Philosophy, as traditionally understood, has ended because it never had a real object of analysis—its content is essentially language about abstract concepts, making it self-referential rather than grounded in reality. The linguistic turn revealed that philosophical problems are merely language twisted into knots, and that philosophy functions as a handmaiden to theology rather than an independent discipline. This shift has led to a focus on concrete objects and practical applications, moving away from abstract metaphysical speculation toward analyzing how language constructs meaning and how cultural narratives shape our understanding of reality.
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Nature's Leftist Conspiracy against Western Civilization @PlasticPills
Added:Well, just before we started recording, Pills told us that he's come to the realization of what he wants to do for the rest of his media creation career.
>> I mean, been doing been doing, but I did say that while we're not recording for good reason. You know, philosophy is in the title of the podcast. We got to keep up appearances. Although I've been I've been saying ideas don't matter for a while.
>> Yeah, you've been saying that [ __ ] forever.
>> Years >> at least. At least >> end of metaphysics.
>> Yes, it is. That metaphysics has ended.
But also that metaphysics never was about what it thought it was about. Like philosophy without an object is just like theology and that you can basically say whatever you want because no one's ever going to be able to check whether you know being is multiplicity or being is one. It's just it's sick. It's a sick waste of time.
>> Yeah.
>> Get back to the immediiacy of things.
>> I feel very vague on on what the difference between theory and philosophy is. I mean, I just they're they to me they just seem like one jumbo lump crab.
I don't know.
>> Well, it's the difference in object of analysis. I think the the different thing they're putting in front of themselves to figure out. But philosophy, I mean, you're right, has always supplemented itself with other stuff like poetry and psychology and God, the gods, whatever. But the object of philosophy proper is basically just other philosophy and the other abstract objects that are in other philosophies.
>> Do you just mean metaphysics?
Yeah, I guess like the core of philosophy when there's another word in front of philosophy like political dash philosophy in so far as it's philosophy rather than political science. It's about metaphysics.
>> Okay. But I've been thinking about this and and don't hold me to this because I haven't I haven't written it out philosophically, but the my thought is that it's about the difference between theory and philosophy is what the object of them are. And the content of philosophy is almost like the the the exclusive content of philosophy if you take away its its digressions and other interests, it's just other philosophy, right? So what is other philosophy? Well, that's philosophy sounding language which are abstracted objects and then arguments about those abstracted objects as an explanation that in the very last instance is back is backwards mapped onto experience if at all like Hurl Hers a great example of this saying I'm going to start with the real objects and then instantly he's in like La La Land. the but the content of theory is not abstract or it's ob its object I should say its object is not abstract because the objects of theory are like psychology or political economy or commercials or the reflecting pool but yeah my conclusion I think this is right philosophy is just about nothing except other philosophy language except when it did self-help it kind of gave up on self-help in the middle ages is but Vickenstein wasn't trying to be provocative by saying that the philosophy the problems of philosophy are just language twisted up in knots. That's literally what it is.
>> Now he did he did also say there are he did say there are ethical problems, political problems, moral problems, but there are no uh genuinely philosophical problems. Well, yeah, the problems don't go away because even if you say, okay, philosophy is dead, thinking is dead, ideas are not don't matter. You're still left with all the problems you have before. And it's like what we've been talking about end of metaphysics or NZA like transvaluation of all values and the emerg some some new regime. I think you have H highaidiger like I read H highaidiger and bodiard backtoback and I'm like H highaidiger's saying you know ideas are just like the outward appearance of things and that's why Plato and everyone else failed to think the essence of things ever since and so he's like where's the lost immediacy of the thing or Bjiard goes the total other way it's like no we're we're in hyper reality and it's an illusion through and through if you try reach behind the thing to grasp its essence. Your hand just passes right through it. There's not still it depends which way you go after it's dead. Yeah, that's uh realism versus anti-realism basically. But it's still up to debate whether the stuff that philosophy is about is real or ever was. And it depends on why you want to talk about reality. But yeah, Bodiard said it was never real. Haidiger said it was real, but no one ever thought to think about it. And I think the moment like the the linguistic turn factors in here because philosophy it's language right and then you realize okay if the content of philosophy is not some outside world but itself is signification and significance as soon as you take it to be that it's it's relevant. As soon as you take it to be cosmic abstraction then it no longer has any object and it's just self self-reference like being the question of being if that's about the significance of being all for that but being is not what makes the flowers bloom you know so the the linguistic turn revealed to philosophy that what it was in fact all along just creative writing. Some philosophers accept that and they get more creative and some double down on realism to make theirel make themselves feel better.
>> Science has always been about it too, isn't it? Science is always about just detailed articulation of reality in whatever books hallucinations of details beyond anything that we can actually ever see or experience.
It is. I mean, it is. Although the difference being in science, sometimes the object punches back and says, "Oh, you're you're wrong." In philosophy, which is theology, it's onto theology, some would say. But into theology, the object never says, "Oh, hey, you got you got me wrong." God has never in history corrected a theologian.
And in so far as philosophy is the handmaidaden of theology. You know, the medievals are correct on that. It needs a new It needs a new object.
And philosophy historically is a bunch of different things. It's got some self-help mixed in there. It's got some mysticism. It's got some science, but it's not the only game in town anymore.
We have these other games that are better at it that its own game. So philosophy can stick around as a handmaiden, but it needs to find a new a new a new uh master. So that's why I'm saying theory, you know, theory is about uh political economy and psychoanalysis and structuralist linguistics. It's got a bunch of things that it can do. If you want to get a little abstract with it, you can draw on philosophy, but the medievals were right that philosophy is a handmaiden. Well, to be a pure philosopher, you basically just, we've said it before, you have to go do an analytic philosophy program and study language.
>> It's interesting. I'm trying to figure out if if a lot of the work that I do, like is it philosophy by your definition or is it something else? cuz I do feel like a lot of the things I write about is kind of like practical political problems or like like speculative solutions for making something uh like democracy better, but obviously there's a whole bunch of baggage in terms of what we mean by those terms.
Uh yeah, I don't I don't know like like what is what is like a like a paper that argues for some institutional design to solve some particular problem like let's say corruption or like capture by politicians and I have some normative argument for why you know I think the lottery thing we've we've talked about on this podcast like selection by lottery is better. Is that doing like philosophy or is that something it's not theory right? It's it's something else.
I think >> that seems like part of part of the uh kind of not not in a negative sense but it's part of the the mythmaking >> like the myth political science is the perfect tool of of American like mythmaking in the sense that pills was talking about it in the latest video. It participates in that. Obviously the video was looking at the reflecting pool and not political science but it's the same sort of thing. You're you're you're creating this fiction. Not that it's a bad thing. Not in a negative sense. It's just it's it's part of the illusion.
It's part of the I mean, what what separates what a political scientist in a university is doing from like a narrative someone's developing in like a private think tank somewhere else in the country.
Haven't you, Victor, you've described political theory as just a a game, a puzzle, a mental puzzle, haven't you?
>> Yeah, that's that's true. That's true.
It is. Some of Sometimes it touches political science like in terms of it draws on like empirical studies, but yeah, it's it's still theory, political theory.
>> I think it is though. It's not just philosophy but philosophical in the sense that its content is about moving abstract objects around because the content of an abstract object is its signification. So that's the philosophy part coming to help out whatever policy recommendation you end up with. But the the method of stroking your chin and asking hm what does democracy mean really? That's philosophy being about itself, being about signification, being about what did other philosophers say democracy was?
>> Maybe downstream policy influence.
>> I would say I would actually say that it's it's those two things coming together because some of the stuff is very like concrete policy oriented, but it's still drawing on these like abstract concepts.
>> Like it is it is philosophical cybernetics. It's like steering ideas as if they were real and efficacious, which which is fine.
>> I mean, look, if it were up to me, I would have spent more time working on this thought before airing it publicly, but you forced me into it. But it is something like there is a method. The method is >> argumentation via logic. It also has objects. the objects are abstract, which is not to say not meaningful, just that their meaning has to come from somewhere or did originally come from some metaphor. So for me, I'm going to say meaning is structured like a language.
And that's what philosophers are doing sometimes, in fact, often without realizing that they're doing signification in action, which is generating abstract objects, playing with the definition according to argument, according to logic. Some of which some of those objects then come from everyday language. Most of them perhaps come from the history of philosophy. This record this data database of of signification. But philosophy in the end is nowhere near as important as someone like Husurl for example thought it was. He thought we could fix all the problems of the European sciences if we remembered philosophy. But no, we don't need to do that. outward appearances or inward essences.
