In Lay Terms | Matt Ehret talks Plato, Cicero and St. Augustine

Ajouté : 2026-05-13

[00:00:10]Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Inlay Terms. I'm joined by none other than Matthew Erit. Matt, how's it going?

[00:00:16]>> Hey, very well. Thank you for having me back on.

[00:00:19]>> No, always. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule. I'm going to hit you with uh four philosophical academic questions and I'm sure you're going to knock them all out of the park.

[00:00:31]>> I hope so. What do you got?

[00:00:33]>> All right. So, the first one, uh kind of open-ended. I wanted to get your perspective on Plato versus Aristotle.

[00:00:41]Uh and take it in any direction you like.

[00:00:45]Uh yeah, I mean that that's a big part of my my um development and as a researcher and somebody just trying to make sense and and and do what I can to influence the world in in a slightly better way um through both my discoveries, communicating them and trying to intervene as a person within the world is um the the discovery I had made some years ago through my affiliation with an organization that was known then as the Larouche Youth Movement uh that I joined in 2006 as a volunteer that had a uh a philosophical uh drive to it. It was a it was a political activist organization but it had a um a philosophical foundation uh following some of the thoughts of a now dead philosopher by the name of Lind Lynon Larouche who had made the thesis that I found very challenging and and provocative that the world world history as we know it could be best understood as a battle between two opposing ideologies that had two different cosmologies, two different ways of thinking about how ideas form. what humans are, what the core definitions of justice, of value, of freedom is. So the same words but but but tied to two opposing cosmologies where one you had uh a system rooted in a belief in master slave relations being unbreakable, absolute and the idea that it was the responsibility and the destiny of the slaves to always be adapted by the masters to a world likened to a cave with shadows cast on the wall that the slaves had to be uh led to believe was all of the reality that there could ever be. and only the small cast of that higher order had the permission or the the authority to know of fuller truth that they would then be the puppet masters and that in that worldview there there would be certain political and economic ramifications on how do you organize such a society if you believe that that's nature of mankind and what does it that say about your idea of God and one of the the uh tech or uh methods one of the ways that the old man Larouche who I had a chance to meet before he died, he uh tried to encourage people to uh read review the the works of Plato and somebody who was his contemporary but younger named Aristotle and and contrast which which set of theories and and or ideas and ideas about how ideas form, which is what they both do, were best were were most conducive to a society founded upon on um oligarchism, the rule by the few by in a higher cast over the many who would be of the slave cast versus uh whose theory whose thoughts about ideas and cosmology would would be a human civilization fit for justice and dignity of which Plato um I was I was surprised to discover in reading his dialogues actually um fit the the the preferred uh type. Whereas Aristotle when you start to read and then contrast his method and what he says about the rules of thought um you find that that is directly what the oligarchical systems of of control of thoughts and control of systems material and metaphysical uh are wired by. Even though we have been led to believe um a narrative which turns out to be facious which I had believed to be true before I I actually started doing the work and taking up the challenge of reading the original writings which was that Aristotle was a continuation somebody a student of Plato who just perfected upon Plato's ideas. Plato is the you know the the abstract tyrant the person who is the source of all fascism evil we've been told is that's Plato.

[00:04:44]Aristotle is the source of practicality of of goodness is what we've been told.

[00:04:48]But when you actually start reading their writings again, you start getting a very different story. So that that's how I would say and quick would be my appreciation for the two those two guys.

[00:04:59]>> That's fascinating. It's a it's a it's a an intriguing take. Um what about uh Socrates? Just a loser we should leave behind or any comments?

[00:05:08]>> No, he's he's he's cool. Socrates is very cool. Um, do you want to know about Socrates? Like who he was or?

[00:05:16]>> No, just I I was kind of um I was kind of joking, but it's almost a footnote like nobody really talks about Socrates.

[00:05:22]Uh, is that is that because he's not that important or what?

[00:05:26]>> Oh, well, no, no. He is the he's so important and he uh he didn't write very much down. He didn't, as far as we know, none of his writings survive, though. We have xenophon and Plato who have transcribed uh his his apology uh his famous discourse that he gave after he was condemned for heresy and and trying to overthrow the gods of Greece and and corrupt the minds of the youth and the demos some of his enemies politically had uh brought him to court and the demos the democracy party had found a way to persuade the jurors of which there were like 500 of jurors sitting in court that he was is in fact guilty and found him uh gave him the death penalty and he had a famous oration which again survives. It's similar but different.

[00:06:15]Kind of like if you think about Jesus and his apostles. Jesus didn't write much down but his apostles, you've got different variations of the same stories in the gospels. Um and um and that's pretty much most of what we have. And then we have some satire by Aristophanes um who didn't like Socrates at all and and made uh satirical attacks, slander pieces on him in the form of plays. Um but I think that's pretty much all we have now. Now we know that Socrates was the teacher of Plato. Somebody who who had taught who created a school of thought. Um he was a a leading figure within the Athenian um government for a short period. He he actually became the president of the uh they have a a one they had a one-year rotation and he was the the president of the Athenian uh parliament or the they had a specific name for it and made a lot of enemies because they were at war and uh there was a condemnation by this guy uh uh Kronos Cororos I'm forgetting my names anyway there was an actual uh figure who was a rhetoricophist um who put out a condemnation of the leading generals of Athens because in a battle that they had at sea, it was a stormy it was stormy weather and and many of the people who had died and and and their ships had had sank. Instead of recuperating their bodies, the captains and the generals of the ships sought to try to keep their men alive and to sail home and make an escape and not collect the bodies, which the argument was made.

[00:07:57]This was a great heresy. Now their souls are condemned to whatever the abyss because you didn't give them a proper sacred burial. and dozens of these generals, the leading heroes that Athens uh needed to defend themselves in, you know, because they basically made a lot of enemies. They were all put to death and Socrates was the only one to stand up while he was the president of this council saying, "No, I'm I'm not going to I'm not going to allow this to go to vote." And he fought to stop this from going to vote because he's like, "If we do this and we kill our best people, we're we're we're sitting ducks. Like we're that's it." And um basically Socrates somehow was vetoed and uh they killed those generals and and Athens went into some deep deep dudu for for a few more years. I think it took five more years for Socrates to be condemned and to be put to death in 399 BC. So I think that Plato is is probably the most loyal though though in his in his dialogues he features Socrates. You know that it wasn't literally like a recording device following the old man be you know Socrates is in his mid20s when when uh Plato was in his mid20s when Socrates dies. Um he was in the audience uh while at trial. Um he wasn't there during the famous discourse of the Fedo when Socrates drinks the hemlock.

[00:09:17]wasn't there. Um, but we know that he he didn't necessarily recount word for word what Socrates said. But I think that the method he was loyal to Socrates's method of learning to question your assumptions and don't believe anything on that you can't prove through God-given reason for yourself before you create a a conviction that something is true and uh you you you internalize that uh conviction. If you can't prove it to be true and you're instead using authority of experts or uh popular opinion as your standard for for judging what is right and wrong instead of your own powers of reason which involve self-reflective evaluations of your motives, your self the power of self-examining your heart and your core axioms, your core foundational assumptions upon which you build hypotheses about reality and you try to make it ever better and you try to do correctives. If you don't have that that going and instead you think that mind and and thought is simply memorization or adding information into a box that just builds quantitatively.

