Jordan Hall says to Bret and Jonathan that Loving is the Key to Knowing and Being

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Hi, this is Paul. I want to keep working on this video because there's I think a lot of good stuff to talk about in this video. I I just as it turned out, it I I spoke with Jonathan Pageau this morning. It's in the wait no ads. I'll be putting out some little pieces of it as we go. Um if you're really really can't wait, um and you're already a Rando Channel channel member, then it costs you an extra $4 or something. And um if you're not that, it'll cost you $7. Otherwise, it'll be out, you know, next week or the week after at some point, but it's it's it's in it's in there, and there's a lot of good stuff in my conversation with Jonathan. So, um but I I I want to keep getting into this. What's sort of fun about I mean, I used to do this a lot more back in the early days when I had a little bit more time with just the Jordan Peterson stuff. You know, I make a video about it, and then I read the comments, and that sort of continues to sort of churn in me what I'm understanding, what I'm seeing, what I'm hearing, and I don't have a lot of time right now. In fact, I don't have any time right now. In fact, I might not even record this video. Um Um Looks like this video isn't going to happen.

[00:01:15]Hi, this is Paul. I've been busy, and I just haven't had enough time to make videos, and it's not because there aren't stuff on my channel. I I have my conversation with Jonathan that'll come out in a week or so.

[00:01:27]>> [sighs and gasps] >> I just like making videos, and I want to keep talking about this video cuz I really only covered the first part of it, which is the least interesting part.

[00:01:39]They, you know, 24 minutes in, and they're not really into the meat yet.

[00:01:43]So, on we go. I want to This is one of these places that, in order to have a proper discussion between [clears throat] people who have educated themselves separately, in order to do high-quality work.

[00:01:55]Anybody who does that ends up having to redefine terms and make up other terms in order to do the work well Now, I really like I really like a lot of things. I really like uh coming back to a video after it's been a few days. I really like having coming back to this video after I've read a number of your comments on the previous video, which I've commented about this.

[00:02:17]It's also the case that we think we hear everything. This is sort of the um the the innocence and naivete of I'd say sort of the lock-in uh epistemological assumption that we are sort of blank slates who just absorb everything.

[00:02:36]Yeah, I'm my conversation with Jonathan, and I'm listening to it, and whenever I go back over conversation, even a conversation that I participated in, I hear things I didn't hear the first time when I was having the conversation, and it just shows me what a terrible listener I am.

[00:02:50]And so, often what's good about going back over conversation like this is I hear things I didn't hear the first time. And lately, I've been like making shorts of videos, making clips of videos, and part of the reason I like doing that, too, is it helps me when you when you see the whole video as one thing, uh a hierarchy develops. And so, let's say this video is about this, but there are many other much smaller little hierarchies in the video, and if you slow it down or segment it out, you can learn things. You know, for example, one of the things that Brett just said just a minute ago that it probably distracted you already.

[00:03:33]way to select your religion. Well, I want to I want to This is one of these places that, in order to have a proper discussion between people who have educated themselves separately, in order to do high-quality work.

[00:03:47]Educated themselves themselves separately in order to do high-quality work. That is There's a lot right there because basically, he's just recognizing that different people come at this from different places and different points of view, and that formation means they use language in a very different way than other people. One of the things that happens with education and schooling is that the school sort of has all of these implicit agreements on language. These words mean these things. These words mean these things. Now, a big part of this You know, people get crazy with the when the uh the camera isn't still.

[00:04:33]So much of what makes these conversations difficult is that as he just said, you have different people using language in different ways, and that is true throughout this video. And so, part of the reason I do these commentary videos is I try to point out the different ways that language is being used. Brett already talked about how things have to map on other things.

[00:04:52]And so, part of the thing he's saying is that you we sort of have to get our language straight. And this again is why spending time together before the conversation is really important because just what happens naturally as you spend time with someone is that the languages and the maps just begin to come together. Those maps just build themselves as we're together. And And so, all of these different tensions are important. Now, Mm.

