00:26:33.140Anyway, I will, now that I've, now that we've, like, laid the groundwork for you to appreciate just where W.E.G. Simpson is going in Which Way, Western Man, I will continue on to the forward.
00:37:46.740And the thing, though, is like, you I mean, I haven't read the book, so I shouldn't prejudge.
00:37:53.960But my feeling is that he stopped too soon and he like found he found a place to rest where like there's something even truer than that in which you just like never rest.
00:38:05.580Like nothing ever is ultimately true, except for just like that you get a little bit of peace and then that you have to plunge yourself right back into war again.
00:38:16.440Well, I would strongly encourage you not to prejudge his journey because this man, like, the amazing thing about him is he isn't just committed to, like, thinking his ideas.
00:38:37.500And, like, he's willing to dedicate, like, years and decades to living them.
00:38:42.540like yeah like he lives out the biography of like saint francis and like jesus in some respect and
00:38:50.820then he lives out the biography of like zarathustra like to the point where yeah you read it and it's
00:38:58.280like aside from the fact that he's glossing over it like you'd almost think that he's like creating
00:39:03.440a character but he's like oh yeah i did this but like the important thing is that i learned x and
00:39:09.000why as like you know well if you lingered on his biography you think he was making it up
00:39:15.340in in like respect to what he's saying what you've said i agree that that is like really
00:39:24.580um admirable that he throw himself into i mean i think for most christians right like i've just
00:39:32.220been reading the antichrist and Nietzsche says like there the church is anti the church is the
00:39:38.960antichrist like there is only ever one there was only ever one christian and he died on the cross
00:39:45.220Nietzsche says like the way that jesus came to present his message it was a demonstration of a
00:39:51.760practice of a life that had to be lived like Nietzsche says well it is false to the point
00:39:58.080of absurdity to see in a belief, for chance the belief in redemption through Christ, the
00:40:04.280distinguishing characteristic of the Christian. Only Christian practice a life such as he who
00:40:10.600died on the cross lived is Christian. So I'm assuming from what he said right here in this
00:40:17.800first introductory bit that like he was a Christian in the sense that he actually practiced
00:40:23.860the faith, instead of just professing a belief that was supposed to redeem him and allow him to
00:40:30.340just continue on in his blind, egotistical ignorance, which I think is often what happens
00:40:37.060with most Christians. They think they're saved by just confessing the articles. And what Nietzsche
00:40:45.280says and what this guy, William, has seen clearly is that Christianity is a practice. It's a
00:40:52.200lifestyle it's something you have to dedicate yourself to completely or you're just LARPing
00:41:00.280basically yes and uh if you're back for chapters three and four uh he says almost the exact same
00:41:11.180thing uh although in like very like deep detail and with lots of text textual support which uh
00:41:21.200might might actually be challenging to read just because of all his like footnoting
00:41:26.940well it's very interesting if you read the gospels from like i don't know i guess a non-christian
00:41:34.640perspective it's like this dude is for real like he's saying you need to do x y and z
00:41:40.600many many different things and all of them are some kind of like giving up social status wealth
00:41:46.980family connections a house and a home material possessions like it's a very difficult life that
00:41:54.240Jesus lived and he called his people to follow him like not to believe in him to do what he did
00:42:01.920and to live the life that he lived and I I personally went through like a very intense
00:42:06.400christian like devoted practice as a young person and sort of arrived at the same point where i
00:42:13.960had to tell jesus one day like bro i can't do this anymore like it feels like literally stabbing my
00:42:20.400own self in the heart and i'm like not into it so thanks but no thanks yeah so i personally have a
00:42:28.360very very cynical interpretation of christ christ's teachings um like i i have like a very
00:42:38.820very dark interpretation of like the meaning of the goss gospels which like uh which actually
00:42:46.640like greatly contradicts uh simpson's interpretation which is like a far more um
00:42:53.960He's far more reflective and, like, far more charitable and far more, like, unwilling to fully reject the 10 years he attempted to fall this lifestyle, this lifestyle and these teachings.
00:43:10.280but uh that'll be something that like uh one of the projects i want to do that i'll probably do
00:43:17.940this year is uh i want to do a read through of um uh there's a book the sayings of jesus says
00:43:25.140just like all the passage of the gospel where jesus speaks in his own words so like if you
00:43:31.280think the gospels are like accurate at all or include like something of the man himself you
00:43:37.000think well the quotations like uh those they try to preserve as intact as possible and when you
00:43:43.220just line those up um i am so at some point i will do that and i will share my interpretation
00:43:51.340of them and i have a very very grim interpretation of them many of those but uh that there'll be a
00:43:58.540subsequent episode but uh yes stay tuned for that but uh back to simpson uh yes as my struggle
00:44:10.240moved on towards certainty and peace of mind it began to come to me more and more that after all
00:44:17.280in an age of disintegration and dissolution like ours when from one quarter or another all standards
00:44:23.960and all values are being not only challenged but rejected. When the old moorings to tie to
00:44:30.920are being washed away and the stars that for centuries men steered by are falling from our
00:44:36.380sky, there must be a multitude of other men who are feeling a desperate need of some tested
00:44:42.320certainties to hold to and to live by. Some of them in particular might take great heart to learn
00:44:48.720of one whose primary concern was with nothing so tawdry as mere human survival,
00:44:55.040but who, on the contrary, was concerned above all else with quality in human life,
00:44:59.840who longed and struggled everlastingly, that man, especially his own kind, his own race,
00:45:09.120those with whom he felt the deepest affinity and for whom he recognized his greatest responsibility,
00:45:18.720And so, on July 1st, 1944, in part to test my own thinking in the light of that of my more
00:45:25.420thoughtful friends, and in part because I was in hope that my own experience might prove a value
00:45:30.440to others, I approached some 250 of my friends and acquaintances in this country and abroad
00:45:35.760in regards to a series of occasional mineographed papers that I might write
00:45:40.340them on a subscription basis. The substance of this letter will form part of the opening chapter,
00:45:46.820the undying purpose, the ennobly man, and of my present work, I propose to examine and to present
00:45:53.980my thinking on a number of the problems that I felt must confront every thoughtful person and
00:45:59.300earnest man as he contemplates what science and technology and the impact of the two world wars
00:46:04.600and the dogmas of democracy had done to the spiritual certainty and direction within him,
00:46:10.020and to the security and tone of the society in which he lived. As their response favored the
00:46:15.920venture and the papers began to appear that summer and continued at irregular intervals over the next
00:46:22.280four years to a total of 19, my readers were mostly intellectuals, some of them in their respective
00:46:28.620fields of worldwide reputation. There were some artists and scientists amongst them, but on the
00:46:34.300whole they were professors, college presidents, authors, ministers, and doctors, with quite a
00:46:39.600sprinkling of university students. These papers may, in a real sense, be looked upon as the
00:46:45.460nucleus of my present book. In fact, my basic values have remained pretty much unchanged,
00:46:51.840and even my most trenchant criticisms and my farthest-reaching conclusions,
00:46:56.640though some of them may have been stated less explicitly in earlier works, were clearly
00:47:01.580foreshadowed there. Nevertheless, my experience, my research, my observations, and the thinking
00:47:06.620have never stood still and have so fed this nucleus that in the course of 30 years the
00:47:12.160manuscript has grown into what is virtually a new work, in which the earlier one is both confirmed
00:47:19.620and consummated. In The Grown Man is the fulfillment of his youth. Certainly, it is the embodiment of
00:47:27.020much might, fullest knowledge, clearest vision, firmest judgment, and most mature thought.
00:47:32.700In the light of this, the original manuscript has been thoroughly worked over, brought up to date,
00:47:37.300expanded and largely rewritten. But the chapters that perhaps are most revealing of the growth of
00:47:42.900my own thought are Man and the Machine, the one on pacifism, the two on eugenics, and most of all
00:47:50.460the two on race. Events in the world in the past 25 years, together with the great increase in my
00:47:56.340knowledge of racial realities and my growing sense of the absolutely pivotal importance of a race
00:48:02.100in The Destiny of All Peoples, and in particular that of my own kind, have desiccitated the almost
00:48:07.760complete rewriting of the original chapter, and in the rewriting, one chapter became two.
00:48:14.160But I have run a little ahead of my story. I had proved quite right in my hope and my expectation,
00:48:21.360before I even approached my prospective reader, that among them I should find some who were
00:48:26.260responsive. In fact, as the series of papers ran its course, I was constantly receiving letters
00:48:31.600in which my readers expressed their responsiveness in very extreme terms. The letters were
00:48:37.400understanding, ardent, unequivocal, moving, and those that were most strongly with me came from
00:48:44.180readers who were most distinguished. Repeatedly, they even called for the publication of the series
00:48:49.480as a book. That this never came to pass seemed to have been the result of circumstances that
00:48:55.200have little to do with the worth of the work, and hence I need not go into them here.
00:48:59.440But there is one thing further it is important to make clear. Gradually and hesitatingly, and only long years after my series of papers had been finished, it began to dawn upon me that perhaps my quest, my struggle, and my achievement had some much wider significance than for my own life or for my raiders.
