Thanks! I have 3-4 unfinished pieces and my creativity is finally starting to wake back up after decades of external suppression, so I hope to be dropping more text-based thoughts very soon!
Finally finished watching episode two. Good conversation. A few thoughts:
I agree that something became culturally arrested in the 1980s. Progress, in some real and meaningful ways, came to a halt. I almost feel like the internet was finally rolled out in the 1990s to provide the illusion of continued progress. But the internet had been developed as part of a department of defense project in the 1960s, so it didn’t represent much in the way of progress, except in its distribution to the masses.
I think Eric Weinstein’s conversation from 2020 about the Distributed Information Suppression Complex (DISC) is relevant, and worth returning to:
The hour seems liminal, for certain. Many things are being turned over and upset.
While it’s true of this particular cultural moment, it’s also a perennial interior situation of those of us traveling between Genesis and the apocalypse.
We are being invited out of the comfort zone of our origins, into a great adventure. Most seem unwilling to make that journey. Like Samwise, we hesitate on the threshold of this journey: https://youtube.com/watch?v=3YvBnxvd1sw&si=xU63DIz96JXUK5Qc
I talked about it to an RCIA class once in the context of introducing them to The Last Things:
Our life after the Fall is a life lived upside down, and when Christ arrives to turn things upside right, most of us resist because we experience it as an upset.
Saint John of the Cross is the best cartographer of the landscape of Middle Earth that I know. He notes how many of us, like Samwise, want to linger at the edge of the Shire. In terms of the spiritual life, that looks like staying in modes of discursive meditation and never voyaging very deeply into the world that mental prayer draws us toward… the horizons of contemplative prayer, with its night of the senses and night of the spirit.
It’s a summary of the Carmelite teaching of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila on prayer. A friend introduced me to this shortly after I graduated from Steubenville and it was invaluable in helping navigate that first very rocky decade after leaving the hilltop campus. It’s a difficult road between Tabor and Calvary, and no one makes it very far along the way without a guide. The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross are a worthwhile investment in this regard.
I really think the only way through the insanity we’re racing toward is a dedicated contemplative life.
Also, in listening to you guys speak about nostalgia and sense-making, I think I understand better why T.S. Eliot is so insistent on the concept of the still point in the turning world. Without that locus of meaning, life will quickly become too dizzying to be intelligible.
I think that the Mass is the hermeneutical key to human life, and very much why Jesus left it as a perpetual memorial until the end of time. In the Eucharist, we find the still point in the turning world. Look up the concept of anamnesis. It’s the particular kind of remembering that we engage in during the liturgy… a remembering that makes the Paschal mystery of history present and propels us forward to the eschaton.
Regarding puppet masters: I wonder if the algorithms might actually be the thing holding the strings, rather than an intelligible being. It would make sense, because the inversion of the loving Father as the ordering principle of the universe would be an indifferent machine.
Thanks for the deep dive on this, Clayton. I wasn’t aware of Eric W when he was doing the Portal and I haven’t gone back into his archives there, but I’ll check this out. He’s one of my favorite thinkers alive today.
On the theological questions, I don’t feel that I can give you the kind of feedback you’re looking for, because I lack the conviction or the belief to affirm (or, really, to deny) your observations. @Kale Zelden may have something to say on that though.
It's hard to find two hours to fully listen to your podcast. I simply have too many things on my plate. But I'm listening to parts of it.
A couple weeks ago I was going to write a Substack post on Plato's cave, but I never completed it. Here's how I started it...
Plato's Cave - Remixed
I woke up – or was I still dreaming? – and found myself staring at one video after another in my stream. They were telling me what is true. Or were they? I stared more closely and saw the AI artifacts. The seams. The tells. I turned to go but found myself glued to my bed. I looked up and saw the sun streaming through my window.
And then I woke up. Again.
I felt like going back to sleep. But maybe I was already asleep. I switched channels and stared at a video of a man dreaming. I thought I saw myself.
It took everything in me to turn my phone off. Not just screen off. Not airplane mode. Shutdown. All the way.
And then I woke up again. And saw my phone sitting there. Waiting.
I got up. And walked. Away from my phone. Away from the drug. Away from sleep.
I found myself outside. How long had it been? I kept walking and found myself in a store, staring at all the people with phones in front of their faces. Asleep. Every one of them. Watching shadows. Thinking they were awake.
I tried to wake them up. But it was no use. They weren't interested in seeing the sun. Or taking a walk. Or breathing air. They had their streams. They had their truths.
I sat down on a bench. I sat for ever so long.
A man walked up and handed me a phone. He thought I was homeless. He thought I needed it. He thought he was helping.
Who was I to argue?
I took it. And stared at the black screen. And saw my own reflection staring back.
You're one interesting dude, Steve. I've been really behind in my substack reading, but catching up with you is always worth it. Thanks!
Thanks! I have 3-4 unfinished pieces and my creativity is finally starting to wake back up after decades of external suppression, so I hope to be dropping more text-based thoughts very soon!
