00:04:32.240Whatever we had on our backs or held in our hands, we had stood ready to give to anyone who had need or desire for it.
00:04:39.780Here we had made a gift of our labor and done both highly skilled and very menial labor for the working people about us, white and black, native and foreign.
00:05:19.460I just want to emphasize, too, here that, like, the, a lot of people think hippiedom, me interjecting, a lot of people think hippiedom in the American tradition, like, starts in the 60s or, like, late 50s.
00:05:33.780uh but like some of the earliest american novels are about communes and experiments in like
00:05:42.960the stem the eight 17th 18th and 19th century and like having communal living or like weird
00:05:51.680religion or like there are all these consistently these weird religious experiments throughout new
00:05:57.240england in like uh collective ownership or even like like there are a lot of cults that crop up
00:06:04.180that have like collective wives and stuff like that like experiments in free love and whatnot
00:06:09.560that's happening like the 18th century that these will like crop up randomly because
00:06:18.200like this entire like fanatical religious tradition is like very poor to the american
00:06:26.000wasp character because of course America the entire New England founding stock is selected
00:06:32.120from people who experience uh intense religious fanatism you know Puritans and Quakers and all
00:06:39.080these dissenter religious movements from England and the Netherlands that that have come over and
00:06:45.240you see this like percolate and continue and so you'll see things like this that uh seem like
00:06:52.800out of joint like a guy in 1923 revolving to go like barefoot for two years
00:06:59.960it's like and like in your mind you're like well that wouldn't be out of place like 1972 no america
00:07:08.700is always 1972 you just have to like look closely and of course like you see this to this day with
00:07:15.720like stuff like the Nixxiom cults or like like there are all these like Burning Man type cults
00:07:22.560and stuff they're always still around like uh they rise and fall but you you see this
00:07:29.300kind of isn't an eternal part of the American character
00:07:33.220but uh something that I'm fascinated with yeah Nietzsche says that um in his
00:07:45.040essay um his first essay in the genealogy of morals he's discussing the idea of like
00:07:50.500good versus bad and good versus evil and how the conquering sort of master race defines itself as
00:07:58.080good and then the subjected and conquered race uh is bad just by comparison because they're
00:08:04.880not strong or beautiful or powerful or whatever and is the um he talks about how when you get
00:08:13.020these inversions in morality, like Christianity, which is, you know, Nietzsche calls it the slave
00:08:19.520revolt in morality. It's like these subjugated populations coming back up to positions of power
00:08:27.080again. Like, you know, he thinks, he speaks about the Aryans as like basically the Yamnaya
00:08:33.200steppe people, the blonde beast of prey that came in from the Eurasian steppes and like the Ukraine
00:08:40.780and subjugated all of these native European populations of, like, farmers.
00:08:48.360I wish you had heard the previous podcast I did with AJ R. Krap on the Toll at Fortune,
00:08:57.900the immediate preceding interview in the episode list.
00:09:02.380You listeners at home will know this, but Bryn Hilder doesn't know this.
00:09:07.320He's a scholar on the airy migrations and whatnot.
00:09:10.400So our listeners will just listen to three hours on exactly this topic in detailed ethnographics.
00:09:29.180It will be interesting because Nietzsche writes this whole article based on his understanding, which is maybe not very sophisticated.
00:09:37.420I don't know really about the way that, you know, the Aryan, the blonde beast of prey is basically this, it's a different race that sort of took over like these previously existing peoples.
00:09:55.280But anyways, he's talking about these. He says, like, it's the pre-Aryan population of Germany, which surges up in these districts. The same is true substantially of the whole of Europe. In point of fact, the subject race has finally again obtained the upper hand.
00:10:12.240in complexion and in the shortness of skull and perhaps in the intellectual and social qualities,
00:10:18.320who can guarantee that modern democracy, still more modern anarchy, and indeed the tendency to
00:10:26.040the commune, which is the most primitive form of society, which is now common to all the socialists
00:10:32.840in Europe, does not in its real essence signify a monstrous reversion, and that the conquering and
00:10:39.880master race the aryan race is not also becoming inferior physiologically so he he talks about the
00:10:47.860like and and you know um what's his face bap talks about this a lot in his book on selective breeding
00:10:55.060how like the the commune is the sort of original not original but like it's the form of social
00:11:32.740ownership of the land, like stretching back to time immemorial, like in the early, under the
00:11:40.440Romanovs. This was actually like a struggle of Stalip and the prime minister to try and get
00:11:45.200these peasants to privatize their land so that they would be like a good conservative farmer
00:11:51.460class that like would be a natural ally of the crown and like an asset as opposed to like not
00:11:57.280very productive and like internally like a liability and like like something that could
00:12:04.320revolt against them but uh yeah i i would argue that the american case is actually like very
00:12:11.640distinct because the the american puritans like um their experiments in like communism don't come
00:12:20.120from like any like ancestral memory uh that should really suck acumenal living like very uniquely
00:12:27.860come companies always fail in the u.s amongst wasps despite the fact that like communes
00:12:34.640you know they work on the shtetl and amongst uh russian peasants slavic peasants and they work
00:12:43.060among in like kibbutzes in israel like there are people who do live communally uh like on communes
