Cults, Conspirituality, and Critical Thinking with Matthew Remski

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Wes Regan (00:00):
WesRegan.

Troy Spreeuw (00:03):
Sorry about that, guys.

Wes Regan (00:04):
Thank you. My name is Wes Regan and I am the master of
the Vancouver lodge of educationand research. And the Vancouver
lodge of education research is aMasonic Lodge devoted to
advancing provocative ideas inthe interest of hosting
intellectually stimulating andrewarding discussion, often
relating to our own peculiarworld of Freemasonry, but not

(00:28):
always. And so I'm joining youtoday from the ancestral and
unseeded homelands of the humpAmin and Squamish speaking
peoples in what is also knowntoday as Burnaby. And I'm
grateful to be on this territoryas a settler and I am committed
to the cause of justice for andreconciliation with indigenous
peoples. And today's talk hasrelevance in this regard, as it

(00:51):
may likely touch on issues atthe heart of colonization, which
relate to ideas of race beliefs,and bodily purity and bodily
superiority and privilege, allof which are defining features
of conspiratuality. I'm verypleased to welcome those of you
in particular today who are notmembers of a Masonic Lodge. The

(01:11):
content of today's talk isimportant for everyone in our
community. And so we wanted toextend the invitation further to
those who might be interested inknowing more about the
fascinating and deeply troublingworld of conspirituality, which
Matthew and his co hosts on thespirituality podcast, have done
such a thorough and engaging jobexploring for the past few

(01:33):
years. After Matthew gives histalk, I will invite Casey
Collins, a PhD student at UBC,studying Japanese, Buddhist, and
new religions, and theircharismatic founders to respond
on behalf of the lodge withcomments and perhaps any
questions to help start off theQ&A portion of today's
presentation, which I'm surewill be very lively and

(01:55):
engaging, as I've talked withmany of you before this event.
And I know you're very, verykeen to to engage with Matthew.
And so with that, I'm now verypleased to introduce our speaker
Matthew Remsky. Please join mein giving him a very warm hand.
I will now tell you a bit aboutMatthew. Matthew is a cult
survivor and researcher andaward winning poet and author,

(02:17):
his 2019 book "Practice and AllIs Coming Abuse, Cult Dynamics,
and Healing in Yoga and Beyond"is the first systematic analysis
of pervasive cultism in themodern yoga world, earning
praise internationally as agroundbreaking resource for
critical thinking and communityhealth. Matthew researches and
writes on abuse in spiritualmovements, as well as for

(02:40):
publications like GEN by mediumand the walrus. His current
research is pivoting to look atcultic dynamics in
conspirituality and eco justicemovements, and has earned praise
internationally as agroundbreaking resource for
critical thinking and communityhealth. He is co host of the
wildly popular spiritualitypodcast as I mentioned earlier,

(03:00):
a weekly study of convergingright wing conspiracy theories
and faux progressive wellnessutopianism. He lives in Toronto
with his partner and their twosons. Please join me in giving a
warm welcome to not.

Matthew Remski (03:13):
Thank you. Thank you so much, Wes, thank you for
putting this together. And forthe kind invite. I do have
slides. So I'll use the ShareScreen function, but I hope that
my face is still visible,because otherwise I can be a
little bit alienating. So I'lljust try to make sure that that
that works out. So the otherthing I don't know is whether
the keynote should be in playmode or not. I think this is

(03:38):
fine, just like this. So thetopic this morning, that a
couple of weeks ago, I know Wesgave a good historical backdrop
to which I will touch on alittle bit and I'll refer back
to but I'll mainly keep mysubject matter confined to
what's happened over the last 18months or so. The topic we

(04:00):
decided on was calledconspirituality and critical
thinking. And this fellow hereis Alan Hostetter. And he really
brings together so many of likeinteresting and like tender but
also volatile inflection pointsof this movement. You can see

(04:21):
that he's playing a singing bowlin a yoga studio. It is indeed a
yoga studio and he's got histrump 2020 Make America Great
Again, t shirt on. But you know,in his other in his other life,
there's kind of a two liveshere. He is a sound Gong
therapist and a yoga teacher andhe's very interested in in

(04:46):
holistic health, but not reallyin public health because he also
led the anti mask protests inhis hometown of San Clemente
starting in in Californiastarting in December. Last year,
and he rode that particularpolitics to a Q Anon conference
in August in Phoenix, Arizona,or maybe it was October, sorry.

(05:10):
And then he rode that all theway to his very exuberant
presence at the January 6insurrection. And now, he's
taken his singing bowls content,I think offline, as he
negotiates with his attorneys inthe FBI about, you know, how

(05:30):
much trouble he's in, as heapproaches his trial over the
insurrection. But it fascinatingcharacter, and I hope that by
the end of the presentation,that he becomes very human to
you, in a way, I thought thatwas gave a good introduction.
But I thought also that I'd saya few things about myself first,

(05:54):
that "A" I'm not a Freemason,and, but I'm very interested in
the fact that this is, this is athing, and I'd like to learn
more about it from Wes and otherpeople. But just so you know, I
won't really be able to, youknow, engage with the particular
concerns of this community, butI might be able to, during

(06:15):
question periods, make somegeneral observations about how,
you know, a community like thiswith its history might be more
or less vulnerable toconpirituality. I am a survivor
of two different cults one wasneo-Buddhist, and when was
New-Agey, and I've since becomelike many, I mean, I think all

(06:36):
cult researchers that I knowactually are cult survivors as
well.
And I think that gives some goodtools for looking at
conspirituality and movementslike Q Anon. But there are also
some drawbacks as well relatedto the fact that a lot of cult
theory is pre digital in origin.
And so it's really not equippedto deal with the gamification of

(06:58):
social media, for example. Also,as a cult survivor and occult
researcher, it's very easy tojust look at everything and with
this really sort of sour andcynical gaze and say, oh, yeah,
that's pretty culty. I try notto do that I'm getting better as
I get older. I'm not atherapist. But if you feel that
there are subjects that come uptoday that you would like

(07:23):
therapeutic engagement with, Ican refer you on to people who
specialize in cultic, dynamicsand conspirituality. They're
very busy right now,unfortunately, in as an
investigative journalist, I tryto make all of my work survivor
centered. So I look first andforemost to who is being
impacted by a particular socialmovement. And I tried to

(07:47):
interview them at length, aboutwhat their experiences are.
Because generally, as peoplecome away from abusive social
dynamics, the thresholds forbeing able to report on personal
experience are really high. Andit's very easy for cult
survivors to be stigmatized. I'dalso just like to put out there

(08:10):
that, you know, I identify aspolitically left. And I'm not
saying this, because I want youto be too I'm saying this,
because there are undoubtedlyundoubted political dimensions
to the topic today. And I justwant to be upfront about like,
you know, how I approach those,and be able to clearly identify

(08:31):
how my analysis trends in acertain direction, because when
we get to discussion ofquestions and comments, you
know, we might be able toidentify where the conversation
heads into a larger sort ofpolitical, you know, idiological
landscape, and it might beworthwhile to spend time there,

(08:53):
but we should know that we'rethere and that we're not really
going to solve those problems.
But as somebody who identifiesas politically left I view
conspirituality and cultsthrough, especially in the 1980s
and beyond, through a historicalmaterialist lens. I think that
the global explosion of yoga andBuddhism and wellness cults are

(09:17):
inseparable from the breakdownof local economies, from stable,
stable labor markets, and alsothe rise of the gig work economy
and the notion of the selfframed in neoliberal hyper
individualistic terms, likethose are all political sort of
facts for me that I can't reallynot look at or unsee. And so my

(09:40):
angle, in brief is that whatwe've seen in the conspiracy
theory world over the last 18months just would not have
exploded to the extent that ithas, if the US, which is where
most of this material comesfrom, how to functional
government. If there werestronger labor protections, and

(10:02):
especially if there wasuniversal health care. So one of
the things that I like to pointout is that I wrote a
investigative piece for thewalrus called when Q Anon came
to Canada that really tried toask the question, you know,
well, how, how big is thismovement going to be here? How
many brains? Is it going tomelt? You know, how disruptive

(10:24):
is it going to be politically?
And so far, the rise of the PPCand Maxime Bernier
notwithstanding, there is noreal electoral success yet, for
Q Anon or Q adjacent politiciansand influencers. And I think a
big part of that is temperament,this Canadian propriety, you

(10:51):
know, an unwillingness toindulge certain types of popular
apocalyptic fantasies in sort ofon mass. There's also I think,
the memory of the Satanic Panicof Martinsville, Saskatchewan,
of the 1990s stands out inCanadian consciousness is

(11:13):
something that is still an openwound, and something that I
mean, the wounds are open in theStates as well. But there's a
much more, there's much more ofa willingness to throw salt
whenever we see blood. So but Ithink the main thing that I keep
coming back to I can't reallyprove this is that

(11:38):
Canada does not neglect itscitizens to the same extent that
the federal government in theUnited States neglects its
citizens, especially during thepandemic. There's vast
inequalities here. The firstnations people are treated
horribly, on a continual basis.
And yet, things likeuniversalized medicine make a
huge difference in thevulnerability of communities to

(11:59):
large scale conspiracies withregard to what, you know, public
health institutions are tryingto do to whole populations. So I
might speak a little bit moreabout that as we as we go. But
let me go to the agenda page,just to give a preview of how I
think this might go, I'd like togive some basic definitions for

(12:22):
spirituality. And I want to givea case study. And then, you
know, I think if I can do thatin 20 minutes or so that would
be a good pause for initialquestions so that I can read the
room a little bit or read thezoom. Because it's, it's not
always easy to figure out whateverybody what everybody needs,

(12:46):
and I want to make this asuseful as possible for you. And
then I have four lenses ofanalysis that I think are
helpful for understanding thevarious facets of
conspirituality. I'd like to saya few things about how
conspirituality leaders deploytactics that we're familiar with

(13:06):
in cultic studies. And then Iwant to spend some time at the
end humanizing theconspirituality movement by
asking the question, well, whatis it that they get, right?
Because I think that if we if wedon't, and this is true of the
anti lockdown movement, the antiVax movement, if if we don't
really grok what the coreemotional, socio emotional

(13:33):
complaints are, I think, I thinkthe discourse is going to
continue to be polarized and Idon't know, patronizing, right.
So. So that's what I'd like todo. So to start with some
definitions, two terms that I'dlike to define. I mean, the term

(13:54):
of the day, for one, but thenalso something that I believe
I've coined, but I had a lot ofhelp with it, which is
disastrous spirituality. So2011, Charlotte Ward and David
Veloce, published a paper calledThe emergence of spirituality in
the Journal of Contemporaryreligion, their abstract states,

(14:16):
as follows. And this is a greatabstract, it really does sum up
the paper. The female dominatedNew Age with its positive focus
on self. And the male dominatedrealm of conspiracy theory, with
its negative focus on globalpolitics may seem antithetical.
But wait, there is a synthesisof the two that we call

(14:40):
conspirituality, a rapidlygrowing web movement, expand out
remember the writing in 2011?
This is like right at the dawnof the Facebook explosion, they
have no clue what's coming. Sothis is very prescient. That
expresses an ideology fueled bypolitical disillusionment and
The popularity of alternativeworldviews. It offers a broad

(15:03):
political, spiritual philosophybased on two core convictions.
The first is traditionalconspiracy theory. And the
second is rooted in the new age.
Now, I'll just refer back to Westhis presentation from Barkun
and Hofstetter about the sort ofcontours of conspiracy theory,
which I'll speak to a little bitmore. But if you remember what
some of those are, they'rereally sort of summed up in this

(15:23):
first point, which is that asecret group covertly controls
or is trying to control thepolitical and social order,
okay. Then, that is sort ofcriss crossed with the belief,
the conviction, the order thathumanity is undergoing a
paradigm shift in consciousness.

