Girard Predicts Apocalypse | Mimetic Theory

Summary

Highlights

• René Girard’s theory suggests apocalypse is not just a theological concept but a reality influenced by societal evolution 🚀.
• Modern technologies and nuclear weapons heighten the risk of global destruction, with historical close calls like the Cuban Missile Crisis as evidence 💥.
• The breakdown of violence management methods—from ancient scapegoating rites to today's complex legal systems—signals a dangerous turn for humanity ⚖️.
• Despite technological progress, humanity faces an identity crisis amidst geopolitical and environmental threats 🌍.
• Girard proposes either a deep personal transformation or withdrawal as potential paths for surviving the ominous future 🧘‍♂️.

Key Takeaways

• Technology's dark evolution: From liberative instruments to apocalyptic tools of destruction, technology has reshaped humanity's fate 🚀.
• The broken chain of containment: Traditional violence-containment mechanisms are failing in modern societies 🛡️.
• Global trade: Once a symbol of unity, now the breeding ground for potential conflict and apocalypse 🌍.
• Law and capitalism: Simultaneously reduce and exacerbate violence, leaving us in a precarious peace ⚖️.
• Imminent apocalypse: Gerard's chilling prediction outlines our existential crisis and calls for withdrawal or spiritual conversion 😨.

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 10:00: Introduction: Understanding the Logic of Violence This chapter introduces the theme of how humanity's perception and utilization of violence have evolved over time. Initially, violence was limited to primitive tools like sticks and stones. However, the technological advances during the world wars of the 20th century significantly altered this dynamic. These changes reflect a shift in understanding and applying the logic of violence, highlighting the unintended consequences of technological progress.
• 10:00 - 20:00: The Role of Violence in History and Society This chapter discusses the escalation of violence throughout history and its impact on society. It begins with the utilization of machine guns, bombers, tanks, and reflects on the unprecedented scale and efficiency of killing. Further technological advancements have led to the creation of nuclear weapons capable of multiple global destructions. The chapter highlights critical moments like the Cuban Missile Crisis as near apocalyptic events. The role of violence continues to be significant in the shaping of historical and societal evolution. This final lecture focuses on the theme of apocalypse and questions its relevancy in modern times.
• 20:00 - 30:00: The Christian Revelation and the Scapegoat Mechanism The chapter discusses the fading concern of the Apocalypse in public consciousness post-Soviet Union collapse and explores reasons why René Girard believes this concern will unexpectedly and devastatingly return. The exploration leads to a conclusion that is not comedic but tragic, focusing on Girard's perspective.
• 30:00 - 40:00: Modern Society's Struggle with Violence and Deceit This chapter discusses modern society's ongoing struggle with violence and deceit, underscoring an impending apocalypse driven by increased violence that contemporary society struggles to contain. Earlier lectures set the stage by exploring past Pagan societies and the transformative effects of Christianity, which introduced new dynamics into history: love, truth, innovation, and violence. The present focus on modernity examines how these forces continue to shape society today, emphasizing our challenges in managing escalating violence.
• 40:00 - 50:00: Institutional Channels: Law, Capitalism, and War The chapter, titled 'Institutional Channels: Law, Capitalism, and War,' delves into an analysis of contemporary society through the lens of Christian ideals and the standards of the kingdom of God. It suggests that despite progress, society still mirrors a pagan culture dependent on violence and deceit to maintain peace. The discussion hints at a bleak future, one that may culminate in an apocalyptic event.
• 50:00 - 60:00: The Catastrophic Potential of Modern Conflict The lecture begins by discussing the fourth and final influence of Christianity on modernity, which is the concept of violence. It explores how violence is interwoven into societal structures and lays the groundwork for understanding its impact.
• 60:00 - 70:00: Strategies for Apocalyptic Times: Personal Transformation vs. Withdrawal The chapter 'Strategies for Apocalyptic Times: Personal Transformation vs. Withdrawal' discusses how human societies have historically dealt with crises and transformations. It begins with the idea that for millennia, societies operated on a cyclical timeline marked by founding murders, which set the cycle of chaos and peace. When chaos erupted, societies would unconsciously choose scapegoats to bear all the blame, leading to their murder. This act would miraculously restore peace, a process that was seen as a crucial mechanism for maintaining social order. The text further reflects on how these patterns could play out differently in modern contexts, as societies face potential apocalyptic scenarios, urging a debate on the merits of personal transformation versus withdrawal in such times.
• 70:00 - 80:00: Conclusion: Gerard's View on the Imminence of the Apocalypse The chapter explores Gerard's perspective on the concept of the apocalypse, focusing on the societal tendency to create myths and core institutions from pivotal events. It discusses how pagan societies used prohibitions and rituals to manage violence, and how they both scapegoated and deified victims in a deceitful manner, projecting psychological narratives onto them who had no real power.

Girard Predicts Apocalypse | Mimetic Theory Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 lecture seven the one who withholds the logic of violence is changing Once Upon a Time our most powerful weapons were sticks and stones but everything changed during the world wars of the 20th century were the very technological advances that we once naively believed would liberate man
• 00:30 - 01:00 started acting against him machine guns bombers tanks the scale the efficiency and the brutality of killing was unprecedented and yet we've only become more technologically advanced since then and today we have nuclear weapons which could destroy the world many times over and they almost did in close calls such as the Cuban Missile Crisis this final lecture we're going to focus on apocalypse and this may seem old-fashioned after
• 01:00 - 01:30 all the Specter of Apocalypse has faded from the public Consciousness ever since the fall of the Soviet Union but Gerard has good reasons to believe that it's going to make a quick unsuspected and devastating return let us explore these reasons now we are at the end of our journey which proves not comedic but tragic in this lecture we will articulate all of the reasons that Gerard thinks we're
• 01:30 - 02:00 marching towards inevitable apocalypse in all these reasons will center around violence our increased capacity for it and the increasing inability to contain it three lectures ago I began by detailing our past Pagan Society after that we talked about the rupture Christianity and the four forces it let loose on History love truth Innovation and violence in the previous lecture We examined modernity contemporary Society under the
• 02:00 - 02:30 light of the three good forces judging it by the standards of the kingdom of God and seeing how it did and did not live up to Christian ideals in this lecture then we are going to talk about the near future we're going to examine contemporary Society under the light of violence as if it were still a pagan Society still requiring violence and deceit for peace and this examination will lead us to a terrifying conclusion we are headed for Apocalypse
• 02:30 - 03:00 this lecture will proceed in three large steps first we will understand the fourth and final force that Christianity injects into modernity violence next we will examine the institutions we have to deal with violence namely law capitalism and global trade and eventually War lastly we will briefly briefly discuss the solutions that Gerard outlines to our apocalyptic moment how ought one
• 03:00 - 03:30 live for inevitable apocalypse it will be brief only because Gerard does not give us much let us begin with violence for Millennia Human Society operated on a cyclical time whose Cycles were demarcated by founding murders societies were descended to chaos scapegoats would be unconsciously chosen to inherit all the blame and killed this founding murder would bring back a piece so miraculous that people attributed the
• 03:30 - 04:00 saving Force to the victim deifying it myths would be created out of this event and out of these myths spawn the core institutions of pagan societies prohibitions prevented violence and rituals acted as release valves for violence of course both the scapegoating and the deification are equally deceitful the victim neither had the power to cause or end the chaos it's all a psychological projection by
• 04:00 - 04:30 the crowd grounded on nothing but deceitful unanimity this fourfold process is called the scapegoat mechanism it's the foundations of worldly cultures in society everywhere Gerard looks he seems to find murdered victims at the origins of worldly power and peace whether it's Cain and Abel Romulus and Remus Julius Caesar him to purusha for Gerard the scapegoat mechanism was deeply ambivalent a combination of ultimate
• 04:30 - 05:00 Evil and worldly good sacrifice one for all limit freedom of the parts for the stability of the whole it used violence and lies to establish a worldly order what is required for its functioning was that its mechanisms remain hidden because sacrity and Pagan power are based on a deceitful unanimity the victim's innocence must remain hidden lest the whole arbitrariness be exposed and the entire Enterprise start
• 05:00 - 05:30 crumbling down for religions to work then cultures must not know that the source of power of their God actually comes from the psychological projections of the group this is where Christ comes in Christ through the crucifixion showed precisely the innocence of the victim the guilt and projection of the crowd and gave us a moral Paradigm through which we can expose decode and free ourselves from religion altogether the Christian
• 05:30 - 06:00 Revelation for Gerard becomes the rupture of human history slowly but surely humanity is going to lose its ability to create myths out of the deified scapegoat and with it the legitimacy of prohibitions now considered oppressive and the efficacy of sacrifice now considered cruel also begin to deteriorate now you may be surprised that Gerard conceived of violence as one of the forces coming out of Christ's defeating of the scapegoat
• 06:00 - 06:30 mechanism but given Gerard's understanding of how worldly peace is brought about this conclusion really should flow naturally because if a worldly order if peaceful Society is founded on a deceitful violent Act of catharsis then the truth and love that Christianity has Unleashed must be harmful for this Foundation Gerard constantly reminds us that Christ himself says as much Matthew 10 34 Christ is this to say think not that I am come to send peace on Earth
