← Zero Hour with James Poulos
Loading summary
Transcript81 lines
- [00:01]
James Polis
Your data is like gold to hackers.
- [00:03]
Jonathan Pageau
They'll sell it to the highest bidder.
- [00:05]
James Polis
Are you protected?
- [00:06]
Jonathan Pageau
McAfee helps shield you blocking suspicious texts.
- [00:09]
James Polis
Malicious emails and fraudulent websites.
- [00:12]
Jonathan Pageau
McAfee Secure VPN lets you browse safely and its AI powered tech scam detector spots threats instantly.
- [00:18]
James Polis
You'll also get up to $2 million.
- [00:20]
Jonathan Pageau
Of award winning antivirus and identity theft protection, all for just $39.99 for your first year. Visit McAfee.com, cancel anytime terms apply.
- [00:30]
James Polis
When the meaning of everything is up for grabs, what does the west mean anymore? Jonathan Pageau is here. I'm James Polis and this is Zero Hour.
- [01:03]
Jonathan Pageau
La la la la.
- [01:06]
James Polis
Yeah, we're gonna clear up the confusion today. Jonathan's here. He's an artist, he's a writer, he's a public speaker. He's the host of the Symbolic World podcast where he explores symbolic patterns which inform our world. Welcome, Jonathan. So, like, everyone's super confused right now and, you know, even symbols that we thought we, we recognized and we're gonna stick around for a long time, it all sort of seems to be melting. Tell us what's going on and how we can find our way out.
- [01:31]
Jonathan Pageau
Well, a good way to understand what's going on is that we're reaching the end of something or the fringe of something. The edge is a good way of understanding it. And the edge of something has a coherence to it. It looks like something looks like fragmentation. Sometimes it can look like an excess also of strength. Right. Like on the wall of a city where you have the soldiers that are trying to hold out the enemy. And so the edge looks like many things, like the monsters on the edge of the world or the gargoyles on the outside of the church and the margins of manuscripts. You'd have these hybrid figures that were, you know, kind of represented a world that it doesn't make sense. And we talk about clown world. Right. You've heard people talk about it that way. That's a good way to understand it, is that in some ways we are in a kind of large carnival and all our civilization has reached a carnival point. Yeah.
- [02:20]
James Polis
It's like one of those funhouse halls of mirrors. Yeah.
- [02:23]
Jonathan Pageau
That turns into the funhouse of horror.
- [02:25]
James Polis
Yeah. Right. That's the thing is one minute you're having a good time, and the next minute you're genuine, genuinely lost and frightened.
- [02:30]
Jonathan Pageau
Yeah. And that is in some ways the whole aesthetic of the carnival or the whole aesthetic of the fringe is that there's a loosening and that loosening can be expressed as maybe a lot of freedom, a lot of liberty, but also, you know, also libertinage like to become, move into excess, into your desire. But that also quickly becomes a kind of breakdown. And that breakdown, because it's funny, think about, let's say a good example would be you're out with friends, you know, things are a little loose. Things are. It's at the end of the evening, you know, the day, work day is over. Now you're partying, you have a few drinks and it's a lot of fun. But there's an edge. Right. If you tip over that edge, then that fun time drinking turns into you losing your mind, you know, puking in the back, in the toilet. Right, right.
- [03:21]
James Polis
Getting mugged in the dark alley.
- [03:23]
Jonathan Pageau
And so that is a good way to understand our civilization. Why sometimes it looks like this weird, you know, anything goes party world, and then all of a sudden it then it flips into despair and despondency.
- [03:35]
James Polis
So, yeah, how do people guard themselves against that? I mean, you know, there's. There's one approach which is ban fun, shut it down. You know, put the padlocks on everything. Super safety, super risk averse. You know, that's kind of become the spiritual response that has become more prominent sort of on the left side of things, which used to not be the case. It used to be like, you know, everyone guardians all the time. That's right, right. You know, the revolutionary acts of, of hedonism and perversion, and now even those have kind of been folded into this. Like everything's going to basically be like a hospital or a therapy clinic.
