Stay Free - Russel Brand - December 22, 2023


Holy SH*T, Now California To BAN Trump! More States To Follow?! - STAY FREE #273


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 36 minutes

Words per Minute

157.08485

Word Count

15,088

Sentence Count

821

Misogynist Sentences

18

Hate Speech Sentences

33


Summary

In this episode of Stay Free With Russell Brand, Russell Brand is joined by Jonathan Pajot to discuss the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling that former President Donald Trump should not be allowed to run for president in the 2020 Democratic primary, and the implications for the future of American politics and the world at large. They also discuss the potential for civil war in the event that Trump is removed from the California primary ballot, and how that might impact the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Stay Free with Russell Brand wherever you get your news and information, and wherever you find your awakening consciousness at this critical time where it s more important than ever that we engage, awaken, and move forward together. Stay Free, and Remember to Share and Retweet this with your friends, family, and fellow awakeners everywhere! Thank you so much for being a part of our community, and we look forward to seeing you all in 2020. In this video, you re going to see the future, and in this video you re gonna see the past, and that s going to be the future. You re gonna have to see The Future, and you're gonna see The Present, and You're Gonna See The Past, too! - The Future. - In This Video, You're Going to See The Future! - You'll Have To See the Future! (feat. Russell Brand) - Stay Free: Stay Free! , by Russell Brand and , and , we'll be available whereverver you're watching us for the first 15 minutes, reach out wherever you re watching us. . We'll be reaching out, reaching out , reaching out wherever we find your Awakening Consciousness . - At this critical moment, we're available. We're available to you. , Reach Out: , reach out where we find you: or reach out, in this critical times where it's important that we can be reached, at the critical, we re making a critical, meaningful, and it s More Important than ever . , in the critical than ever, at this Critical Time where it matters. (Thank you, we need to move forward Together, We're More Important Than Ever, Let's Move Forward Together, - RUMBLE! . . (RUMBLE, and We'll Be Connected! ) - RUMBLY, RATE


