RadixJournal - The Bicameral Sports Brain

00:00:00.000 yeah well um i guess i'll just present one thing i was thinking about so yeah the context for what

00:00:06.540 like what me and mark were talking about the context that uh i think is maybe philosophical

00:00:10.080 and quite interesting um is from this book by maury samuel he's a jewish man from new york and

00:00:15.760 he wrote something called you gentiles it's actually a brilliant book where he constantly

00:00:19.220 compares the it's the jewish experience of the gentile you know it's the the outsider looking

00:00:24.060 in type thing and there's one paragraph in it where he talks about sports and it's surreal reading it

00:00:30.120 because my whole life i've essentially lived as what he's lived but it's been completely unconscious

00:00:35.080 like i've never really understood um what it is but i've always grown up in sports and it's always

00:00:40.300 been a highly like emotive thing for for me and all the boys and it's and all the lessons you learn out

00:00:45.740 of it are so like unbelievably important and he explains that like you know the jews don't

00:00:50.680 experience this stuff i have other jewish friends that i know and i would ask them about this i'd be

00:00:54.760 like what's going on with this and they would describe the same thing where uh they would find

00:00:58.340 themselves in classrooms of of jewish guys studying you know talmud or something like this or whatever

00:01:02.520 they do and he's he like my friend is very much into nietzsche and so he'd always laugh and he'd say

00:01:07.120 they're all there describing they're like how much they hate matter and how much they're very

00:01:11.440 intellectual people you know and he would he would just he would find it hilarious and he would

00:01:15.260 explain that like the we would actually come across this like naive innocent people to them

00:01:20.580 and we're not aware that we're so sporty and why it why it matters to us and so much so i'll probably

00:01:24.960 dive into that quite a lot throughout this and then maybe that's that's that i i should read that book

00:01:29.640 in general but that that's actually uh fascinating it reminds me of this uh joke about a jew in new

00:01:39.200 york who uh ultimately changed his name to something like mcpherson uh or something like that and he did

00:01:46.880 he did he did all of this effort to become more waspish and less jewish name changes the dress um he

00:01:56.860 started wearing uh you know seersucker suits in the summer and um uh these plaid wool uh vests in the

00:02:05.840 winter he he went the whole nine yards and he was actually invited to join um this uh episcopalian

00:02:13.080 uh dinner club their supper club i should say and um he he really had almost done it they they had

00:02:21.640 taken him in as one of their fellow wasp and um just before he was about to be allowed to be a member

00:02:29.140 he was he was asked to give a after dinner speech and uh to his you know new um wasp colleagues and um

00:02:37.860 he stood up and he was going to make a toast and he said fellow goyim so anyway uh didn't work out so

00:02:47.380 well uh maybe that joke didn't work out so well uh but yeah uh so i'm i'm curious you growing up in

00:02:56.200 ireland what what sports did you play um i played quite a lot of them so i have an interesting background

00:03:02.920 because i am like a catholic uh you know born underneath a cabbage but i was in a protestant

00:03:08.480 school for a period of time there's a lot of protestants in in the pale you know i'm i was

00:03:11.800 just on the fringes of the pale and so um i played an awful lot of rugby and rugby is very much like a

00:03:17.300 proddy sport fucking anglo sport you know that's what they don't be playing over here so i played an

00:03:21.580 awful lot of rugby but rugby is if i want to talk about virtue and manliness my god is rugby an incredible

00:03:26.540 sport for learning this it's essentially got feelings inside of it that i i can only assume is the same

00:03:32.000 as like medieval warfare because you know you're just a big team of guys standing across these

00:03:36.620 monsters and you you full force charge into each other and just smash each other with your with

00:03:41.500 your shoulders it's an amazing there's the only sport close to it is uh fighting that's my been in

00:03:46.500 my experience so i played a lot of um rugby but also played an awful lot of soccer like soccer was

00:03:51.820 a big one uh we call it ireland's actually interesting yeah oh you don't go ahead go ahead i don't

00:03:57.180 want to we call it soccer but it's supposed to be called football but we have our own private

00:04:01.180 gaelic football again this is could be quite interesting to get into because gaelic football

00:04:05.220 is like our rebellion against the english so we have like a sort of special football football and

00:04:10.840 hurling we call them and they're like a different type of ball sports and uh there again like another

00:04:16.100 thing so in ireland there's actually quite a lot of sports it's extremely politicized as well

00:04:19.940 like as i said those irish sports are for catholics and you're supposed to play them as they're like

00:04:25.660 they're part of your heritage and like screw the english and soccer is a little bit of a middle

00:04:29.260 ground because it's just so universal but it is ultimately an english sport and then rugby is like

00:04:32.920 very much a kind of pompous you'd see that stuff in like south dublin motherfuckers you know you're

00:04:37.160 like oh you're of course anglos protestants that thing so i've had a broad experience with them

00:04:41.160 interesting i didn't know well of course i should have known sports are politicized as you say but but

00:04:48.120 kind of uh the the religious war takes place in terms of which sport you do that that's um i guess not

00:04:54.440 surprising we have some of those stereotypes it's it's in america it's probably not even close to

00:04:59.720 being as intense uh yeah that's a great sport i mean it's it's interesting when i think back on it

00:05:05.380 because i i played american football which i presume doesn't i mean you guys probably have seen it of

00:05:11.960 course but i i doubt anyone plays it in ireland um you'll occasionally it's a very american sport it's

00:05:18.580 interesting you'll i think you you'll occasionally see it in germany and some other places but it's

00:05:23.320 very rare it's kind of like taking up fencing or something and in in terms of its uh uniqueness

00:05:30.640 um you don't really find it anywhere outside of america but anyway i played i i played baseball i

00:05:37.840 loved baseball i really wanted to be a great baseball player i i um i was obsessed with the

00:05:45.680 game when i was younger and i actually in the 80s and 90s i was a boston red sox fan uh which is

00:05:53.180 kind of funny this will please um mark of course but i um they were they were very good in 86 but

00:06:01.240 then they were they were always just out of reach of being good uh for the next 15 years or so and

00:06:09.520 they they had this long tradition of never winning a world series after they traded away babe ruth and all

00:06:15.000 this this kind of junk but i i was actually born in boston and i just i kind of just loved the

00:06:21.740 ancientness of of the red sox and i i followed them and knew everything about the players and uh

00:06:31.240 i i loved it but um i don't know baseball is a very difficult sport just to you know to hit a uh

00:06:39.820 curveball is extremely difficult so i i wasn't i was always disappointing myself i wasn't good enough

00:06:46.280 at it um but i loved it but i i played football as well and um uh american football and you know i i

00:06:55.820 remember hearing from my father about um he went to a prep school in uh new jersey actually called

00:07:03.140 lawrenceville and they i don't know if they still do this they probably don't uh but they required you

00:07:11.700 to play football it's which is it's almost kind of funny to think of it now they couldn't get away

00:07:18.920 with it but you you played as a house uh so you're you played with your dormitory and um everyone

00:07:26.960 played was the rule and so they they didn't expect any you know great athletic feats to occur but they

00:07:34.960 wanted everyone to participate and so even if you were an 80 pound weakling you still kind of had to

00:07:40.940 go out there and and fight because it's you know and it it's not rugby exactly but it's it is a violent

00:07:47.100 sport you know with pads and um i i thought that was a great tradition i mean it's funny when you look

00:07:54.000 back on it because now football is becoming uh at least in some circles it's becoming almost taboo

00:08:01.660 because of the concussions and just the you know the violence and all of that kind of stuff and i i

00:08:07.240 suffered a concussion or two although i can't remember them for some reason uh but uh but you

00:08:14.020 know i i look back on it and i don't you know i don't know if i even want my son to play football but

00:08:20.060 i i don't regret anything about it and it it is a that concept of team building that concept of

00:08:30.320 uh of fighting also learning to lose um that might sound like a weird thing to say but getting beat by

00:08:39.560 someone who's better than you that's really really important to experience and i still remember to this

00:08:47.620 day where you know 25 years later or something of that time i beat the guy i can even retell this

00:08:58.160 story of this guy i was blocking because again i'm mediocre athlete so i was relegated to blocking

00:09:04.540 but this really good defensive end who i was blocking over and over and over and at the key moment i i really

00:09:12.000 got him and again i was probably 17 or something and i just i remember it to this day i relive it

00:09:19.940 in my mind so it's it's just hugely important and yeah i think we've lost something we've lost something

00:09:28.760 very important when you don't learn learn what it feels like to lose i would stress that so you know

00:09:34.740 that there's a bigger fish out there and also just experience even if it's in a a controlled way

00:09:41.960 experience danger in violence you know i mean i think all of us it's funny i'm not stressing the

00:09:49.880 you know victory and getting carried off the field by your teammates or something because that that's

00:09:54.680 very very rare but just that being afraid to go out there and not knowing who the other guy is and

00:10:03.560 facing off of them i i think that's something that is particularly like gen z are not experiencing

00:10:10.620 they're experiencing that like on a live stream of a video game or something which is okay but it seems

00:10:17.820 like a pale substitute for the real thing of going out there and facing someone 100 i think um actually

00:10:27.940 what you're digging into there at the end is okay if we're to get waxed philosophical about this which

00:10:33.940 i guess we're gonna have to do sure is uh really where things become fascinating so again in this

00:10:37.900 book by you gentiles i was describing that when i was reading it it was just it was just so insightful

00:10:42.740 i was like wow this is amazing this is really really brilliant i love finding stuff like this

00:10:46.540 and because this guy is describing it from the outside and he basically says that uh you know he's a

00:10:51.580 jew and jews are bookish and they're not sporty and they're not engaged this way and

00:10:55.380 young would even describe this that the the arians if i'm allowed to put it this way the arians are

00:11:00.520 more unconscious and innocent and perhaps have more potential but the the jews are actually more

00:11:05.700 conscious and mature they're sort of like a sunset civilization or people their symbols have been

00:11:11.620 taken out of themselves they're kind of a finished product in some weird way there are much older

