The Auron MacIntyre Show - The Lost Ritual and the University ｜ Guest： Johann Kurtz ｜ 2⧸14⧸24

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00:00:30.260 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:00:32.020 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:33.380 I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.

00:00:37.040 So I had the pleasure of meeting my guest today, Johan Kurtz.

00:00:40.920 When I was over in the UK, he gave an excellent speech over at the event put on by the Beowulf Society there,

00:00:47.760 where I was speaking as well.

00:00:49.780 And I also had the opportunity to go ahead and have him do a guest piece on my sub stack recently.

00:00:54.940 And it was so great that I thought I would have him join me to talk about it.

00:00:58.500 Johan, thanks for coming on, man.

00:01:00.280 Thank you so much for having me.

00:01:02.120 And congratulations again on $150,000.

00:01:04.400 That's just an incredible achievement.

00:01:06.300 Well, thank you.

00:01:06.900 And I really appreciate that you were willing to come on.

00:01:09.200 Like I said, the piece was fantastic.

00:01:11.120 Everybody responded to it in a very excited manner.

00:01:14.460 So I definitely wanted to talk to you about it here.

00:01:16.700 You delved into the idea of the university as an initiation ritual, which I think is a really important perspective that a lot of conservatives wouldn't think about.

00:01:25.540 And we're going to get right into that piece in a moment.

00:01:28.040 But before we do, guys, let's hear from today's sponsor.

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00:02:36.820 All right, Johan, I want to go ahead and dive into the topic of the importance of initiation rituals.

00:02:43.640 But before we do, a lot of people are probably unfamiliar.

00:02:47.000 Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

00:02:48.820 How did you get started writing about things like this?

00:02:52.780 Sure.

00:02:52.960 Yeah.

00:02:53.160 So I used to work in big tech at various companies that your employees would recognize.

00:02:58.280 Shout out to the guys at New Founding, by the way.

00:03:00.020 That's a fantastic project.

00:03:01.700 And I also support it.

00:03:02.800 After that, I realized that I had an opportunity to sort of take a break in my career.

00:03:09.160 And around the same time, I had started a family.

00:03:13.380 I'd been married.

00:03:14.100 I'd started having children.

00:03:15.060 And I realized that I actually wanted to think about, not in a reactive way, but in a proactive way, starting to build the structures that would be necessary around myself to protect my family.

00:03:27.120 Physically, yes, but also spiritually to embed them in very rich contexts, psychologically, spiritually, culturally.

00:03:34.120 And I started to think about what leadership in that domain was necessary.

00:03:38.920 And as I started to think about that, I used writing as a tool to structure my thoughts and to sort of prompt me to consider new topics each week.

00:03:47.640 And that became its own thing.

00:03:48.960 And as a result of that, I was invited to the event that you mentioned earlier, which I was tremendously grateful for.

00:03:55.420 And there I met yourself and Dave.

00:03:58.020 And I've online got into conversations with other people that have been on your show, like Krapdos, who are now close friends.

00:04:05.460 So it's just a sort of organic thing.

00:04:07.400 All of the writing centers around the concept of I've anchored it on the subject of becoming noble, which is a question of what is the sort of complete set of considerations that we need to be taking on to establish a new set of elites if, as I think most of your viewers would agree, the society and the civilization that we know and love continues to crumble around us.

00:04:31.280 And I think it's so important, like you mentioned, that people make those critical transitions.

00:04:36.540 That's part of what the piece you wrote is about.

00:04:39.380 But that transition, like you said, to a family man, to a father, that changed your perspective.

00:04:45.160 It changes everyone who I think goes through it.

00:04:47.640 And it creates a scenario where you don't just look at the world around you as a bunch of opportunities for yourself or possible dangers for yourself.

00:04:55.980 But you understand that there's a there's a structure that's going to be around your family, around your children, your spouse, and it's going to influence them.

00:05:05.420 It's going to constantly be changing the way that they live their lives.

00:05:09.220 And if you aren't a part of building a structure to protect them from what's out there, if you're not actively taking a role in shaping the world, the world will instead shape your family.

00:05:20.120 And so I think just, you know, that that basic transition from adolescence to to manhood also involves critically that taking on a responsibility that you assume when you have a family.

00:05:34.280 Yeah, absolutely.

00:05:34.980 And it's you know, you can be a fantastic mentor to your sons, to your daughters.

00:05:39.520 But as you pass them off, as they go through the various stages of their life, first comes school and, you know, homeschooling is an option, private tutoring is an option.

00:05:48.400 And I think it's fantastic that that's growing.

00:05:50.440 But the road is a long one.

00:05:52.560 And you do have to think further down the line about universities, I think, and colleges, which was the subject of the piece.

00:05:59.860 And I think it's just sort of reflexive for so many people now to send their sons and probably worse, their daughters to university, even those that think very deeply about the question of homeschool.

00:06:10.920 When, of course, it's the universities that are the progenitors of a lot of the most radicalized ideological content that I think we have to be on guard against.

00:06:18.740 And so this is part of a wider set of thinking I'm doing about what the alternative structures would be.

00:06:24.780 But more importantly, how you can break out of that reflexive mindset of college is the place to go.

00:06:29.940 Because I think, you know, the impetus for this post was, well, I think it's fairly well agreed upon in our sphere.

00:06:38.300 There are serious problems with the universities outside of a handful of obviously aligned institutions.

00:06:45.680 That being said, most young people I know, it's not even a question in their mind, do I not go to university, regardless of the financial calculation.

00:06:54.840 And perhaps we can get into the psychological aspects in a minute.

00:06:59.220 But also for parents, you know, it's just it's such an established part of the American and the broader Western story.

00:07:05.220 The centrality of the university, the college to the coming of age experience, that it doesn't really get the realistic scrutiny of what are the alternatives other than trade school.

00:07:15.040 And there's nothing wrong with trade school.

00:07:16.760 And I think a lot of people should go there.

00:07:18.300 But that's it's not a universal answer.

00:07:20.580 So I think it does deserve the slightly more well-rounded critical analysis of how can we change this?

00:07:27.260 What comes next?

00:07:28.020 What are the deep structures, incentives and assumptions that are causing this this sort of harass?

00:07:34.540 Yeah, I think that's critical because a lot of people, myself included, have looked at the university system and said something has to change.

00:07:41.880 Obviously, the first wave of this movement, as you kind of mentioned, there was the immediate conservative reaction of, well, just don't send your kids to school.

00:07:50.360 You know, don't send them to college, send them to trade school, have them have them make two hundred thousand dollars a year as a plumber.

00:07:56.520 Right. Something like that.

00:07:58.020 And that looks like a good option at first glance.

00:08:01.360 And for some people, as you pointed out, that is the right option.

00:08:03.960 That is the right way forward.

00:08:05.400 That is where their skill set lies.

00:08:07.100 That's where they would best be able to serve their community.

00:08:10.580 And there should we should be working on accruing a certain level of dignity to those professions that they don't currently receive.

00:08:18.480 I think that is certainly part of the problem.

00:08:20.860 But if you look a little deeper, you realize that the fact that kind of these high verbal skill positions, the ones which tend to shape culture, tend to shape the manipulation of information, you can't just say, we'll just go to the trades for that.

00:08:36.640 Obviously, that's something that is different.

00:08:38.860 And the fact that everyone has to pass through the university for that is a critical problem.

00:08:43.000 And so, for instance, I have said things like, well, we need to go ahead and have alternative certification programs that allow you to go ahead and bypass the university system.

00:08:51.760 And that's a functional answer.

00:08:53.120 I think that's where a lot of conservatives would go is we need to we need to strip the function away from the university.

00:08:58.960 And then I think that's certainly useful to go ahead and pull that away so that they don't have the monopoly on the credentialed class.

00:09:07.100 I think that's really important.

00:09:08.500 However, you and your piece really addressed a separate piece of this, which is not just the functionality, not just removing people, sending them to trade school or not just giving them an alternative certification so they don't have to go to university.

00:09:22.060 But you point out that actually the critic, the probably the most critical part, even as people look at the university and its failures and the fact that it seems less and less of a good financial investment, even as they see that they still send their kids to college.

00:09:39.160 And the reason for that is actually mostly spiritual, not just monetary.

00:09:44.040 Can you explain a little more about that?

00:09:46.800 Sure.

00:09:47.160 Yeah.

00:09:47.380 So the sort of central conceit of the article revolves around the concept of the initiation ritual.

00:09:53.820 And if you look throughout the history of sociology and religion, you find that almost every major culture, even minor primitive cultures, have some conception of an initiation ritual, which suggests there's something universal about the human experience that requires these.

00:10:08.480 There's also this paradox that our university, at least on the surface, at least on the surface, does not have any rituals that it accepts as initiation rituals in the traditional sense into society.

00:10:19.420 Perhaps a little bit further on, we can sort of flesh out the typical characteristics of an initiation ritual.

00:10:25.940 However, I believe that a lot of that has been sublimated into the university process.

00:10:31.580 So to define what an initiation ritual is, perhaps, to make this a bit clearer, you may be familiar with the term rites of passage, which has sort of entered into common discourse now as a term.

00:10:44.980 This comes from a sociologist called Arnold van Gnep, who was one of the first to point out that society is not actually necessarily a cohesive whole, but typically it breaks down into distinct groupings or sub-societies.

00:10:59.220 And a rite of passage is the demarcation, the journey that an individual goes on.

00:11:04.400 Excuse me one second.

00:11:07.600 There we go.

00:11:08.880 It's a journey that an individual goes on as they transition from one section of society to another.

00:11:14.780 Now, these groupings might be castes.

00:11:17.040 They might be classes.

00:11:18.820 They might be gender differences.

00:11:20.940 They might be age group differences.

00:11:22.980 They might be social groups, et cetera.

00:11:24.580 What is very destructive is when an individual is caught in limbo.

00:11:29.260 That is, he is inhabiting a society without a clear conception of what his role is in that society, how he relates to others in the society, what his roles and responsibilities and duties are in that role.

00:11:40.120 And so what a rite of passage is, is it is a commonly understood journey that an initiate, the individual goes on as he departs from one group.

00:11:52.260 In our instance, it would be a sort of adolescent stage into an adult stage.

00:11:57.440 An initiation ritual into adulthood is a sort of like formalization of this.

00:12:02.080 So typically, Mertia Aliade, who's a Romanian famous historian of religion, defines this as a body of rites and oral teachings whose purpose is to provide an alteration in the religious and social status of the person to be initiated.

00:12:19.180 So it is this commonly understood ritual.

00:12:21.940 You do these things.

00:12:23.100 You go to this place.

00:12:24.220 You are recognized as inhabiting a new place in the sort of social structure.

00:12:30.520 Now, this is of great importance for reasons that we can dig into, if interesting.

00:12:36.400 But you might imagine that these occupy considerations like psychological stability, confidence in self-conception, an acknowledgement of where one is in one's life and how one relates to the others around you, how one inhabits one's place in the broader story of the history of the society that you are part of, how you relate to the leadership classes.

00:12:58.160 And these kind of initiation rights, and it's not just school in society.

00:13:03.380 I mean, to give another example that is perhaps recognizable to people in modernity, again, it's not a fully fledged initiation right and it only applies to a small section of society, but would be boot camp when you go to a military.

