A Few Thoughts on Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self

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00:13

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. It is good to be here, it is good to be back.

00:19

I feel like I haven't been gone really, but it's just I haven't done a podcast now since I think last

00:25

Thursday, if I'm not mistaken. And so it's been a few days. I had a busy weekend and I have a lot of news stories that I wanna talk about,

00:32

I saved. I don't think I'll be able to talk about them all because the news cycle is going so fast and there's bigger things that are going on.

00:39

And in fact, just before I pressed the record button, people were sending me news stories about the FBI raiding

00:45

Donald Trump's home, which is unbelievable in my mind. I can't, I don't even,

00:51

I'm going through the files in my mind on history and I'm thinking, when has this happened for an ex -president to be raided by an intelligence agency?

01:01

I heard on the radio this morning, 87 ,000 new IRS agents are being hired too by Joe Biden.

01:08

Now, I haven't seen anything indicating the reason for this, but if experience is any guide, during the

01:19

Obama administration, the IRS was weaponized against Tea Party groups. And so my trust level is about shot.

01:25

It's not there anymore. It doesn't even exist when it comes to these bureaucracies.

01:31

And to have that many more IRS agents being hired just tells me that what we've been seeing, what we're seeing right now tonight with this one agency, the

01:42

FBI is happening in other agencies and it is the weaponization of the bureaucracies against political opponents.

01:53

It's totalitarianism. That's the word for it. It's totalitarianism. That's what we are in.

01:59

And we're in a soft totalitarianism heading for, I think, much higher levels of it.

02:04

And we just need, we need to pray. We need to be as involved as we can be while maintaining the responsibility that God has for us.

02:13

We don't wanna sacrifice our families or the things that he's given us as primary concerns to pursue politics, but we need to be involved somewhere.

02:21

And in fact, that's part of, I think, being responsible, protecting our families. We need to be involved on some level somehow.

02:29

I know voting is the bare minimum, but it's, local governments especially are gonna be very important,

02:38

I think, moving forward. Your local police, you know, I was thinking about this just the other day, I was driving and I saw a

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BLM house, BLM signs and everything. And then right next to them was

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Back the Blue. And it just, it sparked in my mind this thought about that whole time period in 2020.

02:59

And it's still obviously that battle's still going on, but it was really raging that summer of 2020, two years ago.

03:07

And one of the things that I thought, and I think this is true, is that the left doesn't, they're not against the police.

03:14

They don't have a hatred for the police. I'm talking about the institutional left, those who have authority and power in leftist institutions or leftist operating in institutions with lots of power.

03:28

They love force, they love the police. What they don't like are local police.

03:36

In other words, they like it when there's groups, institutions, agencies that swear allegiance to them and do their bidding.

03:53

They love that and use force against their political opponents. They love that. In fact, that's central to what they're about.

04:01

Obama wanted to create a national police force, as well -funded, he said, as the military. What they don't like are local police.

04:11

They don't like policemen whose duties and allegiance, loyalty is to local people, the people that they actually serve on the ground.

04:22

And it's so important right now to maintain and to expand. We must expand federalism and localism.

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If we don't have local communities that we can rely on, that we can be part of and help and we're isolated, then that's when we become vulnerable.

04:46

So maintaining local police, I actually just am remembering a church that I heard about.

04:56

I met a member from the church who said that at their church they have a co -op where people at the church, they have farmers and various people who work in different industries.

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And they've kind of come together in their own co -op for trading, for just in case something happens, they'll have food.

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They'll have some of the services they need are right there in that local area. And so I think that's a great idea.

05:18

That's kind of what we need to be thinking about as we move forward in 2022 and beyond.

05:26

Scary times in some ways, but God is still in control. So remember that. Remember, he's given you a place.

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He put you here for such a time as this. And so it's exciting. It's not just scary. It's also exciting and it's important and we'll see what happens.

05:41

So that's happening right now. But I wanna talk today actually about Karl Truman again.

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We're gonna talk about rise and fall of the modern self, rise and triumph, sorry, rise and triumph of the modern self.

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And there was a couple of announcements that I wanted to give you before I jump into that. The first is just, let's see if I can pull this up for you.

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I believe I have the technology. Here we go. The first is a men's retreat, men's retreat with Dr. Russell Fuller.

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I uploaded a video on this and I haven't put it as part of the audio podcast. So if you're listening, you can go to the

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YouTube channel and check that out or Facebook or Rumble. I have it posted there as well. But it's just a little promo for the men's retreat.