00:12:52.040and it does like not fall apart but it's never american wasp yet american wasp feel compelled
00:12:57.800to like uproot everything and try to do it not because it's in their instinct but because they're
00:13:03.820like this natural like aristocratic class that are fanatical like there's this instinct for
00:13:13.540fanaticism in like the high wasps and the germans as well but also like like the founding
00:13:21.380puritan stock and because the book they're reading is the bible and that has like communal
00:13:30.120judish values that like beer a kibbutz uh they feel the need to like try and replicate this and
00:13:37.840and so you see all these failed attempts but you also see like interesting experiments that do work
00:13:43.380like uh mormonism would be the classic example where like you have an entire ethnogenesis
00:13:49.080of like new people who go on a great migration and like afraid of civilization in the middle of like
00:13:56.820the desert and like weirdly select themselves to be even more credulous and fanatical but uh
00:14:04.920yeah nita talks about i can't remember where but he points out the difference between like the
00:14:12.100like the higher type of man the aristocratic type versus the sort of garrulous man or gregarious is
00:14:20.180the word that is often translated like the herd type the that the latter tends to he says range
00:14:27.780together with positive delight but the former the like more aristocratic type they will group up
00:14:35.320like you can think about it as like wolves in a pack even though i think wolves are more often in
00:14:40.400a pack than they are alone but it's like they will gather together and they will organize themselves
00:14:46.240in order to execute an aggressive like mission like and like they will group up to do something
00:14:55.460that lets them like vent their aggression or take power over a lesser or like a lesser in power but
00:15:03.300greater in number kind of population but then once they group together the group like is he says in
00:15:10.960another place like of the greek nobility that they were all just like constantly vibrating with
00:15:16.680this like barely restrained desire to become a tyrant like they they it was really very difficult
00:15:23.820for them to work together even in their like little democratic cities because each of them
00:15:28.940was like so driven by that agonistic impulse to become the greatest of all of them and to become
00:15:35.640a tyrant and so the way that they worked that out when the Greek poli the polices was that they
00:15:43.380would just take out all their aggression on the other city-states and then try to be nice to each
00:15:48.480other within their own given city-state so I can imagine with like if you are having if if in fact
00:15:55.460the Puritans were a more aristocratic type of organization then they might have been able or
00:16:03.240any sort of higher or organization of higher men might be able to work together longer term but only
00:16:10.020if they have the opportunity to frequently exercise their aggressions outside of that commune like
00:16:17.320outside of that in group yeah well this is um well this is what we see with simpson in his story is
00:16:25.680that um with trishanian slave morality taking over the higher types you see you see these um
00:16:33.900men with these instincts to endure like great hardship and to like go on great
00:16:38.340quests of premeditated uh uh like extraordinary effort and will uh instead of endeavoring to like
00:16:47.700conquer a new land or like deuce on the grid it's like oh i'm going to we're going to all get
00:16:53.880together and we're going to endeavor on this quest to live like slaves and peasants but we're
00:16:58.620going to do this incredible premeditation we're going to invest all these efforts in building
00:17:03.600monasteries fairies in the high mountains on these like remote fortresses where we can live like
00:17:12.980like insectoidoid bug slaves copying scrolls scrolls like slaves but we're going to pour
00:17:21.440all this effort into living like slaves who don't get laid uh well it's a i mean i think it's a
00:17:27.760profound and it's like it it's a very unique thing putting all this effort like simpson is doing0.59
00:17:37.280putting all this extraordinary effort and forethought and research into living like a bum
00:17:42.820yeah i think you have to recognize that like the caste system and i don't think nietzsche would
00:17:50.900necessarily use that designation but i will that the caste system is gradated with many different
00:17:59.660levels of rank like it's not just like you have lower herd type slave type even the herd isn't
00:18:07.360necessarily equivalent to the slave type and then on you know on the other side of that binary you
00:18:12.720have higher men and like um over men or whatever it's like there are many gradations of rank so
00:18:20.940i think what we discussed in the last episode about simpson like he might not be of the very
00:18:27.420highest rank of aristocratic soul as nietzsche would understand such a person but like he's a
00:18:33.120higher man than the herd or like your typical slave type person like and that often is the case
00:18:41.700And Nietzsche even, at some point, I think it's in Twilight of the Idols, he praises Christianity and says, like, we could never show enough gratitude to Christianity exactly because they set up these institutions where these, like, higher type of men who couldn't really, would be just lost and miserable in these herd conditions and these, like, slave communes.
00:19:08.660And who had actually a greater, you know, a stronger will and like a more erotic abundance of life force that they were able to sort of separate themselves from just that mere survival, like mere life of farming and eating and pooping and sleeping to like do something interesting and compelling.
00:19:31.440And Nietzsche expresses gratitude to Christianity for, in a way, saving some of those monks who were able to thrive in those kind of monastic, ascetic orders and environments in a way that they would have just been totally wasted in a typical peasant life.
