Christianity, the Ethics of Energy, and Ray Peat’s Idealism
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Well, we're back for another program, and we always enjoy learning from new folks in the world of the bioenergetic space, this space that is a cross-section of understanding biology and nutrition, how to think, how to take care of your mind and your body and relationships. It's all rooted in a philosophy that Dr. Ray Peet was very much fascinated by and exploring in his life work. And some things that I

When I encountered Ray Pete, got to know him in the brief little times that I was able to talk to him off the record and then on the shows, I found him to be a very fascinating person. And really, I was into the ketogenic thing and doing the carnivore thing sometimes and other things like that, primal and paleo stuff for years. And so I was so in that world. And just his countenance sold me.

on this man's telling the truth. It was just his energy of like, there was just a quiet energy of like deep confidence that this person wasn't trying to sell a gimmick. He wasn't overselling it. He wasn't underselling it. He wasn't, you know, it was just like a deep, quiet truth. So my guest today, I think is going to help us unpack some of the meaning of that from the philosophical background that Ray comes from. And he goes by the name Menser's Meth Lab. So, you know,

I have a history in Florida. We've dealt with a lot of meth labs in Polk County and other places. Lord of law enforcement has had to deal with this, so I'm sure this guy can provide us some insights. How you doing? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I'm really honored that you would have me on your podcast to discuss Ray Peet and his more philosophical ideas. Yeah, well, it's great to have you on. And, you know, this just happened. We put this together, planned this, and you were so generous with your time to

you know, just do a spur of the moment thing, which is often what I do. You know, there's a lot of program podcasts. They're very special and they'll book out guests, you know, five years in advance. And I can't, I can't plan that far. I don't know where we'll have the apocalypse in a good way or a bad way. You know, so, you know, I don't know, you know, I try to go with the moment and I saw your thread and I said, man, that's a good thread. He did a thread folks. We'll put it in the link or something in the description about Ray Pete's philosophy. I thought it was a good little summation of it.

And it's something that I didn't encounter his work through at first. I was coming at it from a seed oil thing. I was doing the seed oil thing. I was a pioneer in talking about seed oil on nightly and daily radio broadcasts that I did on FM and AM. And then I started to realize that there was more to this. His seed oil discourse opens up a whole new paradigm for food and nutrition and then biology. And then you keep pushing on that thread and you start to see the philosophers and artists that he was influenced by. Yeah.

That seems to be kind of the gist of what you were saying with your thread, right? Yes, absolutely. In essence, I do think that the nutrition is obviously of supreme importance because it's the most immediate thing about Ray and what he does. And that's by and large...

what I feel like most people, if all they really care about is nutritional wellness, is his diet. But luckily, it seems as if people are realizing that there's a lot more to Ray than just what he was saying diet-wise and nutritionally. So I figured that this post would kind of shed some more light and make things a little more easier to understand for most people, just because Ray wasn't very...

outspoken about his philosophical influences because that simply weren't the questions that he was asked at the time. Right. I did one show where all I did was ask about his politics. I did another show with the other shows that I did with him were related to more nutrition stuff.

But definitely, it wasn't really until he passed that I really started to click with, wow, the implications of some of his worldview he was coming from, from a philosophical standpoint, you know. I kept thinking there's a through line between these gurus that I keep meeting. And I don't want to use that word in a pejorative sense or something. I'm not using it that way or whatever. But, you know, these kind of, you know, I'm not real into the archetype stuff, but it has some value in the idea of like,

You meet these kind of Obi-Wan, Yoda characters in your life that will give you deep insights into truths that you must uncover in the world. And I put Ron Paul. He opened my mind when I was a young man in high school about the nature of politics.

and opened up the nature of power because he would get up on stage and say, I don't want to run your life. I don't know how to. I don't want to run the world. I don't know how to. And I thought, God, that's such an apocalyptic unveiling of politics. I've never seen a politician get up on stage and say that and have crowds cheering him on, you know, and still missing some of the point of what he was saying. But, you know, that opened my mind in that period of my life. And, you know, and then I uncovered Rene Girard, another double name,

Starts with an R. Rene has a name. Gerard has a name. And then you got, in terms of double first names, and then you got Ray Pete, another double name. And I thought, man, that's interesting. Yeah, there's definitely something to say about the power of names that I think is extraordinarily understated. But I do absolutely agree with you about Ron Paul and the fact that he said something as long as of like, oh, I can't tell you how to live...

your life and I don't really want to use power over you so on and so forth because that actually segues quite beautifully into what Ray liked about Tolstoy right so those of you that don't know Tolstoy was obviously a very prolific author but he was also a Christian anarchist and a pacifist

which it sounds a little bit strange to hear Christian and anarchist in the same sentence, because usually that's associated with the monarchy. But Tolstoy was very much using the argument that, well, I mean, in the Garden of Eden, we didn't really have any earthly rulers. It was just God, period. And what Ray did is he took that idea of

you know, really nobody, no person can really tell you what you can and can't do with your life. And Tolstoy, especially returning back to him when he was a teacher, because I mean, obviously, you know, and most people can't just make livings off of their writing. And Tolstoy was no exception, but he would teach writing and he always encouraged his students to just write.

