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Mi huesped en este episodio es Claude Guislain, un antropólogo peruano que pasa la mayor parte de su tiempo con pueblos indígenas en Perú, Colombia y Brasil. Con su primera investigación sobre el uso de la ayahuasca y el chamanismo por parte de los occidentales en Iquitos (2005-2007), inició el viaje que lo llevó a dedicar su vida a tender un puente entre la sabiduría indígena y el mundo moderno. A lo largo de más de quince años dedicados casi exclusivamente a apoyar tanto a curanderos indígenas como a pacientes y exploradores occidentales, ha estado al servicio de los procesos de curación de cientos de personas. Ha estado trabajando y formándose con los Shipibo desde 2013, ayudando a la familia López a construir su propio centro. Fue facilitador y asesor en relaciones indígenas en el Templo del Camino de la Luz (2015-2023). Trabaja y aprende con un mamo Arhuaco desde 2012, con un Jaguar del yurupari del Tubú desde 2016 y con el pueblo Yawanawa de Brasil desde 2018.Hoy es asesor y miembro del Comité Técnico del Fondo de Conservación de Medicinas Indígenas y colabora también con ICEERS, y otras organizaciones, inspirándolas y ayudándolas a tejer sus esfuerzos y dones con los procesos indígenas de base.Notas del Episodio* La historia y esperanza de Claude* La idealizacion de los pueblos indigenas* El renacimiento psicodelico* Curacion y cantos* Contradicciones en el turismo psicodelico* La deforestacion, la demanda y la continuidad del conocimiento* Conservacion biocultural* ICEERS & MSCTareaClaude Guislain - Facebook - InstagramIndigenous Medicine Conservation FundInternational Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research and ServiceTranscripcion en Espanol (English Below)Chris: Bienvenido Claude, al podcast El Fin del Turismo.Claude: Chris. Muchas gracias.Chris: Me gustaría saber si podrías explicar un poco de dónde te encuentras hoy y cómo el mundo aparece para ti?Claude: Buena pregunta. Estoy, ahora mismo estoy en Rio de Janeiro, donde vivo. Soy peruano y también estudié antropología y dedico mucho mi tiempo a los pueblos indígenas, sobre todo en Brasil, en Colombia y en Perú y he estado trabajando en las Amazonas durante muchos años. Y como veo el mundo hoy, desde aquí, pues con mucha preocupación, evidentemente, pero también por lo que hago con alguna esperanza, Chris: Yeah y pues en esa cuestión de lo que haces y de lo que hemos hablado antes, parece que es un gran camino, un camino de ya [00:01:00] décadas y décadas. Y me gustaría, si podemos viendo un un poco más de ese camino. Podrías comentar un poco de cómo llegaste en este gran momento sea por tus viajes, a otros países, a otros mundos, a otros maestros y maestras. Claude: Sí, claro, a ver cómo te explico. Llevo unos 20 años trabajando con lo indigena en general, pero sobre todo con el tema de espiritualidad, plantas maestras como la ayahuasca y esas cosas, y llegue ahí como, creo que, como la mayoría de personas que hoy en día llegan ahí a la selva, o a buscar estas medicinas como se les llaman, que es una, una cierta o una profunda insatisfacción por nuestra propia cultura, por la respuesta que nuestra propia sociedad [00:02:00] nos puede dar existenciales, diría yo. Es como siempre hay una pregunta que uno se dice, "No tiene que haber algo más. No puede ser eso solamente." Esa propuesta, digamos de occidente, no puede ser solamente eso, debe haber algo más, verdad? Entonces eso me embarcó a mí en una búsqueda desde, no sé cuando tenía por ahí unos veinti, veinti y pocos años.Que me llevó a experimentar estas medicinas como la ayahuasca, el San Pedro, los hongos, no por una cosa lúdica, ni ni evasiva, sino por el contrario, con una curiosidad por otras formas de saber y conocer, . Entonces yo me acerqué a estas medicinas, con curiosidad de entender cómo los pueblos indígenas saben lo que saben. Cuál es el origen de su [00:03:00] conocimimomento verdad?Entonces, estudié antropología. Me alejé de la academia rápidamente porque, me pareció mucho más interesante lo que me enseñaban los abuelos que para la antropología eran mis informantes, verdad? Era como, tenía que a mi informante tal, el informante tal. Y me di cuenta que no, que no eran mis informantes, sino que eran maestros y aprendía mucho más con ellos que lo que me enseñaba los libros, o las clases, o los seminarios, verdad?Entonces decidí mas dedicarme a seguirlos a ellos y a seguir aprendiendo con ellos, y ver de qué manera los podía ayudar a ellos. Estos abuelos, estos sabios indígenas. Y eso me llevó a un camino maravilloso de que hoy en día le llamo "la gente puente," no? O sea, gente que estamos en ese lugar de interface, entre el conocimimomento, la sabiduría que nos queda de los pueblos [00:04:00] indígenas y el mundo occidental, el mundo moderno. Y en ese nuevo tipo de encuentro que está surgiendo hace una década o tal vez dos décadas. Es este nuevo tipo de encuentro de nuestros mundos, verdad? Que hasta hoy era, siempre había sido extremadamente problemático, sino asesino, verdad? La manera con nuestro mundo occidental se encontraba con los mundos indígenas era pues y destructor. Hoy en día nos encontramos en una manera diferente, en el que muchos jóvenes y adultos y gente del norte global llegan en busca de conocimiento, de sabiduría, de cura, de sanación, de alternativas, buscando respuestas que nuestra propia civilización no nos puede dar. Habiendo un hambre, una sed de sentido por algo mayor, pues mucha gente empieza a ir allá con otros ojos, con un [00:05:00] respeto que no creo que había existido antes. Y eso trae cosas positivas y cosas negativas, evidentemente.Parece ser que estamos mal. Hay una gran maldición, que, como todo lo que toca, occidente eventualmente se vuelve en un gran desastre. parece como un súper bonito, súper maravilloso, ilusorio, nos enamora, nos seduce, pero después al poco tiempo nos vamos dando cuenta de las de las terribles consecuencias que traemos, verdad?Pero algo, no sé, algo también está cambiando, algo está mudando. Hay como una cierta madurez de ambos lados, tanto de los del lado indígena como del lado no indígena para encontrarnos desde un lugar en donde podemos celebrar nuestras diferencias y entender que esas diferencias son material para la construcción de un tiempo nuevo, verdad?Entonces esa es la parte que traigo un poco de esperanza. Chris: Ya, qué bonito. Gracias, Claude . o sea, yo siento [00:06:00] mucho de la esperanza, pero también de la desesperación por alguien que ha visitado a varios pueblos indígenas en las Amazonas hace como 15 años de más ya, en ese tiempo esas medicinas fueron llegando poco a poco a la mentalidad colectiva del occidente. Y pues me ha ayudado un montón, no solo por cuestiones espirituales, pero también por reparar el daño que hice a mi cuerpo, por ejemplo, pero también metiendome en esos círculos, en las Amazonas, por ejemplo, pero también mi tierra nativa Toronto, Canadá y otras partes Oaxaca, México. hemos visto poco a poco la descuidado de la sabiduría indígena, las culturas indígenas, las medicinas, y más que nada, las contradicciones que [00:07:00] aparece dentro de el renacimiento" psicodélico. Entonces, ya tienes mucho tiempo en esos no solo respecto a la medicina, pero también en las culturas indígenas en las Amazonas. Me gustaría preguntarte que has visto allá en el sentido de contradicciones, sobre el turismo sobre la medicina, puede ser el lado del extranjero viniendo para sanarse, o igual los locales o indígenas aprovechando al momento.Claude: Contradicciones tienen todas las culturas, tienen contradicciones. Y la contradicción principal es entre lo que se dice, no? Lo que se profesa y lo que uno ve en la práctica no? Es como si tú vas a la iglesia y escuchas al pastor hablando de cómo debe ser un buen cristiano.Y después te paseas por yo que sé por Chicago o por ciudad de México, y ves lo que [00:08:00] son los cristianos y dices wow hay una enorme contradicción, verdad? Es terrible la contradicción Cuando hablamos de los pueblos indígenas y de los conocimientos, de los pueblos indígenas, la sabiduría indígena, parece ser que hablamos desde un lugar de idealización no?Y a mí no me gustaría, caer en eso de idealizar sino tratar de ser muy concreto. Una cosa es la realidad, que es realmente terrible. Vivimos en un momento que es la cúspide, es la continuación de un proceso de colonialismo, de exterminación que no fue algo que sucedió con la llegada de los españoles, y los portugueses y el tiempo de la conquista. Y no fue algo que pasó.Es algo que sigue pasando,. Es algo que [00:09:00] sigue pasando. Como decía el gran Aílton Krenak, un gran líder indígena de aquí de Brasil, y un intelectual, miembro de la academia brasilera de las letras, recientemente. Decía lo que ustedes no entienden es que su mundo sigue en guerra con nuestro mundo. El decía eso. Él lo dice, o sea, ustedes no entienden que el mundo occidental, el mundo moderno continúa en guerra y de, y haciendo todos los esfuerzos para que las culturas indígenas desaparezcan.O sea, en la práctica, eso es lo que estamos haciendo. Entonces, cuando yo hablo de esperanza, hablo porque hay algo que está surgiendo, que es nuevo, pero realmente es muy pequeño. Y como dices tú, cuando, o sea, la expansión de la ayahuasca, del San Pedro, de lo del peyote y de una cierto [00:10:00] respeto y un cierto entendimiento sobre la importancia de los conocimientos indígenas, todavia realmente e no entendemos eso, no entendemos. Y cuando hablamos desde el norte global, y lo que se llama esta el renacimiento psicodélico, cuando hablan de los pueblos indígenas, hay una idealización, sobre todo, es solamente parte de un discurso que es un poco "woke." Es un poco para hacer bonito tu discurso, pero en la práctica no se ve, no, no, no ocupa un lugar importante. Ya está diseñado el camino por donde va esta revolución psicodélica, es extraer los principios activos de las plantas, hacer medicamentos, de hacer una pastilla que va a ayudar a la gente a mantenerse en mejor forma dentro de la locura que propone occidente.Cómo le damos a la gente [00:11:00] herramientas para que se adapten y para que resistan, es el absurdo al que los estamos sometiendo, eso es realmente. O sea necesitamos ya drogas como "Brave New World", no como "soma". Te sientes deprimido? Tómate tus pastillas. Estás cuestionando mucho las cosas, tomate esto para que puedas seguir funcionando y operando y produciendo, verdad?Pero hay una cosa muy, muy clara para mí, es que aún no hemos logrado entender la magnitud de los conocimientos indígenas. Y digo conocimientos, y no creencias porque en general, cuando hablamos de los pueblos indígenas, lo que sabe un chamán, como le dicen, un curandero, o lo que hablan ellos alrededor de su espiritualidad, la gente piensa, "ah, son sus creencias." Y en el mejor de los casos, dice "ay qué bonito, hay [00:12:00] que respetarlo, hay que cuidar sus derechos, y tienen derechos culturales y tienen todo el derecho a creer en lo que creen." Pero cuando decimos creencias, también es una incomprensión porque de creencia tiene muy poco en realidad.Cuando uno estudia más, y cuando uno profundiza sobre lo que sabe hacer un curandero, un ayahuasquero, Shipibo, Ashaninka, Huni Kuin, Karipuna, Noke Koi Kofan, lo que ellos saben, no tiene nada que ver con las creencias. No tiene nada que ver con la adoración religiosa de ciertas deidades. Nada que ver. Estamos hablando de conocimiento profundamente práctico, verdad?Es una acumulación de conocimientos durante generaciones y generaciones por estudiosos de la selva, que se organiza este [00:13:00] conocimiento. Socialmente y además que se transmite con un método. Hay un método muy estricto, muy específico de transmisión de estos conocimientos y de estas maneras de conocer, entonces te acabo de dar una definición no de una religión. Te acabo de dar una definición de ciencia.Entonces, lo que no hemos llegado a entender hasta ahora es que lo poquito que ha sobrevivido hasta hoy de esos conocimientos se asemeja mucho más a una ciencia que a una religión. Es mucho más un conocimiento práctico que una creencia religiosa, verdad? Y en ese sentido, es de suma importancia. Y entonces, cuando tenemos más y más personas tienen esta experiencia, qué es lo que pasa?Mucha gente viene a la selva en Iquitos, he trabajado muchos años, durante años he sido como el centro principal donde he recibido mucha gente para [00:14:00] tomar ayahuasca y esas cosas, y viene gente a sanarse de cosas que en sus países, pues no, nadie los puede sanar de depresiones, de traumas, cosas físicas también, pero sobre todo cosas psicológicas, verdad? Y después vuelven y dice "oh, yo tomé ayahuasca y me curé." "Cómo te curaste?" "Ah, fui, tomé ayahuasca," pero nadie dice estuve tomando con un viejo que todas las noches me cantaba durante media hora. Y después venía en la mañana y me preguntaba cómo era mis sueños. Y después venía con otros remedios y me daba y me hacía unos baños. Y cuando me hacía esos baños me cantaba de nuevo. Y después me daba esto, y me daba esta medicina y me cantaba, y cuando él me cantaba, me hacía ver este tipo de... Nadie habla de eso. La gente dice "yo tomé ayahuasca y el ayahuasca me curó", pero el viejito que estaba cantando solamente parece un accesorio de un viejito cantando.Pero no es así.La mayoría de la gente dice, "Wow, cómo te curaste de eso? Qué pasó? Qué hiciste?"Ah ya tomé ayahuasca. El ayahuasca me curó." Verdad? Realmente yo he escuchado muy poca gente decir "el abuelito, la abuelita, me dio ayahuasca, pero me cantó durante horas, me dio baños, me preguntó mis sueños, adaptó todas las plantas y el tratamiento que iba haciendo según mis sueños, según lo que iba viendo. Cuando me cantaba, me guiaba para ver cosas, o no ver cosas." Parece ser que el abuelito que cantaba fuese un accesorio, decoración. Y no realmente, no le damos crédito al trabajo profundo que ellos hacen, y el conocimiento que ponen en practica. Y no es extraño porque es muy difícil de entender, cómo una persona cantando, me va, me va a curar con un canto, verdad? No, como para nosotros, es muy difícil, no tiene sentido. [00:01:00] Tiene que ser la substancia que tomaste y que se metió en tu cerebro y hizo alguna cosas de conexiones neurológicas. Yo que sé. No puede ser esa cosa, porque para nosotros, ya sería el pensamiento mágico, verdad?Pero como te digo, eso que nosotros llamamos pensamiento mágico para ellos no es un pensamiento mágico. Es un conocimiento muy concreto que se aprende que tiene métodos de aprendizaje. Son conocimientos y habilidades, y capacidades que se adquieren con métodos de transmisión, verdad? Y hasta ahora no hemos logrado darle realmente el lugar que le corresponde a eso.Por el contrario, estamos impactando en eso de maneras muy profundas, y hay una contradicción fundamental que yo veo en lo, en para volver un poco a la pregunta que me haces. En todo este turismo que ha llegado, y [00:02:00] esta fascinación, este interés. Cuáles son los impactos que esto ha tenido en las comunidades indígenas en el mundo indígena, verdad?Entonces yo creo que hay dos cosas que parecen ser un poco contradictorias. Por un lado, hay una gran bendición. Hace 20 años, tú no veías gente de nuestra edad, jóvenes interesados en sentarse con los abuelos y aprender realmente, y ser continuadores de esas tradiciones y cultivadores de ese tipo de conocimientos.La mayoría de gente de nuestra edad, un poco más viejos, hasta la edad de nuestro, gente que tiene hoy día 50, 55 años, 60 años, no querían hacer, no. Querían ser profesores interculturales bilingües, querían ser [00:03:00] profesionales, pertenecer al mundo de los blancos, verdad? Entonces, los viejos, eran de un tiempo pasado que estaba destinado a extinguirse.Entonces, con la llegada de los occidentales y con este interés por esas cosas, ha habido cierto renacimiento y sobre todo, un verdadero interés de la juventud por aprender estas cosas como una alternativa profesional, digamos. Digamos, oye, para qué voy a ser abogado? Si yo, si mira todos los gringos que están viniendo, yo puedo ser esto y me va a ir mejor, verdad?Entonces, por un lado, hay esa parte que, hoy en día vemos, por ejemplo, en los Shipibo, muchísima gente que está aprendiendo, verdad? Muchos jóvenes están interesados, no solamente en los Shipibo, pero sino, pero en muchos lugares en Brasil, en Colombia, en Ecuador, yo veo, veo eso, una juventud que está poco a poco interesándose más y [00:04:00] volviendo a sus propias raíces.Es como, como decir, todo desde que eres niño, siempre te dicen, "los antiguos ser una porquería ya ese mundo acabó, lo único que cuenta es la modernidad y integrarse a la vida urbana, a la vida oficial de esta civilización, ir a la iglesia, tener una carrera, y ser alguien en la vida," verdad?Y entonces era como, y los estados con políticas de esa naturaleza, los gobiernos, los estados de nuestros países, era, pues la cuestión indígena era cómo civilizamos a los indios. Civilizar al indio no es otra cosa que hacerlo olvidar de sus sistemas, de sus culturas, pero como una parte así de como digo, "woke," no como, "ay, que lindo los indios que mantengan sus danzas, que mantengan su folclore, que mantengan [00:05:00] sus ropitas y que mantengan su ciertas cosas que es como bonito, que ellos mantengan como algo pintoresco y algo folclórico," pero sin entender realmente la profundidad. Pero hoy en día, yo creo que en gran medida, gracias a esto, no solamente, es una cosa más compleja evidentemente, pero, la juventud, viendo que hay esta llegada de blancos, de extranjeros, de gringos, no? Interesadisimos por los conocimientos de los abuelos, por la medicina. Y que van y están ahí, dicen "uy acá tiene que haber algo interesante, yo también quiero aprender." Si a los gringos les gusta esto, es porque algo bueno debe haber entiendes? Llegamos a ese punto en que estaba destinado a desaparecer, pero de una a otra manera, hay un renacimiento, verdad? Al mismo tiempo, [00:06:00] en la transmisión de estos conocimientos, como te decía sumamente complejos, sumamente estricta, estrictos métodos de transmisión, pues se ha tenido que simplificar porque los jóvenes no están aptos ya, habiendo ido a la escuela, teniendo un pie en la ciudad. No, no es tan aptos ni tienen el interés, ni las condiciones, ni las aptitudes para realmente entrar en esos procesos como lo podían haber hecho los abuelos, que hoy en día tienen 70, 80 años, verdad, que fueron realmente los últimos. A menos que uno se vaya muy lejos en la selva donde lugares que no tienen mucho contacto, que ellos todavía deben de mantener algunas cosas, pero ellos están alejados también de estos circuitos, Pero entonces, sí, hay una gran simplificación de estos sistemas. Entonces se pierden muchas cosas. Para bien o para mal, no? Mucha gente dice, bueno, por lo menos se está perdiendo toda esta parte de la brujería y [00:07:00] los ataques chamánicos y toda esa cosa, pero a lo cual se le da mucha, mucha importancia que tampoco logramos entender, porque nosotros lo vemos con esa visión judeo cristiana, esa distinción maniquea del bien y del mal, que en los mundos indígenas no es que no exista, sino que es totalmente diferente, no?. Y eso forma parte de esas diferencias que son importantes de entender y de respetar, verdad? Entonces, toda esta parte que nosotros vemos como brujería, como diabólico y tal, tienen su función dentro de un sistema, y que no, tratar de hacerlo desaparecer es hacer desaparecer el sistema mismo, verdad?Porque no lo entendemos. Es lo mismo que pasa, es lo que ha pasado siempre, algo que nos escandaliza, entonces lo queremos cambiar, pero nos escandaliza desde nuestra propia visión del mundo y no estamos entendiéndolo desde la visión de [00:08:00] ellos. No quiere decir que todo se puede relativizar, verdad? Hay cosas que son, pues muy difíciles, no, y muy delicadas, pero en en reglas general, cuando hay algo que nos escandaliza, lo queremos cambiar, sin realmente profundizar en un entendimiento de la función de esas cosas, pues estamos siguiendo los mismos patrones que los curas que llegaban hace 400 años, 500 años. Que decían ah, esto es diabólico. Tenemos que extirpar estas cosas, no? Entonces seguimos haciendo eso. Entonces, por un lado, vemos que hay un renacimiento del interés de la juventud y una reconexión con su propia identidad al mismo tiempo que hay una simplificación algo peligrosa de estos sistemas, quiere decir que los jóvenes que de aquí a poco van a ser los abuelos no saben la [00:09:00] mitad de lo que sabían sus abuelos. Saben lo mínimo indispensable que sirve para darle al gringo lo que requiere, lo que necesita, lo que está buscando, lo suficiente para hacer negocio en realidad y eso no es para culparlos a ellos, sino que es parte del sistema en el que estamos navegando, porque todo funciona así. Para qué te vas a profundizar tanto si con este mínimo ya te alcanza? Sobre todo cuando vemos que muchos gringos, muchos extranjeros van toman ayahuasca unas cuantas veces o hacen alguna dieta, y después se llevan ayahuasca a sus países, se ponen las plumas, agarran su guitarrita, y empiezan a cantar estas cosas como decoración alrededor de esta experiencia y hacen mucho dinero. Y así se ha ido expandiendo la ayahuasca por el mundo, verdad? Y eso cumple su función también. No es para juzgarlo, pero [00:10:00] también hay, es de una superficialidad, muchas veces, hiriente, cuando tú ves lo que sabe un abuelo y lo que ha tenido que pasar las dificultades, las pruebas y las responsabilidades que