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The weirdest chapter in Approaching Zion makes for a kinda’ weird A segment about intelligence and genius. We talk about the history of ranking intelligence and its influence on eugenics before discussing more modern conceptions of intelligence and genius from a nature AND nurture perspective. Then we get into Hugh Nibley’s eulogy of Donald Decker. It’s a standalone chapter, very different from every other chapter in Approaching Zion, and provides a wealth of interesting discussion, including why it was even included in the book to begin with. Then we wrap with happy news of Sweden hitting carbon emission targets ahead of schedule while boosting their economy.
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Show Notes:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/genius
https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-br
- Duration:
- 2h 7m
- Broadcast on:
- 04 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
[MUSIC PLAYING] There is no great genius without some touch of madness, Aristotle. [MUSIC PLAYING] You're listening to the Glass Walks podcast. Every two weeks, we take on headlines in and out of Mormonism to see what's looked through the cracks. We talked to interesting people and we leave you with a feeling that the world isn't actually on fire. Today is Tuesday, September 3, 2024. I am your host, Bryce Blink and I go, joining me is my intelligent co-host, Shannon Grover, Shannon. Aw, thank you. I'm feeling very smart today. OK. [LAUGHTER] Glad one of us is. Gonna be a bit of a low energy episode from yours truly. But if you're a patron, you will find out why. But otherwise, what are we talking about today, Shannon? Well, it's another approaching Zion episode and it's only one chapter this time because it's one chapter that just stands out as separate from every other fucking chapter in this book. Yeah. And I still wonder why and the hell it was put in there. But also, we are going to talk about what makes a genius. And it does tie into the approaching Zion segment of this episode. Very much so. And then we have some happy news about some slashing of emissions and green energy. So we always love those stories near and dear to our hearts. So that's how we'll round out the show for today. Yes, excellent. We do also have a little bit of listener male to discuss from Tyler that's going to be in the main segment of the show. So because it is relevant and pressing it to the discussion, the overall discussion that we're having today. So yeah, let's jump right in. What do you say? Yeah, here we go. Let's just dive into the muck. [LAUGHTER] [MUSIC PLAYING] All right, Shannon. So I wanted to tailor the main segment to the B segment, sort of layman today. Of course. The Niblet segment. So I decided, for the first time, that I was just going to read the chapter about Niblet. Just because I wanted to see what the material was, what he's talking about, and what even is there to discuss. What can I pull out of this as a subject matter to focus the A segment on? Do you mind giving us just like a quick 30-second synopsis of that chapter that we're covering and the unibly to kind of introduce my segment? Yes. This chapter is a funeral address. And it's for his good friend, Donald Decker. This is a man who really did not have a career. He just flitted around reading whatever he got his mind stuck on at the time, and then he would go and discuss it with people like you, Niblet. And he just enjoyed reading and reading and reading. And this is somebody who you, Niblet, held up as a genius, because all the stuff he read. Yeah. And I think that is a really interesting take, because Niblet focuses so much on the genius of Decker and how intelligent he was. And it's also interesting because Niblet was a very moderate progressive by today's standards, but Don Decker was an arch-conservative. So the two of them had significant disagreements, but they were also very good friends. And obviously, like many of their conversations probably revolved around the big problems of society and how to solve those problems. And I find it fascinating when we see those relationships of people who you're like, you don't agree on anything. How are you friends? Why do you hang out at all? Because if you're just sitting around surrounded by people who agree with everything you say, then you're not very intellectually stimulated. You're not forcing your mind to conform and introduce and deal with new information very often. So I think the two of them just intellectually stimulated one another and that that formed the basis of their friendship. Yeah. So out of all of that then, that kind of led me into saying, okay, so genius then. What is genius? Because I kind of want to tackle this as an idea. It's a concept. And does Don Decker actually deserve the label of genius? And also on where when we get to your segment, why was that chapter even fucking included in approaching Zion? Why? Why is that there? It's book about money, yeah. Yeah, right? So and we're going to tap into that a little bit by the end of this segment here. So I'm doing the high school presentation thing. Genius, what does it mean? Well, the original definition of genius, it actually has a root of gignera, I assume, from Greek, which is a form of beguette, to beguette somebody. So essentially what it means is the etymology of the word genius is like a guardian deity or a spirit that watches over a person from birth. Gen meaning birth, right? So genius literally used to mean a spirit attended individuals from birth, which made them predisposed to be intelligent or uniquely skilled. Wow. So what is genius then under our modern definitions? And it's actually kind of hard to define. Genius is like, it's one of those things like porn, right? It's hard to define it, but you know it when you see it, right? The people who make the rank of quote unquote genius, I mean, that obviously fluctuates with your definition of genius. Simply put, it's a person of extraordinary intellectual power, right? But that leaves a lot of people and leaves a lot of nuance out at the same time incorporating people into that category that I don't consider to be geniuses. Because intelligent people can be incredibly smart, but if they don't do anything with that intelligence, are they really a genius? Right. An intelligent person who doesn't advance humanity in any way, that's just an intelligent person, an intelligent who contributes to a field, advances society or humanity, they create something incredible. That's where we transition from intelligent to genius. So then, who even is a genius? And this is where I think it's pretty damn stupid to even make lists. Because every list I find of quote unquote geniuses is 95% dead white men. So fuck that. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Which is so stupid because it's like, you look at things and who is it who started vaccines, virulations? It was a woman who did that. Marie Curie, look what she did. And I mean, Heddi Lamar, Heddi Lamar was this incredibly beautiful actress in the early age of film in the early '40s, you know? And she was very good at what she did. She was actually in the one film playing Samson in Delilah. That was the first one I ever saw her in, which I saw in seminary of all places. But yes, and it was filmed in '40s, so who cares? But she wanted to be involved with the helping the Allied forces during World War II. So she actually looked into potential military applications for radio technology. And she theorized that varying radio frequencies at irregular intervals would prevent interception or jamming of transmissions, thereby creating an innovative communication systems. And so she shared her concept for using frequency hopping with the US Navy and co-developed a patent with this man named George Anthel in 1941. So today, applications today, because of her innovation, which she's the only one who thought of, we can do things like have Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth, because of her. That makes her genius. - Yeah, absolutely. - Is she on these lists? - Yeah. - Exactly, right. So that is also to say that when we are filling out the word genius and applying definitions of what categorizes somebody as a genius, oftentimes we are imposing Western cultures' ideals of intelligence onto somebody and ranking them by those metrics. So if somebody needs to make a major contribution in something, in mathematics, in medicine, in engineering or something like that, in order to be considered a genius. But genius comes in so many, many stripes and it has a very fractal nature to it. Because, I mean, like I'm just thinking of like in the field of Mormon history studies, right? Like there are a few individuals within it who have published and researched for decades who I consider geniuses, true geniuses in the field, who have advanced the field, who have tackled novel questions and actually gone through and done the due diligence of dealing with problems. And in my opinion, their writing is genius, right? But that's kind of the fractal nature of this because every single field is going to have people who are thought leaders within it, people who are advancing the field, who are taking it to the edge. And those can be intelligent people, and those can be people who are in the field who are regarded as geniuses by other people in those fields, right? So anytime you try and break down a list, you make a list of like notable geniuses, it's going to be people who are famous for Western values of intelligence. Einstein is on every single list. He's the smartest one. He's the number one genius on almost every list. - He's it, yep, yep. - And the guy was incredibly smart, but to say that he is the most genius individual in the world who has ever lived is fucking insanity. - Yeah. - Especially for somebody who, you know, hid the vast majority of his contributions to the field of physics, were done by the time he had aged 26, and he spent the rest of his life just lecturing and writing, right? So like, so what are our metrics for genius, right? It's very complicated the way that we look at it. And this goes back to genius's metrics and the origination of these things. And it's impossible to discuss modern day genius and intelligence without a brief discussion of, Francis Galton, you know, Darwin's cousin who coined the term eugenics. He attributed genius to intellect, which led to genius being quantifiable and an overall term attached to book smart intelligence. So 1859 on the origin of species is published and Galton picks up a copy and begins investigating human evolution and hereditary traits. So I have a few quotes from you or for you Shannon from Francis Galton's books. This first one is from 1869. It is titled hereditary genius. This is the introduction to it. - The idea of investigating the subject of hereditary genius occurred to me during the course of a purely ethnological inquiry into the mental peculiarities of different races. When the fact that the characteristics cling to families was so frequently forced on my notice as to induce me to pay a special attention to that branch of the subject. - Which is to say that he was doing ethnography studies, touring areas that were not just the white England that he was born and raised in and was like, wow, these people are so much dumber than me. Why? Oh, and it seems like their dumbness is inherited. So I'm gonna write an entire book about it. So he lays out his methodology and the introduction to this book as well. - I began by thinking over the dispositions and achievements of my contemporaries at school at college and in afterlife, meaning after college. - In college? - Yeah. - In diet. - I like that word, that phrase word though. - I did too. He only lived in college, that was it. Okay, and was surprised to find how frequently ability seemed to go by descent. Then I made a cursory examination into the kindred of about 400 illustrious men. Cursory is not good enough dude. Okay, 400 illustrious men of all periods of history and the results were such, in my own opinion, as completely to establish the theory that genius was hereditary under limitations that required to be investigated. Thereupon, I set to work to gather a large amount of carefully selected biographical data. Oh my God, there's so much wrong with what he just said there. Holy shit, I'm like, I know better than that and I'm not a scientist. Cursory examination, the results were such, in my own opinion, to completely establish it. No. - Yep, so he established his theory and then he went to gather a large amount of carefully selected data. So he looked at the life of 400 illustrious men that he calls of all periods, which are of course going to be rulers and dictators and warlords and the most eminent people of his time and back into history. And then he creates a theory out of it and then he goes to find the data to support his theory. - Yes, which is, it's like you don't understand, you make the theories fit the facts, not the facts, fix the theories. - Precisely. So that's Francis Galton's methodology and once again, that is from his 1869 book, hereditary genius. Well, he further continued to study this and develop it into a much larger theory and in 1883, he published inquiries into human faculty and it's developed, sorry, in its development. And in this book, he coined the term nature and nurture, the phrase nature and nurture, as well as the term eugenics. This is the book from which eugenics comes. - I didn't know, yeah, I didn't know he coined the nature versus nurture stuff. - Yeah. - I was not aware of that. - Oh my God. - Right, well, and he does apply, like he does state that the nature and nurture is what comprises individuals growing up and that is true, right? Like that is what creates our consciousness. That's what it is. There's a little bit of genetics that go into it and I'm spoiling the entire segment. There's a little bit of genetics that go into our minds and then the rest of it is our environment, our family, our neighborhood, the state we live in and so on and so forth. There's so many other factors within the nurture part of it that nature is stimulated or repressed by the natural forces around individuals growing up. But this is a quick selection of a couple quotes out of this 1883 book. And well, he makes his biases pretty clear, I think. (laughing) - Yes, energy is an attribute of the higher races, being favored beyond all other qualities by natural selection. We are goaded into activity by the conditions and struggles of life. They afford stimuli that oppress and worry the weekly, who complain and be wail and it may be succumb to them, but which the energetic man welcomes with a good, humored shrug and is the better