Talking with clinical psychologist Simon Strauch on how behaviorism has supplanted psychology, approaching orthodoxy, a reductionist mindset, studying occultism, a thirst for transcendence, horizontal & vertical axes, the gravitational pull of the wound, surrendering to reality, In Treatment, holding a liminal space, giving into urges, changing our predetermined path for another, a clockwork therapist, a culture of permissiveness, Havelock Ellis % the celebration of perversity, psychology erasing morality, affect & trauma, when the psyche lands, soul & psyche, relation between body & soul, a theory of schizophrenia, psychic fragmentation, demons, voices, chemical imbalances, personal evil, ancestral fragments, a pathology that transcends death. A Gnostic metaphysic, spiritually incorrect scripture, the fearsome face of God, Gnosticism diagnosed, God’s favor can’t be curried, the ego configured for gain, the spiritual seeker’s point system, Jordan Peterson’s mindset, human engineering, what the soul requires, why Peterson preaches the hero’s journey, Peterson’s spiritual pragmatism.
Return conversation with Nicolas Hausdorf, on being a degenerate nomad, on the Jordan Peterson phenomenon, the cultural response, truth and status, innocence & academia, a French banking whistle-blower, Peterson’s naivete, saving the Western narrative, the non-psychological approach, oblivious to propaganda, Leo Strauss & the noble lie, a caricature of postmodernism, identity politics, vulgarized knowledge, going all the way back ti the Garden to locate the rot, trauma & fragmentation, resistance to seeing the trauma, crucial fictions, McGill & MKULTRA, a subversive aesthetic, speaking truth, censorship via the Left & Right, university cults, saying No to say Yes, what Peterson is saying yes to, engaging with the mainstream, radical disenchantment, technology of decentralization, recognizing a complex, crazy psychological experiments in the 20th century, overdoses of knowledge, the Munk debate, the JBP opposition, holding a space for ambiguity, a polarizing presence, when two intelligences meet, Peterson & Trump, jokers in the pack, Peterson’s low-resolution map, an avoidance strategy, the incarnation of a dialectic, Peterson’s voice, the medium and the message, self-sacrifice, a cultural control system & the creation of a YouTube celebrity, Peterson’s blind-spot, the ambiguity of innocence, a Jordan Borg, a man with a mission, respecting the moment, future-orientation, sacrificing the moment, being too much in the Now, Alex Jones and the conspiracy sphere, the US elite in disarray, the state apparatus, ordering the world, interesting times.
Part two of return conversation with Jamieson Webster, on the envy of infants, what Jordan Peterson does for women, feminist harpies, how the sexes don’t know what to do with each other, identifying the wrong turn in the past, the war of the sexes, acknowledging mutual accountability, identification and counter-identification, restoring femininity, Rose McGowan’s rage, the quest for justice, the burden of beauty, women’s power, contradictory messages, a tangled mess of sex relations, what shakes loose in therapy, genital organization, Freud on universal debasement and object choice, the Madonna-whore complex, a mortified phallus, multiple desire objects for women, the cost of civilized morality, the secret of marriage, order and chaos, focused & unfocused awareness, Lacan, neurosis & sexuality, no natural order, the impossibility of sex post-sexual revolution, no natural order, Peterson’s prescriptions, the marital chamber, a game of lovers, hosts to an unexpected visitor, ancestral influences, using the libido for ego validation, the moment of conception, a Darwinian struggle, mental battleground, genital disorganization, no genital stage, a black hole in Freudianism, where the fantasies all crowd in, articulating desperation, suicidal teens, inducted into a cover-up, a toxic womb, a toxic culture, the solution of alienation, separating from patterns, the opportunity of not getting, marriage as alienation, the presence of the beloved, the gift of nothing, the end of analysis, unrecognizable love, the marginalization of psychoanalysis, the thing of value, sexual love, Eros, a simulation, a mysterious conception, the only thing Freud trusted, sublimatory work, an open question, nothing left but faith, fear of Peterson’s troll army, gender confusion & bathrooms.
