America's Past and Future, Ft. Logo Daedalus

what up man how you doing

oh cool i have your fucking stream open

on the tab hold up okay cool i just

closed it that's less confusing now

all right for sure how's it going man

good how about you pretty good man i'm

sipping on my

my favorite capitalist treat now the uh

sonic red bull slushie here

oh shit that's uh our sonics

they're only in ohio right i don't know

i got one in texas man i think they're

they're all over the south

oh that was something else it's

something else i'm thinking of some

fucking idiot

you're thinking of a culver's or

something i need not even culver's i

don't know

yeah i don't have no idea um can i raise

his volume yeah i could do that

wait actually um talk hi hi hi

does that work guys is that good i can't

tell

you tell me is that good let's see what

the chat says

i'll um raise it on discord a little bit

word word yeah uh okay my wife's doing

shit inside so i'm chilling outside i'm

on some fucking airpods it's not the

ideal setup but

is what we got oh man you're lucky

it's i'm in michigan right now so the

weather is just not good for going

outside right now

yeah man i'm from the northeast so i

know how it is i've moved down here

though and i've been enjoying it

nice nice um so yeah it's

it's kind of tough to know where to

begin because you know i've been

following your twitter for a while and

it's just uh

there's so many interesting avenues

so many interesting topics um

yeah yeah i try to keep shit uh diverse

you know i have a lot of

interest they all kind of come together

though you know you're right like if

you're interested in history if you're

like historicist you gotta know

something about everything same thing

with like being a novelist i think

like it's like a type of being a

historian um that's basically what i

want to do i'm working on some stuff

i have like one novel i put out like

probably two years ago now i have like a

poetry collection

i'm mostly interested in that sort of

stuff but like it all ties together you

know

yeah yeah for sure and i forgot to

mention my bad but um would you mind

introducing yourself to the chat for all

those who are unfamiliar with uh

yeah sure so i'm logo daedalus i'm

probably

most well known for being in a comp box

uh viral german idealism video uh

long from long ago um but yeah

i work on the pseudo-doxological podcast

network

um i'm work my podcast is called read

books

um we're reading uh some john crowley

right now

the egypt cycle if you want to get in on

that um

first the episode zero is already out

first episode's coming out pretty soon

um yeah we just put out like really long

form uh pretty in-depth podcasts that uh

kick ass

yeah i mean the yeah the podcast quality

of both convbots

and the logos podcast is you know you're

not gonna find it anywhere else

it's really informative you're going to

learn yeah we're talking like

17-hour series on contra shit like that

like a lot lot like very in-depth shit

all the other podcasters are

trailing us yeah for real man i mean

i've never

i never liked podcasts or could like

could stand listening to them but

that stuff i could listen to you know

it's

yeah we're trying to do more like kind

of like like uh it's like we're mixing

genres but this is sort of like our

outsourced academia you know we're we're

recreating the uh invisible college of

the ross secretions

come join us

yeah i mean um so i know this is kind of

uh annoying but as a topic to begin with

just because it's like it's the theme of

the

stream i know for sure this is

definitely like not

you know the most interesting or even

important thing uh

but maybe we should begin with the topic

of american politics right now because

i think out of anyone um

with ex with few exceptions i think i

definitely

kind of uh really identify with where

you and kantbot are coming from

in regards to the kind of political

stance you're taking right now

in the in the in america which is i mean

i don't want to call it i mean

we're basically like we just consider

the politics i mean i'm just going to

speak for myself but it's something we

kind of share

that like the politics in america is

fundamentally like an anti-politics

it's like a it's a circus you know it's

not real it's all simulation it's all

virtual

everyone gets all like absorbed into it

and like we talk about the eternal

culture war but the eternal culture war

is just the electoral cycle

and the electoral cycle never fucking

ends so there's really like

no point in engaging on that level with

it if you want to have a real political

perspective you have to have a

geopolitical perspective

and you can't have a geopolitical

spectre perspective inside of the

american media circus it just doesn't

exist

it's not even an option that's exactly

the perspective that

we the because we were we ourselves

inferential we're like a collective of

like

11 people it's exactly where we're

coming from and actually it's because of

that fact

that leftists will look at us and be

like how are you guys leftist you guys

are nos bowls you guys are

yeah secret writers you know exactly i

get that all the time i mean i kind of

am

responsible to a certain degree for

spreading the naz bowl meme

because uh some of my russian friends uh

really like that and we all are big fans

of like

and whatnot um like a lot of like so

like you know igor latov

um i was like a russian studies guy so i

really like russian

stuff and uh i have like so i have like

a kind of complicated

more complicated understanding i think

of the history of the soviet union than

most americans also

yeah i can i can definitely see that um

you know regarding this whole thing

about it all being a circus

it's it's interesting to me because i

it's almost like i don't actually think

the left right distinction historically

is meaningless you know i think there's

definitely something clear

about that distinction maybe beginning

with the french revolution and onwards

but the thing about america is that as

far as america is concerned

it's a completely meaningless uh

distinction the american left and the

american right

um there doesn't seem to me to me to be

any meaningful

uh distinction between them i think the

only it's actually kind of upside down

in the historical terms is what i would

say right

because like historically the most like

leftists or like socialist things that

have

happened like objectively in america are

like from the

old old old republicans like like like

herbert hoover feeding like the soviets

you know what i mean

during the civil war period things like

this um which is not something we ever

really talk about right like abraham

lincoln

was uh beloved by marx especially

um but you know that's not really like

how we consider things now

um that was like one of the interesting

things right if we're looking at like

the party realignments like there was a

time i was probably more hopeful

that it would have been actually

potential like there would have been a

potentiality for turning the

republican party into like a workers

party i mean this is this is pretty

explicitly what trump is running on i

think that's

where a lot of his power was coming from

um at least initially like in the really

early

parts of his campaign that's what he

seemed to be uh devoted to

at least in his rhetoric um i don't

think it's like entirely impossible to

do but the

the culture war is like so dominant that

you can't even get you

like you can't get anyone to focus on

just like material incentives like that

we ourselves kind of have this half meme

half serious kind of thing where we have

this idea of

cp usa 2036 and the meaning of it is

basically that

2036 is a cool number it sounds like

futuristic and so

whatever and this idea of reviving the

the communist party

um in the united states is maybe it's

not viable maybe it won't work but we

i like the dream i like the idea of it

you know i like

i mean the cp usa in america just has

such a fucking sordid history that i

i don't even have a positive brand

association

oh yeah i completely agree it's just

that um

i don't know i guess for us there's two

reasons for the appeal the first one is

is china obviously china has given

meaning to what it means for a communist

party to be in power

in a way that um

i guess is viable in the 21st century

and so on the other thing is that we're

kind of just sick of

the left uh the american left the

cultural the cultural laughter

of course yeah and we see a fandom

and we see it as this kind of like

return to roots this return to the

original

thing you know um

but i don't know uh we definitely think

that

a huge political realignment has been

uh been happening in america especially

has been accelerated by the election of

biden

and funnily enough um you're seeing that

also

manifested on the quote unquote american

left uh

maybe the turning point might have been

the january 6th

uh capital riots or it was the the

general election

in general we had a bunch of leftists

talking about how

we all have to get out and vote for

biden but

it's yeah that was so fun what a fun

time

yeah of course but it seems very strange

because

the american left today is slowly

adopting a kind of

otherwise um extreme i guess

otherwise kind of right wing position

almost uh

slowly and slowly they they slowly have

to keep defending the

biden administration they keep having to

adopt the language of

you know war against 50 of the american

people

the majority of whom are of course the

american working class

they've um explicitly entrenched the

become entrenched among the kind of uh

coastal elites

and um silicon valley you're saying like

becoming right but it's like

when wasn't this the case you're right

you're right you're definitely right

i think i mean look at chomsky right

just look at like the arc of someone

like chomsky

like i actually just was watching him on

msnbc like youtube was recommending me

this

and they were just like fucking like you

know an envis nvc presenter introducing

has like tremendous great like world

famous activist gnome chomsky

you know to talk about how biden's the

lesser of two evils and things like this

and whatever you know give it giving him

a slight childing for his uh

his uh nefarious foreign policy but you

know domestically things are

you know doing better than even he would

have hoped

yeah yeah you're definitely right you

know i do think though with regard to

biden's election i think there is

