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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 2: is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with

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Speaker 3: part three of our series looking at the concept of authenticity. Now,

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Speaker 3: we had a little break in the middle of our

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Speaker 3: series there because on Tuesday of this week we had

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Speaker 3: an interview that you recorded, Rob that was already scheduled

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Speaker 3: to come out on that date, So there's a little

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Speaker 3: bit of discontinuity here, but we are picking up where

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Speaker 3: we left off last Thursday, that's right. So in part

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Speaker 3: one of this series, we started by trying to pick

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Speaker 3: apart the different common usages of authenticity, and I explained

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Speaker 3: why I became interested in the subject. It's one of

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Speaker 3: those ideas that I think is very very good for

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Speaker 3: exploration because it's like a commonly used concept that actually

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Speaker 3: is very vague, and there's a lot of equivocation and

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Speaker 3: using the idea in different ways. So we tried to

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Speaker 3: pick apart some of these different usages of authenticity what

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Speaker 3: people mean when they invoke the idea, and we looked

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Speaker 3: at a study showing that we are not as good

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Speaker 3: as we think we are at perceiving authenticity in others.

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Speaker 3: In Part two of the series, we talked about authenticity

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Speaker 3: in art and entertainment, what it means to look for

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Speaker 3: authenticity and musical artists and other types of art. We

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Speaker 3: talked about the Orson Wells movie F for Fake, and

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Speaker 3: then we discussed a specialized idea of authenticity that was

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Speaker 3: proposed by the art critic Walter Benjamin and how it

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Speaker 3: relates to changes in media technology over the centuries. And

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Speaker 3: here we are once again to examine a couple other

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Speaker 3: facets of authenticity. Now, the thing I wanted to talk

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Speaker 3: about today was the interaction between and relationship between honesty

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Speaker 3: and authenticity. We talked about this a bit in part

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Speaker 3: one of this series because we we're alluding to the

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Speaker 3: way that there is an apparent relationship between authenticity and honesty.

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Speaker 3: You know, there is some overlap between the two ideas,

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Speaker 3: but they are not usually understood to be the same thing.

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Speaker 3: And an easy illustration of that is characters both real

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Speaker 3: and fictional, who are known to tell lies but are

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Speaker 3: often thought of as authentic. And yet, despite this clear

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Speaker 3: illustration that the two concepts are not exactly the same thing,

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Speaker 3: we sometimes behave as if they're the same thing. We

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Speaker 3: like forget that we use these ideas differently because we

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Speaker 3: feel like if somebody is authentic, well, that means we

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Speaker 3: can trust them. So I ended up looking at a

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Speaker 3: paper for a trying to find a careful analysis of

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Speaker 3: the similarities and differences between honesty and authenticity, how these

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Speaker 3: ideas are culturally understood, and in how they manifest in behavior.

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Speaker 3: So this paper is by Erica R. Bailey and Sheena

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Speaker 3: Siing are published in current opinion in psychology called Yours

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Speaker 3: Truly on the Complex Relationship between Authenticity and Honesty published

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Speaker 3: in the year twenty twenty two, and Erica Bailey was

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Speaker 3: also one of the authors of the study we looked

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Speaker 3: at in Part one, the one about how we're not

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Speaker 3: as good as we think we are at determining whether

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Speaker 3: other people are being authentic. Now, as a starting point,

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Speaker 3: this paper gives essentially the same understanding of authenticity that

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Speaker 3: we talked about in part one. This will be complicated

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Speaker 3: when we start introducing survey responses and how people actually

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Speaker 3: use the idea of authenticity and how it relates to

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Speaker 3: honesty and so forth. But we start off with the

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Speaker 3: idea that quote a person is authentic when they genuinely

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Speaker 3: express their true inner qualities and feelings. In other words,

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Speaker 3: the inside matches the outside. Our outward behavior is consistent

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Speaker 3: with our private inner feelings, thoughts, and character. So by contrast,

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Speaker 3: a person would usually be considered inauthentic if they say

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Speaker 3: things they don't really feel or think, or if they

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Speaker 3: act in ways that are inconsistent with who they are inside,

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Speaker 3: or if they don't express their inner self in the

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Speaker 3: outside world. And The authors begin the paper by mentioning

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Speaker 3: an episode in the life of the eighteenth century Swiss

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Speaker 3: philosopher Jean jacqu Rousseau, where they write, quote, in order

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Speaker 3: to be more authentic, he committed to expressing himself honestly

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Speaker 3: in every single moment of his day, certain that this

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Speaker 3: brutal truth telling, devoid of any cowing to the social context,

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Speaker 3: would allow him to manifest his authentic self. And I

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Speaker 3: gotta say that sounds absolutely insufferable.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, who wants to hang out with this guy?

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Speaker 3: I mean? And I'm a big fan of being honest.

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Speaker 3: I think honesty is a good virtue that people should have.

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Speaker 3: You know, you should not tell lies to people. You

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Speaker 3: should try to be honest with people generally. But this

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Speaker 3: is actually describing something different than honesty, saying every thought

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Speaker 3: that pops into you head, telling friends and family everything

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Speaker 3: they do that bothers you. Being being honest, you know,

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Speaker 3: quote honest in the most brutal way is always seems

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Speaker 3: like a kind of nasty way to live. It's going

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Speaker 3: to cause other people grief and just alienate you from

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Speaker 3: everyone and everything you care about.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this, you're talking about a life without decorum,

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Speaker 2: without patience, without you know, the limited capacity to be

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Speaker 2: supportive of others because sometimes and being supportive of of people,

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Speaker 2: you know, friends and family with their maybe sometimes half

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Speaker 2: formed ideas in some cases, like you don't want to

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Speaker 2: be brutally honest. You want to be supportive. You want

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Speaker 2: to you want to maybe push them in the right direction,

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Speaker 2: But being you know, completely brutally honest is maybe not

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Speaker 2: the right approach.

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Speaker 3: I think that's right. I mean, I think there is

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Speaker 3: a lot of middle ground between lying to people and

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Speaker 3: or enabling delusions versus being brutally honest to people in

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Speaker 3: a way that you know is like to hurt them

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Speaker 3: and just like avoiding tact altogether.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine just deciding a right from here on. Now,

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Speaker 2: I'm just going to be brutally truthful about everything. But

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Speaker 2: then like the then we get into that other quese

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Speaker 2: like what is truth right?

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Speaker 3: Right? You may in fact be mistaken about some of

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Speaker 3: the things that you think are brutally true when you

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Speaker 3: say them, in which case it would turn out that

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Speaker 3: it was really unproductive. Uh yeah, So this like raises

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Speaker 3: the question of whether it would even really be possible,

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Speaker 3: Like is this kind of radical authentic truth telling even

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Speaker 3: self consistent because there are momentary thoughts we have but

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Speaker 3: don't express, And are those actually truer reflections of our

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Speaker 3: inner selves than what we would say if we thought

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Speaker 3: about it some more before we talked? Mm hmm yeah

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Speaker 3: so or also is it are those more are like

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Speaker 3: expressions of momentary opinions or thoughts truer reflections of our

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Speaker 3: inner selves even than the choice not to speak certain situation.

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Speaker 3: Wouldn't that choice also flow from the self?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah. It reminds me of something I've mentioned before

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Speaker 2: on the show, the medieval doodle of a Christ like

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Speaker 2: bird or a bird like Christ if you rather, in

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Speaker 2: the margins of various manuscripts, and the idea it seems

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Speaker 2: based on what I've read is that thoughts rise from

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Speaker 2: the heart, they travel up through a very long neck

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Speaker 2: before they reach the lips, and therefore, like it's about

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Speaker 2: deciding whether you actually want those feelings to come out.

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Speaker 2: That is why the neck of the christ like individual,

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Speaker 2: the christ like bird here is very long, because there's

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Speaker 2: plenty of time to reflect on said thoughts and perhaps

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Speaker 2: decide not to say them yeah.

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Speaker 3: Or even decide whether you genuinely feel them exactly. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I think we've probably all had the experience of feeling

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Speaker 3: like we wanted to express something, only to think about

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Speaker 3: it for a minute and think, that's not really what

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Speaker 3: I feel.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, write out that great email, but don't send it today,

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Speaker 2: set it aside for tomorrow, and then a lot of

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Speaker 2: the times you'll realize, you know, that's not exactly what

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Speaker 2: I meant to say.

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Speaker 3: So, anyway, to come back to this relationship between authenticity

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Speaker 3: and honesty, from this example of Rousseau, you know, we

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Speaker 3: see someone at least partially equating authenticity and honesty, assuming

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Speaker 3: that to be authentic is the most honest way to live,

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Speaker 3: and that authenticity entails NonStop, moment to moment displays of

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Speaker 3: quote fearless honesty or brutal truth telling. And the authors

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Speaker 3: also quote another another writer in this paper named Valor,

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Speaker 3: who makes a similar equivalent, saying that honesty is defined

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Speaker 3: as quote a willingness to put one's authentic self in play.

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Speaker 3: But the authors actually propose a counter hypothesis in this paper.

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Speaker 3: They write that quote honesty is one of many tools

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Speaker 3: in the pursuit of authenticity, and that people will disregard

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Speaker 3: or discount honesty as authentic under specific condition. And I

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Speaker 3: want to be clear that they're not making a normative

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Speaker 3: argument like about how people should use the concepts of

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Speaker 3: honesty or authenticity. They're just trying to be descriptive and

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Speaker 3: discover how people actually do already use these concepts in

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Speaker 3: their day to day lives and in their self image.

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Speaker 3: So the authors investigate this idea of the relationship between

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Speaker 3: authenticity and honesty in several ways, and one thing they

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Speaker 3: do is a simple small survey with an open ended question.

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Speaker 3: They asked participants if they could describe a time in

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Speaker 3: their life when they quote, lied or did not tell

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Speaker 3: the truth in a way that was authentic or true

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Speaker 3: to themselves at the time, and the results of this

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Speaker 3: were that quote authentic dishonesty really did not generally seem

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Speaker 3: to people like an impossible situation or an incoherent concept.

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Speaker 3: People generated autobiographical examples of when they were dishonest in

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Speaker 3: a way they thought was authentic to themselves. Furthermore, and

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Speaker 3: here's the interesting part, the authors say that the examples

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Speaker 3: people gave of their own authentic dishonesty fell into basically

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Speaker 3: four categories. And I'll list these and describe them as

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Speaker 3: I go. So the first example is when the subject

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Speaker 3: was dishonest with other people in a way that they

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Speaker 3: were also not honest with themselves. So this category might

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Speaker 3: not be immediately intuitive, but I think it makes sense

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Speaker 3: if you see examples. So, the stories people tell seem

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Speaker 3: to be about lying to others about some objective situation,

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Speaker 3: for example, about a worrying health prognosis or bad outcomes

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Speaker 3: at work or school, or mental health struggles or something

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Speaker 3: like that, at the same time that they themselves were

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Speaker 3: in some way deluded or quote lying to themselves about

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Speaker 3: the situation. So, for example, I'm telling my parents that

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Speaker 3: I'm doing fine at college, but in reality, I am

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Speaker 3: failing my classes and I'm going through a mental health crisis,

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Speaker 3: and the person who says this might say, even though

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Speaker 3: I was lying to my parents about how well how

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Speaker 3: I was doing, I was being authentic because I was

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Speaker 3: also lying to myself. Essentially, I managed to truly convince

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Speaker 3: myself of the false things I was telling them.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, to borrow the catchphrase from stand up comedian Dusty Sligh,

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Speaker 2: we're having a good time like that can essentially be dishonest,

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Speaker 2: but you can believe in it, and other people can

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Speaker 2: believe in it even if it's not true in the moment.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. And actually that raises an interesting facet of this,

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Speaker 3: because it raises the question of what exactly it means

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Speaker 3: to quote lie to yourself. This is a common enough

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Speaker 3: concept that we've all heard of it, and probably you

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Speaker 3: have used it ourselves to describe something we've done. And

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Speaker 3: it seems to not be the same thing as simply

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Speaker 3: being convinced of a delusion. There's some overlap, but being

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Speaker 3: delusional can be entirely involuntary. You know like you, don't

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Speaker 3: you don't feel like you, or in any way the

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Speaker 3: cause of being deluded about something. But when people say

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Speaker 3: I was lying to myself, I think they usually mean

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Speaker 3: there is some element, even if just a small element

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Speaker 3: of willfulness in believing in the delusion, like some part

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Speaker 3: of them knows better, but they are they are purposely

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Speaker 3: disregarding or ignoring that knowledge.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I mean, one easy example of this is,

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Speaker 2: like you thinking back to like the old days of

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Speaker 2: buying CDs, especially as a young person with money's a

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Speaker 2: lot tighter, Like you spend your money, you cannot you

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Speaker 2: can buy no other album this week, maybe this month,

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Speaker 2: And afterwards you're maybe a little less won over by

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Speaker 2: the album than you'd hoped, but you're kind of like

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Speaker 2: fooling yourself and like, Noah, this is good. I'm getting

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Speaker 2: I'm jamming to this. This, this was worth my money,

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Speaker 2: This is worth my time.

