[Music] Hey fellow G&Ters, those of us like our spirituality with a twist. So we are in the midst of a very G&T kind of project. We like to do these little series and we're in the midst of a series on cults and cult psychology. We got here by kind of looking at the world around us and going, how can we help make better sense of all this crazy going on? We just realized there's a lot of um cultalooa kind of happening and uh and as a fundamentally sort of like psychosspiritual educational podcast we were thinking how can we help make sense of this for other people make sense of us make sense of it for ourselves. We decided well let's do a little series where we talk about the underlying cult psychology that we kind of see operative in the world and in our United States. And so we've done episodes with people who have sort of had their own cult experiences and broken with cults. We just did one recently with one uh Lesley Garrett talking about her finding her way clear of the Jehovah Witnesses and that was a really deep episode and I thought profound you know her experience. And we've also tried to do things on sort of uh cult psychology overall. We did a little crash course on the social psychology of conformity and cult psychology. And now we're into the next part of our little project with this our educational a little foray. Um doing a little crash course on the great sociologist Emil Durkheim for everyone to learn something from and uh and uh to better understand this idea of social cohesion and ideas like social solidarity. I had to smile because you know we're bringing back Durkheim for all the Durkheim fans out there. We were joking about that beforehand. But you're going to learn to love him if you haven't heard of him yet. You'll walk away as a fan. So anyways, we're doing that. And uh for those of us who are those of you who are watching uh you'll see a familiar face now. One Ryan K. Davenport. Dr. Davenport. Thanks so much for coming back and talking about this stuff with us. Happy to be here. Awesome. Uh Ryan like uh you know TCM doctor and also like background as an anthropologist. So perfect for this subject matter. So we appreciate him coming on. And uh you know that's it. So we'll get into talking about Durkheim. Um anything you want to add first Daniel about any of this stuff? No no no let's do it. Okay cool. Before we get into it though I have to let you all know I'm looking at um a little book thing. I'll do a book re review when I'm done with it. It's called Cult Like Us and uh it's by one Jane Bordon who's an expert on cults for I want to say Vanity Fair. But I'm gonna give it a little listen and I'll give a review. And she said that she thinks the greatest cult leader in the world right now is, drum roll, the algorithm. The algorithm is the greatest cult leader. Something Daniel's been talking about since our very first episode, the cult leader called the algorithm. And I'm using that to say if you want to help our little G&T podcast escape the clutches of the greatest cult leader and uh give us a little TLC in the algorithm, please do all the things that people ask you to do, which is liking and subscribing and uh reviewing and all the normal kind of stuff that people ask you to do because it helps us out. Hopefully get this message out to more people because we're trying to help people make sense of their world psychologically and spiritually. All right. So, we're gonna start talking about this great sociologist one Emil Durkheim. Uh I think maybe the like Ryan and I were talking about this maybe a little backstory in his history. I'll kind of give what I know and if you have other stuff you want to add Ryan. Uh we'll just give some context for it. So his years are 1858 to 1917 and he's kind of a founder of sociology. He came from like a Jewish background in France and his family were like kind of multi-generation rabbis but he sort of broke with that and went more into like academia and ultimately kind of built up an academic career was a really important teacher for a lot of great sociologists uh finding his way eventually to the University of Paris where he worked for you know uh the majority of his career u as this foundational academic figure. Um, if you do the math on his years, you can see he dies pretty young at the age of 59. Um, and so I got curious and apparently, you know, he's very, you know, France was involved in World War I, so you can almost like hear the 1917 and go, "Huh, it's around that time frame." And so he was trying to help with the war efforts and then his one his uh he only had one son and his son Andre went off to fight with the French military and died around that time. So I guess the general understanding was he got burnt out trying to do efforts around the war and then with the death of his son he kind of died young of a stroke. So that's what I know of his bio. Do you have anything you want to add on that Ryan? Yeah, sure. I mean he's interesting because he's he's kind of like one of the fathers of sociology and anthropology. So like both disciplines will kind of claim him. Um he's really influential on a lot of lot of anthropologists going forward. um you know it's interesting because he's he's coming from this religious background right um of you know family of rabbis and he breaks from it but you know he has this he does have his own religious experience because Durkheim is is interested in this experience of religion right and this happens when he's I believe during his teenage years and he has this like intense experience this like um you know perhaps like an ecstatic state um studying with this French nun. Um but you know, so this and you can kind of see some of the theories that he's he's he's trying to make society a science is sort of what his his attempt to do. He's trying to make it empirical, something that can be studied empirical and less philosophical, but he really does blend the two. And you can kind of see that he's he's recognized some phenomena phenomena that's not necessarily explainable and he finds interesting ways to kind of describe it and approach it um in an understandable way um which I think is going to come out. Yeah, I got the idea like he's a philosophical person. He has some religious or spiritual ideas and then he also is like a scientific person. So him having an aesthetics experience with like a French nun that seems like an old school kind of like art movie. Yeah. Julia Bino can play the nun if you go back old school. Yeah. And I think at the end of that is Daniel D Lewis could play a young Durkheim. That sounds like that like old school. I don't think anybody at the very end movie. I like the idea of it. Yeah, they dance at the end. That's the most important thing. And you don't know why. I don't think anybody's getting those references, Eric. Oh, people do, Daniel. Some people watch movies that you don't, right? I'm just saying our audience probably is not. I bet you people do know Julia Binoch and I bet you they do know Daniel D Lewis, but we'll see. You can comment in the comments if you've heard of Daniel D. Lewis. He's a big actor. Daniel guys won like a gazillion Academy Awards, right? And and I know that and I know the audience that we like the Academy Award like a month ago. If you don't know who Julia Bino is, she's super hot. She's French. So if you don't know her, you'll be thankful that I set you up with this. Watch Unbearable Lightness of Being, folks. You got a lot of Julia Pino and Lena Olan and it'll be hot. Yeah. So, um Okay. So, there's lots of things to say with Durkheim. You can kind of do like uh social facts, right? I thought that would be like a place to start, right? So, and I think it kind of fits into our wheelhouse because we like to talk about that kind of stuff a lot. So, I I'll kind of throw out what I sort of have about it and then you'll get your all's reaction too. You know, I think it's really interesting. So he talks about this idea that um these uh social facts things are true in the society and he makes a big point what I understand it that they kind of limit the possibilities of the individual and they become the facts of that society in which the individual works which is like kind of right in our wheelhouse right he also has this idea that you know the social facts are kind of almost like the laws of physics or something like that they're kind of unavoidable things if you function in society you're going to hit the social facts And as part of his idea, like what you were talking about, Ryan is I get it. You know, societies are kind of their own things that have to be studied, you know, based on their own facts, right? Um, so that's part of the idea of these social facts. And then, and one of the other sides of this is that, you know, society is just stronger and will tend to impose its sort of will and expectations on the members of that society. And so he kind of also talks about this idea that it's any anything or any manner of action that exercises control over an individual and kind of gives them like external restraints that are going to control them and kind of guide them into where they're going to go. Right? So any manner of action capable of exercising over the individual external constraint. So we have like some things to say about that kind of stuff. And we you and I have talked about this too. this idea that these things tend to be a little bit pervasive like through a society like once you look you'll find those social effects kind of cropping up all over the place. So I'll be interested what you think about that uh Ryan and like you too Daniel and then like when you get down to like sort of you know maybe like what you're talking about really explicitly these will be things like laws and morals and beliefs and customs and fashions things that are just like commonplace and like assumptions within that social system. So those are the social facts. I'll throw it out to you all. You got stuff on this, Ryan or Daniel? Sure. