[Music] Hey fellow G&Ters, those of us like those of us who like our spirituality with a twist and uh Daniel was making me laugh before this podcast started and I I can't I can't stop. Anyways, so we're going through and we are talking today specifically about the great sociologist Max Weber and his idea of car charismatic authority and how that connects into one of the things that we've been trying to look at over our kind of last little series of episodes on cult psychology. So, we're going be talking about charismatic authority and cult psychology. And this is part of what I know what you think Daniel, but for me it's been one of the more fascinating I think kind of important but also sort of out of out of the box projects for us

we kind of looked around at the world more in the immediate rather than just talking about some of the other psychospiritual stuff we like to talk about.

Yeah. and we decided to really go through uh you know we're not people who do politics and news of the week but there's so much deep stuff happening in the culture and our way to respond to it was really to talk about kind of cult psychology.

Yeah.

Um all right so for context of this you know uh for people who haven't caught up with the other episodes we've done kind of a host of different little things in the project we've been doing. We looked at social psychology of conformity in cult psychology. We looked at the great ideas of the great sociologist Emil Durkheim and how it has to do with cult psychology and how you build like how you get people to like bond themselves in the groups. And now we're into this last part, this kind of Max Weber part, another great sociologist and his idea of like what kind of authorities do people respond to? So we'll get into the charismatic one today. We're going to do a series of episodes. We already talked about people who are maybe a little bit more legalistic authority. We talked about traditional authority and now we're into the one that probably has the most connection to cult but the idea of charismatic authority. But I mean uh oh yeah before we jump in then I'll do the usual thing that I like uh we have to do in at the beginning of every podcast. You know if you want to help support our efforts to keep doing this kind of educ educational stuff that we're up to uh one of the things you can do is give us a like and a subscribe and recommend to friends and do all the things that people ask you in every podcast you ever watch ever. uh because it does help us out. So, thanks for that if you can do it. And uh now we're in before we guess we talk about the full-on charismatic thing. I wanted to, you know, we learned a lot doing this. And one of the things that really hit me was on the one hand, you really could be talking, we were talking off mic, you were talking about diagnosing society, right?

Yeah.

And treating society. Like, can you do that? Can you say, "Okay, here's our societal diagnosis the same way we'd make a medical diagnosis." Mhm.

And I I think on some level that's part of what we're doing, right?

Mhm. And then the other part though and I I think this is the part that strikes me as psychosspiritually interesting and I'm still coming to terms of how I fully want to phrase it but this idea that you know if you're a legalistic person like we talked about in the previous episode and your main thing is you like to see laws and rules and order or if you're a traditional authority person and you want to believe in whatever tradition you know that maybe has gone back through your family lineage and things like that you know like it's a kind of a personality type too. So, I don't know if Vber was fully talking about that as personality types, but I'm sort of seeing it that way. And that's been like I think what's been really interesting for me to kind of realize that there's there's just certain personality types or or these concepts define certain personality types. Mhm.

And then as you get to understand them, it even gives you sort of this might be the sort of scientific part of G&T in a way,

you know, where you start going, okay, if I if I got a theory and let's say this theory is one of people who respond to traditional authority, and we kind of gave a full kind of description of that in the pre one of our previous episodes on this, so you can check that out. We won't do all of that again. But people who respond to retritional authority, one of the odd, it just hit me. I'll bounce it off. You can tell me what you think. But it hit me that

when you really look at that and a lot of traditional authority structures,

they're kind of okay with like sexual abuse. They just kind of are.

Give an example.

Well, like I was just thinking about like the Catholic Church. It's a traditional authority structure. And I was raised Catholic and I mean there were kind of priests even we were around with our family where like you got to stay away from father Tony like you sort of knew and those priests we all know the scandal now they were all moved around and then eventually what happened really nothing you know and it wasn't like there was a violent reaction the people who were members of that church I don't belong to anymore my uncle was a deacon I respect my uncle I don't have anything against anyone's religion, you know, but it's odd. And I was thinking, that's really true. And we're we happen to be recording this in the midst where the Epstein scandal has been unfolding over these last few weeks.

Yeah.

And I was going, well, if that's true, if this is like if this model, quote unquote, is true, and this is what traditional authority is like, well, then probably people who are traditional authority people will just come to terms with the fact that there's there's been this potential history of abuse, and they'll just kind of like, okay, cool. and it'll probably just die out and disappear. Even as much as you could say that cognitive dissonance, one of the other big psych ideas might make you do that, you know, and probably cognitive dissonance has something cognitive dissonance has something to do with this. But I was like, that's just odd, you know, and you can come up with lots of examples like this where there's like sexual abuse scandals in traditional authority structures and people are like, okay, and they just kind of disappear. And I thought, okay, well, if this model's true, then that'll be my prediction, the people who are traditional authority people to probably let this go.

And maybe it's kind of a diagnostic thing.

Maybe even a bit bit more inclusive. I mean, yeah, sexual scandals as a as a specific example, but maybe even more inclusive. They're okay with people being taken advantage of.