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Speaker 3: It's even got the bonus tracks.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's got the bonus tracks. It's like I thought

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Speaker 2: it was ten tracks. No, it's twelve tracks. I'd be

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Speaker 2: losing money if I didn't buy it.

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Speaker 3: Yes. So, However, despite this element of wilfulness, it seems

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Speaker 3: to at least in some cases, not rule out seeing

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Speaker 3: yourself as authentic when you represent that same misunderstanding of

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Speaker 3: reality to other people. So, like you take that CD

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Speaker 3: that you're talking yourself into thinking is so great, and

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Speaker 3: you show it to your friend and say it's so great.

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Speaker 3: You might not think you were being inauthentic there, because

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Speaker 3: you really worked yourself up to convince yourself it was great.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I was authentically delusional about the quality of this record,

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Speaker 2: and honestly, if you know me, you should have seen

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Speaker 2: that in me. You should have seen that in my

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Speaker 2: eyes and known to approach this recommendation with caution.

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Speaker 3: Okay. Other examples of quote authentic dishonesty that people gave.

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Speaker 3: There were some examples that were when being honest would

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Speaker 3: have threatened the subjects basic needs survival or employment. This

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Speaker 3: is the self protection category. A lot of these seem

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Speaker 3: to have to do with employment, which I think is

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Speaker 3: kind of revealing, but things like lying at work to

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Speaker 3: avoid revealing a mistake that could have cost the subject

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Speaker 3: their job. Another one that somebody gives is lying about

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Speaker 3: former job experience in order to get a new position,

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Speaker 3: and the subject in this example specifically says they feel

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Speaker 3: it was a good thing to do because they ended

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Speaker 3: up doing exceedingly well at the new job that they

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Speaker 3: lied in order to get.

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Speaker 2: Fake it. Do you make it right? I mean, that's

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Speaker 2: basically what we're alluding to.

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Speaker 3: That's what they're claiming. I mean, we can't evaluate if

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Speaker 3: it's true that they did exceedingly well, but you know,

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Speaker 3: for the sake of argument, we'll take it. Another one was,

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Speaker 3: and you understand this, somebody lying about psychiatric symptoms in

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Speaker 3: order to get admitted to a psych ward to avoid

258
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Speaker 3: being homeless. The subject says that this was authentic because

259
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Speaker 3: they were trying to escape living on the streets during winter,

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Speaker 3: which was extremely hard. So that is a lie. It's

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Speaker 3: hard to blame somebody for that. But in this case,

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Speaker 3: the subject not only saw that as justified, but they

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Speaker 3: said for that reason, it was authentic that they did that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, they're talking about survival here right.

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Speaker 3: At the same time, it does raise questions about what

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Speaker 3: authenticity means in this case. But we can come back

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Speaker 3: to that third question. When honesty would harm an important relationship,

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Speaker 3: you protecting a relationship, this is probably People can think

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Speaker 3: of examples like this. A close friend says, does my

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Speaker 3: new haircut look good? And maybe you find nice things

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Speaker 3: to say about it, even if you don't actually love it.

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Speaker 3: People thought this was still authentic behavior. And then there

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Speaker 3: are much more serious examples such as like within family

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Speaker 3: and marital relationships, like protecting loved ones from negative judgments

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Speaker 3: that you or others would have made about them.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think both these are very understandable. I mean,

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Speaker 2: the haircut is probably the best example, because there is

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Speaker 2: a line, there is a line at which your close

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Speaker 2: friend's haircut has become so bad that you do have

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Speaker 2: to say something. You have to say, actually, this doesn't

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Speaker 2: look good. Come with me, we're gonna go get fixed

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Speaker 2: right now. You have a job interview tomorrow or something.

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Speaker 2: You know, we I'm a good enough friend to let

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Speaker 2: you know that we have to go fix this. But

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Speaker 2: there's a lot of room on that spectrum for just

286
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Speaker 2: saying yeah, it looks great, and that's what you're expected

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Speaker 2: to do as a friend.

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Speaker 3: Or in fact, in the haircut example, in this paper,

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Speaker 3: they're like the person describes things they found to say

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Speaker 3: about the haircut that were true, even though overall they

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Speaker 3: did not actually think it was good.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean, bad, bad haircuts happened, and you'll

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Speaker 2: grow out of them. You know, it's gonna be pretty

294
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Speaker 2: bad to take it to that next level and say

295
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Speaker 2: we've got to go fix this.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. I think the example was like, yeah, this

297
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Speaker 3: will really stand out, you know, putting a positive sounding

298
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Speaker 3: tone on that, but that'll grow in nicely. Yeah. And

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Speaker 3: then fourth final category, this one you can very much understand. Again,

300
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Speaker 3: it's hard to blame people for this when honesty would

301
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Speaker 3: threaten the survival or well being of someone else in

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Speaker 3: the protection of other people, So examples would include like

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Speaker 3: lying to protect people from physical danger, maybe like a

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Speaker 3: counselor lying to potentially abusive family members that you don't

305
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Speaker 3: know about somebody's whereabouts, or maybe to protect someone from

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Speaker 3: information that would be devastating to them. So it's interesting

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Speaker 3: that some of these versions of authenticity do sort of

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Speaker 3: go along with the inside matches the outside definition, but

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Speaker 3: some do not. Some of these are simply cases of

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Speaker 3: people lying or misrepresenting themselves in a situation where they believe,

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Speaker 3: in some way it was justified. So in those cases,

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Speaker 3: authenticity would seem to mean something different than than the

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Speaker 3: way we've been using it. It would seem to mean

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Speaker 3: morally justified, regardless of whether you were expressing your true

315
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Speaker 3: feelings on the outside or not. And these examples just

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Speaker 3: seem to reinforce to me how fluid our concept of

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Speaker 3: authenticity is. Once again, despite how important it is in

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Speaker 3: these day to day judgments we make about people and

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Speaker 3: about ourselves, it seems to have ill defined boundaries, and

320
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Speaker 3: the authors review some other findings that further illuminate and

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Speaker 3: complicate the relationship between honesty and authenticity. For example, and

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Speaker 3: this came up in Part one, in order to evaluate

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Speaker 3: whether your external behavior is consistent with your true self,

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Speaker 3: you have to both know what your true self is

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Speaker 3: and be able to objectively observe and analyze your external behavior,

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Speaker 3: and both of those tasks are non trivial. The authors

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Speaker 3: point out that both of them are problematic even given

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Speaker 3: what we know from other psychology studies, because studies show

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Speaker 3: systematic biases in how we perceive ourselves. People tend to

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Speaker 3: see themselves as morally better than the average person, and

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Speaker 3: experiments show that people have selective memories of events end

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Speaker 3: of information that help bolster a positive self image. So

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Speaker 3: this can make research about honesty and authenticity rather difficult

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Speaker 3: because both honesty and authenticity people take to have moral implications,

335
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Speaker 3: so people are motivated to exaggerate the extent to which

336
00:19:15,640 --> 00:19:19,240
Speaker 3: they are both in self reports. Though the authors do

337
00:19:19,320 --> 00:19:22,000
Speaker 3: point to one pretty interesting study from twenty twenty that

338
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Speaker 3: used a bit of trickery to look into whether self

339
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Speaker 3: reported and even test evaluated authenticity might be biased or

340
00:19:31,800 --> 00:19:36,040
Speaker 3: strategic self presentation. So this other paper I went and

341
00:19:36,080 --> 00:19:39,439
Speaker 3: looked at was by William hart at All, published in

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Speaker 3: Personality and Individual Differences in twenty twenty, called to be

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Speaker 3: or to appear to be evidence that authentic people seek

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Speaker 3: to appear authentic rather than be authentic. So the authors

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00:19:52,320 --> 00:19:56,479
Speaker 3: in their abstract right quote participants numbering two hundred and

346
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Speaker 3: forty completed a bogus color gazing task under the presumption

347
00:20:01,760 --> 00:20:07,640
Speaker 3: that authentic people see colors become more or less intense

348
00:20:07,760 --> 00:20:10,280
Speaker 3: while gazing at them. And these were the two conditions,

349
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Speaker 3: the more intense condition and the less intense condition. And

350
00:20:13,359 --> 00:20:17,040
Speaker 3: they say that quote participants reported perceiving color as more

351
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Speaker 3: intense in the more intense condition. But this biased responding

352
00:20:21,400 --> 00:20:27,000
Speaker 3: consistent with appearing authentic, was enhanced by trait authenticity indicators.

353
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Speaker 3: So to paraphrase there, participants were told that other studies

354
00:20:33,280 --> 00:20:36,399
Speaker 3: have found that more authentic people will see the color

355
00:20:36,480 --> 00:20:40,560
Speaker 3: of this block either intensify or de intensify, and in

356
00:20:40,640 --> 00:20:44,360
Speaker 3: reality the colors did not change at all. And then

357
00:20:44,400 --> 00:20:48,560
Speaker 3: the experiment found that on average, people who rated themselves

358
00:20:48,680 --> 00:20:52,440
Speaker 3: as more authentic on a self assessment test were more

359
00:20:52,560 --> 00:20:55,520
Speaker 3: likely to claim they saw the color change in line

360
00:20:55,600 --> 00:20:58,960
Speaker 3: with whatever they thought an authentic person was supposed to see. So,

361
00:20:59,080 --> 00:21:01,239
Speaker 3: in other words, there was some amount of interest in

362
00:21:01,359 --> 00:21:06,080
Speaker 3: either lying or in perceiving reality differently in order to

363
00:21:06,200 --> 00:21:10,840
Speaker 3: protect the idea of an authentic self. So this is

364
00:21:10,880 --> 00:21:13,320
Speaker 3: a piece of evidence that maybe not all the time,

365
00:21:13,359 --> 00:21:15,760
Speaker 3: but probably some of the time, maybe a lot of

366
00:21:15,760 --> 00:21:20,879
Speaker 3: the time, authenticity itself is a strategic performance e g.

367
00:21:21,720 --> 00:21:27,479
Speaker 3: Inauthentic behavior in service of appearing to be authentic. So

368
00:21:27,560 --> 00:21:31,080
Speaker 3: it's interesting to pair this with that study, that finding

369
00:21:31,240 --> 00:21:33,719
Speaker 3: from part one about how people are not good at

370
00:21:33,800 --> 00:21:36,560
Speaker 3: judging who is authentic and who is not, at least

371
00:21:36,560 --> 00:21:40,200
Speaker 3: when compared with self assessments, which of course are themselves

372
00:21:40,240 --> 00:21:44,160
Speaker 3: possibly misleading. So I want to pause briefly here before

373
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Speaker 3: you lose all hope, because remember that studies like this

374
00:21:47,119 --> 00:21:51,439
Speaker 3: are observing trends and tendencies on average in behavior, not

375
00:21:51,560 --> 00:21:54,679
Speaker 3: like totalizing realities about all people all the time. So

376
00:21:55,200 --> 00:21:57,919
Speaker 3: I would not walk away from these kinds of findings thinking,

377
00:21:58,400 --> 00:22:00,840
Speaker 3: oh my god, life is a lie. Nobody is ever

378
00:22:00,880 --> 00:22:04,440
Speaker 3: been genuine. I don't think that's the takeaway. Personally, I

379
00:22:04,480 --> 00:22:07,240
Speaker 3: would think about it more like these types of studies

380
00:22:07,280 --> 00:22:12,280
Speaker 3: offer limited individual pieces of evidence, that often the social

381
00:22:12,320 --> 00:22:16,720
Speaker 3: impressions of authenticity that we form are misleading, that social

382
00:22:16,760 --> 00:22:20,879
Speaker 3: impressions of authenticity are often not what they seem, and

383
00:22:20,920 --> 00:22:23,399
Speaker 3: we should be careful about placing too much weight on

384
00:22:23,560 --> 00:22:27,680
Speaker 3: the authenticity assessments of people that we form, especially after

385
00:22:27,720 --> 00:22:30,879
Speaker 3: superficial interactions. So in other words, you know, I'd say

386
00:22:30,880 --> 00:22:34,359
Speaker 3: it's probably not a good strategy to decide whether you

387
00:22:34,440 --> 00:22:37,680
Speaker 3: trust someone with something important on the basis of whether

388
00:22:37,760 --> 00:22:40,360
Speaker 3: they give off an authentic vibe or not. It might

389
00:22:40,359 --> 00:22:43,479
Speaker 3: be better to look at like an objective track record

390
00:22:43,520 --> 00:22:46,919
Speaker 3: of their behavior in the past or something like that. Yeah.