Transcript

00:00:00.000 you you
00:02:00.000 brought to you by Pfizer in this video
00:02:17.000 In this video, you're going to see the future.
00:02:29.000 Hello there, you awakening wonders.
00:02:31.000 Thank you for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:02:34.000 We've got some spectacular information for you today.
00:02:36.000 Wherever you're watching us for the first 15 minutes, we'll be available, reaching out wherever we find your awakening consciousness at this critical time where it's more important than ever that we engage, awaken, and move forward together.
00:02:50.000 Then we're going to be exclusively on Rumble, where we can speak a little more freely about the extraordinary admission and acknowledgement By certain officials that the desire is to convict Trump before the election by any means necessary is closer to his interpretation of reality than the legacy media's interpretation of reality which is astonishing really.
00:03:13.000 Also, we're going to be diving into the depths with Jonathan Pajot, who's going to provide us with some cultural analysis, excuse me, and perspectives that you will find astonishing.
00:03:24.000 Fortunately, we have him on the other side of the line for the most part, because some of his insights are so astonishing that they simply cannot be widely broadcast.
00:03:34.000 If you haven't downloaded the Rumble app yet, please download it now because you'll be informed whenever we make content.
00:03:39.000 And throughout this Christmas and holiday period, we're continuing to make content.
00:03:44.000 Not just because we adore you, but because it's vital that we remain connected in this period.
00:03:49.000 So, download the app so that you'll know whenever we're releasing content.
00:03:53.000 Now, California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kouloulakis, I think I'm saying it right, Kouloulakis, Kouloulakis has sent a letter to the Secretary of State Shirley Weber asking her to explore every legal option to remove former President Donald Trump from California's 2024 presidential primary ballot.
00:04:11.000 Let us know what you think about that in the chat.
00:04:12.000 Let us know what you think of that if you are an Awakened Wonder, one of our supporters, a member of our community, and next year we are going to explore new ways together to make this community More real.
00:04:22.000 Bring it into actuality.
00:04:23.000 The same way that Google can acquire towns now so that everyone can live together in sweet Google harmony, we're exploring a venture into reality ourselves.
00:04:32.000 Let's have a look at this astonishing acknowledgement that the intention is, and was always, to get Trump off the ballot by any means necessary.
00:04:40.000 What about this piece of civil war bit of legislation?
00:04:44.000 That'll do.
00:04:44.000 Yeah, yeah, use that.
00:04:45.000 We are in uncharted territory in our country and the decision out of Colorado is a very significant fact.
00:04:53.000 When the Supreme Court of Colorado determines in an examination of the facts that Donald Trump is an insurrectionist and therefore is disqualified from being on the ballot, certainly here in California we have to look at that information and make the same determination here.
00:05:11.000 Is he an insurrectionist?
00:05:13.000 Or is he really a whimsical guy?
00:05:14.000 A poet?
00:05:16.000 A mysterious unknowable enigma?
00:05:19.000 What is extraordinary to me is that while there is so much emphasis and focus on Trump's
00:05:25.000 unique position, constant attacks on Trump's potential to become a dictator if he were
00:05:32.000 elected, even emphasising the potential for war in the event that Trump isn't removed
00:05:39.000 from the ballot, we're not paying close enough attention to the fact that Biden won't debate
00:05:43.000 anybody from his own party, that increasingly legislation and regulation is being passed
00:05:47.000 continually not just in your country but across the world that makes our government resemble
00:05:51.000 forms of technological dictatorship.
00:05:54.000 It's not the same as the jackboots of the 20th century, but the kind of bureaucratic ability to shut down dissent, to control opposition, and on a more basic, observable, and evident level, Biden won't debate, he won't participate in primaries, or he will participate in primaries, just no one else will.
00:06:13.000 I found a surefire way of winning.
00:06:14.000 How can that same mechanic be offered to us as the thing that's being preserved And protected.
00:06:21.000 It doesn't make proper sense, does it?
00:06:24.000 Let's have a look at Donald Trump doing some poetry, for God's sake.
00:06:27.000 A metaphor of what's going on at your border.
00:06:31.000 And it's a metaphor as to what will happen in Reno, in Nevada, all over the place.
00:06:38.000 It's a metaphor.
00:06:38.000 It's a very accurate, an old song that we... Where's he going with this?
00:06:44.000 ...worked on a little bit.
00:06:45.000 But a metaphor as to What's happening with illegal immigration, and I think you'll understand it very quickly.
00:06:54.000 Yeah!
00:06:54.000 You sure you want it?
00:06:59.000 No, people love it.
00:07:00.000 They love it.
00:07:02.000 Now, as you know, I believe in your individual sovereignty, your personal sovereignty, and your community sovereignty.
00:07:07.000 It's extraordinary to me that what's being framed as a potential dictatorship is essentially, in my view, I wish they didn't love it.
00:07:17.000 I wish we didn't have to say it.
00:07:19.000 of the incumbent dictatorship that's already exercising power that's on the
00:07:25.000 precipice of tyranny if not already at just a different tone of tyranny.
00:07:29.000 I wish they didn't love it I wish we didn't have to say it but it's very accurate.
00:07:35.000 On her way to work one morning down the path along the lake a tender-hearted
00:07:42.000 woman saw a poor half-frozen snake.
00:07:46.000 This is an extraordinary poem, really.
00:07:49.000 We don't actually ever find out what happens with the snake, do we?
00:07:52.000 The poem sadly peters out before we know what the snake is a metaphor for.
00:07:58.000 But I think, actually, what he seems to be saying is that the snake is in the immigration crisis.
00:08:04.000 Her pretty colored skin had been all frosted with the dew.
00:08:08.000 Poor thing, she cried, I'll take you in, and I'll take care of you.
00:08:14.000 Take me in, oh tender woman, take me in for heaven's sake.
00:08:16.000 Any animal, I'm sure it's eventually going to bite and attack this woman, but any animal,
00:08:20.000 like a cuter animal, would do the job.
00:08:22.000 Be an oh tender woman, take me in for heaven's sake.
00:08:26.000 Take me in, oh tender woman, cried the vicious snake.
00:08:30.000 She wrapped him up all cozy in a comforter of silk and laid him by her fireside with
00:08:35.000 some honey and some milk.
00:08:38.000 Also, I don't know that snakes eat milk.
00:08:40.000 I mean, this is an extraordinary piece of zoology, as well as everything else.
00:08:45.000 Well, the poem ultimately seems to be saying that you've got to be careful if you make snakes your best friend.
00:08:51.000 And certainly, I would say that what we have to start considering seriously before 2024, and we've got some fantastic content coming up for you in the holiday period, is models of government Not the figures that occupy those models.
00:09:03.000 But let me know in the chat if you agree and certainly become an awakened wonder now so we can remain connected through this festive period.
00:09:10.000 Who had more influence on this insurrection?
00:09:12.000 And if indeed you agree that it was an insurrection, paying attention to the close fact that there's never been an unarmed insurrection in history.
00:09:20.000 Was it Trump or was it federal law enforcement?
00:09:23.000 Republican Congressman Clay Higgins has said he's seen video evidence of police walking into rooms and then re-emerging dressed as Trump supporters.
00:09:31.000 And I like the idea that Trump supporters is like a costume now, like, rather than just, it's a hat, isn't it?
00:09:37.000 Moment!
00:09:39.000 Oh look, you're a Trump supporter!
00:09:41.000 I will. I mean, if you clearly have men dressed as Trump supporters walking around,
00:09:48.000 Oh, look, you're a Trump supporter.
00:09:56.000 of January 6th still suggests that there are these very distinct types of Trump supporters.
00:10:01.000 No wonder people think that America's on the precipice of civil war, which is doubtlessly being used to legitimize further authoritarianism.
00:10:10.000 We've got a fantastic piece on that.
00:10:12.000 I'm not sure when we're going to post it, but look out for it.
00:10:14.000 How the idea of civil war Is being used continually to amplify fear and legitimize, coming down the pipe I'm sure, further regulation.
00:10:24.000 But let's see what these Trump supporters were wearing.
00:10:27.000 Well, inside the Capitol, on the other side of police officers who are, to one extent or another, not engaged with them, like they're not concerned about them.
00:10:38.000 Then you have a set of closed doors, like exterior doors and interior doors closed and you have police
00:10:47.000 officers positioned outside and then in between the two doors and then on the inside of
00:10:53.000 the second.
00:10:54.000 Seems like an odd convoluted event. Do you think, in all honesty, let me know in
00:11:00.000 the chat what you think. Was it that there was an event that was an
00:11:04.000 insurrection where people are not noting, not significantly enough, that Trump said
00:11:09.000 I'm sure you're gonna go over to the Capitol peacefully and patriotically.
00:11:12.000 Here, look.
00:11:13.000 Again, you know that I don't believe that Donald Trump is the solution to the democratic crisis in America.
00:11:18.000 I believe that there needs to be a radical re-evaluation of your institutions and systems quickly because it's a very important nation when it comes to world harmony and the potential for a more democratic, for a more, for more sovereignty, let's use this word, for more individual sovereignty, community sovereignty, for the right for all of us to control our way of life.
00:11:37.000 What I will say is the way this event has been framed is peculiar and unusual.
00:11:42.000 Certainly we've been given information that's misleading.
00:11:45.000 Certainly there have been federal agents involved in a way that seems macabre and directive.
00:11:52.000 As Vivek said famously in that CNN interview, would the events have unfolded in the way they did without the intervention of those agencies?
00:12:00.000 And now this tension and this fissure is being further exploited.
00:12:04.000 The idea of civil war being utilised now.
00:12:07.000 Did you see that Tim Pool tweet where he tweeted American Civil War and Donald Trump Colorado
00:12:13.000 was the first thing that came up.
00:12:14.000 That's really odd when algorithms are starting to support some of these cultural ideas.
00:12:19.000 And it's in precisely this kind of analysis that our next guest can offer.
00:12:23.000 Now, let's start the countdown.
00:12:25.000 If you're watching us on YouTube now, this is a conversation that can take place only and exclusively on Rumble.
00:12:31.000 Jonathan Pageau is a philosopher and author and cultural analyst.
00:12:36.000 He's a person that understands many, many, many of the aspects of the complex cultural situation we find ourselves in now.
00:12:44.000 You can pre-order his new book, Snow White and the Widow Queen, at thesymbolicworld.com.
00:12:50.000 In this, we're going to be talking about COVID and what we learned.
00:12:53.000 We're going to be talking about the Christianity and Hollywood running out of ideas.
00:12:57.000 Click the link in the description.
00:12:58.000 Join us now over on Rumble.
00:13:00.000 Okay.
00:13:01.000 Now, Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation.
00:13:06.000 All of you watching, remember, you can become an Awaken Wonder by clicking the red button.
00:13:10.000 Excuse me, I don't know what you do with it.
00:13:12.000 You press it with your thumb, I suppose.
00:13:13.000 To become an Awaken Wonder and support us, remember, we've got fantastic content coming out over the course of this year.
00:13:17.000 And now, my conversation with Jonathan Pageau.
00:13:20.000 Jonathan, how's it going, mate?
00:13:23.000 People seem more and more adrift from even the most rudimentary morality.
00:13:29.000 How is it that we find our way back to Christ, or at least back to the divine, in such a rational, materialist, reductive, and at some points painful time?
00:13:38.000 The system will not stand for something new which is beginning or something which is being rekindled, let's say.
00:13:44.000 You can feel everything is running out.
00:13:47.000 Today I'm speaking with Jonathan Pajoux.
00:13:50.000 He's a French-Canadian artist and storyteller and philosopher.
00:13:55.000 We talk about Christianity and its ability to transform reality.
00:13:59.000 We talk about the mystery of suffering.
00:14:01.000 There's so much fantastic stuff.
00:14:03.000 God wants us to be the best version of ourselves.
00:14:05.000 He wants us to be shining images of His glory and His love.
00:14:10.000 The idea that Christ doesn't want us to suffer is just not true.
00:14:14.000 The idea that God doesn't want us to suffer is just not true.