something kind of

unprecedented about it because it seems

like there's just this escalation

of anti-popular or i guess

anti-populistic

aggression america's back the empire is

founding itself

anew joe biden plans on being one being

like a very important presidency

that in his own self-conception like he

wants to replace like fdr

in people's imaginations people are

trying to say like he's the next fdr or

the new one

but it but it's not like you know like

as a continuity of

well i actually you could argue it's a

continuity of the same tradition

in a lot of ways but uh that's what he

really wants to do you know he wants to

run the empire trump was embarrassing

because he didn't want to run the empire

he didn't like the empire

and uh he crippled its functioning for a

while so objectively in like material

sense like

trump was probably better for the people

of the world slowly for like fucking up

america for so long

listen uh we got a lot of flack because

we told people because we know

actually people in china and from china

and other places in the world and we

told them straight

the majority of people in the world like

trump more than

or at least like him way more than biden

oh and trump like g

trump like ji jinping that's a really

fun thing also

because that pisses off a lot of the

trump people because they'll talk about

like

like uh like joe biden is beholden to

china or something absurd like this

um and it like you know they don't even

understand like what

they don't even know who trump really

was it's it's really fascinating that's

how like virtual everything has become

yeah one thing about biden you know i've

always liked to call biden

he's inaugurated the era of the job

and in the kind of islamic eschatology

it's like

oh like this is like your fault like

it's a very antichrist vibe

exactly yeah like a deceiver almost like

he's just

he's adopting the diocletian today on

under diocletian there was a renewed

persecution of the christians

and i tend to think that like that's

that's like uh

pretty pretty pretty evident that's yeah

that's a good way of putting it too it's

like he's a

it's it's almost kind of disturbing

they're adopting the veneer

of fdr and oh we're gonna you know have

an infrastructure plan but then you're

seeing this rhetoric of

oh you know infrastructure is a little

bit too masculine let's focus

more on care let's adopt this new

paradigm of care

because we're going to infrastructure is

really more of a metaphor if you think

about it

yeah yeah that's uh

it's like they're changing our

infrastructure is like we need more

marvel movies baby like you know

yeah they're changing the meaning of the

word infrastructure itself it's like

did you see where the thing where they

were like yeah people in the white house

are concerned that the american people's

longing for new roads and new bridges

and

all that kind of stuff is represents a

type of toxic masculinity and that we

have to

focus around that that would that could

just be like i'm not i'm not totally

convinced that

a lot of these journalists aren't kind

of like in on what they're doing and

trolling through a bit because i'm sure

that got them a lot more clicks than

most of the shit that they pump

out you know what i mean like you have

to wonder like are they really that dumb

all the time or are they kind of doing

their own trolls

i think that here's here's what i've

always thought about

i guess left is syndra and when i say

leftists you know what i mean i'm

talking about like american

not real leftists but like they're like

libs yeah

i would just call them progressives

because that's what they call themselves

yeah sure progressive tradition

but like what and again like i would say

that it's good to call them progressives

with like that historical connotation

because like then like the malthusian

like utilitarianism

of it really like that is like a real

fundamental like this kind of

anti-natalist

very malthusian understanding of the

world like all these people are like you

know they're

they're social darwinists to a degree

but like

it's a it's a really uh it's really

off-putting

like when you get down to the core of

these people that's why destiny's so

great because he is like the the perfect

he's like the perfection of that like

he's

so far ahead of of everyone else and

like you know

adapting like to the perfect tuning of

the ideology for this exact moment

yeah it's it's it's really strange i

think um

but you're also seeing that with a lot

of other people that i mean you probably

don't have time to care about this dumb

stuff but like there's a guy named

socialism done left

oh like he's the one who's his like

grandfather was

involved with like yes no people

dude it's fucking wild you can go down

some wormholes if you just start looking

up

familiar lineages and things oh boy it's

not for me though you know i'm like

anonymous and pseudonymous but honestly

if you

like my grandfather sold barry like

you're not gonna find anything on me

and and that's it's almost scary it's

almost frightening because you can

almost

it's almost like the reason people have

some of the views they have

is just because they have these

bloodlines and it's like

if you just take a normal person who has

the

ancestry of a normal person they're not

going to be disposed to

you know push and believe all these

kinds of i mean a part of me just wants

to chide them because it's like a

pathetic example to like to live up to

you know

at least like even like the evil like

evil like very

you know pretty horrible people for the

most part like the people who founded

the cia and things like this

the human capital there though they at

least fucking were doing shit they were

at least like

they at least read books you know like

come on like these people are slackers

like they're fucking

they're fucking on twitch and their

grandfather was like playing

coups in cuba like you're a loser dude

yeah you're definitely right about that

you know um

but i was gonna say i think progressives

in america

across the board i think that deep down

intuitively let's say in their heart

they don't actually believe in any of

the things that

they they say or they're told but

it's almost like they delude themselves

it's like they get used to that feeling

of lying to yourself and they just push

that as far as they can

and that's why they say all these

extremely outrageous and

almost like things that border on self

parodies just because

they're kind of um they're trying it's

just narcissism

i really do like i know like christopher

lash

calling it narcissism is like a big meme

because of a red scare and things like

this

but that it but i think there is like

just a very core narcissism to it

um because i would almost equate like

virtue signaling to being like what

jesus condemned as like praying in

public

you know what i mean yeah yeah

definitely i mean um

yeah it's it's like that it's like this

there's this one there's this own

economy of like attention and there's

some morality economy there's this like

economy of sentiment

like sentiment is like now uh like this

quantified

fucking metric right which is attached

directly to capital

so you are literally like i often talk

about these people like being like

venture capitalists of ideology or like

uh day traders and ideology uh you know

like

there's a lot of like speculative

investments people like invest

a certain take or whatever for for it to

like appreciate in time

and i think you know the especially

disgusting thing to me personally is

that this is

actually how people organize their real

moral sentiment so it's almost like

what i mean says like people see in

virtue signaling

the way in which to actually have

their sense of morality in in general to

the point where

when you take that away you can really

see how

you know ugly and rapid yeah yeah and

like empty

it all is yeah yeah and um

i don't know to me but i honestly think

that uh i've always said this

we've infrared people we've always said

this is that biden's election is the

death now

of not only the american left but

probably

probably the whole uh current political

alignment

in general one of the reasons i have a

lot of appreciation for you

and and the people in your sphere is

basically that you kind of occupy this

space

that has already anticipated that and it

is already

attuned to that yeah i don't know i live

in the future man

i live in the future yeah yeah it's like

we

we um really are in a position to be

able to kind of

begin from scratch and really have an

appreciation for reality

uh on a new basis on a basis that's

informed

firstly by a more international

perspective and i just mean in the sense

like that non-american perspective like

a geopolitical

precisely the geopolitical perspective

um

from a perspective informed by a new uh

encounter with uh the history of uh

western modernity and history at large

in general

and the whole kind of uh in general the

western canon itself because obviously

it's very clear that uh you know how

they say in the west

the western canon has been completely

forgotten right but

maybe in china and and elsewhere they're

teaching it in their schools

you know well that's that's a that's

easily verifiable

like even if it like uh like just like

the way that they exist in our schools

like they're not

really uh nothing's ever really taught

with a holistic perspective

this is one thing camille paglia was

super right about and a lot of other

commentators in the 20th century

about like the death of the american

like institutional academia like its own

ability to coordinate itself was this

lack of a holistic

like perspective of curricula and so you

have just this like

this this like nonsense just like

random grab bag of whatever you can find

there no one ever has like this like

historical grounding like in the

humanities the way that they had in the

past like

even remotely you know like not even for

our own country like

i honestly missed the sort of old school

dudes who knew a fuck ton about the

american revolution i feel like those

guys don't exist anymore

like you can't like no one knows like

very early american history especially

is like almost entirely forgotten

it's like all been just warped by this

uh

the simulated history that was created

uh as propaganda after world war ii

yeah definitely that's another thing is

that um what we're dealing with really

when we're

