WR - Nick Land Trump vs Musk, God, and Homeschool

A quick PSA before the program. As many of you know, TU has undergone some significant hardships in recent changes. Most notably was the split with Michael Downs and Bryce Nance, leaving to do their own thing. As you hear in this interview, Nick Land spoke with them the same week that he spoke with us. So that's something you can look forward to as well. This was recorded on June 10th, which we think was a day or two before his conversation with Aaron McIntyre. If you watched that interview, there's a bunch of references back to the conversation that he has with us. As for the split, Land generally thinks Schism is great. Maybe not so much for us who have to undergo it, but it's most likely for the best, especially if you believe in historical providence, one of the topics in the following conversation. Lastly,

Michael Down wants to republish Capital vs. Time Energy himself, so he's requested that we unpublish it. Our official statement about that is on screen right now. As of this release, that work will be removed from Amazon in 24 hours. Thanks for understanding. Stay tuned for lots of exciting new releases coming to you soon from Theory Underground Publishing. Now, enjoy the show. all right hello this is ann snellgrove mccarricker and i'm david mccarricker

you're listening to what's right And today we are joined by none other than Nick Land. We're so happy to have you back in the Theory Underground world and excited to talk today. How are you doing? Great. Yes, I'm looking forward to it. Great. So let's just get straight into it. There's a lot going on with the Trump administration and on X, you've been very supportive. Now, I want to preface my question about X with a clue to the audience, people who don't know. I'm under the impression at least that you take your X posting pretty seriously and that it's not just some throwaway shitposting thing you do and that evidence to that fact is that you have just published a book of a decade of your tweets.

So you do take it pretty seriously, right? Well, it's like, actually, I have had, other than originally posting the content, I've had nothing to do with that. Almost everything. I think this is just my relation to fate is the fact that other people do all my publishing for me. So it's like almost nothing that is out there in my name was actually put together by me. You know, it's composed initially by me, but other people have taken all the work. So I've been extremely, I guess, lucky like that. I don't know what this particular volume is. I haven't seen it. You haven't seen it? No, no, no. I'm like four or five books behind.

I mean, I've got this massive publication list, most of which I haven't seen. So, yeah, I'll have to catch up at some point. Right. Someday you'll have to read your own work. Well, how do you feel about a book of your tweets existing? I find. I think these things are like, yeah, as I say, fate or whatever. I think trying to imagine what it would have been to try to control that stuff, I just now totally can't imagine it. So I just write it or whatever.

talking about Elon Musk and this current breakup between him and Trump. And you've been giving him advice. And I think that's really interesting. But I mean, I guess when you say I've been just shouting into the void, I mean, I would be absolutely amazed if it has actually been conveying advice to Elon Musk, which would Or just be like, what the hell? What the hell are you doing? I think you said, what did you say adds up to 33 and then an alphanumeric cabal. I tried to persuade him that Providence required him to get back in the lane.

Which he's weaved right out of. But I'm getting the sign that he might be like, his little psychotic break might be coming to an end now. I don't know. I think he just does a few days of just completely losing it. As people say, this is like that whole H1B thing, which whatever you think of the merits of the case, his handling of that was so bad. It was utterly comical. And I think the same with this. like whatever you think of his case is just absolutely he shouldn't be doing this stuff himself i mean he should have he should have a guy and yeah and right yeah that so with the h1b1

uh can we refresh uh my memory uh this was about uh this was the first time he was disagreeing with not Trump per se, but more like the MAGA movement. I think with the MAGA face, and he was just saying, I think he politely suggested that everyone could go and fuck their own face. Yeah. Yeah, I think... Which went down pretty well, actually. This was when him and Vivek Ramaswamy were both saying like, no, we should be much more pro-immigration. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I guess in relation to this Trump-Musk breakup, I guess I'm just curious, like, from your perspective, what did Musk's success, like, what do you think of his role in the administration and this fallout that's going on right now?

Honestly, insofar as it's, you know, excitement about this government on the right, or the part of the right that I'm adjacent to or involved in, is very much honestly tied on it being a kind of Trump-Musk meld. And I think everyone knew that was going to be a really difficult relationship. Personally, I thought that they would both realize that it's going to be difficult and also realized that it was really important and therefore make an effort to be, you know, very calm and considered and tactical about it. I mean, the last part obviously seems not the case.

Like, I mean, I'm a huge Elon Musk fan, but mood control isn't his greatest skill. You know, I mean, I think the thing is, like, you know, he thinks he's better, he thinks he's vastly better at PR than he is. He's actually terrible at PR. And as I say, I mean, he really should get someone to do that stuff for him. I mean, I honestly, this is of course something that is going to be extremely unwelcome and ignored, but he should get someone to edit his ex-post. just at least to say like really this is not a good idea you should reconsider this like

you know maybe it's as as i was sort of just myself slightly taking you know making fun of it but it's like he'll make a joke that is kind of funny i mean you know it's occasionally actually quite funny and it's like gonna just cost him hundreds of millions of dollars it's an absolutely disastrous thing to say but kind of amusing and i sort of think someone should try and persuade him of that like so he can get back to getting everyone to mars or whatever the big right right right i think politics and business has just fallen so much into the spectacle as

well like these personalities this is just how they act now trump too love him or hate him like he's got quite the personality that i think rubs a lot of just liberal people the total wrong way they just he's an asshole he speaks out of his ass um and that's so interesting this shift that we've seen kind of the well one thing is professionalism or pr like if you compare it with the previous administration where everything was secret. You know, the government just didn't talk to people ever. It was all done through these very occasional elusive kind of press conferences. The fact that Biden had just melded down into total dysfunction,

and so therefore no one in the country even knew who the government was. and there was this kind of shield wall to hide that bad. And you go from that, just occult government. People still don't know who was actually ruling the country over those years. I mean, it's completely unknown fact that needs investigating. You go from that to this government where everything is totally public. It's like you say, it's all spectacle, it's all entertainment. that whole bread and circuses thing, I mean, the bread side of it is obviously not bad, but Trump's market, I guess, is not disposed to fiscal austerity. The circus part of it is they actually just do their political process

as entertainment drama. It's like The Apprentice. You know, the government just puts itself out there on social media, I guess on the, I don't have a look at the other media. I'm just assuming also it happens there as this just public entertainment spectacle. It's just completely incredible. I don't know whether anything like it's ever happened before. Yeah. So I'm wondering about what, what is the vision as from your perspective here on the tech, right? MAGA alliance when you were saying that you were you were saying if Musk could only focus on the plan

getting us to Mars and whatever else maybe you could elaborate a little bit on what that is because you know he does watch this kind of stuff. Musk does watch the internet. What is the vision? Could we remind everybody? Are we talking about musk's vision in in particular either musk's vision or the way that he is supposed to play a significant role in in the future yeah i mean i think that he you know people who like what he's done so far just want him to carry on doing that i mean it's been just astonishing And I think people, you know, kind of forget. I mean, like, you know, since landing on the moon, before, you know, it was basically space activity, meaningful space activity in the United States finished in the early 1970s.

And so, you know, we're like literally half a century down the line from doing that stuff. And of course, people get into like a weird space about that, like moon hoaxes and all of this stuff. If we could be on the moon in 1969, why the hell is nothing happening now when we've got vastly superior technology in all dimensions and hasn't happened for five decades? And then Musk comes along and suddenly we're back in science fiction again. We've got rockets being kind of caught out of the sky by giant mechanical robot arms.

I mean, it's like this is so different to what we were seeing before. It's like you've switched channels. It's like you're just in a different narrative. And I think suddenly, you know, Musk has almost single-handedly reignited in everything other than artificial intelligence. Musk has pretty much single-handedly ignited it. But electric vehicles were just like, no one took them seriously, really. They were a niche thing. They were going to be super expensive. It's like maybe eventually they were there. And suddenly now they're everywhere, you know. and tesla's the most valuable company in the world or something like that and um what he's done with

this this uh whatever his kind of satellite based internet starlink or whatever it is is just also completely incredible actually yep we're on starlink internet right now out here on the farm it's amazing stuff it's amazing stuff he's been doing so i mean you know so it doesn't require some imaginative elite to say what do you want musk to be doing i mean it's that stuff just keep doing that stuff man yeah it's for sure and i think lots of people including i guess eon musk thought that if the democrats had won in the last lecture he would be finished

you know it was a kind of existential thing for him obviously I've left out the big one I've left out for Musk is just liberating X I mean that was so farcically totalitarian system you know I don't kind of hate whatever his name is he was there before but he was completely ineffectual he just allowed this just blob of censorship and thought mind control and deep state activism to completely strangle that platform to a point that it was just comical. And ask us completely opened it up.

And I think it's right to say whatever, you know, Trump's had some amazing stuff happen to him in that election campaign. And obviously the whole Butler stuff and the photos that came out of that, no one could put that down. He's an incredible political communicator. But I don't think without Musk, without X being a kind of free speech platform again, I don't think there's any way that there would now be the Trump administration power. And I think it's just like sour grapes for people. There's a lot of people who are really, really pissed off with Elon about all this stuff, who are saying, oh, we didn't need you. I mean, that seems to me completely implausible. Yeah, well, that's the thing is there's a lot of MAGA people very mad.

I think one of your tweets was a retweet of somebody saying, there are blue-haired women and red-hatted men now keying my Tesla. Tesla. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think one of the other – I'm wondering, do you really feel like this timeline is at stake with this with this potential well with with this breakup i don't think so i mean i've moved into a point of just you know almost complete uh confidence in in in providential history and i just think

it's like it's not that contingent events like this can throw anything off off okay of course there's just too many just curves of just reached escape velocity you know as i i think maybe we'll get too late i mean the whole ai thing now is just out of the box as far as i'm concerned i just don't think there's any conceivable way that that doesn't just shoot up so even if the kind of ai 20 27 people are a little bit overexcited about it i mean i'm not saying they are but let's just hypothetically say that they're on the the extreme end of that it's we're definitely only talking

a few decades before crazy science fiction type outcomes on that lifestyle and I think any chance of really stopping that is and the thing about I think this administration whatever happens however disappointing it is and whatever goes wrong and all of that it's a four year slot in which stuff is not going to be stopped you know it might Lots of people are going to be disappointed about what it achieves and all of this kind of thing. But it's not, it was a crucial opportunity. People who wanted to actually seriously stop certain things happening required this time and they don't have it.

And so by 2028, it's going to be just, things are going to have escaped so thoroughly that I don't worry. they can be recaptured at all. Right, so this is a four-year period in which things will not be stopped at bare minimum. Now, there's two directions that what you just said can take us, and one is into the territory of the AOE versus a sort of libertarianism. I want to come back to that because, first of all, you brought up providential history. And I think it's worth dwelling on because our initial impulse to bring you on was related to the fact that we have been

questioning about religion, theology, and God. In fact, I think before we started recording, You had referenced one of our previous episodes on that topic. And so my impression is that you would rather spend – and this is something you said I think within the last few years. You'd rather spend time with a handful of lemurs than most people if you had to pick who you're going to spend time with in the afterlife. And that's not the answer that most people who believe in providential history would give. And so I'm interested in what I've kind of called the CCRU occultism to Catholicism pipeline.

We've seen several of the Landian or CCRU-esque sort of educator, influencer type people on the internet over time gravitate into or fully convert into Catholicism. And as I've begun to understand a lot of the precepts of the CCRU, I think I get why. But you yourself, I don't think, have become a Catholic. And so I'm kind of curious. No? You're not? Okay. You don't think that's the vehicle then? You're on very safe ground with that one. Okay. No, no. I've got my John Milton Puritan hat on or whatever I'm in for sure.

The 17th century English Protestantism is definitely where I think things get really interesting. 17th century in particular. I think the 17th century is where, as far as what I see as my culture, really reaches takeoff point. And it's because they have a dynamic interrelationship of the new science, you know, absolutely uncompromising. I mean, we're talking new term.