391
00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:49,399
Speaker 2: But though, of course the conundrum is we do this

392
00:22:49,480 --> 00:22:52,080
Speaker 2: all the time, right, Yeah, And a great deal goes

393
00:22:52,119 --> 00:22:57,040
Speaker 2: into making sure that individuals put forward that vibe that

394
00:22:57,080 --> 00:23:01,760
Speaker 2: we trust, be that individual, sale person, a company spokesman,

395
00:23:02,680 --> 00:23:08,920
Speaker 2: a politician, a newscaster, I mean, you name it. We're

396
00:23:08,960 --> 00:23:13,080
Speaker 2: supposed to to instantly feel like, yeah, I trust this person.

397
00:23:13,160 --> 00:23:14,840
Speaker 2: This person seems to know what they're talking about, they

398
00:23:14,840 --> 00:23:16,920
Speaker 2: seem authentic. I don't need to look at a track

399
00:23:16,960 --> 00:23:19,320
Speaker 2: record I don't need to see any papers.

400
00:23:19,680 --> 00:23:21,879
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again, you know, it's not that nobody is

401
00:23:21,920 --> 00:23:25,560
Speaker 3: trustworthy or nobody is authentic. I think it's just more that,

402
00:23:25,720 --> 00:23:29,520
Speaker 3: like you know, more caution and careful analysis is required.

403
00:23:29,560 --> 00:23:32,880
Speaker 3: Maybe sometimes we are a bit naive in trusting how

404
00:23:32,880 --> 00:23:35,520
Speaker 3: good we are at judging the authenticity of others.

405
00:23:35,800 --> 00:23:37,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean sometimes it comes down to the fact that, yes,

406
00:23:38,080 --> 00:23:42,040
Speaker 2: more homework would be required to make a really accurate judgment,

407
00:23:42,320 --> 00:23:45,080
Speaker 2: but we also often don't have time to make do

408
00:23:45,119 --> 00:23:50,000
Speaker 2: that homework, you know. Like I'm thinking particularly about local elections,

409
00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:54,520
Speaker 2: looking back now on a local election maybe like a

410
00:23:54,560 --> 00:23:56,800
Speaker 2: couple of cycles ago, there are a lot of local

411
00:23:56,840 --> 00:24:00,560
Speaker 2: candidates going through this one position and getting a lot

412
00:24:00,560 --> 00:24:03,600
Speaker 2: of information about these candidates nice you know, big sheets

413
00:24:03,760 --> 00:24:06,399
Speaker 2: put in your mailbox, and sometimes they drop by the house.

414
00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:10,520
Speaker 2: And I had one interaction with one of the candidates

415
00:24:10,520 --> 00:24:12,880
Speaker 2: who dropped by the house, and then afterwards I was like, oh, yeah,

416
00:24:12,880 --> 00:24:13,400
Speaker 2: she's the one.

417
00:24:14,200 --> 00:24:14,560
Speaker 3: Yeah.

418
00:24:14,800 --> 00:24:16,840
Speaker 2: It was just it was totally a vibe thing. It

419
00:24:16,880 --> 00:24:19,960
Speaker 2: was just like she seems nice, and and I've seen

420
00:24:20,000 --> 00:24:22,760
Speaker 2: that the literature is coming through the mail about this candidate.

421
00:24:23,040 --> 00:24:25,760
Speaker 2: They're definitely on the ballot. I got a good vibe

422
00:24:25,760 --> 00:24:27,159
Speaker 2: off of them, they're the one, but I did not

423
00:24:27,280 --> 00:24:29,600
Speaker 2: do the homework. I think later on I did do

424
00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:31,639
Speaker 2: a little bit more homework and I realized, Okay, I

425
00:24:31,640 --> 00:24:33,720
Speaker 2: need to be more informed about this. But at least

426
00:24:33,720 --> 00:24:35,040
Speaker 2: for a while there, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah,

427
00:24:35,080 --> 00:24:36,639
Speaker 2: that's that's the candidate I'm voting for.

428
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:39,880
Speaker 3: I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, it's in

429
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:42,320
Speaker 3: that specific example, but in many things in life, you

430
00:24:42,359 --> 00:24:44,720
Speaker 3: just feel like it's it is. It would be a

431
00:24:44,800 --> 00:24:47,840
Speaker 3: prohibitive investment of time to try to get as much

432
00:24:47,840 --> 00:24:50,600
Speaker 3: information as you feel like you would actually need. Yeah,

433
00:24:50,720 --> 00:24:52,760
Speaker 3: so it's just like how are you supposed to live?

434
00:24:53,280 --> 00:24:55,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I guess the challenge is just sort of

435
00:24:55,920 --> 00:24:59,520
Speaker 2: to have some level of self awareness when we're doing that,

436
00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:04,640
Speaker 2: so that we can we can avoid making the wrong

437
00:25:04,720 --> 00:25:05,440
Speaker 2: choices in life.

438
00:25:05,720 --> 00:25:08,480
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, or at least, I don't know, be conscious

439
00:25:08,520 --> 00:25:10,960
Speaker 3: of ways that we are vulnerable to being swayed.

440
00:25:11,320 --> 00:25:13,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, Because of course you also don't have to. You

441
00:25:13,520 --> 00:25:15,159
Speaker 2: just don't have time to be like, prove it faker

442
00:25:15,640 --> 00:25:17,200
Speaker 2: everybody that comes at you, you know.

443
00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:21,040
Speaker 3: But even then, I mean, like another question is is

444
00:25:21,560 --> 00:25:25,320
Speaker 3: imagine somebody is actually being quote authentic. They are truly

445
00:25:25,400 --> 00:25:28,520
Speaker 3: representing their inner thoughts and feelings versus somebody else who

446
00:25:28,560 --> 00:25:32,359
Speaker 3: is not. Is that necessarily actually a better a better leader,

447
00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:46,240
Speaker 3: or a better officeholder? Not necessarily Yeah. This paper looked

448
00:25:46,280 --> 00:25:49,440
Speaker 3: at several other studies in various domains about the relationship

449
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:53,680
Speaker 3: between honesty and authenticity. One was cultural variation in how

450
00:25:53,800 --> 00:25:58,840
Speaker 3: seemingly honest expressions of internal states relate to perceptions of authenticity.

451
00:25:59,720 --> 00:26:03,679
Speaker 3: They at a study from twenty fourteen that compared perceptions

452
00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:07,240
Speaker 3: of authenticity among both German and Chinese participants, and this

453
00:26:07,359 --> 00:26:11,480
Speaker 3: experiment found that you take a fictional character and you

454
00:26:11,600 --> 00:26:16,360
Speaker 3: have them list either their likes and their dislikes or

455
00:26:16,520 --> 00:26:21,560
Speaker 3: just their likes. And this experiment found that the character

456
00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:24,640
Speaker 3: was judged to be more authentic by German participants if

457
00:26:24,640 --> 00:26:28,080
Speaker 3: they listed both their likes and dislikes, but judged as

458
00:26:28,119 --> 00:26:31,199
Speaker 3: more authentic by the Chinese participants if they listed just

459
00:26:31,320 --> 00:26:35,760
Speaker 3: their likes and not their dislikes. Now, in both cases,

460
00:26:35,800 --> 00:26:39,760
Speaker 3: the likes and dislikes were presented as honest expressions, but

461
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:44,120
Speaker 3: there were apparently some likely cultural differences in what types

462
00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:48,800
Speaker 3: of honest expression were thought of as displaying authentic behavior.

463
00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:50,400
Speaker 2: That's interesting.

464
00:26:50,720 --> 00:26:54,280
Speaker 3: There were also some studies in the political context, and

465
00:26:54,720 --> 00:26:56,840
Speaker 3: some of these findings can be a little bit unsettling.

466
00:26:57,160 --> 00:26:59,840
Speaker 3: The authors mentioned a twenty eighteen study by hall At

467
00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:04,320
Speaker 3: which found that in the case of a hypothetical political

468
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:09,480
Speaker 3: demagogue who told flagrant and provable lies, people could still

469
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:13,880
Speaker 3: believe the lying demagogue to be authentic, and that mere

470
00:27:14,240 --> 00:27:17,760
Speaker 3: partisan affiliation was not sufficient to achieve this view of

471
00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:21,399
Speaker 3: the flagrantly lying demagogue is authentic. The other condition that

472
00:27:21,480 --> 00:27:25,560
Speaker 3: was necessary was that the participant viewed the political system

473
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:31,159
Speaker 3: as illegitimate, so kind of interesting finding like lies, flagrant

474
00:27:31,200 --> 00:27:34,560
Speaker 3: lies can be perceived as authentic if you think the

475
00:27:34,760 --> 00:27:38,359
Speaker 3: norms of the system under which you live is not legitimate,

476
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:42,000
Speaker 3: and in a way, kind of the flagrant lying, the

477
00:27:42,119 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 3: violation of those norms comes to be perceived as some

478
00:27:45,040 --> 00:27:49,600
Speaker 3: sort of righteous rebuke. In a similar domain, experiments have

479
00:27:49,640 --> 00:27:53,280
Speaker 3: found a tendency for people to view expressions of prejudice

480
00:27:53,320 --> 00:27:57,400
Speaker 3: and politically offensive language as authentic as long as they

481
00:27:57,520 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 3: held the same prejudiced views as the person may The expression.

482
00:28:01,359 --> 00:28:03,760
Speaker 2: That's that's a weird one to unwrap, because I feel

483
00:28:03,800 --> 00:28:10,520
Speaker 2: like you can you can judge someone's offensive language and

484
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:13,920
Speaker 2: expressions of prejudice as being authentic even if you don't

485
00:28:13,960 --> 00:28:19,720
Speaker 2: share them. Yeah, but this is saying that there's a

486
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:22,720
Speaker 2: tendency for people to view expressions of prejudice and politically

487
00:28:22,720 --> 00:28:25,520
Speaker 2: offensive language as authentic as long as they hold those

488
00:28:25,560 --> 00:28:28,200
Speaker 2: same views, right, Okay.

489
00:28:28,160 --> 00:28:31,560
Speaker 3: Right, or maybe just to judge the trait authenticity in

490
00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:37,560
Speaker 3: the person making the expression, rather than evaluating the expressions themselves.

491
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:40,680
Speaker 2: Okay, So this is kind of a someone's finally saying,

492
00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:43,560
Speaker 2: it's sort of a thinking with the language.

493
00:28:43,600 --> 00:28:47,440
Speaker 3: Gotcha exactly. Yeah. So, given that whole blizzard of different

494
00:28:47,480 --> 00:28:52,320
Speaker 3: findings in the seemingly paradoxical relationship between honesty and authenticity,

495
00:28:52,760 --> 00:28:56,840
Speaker 3: the authors propose a model of how these two concepts

496
00:28:56,920 --> 00:29:01,480
Speaker 3: actually interact, and they call it a coherent model. So,

497
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:06,360
Speaker 3: to use their own words here, quote, A coherence perspective

498
00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:11,400
Speaker 3: stresses the importance of how much new information makes sense

499
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:14,680
Speaker 3: in light of what is already known or believed to

500
00:29:14,720 --> 00:29:17,840
Speaker 3: be true. And then later, a little later, they say, quote,

501
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:22,040
Speaker 3: we propose that the more coherent the mental image of

502
00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:27,280
Speaker 3: a target person is, the more authentic they will seem. Similarly,

503
00:29:27,480 --> 00:29:31,760
Speaker 3: the more coherent a mental version of oneself is, the

504
00:29:31,800 --> 00:29:35,800
Speaker 3: more authentic they will report being. So does that make sense.

