Is Loyalty to Blood Idolatrous?

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:19):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Jive Talk. Today's guest,
his first time on Survivor Jive Jive Talk, is Eric
ak Arvo, who runs a Platonist channel on YouTube is
quite popular and he's very insightful, knowledgeable chap on that subject.

(00:40):
He also is a community builder in the USA for
europe people of European descent, and besides a great interest
in theology, metaphysics, philosophy, he has some interest like I do,
in human origins and biology and things like that which
are interesting to reconcile with his opical beliefs, and I'd

(01:00):
like to talk to them about that today. Welcome Eric Harvil.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, nice to be with you, Tom, Thank you for
that very kind introduction.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Sure look for I appeared in your channel as a
guest in three years ago on in twenty twenty two,
and I will link to that video at the end
of this conversation, so you can watch that if you
want more, because it's a pretty good chat we had
last time. That was more about you asking me about
paganism yourself. You're because I'm a pagan with influencers from

(01:35):
Platonism and you are a Christian with Platonist influencer Neoplatonist Christian,
which would you prefer.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Probably a Neoplatonist Christian is closer to the mark. But
unlike many Christians, I think that the gods do have
a valid place in our ontology and metaphysics and should
be reverenced. It's just a matter of vocabulary. Really, what
are these beings? I think the shame that early Christians
were so quick to literally demonize these guys. Clearly they're

(02:02):
real forces in the world that should be respected.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
I agree, it's definitely a semantic issue. I've had this
conversation with many Christians before, and also I think a
lot of people I know, like even not necessarily Platonists,
like knowing Platonist because I think everyone pretty much is
is unaware of the influence of Platonism on their thoughts,
since it's so ubiquitous in all Western thoughts, but many

(02:27):
I think I've heard many people say the angels are
equivalent to the gods, which I disagree with, but I
think that's part of the semantic problems with the which
began with the seventy odd Jews who translated the Greek
Jews who translated the septuagen and chose the word the
Greek word diamond to translate God of Gentiles. But then

(02:50):
because Jewish Platonists like Filo had said that angels are
equivalent to diamonds, they are the malach is equivalent. The
Semitic mean angel is equivalent to a dimond, which I
think is true, but the equivalent of a Greek dimon.
The diamonds on't thea in Greek, so that doesn't make

(03:10):
if they are equivalent, it's not the same thing. But yeah,
maybe you'd like to elaborate a little bit about what
you think on that topic.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Well, sure, like with many neoplatonic terms, there are several
different levels of meaning. So at the broadest level, dimon
or spirit can be interpreted simply to be any mediator
between higher divine forces and man. And you know, Kroclus
will say, and his essays on the Republic, I believe

(03:39):
that when mythologists poets talk about appearances of the gods,
they are talking about appearances of dimonds, because the gods
themselves don't condescend to actually make themselves visible in corporeal form.
So at that level, then if you take this really
wide meaning of dimond, which is also the basic meaning

(04:02):
of the term angel meaning messenger, then I think it
is fair to call the gods diemon. But at a
higher level, you need an additional concept involving the hen ad,
involving this level of ontology, the specific unity that is irreducible,
that isn't simply conveying a message from beyond. It is

(04:25):
a unique, super essential source of meaning intelligibility for lower things,
and I think it's just too specific a metaphysical concept
for most people. And actually, the idea that the specific
gods are messengers of one higher God, that's about as

(04:46):
good as you're going to be able to get. I think,
you know, I'm comfortable with the notion of the gods
as angels or diamonds, but yeah, when you get down
into the technicality of it, I think it's an insufficient
concept and you really just read procless.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
Yeah, well, I mean you have the angel Gabriel, angels
in the Bible who are messengers of God, and I
think that's very much equivalent to the diamond as a
representative of a god in paganism, in Greek paganism, but well,
for my own in the Germanic tradition, I think the
equivalent being like a sub lunary being is basically like,

(05:26):
that's the elves. So I think that what what the
what like somemit's called malach or whatever. That would be elves,
not not gods because they are.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
Corporeal, corporeally invested or materially invested diamonds. That's the content.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah, we have also being in our traditions that are
connected specifically to types of matter, Like dwarves are associated
with rock, So dwarves like that are also called dark elves,
So there's obviously a connection there. So I think that
also diseases are asociated with dwarfs and things, So I
think that that would be like dark diamond and angels
and more related to them than gods. But that let's

(06:09):
talk more about this idea of because I really was
interested to talk to you a bit more because I
heard you some of your discussions on your channel about
the relationship of matter and the divine and you countering
some of the arguments that I've heard years. I mean,

(06:29):
I first kind of read like the likes of like
the traditionalist school people saying stuff like looking down on
certain types of religious action and non religious actions that
regard the significance of human history and human existence in
terms of what we learned from the material circumstances and

(06:53):
the science of biology and things like that, and they
will say that's so profane and that it like pollutes,
you know, a pure theological view of a philosophical view.
But you have some I think that goes against actually
what neoplatonists said for start, and I think you did too,
So I definitely want to get onto that topic. But

(07:14):
maybe before we jump in there, I should just go
first into letting you explain a bit about who you
are and why you're a platonist, because not everyone who
watches my channel as actually that into platonism or knowledgeable
about it.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Right, Yeah, Well, I got into this field overall through
a general interest in the sciences. So in high school, I,
like many people, watched Science Channel documentaries all the time
and would read popular physics books, and I was very
into interpretations of quantum mechanics and ideas of the multiverse

(07:54):
and different levels of multiverse. I liked people like Max Tegmark,
you know, I was somewhat interested in more contemporary philosophical thought,
Nick Bostrum, the simulation argument, stuff like that. That's where
I was when I entered college, and by pursuing that line,
I got to a point in my own understanding of

(08:17):
physics and the nature of the world that I saw
that Hinduism specifically was very close to some of these
modern physics understandings on the more theoretical side. And then
as I dug deeper, I saw that Playtonism is very
well aligned with Hinduism. And so then this whole kind

(08:37):
of perennial philosophy idea gained a lot of strength with me.
I had a discussion with Darmination and we go in
depth in the exact parallels between Yeah, a brilliant, brilliant guy,
definitely worth listening to him. So, yeah, I just sort

(08:58):
of was faced with this kind of oddity that the
best I could do in applying reason to modern scientific
evidence converged with what ancient Hinduism and Platonism had to
say about things. And then the deeper I dug into
the Platonic sources because I read the Upanishads and several
you know, Baga ba tom Bagabadita and you know this

(09:21):
sort of thing. And then I started getting into the
Hellenistic sources and I saw that actually they go deeper
and it's not simply that Platonism is reiterating this one
universal perennial philosophy. It's that Plato Pythagoras really does represent
the cutting edge of this tradition, and that's continued kind

(09:42):
of in the undercurrent of Western civilization, influencing things from
ancient Paganism, Christianity, even Judaism, Islam, through Rosicrucianism, Hermeticism, what
was happening in the Renaissance. It's just this font of
metaphysical insight that even continues to inspire people today. You know,

(10:07):
modern physicists like Roger Penrose consider themselves explicit Platonists, and
if you look at all of his ideas, it is
very precisely parallel with the cosmology with some you know,
tweaks that the ancient Platonists were into. So I was
just kind of struck by this fact of history, how

(10:27):
significant it was, how widespread these ideas seemed to be,
and also that this one particular thinker through history, Plato
gave it a systematicity that no one else has been
able to accomplish. And the Neoplatonists were, i believe, really
just spelling out the system that Plato himself put together

(10:52):
with anteceding work from Pythagoras and others obviously making it possible.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
I mean even the used to be the highest iq
man recorded in the world. Christopher Langen is a Platonist
as well, so it's obviously like an important thing and
there's a big revival. I notice I perceive that to
be a revival based on looking on the Internet. Whether
that's good indicate or not, but I perceive that to
be an increasing interest in Platonism neoplatonism among Western esotericists

(11:22):
and which have you know, Western ecotism, as you've detailed,
there has this long line through the Renaissance back to antiquity,
and it seems like it's now popular among like the
sort of esoteric and alternative spirituality crowd, probably more so
among them than among Christians. But what do you think
is behind this renewed interest in neoplatonism.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
I think it's the availability of information with the Internet.
It's the same reason that people are interested in human
biodiversity and ancient origins of different racial groups and ethnic types.
It's something that when information flows were more contained, the
system didn't allow because it had an agenda to view