00:19:59.080like a typical householder experience i i i think nietzsche misreads uh pre-christian europe there
00:20:08.760this is where he's a philologist and is like buried in in classical texts he wasn't necessarily
00:20:14.540reading like uh the sagas or like knew much about like northern new didn't necessarily like have
00:20:23.860access to a lot of stuff on like northern european traditions although he did have a fair amount but
00:20:31.020uh wait i think i think his conception of what pre-christian lifestyles were like is like
00:20:38.820rather removed from what they were actually like uh uh the the homicide rate of like uh
00:20:48.74011th century england for example so like into the christian period uh the homicide rate was
00:20:55.140something like 300 000 sorry 300 per 100 000 uh which is like the equivalent of like
00:21:03.840double el salvador at its worst like people were fighting over everything well you read
00:21:11.320la morta arthur uh and it's like wow a knight's killing another knight on every other page and
00:21:17.460then like a lady's committing suicide or like a knight's accidentally killing a lady and then0.77
00:21:22.300having to fight another knight it's like this is way over the top this is ridiculous and it's like0.94
00:21:26.780actually no that's like that's like that wouldn't be extraordinarily ridiculous as a monthly0.68
00:21:33.720occurrence like in your little neighborhood you know these were like this like like the
00:21:42.200closest analogy that you modern people have is like like the ghetto of
00:21:47.460detroit or like baltimore whatever really how much uh data's violence is going on all the
00:21:55.400all the time and like how or like uh samurai stories might be another analogy analogy that uh
00:22:03.640i i don't think nietzsche quite appreciated just like how free and
00:22:11.820and violent like even into the medieval christian era a western man was and like how
00:22:22.300yeah and i mean i think that it's not necessarily that this is something that's really tricky about
00:22:28.720nietzsche right is because he does write with such um it seems so clearly that he values the
00:22:35.000aggressive war-like type of man the murderous type of man um most highly but like if you look
00:22:42.200in the antichrist you know the way he conceives of the caste system is that you have that the
00:22:48.120number one highest caste is the intellectual caste and they're the legislators and the law
00:22:54.360givers and then the caste below them is the warriors and the kings who are like basically
00:23:00.280of the guys who do the dirty work of imposing the will of the legislators so like i'd argue
00:23:07.620that is a like very christian inversion of the western traditions so like uh you look at julius
00:23:16.980caesar uh and julius caesar was both both uh dictator for life and pontifex maximus this
00:23:27.240Pontius Maximus is the title of the modern Pope.
00:23:31.400It's like, it's a title that has never ended.
00:23:33.740Technically, the Pope is still the successor to Julius Caesar.
00:31:51.780by which towards the end I became divided.
00:31:54.800Many kinds of doubts had been sapping the foundation of my certainty.
00:32:01.200For instance, my reading of rationalistic psychology had caused me to look behind the scenes of my mystical experience
00:32:08.280and question its validity and the reliability of the inner direction I derived from it.
00:32:13.780But also my Franciscan life was challenged by deepening spiritual insight and by the mounting pressure of something new within me.
00:32:21.140I want to stop and comment. Obviously, his deep spiritual affection for his wife that rivals God, I find deeply, deeply touching.
00:32:40.080but uh but also i want to point out that uh psychology is like really like fairly new in
00:32:49.260the 1920s and like obviously freud's psychobabble like we hold thrilly psychology and especially
00:32:55.680uh like various jewish traditions of psychology in poor steam for good reason but uh like the
00:33:04.640the framing of like this would not occur to someone like just a hundred years before
00:33:12.000before this or even like 50 years before this they're like oh i feel this deep spiritual like
00:33:18.180psychological calling calling and like uh like i feel this divine
00:33:25.180pressing to suddenly interiate that and undermine it with like with uh this uh
00:33:33.840reductionist uh psychological framing is like relatively new at this point like people
00:33:43.340criticize each other and like and like state that like no you're not this you're wicked or whatnot
00:33:50.820not in like but they impute insincerity whereas uh the the like self-deception are just the
00:34:01.880psychologizing of um of like spiritual belief and emotion is like relatively new at this point
00:34:10.420of course we've had this great demystifying of the world uh that like you know it's it's standard now
00:34:18.940to look on mystical experiences is like oh yeah you just thought yourself into like an at into
00:34:25.560like a semi-psychedelic emotional state and it's like like oh yeah you meditated for 18 hours
00:34:33.100hours straight and you experience like something something that really warped your perspective
00:34:38.900yeah you can take drugs and experience the same thing you don't have to you don't have to sit on
00:34:43.420a mountaintop waiting for your mind to misfire you we can make it misfire by brute forcing it
00:34:49.200But this is, like, relatively new at this point, and I'd argue one of, like, the great kind of inventions of, like, memedom and, like, the internet now and kind of, like, online discussion is, like, we've kind of conquered psychologizing in a way.
00:35:10.420This is like my half-baked thought of the moment.
00:35:13.920It might be a piece down the line, but if you look at how online discussion works, like appeals to vibes or appeals to ancestral blood memory,
00:35:31.920like uh this language has like slowly developed online to kind of override and like brute force
00:35:38.480around uh psychologizing away sincere feeling uh weirdly the the online like what a lot of people
00:35:48.140call call like nihilism or cynicism or uh uh the online discussion space i think in a lot of ways
00:35:57.920is like anti-cynicism like uh it's like a lot of this uh language is kind of a in a
00:36:05.740and meta iron ironies in a lot of ways are are like ways to combat and undo the like
00:36:15.540psychologizing a way of like sincerely held belief that like uh like the nihilist actually
00:36:23.300belief things the the uh supposed anti-nihilist uh traditional conservatives very plainly do not
00:36:31.600believe in anything but uh that that's its own article in some way uh so are you saying that
00:36:40.760you think that his sincerity of his christian belief was pretty new like feeling not spiritually
00:36:48.060uh tormented by it or are you saying that the sort of sense of being torn between his god and
00:36:55.880his wife was like a relatively new thing or are you saying just like sort of being cynical about
00:37:02.680that is the new the newer way of approaching what probably people always understood is just
00:37:09.640very sincere connections to some sort of divine mystery yeah so uh the being torn between love
00:37:17.860and faith is like you can look back on like there are many saints that have had this characteristic
00:37:24.560like this man is living the life of like a saint you know if he died horribly living this out
00:37:31.400sincerely you know he could be could have been canonized canonized in most areas of history
00:37:38.120but uh like the fact that he's having this tension between his faith and his love and
00:37:43.920You spill in them both very sincerely.