in america when we're talking i think at

least when we're talking about

i mean i guess there's layers to this

probably but i think the current

american establishment it's really the

post-war

order right it's the post-world war ii

kind of

um ideological and media and so on but

also i have to

acknowledge that as kantbot and i'm sure

you have uh

discovered it goes actually it runs much

deeper

it goes very very far back my friend it

is a long tail it is a tale that goes

back at least 500 years almost

like like that's that like if you're

talking about the various like struggles

in there i could bring it back like

really really far we're trying to

connect the dots like really really far

back for

for some of this stuff like i've been

doing a ton of research into like the

phoenicians and things

what the fuck wow

well well like for instance for instance

right you like there's a lot of um

evidence for like uh tin mining and

things like this like the phoenicians

put up the pillars of hercules right

the pillars of hercules because hercules

is actually stolen from

a phoenician story like hercules was a

yeah it was originally like a phoenician

story so they put up the pillars of

hercules and said no one could go beyond

that but they were also like

had a monopoly on the tin trade because

they were going up to the british isles

in like the north of

spain and things like this and there

yeah so it's pretty well they had like

these

early trade routes and they may have

even reached into the americas i mean

i'm i'm certainly not one to uh

don't uh don't flatter me too much man

because that's my

that's my uh background is that i'm just

kidding well it's like the phoenicians

are kind of connecting

connected to like ireland in ways too

there's this whole kind of atlantic

trading culture

you know i've always been i the only

thing comparable for me

is regards to that is kind of uh i've

always been

i guess i like to call call it carthage

build you know i've always

if you've heard about i got i got

carthage by doing this research yeah

definitely i wasn't before but i

definitely became because

if you if you study carthage you can see

that it's clear that this

civilization which was its own um

non-hellenic civilization was the only

kind of major civilization

in the mediterranean that wasn't

hellenized and uh

clearly the roman empire was not

unaffected by it

right it it clearly must have imparted

a legacy um that

i mean yeah one of the main things we

just generally miss

again is it goes back to the phoenicians

right because the punic culture these

are like later

like uh built off of like phoenician

infrastructure

fundamentally um because that was where

the phoenicians were had all their

trading ports and stuff uh

but like they're the cultural

interchange between the two

like a lot of um a lot like you know a

lot of these uh

these really early like pre-socratic

philosophers were phoenicians

um yeah i mean um not to abruptly uh

shift gears but i i have had this

question on the back of my mind and i

kind of want to explore

uh this topic if it's all right and it's

kind of really simplistic

and uh and vulgar but so probably i

guess two

questions right um i know a lot of

especially on the right

i mean you're probably used to a lot of

people being annoying about this but

when it comes to modernity right

do you us kind of ascribe to the view

that

what we call modernity is a kind of

catastrophic and abrupt moment of

history

in which uh everything simply changed

and

can clearly be uh kind of um

kind of uh located in the chain of the

historical continuity and then

second to kind of uh complement that

question

regarding the the question of modernity

what is it that we're talking about when

we speak of this uh

this moment then modernity what really

is uh my journey because

and the reason i'm kind of bringing this

up is because we are uh marxist leninist

and

to me the object of marxism and

pretty much commune everything we're

talking about here it is it's to build

the city of god i know

yeah but it's it's modernity it's it's

kind of uh

i would call it the reformation like

this is like my my main point

like uh that like it's uh the absolute

reformation it's the continual

reformation

and like you know like marxism would be

the goal of like the complete

reformation

so so from your perspective you would

say that modernity begins

or more more i should say is the uh the

reformation basically

yeah pretty much like it kind of goes

hand in hand

uh like that's like for instance like

you know you have movable type and stuff

in earlier cultures earlier societies

had like the ability

if they had wanted to to print books but

they had um

like religious like taboos on the

creation of like uh the reproduction of

like sacred print materials you know

what i mean

like as far as text so like really the

psychological change that of like the

the development of like mass publishing

i think is

like uh it's a radical change in the way

people structure

like their own their own consciousnesses

as well

uh this like the creation of this sort

of mass media or whatever

you know um it's interesting because

this is i think uh hegel's perspective

as well for hegel yes like perfect yes

exactly

the protestant reformation is uh what

did he say it's the

the new dawn it's the germanic age the

final age of

of world history um but

the reason i uh have difficulty with uh

this

this view i guess is it to me it doesn't

answer the question of uh

wasn't the renaissance italian

renaissance also a kind of

predecessor or uh part of this same kind

of

oh well the renaissance right the

renaissance humanists right like these

people these are like that these were

huge parts of the early uh reformation

like the reformation

goes in all sorts of different

directions you can think of like it's

cons

is constantly splintering into a million

million different sects you know

and a lot of those like burn out and die

and you like never hear of them again

but

but uh that's just how it goes but

that's that's kind of like a big part of

the renaissance too is like things like

the development of the university of

padua and there's like

people like uh nicholas cassano or

um you know you eventually get to like

giordano bruno

um i could go on like erasmus there's

tons of these guys who are super

influential like uh

on like marxist thought uh tons of tons

of stuff like that i mean

it not just marx's thought but just as

an example

well yeah i mean uh al ducer was of the

view that

the first materialist real materialist i

guess in the marxist sense was

machiavelli right um

well he's like the first like republican

in like the real politics tradition

like like uh he like yeah he he writes

his of writings on politics um real

politics like material

politics in that sense and like is a is

definitely

unique and like it was big for uh the

west

he's a lot like i've been reading a lot

of chinese stuff recently he's a lot

like han fay

um in that way han fei was like the the

big uh real politic

uh chinese philosopher who xi jinping is

likes quite a bit i would recommend

reading han fei

he's a fun read well yeah i'll

definitely check that out yeah it sounds

uh

really interesting you know one of the

things we've been exploring

regarding this question of modernity is

that we think that there has been a kind

of

hidden material when we say the word

material our kind of materialism is not

the traditional kind of marxist

vulgar it's not the way most people use

it but just uh

vaguely there has been a foundation

i guess hidden foundation of modernity

that was built uh with the mongols the

mongol conquests

to me um one of the paths we've been

going down the kind of pills i guess

we've been we've been

taking is that it almost seems like

you're

the european renaissance and then maybe

to a lesser extent the reformation was

the kind of

subjective uh

subjective form of this more fundamental

uh material change that was happening

with the rise of the world historical

uh empires of uh the mongols and the

their successors

i mean that's i would definitely say

that's a contributing factor uh

like for for uh great like you know that

kind of

you like it it certainly impacts uh the

development of the west

i don't know if it's like what make your

argument like what's what's like

what's what's like determinative by

taking this

theory um to i guess uh

many of the things we associate with uh

modernity like this kind of uh

uh universalism generally right this new

universalism this kind of uh

how should i say this tabula rasa this

uh

wiping away of all particular prejudices

and uh traditions and and customs and so

on

uh to make way for this kind of um

is almost this form of knee hill this

kind of uh

nothingness i think in reality this is

uh

what the mongols were for the

settled civilizations over which they um

they would eventually conquer and

fundamentally transform

the mongols whether it was the islamic

civilization whether it was russia

whether it was

china the mongols were this kind of

completely new blank

slate which laid the ground for this um

this new type of universalism this new

type of

understanding of politics completely

divorced

from um almost a kind of universalistic

politics i guess i would

i would call it but um

i could see i could see some parts of

that there is like tons of i'm learning

more and more

like all the time about uh china's

influence like during the middle ages

and things just through uh

trade uh but like

there a lot of like uh innovations in

like these places do end up

like in other places or like reinvented

like kind of parallel

but um yeah i could see i could see that

that is kind of like this does seem sort

of like a dual

like a like uh like an east versus west

thing like which gets a little um

idealistic

i think i don't know i i'm like uh

i don't know i don't know if that's like

the most determinative thing i don't

know if i would make that argument

yeah um you know one of the things i

find um

interesting that i i would always love

to pose this question to

kind of more uh traditionalist uh

not just maybe right wing type of people

is if uh

if we can say that

they have a critique of modernity and

they have a critique of

the ways in which modern culture has

erased

uh the culture of the traditional west i

would say

what is it which is the substance

of the west isn't western history kind

of

only defined by this continual

[Music]