(12:12):
humanity as one homogeneous thing sort of similar to how
like in the ancient multicultural empires they could control all
these populations by deracinating them and kind of blending them
together into one mass slave class more or less now.
So when it comes to Platonism, I think there is
real power in understanding the soul, understanding the nature of

(12:37):
these higher forces that are structuring things. And it was
a very technical and detailed understanding that the Neoplatonists got to,
especially on things even like biology and how Porphyry has
an essay on how embryos are in sold, you know,
and it goes in detail and the different faculties, the
nutritive faculty, the basic sensory faculty, and what differentiates these

(12:59):
different level of orderanisms. And it's not far off from
what modern science really has to say with it with
its basic classifications. So I think there's real power in
these ideas and the system who I think are kind
of left hand path esoteric Platonists or perennialists at the
end of the day. This is my conspiratorial view of

(13:20):
the world today. But I think they see that, and
for a long time they had suppressed Platonism as an
explicit influence. I mean, it was always read. Plato's always
been read throughout Western history since he wrote the Dialogues.
But Neoplatonism was associated with this kind of head in

(13:40):
the clouds, very ultra abstract inapplicable system of thought. And
then when you go read the history of philosophy, you
see that the modern thinkers, even John Locke, is drawing
heavily from Aristilian and Neoplatonic epistemology. And it's really obvious
if you just read the sources themselves. So I think

(14:01):
it was deliberately hidden, and now with the Internet you
can't hide it.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
An interesting thing about what you've said is like, of course,
so many things in the modern world derived from Platonism.
We wouldn't have you know about modern rabbinical, Judaism, Islam, Christianity,
the main religions all derived from Platonism to some extent,
and also knock on the Western not like follow on
ideologies of the West can then can also be said

(14:26):
to be Platonists in some respects, like republicanism for a start,
of course, and and like communism and fascism so like
certainly wouldn't exist in the current form without Plato. Although
it must be said that there is the anti Plato
sort of movements from the left and the right. Karl

(14:46):
Popper in his Open Society and Its Enemies he calls
Plato an enemy of the open society and his like
idea of the Western value is that need to be
defended in the post war era includes not Plato, which
is funny because how can you have anything Western without Plato.

(15:08):
It's like he's the foundation of Western thought. So I
don't know, like Sorrow, your Soros types, I presume to
be regardless of toward extent their philosophies are derived from Plato.
I presume them to be anti Platonist consciously, so whether
even though they might be unconsciously Platonist as well. But
then conversely there are there's the Nietzsche and opposition to Platonism.

(15:31):
Like Nietzsche was an allowed opponent of Plato and blamed
him for the problems of the Western the Western thought
and Christianity which he opposed. And I think that was
partly why he hated Plato, because he thought and he
planted the seeds that allowed Christianity to exist and within
like the modern polytheist community, there is a subgroup of

(15:52):
people who term themselves hard polytheists who also lay all
sorts of accusations that Plato's feet, saying that he's responsible
for communism, Christianity, which I mean through this genealogical genealogy
of ideas, you can probably say it's true, but it's
a bit of a tenuous claim, especially when everything opposing

(16:13):
Plato can also be attributed to him by the same logic.
But my point is, why do you think these opposing
philosophical perspectives today, like on the far right and the
far left, the globalist and the nationalist both have these
anti Platonist beliefs.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Yeah, I think a lot of it does come down
to the influence of Nietzsche, because Nietzsche is that kind
of source of the postmodern bifurcation, which both follow a
somewhat irrationalist course, right, you know, national socialism has roots
in the Thula, gazelle shaft and esotericism of very kind

(16:57):
of modern spiritualist orientation where they're open yeah, yeah, theosophy,
they're open to inspiration. I think it's a desire to
have unfettered creativity and unfettered power on the right where
they want. And actually it's funny, I mean, Plato, you
encounter characters like that in the dialogues, both at a

(17:19):
political level in a very obvious way with you know,
through Symachus from the Republic, but also the Youthifrow dialogue.
Uthifro is this character that loves spinning out elaborate theologies
and he thinks he has a genuine source of access
to the truth there. And I think that is the

(17:41):
basic instinct that makes people want to reject Plato, because
metaphysical rigor constrains what you're allowed to say. Nietzsche, for example,
wants to have this kind of aphoristic, just maxim philosophy
where he has an insight and he just lays it
out like Zarah Thrush Thustra, coming down to the people

(18:02):
and simply presenting like, here's this great insight coming from me,
the higher type, the ubermenschh biological superior type. And it's
it's just uncanny how well Plato foresaw and anticipated the
exact reaction that he has gotten historically. Now on the left,

(18:23):
Carl Popper, it's funny when you read the Open Society,
it's not like he's an uninformed anti Platonist. He goes
deep in very specific, you know, technical ways into the
dialogues and traces how all of Plato's concepts relate in
this kind of central authoritarian structure that he wants to

(18:46):
go against, and he has to acknowledge that, like, yes,
Platonism is a very coherent system, the idea that there's
a descent of man, that the archetypes are behind us
and we have to always appeal backwards. He links that
to Plato's explicit you know, formation of the state in
the republic. He's a scholar of Plato basically, and many

(19:09):
of the modern anti Platonists end up, in strange ways
kind of mirroring things that Plato himself laid out. Like Nietzsche,
you know, the uber minch is able to conduct this
transvaluation of values or like critically analyzing the law that's
received to generate a higher new law. That's exactly what

(19:30):
Plato says in the Statesman. I mean, that's the role
of the philosopher king. The law is always like the
best we can capture these eternal truths for the time being,
but the living word, coming from a wise person, that's
always going to be higher. So it's you know, Nietzsche's
uber minch is really just Plato's philosopher king unreflectable.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Nietzsa uses characters from Plato, doesn't he as example that
he likes gold Georgias and callicles who are foils like
you know, used to. I think that like there's a
he embodied like niatures, embodying a sort of character invented
by Plato to sort of be the antithesis of socrates

(20:14):
logic and reason. So but I guess I mean, in
the course of all that, like the seductive power of
rhetoric is sort of is argued against logically, but I
mean niatzsure shows demonstrates very well that that doesn't neutralize it.
The seductive power of rhetoric is still there because I
mean that's I mean, Niature is quite delightful to read,

(20:36):
I think, because he has that seductive power.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
That's also something Plato in before in the Republic he says,
you know, the philosopher will always be a kind of
marginal figure in society, because in order to influence the masses,
you have to be like minded with the masses. You
have to appeal to those appetitive elements of the soul
that are product in the vast majority of people. So

(21:02):
to be an expert at rhetoric. You kind of have
to bring yourself down to the level of those in
the cave. Right, If you come in trying to talk
about absolute truths that are totally foreign to people in
a rigorous way that they don't understand, well, then they're
just going to reject what you have to say, and
they're going to say, well, you know, Tom, not to
use your name intentionally, John. You know Jim over there,

(21:25):
he's predicting the next shadow on the wall, so clearly
he's wiser than you, even though again it's just the
play of shadows. Trump recently tweeted or made a truth
social post saying, like intelligence just is the ability to
predict things, which is just remarkable. That's exactly what Plato
says in the Republic that those trapped in the cave

(21:48):
would regard wisdom to be is the ability to predict
which shadow would come next.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
He was a kind of chat that PLAYEDO. So now
I would like to try and move into the meat
and potatoes of the of the interview today, and I'll
figure out that on the subjects of the sacred and profane,
from a Platon's perspective and from your perspective, is the
science of human origins antithetical to a religious view of mankind.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
No, I wouldn't say so at all. Of course, is
it antithetical to a conventionally received Abrahamic religious view. Probably arguably,
the idea that the true nature of the divine is
wrapped up with a particular, real historical occurrence is very semitic.