00:37:45.520But then instead of, like, feeling this to be, like, a great, tearing, like, spiritual, emotional, cosmic battle,
00:37:58.800suddenly he's, like, psychoanalyzing his beliefs and, like, demystifying them.
00:38:06.660That demystifying is, like, a very new experience in the 1920s.
00:38:12.460like yeah like one two generations before like this guy is like
00:38:18.840like just 20 years younger than like rasputin in russia who was like a mystic who walked across
00:38:27.540russia to go to a monastery and then decide the monastery was gay and then walked back and became
00:38:33.000a mystic in moscow instead like uh like uh this is right around this uh the the dalai lama like
00:38:43.860the last lama in tibet like uh like brad pitt's character has still not gone to tibet and encounter
00:38:51.700the young dalai lama like you'd still go on a mystical journey to like lost kingdoms in the
00:38:56.760era yeah of like so the pimples run by monks the kind of like retard maxing that is um in vogue
00:39:09.360on the right which i have to say i think is great and i like it you think this is a um attempt at
00:39:15.860sort of remystifying our our experiences yeah yes exactly like the concept of ancestral blood memory
00:39:24.560that's like oh that's just a like because psychology is like oh that's just a firing in
00:39:30.140your brain right that's not anything real that's just like like a hormonal emotion that you're
00:39:37.140having you know it doesn't doesn't matter you're just experiencing an instinct bro and yeah the
00:39:43.420concept of ancestral blood memory is that no uh that instinct and that like complex desire that
00:39:50.400i experienced uh that's actually the product of thousands of generations of like like prayers and
00:39:57.720like that's my warrior ancestor speaking through me and that's you know when i want to beat the0.99
00:40:05.160shit of like some when you want to beat the shit of like some faggy kid or like tell someone off1.00
00:40:12.740that they're cuck you know that's not just that's not just like an impulse you have that's the voice1.00
00:40:19.940of like 100 of your ancestors cheering you on wanting you to yeah wanting you to crack some
00:40:25.260skulls and start to start taking names uh yeah that's like i mean it is pretty mystical though
00:40:34.360like even though it's all like nobody knows anything about why even if you can explain how
00:40:42.480the mechanisms work you don't know like science doesn't know anything about why
00:40:47.020see you may just as well enchant your life like why why not why be it's like look at the people
00:40:53.680who think about life purely in terms of material cause and effect explanations like they're so
00:40:59.860blech they're very uninspiring people because they're very uninspired well this is where like
00:41:06.440the ancestral blood memory like is kind of at the intersection of like both being the oldest idea
00:41:12.560and the newest idea because like uh like it's not very at all different from how like he see it or
00:41:19.340like the berserkers would think about it but it's also exactly what darwin describes is where like
00:41:26.020actually western mythology is a much better like uh osmology sociology and explanatory set of
00:41:34.160theories than like uh i don't i don't argue but i'm right than the like christian metaphysical
00:41:42.540world beer that like he said the agony is 10 000 times more accurate better and more predictive
00:41:49.080than genesis and the the psychology you find in like like the sagas or uh or like a homer or
00:42:00.520or xenophon or or like shakespeare are likewise 10 000 times better than you'd find a like
00:42:10.080doms or well we like we discussed we discussed this last time kind of when i was ranting about
00:42:18.440like the earnestness that i noticed in gacy that like you can't really be a christian if you are
00:42:26.840like sincere and paying attention to the world around you and like earnest in your desire to
00:42:33.300align yourself to a real degree with like reality with nature and with what really happens as
00:42:43.860opposed to what you think should happen or wish would happen or imagine might happen in the world
00:42:50.320beyond this world like you christianity is an inversion of the truth and you have to be
00:42:57.820like very committed to lying to yourself almost constantly to stay there well you said the truth
00:43:05.360but like they use a different word it's an inversion of the world right you know the world
00:43:10.820which is what's happening are the same thing and they say that right that the truth is out there
00:43:17.400beyond the world and my kingdom is not of this world it is right well and that's what i mean
00:43:23.500about the really effective pr of the inventors of that ideology is like they just are like
00:43:30.200what's wild about such people is they're so earnest in their falsity like i think that's
00:43:36.720where there's this really deep disconnect between you could call it the right and left you could
00:43:41.440call it pagans and christians or whatever but like there there are these two sort of fundamental
00:43:46.840types where like on the one hand there's people that are just like honorable you know like they
00:43:54.700don't it doesn't feel good to a certain type of person to constantly having to be pushing some
00:44:00.780sort of a story or a masquerade or a pretense like and then there's another type of a person
00:44:06.840where like they don't feel good unless they're lying they don't feel right unless they're being
00:44:12.560false and it's like i think all of these sort of conversations that just go in circles forever
00:44:17.760and never end with people on the left on the right paganism christianity whatever like
00:44:23.580it's just people who will fundamentally never understand each other because their typology
00:44:29.300is different and on the one hand it's like people are trying to say like wake up like look be in
00:44:35.960what's happening right now let me interject because uh you said falsity which um some of
00:44:43.660somewhere listeners might take exception to but uh i want you to do a listener to think
00:44:49.820of like uh one of the really annoying types of christians you know one of the people who's just
00:44:55.780been saved and like has to spread the good news and is like constantly bringing it up everything's