He said, just write and whatever comes out, comes out. And I won't judge you so much on your spelling and your grammar. I'm more interested in how your ideas develop. And Ray did the exact same thing, actually, when he was teaching. And one of his articles, one of his very, very early, early articles and newsletters about education, he spoke about

how he would pass or fail students based off of their ideas, regardless of the college insisting that he judged them more on their spelling and grammar, which is, it's kind of mind boggling how these two people that talk about, you know, liberty and anarchism,

kind of have a similar teaching style. Now, what's weird is that Ray actually didn't know this about Tolstoy until much later. It just kind of happened. And so, but this ties into Ray's philosophy and his ethics because he simply never said, this is the best diet, right? This is the way you should eat. You should eat like me, my way or the highway. He never did that. And this is when, or this is why at least,

He coined the phrase, think, perceive, act. Nowhere in that sentence does he say, or that statement, does he say, obey this diet. Eat like me. Do like me. You think,

Perceive and you act that's an extraordinarily libertarian view right and it's also a Christian view because what he's doing is he's peeling back the layer of the mimetic dynamic of imitation and models that control us into holding people up as gurus or idols or gods or Scandalous rivals if they become you know in a state of internal mediation as Rene Girard would call it where you talk about you know

you know, getting into a negative reciprocal loop of rivalrous imitation, you know, that, that, that idea of think, perceive, act is this concept of getting out of that and looking for external mediation, the transcendence, right. And looking for that intuitive, creative insight that comes when you're not caught up with keeping up with rivals or impressing other people. Right. A hundred percent. I think that idea, like it, it,

It definitely takes the head off of the kings, so to speak. Because, I mean, you know, a lot of people feel pressured to follow every little word that somebody says to them. And I mean, unless that person is God or that entity is God, I don't think you should be.

And that same idea of like, you know, you shouldn't really follow anybody unless you really think and perceive that you should be doing what they say is it's almost a very forgotten aspect of Ray's work. I see an awful lot of infighting nowadays about, you know, I'm more PD than you because Ray said at this time years ago on this podcast that you should eat this.

And I have this every day. So I'm more PD than you. And it's like, oh, okay. I mean, I'm not sure why that's why that's so important to you. But it's definitely something I've noticed is that it's like people try to one up each other about being PD. And it's like, okay,

That's kind of an oxymoron, man. I'm not sure Ray would be like, oh, okay, nice job. You're copying my diet to a T without any context. Right. That's like the battle of the ages between religion and gospel, right? And this idea of like, and I don't mind using the word religion in multiple ways, but here I'm going to use it in a negative context. But this idea of the gospel,

is that you don't get caught up following the dead letter of the law, right? You have to kind of look at it from a different perspective that what God is revealing is not a concept more than it is a perception of reality that God gives you. And that perception of reality is

is something that is kind of focused on the process of what you're supposed to be doing. Isn't that kind of what you were getting at there with Tolstoy and Dr. Pete, which is they were interested in teaching people how to learn through the process of learning and writing, right? Can you go into that a little more? Yeah, so that is more or less what I was getting at, but I was also taking it a step further.

Like, yeah, I mean, if you just let people write their ideas and their writing style will naturally manifest themselves over time. But I think that concept can be taken further to personalities, right? Instead of trying to impose your personality on somebody else, you just kind of take a step back.

And then you let them be who they are. But the difficult thing is that when you put that almost journey on somebody to figure out who they are, they still do have to overcome a fair bit of programming is the easiest way I can say that.

But I do think that by and large, that when you give people the space to become who they are and they go on a journey to really embody that person, I think people become a lot more, they become a lot better than they thought that they could ever be. That reminds me of a guy named Dr. Barry Court that I had on my show and I've talked to before. He, um,

He's someone who, you know, was a secular person, but he, and you know, I don't agree with some of the things he says, but he was an engineering and mathematical brilliant man. He'd done some stuff with MIT and so forth. And he was a big fan of Rene Girard's scapegoat mechanism concept, the mimetic process. And I didn't agree again with all of his, you know, interpretations, but he was a secular person.

who had a background in the Jewish community, and he knew some insights that I thought had some value in understanding kind of what was going on with my focus on the anthropology of the Bible and harmonizing it with the theology. And he said one thing, that the text, when it says in the burning bush, is often...

you know, Tetragrammaton is, is translated as I am who I am, or I am that I am. And he said, I think if you look at it, the words that are used, that it's more literally translated as becoming, I am becoming, you know, and I think about that for what that might mean, you know, that human beings, you know, the, the,

Orthodox Church is saying, you know, God became man so that man could become God. So if a human being is encountering a representation of God on the burning bush in that period of history, it would be apt maybe that the name identified as the voice of God in the wilderness is becoming. Because man is in the process of becoming God.

God, right? And so if you wanted to identify yourself in the story of man, and you're the creator, you might say a word like, I'm becoming. I am the process. I am the way, the truth, and the life that you will become united in that incarnational sense of all will be in all. God will be in all things. All things will be in God.

and every knee and every tongue should bow, and everyone will confess that Christ is Lord, and that He will be in all things, and that creation is groaning for this process. And it's in this process of birth pains that something is becoming. And the seed is becoming a tree, and the tree goes on to become something else. And our bodies are planted in the earth like seeds, Paul says, to become something else. So there's this whole process that we're involved in.

And this is tapestry of stories that we can lean into and glean a lot from, or we can, you know, miss a lot of the art of what our calling is in this life. But I think that that,

Kind of helps sometimes see things in a different light, because if you say I am that I am not that that isn't I don't want to say any kind of declarative statement about that because I don't know enough to say that. But sometimes if I think if you emphasize I am that I am over, I am becoming, then you get caught up in trying to create these kind of concepts.

And conceptualizations of God, that becomes the idol of God, the map instead of the reality of the terrain that you're engaged in. I think Marshall McLuhan said that sometimes theology and conceptions about God become a little fun game that humans play, but really doesn't scratch the surface of what the encounter with God is supposed to be about, which is a perception change of reality, you know?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think everything, I think that everything you just said, actually, like, once again, that does show itself in Ray's work. He was, he was very environmentalist, in a sense, like he, he wasn't a fan of the genetic cop out. And he, that's why he emphasized nutrition so heavily, especially in the developmental years.

right because you like that that aspect of just being versus becoming i mean like that's an extraordinarily existential concept but being almost implies being stagnant right like you are just simply being but becoming i am what implies the process and it's a kind of psyop it's a kind of psyop that he was fighting against right because he's saying it's not

you know, what we've led to believe by this modern, you know, biological determinism and what he called eugenicist thinking, right? Which is that I am my genes. I have this disease because of my genes. I have that disease because of my genes. I have X, Y, and Z because of my genes. And it creates learned helplessness, right? And like you said, it creates this static nature that's not at all what we see in the story of God.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And it's