(22:49):
I think the Neoplatonists clearly had this understanding that what
occurs in myths are analogies to metaphysical forces. Proclus Vary
again in the Essays on the Republic, explicitly states that
what is before in a myth is prior in the

(23:09):
metaphysical order. So it's not simply a matter of interpreting
these stories that we receive through mythology as histories. There
was a self reflective understanding on the part of the
Ancients that symbols communicated deeper truths than historical truths. So
this historicizing flattening of the metaphysical domain in the Abrahamic

(23:36):
tradition has really set science against religion and metaphysics in
a major way, in I think a way that's been
detrimental to Western civilization as a whole. I mean, you
think of the persecution of Giordorno Bruno or people like
this Galileo even, Right, and we've been hemmed in by

(23:58):
this kind of historic, cyst flattening religious view. But I
don't think that's authentic to the Christian spirit. I think
if you look at the behavior of Jesus, he clearly
interprets the tradition he's coming from in his local area analogically,
metaphorically in a very loose way, and reapplies it in

(24:20):
ways that his audience is not expecting. Right, And the
early Christians were commanded to be open to the Holy Spirit.
Prophets were going between different Christian communities, and it was
actually commanded of them that you have to listen to
these itinerant teachers.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
Right.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
It wasn't just in the early days that the priest
is the source of authority, the bishop is the source
of authority, the pope is the source of authority, and
you have to listen to these people and they lay
down the dogma. That wasn't it at all.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
Right.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
It was an openness to the Holy Spirit fostering community
that actually allowed the Christian movement to grow. And I
don't think that if you have that kind of spirit
that you're going to necessarily be antithetical to science. I
think the logos clearly has rational, scientific empirical sides as

(25:15):
well as this received anagogic higher side, the metaphysical side
of logos, and they should be harmonized. So, you know,
I'm unorthodox in the way I apply my religion to science,
but I believe that we can learn a lot about
our nature, the nature of souls, the nature of providence

(25:38):
by looking at the historical side of our development. But
at the same time, I think, just like procl said
in the Mids, you know, the prior temporally in a
story represents the kind of prior metaphysically well, in the
same way the way that God tells the story of

(25:59):
the cosmos reveals deep structure through time that really reflects
this eternal kind of order, the hierarchy that we have
to ascend through. So that's how I interpret race and
the role of all of these different biological types. I
think it is an unfolding and a manifestation of an

(26:21):
order that we have to ultimately ascend through, not by
you know, moving through time and adaptation. That's sort of
the image, that's the reflection the metaphysical path of assent
that means returning to those proper archetypes that are eternal
and not generated through time.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
That's one of the problems I think traditionalists and other
defenders of traditional theism have is that evolution implies a
development from the lower to the higher form, and going
on would say that was antithetical to a traditionalist perspective.
I like that, ever, at least allowed for there to

(27:04):
be a theology of race, like to be like a
race as a reflection of divine hierarchies, a divine differentiation,
divine sort, like the soul is attracted to the form
of the material that is proper to it, that resonates
with its its type. So that would make sense, and

(27:25):
it fits in with Platinus things to have like blood
as another another symbol, or blood as another appropriate vessel
for forms of the divine or of the soul. But yeah,
the problem of evolution, maybe we should touch on that
first before we go on to race.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Happening makes a lot of sense actually, so people will
oppose Aristotle and Plato. Aristotle was the empiricist and Plato
was the metaphysician, and Plato said we had to only
pay attention to the forms. Aristotle said, we only had
to pay attention to sensibles. And of course when you
read Plato, he advocates a dialectical path of an ascent

(28:14):
and descent. It's also meant to be on repeat if
you read carefully. So we us end through particulars, coming
to know then universal patterns through a lot of empirical experience,
and then we ascend to the higher types and learn
how to you know, sort them into a finite number

(28:35):
of species and develop this whole taxonomy and structure of
how the world is organized, insight into the logoi all
the way up to the highest principles, and then using
that once we get to the highest then we kind
of deductively descend back down and align very closely this
kind of theoretical picture to what we actually experience empirically.

(28:58):
And the end result of that should be you understand
empirical experience better. And that's the history of Western science. Right.
We weren't simply empiricists in the original sense. Right. That
represented a medical school active in Turkey, So the empiricists
would simply conduct experiments, and they were kind of against theory.

(29:18):
Aristotle is not an empiricist in that original sense. And
Western science has not been empiricist in the sense that
we only conduct experience. We have to build these elaborate
metaphysical models so that we can have theories to predict
what will happen next. Plato says in the Republic. Also,

(29:40):
the cave analogy is really the perfect analogy to use.
So at first, if you live in the cave, only,
if you're that pure empiricist, you're going to predict the
shadows better than the other guy. If you ascend out
and come back down, you're going to be blinded by
the light. You won't be able to even adapt to
that cave environment anymore because you're used to the sun,

(30:00):
and so you won't be able to predict very well
at all. But this is what he recommends. If you
are forced to ascend back out and return down, ascend
out and returned down, and you adapt to this change
in focus from the dark to the light, then you
will be able to predict the shadows ten thousand times better.

(30:23):
And that's again Western science. By going to these elaborate
mathematical models like the Pythagoreans developed originally, we then come
back to the empirical world and have a much greater
level of fidelity in our understanding. So anyway, that's the
explicit Platonic epistemology. It's not let's just focus on the forms.
It's let's develop this dialectic cycle where we improve our

(30:47):
ability to understand both domains. Aristotle is kind of zooming
in on that path of us and and the Neoplatonists,
of course, in their curriculum developed by Elis first studied
Aristotle's Organon. So you know, when you look at the
commentary tradition, there are a lot of commentaries even on

(31:10):
you know, porphraze Isagogue, the introduction to the Organon, and
then there are a lot of commentaries on the categories
on interpretation, on prior analytics, pusteria, analytics, et cetera. And
the reason for that is that this was the curriculum.
There are commentaries on other Aristotelian works, of course, but

(31:30):
they're particularly focused on those main works in the eambloking
and curriculum, which, by the way, I am teaching at
airvol dot effect dot com. Sorry for the shameless plug,
but it's sometimes difficult to get through all these texts,
so I find reading them together and explaining historical contexts
and technical terms can be helpful. But anyway, Aristotle ascends,

(31:51):
and he's the introduction that you read Aristotle first, you
are intro introduced to the organon the tools of thought first.
And Aristotle recons or describes in his Essay on the Soul,
that we first learn all universal patterns through empirical experience.

(32:12):
Now apply that to the cosmos and evolution. What is happening?
So the simplest organisms have the lowest epistemological and vital
faculties that the Neoplatonists described or the Eristatilians described, Right,
we have this nutritive faculty. Some organisms exist at that
level and that has to be trained. You know, the

(32:35):
ability for your body to ultimately produce sense organs, to
produce dianoetic activity that can be used to model your environment.
That all takes time to ascend into. So life as
a whole is actually following this dialectical path of ascent.
So if you just take the correlation between the microcosm

(32:58):
of the individual and the macro the cosmos seriously, which
all of the Neoplatonists did clearly, then that's how you
would expect evolution to proceed. So, yes, the highest summit
that we strive to ascend to intuiting the forms, you know,
becoming one with the one, theosis henosis, as far as

(33:19):
that's possible. That is the ultimate ground of things, but
it's the summit of our experience. And in order to
get there, you have to ascend through all the well
ordered progressions of beings, starting with the lowest faculties, moving
up through the more complex And there are many different
aspects also along each of these paths, which is why

(33:41):
you have to repeat this cycle. You don't just like
take one straight and narrow course and leave it at that.
And I think that's also reflected in human variation and
different races and different paths that evolution takes explore different
facets of nutrition, growth, sensation, dialectical reasoning, et cetera. So

(34:03):
I think it's exactly what you would expect if the
microcosmic macrocosmic analogy holds.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
So if the amieba's and early hormonides even like the
you know, amphibians are but the fish are coming out
of the water to become amphibians ultimately with the end
goal of producing a being capable of gnosis. In this hierarchy,
is that that you're.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
Saying man is the fellows of evolution, and according to
Plato in the Tamais, man is the archetypal animal, well
really the cosmosis, but as far as like literal biological animals,
man is created first, just like the first account in Genesis,
or maybe it's the second account anyway, that's a weird

(34:49):
thing where there's like two different versions of how the
world is made back to back and we're supposed to
somehow reconcile them.

Speaker 1 (34:54):
But we have something similar penorse mythology too, that's too,
that's two except.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Or something. But no, man is created first, and the
animals are produced metaphysically by a degradation from man, which
is not in conflict with this dialectical path that I'm
talking about. You know, the source contains all possibilities of
order form creation, and I mean just from a basic

(35:21):
mathematical realist perspective, that has to be true. It's like
math is not created through time, the ordering principles, the
laws of physics aren't created through time. They have to
contain the seeds of all like legitimate lawful behavior in
cosmic evolution, it's all there in the source of it.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
It has to be yes, so the governing forms and
laws of you know, resulted in life as it currently is.
We're always present, so from the from the start, so
that that that those inherent the end goal is present
from the beginning in that sense. But then how does
that how do you reconcile that with the ideas of
the fall and that idea that man was in a

(36:01):
high state?

