VanderKlay masterfully deconstructs the limits of modern materialism, using the UAP phenomenon to advocate for a reality that is as much spiritual as it is physical. It is a necessary and sophisticated response to the modern crisis of meaning.
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UAP, UFO, Aliens and America, Religion and the Most Real, Fundamentalisms, Austin Day 1本站添加:
Heat.
Heat.
Bless is the man here.
does not want the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the love of the Lord.
And on his law he made a taste day and night.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.
Every faith he does prosper.
Not so the wicked.
They are like ch the wind blows away.
there for the wicked will not stand in the judgement.
Nor are sinners in the assembly of the rightous.
For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall be.
Heat. Heat.
Wow.
Heat. Heat.
Blessed is the man who does not walk in counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sits in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the love of the Lord.
And on his height, heat like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.
Every day he does prosper.
Not so the wicked.
day are like a ch that the wind blows away there for the wicked will not stand in the judge man sinners in the assembly to the righteous.
For the Lord watches over the way the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish.
Hey, hey, hey.
Heat. Heat.
Heat. Heat.
Hey, hey, hey.
You know that dog bark video is 9 minutes long and um I sure do miss but dog bark.
Dog bark. Oh, he was such an interesting guy. Um he he was sort of a hippie and that's you know with I'm here in I'm here in uh Austin, Texas. First trip to Austin, Texas. I flew in yesterday. Um had to spend some time on the runway in Dallas as weather got itself sorted out and um then got into Austin was picked up by one of the conference organizers and we had uh we had we had perhaps the best pizza I have ever eaten which is saying something because when I was in Italy that that was the best pizza I had ever eaten. And I had it. We had had pizza in some different places. We had pizza in Naples and it was really good.
The food in Italy was really good, but the pizza at this place in Austin, wow, it was it was good. And my host knew just what to order and it was outstanding. So, had pizza and then um got into the hotel and did a little bit of work on my talk and um did some chatting with my wife and then went to bed and woke up and I'm in central time.
I I I seem to have a very uh flexible constitution when it comes to time zones, which is a good thing. And uh then I woke up this morning and what was what was so fun what was so fun this is this is going to be a trip highlight is that I I I wanted to see who was around and I saw Claire live streaming with a Rob with a pirate thing making me wonder if uh it was the Rob. You know, I I wondered if it was the the Rob, if he was like using that word given to him by Ethan to become a real boy in the TLC. I don't know. Seemed to have an Australian accent. Claire seemed to know who he was. It was like, oh. But, you know, I wanted to come in there in the spirit of Rob and Claire, so I didn't have my camera on. And that video is still going. And if you go to Cla's channel, you can just back up and you can see this blank PVK comes in and Claire says, "Are you the real PVK?" And I just laughed. I just laughed and she booted me.
It was so much fun. Um, but they were having a very interesting conversation.
There are a couple interesting people that were on before them. I didn't get a chance to sort of uh back up and um and and see the whole thing, but that was tremendous fun. But what I what I really want to talk about, let me see. I'm not I'm not a I'm not kind of the the Streamyard um I'm not really the Streamyard maven that someone like Grim Grizz is.
But what is what is more fun was yesterday because I had a lot of time on the airplane and I could um I could download the video because I use YouTube Premium and I'll tell you for me YouTube Premium I have a family um family account so I share it with my kids.
It is worth it for no ads, but it's also worth it because you can listen with the screen off and you can download things.
And so I downloaded the monitoring the situation with Kale and Steve and three and a half hours of it. And like I said, I had time sitting in an airplane like this um for quite a while. And is he going to do the Howard protocol? I'm I'm not going to read from the big book, Chad.
Um, you know, I I think that would be a little bit um I don't know. I think that'd be a little bit disingenuous because uh although although if I were a true a true 12stpper, I suppose I would have to keep that status anonymous. Um although that rule doesn't seem to be completely followed, which I'm not gonna I'm not going to tell people how to how to how to do their own rules. So anyway, so I had three and a half hours and the whole video was really worth watching. Let's see. Um, they started out. Let's see.
Can I go if I go here? Um, see, I'm working I'm just working on a little screen. I don't have all of my screen so I can see what's going on. I'm just in this hotel room in Austin. And well, let's start talking about one of the some of the ideas in this and then I'll drop the link. Um, and others can come in and play if they choose and that'll be great. Um, I I was careful. I didn't want to step on anybody's slot. I I'm worried about stepping on Jeff's slot at some point. Um, but I have time, which is something I seldom have when I'm in Sacramento.
and well seldom have I seldom have to at this time slot to do this kind of thing.
So monitoring the situation. The episode began with a lot of disclosed footage on they're called UAPs. Now I've done some reading in this. I have some thoughts in this. I've never really gone into it much in the channel because in in many ways it isn't real yet.
And Kale I think used the best analogy we have which is the um 15th 16th century discovery colonization of the Americas.
And you have to think about this I'm gonna I'm gonna say it in this way. You have to think about this in let's say a pouian fashion because right now what we have are pictures on screens and testimonies and I believe they're credible um at least some of them are credible and one of the things that's pops out when you start reading in this area is that there is a lot of disinformation and it's intentional disinformation and what's really good about this situation for us is it forces the recession of modernity, questions about knowledge.
um it forces all of those issues that are very very salient for us and Kale and Steve go into that and that's really good and helpful because right away we have to ask questions about what do we know what can we know what is knowledge and all of those questions are very germanine to the religious question which is why Diane Pasulka I haven't read her second book I read her first book is such an important person in this space because not only is she taking seriously the whole realm of UAPs and UFOs and what these things mean, but she's also a religious scholar and I think helpfully a Roman Catholic scholar. Um, I say helpfully not because Orthodox or Protestants can't engage in this space, but in some ways the Roman Catholics, I won't compare them necessarily, but I'll say that the Roman Catholics, I think, have a generally speaking, a very mature um and informed community and tradition from which to engage these issues. And you know, I'm in agreement with people in the corner that bring in C. Lewis and the Ransom trilogy. I think those are really important books to try to make your way into this space and to ask yourself what to think about. And one of the things that I one of the points that I made in the comments, I left about 15 comments there. Um, all right. Are you are you Rob? I mean that's that's the thing with names. Um you haven't you haven't given us the usual Rob uh answers but um you know I don't I I am I feel free to kick um Unreal. I I feel okay and this actually this has everything to do with my posture with respect to accounts on YouTube which is that part of what we do here in the corner in the TLC is we try to make the internet there you go there you go Rob why don't you say Rob um because See, unless you unless you discover an aacc a um an afroaziac real identity, you're not real in this space. You're like these little tic tacs flying through going underwater. You could be a demon. You could be a an extraterrestrial.
You could be from another dimension.
You're just aatic. You're just you're just a thing. You're not real. And part of my thesis is that the new world didn't get real until there were things they could bring back. And I don't mean just moon dust and rocks that sit in the in the Smithsonian. I mean gold, silver, which is of course what the Spanish were really going after.
and tobacco and potatoes.
I know, Claire. I know. I know. It's fine. I I hold no resentment. I was playing a game. I was playing a game with a purpose. Um it's totally fine.
And I knew that might happen. I was I was absolutely okay with it. Um, and I did I did want to jump in and just talk to you and talk to Rob and have a good conversation because I had the time, but it'll probably happen again. Don't worry. I do I do want to rando I do want to rando Claire and I just don't usually have time to rando everyone who asks and everybody that I want to rando. So, um, anyway, but this is my point about the tic tacs. And until something comes back that's real, and it doesn't have to be physical, like tobacco or potatoes. But if you think about tobacco and potatoes, tobacco and potatoes were real things. Why do I say that they're real? Yeah. Were they physical?
Yeah, they were physical. and you can go into the desert and come back with some materials that they can't quite figure out what's real. I've watched a fair amount of Skinwalker Ranch. They talked about that. Um, but the the realness of Skinwalker Ranch and all of the reasons that it it it creates skepticism legitimately because of the liturgies of Skinwalker Ranch.
um because of all of those issues.
That's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about the real. Now, when I'm talking about the real of let's say tobacco and potatoes and gold and silver, it's because tobacco hit Europe like a freight train because tobacco is a drug. You know, it's the it's the carrier of nicotine.
Um, it's also important that Europe and Africa hit the new world with malaria and the mosquitoes because part of what was real about the new world was that the new world was within the same frame. You can't have it both ways. Um, yeah. And if you're if you continue to be a distraction, I'll start with the timeout regimen or ask other people to do it. But, um, that's the reality. You can see I have way more patience with people who are real and Claire has increasingly become real to the corner.
So, and but that's like that's like the discovery of the Americas. It goes both ways because Claire has become in my opinion a a very reputable corner citizen and she's done that over time.
She's done that through real engagement and she has all of her views that what she brings in to the corner now like tobacco and potatoes and gold and silver is because there's actually an exchange and that real exchange makes things real. And given what on earth is going on with these little tic tacs that fly in the air that we can now track on our and our infrared cameras, um yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
And Chad, you can uh you have a wrench.