00:45:01.180reverend reverend cigar like they're really laying it up and like with very very rare exception that
00:45:10.660you know exactly the type of person it is playing it up like uh there is like like a real like
00:45:18.440veneer and insincerity to it um not not so much in that they're lying in that they're like
00:45:26.720very purposely like uh feeling one thing and then yeah trying to create something else and it's dead
00:45:35.760yeah Nietzsche says I think it's so beautiful like they're everyone is an actor and they're
00:45:43.560aping their ideals like you know if you go to see a high school theater production
00:45:48.620or anything sort of low rate like people act so hard and it's so awkward to watch them because
00:45:56.600it's like you know they're really trying to impress upon you that emotion by like way over
00:46:02.780exaggerating the natural expression of that emotion and it's like they have this sort of
00:46:07.860sophistication of a monkey or like a gorilla trying to like really get the point across
00:46:13.940with the most exaggerated pantomime and movement and you know reactivity and it's like this is
00:46:22.380where shakespeare is like little monkeys because every shakespeare character is autistic
00:46:27.740so like when you overact shakespeare as long as you know the lines and you're like understanding
00:46:34.000them as you speak them the overacting uh actually feeds into it because uh it's an autistic person
00:46:42.440like really losing control of their emotions and like trying to express an idea which uh
00:46:49.600translates very well to stage in a way that like a very little other like uh dynamics do because
00:46:57.880like stage acting of course has to be big so that the person in the back of the theater can see it
00:47:02.980right exactly and it's like it's not falsity in that like you have this conscious understanding
00:47:10.960of what's true but then you're making a conscious decision to like pretend to pretend or to say
00:47:17.080that something else is true it's falsity in the sense that like you are a certain way but you
00:47:23.980think you should be a different way and you're more committed to pretending to be the way that
00:47:29.200you think you should be or believe you should be or that god told you you should be or whatever
00:47:34.020than the way that you actually are and that's the falsity that i attribute to christianity it's like
00:47:39.820the fundamental belief of christianity is that you are sinful there's something wrong with you
00:47:46.200So you have to be different than how you are. And that is the core of the falsity in my mind is like that you just are that way. And like everything else you're doing is an act. And it comes across as a high school student in a theater play.
00:48:04.520yes and the the more complexly you acted the more like you lose track of like what you know
00:48:16.060and what you don't know so you get like these awkward moments where we're like uh
00:48:21.480lots of examples of like people insisting that no uh you know the class example black people are
00:48:31.380just just as honest and just as intelligent and just as um and spiritually in tune in as white
00:48:39.440people and assisting this as much as they can and then and then but they cross the street with their
00:48:46.380daughter whenever they see black people but not white white people and then like suddenly they
00:48:52.180catch themselves in that so they have to like go out of their way to complicate that no we aren't
00:48:58.020going to do that or or we're going to invite in this the you know you get like these back and
00:49:05.720force of like trying to like prove to yourself or like override or get around it get around this
00:49:13.640or like complicated in a way that you don't understand don't notice or don't understand
00:49:19.780like part of your hindbrain that's still modeling reality and still has to make it
00:49:24.780make it work and then you get like really obscene versions like occasionally you get like really
00:49:32.440obscene stuff like uh like christian missionaries taking their teenage daughters into like the heart0.88
00:49:39.240of the congo and of course to get like raped and murdered or like inviting in uh0.98
00:49:44.580inviting in a like 13 year old of like like black series of black foster children when they have0.98
00:49:58.380like their own kids who are like eight and nine and stuff and like yeah usually doesn't get to
00:50:05.980that point but you see like really pathological versions of this and you'll see twitter above
00:50:12.120uh like e crusaders saying no that person was just like bad and insane and that's like not in
00:50:19.280the text text at all and they're just being dishonest at stuff it's like no that person
00:50:25.520was like very sincerely trying to like yeah very sincere trying to implement this and like actually
00:50:32.260being very porn and like personally terrorizing themselves and probably exposing themselves to
00:50:37.800like way more um moral of a like self the self-criticism than like any sane healthy person
00:50:50.320would do but they're feeling that like very intensely and say and like that's why they have
00:50:55.180to like sincerely impose the costs upon themselves because like like they can see that like they're0.65
00:51:03.080just being a hypocrite if they don't they have to actually believe in and actually believing
00:51:07.540you know you can't you you have to take up your cross and follow the christ like if you0.98
00:51:13.980do what he said in the gospels and you like i think there's these different types of christians
00:51:19.780right which there's these like old testament christians who are really into purity laws and
00:51:25.700retribution and stuff and i think of those people as pagan because that doesn't have anything to do
00:51:30.500the old testament christians uh i i've looked for them and i find them like actually very hard to
00:51:38.240find like he like there's a stereotype that they're out there but they actually aren't really
00:51:43.660up there like they're very hard to find or like uh or like well i think of matt walsh like matt
00:51:51.080walsh seems to be of that type to me more than like there's no church you can go to where you
00:51:59.320will get preached matt walshism like matt walsh is very specifically an influencer specifically for