• 06:30 - 07:00 I came not to send peace but a sword whereas Orthodoxy often interprets this as christ-causing local inconveniences due to the conflict between Believers and non-believers Gerard takes Christ literally here to be saying that he is here to cut down the very pillars of worldly order now while the consequences of the Christian Revelation for Gerard are violent and destructive Christ's intentions surely are not he did not cut down the worldly order for the sake of
• 07:00 - 07:30 cutting down worldly order but only so that we may be freed from violence and lies such that we can love each other Christ asks us to imitate him in developing unwavering love in an unconditional renunciation of violence in order that we may bring about the kingdom of God in this world which is only possible if all of us surrender this scapegoat mechanism if none of us agree to use it and unilaterally we all renounce violence the problem however is that expelling scapegoat mechanism is
• 07:30 - 08:00 only a necessary but not a sufficient condition to engender the kingdom of God in this world the kingdom of God will only be a gendered again if all unilaterally renounce violence and develop love otherwise those who have renounced violence will simply be silenced by those who have not and this is what happened to Christ while this unilateral renunciation is a logical possibility it is a statistical impossibility as likely as if a randomly
• 08:00 - 08:30 typing monkey will directly produce the Bible Christ only sought to cut down the pillars of worldly order such that we may have the possibility of realizing the kingdom of God Christ took off our training wheel so that we may be freed yet we've simply fallen and stumbled we were given a choice between the kingdom of God and violent apocalypse and we veered away from the kingdom for Gerard it is solely our failure in not being able to choose love over violence
• 08:30 - 09:00 that now leaves us stranded without the scapegoat mechanism to deal with violence at all but scapegoating is unfortunately alive and well in contemporary Society have we been freed from it that's a great question and one I think we should address immediately to be clear the scapegoat mechanism hasn't been fully expelled only parts of it have been weakened from exposure to truth through the crucifixion so let's do this let's examine each step
• 09:00 - 09:30 of the scapegoat mechanism and see how it has been changed now the first step of the scapegoat mechanism is memetic Contagion right it sees groups to send into frenzy as metaphysical desires or run rampant and memetic rivalries multiply modern society is much more susceptible to memetic Contagion because of proximity now the first type of proximity is spatial temporal proximity whereas it was hard to enter into competition or even know of much less be envious of people beyond your town or
• 09:30 - 10:00 Village in the old days modern technology and transportation has greatly accelerated the breaking down of physical distance between peoples slogan of social media companies like Facebook of connecting the world is not a celebratory declaration for Gerard but a terrifying damnation because it renders all of us as capable of competing with each other I can compare myself so easily these days and be competitive with my friend all across
• 10:00 - 10:30 the world whether it's Milan or Beijing through Instagram the second type of proximity that has also been reduced is social proximity most substantive forms of social difference have broken down the whole host of prohibitions which used to create social differences among people whether it's gender Norms or caste systems or aristocratic hierarchies or Guild systems have been obliterated by our ideal of equality whereas before we told our kids that they have to follow in specific professions according to
• 10:30 - 11:00 their lineage we now tell them you can be whatever you want to be whereas before certain goods were reserved for certain castes we now demand access for all we no longer believe that there is any essential difference between anyone between people and that what one person deserves so does everyone else while Gerard believes the breaking down of social differences is an ultimately good thing it's an extension of Christian love he's also incredibly worried because we
• 11:00 - 11:30 are much more envious and competitive these prohibitions however oppressive for Gerard acted as barriers to prevent metaphysical desire from spreading too rampantly now without these barriers desires just travel much more feverishly in the population leading to memetic Contagion much much more easily of course as we discussed memetic contagion leads to Strife it leads to suffering it leads to anger it leads to a spirited malaise that requires an equally
• 11:30 - 12:00 spirited and irrational solution catharsis before Christ groups used to attribute all the blame to a single relatively innocent scapegoat and in an act of violent expulsion achieve catharsis in peace blame the entire plague on Oedipus cast him out of the city and found a new order that was the Pagan logic surely this must be exposed by Christ right surely we can no longer commit as egregious acts of scapegoating as
• 12:00 - 12:30 blaming the entire plague on one man surely you must give us this much right Gerard yes but that is not a good worldly thing Gerard reminds us that what is constant is the level of catharsis we need to feel peace and thus the degree of blame Remains the Same we still need to find someone to blame for all of society's problems what's changed is how many people we need to blame to be convinced Christ has
• 12:30 - 13:00 made us less gullible indeed we can no longer believe one single person is to blame for everything if blaming the plague on one man's patricide and incest engendered peace and Thebes I'm afraid it can engender nothing but laughter today because we are less gullible for the same magnitude of blame we need many more victims we need to up the dose because we are more aware of the effects
• 13:00 - 13:30 we can no longer believe that one single man can single-handedly cause all the problems but the Soviet Union could still believe that entire class of people were the cause of humanity suffering and Nazi Germany could still believe that an entire race of people were responsible for their National collapse this is Gerard's terrifying conclusion I read to you entire categories of humans are distinguished the Jews the aristocrats the Bourgeois the Unfaithful the faithful and we are told that Utopia
• 13:30 - 14:00 depends on the necessary condition of the elimination of the guilty categories as the power of the mechanism breaks down sacrifices at a larger and larger scale must persist to achieve the same calming effect before we could bring Peace by sacrificing a goat or a few men but now we must kill an entire race religion class the eradication needs to be total
• 14:00 - 14:30 end quote truth did not make scapegoating any better it made it much worse whereas the Pagan mystical mind could have been satisfied with a single man being responsible for Calamity the modern rational mind is not as gullible it needs entire classes of men to be expelled now in Pagan Society the peace which the victim's expulsion brought about was attributed to the dead victim he's deified and made ultimately good and evil for bring bout but also ending
• 14:30 - 15:00 the chaos since Christ this no longer happens at all for two important reasons first the Pagan victim can be both good and evil because in the Pagan moral Paradigm the dominant pull was power the primary distinction we draw between people and beings is powerful and Powerless the victim now God in Pagan Society is powerful and can use that to both Good
• 15:00 - 15:30 and Evil in the Christian moral Paradigm the dominant pull is morality it's not power it's been switched to morality people are either good or evil and so no victim can be divinized because in order to do so to make them good to turn them into a God we have to admit that they are essentially good but doing so incriminates the persecutors if they are essentially good why do we kill them in the first place the Pagan answer to this was well the victim was a powerful being it is evil
• 15:30 - 16:00 and caused the plague so our killing was justified but it is also good and ended the plague and so that's why we now worship them this ambivalence is no longer available in our Christian moral framework but even if we were still in the Pagan moral framework that permitted ambivalence we would not be able to create any more deities because Christ showed us the deceitfulness of the scapegoat mechanism height of scapegoating when we are caught in the memetic frenzy bolstered
• 16:00 - 16:30 by the unanimity of all we might still be able to believe in the guilt of modern victims but as soon as the dust settles and we are in a less frenzied and spirited State the Christian moral framework and its suspicion of the mob and concern for the victim allows us to quickly decode the Injustice of what had just happened just as we did do for the victims of Soviet and Nazi Terror put another way the Christian Revelation Unleashed a truth that is powerful enough to help us see persecution after
• 16:30 - 17:00 the fact but not powerful enough to make us see our projection during the violent friendied spirited state of persecution itself I want to hop in and clarify for our listeners who think that Christianity no longer dominates the world that you don't need to be Christian to have a life that's fully shaped by Christian values atheist or Christian religious or secular if you live in the west your life has been shaped by Christian ideas through and
• 17:00 - 17:30 through because of how influential they've become and if these Christian ideas seem so trivial it is only because they're so influential right so we don't explicitly need to be Christians to be suspicious of the scapegoat mechanism in the way that you've just described that's precisely right Gerard would say that the Christian moral Paradigm we're all in even when it does not manifest explicitly as Christian seeps into our everyday secular Notions such as the
• 17:30 - 18:00 ideal of equality or human rights and so the scapegoat mechanism really has been purged from all Western Societies or exposed to all Western societies and not just explicitly Christian people in those societies to summarize then the Christian Revelation has stripped us naked of all of our old tools to bring peace not only is the meta contagion more likely and worsened because of the closing down of physical and social difference not only do we have to scapegoat larger and larger amounts of people for the same
• 18:00 - 18:30 effect but we've also lost our ability to create lasting peace through myth we can have no more prohibitions grounded on the words of a God and we certainly cannot perform cathartic rituals as wholeheartedly both the brakes on and solutions for violence of old have crumbled so that begs the question why haven't we gone bust yet Gerard's answer is that we've developed new institutions not identical to the ritualistic and prohibitory institutions
• 18:30 - 19:00 of pagan Society but not completely different either to repeat there are three key institutions that channel contain and direct violence in modernity law capitalism and global trade and war let's examine each of them in succession to see how they deal with violence in the absence of ritual law is going to be the key modern institution to contain and limit violence Gerard has this to say I quote