>> Well, then it makes me think about Vickenstein's thing where he said there are moral problems, there are political like what does he mean by that? Like that like cuz cuz in a way it seems to me to say that there are for example moral pro or ethical problems and there are political problems to articulate what those are. It seems unavoidable that you're going to push up against abstractions. Isn't that a kind of like isn't that a kind of pragmatism or realism though? Cuz like without Vickenstein, we wouldn't have had that whole turn towards like speech acts like using language as behaviors, how to do things with words and like I don't know cognitive linguistic like cognitive linguistics looking at like what is happening in your mind when we're using language and how it's all like extend and even like going into extended mind theory like it becomes embodied and substantial not abstract and just like pure idea oriented. I don't know. I meant to say it's like a kind of pragmatism. I guess >> pragmatism is good.
>> Anyway, >> I'm making a modest proposal here that instead of trying to rearrange the clouds in the sky, we begin with concrete objects and that's I think what there it's always been about because the clouds in the sky, they've been arranged in every possible way. doesn't seem to change much outside of the clouds and how they look. But uh yeah.
>> Yeah. No, that makes sense. That's very similar to >> in political theory and democratic theory. there's been this turn to what they call realism but like in a kind of new sense to what new and old sense and they and the realists will always uh not condemn but they'll be critical of ideal theory which is like RS starts with principles of justice and then tries to apply them to reality right and then realism starts with the way institutions and human beings actually function as observed and then builds based up from there >> which is interesting because it makes me think that like that sounded to me exactly like when modern monetary theorists are explaining what they're talking about. They say that exact same thing. We're starting with the way that money actually functions from like basically like an accounting perspective and then building out from there. We're not starting from the mainstream economic principles and then like sort of deducing how things do work and if they don't work that way then something's going wrong.
They like no we're starting with the way that money actually functions and circulates and where it comes from and where it goes and then like sort of building outwards from bottom up.
>> Yeah.
>> To the things themselves said and then did exactly >> back to the things themselves.
>> Yeah. Uh then Haidiger tried to really do it.
>> Yeah, that's the other thing. Then then they were like, "Okay, philosophy is about language, so let's go study poetry." And then they study the high poets and the high literature and the high high French, high German. I'm into low culture. Okay, I want I want low culture. I want to I want to look at commercials >> and reflecting pools, >> pop culture, >> Trump. Let's talk about that.
>> Well, we didn't talk about the news. Are we going to do a news update? It's been a while. Let's do a news update just cuz we have to cuz we can't go outside. We can't breathe.
>> Well, I could breathe today luckily, but >> it smells like a campfire.
>> The Americans are really mad at us right now. They're really upset with us.
>> The sky was red orange.
>> It looks like Mad Max.
>> It was yellow. Yeah, >> it literally looked like it literally looked like a Denny Velnuv movie. Like it looked like like a like Dune >> like someone put a lens on the camera.
What's the Sakar Sakario?
>> Sakario, but or or or um uh what's it called? Because Denny Vilnov also did the the sequel to um what's that sci-fi?
>> Uh Bladeunner.
>> Blade. Yeah, Bladeunner. Like I feel like it had Yeah, the Bladeunner 20 2049 or whatever.
>> The orange. Yeah, the orangey worlds.
>> The air quality warning. I don't I didn't know this could happen, but there's an air quality scale that's 1 to 10 >> and it just said 10 plus and it was like dark red, like maroon. So, I don't even know what 10 plus is. It's worse the worst.
>> I actually looked it up because I like uh I'm I'm kind of obsessed with biking in the summer. I try to do it every day.
And I was asking chat GPT, okay, with where the two days ago I was like, with where the air quality is right now in Toronto, like what's the could you do a comparative harm of like me going out for a 90-minute bike ride and smoking cigarettes? Like how many like what's the >> what's the equivalent? And it was like, well, when you're biking and you're pushing yourself, you might be breathing in like >> six to six to nine times more air than you normally would. And like with this level of particle concentration, obviously it was like it's hard to compare cuz cigarettes has all have all these extra carcinogens, but essentially it was basically like in that time it would be like smoking like 10 cigarettes.
>> Whoa. No, this is natural carcinogens cuz it's a forest on fire. So it's like smoking a forest, which is good for you.
>> Yeah. You just stand outside and and breathe it in if you're smoking.
>> Smoking smoking the boreal forest. And uh >> it helps me it helped me quit smoking.
>> Look look look. Here it is. You can if you enter concretely you can enter the signification structure starting from anywhere. So it is indeed healthier to smoke a forest. Now the same strategy is used by American spirit cigarettes because they put an Indian on the cover on the on the pack because Indians are signified on the side of nature. So it's more natural to smoke American spirit cigarettes than you know any technological additives put in there.
And it's interesting the discourse around it on Twitter at least with angry Americans being like, "Oh, see, Trump was right. Like, we need to cut Canada off and Canada needs to >> build a wall in the air. Build a wall.
Stop the air from coming down.
>> Build build an air dome to protect them."
Yeah.
>> What would that do if they like stopped the Arctic currents from going down?
They just fry probably.
>> We need to Yeah. Need to redirect the jetream.
>> Yeah, exactly. There's some Were they playing soccer? There's some soccer happening.
Some war.
>> Well, it's the finals this weekend.
We'll see. Is Spain or Argentina going to win?
>> Who knows?
>> This will have happened yesterday whenever this >> So, someone already someone already won.
Congrats to >> Yeah. Just cut out which one it isn't.
Congratulations, Spain.
>> What a what a prediction. I hope you put a Keli bet down on that.
>> Yeah, cut out the one that doesn't What else? Uh, Taylor Swift got married.
How's that for everybody?
>> Oh, yeah. Oh, wow.
>> To the to the football guy. Uh, >> to a football guy in um in New York, but the basketball stadium, Madison Square Garden.
>> And Justin Trudeau is dating that other pop star, right? And they make really cringe Instagram videos together, Katy Perry.
>> And they drink out of red beer.
>> Don't they seem perfect for each other?
>> Cool life.
>> I feel like they're both like exactly the same type of cringe like white person. I don't know. They just feel >> like we had to see them 20 years ago for a reason. Now we just have to see them all the time for no reason. So everybody hates them.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
>> I shouldn't say hate. It's just they're really corny.
>> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Corny is the exact right word. I think I >> mean on a human level I feel good for the guy. I mean he was like probably the most hated person in the world for a long time. Went through a divorce. Like everyone just hated this guy. And now he's like he's bouncing back and having a [ __ ] blast.
>> I'll bet he's I'll bet I'll bet he's way happier now than he was when he was prime minister.
>> Oh, I bet he looks like he's having the time of his life. Except Except for those insane Australian right-wing news people that follow him around and and like lib bait him all day. But otherwise, >> or like or the people from the Ezra or Yeah, Ezra Leavant, the the rebel media.
They always that guy always follows him around.
>> Yeah. And they lib bait him and try to like be like, "Do you care that you murdered people?"
>> Yeah, exactly.
>> See what he's he doesn't care.
Disgusting.
>> Yeah, the Trudeau body count. I know he did choose this life and now he's continuing to choose this life, but he does seem like the kind of guy, you know, you feel bad cuz he he might cry himself to sleep because of this continue this extended harassment campaign.
>> Yeah. But yeah, there's so I mean to but on the air quality though, Detroit apparently has been even worse than Toronto was. Uh like yesterday, I'm not sure what it's like today, but it was like absurdly like there's another measure of the air quality which is like in the like I don't know I think Toronto at its worst yesterday was like at 300 or something and in in Detroit it was like 550. It was like crazy crazy thick and all those Michiganers were furious with Canada like it's our fault.
>> Yeah. recreational recreational forest fire setting is a thing up here in case you didn't know.