505
00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:41,120
Speaker 3: It's about like the idea of having a consistent mental

506
00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:44,920
Speaker 3: picture of the person, whether that's yourself or of another person,

507
00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:48,000
Speaker 3: that you feel like you fully understand and all the

508
00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:53,520
Speaker 3: information you have checks out with that image. So, under

509
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 3: this model, in both the self perception and in perception

510
00:29:56,640 --> 00:30:00,280
Speaker 3: by others, if behaving honestly in a given situation cuation

511
00:30:00,800 --> 00:30:04,240
Speaker 3: will help increase the coherence of that self image of

512
00:30:04,320 --> 00:30:08,360
Speaker 3: that image of the person, honesty will be perceived as authentic.

513
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:12,280
Speaker 3: And if honest behavior would be inconsistent with that self

514
00:30:12,280 --> 00:30:16,280
Speaker 3: image or helps that image of the person make less sense,

515
00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:20,880
Speaker 3: then it will be perceived as authentic to behave dishonestly.

516
00:30:21,640 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 3: So the question is what makes sense given the image

517
00:30:25,280 --> 00:30:28,200
Speaker 3: you have of the person in question. And I think

518
00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:30,240
Speaker 3: this goes a long way to explain a lot of

519
00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:34,560
Speaker 3: these so called authentic lies, which are either rationalized as

520
00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:37,680
Speaker 3: authentic to the self because they serve a higher moral

521
00:30:37,720 --> 00:30:40,960
Speaker 3: good and the protection of others, or because they are

522
00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:44,360
Speaker 3: justified in some way in self preservation or in the

523
00:30:44,400 --> 00:30:48,160
Speaker 3: protection of an important relationship, or because at the time

524
00:30:48,280 --> 00:30:51,160
Speaker 3: the person told them they were also quote lying to

525
00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:55,160
Speaker 3: themselves in any case, they could be framed as making

526
00:30:55,360 --> 00:30:58,000
Speaker 3: sense based on the image of the self or the

527
00:30:58,040 --> 00:31:02,720
Speaker 3: image of the person inoperation at the time. So I

528
00:31:02,760 --> 00:31:07,120
Speaker 3: think the lies that people might see as inauthentic to

529
00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:10,760
Speaker 3: themselves would be ones that sort of undermine the self image,

530
00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:14,520
Speaker 3: that seem out of character, or don't make sense within

531
00:31:14,600 --> 00:31:16,320
Speaker 3: the coherent view of the person.

532
00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:17,680
Speaker 2: All right.

533
00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:22,280
Speaker 3: So, according to this model, people perceive authenticity as not

534
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:27,040
Speaker 3: the unvarnished expression of people's true inner feelings, but rather

535
00:31:27,720 --> 00:31:31,800
Speaker 3: acting in a way that is predictable and consistent based

536
00:31:31,880 --> 00:31:34,560
Speaker 3: on the image of that person that they already have

537
00:31:34,680 --> 00:31:38,480
Speaker 3: in their head. Okay, And this makes a lot of

538
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:40,880
Speaker 3: sense to me. I think this is a good model

539
00:31:40,920 --> 00:31:44,560
Speaker 3: of how people most often use the idea of authenticity,

540
00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:47,360
Speaker 3: but there's still so much variation in how it's applied,

541
00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:49,720
Speaker 3: and I think plenty of reason that we should be

542
00:31:49,720 --> 00:31:52,920
Speaker 3: cautious about relying too much on our heuristic judgments of

543
00:31:52,960 --> 00:31:54,160
Speaker 3: authenticity in others.

544
00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:57,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, because Yeah, like we've been saying on one love,

545
00:31:57,240 --> 00:31:59,000
Speaker 2: you can't go through life accusing everyone of being a

546
00:31:59,000 --> 00:32:03,280
Speaker 2: faker and assuming that no one is being genuine, that

547
00:32:03,360 --> 00:32:06,360
Speaker 2: no one is authentic. But on the on the other hand,

548
00:32:06,560 --> 00:32:08,680
Speaker 2: you know, the reverse is true as well, Like it

549
00:32:08,720 --> 00:32:12,280
Speaker 2: pays to have some level of self analysis about uh,

550
00:32:13,040 --> 00:32:15,160
Speaker 2: to what extent we're just you know, having these gut

551
00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:19,200
Speaker 2: impulses and believing this person or believing that person. We

552
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:21,160
Speaker 2: should be able to take it apart to some degree.

553
00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 2: Uh though as we've looked at though, that can be

554
00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:25,480
Speaker 2: difficult given all that's going on.

555
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:28,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, just to I would say my own thoughts here.

556
00:32:28,960 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 3: This is not necessarily based on anything we've read in

557
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:35,680
Speaker 3: this research that I think with like interpersonal relationships, friendships

558
00:32:35,680 --> 00:32:38,240
Speaker 3: and stuff like that, it's good to be more generous

559
00:32:38,280 --> 00:32:40,800
Speaker 3: at least at first, like unless you've you know, been

560
00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:43,200
Speaker 3: seriously betrayed in some way to be more generous and

561
00:32:43,480 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 3: and awarding of trust to people. And if it's ambiguous,

562
00:32:48,640 --> 00:32:51,120
Speaker 3: I guess the situation in which you want to be

563
00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:54,720
Speaker 3: careful is like if there is something material, like a

564
00:32:54,720 --> 00:32:57,960
Speaker 3: big material question on the line, and you're you're trying

565
00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:00,680
Speaker 3: to decide whether or not to trust somebody and they

566
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:02,800
Speaker 3: just give you an authentic vibe, you know, or are

567
00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:05,120
Speaker 3: you looking to invest a lot of money, are you

568
00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:08,280
Speaker 3: looking to like make somebody, put somebody an important leadership

569
00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:10,920
Speaker 3: position or something like that, and you're just going on

570
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 3: an authenticity vibe. I think that's a good time to

571
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:16,400
Speaker 3: put the brakes on and say, wait a minute, or

572
00:33:16,600 --> 00:33:18,160
Speaker 3: is there another way for me to look at this?

573
00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:19,400
Speaker 3: Can I be more objective?

574
00:33:19,920 --> 00:33:23,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, but like your favorite musical artists, just switch genres

575
00:33:23,800 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 2: a little bit, you know, give it the benefit of

576
00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:27,720
Speaker 2: the doubt. Let's tell you the worst thing that could happen.

577
00:33:27,800 --> 00:33:30,280
Speaker 3: Right, Okay, That's what I've got for today. But Rob,

578
00:33:30,320 --> 00:33:33,600
Speaker 3: I think you wanted to talk about authenticity and religion, right.

579
00:33:34,040 --> 00:33:37,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, this is a big, big topic to sort

580
00:33:37,840 --> 00:33:40,520
Speaker 2: of dip our toes in a little bit here, Authenticity

581
00:33:40,840 --> 00:33:45,680
Speaker 2: of religion, authenticity in religion. I mean, we've already discussed

582
00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:47,960
Speaker 2: how difficult it is to frame all this up in

583
00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:52,600
Speaker 2: terms of the self, you know, and the mysterious nature

584
00:33:52,720 --> 00:33:56,560
Speaker 2: of our own self and other selves, other individuals that

585
00:33:56,640 --> 00:33:59,920
Speaker 2: we just have to form mental models, sometimes very informed

586
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:03,200
Speaker 2: mental models, but still mental models of what their internal

587
00:34:03,200 --> 00:34:06,200
Speaker 2: life is like, what is what is truly authentic for

588
00:34:06,360 --> 00:34:08,560
Speaker 2: that individual where we have to form a model of

589
00:34:08,600 --> 00:34:11,400
Speaker 2: that in our own minds. But then getting into the

590
00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:15,959
Speaker 2: realm of religion, Uh, yeah, that's obviously a whole different

591
00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:20,160
Speaker 2: kettle of fish totally. So yeah, how broadly are we

592
00:34:20,200 --> 00:34:23,239
Speaker 2: supposed to think about authenticity in religion? You know, there's

593
00:34:23,239 --> 00:34:26,200
Speaker 2: a there's a lot to unpact there, you know, as

594
00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:29,399
Speaker 2: as we've already discussed multiple ways is it to think

595
00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:32,719
Speaker 2: about the concept of authenticity in this series? And on

596
00:34:32,800 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 2: top of that, there are various ways to think about religion,

597
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:37,680
Speaker 2: you know, especially on this show, we tend to dismiss

598
00:34:37,760 --> 00:34:40,560
Speaker 2: the idea of just like okay, religion, is that? Is

599
00:34:40,600 --> 00:34:42,759
Speaker 2: that fake or is that real? You know, like there's

600
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:46,040
Speaker 2: there's a lot of space between those two extremes, you know,

601
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:49,040
Speaker 2: you know, you could you can think about religion in

602
00:34:49,120 --> 00:34:51,759
Speaker 2: terms of whether it is one hundred percent accurate. Is

603
00:34:51,800 --> 00:34:54,840
Speaker 2: it a one hundred percent accurate understanding of reality? Is

604
00:34:54,880 --> 00:34:58,560
Speaker 2: it a legitimate cultural tradition? Is it are we talking

605
00:34:58,560 --> 00:35:01,160
Speaker 2: more about the realm of mythology? Are we talking more

606
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:05,560
Speaker 2: about a particular worldview? In many cases we may get

607
00:35:05,560 --> 00:35:08,239
Speaker 2: into like religion as literature, Like there's just so many

608
00:35:08,239 --> 00:35:12,040
Speaker 2: different ways to look at a given faith as opposed

609
00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:15,359
Speaker 2: to just you know, saying like is this a real

610
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:17,319
Speaker 2: story or is this a fake story? Like, no, there's

611
00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:19,520
Speaker 2: a lot of room between there just in terms of stories.

612
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:23,239
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean, I would say specifically for our audience.

613
00:35:23,360 --> 00:35:26,560
Speaker 3: I think one thing that that did a lot of

614
00:35:26,640 --> 00:35:29,560
Speaker 3: damage was, like in the two thousands in the United

615
00:35:29,560 --> 00:35:33,800
Speaker 3: States context, there was a lot of like evolution versus

616
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:38,480
Speaker 3: creationism debates and stuff that really forced people to think

617
00:35:38,520 --> 00:35:42,960
Speaker 3: about religion primarily in terms of whether the claims of

618
00:35:43,040 --> 00:35:47,000
Speaker 3: its founding myths are literally descriptive of facts that took

619
00:35:47,040 --> 00:35:49,440
Speaker 3: place in history. And I mean, obviously that is a

620
00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:51,920
Speaker 3: question you can ask, and it's fine to ask that question,

621
00:35:52,440 --> 00:35:55,440
Speaker 3: but I think that it caused a lot of people

622
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:58,880
Speaker 3: to see questions of religion only on those terms like

623
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:02,160
Speaker 3: is the bi Bible literally true or something in the

624
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:05,960
Speaker 3: US context, which I think is a sort of deranging

625
00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:09,360
Speaker 3: lens of focus that really causes people to miss a

626
00:36:09,360 --> 00:36:12,640
Speaker 3: lot of what religion means to people and the role

627
00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:13,840
Speaker 3: it plays in their lives.

628
00:36:14,680 --> 00:36:18,200
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, So before we even get into it,

629
00:36:18,239 --> 00:36:21,040
Speaker 2: just know that, like, that's largely I think where we're

630
00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:23,880
Speaker 2: coming from. It's largely where I think a lot of

631
00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:26,640
Speaker 2: the sources that I was looking at are coming from.

