Episode Summary:
In this long-awaited return to the podcast, philosopher, storyteller, and longtime friend of the show Peter Rollins joins us for a rich, mind-bending conversation about faith, identity, and the transformative potential of doubt. Peter was one of our earliest guests and someone who understood the heart of this podcast from day one. After far too much time away, he’s back — and this conversation does not disappoint.
In Part 1, we dig into some of the themes Peter has become known for: embracing uncertainty, challenging religious narratives that promise certainty or comfort, and exploring how belief functions psychologically and communally. One of the biggest takeaways in this episode is Peter’s insight into Communion vs. community — a deeply fascinating reframing of what spiritual connection actually is and what it isn’t.
Whether you’ve been following Pete’s work for years or you’re encountering him for the first time, this episode is packed with ideas that will challenge, encourage, and maybe even unsettle you (in the best way).
Resources & References:
- Peter Rollins’ official website: https://peterrollins.com
- Books by Peter Rollins, including The Idolatry of God, The Divine Magician, and How (Not) to Speak of God
- Pyrotheology community and events
Connect With Us:
- Website: www.thedeconstructionists.org
- Instagram: @deconstructionistspodcast
- Email: deconstructionistspodcast@gmail.com
- Stay tuned for updated Patreon tiers launching soon!
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00:10 --> 00:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the deconstructionist podcast.
00:14 --> 00:18 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host John Williamson, and today's episode feels a little bit like coming home.
00:19 --> 00:29 [SPEAKER_00]: From the earliest days of the deconstructionist podcast, back when we were trying to figure out our voice, our mission, and frankly, our sound levels, Pete Rowlands was one of the very first people who got it.
00:30 --> 00:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Not just politely nodded along, but really understood from the outset exactly what it was we were trying to do.
00:36 --> 00:43 [SPEAKER_00]: He's been a friend of the show since day one, and someone whose work helped shape the kind of conversations we wanted to bring into the world.
00:44 --> 00:47 [SPEAKER_00]: It has been way too long since we've asked Adam on.
00:47 --> 00:50 [SPEAKER_00]: This was long overdue, but trust me, the weight was worth it.
00:50 --> 00:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Pete and I had one of the most energizing thought-provoking conversations I've had in a really long time.
00:56 --> 00:58 [SPEAKER_00]: The kind that sticks with you long after you stop recording.
00:59 --> 01:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And I want you to pay special attention to his reflections on communion versus community.
01:05 --> 01:08 [SPEAKER_00]: That section alone is a masterclass.
01:08 --> 01:15 [SPEAKER_00]: It's challenging, it's refreshing, it's unexpected, and it might reframe the way you think about what church actually is.
01:15 --> 01:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And good news, this is a two-parter, so settle in for part one today, and then come back for even more next week.
01:23 --> 01:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So let's get into it.
01:25 --> 01:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Here's my conversation with the always brilliant, always surprising, Peter Freakin Rollins.
01:38 --> 01:44 [SPEAKER_01]: All right, it's been a long time coming and long overdue.
01:44 --> 02:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Our dear friend and one of the early adopters, and just somebody who, from the very beginning, kind of understood with the deconstructionist was all about what we were trying to do, and was gracious enough to come out in those early days before you really had any reason to come on before we even really had an audience.
02:01 --> 02:24 [SPEAKER_03]: always add them and I have great love for you and welcome you back on the good doctor Peter Rowans thank you so much for coming back on thank you I appreciate it I am as you know like whenever you started this I was a big fan big supporter you guys were very kind to me and so it's great to see that this has continued to go I continue to develop and to grow and yeah it's lovely to be back
02:24 --> 02:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, and I thought what better time we are actually at the end of within a couple months will have hit 10 years since we first kicked this thing off, which is just mind blowing.
02:34 --> 02:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
02:35 --> 02:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
02:36 --> 02:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Very good.
02:36 --> 02:51 [SPEAKER_03]: I know it was going back a while, because I remember when I was touring, like I haven't toured for a long time, you guys showed up,
02:52 --> 03:00 [SPEAKER_00]: been a little out, but yeah, pines and parables, we actually just re-released that one, just because it's such a cool concept and it was such a beautiful evening.
03:01 --> 03:01 [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, no way.
03:01 --> 03:02 [SPEAKER_03]: It's a right dust fright.
03:02 --> 03:04 [SPEAKER_03]: So you guys recorded that one.
03:04 --> 03:05 [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, very good.
03:06 --> 03:11 [SPEAKER_03]: Because for anybody who's listening, who doesn't know, I used to, it would just be kind of storytelling in a pub.
03:11 --> 03:13 [SPEAKER_03]: And I really love doing those events.