Finally finished watching episode two. Good conversation. A few thoughts:
I agree that something became culturally arrested in the 1980s. Progress, in some real and meaningful ways, came to a halt. I almost feel like the internet was finally rolled out in the 1990s to provide the illusion of continued progress. But the internet had been developed as part of a department of defense project in the 1960s, so it didn’t represent much in the way of progress, except in its distribution to the masses.
I think Eric Weinstein’s conversation from 2020 about the Distributed Information Suppression Complex (DISC) is relevant, and worth returning to:
https://youtu.be/QxnkGymKuuI?si=68EJZFm6o74CvmJk
The hour seems liminal, for certain. Many things are being turned over and upset.
While it’s true of this particular cultural moment, it’s also a perennial interior situation of those of us traveling between Genesis and the apocalypse.
We are being invited out of the comfort zone of our origins, into a great adventure. Most seem unwilling to make that journey. Like Samwise, we hesitate on the threshold of this journey: https://youtube.com/watch?v=3YvBnxvd1sw&si=xU63DIz96JXUK5Qc
I talked about it to an RCIA class once in the context of introducing them to The Last Things:
https://open.substack.com/pub/doxaweb/p/advent-and-the-last-things
Our life after the Fall is a life lived upside down, and when Christ arrives to turn things upside right, most of us resist because we experience it as an upset.
Saint John of the Cross is the best cartographer of the landscape of Middle Earth that I know. He notes how many of us, like Samwise, want to linger at the edge of the Shire. In terms of the spiritual life, that looks like staying in modes of discursive meditation and never voyaging very deeply into the world that mental prayer draws us toward… the horizons of contemplative prayer, with its night of the senses and night of the spirit.
https://doxaweb.com/blog/2025/12/14/juan-de-la-cruz/
I recommend Father Thomas Dubay’s book entitled Fire Within.
https://doxaweb.com/blog/2022/11/08/a-question-of-relevance/
It’s a summary of the Carmelite teaching of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila on prayer. A friend introduced me to this shortly after I graduated from Steubenville and it was invaluable in helping navigate that first very rocky decade after leaving the hilltop campus. It’s a difficult road between Tabor and Calvary, and no one makes it very far along the way without a guide. The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross are a worthwhile investment in this regard.
I really think the only way through the insanity we’re racing toward is a dedicated contemplative life.
Also, in listening to you guys speak about nostalgia and sense-making, I think I understand better why T.S. Eliot is so insistent on the concept of the still point in the turning world. Without that locus of meaning, life will quickly become too dizzying to be intelligible.
I think that the Mass is the hermeneutical key to human life, and very much why Jesus left it as a perpetual memorial until the end of time. In the Eucharist, we find the still point in the turning world. Look up the concept of anamnesis. It’s the particular kind of remembering that we engage in during the liturgy… a remembering that makes the Paschal mystery of history present and propels us forward to the eschaton.
Regarding puppet masters: I wonder if the algorithms might actually be the thing holding the strings, rather than an intelligible being. It would make sense, because the inversion of the loving Father as the ordering principle of the universe would be an indifferent machine.
Thanks for the deep dive on this, Clayton. I wasn’t aware of Eric W when he was doing the Portal and I haven’t gone back into his archives there, but I’ll check this out. He’s one of my favorite thinkers alive today.
On the theological questions, I don’t feel that I can give you the kind of feedback you’re looking for, because I lack the conviction or the belief to affirm (or, really, to deny) your observations. @Kale Zelden may have something to say on that though.
It's hard to find two hours to fully listen to your podcast. I simply have too many things on my plate. But I'm listening to parts of it.
A couple weeks ago I was going to write a Substack post on Plato's cave, but I never completed it. Here's how I started it...
Plato's Cave - Remixed
I woke up – or was I still dreaming? – and found myself staring at one video after another in my stream. They were telling me what is true. Or were they? I stared more closely and saw the AI artifacts. The seams. The tells. I turned to go but found myself glued to my bed. I looked up and saw the sun streaming through my window.
And then I woke up. Again.
I felt like going back to sleep. But maybe I was already asleep. I switched channels and stared at a video of a man dreaming. I thought I saw myself.
It took everything in me to turn my phone off. Not just screen off. Not airplane mode. Shutdown. All the way.
And then I woke up again. And saw my phone sitting there. Waiting.
I got up. And walked. Away from my phone. Away from the drug. Away from sleep.
I found myself outside. How long had it been? I kept walking and found myself in a store, staring at all the people with phones in front of their faces. Asleep. Every one of them. Watching shadows. Thinking they were awake.
I tried to wake them up. But it was no use. They weren't interested in seeing the sun. Or taking a walk. Or breathing air. They had their streams. They had their truths.
I sat down on a bench. I sat for ever so long.
A man walked up and handed me a phone. He thought I was homeless. He thought I needed it. He thought he was helping.
Who was I to argue?
I took it. And stared at the black screen. And saw my own reflection staring back.
And I wondered which one of us was dreaming now.
Enjoyed the podcast. Hope you recover from your cold, and can suppress the "you know"s. [Maybe AI can filter?]