5:01 Discussion between Damien and Jonathan begins. 7:56 The distant past and the distant future the coherence breaks down and becomes space for projection for fantasy and sci-fi stories. 8:38 Jonathan talks about his article on how Aliens and they’re relation to Medieval thinking. 9:33 making The Matrix the opening topic 10:33 Damien on the 1st Matrix being like a religious experience in 1999, at what he says was the height of secular times, for himself and the world. 12:39 Jonathan - the phenomenon of people knowing where they were when they first saw The Matrix. Narrative frames reality. The film was the beginning of a shift. The Matrix is upside-down Platonism. 14:18 which is better, reality or Matrix? In the Matrix you can do whatever you want. 15:08 Jonathan talks about Ready Player One. 15:26 Damien talks about William Gibson’s “Neuromancer” 16:44 - the year 1999 the apex of secularity 17:55 Damien talking about the latest Matrix film, thinks the Wachowski’s don’t like or understand the symbolism of their original film. 18:51 Jonathan pans also pans the film and the 2nd and 3rd films also. Wonders what happened. 19:23 Jonathan - the original Matrix forced people to consider meaning and language as a part of the manner we interact with reality. Post-modernism is a way back into re-enchantment because it understands the causality of language and meaning. Story is inevitable, narrative participates in causality. 21:09 the relationship between mysticism and post-modernism John Vervaeke 22:20 Jonathan on Jacques Derrida ending his life as a mystic. 22:34 can sci-fi fill the need for a new mythos or will the mythos always come out of Christianity? 23:36 Pageau - for a community you need connection a core story to unite, but on the fringe, you can have all the other stories. The fringe is where sci-fi at, it can re-awaken but not unite. 25:46 Damien - sci-fi is science attempt to create a mythos because it damaged the mythos society had before. Frankenstein. Attempting the answer the question, if man is not created by God, what is a human being? Star Trek was Medieval in symbolism, but that dream falls apart later. 27:30 Jonathan - Utopian vs Dystopian science fiction. Voltaire’s story Le Micromegas. Utopian giants and aliens make us look bad and teach us, basically they are angels, gods. Dystopian Frankenstein, the technical world is leading toward destruction. 29:10 Damien - talks about the viral Tweet “Torment Nexus” meme. 29:52 Jonathan and Damien talk about Elon Musk calling his satellite company “Starlink”, which is similar to “Skynet” and Facebook using Neal Stephenson’s name for a dystopian virtual reality “metaverse”, 30 years ago. 30:37 Jonathan - Star Trek started as enlightenment project, like Voltaire’s Micromegas, it was a utopian world. Then post-modernism made Star Trek look like colonialism. 32:09 Damien - all heroic, techno-utopian sci-fi with the scientist going into the future to solve our problems has been replaced by anti-colonialist ideas. 33:58 Jonathan - How to Train Your Dragon - the dragons are the good guys and the men are the monsters by the end. 36:06 Damien - the alien as a lover, not a monster. 36:45 Jonathan and Damien - The Shape of Water. The monster that we root for. The core identity vs the embodiment of our desires. The danger of elevating desires over core identity in stories. 40:56 Damien on Jungian mindfulness and the dangers for people without strong identity. 42:10 Jonathan - traditionally people only did mindfulness/meditation in a community with strong disciplines because these practices are very dangerous. On the other hand, post-modernism considers are hierarchy as tyrannical, so there is mysticism without those safeguards. 44:32 Jonathan - Post-modernism understands the fringe but doesn’t know how to reintegrate them into the larger story. 48:03 Damien - this discussion is changing his mind about the future of sci-fi. He sees transhumanism, AI, uploading our being, cyberpunk. He foresees an increase in these themes being seen as what our future should be. 50:58 Jonathan - Parasitic storytelling - a pathological desire to replace all the heroes with some version of woke culture. 51:48 Jonathan - obsession with hybridity. The hybrid will become the mythological embodiment of intersectionality. Mixture will be seen as the good, anything with identity as being bad. 53:11 Jonathan - The Return of the King 54:20 Damien - Furry fandom in sci-fi world. More freedom in the metaverse. 55:36 Jonathan - Ready Player One is better than Matrix in showing us what the future is. 57:18 Damien - there is also a desire for tradition archetypal storytelling. 57:53 Jonathan - Christ’s story is the king who integrates the margins. 58:45 Jonathan - God’s Dog is an example of how the margins can be integrated 59:18 Damien - he is rethinking how the Christ archetype could have a strong place in today’s story. 59:43 Jonathan - it’s the surprise that as Christianity is taken out of the public discussion, Christ’s story is put into everything, especially Marvel stories. The smart people are using this story of self-sacrifice as a Parasitic twist of this story. 1:01:36 - Damien - when the archetype is changed the story doesn’t work 1:02:29 - Jonathan - defines Parasitic storytelling as taking the archetype just enough to serve a purpose, but not enough to stop recognizing it. When they go to far, it doesn’t work. 1:03:25 - Damien - because they are bad at myth, they keep having to go back to the original stories. 1:04:00 - Jonathan - stories that work are stories that embody the fringe, but it has a cost in social breakdown. A traditional example is a fringe character is transformed like the “Princess and the Frog” or “Beauty and the Beast”. An inversion of the story is Shrek, where the princess becomes an Ogre instead of Shrek becoming a prince.
1) when it comes to symbolism in storytelling I usually just wait for pageau to have his turn.. this really is an exception 2) was born 1992 so postmodernism is engraved in me however i live and act out my beliefs. Hearing pageaut talk about derrida’s monster in a positive light helps me sort out a whole lot. Would love to see Pageau try to stealman postmodernism for 60 minutes straight. It would do wonders for grounding my beliefs, if that makes sense… 3) been listening to Pageau for 3/4 years now and it’s hilarious to me how an orthodox youtuber can trigger “something” in an ex devoted catholic. May be just a generational thing but I truly believe those who can speak of faith in secular language do Gods work as much as saints used to in the past… just a thought.. as well as a sincere compliment to Pageau’s efforts
I'm much older than you and even Pageau, but he influenced me back in the direction of faith. Being able to see "story", "narrative" as an essential participant in so called reality is a gateway back to the ancient ways of believing, because it is a reasonable way to see truth in what I would have once dismissed as myth. When you understand that narrative is essential, then myth can be seen as a truth as real as the bricks and mortar surrounding me. The story of the tortoise and the hare for example are truth, the ways this truth works it's way out in the world become the shadows we see animated before our eyes. Those shadows only dance because they are illuminated by the light of the underlying narrative.
@@ButterBobBriggs read every single word you wrote as true. You’ve mentioned being influenced in the direction of faith rather than converting back. Since you’ve mentioned your age, do you find peace in your beliefs as you have described them? (I’ll understand if the question is in too personal to write down on youtube :) )
Born in '95, ex devoted protestant. I can relate lol I don't know what to think about the post modern/modernist dilemma. I feel like both and neither are honestly true. I feel like there has to be an ideology that efficiently guides the human experienc, but that it's also ultimately unobtainable and that we ought to extract what we can from the natural selection of various modes of being without limiting ourselves to one in particular. If we can't be right then how can we best be wrong... This is probably the biggest obstacle for me as a deconverted christian to reclaim my faith. Thanks to thinkers like pageau and Peterson and bishop and vervaeke, I'm really starting to see the truth in the text. I think we need the truth in the text. But at the same time, we are talking about a dogma that confines itself to one hierarchy of value developed solely through the divine revelations of heteronormative men. I don't see how that's in any way sufficient and so I also can't devote myself to any text. It's one thing when the culture is confined to a society of only a couple thousand where gender norms are much more integral to survival, but we are at a point where civilization has evolved to incorporate billions of people all with much more autonomy over themselves and society. Fringe personalities that exist in like 1/100 people might have once only added up to a few dozen, but now we are talking about millions of people who are being disenfranchised by the dogmatic systems. Natural law theory applies to women just as much as it does men, but it's still an incredible struggle for them to gain spiritual influence over the systems in place. I'm stuck in limbo. I can't accept any of the options I've been presented with, but I'm also far from being capable of generating a new one. My main influences are Christianity, Greek/roman philosophy, Spinoza, and daoism. Can I take the best from those to incorporate into my own experience? Is that sustainable? Is that a reasonable path forward for humanity as a whole? Can we ever truly become the author of our own matrix? So many questions.
@@martinbajsic4836 I'm in the process of converting to Orthodoxy. Lord willing, I'll be chrismated on Holy Saturday this year. Yes, I find a great deal of peace in my faith.
