A text dump on The Godcast
Alt-Right Podcasters Offer Praise For ‘Unabomber’ Ted Kaczynski
On Jan 30, 2018 by Eyes on the Right
Topics: ALT-RIGHT, ANTISEMITISM, JASON KESSLER, RACISM, THE RIGHT STUFF
On Sunday’s episode of The Godcast, co-hosts Paisios and SuperLutheran invited Jason Kessler on their show for a glowing tribute to the “Unabomber.” From 1978 to 1995, Ted Kaczynski, a math prodigy and neo-Luddite, sent explosives through the mail that killed three people and maimed 23 others. The domestic terrorist was captured in 1996, and received eight life sentences as part of a 1998 plea agreement.
His manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future, which excoriated society for its reliance on technology and called for a return to “wild nature,” was published in its entirety by the Washington Post and other news outlets as part of a bid to stop the bombings — and in the hopes that someone would recognize the killer’s writing style.
Of the 35,000-word manifesto, SuperLutheran simply remarked that the “Unabomber” was “right.” Likewise, Paisios claimed that Kaczynski “took his beliefs to the logical conclusion” by moving into a shack in the wilderness, sending mail bombs to “get attention,” and then “educating” people on the evils of modern life.
Their guest Jason Kessler was noticeably uncomfortable with the idea of praising Kaczynski’s tactics, saying he wanted to “push back” on the idea that using violence in a “pointless” way would’ve achieved his goals.
“I mean, I think the way that certain people who write these manifestos — like Kaczynski, Dylann Roof, and Elliot Rodgers [sic] — and then they go and just kill random people, or just a small number of people, I don’t think that it’s gonna accomplish their political goals the way that they might think that it would.”
Paisios claimed that, despite his hatred of capitalism, Kaczynski was no Leftist. “And then I read his manifesto, and he’s like pretty right-wing actually,” he said. SuperLutheran added that Kaczynski was “definitely a neo-reactionary for his times,” and that even Timothy McVeigh recognized the “Unabomber” was no left-winger. What an honor.
SuperLutheran then said he wanted to “connect” Kaczynski’s nearly 20 year terror spree “to the church.” He explained that “everybody, when the ‘Unabomber’ did his thing and when he was finally arrested after this big FBI manhunt — nobody in church actually sat down and read in the Scriptures something that vindicates what the ‘Unabomber’ was saying.”
He cited the words of King Solomon in Ecclesiastes 2:
I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine–my heart still guiding me with wisdom–and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life.
Kaczynski criticized technology as, at best, a mere distraction. SuperLutheran likened it to the “vanity” mentioned by King Solomon, and said Kaczynski “might as well have had his hand on the Scriptures when he was writing his manifesto.”
Of course, Kaczynski wasn’t a Christian, but Paisios opined that this was probably because he recognized that modern Christianity was infested with Leftists. SuperLutheran agreed:
The weird thing is, though, you’re probably right, he probably dismissed the church as, “Well, they’re encouraging the same kind of advances as everybody else.’ I mean, he lived during Vatican II when the Catholic Church started saying, ‘Hey, it’s okay to believe in evolution and enjoy modern technology.’ So, it’s kinda the same way the alt-right is right now, looking at all these different churches and we all want to go back to tradition, and then you hear the Southern Baptist Church denouncing all forms of “white supremacy.”
Although praise for Kaczynski isn’t necessarily common among white supremacists, it isn’t entirely unheard of. In 1996 the white power band Mudoven recorded a song dedicated to his terrorist activities. Both pro-environment and anti-Semitic, the song “Unabomber” lambasted the “Zionists” “raping the land,” and called the mail bomb attacks their “just desserts.”
The Godcast Episode 56: The Unabomber Manifesto
By Paisios, SuperLutheran, Jason Kessler & Daniel Antenora.
A line from Kingdom of Heaven (a film portraying the crusades): Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright, that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it means to your death. Safeguard thelpless and doing her wrong.
MYLES: Good afternoon, good evening and good morning, wherever you are, whenever you are and welcome to the podcast. I'm your host for this week. Myles, Poland we can be heard every week on the right stuff, dot biz if you'd like to get in touch with us. We can be reached via e-mail at the Godcast jc@gmail.com and on Twitter. At the Godcast TJC, if you'd like to donate to the show and help our efforts, you could donate via PayPal to our e-mail address. If you don't have the resources to donate to us directly, you can help us out by mining cryptocurrency. For our hosts, the right. Stuff that process will use a little bit of your computer's processing power to mine cryptocurrency for us. While you're at work or asleep or whenever you're not using your computer, you can just head over to the right stuff dot biz and follow the instructions there. Today we'll be hearing from Paisios and Super Lutheran about Ted Kaczynski's Manifesto, Industrial Society and its future. They're joined by Jason Kessler in the first hour and our returning guest Daniel Antenora in the second hour. Let's listen.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Who was the Unabomber, yeah so.
PASIOS: I kind of wanted to talk about this because I had just watched the Discovery Channel show about him. Did you? Did you see that the new series about him?
SUPERLUTHERAN: No, sorry.
PASIOS: Yeah, it was. It’s kind. Of like a true crime thing, everyone's on this kick. Now, but it. It's interesting because the show actually did. It almost made the Unabomber seem like. He was a very sympathetic character on the show, which is surprising. You know, because it's a Hollywood production.
SUPERLUTHERAN: He so for those of us who might not have been a growing up in the 90s. His name was John Theodore Kaczynski. He was a brilliant mathematiciand if you ask the godcast people, they'll say that he was part of project. MK Ultra or something like that, but he kind of became anarchist and started blowing up people by sending pipe bombs in the mail to universities and airports. That's where we get the term. Unand. Bummer Mr. Are you familiar at all with everything that was going down? Back then?
KESSLER: Yeah, I was pretty young at the time, but I remember it happening. There was a show that used to come on in the 90s called unsolved mystery and my family. I would always watch that and it was super creepy. Like really creepy music. They talked about a lot of murders. Satanic coal UFOs and different things. And there was that picture of him that anybody can Google and look up. And it was just so creepy they put that picture up there with the music, but I didn't know anything about his politics. It was just, a guy that they wanted you to be scared of.
SUPERLUTHERAN: And for good reason too. At one point in during the string of bombings, he sent a letter with a manifesto different news publications, and said if you posted this, I'm not going to blow up this next person my list. And the Washington Post actually took them up on it, and you can find it on their website that the special report. The Unabomber manifesto. It's called Industrial Society and its future. And that's the main topic today that we're discussing is everything he wrote down because. Well he was right, yeah.
PASIOS: So basically the Unabomber was this guy that. He had these he's had. These philosophical ideas about everything that was wrong with the world, and he took it to. He took his beliefs through the logical conclusion he like. Went full on. Henry David Thoreau lived out in the woods alone. And he thought that solving all of the problems that he could solve the problems by kind of sending these bombs to get attention. And then his goal was to like educate people once they once he had their attention basically.
KESSLER: I want to hear you guys explain what his philosophy is because I'm not 100% sure on it. I do know that he was very NK technology and everything but like after you guys do that, I probably will push back on the idea that he would. Not even necessarily just that he would use violence to enact his goals, but use it in such a pointless way. I mean, I think the way that certain people who write these manifestos like because they ski, Dylann Roof and Elliot Rogers, and then they go and just kill. And then people or just a small number of people? I don't think that it's going to accomplish their political goals the way that they might think that it would, but we'll get. To that later well.
PASIOS: Ohh yeah and I and I would say I would say also that there’s a lot of great confusion what the Unabomber actually believe. Because I mean, at least from my perspective, I went into the show and learning about him, thinking that he was some kind of like leftist person because he was like anti capitalism, . And then I actually read his manifesto and he's like pretty right wing actually.
SUPERLUTHERAN: He's definitely a neoreactionary for his times and Timothy McVeigh lived in the same maximum security prison as the unwrapper, and they got to meet and he said, yeah, this guy's just as right wing as I am thesis. Of his work, OK?
KESSLER: Well, I was going to say what was it about technology that freaked him. Out so much.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, that’s thesis of his. His manifesto was. As technology increases, freedom decreases and the problem is that most Americans define freedom in one of two ways. They either define it as a constitution. Or B. They define it as I don't have to work and the government is paying me welfare so I don't have to do anything or freedom from responsibility. For the Unabomber, he taught something that he called the power principle. Or the power process where you have a goal and you have the ability to reach that goal. And it have the power to do that, and primarily it's for necessity. It's for survival that we have this power process of. I have something I need. Second step, I'm in the process of getting what I need. Third step I have what I need. And the more technology increase. Cases the more we restrict people's ability to do that, so for instance, the car, an automobile is supposed to be your great ticket to freedom because you can now travel 30 miles in half an hour or less. If you're going to speed, you can go so fast and get where you want. Oh, but you have to take a driving class. Oh, and here is all. These traffic laws that you have to obey. And you can't actually go where you want with a car because you have to follow the rules of the road. You have to. Obey construction workers. If they're directing you somewhere, you have to go on detours, and it's not just about walking somewhere because 200 years ago people could just literally walk wherever they wanted to go.
PASIOS: Yeah, and not just not just like traffic laws and things talking about a car, but. You know society introduces the car and then we start to make our lives more complicated because of it. Like the car allows you to travel 30 miles in one day. So therefore you can work 30 miles from your home now.
KESSLER: Yeah, I'm sympathetic to the concept. That's technology complicates our lives. They the technology, solves our immediate problems and then creates new problems. It’s no. There's no point at which technology and pharmaceuticals and everything else would erase all of your problems like I guess you could take a pill to make you brain dead. That would be. The only thing short of death that would make it so you didn't have problems, we need problems and arguably the problems we have now are worse than the ones our ancestors had because we're objectively not as happy as they were, . So maybe we have a car so we can drive to a job. We may or may not like, but a lot of this. Technology is separating us from our communities, right? And the ideologies that are popping up the feminism and different things are removing us from our communities. Whereas our ancestors, they might have known like a, 100 people in their tribe, but they were tight with them and they were surrounded by. You know their family and their friends all the time.