00:13:16.220 And part of this sort of ritualistic process is the shaving of the head to indicate that you are a new person that will have to take on new values, new disciplines, and that you have new responsibilities to fulfill.

00:13:27.220 College, I believe, is a version of this.

00:13:31.080 And that is part of why it seems to have such an irrational attraction to young people.

00:13:37.840 They realize that financially, it might have been becoming more and more questionable as an investment for decades at this point.

00:13:44.720 Certainly, in some domains, it seems like a totally irrational decision in terms of a crass financial calculation of the debt you take on versus the reward you can expect to accrue.

00:13:54.520 But there is some question of identity that is making it seductive and a reflexive action.

00:14:01.520 And I think this question of the initiation right is at the heart of this.

00:14:04.680 Yes, and I think it's difficult for a lot of modern people to grasp this concept because we are, unfortunately, entirely spiritually impoverished, where we're secular to the point of humiliation.

00:14:17.220 And so when we look at these things, we could easily identify the role of this ritual in a tribal society, right?

00:14:24.320 The young man goes through some kind of spirit, you know, some vision quest, you know, on some kind of symbolic hunt or something like this.

00:14:32.480 This is something we would automatically recognize.

00:14:35.100 But because we think of ourselves as very advanced and modern, we think that we've progressed beyond the need for these type of things.

00:14:41.420 And especially in the United States, this might be less of an issue in maybe a place like the UK, but in the United States, where class consciousness is something that is not very normal, or at least is the attempt to avoid it, even if it still exists.

00:14:56.800 It's very difficult for people to understand the idea of knowing a role in a space inside society.

00:15:02.680 Identity is even kind of a dirty word on the right in many places in the conservative sphere, for sure, because the idea is you should always be very mobile in your class, in your station.

00:15:16.160 You should never be rooted down to one place or one idea, one cast, one thing, right?

00:15:21.320 You should always be able to move fluidly between these points of kind of maturity in society at any moment.

00:15:27.900 In fact, in many ways, some of the biggest problems we have is the fact that perhaps people are too fluidly able to move back to things like their childhood and live in constantly nostalgic surroundings.

00:15:40.620 You have the Disney adult, you know, that kind of idea.

00:15:44.520 And so it's very hard for people to understand that there would be a value of a particular initiation ritual that would move you from one kind of moment of life to the next.

00:15:56.440 Because we're never supposed to have those things.

00:15:58.560 We're not supposed to identify those borders and those boundaries.

00:16:01.520 They're supposed to be constantly fluid.

00:16:03.080 And any of that kind of stuff that was a formal spiritual ritual that progressed you through certain stations of life or gave you a particular role, those are all old traditional notions that have been left behind by modern progressive people.

00:16:17.440 Right, exactly.

00:16:18.240 Yeah.

00:16:18.740 There is this notion that the initiation ritual is basically a tribal act that has been left correctly in the sort of dark mists of history.

00:16:26.440 But in fact, if you look at the Western tradition from antiquity, from the classical world, initiation rites proliferate in, you know, in the Spartan civilization, in the Athenian civilization, all the way through the Western tradition in one form or another.

00:16:39.640 And to this day, the sort of vestiges of that remains.

00:16:42.740 So, you know, something like a baptism is an initiatory ceremony.

00:16:46.940 It is a formalized ceremony that people gather to witness in which there is a particular ritual that is played out.

00:16:54.680 Certain words are spoken.

00:16:55.760 Certain, you know, the individual comes into contact with water.

00:17:00.360 And in more traditional forms, you know, if you look at the baptism of Christ himself, he is submerged in the water.

00:17:08.280 The water rises above his head.

00:17:10.120 And it is this notion of descent into another realm out of which you emerge a new man.

00:17:15.420 So it's a spiritual transformation.

00:17:18.460 It's a physical transformation.

00:17:20.240 And, you know, if you look at the Middle Ages, you have incredibly complex baptismal rites that signify all kinds of divisions within society.

00:17:29.220 So you have in the medieval Catholic mass, for example, you have the difference between the mass of the catechumens, which is the first part of the mass, which anyone is allowed to attend, including people that are still preparing for baptism.

00:17:42.280 And then you have the liturgy of the Eucharist, which follows that, which is a more private affair in which the Eucharist is consecrated, that only the baptized are allowed to attend.

00:17:51.780 So there's this inherent division of society that revolves around this initiatory rite.

00:17:56.120 And these initiation rites, you know, now we think of it in fairly silly and indeed often quite evil circumstances with regards to esoteric cults and these things.

00:18:05.760 But they were typical for, you know, chivalric initiation, priestly initiation.

00:18:10.400 There were ceremonies that were necessary to ascend the different ranks of the nobility and a ceremony that was necessary to become king in many countries.

00:18:18.040 There was guild initiation, which is professional initiation that went through a process of apprenticeship, tests, professional secrets and symbology that was necessary to understand the trade.

00:18:29.140 You know, there were notions of initiatory pilgrimages.

00:18:31.680 It's very interesting that you use the example of the Disney adult, the sort of perpetual child that is always in this limbic state between being a child and an adult, because what you've touched on there is is one of the central aspects of a traditional coming of age rite, which is the ritualistic notion of spiritual death.

00:18:53.860 So this is, you are once a child, you enter for a time into this state of limbo.

00:19:02.020 This was often accompanied by a period in the wilderness or some kind of very arduous physical challenge.

00:19:07.900 And then you emerge out of that a man.

00:19:10.480 And it is this absolute distinction.

00:19:12.420 You are dead to the world for a moment.

00:19:14.420 You were separated from your mother for the period of this challenge, this rite.

00:19:18.940 And then you reemerge, you are represented back to society as a man with all of the understandings that have been revealed to you about what the duties of a man are.

00:19:29.980 You are recognized by society.

00:19:31.740 You are reintegrated by society in your new role.

00:19:34.860 And this very definite partition between childhood and adulthood is incredibly stark in some of these.

00:19:41.640 The Spartan rites in particular involved a child going out for a year into the wilderness to fend for themselves, as dramatically portrayed in slightly extreme fashion in 300, the film, if you've seen that.

00:19:54.080 But there are different gradations of this.

00:19:57.240 But the central conception is that you take a child, you separate them from their mother, all of their infantile support systems, you gather grown men around them, you enter into sacred ground or the wilderness or a church, you make clear to them what their new responsibilities will be, and you richly reenact a ceremony.

00:20:27.240 And this is combined with incredibly dramatic proceedings that capture the attention very fully of the initiative, typically, you know, dramatic events symbolizing death and rebirth, like being subsumed with water.

00:20:40.660 They have a test.

00:20:41.860 They have hardship, whether this is a lack of food or a lack of sleep, and then they emerge back.

00:20:46.000 And this whole sequence, it proves to themselves, it proves to others that they are worthy of assuming their new title, and they have decisively assumed it.

00:20:55.260 Now, the parallels, perhaps, to the college experience, which is an incredibly weak form of this same process, it's a sort of pseudo-initiatory process, may become evident.

00:21:06.400 But maybe that's something we could draw out.

00:21:09.200 Yeah, I want to, because I think one of the most important things that you pointed out, it's become a very common thing at this point to kind of identify wokeness as a religion.

00:21:19.240 And one of the things that you point out is that self-annihilation is a critical part of kind of the initiation process.

00:21:28.540 And one of the things that happens during, you know, this university process is, as you point out, the child is taken away from their parents, often for the first time, right?

00:21:37.400 They leave their parents' household, they live at the university, and kind of their old value system is destroyed.

00:21:45.960 The value systems of their parents, the identity given to them by their parents is broken down, destroyed through critical theory.

00:21:54.080 Everything that they learned previously is deconstructed.

00:21:56.560 Now, in reality, this process has already gone on previously because this is scattered throughout our entire educational system at this point,

00:22:05.220 and our entire cultural kind of consensus-making apparatus follows the same process.

00:22:12.840 But it is most fully realized in this initiation ritual of going to the university.

00:22:19.880 And that previous self, those previous connections, that previous understanding of identity, part of the home, part of the family,

00:22:26.560 part of whatever religious or cultural institutions that have still survived modernity in that area,

00:22:33.620 those things are all annihilated, and that person is reborn in kind of this, you know, this fire of the university.

00:22:40.520 They're reforged into another person, another identity.

00:22:44.680 And that is really, I think, a critical thing a lot of people need to understand when that newly formed creature,

00:22:50.460 you know, there's the very popular, you know, nice girl before goes into college, comes out, 0.99

00:22:56.180 and it's, you know, 97 different colors of hair and, you know, 15 new piercings and everything else.

00:23:01.600 You know, what happened?

00:23:02.720 It's literally the self-annihilation part of the ritual that you're talking about there.

00:23:07.660 Right, exactly.

00:23:08.440 A lot of the sort of postmodern academy critical theory is an approach that I think a lot of people will be familiar with,

00:23:16.120 is inherently deconstructive of the myths, the rituals, the identity that underpins our society.

00:23:23.840 So it makes dubious claims that the ideals, the values that we hold most dear are actually intimately integrated

00:23:32.220 within, you know, chauvinistic or colonialist power structures, that everything is a power game.

00:23:37.540 Now, what this parallels is, in initiatory rituals, one of the most alluring things about them to the young person

00:23:44.800 and one of the most necessary things about them to the broader society is that it is used as the opportunity

00:23:49.740 with which to, in providing moral responsibility to the child, to give them the intellectual framework

00:23:58.740 necessary to navigate their newfound moral responsibility.

00:24:02.220 And this involves revealing to them truths that were deemed unsuitable for children.

00:24:07.520 So it's a very empowering experience.

00:24:09.120 They feel like adults for the first time.

00:24:10.600 They feel like they're being revealed hidden knowledge.

00:24:13.960 This is essentially what college professors of the most hostile and egregious kind try and do.

00:24:20.040 They say, everything you thought you knew was a lie.

00:24:23.980 Your quaint little family in your hometown, they've been teaching you these kind of kitsch myths

00:24:28.560 about the history of your society.

00:24:30.440 In fact, the reality is, is that hidden underneath the surface, there are these power imbalances.

00:24:36.540 There are these forces competing that you couldn't possibly know about until I tell you about them.

00:24:41.800 And what they're doing in that instance is they are seizing upon the necessary part of the initiatory ritual

00:24:49.120 that exposes the most sacredly held truths of a society to the initiate for the first time.

00:24:57.180 In a healthy society, you know, when you're going through the process of baptism or confirmation in the Christian sense,

00:25:03.280 you are taking on perhaps a devotion to a particular saint or you are studying in your catechism the new roles and responsibilities you will have.

00:25:13.500 And this is tethered to the divine, this is tethered to the great saints of the church, this is tethered to a Christian society.

00:25:18.800 But in this supposedly secularized approach, instead, there are different saints, quote-unquote, that are referenced.

00:25:26.580 There are the heroes of the progressive cause.

00:25:28.720 There is an entire arc of history, you know, and what's interesting about it, of course,

00:25:33.980 is that typically in traditional societies, one would reference a kind of archetype situated in cyclical history,

00:25:42.600 whereas, of course, the progressive worldview is one of constant progress,

00:25:48.180 and that means that their sort of entire world conception is quite different,

00:25:53.760 which is one of the reasons why the college is not necessarily immediately intuitive as an initiation ritual.

