What We Are Missing About Bitcoin (THINGS HIDDEN 218)
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Christ said, don't stare into the eyes of the mob when they were, you know, throwing the stones. That's kind of the idea. You know, you can not put your head in the sand, kind of have a detachment, but don't look into their eyes. You can kind of really get hyped up and brought into the mania. That's a great point. ♪♪♪

I love you and I really don't know what to do. I'm talking to the elusive James Cortini's today. He's the host of the Roosters Crow podcast. Where have you been? What have you been doing? I can't find you anywhere. You've been hiding in the shadows or you become the Phantom of the Opera of YouTube?

I've been on a hiatus, man. I haven't been on any kind of social media, Twitter. I haven't been making any content. And it's been kind of an organic hiatus. And, you know, I feel like I just don't have anything to say right now or participate in. Did you go to Marathos or something? I did. I did. Maybe that was part of it, you know. How long after did you go there that you quit your… You know, it was probably a couple of months, you know, when I got back.

Now that you think of it, I never thought of it like that. You got a revelation there to maybe don't say so much? I got the download. Silence is the key, which is hard for me. But it's been good, man. I've been spending a lot of time with the family. I've been kind of immersed in work, just getting my kind of health right, eating right, feeling better. I think I'm just an organic hiatus, and I'll be back when the time is right, you know?

Yeah, you're going to be coming down from the rafters like the Phantom of the Opera, right? Right, yeah. Coming back. Hopefully have something to say. So are you overall pleased with what Trump has been doing politically? Are you kind of neutral, mixed feelings, or...

I'm pleased. I'm pleased. I mean, not, not, you know, I don't like everything that he's done per se, but his general posture, kind of what he's been doing. You know, I'm with it, man. You know,

I've cut off another thing that I've done is I've completely stopped participating in these text threads that I were on with friends and cousins talking politics. I stopped completely. You just stopped. And that was probably good for your mental health, wasn't it? Yeah. It's been great. And they're texting me like, where are you, man? I'm like, I'm done with that, man. I cannot. It still goes on 50, 60 messages a day. I'm like, I just have no interest. That's how Twitter and all that stuff is. Yeah.

It's the same stuff like over and over again, you know, I think people get a adrenal fatigue from Twitter, all the noise, constant yelling and screaming, you know what I mean? It's exhausting. You know,

You know, part of it may be like, it's kind of like the dog that caught the car, you know, stop barking. You caught the car, you know, it's good. Things were kind of precarious for a while. And I feel I had to go through the corpus of Western philosophy and history to share that with people to show that there's something there. And then, you know, it seems like there's been a turn in the culture and that, that voice.

But we're still on the edge of World War III and all this crazy stuff. So even though it feels different on one level, you never know what things can change on a Black Swan type event. No, you're right. So that's why we need James back in the game, you know, when the Lord calls him to. Whenever he's ready, I'm here, you know. And you talked about reading. You were, for those who are not familiar with your YouTube channel, you

you did a, uh, a lot of reading of books and stuff. What was the, what are your favorite book, uh, that you read on your channel? Oh man. Um, you know, I went through a lot of, uh, different writers and different kind of, uh, domains. Um, but the one that started it all was Sarah from Rose, a book by father Damascene called Christ and the eternal Dow, uh, which really kind of inaugurated the whole reading on YouTube type thing. And then from there, just the church fathers, um,

A lot of kind of postmodern philosophy and reading that against the church fathers was really fruitful for me and very interesting. And then I found that some other people have been doing that and that, you know, David, the heart is does this in this book that I've recently been going through the beauty and the infinite, which are just God. So, you know, I really think and he talks about how why why would we as theologians, he is taught, you know, really engage with postmodern thought.

And he says that, you know, the West is kind of the fruits of Christianity. Right. And postmodernism is the fruits of the West. Right. So we got to engage with it and what what the message is, what the critique is and have an answer. Kind of what is the originary Christian authentic response to the postmodern critique? And I find that really compelling to explore. Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, you talked about Father Sarah from Rose and David Bentley Hart. That's like the full gamut of politics in the Orthodox, you know, influencers there, right there. So that's what I appreciate about you is that you're one of those few open-minded people on the public square that is willing to engage without some kind of tribal, you know,

constipation that makes it difficult for other people to just be exist and think and not be afraid or something I'm allergic to that for some reason I think it's maybe some kind of dispositional attitude where I don't have that tribal impulse almost at all I don't know it might be not a great thing or a good thing or might be a good thing I don't know but just I don't have that you know that's why we always got along well on our shows on radio and everything but yeah

Yeah, I think that's going to be critical for what emerges in our culture in the future is people who are not... It's harder for politics and its evil to work when people become more

ungovernable or unmanageable or in terms of they're just too unique and they're not tribalistic in their sense making. Now everybody thinks they're unique already, so that's kind of the paradox of this, but the more people can truly kind of think for themselves critically and feel for themselves critically, they become more in tune with their humanity and less in tune with tribal social influence, right? And so

I, you know, I am paradoxical about Donald Trump. You know, I like a lot of things that I see him doing. I like his, you know, I like the person that I like his personality more than I like his policies. You know, I like him as a character. You know, I, you know, entertainment character. I find him a very interesting character to watch. And but and I'm pleased with some of the things that he's done. It's certainly better than the nihilistic hellscape that was Biden. My goodness. I mean,