[00:10:26]If that's what your idea is, you will never make a discovery and you will not have the type of creative reason and the creative playfulness that um Plato and and those who used his method were able to exhibit in the course of dialogues that I think again were very loyal to the spirit and intention of Socrates. Um so I think Socrates's spirit was kept alive through through Plato in that sense.

[00:10:51]You're making some really profound statements, but I I just can't stop focusing on your hand gestures and the camera following your hand.

[00:10:58]>> It's weird, eh? No, it's one of these AI cameras. Uh it's just Yes, I know. It's weird. Eh, >> it's okay. Uh we we can move on to the next question. Uh I I got these from uh just various readings, books and everything. And sometimes you talk about the these people a lot like Hamilton and Plato. Sometimes you mention them in passing. I think you mentioned Cicero in passing. Who was he and what was his significance?

[00:11:24]>> Cicero was a platonist of the Roman Republic period, the last phase of the Roman Republic before it fully transformed into an empire. And uh much like Socrates earlier, that was his role model and how he chose to he was he was often attacked. Um he was a very leading figure in the government. I think Julius Caesar even invited him. He wanted him to be a part of a triumvirate of which he said, "No, it's just it's too it's too problematic. There's too many corrupt elements in what you're trying to do." And so he chose to stay out of it. And I think that was a wise thing to do. Similar to Socrates, actually, who was invited earlier to be part of the 30 tyrants of Greece. And Socrates said, "No, it's too problematic. I'd rather just stay out of it." Um, which probably did keep him alive a little bit longer.

[00:12:17]um Cicero as well.

[00:12:20]Now Cicero when he was asked to peg himself as either a Epicurian or a Stoic because he had friends who were stoics.

[00:12:30]He had friends who were Epicurans and those were sort of the two dominant choices of ideology around which you could sort of build an identity in in that period of of ancient Rome. Um he's like no I'm neither one of those two things. I am I am a Platonist. and he very clearly defined himself as a platonist as distinct from those two things because he's like the stoic leans too much on uh a a doctrine of of logic over emotions. So logic becomes a tyrant over your will and your emotions and spontaneity. And the Epicuran he said leans too much on a doctrine of emotions as tyrant over reason. And he's like, rather than be led by one of one of those two specifically, how about we find a way through a higher synthesis to take the best of of both of them without of without their neurotic uh contaminations? Because when you lean too much on on being emotionally driven, you you have blind spots on your on your reason.

[00:13:28]When you when you're too logically driven and you you know, you you have blind spots on on your ability to feel and to love and to have proper emotions.

[00:13:36]So he's like let's let's not fall into these extremes guys.

[00:13:41]And um and Cicero also made some enemies um at a time when just like Athens earlier when Rome was going through its its severe crisis of of a of a dangerous transformation for the worse into becoming an empire. a civil war had broken out in the wake of Julius Caesar's murder and that went on for for like 15 years um between Caesar's murder which was 44 45 BC and then the uh the death of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra in I think it was like 34 BC or so and then the establishment by uh Octavio Augustus um Caesar's nephew of the official empire um in around 33 BC or so. But Cicero was killed around 45 44 right after Julius Caesar was killed. Cicero was soon killed thereafter um by by Mark Anthony who was his enemy. He pulicized against them quite a bit. Mark Mark Anthony was a was a hedonistic shill um an agent of of uh the ISIS mystery cults. I mean but don't get me wrong at the same measure it seems that Julius Caesar who might have been more well-intentioned and he's the guy who accepted he killed Pompei one of his his general enemies.

[00:14:59]um and uh was going to make himself console but then because that's that was the top sort of president of the day and the under the Roman Republic there was no emperor there was no kings there was just a console and it was much more based on democratic participation of the society um but there was a an operation in play to get Caesar to declare himself the emperor and you know there's the famous scene where he's like no no I don't want it the crowd's like yo please be our emperor you're the god man and he's like no No, no. And he denies it three times and then on the third time he's like, "Okay, I'll do it." But then that opens up a can of worms as soon as you allow that idea in. So, uh, again, Cicero was very much not in favor of that, but he was also like telling his his student Brutus because Brutus is the guy who kills him. You know, you got the famous Julius Caesar scene of like Caesar getting the stab wound like 20 times from like all the different senators who had to get blood on their hands. And C's like at the last one he's his his buddy his confidant Brutus like A2 A2 Brutus.

[00:16:01]Um and Brutus is like my wife actually Cynthia did did some amazing work on this story and and did a class on it but um Brutus was a student of of of Cicero and Cicero had great hopes for him and he and Cicero really didn't want him to to take the assassination route either.

[00:16:20]He was like, "You're going to also set into motion a civil war. So that's a bad idea." And uh and ultimately Brutus uh lost to Mark Anthony, got killed. Mark Anthony put Cicero on a hit list. He wanted his head and his tongue specifically because he had a power of oration and wielded more power than uh than than armies in those days by the power of his his his poetry and his his his ability to communicate as an aator. He had that type of real political power kind of like a Martin Luther King type of power you can imagine, right? Um and so he had Cicero ultimately condemned to death like Socrates earlier. And with that, I think just like Plato, uh, sorry, Socrates, uh, I'm mixing up my names here. Just like Shakespeare in his play Julius Caesar, um, had Cicero is a figure who Shakespeare admired quite a bit and had Cicero only show up in in a in a very anomalous way where two of the characters say after hearing Cicero alluding or advising that they shouldn't do something very bad, they're like, "What did he say?" I don't know. It was all Greek to me. And that was a little illusion that Cicero was the the the only genuine Greek who in in in Rome who at that time embodied the pro the the healthiest of the Greeks of the spirit of the Greeks of of of Plato and Socrates. Um and once he died it was kind of like all he didn't unlike Socrates he didn't create a school that was as rigorous. So with his death, there was nobody really after him to to pick up the torch and defend the republic from its decay into this empire. Um that eventually Christianity emerged within that that that degeneration as sort of a beacon of light in opposition to.

[00:18:13]>> Do you think uh Cicero is sort of a man of integrity like Catis or is that just mostly fantasy? Uh, looking back on history, >> h it's a great question, dude. Um, yeah, I I think that I don't know if Catus ever wrote anything down, so it's hard to talk about like how he thought. I just know the stories about Catis and for your viewers who may not be aware, that was a famous general of the Roman Republican period. Um, I don't know if he was even a contemporary. I thought he came before Cicero, but he at a time he was used as a role model for virtue in the centuries and and even millennia after he died, including by George Washington, who created a society uh called the Society of Catis in the the Newa, emulating the idea of of the of honor and virtue of this character, this figure who did seem to have existed at a time in in of crisis when Rome was lacking of leadership.