SUPERLUTHERAN: And he was honestly he was spot on about the leftist mindset. He theorized that people go on to leftism. Because technology has made life easy when it comes to basic survival, you don't have to go out and hunt a deer to have meat, and you don't even have to own a farm or be a farm worker to have bread. Instead, you can just go to the store and buy a loaf for what $0.99? And so that does things to people's psychology, where suddenly now they don't have the same drive and purpose for survival. And they're going to redirect those urges somewhere else, and that somewhere else is going to be something inconsequential, like, say, Black Lives matter or feminism. Going somewhere where there's really not a problem, but they need to put themselves. Into this existentialist place, in order to get there.
KESSLER: Yeah, the efforts of modern technology and conveniences to eliminate our problems is sort of like the vacamonte whereas in the past we might have gone out with other hunter gatherers and got an enormous amount of exercise. You know hunting down this game and then food is and then unlimited. Supply, so we're much less likely to be overweight because of excess of food. But now we don't have that, so we work these jobs to make the money which we use to buy the food. That's bad for us. And then because we didn't hunt it ourselves, we got to go to the gym and simulate this sort of activity. We would have got hunting it ourself.
PASIOS: Ohh yeah, and it's like the so he talks a lot about.
PASIOS: Like the decadence of society then, right?
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, and this where I would honestly I want to connect this to. To the church. Because everybody when the Unabomber did his thing and when he was finally arrested after this big FBI manhunt. Nobody in church actually sat down in a read in the Scriptures, something that vindicates what the Unabomber was saying. Let me go ahead and read to you from Ecclesiastes Chapter 2. This King Solomon writing, and so if there was anybody that had affluence and didn't have to really work for a living, it was this guy richest man in history. And so in Ecclesiastes chapter 2. He said I said in my heart come now I will test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself, but behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter. It is mad and the pleasure what uses it. I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine my heart still guiding me with wisdom and how to lay hold on folly till I might see what was good for the children. Demand to do unto heaven during the few days of their life. And he goes over all these. Accomplishments that he has that. He was distracting himself with. And at the end of the day, he's depressed. He has nothing that he's done that really matters for him. He understands he's just going to die. It's all vanity and this something that I mean, the Unabomber might as well have had his hand on the scriptures when he was writing his manifesto, but he didn't conclude it the way that Solomon did Ed Ecclesiastes chapter 12. Solomon throws up his hands. Says the end of the matter. All that has been heard fear God and keep his commandments. For this the whole. Duty of man. For God will. Bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
PASIOS: What based on what you read, I was thinking about how how the Unabomber would conclude this manifesto and how he didn't arrive at a really Christian conclusion. At the time of writing it, he would. He would probably have seen the leftist trends in the Christian communities just as much as any other communities. So at like when he when he's looking around at society, he's probably not thinking of Christianity as any real solution, because they’re leftists, just as much as the college professors.
KESSLER: Why is the Unabomber a Christian?
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, he seems to be an agnostic, but.
PASIOS: Yeah, he seems pretty Pagan in that way. Kind of kind of like a thorough kind of paganism.
SUPERLUTHERAN: But the weird thing is, though, is you're probably right. He probably dismissed the churches. Well, they're encouraging the same kind of advances as everybody else. I mean he lived it during Vatican 2 when the. The Catholic Church started. Saying hey, it's OK to believe in evolution and enjoy modern technology, so it's kind of the same way the alt, right? Is right now looking at all these different churches and we all want to go back to tradition and then you hear the Southern Baptist Church denouncing all forms of quote, UN quote, white supremacy.
PASIOS: Yeah exactly, so let let's talk about how he how he describes the leftist mindset and that might help our listeners understand why we're kind of relating it to the modern church a little bit at the very beginning of the manifesto, he talks about his description of leftists. And I think that if I'm remembering. Right, he talks about a couple of things. He talks about over socialization and.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Feelings of inferiority.
PASIOS: Right?
SUPERLUTHERAN: Over socialization. That's something I think everybody needs to watch out for because he look looking from his prison cell right now. He's not surprised. The more contact you have with high society and its rules, or even just the massive people. They have arbitrary rules about politeness and how people need to act. That too much exposure to results in impossible morality right now. Unless you have a masters degree in gender studies and race relations. You can't really be quote UN quote moral in today's society. And this guy was writing about this in 1996. It's spot on.
KESSLER: What were his views on race?
SUPERLUTHERAN: He,, he didn't. Every time it came up and I wish he would have talked about it more. He said, well, it's not a bad thing to say that one group is more primitive thanother or more aggressive or more criminal. And then he would always in parentheses, say, not that we're saying that and then move on, avoiding the subject.
KESSLER: Well, the 90s were a pretty politically correct time. Maybe even he was a little bit cowed by that. But who knows? Maybe just didn't honestly factor into his equation.
SUPERLUTHERAN: I kind of wish you would have, especially because he talks about leftism and that's where leftism went in the late 2000s. Everything now is about race and gender.
KESSLER: Yeah, it really started in the 90s. There was this movie that came out called PCU. That's kind of funny to watch. In retrospect, because you see the exact kind of social justice dynamics in that movie is around today and people thought it was a joke, but now it's. The mainstream basically.
SUPERLUTHERAN: And on the on, the idea of over socialization. I think that's. It's kind of a good diagnosis for how we got where we are today when none of this stuff that you hear about SJW's. You don't hear about everything that they were doing before Facebook showed up and people are now having 203 hundred 500 quote UN quote friends. They're in this area which. These rules and the social social matter is going to rise up by itself. And that leads to a. System of behavior that you can't live up to without being a complete hypocrite. And so people start getting neurotic and, well, leftists. Kind of purity spiral until they're shooting up heroin and anti feden.
PASIOS: Hmm well so talk talking about the feelings of inferiority. One of the things that he points out that goes right along with that is the tendency for their kind of masochistic activism. The kind of like oh woe is me they like try to play the victims all the time.
SUPERLUTHERAN: This one.
PASIOS: It's and that kind of like perfectly encapsulates their self hatred, right?
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, he was talking about how how. How is your activism effective if you're laying down or if you do a die in or a sit in, you're not doing something masculine for your activism. You're going to a place of powerlessness and kind of showing the world that you wish you were powerless, yeah? Oh yeah.
PASIOS: And this.
KESSLER: Yeah, I.
Speaker 6: Go ahead, Jason.
KESSLER: I was just going to say that the type of activism that they do is not very honorable, but the one thing you do have to admire about the leftist activism is that they're persistent, like they'll have some really dumb idea for a protest, but they'll do it over and over and over again to the point that they become annoying and people just give them their way.
PASIOS: Yeah, and I also want to contrast this with kind of. Christian Christian history and the Christian mindset as. Well, because a. Lot of people. A lot of people try to make this into kind of a. Kind of we could talk about horseshoes all night, but they try to make this into like a horseshoe situation where it's like, oh Christians are like. The same same. Way because they're they try to be like powerless and things. But the I think the biggest difference. Is that Christianity focuses on not having self pity of any kind. It's it. It’s more of a you shouldn't think of yourself at all, let alone pity yourself.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, the leftist will try to incite a cop into hitting him, and then he can go ahead and cry about police brutality and sue people where he? Is a Christian who's being persecuted for his faith is going to just go about his daily life and keep trying to go on?
KESSLER: There's always going to be an element of people in any movement that are being persecuted, and then they're going to use that for their propaganda, right? They're going to turn those people into their martyrs and Saints and so forth and so on, so it's OK. Like if you're in a movement and the government really is. Persecuting you for your religion or whatever and you make a big deal about that because the only alternative really is violence. That's where Ted Kaczynski went to and., as I was saying before, I don't think the isolated act of violence from like a random person is gonna do any good. Like if you're the only way violence, I would say is justifiable is when you have like your entire community is behind you and your you actually have a chance of beating the oppressive system and. Getting freedom back to your people.
SUPERLUTHERAN: And Speaking of that persecution. So one of the reasons we're really happy to have Jason Kessler on is in his manifesto, the Unabomber says that the state is going to persecute anybody who gets in the way of their technological process. And it's very intentional. The government and business people, the Jews, whoever you want to say. They're very much aware of the negative effects that they have on human beings with the society that they're making. They know that Facebook actually led to people. Having less real friends. They know that political extremism is advanced in one way or another with our current technological state. And well, one of the things that the Univer points out is that, Yep, there's going to be racial groups and greater racial awareness arising from this. And the state is going to push them down. This happened to Jason right this everything happened to you in Charlotte. Bill and may end up happening a second or third time coming up soon, right?
KESSLER: Yeah, I'm sure whatever happens with the unite the right two on August 12, 2018. We'll have many more events. It won't be the last time that they try and crack down on our rights.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Is living morally possible now? Is it because we talked about over socialization? And for people that are going to church or even part of a pool party for TRS that are hanging out with Kessler and planning out this event. We highlighted that you can't really live according to the morals of the left in society.
DANIEL: But would you say that it's?
SUPERLUTHERAN: Impossible to live without being a hypocrite when it comes to, say, the alt right or a Christian community.
PASIOS: Well, I can. I can jump in a little bit here, so like I. When I when I. Hear this talk about about it being cause. Kaczynski says It’s basically impossible for the leftist to live up to their own standards. And that is why they go through these mental gymnastics and justifications for their behavior that for example, that's why the Antifa will was like doing backflips, trying to get around the fact that Antifa is a violent group, . Because he can't he.
KESSLER: Well, how can they live up to their own standards when the standards are constantly shifting? He can't.
KESSLER: They don't have a bedrock principle like Christianity to more their sense of right and wrong to, so they're shifting with political consensus or whatever . So you had people like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Who were against gay marriage? And then. Their base decided that gay marriage is fine. They come out in support of it and were talking off the air a little bit about, watching these movies from the 1980s, like Crocodile Dundee. They're joking about ******** in that one and now you can't even criticize the transsexual on. Social media without being banned. So they're creating new rules. It's this post modernism where it's like the end of history. Everything that we've learned from our ancestors and from our gods and our religions is just going to be discarded so that they can create this. This communist equality.
PASIOS: Yeah, and I and I think. This. I think you're totally right on that, and I think this where Kaczynski sort of starts to drift away for me. Like he there's a couple of things that Kaczynski seems to be. Not really picking up and it's. We should also note that he was writing in. I mean what year would he have written this kind of stuff?
SUPERLUTHERAN: This 9596.
PASIOS: Yeah, but like he moved out to. The woods, like in the 80s, I think right? I mean the but this it seems like it might have been a time before. Almost like the an extreme nihilism kind of set in as the over culture, . So like maybe it just was that nihilism wasn't like on his radar at the time as a philosophy.
