Curiosity & Wonder, John Vervaeke & Jonathan Pageau

i thought it would be nice to start with just a sort of sense of what maybe each of asking each of you what it is that you admire or get from each other's work just to sort of start off by framing it and then and then we'll sort of i've got a load of topics things that come up over the last couple of days that we can kind of tap into and get through as much as we can but maybe we would like to start i can start because i'm the i'm the one who would became learned of john in a weird kind of funny way because i i started i did this thing about zombies and i was addressing zombies in a very similar way as him and then someone said have you heard of john viveki he did this thing about zombies and so i listened to him you had written a little book and then there was also some videos and it was exactly what i was trying to get to and i thought this is wonderful like he really has this insight and then i thought oh wait a minute he's he's worked with jordan peterson you know it all kind of came together and uh and i just felt like he gave a great vocabulary for the things that i wanted to talk about because sometimes i have these intuitions and there aren't always words or words are sometimes too imprecise and so it's slippery but what one of the things that john has done is that he's really created a powerful vocabulary to talk about the things and so when i don't know what what to say sometimes i'll just reach it i'll like have my little john vervice dictionary like reach into that dictionary and and pull in a word so that's one but i think that that that's what at the outset attracted me to john but then after that there's so much more i think that what john's doing in terms of consciousness and bringing the importance of consciousness to the fore this notion of relevance and relevance realization i think it's really falling into the right moment in so many ways right there are all these fields that are culminating towards that and i think that his work is crucial to to to make sense of everything so as much in the technology field with the question of ai or the the question of intelligent machines but then also the whole problem social media the whole problem of the media landscape as being related to attention you realize that understanding relevance and understanding how relevance works and the man in which we engage with the world is so important for us to make sense of what's going on and to not just be tools in this machine cog the cog and this machine that's running and we don't know what's going on you know we get we got on our phone and we we just fall into these these framed uh methods of getting your attention we don't realize that we're just playing the game and we're just feeding the system and so i think that one of the things that john is offering is a is a mechanism for us to to be able to step back and understand what that is so that's one and then ultimately i would say in terms of his approach the conversation and his just genuine openness you know like all the conversations we've had and we've acknowledged our differences we know where we stand we kind of laugh about it we smile about it um but then we always go further in and deeper into into the conversations and so and so i think that he's just been such a precious conversation partner and bringing my own ideas you know because sometimes it won't happen in the conversation like we have the conversation we kind of test each other we push each other a bit and then i go away and then i realize a week later that okay yeah this has changed or this this way of thinking has refined itself at least and so so yeah so i i'm really happy that he that i've been really excited to see the attention that he's been getting more and more and and i think that especially his conversation with also with with paul uh paul vander clay i keep having the v wanting to go to verbatim with paul vander clay and all these other people and you as well and all this this little what do they call the little corner of the internet or whatever yeah i think that that's been wonderful uh for us but then also for the people that have been have found some threads and some you know some crumbs to to kind of sustain them on their journey so yeah so uh i i saw jonathan talking about me um and talking about the book i wrote with uh with christopher master pietro and philip misawik and uh and so i reached out to him and then he invited me pretty soon thereafter to come on his channel and i had her first discussion and and i remember after the discussion the discussion was really powerful and then i remember afterwards when the when the video ended i realized oh i'm i'm missing jonathan like [Laughter] i i really really like uh being in his presence and interacting with him um so i i have one of my divining defining features of dialogos is that both people can get to a place they couldn't get to on their own that doesn't mean they come to agreement that's the mistake to think no we we failed because we don't agree on all these propositions um uh i i i i think that's the the incorrect goal but i always feel that i i do that when uh when i'm in discussion with jonathan jonathan makes um [Music] he makes good-hearted and good critiques of my work and i appreciate them this is not me being defensive at all jonathan will say something like well john seems to be overly individualistic in how he's understanding spirituality he's leaving out the ecclesia and i'll go that's really good that's really good and i'll take it to heart i might not respond the way he wanted me to respond but i'll take it to heart and i'll say no that's an important point and that that always happens when i'm interacting with jonathan i'll hear i'll hear like i'll hear genuine well what about this and i'll go um that's something missing from my thought or that's a way on which i've misapprehended or even mistaken something and so and jonathan does it in a way that's always done with affection and respect so he's committed as much for me i sense this in him this is how it is for me the being in right relationship with jonathan is more important than being right about something right um and i feel that i feel that in with him too and his work uh his work on symbolism i i say this and people don't get it i say it half jokingly but only half jokingly people don't realize how radical jonathan is i i think i think uh like jonathan is right the the what he he is he is trying to get people like i hope you take this as a compliment you remind me a good and that you're trying to get people to this fundamental new way of seeing the world that isn't just a way of having new propositions but like seeing the world like in this fundamentally different and profound way and that um and that you actually have the courage and the integrity as a believing christian to nevertheless mount a criticism of aspects of christianity because of how they have lost the symbolic sense and i admire that about you um and again you don't do that any with any hostility but you do it with integrity but i think the the point about um symbolism and the way symbolism happens as you put it i think this is a really profound thing and i i think it it intersects with the work i do on relevance realization and sacredness and meaning in in a really really um mutually beneficial fashion um and um and then as i said um i want to use an adjective and i hope people don't hear it the wrong way there's a sweetness to jonathan's presence like that's one of the things i missed but like once i when i'm not talking with him that kind of goes away and it's like it's like it's like if you know you've been there's been beautiful music playing and then somebody shuts it off and you sort of oh that had been sort of it had sort of gone into the warp and woof of my mind without my realizing it so there's a musicality about how he expresses himself there's a lyricism um i really want you and and chris master vietra to talk at some point because chris is like that too that the lyricism is is beautiful um i you know and like i said i i jonathan's ability um i aspire um i hope that's the right word i aspire to follow socrates and ultimately a neoplatonic way of life uh and and jonathan is living it now it's a christian neoplatonism but i think it's still a legitimate form of neoplatonism and i think christian neoplatonism is a very good thing so i'm not trying to do a backhanded insult but jonathan lives it and um i admire that i almost envy it about him and so that's also why i like engaging with him yeah i've got so many kind of jumping off points with what you guys have said but i just wondered if you wanted to respond to that i mean i i didn't expect i didn't expect what you said and i i feel i take it definitely to heart in there and i think that that something i mean i do see that we we're also on like a growing friendship and i think that that's something that it's one of those things when the first time we met we knew it instinctively that that was happening and then it's just a question of letting the you know just letting the the the vase getting filled with with with time and anecdotes and so so i i appreciate it very much thanks yeah there's so many different jumping off points you mentioned this sort of this this corner of the internet which i think is probably a good way of sort of framing it and lots of people are given a different name sort of the liminal web or the sense making web or lots of different kind of but the the broadest frame and i'd love to get your definitions on this as well is what jim rutter's called the what's next space this sort of sense of there's a lot of common themes one is like the whole left by religion like these sort of deeper questions of purpose and meaning that are not really addressed in modern society and that sort of seems to be fueling a lot of the attention that many of the figures in this space have been getting because they're wrestling with those deeper questions um and how would you yeah how would you frame like the the or delineate this kind of wider space or this wider conversation i mean i think that's right i mean i i i worry that there's a bias because i do think the meeting crisis is is a thing and it's important and i do think it's kind of that whole and we have different names for it but i think we're talking often about very convergent things i guess one of the things i would add to that is not only the matter but the manner uh one of the things that seems to typify this corner of uh of the internet is um that we're trying to move into what i call dialogues