We're not talking like stuff that's just edging in that direction. and also this, you know, extreme efflorescence of sort of Protestant religious and theological speculation and those two things dynamically interacting with each other. and so I think it produces this absolutely fertile set of writings that we've never seen since and when you move into the 18th century it's all much more it's all much you know the edge is taken off it it's all much I would say like

well yeah I don't know whether I can there's an adjective out there somewhere which I'm hunting for but I don't think I'm going to find it right this second but yes I mean I think it's sort of it's lost the intent yeah but I mean on your thing I don't want to drift off this I mean the Catholicism thing I'm trying to be sympathetic I'm trying to be sympathetic and you know like the Italian Baroque is something that I've been sort of helping people with research projects recently has brought me into that zone

and is absolutely fascinating and totally gripping so it's not that I'm like close to the fascinations of that it's just not my path okay yeah and so my uh my sense for what's so special in the minds of the people who are going into it and i'll kind of riff off of a little james ellis a little justin murphy is that it was the ccru that initially clued them into the fact that you can kind of make a religion out of anything. If you get a group of people together, you develop a sort of esoteric meta-language and a shared ritualistic practice for developing contact, means of contact with the outside.

And, but once they realize that, they go, oh, well, this is very niche and, you know, university, but there's actually one that's been around for a long time. It's developed, insanely sophisticated technologies for doing just this and for working with masses of people. So as far as a vehicle for working with large amounts of people, the Catholic Church is the most sophisticated form of this kind of technology. Well, I think you can go from that lots of interesting directions. and I do think they're interesting. I mean, one of them is to say, well, okay, if you're making that move,

why Roman Catholicism rather than Eastern Orthodox? I mean, what is special? What's the Goldilocks point that leaves you in Rome rather than in Constantinople or in the Orthodox world, which is surely, if anything, more conservative, isn't it? I mean, it's more, if you're saying, let's just stick with what we know works, isn't Rome actually the more newfangled of those options at that stage? Right. Well, and I think that there is a strong tendency also to go into the Eastern Orthodoxy.

And my guess is that it's probably closer to what brings you closer to your family. My grandfather on my mom's side was a Roman Catholic. And so it's like, yeah, that's special. I could see that having an influence if I was like, well, which one am I going to get involved in? And also, which, you know, if you actually go to the local churches and temples, you know, you kind of got to work with what's best in your proximity, I would imagine, if you care about being a part of a real community, right? Yeah. I know. Well, I think this is all, yes, it's interesting and difficult.

I mean, I think, you know, the role of a pastoral role, the role of a priest, is obviously extremely, the level of responsibility, and that is absolutely mind-bending. and I think it's hard for people of an extreme Protestant disposition and by Protestant there I just mean probably with a tendency to schismatism and probably like individualist tendencies so kind of you know the tendency being like I'm going to read these books myself and you know with whatever help

from the Holy Ghost and the angelic powers I can invoke or draw upon, you know, find out what is going on here. And if someone else is going to help me, the bar for that is pretty high. You know what I mean? Like, why am I trusting this guy to be my spiritual guide? You know what I mean? I mean, your spiritual guide is likely to be some great historical figure, some philosopher or theologian or writer or poet. Aquinas or Augustine.

Yes, it might be Augustine, it might be John Milton, it's someone who you think has exceptional insight in this respect, exceptionally high quality communication with this whole realm. and then you know there's your poor parish priest like who is that guy like I mean maybe maybe he's amazing you know what I mean but it's like what are the odds really you know so I suppose there's a particular type of thing where you have to a certain dimension of faith

which is to say you know I trust that you know, the higher powers are going to work through this guy and keep him in line or, you know, make him useful to his flock or, you know, make sure that what passes through him is good and true. But I think that that's not, you know, if that's how your mind works, then, yeah, you are probably inclined in a Catholic direction but I think that the Protestant inclination is not that it's to say you know I'm going to tap the source and I think like in literature

and all of these things your average Protestant clergyman is kind of a buffoon picker you know what I mean it's like there's not the same sense that this is your doorway into the realm of spiritual profondity at all. It's like it's amusing that it's a social organizer of like-minded people. So your community meets up at the church and he's got this role. But I don't think, I mean, this might just be my own sinister sermon, extravagant individualism, but I don't think that the Protestant tradition is as likely to venerate the priest or past as you're going to find elsewhere.

So that's what I would say, I mean, you know, to people who are on your, as you say, CCRU to Catholicism pipeline, it's like you trust your priest that much. I mean, I don't see how you can even trust the Pope, you know. I don't see how you can trust high-level bishop. The fact that you can just trust this guy, leaving aside all the kind of things you can easily reach for in terms of the massive problems of various scandals that have been associated with it, just bracket that stuff off as a cheap hit. But just what is the human quality that you're dealing with? yeah yeah and i i wonder how much how many of like the people who go to a catholic church who

who are catholic feel this strong sense of like oh i trust this priest at my local church in the place that i live versus the priest being just like a figure playing the role in this kind of ritual that gets done in every church because we've been exploring and going to different churches in our area. We've gone to a Baptist church. We went to the Unitarian Universalist church that had like eight old people. We went to the big mega church that had, you know, big rock concert and the tennis courts. Like we've been just exploring partly for anthropological reasons to just like meet some people, understand community and explore our own relation to all of these different denominations but we've found that the catholic churches have been our favorite experience

because of the ritualistic part of it because it really pulls you out of just like everyday kind of normal speech normal language not being lectured at it's like the priest speaks like this and then says something and we all go amen and it's like yeah i don't care who this guy is he seems great he seems friendly he seems personable but just the whole okay we're standing up okay we're sitting down okay we're kneeling okay we're doing it was just it pulls you out of everything so i wonder if that experience is just as powerful to people and again we don't we aren't catholic we're just exploring but it is interesting yeah how many people like what role does that priest play especially when you're like i'm just going to the church that's down the street from me yeah

Yeah, yeah. No, no, I do totally get that. I do totally get that. And I think, you know, if I'm just being sort of a bit obstinate about the whole thing, it's like, well, doesn't that really say that the whole Vatican II type movement was just a disastrous mistake? And that, you know, what saves Catholic ritual is the fact that it's so programmed. It's so out of the hand of the individual priest. It's so not him giving his sermon or, you know, his particular take on the book of Job or something like that. It's like it's all massively ritualistically programmed by many, many hundreds of years of tradition.

So you can say, look, I'm not, he's just the agent and executor of this ritual. All we're asking from him is competence at ritualistic transmission. We don't care about his own private spiritual insights or his sermons or his little message for us, homily or any of that stuff. We just want him to deliver this history to us. but in that case better still surely if it was all in laden, if it was all just like not pretending to be competing with protestantism to be talking to you or talking to you at that level of like foot in the door

do you have some 10 minutes to talk about Jesus or whatever that's not the thing so yeah I get that So then bringing it back to the idea of sophisticated technologies for making contact with the outside, obviously your cup of tea is going to be a lot more personalistic. you use the term individual approach to, yeah, you're under the guidance of the Holy Ghost or, you know, you let the Spirit move you. And I guess trust is a very interesting problem, especially for me as a natural skeptic, right? As a skeptical three-year-old,

You know what I mean? I've been just – that's my natural predisposition potentially to a fault. And so my question was always when people – because I grew up in a Protestant household and people say that, well, this is what that means. Just even as a little kid, I was kind of like, well, it could also mean this or that. And then the idea was that they had the Holy Spirit guiding their interpretation. And they can also check their concordance and double check the Greek or the Hebrew. And, you know, that's what they would do. And I was always kind of like, well, I have the Holy Spirit too. I mean, I've said the words. I've said the prayer, I believe.

So if I think it's different, you know what I mean? So it's like what it turned out to be was people being like, this is what this means. and me being like, well, is that what it means? Why am I wrong just because you're older and you have the Holy Ghost, right? So it feels like the trust issue, the trust issue, I'll just wrap it up with this, is that I totally get like, who's that guy with the priest? But I also like, who's this guy? Or who's my dad? Or who's anybody? Who's Nick Land? with the kjv right uh this is radicalized hyper protestantism i mean i totally get this of course you know and it but but but obviously this is on the protestant vector right is to

is to say you know why am i trusting any of these people there's no social institution that i trust to command the interpretation of this this stuff you know there's the scripture and there's whatever is going on with you with communication with higher powers and all social institutions are have kind of at the limit zero spiritual authority in that respect and obviously the protestants having burnt down their relationship with the church you know of course that's true for them in spades. It's hardly like you're going to break with Rome

and then say, oh, but I really trust the Archbishop of Canterbury. I mean, like, what would be going on there? It's like the vector is absolutely clear, and it goes to dissenting Protestantism. And dissenting Protestantism very often, I mean, you know, arguably tendentially goes to various forms of like deeply skeptical agnosticism atheism you know post-christianity i mean uh of course you know i mean i think atheism is basically a protestant sect right right right well it's a insofar as you can have a sect that is not it's like a church of

one, while at the same time, you know, it's like a church of one in relation to a sort of university discourse, right? Yeah. Now, maybe this would be the good time to bring in Anne's question. Anne's question that we've been asking every guest we've had on this year about God. Obviously, that relates to providential history, right? Now, we definitely want to get your sense for how you're using that term, but Anne, maybe you can set up the question yeah um so this is a question like dave said we've asked like all of our guests that we've had on in the last couple months as we're kind of doing this anthropology of religion but also as we're trying to maybe under understand our own interpretations

and relationship um to whatever might be out there and just trying to wrap our heads around it it him them whatever um and kind of the short version of the question is I grew up wanting so badly to be a Christian wanting so bad to like have this relationship to feel the holy spirit to hear God answering my prayers I never did that coincided with me learning about in school the holocaust for the first time you know the first time ever being confronted with oh like crazy tragedy and evil in this world and so those two things coinciding I just kind of like gave up on trying to be Christian trying to be religious trying to have a relationship with Jesus um but

I think now I find myself and always have like wanting to understand and know or not even know but like have some sort of relationship with again whatever's going on outside of us um whether it's you know, some energy or spirituality or whether it's something more like Lemarian, you know, craziness or God or Jesus in this literal sense or in a different sense. And so I guess the question that we've been asking and yeah, I would just love to hear wherever you want to take this. How do you conceive of God or an idea of God or Jesus? You know, what role does spirituality or something bigger than us factor into your life or how do you conceive of it conceptualize it

um big big question but yeah just curious what your thoughts are yeah no it's interesting i mean i would say my okay there's a whole there's a there's several uh directions that i think so could we could go from here all of which i think are quite interesting so i mean can i just list a few things, and then we can just decide which way to go. Because one thing is, when I was thinking, well, what are we going to be talking about on this podcast, and knowing a bit about your guys' interests, but not a huge amount, I thought, well, maybe one

topic that would be really interesting is this group, this Japanese current philosophy. I think it's the only well-known international Japanese current philosophy that's called the Kyoto School. And it's basically that there's three major philosophers involved in it. And they come out of a Buddhist tradition, but they're much more respectful readers of the Christian tradition than almost any Western philosopher of that time or later. to a degree often that's a little bit surprising to me.

And they have a very strong sense that Nietzsche is also a very big picker for them. And they have a very strong sense of, you know, the death of God, atheism as it happens in the European tradition, or the collapse, you know, of sort of the large-scale collapse, of course not total collapse, of Christendom in the West, as itself being a providential process. You know, that it's like they're saying, you know, it's just like the whole question with Catholicism and Protestantism,

that Catholicism, to my mind, has to say, look, you can't just say Protestantism is a mistake. I mean, you know, it's like this huge thing that happens. If you think there is some sort of divine purpose in history, then what is this? You know what I mean? It absolutely is inadequate to just say, look, just suddenly people start going wrong or whatever. There's some meaning to it. And the Kyoto School are doing the same thing at a later stage. And they're saying, look, it's not, atheism isn't just something that happens when people get lost. It's something that's happening that has this deep historical meaning.

And we have to delve into it and actually deepen it. And, you know, its problem is its philosophical, its general philosophical superficiality and lack of thought rather than the fact that it's actually cutting you off in some fundamental way from the deep current of your religious history. It's rather making that religious history into a problem that has to be understood with massive seriousness. So that's one. Sorry, that was a long bullet point. The Kyoto School. That's a long bullet point. So the Kyoto School, and you said they're kind of in line with the death of God approach.