632
00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:30,839
Speaker 2: And this is a topic concerning authenticity and religion that

633
00:36:30,920 --> 00:36:33,200
Speaker 2: a lot of people have written on. So I'm not

634
00:36:33,239 --> 00:36:35,560
Speaker 2: going to be able to provide like a huge overview

635
00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:38,480
Speaker 2: of everything has been thought or said about this. But

636
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:41,560
Speaker 2: I was looking in one particular paper, this is a

637
00:36:41,800 --> 00:36:44,520
Speaker 2: Fake Religion or Deals of Authenticity in the Study of

638
00:36:44,600 --> 00:36:48,960
Speaker 2: Religion by David Chidester. At the top of this paper,

639
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:52,040
Speaker 2: he points to a quote from Thomas Edison, who apparently said,

640
00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:55,040
Speaker 2: I think this was maybe in some letters said, so

641
00:36:55,120 --> 00:36:57,759
Speaker 2: far as religion of the day is concerned, it is

642
00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:03,279
Speaker 2: a damned fake, okay, and so on one level, okay,

643
00:37:03,280 --> 00:37:05,160
Speaker 2: if we if we just go with this view, all right,

644
00:37:05,200 --> 00:37:08,520
Speaker 2: if Edison is correct here, if all religion is fake,

645
00:37:09,160 --> 00:37:12,040
Speaker 2: then no auth then no religion is authentic. Nothing can

646
00:37:12,040 --> 00:37:15,280
Speaker 2: be authentic. Everything is just a story created by human beings,

647
00:37:15,760 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 2: and we can just simply pack it up right there, right.

648
00:37:18,360 --> 00:37:21,319
Speaker 3: Well, I mean that would raise questions about what he

649
00:37:21,440 --> 00:37:24,560
Speaker 3: meant by a fake, like does that mean that it

650
00:37:24,600 --> 00:37:28,080
Speaker 3: is that like the founding myths are not literally true,

651
00:37:28,160 --> 00:37:30,799
Speaker 3: in which case, you know, I guess I'm more sympathetic

652
00:37:30,840 --> 00:37:33,560
Speaker 3: to that idea. But if he means like it is

653
00:37:33,600 --> 00:37:36,920
Speaker 3: all propagated from a place of inauthenticity, I don't think

654
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:39,480
Speaker 3: I would agree with that. So obviously the multiple meanings

655
00:37:39,520 --> 00:37:41,879
Speaker 3: of authenticity and fakeness come into play here.

656
00:37:42,120 --> 00:37:44,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, even in a statement like this that would at

657
00:37:44,280 --> 00:37:46,360
Speaker 2: least i'm a surface appear to be very you know,

658
00:37:46,600 --> 00:37:51,120
Speaker 2: like firm and extreme. So, as Chinaster points out, yeah,

659
00:37:51,160 --> 00:37:54,600
Speaker 2: it's not. It's not so simple to really weigh in

660
00:37:54,760 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 2: on authenticity and religion because even if this is even

661
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:00,600
Speaker 2: even if we agree with this and say, all right,

662
00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:04,200
Speaker 2: to some degree, all religions are fake, and yet some

663
00:38:04,360 --> 00:38:07,399
Speaker 2: religions are definitely faker than others. That is to say,

664
00:38:07,760 --> 00:38:11,360
Speaker 2: we have occasionally or even frequently, depending where you're looking,

665
00:38:11,480 --> 00:38:16,160
Speaker 2: we do contend with outright religious frauds. You can you know,

666
00:38:16,719 --> 00:38:19,799
Speaker 2: likely bust out some sliding scales on this idea as well.

667
00:38:19,800 --> 00:38:24,040
Speaker 2: But there are clear cases of hoaxes, pyramid schemes, and

668
00:38:24,160 --> 00:38:27,160
Speaker 2: cons that use the trappings of religion and are not

669
00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 2: engaging in what you might call good faith at any

670
00:38:30,200 --> 00:38:31,280
Speaker 2: level of the operation.

671
00:38:31,719 --> 00:38:34,799
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, so I can definitely see the difference there.

672
00:38:35,239 --> 00:38:39,640
Speaker 3: For example, faith healing. I might be skeptical of the

673
00:38:39,719 --> 00:38:43,080
Speaker 3: literal efficacy of faith healing in any case, at least

674
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:45,839
Speaker 3: you know, by other than placebo mechanisms, but there are

675
00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:48,879
Speaker 3: different types of faith healing. There are the kinds where

676
00:38:48,920 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 3: people believe they are engaging in something that is really

677
00:38:52,239 --> 00:38:54,520
Speaker 3: going to help people, and then there are people who

678
00:38:54,520 --> 00:38:57,799
Speaker 3: are pulling hoaxes. There are people who are like you know,

679
00:38:57,960 --> 00:39:00,600
Speaker 3: engaging in conscious fraud fakery.

680
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:06,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, and obviously with various with largest larger religious organizations

681
00:39:06,080 --> 00:39:09,399
Speaker 2: and groups and even like big churches or temples, there's

682
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:11,279
Speaker 2: room to have multiple things going on at once. You

683
00:39:11,320 --> 00:39:14,560
Speaker 2: could have conceivably easily have a situation where you have

684
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:18,239
Speaker 2: some individuals in an operation that are very much believers

685
00:39:18,800 --> 00:39:22,359
Speaker 2: and are being what you might call authentic, and then

686
00:39:22,440 --> 00:39:24,080
Speaker 2: you might have say, like, I don't know, maybe the

687
00:39:24,080 --> 00:39:29,279
Speaker 2: building department they're just bad, like they there's there's there's

688
00:39:29,320 --> 00:39:32,319
Speaker 2: there's something very suspicious about this spotch You know, you

689
00:39:32,320 --> 00:39:35,280
Speaker 2: can have multiple energies going on within the same movement. Obviously,

690
00:39:36,280 --> 00:39:39,200
Speaker 2: so anyway, there's sort of one way of thinking about it.

691
00:39:39,239 --> 00:39:44,560
Speaker 2: But uh, there have also been numerous inauthentic efforts or

692
00:39:44,600 --> 00:39:51,080
Speaker 2: attempts to communicate say, indigenous religions to foreign audiences. So

693
00:39:51,200 --> 00:39:54,280
Speaker 2: the author here, David Chidester, points to an extreme example

694
00:39:54,280 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 2: of this again like getting into just straight up con

695
00:39:57,760 --> 00:40:01,040
Speaker 2: artist here and that would be eighteen tenth century French

696
00:40:01,120 --> 00:40:06,359
Speaker 2: con artist George Saul Maanassar, who was who for years

697
00:40:06,400 --> 00:40:09,319
Speaker 2: convinced many in Britain that he was a native of

698
00:40:09,400 --> 00:40:13,640
Speaker 2: Formosa what we now know is Taiwan uh, and shared

699
00:40:13,680 --> 00:40:18,720
Speaker 2: all sorts of discompletely fraudulent information about his supposed life there,

700
00:40:19,520 --> 00:40:24,399
Speaker 2: shared an invented alphabet, uninvented religion and saying, oh, yeah,

701
00:40:24,440 --> 00:40:27,520
Speaker 2: this is the this is the real Formosian religion right here,

702
00:40:27,560 --> 00:40:29,479
Speaker 2: this is what I grew up on, and also making

703
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:32,600
Speaker 2: all sorts of crazy claims that okay, some of them

704
00:40:32,600 --> 00:40:34,680
Speaker 2: protective of his con like saying, well, of course I

705
00:40:34,719 --> 00:40:39,400
Speaker 2: have pale skin because upper class Formosians live underground obviously,

706
00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:44,120
Speaker 2: and uh, and he was, and he could he still had.

707
00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:46,120
Speaker 2: There were plenty of skeptics that were like, this guy's

708
00:40:46,520 --> 00:40:49,080
Speaker 2: not on the level. But they also included and they

709
00:40:49,080 --> 00:40:53,600
Speaker 2: also included Jesuits who had actually visited Formosa, but they

710
00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:57,120
Speaker 2: were largely apparently dismissed within Britain due to anti Catholic

711
00:40:57,160 --> 00:41:01,279
Speaker 2: sentiments of the time. So still, and there were people saying,

712
00:41:01,320 --> 00:41:04,360
Speaker 2: you're full of it, this doesn't sound right. But he

713
00:41:04,480 --> 00:41:07,799
Speaker 2: was good at at least fighting off these critiques, at

714
00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:12,680
Speaker 2: least in the short term, and his reports of life

715
00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:16,560
Speaker 2: over there contained all sorts of just you know, outrageous

716
00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:20,920
Speaker 2: and offensive concepts, including things like ritual cannibalism. But the

717
00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:26,040
Speaker 2: thing is they felt exotic enough to capture the attention

718
00:41:26,120 --> 00:41:31,040
Speaker 2: of his intended audience, like they met expectations to some degree,

719
00:41:31,120 --> 00:41:34,040
Speaker 2: like this is the kind of account that many in

720
00:41:34,080 --> 00:41:37,320
Speaker 2: the population were hungry for, even if the experts were saying,

721
00:41:38,160 --> 00:41:40,600
Speaker 2: I don't know if this is actually accurate. This doesn't

722
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:43,120
Speaker 2: match up with what I've heard from other individuals who

723
00:41:43,120 --> 00:41:46,360
Speaker 2: have traveled either to this particular place or to places

724
00:41:46,360 --> 00:41:46,920
Speaker 2: in the region.

725
00:41:47,080 --> 00:41:50,880
Speaker 3: Oh, that's interesting. It sounds almost like from his audience's perspective,

726
00:41:50,920 --> 00:41:54,359
Speaker 3: he was presenting a coherent view of a person that

727
00:41:54,560 --> 00:41:58,200
Speaker 3: made sense given their expectations of what someone from this

728
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:01,399
Speaker 3: place would be like. And thus like there, you know, yeah,

729
00:42:01,440 --> 00:42:02,360
Speaker 3: he's being authentic.

730
00:42:02,640 --> 00:42:07,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, and essentially created inauthentic religion, a fake religion, and

731
00:42:07,520 --> 00:42:10,880
Speaker 2: presented it as if it were real. Again, this is

732
00:42:10,920 --> 00:42:16,760
Speaker 2: an extreme example, and it's one that's grounded in outright fakery,

733
00:42:16,840 --> 00:42:19,719
Speaker 2: but there are various levels of the problem, even in

734
00:42:19,760 --> 00:42:23,800
Speaker 2: well meaning attempts to study and chronicle religion. Now he

735
00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:26,920
Speaker 2: gets into another obvious reality about all of this. Among

736
00:42:26,920 --> 00:42:30,160
Speaker 2: the faithful, the religion you practice is often talled is

737
00:42:30,160 --> 00:42:33,000
Speaker 2: the authentic one, and of course it's the other religions

738
00:42:33,160 --> 00:42:35,399
Speaker 2: that are the fakes. Like, that's just how this sort

739
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:37,640
Speaker 2: of thing works. That's how you build your worldview, that's

740
00:42:37,640 --> 00:42:39,640
Speaker 2: how you maintain the US versus the them.

741
00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:42,319
Speaker 3: Well, to be fair, I would say that there is

742
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:46,319
Speaker 3: actually variance among the religions in how they regard the

743
00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:50,399
Speaker 3: other religions. So there are some religions that are outright like, yes,

744
00:42:50,520 --> 00:42:53,520
Speaker 3: every other religion on earth except mine is a lie.

745
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:56,520
Speaker 3: It's a complete fraud. There are others that have kind

746
00:42:56,560 --> 00:42:58,840
Speaker 3: of like, uh, yes, other people may have part of

747
00:42:58,880 --> 00:43:01,000
Speaker 3: the truth or something like that.

748
00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:04,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, it definitely depends on the context and the exact

749
00:43:04,880 --> 00:43:08,440
Speaker 2: arrangement in time period. You know, there are there are

750
00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:12,120
Speaker 2: cases where you have different Like you can look to

751
00:43:12,560 --> 00:43:19,800
Speaker 2: some Protestant versus Catholic divisions. They have been rather extreme

752
00:43:19,840 --> 00:43:23,360
Speaker 2: and heated obviously at different times and in different places

753
00:43:24,600 --> 00:43:27,719
Speaker 2: in ways that seem like, you know, more heated than

754
00:43:27,800 --> 00:43:31,840
Speaker 2: would be the relationship between religions that were more different

755
00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:32,479
Speaker 2: from each other.

756
00:43:32,840 --> 00:43:36,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a part of that would be physical proximity

757
00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:42,319
Speaker 3: and thus having to negotiate sharing political spheres. But then

758
00:43:42,640 --> 00:43:45,759
Speaker 3: on top of that you could also attribute some of

759
00:43:45,760 --> 00:43:48,480
Speaker 3: it to what might be called the narcissism of small differences.