- [04:10]
Jonathan Pageau
Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating to watch. The, A good way to see it is that as a pendulum. Right. So as you reach the edge of something, the pendulum starts to swing wider and wider. And there's something about American society in particular which does seem to swing between extremes. And that's not something that's new. We always have to remember that 100 years ago alcohol was illegal in the United States. And now we have this other flip side where kind of like this insane party, party culture after the 60s, we're still at the end of that right now, and we're on the verge. Covid was a little example of a flip back to this crazy purity, right? This. This desire to keep everything controlled and everything tight. And so I think that the solution is to really explore symbolic thinking and the full, the fullness of it. Because traditional societies and traditional cultures, they have a center, they have an identity, they have Ways to participate in that. And then they also have formally, within their structure, something like carnival, Right. Something where there are moments of little bit of excess that we let happen. You know, that you have the corners of the field for the stranger. You have the Purim, for example, in the Jewish culture, where the one day where everybody dresses up and is kind of chaotic and drinks until they fall to the ground. And this is. We had Mardi Gras in the west, and these kind of carnival traditions are there to, in some ways prevent the entire world from moving in these extremes. So having understanding the role of, let's say, the role of identity, the role of participation, then also not being too tight on that, right. Holding it loosely so that you have some room for things to spill over a little, and then they come back to normality. It's nothing weird that I'm saying. It's just basically, it's like you work during the day, and then in the evening you have to stop working and just chill and hang out and maybe have a drink, you know, and then you go to bed and you start over. That's just a normal cycle. But if we think about that as a pattern of normal being where it should be like that for everything, where you have a moment where you're actually working towards the identity, and then you have a moment where you let it go a little and then you come back. But if you try to work 24 hours a day and, you know, people like that, that it's like all work and then, you know, cocaine, bender, crazy madness, at the end of that all work, it's like, no, that's not. We need to find that normal balance.
- [06:42]
James Polis
Yeah, I mean, it does seem like the West. You know, we can talk about exactly what that means. The west has been a place where historically, you know, huge waves of really just chaos and violence, blood ritual, fracturing, fragmenting. You go back to whether it's like an Alexis de Tocqueville or like a Frederick Nietzsche who sort of looks at China as the opposite of this, you know, a place of this kind of almost eternal sort of stagnation or rest under this kind of despotism that's just sort of hanging in the air. And they contrast it with, you know, the intense movement and motion and these waves of motion and coming together and breaking apart in. In the West.
- [07:23]
Jonathan Pageau
That makes sense, you know, just in terms of even the fact that you identify yourself as the West. You know, the idea that although obviously the earth is round, but we still have a map in our mind of what is east and what is West? And we have a sense that we are the west, and that's what the west is. The west is the end. Yes. Is the, the west is the end of the day. Right. It's where the sun goes down. And it, all of that symbolism of that edge, you know, is manifested in our culture. American culture is everything, right? American culture. Often. Cause I'm Canadian, and sometimes people say, well, Americans are like that. And I'm like, well, actually, you're right, but also the opposite of what you just said. You know, it's like when you go to California, you find the craziest fringe stuff, but you also find, like, Orthodox monasteries that are extremely traditional or like Catholic monasteries or these communities that are the most traditional you've ever found. And that's what's particular about America, is that in some ways it represents the danger, but also the pregnancy or the possibility of the edge, you know, of moving into that. How can I say this? Of something that's at the end, but that also contains a seed that can grow into something new, into a new beginning.
- [08:40]
James Polis
Yeah, yeah. The possibility of that rebirth.
- [08:42]
Jonathan Pageau
That's right. That's right. And that's not something which is. And you can see it, like, it's not something that is as available, I think, even to Europe. You know, when you look at some of the things happening in Europe and England and France, you just, you're watching the sunset. That's what it feels like. You're like, okay, there's a little bit of glimmer of light left, but it's almost done. But in America, there's still. And sometimes it's a difficult thing, but there's still the bubbling and still the discussion, and still the, the tension is still there.
- [09:11]
James Polis
Yeah. I mean, I don't think there's any question that, you know, especially just kind of looking at Europe and where, where is this going? Does anyone remember, you know, who they are? So much of this has to do with identity. And so we get this. You know, there's, there's a lot of talk now about saving the West. You know, this is the time we need to sort of come together and find a way to, to save the West. But if you can't identify, yeah, the west, then how are you supposed to save it?