00:49:20.340was it not true that in a real sense my experience had given me something by which i was enabled to
00:49:27.060pass much of what is most representative of the west its traditions philosophy art religion
00:49:32.660principles ethics institutions and history as it were through a filter and thus to separate the
00:49:39.620true from the false the beautiful from the ugly and the high from low had not i myself no genius
00:49:46.040to be sure, yet possibly a man in some degree distinguished by an unusual combination of
00:49:51.420concern, purpose, values, dedication, and experience, being a balance in which the West
00:49:57.120stood tried, and had not the man's admittedly unusual experience perhaps deepened and clarified
00:50:03.120his insight and vision to a point where he could perceive not only where and why his
00:50:09.100people had made the Munch's mistakes that led to the present desperate plight, but also
00:50:14.460what they must cut from themselves and what course they have no choice but to follow if they are to
00:50:20.380survive the catastrophe that lies ahead of them and at last come to the fulfillment of the nobility
00:50:26.020and the greatness that are in them but any reader's appreciation of the significance of such a man's
00:50:33.540findings as of his judgments must largely depend upon their knowledge of what kind of a man he was
00:50:39.700when he wrote. If what he has to say was merely called from books or put together by a lively
00:50:46.080brain or written from an easy chair, if you wrote, let us say, only with ink, then it can have no
00:50:51.860more value than any modern liberal theorizing and speculation. If it was written not with ink,
00:50:58.500but with blood, with his own blood, then the reader may be moved to put himself in the author's
00:51:04.620place and live through his experience with him, so that he comes to sense the reality that the
00:51:09.700author sees so plainly and the dire calamity ahead of us that he predicts. Then perhaps will he too
00:51:17.540have the full faithfulness of our present day gradually dawn upon him, and at last begin to
00:51:23.720recognize and to face and to grapple with the fact that the fearful path which his people must follow
00:51:29.640if they are to survive is inescapable for this reason it has seemed essential they give the
00:51:36.000reader at the very outset some idea of what sort of man it is whose words they are reading what
00:51:41.200qualifications for his present undertaking show up in the native endowment he inherited from his
00:51:46.460forebears and in his earliest training his scholastic record his dominant motives hold
00:51:52.200firm and undeviating from his late teens even into the present hour? What were his crucial
00:52:02.000decisions from which everything else followed, and what were the searching experiences in which
00:52:06.820he was tested and proved? This information I will now give my readers as objectively and briefly as
00:52:13.000I can, though doubtless the story has been told best up to the year 1935 by Professor Jerome
00:53:17.260Like from the perspective of Nietzsche's concept of the genius and the way that he then it kind of lays out his credentials afterwards and that he seems eager to sort of prove by his works that he is worthy to be giving instruction or guidance to, you know, the race or his people or whatever.
00:53:41.620Like, I think it's really those two things pair well together. Interestingly, if you look at them from Nietzsche's concept of like the noble man. So it's interesting that it seems right that one of his goals is to like a noble Western man or to sort of select for a nobler type of man for the future of the West or the future of the European race.
00:54:07.820But it's interesting that he's, in some ways, according to Nietzsche's definition of nobility, betraying himself as not really very noble, because I think that a noble man probably would think of himself as a genius.
00:54:23.400Like, he probably wouldn't do this, like, this humility, like, self-deflection thing of, like, not saying that he, like, saying, I'm, you know, I'm not a genius, to be sure, but let me prove to you by all of my credentials that I'm still worthy of being heeded.
00:54:45.240And just to support that, I will real quick read from Beyond Good and Evil, where Nietzsche defines what nobility is and how you can recognize it.
00:54:57.580So this is in section 287. He says, what is noble? What does the word noble still mean for us nowadays? How does the nobleman betray himself? How is he recognized under this heavy overcast sky of the commencing plebeianism?
00:55:14.540by which everything is rendered opaque and leaden. It is not his actions which establish his claim.
00:55:23.140Actions are always ambiguous, always inscrutable. Neither is it his works. One finds nowadays among
00:55:31.420artists and scholars plenty of those who betray by their works that a profound longing for nobleness
00:55:38.760impels them, but this very need of nobleness is radically different from the needs of the noble
00:55:45.200soul itself, and it is in fact the eloquent and dangerous sign of the lack thereof. It is not the
00:55:52.240works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank. To employ once more
00:55:59.860an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning, it is some fundamental certainty which
00:56:06.180a noble soul has about itself. Something which is not to be sought is not to be found and perhaps
00:56:13.460also is not to be lost. The noble soul has reverence for itself. End quote. So I think
00:56:21.980it's interesting and fortuitous that I brought earlier that quote about how Nietzsche is sort
00:56:28.660of stealing Protestantism from Christianity here and saying like what really defines a noble person
00:56:35.760in these days of disintegration which in which like the noble orders like the economic classes
00:56:43.620that are are wealthy or like high ranking in social value or like um financial value those
00:56:53.580people aren't necessarily noble right anymore because there's been so much decay in european
00:56:59.300culture so how do you really tell who is noble of soul and nicha is basically saying it's just
00:57:05.480somebody who feels very deep reverence for themselves and believes themselves to be kind
00:57:11.020of magnificent so that to to have that sort of humility of saying like oh I'm not a genius
00:57:17.540like that sort of betrays a lack of nobility I think if you interpret it through this section
00:57:24.340that I've read of Nietzsche's and that need to sort of prove yourself by your works is as far
00:57:31.800Whereas Nietzsche defines it fundamentally like a Christian compulsion and like a Christian
00:57:37.940requirement that, which is so interesting, and it happens to the best of us, that like
00:57:44.040we're so deeply impressed by our Christian upbringing.
00:57:47.680And obviously William went through a very intense period of Christian practice that
00:57:53.200like you don't necessarily shake that at any point.
00:57:56.980Like even when you become an atheist, quote unquote, or, you know, a white nationalist or whatever kind of separating yourself from the Christian church, like that morality still clings to you.
00:58:10.260And you can see it has, like, clung to him still in that he's choosing to present himself as humble and to, like, qualify himself by all of his works and all of the, like, actions that he's taken.
00:58:27.400uh yes and no um so it might be the case that he is adopting this like like humility in this
00:58:39.260christian frame or like uh is still holding holding onto it and um we will see in subsequent
00:58:48.080chapters like uh he has a very peculiar relationship with his uh with christianity that's
00:58:55.480Like, he leaves it, but he still holds on to, like, sections of it and stuff that's, like, explicitly that's quite interesting.
00:59:05.920But part of me wants to say, well, he's not assessing himself incorrectly.
00:59:12.020That, like, if you look at which way Western man, he's laying out this, he's laying out this worldview that's multidisciplinary and is fundamentally, like, he's not, he's not trying to break new ground anywhere.
00:59:35.020anywhere he's trying to bring together like these discordant thoughts that other people
00:59:40.700have worked on and like um other people have explored in their their lifestyle he imitated
00:59:47.960saint francis he didn't he wasn't saint francis he didn't invent out of his own head the idea of
00:59:55.700living like a franciscan monk in like abject poverty like refusing refusing everything for
01:00:04.540For No Reason Safe Fate, he imitated a saint from history.
01:00:16.040And likewise, his lifestyle, after he leaves that, resembles Zarathustra as he's reading Zarathustra.
01:00:25.100that um that um and he he does say contrast himself with many various specialists that he
01:00:35.700tries to draw information from like like uh he talked about all these specialists in the forward
01:00:44.780that um that say no one can really draw synthesis of these these fields or um no one can draw
01:00:54.920like ideas from like multi-fields together and whatnot that like it would take a great
01:01:00.760specialist to do it and probably couldn't and like not even a layman and a layman certainly could
01:01:08.620could do it and i'd argue he's he like successfully does it or successfully like
01:01:15.540draws a vision those but like fundamentally he's like synthesizing like a lot of
01:01:22.240different ideas that are in the ether and like actually putting in the profound work of um
01:01:29.240living them but uh but like he's he's synthesizing ideas and like iterating on them he's not like
01:01:39.280inventing something new so depending on your definition of how like restrictive genius is
01:01:45.960you know he he might be accurately obsessing himself as like a great explorer as opposed to
01:01:54.460a great like lone genius or you might say that he's that that's a word game to to avoid
01:02:02.080to allow him to play the humility game you know or you could say that he's just just like a great
01:02:10.260man who's a sub-genius unlike myself who is a complete genius in all things but right of course
01:02:17.400um i think you're right like i i i think he assesses himself correctly i just think it's
01:02:24.920interesting to bring to the fore like this specific line in that nietzsche quote um that
01:02:31.800one finds nowadays among artists and scholars plenty of those who betray by their works that
01:02:38.240a profound longing for nobleness impels them so yeah I think there's something admirable about
01:02:45.180longing for nobility right but I do think I would so far place him as maybe not necessarily
01:02:52.960inherently noble spirited or noble of soul but like feeling a really deep longing for that and
01:03:01.160kind of going on a heroic quest to attain to that nobility and and that's what that's what
01:03:10.800sort of enables one or motivates one to kind of set up these programs and these ideologies
01:03:17.100these um basically religious um creeds and rituals that are supposed to kind of initiate
01:03:25.300oneself and one's kin into this nobler dimension of experience which he mentioned in what you read
01:03:35.300so far that he wanted to help draw both himself and his kind up into this higher state of
01:03:40.540living this like more full and true sense of life which as the noble like the ancient greeks the
01:03:50.080ancient noble greeks from whom nietzsche drew a lot of his uh concepts of nobility they conceived
01:03:56.960of themselves as being noble because they were real like the word esplos it's the greek word
01:04:03.520that the archaic greeks used to refer to themselves as noble men it just basically
01:04:09.280means like the true ones the real ones the ones that have being yeah um this is where
01:04:20.060he occupies a very interesting place in like uh the american far right because um
01:04:28.860in he and uh william luther pierce uh were figures who interacted with or knew uh
01:04:41.080george lincoln rockwell the founder of the american neo-nazi party who like was a naval
01:04:48.100commander, like, uh, was the rank below captains, like, uh, was this great, uh, military man of
01:04:54.920action before he was assassinated and died tragically young after marrying, um, it was
01:05:01.820like an Icelandic diplomat, like, uh, like his life was almost as close as it could possibly be
01:09:41.420This is David Lane, Bob Matthews, one of Bob Matthews' allies and friends in the Silent Brotherhood.
01:09:55.460That's basically the reason that the Aryan Brotherhood and prison Nazis exist.
01:10:01.240Like, this entire culture of prison pains and prison Nazis, like, comes out of that one thinker.
01:10:12.400And then subsequently you get the 2010s, like, white nationalists, like, Anders Breivik and Brendan Tarrant, who, like, are both carrying out attacks and writing massive manifestos.
01:10:32.420I have a friend who knows professors who are allegedly teaching Anders Breivik's manifesto in universities that it's apparently like such a, like not teaching it as like, imitate this, but teaching it as a, this is an extraordinary example of like this advanced level.
