On the Practical Necessity of Having Demons (Session 5)

Okay. Hello and welcome to the fifth session of On the Practical Necessity of Having Demons by Reza Nicaristani. I'm now going to pass the mic. Reza, please take it away. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone. So if I understand this is the fifth session, we are talking about, you know, the problem of evil in the context of Zoroastrianism. where the problem of evil becomes something of an organized religion rather than an ethical problem. I'm not going to say anything more.

I would like to hear if any of you have any questions from past sessions. After that, we'll have presentation response and then I will go ahead. So any questions? Evan, Carl, Handa, Richard, Jasper. I mean, I can name all of you, but I just want to

find easy targets. Sort of a curlicue question. Sure. Why did the Zoroastrians fetishize otters? The atonement in one's lifetime for killing an otter must have required a not insignificant percentage of the GDP of ancient Persia. To be honest with you, I really don't know. I think that the reason for it is just like, if you see, for example, like think about this, if you had seen a dodo in 21st century in the state of Connecticut, then any person who kills that goddamn dodo should go to hell.

I think that the reason behind this is because honors were extremely rare in the Persian empire. That's why I brought dodo, you know, endangered species. If you kill endangered species, then you must go to hell for sure. That was, I think, the message. But it's even more outrageous, right? Like, it takes 2,000 dead good doggies spiritually to create one. Like that's the math. Well, you should understand why. So Zoroastrianism was a dog-caught, you see? Essentially Zoroastrian

civilization, particularly in northeast of Persia, moving towards central Persia, That's what you might call breed or creed of Zorozarianism. They had a certain kind of, what you might call, to be affinity with dogs, because dogs could cleanse human sins. Like for example, if you defecate, if a woman menstruate, If you, for example, trim your nails in the open, in the grass, dogs can take them.

So I think that's just a kind of a symbolic thing because Zorozhareans were always in love with dogs. were the guardians holding the last bastion of humanity against demons of defilement. So that comes with a kind of symbolism that we are going to sacrifice a thousand dogs for an otter. How about that? So canine sin purification system. Yes. So an otter is sort of like a Brita water filter. water filter, but also as I think that in Zoroastrianism, you see Zoroastrianism is

quite actually complex precisely because Zoroastrianism is not a religion that just simply happens like Islam, Druidism, so on and so forth. Actually Zoroastrianism, the creed itself begins from the pre-Christian Achaemenid dynasty. But for the majority of parts of the Achaemenid dynasty, none of the kings actually used Zorozarianism as their official religion. It's simply that Zorozarianism is something of a good faith about nature and thoughts and doings and words. But as you move forward in Persian history, you see that the Rosarianism becomes something of

protecting human supremacy within nature. That sounds almost like enlightenment or humanistic greed, but what they mean by it is that you cannot harm nature and by that particularly not harming the endangered entities of nature because that makes nature less and makes human vices even more. So that was one of the core ideas of later Sorcerinism, post Avesta.

So I would like to ask about where we are going in a sense, because now we are quite far on our journey from the manifold or multitudes of demons towards something that appears to be quite different with this entry of the great monotheistic religions and how the problem of, or the bifurcating problems of evil and the self unfold. So I wonder a little bit if there's anything you can say more about this shift that we are perhaps beginning to see on a more I wouldn't say an abstract level, but perhaps on the philosophical level that takes it out of the

anthropological or historical context that we are hinging this presumably philosophical story upon. Yes. The shift, I would say, that most probably has been explained quite explicitly by people like Kasserer and Paul Ricoeur, it entails a certain kind of transition between what you might call to be living with myth and living with myth by a symbol. so the problem of evil in the ancient times as we talked about is actually the problem of ethics

you see you can get demons or never purely evil or purely good they are just like us they have moral and ethical ambivalence but with the rise of monotheism organized monotheism which is our austrianism par excellence you can see the distillation of this problem of evil into a symbolic problem, a symbolic problem in which lived experience should be subjected to, such that, for example, when you see a symbol of evil and that all comes to the meaning of the symbol,

as opposed to, for example, contingency of reality, you know, chaos of history, so on and so forth. Once you see the symbol, there should trigger a certain kind of reaction in your life experience with regard to the problem of evil. And that's what religion is. It's just that certain kinds of events, certain kinds of occurrences, certain kinds of processes do carry with them symbols of evil.

and those symbols of evil do not need to be experienced it's just that experience is predisposed to react to them and that's the problem of evil at the onset of monotheism like when I see someone rob someone I interpret it symbolically and I react to it within the codes that are required of me

but that reaction is probably no longer the kind of reaction that we could see in the ancient times as if you could ask why did you rob this person? Maybe robbing this person is actually good a la demonic path but now it becomes that that anything that is being codified as a symbol should arose something within your life experience. And if you do not react to it,

then you are not a good person. More questions? Don't let me to come after you personally. I don't know if it's too much of reaching forward into today's material, but from what you just said I was thinking about what was described earlier in the Vendidat as the not

as destruction but as the counter creation of demon which seems to suggest a sort of dialectics of creation and counter creation and yes and this I mean it seems I was auditing Brunella's course the other day on prehistory of cybernetics and I was that made me think about this counter creation as sort of a diabolic retroaction as an evolutionary principle evolutionary in what sense well i was i was thinking about uh maxwell's demon like the uh an organizing entity that can

that can diminish the entropy of a system yes not only diminish the entropy of the system you see this is actually something that i have noticed with some of these uh no uh moralistic readings of the idea of the myth particularly that of the evil um is that they think that um the greatest stories ever told are the ones that are exactly you know dissipate the entropy or

or along what you just said But isn't it what Jean Girard calls the scapegoats? Isn't the function of the scapegoats is also to dissipate the entropy? So obviously, and of course, Girard is going way too much into the arena of this kind of escape codes as dissemination or dissipation of entropy. I don't think that all myths require, all of these stories, mythical stories, require dissipation of entropy in that

sense. Some of them actually require you to harvest entropy and channel it towards some other task. I would say that escape coding is fundamentally to the Christian from a mythical perspective, and hence Girard's position. Who is he? A Catholic Christian? I'm not familiar with this position. Oh, let me... One sec. René Girard was one of my professors 25 years ago. I took like four classes with the guy.

Yes? Yeah, before he died. Jesus. You know that Peter Thiel is a big fan of him. I was in a class with Peter Thiel. Oh my god. It was a weenie back then too. So I would say the best, you can start, I mean, there are so many good books by Girard, but one of them, I mean, the title, simply The Escape Coat. René Girard, The Escape Coat.

that's but isn't jihad's position like the opposite of that that christianity like frees us from the scapegoating process through jesus and everything he was a big really no you see okay you should you should uh i would say as someone who has a kind of minimal understanding of Girard position with these kinds of anthropological hermeneutics there always comes certain kinds of factionism in Christianity and they are mostly Christian to begin with. So he is Christian but is actually not Christian in your colloquial sense, but he's definitely that very idea

to reduce everything of this sort that we have been talking about to escape goat is very much in the Christian tradition to be honest with you. Not in the canonical Orthodox Christian, but it's definitely Christian. In Islam there is no such a thing as a scapegoat. In Islam actually, you know, we do kill the goddamn scapegoat along with every other goddamn people. Isn't it cool?

Reza, I just got here. I'm sorry. I was a little bit late. A friend of mine who's a labor organizer was arrested, and he was beaten up and sent to the hospital. So I visited him. He probably did some naughtier stuff. He just helped a black woman who was assaulted, and he picked her up, and then the police arrested him too. question I have for you is someone who, you know, comes from Iran, and I coming from Turkey, protests in our culture have a very, compared to American protests, except for maybe 1960s, the protests in our culture in the Middle East are generally always like this, right? Like, there's always COINTELP, pro-style tactics used by governments to infiltrate, provocateurs.