>> The boreal forest I actually learned I educated myself on the boreal forest and how uh it's just so remote. Uh and it was also interesting how there's dueling narratives on on Twitter. God, I almost said X. That's shameful. Why would I ever call I refuse to call it X? you know, all the all the lib all the libs and lefties are like climate change like see this is what happens when you don't which I think is more pl certainly more plausible than the narrative that the where the where where the right is well actually maybe both narratives have a grain of truth to them to be honest. So yeah, the the the left is all about see this is what you get for you know not participating in climate policies America like like to take a breath of what it feels like to not care about climate change breathe in that like lack of climate change awareness and then >> your fossil fuel wealth >> and then all the Republicans are just see what happens when you have a socialist country that doesn't know how to manage their like infrastructure like they don't know how to buy like and then there's also a weird narrative within Canada on the right where like if only Canada hadn't given like foreign aid to Palestine, they could have used that money to to buy more.
>> Yeah. No, to buy more like more planes.
>> No, it's obviously the fault of the Conservative Ontario government for cutting all that funding to to rain dance education.
>> And then I looked up like the kind of what experts in boreal forest fires had to say. And it's I mean it's just a very difficult problem to solve. Like very briefly I learned that in many cases they're in extremely remote areas like far away from population centers and it's usually the result of lightning strikes in somewhat dry conditions.
Uh sometimes the the fire actually starts very like quietly underground in like this moss. You'll have this like underground network of like burning stuff and then by the time the fire is like blazing even like you can't get to it, right?
Cuz it's so remote. And then even the airplanes that are like dropping masses of water on it, sometimes it's so hot that it's essentially like spitting on a campfire. Like it it evaporates before it even reaches the like the fire. So it's like it's it's just you can't really do anything about it. Like it's you can try, but it's it's just futile.
>> I don't know about other places, too, but Ontario has been progressively cutting its forest firefighting budget for years, >> which under is Yeah. which this is undeniably the wrong time to be doing that should be increasing.
>> Although it does make firefighting >> although it does make perfect sense given the mythic structure that they are working with given that a a natural disaster i.e. nature as cause is uh aligned with the socialist government of Canada. The the radical leftwing and nature are both conspiring together because both are fundamentally opposed to the goals of civilization and America.
>> Yeah, exactly.
>> Yeah, we should we should use the water from the from the reflecting pool.
>> Yes. The real news the real news of the month is the reflecting pool.
>> Yeah. Yeah. which I didn't know about any of this. So, there's been he $14 million to uh to change the pool's color blue. Is that all?
>> So, pills, give us give us a little give us a little rundown since your latest video was about this. And I will say that I saw news headlines about the reflecting pool and Trump, and it was one of those times when I was like, Trump and Reflecting Pool and I was like, I don't care. Like, I'm not going to read about this. So, I didn't actually ever I didn't actually re ever read about it. So, I learned the details from your video and uh it made me regret not reading about it because it is actually very funny. Uh so so tell us about it.
>> It's beautiful. It's a beautiful event.
Well, I I want to I think probably most of our audience has seen it. though the the the low down >> watch the video.
>> The lowdown is that OB or Obama let Washington DC rot and all the monuments were destroyed under Obama because he's a >> Muslim socialist.
>> Exactly. Muslims and socialists famous for neglecting to take care of monuments and architecture.
>> So what always happens?
>> Yeah. So then, um, Trump hires this cartoonish Florida used car car dealership looking guy. I mean, look it up if you haven't seen it. He's a disgusting. He's got a giant cigar in his mouth. He's like probably late 70s, so his hair is white, but he just dyed it like jet black and it's kind of like thinning and sitting on his head villainously. Uh he's got like a 30-year-old woman with uh plastic surgery face under his arm and he's in a maroon like a dusty looking maroon suit.
So just like classic villain monstrm infronte like disgusting looking dude cartoonish and he pays him he pays him I guess there's a liner and then paint.
So, I guess he pays him, I don't know, $18 million or something to put liner down and then paint the liner this color that's supposed to be very special, American flag blue. But American flag blue, uh, it's it's a lot darker than the gray that it used to be. So, the pool gets very hot because of whatever light defraction.
>> Yeah. Makes the pool warmer.
>> Yeah. Warms it up. So, it got warm and then there's the worst algae bloom in six years or something like that. Uh, I think that pool often has problems with algae. But again, everything Trump says about this is just completely insane. It has nothing to do with reality. Like he said Obama spent $300 million fixing it.
That didn't happen.
>> He said this was going to last for 50 years without without break or without anyone needing to touch it. It lasted five days >> before leftist Antifa vandals snuck in during the night at 3:00 a.m. and poured algae into the pool and put a and and slit a huge gash in it with a box cutter. What the [ __ ] is that part about? There's different stories. Trump thinks that someone put fertilizer into the water which caused algae. Q Anon thinks that Antifa super soldiers put put Georgia algae into the water.
>> Yeah, Georgia algae.
>> Trump also thinks that there was a 200 foot gash cut that was then 300 then 350 foot gash. It changes each time or gets bigger each time. But this is new reporting since new reporting from the Washington Post. Uh they got four pool expert guys to look at they they they documented where all the p or the stuff is peeling the liner whatever it is uh where it's peeling and then pictures of how it's laid down. So they got four experts because it we're we're in a technocracy of course techn technocracy Washington Post and they said this is very clearly an installation problem like this is it happened the cuts are not gashes in the liner they're gashes or the the seams are what's like lifting up cuz water got under it cuz it wasn't installed properly. So all of this stuff there's there's arrests, there's lockdowns like there there's there's fence put up, there's national guard deployed just like patrolling patrolling the pool looking for Antifa vandals who are trying to uh cut holes in in the pool. So of course none of this none of this actually happened.
It's his own fault and his own cartoonish villain who are responsible for this. Then all the jokes come, you know, he's finally created a swamp that he can drain. But the point is, of course, none of the meaning that Trump needs to be in reality is there. So, he needs to generate the the narrative or he needs to generate the myth about why this pool has suddenly turned green. And the way he does it, being the semiotic genius that he is, the way that he is is by pulling on a a deep mythic structure, one that which we're all, I argue, eminently familiar unconsciously.
>> But facts don't matter in this situation, is it? It's the or or it's the it's the social fact of it that counts, not the not the truth behind the narrative.
>> Also, if you've watched the video, there's some some other breaking news today. Taco Bell lettuce has been recalled since it was infected with cylo cycllosporasis today.
>> Apparently, u it's been giving >> parasites and explosive diarrhea diarrhea going around >> that lasts for a month. It's like a month >> from the lettuce.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Drink lots of water.
>> The Antifa terrorist probably did this one, too. They're targeting the symbols of civilization like Taco Bell.
>> Yeah.
Yeah. I know this this uh this narrative structure that you point out I think is is very is very interesting and I'm curious so some of the main features I guess that you identified one of them is uh sort of like the opposition between order and nature right or or that was one of them right order versus nature >> yeah it's I think it's ci civilization or culture versus nature is the big recursive split >> right and then that's why like Antifa uh is is like a source for and then algae obviously itself is like nature running wild and rampant. And then, you know, the the the laying down the law, uh, you know, we're going to make things better is is the is the like culture, the true civilization.
And then there's like a purity versus contamination, uh, dichotomy, which is related, right?
Like like contaminated by by the wilds of nature. I suppose >> any of them can occupy the space of like the organizing binary under which all the other distinctions are sort of placed or aligned. But yeah, civilization and nature usually. Yeah.
Purity on civilization side and contamination and chaos on the side of nature and male and female.
>> Yeah. Exactly. I was going to say very amusingly, you know, kind of the masculine and feminine or male versus female roles, right? The which which pills identified with uh the very odd. I had not seen this press conference. Very strange of Trump saying that his the reflecting pool is taller than a skyscraper. Like it made no sense. It was so weird. Like even for him that was that seemed very bizarre. And like why like what was the relevance? Was there a broader context to that or was it just him in the context of making making it better? He's like, "We're going to make the reflecting pool better, but by the way, if you like if you were to stand it vertically, >> just the big dick energy."
>> Yeah. Like like it would be taller than a bunch of skyscrapers, although not also in the not even the tallest at all.
Like >> this this horizontal hole in the ground is taller than a concrete building. Like what?
>> I love that part.
>> Actually, it's negative space. It's taller than it's if it's it's more if a building wasn't there, it's smaller than that.
>> Yeah.
>> I think he's trying to devagenoid it because if it's a vaginal project, it's not worth working on. But it's a wet hole in the ground. So if you if you turn it up sideways and compare it to skyscrapers, then he's working on something big rather than something lacking.
>> Yeah. Yeah. There is some kind of >> But then it gets infected. It's an infected vulva. Oh. Oh, it's got a yeast infection. Algae infection. Of course.