[00:19:18]um at war. Uh he was a retired hero, a general, but he was a farmer because he was retired and he was called upon to save Rome and was had such a reputation that he was given by the Senate the powers of a dictator. And he could have made himself full dictator for life if he had so wished. But he simply follow, you know, carried out his duty. He um he went back into the force. He he became the tyrant or whatever it was, you know, and led the armies of Rome in in its time of crisis. And and once the crisis was put down, he gave up the uh the scepter, you know, and he he took up the plow again and went back to work as a as a farmer.

[00:19:57]Um which again is it just shows the the right motives in somebody's heart for for doing something and how power doesn't necessarily corrupt. You know, people say, "Oh, cynically power corrupts power corrupts." And it's like, well, it power corrupts people who are weak in in mind and soul. Sure. But if you're strong and mature, it shouldn't.

[00:20:17]Otherwise, we're screwed as a as a civilization, as as a as a human species. Um, and and you know, case studies like Catis, I think, was a great one. Um, and and I mean to that to that extent, even though we don't know, I don't know if he was again an intellectual figure in that sense because I don't think his his writings survived, but Cicero also had great power, uh, immense power. people wanted him to be part of their their little conspiracies at different times because of his power.

[00:20:45]But his power didn't come from uh the wrong place. He didn't it wasn't from ego or from a desire for fame or for fortune. though he slandered. I know there are people and intellectuals in in our current world who do slander Cicero just like they slander Plato as being a tyrant, a a money grubber, somebody who wanted to hurt Catalin and and you know the the the the the noble Catalin who had his noble conspiracy to save the people which Cicero intervened on and stop from happening um in like 55 or 65 BC.

[00:21:20]Now, I've seen no evidence that that's Cicero definitely stopped that conspiracy and saved Rome. Gave Rome bought Rome more time. Is that the governor that he tried?

[00:21:31]>> Yeah.

[00:21:32]>> Uh Brian Peekford on the steps of the Victoria legislature, he cited that he he he said um this is what intrigued me about this this um your fascination with him. goes uh Cicero the Cicero Cicero of Rome uh tried a corrupt governor and and he won. He I got the impression that Cicero was more of a man of the people and he was pushing back against the establishment.

[00:21:56]>> Oh yeah. Yeah, he definitely was. Yeah.

[00:21:58]No, the the the Catalene it was the Catalene conspiracy. I was mispronouncing it. But uh but yeah, it was definitely a rotten conspiracy to overthrow the government and to install a kalene as a as a tyrant and Cicero did an immense a wonderful job at intervening on that conspiracy and exposing it before it could could culminate. Um so yeah, no, I I didn't know that Brian Peekford was was dropping Cicero and setting Cicero.

[00:22:26]That's that's awesome. That's so cool.

[00:22:28]>> Yeah. Yeah. and his traditional Scottish accent. It was pretty cool.

[00:22:32]>> I recorded it, but I can't find it. If I do, I'll send it to you.

[00:22:36]>> Um, all right. Well, let's move on to the third topic. You mentioned St. Augustine is Augustine of Hippo. I hope I didn't make a mistake there. Uh, who was he and what was his significance?

[00:22:48]Uh yes, Augustine was I think the most clear embodiment of both Plato, Socrates and Cicero in um a period again of a major transition in Rome's existence.

[00:23:07]Um he was born around 355 AD. Um he died in 420 something 4 during uh a siege of Rome by the the Viskoths.

[00:23:21]430 he died. He must have that would have been 430 AD he died. So it was a very important period right that was the collapse of the western Roman Empire. Um he was a leading man. He was a a scholar, a teacher of rhetoric. He would teach uh he had a school of rhetoric.

[00:23:39]very well very well read very cultured as a young man in his 20s had a great reputation for teaching and grooming young leaders uh the Roman patricians would would send their children to uh to Augustine born in North Africa and I think it would be today's Tunisia uh or back then it was still like the former Carthage and uh and he would bring them to become basically sophists right and he religiously a devoted follower of uh of the of the doctrines of money. money was a a zorast an esoteric gnostic zarastrian um or he created sort of his new syncric hodgepodge religion that involved elements of zerastrianism elements of gnostic Christianity elements of uh of a few other things and kind of combined it into a secret and a public doctrine structure um premised on the idea of of uh of light and darkness good and evil is two opposing counterbalancing forces in this uh in the universe and around which with that with that belief in mind that evil has as much onlogical positive existence as goodness does.

[00:25:02]um rituals associated with doing evil in order to invoke the good became a logical consequence as always is the case whenever people have foundational philosophies that that are rooted in that type of assumption. Now Augustine for a long time believed that and finally under the influence of a of a platonist a scholar by the name of St. Ambrose um was organized uh through you know basically platonic dialectics that went on for several months to uh become cognizant of the errors of his own assumptions. Basically, the the the one that Augustine made the biggest point of that that really shook him out of it was the idea that evil itself could not be defined as a positive force when you actually put it to test or that darkness couldn't be defined as a positive force either when you put it to test. And you know good easy example he uses in his confessions and in his city of god a foundational document in human civilization which is sort of his own republic just like Cicero had written a a study of the causes of Rome's decline and the philosophical as well as like metaphysical as well as geopolitical reasons for Rome's crisis that in the form of Cicero's uh book the commonwealth um and and what what a a proper standard of of principle should be for a society be fit to survive. That's what Cicero did before he died. Soc or Plato did the same thing using the character of Socrates in his republic, which was another intellectual exercise to figure out how do you how do you train people to diagnose the reasons why a society like Athens would go into empire and decline and collapse? What would allow it to go into like degeneration?

[00:26:44]And then what what are standards around which a a healthy leadership of who are fit for for survival would be able to utilize around justice as a key principle uh to organize cultural policy, artistic, other other forms of law, war and peace. U philosopher kings basically was the ideas. How do you create a culture that is conducive to philosopher kings and that would would would learn to love the joys and pleasures of wisdom over the pleasures and joys of flesh as primary. Not to say you shouldn't enjoy the pleasures of flesh, but that you should always have a primacy of the love of the spirit and the good and the health of the soul over the flesh always. And again, so Cicero and then Augustine in his city of God took that very seriously. And Augustine makes the point that hey, look, just like uh you can't extinguish a room that's lit up with fire, you know, if if light is in a room, you can't bring in darkness to extinguish the light. But inversely if a dark if a room is full of darkness because there's no light you just need to bring in one candle and you can eliminate that. So he uses in a in in a in throughout his writings much many of his writings take the form of platonic dialogues.