@@He.knows.nothing in the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox church, during the time when the priest is asking God to make the wine and the bread become the Body and Blood of Christ - the priest prays: "REMEMBERING, therefore, this saving commandment and all that has been done for our sake: the Cross, the tomb, the Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into heaven, the enthronement at the right hand, and the SECOND AND GLORIOUS COMING AGAIN. The priest and all those present are "remembering" the second coming as if it has already happened. The others have already historically happened, but the priest says he's remembering the second coming. We are outside of time and space and REMEMBERING the second coming. The whole service, the whole liturgy, the whole church is outside of time, in an eternal story that we get to participate in and celebrate together each Sunday. Not just those present, but also there are the saints, the heavenly beings, all together at one time celebrating with no regard to the specific time. We are parts of, members of, limbs of the eternal body of Christ. The whole human race has been joined with the Divine Trinity because in Christ, the human has been united with the Divine in his story. He is the King who invites the beggar to dinner, and it's a dinner we pre-Celebrate and remember celebrating as if it already happened each Sunday. Yes, Christianity sounds so male centered, but if you go to the church, you will find Mary largely painted above the altar, without her flesh, her human flesh and blood that she gave to her son Christ, heaven and earth could not have been united. The whole Liturgy is a celebration of the uniting of heaven and earth, time and space. It's much better than the Matrix that you can't actually live in, it is the story you can live in and one you can die in peace in and one where the church will continue to pray for you after your dead.
The Critical Drinker has a series of videos titled “Why Modern Movies Suck” that nails a lot of these issues directly - in his own inimitable and somewhat less scholarly style :)
Po in Kung Fu Panda may start out lazy but he DOES practice in the end. It's really a spin on Rocky and Karate Kid. It's Rey in the sequel Star Wars movies who is the entitled Mary Sue.
There's still a bit of a fast forward though, which is part of being the chosen dragon warrior. It's built into the structure of his character. The other 4 (5?) main guys have been training for far longer but are nowhere close to Po after his relatively short training.
I think Po was also more symbolically representing what the others were missing, which was truly embodying the spirit and so it didn't matter how hard they trained, if they were incapable of mastering the spiritual, no level of physical devotion will be in itself sufficient. Edit: but there also seems to be the idea present that the reverse is not true, for if one masters the spiritual they understand the physical on a more intimate level, giving them a sort of fast pass to the heights of physical prowess
Agreed, Po turns his sloth and gluttony into his Kung Fu, I'd argue it is swallowing the hybrid. Instead of divine or Dues Ex, Po realizes there isn't a great mystery to success, there is training and doing. Although I'd agree there is something bizarre in how he never changes physically. For all his training, discipline, and exhuberance, there's no outward change.
Awesome and so enjoyable - it's got to be one of your best discussions. I hope you will all reconvene soon and expand on what you started here. And bonus points for the Big Lebowski reference @1:05:42 :p
Great talk. I listened very attentively when the question of what sci-fi is needed for the 21st century was raised and I laughed when I heard the speculations on the return of the king, because that's exactly the kind of SciFi I have been writing. (f.ex. "The Bad Jack" on Amazon) Thanks for the encouragement.
Three great minds (incl the very needed role of the spaceholder and facilitator) coming together: Sparkle, inspires and ignites . Thank you 🙏 .. much appreciated
I really wish I could be a physical part of this conversation because I'm somewhat frustrated by it. I find myself finding Jonathan's position different from Damien's, and I prefer Jonathan's, but I don't hear acknowledgment of this difference. Damien is attracted to the hybrid and the AI, and the anticipation of the coming technology to expand our range of activities, while Jonathan keeps coming back to the Return Of The King, and it's crystallization of the idea of returning to normalization, mythos, and grounded human values. My favorite science fiction/fantasy writer is Ursula K LeGuin, who I'm surprised hadn't been mentioned at all in this discussion, except obliquely when Jonathan referred to the feminist science fiction of the 60s and 70s. In an essay LeGuin wrote that popular science fiction seems to embody the trope of linear progress and historic evolution, of going into outer space and branching out into millions of planets and cultures, never coming back to Earth. She suggests that this is an especially male trope, and sometimes, male fans can be particularly dogmatic about it. She likewise notes that fantasy usually embodies the contrasting trope of regeneration and return, and suggests it's more feminine. She even wrote a brilliant sci-fi book, Always Coming Home, about a future California community of people who don't go out into space, but rather stay grounded on Earth and re build society following a global catastrophic event which is never explained. She said that fanboys hated this book because it rejected the theme of eternal progress. The Return of the King is a semenal work in the fantasy tradition of healing, regeneration and return to human spiritual essence.
@@hemsicle3237 the example that sprang immediately to mind was WALL-E. Especially as it brings in the idea of humanity growing so “fat dumb and happy” that they almost forget the desire to return to earth at all, and the AI that wants to keep them from going back. It’s interesting to note how Pixar films seem to overwhelmingly favor traditional story patterns (in contrast to much of what has been coming out of Disney “proper”) and how much more impact and staying power those films have as a result.
This talk and especially Damien Walter's comments very much overlap with my book Mythopoesis and the Modern World, where I deal with creative imagination, especially sci-fi and fantasy, in reference to the Imaginal World (Henry Corbin) / Collective Unconscious (Carl Jung). I use the term Mythopoesis - myth-making - which was popularised by Tolkien. Examples of modern-day myth-making (or epic storytelling) include Lord of the Rings, Foundation, Dune, and so on. Also, I'm in the process of writing a sci-fi series, and what Jonathan Pageau says about hybrid beings, and races and characters on the margins, very much resonates with my own appreoach here. Interestingly the current Star Wars series The Book of Bobba Fett is very much about outlaws, bounty hunters, and so on who live on the margins of the larger galactic society. A lot of sci-fi is very much along this theme. Also the Netflix series Jonathan mentioned about the animal hybrid children - Sweet Tooth - the whole idea of animal human hybrids, which again feature in my sci-fi writing as well. Excellent and very relevant video discussion.
@@thomaswalmsley8959 You understand that in several interviews Musk literally uses the danger of AI as a selling point for his product, right? Like many times over? He's the grandson of a card carrying technocrat, a political movement to replace politicians with scientists and experts who will run the world based on a centralized technological system that monitors every inch of every individual's life.... and Musk applies alot of that same rhetoric. He's using the threat of AI in the same way so many NGOs and corporations are using climate change.
@@efleishermedia I haven't seen musk sell the lace as some counteracting to Generalized Ai, and I've watch a fair bit of musk. But If you have those videos please post it. Usually he refers to as something thay would reduce technology lag time interfacing and potentially help curing forms of paralysis. The fact he's a technocrat has not much to do with the OP in my estimate, I'd probably a technocrat if it's shown to be more effective than democracy and I'm a pretty big proponent of democracy I'd like to think.
This was a great talk, thanks to you all! Btw the Spotify and apple podcast versions weren’t uploaded correctly …also jonathon, speed racer is not mediocre
Sorry David, I f'n love your work and love you, but the intro's to these conversations I find a bit annoying because it feels like spoilers! I just want to start at the beginning of the conversation, I don't want the spoiler summary all at the beginning!! If there could be some obvious way to skip to the actual beginning of the conversation in RW videos I would really appreciate it. You're the best, cheers. :)
Look at youtube analytics and see that the vast majority aren't like that, and drop out within seconds. Having something to grab them is essential to reaching new people who have effectively infinite content at hand with increasingly less time to play with new sources of it.
Unfortunately Papercut is right, the number of people who drop off after the first 30.seconds is nearly 50%. Maybe we could put a timecode for the end of the intro
Really liked Denis Villeneuve's Dune - hope he sticks the landing in Part II - both Lynch and Jodorowsky missed the point of the book in making Paul an actual Messiah figure whereas Herbert intended his story to be a cautionary tale about charismatic leaders and Messiah figures and how they can create chaos and destruction they can't then control.
One could argue that Villeneuve misses the opportunity for the psychedelia - many Dune readers would argue that this is the point. Here Jodorowsky would have excelled. Dune (2021) is earnest and sits in cannon of post 9/11 hollywood cinema in my view, and remarkable for its sound design but otherwise just an enjoyable watch that honours the narrative. It lacks the completeness of say The FellowshipOTR, Dune very much feels like the first part of a trilogy rather than a complete film.
@@J.M.Stigner Jodo didn't even read dune and his conception of Paul was as an actual messiah. He missed the point and the boat. He's a megalomaniac narcissist who even pushed his own child son to the edge in the feverdream project.
Is there a correlation with the breakdown of traditional story telling and many modern day sci-fi/fantasy authors inability to complete their stories? I can think of at least 5 big modern fantasy stories currently stuck in limbo because their authors can't complete them i.e. Game of thrones being the obvious one. It seems to me in the post-modern soup where everything is grey, heroes are villians and villans have sympatheitc back stories that authors no longer have a telos. They are so infected with nihilism that they can't bring their stories to an end because how do you make an ending that people will want to read when you have created a world that is cynical, suspicious of all its characters motivations and lacking any real meaning?