How long they lied has cancer and God knows what other diseases he has. And he's just psychopaths that were running that administration are just absolutely mind blowing. At least in the Trump world, there is some relative daylight between people. There's a little bit of variance of thought, which is like, it's like a little straw of

amount of air fresh air when you're buried by you know just mind-numbing zombie-like uh politics that we went through for years you know but yeah at the same time yeah go ahead you see tapper's new book that just came out jake tapper i didn't see it but yeah what was your general takeaway from what you heard of it so far it's entitled original sin by the way and he interviewed 200 people close to the president political act you know um people close to him

And he said they opened up to him kind of like he was Barbara Walters after the election, or before they were tight-lipped. But it's like they couldn't get this stuff off of their chest fast enough, how fast he was. And obviously he was deteriorating in so many ways, he would forget –

his closest advisors' names, stumbling around. And, you know, you and I saw it from 2020, 2019. Like this was completely obvious to anyone that had eyes to see. And this goes to the point of not being tribal. You get into this tribal, you know, kind of echo chamber of way of looking at the world. You actually don't perceive reality.

And the same thing with COVID. People just would not perceive reality because they were in some kind of mass psychosis formation. It's like, holy cow, but there is a reckoning coming. I see a lot of people are silent now. A lot of people just want to move forward. Let's not talk about the shots. Let's not talk about the COVID insanity. Let's not talk about Biden's deterioration in front of our eyes and how we kind of deny that. Nobody wants to look back. And the biggest thing I'm having right now is a stumbling block because I spent a lot of my

years in political commentary making foreign policy a focus of my work. And, you know, the things that we're doing in Gaza are just unconscionable and not acceptable. And you just can't, I can't, as someone who understands the Bible, the anthropology that Rene Girard helped to see, I can't go along with this little Whoville act where we just, oh, MAGA's good enough, my taxes are cut or something like that.

a little bit less di and that's, that's a sufficient price to allow Gazans to be slaughtered. Nah, can't do that. Can't do that. You know, and that's for any, you know, then I'm really irritated by the lack of, uh, sovereignty that it seems that the Trump administration has in terms of its relationship with Israel. I'm hoping that that could be changed. That's a, I know that's easier said than done. I'm sure, you know, there's a lot of tangled mess in there, but, uh,

Iran, you know, we can't have any strikes and go into war and carrying their beer for them again as they start wailing at Iran like, you know, we're not doing that. I've been battling this Iran war propaganda since I was a young guy out of high school when I first started writing for World Net Daily and they were running that Zionist propaganda on there and I was, you know, that's why I whipped the right there because I wanted to be contending in the debate and it's like the same stupid talking points. These guys have been

hungry for a war with Iran and it's so psychopathic and I'm just we're all done with it but we still DC hasn't got that memo yet you know they're still completely owned by the psychopaths

Yeah, I think you've seen a little bit of a break from Israel, from the Trump administration, where they're not completely, you know, they're not going to give weapons to Israel if they're going to attack Iran. And, you know, Israel said they're going to go it by themselves. So I think you're seeing some daylight there where you haven't seen that before, you know,

you know, I hope it's, it's gotta be decisive though, you know, because we could get easily embroiled in there with some kind of attack on our people. Our people are all sitting there like good little, uh, sitting ducks there, you know, in terms of our, our bases and stuff. And that's dangerous. Oh yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Put a little false flag there. But I think the people, you know, you've been paying attention to kind of the Dave Smith, Tucker Carlson, you know, discourse that's been going out there versus the Mark Levin. Have you been paying attention to that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and Ben Shapiro. Yeah, you can see the changing of the guard is really taking place rapidly where Levin just looks like a total dinosaur, like something from another universe.

you know, not forsaken era of conservatism, Inc. And so does Ben Shapiro. He just looks like a little kiddie, you know, the kid's table, the kid's corner, Mark Levin, you know? And yeah, that's what you had to do to make money. If you wanted to be an influencer in the algorithms, you had to Cal tell to the war machine and the, and the constant Zionist war machine. That's how it's always been like, you know? And, and I took the Ron Paul pill when I was right out at the gate in 2007, when I was writing articles and, and,

And I've had to go the tortoise route, not the hare route, as an influencer because of that. And that's all the more for it because history is vindicating us. Unfortunately, it's hard to wrap your head around the amount of suffering that people have to go through. You know what I mean? I mean, if something were to happen in Florida where people are being bombed to smithereens and just totally kids are being targeted –

You know, we couldn't even fathom the level of pain and suffering. And that just happens over and over again here with Gaza. But for decades with this mismanagement of foreign policy, how many wars, all the killing, it's just unconscionable. And you can't even wrap your head around it.

How do you process that as a Christian? You know, you're happy that Trump's in there, but he's still he's still hiring and still picking people. And I know everybody says Rubio's chains. He's just he's just doubt his warmongering down a couple ounces. I mean, it's not not a total change.