[00:27:53]He uses various examples to demonstrate that evil is is the consequence of number one human uh free will. That we have the will to do we we because we are made in the image of a living, loving reasonable creator. that living, loving, reasonable creator gave us the right to make mistakes and the right to um to be ignorant and and you know and then and thus make mistakes about things that are important. Um but that evil in in the Augustinian world in opposition to the Manachans would be defined more around an idea of being ignorant of oneself not having defined what our true nature is as uh far as understanding the nature of our soul of the divine part of us that we should spend a lot of time like Socrates says the foundation of knowledge is to know thy to know thyself right that that's that you can't start speculating about justice and try to, you know, inter interact with change the world around you if you haven't take the time to really examine your mind and your heart to know yourself. And what he's getting at is the immortal, the divine, the eternal part of ourselves that are always true, that are that are there before our bodies were born that allow us to know the universal truths of the of creation of the cosmos that are that must have the imprint of the creator with onto on all of creation because part of the artist's essence flows through the artistic production that the artist creates. And so thinking of the creator as a living art like creative uh essence, you would not be surprised that within the smallest parts of creation, um if you're looking for it, you would find the the the characteristic the substance of the creator there, including within our ourselves who we're all part of creation, right? We're not outside of the creation that we're born into and we're trying to make sense of. So, in that sense, if you're ignorant of that, you didn't take the time to do that, then that ignorance creates a realm um of of sort of like a a a non-fertile soil, a bad soil in which bad seeds will emerge, perverse feelings, perverse thoughts that deflect us away from our actual yearning to be attached once more to uh our our eternal divine essence. that would occur and out of that type of um bad culture um oligarchism evil would typically emerge in varying degrees and that was sort of Augustine's contribution in trying to understand what was it that brought Rome to embrace its own decline and and collapse which he was living through and which a lot of people were then blaming on the Christians saying that hey if it wasn't you know Rome becomes Christian in like 380 and then all of a sudden like allaric and the Visigoths are on our ass and like you know invading us. It's got to be connected that that's the gods punishing us because we let go of we abandoned our gods and it's the Christians fault for doing that and people were starting to get really angry and there was a lot of threat to the lives of many Christians at the time. Um and so Augustine's position was like no look and and and that's where his city of God written in 4 410 uh was so important because he's like look the reason why was maybe I think published a little bit later it's like look the seeds of your destruction were planted before Christianity even exists and he makes the case that even before you existed Cicero he cites Cicero and he says look Cicero was already diagnosing why this is going to happen like 350 years ago 400 years ago he's saying that because Cicero makes the point that that Rome lost its its it its moral fitness to survive when it stabbed Carthage in the back. And that was like we're talking now like 280 or something 260 BC like that because Rome and Carthage had this 200-year alliance. Carthage was the maritime power. Rome was the land-based power.

[00:31:57]They both had had talents that they brought together and for 200 years they maintained this alliance under four treaties which served them both quite well and until Rome decided to uh to to undermine their their ally across the Mediterranean and declare the first Punic War. And there was three Punic wars in the subsequent like 80 90 years resulting finally in the total annihilation of their once ally and the the murder of every man and and enslavement of every woman and child and the destruction of Carthage completely as Rome became an empire. And that's when Cicero said we actually lost our moral fitness to survive. And and unless we can get that back, we're we're screwed. And and Augustine is saying look that's correct. You know, don't blame Christianity. we didn't we didn't exist when you were already on that route. So yeah, and then also he's doing battle with the mystery cults. So there's a ver variety of ways of efforts by the high priesthoods of of Babylon which but still existed. They just took on different veneers by that time but you know like in Greece they took on the the temple of the cult of Apollo. Marduk was a solar deity of Babylon. But those those same high priests sort of rebranded their cult in the form of the cult of Apollo, another solar deity.

[00:33:18]There are other solar de deities in Rome like Mithrid and Helios which was sort of the the conduit around which uh Octavio Augustus interfaced with the the high cultists when he made the arrangement to uh you know to to basically turn Rome into a into a full-blown empire and make that the seed of the new Babylon.

[00:33:39]And uh and when Christianity was emerging there were so many efforts to to smother it from the outside. you know, Nero did his thing, kill the Christians, burn them alive, whatever, throw them to the lions. When that didn't work, the the next technique was to follow the efforts of the Gnostics, the followers of Simon, Simon the magician, who had been exposed by Peter and and Rabbi Pho of Alexandria in around 60some uh maybe 63 or 64 AD. Um, and Simon the magician was trying to pass himself off as the real representative of Jesus's uh mission. and and but he was doing magic tricks to try to make himself seem like he had superpowers. And Nero was like building statues in his honor and everyone was getting seduced by this guy. But also some people were getting horrified by this guy and his prostitute sacred wife creature Helen who was kind of like this gnostic woman he put took out of a brothel and made his high priestess. And uh they were doing some pretty satanic rights and rituals. I think it's sort of like a lot of the the core hermetic uh doctrines are found in in in a lot of what Simon the magician was doing. But he was exposed, but his followers still treated him like a like a messiah figure and sort of used him as a foundational stone for the various gnostic uh perversions of Christianity that generated certain books like the Nagamadi scriptures. the a lot of the content within the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed after World War II were second to fourth century Gnostic literature um that professed to to to advance a secret teaching of Jesus knowable only to the inner elites. Um, kind of like the Manakans, as I was saying, had an outward doctrine for the uninitiated members and then an inner doctrine, a secret doctrine for the initiated.

[00:35:31]Um, so too did the these various Gnostic sects. Um, and this is what Augustine was also battling in in his battles against heresy and his battles against the Manachians and his battles against the the Donatists, against the Pelagians, uh, different splinter groups trying to trying to claim ownership of this new thing called Christianity that was highly under underdefined and he had to do battle to try to keep this thing from getting infiltrated and broken up from within. So he did a an immense amount of work doing that. And I would say in the in the centuries following his death, the most potent viable expressions of Christianity that emerged at different times that that created greater foundations of liberty and took away the power of the empire and increased the power of renaissance movements um were the followers the genuine followers of Augustine and hence also he's like the Christian Plato, you know.

[00:36:29]I would say either you caught your stride with that question or Hippo is your favorite of the three so far.

[00:36:36]>> I I like him a lot. Yeah, he's pretty good.

[00:36:39]>> That was really impressive how you tied him across three different time frames.

[00:36:42]You got Hippo in 400, Cicero and just BC 44, and then then you got um Carthage.

[00:36:49]That that's there there's our clip for the episode right there.

[00:36:52]>> Yeah. Right.

[00:36:54]>> Um I'm gonna hit you with another question and then I'll I'll try to let you I know you're a little under the weather. This guy, you you you put out a hit piece of uh Theodore Roosevelt. Um I know that he I I I'm somewhat familiar of his connections with progressivism, but like what are the connections between him, progressivism, angophilia?

[00:37:13]What are your thoughts?

[00:37:15]>> Uh yeah, and once again, I got to say, my wife uh produced a three-part series on Teddy Roosevelt's treachery. uh it's called when heroes are or when traitors are worshiped as heroes. Um going through a a total analysis and and and deconstruction of everything how pretty much everything rotten about the USA today can really be found rooted in in what Teddy Roosevelt put into motion when he became president in uh 1902 over the dead body of McKinley who was assassinated. And McKinley was a very good man. He was a very loyal adherent to the the the the um example of Abraham Lincoln and the best of the American tradition until his assassination um at a at a what I it has been quite demonstrated as a a British intelligence directed anarchist operation that murdered a number of very good statesmen of that era of that epoch. Um, of which one of them was uh Charles GTO. No, that Charles GTO killed um, sorry, Garfield.