Of course. Men have always resented women for having the productive power of childbearing.
So, they need to compare. Well, look, I can build this building. Look how tall my buildings are. [ __ ] you, childbearer.
I've never found that narrative that convincing. I've never felt like there's there's like an unconscious resentment for their uh childbearing. Well, controlling women's bodies and their sexuality has definitely been a proxy way of controlling reproduction.
>> It's also the uh like the the void, the absence that you can't see past the gates or past the surface of the sea.
So, you got to go in again because you know everything's driving you to go in again, but you don't want to get caught up in there because it might decide to swallow you again. It's where you came from, so it might change its mind.
>> I I agree with all of that. It's just the the thing that there's a latent resentment. That's the thing that I I don't know. I've never I've heard that in some in feminist literature and stuff like I've never really found that.
>> But by proxy, you can if you can control women's bodies, you can have the power of child birth without actually having the damage done.
>> Well, exactly.
>> Exactly.
>> Get the best of both worlds.
>> You can make more people. There was a time very likely when there was a resentment when there was no mechanism to be certain about like uh fatherhood or what's the word I'm looking for? Uh p >> paternity.
>> Paternity. Yeah. There was no mechanism to to know paternity for certain. So there was probably a resentment and suspicion there where it's like well I don't know for sure if it's mine because who knows what you were doing behind my back. Right. Well, in in structuralism, what we're talking about, one of the primary I mean, when Levy Strauss gets together all those edip versions of the of uh the Edipus story, he says one of one of the primary organizing binaries besides like culture and nature is um what is it? Overdetermination of blood relations, underdetermination of blood relations. But then another one is is being the the tension of being born from two versus being born from one.
So having two parents, but like say the Prometheian story, man was like shaped from clay of the earth and produced from like one a single father parent kind of situation. And a lot you see this in a lot of Greek myths too, right? Like Zeus gives birth to Athena from his thigh.
Prometheian shapes man from clay that that autotoxinous birth situation.
>> We emerge from the dark void the earth the w bosom of the earth. And I just pointed it out because I think that's per I mean comparing a hole in the a wet hole in the ground to man-made buildings quote unquote man-made buildings uh is definitely like a weird clash of the two sides of that opposition maybe unconsciously. And we've covered this uh recently like in the last couple months.
The primitives in the jungle getting Starlink. That was a whole explosion over don't corrupt these people. Don't corrupt these virginal >> properly patriarchal people with gender roles. That was Michael Null's reading of it.
>> And also with uh Slaughter, we read Slaughter, the human zoo. The zoo, the zoo is a perfect example of this space that that negotiates nature versus culture. Because if we make zoos too too natural, like the the enclosures are too big so that the animals can have privacy and we give the animals all these human rights to to have privacy and run free, then there's no point in a zoo because if you're a spectator and you go to the zoo, you can't see any animals. You just see >> you see the trees, >> right? It's the liinal the liinal space.
>> This wasn't >> threshold >> the the whole diagram the whole web or net of signs. I didn't I didn't plan I didn't see it at the start. It just kind of as I read about the the story it kept kind of adding to it and adding to it and then you see the masculine side as civilization and the feminine side as as nature and nature's getting out of control. One's linear, one's cyclical, one's clean, one's dirty. And yeah, I was trying to figure out um where this goes back to. I thought of Rouso. I don't know how far it goes back. It's probably it's probably ancient, but you see it in like Rouso and the moderns.
Half of them say, you know, nature's bad and evil and dangerous and that's why we need states. And then the other half go, well, states are bad and we need to go back to the perfect equality and harmony that we used to have in the state of nature. So >> the the fallus is in there importantly too, right? Like not the literal penis but the symbolic the the symbolic uh fallus cuz when when well what I was going to say is like with all these organizing binaries structuralism seems to sort of found like uh the the algorithm of when you look at any text the the master algorithm that the text is produced accord like what organizes the text. Yeah. these these structural binaries and oppositions.
But I was going to say when Dereda reads Rouso, he sees that he makes that connection between that the act of uh was it writing his biography and writing the biography and masturbation.
Russo that yeah that's like the central sort of organizing point. Russo is like disavowing masturbation by writing a biography. I forget how the argument sort of goes.
>> Symbolic masturbation.
>> The symbolic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's symbolic masturbation. He's >> symbolic raising of the self.
>> Derided always does that thing where he find he finds like a point where something is disavowed, but then finds it's actually confirmed by other parts of the text and becomes this like organizing point that you can pull on and everything else kind of comes apart with it. And and he finds that in Russo's confessions, I think it was.
Yeah, he finds that in Brusso's and it and it has to do again with with the fallus.
>> We were also talking a little bit before we started recording about uh the last episode that we recorded where we had where we welcome Diego back. Um and the debate was about the role of imperialism. How do we define imperialism? How on what grounds are we going to be critical of Western imperialism? And in what sense is there also potentially a a global south or eastern imperialism? Is Russia acting imperialistic? And I would say that Diego was somewhat apologetic or sympathetic to kind of counterwestern forces visav China and Russia. But one of the things that I felt came through that I didn't say at the time, but kind of in retrospect because it felt like, and you know, Diego, if you're listening, you can correct me if if if I'm wrong here, but uh it it seemed to me that in so far as the kind of Diego position that wants to be critical of the West, which I share, by the way, many of the criticisms of the West, you know, be to be critical means you you are assuming that the thing that you're being critical of has agency.
Because if a thing doesn't have agency, then on what grounds can you be critical, right? Because it couldn't have. So you're critical of the way the West acts because so the West has agency. But then whenever I would kind of challenge and say, well, what about what Russia is doing, you know, invading Ukraine, for example? And he's like, well, they had to, right? They had to because that's protecting their sovereignty. There's a kind of autopoasis and materialist dialectic going on where they have to protect their sovereignty. So, I was sort of talking about my feeling about that conversation before we recorded and and Pills pointed out, well, that there's another binary, right? There's another binary where it's like the West is civilization. It has agency and the the rest of the world, >> the rest >> the West the rest doesn't have agency.
It's just nature, right? It just it is functioning according to the forces, the material forces that are happening. And therefore, I guess the moral upshot is they can be excused because they're just acting according to nature. The west is the only thing that has agency. So they can be um you know condemned.
>> The west becomes like kind of the subject of history and then the world becomes the sort of object of the if you want to put it in like the grimace semiodic actantial model. Yeah. The west becomes uh the subject actant and it has the agency and the the object is is delivered operated on it's the object of the action. It doesn't have any agency itself which is usually the damsel in distress or something like that.
>> Yeah. the sphere the sphere of nature I mean they both have laws right but one is like a voluntary law or you follow it conventionally in the in the sphere of civilization you don't act automatically you act in accordance with morality or virtue and that's your choice but the sphere of nature where trees grow and animals kill each other they're automatic so they're bound >> or or the world where Russia invades Ukraine automatic has to do it Russia Russia had to because their sphere was in danger.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
>> You know, it it really is interesting that of the last 100,000 invasions that that has happened in the history of humanity, 999,999 all said that they just had no choice that they they had to do it. It was it was forced on them. So, you know, >> the odds are it was forced on Russia that they had to invade Ukraine. Now, I don't think this is Diego's position, but it is the very common anti-imperialist position that everything that has happened in history or in the let's be more generous.
Everything that has happened in the last 50 years was completely at the design of a tyrannical United States of America imposing its will upon the rest of the world. to some degree, you know, obviously there's degrees of truth, but the narrative is a little bit too neat when it says all the moral culpability is on one party, one party is active, one party is passive, one p one party has will, the other has none at all.
Whereas, of course, if you look at things um a little more analytically, there's there's some there's some distribution happening. Yeah, >> there's some sense in which a lot of things are are too big for a single agent to control. Now, since Diego is not here, I I think the generous read of his position though is not the typical anti-imperialist saying the United States is bad and everyone else is shades of gray. I think what he's saying is that in terms of autopoesis, autopoesis is a very deterministic uh term to apply to nation states because it treats them as you know evolving organisms that don't really make active decisions. Autopoese is largely a passive or automatic process.
But I'm going to say I think that Diego thinks that what the United States does is automatic as well. And the reason why he makes the argument that he does is because you can't reason moralistically with a machine. You can't you can't appeal to a machine's good nature. So then he swings the other way on that and says, well, you can't you can't argue rationally with a machine. So the only thing to be done is to oppose the machine with another machine.