These are mechanisms that you and I have probably seen a lot in our own countries. And it seems like, I don't want to say the United States is looking at the Middle East and co-opting these tactics. They've maybe even created some of these tactics and sent them abroad and now they're using them at home. But do you see some sort of parallels and just in general, these types of mechanisms blurring the lines between, you know, any type of clear theory of opposition? I mean, it relates to the class. I've become a little bit cynical after all these years. I no longer believe in protest or activism, to be honest with you. It is either the revolutionary path, armed struggle,

the last man standing, or what I actually do prefer, a kind of plank by plank destruction of the current civilization by way of education, by way of lobbying, by way of conning rich men, converting them to our side. I think that U.S. revolution, you see, yes, U.S. revolution, you know, the actual revolution against the British Marquis was one of the greatest achievements of humans on the planet

back then. But today's politics with the certain kinds of technological subsumption and so on and so forth. I think that all of these protests are fundamentally ineffective. In fact, they are counter-revolutionary. In my opinion. But Reza, we saw a man get killed and then these officers not get arrested until there was yes but but that doesn't cause for a revolution a revolution is about what is wrong with the system at the most but isn't killing black people wrong with

the system isn't this something system it's a symptom it's a symptom of the system it is not really capturing the entirety of the obscenity of the system? No, absolutely not. This has been happening all the fucking time. So as killing Muslims, so on, so on, so forth, even white people. It just does not really bottom out into a revolutionary idea. It just, simply is like poking a hole into a decrepit system. But the Bolsheviks had peaceful demonstrations too,

and then, you know, they use, part of the long game in which a revolution is eventually initiated, but you can't go straight to revolution sometimes. No, you can never go to straight revolution, revolution, but, you know, being brought up in the revolutionary times, I would say that do Americans are capable of carrying out the revolution? I absolutely don't think so. But isn't there a way to look, I mean, look, let's talk about the technological aspect of this. for the last for the entirety of my life living in America I have seen at least

once every few months a viral video of a black man killed by police it has gotten to the point where this is movie we've seen this movie too many times in a lot of people's eyes so it's not that they're acting out of a revolutionary spirit but it's acting out of being spat on your face yes yes yes and that's it the idea of the survival The right to survive, like any other person, is not a great cause for a revolution. The great cause for revolution is survival conditions such that any other person, like me, having a black face, having a darker skin, having this kind of inclination, so on and

of world can actually go about and live a good life. But that's not really going to happen in America. Any of you who think that is going to happen, you're just deluded about the kind of empire that America is. And then you resolve, you try to resolve stuff by way of violence. Violence is never going to yield any source of good results. Unless and until, yes, a certain kind of violence will do.

But that kind of violence requires training, organization, leadership. Do you really have it? No, you don't. You simply don't. Moment of silence. Sorry for this, but I think that it is good that our class takes certain sort of tangential remarks because of what is going to happen,

what's already happening. Any other ideas? Federico, any sort of person. I just generally think that Americans are good people, being in this country for a very long time now, but they have a certain kind of arrogance that comes with other star civilizations. Do you know what it is? It's that they accuse, for example, Iranians, Turks, Syrians, and

on so forth, that why didn't you robes against the tyrants of your country? Well, my friends, if you are such great skillful revolutionaries, then why can't you even rise against the goddamn fucking police on the street? I think there is certain kind of immaturity here with the ideology, with the practice, so on and so forth.

And that should be addressed, should be resolved tactically and strategically. violence is not really a great way to move forward with it yeah i think there has been a burst of energy and resentment that has accumulated over the years and maybe that's not uh being canalized right and yes yes Yes, definitely so. It could cede to like non-intentional vectors that lead to like a morbid path maybe.

I mean one of the greatest things that you know the rioters could or protesters could come up with, you can't simply call all cops pigs. Pigs must die. That's just bad public relationship when it comes to revolution. You have to do a certain kind of discrimination. Not everyone who joins military forces or police forces is a goddamn fucking psychopath.

You have to convert your enemies rather than simply make them more furious and disgruntled. That's just stupid. That's just fucking shit Marxist recipe. Yeah, but by shaming them does this not in some sense, I mean, it sometimes produces the reaction that people entrench, and in other cases it produces the reaction of like, you know, if it's said in enough, in a widespread enough way, people start to maybe recognize themselves as perpetrating the acts that would cause so many people to say all cops are bastards or something and in that sense disavow being a member of the police, quit their job. I mean,

there have been stories of people leaving the police force over... Yes. Another way you can do, go around about this is that, yes, you have to do a lot of lobbying, which means that you have to con rich men. You have to get money and resources such that you You can pay off the police union. How do you think that revolution is ever going to happen? It's not going to be brute force. Look at the Bolshevik revolution. The Bolsheviks had already accrued enough money to pay off certain kind of Tezarists, generals.

And that's when they joined their ranks. And that was the revolution. It is not as if you can simply, it's not this kind of stuff about social justice and stuff. It's all about planning. Well Reza, the people in this country is very powerful. I mean, you know, during COVID, every federal department in the entire country, their funding was cut with the exception of the police union. The police union here in New York, the police arrested the mayor's daughter and then they doxed the daughter's information, where she lives, where she works. Then the mayor, instead of saying anything, protecting his

daughter, he apologized to the police. The police union has such a strong grip that they single handedly alongside you okay yes yes i understand that this is the case about america possible no no no it's not impossible you can always get some sort of dirty material on some sort of police chief we have dirty material we have videos of them killing people no i don't mean dirty material like that. I mean really dirty material. You can always get certain kind of stuff just like intelligence services. How do you think intelligence services work? You get certain kinds of compromising materials

on certain kinds of high-ranking officers and then they will yield. They They come to the table. You see, you don't want to do these kinds of dirty works, but revolution is always dirty. And if you do not fight it with cunning and intelligence, obviously you are going to be crushed in a second by the forces of empire. I am sure that these protests are nothing really. They are going to be crushed in the days to come. Utterly crushed. Do you know when the military police joins,

what would happen to them? They already joined. It happened, martial law. No, they haven't joined full force. They are really trying to be as polite as possible. possible. But there is a time when military says that politeness is gone and they will actually do their dairy tactics on the protesters. And that's when you can see that literally every of these people who are thinking that there are kings on the streets will flee to their mama's basement. This is just regular insurrectionary tactics or anti-insurrectionary tactics

the military uses against the revolutionaries and if you don't have a counter tactic then you are doomed, no matter how much you think that you are on the right side. Now, it just really doesn't work. But aren't you making a... Go ahead, sorry, Enda. Well, all I was going to say was really all of the things you're saying could be incorporated under a diversity of strategy, right? Exactly, that's what I was going to say. Yeah, exactly. So like, why would we need to, you know, exclude, like, all of these kind of underhanded maneuvers. I mean, I totally agree that there's more of a need for specialism within kind of revolutionary praxis or organizations that are trying to agitate for

revolutionary struggle or whatever, but like I don't agree that we should, you know, therefore say this is a kind of good substitute for like what's happening. Yes, but see, yes, absolutely, I do agree but have we do anything for example to convert military personnel because military personnel are cops haters no they're not 90% of you you absolutely no Ekin absolutely you are wrong at this point. Look at statistics. There is absolutely no no a majority of people go on to be police in this country it's about 70 percent. That's national

guards that's national guards that's national guards I'm talking about the military Even national guards can be converted. You see, have we done something to convert, for example, the military personnel to our cause? Because people who go to military are actually far more level-headed than the police. And they do in fact bear a great hatred of the police forces in every country, in every country. In the Bolshevik revolution, the military had to fight the police because the police

were the last vestige of the Tsarist government. the military were seeing how they were being made into cannon fodder. In fact, the greatest heroes of the Bolshevik revolution were Teziris generals who have been converted by the revolutionary forces. Reza, this changes country from country. Turkey, what you're saying absolutely is right. But in America, the military and the police share weaponry. They share funds. No, no, no, no, no, no. They do. Absolutely. No, sharing weaponry is very different from sharing the ideology.

They're the same crop. There's something called . Zero sense. I absolutely no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is a military-age pipeline. This exists. You really don't think that I understand US military force. But Eken, it's not sharing. It's devolving. Right? Like over the last 15 years, military surplus hardware has been devolved down onto local police forces. So you've got these people, undertrained, overweight, wearing 50 pounds of military tech that's coming from warehouses that didn't make it to Afghanistan, behaving much differently than the people for whom the tech was intended. it's not a bilateral exchange, right? It's just a simple devolution to make sure that all of the

liquidity is soaked up for the military industrial complex and all of that stuff continues to get bought. I mean, if we're going to be good philosophers, you're right, by the way, Richard, that's true. Devolving is the way that this pipeline for equipment works. But if we're going to be good philosophers and not just trade and vagaries, we can't say military hates the police. No, we have to look at statistics. How many people that leave the military go on to be police before making these types of statements? We can't say it for the entire world. We have to be specific to the country. You see, you're actually making a very dangerous mistake here. You see, those people who actually leave from military are not really actual military people.

They are military reserve. Right? So military reserve always goes and when, you know, they can't get a job in military, they go to the police force and so on and so forth and so on. So that's. But the thing that is the real military core personnel absolutely don't do that kind of stuff. I mean, it's just unheard of. Let me tell you that a great number of special forces in the US, having

talk to them are actually quite intelligent people. They are what you might call to be left-center. And that's a scare. And do you know how, why they are so precious to the American military? Because they can be deployed anywhere in the world. Because they are good, ideologically and in terms of proficiency.

