Living On Common Ground
Does it feel like every part of your life is divided? Every scenario? Every environment? Your church, your school, your work, your friends. Left, right. Conservative, liberal. Religious, secular. From parenting styles to school choice, denominational choice to governing preference, it seems you're always being asked to take a side.
This is a conversation between a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who happen to be great friends. Welcome to Living on Common Ground.
Living On Common Ground
Embracing the Anxiety of Freedom: A Conversation with Peter Rollins
What if the good news isn't finding fulfillment, but discovering we can never be whole? What if community forms not just around shared beliefs, but shared enemies? What if anxiety isn't something to overcome, but the very evidence of our humanity?
These provocative questions form the heart of our conversation with philosopher, author and public speaker Peter Rollins about his concept of "pyrotheology" – a radical approach to faith that embraces uncertainty rather than fleeing from it. Peter explains that pyrotheology helps people confront the death of God (the loss of certainty) not to wallow in meaninglessness, but because this confrontation transforms how we relate to ourselves and others.
At a time when society seems increasingly fragmented along ideological lines, Peter's insights offer a surprising path forward. He distinguishes between three types of human gathering: communities (bonded by shared beliefs and enemies), commons (spaces where we encounter different others), and communion (connections formed around our shared experience of lack). This final category presents a revolutionary possibility – what if we could form bonds not around what we have in common, but around what we all lack?
The conversation takes fascinating turns through psychoanalysis, existentialism, and the nature of anxiety. Peter argues that anxiety, unlike other emotions, doesn't lie – it reveals the truth of our human condition. Rather than trying to escape this fundamental uncertainty through religion, consumption, or self-improvement, pyrotheology invites us to find freedom in embracing it.
Whether you're wrestling with faith questions, interested in philosophy, or simply seeking deeper connection in a divided world, this episode offers thought-provoking insights about finding joy not in certainty, but in the loving embrace of life's inherent incompleteness.
Check out Peter's work at www.peterrollins.com, support him on Patreon, or watch his videos on YouTube. Peter has agreed to return to the podcast in the future for more conversation.
Does it feel like every part of your life is divided, every scenario, every environment, your church, your school, your work, your friends, left right, conservative, liberal, religious, secular? It seems you always have to take a side. This is a conversation between a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who happen to be great friends. Welcome to Living on Common Ground. Do you think if we met today we would still be friends?
Speaker 2:I don't know, but we're friends now.
Speaker 3:A mob is known as a mob because they are with him, man. So what? We won a few games and y'all fools think that's something. Man, that ain't nothing, y'all. And you know what else? We ain't nothing either. Yeah, we came together in camp, cool. But then we're right back here and the world tells us that they don't want us to be together. We fall apart like we ain't a damn bit of nothing, man.
Speaker 4:For this week's episode, Lucas and I had an opportunity to sit down with author, philosopher, storyteller, producer and public speaker, Peter Rollins, to discuss pyrotheology and its implications for faith and belief in today's world. Peter joined us remotely from LA and we visited for a little over an hour. After about 40 minutes there was a brief glitch, but after only a second or two everything seemed to be restored. However, when I went to edit this episode, I realized the online app we use for remote interviews had stopped recording Peter. Fortunately, we were able to record some great content and Peter has agreed to come back on the show in the future. If you enjoy the conversation and want to learn more about pyrotheology and the work Peter's doing, you can check out his website at wwwpeterrollinscom. You can also support him on Patreon and check out his videos on YouTube. Links are provided in this week's episode description. So, with that being said, take a listen. All right, so let me thank you again for coming on. I greatly appreciate you responding as quickly as you did.
Speaker 5:Oh no, I appreciate the invitation and, yeah, I love the idea of the podcast Common Ground two people coming from different places. I like the fact that you have like almost four different identity markers, that kind of coalesce from conservative, progressive to atheist and Christian, so I find that very interesting.
Speaker 4:Well, thanks, yeah, and you had asked earlier how long we've been doing this. November will be two years.
Speaker 5:Very cool.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so well, in my email that I sent to you. By the way, you can see it on our screen. But I'm Jeff, I'm the one that would be called the progressive Christian.