for in the end. It may be objected that if the race were too healthy and energetic, there would be insufficient call for the exercise of the pitying and self-denying virtues. And the character of men would grow harder in consequence. But it does not seem reasonable to preserve sickly breeds for the sole purpose of tending them as a breed of foxes is preserved solely for sport and its attendant advantages. There is little fear that misery will ever cease from. Fox hunts are there to get rid of the foxes. They don't breed the foxes so they can have a fox hunt that's not how it works. Okay, 'cause the foxes go in and eat the chickens and the pheasants and all that stuff. That's why they get rid of them. So they have these fox hunts and yes, the fox hunts are brutal and they watch the dogs rip apart, the foxes and they're really disgusting, but that's not the point, okay. - And also the entire point he's making here is that if an entire race is healthy and energetic, then there wouldn't be anybody to be pitied upon. And is that reason enough to keep the people around who are not the most high of the race just to have somebody for the higher intellects to dote upon basically, that's the point he's making here. But then it gets so much worse, I promise. - He's making me angry, oh, God. All right, there is little fear that misery will ever cease from the land or that compassion will fail to find objects for their compassion, but at present, the supply vastly exceeds the demand. The land is overstocked, oh my God. And overburdened with the listless and the incapable. In any scheme of eugenics, energy is the most important quality to favor. It is, as we have seen, the basis of living action. And it is eminently transmissible by dissent. Oh fuck, fuck you dude, he'd be one who would euthanize me. - That's actually exactly where we're going with this, right? - Of course. - So from the chapter, a tiled selection and a race, of course. This is where he's going. - Oh my God, okay. Ears can be standing on end before death. I keep running my hand through it. The fact of an individual being naturally gifted with high qualities may be due either to his being an exceptionally good specimen of a poor race or an average specimen of a high one. Oh fuck you, okay. The difference of origin would betray itself in his descendants. They would revert towards the typical center of their race, deteriorating in the first case, but not in the second. Whenever a low race is preserved under conditions of life that exact a high level of efficiency, it must be subjected to rigorous selection. The few best specimens of that race can alone be allowed to become parents. Oh fuck, we need to do children, men. Okay, the book in particular. The book, the movie is fantastic, but it's different than the book. It's a little bit different. Anyway, okay. - Yeah, he's not talking about tomato plants here. - Nope. And not many of the descendants can be allowed to live in those parents, that would mean my child would have been euthanized as well. - Yeah, yeah. - Even though she's stronger than I am. Okay, all right. - But you, with your hand, you would have been euthanized, so your child never would have existed to the beginning. - No, neither one of mine. Yep, back, my first child would have been proof they would have just gone and tied my tubes if they would have let me live after that. All right. Oh my God. Oh my God. I thought last episode made me angry. Okay, all right. Beta blockers need to kick in for a second here. Okay, on the other hand, if a higher race be substituted for the low one, all this terrible misery disappears. The most merciful form of what I ventured to call eugenics would consist in watching for the indications of superior strains or races, and in so favoring them that their progeny shall outnumber and gradually replace that of the old one. Such strains or of no infrequent occurrence. It is easy to specify families who are characterized by strong resemblances and whose features and character are usually pre-potent over those of their wives or husbands in their joint offspring and who are at the same time as prolific as the average of their class. There exist a sentiment, for the most part, quite unreasonable against the gradual extinction of an inferior race. It rests on some confusion between the race and the individual, as if the destruction of a race was equivalent to the destruction of a large number of men. (grunts) It is nothing of the kind when the process of extinction works silently and slowly through the earlier marriage members of the superior race, through their greater vitality under equal stress, through their better chances of getting a livelihood or through their pre-potency in mixed marriages. And of course, his version of mixed marriage is gonna be different than what ours is now, okay. - Yeah, oh, and his mixed marriages within this context, this chapter here is talking about basically elevating certain races by mixing in extremely high quality specimens from a higher race into slightly lower races and therefore increasing the genetic desirability of the lower race through those mixed marriages. - Yeah. - That the members of an inferior class should dislike being elbowed out of the way, is another matter. - Oh, is it now? - Is that just another matter? - Members of an inferior class should dislike being elbowed. Oh, you mean genocide in elbowed out of the way, yeah. - Yeah, exactly. But it may be somewhat brutally argued that whenever two individuals struggle for a single place, one must yield and that there will be no more unhappiness on the whole if the inferior yield to the superior than conversely, whereas the world will be permanently enriched by the success of the superior. - Yeah, and then would we have a Stephen Hawking if what had happened? - Yeah, no, I mean, Stephen Hawking is just one tiny example, right, and I mean, we probably would, right, because his MS kicked in when he was in his 30s or whatever and that's when he began to become disabled. So, but otherwise, up until that, he was largely fully functioning. He would have been just fine. But yeah, he would not have been allowed to reproduce though. So that's, of course, a struggle there. But I think the entire point here is that you, right there, you sitting on the other side of the screen for me, you would not be alive right now. You would have been killed as a child just for having physical disability. I had some complications at birth and I likely would have been cut off as well. I don't come from any, let's say, good Mormon breeding stock. I do have pioneer Mormon heritage, but not generally high ranking names. So just by virtue of not being of the upper class of Mormons in some kind of a dystopian modern day, I probably would have been cut off as well as a child. So it's like we can think of famous individuals who have disabilities, who would not be alive if this were implemented, but there's also what-- - Hell and killer, yeah. - Yeah, I mean, there's also people in our everyday lives that we interact with on a day to day basis who would not be here if this were implemented, if eugenics were implemented, right? So yeah, and the thing is, is he's like, well, look, I'm not advocating for killing off everybody. I'm advocating for a slow, gradual evolution of humans by just breeding the selected traits, right? But then he goes on to literally rank the races in this section and then he provides a pretty ominous analogy after doing that. - It is clear from what has been said that men of former generations have exercised enormous influence over the human stock of the present day. And that the average humanity of the world now and in future years is and will be very different to what it would have been if the action of our forefathers had been different. The power in man of varying the future human stock vests a great responsibility in the hands of each fresh generation, which has not yet been recognized at its just importance nor deliberately employed. It is foolish to fold the hands and to say that nothing can be done in as much as social forces and self-interest are too strong to be resisted. They need not be resisted, they can be guided. It is one thing to check the course of a huge steam vessel by the shock of a sudden encounter when she is going at full speed in the wrong direction and another to cause her to change her course slowly and gently by a slight turn of the helm. Nay, a ship may be made to describe a half circle and to end by following a course exactly opposite to the first without attracting the notice of the passengers. Oh, fuck you. - Yeah. So it's just important to pick up on the ideas that he is writing about here. His ranking of the races, his going through numerous genocides of numerous indigenous peoples, he lamented the use of the word aborigines right before you're talking about this and then says, you know, it's if the inferior elbows out of the way the superior, then nothing changes. But if the superior elbows the inferior out of the way in a place that can only occupy, then the whole race is benefit, right? The world will be permanently enriched by the success of the superior. And then he's saying, you know, these can be done in ways that the people in society won't even recognize it. That they won't even recognize what is happening. You are just selectively breeding for your preferred choice traits and the inferior will just slowly breed themselves out of existence. Maybe a couple of little nudges, little shoves here and there will eventually get everybody on board. So with all of that kind of background on Francis Galton and kind of what establishes the idea of intellect of nature versus nurture of how these ideas and how these concepts are used in order to justify eugenics or to justify genocide and removal of quote unquote inferior races and how people in control will use the ideas and labels of superior and inferior on people in order to justify all sorts of actions. I want to discuss some list of mail from Tyler about idiocracy. And I think that we just need to read through a huge chunk of his message and discuss it. - Yeah. So idiocracy is just eugenics/disgenics promotion, pretending IQ is legitimate and being scared of a world where stupid people have more kids. What the fuck? What the fuck is this movie? The premise is that a bunch of stupid hillbillies had too many kids and this causes a dystopia. This is straight up eugenics and disgenics. This is not a good thing as a premise. You mentioned Francis Galton point out that he was both a eugenicist and also where much of the idea of the premise of the movie starts and then failed to at any point to explicitly criticize the movie's premise. So far as I can tell, the premise invented by a eugenicist. What the fuck? You say the marching morons in 1951 is the best parallel for idiocracy. As a refresher, the term moron in 1951, it would have been known as a medical term, specifically for people with a low enough IQ that they'd be forcibly sterilized. As I recall, both the Nazis and the Americans did this. In the short story, the ultimate solution to the morons having too many kids problem is to trick the morons into getting into spaceships in promises of an easy life, then systematically exterminating them all. And it works. It is the solution in the story to the population problem. The historical response to this movie's premise and arguably its implicated solution as well is that Cleveland should have been sterilized or exterminated. So he didn't spread his stupidity or perhaps make more poor and uneducated kids if you think it's a commentary on being poor and uneducated. At the very least, that's the conclusion, the most popular and famous pushers of this narrative and idea promoted, including Adolf Hitler. I disagree with the, it's not the stupid versus the smart, it's the poor and educated versus the educated and affluent concept. Even the charitable version you present. If that were true, it would be poor, uneducated, homeless people who are really causing climate change, taking away women's rights and pushing for Paris Hilton to be in a bikini, eating a burger in Carl's Jr's ads. But the poorest and least educated are not the ones causing these issues. It's affluent and educated oil execs, affluent and educated Republican politicians and the affluent and educated Carl's Jr executives. Whether or not wealth or education or causes or just corollaries, the people making the biggest impact to destroy the planet and whatnot are extremely rich and generally quite educated. - I will also point out too, that the vast majority of people who are trying to solve those problems are also largely educated affluent people in STEM, right? So like it's, I don't think that it's a way to, I think it's a false dichotomy to look at affluent and wealthy as only conservatives. Because there are a lot of progressive people who are also affluent who the movie was much more portray. The movie was not portraying affluent conservatives. He was more affluent progressives. - Yeah, especially since when you consider it, this is 500 years in the future and if everybody is so stupid that what's his name is the smartest man on the planet with the most average IQ possible of our time, would they still have running planes, working planes? Would they still be able to have working cars and all of that kind of stuff? I'm like, okay, you wouldn't have anybody building all that. So yeah, but anyway-- - Well, I mean, well, we can even deal with that, right? Because in the movie, that's part of the established universe that all of the smart people created all of these systems, automated all of them and then all died off, right? So it's like when Brondo's stock crashes, the CEO is on a call with the president and is like, the computer did the auto layoff thingy and nobody has jobs anymore, right? 