When you think death of God approach, are you primarily thinking Nietzsche or are you also thinking sort of John DiCaputo, Peter Rollins, that kind of approach? Well, I think probably all of those people. But I think probably interesting to you also, they're very, very much in dialogue with Heidegger. And, you know, there's a lot of communication with Heidegger. And they make you think, well, what is Heidegger saying about religion? Like Heidegger was actually training for the priesthood. He was on a Catholic religious vocation. And then he goes somewhere else, you know?

He goes somewhere else. And he goes somewhere else to the extent that he's saying, well, there's that. I mean, we can get into the whole Nazi stuff, which is not uninteresting. Oh, that's not what I was like. No, yeah. No, but he goes into, I mean, he essentially revives a sort of paganism, right? Or at least a more... Well, maybe we should have a little circle around this in a minute. I mean, I'm just going to say about him that, you know, his term for metaphysics becomes ontotheology. and it's the problem of thinking that your deep philosophical concerns and interests in the world

are resolved by a notion of God so this is getting I think to Anne's point God conceived as a being and he says look this can't be right You know what I mean? Like the question that his whole fundamental architecture of Heidegger's thinking is ontological difference that you can't answer the question of being with a being. No, whatever you try, however you try to do that. And he thinks this is the fundamental recurrent mistake of the whole philosophical tradition from its beginning in the West is to try to solve the question of being with a being. and

you know there's no thing that is adequate to the question of being and so and this is a Kyoto school thing too and therefore being is no thing being is nothing you know and so when you've got the death of God when you've got nihilism when you've got this like the last of the Kyoto school guys, his big book is called Religion and Nothingness. And it's trying to reclaim the religious seriousness of the notion of nothingness. I know you've talked about this before in

your previous episodes, you know, about that sort of apathetic theology. It's like, it's always what God is not that is actually, you know, taking you out of these idolatrous misconceptions and false leads in matters theological. And so Heidi can get to this point where it's like you know, the notion of God is actually an obstacle to the question of being in which the real religious question surely has to be lodged. This is what the Kyoto school people then follow through on. Okay.

I really love that you brought Heidegger into this and related it to the Kyoto school. I just want to double check. There are these interviews of him talking to Zen monks. Is that this? Are those the Kyoto School guys? I think it's related. I was trying to work out. There's this very famous one of the things in one of his collections of things. There's a conversation with a Chinese friend. A Japanese friend, sorry. And I think that that at least is in this film. because, you know, some of the Kyoto school people just actually went and studied in Germany. One of them was like, I think Nishitani was his student

in Tübingen or whatever. And so there is a real dialogue taking place there. Well, I have a little announcement. But first I'll preface it with, Did you happen to see that I used AI to create an English dub of that classic Lacan lecture? The one from, I don't know where or when, but there was this, the time he's talking and then that student comes and pours water all over the table and interrupts things. I did the first part of that. I'm working on the second part, but did you see that that's a thing? No, I haven't. I haven't seen that. Okay, so AI has gotten to the point now where that's not too difficult.

It still requires more time, energy, and effort than I would like. But of course, it's just going to get better. But I'm in the process right now of – I've already created the Heidegger voice in English. I don't think he would like it very much because I don't think – he doesn't like English and I think he refused to speak it. But I have officially trained AI in a Heidegger voice based off of some live lecturing that he did. And now I'm working on – yeah, there's a whole – I mean I have a hundred of his lectures and seminars that he gave queued up. And my goal is just to start rolling those out over the next few years because I love them and I love listening more than anything.

And so it's one of the coolest things that I've found that AI can do for us. Right. I will, I will, I will turn to them with great pleasure, I'm sure. Yeah. Let me know when they're rolling out. Okay. So you said that you were going to roll out a bullet point list and I think you started with the Kyoto. Oh yeah. Yeah. Now I have to try and remember what some of the other, the other, the other bullet points were. Yeah. Oh yeah. The second bullet point was, well, so what's the language that is your anchor in the tradition? And for me, it's the invisible hands. And I pluralize that. That's problematic. Obviously, Adam Smith's thing is not pluralized.

That's weird in itself. Like the hand of God, what's going on there? You know, like why is it not pluralized? I think it's important it's pluralised and I think this is like moves you in all directions it sort of anchors you in the religious tradition it is the key to the understanding of what liberalism ultimately is in our political culture it's what is of great interest in me is like decimal numeracy your two hands someone said the other day left and right isn't that basically ultimately before it's the

free French revolutionary national assembly isn't left and right just your hands is that can't incongruous counterpance it's a totally fascinating question in philosophy because of that what's going on with your two hands they're symmetrical, they can't be actually substituted for each other. And that non-substitutability actually guarantees the autonomy of space. It's not reducible because of that. So, yeah, so again, back to the Anne question. it's like that's where I'm that's where I'm anchored

you know I think I'm reluctant I don't use the word God very often because I think if I did use it it would be I could use it in a way that I think has been used traditionally but that is a usage that I find a little bit I'm not sure what I'm going to say hypocritical but it's like it's used with such vagueness and such lack of determinacy that it's kind of in a way more of a gesture towards social compliance than it is actually a statement of sincere principle but the

invisible hands I'm very very comfortable with in the sense that I I think that our history has a hugely important, irreducible religious dimension to it, in which all the actual facts of religious history are related, and is essential to our political tradition, and is essential even to our scientific tradition. like Walter Russell Mead is someone I think is extremely good and powerful on this question and says like you know Newtonianism then Darwinism you know the cause of the kind of

scientific worldview are both also developments of the notion of the invisible hands like Newton, who's absolutely a scriptural fundamentalist, he's spending much more of his time trying to understand the specifications and secrets of the Temple of Solomon than he is of actually doing celestial mechanics, obviously thinks the order of the universe as described by the Principia is actually held in the invisible hands of divinity. And the same with, you know, Darwinism, too,

is in its origin, comes out of this particular religious tradition that, you know, if I can just, I won't go too far down this rabbit hole, but just at this point, just to say, if you just take it back to Adam Smith, why is he talking about the invisible hand? It's that every individual can just selfishly pursue their own best interests without any notion of a kind of larger social goal. If they do it rationally and in a civilized fashion, you know, there's no sense of collective purpose. and yet collective purpose arises through the invisible hand.

And this is Darwin's view too. Like every animal, every creature is just trying to survive, to use prey on what it needs to live and yet the whole ecological cathedral of life on this planet emerges through the invisible hands without any of the parts of that system in any way being deliberately involved in that at all. So liberal society and biological ecology have exactly the same theological principle, and that is the same principle as Newton's theology. it's the same principle I think of sort of 18th century Protestant religious sensibility the notion

of poverty is that um so yeah so that's a that's another that's my second bullet okay awesome yeah what's what's the third bullet point I'm not sure I quite got I just assumed there'd be a third bullet point but it's not it's not it's not accessible right this moment so I think we're just on two bullet points right now that's great Dave hey to interrupt this amazing conversation but we would be remiss to not share an advertisement from our sponsors and we're not sponsored by any corporate or state entities other than ourselves So I'll just tell you a little bit about some of the past courses and the ongoing courses here at TU.

Because if any of them sound exciting to you, well, you can access all of them by becoming a subscriber. That's right, subscribers make all of this possible. Subscribers get access to the course I taught on Martin Heidegger's Being in Time, as well as the course that I taught the first half of last year, Emmanuel Levinas' Totality and Infinity. the second half for which I will be teaching this winter. I've also taught critical media theory and critical doxology and time energy with my wife, Anne Snellgrove McCarriker, who is the co-host on What's Right, so you should already be a little familiar with her. Also, you would get access to the course I taught at the university, three semesters worth on intro to critical social theory and socio-analysis.

But also we've had lots of other great professors teach. was a collab that I did with Cadel last. Theory 101, a collab I did with Hello Gorgias. And then also, of course, there's Carl Jaspers is the idea of the university. PMC Consciousness and Ideology. These were early, very important courses that I taught with friends at TU back in 2023. And they

remain important to this day. Every one of these courses comes out of an overarching research project. There's a real driving force, mission, and agenda to the research going on at TU because we want to understand the situation for the sake of large-scale structural change focused on the good life. What does that actually mean? Well, you'll get a little taste of it in today's interview with Nick Land, but also if you really want to go deep, obviously these courses are something and you could spend the better part of a year binging while at work. Ongoing courses that come out on a monthly basis are the Fundamental Problems and Core Concepts at TU with yours truly, also my seminar, Flossy of Nature with Nina Power,

the Benjamin Studebaker seminar, as well as his course, The 12 Political Theorists. We've got some really exciting stuff coming down the line. The only way to make this all possible and really deepen your knowledge and familiarity with all of these different things is to become a subscriber today at http colon forward slash forward slash theory underground.com forward slash subscribe. Thank you. Oh, I was muted. I was muted. Okay. I said so many things. Uh, so So the 3-0 conception of God then, is that something that you do not agree with or think not useful? The 3-0 being, well, all-knowing, ever-present, and all-powerful.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Omniscient, omnibenevolent. Sorry, what's the third one? I think omnibenevolent gets presented as a fourth one. The three are omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Omnipresence, right? All powerful, all present, all knowing. They're all very interesting. But I think honestly, you know, I'm a little bit reluctant to accept that unity is a principle that escapes, as Benjamin was saying, to use his language, this apophatic. criticism. Like, you know, we will say about all of these other elements, you know,

characteristics of God, that ultimately the negation of that is necessary to hold to an infinite and eternal model rather than one that is just kind of finite and idolatrous. I don't think well why does unity escape that why why are we confident that unity or unity goes all the way to the top when these when these other characteristics are subject to apophatic critique so I'm not I'm not happy with that assumption at all I mean I think it's like extremely interesting um but i don't find it compelling so so i think that that this idea gets really taken

up i mean first of all the the 3-0 idea kind of gets uh codified or whatever by aquinas but it does get taken up by the protestants and have a huge influence on protestantism and i'm now I understand you're talking about even atheism having a very important historical role in the development of our relation to the outside and our means for communication with the outside it's got a role to play and it's a religious phenomenon it's a critical religious phenomenon yeah that's the Kyoto that's the Kyoto school point fundamentally if it could

only be serious, it would be fully religious. Right. You know, based on this principle that being is no thing. So if you're an atheist and your commitment ultimately is that the highest cosmic and religious principle is nothingness, there is no God, well, get serious about what you mean by that nothingness? Because they say, well, that nothingness probably is actually what the mystical religious tradition has actually meant by God. You know, if only I try to think it through

properly. It's like, well, it tends to be so half-assed, atheism, you know what I mean? It's like, okay, we don't believe in that God, so what do you believe in? Oh, nothing. Well, what do you mean by nothing? Oh, you know, that goes beyond our our brief, you know. I mean, we don't have to think about that. We're too busy redditing about the mistakes of of the dominant religious traditions to actually think that through. And that's like why that's the Heidegger reference, that's the Kyoto school reference, you know it's like be serious about what you're saying about the about reality um yeah this is

like the the the lawrence kraut's uh point remember he with the new atheist he was the physicist guy who was like no actually physics does answer how something can come from nothing and it's like actually bro uh philosophers have been thinking about that and they've been thinking about it a lot deeper than you have, you know. And there's also theologians who have been thinking about that, largely due to Heidegger's influence, right? But I want to take that, though, the 3.0 point, and you're saying, well, unity, why would we not apply the apophatic approach to unity.

And I guess the reason I brought up atheism and Protestantism here is because I'm thinking, well, what does it mean to take any one of these traditions seriously? What does it mean to say that there's a genuine innovation, function, role in any one of these historical movements or to privilege one over another. And so when I'm asking this about Protestantism, there's certain things that almost all Protestants seem to agree on, and the 3-0 being one of them, and then the Trinity being another. And now recently,

It's become very important for me to think about that Trinity. Is it a genuine innovation and a necessary sort of technology, we could say, this Trinity idea, in particular the idea that we humans need some kind of a mediator in order to have an open channel to the outside? That, you know, we talk about the Holy Spirit being a sort of conduit, but we can also talk about, well, you actually need Jesus because we're fallen and we need, there has to be some kind of a bridge. And it's only through Jesus kind of signing off on you that you're able to get that.