- [09:32]
Jonathan Pageau
Yeah, exactly. That makes a lot of sense. I, I, none. I think that the west will be saved to some extent when it will be able to look to the East. And that sounds weird, the way that I said that, but what I mean is that there is an aspect of the west, which is this stable. Right. For example, I do believe that, let's say Christian culture, Christianity in the west has been, for all the fractiousness of the story of the west has been something which has been a marker that follows through. Right? It's like if there's one line that follows through, it is Christianity. Even in the religious wars, even when it was breaking down, there's that line. And I think that looking towards that stability, finding those places that it, that, that carry that stability will be a way to help us, if not save the west, at least, at least build an arc, right? At least gather together enough so that if things really start to collapse, then there'll be a new. Because collapse also brings a new world after it. So hopefully. Yeah, well, I mean, obviously there's also always a nuclear holocaust possibility, but it's probably best not to think about that because, you know, what are you going to do? You just do. We can only do what we can do right now, which is, you know, in terms of. This is the way that I approach it, which is in a world of internationalism, like in a world where identity is being fragmented and being kind of carried in that direction, the one thing we can do is act around us. And that sounds trite, but, you know, to be a good father, right, to be a good husband, to be a member of your parish, to be a member of your community, to be someone who knows their neighbors, someone who helps their neighbors, all these things are absolutely accessible to everybody all the time. And in a time when things are falling apart, it's those true anchors that will, they'll carry through, you know, because they're real.
- [11:32]
James Polis
Well, and that's about humility too, right? Which is, you know, no matter what, you have to keep doing these things, Even if you get really good at doing some things that are higher order or smarter or more abstract or, you know, addressed to the world as such instead of to, to your own home or your own family. You know, if you neglect those things, you're just cutting yourself off at the roots.
- [11:52]
Jonathan Pageau
And I think the online world and the media world has made it, of course, difficult because we're constantly being put images of world conflicts in front of us. It's like, you know, why am I, I'm paying attention to this war in Ukraine, I'm paying attention to this war in Israel. There's absolutely nothing I can do about this. You know, and when we talk about global warming or these huge, you know, world crises, I just, I just feel crushed. And rightly so. And I'm not. I don't want to say that those things are important. They are important and we should keep them on our horizon. But we should have the right hierarchy, which is that there are places where I can act right, and then I can be a force for good. And, and that's how the world changes ultimately, is to be that where you can be. And if you can have influence on those larger issues, then great. But most of us obviously don't.
- [12:44]
James Polis
I think so many people, you know, faced with that problem, come to the conclusion that there actually is something they can do about it, maybe even something they have to do about it. And that's talk about.
- [12:52]
Jonathan Pageau
That's right.
- [12:53]
James Polis
Just relentlessly talk about it, critique it, argue about it, describe it, explain it. So much of economic life seems to be getting sucked into this idea that like, well, no one can really do anything anymore except just kind of fill the air with as many words as possible. And you know, here I am sort of.
- [13:13]
Jonathan Pageau
That's right, that's what we do.
- [13:15]
James Polis
Contributing more words. And at least my words are about the words. The, you know, the surplus of words problem, it's understandable, but it's also making it hard to experience life in a non verbal way. You know, even looking at AI. Well, what's that? You know, what are all these machines that are going to sort of automate life for us? They're large language models, they're just talk boxes. And everything that they spit out at us is just kind of a compilation of everything they see in that, that funhouse of mirrors. All of the words, all of the word clouds that come out of all of the people and they sort of distill that down. Maybe some of our identity problem that everyone seems to be suffering through has to do with the fact that we can't understand who we are in a world that is constantly filled with words.
- [14:04]
Jonathan Pageau
I agree. I think it's also because something happened, you know, in the intellectual history of the west that we did move up here quite a bit. And so because of that, we tend to forget that identity is participation. It's not actually totally who you think you are or how you think about yourself. It's where you are and how you participate in that world. And so identity is something that you engage in. And so it's actually singing the national anthem, for example, the United States. It's much closer to identity than thinking about what we are, you know, like I said, you know, volunteering for something, participating in the world that you're in. Being a father, being a Husband being a, you know, a part of your community, that then you're. When you do that, like in practice, a lot of the identity problems just go away.
- [14:56]
James Polis
Yeah.
- [14:57]
Jonathan Pageau
You actually don't have time to think about it too much because, you know, when you're having. If you have kids and you're taking care of your kids, you know, you. You obviously are trying to do the best thing you can, but you don't have the energy to spend your time thinking about, you know, what abstractly is a father. It's like, no, you know, just eat, sleep, take care of, you know, keep warm, do those things, make sure they've got everything. And those. That's more of a. I think that's closer to how identity functions, which is why, you know, I, you know, I believe that there's a. That ritual, for example, is a good way to engage identity more than activism or more than talking about it. That, let's say, going to church or having a family meal, celebrating the holiday, celebrating Christmas, celebrating Thanksgiving, celebrating the things. These are the ways in which our identities are formed because they ground space, they create borders, they create natural inside spaces that we engage in, and that's what identity is made of.
