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Episode 48 - The Game of Thrones and the Cunning of Ideology

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May 12, 2019

MENTIONS:

Example: I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too. (Source)

QUIPS and QUOTES:

Talking about 3 types of sacrifice

6.16 – Capitalism Identity Politics, Todd McGowen

6.40 – First type of sacrifice, When you KNOWINGLY give yourself to someone or something, willingly sacrifice yourself (Jon Snow)

9.20 – Most obvious type, it’s an act of freedom, it feels like you’re ripped out of your everydayness – you feel more alive

10.45 – Put aside own differences; acting in own self interest

11:10 – Freedom is when all of your will is focused on something, knowingly give all of yourself to it, when you choose your fate

12:31 – Martin Heidegger - you’re thrown into your world without choice

12.55 – a freedom that is not the opposite of determinism – your will is aligned with your reality

13.38 – Nietzsche – choosing your destiny

12.36 – Second type of sacrifice - you UNWILLINGLY have to sacrifice – i.e. soldiers or a kid who has to go visit their grandparents or go to school

20.00 – Battle of the Bastards – HOUSE BOLTON

21.53 – Childhood is full of unwilling sacrifice

22.15 – Todd McGowen’s book – on sacrifice

22.30 – Sacrifice is something that you think is an archaic thing that doesn’t happen today anymore; that we’re more advanced, but no, we sacrifice just as much or more

23.05 – Third type of sacrifice - we UNKNOWINGLY sacrifice ourselves in ways

23.50 – Type of sacrifice you don’t know you’re doing it, Nietzsche, “acting in the Will to Power” but you’re really acting in a way that is destructive to you.

24.26 – Example: you think you’re acting in your self-interest but you’re actually acting in the interest of your ancestors or your family; going against what you would actually be doing if you were a rational, free being, instead you’re colonized by other peoples’ desires and you don’t even know you’re doing it.

24.42 – Making infinite amount of money – keep making more, doing it “freely” or “selfishly”  BUT actually you’re not because if you were selfish you would stop but you don’t and you start giving yourself stress, a heart attack, drinking, smoking, destroying yourself

25.29 – Cunning of reason – you think you’re acting freely but you’re actually the instrument of some other desire that’s flying through you. (Example: the fight for King’s Landing – people are fighting and destroying themselves but just enacting the desire of duty to their ancestors… it’s not their real desire).

28.15 – “You get it in your head”, Elf on the Shelf, transitional object between external authority (parents), but the Elf is watching, then a virtual camera, the gaze is felt internally, feel that there is surveillance everywhere, watched constantly (psychotic break)

29.30 – Ciszek, Go see granny – internal place of rebellion, “I don’t have to do this when I’m older!” but if the parents paint their inner desires, the child is implicated.

30.57 – Old Testament, “…you should have no other gods before me,” vs. literal reading, “you should have no other gods in front of me.” You can have as many gods as you want just don’t let me see. But when the authority is INSIDE you, there’s no place to transgress or escape, you’re enslaved by the other’s desire inside your psyche.

31.38 – Symptoms are an explosion of the protest that speak of the tyranny you’re under

37.10 – Critique of Nietzsche

37.22 – Will to Power, Daenerys wants King’s Landing, desire to survive and to thrive

37.43 – Ontological, the Will to Power is in everything, even rocks have it; reality has it; all of the destruction and evolution have a spark of life

38.16 – Will to Pleasure, will to a type of pleasure that is within us but not ours – psychoanalytic insight, we’re weirdly driven by pleasure and not often our own, the pleasure to someone else

39.30 – Colonized by the pleasure of someone else, internal pleasure that’s external

40.39 – Born into the desire of the other before your own sense of self; fantasize for others, postulate that others are watching it, “The Gaze of the Other”

41.45 – Island joke, stranded with only one other person, paint a mustache on the other just for the excitement of telling someone else about something, “Guess what! I couldn’t wait to tell you!”

43.50 – Story of the hole-in-one with Seamus

44.39 – Example of a girl doing law who hated it, chose it freely, but incarnating the Will-to-Pleasure of someone else, like her parents. At war with our self but think we’re acting in our own self-interest.

46.00 – Compromise Formation – when reality hits your desire

51.15 – Elliott’s Tarot card experience and the “Devil Card”

54.11 – The demonic structure  - unknowing, unwilling sacrifice

54.30 – When we give ourselves over to this pleasure of the other, we are giving over our libidinal desire

55.51 – “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he didn't exist…” – a psychoanalytical idea, we don’t even know what we’re sacrificing to, we don’t think it exists.

TAKEAWAYS:

58.03 – Elliott – The sacrifice – that’s we’re giving up so much constantly – living in an age where it feels like we have everything but to realize we have a tendency of destroying self in exchange for something we don’t truly want.

59.03 – Working all the time – giving our self over to the dream of retirement – an act of protest against that is going out on a Friday night, self-destructive, not productive.

59.36 – Jordan Peterson – clinical psychologist, commodifying work. Work hard, can’t sleep, but very productive turns into, sleep more, spend time with family and you’ll be more productive, therefore folding into the protest against working so hard, insomnia.

1.00.08 – Selling stuff in the sanctuary

1.01.15 – Peter – Ideology (the devil) – is what functions despite our even knowing. Harnesses our pleasure for its own good.  Act of freedom to ask, what am I sacrificing myself to unknowingly and unwillingly in my life?

1.01.51 – Jamieson Webster – How difficult it is to free our self from these structures – difficult process – what am I immersed in that I am sacrificing myself to without even realizing it?

1.02.31 – How do we give ourselves over to that amount of work to free ourselves?

Episode 49 - High On Our Own Supply