01:11:02.420of like extremism and political thought in extremism that you don't see any anywhere else
01:11:09.520so like you kind of get a synthesis of the two or you could say that they they wasted their lives on
01:11:15.960like symbolic gestures and like attached uh manifests to it but uh you get like this
01:11:24.260this eration evolution of um the relationship of the right-wing extremists to uh thought and action
01:11:33.900uh across the subsequent generations that's uh well as as nietzsche says a good war justifies
01:11:43.240any cause so i i as a perhaps woman i don't know have enormous respect for men who just do things
01:11:52.780like it's much more interesting than sitting around and philosophizing about things even
01:11:58.120though I suppose my greatest hero of all is Nietzsche who did a lot of philosophizing and
01:12:04.380well he wasn't a veteran he was in the board he was a medic in the Prussian some sort of Prussian
01:12:12.320war uh the Franco-Prussian war yeah Franco-Prussian war in the early 1870s uh but I yeah I just get
01:12:21.160like my hind brain turns on and like lights up a ton when I hear stories about insane right-wing
01:12:28.840men just doing ridiculous crazy things like I don't even really care so much about their
01:12:35.200philosophical justifications at that point it's just the doing of something the taking of action
01:12:42.620I think is really attractive and compelling and it kind of goes back to the point that I'm trying
01:12:48.600to make about this like want of nobility and this desire for it. And because Nietzsche does talk in
01:12:54.780a lot of places about like how you actually cultivate nobility. Like he thinks of culture as
01:13:00.760that which like breeds and shapes and trains noble people. And it is, you know, he says in
01:13:10.780Twilight of the Idols, culture starts in the body, not in the mind, not in the soul, in the body,
01:13:17.680in the habits in the demeanor in the company that you keep in the way that you conduct yourself
01:13:24.180and the choices that you make like the selection the selectivity of your um day-to-day habits like
01:13:31.760who you're around what you eat who you procreate with who you socialize with like all of these
01:13:39.220decisions about the way that you nourish uh reproduce your body into the future and just
01:13:45.480conduct your body in your day-to-day life like that's where culture starts and he alludes to
01:13:51.500the greek gymnasium like that's what made greece into a historical cultural event is that they knew
01:14:00.140that culture begins in the training of the male body for war
01:14:05.760absolutely uh uh the the desire and in the preparation for and the enacting of of violence
01:14:19.980creates all the all the cultural tension and discipline and creativity really because
01:14:55.380Like oddities and like failing populations in all kinds of weird ways, like dog breeds that have existed in captivity too long, like the monstrosity that is the modern chihuahua.
01:15:15.200um but uh this is it's actually been edward dutton if you follow him on youtube or like
01:15:25.620his podcast and like can muscle your way through the intense autism that he is which is like so
01:15:32.740admirable and so adorable uh and he he has done all this stuff on like uh the intense oddities
01:15:43.720of modern civilization like breeding practices
01:15:47.600and like the concern about like junk DNA accumulating
01:15:51.520and like really unfit genetic specimens surviving to breed
01:15:57.020and what that does to like population level dynamics.
01:16:02.140And like you study that and suddenly you realize that like,
01:16:07.680oh yeah um all the refinement towards like like uh quality traits that you enjoy do not happen
01:16:17.080uh without like counter selection as well uh yeah there i mean you have nicho speaks about
01:16:25.120this a lot like it's hard to say you know uh what's his name bronze age pervert but i don't
01:16:32.140know what his like real scholar name is coston something wrote that book recently selective
01:16:37.960breeding and the birth of philosophy and it's really interesting i thought it was really
01:16:42.000fun to read about him sort of interpreting nietzsche as primarily concerned with breeding
01:16:49.880philosophers and geniuses basically so bap is it that would be its its own episode that'd be its
01:17:01.580own sequence bap i hadn't read deeply enough uh in light of all the political positions that he's
01:17:10.240taken in the like the past few years that um because bap is like very very jewish and very
01:17:17.640associated with the lakud party israel specifically that um that apparently you have to know that and
01:17:27.520you have to read his stuff with that in mind because apparently this is like a very, very old loyalty you have.
01:17:35.340And if you read that in mind like the same way you read the Straussians, Leo Strauss and his followers,
01:17:43.860or themselves conservative Jews, apparently a lot of his stuff, like you start seeing the underlying threads,
01:17:55.200Like you do with the Straussians or like when you're reading Kagan, the Robert Kagan, the Thucydides scholar, that apparently there's a lot in there that's actually discussing Zionism.
01:18:12.180And like, and like, you need to have that in mind who these, who the Straussians are when you read, when you read them.
01:18:23.040So I read Bronze Age Mindset when it came out, like, years and years ago, and I have selective reading on my shelf, but I haven't read either. I haven't read selective reading, and I haven't read Bronze Age Mindset with the Straussian angle in mind.
01:18:44.860I can't really commentate or recommend that to the readers. I know I have like several mutuals who are like consistently very grumpy and conspiratorial towards that and his influence on the on the online right.
01:19:04.200and uh yeah he's a polar polarizing figure to be sure but I think it is an interesting
01:19:12.340question I suppose for just any Nietzsche enthusiast like how he speaks so often about
01:19:22.520breeding and it's it's interesting to try to disentangle because right everybody is appropriating
01:19:29.440him from one lens or the other. And like, even as a Nietzsche enthusiast in the English speaking
01:19:35.960world, like you've read Kaufman's translations, which are constantly trying to apologize for any
01:19:41.580kind of like, like he writes footnotes apologizing for saying, oh, Nietzsche didn't really mean
01:19:49.200anything by this about like breeding or the Jews or whatever, you know, he's constantly apologizing
01:19:55.220for Nietzsche so it's it's hard it's like I said at the beginning already like everybody is
01:20:00.700regularly appropriating Nietzsche and trying to spin him to their own advantage which is normal
01:20:08.700and fine but like what what does Nietzsche really think about breeding and and I think it's
01:20:15.620interesting in the context of what we're reading about Simpson right now because
01:20:18.920Nietzsche would say you know Nietzsche says that the European of today meaning the 1880s when he
01:20:26.560was writing is like the most docile like mediocre slave type creature that has ever been bred in the
01:20:35.240history of humanity and these are white European people that he thinks are just like the most
01:20:42.360boring slave type herd animal that you could possibly have created as a result of sort of the
01:20:49.580the breeding the selective breeding of christianity and the christian church over the preceding two
01:20:55.940millennia and note for the heroic old old men that we look back on those were like the ones
01:21:03.340and going on expeditions and uh oh my yeah yeah i mean even our grand great grandfathers probably
01:21:11.060we're like living lives of so much more physical robustness and tolerance for difficulty and pain
01:21:18.060and privation than we can even begin to imagine in our slovenly soy fed bodies like we are so
01:21:27.020disgusting compared to even just a few generations ago but Nietzsche's looking at those people and
01:21:33.040saying like wow these people are so weak and so fearful and so incapable of individual thought
01:21:40.020or conviction or decisions of any kind and he's looking back to the renaissance and frequently
01:21:45.240saying like that was the last age of great men like that was the last age in which any men were
01:21:51.460real men or or noble men or geniuses or artists you know or real philosophers fought in the
01:21:59.380Franco-Prussian war like this yeah and you found the like 19th century wars of revelation and uh
01:22:06.980and like uh like napoleon i've just traveled recently to europe on a plane you know and i
01:22:16.340read like the stories of nietzsche trying to take trains from italy to switzerland or to germany or
01:22:21.980whatever and the like travel difficulties that he runs into with the weather and his trunk and
01:22:27.120everything and i am like i would die like i almost died just flying over here on a plane
01:22:32.180and he had to go on a train with a trunk and it's like a horse and you know it's all way
01:22:37.200more complicated and difficult just to travel like even not to be in a war or to fight with
01:22:43.560anybody or to have any enmity along the way just getting yourself physically from one point to
01:22:49.560another is something that I couldn't handle like I think a lot of modern bodies are just destroyed
01:22:56.600by things that were just routine daily life for people 100 years ago, let alone 500 years
01:25:47.660a church of great prestige and wealth,
01:25:50.720and went instead to a very small, broken-down church
01:25:53.640in a very largely foreign industrial district in New Jersey.
01:25:59.640There are those who think this decision gave the set
01:26:02.240to all the future direction of my life.
01:26:04.240what i saw in this town between 1915 and 1918 turned me towards socialism this and even more
01:26:13.360my opposition to the war broke up the church which until then had grown rapidly and greatly
01:26:19.080by the time i resigned in 1918 i felt completely i felt completely disillusioned with christianity
01:26:26.440two years later i went to the pains of getting myself unfrocked i'd come to realize that there
01:26:33.360was no way in which I could be an honest man and remain a minster. In the meantime, immediately
01:26:40.120following my resignation, I had accepted a position as associate director of what became
01:26:45.400the American Civil Liberties Union. But six months of this satisfied me that it was not to be my lot
01:26:52.180to sit in that office and deal with my fellow man by letters, telegrams, and articles. I wanted
01:26:57.820personal contact. But during these same six months, by what at the time seemed sheer chance,
01:27:05.020I read Sabatier's Life of St. Francis. This came to me as the greatest inspiration and challenge
01:27:12.340I had known up to this time. I felt that St. Francis had been dead right in his conviction
01:27:18.540that he was only doing what Jesus had meant all his most dedicated followers to do,
01:27:23.240and that therefore he was the truest and greatest Christian since Jesus himself.
01:27:30.600With all my being, I wanted to go and do likewise.
01:27:34.660But I appreciated the gravity of the decision that confronted me.
01:27:38.320I needed time in which to make very sure.
01:27:42.680I therefore quit my civil liberties job in September of 1919
01:27:47.360and worked my way across the continent as a common laborer.
01:27:51.320In coal mines in Scranton, in a steel mill in Pittsburgh, in the tire factories of Akron, in the Ford Plant of Detroit, in a department store in Chicago, in the open pit iron mines northwest of Duluth, with a railroad section gang in the Rockies, and half a mile down in a copper mine in Butte, where a fall of rock came within a few inches of crushing me.
01:28:19.280I had wanted to find out what men in our country had to do to earn a living, thinking I might
01:28:25.340become a revolutionary labor organizer.