And I think that's definitely one of the concepts that most people overlook when they're first getting into Ray Peet's work. Because a lot of them come from that view of simply, oh, I'm just born this way. You know, I've got this virus and I've got this health issue. And this is my thyroid level, for instance. Like, oh, I'm just destined to be hypothyroid. I have to take all these meds, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But Ray kind of spits in the face of that idea. And I think that's why his article on learned helplessness is so popular. It's like it shakes people out of their paradigm. And I do know that he expanded on this a bit more in generative energy, especially with the experience regarding mice, about how these mice who were

who were supposedly just absolutely just cooked and throttled in so many ways through the proper usage of supplementation and diet, they became like new mice. They became whole again. They became something rather than just being the...

the weaker version of mice that they were supposed to be. And this does tie into, I think, a picture of humanity that Ray was striving for. One of his quotes is that he thinks that increasing fruit consumption could actually evolve the human species faster simply because our brain is so sugar-based.

It's so based off of glucose and sugar. So this constant, like this idealism, because in my article, I do say that Ray, because he engages in philosophy, he's an idealist. The human ideal is a constant process of simply becoming more than what you think you are or what you've been told to be. It's a very beautiful way of looking at things. And just to add, and again, if you...

You take this wherever you want to go, because I'm learning a lot from what you're saying. But just to add some parallels that I see here, you know, looking again at the way Scripture works, where we have like the story of the wine, the miracle of the wedding of Cana that Jesus performs, which is his first public miracle, the launch of his ministry is a

a marriage and a wedding feast, right? And in ancient literature at the time, you know, a wedding signifies a comedy, right? And there's basically, you have tragedy and you have comedy. And tragedy basically is this idea that the best is behind us and the golden age is kind of something far off.

And tragedy kind of comes along and gives us a glimmer of trying to get just a taste of the golden age that we can only get at. At best, we can only get back little glimpses of our childhood. And that kind of fits with that kind of static genetics and all these other layers of looking at life approach, which is like this bargain that we believe that like, well, when I'm a child, if things are okay and I have a relatively happy childhood, that's the golden age.

right and everything is kind of a decline but the win is as you get older you glean wisdom and knowledge and experiences and you encounter more freedom opportunities and more responsibility opportunities and there's this trade-off between like you're supposed to just decline and decay and just you know you get a little grumpier as you get older but that's the cost of gaining wisdom and

When you talk to Jesus, Jesus says, such is the kingdom of these, referring to the children. And he throws that all up on its head. Like if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, which is coming to earth and is manifested within you all, he says, the kingdom of God is within you. The word you is plural there. So he's saying the kingdom of God is within you all, together as a community. And if you want to manifest the kingdom of God, you've got to start looking and thinking like children.

And I think, you know, when you have a child, everything's healthy. They're eating fruits and honey and they're playing in the sun if they have access to the sun. They're quick to forgive and they're quick to move on and they don't hold grudges until we teach them through experiences to start holding grudges more viciously or whatever by imitation or medically.

And they are, you know, they're quick to believe, you know, it doesn't, you don't have to sell people on concepts when they're young about God. You just say it's God's world. And they'll ask questions like, well, where is he? And I don't see him. And what does that mean? But it's not something that requires them to accept some kind of ideological camp or something to, well, I am this tribe and this is my mediation between God. It's just very intuitive.

And so what I'm saying is just juxtaposing what I think Ray was asking. I've often said Ray Peete's foundation was thoroughly Christian, regardless of what, you know, his own personal opinions may have been or whatever about metaphysics. The foundation of the entire ethical and aesthetic thrust of Ray Peete's insights come from Christianity. And, um,

And maybe you can get into that a little bit with William Blake, but just to tie it up with what I mentioned with the wedding, is that the miracle there is that the best wine is saved at the end of the feast. And that was a repudiation of the way in which the ancient world told their stories, which was that the best was in the past. And that all of pagan cyclical history was about trying to get a kind of cyclical return to get a glimmer of the cathartic release and joy of the past.

both as a society, and then you can look at it as a biological person, as a child, right? That you're just trying to get back to the golden age of our innocent youth or trying to get back to the golden age of our innocent ancestors somewhere generations ago. And all of that is upended by Christianity, which says, no, history is going somewhere. It's not stuck in the eternal return. It's going somewhere and it has a meaning and the best is yet to come. And so the best wine is at the end.

And that thought is what motivates Ray. And I think what motivates a lot of what he was trying to say is like, you don't have to settle for this idea that, you know, you're just going to decay. Yes, there's all kinds of things in our environment, in our mindset and the food and the poisons and all that stuff that will decay us and probably, you know, attack and, you know, make us,

expire, right? But that's not something that we have to settle for as a daily state. That's not something we have to settle for as something that we pass on to generations, because the Bible says that the death itself is the last enemy to be vanquished by Christ. And how does he vanquish his enemies? Through his body on earth. And so, you know, there's this tension here that I think Ray's work is kind of in the middle of. Mm-hmm.

Interesting. Yeah, I can see exactly what you're saying because in a sense, yeah, you can definitely say that Christianity had a pretty heavy influence on how Ray looked at the world, just like you said, and that especially exemplifies itself in William Blake. Ray absolutely loved William Blake, and Blake was a very...

interesting Christian figure, extraordinarily interesting. For anybody who's listening, I urge you to read William Blake's work and make sure you look at the artwork that goes with it, because reading William Blake is like being transported into a whole other realm. And William Blake absolutely loved Christ.

absolutely loved him. Now, that being said, he was a little bit skeptical of the church at the time. Very, very understandable. But you can't ignore the fact that Blake's influence on Ray definitely got into his work as like a very quiet Christian influence on how he sees the timeline of humanity, so to speak.