Yeah. Scandals within their community.

They're like, that's okay.

Yeah.

You know, we'll we'll let that go. that that part of being in charge is that's not what you get to do, but like you can kind of like we'll let that [...] slide, you know?

Well, in order to like save the tradition, we'll turn a blind eye.

Yes.

Because actually, if we really look at this, the whole thing will get will get shaky.

Correct. And then

that's too frightening. So, we better

Mhm.

And then this will go then then you could then move that into like cult.

Yeah.

You know, we'll allow Oh, well, I mean, you know, of course the leader's got to have 10 children. I mean, I mean, he's got the best seed, obviously, you know. So, we're going to let that Oh, and these are his clergy. And it's always a dude, by the way.

Um, you know,

well, in my cult book, there are a couple of ladies, but it's pretty rare, but I we'll save it for another time.

There's always some out.

It's mostly a dude.

98% of the time, I think we'll round it up. You know,

I was wild because they have one of them where it was actually a woman and she had like her own kind of sex called. It does show up, but it's pretty goddamn rare. It's true.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

So like so they're just they have the tolerance for abuse of power.

Yeah. They hadn't occurred to me. I think we were talking about traditional authority when we were recording it. We had to take a week off. I had some family business I had to take care of. But when we were recording it, it just came up in the episode kind of spontaneously and I went, "Yeah, you know, if we can't really challenge the bishop or whoever, even if they're involved in some shenanigans that we think is bad because it'll rattle the whole authority structure." And I was like, okay, that probably means, you know, that that's kind of okay within that structure. A certain amount of corruption, a certain amount of abuse is tolerated, right?

Mhm.

Because otherwise it shakes things up too much. And then it it opens up to the ability that you can predict. It might be the part of me that was like a psychologist back in the day in a research side. Mhm.

I mean, to the extent that this is true, um, we didn't talk for a couple of weeks, but I did kind of try to investigate the Epstein thing more deeply. We won't talk about it now, but I mean, I think there's there it's not just there's not just smoke, there's like fire and [...] Like, there's corruption there for sure if you decide to go down the rabbit hole and really look at it.

And it like goes out everywhere. It's not one party or another party. It's there's corruption.

Yeah,

for sure. And if you just on a human level, you would think, okay, I want to see that outed and cleaned up, you know, uh, outside of any partisanship.

Correct.

Right.

You know, like Yeah. Just because there's victims who were abused and you want to break up things who might also be out potentially abusing other people.

Correct.

Right. Like you want to bust that up.

Yeah.

Um, like for psychosspiritual reasons, right? You can't have abuse of women in tantra. No, no, no. That's not right. You have to stop that. You know, even from the psychosspiritual point of view, you know, historical abuse of women has to be stopped.

Well, and we won't go into it, but they're only mentioning women.

They're like specific specifically only mentioning women. I And for me,

for, you know, just understanding the world that we live in. Yeah.

No, I'm sorry.

That's a good call.

I'm sorry. Let's not let's let's you know let's even e e let's understand evenly that like the desires of those who have an endless desire for um debauchery and things that cannot be purchased. It is not limited to the uh standard desires for what you know most people would consider tolerable or intolerable in this case. And uh I don't believe that it stops at uh girls personally. So

No. And like if you go to other scandals, it's it's definitely young boys too, right?

Oh, totally. Yeah.

Yeah. That you said an interesting thing there. We won't go on the down the the rabbit hole of that either, but the the thing that you can buy everything you want except this thing is interesting because I was listening to someone talking about

Yeah.

this whole scandal who's been, you know, like an investigative journalist around it and that was one of their theories. You can buy everything, but you can't buy this one. And it gives it this weird, you know, uh, reverse psychotic allure or something, right? Bizarre psychologically. Yeah.

That's the disdain that most people have for various levels of authority and then people who have purchased their way outside of society's brothers, you know, the the the elites, the quote unquote elites, the, you know, people who have money basically. Yeah. money to do whatever you want. The problem is that you you know you're really at the top of the food chain and I don't not spiritual pyramid but of the normal uh food chain of society you know you're wanting money you're wanting power and then you're wanting the things but when you have both money and the power and you can have the things that that doesn't give you the same dopamine dump that it once did you know

I guess there's a certain truth to that potentially right because that's what they're talking about

yeah so you need more And that's why that's why social media and whatever it's why I've always been, you know, anti that [...] is because you're it's an endless dump of of dopamine. And so people who are kind of like on it regularly, they know that like the the like that you get from the person you want to like your [...] is not the same value as a like on a post from somebody else that you don't really care about because you want that particular thing. That's the nugget for you. But then when they start liking your stuff all the time, it doesn't feel as good as if you weren't sure that they were following you or doing whatever. You know, same thing when people are able to purchase whatever they want. That doesn't have the same dopamine hit. If I could buy any car that I want, as much as I want, what does it matter if I buy a Ferrari or a Bugatti or a McLaren or, you know, whatever. That doesn't matter. I want something that's one of one, you know, or one of five. Now I'm the only one. Now I'm special. And notice I'm saying me. I'm special. My ego needs to feel identified very clearly. Special, unique, one of one. Okay. But then how does that that extends then to other experiences? And so these experiences only become more and more rare. So people want to have experiences and and uh when you're outside of like the the moral code that most people follow because you believe yourself to be, you know, special there. The rules don't apply anymore. They should but they don't because you feel yourself to be better than and that's that is uh you know and let's let let's let that lead us into our discussion of the you know

charismatic authority

charismatic authority because that is inherently

that is inherently part of that that I mean and it's been that way

you know when you give the definition of it people will see it's been this way for I mean since these types of figures have been in power this has always come along with it

well it's a fascinating thing okay so this is Max Vber right this is our educational part of the podcast, right?