Yeah, I mean, I don't combine my Christianity at all with anything that's happening political, like the cult Christian nationalism thing as an anathema to me. It's that's, you know, that's not what it's about at all. I mean, I mean, I kind of look at juxtaposing Trump's even policies versus what was before. You know, it's like, oh, man. So there's there's you know, and the fact that we're even talking about and we're seeing this daylight between the kind of.

you know, implicit support for Israel's policies from a foreign policy perspective. And now you're seeing this daylight and it's being presented and you're seeing it on the right and it's divided. I think it's good, you know, that there is this actual daylight between them. And I think we're going to continue in this vein, you know, and I think you're even seeing now that, you know, I think Levin talked about how the term neocon is a cloak for anti-Semitism. So he says the term neocon is a cloak for Jew.

I'm like, whoa, that's a damn stretch, man. That's so ridiculous. It's just going to disclose more of the absurdity of their position. You know, so, but I don't, I don't, you know, I see my Christianity kind of in a different light than applying it in anything politically that's happening, you know. Interesting. So you've taken kind of a detached approach that the, I mean, maybe I'm misreading, but that, that there's the domain of politics and,

and the domain of Caesar, and then the domain of the spiritual realm that should be detached or interacting, but just not keeping your expectations low on the political side, or how do you view it?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, Christ said, don't stare into the eyes of the mob when they were, you know, throwing the stones. That's kind of the idea. You know, you can not put your head in the sand, kind of have a detachment, but don't look into their eyes. You can kind of really get hyped up and brought into the mania. That's a great point. That's kind of the idea that I think. When you look in their eyes, that's what you're doing when you get on the social media where they're all hyping up one way or the other, aren't you?

It's a digital version of it, but it's still the kind of you catch the contagion of emotional aggression. That's a great point. Even if you're on the right side of it, you're still participating in the mania, you know, because you're trying to stay level headed about it. And then you can get swept up right up in the emotional rhetoric, you know, oh, you got them there. That's true. Oh, you know what I mean? You see something rude or insulting, you know,

against someone that is in agreement with you and then you see them go back rude and you enjoy it and then you're just swept right up in the mimetic contagion and it's got you revved up for no reason and you're kind of hallucinating in this kind of aggressive schoolyard fight posture all the time, right? That's what social media functions as. It's interesting, as someone that you've done a podcast, you didn't do it to a full-time degree like I've been doing for years, but

You certainly put in a lot of time into it. What do you think is the, you know, how does, how do you, you know, this is like a perennial question I always ask people that, like, how do you do media, you know, in that environment? Because it's true, you know, the algorithm is so game for,

You know, if you have to say, you have to say like, you know, top five reasons why James Cortini's left podcasting. That's what I have to title this to make this, you know, but I don't do that because it's lowbrow to me. It's stupid. You know, you do it a little bit, you know, it's okay to be catchy or whatever. That's fine. But, you know, like to just dwell in that kind of mind space, it's just,

waste of life to just try to catch the crowd, right? But yet at the same time, media is such an important calling for the Christian, right? And I always tell people, don't wait for some podcast or influencer to be your guru, to live vicariously through. You be a media. Every day you use your voice to call attention to those who are the vulnerable, the scapegoats, whatever, the misfits,

So how do you do media without seeing the eyes of the crowd? You know, because it's become so crowd-like now, you know? I think the eyes are the likes, so you can't do it for the likes. And I show my son, like, you know, I'm not doing it for the likes and I'm not doing it to grow the channel. And this is why, you know, I've kind of had a parallel relationship

the vocation that I'm involved in, that I'm blessed to have that it's very nurturing and whatnot. So I have that. So I don't need to grow the channel. I'm not looking to make money off of it. I don't care about the, I mean, you do a little bit, right, but I'm not doing it for the likes and for the engagement and whatnot. So I'm not doing it for the eyes. You know, as evidenced by, I just stopped for months now, you know, not worried that the channel is going to die. The algorithm is going to forget about me. That doesn't matter to me. I think

It's just a blessing disposition that I have. I don't know why I have that, but I think that's the key, right? People that will find it, that need to find it, will find it. And I've had a lot, even like with not posting and publishing videos, I still get messages of people finding old videos like, oh man, thanks for this. This is great. And oh, I needed this at this time. That's what it's about, touching those things.

those people that are ready to hear that information, whether it's Sarah from Rose or the church fathers, you know, that's what, that's what it's about. I mean, lightning, lightning, you know, a little lightning lightning bolts or flashes here and there rather than trying to do it for a mass audience, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That's a, it's a well said, you know, and it's a, the trick is, you know, I think that that's the future of media that, um,

that a lot of it will become a tent-making enterprise, like you have to have your full-time job or whatever, and then you do that on the side as a vocation. Kind of like how a lot of evangelical Christianity in the last century felt that it was, for a time, their vocation to knock on doors and pass out pamphlets, right, to evangelize. I think that people...

The future of Christianity in America could look like millions of people and they're already doing it. But I mean, in a more conscientious way where you're not just trying to spout off, but you're trying to like intentionally do like what you did, which like,

I want to spread knowledge and I want to explore ideas and meet role models online and interact with them and spur inspiration for people through something they hear that I've explored. And being more aware of your mimetic role model and then using it intentionally but not necessarily intentionally.

in a way that leverages you that you have to do that to pay the bills. Because once you do that, it's very challenging. That's a very challenging thing. Because the meter between telling the truth about... The more you tell the truth about the more topics, the more you get buried in the algorithm. And the more you compromise or sensationalize or both...