- [16:03]
James Polis
Yeah. The national anthem thing is such an interesting case because a lot of people have. Have thoroughly memorized the national anthem. A lot of people haven't. And you know, you're sort of bombs break, burst, and then, you know, oh, say, you know, people can lock into that and you don't have to have it memorized. You don't have to be an expert in the phraseology of the national anthem in order to partake of it and stand there with everyone else. Your. Your. Your hat to your chest and, and, but that's really.
- [16:29]
Jonathan Pageau
I mean, and you can see that the. For example, the attack on the national anthem that happened a few years ago in all these sports events, you know, that is. That is a sign of identity fragmentation, you know, because identity and being something and participating something does never means that you agree with everything that ever happened in the history of the thing you're in. Like it. I am Pageau, and I come from a line of people and a family, and I assume that. And I'm happy for that, but doesn't mean that everything that everybody's ever done in my family lineage is worthy of praise. And I think that that's something that. That's why I'm saying that when we think about, like, when we're too critical, like, too analytical, then we have this issue and it has to do in America, it has to do definitely with this weird purity thing. You know, it's like our, our national heroes or your national heroes. I mean, in Canada we have the same problem. But your national heroes, they basically have to be gods or they have to be perfect or else they have to be thrown out. But that's not true participation and through relationship. It's the same with your own parents. Like your parents are imperfect and you love them and you're not an idiot. Like, you're aware of their imperfections, you're aware of the things they've done wrong and the mistakes that they've made. But it doesn't mean that you toss them out because you're going to be judged by that standard as well if you're not careful. And if you get rid of the national heroes of America, for example, and who are you going to replace them with? Because even the people you want to replace them with, they all have their dark skeleton skeletons in their closet. They all have dark secrets, can't avoid it. That's what being human is.
- [18:14]
James Polis
Yeah, I mean, we already tried this before people started melting down statues and taking the knee and everything. And it was called celebrity culture.
- [18:20]
Jonathan Pageau
Right.
- [18:21]
James Polis
That's who we replace the heroes with. And it's exactly what you're talking about, where you elevate them to this impossible sort of simulated deity status and then you make the inevitable discovery that they are imperfect and impure and then you exact revenge on them, sort of kill them, tear them down, throw them down and then get that sort of perverse satisfaction out of that. And it was only a matter of time before what happened, happened, which is people start applying this kind of psychosis, this psychodrama to themselves and they think, you know, oh, my wedding day, I have to be a princess. You know, I have to be a literal princess. Or, you know, if, if I'm not the perfect sort of embodiment of this role or that role, then it's just straight to the self loathing, you know, it's the slightest strain in a relationship and the relationship breaks.
- [19:10]
Jonathan Pageau
Yeah, that's a really good way of thinking about it, you know. And you see, the marriage one is interesting too because you see it, you know, people who wait years because they want the perfect wedding and they're like, you know, they're saving up and they're like getting. And they're having this whole thing where they're. And, and it's like, what do you think a wedding is? I mean, of course weddings should be beautiful and great, but it's Mostly two people engaging themselves, you know, ritualistically with their community towards a relationship. And that's the. That's what I mean by, like, the participative aspect is more important than the. You know, the. The image that we have of it or the abstract idea that we have of this perfect thing.
- [19:53]
James Polis
Yeah, yeah. Some of the most important stuff that takes place is invisible.
- [19:57]
Jonathan Pageau
Yeah. And. But it is. It's possible, too, that the. The online world has made all of this more. More difficult because, you know, in. In a normal world or in the ancient world, you know, you. You knew because you're these people, the people around you, they're part of your life. You see their foils, you see all their problems all the time. But Instagram is like a horrible mask, right, where you can just show this glorious image of yourself, and everybody's just voyeuristically looking at other people's amazing lives and have a sense that that actually exists.
- [20:30]
James Polis
Yeah, well, you know, there is this expectation. There's always this kind of lag. So you create the Internet and you say, this is amazing. It's going to be like the ultimate library. And then as time goes on, the number of books in that library seems somehow to start shrinking, or, you know, every book that you pull off the shelf starts to look strangely, increasingly similar to every other book. And you look at Instagram and the beauty standards on Instagram, you know, they're trying so hard to say no. You can as sort of, you know, as. As big of a mutant. You can disfigure yourself as much as possible, and that's beautiful, too. But what's really happening is the vast majority is just sort of coalescing around this kind of, you know, whatever alien, Kardashian esque, just sort of extremely. You know, it's. It's like when they would do those composites of, you know, we took every race and sort of turned it into one face, and it's kind of becoming that one face. The funniest, incredible uniformity.
