Is God More Than a Story? Jonathan Pageau with Jordan Hall on DarkHorse

0:00 Hey folks, welcome to the DarkHorse podcast Inside Rail.

0:04 I am sitting today with Jordan Hall and Jonathan Pageau.

0:08 Jonathan Pageau is a returning guest to DarkHorse.

0:12 Many of you will remember an episode in which we had a far

0:16 ranging conversation that the audience felt you and I were talking past each

0:20 other and there was further thought that Jordan might be exactly the right

0:25 person to translate between us as someone

0:27 who understands both our languages well.

0:30 I don't think that's going to be necessary because

0:32 we've been together for several days hashing out these issues.

0:36 We've learned each other's language enough that I

0:38 think we can have a productive conversation.

0:41 For those of you who don't know, Jonathan,

0:43 I think he would not necessarily cotton to the term,

0:46 but I would say he is a religious scholar.

0:49 Is that an acceptable term?

0:51 Is that an acceptable term?

0:53 All right.

0:54 In my book, he's a religious scholar.

0:56 He specializes in Christendom, but is broadly educated.

1:00 And Jordan is a little hard to pin down.

1:02 Jordan is one of the broadest thinkers I know.

1:06 He and I have been good friends.

1:07 We've known each other since about 2008 or nine.

1:11 And he is capable of bringing clarity on a wide range of issues.

1:19 So without further ado, Jordan and Jonathan,

1:21 let me just say, welcome to DarkHorse.

1:24 Yeah, thanks for having us.

1:25 Thank you.

1:26 Well, this is exciting.

1:29 I will say I have some trepidation.

1:31 I know from our conversations over the last several

1:36 days that this discussion is going to, I believe,

1:41 frustrate just about everybody who watches it on one level or another,

1:45 because what we're trying to do is prototype an interaction between schools

1:51 of thought that are in some ways more compatible than they initially seem,

1:56 but that run afoul of each other in important places.

2:00 And so if you're in the audience, I would just say, bear with us.

2:04 The conversation that we're having is one that I

2:07 think we each believe needs to be had more broadly.

2:10 And this is an attempt to figure out what

2:13 that might sound like and how we might do it productively.

2:18 The topic really is about this moment in history when we find that there are

2:27 different ways of viewing the world

2:30 and our obligation to it that are in conflict.

2:35 And those conflicts are looking increasingly dangerous,

2:39 forcing us to try to reconcile those perspectives rather than

2:44 just agree to disagree at some sort of global scale.

2:47 So I obviously am an evolutionary biologist.

2:50 I would say, as I've said many times before,

2:53 I am perfectly open to the possibility

2:55 that there is something that I would call supernatural,

2:58 but I have yet to see evidence that would compel me in that direction.

3:03 And rigor requires me to await such evidence.

3:08 And you are orthodox and therefore coming

3:14 at deep epistemological questions with great rigor,

3:18 but also from a place of faith.

3:21 And Jordan, I would say, tell me if I have it wrong.

3:25 But you come from a school of thought that is

3:28 much closer to one that would be native to me,

3:30 sort of a scientific materialist worldview,

3:32 but of late have become persuaded that that is not,

3:36 in fact, the highest logical position to come from.

3:42 You become convinced that there is something outside of what we materialists

3:47 recognize as the sum total of forces that allow the universe to function.

3:53 Is that fair?

3:54 Yeah, that's very fair.

3:55 All right.

3:56 So I'm not sure exactly where to begin, but let me ask you, Jonathan,

4:00 can you tell me how it is that somebody who is obviously

4:05 deeply intellectual and compelled to be

4:10 rigorous about your understanding of the universe,

4:14 how does that coexist with faith for you?

4:20 I mean, I think that one of the things that I realized when

4:24 I was younger at some point is that science was a very powerful tool.

4:28 And it had, you know,

4:29 that's why it's all so convincing is because it can predict phenomena,

4:33 it can quantify, it can, you know, it can do it very rigorously.

4:38 And it can also predict very faithfully certain things.

4:42 And and so it's very convincing, but there's something, what I call verticality,

4:46 that is, there's, it doesn't provide meaning in in its own method.

4:52 That is that there, there is something around it, you could call it a story,

4:58 you could call it a hierarchy of virtues

5:00 or hierarchy of priorities that precedes the scientific method.

5:05 And so when the scientist is doing the thing,

5:07 he's not concerned with that, but then

5:09 it ultimately is integrated into that, that hierarchy,

5:12 the way it's applied, or the way that it's, it's, it's, it's seen.

5:15 And so, to me, what happens is that if you remain in this horizontal world,

5:19 there's something that's missing, you don't know how to orient yourself,

5:22 you, there's no, there's no hierarchy of values.

5:27 And, and to me, that is the most important,

5:29 that's the priority is that everything has to start with that hierarchy.

5:34 And so to me, it became inevitable to realize

5:37 that there is a, that that first of all, that exists, and where can we find it?

5:42 And how does it work in terms of human, in terms of human societies,

5:46 how do human societies bind together into a vertical, right?

5:49 So what binds us together, what binds us together as people?

5:54 And ultimately, I came to the conclusion that it is something like worship,

5:58 that it's something that attention towards something that transcends you,

6:01 that this happens at every level.

6:04 So, you know, as a nation,

6:05 you have to be able to attend to the thing that binds you,

6:07 which is your nation as a family,

6:09 you have to be able to do that in a marriage, you have to do that.

6:12 But that ultimately, I see that that's how stuff works.

6:16 And so God becomes the radical

6:18 of that becomes the one that holds everything together.

6:23 So let me just say, one of the things that we've been doing that I suspect

6:27 is going to frustrate people is when I

6:30 hear you or really anyone of faith speaking,

6:34 I am tracking whether or not my materialist

6:39 worldview can be mapped on to what you're saying.

6:42 And there's a very large space in which it's not even difficult to do.

6:47 And then there's a point at which it becomes impossible.

6:50 And or at least for me, it is so far impossible.

6:54 And that ends up being the sticking point.

6:59 From the point of view of your your claim that there is something missing,

7:04 I would agree, I don't, science is not a sufficient worldview,

7:09 because it does lack inherent values.

7:13 And there are obviously people who would

7:14 disagree with that, Sam Harris, for example,

7:17 would claim that you can work bottom up from the facts of the universe,

7:23 to a description of how it is that we are to live.

7:28 I think it's absurd.

7:29 I think, frankly, you know,

7:30 one of the things that Sam says is that we can all agree that suffering is bad,

7:35 and therefore we should work to minimize

7:36 it and that that's deducible from the facts.

7:40 I don't think it is because for one thing,

7:42 and you know, you might map this onto the AI discussion,

7:46 if you decide that it's all of our obligation to minimize suffering,

7:50 there is an obvious way to do it.

7:52 And it is absolutely the opposite of what we should do,

7:55 you could end things that suffer and stop suffering.

7:58 So, you know, if you if you become possessed

8:01 of the idea that everything is reducible to the science,

8:04 you end up in absurd paradoxes and there's no reason for it.

8:08 Yeah.

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10:42 Yeah, there are people that actually have that position, that in fact,

10:45 humanity, that living things should cease to ultimately cease to exist,

10:49 or that we should minimize their existence so

10:51 that we actually remove suffering from the universe.

10:55 And so that's it.

10:56 That's it.

10:56 People actually believe that.

10:57 There are some people that believe that.

10:58 There are some people who believe that, and we need to make

11:00 sure that they never gain power

11:02 because they're liable to do something terrifying.

11:07 All right, Jordan, do you want to explain how it

11:11 is that somebody who is as deeply insightful and capable

11:16 in the realm of science and logic finds yourself in a place

11:22 where faith is now playing a dominant role in your life?

11:28 Briefly, I assume.

11:31 This is not an easy question.

11:32 Yeah, all right.

11:32 Let's try it briefly first.

11:35 Maybe a way of thinking about it is one of the phrases that came up

11:38 in our conversation was that it's an error

11:42 to imagine that science and, I'll just say religion,

11:47 are competing for the same domain.

11:51 It is proper, and the old-fashioned phrase was

11:55 that theology is the queen of the sciences.

12:00 And the key thing here is to recognize that in relationship to, say,

12:05 a knight, a queen is not like a bigger, stronger knight.

12:09 The queen is one who stands next to, in fact,

12:12 in some sense, particularly above the knight,

12:14 but provides the knight with the context that orients the knight towards why

12:19 the knight is doing what the knight is doing and how to do it properly.

12:23 Once you recognize that, then you recognize

12:25 that both of these domains are not just compatible,

12:28 but if they are separated, catastrophic, and that when they cross the streams,

12:34 and when theology tries to do science, this creates all kinds of weird errors

12:39 that are sometimes profoundly bad for theology because

12:42 they're so absurd and so easy to undermine

12:45 that then you lose track of this altogether.

12:49 The same thing happens, of course, when science tries to do theology.

12:53 So the challenge is to figure out how to actually allow each to hold

12:56 this proper role and then bringing them

12:58 into their proper relationship so that we can, in fact, actually live.

13:03 I think we should just kind of hit that point.

13:06 In some profound sense, the beginning and the end of science is

13:11 about understanding how to say true things about reality.

13:15 That's what we're trying to do.

13:16 We're trying to perceive reality clearly,

13:18 trying to perceive reality with each other clearly.

13:21 That's an important piece.

13:22 And then be able to actually articulate that honestly,

13:25 but truthfully, saying true things about reality.

13:28 Whereas in a profound sense, religion is about how to live in reality.

13:34 Well, like to live wholesome, vital, thriving, fruitful lives.

13:39 Now you can see how obviously these fit together.

13:41 If you cannot understand reality well, or you lie about it constantly,

13:45 note to our culture, then your life is going to begin to degrade.

13:50 Equally, your ability to do these kinds of things begins to degrade when,

13:54 for example, the underlying ethos of honesty is not possible.

13:59 The value of truth cannot come from science itself.

14:01 It has to come from something that precedes it and then is

14:04 injected into the attitude that you bring to what it is you're doing.

14:08 And we've seen, it seems to me,

14:09 we've actually seen even the scientific method break down

14:13 in the scientific world because people have lost the honesty.

14:18 A lot of the insane things that have come around,

14:20 gender and all of this nonsense,

14:22 has been due to the fact that the people that are engaged in science

14:25 don't have the value necessary to do

14:28 science properly and therefore have actually distorted science.

14:31 Right.

14:32 And we can say, there's an ordinary stack

14:35 that is well known to old fashioned honest people,

14:39 which is a character, a thing called character.

14:42 And then you've got things like values.

14:44 Character would be to have lived in such a way

14:47 that the values that are yours at the very least,

14:50 and ideally values that aren't good,

14:51 have become the way that you show up in life regularly

14:55 under whatever context you find yourself

14:57 in, particularly when you're under duress.

14:59 We've seen circumstances in the past where people who otherwise were showing up

15:04 with say earnest integrity for sometimes quite

15:07 bewildering reasons began to be full of shit.

15:11 And that's a lack of character.

15:12 So if you've got character,

15:13 you have something that people can count on and they can relate to.

15:16 And then above that is something like good faith.

15:19 And notice the word faith is in there, right?

15:21 In actual capacity to choose to be in relationship

15:24 with reality and with other people on the basis

15:27 of what is good and true without a particular

15:30 need or desire on your part to be saying right,

15:33 or to have your version of things be dominant,

15:35 but rather ultimately with a willingness to sacrifice yourself in the service

15:40 of something that is higher than your particular ego or model or mind.

15:46 And the basic point is something like for sure,

15:49 if we cannot show up with good character and good faith,

15:52 then the entire institutional fabric of science is utterly corrupted

15:57 and can do nothing but become a form of ideology,

16:00 which then becomes a form of a bludgeon.