The more you become swept up in the machine, and that's how you start to get sponsors or, you know, whatever. Yeah.

comes a feedback loop to, you know, the algorithm is moving you to feed it, to feed it rather than the other way around. You know, another thing that just came up to me, you know, this stuff is permanent or semi-permanent. So watch the content that you make through the eyes of your grandkids when they're adults, you know, they're going to go back and see grandpa, you know, what was grandpa doing? Look at these videos he made, man. You know, you'd find an old picture of your grandpa or your great grandpa when they were younger.

It's just such a precious thing. Look at this, man. Now we have hours and hours of content for our future generations to look back on. That's wild, man. I don't even know what to make of that. It's pretty cool, though. Yeah, and seeing the... Yeah, just seeing, wow, you dealt with that issue back then. I can't believe they were doing that. They were eating that kind of trash, seed oils, and you had to fight about that every day on radio? Or, you know, they were literally thinking about...

that it was okay to like just kill kids and guys every day and just like play victimism to make us like, shut up. Like you, you really had to go through that, you know? I mean, hopefully it'll be a better place that they will have the moral perspective. And I think it will be because, you know, I think things are trending. It's, it's, it's funny how things are, but I like,

simultaneously more nihilistic but more morally awakened at the same time, you know, with the younger generation. More checked out. You know, I saw somebody was showing a video of some Gen Z guys watching that Mexican boat crash some of its mass into the Brooklyn Bridge the other day, and there was like

flying off and stuff, and the guy was just going, whoa, whoa, those are people up there. And they were like, dude, this guy's neurons are fried, and they were mocking Gen Z people are like that. And I thought, I was like, man, that's so despairing to think about that on one level, but yet Gen Z's got high rates of returning to Christianity and being against the war machine and the neocon nastiness. So

It's weird how that's happening at the same time, you know? Well, watch out for Gen Alpha, right? Gen Alpha, the young kids are way farther along in returning to the truth than Gen Z. So Gen Z is the end of something. So you're looking at, you know, the end of the alphabet, right? And you actually see the latter half of Gen Z is moving towards what Gen Alpha is picking up. And I see it in my own children and their friends and they're interested in and

and Christianity and they're interested in wholesome things. It's very cool. They're interested in wholesome things. And I love to see it. You know, so I think it's, it's very encouraging to see that. And it's very poetic and symbolic that we're starting back over at gen alpha. And we're seeing that, that kind of turn happen as we turn to this new generation, that's kind of starting at the, at the top again. You know, it's, it's kind of fascinating. What is that? So what do you think, what are the vibes of the generation alpha generation?

scene that you think is that you're picking up you know i mean from what you can yeah i think they're interested in theological uh you know thinking theologically you know as much as they can i think they're they're seeing the fruitlessness of drinking and alcohol and drugs and sex and pornography and all that they're just not interested in it doesn't have that pull and that that that kind of uh that drive anymore i think part of that is we've seen the outcome of that

We've seen the despair that it's led to in some of these latter generations. I think they organically are turning away from that, which is a wonderful, beautiful thing. You're also seeing them kind of more interested in actually participating in going to church.

Um, I was watching a video today, Alex O'Connor, and I think his name is Lennox, the theologian Lennox. And they were talking about this, this John Lennox. Yeah. Yeah. John Lennox. Yeah. Talking about this turn of not people just believing in God again, but actually going to church again. Um,

And I think you're just seeing the the fruits of nihilism ultimately are nothing. Right. And we've pushed that to its to its end. And that's going to leading to kind of a return to a more original understanding of not going back to like this, this false Christianity or the superficial Christianity. People are looking for the truth deeply. And I think they're finding it because it's there and it's at hand. And I was reading in this book.

heart book. And I don't know if I can find the quote, but he says something, you know, the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of man or the city of heaven, the city of man, he's quoting Augustine are at hand. What does that mean? How do you, how do you know what city you're living in? And that's, you know, what you love and what you desire is going to determine what kingdom you're in. I'm like, Oh, that's perfect. Do you know what you love, what you desire, what you focus on is going to disclose the kingdom. Both kingdoms are here at hand and present.

you know, how do you determine which one that you're in is by what you're focusing on, what you're desiring, what your love is, you know, where you're showing me where your heart is. That's where your treasure is in a sense. Right. So if you're focusing on trying to find the originary, you know, Christian impulse, trying to follow Christ's commandments, that is going to disclose the kingdom of heaven here right now on earth. And it's like, it's such a beautiful, encouraging, hopeful message. You know, does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I've always seen it too, well not always, but recently, that it's kind of like being an ambassador of the future. What the future of Earth will look like, you can tap into now through the mind of Christ, right?