[00:38:26]No, this his murderer was this Polish anarchist from uh, Emma Goldman's uh, anarchist commune um, in Buffalo.

[00:38:36]Anyway, she was tied to British intelligence. Bert Russell from the Neil Malthusian League that she was also a member got her out of uh, prison and got her to London.

[00:38:46]um she's a big hero in the feminist movement today. Now Teddy Roosevelt got power over he was the vice president. He had also been in charge while he was the under secretary of the navy under McKinley. he was kept generally at arms reach from any type of real power except at a certain point there was a weak when he became the secretary of the navy because the the the the main guy was like out of town and he used that with um very highlevel players in the Anglo-American establishment camp who are part of who made their fortunes over the opium wars from the 1840s to the 1860s allied with Great Britain against China that's where a lot of these illbegotten fort fortunes came out of of the Russell family and others and the Vanderbilts and and what have you and he colluded with them to initiate America's first major real imperial war abroad in the Philippines um using a false flag incident and uh retaliated on their Spanish enemies that had you know the Philippines as their colony. I think it was the the s the main was was not really it was it was a false flag. It wasn't like the Spanish attacked the main ship. It was turns out that was that was controlled 9/11 9/11 kind of operation and he enshed the United States immediately into a war that McKinley couldn't get out of. And so he started getting he had plans also to get the US into wars with Cuba. Um and and and more broadly once McKinley got power sorry when once sorry Teddy Roosevelt got power he he basically created a new doctrine for American foreign policy called the the Teddy Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine and where the Monroe doctrine was founded on a good intention to recognize all of the Americas as integral to US security interests. And with that idea to keep um foreign European imperial interests out of the Americas because it was understood that whether the French or the British uh or the Spanish empires, they had the same methods of infiltration and destruction and sub subjugation of target peoples to create divide to conquer forever war situations of ignorance and chaos. And that was recognized as anti-Republican, anti the ideals of 1776 and something that John Quincy Adams and uh Monroe earlier s said okay we have to enshrine this understanding now in doctrine as a foreign policy way that will help us in future generations defend ourselves from from intrigue and conspiracy.

[00:41:32]Teddy Roosevelt took that and and basically weaponized it with his corollary that justified US military expansionism, including financial uh colonialism in but also military interventionism into all of the Americas, which which empowered things like what became United Fruit, um Sullivan and Cromwell, a lot of these later on, you know, very destructive agencies that we saw organize the Cold War, organized his US imperial uh interest, the banana republic operations. That was all put into motion by Teddy Roosevelt. He also was a eugenicist who gave federal support to eugenics policies uh for sterilization of the unfit amongst a myriad of states including Illinois and and a few other states. While he was president, he wrote extensively. He was a writer on the importance of eugenics and proper breeding and proper sterilization of the unfit to make society better. He was an admirer of uh King Edward IIIth. They they had extended correspondences together where King 7 Edward IIIth was giving him advice on how do you how do you lead and create an Anglo-American special relationship. There's commemorative coins and stamps of him and the king of England together um saying we will unite the world under the English language uh two people's one language one rule you know like things like that were were being propagandodized by Teddy Roosevelt. He also gave sponsorship to the Pilgrims Society. was a an Anglo-American uh friendship organization overseen by the JP Morgan family, the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts in 1902, patronized by the king. The king was the official patron just like it still exists today. And uh King Charles is still the patron of the pilgrim society even now. And so it was created in 1902.

[00:43:28]And uh he also oversaw the uh he gave the approval directly of the Albert Pike KKK statue. The guy who founded the KKK and the Grandmaster Scottish right um and Confederate general Albert Pike. He gave the approval to have that statue installed in Washington DC in 1902 as sort of I think a a manifesto for the new uh foreign policy which gave rise to again um imperial wars into Colombia, carving up of Colombia, the creation of an artificial synthetic country called Panama um and other many many other uh bad things abroad. also the rehabilitation of the KKK that was continued under uh Woodro Wilson just a few years later who was also a pro- eugenics um fan of white supremacy and gave the KKK a major boost. Um the the liberal the great liberal Democrat Woodro Wilson, but they were actually very similar to each other. And honestly, there's a lot more that can be said. He he's called the trustbuster for having, you know, busted up the trust. Uh not true at all. He actually what he did is he took big behemoth monoliths run by the Rockefellers, the Standard Oil Trust and other things and he basically gave the illusion that you've broken them up.

[00:44:44]But what he did is he simply allowed them to create thousands of smaller organizations that were much more difficult to follow. It gave the illusion of having separate organizations where there used to be one, but in fact, no, they're still run by the exact same owners, the same boards of directors, the same mandates.

[00:45:03]Um it was like cutting the head off of a hydra and having a hundred heads grow back. And that was the design. Um the intention was to do that. So and there's more. But, you know, I think people who want to know more about Teddy Roosevelt's treachery and anglophilia in America should go to um well, I either my wife's current series is fantastic or uh Anton Shaken's work uh on um he's a great historian who I learned a lot from in my he he really his his work gave me a lot of guidance and he's still alive uh doing a lot of great work today. Um called who we are, America's fight for universal progress.

[00:45:43]volumes one and two. Uh, volumes two goes through a lot of this story as well.

[00:45:48]>> What's Could you again tell us your wife's Cynthia's Substack?

[00:45:52]>> Yeah, it's uh Cynthia Chung.substack.com and it's Threw a Glass Darkly is the name.

[00:45:59]>> Just a quick question. Um, it seems like America really took a turn for the worse after the Civil War like the 1860s.

[00:46:08]What was what was like if somebody asked you what what is America? not today which is just God knows what it's become but when it was formed from the 1760s until the Civil War like what was it what did it mean to be American what was the American dream >> I think I think the idea of the the founding fathers the better founding fathers because they weren't there was no there wasn't a solid consensus there was disputes amongst the founding fathers of what this new nation was supposed to mean of course so you can't say they they all had this one view there was common agreements Sorry for the getting over a cold. Um there was common agreements like they they they rejected the idea that uh in principle um hereditary hereditary bloodlines were the foundations upon which authority and and and right to rule should be garnered as it was the case with the British and other imperial systems up until that time. and any institutions that flowed out of hereditary authority should be not recognized as valid. I think there was a general agreement in words at least that that was true that there was a general aspiration for freedom that they all agreed on we deserve to be free. What those meant though in detail you find that there's some quite a bit of dispute. You know a lot of them didn't they like the ideals but they couldn't accommodate their personal lives to their ideals. So you had characters that like Thomas Jefferson uh recognized he acknowledged that his ideals of all men are created equal and endowed with these inalienable rights.

[00:47:44]Um he acknowledged that there's a discrepancy between that and the fact that he owns he was the biggest slave owner in Virginia.