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, but basically, one of the things that he's trying to do, um, and you you hit upon this, Eric, is he's trying to look at social institutions, um, social artifacts, right? These are you know your you know whether it's religion or economics your your roles in society um you know societal norms like looking at how they shape shape the person and kind of create you know the cause this like coercive control over the person you know um he's very much interested in that and and interested in how you can study the by studying these institutions you can study the rest of society right um in fact one of the you know criticisms of Durkheim is that he does not leave um sufficient agency for the individual. That's not to say that these aren't good ideas, but you know that's that's probably he may focus a little bit um too much on on society in some ways, but uh when we look at society and I think what will become apparent um throughout this episode is the level control right um that society um has on the individual. the force that society has on in shaping the individual and maintaining the individual um in society. Yeah. It kind of fits into almost some of the Dowist stuff you were talking about last time we got together and we're chatting. So, it does fit into that whole idea. Right. Right. Right. Um, and something I think you guys have talked about in the past where it's like in order to when you're when you go down that spiritual path, right, when you you are trying to find authentic self, there's a lot to scrape scrape away, right? There's a lot of that social influence and then when you do it right, you can pay the price. And Durkheim talks about this, right? It's like there's a lot of social pressure and you try to break away from that to be the authentic self, you're going to feel it. And there may actually be serious repercussions when you do it. Um life-threatening repercussions. Yeah. And you got something you want to add on it, Daniel? No. All right. So, for me, I was sort of thinking about like, you know, my own experience with this, you know, we try to get a little personal at times. And so, the part that really jumped out to me, you know, in my life, and you know, all of us have known each other for a bit, right? So, it's things that we have talked about like sort of off mic with these things. A little bit closer, Eric. We talked about sort of like in mic 2, right? So for me like I think where I really hit this idea and I think even learning about this terminology from him and really like internalizing it sort of helps me think about it a little bit was I hit like social facts and the way I think about like love and relationships. That was the big thing that I like opted right into in terms of social facts stuff, you know. So, you know, we won't get to do the whole thing. And we've done episodes on this before, but we've talked about like the relationship psychologist Esther Pel and her distinction between like what she calls exclusiveness and uniqueness approaches to love and life and relationships and all those good things. And the exclusiveness person is more based on the idea like kind of what you might call like kind of monogamy kind of things where you know the idea of like the fact that it's just you and that other person creates the core of the relationship and gives it its value. So that's the way she talks about it. And maybe on continuum there's other folks that are more like on what she calls the uniqueness end. And these are people who are looking for like more like unique connections and they're a little bit more open to like everything doesn't have to be met by this one person and everything doesn't have to be so exclusive just to this one person, right? There's more of a idea that you can be more connected with people in more ways. We've done episodes of in the past and we don't have to go through it all. I'm sure we'll talk about more of this stuff in the future, but you know, it was a big deal in my life because I kind of decided as a person who was kind of conscious of like, okay, I don't mind rejecting the social facts, you know, I purposely wanted to reject the social facts at times and I saw it as being kind of part of my maybe Zen calling or Dowist calling or tantric calling, right? That in those traditions, you can do that. So, I was pretty open to the idea like, okay, I recognize there's a I didn't know those that term social facts or that phrase, but I was like aware like, okay, I'm going to like maybe buck some of the things that maybe seem like the social norms or something. And I sort of went out a little bit naively as I thought, okay, you know, I feel good with myself about this. I'm happy with my doing this. And I went out not with the idea that it always had to be a sexual relationship, though. That's cool. But also the idea like just deep emotional and intellectual connections. And I just went out like with this open heart, an open mind, an open philosophy. And uh and then I what I've realized over the course of my life is I just rammed into the social facts. And the social facts of the culture are like exclusivism, right? That's the social fact of the culture. And I like popped right into it in this really dramatic way. And it's funny to me because I was like doing this little Durkheim research. Daniel, you and I have talked and Ryan and I have talked at different times and it my brother and other people who love and care about me have just been like, you know, the social facts are working against you. You're running headlong in the social facts, my man. And I was like, yeah, you know, uh, but that's been sort of my, I would say, major experience of this. And maybe even a little phrase like this is kind of helpful. you sort of begin to realize, okay, I'm bumping into the social facts. Not that I didn't know that, but even like kind of getting the idea that, you know, there's these really hardcore facts of this type and they're in a certain sense within that society are almost like the laws of physics. They're almost like gravity or electromagnetism or something. And I happen to crash into these things. So anyways, that's my experience of like crashing into the social facts. Eric, you know, for you all, but anyways, and both of you have told me like Daniel and I have talked and he's been like, you know, and Ryan and I have talked and he's been like, you know, um, you know, Eric, you like, you know, Durkheim talks about this like pressure that you you can feel like when you run into you run into these social norms and, you know, and you're going against them and he talks about this palpable pressure that you can feel. Would you say you you felt that yourself? Yeah, I mean like I would, you know, I look at each of us are learning, right? You know, all three of us and people are listening are learning. So when I look at my own like learning experience, it was a lot of like you you find your own voice and you feel good about that. So I felt maybe a little bit if I reflect on it kind of the euphoria of finding your own truth. You know, Daniel and I were texting about that today a little bit. You know, this idea you can find your own truth and share it. So that felt really good. And then you'd go out and maybe I had a naive. Well, your own your own truth, but not your own truth in a post-modern sense that like you're you're seeing things that are not there and that but they're true for you. I think you mean your own truth in in the way of like your own authentic way of being, something that is verifiable for you, not you know, like there's there you're you're stating like facts or laws, if you will, not not in a scientific sense, but