• 19:00 - 19:30 sacrifice has languish in societies with a firmly established Judicial System ancient Greece and ancient Rome for example in such societies the essential purpose of sacrifice has disappeared it may still be practiced for a while but in diminished and debilitated form ritual in general and sacrificial rights in particular assume essential roles only in societies that lack a firm Judicial System end quote as a
• 19:30 - 20:00 descendant of ritual law takes its place and serves the same function as a ritual to prevent reciprocal violence from destroying a society recall and Gerard that a likely outcome of society is reciprocal violence or strands of localized violence balloon up to engulf an entire Society or consonants in the case of the Trojan War in early human societies even if people had a well-developed social conscience that is a system of moral Notions as this is right that's wrong there was no
• 20:00 - 20:30 such thing as punishment of a crime by the society if one person injured another it was left at the injured party to seek Vengeance obviously this repeats at infinitum ritual and law then both try to resolve this escalating reciprocal Violence by first prolonging the time of response making sure that Rivals don't exchange punches too frequently leading to escalation second they also try to contain this Vengeance
• 20:30 - 21:00 and violence clearly demarcating what violence is Justified and what isn't in law for example the violence that is Justified is the violence of the state to sentence or kill a criminal in ritual violence is redirected but also contained to a particular space or particular time in sacrificial rituals like Aztec human sacrifice violence and resentment or channeled to the victim only the blow that kills the victim that's Justified that's Sanctified in festivals such like
• 21:00 - 21:30 the bakana or the carnival violent energies were contained to that single day the only acceptable form of violent expression was on the day of the festival let me give you another example in another type of ritual trials by combat as dictated in Germanic law were two opposing parties with irresolvable claims would fight to the death with the Victor having gained the right this is also an attempt at containing that Vengeance and that Violence by saying
• 21:30 - 22:00 hey let's don't go about trying to kill each other every day but let's focus and narrow down our violence in this one date time and place let's just battle it out to the death and see who wins despite the similarities between rituals and legal systems that they both prolong reciprocation as well as clearly demarcate what violence is Justified and what isn't legal systems and rituals are also very different throwing a child in a volcano every Full Moon is radically different than sentencing a criminal
• 22:00 - 22:30 according to an agreed upon law so what is the difference then to answer this let's look at the most law-like ritual and see what is still missing the most law-like ritual that Gerard brings up is a ritual enacted by the chuchik an indigenous people of the Arctic who roamed in these separate different tribes the ritual goes something like this if one person in My Tribe kills a person in your tribe then I as the tribal leader
• 22:30 - 23:00 will choose someone in my tribe to kill to hopefully settle the score importantly I never choose the person who actually did The Killing I must choose someone else who's completely unrelated to the initial incident do you see how this more than sacrifice or Carnival is more like a legal Institution it's done explicitly in response to an explicit wrongdoing instead of Carnival that recurs on a set schedule and it has
• 23:00 - 23:30 the same tit-for-tat punishment that we are used to with modern law following an explicit series of rules but it's also radically different the biggest point of difference being that it's not the guilty party who is punished but someone innocent an innocent bystander on your own tribe on your own team who isn't related that's who gets killed that is what shocks our modern intuitions about this example why isn't the original instigator punished well
• 23:30 - 24:00 we're at it why do none of the rituals that we talked about seek to punish the original instigator but instead punish a bystander like in sacrifice or no concrete person at all like a festival Gerard's answer is that the guilty party can't be punished because they are the ones who are socially charged who have people rallying both against and for them they are in the very center of the mimetic contagion if you kill them you might spawn a whole new line of
• 24:00 - 24:30 reciprocal Vengeance recall our discussion a few lectures ago about how the victim needs to be far from the social order and that's why foreign rulers like Oedipus or Mary Antoinette make such great scapegoats because you kill them and it just ends there they don't have that many family or friends in the social order to avenge them a bat scapegoat would be like Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter right because the daughter is at the very heart of the Spartan power system she's too close to the social order and as a result that
• 24:30 - 25:00 did spawn a whole new path of vengeance this is why the chuchik can't punish the person who is guilty whom entire tribes have rallied around because he is at the very center of the social Nexus everyone's eye is on him this is also why in sacrificial rights like the pharmacos a criminal or Outcast is used and why in carnival the violent actions and intentions aren't directed at anyone in particular
• 25:00 - 25:30 so why can our Judicial System punish the guilty person this is Gerard's answer and the entire punch line because we have an entity with a monopoly over violence the state I quote there can be no true administering of Justice in air Quotes no judicial system without a superior tribunal capable of arbitrating between even the most powerful groups only that Superior tribunal can remove the possibility of
• 25:30 - 26:00 blood Feud or Perpetual Vendetta end quote we can punish the guilty party because we are not like the chuchik with separate roaming tribes we are one big tribe with an entity that has a monopoly over violence which is the state if someone harms you and you don't like the sentence they were eventually given and try to take justice into your own hands then you will be threatened with the state's Vengeance and violence in turn Gerard's surprising conclusion is that for law to work the way it does now
• 26:00 - 26:30 and so effectively where the guilty party is punished there must be a totalizing force handing out the punishments let me give you an analogy I played a lot of basketball growing up and when you're playing a friendly game of casual pickup they're often disagreements of whether you went out of bounds or traveled but there's no referee to arbitrate between who's right or wrong and so one of the only ways you can decide peacefully and efficiently who is right is a essentially a ritual
• 26:30 - 27:00 what we call a ball don't lie right you have your claim that you didn't travel or you did travel or he didn't travel or he did travel and you shoot a three-pointer if it goes in you are right and if it doesn't the opponent gets the call this is not unlike a ritual like trial by combat to agree not on a solution but a solution for a solution it's only in serious matches with the referee who has a monopoly over violence in this case the ability just to kick
• 27:00 - 27:30 you out of the game do we actually get judicial judgments of course the funny thing is that everyone who does ball don't lie and practices that ritual knows that the ball do lie right whether your three-pointer goes in or not has nothing to do whether your claim is just whether he actually traveled or not just like whether you win your duel or not has nothing to do with your innocence in a trial of combat but before there's a monopolistic Force the best one can do are rights like ball
• 27:30 - 28:00 don't lie just like referees are much more effective than ball don't lie our judicial system is much more effective than ritual institutions of old in making judgments and limiting reciprocal violence because we actually take the guilty party out of commission after all the Killer is still on the loose right in the Chuchu tribes even after the ritual and if the other tribe the one who's wronged does not feel cathartic enough then the killing might still continue under this light the judicial system conforms much closer to the logic of
• 28:00 - 28:30 Vengeance than even ritual does because its intent on punishing the guilty party building on what you're saying I'm astonished at how effective law can be at ending the escalation of violence there was a situation recently where Jeff Bezos sued Elon Musk for like three billion or something and what's amazing about this is in the past before we have these systems of law if there is a feud between two of the wealthiest and the most powerful men in
• 28:30 - 29:00 the world it could escalate into something really bad right but what happened was musk won the lawsuit and Bezos put out a press release and simply said congratulations I lost fair and square and they moved on and it didn't end up becoming an issue because the feud was settled in a court of law which everybody respects I think Gerard like you is also a bit astonished and finds it laudable of how well law works but he warns us that we give up a lot for this
• 29:00 - 29:30 efficacy Gerard thinks that not only do we have a monopolistic force on violence the state must assert itself everywhere to establish law it must govern every type of action to snub out even the beginnings of violence because violence can begin anywhere speeding tickets prenups business deals employment contracts inheritance divorce settlements defamation penalties compared to Pagan Society where rituals
• 29:30 - 30:00 were quite localized law has Disturbed itself in all aspects of our lives and in all these areas it is always backed by total violence Lavin becomes a quick way to end a large amount of relationships so that they don't get out of hand what had been functions governed primarily by relationships inheritance by parent and child family by husband and wife business ventures by co-partners is now less so governed by
• 30:00 - 30:30 those relationships and more so by the intermediary of the state through law this idea of law as a way to end relationships is perhaps why societies with a strong rule of law can feel so cold and atomized I think you can get a taste of a society being predominantly governed by relationships and one primarily governed by law by looking at the transition from secured employment relationships to the gig economy that we're seeing today
• 30:30 - 31:00 where I say working long hours is often out of social forces you want to motivate the employees you don't want to let your teammates down in a regular company like let's say a startup where there's a lot governed by relationships the amount of hours you work in a gig economy like driving for Uber or getting food for doordash is solely determined by Cold Hard compensation and whereas say taking care of your employees is a responsibility for an employer the gig economy leaves a lot of that burden onto
