Dr. Dan Koch (2:07)

But, yeah, it's like there is a population of sort of like, you know, guys and gals that are roughly, you know, let's say 30s and 40s and kind of dress like me. Like, you know, that kind of northwest, lumberjack y kind of walk like me, talk like me, and then just to be just so that everyone's on the same page. And for the women, it's beanies, it's relaxed fit jeans, and it's Blundstone boots. That's the uniform female correlate of the uniform that I wear, which is black jeans and band shirts. Anyway, so that was just funny. I was in a coffee shop this morning Kind of doing my final prep for today, and I was like. I found myself putting it so that only the back of the book was visible to people, because I honestly felt like I'm gonna give the wrong impression. And there was a time when I. Oh, this is an invitation. If somebody wants to talk who needs help or something like that.

Kristen Tiedman (3:04)

Oh, my gosh.

Dr. Dan Koch (3:05)

It's just interesting to see. We'll talk a little bit today and next week about how some of this stuff has shifted. I know I have at least one or two things for part four, our final part of this great divorce series, but I'm happy to be back with you today.

Kristen Tiedman (3:22)

Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. This time I didn't do this for the first half, but the second half of the book, I ended up listening to a lot of it, which was fun. I only recently realized Spotify Premium includes a ton of audiobooks, which is amazing. So I was stoked. Yeah. But I found that it kind of put me in a different head space in a good way. But it was crazy because I think I've read this book three or four other times, and so much of it, even though it's familiar, felt so different, just like the experience of it and maybe also a little bit of the anticipation. But it was fun to hear someone else put the emphasis on things, kind of. And then I went back and just read it as well. But I was kind of in this. I don't know. It's funny. I love to listen to things while driving, so it was like I was kind of getting in my heaven zone. My purgatory zone, if you will.

Dr. Dan Koch (4:19)

Yeah. Well, as we're going to find out, as you look back, it will have either been heaven or hell.

Kristen Tiedman (4:25)

And which will it be? Who knows?

Dr. Dan Koch (4:30)

Okay, so, right, we're back in. This is part three of four. Today we are talking about chapters six through nine. Six, seven, and eight are focused on these ghosts kind of specific profiles. And then chapter nine is a big exposition, theology and psychology dump from the allegorical heaven version of the British writer George MacDonald, who was a huge influence on C.S. lewis, I think we're gonna probably spend about as much time on chapter nine as we do on six, seven, and eight combined. But after dragging chapter five around in my psyche like a dandy Broadway performer on a BDSM leather leash and chain for the last week, I think it's gonna be refreshing to talk today about chapters six through nine. How are you feeling? Yeah.

Kristen Tiedman (5:19)

Yeah. Again, getting hit by the really stark picture painting that C.S. lewis does. And yet is so humble about because he cannot capture it in the way that he writes about it.

Dr. Dan Koch (5:33)

