[Music] Hey fellow G&T Dose of Slacker spirituality with a twist. So Daniel and I have been involved in this big series where we're talking about all these different aspects of cult psychology. Um and we've gotten to this point where we're talking about the great sociologist Max Vber and his different ways of thinking about he has a weird phrase for it. He calls it legitimate domination. It sounds a bit saucier than uh what it ends up being, but like what kind of authorities people are willing to submit to in a way and then what it says about society and maybe even as we get to the end of all this, what it says about people psychologically. And so we've done, if you want to go back, we've done episodes on rational legalistic authority. We've done ones on traditional authority. We've done ones on charismatic authority. And now this is kind of a special one um on what's going to be called patrimonial authority. patrimonial authority like paying patronage. Um, so we're going to talk about that one and that'll be the subject matter of our little uh our little convine uh convine conclave whatever a little pow today. So uh but before we get into the details of it, if you can do the wonderful thing that everyone always asks you to do, which is to like and subscribe and uh write a review if you can or even if you just send out the episode to other folks. Daniel and I were just talking about that off mic. Sometimes you send an episode out to people and people come back and they have all kinds of interesting things to say about it. So it can be a real conversation starter, too. So helps us out and definitely labor of love for us and we're trying to do good deeds in a in a funky ass world. So help us out. All right. Um this patrimonialism one is really interesting to me. I'm going to give a shout out to uh a couple of folks. uh Jonathan Roush who's the first person I who kind of identified this as a thing and you know we're trying to propose ways of looking at the world around this and this might be a way of looking at like a certain set of what Trumpism is if you want to like use this as a thing to think about that um and I also want to give out to Jonathan Timothy Snider sorry who's a kind of like a scholar of uh fascist things and he kind of threw this out too so it isn't always mentioned if you get like I I love this fab and I want to do a deep dive. Not very likely that that happens. You usually get these first three types mentioned that I kind of brought up earlier. This one doesn't always get talked about, but I think it's fascinating to think about and then maybe at the end of it, we'll debate what we think is the right way to describe what's happening in the world now. So, okay, what is this patrimonialism thing? Anyway, before I start, anything you want to say, Daniel, you haven't had a chance to get your two cents in. You're good.

Um,

uh, okay. Patrimonialism. So this isn't the idea where the primary thing is owing personal loyalty to whoever the person is who's at the head of the thing and then how that's one is by playing paying patronage. So it's really where you can just kind of buy people off which is a little bit different than charismatic authority where you look at somebody and you say well they have some special aura about them. They're like Shay for the Oklahoma City Thunder. You know, he just has aura. That's a Gen Z thing, Daniel. It's really funny because my son talks about that all the time.

I get the reference, but I don't think anybody else is gonna. So,

Oh, no. We might have some Jenzers out there. And if not, educational,

right? The question is, are the NBA fans not?

Could be, could not,

right?

Yeah. There's a whole thing about like, you know, like uh all of his charisma, which athletes can have, right?

Athletes, athletes definitely.

Charismatic charisma, right? This is probably more along the lines of like uh Tony Soprano, which would be for our millennial Gen Xers who know this. Mob boss Tony Soprano for those who

My Jenzer son would not know that, but our millennials would know that.

Millennials would know this one.

And our Gen Xers would know that for sure. And even our boomers, we got some boomers hanging around.

Yes.

Yeah. Uh yeah. So this is the idea that you get loyalty based on on on service given to the ruler. And the problem with this whole thing that Vapor points out is not oh sorry let me double back on it because it's different than charismatic authority and charismatic authority you think wow this person's so awesome I owe them something right and that can be good or bad potentially right um we might take like a Buddha or a Jesus and say hey they had some charismatic authority and maybe they earned it

right they earned that loyalty or other great spiritual figures you know who have that kind of authenticity the Daly Lama uh you know for people who follow him or Gandhi or somebody might have a charismatic authority that's virtuous so it's not all bad necessarily

right

but there's a danger in it obviously that it can be sort of a corrupt charismatic authority for sure and that was our culty thing so or the traditionalist thing where the the people who are in charge in the traditionalist setting and the psychology behind that is there's supposed to be some underlying traditional set of values and laws and so they're the guiding principle so you can't just do anything under a traditional authority Verbra would point out in its pure form because people go like, "Hey, wait a minute. That's against the Bible or against the Quran or against the Torah and we have to debate this out, you know, and that becomes a source of something you can hold over that person." But

guard rails.