00:14:17.000 I don't need to understand everything, but I don't want to go on like this.
00:14:20.000 I don't want to go on like this.
00:14:22.000 I need transformation.
00:14:26.000 Oh, it's a pleasure.
00:14:27.000 It's a pleasure to be here.
00:14:28.000 I'm very excited.
00:14:29.000 I hear this is your Christmas episode.
00:14:32.000 I thought, what better way to celebrate Christ than with Jonathan and Paggio?
00:14:41.000 I should be of my family!
00:14:42.000 Let's see what happens!
00:14:43.000 To hell with them!
00:14:45.000 Shrek, forget it!
00:14:46.000 Me and you now.
00:14:48.000 On Zoom with Jonathan is much better for Christmas.
00:14:51.000 I suppose, let's think about where we are in this period of time.
00:14:55.000 There are some people that will say this is the winter solstice.
00:14:58.000 There are other people that will say that this period of festivity has long lost its meaning or perhaps has become a true symbol of the one global faith of materialism, rationalism, commerce and commodification.
00:15:15.000 I wonder, Jonathan, how intelligent and awakened people can reclaim Christianity as a meaningful ideology in the sort of post-atheist period when the devil has had all the best tunes, when the intelligentsia have had all the best riffs, when it can be harder and harder to access divinity When people see more and more adrift from even the most rudimentary morality, a time of despair, a time that sometimes feels like revelations is being played out among us.
00:15:51.000 How do you, and I understand that you use, you know, when we spoke briefly before, You said that, you know, sort of Eastern orthodoxy, I think is what you said.
00:16:02.000 How is it that we find our way back to Christ, or at least back to the divine, in such a rational, materialist, reductive, and at some points painful time?
00:16:13.000 Yeah.
00:16:14.000 Well, first of all, I would say the story of Christmas is a good story to think about that.
00:16:19.000 You know, the story of Christmas happens during, you know, Caesar Augustus's rule, and You know, there's a sense in which Roman tyranny is established at the beginning of the story.
00:16:35.000 And then you have these characters that are, you know, can't find a home at the same time as they're facing a tyranny.
00:16:44.000 And so in some ways, the story of Christmas is related, by the way, also to the summer solstice, because the winter solstice is also the same, right?
00:16:52.000 The sun's going down, the sun's going down, the sun's going down, and you think, that's it, right?
00:16:56.000 We're just going to die in darkness.
00:16:57.000 You know, things are going to get worse and worse.
00:16:59.000 And then there's a surprise that happens at the bottom of the world where, you know, a candle is lit, a flame gets, a candle is lit in the darkness, which Let's say is a preview of the of the next world or preview of something which is beginning.
00:17:17.000 And so that is what happens when we feel like everything is out of control is we have to look for seeds.
00:17:23.000 That's the best way to think about it because the big system is going to run out.
00:17:27.000 And what's left to find is the new beginning or the new seed.
00:17:32.000 And this is what the story of Christmas is.
00:17:35.000 And obviously the story of Christmas is a very dark story, by the way.
00:17:38.000 You know, we tend to think about it as being very hopeful.
00:17:41.000 But when the seed appears in the world, King Herod sends his soldiers to kill all the children.
00:17:48.000 Right, to hunt down that seed.
00:17:50.000 And so this is something that we have to understand is going to happen as we look for hope, is that the system will not stand for it.
00:18:00.000 You know, the system will not stand for something new which is beginning or something which is being rekindled, let's say.
00:18:07.000 But at the same time, it's an adventure.
00:18:09.000 You know, there's a weird thing, you know, you talked about how the devil had all the best tunes and That is also kind of running out.
00:18:17.000 It's like as we're drowning in porn and video games and mumble rap and, you know, a kind of a culture that's, and you know, Hollywood is failing, Disney is going bankrupt.
00:18:28.000 You can feel everything is running out.
00:18:31.000 And in that moment, the surprise of finding that being a Christian, for example, is the most rebellious thing you can do or that You know, getting married and having children and, you know, and trying to live a decent life is the most punk rock thing that you can do at the moment.
00:18:47.000 So I think that there is, in that type of attitude, to look at it like, you know, you are going to be against the world.
00:18:55.000 That is what's going to happen.
00:18:57.000 And it has a cost, but it also has a... There is a kind of secret hope in that, you know, to know that that's how it's going to go.
00:19:06.000 So I love your retelling, your interpretation of the nativity as a time where hope is found in opposition to tyranny.
00:19:16.000 When you said we feel like we have no home, I know that a lot of people that I've spoken to say that people that in the post-60s period would have been regarded as classic anti-establishment liberal lefties, that Do not trust authority, that know that free speech is vital, that know that the state is bad, that you can't trust the legacy media, you can never trust the man.
00:19:40.000 And if the authorities want you to do it, whether it's a mandated medication, a lockdown, the support of a war, whether it's the foreclosure of free speech and advocating for furthermore censorship and the ability of the powerful to shut down your individual rights, these ideas would have once been opposed.
00:20:01.000 Now somehow the neoliberal left became authoritarian.
00:20:05.000 They became about centralised authority.
00:20:07.000 The tyranny that you described, the Nazarenes of escaping, I would say now that is the establishment in the USA.
00:20:18.000 I know you're a French-Canadian.
00:20:21.000 Is that appropriate to call you that?
00:20:22.000 Like that little country to the south of you there, their Democrat party, or your Trudeau over there, liberalism now, I would say fascism now, is garnered in neat little haircuts, sweet little riffs, the language of compassion and kindness masks an incredible drive for authoritarianism and control.
00:20:46.000 And I like your reference to, Jonathan, to the slaughter of the innocents, an aspect of the nativity that's sort of understandably overlooked because it would be difficult to recreate in decorations.
00:20:59.000 Baby entrails.
00:21:02.000 I prefer the manger myself, personally.
00:21:08.000 But you also touched on something that somehow traditionalism, conservatism even, certainly Christianity, might be the most rebellious thing that you could do in this.
00:21:20.000 Do you think this is because We've reached a kind of moral singularity in our times where we are on the precipice of near-nihilism.
00:21:33.000 That materialism has brought us to an absolute crisis of meaning.
00:21:38.000 That people are still trying to metabolize individual identity into some kind of manner.
00:21:47.000 Some alchemy is being practiced where gold is trying to be wrested from the prima, when the prima materia is literally just materia rather than something transcendent or ulterior.
00:22:01.000 Do you think that that has left us at sort of a junction of nihilism, Jonathan?
00:22:06.000 Yeah, there's a relationship between individualism, nihilism and tyranny, which is something people might think is funny.
00:22:15.000 But, you know, the way that societies normally work is that we have these buffered structures, right?
00:22:21.000 We have this hierarchy of structures where, you know, we're individuals and families and communities and churches and clubs and there's a sense in which All these buffers, they protect us from the glaring sun of the authority up there, right?
00:22:33.000 Because, you know, I don't know, like the different clubs that you can participate in, we all kind of give each other support so that we don't have to always deal with the highest authority.
00:22:44.000 Now, with the 60s, it's a good example.
00:22:46.000 The 60s, as it moved towards individualism, and rebelled against family structure, religious structure, you know, and then social structures, schools, all these intermediary structures, it actually opens up a door for the government and the authorities to come and take that space.
00:23:04.000 Because that space has to be filled.
00:23:06.000 We actually need to have the roads paved and we need things to happen.
00:23:10.000 So as we kind of move towards this materialism, It gets filled up.
00:23:14.000 So there's a relationship between a movement towards materialism and the tyranny coming to compensate for our own kind of selfish desires.
00:23:24.000 As we move towards our own selfish little idiosyncratic desires, somebody has to cover all the bases and that ends up being You know, the state, whatever, however you want to phrase it, these growing, growing power structures that start to impose themselves on us.
00:23:40.000 And it looks invisible at first, but then when a crisis appears, right, like what happened in COVID, then all of a sudden you can see the tendrils, like they just glow.
00:23:48.000 And now you can see how the world has been taken up by all these authoritarian structures.
00:23:55.000 Yes, and one of the problems of the reification and deification of the state is the state seems to have to, certainly these days in the kind of democracies that you and I are from, It exists as part of a polarity.
00:24:16.000 You cannot have an omnipotent state without tyranny.
00:24:24.000 You cannot demand the kind of surrender that Galatians would ask of us, say.
00:24:31.000 I've been thinking lately, Jonathan, about the The solution to my crisis of identity is to die on the cross with Christ, that He can be reborn in me.
00:24:45.000 These ideas can be found outside, obviously, outside of Christianity.
00:24:49.000 I suppose the word Islam itself means surrender.
00:24:51.000 I suppose Marcus Aurelius spoke of, you are dead, now live the rest of your life properly.
00:25:00.000 But do you think that there is something uniquely benevolent or uniquely nourishing about the idea that we, obviously you do because you're a Christian, but what is uniquely nourishing about the Christian surrendering the self, not to the state, your new material God, whether you live in a communist or capitalist country, but to something higher. And indeed,
00:25:27.000 does that make you, and is that a radical proposition? And does that radical proposition involve the
00:25:34.000 taking up of arms? I mean that metaphorically. I mean that metaphorically. Well, this is
00:25:42.000 the place where Christianity, in terms of politics, is complicated. In the sense that
00:25:49.000 what Christians believed, at least at the outset, is that you will be able to transform the
00:25:54.000 state, but not through revolution.
00:25:57.000 That, in fact, the Christians were actually quite Even they were submitted to the state that persecuted them.
00:26:02.000 If you think of the early centuries when Rome was authoritarian over them, persecuting them, they would submit to all the rules that Rome gave them except for the ones that betrayed their conscience, except for the ones that were against what they believed to be true beyond what the state proposed.
00:26:19.000 So they were actually model citizens.
00:26:22.000 And they believed that the transformation that would happen would be through self-sacrifice and through self-transformation.
00:26:29.000 A good example to understand this is the manner in which, according to tradition, the way that the gladiatorial games ended in Rome.
00:26:40.000 These fighters would come and kill each other, and then as Rome was becoming Christian, one day a Christian man went onto the field and stood between the two gladiators and said, you know, stop in the name of Christ and obviously the gladiator
00:26:53.000 just killed him.
00:26:54.000 And that was it. That was the end of the gladiators fight in Rome. Everybody walked out of this of the
00:26:59.000 stadium and there were no more fights. And so that is in some ways the image of of the Christian,
00:27:05.000 which is that through, you know, holding on to the true light and then be willing to sacrifice
00:27:12.000 your own desires for that rather than thinking, you know, that we're going to rise up and cause
00:27:17.000 revolution.
00:27:19.000 The rising up and causing revolution is actually what brings about tyranny most of the time, if you think of the way that revolutions happen in our history.
00:27:27.000 The French Revolution leads to Napoleon, the Russian Revolution leads to Stalin.
00:27:32.000 These revolutions usually lead to tyranny.
00:27:36.000 Why did you not include the American Revolution?
00:27:39.000 Well, the American Revolution is an interesting one, it's true, because it's the exception to the rule, and it would be interesting to see why.
00:27:48.000 And maybe there are good reasons to look at that, to understand why the Americans didn't lead to autocracy, not at the outset.
00:27:59.000 Obviously, in the long run now, America is moving towards autocracy as well.
00:28:04.000 But it did take a few centuries, which is not bad.
00:28:07.000 Yes, it is moving towards autocracy.