Those kind of military that you're talking about are just draft people. Draft people mean nothing. Well, there is no draft. You're a military person. Everyone makes a decision to join the military. There's no draft in America. So these people make a decision. There is no draft in America? Are you kidding me? What do you mean by draft? Where one is drafted beyond their volition? There's no draft since Vietnam. You can be drafted in any sort of crisis. As long as you have a draft clause in any sort of country, many, many young people will go to sign up and enroll in the military.

Even though it's not necessary. all men at 18 that are U.S. citizens have to register for it. You register, but it hasn't been used. Yeah, it's not active. I understand that, but having registered for it, you know, I'm available for it if need be, up to a certain age. Right. I mean, same. I also registered for it, but I know that it won't be instated because there's enough people who are out of their position. No, Ekin, I think that you are just really don't understand the difference between the core military doctrine and people who are simply enrolling in it.

The core military doctrine is always more rational than the police. at the generals in any sort of country, there are always more rational than the dictators. And that's the scary thing. I mean, I do understand this, but all I'm saying is that I think there is an ideologue, I think that grand scheme that you're proposing is fundamentally impossible. And it's frankly not something that those on the left would find as fruitful in their pursuit as something else. Well, that's why, because left is always failing, you know, one of the greatest things, look

at the Iran revolution. What they did, what they did was an exemplar of revolutionary tactics. Essentially, the communists were in charge at the beginning of the revolution. The religious people, Khomeini's people, were in smaller numbers, even though they became larger and larger to the point that they killed every one of those people. But the thing is that it was really a great tactic. Essentially, they converted all militarily generals of Air Force, of Immortal Guard,

the Imperial Guard, the Ground Force, so on and so forth. The Airborne, the Noh'ed Division, the greatest special force of that time in the world. How do you think they managed to do that? to win the revolution, such that at the end of the day, in Bahman 29th, which is like January 30th I would say they fight face-to-face

revolutionary army and revolutionary recruits on one side and the what you might call to be the really people who are on the side of Shah on the other side. Who did win? Well, of course, the revolutionaries. because they had converted so many military men at that point. It was impossible even for the elite immortal guard to put them down.

You can say the same thing about Cuba, about China, about Cuba, about China at the time of Chiang Kai-shek, so on and so forth. No, that's the very formula of an armed revolution, if you choose it to be the kind of revolution that you want to launch. Break and then we will start back on our course.

no more talk of insurgency. I think it's just worth saying to Ekman's point earlier though that while you can easily imagine a sort of cop show sort of mentality where the feds come in and the local police detest them or vice versa all of these like hierarchies all the way down from navy seals thinking that you the average trooper is sort of a wonk, the average trooper who's in active duty thinking the average beat cop is a wonk all the way down. I mean, ultimately they're in ideological alignment when they're mobilized in a situation like the one that we're facing. And it'll be an amplifying

alignment. There will be no chipping off of the cops acting as the police protecting the czar versus these military guys that are all of a sudden a part of the revolution, unless, as you say, guys coming out of special forces when they quit are co-opted or brought in, seduced into a position. Yes, it's all about conversion. It's all about conversion. And the thing is that it is far easier to convert the military personnel toward the revolutionary path from historical perspective than converting pigs to become human.

Well, a lot of these guys, as you know, given that you've spoken to them at like the Naval War College and whatever, are trained to go and disrupt societies. Yes, they do. That's their job. Yeah, exactly. So if those are people that are standing side by side with you on the streets, then you've got a hell of a lot more tactics and strategy at your disposal than if they're standing on the other side. Yes. And if you have managed to convert them, it means that you have also, to a certain extent, managed their core ideology. Essentially, they are not hired guns. These people are not hired guns, right? They are

not simply asking for money to intervene with people's well-being, like the police force. force, they are essentially different kinds of forces. They have certain kinds of ideology in their mind and that ideology needs to be hacked for the revolution to be happened. We can learn a lot from the Bolshevik revolution, where the Bolsheviks bring the greatest Tezarist generals to their ranks.

That's what revolution looks like. is not about a bunch of gunless, angry, spiteful people launching attacks on the state, but to convert a lot of people who were good otherwise, but have joined the forces of the empire to your cause. And to do that, you require a certain kinds of neutrality in ideology.

Suspend that kind of insurgency idea that you're just like in the mood for revolution, I want to burn everything down. No, you cannot do that in terms of revolution. That's just goddamn anarchist recipe. You have to reach out to people by any means possible. Money, bribery, goodwill, so on so forth. And then once you have them, then the fate of the empire is sealed. So would you tell these people protesting the streets to go back home, go to their jobs,

stop pursuing these protests because they're fruitless in the end? No, I can't say that. I would say that, okay, do as best as you can, knowing that you will be utterly crushed at the end of the day. Yes, but Risa, they know that they are going to be crushed. But this experience... Do they? But do they really? Do they really know the extent of how they are going to be crushed?

But whether they know or not, what matters in such political upheavals is that you enter into a new, a new mode of experience, a new mode of organizing, a new... But do they really have an organization, really? Do they have... If the organization simply means that, you know, directing laser beams toward a goddamn Humvee or a helicopter, if that is the goddamn fucking organization, I don't want to have anything to do with revolution. They don't really have any sort of organization.

I think Black Lives Matter is pretty organized. organized. They've been organizing for the last, you know, Their organization is shit. How do you know this, though? What do you know about their organization? I mean, I don't know that much because I'm not part of it, but from what I can tell, to start in multiple different cities, a protest in such organized fashion. Is that what you call organization? I mean, I think that since 2013, they've been working and they've been progressing. No, no, no, no. You're saying that creating insurgencies and riots in multiple cities concurrently is a certain kind of organization. Yes, it is. But is it really organization? It's a conflation, first of all. These riots started organically, but then Black Lives Matter

in different cities organized those protests to direct them without, you know, because first of there's looting on one side there's destruction of property on another which maybe has the end goal of exacting top-down change because the companies walmart target so on will say our windows have been broken we haven't been able to open up our stores for no no no no no hold on you're you're just you're just getting a little bit over excited not windows are broken actual buildings have been burnt. Yes, but I'm talking about the top-down change that this affects. So the organization on that end, as far as looting and destruction of property goes,

is not that this in and of itself will exactly change, but that these companies, having lost minimal profits, nonetheless will make demands of the cities that they not let this happen again, because this has disrupted the flow of capital. This is what organizational flow. That's like a typical Kitsch Marxist idea. Okay, we are looting and burning down a target. They have a chain across all the countries, so they aren't going to lose that much profit. No, it's a symbolic act that matters. Revolution is all about the symbolicity. You cannot do that. You really cannot do that. It's just bad representation. And if Black

Lives Matter had an actual organization, a revolutionary, in the proper sense, proper Marcus Sands, they would have basically interrogated those people who were responsible for such acts. This is always right about every sort of revolution. You cannot just simply let people loot and destroy property. That's just bad. Well, first of all, police are also doing it, you know, you have provocateurs. Well, that's, okay.

Yes, but what you are saying is just because police is doing that, then we have a right to do it as well. No, revolution has nothing to do with this kind of stuff. Well, first of all, I think there's a category mistake being made between protest and revolution. I don't think that Black Lives Matter or any other political group is trying to stage a revolution. They are not revolutionary. I don't think that they're more rational and they know that revolution is something that is a long game. And first, you have to win over converts. And I think this helps with that. This is not going to happen. To be honest with you, if this is a long game, then this is not the kind of tactic that you should implement.

Well, I think there can be more than one tactic at the same time though. And I think this is one tactic that we can try. It hasn't been tried in this scale like this before. Last time was Occupy Wall Street and that was minimal in comparison to this. Occupy Wall Street was one of the greatest failures of humanity. Even Neanderthals could make a better revolution than fucking Occupy Wall Street. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying this is better and more large in scale. So this is worth trying if it's going to be different, more strategizing. There has not been something in my lifetime. It is not, it's just occupied Wall Street with more violence and more looting.