00:26:01.000 But nonetheless, the sort of Hossal Academy takes this opportunity to deconstruct the mythology 0.83

00:26:07.920 that, in a very healthy way, underpinned the self-conception of the child

00:26:11.380 and to replace it with these sort of supposed hidden truths that reveal the way the world actually works.

00:26:18.140 And that is incredibly, that generates a great feeling of empowerment, of maturity in the children,

00:26:24.140 even when it is, in fact, quite unhealthy.

00:26:25.860 And that's how you end up with a situation where some people that have gone to university

00:26:29.960 end up being sort of snide and superior, despite making obviously bad life choices,

00:26:35.500 which is how you end up in the situation you mentioned,

00:26:37.380 where a very nice young girl or whatever goes off to university,

00:26:41.360 and they have made themselves in every way ugly and unpleasant.

00:26:44.140 And yet, at the same time, they look down upon you with derision

00:26:47.580 for inhabiting the traditional mode of thought,

00:26:49.680 because they have been revealed the sacred truths of the new society,

00:26:52.660 whereas you are still operating under the delusion of the sort of naive ideals of a time gone by.

00:26:58.420 When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most?

00:27:02.560 When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard.

00:27:07.420 When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill.

00:27:10.100 When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner.

00:27:13.820 Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer.

00:27:16.380 So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes.

00:27:19.700 Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.

00:27:23.720 Service fees exclusions and terms apply.

00:27:25.960 Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver.

00:27:29.240 Yeah, and I think that's, again, very critical,

00:27:32.420 because there is a line of thought that goes on that says,

00:27:37.440 well, the key is really just the fact that only people on the right are having kids.

00:27:42.380 They're the only ones having family.

00:27:44.060 Literally, one of the critical parts of the left's initiation ritual

00:27:49.040 seems to be your own sterilization through one means or another.

00:27:53.200 And so it's only the right that are going to be having children. 0.56

00:27:56.360 And so, therefore, eventually, the right will simply outbreed the left.

00:28:00.400 They'll simply replace the left because they'll be the only ones that will have subsequent generations.

00:28:06.940 However, the fact that the left's still controlled, the primary means from initiation,

00:28:11.480 means that you can have kind of as many kids as you want.

00:28:15.180 But for your children to join kind of the idea of the story of the current society,

00:28:21.440 they must go through a process that completely destroys everything that you would have kind of imbued them with.

00:28:26.380 And, you know, as Cicero kind of, to butcher Cicero, quote,

00:28:32.540 that what's the purpose of life unless you weave yourself into the history of your forefathers?

00:28:38.160 If you're not joining that great chain of being, the story of your society,

00:28:42.560 then you're not really an adult.

00:28:44.700 That's what transitions you from childhood to adulthood.

00:28:47.960 And as long as the left are the ones who are in control of who joins that story,

00:28:52.840 who is woven in to that tapestry of our society,

00:28:55.900 it doesn't matter if the right has all the kids in the world.

00:28:58.460 Eventually, the left will own them all.

00:29:01.780 Right, exactly.

00:29:03.100 And I think it's worth noting here that the implication of this is not

00:29:09.320 we should double down on seizing the universities

00:29:12.260 so that we can wrest control of the one and only initiation ritual away from the left.

00:29:17.960 The universities, as they are currently construed,

00:29:21.980 if we rely upon them as being the primary initiatory mechanism

00:29:25.520 from childhood to adulthood in society,

00:29:28.620 progressivism is the inevitable output of this.

00:29:31.340 And the reason for that is that higher education,

00:29:35.080 I think we would probably agree,

00:29:37.180 should be a decision that is made by a relatively small percentage of the population.

00:29:43.400 You know, those that really have an aptitude for it,

00:29:47.480 that have all of the, you know, wealth and social class

00:29:51.380 or just raw intelligence or willpower or whatever

00:29:54.800 that is necessary to be truly exceptional,

00:29:57.040 to attend a truly exceptional level of education

00:29:59.380 in a worthwhile field against a rigorous course.

00:30:03.040 However, if college is to continue serving

00:30:07.240 as the primary initiatory ritual of society,

00:30:09.960 that implies that most children, if not all children,

00:30:12.900 will have to go to college.

00:30:13.820 And, of course, the effect of that is a progressive one,

00:30:17.280 which is one of a sort of radical equality of opportunity and outcome

00:30:23.500 across all sectors of society, no matter how much it makes sense.

00:30:28.040 So instead...

00:30:28.720 Sorry, yeah, I was just going to say that that's critical as well

00:30:33.100 because I think a lot of people are stuck in this, you know,

00:30:36.780 they think that this is just going to be the structure of society forever

00:30:39.600 and they can't imagine a paradigm shift like the one that you're talking about.

00:30:45.080 And so they think that, oh, well, if you're just sending your kids to trade school,

00:30:48.720 then they can never ascend in any elite status.

00:30:51.760 They can never, you know, obtain that which is necessary

00:30:54.800 to actually move forward and kind of obtain more pay or those kind of things.

00:31:01.320 And so, therefore, you know, there's only two options.

00:31:04.220 And I think as you were going to go into, you know, we need to find a third way.

00:31:09.120 We need to find a different understanding of how we have those initiation rituals.

00:31:13.680 Because if we don't, if we keep locking ourselves into this,

00:31:16.740 the progressive worldview is a natural kind of outcome of the system

00:31:20.920 that we currently have set up.

00:31:23.160 Right, exactly.

00:31:24.260 You know, in Silicon Valley, there's an interesting phenomenon

00:31:27.220 whereby if you graduate from Stanford or MIT in computer science,

00:31:32.020 sorry, if you even get into Stanford or MIT in computer science

00:31:35.860 and you attend for a semester or two,

00:31:37.880 you are considered a viable candidate for a venture capitalist to invest in

00:31:42.520 if you want to drop out and start a startup.

00:31:45.580 Now, a lot of that is to do with the selection mechanism

00:31:49.300 that it's difficult to get into the university in the first place.

00:31:51.820 And that is a sign of competence and intelligence.

00:31:53.880 But a lot of that is to do with the fact that the individual has the self-confidence

00:31:59.020 to start a company in an intelligent way after literally just being accepted

00:32:06.460 and showing up and spending a time on those hallowed grounds in, you know, in Palo Alto.

00:32:12.780 And they've gained from that reassurance of their qualification to participate

00:32:20.580 in this echelon of society in this what seems like from a distance

00:32:24.460 a very intimidating ecosystem of startups and tech and so forth.

00:32:29.280 But this mere very short right in their case, you know, they haven't graduated,

00:32:33.480 they haven't spent years there.

00:32:34.500 But the fact that they've been accepted, they've been there,

00:32:36.720 they've stood in those halls, they've listened to those lectures,

00:32:39.300 renews their confidence to go out and pursue these new opportunities

00:32:44.100 in a way that you very rarely see from high school graduates,

00:32:46.680 even though in age they're separated by only for a few months.

00:32:50.580 Now, one of the good things about this is, is that for all the,

00:32:54.580 I imagine quite a lot of your listeners are thinking this sounds dubious,

00:32:59.100 because if you actually think about what university is,

00:33:01.640 most of it is long stretches of not doing much, you know, going to parties,

00:33:06.200 wasting time playing video games, et cetera.

00:33:08.620 This doesn't sound like an exotic initiation ritual.

00:33:10.960 And that is, of course, true to a large extent. 0.60

00:33:13.740 The university experience suffices as a very weak ritual.

00:33:20.600 You know, you do get this access to the leadership class.

00:33:24.500 You do get initiated into the way that they see the world.

00:33:27.640 You do get to call yourself a graduate alongside the other people

00:33:31.900 that are the aspiring elite of the next generation.

00:33:34.660 And you do get to leave your home and go to this new place.

00:33:36.880 So it has dimensions of this, but it is incredibly weak and quite unalluring

00:33:41.260 should a more attractive opportunity come up.

00:33:45.160 And I think that on the right, we have all of the ingredients

00:33:47.560 to make far, far more authentic and compelling versions

00:33:51.640 of these rites of passage, these transitions from childhood into adulthood

00:33:56.400 in a way that will very quickly supersede the spiritual or emotional pull

00:34:01.600 of the university system.

00:34:03.700 And that will open the door for exactly the kinds of things

00:34:07.320 that you referenced at the beginning of this talk,

00:34:08.800 which is, you know, other certification programs,

00:34:11.860 just more technical components as well.

00:34:14.440 And the reason for this is, you know, an initiation ritual,

00:34:17.900 be powerful, does have to have a connection to higher truth,

00:34:21.300 to the divine.

00:34:22.580 It needs to have access to genuinely forbidden truth.

00:34:25.220 It needs to be willing to demarcate the sexes in a way 0.98

00:34:28.920 that the present academy is very uncomfortable with.

00:34:32.600 It needs to embrace a conception that the young must go through 0.98

00:34:35.900 a period of hardship, even physical hardship.

00:34:38.340 I don't know if you saw the thread on leftists exercising a couple

00:34:42.200 of days ago where every single one of them was having a meltdown,

00:34:44.500 but that's sort of illustrative of how intolerant the other side

00:34:48.620 of the aisle is with regards to intentionally undergoing physical hardship.

00:34:51.880 We recognize the particularity of community,

00:34:55.540 which these rituals are most powerfully tethered within.

00:34:59.720 And, of course, most fundamentally,

00:35:01.460 we recognize the importance of tradition and ritual.

00:35:04.860 And all of this, you know, we would have to move through

00:35:08.240 this sort of aura of postmodern skepticism

00:35:12.080 that infuses our present moment and that makes forming intentional rituals

00:35:16.920 more difficult than it would have been in a sort of more naive

00:35:20.780 pre-modern society.

00:35:22.640 But for other reasons, I believe that's absolutely possible.

00:35:25.400 But I think we should have a lot of self-confidence on the right

00:35:27.660 that we are capable of making something genuinely alluring

00:35:30.820 out of this opportunity.

00:35:33.200 I think your point about particularity is, well,

00:35:38.400 particularly important there.

00:35:39.820 And I think it's because a lot of the thinness of this ritual,

00:35:44.620 a lot of, you know, as you said,

00:35:46.100 this college barely qualifies.

00:35:48.480 It only really exists as one because we've destroyed every other one

00:35:51.500 is because of the massification of our society,

00:35:55.300 is because we've scaled up society to a point where

00:35:58.640 we can't apply particular rituals.

00:36:01.340 We, you know, the story of us leaving them behind in progress

00:36:06.160 is a functional one for our ruling ideology

00:36:09.580 because it tells us that we no longer need the particular,

00:36:12.360 we no longer need the tribal, 1.00

00:36:13.520 we already no longer need the close-knit community.

00:36:17.460 We can just scale everything out.

00:36:19.340 We can take everything into the wider kind of global empire.

00:36:24.140 And so one of the reasons that college, you know,

00:36:26.560 does fill that slot is because we've annihilated all those others

00:36:29.940 because it was necessary for us to scale society to this level.

00:36:34.640 And I would say that you're right that most of the things

00:36:38.380 that are truly valuable in an initiation ritual

00:36:40.800 are things that the right owns

00:36:42.580 because it's the only thing,

00:36:43.940 because those are all the things that the left has excluded

00:36:46.160 in order to kind of create this homogenous global gray goo society.