KESSLER: Yeah, that was that was. Starting to come in. The 80s eighties was, the I don't know if they called them the me generation but they were all about money and cocaine and all this stuff. It was big blockbuster movies and fake hits. Everything was becoming very superficial and. Hyper capitalist, then the 90s. That's when things got really nihilistic for sure, what?
PASIOS: See at that time. At that time he was in a cabin the woods by himself.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, he mentions the Internet in his manifesto, so he knew what was going on.
PASIOS: Yeah, OK, that's true, yeah.
SUPERLUTHERAN: But I think there's a good contrast that can be made here, because he saw. That as some as. People get over socialized and their feelings of inferiority rise. They're going to go to the left. But they're going to keep having to adjust to new rules that keep getting added on in social. For the church, though, it seems that we've always had a kind of basic set of rules. I mean the scriptures. The New Testament is not that long into read the Beatitudes or to read the Book of Romans in here . Love thy neighbor. Forgive people who wrong you don't steal. Don't do bad basically. I mean, it's pretty set in stone, and yeah, there's this heretical groups that we've had to deal with that say other things. But it's been more stable than that and I don't think he was looking at the church throughout history.
KESSLER: Have you guys read any of this manifesto?
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, I read it and just recently listened to an audiobook version.
KESSLER: Have you read any other manifestos like the Dylann Roof or the Elliot Rodger?
PASIOS: No, I haven't.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Long time ago for Elliot Rodger.
KESSLER: Could you notice any similarities between these people? Were there any psychological?
SUPERLUTHERAN: Ted Kaczynski was way more cogent. I mean, what's his nuts down in California shooting at women had a problem with women and how he really, really wanted sex and he was really, really lonely basically and OK you can. You can postulate that about society. But none of his stuff really hit the nail on thead and I haven't read Dylann Roof stuff and because he was red pilled, I'm sure it was pretty accurate. But Kaczynski seems like the guy had like a 200 something IQ. He was way ahead of his time.
PASIOS: Yeah, he was extremely intelligent and he actually wrote his manifesto is a bit unique because he wrote it in sort of an academic structure because he, he intended it to be like widely distributed and widely read. He numbered all of the paragraphs right?
KESSLER: Did he offer any suggestions for how people should live or react to this over over infestation of technology and society that we could learn from?
SUPERLUTHERAN: He wanted a revolution to destroy the industrial complex.
PASIOS: Yeah, and this where the anarchism comes in and I wanted to bring up like reading some of this stuff. He talks a lot about the merits of science he doesn't like irrational. People and he also talks about the merits of individualism. He doesn't like collectivists and in that sense I had a nice chuckle because I was like ohh, this guy would be a. Sargon If he. Was alive today.
KESSLER: I feel like there's almost no going back with the technology. Let's say that this guy's wildest dream came true and he was able to start a revolution which destroy. The industry within the United States of Americand people will return to a more primitive state of being, well, would that help us or would that just make us a sitting duck for all of our Islamic enemies or any other foreign adversary?
SUPERLUTHERAN: He wanted it to be worldwide.
PASIOS: And I think that he would say that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. You know, like if because he was this sort of agnostic, agnostic kind of guy. That was very scientific in his thinking. So for him. I mean, again, like Sargon for him, for Islam to take over the United States, it wouldn't really matter, .
SUPERLUTHERAN: And that he did make these really great points. So like you mentioned how intellectual he was, but something you mentioned that really struck a chord with me. It's not natural to raise a kid telling him he needs to get into stem. If they're at all of human history, wasn't until this past century that we started raising kids on, you need to get into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. You need to do it go go go. You have to learn a programming language. Do this, do that. When look I was 24 when I first learned how to build a fire. If you put me in the woods right now. Although I started to learn some of the survival stuff, I would die within a few weeks. Is that natural that I can? I can fix a ring laser gyro navigator on a submarine, but I can't build a fire until I'm 24. Is that? Is that normal? Is that OK? Are we doing our children a service by doing this?
KESSLER: Well, it's certainly not what we originally set out to do. You know, it's not what our ancestors were doing, but human beings are the top of the food chain because of our enormous intelligence and adaptability, so I'm sure that if there was, like a. Electromagnetic magnetic pulse set off in the atmosphere and all the electronics went out. We would in fairly short order adapt to our new circumstances. There would be people out there who are familiar with the old technology, how to create huts out of Adobe and straw and they would teach us that stuff. They teach us how to build. Tires and within a short period of time you would be an expert in that.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Oh, but a lot of people would die. I mean, let's face it are African American citizens that are still on welfare not doing anything? I mean, they're they haven't they. They can't turn off their TV. They don't know how to unplug it. Crying out loud.
PASIOS: Yeah, I think I also think this where Kaczynski's individualism versus collectivism comes in as well. Because I think what he's experiencing in the 80s and 90s is the is a is a badly functioning. Collectivist society You know you have a. You have a collectivist society where not everyone has a place. And I think that is why he's sort of going on this individualist path where everyone should know how to take care of themselves. It's kind of like the natural tendency for Republicans. Or like or Ron Paul types right. You see, this poorly functioning collectivist society so you immediately go. Ohh, let's all be individualist, because then I don't have to pay for. That loser over there. You know?
SUPERLUTHERAN: Correct diagnosis incorrect prescription.
PASIOS: Yeah, I mean so, So what? Is some people might think that? You know Christianity has one way or the other super, what? What would you say is a Christian. Thought on that.
SUPERLUTHERAN: First off, the church needs to take responsibility for her own congregations. One of the reasons people hate collectivism is because they've never experienced it. Doing it right and again when we think collectivism. We think communism. We think starvations and food shortages. When I'm talking about the church being there for you, we had a congregation member him and his wife and his three kids. Their house just burned down. Something happened with their. The gas tank and oops, now they don't have a house and all of us are coming together to make sure they have food to make sure they have a place to live. In a. Completely secular country. Well they better hope they have enough money to stay in a hotel before the insurance company comes in. Or the completely individualized society. They're up a Creek without a paddle. But the church.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Being there providing a real community is something that's given them a real fail, safe, a place to stay. Food, money, whatever they need.
PASIOS: Well and your. Example of that church coming together and helping people is like that's a good. That's a good example of collectivism. Bad example would be a mega church where nobody, nobody knows who they're even sitting next to. Which is basically the society that we live in currently, which is the size which is the society that Kaczynski was writing against.
KESSLER: I'm sure that if our technology Was gone tomorrow. The church would ensure order returned to its roots. A lot of the changes in the churches that I've seen towards this embrace of cultural Marxism, I see a lot of this feminization and this embrace of gays and all this other stuff. Would go out the window because technology helps enforce this false song of equality. You talked about what would happen to a lot of these black people? I think that it would probably be like the talented Ken would learn how to figure out some of this stuff at a very basic level. After a very rapid dwindling of their population. And then they would lean on those leaders and. And then they would. There would be some stabilization of their numbers. I think that they would be very shocking to a lot of people who are brought up in these these cosmopolitan churches that are preaching this equality stuff because they would see. The stark differences between races, the stark differences between men and women. That's another thing that is just conveniently swept aside in the modern churches is where it says the woman should be submissive to the man, but they're trying to enforce the exact opposite. So when it comes down to. Primal strength and hunter gatherer skills are. A premium, I think a lot of those women are going to have a come. To Jesus moment.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah they I would say I agree with the Unabomber, when it comes to technology and its effects, but you're right, I disagree on the individualism aspect. And so for our listeners then, because I know that US Christians, we're going to ask. Well, OK, if this guy was right. How do we heed? His warnings in a godly way. So if his thesis was more technology equals less freedom, then the inverse is going to be true. Less technology equals more freedom. If you take your family or your friends and you go camping or you start restricting the amount of time you spend on your smartphone or your laptop or on TV. You can experience that and be ready for it, and it will teach your wife or your girlfriend or whichever woman you're looking at right now. If she starts seeing that what the state of nature does to gender relations, that you, the more you get back to nature, the more the differences come out. That's going to be healthy for your family.
KESSLER: Yeah, I mean I think that hey buddy can get a taste of that anytime. Just go with your family or your girlfriend, whatever to a camping site and all those normal hunter gatherer. Instincts will come right back in and I'm sure your wife and kids will appreciate that it will put you in a new light where you are the national provider you're supposed to be.
PASIOS: Yeah, even even in the UM, going back to like the technology making things worse. You can, you can honestly just compare like. Think it's sort of a thought experiment comparing Internet writing versus paper writing, right? They have these kind of pros and cons like on the Internet. You can be censored much more easily. But at the same time, reach a larger audience and then with paper. It’s easy to not be censored, right? But your audience is going to be smaller, so like I think in that sense with technology, the Unabomber was a little bit. One sided maybe seeing things in one way, like because he had his one thesis of technology equals bad.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, it's, I understand. And there's pros and cons, but let's face it, there was no automatic banning or there were no mods sitting ready to capture a word for the posters that went up saying it's OK to be white.
PASIOS: That's exactly what I mean. Cause I'm thinking like postering campaigns are very powerful because they're entering, the real world. They're yeah, they can't be censored nearly as easily. They don't have Twitter algorithms attached to them. But I oh go ahead, Jason.
KESSLER: I don't think that realistically there's any way to stop the advancement of technology and its encroachment on our lives. But I can see why people want that kind of thing to reduce some. I mean everything is just happening so quickly. Now much quickly much more quickly than it ever did. For anybody else you think? The people in the past in my hometown of Charlottesville. Thomas Jefferson had his plantation here and, at night he didn't have his smartphone and Facebook and Twitter and all that. He had absolute silence most nights, I'm sure, and he had the candles attached to the armrest of his chair. And he had a big library and he read those books. And he wrote letters to diplomats in France. And . The other founding fathers here in America, and that's the kind of life a lot of people had. And now it's just ramping up so much this constant upheaval of moral values, and you gotta be aware of all these new things at any time so you don't lose your job or have your. Family stripped from you. Yeah, the technology you always got to learn what the newest thing is to keep up with it and it feels like. Like it's unsustainable, we don't. We don't know where it's going, so we long for a simpler time. I do think that. It's good to have balance and things. A lot of people would say that we're extremists, but I think that yeah, I guess we are. But in that sense we have to because society itself has become so extreme. But in general I'd say it's good to have moderation in everything that. Technology in general is something that we need to be comfortable with because. Even if were able to reduce technology in one country, I doubt that it would happen across the globe. The pollution everything that's just going to keep marching forward. And really the only way out as I see it is to have even better technology that. And get us off planet. So we're colonizing the stars. So it's kind of like catch 22 where you're well, your best solutions are go back to a place that it may not be possible to go back to or to dance to someplace you've never before.