Yeah.

We're trying to like

cover some of the great thoughts about these subject matters that we're wrestling with. Hopefully, you all benefit from it. So, you know, context Weber has this idea that there's these different types of authority and they sort of clash with one another.

So, your legalistic rational people will have a certain or that type of authority will have a certain modus operande you might say, right? Certain ideals, certain vision of how things are supposed to be. Traditional authority people are different. We did episodes on those. Now, we're in this charismatic one, right? and they have a certain intrinsic clash. So that's something to explore too, right? And I'm again like to me I'm again maybe as a psychologist and a clinical person I'm like I think these are personality types too either on the top or the bottom. People who are drawn to this some way or another.

Um so charismatic authority. Okay. So the the interesting thing about this in vber is the use of that term and we just have to point it out does go back to Christianity, right? And so some of these things we would think as being very toxic leaders just inherently, right? You're full-on cult leaders. But he's drawing back on something that's Christian, right? The charismatic movement, right? So again, it's an interesting thing because we can decide what of this we might think is good or what of this we might think is bad. But he is drawing from that, right?

So then we can trace through. We're going to emphasize more the toxic sides, right? Um uh all right. So, you know, we can see that this can fit in with something that we would all agree could be toxic. And then the cult idea. All right. So, the big idea here is that you have to see the person who's the leader as having some kind of superhuman qualities, right?

You have to invest this leader with something, you know, superlative. And so, in doing the research around this for this, you can have different versions of what this might mean. And we could think of some of them being good or bad. But certainly you can say there might be a shamanic version of this, right? Where the shaman has super qualities and we can invest that person is having a lot of charismatic authority within whatever the community that would be

or back to like biblical prophets and we would say okay this person has seems to have special you know abilities and qualities and again we can value judge that whether we think that's good or bad. um warrior type people, you know, historically kind of get this kind of thing, right? If you're in like warrior type culture settings, one of the people I was researching would mention like Achilles or something like that for the Greek myths or something, he's a warrior. We invest him with these super qualities, right?

But you know,

Yeah. Go ahead.

You know what's you know what's interesting, Eric, is that like we are a we we fancy ourselves as a very um rational rationalebased society. You know,

and yet we love cults and anoint people who have a mystical aura about them that is outside of rationality. It's like it's almost like we cling to rationality as if it is the the language of understanding, you know, or the the currency to understanding. Maybe that's a better way of putting it. And yet the things that have the most meaning are outside of rationality.

And it's interesting that way depending on what you do about that too is interesting. Yeah.

And it's almost and it almost has to be that way.

You know, they you almost have to be outside of rationality or else you would be subject to the same laws of investigation that everybody else would be. And then you would have a bunch of holes poked in you because you can't claim some sort of like uh spiritual superiority. I'm dunking right now, Eric. I put

I put some needles in my head earlier.

Yeah, but like that that's how I see it, right? You know, we we think of people in charge all over the world now and there is an air of spirituality almost with them, you know, like you're saying, like they have this superhuman quality to them and that doesn't hold up to the rigors that we believe in science. Oh, I guess that's why you might attack it. But anyways, I digress. Yeah,

it's interesting in that like I have like ambivalent feelings about this even in the spiritual traditions I'm interested in. I've met some people who are extraordinary people.

Yeah.

You know, and like who could do some pretty wacky extraordinary stuff like great Zen masters and Chiang people and

great teachers within spiritual stuff. Yet at the same time, and I've come more and more to believe in this as we've gone through this podcast, I still think you need the rationalistic authority that has to be part of this, right? Like I I I I'm wary of the idea of like I'm just going to imbue this spiritual figure even on a personal level with all of this stuff. I don't I don't think that's entirely healthy. Even in the traditions that I like, I'm ambivalent about that. I'm not sure if it's good. Yeah.

You know,

and you know, I'm not going to call out anyone in particular, but I think that's part of the draw for me of like like the Daly Lama tradition to an extent because it's very rationalistic on some level, right?

Yeah.

It it isn't um just here's this extraordinary person and we should all follow them just because they show some extraordinary qualities. I'm suspicious of that. I don't know if it's always good. So, I mean, even in myself, I wrestle with that.

Yeah. And then when I was thinking about these different kinds of authorities, I was like, "Yeah, there has to be something that's rationalistic." And you know, we like that quote from the Buddha where he goes like, "Don't just believe it because I said it."