tiene un curandero amazónico para su comunidad, y los sistemas de rendición de cuentas que son los que más o menos lo mantienen a raya, que uno no puede hacer lo que le da la gana con ese poder, sino que hay un sistema de control, cuando esto sale y se va afuera en estos círculos, medios new age, medios hippie, medio neochamánico, pues toda esa cuestión se pierde y se empiezan a inventar un montón de cosas, y sobre todo, un discurso que es bastante problemático. Entonces surge esta idea que la ayahuasca es la panacea universal, y "la madrecita ayahuasca" me [00:11:00] dijo, y, "esto es lo que va a salvar el mundo." Entonces más personas tenemos que buscar la forma que más y más personas tengan esta experiencia para salvar el mundo verdad? Y la verdad que yo creo que eso no es así. Si fuera así, si fuera por la cantidad de ayahuasca que se toma en el mundo, pues el mundo ya habría cambiado, porque realmente se toma mucha ayahuasca. Cuando yo, el principio de los años 2000 en Europa, era muy raro escuchar de eso no? Hoy en día, en cualquier país europeo, todos los fines de semana tú puedes encontrar una ceremonia de ayahuasca, en todas partes. Eso se ha expandido. Se ha normalizado. Ya es mainstream, ya se volvió mainstream. Pero qué se ha vuelto mainstream? Nuestra propia interpretación, que es bastante problemática sobre esto y no se le ha dado el lugar que le [00:12:00] corresponde a los guardianes de esos conocimientos. Entonces eso es lo que yo tengo para criticar en todo este tema de la revolución psicodélica, que hablamos de psicodélico psicodélico, psicodélico, como la panacea, lo que puede salvar el mundo, pero cuánta experiencia tiene nuestra sociedad con los psicodélicos?Dos generaciones? Máximo? Desde Hoffman, y esa, ya de la generación Beat, de los 50. Vale?, un poco eso. Y entonces, hoy día, tú tienes psychodelic studies en las universidades y formación de terapias con psicodélicos que los enseñan en institutos, de estudios bastante importantes. Y uno se pregunta, pero qué estudia?Qué les enseñan? Qué podemos haber acumulado como conocimiento en esas dos generaciones, siendo que durante más o menos 40 años, esto ha sido o 50 o 60 años. Esto ha sido prohibido. Era [00:13:00] ilegal. Hoy en día se está más o menos legalizando, entonces se puede estudiar más abiertamente, se puede investigar, se puede aprender, se puede experimentar mucho más, pero durante muchos años, era ilegal, era underground, subterráneo, verdad? Entonces, qué es lo que hemos podido acumular como el conocimiento? Es mínimo, es muy superficial, sobre todo si lo comparas con lo que saben allá en la selva, los indígenas en México, los Wixarika allá donde, por donde tu estás, los mazatecos y toda esa gente que tiene conocimiento de los hongos.Eso es una acumulación, de conocimiento extraordinaria. Lo que pasa es que, como son indios, no les damos el lugar. Qué me va, si tú tienes un doctorado en cualquier universidad del mundo y te sienta junto con indios, adentro de uno tiene esa terrible arrogancia que tenemos [00:14:00] los occidentales de decir, si yo soy un doctor, qué me va a enseñar un indio?Entiendes? Y eso, eso demuestra que aún por más que tratamos de idealizar y por más que hay un gran respeto, y algo que esté cambiando, todavía seguimos regidos por un profundo racismo. Un profundo complejo de superioridad, que creo yo, que está la base de los grandes problemas que tenemos hoy en día como humanidad es realmente la arrogancia y el complejo de superioridad que tenemos como miembros de esta civilización, que es extraordinaria, pero también es la que nos está llevando el hecatombe verdad? Es la que está destruyendo el mundo.Entonces, hay verdades muy incómodas que no queremos ver pero es la verdad, a pesar de toda la grandeza que hemos logrado con este, con los conocimientos de nuestra ciencia, es también nuestra misma ciencia la que está destruyendo [00:15:00] el mundo, nuestra manera de entender y de conocer el mundo. Entonces ahora, poco a poco, nos estamos dando cuenta que necesitamos de la participación de estos otros pueblos que tienen otras maneras de ver, de entender, de estar en el mundo, y de conocer, de aprender otras maneras, no? Entonces sucede una cosa muy bonita y extraordinaria cuando juntamos personas que piensan diferente y realmente ya no es una discusión sobre cuál es mejor, cuál sistema es mejor, si mi ciencia o tu ciencia o no, sino que es como complementamos nuestros tipos de conocimiento, verdad? Lo que decíamos también, o sea, a partir de nuestras diferencias, con nuestras diferencias como material, que es lo que podemos tejer juntos, que no se ha hecho nunca, verdad? Entonces, eso es lo que está surgiendo también, pero en un contexto muy [00:16:00] problemático en lo que surgen los intereses económicos, financieros, grandes farmacéutica, grandes capitales que quieren invertir en estas cosas y no se les da el lugar a los grandes detentores de estos conocimientos. Y sobretodo no se les da lugar en el diálogo, ni en la creación de acuerdos, sino que no se le da una participación financiera de lo que se puede recaudar como beneficios a partir de sus conocimientos, verdad? Entonces seguimos reproduciendo ese sistema colonial, ese sistema de explotación del otro y de la tierra, de la naturaleza en beneficio del capital, en beneficio para generar, ingresos económicos, no? Entonces estamos en eso es, es altamente complejo. [00:17:00] Hay cosas buenas y hay cosas negativas. Hay un impacto muy grande también en la Amazonía con toda la llegada de toda esta gente, pero impactos positivos. Yo, yo he encontrado muchos líderes, en Amazonía que me dicen "gracias a ustedes que vienen acá. Nosotros estamos volviendo a nuestras raíces", "Si no fuera por ustedes, ya estaríamos perdidos." Entonces hay algo que está sucediendo, que es algo muy positivo, pero también, como venimos con esos programas, no logramos darle la profundidad que podríamos estar alcanzando. Y que nuevamente, creo yo, que lo que está la base es nuestro terrible complejo de superioridad, que creemos que todos lo sabemos y que, pues somos mejores y que, qué nos va a enseñar, me entiendes? Aunque algo esté cambiando, aunque haya un poco de esperanza, todavía hay mucho camino por delante, [00:18:00] no?Chris: Mm. gracias Claude poder sacar algunos de esos hilos del nudo enorme en que vivimos. Pues sí, yo siento que, una de las cosas menos escuchados en nuestros tiempos de gente que tiene comentarios, opiniones, lo que sea, es, pues "no sé la verdad, no sé" . O sea, hay una una falta enorme de humildad.Creo que de la gente que critica la revolución o renacimiento psicodélico, o la gente que celebra no? O sea, hay una gran falta de humildad igual de tiempo profundo o de conocimiento histórico podemos decir, y como mencionaste, la cuestión de los abuelos y las relaciones que la gente tiene, o sea, las Amazonas y los pueblos indígenas ya por miles y miles de [00:19:00] años con sus lugares.Y como poco a poco se profundizaron su propio lugar dentro de los otros seres en su ecología, en su ecosistema, sus ecosistemas, y que, ese idea de que alguien puede irse a un lugar así. tomar la medicina como es una pastilla nada más volverse o simplemente quedarse y decir que "ah me curó" o algo Pues eso, eso me suena como bastante fascinante, no? Y porque, para mí al final también tiene que ver con la relacion con los ancianos o sabios de un lugar o sea, el maestro mío me dijo una vez que son los jóvenes que hacen ancianos, que hacen sabios que hacen como elders no? No son los viejos.O sea, los viejos son el vehículo para la función de esa sabiduría. Pero son los jóvenes que tienen que preguntar y [00:20:00] eso. Parece que está muy, muy perdido en el mundo occidental. O sea más bien la gente urbana, la gente del norte, la gran mayoría son migrantes o familias de inmigrantes.Entonces, yo siento que la relación que tenemos con la medicina, que es solo medicina, es una pastilla o aunque sí, es un ser que no, como dijiste, como no tenemos a veces la capacidad de entender, el lugar del abuelo, abuela humana en esa relación, pues hay muchas, muchas direcciones que podemos ir en ese sentido, pero también lo que he visto, lo que he escuchado, he leído un poco es sobre la deforestación de las medicinas, las plantas sagradas, y que la gente va [00:21:00] domesticando poco a poco las plantas y que las plantas domesticadas no tienen la misma fuerza, en parte porque están cosechadas o cosechados más y más joven, más y más antes de su maduración, y que eso también quizás tiene algo que ver con nuestra contexto del occidente como la necesidad o rapidez o velocidad en que necesitamos conseguir y consumir la medicina y ser curado, etcétera. Entonces entiendo que también has estado trabajando por algunas organizaciones que trabajan específicamente en la conservación de las medicinas, y también, otras que trabajan en la educación e investigaciones sobre lo etnobotánico. Entonces, me gustaría preguntarte sobre y ICEERS y MSCF tiene [00:22:00] un, una perspectiva fija o quizás como desde tu perspectiva, cómo vamos en ese camino?Claude: Mira, esa es una problemática, que corresponde a ese mismo sistema, no? O sea, en otras palabras, por ejemplo, cuando surgió este fondo, esta fundación, que es el fondo para la conservación de las medicinas indígenas o INC por sus en inglés. La primera inquietud que surgió, o sea el primer impulso y el primer, el primer capital semilla para para lanzar esto era exactamente esa idea no? Estas medicinas se están expandiendo, más y más personas lo van a necesitar, lo van a usar. Entonces va a haber un impacto en la sostenibilidad de estas plantas.Se va a poner en riesgo su continuidad, verdad? Cuando a mí me propusieron a [00:23:00] trabajar en esto y ayudar a la creación de este fondo, y me lo pusieron en esos términos, mi respuesta fue negativa. Yo dije no tengo el menor interés en trabajar en eso. Porque, o sea, en otras palabras, es ¿Cómo hacemos para garantizar la demanda?Cómo hacemos para para que tengamos suficiente, vamos a hacer plantaciones de peyote y plantaciones de ayahuasca para que no se acabe, para que alcance para todas las personas en el mundo que lo van a necesitar. Y yo dije no tengo el menor interés en hacer eso. Además, no creo que ese sea el real problema.Dije ahora si se tratase de la conservación de los conocimientos, estamos hablando de otra cosa. Eso es lo realmente precioso que debemos poner todo nuestros esfuerzos [00:24:00] para que exista una continuidad, para que no desaparezca como está desapareciendo, desaparece. Cada vez que se muere un abuelo y se han muerto muchos últimamente, sobre todo con el COVID, se han muerto muchos abuelos, pues se pierde, se pierde, o sea, es una tragedia para la humanidad entera, que se muera un abuelo que no tuvo la posibilidad de transmitirle a uno, a dos, a tres de sus hijos, a sus nietos, ese conocimiento, que no haya nadie que vaya a saber lo que sabe él, pues es una tragedia para todos nosotros.Entonces, cuando estamos pensando en cómo vamos a hacer? Se va a acabar la ayahuasca, o hay plantaciones, si no es lo mismo, es una inquietud válida, evidentemente, dentro nuestra lógica. Pero olvidamos que lo principal es la conservación de estos conocimientos. Entonces, tanto [00:25:00] MSC como ICEERS se está enfocando cada vez más en un trabajo profundo de desarrollar relaciones, cultivar relaciones con estos abuelos detentores de conocimientos, con estas comunidades que aún practican, mantiene sus sistemas, verdad? Y trabajando con ellos, digamos para ellos, para con programas, y con proyectos, y procesos que son diseñados por ellos, guiados por ellos, y nosotros solamente nos dedicamos a dar, un apoyo técnico y financiero, no? Para garantizar esto, entonces, al hacer esto, al dedicarlos más a la conservación de estos conocimientos, nos damos cuenta que la cultura no puede sobrevivir sin el [00:26:00] territorio.El conocimiento de los abuelos no tiene sentido sin un territorio, verdad? Y cuando hablamos de la conservación de la Amazonía, tampoco podemos entender la conservación de los ecosistemas sin la conservación de las culturas que han vivido ahí durante miles de años. O sea, todo va de la par, todo va de la mano, no?Entonces con una visión mucho más holistica, digamos más amplia. Pues entendemos eso, que cuidando de la cultura y poniendo todos los esfuerzos necesarios para la continuidad de esas culturas también estamos cuidando a la Amazonía, cuidando la biodiversidad, cuidando el agua, cuidando las medicinas, cuidando todo.Entiendes? Ya existen en Brasil enormes plantaciones de ayahuasca, de chacruna. Encuentras plantaciones en diferentes partes del mundo, [00:27:00] en Hawaii, y en Costa Rica, y en diferentes lugares. Ya la gente ha ido a sembrar hace años. Entonces, hay, no, eso no va a faltar. Lo que sí no vanos faltar, nos estamos quedando huérfanos de esos conocimientos.Y eso sí que es una gran pérdida porque yo tengo la certeza, la convicción que en esos, en esos conocimientos están las llaves, las respuestas que nos pueden ayudar a resolver los grandes desafíos que tiene la humanidad hoy en día. Desde nuestra ciencia no vamos a resolver, estamos, estamos en una crisis civilizatoria, estamos en una crisis global, y lo único que nos dicen los científicos es que tenemos que reducir las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero.Y ahí van 20 años o más tratando de hacer eso, y no lo consiguen. No [00:28:00] solamente es insuficiente pensarlo de esa manera tan reduccionista, sino que, igualmente están acatandose a una sola cosa y no lo consiguen, no hemos logrado nada, no? Lo que realmente necesitamos es un cambio de sentido, un cambio entender una profundidad mucho mayor de cuál es nuestra relación como especie con este planeta.Y para eso necesitamos los entendimientos de lo más extraordinario que ha guardado la humanidad hasta hoy, no solamente de la civilización occidental, sino de todos, no? Entonces, cada vez que se pierde una lengua, cada vez que se muere un abuelo sabedor es una tragedia para toda la humanidad.Entonces, está muy bien que utilicemos estas medicinas, está muy bien que se esté expandiendo estas prácticas, pero esto sirve, [00:29:00] como un proceso inicial, como abrir una ventana hacia un mundo de posibilidades. Entonces, a mí me gusta que haya gente dando ayahuasca en Estados Unidos, en Europa.Me gusta porque mucha gente tiene la experiencia y dice "wow, en verdad si hay algo más. En verdad, aquí hay todo un mundo que yo no tenía idea que existía y que podría leer millones de cosas, y puedo creer o no creer, pero teniendo la experiencia, ya no necesito creer. Yo sé que hay algo. Sé que la naturaleza está viva. Sé que la naturaleza habla, sé que hay manera de comunicarse con la sutileza del funcionamiento de este planeta, de las aguas, de los ríos, de los vientos de las montañas. Todo es un sistema que está vivo, y hay manera de comunicarse con eso y mantenerse en una profunda relación, simbiótica, de profundo respeto y de amor con todo esto no? Entonces, es [00:30:00] importante que muchas personas tengan ese tipo de experiencia, pero después qué? Después de esa experiencia qué? Volvemos a nuestra vida normal, a nuestro trabajo de siempre, a la dificultad de nuestras relaciones cotidianas y el drama de la imposibilidad de mantener una conexión profunda con el tejido de la vida.Todo de nuestra civilización está hecho para mantenernos desconectados de la vida, del funcionamiento de la vida en este planeta, verdad? Entonces, hacia eso es lo que tenemos que apuntar, porque el problema no son las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero, el problema es nuestra relación con el mundo.No es las historias que nos hacen creer que el mundo es una fuente de recursos para extraer, transformar y generar riqueza. Esa historia es profundamente [00:31:00] problemática. Y cuando conversamos con los sabios, con los abuelos, con los indígenas, escuchamos esas historias. Nos damos cuenta. Wow. Estas historias necesitan ser escuchadas.Estas historias necesitan, necesitan ser contadas en diferentes espacios. Y estos abuelos, estos sabios necesitan ocupar el lugar que les corresponde en la mesa de negociaciones de la humanidad. No se trata de conservar esto como algo folclórico, como un derecho de estos pobrecitos pueblos que tienen el derecho de vivir, como siempre vivieron, como quieran vivir. No, se trata de nuestra sobrevivencia.Entonces, hacia eso, creo yo, que debemos estar apuntando y sobre todo el tema de la revolución del renacimiento psicodélico yo creo que es una punta de lanza. Es una primera entrada en el que vamos poco a poco, demostrando que no se trata [00:32:00] solamente de convencer así retóricamente, sino que hay que demostrar, con hechos, la pertinencia, la utilidad de estos conocimientos para hoy para el mundo de hoy, verdad?Entonces, el tema de la salud y el tema de la salud mental es como es una problemática gigantesca, no? Enorme, hiper compleja. Es la primera cosa que, más y más científicos y gente que decide se está dando cuenta. "Uy, aquí esta gente sabe algo que nosotros no sabemos y tiene una manera de saber y entender el funcionamiento de la mente y el espíritu humano que nosotros no tenemos idea y que realmente funciona."Entonces eso es como una primera parte, como una punta de lanza. Estamos entrando en un lugar para poder demostrar al mundo. "Oye, lo que saben estos [00:33:00] pueblos es importante no solamente para ellos, no solamente para la continuidad de sus culturas, de sus tradiciones, no solamente para la salvaguarda de la selva Amazónica sino para toda la humanidad." Verdad? Y es muy triste ver en nuestros países, en Colombia. Bueno, Colombia hay otro nivel de entendimiento mucho más maduro, sobre lo indígena. Creo que están mucho más avanzados en ese sentido, pero en Brasil, en Perú, en Ecuador, en México, no le estamos dando la importancia que merece a esta problemática, o sea al rescate de lo poco que ha sobrevivido esos conocimientos extraordinarios que se mantienen en las selvas, en los desiertos, en las montañas, que se han ido guardando en secreto hasta hoy, o sea es heroico que haya [00:34:00] sobrevivido hasta hoy. Y hoy en día nos estamos dando cuenta de la pertinencia y la importancia de todo eso.Entonces, cuando hablamos de conservación, estamos hablando de conservación biocultural. Entender que no se puede preservar una cultura sin preservar la totalidad de su territorio, sin derechos de esos pueblos sobre sus territorios, y no se puede preservar los ecosistemas y los derechos si no se hace todos los esfuerzos para preservar esas culturas que han vivido en profundo respeto, en simbiosis con esos ecosistemas.Y tenemos muchísimo que aprender. Todo este tema de la cooperación internacional, de las ayudas de las ONGs, de los proyectos de los pueblos indígenas es de un paternalismo triste y absurdo que en el fondo dice "ay pobrecitos los indios vamos a ayudarlos", vamos a ayudarlos a qué? Vamos a ayudarlos a que sean más como nosotros.Eso es lo que estamos haciendo, creyendo que [00:35:00] somos lo mejor. Pero entonces más y más estamos entendiendo que es es mucho más lo que nosotros podemos aprender de ellos, que ellos transformarse en nosotros. Tenemos que re indigenizarnos, sabes?. Tenemos que volver a ciertas raíces que nos permitan una profunda conexión con la vida, con la naturaleza, con todos los seres que viven en nuestro territorio.Y eso es lo que en la misma naturaleza, la misma tierra nos está indicando, nos está llamando. O sea, si siguen así de desconectados, los vamos a exterminar. Tienen que re conectarse con eso, entonces ahí yo creo que hay una, algo nuevo que está surgiendo, que es maravilloso, verdad? Y espero yo que eso llegue a más y más personas.Estamos trabajando duro para eso la [00:36:00] verdad. Chris: Mm, pues muchísimas gracias por esos trabajos Claude. Y por tener la capacidad de afilar el cuchillo, en estos tiempos y en nuestra conversación, para sacar la grasa, digamos, como digamos. Yo siento que es, es un trabajo muy fuerte, no? O sea, para mí, eso es el fin de turismo, la capacidad de parar, de ver al mundo como algo que existe sólo por tus gustos. Algo que existe en un sentido temporal, es decir desechable. Pero eso va a durar como un montón de trabajo en el sentido de recordar, de recordar que en algún momento sus antepasados, los urbanos, los del norte, etcétera, fueron indígenas. Pero qué pasó? Qué ha pasado? Qué rompió [00:37:00] esa relación con la tierra? Y eso, eso es un trabajo muy, muy fuerte y obviamente generacional y intergeneracional, entonces. Pues hay mucho más que podemos hablar y ojalá que tenemos la oportunidad en algún momento, pero quería agradecerte por la parte de mí, por la parte del podcast y los escuchantes. Y al final quería preguntarte, y para nuestros oyentes, si hay una manera de seguir a tu trabajo o contactarte, si estás dispuesto a eso, cómo se pueden conocer lo de ICEERS y MSC? Claude: Bueno, tienes, el trabajo de MSC es muy importante. Y pues, si necesitamos a más gente que se sume, que done. Necesitamos canalizar muchos [00:38:00] recursos para poder hacer estas cosas bien, verdad? Con pocos recursos estamos haciendo cosas increíbles, pero ya estamos viendo que, ya llegamos a niveles en los que podemos administrar mucho mayores recursos. Entonces, si la gente se siente inspirada y pueden entrar a la página web de MSC o ICEERS, y MSC fund FND, ver lo que estamos haciendo, los diferentes proyectos que tenemos ahí y se sientan inspirados para donar o conseguir