00:52:06.600for like his specific role being ben shapiro is a goy on a leash and yeah and like uh you
00:52:15.400like uh you can also see this uh if you read like pete hagseth's book like he lays out this entire
01:15:40.540if it had succeeded and had become a movement i can but wonder whether with my absorption in it
01:15:46.640and with the reassurance as to its soundness that its very success would have tended to give it
01:15:51.800i should ever have been able to achieve enough perspective to discover the errors in it and get
01:15:56.540rid of them might not this very triumph of my spirit had brought me spirit my spiritual growth
01:16:03.560to a standstill why not my quote-unquote success had become my grave this is uh
01:16:13.200this what he points to uh audience capture is now like maybe one of the most deadly dynamics
01:16:22.160of like social media in the online world um every influencer and speaker and like
01:16:28.460content creator is like a priest of their little worldview and if you get rich as a con if you get
01:16:37.440like wealthy or self-sustaining as a content creator before like your actual values grow up
01:16:44.180all of a sudden you're stuck in your like juvenile values because you'll destroy your net worth
01:16:49.980if you like actually grow philosophically uh this is like uh
01:16:56.320arrow's like why do you keep the cat girl branding what do you what do you do this
01:17:01.220what do you have to be be so hostile to this group or that group and it's like
01:17:05.680well i have to be like off-putting and hostile because i have to avoid audience capture i need0.96
01:17:11.960to make you fuckers work to keep following me so that so that what i do have like a great0.94
01:17:17.860spiritual growth, growth I don't bank for of myself through enlightenment, which happens to0.99
01:17:25.100too many. But, uh, back to Simpson. As things actually worked out, however, my venture broke
01:17:33.200down, and the immediate effect was chaos. Bit by bit, my whole world fell to pieces and passed
01:17:41.120into solution. I doubted everything. Nothing escaped the acid of my skepticism. I questioned
01:17:48.500the soundness of the teachings of Jesus, the existence of any moral order in the universe,
01:17:54.000the validity of the mystical experience, the doctrine of human equality, and all the
01:17:59.320collectivist philosophies which have been built upon it. I chowned even those beliefs upon which
01:18:06.000depended my very sensitive security and the face of the universe. I did not know whether I should
01:18:12.620ever again be sure of anything. The years from 1929 when I left Longton to 1932 when I came to
01:18:24.180the farm were years of bitter struggle and inner chaos of my mind and soul, the period of the
01:18:31.640worst desolation that i have ever known at the farm it was never any part of my purpose to earn
01:18:40.040all my living from the land i felt that for me just then to try and do so would frustrate the
01:18:46.320my very object of going there i wanted solitude and silence and the contact with the earth and
01:18:53.060with the vast spaces of the mountains but i also want a free time to study to think and to write
01:18:58.680and it was my purpose therefore to use the land so to meet my own requirements
01:19:04.520that my need of money would be reduced to a minimum and my independence of the world about
01:19:12.000me greatly increased and it was in the journal which i kept at the time there's a statement
01:19:18.320that in the week that i had just passed my outlay for food came to 50 cents
01:19:24.780uh 50 cents the rule is multiplied by 100 uh mind you this at the 30 so it's maybe slightly
01:19:36.080different it might be like multiplied by by 50 so that'd be like 25 to 50 dollars uh but uh i
01:19:46.480Weep, dear reader, that, like, buying a log cabin in the Catskills Mountain is now, like, $400,000 is not achievable for a young, misanthropic spirit journeyer.
01:20:09.980I suppose you might be able to get the Yukon or like there might be parts of the Northwest, but even those are expensive now. This is where like, this is where the boomers have consciously destroyed any possibility of like anyone after them having like a spiritual movement because they've made it financially impossible.
01:20:30.280yeah well you'd have to you have to live in an enormous amount of discomfort if you can afford
01:20:37.080to like pitch a tent on blm land i guess but it's a very hard horrible way to live
01:20:45.000no these are those are the only people i've seen able to do it as people who like i'm gonna live
01:20:50.580out of my car i'm gonna live out of my tent i'm gonna live off motorcycle uh that's what i did
01:21:37.460It was here at the farm that I soon settled myself to continue the exploration of the teachings of Friedrich Nietzsche,
01:21:45.760which I had dipped into even before leaving Walden.
01:21:49.020In fact, he was a part of the turmoil that had ended in my breakdown, and it probably took me the best part of a decade to come to terms with him.
01:21:59.300By the way, another quick aside, Nietzsche would be tickled pink that a Franciscan monk had read him and then had a nervous breakdown.
01:22:11.280Like that's, and then decide to go live on a mountaintop.
01:22:15.140That's like, this is one of the extraordinary things about Simpson is that like he acts out his ideology, ideological shifts.
01:22:24.820Well, and I think that Nietzsche would, like, I think that that's exactly the people that Nietzsche were writing for is like those few noble souls that don't, that misunderstand themselves and get lost in these waysides and like have the capacity to understand what Nietzsche experienced in his own self and in his own life.
01:22:48.260And, like, I do think in a lot of ways he wrote what he wrote for people like Gacy or what's his name, Simpson, to find, to be able to, like, save themselves, to, like, have somebody else say, no, actually, you're not crazy.
01:23:03.900Like, no, the way that you feel is actually good.
01:23:08.820And here's all the many illustrations of how and why it's good.
01:23:13.340And I think that's what I think, I don't think Nietzsche was writing to like organize some sort of big political movement or anything. I don't really think he's like a political philosopher. I think he, in his own ways as a priest, and you can kind of see that through the way that he wrote his Zarathustra.