[00:05:18]How am I going to bring this in?

[00:05:20]The Luke and some others on the channel have been fervently sending me this podcast um on Weird Studies, Actual Magic on Ramsey Dukes S S O T B M E. And someone even sent me a PDF of the book.

[00:05:36]Um and the the book is not what you think. The book is about this whole question of epistemology and approach and the nature of the world. And I'm about halfway through the podcast. I'll finish the podcast.

[00:05:51]It's uh the the the title of the book is um in the impish titled Sex Secrets of the Black Magicians Exposed, or S S O T B M E.

[00:06:05]How How to How to take all of this and put it in a digestible way.

[00:06:11]The I thought a lot about Iain McGilchrist as I was listening to the podcast because to go back to the video I already made about this conversation, you can begin at Jordan Peterson's beginning point of Maps of Meaning. The world can be I'm going to use the word imagined. The world can be imagined as a place of objects, which is sort of the monarchical vision. It's sort of the standard model that is in our educational systems about how the world is imagined, and that standard model tends to provoke the meaning crisis in a lot of people.

[00:06:48]Or the world can be imagined as a forum for action. Now, the forum for action has implicitly myself outwards into the world, and that is the majority way. That is actually the natural most natural way in which we grow up. I'm still waiting for the Greg Biddle release of our conversation, partly because there's so many things in that conversation that really pertain to this.

[00:07:16]He asked me, "Why do you believe in God?" And I said, "Because my parents did, and they taught me that way."

[00:07:22]That's No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Um we we want And I knew exactly what he wanted. He wants a series of justifying proofs or arguments for this proposition that imagining the world as a place of objects, that God is one of those other objects in the world, and I sort of have to have a line of argumentation towards that object as well as if I would say I believe in in pink uniform in pink pink unif- unicorns that fart rainbow dust.

[00:07:54]Um you know, how how do I know that there's an object in the world called a pink uniform unicorn that farts rainbow dust.

[00:08:02]Um And then, of course, we'd have to get into all of these questions. Part of what this book gets into that you can hear in the podcast is that everything nameable exists, but the question of The question is in what way does it exist? And what kind of thing is it? And what exactly is existence? And there there's a really good um The podcast is excellent, and I imagine the book is also excellent. It I didn't I didn't find the podcast necessarily was giving me new ways to think about this, but rather sort of new ways to articulate it. But generally speaking, I'm not sure those new ways will be satisfying.

[00:08:45]Part of where I come at these kinds of conversations is that I am sort of in in, you know, part of what Jonathan and I sort of hold in common is kind of this This isn't technically correct. It is technically correct, but it isn't It's sort of a personal It's a person out way of knowing.

[00:09:09]And so, the most when I say, "Why do I believe in God?"

[00:09:14]because I was raised in a Christian family, a materialist has difficulty arguing with that.

[00:09:21]But the game that they are attempting to get me to play is to get me to self-transcend to san- transcend imaginarily out of my body and imagine myself from a God perspective seeing the world, and then accounting for objects I find in the world through a line of argumentation.