recursos, pues, genial. ICEERS también hace un trabajo extraordinario en la creación de conocimientos, artículos científicos y defensa legal también de estos detentores, de estas medicinas. Trabajo con incidencia política con gente que decide en el mundo. [00:39:00] Entonces estamos luchando ahí por los derechos de los pueblos indígenas, por el derecho del uso de estas medicinas que en muchos lugares son ilegales, y también sobre todo, decir a la gente que más que ir a la selva, o tomar ayahuasca cerca de sus lugares, muchas veces ahí cerca también tienen una reserva, algunos abuelos, pueblos indígenas que están cerca de ustedes, no? En sus países, cerca de sus ciudades. Y pues es tiempo de reconectar, y es muy difícil, pero la verdad que vale la pena, ir, ver lo que necesitan, cómo podemos ayudar, cómo podemos colaborar, simplemente con esa presencia, con otro tipo de encuentro, y cultivar esas relaciones de amistad, es algo, es algo muy importante que podemos hacer hoy en día, y que, [00:40:00] pues la tierra nos está pidiendo a gritos que nos re conectemos. Y ahí están los abuelos, todavía hay abuelos que, como dices tú, solamente esperan que vengan los jóvenes a preguntar no? Y muchas veces cuando no son los propios jóvenes de sus comunidades, pues están muy felices cuando viene gente de afuera de otros lugares, con esas preguntas, porque los ayaban a practicar, los ayudan a compartir, pero también inspiran a los jóvenes de su comunidad a sentarse con los abuelos.Creo que es un tiempo en el que es muy importante volver a sentarse con los abuelos, y los abuelos están ahí y están necesitando mucho de nosotros. Entonces, hagámoslo.Chris: Oye, gracias, hermano. Voy a asegurar que esos enlaces están en la página de El Fin del Turismo cuando lance el episodio. Y [00:41:00] pues, desde el norte hacia el sur te mando un gran abrazo. Y gracias por tu tiempo hoy, por tu trabajo y por tus compromisos Claude. Claude: Un placer, Chris, gracias a ti. Gracias por lo que estás haciendo. Saludos.English TranscriptionChris: [00:00:00] Welcome Claude, to the podcast The End of Tourism.Claude: Chris. Thank you very much.Chris: I was wondering if you could explain a little bit about where you are today and how the world appears to you?Claude: Good question. I am, right now I am in Rio de Janeiro, where I live. I am Peruvian and I also studied anthropology and I dedicate a lot of my time to indigenous peoples, especially in Brazil, Colombia and Peru and I have been working in the Amazon for many years. And as I see the world today, from here, well, with a lot of concern, obviously, but also because of what I do with some hope,Chris: Yeah, and in that matter of what you do and what we talked about before, it seems like it's a great path, a path of [00:01:00] decades and decades. And I would like, if we could see a little more of that path. Could you comment a little on how you got to this great moment, be it through your travels, to other countries, to other worlds, to other teachers.Claude: Yes, of course, let me explain. I've been working with indigenous people in general for about 20 years, but especially with the topic of spirituality, master plants like ayahuasca and those things, and I got there like, I think, like most people who go to the jungle today, or to look for these medicines, as they are called, which is a certain or deep dissatisfaction with our own culture, with the existential response that our own society [00:02:00] can give us, I would say.It's like there's always a question that one asks oneself, "Doesn't there have to be something more? It can't just be that." That proposal, let's say from the West, can't just be that, there has to be something more, right? So that led me on a search since, I don't know when I was around twenty, twenty-something years old.What led me to experiment with these medicines like ayahuasca, San Pedro, mushrooms, not for a playful or evasive reason, but on the contrary, with a curiosity for other ways of knowing and understanding. So I approached these medicines, with curiosity to understand how indigenous peoples know what they know. What is the origin of their [00:03:00] knowledge at the moment, right?So, I studied anthropology. I quickly moved away from academia because I found it much more interesting what my grandparents taught me, who for anthropology were my informants, right? It was like, I had to have my informant, this informant. And I realized that no, they were not my informants, but they were teachers and I learned much more from them than what I was taught in books, or in classes, or in seminars, right?So I decided to dedicate myself more to following them and to continue learning with them, and to see how I could help them. These grandparents, these wise indigenous people. And that led me to a wonderful path that today I call "the bridge people," right? In other words, people who are in that place of interface, between the knowledge, the wisdom that remains to us from the indigenous peoples [00:04:00] and the Western world, the modern world.And in this new type of encounter that has been emerging for a decade or maybe two decades. It is this new type of encounter of our worlds, right? That until today was, had always been extremely problematic, if not murderous, right? The way our Western world met the indigenous worlds was destructive. Today we find ourselves in a different way, in which many young people and adults and people from the global north come in search of knowledge, wisdom, cure, healing, alternatives, looking for answers that our own civilization cannot give us. There is a hunger, a thirst for meaning for something greater, so many people begin to go there with different eyes, with a [00:05:00] respect that I don't think had existed before. And that brings positive things and negative things, obviously.It seems that we are wrong. There is a great curse, that, like everything that the West touches, it eventually turns into a great disaster. It seems like something super nice, super wonderful, illusory, it makes us fall in love, it seduces us, but after a short time we begin to realize the terrible consequences that we bring, right?But something, I don't know, something is also changing, something is shifting. There is a certain maturity on both sides, both on the indigenous side and on the non-indigenous side, to meet from a place where we can celebrate our differences and understand that those differences are material for the construction of a new time , right?So that's the part that brings me a little bit of hope.Chris: Yeah, that's nice. Thank you, Claude. I mean, I feel [00:06:00] a lot of hope, but also despair for someone who has visited several indigenous peoples in the Amazon for about 15 years now, during which time these medicines were gradually reaching the collective mentality of the West.And it has helped me a lot, not only for spiritual reasons, but also for repairing the damage I did to my body, for example, but also getting into those circles, in the Amazon, for example, but also my native land Toronto, Canada and other parts Oaxaca, Mexico. We have seen little by little the neglect of indigenous wisdom, indigenous cultures, medicines, and more than anything, the contradictions that [00:07:00] appear within the "psychedelic renaissance." So, you have been in those for a long time, not only regarding medicine, but also in indigenous cultures in the Amazon. I would like to ask you what you have seen there in the sense of contradictions, about tourism regarding medicine, it can be the side of foreigners coming to heal themselves, or maybe the locals or indigenous people taking advantage of the moment.Claude: All cultures have contradictions. And the main contradiction is between what is said, right? What is professed and what one sees in practice, right? It's like going to church and listening to the pastor talking about what a good Christian should be like.And then you walk around, I don't know, Chicago or Mexico City, and you see what [00:08:00] Christians are like and you say, wow, there's a huge contradiction, right? The contradiction is terrible. When we talk about indigenous peoples and knowledge, indigenous peoples, indigenous wisdom, it seems like we're speaking from a place of idealization, right?And I would not like to fall into that idealization but rather try to be very concrete. One thing is reality, which is truly terrible. We live in a time that is the peak, it is the continuation of a process of colonialism, of extermination that was not something that happened with the arrival of the Spanish, and the Portuguese and the time of the conquest. And it was not something that happened.It's something that keeps happening, . It's something that [00:09:00] It keeps happening. As the great Aílton Krenak, a great indigenous leader from here in Brazil, and an intellectual , member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, recently said, what you don't understand is that your world is still at war with our world.He said that . He says that, in other words, you don't understand that the Western world, the modern world, continues at war and making every effort to make indigenous cultures disappear.I mean, in practice, that's what we're doing. So, when I talk about hope, I'm talking about it because there's something that's emerging, that's new, but it's really very small. And as you say, when, I mean, the expansion of ayahuasca, of San Pedro, of peyote and of a certain [00:10:00] Respect and a certain understanding of the importance of indigenous knowledge , we still don't really understand that, we don't understand. And when we talk from the global north, and what is called the psychedelic renaissance, when they talk about indigenous peoples, there is an idealization, above all, it is only part of a discourse that is a bit " woke. "It's a bit of a way of making your speech pretty, but in practice it's not visible, no, no, it doesn't occupy an important place. The path that this psychedelic revolution is going to follow is already designed, it is to extract the active principles from plants, to make medicines, to make a pill that will help people stay in better shape within the madness that the West proposes.How we give to people [00:11:00] tools to adapt and to resist , that's the absurdity we're subjecting them to , that 's really it. I mean, we need drugs like Brave New World now , not Soma. Are you feeling depressed? Take your pills . You're questioning things too much , take this so you can keep functioning and operating and producing, right?But one thing is very, very clear to me, and that is that we have not yet managed to understand the magnitude of indigenous knowledge. And I say knowledge, not beliefs, because in general, when we talk about indigenous peoples, what a shaman, as they call him, a healer, knows, or what they talk about regarding their spirituality, people think, "ah, those are their beliefs." And in the best of cases, they say, "oh, how nice, we have to respect it, we have to take care of their rights, and they have cultural rights and they have every right to believe in what they believe." But when we say beliefs, it is also a misunderstanding because it has very little of belief in reality.When one studies more, and when one goes deeper into what a healer, an ayahuasca, Shipibo, Ashaninka, Huni Kuin, Karipuna, Noke Koi Kofan, knows how to do, what they know, it has nothing to do with beliefs. It has nothing to do with the religious worship of certain deities. Nothing to do with it. We are talking about deeply practical knowledge, right?It is an accumulation of knowledge over generations and generations by scholars of the jungle, who organize this [00:13:00] knowledge. Socially and also transmitted with a method. There is a very strict, very specific method of transmitting this knowledge and these ways of knowing, so I just gave you a definition not of a religion. I just gave you a definition of science.So what we haven't really understood until now is that the little bit of that knowledge that has survived to this day is much more like a science than a religion. It's much more practical knowledge than a religious belief, right? And in that sense, it's of the utmost importance. And so, when we have more and more people having this experience, what happens?Many people come to the jungle in Iquitos, I have worked for many years, for years I have been like the main center where I have received many people to [00:14:00] take ayahuasca and those things, and people come to heal themselves of things that in their countries, well, no, no one can heal them of depression, trauma, physical things too, but above all psychological things, right?And then they come back and say, "Oh, I took ayahuasca and I was cured." "How did you get cured?" "Oh, I went, I took ayahuasca," but nobody says, "I was drinking with an old man who sang to me every night for half an hour. And then he would come in the morning and ask me what my dreams were like. And then he would come with other medicines and he would give me baths. And when he would give me baths, he would sing to me again. And then he would give me this, and he would give me this medicine and sing to me, and when he would sing to me, he would make me see this kind of... Nobody talks about it. People say, "I took ayahuasca and the ayahuasca cured me," but the old man who was singing just seems like an accessory to an old man singing.But that is not the case.Claude: [00:00:00] Most people say, "Wow, how did you heal from that? What happened? What did you do?"Ah, I already took ayahuasca. Ayahuasca cured me."True? I've actually heard very few people say, "Grandpa, Grandma gave me ayahuasca, but he sang to me for hours, gave me baths, asked me about my dreams, adapted all the plants and the treatment he was doing to my dreams, to what he was seeing. When he sang to me, he guided me to see things, or not see things."It seems as if the old man who sang was an accessory, a decoration. And no, really, we don't give credit to the deep work they do, and the knowledge they put into practice. And it's not strange because it's very difficult to understand how a person singing is going to heal me with a song, right?No, for us, it's very difficult, it doesn't make sense. [00:01:00] It has to be the substance that you took that got into your brain and made some neurological connections. I don't know. It can't be that thing, because for us, it would be magical thinking, right?But as I say, what we call magical thinking is not magical thinking for them. It is a very concrete knowledge that is learned and has learning methods. It is knowledge and skills and abilities that are acquired through transmission methods, right? And up to now we have not really managed to give it the place it deserves.On the contrary, we are impacting this in very profound ways, and there is a fundamental contradiction that I see in this, in going back to the question you asked me. In all this tourism that has arrived, and [00:02:00] this fascination, this interest. What are the impacts that this has had on indigenous communities in the indigenous world, right?So I think there are two things that seem to be a bit contradictory. On the one hand, there is a great blessing. Twenty years ago, you didn't see people our age, young people interested in sitting with their grandparents and really learning, and continuing those traditions and cultivating that kind of knowledge.Most people our age, a little older, up to our age, people who are 50, 55, 60 years old today, didn't want to do anything, no. They wanted to be bilingual intercultural teachers, they wanted to be [00:03:00] professionals, to belong to the white world, right? So, the old people were from a bygone era that was destined to become extinct.So, with the arrival of the Westerners and with this interest in these things, there has been a certain renaissance and above all, a real interest among the youth to learn these things as a professional alternative, let's say. Let's say, hey, why should I be a lawyer? If I, if you look at all the gringos that are coming, I can be this and I'll do better, right?So, on the one hand, there is this part that, today we see, for example, in the Shipibo, a lot of people who are learning, right? Many young people are interested, not only in the Shipibo, but in many places in Brazil, in Colombia, in Ecuador, I see, I see that, a youth that is little by little becoming more interested and [00:04:00] returning to their own roots.It's like, how to say, since you're a kid, they always tell you, "The ancients were crap, that world is over, the only thing that matters is modernity and integrating into urban life, into the official life of this civilization, going to church, having a career, and being someone in life," right?And then it was like, and the states with policies of that nature, the governments, the states of our countries, it was, well, the indigenous question was how do we civilize the Indians. Civilizing the Indian is nothing other than making them forget their systems, their cultures, but as a part of how I say, " woke, " not like," Oh, how nice the Indians are that they keep their dances, that they keep their folklore, that they keep [00:05:00] their clothes and that they keep certain things that are kind of nice, that they keep as something picturesque and somewhat folkloric, " but without really understanding the depth.But today, I think that to a large extent, thanks to this, not only is it a more complex thing, obviously, but, the youth, seeing that there is this arrival of whites , of foreigners, of gringos, right? Very interested in the knowledge of their grandparents, in medicine. And they go and are there, they say " oh, there must be something interesting here, I also want to learn. " If gringos like this, it's because there must be something good, you know? We got to that point where it was meant to disappear, but one way or another, there's a rebirth, right? At the same time, [00:06:00] In the transmission of this knowledge, as I was saying, it is extremely complex, extremely strict, strict methods of transmission, so it has had to be simplified because young people are no longer capable, having gone to school, having one foot in the city. No, they are not as capable, nor do they have the interest, nor the conditions, nor the aptitudes to really enter into these processes as the grandparents could have done, who today are 70, 80 years old, right , who were really the last . Unless you go very far into the jungle where there are places where there is not much contact, they still have to maintain some things, but they are also far from these circuits,But then, yes, there is a great simplification of these systems. So many things are lost. For better or worse, right? Many people say, well, at least this whole part of witchcraft and [00:07:00] shamanic attacks and all that stuff is being lost, but to which a lot, a lot of importance is given that we also fail to understand, because we see it with that Judeo-Christian vision, that Manichean distinction of good and evil, which in the indigenous worlds does not just not exist, but is totally different, right? And that is part of those differences that are important to understand and respect, right? So, all this part that we see as witchcraft, as diabolical and such, has its function within a system, and that no, trying to make it disappear is to make the system itself disappear, right?Because we don't understand it. It's the same thing that happens, it's what has always happened, something that scandalizes us, so we want to change it, but it scandalizes us from our own worldview and we are not understanding it from the vision of [00:08:00] They do not. It does not mean that everything can be put into perspective, right? There are things that are very difficult, no, and very delicate, but in general, when there is something that scandalizes us, we want to change it, without really going into an understanding of the function of those things, because we are following the same patterns as the priests who arrived 400, 500 years ago. They said, "Oh, this is diabolical. We have to eradicate these things, right?" So we continue doing that. So, on the one hand, we see that there is a rebirth of interest among the youth and a reconnection with their own identity, while at the same time there is a somewhat dangerous simplification of these systems, meaning that the young people who will soon be grandparents do not know half of what their grandparents knew. They know the bare minimum that is needed to give the gringo what he requires, what he needs, what he is looking for, enough to actually do business, and that is not to blame them, but it is part of the system in which we are navigating, because everything works like that.Why are you going to go so deep if this minimum is enough? Especially when we see that many gringos, many foreigners, take ayahuasca a few times or go on a diet, and then they take ayahuasca back to their countries, put on the feathers, grab their little guitar, and start singing these things as decoration around this experience and make a lot of money.And so ayahuasca has been expanding throughout the world, right? And that serves its purpose too. Not to judge, but [00:10:00] there is also, it is a superficiality, many times, hurtful, when you see what a grandfather knows and what he has had to go through, the difficulties, the tests and the responsibilities that an