00:28:09.000 I suppose we would offer from the outset, Jonathan, that it was ultimately an external colonial settler power that they were rejecting.
00:28:18.000 So there was the opportunity to sort of actually reclaim that land.
00:28:22.000 And there weren't, I suppose, the need for the type of brutality that would have been, I don't know if it was justified, but certainly happened in the French and Russian revolutions. But then if it is sliding towards
00:28:34.000 technocracy now, if we are even seeing a kind of a migration towards autocracy that requires
00:28:41.000 really the sublimation of the idea of nation, is that what we're really experiencing now? That
00:28:48.000 America is just a sort of a panacea for the ordinary people, while the real business of power
00:28:55.000 takes place on a strata that transcends national boundaries?
00:28:59.000 Indeed, isn't that the essence of global corporatism?
00:29:03.000 And then what becomes the duty of the Christian citizen if we are sliding towards the kind of global tyranny that I imagine both of us sense is happening?
00:29:15.000 Jonathan, before you answer that question, we're going to have to leave YouTube now, lest we awaken in people great, great powers that will cause them to challenge the very establishment that many of these platforms are sadly alloyed to.
00:29:28.000 If you're watching us on YouTube, there's a link in the description.
00:29:30.000 Click that link.
00:29:31.000 Join us for the rest of this fantastic conversation.
00:29:33.000 It's beautiful.
00:29:34.000 See you over there.
00:29:35.000 Stay free.
00:29:36.000 So, Jonathan.
00:29:37.000 Yeah.
00:29:39.000 It's true that that seems to be what's happening.
00:29:42.000 And it's interesting to see both things happen at the same time, which is on the one hand, hand in hand with globalism comes the Rainbow Coalition, this self-identification, this idea that I can be whatever I want to be to extremes that are so Radical, you know, that even people in the 60s would have been surprised to hear that you can, you know, that you can transform yourself so much.
00:30:05.000 So you can see this move towards complete idiosyncrasy, like a kind of pornification of society where your every little single idiosyncratic desire finds its niche, you know.
00:30:16.000 And at the same time you can see The tyrannical structure get bigger and bigger and become indeed transnational and I think that your approach and your position and you know a few people they've been aware to that it's no longer a question of capitalism and communism that's not like to remain with those categories
00:30:34.000 is to blind us to what's actually happening.
00:30:36.000 The gigantism is corporations and governments or whatever is beyond governments holding hands together.
00:30:44.000 And so we have to see it that way or else we're going to find ourselves in a fight that's useless.
00:30:51.000 At this point, Google is is no better than the World Economic Forum and these giant corporations.
00:30:58.000 We saw it again during COVID, how they just locked hands and just acted in unison towards not clear goals, goals that were not clear to us, let's say, or at least not transparent.
00:31:15.000 Some might argue that the efficacy of Christianity is its sort of utility, its plasticity, that cults of Christianity around the world can morph into what that geographical territory requires of it.
00:31:28.000 A friend of mine says that like that.
00:31:31.000 In Latin and Central America, the type of Christianity has the theatricality of the paganism that preceded it there.
00:31:38.000 In Africa, the facet of Christ as the healer is prominent.
00:31:43.000 maybe Northern European as the kind of Lutheranism, Calvinism and the new Protestant movements
00:31:50.000 demonstrated you get a kind of ardent Christ steeled for the chill winds of the Northern
00:31:59.000 Hemisphere.
00:32:01.000 And perhaps what we have now is a sort of a critical, and perhaps this was always baked,
00:32:07.000 what would the first century Christians have made of the Christianity of Constantinople
00:32:14.000 onwards, of the Christianity of empire, the Christianity of the papacy, the Christianity
00:32:21.000 of even of globalism.
00:32:27.000 Christianity is a sort of a vaccine against opposing tyranny.
00:32:33.000 You know, kind of a settled insular private little altar in my mind rather than an overt form of Christianity.
00:32:43.000 And if there is something to be said for this sort of plasticity being the reason for the ascendancy of Christianity rather than some built-in veracity in connection to a sublime truth, then ought we be revisiting some of the pagan precursors that there are certainly many of the aspects of the myth of Christ retains, whether it's Osiris and the rebirth or whether it's
00:33:09.000 even aspects of the, I know the figure of the green man is one that
00:33:12.000 interests you and one that seems to be resurgent in the international imagination or
00:33:16.000 what Jung might call, I suppose, the collective unconscious. So
00:33:20.000 firstly, first part of my question is, is there something implicitly true about
00:33:24.000 Christianity or is it just sort of a bit like what I consider democracy to be
00:33:28.000 these days, a a kind of brilliant veil for advanced tyrannies.
00:33:33.000 And the second part of my question is, if Christianity isn't, or in either event, why are there these re-emergent, pagan, pantheonistic, mythic themes emerging in our culture?
00:33:46.000 Yeah, so I think the best way to understand Christianity is that it's, at least the Christianity that I care for, is that it's yes and.
00:33:56.000 It's not a yes but.
00:33:57.000 Which is that Christianity is not something which stands completely and exclusively against pagan culture.
00:34:06.000 That's ridiculous.
00:34:07.000 It doesn't appear in a vacuum.
00:34:09.000 It doesn't just kind of plop out and that everything before it was completely false or completely wrong.
00:34:16.000 You know, there are intuitions in paganism and there are truths in paganism which made it that it could hold societies together for so long, for thousands of years actually.
00:34:28.000 And Christianity, when it comes, it offers in some ways the key to those things.
00:34:33.000 It kind of brings a lot of those stories to their end.
00:34:37.000 uh like i'll give you a little example a simple example which is you know in the 19th century there was a lot of fuss made around the idea of the dying and resurrecting god and a lot of people even the new atheist types who would bring that up right that all these cultures have dying and resurrecting gods and they'll find different strategies or people that go into hades you know to get someone you see that in every In every epic you have a character that goes down to death and either goes to see someone or brings someone out or tries to bring someone out and fails.
00:35:05.000 And they would show that in some ways Christ is just another version of that story.
00:35:10.000 But the thing is that Christ is the end of that story, not another version of that story.
00:35:15.000 Because according to the Christian tradition, Christ, first of all, doesn't just go into death as a visitor.
00:35:21.000 He dies.
00:35:23.000 And then when he goes into death, by the time he's done and he's left death, Death is empty.
00:35:29.000 That's the tradition.
00:35:30.000 We say hell is empty.
00:35:32.000 Hell has been emptied of its dead.
00:35:34.000 The icon of the resurrection shows Christ taking Adam and Eve and pulling them out of death.
00:35:42.000 And so the idea that in Christ's resurrection we are all looking towards resurrection, no matter how you imagine it in terms of phenomena, that doesn't matter, but to understand that it is the end of the story.
00:35:52.000 It's like, what story do you say after that?
00:35:56.000 After death has been conquered, and death has been transformed, and now death has lost its sting, that's the end of the story.
00:36:05.000 And so Christ does that for all, actually a lot of the pagan stories.
00:36:08.000 He kind of brings them to their end in very surprising ways.
00:36:11.000 We're so used to the story of Jesus that we're no longer as shocked as we should be about how How big it is, you could say.
00:36:22.000 So that's maybe the answer to the question about its relation to paganism.
00:36:25.000 And so what Christianity does is that it includes paganism in it.
00:36:30.000 Obviously, the Protestant people watching this will hate that, but if you look at how it happened, that's how it happened.
00:36:36.000 It takes the good things of paganism and then brings them in.
00:36:39.000 It takes the good things of, let's say, Scandinavian culture, brings them in.
00:36:43.000 It takes the good things of African culture, brings it in.
00:36:46.000 A good Christian way of saying it is that it baptizes things.
00:36:49.000 It takes things from the old world, baptizes them, and raises them up, and involves them, and brings them into the new world.
00:36:58.000 Which is why Christianity looks the way it does.
00:37:00.000 And that also answers your other question, which is about how plastic it is.
00:37:04.000 It's not that it's plastic.
00:37:06.000 It's that it takes the good...
00:37:09.000 It's a messy process, but it takes the good out of cultures, transforms them and points them towards, let's say, a transcendent good.
00:37:17.000 That's what it hopes to do.
00:37:19.000 Architecture, music, and then even the Roman Empire, right?
00:37:24.000 So, you could say a lot of people think, oh, it's horrible that Constantine converted.
00:37:29.000 That's the beginning of the end of Christianity.
00:37:32.000 Maybe.
00:37:33.000 It doesn't mean that there isn't evil in the state afterwards, but now there's actually a check.
00:37:38.000 in the system.
00:37:40.000 That check sometimes goes awry, of course, but it's still there, right?
00:37:43.000 The fact that we can now say today something like war is bad, You know, Julius Caesar bragged that he killed a million Gauls.
00:37:52.000 He didn't have to make excuses for it.
00:37:54.000 He didn't have to say, you know, it's like, oh, you know, like how today we always have to hide it and pretend.
00:37:59.000 He wasn't pretending.
00:38:00.000 He's like, no, I slaughtered all these people and that's to my glory.
00:38:04.000 And that's a transformation in the state.
00:38:06.000 There are many others that Christianity brings about.
00:38:09.000 So Christianity ends up acting as a check on the Roman Empire.
00:38:13.000 Doesn't mean that it's perfect, but this is to show how Christianity transforms reality, takes these things, baptizes them, and includes them in its life.
00:38:24.000 We didn't get to the Green Man bit, but we don't need to yet, because I've got a few follow-up questions there, then we'll make our way to that if we're able to, Jonathan.
00:38:34.000 This image of Christ as the redeemer and the emptier of hell, if you ain't seen it yet, you'll like it, I think.
00:38:42.000 There's a British near-contemporary painter, I think he was painting in the 1950s.
00:38:48.000 called Stanley Spencer, who did these beautiful depictions of biblical scenes in very mundial settings, like he would do Christ on the high street, and when he did Christ and the resurrection happening in the churchyard in Cookham, which is where he painted, he was a nationally and indeed internationally renowned painter, And he draws that particular churchyard with those particular graves having people sort of bursting out looking sort of happy but bewildered to once more be out of their graves.
00:39:22.000 This claim which you say is a sort of not the central claim, well maybe it's the central claim, I don't know if Christianity is the crucifixion the central claim, is the divine birth the central claim, is the trilogy the central claim, but certainly the resurrection you say is like the Certainly what takes it beyond what is pledged through paganism.
00:39:39.000 If it ain't an entirely theological proposition, the idea of a resurrection in a type of the way that even a secularist could appreciate it, reborn unto yourself, present in the moment, the flesh man dies, that the transcendent man may be eternally reborn, Joseph Campbell's idea that there is no point in Christ being resurrected 2,000 years ago if you and I can't be resurrected moment by moment into a continual present, the only place that God can truly exist.
00:40:12.000 If it's not like a theological proposition that could be understood and appreciated and even to a degree practiced by a secularist, what is it?
00:40:20.000 Because when people say stuff like that about Christianity, it's better because You know, you get to be reborn or you get to be resurrected.
00:40:28.000 I think, well, do you know?
00:40:32.000 I'm not demanding proof, but I'm saying how is that distinct from any pledge made by any myth or any ideology?
00:40:40.000 How is it distinct?
00:40:41.000 How?
00:40:42.000 Other than as a theological proposition.
00:40:44.000 Well, I mean, I think that you pointed out some of the things that it helps you see is that The resurrection is true all the time.
00:40:57.000 Things die and are reborn all the time.
00:41:01.000 This happens with states, it happens with empires, it happens with families, it happens inside you all the time.
00:41:09.000 Every time you repent, that is something that happens.
00:41:13.000 Every time you turn away from something which is breaking you apart and you find a new beginning, that is what is happening.