03:13 --> 03:17 [SPEAKER_03]: I'd be honest, uh, would be quite excited about doing that again or quite fun.
03:17 --> 03:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Are you absolutely sure?
03:18 --> 03:19 [SPEAKER_00]: The absolute shit.
03:19 --> 03:21 [SPEAKER_00]: It was, uh, I've never seen an audience
03:21 --> 03:28 [SPEAKER_00]: because you did such a good job of creating this sort of story arc and then taking people through just a range of emotions.
03:28 --> 03:41 [SPEAKER_00]: I remember laughing and then by the end you had people in tears and it was just this beautiful event and a great opportunity to meet other individuals who were into the same sort of things and just be able to have conversation afterwards.
03:41 --> 03:42 [SPEAKER_00]: It was awesome.
03:42 --> 03:43 [SPEAKER_00]: We should definitely do it again.
03:43 --> 03:44 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, thank you.
03:44 --> 03:45 [SPEAKER_03]: Very good.
03:45 --> 03:46 [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I'm going to do you this podcast again.
03:46 --> 03:48 [SPEAKER_03]: So I'm excited to dive in.
03:48 --> 03:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, where do you want to go?
03:50 --> 03:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
03:50 --> 03:54 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think good place to start because it has been a number of years now.
03:54 --> 03:58 [SPEAKER_00]: We've gotten, you know, we've got some old school listeners who who definitely will be excited to see your name pop up.
03:59 --> 04:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, we've got probably some new listeners who have more recently found the podcast.
04:02 --> 04:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And so if you could, just a good place to start talk a little bit about
04:06 --> 04:18 [SPEAKER_00]: what you're known for pyrophiology and it's a very cool term, but what does that mean to you and what what how would you describe that to folks who are hearing it for the first time?
04:18 --> 04:20 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean that's a big task.
04:20 --> 04:26 [SPEAKER_03]: We could be here all day talking about that, but yes, I'll try and sum up something, you know, I'm maybe try to
04:27 --> 04:34 [SPEAKER_03]: get an en route to that answer by kind of maybe very quickly talking about where I started with my work and kind of how it's developed.
04:35 --> 04:48 [SPEAKER_03]: I guess early in my work, I was interested in the place of diet, ambiguity and on knowing in life and in fifth, the questions around the limits of our knowledge.
04:48 --> 04:52 [SPEAKER_03]: Theology has always been interested in that one of the kind of most
04:52 --> 05:00 [SPEAKER_03]: Theological definitions of God is God as a signifier is a signifier that signifies something beyond signification.
05:00 --> 05:05 [SPEAKER_03]: So God is a word that we use to describe something indescribable.
05:05 --> 05:15 [SPEAKER_03]: This is an idea in philosophy as well, but it's an interesting thing where theology has always been interested in tiring with something that we do not know, something that
05:15 --> 05:19 [SPEAKER_03]: draws us to the very limits of our experience and our understanding.
05:19 --> 05:21 [SPEAKER_03]: So my work has always been interested in that.
05:22 --> 05:39 [SPEAKER_03]: I have developed a theory in a practice that is very influenced by some areas of continental philosophy, some areas of psychoanalysis and radical theology to develop a type of liturgy, a type of embodied experience.
05:39 --> 06:02 [SPEAKER_03]: And that takes the form of three things, very quickly there is the Liturgy, which I call Transformers Art, but that is a space where three music and art and storytelling you enter into a space that transforms your way of being in the world, as the idea of you know the Liturgy, desentering practices, and what I call communion, a form of social bond,
06:02 --> 06:11 [SPEAKER_03]: not forged around shared beliefs and identities, but on the share realisation that we are all lacking that we all have died an unknowing as a part of our being.
06:11 --> 06:18 [SPEAKER_03]: So yes, so there's my work in a nutshell, there's a lot more to it, but just a little way and I'll say that.
06:18 --> 06:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love the idea of leaning into the unknowing or the mystery, but I think because that is sort of one of the things that we seem to sort of push against or battle against, especially within Western Christianity, because it's so centered on knowing and certainty, and it creates sort of what we call this house of cards theology where,
06:39 --> 06:44 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, one, one thing point of that structure is sort of criticized and the whole thing collapses.
06:45 --> 07:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And so I think a lot of folks who are in that sort of post-even jellical space, you know, have really sort of found a home in sort of mysticism and areas of theology that still allow you to sort of experience God in the divine, but not, not based on the condition that you have to understand or know everything.
07:05 --> 07:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think even though, you know, I think your work and say like, you know, Richard Rourer's work are very different.
07:11 --> 07:21 [SPEAKER_00]: I think the common thread there is the fact that there's this sort of, I guess almost a beauty in the undoing, you know, and the fact that we do not have to have everything nailed down.