>> You know what I think?
>> I don't think he usually resorts to moralistic arguments against uh United American imperial domination.
>> Yeah. I don't I don't want to strongly claim that that Diego would agree with my framing. I'm sure he would he would disagree with it. It's just through the process of the conversation, this implication from my perspective kind of emerged and then I'm sure he would have some sort of response to, you know, to be charitable. I you know I'm not I'm not trying to say that he would be like yeah that's right. I think I think it's actually a a consequence that I feel like follows from some of the arguments being made but I'm sure he has a response to that.
>> Yeah. Regardless of whether he thinks that and frames it as active passive or civilization nature. There are definitely anti-imperialists inside the empire that do function, their narrative functions by those terms that the empire is going out and exploiting and killing these powerless people who are somehow living in peace and harmony until we came with our agency and messed up their harmonious relationship. But Diego, I don't want to be too easy on him. He did say Russia had to do it. And if that's true, well then Israel had to do it too, you know. And I think Diego might come out somewhere actually on that side that says, "Yeah, everyone is automatic.
Everyone had to do it." And that's why he as a representative of the third world must make friends of his enemies enemies and so on.
>> Yeah. No, but that's exactly what I pointed out. I I think I said, "Well, like if if that's your account, then then the West is also part of it." And and they they're just America just had to, you know, they they have to expand NATO. They're just, you know, they have to. It's the same it's the same thing, I think, that follows. Yeah.
But this is why in the forest fires we have to blame the left wing for causing the forest fires because we can't blame the forest. The forest in the forest things happen automatically.
>> Well, you know, imperialism and war or forest fires and poor air quality like the traumatic element to that seems pretty natural to to to use that.
>> Do go on, sir. That sounds fascinating.
I mean we like you know war is and forest fires and climate change like they are traumatic in themselves. I don't know. I'm not going to articulate this very well. I I was going to point out that the hilarious thing about the reflecting pool debacle is is the traumatic element of the whole thing is completely manufactured. like it didn't at all need to [ __ ] happen and there's absolutely no stakes involved except Trump's ego, but it's there's like full damage control and Fox News spin being put and like the National Guard was brought in.
Like they're treating it like a real forest fire and it's completely hyperreal manufactured event that never really happened. spent $14 million to change it blue and it went green and so Trump was symbolically castrated and now there's Antifa plots involved and the National Guard and there's people being arrested and threatened to go to jail for 10 years over this whole thing completely manufactured element of trauma which isn't but the traumatic is is important in all this like structuralism and binary too cuz that that encounter with the other with nature is is also like a traumatic IC encounter, right? Like I don't know what was Conrad thinking when he wrote Heart of Darkness or something like that, you know, the the traumatic encounter with the other and going natural and all that sort of stuff, but it's just funny with the reflecting pool. Oh my god.
>> Just an obligatory qualification there that hyperreal doesn't mean fake. No.
But uh I mean it's interesting you put it in that the term with the trauma because the trauma is always a fiction right or the causa the cause of the trauma always has a fictive element. It becomes a necessary part in the story but it's not it doesn't it's not clear why that's such a big deal like oh your mom loves your dad too now you're traumatically separated from her for the rest of time. But it's like Trump's Trump's fictional trauma is too fictional. Like it's too obviously fictional that no one should be taking this seriously. And yet we're all forced to. We're all compelled to participate in a very obviously fake trauma.
So all these like hangers on who want a piece of the pie, they have to c they have to gather around this like psychotic a deluded insane person and confirm to him and to the rest of the world via you know Fox News that these delusions are part of reality now and that they become part of reality.
>> Yes.
Uh I was just going to say it's the you know the reflecting pool kind of to contextualize what's going on with Trump. I think this is also an effort uh for him to to leave his mark. You know, the same thing happened, which I don't think I'm going to be able to extract a fun binary out of it, but it was very amusing to me also that he tried to change the Kennedy Center to the like Donald Trump Kennedy Center and then a judge ruled that he can't do that. So then they then they took off. They like the workers went and started peeling the the letters off of the building, the Trump letters cuz the judge ruled and they live streamed it so that libs could watch it with satisfaction. Like they live streamed it on a bunch of websites and and just so that they could watch Trump losing. And I mean he is doing really funny bizarre things and I think the reflecting pool is like I'm going to I'm going to turn it blue and then people will remember that you know now it's American blue and that's a thing that Trump did to make to make Washington more beautiful or whatever.
Well, that's very f that's a very phallic, you know, leaving to needing to leave the positive mark.
>> Yes.
>> I think there's a connection to trauma here via the mythic dimension that, you know, we know we're going to be reclaimed by nature at some point. We're going to we're going to get eaten by the worms and we're going to dust to dust and all that stuff. That's kind of why the response to it is so anxious. Don't let it take me. Don't let it take me.
Don't let me die without making a mark.
>> Yeah. the turning green and that whole how you brought in that like is nature coming into civilization where it shouldn't be and the work of civil civilization has to be pure and clean and sterile and when nature comes in it's like a sign of of decay and and chaos entering into the perfect order of things and the whole reflecting pool is an interesting kind of order Right. Cuz like the architect made it and he he made all these illusions involved with it like made it a little bit thinner at one end and like it's deeper in the middle but like so it looks more perfectly rectangular and like all this stuff to make it look like this nice classical neo neocclassical kind of symmetrical point of view you can get from standing at the base of it. Whereas Yeah. which is funny because I was just looking at the impressionist exhibit yesterday in Toronto and they are also painters who are very concerned with uh painting reflections. Mo Monae for example always painting water with reflections in it but their reflections are like anti- classical art.
They're they're driven by that. So the reflections will often be like um disturbed water with broken reflection of whatever is above it in in the water painted impressionistically.
Let just let your mind fill in the details. Fine. Not the realist.
The two mirrored sides, one of nature, one of civilization. And there's a constant I think if you just like look at the history of literature there's constant unconscious expression of the fear that civilization's about to fall apart right like and factually I don't think it ever does fall apart and uh yeah all the way back to Levy Strauss Levy Strauss wrote these four giant toms on Amarindian myths or whatever the correct term for that is indigenous American myths all the way from the the Amazon all the way up to the Arctic. And they have these families of myths and their explanation the or the common explanation in the raw and the cooked is a really famous book he wrote. But raw and the cooked is the the animals at one point were were the civilized ones. The animals can change shape, their magic, their dream dream beings. And at some point uh humans steal the fire from them. They have it. They can cook and we can't. But the animals they we steal the fire from them. And then that's like the beginning of the ascendancy of man. Same thing with the the Prometheian myth. The fire is stolen. But the notion there is like we didn't we didn't earn our spot.
We stole our spot. So now we're at the top. It used to be the animals at the top. They had their powers. They could transform into different shapes. Then we took the fire. Now we're the civilized ones. So ultimately this is reversible.
And the reversibility of it I think it shows the underlying anxiety that you see in so many types of literature, myths, stories like the immigrants are coming, western civilization is dying.
Uh the the chaos in the Shakespearean plays when a bad king is in charge. The entire realm descends into chaos and murder and death. then a good king comes and you know so anyway I think it's a pretty deep-seated anxiety that civilization it's not earned and it might be at any point fall apart it might be at any point this this repressed animal nature might return and yeah that's why that division has to be maintained >> yeah and in the Prometheian myth at least uh when Prometheus and Zeus are basically like in a big fight and Prometheus gives fire to mankind and it kind of represents I guess I don't know there's different readings whatever but it represents the human beings becoming more independent of of the gods and and I mean I guess you could say it represents technology progress whatever it's been it's been used as all kinds of different things but the myth specifically is the founding myth of of sacrifice to the gods because it comes out that okay gods the human I mean and the Greeks always do this you might see this in the Odyssey film uh if if it includes a sacrifice scene where you you burn the bones and the fat of any meat you're eating you eat the meat but you burn the bones as a sacrifice to the gods and that's that's why that's that's the result that comes out of the Prometheus fire deceiving Zeus story and Zeus punishing Prometheus is back.
>> Yeah, that sounds like the the Amarindian fire stealing myths to in that it's reversible, right? So, in the case in the case of sacrifice, you have something that doesn't belong to you.
So, you kind of have to pay rent on it continually. So, the gods are still happy with you because at any time their mood might change and they might take it back. If they take back fire, you go back to the dark ages.