00:41:21.000 Exactly like you said.
00:41:26.000 The story is that that's actually how the world works.
00:41:29.000 The world works through these death and resurrections.
00:41:34.000 And what the story of Christ shows is the limit of that.
00:41:38.000 It brings it to the limit.
00:41:41.000 It gives you an extreme example that lays the foundation for how to experience life in the everyday.
00:41:49.000 That, by the way, is what miracles always are.
00:41:51.000 Miracles are never just extraordinary things that happen.
00:41:55.000 There are always limit cases of how the world works in the everyday.
00:42:01.000 And it's the same with saints and martyrs and all this stuff, right?
00:42:05.000 You don't have to step in between the gladiators and get killed and become a martyr and then become a saint.
00:42:12.000 But that's actually how you live your life with your children.
00:42:15.000 That's how you live your life with your wife, with your friends.
00:42:19.000 Through these acts of self-sacrifice is how you are able to bind reality together.
00:42:24.000 Reality actually binds that way.
00:42:26.000 But what happens in sacred stories is that those are brought to That's the breaking point.
00:42:31.000 And so what happens, like, so people say, well, how can you believe in the resurrection, right?
00:42:36.000 Jesus dies three days later.
00:42:36.000 It's ridiculous.
00:42:38.000 And it's like, I believe in the resurrection because it's pointing me to something which is true all the time, every day of my life.
00:42:46.000 And so when I hear the extreme case, I think, of course, like, that's what it all leads to, or that's where it all originates in.
00:42:54.000 It's like someone dying and then unreasonably Being raised up from that state.
00:43:02.000 Not two minutes later, not like, you know, maybe he was dead, maybe he wasn't.
00:43:06.000 No, he was dead.
00:43:07.000 And then he rises up and you think, well, actually, that's how everything works.
00:43:11.000 That's how my life works.
00:43:12.000 That's how everything that is good about my life functions.
00:43:16.000 And so it's like, the question is, does the world work that way or not?
00:43:21.000 Is the world just like material causes and accidents and chaos?
00:43:27.000 Or is this process of descent and ascent actually part of how the world functions?
00:43:35.000 And if so, then when I hear the story of the resurrection, I think, It's actually revealing me the pattern of everything.
00:43:42.000 So I believe it, because without it, there's something missing.
00:43:46.000 There's like a key missing.
00:43:48.000 There's a puzzle, and I see it in paganism, and I see it in other religions.
00:43:51.000 There are puzzles, but they come together in that one story.
00:43:56.000 We can't continue to make this glorious content without your support and the support of our sponsors.
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00:45:52.000 Now let's get back into this, shall we?
00:45:56.000 So you're saying almost that in this sacred truth there's something truer than material truth, almost like a homeopathic exposure to a distilled version of that which is true.
00:46:10.000 I notice too, actually, Jonathan, that if you have a facility for language communication and thought, perhaps that can be a disadvantage in The felt carnal, given that we're talking about incarnation, carnal sense of what it is to live in the experience of God.
00:46:31.000 Lately, as I know you're aware, because we've sort of spoken, I've gone through like some personal challenges that have been very, very painful and have amounted to some degree to a kind of ego death, which has not been without advantage, even though it has also encompassed extraordinary pain and revealed to me the depth
00:46:52.000 of my attachment to other people's impressions, my personal well-being, materialism, ability
00:46:57.000 to have influence over, you know, all of just a list of things that could loosely be described as
00:47:02.000 sinful. I wonder, though, you know, that what you feel about the sort of simplicity available
00:47:09.000 in Christianity as well as the complexity, because there was a point very recently where I
00:47:14.000 was in a pretty despairing and despondent state and like someone sent me unbidden a kind of, perhaps
00:47:20.000 you've heard of, Rick Warren, who I understand is a sort of southern evangelist who like,
00:47:26.000 I like to think of myself as a pretty refined and intelligent guy that I wouldn't be getting my Eucharist via a Southern Christian TV where there's a handsome white couple sat on a couch with a Southern evangelist.
00:47:47.000 I watched this very simple prayer to camera from Rick Warren where he talked about his
00:47:53.000 own son took his life and then he talked about the subsequent despair, even though by that
00:47:58.000 time Rick Warren had already sold millions of books and been a very successful pastor
00:48:02.000 and this sort of protégé of Billy Graham.
00:48:05.000 And he did this prayer where he said, you know, I put aside my need to understand.
00:48:10.000 I don't need to understand how the digestive system works to enjoy a steak or the combustion engine to drive a car.
00:48:17.000 Jesus, will you please be with me?
00:48:22.000 I've become teachable, I guess.
00:48:24.000 Porous is how I sometimes feel it.
00:48:26.000 In a time of crisis, Perhaps in an attempt to get beyond the ego, or perhaps in an attempt to cling onto it.
00:48:35.000 I've become, you know, the hucksters and charlatans come at me from every angle, offering sort of counsel and advice.
00:48:45.000 And like, you know, I could be highly susceptible to any of that stuff.
00:48:48.000 And in this sort of prayer, That was just, Jesus, I don't need to understand everything, but I'm calling on your name.
00:48:57.000 I'm calling on your name for help.
00:48:59.000 I don't want to go on like this.
00:49:00.000 I don't want to go on like this.
00:49:01.000 I need transformation.
00:49:03.000 It was effective.
00:49:05.000 So I wonder what you make of the potential for this to be quite simple.
00:49:11.000 maybe in a sort of an ultra-rational, post-Enlightenment, advanced approach in singularity culture,
00:49:19.000 are the sort of difficulties of accepting such a sort of what sometimes feels like a
00:49:25.000 proposition that has too low an entry threshold?
00:49:29.000 Well, first of all, I would say that this is in some ways the mystery of suffering.
00:49:45.000 This is also the mystery of what Christ offers.
00:49:48.000 This is annoying for a lot of people.
00:49:52.000 The idea that Christ doesn't want us to suffer is just not true.
00:49:55.000 The idea that God doesn't want us to suffer is just not true.
00:49:59.000 God wants us to be better.
00:50:02.000 God wants us to be the best version of ourselves.
00:50:05.000 He wants us to be shining images of His glory and His love.
00:50:11.000 Whatever it takes, man.
00:50:14.000 And so suffering is, you know, it's like you said, it's sometimes a way to see our attachments and to see our passions and to see the things that are our actual gods.
00:50:31.000 Even if they're good, even if they're good things in themselves and they're a call to See through them, to see through our desires towards something else.
00:50:41.000 Because like you said, sometimes we're being ripped apart.
00:50:44.000 And so there is nothing to hold on to, right?
00:50:47.000 If you lose the things that you're holding on to, at some point, you know, and this is obviously the whole image of hitting rock bottom.
00:50:55.000 But that doesn't have to be, you don't have to be drunk at the bottom of an alley for you to hit rock bottom.
00:51:00.000 It can happen in more subtle ways where you can see that these things that I hold on to, they are They're superficial compared to what is behind them and what is true.
00:51:12.000 And so I was sorry to hear about a lot of the things that you've been through.
00:51:17.000 It's rough.
00:51:18.000 And I hope that they will be for you a kind of way to see through everything.
00:51:26.000 But as for the simplicity, you know, Christianity offers a way in which things scale.
00:51:36.000 And this is one of the things that people struggle to understand sometimes about religion, is that the way that Christianity presents itself is that it's as accessible to, you know, your great-grandmother who couldn't read, as it is to the great scholar, you know, that spent his entire life studying theological texts.
00:51:55.000 And so there's both an immediate simplicity in that abandon that you describe, And then there's also all the subtlety and all the philosophy that the West has to offer.
00:52:08.000 And so it scales.
00:52:10.000 But it scales in a lot of ways, which is that Christianity calls us to experience it also amongst each other.
00:52:21.000 It is not presented to us as an individual thing.
00:52:24.000 So we do, of course, have an individual part where we give ourselves to God and we abandon ourselves to Christ like you described.
00:52:32.000 But then that calls us to then enter into communion with others.
00:52:36.000 That's what the life of the church is, is to be with others, people that you wouldn't have chosen, people that aren't
00:52:43.000 like you, people that are annoying and are wonderful,
00:52:47.000 and to kind of enter into that communion, both in terms of worship and in terms of just living life,
00:52:57.000 because that's life.
00:52:59.000 That's how life works.
00:53:00.000 We aren't individual, just individuals.
00:53:04.000 Our individual transformation has to overflow into our communion with others.
00:53:12.000 That's why Christianity looks the way it does.
00:53:14.000 That's why it's not just something that happens on your couch, although it is.
00:53:19.000 It has buildings, and meetings, and common worship, and common prayer, and it scales all the way up to You know, to the bishop, you know, crowning the king or a prayer at a political event, which you think, ah, it's annoying.
00:53:36.000 I wish it was just this individual transformation.
00:53:39.000 But that's actually the nature of what it is, is that it can flower up and kind of participate in all aspects of society.
00:53:48.000 Yeah, it's difficult, that whole unto Caesar, what is Caesar's thing, because it's like leaves us with a kind of the sense that perhaps that it's incomplete. It gives us a
00:54:03.000 sense that it's incomplete. While I recognize what you're saying in terms of scale, like, you
00:54:07.000 know, there are questions about the historic Catholic Church, there are questions about crusades,
00:54:14.000 there are questions about, yeah, indeed, the coronation of a monarch and what that,
00:54:20.000 and that's why you get, I feel, like, a vast swathe of, you know, like, the last great,
00:54:27.000 most recent intellectual movement is anti-church because it's so easy to equate church power
00:54:36.000 with centralist power and to see Christianity as a palliative and
00:54:43.000 And as a, you know, palliative, panacea, placebo, and kind of a tranquilizer, you know, like, and yeah, it's like that kind of the kind of martyrdom of the early Christians and the sort of sacrifice of Christ and their obvious radicalism, I of the, shall we say, the historic Christ, is like, you know, I feel that that feels like a call, that feels like a call, and yet there is, there are many aspects of Christianity that seem to be counselling a kind of acceptance of, you know, we're not going to go turn over the tables, we're not going to, like, be marching on the great centres of power,
00:55:38.000 Particularly with what's happening now, politically, that that feels like a limitation rather than an advantage.
00:55:46.000 Jonathan, what do you think?
00:55:49.000 The thing is that the question of power and authority is not simple.
00:55:54.000 It's never just that there's a tyrant.
00:55:59.000 A tyrant alone cannot rule over you.
00:56:04.000 The tyrant in his room that tells you what to do cannot rule over you.
00:56:09.000 For a tyrant to rule, there has to be an entire scale of acceptance and there has to be compromise all through the system of society.
00:56:20.000 And this is what Solzhenitsyn discovered, is that for the tyrant to rule, the road had been paved with lies by everyone, not just from above, but everyone through the system is corrupt for that to happen.
00:56:41.000 The image that Christians are trying to, at least the Christianity that I care for deeply, is trying to promote is to say that in that world, a revolution or a standing up against authority, it will only perpetuate the same system.
00:56:59.000 Because who are you going to replace the tyrant with?
00:57:02.000 Another tyrant?
00:57:04.000 Another one of us that's completely corrupt?
00:57:08.000 And so the transformation has to happen from within.
00:57:11.000 It's like a ripple from within.
00:57:13.000 And so the answer is to become a saint.
00:57:15.000 And by the way, if you think about Christianity, the whole history of Christianity, and you talk about the popes and priests, that is true.
00:57:24.000 There's always corruption which sets itself up in any system.
00:57:27.000 But Christianity Christianity rests on the saints.
00:57:32.000 It doesn't rest on the authorities.
00:57:35.000 Although the authorities are necessary.
00:57:36.000 We need the authorities.