[00:09:46]And my argument is that, number one, that's a very um that's a very particular game. Number two, it's not it it the game wants to imagine it actually has power in the world and it really doesn't have very much power. It's not that it has no power, it just really doesn't have very much power because the materialist will have to agree with the fact that I believe in God um because my parents taught me so but they want to imagine that the way that we know things in the world is all in this imaginary space hovering above the world and the truth is that there is a very tiny group of people that actually do sort of imagine that's how they know the world and there's a tinier still group of people that can actually follow through on that in any kind of reasonable way but the vast majority of people are just fudging that whole game completely and so because the reason I believe that is that if that game actually worked >> [sighs] >> it would yield the kind of certainty that people wish it to we wield to yield but it doesn't it almost never does you find people that are well educated and and and brought into that game and they can't agree on hardly anything and the more you push at them the more they disagree because well there's a whole variety of reasons number one you don't even have enough time in your life using that game to account for the objects that are in the room around you you just take them as such and and you but you can't even list the numbers of objects in this room this is the combinatorial explosive point and again it's a point that people don't realize the truer way to to to understand where you are in the world is to actually sort of think historically about who you are back and understand that the again Jordan Peterson made all of these points that the world that you have encountered has been a world that has been driven by the values you possess and the hierarchies of interest and attention you possess that themselves have been formed in the process and so this tiny little point that Brett makes about language and education and formation is crucial and it's true and so hence you're going to have to try and have the conversation but again whenever I walk through this I there is a performative contradiction in what I just did because although the game we are playing you should be able to understand me and perhaps even agree with me the power of formation that that has on you is actually so much smaller than most of the powers of formation that you're constantly in the midst of not paying any attention to nor sort of imagining that you wish to be formed by them because we're constantly being formed and the younger you are because there's less and less of you the less formation that there already is and the more formation your surrounding is doing that's why teenagers are in some ways so much copies of each other because they're just absorbing rapidly and let's say that there was a an element in a pool of water let's call it the squirrel element so you have the squirrel element in a pool of water someone my age going into that pool of water would be hardly made up of squirrels because there's so much of me already there that there isn't much room for the squirrels and I only absorb squirrels slowly but someone who's a teenager goes into that same pool of waters and they are absorbing squirrels at an incredible degree so you take a lineup out of that pool and you Rick just texted me that's why I got distracted you take a lineup out of that pool and you begin to discover that your 18 year olds are just so full of squirrels as opposed to your 60 year olds because there's just not much of them even though we look the same size in that way young people are constantly absorbing which is why we like to put them in educational things because here's what we'd like you to absorb so they're constantly absorbing and it makes them up but as we go through life we're just swimming in all sorts of other things that we keep absorbing which means we are we are the kinds of things that are formed by our environment by our attention by our interests by our appetites by our anxieties that's how human beings are and so when you want to sort of have people self transcend and get out of their actual formation and get into these abstract games well they can be fun to play and they can be good and they can be useful and we certainly play them but my confidence that they actually make up the people that they are now they'll show up on YouTube and say all the things they'll play all that game but I don't know put them in a put them in a stressful situation and you'll learn a lot more about what's formed them than all of the things that they learned in school and all of the things that they wrote down on tests and all the things that they go to YouTube to spit out in front of you just played three minutes of videos and talked for 20 those of you who are around in 2018 know this anybody who does that ends up having to redefine terms and make up other terms in order to do the work well because the natural consequence of you know millions of people speaking a language is that the terms become very dull and broad and that you can't do rigorous work with them so I always point out to to people who are trying to do rigorous work you've redefined things and you forgot that you did it and then when you talk to people you do tend to talk past them so right you've redefined things you forgot what you did it's the same thing as white people don't have a culture what do you mean white people don't have a culture that used to be sort of a meme in racial reconciliation jargon for a while ago it's that we are blind to our own culture we assume our own culture but it's the same thing for how we see the world and apprehend the world I've told the story many times in this show because so much of this has been about epistemology and apprehension I used to have there used to be a guy here at church who he was on disability so he had lots of free time and so he'd hang out with me at church and he'd learn theology and he wanted to learn to preach and so basically he wanted to learn ministry but he had very low vision and he used to explain to me that you know his his real eyesight is like if I would look through like a paper towel tube but you know it's the same thing with the you know you have this blind spot you know where the your optic nerve hits and but when you close one eye you don't see your blind spot and there's all these little tricks that you probably did in grade school to find your blind spot but your brain just fills it in and so I would just you know he would be at church and I would walk up next to him sometime and I wasn't in that little tube and it was like in some of you all might remember I Dream of Jeannie with Barbara Eden now I'm really dating myself but bang I would pop into the world and it would startle him because he didn't see me coming cuz he had such low vision was I in the room yes and see what we do with this game is we sit above the world and we imagine that nothing can sneak up on us because we imagine we just see everything and again if you go into the psychologist or the um cognitive science people they'll say >> [laughter] >> yeah that's not how any of this works Anyway I would say it's not inevitable that you will have a religion it is inevitable that something will play that role in your life but in my terminology >> okay and and so that's so tricky what he just said he's basically he's pushing back and saying like modern materialist I believe religions are it's a public definition I believe religions are supernatural things that only certain people have going back to my conversation with Kevin Flatt religions [snorts] are apps that you have on the phone but normal life is the operating system and people like me now where Jordan Hall what he has come to believe is that no when we use the word religion we believe this is the sort of the basic operating system that you use to go through the world and our argument for that is that Kevin Flatt made it in his book most of the nations of the world didn't have a term like we have called religion for most of their existence and that term pops up the way we're using it the way um Brett is using it in the modern world but we don't want to waste all of our time just talking about language.