Good question. Yes and no. There is some extra difficulty in reengineering a traditional Hero's Journey with modern values, over just telling it straight. I think GRRM was doing this, and would have delivered, but being overtaken by the tv show is just disastrous for motivation. He's also aged and might simply think he has better things to do with his final years. The other writers like Rothfus just don't have the chops to finish what they took on.
@@DamienWalter Martin is a victim of his own ambition imo... it was originally meant to be a trilogy of books but he kept adding new complexities, characters, plot lines to a point where he was left with a labyrinth that required more and more books to solve.. and after decades of toiling on that one series - he had a very diverse SFF and horror portfolio before it - he is likely just dead tired of it..
Someone has addressed this from a religious perspective. I think maybe Paul Vanderclay In short it was something to the effect of (describing reality so accurately an almost perfect simulation of it that it cannot be The Truth. You do not go through revelation mimicking or simulating life. That just gets you stuck in constant revolution (which is literally GOT) revelation is “mimicking” following God, The Word
@Justin Van Rossen what you fail to address is the modern equivalent of Jesus having a Twitter account. Or the Buddha etc, etc. The human condition doesn't exist in a story vacuum. Even GOT doesn't address the constant running to the throne the characters must do as bodily functions daily. You speak of Nihilism as a choice one makes, which to me is the equivalent to telling yourself that same story about magicians or clowns, that your active ignorance to the reality is considered valid for the social payoff (believingin the trick). Now, while this may be true that the social payoff holds sway, it certainly doesn't hold true that it holds Truth, and much, if not all, of a Nihilistic worldview is centered on the difficulty of rectifying what is *true* . It's hard to write the heroes journey when you know you're not a hero, and no one you know is a hero, and you learn the fallacies and imperfections of all those held up as heroes by your society (in the perfectionist story sense). This is where we are socially now, and I think the responsibility is on those who feel the need to say that we ever DID have such heroes or ever _could_ be so perfect.
would've been more interesting if Pageau was discussing this topic with someone who affirms futurism and transhumanism.. he and Walters were mostly agreeing with one another here..
Pageau's warning at minute 56:45 actually reminds me of precisely what a previous guest of Rebel Wisdom has advocated for (in the video "Hacking Consciousness, Joshua Fields" around the 11th minute): "...some studies have come out that show that seeing a coral reef - or one study in particular - seeing a coral reef decimated in virtual-reality - and 1 experience leads to the user actually having a marked reduction in things like; energy consumption, increase in recycling, months and months down the line from that single experience. You can use the same VR for empathy" We should be very mindful of the tendency to participate in social engineering precisely by those within the Rebel Wisdom space as well.
The Matrix shows the dicotomy of the deincarnated world we live in, there is dicotomy between the world of ideas and the world of the passions, even the word "Matrix" to reffer to the imaginary world is inverted from the traditional notion, matrix is the womb of the mother, the earth the sensible world is the mother, call it gaia, pachamama, mother of God, yet in the movie the matrix is not that but a parasitical machine made for the world of abstractions, is actually a world that tries to mimic the father symbolism. That movie simply shows how disociated we are as humans, and how profoundly traumatized we are. The separation of soul and body made manifest in a movie.
Always great to watch Jonathan, but taking on sci-fi is especially close to my heart. If you're interested in my take on Dune, you can find it on my channel.
What changed is that The Watchovksy transitioned so their angst again the "fake" society is gone so the matrix changed to represent something else that doesn't longer connect to the original Matrix.
Superb, again very relatable to whats going on in the arts. Finding something that scales right through culture coherently seems prevalent to me, and I think what both Damien and Jonathan mention about the cannibalisation of story telling is going to ramp up, can be seen in the arts too. I've noticed a lot of what i call "control Z" mentality to creativity, where considered errors can be completely eradicated from an image, leaving no history of the errors that went into making the image/symbol. A bit like seeing the world through a single lens, which is ubiquitous, invariably all you're doing is flattening out the time across a frame, another pattern I have noticed since the universality of digital photography. The single lens frame doesn't really give a good visual account of the anxiety virtually all humans encounter with binocular vision, as Cezanne noticed 120 plus years ago. How do we make symbols that represent the visual cacophony most of us have in our minds eye? If truth is indeed a noble venture, then our art needs to convey continuity in its complexity? Fantastic, really made me reconsider a lot of my thinking, thanks.
'We have suppressed the true world: what world survives? the apparent world perhaps?... Certainly not! In abolishing the true world we have also abolished the world of appearance!' - Nietzsche, 'Twilight of the Idols', 1888
I think everyone does "Parasitic Storytelling" to some degree because we naturally want to preach our own perspectives and values. Even when something is built upon a question, the author needs some fraction of an answer to make the story interesting. Even introducing a theme or trope provides some kind of an answer when you end the book (even if it isn't intended) because you see how the trope spans out or the trope and its antithesis and the relationship between the two and how they develop differently. You can't have story without theme or tropes, it's a necessity of structure. Even when you try to make a story without theme, they naturally pop up through perspective of the reader and their values/experiences or the values/experiences of the author springing up subconsciously. The conversation about Post-Modernism and seeing structure as tyrannical/oppressive opposed to going forward from the deconstruction to reconstruction is interesting, at least to me. Because I see structure as unavoidable. You can choose your kind of structure through numerous spectrums and graphs which are dictated by values/experiences/beliefs/morals, but to avoid structure completely is madness and death, at least from my perspective.
Yes, the monks working together…….somehow connects everything, visible and invisible……some of us go to islands where still the community lies within the seawalls……islands as monastery…..the invisible inevitably is incorporated…..
I think the most important gift we can give to the generations below us, is to give them the option to always opt out of these systems of coercive control, that is the key thing for me, sure ppl want a tattoo today, then tomorrow they regret it, same goes for the matrix, the metaverse, transhumanism, ppl want it, but they don't even realize they also want to opt out.
JR and JBP were talking about categories breaking down and it came up in this convo on a number of fronts…. kids sci fi is an interesting one and in terms of category break down the prime example is Pokémon…. You guys should get Chris Kavanagh, the Irishman In Japan on to talk about the role of manga and anime in Japanese culture. (PS: I find it fascinating that manga and anime seemed to be an obsession of Ron Watkins)
For me it is about the continuation. This is my third (3rd) life trying to get back to Shasta and now I finally realize it isnt necessary. I was here to develope a universal concept of MySelf and I have. This is Me. This is My Peronality, My Ego, My Mind, and My Spirit. I know Myself and I like me. I don't need a savior or a leader or a tribe. I manage MySelf now. Thanks for videos O:) And if any silver haired, bearded, blue eyed beings spot me from their ship, proceed without me. I dont need a ship O:)
Sword art online actually came out before ready player one. I thought it was obviously trying to play off of that idea, and I remember thinking to myself I wouldn't mind "logging in" even if said consequences would happen; the premise is that if you die in the game you die in real life.
59:17 this is a cool moment. He is realizing the rebuttal to Brett Weinstein's assertion that all previous myths or religious beliefs are insufficient for the unique challenges of the present and future. It has been thousands of years of unique challenges of present and future.
So glad I listened. To me where getting setup for a revealed truth no doubt. Perhaps biblical in proportions. I miss my marvel characters from the 70s. They had these dark sides but used it to fuel their power for good. Ghost Rider, etc. I think the only character I can remember lately was Doc Oc being allowed the ability to control his dark side to transcend evil, and on screen a sort of exaltation of the good in us taking a back seat to our evil making it's sacrifice, having wanted reconciliation. Darth Vader, etc
Cyberspace is an interesting concept that, if achieved in reality, may give some people an adequate replacement for the spiritual world we've lost in the modern day, but for other people it could be the rude awakening of lack of discipline and a universal goal to work towards or God to worship that requires a pursuit thereof in the real world.
Blaming science for trying to make a mythology forgets it is people who make all this up, all the time. I am a Burning Man pioneer having watched thousands, tens of thousands of people develop heartfelt rituals with no prodding and just a few repetitions.
Another source of SciFi to look at is the future city of Mega City One in Judge Dredd, published in the comic 2000AD. It is a future post-nuclear apocalypse over-populated super city. It citizens are so densely packed and with no work are going crazy, and lots of its points are coming thru now. Such as a cult of ugliness and the normalisation of obesity etc.
Check out Kowloon Walled City and the book Chasing the Dragon. Jackie Pullinger is Christianity’s answer to Judge Dredd, he throws the Triad boss from the top floor of Peach Trees, Jackie P leads the triad boss on a path of redemption…. I’ll share a video in the reply….
Deconstruction and Post Modernism was a cerebral flirtation with transgressive aesthetics. It's rigid fascination with intellectual style and surface has ultimately turned out to be dead end. Reviewing structuralism today seems somehow quaint.
i heard the story was Matrix 4 reflected the directors recent decent into her own issues/underworld and her coming out as a dysfunctional human, not a woke person per se :)
47:04 On Metamodernism. Modernism is like a stupid question and postmodernism is like a clever yet stupid answer. I don't believe that some Hegelian synthesis of these will produce anything other than a stupid soup
It is as though the creators of the Matrix, were victims of their own creation, Perhaps it was so powerful, precisely because they did not even act consciously when making it,
Maybe Matrix 4 is/was supposed to be bad Compared to the 1st 3 in the series the 4th can be seen as having many reflections of the way the world is now, it references cities in our current world & stuff that has been going on with it too.