like facts of society that are existent within not in a tangible way that you can touch, but that are carried and shared between people. And then when you hold a view that is counter to these societal uh implications or implementations if you will that people are going to present them to you and not only are they going to present them to you in words they're going to present them to you in feelings and like you were saying you bump up into them you know however if you are if you're in a authentic way of being that's your that's the truth of who you are. So you're expressing you're living that kind of a thing. It's hard to say you know like what's true for other people right? Of course. Yeah. But I mean for myself, what was really interesting about this was it wasn't like, you know, we all have our experiences and who we meet and the connections we feel with people. And it wasn't like I I didn't find people that I felt deeply bonded with, you know, and I think that was reciprocal. It wasn't like, you know, something unrequited or something. I had like really the experience of like, wow, these are real soulmate type people and I really love them and I really care about them. But what would happen in the end is inevitably would be like, "Well, you know, you really can't be a part of my life unless we're exclusivist and and eventually I'll probably have to just cut ties with you because otherwise it'll upset some other partner in my life and it'll, you know, and that's just how it played itself out." And so I don't know, it's been kind of interesting. I haven't had a problem of like my mom knows I feel this way, family members, you all as friends know I feel this way. So I didn't feel it from the people who were close to me where I really felt it was this moments of sort of like moments of truth, you know, where you're like, "Okay, I really love you. I really feel close to you. We can figure out some way of being in each other's lives." And getting the message like, "No, we really can't because you know this is like I can't do that. I have to be this exclusive this person, right? Those people expectation put on me." So that's where I think I really felt it. So it seems like those people were really feeling it, right? you know, this is those examples of those people were involved with were very much feeling the social pressure, you know, to conform, right? Um, I think that's probably true. I mean, I got like, you know, having had conversations in these rare instances where it's people really close to my soul, it was Yeah. I think that was something that they felt. Yeah. Right. And Durk Durkheim describes this as like unrelenting pressure, you know, like it's it's really hard to break out of this, you know, which is why when we talk about sort of this authenticity thing, it's a move. Like it is a it is a strong move you have to do and it's it's not supposed to be easy. Yeah. And I think like we were talking about last episode, there's some fear involved in this, right? We talked a little bit about, you know, the Chinese mess and a little bit of fear, right? And like having to have some will to do this. And again, it's an ongoing theme for us, but from my perspective, I don't know if there's a way to I think you can spiritually progress forward in different ways, but I think this ends up being like a core question every person at some point or another is going to have to face in whatever issue it is for you. I tried to share like my example of this, right? Because I was thinking where did I really hit the social facts and this has been like the fact of my life that this was a social fact that I hit. Do you all have examples? I know, you know, if you don't, it's cool, but do you all have examples where you felt like you hit something and you're like, "Wow, I really, you know, I hit something that you feel like you can share maybe, you know, maybe." No, not not at all, Eric. You're completely by yourself. You don't relate to anything you're saying. It's like we we Daniel and I just follow, you know, along with what societ says. Well, I mean, like, it depends on what you feel like you want to share. Sure. Sure. No, I mean, you know, I think sometimes it's as simple as, you know, like for me it's just sort of like, you know, you and I have talked about this is sort of like, you know, having kids. I'm like, this seems like it will suck, you know, and there's social pressure with, you know, yeah, you should have kids. And to me, it was like, you know, and like, you know, this is this seems like it's, you know, it kind of takes away from sort of who I want to be. Um, I think all of us going into Chinese medicine, in East Asian medicine, right, that's a move, right? Um, that goes counter to society. Um I was really aware of that you know like going into it I was pretty cognizant of that and I was also you know someone teaching I've been aware of that with students too you know you are making a move when you do this it's bold I respect it you know did you feel like the social pressure along the kid thing did you like was it what Durkheim was talking about you felt that pressure from people yeah I would I would say that's time where sort of like you know you can you can feel it when you're around other people you know because the vast majority of people you know especially where I live you know like tech where Daniel lives too you know, it's like a lot of families that have kids and sort of like, you know, you and I have talked about this, too. We're like, I do not fit here. Like, you know, this is this is not, you know, the society that's surrounding me is not representative of who I am, right? Um, and you feel that you, you know, and you can also tell the way people look at me too because they're making judgments, right? And so people people always always want to see other people doing the things they do because it strengthens their own identity, right? Their sense of self. And when you when you do things that um go counter to the choices other people have made that becomes a threat to them, right? Um and that that's where you get that social pressure and sometimes danger. Yeah. I mean it's interesting. And do you have something do you have any example you want to share others? I'll talk about this thing with crime because it does Yeah. Let's move on. Yeah. Yeah. So the whole thing with his way he thinks about criminality is interesting with this too because he has something a little counterintuitive. You know, normally you would think he kind of frames it like almost like crime isn't entirely a bad thing. And what he's really getting to, as I understand it, or what's applicable for us is that like punishment has to sort of be there. The minute you have social facts, you have to have punishment. And if you like, and what it does in a way is it reminds people what the social facts are, right? So this, you know, like it's not just a question of like deterrence and it's not just a question of punishment. It's like sort of gives like the group a chance to go you these are the social facts we're going to teach that to you now and remind you what they are and I thought that's really interesting him to in him too you know that kind of counterintuitive way he talks about like crime and punishment right that it kind of gives this the the group to say okay here's where our constraints are and we're going to reinforce that and he also makes a good point that it has to have a little publicness to it right it's not like enough just to privately punish the person. There's a public aspect because that like tells everyone here here's a reminder what the rules are, you know. Yeah. Here are social and moral boundaries and we're going to remind you of them, right? You know, and um you know, so you can see this, you know, you know, when people are younger, you know, and they're testing their, you know, I used to say throwing bricks at their their moral boundaries and finding out where they actually are and seeing the backlash of society. um you know that reminds people you know sometimes it's you know sometimes it's it's a crime you know sometimes it's a you know a shaming of sorts you know which certainly you can see historically literature but also just present throughout society um yeah I mean it's you know it's interesting itself because you look like Durkheim when he was growing up he's described as he goes to university um and he's described as a belligerent student and he's like kind he's like really smart he's a belligerent student like is kind disrespectful to like his professors and so forth and he's like not very wellliked, you know. Um, and so it's interesting that he would kind of come up with this, right? Yeah. Einstein was kind of like that too, right? And Daniel and I both love Einstein and he had that like contrarian streak in him, right? Yeah. Yeah. But