But so Blake was a very, I want to say anti the anti ascetic Christian in the sense that he saw the world as God's energies running over permeating everything that exists.

So when you go through life with that paradigm, it's like, why would you limit your existence? Right. Why, why would you be extraordinarily ascetic? And in a way, William Blake was almost like a Christian bad boy almost because of that. Right. Instead of the church being pretty ascetic, William Blake was like, no.

like God's energies at work permeate through everything. So why wouldn't you simply say yes to life as a whole? And this heavily influenced Ray because the whole point of metabolism is you get to simply do more with your life. Anybody who has an extraordinarily high metabolic rate

can just simply enjoy life more. They can eat more, they have more energy, they can play more, they're extraordinarily warm. Like you said, it's that image of childishness, of being childlike and just being enamored by the world around you because you realize that the world is a reflection of God's energy just spilling over into creation itself. And I think this is where

Ray's work can get more esoteric in that sense, because when you think of it from the Blakey and perspective and look at diet as a way to have the capacity to enjoy God's energies and God's creation more. Yeah, that that's not a very exoteric thing. That's not something that you would notice on the surface, right?

I think there's a weird attempt to kind of downplay the Blakey influence on Ray. But by doing that, you're missing the whole backdrop for why Ray talks about metabolism and energy so much. He just simply wants you to be bursting with energy, actually enjoying life rather than being

cold calculating and your diet is extraordinarily you know your diet is impairing or impinging on the life you can live rather than making it so you can actually live a life and that's that's where it goes this idea that like that saying so heavenly minded they're no earthly good if that's what you are tempted by then you're not following christ you know so it's like

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Heaven is coming into, incarnating into all things and creation. Earth is good. Earth was made to be good. Earth was made to be God's actual home. We were meant to be the caretakers of this garden and to build on it, starting from a garden and building it into a city of God.

with the garden there. And the fruit in the trees are for the healing of the nations. I don't know how far, how much more obvious it can be really that we get past the scarcity mindset. When you look at the streets are paved in gold. I mean, I think that's literally a sign of mankind learning to get past its scarcity and entropic dominated mindset that has this need to have things like

precious metals and things and fighting over hordes of gold. Where we're going, we don't need gold. Gold will be so not scarce and not interesting that it will be the very rubble we use or the very dirt we use to make our roads. And that abundant life, I think, is often lost. And I feel that sometimes, you know, something that

For those of us who are in the church and in the body of Christ and want to grow in our sanctification, sometimes we pick up barnacles or

frameworks and lenses about what that looks like and how we should view ourself and our body and our food and everything else in a way that downplays the actual incarnational reality that we should be leaning into, not running away from. Not that there isn't a role for some other types of disciplines and so forth within a broad, very vibrant community of human beings, of course, but that the general thrust should not be this defeatist mindset of

or a kind of detachment from the physical world, but a doubling down on it in the name of Jesus. I think that's the orientation that Christians should have. And I think Ray helps people get that literally, right? Because if you're eating right and eating well, you are going to have the kind of mindset. Because I mean, I know this sounds weird for people because again, they're so terrified of materialism, they've run off into dualism.

or something else, you know, Gnosticism. They're so afraid of the material world. When we talk about overcoming the world, like in John 17, when Jesus talks to God, and he is saying, he's kind of having his, I call that the breaking of the fourth wall moment, where it's akin to the director of reality, and the Bible as a picture of reality in this unfolding redemptive history.

It's akin to the director of reality pausing the movie, coming on screen in the movie theater and saying, hello, I am your director. And here's what we're interested in doing with this movie. I mean, that's literally what John said. Go read John 17 and see if that doesn't make sense to you. That feels like a director looking at this camera and saying, so you got Jesus talking about his triune relationship with God the Father. And he's saying, I wish above all else that they would be one.

As you and I are one, you know, he keeps talking about, I'm not talking about the world. And I think a lot of people take that word world and they translate that in their mind as like earth bunnies or something and everything that's material in the body thyroid, you know, all this stuff is the world and everybody else in it. Who's not in my special boy club. And I think that's wrong. You know, I don't think that's even accurate at all. I think the word world there is cosmics.

And cosmos is the same context in which it's often used in the Gospels to indicate the cosmic governance and political order. The same thing that Ephesians 6.12 is referencing when it talks about principalities. It's the same concept of this political government and psychological order.

you know, mimetic hive mind structure of how humans do religion and how humans do order and culture and order and religion in spite of God, in resistance to God. That's what Jesus is talking about when he says the word, the world. It's not talking about the beautiful sky. It's not talking about your thyroid. And I think when we take that concept and we say, no, Jesus is kind of downstepping the world in his work.

Then we think, well, don't worry about my thyroid. That's a little bit more of a vain pursuit. Let me just only pray. No, pray and then make your life a prayer by realizing that God loves your body. He didn't make it as an accident. He didn't make it, you know, CO2 is not a random thing that evil scientists discovered. No, it's a molecule that God created for your thriving, right?

and everything around it right your your naked mole rats down the road in your trees and your fruit and the oranges and everything you know and beautiful animals are thriving in this vibrational reality of carbon dioxide and that's just one piece of it that's often maligned i often say if you want to know what the devil's system is up to look at who he demonizes the most

And he's got the whole world hating CO2. Well, if you're a maniacal psychopath, murderer and killer from the beginning, like Jesus said, he's a liar and a murderer from the beginning. Wouldn't it be a great way to start trying to figure out his master plan of exterminating the human race by looking at the things he most vilifies?