There is no certain kind of planning. There is no central leadership. There is no central scheme, strategizing, conning the system. It is going, that's why I think, I really think that Americans, you have got a little bit of the poison of the American insurrectionary overexcited. These people are going to be fundamentally crushed and you cannot understand how much they will be crushed. They're being crushed already. The physical neon neck, the crushing is already happening. So I see this as like a defensive reaction and that will set the conditions for the offensive

of the revolution later. But if you're dead, then you can't participate in the revolution. This is a defensive, this is a defense rather than an offense. At this point, I would say, to be honest with you, disband, disband, disband the protests, group, come up with better schemes, attack the targets which do matter. You don't want to go after the goddamn fucking cops at this point. That's just no-no. Attack the conditions

rather than people. I mean, that's also happening. This is not spoken as much about, but what I've been doing over the last few days is working with a group of activists calling representatives in Albany and local senators and repealing a law called 50A that allows for internal review of police. So this means that there has to be actual court cases when there's police that kill people, whereas right now the law is that police internally review themselves. But of course, this is only one strategy. I do think- That's just a reformation. That's just a reformation, not a revolution. But you're also calling for reformation. The rationalists calls for reformation. They call for- No, no, no. The whole point of revolutionary reformation

is very different from liberal reformation. Revolutionary reformation goes in a hyper-camouflage hush hush steps like you do lobbying use their own resources but like like we all i i i'm the first to say we need the revolution we need we're all being like we're all being degraded under capitalism we're all being this this system is degrading us all but for some of us they are being degraded more than others like reform is the matter of life and death between now and the status quo and reform you know like yes reform reform is something

like what you might call to be delaying the guillotine time the guillotine time delaying the guillotine time is a good thing yes delaying your execution time is a good thing uh but is what you might call to be having a vaccine that boosts up your immunity system or having like four or five of Advils to simply succumb to the pain. But if the guillotine's, you know, if you're about to be if the hangman's or the guillotine's sort of

got about to get you on the chopping block and then you buy your time and buy your time. Maybe your heroes will come over the hill and save you because you've bought time. That's the time. The time can... Yes, but James, I think that America is not the kind of country where you can pull off such scenarios. This country is fully entrenched in terms of military, in terms of police, in terms of institution, and so on and so forth. You could pull off this thing in Iran properly, maybe not, in Ecuador, in Honduras,

so on and so forth, but this is not really a typical country. You are essentially dealing with the greatest civilization existing on the goddamn fucking planet. How are you going to survive? Do you know what it's capable of? Do you really? Okay, let's have a break and then reconvene.

Thank you. America won't be the hegemonic superpower for very long anyway and even though I hope so

I mean it would seem like it's 20 years it there's there's still clawing at their power like for example they recently sent the US military once again back to to colombia because we're basically their backyard and they live off from from the narcotraffic business here so i mean they're still clutching to to their power even if it's fading away yeah i mean i don't know i've heard for like my whole life that the united states's power is fading away in the next five years it will no longer be a world superpower and, you know, Brazil, India, China, and certain other countries will be the next world superpower,

but still manages to cling on in some way, you know, it can be through intelligence operations, it can be through outsourcing certain operations, but it still hasn't happened yet, you know, so yes, maybe with COVID, and with the way that the United States's economy, especially employment, is fairing that may have some effect but i mean the actual stock market is doing great right now 2009 all over again yeah i don't know look i i'm i don't i'm not like idealist about these protests but i sure i'm going to support it because why not i mean like it you can only it's very simple to me

me it's like you can only watch the same thing so many times seeing a black man killed on tv so many times before you get fed up and just say fuck it you know and i think there's like this sort of like dualism at play of either you achieve all your aims of a whole revolution a whole utopian society or you don't and everything else is an abject failure and i think that like i think that if you if you if you save like people from police brutality like in the short term that's end enough in itself yeah yeah i mean like it would be nice to have the police there's there's

like this framework at play that i hear a lot of people a lot of intelligent people using which is police abolition as a framework. It's not going to happen. The police in and of itself is not going to be abolished. And I think all of us would say, yes, there needs to be some type of check in place, but it shouldn't be the police should be the first people responding to a mental health crisis or to, you know, what are other things that police aren't necessarily called into? to, I mean, even to deescalate per se, there should be actual mental health professionals. And these positions have been out pouched over the last 10 years to police because it's cheaper. So now police are the first respondents to everything, even, even, you know, accidents,

police should not be the first responding to car accidents and such. I mean, I think that there should be more specialized positions where it's not people with a gun. or illegal barbecues in the state park or people selling water on the sidewalk without a permit, that kind of thing. Right. I mean, I don't even think you need anyone to solve those issues. You just need to do a countdown. But yeah, generally, I mean, for me, yeah, when I talk about, when I think about like police abolition or prison abolition or whatever, it's just, it would be a different institution that might do similar things, right? You therefore have a different name, it's like a historic break with that, but you know, it's not like you can get away without having some kind of

way of structuring order or whatever. Sorry, I had to open the door. The smell of cigarettes was just unbearable. Yamine, Tucker Carlson is, you know, he's one of the most powerful voices in Trump's ear. He was the first person to tell Trump to take COVID-19 seriously. And he was one of the, you know, the few people to voice an anti-Iraq war position and become, you know, a right-wing populist. Now, obviously, Steve Bannon is another one of those guys, but Tucker Carlson, he was fundamental in that shift.

in the in the sort of stages to revolution do you have to sort of win the populist mass appeal to say we've tried we've tried to fight them in a civil way we've tried to uh to do this and stay friends and every time when you're crushed and beaten by the the apparatus then people finally realize that you have to overthrow them but you can't do it you can't jump to the end is this a question for me or anyone

I would say that generally, there are two paths, black and white. I would say that there is no third path in this arena. Two paths to fight a tyranny in any sort of way that you understand. One is armed as a struggle. Death requires a lot of tactical upbringing, training, so on and so forth. Do you really think that the goddamn fucking people in Brooklyn have the tactical upbringing? They goddamn fucking want their vegetarian food at the end of the day.

Are they revolutionaries? No, they are not. They're counter-revolutions. If I was a Stalin, I would have executed these people right on the spot or send them to the vegetarian. Or being vegetarian? No, not vegetarianism is a symptom of a greater disease. I don't understand your violence towards No, I'm just kidding. No, I'm just kidding. Here, Reza, you know, I... Go ahead. But the revolutionary thing is on point.

You see, who are these people? They want to get out of the capitalist system by way of liberal means. Is it going to ever happen? Absolutely not. That's why I said the first option which I don't condone at all. But it might happen when time comes, if these things exacerbate in time. It's the armed revolution. And the armed revolution, you know, it comes to training.

it comes to being fundamentally not more caring about who is who. So essentially I can execute a king in the gulag if he says something wrong and that would be good. That's a part of armed revolution. Armed revolution is always violent. The second one takes time. It's a part of conning.

Con the system. Use that's what I actually like it. Like a video game challenge. Make more money. Make more reputation. Make more popularity. Start to con those people who have a position within the system. slowly and slowly convert them. If you can convert them, perhaps your students can convert them. In time, they will be on your side. And that's when we attack the citizen,

but not until then. Any sorts of revolution or protest outside of these two formulas is going to fail. It's just premature millennial Zoomer fantasy. Nothing else. What I was arguing is that these ones have to fail. so people's misguided fantasies of liberal revolutions will be seen as impossible by

enough a critical number of people. Yes, I think that a revolution at this point in America looks impossible and is impossible. How are you going? Let me give you a good idea of what America is. So you think the National Guard is this scary? Well you haven't got damn seen the military. Do you know what US military looks like? The good thing is that according to any sort of democratic constitution, the military,

the actual military corps cannot intervene within intra-territorial affairs. Essentially, all military should always fight at the borders. The thing is that these goddamn devil Americans make a division of the military that can actually fight within the inter-territorial aspect. aspect and that's the National Guard and the military police. Hardly any nation in the world has that kind of division because military is not supposed to deal with civilian affairs.

That's why for the majority of the world population, world government and countries, military is a vacant force. Why? Precisely because it can always be converted to the force of the people. Because it does not have the power to intervene with domestic affairs. Only police can do that. Only revolutionary guards can do that, so on and so forth. Military cannot do that. But the U.S. has an armed division which can do that.

But that's just a fraction of what military looks like. The real military is quite robust. generals officers commandos green beret so on and so forth they are not going to simply when it comes to real crisis they are not going to simply sit aside and watch the show they will join the forces and that's when a true revolution should convert them to their side rather than berating them.

I don't think they're open to conversion. I think they are... No, no, no, no. No. I'd like to believe... How many military people have you ever seen? I mean, I come from a military family. I did my military... I have to do... In Turkey, we have to do military service. So it's different. in Iran yes but in America this they don't have this culture here so I think no you're wrong you are wrong to be honest with you just talk to a marine officer in the US forces most probably is your next door neighbor ask him what he feels about the society

You see, you should do certain kind of work. This is your task as a philosopher to corrupt the military. And they will say that actually the more I have talked to them, the response I have heard has been kind of unanimous that there are many psychopaths in military but we never signed up for psychopathy. We will go for the union. Yes, union against Confederacy, bring it on. This is, to be honest with you,

the U.S. Army is just like any other kind of army. Army people, really good army people, particularly officers, are secular arms. And this is why they can be, you know, like herds, moved according to the current politics. But if there is a better option for them, they will always come around with you. I actually think that one of the greatest Marxist mistake was to understand imperial

military, elite military, as a threat. No, there are potential allies who should be converted and not be left behind. Who doesn't like a skillful veteran general on his side? probably a Keech Marxist, who thinks that wearing red pants and living in a commune can lead to the end of capitalism. Well, my friend, it doesn't.