what what i would what i talked about before when you know how jonathan and i interact and how it takes on a life of its own because we're both seeking mutual movement and to afford each other insight and realization and to and and and and then that is in the service of right relationship right and that's a fundamentally different ethos than um well you know what you see through most of social media a lot of the internet so i think that manner uh uh which i like i i i give the name to deal logos i'm trying to pick up on many different things with that term um i think that is also an important thing there's a commitment to that and there's also a commitment to and this is something neither i guess it's part of the manner i think what we're also doing and and i'm trying to use a term that you know i got from christianity i i don't think it's insulting to christianity the way i'm using it i think there's an attempt to rediscover and revalue fellowship as something distinct from specific friendship or just being a member of a teen or part of a corporation or whatever right and so there's because one of the things people often say especially in more intense versions of like dialectic into the logos is they'll say i didn't know that this kind of intimacy existed it's neither sexual nor familiar nor friendship but it's important and i've always been craving it they say that and so i think another thing this corner of the internet is trying to do is to bring back into prominence the presence and the practice and the value of fellowship so that's another thing that i and i don't see that as a a value or even something that's being explored and um so for me i use this metaphor of you know we're trying to get the courtyard rather than the courtroom where we're trying to get people who want to sit together and talk deeply and converse and participate in a conversation that takes on a life of its own it's transformative and they experience fellowship because of course that is also something you know the dunbar number people forget right 150 you're not friends with 150 people i challenge you to be a good friend with 10 people right you can't do it but you're not they're not just people that are living with you right we we i would argue we evolved to be in fellowship and i do think the ecclesia the church was a place that made that i hope this is the right word jonathan i think it made it sacred there's something sacred about what two or three are gathered in my name right right and so i i think that that's another important aspect of this corner of the internet and one of the things that it's been it's been interestingly enough it's also been moving out of the internet which is something which is positive and not and not interestingly two not moving out in a singular way no right because it could have been something like you know some guru or whatever something and then he has his group so that's not what's happening but what happens is you're seeing these estuary groups that paul is doing you have your groups of practices that you're kind of there i have i can see that people in the people are going back to church too but not going back to different churches people are going back into their churches and trying to and understanding the importance of ecclesia and the importance of fellowship and then trying to to re to create that at a local level too because it can't completely exist only online no no no i i agree and i think one of the evidences of the reality of the rediscovery of fellowship and of the logos is exactly what you're saying if it just stood stayed on the internet i would suspect it's reality and that's where the practices come in as well very sort of the circling or the authentic relating and there is a sort of convergence that you're both pointing to of different practice groups that are maybe kind of becoming interested in a lot of the ideas but have got maybe the embodied practices of fellowship or connection yes and you mentioned paul vander clay as well who when i sort of described some of the workshops or practices that i was familiar with was like oh yeah that's that small group in church that's he was kind of basically saying yeah we've we've already got that we don't need that we've already got that and paul's setting up of the estuary like like jonathan said i think is that's really important i mean like what is this register uh so an estuary is where uh salt water and fresh water mix and so the estuary isn't church but it's a place that's supposed to be where people within the church and people without the church can meet in good faith dialogue and really where there's we're not going to secret we're not here we're going to convert you right there's no secret agenda and also there's an expectation people coming in from the world we're not in here to sort of you know debunk your christianity but it's not like it's it's like no can we enter into genuine dialogues and can we facilitate the formation of fellowship and then how will that transform us and then how can right people might go into the church they might not uh people might leave the church that's also happened with estuary but what happens is how do people go back to where they go back home and and is what's happening in estuary going to transfer back and transfer their home life and that's that's the important thing for estuary as far as i understand it so these are people meeting online or meeting in person i think both projects right but they do try to have uh in-person meetings as well yes i understand yeah and i wanted to raise a criticism that came up as i was because i completely agree with you about there is a form as well it's not just the content it is the form and it's the way this conversation i had but i've spent a bit of time kind of dialing into what peter limberg and i have dubbed the critique sphere yeah which is sort of a group of people who've kind of emerged and i think often have very valid criticisms of some of the figures in this space and some of the kind of focus on and one of the criticisms they make is what they call civility porn that a lot of the time like this focus on kind of manners or the way that we interact actually can mask divisions and sometimes kind of difficult conversations are not had or yeah that's one of the criticisms i think is worth raising i think they i think i think they get the cart before the horse i think the deep if you want deep differences to be deeply discussed in a way that might be transformative there has to be trust yeah and they they're not getting or so they're putting the cart before the horse and the criticism and it's like and it is not that we lack debate in our society that and that's the presupposition that's a ridiculous presupposition we are inundated and everything has become adversarial i am not saying we stop that i think i think there are but what we're what i'm saying is no no there there are different needs being met in different ways and we delegate it if we're going to do right there's proper arenas for for example in science i got a debate that's part of the job that's how you do it that's how it works right but if i take if i take that courtroom model into it like try and take it into your relationship with your your significant other it's going to destroy it yeah exactly and and and if you get into that protest polka like susan johnson talks about and this is a therapeutic point you actually can't get to the differences because people get caught up in the intensity of the conflict and mistake that for the issue that is potentially resolvable and what you have to do is you have to break out of that you have to return people to a deep kind of potential for trust and then you say now let's talk about our differences and avoid the protest polka right and let's try and do can we both let's let's let's can we bring up the differences and then is it possible for there to be mutual movement i i think some people who criticize me just also forget the fact that i'm canadian and right and so that's just part of the culture but for me that would be my deepest reply they're getting the cart before the horse and they're they're presuming that there's a lack of adversarial debate in our culture and i think that's not and i think that and it's funny because if you pay attention to the conversations you'll realize that some of the differences between us are huge they're deep they're very they're big and they're consequential if you follow them to what that means in terms of what types of solutions you'll apply and so and and and so i don't i think that and we are aware of them we're not pretending and but we're saying what there's no point we we actually do we it's like a circle it's a circle is a good way to think about it so we'll go into that subject a little like we'll push it we'll push it we'll push it we'll feel the tension then we'll move on to something else but then we know that in the next conversation we'll come back and so there'll be this circling where there's a mix of showing the person that you can trust them and that it's like this is not going to break our relationship we trust each other but then knowing okay this isn't over yet we have to come come back and we're going to discuss it and so i think that that you know i think that a lot of what i'm seeing in this like critique sphere is like they what they would like is they would like to be able to put someone on trial and then just kind of put out all the accusations and what do you say to that sir what do you say to this and that's fine whatever that can exist but i think that that's definitely not a model for a society and it's not a model for showing how groups can exist because if we think about it that way we're saying one of the things we have is a breakdown in the existence of these intermediary groups like we we don't have communities anymore our families are broken we don't have we don't have churches we don't have intermediary organizations we have the state and we have the individual and everything else is being broken down in between if we want to rebuild something like that then we have to understand what it means because if you it's the same if you live in a group and you take on that critical approach someone that lives in the same house as you how long do you think you're going to be living with that yes it doesn't mean that you have to ignore it but you have to come at it like this like the cycling of of like the cycling of trust and of questioning that's the only way to do it and it's in a relationship with one person it's the same thing you can't always be telling the verse