Yeah.

You know, test it like as if I was selling you some gold,

you know, and you wouldn't just take my word for it.

You would test it and you would scrape it and do the everything you need to do to confirm that I'm not giving you like some fool's gold.

So, that's interesting. I've like asked a lot of questions around this. This has been this has been an interesting series for me,

you know. Yeah. The same way it's like hitting for you in different ways.

Yeah.

The other thing that was brought up with this and you know maybe it fits into what you're talking about there too already, Daniel is, you know, one of the guys I was listening to about this would talk about military figures that might be more current, but we don't have as many of those now.

We don't even have like famous military generals like, you know, a General MacArthur from World War II or like a Patton or something. We don't have those figures. They're not so anymore, you know.

No, I mean, I'm not so I mean, I'm just, you know, again, I'm a general generalist. You know,

you had from the first Gulf War, you had Norman Schwarzoff because he was

Well, one of the guys I was listening to mentioned him as like fitting into that thing.

Yeah. Because he was the first fivestar probably since I don't even know when, a long time. So, five-star general, which means you're in command of, you know, you have the high, you're the highest ranking general because there's many generals. Um, and that's was kind of it. And then you had, you know, but then why is because generals have generally moved into politics after their service is over. And so the shine of their time in service and in theater, you know, specifically, I mean, like battle, um, tend to tends to get a little sullied because of their political affiliation or their supposed political affiliation, you know, so thinking of General Flynn, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, uh, yeah.

Yeah. No, off the deep end. And

super partisan, off the deep end, partisan, whatever. hear the same shine.

You know, you had another guy uh uh what's his name? Mad Dog. Uh

yeah, Mad Dog Mattis. Yeah,

General Mattis. Thought to be a partisan person. Turns out not at all. Actually, I heard him speak at a commencement at West Point some years ago, you know, and was very nonpartisan, actually. Surprisingly so. So,

yeah. A lot of the military people I talked to about him, they have really good impressions of him.

Yeah. Very, very good. indirectly under him, but they were like their their opinion of him is very high.

Yeah. So, we just don't get that. So, those people don't they don't move into the zeitgeist of general uh awareness because they don't unless they're moving into politics, you're not going to know them. So, it's hard to anoint them. You know,

maybe the United States just hasn't had those like massive military, you know, victories that have been so clearcut like for so long in our lifetimes. you know, it just hasn't been where there's some person that they gets all the aura,

you know, to use the use the Gen Z term aura.

There's also there's also one other piece, Eric.

Mhm.

And and you know, spoiler alert, if you have not watched Oppenheimer, turn this off right now. Turn it off right now. Um I don't know why I need to do that, but whatever. and Oppenheimer because we already know the story, but um it is, you know, um Oppenheimer feels bad that he was the one who was in charge of this project, you know, to make the atom bombs. And he goes to see, I think it was uh who was it Truman?

Yeah.

And the guy's like he's like, "I feel bad for what I did." He's and Truman told him, he's like, "What did you do? It's my decision. I did this.

You didn't do [...]

Thank you for your service. You know,

really that that aggressive.

Yeah. And then when he's leaving uh at the end of the movie, he's like he goes, "Get this [...] out of here. I don't ever want to see him again."

Truman says that.

Yes. That's that's that's supposedly that's what

[...] Really? Okay.

So, why don't we have that is because it go it it it re it rereavves us back into our point about charismatic authoritative figures. They want the glory because they are the one in the limelight. So they're going to absorb all of that. They're because as we've seen from many stories previous, the generals get the glory and now all of a sudden the general is is in the next is a a parallel to the leader, but the leader inherently is always having to fend off people who want to be in his position. And

that's could be true too, right? Yeah. Yeah. And the only really you know you can't have multiple people who are outside of rationality in ter in terms of their superlatives. So therefore if there is somebody who is outside of rationality and almost superhuman and now there's two superhumans.

We already know unfortunately in this world there are no Marvel characters you know so we can't have a team of superhumans uh ruling over us. It doesn't work. Look at the series the boys you know that just

Yeah. I was just thinking of like Homelander, right? Like that the shine is off of that, right?

Yeah. It doesn't go well. So, inherently they're they're they're looking to to have people be intentionally below them because they're the special ones. They're the most special and therefore that's why they're in charge.

Well, I suppose like and we'll close it off, but I I don't know if Iraq and Afghanistan those those wars just don't look good.

No. You know, so if you need like to get the shine of that, you probably would need, you know, like a war that everyone thought was just, you know, like a patent World War II thing or something. We all agree it's just and that person can get that aura around them, right?

But honestly,

we we weren't alive during that period and the people who were are no longer alive now.

Yeah.