There's a few places where I do think he's having his cake and eating it too, here and there throughout the book. But that's okay. I mean, I do think that the job he's trying to do here is a difficult one. Right? He's trying to use allegory to get at, at minimum, some psychological truths. I think for him, he's trying to get at some theological truths as well. I think that's a little more fraught in my mind personally. But it is a hard task. Like how do you kind of get at this stuff if you don't just want to write a book of nonfiction essays or something where you just lay out arguments. So I hope that we can be a little bit kind to him while also critical of what we need to be critical of. So here's what I'm going to do right now. I'm going to read through the plot summary of chapters six, seven and eight and then we will talk through all the ideas that came up for us around those. And then, as I said, we'll give ourselves a bunch of time for chapter nine, because that's the real meat. And again, this is a Thursday episode, so if you want to hear the whole thing, you're going to need to become a patron. Patreon.com Dan Koch that link is always in the notes. All right, chapter six. The narrator struggles upstream to a massive waterfall and a tree of golden apples, where he finds Ike, the clever ghost from the bus who's trying to gather apples to take back to the grey town and sell the fruit, which is more real than the ghosts, is agonizingly heavy. Icky persists, imagining a profitable heavenly import scheme. This is his way. This is his way. Around Trump's tariffs, a towering spirit in the waterfall tells him that the apples can't be taken to hell, urges him to stay and enjoy them here, but he refuses, choosing his fantasy of gain over the reality of joy. Nice big metaphor here for Lewis. And he drags away, or attempts to drag away. We don't know how it goes. Probably it doesn't work out. A single tiny apple toward the bus. Chapter 7 We're moving back downstream. The narrator encounters various ghosts trying to impose their own ideas, sort of like terraforming Mars version of ghosts in heaven. And then he falls in with the hard bitten ghost. This is a cynic who believes the whole excursion is a con. I would actually say he's more of a conspiracist than anything else. And this guy dismisses the landscape as just another park, like an amusement park, and argues that heaven and the grey town must be run by the same management, since no real rescue ever happens. His suspicion starts to unsettle the narrator. We get a little internal doubt. Anyway, the ghost is not moved to move forward, of course. And then chapter eight, the narrator is now a little bit shaken and he overhears this well dressed female ghost enter a little bit of C.S. lewis's mid century misogyny here. So she is paralyzed by shame and terrified that the bright people, the spirits, will see how thin and unreal she is. And she refuses the spirit's assurance that this exposure is the path to healing. Interesting psychological idea there. When she finally breaks down, the spirit blows a horn and a herd of unicorns charges through the forest, sending both the woman and the narrator into panic. This scene ends abruptly. We don't know how it's going to end at the end of that chapter. Okay, so that's 6, 7 and 8. I have a few things I'd love to hit on. Where do you want to start?

Kristen Tiedman (9:16)

Oh, man. I think something. I mean, we had mentioned some of chapter five and, well, even earlier chapters from the first section. Some of this realness is pretty big and kind of the setting and what that means for these ghosts. But I do think, what do you mean by realness? The heavenly realm that they're in and the world being so hard and real.

Dr. Dan Koch (9:39)

Heaven being more real than hell.

Kristen Tiedman (9:41)

Yeah, more real than hell.

Dr. Dan Koch (9:42)

That's really showing up a bunch. Maybe kind of overdone a little bit. I don't know.

Kristen Tiedman (9:49)

Yeah, I was like, okay.

Dr. Dan Koch (9:51)

I was like, especially later chapters, 10, 11, 12. It's like, okay. I'm not sure if we're adding anything new with many of these ghosts here. We could condense this. It's like somebody who thinks that the best form of movie criticism is to say you could have cut 25 minutes out of this movie. That's how I feel. That's my criticism of the Great Divorce.

Kristen Tiedman (10:08)

Oh my gosh. Yeah, it was like a little bit of like hinting, hinting, hinting and then saying outright saying outright saying, okay, we get the point. They're like, you'll understand presently. That was a phrase I feel like I read 20 times. But there's that, there's, I think, some of the propaganda, the management, and there's something that the narrator says of it being uncomfortably plausible that I'd like to discuss. But then in both chapter seven and eight, the last thing I want to talk a little bit about happiness as outsourced. And that came up for me. So those are kind of my three to begin with.

Dr. Dan Koch (10:59)

Let's start with the conspiracy stuff because I had some thoughts about that too. So what did you have written down about that?

Kristen Tiedman (11:07)

Yeah, well, you've got this guy, the hard bitten ghost in chapter seven, who's like, this is all propaganda. He's like, I've been told my whole life, this thing's gonna get better, that thing's gonna get better, or this is, you know, the management is this or not. But he's like, he even references mom and dad. He's like, if mom comes up and says Dad's gonna be like the, like kind of the villain, but you realize later they're on the same team. And. And yeah, it's like, it's kind of just a. He's just, I mean, a bit of a wet blanket, I was gonna say. I'm glad they didn't make this character a woman. Cause then it would have been even tougher for women in the Great Divorce. But yeah. What do you think of the hard bitten ghost?