Like CO2? Might give you a clue what he's trying to do to us, right? Right, right. And I do like that you mentioned that this is like oneness. I think it's extraordinarily shallow to kind of interpret Ray's work as like a selfish endeavor. Because Ray was a very cooperative person.

individual and his one of his major influences and unfortunately you know he this influence was an anarcho-communist so i mean but even then he still had good things to say that influenced ray like the fact that um well at least according to this person first of all

I think we can both agree that Darwin was wrong simply because evolution. But Kropotkin, one of Ray's very heavy political influences, and I mean very heavy, Kropotkin did propose this theory of mutual aid. And communism as a whole is, it's atheistic. So naturally, Kropotkin was trying to appeal to that paradigm.

Kropotkin's theory of mutual aid states that violence is a rather overplayed aspect of evolution and the species that really evolve and really survive cooperated with each other and other species, right? And then Kropotkin tries to tie this up and says, if you notice the leaps

in the human development have been a thoroughly cooperative and loving effort rather than a competitive effort. And this has massive implications. Like instead of trying to beat somebody in some sort of a weird materialistic race, you pull them up with you.

But this can also be interestingly tied into the fact that the image of God is simply in every person. And instead of just seeing that person as a person, there's just like flesh, bones and whatever, you see Christ in that person. So you want to pull them up the same way that Christ pulled us up out of death. You know, he literally trampled down death by death.

So the way that Christ pulls you up, you pull up your fellow man. And in a very secular way, Ray did do this by just simply how nice he was to anybody that needed his help. Ray was an absolutely prolific email responder. I don't know how he did it. Thousands of emails a day. They were short, but they were very piercing responses most of the time. And he didn't charge a dime.

He was doing it just to simply bring up his fellow man. And although I think that that is heavily in part due to Kropotkin's influence, the fact that, hey, you know, if we really want to progress as a species, we have to cooperate. The divine implications of that can't be understated. But I also think that this is something that the Ray Peake sphere or community has

has forgotten, there's a massive amount of infighting as of forever. It's like, there's just always been infighting. And then I think that thoroughly misses the point. We're not really here just to one up each other and feel like because our metabolic rate is better or higher than somebody else's, as I mentioned earlier, that that makes us better people. It's like, no, if you see somebody who's sick,

or you see somebody who's kind of missing the point and letting their health falter for whatever other means, you pull them up with you rather than just saying, oh, well, my metabolic rate is higher. Guess what, keto guy? You're going to just die of stress, hormones, and cortisol. It's like, dude, which is actually something I've seen. By the way, I've seen somebody say that. And I'm like, whoa, just-

And that's why it's not, you have to put Christ at the center of everything to get it right. And the thing is, is it doesn't mean you have to like say it in every sense. You talk about the nutrition, you know, this is brought to you by Jesus Christ because that doesn't have to be said explicitly because Christ is in all things. Right. And so, um,

He's not a glory hound, egomaniac, like the kind of leaders and gods we construct. You know, it's like, if you're not telling me I did the carrot salad, you know, Jesus Christ would say, I invented the carrot. You need to credit me, not Ray Peet, for that salad's benefit. You know, that's not the kind of God we have. Right. And that same thing goes for everything else. Right. You know.

It's not Ray Pete's ice cream recipe. That's mine. I did coconut oil. And if you don't credit Jesus Christ in your recipe, you're not doing what I want. That's not the kind of God that Jesus is. But that's the kind of God that we're attracted to, right? Because we're attracted to the hard-to-get mimetic models around us, right?

And that's the nature of human desire. And that's where you make money and everything else. So how do you navigate that world? That's the world matrix of desire versus desire.

This in-breaking, incarnational, apocalyptic, upside-down world of the kingdom of heaven in the world. That's an art that can't be formulaically described, right? Like, for example, I sympathize with these people that want mutual aid societies, but I also try—I talked to David Bentley Hart, a theologian who, you know, he subscribes to Kropotkin's ideas as an anarchist Christian.

And I was trying to say, what about Ron Paul? Oh, I don't like Ron Paul. I don't like Ron Paul. I said, oh, my goodness. If you can't learn to make friends and common allies and the path towards liberty and, you know, oh, we can't have private property. I said, you know, my kind of voluntarist society allows for people to have a mutual aid commune. And if somebody wants to own a piece of property and have it sovereignly for themselves, well,

as it relates to their neighbor, then that's okay too. You know, and if you can't tolerate that, you're not, you're not understanding the spirit of volunteerism as Christ, I think, you know, models for us. So I think, again, then you have folks, and let me just kind of riff off of, to defend the Ray Peete divisions that you're talking about, because you have that in every community, right? In Ron Paul communities, they tried to turn them into an idol, you know,

They try to turn things. I remember that when he was, you know, in 2008, 2012, the presidential campaigns and stuff. Then they fight tooth and nail when he gets done running for president because it's like, what do we do now? Right. So you just start fighting over who's the inheritor of the movement and all these little stupid things. Isn't that what Christians did when they when Jesus left? Right. They started fighting immediately.

Not necessarily the next day, but probably. Yeah. You know, I mean, the idea, you know, he can. And while he was alive on Earth before he ascended, Jesus was, you know, dealing with these guys saying, well, I'm going to sit at your right hand. And who's going to, you know, and he said, geez, this is ridiculous, right? You know, you guys don't get it. You still don't get it. You're hanging out with me all the time. And you're talking about who's going to be the favored person.

son, you know, who's the favorite apostle? Sounds like the church history, by the way, doesn't it? I sit at the throne of this. I sit at the throne of this. Well, my line sits through this, you know,

Okay, well, go read John 17 and come back to me and see if we're doing that right. It's not happening. But people are so terrified. It all goes back to some of these foundational things. People are so terrified of the world that whenever you say, hey, I want to agree with Jesus, let's pray for unity. And let's not just pray for it. Let's perceive, think, and act towards church unity. The moment you say that to a lot of traditionalist Christians,

of any tribe, they'll say, "Oh, you sound like an ecumenical globalist. You sound like the New World Order. You sound like you're going to get tempted by Klaus Schwab." And it's like, no, the reason those guys are doing that is because they're imitating the real thing and they're directing it into a different direction. And the people that know better, the traditionalists and so forth, are afraid to act, think, perceive and act unity

across the aisle because they're terrified of ending up in the LGBT globalist world. It's like, why do you let your fear dominate your action or inaction, your learned helplessness? When John 17 said, I wish above all else that they were one, as you and I are one. And then it says very clearly, Jesus makes the prophecy. He said, then the world will know that you sent me. And we're over here whining today, 2000 something years later, why doesn't the world wake up?

