[music] Hey fellow G&T, those of us who like our spirituality with a twist. So we are in the midst of uh one of our little series. Uh we like to do sometimes a little mixology G&T. And what we're mixing up this time is a conversation about this thing called the emotional plague. This is from the eccentric, quirky but genius psychologist one Wilhelm Reich and his ideas that societies and cultures can have these toxic ideas that can spread kind of like an infection through a culture. And he was talking about this before social media. And so we've been talking about his stuff there, but we've been doing a little m mixup mashup thing to also talk about this like relative and uh in conjunction with our talking about some of the traditional Chinese medical ideas that kind of harmonize well with that. So that's been what we've been doing. And um now we're really talking about uh on the one hand the lung and emotions of sadness and grief in TCM theory and how that fits into these discussions of like emotional plague stuff. Before we go into the heart of the matter, if you can do all those things that everybody asks you to do at the start of every podcast you ever listen to, which is to like and subscribe, write a review, share an episode with a friend, and uh everyone always says the same thing. So, we just did it, too. And it sort of helps people out. So, thanks so much for doing that. Uh otherwise, we're into talking about this emotional plague thing. Uh anything more on the intro, Daniel, before we get into it?

Nope.

Alrighty. Well, on the one hand, I like to say it every time. You know, the emotional plague is kind of a personal thing. You know, if you want to like make yourself improve psychosspiritually, you got to sort of escape this. This is a lot of what they talk about in the tantras that you transcend the mundane sort of ideas of the world that you live in so you can achieve greater things. So there's a personal level and then there's sort of a more sweeping level uh which Reich talks about in his mass psychology of fascism that this stuff can spread through a whole a whole community of people, a whole society of people. And then the third thing that we haven't been mentioning all the time, but I think it's really important maybe for this episode especially is that the emotional plague is not just like a psychological thing. It's a physical thing too, which is why we're kind of doing our mixup here of these two things meshing them together because you there's a physicality in this like and that's very creative and Reich and very much fits into a lot of like Asian philosophy.

The mind and the body mirror one another. The mind and the spirit mirror one another. So, and so this emotional plague thing, you think, well, that's a psychological idea, but it also has these physical components to it, too. All right. So, with that as the context, we're talking about the lung. Um, on the one hand, the emotions that are usually talked about this are are sadness and grief that we'll be able to kind of maybe stretch that out a little bit. And then usually there's this idea that there's some positive psychological states and emotions that are tied into each of these. And for in my taste for the metal, I like to think of it as sort of like fairness and senses of equality and justice. And sometimes people will say uh righteousness. Righteousness is kind of a funny word because sometimes it has negative connotations, right? You can be like a self-righteous person and that doesn't sound as positive but on the positive hand and hand things like fairness and justice and desires for things to be equal and fair. Is that how you think about the virtues of the the lung too in Chinese medicine? Daniel, is that

Yeah. So just so

I with you. Uh yeah, just like a a a brief thing for those who people who are not familiar the metal Eric mentioned metal and in Chinese medicine the we're referencing the metal element. So we've talked previously about the water element which is like the kidneys, urinary bladder. We talked about the wood element which is like the liver gallbladder kind of focusing more on one like the the liver more on the other and kidney. And in this one the metal element is more a little bit more focused on the lung. So just to give a little bit of a uh context for those who are listening, you know.

Yeah. And Oh, go ahead. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.

No, no, finish. Go ahead.

I was gonna say like big in the Chinese medical world and then, you know, for our psychosspiritual conversations, big in like the Dowist world, right?

Yeah.

Like real quintessential point.

Yeah. So, yeah. Um, in terms of the positive attributes, yeah. Fairness, justice, righteousness. Uh I also like to think of it like order like in a very right order you know everything in its place a place for everything which has positive attributes and keeping things I don't I can't think of a different word but you know right or in order if you will but then also can some other attributes very rigid.

Yeah. So it has its ups and downs some of these things right.

Yeah. And I guess the attitude in the Dowist world be they're kind of natural and they can have their positives and negatives. I totally agree with you on the order or sometimes I like the word structure or something, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Either one of those words work though. I I totally agree with you. And u

you could talk about the lung, you know, in each of these phases or [clears throat] elements, you can have like two organs with them and sometimes the order gets also tied into like the large intestine. But yeah, I think you're right. I think it's important to talk about these things. And then as far as emotional plague stuff to my mind that's how some of those things can go toxic. The order and structure can be good but then it can become like oppressive or excessive or

self-defeating.

On some level. Right.

Yeah. And then and you know then in line with this the sadness that ar that is afflicts these organs can be you know sadness over loss usually. usually and and for me the way that I the mental image I use in my mind for for the metal element is a filing cabinet

almost exclusively of which are metal you know.