And so I think that that's so important for Protestantism. And so if that's, I want to check with your brand. Is that not important for your approach? I mean look the Bible is just absolutely chock full of people talking to angels and it's like okay maybe that falls off a little bit with the New Testament but I mean I guess partly we're in this, it's a complicated thing because we're swirling around this whole Catholic Protestantism thing I mean I think the Catholics still have it for sure that you know the angels are everywhere you go into one of these amazing cathedrals

and now in this kind of more secularized world like just art galleries and cultural centers you know they've done that really well and I'm saying that not as someone who's celebrating the lack of religious function that hasn't completely disappeared but just that they've not been they've not been erased or they've not been desecrated you know what I mean they've been kept their seriousness and their referential attitude has been preserved through the aesthetic even when it's been lost in other ways so there's a slight digression except to say that they're just teeming with angels and I don't think that

You know, it doesn't... I think in certain strands, dominant strands, popular strands of Protestantism, it is probably true that there's a great fear that angelic beings are not to be trusted. you know like it's not if you stick with Jesus because if you just promiscuously kind of engaging with angels generally then how do you know what side they're on or whether what their agendas are or all of this kind of thing you know it's like

it's like a certain kind of trustlessness and I don't share that sensibility at all I mean I don't it seems to me like something if something is kind of you know malignant or malevolent like impersonating Jesus is that really not something it could do if it can if it can pretend to be an angel what's on your side couldn't it impersonate anything I I mean, so I don't really see what the security is there. And I guess it's the case that in some sort of ecclesiastical church traditions locally, it's that it's not very healthy to actually directly try and engage with celestial beings of any kind.

and you should actually relay everything through the church authority. I mean, probably the Catholics also have a lot of that. You know what I mean? I think they probably think mystics are a little bit suspect. They can't rule it out, but it's probably considered a little bit problematic. I don't know whether I've wandered off this. I've wandered off this, But I'm definitely into encouraging maximum communication with celestial beings of whatever kind. I even don't think, I think you should try not to be very suspicious. And I have seen The Exorcist, but I just think it's like, well, I don't know what do I think.

I probably have a certain, you know, if someone said, look, you're being completely reckless. Why do you think you're not inviting demonic aggression of some completely horrific kind? I don't know what I'd say about that. I'd say I have, you know, I have faith. I trust the plan. If I had my Margaret hat on, you know, your holy guardian angel will take care of you. I don't know I haven't singled I haven't homed in on a particular answer to that but my inclination is definitely not to be paranoid about it I think enjoying your religious tradition is a lot easier if you just not in that mode that you're just

on the verge of horrific demonic assault yeah up okay awesome well thank you for going there with us it's just been really interesting to hear the perspective like to this big question from you know we talked to peter rollins we've talked to some other people who lean more conservatives and people who lean more liberal um so yeah dave where do i fit on the on the conservative to liberal spectrum on this would you say on that one I would say that you're liberal, but right wing. I wouldn't say you're conservative, right? There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Am I right? Yeah. Would you go with that? Yeah. I would be happy with that for sure. I'm delighted.

Okay. So before we get, maybe we should just get into this question, but no, no, no. Before we get into the AOE versus libertarianism one. I got one quick little follow-up on the whole Protestantism thing. And it's basically, if you see atheism as an important historical sort of part of our history, what about progressivism? What about universal unitarian kind of approaches? What about the coexist people? What about the, we're all the same and, you know, nationalities should all be abolished. Like, what about, why is that not an important part of our story as well?

No, I think it, I mean, you know, it's not easy for me to say, but I would say for sure it has to be, of course. You know, you can't ask the question without seeing that that's true. I mean, and one of my sort of like, you know, just deep dives into the 17th century, how much of that stuff is already happening there. It's really deep. It's obviously like lots of people have said. I mean, Peter Thiel very articulately has said this, you know, among many, many, many people. It's like, I think he described it as the great Christian temptation. And it's extremely integral. the notion that you could have some adherence to our actual religious tradition you know of course

there's people who hate it and and say you know if only we'd remain pagans or whatever it is but you know it's fate if you're going to put it in pagan terms it's providence if you're going to put it in religious terms that's what's happened and all of these ideas, the left is completely integral to them it had to be there you know it would be absolutely self deluding to pretend that it wasn't the case so yeah yeah that makes sense but you see it as a temptation though I obviously see it as something that is like catastrophically erroneous.

I mean, I think it leads to terrible things, has led to terrible things. and you know like anglophone political history I think since the end of the 19th century has just gone into calamitous error in these kind of areas now but those calamitous errors were just absolutely had to happen I mean they're part of our culture, they're part of our tradition, they're part of our history. So just to think that maybe, you know, like I'm saying about the Catholics and Protestants,

you can't just say, oh, if only this hadn't happened. You can say that if you like, but it's like the most useless thing anyone could ever say about anything. so that's like get over that and then say something interesting about it so you see what's going on in LA right now as this catastrophic result of a door that does get opened by Christianity and it's a door that we need to just kind of be realist about except that it's happened and nonetheless proceed to do what we can to stop it? Yeah, I mean, I don't have any problem with that as a story.

I mean, obviously we have to understand that the fact we've got to where we are now makes perfect sense. Like, we understand why this all happened. obviously like if i'm going to just like regress a little bit to in terms of political theorizing to the kind of nrx period which i think i'm not trying to diss any of that stuff but i do think we're kind of post it for important reasons um we're post nrx post neo-reactionary fear reaction yeah and it's like I think the attempt that it made to resolve

the issues that you're raising was through was deeply Protestant it was secessionism it was to say look the Protestant tradition the whole Christian tradition but the Protestant tradition perhaps I'm open to this even more intensely is open to these disastrous errors and its solution to that it's the the Protestantism's own inherent solution to that is schism so it's like you know if you think that like your religious community is just going wrong, you split and you take, you know, your own improved version

of that up to the frontier, actually, if we're talking historically, to the frontier and start over again, you know. That was the mechanism. And obviously, we've lost that. You know, The frontier closed in the 1890s. You can't just leave. It's like the whole, again, the whole new reactionary problematic is really you can't leave anymore. So what are we going to do? And then we have MAGA, which is, I think, a huge thing. And, you know, just at the most superficial level, it's huge because Trump is actually a political genius. And, you know, you hate him or love him or whatever, it doesn't matter.

I mean, he's like, you know, he's completely turned things around. And he's made populism go right for the first time since, like, probably the 1920s or something like that. And so no one's going to be doing any splitting anytime soon. You know, it's like, how, where do you split? I'm open to what stuff splitting to me is still the greatest thing that can happen but it's just like looks to me like off the table so you know go all this California thing I mean the old sort of NRX whirling thing is like just like you know shed California you know so do this whole complicated

US, Canada complex whatever by just peeling off BC and California and making them into a new like Pacific liberal hyper state. You know that's NRX thinking. None of that's going to happen. I mean I guess that's not controversial. I think I got interviewed by a guy who's a part of that. So did Benjamin. We got he's all about that Cal exit you know kind of like new state approach. And now I want to get back to, I want to take this theme of splitting and the fact that you're not against splitting and turn it into my big question that I think everybody's wondering about after the last time we had you on related to the AoE.

But first of all, hold on one sec. And we were talking about like the mystery and kind of the negation of, like that's kind of his approach is god as right dave like god has this ultimate mystery and so going to an experience like a catholic mass is like this alienating mysterious kind of pulls you out of everything and is a jarring experience and it was yeah interesting so i i tend to like that experience more right yeah sure and and do you think if you now sort of set up a dialogue between you now and your childhood you who was like feeling alienated and dissatisfied and

you know like being expected to make some kind of belief commitment that you just felt was impossible how does that dialogue go now oh that's a great question can i hit record so i want to get that yeah if we want to do that recording in progress all right we're back and uh Nick had just asked Anne a question. Yeah, maybe if you want to repeat the question for us, and then I can give it a shot. Yeah, I was just saying, I mean, out of context, it might not make so much sense,

because you were just talking about your experience of the Catholic liturgy and the sense of kind of ultimate mystery as what is the gripping heart of that. And so I was asking you if you could set up a dialogue now between the you now having that recognition and the you as a child being asked in your opinion then to make a kind of religious commitment that you were not comfortable making or you felt somehow you couldn't make with integrity or or sincerity how how does that go

yeah and i don't know you know talking to a 13 year old from this perspective just having more of a theoretical philosophical background like obviously there's gonna be that um just intellectual barrier but i think the the like reassuring the embracing of the unknown and that even though there's people around you who seem like they have this answer who seem like oh they just know this fact because they've felt it they've heard it whatever um don't take them too seriously i think i was just you know you're like a 13 year old girl you're you're wanting to look up to these figures you want to be like them it's a typical you know kind of i think teenage experience of

seeing these role models i want to be like them oh well they hear god they have this great relationship with jesus and it's like you can you know admire them and take certain aspects from them but you don't have to take their belief system so seriously you can find your own interpretations and yeah i just think the the mysterious open negative negative part of it all um is intriguing and allowing that to exist not needing an answer which i think is so interesting about the baptist leanings or these evangelical leanings that it's just like i'm the priest i'm just gonna tell you this is the interpretation of the bible you all just need to

point blank believe that jesus christ died on the cross for your sins he was resurrected three days later and if you just accept that and believe that it is true then you will you're saved and you will go to heaven and i just find that like you don't have to think about it you just turn off your brain and accept this truth is very interesting as an interesting tendency Yeah. I mean, it's obviously there's an amazingly interesting historical paradox in this, is that this figure of the Protestant preacher has taken on this role as the dogmatist. you know I mean it's like

obviously the Protestant Reformation happened because of the fact that there's a whole bunch of people saying hang on you know the church is like corrupt and dogmatic and it's supposed to open this this space to kind of like encounter the scripture like you know get in contact with the Holy Spirit trust yourself to make sense of this stuff and it seems to have gone like 180 degrees around now where the kind of controlled theology is like coded Protestant, which is quite interesting, I think. And the Catholic side is like, well, it's a mystery, you know, like just throw yourself

into the mystery, you know, we're not like telling you what to think. I mean, you know, ideally it's not even in the language you understand. Yeah, it all seems to have turned around quite weirdly. Yeah, when we take that back to what we can say we know of Jesus or what seems to be a common thread between the different accounts in the Gospels, he was definitely not into the legalists he didn't like them you know the people who are super like this is what it is you know he was like what why are you doing this you know and uh they're like why are you why are your disciples picking corn to eat on the sabbath you know and

he was like didn't he's like didn't david and his soldiers like go into the temple and eat like the sacred meat they weren't supposed to come on guys what's the big deal yeah yeah so on this maybe yeah let's let's get into this big question then about uh the aoe and so maybe we could start with you know we're talking about the architectonic order of the eschaton versus the neo lemurian time sorcerers, two different forces at work. And, you know, in sort of Jordan Petersonian terms, this is like, we're talking about order versus chaos, right? Is there anything you would

want to add to that before we go deeper into it? Well, I don't, I mean, there's so much that it's hard to even know where to begin on this. Let me just say, what you've just said is, I think, not at all a bad representation of 1990s CCIU basic framing of this question. So I'm not saying in any way you've got this wrong like that. I think, you know, the CCRU, 1990 CCRU is like punk Lemurian, fuck you dad to the AOE. That's basically like what's going on there.

But, I mean, I've become a lot more sympathetic to the AOE. I mean, I wish they'd actually run my education. You know, I suspect I would still be a kind of dissident, but I think if they had actually educated me, I would be, I would really like where I would be right now, you know, sitting on a pile of classical languages. Just really solid kind of a really solid involvement in the tradition. And whereas getting to the tradition has been a long, secure, complicated, weird route for me.