Yeah. And like I what strikes me as fascinating is like a sort of a different psychological place of where you think the authority rests, right? where in the the patrimonialism, the idea is that it's just based on this sort of quid proquo uh sort of uh you can buy me off thing, the Tony Soprano thing you were talking about, loyalty and service to whoever the ruler is, and they seize that power for themselves, which is a, you know, a different thing than really any of the other stuff we talked about, right? And uh you can obviously point out a whole host of problems with that, but obviously you're gonna get a lot of corruption within that like immediately, right?

Because all the decisions are just being based on whatever the quid proquo is of benefit to whoever the he is, right?

So that's going to happen. And then even when there are people who are around that person, they're not there because they have qualifications in any way. They're just there because they have uh a usefulness to whoever the person is who's on the top of that thing who's sucking up all the resources to themselves,

So, it undermines the whole structure of everything. And you were kind of talking about that off mic a little bit that that can happen. You know, even though we have this language, we can see it

potentially in the world around us in different ways. Well, that person is just there because they're going to pledge unconditional rel loyalty to whoever the Tony Soprano is.

Yeah. at the top of this thing.

Yeah. You're useful because you have no willpower of your own.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You are my sock puppet.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's been kind of a debate about like whenever you see this kind of thing, why do all these people like cowtow to this person, right?

But in a certain sense, they're all angling too probably as well, right? Everybody's going to have their angle and everything falls apart under that.

It's also they get to be close. They they get to be in a position that they would not be able to be in had it not been for their relationship with this person who has made it there. So that's their uh you know a power adjacent position.

Not they wouldn't not on their own merits. No [...] way.

That's true too. That's a good point, right? When you frame it that way or emphasize that,

right? And they know that. But if they can, you know, if they're willing to, you know, take this person out or do this thing that this person wants done, then that's that's their benefit.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they're useful this to whoever the big daddy is on the top of this, right?

And we say daddy because usually it's daddy, big Poppy.

Poy grande, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, when we get to these other kind of authorities, what's also interesting about too, if you get to something like rationalistic legal authority, we got an episode on it, right? But usually you're trying to go and, you know, set up laws to hold these kinds of things in check, right?

And there's a natural and vapor is wise in pointing out there's a natural hostility between all these different kinds of authorities. They fight one another,

right? I think that's a a deep observation.

Yes. you know, they archetypally clash. Um, and but it's, you know, you could say it's especially a problem for uh just undermining that legalistic rational kind of authority. It just like has to trash that.

Yeah.

Because it basically has to plow through that in order to like uh um let the re the ruler's will go through and like run right through right while I hit the screen.

It's a little bit

animated today. If you think about it, it's a little bit like, and I know there's the legality is involved here, but it's a little bit like the police and the bootleggers in the 20s in the United States, you know, you have or think we'll just we'll use one person like the Al Capone and his people here because we're recording in Chicago and so it's local to us.

But he was definitely somebody who is a mob figure like a soprano, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. at you know being in this patrimonial uh authority butdding up against a legalistic authority in the state government.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

even though the people who in the state government probably were drinking alcohol on their off time, you know, in order to maintain the laws that they may or may not agree with, but because the laws are in place, they are uh tasked with enforcing the laws and it supersedes their own personal opinion

to the extent that they're willing to do that. Or you can get the corrupt patrimonial authority to undermine that by like kickbacks and payoffs and these kinds of things. Yeah,

sure.

I'm not sure. I think I'm like, you know, the real famous Alapone thing is the St. Valentine's Day massacre and I think I'm right around the corner from that. I realized that a bit ago. Like it happened like right around the block for me.

Oh, okay.

Right. Alapone gunned down all these people. You know, I can't remember what the other gang was, but um anyways. Yeah. Um personal trivia. Yeah. So, it's a big deal, right? It'll like it'll do that. And one of the things that was kind of interesting for me in recording these episodes is I had to rethink Confucianism on some level. And we had that happen like I think when we did that legalistic rational thing because I'm always a little bit wary of that and we can talk about that maybe in follow-up episodes.

Sure.

I'm almost thinking that we might have to have another spot that would be more like spiritual authority or something. I don't know what to call it yet,

you know, but something that's addresses these questions. Vapor recognizes that something like a confusionism, if you don't know too much about it, it's lots of rules and laws. So you try to hold everything in check. It's a kind of an extreme of

legal rationalistic stuff. we're going to set up a whole hierarchy. We'll have everybody have their place. And Vber recognizes that that can be crushing,

right,

to individual people, right?