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Shows you a little bit about where we're going, what we're gonna be doing. There were some questions though on this that I wanted to answer.

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So here's the signup sheet. It looks like this. It's a signup genius. I'll put the link in the info section for this video if you wanna go check it out.

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And I'll repeat some of the things I said, but I wanna answer some questions too. So what I said was, we're gonna have a phenomenal retreat and you're gonna wanna come.

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If you're a man and you want to be around like -minded men, you're gonna definitely wanna try to come.

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And let me sell it to you this way. If I can. I'm shameless about selling this to you.

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So this is how I'm wired. And I would assume most men are actually wired this way.

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You have an option, let's say, hypothetically. You can go to a conference, an indoor conference.

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You can meet people. That's great. I think that can be fun. You get to listen to some speeches that you can probably download from the internet later if you wanted to.

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And so you travel across the country and you do some networking. Nothing wrong with that.

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Now, I've done that. I've gone to the conferences like that. I'm not critiquing that. I've spoken at conferences and things.

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And there's a place for that. However, especially if it's nice out and it's a place that I can go and then later

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I can listen to the same lectures. I don't, I'm not as attracted to it. I'm just not.

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Because I'm thinking, what other things could I be doing? I'd rather go outdoors, if it's nice especially, and have a really good time in the woods or doing something

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I enjoy. If something you enjoy is going to a sports game, you know, go to a sports game. Whatever that is for you.

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I think of cycling. I think of hiking. I think of fishing. I think of outdoor things. And take a few

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Christian buddies. Just have a good time. Have some fellowship, maybe grill some meat that night.

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I mean, to me, I would take that every day and twice on Sunday.

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Well, no, not Sunday. Sunday we go to church. Anyway, I would take that though over an indoor men's conference.

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It's just me. And I think most men are like that. I just, I have that feeling. And especially conferences that go on for three or four days and you're inside.

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I guess some people, you know, that may be how you're wired and there's nothing wrong with that. But I think most guys though, they'd rather be doing something.

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And I've noticed if you're around a campfire, people open up more. They'll look at the fire. There's, I don't know.

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There's just something about it. You're involved in activities together. You're not just sitting and talking. You're doing stuff.

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And that's what I think we're gonna be doing. That's what I wanna do. That's what we're planning on doing at the men's retreat. So it's not just gonna be, we are gonna have great teaching.

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Dr. Russell Fuller's gonna be there and it's gonna be phenomenal, I'm sure. Because he's great.

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He's an expert on Old Testament. He taught it for years. And he's gonna be talking about Jeremiah with us. But we're also gonna be doing some outdoor stuff.

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And it's in the middle of the Adirondack Mountains, late fall, probably just past peak. So there still will be some colors on the trees.

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It'll be pretty. It'll be starting to get cooler, but there's gonna be plenty of stuff to do. And that's what we're gonna do.

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We're gonna have fires at night. We're gonna be boating and hiking. And I think they have a rock climbing wall there.

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And so that's the kind of thing that we're gonna be doing during the day. If you want to. You don't have to.

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I mean, you can do whatever. We'll have enough free time to get to know each other. And the other thing is, this isn't one of those huge conferences where you step in there and you don't know anyone.

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It's capped at 100 people. So if you want to come, I would suggest signing up.

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Just go to the link in the info section. It's gonna take you to Signup Genius. And it's pretty straightforward.

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You can just RSVP right there. Now, let me just explain how this works. Oh, and by the way, I should say, if you're a pastor or a men's group leader or something like that, then this would be a great thing, especially if you're in a surrounding state.

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Maybe get the men in your church involved and say, hey, can we maybe take a Friday off? Let's go to the

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Adirondacks, hear Dr. Fuller and meet some people. I'm gonna be there. I know A .D. Robles says he's coming.

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Dr. Russell Fuller's obviously gonna be there. We'll see who else shows up. I think it's gonna be really good. So, October 28th through 30th.

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Now, here are some of the questions I got. The main one being, John, how do I sign up?

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I've gone to the website and what do I do? Well, the instructions are actually right there, but I can understand some people's confusion because most conferences you're gonna, or retreats, you're gonna be able to pay right there and confirm that you're, well, here's how you confirm with this.

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And it's old school, okay? The reason it's old school is because this is the first time I've done this and I was only planning on doing this for people in my church, and I thought maybe a few from the podcast might wanna come.

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Well, now I'm finding out, wow, there's a bigger demand than I thought. So, if this goes well, which

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I have full confidence it will, and this is a big success, then next year we may do it again.