00:36:51.660 However, one thing that I think, you know,

00:36:54.100 and this is just a problem that I recognize from, you know,

00:36:57.520 observing this across many different domains

00:36:59.540 is that while I think the key to the future is indeed in particularity,

00:37:04.860 one of the problems we run into is that at this point,

00:37:08.100 massification and a kind of larger scale,

00:37:11.620 the mass man still wins against the particular in the moment.

00:37:15.400 I think we're going to get to an inflection point

00:37:17.480 where that's no longer the case.

00:37:18.880 And maybe we'll do it.

00:37:20.260 It'll cascade across many domains,

00:37:22.220 including that of initiation rituals, education, these things.

00:37:26.100 But as we stand at the moment,

00:37:27.760 unfortunately, the particular still seems to lose to the mass man

00:37:32.480 and the mass initiation ritual

00:37:34.080 probably wins over the particular one at the moment

00:37:37.320 simply because of that.

00:37:39.740 Yeah, that's a very interesting question.

00:37:43.580 I think actually conversely, initiation rituals

00:37:47.300 and apologies for my voice, by the way,

00:37:48.760 as you can tell, my two-year-old son

00:37:50.840 has made me incredibly sick in the last 24 hours.

00:37:54.040 Apologies if I'm coming across.

00:37:55.660 I sound a bit like a 70-year-old woman here.

00:37:58.540 But one of the things,

00:38:00.980 if we think about what we really value in initiation rituals,

00:38:04.020 both as individual participants,

00:38:05.640 but also as society that attempts to integrate the individuals

00:38:08.540 coming out of those rituals,

00:38:10.260 we value, I want a ritual that will instill in me

00:38:13.960 a great degree of self-confidence,

00:38:16.220 a strong self-conception that will associate me

00:38:18.940 with people that I regard as virtuous and beautiful.

00:38:21.720 the other initiates coming out of the ritual

00:38:24.920 that I'm participating in.

00:38:27.040 I want something that proves that I'm up to the task of life

00:38:30.640 and that commands respect in the eyes of my elders

00:38:34.800 and wider society.

00:38:36.280 And I really do think we are coming to a head

00:38:38.860 with regards to the university's ability

00:38:41.760 to generate any of those effects.

00:38:45.300 And in fact,

00:38:47.280 to generate respect in an older person

00:38:50.240 and to give an individual

00:38:53.340 a confident self-conception,

00:38:55.940 you don't need a grand ritual.

00:38:58.080 You don't need a years-long process.

00:39:00.540 I mean, it's all very well

00:39:01.500 to point to the high Middle Ages

00:39:03.100 or mature, you know,

00:39:04.980 like Ergos' Sparta

00:39:06.020 and say,

00:39:07.100 look at these incredible historic rituals they had.

00:39:09.740 But those are the rituals

00:39:10.460 of a mature civilization

00:39:11.820 at the height of their summer.

00:39:13.820 And that's not where we are.

00:39:14.940 We're in winter.

00:39:17.660 And so you can start small.

00:39:19.600 I mean, you know,

00:39:21.000 this is to take it all the way small.

00:39:23.660 In fact, too small to be terribly useful

00:39:25.220 to this discussion,

00:39:26.080 but it's what springs to mind.

00:39:27.140 And, you know,

00:39:28.780 I've done Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in the past.

00:39:30.600 I imagine some of your audience has the same.

00:39:33.540 And in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu,

00:39:34.780 there's this concept called the gauntlet.

00:39:36.820 And what the gauntlet is,

00:39:38.180 is when you ascend a belt level,

00:39:40.520 when you transition from white belt 0.85

00:39:41.760 to blue belt,

00:39:42.360 blue belt to purple belt,

00:39:43.280 and so on,

00:39:43.760 all the way up to black belt,

00:39:44.940 you have to run the gauntlet.

00:39:46.880 And this is walking down a long strip

00:39:49.140 where all of your fellow classmates,

00:39:51.660 your fellow students,

00:39:52.720 whip you violently with their belts. 0.94

00:39:55.600 And it's painful. 0.90

00:39:56.700 It's brutal.

00:39:57.740 Sometimes people get really sadistic about it.

00:40:00.820 But it does serve as this function

00:40:04.120 whereby everyone respects the person

00:40:06.620 coming out of the other end of that

00:40:07.960 as someone that has put in the time

00:40:09.340 to graduate to this new level

00:40:10.720 and has the bravery

00:40:11.620 to undergo genuine pain

00:40:13.460 to receive the new belt.

00:40:15.240 And conversely,

00:40:16.480 for the individual

00:40:17.680 that is now accepting

00:40:18.760 a higher status position

00:40:20.000 within that micro society,

00:40:22.440 they are being taught

00:40:24.060 that they are not fundamentally

00:40:26.440 or metaphysically better

00:40:27.940 than those around them,

00:40:29.760 that they still share,

00:40:31.720 you know,

00:40:31.920 they're not untouchable

00:40:32.860 to those around them,

00:40:33.860 that they still share

00:40:34.640 and physically inhabit a space

00:40:36.160 with those other people.

00:40:36.900 They mustn't look down on them.

00:40:38.260 And that there are circumstances

00:40:39.400 in which even those people

00:40:40.780 have lower belts,

00:40:41.640 can harm them,

00:40:44.580 can touch them.

00:40:45.540 And so it sort of rounds out

00:40:46.580 this whole society.

00:40:48.040 Now, that's a terribly small example,

00:40:51.120 but it does show that,

00:40:51.940 in fact,

00:40:52.240 these things,

00:40:53.320 these small economies of respect

00:40:55.100 and self-conception

00:40:55.960 and status

00:40:56.620 and hierarchy

00:40:57.440 emerge organically

00:40:59.020 in even very,

00:41:01.040 very small instances.

00:41:02.800 And as the ability of,

00:41:04.880 you know,

00:41:05.060 one of the things

00:41:05.760 that I think you're seeing now

00:41:06.860 is the fundamental ability

00:41:09.520 of the academy

00:41:10.720 to produce mentally stable graduates

00:41:13.800 is eroding to the point

00:41:15.640 where it is genuinely worrying

00:41:17.100 for an employer

00:41:17.860 if they employ people

00:41:19.740 from certain fairly common studies,

00:41:22.120 if they're going to get someone

00:41:23.760 that is actively antagonistic

00:41:25.500 to, you know,

00:41:26.460 other actors

00:41:27.080 within their organization,

00:41:28.220 it's a common problem

00:41:28.900 as a hiring manager.

00:41:31.700 And so that side of things

00:41:33.640 really is going downhill.

00:41:34.720 So I think this sort of like

00:41:36.240 more,

00:41:37.080 I completely agree with you

00:41:38.140 with regards to

00:41:39.000 the massification of society

00:41:40.400 and the advantages

00:41:41.120 of economies of scale

00:41:42.240 when it comes to manufacturing,

00:41:44.500 when it comes to

00:41:45.060 large-scale physical systems.

00:41:46.820 But this more spiritual

00:41:47.720 and psychological dimension

00:41:48.900 I think is actually

00:41:49.740 a real opportunity for us.

00:41:51.780 No, I agree.

00:41:52.740 Like I said,

00:41:53.220 I think that that is,

00:41:54.560 we are going to hit

00:41:55.400 an inflection point.

00:41:56.120 Like you said,

00:41:56.560 you basically have colleges

00:41:58.240 that are just 0.93

00:41:59.000 mental illness factories 0.62

00:42:00.540 at this point.

00:42:01.600 And, you know,

00:42:02.160 you can talk about the,

00:42:04.500 you know,

00:42:05.060 kind of the importance

00:42:05.900 of that initiation ritual

00:42:07.640 for moving into

00:42:08.700 some high-level business.

00:42:10.200 But if the only people

00:42:11.060 you're churning out

00:42:11.800 are those that are just 0.55

00:42:12.580 completely mentally damaged 0.78

00:42:13.840 at some point,

00:42:15.180 people just functionally

00:42:16.480 have to turn to something else.

00:42:17.900 And I think you're right

00:42:18.820 that the right

00:42:20.700 has much better options

00:42:22.860 for people

00:42:23.820 to kind of turn to there.

00:42:25.740 I want to ask you

00:42:26.660 one more thing

00:42:27.220 before we go to

00:42:28.240 the questions of the people.

00:42:30.920 There's a perennial

00:42:31.760 discussion online,

00:42:33.300 and I know that

00:42:34.280 you've thought about this

00:42:35.140 some,

00:42:35.420 so I want to pick your brain

00:42:36.640 a little on it.

00:42:37.500 There's a lot of people

00:42:38.380 who look at

00:42:39.380 our current situation.

00:42:40.540 They look at

00:42:41.260 many of the initiation rituals

00:42:43.680 that now, you know,

00:42:44.500 sit in the heart

00:42:45.580 of our society.

00:42:46.760 You know,

00:42:47.260 as you said,

00:42:47.980 the university system

00:42:49.580 really only being one.

00:42:51.080 And they say that

00:42:51.720 the reason that we've been

00:42:52.880 in this state,

00:42:53.520 the reason that we arrive here

00:42:54.960 is really that

00:42:55.880 Christianity

00:42:56.740 hollowed out the West,

00:42:58.260 that it was the reason

00:42:59.320 that we ended up here.

00:43:00.680 It's too weak.

00:43:01.540 It's too submissive. 0.89

00:43:02.780 It can't create men. 0.99

00:43:03.880 It can't form

00:43:04.600 the kind of initiation rituals

00:43:05.940 that you're talking about

00:43:06.920 because it's a fundamentally

00:43:08.480 kind of effeminate

00:43:10.320 or submissive religion, 0.79

00:43:12.160 and therefore,

00:43:12.920 there's no way

00:43:13.620 for people to go through

00:43:14.660 the kind of gauntlet

00:43:16.200 that you're talking about.

00:43:18.260 And that, you know,

00:43:19.020 while it may have

00:43:19.760 at some point

00:43:20.380 been rougher

00:43:21.500 because it was more

00:43:22.380 in concert

00:43:23.460 with other pagan roots,

00:43:24.760 now it's just kind of

00:43:25.860 achieved its final form.

00:43:27.380 And the West

00:43:27.880 has to jettison

00:43:29.360 this Christianity 0.99

00:43:30.080 if they ever want

00:43:30.960 to create the kind

00:43:31.880 of meaningful

00:43:32.520 transitional rituals

00:43:34.080 that you're talking about.

00:43:35.040 Again, what would you say

00:43:35.660 to people who take that tack?

00:43:38.980 It's interesting, yeah.

00:43:39.980 So to put my cards

00:43:41.320 on the table,

00:43:41.840 I'm a practicing

00:43:42.640 and fairly developed

00:43:43.420 Christian and Catholic.

00:43:45.840 Let me acknowledge

00:43:47.280 the truth

00:43:48.000 in that criticism up front.

00:43:50.420 So relying on Christianity alone

00:43:52.100 in the absence

00:43:53.560 of wider social structures

00:43:54.960 of support

00:43:55.560 for these initiatory processes

00:43:57.520 is always bound to fail

00:44:00.040 because, you know,

00:44:02.140 fundamentally the truth

00:44:02.960 of Christianity

00:44:03.460 is that it should be

00:44:04.580 openly proclaimed.

00:44:05.920 It's a missionary 1.00

00:44:06.680 and a universalistic religion.