And I've always I'm empathetic to that position because I'm more of a Dowist, Zenandric dude. And that's always spoken to me.

But um you know, in China, they have this thing they call the complete reality school where they try to blend Daoism and Buddhism, Zen stuff especially, and Confucianism. And I always was like, I don't really need the Confucianism there. I can just take that,

get rid of that. But now I can see no, that's a big deal because it's the way that you have to hold you have to hold people in check somehow

on a societal level. And you and I have had conversations about that. I think about this in between the episodes. Sometimes you we have one of our interesting chats

and then you know we haven't talked till the next episode. Sometimes we chat in between, sometimes we don't. But um you know you were in these places where you saw like legalistic uh rational authority collapse like you were in the military and you were in these places where stuff collapsed.

Correct. Yeah.

And I I've I I went back and I kind of re I remembered and like was thinking about those comments of yours over the years whenever that issue has come up

because you're very sensitized to that point, right? You need to have something that will make that structure. It's not just that you're a Capricorn.

It's not only that.

It's not just that.

That's a big part of it, but

but it's also based on experience as well as astrological karma. Yes. You know, and you see that and you're like, well, if you don't set up something like that, you're going to get a bunch of warlords, which is what the problem they had in China.

Correct. Correct.

You'll have patrimonial authority.

And that's a problem we had in Afghanistan have. And that's a problem we have had in Iraq. I mean, it's and anywhere where you go. I mean, it's problem that they're having in Syria. I mean, all over the place. So, yeah, there's a there's pros and cons to having any of these structures, you know, and we could call them governments if you want better than structure, you know, having a government uh dually elected or not. there is an overarching oppressive force which can be obviously not good for the people who live in it. But then to your point, when you remove it, well then there's going to be another force that takes over. They might just be smaller groups, but they're still they're going to be fighting for power and they're going to look a lot more like this patrimonialistic type of authority with, you know, the person who is taking this the head of at the table and then if somebody else, you know, wants power, then they're going to pop him and they're going to do that. It's all men, by the way, that they're going to take that and they're going to do that. Like, that's how it's it's going to go. And that's arguably, I mean, they're both bad, but probably on a on a date on a local level, the independent gangs being in charge or independent, you know, groups being in charge is probably more dangerous than having a, you know, one has like an a societal oppressive feeling, you know, and then there's because people get used to having some freedoms. I remember when we were in Iraq um and if I've said this story story before you know please turn your brain off for a moment but uh we were interview we were talking because we're collecting intelligence we were talking to this local guy and and I was like well you know how how are you feeling now that we're and these conversations are happening not in English obviously um I was like how are you feeling about being about how things have been going you know since the arrival of these of of the troops and he said honestly it's been much more difficult and I was like, "Well, what do you mean?" He's like, "I'm not able, first of all, there's curfews. I'm unable to get to the market on time to be able to set my things up and then if I have to stay later to close down or make some extra sales or whatever to feed my f money to feed my family." And he means it. It's not like a euphemism. Most of the time here in the US, not most of the time, but regularly, people say, "I need to feed my family." But like, you have enough money to feed your family for quite some time. Now, some people are really struggling. I'm not saying that, but most of the time that's a euphemism. It doesn't mean what it does. But for people in other

not so literally literally. Yeah. On a daily basis. Yeah.

In other places people make money, spend money. That's or they barter or whatever. That's what they do. That's for the day. That's the end of it. So he was saying that, you know, before it was dangerous, but there was some expectation that he could um get to where he needed to be with some amount of physical danger, but that he could do what he needed to do to take care of his family, you know, and pay off what he needed to pay off. But now that there was a different kind of authority in charge, there was no budging with this.

So

yeah, and that's that's kind of Waver's critique, right? If you set it in too harsh, right?

And then people like you're screwing people over.

Yeah,

that's profound. I haven't heard that example before, Daniel. I don't think you did talk about that on the podcast. Thanks for sharing it, Steve.

I guess maybe one of the things you can do is we're all trying to learn about this is you can think, okay, so what was happening in Afghanistan before? It was probably like some kind of oppressive traditional authority.

Correct. Yeah. which kind of shows that all these things can go dark.