I think like the public aspect is interesting of it to me because it's like it it gets to his point, right? We're going to remind not only this person who committed the thing, but everybody, you know, look at this, right? So it kind of makes an example and if you've ever been in any situation where someone has like tried to publicly shame you for something you're like oh you know for my little anecdote in my own life it's probably not kwinky dink that like one of the first big American novels is like the scarlet letter which is all about like breaking like relational and sexual taboo and all that and like you know you get to wear this label of punishment right right I had a I mean from that social pressure point I did have a consciousness of that. You know, I'm really grateful to Daniel in this podcast. You know, my man Daniel who I love, right? Because, you know, we were open to like talking really honestly about a very a lot of really difficult subject matters. I'm also grateful to people I talked about outside of the podcast, but people I was close with who I said, "Hey, can I talk more publicly about how I feel about these things without, you know, getting Hester Prim, the character from the Scarlet Letter?" you know, you end up being the person who people think look a scance at. And I got more positive feedback from people like, "No, it's okay if you talk about what you think about this." And it's been cool. And again, I really appreciate Daniel's support in this and your support, Ryan, and other people because it was it it changed it for me. I think I felt I did feel a lot of um a doubt and maybe some fear about that, right? And then it was like, okay, let me go through and I'll I'll and I always thought that was have to be private, you know, on some level. And then doing this thing, I went, okay, I'll make this part public. And it kind of diffused a lot of stuff for me because I didn't feel that tension between what I actually thought about this part of life and uh, you know, what I had to present as a public face. You know, I do have one, Eric, that it's kind of interesting. Um, it's not as not as dramatic, but it's um, you know, just just, you know, when my present spouse and I were dating, it was because she's she's South Asian. Um, and like we would go into restaurants and like we would go into like let's say like a cafe, you know, typical like suburban or like, you know, cafe where the majority people are like whitish, right? And she would just get these nasty looks um, from, you know, from like a lot of like older white women, right? And it was like she's like this is uncomfortable you know and then you know when I would go into restaurants you know like Indian restaurants or whatever um you know I would I would get these nasty looks and people would just be dead staring you just dog staring at you like okay we are clearly not welcome here right you know so kind of another example of sort of like when you do something that's like you know now it's like not that big of a deal but there's some parts of the country where it is a big deal right um but you still sort of feel like this underlying judgment and you know sort of social pressure but obviously for us we're like yeah kiss my ass right so it's like it kind of took they actually kind of enjoyed it to be honest a certain level but you sense that you know around you yeah like I think about a little bit like you know I had my time with my psych mentor and I kind of bring this up sometimes in classes that I teach you know this moment when you're talking with a psychologist you're talking with a clinician and you're oh you're getting to like a tender point right and I got to this point where I was talking to, you know, my wonderful psych mentor one, Dr. Michael Scherer, and uh I felt I I did feel that thing you're talking about, Ryan, because it was the first time I was going to tell somebody or tell him I maybe told some other people a little bit, but tell him like, hey, I don't I think differently about love and relationship. I just don't agree with this culture. At least it doesn't fit me, you know? And I felt like this incredible tension inside of me because I felt like if I reveal this, we talked about this in different episodes in the past, but I felt like if I revealed this, is he going to judge me or say I'm a bad person? You know, I could feel that tension, right? And you know, and uh and that a certain sense it would be like you hit the you hit the social fact and he might judge me too. So yeah. And he didn't. Well, and some therapists will. Sure. Yeah. Some therapists will. For me, those therapists shouldn't even they shouldn't even be able to practice. That should be a bound uh I guess I could say opportunity to lose their license. You know, you don't if if you're bringing in the rules of society into a place of vulnerability and sharing as people are working through their issues, you have no business working with human beings. You could just go publish your dumbass opinion on your stupid Facebook page or wherever and the 10 people that agree with you will give you a thumbs up and then you can feel good for 10 seconds and then go about the rest of your day. It's just there's no place for that. And I and I've heard it many times from patients, friends, and family members that when they have gone into a therapy session and the therapist is like, "Oh, well, why don't you just accept this? You just have to accept that. You know, you're going to have to just this is the way that it is and you're going to have to accept it." Of course, accepting of things is part of the breaking free of it because you have to recognize it and then integrate it and not fight everything. That's fair. But that doesn't mean that I have to change the way that I am, you know, in order to accept this external fact that I inherently think is wrong, was not set up by me, and is being maintained by people who I don't even really care about. You know what I'm saying? Like it's just Yeah. It has no business. And unfortunately, you know, if you get it from friends, okay, or you know, whatever, that's fine. They there that's that. But when you're in a place of vulnerability that you're paying for or at least your insurance is paying for, um it has no place in my opinion. Yeah, Daniel, when you said that, it just made us made me think of um you sort of all of us who treat patients on a regular basis, you know, and what would happen if we suddenly would like judge them or like like not give them that space to uh to kind of really process and and open up, you know, like you know, it's that's going to completely, you know, styy their healing process, right? You just don't do it. That would make us dry needlers. Oh, sorry if that bothered anybody. No, it's not going to bother anybody because nobody knows where that is. No one gives a This is true. That's like the physical therapists who steal their acupuncture essentially. Yeah. Yep. Overeducated personal trainers. Are they doing that too? No, no, no, no. But h Well, let's be honest, some probably do. No, it's like I think you're exactly right. And like it's I've heard those stories, too. You know, there was a friend who was talking about one of her friends who was going to a therapist and she made him the therapist made him write out every single little thing he might have done wrong in the most like, you know, like dramatic detail in any of his sexual lives and experiences. And I was like, yikes. Are you sure that wasn't like a priest? I mean, or a fetish. Yeah, I was going to say he tell me all the things you did that were naughty. Don't leave out any details. I'm going to record this for later. You're a bad boy. I want to hear all the bad things. You've been a real naughty one. Yeah. Well, anyways, I heard it and I was like, you're me really. And it was in this very judgmental tone, you know, uh and I was like, oh my god. You know, happens, right? The pressure of conformity isn't held by anyone but by everyone. Yeah. Yeah. That gets to the social psychology connects into what Durkheim is trying to say here too, right? But it kind of pulls the thing together. I guess I do find it helpful to say, yeah, there's social fact and then there's like this punishment aspect, right? And it's just kind of clear to like get conceptual about, okay, this is what these things are. So and on you know and on on one aspect of it it is necessary to establish laws so that there so that the people who would commit crimes if you will you know there is some deterrent for that to occur. So that you know that that is the the positives is that like some boundaries are hard and you can't get out but some boundaries are necessary so that other things don't come in. This is the, you know, the light and the dark side of that. Yeah. That interesting of like if you're talking about