>> Yeah, I Yeah, definitely. you guys started talking a little bit from anthropology or I guess some of these I don't know if you consider would you consider Levy Strauss anthropologist I guess you know >> yeah structural structural anthropologist >> structural anthropologist yeah so there was a there was a report recently I don't know if you guys saw another kind of ex or god did I call it exagenesis what's wrong with me Twitter cut that out >> you got to stay woke man >> another another uh another Twitter discourse on kind of the anti-woke right I guess well Vander Bill University released a report kind of on the state of the humanities and social science and one of the things they pointed out was that anthropology has become like very politicized and that it's it's only interested in like it lacks a kind of rigor because it's so motivated by certain kinds of social justice outcomes or whatever. I'm sure all of us can kind of recognize what what they're talking about. And then in the Chronicles of Higher Education, kind of a very notable anthropologist, um what is her name? Uh Rouse something.
Uh yeah, it's um what's her name? I guess I don't Yeah, car Carolyn Rouse. I don't I don't know.
I'm not in on the anthropology uh literature, but she's apparently the president of the American Anthropological Association. and uh she came out kind of defended defended uh anthropology as a discipline and said yeah it has to be it has to start from a place of I think as she put it um fighting the power right uh that that >> what really >> yeah that that like yeah she basically said like the it's you know the report in in in Vanderbilt was lacking some rigor was was cherrypicking but then she said ultimately uh it's good that anthropology 's focus is on addressing power structures and that's fundamental to what makes it like good scholarship.
And then obviously the right had a field day with that and and and laughed at her and said that that's like that that she's just basically proving their point.
>> I'm lacking context but that's an insane thing to say.
>> But you know that's that's the issue. I mean another divide. I'm not sure if this maps onto structuralism but the sciences and the humanities, right? like anthropology and like psychology and sociology and economics and all those quote unquote human sciences occupy this weird middle space, right? Cuz psychologists want to pretend to be objective, unbiased, and scientific. And look, we apply the scientific method and we get objective results that are free from any kind of bias, the subjective bias, right? And that and they do that because that was that's what gets the funding. So for a human scientist to come out and say no anthropology does have an interest in the object of study and anthropologists anthropology has a has a structurally inbuilt kind of I don't know again quote unquote bias towards the the well-being of the objects of study then that's like oh oh no you're not a science you're object you're not your objectivity has been compromised right which is but otherwise anthropology such a fascinating discipline historically.
Yeah. Rooted in you know sociology was designed by western scholars to study advanced civil civilizations.
Anthropology was designed to study nonwestern primitive people. So they they have bit of a PR problem. They should rename all of it.
>> Yeah. Just I put it in the chat. But I think it's behind a a pay wall, the full article, but this is apparently the one where she where Rouse comes out and and uh defends defends the discipline, >> but fight the power. That's not a quotation. Sure.
>> Uh it might be addressing power structures or undermining like power structures >> and undermine. Okay. Well, these are very different things. Addressing >> addressing is like okay, here's an application of our work, but under >> I need to find the full article. I you know yeah that's I think yeah I think uh anyway but yeah the tw I mean the Twitter discourse was going uh uh there's a blurry line between exposing and opposing power structures isn't there though. Well, yeah. Yeah.
And I'm not I'm not gonna say that anthropology like even Levy Strauss's structural anthropology, which is I don't know if any I don't know if any Americans do that, but he does say like if you're if you're looking at this unconscious structure, if you're trying to find a way in like we did with the with the uh the uh pool, if you find a way in, then you're creating causation there simply by studying the mechanism because it is sort of a unconscious thing that everyone has that everyone shares because we share the same uh science system. So there is it's not it's not objective and it at its best it's not trying to be objective it's trying to be explanatory and explaining a cultural myth means explaining yourself >> yeah ethnography >> but to bring in like a militant oh I'm undermining the power the purpose of anthropology I don't think is undermine myths it's to recognize that they're there and maybe maybe she's saying it for funding which is the best case scenario but if >> anthropology anthrop apology as a militant discipline is about as corny as Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry.
>> I mean, this is like Yeah. I mean, there's people I think I got the fighting the power thing from someone tweeting about it and saying, "Oh my god, this Oh my god, this woman thinks that fighting the power is the essence of serious thinking, >> which is I mean, I don't see what's wrong with that, but I could see the the psychotic anti-woke right not liking that." And >> yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't I I don't know enough about how anthropology is practiced in the academy to know for sure, but I do know that there are some disciplines that which, you know, from what I've heard at least, sociology, anthropology, whatever, any discipline that starts with the word critical in front of it, right? Like critical disability studies, critical race theory, critical whatever. um probably have kind of a sc kind of have a an activist mentality to them which is good could be good and could be bad depending on the context and what we're talking about. Well, at least a core part of like a humanities degree like I back I remember back from this a good a good chunk of it you're looking at ethnography and ethnographic methods and like starting with what anthropologists do which is usually they have a placement and they go live with a tribe and they have to ingratiate themselves and become like insider observers and have informants and then write like an ethn ethnography where you do this like thick detailed description of the people and whatever thing you're interested in building on previous anthropologist's work obviously and then and then in a humanities degree then you might move on to say okay now like if we're going to do culture studies we can adapt ethnographic methods to study modern cultures and you so because your involvement you're not objective you're involved in it and you have to be you are by definition involved in your culture and you can apply the ethnographic methods to studying your culture and western culture for example which is what boiard does I guess and then that that exposing power structures is exactly why the right is always so sensitive about it because the right is fundamentally like aligned with power structures and so when someone comes along and exposes them they go Oh, no. We can't have that.
>> Yeah. I think uh to to from from some quick background reading I just did now to to try to get a more generous view of what Rouse said, I think her point is an since anthropologists study power, inequality, like they're going to come up against these things in their analysis of culture, humanity, um you know, those questions are going to naturally arise. So, you know, I think the way that she would put it is I reject the idea that we should remain neutral on those structures because we're going to see them all the time.
>> We're going to see structures is very differently different from we have to fight the power. It sounds like you got duped by hysterical right-wing anti-wokes.
>> No, I mean I think I I mean I I just thought it was an interesting discourse that I hadn't read up on yet. I I didn't I maybe I did get duped in a way, but I wasn't necessarily taking a stance on >> I wasn't taking a stand.
>> You got baited. Bart understands uh mythology as uh just the naturalization of arbitrary relationships. So ideology ideology pretty simply >> and that's what I Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at too is this is all you you you find one point and then you find what someone says about that point and it leads to another point. You find what someone said about the next point.
You read the New York Times on the same issue. You read whoever, you read a a skitso Twitter poster on it and the and the structure keeps expanding and then it makes so much more sense of what someone says. Like Fox News makes so much more sense when you have the graph and all the connections of of pointto-point in front of you. But they Yeah, I think you're right when you say they don't want they want the mythology to be naturalized because then when someone like says, "Hey, that's an arbitrary relationship." Then they go, "No, you're a social constructivist."
>> Yeah. Mythological features like elves or Helen of Troy, they're they can be they're not allowed to be black. They can be blonde.
>> Yeah. Exactly.
>> You're you're a constructivist now. And that's bad because you think all everything is arbitrary, all these social relationships. But yeah, no, it's good.
But you got to be it has to be like the anxiety has to be at an all-time high because one of the other one of the other qualities of this civilization is progress, which is a linear form of time. And this is a fear of the cyclical time of destruction, rebirth, destruction or cycles.
And it seems like socially, culturally, socioulturally, make a big word out of it.
Socioulturally, we've given up on the progress thing. So cycles, cycles of war, cycles of death and rebirth, that's the other option. We're we're waiting for the we're waiting for the end to come. It looks like they're just want to be naturalizing what by giving them causal explanations like, "Oh, this is the way it should." Oh, it's cuz men are hunters and women are too weak to do that, so they need to do the Lysol and clean the house.
>> Exactly. This is This is like one of Levy Strauss's underrated points that I I I looked at looked looked it up and found that he said it, but there are no facts in myth. there. Like if there's if there's things that happen to line up with something else, that's completely arbitrary. Like there's no fact of dirtiness there. There's no such thing.
>> Yeah.
>> Oh, yeah. Like germs. Yeah. Our our phobia of germs is a very modern phobia, isn't it?
>> I even mean like dirt cuz what is dirt?
Like a chem a chemical composition of >> organic matter.