760
00:43:48,880 --> 00:43:52,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, and of course it's often the role of an

761
00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:55,839
Speaker 2: orthodox fate faith to point out who the heretics are

762
00:43:55,920 --> 00:43:58,200
Speaker 2: within their own faith or in the peripheries of that faith.

763
00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:01,839
Speaker 2: And these efforts, I guess in some cases, you know,

764
00:44:01,880 --> 00:44:06,800
Speaker 2: they may deal with identifying actual harmful splinter groups or extremists,

765
00:44:07,440 --> 00:44:09,400
Speaker 2: but it can also simply involve the other ing and

766
00:44:09,440 --> 00:44:13,560
Speaker 2: criticism of competition or you know, the endangerment of other

767
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:18,239
Speaker 2: practices of a of a mainstream and entrenched religion, if

768
00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:21,759
Speaker 2: you will. And of course this also includes the demonization

769
00:44:21,840 --> 00:44:26,200
Speaker 2: of local religious traditions. We saw this especially by European Christians.

770
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:31,120
Speaker 2: You create an inauthentic interpretation of a traditional faith in

771
00:44:31,239 --> 00:44:34,120
Speaker 2: order to prop up the authority and authenticity of one's

772
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:36,719
Speaker 2: own your gods, these old gods you believe in, well,

773
00:44:36,719 --> 00:44:40,080
Speaker 2: those are actually demons. That's how we understand them. Women

774
00:44:40,280 --> 00:44:41,400
Speaker 2: are the truth thing.

775
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:44,360
Speaker 3: So not just saying whatever you believe is wrong, but

776
00:44:44,440 --> 00:44:48,040
Speaker 3: also saying, like here, is an alternate interpretation of whatever

777
00:44:48,120 --> 00:44:50,279
Speaker 3: you believe, a very unflattering one.

778
00:44:50,600 --> 00:44:53,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the interesting double nature of this, as Shyduester

779
00:44:53,960 --> 00:44:56,320
Speaker 2: points out, is that on one hand, you're saying a

780
00:44:56,360 --> 00:44:59,160
Speaker 2: local shaman is a fraud who made all of this up,

781
00:44:59,440 --> 00:45:02,480
Speaker 2: But on the you're saying that he's totally not a

782
00:45:02,520 --> 00:45:05,200
Speaker 2: fraud and is actually in league with demonic powers. So

783
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:08,920
Speaker 2: which is it? Sometimes both even at the same time.

784
00:45:09,760 --> 00:45:12,800
Speaker 2: Chiitaser points to examples of this involving say, early nineteenth

785
00:45:12,800 --> 00:45:16,880
Speaker 2: century missionaries in Africa, who at once would have been saying, oh,

786
00:45:16,920 --> 00:45:19,319
Speaker 2: well that that guy, the shaman, he's a fraud, he's

787
00:45:19,360 --> 00:45:21,440
Speaker 2: just making all this up. But also beware of him,

788
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:24,040
Speaker 2: he's in leak with the devil, which is we also

789
00:45:24,120 --> 00:45:27,120
Speaker 2: see he points out the double standard regarding authentication via

790
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:31,200
Speaker 2: material objects. So relics were of course of great importance,

791
00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:34,640
Speaker 2: especially the early Roman Catholic Church and into the Middle

792
00:45:34,680 --> 00:45:37,840
Speaker 2: Ages and so forth. And know, the tradition still holds

793
00:45:37,880 --> 00:45:40,799
Speaker 2: to this day. You know, here is physical evidence that

794
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:44,919
Speaker 2: this saint existed, that this saint suffered. You know, here

795
00:45:45,200 --> 00:45:48,920
Speaker 2: this is our evidence. This is this is authentic. And

796
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:52,120
Speaker 2: chidas are points to accounts that stolen relics were sometimes

797
00:45:52,120 --> 00:45:55,200
Speaker 2: thought to be even more valued because the saint it

798
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:58,680
Speaker 2: was associated with could have been viewed as implicit in

799
00:45:58,760 --> 00:46:02,320
Speaker 2: the theft, you know, like they the saint willed that

800
00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:04,839
Speaker 2: this item be taken so that it could be kept

801
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:08,240
Speaker 2: somewhere better, that sort of thing. But on the other hand,

802
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:11,600
Speaker 2: magical items from outside of the faith, well, these were

803
00:46:11,600 --> 00:46:14,680
Speaker 2: deemed as fetishes and idols. These were harmful things. These

804
00:46:14,680 --> 00:46:17,719
Speaker 2: were not proof of anything, These were just these are

805
00:46:17,960 --> 00:46:19,640
Speaker 2: harmful fixations.

806
00:46:20,200 --> 00:46:23,479
Speaker 3: It's interesting in that it frames like the artifacts used

807
00:46:23,520 --> 00:46:27,839
Speaker 3: within one's own religion as like pieces of rational evidence,

808
00:46:28,120 --> 00:46:31,880
Speaker 3: and the artifacts used within someone else's religion as objects

809
00:46:31,880 --> 00:46:34,359
Speaker 3: of people's irrational emotional attachment.

810
00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:48,279
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, eventually you get into the Enlightenment and the

811
00:46:48,320 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 2: out there points out here that you have two sort

812
00:46:50,520 --> 00:46:54,719
Speaker 2: of contrasting ideals that emerge to determine authenticity, particularly with

813
00:46:54,800 --> 00:47:00,160
Speaker 2: Christians in Christianity and Christian thought. One is transparency, which

814
00:47:00,160 --> 00:47:02,000
Speaker 2: seems to kind of center on kind of a gut

815
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:04,719
Speaker 2: feeling a Christian will have. He describes it as an

816
00:47:04,719 --> 00:47:10,360
Speaker 2: illuminated capacity, uh, that would supposedly help you distinguish between

817
00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:14,600
Speaker 2: genuine and the genuine and the fake, which is something

818
00:47:14,600 --> 00:47:17,719
Speaker 2: that we've been saying. This could surely never steer one wrong, you.

819
00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:21,640
Speaker 3: Know, right, No, this is you sometimes like you you

820
00:47:21,800 --> 00:47:24,000
Speaker 3: just you have a feeling in the in your heart

821
00:47:24,080 --> 00:47:25,080
Speaker 3: that you know it's true.

822
00:47:26,600 --> 00:47:29,960
Speaker 2: And then the other idea is control. And this, uh,

823
00:47:30,239 --> 00:47:32,920
Speaker 2: this is interesting getting this idea that it's it kind

824
00:47:32,920 --> 00:47:34,759
Speaker 2: of gets back to what we were talking about in

825
00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:38,840
Speaker 2: terms of like not not being the first to speak

826
00:47:38,880 --> 00:47:41,920
Speaker 2: your mind and letting thoughts percolate, but it ends up

827
00:47:41,960 --> 00:47:44,239
Speaker 2: ends up going beyond that. So much of this is

828
00:47:44,239 --> 00:47:49,759
Speaker 2: apparently based on the New Testament and then the letter

829
00:47:49,920 --> 00:47:55,560
Speaker 2: Letters of James, and I think the two main bits

830
00:47:55,560 --> 00:47:58,000
Speaker 2: from the scripture here are those who consider themselves religious

831
00:47:58,040 --> 00:47:59,640
Speaker 2: and yet do not keep a tight rain on their

832
00:47:59,680 --> 00:48:03,600
Speaker 2: tongues deceive themselves and their religion is worthless. And then

833
00:48:03,760 --> 00:48:06,000
Speaker 2: I think there's a later bit where it is but

834
00:48:06,080 --> 00:48:08,760
Speaker 2: no human being contained the tongue. It is a restless evil,

835
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:13,080
Speaker 2: full of deadly poison. And so it gets into like

836
00:48:13,160 --> 00:48:16,640
Speaker 2: controlling the human voice, controlling what you say and more importantly,

837
00:48:16,640 --> 00:48:19,560
Speaker 2: what you don't say. But they didn't stop at the

838
00:48:19,640 --> 00:48:21,640
Speaker 2: human voice. They also put a great deal of thought

839
00:48:21,640 --> 00:48:26,480
Speaker 2: into how belching and farting impacted authenticity and religion. Apparently

840
00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:31,719
Speaker 2: I'm not making this up. Like laughter, sneezing, these are

841
00:48:31,760 --> 00:48:36,080
Speaker 2: also things that attracted the attention of the theologians of

842
00:48:36,120 --> 00:48:38,120
Speaker 2: the day, though it really feels like they're in the

843
00:48:38,120 --> 00:48:39,000
Speaker 2: weeds at this point.

844
00:48:39,880 --> 00:48:41,880
Speaker 3: I don't think this is what you're talking about at

845
00:48:41,880 --> 00:48:44,799
Speaker 3: this point. But Martin Luther, that you know, who was

846
00:48:45,160 --> 00:48:49,760
Speaker 3: responsible for the Protestant Reformation, was famously skatological love talking

847
00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:51,120
Speaker 3: about like farting and pooping.

848
00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:53,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it seems like he would be kind of

849
00:48:53,920 --> 00:48:56,480
Speaker 2: in sharp contrast to what this line of thought is saying.

850
00:48:56,520 --> 00:48:59,800
Speaker 2: You know that you know absolutely shouldn't be belching in

851
00:48:59,800 --> 00:49:02,520
Speaker 2: f ard, you shouldn't be sneezing, you should be controlling laughter,

852
00:49:03,040 --> 00:49:06,680
Speaker 2: or any kind of physical outburst that is not tightly

853
00:49:06,800 --> 00:49:11,920
Speaker 2: control is somehow a danger to authenticity. So I don't know.

854
00:49:12,000 --> 00:49:17,600
Speaker 2: I won't pretend to fully understand how this applies to

855
00:49:18,360 --> 00:49:21,719
Speaker 2: being able to judge one's religion as being authentic and

856
00:49:21,760 --> 00:49:25,359
Speaker 2: to rightfully judge other versions of the faith or other

857
00:49:25,400 --> 00:49:28,960
Speaker 2: faiths as inauthentic. But I guess it shows like the

858
00:49:29,080 --> 00:49:33,200
Speaker 2: level of sort of mental gymnastics and theological gymnastics you

859
00:49:33,280 --> 00:49:37,960
Speaker 2: end up turning to when grasping, grappling with a question

860
00:49:38,160 --> 00:49:40,760
Speaker 2: like this, like what how do you know what religion

861
00:49:40,840 --> 00:49:46,560
Speaker 2: is true? Like, because you know, outside of miracles occurring,

862
00:49:47,239 --> 00:49:51,120
Speaker 2: what do you have? You know, just subjective experience, personal charisma,

863
00:49:51,160 --> 00:49:55,759
Speaker 2: and other people weighted arguments for interpretations of natural phenomena

864
00:49:56,000 --> 00:49:58,439
Speaker 2: that are better understood through science. That's what I see

865
00:49:58,760 --> 00:50:01,520
Speaker 2: all the time. You know, where someone's like, you don't

866
00:50:01,520 --> 00:50:04,120
Speaker 2: believe in God? Well have you looked at this cat?

867
00:50:05,440 --> 00:50:06,160
Speaker 3: Right? Yeah?

868
00:50:06,200 --> 00:50:08,880
Speaker 2: You know, on an emotional level, it's like cat is cute.

869
00:50:09,080 --> 00:50:10,799
Speaker 2: I don't know, you kind of got me there, But

870
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:15,839
Speaker 2: we have all these other ways of understanding why the

871
00:50:15,840 --> 00:50:18,480
Speaker 2: cat looks like it looks and why we feel this

872
00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:19,600
Speaker 2: way about said cat.

873
00:50:20,040 --> 00:50:22,080
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I'm very much on that frequency. I

874
00:50:22,320 --> 00:50:25,080
Speaker 3: don't begrudge anybody their religious beliefs, but you can't prove

875
00:50:25,120 --> 00:50:28,200
Speaker 3: your religious beliefs by saying, look, observe the cat, look

876
00:50:28,239 --> 00:50:28,759
Speaker 3: at the cat?