07:21 --> 07:22 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, we can't.
07:22 --> 07:23 [SPEAKER_00]: It's impossible.
07:23 --> 07:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
07:23 --> 07:26 [SPEAKER_03]: And this is a very important distinction.
07:27 --> 07:31 [SPEAKER_03]: They're still missing what's called epistemological unknowing and ontological unknowing.
07:32 --> 07:41 [SPEAKER_03]: Definitely people are very influenced by the idea of epistemological unknowing, which is things we don't know because obviously we're limited.
07:41 --> 07:44 [SPEAKER_03]: So there's things that I don't know that you know, there's things that
07:44 --> 08:08 [SPEAKER_03]: that other people know that we don't know and then there's stuff that we don't currently know even as a species but we will know in the future and that notion of unknowing is uncontroversial everybody basically accepts it but what I'm interested in is what can be called ontological unknowing and that's a more radical claim and that's a claim that unknowing is part of the very fabric of reality itself.
08:08 --> 08:20 [SPEAKER_03]: And that actually, we can know that we don't know there's a certain sense in which it's not that we are protected from or we're unable to breach into the real into the truth.
08:20 --> 08:30 [SPEAKER_03]: But that actually part of the truth, part of the real is precisely that there is novelty, there is spontaneity, there is a type of contradiction at the heart of everything.
08:30 --> 08:49 [SPEAKER_03]: And so my work, you know, started off and that very uncontroversial epistemological on knowing, but has moved very much into this notion of ontological on knowing, and that's why, of course, I've got a big interest in psychoanalysis because psychoanalysis is a discipline that in its proper form deals with
08:49 --> 08:54 [SPEAKER_03]: something that is a type of structural absence called the unconscious.
08:55 --> 09:05 [SPEAKER_03]: So anyway, that might differentiate me from people like Richard Rourer and others who will embrace epistemological ongoing, but they have an idea of a substantive
09:05 --> 09:11 [SPEAKER_03]: Absolute, that knows everything, so we don't know everything, but you know, but the absolute knows everything.
09:11 --> 09:22 [SPEAKER_03]: Whereas, you know, I'm more in the traditional radical theology and German idealism, which is the idea that actually there is an ongoing and the very heart of absolute reality.
09:22 --> 09:22 [SPEAKER_03]: No, I have to.
09:23 --> 09:24 [SPEAKER_03]: I show why I believe that.
09:24 --> 09:26 [SPEAKER_03]: No one should believe me just because I'm saying that.
09:26 --> 09:31 [SPEAKER_03]: So I'm kind of like showing my answers with like my work, you know, it's so nobody should accept what I'm saying right now.
09:31 --> 09:34 [SPEAKER_03]: But that's just a very brief way of describing the difference.
09:34 --> 09:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello, hello.
09:36 --> 09:41 [SPEAKER_00]: So talk about the church of the contradiction, because I think that's a big central part of your work as well.
09:41 --> 09:50 [SPEAKER_00]: What does church of the contradiction look like in practice, how much of it is metaphor, how much of it is institutional, organizational, and how much performative.
09:50 --> 10:02 [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, so church of the contradiction is kind of the current name for the project that I'm working on, and it is a type of fundamentally different form of institution, which is not unusual.
10:02 --> 10:06 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, the church goes through dramatic what we call reformations.
10:06 --> 10:12 [SPEAKER_03]: And those reformations are interestingly, a reformation is not a change.
10:12 --> 10:13 [SPEAKER_03]: in signifiers.
10:13 --> 10:14 [SPEAKER_03]: I don't explain what I mean in a second.
10:14 --> 10:16 [SPEAKER_03]: There is a change in signification.
10:16 --> 10:21 [SPEAKER_03]: And what I mean by that is signifiers are they include the words that we use.
10:21 --> 10:21 [SPEAKER_03]: They're signifiers.
10:22 --> 10:25 [SPEAKER_03]: And signifiers refers to the meaning of those.
10:25 --> 10:29 [SPEAKER_03]: And in general, life, we are interested in what people mean.
10:29 --> 10:32 [SPEAKER_03]: So somebody makes a mistake, a Freudian, Slipper, whatever.
10:32 --> 10:33 [SPEAKER_03]: They say, I didn't mean that.
10:33 --> 10:34 [SPEAKER_03]: And then we're interested.
10:34 --> 10:35 [SPEAKER_03]: What did you really mean, right?
10:35 --> 10:39 [SPEAKER_03]: But, in psychoanalysis, you're interested in what the person said, and what they mean.
10:39 --> 10:45 [SPEAKER_03]: And in a similar way, when a reformation happens, the signifiers don't actually change.