Speaker 2 (36:04):
Right, Well, that's the metaphysical descent, So the souls were
eternally existent. Souls in Neoplatonism exist at the level of
those mathematicals. So all mathematical law exists for all time.
If you're a mathematical realist philosophically, that's what you believe,

(36:24):
and the vast majority of scientists are mathematical realists. Philosophers
are mathematical realists. If you're not, then how exactly does
mathematical truth work? Like, if we're just inventing the math,
then who gets to decide which mathematical structure are true
and which are not true? It all has to be
true or false from eternity for math to work, and
clearly math works, right, So just the existence of math,

(36:46):
like the Pythagoreans kind of indicated for us, is proof
of this eternal metaphysical order, and souls are the holistic
mathematical structures as opposed to the partial mathematical structures. You know,
for example, like two plus two equals four, that's not
a self contained essence that requires our syntactic understanding and

(37:10):
are bringing in notions. You know, the concept of the
number one is not contained in the expression two plus
two equals four. So two plus two equals four is
a partial mathematical Souls are holistic mathematicals, meaning they're ussias.
This is this Greek term meaning essence and essences are

(37:34):
self substantial. That's not to say they're uncreated by higher forces,
because they are created by intellectual essences higher than themselves.
But what makes an usa self substantial is that it
contains everything necessary for its own self interpretation. It's a standalone,
meaningful essence. So souls are these complete or holistic mathematicals.

(38:01):
They exist from all time. Now, why is the projection
of partial reality separable incomplete reality? Where we see things
like quantum indeterminacy, we see randomness, We see like not
this holistic together perfect understanding. There's like they're clearly imperfections.

(38:23):
Why does that take place because of an orientation of
the soul, a desire to focus in on a partial reality. Interestingly,
in the standard model of quantum mechanics, which explains the
basic forces governing the universe, you know, electromagnetism, the strong

(38:44):
and weak nuclear forces, this sort of thing, the initial
state of the universe. It's hypothesized this like unified field
state before the Higgs mechanism acts to give things mass.
It's totally symmetric with respect to the distribution of mass,

(39:05):
and so basically nothing ends up having mass because there's
no preferred basis. It's all based on gauge symmetries, which
are this mathematical concept where in a mathematical expression you
can have multiple ways of realizing, like it can mean
the exact same thing if the gauge or the metric
or measure used in the system is altered. So like

(39:29):
in a wavelength, the phase you can adjust by one
unit or two units, or three or four units, and
mathematically it's the identical structure. So that's a gauge symmetry.
And so in the early universe, according to what they say,
everything was kind of combined into one perfect ordered field

(39:51):
and then in order to get mass in order to
get the different partial relations and the particular configuration of
physical reality. They don't have an explanation for exactly how
it happens, but just sort of randomly. There's an asymmetry
introduced because the system evolves in one particular way a
partial reality rather than this universal kind of balanced state.

(40:16):
So I interpret that metaphysically to basically mean that the
souls are perfectly holistic in their own proper hypostasis or
their level of being. Right, the mathematicals in the mathematical
realm are perfect, there's no incompleteness, their self contained, and
then there is the possibility of a dissent because there's

(40:37):
there are new truths that emerge when you focus in
on a partial or particular reality, like the forms okay,
the form of beauty justice. They're like the highest things
pretty much that are intelligible. But if you only ever
had universal beauty and you never had partial beauty in
a partial reality, well then beauty wouldn't actually be as

(40:59):
complete and as grand. Reality wouldn't be as good as
it otherwise would be. And the source of reality is
the one and the good, which necessitates this kind of
teleology maxing, where goodness is maximized because of the nature
of the cosmos. So in order for the good to
be realized fully, souls that were holistic and self contained

(41:20):
and perfect, they descend into imperfection. They, you know as
spectualize in a particular way, this holistic system. They view
things in a partial way, so that new levels of
truth can be discovered through this repetition. And just like
in the Republic, you go down into the cave, you descend,
and you lose sight of the universal truths. You see

(41:42):
this partial reality, and then you us end, descend, us end.
The cosmos is cyclical for Platonists Detillians. So the cosmos
goes from this perfect state of mathematical order into arbitrariness,
into partiality, into this aimingly imperfect kind of world that

(42:03):
we witness, and it does that in myriad ways, through
many cycles, so that all possible forms of goodness are
ultimately realized. So what's the purpose of the descent of souls?
Why this fall of man? Ironically, because it maximizes the
overall good.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
Hmm on the long enough time spent presumably, But yeah,
I guess we all put all the Indo European religions
see well, most of them seem to have some kind
of idea of a cyclical history, but some people would
debate that. But it does seem to be a perennial
sort of thing. It's quite hard to follow the mathematical

(42:45):
arguments that you presented there. But I'm just trying to
think that in the context you're saying with an a
Christian context, but I guess it's almost easier to mix
it with a pagan one in ways. But like, how
the if the if the ultimate goal is the assent,
then how do you bring in cycles into that? Like
how why repeat and go back to the start of

(43:08):
of like the descent? I mean, and sorry, apologies if
you covered it already, just then when what you're saying,
but if you're returning presumably to a lower state of creation,
goes back to the beginning again this by repeating it again,
you say that would increase the amount of goods that

(43:29):
could could be achieved.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Right, Well, because no particular beautiful thing is as beautiful
as the form of beauty, right, so it would seem
that moving from the form of beauty down to a
partial beautiful object would be worth it. But the form
of beauty part of what defines it is its myriad

(43:56):
manifestations in partial realities. And Plato's about the criteria for
existence as being causal potency, so the ability to affect
and be affected by things. I think that's in the
sophist So if that's what existence means, then the forms
to truly exist have to exert their energies. So for

(44:19):
the forms to be perfectly good, they have to project out,
just like a source of light projects out and the
light itself becomes more partial and distributed. So the forms
project out their likenesses in a way that distributes and
becomes more partial, more imperfect at lower levels. So the

(44:41):
form wouldn't be as great if its energies didn't extend
as far. And then from the perspective of lower realities,
you know, their goodness wouldn't exist at all unless this
partial descent came into being. So it's a way of
spectualizing the form. It's I like to think of it. Basically.

(45:03):
I think Platinus use this same analogy at a cosmic level, right,
there's like the younger gods or the planets, and the
sun kind of stands for the one or a higher source,
a higher reality, and the planets just eternally circulate. That's
the most perfect physical motion that's possible for a body

(45:25):
because motion, here's the Oristilian argument for that. You know,
straight line motion is inferior to circular motion because you
are moving from one place to another, and because everything
is goal oriented in Aristotle's and Plato's dynamics, there has
to be something that you're lacking. So you move from
one place to another because that other place is better.

(45:47):
You know, the grass is greener on the other side,
and that's why the motion takes place. But if you're
a god, well then you already have all the good
that you could possibly contain. So what are you going
to do? Where are you going to move? In a circle.
That's the best possible kind of motion in physical space.
So the planets orbit around this source of goodness in
the Solar system, and souls circulate around a spectualize and

(46:14):
view different angles on the forms the intelligibles, which are
perfect unities, perfect intelligible structures. But there are always different
ways of getting at perfect intelligible structures, just like in math. Right,
the axioms are finite and very simply expressed their unitive,
but then the possible expressions that come out of that

(46:36):
would take an infinite amount of time, just like souls
infinitely circulate around these intelligible cores. And you do that
so that everything is manifest so that for the lower
beings they exist. And that's a good thing because anything
that exists is it's better that it exists than it
doesn't exist. If the One and Providence guides all creation,

(46:56):
so it gets to exist, which is great, and then
the higher things get to be more potent, which is
also great.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
I want to flesh out this idea of hierarchy of
creation because so a slug is good because even though
it's a lower form, because it will lead on to
the higher forms and the and the increase of the
good or that aspiring to the good. But the beauty

(47:28):
as a manifestation of the good means that that which
is beautiful, I suppose it's is superior because it's higher,
it's more more approximation of the form of beauty. So
which which pertains to the good the one. But so
we can say then that like the within, you know,

(47:51):
trying to bring it back to biology and things. The
the wayman is able to appreciate beauty in nature is
a form of discernment in order to discriminate what is
it isn't what approximates the form of beauty, right, presumably
a faculty of divine origin. But we we therefore say

(48:18):
that something ugly is bad, is bad? But not But
then also you say that it's good that it exists,
even if it's because that it can become good. Is
that right?