- [21:26]
Jonathan Pageau
The craziest thing is when you encounter, and it's probably happened to you, is that, you know, they have these makeup tutorials that girls love, and they do these makeup tutorials. And basically the makeup tutorial is actually something which only exists in a camera. That is the way that they're doing their makeup is meant for a camera, not meant for real life. And then you walk around and you see people that have done that to their face in real life. And so you're standing in front of someone who looks like an Absolute mutant, like you said. But it's only because when they look at themselves on their phone, they look great. Like when they take a picture, they look great because it's made for the camera. It's wild.
- [22:04]
James Polis
Yeah. It's like the same sort of thing where you focus so much on what seem to be these higher order things or this higher level of abstraction or scale that you neglect the roots and the roots die. We've got people now who are optimizing for the shimmering visage of the disincarnate avatar. And the foundation of that, you know, what's supposed to be the root of the image is hacked away and you're just left with this kind of floating mask.
- [22:31]
Jonathan Pageau
Exactly, yeah. Wow.
- [22:33]
James Polis
You mentioned a little bit earlier that at some point somehow the west kind of just moved up into the head or into the brain. And you know, we can, I hope we can talk a little bit about exactly what that was and how it, how it unfolded and became so powerful.
- [22:53]
Jonathan Pageau
Well, I, it's very cliche to say that now, but it does seem to start at the end of the middle Ages. You know, nominalism seems to be the first glimmer of that where basically you, you, you put God up so high. Right. You know, this is, that this is Occam's idea, was that some ways we make God completely untouchable. So because of that the causalities down become accidental to divine will. And so you have God and you have the world and there's this separation between the two. And I think that that's the movement of extreme that we have in the, in the West. And it obviously it starts with God and reality, but then it ends up being like mind and body and then it ends up being a kind of insane like, kind of Descartes cogito attitude towards thinking and at the same time developing extremely precise, you know, descriptions of the mechanical causalities in the world. And you have these, this opposition, it takes different forms. It can also take the form of extreme subjectivity then extreme objectivity where you have these opposites or where this idea that you have this purely internal world is completely, you know, closed off and you know, inaccessible to anything and anyone. And then that is the opposite of this material world that's outside. And all these ideas still infect us today. Right. The idea of self identification that we see right now is just one of the latest side effects of that type of opposition where we think that your subjectivity is completely like, it completely belongs to you and it's completely something that you completely self define in Your own little inner experience. And that has nothing to do with all the external. External realities of your body, of the people around you of like your role. None of that matters. It's just this. So I think that that's. I mean, that's a little line. There are. Obviously it's very simplified what I just said, but it's a good way to kind of understand how once you separate, I. I think that real Christian metaphysics is incarnational, right? And this idea that God came into the world became man, and then that's a hook. It's this place where heaven and earth meet, where all the things that are abstract, that are invisible, all the patterns, all the names, all the things that don't have body, are united actually with their body. And I think that that was the great medieval synthesis was that idea that that's actually how the world works and things. God manifests himself in the world in different ways. And the world is a reflection of God's glory. And what we have then is this starts to kind of deincarnation seems to happen in the west where we start to separate the earth and heaven and we start to move in those two directions simultaneously. And it leads to the pendulum. And the pendulum has different forms, not always the same, but that kind of what later will be called the dialectic, this dialectical thinking in Hegel and Marx, which is part of this kind of viewing the world in these opposite, like oppressor, oppressed. There's nothing in between. There's no. The normal hierarchy of participation is. Is gone. And it's just these two extremes that are fighting each other.
- [26:15]
James Polis
You know, it's so important because, you know, there is this movement, this intellectual movement in the west of intellectuals who say, like, well, you know, the west is basically intellectual dumb. And so I, as an intellectual, I'm going to save the west by saving the intellectuals. And what that means is, you know, the most important thing to do is to identify which smart people are making weak arguments and, you know, to describe the problems that we're experiencing as the result of the smart people making bad arguments, arguments. And so I can be a smarter person who can make a better argument. And the argument that they end up making is like, well, we just need to get better at being smarter. And if you get the smartest people together and have them talk about stuff, then that's where truth comes from. And once you know what the truth is, because you trust the smartest people to use the best words to sort of uncover this thing, then that's your path for progress. And so all of that kind of spiritual question about, well, are we forgetting the heart, are we forgetting the body, are we getting sort of lost or trapped somehow in our heads? All of that sort of gets flipped. And you know, of course, you know, I'm not here to say that, you know, being intelligent is bad or being an intellectual, you know, you stop that, you know, but these are deep seated, deep rooted arguments for the orthodox. You know, you can go back to Bar Lamb versus Palamas and, and that debate between, you know, is, is philosophy this kind of disincarnate thing that can explain everything to you? And is, is who we are ultimately a matter of explanation? And is our trust in our fellow man ultimately based on, you know, who we trust to provide the explanations of everything?