Oh yeah yeah yeah

and but then if you think about the loss of something from that if you have an attachment to it you will feel that the space where that one file once was. And so that grief that sadness that grief that you know difficulty in letting go is uh you know inhibitory to the positive function of that element and that could be psychosspiritually or psychologically uh inhibiting to your your your joy your happiness and there's reason there's a there's a reason for that which we can talk about now or kind of go into that later but maybe we'll do it

like even like on a personal level like I was thinking about today knowing knowing we were going to do this and I've had some losses that are sort of, you know, personal losses, people I cared about and you feel it, right?

So, even, you know, if you want to go into your own experience and once you have this little snippet of information, you can realize, oh, you feel heavy in your chest, you feel heavy in your lungs, you feel like you need to sigh more, you feel like these kinds of feelings physically. You can almost feel in your own body,

right?

Yeah. Uh, so I know you want to go into some of the more physiology behind it. I don't want to like You want to do that now or?

Yeah. Well, so so I I Well, let me do this one piece and then we can go into that, right? And so

we'll probably bounce around within this one, right? So,

yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. So, I I you know, I Eric, you can tell me where this comes out of. I don't always have the the exact text, but I I forgot I I took a a continuing education class and and they gave the sort of discussion on this and why the lung, why sadness and grief with the lung in particular. And we've talked about this before, but we'll do it again now because it's nice to give a little bit of background for people who are not Chinese medical practitioners. And even those who are even those who are, they can always use a little refresher, you know. Um, so there's these there's this idea of we call them bodies or maybe we can I don't know what's another word for bodies, Eric. And like, you know, like the the hun and the poe and the the jur.

Oh, yeah. They're kind of interesting. They're kind of aspects of the psyche or the spirit maybe that connect into the different organs.

Yeah. So that's it. Yes. Yeah. Different.

It's really deep. So again, we're getting a little Dowisty. We don't actually do as much Dowism in our podcast, ironically enough. So we're getting a little of this Dowist stuff here, but

you know, Chinese medicine sort of talks like the um the psych the psyche of the person, right, is affected not only by the brain, but also by the heart.

In major ways. Yeah. Yeah.

But then with the heart, the heart also kind of has uh these connections into the other major organs surrounding it, right?

And each of those can also affect the emotions and the psyche in their own ways, right? And then you get these different names that are put on

sort of different aspects of the psyche that are tied into these organs. So for the lung, it's this thing called the PO.

And the the lung is the the lung, the metal element is associated with kind of like the physical body. So the like we talked about the wood element that's sort of associated with like your dreaming body that that at night when you go out and you travel at night in your dreams or whatever you do that's associated with that. This one however is far more physical. They call it corporeal right in the classical kind of translations. And the reason for which the lung and large intestine are associated with sadness and grief. It's because of the the loss that they are associated with in reference specifically to the physical body. So these other elements or archetypes if you will or pieces of our soul if you want to call them that way that are in the lung I'm sorry that are in the liver that are in the heart that are in the kidneys or they will move on to the next life. They will move they will they're they're far more ethereal. They're far more subtle. However, the lung and the large intestine are not subtle in, you know, in in reference to our bodies. They're not subtle at all. They're very physical and they are also aware that they are not moving on to the next life. So any loss is very painful because it is it is a reminder for them that like they're not going to the next one. And so we tend to feel these things much more deeply than perhaps other aspects of our psyche that are shared by other organs. And so loss in general is very difficult for us because we are finite bodies and there is not another body for us to you know to go to yet. Now maybe somebody will, you know, have a trillion dollars at some point and they can store their consciousness and put it into a dog and then uh

shoot that dog off with the to live on Mars,

We be talking like what could we possibly be thinking about? [laughter] Um but you know but that it's difficult because it's a reminder of our mortality and I tend to have you know pretty open and honest discussions with patients about this thing in general that like loss is a reminder of our mortality. Injury is a lot is a reminder of our mortality. Illness is a reminder of our mortality and all of which are bring up fear. All of which bring up a kind of a sadness and this is difficult for us to deal with because there's not a whole lot of recourse, you know. So, you know, we we'll continue to talk about this as the episode unfolds. But I I found that to be very helpful for me uh in terms of framing my mind as to why some of these things are so, you know, so guttural to us, loss in particular, uh and how hard at grieving is a process that, you know, it doesn't just happen, you know, minute by minute. It it takes time.

Yeah. Yeah, there's a kind of a a a piece of this too. You know, the way Dowists and then Chinese doctors influenced by Dowist ideas think is like it's ironic because I was just talking about this today in a class I was teaching.

But, you know, the thing about the lung is it's very connected to like the external world in an immediate way. None of your other organs are like immediately interacting with things. So what happens in the external world if you want to think about this way too really has an impact on the lung and then sort of the psychological aspects you know that you might talk about in the dowist world affected by the lung. So those events outside impact you much more immediately right

and so the losses are very immediately felt and maybe these other parts can get a little bit more removed from that but the lung is like right there in like the the midst of it right.