If uh if Rob if Rob misbehaves, feel free to start the timeout regimen. And you know, again, with accounts that have to actually restore some of Claire's accounts. Um but with people who become real, then there's no need to wrench them.
Then their racial ideas, their racist ideas, um they can all be brought into the corner and managed because they become real in the space. And now whatever's going on with the government in this space, I don't know.
But a big piece of knowing is not knowing and knowing what you can't know or can know.
And and that's in some ways in moments like this what you really have to keep your eye on which is why the disinformation is both helpful and non-helpful.
You have to sort of sus through those things. And like I said, potatoes and gold and silver, gold and silver because it was the same in both worlds to a degree. Um because when they brought gold and silver back, it was not novel.
they knew what it was. But gold for the Incas and gold for the Aztecs and gold for the Europeans were different things.
And then of course things were coming from the old world. Uh steel, um iron, sailing ships, a lot of technology.
The for example it's helpful to remember the Plymouth plantation that a lot of people who came and tried to colonize the new world like horrendous numbers of them died 70 80% again it was sort of like losing you know losing losing rocket ships in space travel because that made it real And but then when tobacco and potatoes come back to the old world. Exactly. The the exchange is unpredictable.
Um Kale, if you've got time to come in, let me know. I'm gonna I'll bring you in first before I drop the link. Um Kale is proctoring something so um he he may or may not be able to come in but I thought it was an outstanding live stream and it was a helpful move towards a an important conversation.
Um yeah that's true. she had been and and part of what happens when so when Clare first came in, Federeri who seemed to have knowledge of her um which is basically what reputation is when he had knowledge of her.
Yeah, that's that's right. That's that's exactly right. Cal Federichi had knowledge of her. And one of the things that Jacob did both by how he treated her and what he did in terms of her reputation was made her a certain thing in the corner which impacted me and impacted others because reputation is a vital thing for human beings because with human beings a certain percentage of us is novel to each And as Jordan Peterson used to say, we are monkeys filled with snakes. And that knowledge is super important because it has to do with um danger and threats and value and all of these other things. Um and so this reality and that's what we're wrestling with.
And so we can see the government could talk about um bodies it pulls up out of spacecraft that it's using electromagnetic pulses to bring down the body that the government can show stuff.
But until you get that exchange, until you get that real exchange, it's not real to most people. Now, if they land in your backyard or if they probe you or if Rod uh Dreer's book has some some pretty vivid stories and I'm not a skeptic with respect to those things, but we don't know what those things are because here's the situation.
Potatoes are different from tobacco.
And I think it was James I of England, although he used tobacco, tried to ban tobacco because tobacco, which was a novel substance and a novel drug, was wreaking havoc in society because it was it's tobacco.
It's so darn addictive. and people tobacco was real to the Europeans when then when they came over the so in terms of North America the real colonization happened initially on two fronts. There were the Puritans which were English religious separatists and there were the Virginiaians which were you know basically became drug drug drug makers because they sent tobacco to the new world and they actually had to pass laws um mandating that Virginia and Mid-American farmers ers grow food because tobacco as a drug was so profitable that they didn't want it. They wanted to use every square inch of resources to grow tobacco to make money.
And and that's where you're actually getting real exchange. Now, this comes up in CS Lewis's Great Divorce. There's one ghost that tries to bring like a an apple. I think it was an apple, which of course Lewis is playing with um the Garden of Eden, but he tries to bring a real thing from the real world back onto the bus into um the shadow city. And one of the angels says, you know, you might as well give up trying because that shadow city is so tiny compared to the real world.
There's there's not enough room in your world for the reality of that one piece of fruit. that by the grace of this bus that's going and connecting the real worlds is um it it can't be done. And that that reality of it can't be done is such an important piece in terms of dealing with the realities between worlds. Um, another important video that I watched, I am actually going to meet with the Episcopal priest that PF Yung was um, chatting with on his video. And um, I'm really looking forward to that because it's fun when the internet, which is very unreal, the internet becomes real.
And that's part of the reason why we do estuary conferences. We meet in estuaries.
And it's part of the reason for the estuary protocol. And the reason it's so open, it's because, you know, I was just talking to my wife. I was talking about OG Rose and Michelle.
Um, and I was I was saying, you know, this is I mean, I want to visit their wedding venue because that's going to make it real.
And and so what we're doing on the internet is there's a level of reality that we are dealing with here. And part of the reason we have the liturgies and the protocols within the TLC that have sort of developed about cameras on real names um knowing each other coming out of the lurk meeting in person.
This is all to make the internet real because we don't know what the internet is.
Just like we don't know what those little tic tacs are.
And the fact that these things come from the sky is not um incidental to the reality and to the limited reality that we have in terms of the exchange with them. Now this these issues of knowledge and reality we live with all the time when we are born into the world we don't know what real is and I haven't read um Esther Meek's new book yet but she's exactly right that the reality begins with the fact with this connection it first begins in the womb obviously with the connection between mother and child.
This is part of the reason why the adoption studies are so fascinating because the adoption studies that show that there's this wound that happens in the infant that is adopted away from her mother very early on that follows them into life.
So that connection happens in the womb and in the womb the baby is already listening to the father's voice, listening to the mother's voice, listening to other voices too. And then the connection from the breast to the eye is made initially and we sort of the world becomes real as we go out from there.
And we can use marriage as an example.
Marriage is a common topic in the TLC.
Claire on her channel had um uh Sicilian from someplace in America and he was talking about the fact that he's short of stature. He's bald, hasn't had any luck with women, had all kinds of ideas about women. It was um it was fascinating.
It it was a fascinating conversation. I had to back up. They were he was gone by the time I came. And then I was I decided to make this point about reality by keeping my camera off. And then when Clare asked who I was, I just laughed.
And I would have booted me too, Claire.
I completely understand. And to a degree, I was trolling. And I was trolling um those who are resistant to the liturgies of the TLC.
But this is this process of reality goes into marriage because you start with a connection and the fact that sex is connected with it. The fact that reproduction is connected with it. I was listening to again the PFung conversation with the Episcopal priest about Gregory of Nissa and sexuality and Augustine.
In many ways, theology is an attempt to get at what is most real and to know what is most real. So, the conversation we're going to have in London, and if you're in England and you haven't bought your ticket to Cassid's event in London, the links are beneath most of my videos, buy a ticket. And if you're in Europe and you want more of these conferences, because poor little Cassidy, poor little Cassidy is always hanging by her fingernails. And at the end of each event she does. I don't know how much she and Furry subsidize the TLC in these events.
But buy a ticket. Even if you can't go, buy a ticket because if Cassidy can't break even on these things, and she's got a stellar lineup. She has pulled out all the stops.
Um, I'm going to probably have to take this out and um and use this as a commercial for the June event because those events make things real.
And you can meet Justin Brierly, you can meet Glenn Scriber, you can meet Jared, the the atheist who does the atheist church audits, you can meet Nathan Jacobs, you can meet me, you can meet um um Joseph Folly. You can meet uh Elizabeth Oldfield.
Cassidy is bringing in people from the internet land and making them real.
Now, part of the problem at a conference, especially if there are big numbers, which is why I love small things, is because with small things like what we're going to have here in Austin, it's going to be real.
And again, I don't know how the estuary is going to plan out. It's ideally, you know, we would have eight people.
Eight people is about the ideal size.
You can do it with 12. Above 12, that number gets big. Um, if we have 30 or 40 people that come for the estuary, not everyone will get a chance to be in my estuary group. And I feel bad about that. If you visit me in Sacramento, I get very real because I'll be there at Living Stones. And that's part of the reason why I want to do these estuary conferences. I know. That's right. I know. I know Claire because at one of the meetups, she and I sat and talked and had a lovely conversation. We had a wonderful conversation together. But that's a reality. Now, part of the challenge that the um Europeans have is the TLC is small and they really struggle with venue and so so often when we've met in England, we've been in noisy pubs and that's that interrupts our realities. I I I feel bad because I got digital nosis Nathan in trouble because we were in this noisy pub and there was this speaker right there blowing at us and I was sitting next to him and we were having a wonderful conversation and I said in a New Jersey mafioso sort of way, you know, it would be a shame if something happened to that speaker.
and he started and I and I I gave him the idea. I led him into temptation and he reached up and he started messing with it and one of the bouncers in the pub said, "What are you doing messing with that speaker?" And he lied to the bouncer, which he shouldn't have done.
And he knew it and he said, "I should not have lied. I should have just told him the truth." But you know, but it's all of this work on reality. And and you know this is why Jonathan Pjo is so helpful because Jonathan Pjo has basically showed a way phenomenology has done it too but showed a way of debunking I might sneeze I haven't taken any um Jonathan Pjo has showed a way for us to get at realities.
the reality of a city, the reality of the spiritual world, the reality of the Bible, the reality of of all of these things. And that's why Jonathan's work is so important and Jordan's work was important and John Herbiki's work is important because all of this work is getting us out of the the important things we learned about reality and modernity and with the enlightenment and science. I'm not going to say those are bad things. Those are really important things, important developmental things for us to do. But now, this is part of the point I was making to Jonathan. Just as the church in the first few centuries had to sort of get their mind around Plato and and make Plato real and Aquinus had to get his mind around Aristotle and integrate that and Augustine had to integrate the Manachans and the Neoplatonists and what was going on with Augustine.