Part one of a two-part return conversation with Jamieson Webster, on the burden of being physically attractive, the company of the blind, a cripple for a father, Jordan Peterson as father figure, wounded by academia, a series of father figure investigations, mapping the wound, Peterson’s private life, an anecdotal disclosure vs transparency, a liminal line, the therapeutic space, an intense sleight of hand, faith in order, Frankfurt school & Fabian Society, the radical left & conspiracy theory, the mess of the left, saying No to bullshit, a tide of social dissatisfaction, the psychoanalytical conundrum, the great family myth, facing an abyss, Lacan & destitution, getting in touch with the soul, trusting the mundane, a taste for the quotidian, a wild discourse, Ferenczi, out on the edge, the catastrophe of genitality, emerging from the sea, the fall of Lucifer, Freud and Ferenczi, mutual analysis, Freud’ wildness, Dalrymple’s view of Freud, Peterson & taking a position, becoming unstoppable, the use of the Humanities, becoming competent, a weird mix of disciplines, an anti-ideological ideology, giving free market capitalism a free pass, the primary goal of success, being raised up by one’s community.
Conversation with Jonathan Pageau, on the relation between liminality & Logos, the vesica piscis, the Christian formula, Christ the impossible shepherd, all the way to the limit, a confused Israelite, liminal characters in the Gospel, the many aspects of Christ, the trickster, Christ’s journey to hades, the all-redeemer, Greek myth parallels, emptying Hades, driving the demons out of Hell, the purging fire of Theosis, transparency to God, forgiveness as embers on your head, the difference between Hades & hellfire, the threat of the Infinite, projecting onto God, religion & power abuse, no common folk in Hell, the corrupting influence of knowledge, when God eats the fruit, what the incarnation is, the source of all possibilities, the corpus of Dionysus, the problem of the infinite, love over knowledge, unity & multiplicity, the Soul of Humanity, human nature as Logos, Rene Girard & zombie apocalypse, the scapegoat, unresolved world war two issues, polarization, the tree & the branches, rejecting the margins, defining mania, Weimar Germany revisited, the transgender agenda, the difference between social justice warrior and the martyr, the deification of the anomaly, multiculturalism, specialness, social contagion, & resentment, a French Canadian perspective, being associated with Jordan Peterson, organized malevolence in the end times, exploring the darkness, the spirit of Mammon, a spiritual disease, the wheat & the chaff, instant apocalypse.
Part two of a conversation with Norman Young, on picking up your cross, the man C.S Lewis warned us about, appealing to pride, submission to God’s will, inverting the Tao, Pagan hero vs. Christian hero, Jordan Peterson’s world-saving mission, the benevolent father, JBP’s wounds, the mythology of JBP’s psyche, the Oedipal mother, masculine-feminine, the Petersonian man, the Aristocratic value, competence of the warrior, the strength of withholding, the doing of salvation, JBP’s heroism, all the young men, the dangers of fame, JBP’s Christian converts, false prophets, Alt-Right and cultural Christianity, a science-based religion, a Gnostic thought, preempting the leap of faith, Kierkegaard and surrendering to the absurdity of the infinite, an element of hubris, 12 Rules for Life & Maps of Meaning, JBP’s shadow-totalitarianism, the social pendulum, Lloyd de Mause, the privatization of morality, egalitarianism vs. the rock of Nature, Luciferian infant ego drives, transhumanism & the will to power, civilization’s emergence from a tribal format, the Messiah-as-State, the inevitability of the democratic project, the idea of Antichrist, the JBP opportunity, the Sam Harris debates, invading the dogmatic citadel.
First of two-part conversation with Norman Young on from biology to theology, The Last Jedi, investigating Jordan Peterson, the meaning of life vs purpose of life, “don’t think about futility,” de-emphasizing Satan, a worldly focus, keeping it equivocal, Peterson’s metaphysic, a pragmatic context, Darwinism as metaphorical context, the concept of eternity, a Liberal Protestant ethic, belief as action, ethical truth, an evolving perspective, Maps of Meaning, the Biblical series, wrestling with the incarnation, myths as extracted patterns of human behavior, use of archetypes, what does Peterson mean by meaning, building a myth, reasons to act, seeking a myth that fits biology, left & right brain function, fudging the data, Rene Girard as counterpoint to Peterson, mimetic violence & the scapegoat mechanism, sacrifice as a worldly practice, the limits of Peterson’s self-sacrifice, a loving father figure, running counter to the Biblical ethic, Social & Spiritual Darwinism, the will to power, hierarchies of competence, is Peterson a gateway to Christianity?, what psychologists do, Peterson & anti-depressants, Jungian psychology, psychedelics and religious experience, the inexplicability of consciousness, keeping the door open, Whitley Strieber & Prisoner of Infinity, the spoken word, speaking beyond his competence, an illustration of human excellence, on the edge of chaos, the moment of discovery, liminalism, Peterson as performer, being led by ideas, the transformation of the Peterson project, modeling an idea of heroism, Pagan vs Christian hero, standing up to totalitarianism.