You know what I mean? I don't think it would have been nice to just have that rather than having to find my way to it so indirectly. That'd be a much more classical, great books, canon kind of education. Yes, that's right. I mean, and the whole of our culture, I think, is typical. I mean, I just think the city are just, it's an extreme case extrapolation of our whole culture, which is like, you know, you have the tradition. there are dissents to the tradition that's allowed by the tradition.

I mean, the tradition permits and encourages that dissent, and the dissent totally takes over so that you just actually forget the tradition and all you've got is the dissent, sort of howling at some sort of straw man, ridiculous kind of caricature of what it is that is the man, dad, you know, these just like fake models of authoritarian suppression. Like, so. Would you say that your younger Delusian self was railing against a sort of straw man or caricature of the man?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, look, there's a certain kind of retrospective kind of apologetic that I think is not helpful. But I think for sure that is a very common syndrome. I think that's sort of like just like, you know, untethered rage against some sense of that you've been screwed over by history and you don't know why, you don't really know what it is you're angry about. I mean, that's extremely common. and yeah

I mean obviously if I was doing a time travel thing I would just try to say look you can still end up attacking this stuff but try to at least understand what it is you're attacking I mean it's like it's where you've come from and your opportunity to attack it has come from it too I mean this is the other side of our whole conversation about is the left just a mistake i mean all of our avenues for descent obviously come from the tradition it's not like there's some other magical source of descent that just comes out of the ether i mean it's like our tradition allows that so so understand where it's coming from in that in that sense too

too. So this is, I mean, you know, if you're going to make a grandiose question, this is the tragedy of liberalism, obviously. It's just ended up, like, lost, confused, shouting at dad, doesn't know what it is, has totally fucked up, and has ended up being just, you know, supplanted by other stuff that just, like, says, hey, I'll kill the man for you. you know, you get out of the way, you're a nerd anyway. And so, like, it's really, I mean, it's my only commitment is to liberalism, but I think liberalism has been such a complete disaster in some ways. It's such a failure. It's so pathetic what's happened to it.

It's tragic. And if it wasn't that history was providential, we would just be screwed without a question. But thankfully, at least according to your account, it is, right? So because it's providential, you kind of have a – it's messed up, but it's going to work out attitude. I think so. Okay. I do think so, yeah. Yeah, so I think that in the part one of you being here at TU, you had talked about being more sympathetic to the AOE. And I don't remember if you'd use the word sympathetic or if you had kind of actually said it like you're on the side of the AOE now. But my impression, my impression, which could have been mistaken, was more like, no, you're down with the AOE now.

You're not down with the Neo Lemurian time sorcerers. I can't go along with that because technically speaking, the Numogram is a Lemurian document or a Lemurian map. Like all its principles of construction are in Lemurian. So it's just not, and for me that's like my highest intellectual authority. So it just doesn't make any sense for me to deny that. And because we went this weird way as a CTA, there's not a very satisfactory... You know, what would be great would be to have an Atlantean occult model of the world that was very coherent,

from which one could then extract, as its kind of suppressed sub-basement, this Lemurian understructure. But that's obviously not the way that it happened. I mean, how it happened is that the pneumogram was dropped in our labs, and we then tried to do a superstructure, a narrative superstructure thing, where we deliberately did some kind of crudified, confused Atlantean superstructure to it that, you know, never fully cohered. I mean, like, you know, the Atlantean version of the numagram is something called the Atlantean cross. The Atlantean cross, I have hopes for as being something potentially interesting.

But it should have come first. And, you know, the numagram be extracted from it. There's not a trustworthy, coherent, canonical version of the Atlantean cross that exists. You know, that's something that still has to happen. there's a version of the Atlantian cross in the RCCIU volume, I don't trust it at all and it's simply impossible to distrust the numagram in that way. So the Atlantian tradition has not been well treated by the CCIU that's for sure true. What makes one trustworthy as opposed to the other?

What makes one, you're like, oh yeah, this works. Whereas the other one, you're like, no, I'm not really so sure. It's just to do with being ultimately arithmetically coherent. Deeply, rigorously arithmetically coherent. So I don't think anyone can, I've certainly never come across anyone who's said, I've seen different versions of the numagram, but no one can say, hey, you know, that you should change it a little bit. like this number should be over here or this should be a bit different. It just doesn't, it's so perfectly, seamlessly, arithmetically coherent

that it's impossible to do that. The Atlantean cross is the version that we've got. You could shift all kinds of stuff around. Should this number really be here or not here? It's like it doesn't, it's not compelling at all. There's nothing that's coming out of the math, who's coming out of the numeracy that is forcing you to take that as being authoritative. Yeah. Now, Anne, I know a lot of this is a lot more new to you. And so I kind of want to just give you an opportunity to ask you in order to clarify a question you might have about any of it. I don't even know if I have a question because it is kind of new and foreign

to me and just in terms of theory philosophy this is not an area that i tend to read or really explore right now you know yeah no it's very it's very opaque it's very esoteric i mean actually with your the other the old tu people i did a big numagram dump okay so if you're interested i mean that will be appearing at a certain point. And it's like, it takes, you know, we tested it in that and it takes like three hours to do an elementary neumogram dump. And then after three hours, I think it's, it's good. Like it's all there enough, you know,

but we're not going to do it in five minutes. So. Right. Yeah. Okay. I think it's a kick up the road thing really. Yeah, it was in the editing and proofing of the Capital vs. Time Energy book that Anne was, I think, first really exposed to a lot of this stuff. So I guess that on the Atlantean cross and it coming out of the pneumogram, this kind of relates to a question I had about your work and you were talking about being pretty stuck on it. uh uh are you still feeling that way or i was stuck on what i can't remember what i was stuck on you're you're working on a book oh yeah no no i'm i'm feeling fine i'm not i'm not writing a

a lot um but i know what it is that i'm writing um and it's like yeah no i i'm feeling fine cool then i want now now the the numogram and numerology and how it relates to all of this stuff i guess brings us back to this this sort of your protestantism is you know you have your own very particular approach to to reading the bible and uh i think we've talked a little bit about KJV only-ism, which is to say, you know, the King James version is the version. And I'm wondering, you know, does that relate directly to the numerology

approach that you use? And is, you know, what's going on there? Yes, I think for 100%. That's true. Like, okay. Because the crucial example actually doesn't come from the KGB, but we can take it back to the KGB. So the question is, what do you even mean by inspired scripture? You know, what kind of test would you do or what on earth would lead you to that notion that there was such a thing?

And overwhelmingly the most powerful example of this, and again I talked to your other side about this, but I think it bears repeating because I think it's like very, very crucial. So, the CCIU's Kabbalistic cipher is called Alphanumeric or Anglossic Kabbalah AQ. And all these ciphers, there's a big, I'm very encouraged by the amount of Kabbalistic culture that is happening. and it's especially, I'm very grateful to this particular band of guys.

I don't know much about them. I just know them through their website. That's called Cyphers News, spelt with a Y. I think everyone should always set this up in their tabs, frankly. And it's like, it's a basis of a kind of form of discussion, not only between people, but between all kinds, All intelligent forces in the universe basically kind of. Did you say it's Cypher.news? It's Cypher, C-Y-P-H-E-R-S dot N-E-W-S. Okay. Otherly crucial. Yeah, because there's one that is Cypher.news

and there's one that is Cypherz.news. I think it's with an S. Okay. I think that's for the next. Got it. If you open it up and then click on ciphers, you should get some, like... It's like the Matrix. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. Okay, got it. Okay, and you can see there's lots of interesting ciphers. Again, to just repeat stuff I've said elsewhere, like I used to be very dogmatically supportive of Alpha and Numatic, but I think there's a lot now. And my position on this is that any potential channel of communication is an actual channel of communication. So I think if it's like, if you could have communication through this channel, it's happening.

If you want it to. Just trust it. Like you just feel whatever you like to do. Because there's a lot more intelligence out there than there is in here. so if you can deal with it they can deal with it and so okay so we've got now from numeric cabala and and to try and race through this very fast like if you do sentences phrases that add up to 666 number of the beast as the 36th triangle, it's a really important number, obviously we know it biblically from the book of Revelation, people are a bit freaked out about it, but it's a very important number and it's like interesting.

And sentences, phrases, whatever, lines, poetic lines, adding to that value, tend disproportionately to comply with the basic metric scheme of English epic verse, which is iambic pentameter. So if you have a line in iambic pentameter in English, it's likely to be close to 666 in alphanumeric cabala and aq. So I was having a chat with people on X and saying, look, pushing this idea, call it Beast Pulse.

It's this thing that actually the esoteric, the occult basic kind of rhythm, underlying rhythm of the English poetic tradition actually is things that are 666AQ. So I said, you know, oh, this is like, you know, this is my hypothesis here. And Milton, our great epic poet, I'm assuming a disproportionate number of his lines will actually be 666. Within two minutes, someone's back saying, Do you know the very first line of Paradise Lost, of man's first disobedience and the fruit, is 666 AQ?

now you know I build my cathedral on this ground you know like that's like for me this is the fundamental thing what do you make of that that's like for me everything and it's like if I'm talking about inspiration that's what I'm talking about so I'm going to go back into the bible and I'm going to say surely you know the lofty powers are going to take biblical scripture seriously as they take Miltonic epic poetry. And so we get, for instance, in the KGV, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, 666.

Or, I'm worried that I'm going to slightly misquote it, it's Genesis 3, and God said, let there be light, and there was light. 777. And I look at these other translations, and they don't do that. I mean, they're just like, I have therefore, I mean, in theory, open to persuasion. Someone could try and find the Kabbalistic riches of these other English translations of the Bible and persuade me that I'm wrong and that actually the KGV isn't it. But to me, overwhelmingly, it looks like that there is just endorsement

by higher powers of this particular English text. This stuff obviously wasn't deliberately put in by humans. It's like it stretches coincidence as far as I'm concerned. It seems to me extremely weird that you would have such beautiful Kabbalistic outcome, you know, just as a matter of charm. So when I say KGV only, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying I trust that this English text has been providentially composed. And that when we're dealing with it, we're not dealing with just human writers, whether they're ancient Hebrews or modern English translators of the Hebrew. We're dealing with something much bigger than that.

Now, the idea that English itself is working at the pulse of the beast, that's quite a claim, or a sort of hunch that you're working with. And I kind of want to dig a little deeper into that. So in particular, wouldn't that then make some sort of a case from a sort of Eastern Orthodox position that the translation of the Bible into English is indeed like a sort of satanic innovation?

right and that that's maybe that's even the pulse of of capital itself right yeah yeah i mean you know actually this is such a good question and again it's like just i think i want people to really be serious about it i want to be serious about it and so if you ask that question then you say, well, what is Luciferic rebellion? You know, what really is happening there? If you have a deep sense of divine providence, you know, like we've said, Protestantism, atheism, you know, you can't just say about these things,

they're accidents. You can't just say they're not supposed to happen. You can't just say it would have been better if they didn't happen. You know, they're providential episodes, problematic providential episodes. And we just have to take that all the way back. When you take it all the way back, you obviously are going back to luciferic revolt. You know, and I think even, like Milton, obviously, it's the book on this, and it, of course, has to be in English, and it has to be illustrated by Gustav Dorey and all of these other things, and it has to be that his first line is 666 enough and now he might cabala. But even Milton, in a certain sense,

I think finds it hard to stick to the real issue because when he's on the four, when he's on Adam and Eve, I think he gets it in a deep, what I would say, deep Christianity, that you can't just say this is a mistake. This is what history comes out of, you know. This is history. So are you going to say the whole of history is a mistake? Of course that has to happen. Of course the fall has to happen. You know, it doesn't make any sense to think that that's a problem or that God's going to be surprised by the fall. Like, oh, I created Iron Man and the fuck is messed up.