Speaker 2:You want to say, hey Lucas, hey Lucas. No, that's not what you meant. Peter, it's very nice to meet you. I'm excited about this. I'll be honest, jeff has been incredibly excited ever since you sent that email back. Jeff has been incredibly excited ever since you sent that email back. He has been following you for a very long time and he has talked about you a lot. I have to admit, I'm get to to know your work and, um, it's, it's very interesting. So I'm, I'm, I'm really excited to, uh, to get to meet you as well.
Speaker 4:Thanks for doing this I appreciate it, looking forward to dive in yeah so, um, like lucas said, I've been, I've been following you for a while now uh, that sounds creepy when I say it but, um, about 12 years ago I think it was 12 years ago I picked up the first book of yours that I read, which was I wrote it down Idolatry of God was actually the first one I read and then, after I read it, I went back and I bought Insurrection and how Not to Speak of God.
Speaker 4:And I read both of those insurrection and how not to speak of God and I read both of those and it really sort of helped me through this moment where I was questioning everything that I believed. And I remember at one point I was actually reading one of your books and I walked out of my office and I just said to people I don't know actually what I believe anymore, but I do still believe in Jesus, and that sort of led me down this road. But one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about is let's start with this how would you describe pyrotheology to people that aren't familiar with it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, in three sentences, peter.
Speaker 5:Yes, that is not easy to do, like any of these terms. Uh, it was kind of invented. Uh, it was actually a friend of mine came up with it because we used to create these, uh, what we call transformance art events that are immersive experiences that use music and poetry and art, whatever. So we would create these experiences and we did one that was all about fire. It was funny. We were doing a festival and we had a fire alarm going off as people went in, say, and we said there's a fire in the building, please step inside. So the fire people hated us. We got into lots of trouble because we were handing out matches to everybody, but anyway, we were wearing burnt clothes and we had a funeral pyre that had smoke coming out of it and we explored this notion of burning.
Speaker 5:Uh, there's a beautiful quote by, uh, the spanish anarchist, bonif, um, uh, who was it? Oh, I forget, I'll come back to me in a second, but the quote is the only church that illuminates is a burning one. And, um, we took that phrase and we built this event around it and somebody said this is like parotheology. So, in order to kind of describe the theory and the technology that I'm developing, I thought, oh, that's a great term, it doesn't exist. It sounds a little bit 80s, like a little bit like parotechnology, like, you know, acdc or something with fire, so I was a bit worried about that. But yeah, so it's a phrase that didn't exist. But in a nutshell, I'll say something and this will actually connect, I think, with your work and what you're doing with the podcast is I'm very interested in what I could call negativity, what we do not know, the ultimate experience that we have with the enigmatic or with the mysterious.
Speaker 5:Uh, this has always been an element of theology. Uh, both atheism and christianity have a really interesting relationship with negativity. Atheism, you know, traditionally, in its classical form, it's about a, an intellectual negation, where an atheist says I do not believe in God. So there's an intellectual negation. Christianity, I find more interesting because it's a lived experience, which means they have to existentially experience the negative, the absence of God. But both of them then have a critique of theism within them, one more intellectual, one more existential. But paratheology, then, because it's more in the Christian tradition, it's designed as a theory and also a practice to help people encounter the death of God, the loss of certainty, the embrace of a fundamental enigma or mystery at the heart of reality, not just for the sake of it, but because this confrontation with an ultimate unknowing, I would argue, and we can get into why transforms our way of being in the world, transforms how we relate to one another, how we relate within economics, within politics, within social life in general. So that's power of theology in a nutshell.
Speaker 4:So that's part of theology in a nutshell. So you mentioned sort of how it has a potential to change the way we relate. That was one of the questions that I had is, as you, lucas, and I have had a debate about whether or not everything has to have purpose and meaning. But do you like, what is the purpose for what you do? Why do you like? What is your ultimate goal and your hope with it?
Speaker 5:Yeah, so my work is in the tradition that critiques meaning. So, whether it's existentialism, absurdist philosophy, psychoanalysis, these are all traditions that have a critique of the notion of meaning, although all of them have offshoots that reject us. So, um, you know, even within psychoanalysis, you have psychology, which is a denial of psychoanalysis. Uh, you have debt psychology. Um, you have, uh, even logotherapy, you know. So you have the return of, you always have the return of meaning.