Part two of return conversation with Gregory Desilet, on cognitive dissonance of critics, morality vs. taste, the benign effects of art, Taxi Driver, Fight Club the book and film, the critic’s role, Pauline Kael as midwife, the quality of response, an absence of contrapuntal characters, a circle of victimage, John Hinckley, Jr., the need for self-confrontation, advertising to the 1%, Natural Born Killers, movies as triggers, The Sopranos, Paul Schrader writing Taxi Driver, shared male issues, the experience of alienation, the straw of identification, movies as signs of decadence, Tarantino and movie sadism, exposing the pernicious narrative, how to have a positive effect on the culture, modeling vs. lecturing, the rigors of academic writing, liminality & the benefits of being lost, moving outside one’s area of expertise, honing skills, postmodernism and Jordan Peterson, misunderstanding Derrida, Lyotard, postmodernism as diagnosis vs postmodernism as solution, postmodernist metaphysics, oppositional relations, Newton, Einstein, quantum mechanics and postmodernism, contextualism, modernity and postmodernity as continuum, Derrida’s spirituality, the new atheists.
Songs: “I’m Going Insane,” “15 Bistro 2” by Lee Maddeford; “Head On String” & “Rest My Bones/Diablo” by the Blacks.
Return two-part conversation with Greg Desilet, on rethinking melodrama, mythology and Joseph Campbell, the Greeks & Nietzsche, myths vs. melodrama, violent myths as relief from disembodiment, a home for the displaced, the opposite of art, message movies, Dostoyevsky, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Taxi Driver, sympathy for the damned, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, how Leatherface feels, puberty & possession, the male assaulted, Psycho & the slasher template, mother bondage and male hostility to women, an evolution in melodramatic structure, cosmological notions of evil, a Manichean identity formation, Girard & mimetic rivalry, the function of obstacles and rites of passage, manufactured outrage, The Matrix, becoming a man, the father-principal, the semblance of an enemy, facing the paper tiger, Fight Club, Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch, the quality of attention, the role of a critic, movies and reality, using art as a virtual reality domain, what’s being sold to us, the distinction between decadent and healthy art.
Conversation with Elena Nikitina, author of Girl, Taken, on when the Soviet Union collapsed, when structures dissolve, growing up in Communist Russia, banking collapse, mobsters moving in, victims of the system, Elena’s kidnapping, telling her story, meeting Patrick Quinlan, working on Smoked screenplay, Natasha Kampusch, Grasshopper script, trauma, being a survivor, the survivor community, Adverse Childhood experiences study, human trafficking, high-level child sexual abuse, a book about hope, a negative miracle & a positive, a feeling of powerlessness, summoning the resolution, despair and prayer, an intimate relationship with the divine, no atheists in foxholes, no real communism in the USSR, living in the US.
Second of two-part conversation with Nick Goudie, on Christian conservatives, Nick’s conversion & baptism, Liberal Christianity, democracy vs. monarchy, Jordan Peterson & working to build a better world, social progress & Christianity, the End Times, attempts to reshape God’s creation, the virus of reform, dialectics, spiritual Darwinism, civilized barbarities, an image of God, Fabian revolutionaries, religion for the weak & stupid, the folly of fighting science with religion, embodying & talking, JBP’s divine facsimile, C. S. Lewis, psychedelics & religious experience, American pragmatism, William James, JBP’s self-authoring suite, SWEDA, early viral marketing moves with JBP, raising the right questions & raising the level of the debate, a Lutheran’s perspective on JBP, Girard & the Bible as textual system or ‘technology,” taking apart the doctrine, choosing to mimic Christ, the one choice we have, JBP’s theory of sacrifice vs. Girard’s theory, progressing towards Utopia, God, Man, & the Devil, instruments of a counterfeit, Gnosticism.