Mhm. because it's immediately connected and like I think you know the Dowist's thought process is very creative in this way. It looks at the organ and it says, "Okay, what's that organ's function? What is it doing?" And then how does it impact the psyche of a person, right?

And you get some of their most creative stuff out of this, right?

Things that you wouldn't think of for yourself. I had a patient, we were talking about this kind of stuff, like what you were saying, and and he was like, "Well, I could sit on a rock for like a thousand years. I wouldn't come up with this Chinese shit." And I was like, "Yeah, [laughter] neither would I."

Right?

You know, but when you see what they do, you're like, "Oh, that's creative way of thinking." And then it ends up being true. You know, you could see cases like this, right? Look through your own life and have losses and you can see, oh, I can you could feel those in that way.

Eric, that that's a profound thing though,

right? That like your lungs, it's it's it makes makes sense to my mind that like they're into like fairness and justice and right order because they are engaging with the they're literally taking in the outside world. So, why would we want to take in chaos? Why would we want why would we want to take in disorganization into a a highly organized system regardless of what people know or don't know about the body? It is a very well-tuned machine, you know, I mean, it takes quite a bit to to to ruin it actually for the most part. And so it makes sense to me at least in my you know crazy halfdowist Chinese Buddhist you know whatever brain that the interaction with the outside world would we would want to have some uh semblance of of order so that we can interact with it on a easier level than if it was

otherwise it feels unstable and you feel vulnerable right

I mean you don't you want to know with the lung that everything's going to go orderly you want to take the chance that you're not going to be able to breathe the next it. No. [laughter]

Right.

No, you want that to be reliable and consistent, right?

Yeah. It's interesting. And there's other metaphors for this, too. Like, we all have to breathe in the same atmosphere around us. There has to be sort of a shared thing. So, I want stuff to feel fair. We all get our chance to breathe the same air, right?

No matter how rich you are, you still have to breathe Well, I guess maybe No, you still have to breathe the same air some way or another.

Some way or another.

Yeah. Even Peter Teal has to breathe this air or whoever you want to talk about. Yeah.

Um All right, cool. So, you know, when I was kind of jotting down my ideas about this and I imagine we're going to drop drop uh jump around with a lot of this that um you know, I was thinking about the culture because we're talking about like what goes wrong in an individual level and then where's the culture gotten kind of funky and there's different ways of talking about this, but I was just kind of thinking about all the elements of like sadness and grief that's happened, you know, even in our lifetimes, right? you know, like we've had like multiple wars that have happened where there's been losses and you know, uh, you know, injuries to people. I mean, you live through that in a very immediate way that we talked about in episodes of Times. And, you know, I was talking with somebody in the last couple of weeks, you know, just how many people came back injured, you know, and you'd know somebody who had a partner who came back injured. It's makes you sad talking about it. I can feel it right now, right?

Just so many people with that. And then we had economic losses, right? financial crisis and like people feeling super like losses within that and maybe still hasn't really totally healed. Right.

On some level I think those losses are still like there, you know.

And then we had a substance abuse crisis, right?

Bad.

Or still have. You're right. I mean, it's getting it's getting better, but it's not Yeah. And it's not covered as much.

No. They're like, man, let's not talk about that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we have substance abuse things and we know a lot of people who you feel sadness and grief with people we've had losses and damage to people and then we have this like COVID thing, right? It's a lung infection itself. And if you go with the body and the mind being interconnected, everyone gets a bunch of lung infections. And then, you know, that's going to be hard on, you know, the physiology of this, all these lingering things that maybe have hung around, right?

Maybe we never really fully recovered from those things either, let alone like

deaths and loss of loved ones and you know, uh, so anyways, it's it does make a certain sense. you were talking about I can't remember which of these elements and bases we were talking about but you said it well you know this idea like you know a a country is like one big body kind of when you think of it this way right

yeah so you know and then on a personal level to me I started thinking well you know you look around and you know there's a lot of like interpersonal separations and divorces and people feel the griefs of those and those aren't easy to get over right

it's a lot of those kinds of personal loss says, "Yeah,

I think I mean I know divorce rate is like you know in this country right now it's like 50%." But

yeah,

I just know so many people who are at this currently like breaking up and getting I mean it's so many

I mean it's a coin flip anyways but like sometimes you feel like even that seems like it's too low, right?

I think 50%'s too low.

Yeah, it seems like it's more right. I mean, I think I think at this point it's the older

it's the exers and the baby boomers who are far more married than not. And once the the you know the older the baby boomers go away, that number is going to go up. That number is going to go up for sure.

Let alone people just aren't doing it too.