Right. You know, like you can look at the dark parts of like Iran and some girls get beaten and tossed off a building because they don't cover, you know, their head properly or something,

You know, like you can get, you know, and I think in the United States, we're looking at now we'll get to the end of it, but we're looking at some of the darker aspects of Christianity popping out.

You know, the the Christian nationalist side.

Yeah. a Christianity like it's just not it's the darker side of traditional authority, right? And it can happen and it goes funky. Oh yeah, thanks for sharing. It's like again this has been pretty thoughtprovoking all of this. Again, it's a kind of a different subject matter for us, right? That maybe would be our normal wheelhouse, but

I've been learning looking at this, right? Yeah,

I've been learning a lot.

all right. So, the thing is like uh you know the it's going to undermine those formal those formal uh structures. I I like the word government. I like the word structure, too, though, because it's kind of like a structure, right?

When you're trying to put a structure in place that will hold things in check. It's even interesting thinking about it with like the Chinese five elements. This is like a tangent in a way, but it just hit me like when we do the five elements in Chinese medical culture. That's, you know, Daniel's and I, that's our day jobs, right? And you say like the metal element or phase has to do with structure and it's how you hold back the wood phase which has a lot of times can do with like aggression

and like overaggression the negative sides of those types of things. You need some structure to hold that back

and vision.

Right. You know aggression. Yes. But also vision. So you're having people who are wanting to like enact their vision of how they think things should be. You know, and

sometimes at the expense of others,

Correct.

Correct. Well, almost always at the almost always at the expense of others. Although sometimes it's to the benefit of others, but some people just don't like that. They're like,

"Yes. What do you

[...] other people, you know?" Like,

this is a a deep question.

Yeah. This is really deep.

But these are archetypal psychological underpinnings that people have. And what's unique about this situation here, and it's not like it's not happening in other places in the world, but what's unique here is that we have a lot of different cultures despite how it might look for some people will say, well, it's a it's a majority white, you know, population. Um, but they're not like you may be white on on paper, you know, and that's not a euphe that's not a pun or a euphemism. That's just

depends on the color of the construction paper. Some of us are some of us are orange. We were talking about that earlier.

Correct. That's right. However, you know, your your your skin color does not dictate from where your family comes from. So if you're from Germany or if you're from Norway or Denmark or Scotland or Ireland or London, those are different cultures. You know, they may look homogeneous when they're here, but they have different traditions and it depends on how far away they are from those traditions if they still keep any of those things, you know, near and dear to their own heart, their own practice, their own life, you know. But we're coming into this with people who have different influences despite how the skin color looks. So like on a on a gross level from a census perspective, yes, everybody falls under this kind of uh purview of like, you know, non-white, Hispanic, white, or you know, whatever all the boxes are that we could potentially check. But then when you go back to where these people are from, their genetics are very different.

And yet we still end up with just like a small amount of of archetypes that people will fall into these kind of like desires for authority.

Yeah. That's interesting because well I mean one of the things to say is like if you look at like the popularity of our current president now one of the groups he's falling out of favor with is like white dudes like this guy over here right two thumbs pointing at me like you know they were probably too much uh for him to my taste ahead of time but you know there's people who you know don't like it right even though on some level you think that that would be part of his generic audience but it's not that simple right

no it's not

and I've been really interested in like like looking at these kind of vibarian uh Max Vber kind of uh uh social structures as being kind of like personality types too. They're archetypal on that level. And I find that fascinating,

you know, that really interests me. And again, maybe we'll do a follow-up episode where we just consider that issue even some more.

Um but I think that's amazing. And like you go around the people around you and you can look at people in your own community and go like, "Oh, that's a traditional authority person. That's my Catholic friend for me in the neighborhood where I grew up. Oh, and that's my legalistic, rational authority friend over there,

you know, and that's my dude who really seems like he has something about charismatic authority and that's what vibes with him

and that's the reason he keeps doing what he's doing. Like those are

powerful things to say about people and then when you get within groups of people, you probably find all that different stuff happening within that same group. You can just look around you, you know, uh sometimes in your friend and acquaintance group and go, "Oh, I can see these tendencies within people." Right.