'Cause it's clearly like the hospital visit, all of the cars, everybody driving around, clearly all of these things are just created by smart individuals who are now have all died off. - And there's nobody left to fix it, yeah. - Yeah, exactly, exactly. You gotta be like Wally and start all over. Anyway, all right, all right, all right, okay. I looked up the plot of the movie and I'm planning to watch it at some point. So far, I can't tell how the conclusion would reject the premise and the premise is legitimately the same shit Nazis promoted when forcibly sterilizing and murdering people. I would ask you to reconsider your recommendation of the movie or at the very least given extremely good set of reasons for failing to address the history of this line of argumentation. The stupid people, the quote, stupid people where we produce more than smart people and make a dystopia end of quote idea has excused and driven the sterilization and extermination of millions. I respect you guys and know you have kind hearts and reasonable political views. Thus, I assume you just didn't quite catch that background or maybe thought it didn't need to be said or something. But when I heard the podcast, even after re-listening, it seems to my ears like you agree with the premise is realistic. As for the history, I can't tell if you're unaware of it or if you're aware it or try not to point it out because of some spoilers or something or maybe something like that. In any case, awareness of this bad of history should come with it, a full-throated and explicit acknowledgement and rebuke of that line of thinking and the deaths that excused. Sorry to have such an unpleasant set of comments after clearly a tough episode, but I don't know what to think of this. Couldn't just not mention it. - Yeah, so I'm glad that Tyler made this comment and look, it can be very uncomfortable to write a comment like that because I can promise it was uncomfortable to read that comment, but it's true, right? And I think Amaya Culpa is in order here, right? We simply didn't point that out and we shouldn't have. And I'm sorry. - We should have, yeah. - Yeah, I failed. I did not do my due diligence as your podcast host. And I did my best to give a charitable reading of the plot of the movie, but in retrospect and listening back to it myself, that was making an excuse for the movie. That said, I'm also not going to retract the recommendation primarily because selective reading is a major plot point in lots of fiction, especially dystopian fiction. We'd have to retract a lot of recommendations that we've shy, if we always shied away from selective reading, doom, how to train your dragon and gate to women's country. Those are recommendations that we made on this show that all include eugenics or some form of selective breeding. So, what we will do now from now on is call out when eugenics is a plot point of future recommendations and give that full throw to disclaimer every time. And with that said, Tyler, I really hope you do watch the movie and you let us know your thoughts on it, right? Because I watched it obviously with a bit of nostalgia from watching it when I was younger, very much younger and less informed on issues. And I think that gave just a rose-colored tint to the entire experience. And, you know, watching it back, it's the movie, in some plot points it's aged well, but in a lot of the jokes, a lot of the things that it says, a lot of things that it does and the way that it portrays eugenics obviously have not aged well. So, there's a lot to resonate with there. A lot of things happen in the movie and it puts a humorous spin on those things. So, I would love to hear your take after watching the movie, Tyler. - Yeah, yeah. - So, can we discuss a little bit about gay twins country and just do a full spoiler alert on this? Because this, I wanna discuss the full plot of gay to women's country here because it's relevant to this discussion, but it is massive spoilers for the huge conclusion of the book. So, if you don't want that, be sure to skip ahead at least quite a few beats because we're gonna spend probably two, three, four minutes talking about this. - Easily, yeah. Yeah, Bryson Post here. It's closer to 15 minutes. So, you just wanna fast more right to the 50 minute mark, 5-0. (beep) - And what episode did we talk about it before? Do you remember? - Oh, that's a great question. Was it one of our major, no, it was not one of the major media episodes. - I can't remember. - At 112. - Okay. - That was when we did episode on law of consecration as well. - Yes, okay. And so, if you wanna hear that before listening to this, you know, stop and go listen to 112. - All right. So, gay to women's country, it definitely dystopian future. In this future, the planet has suffered through massive nuclear war. And killed off a lot of people, massive wars, that kind of thing. And so, it's down to, at least in the United States, you don't hear anything about the other side of the planet because there is no communications available, anything like that. They have areas that are just blasted by radiation and everything else. And so, you know, there's a smaller population, smaller everything, less of the information, even available for learning and all that. So, many years into the future, you have groups of people where you have women's country and men's country that are hooked together. The men live in the men's side. They go there when they're 12. The boys go there when they're, I think it's 12, right? Yeah. Yeah. And two. Oh, five years old. Five years old, they go into. Five years old. Yeah. And they're raised in the men's area on how to be warriors. They just deify the, either the Roman or the Greek gods. You know, the, I think it's the Roman warriors. God, I need to sit down and read it again. I haven't read it again this year. I need to do that again. I'm pretty sure it's all Greek. And they, yeah, 'cause you've got Achilles and all that. So, they deify them and they want to be in. They have phallic symbols everywhere and all this stuff. So, they raise them up to be warriors. And they are there to protect the women of women's country. Women's country is where medical and all the education happens. And everything. Arts, sciences, medicine, medicine, literature, everything like that. They travel from women's country to women's country to share what they find. They go out, they do the farming. They create the food. They do all of that. The men are just there to do their war games. But they protect everybody, right? So, they get, the men come into women's country periodically to for carnival time and all this time. And this is when they get to have sex. And it is, I mean, I really like this part of how it's decided because they are not allowed to rape, period. And a woman shows that she's ready for it and she's open to it by wearing a dress. Otherwise, she's in pants. That's easily detailed. Very simple. And it's her choice if she does and she can say no and you know, whatever. So, all of those happen. And so you have the wars that happen. So throughout this story, several things happen with Stavia, who is the main character. She's been growing up. She's an incredibly smart woman. She's going into the medical field. Her mother is one and she's part of the council for their country. And as they are out traveling, she starts finding out more and more things like, her mother is very good with weapons. Is very good at fighting. Why is she so good at fighting? The servitors who are men who choose not to go to men's country but to stay or to come back actually. They go when they're five. They are allowed to stay. They are allowed to come back when they're 12. That's what it is. Yeah. And when they're 12, they're given that chance. The mother comes and asks if they want to come back and they can say yes or no. If they say no, they're repudiating the mother completely. If they say yes, then-- They're choosing to live in men's country. Yes. As a warrior for the rest of their life. Right. And they coming back, they have to go through the gauntlet of all of the men of their age who can do whatever the fuck they want to them on their way through. And, you know, 'cause they're gonna punish them for choosing to be with the women. 'Cause that's terrible. It's a humiliating. Yeah. Very humiliating. The life of a servitor is a very humiliating thing and seen as humiliation by the men. By the men, for sure. And, you know, they're stripped of their clothes to go. The whole thing. And usually, quite often, I mean, the way they're described, and I love how Sherry Tepper does this, because she doesn't overtly say it. She's just describing. But you see things like the ones who are homosexuals go. Not all of them. There's a lot of them that stay because they're with the men. So that's where they want to be. But the ones they don't like killing, or as they start finding out more and more, the ones who have things like their mental abilities that aren't common, like the ability to know what's happening with somebody, or to, like one of the servitors knows when, what emotions Stavia's feeling, and can tell if she needs help or not, or those kind of things, you know. These things that we don't really recognize as real, but the more empathetic kind of feelings that are taken further to an extreme than we, than are usually seen in our lives today. So, you know, one that can be find people's directions, they can, all this stuff. So they're actually incredibly smart, and incredibly good, and are not warlike. And that's the key. - Well, what you find out by the end is the real secret, 'cause for one, one thing Stavia learns through all of this is that the ones in charge are the women, all the women, the councils, from each of the women's countries. They are the ones in charge. It is not the men. They let the men think they are, but they are not at all. - Yeah. - And two. - Yeah, and I mean, and throughout it, we even see where they like stage, we realize that one of the lead men is trying to overthrow women's countries, trying to overthrow, is it Annsberg, is that the big one? - Might have been. - I'm trying to remember. - Yeah. - Yeah, trying to overthrow basically the headquarters, the largest city, and take it back into the control of men. So the women from the neighboring cities orchestrate essentially a coup to get the battalions to fight each other, kill a bunch of the young men off, and staged, or not staged, but orchestrated an assassination on that one guy. - Yeah. - That was carried out by Stavia's mother herself. - Yep, and they will do that. When the men start getting to the point where their war-like drive is getting too much, they make sure they have one and kill off a bunch of them. There is the case where one boy that Stavia has a crush on, he manages to rape her and impregnate her because he manages to remove an IUD device that she had in her when she was out traveling to keep her from getting pregnant, and that way she is impregnated by him. Now, that's an important thing to know because what Stavia finds out is the women's counsels in charge. One of the things they've been doing for decades ever since they established all of this is before carnival time, all of the women who are deciding they're ready to have sex go in to get a medical exam. And what they do is some that they don't want getting pregnant, they put an IUD in, the ones that they, well, actually they put an IUD kind of thing in all of them. - All of them, all of them. - All of the girls get an IUD. - And then after carnival, when they go in for another medical check, they will determine who they want to have be pregnant, and then they will artificially inseminate with them sperm from one of the servitors. - Yes. - So that none of the warriors will ever father a child. - Yes, none of the warriors reproduce. - Yeah. - And the counsel of women who are, who know about this inner, well, this deep dark secret of women's country are known, the damned. - They call themselves the damned. - The damned. - Because they know the darkest secret of women's country, but it is the key to their survival. It is the only way that they can stop nuclear war from happening again, because they saw how many people, how many millions and millions and millions of people died in the nuclear holocaust, and how much of society and all of humanity and all technology and everything was lost because men couldn't stop killing each other. So they are selectively breeding out the war genes out of humanity in order to create a society that is run by women that's no longer wants to fight with each other. - Right. And they also will systematically allow these war-like men to kill each other off. - Yeah, exactly. - And it'll, you know, so that eventually it'll reach the point where no 12-year-old boy will stay. - Yes. - You know, more and more will come back. And it's just fascinating. And it's also very, it's a fascinating scene when Stavia is told, because she also realizes, when her mother tells her all of this is that if she doesn't agree to accept it and to keep the secret, her mother will have her killed. - Yes, exactly. - Because the secret must be preserved. - Yes. - They have to breed out that war-like tendency. - Exactly. - I like, one of the things I like about it is, it doesn't say all men are like this. It is definitely not, not all men. - No, it's very clearly saying that the, yeah, if we understand it's not all men. So the ones who are responsible, the ones who are the biggest pain in the ass, the ones who do all of the bad shit, we are slowly breeding them out. They are, as Francis Galton would say, they are correcting the course of a great steam vessel without the passengers noticing. - It is absolutely that. When I read that, I'm like, okay, now I see why, you want to talk, do it, let's get to it. - Yeah, right, so that is all to bring this all back, right? That is to say that selective breeding in human populations is a plot fixture of a lot of fiction. - It is. - And that it is necessary. - As well as fact. - And fact, right? - I mean, that's what happened with slaves. - Yeah. - And slaves and with Nazism, it was so much of it, right? Like, we can't ignore when these things have happened. And like, the eugenics societies in America were also sterilizing a lot of individuals. Somewhere in the ballpark of 100,000 men were sterilized because they didn't hit some marker of aptitude on the IQ tests, which we're going to get to in a minute, that made it so they had felt underneath that, they were not fit for breeding, right? So that is to say, you know, when this comes up, when eugenics is a major plot point of media recommendations in the future, we're going to spend a little bit more time talking about that and, you know, disavowing that or at least adding more meat to it because there's the way idiocracy does it and it's humorous and then there's the way that gate to women's country does it and it's like thought-provoking and it's like fuck. Ugh, that's what, you know. So there are different ways to deal with selective breeding when you're doing it as a plot point in fiction. So, idiocracy, you know, the more that I think about it, the more that I consider the movie, it doesn't deal with that, with the idea of eugenics well. - No, that doesn't. And, you know, a discussion to be had comes down to, especially like with gate to women's country, is regardless of why they're doing it, is it right to do it? - Yeah, well. - You know? And it's like all of it comes down to choice versus non-choice, you know, pro-choice versus anti-choice. Always comes down to that and back and forth from that. And whether you are a proponent or an opponent of it, you know, of