So, we don't even know the resistance that was here. We assume that like everybody was gung-ho and you know, D like you know, we we look at [...] now and we're like, "Oh, no. This is obviously propaganda, but what do we have from that time? Propaganda. That's

going to be propaganda one way or the other. But like Eisenhower got elected president. I've watched movies, you know, with my dad about this military general that, you know,

yeah,

the MacArthur movie or the or the, you know, the Patton movie like so. Anyways, it's interesting. I we'll have to see how our culture goes forward with that. But, you know, it's

what one of the guys said was that as far as this thing goes, and he uses a weird word. He talks about Berserker. I don't know if like Ver uses that, but athletics is like that maybe now a little bit too where it's the athletes who are taking on those that that kind of quality, right?

Yeah.

You know, so like um you know, a Tom Brady or a Michael Jordan or a LeBron James, you know, and that's interesting to talk about that. Maybe we'll take some of those athlete guys and come back to it because you part of what's going to happen when we get to it is the more miraculous the feat, the more the person gets the aura, right?

So, Um all right anyways in this list shamans and prophets and warriors maybe athletes in our culture kind of doing that and then people who you probably would call demagogues right so a provocative term I think Napoleon came up as an example you know if you look at a historical figure but you know power hungry leaders

right

um and then the idea with all of this as we were just alluding to is the idea that they have something miraculous they do miracles in the eyes of their followers. So they get imbued with this like again like transcendent quality, this supernatural quality. Um I know one of the people I was talking to about this uh one Ryan K. Davenport, our anthropologist and TCM friend, he said that after that bullet just grazed Trump's ear, he was like, "Oh my god, he's going to get elected like no doubt and he's going to take everything over." You know, just because of the the aura of that that charismatic quality for the people who were his followers, it's going to seem miraculous, right?

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah. Have you seen Have you seen the scar by the way or

No.

Huh. Okay. Anyways, so you were saying

I'm glad you went there. Thanks.

You You were saying, Eric,

moving on. Moving on. All right. So the interesting thing about this is there's like a kind of a duty boundness to this type of authority because if someone comes on and they seem to have this specialness about them there's this specialness charismatic power and authority well then the people who are drawn into that you feel a need to follow that right because it seems so persuasive you know how can I not follow this person look what a badass they are right

and then it creates this weird situation that no matter how otherwise unreasonable the authority might seem, it still will get this again kind of like again aura of justification around it, right? Just by virtue of the fact of who it's coming from because we've imbued this person with all of this charismatic power. So, I think that's kind of a fascinating thing, too, because it really shows you for people who are maybe under the sway of that or if we want to make it a psychological type and you're vulnerable to that,

even if it seems like what you were talking about reasonleness, right? Even if it seems kind of crazy, you're like, well, it's coming from this person

and it would be bizarre not to obey this person because look at their super awesomeness,

right? Yeah.

So, it doesn't matter how crazy it sounds, I guess I still have to kind of go along with it. And that has a certain weird kind of inner rationale to it, I suppose.

I think that's an interesting observation, right?

Gotta do what daddy says.

Yeah. Especially because why would that not obey him? Look at like he's like super awesomeness personified.

Mhm.

Um this also then creates like how you know you structure the charismatic community which everything sort of funnels around that charismatic figure, that charismatic leader. So it's kind of like there you don't like in the legalistic authority thing we were talking about before a lot of hierarchy a lot of division of power a lot of things where you kind of disperse the authority around right but this will all be magnetized around that one figure and that that means that anyone who's like around that figure in any in any position around them is going to have just that figure as the focal point and it sort of all funnels through that one person. Eric, is there an example of

but not like distribution of power? Everything will hinge on like what's my relationship to this person. So you might say like Pam Bondi fighting to be close to Trump and someone else will be fighting if we want to make him into this kind of person, right? I think there's something else describes him better, but you know, everyone's going to be jockeying for how they are relative to that person. Is there ever a is there a is there an example of a woman in this type of position in this charismatic authoritative position that you're from? I can't think of I'm trying to think. Well, I'm not trying to think. I am thinking and I cannot think. I'm trying to think. Uh um

well, there's like some of those there are female figures that can show up. I know. like thinking the things that immediately pop to mind are women who are figures from other cultures almost.

Sure.

Like I've been around like female figures who are spiritual leaders who obviously have big followings. I don't know how to judge whether they're good or bad, corrupt or not corrupt. I think you can get that in some other cultures, you know, but it might be hard in our culture because it is so patriarchal. It might be harder for women to take on that role.

That's what I'm saying.

That's what I'm saying. There's all almost like an aura of you know we've called this before like superficial masculinity that is super I'm going to make a list you know superficial masculinity you know this sort of like um superhuman quality uh that that creates an aura of justification.

Yep.

You know and uh what's the what's the other one? Well, it gets into the idea of like how this relates around they can you can build a community where everything funnels through devotion to the leader.

Yeah. And that leader is outside of rationality.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, they're they're

rationality isn't going to be imposed on them because it would be irrational not to follow them because of their super awesomeness.

Hello.

That's the rationality. Have you not seen how awesome this person is?

Yeah. I mean, my

Hello. That's the rationality.

Wait, wait. My god. Oh, wait. My god. Oh,

it strikes again, does it not? Or has it ever not stricken us?