16:03 And the flip side is also true.

16:05 I mean, if you can actually cultivate people who have good character

16:09 and who can hold to the responsibility

16:14 of truth with integrity, then magic happens.

16:20 Then we actually find things, rich, powerful, deep, insightful things.

16:23 And we all learn from that.

16:24 And you hinted at this, but I think it's critical

16:26 to say that while what I'm saying is sort of obviously true,

16:30 it is simultaneously, obviously,

16:32 decreasingly present in the world in which we live and obviously

16:36 increasingly necessary lest the world in fact actually fly apart.

16:41 I just want to say one last thing regarding to setting up.

16:44 Sure.

16:44 Is that we saw an example of this.

16:46 It was a very particular example in COVID.

16:48 If you remember the follow the science idea and there was something,

16:52 there's very pernicious.

16:54 Red actually does not remember that.

16:56 I was traumatized by that.

16:59 I remember you're rather vivid.

17:00 And so the way that was happening is that what

17:03 actually needed to happen was a discussion about priorities and values,

17:07 which is that we have things that we find important and we have

17:10 to balance the different things we do based on the different priorities we have.

17:14 That discussion was never taken.

17:17 They took this medical layer of reality and they

17:21 limited everything to that layer and they tried to say,

17:23 well, this is what the science says.

17:25 If you don't want to get sick, these are all the things you need to do.

17:28 We're going to limit it to that world and we're going to follow the science.

17:31 And it was ridiculous because it was the most

17:35 superficial type of follow the science that you could find.

17:38 Because if we actually had a true discussion between the hierarchy of values

17:43 and then what science can help us do in that hierarchy of values,

17:47 then we could have formulated a much better response

17:49 that would have respected our need to be together, for families to be together,

17:52 for children to have friends, all of these things that we totally ignored

17:56 and just focused on this chemical medical layer.

18:01 Well, we could have actually gotten

18:02 to something like truth about the chemical middle.

18:05 Right.

18:05 Yeah, exactly.

18:06 Well, that's what I wanted to say.

18:07 It was ridiculous twice over because on the one hand it was

18:13 the discussion of the so-called science without the discussion of the values.

18:18 But the science wasn't science at all.

18:22 It was the product of a cult, a cult that we had no ability to check

18:27 in on and figure out how they'd come to anything.

18:31 So, for example, the fact that we were locked down,

18:35 that the beaches were closed, that the trails were closed,

18:38 that the sand was poured into the skate parks was ludicrous in light

18:43 of the fact that the science actually

18:46 did say that the virus didn't transmit outdoors.

18:50 And that is one of a dozen examples I could

18:53 give you where what we did wasn't reasonable with respect

18:56 to the values or with respect to the actual

18:59 attempt to deal with the virus as a physical phenomenon.

19:02 Yeah, this has been true in terms of scientism,

19:04 like this weird aspect of scientific

19:07 thinking that tries to take over everything,

19:09 is that often what happens is that people say,

19:13 "Look just at the science," but there's

19:15 actually a secret value that is behind it.

19:18 And so when you say something like, "Oh, look at the science.

19:20 We can create pills that will prevent women from getting pregnant.

19:24 And look at the science.

19:25 Here's what the science does.

19:26 We're going to do this.

19:27 We're going to get into the world." But there's actually

19:29 a value that is making you do that behind it.

19:31 And you can just pretend that it's not there and just say,

19:34 "Well, this is a medical thing.

19:37 It's a purely medical scientific thing." And you can in some

19:40 ways obfuscate with the values that are motivating the action really are.

19:45 Same with AI.

19:45 We see the same problem with AI.

19:46 Which is like, we're not asking what is the reason why we're doing this.

19:49 We're just like, "No, we can do this.

19:51 Here's the science.

19:51 Here's the math.

19:52 We can do it." And we just push, but there's something else behind it.

19:55 Well, there's a lost leader, obviously.

19:57 Yeah.

19:58 Anybody who has compared an AI search to a Google search

20:02 understands that there is tremendous power to do wonderful things with this.

20:06 You can answer questions that you can't answer with Google,

20:08 or at least not without spending a week

20:11 sorting through a bunch of haphazard results.

20:14 On the other hand, AI is a profound intervention in a complex system,

20:19 which is guaranteed to produce unintended consequences about

20:22 which we have not had a proper discussion.

20:24 We've had ghost stories about what might happen,

20:27 but nobody is managing the fact that we are guaranteeing

20:31 chaos of a kind we are not prepared to address.

20:35 And we don't even have a shared framework about those values

20:38 that should govern our reaction to the consequences of this.

20:42 We're just running an uncontrolled experiment.

20:45 And it's not a rational thing to do.

20:49 It's just the march of technology and what is our de facto shared religion,

20:54 which is that anything that makes us more powerful is inherently good.

21:00 It's demonstrably false.

21:02 Right.

21:02 Because you said de facto, and this is important.

21:06 You're going to have a religion.

21:09 If the word shared is anywhere in there, there's a religion involved.

21:14 And it's going to be de facto if it is not te jure.

21:17 But if you've not actually endeavored to enter into it

21:19 with sort of rigor and depth and earnestness and investigation,

21:23 practice and tradition, then it's going to be something that is imported,

21:28 rough, and usually quite toxic.

21:32 Because we'll have to be dealing with how does it win in the local

21:35 regime of whatever kind of mimetic warfare domain it finds itself in.

21:40 And that's a terrible way to select your religion.

21:42 Well, I want to I want to this is one of these places

21:45 that in order to have a proper

21:46 discussion between people who have educated themselves separately,

21:50 in order to do high quality work,

21:53 anybody who does that ends up having to redefine terms

21:57 and make up other terms in order to do the work well,

22:00 because the natural consequence of, you know,

22:03 millions of people speaking a language is

22:05 that the terms become very dull and broad,

22:07 and that you can't do rigorous work with them.

22:09 So I always point out to people who are trying to do rigorous work,

22:14 you've redefined things, and you forgot that you did it.

22:17 And then when you talk to people, you do tend to talk past them.

22:21 So anyway, I would say, it's not inevitable that you will have a religion.

22:25 It is inevitable that something will play that role in your life.

22:30 But in my terminology, you cannot start a religion, you start a cult.

22:37 And if it is high quality, selection shapes it into a religion over time.

22:42 But there's lots of garbage cult.

22:44 And what is going on in the space of science right now is a garbage cult, right?

22:49 It is not viable in any regard.

22:52 And what happened is people embraced it because it's clearly very powerful,

22:56 but power is not the only ingredient that you need in order

22:59 to have a proper tradition that fits in that space of religion.

23:04 In fact, the only things that we can

23:05 be sure have that capability are ancient religions.

23:11 And how do we know they have that capability

23:12 because they have stood the test of time.

23:15 So the bitter pill that comes with that is

23:19 having stood the test of time against past challenges

23:21 is not a guarantee that they have the goods

23:26 to address current challenges that nobody has seen before.

23:29 And I'm afraid as much as I feel like it's my job as an evolutionist

23:34 to point out actually the religious folks are

23:36 trying to tell you something of profound importance.

23:40 I also feel like I have to say to the religious folks,

23:42 there's timeless wisdom in what you're saying.

23:46 And then there is a zone in which there isn't any timeless wisdom.

23:50 And it is necessary that we find it because

23:52 the problems that we are facing are now simply novel.

23:59 And the degree to which the solutions that we have are there,

24:02 they're just incomplete.

24:04 But I think that the basics of what Christianity offers,

24:07 which is on the one hand an orientation,

24:10 if you think about it that way, which is on the one hand saying,

24:13 no, not me, but that which transcends me,

24:15 that God is the judge of me and not me the judge of everything else,

24:21 that's already an orientation.

24:23 Then that lays itself out in terms of the virtues.

24:26 What is it that happens in me?

24:28 How do I know that I am aligned with God?

24:30 I have the fruits of the spirit.

24:31 I'm more love.

24:33 I'm more patient.

24:34 I have all of these characteristics.

24:37 Now, when you say that religion doesn't offer the solution,

24:40 I think that the orientation is the first solution.

24:45 That is that if we have the proper orientation,

24:46 we believe that truth is a good in itself, right?

24:50 That duty is something that's real that we can participate in.

24:53 That love is the virtue that binds us together.

24:56 All of these things will prepare us and will give us the right

25:00 orientation to be able to manage the whatever problem comes at us.

25:04 But we kind of need that orientation first without it.

25:08 Obviously, there's no text in religion that deals with very,

25:13 very specific technical problems that we could face in terms

25:16 of how to scale a society in different ways.

25:19 There are orientations in religion that will provide that.

25:24 I don't know if that answers that question

25:26 in terms of what is it that religion gives us?

25:29 The language here is a little bit technical,

25:31 but the key is to say that you can operate.

25:34 You have the notion of ethics, epistemology, and ontology.

25:38 When you actually enter into a proper religion,

25:40 there's a location where those three are not yet separated.

25:44 That is the route from which the three

25:45 are able to separate but still maintain connection.

25:49 They have to be consistent.

25:51 They have to be able to function together.

25:54 Support each other.

25:55 They actually are literally in a relationship,

25:57 and that relationship, by the way, is called love.

26:00 Jonathan's point is there.

26:01 It's not really about something like content.

26:05 It's about who is able to participate so fully with reality

26:10 and with each other that we can respond to what is happening.

26:15 That's the key.

26:16 It's a question of who do we become

26:18 so that we can respond to what's befalling us.

26:22 I'll make it just point out,

26:24 what caused you and Heather to begin to really show up quite

26:28 brightly during COVID was who you were and how you showed up.

26:34 Then finally, what you said.

26:36 You didn't begin with...

26:37 You actually began with the wrong answers.

26:38 You were, in fact, wrong, but you were the right kind of people

26:42 in the right kind of relationship with each

26:44 other and with reality that over time you

26:46 began to work your way towards what was right.

26:49 That's just how it is.

26:50 That's just how reality works.

26:52 If you can find a way to achieve, let me think, something we had talked about,

26:57 maybe a bit abrupt, but something we talked about,

26:59 I think breakfast yesterday, was the problem of...

27:04 I called it ideology.

27:05 You call it corrupt ideology.

27:07 The notion that people often find themselves unduly attached

27:11 to the frameworks that they use to think about reality.

27:15 Oftentimes, if they invented them themselves,

27:17 they're really unduly attached to them.

27:19 But if you have a proper posture of relationship to reality,

27:22 one that prioritizes a willingness to sacrifice

27:25 everything towards something that is higher,

27:28 then you can not be captured by the ideology.

27:32 Therefore, when reality is coming at you as something where

27:35 that ideology is not going to be fit to function,

27:37 you can, in fact, respond to reality.

27:40 That's the kind of thing that we're talking about.

27:42 Let me put some flesh on these bones.

27:46 I would say there are various versions of this conversation,

27:50 and they have arbitrary levels of difficulty.

27:54 The easy one is whatever the nature of an ancient religious tradition is,

28:02 we can be agnostic about whether or not it

28:05 is divine and somehow outside of the universe that we

28:08 have easy access to, or whether it is fully

28:11 the consequence of emergent properties in a material world.

28:17 Whichever that is, one of the functions that religion serves best,

28:21 and in fact, maybe uniquely or almost uniquely,

28:27 is solving deep game theory problems.

28:32 So primary among them is the collection

28:34 of what are called collective action problems,

28:37 where each individual following their own incentives causes the sum

28:43 total of the behaviors to reach a suboptimal outcome.

28:49 So the tragedy of the commons is such a puzzle.

28:52 Prisoner's dilemma is such a puzzle.

28:54 But there are many such things where we can say together we would like

28:59 to leave the world in as good a condition as we found it or better.

29:04 But the problem is each individual is in a position

29:08 to enhance their own well-being at an expense to the world.