(15:45):
Those two things are happeningat the same time. They're,
they're they're causallyrelated. They're chicken and
egg. There's a it's like a mediastrip. And then they really
phrase this Well, I think theyreally captured something
amazing for being 10 years ago.
Proponents believe that the beststrategy for dealing with the

(16:06):
threat of a totalitarian NewWorld Order is to act in
accordance with an awakened NewParadigm worldview. So I'll give
a bunch of examples of this. Butwhat I want to point out is that
there's a combination of it'sreally like two currents socio

(16:31):
emotional currents slammingagainst each other, and creating
a kind of Whirlpool. Number onea secret group covertly controls
or is trying to control thepolitical and world order is a
paranoid posture, a laHofstetter. Secondly, humanity
is undergoing a paradigm shiftin consciousness is I don't know

(16:52):
if you know the term. But wecould say it' pronoic, or the
overwhelming suspicion thatsomething wonderful is about to
happen. And irrational suspicionactually, there's no evidence
for it. It's something thatburbles up from within. And it's

(17:12):
very aspirational. It makessense that New Age, yoga and
wellness culture are at theheart of this number two bullet
point because these areaspirational cultures that focus
upon the development and theawakening of a new self. Okay,
now, this is 2011. We are into,you know, a couple 100 episodes,

(17:36):
including bonus episodes ofconspirituality podcast, and
here's some things that I wouldadd. We would say this is
myself, Derek Barris and JulianWalker is that conspirituality
is an emotionally contagiousoverreaction to an embellishment
of very real issues. In fact, Iwant to bold this, because

(17:57):
that's crucial to keep in mind.
You know, as Wes pointed out,conspiracism conspiracy theories
do not evolve ex nihilo. Theyappropriate, expand upon and
elaborate some shard oflegitimate grievance or actual
conspiracy and then spin it intosomething that can be solvable,

(18:22):
alright? The conspiracy theoryhas to be solvable. The
conspiracy isn't it's just acrime. But the theory gives the
person something to work with.
Conspirituality also we'd say isdominated by influencers. I'm
saying using this word in thesocial media sense who present
themselves as shamans andrevolutionaries to sell wellness

(18:43):
and spiritual products to savethe world. Often they position
themselves in the true shamanicsense between worlds between the
apocalyptic vision of futuredystopia and the nostalgic,
romantic idealized vision of thepre modern landscape and they
stand on the threshold of thosetwo things and they help their

(19:04):
followers or they see themselvesas helping their followers
translate between translatethemselves between the two,
usually projecting themselvesbackwards. There's there's very
little sort of, you know, reallyfuturistic positive version, the
future that is trumped by theconspiritualist really looks
like the 19th century. Andconspirituality we also would

(19:28):
say feeds obsessions with purityfitness, clean diets, natural
supplements, again, in this Imean, this goes back to fascist
body ideas, but it also feedsinto the neoliberal concept of
the autonomous self. The just doit the Lululemon self that can

(19:48):
you know, be ultimately happy ifit drinks eight glasses of water
a day. Next thing is thatconspirituality often builds
upon pre existing cults andthere algorithms, their
networks, their, you know,affiliate programs using cultic
techniques. And sometimes we sawthis very interestingly with a

(20:11):
group called Rama Yoga inVenice, California. The leader,
the, the former or the the lateleader, Guru Jagat died about
two months ago now, possibly ofCOVID. We're not quite sure. But
what Guru Jagat managed to dowas she managed to use

(20:33):
conspiracy theories in the COVIDera to distract her larger
Kundalini Yoga, following fromconcentrating on the fact that
all of these horriblerevelations had come out about
the criminality of the founder,Yogi Bhajan revelations that
threatened to really crumble thethe entire organization. So in a

(20:54):
way, conspiracy theories, ifthey're attractive enough, can
be new content for existingcults and actually help a cult
get through a What would you saylike a crisis period?
We have not seen a singleconspirituality influence or
track politically towards theleft? Not a single one. Part of

(21:18):
this is because wellness Yoga,you know, contemporary Buddhism
usually favors a kind of medicallibertarianism, which is also
very American. And relies uponthis sense that you know, you
can, you should, you should beable to take care of your body

(21:39):
alone, and you know, completelyand you should be autonomous and
your immune system is sacred,and you have a halo around you
all the time. And that's reallywhat's going to help you
because, as we know, there is nosocial contract left, right. So
again, this is a very Americancontextual view in which, you
know, people have basically justgiven up on the fact that that

(22:01):
there's any kind of socialresponsibility to public health.
That's an overly broadstatement, but I'm speaking
about a Zeitgeist that's allowedme because not everybody in
America thinks that but it's,it's that kind of Zeitgeist that
allows can spirituality toblossom in America more
profoundly than anywhere else.
And as it does, it erodesgeneral trust and public health,

(22:22):
the notion of expertise,especially scientific expertise,
critical thinking, and it raisesvaccine hesitancy. Okay, second
definition, disasterspirituality. If you know, the
book Shock Doctrine by NaomiKlein, she gives this sort of
devastating blow by blow accountof how after, for instance,

(22:46):
Hurricane Katrina, the entireinfrastructure of southern
Louisiana and New Orleans wasbasically sold off to very, very
low bid offers at, you know,corporate reconstruction and
rezoning and, you know,privatization, basically, of the

(23:08):
public Commons. And, you know,what she argues is that is that
capitalism has become very, veryadept at seizing upon human
human suffering, to convert thecommons to privacy to private
assets whenever it can. Now,what I would say is that

(23:30):
disaster spirituality is theprocess of taking a real public
health crisis like COVID, or afictional moral panic, like Q
Anon, and making it the basisfor a call to spiritual renewal,
which of course, can also bemonetized. So in the shock
doctrine, Klein describes theseizure of public assets and

(23:51):
utilities in the wake ofhurricanes and wars. But with
disaster spirituality, becauseit exists primarily in the
attention economy. It involves aseizure of attention and
emotional commitment. Andthat's, you know, these assets
are then converted intomonetized networks that are able
to traffic and spiritual andwellness products. Okay. So, I

(24:15):
thought that a case study wouldbe useful to bring some of these
ideas initial ideas together.
And I'm gonna look at this isactually the first these are the

(24:36):
first subjects that I studied indepth for under under freelance
contract for Gen at medium. So Iwrote an article called, you
know, the anti Vaxmisinformation machine of Kelly
Brogan or something like that.
But the article is also abouther relationship with her
husband, Sayer Ji. So we'll justdo some a walkthrough of the of

(24:57):
the play by play here.
Who is Kelly Brogan? She isstill a doctor. She made her
bones as a quote unquoteholistic psychiatrist in amongst
the jetset of Manhattan in thearts and early, early teens.

(25:19):
And, you know, fantasticeducation, MIT great medical
school education, goodpsychiatric practitioner,
apparently, and with goodreviews, very, very expensive.
But she really made a name forherself by criticizing
psychiatry. And, andlegitimately so for it's over

(25:44):
prescription, and it'sdisempowerment of patients
through the diagnostic process,which is, you know, in many
cases is less than scientific.
So, she really established a lotof alt health credibility by
criticizing over prescriptionshowing that there were many
patients and usually women whowere both over prescribed and

(26:05):
then not given an exit ramp foryou know, these these addictive
substances and, and substancesthat would, you know, suppress
their emotions or ruin theirsexual lives or, you know, have
all kinds of unwanted sideeffects that that, you know,
mainstream psychiatry kind ofshrugs his shoulders at and

(26:26):
says, Well, you're not trying tokill yourself. Right. So that's
good. So there are strongovertones of feminist autonomy
and empowerment. And in her inher materials, anything that you
say, back in the go,

Hang on, sorry, guys. Sorry, somebody's unmuted
themselves. And

then I'm sorry.
Okay, sorry about that, man.
Okay. Okay. Now, she is marriedto a fellow named Sayer Ji, that
is his name. It's not a it's notlike a new age or yoga name. And
since the aughts, he has ownedand managed an old health, do it
yourself, quote, unquote,research site called Green med

(27:13):
info, and he earns substantialincome from affiliate networks
selling various products and,but but the draw is, if you pay
a membership, you have access tohis database of 10s of 1000s of
alternative health scientificarticles, which, you know,
apparently, that his, his hisdeal is, well, you should be

(27:33):
able to interpret this yourselfand you should be able to, you
know, study up on what kind ofturmeric is good for your
cancer. And, you know, he makessome good points about
pharmaceutical fraud andtreachery and capitalism. And he
also does, I think, establishthe sort of legitimate argument

(27:57):
reasonable argument that, youknow, why is it that we have so
little access to to a wide rangeof health information? Why are
we always put in a position oftrusting people who we don't
know in lab coats, right? And hehas a daily newsletter that goes
out to 500,000 subscribers, sothat's where they start. And by

(28:18):
the time we get to March of2020, Kelly Brogan jumps the
shark from holistic psychiatristto public health critic, she has
no training in epidemiology, bythe way, right. She has no
training in virology. She'snever done an emergency room
shift. You know. She's not afloor doctor. She's not an

(28:43):
internist. But she has thetemerity to release a sermon
called what's going on becauseshe's going to tell you what's
going on at the beginning of thepandemic. And she cites in this
video of the guy in the pictureis Tom Cowan, who has a lovely
organic farm. Tom Cowan is atheosophist. You might be

(29:04):
familiar with the Theosophists.
Wes Regan spoke a little bitabout Madame Blavatsky and her
brave lineage Well, theosophylives on and it permeates to one
extent or another, you know,things like Waldorf education.
He's a doctor, a trained andlicensed MD who's on probation
for treating a cancer patientover the phone with an

(29:28):
unregulated substance so that'sanother story but, you know,
he's got some credibility knocksagainst him, but he he gave a
sermon a couple of days beforeBrogan that went viral in which
he said that, you know, virusesaren't real because Rudolf
Steiner told me they weren't.
And so he denies germ theory. Hesays it's all about radio waves,

(29:50):
but now it's actually you know,electromagnetic fields and 5g
technology is is actuallycausing the infections and
there's a whole bunch ofbullshit That is like really
quickly debunked, but it doesn'tstop Brogan from just parroting
it, but also funneling itthrough her own kind of
credibility as a I would saypseudo feminist psychiatrist,

(30:16):
alternative psychiatrist, shealso quotes Reich, a geared
hammer, who's the founder ofGerman new medicine, which you
probably don't be surprised toknow has some anti semitic
undertones to it. She quotesJoseph Mercola, who's kind of
like the, the granddaddy ofalternative health charlatanism.

(30:36):
In the United States, he makesmillions of millions of dollars
selling like just quack formulasand snake oil and weird machines
and stuff like that. And he'sconstantly getting hammered by
the FDA. She also quoted thelate Louise Hay. Louise Hay was
the founder of Hay House, shewas an early proponent of A

(30:56):
Course in Miracles. She She wasfond of telling AIDS patients
that they were sick because theyhated themselves. Brogan herself
has also doubted the connectionbetween HIV and AIDS. Okay, so
in blue, I've got you know,what's going on here? Well,
we've got a physician who'sbreaking her scope of practice.

(31:20):
She's appealing to a pre modernmedical thought. And by the way,
breaking scope of practice is acore feature of charismatic
leadership. Okay. And I'll getto that in a moment. But
basically, as social mediainfluence makes public figures
out of people like Kelly Brogan,the temptations to and the

(31:45):
restrictions against goingbeyond this person's scope of
practice basically disappear.
Right. So her being an MD orhaving some credibility with a
goop crowd, allows her topontificate about a novel
Coronavirus, which is completelyabsurd and very dangerous,
right. So she also appeals to topre modern medical font by

(32:10):
pointing at Tom Callen andGerman new medicine. And she
also works to by tying in all ofthese influences, you know,
she's just not making thestatement on her own. She's also
like pulling in these otherinfluential people to sort of
cosign on her work and andwithin a couple of months of

(32:32):
this statement, Sayer Ji andKelly Brogan are hosting a new
website called questioningcovid.com Which I believe is
still up where they start topull together all of their their
favorite COVID denying friends.
Do they believe what they'resaying? It's unclear but what
what is clear is that it'sworking for them in terms of

(32:54):
engagement and clicks. Allright. Now, here's here's Brogan
in the first video of ascreenshot from the first video
of her online tapering frompsychotropic drugs program
called Vital mind reset. Sheteaches Kundalini Yoga, which I

(33:18):
referenced off the top. Youknow, Kundalini Yoga has this
horrible sort of history offraud and abuse in it. I don't
think she's aware of that. Butit doesn't really matter.
Because I think the aestheticsof Kundalini Yoga really suit
this presentation of, you know,radiant autonomy and glowing

(33:39):
health. And what she does in hermedia is that she develops this
theme that, you know, COVIDdeaths are being accelerated by
fear. The fear is being stokedby a conspiracy of mainstream
media sources. And then she alsohas this thing where she gazes

(34:02):
inefficiently at the camera. Andvery calmly talks about how
everything was going to be okay.
But at the same time, she makesall of these like very profound
statements about how awfulthings are. And here's where we
get into a number of aspects, Iwould say of the way the way in

(34:26):
which a cohesive factor incultic leadership is the is the
provocation of what's calleddisorganized attachment. So I'll
speak about this in a little bitmore detail later. But

(34:48):
basically, whenever anybody in aleadership position, basically
in the same breath, or in thesame paragraph, on one hand says
the world is horrible. So that'spoint one of Charlotte and
Charlotte and veloce. Right? Youknow, there's a cabal running
everything, the world ishorrible. And then number two,
you know, there are wonderfulthings happening at the same

(35:11):
time, and I can hand you thekeys to open the door to those
things. Right? So we've gotterror and salvation whenever
those things become reallyintertwined. We have what social
psychologists and coke theoristscalled the formation of
disorganized attachment bonds,or trauma bonds between

(35:32):
followers and leaders. So as Isaid, I'll speak more in detail
about that when in a little bit.
Okay, so finally, by the fall of2020.
Brogan receives the honor ofbeing named along with her

(35:54):
husband, Mr. Ji as members ofthe disinformation doezen. And
the group responsible for thistagging is the Center for
combating digital hate run byImran Ahmed out of the UK. Just
a brilliant communicationstrategist. We had him on

(36:16):
episode 12 or 10, or somethinglike that. Really interesting
guy. But the disinformationdozen is exactly what it sounds
like. Astonishingly, these are12 influencers, who are
responsible for up to 65% of theanti Vax propaganda that you
will see on the internet, right?
So Brogan and ji are occupy twoof those spaces, which is pretty

(36:40):
amazing for a single householdin Miami. So the sort of this
their story isn't over, ofcourse, but as you know, they
kind of recede from themainstream through
de-platforming because they losttheir Facebook accounts. They
lost IG. They lost Twitteraccounts. What tends to happen,

(37:01):
and and this is for other, thisgoes for other influencers as
well, is that the rhetoricbecomes more extreme. You know,
as soon I think within weeks ofSayer Ji losing his Instagram
account for green med info, hewas platforming a pure satanic

(37:22):
panic, panic influencer ontelegram or Odyssey I think is
the video streaming videoservice that he uses. I think
that's blockchain. And you know,nobody can touch it. Nobody can
nobody can deplatform him there.
The other thing that tends tohappen with these influencers,

(37:42):
as they lose mainstreamaccesses, that they'll get into
stranger money making schemeslike cryptocurrency, and Brogan
and ji, both on that they'vealso started to monetize their
own marriage by giving, youknow, relationship. I don't
know, ideal relationshipworkshops and stuff like that.
So there's a case study, theseguys really bring together a lot

(38:06):
of the themes at the same time.
But there, there's a lot morenuanced, too, to bring out. But
I think that I will pause thereand see if anybody has any
thoughts or questions orcomments or objections, or
anybody needs me to slow down orto redefine anything. I will
come out of screen sharing.