00:11:15.760 people spiritually i guess you could say this way they're like old souls and for this reason their

00:11:20.280 maturity leads to consciousness and they their experience of life is very much like that like

00:11:25.900 the jews all get together and read and they study history and they they study the the bible not the

00:11:31.540 bible the the talmud or the torah and they they understand themselves and they're aware and their

00:11:36.080 approach towards morality this is so fascinating is that it's declarative you know you explain to the

00:11:42.160 jew that he is supposed to be moral in this way like the jews would explain to each other is what i mean

00:11:46.380 they sit down with a young guy and they'd sort of say to him hey this is how you be a good boy this is

00:11:49.940 this is what good and evil is this is what you're supposed to do and it's declared to him and then

00:11:54.000 it forms a conception inside of his head and then he has to sort of act out this declaration

00:11:58.060 whereas this this guy maurice was explaining that when he sees us go to sports he realizes that we

00:12:04.200 don't learn morality us europeans or arians or westerners we don't learn it via the book you know

00:12:10.260 like the priest don't let us read the bible it's the sort of uh stereotype learn it that way we

00:12:15.060 actually go and we learn it in the sports field like virtue is embodied for us and it's completely

00:12:20.620 unconscious it's never declared in fact we have this scorn towards declaration why be all talk when

00:12:26.000 you could be action we can consider that a pathetic thing you know like blather braining reading your

00:12:30.480 books it's all that's book sell word sell cope like don't do that stuff go out and experience it and

00:12:35.660 develop and morality is like implicitly imposed upon us i really think this is very close to sort of

00:12:41.660 nietzsche's understanding of of maybe morality like as he kind of has moral predicates in some sense

00:12:47.380 but they're and they're not he's very against like this declarative idea and so our experience of

00:12:52.660 sports brings us into this experience you go out into the field and you come in contact with these

00:12:57.720 amazing things you know as you described it the the failure like how do you deal with failure how do you

00:13:03.080 be quote-unquote a good sport how do you be a good sport in sportsmen in the face of defeat

00:13:08.080 that's actually incredibly moral attitude when you think about it you have to be sophisticated

00:13:12.240 you have to be capable of uh you know putting your ego aside like all these things that we

00:13:16.440 we'd celebrate as if you'd said that stuff in in church everybody would be like you're so good you're

00:13:20.860 such a good boy but to actually demonstrate it is is a much different thing and um even dealing with

00:13:26.440 pain like that was one thing i remember from my sports career is that before i really got into it

00:13:31.260 when i was a teenager like i remember my first couple of sports games rugby games specifically

00:13:35.140 like i was afraid you know i'm stepping up and i'm gonna get hurt man and that's that's that's for

00:13:41.460 you know for your head when you haven't been hurt you're you're afraid man you're like what's this

00:13:45.800 gonna feel like and then you go and you clash full speed against other people and you you smash

00:13:51.720 against people and you get hurt and you realize first of all it doesn't hurt as bad as you thought

00:13:55.360 it was gonna hurt it definitely hurts but you kind of recover from it you start to see that you're

00:13:59.300 you're able to overcome pain you realize that you're much more anti-fragile than than you thought

00:14:03.320 before of course this is reinforced to you is like you're not a lump of sugar you know it's never

00:14:06.960 this grand moral declaration you're just sort of like shouted at it's like you're not a lump of

00:14:10.880 sugar now you learned that didn't you you're all right you'll get up you know you're tough you can

00:14:14.800 handle it and then fear as well fear is another thing i remember before the the games we we would

00:14:20.760 see the other team rugby specifically we'd see the other team come into the dressing room we'd see

00:14:24.760 their bus show up at our school if we were going to do this and we'd all be looking at them and the

00:14:28.720 second you see the bush the the bus there'd be this like uh you know adrenaline drop through your

00:14:33.900 spine you'd feel the chill going you're like oh fuck here we go it was like a team arriving i can

00:14:37.800 i can only describe it as as i said in the medieval times it's like watching the other army show up in

00:14:42.980 the hill and you're like all right boys here we fucking go and the next two hours there was just a

00:14:47.340 different mood among everybody and all the boys we'd be looking at each other in class and then we'd be

00:14:51.460 getting ready and there's this like there was tension in the air and i remember feeling that stuff and

00:14:55.160 that's not a normal feeling in your life and then you start to get nervous and then you start to feel

00:14:59.600 that like lump in your chest and you have to go you have to overcome that you have to go fucking show

00:15:03.500 up and stand on the field and then you have to look across from them and overcome that fear and act

00:15:08.040 despite it it's such it's such a profound thing to teach yourself to learn to do and then as you said

00:15:13.060 those those moments of triumph are definitely not insignificant either like um i i've like many

00:15:18.460 memories of as you were saying like you you you beat that dude i remember i uh in rugby i just gave some

00:15:23.080 dude like an absolutely horrific tackle i must i think i think i broke his ribs i'd like tackle them

00:15:27.540 that hard but i was just like a legend for a week like i was like everyone's like yes let's go and

00:15:33.120 it's it stuck in my mind forever it was like uh the kind of ecstasy of triumph i remember reading

00:15:37.760 nietzsche talking about the old god of israel and it's like what would a god know what type of god

00:15:42.460 could you relate to if he didn't understand the ecstasy of triumph if he didn't understand that

00:15:46.380 the feeling of um of conquest like to tear the scalp off your energy and your enemy and hold it up in the

00:15:52.260 air type thing and so all those virtues are in that experience none of it is declarative none of it is

00:15:58.020 pontificated none of it is uh you know you can't you can't bash people over the head with a book

00:16:02.020 and interestingly you can't really learn that stuff as efficiently within a book you have to go and

00:16:07.120 experience it it is something that must be done it must be experienced through action and there's

00:16:12.340 something incredible there and again marie samuel was basically saying that like sports is your is your

00:16:17.720 church you know like that's actually where you do your church is sort of like a hilarious

00:16:22.100 utter institution but sports is really what you are and he says even though you're christian

00:16:27.140 the ancient greeks knew this the ancient greeks had the gymnasium as a religious center because they

00:16:32.320 actually understood what they were that was the nature of your spirit so there's a lot of profound

00:16:36.040 things in there i think yes i'm definitely taken by that that problem of believing that morality is

00:16:45.740 rational and that that's definitely something nicho would associate with kant um but i that that

00:16:53.700 notion that you could ever you know as you say declare a morality with words um is on one level

00:17:02.760 extremely deceptive um but also on another level it's it's kind of killing it and so on like real

00:17:10.720 morality is felt between the community and it's not something you can exactly even put into words

00:17:19.240 um you know beating the guy and helping him up you you know it's good sportsmanship and and so on but

00:17:25.420 there's a connection between the two of you that you can't really describe by by like putting that

00:17:36.380 into a kind of legalism of like thou shalt you know defeat thy opponent thine opponent but not too much

00:17:44.080 should always help him off the door that ruins it it destroys it in fact um but when it's felt you

00:17:51.520 understand what something like that means it's weirdly like romance when you think about it you know

00:17:57.740 like if you go in with a girl and you'll be like babe i'm gonna do this and then well maybe maybe that would

00:18:01.840 work but if you're like too blunt too spurgy too autistic you you uh you you destroy something

00:18:07.200 you know it just doesn't work that way it must be embodied it must be experienced there must be

00:18:11.720 action and the the right action which i guess is sort of what morality is all about actually has to

00:18:17.120 happen without words you know you can't the whole problem of consent you know like these types of

00:18:21.120 things always come into this and sports very much teaches you that i think it's a fascinating thing to

00:18:25.220 look at i look also at um psychology because in psychology later in my life i learned many of

00:18:31.680 these principles from a different angle entirely so for example um the problem of of our brains is

00:18:38.300 that our brains are split in half we've got like this left hemisphere this right hemisphere and our

00:18:42.400 left hemisphere tends to be a little bit more conscious and it's the part where our brokers area

00:18:46.600 is like if you've got your concussion on your left side you might not be able to speak as well as you

00:18:50.240 used to and this conscious left hemisphere very close to our concept of the ego is sort of um it's it's not

00:18:57.920 really as in touch with reality as maybe the the other side of our brain the right hemisphere which

00:19:02.640 is more subtle and more um wrapped up in the moment i guess you could describe it and so what you see

00:19:07.940 here is this very very deep problem where declarations don't really connect us with the real world as much

00:19:14.740 as we would like to say it and there's this constant issue we have in human civilization overall this

00:19:20.640 is just part of our nature is that we we think that being able to say something uh being a a word

00:19:28.000 declarer is some type of virtue in and of itself it's it's just it's almost like a failure of

00:19:33.020 understanding what we are it's like our own brain matter our own makeup gets in the way of what we

00:19:38.680 would like to be the right thing to do we would like to be able to declare beliefs and then think that

00:19:43.620 that's the right action but we just know that that is not how things work in practice the the true art of

00:19:49.260 life is is your ability to be subtle and your ability to to you know get involved in the moment

00:19:53.500 as we said and actually embody and demonstrate virtue and oftentimes as i was describing the

00:19:59.140 sports earlier the more somebody talks in some sense you want to actually you want to cast the

00:20:05.100 gate that out of people you want to you want to get give out to people if they talk too much it's

00:20:08.700 like boxing i think is a way better example of this when it comes to boxing you can have your

00:20:13.880 opinions mike tyson would always say you know if you have a everybody has a plan till they get punched in

00:20:18.200 the face but when it comes down to it you're going in there and actually going to have to beat somebody

00:20:22.520 up like you're gonna have to fight for your fucking life it's so scary like it's probably a scary man

00:20:27.040 boxing is terrifying oh yeah you shit yourself man before before you go into a boxing ring in the

00:20:34.280 dressing room is like some of the toughest dudes i know i'd be talking to them about this and um they'd

00:20:39.520 be like yeah i just wanted to jump out the fucking window and run away like they just can't do it

00:20:43.940 because the tension's so great and oh i can absolutely imagine i have never experienced that

00:20:49.500 uh i have kind of gotten into boxing weirdly through youtube and watching particularly some