01:28:28.640The experience was invaluable, but in the end, I perceived clearly that more than we
01:28:34.240needed a change in our economic system, we needed a change in the quality and caliber
01:28:38.880of our manhood and womanhood, which, after all, is what finally makes or breaks every
01:28:45.040i returned from the west coast through the deep south with my initial reaction to jim crowism
01:28:51.800and the rest of say and the to the rest of segregation were wholly in sympathy with the nero
01:28:58.380so just want to stop there this guy is like
01:29:04.140like uh this entire arc is like um what every communist up to this point
01:29:14.400would dream that they're like they're like future commie leader a future commie messiah or like a
01:29:22.500great communist leader would do or be like like you'd expect this guy to become like the shake
01:29:30.260wavera or like another like august figure of like some some communist revolution and for us to be
01:29:38.640like cursing his name ever onwards and like very likely he's that that's what he's imagining for
01:29:45.220himself at this point he's going to be like one of the great great uh revolutionary socialists
01:29:51.620of american life except he's sincere yeah and that's exactly why he doesn't stay the path of
01:30:00.860liberal progressivism like um it's remarkable here where he says i had come to realize that
01:30:07.000there was no way in which I could be an honest man and remain a minister. And I just read
01:30:13.760yesterday in the Antichrist, Nietzsche says, quote, what a theologian feels to be true must
01:30:20.080be false. This provides almost a criterion of truth. It is his deepest instinct of self-preservation
01:30:27.800which forbids any part of reality whatever to be held in esteem or even spoken of. Wherever the
01:30:35.580influence of the theologian extends value judgment is stood on its head the concepts true and false
01:30:42.080are necessarily reversed that which is most harmful to life is here called the truth and
01:30:49.280that which enhances intensifies affirms justifies life and causes life to triumph is here called
01:30:56.520false so that's the that's the key to it right because communism socialism liberal progressivism
01:31:06.160itself and whatever of its ramifications wokeism it's a they're they're christianity 2.0 or 3.0
01:31:16.160or whatever they're just further versions of christianity they're religions i don't think
01:31:22.060really any of your listeners would disagree with that statement, even though they might disagree
01:31:27.040with my qualifying them as Christian religions. But you have to be really a very good liar.
01:31:36.560You have to be very good at lying to yourself and to other people to stay the path of those
01:31:42.560religious orders, whether it be Christianity or whatever version of liberal progressivism.
01:31:47.520like it's all built on total the total inversion of the truth and the ability to be an adherent
01:31:55.380to any of those um creeds it depends entirely on your ability to lie to yourself and and then lie
01:32:04.680to yourself about lying to yourself and then like lie to yourself about that again so that you're so
01:32:10.360entangled in this web of cognitive dissonance and that's what like keeps you in the faith right
01:32:17.000It's like you you need that feedback from your co-religionists to keep punishing you for being honest and to keep like it's like you like you vomit lies into their mouth and then they like vomit them back into your mouth like baby bird style.
01:32:34.960And like, that's how you, that's how you all stay connected. And that like communication web that creates the church, if you will, stays intact is like, everyone has to be able to and completely devoted to lying all the time.
01:32:52.320So just that he couldn't lie to himself enough to be a Christian is going to foreshadow very cleanly and predict very well the fact that he's not going to be able to lie to himself well enough to be a communist, a socialist, or a liberal progressivist of any kind.
01:33:09.020well this is where his story is interesting because he's still a christian at this point
01:33:15.000um so he believes that he can't continue as a like presbyterian minister even a radical one
01:33:22.620but uh he's still endeavoring to live the life of saint francis and we're going to get into his
01:33:30.240break with christianity uh in the subsequent chapters where he goes into like very exquisite
01:33:35.960detail, like his very close reading of the Gospels and the essence of Price's teaching.
01:33:45.480And a lot of his pension comes from the very plain fact that there's a contradiction between
01:33:54.500the lifestyle you're supposed to lead as like a lost follower of Price and like also not
01:34:04.540preaching like inoffensively enough that like old women from the village show up again and again
01:34:12.900to hear you every Sunday and that that these are like like the idea that you're that the message
01:34:21.080is for every everyone which uh he argues that uh that Chris message actually suggests a very
01:34:30.540different lifestyle or very different relation for his uh core followers um but uh that is
01:34:40.540a very a very deep deep well we will be dedicating episodes to in and of itself
01:34:47.960uh yeah and i want to have you back i think his oh i would be happy to be back and i do think his
01:34:55.540sincerity like his inherent sincerity foreshadows all of that and I personally really identify with
01:35:04.380that because when I did my um Christian experience I was like so sincere I am so inherently sincere
01:35:13.240and that's what made me so sincere about Christianity and then too sincere to stay
01:35:19.980in it like too too sincere to to stay the course and like I think sometimes in my um more petty
01:35:30.180moments like that I I want it's it would almost be interesting to engage in a Christian ministry
01:35:37.740that actually encourages Christians to be Christians like it would be cool I think if
01:35:43.940christians would just really be christians and like live out the natural consequences
01:35:51.060of being true and genuine to um following the teachings of the christ so it will be really
01:36:00.720interesting to see how he interprets those teachings and i i would argue that everyone
01:36:07.900who has ever tried to do that has met the natural conclusions of christianity which
01:36:15.220is that they died a horrible death like jesus right you end up on the cross basically and
01:36:21.940you know some in some version of uh or analogy analog of crucifixion yeah quite literal
01:36:32.840crucifixion uh you would you would not believe however currently uh uh people who very sincerely
01:36:40.680followed christ managed to like get cultures that did not practice crucifixion to crucify them
01:36:47.580uh like a very uh japan did not have a tradition of crucifixion until christians arrived in japan
01:36:57.180and then they they crucified the christians uh which is a very interesting
01:37:05.520cultural phenomenon pick up your cross indeed but uh yeah i mean it's like nietzsche says this a lot
01:37:15.700and it's some of the really very cruelest things that he says but it's like the basic underlying
01:37:23.740premise of christianity is like a hatred of reality it's a it's a hatred of actuality and
01:37:30.240it's suffering from reality it's suffering from the truth and that's why you have to be such a
01:37:35.320consummate liar to be um a true adherent of that faith and like he just lovingly i think
01:37:45.660mercifully suggests that if you really are suffering so much from life like
01:37:51.620there is a way out you could just leave like you don't have to stay and make everybody else
01:37:57.600miserable like pity right is how suffering spreads like being a pitiful person is like
01:38:04.620whenever people have to look at you it makes them feel sick too and like and Nietzsche's just
01:38:11.120suggesting like really if you hate the world if you hate life that much like why don't you just
01:38:17.220go then like why don't you just go into the beyond into your paradise with god like if you
01:38:22.800if really everything about the world is so awful and you hate it so much like why be here
01:38:28.300i i have christianity does provide an answer to that and i'd are this is my personal
01:38:37.180interpretation this is where like i am probably like the most cynical like bad faith or not bad
01:38:44.360faith the like like vicious interpretator interpreter of christianity uh i think that
01:38:51.640almost every word jesus has ever said uh answers that question horrifyingly uh
01:39:00.000i i have to go into it now because i've hinted at it too much but uh yeah i'm very curious
01:39:09.260hello glorious listeners i went on a bit of a long tangent here so uh we're going to be
01:39:20.520skipping right back to william gailey simpson however the long tangent on uh jesus and
01:39:28.360and the um my personal opinion on the true meaning of the gospel i'm going to move that
01:39:36.260to the end that shouldn't poison your your opinion of gaily simpson he has his own take however i
01:39:42.820will include it at the end of this episode so that uh you can either delete the episode and not bother
01:39:50.380with my opinion or you can listen to it i i think i represent it fairly well but anyway back to simpson
01:39:56.880and which way western man this is this is getting uh we're already way off um
01:40:09.160uh uh timpson so i will uh continue from where we left off
01:40:16.180okay so okay feeling my need for still more time in which to weigh the consequences of the break
01:40:24.580with my past that I was contemplating. In an effort to go the way of Jesus and St. Francis,
01:40:30.660I accepted a position on the faculty of the newly opened Brookwood School of Catanoa, New York.
01:40:39.360But before the end of the year, though I was asked to become the head of the school the year
01:40:44.980following, I felt virtually certain that nothing could ever satisfy me but to give myself with
01:40:50.260abandoned to what was then my highest vision. And so after a month alone on an island in the
01:40:57.120St. Lawrence River, where I meditated much and long and sat down in black and white just what
01:41:02.160I was going to do and why I was going to do it, I returned home in the fall to part quite literally
01:41:07.880with everything I possessed. And early in October 1920, penniless and with little more than the
01:41:16.080clothes I was wearing, and some tools to work with, I went back to the town in which I had
01:41:21.640my church, there to do my labor as a gift and to learn to depend for my need, no matter where I
01:41:28.300might be, and what people wanted to give me. After six months or so, I began to speak, at first on
01:41:35.620the street and in parks, and then in churches, and then more and more as word of what I was doing
01:41:41.980spread to students in colleges. In 1922, I moved to Wallington, a foreign and Negro section on the
01:41:49.660edge of Passiac. Gradually, there came to be a small group of us, all college men, united in a
01:41:59.180common will to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and St. Francis. On land near the town dump, which was
01:42:06.240lent to us, and with material donated, we built ourselves a shanty in which each man had a room
01:42:12.660six feet square. We worked for people in the neighborhood, doing any kind of work we knew
01:42:19.620how to do, from the highly skilled to the most menial. Always our labor was our gift. I myself
01:42:26.780spent more and more time speaking in colleges and churches to which I was invited. It came to be a
01:42:32.580common experience that meetings beginning say at eight o'clock would in large part linger on
01:42:39.860for the most searching kind of question and discussion until one and even two o'clock in
01:42:45.660the morning. Often at last, I simply had to close the meeting in order to get the rest necessary for
01:42:51.760my next day's work. This ever-widening contact with some of the most earnest student life of
01:42:58.820the U.S. and Canada continued until after my pilgrimage to the Orient. This trip was made
01:43:04.920possible by the trust and generosity of many friends. With a knapsack on my back, I set out
01:43:10.540in the fall of 1927. So many were the doors opened to me by my letters of introduction
01:43:16.600that from the time I set sail from San Francisco until I landed back in New York, I never once
01:43:22.120spent a night in a place of public lodging. My close contact with the native life of the three
01:43:27.160outstanding peoples of the orient and especially the many intimate and extremely searching hours
01:43:32.460i spent with some of the great thinkers and seers proved to be an experience of deep and lasting
01:43:37.700significance but here i must pass it by with this fair mention uh the three outstanding peoples of
01:43:45.140the orient i assume are the chinese the koreans and the japanese i assume uh that's who you'd be
01:43:51.820traveling to in the 1920s. By the summer of 1929, however, my faith in the course I had been
01:44:01.260following began to break down. I saw that a pure heart and will was not in itself enough. The need
01:44:08.480for my mind and a certain realistic common sense began to reassert themselves. Moreover, I was
01:44:13.780finding myself deeply moved by what I read in Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Thus I came to be so
01:44:20.200shaken with uncertainty that i could not go on i left wallington never to return and my franciscan
01:44:26.740venture of faith came to a complete end and then followed for some four or five years a period of
01:44:34.040devastating skepticism which i doubted everything i had ever believed i deliberately turned the
01:44:40.540heaviest guns i could find on my most cherished positions i wanted to get down to bedrock i moved
01:44:46.840to New Haven and spent solid months reading and studying in the Yale Library. It was a period of
01:44:53.740slow, painful inner re-examination, reorientation, and reorganization made all the more difficult by
01:45:00.260my efforts to see my way clearly in regard to my wife and child. I suppose it is but to state
01:45:07.020plain fact if I say that I was able to go through it only because I put truth above peace, mind,
01:45:13.580in integrity above social recognition and public opinion. I came to be filled with a growing sense
01:45:19.080of the madness of cities, and indeed of our whole civilization. With a deepening hunger for mountains
01:45:25.680or the sea, and a desire to live close to the earth, and to grow my own food, and I had the
01:45:31.120sick animal's instinct to be alone for a while. In this emergency, a friend made the down payment
01:45:38.100on a farm far back in the Catskills Mountains to which I moved in the spring of 1932 and which I
01:45:46.260still make my home. For several years, I was in complete retirement, devoting myself to much
01:45:52.160study chiefly of Nietzsche and to constant thought about some of the profoundest problems that
01:45:57.400confront mankind. As early as 1920, I had written that our civilization was dying, but now I want
01:46:06.060to know why we are dying and what we must do to arrest our sickness and become well again.