>> What the ground is made out of. You you need you need cleanliness to have dirtiness >> exist.
>> It's wet sand.
>> It's a signification state because I can I you need to I if I look at you and you got like I don't know dirt on your dirt on your skin or dirt on your shoes. You have dirt on you but the fact of dirty or the or the floor of your house and I see there's like fuzz cuz you haven't vacuumed in a while. You need the convention to exist. You need the convention of clean shoes and clean floors turned into law or like c I don't mean law law. I mean like cultural law.
The the law of the land has to be a certain form of cleanliness for dirtiness to exist. And that level of cleanliness is only possible at a level of you know technological capacity where the floors are no longer made out of dirt unless you change the context like you're playing soccer in in the rain.
Now, now it's completely permitted, completely within the zone of nondisgust for you to be dirty. So, the fact there there's there might be outside of signification a chemical compound composition of whatever dirt is made out of, I don't know, rotten rotten grass or rotten leaves. But there's no fact of dirty without signification. And everybody knows exactly what dirty means. So the second you call the second you say these Obama's Washington was so dirty and decrepit and disrepaired and then the the dirty immigrants are climbing over the fences. You just have to say that word to invoke an infinitely virtual structure just to arouse people's disgust and they go, "Oh yeah, I don't want I don't want I don't want dirty immigrants in here."
>> Yeah. Like don't Americans not take their shoes off in houses? Dirty ass houses. Yeah. It only exists by virtue of its opposition to cleanliness.
>> I wonder if stinkiness only exists because stinkiness is so visceral. Like I don't know. I was just thinking about those cases when you're on the street car subway and like you and then you're like, "Oh crap." You're like, "Oh crap, there's like there's a bum on this train car. Like I can smell it. I want to move to another train car." Like it's like really like >> smell bo.
>> I mean it's beyond bo. It's It's like It's like rotting like like rotting human excrement.
>> I I think I think you're right. That has more There's more fact of stink than than dirty.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. But you know, kids kids really can't tell stink.
>> It always I also sometimes wonder about my cat. I'll I'll look >> I think you're sort of trained into it is what I'm saying. You have you're sort of trained into what stink is. I've had that thought as well because I noticed that my cat I just feel like he doesn't react to smells like ever.
>> Yeah. And dogs have like noses.
>> Yeah. Dogs love it.
>> Like 500,000 times stronger. I've never seen sniff your ass right after you let one.
>> Yeah. They love the gross the grosser the smell, the more they love it.
>> I've never seen my cat be like be like they just Yeah. They're just >> You could go fart in a cat's face and they won't battle ash. Even toddlers, they don't they don't react.
>> Yeah.
>> I I know there there's definitely a fact of it that it registers, but there's also a bunch of learned convention about why farting is bad.
>> Yeah. Totally. For sure. For sure. And I noticed I mean I I I feel like I have I have a pretty high tolerance >> for stink. like like I'll notice it, but I'm not going to be like, >> "Oh my god." Oh, >> like that's just I'm just like >> as opposed to like good smells like I guess most mostly when you walk by someone who smells nice. What the Axe commercials tell you should smell like and all that sort of stuff.
>> Yeah, that's true. If you're if you're our age, Axe made it masculine to smell girly.
>> It's still uh binary.
There's a couple like origin points. I know I know you keep bringing up Dera.
Dareda didn't really like this bit of Levy Strauss, but uh the Levy Strauss she says in these myths there's a bunch of origin points of the very primary division like the first the first division according to the mythic Amarindian stories uh like we had with with Durkheim. Durkheim said the first division was sacred and profane for Levy Strauss. There's at least two. The first is the raw and the co mentioned, but the other is the incest taboo because there's there's something there's something of a fact of incest that is bad because if you if you have if you impregnate a a female in your family, then the birth defects, all that stuff. Um, but it's >> don't don't naturalize it. But then there's the signification of the t of the taboo of incest as the first like law is turning turning I I don't know is there an instinct against incest.
I remember I had I had sheep on a farm growing up and they would their relatives all the time.
>> The inst I don't know them were on the border of like constructivism because we're claiming there's like a biological basis for it. But all I would all I would think >> No, no, no. Sorry. I need to correct myself. I wasn't saying there's a basis.
There's a there's a a a biological fact that says females in your own your relatives is bad.
>> It's like an inborn revulsion towards it. But then it's also a pornog pornography category which is also very weird. No, the the taboo completely oversignifies whatever is there biologically, right?
So the disgust you feel like there's no there's no fact.
I don't know. I don't know what animals do about that. But the the taboo is like the origin of the first law that gets instantiated in myth. So there's always an incest an anti-inccest myth.
There are elaborate usually those elaborate rituals uh that are in place originate from the incest taboss those kinds of like the ways like when you look at the different societies and you can categorize you know like okay who's who's the important familial relation here is it the evangular relation is it the uncle and how does the how do like men and women get together does the woman go to live with the man? Does the man go live with the woman? Does the does do they go to their family? Do they whatever? It's always it's all different in different cultures, but yet how they organize their like marriage and procreation and manage generations are like highly ritualized and extremely important in the incest taboos like a I don't know an an originating impetus behind a lot of the rituals. I guess not like potlash is a different one is more like about circulation of material goods and uh and pre social prestige but yeah I think anthropologists will look at the kinds of familial relations and how the incest taboo is navigated and how that hooks into power relationships too because doesn't Levy Strauss look at the tattoos on the a certain tribe and how they have the horizontal and the vertical lines.
>> Yeah.
>> They symbolize like the hierarchical nature of the society and the tension with the more like horizontal egalitarian nature. And then again there's rituals in place that sort of I guess protect against the rigidity of power structures and continue to yeah I mean all that is wrapped up in the structural anthropological approach >> interestingly and he he traced this map or he traced this ritual practice to cook symbolically but do a ritual where you symbolically cook the woman before she gets married. So, she sits on hot sand or she lays on embers or or in in childbirth uh you put hot you put a hot uh you put her into a hot cave basically. So, she's getting cooked in an oven but symbolically and this is to signify before she gets buried the passage from raw female to cooked wife from nature to civilization. And this practice was on different continents. I think in Cambodia, European tribes and Amarindian tribes all had some version of this >> that makes its way into Friedrich Jameson too. The symbolic resolution of social tensions that like are actually problematic and pragmatic, real problems, but we constantly are playing them out in our social games.
>> Yeah. Speaking of speaking of using games to conceal the mechanisms, I think there's something to this this normalization. I'm getting I get gambling ads now on my TV. My TV that I own, I can't turn it on without seeing a [ __ ] gambling ad. Not to mention CNN, sports betting, anytime you watch a sports show. So, this is kind there's there's almost a demand. There's a demand for a sacrifice. You have to pay this goddess of luck, this goddess of chance. Because we know that part of our system game, our system game that you want to call whatever success, the way you move up, the way you get it is is undergurtded by this uh capacity to impress luck. So everybody has to pay their their toll to the goddess if you want if you want a chance in life. And not to mention that it's like one of the final routes for social mobility hoping hoping to get lucky in a casino. But yeah, all this to say, sorry, that's that's for another time. All this to say, this version of theory, it's demonstrated in the method, the the hypothesis is that everything is chains.
They're all chains that are connected.
You can dive in at an arbitrary point.
You can go in through through whatever you want. gambling ads, the reflecting pool, >> and diving in there, you're going to find the chain that's connected to another chain, and a chain that's connected to another chain, and that chain will connect. And a chain of change, interestingly enough, was uh Lan's metaphor for what the unconscious was.
>> I have always felt that your strongest videos were the ones where you end up you do you do a deep dive into some sort of a cultural object. And I mean, you mentioned it in this video, uh, but my favorite video of yours for a long time was the, uh, Travis Scott video, the burger. And and and I, I know that it maybe wasn't your most popular video, but I it was my favorite. And then this one, I think, is is you correctly identified that there's some kind of a similarity or in in the the kind of meth method of analysis.
>> That's interesting. I think you might be you might be the only person I've ever heard say that they like that video in particular cuz I think it I think it got like 30k views total. That's it.
>> Didn't Travis Scott was cast in the >> He is in the Odyssey movie. Yeah, he is in in the Odyssey.
>> What? Really?
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's in the Odyssey. I don't know what role he plays, but >> he plays the poet Demodicus. A po He plays a poet. They've cast a rapper as a as a ancient Greek >> bard which is >> Look at the w look at the wokeification of my culture.