00:20:55.180 of the older fighters and um but yeah that that is something else i mean that is archetypal

00:21:02.180 basically mono a mono and your ability just to survive not to mention when uh is is something else yeah

00:21:12.040 and and this is it is um the i guess the reason why i came to this because maybe my stream of

00:21:16.820 thought is not so clear here um what you'll notice in yourself as a psychological problem is that you've

00:21:23.280 got this propensity to rationalize and you always have to have a story going on in your head about what

00:21:28.420 the world is this is so fascinating to think about because this is what your your your ego i guess you

00:21:33.000 could say is generating generating rationalizations about reality but what things like sports and for

00:21:39.260 example boxing forces you to confront is that an awful lot of that is just meaningless chatter

00:21:43.700 it's just pointless yeah and you really understand this on the most pure level when you're forced to

00:21:49.400 do something scary so for example you're in the dressing room before the boxing match it's scarier

00:21:55.040 in the dressing room than when you're actually fighting that's the weirdest feeling of all but that's

00:21:59.500 actually true the worst part is in the dressing room because you're sitting there and your head just

00:22:03.620 starts to spin webs of i'm gonna get fucking i'm gonna get i'm literally going to die

00:22:08.040 like that's the big one you know what if i die what if i get beaten up in front of all these people

00:22:11.620 and humiliate what if i start like you know foaming at the mouth or something like that what if i start

00:22:14.980 crying you know all this stuff starts going through your head all this bizarre stuff and you start to

00:22:19.260 blow out of proportion to fear and that's your brain rationalizing you're creating you're narrating

00:22:25.020 you're blathering you're creating scenarios in your head and then when you walk out it's really

00:22:29.280 intense but then the second you step in and you throw that first punch something happens

00:22:34.200 where that part of your brain gets so overwhelmed that it just turns off it's like the buddhist or the

00:22:39.860 flow state you know that part switches off and then it's it's it's actually amazing it's almost like

00:22:44.780 you start to enjoy yourself you know it's it's once maybe you do it a few times like you start to enjoy

00:22:49.680 yourself you start to really experience and your your adrenaline is just a hundred like you know

00:22:54.940 150 you're just absolutely wired to your tits on this natural drug but you're completely present

00:23:01.420 you're completely there there's no thinking about anything else and you're actually having a bit of

00:23:05.000 a blast in the most like you know sadistic way possible and that part of your brain shuts off

00:23:10.000 the very same thing that a buddhist would sit down and try to meditate on and kill inside of himself

00:23:14.760 shut off that monkey mind you actually achieve that true true bravery and there's no way that you can

00:23:19.740 declare that you there's no how can you explain this to someone how can you get someone to think that

00:23:23.640 they can just declare the words inside their heads and achieve that experience that experience is really what

00:23:28.760 you're looking for and it just it just falls so short if you surrender your world conception to that

00:23:34.580 rationalizing part of your head as being some in some sense the the priority or the value or something

00:23:40.440 like this so i think just a curiosity have you ever looked into the work of julian james oh man yeah

00:23:46.940 oh yeah oh you have okay so i i felt like that you were referencing him when you're talking about

00:23:52.740 the hemispheric theory of mind um basically but yeah i mean really i i'm uh i don't i'm not even

00:24:00.980 positive i buy it or not but i when i opened up that book around a year ago actually it really blew

00:24:10.120 blew my mind so to speak um uh cut it in two uh but yeah i mean what it's hard to summarize his thought

00:24:18.780 in um just a few sentences but i'll try i guess so if you we've had this assumption for quite some time

00:24:28.620 that you know it's homo sapien the um the rational man uh that what what is what makes us human really

00:24:38.280 is this consciousness and our ability to kind of you know explain ourselves or have a you know a sense of

00:24:46.320 ego or rationally deal with the world consciously that is through thinking and ultimately through

00:24:52.920 using language language but so much of our life is unconscious i mean you can be driving a car

00:25:02.060 at you know 70 miles per hour down the highway and having a phone conversation and um you are

00:25:11.760 basically going to be just as alert and just as good a driver as you would be um uh sorry i just

00:25:22.900 got distracted there for some moment you you can you can be having a phone conversation while you're

00:25:27.320 driving down the uh driving down the highway at a very high speed and you're basically doing it

00:25:32.240 you are unconsciously and through peripheral vision in many ways like adjusting making slight adjustments

00:25:37.940 your reactions your reactions are there um you know what is sport but a kind of um right-brained

00:25:44.720 unconscious ability to you know find that little gap to run through um or to you know um know just when

00:25:54.440 to you know twist to get out of a tackle or something like that and so it's it's that your spinal cord

00:26:01.580 and your your whole nervous system really is your mind on a much bigger level than that language uh

00:26:12.000 left brain thought processes this is such an amazing topic to get into i might go on a little bit of a

00:26:18.800 tirade yeah please been enjoying the conversation um and not i mean i think that you've uh so i'm

00:26:26.440 reluctant to because i think a lot of what i would say would be redundant or just um kind of affirming

00:26:32.180 some of the points that you've already made i mean i think i do i i do think an important aspect of

00:26:37.860 sports is the sort of ethos that's developed um through athletic competition especially i would say

00:26:44.360 team sports um but i think that there there are different lessons learned from individual sports that

00:26:50.420 are also valuable so ideally a a young man would have experience with both uh individual sports and

00:26:58.480 team sports uh individual sports i think are um you know because you you ultimately we are individuals

00:27:05.920 and we have to be we have to kind of uh carry our own weight be self-sustaining be successful as

00:27:11.760 individuals and develop that self-discipline and i think that that perspective of being one against

00:27:18.220 the world is um is valuable to inhabit um as a younger man uh to to become accustomed to it but i

00:27:26.620 also think that uh team sports are very valuable as well because they allow people to um learn i mean

00:27:33.880 these are all kind of like cliches um and they seem like simple things yeah uh but they're simple things

00:27:40.880 that a lot of people don't learn right and we think of morality and ethos generally as a kind of simple

00:27:47.340 thing and on some level i am a little ashamed even to talk about i mean this sort of goes to some of the

00:27:52.540 points that you were um addressing but i'm almost ashamed to like discuss morality because i feel like a lot of

00:28:00.620 the points are kind of so obvious um you know and but i think that sports it has a way of kind of instilling

00:28:08.660 uh good uh ethos uh good sort of community ethos so that people are able to work well together

00:28:15.580 and um so it allows it i guess it has a kind of humbling effect on some level as well um you realize

00:28:24.020 that some athletes are better than you or you realize that you can't yourself um these sort of

00:28:29.540 things i think are are valuable lessons of sports um but also that you yeah but to accomplish the goal you

00:28:36.460 have to be working with one another and uh to richard's earlier point i i think that a lot of

00:28:42.080 that you know i i uh famously will criticize the dr what we call the dissident right but one of the

00:28:49.480 the the problems i find with the dissident right is that there is you know especially you know with

00:28:54.900 people who are ostensibly christians which you you would think that they um would have a special

00:29:02.580 interest in being moral or showing themselves to be moral or virtuous or ethical in behavior um i find

00:29:09.480 that that's often absent with uh people who are are very uh demonstrative of their christianity

00:29:16.240 especially on the right um that you know a lot of times they're just not you know and not in every

00:29:20.960 case of course and um but but they they just they're just kind of unashamed to call themselves

00:29:27.680 christian yet behave in kind of unethical uh and bad ways essentially right and which to me is kind

00:29:36.480 of like well you know i don't go around uh saying how apollonians are more moral than everyone else

00:29:42.260 or that sort of thing right um but i try to uh conduct myself and i and i don't i mean i think that

00:29:48.680 again i think a lot of this is just learned behavior it's how you're raised uh i think sports

00:29:53.600 are helpful for uh developing that ethos as well um and so that's the only thing i would say is i

00:29:59.780 think that there there is a kind of ethical component to it i i did read that chapter that

00:30:04.420 you were referencing um and uh i yeah i found it amusing i i think that there's a lot of truth to

00:30:10.460 what he's saying definitely um i think there's a little bit of a kind of caricature in there as well

00:30:16.340 uh where and he emphasizes as well that like really we're warriors and we're about war which

00:30:23.440 i think um you know i think on some level that is true of course uh you know mars is a is an aryan

00:30:29.320 figure certainly and and we are descended of warriors but um you know i think with a figure like

00:30:36.240 apollo um i mean i i don't think that we are i don't think that we should develop a sort of idea of

00:30:42.100 ourselves as brutes then as a consequence of that right um i think that uh there is room for balance

00:30:48.780 there as well and uh you know civilization it's um you know i think that uh competition you know i

00:30:58.160 think that this this sort of comp this competitive spirit that you gain through athletics uh can be

00:31:02.860 transmuted or sublimated into other activities in the world too and and and and therefore that

00:31:08.240 background in sports has a useful function so you can become uh more valuable to your company for

00:31:14.280 example uh you can become a more successful entrepreneur uh with this sort of competitive

00:31:20.900 spirit that you uh that you learn at least in part from sports um so i think you understand my point in

00:31:28.200 in that um and also in intellectual activities uh to the extent that they're required i mean i i i take

00:31:35.180 your point about us not um i mean i think that i think that we should speak when there are valuable

00:31:41.660 things to say only right uh and we live in a time when there are valuable things to say um but yeah

00:31:49.260 we don't um i i think that we should be men of action as opposed to blatherers or or yammerers

00:31:57.140 right anyways i'll hand it back there's some great thoughts and it's it's like just on that idea of men

00:32:03.280 of action men of and versus yammerers i think the the actual real problem is that you're dealing with

00:32:08.580 um two incredibly important forces like you know the sort of declarative part of our mind is a real

00:32:13.480 part of our mind it's not like we want to lobotomize you know our our prefrontal cortex or something

00:32:18.260 like this and become all sports grugs i think that'll get us anywhere but um we also need to

00:32:22.940 understand that that's more to more unconscious action orientated part of ourselves is is got an awful

00:32:28.180 lot more dignity as you're pointing out even christ himself basically says don't be some pharisee