And then you say, well, can you get along with that Catholic or the Baptist? No, they're going, oh, those are the dum-dums. They don't know anything. Okay, well, that's why you're Gnostic. Sorry. Wrong religion. You're living out the wrong religion. Now, does that mean that I'm casting you into the... No, I'm not. I'm just saying your fruit manifests the truth of the spirit you come from. And if you are more excited about talking about how everybody else is wrong, but you and your tribe,

That's not Christianity, okay? Christianity is a totally different thing. And being afraid, sorry, I'm going on a tangent, I'm sorry. But I just got to get this point out, that just being afraid of globalist and New World Order stuff is a learned helplessness excuse for sitting and doing nothing when people are hurting all around us. I don't think you're wrong at all. I actually think you're spot on. Yeah, like that concept of the fact that, well, the numerous announcements,

in fighting within the Christian community, you know, I mean, as we said, it's like akin to what's going on in the race community. And I think the answer, as you said, is just to simply just, you know, go back to the roots, right? Like in our cases, it's, you know, go back to the Bible, right? Go back to understanding the context of that. And that's the same thing with Ray. It's like actually read Ray's essays, see what he said.

rather than hearing a second, third, fourth, fifth hand account of somebody who's trying to become, you know, the new bioenergetic guy, just read the articles. Like, I really wish that we could just read the articles. And this does tie very heavily into what Ray was saying regarding not being so tied to your influences. Like, Ray...

broke apart from his influences in so many ways, it would honestly baffle most people. Like I know that another one of his influences, Rhoda Barnes, right? There, the thyroid being probably the most important gland possible. And while Ray did pretty much agree with that, I would say their methodologies were,

varied a little bit like brodo barnes was a was a rather um synthetic person based off of how they would approach that but ray did emphasize diet first the very applicable things first like the changes that you can do right now today without needing to go to mexico and get some weird thyroid supplement that the underclass probably can't even afford in the first place um

People seem to miss that. Like, Ray's work was originally designed for people in poverty. It was never designed for people who can afford ungodly amounts of supplements made out of someone's basement or something. Like, when Ray went to Mexico, he was obviously quite assaulted by what he saw. Because, I mean, like, Mexico...

at that time and now isn't in the best health. That country isn't in the best health. So in that spirit, he pretty much prescribed very, very easy things. Milk isn't that expensive. I mean, it depends on your quality, of course, but by and large, milk isn't that expensive. Eggs are cheap.

I mean, again, we get into the argument of quality, but when you're poor, quality isn't your concern. Survival is. Same thing with oranges, coffee, and other things that Ray had recommended. Rather than just going the supplementation route, like some of the people who influenced him, he said, well, what about the people who can't do that? What about the people who can't get their hands on that special T3, T4 supplementation?

That everybody seems to be munching on nowadays, which Ray also wasn't really a big fan of. He was very, very skeptical of supplements. He was very, very skeptical of the easy way out of taking things. Now, I mean, with that being said, he did endorse things like Progest-E and certain thyroid brands.

But most people don't do that research. Like they, like they just assume because they saw it on Twitter by somebody who's like a fourth or fifth account of what Ray supposedly said. If you just buy this product and then take this thyroid, your metabolic rate will skyrocket and your body heat is going to become a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. It's like, dude, you missed the point again. It's supposed to be very accessible, practical changes that, um,

fix your nutritional deficiencies and if needed you go for the high quality thyroid the high quality progesterone so on and so forth so do you recommend thyroid for people or what like do you have a particular one not to go off too down there oh no i i i don't take thyroid and this is and this is actually where i break away with ray um ray didn't like iodine i take iodine

I think that that's one of the things that he missed. And I know that I would get crucified for saying this. Oh, my gosh. The Pete community would have a field day. Because I'm admitting, I think that Ray was off the mark about iodine. I mean, and iodine is really not that expensive. You could get a bottle of it for...

like eight bucks that lasts you a really really long time as long as you can properly dose it properly like as long as you know how to probably dose it most people massively overdose their iodine they're taking like massive amounts like 20 times what you're supposed to be taking as a supplement and then they get all surprised when their thyroid's messed up it's like no that was on you

You really, I only take about 1.25 milligrams a day. That's like half a drop of Lugol's. People jump on the iodine train and they're taking like droppers. And I'm like, no, that's not the way. So that's probably the only quote unquote thyroid supplement I take. And I take it.

because I'm I'm experimenting I want to see if it makes a difference so I can say hey I I'm trying to build off of what Ray Ray was talking about I disagree with him here but here's why and here's the proof that it works rather than just having some random lab rat do it but I think that's moderately unethical yeah that's interesting I um so what what is the

in one sentence or whatever, what is the reason why iodine is better for you and your opinions and say those thyroid synthetics and natural ones? Oh, um, in a sentence it's, it's because I think most thyroid issues are caused by lack of iodine. And I think that T3 or T4 simply masks that problem rather than actually solving it. And what do you think, um,

What did Ray miss and not seeing that? Was there a measurement or a study or something that was just missed his purview perhaps? Right. If I remember correctly, Ray simply thought that iodine destroys your thyroid and he actually recommended the RDA amount of iodine, which is extremely low. So

To get into it briefly, this is what I think Ray missed. So back in the 1920s, I think, most grains were fortified with iodine. Like bread didn't have bromine, it had iodine in it. And if you remember, and this is obviously before the seed oils as well, but the fact that most of the products that people nowadays consume that has bromine had iodine,

it kind of changes the way you look at things. So the RDA absolutely just smacked down the amount of iodine that people were supposed to be taking. I'm not sure why it was reduced so much because back when people were having a lot of carbs, because back in the day, people were having a lot of breads and everybody was thin, everybody was skinny. And obviously the seed oils

or lack thereof played a part, just like I said, but the fact that every bread had iodine is just a major component that I think he overlooked. You have to realize that when Ray was having like a gallon of milk a day, because he was, when he was in college, it was full fat milk. But then when he got a bit more sedentary, it became low fat milk. The amount of iodine that that

has is astronomical. Like a gallon of milk is I think like 1.33 micrograms of iodine. That's way above the RDA. That's full fat milk or regular or even low fat? Both. Both. It's the iodine is just in the milk itself. Like it isn't exactly in the fat. So Ray was having copious amounts of iodine daily.