29:15 And if they are morally required to restrain

29:17 themselves from that, they do not preserve the world.

29:20 What they do is they enable their competitors to succeed.

29:23 And so we are constantly running up against

29:26 the destruction of the world because of the game theory,

29:29 not because we don't understand that we shouldn't destroy it or that we

29:32 can't say it would be great if nobody acted to destroy it,

29:35 but because it is pointless to hurt yourself in an effort to do

29:39 something that you yourself have no impact on whether it gets done.

29:43 So I hope that wasn't too complex.

29:44 But the point is, if you have a religion,

29:48 whether there is an actual God who is looking over us,

29:52 or that is simply an agreement of how we are to behave as if there is a God,

29:57 you can say, well, it is not my right to do this thing that destroys the world.

30:03 And to me, in my own framework,

30:05 there is a profound consequence if I violate my obligation,

30:09 therefore I will not violate my obligation.

30:11 And as long as everyone is in on that same agreement, it actually works.

30:15 So you can solve the game theory problem.

30:17 The world doesn't get destroyed.

30:20 Problem is everybody has to be in on that agreement.

30:23 And if you have a world in which you have a bunch

30:25 of people of faith who are resisting the pull of the game theory,

30:29 and you have a bunch of secular folks who don't think it means anything,

30:33 then the secular people have a very

30:36 temporary advantage and everybody pays the cost.

30:40 Right?

30:41 So one of the reasons that I think we have to have

30:44 this conversation is that that is now happening at every scale.

30:47 Not only do we have a world in which

30:49 secularism is causing all of the game theory to force

30:53 the entire world to face the penalties of the liquidation

30:58 of the well-being that is at our disposal,

31:00 but we also have a conflict even between religious traditions.

31:05 And so there must be, I think, an overarching structure that includes the values

31:11 that we should all agree on, that everyone,

31:15 whatever continent you live on, should agree the world is not ours to destroy.

31:20 We are stewards of it.

31:21 But we don't have that superstructure.

31:24 And as a result, the game theory is haunting us in a way because

31:28 of our technology that it wouldn't have 300 years ago or a thousand years ago.

31:35 So that's a long-winded way of saying this conversation is

31:39 a prototype for how do we take a secular materialist, be Christians,

31:46 Muslims, Jews, Hindus, how do we have a conversation in which we say,

31:52 well, what do all of these traditions agree on?

31:55 What do they not yet agree on?

31:56 What does this tradition have to learn from that tradition?

31:59 How does that conversation happen?

32:03 Well, I think that in some ways I want to bring it back to, I'm a Christian,

32:09 and I do believe that Christianity offers,

32:13 because of the notion of love, I think, is the deepest metaphysical principle.

32:19 This notion also that reality is grounded in self-sacrifice,

32:22 I think, is ultimately the solution to this problem.

32:26 But I do think that this is something that honestly,

32:28 the only way that we can get to it is for Christians to live it out.

32:33 It's difficult to, you know, I think that one of the reasons why we're here

32:38 is because Christians have dropped the ball to some extent,

32:41 that we've dropped the ball, that we've dropped the ball,

32:43 that we have not been proper images of what Christ has taught in the world,

32:48 and therefore we have a faded, you know,

32:50 kind of thin version of that in reality.

32:54 And so obviously we should have the conversation,

32:56 but that conversation should be done by people who are shining examples,

33:01 you know, and that's why it's so much,

33:03 you know, we kind of need saints, we need people that exemplify it,

33:06 you know, and the truth is that if you look at, you know,

33:10 how, let's say, in the early centuries,

33:12 how people were converted to Christianity,

33:15 which mostly because of that, they saw the Christians, you know,

33:19 adopting their abandoned children,

33:20 they saw the Christians caring for the people that were suffering,

33:23 and they were like, "Well, what is this thing?

33:25 There's something in me that's telling me that there's,

33:27 that's not my virtue structure,

33:29 but there's something telling me that there's something more going on here,

33:32 I don't know what it is, and that's what kind of led them to seeing that.

33:37 I don't know, Jordan,

33:37 it's kind of a, it's a, it's a frustrating answer because it's

33:40 kind of saying we have to live up to what we believe.

33:44 Well, let's see, let's throw,

33:45 I'm gonna work backwards to give myself time to get to the big ones as the end.

33:50 So one example that comes to the foreground as you were speaking is,

33:55 I think around 200, maybe late 100s,

33:58 there was a purge happening among Christians in southern France,

34:02 and the Roman governor was being particularly vicious,

34:06 and one of his peers was sort of defending the Christians,

34:10 and the Roman governor just sort of turned him and said, you know,

34:14 "Gaius, I would mistake you to be a Christian," and he goes,

34:17 "But I am a Christian," at which point he was torn,

34:19 you know, he was immediately tortured and killed,

34:21 but the point was the people who were watching that said, "Wow,

34:24 this guy was willing to live to the Roman virtue of telling the truth,

34:30 more powerful than the Romans would." Like

34:31 a Roman at that point would have been like,

34:33 "Yeah, no, I mean, no, I'm just being very, you know,

34:36 judicious," but the point was he was so committed to the values

34:39 that he was willing to step directly in, and he wasn't mistaken.

34:42 He knew he was going to get killed when he said it,

34:43 but he chose to stick to the thing that was right rather than preserve his life.

34:48 Well, let me just point out why

34:50 that mirrors exactly what I'm saying about game theory.

34:54 If you, again, I have to be agnostic on this point

34:59 in order for the whole audience to get it.

35:01 It doesn't matter whether the story is literally accurate,

35:07 or whether the story is simply a metaphor that we take to be accurate,

35:12 but if you have a belief that there is

35:15 an infinite reward that comes from behaving according to your values,

35:21 even when the cost of doing so is not only absolute,

35:24 the cost of your life, but the cost of dying horribly this instant.

35:29 If you believe that there's something big enough to warrant

35:32 that, then the point is you don't defect from those values,

35:35 even when the game theory is blinking red at you, "Hey,

35:39 do the other thing." So a world of people who share

35:43 the same agreement with respect to how we fix the collective action problems

35:48 is a much better world than one in which we all get

35:52 to figure out our own relationship to that game theory and, in fact,

35:56 give advantage to those who are least prone to self-sacrifice.

36:03 But the question is, where is this better that you mentioned?

36:07 If it's simply a metaphor that it doesn't have a truth in its own right,

36:13 where does the better come from?

36:15 Where does the perception that this is better?

36:19 Because maybe the best thing to do is to run through the game theory

36:22 thing and just kill your enemies

36:24 and your descendants will be the ones that survive,

36:27 even if it's just you in the end.

36:30 I want to give you what I think is the right analytical answer

36:33 to that, and I know it is unsatisfying and I think I know why it is,

36:37 and I know it doesn't land, but maybe we'll get there.

36:40 But human beings are a...

36:44 we are a creature.

36:47 I believe it is secure that that creature

36:50 is the product of an evolutionary process.

36:52 We can debate the fine details

36:54 of that, but I think I can defend that successfully.

36:57 But the consequence of it is that we are structured to be effective.

37:03 We are not structured to be accurate.

37:06 Now sometimes being accurate is the way to be effective,

37:10 and that's why we have the capability of being accurate.

37:13 But the higher purpose as built by evolution is

37:18 to do the thing that achieves the evolutionary objective.

37:23 And the consequence of this is that we individuals are

37:28 persuaded of our own significance in a way that's ridiculous,

37:34 even evolutionarily.

37:35 You could not possibly affect the fraction

37:40 of the next generation that contains your genes,

37:44 no matter how carefully you follow that as your North

37:48 Star every hour of every day of your life.

37:50 It just...

37:51 it's a big population.

37:53 You're not going to have an impact on it.

37:55 But the reason that you behave in such a way

37:58 so as to try to increase the number of your genes

38:02 in the next generation is because that is the limit

38:05 of your ability to affect the world in general.

38:08 Historically it has been, right?

38:10 So it might be, you know,

38:12 a person who has 10 times the average number of children in their lifetime,

38:17 but where each of the lineages that they

38:20 have sparked goes extinct 500 years later, their fitness is zero.

38:25 During their life it seems like their fitness is very high.

38:27 So you can behave in a way that seems evolutionarily wise,

38:31 but if it is self-terminating it is the opposite.

38:36 So my point is our sense of our self and our importance

38:40 in all of this is built in for practical reasons because our likelihood

38:45 of affecting things distantly in the future or far away in space is

38:50 pretty low and our ability to affect things here and now is pretty high.

38:54 So we are over-focused on here and now.

38:57 And so anyway, my point is a religious framework can actually correct the...

39:06 it's like glasses on a person with eyes that are misformed, right?

39:10 It corrects the vision so that you don't lose

39:13 track of your role in the deeper evolutionary objective,

39:17 which is, "Hey, let's do everything we can not to go extinct." So let me...

39:22 I'll use my definition of ideology

39:25 and distinguish it from my definition of religion.

39:28 So we just have to do the disambiguation quickly.

39:33 So the idea is that an ideology in the way that I'll describe it has

39:37 to do with representations of reality that are

39:43 taken to be reality adequately to guide human behavior.

39:49 In religion, maybe use of frameworks, but the key...

39:52 and again, this is why we're understanding it...

39:54 is that reality is reality.

39:57 And so science, when it does its job right,

39:59 as you said, there's map and territory.

40:02 There really is a territory, very important.

40:05 And the maps can help us, and we're trying to get better and better maps,

40:09 but we know that the territory is the actual sovereign in this thing.

40:13 Because you just described something in the framework of evolution.

40:16 When I was listening to what you were saying was something like,

40:19 there's an underlying reality to how the evolutionary dynamic operates.

40:23 And if you can perceive that reality more fully,

40:26 you will recognize that short-term optimization that seems really

40:30 satisfying in the short-term is actually mid and long-term idiotic.

40:34 And therefore, we'll select a different short-term choice

40:37 because it actually is a better choice in reality.

40:40 And the fact that there's a reality is the key driver.

40:43 What I would say is that religion properly is

40:45 like glasses that allow you to see reality more clearly,

40:49 and therefore to make better choices.

40:51 And that's what it's supposed to do.

40:54 And this is going back to that notion of disposition,

40:56 character that we can say that being

40:59 able to have certain qualities of relationship,

41:03 certain qualities of relationship with reality,

41:06 certain qualities of relationship with other people is

41:08 a lens that allows you to see reality more clearly.

41:13 Now there's the next piece, which is also discipline.

41:17 Religion also includes saying, hey,

41:19 you need to not just be able to believe something in a certain cognitive way,

41:24 but to recognize that the word belief,

41:26 the Greek word that would be in our shared tradition is pistis,

41:29 is actually most fully understood in the way that you are living it in life.

41:34 And to believe something is literally to embody it in reality.

41:38 And so if you believe in, let's pick a really nice virtue,

41:43 one of the experiences is that you believe in hospitality,

41:45 but you treat your guests rudely.

41:48 I know what your real belief is.

41:50 Yeah, that's pretty obvious.

41:51 So the idea is that religion properly is a thing

41:54 that allows us to simultaneously participate by virtue of discipline

41:59 and a living belief that gives us more clarity in the nature

42:03 of reality and more capacity to relate to other people.

42:06 So that collectively we can simultaneously achieve more clarity,

42:10 the nature of reality and achieve more discipline

42:12 in our ability to live that in reality.

42:16 Can you remind me who the character is that you just

42:21 described who surrendered his life by confessing that he was a Christian?

42:25 I cannot.

42:26 It's in your CBS.

42:28 Over the last several days,

42:30 we've had several of these stories that have come up in our conversation.

42:33 And I want to point out that this is a case

42:35 where you've got some version of a corrective lens that takes

42:40 an individual person and causes them to behave in a way

42:45 that actually does have the long-term net best effect on their fitness.