which version of it and why and is the greater good a good reason and then who determines the greater good and then, you know, all of that. And so, it's like, I think this, that's also why movies like "Idiocracy," books like "Gate to Women's Country" and "Children of Men" and all these others are done, is to give you that is this right or wrong, regardless of the reason for it. - Or because of the reasons. - Or because of it, yeah. And like, "Idiocracy," it portrays it as just like the natural progression of humanity that nobody is responsible for turning the knobs and doing the things. So there isn't much reason beyond just, we're getting dumber as a society, let's stop being dumber. Whereas "Gate to Women's Country," there are people who have reasons to do what they're doing. And it forces you as the consumer of that story to say, "Wow, are those reasons justifiable?" - Yeah. - Can I put myself in their shoes and say, "Yes, that's the right decision for them to make." So, I mean, yeah, anyway, that's all to say, genius, intelligence, these are justifications that have long captivated racial and ethnic purists. They want only the strongest, only the most intelligent people to breed in order to save the stupid people from themselves. - Yeah. - And this means that any discussion of intelligence or genius, it steps into some treacherous waters here. Obviously, intelligence is a desirable trait and a smarter society means a higher standard of living for everybody in that society, right? So, let's talk about the neuroscience of intelligence very briefly. And I'm gonna put out a plea to our listener, Gen C. Please check me or add more in the comments on what I say in all of this. - Yes, please. - You know, I took a tour in the neuroscience. I don't know this stuff innately through actual study. It's just a matter of reading a few articles and some Wikipedia pages and saying, yeah, no, that makes sense to me. This is an explain like I'm five. So, essentially, we need to understand the volume of brain matter and specifically a gray matter that is correlated with intelligence. Basically, smart people generally have larger brains, which is why kids are dumber than adults because their brains are literally smaller and incapable of the complexity of thoughts that adult brains can comprehend. This, however, is it's a simplistic model, right? Overly simplistic, especially given the past methods of using measuring brain volume. Before we had MRI scans to accurately assess brain volume, people, eugenicists, especially, used skull size to determine brain size. Well, some of us with big heads have a lot of hot air up here, so that's a pretty inaccurate measurement of brain size. So, the only way that we can measure brain volume before MRI's was a porous mordum, mordum, excision of the brain where it could be weighed and measured. So, MRIs, of course, change all of that. Beyond the total volume of the brain, the types of matter are also important to discuss. Gray matter is most correlated with high intelligence. Gray matter is basically a super high concentration of neurons and these neurons are cells with one axon for sending electrical signals and lots of dendrites, which they receive all of the electrical signals. And our brains peak in gray matter density at about the age of 20. And this is where we process information. This is the stuff that lights up when we have a light bulb moment. Senses, perception, voluntary movement, speech, learning, reading, listening are conscious. All of that happens in the gray matter. There's also the white matter, and white matter doesn't do the thinking it does the transmitting. So, gray matter can communicate with the cells immediately around it, but white matter is what connects gray matter portions that are much further apart in addition to carrying information throughout the rest of the body. So, basically, gray matter is the processor, white matter is the circuit board that carries the signals throughout the motherboard. So, all of these are correlations, which are not necessarily causations, right? The density of matter and the size of brain matter, right? An anomaly exists. Einstein's brain, for example, was volumetrically smaller than most brains. His brain weighed 1,230 grams with an average brains being between 1,300 and 1,400 grams. However, there's a fissure that exists in nearly all brains. It's called the Silvian Fisher, and it was nearly absent in Einstein's brain, leading to the conclusion that these portions of his brain likely communicated more efficiently than non-Einsteinian brains. - Is that the fissure that's across the center? - No, it's basically above your ear lobes. - Oh, okay, okay, got it. - But also, the fissure in the center of his was also densely, densely packed with the transmission material. So, the fissure in between was also a lot smaller. It was more densely connected. It's important to understand that there's the hemispheric fissures. There are a lot of fissures in your brain, and that he just had a few of his fissures were smaller, and it made it so his brain was just more interconnected. It was more efficient. Therefore, it could be smaller and still do the same task. So, we need to understand that during early development, the volume and the density of brain matter and types of matter is almost purely genetic. And genius, in this regard, seems to be a bit of an inherited trait. It's correlated with an accelerated thickening of the prefrontal cortex in youth. Brains which thicken faster in youth and adolescents that those brains correlate with higher intelligence. Now, the brain is a muscle and stimulus strengthens all of these connections. So, while people may be born with genes to have thicker cortices or more dense gray matter, everything that happens after their birth influences the development of those genes. And so, in those parts of the brain. So, let's consider some factors that increase the likelihood of intelligence being fostered into genius. Put very simply resources. Overall health and access to high quality of life is associated with preservation of these cells, especially these gray matter cells. And stimuli in the form of access to new skills, to new experience, to new modes of exercising the mind, new methods of communication. All of those things contribute to those cells developing very strongly at a young age. And importantly, brain cells don't really regenerate the way that most of our other cells do. So, our brain matter pretty much peaks at the age of 20 and it's mostly downhill from a mechanical perspective from that time forward. So, this is why kids learn really, really quickly, but for adults it's often much more difficult to learn something new. Youth is wasted on the young, yada, yada, yada. You know all that, right? - Yep, yup. - So, basically, a kid with smart genes and no access to education or free time in order to exercise their mind. Like if they're caring for their siblings, if they're working for the welfare of their family or whatever the circumstance is, they may end up no more intelligent than a kid born into a family with below average intelligence genes, but unlimited access to education, free time to learn instrument, novels, experiences, you know, all of those things, right? It's about access to resources that takes the genetics and forms them into an intelligent mind. And here's where we can kind of discuss the variability in intelligence because quantifying intelligence is actually really, really difficult. And some people associate IQ scores with genius. And a lot of people say that anything above a 180, qualify somebody as anything above a 200, a 220, whatever, right? But IQ tests largely favor book learning, classical education structures. And here we can invoke Francis Galden again because he tried to quantify intelligence and some people who took his work crafted some tests in order to assess intelligence. These folks were named Alfred Benet and Theodore Simon who created a battery of tests to determine which children in school had "mental retardation." That's their terminology. Of course, with a mind of removing those kids from school and sequestering them away in asylums to remove handicap people from the gene pool. You know, just regular eugenics stuff. So after conducting these tests for a few years, Benet and Simon figured out that they were also able to detect remarkably intelligent children, not just people who had handicaps. So another psychologist comes along named Louis Turman at Stanford University and he revised the Benet Simon Intelligence Scale and he streamlines it. He standardizes the testing structure and he created a score at the end of the tests, the person's IQ score, intelligence quotient score. So that's all to say that IQ testing system that we have today came from a bunch of eugenicists who were actively trying to homogenize the gene pool for only smart kids and breed out all the people who didn't score high enough on their tests. So the Benet Simon IQ testing system, it was implemented in recruiting in World War I in America. It was imposed as barriers to immigration at Ellis Island. They put it as a barrier for access to public schools and it even became part of the legal system by the end of World War I, where government mandated sterilization was at its peak in America. So, and I say America right now because this is merely how IQ scores in eugenics were applied here in America, but Galton fueled white supremacy, not just white, but supremacy movements all across the globe, reaching its height in the form of the Nazi movement, of course. So IQ tests, standard IQ tests, the history of them, they were crafted to be exceptionally narrow. They tested memory, spatial reasoning, math, language, literature, other classic metrics of classic education. So the child prodigy who can't add numbers together, but can play Bach or create beautiful abstract art at the age of six, they'd be ranked as mentally handicapped by most IQ tests. - There you go, yeah. - Yeah, the child might be a genius if given access to the proper resources, but they'll likely slip through the cracks of the system. Similarly, a child who would fall into the classical definitions of genius might not have access to formal school education for a litany of factors, like they're raising their siblings or they're working for their family or whatever, right? They would also slip through the cracks. And for all of these reasons, most IQ tests skew very heavily against racial and ethnic minorities. We can understand the factors that go into this. IQ tests are made by educated Western people, for educated Western people. So they're clearly going to favor people in those categories. - God damn, you're making me so glad that about this because that was kind of a big deal. What I was growing up was getting IQ tests. And my dad hands down refused to let any of us know what it was, what ours was, or to even talk about it. He was just like IQ tests don't matter. And I was just like, I'm like now, especially, I mean, it was fine with me growing up. He would just say, you're born with brains, you know how to use them. But it's like, you know, and he just expected all of us to do our best in education period and that we could do as well as we wanted to, yeah. And so now I'm just like really super glad he did that. - Yeah, and like this is also part of all of this is why I've never gotten an IQ test and why I refuse to ever get one, right? Because like the IQ tests are so narrow, they are so essentially useless. And what is the purpose behind it? It's to say, oh, I have a number associated with my brain that proves how much, what is your IQ score? Well, mine is better than yours, so I'm smarter than you. When an IQ does not actually correlate with overall intelligence because intelligence has so many different facets. And then we can even get into the discussion of like street smart versus book smart, right? A lot of people who are book smart spend their entire lives in educational institutions that don't spend their, any of their life in the real world, right? Then they are street dumb. It can be incredibly book smart, but somebody who never goes to higher education spends their life in the workforce or whatever, they might not have classical education. They may not be able to answer trivia questions very well, but by God, they know how to move a goddamn garbage can. They know how to mow some lawns, right? They know how, they know practical things. They know how to do plumbing. They know how to, like, exactly, right? So it's like, what even is intelligence in all of this, right? And that kind of contributes, like that exact problem is what contributes to this being a goddamn mess of a segment because it's such a messy subject. Intelligence and general is a messy subject, let alone genius, right? So that's kind of the history of psychometrics, right? But there are more systems today which attempt to take into account many other factors, including factors of development. And psychometrics, it's an entire field. It's come a long way from Francis Galton days. So the modern ideas, they're far more nuanced than early 20th century ideas of intelligence and genius that led to the Holocaust. For example, heritable genius is highly questioned now. Children in high socioeconomic status have a feedback cycle of increasing intelligence, meaning when smart children have access to new forms of learning, they'll naturally seek those out, which leads them to new access points for even more new education experiences. However, children in low socioeconomic status seem to have very low heritability of intelligence, meaning that their intelligence is much more fluid compared to their parents' intelligence. So gene studies have been done trying to identify the "intelligence gene." Most of those are pretty much fruitless. There have been as many as 52 genes that are identified that seem to correlate with high intelligence, but none of them are like the one intelligence gene. And even the correlations are pretty difficult to link, which all to say that genes can lead us to conclude that a certain baby might be slightly more intelligent than another, but the margins are really, really narrow between intelligence and babies. Where the difference comes into play is everything that happens after that baby is born. Where it grows up, family resources, socioeconomic status, zip code, quality of schools, can the family afford music teachers, language coaches and math tutors, the type of neighborhood and the other children which surround the subject child and how many collective resources all of those children have. - And how much desire the child has to learn, yeah. - And even like the desire to learn, right? - Yeah. - If your brain, this part of nurture, right? If your