[00:47:53]Um he said earlier on I think he meant it that he wants to uh become a better person. He wants to eventual he wanted to illegalize slavery or phase it out early on, but he couldn't he couldn't break away from his his the the his lower nature, his more bigoted um nature. So unlike unlike Benjamin Franklin and you know even George Washington let his slaves go free as like that was the first thing in his in his will as soon as he died. He had a few slaves, not even that many, but he's like, "You're all going to go free. You'll be supported." And he treated them quite well. Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, never even let the slaves that he impregnated go free after he died, you know. Um, and so it's like it made it it created some Achilles heels in in the American in in the American system. This unwillingness to let go of the slave economy for many many years. it took a war finally and and even then after after the civil war it still hung on. But I think overall when you look at the best of the those like Ben Franklin and his leading uh followers who really were the initiators who made the whole thing possible like there would not have been an American revolution had it been for people like Jefferson. Jefferson was was dragged along for the ride. He was he is an influential person. He was he had some big ideals low not the best quality intellect. is he's known as a great scientist and inventor. The best thing he invented was a rocking chair, you know, like it's it's cool, you know, smarter than me. I've never invented a rocking chair, but it's like his his reputation is is is is fluffed up quite a bit compared to like a real scientist like a Ben Franklin who made hundreds of inventions and made discoveries of universal principles as well as political um revolutions too.

[00:49:48]So they were they were studying the works of of Cicero. They were studying the works of Plato. They were studying the works of the the Greeks and the Romans to try to see if these ideas of Cicero's Commonwealth and Plato's Republic and Augustine City of God uh were they possible practically in the material organization of human society or were they to be relegated forever in the domain of metaphysical ideas, abstractions floating above the reality of human life that should forever exist in some form of empire? And uh and so they called it an experiment and they called it a more perfect union in the constitution, you know, in order to form a more perfect union because philosophically they recognized that society like Augustine and and Plato earlier recognized that society is always in change but not arbitrary change. Things are either getting better or they're getting worse. They're becoming more perfect or less perfect.

[00:50:44]More, you know, um and if you think you're stagnant, you're actually becoming worse. There's it's a it's a it's an illusion the idea of stasis.

[00:50:52]It's it's doesn't exist. You're you're either better or worse. And people who try to hold on to the ide the abstract idea of some ideal homeostasis, they're actually not doing it. They're draw they're drawing down resources.

[00:51:03]They're actually getting worse. Um so they they were trying to say, okay, in order to form a more perfect union, meaning that we recognize that it's not finished with those constructs of the Declaration of Independence and the and the Constitution. These are these are benchmarks around which future discussions, deliberations, debates can happen that will reduce the imperfections, things like the three-fifths clause for slaves, you know, which is part of the constitution.

[00:51:32]It it it acknowledges, yeah, everybody's got to vote, but the vote of the of the of a somebody born slave is only worth three-fifths of the vote of a of somebody born free, right? Um, that is not the way it was supposed to forever be. It was it was simply that that was better than what had than the alternatives which would have been no constitution because it was based upon compromises with people who didn't who would have rather died than have any like the same equal rights given to their slaves versus those who wanted no slavery. Um so you got to have dialogue, debate, compromise and with a with an an idea always of improving towards um meaning you have to have standards that are universal because improved according to what right general welfare according to whom? Um the good according to whose standards right is is always the idea.

[00:52:24]And that's we know that tyrants have have abused the words general welfare and common good to justify their own power over their slaves. So it's always it was it was understood that we need to have proper standards that are reasonable and moral and grounded and not usable by an empire to enslave. So that that would require an appreciation for the universality of of progress of the improvement of the the the the productive powers of of of society which is where people like Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin in his writings on uh um on the necessary uh increase of mankind in his reputations against the depopulation fanatics of the British Empire in 1751. He was outlining, look, if if you if you want to have a society that's fit to survive, you need to always focus on manifesting the mandate to be fruitful and to multiply as contained within the book of Genesis.

[00:53:29]And and that means quantitative growth has to always accompany qualitative growth, right? To be to multiply is quantitative, to be fruitful is qualitative. And to do both together, you have to always do both together. And that means you have to always improve the the the the amount of production but the quality of your production. And as you do that, you can have more people living at a better quality of life. And your your money system has to always be subservient to that truthful reality that will be as true in a hundred years or a thousand years in the future as it was when he was writing it in 1751. So that was what Alexander Hamilton and others advanced with their more uh practical application of this political system that later on Lincoln that McKinley had fought to apply of of protective tariffs the the American national system of political economy that Teddy Roosevelt and and later on Woodro Wilson overthrew by bringing in British free trade uh following the Jeffersonian model instead. So there's that. I don't know if that answered your question a little bit, but >> No, you did a great job. Um, you you mentioned monetary theory. I promised JP I would ask you this question. Do you do you know of the Douglas social credit system? And do you have any thoughts on it?

[00:54:46]>> Yeah. Yeah. I I like WAC Bennett a lot.

[00:54:50]I've done a lot of research on my merit my Canadian history uh book series. Um, and several chapters are devoted to WAC Bennett, the premier of BC from 53 to 7 or 52 to 72. Um, I'm a big fan. I I I I'm I admire what he did as the head of the Social Credit Party of British Columbia.

[00:55:14]But um I think that in my deeper investigations of the person of Major CH Douglas and what social credit was, I've been not so impressed to be honest. Um, I I would say that Bennett's successes came from his pragmatism and practical street smarts and common sense worldview.

[00:55:45]um that allowed for him to revolutionize British Columbia's lumber industry, hydroelectric uh uh power, his battles with uh BC power core, which was a terrible private agency that was constricting British Columbia's development and um and he had to go to battle with it. He nationalized it, right? Um he created the Bank of Brit the Bank of British Columbia which was he wanted it to be an instrument for emitting productive growth credit for the development of industry and and the long-term cycles of society. It it wasn't permitted to to act accordingly because it was infiltrated by HSBC after he was ousted um and turned into the entry point for the drug the drug economy in North America in 77 or 74.

[00:56:36]That's that's another story. But so he wasn't really a an a doctrinary person.

[00:56:42]He wasn't really following the doctrines of CH Douglas. He was just trying to like use that party as a as a means of attaining power outside of the the major political parties at the time and did it well. Um but I think yeah Douglas was so he it's a tough one. I've written actually a piece um an article that goes into and shares my my explorations of Douglas in my Rosacrruian Golem book volume two of the revenge of the mystery cults. He was um a follower of this guy named Oraj. Uh Alfred Oraj or was the editor the founder and editor of a of a magazine that he set up in 2000 uh 1912 called New Age Magazine and it published the writings of Alistister Crowley and he was the former a leading theosophist a member of the esoteric section of theosophists as well. Um he's the one who actually coined the term when when he gave he commissioned one of his his writers uh Major Douglas a British military figure with the commission of of coming up with a new political e economic system.

[00:57:59]He is the one who coined the term social credit and you know Douglas began publishing with Arage his his works first that was his first publisher in 1919.