A Part-2 to my last convo. On the false accusations that some (Christians) must commit to when they run smack-dab against the sturdy brick wall of Holy Scripture! We're being called Gnostics, Manichean , Anti-Trinitarian, Nestorian, and Aaryan, etc. Oh my-my-my!Thanks for listening!www.divinenature.net

A companion piece to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology and Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology, Seven Sins and Seven Virtues (Abrams, 2024) by Dr. Ed Simon completes this moral trilogy and finally considers God's most enigmatic of creations: None of the conundrums of metaphysics are as baroque as the motivations of the human soul. Unlike the devils condemned to perdition and the angels compelled to paradise, humans are divine creatures that house within them warring impulses. The Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues: A Visual History (Cernunnos, 2024) examines the literary, philosophical, theological, and most of all artistic expressions of the seven deadly sins and their respective seven cardinal virtues, drawing upon millennia of history to gather a compendium of humanity at its best and its worst. As a volume, the book explores the Manichean nature of the human animal in all of its grandeur and canker, motivated by the faith that tales of damnation and salvation are the only stories that are ultimately worth telling. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

A companion piece to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology and Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology, Seven Sins and Seven Virtues (Abrams, 2024) by Dr. Ed Simon completes this moral trilogy and finally considers God's most enigmatic of creations: None of the conundrums of metaphysics are as baroque as the motivations of the human soul. Unlike the devils condemned to perdition and the angels compelled to paradise, humans are divine creatures that house within them warring impulses. The Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues: A Visual History (Cernunnos, 2024) examines the literary, philosophical, theological, and most of all artistic expressions of the seven deadly sins and their respective seven cardinal virtues, drawing upon millennia of history to gather a compendium of humanity at its best and its worst. As a volume, the book explores the Manichean nature of the human animal in all of its grandeur and canker, motivated by the faith that tales of damnation and salvation are the only stories that are ultimately worth telling. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

A companion piece to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology and Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology, Seven Sins and Seven Virtues (Abrams, 2024) by Dr. Ed Simon completes this moral trilogy and finally considers God's most enigmatic of creations: None of the conundrums of metaphysics are as baroque as the motivations of the human soul. Unlike the devils condemned to perdition and the angels compelled to paradise, humans are divine creatures that house within them warring impulses. The Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues: A Visual History (Cernunnos, 2024) examines the literary, philosophical, theological, and most of all artistic expressions of the seven deadly sins and their respective seven cardinal virtues, drawing upon millennia of history to gather a compendium of humanity at its best and its worst. As a volume, the book explores the Manichean nature of the human animal in all of its grandeur and canker, motivated by the faith that tales of damnation and salvation are the only stories that are ultimately worth telling. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

A companion piece to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology and Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology, Seven Sins and Seven Virtues (Abrams, 2024) by Dr. Ed Simon completes this moral trilogy and finally considers God's most enigmatic of creations: None of the conundrums of metaphysics are as baroque as the motivations of the human soul. Unlike the devils condemned to perdition and the angels compelled to paradise, humans are divine creatures that house within them warring impulses. The Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues: A Visual History (Cernunnos, 2024) examines the literary, philosophical, theological, and most of all artistic expressions of the seven deadly sins and their respective seven cardinal virtues, drawing upon millennia of history to gather a compendium of humanity at its best and its worst. As a volume, the book explores the Manichean nature of the human animal in all of its grandeur and canker, motivated by the faith that tales of damnation and salvation are the only stories that are ultimately worth telling. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

A companion piece to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology and Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology, Seven Sins and Seven Virtues (Abrams, 2024) by Dr. Ed Simon completes this moral trilogy and finally considers God's most enigmatic of creations: None of the conundrums of metaphysics are as baroque as the motivations of the human soul. Unlike the devils condemned to perdition and the angels compelled to paradise, humans are divine creatures that house within them warring impulses. The Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues: A Visual History (Cernunnos, 2024) examines the literary, philosophical, theological, and most of all artistic expressions of the seven deadly sins and their respective seven cardinal virtues, drawing upon millennia of history to gather a compendium of humanity at its best and its worst. As a volume, the book explores the Manichean nature of the human animal in all of its grandeur and canker, motivated by the faith that tales of damnation and salvation are the only stories that are ultimately worth telling. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

A companion piece to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology and Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology, Seven Sins and Seven Virtues (Abrams, 2024) by Dr. Ed Simon completes this moral trilogy and finally considers God's most enigmatic of creations: None of the conundrums of metaphysics are as baroque as the motivations of the human soul. Unlike the devils condemned to perdition and the angels compelled to paradise, humans are divine creatures that house within them warring impulses. The Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues: A Visual History (Cernunnos, 2024) examines the literary, philosophical, theological, and most of all artistic expressions of the seven deadly sins and their respective seven cardinal virtues, drawing upon millennia of history to gather a compendium of humanity at its best and its worst. As a volume, the book explores the Manichean nature of the human animal in all of its grandeur and canker, motivated by the faith that tales of damnation and salvation are the only stories that are ultimately worth telling. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A companion piece to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology and Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology, Seven Sins and Seven Virtues (Abrams, 2024) by Dr. Ed Simon completes this moral trilogy and finally considers God's most enigmatic of creations: None of the conundrums of metaphysics are as baroque as the motivations of the human soul. Unlike the devils condemned to perdition and the angels compelled to paradise, humans are divine creatures that house within them warring impulses. The Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues: A Visual History (Cernunnos, 2024) examines the literary, philosophical, theological, and most of all artistic expressions of the seven deadly sins and their respective seven cardinal virtues, drawing upon millennia of history to gather a compendium of humanity at its best and its worst. As a volume, the book explores the Manichean nature of the human animal in all of its grandeur and canker, motivated by the faith that tales of damnation and salvation are the only stories that are ultimately worth telling. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

A companion piece to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology and Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology, Seven Sins and Seven Virtues (Abrams, 2024) by Dr. Ed Simon completes this moral trilogy and finally considers God's most enigmatic of creations: None of the conundrums of metaphysics are as baroque as the motivations of the human soul. Unlike the devils condemned to perdition and the angels compelled to paradise, humans are divine creatures that house within them warring impulses. The Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues: A Visual History (Cernunnos, 2024) examines the literary, philosophical, theological, and most of all artistic expressions of the seven deadly sins and their respective seven cardinal virtues, drawing upon millennia of history to gather a compendium of humanity at its best and its worst. As a volume, the book explores the Manichean nature of the human animal in all of its grandeur and canker, motivated by the faith that tales of damnation and salvation are the only stories that are ultimately worth telling. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

"Saint Peter was a humble, devout and peace-loving man, unlike his father, Tsar Symeon the Warrior (d. 927), during whose reign there had been perpetual warfare. By contrast, Peter's long reign was peaceful, and notable for the restoration of good relations with Byzantium and with the West. Peter married Maria, the grand-daughter of the Emperor Romanus Lecapenus, who recognized him as basileus (tsar or king), and he obtained independence from Constantinople for the Bulgarian Church with its own Patriarch. He had a great love for Saint John of Rila (19 Oct.), whom he would often consult, and he kept in touch with renowned ascetics of the time like Saint Paul of Latros (15 Dec.). The King acted energetically against the Bogomil heresy, an offshoot of Manicheism, by which some of his people, lacking sufficient instruction in the faith, were being misled. He called a council in order to condemn the heresy and reassert Christian principles. Nevertheless, the infection was to remain active for many years in Bulgaria. Following the invasion of the north of his Kingdom by Prince Svyatoslav of Kiev in 969, Peter abdicated and became a monk. He died in the following year, having consecrated his final days to God alone." (Synaxarion)   A note on the Bogomils: The Bogomils flourished in the Eastern Europe as an organized church from the 10th to the 15th century. In theology they were dualistic, incorporating some Manichean and Gnostic ideas from the Paulicians. They were nationalistic and gained much support through their opposition to Byzantine dominance over the Slavic peoples. They disappeared as an organized body around the fifteenth century, but elements of their beliefs persisted in popular thinking for many centuries afterward.

Summary In this episode, I explored the rich history and linguistic features of the Sogdian language, a key ‎player in the cultural tapestry of the ancient Silk Roads. I delved into the unique aspects of ‎Sogdian script, including its evolution and adaptation into other languages like Uighur, ‎Mongolian, and Manchu. ‎ I also discussed the complexities of Sogdian phonology, the influence of the rhythmic law on ‎vowel retention, and the intriguing historical spellings that give us a glimpse into the language's ‎past. We took a look at how Sogdian preserved elements of Old Iranian, such as its nominal ‎declension with three numbers and three genders, while also adapting to new linguistic realities ‎over time. ‎ Keywords ‎#SogdianLanguage; #LinguisticsPodcast; #AncientLanguages; #SilkRoads; #SogdianScript; ‎‎#Phonology; #HistoricalLinguistics; #IranianLanguages; #LanguageEvolution; #MiddleIranian; ‎‎#UighurScript; #MongolianScript; #ManchuScript; #NominalDeclension; #LanguageHistory; ‎‎#MiddleIranianLanguages; #Dialectology; #CulturalLinguistics; #LanguagePreservation; ‎‎#LinguisticHeritage‎ Caption to the Image: Fragmentary decorated Manichean text in Manichean script, ca. mid-8th to early 11th century CE.

Full Text of ReadingsMemorial of Saint Monica Lectionary: 426The Saint of the day is Saint MonicaSaint Monica’s Story The circumstances of St. Monica's life could have made her a nagging wife, a bitter daughter-in-law, and a despairing parent, yet she did not give way to any of these temptations. Although she was a Christian, her parents gave her in marriage to a pagan, Patricius, who lived in her hometown of Tagaste in North Africa. Patricius had some redeeming features, but he had a violent temper and was licentious. Monica also had to bear with a cantankerous mother-in-law who lived in her home. Patricius criticized his wife because of her charity and piety, but always respected her. Monica's prayers and example finally won her husband and mother-in-law to Christianity. Her husband died in 371, one year after his baptism. Monica had at least three children who survived infancy. The oldest, Augustine, is the most famous. At the time of his father's death, Augustine was 17 and a rhetoric student in Carthage. Monica was distressed to learn that her son had accepted the Manichean heresy—”all flesh is evil”—and was living an immoral life. For a while, she refused to let him eat or sleep in her house. Then one night she had a vision that assured her Augustine would return to the faith. From that time on, she stayed close to her son, praying and fasting for him. In fact she often stayed much closer than Augustine wanted. When he was 29, Augustine decided to go to Rome to teach rhetoric. Monica was determined to go along. One night he told his mother that he was going to the dock to say goodbye to a friend. Instead he set sail for Rome. Monica was heartbroken when she learned of Augustine's trick, but she still followed him. She arrived in Rome only to find that he had left for Milan. Although travel was difficult, Monica pursued him to Milan. In Milan, Augustine came under the influence of the bishop, St. Ambrose, who also became Monica's spiritual director. She accepted his advice in everything and had the humility to give up some practices that had become second nature to her. Monica became a leader of the devout women in Milan as she had been in Tagaste. She continued her prayers for Augustine during his years of instruction. At Easter 387, St. Ambrose baptized Augustine and several of his friends. Soon after, his party left for Africa. Although no one else was aware of it, Monica knew her life was near the end. She told Augustine, “Son, nothing in this world now affords me delight. I do not know what there is now left for me to do or why I am still here, all my hopes in this world being now fulfilled.” She became ill shortly after and suffered severely for nine days before her death. Almost all we know about St. Monica is in the writings of St. Augustine, especially his Confessions. Reflection Today, with Google searches, online shopping, text messages, tweets, and instant credit, we have little patience for things that take time. Likewise, we want instant answers to our prayers. Monica is a model of patience. Her long years of prayer, coupled with a strong, well-disciplined character, finally led to the conversion of her hot-tempered husband, her cantankerous mother-in-law and her brilliant but wayward son, Augustine. Saint Monica is the Patron Saint of: AlcoholicsConversionMothersWives Learn more about Saint Monica! Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

Friends of the Rosary, Today, the Catholic Church celebrates the Memorial of St. Monica (333-387), the mother of St. Augustine — whose feast is tomorrow. Through prayer and tears, St. Monica quietly gave the great Augustine to the Church. Born in Tagaste, northern Africa, Monica was given in marriage to a pagan named Patricius, a man of loose morals with a very irascible nature. It was in this school of suffering that Monica learned patience. Evil-minded servants prejudiced her mother-in-law against her, but Monica mastered the situation with kindness and sympathy. Monica persevered and prayed to convert her husband, who was baptized a year before his death. The Confessions of St. Augustine provide specific biographical details. When Augustine joined the Manichean sect and went astray in faith and morals, Monica's tears and prayers for her son were incessant. She followed him to Milan, where Augustine went to teach, and there continued to storm heaven with her prayers for her son. Finally, the moment came, and her tears of sorrow changed to tears of joy. She had the joy of witnessing St. Ambrose baptize Augustine in 387. Her lifework was completed. She died in Ostia, near Rome, in her fifty-sixth year. The description of her death is one of the most beautiful passages in her son's famous Confessions. Also, today is the feast of the Seven Joys of the Blessed Virgin Mary or the Franciscan Crown. Ave Maria!Jesus, I Trust In You!St. Monica, Pray for Us! Come, Holy Spirit, come! To Jesus through Mary! + Mikel Amigot | RosaryNetwork.com, New York • ⁠August 27, 2024, Today's Rosary on YouTube | Daily broadcast at 7:30 pm ET

Tuesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time Memorial of St. Monica, 330-387; she became distressed when she learned that her son, Augustine, had accepted the Manichean heresy ("all flesh is evil") and that he was living an immoral life; she prayed and fasted for him; Augustine came under the influence of St. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan; at Easter 387, St. Ambrose baptized Augustine and several of his friends; Monica knew that her life would end soon; she became ill and suffered for nine days before her death; almost all that we know of St. Monica comes from St. Augustine's writings, mostly from his "Confessions" Office of Readings and Morning Prayer for 8/27/24 Gospel: Matthew 23:23-26

Iranian Languages and Dialects, Part III: Middle Persian Before you listen to this episode, I encourage you to check my previous episodes on Iranian languages and Dialects, particularly the one on Old Persian, which serve as prerequisites for this part. Middle Iranian refers to various now-extinct Iranian languages spoken from about the 4th century B.C.E. to after the Islamic conquest. These languages include Middle Persian (Pahlavi), Parthian, Bactrian, Chorasmian, Sogdian, and Khotanese. Middle Persian, known from inscriptions and Manichean texts from the 3rd century C.E., evolved from Old Persian. It was written in scripts derived from Aramaic and Syriac alphabets. The main Middle Persian religious texts are the Dēnkard and the Bundahišn. The Dēnkard discusses theological issues, wisdom texts, and the life of Zarathustra. The Bundahišn focuses on Zoroastrian cosmology. Other notable texts include the Dādestān ī Mēnōy ī Xrad, Dādestān ī Dēnīg, Nāmagīhā ī Manuščihr, and the Ardā Wirāz-nāmag. In the upcoming episodes, we will explore Iranian languages further, starting with Persian, also known as Parsi | Farsi.

Chloé Valdary is the founder of an alternative model to the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training programs found in many corporations. Her alternative, called the “Theory of Enchantment,” first emerged from her work educating people about anti-Semitism and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. “They would say to you, ‘You are a white man, and therefore you are privileged. And therefore you belong to the 'oppressor class.‘ I, as a person of color, belongs to the 'oppressed class.' And we are—you and I—locked in a Manichean struggle from now until the end of time. There's no escape valve,” said Ms. Valdary.“There are three principles to the theory of enchantment. [The] first principle is treat people like human beings, not political abstractions. Second principle is criticize to uplift and empower, never to tear down or destroy. And third principle is root everything you do in love and compassion.”We discuss concepts such as supremacy, identity, outrage, race, and religion.“We are a Protestant nation. Protest is our founding religion. And so, we are confronted with a great challenge, which is the challenge of growing up. We are a very young nation, and I think that all of these ‘culture wars' are an invitation to engage in some self-reflection, collectively, and grow up,” said Ms. Valdary.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

We travel through the hidden mythologies of Eurasia to discover Daemons lurking in the shadows, capturing children, and seeing off evil sorcerers. Our Daemonolgist this week is the author of ‘Daemons are Forever' David Gordon White. This week: Daemons made from faeces, Tantra's place in India, Dangerous Pools, Changelings, and much more.   Main theme by Simon Smerdon (Mothboy) Music bed by chriszabriskie.com Get David's book here:UK – https://amzn.to/4brXJFL US – https://amzn.to/3zb3gTt David Gordon White Bio: Since being named the J. F. Rowny Professor of Comparative Religion in 2011, I have returned to the focus of my PhD dissertation and first book, Myths of the Dog-Man (Chicago: 1991). While that project focused on the spread of the mytheme of a particular monstrous race across ancient and medieval Asia and Europe, my current interest concerns contacts and exchanges in matters of demonology. Unbound as they are by exclusivist doctrinal and institutional strictures,, demons have traveled more lightly than gods, and so it is that one finds the names of Buddhist demons in medieval Manichean spell texts, charms against Iranian demons in Lithuanian and Chinese sources, an amulet of an Indian demoness at an archeological site in Turkmenistan, and so on. Elsewhere, the yoginis and dakinis of South and East Asian Hinduism and Buddhism are found to be related to the striga of ancient Rome and the vampires of early modern eastern Europe; the tenth-century BCE Homeric myth of Odysseus and Circe reappears, only slightly altered, in the Mahavamsa, a fifth-century CE chronicle of the island of Ceylon; and the nightmares of European lore find their homologues in the maras of South Asia and the Chinese “devil-kings” called mo-wang. It is the “connected histories” of these beings and the humans who trafficked in them that have become my area of focus. Both the Silk Road and ancient and medieval maritime trade routes were information superhighways, and a portion of that information was demonological. It is easy to imagine soldiers, sailors, merchants, diviners, monks, and priests swapping amulets and spells at Silk Road halting points and ports. Demons and the techniques to control them were as much a commodity in the ancient and medieval world as germs, guns, and steel. Source – https://www.religion.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/david-white/