We are doing that to the enlightenment and modernity and we are continuing to integrate this and it's not an easy thing. It's a very difficult thing but it's a very important thing and so that's why the UFO conversation is really important but we don't know a lot. And what was interesting, I pointed out in the comments and when I finish this up, I'll post moni if you just if you just type into search on YouTube monitoring the situation, you can come up with Kale and Steve's channel, it's got basically a satellite disc and towards the end of that stream, I made the comment that you're forgetting what were talking about earlier in the stream because these because Steve and Kale says you could drive a truck through that but Steve says we're the only sen I I'll I'll rephrase it. We're the only sen agents with the levels of consciousness and intelligence that we know about.
But the reason everybody's following the tic tacs flying through the sky is because we're presuming with reason that there's intelligent agents behind that. And of course, those who didn't fully succumb to certain bad enlightenment assumptions like there's no agentic intelligence above human beings. Those who haven't succumbed to that, those who clung to their religion and continued to try to not lose the knowledge from the ancient world and and work do the multi-generational um communal work of integrating these together to improve our maps.
We know that there are agents that are conscious and real and acting, but how real are they? And this is part of my critique of the way that I see in some ways Allah Sarapim Rose, but even Rodrier, the way that they tried to bring Yeah. They flew. Yeah.
um the way that they tried to bring demons into this and this was as as Chad points out you know this was a very big deal and the Protestants didn't do so well initially because the Protestants wanted to say well here's the frame that we have from the scriptures and this is where their solos scriptor which I think if properly understood is a really helpful thing. But this is where that tripped them up. And this is where the Catholics had an advantage.
And I think as we continue to try to sus out and learn and grow together, this is where we try to improve our maps and understand what is real. Because when Joseph of Comp um Joseph of Compeesino I can't say compesino and not thinking Latin American terms is it compes compostella I don't remember which one but when he flew that's data and was it demonic I can't say it wasn't um highly skeptical it was but there are also issues with I think now Now, I'm going to speak from a reformed um creation positive perspective that um that part of the I don't think some of the monastic traditions of the radical renunciation of the flesh that led these monks to levels of starvation actually was God-honoring.
Dum dum dum. Now we're getting into Protestant Catholic things. People have been waiting for eight years for PVK to say something overtly, controversially Protestant.
I remain a Protestant. I think Martin Luther was helpful. I think Solos Scriptor was helpful. I think the Protestant Reformation was helpful. I think it helped to Yeah. Yeah. You might You might get timed out if you keep this on this way, Rob. It might It might We're doing this work of integration.
And this is the This is the This is the difficulty of sin.
One of the things that I noticed in listening to the PFung um conversation was part of what the Dutch Calvinists were really struggling with in the 19th and 20th century was the debate about infrapsarian infrolapsarianism versus super lapsarianism.
And that theological debate is actually really important because it gets to a lot of the stuff between east and west.
And it's I don't have the time or the preparation right now to really go into infra versus super lapsarianism, but it has to do with a lot of the issues around human sexuality that PF Yung and the Episcopal priests were talking about and um so it's very germanine and that's why the you know theology is the queen mother of the sciences because science you know part of the reason we're having this vicious debate about same-sex attraction and same-sex behavior and human sexuality is we are still trying to figure out what sex is because sex is very real and sex is very powerful. Was sex according to Gregory of Nissa a compromised grace given by God because of the fall or is it a creative goodness? And this is a difference between the west and the east between Augustine and Gregory of Nissa.
And and this is a this is something that gets worked out in uh the differences between west and east. And so, but of course, every Orthodox church is going to have to wrestle with those ideas because they have to become real.
So, um I I you know, when I'm monologuing like this, I usually don't have chat, so I'm not really paying attention to the chat very much. And so you'll have to forgive me if I can't read your chats um as well as I do when I have four or five or six people on the screen. When others are talking, I can much more easily task switch or multitask. Um yeah. Yeah. No. And and this is something that Kale and I have offline spoken about a lot because the entrance of North Americans, former Protestants, former Catholics, former atheists, secularists into the Orthodox Church is essentially Orthodoxy having to speedrun the West, which includes the Catholic Protestant things. And now someone might go into I you know I did that video that was a lot about Josiah Trenum and Josiah Trenum is a very big deal in the American Orthodox community.
I was having a conversation with my host last night about that and you know he's a former Presbyterian and all of the levels you know whether his speech is a is a um speech impediment or an affectation but all of the decisions all of the realities and the video that I made yesterday dealt with some of that.
So, I welcome the Orthodox moment and the growth of their churches. They need to be larger for them to be real and they need to get the buzz they're getting now for them to be real and for them to come into the conversations even though they they just sort of show up as a blip, but they're very real to those who go into the Orthodox church.
Yeah. Yeah.
Uh Rob, you have no idea what you're talking about. And this is part of the problem of your refusal to become less real in the corner. And and you might think that this is um All right, Kale. Um I'll tell you what I'm going to do just because it's probably easier. I'm going to drop the link, but I'm but I'm only going to let Kale in now. Um, and if anybody else hits on the link, you can uh you you can sit backstage and wait if you want. Um, but but I want to talk to Kale about these issues.
So, I'm just going to drop it, but I'm not going to pin it. So, I'm just going to let Kale in now and then I will let others in when um we get to the point of the conversation or Kale and I decide to to let others in. So, because I I think I actually do think that this alien conversation is tremendously important, but part of the reason I haven't done much with it is because, well, I'm always doing not enough with too much and I'm always and and and I don't I haven't had enough time to read enough or pay attention enough or know enough. Did you get the link, Kale? If you didn't get the link, let me know and I'll post it again.
All right, there he is. There he is.
>> How we doing?
>> I'm doing great, Kale. How are you doing?
>> Well, I'm knee deep in the grading. Uh, so I'm I'm I'm looking forward to avoiding my grading right now. So, uh, it's good to see you. How's Austin?
>> Austin is Texas.
>> It's hot, I bet. Uh it it was stormy yesterday so I haven't felt the heat yet or the humidity but you know again the reality of Austin like CS Lewis talks about Houston station >> is you know I these mega highways and huge distances and so it's Texas but as as um Nate had mentioned you know it is different from Dallas.
>> Oh yeah >> and I could see that I like I said I had the best pizza I've ever eaten.
>> That's good. And so I, you know, I'm my first impressions of Austin are are terrific. So I don't want to I don't want to not use our time to the fullest.
>> Yeah, let's dive in.
>> And so even whether or not we talked about the UFO stuff, I want you to talk about >> and and in an appropriate way obviously, but what's beneath monitoring the situation, your relationship with Steve and and why the podcast has taken the shape that it has.
>> Yeah. So, I mean, I I met Steve. Um, Steve is really part of how I kind of got my face. It's how I emerged into your consciousness, your salience hierarchy, I suppose, because I um uh found my way to Steve through Rod Dreer initially because he was writing um he had this website called One Peter 5, which was really the first trad, you know, blew it up. um you know was very successful with it. Um but he was having frustrations with the trad movement just as much as we were both also having frustrations with sort of Catholicism in the middle of the Francis pontificate. And so at the time, of course, I had been um sort of deep diving into your content and Peterson and and all of the original DDW um IDW and he found so I cold emailed him and wanted to talk to him about these things because I was looking for a smart guy who was Catholic who was open to talking about these things. And what I found out is that he had kind of constructed for himself a kind of tra, you know, we talk about the iron cage of modernity. Well, he had sort of um inadvertently helped create the kind of iron cage of tradism. And so he was desperate um really gasping for air for an interlocutor to kind of talk about these things because he sensed and of course it came to pass it was also true that his audience was just not capable you know a trad audience was not capable of the kind of intellectual speculations that he needed to do. Um, and of course, you know, you everybody can read about his own deconstruction, but he and I have remained friends throughout all of this. And I have consistently found him to be um um uh really bright, really generous um and um genuinely oriented toward his conception of truth seeeking, you know, as as as the capital virtue. And you know, while I I certainly, you know, this is not talking out of school, I certainly have my my my beefs, you know, we have our beefs with one another um as he's sort of retreating into a little bit more of a comfortable um eminent frame, a kind of materialist frame. He he would call himself, I think, an agnostic, but um but he's bitter and he's angry, you know, about um the way that tradism functions as a kind of Catholic fundamentalism. And so for those people in the audience who are who are Protestants um or you evangelicals, you know, think about that relationship that you have toward fundamentalists, right? Um, and Trad's function, again, there are some distinctions and differences, but TRDs function in the very similar vein, which I I keep trying to tell him, and I've always tried to tell him this, is that Tradism is the the the the a Catholic form of modernist fundamentalism, right? It just it just it takes different sort of points of assumption.