00:44:09.380 And relying on it

00:44:10.140 for these more secret

00:44:11.240 or selective initiation rituals

00:44:12.920 tends to foster Gnostic 0.98

00:44:14.000 and other heresies

00:44:15.200 which are, you know,

00:44:16.480 you end up in esoteric

00:44:18.000 pointlessness

00:44:18.560 and weirdness

00:44:19.400 very quickly.

00:44:20.520 And at the same time,

00:44:23.380 you know,

00:44:23.600 if you look at a society

00:44:24.300 like America, 0.80

00:44:26.000 this Christian weakness 1.00

00:44:28.120 with regards

00:44:28.920 to initiatory rituals

00:44:30.040 has been compounded

00:44:31.160 by, rightly or wrongly,

00:44:32.400 by Protestant skepticism

00:44:33.680 of sort of ritual

00:44:35.100 and mysticism.

00:44:36.220 And equally

00:44:37.000 on my side of the fence,

00:44:38.640 really everywhere

00:44:39.460 in Christianity,

00:44:41.280 a very sort of Catholic desire

00:44:42.640 to move with the times,

00:44:43.800 to be seen as a church

00:44:44.700 of the present,

00:44:45.440 you know,

00:44:45.680 that's modern

00:44:46.260 and approachable

00:44:47.080 and part of the moment

00:44:48.100 and culturally relevant.

00:44:49.160 And this is to live

00:44:50.660 in history

00:44:51.440 instead of outside of it.

00:44:53.260 And what an initiation ritual

00:44:54.740 should be

00:44:55.440 is a temporary transcendence

00:44:58.700 of the present moment

00:44:59.900 to inhabit a sacred space

00:45:01.920 to revivify

00:45:03.480 the ancient

00:45:04.240 sort of myths

00:45:05.480 of one's society

00:45:06.380 and to inhabit

00:45:07.640 a perennial archetype

00:45:09.340 for a time

00:45:09.880 so that when you return

00:45:10.840 to the world,

00:45:12.080 you are better able

00:45:15.380 to perform

00:45:15.940 the mature function

00:45:16.920 that you've been initiated

00:45:17.940 into.

00:45:19.160 Now,

00:45:21.080 all of that is true.

00:45:22.360 So what I don't want

00:45:23.500 to suggest

00:45:24.000 is that,

00:45:25.060 you know,

00:45:25.480 if we,

00:45:26.060 for example,

00:45:27.420 look up old 0.51

00:45:28.360 chivalric initiation rituals

00:45:30.480 and we attempt

00:45:33.520 to revive them,

00:45:34.340 like I put my son

00:45:35.320 through a process

00:45:35.980 where I expected him

00:45:36.880 to kneel in front

00:45:37.620 of an altar

00:45:38.160 all night long

00:45:38.980 with a sword

00:45:39.560 on the altar

00:45:40.060 praying and meditating.

00:45:41.120 I mean,

00:45:41.260 I might get him

00:45:41.660 to do that actually.

00:45:42.240 That sounds pretty good.

00:45:43.020 But I don't think

00:45:45.360 that's going to turn him

00:45:46.000 into a knight.

00:45:46.440 And fundamentally,

00:45:47.780 I think that we live

00:45:49.400 in a culture

00:45:49.860 that is very well

00:45:50.680 attuned to irony

00:45:51.540 that is fundamentally

00:45:53.540 for better or worse

00:45:54.320 a postmodern society.

00:45:56.920 And I think,

00:45:57.820 frankly,

00:45:58.200 rightly,

00:45:58.640 we see such a thing 0.90

00:45:59.520 as ridiculous, 0.94

00:46:00.280 as LARPing. 0.99

00:46:00.800 So whatever the path

00:46:04.080 forward is,

00:46:04.780 it is not as simple

00:46:06.000 as wholesale

00:46:08.340 attempting to revivify

00:46:11.360 the particular ways

00:46:12.940 that Christianity 0.95

00:46:13.940 and the elements

00:46:15.300 of Christianity

00:46:15.980 intersected

00:46:17.200 with the particulars

00:46:18.260 of the various societies

00:46:20.260 of the Western history.

00:46:23.480 Like,

00:46:23.660 you can't just revivify

00:46:25.260 these old initiatory rights

00:46:27.060 wholesale.

00:46:28.140 The question becomes,

00:46:29.360 what is the genuine expression

00:46:31.300 of Christianity

00:46:32.500 in its true

00:46:34.880 and perennial form

00:46:35.840 that is best suited

00:46:37.800 to meet the moment

00:46:39.420 and to meet the needs

00:46:40.480 of that moment?

00:46:41.720 And what is undeniable

00:46:42.900 is that Christianity

00:46:44.040 throughout its history,

00:46:46.400 you know,

00:46:46.780 it goes without saying

00:46:47.900 that the Christian men

00:46:49.200 of the Crusades

00:46:50.280 and the Reconquista

00:46:51.140 and so on

00:46:51.860 were strong,

00:46:53.340 self-confident,

00:46:54.380 pious men

00:46:55.100 who were also capable

00:46:56.560 of defending their own

00:46:58.540 and, you know,

00:46:59.320 standing up for what

00:46:59.980 they believed in.

00:47:01.300 There's this idea

00:47:02.200 that ancient Christians 0.82

00:47:03.640 were in some way different,

00:47:05.720 that they were weak,

00:47:06.500 that the church fathers

00:47:07.340 of the early years,

00:47:08.700 you know,

00:47:09.240 Tertullian and Origen

00:47:10.120 and so forth,

00:47:11.440 fundamentally were pacifists.

00:47:13.240 I think we should be

00:47:14.880 very skeptical of that view.

00:47:16.700 In fact,

00:47:17.300 I think that they were making

00:47:18.580 an incredibly principled,

00:47:21.100 brave and arduous decision

00:47:23.360 to allow themselves

00:47:24.700 to be killed

00:47:26.460 within the context 0.96

00:47:27.220 of the Roman Empire.

00:47:28.820 They willingly

00:47:29.580 sacrificed themselves

00:47:31.140 and faced very bravely

00:47:32.880 to a man,

00:47:34.020 died, you know,

00:47:34.800 facing horrific deaths

00:47:36.260 and torture

00:47:36.740 by the various emperors

00:47:38.960 that persecuted Christianity.

00:47:39.940 And that was in no way

00:47:41.620 a cowardly thing.

00:47:42.440 That wasn't a soft thing.

00:47:43.500 They suffered terrible

00:47:44.420 hardships for their faith.

00:47:46.660 What you see is that,

00:47:47.640 in fact,

00:47:48.520 both of these different

00:47:50.060 instances

00:47:52.240 of different expressions

00:47:53.680 of masculine virtue

00:47:54.760 were the intersection

00:47:56.820 of genuine expressions

00:47:58.240 of Christian faith

00:47:59.260 and Christian living

00:48:00.280 with the requirements

00:48:01.380 of the time.

00:48:02.720 So in the Roman Empire,

00:48:06.840 it was not possible

00:48:08.300 for Christians

00:48:09.520 to join the military

00:48:10.520 for various reasons.

00:48:13.280 And framing that

00:48:14.560 as like pacifism

00:48:15.860 isn't quite right.

00:48:17.400 The Roman army

00:48:18.740 was fundamentally

00:48:19.340 a pagan institution

00:48:20.260 that required

00:48:21.040 pagan sacrifices,

00:48:22.880 that was saturated

00:48:23.820 with a pagan calendar,

00:48:25.180 that required

00:48:25.800 recognizing emperors

00:48:27.520 at various times

00:48:28.240 as divine beings

00:48:29.060 and so forth.

00:48:29.720 It fundamentally

00:48:30.300 was philosophically

00:48:31.560 and theologically

00:48:32.180 irreconcilable

00:48:32.960 with Christianity.

00:48:34.260 And so instead,

00:48:35.440 in defending their faith,

00:48:36.820 in truly living

00:48:37.420 out their faith,

00:48:38.300 in maximizing

00:48:40.020 the authenticity

00:48:40.680 with which they

00:48:41.320 approached their faith,

00:48:42.620 the men of the,

00:48:43.760 and women, of course, 0.99

00:48:45.360 you know,

00:48:45.740 saints like Perpetua

00:48:47.560 and Felicity

00:48:48.000 went to their deaths

00:48:48.740 incredibly bravely

00:48:49.540 as well.

00:48:51.460 But they expressed

00:48:52.740 an incredible

00:48:54.920 intensity of belief

00:48:56.460 that translated

00:48:57.780 into radical

00:48:58.680 physical action

00:48:59.620 and strength

00:49:00.100 in a different way

00:49:01.000 to those later generations

00:49:02.060 of knights

00:49:03.100 and of the Christian men

00:49:05.180 that fought the world wars

00:49:06.080 and so forth.

00:49:06.620 Now,

00:49:07.900 the question then

00:49:08.520 becomes is,

00:49:09.980 what is the intersection

00:49:12.000 of authentic,

00:49:14.400 radical belief

00:49:15.240 that gives you

00:49:15.960 such strength

00:49:16.700 of conviction

00:49:17.220 that you are willing

00:49:18.040 to die to a man

00:49:19.480 for what you believe in?

00:49:20.600 And we are short

00:49:21.300 of that right now.

00:49:22.840 Combined with the genuine

00:49:24.060 demands of the moment

00:49:25.100 and how do you meet

00:49:26.040 those two

00:49:26.620 in a way that is authentic,

00:49:28.360 where you are not

00:49:29.240 politicizing your faith,

00:49:31.080 neither are you

00:49:32.460 misinterpreting your faith

00:49:34.320 in a way

00:49:34.920 to try and make it

00:49:36.080 overly amenable

00:49:36.960 to modernity,

00:49:37.780 to friendly and so forth.

00:49:39.200 But I will promise you this,

00:49:40.900 time and time again,

00:49:41.700 the history of Christianity

00:49:42.540 has shown that it can produce

00:49:44.040 men and women

00:49:44.660 of the utmost ferocity

00:49:46.660 of belief

00:49:47.180 that are willing

00:49:47.920 to kill for their beliefs,

00:49:49.540 that are willing 0.95

00:49:49.900 to die for their beliefs

00:49:50.940 in horrible

00:49:52.060 and strained circumstances.

00:49:54.060 And for us

00:49:54.560 in the present moment,

00:49:55.640 you know,

00:49:56.200 on Twitter or whatever,

00:49:57.400 and I'm as guilty

00:49:58.180 of this as the next person,

00:49:59.780 to think,

00:50:00.240 oh,

00:50:01.200 that's not strong enough.

00:50:02.440 We need something stronger.

00:50:03.700 We need something,

00:50:04.440 you know,

00:50:04.660 we need pagan imperialism 0.96

00:50:05.920 or whatever. 0.97

00:50:07.120 It's just silly. 0.89

00:50:08.300 Like, 0.98

00:50:08.580 Christianity,

00:50:09.880 if you learn Christian history,

00:50:11.580 there is real strength there.

00:50:13.020 The question is only

00:50:13.820 how do we find

00:50:14.840 that strength in ourselves

00:50:15.800 and how do we express it

00:50:17.120 in a way that is suitable

00:50:17.940 for the present moment?

00:50:20.340 Absolutely.

00:50:20.940 All right, guys.

00:50:21.500 Well, we're going to transition

00:50:22.320 over to the questions

00:50:23.380 of the people,

00:50:24.060 but before we do,

00:50:25.020 Johan,

00:50:25.380 can you tell people

00:50:26.080 where to find

00:50:26.620 your excellent work?