in their faults and those faults could be completely true like everything i say about my wife if i criticize it could be absolutely true but if that's all i do because we haven't fixed that yet right because i see you haven't fixed it so let's keep talking about it until you fix it it's like that's not a real that's not a reality it's also it's also a pretentious standing point for the critic right so right um it's i'm out here and i'm going to do this and i'm going to find the criticisms but where are you standing such are you going to come in and actually one of two things will happen then you'll allow me to do that to you and then we'll get to the point of non-negotiable faults that we won't right and that and that's what happens when relationships break down or we'll get into i'm going to actually open up a little towards you you're gonna and then you're gonna move towards uh i would argue if you're going to actually participate as opposed to taking a pretentious epistemic stance then you're going to either move into acrimonious division or you're going to have to move into something like like sometimes acromonas division is necessary right it's absolutely necessary sometimes you do have to eject someone from a group because their behavior or the things they're saying are completely corrosive to the existence of something so i i don't think that that shouldn't exist but we should be careful to think that this is that this is just the manner that you deal with problems or questions that we're not that in our relationships we're not addressing these issues we're doing it we're doing it progressively through these cycles of discussion so i don't i yeah that's what i do so here's what i would i totally agree with that and what i would say is we have enough we have enough forces us we have enough forces both algorithmic and social pushing into prominence acrimonious division right that we like we it doesn't need to be emphasized i'm not it can be needed or necessary i think we've got an imbalance so if they think it's civility porn um i i think it's trying to address a significant imbalance in the society yeah i mean this is obviously something i've thought a lot about having tracked a lot of these public conversations one of which was the idea of the kind of intellectual dark web can we have sort of conversations that go beyond ideology that are kind of going somewhere new and it's very difficult when there's a sort of level of prominence partly as you say because of the tools because of the algorithms yeah which on both sides sort of they boost conflict they boost tribalism they boost criticism but they also identify us often with our worst takes or we become kind of we sort of calcify around our worst opinions in a way all the time because we sort of forced to defend them and i also think there was a as you mentioned like the sense of safety that's needed to create for these conversations i think was not created or was not able to be expanded beyond the sort of a small number of people and yeah like what i think is quite beneficial about the conversation that we're part of is it's it's a it hopefully happened a little bit more underground longer to be able to build up some of those relationships of trust not in this kind of like new york times article about all of these new public intellectuals which then kind of creates this yeah this obvious kind of target and quite rightly i mean it should have been a target but but then often p you saw a lot of those relationships break down a lot of the kind of safety of the conversation break down for various human reasons magnified by the social media kind of platforms that we're using which bring out the worst in us and augment lack of trust as well and i think a lot of it is a lot of it is because it happened explicitly on the political level and the political level that is that's what that's what that level is for it has it does have a certain amount of debate a certain amount of of you know it's it's the level of conflict that's where the political level that's that's where we have wars we have that's also where we get the attention as well so it drags people there because there's such a temptation because that's where you get the responses on twitter that's where you get the so the way it is it's a strange attractor of immense force the discussion we've been having they have political corollaries but they're they they don't tend to be focused on politics we don't tend to to deal with the recent issue and everything so we we're trying to kind of talk about the meaning crisis more and about how we can kind of solve that and then sometimes we'll say a little bit of politics but it's not the central thing and i think that's helped i think that in the idw one of the things that happened and you can see what it broke down was it end up being the political sphere and like specific political questions that this person is on the wrong side of on the right side of and then i can't associate with them anymore and so then we criticize each other across and yeah so yeah i agree with that i have i think first the attempt to shift the sacred into the political arena has been a significant mistake um i have criticisms that politics takes a taste largely at the level of propositions and it can't incorporate a lot of the other stuff that i think is central to meaning making and i do worry also like i said um i've said to you before i worry about um you know the hermeneutics of suspicion have been considered the default mode in which we approach reality and the human suspicion uh prioritizes uh devastating criticism right so the the devastating criticism that knocks the person down or reveals the secret flaw i mean aha and it's like okay uh you do need to do that because there are people that should be knocked off their high horse i'm not saying that but again why not also present what the humanities of suspicion always depends on which is the hermeneutics of beauty right it's not the case it like maybe pull apart the oh because i think this is a great concept we've we've talked about it on the channel but maybe people watching you shouldn't be familiar with it so this is uh an idea from rakuer and the hermitage's suspicion is basically sort of given to the west by you know by marx by freud by nietzsche it's the idea that you know there's all underneath it there's always a secret agenda a hidden motive right and in in you know and there's a lot or the unconscious they're the class struggle or the will to power or or or or some systemic oppression right this is what you're doing but this is what you're really doing yeah yeah the manifest in the latent weber made a distinction to bureaucracies are set up to do this this is their manifest function but they have this latent function so there's you can see many thinkers coming to this and the hermeneutics suspicion is based on this idea that appearances are distracting they're distorting there's misleading um and what you want to do is you want to you want to break through now the problem and this is a point that marla ponte hammers on and on again right phenomenology of perception and uh you know they're visible and invisible and like you can only realize something's an illusion in comparison to something else that you take to be real and what what so what that means is there are you have to say no no there are situation in order to say that turned out to be illusion i know that because look i can't touch it right and the touching is real right and so what do you what what's going on when you say it's real i'm not trying to do the metaphysics here what you're saying is no no there are times when the appearances aren't distracting or distorting or deceptive they're actually disclosing of reality and i take that to be at least the ancient moment an aha moment and i take that when when appearances do that for us um that that's what the ancient at least the ancient concept of beauty was so the hermeneutics of beauty actually is primary and the hermeneutics of suspicion is completely parasitic on it and what i'm critiquing is the imbalance right i'm saying no no no we should also be doing a lot to exemplify the hemorrhagic beauty for people because i want to in in in that manner i want to challenge the prioritization the implicit and almost unchallenged uncriticized assumption that the hermeneutics of suspicion is the way in which we should move through the world and the the idea that the hermeneutics of beauty are primary this is i mean this is not just a statement that john is making this is actually the manner in which you engage with your daily life every day all the time when you walk out on the street and you don't think it's going to break apart when you pick up a glass and it's holding the liquid in it you are engaging in a hermeneutics of beauty trust it's just trust it's just the idea that what is being disclosed to me the the appearance of it is revealing what is true about it and this is something which is which is actually the fuel for your life is that you can function without it and it is the fuel for everything that's good and that makes you feel alive so although it is true that sometimes there are appearances can hide what is behind it as john said we have to remind people that the primary mode is this harmonics of beauty if you engage with it that way and if you also because one of the problems with the hermetics of suspicion is that if you engage others with that hermeneutics the position in which you're in is a position from which you'll not you won't receive anything from the person in front of you because i already figured you out i figured you out and so it's like you do these things but i know what's really going on whereas if you engage someone with a with just at first i'm not saying it's not possible that john's lying to me of course but the first step is a yes right it's like i come to you with a yes and then we'll see later but the first and we do that all the time when when you're walking down the street you don't think the person is going to kill you right you you you walk down the street and you engage with people in a manner that is always that is generally this kind of general basic trust and basic openness to to what you're encountering if you didn't have that you'd be psycho you'd just be hiding in your basement and thinking everybody wants to kill you i found your kind of riff on i mean submission really powerful we put out i think in the piece that we did just after after christmas the the religious wars of the pandemic end game yes yeah and as a diagnosis of particularly where america feels