this continual abstraction and continual

negation

of its own

i guess substantive content

um i i mean i wouldn't i don't know if i

would get like it's uh

yeah it's like a transformative or it's

like evolutionary or you know that's

like uh you could say the the or you

know people

spangler called it faustianism right

which isn't like

all too off base in some respects

um yeah i mean that's that's

that's arguable i would say uh

that that's like what the tradition of

when people are talking about the west i

mean it depends on who's talking about

the west you know a lot of people talk

about the west and they're talking about

the 1950s

uh like in the suburbs or something and

you know like whatever the west means to

them

or like the moon landing that's what the

west means um

i don't know like i i like talking

about like the west in general is uh

less interesting to me than going into

like the very like the specifics here

because there's like vastly like

differing

like i'm inside of the west however

you'd put it there's like these vastly

different uh interpretations of things

and like tons of conflict of course yeah

you're right you're right you're

definitely right um

yeah i just um

yeah i don't know it's just a kind of an

aside but uh

so um i guess uh

i'm kind of just asking simplistic

questions so i have to apologize but

what would you say reflects most on your

philosophical uh background which um

where do you think you

your interest is most uh

invested um

that's hard to say i mean it's kind of

all connects to each other in my mind

like i can't imagine like

stripping any link in the chain here um

as being like superfluous or something

um

i don't know i've just always loved uh

i've always been extremely curious i'm

like

i'm a bookish person i've always read a

lot of books i've always been

insatiably curious about almost

everything um

so everything is interesting to me

pretty much

i could work and find something

interesting about it uh

i really like literature i suppose or

like poetry i think or

like which i consider to be kind of the

same like the religious

element and the poetic element are

basically the same in my opinion

so i'm also really fascinated by like

world religions and you know sacred

texts and

all these different things

yeah that's interesting i mean um i

think for

for hegel uh the object of art is the

same as

the object of uh religion so not just

poetry but

all uh yeah he considered religion more

to be like a massive like artwork in

which people lived right

and that is kind of like um how our

ideology functions we just don't have

like a real religion our religion is uh

you know going marvel movies and these

sort of uh we live in rome you know

these are just all like imperial

pagan ceremonies you know the super bowl

etc

these are our colosseums we have our

we've we're just rome

we're just that's all you know um it's

interesting to me

i always for my limited understanding

a lot of uh neoclassicism

uh originates in the british empire

the british empire and yeah it's a

kind of whitewashing of uh

the ancient uh roman republican empire

i mean that's what they that's what they

had access to there's also like you know

i would say there's like the

countervailing tradition

also inside of it that were like

extremely uh

uh like uh these people are generally

not very much liked by the uh the roman

the romophiles but these are the ones

who are obsessed with like

uh you know hebrew mysticism and things

like this you know and this is like

these are my guys you know these are the

puritans i love it's like uh

the distinction uh freud made between

moses the midianite

who was more of a kind of mysterious

um you know mystical side and then moses

the egyptian

was the more rationalistic and kind of

logo centric

yeah yeah it's it's really interesting

so um

uh i

this is a another a kind of stupid

question i want to throw your way but

i'm really interested in so

when we're talking about this kind of um

establishment which goes back uh

hundreds and hundreds of years

uh whatever we want to call it the

elites the hereditary aristocracy is my

go-to term these days

precisely precisely is there really a

kind of um

is there some sort of uh preservation

among them of this

same uh i mean explicitly

explicit preservation of the same kind

of um

occult and alchemical and mystical

beliefs which we can trace to the very

beginning of um

the journey i would say that they've

been kind of just like watered down and

watered down and watered down and

watered down that

like it it they don't really uh a lot of

these things get like rehashed over and

over and over again for

to new means like it's kind of just like

an old set of costumery that

almost anyone can adopt and claim like

the tradition of you know

like a lot of people have taken up being

the raw secretions over time

especially just like in this tradition

or like you know there's tons and tons

and tons of types of masons

or like masonic or these like secret

society fraternal organizations and

things like this

um so like a lot of that uh that imagery

sticks sticks around and like people

will reappropriate it to new ends

um i don't know like i don't really

believe in like the like literal

satanist like uh pedophile conspiracy

that's like true in a sort of

metaphysical sense but

okay i got you

would make it out to be um but

like i mean you know like i don't know i

watch i like a lot of

orthodox christians um i always have and

uh

i i think that their analysis and things

are usually pretty good

um and uh so i was just watching this

video today i was like talking about

like that the

little nos x thing that everyone was

freaking out about and then people were

freaking out about people freaking out

about it

because they were saying that it was

like the satanic panic 2 or whatever

but it's like you know like it's pretty

objectively like

like deploying this sort of like image

satanic imagery that has been like built

up in like the can

the pop cultural mind or whatever over

time by people with extremely shady

origins you know

like fucking people like anton levay

that's that's i mean what i'm talking

about that kind of

scares me a little bit is that you know

i

when that video came out i kind of did a

review on stream and i was like

did this video is cringe you know this

video is fucking he's just trying to get

attention he's trying to

he's trying to play off of people's

paranoia and he's trying to um

basically insult the sensibilities of a

lot of

people but i couldn't help but kind of

understand the kind of i don't know

i guess schizophrenic type of response

to watching that type of video like wow

it's really that out in the open you

know

but then when you when you subtext

anymore

yeah but but then when you actually

think about it you're like okay clearly

he's just doing it ironically and he's

not you know it's not but then he

actually

questions like where does the where does

that symbolism actually originate

where did that even come from right and

when you start asking those types of

questions you're

you start getting more paranoid and like

wow this actually has

an origin it's not it's not just a meme

you know point of the video

what's it trying to express like what is

it trying to say it's a piece of art you

know what i'm saying like and as i'm

saying like all art

has like deploys these sorts of

religious symbolisms or things that can

be taken as metaphors for such

and um like it's clearly that he's

trying to like say a specific thing and

what he's specific specifically saying

is like

that you have to like destroy all like

self-doubts and like you know crown your

like ego

essentially like you crown your like

virtual

you know that's like and you that's you

become the king of hell or whatever

that's the the this is uh the idea it's

kind of a it's a perversion of like the

miltonic

like thinking taking milton and being

like this but unironically

yeah i mean um that's one of the

interesting things about uh

what it is we're talking about with

modernity is that we say

it's and i completely agree thank you so

much hidden uh taurus

we we say and i agree with this more or

less of you that it's

it's the reformation but we can also

clearly see that

um at least in explicit terms

it seems to at least appear completely

divorced from

all religion all tradition all

particular uh background

and it's a kind of like a big question

like what is the object of the kind of

modern

subject you know

uh it's just like uh

evil i don't know crime

i don't like i was trying to think like

i was like you can justify pretty you

can explain almost anything in america

and just be like it's just crime

it's like just a crime like they just

get away with that

yeah it's almost like that it's almost

like it's type of self-referential

nothingness for its own sake just

because they're betting on

the fact that they can do it you know

like it's almost like

um in the kind of tradition of cartesian

demons and doubt if it's possible it

will we must act as though it's already

real you know

yeah i mean uh yeah i it's

it's kind of a kind of like a viking

mentality to a degree

uh you know it's uh just the world for

plunder

and uh you die in combat yeah

um so uh

here's a question i uh so are you is a

kind of

american culture and tradition in

history

uh one of the main topics of interest

for you

i mean it always has been i was i was

born and raised in a really really old

part of america like really early uh

founding pretty interesting history of

the whole

area i was always fascinated by it

because there's like tons of uh old

buildings and stuff buildings holding

older than the country itself

you know lots of ghost stories and stuff

it was a kind of a

it was a weird place to grow up but uh i

was always interested in that stuff and

uh i'm

i'm fascinated just by history in

general so i used a lot of the like

local

uh my local area as like a prism through

which to see

everything else you know just like uh

you know i'm the kind of person i read

all like the old town histories of my

like little

little town what nice i mean uh yeah i

saw a video by

dugan um and he was talking about the

differences between

american pragmatism and uh british

utilitarianism

and there are differences yeah yeah yeah

he and he pointed out how you know

you'd think that pragmatism is just an

extension of the british utilitarianism

but

dunes is a completely different uh type

of thing

and one of the things i've always wanted

to understand was

in what way is american pragmatism which

i guess

in the work of dugan is the kind of

logos

of america this is his words at least

um in what way there's there is a degree

to which that's true

um like uh jordan peterson is probably

the closest to a popular pragmatist

right now and a lot of what the

pragmatists were doing

is essentially they're like holding out

a domain

for non or like what you could call

non-rational inquiry or like you know

basically everything that isn't just

like

like these uh analytical logic uh

statements

um or like syllogisms but like you know

like the

leaving room for like poetry as

something that would inform like

your decisions on things or whatever

like uh

like like you know people like rory

who's like a very big pragmatist would

make uh the example that like you know

you can be

a scientist and a christian you know at

the same time you can believe

in both of these things so like they

were often like less like the

utilitarians want to like

like erase all this sort of shit uh they

don't they don't want they don't want

you to do anything

they just like want to maximize your

inputs and outputs

uh but i've always been interested from

a kind of religious

and theological perspective what

uh why uh does pragmatism

why is this the kind of uh philosophical

spirit of america

because i can understand the relation

between uh utilitarianism and let's say

maybe british

angry with the the original puritans

right like the theory had to be the

practice they were identical they were

trying to derive

the perfect form of not just governance

of a church polity but of a political

polity