>> Our rappers are modern bards, aren't they? They're the modern storytellers.
>> I mean, sure, if you want, but if you want a bard, if you want storytelling rappers, I think these wild >> It's hard to get a worse example than Travis Scott.
>> I love how these white these white people just like decide to own like Greek. They're just like, "It's mine.
It's my culture." It's like, "What do you mean? This is like ancient Greek like culture." Like, it's just the weird ownership. Anyway, >> yeah, they get very possessive. Oh, cutting Plato out of the university syllabus. That is a major front on the culture war.
>> Yeah, >> we can't let it happen. Western civilization is going to collapse and then we're back to blue pools turning green.
nature said that Socrates and Plato represented Greek culture in decadence in decay.
>> Yeah, I I forgot that Travis Scott is in it. That's funny.
>> Eric, you want to hear I know you know who don't know who this is, but do you want to hear? Here's an example of uh Travis Scott's storytelling.
>> I bet she going Dumbo, dummy. I bet she going Dumbo.
That [ __ ] a dummy.
I bet she going Dumbo. Woo.
I bet she going Dumbo. Straight up. I bet she going Dumbo.
Okay, I quit. I quit. Oh my god. Okay, it's just so much better. It's so much harder. It's so much harder to read it than to say it, you know. No. Yes. The Bard. This is The Bard. Travis Scott.
>> Funny. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna go see it.
Are you guys gonna go see it? I want to go see it.
Yeah, >> I keep seeing the little the pictures of it cropped and like it seems like you have to see it in IMAX.
>> Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
>> But IMAX is so far.
>> I know. I know.
>> And expensive.
>> Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. All right. Well, that was great. We could have talked about Graham Platner, too. I would have been curious, but that doesn't really fit into this narrative structure, I don't think. Unless cuz now he's toast.
Hey, I think I think Jordan Peterson woke up from his year-long coma.
>> Oh, has he really?
>> To tweet about Judeo-Christianity.
>> He's been tweeting. Yeah, but I don't know if he's >> No, the MSAD the MSAD saw they were losing ground, so they had to bust out the good stuff to revive Jordan Peterson.
>> Actually, really quick, last fact. So, one of I think it's Jordan Peterson's like best friend or one of his best friends is this Canadian Quebec Quebecer. Uh I think he's some kind of a social critic. Uh Jonathan Pio, I don't know if he's an academic or a journalist, uh but he's been tweeting about how much he loved the Odyssey. He went to go see it on a on a premiere and he said like don't be fooled by if you think that it's just wokeness. Like it's an incredible movie and an incredible depiction of of of of what Homer, you know, if Homer even wrote it, you know what he did.
>> Jonathan Peio is an icon carver and a YouTuber.
>> Oh, is that is that all? But he's person that I mean that's that sounds dope.
>> I thought he was some sort of academic.
I thought >> Jonathan Pio. Yeah. Oh yeah, you're right. He's Oh, he's a religion expert. Yeah, he's the editor of the Orthodox Arts Journal.
>> Okay. What is this? He Catholic French Baptist men. Is there a Is there a religion this guy hasn't joined? Now he's an icon. Oh, he's an adult convert.
I can dismiss him out of that.
>> Okay. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah, he's all into Yeah, he's he's advocates apparently for a symbolic approach to the world.
>> Is that like symbolism the common noun or like the malar school like symbolist?
>> I'm not sure >> like the painters.
>> It's so funny. Look at these look at these mind-numbing comments though.
People are like I have I have no doubt that it's be that it's beautiful. It's beautifully done but it doesn't change tradition. Crazy to expect people to throw history away. There you go.
>> Like it's like it's like what do you It's like dude this is a [ __ ] myth.
>> Hit us with some more. Tradition is a mythic term. Tradition is like the the part of history that belongs to us but then it's associated in that comment with history but separate from beauty.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Which is a kind of an anti-Greek notion.
>> It's all about beauty.
>> Achilles and the beautiful death.
>> Yeah. Callos Agathon. I forget what it's called. What's Can you Is there any more Mythic comments?
>> Um Oh, he did. Okay, so he did he did tweet this. He said, "And by the way, the casting of Elliot Paige is absolutely brilliant. A master stroke, actually.
>> Uh and then people are responding to that. Uh I thought this was a joke. Now I know that you're you're serious. You even call Elliot a he in your latest video. What the [ __ ] People are mad that that he's not misgendering him.
>> You didn't misgender Uh yeah, that's funny. Uh because if your theory is true, it means Ellen Ellen Paige is so dumb and Chris Nol and so perverse as to cast a multi-lated transsexual manlet like Okay, I'm not going to read this is just like a bunch of transphobic stuff. They were they they were spazzing out that um Elliot Pageige was playing Ulissi or >> you know like >> Achilles which is a complete lie. He was not complete.
>> He's playing just like the youngest kid on the on the boat or something.
>> Yeah. Son, I think is the character. I don't know. I I'm actually not my knowledge is not good on uh >> No, I haven't read it in 15.
>> Yeah, Elliot Paige plays a uh minor role.
Yeah, minor male role. That's what they're mad about.
>> Is it Is Achilles in it? He's in the He's a ghost in the in the book.
>> Here's here's another Here's another comment. Sorry, but this is a horrible take. I'm not giving money to a movie that casts Helen of Troy as a subsaharan.
>> There it is.
>> You should also probably be losing your [ __ ] and unwilling to pay for a movie if they decided to cast Virgin Mary as a subsaharan. Canonical books deserve better.
>> Canonical books. canonical books and literal cranottomy.
Bloom and Bach would be proud.
>> Uh, yeah, Jonathan, your review says a lot about saying anything or says a lot without saying anything. None of us are seeing a movie with a black Helen and a trans whatever.
>> Exactly. Whatever. Don't trans our beloved character. Whatever.
>> I am done. I am done financing media that race swaps white people's history and my mythology. I don't care how good it is. I am ethically European and I will put the se the self-interest of my people first. I mean, that's just like racism. Like, >> so this this is deep cut racism. This is like 18th century racism. So, this has to be This sounds like European racism.
They have any flags in the bio.
>> I mean, there's they're their summary on their own profiles. Western civilization lies on the brink of destruction.
>> We have been betrayed by our leaders.
Make the men of the west masculine again. And then it has a British flag and a and an and a and a English flag.
>> Yes. English English race science.
There's the myth. Society civilization is collapsing around us. Why? Because Helen of Troy is black.
>> After after your analysis in your video, I don't want to call Twitter a cesspool or a swamp because I think it's insulting to cesspools and swamps.
Twitter's something else. Swamps are beautifully rich, integral, >> incredibly important. I always get I always go on about how Toronto was built on a swamp that was destroyed and so was the so was the so was Trump's gash pool.
That was all a swamp land. They p it was a massive project to pave over the swamp and build that [ __ ] reflecting pool there.
>> But you can call it a cess pool. Isn't a cess pool like a septic pool? Like a [ __ ] pool? I think a cesspool is uh sounds just more like a morally loaded term to me.
>> Well, you can call Twitter a cesspool, but it's it's rich with myth. Even if even if >> Yeah. And >> it is kind of an ideological cesspool where all the worst ideas come together and bloom.
>> Yeah.
>> Bloom and Bach. even a a a British Nazi is publicly upset to the point of, you know, keyboard crying that an American director is ruining his cultural heritage by casting a black actress in a Greek myth and as a very minor character. Helen of Troy is not a minor character overall, but in this in this story, she's a very minor character. What does this guy uh call himself out of curiosity? Oh, it was called Oh, it was called It was called Night of Ruin is the first.
>> Of course it is.
>> Night with as in as in K ni GT. Night.
>> Yeah. No. Yeah, of course. I got it.
Night. The knight of the of the ruined the ruins of civilization. He's marching around alone, >> yelling at the ghosts.
>> Exactly.
>> He's trying to tilt at giants, but it's just the self-s served kiosk at the Wendy's.
>> The ethnationalist crusader.
>> Yeah, it's quite quite remarkable.
Sir, can you please sit down or we're gonna have to call the police.
Okay, >> that's a good place to end. Good job.
That was fun.
>> And uh >> we will see you >> talk to you soon. Hopefully something uh something equally semiodic happens this week.
>> Yeah. Uh see y'all next time.
>> See you soon.
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