PASIOS: Yeah, we. Right, and I mean from from the perspective of the Orthodox Church. It's like we need to. Strike a balance like we need to move away from maybe like. There's a video of a of a priest exercising a Furby. That's pretty good. And in some sense, that priest was pretty woke. You know, like he, he understood what was coming, ?
SUPERLUTHERAN: And that’s where J. That's right, the Unabomber is probably never going to see the realization of his goal. It's not going to be a revolution against technology itself. We're not all going to be Mennonites or Amish people going through that, but he did mention the possibility of a system collapse or a society collapsing. After all, when you heat up a car and the engine can only get so hot, it's eventually going to break down, and as everything keeps shifting and changing. There could be a collapse. But even if there isn't. It's useful to know about this manifesto because you can easily see hey, look. The Facebook isn't the real world. You're not beholden to those morals, and you're not going to die if you don't have. Your phone on you.
KESSLER: Yeah, if it collapses, I don't think that it's going to be a complete collapse. It would be hard to envision a scenario where all technology is gone. You might be able to think of an electromagnetic magnetic pulse going off. In destroying electronic items, but that would still leave a lot of the stuff we're familiar with in the post apocalyptic fiction and Mad Max and fall out and all that where people are driving around in cars and they still have guns and. That kind of thing.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, but even if that doesn't happen it there's kind of a confidence that I have now. The more I've read this manifesto that. I don't have to feel like technology is a necessity. If my coffee machine breaks down, I don't have to go well. Looks like I'm going back to bed.
KESSLER: Yeah, I think that's what is thealthy thing to take out of it. That's where you have your moderation. Is it what we're doing with our over saturation of technology is really an extreme thing, and to not be able to pull yourself away from that and read a book or say a prayer. Or meditate on your day's experience. Talk to your loved ones. That's not healthy. You gotta be able to reconnect to something that's real.
PASIOS: I’ve often given advice to like every once in a while, on forums or whatever, you'll get like an upset teenager or something. And I think the best advice you can give people when they're like in a really messed up situation is like. Just unplug from technology for a little bit. You know like if you have a terrible if you're living at home and you have a terrible relationship with your mother and father like stop sitting on the Internet, right? You might get bored enough where you'll actually just have a conversation with them.
SUPERLUTHERAN: So we have a. A fun segment here for the audience. Who said it? Kaczynski or Chesterton? How you see us is going to read us a quote and Jason and I are going to go ahead. And guess to the best of our ability. And then we'll have a reveal.
PASIOS: Ohh and also. We also have some other participants here borzoi and right wing not want to play. I thought I.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Heard a sneak sneaking around.
Speaker 8: Sorry to pop in like a snakes all of a sudden, unfortunately can't stick around too long, but, I heard about. I heard Kaczynski and I came.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Morning, Phil, you didn't drive a car.
KESSLER: Hey there. Who is this Chesterton cat?
PASIOS: Yeah, so GK Chesterton he is he. He was a big. Proponent of the distributist idea of society, he's he's a Catholic writer from like the late 1800s.
Speaker 8: He was a he was. He was an Edwardian era writer and a Catholic apologist. He had a huge impact on JRR Tolkien as he also had a lot of public debates of George Bernard Shaw.
SUPERLUTHERAN: And it was really.
Speaker 8: Fat, yeah, but he's also. He also helped create the mystery genre with his father Brown stories and has another fantastic kind of Christian allegory story called the Man who's Thursday. I highly recommend it.
KESSLER: Have you guys done one on HP Lovecraft yet?
Speaker 8: I would love to do one I don't believe we have but I can. I can talk at length about Lovecraft, so if you guys want to do a Lovecraft episode, make sure I'm. For that, yeah.
KESSLER: I'm sure you'd have some interesting things to say about religion and about race through the lens of HP Lovecraft.
PASIOS: Yeah, I, I think Lovecraft is especially interesting for the alt right? Because he was extremely racist so.
Speaker 8: He's also extremely atheist, so it that informed, at least in the stories that informs quite a bit of his.
PASIOS: Yeah, to be honest we should just save that for your show borsoi.
Speaker 8: I can I can talk you in either place. But anyways, I'm excited for this game. Are you?
PASIOS: OK, so It’s a short game. We're gonna do 3 rounds OK, and if for people that know Chesterton or know Kaczynski like you might. Pick up on. The writing and you'll and you'll know it. Instantly, so just wait a bit. So here's here's the first one. We are certainly not getting the most individual or the most interesting qualities out of men. And it is doubtful whether we ever shall, until we shut off this deafening din of megaphones that drowns their voices. This healthy this deathly glare of limelight, which kills the colors of their complexions. This plangent yell of platitudes which stuns and stops their minds. All this sort of thing is killing thoughts as they grow as a great white death ray might kill plants as they grow.
SUPERLUTHERAN: I'm going to guess Chesterton.
PASIOS: Was it? Yeah, was it Chesterton or Kaczynski?
Speaker 8: Are we going in the line here?
PASIOS: What do you say Jason?
Speaker 8: I'll go last.
KESSLER: I'm going to say Kaczynski just because of the references that he makes the technology.
Speaker 8: Saying that's what I'm thinking. Megaphones, limelight death rays? That seems like Kaczynski to me.
SUPERLUTHERAN: But he's so this way more fancy than Kaczynski wrote.
PASIOS: Yeah, that’s because you're cheating super. That was actually Chesterton. Oh wow from the holiday of the slave in the outline of sanity. He trusted him.
KESSLER: Do ? Where was that?
PASIOS: So this was this. Is probably early 1900s, late 1800s, sometime around there.
KESSLER: OK.
Speaker 8: He did a lot of his big rag in the first decade of the 20th century.
PASIOS: So. Yeah, he was. He was very anti modernist so that's why I think it's interesting they kind of wrote. On the same topics.
Speaker 8: I didn't realize the megaphone was that. Old or maybe megaphone.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Say the same thing.
PASIOS: Yeah I had. No idea. Anyway, here, here's the second one here. It is capitalism that has forced a moral feud and a commercial competition between the sexes that has destroyed the influence of the parent in favour of the influence of the employer that has driven men from their homes to look for jobs that has forced them to live near their factories or their firms. Instead of near their families and above all that is encouraged for commercial reasons. A parade of publicity and garish novelty which is in its nature the death of all that was called dignity and modesty by our mothers and fathers.
Speaker 8: I'm going with Chesterton. That one that definitely sounds like Distributism.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, but I’m going to go with Kaczynski on that.
KESSLER: I need to just because. Of the earlier analysis, it doesn't sound like this writing is as fancy as the last quote.
PASIOS: It is very anti capitalist that one but that one also is Chesterton.
Speaker 8: That's yeah, I'm familiar,, that Immediately. Heard Distributism when I when I. Heard that yeah, that's.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Maybe the moral of this story is the Christians that are interested in the Unabomber just go read Chesterton.
PASIOS: Oh absolutely, it's that one's from the three foes of the family in the common man. Yeah, because Chesterton was very interested in like the dignity of every human. You know, all right, but we, we see he was not necessarily in favor of. Right wing capitalism. There, here's the last one here. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not use may, may, or may not make use of violence. It may be sudden, or it may be relatively gradual. Spanning a few decades, we can't predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This not to be a political revolution. Its object will be to overthrow, not governments. But the economic and technological basis of the present.
Speaker 8: I'm going with Chesterton just because Paisios can't stop laughing.
SUPERLUTHERAN: I'm going to say that's Bill Gates right there and his secret Diaries.
KESSLER: And yeah, I'm going to go with Kaczynski again just because with some cost valancy. I've already wagered a few times like he's just getting lost so it's. Gotta be this.
PASIOS: Time, yeah, that indeed was Kaczynski. OK, could be mistaken for Bill Gates, though I have also read those secret Diaries and that's yeah, that's all we have. That's the game. So thanks for playing everyone.
SUPERLUTHERAN: And thank you very much. Mr Kessler for joining us.
KESSLER: Yeah, thanks for having me on it's informative.
PASIOS: All right?
Speaker 8: There's a if you guys are. Still want to know? A little bit more about GK Chesterton. He was he. I Another book of his I recommend is the Napoleon of Notting Hill. It's another one, notting Hill. It's another one of his novels. He's he's quite funny about people about intellectuals and it. It opens with the human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at Children's Games. From the beginning, it will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up and one of the games to which it is most attached is called keep. Arrow Dart and which is also named by the Rustics in Shropshire, and I have no doubt keep the Prophet. The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what has to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all for a race of simple tastes. However, it is great fun. Well said.
Speaker 8: Unfortunate guys, I have something I need to take care of, so I'm going to drop out as well. Thank you very much for let me play this game.
PASIOS: And on that note, I think it's actually time to wrap up.
SUPERLUTHERAN: So thank you very much again to our guests, and May God bless everybody listening to this.
MYLES: That was an excellent first hour. We have even more to come in our second hour, so stay tuned after the break. Our hymn this week is called a muddy fortress. Didn't we our own strength and fight our stride?
PASIOS: So Daniel, this a little continuation. It's a Part 2 so you had some thoughts on Kaczynski and you said that he left something to be. Desired for you.
DANIEL: Well, I mean, I've been thinking about it a lot. I tried to reread the manifesto like I don't know once or twice a year last year I read Peter Thiel's Zero to 1 and Teels Big. Take away was from like paragraph, is it numbered in paragraphs? I can't remember. I'm pretty sure it's. Numbered, I think like.
SUPERLUTHERAN: For everybody listening, this Daniel Antenora.