01:46:12.060I come to mistrust the too narrowly personal approach that had marked my Franciscan period
01:46:17.540of 1920 to 1929. I recognize that a people is something more than a collection of individuals.
01:46:24.860It is only exceptional men, only a few, who can achieve and maintain spiritual and intellectual
01:46:30.700health and wholeness in the midst of an alien, decaying, and poisonous environment.
01:46:35.120therefore the potentialities of the individual on the one hand and on the other the form of
01:46:40.700social organization which can so largely further or frustrate personal instinct and effort must be
01:46:46.880worked ought must be worked at together and so i now undertook is never before to fathom the
01:46:53.900beginning of man and not just the superior exceptional man but as well the general the
01:47:00.140general run of men and mass man for i saw clearly that all through the effort for a higher human
01:47:07.920future was forever remain but folly and futility except as a recognized man's inborn and fixed
01:47:14.640limitations and was adjusted to the range of escape capacities i need to know too by the
01:47:21.200verdict of history and of genetics which is a rule on long run and in long run has more to do
01:47:28.620with determining what a man becomes what he is born into or what he is born with his
01:47:34.140his environment or what he got from his ancestors his heredity upon the answer to this must depend
01:47:41.700the socialist ability to make good the promises by which today he lures mass man all over the
01:47:47.200world to follow his cause further i tried to learn from history whether or not there was
01:47:52.700any form of social organization that seemed more generally to have provided the foundation of
01:47:57.800for societies that have lasted long, proved culturally significant, and provide their people
01:48:04.480with health and contentment. I paid special attention to the respective claims of aristocracy
01:48:10.520and monarchy on the one hand, and of democracy and socialism on the other. And I began to take
01:48:17.220a good look at these questions through the eyes of modern psychology and sociology.
01:48:21.140also in probing for the causes of the decay that manifests itself on every side of us today
01:48:28.620i spent much time on the problem of human breeding to what extent we were suffering
01:48:34.200for the fact that we are no longer the same people we were once that our better elements
01:48:39.240were being outbred by our worse and worst that the very caliber and character of the stock
01:48:45.920that founded this country had gradually been demonstrably and markedly deteriorated.
01:48:55.180What should we do to remove the burden and the contamination of our human rubbish,
01:49:01.640which was generally quite incapable of doing anything but producing still more rubbish?
01:49:06.500I do not use the word rubbish lightly or unfeelingly,
01:49:09.980but by what other word can I refer to those unfortunate and helpless human beings
01:49:14.220who can be nothing more than dead weight on any human society what was wrong with our woman
01:49:19.960our women on the upper levels that they said should so generally have gone on strike against
01:49:25.100bearing children what should be done to make marriage the institution by which our breeding
01:49:30.120stock is not merely perpetuated but constantly purified strengthened and enriched what rule
01:49:36.160should be instituted but above all what tradition should be fostered and established by which people
01:49:41.660might be given sound guidance in their selection of mates again i found it necessary to look closely
01:49:47.720into the question of race and particularly into the origin characteristics and record of those
01:49:53.600races that had been most involved in our own civilization what is race what makes it is it
01:50:01.300something so superficial that it may safely be ignored if a man or woman is a of widely different
01:50:07.740race but themselves of sound body and mind wish to marry or is it something so deep inexorable
01:50:13.760far-reaching in determining that marriage between individuals of widely different races should be
01:50:19.120absolutely interdicted and severely punished with the rule against it is broken and then what of
01:50:25.140the claim today so prevalent that the races are equal and that they have all proved or when given
01:50:31.380the opportunity will prove of equivalent cultural capacity to what extent was the truth was
01:50:37.920disraeli who declared that race is all and pronounced it the key to history provided only
01:50:46.000the race be of superior inborn capacity and sternly keep keep its blood unmixed with that of
01:50:52.420aliens and furors and to what extent was it with those opponents who saw race a thing of so little
01:50:59.800consequence that they would turn the whole earth into a racial melting pot and thus entirely
01:51:05.200obliterate race as a mark of distinction amongst human beings. Again, I want to emphasize that
01:51:12.480this is a book published in 1977 that was written largely in the 1950s. I just want to emphasize
01:51:22.280that to listeners at home who might think, oh, this, this is a, who might not quite appreciate
01:51:29.960that, like, this man is like Cassandra perceiving things decades ahead of the time.
01:51:40.440Yeah, it's, well, I was just reading yesterday Nietzsche already in, you know, the 1880s
01:51:47.800speaking about the dissolution of the institution of marriage and of basically the dissolution of
01:51:56.140institutions generally and what causes that or what, you know, the degeneration of the race is
01:52:05.720what leads to the inability to establish and maintain institutions. I'll just read real quick.
01:52:13.560He says, everything in institutions, which makes them institutions, is scorned, loathed, and repudiated.
01:52:22.420Everybody is in mortal fear of a new slavery, wherever the word authority is so much as whispered.
01:52:29.100The decadence of the valuing instinct, both in our politicians and in our political parties, go so far that they instinctively prefer that which acts as a solvent, that which precipitates the final catastrophe.
01:52:43.560As an example of this, behold, modern marriage. All reason has obviously been divorced from modern marriage, but this is no objection to marriage itself, but rather to modernity.
01:52:55.160The rational basis of marriage, it lays in the exclusive legal responsibility of the man. By this means some ballast was laid in the ship of matrimony, where nowadays it has a list, now on this side, now on that.
01:53:10.020the rational basis of marriage it lay in its absolute indissolubleness in this way it was
01:53:16.560given a gravity which knew how to make its influence felt in the face of the accident of
01:53:21.420sentiment passion and momentary impulse um he's and then he kind of criticizes the idea of love
01:53:31.140marriages and says that the family should be or was traditionally involved in creating these
01:53:37.220matches, no institution ever has been nor ever will be built upon an idiosyncrasy. As I say,
01:53:43.900marriage cannot be based upon love. It can be based only upon sexual desire, upon the instinct
01:53:50.180of property, wife and children as possessions, upon the instinct of dominion, which constantly
01:53:56.900organizes for itself the smallest form of dominion, the family, which requires children and heirs in
01:54:03.680order to hold fast, and also in the physiological sense, to a certain quantum of acquired power,
01:54:10.360influence, and wealth, so as to prepare for lasting tasks and for solidarity in the instincts
01:54:16.220from one century to another. Marriage as an institution presupposes the affirmation of the
01:54:22.060greatest and most permanent form of organization. If society cannot as a whole stand security for
01:54:29.220itself into the remotest generations, marriage has no meaning whatsoever. Modern marriage has
01:54:35.860lost its meaning. Consequently, it is being abolished. So thought of that when you read
01:54:41.820about what's compelling women to not want to bear children. And in our age, men don't want
01:54:47.720children either. Both sexes are so reluctant to have children because we don't feel ourselves to
01:54:54.700be a link in a chain of like a generations long social project like our society has decayed to
01:55:05.720the point literally like we feel so disintegrated from our society and it is so disintegrated by
01:55:13.500the introduction of people from all kinds of different races and cultures like there is no
01:55:17.780cohesion in our society so there's no guarantee for the future so what's the point of marriage
01:55:22.920there's no point of marriage like what's the point of having children if there's nothing to
01:55:28.100give them like there's nothing for them to inherit there's no culture into which they can
01:55:34.940grow or by which they can be cultivated so like very low motivation to have children and then
01:55:44.820I think the reason you know that men don't want to be married now and they don't want to have
01:55:48.380children is because they don't have the basic motivation to do so which is the ownership of
01:55:56.460their wife and their children and women don't want to be married to men who won't own them
01:56:02.180that's the crazy thing about feminists is they're always going on and on about
01:56:05.500how they want men to behave in these certain ways but like women don't actually like men who
01:56:10.540treat them as equals like women actually only really like very dominant men and so of course
01:56:17.120feminists and women who've been tainted by feminism don't want to get married because
01:56:21.500men can't be domineering enough to actually like take possession of them as wife as a piece of
01:56:28.380property yes uh women want to make as much as any man but they want their husband to be a vampire
01:56:37.000billionaire and it's like you just literally cannot you cannot love a man unless you need him
01:56:44.560Like love is not enough. You can't build a marriage on love. It's, it's simply not enough. Like you have to, I maybe don't speak for all women because I'm a very odd woman, but you have to need your husband to stay committed to him.
