Jonathan Pago is a Christian artist, public intellectual, and the host of the show, The Symbolic World. He has studied the hidden and almost magical world of symbolism and fairy tales and conspiracy theories, and now he s here to explain why.
00:04:28.000Well, a good way to understand it is, you know, that famous conspiracy theory about the lizard people is a good way to understand it.
00:04:35.000And what happens is people have an insight about our leadership and the insight is something like our leaders are supposed to be there for us, but they're not.
00:05:15.000And so that's the way to think about it is you can see these types of crazy conspiracy theories.
00:05:19.000Pizzagate's another example where some of the details of the thing people are seeing are wrong and they're kind of crazy and over the top.
00:05:26.000You know, they get into conspiracy minded, like crazy conspiracy minded ideas.
00:05:31.000But if you think of the people as like a tuning fork, you know, and they get a sense, they kind of, they start to vibrate and they, they start to sound an alarm.
00:05:46.000We don't have to take all the details seriously, but usually they have the, the sense that they have is probably right.
00:05:53.000And so we can look through the mythological images and realize that, you know, even if, you know, I don't believe in actual lizard people, but the image, but the image of the serpent, you know, in the garden telling it's, it's, it's, we shouldn't be thinking about the serpent or the lizard.
00:06:10.000We should be thinking about what is that saying?
00:06:13.000Yeah. What is it saying about the moment in culture and the way in which we interact with our leaders?
00:06:18.000And that's true about a lot of conspiracy theorists.
00:06:21.000You can usually, if you take one step, you, one step back and you look at it, you can kind of understand it.
00:06:27.000I remember the conspiracy theory in COVID when they said 5G causes COVID, right?
00:06:31.000And you're like, I don't know, whatever.
00:06:32.000So you realize, no, actually 5G doesn't cause COVID mechanically, but does 5G cause COVID?
00:06:38.000Like if we didn't have the connection that we had on the internet and we didn't have all this way of surveilling and of, and of, and of staying in touch with like tracking everyone, would there have been the COVID reaction that there was?
00:06:51.000And the answer is obviously no, a hundred years ago, people would have died and we would have gone on with our life.
00:06:56.000And so does 5G cause COVID? Well, in a way, yes, it's not a mechanical cause, but it is something that is like a meaning cause, right? It's related. And the, the people like just the regular Joes, they sense that, but they formulate it in all kinds of weird ways that are sticky.
00:07:13.000Uh, and so I think that there are ways to look at the cultural narratives that can help us understand what's happening. If that's what we want, if we want to understand what's happening in the world, it's like, we can look at these cultural narratives from one step removed and we can actually understand what's happening.
00:07:29.000So what are the cultural narratives that you're seeing that you're like, Oh, well, one of them is the lizard, lizard people. One is a good one to understand. And it has to do with the fetishization of, or the,
00:07:43.000obsession with that, which is strange. It's a good way of thinking about it, right? So you have your world, right? You have your story, you have your identity, no matter which one it is, it doesn't matter. You have your family. And then there are elements that are strange that don't belong.
00:07:57.000And what's been happening now for the past, since world war two, really is we're obsessed with that question. So on the one hand, we fetishize that, which is strange. So you have narratives, like basically the idea that, uh, anything that's not my identity is better. Right. So we fetishize other cultures, we fetishize other things, or we, it's the opposite, or we kind of fall into this idea that we're in danger. We have, we're being invaded from without in all kinds of ways.
00:08:24.000There are people with bad intentions that are trying to influence our children and, or that are trying to come in and take our jobs or whatever it is.
00:08:31.000But both of those, a step back are absolutely true. Right. Right. Okay. Yeah. And so both of those are showing a moment in culture that is worth noticing, which is that when any culture becomes obsessed with that, which is outside, it signals something about who we are. It signals something about how there's, we're running out of our own, of ourselves. We're running out of fuel. We're on the edge of death, you could say.