[00:58:13]Um and uh and part of part of the idea was to I think take elements of of truth that embodied the optimism of this American system of political economy that was quite quite popular in those days. It hadn't been yet forgotten the Lincoln system of Hamilton that McKinley had fought to revive that leading people even in Canada like Wilfrid Laurier was an admirer of a guy who was ousted by the the Cecil roads roundtable network in 1911 that was decent a decent Lincoln admirer of Canada. Um but their ideas the ideas of the Hamiltonian system were were still quite present and had to be subverted in some way. So a number of theories were were promulgated of which this was one of them it seems to me um to and it was founded on certain concepts that involved universal basic income for everybody. Um a certain absence of planning. So in the Hamilton system planning is encouraged. Thinking ahead uh is encouraged. Uh a balance of top down and bottom up um aspects of the human system is encouraged.

[00:59:25]um in the social credit system, it's it's not so much that there's not really that balance. It's more of a a spin-off of of anarcho syndicicalism, if anything, of of a of a pseudo less a fair thing that involves a controlling universal basic income structure. Um and it was very marketable to the occult the occult fascist networks that were then rising to power in Germany. And he was CH Douglas is is an embarrassing fact for for people who really like his work. these days is that he was actually writing letters openly to Hitler that still survive to this day encouraging saying that like he admires Hitler and wants uh and believes that the Hitler structure the fascist structure of Nazi Germany is the most conducive to applying his system whatever that meant in in details I'm not too sure but uh those extended writings exist John Maynard Keynes was also writing to Hitler saying the same thing um and John Maynard Keynes was also playing a role with the British Fabian Society and high level occults agencies of the Rosacrruian you know operating through Cambridge at the time around the same period coming up with another system that was like a variation that took other elements of the American Hamiltonian system but then extracted all of the principles that made it viable in infused his own Trojan horses into it. Uh called it Keynesianism. It was marketed from the London school of economics and he was writing letters to Hitler as well. Kees to you know in it in his first German edition of the general theory in 1936 published the forward as a message to the Nazis saying hey your fascist system is the best one for my system of political economy. Um Roosevelt despised kings. he uh was not a Keynesian. Though we've been told, just like we've been told that Aristotle was a follower of Plato, that's a lie. So too have we been told that uh FDR was a follower of KES, that's also a lie. We've been told that British imperial philosophers that love slavery like John Lock inspired the American Declaration of Independence, which is why it's apparently an invalid fake hypocritical document run by slave owners. That's not true. That's a lie.

[01:01:40]It was made in spite of an in opposition to the the John Lock movement and his followers who did believe in things like the the the Anyway, the South Carolina or the Carolina Constitution was John Lock in way before the US Declaration and that was promoting slavery. Um, but we've been told these narratives by those who write history and want us to believe in a certain story of why things happen that that betrays the reality of the real ideas and sets of ideas that gave rise to all of these bursts of genuine progress of which FDR was I I think a more recent one of the more recent living expressions of that Lincoln, McKinley, Hamiltonian, Austinian, Ciceronian Platonic spirit in our more recent period before JFK maybe took that up with MLK a little bit later. But yeah, so it's important to always just hold these two different intentions and currents in mind which brings us back I guess to the present or the first discuss question that you you threw out there which is like Plato and Aristotle right there's these two opposing currents paradigms and cosmologies on how do we define what we are what God is what creation is and who the representatives of each movement is in history that moves things for better or for worse right who are the representatives that moves things in a Prometheian way that that opens up our potential for growth growth and improvement. And who are the ones who act on who create it and live their lives in a way that contracts that potential for growth and improvement by making us worse and less than we are, think that we less that we're something that we're not to better accommodate the control grid of a of a slaveocracy.

[01:03:21]I'm reminded of the your the first book of yours that I read um Mystery Babylon I think it was called >> and I read it I'm like what the what the hell is this because it's not for the uninitiated right so somebody who's never read like I think I've read five of your books now they're going to watch this episode they'll be like my god this guy's a thesaurus >> well you know it definitely um it the writing helps to compose and and put the the roots of thoughts deeper when you're when you're trying to commun communicate not just for putting things into the head but to try to help other people. So that intention and then writing helps I guess yeah uh solidify thoughts. But number two, yeah, I wouldn't encourage people in general to just jump right into something more advanced like the Revenge of the Mystery Cult trilogy. Unless you're already into that sort of research, go for it. But if you're not, uh I'd say work build yourself up to it. So in that sense I've kind of tried to capacity build in my understanding as I also compose books.

[01:04:22]So my first batch of books was just trying to make sense of Canada like a born in Canada. What the hell is Canada?

[01:04:28]So that came that that was a few years of work and I had some good good uh luckily some good mentors along the way who gave me some good nudges and you know slapped me when I was like going in a stupid direction and uh that manifested in my my untold history of Canada book series. So that's sort of a very small short little books just to sort of map out the terrain, the history of what this is.

[01:04:51]>> I found your two Americas books. That would be the best place to start. I I'm on volume three, I think, now.

[01:04:58]>> Seriously? Okay. Yeah. Cool. Well, that was the next batch. My next project was trying to piece then together Canada a little bit more now with a focus on America and now like what is the United States with this better appreciation of Canada as part of the battle between the British and the American system that I I had starting off with. But I didn't. So I first had to position Canada because I'm I'm I'm living here. And then once that was done, I was like, "Okay, now I feel like I'm I'm equipped enough to now apply this research to better appreciate what is this American deep state as a British phenomenon inside of America baked in since 1776, even before." And then that manifested in those those four books. And then with that in mind, when when that was there, I was like, "Okay, well, let's do a let's do a little exploration of like why some of the the truthful ideas that are so beautiful and good and scientifically valid fail." And so in that sense, I did a study on on science unshackled. It's kind of like volume five unofficially of the of the clash of the two Americas.

[01:05:56]Um, and that sort of looked at the the how how the biggest principal discoveries of God's creation happened scientifically from the ancient Pythagoreans and platonic networks all the way to our present day. And I didn't follow I didn't look at everything, but I looked at the most dramatic ones that I I I could see like the discovery of gravity. Was it Newton? the the alchemical black magician Cabalis Newton who we've been told is the guy who discovered gravity because fruit falls on his head or is that a fake story and there's a there's a better more reasonable story on on how the discovery was made and yet sure enough yes it Newton is a hoax and you can find that the real discoveries were actually made by people like Kepler um Linets Huygens Fair but especially Kepler um who was when you read Kepler you're like oh [ __ ] He's citing Cicero. He's citing Plato.

[01:06:47]He's citing Pythagoras. Like, oh, he's that's the that's the method he's using.