You know, we are the body of Christ. We're in the mind of Christ. We have this relationship between God and the link between man and God, Jesus. And through that, we're able to like tap into the future of where all humanity will be when the earth is full and complete, you know, and all things are in, like God is in all as the text says. And so when that happens, like we don't have to wait and just slog it out now. We can live it out now. And so,

That's one of the things that I've tried to introduce in the discourse through the years is that a lot of the folks who have become interested in Christianity, again, the millennials and Gen Z who are converting to traditional, they call it trad or the word for that.

for older forms of Christianity, that it's important to not get in a reactive, backwards-looking view while you convert to those traditions, but to keep the progressive, future-looking view that Christianity actually has in its organic form, right? And so because we were sold so much fake information

versions of Christianity because that's what a lot of modernism is and all this kind of like, you know, like a perversion of the universality of Christianity, the idea of we can cure all the diseases and everything. All of that's Christian and you should do that. But there's a way in which it's done in modernism, which is a kind of a fool's errand that uses violence to do it. And so trying to recover from

And I said that on the social media the other day, that Christianity is the only answer to resolve conserving traditions while having a progressive view of the future. Like, together. You can't reconcile that without Christianity, you know?

Yeah, that makes sense. You know, Christianity endures. You know, Christ is here yesterday, today and tomorrow. If you take that seriously, that means he's always ever present and available to you if you, you know, if you turn towards him, which is a wonderful thing. You know, I think that's that's what's happening. And it's it's encouraging to see that. I think Hart in this book at the end of it talks about the market.

And how the market is actually kind of the final resting place of Nietzschean impulse of the will to power and how the market is this revaluation of values. We create our own values. We do that. And at the heart of nihilism is the market, right? The market doesn't value beauty. It doesn't value truth. It values commodity, right? And this commodity exchange. And that's kind of the, so the market is kind of the final,

you know, a resting place of the chin impulse of will to power. And he writes beautifully about that. I've never thought of it like that, like that. I'm like, man, this is cool. Yeah. Yeah. He would, he, him and I did a, a couple of shows together years ago. I don't know if you ever saw those, but that was probably one of the things that he was most irritated by me is because I have a general, uh,

you know, disposition because of my upbringing in the Ron Paul tradition to be pro free market. And yet it was very, he's more what he would call like an anarcho communist, you know, and there, and there was a, there was a little bit of oil and vinegar attitude he had towards, you know, cause I was trying to make common cause with him. And he's like, no, we, you know, I can't have private property and all that stuff, but that just goes to show that there's, there needs to be that kind of dialogue that continues on.

Yeah. Let me read a little bit from, uh, from it where he talks about this Nietzschean. He says, um,

for all his solicitude for noble values Nietzsche may prove in retrospect to have been the greatest of bourgeois philosophers, the active and creative force of will he praised, may be really a mythic aggrandizement of entrepreneurial ingenuity and initiative. Talk of the world of power, however abstracted and universalized, may reflect only metaphysical inflation of that concept of voluntaristic

punctiliarity that defines the quote unquote subject to which the market is hospitable. The notion of a contentless and spontaneous activity that must create values describes in somewhat impressionistic vein the monadic consumer of the free market and the venture capitalists.

To speak of the innocence of the all-becoming, the absence of good and evil from being, and a general preference for the distinction between good and bad as a purely evaluative judgment, is perhaps to speak of the guiltless desire of the consumer, the relativity of want and the perpetual transvaluation that is so elegantly and poignantly expressed on every price tag,

Every declaration of a commodity's abstract value, a force that goes always to the limit of what it can do, is perhaps at one with modern capitalism's myth of limitless growth and unbounded trade. And he goes on and on. And he critiques Marx in this vein as well. It's kind of interesting.

I just came across that, so I don't know what to really think of it, but it's interesting. What is the free market? And is it what it was before? What has it turned into? I don't think the free market is the same thing it has been when Adam Smith kind of named it and what it was in the industrial age. And now we're in the post-industrial age. What is it now with these commodities that flash around?

on our screens and are even more superficial than they were before. It seems like the free market commodifies, you know, it takes the, the, the value, the beauty, the substance out of things and makes them superficial and transactional. Well, it's like, yeah, there's a couple of things there. It's like, there's the word free market, which is a symbol for this cultural edifice that we have.

And then we have the abstract notion that Austrian economics teaches about like markets and how they work. And that might be mixed up into some of the error that there's been a critique for, but, but there are different things. Right. And so it's like the word free market is invoked like Thor to mean the system we have and all of its abuses, which is ultimately an effusion between central banking, the state and,

And these corporate oligarchic controls of the market, but it's like, but you're right that there, and he's right in the sense that there is a cultural critique that needs to be really leveled that conservatives have to kind of process, which is like you invoke this word, the market as a kind of chant to like.

wave the hand about ugly, disgusting ways in which people treat each other in everyday private business scenarios. Just because you have a right, theoretically, maybe, in terms of to do something, doesn't mean in a Christian heart you should do it. There's this attitude of kind of, well, and I see it, and I've talked about it a lot, it's like,

people, even when you go to church, right, there's this kind of notion that like,

As long as you're not doing like something egregious, like running a gambling casino or a prostitution ring, whatever you do in your business is just you. Right. You know what I'm saying? And it's like, don't ask, don't tell kind of policy about like whatever you do in your business. It's kind of like that separate domain where you can kind of, you could be a money hungry person or a memetic person or, you know, uh, you know, exploitative, uh, consumer capitalist or whatever, uh,

And not think more conscientiously about what you're doing with your power or your position in society. That we should be able to redeem all of that. All of that should be redeemed and not just left at... I'll tell you an example, and it might irritate people. I don't like real estate. I think people that sell people... And I know that irritates people because it steps on everybody's toes. But selling people on mortgages that they can't afford and getting them into bondage of usury...