at the same time on in like this new

place

you know so like they like they're

really if you if you if you're like

interested in like the

like political accommodator degree like

the early history of like the puritan

settlements are very interesting because

they were

like these sort of very experimental

like almost joint stock corporations

in which like the various like people

were like shareholders

but that meant they were also on like

the board which was like what the

like congregationalism like comes up

with and uh

like a lot of like tons of uh the early

american

civic life which doesn't exist under

electoral conditions and various other

for various other reasons but like your

primary sense of uh

political unit wasn't your family it was

your town

it was like your specific town like

everyone was like the town was a

collective

enterprise and then like these then like

the structure sort of

uh moved past that where then like the

township or like the county

was a collective enterprise of those

collective enterprises and that's like

where like the real like republican

tradition in america sort of came from

that's like a more pragmatist conception

than because it's like about like uh

people having skin in the game as telev

would say

um yo yeah uh tele

is also uh i'm also a fan of that guy

too

uh um but yeah

uh you know um

shit what was i gonna say again it was

about oh yeah and one of our videos we

did on our youtube

i actually briefly um studied

very briefly the puritans and all that

kind of stuff to demonstrate

because the video was about the the

meaning of socialism basically right

and it's clear very clear to me that uh

this is the origin of what we

what is called uh socialism is that when

they came to america the pilgrims and

the puritans

they had to create everything from from

scratch basically right

and uh more or less this was

this is what uh socialism is

in regards to society in general

absolutely man

that's what i'm saying all the time yeah

yeah i mean um of course this is the

internet so you know when you talk about

socialism

i can't i don't i kind of hate

confronting you with this sad fact but

like

you're either people will be like oh

yeah that's that means the workers

ownership of the means of production

or like some stupid shit you know and

then you just gotta be like okay so how

do you define that and then it's like oh

and they all start fighting each other

they'll start eating each other alive

yeah yeah i mean um

you know you mentioned your interest in

orthodoxy and also the russian

tradition um do you see any

to me i do see a relation but uh have

you observed the relation between uh

russian at least russia or soviet

marxism leninism

and russian orthodoxy um

there was like there's kind of like i

would say that the most interesting

combination is kind of pre-bolshevik or

like kind of parallel to it

in in connection to a lot of like the

avant-garde where you have like people

like pavel florinsky

and uh the the cosmis the cosmis

were really really cool uh do you know

what that do you know about the cosmos

at all yes yes i'm very familiar with

bogdan

sorry how do you say bogdanov

i think that's one of them there's like

i forgot i think it's a fedora of uh

like oh yeah that guy uh he wasn't the

bullshit

for your door of uh what's his last name

yeah i think that's we know we're

talking about the same guy with the

beard

basically yeah yeah yeah he was friends

with tolstoy um

he wanted to raise the dead yeah he said

that the goal was

we were going to resurrect everyone and

uh like create like through like you

know as like a

we're going to resurrect everyone that

ever lived to life and we're going to

populate the cosmos and live forever

and uh that sounds like the great the

greatest goal you could possibly have

right and

he had this idea of attaching thrusters

to the earth

to propel it away from

its kind of fixed place in the solar

system to turn the earth into like a

spaceship basically

yeah yeah he wanted to turn the whole uh

solar system into a spaceship

oh yeah yeah i know you know but it's

interesting to me that

one of the uh very uh clear things to me

about marxism and marxism leninism is

the theological um

implications are very clear so you know

if you want to understand

the theological nature of marxism

like what religion is it the kind of

secular form of

you just have to replace um the

transcendence

you have to replace the divinity you

have to replace

the paradise is the simplistic version

but those types i think just communism

the word

communism is this kind of

it's the city of god man it's the yeah

it's making things

it's like uh it's what uh it's in the

lord's prayer

i forgot yeah yeah it's like um but it

it it also can be seen as the point in

which

uh i think in the you can correct me

wrong

to the extent of my familiarity within

the orthodox tradition you kind of have

this subtle theme

of man following in the footsteps of

christ

and almost uh becoming divine

man yeah

is it much bigger in the theology of uh

orthodoxy than it is in catholicism

i was raised catholic uh for like kind

of in the same way that most people are

aware they go to ccd and they show up to

like

a few of the things or whatever but a

lot of my family were very hardcore

catholics and we'd have very

good uh you know like um one of my my

cousin is a phd uh

bc uh boston college like so he's like

hardcore jesuit type guy

so um we i've always had arguments like

very d like big theological ones and i

was always coming at him with like the

orthodox guys

and uh these weird frosts and mystics so

those are my guys

yeah i mean uh i i completely i've

always

had a preference for uh orthodoxy myself

to me though

one thing i can see clear about uh

orthodoxy is that

its view of um

its view of uh the point at which

uh i guess i don't know what to call it

the transient transcendence whatever

it's always uh kind of permanently

delayed right the catahound as an

example the theosis is an example

you never actually arrive at the point

at which it happens but it's

a necessary point of reference and

that's why i've always

maybe i'm stupid because i've never

heard anyone else make this comparison

i've always

thought of orthodox theology

specifically

russian orthodoxy as the kind of uh

basically kantian kantian in nature

i'm not like as much of a con expert as

my friend uh combot

so i never want to say anything about

kant because i know i don't know enough

about kant

um i'm learning but i'm not i'm not an

authority on khan so i have no idea

oh yeah i kind of i kind of came into a

lot of that era

through my friendship with him so it's

kind of an area that i've learned more

about all the time

but like you know i had a really strange

like um mixture of like a lot of uh

like uh american and russian

thought for a long time where i like

kind of

built my interpretive mechanics or

whatever

and i've been like expanding more and

more since then

nice nice um yeah

it's really interesting so would you say

in general you came from basically like

a religious

background and that was i know i was

like a really hardcore atheist when i

was a kid for some reason

but like and i was like more of like

interested in like the the

anarchist tradition but like

particularly like the american like

individualist anarchist tradition

like uh so i read like max sterner and

stuff i still love max turner

my interpretation of him is much more

complicated now than it was then

but i was like 14 or whatever um

and i i really got more into like

religion and like christian

christianity just through reading a lot

of literature and then like you know

you're eventually like you're like

you just have to you know it's like

eventually like well gotta read the

bible

if i want to know fucking anything about

anything gotta read the bible

and uh i i've i don't know i've i've had

some uh i

i have a i would say that i'm a man of

faith

yeah i i began in a similar way i uh

when i was a kid

i uh took the the the new atheism

pill i guess and uh i was that kind of

obnoxious guy for a pretty long time and

then

you know i matured and uh i had a new

kind of uh

appreciation for uh religion and its uh

significance

yeah you kind of realized that um like

there is a religion

like like what the religion is is like

the whatever the

collective story of the world that like

the people

around you believe that everyone takes

is like a reference point

and also yeah certainly like if without

that

you have like you we've just like

privatized that to a degree

um and that and instead of it being even

like you know

great great the greatest authors in all

of history or something like that the

great thinkers

um it's like just these uh corporations

yeah you know and one hegelian insight i

came to is that

there there is no real atheism in the

sense that

the negation or rejection of uh

the god is always uh it so for example

a catholic atheist is not the same as an

orthodox

atheist yeah not the same as a muslim

atheist

or a jewish atheist you know 100 100

in a lot of ways um i think that uh a

lot of the times like

atheism is a path to like a deeper faith

um than people who might not have like

run through it there's a lot of like

there's like people who have like a kind

of naive folk faith

who like really haven't like

investigated the things that they

actually believe

but uh or like or are supposed to

believe by what their own like you know

they'll say that they believe something

but they effectively don't

because they've never really

interrogated it um

one of the um i guess one of the

interesting questions for me

uh and i don't know if you've uh

explored this topic is

why is it that we have whether we're

talking about

you know kind of uh this occult

secret religious underpinning and those

why

is there this uh contradiction between

the appearance of

things in the modern era and

the kind of um the kind of

real uh religious essence like for

example why

is it that religion takes

form most strongly in the appearance of

its opposite

like i understand uh this way in which

we can uncover the kind of protestants

for example

foundations of uh many of the

values and ideologies and forms of

consciousness in the modern world but

still how has it happened that this

distinction

has been so strongly affected between

the appearance

and uh the real essence

i think it's uh this is something we've

been trying to track really but i think

it's sort of like the development

of like uh the uh

a sort of geopolitics right like uh a

sort of

political economy for the management of

like imperial possessions

most of the time like we're talking

about in uh british history specifically

and a lot of like this uh political

economy a lot of these tools are

you know being designed for you know

surveying

and uh summing up quantifying like you

know you could call it the reign of

quantity

or like the reign of um like

combinatorics or like computation

um and like you know the development of

systems theory and games theory that

like this

the re like we live in uh this uh

we're governed by this like simulation

the sort of fiction

um that

is like requires the for its own

justification

like the nullification of like whatever

of this like christian inheritance

is left or at least like it's very

cynical

adaptation like as when uh you know

rockefeller is founding the uh

the protestant modernist movement and

like the the alliance of global churches

or whatever he called it

the interfaith council or something like

that

like they become tools for that and

yeah i mean um it's interesting to me

because uh

when it comes to

uh when it comes to this

history specifically um

well i'm kind of blanking out um

was it trying to fucking say

with the religion and like it takes on

its opposite like you know like the

we would say that the prevailing form is

kind of uh

like you know it people the satanic

imagery is certainly popular at least uh

like anti

like you know um inversion or trans

valuation

i would say like uh i would say like in

the you know a lot of it has to do with

like the the triumph of like the

utilitarians with the left nietzscheans