So you get to like the Jenzers and like some of the younger folks and they're like, "Nah, I don't want to do this." And then you do get the thing like a lot of them are people who've seen like maybe parents divorce and things like that and it's kind of left the imprints on them, right?

Kids of those things. Yeah. It's I obviously you start thinking about that and you know we could all probably in our minds like list three, four, five, six people who we know are going through this some way or another, right?

And a lot of times there's kids involved and it gets kind of ugly, you know, especially get children involved and that kind of drags, right? Like a lot of them that I know, people have kids and you're never quite done with that person and it never quite fully ends. It just keeps dragging and dragging, right? So, you're constantly feeling that and then, you know, you feel the sadness of seeing your kids go through it. Yeah.

The very real. I mean, so if you start getting obviously we're being really real in an episode like this and all of them,

that's our that's our jam. you start thinking, okay, well that's a lot of like sadness and grief for people to be carting around,

right? Um and then you know kind of the explosion of like kids with a lot of issues too,

right? how many people are worried about their kids and sad about things affecting their children and stuff,

you know, um comes up in episodes here and there, but [clears throat] you know, Jonathan hates really big on this social psychologist and you know, there's the the rough ride the culture has been giving to kids, especially girls over the last, you know, 10, 15 years or something.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Social media got really toxic. Yeah.

Yeah. We've been talking about this for at least four years. I mean, since we started, we've been talking about this. It keeps popping up here and there,

So, if you're a parent and you see your kids going through issues, god damn, you know, that you really feel those things so deeply.

So, I I thought about, you know, as far as the emotional plague thing and how stuff can like ripple through a culture in that way. I thought, okay, this is really powerful stuff that people will have to deal with around this particular set of issues, the lungs, sadness, and grief and these questions, right? And then the idea that that's a physiological thing and like an you know psychological emotional thing and I guess if you really think about it and I didn't put it in the notes but like the air quality is kind of [...] in a lot of places too.

Totally.

You know

so you know it's like if you look at like what would damage this thing and like make this whole set of emotions and psychological problems more intense. Even our air quality is not that great.

Yeah. reminder for the audience, right? The body can affect the mind as equal as the mind can affect the body. So, you know, Eric is pointing out what we call environmental factors, right? Things that uh will affect your your soma, things that will affect your body that yes, okay, they're they're affecting your body, right? Air quality is poor. There are a lot of particullet that are just sort of floating around in people's homes. People are not going outside enough. They're just, you know, our our bodies having to filter a lot of these things with sort of depressed lung function which then depresses the emotional function of the lung in our minds as well. So there's a more so we're more prone to sadness and grief. And I want to make this point before we move on for you know those people who listened. Uh if not, you could totally check it out. But on the the episode that we did on anger and it was my contention at that time that like sadness and grief, fear, well, fear, grief, sadness will move you into a state of fight or flight

because people don't want to linger in the sad state. Like I I I I mentioned it then and and I think it's some psychological uh I don't know tendency in discussion that like anger is kind of like a secondary emotion that you're usually angry about something but underneath once that the dissipate once the energy of the anger dissipates what rely what remains is usually some kind of sadness or grief or fear or some more vulnerable emotional state. And so in this state in in this state of grief or in this state of sa you know sadness people will mask it with fear. I'm sorry they'll mask it with anger

and that you know encompasses a lot of people. So you might be angry because you're breathing in mold or something like this. Just it it can happen.

Yeah. It's kind of like can be a vicious circle then because you know the physiology the lungs aren't working well and you also have emotional events in your life that are sadness and griefinducing and then you get this two-way street. Mhm.

You know, and then you like lose your chicken in the egg of the whole thing, right? It's just going around in a circle.

You know, you can get to the these things are fun to explore when you're having these kinds of conversations and hopefully if you're listening to them, so there's like yin and yang of the emotions too and you could think that the the more yin emotions feel more fragile like yin-yang theory, right? So if you get into sadness and grief or fear and fright, those are the kind of the more yin emotions probably turn you more in, right? Mhm.

You know, they're more like inward moving or something and they also feel you probably feel more fragile in them, right? Where when you have like anger, it's a very like young

outward. Yeah.

Outward and it just feels you'd rather be in that state.

Absolutely.

That'll feel better, you know, and then it ends up being a thing that can mass up these other emotions.

Child's medical theory, the fear can go and like feed into anger in a very direct way like what you were bringing up in the episode when we were talking about that, right? fear directly feeding in and then sadness and grief. You know, in a way these emotions of like fairness and uh equality and justice and these things are supposed to control some of that anger.

But that that's really weak. can't, you know, and the anger will kind of erupt out, right,

of the inability for those like sort of more more positive aspects of the emotions with the lung and the metal and so on to be able to control those uh uh angry ones. But, you know, that's really weak. You can't control the anger.

No.