Speaker 5:Christianity, I think, as a religion, is a fundamental rejection of the lack of meaning that the death of god means. So you could say the entire, I would say the entire oedipus of religion is an attempt to bring meaning back to an event that that, uh, critiques meaning. So, basically, in a nutshell, just as in je, you're asking me what is the form of life? What I would argue. Again, I'll do it in shorthand and if you want me to unpack it, great, but in shorthand I would say we are obsessed with meaning and purpose. We are obsessed with to be human is to experience being between where we are and where we would like to be human is to experience being between where we are and where we would like to be. So all of us have what's called a circle of reality, a worldview, ideology, and that circle of reality we experience ourselves as not being where we want to be. So, as I say, we all have a sense of I'm here and I'd like to be here, and self-help and cognitive therapies and psychology all try and help you get from A to B. I want to write a book, so you want to get to the point where you've written the book and you can get advice about how to do that right. So, within circles of reality, we experience ourselves as being between, say, who we are, who we'd like to be. The name for the affect between those is guilt. So guilt is the experience of not being where you want to be, basically, but it can be in anything. I'm not having enough fun, I'm not having enough sex, I'm not reading enough books. It manifests in lots of different ways and what I'm interested in is our whole, whether it's commodity satisfaction, psychedelics, polyamory, whatever you want. Someone's giving an answer to how you can bridge the gap, how you can be whole and complete, how you can have a meaningful, purposeful life, like everyone's preaching that right. I'm currently in LA, which is the Mecca of that world.
Speaker 5:Everyone is promising wholeness and completeness, different ways of getting to be who you want to be, and my work is freedom from that entire way of being, that entire way of thinking, which means it's a type of freedom from enjoyment Not freedom to be happy, but freedom from the need to be happy. Happy but freedom from the need to be happy, freedom from the pursuit of wholeness and completeness, an ability to embrace radical unknowing and sacrifice. So for me, it's an entirely different way of being in the world that can free us from thinking that some commodity will make us happy, whether it's a car or a house, whether some person will make us happy, some romantic partner, whether some drug experience or religious experience, whatever it is right. Fill in the X, whatever the X is that will make you whole and complete. My work is about attempting to free people from that entire framework of thinking.
Speaker 2:I love that you brought that up. One of the episodes that I listened to of your podcast was back in 2019. It's labeled Pirate Theology 101. You were giving a talk to a room and then taking questions to say again I'm not, I'm not trying to blow smoke here. I had not. I was I'm not familiar with your work prior to like a couple of weeks ago, and I'm I just have really loved, uh, the stuff that I've listened to so far listening to you explain, um, your worldview for a couple of reasons. Number one, um and I'd like to get into this more in the, maybe later on but you have a real depth of knowledge of psycho, psychoanalysis and it seems like you bring that to your work quite a bit that understanding, and so I would like to talk about that more in a second.
Speaker 2:But I had a specific question when you're talking about trying to free people from meaning, because you did mention this in the episode that I listened to as well, which is, you know, you talked about how we have a desire. You talked about this concept of guilt being I should, but I'm not right. I should be here but I'm not. I should have this, but I don't. I should have done that, but I didn't, whatever it is and that there's all these different frameworks that try to free us from anxieties.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that you had said and I'm going to try to relate this, I apologize for the rambling for a second but one of the things that you had said is that, when it comes to the anxiety of death that the Stoics have this, well, first, you said that religious traditions can have an answer, for that can relieve that anxiety. Even if it's not true, right, whether it's true or not right, we don't actually die because there's another life, and so that can relieve the anxiety. And that you had said the Stoics have their answer, which is you don't have to worry about it because you're not dead yet, and when you're dead you won't know it, and so you don't have to worry about it, which I thought was a great way of summing that up. But you said that there's not really a way to, in those traditions, relieve you of the anxiety, of this need for meaning, and so my question is why doesn't a stoic position relieve you of that anxiety for meaning?
Speaker 2:Why couldn't you use that same framework of like there's no meaning? And if there was, well, I guess. Anyway, sorry, that's my question. Why wouldn't that work? Why wouldn't that work?