a law to control actual criminality and then, you know, in his list things like morals and beliefs and customs and fashions you're going to impose on people, then you're maybe into something different. But I do agree you need something with that course. You know, there's those border lines and I think you're right. You can kind of make a distinction between those things too, right? So they change over time, right? You know, and so this is we've talked a little bit about this before. I'm not sure on this podcast, but these contestations of culture where like there's always people pushing on the periphery to expand and change those social norms, right? Um that's needed for, you know, society to grow, right? Um but there's a battle on that periphery. But I had that thought. I thought, well, you know, for my kids and for, I don't know, maybe just as a statement in the world, I'll try to live my life differently. Yeah. you know, and it'll be kind of like making it like it to the extent that you feel like you make a statement with your life, right? Yeah. Every little thing maybe pushes the karmic wheel a little bit, right? They call it creating space for other people, you know, something like that, right? I'm sorry. What' you say? Like creating space for other people. I think that's or just I mean maybe energetically pushing the universe a little bit if we want to get a little like mystical twist about stuff. Sure. push a space and see if you can move things a little bit more towards I suppose like the idea of something that's more like freedom, right? Yeah. I mean, I think that's definitely sort of what you guys are trying to do here and um you know, probably what we try to do in our our lives in general is sort of like, you know, bring a little authenticity to the world and maybe that affects other people in a positive way, right? Yeah. All right. All right. So, I guess I'll move and I'll do like types of societies because this is another big deal that he talks about, right? And uh getting to our culty stuff. Obviously, what you can get is if you have social facts within a cult thing and you can get punished, you can see where that gets potentially culty. You know, I've been really interested in the idea of exploring in our episodes together this notion of like, okay, we have cult in the more narrow sense. And Ryan likes to make this point whenever we talk, you know? So like David Caresh or something down in Waco, Texas, that's like a cult in the strict sense, right? And then we have things that are more on those border lines. Even like Jehovah's Witness, is that a religion? Is that a cult? Obviously for someone that we had like a guest like Leslie Garrett, she's like, "No, this is a cult." Right? A lot of people would agree with that. and she broke out of that thing. And then this notion of like well there's like a cult psychology maybe that we're all vulnerable to for the cult like us book I was talking about earlier. She's like yeah she uses the phrase it's in the little preview of the book you know you can get those little five minutes. She's like oh yeah America's one big cult and I'm like yeah I'm cool with that. So I mentioned it's at peace too or the idea that we've all talked about this notion I think Daniel you like tendency or vulnerability this idea there's something in human beings that can kind of go that way right well there's a there's a concern you know every so if you consider the the human mind as like maybe a a compartment a large compartment of smaller compartments there is a few of the compartments within this bigger thing that are carrying beliefs that are externally implemented or imprinted on the human from a very young age. You know, some of these are laws or we want to call them morals, ethics, whatever, but we'll just call them, you know, societal facts for the purpose of this conversation. Those are there and reinforced early on. Some of which are are good, you know, and some of which are go from society to society. The ten commandments, right? The golden rule. These are some things that are that get passed. But then there's other smaller things that are more local, more tribal, if you will, and then change as time goes on. You know, we still have no real uh so societal rules for like internet ethics. That's not a thing. You know what I'm saying? So like you know there's there's this and if you're not aware that those things are not a fixture of your mind then they're going to just exist. And as soon as somebody pushes up against one of the, you know, boundaries of those things that were filled that you weren't even aware of or you don't remember filling yourself, you're going to find out. You know, as they say, you're going to around and find out because someone's going to say something or do something that's going to trigger you. And if you don't like that word, it's going to bother you or it's going to set off an alarm of something inside that is like, "Hey, doom. That's not right. That's not right. That's not right. That's not right." And on one hand, maybe, of course, it's good, you know, hitting a woman. Okay, that's not right. We're going to, you know, say, "Hey, that ain't right." Or on another hand, in the case of, you know, Ryan, they're going to say, "Hey, that's a light-skinned man with a dark-skinned woman. That's not right." And but it doesn't matter who it's from. It could be from Caucasians in a suburb, or it could be from Indians on Devon in Chicago, you know, where they're like, "Who's that, you know, white devil, that uncle, the white ghost with our beautiful brownskinned lady? Get out of here." You know what I mean? Um, and then from Eric, it's like, you know, oh, well, you're pushing the boundaries of what we feel comfortable with in terms of monogamy, so like there's something wrong with you, obviously. So, you're there, so you're a flawed thing. But I don't think that people walk around thinking about that. I think they're people are far more self-absorbed except these programs are lying underneath and as soon as you pop up on them, then they're like, boom. and they become the the kind of first and foremost thing in their mind and they react based upon all of that and it's incumbent upon at least what we've been saying not just in this episode but in many many episodes for the last you know damn near coming up on 5 years you know you have to root those programs out you have to go in and decide for yourself is that who I want to be did I say yes to that if I didn't say yes to that then why do I walk around with it and why is it dictating my actions behaviors and feelings in this moment moment. It's It's the It is to me the definition of being of being unconscious, you know. Yeah. We were talking about the Daq Ching today between the three of us. We were sending some texts around. Ryan had a really cool translation of like the first chapter of it and you know, like I was skimming the book again um as I sometimes do, right? right? You pull it off the shelf, you there's all kinds of delightful things in there obviously that you can learn. But, you know, that's a major project in a lot of the spirituality things to make the unconscious conscious, right? And say, "Okay, this is the stuff." And it it's like a it is kind of like a scraping project, right? It's so funny we've been using that word because I literally just sent a text to someone yesterday like I had to go through this process of like scraping out, right? And I was using that almost exact language, right? Yeah. I know I have this this background in archaeology and so it's like you explicate the layers, right? You take layer by layer off and then eventually you find like a cool artifact, right? I mean, it's just like a interesting little metaphor there, right? It's like finding your authentic self under a bunch of junk, right? It's a it's a a Buddha nature metaphor, right? In a lot of the Buddhist stuff, right? All right. Well, I guess I'll do types of societies because it does fit into this conversation, right? Like why are people so reactive? Like what's happening? So Durkheim does this deal and I'll just kind of lay it out maybe one at a time or something and we can kind of discuss it. So he says there's really kind of two types of social organization and you can think of maybe like a whole society or maybe like individual groups within there, right? and one he calls mechanical and it's a weird word and I think he's thinking about like cogs in a machine or something where the members of that group are just much more similar to one another and he calls this like kind of a mechanistic group or a mechanistic society. So similar members, right? And because they're similar members, they all share like the the same strong sets of ideas, right? Right. So they hold like the same strong kind of like norms and codes and moralities, right? That