10:45 --> 10:55 [SPEAKER_03]: So, potentially crucifixion, resurrection, virgin birth, canuces, you know, all of these theological terms, they all stay the same, but the signification radically changes.
10:55 --> 11:01 [SPEAKER_03]: And so what keeps the Christian church in continuity with itself is not signification, but signifiers.
11:02 --> 11:08 [SPEAKER_03]: A certain set of signifiers that are reimagined on a occasion, every say 500 years.
11:08 --> 11:19 [SPEAKER_03]: So church of the contradiction is an approach, a theory, and a technology, that, I mean, in a nutshell, I'm for anybody who's listening, you know, I'm in the same tradition as people like Slavio Ishisek.
11:19 --> 11:34 [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, what Slavio Shizek has argued very beautifully many times, is that, you know, in Christianity in all religions you have separation, you have some sort of separation from the appearance and the reality.
11:34 --> 11:37 [SPEAKER_03]: This, the separation might be an illusion, right?
11:37 --> 11:47 [SPEAKER_03]: Something you have to see through where caught up in the veil of illusions, or it might be ontological, it might
11:47 --> 11:51 [SPEAKER_03]: But in all religions you'll find, here's where we are and here's where we should be.
11:51 --> 11:54 [SPEAKER_03]: On religion provides a way of getting there, right?
11:54 --> 12:00 [SPEAKER_03]: Or understanding why you're not there and getting there in the next life or after a few reincarnations, whatever.
12:00 --> 12:05 [SPEAKER_03]: But in Christianity, you have the idea that it's not that we're separated from God, but the God is separated from God.
12:06 --> 12:08 [SPEAKER_03]: So most obviously we have it in the crucifixion.
12:09 --> 12:10 [SPEAKER_03]: My God, my God, why have you ever seen it, can we?
12:11 --> 12:13 [SPEAKER_03]: This is a really interesting innovation within religion.
12:13 --> 12:25 [SPEAKER_03]: where we're saying it's not that God experiences separate, are we experienced separation from God, but here God is in kind of like in the narrative, as experiences self-division, right?
12:26 --> 12:26 [SPEAKER_03]: God is divided.
12:27 --> 12:32 [SPEAKER_03]: Now, this is kind of like a religious way of saying what we find in various modern sciences.
12:32 --> 12:38 [SPEAKER_03]: So, in evolution, the non-wonus of the biological organism is called evolution, right?
12:38 --> 12:41 [SPEAKER_03]: So, the non-wonus of the biological organism that creates complexity,
12:41 --> 12:43 [SPEAKER_03]: In politics is called democracy, right?
12:43 --> 12:47 [SPEAKER_03]: The non-autonomous of the political body, that generates civilization.
12:47 --> 12:51 [SPEAKER_03]: In physics, you have got like highs and burgs on certain principles.
12:51 --> 12:53 [SPEAKER_03]: You've got like where, you know, we have particle geology.
12:54 --> 12:59 [SPEAKER_03]: You've got like an inherent kind of division within potentially the building blocks of
12:59 --> 13:25 [SPEAKER_03]: physics if you go with like the coupon here again interpretation which I do you know in the psychoanalysis the non-oneless of consciousness with itself is called the unconscious etc etc but the the big name for this is Christ crucified right that's the death of God right it's because in Christ crucified you have this idea of the self-divided absolute which is a way of saying that reality is divided against itself like if you take this seriously
13:25 --> 13:28 [SPEAKER_03]: I understand people don't need to take a serious day until they hear the argument.
13:28 --> 13:32 [SPEAKER_03]: But if you take it seriously, this is a very different idea from what we call it.
13:32 --> 13:37 [SPEAKER_03]: So one of the common ideas is we can be whole and complete by various things, right?
13:37 --> 13:39 [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe it'll be taken psychedelics, right?
13:39 --> 13:43 [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe it'll be commodity satisfaction if I have enough wealth and have enough commodities.
13:44 --> 13:47 [SPEAKER_03]: It might be some sexual thing like polyamory.
13:47 --> 13:54 [SPEAKER_03]: or monogamy, it might be in psychology, the idea of a balanced life and a fulfill life a happy life, right?
13:55 --> 13:58 [SPEAKER_03]: Basically, non-elionation and politics are utopia, right?
13:59 --> 14:03 [SPEAKER_03]: So you've got all these ways of trying to go like, we can overcome alienation.
14:03 --> 14:08 [SPEAKER_03]: And in, for example, a lot of forms of therapy, there's a notion of a pre-traumatic subject.
14:09 --> 14:12 [SPEAKER_03]: The pre-traumatic subject is traumatized.