DANIEL: Sorry sorry I should have I should. I should have introduced myself. Hey guys, I'm just still really like hyped up from the gym so I'm now we're doing our mental hypertrophy. Yeah, it's Daniel. So the big take away for teal was like the middle. Like paragraphs like 45 through 49 I think where they talk about. The fact that there's no achievable. Or, I don't know. I don't know. Hard, somebody give me a synonym for that. That I’m groping around here, so there's a dearth of human goals that are obtainable or achievable, but that require a maximum amount of individual. Effort, or even I guess, collective effort so. But there’s still no lack of goals that are impossible to achieve, right? But then all the low hanging fruit, right? Like Newtonian physics, and I don't know whatever non Euclidean geometry. According to Kaczynski and Teal, who sort of catches his wagon to this ideare gone, ? So we have all the best and brightest minds working on things like PayPal or I don't know. Delivering ***** to people faster or more high definition or whatever, but I think that what that actually. The lies, and I've been thinking about it is really a lack of imagination kozinski's part and I think. Really well, I'm kind off the cuffing this that it's a consequence of his era. You know, general the five generals are around General Electric and it's like they General Electric, General Motors, General Mills, whatever. It's like we've conquered disease and hunger and death and transportation. And all these things, and we have broke the sound barrier. And nuclear weapons and yada yada yada. And I think. A first of all, that doesn't mean like we're done technologically. But second of all, I think it's. It's a failure to envision that we have other problems, other frontiers, sociology and psychology. So the sociological landscape and the psychology psychological landscape that we've nowhere near really, in my opinion, even begun addressing.
PASIOS: It’s funny because a lot of people act like Christians are like these Luddites, right? In reality, it seems like the real Luddites are these kind of like individualist people. No they. KoczynskIs the one that wants to go back to the Stone Age. Meanwhile, like in the Christian worldview, we're we're meant to labor and be stewards. And we wanna live in the ideal society we wanna create it.
DANIEL: Yeah, I think Rushdoony. Would take a severe and extreme umbrage at everything in the manifesto. I would say there's so little stuff worth. Sifting through, but yeah, I also. I also think that Luddism if you look at this sort of original like English worker response, wasn't necessarily either going back to the stone. Like Stone Age like everybody has like this preferred nostalgic time period, and I think the loomers, the people that were smashing up the looms like they wanted to restore. Craft right, but in the home and I'm not sure that's actually anti technology. I think that might better considered like the distribution of technology like where technology resides and who is in control of technology and I think. Well, that's
SUPERLUTHERAN: The problem that I'm having with that though is his kind of. His outline for how society was gonna go talking about the Unabomber. Here right was basically right and it's well we can argue about well who's in control of what technology? He's still right that the more advanced our societies become, the more your rights have been restricted, the more miserable people have gotten. I guess what you're it seems like you're looking for a different diagnosis than just technology itself.
DANIEL: Well, I've been known to throw around the words like christone materialism and that I that I'm a that. I'm a Marxist of. Sorts, and I do think that yeah, it's a huge problem. But I guess what I'm saying is that now I think we're also in a trap, and I and I think that in a sense there's the only way out of it is more technology or the focusing of technology. On the social landscape or all of these other problems that we're talking about and. I mean, I'm not sure how much more. Miserable we are. I can't remember the quote. There's a famous quote about. There's a ton of them about toothache, and it's like, the man that solves the toothache problem is solving like 85% of the world's problems. And but in an I. Don't know. I do think that technology is a problem and I think that it's the main driver of what's going on, but I'm not sure that I necessarily. Agree with Kaczynski on the let's abolish it but I guess you're right. I guess things are going that way. Depending on your metrics, .
PASIOS: I want the. I want the trailer for civilization the Civilization 5 expansion where they go to space in the trailer for that video game, the Orthodox Orthodox priests were like blessing the spaceships with holy water like that. That's that's what I want in real life, that's all.
DANIEL: Yeah, archaeo futurism I guess.
PASIOS: Yeah, yeah.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Man, if only we could have Mike knock on.
PASIOS: The. The wheat field. With the peasant farmers and then the rocket ship in the background.
DANIEL: Yeah, yeah, yeah isn't that. Isn't that sort of the aesthetic of that? Was it? Bradley Cooper that one? Who's the director for Batman again? Christopher Nolan.
PASIOS: Oh yeah, interstellar interstellar.
DANIEL: Yeah, isn't that yeah, yeah. Isn't that kind of like the aesthetic like the weak like they're? Ohh yeah.
PASIOS: Interstellar is totally reactionary. It's awesome.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, but if only we could have gotten Mike.
PASIOS: It's very much.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Enoch on to tell us look.
DANIEL: Here's the thing, we could have all this technology, and it'd be great, but. We got Jews. We got.
PASIOS: The JQ to deal with yeah and that's the whole point that I didn't even get a chance to bring up with. I thought it would start a rabbit trail but since we're. Doing the after hours right now. The that whole manifesto I like at the very beginning he talks about. Like he could. I think he talks about white academics. And I'm like and I'm.
PASIOS: And I just wanna shake him and tell. Him they're not white. They're not white Kaczynski.
DANIEL: Say it Teddy say it.
PASIOS: Yeah, I’m sure in private company he'll like express that he's totally woke on the Jake. On the JQ but he just didn't want to scare people in his manifesto.
DANIEL: Well, I don't know sending like rice and lace letters and stuff probably scared people, so I don't. I don't.
PASIOS: That's very true. What what would a?
DANIEL: I don't know.
PASIOS: Jewish, I mean really. Would a Jewish person person send a mail bomb? I mean is that a goy thing to? Do I don't know.
SUPERLUTHERAN: They would have somebody else send it for them, like oh damn it. This Iraqi neighbor is, like, mowing his long way too close to my own yard. Hey, Ted. This guy is an executive for Verizon, yes?
KESSLER: I I don't.
DANIEL: I don't. I don't know exactly how he would go about it, but I do know that he would fret about the cost of postage.
PASIOS: Yeah, at least nowadays for sure.
DANIEL: I mean. I don't know. I think there's there is there are some separate issues, but I also think that we all have a bit of unhealthy nostalgia like everybody wants to turn the clock back, and there's always like there's also. Of this one up, one up ISM in our circles. Like no, it was actually, Cromwell. No, it was actually. I don't know. 1066 when.
PASIOS: Ohh yeah it's. Everyone wants to say ohh it was the Calvinist. No it.
DANIEL: Yeah, and honest like I like.
PASIOS: Was the Jesuits?
DANIEL: I don't, I don't know. I mean, I think there was a response from Heidegger. There was a response in Heidegger to. Two Kaczynski, but I also think that like I'm honestly like I really like hot water bro like I just. I mean, I'm not gonna knock him, he was definitely not a hypocrite. I mean that how long need to live off in the woods again, like off. The Grid 3 1/2 years.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Something enough to impress me, yeah?
PASIOS: Honestly, Oh no, no, no he. Our, our,, our intern told us that he was in a woods in 1975 and he started mailing the bombs in like the 90s, right? So he was he was out there for like almost 1/4 of his life.
DANIEL: Oh yeah, yeah. And I don't want a name drop, but there's actually a my favorite episode. My favorite murder episode too, where somebody tried to connect him or they're you speculated that he might have been involved with the aspirin poisonings that occurred in Chicago, the Greater Chicago area, or something like that, like in the 60s. So yeah, I don't know he. Wow, well, .
PASIOS: The whole the whole male thing I remember. After the Unabomber, then there was a scare about anthrax being mailed. Do you remember?
DANIEL: That yeah, yeah, but I think anthrax was from that. Thing was from when were kids, no?
PASIOS: Well, It was from when I was a kid and yeah and like the Unabomber wasn't when I was like literally a baby so.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, 2001. Right?
DANIEL: Right, yeah, whatever happened with the anthrax thing? I don't remember did. I don't know, I don't.
PASIOS: They I don't know if anyone knew who did that even but it was apparently a thing that was happening.
SUPERLUTHERAN: I think they caught them, but it was on the down low. So Daniel question for you then since I mean I'm number one Ted Kaczynski fan here, I might end up trashing my cell phone and getting a landline here soon to just be graves.
DANIEL: Yeah, yeah fire.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Get more free man but for Someone Like You who has a legitimate critique of the Unabomber. Hey, what do you think are some good lessons that the Christian US, Christians and our listeners can take away from this guy?
DANIEL: Oh man, that's a tough one, and that one I had not really gotten around to rolling around in my head yet. But well first of all. Discipline, focus and practicing what you preach I think is the major one and we already hit on that like I don't think there's. I don't think I don't think there's anyone that could say that he wasn't an, an example or wasn't leading by example. Then again, I, I mean Chad kind of did the same thing, but as far as doctrine. Like as far as if he said anything that I think that resonated with Scripture or resonates with. I don't know any eternal truth that we might deduce from Scripture. I'm not so sure. I mean, I think there's a sense. It's more just the way he lived, his life, . Really, truly taking a step back and contemplating your know you and your environment and how to respond to it. But yeah, I'm I'm not really sure that there's I mean what? What was your contention the show? Did did. You have like, did you? Do you think there's anything beyond?
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, I read.
DANIEL: You know the.
SUPERLUTHERAN: I read from Ecclesiastes. Because the richer Solomon got and the more opportunities he had to test his flesh and his mind with folly and wine and then accomplishments, the more depressed he got and the more he realized that it was all vanity. And the more society gets technologically advanced and we're basically living like Solomon did as functionally as kings, same hot water sources.
Speaker 8: OK.
SUPERLUTHERAN: We don't have to work nearly as hard as our ancestors did. Well, depression rates have spiked and everything. The only problem is that Kaczynski didn't conclude. His manifesto the same way Solomon did Solomon threw up his hands and said, look? The only purpose you really have is to fear God and keep his commandments. And that's man's all, he says. Well if Kaczynski had just put that. Code on his manifesto. It all would have tied up really nicely, but instead he wanted to talk about a revolution that look it ain't ain't going to happen. While too many people are high on technology.
DANIEL: OK, I think. My I think it's also an Ecclesiastes, but I'm not exactly sure. It's definitely proverbial. There's a scripture that says how does it go, Lord, don't give me great riches. Basically, lest my heart grow fat and I or my heart wax fat and I. You know, I ask myself, do I really need God and don't make me poor lest I just.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, that's proverbs 30I can pull it.
DANIEL: Yeah, OK, yeah, just.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Out right here.
DANIEL: Just because I've always taken this as like. And I don't know that's right, but I've always taken this as like put me in the middle class God. Which is weird, because that's like that's like justification for. Yeah, every bourgeois everything and that we're kind of also stride all of us. I think stridently opposed to the excesses of that, but I mean, I don't know that asceticism. Is really the same thing as poverty, I mean or.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, here's from proverbs 30 verse 7. Two things I ask of you, deny them not to me before I die. Remove far from me, falsehood and lying give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, who is the Lord? Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.