Can demons be useful in conversing these people? You know, it's not because I have come from a long tradition of military family. My father was general, my grandfather was general, and so on and so forth. I never actually gone to the military, thankfully. I have come to a certain understanding after I have talked to many, many officers who have

been veterans. And they always tell me that, you know, there are two kinds of military personnel, the psychopaths, who simply sign up to kill people, right? And there are certain kinds of other people who just simply want to defend their country in the time of crisis. But what is a time of crisis? We don't know. The second category is the kind that you should be converting. The psychopaths are always psychopaths. They can become police, they can become pigs, so on and so forth.

But good military officers is what you need for an actual revolution. Because you cannot really win a revolution with goddamn shovels, sickles and hammers, or multiple cocktail. It's just not possible. What do you mean by a good military officer? And what kind of rationality do you find in them? A good military officer is the one who has a certain kind of secularity with regard to politics.

Essentially, you see, many military personnel actually do join at early age out of either poverty. Majority of these people are actually poor. That's why they do join military academy. military poverty or certain kind of careerism. But in time, they do realize that they cannot become president, they cannot become a senator, so on and so forth. At the best, they can become a general who will be retired in time. So these people have a certain kind of lost ideals.

The greatest con of Marxism at this point is to give them what they always wanted. Make them popular again for the people. You see, it is not we Marxists don't dabble in good or bad. We only con people. We only con the system. You want to con the generals such that they think that what they do is actually good for the people and themselves.

How can you con them? I don't get that point actually. Well, you can con them by ideological means. One of the greatest things you should understand that the majority of people who actually do voluntarily join military forces are patriotic people. So start with the patriotic trump card, that yes, America is one of the greatest civilizations on the planet, Iran is one of the greatest civilizations on the planet, and then slowly and slowly

take them to this position such that they can accept All people are worthy of their lives. And we are going to kill every single person who thinks otherwise. We can see it in so many revolutions. Wait, so your tactic is to talk to them, is to discuss with them? not just to talk to them, to convert them, to bring them into the ranks, so on and so forth. Yes, all of that. But to do this by means of discussion. But this assumes that these people are-

But also give them privileges. You have to give them privileges. But they already have state power. Why would they care to speak to some philosopher? You just don't, I think, this is why you don't understand the undergirding of the military personnel, veterans. You see, these kinds of people did not go subscribe to be military personnel just because they wanted to kill people or defend simply their country. They just wanted to be the heroes. Right? Give them a different version of hero weakness.

But they already have heroism. I don't see why they would be receptive. And I think this is why... Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let me tell you, you know, think about the Iranian revolution. Iran Revolution, they were you know old officers, were heroes, utterly what you might call them into their today's world, bad ass. But what happened to them? You see, Bistudu al-Bahman, which is the month

where the Islamic Revolution, not the Islamic Revolution, the Iranian Revolution happened. Majority of these people joined the ranks of the revolutionaries. Why? Precisely because they were given something better to protect the people protecting the people is the con. I think this is a very idealist picture, and I wish you were right, but I think in America, the military is, and especially the high-ranking people in the military, have a lot more to gain by climbing... No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I have, to be honest with you, I have talked to some of these officers from CIA

and special forces, they are quite actually innocent in a certain kind of sense. They enrolled in this to serve the people, but they were hijacked at some point. and now they are being disenchanted. Why they were being deceived and so on and so forth and that's why they become evil. The problem of evil comes with a certain kind of you know, disenchantment.

But if you give them back certain kind of duty, certain kind of moral upbringing, they are all good. I have seen so many of them in Iran, in Malaysia, in Thailand, in America, so on and so forth. Military forces need certain kind of cherishing. Lenin was right about it, Stalin was a spot-on about it. Why do you think a

Stalin, managed to win the war because he recruited all the great Tessarist generals that Lenin hadn't executed yet. But if you have the revolution and then become the Tsar you might as well not overthrow this up in the first place. Yes, yes that is true, but I would say that kill all the Tezzarists, but before that make sure that you create a certain kind of coup d'etat

willing officers such that you can actually recruit them after killing Tezer. In every revolution that's just like the trump card you see for example with Iranian Revolution it was quite actually striking. There were greatest generals among the ranks. Khomeini got whimsical and ordered them to be executed. All of them. All of them.

One of the greatest generals in the ranks was John Bonney, one of the greatest pilots of the world at that time. But the thing is that Khomeini said to his executioners that, okay, I'm going to, you know, scratch these names of generals so they cannot be executed. And do you know what those generals were? Well, basically they were generals who had betrayed the Imperial forces because they had already been converted or intimidated by the Revolutionary forces.

And those generals literally managed to instruct Iran forces during the Iran-Iraq war. Without them, Iraq would have completely bulldozed Iran forces at that time. Now you always want that kind of force, that kind of elite imperial force, but you have to do certain kind of, you know, platforming, so to speak.

By the way, my apologies for us going tangent to the realm of insurgency, generals, military. I promise you that for the next sessions I will add like 10 or 20 minutes to each sessions so we can compensate this charade of topics. So, with regard to the Zoroastrian,

take on evil. Where does the problem of evil in the modern sense takes place? Is it really the distillation of myth to a codified symbol Or is it rather that the myth becomes unreadable, completely outside of the purview of hermeneutics of evil?

So, two stories about the rise of the monotheistic account of evil. One, the symbolic idea of evil, the codification of evil or myth into a symbol. Second, the idea of evil is just not in our reach, hermeneutic or otherwise. which one do you think is the beginning

of evil in a modern sense in the religious sense I don't know if it's in a modern sense but I was thinking about the Greek miasma where it seems that there's also an aspect of of inheritable evil or genetic evil that for example Antigone can take over Oedipus' incestual

genes and proclivity to do sin Yes. So that would be one genealogy of evil, but I'm not sure where to put it in codification or evil, which is beyond reach. Evil, for example, let me give you an example of evil beyond reach. For example, think about, I'm going actually make a more contemporary example more palpable than the ancient ones. Think about Lovecraft, you know, horror writings, right, where evil arise because it is beyond

of any source of self-relation, self-conceptualization, and self-transformation of the human being. Yoksa thought, is he evil? Not because he actually has a revenge or a vendetta against you, but he just, because he doesn't care about you. Literally, he doesn't care. So that comes back to what we were talking about, that within the realm or the doctrine

of evil there are two what you might call to be main trends, what you might call to be the moral normative trends of the first trend that we talked about. The second one is a more naturalistic trend. Does actually nature give a shit if you are gay, bisexual or straight? Perhaps not. Reza, myself and Shilpi are meant to be doing presentations for videos now, or?

Oh yes, yes, yes, yes. My apologies. I mean, mine's not very long anyway. No, no, no. My sincere apologies. My sincere apologies. I completely forgot about that. No worries. I'm just going to share my screen. Could I just add one thing? Yes, yes. Reza, you said that about nature. is reproduction not an important part of nature? So, like, would nature not care? You see, okay, this is something really, I would say that kind of reveals a certain

kind of cracks among these known Nietzscheians. So with Nietzsche, it absolutely does matter, right? But I think that this is precisely because Nietzsche really did not construct his idea of ethics or transvaluation to the fullest extent. So for example, think about, I don't know, let's pick up the usual suspects, Nick Land, right? What do you think that he might think with regard to this problem?

He's an idiot. Why do we keep talking about him? He's not an idiot. No, he's not an idiot. He's been sharing infowars on Twitter. He does that out of trolling. Trolling is good, but to be a troll is not equal as being an idiot. There was a time where his philosophy was decent. Now he doesn't matter. He really doesn't. He doesn't matter. Okay, let's say that he doesn't matter. But then you have to justify why is that? People actually are still talking about him.

Because of the aesthetics, because it's cool, because he and Mandacious Molba present this type of radical aesthetics. But it's nothing beyond pornography. you know there's no actual substance to it as if as if as if badu was any better oh absolutely agamben was any better as if was any better deluz and badu yes agamben no of course not but they they are not really better than that no to be honest with you nick nick's not his old some old works that he wrote aside from those that are pure science fiction have some meaning But most of it is if you ask a serious philosopher, if you ask a serious scientist, they'll say, who's Nick Land? You show them writing of Nick Land, they say, this is stupid.