00:08:57.100So the end of a world has a shape. It looks a certain way. When the Roman empire was close to its own, uh, you know, its own fall, the young people were obsessed with the barbarians. They actually like, people would complain that they dressed like the barbarians. They would wear pants and they would wear their hair like their enemy. And so it's like, what, what does that mean? And it, it signals that we're nearing some kind of crisis is a good way to think about it.
00:09:22.200So, uh, I got so many questions on just that. So let me, let me start here when it chicken and the egg. Yeah. What's happening first and how do we all connect that? I mean, I find it strange. People are finding God, you know, they're questioning demons. Yeah. Now I talked to atheists who say there's no other way to describe what's happening other than evil. Yeah.
00:09:52.100And around the world, we're all protesting the same things our governments are doing. This is global in its nature. Um, and that makes it feel otherworldly. Yeah.
00:10:09.100It makes it feel like it, that evil is an actual force. And I don't think the average American and especially European have been there in a long time.
00:10:21.140Yeah. Well, there's definitely something happening. And like you said, there's, there's a phenomenon that's happening in every field simultaneously, which is materialism is running out.
00:10:30.620The mechanical, you know, explanations of things, the way that we describe things as basically billiard balls bumping into each other is not sufficient. And people are reaching that conclusion in science, in psychology, in all the different fields. Simultaneously, it's the problem of complexity. It's the problem of emergence. They have different ways of talking about it. It's like, how do we account for how multiplicity becomes one? Like how can something be many things like have parts, but then also be, you can see it as one thing.
00:11:00.520And how does that work in terms of people, right? So it's like, how is America one thing? And America is billions of, it's like millions and millions and millions of things.
00:11:10.760But if I, if I may, our, our whole country was built on e pluribus unum and our unum were the principles that built us, that we don't, we don't share those anymore.
00:11:23.240That's right. And that's what I think people are noticing is that the, the way that people join together into one is not arbitrary.
00:11:30.520There has to be something, it has to be a principle or a principality. You can say it in different ways that is overseeing, or that is binding multiplicity together.
00:11:40.760Explain principality, interesting word.
00:11:43.920Well, so principality is an, is a, something like a, a principle, but a principle that's active, right? It's acting on us. And so a boss is a principality for all intents and purposes. You know, so you have a boss, you have a team and the boss is trying to embody the purpose of the team, but he's doing it actively. It's not just a passive principle that we all kind of follow. It's like, if you don't follow this, there'll be punishment.
00:12:08.240And if you do, there'll be reward and all that stuff.
00:12:10.500Beyond a, beyond a boss, God and Satan.
00:12:14.820Satan, but also all kinds of principalities, right? So that's why you, when you said the idea of demons, in some ways we're at a point where the question or the possibility of angels and demons all of a sudden becomes prescient again, where I'm talking to cognitive psychologists and they use fancy words.
00:12:31.960You know, they, they talk about, you know, they talk about transpersonal agency, right? What are we talking about? What's a transpersonal agency? It means that they're recognizing patterns of agency that are beyond the human person.
00:12:47.640And they realize that when people act together in groups, that there's something binding them together and there's something making them work towards a single goal and that something like an angel, they won't use the word angel, but that's really what it is that they're slowly kind of pointing to.
00:13:03.980And that there are some of these transpersonal agencies that spiral into chaos, right? They kind of spiral you down into breakdown. They, they capture you, you know, think about like on a street gang, like a street gang has a type of transpersonal agency, but it's devouring the people inside.
00:13:22.040Like it's basically just destroying them. So it's like, well, what's that? Well, that's a demon. That's what we used to call a demon. And now people don't want to use that word, but it's in some ways becoming, it's, we're moving towards a position where it's becoming better to actually use these terms to understand.
00:13:38.360And it's really to understand because you, what you want to do is to be able to see what's happening and to recognize what's going on. When you have a, like a kind of intellectual fashion or some kind of idea that, that like starts to capture people and push them in a direction, that's a type of agency. It wants something.