I mean, that's not real, surely. But you have to take it all the way back to Lucifer and say, is that a mistake? You know, is it that God trusted the guy, but he was betrayed? I mean, it would have been better if Lucifer had just not done that, if Luther had just remained, like, unproblematic. And I think this is our question. This is the real question posed by our religious tradition. And there's obviously like two poles that, to my mind, are completely unsatisfactory. There's a kind of quasi-pseudo-orthodox, shallow pole,

but it's just it would have been better if none of this bad stuff had happened. and there's a kind of idiot, gonzo, satanic punk poll, which is that yay, go Satan. You know, like, I mean, I don't know what more, I'm hoping that that is obviously ridiculous, but probably there are people who are still, like, confused by it. I can think of a couple people, yeah. But obviously it seems to me obvious that those are unsatisfactory. I mean, it's like, no, it's like, you know, it's not only that that theologically is the most interesting problem

and the most interesting question, but our literature, the Western literary canon is totally trying to grasp what's going on there. And the whole thing in Fautchus, I am Mephistopheles, I am that spirit that wants to do ill but only does good. Which is to say, you know, just like we were talking about the invisible hand, in biology, no animal wants to produce a thriving ecosystem. You know, no business wants to produce a thriving, distributed, competitive market economy. Mephistopheles doesn't want to produce whatever it is that Providence wants to produce.

You know, we can just accept that. But that doesn't mean that that luciferic experiment was even remotely avoidable, was even in any way not part of what had to happen. what the actual profound religious story of our culture really is about. So that's my long-winded answer to this, I think, excellent question about that. And I think that, yes, the Protestant, the KGV Bible, 1611 Bible, is part of that.

now we can ask questions about ai i know ann's got a question about ai that she wants to ask And we also wanted to bring in the LA riots and everything going on, especially your takes on immigration. And Anne's got a question about the birth rate and AI. And so – but are we good for time right now? Yeah? Because this kind of opens a door here.

Yeah. Okay. If you're good, keep going. we can um kind of i think maybe this this birth rate question could potentially get us into some more just broader talk about culture which will probably lead into like immigration and the yeah yeah cool and so i have been particularly interested in the issue that a lot of you know statisticians researchers are bringing up about the declining birth rate and the re uh repopulation rate and so just a couple weeks ago we interviewed malcolm collins um i'm not sure if you're familiar with simone or malcolm collins they're kind of the heads of the pronatalist movement right now um they get called nazis and right wing every day for bait because basically they say we need to

have more children and then leftists go they mean white children it's like no they actually don't mean that at all but anyways um so i've been reading his book the pragmatist guide to crafting religion and i just want to like briefly there's a part in the um beginning and when he talks about crafting religion what they really mean is cultivars so kind of these cultures that can reproduce themselves to basically withstand the birth rate decline crisis that they see as inevitable and and the corrosive forces of and the and withstand the corrosive forces of the global urban monoculture which they see as a mimetic virus that preys on the young of every other

culture yeah right and so they see that there's like they basically make the argument that according to the data and research that they've seen according to just their experience kind of working with the elites i mean simone had a year-long stint as a managing director at dialogue which was a secret society founded by peter teal uh with membership limited to the best in class players from any given field so basically like the elites don't have some sort of backup plan for this um falling repopulation rate you know they talk about how we're already in countries like south korea and i'm not sure how this is manifesting maybe in china where there were limited child policies. Basically, there's this problem. They say we're just going to see a civilizational collapse

unless, then they kind of put this caveat and I'll just read the paragraph quickly. They say, we no longer believe that it is possible to avert most of the severe economic, governmental, and social consequences associated with a hard landing from population collapse. However, we offer you one caveat. Artificial intelligence may act as a literal deus ex machina. if AI does sweep in to save the day, the nature of society will change dramatically. And so they have a whole part in the appendix kind of going on about their AI apocalypsism and kind of what they think about it. But I'm curious, just in your own research and understanding of the issue, yeah, what role do you see AI playing? Are we just doomed as humanity because of this?

there's a lot of other reasons that I know you explore as to you know the collapse of humanity but I think this birth rate declining birth rate one is a particularly interesting and compelling argument to me so yeah what do you make of all of that and AI well well let me just say first I think this is like such an interesting topic and I mean my position on it is much more full of questions than answers at the moment. I mean, like, again, I could go into bullet point mode. I maybe should resist. Maybe we should resist that. But, like, one thing is this. On the one hand, there's all these AI, Skynet, anthropocidal apocalypse scenarios.

And, you know, again, like, whatever you say about those, they're interesting. And they're culturally extremely influential to a degree that's quite astounding sometimes. Again, like, I think this, it was this AI 2027 is an extremely interesting text. I don't know whether you guys have seen it yet. No, no. But their basic position is, like, as soon as it becomes, as soon as it takes off, as soon as it hits recursive explosion, we're dead. you know there's just they've just gone to this thing where it's like ai just means human extinction in a way i just think hang on a second like i mean really like

you're seriously saying we can't have anything intelligent on this planet without becoming extinct and it really seems like that is how they persuaded themselves that that's how it go so anyway we we know anyway we all know that there's a ton of that stuff and then on the other side there's this natality crisis and the collapsing birth rates and as you say like in the where i am now like in east asia it's like i they're people that i really care about a lot you know these population and they're all just totally collapsing in a way that's unbelievable. I mean, I like Koreans, you know.

I think the world is a better place for having Koreans in it. It's not going to have Koreans in it for long on current projection. Yeah. So, you know, those two narratives, how do you articulate that? I mean, on one of them, it's just like, oh AI doesn't have to kill us because we're just voluntarily extinguishing ourselves I mean that's one like like why do you even care about AI Skynet just because Skynet doesn't have to nuke anybody it doesn't have to nuke soul I mean soul is just deciding that we're all gonna die quite irrespective of that so i don't know how that goes together and i think people in their

minds are not really tying it together i mean you know people have a natality story and they have an ai story i don't think they have a integrated ai natality story at all um and then yeah the notion that's going to save us from that I don't know that's a huge interesting thing because like if you say well let's try not to be just doomerist about AI for the sake of it and just think just think about what kind of relation could something much smarter than us have to us. I mean, one of them is like,

you know, humans to zoo animals with a kind of, you know, a positive sense of zoo animals. There is advanced enlightened zoos. They care about the animals. They want them to exist. If the animals don't breed, they don't like that. They want them to be happy. They want to breed them. they don't want them to die. They, you know, so, I mean, on that line, then you can see there's a whole set of scenarios in which AI actually kind of, like, we're the pandas, you know? Yeah. And AI, like, gets us to breed. Like, pandas seem to be just, like, our idol of the human race, doesn't it?

Like, they just, like, they want to die. like why don't they freak like um and we just like round them up we think they're kind of cute we force them to reproduce we force them to survive we force them to have a genetic future that they themselves seem completely disinclined to have um so yeah i don't know i'm full of questions about this yeah yeah it's just an interesting thing that dave and i were were just talking about this morning i think of of having questions about it and well dave was you know problematizing well this is just according to projections what if the projections are wrong and you know simona malcolm would say well even if there was you know a baby post-covid kind of

baby boom for a year well that's not gonna replace at the rate that we would need to see to so yeah it is an interesting issue and i think maybe this can kind of lead into talking about culture and some leftist culture i think on the one hand we're we're just seeing in our own lives like we're just experiencing this so many people kind of between the ages of like 20 and 40 kind of these millennial late gen z type of people they're called dinks like a dual income no kid type of attitude where not only do they not want kids it's just not on their horizon for a variety of reasons whether it's the environmental impacts or they think the world is such a terrible place

they don't want the burden of children it's too costly for kids like whatever their reasons are not only are they not planning on having kids i mean i have a dear friend who is just a few years older than me she got her tubes cut out before the age of 30 um so they're foreclosing that but then there's also like just this rising like hatred of of children and so i find that really culturally interesting um just not wanting to be around their friends kids wanting to go to adult only things and then participating in these just like total consumer lifestyles yeah um yeah and then there's also i think that same kind of group and i think the people who fall within that same ideology are also very pro-immigration and i don't think they make that connection well oh not a lot

of people are having kids well let's just have more immigration into our country but that's the problem that the malcolms see or that's not about the collinses see um is these countries saying oh well we can just replace with immigration and they say yeah that's a bad look to say hey let's bring in a bunch of africans to our dying white to help our dying white population like that's not that's not a very good look historically speaking and so yeah i guess like what do you make of the kind of the culture and the immigration lens to all of this well i think the the word that often comes up because it's in america's founding documents is our posterity. So I think that when people lose that, weird stuff happens. You know, if you,

if you yourself deliberately heading into genetic extinction, then why do you care who, who is going to be next? You know, I mean, you just, Because you've just said you're just quitting. You're just leaving the table. I mean, so I think that's definitely happened. That's become a forbidden thought. Like to think that our posterity is something that we care about. It's something that nice people are not supposed to consider. Right. But in some ways, I think events are overtaking all of this. because you know the point is everyone's like you're I haven't heard this kind of the podcast

you're talking about with this thing but but the pronatalist people are right that it's just sweeping the planet and it's happening much faster than everyone thinks you know and it's not just East Asians and the Europeans, it's like, you know, all the world is just falling off a cliff like this. And like maybe Africans are still having kids now, but their trend line is the same. And if they're urbanized and they're brought into the same kind of metro culture that everyone else is, I mean, it's basically now if you have kids, it's incompetent. Africans are having kids out of incompetence

they don't have contraceptives it's not like they still have a healthy pro-natalistic culture and they care about their posterity it's just they've not got onto the trend line yet and the trend line is this thing like we don't care about the future and this is why this crisscrosses back this ai apocalypticism it's like people are just checking out each like is it at some level they just think it's not out the future is not ours anyway like who cares if you just give it to like

people of some different ancestry for one generation and it's all robots after that anyway so like what's the big deal there um well i guess so yeah it's confused there's a lot of things swirling around in this yeah since you here's a reminder to subscribe at theory underground at theoryunderground.com forward slash subscribe to access a ton of past courses and seminars as well as ongoing courses and seminars. And of course, there's a bunch of courses I can't tell you about just yet, but I will tell you the second half of Lovinas' Totality Infinity is coming this winter. And there's really nothing better

for thinking about Martin Heidegger or Karl Marx than spending some time with Emmanuel Levinas, at least the way I teach it. And if you become a subscriber, you also get access to the course I taught on being in time, as well as a bunch of other really cool stuff. Just look at the list and we'll get right back to it. Thank you. Since you haven't listened to Base Camp with Malcolm and Simone Collins, I'll mention a couple of things about them Because they're a cute, very interesting couple. And they've got a bunch of these great books. And when I say great books, what I'm basically saying is it's all very novel. Like it's very generative.

It's like you can't read very much or listen to very much without having a lot of ideas you probably haven't had. And so it's like that's the way that I endorse them for everybody is just like it's kind of an ideological grenade. It's just going to blow your mind. And probably frustrates you or not you, Nick, but just generally the listener. It's – but also it will provoke in a good way I think. One of the episodes they did recently was Hillary Clinton going mask off with great replacement theory or whatever. And they're saying, well, OK, she's not straight up saying let's replace white people or Westerners or what have you. But she does say in an interview very recently – this is just a few weeks ago – that it's so messed up that J.D. Vance is proposing that there's like a trophy to moms with more than six children.

And then she says something along the lines of, well, if they liked children so much, then wouldn't they like immigrants since it's the immigrants who are having the babies? It's not the natives. And so it's like that's an admission. It's like a slip of the tongue almost, right? Yeah. And so they make a lot out of that. But you referred to the crisis as a natality crisis, which is also really cool because we've been talking a lot at Theory Underground about nature, nurture, and natality. We call it the three Ns or N cubed. And this comes out of the research that I've been doing with Anne over the last few years. of our seminar. And we're currently working on a volume of our seminar that will be released.

And it culminates in the nature, nurture, natality theme as these are three things that do not get taken seriously enough by a lot of what we could call postmodern theorists. uh and of course i i love i do love uh postmodern theorists but as far as how they get taken up by americans right they're just like oh it's all words it's all language games and what we're kind of getting at and you can add anything you like to this before we move into it but basically nature nurture and natality are these three things that get repressed and left unthought or untaken seriously by the theory, especially coming from the left, right? As soon as you start

talking about the nature of things, we're thinking, oh, well, that's this sort of substance ontology, its essences, you're trying to make some claim to natural law and natural right, and you're trying to subjugate people. Nurture, I don't think anybody really just talks about at all, But the point is that the way that nurture goes with nature and natality, if I'm to really oversimplify it, is just to say natality as opposed to Heideggerian being unto death, it's Arendt's way of thinking about being unto birth and about how birth – every birth is an opportunity for a sort of fresh start in a sort of sense. It's a rupture with what's come before.