like it is right now where almost like the hermeneutics of suspicion is almost consuming itself yeah just sort of paranoid conspiratorial spiral downwards but the fascinating thing is as you point out like behind this sort of conspiracy mindset is actually that addiction to the kind of like aha i figured it out like the the addiction is actually to the to that kind of problem yeah inside porn it's it's probably a kind of facsimile of true hermeneutics of beauty but it's kind of an addiction to that facsimile of the hermeneutics of beauty where you're like i figured it out and that that's a kind of empowering thing or feeds us in some way it is and and and and and and they they they look very similar and that's a statement from the hermeneutics of suspicion um they look very similar um and so the the thing you you want to get at is right is and i think this is also part of what's meant by beauty above and beyond the trust the trust is important is that is are these insights leading to reciprocal opening because you mentioned addiction and i think that's completely illegitimate and mark lewis's idea of addiction as reciprocal narrowing between the agent and the arena and are the insights because you get this you get what's called like uh you know schizophrenic insight when the schizo what actually gives the onset of schizophrenic is they have sort of an insight that makes sense of all the weird aberrant salients they're getting that's why just giving them drugs doesn't cure them because even though you can sort of dampen down their salience landscaping they've created this huge insight laden metaphysics that you then have to take apart with using completely different machinery therapy so the question is are are the insights leading you like downward uh or reciprocal narrowing or are they opening you up are they doing reciprocal opening and i think also part of what we mean by in this way plato puts beauty in with love right so if you and i do this is aaron's work aaron is the last name if you and i do if you do some open if you open up a bit to me and i reciprocate by opening up and then that gets mutually accelerating disclosure psychologists have wonderful anemic names for things right mutually accelerating disclosure that's how you get people to fall in love not just romantic love friendship love right that and you see how that that is exactly the opposite it's an open system well it it's that the the insights are the insights this is the socratic point the insights are not just ah-ha's that way they're a-has this way right so that you realize you know oh now i'm figuring it all out but it's there within this like i'm seeing more and more of this and i'm also realizing more and more of myself in a mutually affording fashion and that for me if you can describe it one way and you're talking about beauty and you can describe it another way and you're talking about the experience of love and i think this is one of plato's great insights about how those those are just interwoven together um and so the insight porn tends to go like this where what people are doing is they're reinforcing and they're and they're making the insights are more and more about how this is confirming together and and why that's why that's so powerful for us is that's half of how truth works so part of truth is how things confirm think about think about moments when you think something's really real one is oh look everything fits together that's why this was so real but you also have these other moments as holy cow i didn't know that and you think that's makes that so real because it blows apart all my previous preconceptions and only something that's real could have done that right and and beauty is doing both but inside porn is only doing one it's only doing the confirming cycle and locking you down and in that's what we were talking last night and i said you know the thing with with with you know you know when people get into spirituality is the thing you notice is an absence of self-correction an absence of self-correction there is there's continual confirmation confirmation confirmation confirmation confirmation there's a relation here between curiosity the curiosity is actually a sort of i realized it's something that i was taught in in the dear logos process like a type of dialogue called inquiry and one of the the guides to it was always be curious be curious about your experience if you feel triggered by something be curious about why that is and actually that's a deceptively powerful tool because it's the openness it avoids that sort of sense of like a closed system that then that then kind of starts to spiral but by nature any closed system sort of entropy will will kind of pull it downwards whereas curiosity always suggests like i might not know there might be something more to this there is a there's a it's by definition it's an open system especially if we're being curious about our reactions and how we're how we're responding to things as well as what might i not know there's a kind of there's a it opens the system back up in some way so i think that's good and cash dan has argued that a lot of what you get out of a lot of the transformative benefit of mindfulness practices is actually curiosity but here's a bit of pushback on it because i i think there like um there's a good distinction uh to be made between curiosity and wonder um and i think plato's very careful you know wisdom begins in wonder so a way of thinking about it for me we use the terms and they overlap so i'm trying to stipulate a difference to make a conceptual distinction i'm not saying that we all speak this way in real language it blurs but i'm trying to make a conceptual distinction with two words so i think of curiosity as within the having mode curiosity is i'm lacking something there's a hole and i'm going to find what fits in the hole and that's why if you ask people sort of without thinking about what they mean indeed in depth by curiosity would you like curiosity be to be you know to to to persevere like you're watching you're reading a detective novel and you never find out who did it right or your watch you were watching lost and you realized there is no ending right right but right so that's one thing you can do so i think curios is by definition time bounded as well it's oriented towards having a solution to a problem right whereas wonder so gabriel marcel has this interesting id this point so i like like you know i talk about problem formulation the way you frame a problem right and what you can do is you can frame a problem and then you can do a important act of self-correction you can realize oh no the way i'm framing the problem is actually part of the problem and then i step back and i try more encompassing frame and sometimes that's it i solve my problem but sometimes i go oh wait that frame is also and i go like this and i realize there's no place i can stand that's my point against the critics earlier there's no place i can stand on certain things where i can frame this that's a mystery and i think wonder is to put oneself into the momentum of mystery and so it's very much about the being mode rather than having one you're not trying to solve a problem you're entering trying to enter through mystery into the right relationship about the depth of reality and i think that's a fundamental so i think what i would say what you were actually talking about was wonder and the reason reason why that's important it sounds oh what's the hair academic the reason is is because curiosity is something that's very much loved by a kind of you know marketing and commodification and innovation and right and oh right oh it's so cute and and we can solve your curiosity yeah yes yes and what we need to recover and i think one of the proper jobs of both ancient philosophy and religion is to continually restore people to the capacity for wonder in the way i've just described it i i have a question for you in terms of this whole hermeneutics of suspicion and so i first of course i totally agree with the idea that we need to recover this sense of wonder we need to recover this open sense but i'm wondering if you ever thought about how as the hermit units of suspicion were set up let's say in the 19th century early 20th century that it actually created a system of hermeneutics of suspicion which grew yes and it was instrumentalized so an exact simple example is right freud engages into in brings about hermeneutics of suspicion his nephew edward bernays writes propaganda goes into advertisement and now we are flooded with messaging that is involved completely in hermeneutics to suspicion all the time the message is telling me you'll be young and happy and beautiful and what it's saying is buy this toothpaste or whatever and so so there so it's as if it actually is justifying people's communities of suspicion advertising is the best example because we are constantly surrounded by it i mean even the social media thing is the same right they're saying come here network everybody will be together and realize that no we just want to trap your attention so that you can look at advertisement and it's like so it's termination of suspicion all the way down exactly so so i think that so i think that i think it's mostly because i want to i want to express some compassion for people who who enter into that because it's there yes and it's and it's not only there and let's say bernie's not only brought it into into advertisement he was also uh hired by the u.s government yes in order to message and in order to create pr and public relations messaging which is also engaged in explicit renewal suspicion so it's like we on the one hand we we say okay we want people to break out of it and we want people to be able to engage the world with wonder and that but but that the reality is that yeah your governments are lying to you and the advertisers are lying to you and the social media people are lying to you and and you can see it and you can see and you feel like there's no escape so i can understand why someone would make that their entire world view i think that's a completely legitimate point and and first of all if i was not conveying proper compassion i should have um no no no i mean the virtues virtues are virtues matter and so i think that's well said um this is that always bothered me in the matrix movies oh they're part of the system so you can kill them and it's like really like really wow i don't are you guys really the heroes oh we can kill they're part of the system so we can kill them and it's like oh and that part and that's the unwilling part of the system