Return conversation with Nick (Kalani) Goudie, on writing about Jordan B. Peterson, Maps of Meaning, a dream of Jordan, John de Ruiter parallels, Bible lectures and 12 Rules for Life, Trojan Horses, saving the world, the new atheists & atheism 2.0, a coherent worldview in the age of postmodernism, a Gnostic patchwork, the Sam Harris-Peterson debates, the 1st principle of truth, moral Darwinism, Harris’ “killing people for holding the wrong beliefs,” the power of charisma, Dawkins on cannibalism, a disdain for Christians, a moral framework in the absence of religion, an impasse on morals, a scientific basis for morality, a sense of God, religion as action not words, pain as meaning, acknowledging the reality of God, surrender as antithesis to Peterson’s bootstrap theory, C. S. Lewis and the great sin, advocating pride, the fundamental part of being fallen, Christian pride as counterfeit of faith, a spiritual superego, Charles Upton on God’s grace, relating to an idea of God, talking about what God is, Catholic theology leading to atheism, divine simplicity, the holes in Christian theology, the personal God, prisoners of infinity, temporal existence in eternity, a state beyond time, endless variations, the many rebellions of men, what God allowed but did not intend, free will & evil, a learning curve, the appearance of determinism, archetypal possession vs, abiding in Christ, storming heaven, the limits of Jungian psychology, the Shadow’s roots in hell, the Shadow of God, Lucifer’s plan, opposing the infinite, Jordan Peterson’s battle with Satan, the trap of defying Satan, becoming a monster to battle monsters, John de Ruiter the Gnostic heresy, identifying with Prometheus to save the world, an oppositional stance, the true vine, learning humility by consenting to circumstances, Kierkegaard and the very absurdity of faith, looking down on the plebes, projecting inadequacies onto an autistic, a narcissistic worldview, talking about whales, involuntary interaction with images of the divine, Jasun’s thrift store interactions, CS Lewis’s The Great Divorce.
A linkage between subjective and objective reality, escaping the dialectic, a Christian inside creation, essence & energy of God, Logos & God’s articulation, the transmission of scripture, abiding in Christ, the sacred vine, faith vs. works, the parameters of sin, retaining identity within Christ, the resurrection of the body, a multitude of images of God, a human essence.
Part two of conversation with Charles Upton, on intellectual error & moral error, reigning in hell, virtual intellection, a collective psyche blown open, a new lease on atheism, drawn to phenomenology, esoteric Greek knowledge of unity, the end of Catholicism and the arrival of psychedelics, a world of spooks, religious revival, a utilitarian religion, agents of pseudo-initiation, Jordan Peterson’s 12 rules, the Goddess of reason, the robot of rationality, the concept of an evolving God, the lens of a world of change, the monolithic view of eternity, the ongoing self-manifestation of God, the best of pursuits and the worst of idols, turning Allah into Lucifer, converting to Islam, social justice liberation theology, entering the New Age, Sufi dancing with Samuel Lewis, repressing misgivings, the covenants of the prophet Mohammed, the sorcery path, the threshold of God’s house, a sense of longing, intuiting something beyond Hell, Jenny Upton’s religious path, Malachi Martin, the metaphysical transparency of phenomena/dogma, the Trinity, Brideshead Revisited, flaws in the transcription of transmission, Christian paradoxes, the problem of Hell, the difference between perpetual and eternal, God’s gift of free will, choosing to burn, the furthest distance from God, C.S Lewis and The Screwtape Letters, resisting God’s love, divine discontent, the desire to leave earth, letter from a prisoner, astral projection & lucid dreaming, trying to land, seeking incarnation, finding transcendence through immanence, an anti-Christian doctrine, getting Christianity existentially, theurgy & occultism, Western ceremonial magic, occultism as rebellion, a schism in the church, the Hermetic tradition, renaissance magic, Platonic wisdom, Augustin, & Aquinas, the negative identity of religion, Crowley’s rebellion, Dante’s inferno, Fedeli d’Amore, the 3rd order of the Templars, creating modern Italian, the lost cantos of Paradiso, undoing knots with writing.