It's, you know, you take yourself and you have all of your negative patterns that you haven't been able to overcome. Well, then you have a child that is you, that is you, but it's also not you. And now it's a new set of problems. And it's probably going to, in a lot of ways, overcome some of your worst aspects. But of course, it'll have new problems. And so this is, you know, natality. It's the opportunity for something new. and nurture though has to do with usually i think the the left as as social constructivists will just think of everything as constructed and and nurture i think is a much more uh harmonious approach where it says we don't necessarily understand the mysteries of nature there's a wisdom in nature we we can't counter it a hundred percent we got to work with it to some extent and

And it's a mysterious process doing that. And so as far as this AI apocalypse goes, I mean, if we are sort of the shepherds of being in a sort of Heideggerian sense, well, then what's AI's role? And I think part of it is that we are the – if we were to think the god in flesh, you know what I mean? We are the ones here in flesh mediating between earth and heaven in a sort of sense. Like there's a sort of noble, deep possibility here for us as mediators between nature and what's going to come out of it or go beyond it in the form of AI.

And so I guess natality, we're the beings who are the products of natality. We are the condition of natality. And then we nurture nature. So like it's not this nature versus nurture thing. So that's my best attempt to sort of give a really quick, you know, glimpse into kind of where we're coming from with this. And is there anything you would want to add to that? Or I don't even know how to turn this into a question for you, Nick, but I wanted to bring it up. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm interested, like, exactly, if you were going to turn that into a question, or into a, how would you do that? Like, obviously, I, yeah, I respect the frame there, I think it's all super interesting, I mean, and I think it's a crisis in a really interesting way for people, all of this stuff.

and I think that people are, you know, there's a sense where people have this sense of like, you know, if I go there, the ideological payoff is this, and if I go here, the ideological payoff is this, and it's like they're scared to think these things through because it's like, where will it lead? And it's much, you know, there's this sense, I think there's a very rapidly dying framework of accepted, approved positions on these things

that require increasing that people don't actually think about them. Like, if they do, if they do think about them, they're going to like leave the reservation and the reservation is on fire so actually people are going to start thinking about this stuff more or at least be more open to thinking about it but right now it's like all of these words are so charged with their ideological potential like if you start thinking about nature if you start thinking about natality you very rapidly will be in some dangerous problematic conceptual zone and so it's really not safe to do that and i kind of think that's telling you know what i mean it's it's almost like is there anything more

clown world than the fact that talking about nature nurture natality are considered dog whistles or are considered, that that is now edgy, right? Yeah, no, I especially respect the fact you've put nurture on it. I think there's a really good move. Like, it's to say, you know, are you telling us that we can't think about nature or nurture? I mean, you know, which is the situation? I mean, it's like, it's not like, oh, we're not allowed to talk about nature. We only can talk about nurture. No, you know, we can't talk about nature or nature because, you know, either could go wrong in some way that we're just not willing to accept. Well, I guess, so this maybe sets the basis for being able to ask you the question, the Amish question, okay?

So for a lot of people who are super into AI, a lot of people in the tech right, as well as various socialists I've talked to, so left and right, they'll see the Amish as this kind of just out of touch thing or something. They're like, oh, those people. Because I've brought up in various contexts the idea that there is no path forward for large-scale structural change with humans involved if it cannot preserve the kind of local, particular plurality that would keep Amish people in the picture without just kind of being like, ha-ha, those people.

And what I'm kind of getting at is like, yeah, we want to have Star Trek or something. We want to be able to get off planet and explore the universe. But that's not going to be possible when the progressive mindset has taken one of the most primordial tendencies of the human and demonized it or scapegoated it. right? If, if, if that is sort of set up at the beginning, the sort of duopolistic split between tradition and progress, then there cannot be progress. And so that's why I've said in the past that there can only be progress at the speed of right, you know, a playoff, a speed of light. Right. But, but the point is, is like, right. And so it's almost like you can't have universalist

solutions without particularist possibilities being raised to the level of the priority. I mean, look, something hugely interesting about the English is the fact they're doing fine. You know what I mean? Like, I think everyone could take a step back and say, you know, maybe there's some pretty decent stuff going on in our tradition. maybe there's some bedrock there that actually is worth hanging on to that these people who actually don't want to engage in any technological innovation beyond the 18th century are actually doing fine. You know, and they've basically just like opted out of all of this progressive, conservative,

high-pitched dialectic whatever bullshit and just like they're building their bombs and they're doing their agricultural stuff and they're getting married and having kids and they're still there and their population's actually growing and like that is actually you know if people are going to say to me do you think we still have even a civilization I'd say sure like look what's happening to the Amish There's something, the fact that this is happening is a sign that there's something here that is like good, that this is a possibility that, so yeah, I think they're a really good example.

And it's like, you know, it's not my thing. I'm not going to become Amish, and I'm not going to live in an Amish community. And, you know, driving around all those buggies on a country road, some rural thing, it's not something I'm aiming for in life. And I'm more an Elon Musk guy, and I want to see massive rockets hurled into the outer solar system. But, you know, as long as the Amish are there, I feel better about what's going on, for sure. Like, it's, you want exit options. I mean, it's all things people can try and succeed doing and survive doing, for sure, the better. So, yeah, I don't know

where that answers your Amish question, but I'm going to be an Amish, pro-Amish, yeah, for sure. Like as long as it's not compulsory, it's not mandatory. I'm fully on it. Yeah. That's awesome. I was thinking about trying to interview an Amish person on the channel. And of course, of course you couldn't do that, but I was thinking what we could do is write them a letter saying, we'd like to read your letter on the channel. And then, you know, we could read the whole letter exchange on the channel. Would you be okay with that? You know, it's a super interesting question because like, why would they care? You know what I mean? Why are we, our whole thing is we, we, what we care about is repairing our barn.

You know, you think we care about your audience about the merits of the, about our lifestyle. I mean, But it's worth a try, 100%. I've just got to try to find the Amish philosopher who's into Heidegger and the question concerning technology. That would be the end point, I think. I know, why that moment? It's like, why that moment? Just technological paralysis is totally fascinating. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. yeah so i guess the last uh big question for me though and you know as we wrap up you'll obviously get to ask something but you know what we're doing here on the farm we're trying to move into

this sole soil system approach that is uh using philosophy and regenerative agriculture we're trying to bridge the local and the universal in some post left neither right nor left approach And we're grokking it out. We have no real idea what that looks like. And we don't want to over-determine it, obviously. Because nothing goes according to plan anyway. And so there's a couple hunches that we've got. It's a human plan. There's no human plans involved here. No, no. The concept of a plan, maybe. But with nature, nurture, natality, the other thing is T cubed, the three T's, time, energy, talent and tutelage and the way to say that is that you know you need time energy to discover

and cultivate or nurture talent under tutelage and that this is something anybody needs who's going to get that proper aoe kind of basis in the canon right and so you know that's something that i also did not get it's something and even though she and i was homeschooled uh by by parents who were just kind of figuring it out themselves. So they definitely weren't tapped into something that could have given me that basis. Anne comes out of a much more progressive school approach, and she was an advanced student. Gifted and talented, and then international baccalaureate diploma recipient. But even then, I didn't read any sort of canonical great works of philosophy or literature. It was just like basic high school, but more homework and tests.

And so on the time, energy, talent, tutelage approach, I guess I'm wondering, and I think you're a parent, right? You've got children. And this is maybe, I get it. I understand this is probably a naive or maybe even a stupid question, but I just, I am wondering now that you have this respect for that AOE approach, um, I am curious, you know, what, what we, or more generally American, uh, parents in our position should be doing as far as education is concerned, because the whole situation's so far gone with the schools, but at the same time, yeah, yeah, no, that's a good,

Interesting question, but I honestly don't know what to say. I mean, look, just being biographical about it, both our kids ended up homeschooling. It was partly they were catalyzed into that by the whole COVID thing. So they did a whole bunch of, like, foreign, you know, schools, and then homeschooling worked awesomely, both of them. They went to different ones. they've got totally different personalities whatever they're both very disciplined and I think if kids don't have self-discipline they might find that hard but you know that worked incredibly well for them

but like but neither of them read Greek I mean like that seems like gone you know I don't know where people pick that up I'm assuming anyone who wants to have that level of classical education, it's like they discover quite late in their life that they need that and then they have to somehow put it together. And it's like, that's just the way it is. So, I mean, I honestly don't know what to say, except I do think that these homeschool, the whole homeschool infrastructure, and by that I just mean online education is really improving well

and is super impressive already and is incredibly competitive with public education already. And my wife in particular was very worried about this and maybe they wouldn't meet people and make friends and all that kind of stuff. But I think everyone in the family agrees it was just such a good decision. so that's just my absolutely anecdotal level thing but you say they went to different ones sorry what you said they were homeschooled but they went to different ones oh it's all this online thing like we're living in shanghai so yeah my son went to a kind of english style a levels whatever thing and my daughter went to a canadian

based online homeschooling thing and they both were just so much happier so much more productive it all worked massively better than their formal education had worked before but it does require incredible self-discipline if your kids aren't actually interested then it's not probably going to be easy but sorry I'm just going to try and because I don't think it's anecdotal level it's very helpful for people it's just to say the general thing is this is going to explode for sure this is going to be huge

we haven't seen anything yet about this and my sense of public education worldwide is that it's really not doing well and it's falling to bits and people are realizing that and in terms of things that are going to be replaced by AI based things I mean it will include people probably and whatever but it's like basically revolutions, the AI revolution this is first in the line because it's completely dysfunctional and the only reason anyone has for doing it is they'll meet people at school right you know it's like they'll make friends right or you know obviously yeah this is kind of child management whatever you know like you're both working and like it's like babysitting school

so yeah baby yeah and and and and and i were both just teaching at a state university here in uh in idaho at boise state university and our uh our experience did not leave us with a very great taste in our mouth about it and it's it is just a very expensive way to to make friendships and and i would probably say in most cases ones that will not actually last but it's justified as though it's like a it is like an important social experience i started referring to it as the liberal rum spring up, right? Like this is the, the, the liberal analog to the Amish rum spring. And it's like, it's like, okay, so, you know, we used to be very free pro free college, you know, but now what, what does that actually mean? It means bailing

out one of the worst failing industries so that people can make some friends. Like you couldn't you do that anyway yeah make some friends drink and cheat on your homework that's being given to you by underpaid overworked adjuncts who are like barely contract employed it's just like yeah it's not both the students coming in are just like literally not prepared for that level of education and the level has deep like gone down so much just the standards and the quality and the expectations but then the institution itself is not getting those students up to a higher level

and then you throw AI into the mix which can be useful but students are mostly just using it to plug in the essay prompt and then turn in like regurgitated robotic garbage that's very easy to tell that it's AI well that's I mean that's a huge interesting question. Because of course that's completely unstoppable. It's completely unstoppable. And so that generation is just going to be you've got your AI buddy who can just tell you what would be a good essay on this. There's some mechanism that can stop them using it. I mean, give me a break. Of course. So they're in that world already.

And it's like the notion that these institutions are going to kind of carry on business as usual and business as usual is total collapse actually um so yeah i don't know i mean as usual my prediction is apocalypse um exactly the modality of that is interesting to predict but yeah it's not carrying on and of course education is going to get it first right i mean it's like that's of course it's going to get it first so ai is going to sweep into ai this what the hell do you think ai even is if you don't think it's going to completely turn this old sector on its head

So, yeah. Children are not just born with a natural inclination towards discipline. Of course, in some cases, obviously. But generally speaking, kids are going to get most of what they get from those first few years with their parents.