yes exactly exactly so that i always had like i always had a visceral like oh that's the really radically insufficient justification so i yeah i think that what you said is well placed and i think i think this this gets us into something quite nuanced which is like he and and and the the work i'm doing with christopher masterpiece as we prepare the series on socrates and kirkegaard like and kirkegaard wrote his thesis on socratic irony and and kirkegaard is uh is called like all about irony but the problem is again the hermeneutics of suspicion has taken irony and basically made it sort of equivalent to cynicism right where i irony is a kind of serious play that is supposed to do exactly what you're talking about then you see both socrates um and kirkegaard wrestling with it i take it that kirkegaard sees this in christ but i i'll leave that to you if you think that's a legitimate thing right which is i'm going to speak to you in such a way right that's going to always be almost like tai chi always trying to move around the humanities i'm not going to try and hit you yeah in the hermit system i'm going to try and find a way to insinuate and weave my way in without participating in the hermeneutics institution that's you got to maintain socratic uh integrity and so the the the there's there's there there and this is clearly in kirkegaard there's a loving irony i think it's also in socrates socrates says he loves the people he's talking to um and and and i imagine because i i i see kirkegaard wrestling with this as a also with um how do you talk to somebody in sin because right he says there's a parallel thing uh because people are locked into a pattern he's he's being like a very uh augustine people are locked into a self-deceptive self-destructive pattern and whenever anything you do to try and do that will just get uh co-opted into the system it's like the parasitic processing stuff i talk about so for me um this this is again why deal logos deal logos is to give up the manipulative thing but to say well when i'm talking to people especially people who are in that can i exercise that kind of loving irony that socratic irony and and make it very distinct from what passes for irony today as a way of trying to um draw them out into the hermeneutics of beauty rather than to to just criticize them or just attack them for um for being in the hermitage suspicion i guess where i get a little bit more directly confrontational and critical is people who are are sort of have some relatively deep understanding of what we're talking about here and actively choose to directly um you know use it to manipulate other people there's a different there's a difference between people who as you said are unwitting victims if i can put it that way of something and then people who are bad players right um and so i would try and be have that proper kind of irony and you see irony requires a very sophisticated kind of self-awareness right um towards people who are victims but be much more confrontational and this is what i see in in the life of socrates so socrates confronts the people who are just the tyrants and just right but he will do this other thing with people who are uh caught up and yeah they're just caught up in this mental game that they don't realize or this mental sphere that they can't see the mechanisms of trying to kind of tease it out so people can see it so bob newhart once had a very funny routine where the the the the really bad therapist and the person goes in and and says all of their problems and uh and then bob bob newhart because only bob newhart could do he'd say okay so this is your problem right this is your problem this is your problem yeah stop it stop doing it [Laughter] right and it's like and it's great and we know and we laugh because we know that's absurd yeah right and and that by the way that joke by bob newhart is an example of the kind of irony i'm talking about yeah and you can see it you can see that all the time now which is which is so an example you're seeing in the political disorder that i see all the time they're saying something they say they're still like oh he's far right and what they mean by that is not clear they mean like you shouldn't talk to them you shouldn't never engage with them you should either act as if they don't exist or you should just tell them to stop being in the far right or i won't talk to you and that and it's like that's not how reality works like you can't that that's not we have to we have to be able to engage in conversation be able to to keep our distances make sure people understand the differences but the idea of saying just stop having that political opinion right that's basically on twitter it's basically all that areas like this person is stupid for having this political opinion they should stop it that's not we're not going to get anywhere and here's what he hears but with the way bob you are does it is to put like to call attention to that yeah just how absurd it is yeah of course but but the thing is and here's where you can do that kind of irony that overemphasis on the product of cognition and under emphasis on the process and an undervaluing of the process is actually the hallmark feature of irrationality if i had to say in one thing what makes people irrational is that they focus they fixate on the product of their cognition and they see no value in paying careful attention to the process how they're collapsing into yes binary thinking or whatever tell me what you think because i maybe because what you're saying is making me realize let's say one of the things that i'm doing or because because i'm realizing that one of the things that i'm doing is i'm trying to help people see that because one of the problems of this weird moment is that people see patterns but they always see them they see them as leading towards this hermeneutic of suspicion like it's hiding something and i can see behind it the true intention whereas what i'm trying to do is to say here are these patterns and they point towards this beautiful music basically it's like here's this here's this pattern of reality and and hear how it's musical and beautiful and will lift you up basically and so that's exactly it so yeah this is what i mean about how radical you are right like the way so you well i it seems to me that you right are trying to move to what the way i just described it a deeply ironic understanding of symbolism what i mean by that let me be very careful is a symbol is something that has this very powerful property right and you are very clear a symbol is not just a metaphor it's not just a transpositions between propositions and you say no no this is what you mean i think by it happens right it's it's a way of getting your cognition coupled to how reality is unfolding if i understand is that is that fair okay okay so so you're in this frame and you're locked in and a symbol right has the capacity to be taken into the frame but also not belong and take people out which is the proper state this is why kirkegaard writes under pseudonyms it's the same thing what i'm going to do is i'm going to present something to you that you're going to be initially because if people don't take the symbol into the frame it won't do a damn thing right so i'm going to make the symbol at least attractive to you and it right but from your frame but once you get into once it gets inside it'll break things apart and it'll attract you outside your frame it'll reverse the arrow of relevance that's what i see you doing with symbolism yeah well that's why i do movie interpretations because i find movie interpretations are pretty low on the higher cube things that are important but when i realized that okay so the people love these movies and they get enthralled by them and they they don't know what's going on so it's like let me go in there let me show you something and let me show you how it points towards something more than just the the pleasure of the narrative you could say yes and then see this is the this is i've been i was deeply influenced by salic mcfag's work on christian theologian on parables because i think you know the same way in which people trivialize symbols into metaphor yeah i think people often trivialize parables into allegories and i think and so when i was reading other things like plato's parable of the cave or the sufi stories or some of kirkegaard's like cricket guard is this great parable i love it and you get his humor in the irony so there's this bunch of geese and they walk into this beautiful building and they sing and sing about flying and then they walk out again and you get it you get all right right and all these things opens up right right right but if you look at something more profound right like let's say the parable of the prodigal son you're initial this is how i i continue in a carol shields like people writing about it right i keep experiencing it i i get taken into the parable different roles sometimes i'm the prodigal son sometimes i'm the father sometimes in the elder son and i realize oh wait if i try to resolve this and remove make it a stable finished narrative i've lost what it does what it does is it draws me in and then it blows me apart and then when i started reading jesus's parables that way it was like oh wow right right because i was brought up like no it's an allegory he's talking about these are the jews and these are the right but it's if you really define systems yeah as a defined thing but it but if you do the if you do this thing right sorry this is long but this is this is i'm trying to really articulate what i see in your work and i hope you're appreciating it that way like that that like i mean this is a compliment you're christ-like in that way what you're doing okay you are trying to get people to see in in this way that is like the parables right in which it seems so familiar and so attractive and then you take it in and then you explode it from the inside and instead of how is this relevant to my frame it breaks you out and means how am i going to become relevant to this bigger frame that i've just been exposed to that's what i see you doing and i see that as much more fundamental sorry i'm being a little bit strident here but i see that as much more fundamental that's wrong word for me to use but i see that as more of a fundamental to christianity than a lot of these sort of statements of particular propositions that about because that's what i that's what i see when i'm reading the gospels in jesus at least one of the things i see i'm not i i'm not denying in fact there's ways in which you can interpret the