openpolitics.com

says well we’ve had all these years of

warfare over religion we’ll stop asking

important questions and all these

decades these centuries after the

Enlightenment here’s the world we’ve

reached this is the way I read you you

can correct my reading but let me finish

quoting you instead of violent wars

there could be violent video games

instead of heroic feats

there could be thrilling amusement park

rides instead of serious thought there

could be intrigues of all sorts

in a soap opera it is a world where

people spend their lives amusing

themselves to death close quote

now that is a devastating indictment of

much of contemporary America correct

well it is I mean I think this has been

06:59

the trend of modernity now it’s it’s

07:02

it’s not as though politics has

07:04

disappeared though it’s it’s often just

07:05

gets displaced in various ways but but

07:08

yes I think there is this this

07:10

incredible degree to which we’ve we’ve

07:14

we’ve substituted the realities of

07:18

politics for these sort of increasingly

07:20

fictionalized worlds and and it’s

07:23

probably uh that’s probably a very very

07:25

unhealthy thing there’s sort of a

07:27

slightly different frame that I’ve often

07:29

given on this is is that in in the last

07:33

40 or 50 years there’s been a shift from

07:36

exteriority which I which you know doing

07:41

things in the real world to the sort of

07:43

interior world which is sort of in a way

07:46

can be thought of this also the shift

07:47

from politics to entertainment or

07:50

something like that and and the the from

07:54

a dr. Phil a the powerful frame I give

07:57

is you know almost exactly 50 years ago

08:00

today and you know July of 1969 men

08:03

reached the moon and three weeks later

08:05

Woodstock began and with the benefit of

08:07

hindsight we can say that that’s when

08:10

you know progress ended and when the

08:12

hippies took over the country or

08:14

something like that and then we’ve had

08:16

we’ve had this incredible shift to

08:18

interior tea in the decades since then I

08:20

would include things like the drug

08:22

counterculture I would include

08:24

videogames you know maybe a lot of

08:27

entertainment more generally you know

08:30

there’s sort of parts of the internet

08:31

that can be scored both ways but but

08:34

certainly there all these things where

08:36

we’ve shifted towards the you know your

08:39

world of yoga meditation there’s a world

08:41

of interior culture that sort of and it

11:04

Rene Girard is in some ways the

addresses an aspect of human nature well

it’s it’s good it’s the very thing that

the Enlightenment says no no don’t even

think about such things right

yeah well the Enlightenment always

whitewashes violence it’s one of the

there are many things we can’t think

about an under Enlightenment reason but

one one is certainly violence itself and

and if you go to the anthropological

myth of the Enlightenment it’s the myth

of the social contract so what happens

when everybody is that everybody’s

else’s throat what the Enlightenment

says is everybody in the middle of the

crisis sits down and has a nice legal

chat and draws up a social contract and

that’s maybe maybe that’s the founding

myth the central lie of the

Enlightenment if you will and what

Gerrard says something very different

must have happened and when everybody’s

at everybody’s throat the violence

doesn’t just resolve itself and maybe it

gets channeled against a a specific

scapegoat where the war of all against

all becomes a war can of all against one

and then somehow gets resolved but in a

in a very violent way and so I think you

know what what Gerrard and Schmidt or

Machiavelli or you know the

12:18

judeo-christian inspiration all have in

12:20

common is this idea that human nature is

12:22

problematic its violent it’s um you know

12:25

it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s not

12:27

straightforward at all what what you do