DANIEL: There you have it. I mean, I don't. I don't know how else to read that other than. Also, is poverty relative and then in the spiritual like obviously to me. The Scripture always has multiple levels, and the spiritual level there is of course when the when the Bible describes riches. It's usually people that are sort of like Solomon or wise on their own, and they end up despising God and poverty. Being of course lack. Lack of the gospel, but I mean there is, I think also the. Material sense. And I mean I don't know how to read that. Other than, like hey, make me middle class I mean.
PASIOS: There's yeah, there's. That's really funny. I like your interpretation of that, but there's like kind of two directions you can take this kind of like. You can, you can kind of go the direction that like these technological luxuries can be turned around and used for good. You know, like, imagine all the spiritual good that a person could do if they didn't have to do all these menial tasks, and. Stuff but. You know the logical conclusion of that from a Christian. World View is. You know any anything that you do is almost certainly going to be twisted for evil, and it will be destroyed, . So that might not be the correct path to take? I mean, cause cause the other hand of that is like, well, if you go to a monastery, what do those people do all day? I mean they're literally working all day long.
DANIEL: Well and I and I think The funny thing is and I've always said this about Hermitage, including Kaczynski’s like it was only possible for him to do what he did on the periphery of a highly advanced society right? Like you can't. Live in the. Woods, like it, was the same thing with Thoreau like you can retreat. Temporarily to the edge and I think that's beneficial and wonderful, like, especially if you're an urban dweller like me and I've have always been. To get up to the mountains and to. Like get away. But this. Notion that man can like live on his own like against all the elements. By himself is. Ridiculous and that's
SUPERLUTHERAN: Well also Terrell is a liar. Yeah, he had people bringing him pies every two weeks and.
PASIOS: That it wasn't really.
SUPERLUTHERAN: He got so staged.
DANIEL: That's true too, but I mean, did Kaczynski make his own acts? Like did he ?
PASIOS: No, no cause since I see I, I trust me I watched the Discovery Channel show about him. OK, I literally saw him in real life, no, but in the show it showed that he actually did live like outside of a town and he would like ride his bicycle to the town. So like he wasn't. He wasn't like fully. In a woods necessarily.
DANIEL: Well, no, and I think there see and I think it's a good comparison to make to Wendell Berry, who doesn't have a computer who doesn't use the Internet, really. And I who I think is in one sense, maybe has the advantage I'd have to like reread some of his essays to kind of like let it percolate for a bit too. But I think that might be. A useful comparison.
PASIOS: Yeah, Wendell Berry is a really good comparison like that's that might be some homework for listeners that are interested because he Wendell Berry is known as kind of like the outdoorsman Christian, .
DANIEL: Right, right? Yeah, that’s a good. That's a good way to put it.
PASIOS: He's a pretty. Cool guy too. I like Wendell Berry. He's he's like the Unabomber, that never mailed bombs like.
DANIEL: As far as we.
PASIOS: Know yeah, as far as we know, maybe it was him. I mean they were they're alive at the same. Time I don't know, but.
SUPERLUTHERAN: I'm looking at a. Picture of this old man smiling and going that dude can't mail bombs.
PASIOS: No, he's a little Mr. Rogers Eve, but,, yeah, the. But as far as humans surviving on their own, though, the, what? What we could do is kind of relate this to the desert fathers as well. I wish I wish good skeletal was here because he's doing some research on them lately. But I mean historical. Classical monasteries, right literally in the middle of nowhere. These people probably eat like. 100 calories a day you. Know it's and they're. I mean they’re sustained in a bizarre way, almost like Buddhist monks are, like they achieve these very strange lifestyles that they would, they would beg to differ that they could survive out there. Although I would say that they are in fact. In a community, so they are not completely alone. So monks are confirmed for collectivist.
DANIEL: Well and on top of that there has to be a civilization for you to despise and withdraw from, like. You know and I don't know that Kaczynski was necessarily. Thisn't a fair criticism of him, but like Monkish Ness like, hating the world like requires that a world exists.
PASIOS: Yeah, you're right, you're right, but I would say that there are writings. Yeah, there are writings of the fathers, the desert fathers in particular that say things like that. Talk about. Like a lot of monks. Absolutely they would say the world is the world of men, right? The cities but there are stories in the desert fathers for example, where they venture outside of their monastery. They go on a I don't know. A five mile hike. And they’re beset by demons. Right, so like it's almost like the world to those people are is is the spiritual world of demons and the devil. And like because. If you say.
PASIOS: You, you despise the world well who rules the world? Ultimately, Satan is the ruler of. This world right? Right?
SUPERLUTHERAN: You know I've had it in my mind to if maybe there's a therapeutic aspect to monastic life. That could be harnessed in the short term, and this something I've talked to with my Bishop because when we plant a church after I'm out of seminary, we're going to plant a church and I'm going to be head. Pastor over it. I think I'm going to want a monastery on the side of it where any church member can just be there for a day or two. Not six months to a year or three years, they can just be there for a day and totally isolate themselves from technology from society from everything that they need. To get closer to God and reach our.
PASIOS: Yeah, that I mean that’s kind of the impetus behind a lot of church retreats, right?
DANIEL: Yeah, or this gonna permit.
SUPERLUTHERAN: But yeah. You know it's got to be permanent. It's kind of silly.
DANIEL: Right, I mean the Sabbath isn't permanent, right? I mean, well, not yet. Eventually it will be, but right now it isn't.
PASIOS: Yeah, I mean my church, my church growing up often had these church retreats that were, like . I mean, it was kind of like cheesy boomer kind of retreats, but the IT was the feeling was the same. Where it's like, you get away from technology, you're in a woods and. You're you feel closer to God.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Let's do our Calvary Chapel drum circle now. Ohh gosh no.
PASIOS: Yeah well there yeah there has to be at least four guitars so.
DANIEL: Yeah,, yeah I, I messed up a few of. Those covering Chapel church camps in my youth. Uh, how?
SUPERLUTHERAN: Please tell us. I got I.
DANIEL: Got lost in the woods one time. And,, they had to send like a search and rescue team and. They almost sent out a helicopter. I was I was disinvited told never to come back.
PASIOS: Did you?
DANIEL: I wish I.
PASIOS: Did you feel closer to God when you were? Out in the woods lost.
DANIEL: No, I I felt closer to bears and one of these kids had a protruding bone fracture a boulder let loose and basically smashed his. I mean, it was like it was terrifying. It was absolutely terrifying, which I suppose in the Burkean sense, yes, I felt closer to God. Yes, I did.
PASIOS: In the wait in the what sense?
DANIEL: In the Burkean sense like of Mr. Edmund Burke, of like, sheer sheer terror that one approaches upon the sublime, stumbling upon the sublime.
PASIOS: Who was Burke like a poet? What what? Did he do?
DANIEL: He was the sort of founder of the Conservative revolution in England. He wrote, who I'm talking about if you.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah he was a massive loser. Can we like have progress but slowly?
DANIEL: Yeah, slowly arrive at gay marriage.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah thanks. That would be great, can we?
PASIOS: But he but. But he wrote about like. Numinous experiences or something?
DANIEL: He wrote a book that’s famous in. Maybe, I wouldn't say Seminole for esthetics but Seminole for modern aesthetics called the beautiful and the sublime. And he talks about the component of the sublime or the essential ingredient of the sublime sublime. Being terror being being terror stricken upon approaching it, or the vastness of it is makes you feel small. You know, like I don't know if you ever been on a or like a really big sound, where and all of a sudden the depth of the ocean just kind of freaks you out. You know like you feel like you're gonna get swallowed up.
PASIOS: Oh yeah, but I mean those. Those are my favorite experiences.
DANIEL: But yeah, there's a. It’s basically an extended meditation upon that, and it kind of mixes. Theology and aesthetics and I would say it's one. Of something worth reading, if you ever, it's quick, it's an easy read.
SUPERLUTHERAN: He should have stuck to that.
PASIOS: Yeah, it's like it's like that guy's paintings that he, the guy looking out over the distance.
DANIEL: Yeah, yeah, I know.
PASIOS: He's holding the cane.
DANIEL: I know. The cane, yeah, I know you're. Talking about, yeah, I can't remember the name but.
PASIOS: Yeah, same similar aesthetics, yeah.
DANIEL: Similar, yes, that's what that.
PASIOS: Anyway, anyway, back to mail bombs, so what's what's another thing? Yeah, OK. So Daniel, we didn't get your we didn't really get your take on some of the points that he brings up. Regarding leftists I had, I had a couple of thoughts on leftists and I'll. I'll get those out and you can kind of play off of that. You want first point here. He mentions that leftists claim to have compassion, but always resort to hostility. Compassion is an excuse for their need for hostility and power. I thought that was interesting, and I thought I thought the. The morality part was interesting, how they can. Never live up. To the morality. Because I thought that relates back to Kierkegaard's idea of the three stages of life, how? In Kierkegaard's ethical life, the more the moral only rudder will always lead to despair. Ted's Kaczynski says in order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions. That in reality have. A non moral origin, so it's. Like I, I mean, obviously, Kaczynski gets his ideas from many other sources. But I thought that idea in particular was like directly derivative from the ethical life.
DANIEL: That's a lot. It's a lot and I. I'm not quite. Sure where to start with that, because depending on the type of leftist you're talking about, it's like. You know there is this. Obviously this standard sort of left ISM that's just in the air and like prevalent and it isn't even moralizing anymore. Half the time which I despise.
PASIOS: Well, well, we don't. We don't have to talk about leftist. Generally we can talk about the leftist that the Unabomber talks about the overly socialized and the kind of self pitying. Left pencil
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, like he brings up. It's kind of weird psychology that they have. According to his observations, like because they feel inferior. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America. They hate Western civilization. They hate white males. They hate rationality.
DANIEL: They hate deadlifting.
SUPERLUTHERAN: They hate flipping, deadlifting and pistols.
DANIEL: Yeah, I mean. I'm not sure. I'm not sure though. What's what's his contention again though, that the implicit knowledge of that others are superior? Like I'm not, I didn't. I'm not quite following, say, say it again. Exactly what he said.