And I noticed that and I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute. So if the RDA amount of iodine is five, but Ray himself was having way more than that, something doesn't add up. And I just think that he kind of overlooked it. I'm not sure why, I'm not sure how, but that is one of my breaking points with Ray is that

the fact that he was he underestimated the power of iodine whilst ingesting so much of it now if you're listening do not just go out and just start slamming iodine there is a protocol but that's a whole different topic like but that is something that i think he missed and i i i take iodine and i feel perfectly fine my thyroid's fine i'm warm i'm energetic there's no problem

That's very interesting. So it's just naturally occurring in milk? Yes. It naturally occurs in milk and most dairy products. And dairy is a very heavy staple in the nutritional use of Ray. How much iodine is in milk naturally, you said, in a gallon? In a gallon? I think it was like 1.33 micrograms or something. I think I said milligrams, but it's... Hold on. Let me see. It's...

It's a lot. It's definitely more than what the RPA recommends. But yes, it's micrograms, my bad. It's like 1.33 micrograms. So you don't count that when you say you take how much milligrams of iodine a day? I'm just curious. Um...

I don't particularly count that because I only take about half of a drop of Lugol's a day. And like I said, I misspoke. It's micrograms. So it's like so it's a 1.25 micrograms. I have milk and I count it, but I don't have as much milk as Ray was having. So like I drink like a glass or two.

But a gallon versus a glass or two, yeah, I'm going to have to supplement with some iodine to get the amount that Ray was having. You said 1.2 micrograms in your iodine supplementation or what? What are you saying? Yeah, yeah. It's about 1.25 or 1.22, depending on which brand you get. Uh-huh.

Well, you know, it's interesting that, you know, you shouldn't be afraid about what people think about. And I know you're not saying you're afraid, I guess, but it's just, you know, people are going to, you know, it's something to do with, again, mimetic theory explains why they do this. Good senses make good neighbors. The more alike you are, the more likely you are to have conflict, you know? And so when you're in the rape heat world, there's a little bit of a loss of self that can take place the more you're imitating one another.

to the point where you start into rivalry about who is the most accurate version of the mimetic script that we're all kind of imitating. And the same thing goes for, you know, that's why, like in any of those little subsections, you know, like for example, I come, you know, with years of studying Rene Girard stuff and I, you know, you know, there's a Rard online,

Facebook groups are notorious for being some of the most mimetic and caustic and rivalrous and angry and scapegoating type places you can find. There's this weird paradox that people, it's like with anything, how many times have you, I mean, I don't know, I know you can tell me about your situation, but

if you'd like, but you know, how many times do people leave churches because they say, well, everybody at these churches are the worst, fakest people ever. And it's like, well, they're a hospital. That's why they attract people who are sick and hurting. Right. And that same mindset is going on in everything else. You know, like people who are into repeat dietary advice, they're there. They've got years and years of, of, of, uh,

sickness and mental afflictions and toxins and all these things. And you expect them that they get excited about some breakthroughs they get for a year or two or whatever, learning Ray Pete's advice. And then they're not going to be completely healed or fixed of some afflictions that took decades to happen, you know what I mean, in terms of stress patterns or whatever. So, you know, these things take time.

So you can't let that stuff bother you, you know, and people who, everybody has their role. I mean, Constantine was a pagan, then he converted on his death, you know, when he was out of the role of emperor. But he did a lot of good. He stopped people being killed and stuff, you know, and protected churches and stuff who were being torn apart before, ripped apart. But that doesn't mean that he was perfect, you know, and

You know, that's the idea of, you know, people who are, you know, they can be directionally helpful, but that doesn't mean that they're absolute perfected, you know, when you're encountering them. And they can have, there's trade-offs because it's like the body of Christ. There's all these different organs and each of these body organs have their own role. And you can't,

You can't look at the hand and judge the hand by the kidney standards of goodness. And you can't judge the kidney by the liver standard of goodness. Or you can't judge the hair follicle by the eyelashes standard of goodness, right? And you just have to give it to God and say, let's try not to be a stumbling block for one another. But most of the stumbling block comes into the picture of human relationships today.

when most of the stomach blocks come into the picture when we lose sight of our sense of self and we become fixated on beating the rivals. And that's what you're seeing when you see people one-upping each other about their temperature or their purity to a following, raise advice and all this stuff. That's just the tribalistic, mimetic nature of human beings. It doesn't mean it will stay that way, by the way. I think we can actually heal as a species away from that behavior. But it takes being aware of it and how it works

And then maybe implementing some steps to avoid it, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And I think what you said about the church is very accurate, by the way. Like there are a lot of people believe because they expect everybody to be a saint. It's like, no, it's the church makes saints. You don't just walk in already a saint.

And it's, and that, and that idea, as you said, it does tie into the whole PD community here. A lot of, a lot of them are sick. A lot of us are sick. We're trying to recover from something that happened. Ray too, he, his thyroid was absolutely thrashed by the medical procedures that he went through when he was a kid.