are there without so much of these little individual differences, right? So that leads to if someone like kind of what Daniel was bringing up is someone deviates in some way, it's more obvious to punish then because there's much more like homogeneity within that group. So when someone starts to stand out like the old thing about the nail that stands out gets pounded down kind of a thing, it's easier to for that person to kind of stick out. The other things about it is like there's probably like you don't have the same individual freedom because there's lots of pressure like you were talking about Ryan to be another one of the people within that more me mechanistic kind of structure and group right and maybe the last piece of it would be something like um in terms of like our main theme about like cultiness. This creates a strong cohesion within that group because everyone feels their similarity and if someone deviates they get punished and get knocked back in the line and it creates this really strong sense of like social cohesion. So for our theme of like cultiness, right, social cohesion, social solidarity, you get into those little culty groups and this is going to be very intense, right? Yeah. Like like Mormon, like a Mormon group, right? Yeah. There's other ones. Men andites very dressed very similar. Amish dress very similar, you know. Uh I mean but you can go you can go we can go non-religion we could say gangs dress very similar teams you know sports teams dress very similar um I mean you go even even larger culture cultures have similar dress to identify themselves from other cultures or other tribes even within cultures there's tribes based on you know region or whatever that dress very similar same um language ethics religious practice food you know Um, hell, I don't even know. Sexual practices, who knows? You know what I mean? I don't know. But, but they it's a thing. I'm watching the old school like Luke Cage series, the old Netflix thing and like you can really see like it's a little bit of an exploration of like sort of that culture of these mobsters, right? It's a mob story essentially, right? And there's like codes and you you break the code, everyone knows, right? Yeah. Stitches get stitches and all that kind of stuff. So, it's a real thing. And you can see the characters are sometimes like you know the rules of this, I know the rules of this, you know, they all understand one another from that point of view, right? Yeah. Durkheim's going to like make this argument, right? He's um you know, because he's he's coming during this time in in anthropology and social science where they're like looking for these grand theories, these evolutionary theories. Um and so he's he sees like the the mechanical societies more like what you know what's referred to as like traditional societies or smaller societ societies the time they would have said you know maybe simpler um Durkheim didn't really like that explanation because he thought there was a fair amount of complexity in them um and then these organic societies which were more like larger um you know state level societies right um and so but and he gets kind of maligned for this and there's problems problems with both of these ideas because you know evolution and social you know there's not a universal way that societies develop. Um and just to kind of point that out. Um having said that some of these ideas you know with the social pressure and smaller groups and larger groups I think are true right if we the way you're kind of phrasing it Eric you know makes sense but I just want to sort of point out sort of like kind of what the the initiative was during that time. Then he's using this term mechanical which like that's right during the industrial revolution. So like it makes sense that that would be um for forefront of the mind. It's such a weird term but he's getting to like people being much more similar like you know in an engine or you know like similar cogs in the machine. I mean part of what we're doing is we're trying to understand the world around us and that's not even really being a hater or anything but like a lot of Trumpism is rural. Yeah. Right. And like that's going to be much more mechanistic. Right. you know where you get oh no that's just a factoid like Trumpism is like the rural parts of the United States vote Trump there might be other places too but like that's just a that's just a statistical factoid right and yes but and also the statistical factoid is that you know like it or not like it like the majority of the people not by a massive amount but the majority of people voted for him so it's not it is not to me it's not simply rural versus non-rural. You know, rural tends to vote Republican anyways. So, I don't know whether that's Trumpism or not Trumpism. I, you know, I'm sure they're not losing the team red is not losing votes. You know what I'm saying? Regardless of their candidate, but I I've listened to some of these people who are in these like conservative environments, right? And there's like a lot of pressure on them because there's a lot of similarity within the group, right? That might happen any group, right? Yeah. Yeah. And if you get to like I I mean we can you know all have our own feelings about this but I think if you do get to like areas where you get people who are much like you get I like I know people from like East Texas and right there just there's just this mechanistic quality to that in the sense that there's this expectation of a lot more similarity. Sure. I think this works well around that right. Yeah. I mean I think this works well when you look at cults. I think I think there probably is a little more variation in the rural areas, you know. Um, and that's kind of again sort of when you're using relatively simplistic, you know, theories like you run into problems of variation, right? Talk about relatively speaking though, you know what I mean, Ryan? Well, yeah, but there's some rural areas that could be fairly liberal, right? In some larger cities that may be more conservative. I mean, it's but I think in general we can say, you know, rural America tends to be more more Trump-like. I think a a better way of utilizing this theory or another way of using it would be to look at the enveloped evangelicals, right? These are small close-knit groups, right? Um which, you know, have a tendency not 100% to uh to view Trump as almost like a me messianic figure, right? Um and then then they are very closed, right? Um, and I can look at that model and then if someone goes outside of those norms within that small community, yeah, the pressure is going to be pretty strong, right? The pressure to perform is going to be pretty strong. Um, if that makes sense. I mean, I know I agree with you. You're not going to get something like Apple's absolute mechanistic, you know, but you can get things that look a little bit more like within that framework, right? I guess I mean maybe there's different ways of using these kinds of ideas obviously like I suppose for me as like a conceptual tool I think okay the more commonality you get between the members of the group right the more you're going to get this kind of pressure building up right so the closer if you look at it maybe on a continuum or something the closer you get to that the more pressure that's going to build whether you know whether we can like debate whether a rural example is the best example but it did cross my mind right you know because you get a lot more commonality within those groups everyone might be same race, same religion, same whatever, right? You're, you know, less diversity to something will create more of this kind of pressure. That's the that's the key right there. Less diversity and that doesn't necessarily mean racial diversity. Less diversity of thought creates more pressure on the individual to conform. That's in my mind that's Yeah, I agree. I think that's the heart of it. You know, we can kind of figure out where that is, you know. Correct. the more you get to that probably you're going to feel more of that stuff, right? Like the more isolated a person is, right? The less the less opportunities they have to interact with other people and people who may not share their worldview, right? Um the easier they can be controlled by their, you know, the group that they're in. Correct. You know, I think that makes sense. And what's this last bit here, Eric? Well, the other part is the organic idea. So, he says maybe two types of groups, right? And you know, they're archetypal. So the critique that you're bringing up is spare, Ryan. I mean, no one's going to fit this like perfectly, right? But maybe they're on something like a continuum for the purpose of the conversation or something, right? So he uses this word organic with this and he's trying to get to the idea of like