brain is tuned to reward, to release those reward chemicals when you have a new experience, your brain is gonna continue to seek out those new experiences. So as a young kid, if you have access to a whole bunch of new experiences and that's how your brain is tuned, then you're naturally going to want to go find new experiences. - Yeah. - So, I mean, it's very difficult. And like so many factors play into intelligence and especially genius, which makes this whole field of psychometrics, right? It's difficult for, you know, lay people like myself to take a tour in this. So what kind of bridges the gap between a person being intelligent and a person being a genius? And I've used the terms almost synonymously a few times in the segment here, but they are different terms. And I think the impact is the defining difference, the impact that an intelligence has, right? If a person, or for a person to be a genius, they have to do something with their intelligence. They need to contribute to humanity. They need to break new ground. They need to explore new frontiers and they have to share those discoveries with humanity, with society, with the rest of all of us little idiots, right? A person can have a genius IQ of 230, but if they work in a bowling alley their entire life, just so that they can go home and spend all of their free time learning and then they keep all of that information and all that discovery to themselves, they're just smart, right? Geniuses change the world. They shape society. They discover new things staring humanity in the face that everybody else seemed to have missed before that genius came along. Geniuses have made a mark in their field. Exactly, they facilitate change. Geniuses facilitate change. So then there's kind of the question of innate aptitude versus dedication to something, right? Because plenty of people have an innate ability to grasp a skill, a composition, a field of study, but most of us have to work really goddamn hard to be good at something, right? There's the adage of like 10 years or 10,000 hours of devotion to something is the requirement for mastery of a complex endeavor. People who are inherently intelligent might be able to shave some time off of that metric. They might take it into, you know, it might take to whatever that skill is, that complex endeavor at a very early age and completely obsessed to the point that 10,000 hours is fulfilled by the time they hit adolescence, right? However, genius often implies somebody who comes along and solves a complex problem that form decades of mathematicians just by looking at the problem written out once on a chalkboard. That's not how it works. That's just Matt Damon in Hollywood, okay? So all that is to say that with enough time, dedication and true passion in a field, most people could qualify as a genius in their field. And I don't mean any field is in like ivory tower STEM. I mean, in all fields, art, science, literature, innovation, medicine, everything, right? All of it. - I've been called that in the music field. - Right. And look, and yeah, like we've, a lot of us have been called genius by kind of a colloquial definition. But in many ways, like the colloquial definition is closer to the etymology of the work. Like, oh, you have a, you have like an innate spirit resting on you that causes you to be good at this thing. Well, it's like, yeah, well, I'm also like, I've also spent, you know, three hours practicing every single night for the last seven years of my life. So yeah, I better be goddamn good at this skill, right, Shannon? - Yeah, exactly, that's exactly it. - Yeah. So, you know, where does this kind of leave us? And back to the top of that, like, what is genius? And what is a modern way to look at genius that's all inclusive of all forms of intelligence without exclusion? And I think, and it involves all of these many factors. And I think genius is definitely not a white dude with crazy hair and a mustache, right? But that's what culturally we think of, when we say the word genius, we see Albert Einstein, right? - We always do. - So then what is it? The definition that I've come away with this is this. A genius is a person with extraordinary intelligence who contributes to humanity by breaking new ground with discoveries, inventions, or works of art. - Yeah. - That's my definition of genius. That would make sense. 'Cause, well, it's like what I said last approaching Zion episode when I kind of ripped on Nibley on what he said about Beethoven Bach and for whoever it was he was setting up. - Yeah, yeah. - Where I'm like, no, he stretched this, Beethoven stretched it and others worked to meet it. And this person stretched it and others worked to meet it. That's what made them so fantastic. The genius of their time is how they-- - How they stretched people. Michelangelo did with the way he carved marbles, the way he painted the Sistine Chapel. You know, the way they did it, Picasso did it. He changed art. I don't, it's not my favorite form of art, but it's still changed the face of art. Every time there's a change in music, you know, I want guard change things. I hate a lot of it, but it changed things. 'Cause it changes a perspective of it all. Same thing with writing. I mean, the way things, the way stories are written and the way people write books and novels and TV shows and movies and everything else, it's different now than it was when I was growing up and the way it was 20 years before. And that's the nature of it is who affected the change. And that's the important thing. And I agree, I agree when somebody takes what they have and what they know it could do and changes the whole nature of everything so that others are trying to follow them. That's genius. Yeah. - Yeah. And let's also talk about the worshiping of genius, right? And I think this is going to lead us into the next segment very well. And why we are gonna be discussing genius and Don Decker, right? Because, and why this was even included, right? Because there is the worshiping of the genius, right? We have an affinity for people who make themselves appear intelligent, whether it is true or it is just a show. We generally like to be associated with people who are intelligent, we like to fawn over those people, whatever the case is, right? Because I think innately, humans want to look at the world and see the complexity and boil it down, reduce it down into something that their brain can grasp. And when you boil big problems down into simple problems for your mind to grasp it, you think, "Hey, we just need a genius to come along with one simple solution that nobody's ever thought of that's gonna fix all of these problems," right? So we see geniuses as being associated with these figures that fix these huge problems, make, you know, break new ground in a field that's totally like, right, you know, Darwin on the origin of species, you know, crafting the theory of evolution, right? Well, he was in a litany of researchers who were all hinting at and working on and discussing the idea of evolution for decades before Darwin even went to the Galapagos Islands, right? - Right. - He goes there and he just establishes like the treatise. He lays it all out in one simple to consume book. Therefore, he's regarded as a genius. But I bet that Darwin probably had a bunch of his colleagues who he regarded as far better researchers than him, as far more intelligent, far more prolific, wrote way more, did way more research than he did, right? So that's all to say that like, popularity is not associated with genius. It just so happens that we as a society like to attach ourselves to a genius and look at, oh, this one, you know, brilliant mind is going to save us all, save all of humanity. When really, it just so happens that usually that brilliant mind is just the most popular in the field of an entire community of people who are working on those same problems. Or creating those works of art or whatever, right? - Yes. - So, yeah, I think it's very complex, right? And genius worship, intelligence worship, I think is a very complicated matter to deal with as well. But it's nonetheless something that people have an affinity towards. And then we get people who go up on a stand and call themselves stable genius and think that it's going to win them votes, right? (laughing) - Yeah, that's true. Well, I mean, what it comes down to is what John Dunn said, "No man is an island." Because no one is, everything is built on another. Like Hillary said, that a child is raised by a village, you, everything, all of that. It all works together, humanity works together. And you have the one things that pop up and then the rest come and follow and it's just always that. And it should be always that. - Exactly, exactly. - Yeah. And if one person doesn't-- - But we need heroes. - Yes, we all always do. We always need someone we can look up to. And well, I get it, but I also agree with James Fell who said that there are no heroes. There are just heroic acts. - There you go. - And that's what we should remember is, gosh, I'm just popping out quotes everywhere. I'm so proud of myself right now. - Hey, Ellen. (laughing) - Oh, I'm not always able to do that. My brain is working really well today. Okay, but I do agree with that because once we make somebody a hero and put them on a platform, they will fall. Like said in Batman, you be the hero until you have to become the villain. Until you become the villain, you know. - Don't be the hero. You're really long enough to see yourself become a villain. Yeah, exactly. So I get the movie quote. You get the quotes from the philosophers and researchers and I get the movie quote, right? And politicians and musicians. (laughing) Oh my God. Okay, we're on a roll today. All right. So anyway, yes, it is humanity as a whole. And I think if we as a humanity, remember and just actually really take into account that you need all shapes and sizes. We're not all squares fitting together because this planet is not even a perfect circle, which is why we have seasons. It takes all the shapes to make this planet work. It takes all the shapes for humanity to work. And it is not for the place of anyone to decide, we need this type, but not that type, you know? I mean, one of the few things I say is absolutely right. If Mormonism is the quote, we need, there must be opposition in all things. We have to, we do have to have it. Yeah, a few true, very few true Mormon quotes. That and when men get a little bit of authority, they begin to exercise on righteous dominion. That's another one. Bingo. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, that's the truest thing you ever said, Joseph. But anyway, we do need to have, but because we need to allow everyone the right for free agency, for their own thoughts and everything else. And so that's where it comes down to things like eugenics, no matter what the reasoning is, it's still wrong. Yeah. When you're taking away the choice. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't matter if it's for the greater good. It doesn't matter, it's still wrong. Yeah. Yeah, so let's talk about a Mormon genius written in through the funerary address of another Mormon genius. Or at least one that Hugh Nibley said was a genius. Right, well, and yeah, you know what? Let's let's get into it. Let's get into that, yeah. I'd like to tell you about a product. For all their flaws from their luminous orange appearance to their odd synthetic flavor, is this about the president? Cheese poofs are among the most popular snacks in the world, former, I should say. Although it is hard to imagine the time before cheese puffs that that world did in fact exist. And the bizarre story of how they were made makes them even more intriguing. Cheese puffs are the byproduct of animal feed. What? The brightly colored snacks were created by animal food manufacturer Flackall Corporation in Beloit, Wisconsin in 1935. I nailed those pronunciations. Nice try, Shan. To make the feed, a grinder was used to flake corn in order to clean the machinery, staff fed moist corn into the grinder. This process, to the surprise of the workers of the plant, produced airy blobs of corn. And so the first corn puffs were born. Edward Wilson, an employee saw potential in the little puffs, took some home to season and see if they could be eaten by humans. The result were corn curls. The product was such a success that Flackall broadened its line of products to include snacks for humans and animals, changing its name to Adams Corporation to distance itself from its farm feed past. Other firms also stake a claim in the invention of the cheese puff, including the producers of Chi-Wiz. Chi-Wiz, Chi-Wiz? Not Chi-Wiz, Chi-Wiz? Okay. - Chi-Wiz is just like aerosol cheese. - Yeah, which is so good on crackers. Oh my god, who developed similar snacks in the early 20th century. I'm going to die and my body will be preserved for centuries. Okay. But the game changed in 1948 when Cheetos were produced and have since become the most popular brand of cheese curl in the US. Another popular snack to be weary of is classic Cheetos puffs, an item full of cheesy flavor, yet incredibly low in fiber and protein. Cheetos are considered one of the most unhealthy snacks primarily due to their unhealthy fat sodium and artificial additives. Unfortunately, regularly eating snacks high at sodium can elevate your dating of sodium intake, which in turn can lead to increased blood pressure and increased risk of heart problems. Oh, oh really, interesting to find that paragraph in here. Research suggests that cheese puffs may have addictive properties due to their high salt, fat and carbohydrate content. The ingredients activate the reward centers in the brain leading to a craving for more. According to an Oxford study, the brain associates a crunching sound with freshness. So you might be convinced that what you're eating is more appetizing than it really is. Oh, and then there's this little thing called vanishing caloric density, which tricks your brain into believing that you're not getting enough of the tasty snack. I'll just have a few, no. So next time you, yeah. Next time you pop open that orange bag with a tiger, snarfing down a food, no tiger would ever touch. Just remember that if you want to stop, dump water in the bag so they no longer crunch, then your brain will let you walk away, gross. Anyway, go buy something from our merch store. - You're welcome. I was kind to you this time 'cause I knew I should be kind. - You're very good, very good. - The sword of laymen. - Well, Bryce, should we jump on the huge nibblet? - Yeah. - I just love calling him that. - Because huge and nibblet are opposites. - Yeah. - And what is this man, aside from dichotomous in our minds, right? - Exactly. Oh my God, I just, it's just such a, oh God. There's so many things, I come out of it going, wait, what? All right, okay, okay. - So he's an oochy oxymormon. - Yes, he is, for sure. Or synopsis, work ethic is bad, working for money is bad, gospel is the answer to everything, God gave you everything, and when he asked, you must give it all back. Law consecration is the one and only law, and you must obey it to the letter. Deuteronomy is the book in the scriptures that must be followed because it is the book of law, though it is a contradiction even to itself. And we must work, but the lunch is free, and the work we must do is temple work and reading the scriptures and giving everything you have to the church and orinhats is just beat of shit. - Yes, that was one of my favorite parts. - Oh, I love it. I'm like, how many more times is he going to mention or inhatch or reference that senator? - That senator, yeah. (laughs) - Makes me laugh every time. I'm just like, okay, I love you, dude, for that. - Yeah. - So, here we go, chapter 10, funeral address. Yeah, it's a fucking funeral address, and it's put into a collection of essays with diatribes about money. And there's not any diatribe about money in it. 