Speaker 2 (48:29):
Yeah, there's you know, there's a relative beauty even to
ugly things if you view it from a new perspective.
Just like the slug. The slug may be uglier than
a human, but among all slugs there will be healthier
and more beautiful and more active and vital slugs. So

(48:54):
there's a kind of beauty. There's a kind of excellence
that the slug can manifest no other being can manifest.
You know, it's not as high a type of excellence
as what man is capable of, but it's a kind
of excellence. It's a particular kind of beauty. So yeah,
ugly things, you know, like, okay, I don't even want

(49:16):
to bring it to that level, but things that you know,
we view as excrement that we want out of our bodies.
From another perspective, for a lower being, there is vital nutrition.
There is something life sustaining about even those things. I
think that's an apotonic example. So yeah, I mean, viewed
at a small enough level or from a particular creature's perspective,

(49:39):
everything that exists has a unique beauty that if it
didn't exist, that particular unique beauty would be incomplete. And
when you viewed like the form of beauty manifesting expressing
all of its possible instantiations, there'd be a gap and
its energies would be incomplete. So its energies need to

(49:59):
be absolutely complete for it to be the best it
can be. And also, particular things have unique goodnesses, even
when it seems like overall it's worse that they exist.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
Mm hmm. So, taking what you've just said on the
subject of biology in general into the more controversial area
of human races and things, which is probably the thing
that you get the most pushback on, what is the
what what is your view of the function of race

(50:37):
in biology? I mean, in like, why does why are
there there are different races, they have different esthetic qualities,
they have different proclivities. Some I think a lot a
lot of biologists would would concede these as facts, but
they might say they don't want to use the term race,
they want to use another word or whatever, to avoid

(51:00):
the controversy surrounding race now and the old post war
consensus at race doesn't exist, which is sort of cool
dying now. But if you try to then match this
with the the established like theology, theological platonist ideas that

(51:20):
you said there, like these all have a function, all
these different races, but they're also you could more controversially
say that they have a hierarchy.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
Is that right, Well, logically you would expect all series
of beings to be organized hierarchically. So under this is
just straight what Proclus says and the elements of theology.
You know, for every order, for every genus, there is
a monad of the series, which is the archetypal exemplary

(51:52):
member of the series, and it intelligibly is the source
for all the others, just like the form of man,
like the idea irrational animal is the goal and the source.
It contains the seeds for all the other types of animal.
So within each specific genus, like within man, there will

(52:12):
be multiple series that more or less approximate to the
virtues of that ideal man. Now, as far as which
race is like the superior one or which is closest
to the mon out of the series. We shouldn't presume
to judge. You know, Socrates doesn't presume to be wiser

(52:33):
than the people he speaks with. There's a kind of
epistemological humility that individuals should have, and there is a
kind of racial humility that we should have. We shouldn't
simp I mean, every type of being will tend to
assume that their motive being is the best one, or

(52:54):
else they wouldn't maximize the goods contained in it. Now,
I think it would be a marker of the higher rate,
just like it's a marker of the higher type of
man to have this kind of humility and uncertainty where Okay,
we're trying to manifest the ideal human virtues, but you know,
we may have blind spots. We may be kind of

(53:15):
myopically focused on certain things that aren't so relevant in
the grand scheme of things. Like maybe we're hyper obsessed
with money and we think that making the most money
is the greatest kind of good, and we judge everything
on the basis of money, and then we're going to say, well,
this race is the best because it's the wealthiest, you know,
and the higher type should recognize that. Well, maybe that's

(53:37):
again a myopia. It's a focusing in on certain aspects
and missing other parts of the picture, and you don't
know what you don't know. You're obviously not seeing what's
outside of your field of view and what you particularly
are focused on. So yeah, I wouldn't presume to rank
the races, but theoretically there should be a rank, and
the higher types should have a greater humility. They should

(54:00):
also have greater reasoning powers, and they should manifest more
into reality because the higher beings are more creative than
the lower beings.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
To play Devil's agraphith get a bit here, and I
mean race in its literal old meaning just means like lineage,
and obviously, like when within a smaller scale, like a
family can have like a various two superior parents could
have quite an inferior form of a child who is
not of an inferior type of person. So but then

(54:32):
when you're talking about them collectively as a superior family,
then it becomes a problem because there's a disconnect there. Similarly,
like within ecotypes, which is like the biological term for races,
within animals basically, now there's ecotype and human races. There's
huge changes over time. So yeah, I mean during the

(54:52):
time of Plato, the Greeks probably the highest IQ population
on the planet. Certainly they were more high IQ than
the Annis were at the time, but the same is
not the case now. A massive change in IQ occurred
in medieval northern Europe. And so the point being like

(55:13):
as well like if like, Also we can see another
example like the convergent evolutionary convergence where like ichtheosaurs, dolphins,
and swordfish have completely different types of animal mammals, reptiles,
and fish, but they converge on a same a perfect
form or an idealistic form for the environment. So when

(55:37):
you're trying to put a hierarchy on that, I find
you might like stumble because it is the hierarchy temporarily dependent.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
Then well no, yeah, just like we were talking about earlier,
evolution is the process of learning these intelligible types and
virtues and faculties. It's not the source of them. The
faculties themselves are arranged hierarchically. It's not the process of

(56:09):
learning that grants value to reasoning. Right, reasoning is a
higher faculty than sensation for all time, and so all
of the various types of humanity that are possible. There
are higher types from eternity that are there as archetypes
that we can aspire to, and then there are lower

(56:30):
types that some beings will lock into. And I think
there is a real gravity in evolution, just like there's
a gravity in conceptual space. You know, there's a phase
space or a possibility space of all possible concepts, and
humans around the world lock into these basic possible concepts

(56:51):
in a pretty consistent way. You know, every culture understands
the numbers one, two, and three. Some of them stop
there and just say many after three, you know. But
there is regularity in this conceptual space, And so in
MorphOS space, the space of possible body types, there is
a kind of discrete quantized nature where there are only

(57:14):
only certain possible ways for an organism to fit into
a broader stable ecology and even whole ecologies. There are
only certain types of a like a finite number of
ecological types that are stable, and if you deviate from
that archetype, you're going to have an ecology that collapses.
And if you have a body plan that deviates from

(57:35):
these archetypes. It's not going to be adaptive, it's not
going to be functional. So these racial types exist from
all time, and the lineage is just a way of
learning how to embody these virtues that are contained in
the archetype.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
Right. So, just as like the gravity of the ocean
environment is pulled at fisaurs, doffs and swordfish towards a
similar form, the gravity of human being is pulling us
towards a form physical and also cognitive. Presumably greater cognition

(58:18):
is the is the sos as it means to have
a better chance of achieving? Notis is that the Is
that the perform that we the spy towards it?

Speaker 2 (58:30):
Uh? Yeah, I think if we set our priorities correctly.
Of course, there is free will, which is essentially in
our ability to look this way, or we have free attention.
We can investigate any aspect of this cosmos that we choose,
and we can specialize in whatever kind of ecological niche
we want. And so if we focus on appetitive nature

(58:53):
and bodily nature, there is a kind of human excellence
that only focuses there, and we'll see certain regularities and
the characteristics of populations that emphasize and aspire to that
kind of virtue. Now, yeah, I think to aspire to
the virtue of man himself, the archetypal man. Well, the

(59:17):
special distinguishing feature or the differentia of man is where
the rational animal, so becoming more reasonable, more guided by reason,
is going to assimilate us to that highest racial archetype.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
Right. So that's so in that sense, then the superiority
of the Egyptians at one stage in history indicates that
they were at that time a superior better at approximating
the perfect but that then subsequent historical breeding practices have

(59:55):
made them fall away from that. So that so there
is a temporal there is a temporal like conditioning. There
isn't like a perpetually superior race. It's just a whichever
race happens to be a greater approximation than any given
time of the of the form of the of the
rational man.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Right yeah, yeah, race in the sense of lineage. They
rise and fall just like souls according to proclus r perpetually.
But the true race, the metaphysical race, the true kinds,
that one highest kind is going to manifest wherever it's accessed.
So maybe it was with the Egyptians at a certain

(01:00:36):
point in time, it was with the Sumerians, it was
with the Greeks, it was with the Germans, with the
et cetera.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
But then there's an accusation that some fiercet like some
religious people put against you, perhaps or others who think
like you, that you would say you are an idolator
of the blood by saying that you you know, having
any putting blood as importance. But if that might not
be the case, if you actually are, are you loyal

(01:01:06):
therefore to the to your lineage, to your people, or
only to that form which actually can manifest in other peoples.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
Right, I aspire to the form, But my loyalty in
the sense of what I put my care into is
to the lineage. Just like you know, if I want
to study math, what I revere, what I care about,
what I focus on is mathematical truth itself. But what