00:13:59.260Okay. So wait, let's just explain a couple of things. Do you believe in evil as an entity?
00:14:06.740Uh, I would say, I believe that, I mean, I believe in the devil, the DS, I do believe in the devil. I believe that the evil, evil doesn't have its own existence. It's a parasite, right? That's the best way of understanding it. It's like it, it takes something good and it twists it.
00:14:27.800It has a coherence to it. It has a type of coherence.
00:14:30.440And so when you're looking at things happening all around the world, I mean, I think we're seeing possession all the time. You watch people on TV and sometimes they absolutely look possessed. They act like possessed people. And it's all part of this insanity that's going on.
00:14:47.700And what I want to know is, are you saying that this is a physical thing that you start getting wrapped up into this and then you just go down? Or are you saying, no, no, no, this is an, an outside force that is coming in and invading and we're just ripe for the picking?
00:15:07.760Yeah. I think the best way to understand it is as, especially for a demon, the best way to understand it is as an outside force. Because the reason why we think of it that way is because let's say the, the transpersonal agency, let's say that's making you drink, let's say, like it doesn't want good for you. It's bringing you on a path that's actually destroying you.
00:15:31.020And so if you think about that, like at a higher level in terms of a group, if you have a group that's engaging in absolutely self-destructive behavior, that cannot be, let's say, it cannot be an inner truth. It's an outer truth. It's something that is, that has intentions that are from something else. So you can imagine, like, we have to be careful. We have to, I try to try to keep it as, let's say, grounded as possible, right?
00:15:54.920So you have a foreign government, right? That foreign government has interest in your government, let's say, falling apart. So they would be willing to influence your people, let's say, funding drug gangs or funding all kinds of things that will bring the breakdown of your, of your, of your people. And so you're like, well, that's a foreign influence, right? And that's how to think about it.
00:16:17.920You can think about it in terms of, let's say another government, but sometimes there's also something happening, even at higher levels where you have beings that have other intentions that are affecting us and bringing us towards our own destruction. Usually it has to do with, let's say, just gaining power for that being, right?
00:16:36.860It's like anger, let's say, in a, in a, in a person, you know, it's like, if you give into the sin of anger, it's like anger wants to be primordial, right? It wants to rule you. It wants to take over all your energies, you know, the gambling, or you can think of all the things that take over people, but that happens in societies too. So, I mean, we've seen like this rainbow stuff, like that's part of, like it's, it's completely coherent and it wants something and it's, it's infecting or it's taking over people's minds.
00:17:24.500And is willing to destroy whatever stands in its way.
00:17:27.600Exactly. And so that's a good way to understand it. And the best way to understand it, like, so that you don't fall into just woo stuff or like kind of magical thinking,
00:17:35.640is to think about a foreign influence, like to think about a government that is affecting us.
00:17:40.840And so let's say for the rainbow stuff, you can realize that there is an actual principality, like a kind of some transpersonal agency, a demon that is, that wants something and is devouring us.
00:17:53.400And you'll also have foreign agents that are willing to feed that because it's to their advantage that you're destroyed.
00:18:01.540Like it, it means that you can trace sometimes the causalities.
00:18:05.240You can say, oh, I can see that there are people with bad intentions that are influencing us towards something, but they're, they're doing it using a bigger story, which is, you know, basically a coherent path towards destruction.
00:18:19.520You know, like any society that, any society that starts to emphasize behaviors that lead you away from just having children is a society on its deathbed.
00:18:31.180It's a society that's moving towards its own destruction.
00:18:55.840Because I've never in my lifetime seen people interact and talk about the things en masse.
00:19:10.900Like we're talking, I was just sitting here thinking 20 years ago, I could have had you on the podcast and I would have been thinking the whole time.
00:21:25.320First, let me tell you about the Jace case.