00:32:32.880 walking around blathering that you're just the best person ever like that's demonstrate your

00:32:37.240 morality type thing demonstrate that you're a follower of the law and the real difficulty i guess

00:32:41.640 is trying to make those two things work together you know but it's really trying to humble your

00:32:45.160 your declarative uh rationalizations your talking mind to the the groundedness of a more complete

00:32:53.000 um brain i guess you could say something like this i'll um go back into mcgill chris i think

00:32:58.580 everything's been sorted out with the with the zoom meeting maybe you'll just read like one or two

00:33:03.060 quick uh pieces like short paragraphs from the you gentiles because it is as mark was saying maybe a

00:33:10.040 little bit of a a little bit of a parody but there's just some very fascinating things that he puts in

00:33:14.680 here so for example and this is him speaking now your spirit is sport particularly your young men who

00:33:21.540 are not yet yet absorbed in the struggle for existence and whose emotions are therefore for the

00:33:26.360 largest part free they must find them in sports in games in contest the most satisfactory expression

00:33:32.800 of their instincts hence the comparative weakness of your organized churches which are founded on a

00:33:39.060 misconception sport is for you a serious spiritual manner it is the proper symbolization the perfect

00:33:45.460 ritual wherein your spiritual forces find expression and they also find exercise and sustenance

00:33:50.820 they were cleaner witted who before the advent of christianity associated sport intimately with your

00:33:56.980 religious life today you are practicing on a vast scale the troubled hypocrisy of unhappy converts who

00:34:03.000 have been convinced in reason of a new religion but whose proper and healthy instincts drive them to

00:34:08.520 surreptitious homage to older gods and i've always i just find that such an interesting way of framing

00:34:15.620 things because it's um exactly the sort of experience like i went to church when i was younger

00:34:20.260 even in this school like i went to protestant church catholic church it's the same feeling where

00:34:24.740 you sort of go through the motions in the church you don't ask fucking questions you let the dude up

00:34:28.980 there do his little ritual you know it's obviously important it's kind of got style and everybody gets

00:34:33.240 together and you sing some nice hymns but then like you know when the real work happens you go out in

00:34:37.060 the sports field and you go out and you beat the shit out of each other and that's where it actually

00:34:40.340 happens that's where the energy is going and it's it is um it there is that sort of hypocrisy and again talking to

00:34:45.220 these uh like people i know who are jewish and and listening to this guy their approach towards uh

00:34:50.500 the torah and going to synagogue is is far more like i guess serious like they actually you know

00:34:54.740 study and they try to understand what's going on with this thing and they actually try to to make

00:34:59.240 sense of it like but we had never had any of that and going growing up so it's i find that one quite

00:35:05.000 fascinating um if you have any thoughts we uh we've solved it so they can read us and and then they

00:35:10.400 don't have to pay as much attention to the door in the future let's go we fix them and if you have

00:35:17.080 any thoughts on that before i go into the hemispheres well so one thing i wanted to point to because i

00:35:22.720 think that um and this is a well so returning to this idea that you develop um uh teamwork um an ability

00:35:31.660 to work with one another i mean these things should be attractive or interesting to people who call

00:35:35.980 themselves nationalists right even if they consider themselves petty nationalists or whatever the case

00:35:39.920 may be um they sports should be meaningful to them because of this right now i think that a lot of a

00:35:46.840 lot of people in the dissident right are not interested in sports or that's what i perceive

00:35:50.680 and i think i i do think it is one of the problems is that there's you have these pencil necks or these

00:35:56.860 nerds or whoever or who you know don't really know how to get along with other people and can be

00:36:04.360 obnoxious as a consequence right uh now of course a lot of this is due to the online online milieu or

00:36:09.660 nature of a lot of uh what we call the dissident right so that's another aspect of it um so there

00:36:16.440 are good lessons there but i think one of the criticisms that they make has which has some

00:36:20.640 validity of course is that uh they call it sports ball right so there's this criticism and i'm probably

00:36:26.540 sure you've heard this expression as well this idea that it's sports ball right and i think a lot of

00:36:31.020 that criticism is related to the to the manifestation of sports in the professional world as part of um

00:36:38.800 you know as part of the media um cosmology as it were so there's a lot of um non-white athletes for

00:36:46.880 example that are celebrated in uh professional athletics so the criticism is is rooted on that that

00:36:53.540 it's a sort of celebration of other groups i think is part of the criticism the other aspect of the

00:36:59.420 criticism which i think is legitimate too is that there can be a kind of sedentary aspect to watching

00:37:05.740 or vicarious aspect to watching sports right as opposed to actually participating in sports and

00:37:11.140 those are legitimate sort of criticisms of sports as a phenomena in the society now of course we don't

00:37:18.140 live in a sort of we don't live in an ideal society so uh the institution uh uh of sports even as a

00:37:26.200 professional institution um has kind of been turned in some negative ways you might say um but a lot of

00:37:33.280 that is a kind of it's not that the it's not that sports itself is corrupt no more than you know media

00:37:39.560 for example by itself is corrupt uh the communication of humans or expression of humans uh through whatever

00:37:45.980 medium you know is not by itself corrupt humans communicate they make art they uh they make plays they

00:37:52.860 whatever these are all part of a kind of healthy functioning aspect of humanity um there are arts

00:37:59.660 there are sports you get the point uh but those each one of those institutions can become corrupt

00:38:05.620 or you know start manifesting bad values as it were uh on whatever basis for whatever reason um

00:38:13.580 so i think that that's important to remember that we're we're we're kind of we're looking at sports

00:38:18.480 in a kind of idealized way we're also looking at sports as something that someone participates in

00:38:24.080 as a youth um but you know i think that also in an ideal society you would have professional athletes

00:38:30.000 i think that that i think that there is a kind of uh larger community aspect to professional sports

00:38:35.360 that has a lot of positive uh benefits or aspects to it that it has a kind of cultural dimension

00:38:41.680 in the way that you know cinema or the other arts do um and can be positive um but it's just a matter of

00:38:50.720 um uh balance i think on one level and also um you know i mean obviously uh some people are going to

00:38:57.240 become addicted to sports and becoming addicted to anything is is not you know as a especially as a

00:39:02.680 viewer is not a good thing um but i think you understand my point i think that what people are

00:39:08.740 reacting to is a corruption of a aspect of human life that is ultimately positive and necessary

00:39:18.520 so they're reacting to a corruption of it um and i mean they may as well you know i mean it so i i think

00:39:28.020 you understand my point it's not well what they're reacting to i i i think are some very real things um

00:39:35.160 first off yeah sure there's the the brutal quality of the jock or something and you know fair enough

00:39:43.020 uh but i i think in the contemporary time they're they're reacting to this this problem uh they're

00:39:50.700 okay first off there's the there's the obvious kind of racial angle to all this which is the elephant

00:39:56.080 in the room and i probably don't need to go into it too much particularly in the united states but you

00:40:01.980 actually see this all over the world um i i remember actually i was um in europe for the um world cup

00:40:11.220 in 2000 i believe that that's when it was maybe yeah it's 2000 when france won and and i i just

00:40:17.240 remember seeing this non you know racially or traditionally french team and um that was a

00:40:26.280 interesting experience um thinking about that i i think that probably got my mind going but united

00:40:32.460 states i mean 70 percent of the football players or basketball players etc um are african-american

00:40:40.580 uh baseball's a little bit percent yeah yeah yeah i think that's that's probably the right estimate

00:40:47.300 don't you think at least 50 um and basketball but although basketball is changing that's kind of

00:40:53.460 interesting there's a european influx into the nba uh baseball's different it's always been just

00:41:00.560 a different sport um there are actually i think fewer african-americans playing baseball now than

00:41:05.720 there were previously um but it's it's uh long been a kind of big sport in south america and things

00:41:13.160 like that so it has more of a latin uh component to it but the racial component is that you have

00:41:20.600 you know your average southern sec football fan watching these teams that are in effect all black

00:41:31.100 and so it's the the the white fan black player dynamic and and i i think there are some unhealthy

00:41:37.700 aspects to that another criticism of sports is just the the corruption and just to kind of like

00:41:44.060 let the rubber hit the road is you know they're just just paying these people paying some people

00:41:50.500 who are actual criminals to play sports for you uh the recruiting prospect uh process in uh

00:41:58.660 college football is is in many ways worse than what goes on in the nfl and it's actually quite bad

00:42:06.460 uh involving prostitution of students in some cases i mean it's it's just horrible and uh so i think

00:42:14.200 those are all good criticisms there's this other kind of deeper criticism of just the the lack of

00:42:19.040 participation and i i think this is a bigger thing that we've experienced but you're you know sports

00:42:26.300 how do you participate in sports most of the time you're not actually playing you're sitting on your

00:42:32.380 couch watching someone play it and by you're you're experiencing vicariously but you are experiencing

00:42:39.400 it i mean watching a nfl game and you see some big run or big hit or whatever you your mind

00:42:48.520 there is a kind of virtual reality quality to that like your your mind will feel it like you'll

00:42:54.680 sometimes when you see a player get hit you'll wince and and certainly there's a thrill when your team

00:43:01.780 does something good that you you feel like you're a part of it you've done it you you want to jump up

00:43:06.740 and a high five and you know all that kind of stuff um but there's so there's something good about that

00:43:13.460 of course but there's also something bad that that vicarious kind of abstraction away from the

00:43:19.260 physical i mean it's very similar to the development of music where there there was a dramatic change

00:43:27.100 concerts always existed of course but there was a dramatic change when at some point in history

00:43:32.040 participating in music meant listening to a record as opposed to playing it yourself

00:43:40.300 or perhaps playing and and even dancing while someone's in the same room playing with you that

00:43:46.800 that's how you participated in music and we're getting to this realm of like music as muzak you

00:43:53.960 know background noise it's in your headphones while you're at the grocery store um or the kind of you

00:44:00.020 know audiophile with his big ear cans on listening you know to the precise you know to the precise beats