14:12 --> 14:24 [SPEAKER_03]: and then there's a post-traumatic subject, you know, where you can kind of get back, you know, which is, again, the religious idea, if there's a original blessing, then there's a full, and then there is a potential return to blessing, right?
14:24 --> 14:25 [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, that's structure.
14:26 --> 14:34 [SPEAKER_03]: This idea is very different because this idea says that alienation is inherent to being self and to being a subject.
14:34 --> 14:43 [SPEAKER_03]: And therefore the challenge is not to overcome alienation, but to embrace your alienation, to enjoy it, to say that I am alienated.
14:43 --> 14:45 [SPEAKER_03]: that I'm not put it on to the other, which is called skip.
14:45 --> 14:49 [SPEAKER_03]: Go in where I tick my own lock, put it on to the other, put the violence on to them.
14:49 --> 14:54 [SPEAKER_03]: It's more like AA, where you say, my name and I am locking, right?
14:54 --> 14:58 [SPEAKER_03]: And sin to lock, you know, I guess not the moral connotation, but I am a locker.
14:58 --> 14:58 [SPEAKER_03]: I lock.
14:58 --> 15:05 [SPEAKER_03]: and in embracing this experience of self-division, one can endure it and enjoy it.
15:05 --> 15:14 [SPEAKER_03]: And church of the contradiction is a bike helping people confront this alienated absolute and help them become
15:14 --> 15:20 [SPEAKER_03]: able to endure and enjoy their own alienation and this changes your way of being in the world.
15:20 --> 15:41 [SPEAKER_03]: Because through this activity, you cease to be fornabically pursuing wholeness and happiness certainty and satisfaction, and you can begin to enjoy your own alienation and become free, not free to pursue what will make you happy, but freedom from the pursuit of what will make you happy.
15:41 --> 15:50 [SPEAKER_03]: freedom to be miserable, freedom to be alone, freedom to, you know, to basically not be caught up in this frenetic pursuit of wholeness and happiness.
15:50 --> 16:00 [SPEAKER_03]: And so that's church to the contradiction uses, as I say, it has a way of doing it, but we can get into your not, but it's ultimately helps people in kinder that alienation.
16:00 --> 16:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's that's a perfect place to flow into this notion of communion versus community, which I think you make this great point.
16:09 --> 16:16 [SPEAKER_00]: I was watching when you're the debate that you did online recently between your and yourself, your AI, self which I thought was fascinating.
16:16 --> 16:20 [SPEAKER_00]: If people haven't checked it out, put the link in the show notes, you should definitely watch it.
16:20 --> 16:21 [SPEAKER_00]: It's very fascinating.
16:21 --> 16:44 [SPEAKER_00]: But talk about, you make this beautiful distinction between the two, because we always talk about in the podcast about how important community is, but you point out rightfully that to be a part of community is also inherently to place yourself in a position where there are folks who are outsiders, or one of the common threads that binds you together is the fact that you have a shared enemy, which obviously is not something we want to do.
16:44 --> 16:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's where, you know, communion, your definition of communion sort of comes in a play.
16:48 --> 16:50 [SPEAKER_00]: So talk about the distinction between those two.
16:51 --> 16:56 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so basically, I've always had a certain difficulty with the word community.
16:56 --> 17:02 [SPEAKER_03]: And if I can kind of sum that up in a nutshell, a community is a type of social bond.
17:02 --> 17:07 [SPEAKER_03]: It's a particular type of social bond in which there are insiders and outsiders.
17:07 --> 17:16 [SPEAKER_03]: And communities are forged around shared beliefs, shared values, shared practices, shared obstacles, and shared enemies.
17:16 --> 17:28 [SPEAKER_03]: And the last two are particularly important, which might come back to you, but so you've got shared belief shared value shared identities, which creates a community, you know, like football, or you're like a certain author, whatever it is, right?
17:28 --> 17:29 [SPEAKER_03]: We all, and we all have communities.
17:29 --> 17:31 [SPEAKER_03]: They're all, they're very natural to have community.
17:31 --> 17:35 [SPEAKER_03]: It is a particular type of social bond, but also communities have challenges.
17:36 --> 17:40 [SPEAKER_03]: They always have something they won't overcome, whether it's or we want to win the next
17:40 --> 18:01 [SPEAKER_03]: general election or the next Super Bowl or whatever is that there's an obstacle and or there's enemies these are the people who are preventing us from getting where we want to be another element of community to answer that is communities always have a sense of where you are and where you should be so a community by having obstacles and having enemies you have a sense of
18:01 --> 18:08 [SPEAKER_03]: you know, we're here in terms of our political reality, but we want to be here in terms of the future, or in any other sense.