00:21:27.260Um, we all need to realize we are powerful and we need to be empowered by ourselves to care for ourself and empowered to, uh, the idea of responsibility for our loved ones when the unexpected happens.
00:21:47.720I don't know if you've been paying attention lately, but a lot of unexpected things have been happening.
00:22:16.980The Jace case is a personalized emergency kit that contains essential antibiotics and medications that treat the most common and deadly bacterial infections.
00:22:26.060It is providing five life-saving antibiotics for emergency use.
00:22:30.200You just fill out a simple form online and you'll have it in case you need it.
00:22:34.360Then they also have Ivermectin as an add-on.
00:23:12.880I think that that's the best way to think about it is that there are natural cycles, natural in the sense that, you know, that societies and individuals, they emphasize certain things and that leads to certain counterbalance.
00:23:27.720And so you have this, these kind of cycles that, that the thing that's hard to know is how big is this moment?
00:23:35.840Because we're clearly at the end of something.
00:23:37.620We kind of feel we're at the end of something.
00:23:39.180We can even see the new beginning kind of peeking through in these insights.
00:23:44.840The fact that, for example, people are now normal people who would have thought talking about transpersonal agencies or angels or demons would have thought you were just a kooky, crazy person are now saying, well, actually, no, I kind of see that this is part of the world.
00:24:05.620It, it, it might also be negative in some ways too, because people are like, oh, you know, there are transpersonal agencies, there are demons.
00:24:14.580Can we talk to these beings and, you know, have them influence us?
00:24:17.720You know, you have these, you have all these stories of, of tech people, you know, who take psychedelics in order to kind of receive information from the other side, you know, even to build their technologies.
00:25:08.740And it is, there is a, there's a kind of a hidden strain of history that most people don't know, which is the development of kind of esoteric and occult thinking.
00:25:19.940I mean, now it's weird because it's in the popular sphere.
00:25:22.920You know, you have people, like regular people who, who are interested in these things, say they're witches or interest, you know, or casting spells.
00:25:31.840So it's a very, it's, it's like, as if the, this thing that used to be kind of elite and in the secret societies and all this stuff is now become almost like, we have a witchcraft school at the, like two streets from my house.
00:25:58.100We're in a very, so in every town in Canada, for example, now in Quebec, where I'm from, you know, there used to be, used to be the most Catholic place in the world.
00:26:05.420And now every little town has like a new age, you know, shop, but the churches are closing down.
00:26:12.380So when you say that people are casting spells and new age stuff, people think they're just shredding, it's just shedding religion.
00:26:25.660Which is a man's, you know, man sees and hears God and then his way to interpret and be able to get a group together and pass that information on through religion.
00:26:40.780They think they're just shedding that, but it's, you don't just, you can't leave the vacuum.
00:26:51.920And one of the things, it's funny because one of the things that the internet has done is made people aware of these agencies that are running through us because they used to, let's say, these types of agencies used to act on us over long periods of time.
00:27:06.000So maybe generations, you don't see it, but now we're seeing it happen very quickly because of the internet.
00:27:10.940So we're seeing these things take over like virality in general.
00:27:14.220Like you all of a sudden you see something, everybody cares about something for like 10 minutes and then it's gone.
00:27:21.440And we're seeing it definitely happen in social spheres.
00:27:24.320And it seems like one of the things that there was hope or some of the elites wanted to do was realizing that we have this religious problem and trying to substitute it with a kind of green, like a kind of environmental religion.
00:27:38.320Or also the rainbow type religion, all that stuff presented like the trans is sacred aspect of the LGBT movement, realizing we need some kind of religious theory.
00:27:51.360And so we're going to do this with these other structures.
00:27:57.080You can't just decide what it is you get people to care about.
00:27:59.780It's a religious movement in the, you know, in the BC days.
00:28:05.120There were times where societies would have these gods and the men would become women and it would celebrate, you know, abortion and all the things that we're doing.