- [27:57]
Jonathan Pageau
Yeah, and I think you're absolutely right. A good, a simple line to kind of understand it. You can see the early church fathers, they would always say, you know, the theologian is he who prays, right? That's what a theologian is. And now we have the, the theologian is an expert who's done like a, you know, a PhD and a dissertation and like works for university. Maybe he doesn't believe in God. He's still a theologian because he's the expert, you know, and I think that that's a difference. And it is in some ways a difference between wisdom and just knowledge or just understanding. Where we, we have a lot of understanding now and we have a lot of capacity to explain things and to describe them. But we have put aside the notion of wisdom, which is which path should we be following. We don't ask ourselves the question of why should we do? Especially in the technological world, like nobody is ever asking the question like, should we do this? It's all, it's always, if we can, we will, and if we can increase power for anything, then we just do it. It's a natural good. There's no thought of what's the path that we actually have to follow.
- [29:10]
James Polis
And even less attention to what environment do we need to be in in order for us to properly even pose the question of whether or not we should do something. Much of prayer, perhaps the deepest prayer, requires silence. And if you're asking these good questions, even the right questions in an atmosphere of noise and of this kind of gratuitousness of words, if you don't have silence to inhabit, and if you're not forced to experience what you have to go through and feel the patience, you know, among other things, some certain kind of discomfort of silence, if you don't have the discipline of silence, then you're not going to hear what can only be heard in silence.
- [29:57]
Jonathan Pageau
Yeah, we are frenetically running around. That is 100% sure. But I think that it's an interesting time simultaneously is that in some ways we're seeing the extremes manifest themselves. We're seeing this extreme kind of hedonistic world still shimmering but also falling apart into kind of me too, kind of, let's say, tyrannies and stuff like that. So you can see the both like people are extremely hedonistic but also extremely scared of hedon because it leads obviously to abusive things. And so you can see that happening. And you can also, people are also noticing like their families fall apart, their communities fall apart. And the COVID I think was huge in terms of helping people see where we are. It's like it was a wake up for a lot of people to think, oh, okay, oh wait, wait, wait, wait. That's what technology can be used for. Technology can be used to shut us into our, in our houses for like a year or two years in some places. And technology can be used to track me, you know, and you know, I, I fell into the worst thing during COVID where I was being tracked by the government and they were forcing me to like, like a prisoner, right, every day to like check in because I was supposedly in quarantine, but there was some problem. And so I was getting threats, being put to jail for like six months, three years, million dollar fines, irregular purity test. It was absolutely crazy. And, and, but I think for a lot of people it woke them up. And what we've been seeing now since around that time is there's a resurgence at least in the Orthodox Church, for example. Like there's a lot of people going back to church and a lot of atheists, a lot of secular people that are converting or at least even if they're not necessarily explicitly converting, they're at least not hostile anymore towards Christianity and towards religion. And I think that that's, that in some ways it's, it's inevitable because as things start to fragment and to collapse, then there will always, it can always be a sounding alarm for people to kind of look. So right now you can see it. I mean people, the rebel teenager who basically wants to get married and have children and have a family and do the things that, that we're actually completely normal and that this is a, this happens almost as a rebellion against the madness that is, that is surrounding us. So there is, I think there are hopeful signs and there are, there are hopeful glimmers. And it's the same with. With art, for example. Like, you know, the madness of Hollywood and all the kind of ideological capture that they've been going through for the past, you know, five, six years, probably way more than that, is now collapsing under its own weight because people don't care. Like, people actually don't want to pay money to go watch someone preach some ideological thing at them. So because of that, there are new pockets that are opening for possibly speaking back into culture in ways that were nearly impossible 20 years ago.
- [33:08]
James Polis
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And, you know, I'd go even a little bit further being kind of close to that world in some respects. It's not just audiences who are looking at, you know, they're sort of like woke clickbait or fan service, whatever you want to call it, on the one hand, and then just sort of CGI slop on the other and saying, like, there must be something more, you know, like, this is not what art is about. This is not what I, as a. As an incarnate and sold human being. Not that they're using these terms, but you.
- [33:42]
Jonathan Pageau
Yeah, it's an intuitive thing. Yeah, it's an intuitive thing.