And it's a theory. I mean, you can say, why did the culture get so angry? We got multiple reasons why. were exploring different angles on them. But this is like part of a picture then if you want to look at it from a dowist Chinese medical point of view. For sure.

Well, I mean in part why do we get so angry is because people are always teaching other people that things aren't fair.

That's an interesting thing. Flesh that out a little bit more. Let me see what do you think about that.

So we can agree that the system is not equal. Okay. System is not equal. And this goes back far, right? We think of we we okay Native Americans it, you know, Thanksgiving is coming or will have just happened by the time this episode comes out or whatever, right? So the system isn't fair. It wasn't fair to them. They got blankets with smallpox and they were in all kinds of path pathogens and they okay and then they were murdered and you know whatever. Given a raw deal and then slavery obviously raw deal. Um, and I know it happened all around the world, but I'm just talking about here, you know. And then you had your Jim Crow laws. You had, you know, women were not able to vote. They were not, you know, like there was these tears of uh citizens in this country. This is not and this is not like, you know, woke somebody woke whatever. These are this is real life. This is how it was, right? It wasn't that we've mentioned this numerous times in the podcast. It wasn't that long ago that women couldn't get a checking account without their a letter from their husband or their father.

My mom couldn't get a credit card until like the early 1970s. She was born in 1940.

Okay. So, she's in her family.

You couldn't live. You couldn't live independently, right? No. Couldn't do it.

How would you do it? Yeah.

You couldn't do it.

So, there is always injustice in this system. There's probably injustice in every system because usually it's the people with the most power that are making the rules. So okay fine. So we can all agree that there is injustice in every system. I know I made all the arguments and I'm agreeing with myself. I'm understanding that this is how it goes but this is our show. So you know whatever logically you could you know whatever. However it is that that is withstanding uh of my argument. My argument then is that there are people who essentially are feeding other people further injustices. Right? true or untrue, they evoke the same response because you believe them to be real. And then when you isolate yourself into an inroup which is inherently not part of the out group and the inroup that you are now self-identified with and I say self-identified meaning that you identify the group that you are in i.e. the inroup as yourself. Okay? And this could be anything from your culture like your specific ethnic culture. This could be your identified culture of trucker or plumber or whatever priest. This could be your culture of you know liberal-minded people, maga-minded people, whatever your your group you feel this the same as you. And then you will find you know then then you add the algorithm into that equation that then targets your group and then you will find people or maybe more they will find you that are telling you specifically your inroup is being picked on. These are the injustices that your ingroup is being subject to. And here are the people who are subjecting you to these injustices. And then therefore your you know justice center in your specifically your metal element is activated and it takes us all the way back to the beginning our discussion about 3 minutes ago. Anger arises now because you are sensing an injustice and you are going to fight tooth and nail against those whom you think are delivering said injustice to you and your group.

Therefore, people be angry.

Kind of like [clears throat] a propagandizing element to this, right?

Yes.

So, you could fall into these like however this played out. I mean, there's always been propaganda, too. It's not like there's never been a time. you don't have human propaganda, but you there's like powerful propagandizing things going on. And then you get to the other part of this which you alluded to as well, but like the economic injustices of the system.

Because now you got people who are like hoarding tons and tons of money and power

in these really kind of insane ways and other people like, you know, we're trying to like people are trying to live on like scraps that maybe trickle down or something, right?

Yeah. There's a whole theory around that. [laughter] just total [...] I always think of like uh Robert Robert Thurman. He come on the podcast years ago, right? We got to reach out to him again at some point, Bobby T. And we were just talking about trickle down trickle down economics and that which is total [...] And he was commenting on that. [laughter]

I remember that in our intro. Anyways, uh

does that make sense though, Eric? Do you understand what I'm saying? You feel me? Like

yeah. Yeah, for sure. You know, it's like in a certain sense it's a little bit of a manipulation of the metal or something like a manipulation of the virtues of it.

You know, you're sort of like because they're not

I think for it to be truly fair, you have to be able to step back and have a kind of an equinimity, you might say, about things. Let me step take a step back and really you think about the scales or something. Let me really take a step back and see if this thing seems fair or not. But you can rile people up around this, right?

Last.

Yeah. kind of use it against, you know, other people.

Last sentence of the pledge of allegiance. Do you remember it, Eric?

I was just thinking about it the other day. Um,

with liberty and justice for all.

There you go.

Shout out to the metal element right there.

Yeah. That's what's cool about I mean there's many things that are cool but that's what's cool about the this kind of like dowist view of the psycho physical view of the body you know and of the mind is that these things are all present in what it is that we are being taught and engaging with so I hope that people find this interesting because you know we all obviously we always have you know

it's like kind of like this idea that there's an like an intrinsic potential to show these positive qualities kind of like yes latently there right it's like kind of you could say the system is finally balanced. Like you said earlier, these things are kind of like latently within that system, right? There's a you could if you want to frame it that way. There's a certain wisdom within it that can get tapped into.