00:28:18.080We're just casting it in a different light.
00:28:22.660When you tell me that, no, there's something that's in you, but it's not physical and it's telling you that you're not really a boy or a girl.
00:29:08.700That's why we would have initiation rituals.
00:29:10.660We'd have all these kind of things to kind of say we're going to like we're going to take this problem of someone in transition and confused and asking questions and we're going to give it a direction, you know.
00:29:21.100And so all of the bar mitzvah is a good example.
00:29:23.160And so it makes sense that there's another force.
00:29:26.880There are all kinds of things are trying.
00:29:28.400That's why teenagers are always the, you know, the prey of like rock and roll culture or all these things.
00:29:33.880And the, I mean, the LGBT stuff is just the most recent one, which is like someone, a teenager is confused and saying, and then they say, well, we have an answer for that confusion.
00:29:43.140We can explain to you why you don't know who you are.
00:29:46.020We can explain to you why you have these feelings that make you feel like you're alienated from your body.
00:29:51.200And it's totally normal when you reach puberty to be alienated from your body because you're going through such rapid changes that you are in some ways becoming a kind of potential for, on which, you know, a community will then like.
00:30:07.980It's like in that moment of puberty, you can completely capture people towards something.
00:30:13.200Uh, and so we have to, if we're, if we know that, like if we can see it, we have to be able to formulate positive answers because this is one of the issues that we have is that one of the problems that's happened, I think in North America is that we focus so much on like the individual and everything that we just want the teenager, for example, to just like to figure themselves out.
00:30:37.360But that's not what's happening when you're a teenager.
00:30:39.540You're actually looking for allegiance.
00:30:41.220You're looking for, that's why teenagers follow all these weird fashions and all this.
00:32:07.300Like, uh, but what, but wait, wait, wait, wait, I'm not against science, but I'm not saying that science isn't, isn't real, but science explains mechanical causes.
00:32:26.040But that doesn't mass not behind all this, you know, math is how it, it, it exists and how it works, but that's not the mind behind the math.
00:32:38.600And that's a good way, it's exactly the way of thinking about it is that humans are a joining of mind and matter, you know, they're a joining of, of intention, of will, of, uh, you know, agency.
00:32:51.840And so I think that one of the things that happened is in some ways the, the church or the Christians, they lost sight of what they were holding, like the story, the worldview, you could say that they were holding.
00:33:05.220And they reduced it to morality and science basically.
00:33:10.080But what we have is way more than that.
00:33:12.700Like the vision that's presented in the Bible and the vision that's presented in the Christian cosmology or the religious cosmology is something like an orienting structure, right?
00:33:25.000It helps people understand how to be, how to be with others and how to orient yourself as you move.
00:33:31.500And if we forget that, then we have this problem, which is that someone else is going to take it from you and someone else is going to, is going to take that from you because that's actually how we exist.
00:33:41.100And so one of the things we've been trying to do, you know, in the past few years is say, how can we help people connect again with these things?
00:33:48.760You know, like, that's why, like what I do on the symbolic world is basically help people see how the stories, not just the Bible, but, you know, even like our fairy tales, the different kind of cultural stories that we have, that they are these orienting mechanisms.
00:34:02.820There are ways for you to identify with a purpose and a group or, you know, a value and then orient yourself with others towards that.
00:34:12.620You know, so I've, I've often thought, you know, Grimm's fairy tales, they're really grim.
00:34:40.940In a way you could understand as a child.
00:34:43.480Yeah, and you didn't even have to understand it.
00:34:46.140It's like, it really is like how when you train a child in doing something, they don't understand the fullness of what it is that they're doing yet.
00:35:08.620They're, they're, they're really are orienting mechanisms.
00:35:11.580And so that's one of the things we were trying to do with these fairy tales is say, can we represent them to the world in a way that will play that role again?