I don't care about serious philosophers or serious scientists. Yes, I can actually play in the position of them being a serious scientist and being a serious philosopher. but that is not really how we approach philosophy. Well, we should be serious about it. Nick Land, when he uses the word cybernetic, No, no, no. The idea as Plato said it was simple as that. Any person who impinges upon the idea should be taken seriously. To that extent, Land, Trump, I don't know, Cantbot, all of his shit should be taken seriously.

If you don't take him seriously, you are done. Well, Cantbot and Trump, to some extent, actually research what they talk about. Land just is a historical thing. No, no, no, no, no. I disagree. I fundamentally disagree. I'm talking about people who are actually reading and producing literature or cultural artifacts that are relevant. Land is an artifact from the 1990s. Yes, I understand. So why do we care about him? He's capable of delivering a great deal of maybe not improved medium in the goddamn fucking French literature or philosophy, but he's capable of delivering quite a great

deal of venom through the social medium. And that's why he should be taken seriously. But so are cute pictures of cats. Should we take those and talk about what would the cute picture of a cat think about the X-Men? Well, you decipher that. I'm just saying, there's no reason to keep talking about Nick Land when there's No, no. I know. You understand that what I think about Nick Land and this whole idea of CCRU and stuff. But I don't think that their time is over. I think that to say so is to simply miss the historical point.

Land is an absolutely important, I wouldn't call it a thinker, but an absolutely important instigator and we should pay attention to that. You cannot simply say that, oh, I have basically figured all this out without hearing the words, the catchphrases and the memes of those instigators. The battle to be fought should be multi frontal,

like a Stalin. Battle of the Stalingrad should be brought on the Klan. Anything else, anything else, anything else, I would say is just like a Hitlerite propaganda against the Klan. But you yourself, like a week or two ago said, what's the point of talking about CCRU and Nickland anymore? It's old news. Now you're asking. No, no. They're old news. They're old news. They're old news. In the sense of content, but in the sense of delivery. And that delivery is really important too.

We should also pay attention to that. You see, these are goddamn redneck moonshiners. What do you do with moonshiners? Does anyone know? Well, in the American South, you chase them like bats out of hell along winding back roads through the forest, which is what gave it to NASCAR. First you cut their supply lines and then there you cut their throats. But not before cutting the supply lines because if you leave the cuts, their supply lines open, they will always propagate.

propagate. Okay, so my apologies. Presentation and response. Sure. Um, yeah, I'm just gonna share my screen if that's alright. Um, yeah, like I was saying, um, to be honest, I've been ill the last couple of days anyway, so this is going to be quite brief. and yeah just a general overview of the book I mean I guess I don't need to really go through all of that because presumably people have read it but it's a bunch of kind of myths rituals incantations against against the demons I guess like bits that I wanted to pick up on specifically

or I thought were interesting this bit in I hope I'm saying this right Fargad 3 which which talks about the earth, I thought was quite interesting. Basically, there's a footnote that kind of explains this better, but I think it might be useful for our discussion around demons, which is the idea that basically it seems to kind of suggest, I think I put it here, it kind of suggests that like the kind of the sorest grief for the grief of the first grief of the fiends rushing forth from the thing. Hang on. Sorry.

I can't see my screen share properly because of the... No, I can see it. Oh, it was good. It was good. I couldn't read it. That was the problem. Okay. So basically, yeah. So there's no corresponding act that can be taken to mitigate the problem of the demons rushing forth, right? So it's a kind of intractable problem. And I thought that was kind of interesting in respect of like some of the previous discussions we've been having, namely, it's kind of to say that in this text, what the demons are being described as are kind of an entity that can't be negotiated with. And I I thought maybe this would be similar in ways to kind of discussion.

I think it was from two weeks ago where we were talking a little bit, yeah, about the kind of, I actually can't remember the specific demon you were talking about, but it was basically like the question of how does one react to the existence of the demon. And then, you know, partly this seems to be a kind of, we can act in certain ways, but it doesn't kind of remove the problem of the demon. It just kind of mitigates or it's a kind of, you're kind of engaged in this kind of constant struggle, maybe. I think in the next thing here, oh, I made it, yeah, I made a little meme to sort of, like, you know, illustrate. I think this is kind of interesting further on in the same chapter. So basically, it's a kind of a more positive sense of what that struggle consists in.

And I think here it was, I mean, basically, it seems to be doing the thing that a lot of religious, like, kind of doctrine will do, which is just to kind of justify certain kinds of practices in this more cosmological sense. and the good equals killing demons, but it doesn't mean stopping them as such. It doesn't resolve the problem of demons. It seems to still somehow be a good act. I think that there are things we could say about that, but I'm going to try and just go through all of this, rather than go on about that. Okay, and yeah, there was some other interesting

stuff around, like, I mean, I'm not really giving a full summary, I'm just kind of picking different parts that were kind of interesting, but yeah, there's this kind of interesting description at one point where it sort of describes the ritual by which the sort of the death, the demon of death is literally chased out of the body. And a lot of the book is kind of, it has to do with these various rituals and it really enumerates a lot of stuff in, you know, it can be quite painstaking to read at times, but basically, yeah, it of details or like how those rituals. And do you know my apologies to Katju, do you know that this whole idea of Druj Nasu, so Druj is actually an Avisan

and Pre-Purgeon word coming from Aramaic. It translates to the modern Farsi as durug, lie, a stratagem, right? Cunning, conmanship, right? And nasu is simply means tissue, right? body, carnal matters, so on and so forth. So, you see in Vendidad, the greatest demon, which is Drouge Nasu, Drouge, who is actually being cited as a female rather than a male.

is actually not a symbol for sin, of human sin, but human defilement, i.e. when demons of the outside encroach upon an innocent person against his or her will. So it is not a willful sin the ultimate demon. It's the encroachment of the outside upon the self. Yeah, and I was actually thinking a lot about how in this text in general, like a lot of, I mean, it feels a lot with this specific demon, Drouj Nasu, it kind of brings, you know,

she's brought up a lot, but also about how much of this kind of, it's not so much about defending oneself against the demon, but about how to deal with the fact that this necessarily, you know, that one necessarily is in the course of life for reasons not entirely to do with one's own conduct or action, kind of might become contaminated by the demon or, you know, yeah, like the demon would befall a person. And yeah, I mean, I had a little bit more, but I mean, And there's not, I mean, this is just the last bit on 19 where, I guess, with like the kind of encounter between Zarathustra and the demon.

And I mean, yeah, these are like more specific stuff. Again, I don't know if necessarily it makes sense to talk about them now, but I thought it was, yeah, another thing was basically talking about like the Buddhist sort of like idolatry and how this was a kind of like a kind of defilement or something, like the the death of the soul. But yeah, I mean, to be honest, I kind of have lost my train of thought a bit because it's a bit late in the seminar. So I'll probably just stop it there. We can maybe

chat about it or ship we can. One question for you. So So if Druj Nasu is a kind of defilement, the impingement of outside forces upon the will, rather than the sin, because sin, you should understand the Book of Ben-Didha, is actually post-Christianity. It is not really ancient texts in the canonical sense. It's perhaps written 250 to 500, completed 500 post-Christianity.

So by that time actually the idea of the sin, the monotheistic sense, had already been consolidated within Judaism and Christianity and also ancient Saurians. So it is kind of strange that in the book of Ben-Vida, the book of Antidemons, the majority of recipes are about defilement, the impingement of an outside force on a good will, right? Which means that involuntary sin is not a willful sin.

It's like manslaughter against Mary, right? So what do you think that the idea of willful sin came from then? Among all these traditions, that someone has an actual will to pull off something that is evil, symbolically speaking. I mean, where do I think as a kind of historical question? Historical question at this point, yes.

I'm not very well read in general questions of religion. I would hazard a guess that it had to do with Christianity and that this is the kind of point where that emerges. But yeah, to be honest with you, I couldn't give you a well... No, no, no, no apologies. Well, yes, that's kind of true, but I will say that Druidism was the first religion that

utterly codified all of these pre-Zorosarian, post-Zorosarianism into a code of law. So, Jewelism, you should understand that it is not actually a religion in the Christianity sense. You come up with a historical movement and so on and so forth. It is something more like that it inherits a bunch of stuff from the code of law of the Hammurabi. lex talionis eye for an eye. Does anyone has read the code of Hammurabi?

No but I know that they burn the tongues of instigators with a hot spoon. Is that correct yes yes yes in high school we read and selects talionis eye for an eye in uh in high school we read the hammurabi's code as sort of the first doctrine of what would eventually become Egalitarianism. Assays law. Yeah. But also like reproduction of behavior, like a doctrine through which it's reproduced.

Yes, yes. Because laws can always be entrenched and they can always propagate further. So, you should understand that Jewism came from two directions, one from the religious tradition, the kind of mystical religious tradition, and second from the law of the state. And the fusion of these two is essentially what you might call to be the anthropological original point for the problem of evil in the modern sense, in the religious sense.