18:08 --> 18:16 [SPEAKER_03]: And the the affect that's created by experiencing a disconnect between where you are and where you want to be is called guilt.
18:17 --> 18:21 [SPEAKER_03]: So guilt is the affect that arises from you not being where you want to be.
18:21 --> 18:22 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm talking on to logical.
18:22 --> 18:24 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not talking like I'm guilty about this or that.
18:25 --> 18:27 [SPEAKER_03]: More that there's that when you
18:27 --> 18:33 [SPEAKER_03]: And it doesn't matter if you're kind of thinking you should be going out more, having more friends, you know, whatever it is, there's guilt.
18:34 --> 18:48 [SPEAKER_03]: Guilt as Lacan says, the super-ruguah conjunction today is the injunction to enjoy, maximize the self-self-optimized life-hack-be-all that you can be, and so we're guilty, not because we're not nice to our mom, we're guilty because we're not having enough fun, right?
18:48 --> 18:49 [SPEAKER_03]: We're not enjoying enough, right?
18:49 --> 18:55 [SPEAKER_03]: So the super-ruguah conjunction makes us feel guilty, fear of missing items, et cetera, et cetera.
18:55 --> 18:56 [SPEAKER_03]: create this.
18:56 --> 18:56 [SPEAKER_03]: That's that's the suit.
18:57 --> 18:57 [SPEAKER_03]: That's community.
18:58 --> 18:59 [SPEAKER_03]: And I say it's natural.
18:59 --> 18:59 [SPEAKER_03]: We all have communities.
19:00 --> 19:04 [SPEAKER_03]: Then the dialectical opposite of that is the commons.
19:04 --> 19:10 [SPEAKER_03]: The commons are spaces where you meet people who are genuinely different from yourself.
19:11 --> 19:15 [SPEAKER_03]: Like public library is a commons, a park, public park is a commons.
19:16 --> 19:18 [SPEAKER_03]: Again, a bus station is a commons.
19:18 --> 19:18 [SPEAKER_03]: There's
19:18 --> 19:25 [SPEAKER_03]: Commons is under threat today, but the Commons is where you can encounter people who are genuinely different from you.
19:25 --> 19:30 [SPEAKER_03]: Not just that you disagree with, but people who you disagree about what the disagreement is about.
19:31 --> 19:32 [SPEAKER_03]: And that's very key.
19:32 --> 19:34 [SPEAKER_03]: The problem is not disagreement.
19:34 --> 19:39 [SPEAKER_03]: The problem in civilisation is we disagree about how to interpret the disagreement itself.
19:39 --> 19:44 [SPEAKER_03]: And that double knot creates in commensurable worlds.
19:44 --> 19:45 [SPEAKER_03]: So that's the comments.
19:45 --> 19:49 [SPEAKER_03]: The comments is not a social bond, but you know, you've been, but it's where you can meet somebody.
19:49 --> 19:52 [SPEAKER_03]: But by the way, the comments is where love can happen.
19:52 --> 19:59 [SPEAKER_03]: It's hard to have love in community because love by definition is an openness to the otherness of the other, right?
19:59 --> 20:06 [SPEAKER_03]: When you just love for the CM, people who are, look like you think like you have the CM identity, that's basically narcissism, right?
20:06 --> 20:07 [SPEAKER_03]: It's a narcissistic,
20:07 --> 20:20 [SPEAKER_03]: saying, real love arises when you encounter someone who is genuinely other from you and they can be terrifying, but love occurs when you're able to provide a harbor for that otherness and vice versa, right?
20:20 --> 20:26 [SPEAKER_03]: So that's why you know, Romeo and Juliet is a love story because it's too completely different people, right?
20:26 --> 20:32 [SPEAKER_03]: This is why love is hard to come by on dating apps because people are through one's a gather with the CM.
20:32 --> 20:35 [SPEAKER_03]: You say, here's my political views, here's my religious views here.
20:35 --> 20:39 [SPEAKER_03]: So I'm put me in touch with someone else who shares all of those, right?
20:39 --> 20:47 [SPEAKER_03]: Whereas love happens in the comments because you meet someone who you think's an asshole, you don't agree with them at all and yet somehow you're like something.
20:47 --> 20:49 [SPEAKER_03]: Be the same's happening, right?
20:49 --> 20:50 [SPEAKER_03]: That's where love can grow.
20:50 --> 20:51 [SPEAKER_03]: Just to then that
20:51 --> 20:55 [SPEAKER_03]: third space, which is what you mentioned, what I would call communion.
20:55 --> 20:56 [SPEAKER_03]: And I don't mean it.
20:56 --> 20:58 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm borrowing that word from religion.