What always fascinates me, is how the stories that endure, are the one's that resonate at the deepest most ancient traditional level. It is unsophisticated to critique the bible, as just a made up bunch of stories, when they are based on careful observation of human nature and architypes. they endure, because they are stories that have evolved with human civilization, just as we have co-evolved with domestic cats and dogs. In some ways, they could not be more real, because they transcend the individual, they might be a description of reality itself.
I'm only half through, but if the religious undertones of the soul, heaven, and Jesus being that which is a conduit to humanity ( meaning in the world and not OF the world), aren't addressed as being extremely similar to the scientific goal of escapism from 'the world',, then I'm going to be very disappointed.
The irritation I have is that Jonathan is "Woke" to how the culture is manifesting changes in ideas and ideals and goes so far as to call these manifestations #propaganda# (intentional) as in the He Man narrative, yet fails to see Christian mythos as at least similar, if not intentionally the same. The fact that I cannot believe in a God that is just as fantastical as all the Sci Fi that's supposedly the antithesis of the Christian Goodness Project doesn't sit right with me.
@theOrchestra I've always considered *WOKE* to be a critical/sceptocal/questioning frame and can't rectify the nature of Christian Theology being superior to those having spiritual intuitions about issues within the nature of reality, and especially social reality, in their lives. It's as if there is no serious contemplation on the pre-christan narrative that existed before Christanity took hold, because as those like Jonathan and Peterson like to point out, we cannot truly reflect on such things because we are enmeshed in a Christian Culture currently (though they use this as a bludgeon against Atheist types to say, as Jonathan does here, that the common good is the allowance for dissidents).
How is there also not a similarity with the body replacement by AI and the body replacement (integration) by the Catholic performance of Communion? Isn't the same embodiment problem being addresses in that the Christ is seen as that which is good (better than) the 'Earthly' bodies of those in the congregation? Who's responsible for the cultural ideas of mystery, divinity, miracles as those things which are so much higher-order better than that which is 'of the evil god-forsaken world' realm. Reap what you sow indeed.
@@JH-ji6cj Excellent points, and the depth this discussion really required - I had overlooked the transubstantiation parallel of communion with the integration of AI for bionic humans.
Things That I Would Love to See But Will Never Happen #476 - Jonathan Pageau reacting to and analysing Doctor Who - The slain and risen god with 12 incarnations (disciples/zodiacal signs) and a yoni/lingam TARDIS console, and the contemporary heretical corruption...
Always keep in mind, that people will do irrational things, to prove they are alive, if they are boxed in and constrained into some kind of matrix life of box ticking mundanity, yes, for sure they will engage in irrational acts, to agitate their spirit, for better or worse, at least they will know they lived.
Wonderful free-flowing conversation guys, part one, and look forward to part two and more very soon. Would also like to share, a book, [Philosophical Posthumanism] from one of my personal favourite academic sages, Francesca Ferrando. Philosophical posthumanism is a movement relative to the 21st century and beyond, evolving out of 20th-century postmodernism and feminist activism. This book clarifies the varying transhumanist movements, and where posthumanism is similar and diverges. A movement not afraid to ask what human(s) are becoming with and through technology and in relation to planet mother earth (Gaia). Posthumanism is an embodied and embedded movement integrating spiritual wisdom such as "Taoism" with technology-human(s) and ecology. Recommendation for an open dialogue on "Protopian Futures, with Monika Bielskyte. Monika was quite recently at the forefront of the Hollywood film industry working as an independent futurist adviser on Science Fiction movies. Now she is a digital nomad, who travels all around the world inspiring participatory involvement in enliving culturally and locally specific Protopian futures. "The word "Protopia" was coined in a 2011 blog post by Wired's founding editor Kevin Kelly. Kelly's initial idea of the concept came from "pronoia", (the opposite of paranoia): an exuberant feeling that the entire world is rooting for you". Monika Bielskyte This quote comes from, an article by Monika, entitled, Preface: The "We" of Protopia Futures. Link: medium.com/protopia-futures/protopia-futures-framework-f3c2a5d09a1e Protopia moves beyond the false binary, dystopia vs utopia, that really are opposing sides of the same coin. Recently, heard "Protopia" mentioned during a discussion on The Stoa. The episode, Game B Dialogos w/ Jim Rutt, Jordan Hall, Tyson Yunkaporta, and Daniel Schmachtenberger. Link: th-cam.com/video/PKz9TAsqsRo/w-d-xo.html Peace and light from Sydney, Australia.
I enjoyed it; But I’m pretty easy to please as I generally just ride through any Syfy fantasy that has good special effects without over analyzing. I like to get caught up in it. But the first thing I did after I left the theater was get on TH-cam and look at all the interpretations of the matrix 4… helped to fill in a lot of the gaps for me.
I love the genre, but i dont like Matrix, i rather point to George Lucas THX 1138, 1927 Fritz Lang, Metropolis, Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, kubrick's clockwork orange, and the genio tv masterpiece MAX HEADROOM!!!
quite frankly this comment on this webular network of connected computers just mans to breafly express that my level of intellect is advanced - perhaps more advanced than yours. that is all quite frankly blah blah blah you get it I'm smart
Sorry I just don’t like Jonathan Pugeua . I’ve seen him smirk and laugh and scaff at what other people take very seriously too many times, it’s put a bad taste in my mouth he comes off as disrespectful.
In all seriousness, did I hear him say heard something like Meta was the future of humanity? That it will be key to real happiness & save the planet ?.. lol. (Maybe I was having audio hallucinations.) His over use of the term post modernism was annoying. Post modernism is basically transgressive aesthetics and little else. Fascination with surface and style is great for 14 year olds (sorry I found this whole discussion boring )
He is aware that he sometimes laughes at the most innapropriate moments and he refers to that in several of his videos. I don't think that's a problem :)
@@airmark02 I think you just didn't listen properly. Why would you, if you found this discussion boring to begin with? Also, post modernism is just aesthetics? How about no.
@@candaniel2 Post Modernism is a cultural trend. Not a revolutionary social movement. If anything it has solidified the professional managerial class and its strangled on elitist identity politics. Sure its fun to have a discursive discussion about deconstructing Disney, Mao, Transhumanism or whatever.... etc. Inequality & misery still remain despite the academic chatter.
5:01 Discussion between Damien and Jonathan begins.
7:56 The distant past and the distant future the coherence breaks down and becomes space for projection for fantasy and sci-fi stories.
8:38 Jonathan talks about his article on how Aliens and they’re relation to Medieval thinking.
9:33 making The Matrix the opening topic
10:33 Damien on the 1st Matrix being like a religious experience in 1999, at what he says was the height of secular times, for himself and the world.
12:39 Jonathan - the phenomenon of people knowing where they were when they first saw The Matrix. Narrative frames reality. The film was the beginning of a shift. The Matrix is upside-down Platonism.
14:18 which is better, reality or Matrix? In the Matrix you can do whatever you want.
15:08 Jonathan talks about Ready Player One.
15:26 Damien talks about William Gibson’s “Neuromancer”
16:44 - the year 1999 the apex of secularity
17:55 Damien talking about the latest Matrix film, thinks the Wachowski’s don’t like or understand the symbolism of their original film.
18:51 Jonathan pans also pans the film and the 2nd and 3rd films also. Wonders what happened.
19:23 Jonathan - the original Matrix forced people to consider meaning and language as a part of the manner we interact with reality. Post-modernism is a way back into re-enchantment because it understands the causality of language and meaning. Story is inevitable, narrative participates in causality.
21:09 the relationship between mysticism and post-modernism John Vervaeke
22:20 Jonathan on Jacques Derrida ending his life as a mystic.
22:34 can sci-fi fill the need for a new mythos or will the mythos always come out of Christianity?
23:36 Pageau - for a community you need connection a core story to unite, but on the fringe, you can have all the other stories. The fringe is where sci-fi at, it can re-awaken but not unite.
25:46 Damien - sci-fi is science attempt to create a mythos because it damaged the mythos society had before. Frankenstein. Attempting the answer the question, if man is not created by God, what is a human being? Star Trek was Medieval in symbolism, but that dream falls apart later.
27:30 Jonathan - Utopian vs Dystopian science fiction. Voltaire’s story Le Micromegas. Utopian giants and aliens make us look bad and teach us, basically they are angels, gods. Dystopian Frankenstein, the technical world is leading toward destruction.
29:10 Damien - talks about the viral Tweet “Torment Nexus” meme.