I mean, the whole Constitution, the Bill of Rights is a is a metal act.

Putting order and structure.

On something to try to create liberty and justice for in a flawed way. We have to acknowledge the history of course, deeply flawed. But underneath it, you could see there's a virtue that's trying to squeeze its way out through all the prejudices and

other things are, you know, don't want to be minimizing of any of the, you know, the atrocious elements of things, but underneath you can tell there's something that wants of wisdom that wants to try to

force its way through and it's still

keeps on keeps on struggling to try to get out. Mhm. I guess I was thinking about like that fairness, justice, equality thing. You know, if you really have problems in the male element, then you can get propagandized or one of the things that obviously goes wrong if you lose the sense of that those virtuous qualities, then you can have the idea that you want to like seize power,

you know, and that whole thing of wanting to seize power is, you know, toxic and obviously works against this sense of like equality. You know, the whole thing of wanting to seize power intrinsically has within it this idea that I deserve to have power and uh you don't,

So, this idea that I'm going to like seize the power away from you because I deserve it and you all don't. And that's obviously a toxicity within this, you know, works directly against the virtue of what this is supposed to be, right?

Mhm.

Yeah. And you know you could see this in like multiple ways within the culture. Obviously the culture has real problems with racism has real problems with like aspects of anti-semitism access of president uh like prejudice against all kinds of people you know who look differently on the outside you know so it has those deep problems right and uh

and even like you know like living in Chicago there were these sort of uh you know ICE events that were happening it's kind of toned down a little bit you know I I think order and structure got a little bit reimposed, right, to hold back some of those displays of power. But, you know, you could feel the unfairness of that. You know, if you know people who are Spanish speaking people that are within your circle and within your friend group, a lot of students for me too, right?

People I know personally, patients and students and

personal friends where you're like, "Okay, this is all I mean it makes you want to cry thinking about it." You can really feel the metal of it, right? The injustice and the unfairness of it.

Yeah. You know, one of the expressions of that is that, you know, you feel that injustice and fairness and it like brings you to tears somehow, right? You can feel that connection like so strong. Yeah. So, um, so I would, you know, argue that, you know, in terms of our emotional plague thing, you can see the elements of where this is sort of like off the rails in some ways, right?

Yeah. Um, on the, uh, order structure and propriety thing, right? That was the other part. Maybe we can talk about a little bit before we have to like wrap this one up. But I think we done a good job with it, you know?

I think so. Yeah. Maybe we end on a little bit of a positive note just [laughter] we're all in tears at the end of the episode.

Yeah. Like it's like

um that can go good or bad, right? like we were talking about earlier, you know,

and um

and it's funny, you know, framing it from a Dowist point of view, when it goes bad, then you get this thing where you try to put too much structure on the thing that you want to allow to flow naturally, right? And uh if you like kill the natural flow and movement of a thing by overstructuring, overordering it, you kind of kill the life within it or something like that. And that's sort of a problem, right? Mhm.

There's a little bit about this. I want to do an episode at some point maybe on Christian nationalism because I think there's going to have to be something where Christianity is going to have to straighten itself out in the United States. We have positive versions of it and parts that are very authoritarian. I think that's an important subject,

Of how this thing is going to straighten itself out. Obviously, there's really good Christian people and it's good Christian people are out there trying to like do their good Christian deeds. And there's uh one of the people that I like u Dr. Reeves Yees Reququina. He's a French MD and acupuncturist, Chinese medical theorist. And he talks about the metal element with Christianity. And when you look at that, there's multiple ways you could see that both in a potential the way it could go for good or if it has problematic aspects, you know, because in Christianity and what can be very moving about it on the positive side of it is you can get, you know, these things like as we talked about in different episodes now when this has come up like sermon on the mount, fairness to everyone. You know, the meek shall inherit the earth and blessed are all the people who aren't getting justice now because they will get justice and will establish a kind of a fairness for people. And that's the virtue of that right and Christianity can be very powerful with that

you know that part of uh uh you know the Christian message which is everyone should be treated equally and everyone should be treated fairly and everyone should be respected as an individual spiritual being that deserves equal respect it's beautiful right so the beautiful aspects of Christianity are there right

in those metallic qualities because it does talk about like

justice don't you think

in very powerful ways very moving ways you know

you and and I were both at least partially raised within Christian households, right? There's Christianity floating around in our backgrounds and that part's still moving to me, you know, even though maybe I'm not a Christian now in the same way. I feel that very deeply.

It's very beautiful, right? And also those elements of like I'm willing to sacrifice a little bit to try to achieve those goals, right? That's a virtuous act, you know, to do that. It's beautiful, right? And then on the other hand though, you get the things where you can get the parts that are like, I have an idea of how things are supposed to be and my order and structure I have to impose on you. That's a problem. And obviously any orthodox system can go that way, right?