Speaker 5:Brilliant, yeah, so basically, in terms of the kind of popular view of death is death is ahead of us and, as you mentioned, you know there's, you know whether in the religious world they say well, we won't die, we'll go to heaven on the next life or secular forms, which is, we'll download ourselves soon into the cloud, or we'll be able to augment ourselves and get escape velocity so that we'll effectively not have to die. Or the stoic answer, as you mentioned, which is a type of yeah, hey, while you're alive, death isn't here, and when death is here, you're not, so don't worry about it. But none of them have a notion of the idea that basically, death isn't something that's coming, death is already here. There's a form of lack or death that is in, that is infused within us, and so overcoming the anxiety of going to die in the future doesn't doesn't address the anxiety of a type of lack, because I use death and lack to mean the same death is the ultimate lack. But, um, so in something like Paul Tillich's book, the Courage to Be, he kind of gives three shapes of lack, and one is the first one, which is you're going to die, and that was actually a big thing in previous ages and in different places in the world where death is all around you, then that's a big thing. In previous ages and at different places in the world where death is all around you, you know, then that's a big anxiety. But uh, then as society develops and death is more hidden away. But we we become more aware of guilt, which is another form of lack, and I mentioned that. So guilt is I am not who I need to be, so that's an infused type of lack.
Speaker 5:And then the third that pillock talks about bringing us up to the contemporary world is meaninglessness, a sense that that we can't find meaning. And so, of course, the 20th century, the late 20th century, was, in many ways the great artists were, and literary theorists and whatever. We're exploring how, this lack of meaning we feel a profound sense of of within a contemporary industrialized society, we don't get meaning in our work, we feel alienated. And then we go home and we watch crap on tv and there's something in which we just feel inherently like life has no meaning. And so for me, you know, and there's various ways in which stoicism is attempting to address that Also the pharmaceutical industry attempts to address that as well by giving certain drugs, Certain therapies.
Speaker 5:As I said, like most psychotherapies not all of them, but a lot of psychotherapies are designed to help you overcome that feeling of alienation. The difference with most psychotherapies and psychoanalysis is in psychoanalysis, and also in existentialism, with Søren Kierkegaard and others, and with Camus and the absurdist tradition, the idea is not to overcome alienation but rather to find a way to embrace it. That alienation is not an evil that has to be gotten rid of through taking some xanax or whatever, or through stoic practices or through religion. Actually, anxiety is something that is evidence of our humanity. That's what soren kirkugar says. He calls it spirit. Actually it's. Anxiety is the evidence that you're human and the reason for that is because anxiety is the affect. I don't think this is quite right, but we can get. But basically, the the best way into anxiety is to think of it as it's not knowing how you fit into the world.
Speaker 2:Uh, you said you said that it's. I'm sorry to interrupt, but you had said in that, in that episode, that, um, that you, uh you regarded anxiety as the maybe maybe I'm gonna say this wrong but as the only true emotion that there is, that that we can have many affect uh, that are not, uh, that people have this, this idea that our emotional life is the truest sense of what's real for us. That that's not actually the case, which I thought was. I think that's I would agree with that, but that anxiety is the only true emotion. Why is that? Is it because what you're talking about that it's the sense that I don't fit into a world that I exist in.
Speaker 5:Yes, absolutely so. This is a brand of Kenyan. So I I I'm very influenced by the Kenyan French psychoanalysis and in the Kenyan school or a French school, um uh, you know, emotions can lie. You can think that you hate somebody when you really love them. You think you can. You know, you think you're happy, but sometimes if someone's too happy, happy it's actually a defense against sadness.
Speaker 2:You know all of those things that happen well, it's kind of the core of psychoanalysis, right? Is that? This idea that I think that I am angry with my wife but really I'm sad because of something that happened with my mother or whatever?
Speaker 5:yes, exactly, exactly so. The analyst, we, you don't trust any of these emotions, yeah, and then, when the can says that, basically, he says I've, like, I had so many great little quips, little aphorisms, and one of his aphorisms is you know, the only, the only affect that doesn't lie is anxiety. Yeah, what he's referring to is when there's anxiety, there is a sense of kel and practice. When he says, touching the real and touching the real means it is touching an absolute enigma. You don't know how you fit into the world, you don't know who you are. So the other that's the more precise definition actually is you don't know what the other wants, you don't know what you should do. Uh, you're kind of you're the dizziness of freedom.