Dr. Dan Koch (11:46)

Well, I like that you're highlighting the childhood aspect there. And I think Lewis is actually smart to include a comment about mom and dad because there is a kind of immaturity and childishness to this. And where my mind went with it was the connection between like this character embodies two things that we tend to see like as therapists, maybe separately, which are what are called like a victim mindset or sort of a victimhood script. So that's common. There are whole books for therapists written about clients that present this way. And also the conspiracy theorist mindset. And I was like, why do I. What do those have in common? And I was thinking about it and I was like, oh, it's the commonality between them, which is also true of childhood, by the way, is what we would refer to in psychology as locus of control. So internal versus external locus of control. So if somebody presents with a view of the world that has a heavy internal locus of control, then that means that, that they see their experiences and their interactions in the world as flowing out of their own choices, their will, you know, decisions that they've made for ways that they have formed themselves. Right? So somebody who is. Speaks with confidence about their career path or whatever. Like they are, they are showing you that they have a high internal locus of control. Whereas somebody who presents with like a high score on external locus of control kind of sees all the Things that happen in the world as out of their control. It's other actors, their parents did it to them or the government or society or conspiracy theories work this way. Well, it's not really that I failed. It's that there's a group of really powerful, a cabal of powerful men that really run things and they are the reason that I've failed.

Kristen Tiedman (13:45)

Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (13:45)

So there is this kind of, you know, inability or reduced ability to sort of see oneself as an actor in the world whose choices make a difference. And that's directly tied to responsibility. Because if it's not your, if it's not your doing, then it's not your fault and it's not your responsibility. And you can't be the one to move things forward either. And so you can end up in cynicism, nihilism, obviously depression. And then that can be kind of a self fulfilling prophecy and a downward spiral. So that's kind of where my mind went psychologically with it.

Kristen Tiedman (14:22)

Well, it's funny, I mean, yeah, we're talking about this and I made it a separate point, but it really gets folded in here of this, even happiness as this outsourced thing that I think goes hand in hand.

Dr. Dan Koch (14:33)

Do you mean that like you have to, in order to be happy, someone else has to do it? What do you mean by outsourcing?

Kristen Tiedman (14:40)

Yeah, well, mainly when I was seeing the, you know, the hard bitten ghost is talking about the management has to find something that doesn't bore us and has to. It's like if you're in an Airbnb. Airbnb. Oh my gosh, I always do that. A BNB with the eggs that aren't good and then the management's like, you'll learn to like them, you know, like you would never be happy with that. Which is why I say also like started to verge on a Karen attitude, which I was glad I was a dude.

Dr. Dan Koch (15:04)

Yeah, yeah, it's the male version of a Karen.

Kristen Tiedman (15:07)

Male version of a Karen. But I was like, yeah, this is, I think it goes hand in hand of like waiting for the other. The power that be to both bring you, you know, the good fortune you need to get things done or the happiness, you know, it can't just be that you have the responsibility to find that the happiness that you can. And I'm not, I mean, I'm wondering, I don't know the psychology of happiness exactly. I'd be interested to hear some of the components there. I've heard different things that it's a balance of what is within and without your control, of course. But I think, I mean this goes back. It's funny, you see, I think Lewis has a strong opinion of people taking this mentality like obviously a strong low opinion of, of just seeing themselves as I would say, not, not having that control of, of having that victimhood script. But then also the inherent pride in it. It's like, well, I did my best. That's what keeps recurring so strongly in these ghosts. I did, I did what I needed to do. It's these other people, the management, the whatever, even God they directly do blame, especially some of the. In the next few chapters. And I, I think you. Yeah, Lewis isn't hiding, he's showing his cards here. That pride paired with low control seems to be the ultimate like not the state of mind you don't want the way to be, the not way to be, if you will. And I, But I. That it's the recipe of both because as soon as someone could kind of acknowledge that they're either being prideful or that they're being, you know, like they're lacking any sense of responsibility. It's weird because it gets into almost a determinism and a lot of this book is about choice. The choice of hell, I mean spoilers of chapter nine, but the choice of hell or heaven. So I guess it's funny because he also acknowledges that there are people, denominations that are more, of course those who are Calvinists have a little bit more of a deterministic script, but he seems to reject that.

Dr. Dan Koch (17:17)

So.

Kristen Tiedman (17:18)

Yeah. Did those sorts of thoughts come up for you on the theological side as well?

Dr. Dan Koch (17:23)

Well, there's a psychological angle I'd like to take and I'll borrow one of the points that I had earmarked for chapter nine. We can balance the scales a little bit here. I think it's really interesting to read the Great Divorce through the lens of kind of the way that like Jonathan Haidt and other psychologists think about how we use language to justify ourselves.