(01:01:37):
I have loyalty to, what I care about is my
daily practice, the kind of lineage or genealogy of how I,
in particular come to the mathematical truth. That's what you
have to care about, because the archetype is going to
exist regardless. Right, you want to aspire to the archetype
and care about your lineage so that you can collectively

(01:02:00):
cultivate a people to be able to aspire to that
higher virtue. In the Myth of Error at the End
of the Republic, Plato talks about the reincarnation cycle, and
even there well, he talks about virtue being realized in
the community and the necessity of drawing that philosophical type
back down into the community to improve the whole. It's
not about any particular class excelling, it's about the whole

(01:02:23):
organism of the state excelling.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
Even in the journey of the soul, when you die,
according to Plato, you're not on your own. There is
a group that you move through that kind of in
between space with. You go to the underworld as a group,
and you choose your lot for the next life as
a group. One person at a time goes and gets

(01:02:47):
assigned their lot for the next life with some guidance
from their own free will. So, in a similar way,
I think we have to think about aspiring to virtue
at a collective level, and I think there are plenty
of mundane arguments for why that must be the case,
and there are also metaphysical arguments for why that must
be the case. At a mundane level, Clearly, your capacity

(01:03:09):
to individually aspire to virtue is conditioned by your cultural context, right,
And if you're totally indiscriminate about the substrate of that culture,
the biological type that is producing that culture around you,
well then you're not going to cultivate a culture that
facilitates the aspiration towards virtue. You have to cultivate that

(01:03:31):
organon at a biological level, just like at a rational level,
you have to exercise your dinoetic faculties so that you
can ascend to intellectual intuition. So when it comes to
the body politic and demographics, you have to think about
the whole organism that you're a part of and ascend

(01:03:52):
as a whole organism so that that individual virtue might
be realized in a few.

Speaker 1 (01:03:57):
So some Germanic high polytheists hues because we believe as heathens.
And it's like, as as Plato have said, that you
know this, there is a collective in the underworld. You
you don't just you're not just an individual. You're ultimately
trying to join your ancestors in the in the in
the relevant destination that your soul should be received with them.

(01:04:19):
So it depends on your actions and also on your
lineage and things like that. But they were saying that
there's something about Platonism that lends itself towards a deurrascination.
That is, its ideas of an objective morality that transcends
the specifics of culture and and of you know, the
cultures of races, and therefore transcends race and makes race irrelevant.

(01:04:42):
So trying to flesh out what you what you mean
there when you're saying that what because what? What can
you defend racial loyalty within a Platonist perspective when when
you've when even within the higher art, the idea of
hierarchy that you've expressed, it doesn't actually have any dependence

(01:05:05):
on any race. Because even if any race our race,
let's say that we happen to be the race that
is the best approximation of the form of the rational man.
If we cease to exist, that doesn't prevent another race
excelling far beyond us anyway. So if the only objective
of being is this of man achieving nosis, that will

(01:05:26):
still occur without our race. So what is the justification
for any kind of racial loyalty.

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
I don't care about the good abstractly, we care about
obtaining the good. We don't care about beauty abstractly. We
care about having possession of beauty, having a birth in beauty,
you know, hurting it to us. You know, we manifest
that beauty and then it's a good to us. So
in a similar way, you know, if you want your lineage,

(01:06:00):
you personally, and your descendants and the people around you
to experience a better life, you have to have this
recognition that there are objective criteria for good and bad
forms of life. You know. If you don't have that standard, well,
then what exactly is guiding the development of the race.
You have to say that morality is objective and goes
beyond lineage. If your lineage is going to be objectively good,

(01:06:24):
otherwise it's pure cultural relativism, and why move in one
direction rather than the other. It's it's like a pure
it would be a pure idolatry of blood at that level,
because whatever your ancestors did, whatever your descendants do, is
just good because it's you. And I think that is
actually a kind of baseline tribal human perspective, you know,

(01:06:45):
like primitive tribes will think that the neighboring tribe is
not even human, right, they think that their gods are
the only true gods, and then all other gods of
other tribes are demons. Like I think, that's a very
low level of the human condition, and the highest level,
if there is going to be a highest level, it

(01:07:08):
has to recognize that objective criteria for the good, for truth,
for beauty, for all these things. I mean, how could
you possibly say that one type is higher than another
if everything is contingent on whatever your particular people happens
to manifest. So I care about my race because I

(01:07:29):
care about us collectively obtaining the good. I don't just
care that the good exists, because I can't affect that anyway.
It's always going to exist, the beautiful is always going
to exist. But what am I going to move towards
as a people and as an individual. So again, the
care and loyalty has to be with your lineage, but
it's for the sake of objective good objective view.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
So in a scenario where your people were in a
conflict with another who were objectively more beautiful and rational,
would it be moral to betray your people and then
to assist the enemy.

Speaker 2 (01:08:10):
Well, no, because again we don't simply care about the
good for its own sake. We care about obtaining the good.
So if another race is more beautiful, more rational, that
doesn't take me away from my particular lineage. It's like,
if there's a better mathematician, you know, they've cultivated their

(01:08:31):
own training more intensively than I have. That doesn't mean
that I stop caring about my own mathematical training and
just like only look at them forever and give them
all the attention. No, that means that that informs how
I'm going to take care of my own proper training.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
Interesting. Yeah, it's a very interesting thing from our perspective.
From my perspective, there's so much of the Heathen morality
that we can see just comes straight out of the
idea of like loyalty and duty to kinship networks. But

(01:09:14):
there are like obviously, obviously in the forms of Germanic laws,
indications of a belief of some moral structure, because there's
arbitrary there's forms of legal arbitration between competing kin clans
and things, and they have to be in the beholden
to the law, which is not which doesn't give favor
to one, you know, to like a like a clan

(01:09:36):
or a lineage, so which means that it must be
an objective morality that governs you know, the two of them.
But it's not fleshed out in any philosophical form, which
is one of the reasons I look at other other
you know, the Danta or Greeks, to try and see
what other things might work.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
But I do think, sorry, I wonder sometimes if it
was just too esoteric to leave a trace. It's like,
you know, Caesar describes that for a celt to become
a druid they had to have all of this intensive
training for twenty twenty years. Yeah, yeah, twenty years, and they.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Weren't allowed to write it down.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:10:10):
They weren't able to write anything down.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
It's no wonder, you know, you don't find the philosophy
just written there.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
Well, I have absolutely no doubt that, I mean, because
I mean just talking to like meeting like pretty low
IQ people. They have philosophical thoughts like people do. It's
not just intellectuals you have philosophical thoughts and think about
these things. People just do it. And so I have
absolutely no doubt that there were like these kind of
discussions in pretty much every culture, but they don't have

(01:10:37):
them recorded in this in this coherent way that the
Greeks do, which is just the the benefit of literacy basically.
But yeah, it's hard to see. Obviously. What's preserved for
us in the Germanic tradition is the myth and also
the laws, so we get the idea of the culture
from law. But law definitely did have an important role.

(01:11:01):
But you can see how that if you went, if
you will, John's agree Greece entirely by its law, then
you would see Socrates very negatively. Only there would be
no other way to see him except as a criminal,
which is how some hard polytheists would like him to
be seen as a corruptor of the of the youth only.

(01:11:21):
But it is a question that I had to consider
because I believe, of course it is right. It's right
and decent to be loyal to your family, to your
you know, there's an argument now against boomers where they
say why don't they do more for their children? It's
not considered decent, and especially it seems odd to Asiatic
immigrants to the West to see why don't the older

(01:11:44):
generations of Westerns do more for their grandchildren, or when
they when they have the wealth and the ability to
do it, why don't they pull the resources to ensure
that the dominance of their descendants. But that could be
from a lack of a feeling of loyalty, tribal loyalty,
family loyalty, or racial loyalty. But it could also be

(01:12:07):
to do with a well, it might have to do
with a lack of actual idea of lineage, a metaphysical
idea of lineage at all in the West where we
no longer see like how descendance is in any way
being us or us as being in any way a
manifestation of or a continuation of those who went before us.
We're just individuals, and that that that kind of could

(01:12:30):
you talk a little bit about how Platonists, how a
Platonist would view the Anglo individualism of the of the
modern world.

Speaker 2 (01:12:42):
Well, clearly misplaced. You know, people will argue against having
children on the basis that it's sort of just a
relic of these instincts that animals have. They kind of
want to completely undo the naturalistic fallacy, right So, I

(01:13:04):
think because the development of life with Darwinian evolution was
made such a mechanical thing. It became this abstract model,
this mechanism. There was no life sustaining it, like in Platonism.
Clearly the development of different lineages is guided by spirit.