42:51 And I just want to map this onto that story because whoever

42:55 this character was or any of the other characters that tell this story,

43:00 you had a particular favorite that you were mentioning, uh, gentlemen, Polycar.

43:05 Polycar.

43:06 Polycar, my boy.

43:07 Right.

43:07 So this is another person who, um,

43:10 refused to tell a small lie about his own belief at the expense of his torture

43:19 and death that he knew would come from just

43:22 simply not being willing to say something false.

43:26 On the other hand, we're talking about people whose

43:31 names we are still referencing thousands of years later.

43:35 So in fact, the terrible price that these people have paid actually does

43:40 have an impact on the wellbeing of the lineage to which they belonged.

43:46 They had the capacity to have an impact thousands of years down the line.

43:51 And so that corrective lens is actually demonstrably potent.

43:56 And the fact that the religion to which they belong

44:00 is actually the most populous religion on earth tells us something.

44:04 There's something about this tradition that actually does aim at the long-term

44:09 in a way that I would argue

44:12 is highly consistent with the best evolutionary objective.

44:18 One of the things that it just popped in my mind as you

44:21 were talking about that is that the way in which you are able,

44:24 because you talked about how you need

44:26 to be able to sacrifice your proximal desires,

44:28 you could say, to some extent in order

44:31 to be able to push yourself forward in more time.

44:37 And in space or like in relationships between people,

44:40 this is what groups to some extent are for.

44:43 That is the groups in general.

44:45 Right.

44:46 And so if you have allegiance to a group,

44:49 you are already having to sacrifice some of your proximal

44:54 goals in order to be able to serve that reality.

44:58 And so this is already a little aspect of transcendence, right?

45:03 So you have something that is beyond us.

45:05 It binds us together.

45:06 And this is related to what religion is.

45:08 It binds us together.

45:09 And we all recognize we have something in common, some value in some ancestor,

45:13 even if it's just an ancestor,

45:15 there's something beyond my individual that binds us together.

45:18 And I have to sacrifice some of my proximal goals

45:22 in order to benefit from the group and participate in it.

45:26 Okay.

45:27 Now, this, this insight that people have, and this reality,

45:33 which is actually how reality functions, has layers, there are layers to that.

45:38 And it's related to, for example,

45:40 we talked about a virtue that is at some point,

45:42 the reality of a virtue starts to bind us together.

45:46 We say, well, if I act with truth, then I give myself I sacrifice my proximal

45:53 goals towards something that is transcending me,

45:56 something that is that is that is above me and is managing me.

46:00 I'm accepting that it manages me.

46:01 I'm accepting that it actually, it's will what it wants, you know,

46:04 if we could talk about especially virtue wanting something,

46:06 the virtue wants you to live in, in a certain direction.

46:11 If I if I submit myself to that, then I

46:14 am participating in this broader story in this bigger story.

46:19 And so to me, this is why this is why the metaphorical language bothers me.

46:24 And you know, it's like,

46:27 I don't understand why we have to say it's metaphorical,

46:31 in the sense that this idea that this base relation,

46:36 this base world, and this material world is the real world,

46:38 and there are layers of metaphor on top of it,

46:41 let's say a virtue is a pattern of behavior that you follow,

46:46 right, you submit yourself to that pattern of behavior,

46:49 and then it plays out in the world.

46:52 And so to me, it's not a metaphor, it's like, it's an absolutely real thing.

46:55 Well, hold on, I want to defend it.

46:57 And yeah, I want to defend it, though I know,

47:00 it is annoying, I don't want to do the annoying thing.

47:05 It's much more pleasant not to, but I think there

47:07 I think we have to because if we sideline that now,

47:11 it will trip over it shortly.

47:14 So let me just say, when you say group,

47:18 you are immediately throwing an error in my world,

47:21 because group is a term that there

47:24 has been a long running battle in evolutionary.

47:26 But where should we use?

47:28 Well, a team?

47:30 No, no, no, the example that I would give is say, like a football team.

47:33 Yeah, football team is a good example.

47:34 Right.

47:35 But a football team is properly structured

47:37 to function as something akin to an organism,

47:41 right, because everybody, everybody benefits if we get to the championship.

47:46 And so the point is the basis for competition within the team is not zero.

47:51 You do have people who, you know, are trying to get hired by, you know,

47:54 the pros, and so they play in order

47:56 to be impressive rather than in order to win.

47:59 But in general, you do well in sports if you play so your team wins, right?

48:04 That's what you should be doing.

48:05 So you're going to distinguish between group and team?

48:07 No, we're going to, we're going to point out that there is

48:10 an unresolved battle and that the right way to think of a group,

48:14 right, any collection of people, people in this room,

48:17 our group by definition, the important idea is a lineage.

48:23 A lineage is actually something on which selection can act.

48:26 And when we try to make a group function like a lineage,

48:32 it doesn't work unless we have a very narrow structure in the game theory,

48:37 like a sports team, right?

48:39 But strange as this may sound,

48:42 the very same thing that causes the cells in your body,

48:46 30 trillion cells to act in perfect coordination so that you

48:51 can be a living breathing organism that does coordinate things.

48:55 That same property at a lower strength is what allows

48:59 a population of people to function in a coordinated way towards,

49:05 at the very least, survival.

49:07 And so that is the substance

49:10 that is actually functioning towards our long-term well-being.

49:15 And my point would be,

49:16 we now live in a world in which the logic of lineage is both very dangerous.

49:21 It can result in one population deciding

49:24 that it needs to eliminate another population.

49:26 That's a very common pattern of history,

49:28 and it's based in evolution, unfortunately.

49:31 And if we are to try to frustrate the game

49:33 theory that leads one population to try to exterminate another population,

49:37 we have to understand what drives them to do it and what

49:41 conditions would cause that not to be a wise course of action.

49:46 So the reason, and mind you, I don't say that that higher power is a metaphor.

49:54 I would say it is at least a metaphor.

49:56 From my materialist perspective, I can say that it is at least a metaphor.

50:00 There's the metaphor there.

50:01 If there's something else, wonderful.

50:03 I'm eager to find out about it.

50:04 But we can at least go this far together.

50:07 We can say that that metaphor has a very powerful implication for how we behave.

50:14 And the more literally you take it, the more effective it is,

50:18 which is one of the stumbling blocks here,

50:21 because we can't just all agree to behave according

50:28 to what Jesus says the right way to behave is,

50:32 because those that don't really believe it have a loophole.

50:37 So on the one hand, it works well

50:39 when everybody actually believes it for whatever reason,

50:42 maybe because it's true, or maybe because belief is what makes it work.

50:47 But what we can't do is have our own independent relationship with those ideas,

50:54 or the bad game theory is going to break out every time.

50:57 So at least in the case of Jesus,

51:00 what seems to happen is that we have this in the early church,

51:03 we say the seed, you know, the blood of the martyrs are the seeds of the church.

51:07 That is that people like Polycarp or these characters,

51:09 one of the things that seem to have happened is that by being

51:12 willing to sacrifice themselves for that which they knew was true.

51:18 And we're also willing to live a humble life where they would

51:21 care for others and they would act in the way that Jesus,

51:25 that their willingness to, in some ways,

51:27 sacrifice themselves is what drew people to that teaching,

51:32 that it acted in a real way to draw

51:34 people towards the vision that Christ was giving.

51:40 I want to recapitulate some stuff because the correct if you give on group,

51:46 I don't want to distract from points that you make.

51:50 And I think we can actually add some richer,

51:52 because we have some mature language.

51:54 So the idea was something like, and I think we can actually be quite nicely.

51:59 So let's say we have a football team,

52:03 and we have actually in America in particular,

52:05 I guess also in Canada with hockey teams, we have a very clean language of what

52:09 it looks like to behave properly and not properly.

52:11 Like the mythosome that is actually quite strong.

52:13 We know that somebody who is a selfish player,

52:15 somebody who is a ball hog, somebody who is trying to get attention,

52:18 trying to play for themselves instead of for the team

52:20 is doing something that is actually morally wrong.

52:23 It's a betrayal.

52:24 It's a betrayal.

52:25 And that a team that hangs together as a team properly,

52:28 even if they have less talent, will be more successful as a team and the players

52:33 will participate in the glory of the team.

52:35 And by the way, this happens largely because of selection,

52:37 selection acts on teams.

52:40 Now what this tells us though,

52:41 is there's some right way to do this, like reality

52:43 actually constrains this kind of behavior in a very profound way.

52:47 And we're aware at that level.

52:49 And then what we can say is there's something like a hierarchy.

52:52 So we can do this at higher and higher levels,

52:53 because there's a higher level of something like team,

52:56 which let's say the Spartans vis-a-vis the Persians,

53:00 where they behave in exactly the same way.

53:04 They produce a whole that has more capacity to engage

53:07 in a selection function with another aggregate in this case,

53:10 by the way, or a group.

53:12 Let's see if we'd like to put it that way, or a weaker identity.

53:15 So a stronger identity and a weaker identity.

53:17 And what I'm hearing is there's basically two elements to the story.

53:21 Well, there's probably ultimate three.

53:23 One element is the notion of the quality

53:26 of the identity in which you're participating.

53:28 So a group is a weak identity, a lineage is a strong identity.

53:32 A lineage has things intrinsic to the nature of the members,

53:35 whereby they are more available to a variety of different

53:39 elements that hold them together in more intense and diverse contexts.

53:45 And then can continue.

53:46 Well, I have to, I mean, again, I don't want to play this annoying role,

53:49 but I think it's got to be done.

53:52 The other thing about a lineage is that the cost of sacrificing to the lineage

53:56 is reduced by the degree to which you are related to its members.

54:01 So the fact of giving up your life for the benefit of lineage,

54:09 if it causes your lineage to continue,

54:12 is actually a justifiable calculation in narrow evolutionary terms.

54:17 I'm trying to abstract above that.

54:18 So I'm saying that what you're describing is a very strong binding

54:22 agent that allows the thing called lineage has that characteristic in biology.

54:27 But if I were doing it in memetics, it's a different kind of thing.

54:30 And yet there are things called lineages in memetics.

54:33 And there are lineages that have something where the identity of the individual

54:36 is so closely tied to what's going on in the larger group,

54:40 that there's something about the sacrifice of the individual

54:43 that works just because their participation in the large,

54:46 the success of the larger group works.

54:48 And I would just point out this has

54:50 a profound relevance to the way history unfolds,

54:53 because many of the religious traditions that bind

54:58 people together actually unite distinct genetic lineages.

55:02 So is exactly for example, is, you know, it's very different.

55:06 The lineage in question is very different if we're talking about,

55:09 you know, Persians than if we're talking about Indonesians, right?

55:13 Those are, they believe in overlapping traditions,

55:17 which unite them in some ways.

55:19 But genetically speaking, we have distinct lineages functioning,

55:22 and that's often the way it does work.

55:25 So these two things have a subtle interplay.

55:28 But right, okay, so given we have that set of ingredients,

55:30 which is kind of the characteristics of the nature

55:33 of the participants in the group that they're

55:35 participating in, of which lineage is a very

55:37 particular case of vectoring towards stronger and stronger.

55:41 And then we have over here, which is something like the set of processes

55:44 and procedures by which they relate to each other.

55:47 So we say, hey, if you are a member of my biological tribe,

55:51 but you're operating entirely as 100% defector,

55:54 one, you're being stupid for yourself.

55:56 But two, that's actually bad.

55:58 That's a bad behavior.

55:59 That's an error in how we do this.

56:01 So if we run the protocol,

56:02 these two things coming together is produce something that actually is

56:06 successful in the world and continues to move forward in time,

56:09 in increasing richness and thriveability.

56:12 And if I just take, and Jonathan, by the way,

56:15 makes this point beautifully multiple different times,

56:16 which is the embedded fractal nature of how reality operates.