29:52 Jonathan and Damien talk about Elon Musk calling his satellite company “Starlink”, which is similar to “Skynet” and Facebook using Neal Stephenson’s name for a dystopian virtual reality “metaverse”, 30 years ago.
30:37 Jonathan - Star Trek started as enlightenment project, like Voltaire’s Micromegas, it was a utopian world. Then post-modernism made Star Trek look like colonialism.
32:09 Damien - all heroic, techno-utopian sci-fi with the scientist going into the future to solve our problems has been replaced by anti-colonialist ideas.
33:58 Jonathan - How to Train Your Dragon - the dragons are the good guys and the men are the monsters by the end.
36:06 Damien - the alien as a lover, not a monster.
36:45 Jonathan and Damien - The Shape of Water. The monster that we root for. The core identity vs the embodiment of our desires. The danger of elevating desires over core identity in stories.
40:56 Damien on Jungian mindfulness and the dangers for people without strong identity.
42:10 Jonathan - traditionally people only did mindfulness/meditation in a community with strong disciplines because these practices are very dangerous. On the other hand, post-modernism considers are hierarchy as tyrannical, so there is mysticism without those safeguards.
44:32 Jonathan - Post-modernism understands the fringe but doesn’t know how to reintegrate them into the larger story.
48:03 Damien - this discussion is changing his mind about the future of sci-fi. He sees transhumanism, AI, uploading our being, cyberpunk. He foresees an increase in these themes being seen as what our future should be.
50:58 Jonathan - Parasitic storytelling - a pathological desire to replace all the heroes with some version of woke culture.
51:48 Jonathan - obsession with hybridity. The hybrid will become the mythological embodiment of intersectionality. Mixture will be seen as the good, anything with identity as being bad.
53:11 Jonathan - The Return of the King
54:20 Damien - Furry fandom in sci-fi world. More freedom in the metaverse.
55:36 Jonathan - Ready Player One is better than Matrix in showing us what the future is.
57:18 Damien - there is also a desire for tradition archetypal storytelling.
57:53 Jonathan - Christ’s story is the king who integrates the margins.
58:45 Jonathan - God’s Dog is an example of how the margins can be integrated
59:18 Damien - he is rethinking how the Christ archetype could have a strong place in today’s story.
59:43 Jonathan - it’s the surprise that as Christianity is taken out of the public discussion, Christ’s story is put into everything, especially Marvel stories. The smart people are using this story of self-sacrifice as a Parasitic twist of this story.
1:01:36 - Damien - when the archetype is changed the story doesn’t work
1:02:29 - Jonathan - defines Parasitic storytelling as taking the archetype just enough to serve a purpose, but not enough to stop recognizing it. When they go to far, it doesn’t work.
1:03:25 - Damien - because they are bad at myth, they keep having to go back to the original stories.
1:04:00 - Jonathan - stories that work are stories that embody the fringe, but it has a cost in social breakdown. A traditional example is a fringe character is transformed like the “Princess and the Frog” or “Beauty and the Beast”. An inversion of the story is Shrek, where the princess becomes an Ogre instead of Shrek becoming a prince.
Thanks Bob!
30:10 JP says something isn't funny while laughing.
@@RebelWisdom call Robert Shepher to make a big talk about myths
I love Jonathan Pageau. He is such an important person for our time.
absolutely.
1) when it comes to symbolism in storytelling I usually just wait for pageau to have his turn.. this really is an exception
2) was born 1992 so postmodernism is engraved in me however i live and act out my beliefs. Hearing pageaut talk about derrida’s monster in a positive light helps me sort out a whole lot. Would love to see Pageau try to stealman postmodernism for 60 minutes straight. It would do wonders for grounding my beliefs, if that makes sense…
3) been listening to Pageau for 3/4 years now and it’s hilarious to me how an orthodox youtuber can trigger “something” in an ex devoted catholic. May be just a generational thing but I truly believe those who can speak of faith in secular language do Gods work as much as saints used to in the past… just a thought.. as well as a sincere compliment to Pageau’s efforts
I'm much older than you and even Pageau, but he influenced me back in the direction of faith.
Being able to see "story", "narrative" as an essential participant in so called reality is a gateway back to the ancient ways of believing, because it is a reasonable way to see truth in what I would have once dismissed as myth.
When you understand that narrative is essential, then myth can be seen as a truth as real as the bricks and mortar surrounding me.
The story of the tortoise and the hare for example are truth, the ways this truth works it's way out in the world become the shadows we see animated before our eyes. Those shadows only dance because they are illuminated by the light of the underlying narrative.
@@ButterBobBriggs read every single word you wrote as true. You’ve mentioned being influenced in the direction of faith rather than converting back. Since you’ve mentioned your age, do you find peace in your beliefs as you have described them? (I’ll understand if the question is in too personal to write down on youtube :) )
Born in '95, ex devoted protestant. I can relate lol
I don't know what to think about the post modern/modernist dilemma. I feel like both and neither are honestly true. I feel like there has to be an ideology that efficiently guides the human experienc, but that it's also ultimately unobtainable and that we ought to extract what we can from the natural selection of various modes of being without limiting ourselves to one in particular. If we can't be right then how can we best be wrong...
This is probably the biggest obstacle for me as a deconverted christian to reclaim my faith. Thanks to thinkers like pageau and Peterson and bishop and vervaeke, I'm really starting to see the truth in the text. I think we need the truth in the text. But at the same time, we are talking about a dogma that confines itself to one hierarchy of value developed solely through the divine revelations of heteronormative men. I don't see how that's in any way sufficient and so I also can't devote myself to any text. It's one thing when the culture is confined to a society of only a couple thousand where gender norms are much more integral to survival, but we are at a point where civilization has evolved to incorporate billions of people all with much more autonomy over themselves and society. Fringe personalities that exist in like 1/100 people might have once only added up to a few dozen, but now we are talking about millions of people who are being disenfranchised by the dogmatic systems. Natural law theory applies to women just as much as it does men, but it's still an incredible struggle for them to gain spiritual influence over the systems in place.
I'm stuck in limbo. I can't accept any of the options I've been presented with, but I'm also far from being capable of generating a new one. My main influences are Christianity, Greek/roman philosophy, Spinoza, and daoism. Can I take the best from those to incorporate into my own experience? Is that sustainable? Is that a reasonable path forward for humanity as a whole? Can we ever truly become the author of our own matrix?
So many questions.
@@martinbajsic4836 I'm in the process of converting to Orthodoxy. Lord willing, I'll be chrismated on Holy Saturday this year. Yes, I find a great deal of peace in my faith.
@@He.knows.nothing in the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox church, during the time when the priest is asking God to make the wine and the bread become the Body and Blood of Christ - the priest prays:
"REMEMBERING, therefore, this saving commandment and all that has been done for our sake: the Cross, the tomb, the Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into heaven, the enthronement at the right hand, and the SECOND AND GLORIOUS COMING AGAIN.
The priest and all those present are "remembering" the second coming as if it has already happened. The others have already historically happened, but the priest says he's remembering the second coming. We are outside of time and space and REMEMBERING the second coming. The whole service, the whole liturgy, the whole church is outside of time, in an eternal story that we get to participate in and celebrate together each Sunday. Not just those present, but also there are the saints, the heavenly beings, all together at one time celebrating with no regard to the specific time. We are parts of, members of, limbs of the eternal body of Christ. The whole human race has been joined with the Divine Trinity because in Christ, the human has been united with the Divine in his story. He is the King who invites the beggar to dinner, and it's a dinner we pre-Celebrate and remember celebrating as if it already happened each Sunday. Yes, Christianity sounds so male centered, but if you go to the church, you will find Mary largely painted above the altar, without her flesh, her human flesh and blood that she gave to her son Christ, heaven and earth could not have been united. The whole Liturgy is a celebration of the uniting of heaven and earth, time and space. It's much better than the Matrix that you can't actually live in, it is the story you can live in and one you can die in peace in and one where the church will continue to pray for you after your dead.
Fantastic! What a discussion. Thank you for this wonderful dialogue.
Yes this should be a regular topic! More of this please!!
Marvelous discussion from two interesting people. Thank you.
These kind of discussions really help me better understand why I don't like some of the modern movies out there and what problems lie at their roots.
The Critical Drinker has a series of videos titled “Why Modern Movies Suck” that nails a lot of these issues directly - in his own inimitable and somewhat less scholarly style :)
Cronenberg’s movie Existenz, also from 1999 had a very profound effect on my sense of reality.
sick movie
Oh yeah, I forgot about that one. Disturbing, but can be seen (if you want to) as a cautionary tale
Po in Kung Fu Panda may start out lazy but he DOES practice in the end. It's really a spin on Rocky and Karate Kid. It's Rey in the sequel Star Wars movies who is the entitled Mary Sue.
There's still a bit of a fast forward though, which is part of being the chosen dragon warrior. It's built into the structure of his character. The other 4 (5?) main guys have been training for far longer but are nowhere close to Po after his relatively short training.