incarnation and other things along what i've just said but that that's what that's what i think you're doing with the symbolism that's so different than i've read a lot of books on symbolism right or the symbol is this the symbol of that and oh no it's a it's a way in which the conscious mind can deal with the unconscious and and that's right but you know right they all share this much larger pattern do young's conscious and unconscious a symbol is how something from the unconscious can get into the conscious mind that blows up the ego structure and opens it up to the unconscious it's the same thing over and over again and i think you have seen that and you haven't just seen it you're enacting it and you're reducing it in other people so sort of taking it from a propositional level to a participatory experience and also reciprocal opening it's opening people up at that deeper level that's what i see that's what i see and i see you doing that and i i i really i i really intend this as a compliment yeah i i i definitely take it as a too big of a compliment for sure the christ-like thing we can satisfy but i think i think you're i think you you i think you're right i think that that's that's definitely what i'm what i'm trying to do like i i'm definitely trying to change the way people see i always it's funny because i actually think that it's like i'm not a buddhist but i i think that i'm doing i'm always trying to do something like a zen cohen that's what i'm trying to do exactly i'm trying to like bring something like there's some here's something familiar and here's how you have no idea and like but not in a way that will make not in the hermeneutics of suspicion way in a way that brings you in and deeper and more in reality right that's what that's what i hope exactly that's exactly it that's exactly it yeah i think i think a parable is to narrative what a cohen is to a question yeah yeah no i i i tend to i definitely agree with that and and you and then and and those two are what aporia is within the socratic practice when you bring people to emporia it's the same thing it's the same thing well thanks yeah i mean i'm happy that it's like it's really surprising to hear you say that just because it's one of those things where how can i say this it's one of the things that i don't formulate explicitly or that i keep it's like my that's my secret yeah so so no i think it's fine i think it's fine but it's true that that i think that that's what at least that's the method i think symbolism can do a lot more but i know that that's the method that i use and i'm always when i'm talking about symbols i'm always thinking that way like how can i get in and then say something that at first either sometimes it's something you don't understand at all at first and then you're surprised to find you understand it or something you thought you understood and then i can just re peel off a layer and then then you have that aha yeah and that for me that's this that that's just that's that's that's the core of the socratic practice the same thing that's what i see socrates doing again and again well that's what i it's funny like no it's all these things rolling in because i i do think that insight because you talk about this too like this idea of cascading inside or that insights and i think that it is that it is for at least online and in terms of communication it is the fastest way to participation yes right because everybody has access to it all the time like it's actually just there in front of you it's like right behind that first veil and so if you're able to just get someone to have insight like all of a sudden that light that goes on it's not a change of information it's not a propositional change of opinion none of that is going on it's actually it is the best way to say it is that there's a light that goes on and then that light wants to shine and you then it's like okay now i look at the world and the world is changed the way that i see the world is not the same as it was and sometimes you can't hold on to it for a very long time sometimes it just lasts a few seconds because i know it because when i have insights i have these insights and it's like oh no no it just kind of gets away but it's like if if people can have those little moments then i think that i think that that's one of the ways to help them get back on a path of meaning and to get back into yeah i agree again if it's if it's the right kind of insight yeah right with the type of insight that like you said that transforms you that doesn't just give you the idea that it's like i figured out yes how this thing works it's it's an insight of wonder rather than an insight of curiosity no that's a that's perfect thank you because you were talking about that just before and i'm like oh yeah it all comes together that way yeah yeah it's one without kind of resolution yeah it's it's without resolve state but one that kind of isn't expanding it was all state that opens itself up it's like when you're falling in love with somebody you fall in love and that takes you into them in a way that affords you to fall deeper in love that affords you to fall deeper in love that's why i sometimes say my whole project could be put into the sentence i want to help people fall in love with being again and the harmonics of suspicion prevents that from happening again it has its place we don't we this is the politeness in me i don't think we ever like well maybe because there's a bit of augustine here too but right now i think a lot of the time a lot of the time people don't pursue something knowing that it's wrong or evil pursue something they put they they they believe it to be good another way of putting it is i think people often fail not because they're pursuing something good but because they pursue a lesser good at expense of a greater good that's what i mean when i i tweeted once i i i don't tweet very much but i'll periodically tweet these sort of i try to be like uh you know epictetus you know these little sort of provocative things to try and get people talking and that's what i meant when i said i think sin is the failure to love wisely and i wanted to get that in as something that overlaps but it's not the same as our notion of immorality yeah and that's what dante treats completely in his comedian like that the way he sees sin is exactly that it's always love that's driving yes but it's love that is misplaced it's excessive or that's too cold or that it's just not it's not proper love it's not love at the right level so one of the things i'm seeing in as i go through dionysus dionysus is somebody i don't just read alexio davina on dionysus um and and he there's this um and this was in a conversation we had yesterday with jordan but there there's you know there's the proportioning of attention the proper proportioning of attention is one of the virtuosities and virtues of love when you're loving well you are properly when you love things well you are properly proportioning your attention this is iris murdoch notion uh in the sovereignty of the good that the the the the the dispensing your attention appropriately as things are deserve is is the is the actual key uh to to being a good person i gave a talk two months ago at to kintore college about dante and and hierarchies of love exactly this and how dante structures his whole it's really beautiful because he he sets it up in a personal way and you can see it that so you you have this sense right because what there's a place in in the purgatory where he asks he he uh i'm reading it right now all right okay and so so he he asks why is it my brain that he who's this guy the enid guy the virgil virgil sorry man alive so he asked virgil basically like why did you come see me yeah why did you come get me where i was in this dark place and he says well there's this woman who came down yeah and she was and she said why don't you go see dante it was beatrice yeah so beatrice but then beatrice heard from dante's patron saint and then it says that and there was another lady and so he's basically suggesting that the virgin yes called upon his patrons saying and his patrons ain't called upon uh on called upon uh beatrice and then beatrice called upon virgil then he came but then you can see it reverse now yes where you can see it as dante's hierarchies of love in itself which is that it's poetry and it's the poetic spirit which made dante possible that he could know what love is and then beatrice is what awakened love in him yes but then that love was never sufficient and then the higher beings up to into the virgin ends up being this like ascent the very ascent that he's doing from hell all the way to heaven is an ascent of hierarchies of love and and so it's like as if the very way in which the people that come see him represent in his own life what those hierarchies of loves are that they're all good right that the love for poetry is good but everybody knows right that the stuffy professor who like reads poetry but he's completely asocial and can't have relationships and so but you all and you know the person who is in love with a person becomes so obsessed with that person that they lose themselves in their relationship right so you know that all these loves kind of stack up and i just find it so power to realize how powerfully he kind of and and then when he goes up it's not exactly the same but he goes to bernard of clairvaux who is like the theoristion of love in in the middle ages and ultimately into the virgin as this ultimate image and ultimately into the obviously into the you know into the non-duality of god god himself so so anyway so i i just think that it's a great place to look for that because it it's that i think the whole comedian is organized that way and um and that and this isn't an insult to dante i think you would like it that that structure is actually given that's the structure given in the symposium right about uh and and in it one of the things that's a little bit clearer you don't get it as so much in the purgatory and i'm only in the purgatory i i know people tell me you get this what i'm going to talk about in a second you get it more clearly when he moves no i'm sorry i'm still in the inferno but when you move out of the purgatory into paradisio but in in plato each love right and this is this is what i wanted something to ask you about because you made a statement of faith that lines up with this i think right so plato says each level of love sort of scaffolds you onto the next level so first you love beautiful bodies and then you start to love right beautiful character and then you start and