SUPERLUTHERAN: The idea is, is this feelings of inferiority where you feel like something is good or strong in your? By jealousy, they’re driven to feel contempt for a lot of these people that are good, strong, big, powerful, successful, and also they're over socialized where they're in such a large community that these sets of rules and interactions. Come up that they can't keep up with and that leads them to being the activists that they are, I mean. In common alt right circles you hear a lot about status signaling, and that's like the big word of the day for everybody. Every time they wonder like why is my mom posting on Facebook about gay marriage, well that’s status signaling. This kind of an alternative view for the psychology of it. It's like there are people that have got their heads way too far up their own communities ******** and they feel bad whenever they see something that's better. On them.
DANIEL: See, but I don't know that's prevalent, like maybe in the 70s, but like these people think they're superior in every way and I don't know that it's an unconscious reaction. Or an unconscious or semi conscious feeling of inferiority that causes some sort of outburst like I'm not really sure that's what happens.
PASIOS: Daniel, have you have you read any other manifestos?
DANIEL: Ohh my gosh, I'm sure I have but I'm. Not what? What specifically are we talking about here?
PASIOS: Well like Jason Kessler brought this up like he wasking us if we read like Dylann Roof's manifesto or like I.
DANIEL: I do I actually.
PASIOS: Like unders brevic ?
DANIEL: I read Dylan roofs. Anders brevik. I've been putting off for a long time because obviously the guy wasn't crazy, so that one's interesting for me, but I read I read part of Roof's confession or manifesto or whatever was released as soon as it was released and that was it. I mean that. That seemed more like apologia for just for falling apart to me than like a manifesto. You know, I, I don't think he was, . And he was clearly he was clearly a mentally. You know he wasn't all there and or emotionally even actually. You know. I mean, this was a kid who grew up like the rest of us in diverse neighborhood with a diverse group of friends, or at least a smattering of those. And I'm not even. Sure, what to make of his really but I. I mean.
DANIEL: I don't even know there's any common, necessarily any common themes, but with brevik's I'm sure there is brevik those were.
PASIOS: Yeah, well, I’m especially interested in maybe doing a different talk on Brevik's manifesto, especially because from what I understand, Brevik was actually advocating for like Christian society, right?
DANIEL: Yeah, it's. I think he was acknowledging the fact that's sort of hilarious bellock. Or what's his? Name, good Lord.
PASIOS: Chesterton and Belloc.
DANIEL: No, no luck. He was sort of. He was sort of paying homage to the notion that Europe, it essentially was formed by Christianity, and I think he was OK with honoring that past. I don't. I don't think he was necessarily. Saying he was a. Christian, ?
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, you don't. You don't go about saying we need to go to Christian society and then go shoot kids.
PASIOS: Yeah, yeah that I was going to say that's definitely the dichotomy there, but.
DANIEL: They weren't exactly children. I mean not. I don't think it was OK, believe me. But they weren't they. OK.
SUPERLUTHERAN: England posting right here, man.
KESSLER: Yeah, yeah.
PASIOS: It's good thing this on TRS.
DANIEL: They weren't. They weren't kid. They weren't 8 years old. They also weren't churchgoers. It was a strategic quote, UN quote target. And I think it was designed.
PASIOS: It was the target was children of like. The bourgeoisie, basically.
DANIEL: Yeah, and it was, it was designed to be, not that I mean murder, mass murder. Mass murder is always provocative, but it was designed to be very much on the edge of, . Something really inverted or perverted or whatever.
PASIOS: From, from what I understand. You could you could like he probably thought of the parents of these kids as like the French aristocracy or something like completely depraved ruining the society. Which which.
DANIEL: To me is crazy. I mean that's. I I don't know that's any. Anytime somebody starts doing kill the koulax like or like class war in the sense that like we're not gonna make any discriminations at all and this where I think. Miss Burke the ****** had something important to say, like he was horrified by the fact that Marie Antoinette or whatever. Was it Marie Antoinette good Lord? Yes, they got her head whatever she got executed wherever the whoever the female was at the time, which which then of course led to sort of recapitulation with the Romanovs. Like and Burke was horrified by this. This lack of making distinctions, and I think it's funny when people. On the right who. Are hell bent about making distinctions? Are making proper distinctions and finer and finer distinctions all of a sudden throw up their hands and let's and say, fit? You know, like, let's just throw everybody in the same bucket and stuff and start opening fire on people like. Yeah, I mean.
PASIOS: I don't wanna I don't wanna say that's what brevick thought necessarily because I haven't researched it in great depth. I'm sure people will. Tear me apart in the comments but yeah, you bring up a good point though. Like It’s interesting because we're kind of getting away from the Unabomber a bit. But like on the topic of like killing people in the name of something good I guess. It's like the Christian the proper Christian response would be that the ends don't justify the means right.
DANIEL: Right, so I mean, yeah, I mean I think the yeah, the response is don't murder people thou. Shall not murder.
PASIOS: Yeah, yeah, it's the ends. Absolutely don't justify the means and I think that's were actually getting. Were actually seeing a little bit of that today on the TRS forums because people were. People there was there was like a **** posting poll asking people. Is it OK to dox your political enemies moms or something like that and people that were saying no, we're getting like torn apart in the in the forum thread because they're like, oh, you're not willing to like do what it takes for your people. Something like it's like if you're not completely without morals, then you're worthless to this cause or something like that.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Timothy McVeigh did nothing wrong, so yeah.
PASIOS: People like that literally, I think. That a lot of people. Like are standing by him completely, .
DANIEL: Well, I think you’re also off your rocker in the sense that like there's no war going on man like what do you like?
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, don't jinx it, Daniel.
DANIEL: I mean in what? Sorry, sorry, I mean if.
PASIOS: Well, It’s the same. It's the same logic of. You know any any kind of radical political movement? They often. Like you're not, you're not going to gain the support of the general populace by living in a fantasy world in which you overreact to everything, right? And that's that. That's definitely a problem in the alt, right that I see people for example. People criticize people.
DANIEL: Well, again again.
PASIOS: Oh, go ahead.
DANIEL: Well and I and I want to say we brought this up before and that is this sinequan non or the defining. Characteristic to the. Left is a complete and utter lack of proportion. Man's hysteric hysterical overreaction. Like and on top.
PASIOS: Absolutely it.
DANIEL: Of that, it's just basic game theory. Like nobody like all at war doesn't work. Dude, that's not the way it works. Like that's why we spare women and children like we always have we always will. You know obviously stuff happens like that. That shouldn't happen. And testosterone fueled morons go crazy when they have AK's. But
PASIOS: Unless we.
DANIEL: I mean.
PASIOS: Spare women and children, unless they're full.
DANIEL: Well, unless we receive divine revelation from God, yes.
PASIOS: Yeah, unless we have losses.
SUPERLUTHERAN: So what we're saying here is. That So what we're saying here is the alt right has the susceptibility to over socialization.
DANIEL: Well yeah, and I think the what did the French say. How about that?
DANIEL: Lesick Strem touché, which is basically a French a fancy word for horseshoe theory. I guess, but not really.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well like.
DANIEL: But not the not the. Politics, just the frame the mind were the mindset I guess.
PASIOS: As an example, as an example of over socialization in the Alt right. People like it's like your mom, that virtue signals about loving the gays right right in the same, in the same way like you'll see ******** alt, right? People virtue signaling like. About how ******** they are. You know it's like, oh, if you're not willing to Dox antifa's mom, then you're not **** and but I literally, I literally saw. That and also people people are criticizing groups like IE, right? Because they’re not saying and they're official communications white genocide. So because.
DANIEL: I can't.
PASIOS: Because IE isn't using the word genocide, then IE is garbage. You know, like it's this, it's this insane. Like unless you are, unless you're willing to like blow things into extreme proportions, .
SUPERLUTHERAN: Unironically follow weaves prescription to stomp on black kids heads.
DANIEL: Oh my gosh, he said that.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, he apparently hacked some printers and had stuff like that sent out to all these businesses saying we need to crush some baby skulls.
DANIEL: Oh, I didn't know that was in I. I remember the ANTIC or the. I didn't know that was what was on the Flyers. Well, you're really gonna convince a. Lot of people that way. I don't, yeah. I don't know if I'm, I mean.
PASIOS: I mean, it's just people I don't. I don't understand, but it in some sense there is this horseshoe thing going on because. I mean, obviously horseshoe theory is, silly, but like in the sense of like the mental state of some people, right? Some people attach to.
DANIEL: Right?
PASIOS: They attach to a political ghetto because they're, for whatever reason they're outcast from society and they want to fit in somewhere. So they find this ghetto. But when people try to turn the ghetto when people try to gentrify the ghetto right and make it something actually, actually we're worth following, then they get all up in arms and they're like what's happening to my ghetto. You're ruining my ghetto. You know?
DANIEL: Oh my God dude, that was you just took. That full circle. I love that I love that, and honestly, I've been running this lately. I've been telling people. But civilization itself, if we're actually progressing and not in the leftist sense. But in the things are getting better sense, is gentrification? Like that's all it is like block by block. Like but I but.
PASIOS: Yeah it and the alt right the alt right will will say like ohh like gentrification in neighborhoods is cool because white people are moving in no like you're missing the point, gentrification. Gentrification is cool because the society is getting better. The whole reason behind white nationalism is that society gets better. You know, like. I'm not in the alt-right because I want to live in a white ghetto. I spent my life clawing my way out of the trailer park, I really don't wanna go back, but yeah, and it really aggravates me when I see trailer trash trying to lead the, white identity movement. You know it's like who we don't wanna be like that as a whole people.
DANIEL: No, and I want to make a distinction, though there are poor people who are good people who are book rich. You know that are life rich I’m not, I don't wanna.
PASIOS: Yeah, absolutely.
DANIEL: Like I'm not trying to. Say everyone poor is horrible, .
PASIOS: But It’s a difference. It's a difference of like people on the bottom trying to pull people downward, .
DANIEL: Right, right, right, right.
PASIOS: It's like it's like rather than people above pulling you up, it's. It's the opposite, .
DANIEL: Which which strangely is like was it was British and like in the in the waning days of the empire. Liberalism like. Like Cecil Rhodes and Lord Milner, and the kindergarten. All these quote. UN quote liberals like That was what they were trying to do. Literally like and.
PASIOS: Well and this and this goes back to the Unabomber too, right? Because in some sense the Unabomber is on the bottom and he's trying to pull people down towards him, right? But in his in his understanding. Of the world. He sees his position as being on. The top right?