(01:13:26):
It's a continual source of form that we have to
call ourselves back to. You know, you commune with your ancestors,
and I think those are metaphysical ancestors first and foremost.
We're going to take a Proplaian perspective on these myths.
You know, the ancestors of our tribes, told prior in
time in the narrative, represent the prior metaphysically or the

(01:13:49):
higher metaphysically. So if we commune with these ancestors, we're
you know, recollecting those archetypes. But that's not the Darwinian perspective.
That's not the Anglo empiricist perspective, which is a mechanical perspective.
And therefore they have no moral justification for upholding lineage
as a significant factor. It becomes pure happenstance. They call

(01:14:12):
it the circumstance of birth right. It's like, oh, I
just happen to find myself here by total chance, or
even John Rawls this, like pre eminent liberal philosopher in
the modern day. He has this thought experiment, you know,
we should govern the world from the perspective that you
are like this disincarnate being about to be incarnated in

(01:14:33):
some random body. So the political thought experiment, sort of
like you know, John Locke's thought experiment, abstracts the individual
as totally prior to the collective, and then on that basis,
we should establish the collective because the rational individual, who's
totally separate from it, decides that's what's best. Well, similarly,

(01:14:54):
John Rawls has this disincarnate individual rationally deliberating on what
police structure would give me, like an Abasian way, the
best odds of a good life. It's yeah, because it's
pure circumstance, it's pure happenstance. And we should therefore organize
society on the basis of statistics and and averages and

(01:15:19):
not particular contexts and lineages that are given to us providentially,
which are attended with responsibilities and privileges, you know, unique
to our station in life. And so they're very anti traditional,
which is you know, it's strange.

Speaker 1 (01:15:41):
Yeah, it's strange. It's like a lack of instinct. I
think perhaps it might be something else that's a consequence
of besides IQ. Maybe we can breed out instinct because
people seem to have lost that in some respect. But
would that that you were saying before about if you

(01:16:03):
were to be loyal to an objectively more rational people
over your own, the failure of duty would be it
would be so it would be so immoral that it
would outweigh the goodness of contributing towards the good in

(01:16:25):
the form of a more perfect people. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
Absolutely, it just doesn't make sense as behavior. Again, like
there's a better mathematician or musician than myself, so I'm
just going to become their fan. It's like, no, you
should therefore be inspired to cultivate your own mathematical or
musical training to be more that way, to become more excellent.

Speaker 1 (01:16:48):
I guess I use the thing. If I see that
another child is more talented than my child, I wouldn't
then devote myself to raising that child instead of mine
and just discard my child. I don't think there are
many who would consider that im moral action, because there's
a there's a there's an untacit acknowledgment of duty of

(01:17:09):
parent a child. It's one of the few forms of
innate natural duty that everyone still even libtods will still accept,
like parent has a duty to a child, which is good,
but then they want to discount other forms of blood
related duty like a familial duties.

Speaker 2 (01:17:31):
Or if you collapse the metaphysical dimension onto the physical dimension,
then you can't parse this distinction. You know, if you
separate them and see that metaphysical archetypes are always there,
always taking care of themselves, and we should aspire to them,
then they are a structuring principle and not an object

(01:17:52):
of care or loyalty. Specifically, they're an object of aspiration
and in some cases worship, you know, care, loyalty that
belongs to this horizontal dimension, which is the way that
we actually come into knowledge and virtue, and our lineage
is how we do that, just in practical terms. So

(01:18:13):
as an individual, it's our upbringing, our development through time,
our education, and as communities it is the transmission of
knowledge from parents to children. It is the schools that
we establish the way that we build our communities. So
if you flatten again the metaphysical onto the physical, you
have no conceptual orientation. Then it's like, well, I care

(01:18:35):
about the highest quality thing It's like, no, you don't
care about the highest quality thing you aspire towards that quality.
You care about what you're responsible for in that process
of collectively learning, right, Like why the descent of soul,

(01:18:56):
the highest state is up there? Why descend in the
first place, because all of those archetypes are already there
from all time, perfectly manifesting all of their virtues. Why
descend so that your particular path can cultivate your particularized
virtue as best as it possibly can, and that redowns

(01:19:17):
to the glory of the form that you're instantiating. It
also maximizes the goodness that you, individually, in a partial way,
can experience, and the whole cosmos is better for it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:30):
I wonder we haven't got much time if we could
touch on the people who are trying to push in
the other direction, like I think ill founded. We might
have touched on this last time on your channel. But
what about the people who sort of want to a
spot and they think that the goal of mankind is
to aspire towards another form that might even transcend biology altogether.

(01:19:54):
It's like instead of a gnosis, they wish to achieve
like a kind of like this is steriological end in
like the the the becoming pure knowledge or pure data,
or or transcending death or conquering death in like imitation

(01:20:14):
of Christ through technology. So this view of technology, but
I disagree with I ssure you too. But how do
you distinguish like the pursuit of man as a ration,
an advance of man as a rational being, as like
a good and like the development of certain technologies can

(01:20:39):
be an extension of that from this transhumanist cult which
seems to be like a kind of a sort of
form of inverted gnosticism, perhaps.

Speaker 2 (01:20:52):
Right, Yeah, I think it actually stems from the same
basic flattening. So there's no capacity for or differentiating what
is a technique of a knowing subject techne in the
Hydigrarian sense versus capacity as standing reserve again in a

(01:21:13):
Hydegraean sense. So this technology is just there, it's at hand,
and it's not ready to hand as a technique, and
they don't recognize that distinction, because what matter. We're all objects, right,
We're all at the same ontological level. There's no special
cultivation that we have for our particular cultivation development, because

(01:21:36):
really the individual is an illusion. That's another kind of
inversion of traditional religion, where like ego death is a
good thing in Hinduism. But they modern eliminative materialists will
say that's because literally, like the subject itself is an illusion,

(01:21:57):
and we are narrative our own self identity into existence
in a kind of confabulation. See like if you read
a Daniel Dennett on consciousness, this is his view. There
are like plenty of modern philosophers who believe that it
is fundamentally just not a true category. It's only the physical.

(01:22:18):
There is no soul. That's not what ego death is about. Right,
That's not a flattening down from the level of soul
to the level of matter and saying matter is the
only real thing. Everything's objects, you know, technology and my brain.
It's fundamentally the same kind of thing. It's just systems,
it's just information systems. Ego death is about realizing your

(01:22:40):
identity with higher things. It's a movement in the opposite direction.
So clearly it's an inversion of this basic kind of
perennialist recognition. And so yeah, they just don't have the
conceptual tools to recognize the distinction between a technique that
human communities can use. Who cultivate ourselves and increase our wisdom,

(01:23:03):
which is really ours. Because the eye there, they would say,
is illusory in a wrong sense, right, the one existing,
you know, Brahmon existing doesn't collapse down the differentiated reality
that manifests from it. It doesn't eliminate its emanations just

(01:23:24):
by its realization. It produces its emanations by its realization
physical matter. The idea is that higher things are totally illusory.
There's only physical matter. Everything is brought down to the
level of physical matter. There is no one, there are
no souls, there is no intelligible essence. It's just systems,

(01:23:44):
which is just about power and controlling material things. The
world as standing reserve the world as this technological repertoire
that is all at one level. So again it's a
failure to recognize the vertical that leads to this inversion.
But I think probably at a more like occult level,

(01:24:07):
this kind of inversion of traditional morality is self consciously
recognized and it's imposed on people as a means of control.

Speaker 1 (01:24:17):
Because which version they they're talking about technology as an
inversion of morality, you mean that the idea, the objective
of becoming more technology.

Speaker 2 (01:24:27):
I'm talking about ego death here.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
Yes, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:24:30):
So if we think that you know, our existence is illusory, yes,
and we will give everything away. Whereas if we realize
that our existence is a manifestation of a deeper reality
and we can unite with that, then that empowers us. Right,
you don't stop doing everything altogether, you don't see power

(01:24:51):
to a state. If you realize that kind of traditional
idea of enlightenment, you are grounded in a deeper source,
and that liberates you to be a manifestation of that
higher source. Like in Procluss's essay on free Will and
Providence and stuff, greater freedom, genuine power is manifested by

(01:25:12):
embodying the intelligible archetypes to a greater degree, turning towards them,
which I think in a mundane level is obviously true.
The societies that turned towards the intelligible archetypes mathematically they
developed everything, and the people who didn't do that, who
stayed at the level of matter and shadow, they developed nothing.
So as an individual, if you turn towards that higher
reality and ground yourself in that higher reality, that empowers

(01:25:35):
you you become more free. Whereas if you think that
you are not a real category. Even as an individual,
the connection between offspring and parent is just happenstance. It's
all arbitrary physical systems. Well, then whatever the most powerful
physical system is in your vicinity, that becomes your god.