um but the left knee teams are something

i've been focusing on recently because i

feel like that explains a lot

oh i've actually sorry i remembered what

i was gonna say but um

so it's clear to me that there's a

continuity between what you're talking

about this kind of

management of imperial possessions this

kind of uh

this i guess we call modern paradigm

there's a kind of continuity between

this

leading up to systems theory and then

amer which is american american systems

theory and then um

cybernetics and stuff would you agree

with the kind of

heidigarian view that cybernetics

represents

basically the end of uh humanity in in

general

it's like the ex taking of this original

modern logic to

its fullest possible conclusion which is

the uh

yeah the abolition of man or like c.s

lewis called it i think

um yeah i think that's true to a degree

this is also

what like the end of history i always go

off about this has been uh

taken up by fukuyama who worked for the

rand corporation he wrote the book for

the rand corporation so

that's an interesting little tidbit but

um he he took this term from kajab but

what khajev meant to mean was far more

like what fukuyama was doing

as being extremely indicative of the end

of history which was like this uh just

uh programming

just uh that's it you know people are uh

at the end of history people are

live in a distraction and uh they're

either satisfied by it or they go insane

for which case

they're drugged or they get they're

arrested

and uh that's about it i think

not a lot of people appreciate specific

regards to kojov how

strangely um kojev is the kind of common

denominator of so many different

thinkers i think the three that i know

trying to think specifically that

actually knew each other strauss

they were within the same kind of friend

group even was la khan

bataille and strauss i think was as well

was he yeah those were his you're naming

his students but yeah he

he didn't really like his students he

for good reason in my opinion but um

it's almost like all of them though were

kind of

trying to develop

some original insight

that i guess begins with kojev or i

would argue maybe begins with

heidegger to me heidegger is the real uh

but skoja specifically is able to

place heidegger's thinking in proximity

with hegel

and uh and to me this unleashes uh

a kind of um big problem

for you know oh i feel you on that dude

that one that's been uh that it haunts

me

like it really does yeah i mean um

have you ever gone down the kind of like

battali rabbit hole like just become one

of those yeah

yeah so i feel like uh like battalion

right but ty's whole thing is like you

know he could uh because jeff called him

a

magician who be who began to believe in

his own

uh sleight of hand yeah i think that's

pretty accurate

uh battalion one of his journals i

believe he he said like when confronted

with his

argument he felt as if he was like uh an

animal like a wolf whose like

leg had been trapped by um like in a

steel trap um

that he'd have to like bite off his limb

to get out you know uh

yeah i think that's a that's a path a

lot of people go down i think though

is like this kind of um that like uh it

has like it's

like i think the modern battalions are

like you know like nick land and a lot

of the uh

the like more aesthetic like far right

that are like seem to be more interested

in like

that turning their lives into an artwork

and like you know being obsessed with

mishima and things like this

uh that that comes out more from like

the thai

yeah i mean battalion reaction to kajab

or whatever

yeah there was a period in my life where

i isolated myself from all society and

and it's what happened to me the thing

you described about bataille like

at first i saw it as this kind of

playful

you're just playing around with this

kind of uh magic stuff or whatever and

then

i began to become uh

so in immersed in it then i started to

believe in it i started to

really see in uh you know but it follows

from heidegger's kind of

um shift to a more

imminent and i guess uh maybe not

imminent but total logical kind of um

well he kind of gives up on philosophy

yeah

exactly he's just like he just like

everyone just read holder

um yeah yeah i like that i like when

philosophers give up on philosophy and

they they're just like i'm sorry i just

could never write poetry i was trying

yeah i mean uh yeah heidegger that's why

i

tell people that i don't consider

heidegger himself a philosopher

to me no no he's at his best a poet for

sure yeah

but i i still uh think heidegger is uh

maybe to me at least the most uh

well the most important western thinker

of the 20th century i would say

to me for me at least uh i don't know if

i can

if i say the most important thinker i'd

be committing a type of sin right

because

of course it's lenin and mao and stalin

and so on are the most

oh yeah yeah yeah those are those

towering uh

poets um i mean stalin was a poet so

yeah definitely

definitely um thank you much from king

appreciate it man

yeah i think but uh this kind of view of

the end of philosophy

i think i don't know if you would agree

but uh would you not uh agree

maybe that hegel is pr has to be the

last

philosopher there could be no more

philosophy if hagel's right yeah yeah

of course yeah yeah but you know to me

i've always seen

any all post philosophy after hegel

kind of just retracing the steps of

german idealism and not really going

any farther than that and uh in some

ways um a fun a fun one is a haman or

haman i never know how to say any of

these

fucking german names i didn't study

german um

my wife did that was not my study uh

but he he he predicted a lot of uh

a lot of the like sort of post-modern

response like i don't i'd recommend this

book

after enlightenment i always recommend

this but he's a really interesting

thinker

um he like like the philosophical turn

to language et cetera he he predicts a

lot of this stuff like most

he's like kind of already predicts

almost everything nietzsche is going to

say

and like like by the consequences of

like the enlightenment

and um then he even like proposes like a

synthesis afterwards

so he and like william blake i think had

like the furthest

views on that time period and they were

kind of contemporaneous

um yeah it's almost like uh it's clear

to me that

even with the the linguistic turn of the

20th

mid 20th century um this new focus on

language

as far as it's i'm not saying these are

its only philosophy

philosophical sorry it's not its only

consequences but as far as its

philosophical implications is concerned

it needs to be just stuck with kant you

know you haven't gone farther than

khan's

uh with that it's just it seems to me

like a re-creation of the

you know on-screen accidental

uh yeah i mean we kind of do like just

retrace these circles i mean this is

sort of what's

uh one thing that's a little compelling

about spengler is that he he just placed

hegel at the top of like

the autumnal uh cycle in his uh cycle

here

so it's basically like you know we had

this civilization

hegel reaped all the best of it and like

now we live in the cold

yeah yeah i mean um

we got a lot of people in the chat with

some spicy tea this guy was

quentin maya sue was the only guy who

escaped

hegel's trap i think it's a coke dude

i don't even know who that is so i

couldn't tell you maya sue he's the guy

he's like a french guy if i'm saying his

name right he wrote the book after

finitude

oh okay yeah i haven't read that i don't

know yeah i don't know i don't trust

frenchmen

that's one of my policies they're like

the scots you don't just trust them

just because uh you know gg's been meme

to hell and back people

don't understand like when jijic has

critiqued these

uh philosophies like meijer he rips them

apart dude like he actually

he's not just like a joke gg i mean he

has a very profound

um foundation for his thinking

in his writings i mean yeah he's pretty

good he's been kind of getting more into

like the blakey and stuff as he's gotten

older

which is really cool oh yeah i mean yeah

yeah yeah i mean really like all theizer

right like a christian

atheism or things like that you know

that sort of that's all fights are right

i always get all thiezer and all tiser

confused yeah that's so i always just

say help this here i don't know

i don't even know what to do no the

theologian uh jesus was a fan of his

and uh he's a big william blake guy i

mean uh

my philosophical grounding so like if

you're talking about like 20th century

like my

my favorites of the 20th century are

like marshall mcluhan and north of frye

but um like it's like a pretty different

field i guess that's more they're more

like media studies or like

you know criticism in that sense oh like

yeah yeah they like uh they were they're

super influential in my thought

interesting i actually don't know uh i i

know of those people

you know what was mcluhan was the guy

with the quote that said

the new war is the information or

something like that

yeah he said world war iii yeah yeah

world war iii

with note with no difference between

civilians and partisans

like no distinctions um yeah he was a he

was a head of the curve on a lot of shit

he was a he was a very smart guy very

well read but again

he gets it all from like blake and joyce

you know all of like the really greatest

insights come from like

inspiration and like the best of the

literary tradition in my opinion

um like all the best philosophers are

really just really great commentators on

the great poets that they've read

for the most part they're kind of trying

to systematize them and um

yeah uh so a lot of

like really great like you know marx

loves like the satirical tradition he

loved literature novels especially so

i think that like it one of the sad

things i suppose is uh

like uh hermeneutics has been destroyed

so fundamentally in uh the western in

western academia like

uh basically everyone functions on like

audience response theory now

and uh so this is like when you read uh

you read othello and then you talk about

black lives matter and it's like

oh my god dude it's what a pity

it's you know that's one of the listen

uh

people people don't get this right it it

bothers me so much

people not only like marx but even the

more partisan ones that we know like

lenin even probably stalin and mao and

the rest of them

especially marx marx was so profoundly

if you just read marx and angles they

had such a profound

disgust for what they would call the

philistines of their time who were more

whether they were socialists leftists or

otherwise who just had this kind of

not to like you know have vulgar means

like npc

type of audience response

virtue signalers um there's a victorians

yeah but we still live in victorianism

to a degree you know like a lot of

you can see just like elements of

victorian society in america

in our new forms it's like yeah

there's so much of it definitely that

man

syndrome yeah people would definitely

um consider

all the greatest moxes including marxist

and angles themselves

today they would consider them as like

right-wing crypto fascists

oh yeah no they're not serious they're

all it's still fake

you know like they live in a fake world

like if it's not on their wikipedia

thing or their summary of like

their uh reddit strategy guide on how to

debate x point against why or whatever

they don't know shit about anything they

can't they can't synthesize

new knowledge they they just are like

these rhetorical automata

who if you knew about the like

the scene on political twitch and

youtube and shit

dude people like wash they had a

research

stream about they're the worst man

they they're they're very informative to

watch like anthropologically though

yes exactly that's how we saw them

before we got into this whole thing we

it was purely like this from a distance

we didn't even have an any kind of like

ideological investment in it it was

purely kind of like

a zoo almost like what is

you know what i mean but people like

that they they will

look at wikipedia and unironically just

read wikipedia and that's where they

will get their information from and