00:57:37.000 But the story of Christianity is told through the saints.
00:57:40.000 And the saints are not bound by the authority.
00:57:43.000 They kind of stand above it.
00:57:45.000 They are shining lights to which the authorities are meant to look at and to model their behavior over.
00:57:51.000 And so, of course, it's always going to be corrupt, but there's a way in which, for example, the figure like Saint Francis in the West, you know, his way of transforming the medieval society was amazing, because he didn't do it with revolution, right?
00:58:06.000 He did it through the very strange behavior where he could humiliate a priest by humbling himself before him, right?
00:58:16.000 He could kiss a priest's hand, In a manner that would shame the priest into transformation.
00:58:24.000 And these are the types of gestures that Christians pose all through the history of Christianity that are similar to the man standing between the gladiators, which is the way in which true transformation happens without opposition.
00:58:37.000 Because one of the problems with revolution is that It's a dual thing, right?
00:58:42.000 And it's the same with the culture war, let's say, that's happening in North America.
00:58:46.000 It's like, what happens if the Republicans win?
00:58:48.000 It means that half the country is lost.
00:58:51.000 So do you think that that's winning?
00:58:53.000 That's not winning.
00:58:54.000 What happens if the Democrats win?
00:58:56.000 It means that 50% of the country is lost.
00:58:58.000 That's not winning.
00:58:59.000 You're not going to win by just humiliating half of the population.
00:59:03.000 The true transformation is one which can happen without opposition.
00:59:09.000 It's a non-dual transformation, and that's the transformation that Christ surprisingly offers.
00:59:15.000 And it's not an easy one.
00:59:17.000 I'm not saying, like, I don't want to die.
00:59:19.000 I don't want to sacrifice myself.
00:59:21.000 Nobody wants that.
00:59:22.000 But nonetheless, if you run it through your mind, you'll see that It's really the only transformation that can have long-term effects, is one which doesn't increase polarization and doesn't increase duality, but is like this seed that is planted that ripples out, right?
00:59:39.000 And then attracts people like magnets to that transformation.
00:59:43.000 And so you become like a shining example in your family, in your community, in the people around you, and you inspire people to change rather than fight them off or, you know, oppose them in that simple way.
00:59:56.000 Is that, Jonathan, do you think why asceticism remains so important in Christianity, but perhaps in all faiths, even in cults?
01:00:06.000 If you can see that people have material, carnal attachments, if you see that people are interested in sex or pleasure or food or domination or status,
01:00:17.000 then there's always a suspicion that everything else they do
01:00:21.000 is mobilized behind the pursuit of goals that anybody can easily understand. Status, power, procreation.
01:00:31.000 But when someone seems to be able to invert, subvert, reverse
01:00:37.000 the polarity of the charges of the material world, it seems there is a genuine power in it.
01:00:47.000 And indeed, I suppose that is another that exemplifies further this ability to die unto yourself because perhaps among the more obvious dualities of male female dark night and these might be false dichotomies who are we to know how the universe works at depth although there seems to be a pretty interesting wave particle duality going on down there in the true true poetry of the sub molecular that if you even if death and life
01:01:19.000 are overcome by your personal conduct, then that truly, yes, it does become...
01:01:27.000 It becomes like a... It becomes a crucifixion.
01:01:30.000 It becomes... It becomes a living sign that's radiant, seductive and powerful.
01:01:38.000 Is that what you're saying?
01:01:40.000 Yeah, that's true.
01:01:41.000 And that's why the...
01:01:43.000 For example, the ascetics are shining examples.
01:01:47.000 It's really, in some ways, the best way to understand what saints are.
01:01:50.000 They are shining examples of things that you, normal us, Have to deal with that in every day.
01:01:57.000 It's like they take that to the extreme and so become like a summit.
01:02:01.000 So, you know, an ascetic that lives in a cave somewhere that just prays all day, does prostrations, you know, eats three leaves a day or whatever, like all these crazy stories that you hear about ascetics, you know, we don't have access to that.
01:02:14.000 But if they become shining examples for us, then maybe I can sacrifice that second beer because I love my son.
01:02:20.000 Like maybe I can not I can not do the things that bring me immediate pleasure in moments where I need to cement that to a higher good.
01:02:31.000 And so they become examples for just our everyday life.
01:02:35.000 And hopefully, in terms of Christianity, in the Church also, they become examples.
01:02:40.000 Even the fact that we set them up as examples.
01:02:42.000 An ascetic will shame a Pope.
01:02:45.000 If the Pope is extreme, he might be extreme, but having that image of the ascetic as being the highest will shame them and will ultimately have an effect on the way in which religious authorities act, which is different, again, like we have to understand, which is different from the pagan Lord that just rapes and pillages and kills anybody they want and, you know, subjugates people without any excuse.
01:03:13.000 We always forget how, you know, when the Scandinavians came down onto Christian society, you know, they had a completely different set of values, which was basically just kill, rape, pillage, dominate and brag about it, not feel bad about it in any way, not feel ashamed.
01:03:31.000 Yes, yes.
01:03:32.000 Power.
01:03:32.000 Only power.
01:03:33.000 Only power on this plane.
01:03:35.000 Only power on this bandwidth.
01:03:37.000 Do you think that what you've described around saints is, do you think that they are idols and are not attainable, or is the function of Christianity to create the conditions of sainthood in all of us, or as you've just indicated, merely to provide us a sort of a scale where we can, you know, in our own lives make offerings?
01:04:01.000 Well, it's both, right?
01:04:03.000 It's a scale so that you can climb it, right?
01:04:06.000 It gives you shining examples so that you can follow and so that you can be transformed.
01:04:10.000 Obviously, we're all called to become saints.
01:04:13.000 That's the purpose.
01:04:15.000 And not for some just like weird moral thing, but to our own joy and for our own transformation and our own freedom, right?
01:04:23.000 Because the ascetic that reaches, you know, the ascetic that reaches, you could say, The purpose of his journey is free.
01:04:33.000 He's free and full of joy and full of hope.
01:04:36.000 We were on Mount Athos just a few months ago.
01:04:41.000 I went with Jordan Peterson, by the way.
01:04:43.000 And we met the head of a monastery there.
01:04:47.000 And he was just beaming.
01:04:49.000 I mean, he was shining.
01:04:50.000 He had this simplicity and exactly could speak in those simple terms.
01:04:56.000 It's a very simple Christian truth.
01:04:58.000 But there was so much of There was so much truth behind his words.
01:05:05.000 Unless you met someone like that, it's hard to explain it.
01:05:07.000 They're just glowing.
01:05:08.000 Not physically, but there's something about it that reduces you to silence.
01:05:13.000 And that's what we're all called to.
01:05:14.000 But seeing it makes you see that it's possible and that it's something that we can move towards.
01:05:19.000 Yeah, I think you're right.
01:05:21.000 When that power is encountered, it's pretty beautiful.
01:05:25.000 In my own life, once in a while, I've encountered saintly beings, and I feel like you couldn't get them to go... They wouldn't suddenly go, oh no, my car!
01:05:37.000 They wouldn't suddenly panic.
01:05:41.000 It feels like that, and is it like in a lot of...
01:05:45.000 My understanding of Vedic literature is that this is accessible within us.
01:05:51.000 That there is an energy source within us that will provide limitless bliss.
01:05:56.000 It's available and we cannot access it because of the sediment of our carnal nature.
01:06:06.000 Like an idea that we've got caught in the heaviness.
01:06:08.000 We've got caught in the heaviness of self.
01:06:12.000 It's very beautiful to encounter that power but I've also heard of people that live for many years in monasteries or you know live mendicant lifestyles and then come back into a culture and like it's quite common I feel like in the sort of 60s a lot of those guys that went and lived ashram life and got enlightened with great gurus came back and just lost themselves in hedonism.
01:06:35.000 It's like there's there's not a continual inoculation.
01:06:39.000 I wonder We're coming to the end of this particular Christian conversation that we're embarking on, Jonathan.
01:06:47.000 Do you think there is a need?
01:06:49.000 Do you think that the stories are sufficient?
01:06:52.000 And how do we deal with the lexicon and the syntax of this?
01:06:56.000 the lexicon and the syntax of this because you know like when a figure like cs
01:07:03.000 Lewis is able to mobilise Christian thought because, for me at least, my take on him is that he's able to re-engage academics and able to re-engage intellectuals and he's able indeed to tell stories in a new way or Tolkien, who I know you care about and stuff, is able to revivify The imagination of a version of Christianity that starts to feel arcane and not in a good way, that starts to feel like a little encrusted in candelabras and dust.
01:07:35.000 I wonder if you feel that there are new ways to tell this story, or new ways to live this story.
01:07:41.000 Are both of those things important?
01:07:45.000 Yeah, I think that this is actually a crucial time because, like you said, we're in this meaning crisis where all of a sudden people are noticing that their little life of Netflix and porn is just not enough.
01:08:00.000 And we saw it because we were given it in abundance during COVID, right?
01:08:03.000 It's like, just stay at home and And just revel in your own desires.
01:08:10.000 And people became crazy.
01:08:12.000 People started losing their minds.
01:08:14.000 And there have been waves of conversions, by the way.
01:08:17.000 In the Orthodox tradition that I'm part of, my church has tripled since COVID.
01:08:24.000 And it's happened all over North America and it's all young men, mostly, that are intellectual, looking for meaning, looking for purpose.
01:08:35.000 And so I think that it's a crucial time right now where there is this possibility of people seeing again what these things are for, right?
01:08:43.000 It's not just about morality, it's not just about You know, feeling guilty or whatever thing you might think Christianity is about.
01:08:49.000 It is about, you know, finding purpose and being transformed.
01:08:53.000 Now, that's one.
01:08:54.000 In terms of stories, I think it's the same.
01:08:56.000 You know, as I said, as Hollywood is running out of steam, as the culture machine is basically now just Turning over the same crap that they've been, you know, putting out for the past two generations, there is an opportunity of storytelling.
01:09:12.000 To recapture storytelling and to retell even, you know, the fairy tales or these ancient stories, to retell them with a bright voice.
01:09:23.000 That's one of the things that I'm doing, for example.
01:09:24.000 I think you probably know that I'm starting to publish these fairy tales again.
01:09:30.000 I just published Snow White and I'm going to publish a series of fairy tales that are going back into the tradition with a celebratory tone, a joyful tone, Where we look at the stories and celebrate them, really.
01:09:45.000 Now that there's been cynicism since the 60s, it's like there's actually a possibility of re-celebrating these ancient stories in a way that points towards their meaning.
01:09:54.000 And I think we can do that for a lot of things right now.
01:09:58.000 Right now, there are many opportunities for transformation.
01:10:01.000 What do you think this is?
01:10:02.000 Meta-modernity?
01:10:03.000 That there will still be this sort of post-modern cynicism but in a new emergent necessity for meaning?
01:10:10.000 What do you think is the original context of a story like Snow White that you have rewritten?
01:10:17.000 And what do you think are the failings of post-modernity?
01:10:21.000 I mean it's pretty obvious that it's sort of contributed to the crisis of meaning because it's just taken the Bottom out of everything.
01:10:30.000 What is there to galvanize in folklore and fairy tales that is extraneous to Christianity or is it within the purview of Christianity?
01:10:43.000 I'm guessing within, given that it's you that's done this.
01:10:46.000 And if so, how so?
01:10:48.000 Yeah, well, in terms of post-modernity, it's interesting.
01:10:53.000 I do take some aspects of post-modernity quite seriously.
01:10:57.000 I think that post-modernity is useful because, you know, let's say the really modern or the Puritan approach to fairy tales, for example, was horrible, right?
01:11:06.000 It's like, let's take these stories that have a kind of grit to them, that have a kind of a darkness or a messiness to them.