00:44:06.940 and tones of some recording that he has all that's fine and good i do all of those things but but

00:44:13.380 certainly have to recognize that something has been lost that you're you're not you're participating

00:44:19.680 passively and you're participating vicariously and so i i think that's a a deeper criticism of sports

00:44:28.000 culture it's it's you know you you experience nationalism through sports but again it's a kind of fake

00:44:34.300 nationalism you're cheering on a team of algerians you know wearing the french colors uh and you're

00:44:42.600 experiencing the glorious civilization or something you know what i mean well so i mean i think that

00:44:48.880 some some things you've pointed to i would call kind of corruptions of the institution of sports

00:44:53.680 sports yeah but i think that um and i i did point to the that sort of vicarious sedentary aspect of

00:45:00.180 sports viewership which i think should be limited of course um but on some level it's also a kind of

00:45:06.980 civic activity where people come together and venerate uh the best athletes or the the people that are most

00:45:13.280 accomplished in their endeavor in their in their endeavor so in this way it's similar to theater or cinema

00:45:19.640 or anything like this and and what should occur more often is a veneration of scientists and

00:45:26.080 accomplishments and this sort of thing uh there should be more of a balance there of course right

00:45:30.480 um but uh i think that i think that the civic aspect of sports is also very positive even though

00:45:39.560 it it means that there will be spectators as well as participants right um but you know again it's not

00:45:47.900 i mean i think if the ethos of the society is such that people are atomized and the only thing that's

00:45:53.720 interesting to them is sports then i mean there are other deeper problems there that cause um you know

00:46:00.440 something like sports addiction or uh you know whatever they would call it now um one other thing i i wanted

00:46:08.480 to uh talk about that was a concern sports is um so in in uh maurice uh uh addresses this in the book as

00:46:16.880 well is that it becomes in its origin sports was a uh essentially a preparation for war right so in

00:46:24.720 other words uh the gymnasium was understood as a way of preparing i mean the athlete exists to as as

00:46:31.880 preparation uh for the warrior he or he becomes a kind of um he's the he's the warrior in training as

00:46:39.540 it were in ancient greece um and i think that that is so it becomes a kind of vestigial reference to

00:46:47.040 our warrior nature or warrior character um i you know the idea that i mean because uh we've pointed

00:46:55.340 to this the uh sort of racial issue with american sports and sports in the west generally um i you know

00:47:03.260 i think probably the most ideal scenario would be that um groups would be competing as teams or

00:47:10.400 whatever or nations would be for example nations would be competing as teams um and ideally there

00:47:17.180 would be a kind of ethnic um you know homogeneity or uniformity there among teams um so that races would

00:47:26.100 be like fielding teams i think would be in a kind of utopian vision of of sports uh and it's one of the

00:47:32.760 reasons that i like um because it approximates this very imperfectly but it's one of the reasons i

00:47:38.240 like the world cup in soccer now uh the teams are becoming more diverse but it used to be the case

00:47:44.800 that uh germany for example they might have had a couple of uh token blacks but they were a relatively

00:47:50.380 like sort of white team and they would play in france for example was has for a long time been a

00:47:56.500 kind of multi uh ethnic team whatever the case might be but but generally you would see if you

00:48:03.160 saw a russian team or an italian team or a german team that they would represent the people of that

00:48:08.860 country and and so the in a way it's a kind of uh pseudo war but it's a it's a good it's a kind of

00:48:17.120 good-natured um way for nations to interact and to celebrate uh you know the members of their own

00:48:24.540 society and especially the accomplished athletes um so i think that that that is um that approximates

00:48:33.740 a kind of more ideal development for sports i mean because obviously i mean i think i think that

00:48:39.020 people would have interest in seeing like germans compete against blacks on a different team because

00:48:44.840 that is kind of interesting in that that uh goes to our uh instinct for competition or you know in a

00:48:52.100 and also to a kind of tribal and racial uh sort of jingoism or you know that sense of uh collective

00:48:59.820 competition that i think that people would find interesting and it could have a positive or

00:49:05.080 moralizing effect on populations something like that in any case yeah there's a lot of really

00:49:11.660 interesting things that have come up across the board there um the first of all i was just looking up

00:49:17.300 what uh was said about the the racial representation so yeah it was 68.7 african american in the nfl which

00:49:24.080 is like i was amazed that it was that high that's absolutely crazy and i guess to kind of lead into

00:49:29.780 this conversation is the ideal of the institution versus the you know actualization of the institution

00:49:36.840 in the context of a culture so if we were to look at the institution of sports in its ideal sense

00:49:42.520 maybe like what marie samuel might be pointing towards i think of ancient greece like how would

00:49:48.000 would this show up in the hellenic world sports maybe even the word sports is a bit of an issue

00:49:53.740 altogether because back then it was fundamentally tied to something practical like they were getting

00:49:58.680 trained like if you train the rugby team it's not too different from you working together with a

00:50:02.660 swat team squad you know you're learning communication teamwork all these types of things it's quite

00:50:06.900 important to understand this now it's that's still a little bit abstract because you're using guns versus

00:50:11.300 you know throwing a ball around but back then like a sports team is fundamentally tied to the the phalanx

00:50:18.700 you know it's the same thing essentially when you when you work with it this way so i think it's quite

00:50:22.820 important to link into this but overall the greeks sort of pedestalized sports or experienced sports

00:50:29.380 as a part of religious worship like it's a part of the cultural experience of being greek it's part of

00:50:35.300 the cultural experience of celebrating greekness and celebrating the gods indeed you know it's a hard thing

00:50:40.160 for us to wrap our heads around and this is not trivial at all the olympics for example there was

00:50:45.860 almost like their great anti-egalitarian representation it was like the pinnacle of their

00:50:50.000 spirit in some sense you know everybody stops fighting and then they all go to this place and then they

00:50:55.740 they they compete to prove who's the best man who's the best individual nietzsche would often look to

00:51:00.560 the greeks and celebrate them for this this sort of like radical competitive individualism that they had he

00:51:07.040 really really like this about them that they're all fighting against each other to be the best

00:51:10.420 he loved this energy inside of them he loved this this this is like this is the culture that he

00:51:14.940 considers the one of the apexes the thing to be modeled upon and at the center of this was something

00:51:19.800 like the olympics now the olympics was banned in 1391 when christianity basically finally stamped its

00:51:27.220 foot on the roman empire that's when the olympics stopped that's actually so astounding when you think

00:51:31.640 about it when we moved over from the people of the book the one thing that was targeted so severely was

00:51:36.640 this institution of the olympics the end of sports in some sense and sports continued in the byzantine

00:51:42.140 empire but something here was ended olympic the olympics showed up again of course at the the start

00:51:46.860 of the 20th century end of the 19th century when you know the likes of nietzsche and all them were

00:51:50.600 saying that we're returning to an old spirit and whatnot i've always found that very very interesting

00:51:54.340 but um the idealized sense of the institution is important to understand it is a way to represent many of

00:52:01.080 these these um these these values and i think even a spectator can definitely benefit from that you

00:52:08.520 know like you go and watch the olympics like i'm not going to compete i'm not going to be able to

00:52:12.680 it's actually it sort of shoves something into your face is that i'm not like democracy the democratic

00:52:19.160 ideal is very very weak in the face of something like this i'm not good enough to be a javelin player

00:52:24.460 and if i was good enough to be a javelin player i wouldn't be good enough to be a sprinter you know

00:52:27.400 there's something about human excellence that's shoved in your face and i think it's very

00:52:30.880 healthy for people to be exposed to this sports even does do this but of course there are those

00:52:35.040 problems with consumerism and the sports ball problem and then of course saturating sports with

00:52:40.600 negative cultural values but i i'm not sure i can criticize the institution itself for this because

00:52:45.760 as as we would say it's just it's just like it's it's it's not a priestly institution at all it's not

00:52:51.100 something that controls the values of a people the the churches for example have all succumbed to

00:52:56.980 the culture that we have this is really a kind of i think a problem that's much higher up and sports

00:53:01.840 is a victim of it and sports will never be something that dictates the value of a culture and i don't

00:53:06.420 think it should be understood as this way in some sense sports is the process that improves people

00:53:11.740 that that sort of idealizes people in some sense very very powerful this way there's also a side of

00:53:16.240 it as well you're describing nationalism which i think is fascinating being irish like our experience of

00:53:20.460 sport as irish people is just so hilarious because we will go and we'll be losing you know six nil in

00:53:27.240 soccer which is huge but we'll still all be together singing irish you know um irish nationalist songs

00:53:33.100 like sports is probably the last outlet for the irish to experience like obnoxious nationalism like

00:53:39.260 we're right now they're instantiating all those hate speech laws and all this crazy stuff and trying

00:53:43.420 to beat down and make everybody part of the new project of transforming the west and all this but then

00:53:48.500 we'll go like you know we'll have the world cup next year and we'll all go and we'll all be irish

00:53:52.300 again we'll all be dressed in green and like stomping our feet and celebrating what we are

00:53:56.320 obnoxiously there's something quite fascinating about the way it pulls you together it's like

00:54:00.020 watching an army or something like this is very very interesting in this way and there's also

00:54:04.580 something in this that tells you about elitism like even politics constitutes largely a lot of people

00:54:10.940 spectating and then a couple of people acting sports is a couple of people acting the professionals

00:54:15.400 acting and the rest spectating and many facets of life are like this so i think it reflects it back

00:54:19.800 to us in some sense but of course it's absolutely correct i think it's very weak if it um is not aware

00:54:25.200 of the fact that it's well it's very weak because it can't control they're they're not priestly you

00:54:31.180 know this is not the priestly type we're dealing with here the the warriors are fundamentally unconscious

00:54:35.680 they're not aware of uh of beliefs they're not aware of values and so they will succumb to whatever

00:54:40.320 is kind of passed down to them from the elders from the high priest and and sports has definitely

00:54:44.820 succumbed to that altogether but um the virtues installs in people i think is where the the rubber

00:54:49.140 hits the road so if you have any thoughts on that and maybe i'll go into the the hemispheres then