I think Po was also more symbolically representing what the others were missing, which was truly embodying the spirit and so it didn't matter how hard they trained, if they were incapable of mastering the spiritual, no level of physical devotion will be in itself sufficient.
Edit: but there also seems to be the idea present that the reverse is not true, for if one masters the spiritual they understand the physical on a more intimate level, giving them a sort of fast pass to the heights of physical prowess
King Fu Panda is amazing
@@DevastationMtrsports I literally make a whole night out of it with Chinese takeout
Agreed, Po turns his sloth and gluttony into his Kung Fu, I'd argue it is swallowing the hybrid.
Instead of divine or Dues Ex, Po realizes there isn't a great mystery to success, there is training and doing.
Although I'd agree there is something bizarre in how he never changes physically. For all his training, discipline, and exhuberance, there's no outward change.
Wow this channel has really grown. I remember when there were only like 10k subs. I knew this channel would do well :)
Awesome and so enjoyable - it's got to be one of your best discussions. I hope you will all reconvene soon and expand on what you started here. And bonus points for the Big Lebowski reference @1:05:42 :p
Great talk. I listened very attentively when the question of what sci-fi is needed for the 21st century was raised and I laughed when I heard the speculations on the return of the king, because that's exactly the kind of SciFi I have been writing. (f.ex. "The Bad Jack" on Amazon) Thanks for the encouragement.
Awesome presentation.
Three great minds (incl the very needed role of the spaceholder and facilitator) coming together: Sparkle, inspires and ignites . Thank you 🙏 .. much appreciated
I really wish I could be a physical part of this conversation because I'm somewhat frustrated by it. I find myself finding Jonathan's position different from Damien's, and I prefer Jonathan's, but I don't hear acknowledgment of this difference.
Damien is attracted to the hybrid and the AI, and the anticipation of the coming technology to expand our range of activities, while Jonathan keeps coming back to the Return Of The King, and it's crystallization of the idea of returning to normalization, mythos, and grounded human values.
My favorite science fiction/fantasy writer is Ursula K LeGuin, who I'm surprised hadn't been mentioned at all in this discussion, except obliquely when Jonathan referred to the feminist science fiction of the 60s and 70s.
In an essay LeGuin wrote that popular science fiction seems to embody the trope of linear progress and historic evolution, of going into outer space and branching out into millions of planets and cultures, never coming back to Earth. She suggests that this is an especially male trope, and sometimes, male fans can be particularly dogmatic about it. She likewise notes that fantasy usually embodies the contrasting trope of regeneration and return, and suggests it's more feminine. She even wrote a brilliant sci-fi book, Always Coming Home, about a future California community of people who don't go out into space, but rather stay grounded on Earth and re build society following a global catastrophic event which is never explained. She said that fanboys hated this book because it rejected the theme of eternal progress.
The Return of the King is a semenal work in the fantasy tradition of healing, regeneration and return to human spiritual essence.
@@hemsicle3237 the example that sprang immediately to mind was WALL-E. Especially as it brings in the idea of humanity growing so “fat dumb and happy” that they almost forget the desire to return to earth at all, and the AI that wants to keep them from going back.
It’s interesting to note how Pixar films seem to overwhelmingly favor traditional story patterns (in contrast to much of what has been coming out of Disney “proper”) and how much more impact and staying power those films have as a result.
Thank you
Fascinating discussion. Thank you.
Excellent discussion, gentlemen.
Jay Dyer's analysis on Matrix 4 was good too.
Wonderful conversation!
great stuff - would love more for sure
This talk and especially Damien Walter's comments very much overlap with my book Mythopoesis and the Modern World, where I deal with creative imagination, especially sci-fi and fantasy, in reference to the Imaginal World (Henry Corbin) / Collective Unconscious (Carl Jung). I use the term Mythopoesis - myth-making - which was popularised by Tolkien. Examples of modern-day myth-making (or epic storytelling) include Lord of the Rings, Foundation, Dune, and so on. Also, I'm in the process of writing a sci-fi series, and what Jonathan Pageau says about hybrid beings, and races and characters on the margins, very much resonates with my own appreoach here. Interestingly the current Star Wars series The Book of Bobba Fett is very much about outlaws, bounty hunters, and so on who live on the margins of the larger galactic society. A lot of sci-fi is very much along this theme. Also the Netflix series Jonathan mentioned about the animal hybrid children - Sweet Tooth - the whole idea of animal human hybrids, which again feature in my sci-fi writing as well. Excellent and very relevant video discussion.
Should talk, read and watch Robert Shepehr
I've always thought it was interesting how you can see insane, unreal, ideas from science fiction 50 years ago becoming reality today.
We thought these stories were warnings, the people today think they are blueprints.
Very enjoyable, thanks.
Elon Musk - "Artificial intelligence is dangerous!!! Put my chips in your brain to stay safe!"
Great comment!
You understand the neural net and AI are two different categories of things, right? Like not remotely related I'm terms of functions.
@@thomaswalmsley8959 You understand that in several interviews Musk literally uses the danger of AI as a selling point for his product, right? Like many times over?
He's the grandson of a card carrying technocrat, a political movement to replace politicians with scientists and experts who will run the world based on a centralized technological system that monitors every inch of every individual's life.... and Musk applies alot of that same rhetoric.
He's using the threat of AI in the same way so many NGOs and corporations are using climate change.
@@efleishermedia I haven't seen musk sell the lace as some counteracting to Generalized Ai, and I've watch a fair bit of musk. But If you have those videos please post it. Usually he refers to as something thay would reduce technology lag time interfacing and potentially help curing forms of paralysis. The fact he's a technocrat has not much to do with the OP in my estimate, I'd probably a technocrat if it's shown to be more effective than democracy and I'm a pretty big proponent of democracy I'd like to think.
Thank you Jonathan, I had never understood why I never liked Shrek, despite being told that I should like it.
It's post-modern.
It’s true about the He-Man thing. He was replaced by two lesbians
The stories we tell open up the arena we live within. Another talk about Robert Anton Wilson is due. Illuminatus prepared the world we are in...
Thank you. A great poscast
This was a great talk, thanks to you all! Btw the Spotify and apple podcast versions weren’t uploaded correctly …also jonathon, speed racer is not mediocre
I was hoping blade runner 2 would of been mentioned
What a great movie that is
More like this please
Sorry David, I f'n love your work and love you, but the intro's to these conversations I find a bit annoying because it feels like spoilers! I just want to start at the beginning of the conversation, I don't want the spoiler summary all at the beginning!! If there could be some obvious way to skip to the actual beginning of the conversation in RW videos I would really appreciate it. You're the best, cheers. :)
starts around 2:45 for anyone else like me
Look at youtube analytics and see that the vast majority aren't like that, and drop out within seconds. Having something to grab them is essential to reaching new people who have effectively infinite content at hand with increasingly less time to play with new sources of it.
@@papercut7141 True, unfortunately.
I skip it too. I generally skip ahead in most conversations to also pass the intro talk. I just want to dig in.
Unfortunately Papercut is right, the number of people who drop off after the first 30.seconds is nearly 50%. Maybe we could put a timecode for the end of the intro
Really liked Denis Villeneuve's Dune - hope he sticks the landing in Part II - both Lynch and Jodorowsky missed the point of the book in making Paul an actual Messiah figure whereas Herbert intended his story to be a cautionary tale about charismatic leaders and Messiah figures and how they can create chaos and destruction they can't then control.
One could argue that Villeneuve misses the opportunity for the psychedelia - many Dune readers would argue that this is the point. Here Jodorowsky would have excelled. Dune (2021) is earnest and sits in cannon of post 9/11 hollywood cinema in my view, and remarkable for its sound design but otherwise just an enjoyable watch that honours the narrative. It lacks the completeness of say The FellowshipOTR, Dune very much feels like the first part of a trilogy rather than a complete film.
@@J.M.Stigner I think it a beautiful movie and it definitely has a mystical dimension.. director Villeneuve will be remembered as one of the greats..
@@J.M.Stigner Jodo didn't even read dune and his conception of Paul was as an actual messiah. He missed the point and the boat. He's a megalomaniac narcissist who even pushed his own child son to the edge in the feverdream project.
Is there a correlation with the breakdown of traditional story telling and many modern day sci-fi/fantasy authors inability to complete their stories? I can think of at least 5 big modern fantasy stories currently stuck in limbo because their authors can't complete them i.e. Game of thrones being the obvious one. It seems to me in the post-modern soup where everything is grey, heroes are villians and villans have sympatheitc back stories that authors no longer have a telos. They are so infected with nihilism that they can't bring their stories to an end because how do you make an ending that people will want to read when you have created a world that is cynical, suspicious of all its characters motivations and lacking any real meaning?