Yeah. and it's going to really radically change like you know major things about how they think about life or how they think about how they want the world to look right you know like that's I guess you know where this gets really profound it's profound in so many ways but one of the areas of profoundity is like you know it's going to completely change what you're going to try to advocate for the for the world

and what you're willing to kind of like put under pe like try to impose on others even right

it's child. Yeah. Okay. So, the patrimonialism. Yeah. It's great. This is this is I'm learning, you know, hopefully other people are too, but I'm definitely feel like I'm learning. Okay. Okay, so the other thing that happens in this deal that Vber points out is that there's really blurry lines then like the public and the private sphere completely blurs because all of a sudden the state becomes an instrument of that person and that state's now their personal property and their personal uh instrument of enforcement for whatever their own agendas are. And uh it goes like all ways you sort of like you seize the state to serve your own interests and you also sort of like destroy the private sector outside the state because you're constantly imposing upon it your own will. So you're kind of trashing everything everywhere by like completely blurring those lines and obscuring them. Right. I think it's deep

kind of like a Russianesque

uh like Soviet or which part?

No, I mean that like the state is sort of

Oh, like Russia now the Putin Russia.

Yeah. Yes. Current Russia. Yeah.

Mhm. And you can kind of see that like in all the lawsuits that come out now. You don't like what someone does, you sue them,

you know, and then you're using the instrument of the state to enforce your own will. Mhm.

And like there was a whole big thing with the South Park episodes coming out now that are really swinging hard.

Right. But um you know before that it was um you know the lawsuit, right? And CBS had to pay him off so they can get their they had to pay the Trump off so they could go and get their murder through, right?

Everyone's trying to get

do it. We're gonna Yeah.

Everyone is trying to get off. We're all waiting for the second coming.

Yeah. I mean like even like this is the you know we don't do news of the week but the guy from Apple went to the White House and gave some special little [...] plaque that was 24 karat gold so he could pay off the patron you know so it's patrimonialism right as it's like this thing blurs. So ultimately like when you get to the end of this whole deal, you get to corruption, you get to opportunism, you get to inefficiency, and then you get to lack of accountability. And you were talking about examples of that too, Daniel. We were talking off mic. And you can see these all over the place, right? All of a sudden, someone completely screws [...] up, but as long as they're loyal to whoever you know, Big Poppy is, then that's okay, right? And so you it doesn't work efficiently either. You know, and Bibber points that out. Your legalistic rational authority will probably be the most efficient way of doing things, but you undermine undermine that and next thing you know, you got the whole thing kind of stocked up with all these people who are not there by any merits and qualifications as you were pointing out. We talked about that with military stuff, right?

You want to have the most qualified people. So you end up with corruption opportunism in inefficiency and then you know sort of no accountability. Right.

Right.

Because the person in charge will tend to d dole out punishments or rewards not based on even whether you did a good job or not but to what extent it benefits them. Right? So the whole structure is kind of undermined. So you get loyalty over inefficiency and everything getting like kind of being done based on this idea of uh just rewarding the lackis kind of thing and that's the that's the gist of it. What do you think of it?

Yeah, I mean it it it's uh relatable.

Yeah. So again, I think if you want to think about the world around you, this is probably like the closer part of this episode for for me, you know, we have this other structure that's kind of being thrown out here. Then you get to go through and you try to figure out like we're looking there's no doubt that there's been like a kind of like an authoritarian type vibe across the whole planet, whatever that means, that's been happening, right?

It's not just a US thing. It's been happening in other countries, too,

Yeah. And so you saw these things in just recently like you know France it was Le Pen and then you had that kind of like far-right Nazi adjacent party in Germany and then you had the Canadians who rejected it and the Australians who rejected it and the French who rejected it and Germany who rejected it and probably unfortunately if you have this view of the United States we were sort of like the canary in the coal mine that didn't get the opportunity to reject it first or something Right.

So, we got kind of caught in the midst of it, but you know, it's gets up with this question of like I wanted to do this one because it really depends on what you think you're seeing in the world around you, right? To my mind, if I look at like a Trumpism, it has the main features of like a patrimonialism. That's kind of what that's about in some very core way, right? Or maybe that's who he is at the core to my eyes. We can all look at this for ourselves. Mhm.

But I think that's the best descriptor for him, right?

It's like a lot of quid proquo.

And to the extent that he has an agenda, it's sometimes even hard to know if they're really his agendas.

What do I find interesting about it in the vapor thing is that I think in a certain sense projected on to him and we I mean I'm interested in your opinion about this. Then you get people who are interested in these other things, but they're kind of funneling under the umbrella of that same under like the umbrella of what Trumpism is or something, but they're they're not exactly the same. Like you get people who are probably traditional authority people who are also riding along in the same thing. And whether they see him as a representative of traditional authority or not, I think something is happening with that, right? That's kind of like the project 2025 vibe,

right? Those are people who are religious nationalists.