Because the problem of evil didn't exist before that. The problem of evil was always more in the gray zones. There is no such a demon as simply doing evil. All demons doing certain kinds of good, certain kinds of evil, just like people. The problem of demons were the problems of the cells. But when this kind of behaviors of demons, these kinds of revenge, vendetta, ransacking, on so forth became codified by way of a canonical medium. That's when we got what you might call

to be modern notion of evil, starting from Orthodox Judaism moving forward. Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, so on and so forth. Reza, can I pick up on a thread from last week where you were critiquing the the Enlightenment philosophers, fetishization of Buddhism. So if we look at this Erazura, this place in the north where demons come from, as Greco-Batria. Yes.

So my apologies. Just in terms of things, so anthropological, archaeological sense, So you see, essentially anything in north of Iran, from an anthropological, historical, archaeological sense, is always linked with the problem of evil. Do you know why? Well, I was going to suggest it was because when Alexander the Great rampaged through Persia, he went north.

And ultimately, the Greco-Bactrian sort of locus where Buddhism first emerged and took a human face, i.e. the first demon that this chief of demons sent after Zarathustra in Friar 19 was a bodhisattva, right? Perhaps not the second one. The first one is absolutely right. Alexander's trajectory of being cursed into Persia proper was through the north and coming to the south to Percipolis. That one. Another one, more importantly, is the Arab invasion.

The Arab invasion actually started from Tavi Kassar, the arch of Kassar, from northeast of Iraq, going to the north of Iran and coming to the south. So essentially in Shahnaman, in Perdoz's Shahnaman, the Book of Kings, one of the greatest books, poetry ever existed, any sort of invasion against genuine Arian ethics and, you know,

Iranians think of themselves as Aryans is always coming from north to south, either it's Greek or the Arab. So anything in the Persian mythology that comes with evil always manifests itself in the north. That's cool. Let me insert something in between those, because the Persian invasion, according to your timeline of when the Vandidad was written, the Persian were invaded later, right? Yes. In between, you had multiple waves of Buddhist invasion in the form of proselytizers, pilgrims.

Yes, but you see, the Persians actually did not, you see, Persians did not actually think of Buddhists, monks, what they call the vagabonds, as people who are insurgents or who are basically doing harm to their civilization. Why was the demon called Bhuti or Bodhi in Fragnard 19? That's the first demon that's sent against Zarathustra. Precisely because of the old Abistan Sanskrit idea. It has nothing to do with the later evolution of these cultures.

It's precisely because the old Pahalabi and old Abistan are Sanskrit, so the name of the demons are actually distortions of the old Indic demons. Reza, the text says, the Vendida text says, talks about the devas. Devas in India means God. Gods? Yes. We shall be either good or bad. well it was yeah they can be good or bad but they are people in their beings in power and they're worshipped yes the same thing in early understand you see in early understand which so if

If you are actually trying to figure out the transition from a kind of communal understanding of evil to a kind of dead symbolic understanding of evil, where evil is just codified into certain kind of stuff, then you might say that, yes, this has happened also through the, in the culture, so as the Persian culture, where the divas are no longer good or bad. They are not just demons as gray zones of self-food. They are really evil,

precisely because anything that is gray, anything that is what you might call to be an excuse for impinging upon the codes, upon the laws that have given to you could be called an evil. The same thing happens in Indie culture, the same thing happens also in Persian culture. Yes, absolutely. I mean Persian culture and Indian culture are

essentially the same at the end of the day. I'm not going to say that they're all bunch of Nazis. Aryans to begin with. Well, the Indian devas are basically, you are right, they're not completely good and they have shades of grey and they are basically power driven. Their acts don't fall in the

region of good. There are rapes and there are a lot of things which are really bad. You see in Abyster as opposed to R.W. Roth, R.W. Roth is post-Christian. It's when monotheism is in full force, right? In Avis, which is pre-Islam, there is a passage it reads that the power of a man is something like that. I can actually find it for you, But it reads something like that, that when it compares the powers of Ahri man to Ahura Mazda,

so Ahri man is what you might call to be the proto-version of Satan. Like Satan didn't even exist before Ahri man. Ahriman is far more cooler. Like, you know, it is like that goddamn guy who is going to lead your civilization to complete annihilation. Isn't it that cool? It's Niklan Par excellence, if you like Niklan. So, Ahreman's idea is simply like that. So Ahreman is a twin brother of Ahura Mazda.

Ahura Mazda is the prophet of good words, good deeds, and good thoughts, whereas Ahreman is completely the opposite. But in other stuff, as opposed to Vendida, Ahreman is introduced, so has Ahura Mazda, in terms of better and worse, not the bad and the good. You see, this is really actually quite a striking position in the old Alistair, that the position

of Ahreeman as Satan with regard to Ahura Mazda, which you might call to be Allah, God, so on and so forth, is not the position of the evil versus good. their position is just simply a spectrum, a gradient where you can traverse. It is only in vendita with the establishment of organized religion that the problem of evil becomes that of bad against the good. I guess that's what I meant by the

evolutionary necessity of counter creation I mean what's the first I forgot the name of the first man who was created who was then killed by by not Ahura Master, but the twin brother, the Satan. He then resurrects. I'm not sure. He resurrects as a plant which becomes the first couple. And that's what I meant, the evolutionary purpose of the demon or Satan, that it leads to a new becoming. Yes. Yes, well, I mean, Deleuze has a chapter on Cain and they're, you know, in the history

of mysticism, particularly from, I would say that the 1400 to 1700, you know, from high scholasticism to the mid-Renaissance, that kind of person, that kind of demon, that double dealer became the very idea of the human ethics. As in essence, Cain became the hero just like a Prometheus, the martyr that died for all us.

Is Caio Marx in the Everstand? Yes and you can see it later in Renaissance being propagandized by people like Minocchio, by people like Giordano Bruno, so on and so forth. Yes, that's essentially coming back to the previous session where we were talking about that at a certain point in the evolution of civilization, the problem of demon simply was equated with the problem of enlightenment.

The heroes of enlightenment became demonized. And yes, that is absolutely true. Giordano Bruno is a great example of that. You know, Giordano Bruno is not that kind of person that people talk about as a defender of enlightenment. No, Jordan Bronow was actually part of the church establishment, but he created a heresy. Heresy in favor of enlightenment is very creation of a demon.

And that's why heresiarchs who were burnt at the stakes for the most time were not actually people who were against religion. religion, they were trying to bring back something, something humanistic, something of the ethical worth in the secular sense into the womb of a religion and for which They were burned at stake. Because religion doesn't want heresy.

Heresy is the ultimate idea that the secular should be cherished. What is heresy? Heresy is that you are coming to a certain historical understanding that religious at your time is necessary. What is even more necessary is to create what Minocchio called a corrupting worm within this edifice such that it leads to a better enlightenment.

Who was that again? Sorry. Minocchio. Minocchio. Here, let me. He was burned at a stake. is he the subject of the cheese and the worm yes uh m-e-n-o-c-c-h-i-o yes as uh a friend said is the protagonist of this historical document written by Karl Ginsberg called Cheese and the War.

His ultimate slogan was that the world is created out of corruption. because he was a cheese maker. There was, by the way, some years ago there was a Danish cheese maker who became a Satanist. It sounded like this guy. To be honest with you, the challenge or confrontation with organized religion can land you in any

sorts of quirky position. I mean remember that Dugin thinks that I am that job, the anti-Christ. I am just a man doing gardening, playing video games, nothing more, nothing else. So, we are coming close to our end. Should I share my response? Yes, yes, absolutely. Okay. So Wendy Da talks about the cosmic dualism between people and the heavenly beings.

I get an idea that it gives a glimpse of the society in general, like it was an aggregating society and it was cattle driven. That is why the importance of corn, dogs, dogs for keeping the cattle safe etc. Importance of eating good food and maintaining good health. Vendida builds the ideology and practice of symbols of what is good and what is bad and what is the correct behavior defining the moral practices. While I was thinking about it, I don't know if it is too absurd, but I think the kind of attributes

that Vendidad has is similar to the attributes of capitalism. yeah, it is not religion, in today's society, from what I see, it is not religion, but capitalism that defines and defines what is good and evil and what is the correct practices in the world that we live today. For example, if we look at it, because the text is talking about menstruation and the fact that the dogs are a symbol of positivity, that they eat

up the menstrual waste and keep the land clean. Similarly, if you see in today's society, the capitalist machinery is constantly projecting at us a lot of menstrual products. Like for example, let's take the case of a sanitary pad. And the idea if that if a woman stains, that is the so called, it represents the so called stigma of the demon. And the idea that if there is a stain that is there on a woman's dress, she doesn't have a good character. That is the kind of things that we see in the advertisement, at least in India, I don't

outside. So yeah, I was kind of seeing a parallel between these two, how the idea of the good and the right practices are being developed in this way. Thank you so much. A couple of things. You see, the problem of filth and dirt probably do precede the problem of religion and the idea of sin and defilement. just that religion codifies them, turns them into a law.