[00:19:55]So, and that's why sometimes people opt for worldview or something like that. We could say operating system. Again, my definition that which is highest and how to get there. Now now Brett has both said how he uses the word and how he doesn't want to use the word, but that he understands how we're using the word, and so he uses another word.

[00:20:15]It's not inevitable that you will have a religion. It's not inevitable that you will have a religion. So, he means I used to use a thing like that's that's religion um S. That's that's the secular definition of religion. And then there's religion W, which is the worldview definition of religion. So, he just used it in religion S. It's inevitable that something will play that role in your life. Okay. Something will play that role in your life. So, in in other words, he sort of points to the other definition of religion while he says, "I don't want to use it." That's how tricky these conversations are. And you know, there's no lying or or there's nothing wrong with what he just did.

[00:20:59]It's just important that you understand that we're all talking about we all work from different operating systems and of course, a big part of Brett's is as my friend Sam Teedman says, he's he's sort of got kind of this gnostic world that he lives in. That the the creator of the genes The creator of the genes is the is the evil demiurge that made this insufficient world. But the creator of the memes is a benevolent >> [snorts] >> better god.

[00:21:32]Except that Brett will also say that even though genes don't have agency, even though genes don't have consciousness the genes afforded the creation of the better god, which comes at us from the memes that help us transcend the sins of our genes.

[00:21:51]But in my terminology, you cannot start a religion.

[00:21:56]You start a cult, and if it is high-quality selection Okay, and I'd be curious to have him So, okay, religion and again, I said it before, I'd be curious to know what he means by cult.

[00:22:12]But I think basically he's understanding it as sort of a little baby a baby baby seed of a religion that will grow full-blown. And basically what happens is that we walk around with these maps, and one of our maps, like the biggest map, is like the worldview map or the religious map.

[00:22:31]Um and then other maps begin to emerge, and we find code in them, and it's like, "Oh, what if I integrate that? That's better code than my worldview map." And and that's a very important thing to do, because let's say if you're a a newborn a newborn infant, your map is mostly like the distance between your eyes and your mama's eyes and that breast that's giving you life. And then some sounds, and it's not a very big map. And so, as we go through the the amazing thing about human beings is that we are just constantly remapping. But again, back to my point about age after [snorts] certain age, we have so much maps, it's harder to have a really big flip and a really big transition of a map. It does happen. But usually it's about an integration of maps. And so, I I like the map image a little bit better. So, the point that he's making is that there are all these little competing seeds, let's call them cults, and certain of these groups of these seeds will actually endure a very long time, because they're a very powerful map and they find that people in these they outcompete the other maps. And shapes it into a religion over time. But there's lots of garbage cult. And what is going on in the space of science right now is a garbage cult. Right? It is not viable in any regard. And what happened >> So, in other words, that there was a seed, let's say trying to use science as a worldview. And again, it's it's way way way way way too insufficient as a worldview. If you understand sort of what science is and that the scientism is sort of a garbage cult.

[00:24:10]But and now he's just pointing out that there's lots of garbage in the science cult, too. And this is all the stuff that, you know, the whole woke thing and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

[00:24:18]We've all been through that for 10 years. As people embraced it because it's clearly very powerful, but power is not the only ingredient that you need in order to have a proper tradition that fits in that space of religion. In fact, the only things that we can be sure have that capability are ancient religions. And how do we know they have that capability? Because they have stood the test of time. So the bitter pill >> And I don't know the degree to which he's changed his opinion about this.