Um, and of course I he I continually frustrate him because I am just much more I wear that stuff much more lightly. I wear um scripture and the tradition and um you know papal pronouncements and documents and encyclical much more lightly. Um and he would say is yeah but they said this thing and I'm like yeah yeah I know I know. Um so and I think that has everything to do with and I think this is um pertinent to what you're discussing right now. You know I think this has everything to do with my own intellectual formation and one of my great teachers Dr. Peter Sampo, may he rest in peace. Um, always talked about the great synthesis that, you know, you talked about the synthesis that the early church had to do with Plato and the neoplatonists. And I think that's right. But we have to remember that when Aristotle kind of gets seated back into Europe or really into Europe for the first time um after the um crusades and by way of the um Muslims um it was a real crisis for the western church. And so the synthesis that Thomas was able to render was um amazing um not without controversy. And to me I and I put in that piece if you were if you remember the piece that you actually found and brought me on to uh your channel originally. You know my reading of Thomas is not so much scripturally, right? uh or or to sort of fact check it against whatever is can be found in this in the various sumas but rather as a kind of method for truth seeking and sensemaking which is to read um generously um and always look for points of convergence as opposed to reading out of fear saying well this is right and that's wrong and I have to get rid of that you know Thomas is much more of a of a massively generous intellect and I think that so my teacher always told me to Um we he said your challenge he would point to us this is of course back in the 90s but your challenge is to render a synthesis to get us out of modernism and you know you can't simply default to um the sources right oddfontes right that you have to be you have to actually it's actually it's an act of creativity um and I think that's why my my gravitation toward this channel and to this flotillaa has been finding ways to sort a generative way out of um you know the eminent frame.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's right. It's it's helpful to just a little tidbit. It's helpful to remember and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe I read that Aristotle was a banned book.
>> Yeah. 100%. and and and remember um you know so when when when Thomas um brings Aristotle to Paris the University of Paris um it was massively controversial and and so much so that when he dies like it's Thomas is such a fascinating character because the popes knew that they had kind of like a a big brain on the team so to speak right and they knew that what he was doing was kind of important they didn't fully sort of fully gro it but um and but of course like all guilds there was an incredible able of jealousy and backbiting so that when he dies he is immediately banned and ana anathematized. Um, >> was >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay.
>> I didn't know this.
>> Yeah. So, there's this period of time, and somebody can fact check me on the years, but it's at least a decade in which Thomas's work is suppressed and um rendered anathema. It it eventually, you know, the jealousies subside and I think, you know, cooler heads prevail.
This is like the plank thing, right?
That that that that um scientific advancements are are made one funeral at a time. Well, I think Thomas is a perfect example of that. that that the toistic synthesis doesn't advance until those contemporaries of Thomas um both in ecclesial structures but also in academic structures die off essentially and and then it is the following generation you know the upand cominging folks who do not have positions or synicures or that kind of thing and they can see no man what Thomas is doing here is the real deal and then of course it becomes you know he becomes I mean in essence Catholic theology right aristoism is in essence Catholic theology much to the chagrin of some of the mid-century folks that maybe we can talk about at another time. But um so so but what happened to Thomas is what happens to all folks I think especially in you know when the emissary brain is allowed to um take over and you know the managers are not thinkers right and so what happens is that um folks turn Thomas into scripture itself or a kind of scripture 2.0 O and so you can just sort of fact check against the deposit of the suma and if it's not in the suma then it's bad right and this just bad this just bad thinking it's it's um it's like you know people in the audience might understand this the way in which if you go to a management seminar in any domain people will often talk about best practices well best practices is a spell I think which people use to um dominate and control Um, best practices are um, always after the fact, right? And if you've ever tried to implement best practices in a church, running a church like you do as a pastor, you know, you talked about all the time, you would go to all these emergent church seminars and white, what is it? white willow creek, you know, how to make Willow Creek your, you know, and and what you always find is that all these things which look great on paper, you know, have um very little bearing with how you deal with actual people at the local level. And so I think that that happens um uh in theology. I think it happens in literary studies, philosophical studies, everything. So >> well, and that's so helpful.
I knew that Aristotle was a band book and so I knew but I didn't know that Aquinus himself was it doesn't surprise was was was put out. It doesn't surprise me just reading history, >> right?
>> Because any any innovator, it's like the guy from Bell Labs who said, you know, don't be worried if you have a genuinely new idea that anyone will steal it because you'll have to actually, you know, beat it into their heads. Yeah.
>> For them to even begin to comprehend it because that's how we work. But that's how we work collectively, >> you know. And it would be it's interesting that that little tidbit that you gave me that I had not I've not read that >> point in history very well, but that tidbit that you gave me that is a huge point.
>> Yeah. Massive. Massive.
>> And it's huge in terms of the conversation around UAPs and UFOs.
>> It's going to be, you know, decades.
Although, you know, things are fast right now.
>> Yeah. But >> Yeah. beings. We're still not that fast.
But it's going to be decades to figure out even what you know these tic tacs in the sky are.
>> Right. Right.
>> Because we don't even know what a human being is and we are human beings.
>> Right. Right. Right. And you know the the the the speed thing is an interesting bit. Right. And again, we can look backwards for comps, but comps are not exactly the same thing as, you know, algorithms. And, you know, I I think the speed is something we're going to have to reckon with. Well, we'll have to deal with it. It's not, you know, I don't think it's something you can necessarily control, but I I think the, you know, Mary Harrington at the Symbolic World Summit was talking about orality and literacy and and when we made this sort of massive leveling up visav literacy um you know um marriage to a technology which could rapidly reproduce um that which we had to handw write. I mean literally had to hand write. Um you know the speed was amazing. But she said uh something interesting is that we had um what we had was a a kind of a fully sacramental um or or or or um yeah, I'll just use it that way. a kind of fully sacramental um consciousness congress so that we could absorb these kind of rapid changes absorb with lots and lots of bloodshed as you and I would both uh uh sadly acknowledge um coming from our respective tribes, right? But but the the the at least you could say that there was a kind of surrounding um fundamentally religious sensibility. um she worries of course that we don't have um that deep religious sensibility now and so that sensibility is going to be co-opted. And so one of the reasons why I pay such close attention to this UAP thing because a lot of people get mad at me frankly um for um humoring Steve with all this UA as if as if Steve is like forcing me to have these conversations which is hilarious, right? Um, but they get very mad at me because they they the the fragility of your imaginary um is threatened by the unknown or or the more fragile your imaginary is, the more um it can topple and crumble at an instance. And I think Steve would say, yeah, that's what I lived through, right? And that's what I think is probably common with many many deconstruction stories is that in in the in in the middle of a crisis, it was exposed as being hyperfragile um and and often as a kind of >> counter signal to the robustness, the fullthroatedness with which the um priest class and I don't mean literally priests, I mean the priest class as terms of sense makers um made it out to be right. So what we are talking about you know um with you know having to speedrun modernity is that Protestantism and Catholicism have have been forced right um uh compelled to um reckon with all of this kind of stuff and uh it's it's it's not skippable like like like like you have to go through it and and as as as as much as I would love to skip it. I mean, it would be great, you know, when you read about the sort of the sort of full, you know, you talk about the, you know, the sort of the Dutch Calvinist uh world of 1950 and and even into the early 1960s. You know, it is awfully tempting to want to return, right, with with the necessary V instead of the U. But but but but we I think are both testaments uh to the impossibility of some kind of nostalgic um return because a return um necessary facilitates you know pretending that things don't exist.
>> Yeah. and and so um while I am skeptical of government chatter about UAP stuff um I have to reckon with the sheer um anecdotal evidence that is all around us and I think that's why Pulka is so salient to our moment is that you know she's very correct in not saying well this is what it is like a equals three and B equals 10, right? It's like she's she's very and I think people get frustrated with her on that score. She's like, "Look, I I I know that ultimately all of us are going to have to render a judgment, but right now um you have to deal with the sheer amount of of of testimony." And and what we're finding, of course, is that a lot of that testimony has either been actively suppressed or um so surrounded with with um as to make the whole thing seem absurd. And I'm just here to tell you that I think it is a very low res solution to call it all demons.
>> Yeah.
>> Um just as much as it's going to be a kind of low res solution to say ah see >> all of the religions were BS now we really know that the aliens made us or whatever the narratives. I mean you can you know mark it. These will be the narratives that will unfold. And I'm telling you June 15 is June 15th is going to be crazy PVK. June 15th.
>> June 15th is Spielberg's um new movie.
>> Disclosure.
>> Oh, I don't know anything about it.
>> Okay, you you got to pay attention to this because I'm telling you, it's going to be nuts. Just yesterday, if you know I as I monitor the situation, PBK, that's sort of what I do. Um just yesterday, um all of the Hollywood press or or those people who write about movies were were given, um a screening yesterday. and just go on X today, tomorrow, like just start following a couple of these accounts and you, oh, it's Spielberg's best movie in 20 years.
And and I have no doubt, I mean, I'm a huge Spielberg fan. I mean, I think he's a great he's truly one of the great artists of America, American history.