56:19 So you can see it at a low level,

56:21 but the thing you're seeing at a low level repeats in nested levels.

56:25 So then what I'm going to do is I'm going to say,

56:26 okay, I'm taking that fractal embedding as a principle and say,

56:29 great, what would happen if I just sort

56:32 of thought about what is the highest version of that?

56:35 What is the lineage of lineages,

56:36 which is participating in the religion of religions?

56:39 If I can identify that there's a particular

56:41 right way to behave in a football team,

56:43 and there's a particular white right way to bring

56:46 groups of people together such that that group has

56:48 a strength binding that allows it to have a wide

56:51 variety of good reasons to be able to move forward.

56:53 And I just say, okay, what happened if I tried to imagine

56:56 what is the highest possible version of that?

56:58 That's actually what we've been talking about.

57:01 And that is exactly, we have arrived at a resonance there.

57:06 First, I just want to point out lineage is simply fractal by its very nature.

57:11 If you were to look at the tree of life, right?

57:14 Initially you're talking about large clades,

57:16 vertebrates over here, mollusks over there.

57:20 And if you keep zooming in and looking at finder-finder grain branching,

57:24 you eventually get down to the individuals and all of these things.

57:27 So it is literally fractal, which is why so many of these belief structures

57:33 that have this fractal nature seem to actually kind of map.

57:36 We're really telling a story that at least

57:39 until pretty deep into the structure is consonant.

57:44 And that's important, right?

57:46 The most scientific materialists won't acknowledge that.

57:48 And it's about time that they did,

57:49 because there's a meaning to it that not only is

57:53 it important in the context of how we are to live,

57:56 but it's also important if you want to do the science correctly,

57:58 you have to understand what religion is and why it functions the way it does,

58:03 irrespective of what the ultimate causation might be.

58:08 But the other thing is, if we compare between traditions,

58:12 we have some conflicts that have to be resolved.

58:18 And I would point out, I just started researching the question, you know,

58:24 partially in light of the behavior of Israel in the Middle East,

58:28 recently, does the Torah contain the concept of ceasefire?

58:33 I don't think it does.

58:35 So when Israel is attacking peace negotiators,

58:40 that may be consonant with the particular book.

58:45 Can we have a world in which powerful parties don't have a concept of ceasefire?

58:50 I don't think that world is conceivable.

58:51 It's not stable.

58:52 It won't last.

58:53 And so, you know, it is certainly true that the New Testament has this concept.

58:58 Islam has it.

58:59 So maybe the point is, well,

59:00 that's actually a deficiency in the Torah that it's missing.

59:04 And if we are to continue to live well on this planet,

59:06 that's something that needs to be imported.

59:10 And, you know, we could go about mapping those things,

59:13 which things are missing from what places I'm led

59:16 to understand that in Islamic tradition and the Quran,

59:23 the failure to act with maximum strength

59:28 against an antagonistic nation comes inherently from weakness.

59:34 Well, that's in violation with the New Testament.

59:37 Can we have a world in which you are obligated to act when you have

59:42 the ability to get the better of a competing

59:45 nation that you're forced to attack them?

59:47 We can't have a world like that.

59:49 So the question is, what conversation do we

59:52 have to have where we stop the religious people,

59:54 stop pretending that the evolutionists are on about some nonsense

59:58 in which the evolutionists stop pretending that the religious people

1:00:03 have a mind virus in which the various religious traditions

1:00:06 stop pretending that it's all one story told in different languages,

1:00:10 whatever these things are.

1:00:11 That doesn't sound like a fun conversation to me,

1:00:14 but it sounds like an essential conversation that the world

1:00:18 doesn't survive if we don't figure out how to happen.

1:00:21 And one of the things that's interesting in what you're saying is

1:00:24 that maybe I don't know if you agree with this, but there's something very

1:00:27 specific about the monotheistic religions that tend to have in them the desire

1:00:34 to move towards transcending lineage as the only mechanism by which you exist.

1:00:42 And so this idea is that we have a common source.

1:00:45 That's what we're saying.

1:00:47 The Christians, even in Judaism,

1:00:51 even though the Jews believe they have a special role in this, there's a sense

1:00:55 in which we all have a common origin

1:00:58 and that we recognize that as being more important.

1:01:03 It doesn't mean that the differences don't exist

1:01:04 and that we don't have all our particular fractal participations,

1:01:08 but that there is a way in which we all are in Adam.

1:01:12 We all have something that binds us together.

1:01:17 And that is not a metaphor.

1:01:21 What you were describing because of the fractal

1:01:23 nature of lineage is actually just simply literally true.

1:01:27 The part that's subtle is this.

1:01:30 We are for both better and worse driven by our genes

1:01:35 to attempt to preserve their existence in the world,

1:01:39 to get our genes into the future.

1:01:41 And that is the cause of all of our best

1:01:45 characteristics and all of our worst characteristics, right?

1:01:49 That desire to get the genes into the future can literally cause you to make

1:01:53 the ultimate self-sacrifice for the benefit of others

1:01:57 and it can cause you to commit genocide, right?

1:02:00 It is an amoral objective, so I'm not defending it in that regard.

1:02:04 But the genes in wanting that have done something very special in human beings.

1:02:13 They have engendered a second heritable layer, right?

1:02:17 And this didn't start with humans.

1:02:18 There are lots of other, well, basically it's birds and mammals,

1:02:21 but amongst birds and mammals there is

1:02:23 culture that is passed outside the genome.

1:02:26 In human beings, that culture is to the tenth power because we have language.

1:02:33 So we can pass on detailed values

1:02:36 and models and other things outside of our genomes.

1:02:40 Why did the genes do that?

1:02:42 They did it because using that second layer,

1:02:46 using cognition, using consciousness and passing things on through culture,

1:02:50 we can actually do the genes bidding better than they can do, right?

1:02:55 We can understand that if it would be advantageous

1:02:58 for the next hundred years to behave in X way,

1:03:01 but it will be fatal 200 years later, that that's not the way to behave.

1:03:06 We can reason our way through the puzzle.

1:03:08 So if you take all that and you map the question

1:03:11 that you just pointed to, we act on behalf of lineage.

1:03:16 That can have Jews fighting Muslims.

1:03:19 It can have Christians fighting Jews.

1:03:22 It can do any of those things.

1:03:24 It can also get you to look at the pale blue dot Carl Sagan's formulation

1:03:29 and recognize that actually sometimes the lineage

1:03:32 that must be prioritized is the full lineage.

1:03:36 It's all of us.

1:03:37 We are actually one lineage.

1:03:39 And if the genes were capable of understanding

1:03:41 that in order for that lineage to survive,

1:03:44 we have to stop doing certain things at lower levels of lineage.

1:03:49 If they knew that, that's what they would want

1:03:52 because they're only real objectives to get into the future.

1:03:55 But it's funny because I see all higher order beings, you know,

1:03:59 I don't know what word you want me to use, but like all high order,

1:04:02 higher order beings, that is beings that are above the individual person,

1:04:06 that their, the role of that is to manage this problem, right?

1:04:11 And you can see it from, let's say from a Christian point of view,

1:04:14 you could, you don't have to use the word genes.

1:04:16 You could say that there are, we have desires that appear in us and we

1:04:19 have these desires that are serving our proximate goals.

1:04:22 You're hungry.

1:04:23 You want to survive.

1:04:24 You have all these things that you could do in order to make sure that you,

1:04:27 that you're surviving.

1:04:28 But we have these higher order beings.

1:04:30 What they do is they establish a hierarchy and how

1:04:33 it is that you can participate in that, right?

1:04:35 That what, what desires you have to prioritize and when do you

1:04:39 have to engage in certain desires and they kind of manage this.

1:04:43 And this happens at higher and higher levels.

1:04:45 And religion is to me, it's the, it's the highest level

1:04:49 of this because it's oriented towards the infinite.

1:04:51 You could say, right?

1:04:52 It says, we're doing this in view of the infinite.

1:04:55 We're doing this in view of the thing that has no limit.

1:04:58 We're not, we're trying to, everything that is limited,

1:05:00 it's not that it's not good, but we're all, we're trying to orient it

1:05:03 in a manner that will serve that, which is infinite.

1:05:07 And so this is why it's, I mean, again,

1:05:10 we're going to, we're always running into the same problem,

1:05:12 which is like, I think that that has,

1:05:13 like, I think that that has more real existence.

1:05:17 I don't, I don't think you're going to get a disagreement at this table.

1:05:20 In fact, I think this is exactly what Jordan was pointing at.

1:05:23 When you made the illusion to what you call

1:05:25 the religion of religions, the point is it is,

1:05:28 it is the thing that you are talking about extrapolated to a higher level.

1:05:34 And I would argue it will be uncomfortable

1:05:36 for at least most of the other religions of the world.

1:05:40 But this is one of the things that Christianity

1:05:43 has to teach most of the rest of us,

1:05:46 which is you don't get to protecting the entire lineage

1:05:50 of humanity from our own game theory that will destroy us.

1:05:54 If you don't come to the realization that all people are deserving of dignity,

1:05:59 irrespective of what particular branch of humanity they're on.

1:06:02 And by the way, you can't actualize that if you don't take on, for example,

1:06:05 self-sacrifice as a fundamental value.

1:06:08 Yes.

1:06:08 There's a whole bunch of things that, let's say,

1:06:11 not at all haphazardly happening together,

1:06:13 that are part of this particular tradition.

1:06:18 Yeah, I think that just to kind of read, to reemphasize this notion of grounding

1:06:24 in the infinite is extremely useful thing to do.

1:06:29 Because if you do things that are trying to be big and bigger and bigger,

1:06:33 you're going to run into a lot of different kinds of problems.

1:06:36 But if you're actually able to perceive

1:06:37 the infinite in the category of the infinite

1:06:40 itself and find things there that can

1:06:43 actually guide what's happening underneath it, then you're good to go.

1:06:47 And this is very commonplace in math.

1:06:49 It's actually very complex in science.

1:06:51 It's like why physics uses math.

1:06:53 If you can actually find things in mathematics that are

1:06:56 not part of the things that happen in time,

1:06:59 circles don't change from year to year.

1:07:02 Great.

1:07:02 If I can design things around circles, I know I'm really solid.

1:07:06 I've got a lot of grounding that I can deal with there.

1:07:09 And so this is a very similar idea.

1:07:10 Because, hey, is there something we can do that allows us...

1:07:13 Sorry, I have to finish my sentence, but the better thought just came in.

1:07:17 That allows us to see how, unfortunately, my handwriting is a automatically

1:07:22 encrypted process for everybody, including myself.

1:07:26 If we can find and discern principles with principles, right?

1:07:30 When I say that, what I'm saying is that that which is the deepest

1:07:34 possible way of thinking about or participating in a principle, which of course,

1:07:38 a principle then grounds things that are actuals underneath it,

1:07:41 then we're actually operating at the right level to be able

1:07:44 to start doing the heavy things that we have to do.

1:07:48 And as Jonathan mentioned, I, in fact,

1:07:52 don't just think I actually live under the deep

1:07:56 conviction that love is the principle of principles.

1:08:00 And you can then, if you want to think about it very carefully,

1:08:03 you can actually extrapolate from the nature of what

1:08:07 love must be everything else in a proper order.

1:08:12 Now, you have to not be at all ideological,

1:08:14 and you have to be very, very resistant to bullshit and lack of rigor,

1:08:19 because what'll end up happening is you

1:08:21 will tend to put various forms of sentiment

1:08:24 or various forms of game theoretic hijacking

1:08:27 mind viruses that are plugged into that environment.

1:08:31 But you don't have to do that.

1:08:33 You can actually do this very cleanly.