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And I may make a bigger deal about it. We'll see. But we may have a whole item, or a whole mechanism for taking your payment and everything.

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But this year, first time, I'm going simple and it's old school. Now, here's how it works.

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You go to the website and you can scroll down and it says, will you be attending this event?

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RSVP now, just click on that and it's that easy. We have 28 confirmed right now, okay? You just click on that and you're in.

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Now, how, then you say, well, how do I pay? It's $176 to attend. How do I pay for that? For two nights, what would that be?

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Five meals, I think. How do I pay for this? Well, it's old school. You're gonna be sending a check.

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So, I put the address right here. To pay, send checks to Grace Bible Church, and there's the address, itemize

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Ben's Retreat. So, when we get that check at Grace Bible Church, the church secretary will look at it, or whoever, it might be me.

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I may be looking at it, whoever ends up handling this. We'll see your name, we'll compare it to the list, and we'll just check off paid.

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And that's as easy as that. If we don't receive anything by the beginning of October, I'm gonna be reevaluating, okay, who hasn't paid, and you'll be hearing from me.

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And if you haven't paid, you may just lose your spot. So, that's how it works.

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You just mail in. I know it's old school. I know, who does that anymore? Mail checks, mail letters.

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Well, we do. Now, there is another way you could probably do it online. You could go to gracebiblenewyork .org,

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and I would really suggest, please try to do it with a check. But if you're really against that, send me an email and let me know you're doing this.

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But you can go and you can make a donation to Grace Bible Church through the website, just a digital donation.

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And I think there's an option you can itemize for men's retreat. Just let me know. It's, without getting into the details, it's a little more complicated.

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So, we can handle it, but we would prefer, I would prefer at this point, a check if possible.

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So, that's how it's gonna work. And if you signed up, you're on the list. And it's filling up fast.

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So, you're gonna wanna get on there. Okay, so the last announcement is I wanted to just let you know about, if you haven't heard yet, about Equipping the

13:52

Persecuted. It's a great organization. They're doing missionary work, but also what most call humanitarian work, but supplies, bulletproof vests, food, walkie talkies, all the things that Nigerian Christians need.

14:07

They're providing those things. And it's just a great Christian organization.

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They preach the gospel, but they also are helping some of these needs of our brothers and sisters in Nigeria who are being viciously attacked on a weekly basis, monthly basis, sometimes daily, depending on how hot it is over there by terrorists.

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And so, you can help your brothers and sisters in Nigeria by donating to Equipping the

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Persecuted. Simply go to equippingthepersecuted .org. Okay, well, let's talk about the book now,

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The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. The subtitle for the book, I'll hide my image so you can see, it's called

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Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism and the Road to Sexual Revolution. And you can see in that that Carl Truman is leaving something out in a way.

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There's actually a number of things. I want you to just see from the title and the subtitle.

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And I'm not saying this is a mistake necessarily, but it's odd to me. And I wanna point out why it's odd.

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And this is the first thing that stood out to me because I kept thinking when I was reading it, okay, when's he gonna get to the

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BLM stuff? When is he gonna get to CRT? And the book came out in 2020, so that stuff had been around for a few years.

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2015, I think, was when BLM started. So why did he not get to that?

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And the subtitle is The Road to Sexual Revolution. So that's what he's talking about. Now, the title though is

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Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. You think if it's something as big as the modern self, it would be able to explain how we think of ourselves today, right?

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If you think modern is current or the present way that people think of themselves, which

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I'll get to that in a minute because there's a philosophical meaning for modern as well. And it's confusing.

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It's just confusing. But anyway, if we're just assuming it means the current self, how people think of themselves, well, that's pretty big, right?

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Race, ethnicity, these things are really big deals that would be great to have some information on from a

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Christian understanding, wouldn't you think? I mean, that's kind of big. I mean, I was talking the other day about, on the podcast, this new

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Lord of the Rings, this series that Amazon's putting out. I actually, by the way, read the

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Lord of the Rings last week, all three of them, and I have some thoughts, but I won't share them now. All that to say, man, the

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Amazon, it made me dislike the Amazon series even more, at least the trailers and reviews that I've seen, because they're taking

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Tolkien's work and they're taking descriptions of things Tolkien's talked about, and then they're just making their own thing up.

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And the reason they're doing it, though, is important. The reason they're doing it, they'll take like a princess, let's say, or a character that is described by Tolkien as glowing white, that kind of thing, and they'll make that person black in the series.

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Now, is that a sin? Is that wrong? I mean, not necessarily, but why are they doing it is the question. Why is it that 16 % of the population is represented in like 98 % of the commercials on television?