And they're along in this train, too.

Well, I mean, they're they're they're religious nationalists, but they're more it's more than just it's more than just that. You know, any uh conglomeration of individuals is going to have a a synthesis of intentions and desires, and then they're going to put forth a kind of a unified front. But it's not unified in that it's it's homogeneous. It's not at all. They have their things that are that are happening. So

I think that there are like anything else there are, you know,

outside other influences that are hiding under this religious nationalistic viewpoint, you know,

because they're that's easier for them to sell, right? They attach themselves onto a larger idea and then they co-opt. They don't even co-opt that idea. They just hide behind it. It's like if you believe yourself to be a Republican or Democrat or independent or non-affffiliate or whatever in saying that you're one of those choices, the idea is that you believe the majority of the things that those people believe generally, you know, and so I feel like there's a lot of other forces that are hiding behind some, you know, the movements because they're not popular enough on their own to be a movement by themselves.

Oh, that can happen that way, too. Then you that's political action almost,

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those things. I mean, I think like to me the people who are within this sphere who are kind of more like the Christian nationalist types. And there are like people in this that you can almost name by name, right? Like a uh what's his name? Russ Vote or whatever is like one of those dudes. He's like I'm a Christian nationalist. He's the guy who controls the money within the Trump administration. and he's one of the main voices behind project 2025 which is like part of the agenda, right? It's a project 2025 agenda. So, so you know, he's there and he's like the economic person and he's like, "Yeah, I'm a Christian nationalist. I want to like take my version of Christianity and impose it upon everyone."

That's who the dude is. Right.

Right. What I'm saying is he's part of a movement. It's not, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. He is. There's a whole bunch of other people who are identify as Christian nationalists, too. That doesn't mean that everyone who's a Christian is a Christian nationalist. Doesn't mean that. Yes.

Right. It's a movement to people, right?

And it's whatever the percentage of the population is, right? 20 something or whatever that group of people is.

But they're part of like I think what's happening now. I don't know like we had talked about it before you know I listen to like David French another journalist lawyer is kind of right-wing guy as sort of like a voice on this but someone who is on the right who's like against Trumpism right and he's the guy who we talked about a few episodes he was at his dad's funeral and he was getting notes from people saying uh I know it's your dad's funeral but I really don't like your attitude about Trump and his wife was like what the [...] is wrong with you people I think she said what the hell like you know So I think you know when you get into that thing I don't know when I'm trying to diagnose this for myself whether or not partial what's happening there is that people within that traditional authority mindset that psychology want to project that on to this figure who they see at the top of this thing who want to like like project a religiosity that isn't there right but you know when you hear that being talked about a lot of times it's like this idea of uh uh and you know people who are in those circles talk about it I'm not in you know, I'm listening to other people who live in those spaces more than I do. I try to pay attention to some of those right-wing Christian spaces to understand them. But the people who explain it are like, yeah, there'll be this whole thing of like, well, God works in mysterious ways and sometimes he chooses a messenger who's really, you know, uh, not the most worthy messenger, the flawed messenger theory of things and so on and so forth. That goes back to our charismatic discussion about being necessarily extraordinary, right?

Yeah. I wonder about that because I feel like again I'm just trying to be a diagnostician on this. If I like were to diagnose this most directly, I want to do the patrimonialism because to Maya I was like, "Oh, that's the most like on target of what the oddless looks like, you know,

depending on how you look at it." But there's obviously like other streams that are happening here. And then I, you know, if I get to the psychology of it, some of that might be maybe what you were alluding to, sort of like opportunism. Okay. Well, this is my chance to get my agenda pushed forward by gloming on to this person who has momentum, right? So I think that can happen for reals you know and I also feel like psychologically though it can be like well even because of the cognitive dissonance you know you want to project something onto this person so all of a sudden you make that person into a more traditional person than what they really are you know and all of a sudden you come up with this whole cognitive dissonance rationalization of like okay he's really a traditional authority figure even doesn't seem to be

you know because you have to rationalize that out maybe because psychologically at the core you're a traditional authority person, then you're uncomfortable with the idea like I'm just going to like support some corrupt Tony Soprano guy.

I'm going to have to do some major internal operation psychologically to make that seem like that makes more sense or something, right?