• 31:00 - 31:30 the worker and even in this subtle transition from employment relations governing job relations to the gig economy governing job relations we can already see a microcosm of the larger shift towards law there's more freedom but less social Congeniality there's more things that are governed by contracts and not relationships law then is not only a descendant of ritual but it's also a descendant and continuation of prohibition
• 31:30 - 32:00 we've given away the big prohibitions like caste systems but only to find ourselves surrounded by a million small prohibitions no matter where we look what you're saying is making me think of an example that drives me insane and it's one of the things that has surprised me the most about the professional world I've noticed that when we're hiring people for Reddit passage we're doing some interviews there are so many things that I'm not allowed to say right and they're also specific and what bothers
• 32:00 - 32:30 me about this is that there isn't like this big code of morality that's intuitive that's natural that's embedded in the society that has room for bending and all these sorts of things but what happens is that with modern employment law we have atomized Behavior so much that we need to know about this little thing this little thing this little thing and I have to keep them at the top of my head the entire time and I feel like I can't even treat somebody like a human being when I'm interviewing them and it's this atomization of virtue that
• 32:30 - 33:00 drives me insane where instead of talking to somebody like a friend somebody like you know them you need to treat them like a potential lawsuit and it's terrifying but also there's so many laws that it's impossible to keep up that's exactly the total restraint that Gerard thinks we have to give up for efficacy not only do we need a monopolistic force of the state governing our relationships but now we also need the state to be in the middle of all of our relationships all of these
• 33:00 - 33:30 different employment questions and employee employer relationships every little detail has to be managed by the state and the only way the state can do that is through these cold objective laws that surround you in every angle this is what we've given up for the efficacy of law however Gerard also observes that this total restraint also paradoxically allows us to behave more freely towards each other Gerard has this to say
• 33:30 - 34:00 primitive societies do not have built into their structure an automatic break against violence but we do in the form of powerful institutions whose grip grows progressively tighter as their roles grows progressively less apparent the constant presence of a restraining force allows Modern Man safely to transgress the limits imposed on primitive peoples without even being aware of the fact in policed societies
• 34:00 - 34:30 with law the relationships between individuals including total strangers is characterized by an extraordinary era of informality flexibility and even audacity end quote Gerard's point in this quote is that yes David you are right our relationships are much colder and less intimate but this paradoxically also frees Us in some sense that we have an aura of informality and flexibility in our relationships with other people that
• 34:30 - 35:00 these two things the coldness the atomization and the freedom are joined to the hip so to speak for Gerard then what makes it possible to live peacefully with each other as equals what enables us to not have the large Pagan prohibitions like caste systems is a totalizing violence that legislates and directs prohibitions in every aspect of Our Lives law by atomizing us decreases the actuality of Violence by allowing us to freely
• 35:00 - 35:30 interact with each other however cold that interaction may be but always the looming threat of State violence is in the background in those interactions with law then now we can conceive of each other's as equals now we can desire what the president of the United States desires this creates more conflict which rarely results in actual violence because of law but does lead to a greater buildup of violent energies law
• 35:30 - 36:00 increases the potential buildup of violence while decreasing the actuality of day-to-day Violence by allowing us to interact much more frequently law increases internal mediation but stops it before the stage of violence there's a popular critique of Stephen Pinker who writes that never has the world been safer than it is right now but the critique goes as such and I think it's a good point where in the world of physics there's an idea
• 36:00 - 36:30 of potential energy and there's kinetic energy and likewise in the world of social relations there's potential violence and kinetic violence right and Pinker is only looking at kinetic violence how much violence is actually happening in the world but what you're talking about here is the buildup of violence the potential violence and with nuclear weapons and the way that Society is structured under this legalistic framework it's the potential violence that is being underestimated in its ideas precisely and you bring up Pinker
• 36:30 - 37:00 makes me think of what I think colloquially people call the turkey problem that a turkey who's statistically inclined that lives each day closer to Thanksgiving will conclude that it is actually safer than the day before because there is no kinetic violence right the turkey is safe there's an extra day that's gone by without there being violence but precisely to the point the potential violence is building up and paradoxically the turkey will conclude that he is safest on Thanksgiving which is of course is the most dangerous day
• 37:00 - 37:30 of the year so this delineation between potential and kinetic violence is important when we're trying to understand the violent potential of modernity the absence of violence is not the absence of the potential for violence now let's take this back to the transition from ritual to law I suggest that we should understand this transition from ritual to law as a shift of what actually brings about peace in rituals peace is primarily brought
• 37:30 - 38:00 about by catharsis and Prestige and only partially by the threat of violence whereas in law peace is primarily brought about by the threat of violence and only partially by catharsis and prestige let's say you were the wronged party and were not satisfied with the outcome of a sacrificial right or a ritual say you weren't happy with the outcome of the trial by combat or the sacrifice didn't give you enough catharsis what is your cost of taking Vengeance into your own
• 38:00 - 38:30 hands well because there's no Central Authority the cost is somewhat low right it's simply the resistance of the guilty party that you're trying to take Vengeance on and any future reciprocal violence because there is such low cost for you to continue killing it's basically one guy and his friends that you have to worry about rituals really need to make sure that you are satisfied with the outcome of the right and the way rituals do this is twofold first rituals aim to give you the
• 38:30 - 39:00 wronged party and the angry party catharsis this is why ritual sacrifices often seem so unnecessarily cruel like the pharmacos ritual where the entire community participates in harming and humiliating the victim before killing the victim its cruelty is not tangential But Central to why rituals work so that you get your cathartic release and have no more desire to seek vengeance the second way that rituals make you satisfied with the outcome of the ritual
• 39:00 - 39:30 is that rituals are grounded on immense Prestige such that even if you don't feel catharsis you feel social pressure against exacting Vengeance let's say you're a wronged party and challenges the guilty party to a trial by combat even if you lose and you don't feel catharsis the outcome of the trial by combat may be seen as the will of some God and so there's immense Prestige of the outcome of the right even if it goes against your favor you feel compelled to
• 39:30 - 40:00 respect it even if you aren't satisfied with the outcome of it to summarize them rituals bring about peace primarily by making wronged parties feel catharsis and by grounding the outcome of the ritual on Prestige whereas the threat of violence for exacting revenge is actually quite minimal law flips this on its head primarily stopping violence with more violence and only partially using Prestige and catharsis think about it this way our judicial
• 40:00 - 40:30 system does indeed generate some level of catharsis right Gerard thinks that the state is acting in our stead and exacting Vengeance for us which may give the wrong party some release I think this idea has some bearing because after the guilty party has been sentenced you often hear the wrong parties state that your justice has been done and furthermore the way we do our sentencing and build our jails is also reminiscent of the type of expulsion of ritual sacrifices where we cast people away from society
• 40:30 - 41:00 and I think the legal system does serve a primarily cathartic function in very public cases I mean look at how social media reacted to the sentencing of the cop who killed George Floyd right there were celebrations all around of the cops conviction it was a hugely emotional cathartic National event but I think for Less public cases catharsis is not the primary reason that the legal system works and I don't think it's Prestige either Gerard thinks that the legal system does
• 41:00 - 41:30 indeed enjoy some amount of prestige and respect but certainly not enough to prevent violence on its own what really ends violence for our judicial system and makes it so effective is the threat of more violence let's ask the same question in today's society if the wronged party were not happy with the sentence given by law to the guilty party and decided to take Vengeance into their own hands what is the cost
• 41:30 - 42:00 well the cost is almost infinite because it's not just the guilty party and the guilty party's friends who will come after you but the entire state that will cast you as a criminal for taking Justice into your own hands for Gerard this is what grounds the efficacy of law that there's nothing we can do about the conclusions of law this transition from catharsis and Prestige to the threat of violence spawns both a change in who the focus of punishment is and also changes the very
• 42:00 - 42:30 philosophy of punishment itself in rights the focus of punishment is the wronged party so that he can get his cathartic release and the philosophy of punishment is retribution the wronged person deserves to get even in some way right this is also Nietzsche's conclusion as well I quote Nietzsche here to what extent can suffering balance debts or guilt to the extent that to make suffer was in the highest degree
• 42:30 - 43:00 pleasurable to the extent that the wronged party exchanged for the loss he had sustained including the displeasure caused by the loss an extraordinary counterbalancing pleasure that of making suffering a genuine Festival end quote in rituals then it's about the wronged party experiencing pleasure and catharsis because without the threat of State violence that is what will end reciprocal violence now in the legal system the focus of