After the last two inversions, things may seem a bit bleak. But the fall of one-third of the angels should not bring despair, despite the fact that God gives them leash to harass us - but just enough. (We should take note that they have been defeated already, yet the end must play out.) The existence of spirits and angelic beings (even fallen ones) does nothing to change the fact that the radically transcendent God created wholly out of love. And how do we know this? Because God praises all of his creation as “good.” When God said “Fiat lux” he was pleased. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.Notice that he did not say, “Let there be dark,” for nothing is the darkness. But the light is good, and light is also true and beautiful. Seven times in the first chapter of Genesis we read “And God saw that it was good.” In the last mention, a strong adverb is added:God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.Note that God says “it was good” even after creating humans, in our pre-fallen state. Note that this declaration of humans being “good” is prior to the moment when he breathes a rational soul into humankind, but even after the Fall we are good, but compromised. We are bent but not broken. Even when our ejection from the Garden happens, the ground is cursed, not us. This is an important point to notice. Goodness in creation brings with it the language of hope, second chances, forgiveness, because all of us spiritually crippled and broken things are worth saving. In Japan, an art form called Kintsugi takes broken pottery and mends it with a golden filler or powder so that the item becomes serviceable again while maintaining its scars. After the restoration, the pottery looks more beautiful and even becomes more valuable than the original pot. The original pot was good, but the healed pot is better. Shattered, it seemed destined for the garbage heap. However, with this art form, what was perceived as garbage or as a lost-cause is mended and brought back to life, in a resurrection of sorts. What was originally good is glorified in the restoration. That is the plan of salvation. Don't let the Fall get you down, because the plan is greater than we understand. And that brings us to the inversion regarding goodness: all that God made is good. This is why sin is ridiculous. It destroys the good. Yet the good remains and will be restored if we understand this inversion. Cast out your cynicism and your glass-half-full thinking. Reject the notion that this world is intrinsically evil, for it was not made that way. By our sin, the pottery was shattered. Through the Paschal mystery we are repaired with golden seams. But in the meantime…Because we have the reality of sin, we look for answers outside of the most obvious place. And this causes us to forget: that all matter and spirit created by God was good from the start. It is only by turning away that we crack up and need restoration. Yet there is much hope in that restoration, too, for in the healing, our wounds will remain but be more glorious. Many errors about the goodness of creation has led both the Israelites and Christians and non-believers away from the right path. This often falls under an umbrella of “matter is bad” or “spirits are bad.” The error is simple. All of God's creation exudes goodness. It is sin that is bad, because it deforms and disorders that goodness. The one thing that God creates that he deems “not good” is when the man is alone, and therefore he creates woman. “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.'” Thus, the only thing that God created that was not good - human loneliness - was promptly addressed with the most wonderful creation of all: woman, and with her, he created another amazing gift called marriage. The Fall marred that relationship as well, for as we turned from God, we turned away from each other. Since the Fall, we have been looking for something to blame for the state we are in, and the list of errors in what to blame grows long. If we don't blame God, we blame something created. I would personally like to blame mosquitoes, but in the grand order of things, without mosquitoes many birds and bats would starve, and I like birds and bats. Even though mosquitoes ruin many summer evenings, they were created as good, because God said so. Many stand-ins for mosquitoes have been tried. With Pandora's Box the Greeks blamed the gods and woman for introducing evil. With the Manichaeans, matter was evil. In Christian history, there are thirty-one flavors of Gnostic heresies, with popular movements like Marcionism, Catharism, and Paulicianism. Most recently, the Woke movement of recent years has come up with a remarkably parallel set of doctrines to the Cathars, to the point that they seem somehow separated at birth despite being hundreds of years apart. All of these gnostic groups die an ugly death, because they are errors and forget that God is good, and creation is good. With all untruth, it eventually turns on itself, killing off the host. The “light versus dark” idea is not new. This mistake is ancient. The light/dark battle royale is called dualism, and here is the mistake: dualism declares that there are two equal forces in the universe in contention for power, and only those on the “right side of history” are the “good.” If you find Catholicism odd, look into the gnostic and dualist movements. You will find many strange ideas and no coherency, but a general theme of “matter is bad,” and that is not what God says. He says the opposite. He says matter is good, repeating it seven different times. In much of the “light vs. dark” errors, there is a misconception of God and the “war in heaven” idea included God himself. But there is no competitor with God, who is the highest good and source of all that is good. Any war in heaven that happened among the angels occurred as part of God's plan of salvation. Again, God is transcendent of all created things, even the angels. Thus, evil cannot touch God, because evil only happens in creation, which includes the created heavens. To use a metaphor, if an architect built a beautiful cathedral, and later a visitor entered the cathedral and spray painted the walls, that is not the architect's work. The graffiti vandal represents disorder from the goodness of the creation, but the spray paint came from the creature who used creation unwisely. Back to dualism: this idea often grows out of an imbalance in the world due to people causing disorder. We naturally fall into this state, and its called paganism. Paganism and modern political religion falls into this zero-sum game trap. The idea of competition comes from dualism, which is fundamentally a distrust in God and his plan for salvation. Here is something we don't like to admit: most Americans today are not Christians; they are gnostics and dualists without knowing it. We lionize competition and achievement, where failure is darkness. In other words, the Fall pushes us into continual competition, so that we do not cooperate with God's grace or each other for the common good. After all, God created all things and saw that it was good. No, it was very good. We forget this every day. It's good, yet something is off in creation, so we need to fix it. What could it be? What could be off? What is it that is un-good? That thing is called “me” but that's hard to look at. Blaming something else is the path of least resistance, but wide is the way that leads to destruction and many are those who follow it. This leads to a variety of conclusions about what is bad, or what went wrong, and so often the conclusion leads to something called “gnosis,” or secret knowledge. This secret knowledge tends to elevate the self over other people or groups. This secret knowledge pins the tail on a donkey to blame for all suffering. Gnosis behaves like a cancer cell, because gnosis takes many forms, and whatever group catches this disease always dies off in the end and becomes an obituary in history books. This is inevitable because the truth always bubbles up and continues on, like a cork in a stormy sea - no matter the weather or the waves, the truth cannot be sunk. For some of these errors, the secret knowledge looks at matter as the source of evil, sometimes all matter. Leaps of logic are made, such as: Life is pain, ergo “bodies are bad.” An extension of that is “sex is bad” which was the cry of the Puritans and Cathars. (FYI: Puritanism is an error, as is all of Calvinism). Often specific matter or bodies are the target, like women or men, or black people or white people. Sound absurd? That's because it is absurd. Sometimes there are specific groups, like Republicans or Democrats, capitalists or communists, that mark off the light versus dark and the group is responsible for all evil (depends on which side you are on). This blame and zero-sum game leads to a world lacking forgiveness. Conversely, the idea that all creation is good, but we are compromised, this leads to a world of forgiveness and redemptive suffering, which we'll discuss in a later inversion.When any cult of dualism arises - and it always does - there is an enemy that must be destroyed, for that is the root of darkness. Killing all the Jews and Catholic priests has been tried multiple times and didn't solve the problem of evil. Caesar killed a million Gauls and that didn't cure Rome. Currently, in the 21st century, one set of gnostic dualists say that the the enemies are whiteness, the patriarchy, pro-life groups, traditional Christians, and (the perennial pick) practicing Jews. Another set blames foreigners, economics, academic elites, and the progressive lobby. Unsurprisingly, the enemy of the dualists never takes the name of “my personal sin” or “the Fall” because the source of all evil is elsewhere. For dualists and gnostics, the evil comes externally, not from the human heart that resides in each of us. We were created good, but like a broken pot, we are scattered into pieces. Yet there is a way to be mended, and it is by the savior that heals, the great Konsugi artist named Jesus. We all seem to know there was an Eden, a perfect state, a heavenly existence, and we want to return to it. We can feel that creation's goodness is real without having ever been to the eternal paradise. Our confusion swirls around how to get back to the Garden. When we turn from God's goodness, we tend to believe that it is us who will restore the Garden, and somehow by our efforts we will get past the cherubim and the spinning fiery sword that blocks the way. To do so, we need to remove the un-good ideas or people or material that blocks the path. This attempt to boost our own way to heaven is flammable and the devil loves watching it happen, since the father of lies caused the Fall in the first place. Socialism and capitalism claimed to have the way to paradise, and both have created versions of hell on earth. The darkness in the human heart can be hard to admit, so we project it onto other created things, or the Creator himself if we have a poor understanding of God. St. Augustine and others did much battle to knock-down the Manichean dualist claim that all matter was bad. Many others throughout the centuries have had to defend God's holy name against a variety of similar heresies. The gnostics and dualists always come back, always with bad ideas, slightly different than before, which again makes them much like a mutating cancer cell that winds through time. However, this inversion is not about who is to blame. It is about goodness, truth, and light. First and foremost, we must understand that all matter and spirit was created good because it came from God's love. Another way to say it is that creation is ordered. Creation has a wisdom of its own, far beyond ours. The Catechism states:Because God creates through wisdom, his creation is ordered …Our human understanding, which shares in the light of the divine intellect, can understand what God tells us by means of his creation, though not without great effort and only in a spirit of humility and respect before the Creator and his work. Because creation comes forth from God's goodness, it shares in that goodness - "And God saw that it was good. . . very good”- for God willed creation as a gift addressed to man, an inheritance destined for and entrusted to him. On many occasions the Church has had to defend the goodness of creation, including that of the physical world. (CCC 299)This should not come as a shock for anyone that has witnessed a sunset, or watched seeds grow, or watched puppies play, or observed a baby being born, or caught sight of a red fox in the winter snow, or watched a monarch caterpillar emerge from its cocoon as a monarch butterfly. This should not come as a shock to anyone who has pondered the mathematical miracle of a shell on a beach, or felt the might of ocean waves against their legs on shifting sands, or visited a glacier, or hiked a mountain. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has caught a fish, or harvested apples, or has felt the sting after being too late in slapping a mosquito before the bite. There is order in creation. All modern science rests upon that assumption. Perhaps we've taken this for granted for too long. We need to recognize this wonder of intelligibility. Saint John Paul II said, “It is the one and the same God who establishes and guarantees the intelligibility and reasonableness of the natural order of things upon which scientists confidently depend.” (Fides et Ratio, 34)God created the integers and the angels, as well as the basic Legos we call carbon and hydrogen and helium - and all of this was good. Why was it good? Because it is reasonable. It is order out of nothing, out of emptiness, out of chaos. The watery void or the Big Empty is uninteresting, whereas the music of the spheres in the heavens makes sense. The soil cycle and weather cycle and Krebs cycle and tricycle: all of these make sense. As Einstein said, “The eternal mystery of the universe is its comprehensibility. The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.”In other words, nature is ordered by a wisdom far greater than our own, yet we can study it. Better still, because we are part of that good creation. God is the only thing not part of creation, because he is the sheer act of Being Itself. Thus, we should never worship creation or anything in it, because creatures are not the Creator. That means we should not worship the earth or the stars or celebrities or mascots or nations or corporations or ideas. On this ordered “goodness” the first universities were founded, as all truth leads to God, who created all things. The foundation of order in the universe coming from the Unmoved Mover provides the bedrock for all inquiry, and we are free to arrive at our own conclusions. In the Catholic manner of thinking, inquiry into the truth is right and just, and is based on the observed order of God's good work. The Catholic intellectual tradition and the contemporary university share two underlying convictions: that to be human is to desire to discover truth, and that the quest for truth is sparked by the expectation that the universe is intelligible. In the Catholic view, these convictions arise from belief in the union of the divine and human in Jesus Christ and the unity of all things in God. From this theological perspective, the Catholic intellectual tradition is based on two fundamental principles: first, that the search for truth in all aspects of life extends to the ultimate search for truth that animates faith; and, second, that faith is a catalyst for inquiry, as faith seeks to understand itself and its relationship to every dimension of life. Thus, the most probing questions in every discipline are never deemed to be in opposition to faith but are welcomed into the conversation on the conviction that ongoing discovery of the intelligibility of the universe will reveal more of the truth about God. The Catholic intellectual tradition can thrive only with the participation of all who seek the truth, including those whose inquiry leads them to question whether the search reveals purpose, meaning, or God, or to conclude that it does not. (from The Catholic Intellectual Tradition: A Conversation at Boston College)The ultimate truth is God, so all honest inquiry leads back to God. Hence, if we are to truly, honestly “follow the science,” it will lead us to God. But much of modern science leads away from God and every thirty years those erroneous papers are scuttled, because “the science” was actually disguised ideology, often with motives not unlike the gnostics and dualists. St. Paul tells us that “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” which explains the confusion. Drawn to artificial light, we stray from the true God. This happens in our own moral behavior, in our pursuit of happiness, and even across entire nations. The intelligibility of creation, which is good, comes from God, who is love. He created out of love, not because he had to, or needed to. God does not compete with anything in creation, as he is the Creator. Just as Shakespeare cannot compete with Macbeth, God has no competitor that can even approach or fathom his glory. The closest beings to him, as handed down by tradition, are the Seraphim, the angels of the highest order (or choir), and yet there is zero chance of them overtaking God. In our much lower place, we can conclude that we know better than God, and that we can make his creation operate properly, when it is exactly our sin that disorders creation. This is the opposite of humility. Pope Francis wrote Laudato Si, or Care for our Common Home, which delved into details about the goodness of creation, rejecting all dualism and gnosticism, and putting it into terms of how the creation in Genesis and the Gospels clearly dovetail, particularly in the life of Jesus. Closing out this inversion, here are six paragraphs from Laudato Si. 84. Our insistence that each human being is an image of God should not make us overlook the fact that each creature has its own purpose. None is superfluous. The entire material universe speaks of God's love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God. The history of our friendship with God is always linked to particular places which take on an intensely personal meaning; we all remember places, and revisiting those memories does us much good. Anyone who has grown up in the hills or used to sit by the spring to drink, or played outdoors in the neighbourhood square; going back to these places is a chance to recover something of their true selves.85. God has written a precious book, “whose letters are the multitude of created things present in the universe”.[54] The Canadian bishops rightly pointed out that no creature is excluded from this manifestation of God: “From panoramic vistas to the tiniest living form, nature is a constant source of wonder and awe. It is also a continuing revelation of the divine”.[55] The bishops of Japan, for their part, made a thought-provoking observation: “To sense each creature singing the hymn of its existence is to live joyfully in God's love and hope”.[56] This contemplation of creation allows us to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us, since “for the believer, to contemplate creation is to hear a message, to listen to a paradoxical and silent voice”.[57] We can say that “alongside revelation properly so-called, contained in sacred Scripture, there is a divine manifestation in the blaze of the sun and the fall of night”.[58] Paying attention to this manifestation, we learn to see ourselves in relation to all other creatures: “I express myself in expressing the world; in my effort to decipher the sacredness of the world, I explore my own”.[59]86. The universe as a whole, in all its manifold relationships, shows forth the inexhaustible riches of God. Saint Thomas Aquinas wisely noted that multiplicity and variety “come from the intention of the first agent” who willed that “what was wanting to one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another”,[60] inasmuch as God's goodness “could not be represented fittingly by any one creature”.[61] Hence we need to grasp the variety of things in their multiple relationships.[62] We understand better the importance and meaning of each creature if we contemplate it within the entirety of God's plan. As the Catechism teaches: “God wills the interdependence of creatures. The sun and the moon, the cedar and the little flower, the eagle and the sparrow: the spectacle of their countless diversities and inequalities tells us that no creature is self-sufficient. Creatures exist only in dependence on each other, to complete each other, in the service of each other”.[63]…98. Jesus lived in full harmony with creation, and others were amazed: “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” (Mt 8:27). His appearance was not that of an ascetic set apart from the world, nor of an enemy to the pleasant things of life. Of himself he said: “The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard!'” (Mt 11:19). He was far removed from philosophies which despised the body, matter and the things of the world. Such unhealthy dualisms, nonetheless, left a mark on certain Christian thinkers in the course of history and disfigured the Gospel. Jesus worked with his hands, in daily contact with the matter created by God, to which he gave form by his craftsmanship. It is striking that most of his life was dedicated to this task in a simple life which awakened no admiration at all: “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” (Mk 6:3). In this way he sanctified human labour and endowed it with a special significance for our development. As Saint John Paul II taught, “by enduring the toil of work in union with Christ crucified for us, man in a way collaborates with the Son of God for the redemption of humanity”.[79]99. In the Christian understanding of the world, the destiny of all creation is bound up with the mystery of Christ, present from the beginning: “All things have been created though him and for him” (Col 1:16).[80] The prologue of the Gospel of John (1:1-18) reveals Christ's creative work as the Divine Word (Logos). But then, unexpectedly, the prologue goes on to say that this same Word “became flesh” (Jn 1:14). One Person of the Trinity entered into the created cosmos, throwing in his lot with it, even to the cross. From the beginning of the world, but particularly through the incarnation, the mystery of Christ is at work in a hidden manner in the natural world as a whole, without thereby impinging on its autonomy.100. The New Testament does not only tell us of the earthly Jesus and his tangible and loving relationship with the world. It also shows him risen and glorious, present throughout creation by his universal Lordship: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:19-20). This leads us to direct our gaze to the end of time, when the Son will deliver all things to the Father, so that “God may be everything to every one” (1 Cor 15:28). Thus, the creatures of this world no longer appear to us under merely natural guise because the risen One is mysteriously holding them to himself and directing them towards fullness as their end. The very flowers of the field and the birds which his human eyes contemplated and admired are now imbued with his radiant presence.And that includes the mosquitoes. Hard as it is for me to say, God bless the mosquito. Further reading:Why death and violence in God's good creation?Why God createsUCCSB's Care for CreationPope Francis: Laudato Si (Care for Our Common Home) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

On this edition of Parallax Views, recorded in May, a lengthy, almost 3 hour conversation with Yakov Hirsch. You can Yakov's writings at his new Substack here. Although Hirsch is perhaps best-known as professional poker player, he has in recent years began commenting on the psychology of what he calls "Hasbara Culture". Hasbara, for those unfamiliar, is more or less a term that means propaganda and apologia for the state of Israel. Hirsch's concept of hasbara culture, however goes far beyond that. He argues that prominent commentators in the U.S. like Bari Weiss, Eve Barlow, Brett Stephens, and The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg have come to internalize hasabara so much that it has become a culture, a mindset, an identity in and of itself that distorts reality in ways that are harmful to not only Palestinians but also Jews, both in Israel and abroad. Hirsch's thinking on these matters first came to prominence through and article he wrote for Tablet Magazine entitled "Hasbara Culture and the Curse of Bibi-ism". Although Tablet is a generally understood as a right-wing and adamantly pro-Israel publication, it nonetheless viewed 's commentary and thoughts on the concept of hasbara culture relevant and important. Hirsch argues that his examination of this hasbara culture is not about left-wing vs. right-wing or even pro-Israel vs. anti-Israel but instead an attempt to look at a phenomenon that is denying ground-level realities in favor of an alternate reality that exists only in the minds of its proponents. Among the topics discussed in this conversation are Benjamin Netanyahu as the embodiment of hasbara culture; sacred macho victimhood and victimhood discourses; Anti-Antisemitism; the Daniel Goldhagen vs. Christopher Browning debates on the Holocaust (Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners vs. Browning's Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland); Hannah Arendt and the trial of Adolf Eichmann; cognitive empathy and how it is shut down by hasbara culture; the ideology of hasbara culture; the Gaza War and Israel/Palestine; "Never Again" journalists; the "real world" vs. the "separate reality" of hasbara culture; the concept of betrayal in hasbara culture discourse; the Iran nuclear deal and Bibi-ist ideology; John Kerry's warning to Israel about needing to understand the perception of Palestinians; Peter Beinart's The Crisis of Zionism and the significance of Beinart's witnessing the tears of a Palestinian child in the West Bank crying out for his father; the pro-Palestinian protests happening across college campuses; hasbara culture's cultivation of narratives and tactics of agitation; Bill Maher vs. Bill Burr on Hamas, the Gaza War, and the youth;  serious people vs. unserious people; the significance of Israeli politician Yair Golan; Ehud Barak's comments on Palestinians and how he'd probably have been a terrorist if he'd grown up as a young Palestinian; Netanyahu's holy war and the coming Jewish schism; pro-Netanyahu demonization of Barack Obama; "us vs. them" mentalities and narratives; the October 7th Hamas attack; the ADL's response to the BDS movement; the question of irrational hatreds vs. legitimate grievances; the "Whataboutism" arguments of hasbara culture discourse; the attacks on Jewish studies culture Derek Penslar, the embattled co-chair of the Harvard's antisemitism task force; the Israel lobby; the IHRA working definition of antisemitism; ethnocentricity and ethnocentrism;