[00:24:50]But when I listen to him from like eight years ago, and I listen to him now, cuz there's certain clips that people have sent me from his DarkHorse podcast he and Heather Heying, his wife, seem to be much more on this page now.

[00:25:04]And this was again, very much the page that Jordan Peterson was promoting it years ago, that Jordan wasn't saying it quite as directly most of the time, but these religions, these fairy tales, these very ancient things, it's basically the Lindy effect that Nassim Taleb had pointed out to. These very old things you have to give them a degree of precedent and priority because they are battle-tested and they work. Doesn't mean that true word and the weird science thing talked about that true word up at the weird science uh link below in the um in the show notes. But they work. And this is part of the tradeoff with, let's say, the big evolutionary worldview map in that the bitter pill Glenn Scrivener was just making a point about this at their 100K um celebration livestream. They'd asked him, you know, what what videos would you like to make but haven't make. He wanted to make a video on Alvin Plantinga's argument that the evolutionary the evolutionary map biases towards exactly what Brett says, getting genes into the future.

[00:26:27]It doesn't bias towards truth, even if you're playing the monarchical vision game.

[00:26:35]It doesn't say doesn't give you the good, the true, and the beautiful. It just gives you the survivable.

[00:26:42]That's what it gives you.

[00:26:44]Now, for Brett in this video, he's going to play he's going to he's going to keep talking about game theory.

[00:26:51]And the aspect of game theory, I don't know a lot about game theory, but the aspect that always comes up in all of these conversations is the free loader problem. And you have to deal with the free loader problem, the problem of the commons. Again, this is all of the game B stuff that Bret Weinstein and his brother Eric and Jordan Hall. Jonathan didn't know that they knew each other, but I had been doing some digging into the game B stuff a few years ago, and that's where I found Jordan Hall and a whole bunch of other characters, because they were basically looking at the polycrisis or the metacrisis and saying, "We need something that's going to transform society with the speed at which something like the cell phone transformed society." And uh we have to find that to save the world, and basically it was a failure.

[00:27:43]But all of sort of the anxious brainiacs like these guys were working on this, and in the end they had to say, "We can't do it. So, I guess we'll die." So, they all went out into Sporay and with the guy's a podcast, I don't remember his name off the top of my head, but Jordan Hall's been on plenty. He's part of that same group.

[00:28:05]What comes with that is having stood the test of time against past challenges is not a guarantee that they have the the goods to address current challenges that nobody has seen before. And I'm That's the point that Brett would had been making historically. And it's a very fair point. And then if you go all the way back to the videos when I was first sort of commenting in some of his videos, my point was he kept sort of dismissively saying "That's the thing religious people have to learn." And my point was religious people might not articulate that from especially within their own tribal competitions, but that's actually the project that all religious people are doing. They are field testing all of the tiny little upgrades and hacks or um attempts to hold out pieces that the broader culture sort of pushing us into.

[00:28:56]That's the constant That's the constant project of Now, when I'm using religious here, I'm meaning the secular definition of religion. That's the constant project of all religious people. So, they're doing all the time. They're life testing it. Because for those people, their lives in fact depend on it, because it is in fact their lives.

[00:29:17]Whereas many other people are just living in the moment absorbing the squirrels in the water going through time.

[00:29:28]afraid. As much as I feel like it's my job as an evolutionist to point out actually the religious folks are trying to tell you something of profound importance.

[00:29:37]I also feel like I have to say to the religious folks there's timeless wisdom in what you're saying. And then there is a zone in which there isn't any timeless wisdom and it is necessary that we find it because problems that we are facing are now simply novel [clears throat] and the degree to which the the solutions that we have are there it they're just incomplete. But I think that And I agree with what he said right there 100%.