• 43:00 - 43:30 punishment is the guilty party to take him out of commission and break the chain of reciprocity the philosophy of punishment is guilt he in some ways deserves to be punished not for the pleasure of the wronged party but in and for itself Gerard naturally draws a somewhat relativistic conclusion on Modern conceptions of justice as punishing the guilty party Gerard's point is that we didn't start punishing the guilty party because it was more just we started
• 43:30 - 44:00 doing it because it was more effective and then we backed our way into this notion of justice as punishing the guilty party he is this to say our penal system operates according to principles of justice that are in no real conflict with the concept of Revenge the same principle is at work in all systems of violent retribution either the principle is just and Justice is therefore inherent in the idea of Vengeance or there is no justice to be found anywhere end quote
• 44:00 - 44:30 his point here is that either Justice is Revenge in which case our system is the most just because we conform closest to Vengeance or Justice is just some relativistically made up term Contra Plato Gerard isn't particularly concerned with Justice because some abstract ideal of Justice isn't the concern for rituals or law it's about containing reciprocal violence it's about making sure the group survives in the absence of a monopolizing Force the most effective way is to create
• 44:30 - 45:00 cathartic rights that does not punish the guilty party but gives the wrong party release if you want to call that Justice find by Gerard Justice really isn't the concern here the existence of the social group is at stake law then for Gerard is an institution descended from rituals that occupy the function of both ritual and Prohibition in modernity there are three large differences between rituals and law first law requires an all-pervading all-powerful monopolistic Force to
• 45:00 - 45:30 function second whereas rituals prevent further violence from Prestige and catharsis law prevents violence the threat of moral violence third rituals are primarily done with the wronged party as its focus the logic of punishment is retribution laws are designed with the guilty party as its focus the logic of punishment is guilt the key thing to take away is that law is the catachon that which contains
• 45:30 - 46:00 violence and apocalypse but it is only effective at stopping violence with the threat of more violence this will be pivotal for Gerard's arguments on apocalypse because at certain points the dike is going to break the dike of law is going to give way law will break precisely where there's no Central monopolistic power namely in international Affairs and global trade with that let's move on to our second
• 46:00 - 46:30 institution of modernity capitalism and trade in the same way we understood our legal system by tracing a genealogy to Ritual let us understand the institution of capitalism and global trade by tracing a genealogy back to gift giving now Contra are popular conceptions before currencies were invented societies didn't operate under barter you know I'll take three sheep for your cow but under gift giving you know I see that you my neighbor are hungry and I
• 46:30 - 47:00 offer to give you a few eggs and I think this makes somewhat intuitive sense bartering in exchange is rather cold and impersonal and not suitable in early societies that has a small and tight-knit social fabric even today in environments with a strong social fabric the exchange of goods and services operates Less on the logic of barter and more on the logic of gift giving we don't go to our close friends or co-workers and say you know I will work on your spreadsheet for three hours if you uh promise to walk my dog for two
• 47:00 - 47:30 days we offer to walk dogs we offer to helps with spreadsheets based on the strength of the relationship now we do keep some kind of tally right you can't just keep asking me for favors the whole time but it's not the immediate bartering system that we may have in mind it doesn't need immediate reconciliation Gerard makes two interesting observations about gift giving that will help us better understand capitalism the first is that while there is a substantive portion of gift giving that was about material Aid
• 47:30 - 48:00 the dominant logic of gift giving was often about spirit and not appetite appetite it was about what gift giving said about the gift giver instead of how it helped the receiver Gerard has this to say among the quakuto and other Northwestern Indian tribes great Chiefs used to demonstrate their superiority by giving away their most precious possessions to their competitors the other great Chiefs they all try to outdo one another in
• 48:00 - 48:30 their contempt for wealth the winner was the one who gave up the most and received the least this strange game was institutionalized and it resulted in the destruction of the goods which the two groups in principle were trying to give to each other just as most human groups do in all kinds of ritual exchange end quote as this example shows gift giving which may have originated from neighborly help transformed into a social competition
• 48:30 - 49:00 and there are so many examples of this including how gift giving started Wars and how some after receiving a gift so good that they had nothing to reciprocate with committed suicide or killed the Gift Giver because they were so humiliated these points about gift giving remind me of modern day philanthropy where often at universities for example people will put their names on the building and outwardly they'll they'll be all about the good they'll be about oh I believe and what's happening at this institution I really believe in
• 49:00 - 49:30 education and so I'm gonna give a building but really what ends up happening is once they see their name on the building they get to put their shoulders back and feel the sense of tremendous pride and what they get from that is so often them not giving to the university but them giving to themselves I think that's a funny modern equivalent whereas the tribal chiefs were giving but not for the gift-giver's sake but for their own sake by showing how much they had to spare it seems like you're
• 49:30 - 50:00 suggesting that the same logic happens in modern-day gift-giving in philanthropy but I think it's not just about the habits of giving in modern society but any form of Material Exchange as we discuss extensively in Celebrity advertisement Material Exchange is often not about material Goods at all but about what they say about us now going back to gift giving in early societies the second interesting point and what will be different from modern
• 50:00 - 50:30 capitalism and trade is that gift giving rituals always had a temporal gap between gift and counter gift and furthermore the value of the gift couldn't be wildly different but also couldn't be exactly the same now it's obvious why the value of the gifts can't be wildly different you can't have one person taking advantage of the other but the values can't be the same either because that implied that you wanted to break a relationship off with someone if I have a friend who say asks me to
• 50:30 - 51:00 fix his car I may be offended if he constantly asks me for favors like that without reciprocating but I may also be offended if he offered to pay me immediately and insistently because it implies that our relationship isn't strong enough to have that trust of future reciprocation aziring of the balance sheet implied a Breaking of that relationship what about the other point about the temporal Gap well there had to be a temporal gap between gift and
• 51:00 - 51:30 counter gift for the same reason to show that there was trust in that relationship instead of a clearing of the balances immediately I mean in my life at least the closer the relationship the less urgent I am in settling accounts after say you know at dinner if it's someone I'll never see again well it's imperative that we pay for our both our own dinners but if he's a good friend I'ma just get the whole bill without thinking too much about it because he'll likely do the same for me in the future I've experienced this too I was once on a trip with a friend and
• 51:30 - 52:00 for the first 24 or 48 hours we were venmoing back and forth twelve dollars here 17 there and I was the one initiate getting it he was like dude stop doing this he's like we're not venmoing each other anymore and at the time I thought it was weird I thought it was really jarring but looking back I understand why the need to settle the accounts as you were saying to always bring that balance back to zero it implied this implicit break in the contractual nature of a
• 52:00 - 52:30 friend like two people who just care for each other and the second that you start accounting for deaths the relationship just devolves into a transaction that's exactly right the need to immediately zero the accounts implies that the relationship itself is not strong enough but there's another reason to widen the temporal gap between gift and counter gift and that is to prevent violent escalation as the example of the coodle Chiefs showed gift giving can be extremely
• 52:30 - 53:00 passionate and spirited and it is best to have some Gap in between to cool off the spirited energies now let's summarize what's important for gift giving for Gerard is that first Material Exchange is often not about material at all and is about a social display that could lead to violence because there's so many prideful energies involved and second gift giving had to be done with temporal gaps in between with objects of differing value transition to modern capitalism then can
• 53:00 - 53:30 be understood as the introduction of money which takes away this second quality of gift giving when we buy things with money it is both instantaneous as well as the exact same value this breaks the relationship and prevents an escalation of violence money then is to exchange what law is to Human Relationships just as law atomized us which allowed us to interact much more frequently with a much more diverse set
• 53:30 - 54:00 of people money also atomizes us it takes this Ledger of gift giving Which used to be governed and intimately entwined with relationships and ends it with each transaction bring the balance to zero the same story for law here applies to money as well whereas before so much of our functions in life were governed by relationships now they've been substituted by some more mechanical and immediate process
• 54:00 - 54:30 but make no mistake capitalism like gift giving is still mostly about social displays and less about actual material goods for Gerard it's still about spirit and competitive energies that could lead to violence the relationship between capitalism and gift-giving then is the same as the relationship between law and ritual in that by atomizing individuals it allows us to interact much more frequently trade has
• 54:30 - 55:00 accelerated so while the actuality of violence has diminished the potential for violence has increased Gerard probably has something like this in mind in tribal societies only a very limited set of goods or traded or gifted and at very infrequent intervals but in modernity almost everything can be bought by money and the pace of exchange is much much faster this increases the surface area of