Mark Hannah, senior fellow at the Institute for Global Affairs, the nonprofit housed at the Eurasia Group, and host of the None of the Above podcast, argues that President Biden has not used the leverage US support provides over Israel in its war in Gaza and Ukraine in its war with Russia, prolonging the conflicts instead of imposing real conditions and pressing for negotiated resolutions. He discusses the recently passed aid bill, Israel's planned attack on Rafah and Biden's threat to withhold aid, and the politics within each party over Israel and Ukraine, as well as the American addiction to war and tendency to construe international conflicts in simplified Manichean terms, among other issues.Show NotesMark Hannah, “Biden needs to get real with Ukraine and Israel,” CNN, April 26, 2024Mark Hannah, “Straight Talk on the Country's War Addiction,” New York Times, February 18, 2023Mark Hannah, “Why Is the Wartime Press Corps So Hawkish,” Foreign Policy, March 30, 2022 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week (last year) we watched Silent Hill back from 2006, ANOTHER VIDEO GAME MOVIE THATS 2 IN A ROW BABY! J 6.5/10 M 7/10 For daily horror movie content follow the podcast on Twitter / Instagram @darkroastcult Each week we choose a movie from one of the horror genre to discuss the following week. Follow along each week by keeping up with the movies we are watching to stay in the loop with the movie club! Check out other podcasts, coffee and pins at www.darkroastcult.com ! THANKS TO ANDREW FOR MAKING THE INTRO SONG. (soundcloud.com / andoryukesuta)@andoryukesuta Rose Da Silva and her husband Christopher are disturbed by their adopted daughter Sharon's constant sleepwalking and nightmares about Silent Hill, a town in West Virginia that was abandoned in the 1970s due to a massive coal seam fire. Desperate for a solution, Rose takes Sharon on a trip to Silent Hill to find answers. Her erratic behavior concerns police officer Cybil Bennett when they encounter her at a gas station en route. As they enter Silent Hill, a girl steps out into the road, causing Rose to crash and black out. She awakens in the fog-shrouded dimension of Silent Hill, and realizes that Sharon is missing. Searching the town for Sharon, Rose pursues the girl she encountered prior to the crash, who resembles Sharon. At various points, the town suddenly transitions into a nightmarish world inhabited by inhuman monsters, including the fearsome Pyramid Head. Cybil encounters and tries to arrest Rose, but while attempting to bring her to the local station, they realize they are trapped, all roads out of town ending in a mysterious cliff. Rose encounters many other inhuman creatures and learns of Alessa Gillespie, a young girl burned as a witch by the Brethren, the town's fanatical Manichean cult. Her mother Dahlia wanders the streets as an outcast, guilt-ridden over her negligence that led to Alessa's suffering. In the real world, Christopher searches the abandoned town with policeman Thomas Gucci, but they find nothing: the town appears to them simply as a dilapidated, abandoned place devoid of fog or creatures. Gucci later reveals he lived in Silent Hill and saved Alessa from the fire. He encourages Christopher to end his futile search. In the Silent Hill dimension, Rose encounters the girl again, revealed to be an aspect of Alessa. When the town transitions into the dark dimension, Rose, Cybil, and Anna, a Brethren member, flee to an old church, but Pyramid Head catches and flays Anna alive. Brethren members lead Rose and Cybil to a hospital, claiming the demon that has taken Sharon is in the basement. Upon noticing an image of Sharon in Rose's locket, Christabella, the high priestess of the Brethren, identifies Sharon as a likeness of Alessa. She decries the two women as witches and orders her Brethren to stop them. Cybil holds them off while Rose descends into the basement, but is quickly subdued and captured. Rose explores the basement but is barricaded by a group of disfigured nurses. She sneaks past them and enters Alessa's room. In a flashback, it is revealed that Alessa was stigmatized by the townspeople for being born out of wedlock. Christabella convinced Dahlia to "purify" Alessa after Alessa was raped by the school janitor. Christabella immolated Alessa during a ritual in 1974, but Dahlia alerted Gucci. The pair arrived too late, and the ritual went awry, igniting the coal seam fire. Hospitalized and in excruciating pain, Alessa's rage split her soul apart, one half manifesting as the dark entity responsible for the shifting dimensions of Silent Hill. Her remaining innocence manifested as Sharon, who was taken to the real world to be adopted. Desperate to find Sharon, Rose allows Dark Alessa's spirit into her body, allowing it access to the church. Sharon, despite being protected by Dahlia, is captured by the Brethren.

Dr. Paul Thigpen explores the historical context of Saint Augustine's association with the Manichean sect, a radical offshoot of Gnosticism. Augustine's journey unfolds, revealing his struggles with lust, his embrace of Manichean beliefs, and the profound impact of a friend's conversion on his own spiritual path, ultimately leading to a heartfelt portrayal of grief over the friend's death.Episode six covers Book IV, chapters 1-16.LEARN MORE - USE COUPON CODE COM25 FOR 25% OFF:Confessions of St. Augustine of Hippo by Anthony Esolen (https://bit.ly/3GX9HdF)The Roots of Western Civilization by Anthony Esolen (https://bit.ly/41Avi57)Saint Monica: Model of Christian Mothers by F.A. Forbes (https://bit.ly/3NEkQDW)A Year with the Church Fathers by Mike Aquilina (https://bit.ly/3RDbvxa)TAN Classics Set (https://bit.ly/47OHCjV)The Commentaries is a podcast series from TAN in which you'll learn how to read and understand history's greatest Catholic works, from today's greatest Catholic scholars. In every series of The Commentaries, your expert host will be your personal guide to not just read the book, but to live the book, shining the light of its eternal truths into the darkness of our modern trials and tribulations.To download your FREE Classic Companion PDF and for updates about new seasons, expert scholars, and exclusive deals for The Commentaries listeners, sign up at TANcommentaries.com And for more great ways to deepen your faith, check out all the spiritual resources available at https://TANBooks.com and use Coupon Code COM25 for 25% off your next order.

"Saint Peter was a humble, devout and peace-loving man, unlike his father, Tsar Symeon the Warrior (d. 927), during whose reign there had been perpetual warfare. By contrast, Peter's long reign was peaceful, and notable for the restoration of good relations with Byzantium and with the West. Peter married Maria, the grand-daughter of the Emperor Romanus Lecapenus, who recognized him as basileus (tsar or king), and he obtained independence from Constantinople for the Bulgarian Church with its own Patriarch. He had a great love for Saint John of Rila (19 Oct.), whom he would often consult, and he kept in touch with renowned ascetics of the time like Saint Paul of Latros (15 Dec.). The King acted energetically against the Bogomil heresy, an offshoot of Manicheism, by which some of his people, lacking sufficient instruction in the faith, were being misled. He called a council in order to condemn the heresy and reassert Christian principles. Nevertheless, the infection was to remain active for many years in Bulgaria. Following the invasion of the north of his Kingdom by Prince Svyatoslav of Kiev in 969, Peter abdicated and became a monk. He died in the following year, having consecrated his final days to God alone." (Synaxarion)   A note on the Bogomils: The Bogomils flourished in the Eastern Europe as an organized church from the 10th to the 15th century. In theology they were dualistic, incorporating some Manichean and Gnostic ideas from the Paulicians. They were nationalistic and gained much support through their opposition to Byzantine dominance over the Slavic peoples. They disappeared as an organized body around the fifteenth century, but elements of their beliefs persisted in popular thinking for many centuries afterward.

"Saint Peter was a humble, devout and peace-loving man, unlike his father, Tsar Symeon the Warrior (d. 927), during whose reign there had been perpetual warfare. By contrast, Peter's long reign was peaceful, and notable for the restoration of good relations with Byzantium and with the West. Peter married Maria, the grand-daughter of the Emperor Romanus Lecapenus, who recognized him as basileus (tsar or king), and he obtained independence from Constantinople for the Bulgarian Church with its own Patriarch. He had a great love for Saint John of Rila (19 Oct.), whom he would often consult, and he kept in touch with renowned ascetics of the time like Saint Paul of Latros (15 Dec.). The King acted energetically against the Bogomil heresy, an offshoot of Manicheism, by which some of his people, lacking sufficient instruction in the faith, were being misled. He called a council in order to condemn the heresy and reassert Christian principles. Nevertheless, the infection was to remain active for many years in Bulgaria. Following the invasion of the north of his Kingdom by Prince Svyatoslav of Kiev in 969, Peter abdicated and became a monk. He died in the following year, having consecrated his final days to God alone." (Synaxarion)   A note on the Bogomils: The Bogomils flourished in the Eastern Europe as an organized church from the 10th to the 15th century. In theology they were dualistic, incorporating some Manichean and Gnostic ideas from the Paulicians. They were nationalistic and gained much support through their opposition to Byzantine dominance over the Slavic peoples. They disappeared as an organized body around the fifteenth century, but elements of their beliefs persisted in popular thinking for many centuries afterward.

Augustine's years from ages eighteen to twenty-seven: his Manichean beliefs and practices; losing a dear friend and reflecting on sorrow; the transience of created things; reading and understanding Aristotle

A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference. Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. China, however, took a different historical path. In Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea (Princeton UP, 2023), Shuchen Xiang argues that the Chinese cultural tradition was, from its formative beginnings and throughout its imperial history, a cosmopolitan melting pot that synthesized the different cultures that came into its orbit. Unlike the West, which cast its collisions with different cultures in Manichean terms of the ontologically irreconcilable difference between civilization and barbarism, China was a dynamic identity created out of difference.  The reasons for this, Xiang argues, are philosophical: Chinese philosophy has the conceptual resources for providing alternative ways to understand pluralism. Xiang explains that "Chinese" identity is not what the West understands as a racial identity; it is not a group of people related by common descent or heredity but rather a hybrid of coalescing cultures. To use the Western discourse of race to frame the Chinese view of non-Chinese, she argues, is a category error. Xiang shows that China was both internally cosmopolitan, embracing distinct peoples into a common identity, and externally cosmopolitan, having knowledge of faraway lands without an ideological need to subjugate them. Contrasting the Chinese understanding of efficacy--described as "harmony"--with the Western understanding of order, she argues that the Chinese sought to gain influence over others by having them spontaneously accept the virtue of one's position. These ideas from Chinese philosophy, she contends, offer a new way to understand today's multipolar world and can make a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions in the critical philosophy of race. For readers interested in how GCB and the Greek philosophical justification of GCB, domination, and destruction of barbarians still inform productions and consumptions of racist ideology as embodied in The Turner Diaries, see for example, here, here, and here.  Readers interested in the Vāda project that employs Indian epistemology to evaluate contemporary political claims, see here.  Jessica Zu is an intellectual historian and a scholar of Buddhist studies. She is an assistant professor of religion at the University of Southern California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference. Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. China, however, took a different historical path. In Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea (Princeton UP, 2023), Shuchen Xiang argues that the Chinese cultural tradition was, from its formative beginnings and throughout its imperial history, a cosmopolitan melting pot that synthesized the different cultures that came into its orbit. Unlike the West, which cast its collisions with different cultures in Manichean terms of the ontologically irreconcilable difference between civilization and barbarism, China was a dynamic identity created out of difference.  The reasons for this, Xiang argues, are philosophical: Chinese philosophy has the conceptual resources for providing alternative ways to understand pluralism. Xiang explains that "Chinese" identity is not what the West understands as a racial identity; it is not a group of people related by common descent or heredity but rather a hybrid of coalescing cultures. To use the Western discourse of race to frame the Chinese view of non-Chinese, she argues, is a category error. Xiang shows that China was both internally cosmopolitan, embracing distinct peoples into a common identity, and externally cosmopolitan, having knowledge of faraway lands without an ideological need to subjugate them. Contrasting the Chinese understanding of efficacy--described as "harmony"--with the Western understanding of order, she argues that the Chinese sought to gain influence over others by having them spontaneously accept the virtue of one's position. These ideas from Chinese philosophy, she contends, offer a new way to understand today's multipolar world and can make a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions in the critical philosophy of race. For readers interested in how GCB and the Greek philosophical justification of GCB, domination, and destruction of barbarians still inform productions and consumptions of racist ideology as embodied in The Turner Diaries, see for example, here, here, and here.  Readers interested in the Vāda project that employs Indian epistemology to evaluate contemporary political claims, see here.  Jessica Zu is an intellectual historian and a scholar of Buddhist studies. She is an assistant professor of religion at the University of Southern California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference. Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. China, however, took a different historical path. In Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea (Princeton UP, 2023), Shuchen Xiang argues that the Chinese cultural tradition was, from its formative beginnings and throughout its imperial history, a cosmopolitan melting pot that synthesized the different cultures that came into its orbit. Unlike the West, which cast its collisions with different cultures in Manichean terms of the ontologically irreconcilable difference between civilization and barbarism, China was a dynamic identity created out of difference.  The reasons for this, Xiang argues, are philosophical: Chinese philosophy has the conceptual resources for providing alternative ways to understand pluralism. Xiang explains that "Chinese" identity is not what the West understands as a racial identity; it is not a group of people related by common descent or heredity but rather a hybrid of coalescing cultures. To use the Western discourse of race to frame the Chinese view of non-Chinese, she argues, is a category error. Xiang shows that China was both internally cosmopolitan, embracing distinct peoples into a common identity, and externally cosmopolitan, having knowledge of faraway lands without an ideological need to subjugate them. Contrasting the Chinese understanding of efficacy--described as "harmony"--with the Western understanding of order, she argues that the Chinese sought to gain influence over others by having them spontaneously accept the virtue of one's position. These ideas from Chinese philosophy, she contends, offer a new way to understand today's multipolar world and can make a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions in the critical philosophy of race. For readers interested in how GCB and the Greek philosophical justification of GCB, domination, and destruction of barbarians still inform productions and consumptions of racist ideology as embodied in The Turner Diaries, see for example, here, here, and here.  Readers interested in the Vāda project that employs Indian epistemology to evaluate contemporary political claims, see here.  Jessica Zu is an intellectual historian and a scholar of Buddhist studies. She is an assistant professor of religion at the University of Southern California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference. Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. China, however, took a different historical path. In Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea (Princeton UP, 2023), Shuchen Xiang argues that the Chinese cultural tradition was, from its formative beginnings and throughout its imperial history, a cosmopolitan melting pot that synthesized the different cultures that came into its orbit. Unlike the West, which cast its collisions with different cultures in Manichean terms of the ontologically irreconcilable difference between civilization and barbarism, China was a dynamic identity created out of difference.  The reasons for this, Xiang argues, are philosophical: Chinese philosophy has the conceptual resources for providing alternative ways to understand pluralism. Xiang explains that "Chinese" identity is not what the West understands as a racial identity; it is not a group of people related by common descent or heredity but rather a hybrid of coalescing cultures. To use the Western discourse of race to frame the Chinese view of non-Chinese, she argues, is a category error. Xiang shows that China was both internally cosmopolitan, embracing distinct peoples into a common identity, and externally cosmopolitan, having knowledge of faraway lands without an ideological need to subjugate them. Contrasting the Chinese understanding of efficacy--described as "harmony"--with the Western understanding of order, she argues that the Chinese sought to gain influence over others by having them spontaneously accept the virtue of one's position. These ideas from Chinese philosophy, she contends, offer a new way to understand today's multipolar world and can make a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions in the critical philosophy of race. For readers interested in how GCB and the Greek philosophical justification of GCB, domination, and destruction of barbarians still inform productions and consumptions of racist ideology as embodied in The Turner Diaries, see for example, here, here, and here.  Readers interested in the Vāda project that employs Indian epistemology to evaluate contemporary political claims, see here.  Jessica Zu is an intellectual historian and a scholar of Buddhist studies. She is an assistant professor of religion at the University of Southern California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference. Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. China, however, took a different historical path. In Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea (Princeton UP, 2023), Shuchen Xiang argues that the Chinese cultural tradition was, from its formative beginnings and throughout its imperial history, a cosmopolitan melting pot that synthesized the different cultures that came into its orbit. Unlike the West, which cast its collisions with different cultures in Manichean terms of the ontologically irreconcilable difference between civilization and barbarism, China was a dynamic identity created out of difference.  The reasons for this, Xiang argues, are philosophical: Chinese philosophy has the conceptual resources for providing alternative ways to understand pluralism. Xiang explains that "Chinese" identity is not what the West understands as a racial identity; it is not a group of people related by common descent or heredity but rather a hybrid of coalescing cultures. To use the Western discourse of race to frame the Chinese view of non-Chinese, she argues, is a category error. Xiang shows that China was both internally cosmopolitan, embracing distinct peoples into a common identity, and externally cosmopolitan, having knowledge of faraway lands without an ideological need to subjugate them. Contrasting the Chinese understanding of efficacy--described as "harmony"--with the Western understanding of order, she argues that the Chinese sought to gain influence over others by having them spontaneously accept the virtue of one's position. These ideas from Chinese philosophy, she contends, offer a new way to understand today's multipolar world and can make a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions in the critical philosophy of race. For readers interested in how GCB and the Greek philosophical justification of GCB, domination, and destruction of barbarians still inform productions and consumptions of racist ideology as embodied in The Turner Diaries, see for example, here, here, and here.  Readers interested in the Vāda project that employs Indian epistemology to evaluate contemporary political claims, see here.  Jessica Zu is an intellectual historian and a scholar of Buddhist studies. She is an assistant professor of religion at the University of Southern California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference. Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. China, however, took a different historical path. In Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea (Princeton UP, 2023), Shuchen Xiang argues that the Chinese cultural tradition was, from its formative beginnings and throughout its imperial history, a cosmopolitan melting pot that synthesized the different cultures that came into its orbit. Unlike the West, which cast its collisions with different cultures in Manichean terms of the ontologically irreconcilable difference between civilization and barbarism, China was a dynamic identity created out of difference.  The reasons for this, Xiang argues, are philosophical: Chinese philosophy has the conceptual resources for providing alternative ways to understand pluralism. Xiang explains that "Chinese" identity is not what the West understands as a racial identity; it is not a group of people related by common descent or heredity but rather a hybrid of coalescing cultures. To use the Western discourse of race to frame the Chinese view of non-Chinese, she argues, is a category error. Xiang shows that China was both internally cosmopolitan, embracing distinct peoples into a common identity, and externally cosmopolitan, having knowledge of faraway lands without an ideological need to subjugate them. Contrasting the Chinese understanding of efficacy--described as "harmony"--with the Western understanding of order, she argues that the Chinese sought to gain influence over others by having them spontaneously accept the virtue of one's position. These ideas from Chinese philosophy, she contends, offer a new way to understand today's multipolar world and can make a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions in the critical philosophy of race. For readers interested in how GCB and the Greek philosophical justification of GCB, domination, and destruction of barbarians still inform productions and consumptions of racist ideology as embodied in The Turner Diaries, see for example, here, here, and here.  Readers interested in the Vāda project that employs Indian epistemology to evaluate contemporary political claims, see here.  Jessica Zu is an intellectual historian and a scholar of Buddhist studies. She is an assistant professor of religion at the University of Southern California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies

A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference. Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. China, however, took a different historical path. In Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea (Princeton UP, 2023), Shuchen Xiang argues that the Chinese cultural tradition was, from its formative beginnings and throughout its imperial history, a cosmopolitan melting pot that synthesized the different cultures that came into its orbit. Unlike the West, which cast its collisions with different cultures in Manichean terms of the ontologically irreconcilable difference between civilization and barbarism, China was a dynamic identity created out of difference.  The reasons for this, Xiang argues, are philosophical: Chinese philosophy has the conceptual resources for providing alternative ways to understand pluralism. Xiang explains that "Chinese" identity is not what the West understands as a racial identity; it is not a group of people related by common descent or heredity but rather a hybrid of coalescing cultures. To use the Western discourse of race to frame the Chinese view of non-Chinese, she argues, is a category error. Xiang shows that China was both internally cosmopolitan, embracing distinct peoples into a common identity, and externally cosmopolitan, having knowledge of faraway lands without an ideological need to subjugate them. Contrasting the Chinese understanding of efficacy--described as "harmony"--with the Western understanding of order, she argues that the Chinese sought to gain influence over others by having them spontaneously accept the virtue of one's position. These ideas from Chinese philosophy, she contends, offer a new way to understand today's multipolar world and can make a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions in the critical philosophy of race. For readers interested in how GCB and the Greek philosophical justification of GCB, domination, and destruction of barbarians still inform productions and consumptions of racist ideology as embodied in The Turner Diaries, see for example, here, here, and here.  Readers interested in the Vāda project that employs Indian epistemology to evaluate contemporary political claims, see here.  Jessica Zu is an intellectual historian and a scholar of Buddhist studies. She is an assistant professor of religion at the University of Southern California.