Kristen Tiedman (17:49)

Hmm.

Dr. Dan Koch (17:50)

So the basic model is something like this. I do something and then I need to narrate to myself and maybe other people why I did it. And I will narrate that in a self interested way by default. Does that make sense? I want to make sure that model's clear.

Kristen Tiedman (18:10)

Yes, but Height's saying that's almost intrinsic.

Dr. Dan Koch (18:14)

Yeah, that's just the way that language, the way that we use language for the purposes of self justification. That doesn't mean we always, always do that or can't do it any other way. But like just think of that as kind of a good default understanding. So like if I. I always use this example. I tell Jaffrey that I will do the dishes while she's gone. She gets home, I haven't done the dishes, I. And she says, jail. So what happened with. What happened with the dishes? I don't tend to default and I think I'm quite normal in this sense. I don't tend to default to. Huh. I guess I didn't do what I said that I would do. I wonder if I have a problem with follow through. I don't do that. I will say, oh, you. I was going to and I got distracted by this thing and then this thing. And so yeah, I didn't get to it because I'm not like the kind of person who doesn't do what he says he'll do.

Kristen Tiedman (19:08)

Oh, interesting.

Dr. Dan Koch (19:08)

External. I mean, locus of control. External things happen. I have good reasons for this. So in a sense, Height says, we are always our own defense lawyer. Right. And. And I think that that's a really good way to read the ghost's narration of their own lives. They are sort of like a shitty defense layer for themselves that we can see through. It's like easy.

Kristen Tiedman (19:38)

Literally.

Dr. Dan Koch (19:39)

Literally. But it's easy. And that works in the sort of theology and metaphysics of the world that Lewis is creating. Right? Because in Lewis's world they are diminished versions even of themselves on Earth. Right. We will talk about this with chapter nine and then again, sort of chapter 13, McDonald's kind of final next week. McDonald's sort of final narration of what's going on here really is that people kind of continue in the afterlife on the trajectory that they had in their own life. Now that's an interesting metaphysical idea that I don't know how you would prove that, but as a concept, to look at it psychologically, it's really interesting because you just are imagining sort of like a concentrated dehydrated astronaut food version of these people when they're alive. And so to the extent that we all do this, we speak sometimes as our defense attorney without knowing it, by the way. Often then these characters are really doing that because they are sort of diminished versions, extreme and also diminished versions of who they were when they were alive. So that's kind of where my mind went. Are you familiar with that concept?

Kristen Tiedman (20:56)

I think, I mean, somewhat not. I wouldn't have been able to articulate it that way. But I do know, I think, maybe, correct me if I'm wrong here, there was a book I read forever ago called you Are not so smart about a lot of fallacies and whatnot.

Dr. Dan Koch (21:11)

I'm familiar with the podcast. Is it the same guy?

Kristen Tiedman (21:14)

I think it must be. Probably.

Dr. Dan Koch (21:16)

Yeah.

Kristen Tiedman (21:16)

Yeah. But the one, of course, that's like, we tend to attribute, you know, if we make a mistake, it's kind of a fluke. Whereas if someone else makes a mistake, it's a character flaw.

Dr. Dan Koch (21:28)

Totally related. Right? Like, yeah, like we are the prosecution if they made the mistake and we're the defense if we made the mistake. Like the lawyer analogy is a pretty.

Kristen Tiedman (21:36)

Good one, I think, where this is so funny. I mean, I mentioned to you Dan, and I'll get into it, I'm sure. More in our next week's episode with the ghosts there. But there were a number of times in the second half where I got. I was convicted, very convicted. Christian language.

Dr. Dan Koch (21:52)

But I. I'm just glad that I can. I'm just glad that I can shift the burden over to you for a week.

Kristen Tiedman (21:57)

Well, I mean, yeah, I didn't want it, but here it is. And this was one of the first spots. Was. And even as we're talking, I think, I mean, I hope you don't get the pleasure of arguing with me in a real argument at any point because as someone may attest, someone in my life may attest, I become qu. The lawyer. I am instantly a very good defense and prosecution lawyer. And I will say if you told me if said person said they didn't do the dishes, I would make sure they knew it's because of the kind of person they are. Hopefully I'm getting better about all this, but I.