Wes Regan (38:33):
If anyone has questions, please feel free to
use the hand function to raiseyour hand.

Yeah, been following the chat, we don't
have anything in the chat or anyraised hands yet. I think the
only raised hands we saw earlierwere tests. So yeah, I think
your pacing is good, man. Goahead.

Wes Regan (38:59):
All right. You're just entirely engrossed in the
content. Let's continue.

Okay. Sounds good. Go back to the share here.
Okay. So yeah, so I can'tremember who it was. There was a
journalist who asked me does Whydoes the yoga world have
conspirituality or conspiracyproblem? And I wrote a Twitter

(39:24):
thread thread. You can you cansee it on my Twitter feed. I'm
just at Matthew Remsky. And it'sthe pinned thread but I'm just
going to go through this, thisframework, which I think has
been resonant in a number ofways. I've adapted it, but I'll
be looking, I'm just going tobriefly talk about the the

(39:46):
history the ideology, thepolitics and the technology
involved in makingconspirituality explode. So it's
not like, Wes gave a lot ofHistory a couple of weeks ago
and that's very useful, I thinkit's I think it's easy to use in

(40:11):
our language, sensationalize.
And catastrophize. With pullingout or making connections
between contemporary movementslike in spirituality and q&a on
and early 20th century fascism.

(40:36):
The way I see it is that is thatnot only is our present media
landscape, it didn't it didn'tarise from from nothing. But
once once it gets going, and youknow, the influencers that we
covered, don't have to knowanything particular about, you

(40:58):
know, Julius Evola, or, youknow, how he recounts early 20th
century fascism or they don'thave to know anything about how
close the BJP is to a kind of akind of Nazi worship actually,
in its literature. Those thingsdon't have to be overt for there

(41:22):
to be a strong historicalcurrent that pushes people along
in a particular direction, alongpredictable themes. So I'll just
say a few things about thehistorical backdrop that allows
for spirituality to have thisunending kind of fountain of
source material to draw on. It'svery true that Nazis loved Yoga.

(41:46):
But all early 20th centuryfascists did, because the there
was a general fetishization andjust Enthrallment with the idea
that the individual body andbootstrapped up or macrocosm up

(42:10):
into the national body could bepowerful and pure and sovereign
and free from foreign influenceand foreign influence rather it
be the, you know,individualistic foreign
influence of the of modernmedication or the, you know,

(42:32):
trans cultural influence ofborders that are becoming more
porous as 20th century historyprogressive progresses. The
Third Reich itself drew on afervor around physical culture
and natural remedies that wasvery much concerned very much

(42:55):
anxious with the notion of whitereplacement, white genocide and
the revitalization of urbanizedlifestyles. The idea being that,
as modern Europe became morecorporatized, and more
sedentary, but also moreglobalized, that somehow the

(43:19):
invading hordes of labor workersfrom the global south would
out-reproduce the, the thecitizens of the north, and this
was an act of fear that, youknow, continues to continues to
this day. And so they sought tostrengthen ties of blood and
soil through bodybuilding,through physical culture through

(43:40):
gymnastics, through pure foodsthrough organic gardening, which
was actually,you know, ecological farming was
the brainchild of RudolfSteiner. So there's, you know,
there's little bits of good andeverything here. And then the
overall sort of application hassome very sort of ominous

(44:03):
shadows behind it. And then alsofetishes involving reproduction
and milk, which is part of whythe modern conpirituality and
coupon movements are soincredibly heteronormative and
usually transphobic. Okay, sothat's history, one lens.

(44:23):
Etiology is another lens. Now, Idon't know if Wes specifically
quoted Barkun, in identifyingthese three axioms as being at
the heart of conspiracism. I didnot, he did not. Okay, so Barkun
omments on this. And then anumber of people pick it up

(44:48):
later on, but, but basically, inorder to start moving into
conspiracy land, you have threevery strong feelings. Nothing is
as it seems, everything happensfor a reason. And everything is
connected. Now, here's the thingis that like if you studied yoga
or Buddhism in any I just wantto make sure did my face become

(45:20):
big there? Because that's whyI'm coming out of the
screenshare it did okay. Yep.
Okay. So, the, if you had, ifyou, if you had spent any time
studying yoga, Buddhism, Easternphilosophy at all, nothing is as

(45:47):
it seems everything happens fora reason and everything is
connected are basically the, thefundamentals of, of Maya or the
illusory nature of materialreality, nothing is as it seems,
everything happens for a reasonwould be you know, in Buddhism
interdependent arising or karmaor or you know, any any notion

(46:11):
of, of the immutable connectionsbetween cause and effect that
just have their own momentum.
And then And then thirdly,everything is connected or
interdependence, or oneness ornon duality. Like if you had
schooled yourself in these verybeautiful contemplations on the

(46:32):
nature of reality, you mightalso have kind of entrained
yourself to roll out the redcarpet for for conspiracy
theorizing. And, you know, Ibelieve, and you know, my
colleagues believe that that'spart of what happened at the
beginning of the pandemic isthat we had an awful lot of

(46:53):
people who had meditated onthese three principles for a
very long time. And we're primedfor them to be curdled in a way
for them to be flipped into akind of chiaroscuro in which
they took on this sort of, youknow, piquant negative, ominous

(47:14):
meaning, which was alsoexciting, that's the other
thing. So, you know, nothing isas it seems, everything happens
for a reason, and everything isconnected as spiritual axioms, I
think, you know, sort ofnaturally point to a sense of
equanimity. And yet, if there'sthis shadow of, of, you know,

(47:36):
the portents injected into thosesame principles, I think it's
very easy to develop a much morelike teeth on edge perspective
on the world. And one of thethings when I say that, you

(47:58):
know, there's something excitingabout the flip between
equanimity and hyper vigilance.
There's something about theconsumer orientation of yoga,
Buddhism and wellness, that'sjust incredibly boring after a
while. It's just too lovely.
It's just too peaceful. And partof that is the fact that it is

(48:23):
always de-politicized. And Ithink one of the things that
happens, this is really my ownspeculation reflects my
political views. But I think oneof the things that happens when
the new age and wellness worldsrun up against Q Anon and
conspirituality in the spring of2020, is that finally, something

(48:45):
seems to be important, becausefor the longest time, I would
say for decades, the driving adriving principle of New Age,
culture has beende-politicization. Don't involve
yourself in worldly affairs, theDemocrats and the Republicans
are the two, two sides of thesame illusion. You know, nothing

(49:06):
really happens anyway. And, youknow, the world is all joined in
one and, you know, and my tripto Costa Rica really drove that
home for me, right. Sothe last thing that I'd say is
that ideologically these threethese three principles intersect

(49:28):
with yoga in New Age,spirituality, as I've explained,
but they also address epistemicsocial and existential needs. So
the social psychologists ofconspiracy theory, theorists,
or, you know, socialpsychologists who study
conspiracy theories pretty muchagree that what the theory does,

(49:50):
regardless of what it is, is itgives a group of people this in
group feeling that they knowsomething that others People
don't, that helps them withtheir social connections, you
know, creates bonds, whetherthey're healthy or not, is
another story. And it alsoaddresses their existential
needs, if people are veryscared, as you know, they might

(50:11):
well be about the pandemic orabout, you know, late stage
capitalism or about climatechange or about medical
malpractice, then those needsare spoken to. Okay. So that's
ideology let's move to politics.

(50:31):
And here, we just have to saythat, you know, the, the US is
the primary exporter of I mean,popular culture in general. But
so it makes sense that it wouldalso be the primary exporter of
can spirituality and Q anon. Andthat means that it will carry
with it the the impacts ofprofound institutional neglect,

(50:56):
combined with a kind ofdemoralizing neoliberal
propaganda, that, on one hand,tells citizens that they should
be happy all the time, and onthe other hand, tells them that
they have to make themselveshappy, and nobody's going to

(51:17):
help them that they're actuallyon their own. And I think this
is, I don't think we canunderstand New Age yoga,
wellness, and many newspirituality movements without
understanding this kind ofabsence of social contract, that

(51:41):
they grow up in and accelerate,especially in the internet age.
Secondly, I would say that themarketing of alternative health
practices has to sell whetherthey're good or bad, whether
people enjoy them or not, orderive benefit or not. All
health marketing has to selldistrust of public health, it

(52:03):
has to say, implicitly, orexplicitly, that the people in
the lab coats the people doingthe pressors, during the COVID.
You know, scare that Tony Faucithat the people of the CIA, CDC,
that Theresa Tam, that BonnieHenry, that these people are

(52:30):
un-trustworthy, that they don'tknow the full picture. And
specifically, they don't knowyou, they don't know you
personally. They arebureaucrats. And to the extent
that a country's bureaucracybasically neglects and abuses,
its citizens, those sentimentsare going to be more acute. And

(52:51):
so again, I'll just say,America.

Unknown (52:56):
Thirdly,

you know, for a population that needs to protect
itself against the ambivalenceof the state, it really makes
sense that the self care ritualsof wellness and yoga, become
aligned with conservative valuesthat are libertarian, or that
concentrate on personal autonomyall the way up to and including

(53:21):
the sovereign citizen movement.
Okay, now, who's the yogateacher? I'm a little bit
ambivalent about thisphotograph, but I just found it
today because like, my god, Ithink it's Breathe, breathe easy
Barbie. The yoga teacher is thede facto priest of the

(53:43):
neoliberal state. Because whatthey have to do is they have to
make the instability of the gigeconomy look beautiful. Their
job is to go with the flow.
Their job is to, you know,anoint, a kind of virtuous

(54:08):
consumerism, you know, that isholistic and organic. And it all
happens in a kind of like,individualistic framework where,
you know, you are building yourown dream, you are, you know,
building your own side hustle,there's really no discussion
within neoliberal politics ofclass consciousness or

(54:29):
solidarity. And that is, youknow, extremely true in the
hyper individualistic andcompetitive marketplace of yoga
and wellness. But there's nostability in this economy. You
know, there's a lot of peoplethat have been running around
teaching yoga classes, you know,on on piecework or on per head

(54:54):
payment basis for a long timeand they're utterly exhausted
and They also have to endlesslyself promote. And that leads us
to the last slide here, which isthe technology aspect. You know,

(55:17):
COVID-19 erupting in 2004 wouldhave looked a lot different. But
it didn't. And so it's almostlike, while, you know, we had,
we had a lot of infrastructure,trying to look at how to keep

(55:38):
people safe, and, you know, sortof piecemeal ways. We also had
social media, basically throwingkerosene onto every vector of
distrust that was was out there.
And the strange thing thatstarted to happen, that we
noticed really early on was thateverybody in lockdown from the

(56:00):
spring of last year, who was agig worker, and who was already
relying on social media fortheir primary visibility in this
market, was suddenly in an evenmore compressed, competitive and
flattened screen based landscapein which they had to make money.