- [33:44]
James Polis
You know, also, creators feel this way. Also, people who are in the industry, you know, they don't want to devote their lives to ensuring that, you know, the. The fashionable identity of the month is appropriately featured in the rank order of identities in the film that they're working on. And they don't want to just sort of surrender their agency and their artistic fluency to machines. And so what that means is right now, you know, production in Hollywood has dropped by at least 40% this year, but there are lots of folks who are sitting around hoping, wishing, wanting there to be creative artistic projects of some sophistication, but, you know, not reinventing the wheel where the natural or inherent purpose of art, spiritually speaking, is returned to the production of things that people actually do want to watch, that they do want to sit down in front of.
- [34:45]
Jonathan Pageau
Yeah, so I think that, you know, because we, you know, we have a lot of doom saying, and it's fine because there is. We are in a crisis, but I think it's important to notice exactly what you said. And it's important not only to notice it, but to make the most of it, you know, and to, you know, I. I have a bunch of artists and creative people that are around me, and there's a kind of jubilation, really, because they're also encountering each other Meeting each other, trying to notice who are the people that care about good stories, who are the people that care about making beautiful things. And in a world of fasting, like in basically, you know, in a desert, when you see something, it's like an oasis. So it's, there's this excitement to say, oh, we could collaborate, we could work together, we could try to move. And, and in some ways the technology in this case can actually be an advantage because distribution is not as difficult as it was for, let's say my parents time, where basically there were just a few gatekeepers that were controlling everything. There are ways now to distribute art and to distribute stories that are more accessible. And so people who have the talent and the capacity and also the desire to make beautiful things that are meaningful, they have a chance right now.
- [36:04]
James Polis
Yeah, there's always a mirage here or there in the desert, but it can also give you that incredible clarity. Being able to quickly distinguish what is the source of life and what is withering.
- [36:12]
Jonathan Pageau
Yeah, it's just something that's, that's an illusion for sure.
- [36:16]
James Polis
But you're working on a few creative projects yourself, targeted toward maybe younger audiences than what the average intellectual is accustomed to. Tell us a little bit about those before we wrap.
- [36:26]
Jonathan Pageau
So, I mean, this is the thing I'm actually the most excited about what I'm doing now is, you know, one of the things I noticed several years ago was I love fairy tales. I love fairy tales. I was a child, I love telling, you know, telling fairy tales to my kids. And I noticed that Disney, for example, was dropping the fairy tales. And I could tell for a while it's been kind of happening. But Snow White, the Snow White project that they have, it was like this was going to be a flashpoint. And I knew, I knew this three years ago because I knew they were going to do it for the hundredth anniversary. I'd found out kind of through the grapevine. And I knew they couldn't make it. I think they can't make this. So I thought what an opportunity to take those stories, to take them back and to do it in a way. Because now for about two or three generations, fairy tales have been treated with cynicism. So you have Shrek, for example, is a good example where you have this mismatch of like all these fairy tales jam together into a kind of symphony of fairy tales. But it's all cynical, it's all kind of exposing the sexuality of it, exposing the darker aspects. And you have adult version, like into the woods, you know, or what Is what is the wizard of Oz 1? I forget.
- [37:41]
James Polis
Wicked.
- [37:42]
Jonathan Pageau
Yeah, wicked, right. And then Disney also started making all these like bad guy movies where the main character is the evil person. And I thought it seems like now's the time to re celebrate these stories, to do them in a way that doesn't ignore the sophistication of what the postmodern moment has brought to us. Because there is a kind of clarity of looking at the fairy tale and seeing it from a distance that can help you see things that the old grandmother telling those tales to her child didn't necessarily see. So can we create a sophisticated version of these fairy tales that is totally accessible to a four year old, but that also an adult can read and get that adult level reading? But now it's not the dirty jokes of Shrek and it's not the cynical, it's actually insight. Right. It can bring you insight into what these stories are for and what they're doing.
- [38:36]
James Polis
And so, so you've got one or two of them tell people where they can find.
- [38:40]
Jonathan Pageau
So, so people can go to symbolicworld.com and we have a store there and we started selling. We have Snow White and the Widow Queen and we're just putting out Jack and the Fallen Giants with the Jack and the Beanstalk. We're going to do eight in all eight fairy tales.
- [38:54]
James Polis
And these are in book form or novel.
- [38:56]
Jonathan Pageau
We're going totally against the grain. These are beautifully bound books with like, you know, foiling and cloth, you know, cloth bounding and everything. We're making these little treasures that people will just love and we want to keep and to pass down to their, to the kids and the grandkids. So that's how we're, that's the aim that, that's the bet we're making, is that instead of going cheap and digital and just, we're actually going towards high quality, beautiful illustrations, you know, everything paid attention to.