this is he says this you start to love beautiful institutions distributed cognition and then you start to love sort of you know beautiful aspects of sort of fundamental and then you love beauty itself right and and each one affords and scaffolds the other and then i was thinking about this in connection to what you said i forget who you were talking to was it was it brett weinstein wait you yes it was and you were trying you were talking about this the other day you're trying to give him a notion of faith that's orthogonal to what we've inherited from the enlightenment and perhaps from the darker parts of the reformation which is faith is to assert things without evidence like right which is i i don't know why anybody would want that um but um but you were saying and invite me if i get you wrong please correct me but you were saying no no faith is this you're at this level and you love it but there's something in it that that love also draws you to something higher and you and then you you you get to a gestalt that right you can't infer from the lower level but once you're there and this is the kirk guardian leap too it's like a call you can feel it like a call yes and that's what is the call it is a it's a call to faith i guess and right but and plato but plato has that love is always mataksu love is always a call right love is always a call beyond what what is uh and so it seem so you it's as i'm trying to understand what you said you're at this level love is being instantiated embodied incarnated whatever word you want um there and and that and that is a good but then the love also issues a call because eros is always in between the sake uh the the the human and the divine that's right and then if you follow the call if you if you are willing to fall in love you fall upwards into a gestalt that then makes sense of the lower level but and so you can always in reverse justify having taken the leap but you can never justify before you take the leap if am i understanding you correctly i totally i totally that's exactly what i'm talking about yeah and uh and i think when you talk about it's funny that you talk about the symposium because i think that in the symposium there's it's half all this is happening in multiple levels and that the scene with alcibiades and socrates yes that's the that's like the best it's like the best scene because alcibiades is trying to seduce socrates and socrates is trying to like basically engage with him enough so that his desire remains active and then lift his desire up towards something more that's what i mean by this the symbolic irony yeah that's the socratic thing at the same time please continue and and it's what's interesting is that if you know the story of athens you know that it's as if it's all you get the said that if alcibiades had just filed socrates up he would not have betrayed athens yes and the idea that socrates is guilty of perverting you know the youth it's in the symposium it's kind of overturned because you see that no socrates is actually trying to bring alcibiades out of his own glorious like kind of self-love of bodies and move into something more and that if he had only been able to then also bodies would not have athens would not have been betrayed what and what do you think of that moment that it's almost a moment of mystery because alcibiades sees it yeah he hears the call right he gets it like that's clear in plato and yet he nevertheless turns away and he even he admires he admires socrates but he's like no it's not for me or like this is you know he's too he's too he might be too glorious yes like that's one of the problems i guess it's also one of the problems of pride it's like if that's the problem of not being able to rise up to the next level it's pride because pride appears as self-sufficiency it appears as self-naming and so it's like i've got it and and i and i master this and i see myself as the pinnacle of something so it's it's a lot harder to jump up the next level when you master one level let's say not that you mastered too much but that you take it at self-sufficient and then you and it's hard to go up so that's why humility is always part of this process right so the idea is that you you humility makes it possible for the call to like lift you up i think humility and wonder because wonder always gets you to to challenge the self-sufficiency of any framing that you're in yeah but because it's actually the the lower level is impossible of being resolved at that level and so the idea that you master it in that level it has to be pride because it cannot be resolved it has to in order for it to be resolved it has to reach the gestalt say more what you mean by i think i understand what you mean right so okay so so so yeah i'm trying to find the best example like i'm am i going for an object or for a human process let's go for an object it's like the the gestalt of the glass cannot be resolved by the different elements of the glass yes right and so if one element of the glass or some aspect of of the one level thinks that it masters everything that it's got it that it completely owns this thing it's lying it doesn't it's not possible right and so can i try something yeah go for it go for it okay so and again we were talking about this yesterday but i think it's completely appropriate so i've been trying to get to a way of making phenomenologically viable and powerful the platonic notion of the form because it seems like it's been turned into this abstract thing and so there's this idea that right and and i'm trying other people are doing this not just me john russo is doing an amazing job having a huge influence on me uh but the idea that and this is from marlo ponti we never actually see something right we because we can't see all of its aspects the and and beyond the perceptible aspects there's conceptual there's imaginable aspects right you know this could be used as a hat right right right all that so there's all these this is multi-espectuality and yet it's not it's not a cacophony it's it's harmony it's like it's like a melody of music there's a through line that runs through all the aspects and and the through line and this is where marlo ponti i think is better than hustle because hostile thinks he can find the essence as a complete as a completion or something like that the reduction i don't want to get into the scholastic arguments about that but marlo ponti says no no no this this is inexhaustible but the through line is is right it's like tolkien illuvator you know sings right the the song of reality so that through line is not itself an aspect okay right it's not because it's that which can bind all possible aspects together exactly right so that's what it's writes a form and not something you see although the word idos actually means the look of something it means a particular ass so he's trying to say he's trying to play with aspectuality and then of course you increase that when you do deal logos because then you get multiple perspectives each with multiple aspectuality right and it gets layered in this and what's the form going through all of that and it's wonderful right but what i was going to say is right is the lower level what you like when any aspect thinks it captures the through line and thereby enters into a kind of profound category mistake because no aspect can be the through line is that what you that's exactly what i'm saying excellent yeah that's it and that's what you could say that that's what that's pride that's when you say pride before the fall like that that's what that's what pride is and that is you could say that that's the origin of sin that's when you miss the mark right because the mark is is beyond the mark is the throne yeah and so you if you if you think that you've got it here then you you missed it you're not aiming you're not aiming properly it has to move up across the categories across the level to enter into this gestalt but the gestalt does like because i i i me it's just stories right in my mind it's okay so the gestalt in the stories it always appears at this level but if you see in the story what it'll appear as is always something like a glimmer or like a seed or like a golden something a golden ball a golden golden like a little thing a small like when christ said christ christ talked about he said the smallest thing the seed the small is the mustard seed you can't see it it has no substantiality right so it has to do with the and even has to do with the idea in a way of the geometric point right the idea of the the the in a space the the geometric center of a circle has no position in the circle it doesn't hold it doesn't have yes yes space it but it's there yeah so it appears as this glimmer as this this thing so that brings me to then wow i want to join two things we've been talking about okay it seems to me that glimmer is right like you said there's somehow in which the gestalt is glimmering shining into the lower level right and that is if that to me that lines up with what we were saying earlier about what the symbol is yeah and that so there's a relationship between faith and the ability to see symbolically i think so because you can't i think you know i think you're right and that's why i frame it that way because it's like the the symbol the gathering the manner which the pattern gathers into this unity it's like that it kind of pulls you out yes and it pulls you up you can say because it also because the some if you can able if you're able to help people see the okay actually okay think about this so be able to if you're able to help people see a pattern is something and help them see that there's a pattern the through line and then you can help them see like that pattern can be applied to something which is not at all in this category yes then it pulls them out it has to yeah right so it's like here's a that you could think of it like you know here's a pattern of b here's a pattern of action we call this pattern you know affection and so you can see it's like it's a bunch of things right it's a tap on the shoulder it's like what is this there's a kiss on the cheek like what are these things that we're touching each other like what is that but no but you see that there's a pattern going through and this pattern has a reality it's effective if i can help you see the pattern then i'm pulling you up and outside he's like oh oh that's affection that's affection that's fiction and of course it's it's organic it's messy sometimes you can it can slip or whatever but i think that there's something about that okay so all right okay good so so we've got faith and symbolism