It is an interesting question.

But I I mean, I wasn't thinking about in the context you were bringing up, but when you really make it that way, even the figures who get a lot of TLC in American culture, they're not they're not imbued with this superhuman quality. I don't think so. I can't think of any political leaders who got this kind of [...] going on. No.

And I can't think of any even like, you know, like your Taylor Swifts or your Beyonces. Does anyone imbue them with this kind of thing? I don't think so. And I think even in their vulnerabilities make them more interesting. They don't have to put on this super shine.

This is a cult

of something transcended. It's interesting.

This is any any cult any structure of cult. This is the This is the structure of the cult. Well, I mean, this is the one that, you know, when we were talking about doing vapor, this was the one that was going to be the most culty.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, anything that feels culty, this is the this is why it feels culty.

Now, I think you can get traditional authority in cult things after the cult figure dies. So, we had on Lesie, right, to talk about what it was to be Jehovah Witness. That could be a cult, but that's based on traditional authority probably.

Yes.

A long time ago, this dude said it. So now we're still following it and I think that and we'll get to that idea that what happens as this progresses forward. But yeah, I agree with you. I don't know if you see the female figures.

You don't see the female figures. The other thing with with once once the cult figure dies, the replacement it, you know, emulates the, you know, tries to emulate, you know, and doesn't try to steer away. And then and then the ne the sub next subsequent generations will hearken back but make further changes and according to cuz I did some social psychology and one particular uh social psychologist they call him the father of sociology or I I I interchange those words so apologies if there if that's confusing for people sociology the father of sociology uh I don't know if he's Turkish or Egyptian Iben Khalun is his name

and uh he says four generations the first

Oh yeah, I've looked at a little bit of him too. Yeah, that might be the way that works.

Yeah, the first person is the first generation and they are that's the strongest. That's the that's where that comes from. The next generation and he's talking about kingdoms in particular, but it can be related to other things that is like the son. So they could say, "Oh, your father was a really great or your mother was a but it's probably father." Um, so you're was a really great man. I knew him. You're his son. And I saw okay but then now the next one is like oh your grandfather

was a but no one no one really knew him they heard tales and now it's your greatgrandfather these are now legends and after that it's like oh your great greatgrandfa no one knows at this point these are these are

it gets too far away from the source and so yeah

yeah yeah

well I got uh we could even double back on that you know Vapor has some stuff how he thinks this stuff can get passed along

Sure. So yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's that's like already interesting, right? That's one of the pathways that you can get, right?

Yeah. Through familiar lineage or through other things like Okay.

And that maybe we'll get back to it because that's going to raise a big question of like what's going to happen like people are debating this now. What's going to happen within MAGA

to the extent that magaz calling that call, but all right. Um, okay. So the other thing that comes up is the relationship of money. to this, you know, the financial aspects of this. And there's a kind of an interesting point that's made, which is that this person should not make their money through normal means because that's too mundane.

That embeds you too much in like the structure that's here now and you're supposed to be transcendent of that.

So the interesting thing is if you go back to like say the Christian tradition, maybe you're there and you're you're asking for alms and you're supporting that way or like Buddhist stuff, right? as a charismatic tradition.

You know, you could be begging, you could be getting gifts. But the other part is that you could steal it

or you could conquer it.

And in a weird way, the point that's being made is that in any of those ways, if you're stealing or conquering, even we would say, well, that looks not that awesome. But the point is that you're not part of the normal rules of the world. To the extent that the charismatic leader is just doing mundane work, working making their money, making their finances in a mundane way, that doesn't work because that seems to undermine the magical qualities of the person who's the charismatic leader. You know, they're supposed to be outside of the this the rules of this world and are also be supposed to be sort of challenging them. I I got

couldn't help thinking like, you know, like even if you go to like DGT or President Donald Trump, does he make any money in any legitimate way? Really? No. Right.

Story of like sneakiness and corruption. But if you're into charismatic authority, you're kind of like, look at this guy. He's miraculous, right? It gives gives the person miraculous powers.

There's numerous people that'll say Putin's the richest person in the world,

but you know, on his no route of legitimacy.

If you look at his Wikipedia, it doesn't say he's that rich, you know. But I I have it uh necessar they're necessarily extraordinary.

Yeah, I think that's right. And if the person made their money through some normal humrum way, they wouldn't seem this awesome.

Oh,

yeah. But if they're like, "Wow, look at this guy's able to amass all this [...] money through whatever the the thing is." Of course, people like Jesus and Buddha aren't massing tons of money. Those are different. Oh,

what about the prosperity gospel? What about the prosperity gospel? Yeah. So, anyways, the person should be able to get their money in through what seemed like miraculous ways. And if you're going to conquer, you know, you just or you're even stealing, but you're like, "Wow, look at that badass person. They're outside the rules of things." It's an interesting observation. M.

And then when you look at the time now, you're like, "Yeah, we got a lot of [...] who work within this thing

and they do a lot of corrupt shit." But I mean, if you're into charismatic authority, if that's a psychological type, then you're kind of okay with that.