(56:21):
So how were, you know, sort oftypical yoga teachers with
followings of, you know, 1500 or2500 people on Instagram, how
were they going to continue tocapture market share, when
everybody was online, trying toget donations for their aunt for

(56:43):
their for their, you know, livestreamed yoga classes on
Facebook? How is that going tohappen? Well, we believe that
what what a lot of peoplestarted to do, and this is not
something anybody would admitto, but it's just sort of
evident from the fact is thatyou could become more visible as

(57:06):
a wellness influencer, if youadopted more contrarian content
in a highly competitivemarketplace. So I think what a
lot of people discovered andwhen I was doing that work on
the the the walrus Q Anonarticle, I found this to be like
hundreds of examples of this,that the more inflammatory or

(57:28):
emotionally engaging ormanipulative the content, the
more it will amplify thevisibility and the charisma of
the of the influencer.
I think one of the saddestthings about the pandemic
landscape is that it putinfluencers into this position

(57:50):
in which they could get positiveludic loop feedback from
basically coming really close toshitposting. Q Annon content,
whether they believed it or not.
And this is just sort of mindblowing. There was there was
there was probably a half dozenpeople that I reached out to,

(58:12):
for the Walrus article where Isaid, so you know, you said this
thing back in June, on yourInstagram feed. And I'm just
wondering, like, where did youhear that, that, you know, that
that sex trafficking was thereal pandemic? Sex trafficking
of children was the realpandemic? And that's what nobody
was talking about? Where did youget this stat that there was,

(58:34):
you know, 800,000 people went,children went missing every
year, which is just not true inthe States. So I would reach out
as a journalist asking thesequestions like, Where did you
hear this? And do you stillbelieve it? And if the person
answered it all, they would say,you know, I don't want to

(58:56):
associate myself with Q Anon. Iwas just passing along what I
thought was valuable informationthat I had heard. And, you know,
please don't put my name in yourstory. And I just it was really
clear that people got audiencecaptured. And they saw their

(59:16):
engagement saw there was onewoman who is still at it
actually, she hasn't, she hasn'tbacked away. But the first time
I kind of became aware of thiswas through the coverage of the
A Anon anonymous podcast, theepisode called the wellness to Q
Anon pipeline, I think, and theycovered three wellness

(59:39):
influencers. And one of them hername was crystal teeny, and
she's like a yoga teacher andmodel from from New Jersey, who
had a line of yoga mats to sellAnd something happened to her

(01:00:00):
where she watched a you know,kind of like a a famous Q Anon
recruiting video. And shestarted posting Q Anon content,
she started postingconspirituality content. And
within a couple of months, herIG following went from two and a

(01:00:21):
half 1000 to over 100,000. Like,there's money that comes with
that, too. There are affiliatedeals that come with that. It's
actually it's a poison chalice.
And I think what happened for alot of people is that they
didn't actually know what theywere doing. And they became

(01:00:42):
vectors for misinformation.
Okay, so, let me move on to acouple of a couple of things
from the cult literature that Ithink might be useful. Okay, um

(01:01:03):
I think I mentioned at the topthat cult literature, the bulk
of it is pre digital. And thatis really problematic. Because,
you know, top sort of culttheorists and writers in the

(01:01:27):
world are being pingedincessantly by top level
journalists, you know, about QAnon about conspirituality. And
they're really being pressed togive answers for phenomena that
don't actually fit the modelsthat we have. I'll give you I'll

(01:01:50):
give you one thing. It's it'san, it's undoubted that there
are many aspects of Q Anonparticipation that feel cult
like just to take this as anexample. And yet, we don't have
a model for cultic organizationthat does not feature the

(01:02:10):
centrality of a leader. Or thecapacity for that leader to
congregate followers in brickand mortar spaces.
That second point is a littlebit less important. But what

(01:02:31):
happens when the leader isactually invisible? What happens
when the not only anonymous, butmay not exist at all? So before
Cullen Hoback, HBO film comesout, and it becomes a little bit
more clear that Ron Watkins isprobably acting as Q. Before

(01:02:53):
that all happens. People who arelooking at Q anon through the
lens of cult analysis, can'treally answer this question,
right? Like, what do you do witha social organization like this
that has all of the behaviorthat has all of the
informational control, that isself sealing, that has a
transcendent ideology thatbelieves that everything is

(01:03:14):
coming to a particular crescendopoint and specific things are
going to happen and relies onprophecy and all of this stuff?
What do you do with a group likethat, that does not have a
leader because at the top ofevery model for cultic
organization, typically is thenotion of the charismatic leader

(01:03:36):
from, you know, Jim Jones toKeith Raneri, to whoever you'd
like to name. And so I mean, mytake on that is that the the
leaderless group, first of all,is connected operationally two,

(01:03:57):
you know, forms of whitesupremacist movements in the
United States that go back overthe last 40 years like that's,
that's a tactic to sort ofdiffuse responsibility and to
make sure that nobody, nobodygoes down at the center. But the
function of the charismaticleader in the traditional cult,

(01:04:19):
or traditional as defined fromthe 1980s or so is to embody the
sort of absolute realityprinciple of what everybody is
supposed to do and believe andvalue. And when that isn't
there, and and when thatcharismatic function isn't

(01:04:39):
radiating out. What takes up thespace and my answer for that,
which is still speculative isthat the brilliance of Q Anon,
is that it made everyparticipant into a charismatic,
it actually diffused charismaticresponsibility to the individual
digital soldiers who were allsupposed to visualize themselves

(01:05:03):
as heroes on the, you know,cyberspace battlefield in of
good and evil. But that's not avery satisfactory answer. All
all of which is to say that Ithink there are some aspects of
cult literature that are useful,and some aspects that are just
that are outdated. Also, I wouldsay that there are economic and

(01:05:28):
class and also mental healthissues, that cult literature
will not address that I thinkare crucial in understanding the
success of something like Q Anonand I'm, I'm not making Q Anon
and conspiritualityinterchangeable. So, let me just
clarify that I believe in myformulation, conspirituality is

(01:05:51):
kind of the landscape out ofwhich Q Anon can arise, okay? If
you can imagine, conspiritualityas as Minecraft, and then Q Anon
is, you know, some structure,some castle that could be built
within it out of its elements.
That looks very ominous. That'skind of how I visualize it.
Okay, so, there is a couplethere are a couple of ideas,

(01:06:14):
however, that I think areuseful. And let me just go back
to screen share, to show youwhat I mean.

(01:06:37):
Okayall right. So, I'll give a basic
definition of of, of the, "cult"but then I'm going to talk about
something called disorganizedattachment, which I think is is

(01:06:57):
the most useful framework. Okay,so this is 19. I didn't put the
year here. Yeah. Oh, no, I did.
It's 1986. This is Louie Westand Michael Langoni. And they

(01:07:19):
say that a cult is a group ormovement exhibiting great or
excessive devotion or dedicationto some person, idea or thing,
and employing unethical,manipulative or coercive
techniques of persuasion andcontrol. Okay, isolation from
former friends and family,debilitation, use of special
methods to heightenedsuggestibility, and

(01:07:40):
subservience, powerful grouppressure's information
management, suspension ofindividuality or critical
judgment, promotion of totaldependency on the group and fear
of leaving it. And all of thisis designed to advance the goals
of the group's leaders to theactual or possible detriment of
members, their families, or thecommunity. So if we just look at

(01:08:02):
that list, which is I think,classic here. And I'll just
highlight it. Yeah, um, what wesee with people who join the
online groups of, you know,Kelly Brogan and Sayer Ji or

(01:08:24):
people who are completelyimmersed in the materials of
Christiane Northrup, or I mean,I had a number of pictures up
here we've got you know, MickeyWillis, Yolande Norris-Clark,
Stephanie Scipio, here inToronto, Zach Busch, Kelly
Brogan Guru Jagat. This guy downhere can't see him very well

(01:08:46):
Madhavad Settee, BernardGunther, Christiane Northrup,
it's just kind of a grab bag ofof people that you'll be able to
learn about through our variousepisodes, but also I write a lot
about them on medium. You know,when people get involved, none
of them run brick and mortarbuildings, none of them run

(01:09:09):
residential cults, right?
There's no There's no wacocompound in conspirituality that
we're aware of. However, theimmersive nature of the online
content can definitely isolate aperson from their friends and
family. It can definitelydebilitate them in terms of the
time management part of theirlives where they're spending,

(01:09:32):
you know ungodly amounts of timeconsuming the content of the
particular influencer specialmethods to heightened
suggestibility and subservience.
You know, if the, thereligiosity of the particular
influencers content has themchanting or you know, saying

(01:09:55):
mantras or advising peopleparticular types of meditation,
then these are all sort oftechniques of suggestibility,
powerful group pressures,information management is a huge
one. And of course, it's kind ofa chicken and egg thing, because

(01:10:16):
the groups that we study, sovery easily are able to isolate
themselves within echo chambersand filter bubbles. Suspension
of individuality or criticaljudgment, promotion of total
dependency on the group and fearof leaving it. I mean, that's
embedded in the in the sort ofinduction promise of here's this

(01:10:38):
terrible thing that's happeningout there the pandemic. And
here's the spiritual spiritualsolution that I offer, very
difficult for the vulnerableperson to leave that once they
have been drawn in. So that's auseful basic definition that I
wanted to have you on board. ButI think the more important

(01:11:01):
dynamic that comes from theliterature that I want to flag
comes from a researcher namedDr. Alexandra Stein. She has an
amazing book called Terror, loveand brainwashing, attachment in
cults and totalitarian systems.
And that's from 2017, there'sbeen a new edition. And I'm just
going to read this paragraph.

(01:11:26):
And then I'll break it down alittle bit. So the paragraph is
describing a scenario withinfamily psychology.
And so there are developmentalovertones to it. As I read it,
you can replace child withfollower and caregiver with
leader. And it pretty much scansbecause that's what she does in

(01:11:49):
her book. So this is adescription. Now, anybody who
has a good background inpsychology will know what
disorganized attachment is andhow it fits in with with
attachment theory. So I'm notgoing to go into that. But, and
I think that even if you don'thave that on board, the
sensations of disorganizedattachment are palpable through

(01:12:13):
this description. So we'redescribing she's describing a
pattern of relationship betweenchild and caregiver. That's
called disorganized anddisorganized also implies
volatile, unpredictable, butalso highly charged and, and

(01:12:33):
very bonded. And she says thatthis occurs when a child has
been in a situation of frightwithout solution. So fright
without solution. I think thisis culturally familiar with us,
it's globally familiar to us atthis point. Fright without
solution is is a good sort ofband name for the beginning of

(01:12:55):
the pandemic. The caregiver isat once the safe haven and also
the source of threat or alarm.
So when the child feelsthreatened by the caregiver, he
or she is caught in animpossible situation, both
comfort and threat arerepresented by the same person,
the caregiver, can I just goback to the dichotomy in Ward

(01:13:16):
and veloce. Between the theparanoid sociality of conspiracy
theories, and the pronoidsociality of New Age promises,
that same kind of split betweensomething very ominous and

(01:13:37):
something very promising isbeing described here, or I'm
implying that it's beingdescribed here within a within a
psychological or relationalcontext. The child experiences
when these two things are atwar, the unresolvable paradox of
seeking to simultaneously fleefrom and approach the caregiver.

(01:13:58):
This happens at the biologicallevel, it's not thought out, or
conscious. It's an evolvedbehavior to fear. The child
attempts to run to and flee fromthe caregiver at one and the
same time, but because they needto be near to the caregiver to
survive. They will overrideattempts to avoid the fear

(01:14:23):
arousing caregiver, usually thechild stays close to the
frightening parent, whileinternally both their withdrawal
and approach systems aresimultaneously activated and in
conflict, that simultaneousactivation of, of fear and need
creates a heightened emotionalstate that can actually also

(01:14:44):
feel euphoric. Now, let me justgive a prime example of how this
worked out early on in thepandemic. This is the face of a
very handsome face and radiantface of Mickey Willis, who was
the producer and director of afilm you might have heard of

(01:15:08):
called Plandemic. Plandemic wasprobably the most successful
medical conspiracy theorypropaganda piece ever produced,
or released. It was released onMay 5 of 2020. It featured an
extended interview with JudyMikovitz who said many of the

(01:15:32):
same things that Tom Cowan did,including the fact that you
know, will masks will actuallygive you viruses because you're
going to recirculate? She alsosaid that, you know, you could,
she implied that you could cureCOVID By rolling around in sand
on the beach or something likethat. Anyway, he releases
pandemic on May 5.

(01:15:57):
There's like, spooky musicinvolved. There's a you know,
everything is shot in this kindof like very noir, disorienting,
very ominous aesthetic. And thenthe day after, this guy,
photographs himself, radiantwith golden light in his home in

(01:16:22):
wherever he is in New Mexico, orArizona, crying into Facebook,
about how he loves everybody,and how we're all going to pull
together and how it's going to,you know, everything is going to
be okay if we just rely on eachother. So on May 5, he releases
a film that scares the shit outof 10s of millions of boomers.