And your job is to like entice them to keep up with the Joneses and then stick their little kids with this disgusting usury. I just find that so disgusting. And yet it's such a banal job that everybody knows someone that does it, that they really care for dealing. I find it absolutely disgusting. And I think that there is a place for the market critique to come into that, you know, and be like, what are we doing here on an individual level and then a collective level, right? You know,

loading people up with debt. Well, I'm just doing my job. They wanted that house. Well, you could have been a Christian there, you know? Yeah. Jesus does condemn usury like a million times. You could have told them, man, you know, but then you wouldn't be a good realtor, would you? Because everybody's just kind of pushing them on their desires, right? So, you know, James, you know, what you've raised and what I think, what the core, I think about

the best of what David's saying there. And if you have anything else that's in that text, that's great to add to. But it's like, it's really a critique on the idolatrous notion of the individual and his desires, right? Like we have to get past this notion that, you know, my subjective desires are untouchable, you know, and realize how much of it is just meaningless imitation of other people's desires.

Yeah, because ultimately what we desire is determined by the metaphysics that we're embedded in, right? And at the heart of our postmodern, late

market capitalist, yet a physics is nothing, right? So we desire things for, because of their fashion, because they're in fashion and they exchange, we get them. And when they're out of fashion, we buy the new thing and there's nothing there. There, there's no, there, there, there's no substance in it. You know, he talks about how crisis that, you know, once you invest your desire and love in Christ, Christ is uncommodifiable. He says in that, right. He's not a commodity. He resists that. That's why the market doesn't, you know, really, you know, function, you

you know, in a real Christian sense like that. So at the heart of free market capitalism, at least this late postmodern version is the desire for nothing, you know, and that's, and I think we've run up against, that's why we're seeing this, the end of nihilism, the bubble is bursting.

And we're seeing that because, you know, you see like the traditional midlife crisis, you know, you get the sports car, you get the wife, you get the house. And then you're, you know, you get into your forties or fifties and you realize that it was all for not. You have a crisis of conscience, right? I think that the new generations are going to avoid that because they've seen that we don't need the newest thing. We don't need the newest toy. We didn't need the newest this, that, and the other. I think once you plug in your desire appropriately, right?

you know, through prayer and through, you know, authentic thirst for the Christian heart, you know, then you can participate in the free market without being captured by it. I think that's what's important. Yeah. Yeah. That's well said. I like that. And it's something that, you know, there's, I do feel like we're entering into this Wild West territory where

Everything that was considered untouchable is now touchable. And it's fun. You know, I mean, we, we recently had the pleasure of seeing my cohost for the show who, you know, Dr. You, Dr. Weeping, you went on the Patrick bet David show with parents Howard, and he had an apocalyptic, a neighbor's choice type moment there, you know, because he,

they brought him on with the thought that he might provide the standard conventional establishment view of physics in contrast to Terrence Howard's heretical, you know, deviations. And instead, Dr. You affirmed many things in which Terrence was very right about. And then he gently critiqued them in a very humble way about things that he thought he wasn't right about. And it was a very Christian kind of moment. I think all together the clips and things were like past 47 million views and

Dr. Yu became a, you know, I was so proud moment for me because I'd been pushing, you know, Dr. Yu's ideas and his theory of everything, the Yuan theory on our show for years and waiting for it to catch on. And it's all about, it's all this mimetic little, you know, it's a mimetic game, right? And you're like, man, and I've always said, man, I wish people were not so

mimetic that they have to wait for the crowd to validate somebody before they'll give it a shot because that's just the whole point of being christian is being able to look past the eyes of the crowd like you said and look for the truth and you think with a nation of 330 what 360 million people that we would be able to at least a million of us or half a half you know half a million of us could maybe really think like that and and use our christianity that way uh

We could change the world with just 10,000 people like that, you know? Absolutely. I think that's happening. Yeah. I think that's what's happening, you know? But you're not going to see it in mass. You're going to see it take hold in little pockets digitally and in real life and kind of see this kind of feedback loop that's going on, you know? And kind of as an aside, I have this at my job.

We work with different clients, you know, with medically fragile children. And there was this family where these parents, you know, some parents are very difficult because they got very difficult situations and they're kind of, you know, counting on caregivers to show up at some site that don't show up. And I had this one of the most kind of challenging clients. And, you know, he actually tried to, you know, get me fired at a time. It was a very difficult situation. Right.

Cut to long story short, he just sent me an email. He joined the Orthodox Church recently because of the conversations that we've had in these difficulties and just the most mind blowing thing. Like I'm seeing this information. He said, James, you played a huge role in this and me actually being able to find my way here. And we went from this guy that was trying to get me fired. And all of a sudden we're having these theological discussions out of nowhere with someone like a normie at work.