they'll do it on stream they're like

okay

let's research uh what's going on in

xinjiang and then vosh pulls up

wikipedia and just reads it ad verbatim

with the wikipedia on screen streaming

yeah he makes it seem like this is like

the the site of the revelation of

knowledge somehow

yeah yeah i mean like it is for them

that's all they know they wouldn't know

how to find knowledge otherwise like

they're

they have to type it into google and

google is going to lead them right to

the right answers

every time let me let me ask you

something do you know about a guy named

philip cross no

i can't say idea of philip cross so

there's a really spooky guy

on wikipedia named the user is called

philip cross

so spoiler alert this is a government

agency

this is a collective of like dozens of

people probably

easily easily yeah i know like so philip

that's not even a question

philip cross edits posts at such a rapid

pace

every single day um

it's not possible it's an individual

person that we know that but

everything's

cool so do we already have like an ai

that's just like

i don't know if it's it's either an ai

or it's a

team of like 100 people but what's for

sure

is that every single thing they edit has

to do with

propping up the establishment narrative

and you know debunking conspiracy

theories and

you know any type of kind of skepticism

toward the status quo

whatsoever whether it's from the right

or it's from the left

phillip cross is going to be there to

make sure that the msm narrative

is what prevails on on

wikipedia i mean support the troops man

you know

like someone's got to do it yeah i mean

um

we don't want the chinese to produce

more than we do so we gotta edit we

gotta plan the consciousness of the

of the society dude so that they're

motivated

to produce more yeah

yeah i just um i don't know i think um

would you say you're probably more

familiar with the maybe the right wing

scene

um i would say i'm like i'm not as from

like i

i kind of canceled myself from the left

a long time ago um

just like more interested in talking to

people on the right because a lot of it

was like

uh literature that like i hadn't gotten

into or read you know like

i had had like a pretty solid like uh

read a lot of leftist stuff or whatever

and then like kind of tied with my like

refound interests and like christianity

and things i was like

you know like i'm gonna give like the

and you're reading a lot of russian

literature you'll you'll

you'll be more uh skeptical i think of

um

like the anglos because that's like what

a lot of their literature just kind of

like posed directly against

and um so i got into i got interested in

reading more of these people

and uh yeah i mean uh so i know i know

like a good deal about both i just don't

know the the personages that make up the

quote unquote left these days

yeah i mean it's almost like the left

today is just synonymous with

virtue signalers and people who cannot

think independently

it's like i'm not even it's not a

partisan thing to say it's like it's

literally true like

if you want to appreciate literature if

you want to

care about what lenin called the

treasures of mankind

you're going to have to engage with

people who are either apolitical

or probably land themselves somewhere as

conservatives or rightists

but it's always going to be them

you know and um i to me

our perspective at least with regard to

that is that the left

wherever it exists is always necessarily

corrupt

and you know what's it and and what i

mean by that is that

if a left exists right and we still live

in the world that we do

clearly they're corrupt clearly they

have they're not succeeding in

changing anything or overthrowing

capitalism or anything like that

yeah no they're doing they're doing

their jobs though they're doing the work

like they're doing what

is their job is to do it's just not what

like you know their job is to be actors

to a degree and to like perform

sentiments and to you know have people

mirror them

mirror their sentiments like you know

pass that and pass that around so that

everyone's kind of like you know

uh on the same page you'd agree or at

least can all perform in the same

production here of america and uh

so that's what they do like they're very

good at that but yeah i know like

they're they're not serious thinkers or

anything

and it's interesting too because you

know if you think about

it beginning in the title of the french

revolution

there's a few interesting things to

point out first

uh robespierre right

we consider him part of the left today

but

and i guess i would but you know at the

time robespierre was not

uh a kind of progressive robespierre

with his

rejection of atheism and his uh

more popular sentiment he was a kind of

almost uh conservative

robespierre and the first reactionaries

actually were not the royalist

restorationists

they were the kind of um

liberal uh the thermadorians basically

and they were liberals they weren't

uh they weren't really uh

just to return to the ancient regime if

that makes sense

oh yeah yeah yeah yeah they were all

masons too they were they were voltarian

atheists

basically yeah

yeah i mean a lot of them are freemasons

though also so a lot of them

aren't even like a lot of them were like

freemasons or like yeah there's a lot of

you can just

so it's like you know uh freemasonry is

interesting because like people take it

as like both a uh

within the organization itself they take

it both like literally and

like symbolically at two different

degrees

it's pretty interesting you know have

you ever it's hard to say like you know

if you're if you're going to like you

know a masonic mat like are you an

atheist like i don't know

have you ever been to a mace so i

whenever i go to masonic temples because

you know they those are buildings that

are for

their historical buildings so they're

for they're no longer for

freemasons they're like they're just you

know what i mean by that they're just

yeah there's a bunch that are just

around

whenever i go to them for like a party

or an event or something i always get

spooked out like i'm in an

unholy place that has been methodically

and alchemically designed with

the specific intent to like invoke some

i don't know some effect with sacred

geometry or something you know

um but i just get this kind of bad

feeling i don't know

do you know what i'm talking about or uh

i i haven't been inside enough masonic

lodges to like get spooked out by them

they

like um i've gone through like different

levels of my my affiliation with like

what is like masonic imagery like just

inherently spooky or something

but like it's it's gone under it's

undergone so many different revisions

but uh

for for example right um on the back of

the dollar right where you have like the

eye of providence and things like this

most people would probably consider that

to be like a pretty old thing or it's

like a leftover

somehow from from like the really early

times in america it's from the great

seal of america

but the great seal of america was never

something that was really that popularly

used

the the reason why it's on the back of

the the dollar and the reason why it

says

novus order seclorum is because fdr

who is a very high level mason basically

considered that to be the same as the

new deal

it's like supposed to be like a latin

synonym

yeah it's i always wonder if

these are just kind of people in power

who are playing

you know with metaphors and you know uh

kind of easter eggs or is this how to

really

really no like really really practical

considerations because um

like you know a lot of these like uh

alchemical techs or whatever are also

about like mining and like you know the

and like early industry like industrial

processes organizing industry

like uh herbert hoover we were just

getting obsessed with this one

recently i'm kind of like elated on this

one because it's so fucking wild and i

can't believe i never knew this

but herbert hoover uh and his wife were

the first people to translate uh

agriculture

uh agricolas uh de re mineralibus or

something like that it's a it's about

it's about like uh it's it's a really

complicated like german philosophical

text i believe marx even um

cites it but it's like in the alchemical

tradition

and it's uh it uh organized uh it was

like talking about like organized labor

and like the rights of labor and like um

having eight hour work days

and things like this for maximum

efficiency and uh

for like you know like so a lot of this

like

it's weirdly connected though in in many

ways

like sometimes people think it's just

like this nefarious symbolism

that they're like are like doing

knowingly or something

but a lot of it's connected to like

these these like uh

these things that are like pretty good

like for construction projects you know

like

like building the fucking hoover dam

these sorts of things it's a it's a good

thing to do

you know it helps it's good to build

infrastructure

it almost begs the question like um

because you can tell in other cultures

non-western ones i mean that

there's there's a clear distinction

between the overtly kind of religious

and this this ambiguous fear of the

secular

i guess i don't know where they're

playing with symbols and they're playing

with metaphors and they're kind of

constructing you know thing things that

are

they they would otherwise from a modern

i think it's almost like only in the

modern times do we have this kind of

rigid distinction between the inner

kind of holy and spiritual truth and

then

the secular world to the point where

like when we're confronted with masonic

imagery

and when we're confronted with the

legacy of this kind of um

worldly and secular traditions there's

something so

nefarious and kind of unsettling about

it

you know i think it was kind of like

kind of purposefully

done to a degree in like the 20th

century

where a lot of like you know like the i

feel like sort of the satanic panic

itself was sort of

like uh like a way of like covering for

a bunch of other shit

you know so it's like in a society where

at the same time you have like the

franklin boys scandal and shit like that

then you have like this like like and

like you know the bohemian grove and

these sorts of things um they kind of

like

they they've disassociated i think from

a lot of the

tradition of that and now they kind of

do it as like a play ironic

adaptation of this imagery as a sort of

which is even more nefarious in a way

because they're kind of they're not even

taking on

like if there's a positive element to

like the free masonic vision or

something they don't even take that on

they just like the idea

of like a secret power itself um

so it it there's like a it i think it's

taking on more nefarious hues

than it was before because again like in

the time where we're talking about like

like like if we're saying like early uh

20th century america or late 19th

century america

um almost like tons of people almost

ever everyone was like involved in these

sorts of lodges you know like tons of

like i was just

like sun raw all these jazz musicians

most of them were like prince hall

masons

um it was a very like everyone was

involved in various secrets it was like

what everyone did and we kind of still

do that by creating like these forums

and stuff like that right

like you sort of created your own little

you know secret society

i think one of the things that this kind

of panic over secret societies

anticipated was the internet because

before the internet

this kind of way of or what i mean it's

not only just secret societies it's also

political parties like the communist

party right

yeah the way in which organization was

um

organized was in terms of secrecy when

select few can know and

well all of this has kind of been

digitized and decentralized in a way so

that when we think of a secret society

we think that they're doing something

so nefarious that it couldn't possibly

no it's what we do every day yeah it's

like we all do the same shit

like if you like a lot like that's

it's we're all involved in this like

sort of process like people have to