• 55:00 - 55:30 competition you may say then that with capitalism and law we never have any true peace which only violent catharsis can bring about what we have is superficial peace covering an ocean of violent energies we are in a state of suspended polarity that could burst at any moment capitalism and capitalistic competition then is a guard against violence because it atomizes us but it's also a generator
• 55:30 - 56:00 of violence because it increases the frequency and surface of trade the next point that Gerard is going to make is that capitalism also channels it is an outlet for violence that acts as a stabilizing Force now before I go on and elaborate on this last and third Point let me be clear that when Gerard says that capitalism is channel for violence he doesn't have in mind whipping slaves to build the pyramids but that the same energies of
• 56:00 - 56:30 violence of pride of desire for Conquest are the dominant ones driving capitalism today Gerard reminds us I quote it is not by chance that the European aristocracy went into business once Heroes and Warriors went out of style end quote Gerard's reading of capitalism here is nothing new a private Vice leads to public virtue when we peek behind the motivational curtains of actors in capitalism we
• 56:30 - 57:00 shouldn't expect to find a desire to help others hell we shouldn't even expect to find materialistic selfish greed instead Gerard thinks that it's the exact same motivational Force as the tribal Chiefs giving away Goods it's honor its Prestige it's glorious Conquest princes and heroes of yore who would have amassed armies Now find themselves competing to make products and services Gerard warns us don't be fooled but what the actors in capitalism tell you it's the same drive that drove Achilles to
• 57:00 - 57:30 kill Hector a Germany to invade France and Caesar to capture version generics that underpins our world economy today hearing you talk about the armies and products makes me think of how many entrepreneurs a shocking number of entrepreneurs I know were criminals in high school and I've been trying to back into what's going on there because they clearly have this either violent or destructive or rebellious energy inside of them but it's through capitalism that they Channel their
• 57:30 - 58:00 their Pursuits into the pursuit of profit which is better for society than the illicit activities that they used to engage in and I think this is both a critique of capitalism right that it's fundamentally still driven off these same spirited forces and by these uh malicious actors but also a deep deep Praise of capitalism for the point you just made that it channels these malicious energies to such a productive use this is what Gerard has to say the
• 58:00 - 58:30 United States never relapsed into totalitarian contractions because of among other reasons it's social fluidity it's extensive Mobility both in geographical and in Social terms the modern Western economy is the first civilization that has learned to use memetic rivalry positively it is known as economic competition end quote George's point is that what a miracle it is that people today who seek revenge who seek Glory who seek to conquer who
• 58:30 - 59:00 seek to channel their conquering drives who would have had to raise armies and engage in zero-sum Wars just a few hundred years ago today they primarily satisfy these malicious drives by creating better products and services for others think about how ambivalent this makes Gerard just as as we discussed in the last lecture the good forces of Christianity truth love and Innovation power the most
• 59:00 - 59:30 charitable currents of modernity the most terrifying and apocalyptic Force violence is responsible for feeling the best living standards of Any Human Society ever to exist Gerard's reading of capitalism as driven by Spirit instead of reason and appetite explains a whole host of behavior puzzling to classical economics with its homoeconomic as a reading of human
• 59:30 - 60:00 nature for example in the 2000s and 90s the dominant view of China's relationship with the West Was of Greater Harmony through economic liberalization the belief was that China's rise would lift the boats of the world economy and that economic similarity would lead to political Harmony at peak of Chinese optimism however in 2007 Gerard says nay the reason nations compete is the same reason individuals compete similarity
• 60:00 - 60:30 instead of difference being more similar having the similar ends between us and China will cause more rivalry and make both sides erect false differences and even if China's rise will make most in the U.S have absolutely more material Goods spirit is what drives capitalism and so it's more the relative rather than absolute standing that Americans will care about and will feel threatened by the rise of China Gerard has this to say
• 60:30 - 61:00 the looming conflict between the United States and China has nothing to do with a clash of civilizations we always try to see differences where in fact there are none in fact the dispute is between two forms of capitalism that are becoming more and more similar end quote but conflict is fine right after all doesn't capitalism Thrive from rivalry and channel it productively it does but only when law is there to constrain
• 61:00 - 61:30 it capitalism is dependent on law but as we discussed earlier on law is dependent on an entity with the Monopoly on violence capitalism and law work fine within a nation as your example of Jeff Bezos peacefully suing Elon Musk goes to show but between nations where there is no monopolistic power that is where the breaking point is global trade will be
• 61:30 - 62:00 the arena where violence erupts and so at the height of sino-american optimism in 2007. Gerard not only predicts the falling out of these two Nations but also correctly observes that the very mechanism others thought would bring together these two Nations global trade would be the exact point of conflict anticipating the trade Wars of the 2020s Gerard a conflict between the United States and
• 62:00 - 62:30 China will follow everything is in place though it will not necessarily occur on the military level at First Trade can transform very quickly to war from this point of view we can reasonably fear a major clash between China and the United States in coming decades end quote let us now examine what such a war in modernity between two colossal nation states would entail
• 62:30 - 63:00 we've discussed the mass collapse of all forms of Institutions ritual sacrifice prohibitions the breaking of laws and capitalism but the most frightening collapse of institution is the institution of War now you may be surprised that I would even call War an institution after all when we think about institutions we think about laws and codes rules and regulations this in our minds has nothing to do with war
• 63:00 - 63:30 because we conceive of War as about winning at all costs disregarding any codes and rules and laws regardless of the means in the form which Victory takes right biochemical weapons terrorism torturing prisoners weapons of mass destruction this is what we think about when we think about war Gerard's point is that war was not always like this I mean think of how the Iliad ends with a 12-day truce for the burial of Hector think about how Greek city-states fought each other over land with phalixes in a very ritualized
• 63:30 - 64:00 manner right at least before the Peloponnesian War most of the battles between these phalanxes were very contained and ritualized it's like a rugby match almost where rival leaders agreed where and when to fight and the fight ended not when one side was totally exterminated but when one side started to lose ground there are always these implicit rules governing every aspect of the fight even in modern day I think we still have hints of this institution of War I mean
• 64:00 - 64:30 for example the impromptu Christmas truces in World War one where rival soldiers came out of their trenches to play soccer with people that they were just trying to kill days ago in no man's land Gerard understands Warfare as being composed of two elements the abstract concept of War which is what we are used to now and the frictions of war that turn it into an institution
• 64:30 - 65:00 to understand this abstract concept of War Gerard asks us to turn to the military theorists and general Carl Von klauschwitz's famous on War I quote war is nothing but a duel on a larger scale war is an act of force and there's no logical limit to this application of that Force each side therefore compels its opponent to follow suit a reciprocal action is started which must lead in theory to extremes end quote
• 65:00 - 65:30 this metaphor of a duel is very alarming because a duel is defined by instant escalation whether by sword or by Pistol The Duel is often over in a matter of minutes if not seconds with one or both parties dead both of you deploy all your abilities and forces to immediately exterminate the opponent that's the logic of the duel for Gerard ask for klauschwitz the abstract concept of war the governing
• 65:30 - 66:00 logic of war is none other than this instant escalation to extremes The hegelian Duel which only ends in death or complete domination but of course in reality Wars do not happen like this they're stalemates their withdrawals there's de-escalation there are peace treaties what prevents actual war from conforming to its abstract concept of unending escalation to the extremes are frictions
• 66:00 - 66:30 frictions that prevent both parties from fully deploying all their forces at once the idea is this if violent reciprocation is simultaneous then Spirit dominates and you are completely caught up in that logic of Vengeance yet if there are frictions that prevent rival factions from deploying their forces then they can have time to de-escalate and cool off it's very much like personal rivalries where taking time away from your rival is very
• 66:30 - 67:00 important for Spirit to cool off and being able to use reason in like manner rival Nations need frictions to help them gain Lucidity to de-escalate and I think there are two types of frictions that prevent rival armies from deploying their forces at once first are technological frictions and the terrain that you have to Traverse to get your troops into the battlefield the long gap of communication that plagued armies of old and etc etc the second are cultural frictions the
• 67:00 - 67:30 rituals and prohibitions in War what made War into an institution you see up until modern times there were often things you must or could not under no circumstance do to your enemy even in the context of War even if it meant giving up an easy Victory or facing certain defeat these frictions often delayed violence and gave both parties space to de-escalate and we don't have to go back
• 67:30 - 68:00 to the Greek phalanxes to see War as an institution governed by these rules we can look at something much closer the gentleman's Wars of the 17th and 18th century these wars were called gentlemen's Wars because there were so many implicit agreements that everyone respected let me just give you a few examples during the wars of 18th century in Europe it was usual for armies to campaign in set seasons usually from March to September