[00:30:08]My yeah, but is that the people who are holding on to their timeless vision are actually providing a function in the overall equation because I wish I could find that. Maybe now with our better search engines I can. There was one great moment where Jordan Peterson back in probably 2018 was engaged in a debate 2017 2018 because we always the problem we have with change is change too much you die change too little you die. So it's sort of the opponent processing find the right amount of change. Well, how do we do that? We were always doing that as individuals by ourselves but as communities we are always doing that together and that the deep function of the religious communities who tend to be the ones that are sort of holding things back. So don't change too far or too fast is that you know, out of my cold dead hands I'm going to give up my belief in name it or my practice of name it.

[00:31:16]And with enormous populations as we watch each other as we debate each other as we fight each other all of those things get worked through.

[00:31:28]So that's the fun that's the religious function in terms of our maps.

[00:31:33]The basics of what the Christianity offers which is on the one hand an orientation if you think about it that way which is on the on the one hand saying no not me but that which transcends me. You know, that that God is the judge of me and not me the judge of everything else. That's already an orientation. Then that lays itself out in terms of Okay, and that orientation is really important because again, it's a human beings have a natural propensity to look around and do what's expedient.

[00:32:07]There's another Jordan Peterson word.

[00:32:09]This is all rehashing the stuff that we talked about 2018 2019.

[00:32:13]We do what what's expedient. Ice cream?

[00:32:15]Love it.

[00:32:17]Eat it all day? Yes, please.

[00:32:19]At my age doesn't work like it did when I was 18.

[00:32:25]And so you might say, well, that's you can you can learn that. Yeah, ice cream's just a little thing.

[00:32:31]But you know, part of the reason that certain religious groups focus on appetites is because it's a common vector for hold off those appetites. Teach little children no self-control is a powerful tool for human beings and human beings can accomplish amazing things if they have self-control and having something transcendent something really big to help us with self-control it's a big ally. Virtue is what are what is it that happens in me? How do I know that I am aligned with God? I have the fruits of the spirit. I'm I'm having more love. I'm more patient. You know, I have all of these characteristics. Uh now, you know, when you say that religion doesn't offer the solution, I think that the orientation is the first solution. That is that if we have the proper orientation, we believe that truth is a good in itself, right? That beauty is something that's real that that we can participate in. That love is the virtue that binds us together. All of these things will prepare us and will give us the right orientation to be able to manage the whatever problem comes at us. But we kind of need that orientation first. Without it And so obviously, you know, there's no there's no text in religion that deals with very very specific technical problems that we could face in terms of how to scale a society in in different ways. There are orientations in Now now this is >> [snorts] >> So much I got to so much time. I've got my men's Bible study tonight. I don't want to make this video.

[00:34:09]Great conversation between Aaron Renn and Joshua Mitchell. Joshua Mitchell wrote a great piece. I'll put the link to this video below. I don't have time to go through much of it but what Jonathan is talking about is a re a religion that has enough orientation and in some ways enough abstraction to travel through time with a bit of looseness as opposed to religions that dictate too much too strongly and this is always the tension sort of between certain kinds of fundamentalism and that and when I did my video on Islam and we talked about um Kevin Flat was saying, yeah, well, Islam says this is a life system.

[00:34:52]So here download the Quran. The Quran will tell you what you all to do how you to be a father, how you to be a mother, how you to be a daughter. And again, you have this tension between let's say principles that we derive from the text versus direct application of what the text says and you'll hear that tension throughout a bunch of the Islam conversation and videos I've been doing.

[00:35:13]You'll find tens of millions of hits.

[00:35:15]Way of life is a code for a comprehensive doctrine.

[00:35:19]And what Tocqueville saw with respect to Islam is I think what we're seeing today which is if you're living in a world that doesn't quite fit one great temptation is to is to find a religion uh and and frankly the Al-Qaeda thing development is is very much along these lines.

[00:35:38]Uh and and all the fundamentalism in the Middle East is along these lines.

[00:35:42]Uh which promises to give you rest from a world that doesn't fit.

