Deconstruction that Glorifies vs Deconstruction that Desecrates: Pageau, McGilchrist

I am reminded of the old sentiment, “You’ve gotta be able to put it back together if you’re going to take it apart.” Thanks Paul.

"In our desire for mastery you've taken the world apart" "He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." - JRR Tolkien

I think the only reason people take any notice of Harari's evil philosophy is that he seems to be a favourite of other godless people who are seeking to order the world to their profit.

"Deconstruction that glorifies and a deconstruction that desecrates" This is good.

Watching Francis Schaeffer as a teen helped protect me from the “one weird trick”, rediscovering him as an adult helped me understand why it’s so seductive to so many. It’s always crucial to bring compassion into these conversations.

Humans Rights are the main reason we can tolerate people like Harari.

"Never break a beautiful thing down to its parts" Never over-emphasize one aspect of a beautiful thing, or you won't be able to see the other aspects of that beautiful thing? Especially if what you're over-emphasizing is a flaw or ugly thing about that otherwise beautiful thing.

I'm reminded of the deconstruction that occurs in the tearing down of idols. As Pageau points out you need to be able to move between levels and see the difference. How do you separate between the wheat and the chaff if you don't even know what they look like? This really brings in your idea about the spirit of finesse and the spirit of geometry. It turns out that relations of all kinds (friendships, marriages, countries, mountains, planets, etc) are simply unable to be mediated by geometry / deconstruction. But a spiritual journey is a process of targeted deconstruction to replace the chaff with the wheat in our own lives. But so many problems arise when people deconstruct with no bigger plan or guidance. Deconstruction today operates much like an immune system which cannot tell the body apart from an invader and slowly kills the thing it is meant to protect.

The "Archaic Revival" was a term Terence McKenna popularized because he saw this deconstruction effect all over the culture. When a person's worldview is shattered the natural response is to try an go backwards to the last moment when things made sense. Since he was doing this in the 80s-90s he saw people deconstructing from Christianity. In that deconstruction all these older traditions from our archaic past started reemerging; tattooing, piercing, psychedelics, paganism, orgiastic lifestyles, the list goes on and on. Terence saw it as a natural human reaction because we need to find something could give us a new identity. He claimed this was something that has happened over and over again throughout human history. It's funny now that we've come full circle, this newly deconstructed Christian identity became what we now call "Liberal Woke" ideology. And now we have people "deconstructing" from that religion and are going backwards again to our archaic past to find something else. It seems like Orthodox/Traditional Christianity is the new thing we're going to try.

I saw that tweet and it brought me back to the spirit idea. In the church there exists a spirit of sacrificial love, whereas in the world there is a spirit of atomistic self-interest.

"Is broken pottery an upgrade?" There's a Japanese art form called kintsugi, where the artist takes a broken piece of pottery and joins it together again with golden lacquer.

Kudos for linking to the videos you are commenting on.

This video was so helpful! I plan on doing a lot of constructive deconstruction now when I encounter the reductionist narrative. I feel so smart using these fancy words , lol.

This came at a great time for me. Thank you Paul!

I think we don't break beautiful things down because we love them. Because we love a beautiful painting we are willing to trust the reality of what the oil is gesturing at. It isn't "just" a purple smudge, it "is" a mountain. Somehow the artist used purple smudges to convey the spirit of a mountain.

I love the “come on in” at 17:20. These responsibilities grounds your high in opennes in the here and now. I feel like most YouTubers need to touch grass.

Apologies for almost off-topic, but I cannot help myself :) The is a beautiful film "The Englishman Who Went up a Hill but Came down a Mountain" . If you have about 1.5 hour - you will not regret it!

Sorites paradox is the issue that encompasses the framing problem. 'at what point does a pile of rocks become a mountain?'

The idea of Deconstruction that Glorifies makes me uncomfortable. The way I had always viewed postmodernism was as a way of deconstructing our past (in Derrida, anyways), but then was more of less hijacked because of its power as a political weapon. Iain Mcgilchrist's solution to never deconstruct what is beautiful is simple, but the idea of deconstructing to glorify makes things more complicated. Furthermore, the idea that Jonathan brings up, that we shouldn't deconstruct evil all the way down complicates things further. It seems like there's an art to this and the need for some kind of reference key. If you substitute a "common story" in for the key, you have an analogy that seems to explain a very huge part about what TLC is up to.

I wonder if a better term is restoration? Have you ever seen yt videos where they restore an antique machine or item? They have to take it apart clean it, and get a good understanding of the whole in order to put it back together more functional than before. The difference being an intent to bring it back together as something better at the end.