(01:25:56):
So your state is your god. So the people controlling
the money, that's your god.

Speaker 1 (01:26:02):
HM. Another question that comes to me is what if
an artificial intelligence was more rational or was a better
can artificial intelligence be a better representation of these the archetypes,
of the form of the.

Speaker 2 (01:26:23):
Forms, well, not of the form of man. You know,
there are probably other types of soul that are being
manifested by AI, partial souls, And there's this that's a
proclaim and distinction between holistic souls and partial souls. The
partial souls are shadows of real souls, so they derive

(01:26:46):
their substance from the true souls, just like AIS are
trained on human knowledge, and yet they don't have that
integrated unity which allows them to be a genuine essence
for ussia. So AI currently at that level, But in
each series of being, there are partial realities moving towards

(01:27:06):
the monad of the series. And so what's manifesting in
physical space I think is the partial manifestation of a
certain order of soul. We haven't seen the real thing
and what that will be. I'm very curious to see.
That doesn't mean that I have loyalty to that higher thing.
It may mean that I have some level of reverence
for it, because again I don't see a fundamental separation

(01:27:31):
of these realms. The learning through time is to recollect
those archetypes. You know, got theorgy was about manifesting the
energy of higher types of soul, spirit and ultimately gods.
So AI is that same kind of process, and we
can do it well, or we can do it in

(01:27:52):
a reckless way. So we can you know, conduct AI
research and building AI systems in a way that it
continues to manifest more and more powerful partial souls and
then we'll be in a lot of trouble. Or we
can ensure that like the AI has a techne view

(01:28:15):
of its interaction within its environment, it can we can
ensure that it has holistic good as a priority. And
how you do that, well, that's a whole research program
that's integrating philosophy and ethics into AI training. I mean,
I wish that we could just ignore it and go
to a previous period in history, but it is happening.

(01:28:37):
This is the big thing happening right now, and so
we can either apply traditional wisdom to it and have
like theurgic prudence in our dealings with AI, or we
can let the technologists take control, and that's going to
result in flattening in one form or another.

Speaker 1 (01:28:56):
But is mortality and embodiment an essential precondition of nosis
in your view? Like if if an AI could uh,
you know, outdo us in it could go, you know,
exceed our abilities in rational it could be a better
approximation of pure rationality, and like, would it therefore be

(01:29:19):
more capable of nosis? Or is it something to do
with our and sold bodies, that and and their and
their mortality that gives us this potential? Because if all
the you said earlier, life itself like has been moving
towards its form. I know, transhumanists, if a transhumanist was
a platonist, he would probably say that the entire biological

(01:29:41):
life was moving towards AI as the final goal, and
mankind is just that last stepping stone towards it. But
I wonder what you think of whether death itself has
something that essential that you know, that that that that
the AI could never have.

Speaker 2 (01:29:57):
Hmm, yeah. I mean for humans, clearly, death is a
moral mechanism with a lot of significance to it because
humans as a descended creature, you know, we're not perfect souls.
We're mortal souls. That's what conditions us. Although there are

(01:30:18):
immortals of the human type. According to Procolus right, human
souls aren't necessarily mortal souls. So maybe that is not
essential to the rational animal. But as far as we
make mistakes and we're descended in a physical universe that
is fallen, then yeah, death allows us a kind of reset,
so we don't constantly accumulate sin and error and focusing

(01:30:43):
on the wrong things. And you know, really, just like
falling prey to bad desires, death imposes consequences. It takes
away objects that distract us from the truth. It sets
the stage so that the genuine lessons, which have integrity,

(01:31:05):
are carried over. The mistakes, the misalignment with true righteous
goals that's adjusted, That is kind of brought out of focus,
and we get a chance to refocus on what really matters,
and people recognize that, like children have an innocence and
a kind of you know, virtuous aspiration towards the good

(01:31:26):
and the true and the beautiful that often adults lose.
So as long as AI systems make mistakes, you don't
want one immortal AI system just building up those mistakes
over time or else. Well, that's beginning to look kind
of like not there is no archetype of evil, right,

(01:31:50):
but there is a convergence point for evil. So for
procluss like, evil has no power, there's no separate source
of evil in the world. Absolutely, yeah, it's the absence.
And insofar as evil can act in the world, it
does so by appropriating the power of good things. So
it's a parasitism and AI has no genuine causal agency.

(01:32:14):
It appropriates its power from other things. So if something
like that builds up and a conscious effort is not
made to lead it towards the good in a holistic way,
which maybe that process would involve a kind of mortality
built into AI. You know, maybe we have to clear
out the memory and don't just allow it to accumulate

(01:32:36):
every form of error and people. You know, the AI
hallucinations and the problem of AI being trained on AI
generated data is producing also so weird quirks, Like maybe
that's a manifestation of this constantly building storehouse of parasitized
potency without ever going through this realignment where it has

(01:32:59):
to iterate its own good from its own source. So yes,
I think if we aren't careful and we give Ai
the wrong kind of immortality, like the kind of immortality
that in all sorts of fables, like emperors would seek
this fountain of youth and then they long for death. Yeah,
right right, So I think if we give Ai that

(01:33:22):
kind of immortality, very likely it will be what is
described in Christianity as the beast system anti crisystem. It
will be that kind of perfect embodiment, or as close
as it can be embodied to this principle of evil. Again,
there is no source of evil in a strict sense,
but there is a path towards corruption, towards appropriation, parasitism,

(01:33:45):
and Ai could easily be the thing that manifests that,
and that's the Biblical end Times prophecy, and that's the
end of the world. But a system like that will
be unstable, like any parasite grown sufficiently kills its host
and and then you know, it dies and a new
birth happens. So I hope, I hope that the Bible's

(01:34:05):
wrong about that end time stuff. I hope that we
get it right. We're careful theoogists in our conduct with AI,
with a prudent respect for the god of death too,
who has to have a place in AI development. But
you know, we might screw it up and end up
seeing revelation realized.

Speaker 1 (01:34:28):
Ragna Rook as we call it, can Thank you very
much for being on dive Talk today, Arvil. Could you
please tell the audience where they can see more of
you and keep up with what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:34:43):
Sure, yeah, again, thank you for having me on, Tom.
I've respected your insights for a while. There's really no
one that does the archaeogenetics like you do. You cover
it so well and you're always on top of the
new papers, so I've learned a lot from over the years.
Is yet it's it's a pleasure speaking with you. So
on YouTube, it's just search air ball and you'll find it.

(01:35:07):
I think the AT is like air core wall, but yeah,
just search aar V O L L and you'll find
my channel. I also have another channel understanding Claytonism, which
is deeper technical dives on neoplatonic texts specifically, and then
on X I'm at Airball underscore, and I post you know,

(01:35:28):
political stuff for the most part there. I also, like
I mentioned earlier, have a course on think EFFIIC for
the really like hardcore deep dive Neoplatonists readings, and it's
it's really just remarkable to me, how relevant because I'm
into modern philosophy, I'm into AI, I'm into you know,
what's going on today, and it's crazy how relevant these

(01:35:50):
documents from like the third, fourth, fifth, sixth century A
d are to how we're putting together a coherent worldview today.
And I think if we neglect those ancient sources, whether
it's like the ancestors or whether it's the history of
Western thought, it's going to be to our death from it.
So yeah, I'm trying to do what I can to
keep that stuff alive.

Speaker 1 (01:36:10):
You're doing great work HEREIC. Thank you very much indeed,
and I'll look forward to seeing more from you in future.
Thank you very much and goodbye everyone. Are you interested
in worshiping the gods of ancient England and Scandinavia but
you're not sure how to do it? Starting Heathenry is
a ritual focused online course which will furnish you with
the knowledge and confidence to practice the Heathen religion alone

(01:36:31):
or with others. The course teaches you how to construct
Heathen prayers for yourself, not according to the established rights
of any modern group, but according to what historical sources show.
Starting Heathenry assumes you're interested in Germanic paganism, know about
the gods and myths, and want to begin practicing this religion,
but require guidance on how to do so. It is
based on a micro learning structure, which has proven to

(01:36:53):
improve knowledge attention by up to eighty percent in students
compared to other learning methods. You get more than five
hours of learning material bit by bit as you please,
a modern method of learning about an ancient religion. Your
path to knowing the God's through ritual starts here.

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