20:58 --> 21:00 [SPEAKER_03]: And there's a reason for that, which I can mention.
21:00 --> 21:09 [SPEAKER_03]: But communion is a social bond that is forged, not a right-shared beliefs, values, identities, obstacles, and enemies.
21:09 --> 21:22 [SPEAKER_03]: but a bone that is forged around the fact that we are all lacking beings, that we're all in a sense traumatized beings, in that sense, a trauma of being human, that lack unknowing dites are an inherent part of our being.
21:23 --> 21:24 [SPEAKER_03]: And so
21:24 --> 21:29 [SPEAKER_03]: In a way, right, you've got on the, you know, on the right, you have these ideas of universal positive values.
21:29 --> 21:35 [SPEAKER_03]: So the right talks about equality under the law, talks about things like meritocracy and all of that right.
21:35 --> 21:37 [SPEAKER_03]: Facts don't care about your feelings, whatever.
21:37 --> 21:42 [SPEAKER_03]: And that's because they're universal positives, positive things that we all share in common is humanity.
21:42 --> 21:45 [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, then on the liberal left, you have a critique of that.
21:45 --> 21:53 [SPEAKER_03]: And the critique in a nutshell is that all supposed universal identities are a crypto-particularistic.
21:53 --> 21:56 [SPEAKER_03]: In other words, they actually help some grips over others, right?
21:56 --> 22:01 [SPEAKER_03]: They, what looks like a universal characteristic, really is a benefit to one group over others.
22:01 --> 22:05 [SPEAKER_03]: And so the critique means we're all caught up in our own identities.
22:05 --> 22:09 [SPEAKER_03]: And we create smaller communities that intersect with each other, right?
22:09 --> 22:09 [SPEAKER_03]: That's the,
22:09 --> 22:11 [SPEAKER_03]: liberal, left critique.
22:11 --> 22:19 [SPEAKER_03]: This is the critique of that, which is to say that no we do have a universal that we all share in common, but it's not something positive.
22:19 --> 22:21 [SPEAKER_03]: It's a negative, it's a negation.
22:21 --> 22:33 [SPEAKER_03]: What we all share in common is the death of God, as a white-collar communion, is a fundamental gaping void that is part of the very fabric of subjectivity and of reality itself.
22:33 --> 22:38 [SPEAKER_03]: So that's what communion is, a social book, and by the example of a communion is AA.
22:38 --> 22:51 [SPEAKER_03]: Alcoholics and anonymous, you have different people, different values, and different political views, and completely different, they come together because they have a shared defense over not shared trauma.
22:51 --> 23:00 [SPEAKER_03]: It's like a various trauma's happen in AA, but what brings them together is they have a shared defense against their trauma, and that's drinking, right?
23:00 --> 23:03 [SPEAKER_03]: In AA, it's about acknowledging in a space of grace.
23:04 --> 23:07 [SPEAKER_03]: You just say your name and say you're an alcoholic or nobody tries to change you.
23:08 --> 23:11 [SPEAKER_03]: So, Greece is where you accept that you're accepted as the opposite of self-help.
23:11 --> 23:16 [SPEAKER_03]: Where how self-help tells you how to go from A to B, which is part of community, how to go from A to B.
23:16 --> 23:20 [SPEAKER_03]: In self-help, or sorry, in Greece, there's no going from A to B.
23:20 --> 23:22 [SPEAKER_03]: You just admit where you are.
23:22 --> 23:25 [SPEAKER_03]: You'd met your at A with no need to change.
23:25 --> 23:31 [SPEAKER_03]: You realize that A does not equal A, which means you're self-divided, and you're full of conflicts, but you stay in a clear so-create.
23:31 --> 23:33 [SPEAKER_03]: Watching calls step zero.
23:33 --> 23:39 [SPEAKER_03]: And then through that experience of careers, you can experience forgiveness, right?
23:39 --> 23:40 [SPEAKER_03]: So what is forgiveness?
23:40 --> 23:43 [SPEAKER_03]: Well, very simply forgiveness is freedom from guilt and condemnation.
23:44 --> 23:51 [SPEAKER_03]: So if guilt is the affect that you get from moving from A to B, then forgiveness is the experience of not having to move from A to B.
23:51 --> 23:54 [SPEAKER_03]: of pure acceptance for who you are, right?
23:54 --> 24:03 [SPEAKER_03]: So NAA, you get up pure acceptance, no moving from A to B, no guilt, your freed from guilt, you experience forgiveness, which ironically allows you to change.
24:04 --> 24:09 [SPEAKER_03]: One final thing I'll say about the interesting community and communion is communities, the kind of the,
24:09 --> 24:19 [SPEAKER_03]: The ideal of community as the hero, because the hero is someone who is able to get from a to be, right, who is able to engage their will and try to move forward.