1:08:35 And that is a very high hope,

1:08:38 because that can carry the weight of the thing that you've put out there.

1:08:42 And remember, what you've been broadcasting,

1:08:44 I haven't thought about it this way until recently, when you say something like,

1:08:47 we're reaching a point where the natural logic

1:08:50 of game theory multiplied by the mandated lineage,

1:08:55 multiplied by the arms rate of technology, hey, genes, you're all going to die.

1:09:03 If your job, if you're only mandate is to not die immediately,

1:09:06 you're going to have to figure out how to participate

1:09:08 in something that's strong enough to prevent that from happening.

1:09:10 So it's really neat.

1:09:11 It's actually a message from culture back down to genes,

1:09:14 which can't listen, but I get it,

1:09:16 the metaphor, this is a metaphor, but it's a clean one, is we need to find that.

1:09:21 We need to find that thing, which is clear enough,

1:09:23 strong enough, robust enough, and by the way,

1:09:26 real enough, upon which we can truly rest

1:09:29 and then hang everything else off of it.

1:09:31 That is exactly, exactly what I'm getting at.

1:09:34 The genes sent our cognitive structures out

1:09:38 into the universe in order to navigate better for them.

1:09:41 And the message that comes back is, uh-oh, we have a five alarm fire, right?

1:09:47 Here we are headed for extinction.

1:09:49 It's going to go down some way and it doesn't matter.

1:09:51 It's going to take us all out with it.

1:09:53 And there is a way conceivably to avoid that, but it involves

1:09:57 solving a game theory problem at a scale that's never been solved before.

1:10:00 We have many analogs of it being solved at a lower scale,

1:10:04 but it is time we have to solve the top level game theory problem or that's it.

1:10:10 So once you know that, it isn't even a question of overriding your genes.

1:10:16 It is a question of effectively acting on the basis

1:10:22 that if they understood the puzzle at that level,

1:10:24 this is what they would want you to do too.

1:10:27 Not going extinct is what they want.

1:10:29 And it is time for us to override the little instincts

1:10:33 that it's given us in order to solve the game theory problem.

1:10:36 Just for my mind, I just want to do a little loop of one

1:10:38 of the things that's a recurring conversation in my church is that, uh,

1:10:46 Christendom, or at least the particular branch

1:10:49 of Protestantism that I'm a member of, um,

1:10:55 walks too closely to a Gnostic anti-life ideology, which looks like this.

1:11:02 Um, life actually really sucks a lot.

1:11:05 The only reason I'm participating in life is because one,

1:11:08 I've got to get saved and two, I guess I got to save other people.

1:11:14 That's that's a, we even talked about this yesterday,

1:11:16 but Jonathan has participated in that same thing,

1:11:19 but that's actually not at all what this is supposed to be.

1:11:22 What this is supposed to, this is the analog to the genes.

1:11:25 Hey guys, life is actually unspeakably beautiful.

1:11:28 Hmm.

1:11:30 And by the way, Sam suffering that is meaningful is incredibly wonderful.

1:11:33 That's right.

1:11:34 It actually, it allows the wonderful part to be wonderful without it.

1:11:39 It would be just numbing.

1:11:41 And so the message is something like this is something that is in fact win-win.

1:11:47 It's a funny thing to say.

1:11:48 It is in fact, win-win.

1:11:49 The lowest is brought on a continuing

1:11:52 journey towards a perceived and lived higher.

1:11:57 And the highest is increasingly literally embodied in life.

1:12:02 And there is no discontinuity between them.

1:12:04 That's the thing that we're actually talking about and yearning for.

1:12:08 And the beautiful thing is it's the way reality works.

1:12:10 If you can perceive it very, very clearly,

1:12:12 if we can just learn how to participate with each other and with reality,

1:12:17 that is very well said.

1:12:19 And I would point out that it, it,

1:12:21 I think eloquently addresses the thing about what I'm doing here.

1:12:27 That is so hard for most people to swallow, including me, even as I say it,

1:12:31 it feels petty to be pointing to the materialist

1:12:34 explanation that maps onto all of this more important stuff.

1:12:38 I don't like doing it as much as I enjoy thinking about biology.

1:12:42 I don't enjoy mapping biology onto human affairs

1:12:45 because human affairs are important at a different level.

1:12:49 But it is the fact that you see that consonant story that actually it does map

1:12:56 onto the game theory and that the game

1:12:58 theory really is for whatever reason divine or otherwise,

1:13:01 it does map onto the full landscape of these religious structures.

1:13:06 And that if we can recognize that that is true,

1:13:09 not just within any of these structures,

1:13:11 but that it actually is true within each of the structures,

1:13:14 but that there are missing elements, right?

1:13:17 The fact that there are missing elements

1:13:19 means that there's actually room at the table

1:13:21 for all of those traditions to get together and actually figure out what,

1:13:26 what you call the religion of religions is,

1:13:28 what are the values on which all human beings should agree

1:13:32 that actually are the basis for how we can get along together indefinitely,

1:13:36 how we can manage the quality of the planet so we

1:13:40 don't keep handing each generation a degraded version of the thing.

1:13:43 Yeah, but I think that one of the, I mean,

1:13:45 one of the issues of what you're saying when you talk about the religion

1:13:50 of religions is that the only way that we can participate in the world is,

1:13:54 is in this embodied way that Jordan is mentioning.

1:13:58 And so when you talk about the religion of religions,

1:14:03 it's as if you're, it's as if you're pulling yourself outside of the world.

1:14:07 And you're, you're kind of showing that there,

1:14:09 that there is this thing that I did for some reason,

1:14:12 you seem to be able to see that is

1:14:14 beyond all of the instantiations that are in the world.

1:14:18 Whereas that's actually not how we function.

1:14:22 It's like I am, I'm a Christian, I, I follow the Christian story.

1:14:26 I live it.

1:14:28 And I don't even know from which point of view I would stand to be able to say,

1:14:35 well, this is good in this religion,

1:14:37 this is good in this religion, this is good in this religion.

1:14:39 Let's like kind of bring them together in some way

1:14:41 that we have to live it through our instantiated story.

1:14:46 I agree.

1:14:46 And that's the puzzle.

1:14:48 And this is, I think the reason that I stand in this spot in the conversation

1:14:52 is that the only place I'm not claiming to have a privileged view of any of it,

1:14:57 but the only place that you can see that there is

1:15:01 an unsolved problem between these religions is from the position of game theory.

1:15:09 And I'm not arguing that anyone, me especially is in a position to say,

1:15:13 Hey, you all need to recognize x, y, or z.

1:15:16 I don't know what you need to recognize,

1:15:17 but I do know that you can't do it from wholly within any of these traditions,

1:15:23 because the problem is actually one that these traditions have not solved.

1:15:27 It's the same game theory.

1:15:28 It's collective action problems at a level that's never,

1:15:31 it's never been solved globally.

1:15:33 And I will say, from what I can see from my limited perspective,

1:15:39 the unique element, maybe it's not fully unique.

1:15:43 Maybe it's in Hinduism.

1:15:45 Maybe the Buddhists have seen, I think that's likely,

1:15:49 but the co-equal status of all people irrespective of tradition.

1:15:57 Right?

1:15:58 That thing is a the core of the West.

1:16:03 And by the West, I don't mean a list of countries,

1:16:05 but I mean the idea that the countries we call

1:16:09 the West sometimes live up to and often fall down on.

1:16:12 That thing is an agreement.

1:16:15 It's a prototype of an agreement for how to get along together in the world.

1:16:20 We don't stop competing with each other,

1:16:22 but we do agree not to destroy each other.

1:16:26 Right?

1:16:26 We, and the world becomes wealthier in our doing

1:16:29 that we create wealth when we collaborate with each other.

1:16:32 And that is a very beneficial thing that we waste a lot of its

1:16:37 potential when we go out in the battlefield and start blowing each other up.

1:16:41 Yeah.

1:16:42 I have a, this is an interesting way of twisting the question.

1:16:46 This is by zooming in.

1:16:48 So you zoomed out and we've, sorry, keep your context.

1:16:53 We're talking about the notion of something like

1:16:54 a very big conversation that includes all the major traditions.

1:16:59 And we've identified sort of a couple of big distinctions.

1:17:01 You've got the secular world, which if it is at all coherent,

1:17:06 it is mostly grounded about something around science.

1:17:09 Otherwise it's just a runaway death cold.

1:17:14 You've got Christianity, right?

1:17:16 You've got a series of traditional religions that have

1:17:19 been around long enough to kind of like say,

1:17:21 okay, that's, that's got something going on that holds together.

1:17:23 And that's kind of the big conversation.

1:17:25 And what we recognize is that if we zoom in and just say, okay, well,

1:17:30 you are part of one of those lineages in a very profound

1:17:35 way and are able to participate in that in the direction of lineage,

1:17:39 meaning I'm not a scientism guy.

1:17:42 I'm actually a guy who tries to show up

1:17:44 as what science is when it's at its most alive.

1:17:48 We much more him than me are participants in the lineage of Christianity.

1:17:54 Okay.

1:17:56 What I noticed is if we zoom in one step closer,

1:17:59 there's a conversation between Jonathan and I

1:18:01 that actually is a prototype of the bigger conversation,

1:18:04 which is Jonathan's Orthodox.

1:18:06 I am not Orthodox.

1:18:08 From the point of view of Orthodoxy,

1:18:10 there's a wide variety of things about what I'm doing that are not just wrong,

1:18:13 but really catastrophically wrong, like at the level of the infinite.

1:18:17 And yet we're very good friends.

1:18:19 I hope you became even better friends.

1:18:20 His wonderful wife invited my family to come visit their family in Montreal,

1:18:24 which God willing we will do.

1:18:26 Notice that we are actually able to be friends.

1:18:29 And notice that by the way,

1:18:30 the protocol to which we both participate puts that as not only an available,

1:18:35 but even a mandatory thing.

1:18:39 He has a responsibility because I have chosen to profess that I'm a Christian.

1:18:44 He has a responsibility and invitation to convict

1:18:47 me and rebuke me more towards the deeper

1:18:50 truth and reality from a place of humility and from a deeper place of love.

1:18:56 And by the way, I do as well, but I'm again,

1:18:58 I've been only doing this for a couple of years,

1:19:00 so I know the magnitude of what I do not know.

1:19:04 But notice that at that point is very, very important.

1:19:06 There's something like back to this notion of who and process

1:19:11 that before we can begin to endeavor some notion of, let's say,

1:19:16 reconciliation at the level of the big stories,

1:19:19 we first have to become ones who can simply participate

1:19:23 in loving relationships with people who are not exactly like us.

1:19:28 And by the way, love is not at all sentimental and convict

1:19:31 and rebuke and bring closer out of that depth of love,

1:19:36 effectively, mutually, by the way.

1:19:40 And I've been calling this process an anointing.

1:19:43 Anointing has, the way I use the term is,

1:19:47 if you don't at all familiar with the idea,

1:19:49 just think of somebody pouring a very

1:19:51 viable and fragrant oil on somebody else's head.

1:19:53 So it's a really nice viscerality.

1:19:55 But the idea is that it's a kind of a salve that comes from above.

1:19:59 And it has the characteristic that as it comes from above,

1:20:02 the notion salve is that it brings the parts

1:20:05 that have grown apart back into a healed

1:20:09 relationship with each other and back towards

1:20:12 a proper relationship and orientation towards what is above.

1:20:16 That's what I mean.

1:20:17 So what we're looking to do is

1:20:18 we're looking to engage in this anointing process,

1:20:21 looking to engage in a way that we can participate with each

1:20:25 other and participate with reality in a fashion that heals us,

1:20:29 heals our relationships, and heals our relationships.

1:20:34 I very much agree.

1:20:36 And I would point out that this is actually built in.

1:20:40 Linear selection is my own model, but this is built into it.