First of two-part conversation with poet and traditional metaphysician Charles Upton, on Garbanzo’s attitude, Upton’s answer to Alexander Dugin, Jasun’s answer to Jordan Peterson, living in the latter days, the New Age folly, optimistic pessimism, looking for the worst, into the dark side, the laughing man, the fall of Lucifer & the etiology of the ego, the Nous, the first Intellect, the Gnostic heresy, cosmic paranoia, Frithjof Schuon, trying to get back to the Garden, there embodiment of a split, the prophetic books of William Blake, Lucifer as trauma victim, Charles’ memory of the ego’s arrival, a robot dream, antichrist as pinnacle of artificiality, the Sufi path, the two arcs, Joseph Chilton Pearce and the defense system ego, adolescence trauma, an inverted rite of passage, negative identity, adult materialist and child mythologizers & vice versa, self-initiating hippies, mundane wisdom, following Castaneda to Mexico, CIA LSD MKULTRA, the disgorging of archetypes, engineered chaos, Whitley Strieber & the spiritual elite, Castaneda dreams, a profound order of truth, the question of power, the beaten path of the will to power, the left-hand path & self-will, the error of all our trials, removing the soul’s tattoos, the toll of psychedelics, getting high off Kundalini yoga, spiritual and psychic impressions of what is always so, the 2-edged sword of the psyche, the obstacles & the path, the Nafs & gnosis of the self & God, a revolution of inner being, lost in the psychic realms, the border between worlds, the bid for immortality, a spook that lives forever, intellectual error and moral error.
Part two of conversation with Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels), on the urge to liberate as a totalitarian urge, liberacion vs. salvation, seeking perfection in legislation, Trump as lightning rod, the Trump double-bind, the whirligig of time, a declining demographic of Trump support, illiberal liberalism, antifa fascism, Katy Hopkins protests, society as an imaginary autonomous entity, everyday oppression, a hierarchy of bullying, the managerialism of our lives, the desire for freedom for consequences, who pays the piper, aligning our desires with the State and corporations, a worthy authority, a life of suffering, self-inflicted suffering as a sign of privilege, Chekov’s choice, misfortune as destiny, to misery born, a systematic denial of agency, complicity with monsters, taking the religious viewpoint too far, possessed by trauma, the danger of absolution dehumanizing, dealing with panhandlers, the last days of the tramp, reserving compassion for pure victims, dividing the world into victims and perpetrators, creating the scapegoat, the reverse of sentimentality, the Alt-Right, conspiracy speculation, conspiracies vs. The Conspiracy, the evidence for social engineering, the harm done by bad ideas, the Fabians’ Open Conspiracy, open ostentation of vice, Jimmy Savile, the Freudian sect, complicity as conspiracy.
Two-part conversation with Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels), opening Dalrymple excerpt on equality of opportunity, conspiracy or coincidence of interest, totalitarianism without accoutrements of tyranny, how nothing succeeds like failure, perpetual motion misery machine. Conversation: discovering Dalrymple, degenerative culture and improved living conditions, the value of comfort, medical advances, milk and licorice cures, when the devil makes work for idle hands, humanity as Sisyphus, the assumption of progress, Scottish colorists and the idea of progressive art, solving the problem of death, a misapplied metaphor, the attempt to remove suffering, Job’s suffering, the religion of social progress, serial monomania, moral enthusiasms, Marxism & transcendence, determinism & voluntarism, history-as-God, being Fabianized, reforming relationships between men & women, no escaping misery, the unintended consequences of the quest for sub-lunar perfection, contradictory desires & original sin, religious heresy, Jasun growing up among champagne socialists, a secular religious mindset, the aesthetic dimension of religion, Catholic advertising, God’s truth as beauty, belief as a means to reconcile oneself to suffering, Theodore’s father & East London in the early 1900s, infant mortality rates, the question of intention, UN in Haiti and a cholera epidemic, the difference between conspiracy & cover-up, UNICEF’s poisoned wells in Bangladesh, distinguishing incompetence from malevolence, when good intentions turn into malevolence, hiding from original sin, wishing our friends’ ill, a disease of the poor, redefining poverty in the context of equality, impoverished multi-millionaires, the desire for a providential role.