00:54:54.100 eventually after that uh yeah no i mean maybe it's a more the the difference between um you know petty

00:55:01.740 virtues and and uh macro virtues or micro virtue micro morals and macro morals right so sports would be

00:55:11.960 um responsible for instilling micro morals um uh good sportsmanship uh bravery these sort of things

00:55:21.180 right that's very true yeah but less related to kind of a bigger direction established by you know

00:55:28.060 sort of the brains of society as it were the priests as you were as you were putting it 100 yeah it'd be

00:55:34.000 like nietzsche's um brand politics you know i don't think any i don't think the the soccer players would

00:55:39.240 be really understanding comprehending that stuff no crusades but um certainly kind of making people

00:55:44.100 worthy teaching them the kind of foundational ethics that they could participate in a crusade and

00:55:48.840 it's interesting how you know things have to be like institutions must be separated out culture

00:55:54.200 happens almost like an octopus in many different directions arts and theater is a completely

00:55:59.380 different realm that has significant impacts the political world another one and they're all like

00:56:04.140 different in the way that they manifest but i guess you could say equally important and very

00:56:08.060 vulnerable if they get um if negative ideals get installed inside of them and that's certainly

00:56:12.720 what you're seeing happening right now

00:56:13.960 yeah absolutely i don't know maybe this point was correctly emphasized but sports too you learn

00:56:23.440 failure right so you learn to fail and get back up i think that that's one of the most important

00:56:31.020 lessons of sports right yeah big time big time well i guess i can get into the hemispheres then since

00:56:37.440 we'll call all the way back to what we were talking about there a while ago and i'll try to get into it

00:56:41.760 um and maybe we could talk a little bit about the greeks as well because that that is a fascinating

00:56:46.440 thing but i'll go into this first of all so yeah richard was bringing up the um julian james which is

00:56:52.360 a brilliant book like i like people who assert bizarre theses with decent evidence even if they're a bit

00:56:59.960 wrong i still find them fascinating i just love entertaining like crazy ideas i think nietzsche is

00:57:04.920 brilliant like this i'm not sure if everything he says is perfect but at the same time he definitely makes

00:57:10.140 you think and you come out the wiser for it as a consequence and julian james is very much like

00:57:14.820 this like he sits down and he studies recent evidence in the hemispheres which are which is

00:57:19.640 absolutely bizarre when you get into it i'll maybe i'll talk to you about some of it and

00:57:24.060 a lot an awful lot of this comes from epileptics so for example when you have epilepsy you have this

00:57:30.760 like storm of electricity running through your noggin you know and you have a problem like you've got

00:57:35.760 this big storm going through your head so what you need to do is stop this storm so what people would

00:57:39.960 do is cut their brains in half that was something they used to do back in the 60s and 70s they'd go

00:57:43.980 in with a knife and they cut the corpus callosum i think it's called and this would separate the

00:57:48.280 brain into its two hemispheres this would stop the storm reaching a sort of cascade or a tipping point

00:57:53.360 and then the epileptic seizures would stop happening as a consequence so would it be localized to one brain

00:57:57.720 and then the person one side of the brain and the person could want to continue their life

00:58:01.160 talk about a bizarre thing to do first of all like that's just wild in and of itself that people

00:58:05.840 used to do stuff like that but there you go

00:58:07.580 function perfectly fine afterwards they'd go into their life and you'd talk to them and they'd be like

00:58:18.300 yeah i'm still here and there'd be no brain damage nothing nothing seemed to go wrong you know so they're

00:58:24.220 like all right well that's that's pretty okay now of course they did this to a lot of people and

00:58:27.540 they'd eventually start to get back some weird side effects you know so people would get this this

00:58:32.160 this uh surgery they'd go out and live their lives but they'd say weird stuff would happen where they

00:58:37.280 would pick up a chocolate bar and their other arm would come over and slap their hand and throw the

00:58:42.880 chocolate bar on the floor and then their other hand would reach down and try get the chocolate bar

00:58:46.460 and then their other hand would start slapping it and they would explain it's like i literally can't

00:58:50.360 control it in some sense it's almost like i'm fighting against myself and loads of instances would

00:58:54.980 happen with this loads of experiences of people um you know like putting on a shirt and then one of

00:59:00.440 their hands starts taking the shirt off and the other hand starts to try to fight to put it back

00:59:04.620 on and they're like what is going on here and so they began to do study these people who had this

00:59:08.740 surgery done on them and they started to find astounding things with it and so for example this

00:59:14.400 this was very interesting obviously with the hands but it really got interesting when they started to

00:59:18.000 work with language so they sit down people and get them to look at these computer screens

00:59:21.780 and they'd flash two things up onto the computer screen and get them to write down what they saw

00:59:26.940 and so people for example would get their two hands and if you flash like an egg and a brush

00:59:32.080 their right hand would write the egg and the left hand would write the brush and they would all they

00:59:36.840 would sit and they'd look at this and it's like that's weird what's going on here then they'd do

00:59:40.160 stuff like where they would flash um they would they would try to test what what exactly was

00:59:46.040 happening so they'd flash two things and then they'd ask the person what did you see

00:59:49.580 and say they flash the egg in the brush and they'd ask the person the person would say egg but then

00:59:54.560 their their other hand would write down brush and this started to weird them out a little bit because

01:00:00.220 they're like wait a second why is one side of their brain not answering me but telling me the brush

01:00:05.300 why is the other side of the brain able to declare egg and they started to realize through a variety

01:00:09.840 of experiments like this that your left hemisphere the language center where you have your broca's area

01:00:15.140 your wernix area is the one that's actually conscious this is the one that when me and you

01:00:20.240 narc richard everybody here when we're talking i'm talking to you out of my the left side of my brain

01:00:26.140 now that's weird but that's what it seemed to look like and it seems like the other brain

01:00:30.960 you call the brain pretty close pretty close although your left brain wires to your right hand so i don't

01:00:37.120 know this is one of those uh crosses the boundaries i guess and the other brain is there

01:00:42.960 and it's paying attention and it's taking in information and it's conscious in a separate way

01:00:48.420 and it's processing things in its own way and it has its own perspective and you can talk to it and

01:00:53.580 it will answer you but you can only talk to it using writing and symbols and images you can't use

01:00:58.580 declarative words it can't use your mouth but it's completely it's completely there but it's it's

01:01:03.240 essentially outside your consciousness so you could say unconscious but it's more like unaware it's very

01:01:08.340 close to the idea of what we call the subconscious and they would sit down do these experiments that

01:01:12.540 these are just so crazy they would show people and they would flash stuff up on the screen because

01:01:17.740 your eyes are wired to each side of your brain so your left eye is wired to your right brain right

01:01:22.620 brain to the right so they'd flash things up in the screen and they would not flash anything to the

01:01:27.040 left eye and they would flash something to the right brain and they would flash this and then they would

01:01:30.700 ask the guy what did you see and the guy would say nothing because obviously his left brain didn't see

01:01:34.560 anything then they would ask them write down if anything came into your mind and they draw the brush that

01:01:39.660 was just flashed up into the screen sort of like wait a fucking second now so there's something in

01:01:43.580 here that's able to pay attention that is not part of your conscious identity or ego and this became

01:01:49.500 the foundation of the whole hemisphere thing which just has so many bizarre connotations when you dive

01:01:54.060 into it i highly recommend ian mcgilchrist for this i think he's better than julian jane certainly for

01:01:58.700 exposing this theory and he he shows how for example the left hemisphere is the is declarative he studies

01:02:08.300 like schizophrenics for example and how the schizophrenics basically display symptoms of

01:02:13.300 being trapped in the left hemisphere he shows these experiments people did where they would get them to

01:02:18.680 describe themselves and the right hemisphere would have this really realistic down-to-earth

01:02:23.300 self-conception whereas the left hemisphere would have this either like bizarrely arrogant one or

01:02:28.300 bizarrely demoralized one it was very rarely accurate which is scary because your conscious

01:02:33.200 mind is prone to delusion is what we're starting to see this conscious declarative rationalizing brain

01:02:39.240 is prone to delusion and then there's this this is the kind of this is the kicker right and another

01:02:44.100 part of these experiments was trying to force the left brain to confront this reality this think about

01:02:48.680 what happens here so what they would try to do is try to um try to to trick the the left brain to

01:02:55.160 confront the fact that it's the right brain is there so they would um give a an object to your

01:03:01.620 right hand and say what's in your hand and say there's an egg in my hand and then they would take

01:03:06.160 the egg and put it in the left hand which is the right hemisphere and it's like drop the egg and he

01:03:10.420 put it down and then they would say why did you drop the egg and the left the the conscious mind would

01:03:14.960 start to rationalize because it wasn't in control so it didn't do it so the conscious mind would start

01:03:18.760 to rationalize and it would make up stories it would like oh i didn't like that egg or that egg was too

01:03:22.780 heavy or all this crazy stuff instead of confronting the fact that there's this other entity watching

01:03:26.820 him this type of thing so we start to see this we start to realize that our brains are split this way

01:03:31.420 and that we have these two forces going on it's it just starts to chew at you so much about you know

01:03:37.360 the freudian theory of the the id or the unconscious young's idea of the the dream unconscious is all of

01:03:43.780 this stuff starts to play into it even dreams man when you are recalling dreams when you wake up in

01:03:48.460 the morning your right hemisphere switches on and almost like sends the dream to the left hemisphere

01:03:53.920 making many people speculate that the right hemisphere is the thing that produces dreams and

01:03:57.900 dreams are your right hemisphere communicating with you all this crazy stuff the point being is that we

01:04:02.620 have this bizarre split and what we identify as consciousness seems to be very much tied to

01:04:07.900 consciousness maybe not the best word but front-end awareness is tied to declarative statements words we

01:04:15.400 can't use words with the right hemisphere in the same way and abstractions the ability to get lost

01:04:22.480 in delusion the ability to not be in touch with reality all this stuff seems to be wrapped up with

01:04:27.560 our conscious egos and there's this other side on top of it and there's a good reason why we would do