'Cause I was like going into this, going, why will you talk about money at a funeral? Why would you do that? 'Cause I assumed, because that's what-- - You were going to, right. - Yeah, Don Norton, there was like, this is a collection of essays about money. Okay, all right, well, it was a funeral of his very good friend, Donald Decker. So, why did Don Norton think it should be included in this collection? And why was it not added to a different collection? So, let's talk about that. So, first of all, let me tell you about Donald Decker. Decker was more than 10 years younger than Nibley. He was a Marine, he fought in World War II, age of 21. He was at BYU, and he enrolled in a Greek class that Nibley taught there at BYU. He took the class just because he wanted to learn Greek. It had nothing to do with anything else. He was Mormon, married his wife, Jeralin, in the Salt Lake City Temple. And Nibley and his wife attended the wedding, and the four took a trolley ride out to Salter afterwards. Salter, which was not open for long, 'cause it got, I think, it was either flooded, was it flooded? Yeah, it was flooded. It sits out on Great Salt Lake, and it got flooded, and the salt destroyed a lot of it, and it just didn't last for a period of long. (laughing) So anyway, this funeral was on August 11th in 1982, and it happened in Rexburg, Idaho. I can speak. So, Nibley described Decker as sensitive, but not sensible. He called him a genius in the true sense of the word, and this whole talk he gave was to illustrate the genius of Donald Decker. Yeah, which honestly is a good funerary address. It was. I was expecting a funeral address to be preaching about the plan of happiness, and the kingdoms, and make sure you're doing everything. No, I mean, that was almost completely absent from the entire chapter, which was so strange to me. It was. I mean, I read this, and I was like, this actually legit is a good funeral address. I'd be proud to have this, right? Okay, so Nibley says, (clears throat) He was a man determined to find out how things really are and so forth. That is where he directed his energies, and if he thought it might lie in this direction, he looked here, and if in another direction, and he looked there and so forth. And he didn't exhaust any one direction because he thought he might be missing something somewhere else. He went remarkably far in more directions, and the rest of us have risked. You see, one person wants him to go into biology, another into medicine and so forth. One wants him to go into literature, poetry, language, or into everything under the sun. He was looking for himself all the time. He was determined to denote his life, not to the momentary dictates of expediency or advantage, but to whatever schedule or scenario had been set for the eternal human family to live by. - Now, there's so much in this address that is a really good tribute to Decker. - Yeah. - And really, I would love it if somebody talked about me that way. He talks so much about him seeking knowledge, but he also points out that Decker was impatient and impulsive, that he never wanted to be cooped up. - Oh my goodness. - Yes, he didn't want to be cooped up in anything, and as such, he never had a career. That alone was something Nibley admired him for, was not having a career. He said, Decker was-- - Which is understandable from Nibley's perspective too, right? - Right. - Because it seems, I mean, it's clear to me that Nibley seems like he was trapped in his own rhetoric. Like, he had become a victim of his own success as the foremost apologist for the church, and he was like, at any point, he was trying to get out of this whole shit show that he was wrapped up in, but, you know, they kept paying him, sorry, kept on writing. - And they had the apostles go after him every time he tried to leave. - Exactly, yeah. - He said, Decker was an inconceivable man, inconceivable. Okay, he never stopped doing what he was doing and was always doing something very different. He told him endless discussions to two would have where, as he claimed, Decker always won because he wore nibley down. (laughing) Every time they were in contact together, he would be like, "Oh, I need to talk to you about something." And they would just go on for hours, just discussing whatever the topic was, yeah. - Late into the morning. - Yep, every single time. And much of how he describes Decker makes me wonder if the guy was ADHD. But not being able to read about him elsewhere, which I did look him up, makes it really hard for me to tell. Nibley had a very narrow view on people and life, so it's hard to interpret his descriptions of people without getting an outside context. And I looked into the biography of him and there's only two mentions of Decker and both of them have to do with this funeral address. Yeah, and I was like, if he had that much impact and that much time speaking together, then the biographer really should have put more in there, but I guess not. - Yeah, interesting. - Which also makes me wonder more about how off, I don't know, I mean so much of what we see about Decker is from Nibley's perspective here. It's all Nibley's perspective. - Right, right, right, of course. - So, yeah. So he talked of Decker's need to immerse himself in literature, particularly ancient literature. That led him to talk about books and the drive to read the best books, which this is Nibley's thing. And of course, it's his version of what's the best books. - Yep, of course. - And that's not the same from person to person. 'Cause what I think are the best books are definitely not what he thinks. I mean, top of his list are the scriptures, so. But he said we must find ourselves by diligently searching. - Man, I resonate so much with that. - Yes. - I mean, I call it touring, right? I like to tour different cultures. I like to just learn about new things, new areas of fascination, new things around me. Just like grab them, put them into my brain and like, you know, just enrich my own life through those experiences, right? So like that resonates so much. We must find ourselves by diligently searching. - And I like, yes. - I like that too, but also, this is the first time I've seen Nibley say that. - Huh, very interesting. - And I'm like-- - Very, very interesting. - Find ourselves, and there's a lot of that in here. But it's because this is what Donald Decker was like trying to find himself. And so that was fascinating to me. But there's also this quote he says, "If the Scriptures bind the worlds together, "the writings of man bind together "the generations and dispensations." - Ha. - And I was like-- - Ha, very interesting. - That's good, 'cause it changes that perspective, 'cause it's like, well, the Scriptures bind this world and the next life and pre-earth life and all that, okay. So that makes it separate, but then the writings of man, but it's like just when you consider it, all the Scriptures are the writings of men, and they do bind together generations and dispensations. - Right, but I think that it's the point that he's making there too, is that the writings of men that are not the Scriptures are also useful to us, right? The best books, sure, the top of the list are gonna be the Scriptures, but there's a whole long list below the Scriptures that are not necessarily religious books, that those are the writings of men, right? That that's the philosophies of men mingled with Scripture that used to be lamented, right? But that is what binds together generations and dispensations. - It does. - That's what lives beyond the author, right? - Right, and you think about it, like just the oral tradition itself bound generations together. - Exactly. - And the way stories evolved over time, all of that stuff, that does. It absolutely binds together all of time, all of humanity, yeah. - Yeah, that's a really interesting sentiment, I like that. - Yeah. Okay. - Oh, okay, yeah. For Don Decker, the value of books was not academic. He did not seek the wisdom of the race and he invariably gravitated to what was the greatest and best and so forth. What the books do contain is the experience of the race and then you can see what men have learned and what they have gone through. For Don, reading this stuff was a profound experience. He could lose himself completely, identifying himself with a character from Shakespeare or a Sheila's or another author and so forth. - Yeah, which that, I love that he brings this up because, I mean, Don Decker really loved Shakespeare and this comes up several times in the talk. But in here, Nibley speaks about dispensations and episodes of time. He says that our lives are filled with episodes, that this life isn't a one-act play, but a series of acts or episodes. And according to him, we experience a culture shock when we pass from one episode to another, like from childhood to puberty, adolescents to young adulthood, et cetera. He says that Shakespeare treats the passing of youth as a form of death, something you can never get back again. He points out that when we were young, much of what, a bunch of it was hell, but looking back on it from our adult perspective, it seems to be paradise. And he does say it just, you know, much of it was hell. I was like, what? You used a swear word in this, this is awesome. (both laughing) - And once again, these are all actually good sentiments, right? These are like, these are reasonable approaches, like reasonable ways to look at life too, right? Like it's troubling because all of it is given within the Mormon context. So everything is like fractured and skewed and a little bit of fucking deranged, but at the same time, it's like sands, any of the Mormon theology and shit. They're like, Nibley is speaking legitimate truths here. - Right, exactly. And he says there's seven episodes in life, but I disagree. And I know they like to, you know, seven is the godly number and all that, or whatever the fuck, I can't remember all the details on the numbers, but I'm like, I think it's real, I mean, for me, it's like this, starting February 12th or 11th last year, started a whole new episode for me. - Oh yeah, absolutely. - And I had to completely change, rethink everything of my life, you know, and it's like, everything I thought it was before that, I can never go back to, ever. - That's true. - You know, and so that's a whole new episode and I've had so many. I mean, I'm probably on episode like 22 or 23 now, except they're trying to count them all out going, yeah, okay, that's changing everything and I couldn't go back, yep, this change, you know. And so that's a thing is, there's no limit to him, but it does make sense because that is a culture shock, that is a change, that is, you know, a change in the direction of your life and what's happening and where it's going and you have to rethink yourself. And so these are all important things to point out, you know, and this was something he, that Donald Decker recognized as he went along as well, yeah, so he references Shakespeare so many times in this talk and in particular, he spoke about Prospero's final speech in the Tempest as he put it. Now, this part really irritated me. He quotes from the Tempest and he calls it the last word in the play, but it isn't the last word. Okay, so the quote he gives is this. It is the baseless fabric of this vision, it shall dissolve and like the insubstantial pageant faded leave not a rack behind. That's not the last word of play. That's from Act 4, scene one. There are five fucking acts in the play. - Yeah, that's definitely not the last word. - So no, it's nowhere near the last word. I know the last word, I had to memorize that final speech, that Prospero gives and in fact, you're getting a tangent today. You're getting a literary tangent because I want to go on a diatribe, yes. - Yes, please. - The epilogue at the end of Act 5 is Prospero's final speech and in it, he breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience directly. There are, I think, only two other plays. I'm trying to remember exactly, but I think there's only two other plays where Shakespeare breaks the fourth wall. One is Richard III, but the more important one that applies to this is a Midsummer Night's Dream. Now, there's a huge level of importance on those two times as well as the two plays themselves. And now, granted, it's really hard to prove exactly the order of when the plays were produced because records then and all that shit. But Midsummer Night's Dream was written near the beginning of Shakespeare's career and the Tempest is near the end. There were many who believed the Tempest was the last, but it just depends, it changes all the time. And at this point, it's up in the air, but they're basically beginning in the end of the career. So, Midsummer Night's Dream, the last speech given was by Puck. Puck in English fairy tales and the English fairy land, really. He's kind of the trickster of the fairies. He's part of Oberon in Titania's court. He's also known as Robin Goodfellow and a few other names. So, Puck is there on the stage at the end of the play and this is his speech. I had to memorize this two months. He says, "If we shadows have offended, think but this "and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here "while these visions did appear. "And this weak and idle theme, "no more yielding but a dream. "Gentle's, do not reprehend. "If you pardon, we will mend. "And as I am an honest Puck, "and if we haven't earned it luck, "now to scape the serpent's tongue, "we will make amends air long." Else the Puck liar call. So, good night until you all. Give me your hands if we be