1:20:44 The point is actually any group,

1:20:47 any room full of people is actually defining of a lineage.

1:20:54 It's a much bigger lineage than is contained in the room.

1:20:57 But there is a most recent common ancestor for any collection of individuals.

1:21:02 It may be very far back, or it may not be very far back,

1:21:05 depending upon how closely related those individuals are.

1:21:08 But one of the predictions of the model is

1:21:10 that if you have two lineages that can't get along,

1:21:15 like Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants,

1:21:18 that there are things that will bring them together.

1:21:21 And in fact, this was my prediction from decades ago,

1:21:24 but we've recently seen an example.

1:21:26 And it was actually a unity that came about in light of an immigration crisis.

1:21:33 That is to say, a more distant lineage was seen as threatening.

1:21:37 And as much as most people would never have seen it coming,

1:21:41 you had Protestants and Catholics in Ireland linking arms,

1:21:45 like literally linking arms.

1:21:46 There's a picture of this happening.

1:21:48 So in light of that, the point is any two lineages

1:21:52 can be brought together by a threat from a more distant lineage.

1:21:57 But, you know, and the sci-fi trope is right

1:21:59 if we can spot it correctly, that, you know,

1:22:03 the asteroid that is going to destroy the earth and causes us

1:22:06 to have to put our differences aside in order to fend it off.

1:22:12 We all think about that puzzle.

1:22:14 We all think, well, would we really?

1:22:15 And, you know, of course we have

1:22:16 a recent movie suggesting that we probably wouldn't.

1:22:19 But we are threatened by ourselves.

1:22:23 The enemy is the game theory.

1:22:27 And our recognition that the game theory forces us to put our differences

1:22:32 aside sufficiently to build a structure that corrects our collective view of it.

1:22:41 That's a pretty, it's a heavy lift,

1:22:42 but if we don't figure out how to lift it, there's nothing else to be said.

1:22:47 So I don't think it's unusual to imagine that people who profoundly disagree

1:22:52 will find a reason to stop disagreeing if the cause is big enough.

1:22:57 I mean, you know, sometimes I think about, you know, if I was,

1:23:00 you know, if I was on a ship and it sank and I found myself,

1:23:04 you know, struggling for survival on a lifeboat with a Nazi,

1:23:07 would we put our differences aside?

1:23:10 Yeah, I bet you we would.

1:23:12 Right?

1:23:12 If you have to, in order to survive,

1:23:14 suddenly you're gonna figure out how to start

1:23:17 collaborating and who needs to be doing what.

1:23:19 So that's in us already.

1:23:21 That's built in.

1:23:22 The genes built that in.

1:23:23 And figuring out how to properly trigger it so that we

1:23:27 can confront the game theory problem that's obviously at the fore.

1:23:32 Because one of the, I mean,

1:23:33 it'd be interesting to hear what you think because one of the, it

1:23:36 seems like one of the strategies of the globalists was to do that.

1:23:39 Yeah.

1:23:40 Is to say, to create the vision of an ecological disaster or COVID or whatever.

1:23:46 And so that we will be able to become a one nation, like one world, let's say.

1:23:52 I think you're giving them too much credit.

1:23:54 I don't think that's what they were trying to accomplish.

1:23:56 Okay.

1:23:59 Let's say, so the vision of the heavenly Jerusalem

1:24:02 is one that I always go back to, right?

1:24:04 Which is that there is a manner,

1:24:06 the image of the heavenly Jerusalem is different from that one, right?

1:24:09 It's not that there isn't commonality, but that commonality,

1:24:12 it's like a breathing in and breathing out of similarity and difference.

1:24:16 It's fractal, right?

1:24:17 To understand it.

1:24:18 And so it's not, it's not necessarily this idea that in some

1:24:22 ways we need like a religion of religions or that you

1:24:24 would have to kind of find something that will make

1:24:27 us all completely one in a tower babble kind of way,

1:24:31 but that rather there are, like you said,

1:24:34 there are ways in which we can recognize our differences,

1:24:38 but also we can still participate in the things that we can participate in.

1:24:43 And in the image of the heavenly Jerusalem,

1:24:44 you basically have all the kings of the nations,

1:24:47 they come and they offer their crown to this image that is at the top,

1:24:52 which is the king and the sacrifice one, right?

1:24:55 The king and the victim kind of together in one image,

1:24:59 but that it doesn't annul the differences of the nations, right?

1:25:02 The nations continue to be the nations

1:25:03 and there is a healthy amount of difference.

1:25:07 We have to be very careful of Moloch worship.

1:25:10 Remember we used that metaphor earlier?

1:25:12 Sure.

1:25:13 So the distinction here is that there's

1:25:14 roughly two ways of binding a group together,

1:25:19 taking differences, particulars and creating something like an identity.

1:25:24 And Moloch worship is one way, which involves something like fear, for example.

1:25:29 And of course, the powers that be are

1:25:31 extremely skillful at using fear to create a herd,

1:25:35 which is a kind of an assemblage out of a group of particulars.

1:25:39 Sacrifice, sacrificing of something, and by the way,

1:25:43 increasingly more and more valuable things to force the group to be together.

1:25:46 And this is by the way, the methodology by which all empire, I'm sorry,

1:25:52 Pavel Shailin will correct me on this, but a particular

1:25:55 subset of empires hang together, right?

1:25:58 The methodology of fear, manipulation, by the way, greed,

1:26:01 incentive, all these different things, lead me not into temptation.

1:26:04 I've actually just been calling it temptation as a methodology.

1:26:08 And when we rebuke the globalists properly, by the way,

1:26:11 in addition to being both ugly and stupid,

1:26:14 they're also remarkably committed to using temptation

1:26:17 to form a simulacrum of the heavenly Jerusalem.

1:26:21 So let us simply say that is the exact opposite of the right direction.

1:26:26 But what we notice is that in fact,

1:26:28 actually in reality, there is this other way.

1:26:31 This other way is on the basis of just the truth.

1:26:34 It's on the basis of the fact that love is the most fundamental principle.

1:26:38 And it's on the basis that if we are learning,

1:26:39 if we learn how to behave, become ones who can participate in this way,

1:26:43 and we behave in this way properly, we begin to inside,

1:26:48 begin to discover that at these fractal levels, it works.

1:26:53 And it's really weird how this works.

1:26:55 I've noticed in my own experience,

1:26:57 you get these local winds where you notice the fruits in a very beautiful way.

1:27:03 And then you go through local troughs of like, man, this is rough.

1:27:08 I imagine you guys have had this experience.

1:27:10 But in those troughs, you get the suffering,

1:27:12 you notice the suffering is not just suffering,

1:27:15 it's meaningful suffering, which builds a deeper faith, right?

1:27:19 A deeper capacity to actually an embodied way,

1:27:21 no end trust that what you're participating in is both real and good.

1:27:25 Now, of course, when you have a strong enough faith, you can do more.

1:27:28 You can extend yourself more deeply into helping other people and bringing them

1:27:33 in because you know and trust that what you're doing is true and good.

1:27:37 And then the cycle continues, you get these profound fruits,

1:27:41 like something very bad will happen to you.

1:27:44 And other people will come in a great extent to themselves to help you.

1:27:48 We did not mention to the audience,

1:27:49 but this episode of the DarkHorse is being filmed in Asheville,

1:27:52 North Carolina, where the Helene came and destroyed

1:27:57 us pretty substantially a year and a half ago.

1:28:00 And we got to be in the benefit

1:28:01 of watching all these people come in, completely disorganized,

1:28:04 by the way, they were not organized by a obvious secular institution.

1:28:10 Those didn't do a very good job,

1:28:13 because they thought it was the right thing to do,

1:28:15 and just came in and helped us.

1:28:18 And that, of course, is profoundly encouraging.

1:28:20 Well, I'm participating in something that has

1:28:23 an ability and a willingness to help me.

1:28:29 And that help is well received.

1:28:31 And the encouragement of that, which is

1:28:32 to say these fractal loops begin to spiral out.

1:28:35 And now as a consequence,

1:28:37 I am prepared fully to participate in that to the degree

1:28:40 which the invitation shows up to me to help other people,

1:28:43 because my confidence, they're acting in this way.

1:28:47 And when I say confidence again, I don't mean like confidence game.

1:28:50 I mean like an embodied wisdom that just is at the level of almost habit,

1:28:55 muscle memory, to use the metaphor that we were hammering on the other earlier.

1:28:58 And see how these cycles build.

1:29:02 So there's a practical of how one participates properly in this and builds

1:29:06 the strength to be able to extend it further and further out.

1:29:09 Right.

1:29:10 And I don't know if you said it, but it is inherently fractal.

1:29:14 Inherently fractal.

1:29:14 Walk into one community that is functioning in this way,

1:29:17 you immediately detect that it has a capacity that some other community doesn't.

1:29:22 And so when anyone sees it, the point is,

1:29:24 well, how could I get that to work over here?

1:29:29 So it's contagious when it works for good reason,

1:29:31 because to pick up that capacity is

1:29:35 enhancing of all the objectives you might have.

1:29:39 So, yes.

1:29:40 And this is actually, you asked me like,

1:29:42 how is it that I came to choose to become a Christian?

1:29:45 A very big part of the initial move was I had spent the last

1:29:49 10 years investigating this problem of the meta

1:29:51 crisis and then in point of fact, living the way that we're living,

1:29:54 we're all going to die in a variety of different, quite terrible ways.

1:29:57 Some of which involve not actually dying,

1:29:58 but having the fullness of life completely sucked out of it.

1:30:02 And like very deeply committed,

1:30:05 engaging with all the smartest people in the world,

1:30:07 some of whom are in this room and coming to the conclusion of man,

1:30:11 we're in deep trouble.

1:30:13 And then showing up this, you know,

1:30:14 small town in Western North Carolina and noticing all

1:30:17 the signs of like the things that look good, all the healthy things,

1:30:21 the signs of an actual healthy community that has the characteristics

1:30:24 that you need to have to navigate the biggest possible humps.

1:30:28 Oh my gosh, they're here.

1:30:29 Okay.

1:30:30 How did they do that?

1:30:31 What's the secret?

1:30:32 Well, the secret is we're actually all Christians and we live it.

1:30:36 It was not, we're not doctrinal Pharisees.

1:30:39 We're actually deeply endeavoring to participate

1:30:41 in the responsibilities that have

1:30:43 been given to us to be disciples and to be anointed.

1:30:46 So, at the risk of making what I think has

1:30:50 been a very good conversation uncomfortable in a certain way,

1:30:53 I will say that one of the things that was very

1:30:56 disappointing during COVID and frankly during the woke revolution was watching

1:31:03 religious communities that in principle had the goods to resist

1:31:07 the temptation of those, I don't even know what to call them,

1:31:13 broken ideologies, failed to do so.

1:31:17 Many, many, many churches failed on those lessons.

1:31:21 Those churches are also, that many of those churches are also doomed

1:31:26 to die and they're dying and before our very eyes.

1:31:29 And I think that the churches that are

1:31:32 moving in the direction that Jordan is mentioning,

1:31:35 they have, especially since COVID, they've actually started to thrive.

1:31:40 You know, and your church, my church, so many,

1:31:42 so many churches are actually growing with young people especially.

1:31:46 Well, I really don't like making the point, but that is exactly the story that I

1:31:55 would tell about religion and its evolution.

1:31:58 That there is a perfect analogy between the way these lineages function, right?

1:32:06 You have sectarian difference, right?

1:32:08 You have Christendom divided into all of these traditions.

1:32:11 Now, some of those traditions may be adaptations to particular conditions

1:32:14 in particular places and some of them may be competing methods.

1:32:20 And the point is the ones that work flourish.

1:32:23 They spread.