What do Critical Race Theory and antisemitism have in common? A lot, actually, from the roots of each movement, to the ideology, to the way they are weaponized by the left today. The overarching philosophy linking these movements together is a Manichean ordering of peoples into groups of oppressed or oppressor – usually, but not always, based on the color of one's skin. Indeed, it is no mistake that in the aftermath of WWII, Jews sought to categorize themselves as white, a move that has now fed the bizarre oppressor/colonizer trope so popular on the left. First Jews weren't white enough for the white supremacists, but now are too white for the CRT crowd. Not to mention the shifting ideological assaults on Jewish groups, once accused of being communists now accused of being capitalists. Yes, donors are pulling out of universities that harbor pro-terrorist groups; yes, the support of Hamas the past few weeks has been a PR disaster for wokeism. But it will take a lot more than that to root out the antisemitic and real race-based discrimination that has gripped America.David E. Bernstein holds a University Professorship chair at the Antonin Scalia Law School, where he has been teaching since 1995. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Georgetown University, William & Mary, Brooklyn Law School, the University of Turin, and Hebrew University. Professor Bernstein teaches Constitutional Law, Evidence, and Products Liability. His most recent book is Classified, The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.Download the transcript here.

“Either the Bible is true or it isn't, either it's God's inspired inerrant word or it isn't, you can't have it both ways, you can't pick and choose to fit with whatever the latest fad or zeitgeist happens to be . . .” “So claimed someone in a comment thread on a Patheos Progressive Christian Facebook page post recently. One thing I'll say for Bible literalists: they aren't a big fan of nuance. They like their truth to be . . . literal. Their world view is Manichean to the core. This or that. Black or white. True or false. Good or evil. No gray areas allowed.” “Me: The Bible is a book. A special one, but a book. Written by human beings, not dictated by God. Him: You're free to believe that, to reject the nearly 30% of prophecy that is STILL being played out today, but it does mean that you may not identify as a Christian. Me: It means nothing of the sort. Millions of Christians do not believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. What one believes about a book is not the litmus test for membership in the club. Him: In THIS CLUB, yes it is. Rejecting the inerrancy of scripture is tantamount to rejecting the authority of God in your life, (A.K.A. Christianity) because you wish to be your own God and live for yourself, which is the very heart of so called progressivism (A.K.A SIN). Me: It is sad to imagine a faith so narrow that it claims that God is confined within the covers of a book. That God somehow is incapable of speaking directly to contemporary human beings. That the Word of God is a book rather than a Person. God is brought into the world through human beings, not ancient texts. I could have done better. I could have used the book this fellow worships to make my point as another participant in the conversation did succinctly: John 1:1—In the beginning was the Word. John 1:14—And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us . . . The Bible isn't the Word of God, but it can lead us to the Word of God.” --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/antonio-myers4/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/antonio-myers4/support

After summarizing the Orthodox approach to scripture, Fr. Anthony begins a verse by verse examination of Genesis One.  We made it up to "Image and Likeness!" Review. We have to read texts according to their purpose and scope. The purpose of the Bible is to describe the economy of our salvation (i.e. mankind's sin, Christ/Messiah as our savior). The Bible is inspired; God spoke through prophets and scribes who automatically presented His revelations in their own language, with their own symbols, and in a way that their immediate audiences would understand. Our worldview (our language, symbols, and stories) is very different from those of the prophets, scribes, and their immediate audience; mirror-imaging can lead to incorrect understandings of the Bible, God, and His plan for us. Useful Materials Bouteneff, Peter C.. Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives. Louth, A., & Conti, M. (Eds.). Genesis 1–11 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture Series). Walton, J. H. (2009). The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate. Genesis One (read the first four days using Septuagint and Hebrew translations; pause to make points). 1. In [the] beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void [Tohu wa bohu]; and darkness was on the face of the deep. 2. And the Spirit of God [!] was hovering over the face of the waters [where did they come from?] 3. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light [!]. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day [?], and the darkness He called Night [?]. So the evening and the morning were the first day [liturgical time!]. 6 Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” 7 Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven [use of ancient cosmology does not need to be explained away or excused; the explanation is functional, not astronomical/geographical!] . So the evening and the morning were the second day. 9 Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good.[imagery of the Nile – agricultural, miraculous, dependable] 11 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind [we'll explore this “according to its kind later; order is important in the temple!], whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 So the evening and the morning were the third day. 14 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; 15 and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. 16 Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night [why the ambigious language? De-divinization of creation!]. He made the stars also. 17 God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 So the evening and the morning were the fourth day. Some Observations Although there are similarities with the creation myths of surrounding nations, the contrasts are stark; the Hebrews are given a new way of understand God and the world. E.g. The Enuma Elish (Babylon, at least 7th century BC) has Marduk overcoming chaos (personified in Tiamat); he then creates the heaven and earth by splitting her. In the Genesis creation account, creation is demythologized (e.g. deep/chaos, sun, stars). These sorts of things show up later, but the creation account is kept pristine so as to make the distinction between Creator and creation clear. There is a pattern (7 days, 7 “it was good's”; things are “according to their kind”) that speaks not just to poetry, but to liturgical use. Speaking of liturgy, note that evening is the beginning of the day (as with Vespers). You can imagine this being chanted/sung the way we do Psalm 103 at Vespers (creation!). Creation is spoken into being. See also the Gospel of John 1 (“In the beginning was the Word…”) and Amos 8 (fear a famine of the Word). Also see C.S. Lewis The Magician's Nephew. We know that creation is ex nihilo (from nothing), but that is not necessarily being asserted here (although many say it is). This is not a description of a factory of creation (i.e. the “how” of creation), but a functional creation (purpose and meaning). Some Examples of the Functional Creation Day One: The creation of time. Day Two: Room for people to live. Weather. Day Three: Production of food. Some Commentary: St. Augustine, One the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 3:10. Scripture called heaven and earth that formless matter of the universe, which was changed into formed and beautiful natures by God's ineffable command.… This heaven and earth, which were confused and mixed up, were suited to receive forms from God their maker. Basil the Great; Hexaemeron 1.5. It appears, indeed, that even before this world an order of things existed of which our mind can form an idea but of which we can say nothing, because it is too lofty a subject for men who are but beginners and are still babes in knowledge. The birth of the world was preceded by a condition of things suitable for the exercise of supernatural powers, outstripping the limits of time, eternal and infinite. The Creator and Demiurge of the universe perfected his works in it, spiritual light for the happiness of all who love the Lord, intellectual and invisible natures, all the orderly arrangement of pure intelligences who are beyond the reach of our mind and of whom we cannot even discover the names. Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne (excerpted from On Being) I mean, this is an extraordinary thing, Genesis 1 … things don't quite come in the right order. I mean, it's striking that it begins with energy for light, “Let there be light.” It's striking that life starts in the waters and moves onto the land. But of course … the sun and moon and stars only come on the fourth day. And of course, there wouldn't be any life without the stars, because that's where they make the raw material for life. So that isn't right. And we believe that one of the reasons, we believe in theology, one of the reasons why the sun, moon and stars come downstream, so to speak, is that the writer is wanting to say the sun and the moon aren't deities. They're not to be worshipped…. They are creatures just like everything else. And that shows us that what we're reading is a theologically oriented thing and not a scientifically oriented thing. I mean, you have to figure out, when you read something and you want to read it respectfully, you have to figure out what it is you're reading. Is it poetry or is it prose? If you read poetry and think it's prose, you will make the most astonishing mistakes. [And Genesis 1…] is much more like a poem than like prose. And that's, in a sense, the sadness of the “creationist” so-called position, that these people who are really wanting to be respectful to scripture are, I think, ironically, being disrespectful, because they're not using it in the right way. Walton, J. H. (pp. 49–50). The creation account in Genesis 1 can then be seen to begin with no functions rather than with no material. At this point, however, it is important to establish what we mean when we talk of functions… In the ancient world, function was not the result of material properties, but the result of purpose. The sun looks down on all and is associated with the god of justice. It functions as a marker for time and seasons. When the ancient texts talk about how something functions in an ordered system, the system under discussion is not a cosmic or ecological system. It is a system inhabited by beings…In the Old Testament God has no needs and focuses functionality around people. We will see increasing evidence of this understanding as we move through the remainder of Genesis 1. Consequently, functionality cannot exist without people in the picture. In Genesis people are not put in place until day six, but functionality is established with their needs and situation in mind. Major Points for Discussion Who is God (i.e. what does “Elohim” mean?).  Elohim is a plural noun that can either describe beings from the/a spiritual realm (e.g. gods, angels, maybe even ghosts) or the One Uncreated God (it's obvious which one it is by grammatical context). What does “according to its kind” mean?  It is not an attack on science.  Here's a gem of a quote from St. Augustine's tract against Felix the Manichean (quoted here); In the Gospel we do not read that the Lord said: I send you the Holy Spirit so that He might teach you all about the course of the sun and the moon. The Lord wanted to make Christians, not astronomers. You learn at school all the useful things you need to know about nature. It is true that Christ said that the Holy Spirit will come to lead us into all truth, but He is not speaking there about the course of the sun and the moon. If you think that knowledge about these things belongs to the truth that Christ promised through the Holy Spirit, then I ask you: how many stars are there? I say that such things do not belong to Christian teaching…whereas you affirm that this teaching includes knowledge about how the world was made and what takes place in the world.  The point being made is that 1) there is an order to creation that is logical (and created through the Logos!) and 2) the multitude of creation reflects God's glory and purpose.  God led the Hebrews to make seeing things “according to their kind a virtuous instinct.  What do we lose when we don't? Who is God talking to when He says “Let US make man…”?  Different explanations.  Could be the “Royal We” (not likely).  Could be the Heavenly Hosts (i.e. the Divine Council).  The main explanation (because we read in the light of Christ) is the Trinity. What is “The Image of God”?  Lots of good answers (ask for some).  At the very least, it means that we re-present God in creation (just as Christ does as the New Adam; “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” Colossians 1:15). What is the “Likeness of God”?  Again, many good answers.  The usual one is that it is His purity and holiness (theosis).  This is something we have to grow into (more on that once we talk more about mankind). Enjoy the show!

Full Text of ReadingsTwenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time Lectionary: 121The Saint of the day is Saint MonicaSaint Monica’s Story The circumstances of St. Monica's life could have made her a nagging wife, a bitter daughter-in-law, and a despairing parent, yet she did not give way to any of these temptations. Although she was a Christian, her parents gave her in marriage to a pagan, Patricius, who lived in her hometown of Tagaste in North Africa. Patricius had some redeeming features, but he had a violent temper and was licentious. Monica also had to bear with a cantankerous mother-in-law who lived in her home. Patricius criticized his wife because of her charity and piety, but always respected her. Monica's prayers and example finally won her husband and mother-in-law to Christianity. Her husband died in 371, one year after his baptism. Monica had at least three children who survived infancy. The oldest, Augustine, is the most famous. At the time of his father's death, Augustine was 17 and a rhetoric student in Carthage. Monica was distressed to learn that her son had accepted the Manichean heresy—”all flesh is evil”—and was living an immoral life. For a while, she refused to let him eat or sleep in her house. Then one night she had a vision that assured her Augustine would return to the faith. From that time on, she stayed close to her son, praying and fasting for him. In fact she often stayed much closer than Augustine wanted. When he was 29, Augustine decided to go to Rome to teach rhetoric. Monica was determined to go along. One night he told his mother that he was going to the dock to say goodbye to a friend. Instead he set sail for Rome. Monica was heartbroken when she learned of Augustine's trick, but she still followed him. She arrived in Rome only to find that he had left for Milan. Although travel was difficult, Monica pursued him to Milan. In Milan, Augustine came under the influence of the bishop, St. Ambrose, who also became Monica's spiritual director. She accepted his advice in everything and had the humility to give up some practices that had become second nature to her. Monica became a leader of the devout women in Milan as she had been in Tagaste. She continued her prayers for Augustine during his years of instruction. At Easter 387, St. Ambrose baptized Augustine and several of his friends. Soon after, his party left for Africa. Although no one else was aware of it, Monica knew her life was near the end. She told Augustine, “Son, nothing in this world now affords me delight. I do not know what there is now left for me to do or why I am still here, all my hopes in this world being now fulfilled.” She became ill shortly after and suffered severely for nine days before her death. Almost all we know about St. Monica is in the writings of St. Augustine, especially his Confessions. Reflection Today, with Google searches, online shopping, text messages, tweets, and instant credit, we have little patience for things that take time. Likewise, we want instant answers to our prayers. Monica is a model of patience. Her long years of prayer, coupled with a strong, well-disciplined character, finally led to the conversion of her hot-tempered husband, her cantankerous mother-in-law and her brilliant but wayward son, Augustine. Saint Monica is the Patron Saint of: AlcoholicsConversionMothersWives Learn more about Saint Monica! Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

This third part in the series on Trinitarian heresies addresses the Manicheans and other related sects in the early church.

Bob Kagan won. Join hosts Rob and Ruairi as they delve into the opinions and career of renowned scholar and author, Robert Kagan & his most recent analysis . Known for his influential perspectives on global politics and foreign policy, Kagan has been a prominent voice in shaping public discourse. Though perhaps not as well known as earlier subjects of discussion, like Peter Zeihan, Kagan's influence is much, much more important. For Bob Kagan everything is 1938 & appeasement, and the United States is always doing too little. For two decades he has been using World War Two analogies to interpret every single contemporary event and conflict. Despite horrific errors, like his unrepentant support of the Iraq war, and his sometimes stunning ignorance of the world beyond our shores, in 2023 it's impossible to deny that Kagan and his Manichean worldview have won. If you're unfamiliar with his work and influence this podcast is a great place to start. ⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Books⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok

If you've ever been a part of a team, you no doubt have had experiences with successful and not-so-successful collaborations.  What makes collaborations fruitful, and, why and when do they stall or dead-end? Our field has been grappling with these questions for quite some time, both in virtual and in-person learning environments. Collaborations typically involve two or more learners who come together to jointly analyze problems and develop a plan or solution to address it. But, my guests today want to problematize this straightforward notion of collaboration, and push us to think about collaboration not just as a process of joint knowledge construction, but as a situated process in which students exercise agency, navigate and even shift power dynamics, and negotiate their social and intellectual authority and identity.  Our guests today are Drs. Jennifer Langer Osuna and Karlyn Adams-Wiggins. Jenny is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, and Karlyn is an Associate Professor of Applied Developmental Psychology at Portland State University.  --- Works Discussed: Packer, M. J., & Goicoechea, J. (2000). Sociocultural and constructivist theories of learning: Ontology, not just epistemology. Educational psychologist, 35(4), 227-241. Langer-Osuna, J. M., Gargroetzi, E., Munson, J., & Chavez, R. (2020). Exploring the role of off-task activity on students' collaborative dynamics. Journal of Educational Psychology, 112(3), 514–532. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000464 Langer-Osuna, J. M. (2018). Exploring the central role of student authority relations in collaborative mathematics. ZDM, 50(6), 1077–1087. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-018-0965-x Stetsenko, A. P. (2020). Critical Challenges in Cultural-Historical Activity Theory: The Urgency of Agency. Cultural-Historical Psychology, 16(2), 5–18. https://doi.org/10.17759/chp.2020160202 Adams-Wiggins, K. R., & Dancis, J. S. (2023). Marginality in inquiry-based science learning contexts: the role of exclusion cascades. Mind, Culture, and Activity, https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2023.2178014 Adams-Wiggins, K. R., & Taylor-García, D. V. (2020). The Manichean division in children's experience: Developmental psychology in an anti-Black world. Theory & Psychology, 30(4), 485–506. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354320940049