01:23:31.280But I really do think that, like, it would have delighted Nietzsche to know that there are people of, like, a higher order of soul who were in a ways, like, handed a lifeline by his writings.
01:24:44.940not only by an almost unmatched beauty of literary form
01:24:51.880as I found it first in his Zarathustra,
01:24:55.460but above all by the unquestionable evolution
01:24:58.940elevation of his spirit and purpose and by the singleness and depth of his dedication to his
01:25:05.900task of exalting the life of man on the other hand i kept coming up upon ideas and conclusions
01:25:13.240as to necessary means they are so anathema to all my previous and still lingering ideals and
01:25:21.120assumptions that more than once i threw the book down i was reading with the explanation
01:25:27.220if that's where he would take me i've had enough but already his barbed idea was stuck in my mind
01:25:35.280and the more i resisted it the deeper it worked its way in and besides almost from the beginning
01:25:41.960and deeper than the resistance in of my head there was my intuition that here was a man
01:25:48.440whom i should not be able to lay aside until i've read all he had written to to my head
01:25:55.300head he might stand before me as an implacable foe but yet more deeply i felt that he was my
01:26:03.800friend and that ultimately i must range myself on his side that to me as to every other man
01:26:11.820he'd come to to bring more exalted life that to me as to every other man he'd come to bring
01:26:20.380more exalted life in any case he was a fourth force with which i was compelled to reckon
01:26:27.920he leveled such an attack on my very ideals and all the world that had he that had given birth to
01:26:37.100me that i simply dare not go on leaving him unreduced in my rear so i turned to face him
01:26:46.740squarely and fought him the result that in the end he reduced me i read he does that very much so
01:26:57.000and i i'm taken back at the um i'm taken back at the scansion of simpson uh you you might notice
01:27:08.220reader them like struggling to to read him he has his his style is becoming more halting unless
01:27:15.400I naturally want to read things in like a kind of Shakespearean iambic, like a trippingly on the tongue type, hopping about and progressing forward at a faster pace.
01:27:30.340but he has this, like, his style becomes more halting as he gets to Nietzsche, and it actually really apes, really captures the hesitation and, like, the stopping of his own mode of thinking, which is quite fun to read, but it might not translate to you, dear.
01:27:57.480I read twice all that he wrote, some 16 published volumes, and several biographies about him.
01:28:06.740All this before I read any interpretations of him, for I wished, before I knew what others made of him, to get my own reaction fresh and firsthand.
01:28:17.520For four years, the best of my free time went into the study of Nietzsche.
01:28:22.280but despite all this i must add that since the late 30s i have looked into him comparatively
01:28:29.100little i am quite able to criticize him and some of his teachings i reject nevertheless taking him
01:28:36.800as a whole i am very ready to admit that i stand as his ally i look at the fast shaping issue of
01:28:44.500our day from his side and from his angle and i believe that the future belongs to the people
01:28:50.540who accept the essentials of his teaching.
01:28:54.260In this chapter, it was impossible to do more than introduce Nietzsche
01:28:58.060as one of the two men who have had the greatest influence on my outlook,
01:31:44.380That segment was written originally in 1944 and again in 1972.
01:31:50.880But it concerns a period of his life from 1929 to 32 when he was leaving Wallington, he said.
01:31:58.920So before, well before the war started.
01:32:00.880Yeah. So like when you left Wallington, like in 1929, he was born in 1892. So 1932, he was 40 years old. The reality of old people who don't get see-dwell brain is like endlessly fascinating to me.
01:32:25.400um I'm I'm really interested in what he like has to say about Nietzsche I don't want to read ahead
01:32:34.600I'll just wait until we read it together but I'm interested to find out and I also think it's
01:32:39.860interesting that he notes that he read everything twice and then didn't really revisit it very much
01:32:49.160and you know for the rest of his life because I read a little bit of Nietzsche every time before
01:32:56.220we um we meet to talk for the recordings and I've I've read everything he's written
01:33:02.520at least five times each and it's like every time I read again something that he's written it's like
01:33:11.860I forgot 95% of it like he's so profound and everything he has to say is so dense and it's like
01:33:19.880magic because you cannot understand it until you've lived it until you've felt it and known
01:33:28.300it from your own personal experience like the meaning that he puts into one sentence is so
01:33:35.860dense it's like so many years of life experience distilled down into a thought and it's like
01:33:43.220endlessly it's like the chronicles of narnia did you read that at the end where they like go to
01:33:49.760heaven and they climb up a hill and inside of a garden is another bigger world and like a mountain
01:33:55.360inside of there and they climb up to the top of the mountain and go into the garden and there's
01:33:59.280another bigger world inside of that one and another mountain to climb like that's how reading
01:34:05.080Nietzsche is it's just like forever blossoming into something more profound and like explanatory
01:34:13.660and predictive than you understood the first time that you read it and especially Zarathustra like
01:34:19.540that work is so it's a it's like a mystical text like I don't want to use the word mystical because
01:34:27.220I think Nietzsche uses that word with disdain but it's it's incredibly dense and profound and
01:34:33.520I thought things about Nietzsche the first two times that I read through everything that he
01:34:38.560wrote that I know were just my own ideals being projected onto his writing. It was my own sense
01:34:47.280of who I am as a person being projected onto him and then trying to justify myself through him.