1:32:24 Other people take on the wisdom that they

1:32:27 have because it works and then other versions,

1:32:30 you know, wither on the vine because they

1:32:33 don't have the insight to get through time.

1:32:36 You know, to take one fascinating example, the Shakers are no more.

1:32:43 The Shakers were a very noble, committed group of people.

1:32:48 Famously, their furniture is still sought after because there's a wisdom there,

1:32:53 but their tradition did not allow reproduction.

1:32:57 It was entirely based on recruiting and it couldn't recruit

1:33:00 at a level that met equilibrium and the Shakers are gone.

1:33:04 So, the point is you have sectarian difference playing exactly the same role

1:33:09 that genetic variation does where the things

1:33:13 that work well make it into the future.

1:33:15 The things that work really don't show up there

1:33:18 and that is why we have the traditions that we have now.

1:33:22 These are the pieces of wisdom that won because they were wise.

1:33:27 And so, you know, you just describe it exactly.

1:33:31 You have churches that aren't passing the test.

1:33:34 They will presumably not leave the sentence.

1:33:36 Doesn't make me at all uncomfortable.

1:33:37 Does that make you uncomfortable?

1:33:38 No, not at all because that truth is what if something isn't true,

1:33:43 then at some point it will, you know, if you can think that if I drink a bottle

1:33:48 of vodka every day that it's going to be fine,

1:33:50 but there are certain behaviors that will cause

1:33:53 your own downfall and they will bring you, you know, they'll make you extinct.

1:33:57 Yeah, I would say that again

1:33:58 to make this distinction between ideology and religion,

1:34:01 sort of the most basic commitment to be in the category

1:34:05 that I'm referring to as religion is that there's reality.

1:34:09 Reality is really real and that ultimately the check sum of everything

1:34:12 that every framework you build about reality is real, is reality itself.

1:34:17 And so, and I should add as a second is

1:34:21 that all ideologies simultaneously tend to try to become simulacra of reality.

1:34:26 This is the corruption vector and to capture

1:34:29 and then ultimately they begin to separate and degrade.

1:34:32 So there will always be a process of a check.

1:34:35 We will fall away from reality at our cost,

1:34:38 but reality will come slap us in the face.

1:34:41 And if we're able to meet it directly,

1:34:43 we will then grow more intimate with reality.

1:34:47 And those who don't will just go deeper and deeper into the.

1:34:51 And that's really the way to understand sin, by the way,

1:34:53 sin isn't an arbitrary imposition of moral principles on people.

1:34:58 It's actually a reflection of reality.

1:35:00 If you do these things, you will thrive.

1:35:02 If you do these things, you will not.

1:35:04 You know, if you lie, if you cheat,

1:35:06 you might win in the short term and you probably will.

1:35:10 But that over the long term, it will destroy you and the people around you.

1:35:14 Which is the exact description of how the game theory will play out.

1:35:17 But I would also point out humans are unique in that you

1:35:22 are not condemned to live out the product of your, you know,

1:35:28 in the gene space, you have a particular set of genes and you don't get another.

1:35:32 So you're condemned to their consequence in the space of belief and culture.

1:35:38 You can recognize, Hey, when I do this thing,

1:35:41 it ends up coming back to haunt me.

1:35:44 I should probably stop doing that thing and a person can do it,

1:35:47 but a congregation could also do it.

1:35:49 Hey, that thing that we thought was the right

1:35:51 way to go has now created a problem.

1:35:54 Maybe it wasn't the right way to go.

1:35:56 We can reverse course.

1:35:57 And so I would hope that there'd be a kind of recognition

1:36:01 that a lot of things that seemed wise turned out not to be.

1:36:04 I mean, the wheat and the chef got to be separated.

1:36:06 They do.

1:36:07 Well, but, but, but the problem with that analogy

1:36:09 is that chaff does not become wheat,

1:36:12 but you can go from making errors to not making them.

1:36:16 Right.

1:36:16 And in fact, your, your point about the errors that get that are the errors,

1:36:20 the errors of the right.

1:36:22 Not the P works both ways.

1:36:25 But I would point out to go back

1:36:26 to your point about Heather and me during COVID.

1:36:29 We started out incorrect in our understanding of what was going on.

1:36:34 And you know, I guess to your point that the errors are the chaff,

1:36:37 it's the recognition that some of the things that you're thinking are true

1:36:40 aren't and the correcting of that, it causes you to have a model.

1:36:45 So the deepest, well, it's actually quite nice because you said both

1:36:47 the deepest protocol is don't be the chaff.

1:36:51 Yeah.

1:36:52 That's a very important protocol.

1:36:53 If you become the chaff, then you will be selected out by the way.

1:36:57 That's just how reality works.

1:36:58 In spite of the fact that you may have a really good weekend,

1:37:00 you will ultimately be selected out, but you don't have to be the chaff.

1:37:04 You can be the kind of person who participates in the sorting of the wheat,

1:37:08 the chaff by allowing funny.

1:37:10 Actually talked about that notion of the extinguishing of this thing within you,

1:37:14 but allowing the chaff in you to be sorted out and you

1:37:17 can become more and more in the direction of the wheat,

1:37:19 recognizing that you will never be the wheat,

1:37:22 but by participating in the process voluntarily, voluntary self-sacrifice,

1:37:25 you are now not committed to being the chaff and identity.

1:37:29 And that's why this fractal nature is so important to understand,

1:37:33 at least from our point of view is that the first

1:37:37 thing you actually have to do is to become virtuous.

1:37:40 Like you have to become holy.

1:37:42 That is how the whole thing changes.

1:37:45 And so we can think about the big picture,

1:37:47 and we do have to think about the big picture, but that big picture,

1:37:50 if we try to participate in it, but we come with a torturous heart,

1:37:54 we come with our own sinfulness that hasn't been kept in check,

1:37:59 then even participating in these big schemes will be the biggest

1:38:03 temptation you have to indulge those those those kind of, let's say,

1:38:09 sinful aspects of yourself, you know,

1:38:10 and so there's no other way but to start with yourself, right?

1:38:15 Yeah, well, and of course, fractally speaking,

1:38:19 I'm sorry, the reason I was laughing,

1:38:21 I'm actually both together at this experience,

1:38:23 but the experience of, oh, the one ring again, right?

1:38:28 That experience, oh, I've seen you before,

1:38:30 and I remember what happens when I grab you.

1:38:33 So now I could just actually kind of laugh at you,

1:38:35 because I've learned enough of what it feels

1:38:37 like to see that temptation coming down the road,

1:38:39 to be able to know, yeah, that's tempting,

1:38:41 but I've learned enough not to grab that ring this time.

1:38:44 Well, as I've probably mentioned you before,

1:38:47 my favorite aphorism is good judgment comes from experience,

1:38:52 experience comes from bad judgment.

1:38:54 And, you know, if I mean, really, at some level, in a complex system,

1:38:59 you can't blueprint a solution,

1:39:01 it's not going to work because you can't anticipate the consequences.

1:39:05 But what you can do is you can navigate so that you

1:39:09 correct your orientation based on how your current trajectory is working out,

1:39:13 and you can prototype, you can make something and you can pay very close

1:39:16 attention to how well it did relative to your objective,

1:39:19 and then you can make a better prototype.

1:39:21 And so we are stuck in that process.

1:39:24 And all of us, whether we're religious in orientation, scientific or both,

1:39:29 have to understand that we don't have the finished version.

1:39:33 And I know that that comes as a bitter pill maybe,

1:39:35 or it can't be accepted if you come from a tradition that, you know,

1:39:41 that proceeds from the idea of divine perfection.

1:39:44 But with respect to the game theory of the world, we don't have,

1:39:48 we have the prototype, we know what we're supposed to do globally,

1:39:51 but we've never done it.

1:39:52 And we need the structure that allows it to actually fire on all cylinders.

1:39:58 And we have, I mean, that's why I think,

1:40:00 especially in Christianity, we have an eschatological vision,

1:40:02 which is that we also do understand, and we should,

1:40:06 as Christians, understand that there's more to come.

1:40:10 Like there's a bigger version of what it

1:40:11 is we're participating in that is ahead of us.

1:40:15 And it's kind of like the guiding light that we

1:40:17 don't actually totally know what it's going to be.

1:40:20 We don't know what it looks like.

1:40:21 But we also understand that although we believe we have the revelation of God,

1:40:25 you know, in our life through the incarnation of Christ,

1:40:28 that there is a second coming.

1:40:31 That is, there is a man in which Christ will reveal

1:40:33 himself again to us in a way that will kind of overthrow,

1:40:38 but will complete, you could say, whatever it is that we have now.

1:40:43 So there is a, in Christianity, there is this sense that yes, we have,

1:40:48 but we also have to be humble to know that there is more to come,

1:40:51 that there's more coming.

1:40:52 Yeah, excellent point.

1:40:53 The story is not complete even within Christianity.

1:40:57 And the category of humility is sort of, sort

1:41:00 of very close to the base of the stack.

1:41:04 Like, right.

1:41:04 You know, hey, you're finite, full stop in relationship to the infinite.

1:41:09 That means you're in fact perfectly inadequate.

1:41:12 You're definitely not going to have the fullness

1:41:13 of the infinite in any amount of the finite,

1:41:15 sorry to be, you use theoretical language,

1:41:17 but it's very, for me, it was very clean.

1:41:19 So you're just going to have to learn how to live with an embodied humility

1:41:24 and recognize that you just have lucked out

1:41:26 that the infant is going to help out.

1:41:29 All right.

1:41:30 Well, this has been an excellent conversation.

1:41:33 I want to thank you both for participating.

1:41:37 Jonathan, where can people find you?

1:41:39 Yeah.

1:41:39 I'm, uh, people can go to the symbolic

1:41:41 world.com if they're interested in symbolic world dot com.

1:41:45 If they're interested in the kind of things that I talk about.

1:41:47 All right.

1:41:48 And Jordan, if you have to find yourself in Swannanoa,

1:41:51 North Carolina at recess and a short sleeves coffee shop, I'll buy you a coffee.

1:41:57 Otherwise don't find me.

1:41:59 Very nice.

1:42:00 And I want to thank, uh,

1:42:01 Redeemer Anglican Church for loaning us the space to do this podcast.

1:42:04 It was very generous of them.

1:42:07 Father Gary Ball decided that this was a worthy endeavor and I'm glad he did.

1:42:11 And I think one last thing I,

1:42:12 maybe I want to say is that it's important people to understand that, like,

1:42:15 we're having this conversation,

1:42:16 but we've been talking for three days, just nonstop going over.

1:42:21 And I, and I also have to commend you,

1:42:22 Brett, you know, because of coming to this with humility,

1:42:26 our, our first conversations are different interactions have been a little

1:42:29 testy sometimes because that sense of we're talking past each other.

1:42:33 The first time we encountered each other,

1:42:34 we kind of started this debate thing and then it got taken away from us.

1:42:37 If you remember in Vancouver 10 years ago, right?

1:42:40 I do remember that.

1:42:41 There you go.

1:42:42 And so I think that, you know, when Jordan said,

1:42:45 Hey, let's just all come together, spend three days.

1:42:47 I thought this is, this is a testimony to your kind

1:42:50 of desire to continuously move forward and in your own humility.

1:42:54 So thank you.

1:42:54 Well, I appreciate that.

1:42:55 And I will say, um, one of the really

1:42:57 glorious things about the conversations we've been having

1:43:00 with the whole group who's been assembled is

1:43:02 that it is just utterly clear that everybody is there,

1:43:06 uh, with the best of intentions and incredibly high

1:43:10 integrity and, and a willingness to listen that is uncommon.

1:43:13 So thank you both.

1:43:14 And to the whole group who was assembled, it's been a marvelous few days.

1:43:19 All right.

1:43:20 Hey everybody.

1:43:21 Thanks for joining us.