And he was and he was healing, too, which is why it's a shame when people from other communities that maybe that are more like fitness oriented look at Ray and they're like, oh, well, he was just, you know, a skinny, fat old man. I'm like, dude, do you have any idea what he went through? He his thyroid was destroyed through radiation.

And he was essentially playing catch up to become the person that he was meant to be. So by and large, I think things will get a lot better when we realize that at the end of the day,

we're all going through something we're all trying to fix a problem whether it be spiritual whether it be yeah mental physical something like we're all fighting our own battles so but so instead of seeing everybody as the enemy because oh my battle is more important than yours or even worse i'm further ahead in my war than you it's like just realize that they're going through it yeah and um

All we like sheep have gone astray, each into our own way. And the joke is, is that when you don't realize how much of a sheep you are, you don't know that you're following another sheep's hooves off of a cliff. You think you're going your own way because you think you're in control of the destiny of where you're walking. And to realize that you're a sheep is the first step of becoming out, is getting out of that, you know, mimetic nature is what

the biblical story talks about over and over again in different ways and the way we idolize our neighbors and rivals and so forth. And all of these things are meant to be, you know, kind of held in the proper place. For example, we have to, you know, you talked about the ketogenic people. That's a huge community of people who, again, I've, I've lived in that community for many years, so to speak. And it's different evolution, evolutions and so forth. And, you know, that community has its own infighting. The carnivore people have factions and,

tribal people faction against paleo people and low carb and all these different things, Atkins and all these different little tribal identities. That's the mimetic nature of human beings, especially when it relates to something so identity centric like what you eat. You know, there's a reason why religions always have something to say about diet. Isn't that interesting? You know, it's fundamentally kind of related to our identity.

So there's no reason to be surprised by the fact that there can be religious tribalism built up into these online nutrition conversations. Absolutely. Once we get past that tribalism, I'm sure things are going to get way, way better. Now, do you think that when you have a really functioning high thyroid and mitochondrial health and low cortisol and low –

you know, estrogenic poisonings and endotoxin poisonings. You get all that in working order, really, really thriving. Do you think it will correspond generally with a better disposition to fleeing temptation and loving joyfully your neighbor?

um uh yes yes absolutely uh because i think that when like when you maximize your energy production like i said like you become more childlike and children by and large aren't really that standoffish they're actually very very friendly um so that that's yeah they're quick to forgive and they're quick to to not like um uh

you know, try to manipulate you unless they're cranky and hungry, you know, typically too, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. So absolutely. Like as you become healthier and everything's working right in your body, you'll find out that by and large, you end up becoming nicer and much more empathetic. That's at least something that I've noticed as I've actually gotten healthy over time and not just like, you know,

like a muscle bound bodybuilder guy when i actually focused on on my health i got nicer like rather than oh i'm so healthy look at me i actually no i actually got more empathetic yeah i mean that's why you know there is the spiritual dimension is always there and it's always infused in everything but sometimes there's this kind of crutch cop-out thing where

If you've got massive cortisol problems and lactic acid built up and deprivation of proper glucose oxidation for the brain and tissue, and you've got bad oils running through your heart, creating inflammation all around the body. You've got all these different things, lack of CO2, all these different things we talk about in the repeat world, serotonin.

All these things can create this cacophony of bad dispositions, right? So you walk into a room and two people have the similar situation and you think a hobgoblin has stirred it all up. In reality, it's all of those biochemical pathways that we've neglected because we don't love the body like Christ loves our body. And when you learn to love the body in its proper place as the temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells,

then you take care of it like a temple that you honor and respect. And when you take care of it,

as something that is meant to be taken care of in honor of God, then you'll realize that it's easier to forgive and it's easier to not get into rivalry and it's easier to feel not insulted by every little dart that someone may or may not say to you by their verbal words or nonverbal communication. And once that stuff starts to just be like duck off of the water's back,

excuse me, water off of a duck's back, once that starts to be in the natural kind of tendency, you're able to follow God better. Isn't that great?

Yeah, absolutely. I agree with you. Like, like the healthier you get, the more resilient you become. And that means, you know, both physically and spiritually. Let me say this just to balance it out. And you let you have the last word, anything you want to talk about or leave us with a website or anything you have. I want to say to people who are,

because I have a lot of things I have to work on, right? And so I just want to say, if you're in a situation where you're looking at

vicious levels of toxicity or poor diet habits or lack of sleep or lack of sunlight or bad relationships that have been traumatic for you or, you know, all these different things. You cannot let what we have said about building your health be another opportunity for you to fall into despair.

You have to understand the spirit is greater than the body and the soul. The spirit that God has given us is able to overcome those things. Even when you have no sunlight, no thyroid, your thyroid's been removed. For God's sake, some people have.

that situation. Whatever you're in, do not let that be an opportunity for you to despair, because the Holy Spirit can overcome all of your circumstances, and you can thrive and have the joy of the Lord supernaturally right now. So do not allow any of this stuff to be entertained in a way that becomes a stumbling block for your life. You can thrive right now. Even if you're in a dark cave, God is with you. So if you don't have access to sunlight, orange juice, and carrot salads,

The supplements, the carbon dioxide, all the things that God gave us to flourish. Don't let that be a stumbling block of despair. The Holy Spirit can give you joy beyond anything a carrot or anything else can do. These are all tools that God gave us, and we won't want to idolize any of it. We want to subject it back in our minds in the dominion of God and allow Him to take care of us wherever we're at, step by step.

Absolutely. And the only thing that I want to add is it's not a sprint. It's a marathon. Health, divinity, anything in existence worth doing does take time. And that's a problem that I struggle with every day. I want things right now, just right now. Like I want them when I want them.

But the more that I've matured and the more that I've learned about health, the more that I've deepened my faith, I realize that it just takes time. So if you do feel as if you're in an extraordinarily dark place, whether it be physically, spiritually, mentally, realize that the ideal that you can be and that you can become

is a marathon. So hold fast, pray hard, research, and finally be who you can really be. Thank you.