00:35:44.420And this is funny because a lot of the Christians, they don't like the fact that there's the secular people have told them there's a sexual element to the story.
00:35:51.920And the truth is there is, but it's not just, it's not just a sexual story, but there is an aspect of it, which has to do with sexual maturation, which has to do with finding your place in the world.
00:36:00.240And just in general, kind of going through chaos and finding your own identity, right?
00:36:04.280That basic story trope of you're somewhere, you kind of fall into a kind of confusion and chaos, and then you find your way out and you're in a better place.
00:36:12.000That's what happens during teenage years, by the way.
00:36:14.660And so the story of Snow White is about that for a girl, like a girl, a young girl who is innocent and beautiful.
00:36:20.840As she starts to change, she now at first faces all the negative consequences of that.
00:36:26.060And jealousy from the other women, all these, all these men that are kind of like a caricature of men, that there are these little men that are like just dopey and sneezy or whatever, that they can't be my maid.
00:36:40.060These men that, and I have to work and I have to clean the house and I have to serve these men that aren't, and I don't know what it is.
00:36:47.400And I've just gone through this kind of chaos where, you know, I'm thrown into the, into this, in this, into this world where everything is changing.
00:36:55.440And then the story of Snow White is about that image as a kind of death, you know, it is related in some extent to a, to a young girl kind of reaching the age where she starts her menstrual cycle.
00:37:07.180And so, and then she, then she finds out what it's all about.
00:38:26.560They just see it through their own little political lens.
00:38:29.660And so, you know, they're making a version of Snow White now.
00:38:32.380That's one of the reasons why we published this book was because I found out to the grapevine around 2020, 2021, that Disney was going to put out a version of Snow White live action.
00:38:46.140There's so many things in the story that they can't do because of all their because of their kind of weird ideological position.
00:38:51.700So I thought this is the moment where we need to take these stories back, like take them back, present them beautifully.
00:38:57.940You know, we have, we're doing it in an amazing way with an amazing illustrator, world-class illustrator, beautiful kind of, like kind of, let's say, yeah, heirloom book, you know, like a treasure, not like a throwaway thing.
00:39:08.320Something you put up on the shelf and you have to ask your parents, you know, can we read Snow White again?
01:21:09.940Well, in your case, you know, things align so much that it's hard to say, it's just, it's a coincidence, but there are smaller versions of that that everybody deals with all the time.
01:21:20.100You know, these little moments kind of coalescing and becoming bright, you know, and kind of standing out from everyday life, this kind of boring everyday life.
01:21:30.660In some ways, they are little glimmers that we are in something bigger, like we participate in something bigger than ourselves.
01:21:38.300And we've been trained to ignore them or to say, like you said, it's just coincidence, it's superstition, you know, but these, these are part of the world.
01:21:48.580Like they are what brings reality together.
01:21:51.680You know, this type of thing, like this idea that events come together and kind of manifest meaning, you know, it happens to you every day, all the time in the little ways, you know, every time you, you were able to finish a project or you're able to work with someone in the team or whatever, you have these little experiences.
01:22:07.420And sometimes, like the story you told me, then it shows itself in a way that is really drawing you, right?
01:22:14.960Drawing you into something bigger than you.
01:22:17.500And, but that's actually how the world works.
01:22:21.400You were brought to, if, you know, I really, I'm, you know, I'm a recovering alcoholic.
01:22:28.200So I had this massive crash in my life and didn't know what I believed in and blah, blah, blah.
01:22:32.620And one of the first things I adopted was don't, don't accept anything as a coincidence, anything for 30 days, dismiss, wow, that was weird.
01:22:44.940And sometimes you'll pursue it and you'll go down a dead end and there's nothing, you know, that you, you can find there that other than it was just kind of a weird coincidence.
01:22:54.760Um, but there are other times that you're like, holy cow, look at how God is working, how the universe works.
01:23:05.880And the nihilists are absolutely wrong.