01:04:32.040 this this is the same reason as that you have two hands the same reason as you have two legs the same

01:04:36.980 reason as your laptop has a dual processor because you're more dynamic in reality when you're split in

01:04:42.060 half the two arms are better than one like imagine walking around with one big arm sticking out of

01:04:46.800 your chest you just wouldn't be that you'd die very quickly so the world obviously understands that

01:04:51.320 uh that you know a sort of platonic ideal is is dynamism is more important than one giant blob of a brain

01:04:57.840 is not as valuable as two separate consciousnesses but this seems to be what what uh the way that we

01:05:02.700 are built and whatnot and so an awful lot of fascinating things happen as a consequence of this

01:05:06.220 and as we said that ego can get shocked that rationalizing mind can get shocked when you're

01:05:10.500 playing sports and this also ties into the idea of flow states you know like if you have a flow

01:05:15.540 state what it seems to happen is that your hemispheres sync together and they work almost like as a

01:05:19.960 perfect team and then when you go back into normal life and you're not using your brain you seem to

01:05:23.900 default back into simple simplistic consciousness and your right hemisphere switches on every now and

01:05:28.300 again but turns off is is what it seems to the way that these things work which is just bizarre in and of

01:05:32.380 itself so there's a lot of a lot of interesting study here yeah i mean what and what who is the

01:05:39.080 second fellow you mentioned mcpherson is that ian mcgilchrist you can check him in mcgilchrist yeah i will

01:05:46.160 definitely check him out um there there's an interesting component to james which is that he he's he he

01:05:54.060 talks a lot about the origin of language and um you know injunctions and maybe even at some

01:06:02.220 point naming that was probably a development where we started to name you know a bear or name someone

01:06:09.380 unique uh you know like mother or something like this but what what he was saying as well is that

01:06:16.880 um earlier in human history um we would receive probably injunction like statements from our parents

01:06:28.320 are or from perhaps an elder and the left hemisphere would continually repeat these throughout

01:06:37.360 our lives and they might be as simple as don't go in there uh or you know uh take care of your little

01:06:44.520 sister or something like that they might they're probably that simple uh and they could develop from

01:06:50.820 there these these basically kind of repeating voices that you would hear they would develop from there

01:06:56.600 to be a kind of voice of god and so the his really bold theory and i'm i'm i hope i'm representing

01:07:06.840 it properly because it is um it is bold and it's and it's very complicated is the origin of god in a way

01:07:15.840 was were those voices in your head so and he connects us and and as well with with schizophrenia

01:07:23.440 um and people who you know actually do experience that experience someone talking to them someone

01:07:30.360 ordering them around someone uh giving them a little you know a devil or an angel on their shoulder

01:07:35.880 so to speak um it's interesting he james mentions that because that you have the you have the

01:07:42.580 two hemispheres uh actually right there with the that image of the devil and the angel on your shoulder

01:07:47.600 um but so you have this god-like figure that is directly talking to you and he suggested that

01:07:57.840 humanity went through a tremendous revolution during the collapse of the bronze age so he also asked

01:08:06.640 these questions i mean this book is just incredible but he asked these questions about how was it that

01:08:13.040 you have these these these bronze age societies so well before the ancient world as we know it if you if

01:08:21.940 you consider that the time of you know plato and jesus and caesar and all that kind of stuff um these

01:08:27.400 bronze age societies that were actually mechanized centralized that would build these magnificent

01:08:34.480 structures like the pyramids uh and so on that that are are thousands of years old and they might even

01:08:41.600 be older than we can imagine and you can see similar uh examples of this and say south america

01:08:47.020 um central america and so on and how was it that we could manage such a workforce to construct something

01:08:56.040 like this and what he was saying is that it was a an unconscious society so you had hundreds of people

01:09:02.600 all receiving the same injunction uh they were all on the same page all being ordered through a a a kind

01:09:11.620 of god or higher mind that was actually in their heads um he sees the the end of the bronze age as this

01:09:20.880 breaking down and people you know crossing crossing paths with different cultures these this kind of

01:09:29.180 economic collapse of the civilization and conquest and it broke us apart and we seem to develop a new

01:09:38.080 way of using the left hemisphere which was the the interior monologue and it ultimately had the grammar

01:09:46.480 of the eye in it and so we go through our whole day and you know this is my experience i imagine it's

01:09:53.040 yours you're kind of narrating your day to yourself while you're doing it with language

01:09:58.620 and you will contemplate things in your left hemisphere using language ability and that that

01:10:05.200 is in a way what we that is what we mean when we say conscious we are conscious but of course what

01:10:11.840 james tells you is that like there's this whole level of like reasoning and uh awareness if that's the

01:10:21.220 right word of just psychic life that is not conscious and is it is non-linguistic so i use this example many

01:10:31.060 times when in our um we were talking about nietzsche actually at alex university but you know a baseball

01:10:37.600 player can hit a a fastball thrown at 100 miles per hour and he can hit an 85 mile per hour curveball

01:10:45.220 that has this really unique motion that is created by the spin of the ball and aerodynamics and a great

01:10:54.360 baseball player can hit that he can't explain to you how he does it because it's not operating on a

01:11:02.160 linguistic level and yet he just does it he does something that's that's actually rather miraculous

01:11:07.780 even something like a um uh you know excuse all the sports metaphors like a a pop fly to center field

01:11:14.800 um the the the fielder hears the crack of the bat he sees in the first few milliseconds the flight of

01:11:23.320 the ball and he can lackadaisically uh adjust to where it is he can just jog over hold his glove up and

01:11:32.260 catch it the amount of calculations that he has performed in order to move you know 10 feet to the

01:11:40.080 right sit there and catch the ball is incredible i mean the the amount of processing that takes

01:11:46.960 you would need to you know program a robot and create a have microprocessors it would be a huge

01:11:54.360 event and yet he just does it and obviously the animal world they reason um although they are uh

01:12:01.280 at least 95 percent of the time pre-linguistic obviously animals they they have a certain

01:12:08.460 language a dog can learn uh you know english human language etc but you know what i mean they're they're

01:12:14.060 engaging in reasoning and calculation and all sorts of things um without using the linguistic mind

01:12:21.880 another experiment that i found fascinating is that you also engage in judgment so there is an

01:12:28.080 experiment that was done where um there were um two different uh two different objects before a

01:12:37.900 subject and the subject was blindfolded or something like this and the objects had different textures

01:12:44.980 and so they were asked which object is rougher and so they they picked up the one by their um you

01:12:53.040 know the first object they they picked it up and felt it and they picked up the next one which

01:12:57.080 was quite which was smooth they said oh the first one that's rougher and then they ask which object

01:13:02.280 was heavier and they always got it so now this this almost seems like simplistic or stupid it's like

01:13:12.000 of course they got it but you have to you have to look in to what that experiment proves you engaged

01:13:17.860 in judgment while your conscious mind that is your linguistic mind was engaging in something very

01:13:24.220 something else so you engaged in judgment so basically his whole point is that like your psychic life

01:13:31.340 is so much bigger than mere language language is this kind of like late development that seems to

01:13:39.080 affect us but you're you know and and i think that's what you know to kind of bring it back around

01:13:44.020 that that's kind of what sports is in a way um is is is getting in touch with like your psychic mind

01:13:51.120 that is pre-linguistic yeah um i have no idea what a pop fly is by the way how's one in

01:13:58.180 what good lord is that uh it's a you know you hit the ball in the air and uh you catch a pop fly

01:14:06.060 you you uh you sit under it and catch the ball yes yeah it's it's when you hit the ball and it has a

01:14:12.460 it has a a kind of steep upward trajectory right so as opposed to like a line drive would be a ball

01:14:20.500 that you hit in a more a straight line essentially right so pop fly would be a big you know looping

01:14:26.640 shot essentially that you can you can camp under and catch like camping under i got an awful lot to

01:14:33.300 learn about these american sports terms my lord and get into this because man this is such an

01:14:40.580 interesting topic man you're gonna love ian mcgillacrist you're gonna absolutely love him

01:14:45.280 but i'll actually go into julian jane's theory a little bit more because it just adds such amazing

01:14:50.360 context to this and so first of all about julian's theory maybe i'll start first of all about what we're

01:14:57.100 actually thinking about here in terms of evolution because all animals have their brains split in

01:15:03.340 half okay i should say most animals mammals for example would have their brains split yes and

01:15:08.560 there's very specific reason you know so if you're um as i said dynamism is always better than

01:15:13.900 being unitary it's always more powerful to have two things working on a problem two brains are

01:15:18.720 better than one type idea so splitting the the focus is quite valuable now you can think of a very

01:15:23.540 practical version of this that if there's a bird and he sees a lovely puddle and he goes down he says

01:15:28.540 i'm gonna have a supper that i'm gonna have a drink so he flies down he starts to sup that up

01:15:31.680 his narrow focus left hemisphere the conscious ego of the bird will focus on what he's doing now

01:15:38.400 what's so interesting is that the right hemisphere basically acts as this vigil vigilant watchman who's

01:15:44.900 fully conscious but he's almost like a radar popping out awareness into the background this is even to do

01:15:50.220 with um the the neurochemicals right so the left hemisphere is more dominant more wired for dopamine

01:15:55.940 the right hemisphere is more wired for adrenaline so the the right hemisphere goes in the background

01:16:01.140 doesn't do anything and it just sort of sends out the radar it's paying attention to the rustling of

01:16:05.320 the leaves but it doesn't make your left hemisphere aware of this now think about this it's taking in

01:16:10.080 information but it's hiding it from you while you gorge yourself in that water you go and you go go go go

01:16:15.920 go the bird sucks it all up he's delighted with himself and the dopamine is filling him he's like oh

01:16:20.340 my god the water yeah and he's getting filled with pleasure the right hemisphere is just paying in

01:16:24.420 checking out what's going on now he notices the rustle in the in the tree he notices the the maybe the

01:16:29.820 wind and then he hears here's footsteps and that switches on adrenaline because footsteps is obviously

01:16:36.220 some big cat or something like this so the right hemisphere is being calm and then when it hears