Speaker 5:Soren kirchgaard calls it the dizziness of freedom. You're like I don't know what to do. So every you hit anxiety, it's kind of like a true affect. It's touching the very depth of what it means to be human. But most of us I would say all of us want to escape the dizziness of freedom. Sartre, of course, said we're condemned to freedom, and what he meant by that is we don't like freedom. We want someone to tell us what to do. We want to look at tarot cards or key leaves or look at prophecies. We don't want freedom, we want to escape our freedom, but anxiety is the evidence of our freedom and it's the evidence of the truth of our subjectivity.
Speaker 2:Is that kind of related to? I think it was Jürgen Gard who talked about floating over the fathoms, in terms of the idea of faith being floating over the fathoms and not reaching for the solid shore. And that's exactly what you're talking about that we have this drive to try to reach for the solid shore, that that's where our salvation will come from, or whatever. That's where the relief of get rid of the anxiety Is that right to go ahead and embrace the anxiety of meaninglessness?
Speaker 5:Yes, yes, I mean basically no, no, that's perfect, that's perfect. Uh, dig the, the mechanisms for how to do it we can chat about, but ultimately, yes, you hit the nail on the head, which is, for me and I'm the funny thing is existentialism just very briefly, because we were mentioning existentialism is like it actually comes from, like that one of the proto existentialistsentialists was, you know, blaise, pascal and Pascal, who I love and also disagree with Pascal. The reason why he's a proto-existentialist is because in his most radical formulations of what it is to be human, he goes like to be human is to feel that something is missing both in our desire and in our conceptual abilities. So in our desire and in our conceptual abilities, so in our mind and in our bodies, and he basically shut the door to the idea that we can get rid of that. Just as you said about floating over the fathoms, there's a certain sense in which we are lost ontologically, in a sense of unknowing, and then what happens is a lot of existentialists then try to find some way of alleviating that. And so for Pascal it was a leap of faith, but for someone like Albert Camus, in his book the Myth of Sisyphus, camus basically argues very well.
Speaker 5:I just reread the book recently as well. It's in my mind that his work, the absurdist work, the work of the absurdist, is to endure and enjoy the anxiety of never being able to kneel down at the level of the mind full knowledge and at the level of the body full enjoyment. That full knowledge and full enjoyment are fantasies and we somehow have to endure and enjoy that alienation that we feel. So you said it perfectly that's the kind of work that's the good news. The good news is you can't be whole, you can't be complete. Life is shit. That's the good news.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you mentioned the good news. I have written down here one of my favorite quotes from your book, the Idolatry of God. I'm going to read it. It says here we start to approach what can be called the good news of Christianity you can't be fulfilled, you can't be made whole, you can't find satisfaction.
Speaker 4:At first, this can sound like anything but good news. However, once we're freed from the oppression of the idol, we find that embracing and loving life, with all its difficulties, offers a much deeper and richer form of joy. The good news is not simply a confrontation with the reality that total fulfillment and certainty are not possible, but rather is found in the joyful embrace of this insight, an embrace that robs the reality of its oppressive sting. So I highlighted that, like I said 12 years ago, and it's something that, as we were getting ready to talk with you, I immediately knew where it was in the book and I pulled it up Because one of the things you were talking about is this idea of anxiety, and my experience with this has been that, as I have jettisoned certainty, I have actually experienced less anxiety in my life and I am experiencing that joyful embrace that you describe. It's also the thing that has allowed me to be able to sort of step over and and kind of come through differences and just relate with people yeah, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 5:Uh, yeah, I thank you. I'm thank you for reading that. I'm glad I said that 12 years ago, so I I thought you know. You never know if you'll agree with yourself, but younger peter was was onto something there. Um you there. This gets to your core. Did you want to say anything else before I jump in?