So for example, Vendidad, you know, Vendidad actually, you know, is not this kind of male-centric text at the end of the day, but for example, it says that, you know, it has a huge respect for women in the text, in the canonical text. For example, it says that when women are menstruating, they should be put away, and those men who fornicate or have intercourse with women who are menstruating are the most defiled

ones. So there is a certain kind of moral law that is evolving. moral law is not, has always not been in the civilization, most definitely not in the Persian Empire and in the Persian culture, but it is certain kinds of gesture that encapsulates the rise of monotheistic religion par excellence. So with that said, do you really think that, and this is a challenging story, feel free

to not answer this because I don't want you to get cancelled for no reason. Do you think that monotheism by itself, par excellence, is anti-women? Yeah, I think so. I'll tell you why, because I'm comparing it with the Indian culture, Indian religion at least. right now India is in shambles, no doubt. And women are in the worst of states that they can ever be in.

But, but we, I, I, at least I'm assuming it at least, we have a goddess, we have a menstruating goddess, which doesn't have, which has red, red, red powder all over her, which actually shows that she is menstruating. all the Hindu gods are duality. They are half men and half women. And in no ways are the female parts less than the male parts. I'll give you an example here with respect to a demon. There is a goddess called Kali. So, of course.

I was, she, if you look at her. The vindictive mother. Yes, she will look demonic. You will be scared of her. You won't be able to sleep at night. She looks so demonic. But she was, and she's very, very powerful. She's the one who can control and wipe off the demon from the world. So it's not that women have, female forms have been given, have been recognized as equal in the Hindu tradition. And they have been, right now, this is not the state though, but they have been given that kind of stature. At least initially that was the way it was. And I don't know so much about Christianity, so I can't really say so much.

No, I think that what you're describing is only happening among what you might call the ancient religions. Certain brands of Druidism, Zoroastrianism, Hindu religion, so on and so forth. Definitely not Christianity. No, absolutely not. But with that said, this is a paradox here. So within these kinds of proto-monotheistic, by that I don't mean anti-monotheistic, they are actually giving rise to monotheism or excellence.

comes a certain kind of equality, ethical equality, between men and women, between male and female, to the extent that in the mythological symbolism it looks as if they have abolished the difference between the two, such that you get genderless gods, genderless demons, so on and so forth. But how much does it really translate to actual society that succumbs to this religion? Does it actually become enlightening or rather another what you might call to be

a scheme to keep the anti-female under the control, under the pretext that, yes, we have some goddesses, by the way. See from how the mythology has evolved in India, even in the stories that we have, the condition of women has only gone down and down. For example, if you see Ramayana, what happened to Sita, the way she was dealt with, even

though she was the incarnate of a goddess by the husband was a very horrible horrible thing actually then what happened in Mahabharata to Draupadi also shows the state of women where she was actually she she was do you know the story of Mahabharata and I have read the story but I can't remind us what the exact story Draupadi was married to five brothers like five brothers had one wife Draupadi and the brothers were called Pandavas and they were

they had cousin brothers who were called Koravs and Pandavas and Koravs were they were kind of fighting for the same kingdom. They wanted the same kingdom. So what happened was that there is this game called, I don't know what it is called in English. It's a game of dice where you roll the dice and And in that rolling game, the Pandavas lost their wife. They actually put her on a bid. And they lost their wife to the Kauravs. And then the Kauravs, they actually pulled her hair and they tried to take off her clothes.

And there was a lot of whatever happened and there was a battle and all. But the state of women have constantly been, like it's degrading with every mythology that is coming up. So it has gone from bad to worse to worse now. So I don't know. It's not, I don't think that women have been portrayed in an equal way since very, very, very long. May I actually ask you a very frank and probably disconcerting question? Do you really think, you see, India, perhaps the greater Persia and also the greater India, have always been portrayed

as peaceful population, where they have respect for the rules of ethics, not rules of the law, rules of ethics, such that we can make a better life for ourselves, for women and people in need. But the more I have seen, and of course, the reason I'm actually asking you this question because I have actually lived in India. If you are going to- Shereza, you've lived so many places. There's this like constellation of Malaysia and that

ends at Connecticut. But there's this period between- The worst place on the planet. If I may ask, do you really think that we have been honest? with each other? Do you really think that we have accomplished anything? To be honest with you, I really think we haven't. I think that Indian society, so as Persian, is extremely male dominated, thuggish, so on and so forth, so as Persian one. I completely agree with you on this.

Guys, we have no hope. I think that you should go back, play your video game sessions. Just think about that you could win Red Dead Redemption 2 instead of winning the revolution yet to come. Because you are not going to win the revolution. I think we might as well try to engage and see what happens. It's like experimenting with it. Experimenting. No, it will probably turn out bad. Maybe it'll even turn out with more authoritarianism. But still trying. The world is really obscene, to be honest with you.

I am a revolutionary. I want a mixture of Russian communism and American revolution, both at the same time, which is a lot. But I think this world is just goddamn obscene. I just will revel in it to be burned. And never resurrected again. You sound like Schopenhauer.

Yeah, unfortunately, I'm more like Kant with a pessimistic side. Schopenhauer. I was going to say, yeah, that's Schopenhauer. Yeah, or Bon Hartmann, going to the extreme. But can any of you tell me what is really good to retain this world that we live in? What is the worth of it? If you're dead, you can't troll anyone. I mean the only good thing about this world is that you can troll so many people. That's the only greatest thing about this world.

Otherwise this world should be nuked out of the face of the galaxy. And I don't mean the planet. It is... this is an obscene world. We deserve better. The revolutionary task is to unmake this world first task in order to make a better world. For revolutionary always the idea is to imagine a better world in tandem with the understanding that

The impulse to think about a better world always comes with a frustration about the existing world, and hence an impulse to undo this world to make a better one. Raze, we still need to decide while we're all here on the readings for the next session. Yes, yes. Also, I have to play my video game and make dinner. Yes.

Who is going to be the victim? What is the reading next time? it'd be Augustine and Plotinus. Oh shit, that's really tough. I want to do Spinoza, so if I can claim that one. Whenever that. Who is going to go with Augustine and Aquinas? This is the ultimate hardcore student. Those people who go for Espinosa are just losers.

Oh. That's the easiest task. It's always the third book that people read. The first two are pretty tough. Okay, who's going to go with Augustine? That one? Be the man of Persia. Yeah, sure. Okay, we have one. We conned one person. So, what is the respondent? An Italian, please.

Oh, that fucking Italians are not here anymore. They have always retreated. They always retreated. They always get spooked too early. Oh, there's me left. I'm Italian. Oh, who is that? Okay, okay. We have an Italian now. I think I just ruined myself but yeah. Superb, fantastic. My apologies to my always come up with Italian jokes because I'm perishing. Okay, so we have our presentation respondents set for the next session.

And my apologies for off tangent comments throughout this week. I promise you that I will add 10 to 15 minutes to each session to compensate for this sin. and I don't want to hear from you anymore and any longer. I have very tasks to do. I have to play video games and do my gardening. Thank you very much. Love you.

Thanks Reza. Thank you Reza. Ciao, ciao. Bye bye. Bye Reza. Bye bye. Reza, can you one day when you have time, can we discuss the thing I wrote? Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. My apologies. Yes. No, to be honest with you, I have been, you should understand, I'm doing like four hours gardening every day these days very jealous i i want to leave new york city and move to a place like where you live actually i'm going to actually post some photos on twitter oh it's just like majestic look at this resum with the red flowers right oh yes it's like yeah exactly

It's one of that, exactly. I think between like Fabio working on a boat and you gardening, like this is what makes more sense these days. To be honest with you, it doesn't make sense in these days, but the thing is that any sort of philosopher should be also, should be two things. the full force of modernism against this kind of Agambenites, shetheads, for one, and two, being a good person who cherishes in the forces of mundane nature.

mundane nature. I didn't say spectacular nature, mundane nature. Like, you know, I just like to see a goddamn fucking bumblebee, the most stupidest species on the planet, flying around my head. That's a good thing. But I don't give it a bonus like a gumman. well have a wonderful week and uh stay stay safe and healthy i think you'll be okay though once this is over you will come to the party and we'll have some barbecue here

as long as they don't attack us with you know spears we're we're on your side ciao and love to you all bye bye bye bye bye Rizzo bye bye