Not just Christianity, but like I think in him pointing that out that can happen. You know, that idea that I I'm going to impose the way I think things should be, my order and structure on other folks. No bueno, right? And the downside of the melodment being there,

you know, and some of these things can be, you know, kind of puritanical,

And um and you can get within that idea of wanting to impose a certain structure on others, you can get judgmentalness.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I'm listening to a lot to people in these, you know, we did a stuff on cults in the beginning of the whole thing. And I made kind of a point for the benefit of our podcast to listen to people who kind of broke out of some of these Christian nationalist spaces. And I love those that are really stayed Christian, too, because you can see they're really wrestling with these questions within their own spirituality and faith. I deeply respect that, right? like bring it up in different episodes as we talked about this, but they're like, yeah, we were really judgmental people and now we look back on that and we're like, we regret that,

you know, you know, we had there was a judgmentalness that was sort of within this, right?

Where structure and order and all that and the desire to impose it upon others becomes kind of toxic.

Right. And that's how we thought about things. So we thought here's how you're supposed to act in all these ways and if you don't act like us we're kind of against you know and beyond that we deserve to like impose our thing on you right and I think that's what is straightening itself out in the United States some way or another we have a branch of like our spirituality our religion within our culture that has that thing in it

you know or on a more personal level just to throw it out I don't know what you think about this and we're wrapping this up but this transcending of like shame and guilt is part of this too right Yeah,

because there can be the the color associated with the the metal element and these things we've been talking about is white and that has to do with like purification of something, right? It's kind of the imagery around this.

You can take that for what it's worth. But even when you were talking about the poe earlier, corporeal, but if you look at the Chinese, it's white, the white spirit, right?

And um so some of that could be good. You know, you can do spiritual practice and kind of purify yourself out and that's not all bad. But then you can also get within this if the order and the structure and the rules get too

heavy and too imposing. That can happen in, you know, religiosity, Christian and otherwise, then it's stifling and you could walk around feeling a lot of shame and guilt,

you know, if the metal isn't healthy,

right? The further the further conservative you go in any structure in any system, the more structure there is.

Yeah. And I'm really getting comfortable with that idea. You know, some threw out in the words of like it's not Christianity or Islam or any other religion, Hinduism or any of these, you know, big religions you want to talk about that are the core of the problem. It's the more you go orthodox, the more problems you're going to have with it.

Correct. because it's going to get more and more what you were talking about earlier rigid.

And more and more self-justifying and rationalizing of like, okay, now I deserve to impose this upon others.

So now I'm going to do that and I'm then warranted to do it by force,

you know, and that's seems fair to me,

right? Yeah. To me, because I'm perspective, that looks just.

Yeah. Seems good.

If like you're not going to bring yourself to justice, I'll do it for you. Mhm.

I'll purify you [laughter] even against your own will. I'll make it pure.

Or if you if you've been like, you know, I was raised Catholic and some of this you internalize too.

And this idea you carry these shame and guilts about things, you know,

original sin.

Original sin. Yeah. and bad feelings about your desires and and you know, we were talking a little bit off mic before we started, but part of project 2025, which I started it out, I made it sound like uh the old Tweety Bird cartoon 25

um when we were talking earlier,

or as now we're calling it 2020 [...]

Yes. Terrible project. But they're going to eliminate pornography and there's a whole scheme behind it. You know, a lot of cleverness going into this. So they're going to like try to use economic means and you know pornography is flawed. None of us are like saying pornography is the most awesome thing but it taps into this idea of like guilt around like very basic

vital elements of human life and experience. Right.

And you can walk around with shame and guilt. So that has to be transcended. That's a personal thing and a cultural thing too.

Right. You got a culture that walks around with a lot of shame and guilt and people carry this individually. There's no there's no good dowoism that comes out of that. Right.

No. Well, this was I mean this this this country was founded by Puritanicals.

Right. The Puritans, that's what they came here for. That they wanted they wanted a more conservative a more orthodoxy view of their religion because they were they didn't have it enough. There wasn't enough where they were from. They said, "Fuck that. We don't want nobody to tell us

how much Yeah. how much we want to impose.

Yeah. No, we want to

on ourselves.