(01:16:46):
And on the next day, he goes onFacebook, and he talks about how
he's willing to die foreverybody. If they all, you
know, he plays he gives thisMessiah speech basically, in
very soothing tones that arevery spiritually charged. This,
whether he, you know, knows whathe's doing or not, is like a

(01:17:07):
classic cultic technique ofprovoking a disorganized
attachments state in the vieweron May 5, I'm going to terrorize
you. And on May 6, I'm going totell you that staying close to
me, or being involved with acommunity of people who are

(01:17:27):
likewise scared is going to beyour pathway to salvation. That
creates what Alexandria Steindescribes, in this circumstance
as a trauma bond not thatdifferent from what arises in,
you know, domestic abusesituations or situations of long
term family violence. Sobreaking down this dynamic. The

(01:17:48):
caregiver presents a false safehaven apart from other
attachments, but their care isunpredictable mingled with
neglect or abuse. See, when youturn on any of Mickey Willis's
content, you don't know whetherhe's going to tell you that
you're being poisoned, or thatyou're turning into God, you
just don't know. Like it couldbe one or the other. And the

(01:18:08):
more that those two thingsoscillate, the more hooked
you'll probably be right for abunch of neurological reasons.
At more extreme levels ofunpredictability, the attachment
of the member becomesdisorganized, highly aroused,
fearful, conflicted betweenwithdrawing and approaching, but

(01:18:29):
defaulting towards proximity.
The group if there's a groupinvolved, and then of course,
all there's all of this sort ofparasocial bonding around events
like this on social media, theywill nurture this
disorganization and interpretthe stress responses as signs of
devotion and advancement. If youare suffering while watching

(01:18:50):
Plandemic, then you're doing thework if you are suffering, but
then also bonding with otherpeople who are suffering you are
doing the work of transformationtogether. Doesn't matter that
you're on Facebook all day youare involved with spiritual
transformation, and it's reallyhard work. It's the dark night

(01:19:10):
of the soul. Don't you know? Thething about this conflicting
pattern between being terrifiedand being loved bombed is that
it's extremely stressful. In myown cultic experience, there was
a regular daily ritual at theplace one of the places that I

(01:19:33):
was at called endeavour Academywhere the you know that the, the
teacher, the teacher had thiskind of like, flipped back and
forth between you are you'redying of your own ignorance and
you are already Christ incarnateand the thing about being in the

(01:19:58):
presence of that group dynamicwas that it was unbearably
stressful for me physically andpsychologically, it made me very
ill. And I was told over andover again by the group that
those feelings of illness ordread, were actually signs that

(01:20:21):
I was learning something that Iwas like, ascending or I was I
was, I was becoming better insome way I I was going through a
necessary process, I was goingthrough the eye of the needle or
something like that.
And the thing about AlexandraStein describes in her book is

(01:20:44):
that the thing about the stressof this is that neurologically
at a certain point, the thefawning response, which is the
point at which you reach thismaximal stress, and you cannot
sort of resist or processanymore, can actually feel like

(01:21:04):
pleasure. There's a moment ofsurrender to the social tension
involved, that can feel asthough you have had a quote,
unquote, breakthrough into someprofound realization about your
life or about the nature ofreality, or about the truth of
the Cabal, or about, you know,how Theresa tam is actually

(01:21:24):
trying to kill you. So, I wouldsay that the empathy that I have
for people who get wrapped up inthese highly charged very
emotional dynamics in which onone hand, they are paranoid, of
the, you know, the New WorldOrder. And on the other hand,

(01:21:46):
they really feel strongly thatwonderful things are happening,
and in fact, must happen.
Because it's darkest before thedawn. I understand that stress,
and I empathize with it. It'svery captivating. And I think it
really locks people intodynamics that are hard to leave.
Okay, I'm going to try to finishup in five minutes so that we
have a good amount of time forquestions. I think I've said a

(01:22:10):
lot. I think I've said a lotabout how a harmful can
spirituality can be, you know, Ihaven't gone into details about

(01:22:32):
just how much it moves theneedle on, you know, vaccine
hesitancy and things like that.
I know that when we get into itsdeepest expressions, or its most
rigid expressions like Q Anon,that when you go to the

(01:22:56):
subreddit called Q anoncasualties, you'll see that
there's like 150,000 users thatare signed up and they're
telling each other stories abouthaving lost their their family
members to to q anon. You know,there's a lot of this material
that destroys families andrelationships. I have been, I

(01:23:18):
haven't actually participated inany court cases like this. But
I've I've spoken with a numberof people who have like,
interviewed me to see whether ornot I could be a friend of the
court or provide an amicus briefin you know, divorce proceedings
or some kind of testimonialbecause one person in a marriage

(01:23:39):
has become devoted toconspirituality or Q anon and
won't vaccinate the children andthe other partner is
immunocompromised themselves, ortheir parents are and it just,
it's just, it's like a it'sthere's there's incredible pain
that comes from this material.
And so, in the midst of sort ofbeing aware of that pain, I

(01:24:02):
think it's very easy to have areaction of disgust to those who
would use spirituality, or wouldcloak let's say, anti masking or
anti Vax sentiment inreligiosity. But I want to end
by suggesting that unless werecognize what conspiritualists

(01:24:28):
get right. In general, not inspecific, that we won't really
be well equipped to build thekind of society in which in
which an explosion like this isis less likely to occur. So so

(01:24:50):
let me just share a few ideas onthat.
Okay, so conspiritualists aregreat storytellers. And in
contrast, you know, Teresa Tamhas to explain processes, tasks,

(01:25:15):
benchmarks phases, so does TonyFauci very different tasks. The
stories that conspiritualiststell try to grasp what Timothy
Morton the the philosopher callsthe hyper object, the totality
of the world. And what we havein the communications of public
health and critical thinking isokay, well, let's look at this

(01:25:37):
little thing. And make sure thatthat's operating well. Let's
look at this problem and makesure that we we increase
efficiency and clarity there.
But the stories thatconspiritualists tell our grand
stories, like Marvel movie grandstories, right. And at root,
many of the stories arereasonable, because they're
stories about predatorycapitalism, their stories about

(01:25:59):
medical or organizedintergenerational abuse. Is it
really implausible that there isa pedophile ring at the center
of the Democratic Party? When weknow that there is a pedophile
ring that is organized aroundthe figure of Jeffrey Epstein?

(01:26:21):
No, it's not implausible. Sowhat are people right about?
What stories are they rightabout? And how do they tell
stories in compelling ways thatallow them to be felt, first of
all, but then also answered andbrought towards some kind of
denouement? One thing that Ipoint out is that often however,

(01:26:42):
the stories thatconspiritualists tell our story
appropriated One prime examplebeing that when Save the
Children emerges in the summerof 2020. Many influencers that
used it would draw sort of acorrelation between efforts to

(01:27:06):
save the children from the, youknow, deep state cabal with
efforts to, you know, reckonwith the fact of missing and
murdered indigenous women inCanada, for example. Those are
not the same story. And in fact,it's a way tragically for the

(01:27:27):
MMI WG story to be, I think, coopted. Now, I would also say
that conspiritualistsunderstand the principle of
heroism. Part of this is becausethey operate through charismatic
leadership, and they endow theirfollowers with a kind of

(01:27:53):
autonomous self importance. Youbecome the hero of your own
health, you become the master ofyour own well being. And yeah,
and that can even work in aleaderless movement like Q anon
through the deputize ation ofits users. And, you know, we

(01:28:14):
have to look at the question ofwhen a movement like Q anon
makes its digital soldiers intoindividualized heroes, and they,
they might feel a sense ofautonomy or agency for the first
time in years. Where are theynot feeling that? Are they not
feeling that in local politics?

(01:28:36):
Are they not feeling that in thedemocratic process? Are they not
feeling that in their workinglives? Conspiritualists also
appeal to very real grievancesand uncertainties? They know
about economic inequality. Theydon't really have a social
answer to it, they have kind ofa demoralized answer, which is

(01:28:58):
to promote, you know, sovereigncitizenship and autonomy. But
they also know from decades of,you know, globalist management,
failure to act on climatechange. They know from the me to
movement, that contemporaryinstitutions offer very few
pathways to accountability. Andso, this again, pushes them

(01:29:24):
towards Well, I'm going to takeresponsibility for myself, I'm
going to protect my own healthI'm going to I'm going to pursue
my privatized spirituality andreligion towards my personal
transformation.

(01:29:45):
I would say also thatconspiritualists do a really
good job. Maybe they'redeploying cultic dynamics to or
techniques to do it, but theysoothe anxiety about fraying
social networks. They are wellaware of how much technology has
reorganized our socialrelations, they know how chaotic

(01:30:06):
that feels. And so they areconstantly appealing to
populism, community,heteronormativity, and the
nuclear family and tonaturalistic fallacies about,
you know, how if we all gotcloser to the earth and did more
gardening, we would feel moreconnected with each other.

(01:30:28):
They're not wrong about thatthey're wrong about the
heteronormativity maybe, butlike, they're not wrong about
fraying social networks. But,you know, they're not reaching
towards, you know, structuralanalyses of fraying social
networks, they're not, you know,and so and so, you're gonna see

(01:30:50):
a lot of overlap a predictableoverlap between anti Vax
sentiment, and, you know, themoral panic over critical race
theory in the United States.
Both are instances one isbiological, and one is social in
which the person feels that thestate is injecting their body
with some kind of chemical orshame about, you know, a history
and so those things flowtogether.

(01:31:18):
Okay. Finally, I don't know ifthis is the scariest or the or
theor, or the most poetic way to
end. But conspiritualists don'tmanage endless crises? They
offer salvation, but thatsalvation is often offered by
cosplaying the role ofchanneling the wisdom of the

(01:31:43):
natural world. And here we havethe incredibly handsome face of
the Marlboro Man ofconspiratorial ality Zach Busch,
Dr. Zack Bush, who is an antiVax activist who is obsessed
with the microbiome and sellsdiatomaceous earth that is, has,
I don't know, bacteria in it orsomething like that, so that you

(01:32:04):
have good poopy. And here's aquote from one of his sermons.
He's an amazing speaker. He'stotally mesmerizing. And this is
in the midst of an anti Vax kindof presentation. Go create with
nature today. Don't buysomething today. Alright, so an
anti capitalist, maybe, youknow, don't buy something today,

(01:32:26):
except my supplements, go createsomething today, plant a seed,
stack a stack of rocks on theriver and see the river move
those play with nature today, Iencourage you to look up Zack
Bush, because I'm not doing hisvoice justice. He's like, it's
like listening to, I don't know,to Charlton Heston or something
like that, like he speaks sobeautifully. Go outside and
revisit your beauty. You don'teven know yourself yet. Society

(01:32:49):
has not let you see it. Youdon't know what lies within you.
Because society has made sureyou don't know your own power,
and so on and so forth. Findyourself love yourself. And
through that we will find ourbeauty and we will find the
reverence for humanity as muchas nature. Alright, so we have
charismatic sermonizing. At thelevel of Martin Luther King, Jr,

(01:33:14):
Cornel West, like you name yourfavorite order, there will be
somebody conspirituality who'sdoing it that well or better.
And the humanizing part ofpointing to that is, is to say
it's very understandable whypeople are hungry for that kind

(01:33:40):
of mysticism, that kind ofpoetry. It speaks very
powerfully to disenchantment andto alienation. And for somebody
who is a doctor, to speak thatway, is even more powerful. And
it returns I think, people tothe nostalgia of, you know, the

(01:34:00):
19th century and before when youknow doctors medicine and poetry
and philosophy were notindependent disciplines. And so,
I guess I'll I'll end by sayingthat if we are concerned by the
misinformation that comes in thesheep's clothing of

(01:34:22):
spirituality, that we have totake the sheep's clothing
seriously, because it's feedingan emotional need. And it
doesn't, it's not going to workto debunk somebodies anti Vax
science, it's not going to workto say, you know, you're really

(01:34:44):
an idiot for thinking that 5gtowers are giving you migraines.
None of that is going to work.
What's going to work is toreckon with the I think the
hollowness and the alienationand the lack of social support

(01:35:07):
that allows this kind of veryattractive, but also very
dangerous answer to take root.

Wes Regan (01:35:22):
Thank you very much, Matthew, that was even more
detailed in depth and thoughtfulthan I was expecting and
listening to your podcast, andreading some of your other work,
I was expecting it to bethoughtful in depth. On behalf
of the Vancouver lodge ofeducation and research, I want

(01:35:43):
to turn it over to CaseyCollins, who's one of our
principal officers, seniorWarden, I believe Jr. Ward,
she's I can't remember, wehaven't met in so long. In any
event, we've asked Casey torespond with some thoughts and
comments on behalf of the lodgebefore we open it up to have
some general discussion and somequestions from the rest of the
audience. So I will Oh, andTroy, do you have a question? Or

(01:36:05):
did you want to just be added tothe queue?

Troy Spreeuw (01:36:07):
Now I just want to be added to the queue. I don't
want to use my bully pulpit.
I'll let you guys go at it for alittle

Wes Regan (01:36:13):
after Casey, we have a question from Craig DiRocco.
That was mentioned in the chat.
So if anyone else has questions,please feel free to type them in
the chat. Or you can raise yourhand. But I want to turn it over
quickly to Casey, for someresponse.

Matthew Remski (01:36:26):
Also, I want to say yeah, I also just want to
say that I do not have a hardstop in 15 minutes, so I can
stay to.

Wes Regan (01:36:32):
Thanks, Matthew, we appreciate that. Yep. Casey,
take it away.