where there's more diversity amongst the members and they fit together more sort of like the different organs that make up the body or something, right? Yeah. It's like interdependence, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so in that sense like a lot more diversity amongst the people who might make up that group, right? Um a greater individual differences are going to be okay because you know everyone's kind of having their own different vibe within that group even though it might hold together and fit. The bonds though in that case would be sort of like less strong on some level because there is more diversity within that because of the like uh again the diversity of the membership probably like greater freedom, right? And then the bonds are are less based on like we're all the same and more based on idea like okay we're all part of like an inter interdependent group or community and we might not necessarily share all the same norms mores values and codes and stuff right right so I mean it's sort of like you look at you know again this is you know this is coming during the time of the industrial revolution right which is also the time like you Durkheim has been critiqued as a materialist as well. So this is this time when anatomy is becoming very pronounced in medicine, right? And so it makes sense that you see this mechanical, you know, organic metaphor organism metaphor, right? And so I think he's looking like, oh right, well look at society and like all these pe different people with specialties depend upon each other, right? In order for society to function, right? You know the you know the person the baker depends on the it's it works, right? you know, the baker depends on, you know, the the farmer and the blacksmith depends, you know, on the the guy who's, you know, has the horses or like whatever, you know, you want to use the interdependencies between different specialties and specializations of people living within a community. I think that's kind of how he's viewing this um because he's viewing this organic um type of society is one that's just a larger society. Yeah. But I mean, if we use it as a tool like understand groups, right? Right. You know, if we take it out of the context of like, okay, we're talking about something that this dude was writing a hundred years ago or something, we more as a tool to understand what's happening in the world around you. You know, if you're kind of in a thing where you're going to have more of this organic thing going on, you're probably going to have more freedom and less of these pressures because it's a little bit less obvious how you're going to punish people about stuff. Right. Right. And uh and uh then in ways like greater freedom and all this kind of stuff. Right. Now again, we could debate like rural or urban or urban or something, but I live in like Lincoln Park. Yeah. A big neighborhood in Chicago. There's a lot of diversity amongst the people here, right? Right. So, it would be pretty weird to like look a scance at my neighbor. Like there's a I don't even know what it is exactly. There's like if I look out my window onto the street where I live, every once in a while the gate will open and there'll be this like religious statue that will come out that's something East Asian. I don't even recognize who it is. and they'll be like sort of the flower garland around the statue's neck and they'll have a whole thing and I look out the window and I'm like, "Oh, that's interesting." You know, that's a curiosity, right? Um but I, you know, it's not it doesn't register as like some big difference within like the community or something like that, right? I'm like, "Okay, there's a lot of diversity here." And it just feels sort of natural, right? More flexibility. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I've talked about this book, uh, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. Um, and they have he has kind of like an updated version. I think it's The Revenge of the Tipping Point or The Tipping Point 2024 or whatever it is. So, I read this book a little bit ago and and I'm probably going to butcher the analogy um, a little bit, but I think it I think it's a good one. So, in this book, they talk about uh cheetahs uh in in the United States, cheetahs that are held in in captivity. And they were having an issue with uh breeding. And what's interesting about cheetahs is that they said that the cheetah probably during the whatever the great frost or you know, whatever I forgot what the name of that is called, but you know, whenever there was a the big frost, the ice age or something like that. Ice Age. Yeah, that's it. There you go. that they said that they it's likely because cheetahs are identical like they're they're like their their genetics are like 99.99999999999% the same that they probably got down to a mother and some cubs in a cave and that was it. That's their the genetics get down that tight and then they obviously expanded after that. So, what does that mean? Well, in captivity, it's harder to breed them because they're less likely to breed with their own kin, number one. Um, and they're territorial and everything else. So, they had this problem where one of the jaguars got or cheetahs got sick, you know, and they they couldn't figure out what was going on and, you know, whatever. So, they were not sure what to do. The numbers were getting down. They brought in another one because this one died. They brought another one in to fill the spot and whatever. But now they're getting sick, you know, and so they're thinking, "Okay, let's separate them and move them around and whatever." A a lot of these cheetahs, I'll kind of skip to it and I and I'm hacking it, but I'm not going to go back and tell it the more proper way. A lot of these cheetahs ended up getting sick and but they were being they were kind of taking them from these different places. The problem was that they were this virus that only really affected cats k you know cats ended up affecting cheetahs and it killed off a ton of them. Well, why did it do that? because genetically they were not diverse. And if they had a a larger influx of uh genetic influence from different kinds of cheetah from different parts of the world, they would have had a better chance at surviving this kind of thing. And then when we look we we do the anthropological thing and bring in human beings, we could think of like smallpox on the Native American population, wipe them out. Why? because they're mono they're, you know, sort of a monoculture and that left them genetically uh vulnerable to these viruses that they had never, you know, got a never haven't gotten a hold of them yet and they didn't have enough variation in order to kind of withstand this thing. So on on if we think of that in terms of ideas then for the the final evolution of this long- winded argument um the final evolution of this then is the spreading of ideas in a monoculture spreads much more quickly and it's much more we could say uh morbid you know or detrimental because it can move much more quickly without resistance as in a as in a culture that has or in a group or a society that has uh diverse kind of groupings of ideologies and individuals. It is much more difficult to spread viruses, a but b mental constructs. It's harder for it to flow between person to person because of the differences that people are going to have from each other and then they're going to present each other when they talk about this thing. They're coming from different places. It's gonna it's going to have a harder time to take hold in people's minds. And so this is my um I guess my politicking for people to interact with other folks. You know, it's kind of like almost like the metaphor would be like if we're all the same, maybe there's almost like an instinctive thing of like we better not let that other thing come in because it might wipe us all out the way that virus wiped all the cheetahs out. Yeah. Yeah. We want to go the way of the cheetah. Yeah. You know, so you get much more of a defensiveness around that. Yeah. sort of like a um a psychological incest taboo or an ideological incest taboo or sort of like you know I think that happens when you know when you intentionally surround yourself around uh people who who have diverse ideas you know um and then if you go back to a situation where like everyone sort of thinks like you or um you know or they they think they you know relatively closed mind or something like that it feels very constraining right um I know that happens to me if I go back to situation where it's like, oh, it's all these people I kind of, you know, grew up with and like sort of think the same and I feel like literally feel like it's almost hard to breathe. Um, you feel the pressure that you were talking about, right? Yeah. I heard this wild