Um, but uh but but but oh but you know I'm telling you it is you know he's shifted from from when in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, wouldn't it be cool if this were true to all of a sudden wouldn't isn't it awesome that we get to tell people that this is real, right? It it's going to be the shifts are going to be wild and crazy. So um buckle up everybody. It's not going away >> and it's not and it's and of course you know like what Trump is doing with these disclosure of the files like everything is just so fascinating right now. Um but I p yeah well it's going to be as me that's why I brought up the Columbus thing you know it's like we're in this moment where like okay so people have said these things and like we're seeing a few things here and there but like is it true like is it real? And you have to imagine like what was life like in like 1498 in Europe when you're hearing these stories and you're like I don't believe that. What is the what's going that's crazy talk you know it's probably just demons in India right you know um so so I just think we're in that we're in a similar momentum >> yeah well I I agree completely and you know um Carlos he's book reformations >> yeah I mean I grew up I I mean just again you mentioning that Aquinus was banned for the first 10 years I grew up in a community that fetishized the reformation. And I I I mean, I could get I could get real I could get real from some of my CRC brethren, especially at this moment in time in the CRC using that word fetishizing the Reformation.
>> But I grew up in a community where we told those reformation stories again and again and again. And so formation within the Christian Reformed Church, these are our people. I mean, we were we were we were ref bros. We were young, wrestlers, and bros.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
>> But for Carlos to begin his book on reformations with, oh, by the way, Martin Luther grew up in the generation >> Yes. Yes. Yes. that had to process.
>> Right.
>> Columbus, >> right? Right.
>> And it's like, you know, part part of me wants to line up all of my teachers and say, "You failed us."
>> Yeah.
>> But the thing is, they didn't know what they didn't know either.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have to I look I think you know when you think about recent history I think it's very important to be to have a certain extension of grace you know is that our teachers give us what they were given right and and look new things do come out I mean you know it changes the color of of of certain things it's like it's like look I could I could spend my entire adult life being mad at Henry VIII, okay, as a Catholic, as as an Anglo Catholic, right? I mean Anglo in the sense that I'm in the Anglo world and I'm Catholic.
>> Um, I could spend an eternity being mad about, you know, the the the the iconocclasm, the the the the stealing of the monasteries and all that sort of stuff, right? Um, I could spend an entire lifetime reading and rereading Aean Duffy's stripping of the altars and just getting mad and mad and mad and mad, right? But but what does that do?
Number one, uh, but but but I I can't get mad, for instance, at my my, you know, my sort of my Anglican friends, say, from the from the midentury who were just sort of giving a kind of fullthroatated uh defense of, well, it's not really a reformation. It was really a a a reassertion of of the English church which was always there, right?
You have these ways of rewriting history in like these sort of these these these swoops, right? And so all of a sudden, what's the guy who translated the Bible in English in England? Um who was condemned.
>> Oh yeah. Right. Right. It's like well I mean Wickliffe, you know, clearly, you know, uh was was the true, you know, voice of the English church. You can sort of play these games and it's really tiresome, right? and and and I would say the same thing on my side of the aisle.
It gets really tiresome to sort of pretend like well the English church was just fine and until that nasty person Henry A came along you know it's like no I mean come on like that that's also stupid. So, so anyway, you know, I I totally get it. Like, you know, your teachers sort of gave you that mythology. They delivered the mythology.
Um, and we're clearly in a time of we need an upgrade in the mythology, right?
Not a getting rid of mythology. And I think that's why again why PJO is really important. You know, you could update a mythology without getting rid of the the necessity for mythos.
>> Yep. No, that's exactly right.
we're working through these things and even you know reading Brett Sakold's book transubstantiation which for me was just an eyeopener >> to realize that here you've got Luther and Calvin basically railing against Aquinus >> and Sakold in the book basically says you know um there are all of these presuppositions in our language and culture underneath through which Luther and Calvin and you know Arasmus as well had to wrestle with Aquinus and Aristotle >> and okay they got stuff wrong.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Okay. What does that mean now in terms of I I didn't watch it last night. It's a bad habit to not finish my sentences.
Um, but I saw three months ago there was a video out with Justin Briarley, Bishop Baron, and Tom Wright.
>> And Bishop Baron begins by basically fangirling Tom Wright.
>> Sure. Sure.
>> And Tom Wright, of course.
>> It's a good rhetorical move. It's a good rhetorical move.
>> It is. It is. But it's and that's why you know I talk about >> because I praise God for the fact that we are in a moment where you and I can have this conversation.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> And and we couldn't have had this conversation 50 years ago. Well, you weren't very old.
>> Not not even 15 years ago though, Paul.
I mean, like it's it gets pretty darn new. I mean, I would say, you know, I would say roughly at the turn of the millennium. So it's been 25 years I say it's been possible.
>> Yeah. Yeah. And and so then when I you know obviously I'm here we're going to do estuary. I will be doing an adult education class in an Orthodox church.
>> Um and and you know what has sort of over the last couple of weeks you know a lot of which I dealt in my video yesterday. I mean what's what's happening now among the Orthodox between the Orthodox between the Orthodox and the Catholics and the Protestants and the secularists all of this is not unreasonable or unpredictable. You're going we we are we are watching the creation of an American orthodox fundamentalism.
>> Yeah. Yeah, man. So, so as you know, I I just got back from the Symbolic World Summit. Um, and it was a great time.
Like PJO and and and Roland and um their tireless assistant Morgan were amazing.
Like they were they they they treated me like I truly felt taken care of as a guest. They were awesome. It was but was fascinating for me um is that uh and it didn't feel this way in uh in um Elmharst. Um but it was so funny for me, you know, I I live at at a monastery as you know, like I work at a monastery school and so I'm I'm I'm I'm surrounded by um Catholics um but mostly I'm surrounded by like mainstream folks.
I mean like just to just to be just to be fair about it, but um you know going going to the symbolic world summit like it was this fascinating experience of being like a pretty radical minority um um and you know that was fun um for me uh just just evedropping in on conversations and you know like 10 minutes into my first dinner somebody brought up um um oh what's the what's the iota thing. Um, oh shoot, this is terrible. The um what is the big thing that separates Orthodox and Catholics? It's this um the >> Oh, the Filioqua.
>> The Filioqua, right? The I the the Yoda, right? So, like within 10 minutes, somebody's like, "But what do they say about the Filio?" And I'm just like, "Okay, all right. Okay." You know, like I wasn't expecting that right off the bat. And it's like, you know, I'm reminded of, you know, that that that scene in um it's me'd from Mad Men and um he's in an elevator and there's somebody kind of like, you know, sort of heranging him a little bit and then um Don Draper turns to him and says, "Well, I don't think of you at all." You know, it's like I never I don't think of you ever. And so I was like this sort of in this weird moment was like I I number one, I've never been surrounded by this many um Orthodox folks. again very cool. It was it was it was fun but I was like I don't think about that at all like I really don't I you know and it's cool I mean obviously I'm friends with Roger Reer and so you know I'm familiar with the stuff and I'm familiar with the prayers and you know but I I am I like what like okay you know um so so that was fascinating but but I I I think your your your insight or your intuition about um this moment of orthodoxy as you keep calling it um is is is an important one to pay attention to. Um um I would add as what I've already said is like it's going to be impossible to pretend that roughly the year I mean I mean think about what you have to do like you have to pretend the last thousand years haven't happened in the west right and I'm sorry you can't do that and you can't just in a in a kind of backwards fashion just adopt all the cool things you like and then skip all the things you don't like. It's just like you and I, like I've got skeletons in my family tree that I can't pretend didn't happen.
You know, you have skeletons in your family tree. I'm talking about our respective um tribes, right? You know, we can't pretend that didn't happen and we can all bring those grievances to the table, right? We can all do that. We can play, but but like what's that >> what's that done us, right? Um, so, so I think they're going to have to reckon with that. But I I I and again I know I'm going to risk offending people, but I I and I've said it in group chats before, but I'm saying now it's like it really feels to this Roman Catholic like orthodoxy in America is a way of not being Catholic. for some people, for some un uh for some significant amount of people, um it's it's like I can I can have my spells and bells, but I man, please don't make me ever have to be Roman.
And I Okay, well, you know, we'll see.
We'll we'll see how that goes. I mean, it's not like, you know, you know me, Paula. I'm not exactly some sort of like, you know, fullthroated, you know, um, you know, protect the badge at all times, you know, it's like, you know, I I that that's the that's the trad.
>> No, but I think you're that's part of why that Richard Reeves I didn't know anything.
I suspected because as I would, you know, I was reading 19th century history, >> uh, Ottoman Empire and it's like what's what's this relationship like where you still have the metropolitan of Constantinople and and Me basically gives >> Yeah. you know, basically gives this Orthodox bishop authority over all of the orthodox and why his empire, >> you know, the marriage and the legal thing. One of the one of the layers is is you have to recognize that these ancient empires did not work like our modern empires. They did not have the systems of control. And so implicit in all of that, >> the church functions in that capacity.
>> Exactly.
>> Yeah. Yeah. because the church has to and then you can see those strains in Europe in terms of how Europe managed certain things differently than let's say America because America is sort of the America became the quintessential modern experiment that Europe eventually emulated.