• 68:00 - 68:30 and so with the onset of autumn armies would go into winter quarters and many officers would head home now this notion of war that it's like some kind of NBA season is ludicrous enough but what is more is that for many officers to go home on this off-season some would have to travel through enemy territory and usually their enemies granted them safe Passage let me give you a more specific and incredible example in gentlemen's Wars
• 68:30 - 69:00 to kill officers via assassination was considered scandalous and not honorable the famous rifle corpse Commander uh Colonel I think Patrick Ferguson had this to recount in 1777 when he was deployed to America from the British Empire to quell the Rebellion I'm reading from his journal here I quote we had not leaned long when a rebel officer remarkable by a hussar dress passed towards our army within a hundred
• 69:00 - 69:30 yards of my right flank not perceiving us I ordered three good shots to steal near to them and fire at them but the idea disgusted me I recalled the order I could have lodged half a dozen of balls in or about him before he was out of my reach I had only to determine but it was not pleasant to fire at the back of an unoffending individual who was acquitting himself very coolly of his duty so I left him alone
• 69:30 - 70:00 that day one of our surgeons came in and told us that they had been informed that General Washington was all the morning with the light troops and only attended by a French officer in a hussar dress he himself dressed and mounted in every Point as above described I am not sorry that I did not know at the time who it was end quote Ferguson let the Rival chief commander
• 70:00 - 70:30 George Washington go because it was I quote not pleasant to assassinate and after learning who it was he wasn't sorry for letting him go that's like if the U.S had Bin Laden at its crosshairs but decided to call off the Drone strike because it was a Sunday and it's not good to kill on the Lord's Day that is how strong these cultural frictions were in the 18th century war was much more like a competitive team
• 70:30 - 71:00 sport filled with passions and emotions but with clear boundaries that few transgressed these all sound so bizarre to us after World War one and World War II we do have a code of law now that governs War but this doesn't carry much cultural weight we've simply resorted to the most efficient forms of killing there are no real rules anymore to us it seems so odd to tell your opponents where you will go to let them pass by on a vacation and not to shoot
• 71:00 - 71:30 someone because it was unpleasant today Warfare is all about domination how to use every method every arrow in our quiver to inflict greatest damage with the most minimal loss so what has changed between our era and the era of gentleman Wars Gerard sees the inflection point between Modern War and the gentleman's war in Napoleon Napoleon came to power towards the end
• 71:30 - 72:00 of the French Revolution and throughout the revolution would fundamentally shifted was the philosophy of War before the French Revolution Europe generally was at ease with war in some sense war was thought of as a normal State of Affairs waged by professionals usually aristocratic officers for whom military service was just another phase in a varied career not unlike how you'd go start a company now but later on you'd be a venture capitalist just another phase in your career
• 72:00 - 72:30 the Napoleonic era saw three radical changes from this European ideal first The Prestige and power of the old nobility along with its attitude towards an involvement inward diminished second the enlightenment Assumption of War as an extraordinary aberration took hold war was no longer a common state of affairs but a barbaric interlude which gave people greater normative
• 72:30 - 73:00 justification to commit atrocities in the name of ending Wars and third an apocalyptic view of War as either total Victory or total defeat started gaining momentum whereas there was a form of dignity given even to The Losers of War if you were defeated you often could just go home and sometimes were even honored by the victors now people believed that the enemy was out for total extermination this change in the philosophy of War can
• 73:00 - 73:30 be summarized as the stakes of War being heightened and these extraordinary ends started justifying extraordinary means war was no longer a profession a team sport an institution among others in society it became total and enveloped all aspects of society the first time in modern history the Jordan law of 1798 introduced total mandatory conscription before that armies were usually filled
• 73:30 - 74:00 by mercenaries Aristocrats and maybe localized conscription but even for non-combatants those who weren't conscribed in this new paradigm of total conscription War started taking on a total form married men made Munitions women created clothes the old tell Tales of Glory and this blending of civil society and the military resulted in increased civilian casualties and further
• 74:00 - 74:30 oppression of conquered peoples after all it's not just the military that is the enemy now it also resulted in more grotesque tactics like scorched Earth policies and this intensified cruelty engendered coordinated attacks by already conquered civilian peoples most notably in Spanish guerrilla warfare which Gerard sees as giving birth to Modern terrorism with Napoleon then we are already far away from the gentleman Wars as the
• 74:30 - 75:00 stakes of War increased Warfare became more about Exterminating the enemy at all costs instead of respecting rituals and prohibitions that gave one honor today these cultural frictions have all but Fallen to the Wayside war is no longer an institution with checks and balances but conforms to its abstract concept of domination of course cultural frictions aren't the only ones that have disappeared in the
• 75:00 - 75:30 age of instant telecommunications and paratroopers we can deploy our forces in much more rapid succession but nothing beats the nuclear bomb in its ability to instantaneously deploy all of one's violence at once what is unique about the nuke isn't its singular destructive force in the firebombing of Tokyo the Mongol Mass murderers are all comparable to the devastation of a singular nuclear strike what is unique about the nuke is that it
• 75:30 - 76:00 forces Rivals to utterly destroy each other at the first glimpse of provocation unlike firebombing or a Mongol horde that takes time to maneuver through terrain there are no frictions to unleashing your entire nuclear Arsenal you just gotta press the button for the nuke Nations fought Wars like a boxing match taking time to maneuver resting in between with fatal blows rare and often taking a long time
• 76:00 - 76:30 the nuke allows nation-states to fight Wars like a duel instant fatal escalation it's worse than a duel because it allows the dead party to shoot the person who is alive because even if you nuke my entire landmass to Oblivion my nuclear submarines can still avenge me post-mortem framed in this light Gerard's worries of Apocalypse is less theological speculation than deja vu
• 76:30 - 77:00 on October 27 1962 a Soviet submarine armed with a nuclear-tipped torpedo was located and targeted by an American Carrier Group dropping signaling depth charges intended to destroy the submarine height of the Cuban Missile Crisis the crew had lost contact with Moscow for days and thought that a new war had broken out the crew was considering whether to fire the nuke believing they were under
• 77:00 - 77:30 attack this submarine required all three senior officials to agree to launch the nuke two of them decided to fire only one officer's stubborn refusal prevented an almost certain nuclear attack and likely world-scale Armageddon this is how close we were the will of one man was all that stood in the way this is why Gerard felt with the bomb we
• 77:30 - 78:00 truly do live in an apocalyptic time where if a war were to begin it could quickly conform to its abstract concept escalating instantaneously to the extremes Gerard isn't exaggerating when he says we are living in the end times prohibition and ritual have broken down and we are without our old tools to limit violence the best we can do is Law and capitalism which are insufficient
• 78:00 - 78:30 catachons decreasing the actuality of violence while increasing its potentiality unlike sacrifices of old there is no real peace this potential energy if it hasn't already will engender War at the point where law is impotent and capitalism has channeled our rivalrous instincts global trade and such a war without cultural nor
• 78:30 - 79:00 technological frictions would see a rapid nuclear escalation that brings about literal apocalypse so what ought we do in such an apocalyptic age how should one live in the end days let's begin with what Gerard thinks we shouldn't be doing we shouldn't try to fix the world through Collective political action indeed Gerard has an inherent suspicion of all Collective actions because we
• 79:00 - 79:30 necessarily lose a part of our authenticity by being so immersed in a group forceful political action is almost always deceitful to justify violence or at least expulsion but Gerard does not categorically reject political action despite these downsides because there are certain movements that are still worthy of Engagement despite of them perhaps freeing the slaves George heed therefore against political action isn't categorical but contingent
• 79:30 - 80:00 on our social historical moment he believes that nothing is left to be done on the political level Gerard like Hegel believes we are in the end times we have realized to a large degree equality freedom and Truth which are the ultimate ideals Humanity can strive for Gerard also believes that it's these exact forces of equality freedom and
• 80:00 - 80:30 Truth there are also the forces causing this monstrous buildup of violence because we've gotten rid of caste systems that competition is building up it's because we've given up on unjust sacrifice that we have no resources to resolve violence it's because we've given up silly prohibitions that Wars have taken a total character and it's because of our desire for truth that we can no longer believe in any Noble lies
• 80:30 - 81:00 that can bring lasting peace this is the eschatological paradox the conditions that make possible the kingdom of God on Earth undifferentiation the state of equality that we're all in now is also the conditions for Mass violence political action is impotent because we are already at the most ideal state if we can't love each other now we can't love each other ever Gerard declares I
• 81:00 - 81:30 quote all men are already equal not just under law but in fact end quote we are already in the perfect social historical conditions there's nothing left for political activity to do what is required of us in such perfect social historical conditions is a radical transformation of spirit where we give up our metaphysical desire and
• 81:30 - 82:00 in doing so renounce violence and learn to love others this deeply personal individual transformation Gerard calls conversion now if Collective political action won't save us let's see whether conversion is an adequate strategy to live in an apocalyptic era despite its Christian connotations conversion is not an experience reserved for the religious but simply the process of becoming disillusioned with the