We want to impose more rules. There's not enough rules here. We need more rules. Um

Yeah. Which is just such a wild but but that you know I still think that that threat is still pervasive in in society today. And you know, and I've mentioned this in the previous episode, but I'm going to say it again. If I tell somebody don't think about the pink elephant, what's the first thing you think about? The pink elephant. So, when you tell somebody don't follow these rules, the first question someone asks is, "Well, why not?" You know, that that there's rules for a reason. Well, it could be fun. I don't know. Maybe you don't like it. Maybe I will. But I think curious folks um which you know more people I think are curious now than I mean maybe they've always been this way but there's less punishment for being curious now than say 200 years ago or 100 years ago you know people don't like the rules and restrictions and on you know so rules and restriction being in the center on one side people want the ability to explore and be free and create and on the other one they think that I mean I'm generalizing greatly I realize But on the other side, they'll say that, well, if there are no rules and there are no structure, again, these are very diametrically opposing views. But if there are no rules, there are no structures, well, then we're going to just dulge into chaos. And humans essentially are, you know, chaotic creatures and have the capability for great evil and to ruin their lives and so on and so forth. Now, yeah, people have tendencies, of course, right? But I am just not of the belief that humans are bad. I am of the belief that humans left to their own devices will actually cooperate and we'll find common ground will create a co relatively cohesive culture that will deal with all the various things that they will have to deal with. I mean, we survived for a long time without much under far worse conditions and were able to do that without completely killing off the entire species. It would stand a reason to me that we are far more cooperative creatures than not. And you know, I have people in my life who, you know, believe different politically than I do. They're not opting for murder because someone doesn't hold the same view that they do, you know? I mean, most people are good. Most people are good people. They may root for a different team. It's just but they're still good at this at the center. You take away a few beliefs and they're still they're good people. So, I just don't I just don't believe that like the uh the desire for more rules and regulations keeps us in a safer place. I just I'm just not under that belief.

Maybe that's naive.

Orthodoxy will always, you know, go beyond the proper balance of these things, right? If you want to be dowsted about it, when you push something to its extreme, it tends to like fail, right? Or go to its opposite. You lose the balance of it, right?

So, you need a certain amount of something, you know, like uh you know, we're talking a little bit about music. I'm playing a little bit more guitar. Music has a lot of structure and order and it can be beautiful, right? But if you like, you know, you need to have your proper the beauty of the structure and the proper context. But yeah, I'm I'm convinced of the like it's it's a simple thing to say and it's kind of obvious on some level. You push something too much too far, it's going to go ugly.

Correct.

Right. You lose your balance of it. And um and uh you know, again, I like the idea like at certain point for our podcast, what's happening? Well, you know, we're in a way trying to present an alternative spirituality to things that are too orthodox. That is an undercurrent of what we do

because, you know, when you get to the spiritualities that are not that way, it's they're about freedom.

And liberty and justice for all.

Right. The other thing I can add before we check out because I know we got here a second, you know, this whole idea of human beings being good at the core, it's a Buddhist idea. It's a Dowist idea, right? It's not an original sin idea, but just to wrap it up, it's a Wilhelm Reich idea, too. Yeah. The psychologist, you know, who started this whole thing with the emotional plague because his, and we talked about this in different episodes, but always nice to remind, you know, if you scrape away the emotional plague, what do you find underneath? And his argument is you find living things that want to love and share and be creative, right? and um uh yeah, creativity uh u love and the ability to share like joyful and pleasant experience. You got three qualities. You scrape it away, that's what you're going to get.

So he has that same idea of the positive, right? Scrape away the toxic and you're going to find the good core.

Yeah. And I realize I realize, you know, even as I'm talking that like some rules and guidance is required to make the playing field more even for those who were inherently underserved when the original rules were made. So I'm not, you know, a proponent of just taking removing all things, right, and just letting society roll. Even when we were talking about like cuz this is what you've been and I have been in some ways like discussing the metal element at different times over all of 2025,

right? And part of the idea of like the confusion thing was like we got to get some rules and structure going on so we don't have people who will abuse their power over others.

So we better put something in here that will create liberty and justice for all.

You know, so we got to try to do that.

And you know, then it that's the that's the beauty of the metal element. Now you're talking about the virtue of the metal element and you're not talking about the toxicities of it, right?

It's good framing, right?

Feels like a good spot to end. We did

Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Pretty good exploration exploration of metal for everybody.

Yeah. So, I know a little bit uh a little down, a little uh you know, a little sadness, a little grief, a little metal, but that's uh that's what it is.

But there's a beauty within it, right? You know?

Yeah, of course.

Yeah. We found like you know you want to create justice and order to make things fair and then you know there can be a beauty in the order and the structure and all that.

Yeah. Well as

we weren't totally dower about it.

No not totally but you know it is a

you felt it was I felt it was like we got to the sweet spot at the end.

You know audience you you can uh [laughter] for those 5% who is remaining you can let us know if uh if this was a downer or a illuminator or a you know a a a we did it justice. Yeah. Justice and fairness and equality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's right. Eric, thank you so much for uh Thanks.

doing it. You know, audience, uh like, comment, subscribe, leave a leave something. I don't know. Do whatever you do. Email us jyn andantragmail.com. Uh hit us up on the gram. The Jinatra podcast. Give us your thoughts. Give us your uh you know, nothing inappropriate for Eric. This is Daniel. [music]