friends and Robin shall restore amends. Now, this is Shakespeare at the beginning of his career addressing the audience saying, "You know, he didn't like the play. "Just pretend like you were asleep. "You just had a weird dream. "And come back next time, don't get mad at me. "Come back next time, we'll try again." "And clap your hands, give me your hands. "We'll be friends and, you know, "we'll try next time and see if you like it better." That's all it is. Yeah, so now, Prospero's final speech. Tempest near the end of his career. "Now my charms are all overthrown "and what strength I have's my own, "which is most faint. "Now, 'tis true, I must be here confined by you "or sent to Naples. "Let me not, since I have my dukedom got, "in part in the deceiver, "dwell in this bare island by your spell, "but release me from my bands "with the help of your good hands. "Gentle breath of yours, my sales must fill "or else my project fails, which was to please. "Now, I want spirits to enforce, art to enchant, "and my ending is to spare "unless I be relieved by prayer, "which pierces so that it assaults mercy itself "and frees all faults. "As you from crimes would pardon me, "let your indulgence set me free." Okay, so here this is Shakespeare saying, "I have spent a long time doing this, "and with your pardon, with your spell to release me, "let me go on and finish and be done. "Let your indulgence set me free." You know, 'cause all of my dawg, all of my projects were here to please. Now, let me go, and I mean-- - Very interesting. - He had quite a career, but really, while he was working, he was either writing, rehearsing, or performing a play, and performing a play, all the time. - All the time, all the time. - All the time, and so, and they would only perform the play maybe two or three times in a week, and that was it, and then the next week, they're doing another one. Only once, if it didn't go over too well. And yes, he was a genius playwright. He really was, but not all of his plays are awesome plays. I will say that, not all of them were, but they all, I mean, as a whole, they are great. They are really well done. They're not all understandable, and there's repeats on them, comedy of errors, and the-- Oh, fuck, I just lost the word. I can't remember that name on my head. There's two of them there. - Julia is screaming at us right now. - Yep, so his friend from Serbia, she's like, she had it! But anyway, you know, there's some that are copies and everything, but his history, some of the histories, are some of the best ones done. His tragedies, his comedies, all of them. You know, and there's so much he had to present, and they've lasted through time because they can be interpreted in so many different ways. - Right, right. - Yes, he was a genius. Okay. Yes, he wrote them. You weren't written by Francis Bacon. Anyway, okay. - I wasn't gonna say it. - I am so irritated with Nibley on this, 'cause I'm like, dude, you are a scholar. You know how to do this. Why the, just say it from scene four. Not his final word. His final word is, let me be done. Let me move on with my life. He's not saying I wanna die. He's like, I wanna move on. Okay, all right, all right, okay. All right, we'll get back to the book now. - I mean, maybe it was that. Nibley just took a little bit of liberty with the life of Shakespeare just, you know, for a little extra punch in a funerary sermon. - Yeah, sure. - Fast enough. Okay, so he says the test for life is not knowledge, or intelligence, or courage. We are tested for only one thing, and that's the desires of our heart. He says that for years, Decker was obsessed with the Shakespeare character, King Lear, who he sees as the great example of repentance. I'm not sure if I would see Lear as repentance. I'd see it. Lear is the one who really fucked up. Sorry, but yes. I don't know how many of you know the King Lear. It's actually the most, I think, the most incomprehensible of all of Shakespeare's plays. And I really wish Kenneth Branagh would do a film of it, because he knows how to get actors to speak the lines as if it's their normal speech, and to portray it. Because if you understand how to speak the lines, you don't have to do it in an English accent, and he never does. He hires people from all sorts of countries, and he does not make them change their accents. He has them use their own accents. And yeah, and it's fantastic. I mean, his hamlet is the best I've ever seen. Absolute hands-down best. And I have seen every film made. I've seen the play done seven different times with seven different casts, and I've read the play 15 or more times. I've written so many papers on it. I studied it in three different classes, all of this. And his hamlet is the only one made me cry. Absolutely, only one. It was fantastic. Anyway, so I want him to do Lear, because he would present it, and I would love to see him play Lear, because he's old enough to do it now. But ah, definitely a side note. Okay, but anyway, I mean, in Lear, he has three daughters. Two of them are evil. One of them is wonderful, but because the two evil ones flatter him galore, and the wonderful one speaks truth to him, he cuts her off and sends her away, and gives, divides his kingdoms between the two evil ones. Oh, very interesting. And everybody dies in the end. Oh, I mean, yeah. It's like, you're such an asshole. You know, I mean, he regrets it later, because he realized he was stupid. But it's like, that's not repentance. Les Miserables is a little bit better with repentance, even though it's about a whole hell of a lot more than that. But anyway, all right, okay. So as the church's gospel is the gospel of repentance, that is what we should seek. This is getting back to Niblet, and that's what he's talking about. And so this is what he says next. Who is righteous? Anyone who is repenting, of course. No matter how bad he has been, if he is repenting, he is a righteous man and so forth. There is hope for him. And no matter how good he has been all of his life, if he is not repenting, he is a wicked man. The difference is which way you are facing. A man on the top of the stairs facing down is much worse off than the man at the bottom step who's facing up. The direction we are facing, that is repentance. And that is what determines whether we are good or bad. Now I remember a seminary lesson, and this seminary lesson actually impacted me, because it's one of the few that I'm actually have on memory recall right now. But the teacher drew two graphs. The rise was righteousness, the run was time. And drew these one that looked like a stock market that was up, up, up, up, up, up, down, up, down, up, down. But overall rising in righteousness. But at the very end of it, it showed a downturn. There was a second line that was basically flat across the run, meaning this person was not spiritual their entire life. But at the very end of it, it ticked up towards righteousness. And he said, "So which of these people is going to go to heaven? The celestial kingdom?" And of course, we all point to the most righteous one, the one that I had the high peaks look like the star market. And he's like, "No, that's wrong." It's a person who was repenting at the end, had the little tick up at the very bottom. That's the one who's going to go to the celestial kingdom. Yeah. And I remember because it was so inimical to everything, I was thinking like, wait, so then I can just do all of the sinning. I don't have to carry about it and go to the temple. I can do all of those things. But as long as I repent on my deathbed, then I'm good, right? That was the thought that I carried. That was the thought that I had for a long time in Mormon theology when deathbed repentance is like the most inimical thing to Mormon theology ever, ever, ever. And I just remember my mind being blown away. The seminary teacher was saying, "No, deathbed repentance is pretty great. Let's try it out sometime." Which is funny because there is the parable of the workers throughout the day and they all get paid the same, no matter how long they worked. Right, yeah. So therefore, that's what that means. Yeah. Right. If that's what you take away from the parable. Right, exactly. And so, I mean, that's what other churches get from it. That's what the Catholics get from it. It's a deathbed repentance thing. Yeah, of course. And so, yeah, it was interesting. But that's what Niblet just said too, right? The man who's at the top facing down is worse off than the man at the bottom facing up. Right, which is, I mean, his point is continually repenting, not necessarily, I'm just like, how much of that is, who can be interpreted as just, you know, like me and so many others with our, watching our rated movies and then repenting afterwards and then doing again and repenting afterwards, you know, back and forth. Okay, fair. But, you know, because he doesn't address that if you're repenting of the same thing all the time. I mean, we're just, it's sophistry here, but, yeah, but it's like, interesting, especially considering that the emphasis on this is not what you are doing, that you are being righteous, but that to be righteous, you have to repent. I don't know how to put this. If I even can phrase it right, but it's like so much of what I had heard through life was to be perfect in your actions, whereas this was like, no, it's just as long as you're always repenting, that's what matters. And it's like, it's a different focus. I mean, really, it's the same thing, but it's a different focus on it. So I don't know. It was interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look, I am beginning, not beginning, but I'm kind of midway through understanding why Nively is such a popular writer, because you and I don't believe in this shit and the stuff that he's written, you and I are having a thought-provoking discussion about this. What does he mean by this? What is actually his marker of righteousness? His marker of genius here, right? To TV and discussion, right? Like, what is Nively trying to tell us here? And it's leading to a thought-provoking conversation. And you and I don't believe in this. So I can only imagine that people who believe that Nively is like this thought leader, this genius in Mormon theology spaces, that they would just gobble this up, because it introduces nuance into a very black and white, good and evil theology. And I appreciate that. Like, that is much more interesting to read than Miracle of Forgetness. It is, for sure. And Millennial Messiah, too. Yeah, I mean, exactly. Yeah. I mean, really, truly, he was a philosopher of his time. He was, yeah. Yeah. And within the strict confines of his upbringing. Of his upbringing. Because he does promote discussion. The things he says. Yeah. Very much so. So he said that Decker was always pondering on the problem of repentance. And he talks of how we are all sinners and must spend our lives making sure we root it out and repent. Dig all the nitty gritty out of the rug. We go to the next life in the position we die here in this life. You know, that we die here in. So we should always repent so we can be called righteous. And I remember once I said to my aunt who's Baptist, I brought up that because this is a Mormon belief, is that your spirit retains the desires of your physical body. Yeah. So when you go to the next life as your spirit, you know, if you are an alcoholic, you will crave alcohol, but you won't be able to get it. Yeah, exactly. Or you will crave a cigarette or anything like that. She was vehemently opposed to that. Yeah, of course. Because she's like, no, you will go there your perfect self. And it was really interesting. But I think that is also a thought-provoking thing. And I was never taught this, but like wherever you are on your spiritual journey, when you die, that's where you start, even in spirit, prison or paradise, right? And that's where your eternal progression begins, is where you left off, right? Like, you know, it's intuitive in Mormon theology. I was just never taught that explicitly, or taught it that way when I was a kid. And it's like, oh, that's actually interesting to me. Yeah, yeah. He finishes this talk with a bit about consciousness, which completely surprised me. He talks about how many scientific writings are zeroing in on the idea of consciousness, that there is no center of the brain where consciousness is located, and that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the body. He goes with the conclusion that John Eccles made in the book, he and Karl Popper wrote that was called The Self in the Brain. This was his thing, Popper didn't agree with him. So where he concludes that consciousness exists outside of independent of the body. And he says this. "There are ties between the body and the mind. There should be, for a physical resurrection does exist. We believe in it. We will need it." And so forth. Body does play a definite role in the mind and the spirit. We came here to get a body for a definite purpose, but it does not do a one-to-one, but it is not a one-to-one relationship. Certainly not here, for the time being only a temporary and wobbly relationship. I'm finding it to be with consciousness going its own way. It blacks out completely sometimes, or at least partially and so forth. It fights the body or loses interest in it sometimes. Sometimes it makes me sick in spite of myself. Good old consciousness, overcoming limitations of hunger and weakness. It was such an interesting side note because this is him talking about himself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that does not happen very often. No, I was like, why did he talk about himself there? And now according to his daughter, Martha Beck, he would black out sometimes, just at random moments, that they really freaked out, nibbly, because he didn't know what was happening. The first one happened right before he was supposed to give a talk at BYU. Doctors never found out a cause for them. They tried to see if it was, you know, for a stroke or something, but they didn't have any evidence of them. And the way she described it, it's almost like how I've seen petite mal seizures describe, but he wasn't epileptic. But I just have to wonder, how much could have been caused by what he ate, or didn't eat? Yeah, more likely, right? Yeah, especially this, you know, overcoming the limitations of hunger and weakness. Yeah. And I'm like, interesting. It's also, it comes from a very ye old idea too that like, our consciousness is, you know, separate from our body, right? And that's like something that is universally understood and accepted in psychology, neuroscience, and everything that our consciousness is a manifestation of the chemical reactions in our brain and the rest of our body, right? But the idea that our consciousness