And he ended up founding his way into the Orthodox Church. I'm like, wow. So this came from my participation in conversations like this and engaging with people and ideas on the Internet, by the way. You know, I wouldn't have found my way back where I'm at now without those things. So, you know, the technology is something that if, again, if used appropriately, put in its right place, can actually proliferate the authentic Christian vision of the world, I think.

yeah um on that note have you been following jordan hall and his thought on bitcoin bitcoin monasteries and i haven't no i you know i haven't talked to him since the around the time that we last had him on the show but uh no what is he up to man i gotta share this conversation that he had and part of i've been i haven't been able to like nothing compelling has seemed to be on the podcast sphere anywhere like nothing new and compelling it's just been the

reappropriation of the same material. And I caught this conversation he had, I forgot who he had it with exactly. And it was a rather long conversation. At the end of the conversation, they talked about how Bitcoin

is really akin to the Christian Holy Spirit and analogous, very analogous to it. And talking about how Bitcoin is the future of transaction and the way that this kind of fabric of transacting that is Bitcoin, that is blockchain, so to speak, inaugurates a new way of being in the world that is very close and akin to the Christian ethic.

At the heart of it is integrity, the integrity of trust in transaction. That is at the heart of Bitcoin, right? You don't need a third party. It can be done between two parties and they talk about how like money and law, the

the function and the effectuation of money and law eventually seeps itself out into the way people treat each other. And we are kind of an expression of the code that is language, money, and law, right? So we are kind of expressions of that over time, the way that we transact, it gets into our way of being with each other. And Bitcoin or the blockchain inaugurates a new way of being with each other. And it kind of inaugurates the divine economy of the...

the logos of transacting each other in complete good faith with integrity. And I'm not able to metabolize it and communicate it, but I found it extremely interesting and compelling to think about how at the very bottom, the way that we transact with each other, right, actually affects the way that we engage with each other as human beings. Like there's something at the fundamental code level of language and the law

and of money, you know, that these three kind of elements interact within us to engage how we interact with corporations in the world, with each other as neighbors and everything. So it's like this new fundamental code that has emerged that is this blockchain is eventually going to inaugurate the kingdom in a sense because it verifies a way of transacting and engaging with each other rooted in trust.

in faith, in faith, actually. I was like, whoa, it was compelling. I'm not doing it any kind of service by trying to summarize it. I'll send it to you. But I found it very interesting. I've heard him talk about the Bitcoin monastery before, and I've heard kind of thoughts about Bitcoin in this regard. This was the first time that I'm like, oh, I get what you're talking about. And it kind of lit me up a little bit. I have to check that out. You know, that reminds me of like this prediction I've kind of tried to share with people, which is that

You know, wealth is very scarce, so to speak, in the earthly sense, in this rigged economy. But at the same time, money is not scarce. It's printed out of thin air on computers. Elon was watching trillions go this way or that way. They didn't do anything to codify it in any cuts, you know, with Trump's administration or the House or Senate.

so far, and they probably won't, but the trillions just disappear out of the Pentagon and go this way and that way and all this stuff. So money is very post-scarce, whereas real wealth is very kind of scarce right now for folks in the rigged world economy. And I think that what's going to happen if Christians get their act together with the way Bitcoin and

Look how Bitcoin is very scarce. It costs like, what is it, going closer to $100,000 a coin? So it's very scarce. And I think that money, in my opinion, represents...

And Bitcoin, too, is kind of like putting it back in its proper place. It will be extremely scarce in the future, and wealth will be very post-scarce. So we're going to switch. Right now, we're living in a country that's flooded with dollar bills on computer paper all day, all day.

We have no wealth. We have no wealth. Because that money is referred to nothing. It's fiat currency. And that actually speaks to the point of since money was – currency was taken away from the gold standard, it was fiat and it was –

based in nothing. Again, the whole metaphysical presence of nothing, right? So the stuff you buy with nothing is invaluable because there's no value that's actually being exchanged at a metaphysical level. And it actually made our relationships more superficial because the money isn't rooted on anything. So the way that we transact isn't rooted on anything, you know? And it's like you're living a lie every day that you give nothing for something, right? Yeah. And the something that you get is rooted in nothing. So there's no value to it. So this new, like,

um, this new idea with, with, with the Bitcoin and what that is and what it can do, uh,

And kind of grounding, which sounds crazy, right? Grounding value back into something real when Bitcoin seems, you know, like, you know, computers, it's hard to understand. But the whole proof-of-work concept is what is at the heart of it and how it actually re-kind of roots us back into kind of the reality of transacting with each other. So I think there's a lot more to think about there and to think through it. I think if we...

I've always had this intuition, even with Bitcoin, like it came out in recent that, you know, people, I would tell people, you know, about Bitcoin and they would invest in it and they would trade it just like they do in any other stock. And I would tell them, this is different. You can get trade stocks and trade into maybe other cryptos and, you know, all the little ones that popped up.

- You're just participating in the same thing. - Yeah, it's the same casino. - I've always had this intuition that Bitcoin, this blockchain is different. So when I bought Bitcoin, I never touched it again and I probably never will because I have this intuition that whatever this is, is different.