story. Again, I've been doing a little research for these podcast things here and there, and there's a guy named David French who's real religious conservative figure, right? um but not Trump, you know, and uh his I think he told the tale that his father died and they were at the funeral and he's there with his wife and this note gets passed along to him and he opens up the note and he's not sure what it's going to be like note of condolence or you know like you're literally in the funeral ceremony and he opens it up and it's a note from someone else in this congregation that I guess he was explaining he had been going to for years right and the note said I really don't like that your the way your politics are evolving like at the funeral. Interesting. And he showed it to his wife and his wife at the funeral went like just like exclaimed like what the hell is wrong with you people like at the funeral and folded up the note, crumpled it up or whatever. And like you could take whatever I I'm sure we could get an equal story on the left or something. So we're not even like trying to blast one side in this. But right, you know, it's one of those things where you have like that drive for conformity, you know, like whether it's cheetahs or humans or whatever within that group, then you can really see that defensive reaction, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think just just for fairness because we I guess we have kind of spend a lot of time on the right today. Um is, you know, we we talked I think a little bit, you know, last week too, but sort of like you you can get this zealatry, you know, on the left as well, right? Which can be just as constraining, right? and just as much social pressure and just as vicious, right? Yeah. them both, you know. Yeah, we should start rapping. Yeah. So anyways, I don't know like as a closer on it for me, I don't want to like just say organic stuff is better and mechanical stuff is worse, but there is something like if you're going to promote the idea of more like individual freedom and diversity and the ability to maybe like spiritually explore to the case to the extent that you're able to find authenticity, you have to go somewhere in that direction, right? Yeah. you know, if you just like think of that as a continuum for the point of what we're discussing, you need some like, you know, if it's all going to be locked down in that mechanistic way, you need more space, you know, you know, it's interesting to grow and evolve, you know, and like what Daniel was saying, you need a little bit more than diversity to allow that to happen so that people can diversify themselves out because we're not all going to grow in the same direction, you know, but we have to be able to be tolerant of one another growing in different directions, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's that's right on. Um just it made me think of of you know just reading this book recently kind of the dawn of everything. Um but then kind of looking looking back at Durkheim's theory of of some of these smaller societies what we see in societies which are fairly closed. We look at like some you know indigenous society is like they usually have some sort of mechanism for individuals to go through like a right of passage right. Sure. they go on a vision quest or they go on this journey on themselves. They'll have to have to leave the group, right? Go on this journey on themselves, you know, a vision quest of some type to find themselves, right? Um, you know, and so there there are these mechanisms kind of built in um with with a number of these societies as well. It's kind of a another aspect of this. So they leave a little space for people to find their own spiritual path or something. There's a wisdom in that I guess there, right? Yep. I'd be curious, maybe not this episode, Daniel, because now we're wrapping up, but for me, like we were talking about this social fact stuff and I was drawn to practices like Zen, Dowoism, Tantra that were challenging of those things. You're kind of like our, you know, shamanic person of the group and I'd be curious what you think about that challenging of those things. Does shamanism purposely say you're supposed to challenge that thing? Well, shamanism is shamanism isn't is not an ism. You know what I mean? like either way. But yeah, but but in the practice of the the shaman was is is half in half out. They walk between the worlds in general. So they were already on the out they are literally the the the furthest thing from society and the closest thing to outside of it, right? It's the same the same piece. But yeah, if there's a circle, the shaman is the ven diagram. He's the circle that is like adjacent to touching the circle but not inside of it but also not completely outside of it either. They're they're they they act in both and that's the that's their purpose. You know, the purpose is to be able to maintain uh well, the purpose is multifaceted, but it is in part to intentionally hold the view of nature, the view of spirituality, the view of someone's life on a far different trajectory, you know, to be able to kind of read the tea leaves or, you know, throw the bones or the dice or whatever ritual is there in order to be able to read the signs, you and to do some, you know, shamanizing, if you will. But if you're bound to the structure that you are that everybody else is, you're probably not going to be able to be effective at seeing the signs of the universe or hearing the call of nature or, you know, having your finger to the wind. how how whatever you euphemism you want to use to be able to I guess connect to the subtleties of reality you know and then interpret those in a way that is usable for the person who was there seeking out healing guidance or you know some kind of intervention or be able to bring that back to the group right to bring something back to the group you have to be able to be like okay I have to step out of the group I'm going to connect to the source in a different way, you know, and I'm going to bring something new. I have to be I at least have to have some foot outside the doors. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, they Yeah. I mean, that's you know, the shaman is at the crossroads. They're at the crossroads of chaos and organization. They're at the crossroads of a tribe and the jungle, you know? They're at the crossroads between sanity and insanity, between light and dark, between ordinary and non-ordinary. You know what I'm saying? Between po uh between medicine and poison, you know what I'm saying? Like that is that is exactly where they are. So this is this is the role of the shaman, you know, and then based on the practice, they could be more healers or more seers or whatever, but not in a position of leading in that sense, generally speaking, in a position of guidance, not in a position of like I'm going to force this tribe to do this thing. It's more like this is what I see. This is what I hear. this is what I feel this is the best course of action based on my experience you know in in in being outside of this structure of society I just found it interesting that we all have some draw in all of our own ways and our practices to things that have some element of that transcendence thing right like there has to be some transcendence that's possible right bring in the new right yeah for the value others right yeah with the old for sharing I wanted to just ask about that because it popped in my mind earlier and I thought that's really right. What's the shamanic perspective on this? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. All right. Well, let's wrap it. Gentlemen, thank you so much for being on. Uh appreciate all the effort and uh you know inputs and everything else. Audience, thank you so much for listening uh or watching or however you've you know consumed our product today. Uh as always uh sub, you know, subscribe if you want to leave a comment, you know, please feel free to do so. we generally respond uh unless you're talking then we may or may not. Just FYI, not cuz we're scared, just cuz I don't feel like getting into a a battle uh on YouTube or whatever, but you know, talk your I don't care. It's like it's all good. Um I I appreciate all the the love regardless if it's if it's uh you know, uh what what do you want to call it? Out of smite. Um but you know, as always, feel free hit us up jyn andtragmail.com or on the on the gram at the Jyn and Tantra podcast. uh you know, if you like what you're seeing from, you know, here today, please feel free to check out all of our uh you know, hundreds of previous episodes uh that we've been doing this thing for, uh we'll be back at you for sure, uh probably in like a week or so. And for Ryan and Eric, this is Daniel. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace. [Music]