01:57:00.800very very much much so and uh this is where we always say to guys you have to have children
01:57:11.900no one else will continue the fight against the enemy uh that like uh they're like a huge part of
01:57:20.400the impetus for, like, marriage and children in times past
01:57:30.720was that you perceived yourself as being in a, like, fighting competition.
01:57:43.480you are ceding the future to your enemies, you know.
01:57:49.940There's no point in fighting the battle if you're just going to die and lose your territory at the end of it, you know, then you're just, then you're fighting these long battles for your enemy's children to inherit.
01:58:03.220well and that's the that's the other real trick about the captivity that we find ourselves in
01:58:11.440because as he mentioned you know considering monarchy aristocracy and democracy like
01:58:18.760Nietzsche says in the Twilight of the Idols that democracy has always been the decaying form of
01:58:26.320social organization like democracy is the last stop on the train to anarchy and the total
01:58:34.240dissolution of society like french revolution style you know it's it's interesting to think
01:58:41.940of america in that sense as a country that was basically founded on a decadent political principle
01:58:47.940like it was rotten from the beginning so it's no wonder that it's become as dissolute as it is now
01:58:55.060And I think that Simpson will come to this conclusion, I imagine, because it's the only reasonable one, like, to try to save a culture by a decadent principle is foolishness.
01:59:10.760To try to like get a democratic majority of people in America or any of these sort of Western countries that are nominally democracies is very retarded because democracy in itself is decadent.
01:59:26.640So you will not solve the problem by applying the sort of political methods that actually just betray the problem and feed the problem and are fundamentally themselves a problem.
01:59:46.060yeah the um the history of democracies are uh are the history of um the franchise being like
01:59:57.720forced open in peacetime and the democracies decaying and this is true when like athens went
02:00:04.220from like five percent of the population voting to ten percent of the population voting right
02:00:09.400The Regisians were forced to diversify from, like, 2% of the population voting to, like, 5%, and they had to include, like, some of the, they're backing African ethnicities.
02:00:25.160And the history of democracy is this franchise widening as, like, the society and its decision-making structure decays, and it becomes more and more corrupt.
02:00:35.140and then uh well we were very suddenly like like over the course of like a decade or less
02:00:43.840uh some coalition of like violent young men uh the first philosophers uh were amongst the first to
02:00:51.780do it like uh in athens uh established an all-eurokia dictatorship which radically reduces
02:00:58.760the franchise and like usually kills off a ton of their rivals well and that's what you want to
02:01:04.900be breeding for right I think that was the rest of my point that I forgot to make is like you don't
02:01:09.900want to be breeding future voters democratic voters like that's not the way to think about
02:01:15.560having babies as you know if you are on the right wing and want to follow along and what I think
02:01:21.740Simpson is getting at here is like you don't want to think about breeding the most voters you want
02:01:27.060to think about breeding the best warriors because it will eventually come to a war like no one's
02:01:33.400boating their way out of the dissolution into which our western nations have degraded yeah be
02:01:43.080breeding uh young tyrants like the 400 exactly exactly and you know to i don't know i have to
02:01:51.740rethink i guess but i really did like in selective breeding that bap points out that the you know the
02:02:00.440Greek philosophers of whom you just spoke, these first philosophers, they were constantly grappling
02:02:06.320with the fact that to breed philosophers, you also breed tyrants. And both of those are a type
02:02:12.560of genius. And I think to go back to something earlier, where Nietzsche is concerned with
02:02:19.180breeding, he's very interested in the conditions of breeding geniuses.
02:02:24.620yes a because that's who you need to to make the rules so so again the simpson was just asking this
02:02:35.140question like what rules do we establish to create this ideal society you know and that's i mean
02:02:41.180that's even something plato is concerned with right in the republic like how do we set down
02:02:45.740the right rules and who do we put in charge like who's the one who makes those rules for plato was
02:02:51.280like the philosopher king right for Nietzsche I think this is kind of a stretch but like
02:02:57.400the genius is the law giver like the philosopher of the future is what Nietzsche often calls him
02:03:04.160but like he is also the legislator he is the one who sets down or like commands he commands the
02:03:14.540laws and I think the one major difference between like the worldview that will create a noble race
02:03:21.120of men and the um christian worldview which creates like a democratic like democracy is a
02:03:26.880very christian concept right based on the equality of all voters before the law um but that whole
02:03:36.360idea of law is based in logos right it's what's written down in the sacred text either the bible
02:03:44.000or the constitution or the like written law that guides western nations today but like that
02:03:51.580is so vulnerable to casuistry like that is so vulnerable to the type of people who can like
02:04:00.400make loopholes out of any single law to the advantage of them and themselves and to the
02:04:07.020disadvantage of like everybody else and I won't name names but we all know who's really good at
02:04:12.240doing that as soon as you have something written down like it's very vulnerable to perversion
02:04:18.380very rapidly and to dissolution so like you want to actually be breeding law givers so that each
02:04:25.260generation has somebody who is commanding from his own instinctual internal genius
02:04:33.040with a felt connection to the preceding generations and a real interest in the
02:04:40.720upcoming generations he is like generating the law from his living body so it's an erotic
02:04:48.420law not it's not logos driven it's eros driven like he feels that life force power within himself
02:04:58.060and articulates that into legislation that molds the plastic mass man into his vision
02:05:08.440for a society that is organized to the end of breeding these exceptional human beings that we
02:05:18.180know as genius yes and we can if you remember that table of contents we can see that uh
02:05:26.320simpson is building up to this he's even going to be talking about um monarchy and aristocracy
02:05:32.620in addition to breeding and everything else um of course the the ur example of um the great example
02:05:43.040of this like kind of project is the uh european courts uh kingly courts of like uh the medieval
02:05:52.060through the early modern period where you actually had um the the king and the crown prince prince
02:06:01.100depending on the the age of the king acting as like a father and uh and most attractive man
02:06:11.760in the kingdom and the retainers and like military personnel acting as extended family
02:06:20.100in like this ongoing um basically basically like party culture almost that like uh
02:06:30.400like the courtly ball is like a core political event because that's when the marriages and like
02:06:37.800the relationships are starting and when like future generations are being made who will become
02:06:43.680low officers of the court and like uh when up-and-comers are being integrated and like
02:06:50.800it's being decided which the up-and-comers are going to be um integrated by a blood into blood
02:06:57.580loyalty through marriage and stuff and that it's it's you watch any of like the uh the films or
02:07:09.420the recreations are just like photographs that were taken of like courtly balls and it's like
02:07:15.460genuinely incredible just how how much like uh it's very plainly a higher civilization than we
02:07:25.660have but uh and we are you know it go ahead oh go ahead no go ahead oh i was just gonna say
02:07:34.220i want to finish up simpson uh rather soon we had been going for yeah we can talk about breeding
02:07:42.440later more in the breeding chapters absolutely all right and then there was the practical
02:07:50.600and, for the man who is out of step with his age, the very important question of how he could best
02:07:57.800maintain a health of body, mind, and soul amidst a world that was rotting to pieces. How could he
02:08:04.380assure himself of a livelihood while he resolutely pursued his bent and freely spoke his mind?
02:08:11.500How could he find time for the things he believed most important? How should he avoid wasting
02:08:17.520himself in mere resistance to a world that pressed itself upon him all too closely and in the
02:08:23.700headlines of every paper in every radio program and in almost every person he met how should he
02:08:29.720keep his spirit unembittered holding in perspective the onrushing tumult of events and judging them
02:08:36.340steadily in the calm light of his final comprehension of the meaning of life how should he manage to
02:08:42.240the end and come what may, to keep his eye serene, his step firm, and his heart full of sympathy and
02:08:48.580love. In seeking the answer to these questions and light questions, my thinking often led me
02:08:53.600into paths that were either forbidden or badly overgrown, and to conclusions that at many points
02:08:59.680were far removed from those in my Franciscan days, and often both uncongenial to the modern
02:09:05.660American mind and very unpopular. Perhaps it was on this account that, by 1941, a growing and
02:09:11.900hearting antagonism to my views, most marked on the part of the university authorities but also
02:09:17.260amongst my old friends, gradually led to the almost complete termination of my speaking engagements.
02:09:23.400It would be a mistake, however, to assume from this that the students themselves had become
02:09:27.920less responsive. On the contrary, whether it was in New England, New York, or Pennsylvania,
02:09:32.820Chicago, or California, the meetings always ran on for hours over time. Primarily, the difficulty
02:09:39.760did lie in the opposition of the university authorities and in the failure of my friends
02:09:44.960any longer to make the necessary arrangements. But two other factors need to be noted.
02:09:51.200For one thing, I became increasingly aware that my values and my point of view on life
02:09:56.720and all of its problems were so vastly different from those of the overwhelming majority of my
02:10:02.380audiences that I could hardly hope for deep understanding without a series of meetings,
02:10:07.480something that the crowded setup of college life rarely allowed room for. Also, my own growing
02:10:13.520deafness created real obstacles to my continuing any longer to participate easily and spontaneously
02:10:19.580in the period of questioning that always followed my talks and that gave me my best opportunity to
02:10:25.460clear up misconceptions. At any rate, as the end result of these combined difficulties,
02:10:31.920my speaking virtually came to an end in 1941. Now was the situation very different when I turned
02:10:38.760to writing, nor was the situation very different when I turned to writing. To be sure, my Towards
02:10:44.300the Rising Sun, published in 1935, had traveled to the ends of the earth and by many congenial
02:10:50.200spirits, some of them quite distinguished, had been very well received. But very shortly after
02:10:56.300of the there began that then puzzling and quite unexpected change in the attitude of publishers
02:11:02.440towards everything that did not conform to the sort of new orthodoxy that was taking shape in
02:11:07.140American life. Perhaps I thought at the time the coming of the Second World War had something to
02:11:12.060do with it. Anyway, a book that I had been working on for some years was written from a point of view
02:11:18.120and was full of ideas that even friendly critics maintained would prevent its publication at least
02:11:24.620until the war was over. But I did not like the deepening isolation in which I found myself.