Unknown (01:36:37):
Thanks, Wes. I'm Matthew, first of all, thank you
so much for taking time to bewith us today. I'm a fan of your
podcast. I find myself listeningand smiling because oftentimes,
what you articulate so well onthe podcast, kind of validates
what I find in my research onJapanese new religious

(01:36:59):
movements. And oftentimes I findit it's difficult for me to
articulate some of the thingsI've observed or experienced,
but then to hear them in adifferent kind of familia in,
you know, North Americanspirituality and things like
this. It's It's gratifying tosay the least, and it's a
pleasure to meet you. So I havejust a couple of questions. My

(01:37:25):
first one is actually it's aboutBuddhism is kind of specific.
And I'm interested in what youwere calling like the the
curdling of those three axioms,kind of at the core of kind of
the milieu of conspiritualthinking and I'm just it strikes

(01:37:47):
me as kind of this uncritical orunnuanced mixture of Hindu and
Buddhist concepts that are oftenconflated and because Hinduism
might be like Sankhya philosophymight suggest that the world is
an illusion, yeah, but BuddhismBuddhism disagreed with that,
that notion, and that actually,you know, that the world is

(01:38:10):
real, but being attached to itor having a particular attitude
or approach to it is what canmake you suffer is one of the
things that Hindus and Buddhistshave disagreed about so much,
you know, the height of thelength of emptiness, these
things have gotten conflated,and then get imported into the
yoga world and New Age ideas,perhaps through kind of like

(01:38:36):
Orientalist enthusiasts and andkind of just, I don't know, so
I'm wondering if you could talkabout this conflation of these
ideas?

Yeah, I mean, I think for for most consumers of,
you know, globalized Buddhismand yoga, the significant and
yet, seemingly, well,significant, but difficult to
understand philosophicaldifferences between the various

(01:39:06):
schools, are probably going tobe less important for the
curdling of those axioms from,you know, here are some, two or
three ideas that produceequanimity or should produce a
sense of feeling of rest withinthe world into I now I'm on

(01:39:28):
edge, and now something ishappening. You know, I think
that the philosophical positionof, you know, is the world
illusory, or does it exist, butin a way that we don't, we
understand, we misunderstand it.
And then there are variousBuddhist schools in there. I

(01:39:48):
think those arguments are lostto most consumers. And what
they're left with is, is, youknow, nothing is as it seems,
which is is a lot more vague.
And and but I think that I thinkthat the the, the point about

(01:40:10):
the curdling is that I don'tthink consumers have global
Buddhism or Hinduism, neither ofthose economies have emphasized
the ethical foundations of thosecultures. And so, the adopters

(01:40:30):
of global, the converts ofglobal Buddhism and Hinduism,
from the 1970s onwards, havetrended towards
de-politicization. And so thethe salient or that the soothing
aspect of nothing is, as itseems, allows for a kind of real

(01:40:54):
world bypassing for both groups,regardless of how they
understand the philosophy. Andthen, but I think I think that,
that, I guess I'll just repeatwhat I said in the, in the
presentation, is that, at acertain point, there's a boredom
that sets in that, that switchesthis nothing is as it appears,

(01:41:17):
as in well, meaning I shouldn't,I don't need to take anything
that seriously. I don't need topay attention, life will unfold
as it unfolds or things are intheir place, and God is in His
heaven or whatever. That thatthat feeling becomes
disenchanting itself because,obviously, life is continuing,

(01:41:37):
obviously, things are stillchanging, you know, you can't
shut out the news forever. It'snot like you start meditating
and somehow the IndustrialRevolution doesn't, you know,
spew carbon into the atmosphere.
So people are doing a practicethat is d politicize them and
then they're feeling the impactof their political reality rise
around them. And the statementnothing is it, as it appears,

(01:42:00):
can flip from this kind ofrelaxation into the status quo
into Oh, I should learn more andI should do more and maybe my
mystical insight that I'vegained through meditation will
allow me to see how to be anactivist now. So I don't really
know if that answers yourquestion, but But I too am
frustrated by the fact that thatthe this kind of globalized

(01:42:22):
products of glow of Buddhism andHinduism are really kind of
vague and and, and Orientalised.

Unknown (01:42:35):
Thank you. Um, I have one other question. And it
relates to the humanizing ofconspiratuality you mentioned
kind of the you know, the needto understand why people are are
hungry for this type ofthinking. And I was just

(01:42:56):
listening recently to yourepisode about Elena Brower and
doTERRA oil, you know, multilevel marketing. Yeah. And you
mentioned there the with kind oflike an editorial comment that,
you know, you pause to say, oneof your informants had mentioned

(01:43:19):
that joining a multi levelmarketing scheme can seem to
outsiders very kind of odd andirrational or whatever, but that
this informant wanted to stressthat there are real benefits
positive, you know, initialexperiences of belonging that

(01:43:41):
can be affirming in the same waythat, you know, kind of
discovering this, this kind of,I don't know, affirmation
through I'm just wondering ifyou could mention also some of
the positive benefits. Oh, yeah.
Well might experience within agroup when they when they join?

Well, I referenced the social psychology
around the conspiracy communityoffering epistemic social and
existential benefits oranswering those needs. And I
think that's, that's, that's thethe primary useful framework to
join. Christiane, Northrop'sGreat Awakening video series and

(01:44:32):
to tune in every day is to gainthe sense along with a whole
bunch of others in commonthreads that you now know
something that is privileged andwill allow you some kind of
moral or spiritual advantage asyou move through your day. It

(01:44:52):
will soften the jagged edge ofperhaps You know, the deepest
pain of the information crisisthat we live through day by day,
which is, you know, here'ssomebody who's telling you how
reality is and and she's, she'sdoing it from her kitchen in

(01:45:13):
Maine and it feels very cozy.
And, you know, there are notnone of these influencers are
without their particular kind ofattractive effect. You know,
Christiane Northrup is kind oflike the, the gracious aunt
who's always pouring tea foryou, you know, Kelly Brogan is

(01:45:34):
this kind of, you know,glamorous, both maternal but
also very independent and sortof unattached, or avoidany
attached lioness who wants to,you know, empower followers. So

(01:45:54):
there's a, there's a, there's anattraction to an effect that I
think is very important as well,that people bond around
parasocially, as they aregetting the secret knowledge, as
they are finding, you know,social relationships that are
more receptive than the onesthat they are finding at home or

(01:46:18):
in their communities. And, yeah,if they are nurturing some kind
of experience of past medicaltrauma, for example, to be told
that there is a way to bypassyou know, medical or public

(01:46:40):
health infrastructure and takecare of yourself, either by not
believing that the virus isreal, or by understanding that
your sacred holy immune systemcan defeat it on its own, then
that can be existentiallyvaluable, because the amount of
terror that some people have inrelation, especially to the
predatory American health systemis really high. So yeah, there

(01:47:03):
are all kinds of of wonderful,wonderful benefits that are
about social identification.
And, you know, you know,horizontal networking, what I
would say is different betweenthe online movements that we

(01:47:24):
study we've studied over thelast 18 months, and traditional
cults is that they're online,and so they're more fragile. You
know, one of the things that wesaw happen on January 20, on
telegram was the absolutecarnage, of Q Anon adherence,
tearing each other to shredsover whether or not they were

(01:47:47):
going to remain faithful to theplan, whether they were going to
stand by Q, as they werewatching Joe Biden swear the
oath of office on that Bible.
And in real time, the ones whowere saying I'm going to stay
with the plan, we're having tosay, Oh, he was just replaced by
a CGI President Biden, andthat's not a real Bible. And you
know, Trump is off in the wingsand so on. So but but the level

(01:48:10):
of conflict and how immediatelyit overran the various coupon
channels on telegram was reallyindicative of how fragile these
bonds actually are. They offerso I think, I think that the the
final point that I'd make isthat groups like this offer
incredible social benefit. Butit's slightly deceptive because

(01:48:34):
it's it's built on either thedeceptions of pseudoscience, or
a fiction like Q Anon, or it'sbuilt upon the the bonding
effected by a charismatic leaderwho may not have their best
interests in mind.

Wes Regan (01:48:52):
Thank you, Casey. We haven't really touched on it,
Matthew, and I want to get tosome of the other questions here
but you you've sort of hinted atsome of the things in the
conspiratuality podcast, whichyou delve a bit deeper into,
including disconfirmation. Andthe idea that we now have this
situation where we have aleaderless cult, effectively,
online, and yet, you see thissort of entrepreneurial,

(01:49:15):
charismatic leadership thatsteps forward and is able to,
you know, harness some of thatcultic energy and stamp their,
you know, presence on the on thecultic milieu online, which I
think you and the podcast havedone a service to research into
this area. Because I think as,as you pointed out, you know,

(01:49:38):
classical academic research intothis has, we're still relying on
a lot of truisms or things thatwe have learned from, you know,
before the digital era, andwe're at a real interesting sort
of, we're in a liminal space, orperhaps we passed through that
liminal space in the 90s andearly 2000s that we are fully in

(01:50:00):
into this new era of digitalchaos in which the cultic
dynamics are actually quitedifferent in many ways. So I
really appreciate your attentionto that. And I want to direct
people to your podcast where youdelve into that more deeply. But
I want to draw attention to aquestion by Craig here, who
earlier asked the two groupsthat seem to be most in the

(01:50:22):
crosshairs of conspiracy groupsand fascist regimes, regimes,
which he would consider moreorganized conspiracy groups. And
if you have studied any of NaziGermany, you'll appreciate that
conspiracy theories are veryimportant in how they mobilize
their social solidarity aroundtheir ideas. But he's asking,
you know, often in thecrosshairs are Freemasons and

(01:50:44):
people in the Jewish faith andhe, he asks you, Why do you
think that might be?

Well, I can speak more to just my general
knowledge of of the perennialnature of anti semitism and
conspiracy theorizing going backinto medieval Europe and the
blood libel theme that is justsort of writ large and Q anon.

(01:51:18):
You know, I don't think that theanti semitism of Q anon and
conspirituality can be untangledfrom the proximity of these
movements to ethno nationalismand white supremacy in the
United States, either, becausethere's always on the fringe of
the, you know, anti mask, antilockdown, anti vaccination

(01:51:43):
argument, there's always thefringe of, or there's always the
context of the the Jews are notonly controlling how money
flows, and that's all unequalright now. But they're also
controlling the culturalnarrative of how, you know, the

(01:52:08):
United States considers itsracial history and moves towards
racial equality. And so there'sthis sort of confluence of
paranoia around financial actorsand educational actors. And, and

(01:52:30):
then, of course, theentertainment industry, that all
gets sort of tagged as beingJewish. So that's the contours
of anti semitism are just sortof like plain to see. I guess I
don't know enough abouthistorical or contemporary
Freemasonry, to be able tocomment much except to say that

(01:52:57):
you know, as a sort of wellformed and organized and
ritualized social movement, thatis dedicated to, you know,
principles of, of, you know,humanism, rational philosophy,

(01:53:17):
but also preserving, you know,some aspects of esoteric
heritage. And also, I, am I am Imistaken in in an understanding
that the Freemasons typicallytry to adopt positions of
political neutrality

Wes Regan (01:53:38):
in the Anglo American tradition that's explicitly So,
in the French what we call thegrand orient tradition, which is
the largest, you know, Masonicbody by membership in France
and, and birth lodges incolonies around the world. It's
actually, in many casesexplicitly political, and, and

(01:54:00):
yet also explicitly secular.
Right. So there's some nuanceand some schisms within
Freemasonry, but within NorthAmerica, it you know,
Freemasonry has traditionallygone to great lengths to try and
remain explicitly apolitical.
And D politicize its presence incommunities, although, for many
years,

It sounds like it sounds like it's such a
diverse movement. With with somany different types of of
participants, that I'm wonderingif, if the if the targeting of
Freemasons over and I haven'tseen a lot of it, I think its

(01:54:45):
features in q anon discourse,actually, over the last 18
months or so. But I'm wonderingif it's some sort of vague kind
of branding issue where becausethe The because Freemasonry is
difficult to define difficult tounderstand because there are

(01:55:05):
membership requirements thereseem to be, you know, degrees of
participation and there's athere's a ritualization of the
institution, it's very easy tostereotype it's very easy to
other. I mean, I think justspeaking as a as a civilian, the

(01:55:27):
term Freemason for me conjuresyou know, the secret society
that is planning to retain somesort of secretive knowledge. And
I think that is just an easilytransposable brand on too deep
state or cabal or there's atransitive quality there that
probably has nothing to do withanybody's sociological

(01:55:50):
understanding of whatFreemasonry is. Yeah, thanks for
that.