00:50:28.160 Sure, yeah.

00:50:28.740 You can find me

00:50:29.500 at becomingnoble.substack.com

00:50:31.740 or if you just Google my name,

00:50:33.340 you should find it

00:50:34.220 pretty quickly.

00:50:35.700 Excellent.

00:50:36.260 All right.

00:50:36.940 So Florida Henry says,

00:50:38.880 rite of passage,

00:50:40.220 another tradition

00:50:41.100 that boomers 1.00

00:50:41.840 threw in the garbage

00:50:42.880 firsthand.

00:50:44.520 This has been destroyed

00:50:45.440 in the military

00:50:46.140 and fire service.

00:50:48.340 Yeah, well,

00:50:48.720 a lot of that stuff

00:50:49.420 is now called hazing,

00:50:50.980 right?

00:50:51.240 You're not allowed

00:50:52.120 to have what used

00:50:53.600 to be very common rituals.

00:50:56.160 In fact,

00:50:56.640 that was like

00:50:57.420 the whole premise

00:50:58.980 of a movie,

00:51:00.280 you know,

00:51:00.800 right?

00:51:01.760 The Tom Cruise movie

00:51:02.780 is that these things

00:51:03.760 are no longer allowed.

00:51:04.980 A certain level

00:51:05.560 of that is not allowed.

00:51:07.820 And so those institutions

00:51:09.360 that might have once

00:51:10.400 perpetuated

00:51:12.880 this idea

00:51:13.640 of a rite of passage

00:51:14.580 has had that stripped out

00:51:16.500 even of their

00:51:17.000 more traditional structure.

00:51:19.140 Yeah,

00:51:19.320 that's absolutely right.

00:51:20.180 I mean,

00:51:20.360 if you look at,

00:51:20.960 there are still aspects

00:51:23.480 of initiation

00:51:26.260 into parts

00:51:27.240 of military life

00:51:28.060 that still hold

00:51:29.520 this incredible appeal.

00:51:31.740 You know,

00:51:32.460 Buds is legendary.

00:51:34.740 Everyone knows

00:51:35.200 who Buds is.

00:51:35.700 I know what Buds is

00:51:36.660 and I didn't grow up

00:51:37.340 in the US.

00:51:38.160 And that is because

00:51:39.180 it is a series

00:51:40.720 of tests

00:51:41.660 that are conducted

00:51:42.460 in the most extreme

00:51:43.600 and horrendous circumstances.

00:51:45.280 And if you come

00:51:45.800 out the other side of it,

00:51:46.700 you get to call yourselves

00:51:47.560 a SEAL.

00:51:48.260 And everyone knows

00:51:49.300 what a SEAL is.

00:51:50.000 And so that

00:51:51.040 as an initiatory right

00:51:52.360 is still incredibly powerful.

00:51:54.520 You know,

00:51:54.700 one of the interesting things

00:51:55.580 about the US military

00:51:56.600 is that

00:51:57.520 the more

00:51:59.720 that the focus

00:52:01.540 of the material,

00:52:03.980 that recruiting material,

00:52:05.060 the advertising material,

00:52:06.260 focuses on war fighting,

00:52:08.540 on killing,

00:52:09.260 on the military's true purpose,

00:52:10.520 which is the defense

00:52:11.240 of the United States

00:52:12.140 or whatever country

00:52:13.060 you come from,

00:52:14.100 the higher the recruitment rate,

00:52:15.880 even absent other incentives.

00:52:17.920 So if you break down

00:52:18.760 the different forces

00:52:19.400 in the US,

00:52:20.320 I did this once

00:52:21.040 as a sort of

00:52:21.480 interesting exercise.

00:52:22.760 What you see is that

00:52:23.840 even those that offer

00:52:25.320 significant signing bonuses,

00:52:28.260 educational bonuses,

00:52:29.780 and this is,

00:52:30.700 you know,

00:52:30.800 the Army and the Air Force

00:52:31.700 really struggle

00:52:32.900 to hit their recruiting targets,

00:52:34.040 whereas the Marines,

00:52:35.100 you know,

00:52:35.560 and the various

00:52:36.560 more elite units

00:52:37.740 smash them

00:52:39.040 because they have that respect. 0.97

00:52:40.560 They have that,

00:52:41.580 even though greater hardship

00:52:42.960 is understood

00:52:44.820 to be attached to that,

00:52:46.160 even though the financial incentives

00:52:47.600 might be lower,

00:52:48.400 even though the danger

00:52:49.200 is higher,

00:52:50.280 there is a prestige

00:52:51.200 of joining that

00:52:52.760 that is essential

00:52:54.340 to the self-conception

00:52:55.360 of the individual

00:52:56.700 that actually wants

00:52:57.460 to join the military

00:52:58.140 in the first place.

00:52:59.600 That's right,

00:52:59.920 and that's why

00:53:00.220 the ideological purging

00:53:01.540 of those exact same units

00:53:03.480 has been so devastating

00:53:04.560 to military recruitment

00:53:05.600 because the very people

00:53:07.080 who would be spurred on

00:53:08.120 by exactly the kind

00:53:09.040 of material

00:53:09.420 that you're talking about

00:53:10.500 are no longer allowed

00:53:12.380 inside the military

00:53:13.280 or are heavily dissuaded,

00:53:15.520 and it doesn't matter

00:53:16.120 how many signing bonuses

00:53:17.340 you go ahead

00:53:18.300 and tack on

00:53:19.220 for other groups,

00:53:20.140 those aren't the ones

00:53:21.080 that really want to fill

00:53:21.880 those elite ranks,

00:53:22.840 and those are the things

00:53:23.520 that really do spur people

00:53:24.700 to make that choice.

00:53:27.740 Seneca here says,

00:53:29.260 Johan,

00:53:29.820 life used to be full

00:53:30.920 of little daily rituals

00:53:32.460 by which you planned your day.

00:53:34.140 How would you re-implement

00:53:35.560 those rituals

00:53:36.380 with your family?

00:53:38.520 That's a great question,

00:53:39.700 yeah.

00:53:40.500 And hi, Seneca,

00:53:41.580 I recognize you

00:53:42.120 from my substack,

00:53:42.820 assuming it's the same one,

00:53:43.640 but you've got the same

00:53:44.140 profile picture,

00:53:44.800 so I'm assuming it is.

00:53:45.780 Great to see you here.

00:53:50.120 Some become obvious.

00:53:52.200 You know,

00:53:52.680 there are some activities

00:53:54.060 that are recognized

00:53:55.420 as obviously healthier,

00:53:59.540 psychologically speaking,

00:54:01.160 spiritually speaking,

00:54:02.000 the alternatives.

00:54:02.680 An example would be

00:54:03.400 sitting down as a family

00:54:04.440 to have a meal

00:54:05.040 and having no devices

00:54:06.460 on, no TV on,

00:54:07.780 eating at the same time

00:54:08.920 as a family,

00:54:09.620 speaking to each other,

00:54:10.380 as human beings

00:54:11.160 looking at each other

00:54:11.960 and inhabiting the same space.

00:54:14.260 So that's a sort of

00:54:15.440 physical example.

00:54:18.300 Maybe to make it more personal,

00:54:21.280 in my prayer life,

00:54:23.480 at this point,

00:54:24.900 you know,

00:54:25.200 I've been praying for so long,

00:54:26.940 I've sort of developed

00:54:27.720 a repertoire

00:54:28.220 of different prayers I pray,

00:54:29.880 and there's a sequence to them

00:54:31.700 that I pray at every day,

00:54:32.960 and I've sort of observed

00:54:34.140 over time

00:54:34.740 where I need particular support,

00:54:36.160 and I've incorporated prayers

00:54:37.360 into those.

00:54:38.340 So, for example,

00:54:38.880 I always start out

00:54:39.600 the morning with the prayer

00:54:41.320 of St. Michael the Archangel,

00:54:42.900 which is to ask

00:54:43.660 for his intercession

00:54:44.320 in battle,

00:54:44.880 defendenos in proelio,

00:54:46.380 contra anacuitia,

00:54:47.220 metinicidias,

00:54:48.000 diablias o presidio.

00:54:49.120 It's a very, very powerful

00:54:50.240 prayer in Latin.

00:54:52.660 And I follow that with,

00:54:54.360 you know,

00:54:54.680 I pray that my grandfather,

00:54:56.000 who is a great war hero,

00:54:57.620 is looking over me

00:54:58.980 and praying for me as well,

00:55:00.080 and then I sort of go through there,

00:55:01.520 the Our Father, of course,

00:55:02.340 and so forth.

00:55:03.500 But it's about developing

00:55:05.420 a personal connection,

00:55:06.760 and my son, in turn,

00:55:08.040 is praying with me now,

00:55:09.140 and it's about developing

00:55:10.620 these little rituals

00:55:11.460 that are not artificial,

00:55:13.460 they're not forced,

00:55:14.880 they are genuinely healthy,

00:55:16.280 and they sort of

00:55:16.720 re-instantiate themselves

00:55:17.840 because they're enjoyable,

00:55:19.140 because they're meaningful,

00:55:20.200 because they're relevant

00:55:20.860 to the moment.

00:55:21.860 I don't think

00:55:22.680 what would work is,

00:55:25.060 you know,

00:55:25.460 buying a book of, like,

00:55:27.440 the way that kings

00:55:28.960 had dinner in the Middle Ages

00:55:30.280 and attempting to reincorporate

00:55:31.600 some of that

00:55:32.080 into your particular life.

00:55:34.360 It's very important

00:55:35.080 not to allow this

00:55:36.740 to devolve into laughing,

00:55:38.020 because it is fundamentally

00:55:39.000 such a healthy

00:55:39.620 and human thing to do.

00:55:40.560 It's not necessary.

00:55:42.480 Yeah, I think you're right

00:55:43.560 that just finding those moments

00:55:44.980 that work into your day

00:55:46.480 and make sense

00:55:47.700 but also communicate

00:55:49.780 that togetherness

00:55:50.920 and that ritual

00:55:51.500 are absolutely key.

00:55:53.560 Creeper Weirdo says,

00:55:56.740 those old rituals

00:55:57.600 were low class,

00:55:58.920 but you know what's high class?

00:56:00.220 Consumerism,

00:56:00.900 hypersexuality,

00:56:02.080 and self-centeredness.

00:56:03.060 Every man is an island 1.00

00:56:04.420 and nothing matters.

00:56:05.640 No, you have crippling depression.

00:56:08.140 Yeah, no,

00:56:08.680 as amazing as that sounds,

00:56:11.060 that is pretty much exactly

00:56:12.240 what has managed

00:56:13.520 to be sold

00:56:14.180 to our society.

00:56:15.260 Daedalus says,

00:56:17.220 college is just

00:56:17.900 a voluntary blood tax

00:56:19.220 that you pay for

00:56:20.160 so the regime

00:56:21.440 can have a never-ending

00:56:22.940 supply of janissaries.

00:56:25.360 Yes, but also,

00:56:26.600 as I think Johan

00:56:27.540 critically pointed out,

00:56:28.740 it's also so much

00:56:29.620 more than that,

00:56:30.500 and until we have a way

00:56:32.160 to kind of step in

00:56:34.220 and substitute

00:56:35.640 a much more powerful

00:56:38.000 spiritual ritual

00:56:39.260 as something that

00:56:40.120 can transition people

00:56:41.600 from one moment

00:56:42.480 of life to another,

00:56:43.220 they will continue

00:56:44.300 to fall back on that.