- [39:24]
James Polis
I for one think that that is exactly the right approach. I would say that I did a limited edition of my book Human Forever. You know, leather bound, foil stamped, all the pretty sort of marbling on the inside jacket and you know, hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of dollars. And I just tested the market and guess what the, the, the appreciation is there. There's a hunger, you know, that, that people have and it's not everyone, but it doesn't need to be everyone.
- [39:48]
Jonathan Pageau
No. And it, and I think it's also because we're so full of fake stuff. Like everything, this plastic world that we live in, everything is so accessible. All the time.
- [39:57]
James Polis
Yeah. And like disposable by design.
- [39:59]
Jonathan Pageau
Yeah. To do a limited edition of something and say, this is precious. This is actually something that, you know, you have to put a little more thought into buying because it's going to cost you a bit. But it makes people feel like they're participating. That just makes people feel like they're participating. They are. It is a kind of participation in culture. It's saying, I stand by this and I want this to be something that's a little brighter than all the other junk that's in my world. And so that put it on the table. People notice it. And it's also moving away from the deincarnation of the online world. For some time, people thought that people would just live in the metaverse and buy digital objects and pay fortunes for digital artwork to hang in their digital houses and wear 3D glasses. Like, that's not. People don't want that. Maybe a few freaks want that, but most people will not be willing to live in that world. People like real things that feel heavy and have a weight to them. And I think that that's the right move. Yeah.
- [41:02]
James Polis
So last question. We talked about a sort of creative renaissance. Talked a little bit about a spiritual renaissance or a researcher's of hope in the culture. As a Canadian, you've spent a lot of time in the UK and in Europe and of course here in the US and probably other parts of the Anglosphere, stepping back and sort of looking, you know, from the standpoint of coming out of COVID and everything. How about the political piece? Do you have hope or confidence, as someone who's kind of experienced life across the Anglosphere, that the west is going to turn it around this year?
- [41:34]
Jonathan Pageau
This year? I don't know if it's this year.
- [41:37]
James Polis
I think it's an election year in more than one place. You know, it does seem like things are coming to a head.
- [41:41]
Jonathan Pageau
Yeah. So I think that there's definitely are signs of hope. There are signs of hope in Europe, by the way, and I think even in Canada, there are signs of hope. You know, we. It seems like, for example, in Canada, it seems like Poiev might get in, you know, if. And people are tired of the kind of inane madness that Trudeau has been spewing for years now. And so. And he's like. I think it's like the most disliked prime minister in the history of Canada at this point. And so it feels like there's a. There's a chance. You know, of course, the. The danger is to Flip, because this is also the issue with the west is that we have this pendulum, like we go from Weimar to the Reich. It's like it's, you know, can we have something nice and like, that's a little reasonable in the middle, like, can we have something that is, you know, that is both celebratory of identity and participation, but then also has a kind of flexibility. Right. So that's what I hope, that's my hope, is that even the movements that we see towards the right in Europe will be healthy, balanced ones. Right. And that we won't be pushed into the kind of Spanish Civil War type extremes that we've seen in the past centuries. That's my hope.
- [42:52]
James Polis
Yeah. Well, you know, we talked about that little pressure release that, whether it's carnival or, or going to a movie and experiencing that kind of mixture of joy and suffering and meeting the Creator and the audience in the same place. But I think if we're going to get there sort of out of that swing between extremes, a touch of stillness, a touch of silence, these things can go a long way.
- [43:14]
Jonathan Pageau
I totally agree. That's a great way to think about it. Sit with your family. Family meals, I think, are a great way to find that it's a very simple way to like, live in the world and just be anchored and find that normal balance, you know, that. Find that discipline of, of time together and, and the rhythm of relationships, you know, and like you said, to just. Yeah, to just sit there. Actually, you know, in the, in the orthodox tradition we have the Jesus prayer, which is like a mental prayer that you say you just sit in silence, you just repeat the prayer. These are totally key because we're in a whirlwind, so we definitely have to find the center.
- [43:54]
James Polis
I was trying to drift off to sleep last night and you know, I've been in a couple different time zones over the past 48 hours, so I found a YouTube, like, 10 hour super cut of the Jesus prayer in melodic form. And, you know, there is a way of reconciling these things.
- [44:09]
Jonathan Pageau
Did it put you to sleep?
- [44:10]
James Polis
Eventually, eventually, eventually. Jonathan Peugeot, thanks so much for joining us. All right, that's all the time we got till next time around. I am James Polis. This is Zero Hour and may God have mercy on us all.