Wes. Wes, and I may well, you're an excellent,
yeah, please. Yeah. But but theMy question has nothing to do
with what you guys were justtalking about. And I in, in many
ways, the establishment of asmall our Republican
representative government. Thatis that that at least leans into

(01:56:18):
secularism, if not, the overtdeism that we practice in
Freemasonry is, and I believethat even on the conspirituality
side, they're right about this,we, Freemasonry established
representative democracy, andthe forces that work within
Freemasonry establishedrepresentative democracy in in

(01:56:40):
England, and then in the Statesand in other places around the
world, quietly, discreetly,because that's, that's our
working ideal. And, and we don'teven know, as a group, where
that comes from internally. Itmight just be a result of the
the type of deism that we stillpractice which you know, I

(01:57:05):
believe harkens back to the theeven the Gnostic heresy, maybe
even earlier. But right. But wewe see, the establishment, and I
meant small establishment ofthese principles in the west and
functioning for a couple of 100years, seamlessly. And

(01:57:26):
Freemasonry just gets itsucceeded so successful, it's
succeeded so vastly and socompletely, that it's, it's,
it's, it's almost no longerneeded. It's like the argument
about the ultimate victim of itsown success. Yeah, yeah. The the

(01:57:47):
true Bavarian Illuminatisucceeded so wildly in
establishing, you know, removingthe power of the church from
education and government. And,and replacing it with a, you
know, a pluralist secularism andhear Freemasonry does the same
thing everywhere else, andpeople take it such for granted
and are set but my real questionwas about how much of of our

(01:58:10):
problem now is about, everybodyjust takes the way things work
for granted, which is not easy.
consensus building andrepresentative democracy is
hard. Losers have to accept theloss. People could have. First
of all, you cannot bringviolence into politics, because
basically, any version ofviolence on either side now is a

(01:58:32):
form of fascism. And thatthere's no way that
representative democracy istrying to build consensus can
handle how radical people needto be to embrace violence in a
political milieu now, so. Butwe've left the ground without
idealistic competition at all tothe point where nobody bothers

(01:58:58):
to learn about the past of thisstuff, or about constitutional,
their constitutional rights inthe States or the way
representative democracies inCanada and the rest of the world
work. So I mean, what I wantedto ask about is, you know, how,
how do we get back to a timewhere people appreciate how hard

(01:59:20):
it is to work with it arepresentative democracy,
because all the benefit is allaround us. And yet, we're just,
we're just lighting it on fire.
And the people who are willingto fight for fascistic ideas are
willing to embrace violence, andeverybody else is just like,

(01:59:41):
well screw those guys.

They're also willing, they're they're also
willing, they're also morewilling to to embrace
representative democracy, incertain cases was just what
we're seeing with theoverwhelming of school board
meetings and you know, and localpolitics, elections in the state
so, so so they are they areplaying that too. Yeah, it's a
great, it's a great question. Imean, every, like, I find, I

(02:00:07):
find I empathize with yourquestion. And I find it
nostalgic for a time in which,you know, there was a better
base level of of civicseducation. Where, you know,
everybody could just sort oflike, remember what they learned

(02:00:28):
in grade nine about how, howdemocracy worked and and things
would, I don't know they wouldfeel better about that and all
get along on a Saturdayafternoon. But I don't know I
like I'm thinking about thismight seem like a tangent, but
I'm thinking about a verypowerful book that we reviewed

(02:00:49):
on the podcast called it camefrom something awful by a
journalist named Dale Baron. Andit's called how an old right
troll the subtitle is how an oldright troll army accidentally
memes Donald Trump into office.
And and and I guess what I wantto say is that you obviously
know the history of your Is it aguild, you would call it your,

(02:01:17):
your your organization? Likereally well? And that everybody,
everybody who is using it forsome kind of using the name
Freemasonry, with with for somekind of social capital? I don't
believe they would know anythingof that history, nor would they

(02:01:40):
care any more than they wouldcare about what it means to
traffic in anti semiticmaterials? Because one of the
things that Barron's book laysbare is that in the internet
culture of, of, you know,meme-ified politics, which is

(02:02:02):
what conspirituality is alsodriven by? Thing, history is
stuff, history is pictures,history is images. It's not like
clear arguments or positions ornarratives about how something
came to be are of high culturalvalue. What is of high cultural

(02:02:24):
value is the fact that the wordFreemason can be used. I mean,
if you imagine Donald Trumpsaying the word, just the sound
of the word itself, would carrymore weight and emotional impact
than, you know, the mostarticulately written history
could provide. And so it feelsYeah, I feel I feel melancholic

(02:02:47):
about your question, actually.
Because? Because it's it's,it's, it's a very, it's a great
question, which is about, well,you know, how do we slow
everything down so that peoplecan understand what's actually
running things? And yeah, Idon't, I don't have an answer
for that, at the

Wes Regan (02:03:08):
time that everything is speeding up.

Yeah. Yeah, neither do and neither do those
of us who take these thingsseriously, which is part of why
you're here and why we'retalking about this so much, and
Wes has been talking about it.
I've just before we move on toBrother Harbick's question, I'm
just gonna read a comment thatwas in the chat much earlier.
And this just sort ofillustrates the problem we've
got because we've got members ofthese rather radicalized

(02:03:34):
conspiracy groups, in ourmembership in the lodges that
are initiated in our members andmaybe even influential in some
areas. And here's the comment,I'm not going to say his name,
but I know he's a brother. Andhe just he said right before he
flounced "Sorry to leavebrother, I wish you would have
announced that you would beenforcing your beliefs by

(02:03:54):
skewing any and every everythingfrom the counter argument. Your
talk has lost itseffectiveness." Yeah,

I saw Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. I don't
know what

did you see me call him out right below?
Because he she said that andbolted, which is not very
Masonic at all? Because, yeah,you can't make a statement
without allowing a reply or acounter argument. And that's, I
mean, and that's part of theproblem is that is that they use
these tactics and, and theywould never stand for those

(02:04:26):
tactics in their groups. Butwhen they were in our group,
they come over here and, and usetheir destructive rhetoric, they
have no idea what they'retalking about. They don't even
know what they're involved in.
You know, they just, they, theysee it as a as another vehicle
for this sort of promotion andimprovement and it's very
frustrating to those of us whowho value what this organization

(02:04:47):
represents. And and it's, it'sso broad and so inclusive. We
daren't even say what it is. Andthat's part of the problem, I
really think and I appreciateyour response, because it's very
considered. And I could see thewheels turning over there.
Because I know you haven't spentmuch time thinking about us or

(02:05:09):
what we do. But I can see thewheels turning now, where
you're, you're well about.

I mean, I mean, I, I don't think I have to know
much about your group to sort ofassess the crisis of that, of
that comment. I mean, this is aweird format. And if we were in
person, you know, it, I'd bestanding at the front of the
room, or sitting at the head ofthe table or something like

(02:05:36):
that. And the person wouldobviously be uncomfortable, I
would probably have pausedearlier in the talk, because
this also looks like a commentfrom somebody who is just
overwhelmed by something, andisn't taking the time to
articulate it, but they'resaying they are communicating

(02:05:58):
that they're overwhelmed. And soI think if we were in person, I
would probably be able to feelthat discomfort, and I probably
would have stopped and said,Okay, so is Is there anything
that is objectionable, oranything that you want to push
back on? Or, you know, if I, ifI'm speaking from a political
point of view that you disagreewith? Do you want to identify

(02:06:20):
that so that we can move onbecause we can agree to disagree
about, you know, stuff without,without abandoning the thread of
the the actual data altogether?
You know, I probably would havedone that. I think it's hard to
tell, with a comment like thiswhat the person what the person
means. I don't know what aneffective talk would have been.

(02:06:44):
I don't know. Like whether,yeah, I just want to ask the
person more questions. What's,what's really, really alienating
about this format? Is thatsomebody can bounce like that.
Right. And, and, and, andregister their discomfort
without really explaining it.

(02:07:04):
And, yeah, that's rough. Yeah,

Wes Regan (02:07:07):
I think I might have been more therapeutic than
anything. So we'll move on toJohn Harvey's question next. But
we had the same thing happenedlast year, when we hosted Dr.
Thomas Milan Konda, who wrote in2019, a book called conspiracy
of conspiracies. And he's aprofessor emeritus of political
science at State University ofNew York. And we had actually a

(02:07:27):
member who was a ardent believerin Q Anon, and believed that
this was in the lead up to theelection in the US, I believe it
was, and he believed that thethe Q eschaton was at hand and
things got very awkward. And soyou know, we here we have this,

(02:07:48):
this interesting conundrum inFreemasonry, where we are in a
very old organization that onone hand, believes in
rationality and we're a bit of achild of the Enlightenment, for
better or worse, there's goodbaggage and some problematic
baggage that comes with that.
But on the other hand, we arestewards of rejected knowledge
or stigmatized knowledge orthese other things that you've
hinted at earlier. Which, whichmeans that, you know, guys who

(02:08:10):
can be attracted to Freemasonry,for what we think are healthy
reasons to have an interest inesotericism or hermetic, you
know, old interesting arcanethings can also have an interest
in why the earth might actuallybe flat, or, or that there's,
it's a hollow Earth with a kingat the center of it, literally,
or whatever else they mightbelieve. But I wanted to get to

(02:08:32):
John Harbick's question here,John, please. We end this. It
doesn't look like anyone elsehas questions. We really
appreciate you staying a littlebit late. Matthew is we had some
some technical difficulties.
It's been a really rich andinteresting discussion here. And
I guess, unless anyone else hasa final question from the
audience. You know, I'll hand itover to John here for the last

(02:08:55):
question

Unknown (02:08:55):
\

I've got one more question, Wes. You can come back
to me to address address.

Wes Regan (02:08:57):
So John, and then we'll have what is that? Okay.
Matthew will be one. Yeah. Okay.

Yep. Go. Go ahead, John. Okay, hopefully,

Unknown (02:09:04):
you can hear me. I can.
Good right at a microphonefailure. Anyway, very erudite,
much appreciated. I'm readingsomething I wrote earlier. So
some of its already been covereda wee bit, but the information
that's been presented seems tobe preaching to the choir, among
the people who did sign up otherthan the departur ecxepted. But

(02:09:26):
as Troy and West have noted, Imean, I've blocked people were,
who are members of Freemasonry,who said, we'll do the research
and I know that say, a flag, oralso I see comments about the
Nuremberg Code. So I'm, Iconsider that really specious

(02:09:49):
reasoning, and it rankles me andother than finding a direct
energy weapon to send to them,which I think Wes and Troy would
get that joke. How can you reachthose? Who do hold
conspirituality beliefs withinthe craft? Or are they simply
too far down the rabbit hole tobe reached?

Yeah. Okay.
That's, that's a that's that'sthe, it's a great. I mean,
there's another question, butthis is a great one to, to move
towards a conclusion with isthat, you know, I don't know how
often you meet, I don't knowhow, you know, I don't know how
your meetings go and what kindof socialization that you do.

(02:10:37):
But the extent to which it lookslike this is an
intergenerational organizationwhere you can have
intergenerational bonds, you canhave people who act as, as
mentors, people who feel likeuncles to you and brothers to

(02:10:59):
you, I know that you're usingthat appellation. You know, I
think that you have anopportunity to put relationship
above ideology or evenworldview. In this particular
circumstance, you know, ifthere's a commitment to, okay,

(02:11:22):
we are studious, we value both,you know, enlightenment values,
but we also want to preserveHermes Trismagestus has, you
know, we, there's a lot ofthings that we're interested in,
and we love, and we really lovesharing this stuff together. And
we are dedicated to criticalthought, and, you know, and and,

(02:11:47):
and rationalism. Those are allvery fine things. But I think
the key ingredient to having amore sort of receptive and
cohesive environment is that ifyou do feel that somebody has

(02:12:09):
moved towards a kind ofindoctrination,
if they've moved out of reality,arguing about the facts isn't
going to bring them back.
Discussing, you know, how roundthe earth versus how flat the
Earth isn't going to salve thewound that drove them out of the

(02:12:34):
consensus based, you know, sortof community. Anything that you
do to suggest that the the, thefellow is deluded, or they've
been duped or they've been takenadvantage of, or they're not, or
they're not thinking straight,none of those things are going

(02:12:57):
to work. What's what's what'sgoing to work is the sense of
social safety that the personfeels, I think I described in
some of the comments aboutcultic dynamics that and also in

(02:13:17):
response to the questions at thebeginning of the session. That
the social relationships formedin groups like these are
ultimately fragile becausethey're either based on
pseudoscience or charismaticabuse. Any long standing social

(02:13:38):
society with regular meetingsand an infrastructure for sort
of interpersonal care has anadvantage over a huge advantage
over Q Anon and that's theadvantage of, you know, secure
attachments. You know, here'ssomebody that I know I know

(02:14:01):
something about his life. We arewe see each other at meetings X
number of times a month, or peryear. And I I like the normalcy
and the groundedness of knowingthat this person cares about me.
And so it's almost axiomatic incult recovery circles, for the

(02:14:27):
advice to be given to familymembers, for example, where
somebody has been indoctrinatedto do everything that you can to
preserve the relationship. Andbecause it's, it's the the
memory of the secure attachmentof the relationship that's
eventually going to win out overthe sort of false self of the

(02:14:48):
indoctrination. There's alsothis idea that, you know, if a
person gets sucked into Q Anon,they actually become a different
person. And your job as theirfriend is to remember for on
their behalf Have who they werebefore they got sucked in. And
if you can reflect that back tothem, that's going to be a
stabilizing to the relationship.
But, you know, the the personthat you're talking about

(02:15:12):
blocking John online, you mightnot have any social capital
with. And so the advice that I'mgiving about maintaining the
relationship might not beappropriate. And in fact, it
might not only not beappropriate, it might be
counterproductive, to continueto discuss, especially in a

(02:15:34):
social media forum. They'reweird disinformation, you know,
publicly that here's a weirdweird thing about Facebook is
that if you start arguing withsomebody about the reality of Q
Anon and a comment thread, thealgorithm actually highlights
that particular comment threadas being more interesting than

(02:15:57):
other comment threads, thecontroversy and the conflict and
the actual acrimony is amonetizable product by Facebook.
And so the advice from theonline disinformation activists
is to is to block and to isolatepeople who produce

(02:16:18):
disinformation. So we've got twoconflicting sets of advice, cult
recovery, people say maintainthe relationship with a person
at all costs. And I would saythat is appropriate. In real
life, if you actually havestrong social connections with
the person, then keep thatgoing, because they're not
getting that from the groupthey've been indoctrinated into.