01:11:13.000 Let's make them into simple morality tales.
01:11:15.000 And so we take out all the kind of grungy bit out of the fairy tales.
01:11:20.000 We present them as these very clean stories, but that's not what the fairy tales were.
01:11:24.000 And the postmoderns realized that.
01:11:26.000 And so they just said, well, let's, they just said, let's expose all the grit.
01:11:30.000 Let's expose all the cynicism, all the dark power dynamics, all the sexual stuff in the fairy tales, you know,
01:11:36.000 and let's ignore these Puritan versions.
01:11:38.000 And I think it's both.
01:11:40.000 I think, I think the stories are powerful, beautiful, shining examples of how to be and not to be, but there's also in them a way of exploring some of these darker themes.
01:11:51.000 And so the way that I'm doing these stories, you know, I'm not taking out all the sexual references like they're there in the story, but I'm also not emphasizing it in a way that is kind of dark and cynical.
01:12:02.000 It's just part of the story.
01:12:03.000 This is the story.
01:12:05.000 And so I think that that's one of the solutions to the postmodern morass is to be aware of the kind of, let's say, the grittier part or the sliding part of the stories and including it in a higher tale.
01:12:22.000 To have the margins and the center together.
01:12:24.000 To not just have the center or the margins, but to bring them together in one story.
01:12:28.000 So that's been my approach to the fairy tales.
01:12:31.000 When you do that with something like Snow White, I'm guessing that there are sort of functional, no folklore would succeed if it did not have a functionality, I suppose.
01:12:31.000 Cool.
01:12:42.000 So I suppose there are social codes and ethics and things to do with Chastity baked into Snow White, the inability of Snow White to evade her own female darkness if she's not willing to voyage into the forest.
01:12:56.000 I'd like to know what them underground miners go down into the unconscious and they mine for jewels.
01:13:02.000 Y7, I'd like to know that.
01:13:04.000 And the apple has to be given as a gift and the apple is perhaps the most potent fruit, isn't it?
01:13:12.000 Something whole.
01:13:13.000 It features in the origin story of our kind and of obviously Christian mythology and the idea of the poisoned apple, that which looks whole being toxic, that the mother, the dark mother, will give you a toxic gift.
01:13:28.000 Tell me like how some of that Jungian stuff comes out in your retelling.
01:13:33.000 I mean, there are a lot of things going on in the story.
01:13:36.000 So in terms of the dwarves, one of the best ways, I think, to understand the dwarves is you imagine Snow White, obviously, she reaches her teenage period.
01:13:44.000 That's what's happening, right?
01:13:46.000 She is entering puberty.
01:13:47.000 She's being transformed.
01:13:48.000 All of a sudden, she becomes a threat to the woman, to the mother.
01:13:51.000 All of a sudden, this young girl now is becoming a woman.
01:13:54.000 She's beautiful.
01:13:56.000 And so she gets cast into the forest and she deals with, you could say, The problems of femininity at the outset.
01:14:05.000 She deals with the problems of puberty and not the solution to it.
01:14:10.000 And so she has to learn to work, she has to learn to clean the house, she has all these kind of annoying parts of what the female role was traditionally.
01:14:18.000 And then also she's surrounded by these idiosyncratic men that are all, you know, that are just like little men that aren't really men, they
01:14:26.000 can't really be her priest, her priest, they can't be her prince, they're just, you
01:14:31.000 know, and Disney gets that right too.
01:14:32.000 It's like all these weird aspects of manliness, you know, like sneezy and doc, like,
01:14:37.000 and kind of dopey guy, and they're, they're, they say they're fragmented masculinity.
01:14:41.000 Excellent. And then what she has to find is ultimately her mate.
01:14:45.000 She has to find her prince, the one that can show her what this transformation is for, which is ultimately to be married and to have children.
01:14:53.000 That's what puberty is leading towards, is fertility and the capacity to engage in sexual union.
01:15:00.000 And so that's a good way.
01:15:02.000 And so that's a dark time, right?
01:15:04.000 She goes into the forest and she has to, like I said, she has to learn to work.
01:15:07.000 She feels like she's in a stranger's house, right?
01:15:09.000 She's not at home with herself, with her situation.
01:15:13.000 And she has to kind of get through that in order to find a new home.
01:15:16.000 And in some way she has to die.
01:15:17.000 It's also part of the menstrual cycle, like the monthly menstrual cycle.
01:15:20.000 There's like a little death and then a rebirth at every cycle.
01:15:23.000 So that's a little image of that.
01:15:25.000 But in terms of the The apple really has to do with Adam and Eve.
01:15:31.000 It really is a play on the story of Adam and Eve and the problem of beauty, the problem of supplement.
01:15:40.000 In the story of Snow White, the original, the Grimm's version for example, The Queen goes to see Snow White three times.
01:15:50.000 The first time, she brings her a decorative comb.
01:15:53.000 The second time, she brings her a corset or a belt or something.
01:15:59.000 It's very mysterious because you think, isn't Snow White the most beautiful girl of all?
01:16:05.000 Why is she trying to give her things to supplement her beauty?
01:16:09.000 Why is she trying to put makeup on the most beautiful girl in the world?
01:16:13.000 And that's the mystery of beauty, right?
01:16:15.000 The weaponized beauty or the artificial beauty versus true beauty.
01:16:20.000 And that has to do with self-consciousness of beauty, right?
01:16:24.000 When someone becomes self-conscious of their beauty, then they're capable of weaponizing it to manipulate others.
01:16:30.000 And that's what she's trying to do.
01:16:32.000 She's trying to kill her by making herself conscious of her beauty so that she then can become like her, basically.
01:16:40.000 Become like the Queen, which is a weaponized beauty.
01:16:44.000 And the apple, ultimately, that's what it is.
01:16:47.000 In the original version, it says that the apple was polished smooth like a mirror.
01:16:53.000 That's the mirror.
01:16:54.000 That's the Queen's mirror.
01:16:56.000 The Queen's mirror is not a magic mirror, really.
01:16:58.000 It's just a mirror.
01:16:59.000 It's self-conscious beauty.
01:17:01.000 It's the capacity to see yourself from the outside, to judge yourself in terms of your beauty.
01:17:07.000 And that's what makes you put on makeup, let's say.
01:17:10.000 So that's what's going on in that story.
01:17:12.000 Make yourself conscious of your beauty and that will destroy it or kill you.
01:17:16.000 And the primary relationship is the relationship with the self, that the self has replaced God.
01:17:22.000 Your primary relationship with the external world is a replication, a reciprocal relationship with the self.
01:17:29.000 The self has become the deity.
01:17:31.000 That's cool.
01:17:31.000 That's really cool analysis.
01:17:33.000 So is that the function of the apple then in Genesis?
01:17:37.000 It has to do with knowledge.
01:17:39.000 I think that's what it is.
01:17:40.000 I'm pretty sure.
01:17:41.000 Because in the Biblical story, it has to do with knowledge, which leads to self-consciousness, right?
01:17:46.000 So, Adam eats the apple, and then he feels naked, and now he has to cover himself.
01:17:52.000 In the Snow White story, it's kind of reversed, where the Queen is Enticing her to cover herself.
01:17:58.000 Enticing her to put something out there, to put on the decorative comb, to wear a corset, to enhance her beauty.
01:18:05.000 In Adam and Eve's story, it happens in reverse, where they eat the apple first and then they want to cover themselves.
01:18:11.000 But it's still the same structure.
01:18:12.000 If you see it from outside, you can see how it's the same pattern.
01:18:17.000 And it has to do with It has to do with self-consciousness, the problem of self-consciousness.
01:18:22.000 In our version of Snow White, for example, we have her holding a hand mirror and it's a phone.
01:18:28.000 She's holding a phone.
01:18:29.000 You can see it in the image, right?
01:18:31.000 She's holding this hand mirror and looking at herself.
01:18:32.000 And it's like that reflection and those likes and those comments that make us feel like we have worth, external validation.
01:18:43.000 Also, as a paradigm, they're both about objectification and materialization, i.e.
01:18:51.000 the ineffable made objectified.
01:18:54.000 When it remains ineffable, it remains in the territory of divinity, it's still sublimated.
01:19:01.000 Once it's objectified, then you've just cast more territory, you've given yet more unto Caesar.
01:19:08.000 Why do you think that Why do you think that more female-centric folktales have succeeded than, you know, you have to dig around for male fairy tales, you know?
01:19:20.000 Do you think it's because there's customarily more pressure on females to socially conform because of the sort of biological challenges that females traditionally and more generally have?
01:19:32.000 Why?
01:19:33.000 Why are there more?
01:19:33.000 Why would that be?
01:19:33.000 Why?
01:19:36.000 I mean, I think that for sure that there's a...
01:19:41.000 For sure when girls hit puberty, they have to deal with it, like, in a way, more than
01:19:48.000 Guys, we have to deal with it too, but there's a reality to transformation, which is way more risky for girls than it is for men.
01:19:56.000 It's like, you can get pregnant, That's a big deal.
01:19:59.000 That'll change everything in your life.
01:20:01.000 And so I think for sure the fact that a lot of these stories have to do with the transformation and kind of learning about this transformation are part of our, let's say, the fairy tales that have risen to the surface in the modern world.
01:20:15.000 But there are a lot of fairy tales that also have male characters.
01:20:19.000 They're just a little less known in the modern world for some reason.
01:20:22.000 But we have Jack and the Beanstalk.
01:20:24.000 That's part of the series we're going to have.
01:20:26.000 I have the Valet Little Tailor.
01:20:27.000 We're going to have different versions of those more male-led fairy tales as well.
01:20:33.000 That's pretty cool, that'll be a cool one.
01:20:34.000 Jack and the Beanstalk, what he has to do, he gets that magical seed, he exchanges it for something practical, the bloody idiot, then he can reach the sky in this magical plant and then he's got to confront a giant and then he's essentially a king if he does that.
01:20:50.000 Well, that story, I love that story.
01:20:53.000 When I was a kid, I loved that story and I loved it and hated it because I didn't understand it.
01:20:58.000 Why do I love this story?
01:20:59.000 And I remember being a kid and thinking, first of all, why is Jack the hero?
01:21:04.000 He's just a thief.
01:21:05.000 Why is he the main character of the fairy tale?
01:21:08.000 And I was always bothered by that when I was a kid.
01:21:10.000 I was like, I love this story, but I didn't know why.
01:21:12.000 And so I've been meditating on it forever, thinking about it for a very long time.
01:21:17.000 And I think that I've cracked some aspects of it.
01:21:20.000 In terms of what the story is about, you know, and it is about discovering what masculinity is.
01:21:27.000 That's what the story is about and dealing with that.
01:21:30.000 So, I mean, first of all, he trades a cow for seeds.
01:21:33.000 That gives you a nice hint right away.
01:21:36.000 He doesn't have a father.
01:21:37.000 He lives with his mother.
01:21:38.000 Then he takes the cow and he trades it for seeds.
01:21:42.000 But those seeds, he doesn't understand His mother doesn't understand the value of the seed.
01:21:48.000 Doesn't understand the value of this point.
01:21:51.000 The thing that has the pattern in it, but doesn't have the body.
01:21:55.000 What is that?
01:21:56.000 What is this thing that has a pattern, but doesn't have a body?
01:22:01.000 What is this idea of something?
01:22:03.000 That's what a seed is.
01:22:04.000 A seed is a pattern without body.
01:22:07.000 It's close to the notion of idea.
01:22:09.000 That's what Jack is going to get in the beanstalk.
01:22:13.000 He climbs up.
01:22:16.000 At first, he gets the riches.
01:22:18.000 Then he gets the source of riches, right?
01:22:20.000 He gets the chicken that lays the golden egg.
01:22:22.000 It's like, no, riches is one thing, but wait a minute, that's not good enough.
01:22:26.000 Like if I get the thing that makes you rich, oh, then I've got more than riches, right?
01:22:31.000 Then I've got the pattern of how to produce riches.
01:22:34.000 Oh, nice.
01:22:35.000 And then it's like, well, there's actually one more, which is something like the music of the spheres, right?
01:22:39.000 It's something like the pattern of all reality.
01:22:43.000 And that's the final thing that he gets.
01:22:44.000 He gets the harp.
01:22:46.000 The golden harp that plays the music of the world.
01:22:49.000 Like, if I can get the pattern of everything...
01:22:51.000 Then all the things will lay themselves out below that.
01:22:55.000 That's what Jack is about.