01:16:40.480 footsteps a big dose of adrenaline and all of a sudden this adrenaline the right hemisphere interrupts the

01:16:45.820 left hemisphere pulls it out of its focus directs its focus and and sends the brain to focus over on

01:16:51.260 what just happened so the right hemisphere is like a matador it's controlling this dopaminergic bull this

01:16:56.720 conscious mind think about what's happening there this unconscious hidden from awareness brain is

01:17:02.800 controlling the left hemisphere the conscious brain that you consider yourself there's something in you

01:17:07.820 that is more aware of what's going on than you and decides when when you should focus on something

01:17:13.100 and you're just very good at getting wrapped up in things and focusing on specifics but it's the

01:17:17.500 thing in control of your awareness that's bizarre in and of itself but this is what it does

01:17:21.000 so it brings the the dopamine over to um the left hemisphere over to the the the cat and then the

01:17:27.200 bird flies off the bird's like oh fuck i better go out of here and then it's filled with excitement

01:17:31.040 and adrenaline and dopamine to get out of there and then it flies off now this is the basic way

01:17:35.000 it works it's actually quite interesting because that makes sense that's a very smart way to do things

01:17:38.800 you know you wouldn't be able to notice the bird if you were too wrapped up and sucking up all the

01:17:42.980 water in the puddle now this is where things get very fascinating the more evolved an animal is

01:17:49.040 the more split the hemispheres are the more they divide so the simpler animals tend to have more

01:17:56.080 unified brains the more complex an animal the more they divide really think about that now of course

01:18:02.240 what are we one of the most complicated animals out there and our brains are the most divided our

01:18:08.100 brains are the most separated and so julian's thesis or idea is that we have been evolving this capacity

01:18:16.180 to switch between these hemispheres and we kind of reach the point around about the bronze age he

01:18:20.980 speculates where that division of the hemispheres got so drastic that they actually lost touch with each

01:18:27.360 other in some sense they basically just like cut out and before that the experience that people were

01:18:33.060 having was very similar to the bird so people were walking around full of dopamine in their little

01:18:37.440 conscious mind and if the right hemisphere contextualize for whatever reason that they need to go do

01:18:43.540 something it would have this problem the right brain needs to communicate with the left brain

01:18:47.300 so it what would it do it would shock the left brain with this big dose of adrenaline which is what an

01:18:52.000 awful lot of religious experiences are like do not be afraid as the angels always say it can't really use

01:18:56.900 language so would it often give people visions it would often like induce like dream states inside of

01:19:01.860 them psychedelic trips was other ones it can actually talk but the way it talks is very simple it says

01:19:07.180 simple sentences and it's very rare for this to happen exactly what schizophrenics experience they don't

01:19:12.160 experience like narration they experience sort of like statements and simple words and and they're

01:19:17.780 always scared as well as the other experience of this this too and and this is this is how this

01:19:23.260 this appears it seems like the right brain jolts in snaps the left hemisphere out of out of its what

01:19:28.620 it's doing and directs it towards something and of course julian's postulating that when people

01:19:32.980 described the experience of god they were actually having a higher intelligence lead them towards what they

01:19:39.140 should focus on so in some sense it was more raw and he looks at like the iliad and he says that

01:19:43.820 these these characters interacting with all these forces these gods especially like the early bible as

01:19:49.240 well you have you know yahweh is showing up and inducing these dream states upon people and ordering

01:19:54.580 them towards a higher higher goal and stuff this is exactly what happens with the bird when the right

01:19:58.520 hemisphere decides the bird needs to get interrupted from whatever bullshit it's doing the right

01:20:02.400 hemisphere has the power to decide what's going on and emma gilchrist basically articulates this as like

01:20:07.400 the conscious mind the left hemisphere is like a soldier and the right hemisphere is like a general

01:20:11.960 so the right the right hemisphere doesn't act but it decides what the soldier will do the soldier acts

01:20:17.160 but it has no control over what well okay it has much less control than it thinks over what it's going

01:20:21.560 to do now of course our big problem is that the advantage of this binary is quite extreme the more you

01:20:28.100 can um for whatever reason it's expanding on this binary it's like you know developing institutions

01:20:35.140 you can become more sophisticated in individual senses so it makes them better but it also has

01:20:39.800 its own problems because it's like compartmentalization issues this happens inside your head eventually that

01:20:44.740 gets to a point where we evolve so much that we we basically get trapped in the left hemisphere the

01:20:50.140 left hemisphere's ability to suppress the right hemisphere gets so strong that it can actually shut

01:20:55.640 it out altogether and julian james is sort of speculating that that happened at some point

01:20:59.880 and that's when we started to arrive to this what he actually sort of maybe considers or many people

01:21:05.640 who would follow this line of think thinking would consider the incorrect assumption that we have

01:21:10.560 individual egos that we have rational unitary individual egos living inside of our heads when

01:21:15.820 what we've been experiencing for a couple of thousand thousands of years is actually just the left

01:21:20.380 hemisphere and we're sort of trapped inside of it it's like plato's cave type problem you know

01:21:24.060 and this evolution in our consciousness has thrust us into this issue and this is where we start

01:21:29.640 writing all of this starts to show up around about these times you get an awful lot more like self

01:21:34.000 reflective introspective writing ecclesiastes is the famous example i'm not sure if i'm pronouncing that

01:21:39.480 right and um it's the severance from the unconscious mind and we've basically been trapped in this to a

01:21:46.000 large extent over the last couple of thousand years and there's an awful lot of pontification about what

01:21:51.300 does one do about this you know because obviously our right hemisphere is important and it's still

01:21:54.880 there and it's been there the whole time in our recent history but we've been sort of separated from

01:22:00.180 it and really struggling to interact with it we maybe call it god an awful lot of time or our

01:22:04.800 conscience or the angels or visionary experiences or as people are now calling it in modernity which is

01:22:10.320 maybe a little bit more accurate and the unconscious mind or the subconscious mind or something like

01:22:14.420 this it's weird like what what do you make of this this is sort of julian's take on this and then this is

01:22:19.140 where i get into young i think this actually contextualize an awful lot of young's work very

01:22:22.880 very well where young would sort of um prescribe that you pay serious attention to your dreams

01:22:29.100 your intuitions he would prescribe that you pay serious attention to like the art that attracts

01:22:34.500 you and stuff like this because he's basically saying that that's stuff that your right hemisphere

01:22:37.800 is naturally bonding with he would call it your unconscious and it's it's almost like a way that

01:22:42.260 you can begin to re-establish that connection you know you can begin to talk to that listen to

01:22:46.360 what that right hemisphere is saying because it can't speak in words but it does speak in symbols

01:22:49.820 it is drawn to symbols in fact and this is such a fascinating book by young the book ion

01:22:54.160 young dives into ion and explores this idea that the reason why christianity was so compelling to

01:23:01.480 people back in the day is that there was something symbolically significant to everybody's right

01:23:07.300 hemisphere at the time he obviously calls this the collective unconsciousness everybody was sort of

01:23:11.280 pregnant and ready for this big sort of apex symbolic story maybe the jews had reached the

01:23:17.420 fulfillment of their inner drama and they had reached the sort of um blossoming of their narrative

01:23:23.180 and christ was sort of like the the finishing touch on the jewish the jewish world story or the jewish

01:23:29.020 unconscious symbolic story and what you see in christianity is the fulfillment of all of the symbols

01:23:35.240 united in one thing because this is what the story of christ is is he fulfilled all the prophecies

01:23:39.080 and that's what makes him such a sort of perfect figure he he he he he's perfectly ironic but also

01:23:45.360 kind of cancels out many ironies and and ends up being you know the savior if you want to put it this

01:23:49.580 way and um young was exploring this in ion and saying that like all the symbology before this was

01:23:54.480 leading up to something like this in the levant specifically there's this sort of pregnancy waiting

01:23:58.800 for something like this and he argues that that's the unconscious is working something out our

01:24:03.100 unconscious is literally evolving and you can trace it through the the arc of symbols and maybe you

01:24:08.360 could say this is the right hemisphere's language that you can detect in this weird awkward way and

01:24:13.160 then young if further in ion says that this has continued to happen like since um the christianity

01:24:19.100 it's not like the the symbol the symbol evolution has stopped the right hemisphere still all of our

01:24:24.300 collective right hemispheres are still figuring things out and so he points to things like alchemy

01:24:28.260 and talks about fascinating things inside alchemy so for example and one big thing about alchemy

01:24:33.360 is that it there's this constant assertion of wanting to try find a stone that is alive which

01:24:39.920 is basically making matter alive this is some type of irony inside of the alchemical exploration

01:24:44.880 now alchemy famously began the project of science and he goes through many other things that kind of

01:24:49.800 build this up but what do you see happening with artificial intelligence there's this almost will

01:24:53.840 inside many of these people to take a load of stone which is minerals and metal which is what these

01:24:58.300 laptops are and put life inside of it they want to bring it to life and all of these people sort of

01:25:03.420 see themselves as like you know creating god and fulfilling some type of archetypal process and

01:25:08.500 concluding the project of science towards where we create god on earth and then artificial intelligence

01:25:13.400 takes over and and sorts everything out for us like we we give birth to the next level and jung was

01:25:18.640 sort of pointing that out back in the 60s that he sees that there's some type of symbolic pregnancy

01:25:24.080 inside of that that's leading up to some type of cadence and you see all that language is drenched

01:25:27.980 around these guys in the ai sphere and hurts well saying that we will make god the guy calling elon

01:25:34.180 musk a speciesist because he doesn't believe that artificial intelligence could be the next species and

01:25:37.980 stuff like this and it's very very bizarre to see this style of thinking it's obviously weird

01:25:42.380 jungian way of thinking but um perhaps there's something to it i've always liked that right hemisphere

01:25:46.600 as an explanation now i've said an awful lot there so maybe i'll leave it there and see which is our

01:25:50.640 thinking

01:25:51.100 you

RadixJournal - May 24, 2023

The Bicameral Sports Brain

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