24:19 --> 24:21 [SPEAKER_03]: So that's the kind of figure of community.
24:21 --> 24:23 [SPEAKER_03]: The ideal figure of communion is the saint.
24:24 --> 24:31 [SPEAKER_03]: The saint is someone who doesn't get somewhere through will, but through contemplation, through giving up, through experiencing forgiveness and grace.
24:32 --> 24:39 [SPEAKER_03]: That's the power that moves the saint,
24:39 --> 24:48 [SPEAKER_03]: So anyway, there you go in brief thoughts, and I'm trying to, for me, communion is a vital form of social bond that we need, otherwise civilization falls apart.
24:49 --> 25:07 [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember the first time hearing you say that, I thought, what a brilliant way to sort of use a religious archetype, you know, in the sense that when I think of ways in which to get people together, you know, may come from very different viewpoints or whether it be social political, whatever, um,
25:07 --> 25:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Sitting down and having a meal, which is literally the definition of the religious Active community and we're all going to have this meal together and guarantee that the person I left and right Probably have very different ideas than I do on a number of issues But we're there for that shared common meal, and that's you know as opposed to as you said You know joining a community where oftentimes it's a club because you all believe and think the same thing You're coming together, you know
25:35 --> 25:38 [SPEAKER_00]: through this act of forgiveness by way of meal.
25:38 --> 25:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
25:39 --> 25:47 [SPEAKER_00]: That's such a powerful, powerful, visual thing and also act that's taking place, you know, amongst people who are very, very different from me.
25:47 --> 25:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
25:47 --> 25:50 [SPEAKER_03]: On the very key, the key meant for me is the meals important.
25:51 --> 25:53 [SPEAKER_03]: I call these the death of called supper clubs because they're a little bit of food.
25:53 --> 25:55 [SPEAKER_03]: But the key is...
25:55 --> 26:03 [SPEAKER_03]: doubt your guarder together, not simply a rounded meal, but a round of shared loss, so communion is a meal, a rounded death of God, the loss of the absolute.
26:03 --> 26:12 [SPEAKER_03]: And so in a way, in these communions, what joins me to you is that by identifying human, there has been a loss.
26:12 --> 26:32 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you know, at a very superficial level, like, you know, basic kind of like popular view of Floyd Floyd's been more complicated, but popular free of Floyd is, you know, the mother and child are like a symbiotic union, and then the infant separates from the mother, and in that separation, they become a subject, so subjectivity is marked fundamentally by a loss.
26:32 --> 26:39 [SPEAKER_03]: That's why within psychoanalysis, there's no pre-traumatic subject because, in a sense, trauma
26:39 --> 27:06 [SPEAKER_03]: is part of the very coming into being of subjectivity, separation, loss, et cetera, and so the death of God, which by the way, we have the circle, the right avoid of avoid in the middle, is to say that, oh yeah, what unifies us all is in different ways, no matter how good your life is being or whatever, is that we are all marked by a fundamental and agmatic dimension.
27:07 --> 27:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Because he has a body or even a name But if he does, does he know That I'm alive Is God
27:29 --> 27:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Does she care that I don't, does she care that I feel something to me, God, will survive?
27:46 --> 27:53 [SPEAKER_02]: So take a breath, breathe in the mystery.
28:00 --> 28:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Because we don't know you, I think a true face If God has a face, His face must look like yours
28:29 --> 28:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Kill this kid, did he have to have blood before he would forget?
28:37 --> 28:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe we made a guy that looks like us.
28:49 --> 28:53 [SPEAKER_01]: Does God know my name?
28:54 --> 29:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Is the aching my soldiers confined to my brain, even so?
29:02 --> 29:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Does that mean it's not real?
29:11 --> 29:19 [SPEAKER_02]: So take a breath of breathing, the mystery that it is.
29:24 --> 29:41 [SPEAKER_02]: If God has a face, her face must look like this.
29:52 --> 30:14 [SPEAKER_01]: A face like a teenager, and I'm at a meal dreaded A rock, sand, and it's husband, God send their children Vays like a Kim, a TED or Tyrone, a Lucy, born with an extra chromosome
30:14 --> 30:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Powerful with legs, he can't move by himself A girl born and a Daniel, who now is then now A pillage of Eve and white guy's name tile If you have a heartbeat, you are
30:43 --> 31:09 [SPEAKER_02]: To take a breath, breathe in, a mystery that is there.
31:12 --> 31:42 [SPEAKER_01]: But I think the truth is If God has a face, the face must look If God has a face, the face must look If God has a face, the face must be