Speaker 4:No, I'd like to hear what you have to say about that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you know, I guess the work here is that, technically, it is precisely in not knowing and in this mystery that we can find our connection with others, and that's what you were mentioning, and I'd like to just start about that very briefly. I could talk about community. So community is any social bond that is forged around shared beliefs, shared values, shared practices and, most importantly, a shared enemy. So any social bond we have like you know, we all go to a snooker club because we like snooker, we go to a certain religious group because we have those beliefs. Communities are not wrong, right, but communities, they say, they join around shared identity. But there's always and this is very key there's always. But there's always and this is very key there's always negativity, there's always something missing and that's put into the scapegoat. So the scapegoat is the name for a negativity. So a community is bound together not just because they have the shared beliefs, but their own community will have a shared enemy. Now, it might not be a shared actual enemy. Community will have a shared enemy. Now, it might not be a shared actual enemy, it might be a shared goal or whatever, something that's incomplete, something that if only they could get rid of. You know the conservatives. Or get rid of the immigrants, or get rid of, it doesn't matter. X, get rid of x, uh, get rid of the homeless, get rid of the fat cats, get rid of whatever. It is right. If we got rid of them, everything would be great. So there's a negativity.
Speaker 5:Now the thing about the scapegoat is what the scapegoat does very clever. It's a fetish object. It offers it. It basically renders an inherent impossibility into something contingent that can be got rid of. So there's an inherent problem with being human, an inherent alienation to being human. Let's imagine that for a second, without showing the work, and I let's imagine there's an inherent alienation of being human. We put it into the scapegoat, and so then we can fantasize. If only I got rid of them, then everything would be wonderful. And it's actually the scapegoat that we think. The scapegoat is what prevents the community. It's preventing something, but actually it's what joins the community. The very impossibility, the very thing that you think is the problem, is the solution to the problem. It's what holds the group together. So that's community. Anyway, it's community Then.
Speaker 5:By the way, one final thing about communities is they all exclude somebody. If you ever see a community that says we welcome everybody, there's always somebody who's not welcome. I had a friend who wanted to do a progressive friend. He wanted to do this festival. He said everyone's welcome and I was able to rattle off about four groups that would not be welcome in his progressive LA festival. And that wasn't me digging out. I must be going like there's always excluded groups. Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, I think. I think that's brilliant. And then what I was thinking when you were describing the scapegoat is that my wife is a therapist for the last 20 years and she would say I think in family systems and family systems theory they would talk about and I'm going to get this wrong but the actual term, but essentially it's the like, the identified problem person in the family, right and and the exact same. It's just a community at a smaller level. It's the exact same thing you're talking about. I think it's, and you said, most importantly for a community, it's the enemy. That is the thing that's most bonding for a community that's most galvanizing, is that right?
Speaker 5:Yeah, and the reason why I would argue that because that's a good point, yeah, and I said so why is that? Why is that more important than shared identity and this will become clear, actually, when I I'll do kind of basically three different groups, but I'll mention it now is the argument almost is that negativity always exists. You can't get rid of it. So what community does is it renders it contingent, it puts it onto somebody else, it puts the negativity onto another, it represses, disavows it, forecloses it. And this, by the way, is 101. This is why kind of the new age and fascism are so close. It's like, so like, uh.
Speaker 5:Hitler continually in my camps talked about the world is an organic whole, the nation is an organic whole, but there's some virus that's in it and we have to get rid of the virus to have a healthy, sustained whole body where everything works together. This is called corporatism. In politics, corporatism is where the government works in cooperation with the unions and the industrialists. Everyone works together. So it's a denial of what's called class consciousness, it's a denial of class antagonism that everything can work well, and of course you get that within the New Age as well. It's oh, everything's one and whole and whatever, and we just have to see through the illusion, because there's always something we have to do. So we have to just see through the illusion, anyway. So negativity at Argy always is somewhere and in the community it's repressed, it's put onto somebody else.
Speaker 5:Then the second group that I'll mention is the commons. The commons isn't a social bond at all. The commons is spaces where you meet people who are potentially radically different from yourself. So parks, libraries, public transport, places where, as I say, not only do you meet people who are on different sides of the political conflict but, more importantly, who don't even interpret the conflict in the same way. That's very, very key. The problem with society is not just that we have disagreements, but that we disagree about what the disagreements are about. That's what makes it impossible, because it's not just that one person you know kind of loves kids and the other hates kids, right, and it's like it's suddenly weirdly like if you don't agree with my position, then you hate children or whatever, because children are not being fed or whatever it's. You disagree about what the disagreement is about. So it's not as simple as that.