DANIEL: Sure, and that, well, that goes back to what were talking about, with morale. With the leftists over socialization or his contention. You know, I think he might have been self diagnosing in a sense I guess is what I'm saying this idea that like. To be frustrated and angry with everything around you and to. In a sense, to lose the words to not have the words and have to resort to violence but. This idea that. Sensing the superiority around you, or sensing that you might be inferior in some way, but I don't know that he. I mean he was pretty. Stable, I'm not really sure that he actually. You know, kind of had some undiagnosed condition or whatever, but I don't know. I I still think though getting back to technology or tech. OK. I, I think it can be an authentic part of human existence. I think it might be an inseparable part of human existence. And I mean, there's a. There's a whole school like philosophy, sort of new new French guys that talk about. I mean who wants to like Timothy I guess or Kaczynski was like kind of like. Paleo, like the beginning of the paleo movement.
PASIOS: Right?
DANIEL: Or whatever, but like how far back do we really want to go like? We don't know anything about really about before written language and before records and I'm not really sure that.
PASIOS: Well, and It’s funny it's funny because Greg Johnson from Countercurrents recently said on. A on an. On an Internet debate he was talking about how. In a lot of ways, in the 1960s were more, were, were a technologically advanced society, but now it's like we're in this technological ghetto. In a lot of ways, and. And if you think about it, that's so true. I mean, went to the moon with largely pen and paper.
DANIEL: You know, yeah, and slide rulers I mean, but and now and this and people have asked NASA like can we go back? And they're like, no. It's gonna take 20. Five years to. Do that you. Know like yeah. Yes, yes.
PASIOS: I mean, It’s like it's like what happened. So in that sense, the Unabomber was on to something because he recognized that these were sort of. These were quote UN quote technological advancements but at the same time they weren't, so It’s almost like we're lacking in ability to discern what is a worthwhile.
DANIEL: Advancement yeah, no.
PASIOS: You know?
DANIEL: Definitely the direct. The direction of technology. I mean it has a logic all its own. There is an inherent logic. In it, there's but.
PASIOS: But right because what's happening is like. We're, . The washing machine is a Gen is a genuinely amazing. Invention, but it's like you just mentioned, it's like we got off onto a tangent where the only like were on this wonderful path and then. We broke off. And now every single advancement since then has been working towards the robot ****** machine.
DANIEL: Oh, that's pretty black Pilling, sorry.
PASIOS: Oh yeah, I mean, this we're we're actually gonna start making some episodes of Black Mirror pretty soon. We're we're the new writers for the Netflix show so.
DANIEL: Yeah, obviously on the left they're right all across the spectrum there other than a few like there's a few voices I've read in like in the critique tradition. That'll say no, things really are better and like, yeah, things really are better in a lot of senses. For a lot of people, like in the material and some of them material, some of them spiritual. Some of them social like there's a lot of people have a lot of access to therapy and like. I don't know pharmaceuticals that help them through like resolve a lot of issues and things but yeah, you're right, this Faustian spirit, like to take technology.
KESSLER: Right?
DANIEL: Integrate it into. The human soul in some way, and like strive with a piece of technology to achieve something like that's long gone, man, that doesn't exist. Anywhere .
PASIOS: I and I think, and I don't. Know go ahead.
Speaker 7:, I don't know if that's just the profit motive like or like late capitalism, or if we're a dying, exhausted. A group of people who are just out of ideas or what, but I mean like it's not hard to. Drum them up like. I mean, we can go to Mars, right? Like we can go to the middle of the Earth or something. I don't know, like.
PASIOS: I and I think this we're kind of we're kind of working. The conversation to this point and of recognizing the need for true Christian discernment in these things and I think a huge issue is that. People are not. You know most Christians out there are not able to discern things properly in a in a true Christian sense because there's so many competing voices out there. You know we talked in. The in the first hour we. Recorded with Jason about how when Kaczynski was writing his manifesto. He probably didn't arrive at a Christian conclusion because he probably saw most Christians of the 70s and 80s as being equivalent with leftists, so what's what's happened to the Christian Church is?
SUPERLUTHERAN: Right?
DANIEL: Right?
PASIOS: They're not able to discern the voice of God because of these. Repeating voices there that they are thinking is God. You know it's like. I I. I worry about this a lot and I'm concerned about it because obviously everyone I most of our families are mainstream Christians, right? And I and I really just. Hope that they're not confusing things in this way, right? Cause cause so many people are like, oh, we just gotta. We just gotta love everyone and not judge anyone and.
DANIEL: Well, I mean I, I'm kind of like. There's a remnant. There's always gonna be a remnant like I'm not I'm not a. I'm not a post millennial guy. I don't. I have a I have a really pessimistic understanding of, well, I don't. I don't wanna call it pessimistic, I mean God's. Will is being done but. I'm not like anticipating some revival. Not that not that it's not possible, but . I don't. Yeah, a Christian culture or a Christianized culture.
PASIOS: I think have you, I think. I'm very keen on distributist ideas. I like that a lot, I I, I think that it. It encapsulates a Christian like I've, . I've heard arguments for National socialism being like the true Christian organizational pro. Simple and yeah that National socialism might be a very Christian way to do things in a society that's already like super collective and homogeneous maybe. But we're living in this modern world where things aren't already that way and are historical. Heritage is in a more libertarian.
DANIEL: I think. I think there's more than one way to express. To express that you're a population, you’re a group of people and that you're abiding by the spirit of the law. I don't. I don't think there needs to be anyone over over arching like prescription I. You know I'm with you. On that. @@@ PASIOS: Exactly and I so in that sense I like distributism a lot because it does emphasize the dignity of individual people. But it also emphasizes the essentiality of the family and the and the town. You know, the village. That's something that we've that we've lost that's been detrimental obviously, and I'm just preaching to the choir at. This point, but.
DANIEL: Well, well, I mean. People seek out their Dunbar number like they seek out their village and they find it. And so it's I don't know I've always.
PASIOS: They do. They do nowadays. People like I was I was having lunch with a with a Christian couple that lives across from me and they. They were talking to me about how from their church they'll just like invite cause they go to a big church. They just invite random couples over for lunch sometimes and they try to like build their community that way. That's what people have to do. They have to like very intentionally seek out people that are similar, usually and kind of bring them into a fold. So they can build their own village, right?
DANIEL: Right, right and. Is that really in like inferior to being small? Together with the people that you might despise. That you might despise, I don't.
PASIOS: It's well, I would say I would say that.
DANIEL: Know I don't know what.
PASIOS: It would. It should, it should at least give you. It should at least make you do a double take, because for example you could say that your family is God. Given right, you're born into a family and in that sense, in that sense you could say 100 years ago that your town. Was God-given? Because you're born into a family. Your family lives in a town. You were placed here for a reason, but now. A common trend is that people not only choose their own village, they choose their own communities. You know they have friends from all over dotted around the city, . And all those people come together once and once a week to have dinner together, for example. So they choose their village. But they also are doing things like choosing their family. You know how many times do people say your friends are like the family that you choose?
DANIEL: Oh a lot friendsgiving bro.
PASIOS: Yeah, friends giving friends miss, like It’s all over the place. People people are and I see Christians do this all the time but they don't, they don't. Think deeply about a lot of things like this. You know what is it actually saying? It’s. It’s just one step further on the path to completely removing God from your life. You know if you if you and this the reason why people shouldn't outright reject their families. Even if you. Have strong political disputes especially if you have strong political disputes. You should not reject your family, .
DANIEL: Yeah, I think that's incredibly silly, like.
PASIOS: Because it's a, It’s a it. I mean It’s a God-given thing much like race is a God-given thing. Both are sacred, .
DANIEL: Yeah, I don't know and I think kind of. Wrapping it up. I mean for me I gotta get. Off here in a SEC I. I'm not. Everyone it's to say that everyone's getting a given a set of circumstances and. The sort. Of throne and Altar Catholicism, the reactionary Catholicism of Demuestre like. Everything has its place. I don't know that the adaptability or the modularity of modernity or the convertibility or the freedom to choose and associate which is funny, because every everybody is sort of up in arms about free association which we have in spades, to many degrees here. I don't know that it. I don't know that it's a reaction against God or that It’s Babble, listic or anything, or if it's just part of technology like inherent to the nature of Facebook and relocation for work and all that. I mean, I don't know I do but. What I don't want to do, I guess, is.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Fall prey to the idea that.
DANIEL: It's impossible to live authentically now. Because XYZ like I like that to me is has to be. First of all is wrong and second of all depressing, because we're still given a set of circumstances. It's just that. You weren't born in some, some borough in the 17th century you were born now and like you have the Internet and you have these people that are, are your Facebook buddies or whatever. So I don't. I don't want to despise the situation that I've been given, I mean, but I also don't want to accept anything as natural. I guess.
DANIEL: So I don't know, it's very hard we're we, have we? We all have this utopian. We all have this utopian drive. We all have the drive. To make things. Better or a lot a lot of. Us, but at, but at the same time it's like you wanna be like. Well, these are your God-given circumstances, well, and not to get too racial. But I mean the. White man like has continually like defined himself. By throwing off like his his circumstances by westward expansion by, .
PASIOS: You're right.
DANIEL: So I I think It’s a it's a complex dialectic that we should probably like. I think.
PASIOS: Let's .
DANIEL: I don't know invest like talk about at some point in. The future for sure.
PASIOS: Yeah, I like I yeah I. Like I like your final thought there.
DANIEL: But anyway, anyway, it was good man. I gotta go though. I'm a I like to stay on and chat after we're done. Recording, but I gotta get out of here. Yeah, absolutely.
PASIOS: I guess,.
‘GENERAL’: That was excellent. I'm glad you guys chose to continue.
PASIOS: Yeah, that was good advice.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah me too.
PASIOS:, you guys. You guys wanna say a prayer or something any anyone I guess.
SUPERLUTHERAN: Yeah, you've hardly spoken at all. You should totally do it General.
‘GENERAL’: Oh OK, sure I guess lets bow our heads and humble ourselves. In the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit, Amen. Father God thank you so much for the opportunity to be here. And to discuss events. That preclude yourself to our path as humans. And as followers of your work. Got to just ask that you. Would give each and everyone. Of us both the hosts and the listeners the strength and. Humbleness to move forward in these trying times, whether that be with technology or without. That we'll be able to. You would just give us the ability to discern what is both right and wrong in your name. In your name I pray, Amen.
PASIOS: Amen.
A line from Shakespear’s Henry V, Act IV: But with this acknowledgement, that God fought for us.