877
00:50:29,239 --> 00:50:32,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, in my own opinion, I mean it

878
00:50:32,239 --> 00:50:34,520
Speaker 2: comes down to faith, right, And a lot of faith

879
00:50:34,680 --> 00:50:40,959
Speaker 2: is believing in that which cannot be proven without without

880
00:50:40,960 --> 00:50:43,480
Speaker 2: a shadow of a doubt, you know. Yeah, that's what

881
00:50:43,480 --> 00:50:47,240
Speaker 2: it's about again. Without an outright miracle occurring. And even

882
00:50:47,320 --> 00:50:51,040
Speaker 2: then you get into you know, we've discussed hallucinations and

883
00:50:51,560 --> 00:50:54,160
Speaker 2: so forth on the show before, So even then you're

884
00:50:54,200 --> 00:50:58,840
Speaker 2: still dealing with something that has tremendous subjective weight and

885
00:50:59,040 --> 00:51:02,680
Speaker 2: tremendously in motion weight, in personal weight, and is therefore

886
00:51:02,760 --> 00:51:04,680
Speaker 2: not something that can be presented as like here we

887
00:51:04,719 --> 00:51:05,960
Speaker 2: go a prove of God.

888
00:51:05,760 --> 00:51:07,480
Speaker 3: Confirmed right now.

889
00:51:07,480 --> 00:51:10,680
Speaker 2: The author here also gets into what he calls virtual

890
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:14,320
Speaker 2: religions on the internet, but something that is elsewhere discussed

891
00:51:14,320 --> 00:51:17,319
Speaker 2: in terms of hyper real religions. And I believe we've

892
00:51:17,320 --> 00:51:20,399
Speaker 2: talked about the hyper real religions on the show before.

893
00:51:20,640 --> 00:51:24,360
Speaker 3: Right, so religions that we've actually been able to see

894
00:51:24,440 --> 00:51:28,919
Speaker 3: within human history. The arc from something that began as

895
00:51:29,120 --> 00:51:32,640
Speaker 3: consciously inauthentic in some at least in one sense, like

896
00:51:33,160 --> 00:51:36,879
Speaker 3: began maybe as a joke, or began as a sort

897
00:51:36,920 --> 00:51:39,719
Speaker 3: of an art project or something like that, something that

898
00:51:39,800 --> 00:51:44,560
Speaker 3: was not originally believed as a genuine religious movement, that

899
00:51:44,960 --> 00:51:47,880
Speaker 3: came to be believed as a genuine religious movement.

900
00:51:48,200 --> 00:51:51,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, like it's the roots may be in fiction, they

901
00:51:51,320 --> 00:51:54,080
Speaker 2: may be in activism, you know, or like you said,

902
00:51:54,120 --> 00:51:58,719
Speaker 2: parody and so forth. But over time, they may grow

903
00:51:58,719 --> 00:52:00,799
Speaker 2: into something else. They may not, they may not grow

904
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:02,640
Speaker 2: at all. It may just be, you know, a quick

905
00:52:02,719 --> 00:52:06,239
Speaker 2: laugh and then we're done with it. But you know,

906
00:52:06,280 --> 00:52:08,399
Speaker 2: we we have been able to observe some of these

907
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:12,920
Speaker 2: things growing, taking on some of the the the aspects,

908
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:16,000
Speaker 2: the trappings, and sometimes even the legal protections of religion

909
00:52:16,239 --> 00:52:18,520
Speaker 2: of quote unquote authentic religion.

910
00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:21,399
Speaker 3: And as with most things in authenticity, it's it's hard

911
00:52:21,440 --> 00:52:24,000
Speaker 3: to look at somebody else and judge whether, wait, do

912
00:52:24,040 --> 00:52:28,160
Speaker 3: you really believe in the Jedi religion? I mean, there's

913
00:52:28,160 --> 00:52:30,360
Speaker 3: a there's a tendency to doubt people like that. But

914
00:52:30,360 --> 00:52:33,040
Speaker 3: if someone professes that they do. I'm I am a

915
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:36,160
Speaker 3: true believing Jediist, what are you going to say to them?

916
00:52:36,200 --> 00:52:36,480
Speaker 3: You're not?

917
00:52:37,040 --> 00:52:41,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Jediism is a good example of this. There's dudism.

918
00:52:41,719 --> 00:52:43,880
Speaker 2: There are other examples like Church of the SubGenius and

919
00:52:43,960 --> 00:52:47,680
Speaker 2: so forth, where yeah, it's like it may start as

920
00:52:47,719 --> 00:52:51,040
Speaker 2: a joke, it clearly has roots in fiction. But if

921
00:52:51,040 --> 00:52:53,440
Speaker 2: it takes if it truly takes on this this light,

922
00:52:53,600 --> 00:52:56,080
Speaker 2: if it becomes an important part of someone's life and

923
00:52:56,120 --> 00:52:59,600
Speaker 2: their worldview, and and above all of it, it improves

924
00:52:59,640 --> 00:53:02,719
Speaker 2: their life, life and doesn't hurt anybody else, then you

925
00:53:02,760 --> 00:53:04,719
Speaker 2: know what's the beef right. And I think you can

926
00:53:04,760 --> 00:53:08,120
Speaker 2: also throw in discussions of the likes of say Leveyan

927
00:53:08,320 --> 00:53:13,680
Speaker 2: Satanism and also more recently the Satanic Temple, with the

928
00:53:13,719 --> 00:53:17,520
Speaker 2: acknowledgment that there's often this kind of ambiguous space for

929
00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:21,040
Speaker 2: any new religious movement, a kind of discussion of authenticity

930
00:53:21,480 --> 00:53:24,680
Speaker 2: and even a change in mission for a given movement,

931
00:53:24,719 --> 00:53:27,719
Speaker 2: because as with any religion, things change over time and

932
00:53:27,800 --> 00:53:35,680
Speaker 2: a central body or central individual cannot always control it. Actually,

933
00:53:35,719 --> 00:53:37,799
Speaker 2: this is something that Frank Herbert gets into a bit

934
00:53:37,840 --> 00:53:40,600
Speaker 2: in the Doom novels. You know, it's like once a faith,

935
00:53:40,640 --> 00:53:43,719
Speaker 2: once a following has built up, that doesn't mean the

936
00:53:43,760 --> 00:53:46,520
Speaker 2: person at the center of it has full control over

937
00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:49,600
Speaker 2: it anymore, you know. And just because you have the

938
00:53:49,600 --> 00:53:52,120
Speaker 2: copyright for the name of the religion doesn't mean that

939
00:53:52,160 --> 00:53:52,920
Speaker 2: you are its master.

940
00:53:53,239 --> 00:53:56,399
Speaker 3: And this doesn't apply only to religions, but I think

941
00:53:56,440 --> 00:54:00,880
Speaker 3: there is a general tendency among people to, over time

942
00:54:01,880 --> 00:54:06,319
Speaker 3: try to find meaning in whatever they have spent their

943
00:54:06,360 --> 00:54:10,279
Speaker 3: time and effort doing, even if that thing started off

944
00:54:10,320 --> 00:54:13,480
Speaker 3: as just fun. Whatever you have spent your time and

945
00:54:13,520 --> 00:54:15,920
Speaker 3: effort on, even if it started just as a game

946
00:54:16,239 --> 00:54:19,080
Speaker 3: or a joke or whatever. I think there's just this

947
00:54:19,160 --> 00:54:23,160
Speaker 3: inexorable pull over time to look back and want to

948
00:54:23,200 --> 00:54:26,640
Speaker 3: feel like your time has been well spent, and thus

949
00:54:26,800 --> 00:54:29,360
Speaker 3: think that maybe there was more to what I was

950
00:54:29,440 --> 00:54:32,919
Speaker 3: doing than I originally thought. And I can definitely see

951
00:54:32,920 --> 00:54:35,920
Speaker 3: how this tendency like on one hand, this is the

952
00:54:35,960 --> 00:54:38,719
Speaker 3: kind of thing that turns like jokes and memes over

953
00:54:38,760 --> 00:54:42,719
Speaker 3: time into sincere political beliefs. You've probably seen this kind

954
00:54:42,719 --> 00:54:45,239
Speaker 3: of arc of people who are like meming all the

955
00:54:45,239 --> 00:54:47,560
Speaker 3: time on the Internet. I think the same thing could

956
00:54:47,560 --> 00:54:50,839
Speaker 3: happen with a joke religion. You spend enough time on

957
00:54:50,920 --> 00:54:54,480
Speaker 3: the joke and you eventually decide like, actually there's something

958
00:54:54,520 --> 00:54:55,279
Speaker 3: going on here.

959
00:54:56,080 --> 00:54:59,160
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I was thinking about that a lot

960
00:54:59,200 --> 00:55:01,480
Speaker 2: as I was looking at this other source two thousand

961
00:55:01,520 --> 00:55:05,799
Speaker 2: and eight worked by Thomas Alberts titled Virtually Real Fake

962
00:55:05,840 --> 00:55:10,280
Speaker 2: Religions and Problems of Authenticity and Religion, and he invokes

963
00:55:10,440 --> 00:55:15,600
Speaker 2: three different principles, including Walter Benjamin's theory of the dialectical

964
00:55:15,640 --> 00:55:19,120
Speaker 2: image and Peter Berger's theory of redeeming laughter. But I

965
00:55:19,160 --> 00:55:21,480
Speaker 2: want to just briefly focus on the third, and that's

966
00:55:21,800 --> 00:55:27,400
Speaker 2: Australian anthropologist Michael Tausig's theory of defacement. So Tasig wrote,

967
00:55:27,800 --> 00:55:32,480
Speaker 2: quote defacement asks what happens when something precious is despoiled.

968
00:55:32,640 --> 00:55:35,600
Speaker 2: It begins with the notion that such activity is attractive

969
00:55:35,640 --> 00:55:38,720
Speaker 2: in its very repulsion, and that it creates something sacred,

970
00:55:39,080 --> 00:55:43,120
Speaker 2: even in the most secular of societies and circumstances. So

971
00:55:43,280 --> 00:55:46,200
Speaker 2: Tausig gets into the importance of like secrecy and both

972
00:55:46,239 --> 00:55:49,839
Speaker 2: religion and taboo and the interplay between the two. And

973
00:55:50,719 --> 00:55:56,000
Speaker 2: I may not be grasping the full depth of this topic,

974
00:55:56,239 --> 00:55:59,200
Speaker 2: but if I'm understanding it even halfway correctly, I think

975
00:55:59,280 --> 00:56:03,120
Speaker 2: one possible use of defacement here is that anytime you

976
00:56:03,160 --> 00:56:06,319
Speaker 2: despoil something that is held up as sacred, you can't

977
00:56:06,360 --> 00:56:10,600
Speaker 2: help but potentially create something that is also sacred. So

978
00:56:10,800 --> 00:56:15,319
Speaker 2: Alberts argues that quote, fake religions produce secruelty in there

979
00:56:15,600 --> 00:56:19,160
Speaker 2: connecting the body of the perceiver with the movements of

980
00:56:19,239 --> 00:56:20,880
Speaker 2: concealment and revelation.

981
00:56:21,520 --> 00:56:25,360
Speaker 3: Hmm, well, I'm not sure I fully understand the concealment

982
00:56:25,440 --> 00:56:28,319
Speaker 3: and revelation aspect of this, but I mean I can

983
00:56:28,360 --> 00:56:32,919
Speaker 3: certainly see how by simply engaging with the sacred at all,

984
00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:37,920
Speaker 3: even to negate it, you implicitly assume some of the

985
00:56:37,960 --> 00:56:40,880
Speaker 3: power and authority of the sacred dimension of life, because

986
00:56:40,880 --> 00:56:44,360
Speaker 3: you're sort of showing that you yourself are on the

987
00:56:44,800 --> 00:56:47,160
Speaker 3: level like the plane of authority with which you can

988
00:56:47,239 --> 00:56:50,280
Speaker 3: interact with the sacred, and so by defacing the sacred

989
00:56:50,360 --> 00:56:54,200
Speaker 3: or negating it in some way, you assume a mantle

990
00:56:54,239 --> 00:56:57,279
Speaker 3: of cultural power. And people may well look to you

991
00:56:57,360 --> 00:56:59,160
Speaker 3: then and say, well, are you the new Are you

992
00:56:59,239 --> 00:57:02,720
Speaker 3: the new boss? You know, is what you're doing somehow

993
00:57:02,800 --> 00:57:04,600
Speaker 3: supposed to replace what you destroyed?

994
00:57:04,960 --> 00:57:07,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I was thinking too about you know,

995
00:57:07,080 --> 00:57:10,400
Speaker 2: like what you're just talking about with various memes and whatnot.