Speaker 2:Both sides think they care about kids, right you know, and they think they're fighting a different. They both think they're fighting a different battle. They, they can't, uh, they don't even have the same language for the uh, for the, for the um uh the conversation. I can completely see that. I was just listening to somebody talking about the problem with uh blowback. Um, you know, and part of the problem with part of the theory of the problem with blowback is not just when you know when, when a government does something, um, uh, in some other uh country or whatever, and and um, you know, there's ramifications of.
Speaker 2:That's the initial part of the blowback, but the secondary and maybe worse part of the blowback is that because the initial community, the initial government, the initial country that perpetrated this, the citizens don't know why it happened, or that it happened, or therefore they don't know that, why the blowback is happening, which means that there's confusion about what's actually happening among the populace. So they are exactly what you're talking about. Then they want a reaction from their own government, which maybe is completely disconnected with the, the reason why it's happening in the first place. So they're they're not even having the same conversation and that's kind of. It sounds like that's similar to what you're talking about there.
Speaker 5:Absolutely.
Speaker 5:There's a very famous essay by Claude Lévi-Strauss, great anthropologist, structuralist, and in this essay, very briefly, it wasn't him, it was actually another anthropologist who noticed that in this there was this tribal group and they asked the people in the tribe to draw a map of the village and the one group within the tribe drew the map with um, basically a circle in the middle where all the temple were and the kind of the elite people, and then a circle on the outside where everybody else lived. Another group drew a completely different map. It was still a circle, but it was a line down the middle and on one side there was one group, on the other the other, and basically what the anthropologists going like is. This is weird, because I was just asking him to draw a map of the village, but there's a disagreement about even how the village is mapped. And claude levy strauss really explores this. He goes like there's no real. It's not that you could then take a helicopter and take a real picture of the map. It's like the two different groups have a totally different way of mapping reality within the same village. And it's the same in American politics. It's not just that there's two different groups that disagree, they disagree about the entire mapping of the disagreement, and that's what makes politics positive a disagreement and that's it and that and that's what makes you know that's what makes politics positive. You have to navigate what's called the real of that, which is the fundamental antagonism.
Speaker 5:Now, the great thing about the commons the commons is the place where you meet people, then, who are so different from you that they map social reality differently, so much so that you hate them that you probably think they're awful, but you rub shoulders with them. You're walking your dog with them. Now, one of the problems with what happened over covid is the commons was, which is already being eroded very badly, was very eroded because we were all just stuck in our own homes and then we started hanging about with just people who thought like us. So there is an erosion of the commons. The whole idea of the commons is you need to rub shoulders with people who are very different.
Speaker 5:You even saw this online where people started to go I don't want to go home for Thanksgiving because my uncle is X, y and Z and I hate his views. His views are wrong. So, in other words, more and more we were going like we shouldn't rub shoulders with people who are radically different. So that's the commons, anyway, is where we do. So. There's community, which is a social bond based on what we share in common, and an enemy. The commons, which is just where we encounter people who are very different from us.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry to interrupt again real quick, but one of the things that Jeff and I have talked about is this concept of avatars that we project onto people an avatar of what we see like a fully caricature, like a full caricature of someone, and that we do the same thing for ourselves. We present an avatar to other people and we present an avatar to ourselves most of the time as well, and it sounds like what you're saying is that the and I would completely agree is that the more isolated we are from this place you're calling the commons, the more we are able to keep solid these avatars of the other, of the enemy, and of my friend and of myself, and all of these avatars can stay very calcified, and so is part of the benefit of the commons to constantly rub down those avatars. Is that what you're saying there?
Speaker 5:Absolutely. I mean politically speaking. That's what the commons, the value of the commons, always was, especially in the UK. There's a very big tradition of the commons. The value of the commons always was, especially in the uk. There's a very big tradition of the commons, which was one of the big air, with parks, obviously, but also with uh, what do they call them? Um, oh, uh, they're still very popular in england.