00:56:45.840 No matter how hollow

00:56:46.880 it seems,

00:56:47.400 no matter how much

00:56:48.340 of a bad investment

00:56:49.460 it seems,

00:56:50.000 people will continue

00:56:50.700 to pay that tax

00:56:52.160 as long as it's

00:56:52.640 the only way

00:56:53.240 that they have

00:56:54.160 to kind of join

00:56:55.680 that higher status

00:56:57.560 or make that transition

00:56:59.240 from one mode

00:57:00.140 of being to the next.

00:57:03.140 Yeah,

00:57:03.800 completely agree.

00:57:05.460 Creeper Weirdo

00:57:06.180 again here says,

00:57:06.920 pagan cope is so cringe. 1.00

00:57:07.960 It's like,

00:57:08.620 who do you think

00:57:09.300 gave you the memory

00:57:10.960 of pagan rituals

00:57:11.680 to begin with?

00:57:12.340 It wasn't Crowley,

00:57:13.840 I'll tell you that.

00:57:14.880 Yeah,

00:57:15.240 there is this nasty

00:57:17.080 tendency

00:57:18.000 to kind of

00:57:19.220 cloak a little bit

00:57:19.900 of new atheism

00:57:21.640 in kind of this idea

00:57:24.280 of neo-paganism.

00:57:25.540 Don't get me wrong,

00:57:26.220 there are people

00:57:26.700 who genuinely believe in it,

00:57:28.080 there are some

00:57:29.140 who do actually practice it,

00:57:30.940 and then that is

00:57:31.760 a far more

00:57:33.020 real version of that,

00:57:36.340 but the people

00:57:37.020 who are just using it

00:57:37.940 as a kind of a shield

00:57:39.380 for their kind of

00:57:41.600 new atheism

00:57:42.220 is always kind of

00:57:42.840 tiresome.

00:57:43.300 Lauren,

00:57:43.760 I think the all caps

00:57:45.140 means he expects you

00:57:46.020 to shout the comment

00:57:46.940 at the camera.

00:57:47.380 I'm sure he does,

00:57:48.420 that's true,

00:57:49.020 but Creeper Weirdo

00:57:49.760 is known by now

00:57:51.340 probably that I'm not

00:57:52.440 going to do that,

00:57:53.340 but I appreciate it.

00:57:55.100 Seneca says,

00:57:56.240 great,

00:57:56.620 good stream,

00:57:57.640 gents,

00:57:58.100 cheers from Missouri.

00:57:59.600 Well,

00:57:59.720 thank you very much,

00:58:00.420 sir,

00:58:00.760 definitely appreciate it.

00:58:03.260 And Sky Dancer,

00:58:04.660 the boomer rite of passage 0.65

00:58:05.740 is losing virginity. 0.87

00:58:08.260 Yeah,

00:58:08.560 I mean,

00:58:08.980 that was definitely

00:58:10.320 something that was

00:58:10.840 emphasized very heavily

00:58:12.200 in that generation,

00:58:14.180 though I'm going to

00:58:15.000 just say,

00:58:15.920 to be fair,

00:58:16.540 I think that is

00:58:17.220 a pretty common

00:58:18.380 rite of passage

00:58:19.820 in pretty much

00:58:21.380 all cultures,

00:58:22.660 whether we realize

00:58:23.900 it or not,

00:58:24.400 but the very crass

00:58:25.420 version of it

00:58:26.200 in kind of

00:58:27.740 the modern sense

00:58:28.720 and the way

00:58:29.500 that we've kind of

00:58:30.540 made that such

00:58:31.240 a very cheap

00:58:32.060 rite of passage

00:58:32.940 probably makes it

00:58:34.300 just seem

00:58:35.700 strictly vulgar,

00:58:36.580 but I do think

00:58:37.740 that that is

00:58:38.380 one that has existed

00:58:39.640 pretty much across

00:58:40.360 all cultures

00:58:41.140 in one way or another,

00:58:42.740 so I wouldn't just

00:58:43.940 throw that away

00:58:45.140 and dismiss that 0.98

00:58:45.940 as ridiculous, 0.87

00:58:46.620 but I would say 0.96

00:58:47.300 the current version

00:58:47.980 of it is so

00:58:48.740 low and crass

00:58:49.960 as to make it

00:58:50.780 easy to do so.

00:58:52.000 If I can make

00:58:53.020 one observation

00:58:53.580 on that front,

00:58:54.080 I think it's actually

00:58:54.720 a very interesting subject.

00:58:56.160 Primarily,

00:58:56.720 what we've spoken

00:58:57.200 about today

00:58:57.740 are male-coded

00:58:58.780 initiation rituals,

00:59:00.080 but if you look

00:59:00.500 at the history

00:59:00.860 of female initiation rituals,

00:59:02.480 they typically,

00:59:03.480 I won't go too

00:59:04.040 into detail

00:59:04.440 because it's perhaps

00:59:05.280 not the right

00:59:05.840 forum to discuss,

00:59:06.960 but they typically

00:59:07.900 center around

00:59:08.780 physical coming

00:59:09.880 of age for girls

00:59:10.860 and how to deal

00:59:11.680 with their

00:59:12.160 becoming fertility,

00:59:13.700 and it's much

00:59:14.620 more of a private affair,

00:59:15.540 it's much more

00:59:15.880 of a personal affair,

00:59:16.860 in part because

00:59:17.640 that happens

00:59:18.140 at different ages

00:59:18.980 for different girls,

00:59:20.000 and they're taken

00:59:20.840 away by older women 1.00

00:59:22.140 into seclusion,

00:59:23.400 and they go

00:59:23.780 through ritual

00:59:24.280 purification,

00:59:25.300 and they are taught

00:59:25.820 how to process

00:59:27.700 the advent

00:59:28.680 of their fertility

00:59:29.500 in a sort of

00:59:30.540 meaningful and healthy

00:59:31.280 way that contributes

00:59:32.400 to the wider people

00:59:33.360 and that prepares

00:59:34.260 them for family formation

00:59:35.320 and so forth.

00:59:36.260 We have the opposite

00:59:37.360 of that in our society,

00:59:38.600 which is we have

00:59:39.440 a series of anti-fertility

00:59:41.380 initiation rituals

00:59:42.560 throughout, you know,

00:59:44.240 the school years

00:59:44.940 that basically is like

00:59:46.560 sex ed,

00:59:47.260 which is like,

00:59:48.040 here's how you stop,

00:59:49.060 you know,

00:59:50.260 conception at all costs,

00:59:51.940 and then you go

00:59:52.760 to university

00:59:53.340 and you have, you know,

00:59:54.700 radical pro-choice

00:59:56.360 movements and so forth,

00:59:57.380 so you're sort of

00:59:58.660 reverse-initiated

00:59:59.700 away from ideals.

01:00:01.820 Very true.

01:00:03.260 Very good insight.

01:00:04.740 Roel Pepper says,

01:00:05.760 Baptism seems to be

01:00:06.840 Protestants' main method

01:00:09.060 of initiation

01:00:10.080 and is often done young.

01:00:11.920 Any thoughts on

01:00:12.500 how to create more? 0.80

01:00:15.480 Stuff.

01:00:16.540 I'm probably not

01:00:17.380 the right person to ask.

01:00:18.640 So I'll give a critical

01:00:20.600 perspective because

01:00:21.400 that's what I'm equipped

01:00:22.120 to do,

01:00:22.600 but I'm sure I'm not

01:00:24.200 doing the subject justice

01:00:25.280 in that some of my

01:00:26.220 well-informed Protestant

01:00:27.320 friends would be able

01:00:28.720 to give a more

01:00:29.160 positive vision.

01:00:29.820 One of the things

01:00:31.440 about the Protestant

01:00:33.360 ethos

01:00:34.200 and the genesis

01:00:35.140 of Protestantism

01:00:36.020 was the skepticism

01:00:37.480 of ritual,

01:00:39.640 of the centrality

01:00:40.720 of tradition

01:00:41.340 as an overbearing

01:00:42.920 factor

01:00:43.420 that got in the way

01:00:45.160 of man's personal

01:00:46.680 and rightful

01:00:47.440 relationship

01:00:48.100 with the divine.

01:00:49.860 And if you move

01:00:50.880 towards that more

01:00:51.600 individuated approach

01:00:52.660 to religion,

01:00:53.560 then these more

01:00:54.680 archetypical,

01:00:55.660 formal,

01:00:56.060 and mandatory

01:00:56.520 processes sort of

01:00:58.720 recede into the

01:00:59.560 into the distance.

01:01:00.500 Whereas if you look

01:01:01.120 at the religious

01:01:02.240 traditions like

01:01:03.320 Eastern Orthodoxy

01:01:05.400 or Catholicism

01:01:06.480 that are much more

01:01:07.480 acquainted with ritual

01:01:08.900 and that have these

01:01:09.880 different gradations

01:01:10.720 of initiation.

01:01:11.640 So in Catholicism

01:01:12.940 at least,

01:01:13.680 you know,

01:01:14.200 you have baptism,

01:01:15.400 but then you also

01:01:16.060 have First Holy Communion,

01:01:17.500 which is typically

01:01:17.960 when you're about seven.

01:01:19.000 You might have

01:01:19.440 confirmation a few

01:01:20.240 years after that

01:01:21.080 and so on and so forth.

01:01:23.360 So there's this kind

01:01:24.080 of evolving continuation

01:01:25.260 of ritual.

01:01:26.140 Now, none of those

01:01:26.760 are sufficient

01:01:27.260 for the reasons

01:01:27.800 I said earlier

01:01:28.400 that the Catholic Church,

01:01:29.900 as with pretty much

01:01:30.660 every other church,

01:01:31.280 is not doing a good job

01:01:32.400 at providing a fully

01:01:33.460 fleshed out initiation

01:01:34.540 ritual into adulthood.

01:01:35.980 But I think Protestantism 0.52

01:01:37.200 in particular

01:01:38.120 will have to derive

01:01:39.920 their sources of initiation

01:01:41.160 from processes

01:01:42.440 other than the faith itself.

01:01:44.260 I mean, obviously,

01:01:44.720 you still want to reflect

01:01:45.680 their faith,

01:01:46.680 but they will have to turn

01:01:47.660 to other sources,

01:01:48.860 institutional sources,

01:01:50.040 community sources,

01:01:51.540 traditional sources,

01:01:52.760 and so forth.

01:01:53.320 But I don't think

01:01:53.780 they'll emerge organically

01:01:54.820 out of the Protestant faith.

01:01:56.400 I think there's some truth

01:01:57.500 to that as somebody

01:01:58.160 who is Southern Baptist

01:01:59.440 and grew up Protestant.

01:02:01.600 I would say that

01:02:02.820 while there's probably

01:02:05.920 less ritual directly

01:02:07.200 tied to the church

01:02:07.980 and that, as you said,

01:02:09.160 that is intentional,

01:02:10.560 there are alternatives

01:02:12.380 that do emerge

01:02:13.400 inside the church.

01:02:14.980 The transition

01:02:15.580 to deacon or elder

01:02:17.640 is one that I think

01:02:19.460 is probably a critical one

01:02:20.800 to point to.