alienate like things that are actually

very like

it doesn't have to be a conspiracy of

journalists they're all in the same

fucking

like they're in the same forum they're

on the same email chain or whatever

it's really not like it's not it doesn't

even have to be

that complicated i but i still feel like

something i can't really justify it but

i feel like

i still believe that there's something

really spooky going on

at the very top that like it's not on

the surface you know

i mean that's just like yeah that's true

there's tons of spooky shit happening

all over the place

yeah but i think that like that like the

people who are like at the top

like don't they don't really they're not

even really involved

to a lot of the degree with that stuff

like it's all just outsourced

and they are like hiring people to do

things without them having to know

or like think about it you know so like

there is so there is this like this dark

underbelly but it's like even like

something that our leaders are probably

blind to themselves even to a degree

because

they're they're willfully they will

fully keep themselves in the dark

and like they prefer they want to be in

the dark what do you think about like

epstein and stuff though like that kind

of

level of because i don't i think we've

just i mean

epstein you can connect like almost

immediately to like just hold over like

carry over

financing shit like shell corporations

etc from the iran contra days

so he's like you know that's that's just

like he's just been doing stuff for a

long time

i think honestly that he might have just

been like

like it's kind of just a massive

distraction that's gone nowhere right

and uh like right like what is what have

we

gleaned really from the epstein thing

yeah i mean um

sorry can we get some mods in the chat

guys some mods in the chat are there any

mods here

sorry it's twitch we got to be careful

here and people are

it's like twitch is super strict you

know oh i can't see the chat so i don't

know

i wonder am i am are people getting or

am i pissing people off am i getting a

lot of

is anyone pog champion no no it's just

some guy was saying something

that was tossed yeah but anyway um

yeah i think um

do you think i'm trying to think like uh

when we talk about the establishment in

the us

it's difficult to like locate that

and map it out discreetly but i think

that this is kind of what

kantbot and and maybe yourself have been

doing is basically

actually mapping out what it's like

linchpin you know yeah i mean we're also

looking at just like the internal

organization and like the development of

the internal organization of like these

institutions

because that's like extremely important

like you know that's

that's where the real game is played you

know it's like who does like who gets to

restructure

the uh the architecture of these various

uh interests and uh

embedded bureaucracies and things but

that shit's

like it's it gets it gets really fuzzy

it gets really hairy because

like the financial world is also so so

opaque like you know these people like

my god like there's so so much fuckery

in our world man like you know

like panamanian merchant banks and all

these weird

these uh offshore like british colonies

financial crypto colonies

it's a it's a weird world up there when

you're when you're at the very top i

suppose you can just like fuck around

and

do crazy shit just get away with world

historical crime

yeah i mean um

that's what i'm saying is like there

there has to be some

really and when people talk about you

know like child

sacrifice and all that kind of stuff

it's almost like i don't know that

the things that the world that these

elites experience

is so different from ours that there

must

their minds must be so different that

you know i don't know it's almost like

uh they live in a kind of david lynch

world you know

like that i mean i feel like we all live

in a kind of david-less world but yeah

you're right you're right yeah yeah i

mean i

i don't i don't like i try to be a

little more grounded than like you know

like

being like anderson cooper has been

going to black masses since he was five

years old

um but i think there's like a kind of

like that's like metaphorically true or

like you know spiritually that's

fundamentally true

i think that his actual like like the

people like these like super elite types

who are from like super elite families

and stuff

i think that they're they're they're uh

they're really kind of hollow

shells of people they're they're really

not that interesting at all they need

they literally require

like this massive multi-billion dollar

media infrastructure to make themselves

relevant in any way

they'd never hack it none of these

people would ever fucking hack it

if they had to go through what a ship

posters got through

yeah very true very actually you're kind

of right yeah it's almost like

the real people it's almost like what

hegel says right the

the i which sees evil everywhere is

where evil is

right evil is in the eye that sees evil

everywhere so it's almost like we the

conspiracy theorists are probably

the evil ones right well a lot of a lot

of conspiracy theorists in this degree i

don't

like i'm not a conspiracy theorist i'm a

financial consultant and a historian

oh yeah yeah true

true but yeah i know a lot of them like

they just want to be in on the game you

know what i mean there's a kind of

like you know this is the sort of irony

of something like human on coming off of

a board that like hosts child

pornography

it's like oh yeah yeah yeah true

true they're like why can't i do that

it's like kind of a kind of a thing you

know like uh it's kind of funny in like

some parts of like looks like the

aesthetic nihilist right or whatever uh

jeffrey epstein is like

like they like a relatable figure

they're a relatable guy like that's

there but for the grace of god go eye

you know that's how they look at it

yeah i mean um it goes from the bottom

and all the way to the top

right like the same evil that's at the

top

is all the way at the lowest level

yeah it's

place yeah i mean um

it's uh it's definitely true that

you know um well okay i

maybe to shift gears a little bit so

yeah so as far as the current um

political right is concerned after the

uh the defeat of trump

and i guess the trump movement after

january oh sorry

zero mike oh yeah just fucked up my

airpods are dying too but i think i can

do one more

oh okay yeah we'll wrap it up here where

do you see the future of um

the political right in america if if it

has a future at all

um honestly this is like my fun my fun

take right now is that i see like

a kind like a lot of like people have

been trying to amp up like

nick fuentes is gonna no he's not he's

not he's a fucking nobody he's a fucking

idiot he's a clown

if you like charlie kirk is a much

longer refuge

yeah fuentes but he he got he gets a lot

of views apparently but um

still i just

oh your your mic is kind of um

hello

uh i can't hear anything i can't hear

anything that you're saying

here i'm gonna send you a uh

um did you hear any of that yeah yeah i

hear you now i hear you know i didn't

hear any of that

oh fuck god damn it i had a good one um

damn um i was saying that i could see

some parts of like the post left or

whatever the people who are now like um

you know disassociating with the left

like uh

you know like doing a little scoop

jackson action

and like talking about how um you know

the the compassionate the the sort of

like texas ford uh conservatives

um have the people's interests more in

mind or something like that i could see

something like that some sort of like

weird uh

i don't know there's a lot of ways it

could go i think that like um

i think that as the tech hubs are kind

of shifting more towards like texas and

florida

that'll lead to like the real future of

the republican party

ah so the republicans will become kind

of more elitist

i think they'll be it'll be like uh

hispanic like pro empire america like

hurrah like punisher

truck america oh shit

but it'll be all latinos and there'll be

like veterans and stuff and

it'll be like you know you know exactly

what you're talking you know dude i know

exactly what you're talking about and

yeah right leftists are so blind to that

because they they have

they have this idea that people who are

minorities are just inherently

gonna be like yeah it's not yet yeah

they're all liberals

yeah yeah all these latin americans are

liberals yeah

they they identify as latinx uh yeah

yeah and they all went to a liberal arts

college exactly yeah they're not in the

marines actually

dude i know exactly with the whole thing

about veterans

i know exactly what you're talking about

dude like yeah i saw i've been seeing

like i saw my first uh punisher edition

like ford truck on a guy

and i was it was amazing i was like i

was like wow this guy's

this is like i found one um but yeah

they're out there

and uh they're they're the work there a

lot of them are doing the real like

working-class jobs

and uh the fail if the left fails you're

gonna have

a fascism of latino punishers

so um and and the left

seems to me just to be increasingly uh

i mean uh they don't call it baiso in in

china for nothing it's

it's increasingly yeah hey that guy

follows me now the guy who came up with

that term he's

he's funny oh really he's the he's in

china

uh i think he's like actually not in

china he's like a manchurian nationalist

it's very funny i think he he got into

scrape with the ccp because he's a

reactionary

it's hilarious yeah i mean um yeah

the the you know i don't know the whole

social and done left thing to me is like

it almost seems like to me the real

white supremacists

are leftists you know but yeah i mean

that's but like is it it's so fun right

how many ways you can rephrase like

democrats are the real racist

i don't know it's like cringe when

people say it or whatever i guess

everyone's supposed to believe but but

that's literally true here's another

funny thing though

but then with the people who call

themselves white supremacists you'll

find out

they're like 50 hispanic or something

yeah no because because they they're the

they're like the last ones to real

like you know like they they want

they're like wait a minute like wait

what is like they wanted to attain that

they're like you know

yeah wants to catch on it's like elliot

roger you know he he always like

he's descended from british aristocrats

you know

yeah yeah and uh yeah yeah i know what

you mean

yeah that's like it's funny because like

i like to pull out the old school

angler racism sometimes on them too

because i'm like you're all

germans like what are you talking about

yeah like you're you're like half

italian shut up

or like yeah yeah

yeah i would just like i would uh he

blocked me a long time

but i would just post my uh my 23 of me

because i'm like

sorry i can't uh hear anything right now

your mic is like

your mic is uh cutting out

hi yeah i can hear you know i can hear

you know all right yeah

shit i'm sorry about this man i put them

down there's airpods are stupid because

you can't just like turn them off

that's right yeah that's all right i

don't want to have to keep you if you uh

if you gotta go though yeah i'm gonna

head in and like yeah

so this is a nice conversation man it

was fun yeah definitely man and if you

want to shout out any

anything to the the audience so they can

give you

um yeah we're on the pseudo-doxological

podcast network um subscribe to that

shit it's good i promise um i've written

two books

one's called selfie suicide the other

one's called ampersand

you can find those probably on my

twitter account in the pinned

thing if you're looking for that shit

and uh check out my friends podcast

ghost jail

it's very funny very it's like uh it's

like a fucking

experience it's it's like a type of

thing that not a lot of people are

making right now

and uh there all the episodes are

fantastic there'll be another one coming

out pretty soon so those are all my

shout outs i think yeah

i appreciate it man thank you so much

for peace out man see you later

it was a really good discussion

see