Speaker 5:Uh, where you go and you grow vegetables in this little uh, you'll basically have a little spot of land like a community garden kind of thing, kind of, yeah, allotment, allotment, that's the name for it. So people have allotments and you go down and you mix with different people and and that's, and so the idea was, if any society that does not have a healthy commons will potentially collapse into civil war, because if you're not rubbing up against, as you said, like different and then realizing that the person you think is a demon has actually got problems just like you and you can have a discussion with them and all that, yeah, without a space where you have the commons, society generally collapses yeah yeah, interesting okay, sorry, go ahead just keep going.
Speaker 2:I want to hear the next the. The rest of it yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 5:well, this is the money here.
Speaker 5:Right then, is it possible to create a social bond, not on what we share in common, but on the fact that we all share lack, and I call this communion. So there's the community, which is we share certain values, certain beliefs and a shared enemy. There's the commons, which is just we rub shoulders with people, and then there is communion, which is a social bond based on the acknowledgement that we all lack, that we all have unknowing and mystery within us, and I call it communion, because communion traditionally, is a meal around the death of god, and the death of god is the loss of absolute certainty, absolute meaning. So death of God is the loss of absolute, certainly absolute meaning. So death of God symbolizes the absolute confrontation with the loss of meaning, and so a communion is a meal in which you remember that loss you eat, and AA is an example of this.
Speaker 5:I would say AA is a communion now based around alcohol, but people who are rich and poor, conservative and liberal and all of that get together, they eat terrible donuts and cold coffee and they're all unified around a shared loss, a pain that comes from alcohol, and they acknowledge it in a community of grace, because the idea of set zero zero is like you don't do anything, you're just in a space where everyone embraces you, you accept it, you're accepted, but in that some transformation can happen. So communion for me is a social bond on lack.
Speaker 2:I can see that you want to jump in. That just makes so much sense because the first part of AA or a 12-step program is just a recognition that not that I have power over anything, but I really literally just a recognition that I don't have power over this thing.
Speaker 5:It is just a recognition of the lab. That's it absolutely, which for me is is yeah, and that's, for me, grace. So the the difference between self-help and grace is self-help is all about getting you from a to b. Self-help is all about what can be called r or will to help you get from a to b. Um, grace is can be called attention. In grace you don't go from a to b, you stay at a and you, you are set, you accept that you don't have to change at all. So in in a, a, you go around, you say my name is pete and I'm an alcoholic. Nobody asks you to change, nobody says anything. You're able to symbolize the trauma in a community that accepts you for who you are.
Speaker 5:But the trick with grace is technically and this is where psychoanalysis comes in, because psychoanalysis is the opposite of self-help. Psychoanalysis doesn't try to get you from A to B, it keeps you at A and you start to realize that A does not equal A. And what I mean by that is, say, I want to write a book and I can't write a book, so I go for advice, I go for self-help. And I find these people who say write 500 words a day, and you know, maybe you know, find a nice place to work or whatever advice they give you, right. The problem is, there's some part of you that doesn't want to write the book, right. There's a part of you that does, but unconsciously you don't. So in psychoanalysis, the question is why are you enjoying, not writing it? Not writing? It's not. How can I help you write? But let's find out why you're not writing. Why is it that every time you sit down, your mind goes blank? Is there a sense in which you want to refuse to write? You want to withhold your voice? Or you feel that your voice has been withheld in the past, or whatever it is? And as you accept it, you don't have to move, you don't have to change. You just start to see that A does not equal a. You start to go oh, I'm full of contradictory desires. I want to write the book and I also don't. You bring that to the surface, but in symbolizing it, you weaken its power and you find, paradoxically, you can maybe write the book or you lose the desire to write the book entirely.
Speaker 5:So a clinical example yes, is a woman. It's a clinical example. I heard a woman who was sleeping around a lot and she felt guilty about it. She said ah, you know I go out in these one-night stands. It's dangerous, you know I might get a sexually transmitted disease, my parents might judge me, whatever. But in the course of analysis he got rid of all the guilt. All the guilt went. Why do I feel guilty? I can do whatever I want. But of course, when the guilt went, so did the desire to sleep around.
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