>> So So I want I want to I want to go in I want to lean into this real quick. So just think about that. But but I what was fascinating about that story that you related and I was unaware of this is that in essence the the the Islamic sort of power put the metropolitan in place because it was a way of driving a wedge between them and Rome.
>> Exactly.
>> Rome both in terms of religious sensibility but also Rome as a kind of capital of the west as a kind of political power you know etc etc. So, like that was like mind-blowing, I gotta tell you. Um, because I had never put two and two together in that respect.
Um, and and then what was the line? I was like, I would rather bow to the >> turban. The turban than the tiara. Yeah.
What a great line. That's a great line.
Right. Um, right. So, that Well, that seems significant to me. Like, that might be something you might want to reckon with. Um, but but but I want to go back to this what what America's means, right? from from you know and and and I I want to think of it tell me what you think about this. I want to think of it is that America functions as a kind of pressure relief for Europe, right? uh you know, not only does it afford a place for um the uh the surplus of elite talent to go out and do things, right? Because like what are you going to explore in Europe? It's pretty mapped, right? So it allows all this energy to kind of you know this this exit of of energy and talent and focus to just go out and go and do these things and then reinjected back into Europe. Right? So it sort of functions this way until it itself becomes larger as a kind of lab space you know to take her around with ideas and with forms of government and you know forms of industry and and all that. um um it then becomes larger. I mean I think the post-war consensus is is the sort of the coming out party that the the the western hemisphere is now bigger than its than its mothership.
>> Yep. Yep.
>> You know and and and so it's always functioned as the place where things get tried out and worked on and workshopped.
Um, and I don't know something, of course, it changes, right? It changes with the end of end of World War II and the post-war consensus and and all of that, right?
Um, and and then it's so it's kind of funny to listen to our European um brothers and sisters get really uh uh touchy um about um the American influence, right? you know, these kinds of things. But like if you look at our respective, you know, you know, why did the Dutch come to the upper Midwest, right? Why, right? You know, there were >> kicked out of New York.
>> Well, right. But but but like why did you come to New York? And then why why did you get kicked out, right? I mean, I think that these are these are important things, you know, like what's what happened in Italy? What happened in Ireland? what happened in Germany that that made all of these people compelled didn't force but compelled all these people to leave hearth and home um to live this this experiment right um and maybe part of our our growing pains as a nation is because we are having to sort of reckon with the fact that we're no longer the experiment we're the we're the default now.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the boomer. the boomer problem that we're no longer the plucky avantguard rebels, we are the establishment.
>> Right. Right.
>> Um the reason why I mentioned Germany swearm G2769 is because um for many many years ger the German population was the largest population European population in the United States of America. you know, so you know, everybody talks about the Italians and the Irish, you know, and the original English and and and the Scotish, you know, Albian Seed and all that, but Germans have been like this weird massive influence on this country.
Um, and maybe because they were just really good at assimulation. I I don't know what to make of it. Well, and you know, one of the things you have to reckon with in Europe in the 19th century is, of course, Italian and German unification.
>> Yeah.
>> I mean, you cannot understand the first and second world war without understanding Bismar and um the loss of the Papal States. I mean for me reading now I'm not well read in that history but even reading one book in the I mean the pope fought like crazy to not be a terrestrial monarch >> right >> in Europe in the 19th century.
>> Right. Right.
>> I mean that history is just >> I just found that mindblowing.
>> Yeah. And so then the connection with fascism, you know, and and and we tend to by virtue of Americans, Anglo, we tend to focus mostly on English, German, French to a degree, >> Italian if we must, but we tend to not pay much attention to the Spanish, which of course in the Americas is because most of the Americas is Spanish and and so then you have Franco and of course you cannot understand >> the second world war or what happens in Italy or anywhere else in Europe without without recognizing the importance of the Spanish revolution.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> The Spanish Civil War, >> right?
>> And and what exactly you know communism and fascism were and then the democracy. So, it's um and okay, let's give Rob his due and the Moors. Um he's exactly right. And the and the conquest of you know who launches Columbus and he's he's genuine, you know, he's not Spanish >> and basically the Portuguese know, yeah, there's land out there, >> but it doesn't become real, >> right? I love that. Yeah.
>> Until Columbus can actually begin going back and forth.
>> You know, Paul, you're gonna have to do um this is me directing your channel here, right? But you're you're gonna have to do some work on with this like this idea of the real. Um because I I I have long felt that it is the haunting spectre of whatever you want to call this thing TLC you know whatever Pio is doing whatever Verve is doing um whatever Peterson was doing. Um, and I think it's the question. It is the question like you know what is the real like what do we mean when we when we we say it's real. Um, and you know you used to play with this a funny you know I love used I should say even in class now every time I use the word literally I check myself do I actually mean literally or am I talking physically?
Right. Right. So anyway, so you you you've been at this, I think, for a really long way, but I think we have to I think if if if modernism is failing, right, as I think both or or it's in its in its um movement, >> it's at least transforming.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Right.
That's a probably a better safer way to say it. Right. If if if if modernism as we have grown up in as we were born into and grew up in if if that is actually suns setting in some interesting way and maybe changing um we're going to have to um unlimit or or or or differently limit this this conception of the real and and and I think that you know because the way that a materialist hears that word, right? Um, is just so different. I mean, like one of the I think one of the reasons why you and I, you know, as soon as we started listening to a couple of PJO videos, we're like, you were like, "Yes, yes, yes, of course." Right. This idea of the real is is has been has been radically governed, you know, in this this this tightly constricted um materialist physicalist way. Um so that it's only real if you can see it, taste it, touch it, measure it, etc. Right.
Right. Right. Right. Exactly. Right. So, so, so therefore, right? Um um as you have always pointed out, you know, when we talk about that word spirit, like everybody thinks, you know, you don't believe in spirit and then just bring in school spirit like well, we all know that that's a real thing, right? We can feel it. We we experience it, right? And it's not fake, right? And I think that's so important, you know? It's like because I think culturally we're tired we're tired of being um Mythbusted to death, right? You know, like that very very very popular show in the early 2000s, Mythbusters, right? And it's fun.
Like I I enjoyed it, but like the entire ethos of that show was to sort of point out how stupid everybody else has been for like 5,000 years and like now we're going to sort of do this thing, right?
And and and fine as it goes. I mean we could >> created by Hollywood stunt people.
>> Right. Right. Right. Right. Who are in the business of faking things for for a living. Fascinating. Fascinating. Right.
But but anyway, the the the idea of the real um is going to be hugely important.
And I and I really believe that all of my friends, all of our friends who have deconstructed, right, all of them have been oneshot by this myth of the real, right? And and so therefore, you know, reading somebody like I would love to see you do a deep dive in Lurman's u making God real. I think it is um and and there's this fascinating confluence between some of the work that Vervey has done, some of the work that Lurman has done, some of the work that Ma Matthew B. Crawford has done. You know, all of them are hovering around questions of epistemology and identity and reclaiming this this much larger and more generative sense of knowing and therefore a deeper uh and more full appreciation of what the real is. Um and and I you know I bet we could probably you know develop some sort of like six question test right you know to you know where do you fall in in your conceptions of the real um and and then I can tell you I can tell you almost everything about you know this is all making fun of course right >> but you know you can you you can know so much um you know and look this absolutely pertains to um uh Christianity, right? Because as Steve never tires of telling me, right? Like, well, you know, you based your entire worldview on somebody who doesn't really talk to you, Kale.
And I'm like, well, okay, not true, but but fine. You know, he's not wrong, right? The hiddenness of God is like a kind of a problem, right? And so, what do we mean by this? And of course, the hiddenness of God is exacerbated by the ratcheting effect of hyperindividualism.
Right. And and and and the more lonely we get, you know, the more the more digital we get, the more we lose our ability to experience the reality of God.
>> Yeah.
>> And I think that all of these people are circling around this. I I at least that's my sense.
>> Yeah. Well, the first thing I think I I always want to remind people is one of the insights that Vervey has for us, which is real is a comparative word.
>> Yes. We usually use it categorically.
And I think both of us given our traditions would say >> that which is most real is God. He is the source of reality. And and even if you're skeptical about the ontology of God as you understand it, you can even and this is why Jordan Peterson was so important. You can even go through a Jordan Peterson door and say whatever your onlogical assumptions are in terms of your linguistic psychological frame.
God sits at the top of the hierarchy of that which is real. So you can start there if you have to start someplace.
And it's not a I mean it's it's not dumb to start psychologically or linguistically.
>> Yeah. I mean look this is this is this is an you know that being um that being by which we could conceive no greater. I forget exactly the exact acronym but it's you know it's it's Anselm's one of Anselm's proofs and I think it it works not as a sort of like a proof in the way that we would say that you know when I mix this um element with this element this third thing happens right I don't mean proof in that way but it's a it's a way of holding a space um epistemologically um that that that affords um all all all everything ultimately.
>> Yep. Yep. So, so that's and and even just let's say the basic overarch the the arc of let's say personal narrative is you know towards the real and you being a great books guy when you look at the great books >> I mean one might say that you know what the great books are for are to help us locate ourselves on this journey towards the real, >> right?