It's one of the things that answers the question of like, why is why do people tolerate that level of corruption, but that's a legalistic rationalistic point, right? You're like, "This [...] shouldn't be allowed to be so corrupt."

But if you're charismatic and you follow that person, you're like, "Ah, you know, look at him. He's amazing."

Yeah. you know. Anyways, does he say what? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off on that.

Does he say who is attracted who might be attracted to these types of authority or he's just giving uh descriptions of authoritative uh people and then we are left to sort of decipher that based on our own experience? I think what I find fascinating about it is that it seems to me to be a statement about like what a group might be like

but I think it's psychologically interesting like as we were talking about earlier to think okay what kind of people are drawn to this kind of stuff because this is a personality type then you know who can be drawn to these kinds of things and that I find really interesting I don't know if he's fully saying that you know I don't want to claim more expert on vber than what I am but like certainly one of my reactions to this and like kind of filtering through them is like yeah this sounds like especially when you look at America because it's diverse enough and you can almost start to go like oh that's a legalistic rationalistic person you know

oh that's a traditionalist person that's a that's a probably someone who's drawn to charismatic figures you know it almost ends up looking like it's probably a personality type test or at least I find it interesting to think that way

does that make sense to you diagnostically

yeah I'm just thinking about it I don't I don't have a I don't know if I have clear answer in the moment, but it does seem like there's a tendency, you know, we like to talk about these words tendencies and vulnerabilities or personality type, archetype, whatever.

Yeah. That there is certain kinds of people that are going to be drawn towards certain things. And obviously this gets played out politically in voting blocks, people who identify as one, the other, the other, you know, like they have this kind of like uh self-identifying distribution.

But I guess that question is like why? That's really what I want.

It's fascinating because if it is a personality type, then all this stuff sort of starts to fit. That's what I found fascinating

because why why would a traditional authority person not be bothered by sexual abuse, but they're not,

right?

If that's a personality type, then you would really say like I was talking about earlier, you would predict like, probably this Epstein thing will just eventually like, ah, it's okay, you know, because it's just a personality type. There's something intriguing to me about that. or why is people not bothered by corruption within their charismatic leader? Because this only adds to their aura.

And it's not like, you know, anybody who's, you know, pro MAGA is some kind of like right-wing evangelical. That's not the ca that's not that's not it's not true, you know. I mean, yeah, that they might be a part of that coalition, but that coal that's more than them. So, we can't say, oh, the religious component is is is the thing. No, there's plenty of non-religious.

No, I I honestly when looking at that part, I was laughing because obviously there's a part of Christian nationalists that are in MAGA, but you're making a different point almost. You're basically saying like I don't think all of MAGA is Christian nationalist. I think there are traditional authority people who are in that.

Yeah.

You know, and they're looking at him to like kind of like, you know, provide elements of their traditional authority needs. And probably some of that is even a little bit strategic, you know, okay, we're not totally into him, but okay. you know, but then I think there's another part that is drawn to like a charismatic thing and that that's a more that's a different kind of vibe within what makes up MAGA. That's how I'm analyzing it.

Yeah. But then, you know, we we we you know, everything doesn't revolve around, you know, political things because people have regular lives that are

Yeah. not political, you know, people, you know, leaders of churches, CEOs of companies, you know, the the the kind of characteristics that get imbued upon these people often times are not rational. Sometimes they are, but often they're not. And I

No, they're really not. Yeah, it's true.

Right. And so I I just wanted to kind of like, you know, bring it down to like a little bit more of a ground level.

I don't know to what extent a personality type if like you're into like hero worshiping. Like we come from Chicago so like Dicka Mike Dicka you know or whoever the sports figure is are you a little bit more vulnerable to hero worshiping someone in the political sphere I don't know maybe you know I don't know the answer to it but it's one of the things you would wonder about and then it's a kind of like a personality trait and then you're looking around for whoever that charismatic person I can't lie I've seen this in like the spiritual circles that we move in too and I'm uncomfortable with it

you know even with teachers that I love there are people who will that they have a lot of they have a lot of that charismatic personality type to them and uh and I've been like uncomfortable a little bit.

Yeah.

You know, like I I don't want to I don't want to be in a charismatic authority space because I think it undermines your ability to grow on some level.

Right. If I'm going to imbue this person, but I've se you know, I can't lie. I've seen even with teachers I respect, I've seen students do this. Can't lie. It's true. And I've had numerous people um reach out to me over the years when they see that I offer some shamanism or something like this that is kind of outside the norm.

Yeah.

They are specifically seeking a miracle.

Yeah.

That's what they want. And I find that to be interesting because it is a n again it's a nonrationalistic kind of experience number one but then they want it rationalized. You know what I'm saying? So they want something

Oh. Oh, I see. Okay.

You know, so they want something that that transcends language to be to be moved through language so that they can understand it in a way that they can break it down. you know, there's like multiple layers of filtration and it's sort of the opposite of of what it of what they're wanting actually. And for the few people who and I'm not saying I could perform miracles. I'm not saying that not saying that at all. Right? I'm just going to say I've done some as we all have some everybody's done some wild things in their life, you know, whatever.