01:23:08.280Like they, they, you cannot avoid meaning meaning is the world is structured in meaning for every movement you make, everything you do, every time you move towards the door or that you, anything that you do is always an alignment towards purpose.
01:23:35.900It's, it's the way that you're entire.
01:23:38.260And how come so many of us are looking for meaning in our life?
01:23:40.760That's because they, how can I say this?
01:23:43.920It's like, they're looking, they have this lofty idea, right?
01:23:49.340You know, Christ says you have to be faithful in small things before you have access to the bigger things.
01:23:53.680You know, if you can't see the biggest, the bigger meaning, if you can't find like a purpose for your life, realize that there are purposes in front of you that are very close to you that you can engage with right away.
01:24:05.540Whether it's your friendships, whether it's your family, whether it's, you know, your community, whatever it is, there are these little things that you can embark on that will give you little meanings in life.
01:24:15.940And that those, if you, if you're faithful in those, and all of a sudden, like you said, like the story that you told, all of a sudden miracles start to appear and you realize that the world is actually full of light and is full of miracles.
01:24:27.020Did you see that the tabernacle was found in one of the churches that burned down in California?
01:25:48.060Like if you make it out of a crisis, it's because you are able to find that kernel, that little seed that is kind of going to pull you through that little arc that is going to bring you through the chaos.
01:25:59.080So when it happens at a greater scale, why are you surprised?
01:26:02.580It's like, that's how the world works.
01:27:28.900And people weaponize that in all kinds of kind of annoying ways where they're, you know, they're like, if you want to make money, you know, you kind of visualize it.
01:27:36.740It's like, yeah, you know, that probably does work.
01:27:39.020But there are better applications of this than just, you know, making a bunch of money.
01:27:44.620There are those that actually, like, hold the world together and, like, align it towards the highest good.
01:27:51.300Final segment with Jonathan here in just a second.
01:27:54.220First, let me talk to you about pre-born.
01:27:56.100The sanctity of life that is this month.
01:27:59.120We honor the 66 million babies whose lives have been tragically ended through abortion since Roe versus Wade.
01:28:05.420Sadly, since Roe was overturned, babies' lives are even at greater risk because the abortion pill accounts for over 60% of all abortions now.
01:28:15.960This tragedy is even a bigger tragedy because it's available on man 24-7.
01:28:22.420But in the midst of this darkness, there is a light that shines and it's pre-born.
01:28:26.060They've rescued over 300,000 babies from abortion and every day, on average, they rescue another 200.
01:28:32.100When a woman is considering abortion, she hears her baby's heartbeat and sees the face on ultrasound, the baby's chance at life is doubled.
01:28:40.120Pre-born shares free heartbeats and God's love for mom and child.
01:29:46.180Aliens means things that I don't know what they are or people that I don't know what they are or creatures that I don't know what they are.
01:29:51.080So, obviously, aliens exist and UFOs exist.
01:29:56.500Now, what does it mean in terms of the story?
01:30:14.040It's like, a stranger isn't like a specific type of person.
01:30:17.920It's just the type of person that you don't know.
01:30:19.760And so, the fact, and this has to do with this question, the fact that we're obsessed with the strange, we're obsessed with difference, is the mythological expression of that is something like obsessed with UFOs and obsessed with aliens, right?
01:30:36.140Because we see value in the alien, that which is...
01:30:40.400Wait, so this is the tyranny of exception.
01:30:45.220Yeah, and so, people project, and so people, well, there are two sides of it.
01:30:50.420Like, if you look at the mythology of aliens, you kind of have two aspects of it.
01:30:53.820On the one hand, you have the alien in the sense of the different monster that comes and eats me, right?
01:31:00.080So, if you think of, like, War of the Worlds, you know, or Independence Day, that's how it's presented.
01:31:04.760And so, we're America, there are these, like, things that we don't know what they are, they're attacking us, they're invading us, they're trying to destroy us, and we have to stop them, right?