It's different. And so we're trying to apply old concepts of transaction to this new thing. Right. And a lot of, and you can do that because you can transact it, you know, just like you do a stock or penny stocks or whatever it is, invest in it. And it goes up, you know, number goes up and I take some money out and you can actually do that with it. But I think there's something else there that we're not, we haven't, it hasn't really come to our consciousness what it, what it is and what it may be. You know, so it's probably waiting for,

Again, that harmony between money, which is in this Bitcoin, which is a concept of the mind, in order for it to progress, it has to be incarnated. It has to be embodied. And I think the embodiment will be the energy revolution that I keep talking about, whether it's cold fusion or endless energy some other way, whatever.

Whatever, whatever horse gets us to that promised land, when we get to a level where energy is super abundant and we don't give a darn about the Suez Canal or whatever. And so therefore we don't care about the wars and we don't care about these ridiculous nihilistic, you know, rules based orders that, like you said, mean nothing because they're completely violated for every, every personal, you know, murderous desire that these people in power have.

We would just be able to move away from that as a species when the cat's out of the bag, that energy is too cheap to meet her.

And when it gets too cheap to meter that, I think will give the body for Bitcoin or something like it to incarnate. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's a good point. The brain, the brain races that our mind has raced it because we're Gnostic culture. Our mind has raced ahead of our body. And so our body has to catch up because our body's still living in gas powered cars. And, you know, that's incarnational physical stuff from a hundred years ago. Once we calibrate back up to where we should be,

It'll situate the money in its proper place and the banks will go bye-bye and the cartels that have spent. And the thing that I'm most excited about is what Ray Peet taught me when I got to know him and just meeting so many delightful followers of his that I've got to know through the show and offline. I mean, it's been remarkable because it really does ground a lot of the spiritual principles of

that Jesus teaches and Paul teaches in a way that's very concrete. Like, okay, this isn't just some kind of, like when you hear about the spirit man and all this stuff, it's so, it's very esoteric and woo-woo for people. It's like some kind of spiritual, just another religion. You know, what is, I got to get to my spirit man? You know, what is Paul talking about? But then when you realize that, like, you know, I thought about it, that the thyroid is the mediator between the mind and the body. You know, the thyroid, you know, because people talk about having a high thyroid or low thyroid,

And they typically associate that with like weight, but no, people can have a high or low thyroid on any kind of body type because it's what you're doing to your environment. It's the stress, it's the food and everything else. It's the mindset you have that impacts your metabolic rate. And I thought about it and I said, you know, so much of what spiritual disciplines we've been bought into, the spirit of religion in a sacrificial sense has been that, you know, the things of religion, the things of God are like an attack on the things of the body.

That's a disorientation of your metabolic system that produces that kind of theology. Because think about your thyroid is positioned in your neck, and you've got your head, which has got your mind, and then you've got the rest of your body. It's the mediator between heaven and earth.

And so why would you practice a lifestyle if you do intermittent fasting, one meal a day, if you're doing low-calorie restrictions, if you're doing low-carb or ketogenic diet? And look, I advocated for those things, so I have to repent publicly for it. And I have been over the years of talking about this the other way. But when you do all those things, what you're doing is you're down-regulating your metabolism, which means, in other words, you're dysregulating the mediator between your body and your spirit. Right.

I started thinking about it. And when you think about what Jesus said, he says, if you want to know what the kingdom of heaven is like, like what I want you to be like together, go look at the kids. Well, kids have a high thyroid unless they're poisoned, you know? So kids have a high functioning thyroid and,

that keeps their body and spirit resonating really nice harmoniously, which is the picture of the Christian view of the human. You know, the dualists that we lived in, see, we live in this dualistic mindset. And the dualistic mindset of Descartes, you know, that here's your body, here's your mind, and never the two shall meet. They're just like little different domains of the world. That's bullcrap. That's why we're in the problem we're in today.

Because we don't want to integrate the incarnational view of the body and soul together. And so we don't want to take Christianity down to the roots and say, no, it has things to do like thyroid function. It has things to do like carbon dioxide and how that plays a role in your mitochondria. And if you think about it,

The picture of the body working in resonance together is the picture of the human collective species body working in resonance together, right? Because when you look at your mitochondria, when it's in good health, flowing with your heart, flowing with the orchestrator of it all, the thyroid, and then flowing with your brain, guess what?

Your whole cellular community in your body is like in a perfect unity of mind, which is what God, just what Jesus says we have to do as a species. He says, I wish above that they were one. I wish above all else that they were one, as you and I are one, talking to his Father, and that when the world sees the church be one, they will know that you sent me. And I think there's a mystery there that we've got to press into. Yeah.

But let's leave it there, James, because I know you got to go, but you get, you finish your thought there and I know I got to get you out of here. I think the hormones in general are the bridge between the spirit and the material world and the physical body. And I think once you have the, you're, you're, you're regulated appropriately, you can see reality as it is. You can perceive reality as it is, as it is a lot better. It's actually a, a,

It's a immune function against ideology. If you can think clearly, if your metabolism is correctly, you're not going to get caught up into COVID and all this other stuff, you know? So it's very fascinating, but thank you, David. I appreciate you, man. Good to connect with you. Thanks for getting me out of my hole. And until next time. All right, we'll do it again. Thanks my friend.