[00:35:46]Well, Tocqueville said you need religion in a democratic age but not that kind.

[00:35:49]Not a comprehensive doctrine. His view was that what you needed was a religion that allow you to live with the world that doesn't quite fit.

[00:35:58]Translate amidst the amidst the wheat and the tares.

[00:36:03]Okay? To the go to the parable of the wheat and the tares. And to live in hope and in faith that that there's a promise this all sounds very Protestant as you know that there's a promise that all this will make sense at the end time.

[00:36:15]So so Tocqueville's view of what a healthy religion is is not one that's a comprehensive way of life. It's not one that's enchanted. He thought Islam promised to do that which is why it could never fit in the modern world. So we have a younger generation on the right but I think the left has its version too. A younger generation on the right that's that that is so demoralized so disillusioned understands itself to be with without redeemable qualities according to the left that they're going all the way back and it just cannot work and I think part of the tragedy here Aaron is that this identity politics thing is not going to go away. Could be with us for 50 years. Uh Trump's force of personality may have muted it but it's going to come back with a vengeance.

[00:37:02]And precisely at the moment when those who oppose it I'll call them liberals in the old sense and and conservatives precisely at the moment when there needs to be a coherent response to this the right is fracturing and some portion of it and some very smart people in that portion are are choosing the path of enchantment and and so we're we're dissipating the force that we might have uh because these this group of people wants to re-enchant the world. We can't.

[00:37:31]All right, and that that's going to be spicy stuff and uh in in some of in some of these circles here. We'll let Jonathan finish and then I got to land the plane cuz I got I got I got stuff to do. I got stuff to do. in in in religion that will provide that.

[00:37:47]But uh and I'd also I don't know if that kind of answers that that question in terms of Yeah, just to What is it that religion gives us?

[00:37:53]>> The the language here is a little bit technical but the key is to say that you can operate you have the notion of ethics epistemology and ontology.

[00:38:01]And when you actually enter into a proper religion, there's a location where those three are not yet separated.

[00:38:07]There's the root from which the three are able to separate but still maintain connection. They have to they have to be consistent. They have to be able to function together.

[00:38:17]>> And and support each other. They actually are literally in a relationship and that relationship by the way is called love.

[00:38:23]And so Jonathan's point is there. It's not really about something like content.

[00:38:28]You know, it's about who is able to participate so fully with reality and with each other that we can respond to what is happening.

[00:38:39]That's the key, right? You it's a question of who do we become so that we can respond to what's befall befalling us. And I mean can I just point out, you know, what what caused you and Heather to begin to really show up quite brightly during COVID was who you were and how you showed up. Then finally what you said. And you didn't begin with you actually began with the wrong answers, right? You were in fact wrong.

[00:39:04]But you were the right kind of people in the right kind of relationship with each other and with reality that over time you began to work your way towards what was right. That's just how it is. That's just how reality works. And so if you can find a way to achieve me think something we had talked about I mean it may be a bit a bit abrupt but something we talked about breakfast yesterday was the problem I called it ideology. You call it a corrupt ideology. Like the notion that people often find themselves unduly attached to the frameworks that they use to think about reality.

[00:39:38]Often times if they invented them themselves, they're really unduly attached to them.

[00:39:43]But if you have a proper posture relationship to reality, one that prioritizes a willingness to sacrifice everything towards something that is higher, then you cannot be captured by the ideology. And therefore, when reality is coming at you as something where that ideology is not going to be fit to function, you can in fact respond to reality.

[00:40:04]That's the kind of thing that we're talking about. Okay, that's a great place. And that's a great That's a great You can [snorts] So, when I talked about the game of, you know, uh foundationalism, justifying things, arguments, first principles, that that whole game, Jordan just basically says, "Whoosh."

[00:40:25]No.

[00:40:26]What he just described is much more like how you actually got here.

[00:40:32]Because the fact that your life began um only being able to see as far as your mother, who hopefully was suckling you, her eyeballs to your eyeballs.

[00:40:47]That's where it begins. Well, actually begins in the womb, even before then.