[01:06:52]He's telling you what it is in his mysterium cosmographicum, in his harmonies of the world, and in his work on the six-sided snowflake. He's citing all of these people, you know, he's citing St. Augustine. Um, so I'm like, okay, there's there's a lineage. There's a direct continuity of method of of cosmology, and it bears fruit. When applied, Kepler lived his life, and he made universal discoveries, and it changed everything. and linenets. You know, you could read liets and who's lin citing the guy who's discovering the infinite decimal calculus that Newton is later on taking credit for the rose of Newton. Um, oh well, he's he's citing Kepler. He's citing Plato. He's translating Plato. Oh, he's he's citing Augustine. He's an Augustinian. Oh, okay. Now it makes sense. So you you start seeing that there's this and you know I I have to thank the old man Larouche for bringing this this concept to my attention that there has been a discoverable continuity of a lineage of method that has been maintained um over the course of thousands of years that you could find really rooted clearly though it existed before Plato.

[01:07:57]He makes it as transparent as it could possibly be as a method in his in his collected uh dialogues that have survived and then you could find that method at the heart of every great discovery and the opposing method you will find at the subversion of every discovery. So then you look at oh we've been told Newton we've been told daycart's this great mind we've been told lock and hobbs are these great minds we've been told Newton uh Darwin is this great universal genius okay are they are they aris are they using an arisetilian or a platonic method and you'll find generally speaking they all either they're using an arisetilian or what's called a a neoplatonic pseudoplatonic move method which is not platonic at all in it in its method It's called Neil Platonist, but they're just magicians calling themselves Platonist by by extracting words, outward shells of what Plato says, destroying the method. No honest self-reflection, no inner dialogue that's honest, no evaluating of axioms that are reasonable. And they started infusing things like ghost spirits, you know, revelatory trans states of ecstatic altered states that are all part of their initiatory doctrines to become the thing Plato was actually warning about within his dialogues and within his republic, but they're trying to become the shadow masters. they're they're you know and so that you have that that tradition where Plato is is in his in his republic which again just to restate he's often attacked for being the promulgator of of systems of Tyrion and master slave relations because of some of the content in there but people ignore what he's actually giving you which is clues to break out of these intellectual traps that are being set within the republic on if you go if you misstep and you misdefine what a human is and you don't take the time to differentiate a human from a guard dog.

[01:09:52]If you don't take that time to do that, then you will build on a bad foundation and create a system of eugenics. You will create a system of of some some kind of uh allegory of the cave. That will be a control mechanism, right? to keep the the slaves always believing in the shadows and not permitted to actually get out of the cave and use their eyes and see the light as it is and truth as it is. So Plato even says for the true philosopher, he can't just leave the cave. He has to be willing to go back into the cave after learning how to adjust his his mind's eye to reality to go back into the cave to help other people even at risk of his own death.

[01:10:31]That's part of the republic of book seven. And the oligarchy who calls themselves like neoplatonics, they don't they ignore that. They they they're misanthropic. They hate humankind. They want to just be out of the cave to control the shadows. So if anything, you'll get arisatilians and neoplatonics of the western tradition who are subverting real discoveries. And so that book that I did, Science and Shackled, kind of as my transition to just do as much of a of a critical analysis of of both of those schools of thought as they impacted science.

[01:11:04]And then I did the the mystery cults trilogy to now take it to, okay, well, we've been brushing on the the secret societies. We've been brushing on these shadow networks. Let's let's get into the thick of it a little bit more now and look at how they manifested in the the the domains of mind, body, and soul.

[01:11:22]So the volume one on new mystery Babylon was more on the practical geopolitical aspect of mystery cults and how they they manifested in the creation of or transition of Rome into an empire and what is the cult of Mithra? What is the cult of Cibel? How do they manifest in the organization of things like the Jesuits, the Templars or later on the Fabian Society versus the Round Table Movement that had again mythraic and civilian ISIS foundational sort of recipe books guiding them, but it's that's a little bit more geopolitical.

[01:11:56]Uh volume two on Rosacruian Golem that has Newton and Darwin, Elon Musk and Nicola Tesla on the cover. That one is more the intellectual domain of the of the occult in science and the cult the occult subversion of science contrasted again with the real scientists. And then volume three on Edgar Poe's final mystery um deals a little bit more at the spiritual cultural battlefield of Edgar and Poe as my entry point into where does the battle over poetry culture the aesthetics come into play in opposition to these um the arts of the arts of evil that people like Sir Arthur Conand Doyle an enemy of Po after Po dies who despised Po um was doing with his uh creation of Sherlock Holmes and his participation in the Jack the Ripper murders, which right have some wild surprising connections that I that surprised me going through that that were tied to like the creation of the state of Israel and and and the creat a a Solomon temple cult revival movement under the g the order the order of the golden dawn and uh quatour coronady lodge of British Freemasonry that King Edward IIIth, the guy who was advising Teddy Roosevelt, was also overseeing with Charles Warren, who goes on to oversee, was the head of the Metropolitan Police and who is the head of the Quatro Cornady Lodge devoted to recreating Solomon's temple as an esqueological sort of like ritual zone of human sacrifice that they believe has to be recreated to revive the old Canaanite deities of Balin, Moolik, and [ __ ] So that's that's volume three.

[01:13:43]>> This is that was just a brief synopsis of all the your life's work right there.

[01:13:50]>> A bit of it. Yeah.

[01:13:53]>> Well, Matt, um, thanks for coming on and entertaining my questions. Can you let the audience know how they can follow you, follow your work, your great articles?

[01:14:01]>> Sure. Yeah. Uh, I put out a lot of stuff on on matthew erit.substack.com.

[01:14:08]my voice is is hanging on there, but only only by a thread. And um there's Canadian.org as well as risingtidefoundation.net.

[01:14:20]So there's that. I I'll say too, I don't know if this is going to go up soon, but um my wife Cynthia Chung and I will be going to Victoria um this week. So tomorrow we leave um and we're going to be there for about a week for family stuff and other things.

[01:14:36]But we folded in a little event that we're going to do in Victoria um that people are are welcome to come to. It's like tickets are like 15 bucks. Going through a lot of this history actually in more detail that I that I just spun off the cuff here. My my wife is going to be the the the main feature and a lot of the work on Cicero and Socrates and Plato will be addressed in her presentation. Um and so that's on the 16th of May uh in the afternoon. And if people want to know more about that, they can I guess best easy thing to do would be to write to contact me from canadian.org or rising tidefoundation.net.

[01:15:14]There's contact sections and you could send a message. I'll get it and give you the info on where did you get your ticket and uh and yeah, where where is it located?

[01:15:25]>> You should go visit Brian Packford while you're there.

[01:15:28]>> Is he in Victoria?

[01:15:29]>> Yeah. Yeah, that'd be cool.

[01:15:33]>> Do you have >> I know a guy who knows him. We can talk off offline.

[01:15:37]>> Oh, yeah. Yeah, right. Okay. Yeah, sure.

[01:15:39]Okay.

[01:15:39]>> All right, Matt. Thank you so much for coming on and I'm sorry we went over the hour. I know you're under the weather.

[01:15:45]>> No, this is important stuff. I'm I'm happy to do it. It's a pleasure.

[01:15:48]>> All right. Take care.

[01:15:49]>> Bye.