Excellent question/observation
Good question. Yes and no. There is some extra difficulty in reengineering a traditional Hero's Journey with modern values, over just telling it straight. I think GRRM was doing this, and would have delivered, but being overtaken by the tv show is just disastrous for motivation. He's also aged and might simply think he has better things to do with his final years. The other writers like Rothfus just don't have the chops to finish what they took on.
@@DamienWalter Martin is a victim of his own ambition imo... it was originally meant to be a trilogy of books but he kept adding new complexities, characters, plot lines to a point where he was left with a labyrinth that required more and more books to solve.. and after decades of toiling on that one series - he had a very diverse SFF and horror portfolio before it - he is likely just dead tired of it..
Someone has addressed this from a religious perspective. I think maybe Paul Vanderclay
In short it was something to the effect of (describing reality so accurately an almost perfect simulation of it that it cannot be The Truth. You do not go through revelation mimicking or simulating life. That just gets you stuck in constant revolution (which is literally GOT) revelation is “mimicking” following God, The Word
@Justin Van Rossen what you fail to address is the modern equivalent of Jesus having a Twitter account. Or the Buddha etc, etc. The human condition doesn't exist in a story vacuum. Even GOT doesn't address the constant running to the throne the characters must do as bodily functions daily. You speak of Nihilism as a choice one makes, which to me is the equivalent to telling yourself that same story about magicians or clowns, that your active ignorance to the reality is considered valid for the social payoff (believingin the trick). Now, while this may be true that the social payoff holds sway, it certainly doesn't hold true that it holds Truth, and much, if not all, of a Nihilistic worldview is centered on the difficulty of rectifying what is *true* .
It's hard to write the heroes journey when you know you're not a hero, and no one you know is a hero, and you learn the fallacies and imperfections of all those held up as heroes by your society (in the perfectionist story sense). This is where we are socially now, and I think the responsibility is on those who feel the need to say that we ever DID have such heroes or ever _could_ be so perfect.
This is wonderful, tradition connecting with far future is where the answer lies.
35 minutes in is a good way to phrase the noble savage trope.
would've been more interesting if Pageau was discussing this topic with someone who affirms futurism and transhumanism.. he and Walters were mostly agreeing with one another here..
Pageau's warning at minute 56:45 actually reminds me of precisely what a previous guest of Rebel Wisdom has advocated for (in the video "Hacking Consciousness, Joshua Fields" around the 11th minute):
"...some studies have come out that show that seeing a coral reef - or one study in particular - seeing a coral reef decimated in virtual-reality - and 1 experience leads to the user actually having a marked reduction in things like; energy consumption, increase in recycling, months and months down the line from that single experience. You can use the same VR for empathy"
We should be very mindful of the tendency to participate in social engineering precisely by those within the Rebel Wisdom space as well.
The Matrix shows the dicotomy of the deincarnated world we live in, there is dicotomy between the world of ideas and the world of the passions, even the word "Matrix" to reffer to the imaginary world is inverted from the traditional notion, matrix is the womb of the mother, the earth the sensible world is the mother, call it gaia, pachamama, mother of God, yet in the movie the matrix is not that but a parasitical machine made for the world of abstractions, is actually a world that tries to mimic the father symbolism. That movie simply shows how disociated we are as humans, and how profoundly traumatized we are. The separation of soul and body made manifest in a movie.
Always great to watch Jonathan, but taking on sci-fi is especially close to my heart. If you're interested in my take on Dune, you can find it on my channel.
Recommend your channel
@@stainedglasszealot6231
What changed is that The Watchovksy transitioned so their angst again the "fake" society is gone so the matrix changed to represent something else that doesn't longer connect to the original Matrix.
Superb, again very relatable to whats going on in the arts. Finding something that scales right through culture coherently seems prevalent to me, and I think what both Damien and Jonathan mention about the cannibalisation of story telling is going to ramp up, can be seen in the arts too. I've noticed a lot of what i call "control Z" mentality to creativity, where considered errors can be completely eradicated from an image, leaving no history of the errors that went into making the image/symbol. A bit like seeing the world through a single lens, which is ubiquitous, invariably all you're doing is flattening out the time across a frame, another pattern I have noticed since the universality of digital photography. The single lens frame doesn't really give a good visual account of the anxiety virtually all humans encounter with binocular vision, as Cezanne noticed 120 plus years ago. How do we make symbols that represent the visual cacophony most of us have in our minds eye? If truth is indeed a noble venture, then our art needs to convey continuity in its complexity? Fantastic, really made me reconsider a lot of my thinking, thanks.
'We have suppressed the true world: what world survives? the apparent world perhaps?... Certainly not! In abolishing the true world we have also abolished the world of appearance!'
- Nietzsche, 'Twilight of the Idols', 1888
I think everyone does "Parasitic Storytelling" to some degree because we naturally want to preach our own perspectives and values. Even when something is built upon a question, the author needs some fraction of an answer to make the story interesting. Even introducing a theme or trope provides some kind of an answer when you end the book (even if it isn't intended) because you see how the trope spans out or the trope and its antithesis and the relationship between the two and how they develop differently. You can't have story without theme or tropes, it's a necessity of structure. Even when you try to make a story without theme, they naturally pop up through perspective of the reader and their values/experiences or the values/experiences of the author springing up subconsciously.
The conversation about Post-Modernism and seeing structure as tyrannical/oppressive opposed to going forward from the deconstruction to reconstruction is interesting, at least to me. Because I see structure as unavoidable. You can choose your kind of structure through numerous spectrums and graphs which are dictated by values/experiences/beliefs/morals, but to avoid structure completely is madness and death, at least from my perspective.
great channel....sanity
In Neuromancer it is indeed "the Matrix" Case jacks into to do his spiritual work and communicate with the dead.
Yes, the monks working together…….somehow connects everything, visible and invisible……some of us go to islands where still the community lies within the seawalls……islands as monastery…..the invisible inevitably is incorporated…..
I think the most important gift we can give to the generations below us,
is to give them the option to always opt out of these systems of coercive control,
that is the key thing for me, sure ppl want a tattoo today, then tomorrow they regret it,
same goes for the matrix, the metaverse, transhumanism, ppl want it, but they don't even realize they also want to opt out.
Erik Davis needs to talk
JR and JBP were talking about categories breaking down and it came up in this convo on a number of fronts…. kids sci fi is an interesting one and in terms of category break down the prime example is Pokémon…. You guys should get Chris Kavanagh, the Irishman In Japan on to talk about the role of manga and anime in Japanese culture. (PS: I find it fascinating that manga and anime seemed to be an obsession of Ron Watkins)
For me it is about the continuation. This is my third (3rd) life trying to get back to Shasta and now I finally realize it isnt necessary. I was here to develope a universal concept of MySelf and I have. This is Me. This is My Peronality, My Ego, My Mind, and My Spirit. I know Myself and I like me. I don't need a savior or a leader or a tribe. I manage MySelf now. Thanks for videos O:)
And if any silver haired, bearded, blue eyed beings spot me from their ship, proceed without me. I dont need a ship O:)
Sword art online actually came out before ready player one. I thought it was obviously trying to play off of that idea, and I remember thinking to myself I wouldn't mind "logging in" even if said consequences would happen; the premise is that if you die in the game you die in real life.
59:17 this is a cool moment. He is realizing the rebuttal to Brett Weinstein's assertion that all previous myths or religious beliefs are insufficient for the unique challenges of the present and future.
It has been thousands of years of unique challenges of present and future.
❤️
So glad I listened. To me where getting setup for a revealed truth no doubt. Perhaps biblical in proportions.
I miss my marvel characters from the 70s. They had these dark sides but used it to fuel their power for good. Ghost Rider, etc. I think the only character I can remember lately was Doc Oc being allowed the ability to control his dark side to transcend evil, and on screen a sort of exaltation of the good in us taking a back seat to our evil making it's sacrifice, having wanted reconciliation. Darth Vader, etc
17:11 Neo's passport in the original Matrix movie expires on 9/11/01 - look it up!
Cyberspace is an interesting concept that, if achieved in reality, may give some people an adequate replacement for the spiritual world we've lost in the modern day, but for other people it could be the rude awakening of lack of discipline and a universal goal to work towards or God to worship that requires a pursuit thereof in the real world.
Blaming science for trying to make a mythology forgets it is people who make all this up, all the time. I am a Burning Man pioneer having watched thousands, tens of thousands of people develop heartfelt rituals with no prodding and just a few repetitions.
yes idolatry works that way
That's like saying I don't blame evil I blame people. It's metaphysics. Science is fine. It's a God, principality of scientism that's the issue.
Another source of SciFi to look at is the future city of Mega City One in Judge Dredd, published in the comic 2000AD.
It is a future post-nuclear apocalypse over-populated super city.
It citizens are so densely packed and with no work are going crazy, and lots of its points are coming thru now.
Such as a cult of ugliness and the normalisation of obesity etc.