Dr. Dan Koch (22:39)

Fair warning to Bo. Yeah, yeah, right.

Kristen Tiedman (22:42)

I know. Well, I. When I was. I told you I was listening to some of this. When I was listening to it, I'm like, I can't let Beau read this chapter. He'll be like, look, you.

Dr. Dan Koch (22:52)

Hey, you know what though? But hey, if it's gonna be presented as evidence, the rules of discovery means the prosecution has to get it as well.

Kristen Tiedman (23:00)

It's rough that way. Rough that way. Yeah. I was like, oh, no. And so I was really. I was humbled in the ways that I. And I know this is part of Lewis's intent, but the way I could see myself in the ghosts, the thing that's tricky. I mean, the hard bitten ghost wasn't where I was the most convicted. More so maybe even in this vain GH that didn't want to be seen. But the hard bitten ghost, what's tricky about it is, and this is why conspiracy theories flourish is that there is the. That's why it stood out. That uncomfortably plausible language. I mean, if you line it up in such a way, everything lines up. You know, it's like, oh, well, that would make sense. If X is true, then Y is true. You know, blah, blah, blah. And it's a little bit tricky again, as we come at it from our theological perspective, which I think we covered more in the first half. We don't need to go down that whole road again. But it's like, yeah, well, why is it like this? And you can even, I think Lewis, at the beginning of chapter eight, it was. Was asking, you know, why aren't these, you know, heavenly spirits going down into hell? Like, it doesn't make sense. Like, why wouldn't they do all they can do? And he's like, all depressed. So I think, yeah, there's. There's components of this where I, again, I would say, what are you feeling convicted by?

Dr. Dan Koch (24:27)

What's the real juice here?

Kristen Tiedman (24:28)

Give us my own victimhood in this instance, my own blaming of other things, which historically I think I've done more of. I'd like to think I'm getting better at accepting the responsibility of doing things at times, not the best way, which is a hard. I will say I think it's from my experience, it's a little bit of a skill. You just have to get better at doing it. Kind of like swallowing your pride, which is initially not fun. But then you're like, oh, okay, it can be done. But it's also empowering because I think when I remember, especially my mid-20s, maybe I've talked to you about this, Dan. I was in a pretty good career, but I was kind of feeling stuck. And I just was like, I don't know what to do. And I saw this attitude among it was a lot of people in their 20s and early 30s at the place I worked, Just kind of the nature of what it was, saw a lot of blame cast on the leadership. And it was kind of the attitude of the. I mean, unfortunately, the whole business that was only about 30 people. It was like, oh, they don't want this for us. They're trying to extort us. All these sorts of things, like very.

Dr. Dan Koch (25:38)

Much management versus labor kind of classic dynamic.

Kristen Tiedman (25:42)

Yes. And I feel like I, without even intending to, kind of bought into that. And then, of course, as many people in their 20s do when they're stuck, I went to grad school. There are a lot of reasons for that. I waited till my 30s, but, yeah, hey, nice. Well, you know, you had Like a famous band to run. I famous. I knew about it in middle school. That means it was famous. I look back and I think, man, if I had had more of a script of like having that locus of control, I would have done things so differently. I would have known, like. And I just recognize I had so many more cards, I guess in my favor. I think I'm mixing metaphors, but so many cards in my hand that I could have played that I didn't see what I could do with them at the time. And so unfortunately, youth is wasted on the young. Things are different now. Hopefully though I've learned from that. I think I have. I think it's a different sort of situation. But it's tough to look back and be like, man, I was this hard bitten ghost a little bit. And although I was not the worst in my company, there were some people who truly you would be like, why are you hate these management? Like you hate these people. So yeah, and there's, there's, there's a thing that I, I wrote actually an essay on grads in grad school about this, about kind of Plato in this perspective. But that's another story that's a longer, a longer discursion.

Dr. Dan Koch (27:12)

Let's, well, let's pop over to the patron only section of the episode. So main feed listeners, we will bid you ado. Everybody else will see you on the other significant.