>> And and you could see that in terms of, you know, going to heaven. Going to heaven means going to the real.
>> Yeah. Right. Right.
>> I mean, that's that's what all of this stuff is about.
>> Right. And like, think of even something like, you know, Dante's a perfect example of this, right? Because, you know, an easy objection to Dante is like, well, like where is this second place? Like where is this purgatory thing, right? And this is the kind of stuff that gets litigated up and down and sideways through Catholics and Protestants and da da da and okay fine fine you know but but it misses sort of the larger reality right which is this um uh symbolic representation of of of a of a higher reality and and so that you know you can read Dante as a kind of both the state of the soul in its ultimate teiology ology, but also it's like this is now. And I think part of the the you know, you know, PJO was online sort of squabbbling with wi with with you know, Protestants um the other day and you know, different conceptions of of siology and and salvation like what this really means and and and I think you know if I if I'm stealing him orally giving him his due think what he's trying to um reclaim is this sense of this sort of this literalism and I think I'm using the word correctly here now.
the literalism of heaven and hell um versus our our our our call as Christians to start now, right? That that now is is is the the the way in which we it again I want to be careful about this because it can get really squish you really fast, right? that it's all just a psychological reality and you know and I don't think that that's what he's saying but but rather that that that living the life of virtue is exactly our prep our preparation for some sort of ultimate um heavenly host the participation in the heavenly host right >> and and so and so um but but again and I'll be a little bit mean to my autistic friends and I mean this metaphorically I don't mean those the poor souls who genuinely suffer from from autism But but we can you know um we can get sort of so obsessive about like well actually you know it's this and well actually it's that. It's like okay you need to put the well actually guy on the back burner because because you you know the meme I'm talking about right? It's like the well actually meme is is is a recipe for madness um and depression um and and and we need to find some sort of way out of that because um it's not all there is. You know, we don't live in an episode of mythbusters.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and that's and part of what we have to continue to explore is that those of us who not only defend but promote church participation, liturgy, >> that that there is that there is value here >> and sort of the utility rads. You know, we're in this interesting moment now where um you know, this is part of the reason why I want to I want to talk to Steve. I want to talk to Steve really badly, actually.
>> The hiddenness of Steve is a real >> hiddenness of Steve. Come on, Steve.
Come at me. Bring it on.
>> Yeah.
Um but you know we're we're in this moment when even even people who don't participate and are deeply skeptical or deeply hurt have to sort of acknowledge by their own metrics that >> church participation improves outcomes for children >> um for wealth >> for all of these things. It's a curious curious thing. Now you might you might synthesize it through let's say a big five profile and say well people who participate in church tend to be higher and conscientiousness and conscientiousness also improves outcomes on and on and on and on and on.
>> Yeah.
>> But the you you're really hardressed to say that there is nothing real in that area.
>> Right. Right. and and and so then and so then people will sort of default into a certain kind of perennialism. But perennialism has its problems too.
>> Um and which which I don't I don't the problem that I have with perennialism is that they themselves can't really pull it off.
>> Yeah. Right.
>> You you extend the tent too big and and nothing is real, right?
>> And you know, you have the problem of the one and the many then.
>> Yeah. Totally totally 100%. Yeah. You know, I'm reminded of two things. Um, and I have to I probably have to end on this one because I got to scoot up to my next assignment here. But, um, I feel like God has spoken to me um, on probably a handful of times. Um, and one of the times was I was a young man and I would have been the equivalent of an ortho bro when I was like 19. Okay? So, I was like really on fire for Catholicism and I was really like this is like really, you know, very hardcore, right? And I was really judgy, you know, and I had I had some experience of some really like close-knit, tight, reverent um churchgoing. And then I go home for Christmas and we're at the we're at like, you know, Christmas mass, right?
And and if you're familiar, of course, with the Easter Christmas Catholics, you know, it's like, you know, the hardcore folks go every week, the super hardcore go every day, but the hardcore go every week, and then you've got a whole slew of people that show up on Christmas and Easter. Now, I don't know if that's still a thing anymore, but let's just for the sake of conversation. So, I get there, right? And I am, you know, outraged. I'm at this liturgy and it's big and this crowded and I'm and I'm just like they don't they don't ever come like you know where are they on like October 3rd like yeah they're of course they're here for Christmas Eve you know I'm playing that thing in my head and I'm just like I'm looking at at this sort of this sea of people and I just get blasted blasted by God in that moment and it's like oh so you think you're better than these people Kale you know and it was just this moment and and and I'm reminded of that line from Joyce And he said, you know, oh, you know, Catholicism, here comes everybody. And and I was humbled by by a by a lapsed Catholic who's like hovering around in my consciousness congress, and I'm saying, you know, he may he was sort of poking fun at Catholicism as, you know, here comes everybody. But what I heard God telling me is like, yeah, here comes everybody, Kale. you know, they're called too, you know, and so this is this this kind of leveling moment in which um I had to recognize that all of my hardcornness was coming at the expense of the genuine love, charity that we're called to be.
And then of course it's like, who do I think I am? Like I think I can just sort of like practice my way into works righteousness, you know? I mean that that that that's what hit me like like a ton of bricks. Um but but I'm fascinated by this idea of the many and the one um because um this is exactly what Joyce is doing in Dubliners. Dubliners is a collection of short stories that on the surface of things functions as these little in independent little ecospheres of different stories. But if you but but what he's also doing is he's showing you thematically and linguistically that there is a larger oneness to this thing that presents itself as a many. And so >> so you say there's literally a larger oneness in Joyce's double letters.
>> Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So sorry but on that note I gota I got to bounce.
I got to go do some things here. All right. Sorry. Sorry for the quick hit.
>> Thanks for jumping in. You tell Steve you tell Steve he's you know I want to talk to him.
>> All right. We'll do. We'll do. All right, man. Be well. Bye.
>> All right.
So, I have an hour before I need to be picked up and I need to do some things before I need to be picked up. So, I was probably just going to drop the link, but I monologued so long and then Kale came in and it was so absolutely good that I am not going to drop the link.
And so in lie of home room which I am not at home to deliver home room um this is going to be your video for today. And again uh shout out to um the wonderful people in Austin um who brought me here and I'm having a wonderful time and it hasn't even begun. Uh we're going to have estuary tonight and estuary party at Riel's. Um, the links are on Riel Substack. If you're looking for those links, they're on just about every one of my videos over the last couple of weeks. You can just dig one up and find the link. And if you're in the area, come. And if you're in Europe, or even if you're not in Europe, but you want to support what Cassidy is doing, buy a ticket. Just buy a ticket. You might not even be able to come. just buy a ticket to to and and same thing with Marcus in Ireland. So, um here here's something fun. I don't know if I'm stepping on Jeff's uh shoulder surf, but Jeff Pace is going to be with me in Europe. So, if you want it said his last name, uh if you want to if you want to meet Jeff P and you're in Europe, come to Cassid's event. or if you're in Ireland, come to Marcus's event because Jeff P is gonna be at both events. And I am super excited about that. I um it's not that, you know, I don't get a chance to talk to Jeff. I get chance to talk to Jeff all the time. It's not that I haven't had a chance to meet Jeff. My last trip to Texas, I spent time with Jeff in Dallas.
um it's that you all in England and if you're coming over from Germany or the Netherlands or France um you all get can get a chance to meet Jeff at Cassid's event and at Marcus's event. So if you want to support Marcus and Cassidy, even if you can't come, buy a ticket. Buy a ticket, please.
Because here's the thing with Cassidy.
Cassidy is Cassidy wants this Europe thing to work so badly that I suspect she's never come clean with me, but I suspect what happens often and there might be some other people who sort of bail her out. She puts on these events and she loses money and then she's got to go to Yeah. buy a ticket and give it away. Find someone in the TLC in England that says, "I would like to go, but I can't afford to go."
Buy a ticket for that person or or get another friend to go in with you to, you know, split it. Because here's the thing, TLC in America is large and comparatively wealthy.
So, one of the things that I'm thinking about, I can't announce it yet because I have to work with my team in Sacramento.
We are going to have sponsor. We're not We can do sponsorships, but we are going to have um this one. I've already chosen the speakers, so we're not going to have it now. But hopefully, Lord willing, if we do future conferences, people can actually basically choose a speaker with giving, you know, with basically giving a giving a gift. And it'll be a large gift, but there'll be free tickets that come with that large gift. Free tickets that can be used by friends and family who want to come. if if a particular speaker is sponsored or um tickets that can be given away to other friends who perhaps are in the area. So, we're working on the Sacramento estuary conference and it was interesting because we have a rough budget and food.
It was interesting. I thought the speakers would be the largest item in the budget. Nope. The largest item in the budget is food because we'll have probably 120 130 people at Living Stones for two days and they're human beings.
They have to eat. And so just logistically speaking, the easiest thing to do is to provide food, but food is super complex and Living Stones does not have an industrial kitchen. And so we're working on those difficult problems of food because we want to feed everyone and we want to feed people well. We want to host people well, but figuring out how to manage the food isn't easy, especially with a limited facility like we have at Living Stones.