Yeah. But

I might have to really twist that up if I if we buy into the idea that like there is a traditional authority psychological type, which I'm proposing there is.

Yeah. No, there is. I I just I'm I'm not sure that, you know, there's a couple things. I don't know how much people think about this [...] just in general.

Yeah. But people don't know if they're extroverts or introverts or metal phases or wood phases or anything.

So they go and they

But they are But they are those things.

They are those things for sure.

I just I think sometimes when people are doing things or making decisions or choosing or whatever, there's not a whole lot that goes into it. It's like what feels right. You're choosing based off feeling. And so some of these kind of conversations that we're having are un people are unaware of them. They like it's like you're you're describing some forces in the world that like someone is not even privy to. They're like wait what you

but it's kind of like well it's kind of like the Jung thing from the the shower curtain of wisdom until you make the unconscious conscious. It'll govern your life and you'll call it fate.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean like to me the educational part is directly in the wheelhouse you're talking about.

But like if I wasn't listening to like let's say just a David French or I've listened to other people who are in the Southern Baptist Convention but who got out and they're like hey listen I'll tell you what's going on there.

There's a whole bunch of rationalization. I would see it as rationalization,

whatever you want to call it, going on around this person

to try to imbue them with some kind of traditional authority that they really

that might not be the accurate diagnosis to who that person actually is.

Well, I mean,

other people other people might be just like, "Oh, yeah, I know this isn't true, but I'll roll along with it."

You know, but I think like for a lot of people, if I look at I got a lot of born again relatives, and I think, you know, they're probably having to rationalize this out

now. Of course,

and you know, like Yeah. Do they celebrate the birthday that they were born with or the one when they were born again? Or do they get two? Because if you get two, that's just kind of [...] That's a lot of presents as an adult.

They probably get the double gifts thing going.

But to be honest, they had the gift of the Holy Spirit. Daniel.

Oh.

Which is a gift every day.

So every day for them is like a birthday.

Do they have to do Do you have to do their chart over again? In some places they might, but they wouldn't believe in that because charts are the work of the antichrist Daniel.

Oh no.

Those are demonic forces. Witches and magic users have to be taken out to the end of the community and thrown off a cliff along with a sacramental a sacrificial goat.

So what you're saying is that there are not a lot of born again astrologers.

That I can't answer entirely because we might have some funky [...] going on there. That might be the case, but you're not supposed to. So my

those are like those are like teenage girls from like born again families who are hanging out with their friends in the basement doing their charts.

And they're secretly have their tarot deck like hidden under their bed.

That's actually a thing I've listened to that.

It wouldn't surprise me.

There's like a kind of a concern about

Who doesn't?

But like to me like you know the psychology of it has to be kind of important. You know like

you don't know you're under the thr of an archetype but you may be if you're under this thing of traditional authority. And then like what we kind of alluded to here and there in some of the episodes we talked about, then if there's like a major sexual scandal thing,

You know, like the Epstein thing and all of a sudden it's getting too close to the people in your team, you know, how do you handle that? You know, and all of a sudden you're going to you're going to repress it, right? Because you don't have to deal with that. And that's part of traditional authority, too, of course. But you have to like say, I have to have a reason to repress that. I can't just pretend I'm going to repress it just because this guy's [...] Caesar or Tony Soprano,

That's not good enough.

No,

I have to have a better reason to repress it. He better be some traditional authority person that he's not, you know?

Or like again, this is my diagnostic wheels turning, but even in the charismatic side, I think there are people who just find him to be this awesome magnetic super figure, right? And I'm almost saying I think that's a different group of people maybe even than the traditional people.

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think we I think next next episode and we'll we'll probably cut it here. Um we will go we will do a a kind of a a a brief sort of rundown of all the types of authorities and then list them as like archetypes and and associated people who might be who might be attracted to which one.

Yeah, I think there's a certain there's a certain truth and we could even maybe propose like like we were talking about earlier. I think maybe we have to like have a G&T authority. What would G&T authority look like? It'd have to look a little bit different. WW G&TD

TOM.

Got TOM.

All right, brother. Thank you so much for

Thank you, Daniel. It's interesting.

Yeah. Thanks so much.

Audience, thank you for tuning in. Uh like, comment, subscribe, send us an email, jinantragmail.com. Hit us up on the podcast on the Instagram at thejin and tantra podcast. For Eric, this is Daniel. We'll catch you guys on the next one. Peace.