02:11:30.900From the beginning, I had turned to people if I had sought solitude at the farm. It would prove,
02:11:36.860I thought, only for an interim, and as a means by which to recover from the debacle in which
02:11:42.640my Franciscan venture had come to the end. For a time, I had to be alone, that I might search my
02:11:49.160innermost being anew and explore the tested answers to our problems afforded in the historic
02:11:54.380record of great peoples and in the wisdom of great seers, in hopes that once again I might
02:12:00.040be sure of my bearing and locate within myself the strength to follow my star. But when I turned to
02:12:05.420my friends and supporters, and I did in 1944, in regard to the series of papers that I might
02:12:10.500address to them, I was moved primarily by my need to find people with whom I could travel, people
02:12:16.100who, whether or not they were yet aware of it, really longed to find and to follow paths and
02:12:21.500stars, very like to those that lured me. Now, as always, I reached out to people and from friends
02:12:28.140with whom I could freely share and what I had found and with whom I could realize the great
02:12:33.960strength that grows out of deep fellowship. I warned my prospective readers that I should have
02:12:39.680little to say by way of interpreting current events. On the whole, I did not even follow
02:12:44.780these closely. I believed that there was absolutely nothing that could be done to save the social
02:12:49.780situation. The social situation was completely out of hand. Catastrophe was upon us. The stars
02:12:56.880by which for long centuries we had set out that our course had darkened in our sky. The cohesive
02:13:03.460force that had long bound us together as people and as a people had died long ago. And now the
02:13:10.600body of our society was falling to pieces, believing as I did that we were already in the
02:13:16.360midst of this tragedy and that there was no power that could keep it from working itself out to its
02:13:22.400bitter end. It did not make sense to spend energy on resisting it. The part of wisdom was to begin
02:13:29.180to prepare for what might follow. To some, this may have seemed pessimistic, but basically and
02:13:35.360ultimately, I was anything but a pessimist. I believed in life. I believed in man. I believed
02:13:41.280in what man had done and what man would yet do again. I could not close my eyes to what I saw
02:13:47.220as actualities before me or to what these actualities meant. One thing they meant was
02:13:54.580that those of the requisite vision, intelligence, and devotion would narrow their efforts to what
02:14:00.840after all remained forever the basic problems of human existence, the nature and the potentialities
02:14:06.940of man and the goals together with the means for reaching them by which the life of mankind
02:14:12.520might develop a health a robustness a beauty a nobility and a significance beyond anything we
02:14:20.120knew of in our past it was to the future that i wished to address myself out of the hope that
02:14:26.660whatever time and strength might still be left me might help if our small way to prepare for the
02:14:33.440new dawn which i believe must at last follow the storm of night for when that great day came
02:14:40.460its opportunity for new building i longed that our children might know how to build better than
02:14:46.960our fathers built but these were strenuous tasks beyond the wisdom or the strength of any one man
02:14:52.980there was the uttermost need therefore beyond even the need of starving people for bread or
02:14:59.420broken people for peace, that somehow, as many as possible of the best minds and spirits of our day
02:15:06.540should together concentrate upon solving the problem they raised. Doubtless, very few men
02:15:11.960would be able to detach themselves sufficiently from the Holocaust before their eyes to achieve
02:15:17.220the perceived necessity, the perspective necessary for wisdom. And it must be recognized from the
02:15:23.660start that whoever set his hand to this task gambled with circumstance he might give to the
02:15:29.820solution of the problem upon which the whole future of mankind depends the very best he had
02:15:36.540and all he had in him and he might for chance find much wisdom and yet it might all be swept
02:15:43.220aside by the seeming indifferent hand of fate or be swallowed up in the ignorance and vulgarity of
02:15:48.620a day given over alas to the happiness of the greatest number nevertheless that's in scare
02:15:58.400quotes there i want you i hope that came through in my tone the happiness of the greatest number
02:16:04.700uh the contempt oozes off the page nevertheless the task must be assayed if only for the sake
02:16:14.020of trueness of oneself and in the hope that it might count for the higher life of the race and
02:16:20.940we could support ourselves through dark hours by the memory that more than once in the past
02:16:25.720work that was done quietly and almost unseen did finally count for much after all the form
02:16:32.880any society takes is largely determined by the molding power of its ideas and ideals
02:21:46.480so if you this is way off of gailey simpson but um if you read the bible um
02:22:04.120like especially just the words of jesus so like just jesus in the god for gospels and even then
02:22:12.500not John John is like significantly like more distant from Jesus than the other three gospels
02:22:20.780like it's yeah it was much later composed and like after I think it was composed for
02:22:27.840ideological purposes after several decades of the like nascent church actually having to deal
02:22:33.920with the real world and when you know that and you read the gospels like it it jumps out at you
02:22:39.160immediately that like uh jesus is very much less a person in john and is more like um like uh
02:22:46.100at various points in john he's a he's a concept he's logos like they tried to take this sort of
02:22:52.380gnostic understanding of the word and then give it a story that ties it to jesus of nazareth
02:22:59.580not very convincingly but nevertheless a for effort yeah but like this this affects even like
02:23:06.560the style of john so like uh jesus will start talking in a dialogue and then like the dialogue
02:23:13.460that jesus is like speaking as a character will not like close out with a quotation mark but then
02:23:19.280will like just like seamlessly morph into like the rest of the passage that's being spoken as if from
02:23:26.660like a third person to like uh to like grace will like start speaking the quotation won't end
02:23:33.620and then like it will continue as if um is switching switch back to the nearer uh going
02:23:41.740on about and so and so christ will be x will be executed and is like say all this stuff like
02:23:49.980talking about what's going to happen in the future that like he obviously like like just
02:23:56.360narratively did not say that to his followers in that moment in that house of that lady who
02:24:01.080had just been cured but cured of demons because then all his followers would right would be like
02:24:05.680wait what you're gonna die by crucifixion that sounds like that's that's gonna stop wait a
02:24:11.860minute wait a minute roll that back walk us through this what yeah one more time big j
02:24:16.720uh like uh like that's like even if you're the most devout follower you wouldn't just go oh he
02:24:24.260just said that you'd be like wait what can you unpack that that for us uh what's gonna happen
02:24:30.600what unless you know you know and then you're going to revive like uh why wouldn't if you're
02:24:37.200telling us this now why aren't you avoiding this uh what what's going on here like uh like it very
02:24:42.760obviously is not a uh like recounting of events and is not like supposed to be really whereas um
02:24:51.500um mark matthew and luke like uh especially mark but like mostly matthew and luke as well
02:24:59.960Like, um, you could totally believe that like individual scenes and dialogues are like, um, recorded from memory or recorded from a guy who recounted it. That's like, uh, like there's very clearly like a, a scene there that's like, at least on the face of it, it's like flesh and blood people interacting and like could be like recorded by someone who is there or recorded by someone who spoke to someone who is there.
02:25:26.000that it's like a very much like something that could come from from experience and this is where
02:25:33.380we get like the quotations from jesus that like okay this makes perfect this would be like if
02:25:40.100this was a direct quotation from the guy like uh that wouldn't be be odd like we'd expect
02:25:47.000expect like this where the sermon on the mount and like other other passages come from and
02:25:54.000so what is the essence of like jesus's words that they've like preserved as much as they can and
02:26:00.500are being passed down what's the essence of that and um jesus is a very distinctive
02:26:07.160thinker and he has and no one notices this because um we're used to it in modern parlance
02:26:15.660but uh jesus is the first think thinker or like the first speaker that you encounter anywhere in
02:26:24.380history who's saying spread this word spread this he's the he's the inventor of viral marketing
02:26:30.580uh he's the first um he's the first um public speaker guru he literally is saying follow me
02:26:39.460like follow me on twitter yeah he's the first person who's saying spread the word spread
02:26:45.520the word spread the word um and this this goes like even into the setup of it um i was always
02:26:52.680i was always very cross at like uh christian performances like not just nativity performances
02:27:00.660but like godspell or like jesus christ superstar or like uh there's a there's a ton of musicals
02:27:07.700that get put on by various companies about the life of jesus that my i have female family members
02:27:13.900who are very into musicals that, uh, I, I wound up going to these instead of like not being
02:27:19.400Christian by myself and seeing these. And, and it's like, um, I was always very cross that I'm
02:27:27.460like, wait a minute, this is supposed to be one of the greatest thinkers of all time. And yet like,
02:27:31.700um, we're having like little dramas about them putting on like a play, but it, but the play,
02:27:38.820like in the play in the musical they they're having a drama about putting on a performance
02:27:46.760performance like handling the logistics of a stage show but the stage show is the sermon
02:27:53.580on the mount or the stage show is this other speech that jesus is delivering i'm like these
02:27:57.980goddamn theater kids they've they've written themselves into the story of the uh of of jesus
02:28:06.200And now we're getting like this theater kid logistics drama when we should be, when like, what's his message?
02:28:12.520What's the deep philosophy of this guy?
02:28:15.080And I always thought like these theater kids, they keep writing themselves into the story.
02:30:24.180We don't have this for, um, for like, uh, the plays of Sophocles and Euripides, you know, if the, if the deus ex machina at the end, the crane with which they lowered Athena into the, the theater to like end the play by like having a magic, magical revelation that like allows peace.
02:30:45.180if that crane broke and like uh the the actress playing athena broke her hip
02:30:51.760we don't know that you know that's like lost time even something that dramatic and yet the
02:30:58.720entirety of the gospels is stage direction and stage logistics and how do we arrange arrange
02:31:05.840this and then you also notice that like uh that jesus's entire message like uh it's very hard to
02:31:14.880actually draw out okay what's the essence of this christianity thing what's the core of this uh
02:31:19.880stuff there's all these like parables there's all this different stuff what does that actually mean
02:31:24.720what does that mean for application to is life but every single one of them is about getting more
02:31:31.980people to believe in like the word and jesus like what it actually means for how you're supposed to
02:31:38.460live is very ambiguous like uh jesus instructs a um a guy to leave his father unburied the guy was
02:31:47.100asking to like bury his father or like attend his father's funeral and jesus says no let the dead
02:31:56.220tend their own uh you have business with me follow me this instant and a lot of people debate well
02:32:02.620was his father actually dead or was he waiting for like the man to keel over in a few years in
02:32:08.620which case this structure jesus makes sense or like is that actually an instruction to leave a
02:32:14.020corpse and unburied buried and it's like that's a a question that's a big detail you know that's
02:32:22.500just left ambiguous but in all these parables every single one the core thing is no you have
02:32:29.840to drop everything you're doing and start telling other people to follow Jews and and like um you
02:32:41.780know what does it mean to oh he who loves his um father and mother mother brother and mother and
02:32:50.640child more than me does not deserve me or um I've come to not to bring peace but it's the sword um
02:32:58.420for the enemies will be those of their own household and it's like um you know a lot of
02:33:04.240people have interpreted that differently like oh do monks have to renounce family entirely and like
02:33:09.540live celibately or like do you have to cut ties or do you have to convert your family all this
02:33:15.000stuff and it's very ambiguous but the real essence of it is you have to be willing to start fights to
02:33:21.480convert people and basically everything that you see is um this is where i have the most cynical
02:33:30.760interpretation uh and this is like do not ascribe this to gaily simpson uh he has a very charitable
02:33:39.600interpretation of christianity and he's like you can feel that he like almost misses it like a limb
02:33:45.440like he's very sentimentally attached to his christianity but um my interpretation is very
02:33:51.160dark and my interpretation is you know how do you become the most famous human being in history
02:33:57.300uh you know you could think alexander the greater napoleon had to like
02:34:03.360like uh they weren't telling anyone to spread the war they they had to earn it the hard way
02:34:08.760and, you know, conquer half the world and, like, win all these battles
02:34:15.340and, like, play this administrative game for, like, decades on end
02:34:19.680and, like, both of them lose everything and gamble everything.