01:31:25.780It's like, we have all this type of imagery that projects them into this higher role, where they are now going to kind of save us.
01:31:32.960So, we have to be attentive to that, right?
01:31:34.620We really have to be attentive to when people kind of fall into these narrative images about what it is that these strange and unidentified things are, because it tells us, first of all, it shows us that we're dealing with a world that's on the limit, right?
01:31:50.640So, the strange manifests itself on the border, right?
01:31:53.600So, you have an identity, you have a border, and that which is on the other side, that's what's strange.
01:32:02.020But there's also the dragon in the elite circle, in the government, you're like, I don't trust that either, to protect me.
01:32:08.400That is one of the problems of our moment now, which is, normally, your leader, your father, is the origin of you, right?
01:32:20.340The peepers that are above you, they are related to you, like, not necessarily biological, but they're related to you in the sense that they identify with you as a body, and you are serving them.
01:32:31.140And so, that's like a normal thing, but one of the problems we have now is that we have this weird situation where people think that the elites want something else, like they are a strange influence on us.
01:32:45.160And so, that's like the, you could say, it's the infiltration of the strange into the hierarchy.
01:32:52.620It's a kind of corruption from inside, and the corruption from inside, everybody understands it.
01:32:58.960There's a mythological image, which is the lizard people, but there's also, you know, the police chief that is serving another interest besides the one he's supposed to serve.
01:33:07.380His interest is he wants to fill his pockets.
01:33:09.840So, because of that, he's corrupting the world because he's using his position of authority in order to gather things to himself rather than do the job he's supposed to do.
01:33:20.260And so, we can understand this idea of the influence of the strange in our world.
01:33:26.800Now, that's the negative aspect of it.
01:33:29.460The reason why we also have this image of like the kind of glowing alien or the one that's going to save us is that sometimes the strange is also a land of opportunity, right?
01:33:41.480So, like, that's where trade comes from.
01:33:43.220So, the stranger brings new things, like things that we, and so we want to engage with that which is strange
01:33:49.560because there are hidden treasures, there are like hidden opportunities, it grows your world, it makes your world bigger.
01:33:55.820If you kind of engage with the people around you, with the people you don't know, or things you don't know,
01:34:00.220there are like little treasures hidden in that.
01:34:02.340And that's what, so the mythological image is these two extremes, right?
01:34:06.380This idea of like the alien that will save us, right?
01:35:23.000Is it foreign governments that are trying to spy on us?
01:35:25.680Or is it our government that are doing things that we don't know what it is and that are hiding from us?
01:35:30.700All of those, in terms of story, are the same.
01:35:34.700They are foreign alien influences that are trying to affect us and we don't know what they are.
01:35:40.840So, whichever it is, and I'm not saying it's one or the other, but whichever it is, we can see it in the same way.
01:35:46.400So, instead of debating, just like, obviously, we have to find out what these are because it's dangerous to have alien influences that you can't recognize and you can't identify.
01:35:59.880Well, it's also, you know, part of this is, you know, I've had the thought, is this the government staging this to distract us or to do some sort of mind game on us?
01:36:13.700Because it does play mind games on people.
01:36:15.840And that would be a lizard person situation.
01:36:48.940So, it's like if the government, let's say, is trying to establish more control over us and they use this smoke screen, the smoke show of like aliens that are coming to distract us while they're doing something else.
01:37:06.820If it's, you know, if it's like a foreign governments that are trying to like get information from us or do that, then it leads to similar consequences, which is basically being taken over by a foreign power.
01:37:19.980And so, all of these, that's why, you know, when you have.
01:37:23.000But wouldn't it be better for society if the government came out and said whatever answer it is and just said, look, here's all of the documents.
01:37:32.800We really don't know what it is, but we think it's this.
01:37:38.140Isn't that better long term for a people than saying, what are you talking about?