Second of two-part conversation with Gregory Desilet, on cultural regression in drama, assigning guilt to technology, evolutionary intervention, the power to enact a distortion, an environmental feedback loop, hypermodernism, a bifurcation, Trump vs. Obama, the mask behind the face of Antichrist, living in the end times, seeing the Adversary, faith in the inward glance, the world as adversarial presence, Socrates’s self-examination, praising Prisoner of Infinity, rushing in to audience cults, assuming a skeptical position, boiling down experience, the past that haunts, trying on belief, a scientific approach, open skepticism, a mad scientist’s approach, the tragic trajectory, defining faith, moralism & postmodernism, Jacques Derrida, contextualism vs. radical relativism, how meaning arises, words over swords, brink of catastrophe, compelled speech laws, language as first casualty, Derrida & feminism, understanding how language works, the limits of language, the polarization of dialogue, why Derrida deserves a second look, rescuing Derrida from his legacy, sorting wheat from chaff, the difference between spoken & written word, the unconscious content of text, layers of context, zip files of meaning, an artificial boundary of sense, infinite context/finite language, totalitarian thinking, taking words out of context, words vs. images, a text-based world, liberty, fraternity, equality, purification & words, the inherent absolutism of words, an ideal off the rails the superposition of yin in yang, how to be led by ideals but not overwhelmed, Man aspires, God acts, the Jesus journey, a complicated relationship with Catholicism.
Two-part conversation with Gregory Desilet, on the wisdom of the elders, Our Faith in Evil, the inherent paradox of evil, evil as misperception, Greg’s Roman Catholic upbringing, a polarized image of the world, how to conceptualize dichotomy, movies and myths as collective dreams, Christ on the cross, Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ as revenge drama, the depth of Christ’s suffering in relation to the scope of human depravity, the brutality of nature, demonizing Nature, the Gnostic view, an original dichotomy, Jasun’s rejecting atheism, Christ as tragic hero, reading the Gospel, the hero who looks within, conflict resolution, tragedy as a means to a higher resolution, Girard & the scapegoat mechanism, Kenneth Burke, scapegoating via literature, symbolic victimage, the generative principle of difference, the ego’s self-rejection, Blue Velvet and sympathetic villains, reflexive melodrama, Moby Dick and the reversal of hero-villain polarity, Les Miserables, Red River, Fight Club’s changeover, The Godfather as tragedy, evil vs. evil stories, Aristotle and the odious drama, seeking contrapuntal characters, voyeuristic activity, empathy for Michael Corleone, organized crime in America, what would Aristotle think of Shakespeare?
Final part of Chronicles of a False Awakening, on taking on a demon form, God coming all the way down, Matrix Warrior, true depression, running with Keanu, the place of euphoria, disappearing daily, Charles Upton on Lucifer, God’s knowledge of Himself as Other, the etiology of the ego, an impossible dream, levels of God, getting the idea of Matrix Warrior, publishing deal at Orion, Jake counts his chickens, Simon Spanton & the lap of the gods, intimations of ruin, “don’t change anything,” Jordan Peterson’s story, a messianic figure, channeling Kek, the carrier of divine virus, how best to avoid archetypal possession, the grip of the gods, Terry Gilliam & the Wachowskis, success city here we come, contemplation & expression of truth, post-fiction existence.
Chronicles of a True Awakening (part 5), taking a psychic dump on my audience, a lucid crap scenario, a self-diagnosis, threads of shit, moving towards truth, why people take to religion, an external structure, summoning Lucifer, the danger of sacrifice, power of the fool, spiritual suicide, Satan’s well-earned reputation, Jake’s psychotic naiveté, alien minerals inside a meteorite, organized abuse, organized religion, father and brother, the father’s half-life, nihilism as worship, the Promethean fire, an anti-Christian mindset, religion as cover for victimization, the only strength there is, giving the finger to the father, the epitome of godlessness, the father’s passing, the telepathic tapestry of souls, disaster strikes, Harry is struck down, a series of sacrifices, the left-hand-path, the King of the Jinn, the sacrifice of a child, a defining moment of horror, becoming Christ, a vehicle out of control, surrendering to God, a realization of powerlessness, love for the devil, running from Satan, art & pain.