And so actually when you buy the ticket to the conference, most of the ticket um most of the ticket actually goes to feeding you. And you might say, well, I look at that ticket and yeah, but the difficulty is that yeah, you might be able to go out and to fast food and get a burger or something for well California actually. Now, if you come to California, you will be shocked at the price of gas and shocked at the price of fast food and shocked at the price of food in general, even though California grows so much of this food. But um anyway, so we're trying to work that out and and one of the values that we've had through most of our conferences is we tried to keep them as affordable as possible because going to a conference, you have the conference price, you have the travel price, you have lodging price. Part of the plan at Living Stones is that we will have a limited number of campsites on the property. you get to camp and if the city gives me a problem, I'm going to say, "You've let people camp on my property for years." And if I needed help with you, you weren't much help. So, if I have, you know, a group of friends camping for two nights at Livingstones, don't give me grief. They will use the bathroom. They will clean up after themselves. They will not um burn down the place with fires. Okay?
Um, so my goal is to have camping on site so that those who can travel there by car, which generally is perhaps less expensive, or even fly in, they won't have to have the huge expense of a hotel. A lot of times people do Airbnbs, which is a great way to go. And there are Airbnbs in the area. My family has used them. There's a really nice one over the river in Yolo County. Um, there will also be hotels, and I'm trying to figure out how that works.
But again, in Europe, um I've got two dates, one in London, one in Ireland.
And you know, I I mean, if Cassid's able to cover my if Cassidy and Marcus are able to able to cover my expenses, that's what I ask. Um I'm not asking for a speaker fee or an honorarium or anything like that. I just want these events to happen because I want people to up their level of reality between each other. That's what estuary is about. That's what the TLC is about.
Using the internet against itself so we can be real with each other. And that's why we use real faces and real names and real connections and real relationships.
And again, real is a comparative. I just finished talking about that. So, um, so yeah, if you even if you can't go to Europe, buy a ticket and then if you if you can give it to someone, you know, maybe we can figure out how to have an exchange so people can buy tickets for other people. Um because Cassidy and Marcus, they're doing these things on a wing in a prayer and I suspect they often lose money. And I want Cassid's got big dreams and she wants to have bigger events with better speakers and and the real challenge in Europe is always venue.
In America, Living Stones has a church.
Almost all of the estuary conferences have happened in Christian reformed churches. Do you think that's just kind of is an accident? No. It's because I have a network and I can leverage that network for estuary and because the pastor in Olympia, Washington was a good friend of mine in college and seminary. And so when he hears my name, he opens the door. The pastor at Elmherst CRC was a friend of mine. He was in the Sacramento cluster.
When he hears my name, he opens the door.
Um, and but my network is limited and my network is not in Europe and we need spaces in Europe for events and they're hard to come by and so you know Cassidy has to spend for space and when we do estuary events in London we're often in noisy pubs and digital nosis gets in trouble on my behalf trying to disable a speaker so we can actually have a real conversation between us. So that's my that's my appeal for Europe. What you think of the Europeans?
Um, no, I'm not I'm not going to drop a link. Um, Mark, I just don't have time.
I have some things I have to do and then Riel is picking me up. And um, yeah, go Cassidy. We are cheering you on. Um I you know Mark um burn has been trying to get me to Georgia and it's it's it's in my mind. Um Georgia sort of considered um drop the link for sign up.
Oh, okay. I can do that. Um where is I have to find my links. because I know once I drop the link it just goes on and on and on and on which is wonderful which I love.
But um all right. So the Austin the events here in Austin that are now upon us you can find there Cassid's link.
Well, this is boring watching me do this. There's Cassid's link.
And here is Marcus's link for Ireland.
There they are.
So, the first link was for Austin. The second link was for Cassidy. Oh. Oh, Mark, can you make it back to you're from that? That's your home, Mark.
That's your home. Um, it would be so much fun to meet Mark in person. And again, just to keep this whole live stream together, that's the reality is that Mark is real just like Rick is real. If you wanna see, if you want to know that Rick is real.
Yes, Mark. Come to Breakwater.
Definitely come to Breakwater. Mark, if you want to see that Rick is real, come to Sacramento. You could. Rick was in Chino, too. If you want to see that Mark is real, if Mark comes to London and Jeff comes to London and I'm in London, you know, that's so much reality to see that gorgeous beard that Mark has. Do you straighten that beard? I've got some beard questions for Mark because he's got this fabulous beard. Um, PVK is definitely I'm not really literally real because there's not that much literature out on me. I'm more YouTube real. I'm physically real. Um, and again, if you if you come to Sacramento, um, come to Sacramento on a Sunday at 9:00 a.m. And if you come on time, you can have a one-on-one with me because a lot of our estuary people are late. But then you can have an estuary experience with me in Sacramento in a very small group. And then you can meet other people from Living Stones who are very real. And then you can I mean all of these realities can be had with just a little trip. Oh, actually in August we're going to do another estuary weekend because we still have more rooms to paint to get ready for the conference in October. And you know I I seldom make the appeal but um yeah, Living Stones I I think we'll make it to October.
Well, I should I should I should qualify that Living Stones is more real than I am in some ways. And and the crisis that is that Living Stones is basically um that at some point they'll stop paying me and um because they just don't have the money. So um you know one way to support me is to support Living Stones and the links are again beneath my living my opinion livingstonescr.comgive you can give money to living stones um but the conferences part of what we're trying to build into the conferences because we as a church have put in several thousand dollars already for um preparation for the conference and there are two contractors s um who are from the Bay Area who have been driving in to fix the facility because they believe in estuary and because they want to support the conference.
Yes, Mark's donated to Living Stones.
So, we know Mark is real. Um maybe we'll have to have a Living Stones fun drive sometimes. um I'm sensitive to that because people have re um bad experiences with churches trying to get money out of you. But um anyway, so yes, buy a ticket to Cassid's event, come and see me in Austin if you're near. Um donate to Living Stones.
And my vision for Living Stones is that we will have we will have conferences regularly at this point two or three a year. If we wanted to do I'd love to do six conferences a year.
Now, they're all going to be small, but I want to find a way to do them efficiently, economically.
The difficulty with living stones is that it's I I can't do them in the mid middle of summer because Sacramento is too hot and the buildings are too old and the air conditioning is too weak. And if you were in our buildings at 5 in the afternoon on a 110 degree day in Sacramento, you would be so uncomfortable you couldn't do anything.
Um, and that's because the buildings are old and uninsulated and the air conditioning is weak. But getting Living Stones to a level where they could handle that takes a whole lot more um money.
So, but we could do conferences in the spring and the fall. Hey, thank you, UPS. Thank you, UPS. Really appreciate it. Ups. Ups hasn't left us yet. I'm really looking forward to seeing Ups again at Ark and maybe Ups and I need to have a conversation about ARC because it's it's been interesting listening to like Upsort of process. Okay, how where does ARC fit into this picture and um I'd really like to hear more of his thoughts on that. I've been to every arc. Um, hey man, Rob. Um, Rob, I don't know where you live. I it could very well be that in 2027 if you are the Rob that was on Claire's channel and if I detected an Australian accent, if you are that Rob and you are in Australia and the Australian aspect of the TLC and estuary get their act together sufficiently to fly me to Australia in 2027, I would love nothing more than a big bear hug. I don't know how big you are. I'm plenty big. So, I would love nothing more than to give you a big bear hug of reconciliation. I would I would love that immensely.
Um, I'm trying to Okay. Trying to deal with All right. Um, that's it. Sorry, I'm not dropping the link. depending on what my schedule looks like tomorrow and um how everything that I need to do here while I'm here happens tomorrow. I might do another live stream tomorrow morning because I'm not going to have a I'm not going to have a home room video, that's for sure.
And um yeah, so thank you for joining me and let's see um let's play a little branding.
Well, I don't know about the meaning crisis, left, right, black, white, or other vices. But Jesus Christ is right.
Or if we're all saved from my perspective, our propositions participate procedurally, running in circles. Remember, embody. We're in the age of decay.
Symbolically speaking, the reapers are reaping them damn aggregors are whispering sweetly. We're all NPCs in the belly of the red pill, blue pill, bread pill, Mars Hill or DMG or whatever you feel.
and number two. It's all the same damn thing.
So clean your room. Repent on Zoom.
Ontology for dummies, a bird's eye view.
Cuz if you really knew, could you really even say?
Totally depraved, all totally saved. The total disposition from the bed we all made. Or is it the elect? Or are we just insane?
From John Vi to Jonathan Pio and Jordan Peterson to the Chris Poo Show, Paul Vanderlays and Griswald Grim and all the dice he shuary diddy is a little bit cringy and quite the U shape or the hero's journey. All the NPCs in the flood dreading water to watch you save the day with a bunch of chitter chatter.
From the Ortho bros to the Catholic Joe or atheistic Job to Protestant folks, the Josh and Jewish Jacobs and everything in between.
So love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, with all your mind and your fingers and toes. all your neighbors too as if they were your own.
So love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and with all your mind and your fingers and toes. All your neighbors too as if they were your own.
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