but we also linked symbolism and love and link to love and beauty are they all linked together is there an aspect of faith that is responding to a call of beauty from a higher level i think that's what it is i think but that's what i think that that's what beauty is i mean beauty beauty is you could say something but it beauty is the integration yes it's the integration of the higher and the lower aspects together because it's something like i see the pattern and i see the i see the not the messiness but i see the spinoza does this with skin sienta ski anti intuitive and and when you get scants into it like when you when you see spinacistically and you get you enact cancer into it here then you get the ethics the ethics is this long argument complex mind-breaking thing right and if you read uh elsewhere in spinoza he's actually quite capable of writing sort of lyrically and beautifully but he's doing this thing and then you get this and i and and you get it and it's only because i think i had experience in mindfulness with project you see the whole of the argument in each premise and you see how each premise goes into the whole of the argument so i think the best way to say is you see you see the embodied pattern and it you see it as in body so you see a beautiful woman you see the balance and you see the you see the the the structure but then you also see that little difference right that you see that little difference that little idiosyncrasy which is floating around in an exactly powerful way but i think that that's what that's the that's that's beauty i think that that's would be right but so but that seems then as i said that seems that there's there's something in faith that is bound up with beauty as opposed to being bound up with assertion i think so no i i i think so and i don't i mean i've never seen i mean maybe never but at least for 20 years i've never seen faith has bound up with assertions anyways like i don't think that it's a i mean i'd say that okay i'm i'm wrong i'm wrong because i do say the creed like i will say the creed and i do believe that there's something important about about the assertion uh but i i do think that the creed is also there let's say the creed is a good example the creed is a gathering of elements of christianity into a through line yeah it's like it's like here's all these things christians have said all these things in the bible or whatever we're going to condense them we're going to bring them together but we also understand that this is there to point to something which ineffable and is a mystery you mentioned faith and beauty yeah there's all so there's kind of an aesthetic sense to faith yeah that's deeply entwined with that aesthetic yeah there's an aesthetics to it but i want to do like i want it i want to i uh these two conversations are like growing together in my mind the one we had yesterday one uh but see see with kant and the three critiques and this is a i think a central point that habermas made we we separated the true the good and the beautiful we separated them into autonomous regions um and and and and because the the ultimate sacredness in the enlightenment is autonomy um and you know autonomous reason is kant [Music] but anyways um and i think that is one of the besetting things of the meaning crisis because them being uh trying to separate the true the good and the beautiful from each other they're not identical but i i do think the ancient thomas aquinas puts them as they're convertible to each other they interpenetrate and mutually afford each other so i want to use aesthetics in an ancient sense not the way we mean it now i want to mean in a sense of an attraction to beauty that's also a falling in love with reality right that is also the transformation of one's uh being connected and being in right relationships the right relationship is goodness right the disclosing of reality is a kind of deep kind of truth and then the falling in love with it is the ass they're all bound up together inseparably that's how i would because cons the way that kant brought about aesthetics would you agree that this might be controversial little but do you agree that without him wanting this that const notion of pure aesthetic or this aesthetic experience is what led to something like entertainment culture because he he he has this notion of so it's like the idea of going into a museum and looking at a piece of art like there's nothing wrong with that i do it i do it too but there's a difference between that and let's say the function that an icon will play where the icon will be beautiful right the icon will have all the elements of you that you'll find in a painting in a museum but it's a it's the calling of the person that's representing it's that person is represented for a reason and that person is calling you into engagement and your relationship in a frame where everything is calling you into this mystery and so so the let's say the way that i stand in front of an icon is one which pulls me into all these corollaries that is engaging me with also with even my own sins you would say it's like i look at this saint as an example of virtue and i it's like i now i realize i need to transform my this aspect of myself or whatever but if i stand in front of picasso i can get like a it's like this is it's an interesting beautiful experience an emotional experience maybe maybe there's a message there that's not the same it's not the same as entering into like a church and having this architecture that surrounds you and like drags that draws you in yeah i don't i don't i mean that's hard i read a really good book by fisher called uh something like wonder and the aesthetics of rare experience where he's he's talking about how kant started the emphasis well he's not this whole person but he starts the emphasis on the sublime and the sublime is that sense of right reason is running but it can't sort of come to a conclusion and that sort of sort of open-ended um and that and then what fischer said is that has tended to exclude it it tend to exclude wonder as being the more a deeper understanding of what he would call the sublime yeah and and and and and that's why uh uh fischer talks about beauty and and also the aesthetics of rare experiences like the rainbow and why we're called to it because it it it engenders wonder in us um so i don't know how much i would i don't know how to answer your question i do see i do see kant as doing some stuff that was shifting things around i do see that him he him making each one like the making a pissed like epistemology and ethics and aesthetics and we're you can learn this one and master it without having to know the other two and that's that's the point i'm challenging i do think the uh i don't know about you see the kant at least seems to still be arguing that we take it seriously my notion of entertainment if you look at the actual origin of the word to entertain an idea is to just hold it in your mind and sort of look at it right you're not taking it very seriously what you're doing is seeing if anything calls to you so that you will then take it seriously so i can entertain something and go no that's trivial right so entertainment for me entertainment for me the problem we've done is we we've lost that it is it is primarily an intermediate space it's kind of like an airlock where we can bring things in and say yeah should i take them into my mind or not and then the problem is if you just stay in the airlock you right then you're you're really for me i guess the deeper critique would be this the problem with for me for account and autonomy and freedom and this maybe goes into entertainment which is i think this is people get really angry when i say this i don't think freedom is an absolute good i think freedom is an instrumental good yeah i mean you won't get any argument for me on that but the problem with what the thing with autonomy is it emphasiz and this is this is clearly running through all of the german idealism and content like freedom and the enlightenment's about freedom and freedom in a talk and you achieve freedom through autonomy and the autonomy of reason is what frees it right and et cetera et cetera et cetera and there's all kinds of con to tighten for a reason there's all kinds of good stuff there but i think that has seeped into our culture you know there's like there's like there's decadent romanticism there's sort of decadent you know notions of autonomy um in that you know well free you know freedom it's like that's the ultimate thing we're no we're not i i i i actually don't know what people mean by that and i don't know if they look look this is a good way to understand my life i want to lose my freedom in this way i want my thoughts to be completely determined by what's true i want my actions to be completely determined by what's good and my my sensibility to be completely determined by what's beautiful and once i'm there i don't want to i don't want to lose that and and and the degree to which i fall away from that is usually because of errors due to my freedom or freedom isn't an absolute it's an instrumental good and part of what what happens is we make these things oriented towards freedom and then they get locked into an incapacity to talk to each other because their autonomy is so important and they absolutize freedom which i think is a very problematic thing i want to say thank both of you like the thing i was feeling to to say is like when when you share about your work that you're doing both of you i feel like this real sense of like congruence and authenticity and like the words matching the actions and sort of yeah really living that in the world so really glad to meet you in person yeah it's time properly yeah and john always well thank you david it's this has been wonderful um and um uh like yeah but what jonathan said being here the the the dynamic living spirit of it has been a fantastic um and again it's always it's it's a joy to talk to jonathan and and so i do think that i to use the metaphor i hear the first notes in these kinds of conversations that's where i hear them in the dialogue was when the logos really takes over and we're following it rather than just saying what we want to say that's where i start to get the first sort of query of notes from the horizon and so it's always a privilege to do that and i hope that what we've done will be that for other people they can start to hear the beginning you

Channel: Rebel Wisdom

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Length: 84min 37sec (5077 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 16 2022