01:34:55.260It's interesting that Simpson says that he feels that both Nietzsche and Jesus have been
01:35:01.020the two men with the most influence on his life because I think in a way Jesus is like the ultimate
01:35:06.580guy onto whom people project their own self-justifications and I think that people do
01:35:15.320that with Nietzsche like I've met of all the people that I've spoken with and interacted with
01:35:21.040on the internet who are interested in Nietzsche there's like maybe two men I think that really
01:35:27.580understand Nietzsche on Nietzsche's level and are of the same caliber of rank of soul as Nietzsche
01:35:35.280is and even where he says like I could very easily criticize Nietzsche it's like I can't like every
01:35:42.360time I try it just turns out that I'm being like a little ego monkey and like trying to justify some
01:35:50.100aspect of my own vulgarity by like getting into a pissing contest with Nietzsche so it'll be
01:35:57.980interesting to see how he like how what he took out of what I think is even though he sort of
01:36:07.320presented himself as being credentialed with this deep intimacy with Nietzsche I think what he's
01:36:13.460described is barely a cursory reading of it but on the other hand like I know you know the one
01:36:20.080man I know who is like Nietzsche reincarnated I think also didn't really read Nietzsche that much
01:36:25.960like has read him a few times but like it matched his personal experience so perfectly that like
01:36:33.780he almost like memorized everything Nietzsche wrote the first time he read it because it was
01:36:39.340just like his own soul like articulating itself to him and there wasn't any battle like between
01:36:46.780his ego and what Nietzsche had what Nietzsche has to say and what Nietzsche like reveals from the
01:36:52.920gods I I think um so all of this going on is to just uh I think it enforces that like Nietzsche
01:37:01.980is an incredibly powerful human being and has come to really deliver a message to the world
01:37:11.420like a gospel like I do I guess I do see him in some ways like a lot of people see the Christ
01:37:18.700yeah Nietzsche I've read it part of I'm nowhere near an expert on Nietzsche I've read like
01:37:29.420well neither am I I need to interject that I've read like two or three works of Nietzsche
01:37:36.480like two or three times i have read the antichrist uh like two or three times i should reread it
01:37:43.400i've read genealogy of morals morals and i've heard like one or two others but i
01:37:49.180i haven't like dived into nietzsche beyond that and like most of this was like stuff i read like
01:37:57.760too long ago like uh well i start thinking in the 1930s like stuff i read like in high school
01:38:11.380and didn't appreciate at the time or like stuff i read in university or like something that i
01:38:17.860reread once on vacation like uh like on a trip to florida when i was like
01:38:25.440wasn't even the right headspace because i was sick at the time for some reason i had the flu in
01:38:33.340florida but uh but like uh there's a there's a place in the twilight of the idols where nietzsche
01:38:42.100makes this some offhanded comment about like the the like aristocratic intellect is one that knows
01:38:49.540only five things and politely declines to know anything else and I like to uh like um what's
01:38:58.280the word I'm looking for I like to inflate my own ego about like how I just can't I can only read
01:39:04.720Nietzsche like the more I try to read anything else it's just like everything else is garbage
01:39:09.780and I just end up going rereading Nietzsche or just not reading at all because he is the only
01:39:17.340person that I can read with tranquility like everybody else enrages me with their absolute0.97
01:39:24.380stupidity or just like their idealism but I read Nietzsche and it's just like such great0.97
01:39:31.540kinship there's such a feeling of kinship there that I just don't experience reading anything0.95
01:39:37.440else so it's like I just can't I can't branch out I'm not really like um an expert on Nietzsche
01:39:44.120because I'm not really a scholar I'm just like a main ad you know I'm just like a crazy woman
01:39:50.880who gets fixated on something for whatever crazy woman reasons I have but nothing nothing moves me
01:39:59.620nothing like berserks me nothing it just delights me as much as Nietzsche does so it's just very
01:40:09.720hard to be interested in anything else no uh and there's there's nietzsche and a few other
01:40:20.300thinkers that like philologists and classicists read uh uh there's
01:40:27.960there's a like the classical texts uh i get the same feeling from like a
01:40:37.640like reading classic classics like uh the greeks and and romans and like other like very early
01:40:45.140texts like uh the sagas or the iliad yeah i love the iliad that also feels very much like home to
01:40:53.160me lamort d'arthur i cannot recommend lamort d'arthur enough uh okay like uh like you watch
01:41:02.620the 80s film version of Excalibur which I'd argue is like one of the top 10 films ever made if you
01:41:09.440get asked like some cheese like there's a few things that's like okay this is this is a cheesy
01:41:16.680production of King Arthur but the rest of it is like absolutely gorgeous and incredible
01:41:21.080like you watch that and then you go to read La Morta Arthur and and like you have to like once
01:41:27.500you have that tone and you're reading it and you're like in the first page like uther is like
01:41:35.140ripping apart his kingdom and launching a war of spite because he wants another man's wife
01:41:42.200and like this is going to rip apart the kingdom and like start start apocalyptic wars and
01:41:50.300and stuff and just the amazing passion behind everything that happens in it and like uh
01:41:57.500you know third and i consider both two of lamar d'arthur maybe one of the greatest like works of
01:42:05.440art ever created uh one of the like the work that i would adapt to film and like might try
01:42:15.380in like my 50s to do they're like just the incredible insane amounts of like ultra violence
01:42:23.320in every instance in every page like uh yeah like the main character
01:42:29.280i'm gonna edit all this out after like we stopped i'm gonna stop recording now