* I am releasing this episode on the 70th anniversary of their execution, at 8:00 PM EST, the time at which the Julius and Ethel were executed. Pre-Episode Introduction0:00:00 - Introduction and Robert's story0:08:40 - Manichean nature of propaganda0:12:40 - Government destroys culture, not just resistance0:14:35 - Timing of this episodeInterview with Robert0:18:05 - Propaganda in the case of Robert's parents0:23:35 - Role of fear and othering in propaganda0:31:45 - Why was it important for propaganda that the kids of the Rosenbergs were targeted as threats?0:42:45 - Propaganda in the media as a sedative that gets people to work within the system rather than buck it0:56:10 - How can we know truth in a world saturated by propaganda?1:04:50 - Why can't the government bring itself to admit they're wrong?1:16:05 - Why do we need activists today if we solved discrimination with Civil Rights?1:26:10 - Resource recommendations and plugs A huge thanks to Seth White for the awesome music! Thanks to Palmtoptiger17 for the beautiful logo: https://www.instagram.com/palmtoptiger17/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/thewayfourth/?modal=admin_todo_tour YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTd3KlRte86eG9U40ncZ4XA?view_as=subscriber Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theway4th/  Kingdom Outpost: https://kingdomoutpost.org/ My Reading List Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21940220.J_G_Elliot Propaganda Season Outline: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xa4MhYMAg2Ohc5Nvya4g9MHxXWlxo6haT2Nj8Hlws8M/edit?usp=sharing  Episode Outline/Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wXPgp06Xp5Hc-IlB3x81Fwi6ZCCHL4uu2Xs8Wu1rKJs/edit?usp=sharing YouTube version of our interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbzPXxJ2PTo PRE-RELEASE EPISODE 1 INTRODUCTION: https://share.transistor.fm/s/4fec1099 PRE-RELEASE EPISODE 2 HOW PROPAGANDA FUNCTIONS: https://share.transistor.fm/s/7f9c0a8c PRE-RELEASE EPISODE 3 THE FALSE PROPHET OF PROPAGANDA: https://share.transistor.fm/s/89025034 An Execution in the Family (Robert's Book): https://www.amazon.com/Execution-Family-One-Sons-Journey-ebook/dp/B003J5UJJK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=252RAVF2FZJCL&keywords=an+execution+in+the+family&qid=1650622614&s=digital-text&sprefix=an+execution+in+the+family%2Cdigital-text%2C193&sr=1-1  Executing the Rosenbergs: https://www.amazon.com/Executing-Rosenbergs-Death-Diplomacy-World-ebook/dp/B015P7A066/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1IUJQLH31QLL9&keywords=executing+the+rosenbergs&qid=1650622585&s=digital-text&sprefix=executing+the+rosenberg%2Cdigital-text%2C190&sr=1-1  Rosenberg Fund for Children: https://www.rfc.org/ Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Mens-Attitudes/dp/B08YJ3V7F4/ref=sr_1_1?crid=GGCP6WP3WUXW&keywords=ellul+propaganda&qid=1650622694&sprefix=ellul+propagand%2Caps%2C198&sr=8-1 Chomsky on Propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suFzznCHjko The Radical King (on King and Communism): https://www.amazon.com/The-Radical-King-audiobook/dp/B0799ZNCQQ/ref=sr_1_39?crid=1FHIRH7P45O7X&keywords=martin+luther+king&qid=1650620746&sprefix=martin+luther+kin%2Caps%2C201&sr=8-39 "Strange Fruit" sung by Billie Holiday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Web007rzSOI "The Rosenbergs" poem by W.E.B. DuBois: https://minervasperch.wordpress.com/2020/12/11/the-rosenbergs-june-1953-by-w-e-b-du-bois/  Robert Williams and Radio Free Dixie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Dixie Negroes with Guns by Robert Williams: https://www.amazon.com/Negroes-Guns-Robert-F-Williams/dp/1773230522 Slavery into the 1940's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA Slavery into Modernity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OXbJHsKB3I Terror Factory: https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Factory-Inside-Manufactured-Terrorism/dp/1632460653/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1RHU33LH9VVFD&keywords=terror+factory&qid=1650622428&s=books&sprefix=terror+factory%2Cstripbooks%2C211&sr=1-1 Nixon's War at Home: https://www.amazon.com/Nixons-War-Home-Guerrillas-Counterterrorism/dp/B09HVC31CS/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3DHD4VELWJKKK&keywords=nixon%27s+war+at+home&qid=1650622483&s=books&sprefix=nixon%27s+war+at+ho%2Cstripbooks%2C194&sr=1-1 Not a Nation of Immigrants: https://www.amazon.com/Not-Nation-Immigrants-Colonialism-Supremacy-ebook/dp/B08K7QKCCK/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1650622505&sr=1-1 Yippie Girl: https://www.amazon.com/Yippie-Girl-Exploits-Protest-Defeating-ebook/dp/B09MS4YS68/ref=sr_1_1?crid=276EC2B44V265&keywords=yippie+girl&qid=1650622525&s=digital-text&sprefix=yippie+girl%2Cdigital-text%2C190&sr=1-1 Thanks to our monthly supporters Laverne Miller Jesse Killion Michael de Nijs ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

This is part 16 of the Early Church History class. Jerome and Augustine are two of the most influential Latin Christians of the first millennium of Christianity. This episode will introduce you to their lives, personalities, and some of their most important ideas. You'll see how significantly asceticism affected their lifestyles as well as how their particular take on Christianity came to set the norm for Roman Catholic Christianity. Listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtNF5-rvmwU&list=PLN9jFDsS3QV2lk3B0I7Pa77hfwKJm1SRI&index=16&pp=iAQB —— Links —— More Restitutio resources on Christian history See other classes here Support Restitutio by donating here Join our Restitutio Facebook Group and follow Sean Finnegan on Twitter @RestitutioSF Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments and we may play them out on the air Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library. Who is Sean Finnegan?  Read his bio here —— Notes —— Jerome's Life (347-419) Actual name: Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus Excellent Latin education, highly intelligent Learned Greek and Hebrew Lived as a hermit in the Syrian desert 382-385 - served as secretary to Pope Damasus I, bishop of Rome Jerome's Asceticism Believed everyone should be celibate Worked a lot with wealthy widows from the senatorial class and their daughters Thought the only benefit from marriage was the production of more virgins After Paula's daughter Blaesilla died, he moved to Bethlehem. Spent his time engaging in controversies by letter, translating the Bible and other literature into Latin, and writing commentaries on scripture Jerome's Writings Though deeply influenced by classical literature, especially Cicero, he advocated reading only the Bible and Christian literature. Worked on the Vulgate (382-405) Became the dominant Latin Bible for the Roman Catholic Church from 600 onwards; though in Jerome's day, many still preferred a translation of the Septuagint (including Augustine) Translated Origen's On First Principles, Pachomius' Rule, and Eusebius' Historical Chronicle into Latin Lives of Illustrious Men provides short biographies of many early Christians. Commentaries on many books of the Bible Augustine's Early Life (354-430) Grew up in North Africa with a Christian mother, Monica, and a pagan father, Patrick Had an excellent education in Carthage Particularly influenced by Cicero's dialogues, especially his Hortensius Became a teacher of rhetoric in Rome, then Milan Augustine's Sexual Life Stealing pears as a teenager “I was burning to find satisfaction… I ran wild in the shadowy jungle of erotic adventures.” (Confessions 2.1.1)[1] At Carthage, he said, “All around me hissed a cauldron of illicit loves.” (Confessions 3.1.1) Took a concubine from a lower class and lived with her for 13 years and had a son with her, Adeodatus His mother convinced him to send his concubine away so he could be eligible to marry a well-born woman. Couldn't live chastely in the interval and took another concubine Augustine's Journey to Christianity Had encountered the scriptures but said they “seemed to me unworthy in comparison with the dignity of Cicero” (Confessions 3.5.9) Became a Manichaean for 9 years Believed in Astrology for a long while Found great satisfaction in Neo-Platonism, especially the writings of Plotinus and Porphyry Checked out Bishop Ambrose just to listen to his rhetoric and was impressed Heard a voice saying, “Pick up and read [tolle, lege]” and opened to Romans 13.13-14 387 - Ambrose baptized Augustine and Adeodatus Augustine's Bishopric (395-430) Became bishop of Hippo Regius and served for 35 years Preached regularly, held court twice a week, counselled people Engaged in many controversies with Manichaeans, Donatists, Pelagians, and pagans. Augustine's Writings Wrote approximately five million words Confessions: an autobiography City of God: responds to Alaric's sack of Rome in 410 as well as lays out extensive interpretation of the Bible and key doctrines On the Trinity: defended the Trinity and explained it philosophically Also, many letters, commentaries, and treatises Augustine's Thought Original sin passed down a corrupted nature incapable of doing good. God predestined the elect to be saved. The elect go to heaven to live eternally. The damned go to hell to be tormented eternally. Augustine's Influence Probably the most influential Christian of the first millennium Codified Catholic doctrine that held sway throughout the Middle Ages Martin Luther was himself an Augustinian monk, and the Reformation was largely a return to Augustinian Christianity. Review Jerome and Augustine were influential Christians who shaped Christianity in the fifth century. Both received excellent educations and voluntarily chose ascetic, celibate lifestyles. Both were influenced by Origen, especially his allegorical hermeneutic. Jerome's translation of the Bible into Latin from Hebrew and Greek--the Vulgate--became the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. Augustine had a fraught and lengthy battle with lust that eventually led him to celibacy. Augustine was a Manichean, a believer in astrology, and a Neo-Platonist before he became a Christian. Augustine battled Manicheans, Donatists, Pelagians, and Pagans throughout his career. He advocated original sin, infant baptism, eternal life in heaven, eternal torment in hell, predestination of the elect, and celibate clergy. More than anyone else in the first thousand years, Augustine's thought influenced Roman Catholic doctrine. To a degree, the Reformation itself was a return to Augustinian Christianity. [1] All quotes from Confessions from Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford, 1998).

Trita Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, explains how China's impartial approach to diplomacy gives it an edge against America's more Manichean tendencies. He also discusses what US troops are doing in the unauthorized war in Syria, Beijing's diplomatic mediation of negotiations between Saudi Arabia and Iran -- and potentially between Ukraine and Russia, and what accounts for the slow pace of change in America's posture in the Middle East, among other topics. Show NotesTrita Parsi bioTrita Parsi and Kalid Aljabri, “How China Became a Peacemaker in the Middle East,” Foreign Affairs, March 15, 2023.Trita Parsi, “The U.S. Is Not an Indispensable Peacemaker,” New York Times, March 22, 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A second full episode this week for you Sinica listeners! Jude Blanchette joins to talk about the House Select Committee on United States Competition with the Chinese Communist Party, and all that is wrong with it, from its framing of the CCP as an "existential threat" to its focus on the CCP, and how all of this adds up to an embarrassing moral panic that distracts from the serious issues the U.S. confronts when it comes to China.4:37 – What's wrong with the Select Committee's framing of China as an “existential threat,” and why the first hearing was an embarrassment9:01 – The current moment as a moral panic over China12:09 – Domestic political drivers of U.S. China policy15:04 – Why the United States versus the Chinese Communist Party is the wrong framing too22:46 – Is this more like McCarthyism — or antisemitism? 28:58 – The downstream effects of U.S. tech containment policy toward China42:01 – The advantage of simplistic, Manichean messaging46:15 – Prioritizing U.S. issues with China: why Confucius Institutes and TikTok are so far down the to-do list, and what really matters48:59 – And what are the real issues that deserve priority?A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.comRecommendations:Jude: Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon by Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce Headlam, from AudibleKaiser: This podcast interview with Angela Rasmussen, the virologist who has been in the front lines fighting back against the resurgent lab leak theory, from the Slate What Next: TBD podcastSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"Saint Peter was a humble, devout and peace-loving man, unlike his father, Tsar Symeon the Warrior (d. 927), during whose reign there had been perpetual warfare. By contrast, Peter's long reign was peaceful, and notable for the restoration of good relations with Byzantium and with the West. Peter married Maria, the grand-daughter of the Emperor Romanus Lecapenus, who recognized him as basileus (tsar or king), and he obtained independence from Constantinople for the Bulgarian Church with its own Patriarch. He had a great love for Saint John of Rila (19 Oct.), whom he would often consult, and he kept in touch with renowned ascetics of the time like Saint Paul of Latros (15 Dec.). The King acted energetically against the Bogomil heresy, an offshoot of Manicheism, by which some of his people, lacking sufficient instruction in the faith, were being misled. He called a council in order to condemn the heresy and reassert Christian principles. Nevertheless, the infection was to remain active for many years in Bulgaria. Following the invasion of the north of his Kingdom by Prince Svyatoslav of Kiev in 969, Peter abdicated and became a monk. He died in the following year, having consecrated his final days to God alone." (Synaxarion)   A note on the Bogomils: The Bogomils flourished in the Eastern Europe as an organized church from the 10th to the 15th century. In theology they were dualistic, incorporating some Manichean and Gnostic ideas from the Paulicians. They were nationalistic and gained much support through their opposition to Byzantine dominance over the Slavic peoples. They disappeared as an organized body around the fifteenth century, but elements of their beliefs persisted in popular thinking for many centuries afterward.

"Saint Peter was a humble, devout and peace-loving man, unlike his father, Tsar Symeon the Warrior (d. 927), during whose reign there had been perpetual warfare. By contrast, Peter's long reign was peaceful, and notable for the restoration of good relations with Byzantium and with the West. Peter married Maria, the grand-daughter of the Emperor Romanus Lecapenus, who recognized him as basileus (tsar or king), and he obtained independence from Constantinople for the Bulgarian Church with its own Patriarch. He had a great love for Saint John of Rila (19 Oct.), whom he would often consult, and he kept in touch with renowned ascetics of the time like Saint Paul of Latros (15 Dec.). The King acted energetically against the Bogomil heresy, an offshoot of Manicheism, by which some of his people, lacking sufficient instruction in the faith, were being misled. He called a council in order to condemn the heresy and reassert Christian principles. Nevertheless, the infection was to remain active for many years in Bulgaria. Following the invasion of the north of his Kingdom by Prince Svyatoslav of Kiev in 969, Peter abdicated and became a monk. He died in the following year, having consecrated his final days to God alone." (Synaxarion)   A note on the Bogomils: The Bogomils flourished in the Eastern Europe as an organized church from the 10th to the 15th century. In theology they were dualistic, incorporating some Manichean and Gnostic ideas from the Paulicians. They were nationalistic and gained much support through their opposition to Byzantine dominance over the Slavic peoples. They disappeared as an organized body around the fifteenth century, but elements of their beliefs persisted in popular thinking for many centuries afterward.

The new year is quickly reminding us that the more things change the more they stay the same. The Manichean temptation is alive and well in 2023. Whether one pretends that their justification for forced medical procedures was done out of love, and everyone else was motivated by evil, they embrace a platform infested with child pornography to escape "rich man bad," or they become the very thing they swore to oppose because they aren't getting their way, seeing the world as black and white leads to predictably poor behavior and conclusions. Perhaps nowhere was this more apparent this week than in the way RINO/Neocons like Patches McCain (Dan Crenshaw) treated and spoke about their Republican colleagues for holding out on the House Speaker vote for Kevin McCarthy. Patches is a repeat Manichean offender, getting worse by the day.

On this edition of Parallax Views, a previously unpublished conversation with John D. Wilsey, associate professor of church history at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, about his book God's Cold Warrior: The Life and Faith of John Foster Dulles. In past episodes, John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen Dulles have been discussed critically for their role in 20th century U.S. foreign policy. John Foster Dulles served as a Secretary of State and his brother Allen Dulles was a Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Both were major figures in the Cold War and were crusaders against communism. Previous Parallax Views guests such as Andrew Bacevich, Greg Poulgrain, and, most notably, Stephen Kinzer, who wrote The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War, have all been extremely critical of the Dulles legacy. John D. Wilsey, although sharing many of those criticisms, was interested in examining John Foster Dulles from a different angle. Namely the role of Dulles' faith in his endeavors as a diplomat and Cold Warrior. Specifically, what was the influence of Protestant Christianity on John Foster Dulles? In this conversation we delve into the theological framework that informed the ways Dulles thoughts about diplomacy and his view that Soviet communism was an existential threat to the U.S. We delve into the ways in which diplomat George Kennan found Dulles' framework and the religious influence on it to be dangerous and Manichean in nature. We also look at the way in which Dulles believed that the Church would play an important role in the fight against Soviet communism. Other issues covered include moral law and Christianity, the early life of John Foster Dulles, Christian nationalism (a subject that Wilsey has written extensively on), the view of the Cold War as a Manichean battle between good and evil, the paradoxes and contradictions of Dulles' thought and diplomacy, Protestant liberalism, the Federal Council of Churches, WWII, the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation, Dulles as product of his time, U.S. covert wars during the Cold War, comparing and contrasting Martin Luther King and John Foster Dulles (Wilsey devotes a whole chapter to this in his book American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion: Reassessing the History of an Idea), and much, much more. Those looking for a conversation about whether Dulles was right or wrong in his views may be disappointed by this conversation. Wilsey's book is ultimately a religious biography of Dulles rather than a critical look at his role in foreign policy. However, I believe it nonetheless sheds light on Dulles and his thinking regardless where one stands on his whether his influence on U.S. foreign policy was positive or negative.

Full Text of ReadingsMemorial of Saint Monica Lectionary: 430All podcast readings are produced by the USCCB and are from the Catholic Lectionary, based on the New American Bible and approved for use in the United States _______________________________________The Saint of the day is Saint MonicaThe circumstances of St. Monica's life could have made her a nagging wife, a bitter daughter-in-law, and a despairing parent, yet she did not give way to any of these temptations. Although she was a Christian, her parents gave her in marriage to a pagan, Patricius, who lived in her hometown of Tagaste in North Africa. Patricius had some redeeming features, but he had a violent temper and was licentious. Monica also had to bear with a cantankerous mother-in-law who lived in her home. Patricius criticized his wife because of her charity and piety, but always respected her. Monica's prayers and example finally won her husband and mother-in-law to Christianity. Her husband died in 371, one year after his baptism. Monica had at least three children who survived infancy. The oldest, Augustine, is the most famous. At the time of his father's death, Augustine was 17 and a rhetoric student in Carthage. Monica was distressed to learn that her son had accepted the Manichean heresy—"all flesh is evil"—and was living an immoral life. For a while, she refused to let him eat or sleep in her house. Then one night she had a vision that assured her Augustine would return to the faith. From that time on, she stayed close to her son, praying and fasting for him. In fact she often stayed much closer than Augustine wanted. When he was 29, Augustine decided to go to Rome to teach rhetoric. Monica was determined to go along. One night he told his mother that he was going to the dock to say goodbye to a friend. Instead he set sail for Rome. Monica was heartbroken when she learned of Augustine's trick, but she still followed him. She arrived in Rome only to find that he had left for Milan. Although travel was difficult, Monica pursued him to Milan. In Milan, Augustine came under the influence of the bishop, St. Ambrose, who also became Monica's spiritual director. She accepted his advice in everything and had the humility to give up some practices that had become second nature to her. Monica became a leader of the devout women in Milan as she had been in Tagaste. She continued her prayers for Augustine during his years of instruction. At Easter 387, St. Ambrose baptized Augustine and several of his friends. Soon after, his party left for Africa. Although no one else was aware of it, Monica knew her life was near the end. She told Augustine, “Son, nothing in this world now affords me delight. I do not know what there is now left for me to do or why I am still here, all my hopes in this world being now fulfilled.” She became ill shortly after and suffered severely for nine days before her death. Almost all we know about St. Monica is in the writings of St. Augustine, especially his Confessions. Reflection Today, with Google searches, online shopping, text messages, tweets, and instant credit, we have little patience for things that take time. Likewise, we want instant answers to our prayers. Monica is a model of patience. Her long years of prayer, coupled with a strong, well-disciplined character, finally led to the conversion of her hot-tempered husband, her cantankerous mother-in-law and her brilliant but wayward son, Augustine. Saint Monica is the Patron Saint of: Alcoholics Conversion Mothers Wives Learn more about Saint Monica! Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

Matt Kibbe is joined by Tony Woodlief, author of "I, Citizen," to talk about how Americans can address political polarization and the increasingly fragmented communities that leave us at each other's throats. If you only view the country through the lens of social media, you could be forgiven for thinking that the country is on the brink of a civil war. The reality is that we are less divided than we seem. The tendency to break everything down into Left and Right doesn't actually reflect people's real attitudes. In reality, most people fall somewhere in the middle, or else have a complex blend of views from both sides of the aisle. The kind of Manichean thinking that reduces everything to red versus blue is what's dividing us more than our actual views. I, Citizen: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1641772107/