02:34:23.720And they're not the most famous person in the world in human history.
02:34:28.320They're, like, top ten, but they aren't number one.
02:34:30.360How did Jesus become number one when he wasn't doing all this?
02:34:38.760You know, you think, oh, why do you want to be the most famous person in human history?
02:34:43.400Oh, because I want to be so great that I become the most famous person in human history.
02:34:47.720Well, what if you, well, actually, can you achieve, become the most famous person in human history without being great?
02:34:53.940And, well, like, it's either Jesus or Donald Trump is, like, the most famous person in human history in terms of, like, number of people who know the name, number of people who can draw, like, the image and stuff of what he looks like.
02:35:07.100like um like there's a lot of like children in like Thailand who don't know who Alexander the
02:35:14.680Great was but know who Donald Trump is and know who Jesus are like it's between those two and
02:35:20.240my interpretation is how Jesus got famous is very similar to how Trump got famous which is
02:35:26.200self-promotion that uh the same way that like when your entire existence is a branding exercise
02:35:34.140whose core message is like a bunch of contradictory stuff but spread the word it's very easy to spread
02:35:41.080the word and like this is where a lovely oddities of christian religion like uh all suddenly jesus
02:35:46.700appears and heaven and hell are both like very pressing you read the old testament it's actually
02:35:51.880like kind of ambiguous do you go to heaven do you not does hell even exist like what is the devil
02:35:57.860Well, doing, like, hellfire is very obscure, like, kind of hard to interpret.
02:36:08.940Like, all these oddities, Jesus appears hell is, like, pressingly immediate,
02:36:13.780and you have to, like, save yourself from being threshed into that fire
02:36:17.260and, like, cast out with the straw from the chaff.
02:36:23.900and the answer is well what message what's the maximum reward you could give for spreading the
02:36:32.040word to make this guy famous what's the what's the maximum reward you could give what's the
02:36:37.800maximum penalty you could give if you don't and and like it's so petty and yet you look at like
02:36:48.980the behavior it creates and like uh the willingness of people to go on mission and like half of them
02:36:57.460died in the attempt to convert like one barbarian you know or one barbarian nobleman or like uh
02:37:06.300like why do all these christian missionaries you know you're supposed to tend the poor in your
02:37:11.820homeland yet they go to a foreign land and immediately they're trying to get as close
02:37:16.080they can to the king why are they doing all this and it's because the core message is spread the
02:37:21.460message you know why does the religion hate life so much and yet suicide is completely forbidden
02:37:30.400in the christian faith why is that that seems contradictory well because you're the core thing
02:37:37.340you're supposed to do while you have life is spread the message and you know you don't get
02:37:44.460to be the world's biggest religion by by treating growth as a secondary concern you know if you
02:37:54.060you know a company with a good product or like a a middling product or like a product with like a
02:38:02.560mysterious quality that like some people great get great value out of but others is always out
02:38:09.120competed by the one that has like the largest marketing department and the largest sales
02:38:13.960department you know you can sell a horrible product but if you have high pressure sales
02:38:18.800on at all time uh uh you will get more and more customers uh this is where um
02:38:28.180well i mean i think that there is there is a fundamental message there also i mean you're
02:38:36.940right about the carrot and the stick being very effective but i also think that there's a real
02:38:42.900appeal to the sort of basic idea that everybody is equal before God. It's like, you know, Nietzsche
02:38:51.700calls them the canai, like that's the French word for like dogs, the mob, the rabble, like the lower
02:38:58.420castes of the Roman Empire are very titillated by the idea that like, you know, he sees Jesus as
02:39:08.960somebody who was suffering from reality. Like he just didn't want anything to be real because
02:39:15.180everything hurt because he was just like hypersensitive to reality and like the hardness
02:39:20.700of it. And so he re-imagined this entire relationship to God based just on his inner
02:39:26.700feelings of being God's child and being connected to God, not because he had to follow the law or
02:39:34.600satisfy any sort of requirements, but just because he felt himself to be a child of God and that was
02:39:40.860sufficient. And his message was like, you too are already as you are, regardless of your
02:39:47.800ethnicity or, you know, your wealth or your position in society, you are also a child of
02:39:54.940God. Like the kingdom of heaven is within you. It's a presently happening reality that you just
02:40:03.020have to make this mental shift to tap into paradise now. Like when Jesus was hanging on
02:40:10.460the cross, he told that thief that was hanging next to him, like, you will be in paradise with
02:40:16.280me today. Like it happens in the moment. There is no, there are no, it's like, that's why the
02:40:23.400other fundamental teaching of Christianity is resist not evil. Like don't fight the people
02:40:30.340that want to crucify you just surrender to everything because there is no reason to fight
02:40:34.920there's nothing to struggle or overcome like you already are god's child and as a slave like with
02:40:41.540no social prospects whatever and no possibility of living a truly like materially comfortable
02:40:50.120or high status life like that's the best idea ever that like all today as soon as you believe
02:40:57.500and take on this mission of spreading the message, you are in paradise. You don't have to suffer
02:41:04.860anymore. And you are a child of God. Like that is, I mean, just regardless of the additional
02:41:13.720impetus of like, if you do this, you'll go to heaven after you die. If you don't, you'll go
02:41:18.940to hell. Like just that momentary feeling of that, like those delusions of grandeur,
02:41:26.180the intoxication of feeling like, in fact, you're nothing, but in the true world of the kingdom of
02:41:35.780God, you're better than the kings of this earth. There is no more powerful and intoxicant to
02:41:43.600someone who is just suffering from the realities of very unfair and social hierarchy and very
02:41:51.900unevenly distributed resources so it's i i agree like with what you're saying that the marketing
02:41:59.120campaign is very effective but there's also this core message of like everybody's the same everybody
02:42:05.720has the same value there are no differences between people and that's why i say that liberal
02:42:11.700progressivism is fundamentally a christian faith because it rests exactly on that foundational
02:42:18.580premise of equality yeah so so everything you just described is like um an accurate description
02:42:26.120of um what early christianity would become like what paul would turn it into like uh like if you
02:42:34.540were to summarize like the philosophy of the new testament is like born out that is like very much
02:42:42.780what it is my argument is it wasn't even that if you like go just to the teachings
02:42:49.980of um jesus so like the sermon on the mount you kind of get like some of that out of it
02:42:56.780but uh if you actually like look at the full like teaching of jesus like that's very much
02:43:02.800in embryo or like there's only some elements of that in it and if you just like just the
02:43:08.520quotations and deeds of jesus it recorded in mark luke luke and matthew uh like what you find is that
02:43:18.320that it's this this marketing campaign with like a very slight hint of that like a seed or germ of
02:43:27.520that that that um basically all the like nichian like flame morality all the um like transcendent
02:43:38.080ass effects of it, all, all that stuff evolves out of it because that becomes like the most
02:43:46.040effective, um, or like most marketable, um, uh, like kind of, uh, Marx would say an opiate,
02:43:59.840But, like, that becomes, like, the, like, that becomes kind of an incidental aspect of it to make you, like, more likely to spread the message.
02:44:15.740Like, I'd argue that even that is, like, very nebulous or only partially there in the actual, like, quotations and words of Jesus himself.
02:44:27.800in fact you find like a lot of like weird other things that jesus says and does they're actually
02:44:34.200like quite incidental to that like um a lot of like jesus's miracles are like um very odd and
02:44:43.480no one ever does one like a miracle like that again and it's like doesn't appear in like any
02:44:49.180of the doctrine or any of the beliefs but it's a good marketing moment that's like never done again
02:44:56.400but it's recorded but there's like no like uh jesus chasing like demons into pigs like it has
02:45:04.560no relation to you whatsoever and like tons of other miracles like that that like they put a
02:45:09.760lot of emphasis on and go through all the details of it like it has no relation to the actual
02:45:16.120ideology that evolves out of it or like really even like it's there aren't even episodes that
02:45:22.640like Priest Ligeron or like their only analogy in the modern world is like exorcism movies
02:45:30.760or like some some odd like sci-fi that's like oh that like was mysterious and that like
02:45:37.220kind of stuck with you but no one knows what it means except it has this one analogy in scripture
02:45:43.060that like no one talks about but all these are like like good marching moments. Well because
02:45:51.540Because it's an indictment against Christianity too, though, because even in the synoptic
02:45:57.960gospels, Jesus basically ends telling them two things, right?
02:46:03.860Like you said, tell everybody about me, but also do all the miracles that I did.
02:46:10.040And nobody can or has done his miracles.
02:46:13.140So of course, the priests are not going to focus on the fact that the mark of reception
02:46:18.480of the holy spirit is that you're able to do the miracles that jesus did and nobody can do those
02:46:23.900things anymore i think that jesus was actually really interesting as a physician and again
02:46:30.700another way in which i think it would be cool if christians were actually christians like if
02:46:34.800they're actually healing people that would be such a much more honorable life path to take
02:46:41.780I can name like a dozen churches there that are doing healing of just like the same variety.
02:46:50.280Like the Reverend M. Jones did stuff like this all the time.