Check out Kowloon Walled City and the book Chasing the Dragon. Jackie Pullinger is Christianity’s answer to Judge Dredd, he throws the Triad boss from the top floor of Peach Trees, Jackie P leads the triad boss on a path of redemption…. I’ll share a video in the reply….
th-cam.com/video/fYM2rH0Z1Ik/w-d-xo.html
Why did things go downhill from the first Matrix? Dark City 1998
Well this should be good
Deconstruction and Post Modernism was a cerebral flirtation with transgressive aesthetics. It's rigid fascination with intellectual style and surface has ultimately turned out to be dead end. Reviewing structuralism today seems somehow quaint.
50:50 The answer to transhumanism is right there in Dune and it's the Butlerian Jihad.
i heard the story was Matrix 4 reflected the directors recent decent into her own issues/underworld and her coming out as a dysfunctional human, not a woke person per se :)
47:04 On Metamodernism. Modernism is like a stupid question and postmodernism is like a clever yet stupid answer. I don't believe that some Hegelian synthesis of these will produce anything other than a stupid soup
If the human-animal hybrid turns out right, it will make the game Beyond Good & Evil way ahead of it's time.
It is as though the creators of the Matrix, were victims of their own creation,
Perhaps it was so powerful, precisely because they did not even act consciously when making it,
Paul Vander Klay sent me.
Maybe Matrix 4 is/was supposed to be bad
Compared to the 1st 3 in the series the 4th can be seen as having many reflections of the way the world is now, it references cities in our current world & stuff that has been going on with it too.
What always fascinates me, is how the stories that endure, are the one's that resonate at the deepest most ancient traditional level.
It is unsophisticated to critique the bible, as just a made up bunch of stories, when they are based on careful observation of human nature and architypes.
they endure, because they are stories that have evolved with human civilization, just as we have co-evolved with domestic cats and dogs.
In some ways, they could not be more real, because they transcend the individual, they might be a description of reality itself.
I'm only half through, but if the religious undertones of the soul, heaven, and Jesus being that which is a conduit to humanity ( meaning in the world and not OF the world), aren't addressed as being extremely similar to the scientific goal of escapism from 'the world',, then I'm going to be very disappointed.
I don’t know you, but I also want to have this conversation.
The irritation I have is that Jonathan is "Woke" to how the culture is manifesting changes in ideas and ideals and goes so far as to call these manifestations #propaganda# (intentional) as in the He Man narrative, yet fails to see Christian mythos as at least similar, if not intentionally the same. The fact that I cannot believe in a God that is just as fantastical as all the Sci Fi that's supposedly the antithesis of the Christian Goodness Project doesn't sit right with me.
@theOrchestra I've always considered *WOKE* to be a critical/sceptocal/questioning frame and can't rectify the nature of Christian Theology being superior to those having spiritual intuitions about issues within the nature of reality, and especially social reality, in their lives. It's as if there is no serious contemplation on the pre-christan narrative that existed before Christanity took hold, because as those like Jonathan and Peterson like to point out, we cannot truly reflect on such things because we are enmeshed in a Christian Culture currently (though they use this as a bludgeon against Atheist types to say, as Jonathan does here, that the common good is the allowance for dissidents).
How is there also not a similarity with the body replacement by AI and the body replacement (integration) by the Catholic performance of Communion? Isn't the same embodiment problem being addresses in that the Christ is seen as that which is good (better than) the 'Earthly' bodies of those in the congregation? Who's responsible for the cultural ideas of mystery, divinity, miracles as those things which are so much higher-order better than that which is 'of the evil god-forsaken world' realm. Reap what you sow indeed.
@@JH-ji6cj Excellent points, and the depth this discussion really required - I had overlooked the transubstantiation parallel of communion with the integration of AI for bionic humans.
This is aqesome
Things That I Would Love to See But Will Never Happen #476 - Jonathan Pageau reacting to and analysing Doctor Who - The slain and risen god with 12 incarnations (disciples/zodiacal signs) and a yoni/lingam TARDIS console, and the contemporary heretical corruption...
Always keep in mind,
that people will do irrational things, to prove they are alive,
if they are boxed in and constrained into some kind of matrix life of box ticking mundanity,
yes, for sure they will engage in irrational acts, to agitate their spirit, for better or worse, at least they will know they lived.
Wonderful free-flowing conversation guys, part one, and look forward to part two and more very soon.
Would also like to share, a book, [Philosophical Posthumanism] from one of my personal favourite academic sages, Francesca Ferrando. Philosophical posthumanism is a movement relative to the 21st century and beyond, evolving out of 20th-century postmodernism and feminist activism. This book clarifies the varying transhumanist movements, and where posthumanism is similar and diverges. A movement not afraid to ask what human(s) are becoming with and through technology and in relation to planet mother earth (Gaia). Posthumanism is an embodied and embedded movement integrating spiritual wisdom such as "Taoism" with technology-human(s) and ecology.
Recommendation for an open dialogue on "Protopian Futures, with Monika Bielskyte. Monika was quite recently at the forefront of the Hollywood film industry working as an independent futurist adviser on Science Fiction movies. Now she is a digital nomad, who travels all around the world inspiring participatory involvement in enliving culturally and locally specific Protopian futures.
"The word "Protopia" was coined in a 2011 blog post by Wired's founding editor Kevin Kelly. Kelly's initial idea of the concept came from "pronoia", (the opposite of paranoia): an exuberant feeling that the entire world is rooting for you". Monika Bielskyte
This quote comes from, an article by Monika, entitled, Preface: The "We" of Protopia Futures.
Link: medium.com/protopia-futures/protopia-futures-framework-f3c2a5d09a1e
Protopia moves beyond the false binary, dystopia vs utopia, that really are opposing sides of the same coin. Recently, heard "Protopia" mentioned during a discussion on The Stoa. The episode, Game B Dialogos w/ Jim Rutt, Jordan Hall, Tyson Yunkaporta, and Daniel Schmachtenberger. Link: th-cam.com/video/PKz9TAsqsRo/w-d-xo.html
Peace and light from Sydney, Australia.
Human animal hybrids….. once again Alex Jones was right! 🤣
Am I an outlier in thinking the Matrix 4 was a masterpiece? Anyone want to point me to a good critique that will pull the wool back from my eyes?
The first 30 minutes was drivel but it did get very watchable thereon in, I thought.
Anime manta ray robot
Critical Drinker lambasted it.
Definitely an outlier.
I enjoyed it; But I’m pretty easy to please as I generally just ride through any Syfy fantasy that has good special effects without over analyzing. I like to get caught up in it.
But the first thing I did after I left the theater was get on TH-cam and look at all the interpretations of the matrix 4… helped to fill in a lot of the gaps for me.
One hour is bullshit these days! Got channels chatting for 2 to 4 hours now. 😅
snow crash diamond age too
There is a group of farmers that are putting VR headsets on cattle to boost their well being while they live in an 8x5 pens.... Perspective
On matrix see Sophia Stewart. It was not their story !!!
The understanding of The Matrix and Metaverse in this conversation is so ass-backwards that I am embarrassed to watch this.
Rooting for the savage wild beast on the edge of civilization,
is rooting for your own demise.
-
Oof, I heard that.
I love the genre, but i dont like Matrix, i rather point to George Lucas THX 1138, 1927 Fritz Lang, Metropolis, Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, kubrick's clockwork orange, and the genio tv masterpiece MAX HEADROOM!!!
I think you're mistaking the Christian saviour for the pagan mythological hero..
quite frankly this comment on this webular network of connected computers just mans to breafly express that my level of intellect is advanced - perhaps more advanced than yours. that is all quite frankly blah blah blah you get it I'm smart
Haha "brilliant thinker" who can't accept a single bit of criticism.
Star Wars wasn't Christian lmfao
Sorry I just don’t like Jonathan Pugeua . I’ve seen him smirk and laugh and scaff at what other people take very seriously too many times, it’s put a bad taste in my mouth he comes off as disrespectful.
In all seriousness, did I hear him say heard something like Meta was the future of humanity?
That it will be key to real happiness & save the planet ?.. lol.
(Maybe I was having audio hallucinations.)
His over use of the term post modernism was annoying.
Post modernism is basically transgressive aesthetics and little else.
Fascination with surface and style is great for 14 year olds (sorry I found this whole discussion boring )
He is aware that he sometimes laughes at the most innapropriate moments and he refers to that in several of his videos. I don't think that's a problem :)
@@airmark02 I think you just didn't listen properly. Why would you, if you found this discussion boring to begin with? Also, post modernism is just aesthetics? How about no.
@@candaniel2 Post Modernism is a cultural trend.
Not a revolutionary social movement.
If anything it has solidified the professional managerial class and its strangled on elitist identity politics.
Sure its fun to have a discursive discussion about deconstructing Disney, Mao, Transhumanism or whatever.... etc.
Inequality & misery still remain despite the academic chatter.
are u European? nort americans are much more prone to smile and laugh during conversations which can come off as fake and inappropriate to others..