(02:16:39):
But then, if you encounter thematerial online, do not become a
vector for its algorithmicspread by engaging with it, your
you know, your, your, your bestoption there is to is to block
because you don't have socialcapital to to lose anyway.

Unknown (02:16:59):
And I do want to maintain my same equilibrium.
And there's no point in engagingin a social debate on topics
this contentious online, so Isee your point, it's just easier
to block them, knowing now whatI know, it's going to be

(02:17:20):
difficult to engage personallywith them. Because, you know, I
can fake a smile with the bestof them. But it you know, I'd
rather be honest with myself andbe a social hypocrite.

Yeah, I mean, it's, there's, there's a,
there's a line between being asocial hypocrite and, and having
the will, and also the emotionalenergy to to sit with somebody
and say and say, yeah, that's,that's I, you know, to be able
to say, to the Q Anon adherent.
Wow, it sounds like you'rereally anxious about the state

(02:17:58):
of the world. Can you tell memore about that, you know, but
that, that takes a lot ofenergy. And not everybody is in
a position to do that. And, youknow, it can feel like a lot of
emotional labor. And, yeah, wehave to, we have to make tough
choices about how much weinvest.

Wes Regan (02:18:19):
Thank you, Matthew, it's gonna, there's gonna be a
lot of awkward moments for usonce we get back to in person
meetings in Lodge, becausethere's been a lot of
unfortunate things that havebeen said in digital formats.
And we've really seen somepeople's true colors, oddly, in
a way. You know, as to yourpoint, Matthew, we build very
strong trust bonds in lodgebecause we have these rites of
initiation. Yeah. And we havethese, you know, this

(02:18:41):
ritualistic experience that weshare. And it's unique. It's
unique and peculiar to, to us inour society, so to speak. And
that does create a really strongbond. But yet sometimes, we find
you don't actually even knowthat person, you may have a
strong bond in a I don't want tosay superficial way, but in a
way that comes just by virtue ofbeing a part of a membership of

(02:19:03):
something. But yet we've seenthese comments from people
within Freemasonry online, we'relike, wow, I thought I knew that
guy. And he's like, not who Ithought he was, you know, he's
expressing his truest self,perhaps, in in this format. So
we're going to have an awkwardtime when we get back to face to
face meetings and lodges. If wedon't find a way to

(02:19:25):
constructively try and get to abetter point in.

Shouldn't we be thankful that we've opened this
Pandora's box so at least wecould find these people as to
exclude them from the people whodon't care about facts, and now
we can exclude them from thereal conversation?

Wes Regan (02:19:42):
Perhaps I think it speaks to Matthew's answer about
the tensions between recognizingwho that person was before this
happened or what you what youappreciate about them what you
saw and that you found noble andliked and trying to get past the
comments that have been broughtup in a really hyper tentious
moment. It also

says something It's also probably like a good
mirror on the how how, you know,ritualized bonding can, it can
bring people closer together,and it can abstract
relationships as well, you know,there's got to be some sort of
relationship between betweenthe, the, the ritual emotions

(02:20:19):
that a community goes through,and just the casual shit that
happens on the break room orwhatever, right. And that's why,
like, you know, I knowingnothing about your organization,
I keep thinking about what I'veheard about a totally different
(Wes) Started by a Freemason.
Okay. All right. Well, there yougo. So what I'm what I
understand about what Iunderstand about AA, vastly

(02:20:41):
problematic, there's some badscience involved with it. The
you know, recidivism rate is isrelapse rate is higher than they
want to admit, I think. Butsociologically, the bonds that
are formed in these groups, Ihaven't heard of anything like
it. And it's, it's a mixture ofthere's a formal, like, people

(02:21:02):
sit in circle, and they do theirthing. But then also, there's
this, like, there's this dyadmentorship, where where, you
know, the everybody has asponsor, and so, like, there's a
mixture of the formal and theinformal of the group and the
interpersonal, that that Ithink, is, is probably probably
really interesting there. And Ithink if it was only the circle,

(02:21:26):
then yeah, there would be a lotless of there would be a lot
more of oh, I don't actuallyknow you after all these years,
because when push came to shove,something else happened.

Wes Regan (02:21:37):
I think so. We have one, you've been very generous.
Matthew, one final question,which is a very British Columbia
question. Yeah, I reallyappreciate the comments, you
make them about how the, thebonds of ritual, create an
abstract sort of closeness orimagine. And, and that's, you
know, I want to hold on to thatfor future discussions within

(02:21:57):
the lodge. But I want to turn itover to Cumberland, where we
have a living room party,

Unknown (02:22:03):
with with a watch party, we were actually we've
been following conspiritualitypretty much since the beginning.
And I'm interested when I saw inyour bio, that you're moving
your work into, like, ecojustice movements. I'm kind of
interested for thoughts on theconnections between

(02:22:24):
conspirituality and eco justice,knowing that here on Vancouver
Island, you know, we know lotsof people who are quite involved
in the Fairy Creek, blockadesand protests, protecting old
growth. Yeah. And I noticed alot of overlap, like it's a lot
of the same people who are likethe virus doesn't exist, and
humanity is on the cusp of agreat transformation. Yeah. And

(02:22:48):
they go to places like fairyCreek and have these
transformational experiences,which I am reminded of, you
know, things like Occupy, likethere is intense grief process,
intense bonding in the face ofsome perceived adversity. But
anyway, I'm just kind ofintrigued to connect some of
those dots. Yeah, thank you somuch.

Yeah, you're welcome. And thank thank you for
the thank you for the kindwords. So I guess the first
thing that comes to mind is thatyou know, I don't think it's, I
don't think it's a surprise thatradical ecological movements

(02:23:27):
will carry with them or reachinto historical sources.
Elements of early 20th centuryfascism. I mean, it's like, if
it's, and it's entirelypossible, and it's entirely
possible to be inspired as ayoung person, by the, you know,

(02:23:53):
the ecological sensitivities ofsomebody like Rudolf Steiner to
send your kids to SteinerSchool, to Waldorf school, to be
organic gardening, both on yourown property or or collectively,

(02:24:15):
and to not realize that thereis, there are etiologies of
purity and self sufficiency andnotions of kind of divine
connections between between, youknow, chosen groups of people

(02:24:37):
and their divine sources. All ofthose things can flow together
in ways that allow for otherforms of Magical Thinking to be
acceptable. And then also for akind of anti authoritarian and

(02:24:59):
anti State and anti corporateattitude, all very
understandable attitudes to tobe to be folded in. So, yeah, I
think that if you spend yourlife if you've if you've, you've
spent the last 40 years, oryou're you're in a lineage of

(02:25:23):
organic, crunchy gardener typeswho have been doing their thing
since the 1970s. As inopposition to the globalized and
scientized Green Revolution,let's say and it's been in your
lifeblood, your communitylifeblood to say, Okay, well,

(02:25:43):
the agro business captains areruining the planet, and they're
denuding the soil. And the soilis the lifeblood of our
existence. And the soil is whatmakes us who we are. There's a
there's a what's Northrop Fry'sphrase is fearful symmetry

(02:26:07):
between those very, I think, prosocial positive attitudes and
similar attitudes that lead veryeffortlessly towards, you know,
an anti immigrant attitude or,and a concern about the

(02:26:27):
pollution of modern medicine or,you know, a kind of xenophobia
or a hyper protectionistattitude towards one's land. So,
I don't I don't think that's Idon't think that's surprising.
What I have been increasinglyconcerned about as I interact

(02:26:52):
with and and involved with, and,you know, do some do some kind
of organizing limited amount oforganizing with some ecological
groups is that it seems like asclimate crisis accelerates, that
eco activist groups are going tobe just kind of like conveyor

(02:27:13):
belts for cultic dynamics. And Ithink we can see this very
clearly, in organizations likeextinction rebellion, where
with, you know, very goodintentions, we have an older
generation of activists, verycharismatic activists, telling

(02:27:39):
younger activists, what theymust do, generally involving
physical or legal or financialdanger, and creating highly
charged emotional, socialcontexts around those actions
that feel theatrical, that feelritualistic, you know, there's

(02:28:00):
costumery, there's, there's,there's pageantry,
I'm very concerned to actuallyabout whether or not everybody
who participates in the typicalXR action is being fairly
influenced or unduly influenced.
And, you know, this comes downto how the leadership of XR, you

(02:28:23):
know, utilizes data around theefficacy of social movements,
and what percentage of peoplehave to have to be involved and
so on. So, yeah, I mean, Iremember I just read, let me let
me put it this way. One of thethe last XR meeting that I went

(02:28:43):
to, there was a, there was a, anaction plan for downtown
Toronto. And there, the meetingwas probably 15 people in the
room. And we started with anhour of group processing, which
was interesting to me, but itwas also like this kind of
untrained psychotherapy, Iunderstand that people need to

(02:29:07):
get together and talk abouttheir ecological grief. But this
seemed like excessive and, andalso sort of unboundried to me.
When we got around to the actualplanning part of the discussion,
like, who is going to show upwhat, what, where, who is going
to do press releases? You know,how is this event going to
unfold? I raised my hand to askbasic logistical questions. And

(02:29:31):
I was told by the person who ledthis pseudo group therapy
session for close to an hourthat this was not a meeting for
questions, that if I wanted toask questions about the, the,
the goal or the outcome or youknow, the reason for the
particular action, that youknow, I could phone this number,
and you know, I would I would beable to get more information

(02:29:54):
there and I was like, oh, okay,so everything except the sort of
emotional investment in thisgroup is invisible. Right? It's
that's gonna be off the, like,the space in which I would
actually be a human being whohad questions about my bodily
safety or about my commitmentthat was going to take place in

(02:30:15):
another room. Right. In another.
It was going to take placehidden actually, on the phone. I
actually phoned several timesthe phone number, nobody got
back to me. They might have beenbusy. Who knows, but but I felt
like, Oh, I'm going to keep aneye on this. Because as more and
more people get involved incrisis oriented ecological

(02:30:37):
movements, I'm concerned aboutthe social dynamics of coercion.

Unknown (02:30:45):
Thank you for that.
Yeah, it's really insightful.
Yeah. I'm reminded our goodfriend has sort of been avoiding
or one of our big concerns withthat is the, you know, tendency
to put young female bodies

Oh, God. Right.
Right. To Yeah, to dress them upand to and to and to make and to
give. Yeah, to make them intothe the muses of destruction,
right. Uh huh.

Wes Regan (02:31:12):
To feed them to the Eco justice Moloch.

Yeah. Yeah.

Wes Regan (02:31:17):
I really appreciate that answer. A number of years
ago, I, after my finished myundergrad at SFU. I took the
professional programmingcommunity economic development
in SFU. And Charles Eisensteinwas one of the instructors. And
I got an eye so I got an earlyglimpse at that sort of
positioning of eco justicemovements and and a sort of

(02:31:38):
detachment from reality. Andit's sort of back to your saying
about, you know, nothing is asit seems everything is
connected. You know, all thosesort of things come, we're
coming through in Charles'ssessions with us, which involve
long bouts of silence. Oh, yeah.
Right. Yeah. On long bouts ofsilence. Plus,

yeah. Plus, plus intrusive eye contact, probably.

Wes Regan (02:32:00):
Yeah, I'd be sitting there silently, he would look at
me. And I'd be like, what'sgoing on?

That's one thing. I think zoom has has
obviate a little bit. So I thinkwe can be grateful for that. All
right. Well, thank you so muchfor thanks so much for the kind
invite invitation. It's apleasure. Happy to talk with
with any of you at any time.

Wes Regan (02:32:21):
Thank you so much, Matthew, You take care. Thank
you for all the work you'redoing. I've posted a bunch of
stuff to your own website and tothe spirituality podcast, and
you stay well out there inToronto. We really appreciate
your time.

Thank you so much. Take care, everybody.
Thank you. Thanks, everyone. You

Wes Regan (02:32:38):
take care. Stay safe.
Great scene. Stephen. Robin.
Joel, thanks so much for joiningus and everyone else here today.
Your living room party was aninspiration

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Crime Junkie

24/7 News: The Latest

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Cults, Conspirituality, and Critical Thinking with Matthew Remski

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Crime Junkie

24/7 News: The Latest

Stuff You Should Know

All Episodes

Cults, Conspirituality, and Critical Thinking with Matthew Remski

Crime Junkie