01:22:57.000 It really is about, in some ways, what is a seed and what is a pattern and how does it land in the world?
01:23:05.000 So it's functioning on a few levels there because you've got to trade the milk for the sperm at some point to become an actualized male.
01:23:05.000 Cool.
01:23:13.000 Then there's the potentiality of the beast, and I like that the template of sky father and earth mother is a strong pagan ideal, that the father is sky.
01:23:29.000 You would think it would be You know, because of Mars and martiality, that men and steel and men and flesh would be a sort of a perpetuated theme.
01:23:39.000 But continually, theologically and theosophically, you find maleness and air equated.
01:23:44.000 And I reckon, yeah, you nailed it there.
01:23:45.000 It's because it's the unembodied potentiality.
01:23:49.000 And I love that.
01:23:50.000 The first thing you get is riches in the thought of, yeah, the gold or the egg.
01:23:54.000 then you get the ability to generate it as well as the sort of the chicken-egg
01:23:58.000 famous folk maxim and then ultimately yeah you get the ineffable ethereal ulterior reality from which reality is played and
01:24:10.000 whether that's the harp in Gaelic mythology or the flute in you know Krishna
01:24:15.000 and many other like there's sort of that music of the spheres thing as well
01:24:19.000 yeah that vibe and in the beginning there was the word, the vibration, the
01:24:23.000 vibration that precedes matter.
01:24:25.000 That there's presumably some point where matter, where vibration materializes.
01:24:31.000 Or as Bill Hicks' joke used to have it, that all matter is energy condensed to a slow vibration.
01:24:38.000 That at some point we have to straddle this space between the unrealized, the unmanifest and the manifest.
01:24:46.000 And that is the journey of the male.
01:24:48.000 The journey of the male will do that.
01:24:50.000 I reckon that the reason that male folklore isn't successful is it's helpful to have mediocre males.
01:24:55.000 Mediocritized, unrealized, unawakened males.
01:24:58.000 You don't want societies full of awakened, oppositional males.
01:25:03.000 And with females there's the obvious functional requirement that all of those fairy tales that we've touched upon Deal with.
01:25:11.000 That's pretty cool.
01:25:12.000 You want anything on the Pied Piper?
01:25:14.000 I once wrote a version of that, which I should have put more effort into.
01:25:17.000 I got the ambiguity of the figure pretty, pretty good, but I never truly understood the nature of the bargain.
01:25:24.000 You know, he goes to the town, he's got some weird Christianity in it, there's that lame child, there's a lame child that is spared the purge.
01:25:32.000 He first of all clears the town of rats, then the town Knock him on the rat deal like they don't pay the Pied Piper and then the Pied Piper comes back and he takes all the children.
01:25:43.000 And I think that like it ends on that.
01:25:46.000 It ends on that.
01:25:47.000 It's so brutal.
01:25:47.000 It's a pretty horrible story.
01:25:49.000 It's so brutal.
01:25:55.000 I mean, You could say that it has to do exactly with the deal.
01:26:03.000 It has to do with the problem of the deal.
01:26:07.000 How can I say this?
01:26:11.000 The town makes a deal with a stranger.
01:26:18.000 That's the best way to understand it.
01:26:20.000 Someone who's not part of their unity.
01:26:26.000 He's not good or bad.
01:26:27.000 He's ambiguous.
01:26:27.000 He's black and white.
01:26:29.000 That's what a stranger is.
01:26:31.000 A stranger is ambiguous.
01:26:32.000 Now, the problem is that once you include something in a town or something that's not part of it and then you give it responsibility and power, you have to be aware of that.
01:26:47.000 You have to pay the piper or else Or else that influence will take over.
01:26:55.000 It's the best way to understand that.
01:26:58.000 That influence will kind of... A good example would be... Think of the Roman Empire.
01:27:07.000 The Roman Empire needs soldiers.
01:27:11.000 So they're like, let's just get these barbarians and bring the barbarians in and they'll fight for us.
01:27:16.000 But their allegiance is not to the Roman Empire.
01:27:21.000 So if you don't care for them in the right way, they're just going to take you over, obviously.
01:27:28.000 At some point.
01:27:31.000 Because they don't care about your goals.
01:27:33.000 They want to get paid.
01:27:35.000 If you pay them, if you give them what they ask for, then they'll remain ambiguous and they will play the role that they're playing.
01:27:43.000 But if you don't Manage that relationship properly, then at some point they'll take your kids.
01:27:53.000 These are dark stories, like really about how reality works in ways that a lot of red pill realities, let's say.
01:28:03.000 Yeah, I mean, I was thinking then about the nature of the mercenary, that the mercenary has no attachment, and I was relating that to something you said earlier in our conversation, that we've noticed one of the trends of globalism is the breakdown of these intermediary institutions from family to church to community.
01:28:20.000 You know like a hundred years ago I reckon anyone you spoke to would belong to a church and a cricket club and like various little organizations and now increasingly people are sort of looped off staring just in into solitary mirrors like trapped in that you know trapped in the device in narcissism solipsism and onanism and to break out of that yeah you do require the transcendent experience and I feel like that these kind of pacts the The Pied Piper Pact, the Barbarian Pact, might be at a contractual tipping point right now.
01:28:54.000 What I feel is one of the macro arguments, Jonathan, is that the technological and communication power that has been harnessed could lead to mass decentralization of power.
01:29:05.000 It could lead to communities becoming democratized, sharing of resources.
01:29:10.000 What happened with Napster?
01:29:11.000 What happened with the Arab Spring?
01:29:13.000 The ability for revolution, overthrow, Fast turnaround of power, end of dynasty, emergence of mass decentralization, localism, the slaying of the titans, the behemoth could be slain, the serpent could have its head cut off.
01:29:30.000 So to maximally oppose that power requires barbaric Centralisation.
01:29:38.000 But because those kind of tropes have dropped out of our discourse, they have to be ornamented as, this is to protect the vulnerable!
01:29:47.000 To protect the vulnerable we have to censor everything that you're saying is going to hurt vulnerable people!
01:29:54.000 It's been the most awful type of inversion, the sort of dark alchemy of the tyrant, you know?
01:30:03.000 Yeah, well, it's interesting because the technology question and the phone question and all of these are actually a good example of the Pied Piper story.
01:30:15.000 If you want to understand the Pied Piper story, it's a great way to understand it, which is that we create powerful technologies that are added to us.
01:30:26.000 Technology is supplement, it is not from our nature.
01:30:30.000 It's something that you add to yourself.
01:30:32.000 That's what the Pied Piper is, right?
01:30:33.000 A stranger comes in, we add his power to ours, and we do it to get rid of the rat.
01:30:39.000 So we say something like, well, Neuralink is great because it'll help people walk.
01:30:45.000 I mean, don't you want people to walk, Russell?
01:30:48.000 Like, don't you want people who can't walk to walk?
01:30:51.000 You like people in wheelchair?
01:30:53.000 You get off on that?
01:30:55.000 That's right.
01:30:57.000 But then if you're not attentive to it in the proper manner, obviously, then it will rule over you and take your children.
01:31:04.000 Neuralink is the scariest technology to ever come about on the horizon of human experience.
01:31:11.000 And it's being, like you said, it's being promoted.
01:31:13.000 A lot of these technologies are promoted with the desire to help get rid of the rats.
01:31:20.000 But ultimately, if we're not careful, they'll take our children.
01:31:22.000 And that's what happened with cell phones, right?
01:31:24.000 It's like now our kids are completely taken up by TikTok.
01:31:29.000 They're hypnotized, you know, by the music.
01:31:34.000 Because in a sense, yeah, say Jonathan in it, safety and convenience, like think how many measures are into all measures now, all globalist centralizing measures, safety or convenience are always the lubricant that is deployed to gain entry.
01:31:50.000 And I feel like... Maybe sometimes we have to do with a few rats.
01:31:53.000 That's right.
01:31:54.000 Just leave them there.
01:31:55.000 Leave the rats.
01:31:56.000 A few rats are fine.
01:31:57.000 Tidy up.
01:31:58.000 Tidy up your food.
01:31:59.000 Don't leave shit everywhere.
01:32:01.000 Be hygienic.
01:32:03.000 Or as our mutual friend would say, clean your goddamn room, man.
01:32:07.000 Tidy your room.
01:32:08.000 Don't leave scraps all over the floor.
01:32:11.000 Otherwise, those Pied Piper types, they'll benefit.
01:32:16.000 That's right.
01:32:17.000 Exactly.
01:32:17.000 That's right.
01:32:19.000 Jonathan, that was good.
01:32:19.000 Amazing.
01:32:21.000 We were talking for 75 minutes there.
01:32:23.000 It was a beautiful journey from Christianity to pagan folklore, all the while cruising gently through personal and cultural morality and what may be transcendent of that and from what it might be ultimately derived.
01:32:38.000 Some unifying sense of oneness, the possibility of the divine being realized here.
01:32:42.000 It's good chat, man.
01:32:43.000 Thank you very much, Jonathan.
01:32:45.000 That was great to talk.
01:32:46.000 Thanks, Russell.
01:32:47.000 Thanks for having me.
01:32:48.000 Let's do it every Christmas.
01:32:50.000 Anytime.
01:32:50.000 Sure.
01:32:55.000 Jonathan, thank you so much for that informative, enlightening, exciting conversation.
01:32:58.000 I hope we get to speak with Jonathan again soon.
01:33:00.000 Let me know what you thought of that conversation in the chat.
01:33:03.000 Merry Christmas, everyone.
01:33:05.000 Coming up over the, yeah, that's right, coming up over the festive period, we've got loads of content.
01:33:09.000 We've got a series called Conspiracy Theory to Conspiracy Fact.
01:33:13.000 We're gonna be talking about the number of times over the past year we've moved from being condemned and criticized, vilified, I'm taking this off, as lunatics, because I was about to say, you know, I do look like, The colours, they clash, to understanding that empirically the claims that were made were legitimate, whether that's Nord Stream Pipeline, the origins of the Ukraine war, certain ideas around January the 6th, and of course the mother of all conspiracy theories become conspiracy facts, the coronavirus pandemic period.
01:33:43.000 That's coming up at the end of December.
01:33:46.000 Into January, we've got Chris Hedges talking about Israel-Palestine.
01:33:48.000 We've got Kali Means on Big Food.
01:33:50.000 You'll come out of that conversation a lot better educated.
01:33:54.000 Similarly, with Vandana Shiva explaining how big agriculture plans to take over the world's food supplies and monopolise our ability to eat.
01:34:03.000 Then, on the 8th of January, we've got Greg Gutfeld coming on the show talking about Tucker Carlson and how media has changed.
01:34:10.000 Thank you so much for supporting us this year.
01:34:12.000 We will see you for the Conspiracy Theory specials in a couple of days.
01:34:16.000 Remember, become an Awakened Wonder, press the red button right now, and join us to talk about how we can build physical real communities together, live events, and you get the opportunity to be with our live guests.
01:34:26.000 Thank you those of us that have been with us for a year and supported us and welcome our new members like HootYouShopper, WGreddy's, Nick Diesel, NickTrapasso1 and Tshar.
01:34:36.000 Join us in a few days, not for more of the same but for more of the different.
01:34:39.000 Until then, if you can, stay free and Merry Christmas!
01:34:43.000 Coming up this week...
01:34:45.000 is if you have an economic system in which pharmaceutical companies benefit hugely from
01:34:50.000 medical emergencies, where a military industrial complex benefits from war, where energy companies
01:34:56.000 benefit from energy crises, you are going to generate states of perpetual crisis.
01:35:01.000 Yes.
01:35:02.000 This war was totally preventable.
01:35:09.000 We knew the red lines, but we wanted to get food now.
01:35:14.000 The American people get it now?
01:35:16.000 National suicide, man.
01:35:17.000 If we wanted to annihilate the globe tomorrow, God forbid, we can do it like that!
01:35:24.000 This is greedy war on the general public.
01:35:28.000 All the hormones and all the toxins in our food are changing our biology.
01:35:34.000 We're losing our ability to reproduce.
01:35:37.000 Bill Gates pours money into Africa for feeding the poor in Africa and preventing famine.
01:35:41.000 What's he doing?
01:35:42.000 He's pushing chemicals, pushing GMOs, pushing patents.
01:35:46.000 Who hates the speech?
01:35:48.000 It's the elites.
01:35:50.000 Around the world we see censorship.
01:35:54.000 This cycle that we're experiencing is the present decline of America.
01:35:59.000 It's military adventurism.
01:36:00.000 It's essentially a military beyond control.