01:02:21.380 many of the organizations

01:02:22.860 that are inside the church

01:02:25.560 often have that kind

01:02:27.860 of transition to leadership

01:02:29.240 or that transition

01:02:30.360 from a childlike role

01:02:34.020 inside the church

01:02:34.920 to one that is more

01:02:35.840 of a adult-coded role

01:02:37.840 in the church community.

01:02:39.440 And so while I think

01:02:40.180 probably the more,

01:02:42.000 what we would think of

01:02:42.940 as ancient ritual aspect

01:02:45.280 of the church

01:02:46.020 certainly doesn't exist

01:02:47.220 to the extent that it does

01:02:49.040 in, say, the more orthodox faith,

01:02:51.940 I think that those opportunities

01:02:53.040 still do exist.

01:02:54.520 And I think many of them

01:02:56.000 are tied very deeply

01:02:57.580 to the civic organization,

01:02:59.120 which is why de Tocqueville

01:03:01.460 saw that as such a critical part

01:03:03.100 of the American formation

01:03:04.460 of civic life.

01:03:06.500 And I think that that is

01:03:07.720 probably the Protestant display

01:03:10.340 of the kind of ritual

01:03:12.100 or transition

01:03:12.720 that you're talking about.

01:03:16.760 Yep.

01:03:17.200 We've got Glow in the Dark here.

01:03:18.940 He says,

01:03:19.260 What happened to the ritual

01:03:20.180 of fixing up your own car?

01:03:21.660 I found it therapeutic,

01:03:23.180 rhetorical,

01:03:23.880 but I miss being able

01:03:24.800 to work on my car

01:03:25.860 without having to remove

01:03:26.680 30% of the engine

01:03:27.600 to reach something.

01:03:28.740 Yeah, this really was

01:03:29.680 a critical part.

01:03:30.500 Like, I remember this.

01:03:31.460 Yeah, I got a really old car

01:03:32.980 because it was all I could afford

01:03:34.180 when I was young,

01:03:36.140 when I was 16

01:03:37.260 and working, you know,

01:03:39.100 a part-time job.

01:03:40.700 And, you know,

01:03:41.500 it broke down almost immediately.

01:03:42.820 And so I had to learn

01:03:43.500 how to change a water pump

01:03:44.740 and a thermostat.

01:03:46.040 And it was so old

01:03:47.120 that there wasn't

01:03:47.820 a large amount of computers

01:03:49.540 and everything

01:03:50.240 between me

01:03:51.280 and all of those parts.

01:03:52.260 And so even though

01:03:52.820 I'm not particularly

01:03:53.920 mechanically gifted,

01:03:54.880 I was able to learn

01:03:55.820 all that stuff.

01:03:56.540 And that was a rite

01:03:57.240 of initiation

01:03:57.940 to a degree.

01:03:59.060 You had to learn

01:03:59.540 how to care and maintain

01:04:00.840 this thing that gave you

01:04:02.400 a certain degree

01:04:03.100 of independence.

01:04:04.420 I think the really

01:04:05.380 interesting thing

01:04:06.080 is that most of that

01:04:07.380 has gone away

01:04:08.380 for a couple

01:04:09.220 different reasons.

01:04:10.220 One is that younger

01:04:11.000 generations today,

01:04:12.140 this has been remarked

01:04:12.840 on by many people.

01:04:13.760 I mentioned this

01:04:14.280 in actually my last stream,

01:04:15.880 is that many

01:04:16.420 of the younger generations,

01:04:17.920 Zoomers and younger, 1.00

01:04:20.160 weren't even interested

01:04:21.000 in getting their driver's license

01:04:22.500 in the U.S.

01:04:23.460 as young as they could,

01:04:24.780 as where when I was a kid,

01:04:25.900 this was a critical part

01:04:27.100 of your transition

01:04:28.660 to kind of semi-adulthood.

01:04:31.900 And, frankly,

01:04:33.780 automotive ownership

01:04:34.960 is more and more

01:04:35.860 out of reach.

01:04:36.780 The prices,

01:04:37.760 inflation,

01:04:38.780 the upkeep,

01:04:39.500 the maintenance,

01:04:39.980 all of these things

01:04:40.640 have pushed these things

01:04:43.020 out of ownership.

01:04:44.380 And, finally,

01:04:45.200 you just don't have

01:04:45.940 dads teaching kids

01:04:47.020 how to fix this

01:04:48.080 kind of stuff anymore.

01:04:48.840 You don't have

01:04:49.160 that transitional knowledge

01:04:51.140 where your dad

01:04:52.800 or your grandpa

01:04:53.360 pulled you aside

01:04:54.480 and said,

01:04:54.920 this is how you get

01:04:56.160 under the hood of the car

01:04:58.020 and fix those things

01:04:58.620 because you can outsource

01:04:59.400 that to cheap labor

01:05:01.680 or what used to be cheap labor

01:05:03.060 but isn't anymore.

01:05:04.320 And so I think

01:05:04.780 these are all

01:05:05.320 kind of multiple things

01:05:06.480 that have stripped away

01:05:07.720 not just in the automotive sense

01:05:10.180 but all kinds of senses

01:05:11.400 whether it be home maintenance

01:05:12.500 or the lack of ownership

01:05:13.980 and therefore the lack

01:05:15.640 of maintenance

01:05:16.100 means the lack

01:05:17.260 of that transition

01:05:18.120 to adulthood

01:05:18.760 by caring for

01:05:19.900 your own possession.

01:05:22.160 Yeah.

01:05:23.120 I mean,

01:05:23.680 what you're talking about

01:05:25.900 isn't an initiation ritual

01:05:27.160 as such.

01:05:27.660 It's more of a sort of

01:05:28.440 therapeutic

01:05:28.880 or a different kind

01:05:32.800 of ritual.

01:05:33.580 But the characteristics

01:05:35.200 of a ritual

01:05:35.840 of the kind

01:05:36.280 you're talking about

01:05:37.000 is something

01:05:37.440 that you can sink into

01:05:38.600 that you can relax into

01:05:39.740 that you can inhabit

01:05:40.620 unselfconsciously

01:05:41.680 because you're familiar

01:05:42.300 with it

01:05:42.680 because you've been taught

01:05:43.440 to do it

01:05:43.760 because you've done it

01:05:44.380 again and again

01:05:44.960 just as your father

01:05:45.720 did it and so on.

01:05:46.980 And it becomes

01:05:47.440 this sort of very soothing

01:05:48.720 and reassuring activity

01:05:52.080 to sink into.

01:05:53.240 And if you look

01:05:53.840 at the Zoomers,

01:05:54.880 as with many physical

01:05:56.420 and indeed digital tasks,

01:05:59.440 Zoomers are surprisingly 1.00

01:06:00.740 bad software engineers

01:06:01.680 because they rarely get

01:06:02.580 into the nuts and bolts

01:06:03.420 of a ritual

01:06:05.200 of having 20 years ago

01:06:06.620 we had to fix

01:06:07.600 our own computers

01:06:08.660 and to download

01:06:10.120 to pirate something

01:06:11.000 you had to like download

01:06:12.060 a VPN

01:06:13.640 and get into the

01:06:14.340 download some kind

01:06:15.680 of flat converter

01:06:16.500 or whatever

01:06:16.880 to get a video to play.

01:06:18.140 Now if you've got Netflix

01:06:18.980 there's a smooth front end

01:06:20.960 for everything

01:06:21.320 so you're not digging

01:06:21.940 into the nuts and bolts

01:06:22.620 of the machine.

01:06:23.620 Returning to the example

01:06:24.440 of the car,

01:06:26.140 I think a lot of Zoomers 1.00

01:06:27.280 and this isn't a criticism

01:06:29.160 of them,

01:06:29.740 it's not their fault

01:06:30.360 it's societal processes

01:06:31.520 that are bringing this about

01:06:32.680 but they find it

01:06:34.300 much more difficult

01:06:35.120 to unselfconsciously

01:06:36.800 sink into

01:06:37.700 and relax into

01:06:38.800 the physical

01:06:39.420 and mechanical world

01:06:40.420 because of all the structures

01:06:41.820 that Auron noted

01:06:44.800 have degraded.

01:06:45.900 So even if they were

01:06:46.600 to engage in that activity

01:06:48.080 what might be a ritual

01:06:49.700 for you

01:06:50.160 wouldn't be a ritual

01:06:51.020 for them

01:06:51.600 because it doesn't bear

01:06:53.420 that repetitive

01:06:54.160 and familiar feeling

01:06:55.280 that a ritual

01:06:55.840 is supposed to.

01:06:56.760 Instead it would be

01:06:57.480 an intentional activity

01:06:59.260 and perhaps a challenging

01:07:00.480 and difficult one

01:07:01.220 even a frightening one

01:07:02.120 which is not to say

01:07:04.840 that that isn't something

01:07:05.540 that shouldn't be

01:07:05.960 taken on and surmounted

01:07:07.000 but it wouldn't be

01:07:07.640 a ritual

01:07:08.320 it wouldn't feel

01:07:08.940 the same way

01:07:09.500 that it would to someone

01:07:10.260 that had been raised

01:07:10.920 in that circumstance.

01:07:12.320 Right, right.

01:07:13.260 Alright guys

01:07:13.760 oh one more

01:07:14.920 super chat

01:07:15.460 we'll make this

01:07:15.860 the last one guys

01:07:16.700 thank you very much

01:07:17.540 I appreciate your questions

01:07:18.600 Will in the Dark

01:07:19.380 follows up and says

01:07:20.120 speaking specifically

01:07:21.260 to church rituals

01:07:22.440 I don't remember

01:07:23.340 the last time

01:07:23.800 a church organized

01:07:24.700 to help a fellow member

01:07:26.180 like building a ramp

01:07:27.380 for disabled grandmothers

01:07:28.340 or doing a fundraiser

01:07:29.680 for a college kid

01:07:31.440 I mean

01:07:32.380 I don't know about

01:07:33.460 your personal experience

01:07:34.640 going in the dark

01:07:35.080 but that's the kind of thing

01:07:36.420 that my church does

01:07:37.120 all the time

01:07:37.600 one of the reasons

01:07:38.220 that I like being involved

01:07:39.460 in it

01:07:39.780 so if that's not

01:07:41.340 a part of a church ritual

01:07:42.760 then you know

01:07:44.300 I think you might need

01:07:45.240 to find a better church

01:07:46.420 because that sounds

01:07:47.740 like a church

01:07:48.280 that's not fulfilling

01:07:49.600 a critical role

01:07:50.440 in its community.

01:07:54.440 Alright guys

01:07:55.340 we're going to go ahead

01:07:55.940 and wrap this up

01:07:56.780 but Johan

01:07:57.280 thank you

01:07:57.760 once again

01:07:58.600 for coming on

01:07:59.340 everybody should

01:07:59.920 definitely go

01:08:00.480 and check out

01:08:01.140 his excellent

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01:08:22.500 thanks for coming by guys

01:08:23.980 and as always

01:08:24.620 I'll talk to you next time

01:08:26.060 I'll talk to you next time

01:08:26.900 I'll talk to you next time

01:08:27.780 I'll talk to you next time

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The Auron MacIntyre Show - February 14, 2024

The Lost Ritual and the University ｜ Guest： Johann Kurtz ｜ 2⧸14⧸24

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