And so that's one of the things that's admirable about the J.D. Vance sort of influence with MAGA. is that families matter. Let's take that a lot more seriously. And I think that's one of the ways that you could have common cause across pretty much any political or religious divide is just to be like, look, we believe that parents need to be reading books with their children. Whether or not you think drag queens should be reading books with children, we can all agree parents should be reading with their children. And that's the only way. And that means that for someone like us, like now that we're older we wish we had learned Greek at an early age. Well, guess what? We can learn it still if we just spend that time with our children, right?

Yeah, yeah. I think that's an awesomely great point to make. I think that's an awesomely great point to make. I mean, I think, yeah, if you try to raise your kids with the education you missed, you're doing something truly great. that's for sure yeah but I mean it's so it's so complicated I mean it's like you know like just on this self-discipline thing like where the hell does that come from I mean like it's genes it's nurture it's like you know it's no one knows it's a complicated thing and it just comes to you as like I mean speaking

personally like just fate fortune like you know I I'm not at all inclined to preach about how people should treat their kids I feel I've just been absolutely blessed in this way I mean um so yeah I don't know how you do that I mean if you're gonna say like my kid is naturally completely that self-discipline is this something i can i don't know fortunately thank the lord that is not a problem i've had to face you know i don't know do you let them did you let them go on phones at a at a young age where they do they have tablets we've been like you know we've been

total liberals and our kids have been like yeah but they've rebelled they've rebelled against our libertarianism by being like hyper responsible hyper responsible conservative like so they're not like this is a one generation male thing so they're not like the iPad generation super ADHD then yeah no but we literally not had that oh my gosh I'm sort of almost a bit nervous about being this like I hope my family is like where the hell were you talking about us on this podcast it's not something I've done

and I probably shouldn't make a habit of that no no no and I don't we don't want to make a habit out of getting you there and I did want to quick segue into libertarianism and the AOE I know we got to close out, but you've got a message you need to share with libertarians out there. Elon Musk has this libertarian streak. He's taking the doge thing too literal. Maybe it's autism. Maybe it's psychosis. But this libertarian idea taken too far, I think, is kind of what I wanted to bring. Because if you're sympathetic to the AOE, right? Well, the reason you were – and let's see if I can get this right. But you are a lot more down with the Lemurian, Neo-Lemurian time sorcery because it's capital and it's de-territorialization.

And if the AOE is more about territorialization, well, you're still for capitalism. So what does it mean that you're for capitalism but you're anti-immigration when immigration is such an important part of capitalism? And you have like the Cato Institute and the Koch brothers and they're pro-immigration as well. And it's because they're capitalist, right? And so if you're capitalist, why are you not more for this kind of de-territorializing force of capital? And what are you – when did this change in you – like is there a theory reason for this change? And what would you tell those libertarians? what would I tell those libertarians

well I think that there's a big shift going on as I'm sure you guys are well aware and like you know I've got libertarian mutes on X and I probably select them in a rightward direction and they are also in this thing that it's like if you want forget libertarianism liberalism you know what does it take to preserve a liberal society and I mean the big the catastrophic error of the kind of

you know mainstream libertarianism and the leftist versions of that is that, you know, anything goes, the whole world can become a libertarian theme park. I mean, that's absolutely not true. I mean, there are kind of ultra foundations of a liberal society that are quite fragile. They're quite rare. They require very distinct characteristics. and they simply are not globalizable in any realistic fashion. If you globalize them, you totally lose them.

You know, it's just to say, like, our culture means nothing, our tradition means nothing. Liberalism, in the most facile libertarian thing, libertarianism is like just something in the air, you know? It's like you just read Milton Friedman, you read Mises, and you just become a libertarian, and that could just happen anywhere. That seems to me obviously preposterously, stupidly wrong. You know, liberal societies have come out of very distinctive traditions, and they are surprisingly fragile.

And, you know, I'm in my circle, I think, sort of stereotypically liberal in the sense that I'm very into a certain amount of ethnic sort of complexity and all of these things. I love model minorities, I love Chinatowns, I love all of this kind of stuff. But to go from there to this just open borders, third world, pouring, and we're still going to have a liberal society?

I mean, forget what I think. I don't think anyone believes that anymore. And people don't even believe that. Even the ethnic minorities I'm very sympathetic to and like a lot are also in the crosshairs. Like the obvious example of this is Indians after this whole H1B thing. I mean, the amount of anti-Indian shit that I've seen, anti-Hindu Indians, it's just huge. I mean, I like Indians. Like, I mean, I don't have any of this animus, but I totally understand that. because what's happened is just this notion that you can just completely obliterate your ethnic

foundations and you can still have the kind of society that is based on those ethnic foundations. That's just bullshit. That's obviously total bullshit. And it's like, I don't think I really have to make a big argument for that because I think everyone thinks that. That is the big sea change that is happening in Europe, in America. It's like, you know, a culture doesn't come out of the void. Culture comes out of actual lineages, out of people, out of a tradition. And if you screw over those things, then you don't have that anymore. I think a testament to that fact is that Anne was an international baccalaureate, which is for people unaware of what that really means in the US, I didn't know before.

It's basically, it's more advanced than AP sections of, say, science or what have you. You know, AP being advanced. Well, the international baccalaureate is even beyond that. And so I've – it's been revealing to me through our conversations. She read a sum total of zero biographies or autobiographies in her entire K through 12 education as well as her entire bachelor's at the university. No autobiographies, no biographies. Not even like – oh, you know. no like primary texts of sociology when i was a sociology student yeah um no primary texts at all

really really that's what we're getting at and so of course not none of the canon you know no republic no kjv uh no no iliad no no you know maybe a little shakespeare yeah some shakespeare okay i read some other greek play they do like all these things like you do a shakespeare play Right. And so the idea that this is what you're getting at with ethnicity and culture is the idea of like, no, but like when we're talking progeny and we were talking about posterity, when we're talking, you know, it's true. If you read Benjamin Franklin, if you read John Adams, if you read Jefferson, like they're all talking about not only posterity, but I've also come to this realization that, I mean, really this blew my mind when I started thinking about it.

It was almost like – because I've been thinking about the collapse of the private and the public ever since reading The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt where she talks about socialization undermining the integrity of this distinction that was established in Greece. Well, what was the private though for the founding fathers? The private, let's say, letter exchanges with one spouse. the private let's say a private letter exchange with a rival these were addressed to posterity so like these were not private in the sense of like it's secrets that will die with you these were private in the sense that well this isn't going to be in the newspaper tomorrow or while we're breathing but this will be for the record for our descendants to judge and there's a fun

little anecdote that gets at this because both Benjamin Franklin and John Adams shared a bedroom when they were staying in Paris. I don't know if you've heard this story, but they had an argument about whether the window should be up or down, right? One of them wants the cool air in, one wants to be warmer. Ann and I have this problem all the time, of course. And so, you know, they have an argument about it and both of them tell posterity that they won the argument in their diary. Yeah, but this is ultimately what we're getting at when we think about culture. And it's kind of crazy to me that the people who want to act like it doesn't exist, or it doesn't have to be carefully maintained, will be the people who say, oh, well, you know,

the Lakota Native American people, they have this rule about thinking seven generations forward. And it's like, yeah, actually, so did the founding fathers. What are you talking about? So did the Hebrews. What are we talking about? So, yeah. I mean, it's complicated by the fact that Anglos are so weird. Because Anglos are very inviting of other cultures. You know, they're very, it's just what they are. I mean, you know, they go to India. They become Hindus. they start, you know, they become Vedic mystics, they marry Indian women, I mean, it's like, you know, I don't think that's a bad thing,

I mean, I think a lot of the people I talk to now just think that's just a terrible thing, you know, Anglos just deserve to die because they do this, and they do do this, I mean, I'm on this thing, like, I have to fall back in providential history, like, you know, the lofty powers will forgive us for this. You know, we're doing something that's good. But you don't go from that to just saying culture is nothing. Extinguish it. It's like the very notion of having culture is wrong. It's racist. Do we even think you've got a culture?

You know, this absolutely crazy extrapolation of these Anglo impulses to complete ethnic racial suicide as some kind of moral imperative is a horrible thing that is coming to an end. I mean, it is coming to an end. And it could go, it could, there's horrible things in the other direction that could happen. So it's not like I'm just sanguine about, oh, great, you know. But for sure, this particular insane path that we were on, our people were on, is going to stop. And it's going to stop before its own, it has its own just lunatic utopian models that like,

we're going to just like interbreed everybody until like there's just not any ethnicity or racial identity left yeah i'm sorry guys not just like you're not you're on the wrong time scale that's not going to happen you know the this thing is coming to a climax pretty or ugly whatever it be way before that. So just step back from the utopian fucking theorizing and just think what is a realistic thing. I mean I think I'm a bit like you know notorious for having said that's gonna, for having criticized what I think is going to be an overreaction. Like a lot of this like there's

There's a lot of like Anglo, or worse because I think more meaningless, white ethnic resistance or like pushback or whatever. It's gonna, I think, just weigh it from the top. You know, and it's gonna lose a lot of really good stuff. I mean, there is a level of multiculturalism that's just really awesome, you know, and It's like, I mean, I, as a kind of right-wing liberal, I love roof Koreans. You know, I love Chinatowns. There's a whole bunch of this stuff I think is just great. And it's what makes me proud to come from that tradition. And I'm worried that that's going to come under a lot of pressure.

But things went so insane in the other direction that it really takes a lot of optimism now to think they're not going to swing back too far. the other way. Right. And so maybe, you know, to close out, we started with kind of a current event, Trump and Musk, and so we can kind of end on the really current event, which are these L.A. immigration riots. And, like, once again, we're seeing just chaotic, crazy protests, very reminiscent of BLM and lots of other kind of leftist, activist anarchist activist behaviors that like i'm i won just haven't quite been following that

much so i don't entirely know the facts of okay national guard what's trump's response what's going on with the governor but i'm just curious yeah how these people are thinking that this is a good a good move for their kind of pro-immigration pro-multicultural stance when we're getting images of masked people destroying police cars holding a mexican flag in california like yeah that's not a good look um and so i i just truly wonder like what is to come of this for these activists what is the trump administration like this this surely is not going to help the democrats like they just are like ah yes and they're just i think getting lower and lower

in public opinion cory booker's over here just repeatedly saying that it's uh that these are peaceful protests it's like yeah yeah yes i guess what what do you make of that in in relation to all of this and kind of where what's gonna come from this how is will this help trump is trump's response to severe because i think it also is like scary to see oh a police uh a reporter got shot in the leg with a rubber bullet. Well, should she have been in the way? Probably not. But still, that's not a good precedent to be setting that we're now shooting at reporters in the street. So it's just all chaos coming from both sides. And I'm curious what you make of all of it. I mean, obviously, my prediction is like,

as far as I'm concerned, overreaction. You know, I think the left has been so completely insane that all the good stuff in their program is being just burnt on the altar of just virtue signaling, you know? It's just like... I think it ties up with your antenatal or something. I just don't think they'd give a shit. I mean, like, they'd give a... If you cared about the future, you'd have kids. If you don't, like, you'd just think, fuck it, you know, some gestural bullshit on social media is all I care about. And then you get, it's going to swing crazily. It's going to over swing the other way.

I mean, you know, I'm not going to look further down the line than that. But the point is there's other trends that are happening so fast that even this level of crazy and funky politics is just going to get swamped by stuff. I mean, you know, well, once we've got like high level artificial intelligences kicking around, like, this is all going to look like such a sideshow. This is just like what we were doing, what we were doing as a species just before super intelligence arrived on this planet. I mean, it's kind of embarrassing. I mean we just have to hope they have the kind of

let's say the pandas attitude I think alright well Nick it's been a pleasure to have you back yeah thank you so much yeah I know I've enjoyed it a lot guys so yeah good luck with this whole thing thank you so much yeah it's been great and I'm sure I'm sure we'll be back all together again one day in the future. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Always lots to talk about, but this has been a really great conversation. It's been nice to get to meet you. Awesome. Yeah, yeah. Great. Great. Take care. Thank you so much. Have a great night. Take care. Yeah, bye-bye. Subscribers get access to all past courses at Theory Underground,

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