exists outside of the body, and that the consciousness like will fight with our body or will be influenced by other spirits that can cause the consciousness to fight with the body, like that's a very old occult idea, very, very old. So it's, you know, I also get the like within the context of what he understands, the worldview he understands, and the idea of like a spirit, body dichotomy like this. Sure, it makes sense in that worldview, but also at the same time, it's like, it's not taught about this way in Mormon circles. It fights the body or loses interest in it sometimes. Sometimes it makes me sick and spite of myself. Like, that's not the way that the spirit is talked about in Mormon circles. No, never. Or whatever. That's a very interesting, interesting thing. Yeah, and clearly informed by his own lived experience. And Nibley never really talked about himself much. He was always talking about things. He was talking about ideas. He was talking about books. He was talking about scholarship. He was talking about writings, language. He was talking about things, never himself. Never himself. Yeah. So this was interesting. He said that consciousness was a subject Decker really enjoyed talking about as well. But yeah, that was more about Nibley than Decker. So all in all, he gives a really nice tribute to Decker. He showed the admiration he had for the man, and managed to present him as a man to admire and emulate. Though reading between the lines, I'm like, never focused for long though. He just gained knowledge. But what did he do with the knowledge? Right. So that's an interesting idea, right? Yeah. I was like, if he didn't have a career, how did they live? Was his wife the one working? I don't know. I don't know. I have no idea. Maybe he was maybe he was a trust fund kid. Yeah, exactly. And the deckers are, you know, the wealthy Mormon name, and he just lived off of the family in Attil who knows. I'm not sure. So why did he and Don Norton include this in a book about money? So I have my suspicions for it. Okay. It ties into my segment. But I want to hear what your thoughts are. My thought on that was his thing of him admiring him for not having a career. Okay. And that, I mean, it was only one statement made in there about that. You know, he didn't have a career and Stephen Richards, you know, on his diatribe about against careerism. And yeah, BYU, they teach careers all the time and all that stuff. You know, and so that was kind of a big bugaboo to him. That's the only reason I could think of really with that, that he admired a man who managed to live his life without having a career while he couldn't. Right. But so somebody who was also a fellow seeker of knowledge, someone who was working to unlock the mysteries of the universe, right? Yeah. Hmm. I think my reasons for it may be a little more cynical and not separate or distinct from your reasons, just in addition to the reasons you just stated. And that is the idea and tapping into my segment as well, of genius worship, of intelligence worship, right? And this is the case where Nibley carried so much goddamn cache in Mormon circles. He was so vaunted of a figure. Just everybody loved Nibley so much except some of the leadership, right? Yeah. But he was thought provoking. People saw him as a thought leader, saw him as a genius in Mormon theology. And when somebody who you think is smart tells you the attributes of who they consider to be smart, you want to emulate that, right? If there's someone who you admire and they describe what attributes they admire in somebody, you're going to want to emulate those attributes, right? So Nibley, someone who is universally admired, doing a funeral address for somebody that he admired, is going to spurn readers to emulate Don Decker. Because if Don Decker was somebody that Nibley respected, then I want to be somebody that Nibley respects. So I'm going to try and be like Don Decker. Right. So that's also not distinct, you know, separate or, you know, antithetical to your reasons, right? It's just like, you know, Don Decker was somebody too immortalized in this way and too, you know, to worship because he was so intelligent and did all of these things without having a career. Nibley clearly had those reasons for liking the guy. And, you know, as readers of this, it's like, yeah, Don Decker actually sounds like a really interesting person to talk to. He sounds like he and I probably wouldn't agree on a whole lot of things, but we could have a long, fascinating conversation over, you know, milk and beer, I guess, laid into the evening, right? Root beer and beer, yep. I was like, I would have sat down and talked Shakespeare with them. Yeah, that would be fun. I had entire classes on those semesters at college on Shakespeare. Ah, fun. So what a strange chapter, though. It was really strange. And it's totally an anomaly. It doesn't fit in with the thesis of every other page of this book. It's just as a strange standalone thing. Yeah, all I configure is Don Norton was like, well, it wasn't included anywhere else. So let's put it in there so we could make it apply. Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. I just, yeah, that was, but, and I was like, this probably should have been the last chapter, not the middle. Maybe. And, you know, maybe Norton liked it because it has that little tiny illusion of self-reflection that Nibali actually wrote about his own thinking in a way that was, you know, or like self-reflective, not thinking about things, but thinking about himself. And this is the only time that we've seen it in the book so far. It's probably the only place where it exists in the entire book. And maybe that was something that Don Norton thought was a bit of an endearing quality about this essay specifically and was like, you know what, why don't we include it? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. There are cynical ways to look at it and there are very like endearing ways to look at it. Yeah. I don't, I don't really know what to make of it. Okay. I don't either. Yeah. It was interesting though. And it just doesn't fit with any other chapter, so you only get one this time. No, all right. That works. Very cool. Well, should we close our discussion of geniuses, intellect and eugenics and white supremacist theology and talk some happy news? Let's talk some happy news. Yes. All right. I can't wait. The light of gazebo. Well, price. Yes, you're ready for some really good Swedish news. Sure. Sweden has managed to cut 80% of its emissions since 1990 while doubling its economy, proving that economic growth and climate protection can go hand in hand. Okay. So the Democrats win, we're done, right? The biggest argument that the conservatives have about sticking with oil and gas and all that shit is that it will destroy the economy. No, it won't. Sweden has proved that it will not. So, yeah, I mean, the key quote from them, from Asa Pearson, who's an advisor to the Swedish government on climate policy said this, the biggest lesson is that you need close cooperation between government, private sector and the local government as well to really develop these system solutions together and take risks and make these big long-term investments. Everybody has to do it together. Yeah. And this was a country that was willing to do that. And that, to me, is amazing. I mean, they had strong government policies, high-carbon tax, incentivized businesses, and citizens to adopt greener practices, which that's important. I mean, yeah, here we get tax deductions for electric cars, for natural gas cars, you know, for these kinds of things, hybrid cars. And that's great. But also, they transitioned away from fossil fuels. And they now have biofuels powering 97% of heating. I'm like, holy fuck. That's crazy. Yeah. That's really crazy. They had early investments in renewable energy, utilized natural resources like forests and hydropower, all that kind of stuff. So, this is fantastic and it's proof. It can be done. And it should be done. And look, like there are many levers that government can pull on to try and incentivize this and, you know, subsidizing private, you know, the private sector and individual citizens to buy, you know, clean energy through electric cars or whatever, through, you know, solar installing solar panels in their houses or whatever. That's one of the levers. And having, you know, a green new deal passed in America would be another one of those levers that can be pushed. And, you know, look, this is, yeah, this is really interesting. And also getting people elected in local governments that want to put solar panels in local schools too, right? So like local government, federal government and private sector, having those three working in concert towards green renewable energy. Yeah. And it boosts the economy at the same time. Brilliant. Yeah. Fuck. Yes, Sweden. Way to go. Yes. For sure. So there's your happy news. Yeah. Now, if we could just get our government and others to look at that, that'd be good. Yeah, it's not hold our breath. No, because then we'll just die. Yeah, which, speaking of not holding our breath, we have some listener mail from the last episode, which, you know, talking in Project 2025, of course, listener mail will be informed by that. So if you want to end on a happy note, cut it off here. Right. So last episode, Tyler also said, stopping free food programs for kids is some cartoon villain stuff. Yeah. Yeah, it is for real. It is anti-evolution. Good Lord. Is that still an issue? I thought that was a solved issue, but apparently not. Getting rid of car safety regulations. Again, cartoon, villain, stop. They aren't even attempting to hide it. Yeah. Exactly. It's the mustache twirl. Like it is the most evil universe upside down world shit. It's incredible. Absolutely is. And he says, Project 2025 is so horrifying. Why would anyone want these to come through? Even Donald Trump, the dude cared 0% about anything related to ethics, is trying to distance himself from it publicly. It is so horrible. Now, as I recall, Trump can't pardon himself from the 34 felony counts, even if he was president. They are state level charges. Of course, the Supreme Court could just interpret some rammed him shit to say it's legal when it's not. So maybe he could. That's fair point. Fair point. I didn't make that distinction. That is true. And well, it's like, who knows? Because the Supreme Court. God, yeah. Well, anyway. Autisticness is next to godliness. Who recommended that Project 2025 as a topic? Wow. Thank you for the amazing breakdown of this horrifying document. Abstinence only sex education does not work. How do I know? Yep. I grew up in Utah with taught abstinence only in sex that my high school girlfriend and I stopped attending church when I was 16, because that was easier than admitting to the bishop that she was pregnant. Well, there we go. There we go. There it is. An anecdote that supplies data. Yep. This is John Oliver makes an important point that cannot be glossed over. If Trump doesn't win the election, that's not the end of Project 2025. It just becomes Project 2029. And he's right. Yeah. Yep. That's actually a really good point. And I didn't actually make that explicitly clear when I talked about the previous mandates for leadership that had been written for the Reagan administration, for the Bush administrations. And you know what? Absolutely right. Thank you for putting that point on that. We implied it, but didn't say it. And so it's good he said it. Yeah. 100%. So everyone remember go, are you registered to vote? Make sure you still are. Vote.org. Yep. It's the top link in the show notes of this episode as well. Vote.org. Make sure you are registered to vote. And if not, it's going to take five minutes to register to do it. It'll be a really easy promise. We're not, we do not count our chickens. We have not won yet. Let's keep up the steam. We learned that in 2016, do not count your chickens. 100%. Yeah. So real quick, we do not have any new iTunes reviews, but I didn't want to let everyone know. I'm going to be in Utah here this next week. That's going to be at fungi fest. We're going to be doing a screening of the documentary as well as presentations and whatnot at fungi fest. Fun guy is meaning mushrooms. Not fun guy as this guy is just really fun. I'm sure there will be lots of fun guys there. And fun gals and fun geekses and all of the genders. But it is September 6th through 8th. That's going to be happening. You can find links for it on a, well, in the show notes, it's at wholesunwellness.com where they are hosting it. So yeah, it's actually a really, really fun event. Looking forward to it. And then immediately after that, I'm going to be at John Whitmer Historical Association down in St. George, Utah. At this time of year, it's not St. George, it seems taint. And that is going to be, what is that, the 12th through 15th? And that is going to be at the Dixie Conference Center in St. George. So if you're in southern Utah area or if you're traveling for it, love to see you there. Or if you're going to be a fungi fest, or if you only just now learn about that event, love to see you there as well. And yeah, get a chance to hug you at fist bump, elbow bump, shake hands, wave from a distance, whatever you're comfortable with. It'd be really fun to see you there. So yeah, just want to let everyone know about those things. Excellent. All righty. And we might even record another episode in person. I know, we'll see. We'll be in the room. We'll try and make it work. I hope so. Well, we're going to try really hard to make it work. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my god. Cool. Got to figure out what it's going to be on. Yeah, I got to do children and men next, but we might not work. I don't know. Too plumbing the depths of shit for this episode. I haven't even thought about the next episode. I know. Anyway, all right. If you want to support the show patreon.com/glassboxpod, get some of our merch at xmomerch redbubble.com/xmomerch or check the show notes. You can make direct donations to Shannon or I or to the show through PayPal over in the show notes as well. You know all the things listeners. Yeah. You know how to get in touch with us. You know how to send in listener mail or comments on the patreon threads. And obviously we read those at the end of every episode. And sometimes we make entire segments out of comments from listeners. Thank you all as always, Tyler and all of our commenters. Anything else, Shannon? We're done. I think that's it. I think we're good. All right. Yeah. Walk out. Take a slug of night quill and let it take me away, Sandman. All right. Let's call it a night. Hey. Good night, everybody. See you. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]