But I've done some very interesting things

um in terms of working with people and whatnot. this, you know, the handful of times or more than a handful, but the handful of times that I'm thinking about right now that I've done something that that transcends rationality for somebody, it's it's been too much for them. Even though they sought that, it's been too much. And I've never seen them again. This happens numerous times. I don't really do it too much anymore because I don't it's not well not to be weird but it's not good for business but like but you know from the compassionate perspective I don't even know if it's good for their process overall because then the curiosity for whatever path that that was providing them to search and to question and whatever is just finished in in a moment you know obviously it took many moments to get to that moment but after that it sort of you know loses its power so I don't know the whole thing is just very interesting but The reason why I bring that up is because in order for someone to seek a miracle or seek something like that that transcends rationality, they have to believe that somebody can transcend rationality themselves. And so they imbue upon them this kind of superhuman quality at least for the time at which that person is performing said miracle. Because if they don't, you know, withhold uh or suspend judgment or withhold disbelief, it's not possible. You know, they'd have to be

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know,

you have to buy into the fact that someone could be miraculous to to imbue

any individual person with that power and then like elevate them to that space. Right.

Correct. Correct.

I The other part you're bringing up is like is I've been trying to work through this for myself and people who are listening, we all have our own thoughts about this stuff. I've been like I don't even know where if I want to say these are different like sort of ways of looking at the world right

I don't know if I completely understand always where these things come from

I've listened to people talk like let's say someone's going to be in MAGA why are they doing that and I'm like I don't know even if that's clear to me that probably isn't one answer for you know for the different groups of people we're talking about but for this I can get like okay yeah there's different personality types and what are they like and this again does help to explain things,

you know, to me like why is the

for the people who believe in the charismatic authority, let's say, of someone like a Trump, why is his corruption okay? Well, of course it's okay

because that just adds to like his aura of miraculousness, right? That he's able to accumulate all this stuff transcending the normal the normal means of how mundane people have to get their way through the world. You know, it adds to the it adds to the the hype. Mhm.

All right. Um, well, we'll wrap it up for today. I know we got a couple of minutes left. If you're okay recording, you you cool for a few more minutes?

Yeah. Yeah. Two, three.

All right. Well, it might take us a little bit longer with this, but let's see what we can end up with this.

Um,

let's call it.

You want to break it? Maybe we'll do since Charismatic Authority is one of our main ones, maybe we'll just do a mini episode next time and we'll finish this stuff up because there's a few more things to say about it.

Okay. All right.

All right. That sounds like a plan. Interesting. Thanks, Daniel.

Thoughting. Yeah. Thanks for Thanks for doing it. Yeah. I mean, it's it's good. We've been, you know, we've been working towards this for quite some time and and I, you know, I imagine we're getting close to a pausing point for this period of

investigation,

you know. So, everybody, you know, so if you're tuning in at this point in the episode, your attention span is in the top 5% of humanity immemorial.

Um, and I read a couple pages of a book earlier, so my uh vocabulary is on fleek this evening. Um, but yeah, thanks for tuning in and you know, we we're just, you know, we've been doing this kind of like social psychology, sociology, diagnosing society as as if it were to be a patient, you know, and we're we're sort of work, you know, working through that process together out loud over a long duration, you know, over these last few months. So, if you found this stuff interesting, you know, thanks for tuning in. If you if you're listening today and you don't find it interesting, then don't tune in again. um you know but we do you know we've been doing a a you know sort of a spirituality podcast and we still are over you know the past five plus years now and we've covered many many topics but I think at the at the current moment there's just a lot of stress in the world there's just a lot of stress and there is not a very clear end as to when that's going to be news flash there never is a clear end as to when that's going to be same thing kind of during co but at least during co we had an idea of what the cause was and we just weren't sure when it's going to end. Now it's less clear and there just a lots of people who are affected you know by various forces you know some environmental you know what I'm saying so it's not just one particular thing but as compassionate people as you know philosophers and you know medical practitioners we try and observe the world around us so that we can orient ourselves and orient where it is that we could put our efforts in order to help people in the way that we find uh useful and that really is through understanding that's you know that's my medicine. I know Eric, I believe that is the one of your medicines as well. And so, if we can filter what we're seeing through our lens and try and break it down into bite-sized pieces and then share with people, that helps us to understand personally. I know it does for me. Um, and then when we get feedback from people at jynantragmail.com or in the comment section of this video, or you could hit us up on the gram, uh, the Jin and Tantra podcast, it it helps us to further understand what people are taking from what we're giving. So, uh, please feel free to hit us up, uh, share our work, like, comment, subscribe, do your thing. We appreciate everybody tuning in, whether this is your first or your thousandth episode or, you know, whatever. Uh, you know, we love having you guys here with us. Eric, it's always a pleasure, my friend. I learn so much every time, and I continue I hope to continue to do so moving forward. For Eric, this is Daniel. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Deuces. [Music]