996
00:57:10,520 --> 00:57:15,399
Speaker 2: And I'll see occasionally memes that are about propping up

997
00:57:15,719 --> 00:57:18,880
Speaker 2: villains from popular franchises, you know, siding with the villain,

998
00:57:18,960 --> 00:57:24,880
Speaker 2: be it the Empire in Star Wars or with Thanos

999
00:57:25,080 --> 00:57:29,600
Speaker 2: in the Marvel Cinematic universe, you know. And on one level,

1000
00:57:29,640 --> 00:57:32,080
Speaker 2: it's like, yeah, it's fun. They're just movies, right, It's funny. Yeah,

1001
00:57:32,120 --> 00:57:36,600
Speaker 2: and Fanos is a great villain the Empire. They're cool villains.

1002
00:57:36,680 --> 00:57:39,760
Speaker 2: But I don't know, but what's at what point do

1003
00:57:39,760 --> 00:57:41,800
Speaker 2: you end up drawing the line and think like, wow,

1004
00:57:42,040 --> 00:57:45,000
Speaker 2: you know, are we how much thought are we putting

1005
00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:48,880
Speaker 2: into this? Are we propping up, like, you know, some

1006
00:57:48,920 --> 00:57:53,600
Speaker 2: sort of like awful authoritarian figure, even in fiction that's

1007
00:57:53,640 --> 00:57:56,520
Speaker 2: gonna end up casting a shadow on our reality and

1008
00:57:56,560 --> 00:57:59,760
Speaker 2: the way we interact with risks in the real world.

1009
00:58:00,000 --> 00:58:03,000
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I would say, like, it's a it's funny

1010
00:58:03,320 --> 00:58:05,800
Speaker 3: to say, Okay, yes I'm with the Empire in Star

1011
00:58:05,880 --> 00:58:08,240
Speaker 3: Wars because it's not a real it's not a real thing.

1012
00:58:08,360 --> 00:58:12,560
Speaker 3: That's like funny Initially, I would truly be careful about

1013
00:58:13,160 --> 00:58:15,520
Speaker 3: keeping up that joke for a long time. If you

1014
00:58:15,680 --> 00:58:19,320
Speaker 3: just keep doing that over time for years, I strongly

1015
00:58:19,400 --> 00:58:22,200
Speaker 3: suspect some people who do that would end up thinking

1016
00:58:22,240 --> 00:58:24,480
Speaker 3: that it's not just a joke and the Empire had

1017
00:58:24,480 --> 00:58:25,320
Speaker 3: some good points.

1018
00:58:25,720 --> 00:58:27,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I agree.

1019
00:58:27,920 --> 00:58:29,480
Speaker 3: I think that's just how we are. It's like you

1020
00:58:29,560 --> 00:58:31,520
Speaker 3: want to think that what you've spent your time on

1021
00:58:32,000 --> 00:58:34,880
Speaker 3: is time well spent, even if it's something you originally

1022
00:58:34,920 --> 00:58:38,440
Speaker 3: meant ironically. I think there's there's a pull to start

1023
00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:39,800
Speaker 3: saying actually that is right.

1024
00:58:40,400 --> 00:58:43,320
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So this whole like defacement theory thing, I

1025
00:58:43,320 --> 00:58:45,480
Speaker 2: think it can. It seems to definitely get a bit heady,

1026
00:58:45,960 --> 00:58:49,080
Speaker 2: but I think we can easily take it and apply

1027
00:58:49,200 --> 00:58:54,000
Speaker 2: it to discussions of conspiracy thinking, fake news, misinformation, and

1028
00:58:54,080 --> 00:58:59,080
Speaker 2: more items that often twist authenticity and or reality into

1029
00:58:59,120 --> 00:59:02,320
Speaker 2: a form that is on some level more appealing to

1030
00:59:02,360 --> 00:59:06,520
Speaker 2: the individual, that is more infectious, it's more bombastic, and

1031
00:59:06,600 --> 00:59:09,240
Speaker 2: in some cases not without the trappings of religion in

1032
00:59:09,280 --> 00:59:09,640
Speaker 2: the end.

1033
00:59:09,960 --> 00:59:13,160
Speaker 3: Oh, now that you get into like conspiracy theories and stuff.

1034
00:59:13,200 --> 00:59:15,120
Speaker 3: I've said this on the podcast before, but I will

1035
00:59:15,160 --> 00:59:19,320
Speaker 3: reiterate my personal belief that I think a whole lot

1036
00:59:19,360 --> 00:59:23,880
Speaker 3: of conspiracy theory ideation begins as entertainment. It's people not

1037
00:59:24,200 --> 00:59:28,640
Speaker 3: engaging with this subject as a serious true believer. At first.

1038
00:59:29,000 --> 00:59:32,440
Speaker 3: It starts with people engaging with it because it's entertaining.

1039
00:59:32,480 --> 00:59:35,520
Speaker 3: It's just kind of like funny and interesting. Okay, it's

1040
00:59:35,520 --> 00:59:39,480
Speaker 3: a meme whatever. But you spend some time with it

1041
00:59:39,640 --> 00:59:42,720
Speaker 3: and it works its magic on you. You get adapted to it,

1042
00:59:42,760 --> 00:59:46,960
Speaker 3: and it starts to seem more and more legitimately authentically compelling.

1043
00:59:47,560 --> 00:59:50,440
Speaker 3: So I think it's it's a dangerous road. Things that

1044
00:59:50,520 --> 00:59:53,360
Speaker 3: start off as just just for a laugh end up

1045
00:59:53,400 --> 00:59:56,000
Speaker 3: being quite serious and meaning a lot to you.

1046
00:59:56,640 --> 00:59:59,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, So think about that the next time you load

1047
00:59:59,640 --> 01:00:05,320
Speaker 2: up a particularly dank meme to to share on social media, I.

1048
01:00:05,360 --> 01:00:07,760
Speaker 3: Want to be I don't want to overstate that. I mean,

1049
01:00:07,760 --> 01:00:10,560
Speaker 3: I think it probably takes time and repeated engagement and

1050
01:00:10,600 --> 01:00:12,960
Speaker 3: stuff like that, but but I do think that tendency

1051
01:00:13,040 --> 01:00:13,360
Speaker 3: is there.

1052
01:00:13,680 --> 01:00:16,320
Speaker 2: Yeah. So again, there's much there's much more that that

1053
01:00:16,480 --> 01:00:19,840
Speaker 2: can and could be said about the interplay of authenticity

1054
01:00:19,880 --> 01:00:23,040
Speaker 2: and religion because it's you, You're you're dealing with very

1055
01:00:23,320 --> 01:00:26,600
Speaker 2: very complex topics when you're just asking what is religion,

1056
01:00:27,000 --> 01:00:31,800
Speaker 2: what is authenticity? What is truth? And religion? Uh, it's

1057
01:00:31,960 --> 01:00:34,880
Speaker 2: it's very gets, very subjective, open to a lot of

1058
01:00:34,920 --> 01:00:36,000
Speaker 2: different interpretations.

1059
01:00:36,240 --> 01:00:39,160
Speaker 3: All right, does that do it? For Part three on authenticity?

1060
01:00:39,720 --> 01:00:42,640
Speaker 2: I believe that is authentically the end of the third

1061
01:00:42,680 --> 01:00:44,440
Speaker 2: episode on authenticity.

1062
01:00:44,880 --> 01:00:46,520
Speaker 3: This is one of those subjects where I feel like

1063
01:00:46,560 --> 01:00:48,880
Speaker 3: we we went kind of deep for three episodes and

1064
01:00:48,920 --> 01:00:51,520
Speaker 3: still there's like so much we didn't get into. So

1065
01:00:52,560 --> 01:00:54,479
Speaker 3: maybe we could come back in the future, who knows.

1066
01:00:54,720 --> 01:00:56,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, And I think there's some sort of

1067
01:00:56,200 --> 01:01:00,280
Speaker 2: like splinter topics. Like I was looking at some others

1068
01:01:00,440 --> 01:01:04,240
Speaker 2: regarding the topic of heresy, and I think there's a

1069
01:01:04,280 --> 01:01:06,840
Speaker 2: lot to discuss there that might be more deserving of

1070
01:01:07,560 --> 01:01:10,280
Speaker 2: its own episode or series of episodes on just the

1071
01:01:10,280 --> 01:01:15,200
Speaker 2: topic of heresy, you know, not just within like Christian traditions,

1072
01:01:15,200 --> 01:01:18,400
Speaker 2: but also like globally, you know, with accusations of heresy

1073
01:01:18,480 --> 01:01:22,760
Speaker 2: being thrown between different factions, different religions and so forth.

1074
01:01:22,800 --> 01:01:24,080
Speaker 2: And what does it mean.

1075
01:01:24,640 --> 01:01:27,560
Speaker 3: Getting into the idea that a religion which is in

1076
01:01:27,600 --> 01:01:31,440
Speaker 3: fact just like a set of related practices and beliefs

1077
01:01:31,480 --> 01:01:35,320
Speaker 3: held throughout a culture, that there is some correct, original

1078
01:01:35,440 --> 01:01:38,440
Speaker 3: version of that, there's the authentic version of it, and

1079
01:01:38,520 --> 01:01:41,840
Speaker 3: that at some point some practice that a person has

1080
01:01:42,000 --> 01:01:48,080
Speaker 3: is different enough that it's actually not the same thing anymore. Yeah, Like, yeah,

1081
01:01:48,120 --> 01:01:50,720
Speaker 3: where do you draw those boundaries and how does that emerge?

1082
01:01:50,720 --> 01:01:51,920
Speaker 3: That is an interesting question.

1083
01:01:52,160 --> 01:01:55,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, what is the real Highlander too? Is it the

1084
01:01:55,160 --> 01:01:59,280
Speaker 2: theatrical cut? Is it the director's renegade cut? Is it

1085
01:01:59,320 --> 01:02:02,160
Speaker 2: a fan at it comes later on? That is combining

1086
01:02:03,200 --> 01:02:06,920
Speaker 2: portions for multiple versions of the film into a new model,

1087
01:02:07,200 --> 01:02:10,200
Speaker 2: which is heresy, which is orthodoxy, which is authentic.

1088
01:02:10,520 --> 01:02:14,040
Speaker 3: Fortunately, I am a geist cut fundamentalist, so I can

1089
01:02:14,040 --> 01:02:16,880
Speaker 3: speak for the authentic version of The Highlander two religion.

1090
01:02:16,920 --> 01:02:19,960
Speaker 3: Anybody who's trying to get me to watch the renegade

1091
01:02:19,960 --> 01:02:21,720
Speaker 3: cut or whatever you blaspheme.

1092
01:02:23,040 --> 01:02:26,040
Speaker 2: Well, fortunately we're aligned on that. All right, We're going

1093
01:02:26,080 --> 01:02:27,320
Speaker 2: to go and close it out. But we'd love to

1094
01:02:27,320 --> 01:02:29,720
Speaker 2: hear from everyone out there, because, again, everything we've been

1095
01:02:29,720 --> 01:02:32,640
Speaker 2: discussing in this series, there are so many applications for

1096
01:02:32,680 --> 01:02:37,280
Speaker 2: our daily life, for history, and just the entire human experience.

1097
01:02:37,360 --> 01:02:39,560
Speaker 2: So write in. We would love to hear from you.

1098
01:02:40,000 --> 01:02:41,720
Speaker 2: Just a reminder of that. Stuff to Blow Your Mind

1099
01:02:41,760 --> 01:02:44,320
Speaker 2: is primarily a science and culture podcast, re core episodes

1100
01:02:44,320 --> 01:02:47,600
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays we do listener mail,

1101
01:02:48,000 --> 01:02:51,680
Speaker 2: On Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on

1102
01:02:51,720 --> 01:02:53,960
Speaker 2: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk

1103
01:02:54,000 --> 01:02:56,240
Speaker 2: about a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.

1104
01:02:56,480 --> 01:03:00,200
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1105
01:03:00,360 --> 01:03:01,920
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1106
01:03:01,960 --> 01:03:04,320
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1107
01:03:04,320 --> 01:03:06,240
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1108
01:03:06,640 --> 01:03:09,240
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your

1109
01:03:09,280 --> 01:03:17,480
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.

1110
01:03:17,520 --> 01:03:20,480
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1111
01:03:20,560 --> 01:03:23,360
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1112
01:03:23,480 --> 01:03:39,800
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,