[00:40:51]But that's where it begins, and it just grows out from there.

[00:40:55]And And so, you know, basically says, "Well, the the foundation of all of this is love." Now, the vast majority of you, when I say that, aren't even going to flinch.

[00:41:06]Because you've been so conditioned because Jesus has been colonizing the world for 2,000 years.

[00:41:14]And when he gets to the end of his earthly ministry, he looks at his disciples and says, "A new command I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you."

[00:41:27]And it's be like, "Well, wait a minute.

[00:41:28]What about What about interest rates?

[00:41:30]What about um hand washing? What about uh sexual ethics? What about What about What about What about" And the point that Jordan just made there is that it starts with love.

[00:41:44]And it goes out from there. And the point that he made to Bret was that COVID hit.

[00:41:51]What really helped Bret and Heather make their way through COVID were not the two PhDs that both of them held. Because they got all the first answers wrong, as they just said.

[00:42:06]What really helped them was their relationship with each other.

[00:42:10]And I've said many times that I'm not a I'm not a regular watcher of their channel, but I've seen enough of it. And in fact, the one time that I've met them in person, uh that was at the first Arc event in London.

[00:42:24]And, you know, I gosh, I got to finish this up.

[00:42:27]>> [sighs and gasps] >> You know, I would bump into that first Arc event. There's only 1,500 people there, and there's a bunch of people on YouTube there, a bunch of people around Jordan Peterson. And because I'm quite low status, um people would see me, and they would first, again, just psychologically, they'd first recognize me, and they'd look at me like they knew me. And then there is this next look on their face that once they once Oh, I know them. Oh, no, he's that He's that weird guy who makes these videos where he gets in and where he's, you know, he butts in where he hasn't been invited, and he and he shares his unfiltered comments on on our cherished little ideas. And but they were Heather and Bret were gracious because that's who they are.

[00:43:13]As Jonathan said yesterday, these are honest people. These are honest, good, loving people. That's who they are.

[00:43:19]Doesn't mean you necessarily have to agree with them over everything.

[00:43:22]No. But this this center that Jordan Hall just pointed to, that's who they are. They're honest, good, gracious people.

[00:43:31]And so then, oh yeah, you're the guy that makes videos about me.

[00:43:36]And of course, it was a room full of people, and there's no time, and people are passing through.

[00:43:40]And And so then, in cases like that, I usually know that I have I'll if I Besides just simple a simple greeting, which says a lot because you're saying, "We're friends here. We shake hands, all that. Everything's safe here. Everything's fine. Nobody's going to attack each other." Then there then I usually think about what's the one message I want to give them.

[00:44:02]And I I believe what I told them, they probably don't even remember it any of this.

[00:44:07]Is the best thing about what you two are doing is how you two are doing it together.

[00:44:15]Exactly the point that Jordan Hall just made.

[00:44:18]Now, I would argue that it's Jesus Christ that brought this point into the world.

[00:44:24]And well, in Christianity, the redeeming God is also the creator God. So, that point was already seeded in the world. So, it doesn't mean that you can only know that point through Jesus, even though that point has been excessively popularized through Jesus up until now Now, to the point that people who don't believe in any of the the idea thinky-talky Christian stuff will say with the Beatles, all you need is love.

[00:44:55]Because the reason that we recognize it as being true is that we bump into it all over the place. We bumped into [clears throat] it. If you had a good mother, you bumped into it through your mother, and then through your father, and then through your siblings, and then through your grandparents, and then through your friends, and then through and then through And then you go to a church, and you discover it there, too, and you just keep bumping into it.

[00:45:15]And that's the map of And so then, you get accustomed to believing that the way the best way to go through this world is by loving my neighbor all the way up to and including my enemy. And at that point, people will begin to say, "Yeah, but I don't know."

[00:45:32]Because enemies kill you.

[00:45:36]But I got to stop.

[00:45:37]But I made a video.

[00:45:39]I'm happy I made a video. Leave a comment. Let me know what you think.