• 82:00 - 82:30 promise of metaphysical desire Gerard uses the term conversion much more broadly to describe a Liberation from desire in fact Gerard's canonical examples of conversion are literary writers that have nothing to do with Christianity through conversion one sees through the vanity of metaphysical desire naturally renounces the futile violence within memetic rivalries develops an
• 82:30 - 83:00 identification and love for the other as false differences diminish and is even imbued with a newfound Creative Energy post-conversion or so Gerard makes it seem we can continue to engage deeply with Society without being trapped in the pernicious games of metaphysical desire conversion is a fundamental transformation of spirit where we are no longer prideful
• 83:00 - 83:30 our energies are channeled into wildly creative Pursuits and we develop a genuine identification and concern for others while this may seem too spiritual I think we can all recognize instances of conversion even if it does not go through the heights that Gerard is suggesting here in our own lives think about the stories of letting go of a competitive career to spend time with family think about realizing the vanity of status games and stepping away these are all steps in the direction of conversion
• 83:30 - 84:00 conversion is precisely what we need but for Gerard it is not reproducible for three key reasons and thus is not a reliable solution we can just recommend anyone first the requirements for conversion are extremely specific and intimate Gerard has this to say in reality no purely intellectual process and no experience of a purely philosophical nature can secure the
• 84:00 - 84:30 individual the slightest victory over memetic desire for there to be even the slightest degree of progress the victimage delusion must be vanquished on the most intimate level of experience and this Triumph if it is not to remain a dead letter must succeed in collapsing or at the very least shaken to their foundations are core conceptions of self everything that we can call our ego our personality our temperament and so on
• 84:30 - 85:00 end quote that is to say conversion relies on a rare experience that fundamentally changes what we conceive the self is or could be and yes if this dissolving of the ego sounds a lot like what you see in eastern spirituality Gerard himself makes the comparison to Nirvana Prima facia such an intimate and copernican event should make us suspicious of its reproducibility we can't just tell people to go out
• 85:00 - 85:30 there and get enlightened the second reason for why conversion is not a reliable reproducible solution is that the conditions for conversion cannot be pursued directly what is necessary to produce such a strong life-changing experience is a fall feeling a company having your heart broken losing a loved one you need to suffer through the Pains of desire to shake your ego down since the fall is defined by above all
• 85:30 - 86:00 failure it cannot be pursued directly it is not as if one can work towards a fall in hopes that it will lead towards conversion for then it would cease to have the necessary destabilizing shock instead the fall must result from a genuine and intense metaphysical desire that is inevitably thwarted the third and last reason that
• 86:00 - 86:30 conversion is not reproducible and reliable is that even when both of these conditions for conversion are met it is still to some degree not up to us whether we do convert we are still faced with the choice to deepen our pride or to renounce it to enact violence on the Rival or to seek reconciliation unfortunately this choice is not completely up to us and will be determined at least in large part by the
• 86:30 - 87:00 models we have been exposed to at a young age old habits die hard and old models haunt us for our entire lives it should now be clear why conversion cannot be prescribed any more than winning the lottery can be prescribed not only do you need to fail monstrously to the point of collapse that failure has to expose the lies of mimesis and Shake Your Ego to the Core and only if you have been mediated by
• 87:00 - 87:30 the right models then and only then do you have even the possibility the chance of Escape conversion then is an act of Grace given to the fortunate but not something we can make meaningful strides towards ourselves but there is one last solution Gerard offers us as individuals living in the end times that can be reproduced this
• 87:30 - 88:00 does not require Grace and can be willed by us recall conversion is a way to exist within the community to live to love and creating it it is the ideal State a state that if everyone obtained would bring forth the kingdom of God on Earth but for those of us most of us not lucky enough to be given such a treasured gift Gerard's suggestion is simple withdraw withdraw from the world Leave
• 88:00 - 88:30 the World Behind tend to your own garden proximity is the problem of modernity there's nothing we can do about social proximity we're all equals now but we can create physical proximity by leaving Society altogether Gerard's example poxilones of withdrawal is going to be found in Friedrich holderlin the 19th century poet a contemporary of Hegel shelling and ficte holderlin is someone that Gerard brings
• 88:30 - 89:00 up because and not despite of his strong metaphysical desires and pride Gerard diagnosis holderlin with an extreme Pride that he wanted to be Gerta or nothing holderlin was not lucky enough to be blessed with conversion that is precisely what makes him attractive for Gerard if withdrawal works for even such a memetic person then it must work for all
• 89:00 - 89:30 and withdraw holderlin did for the last 40 Years of his life holderlin retreated into a tower where only few of his friends visited him cutting himself completely off from society Gerard attributes to the withdrawn holderlin a quiet mysticism tranquility and even holiness this withdrawal is so Central to Gerard's prescriptions that he takes it to be a defining characteristic of
• 89:30 - 90:00 Christ the command in matatio Christie to imitate Christ for Gerard is a heed to leave Society like Christ who does not imitate any man so must we refuse to imitate what's equally important is to refuse to be imitated Gerard comments that Christ I quote withdraws at the very moment he could dominate end quote Gerard's point is this at the
• 90:00 - 90:30 resurrection when his divinity when Christ's Divinity is apparent to all when Christ could have founded an Empire on Earth he left so too must we then humble ourselves in front of others and refuse to be a model by refusing to be too close to society and it's only at this distant and withdrawn place refusing to imitate and refusing to be imitated can we see truth and practice
• 90:30 - 91:00 love the first commandment to direct one's gaze towards God is incomplete without the tenth commandment to divert one's gaze away from others we may find Gerard's only actionable prescription withdrawal deeply unsatisfying first holderlin's contemporaries found him far from the ideal of Holiness that Gerard attributed to him he was devoid of companionship he was characterized by anxiety rather than
• 91:00 - 91:30 peace it's not clear that withdrawal does protect us second Gerard ironically succumbs to The Escapist flaws the younger Gerard found unsatisfying in Eastern religions Gerard says this as a critique the non-violence of Eastern religions is the search for a position outside of violence Nirvana Etc but this comes at the price of all action but this search abandons the
• 91:30 - 92:00 world in a way to itself but these are the exact problems that Gerard himself runs into by prescribing the holder lineian option lastly we may ask what good is whatever love we manage to develop withdrawn this love is so far from being able to help others now I don't think Gerard found this Final Solution that's satisfying either but at the end of the day Gerard has no
• 92:00 - 92:30 choice and if he is right neither do we apocalypse is imminent if we don't withdraw we're going to get sucked right up into the memetic frenzy this is how certain Gerard was of the end of the world I quote Christ will have tried to bring Humanity into adulthood but Humanity will have refused I'm using the future perfect on purpose because there's a deep failure in all this end quote
• 92:30 - 93:00 the kingdom of God while a logical possibility is a statistical impossibility apocalypse is coming there's no hope for Collective salvation the only thing we can do is to preserve our own Integrity by withdrawing in order to make ourselves worthy of Salvation by God in the next life in the 80s after describing our predicament someone asked Gerard what is to be done and all that he said was
• 93:00 - 93:30 we might begin with personal sanctity during a lecture in Paris he was asked the same question and he simply just answered pray Gerard does not give us any worldly Solutions because there are none the kingdom of God will not be established on here on Earth but perhaps we can preserve ourselves to be worthy of it in heaven perhaps the only worth asking question
• 93:30 - 94:00 then how do we know when the end is near I can't help but call to mind these marxists of the Frankfurt School who have a set date where capitalism is going to end exact eschatological predictions are I think are not good for much Beyond humor in retrospect Gerard is not engaged in this Mayan type of business of having a specific date instead he points us gently back to Matthew 24.
• 94:00 - 94:30 for nation shall rise against nation and Kingdom against Kingdom and there shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in diverse places all these are the beginning of Sorrows then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted and shall kill you and ye shall be hated of all Nations for my name's sake and then shall many be offended and
• 94:30 - 95:00 shall betray one another and shall hate one another and many false prophets shall rise and shall deceive many and because iniquity shall abound the love of many shall wax cold but he that shall endure unto the end the same shall be saved and this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations
• 95:00 - 95:30 and then shall the End come Gerard looks at our world what is the earthquakes and pestilences that Matthew refers to but the ecological challenges we're facing what are these geopolitical fault lines and trade conflicts but the rise of nation against Nation what are the ones who persecute in the name of victims but the false prophets who shall deceive many and what is our increasingly toxic cultural landscape
• 95:30 - 96:00 but the iniquity that causes the love of many to grow cold and to that we may add what is Gerard's work but the last preaching of the gospel for an unreceptive world the end is not near the end is here I will leave our listeners stewing in the same unbearable silence that Gerard
• 96:00 - 96:30 left me stranded in final sentence in his final book reads in 1815 the Congress of Vienna was still able to put an end to the war of the sixth coalition that era is over violence can no longer be checked from this point of view we can say that the apocalypse has already begun
• 96:30 - 97:00 [Music]