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I got a friend who does some of these commercials. He says that it's really important for the companies. They figure out who's gonna be in the foreground, in the background, and you'll see more prominent positions even in those commercials are given to ethnic minorities.

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Why is that? Well, that's something that Carl Truman's book, I don't think, gives you an explanation for. In fact,

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I don't think you could really, his paradigm for sexuality doesn't make sense, in my opinion, of the stuff we're seeing with race and ethnicity.

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And that's one of the weaknesses in my mind is that there's a commonality between those two things, namely that they're both viewed as social constructs, but Truman doesn't see them in terms of a socially created identity.

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He sees them as, as the subtitle says, expressive individualism. So there may be a misdiagnosis going on here.

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It may be that Truman says some very true things, which I think he does, but he's missing something that actually is the puzzle piece that would make more sense of what's going on today.

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And that's kind of, that's my contention. And I wanna say this up front. There's some things I'm still working on in my mind.

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When I read something, I kind of, I think of the aftertaste that I get.

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I marinate in it. And I'm still marinating on this. I don't really know exactly what I think about everything in this book, because I think there's some good things too.

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But there are some things that I am sure are off. And I'll try to let you know what those things are as we get to it.

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I also wanna give a shout out to Hiram Diaz. Hiram Diaz, I'm gonna put the link in the info section.

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Lots of links. You're gonna get that link. You're gonna get a link to my slideshow for this, if you're a patron, at least.

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You're also going to, if you go to the info section, find the link to the retreat. So yeah, lots of links.

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But the links for Hiram Diaz's articles on this will be there. I couldn't find anything critical of this book except Hiram Diaz.

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That was it. And he has what I think is, it's worth reading. He has seven essays worth reading critiquing the rise and triumph of the modern self.

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And I'm not saying that you'll necessarily even agree with everything he says, but it's worth interacting with.

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And it's the only person I know of who has interacted with Truman in this critical way. And I borrowed,

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I've taken some of his critiques and I've given them to you. He actually helped me answer some of the questions that I was asking, like, when's he gonna get to BLM?

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Why doesn't this make sense of that, of race and ethnicity? So let's keep going.

19:33

Let's talk about the book in a little more depth here. Reading, I think, this book,

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Republicrat, helped me in understanding rise and triumph of the modern self. And the main reason for that is that I understood where Carl Truman was coming politically.

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And once I understood where he was coming from politically, usually, like I said, with politics, they spring out of these religious worldview philosophy, these deep embedded first principles.

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And so if I understand someone's politics, often, at least if they try to be consistent, you can understand a little more about their metaphysics, epistemology, and all of that, their philosophy.

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And there's no exception here. So if, in fact,

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Carl Truman is a communitarian, and I'll talk about what that is in a minute, and if you might, for in layman's terms, soft socialist, perhaps, if he is that, then his critique of the modern self or what he thinks the modern self is, he would have a consistent view, at least.

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He would have a view that his politics, his communitarian politics, and then his metaphysics are going to be consistent, and they explain each other in some ways.

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At least they make sense of one another. And so it helped me to understand his politics a little bit first.

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So here's a summary of some of the arguments or the problems he identifies, and then the narrative, or kind of the argument he makes here.

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Now, the problems he identifies, number one, he talks about this individualism.

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He says that prioritization of the individual's inner psychology, we might even say feelings or intuitions for our sense of who we are and what the purpose of our lives is, he says that's a problem.

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And he blames Rene Descartes for this. He blames Jean -Jacques Rousseau for this, this romanticized kind of view, eventually, that developed of the self, that there's corruption in the world, there's bad things out there, but internally, you can trust yourself.

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You can believe in yourself. You can follow your star. Now, this was popular in Disney movies in 1930, well, 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, right?

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This is the modern self, I would say, in the sense of modernism.

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Now, his title, The Modern Self, I think most people reading it, laymen reading it, think he's talking about the current self or the self that most people conceive of today, the present self, the self that's popular.

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But it's possible he's also talking about the self of modernism. And it seems that way, because modernism would be associated with individualism more so.

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And that's what he's critiquing here. And so the missing piece in my mind is there's not a lot said about postmodernism in the book.

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I think it's mentioned like three times, but he doesn't critique it. And there's some missing pieces. In fact, when

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I wrote my book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict, I had to try to make sense of the present state of affairs and the commonalities between them and what led us to where we are.

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And I gave you a historical progression. You can get the book, go to worldviewconversation .com and get a sign -in copy.

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You can go to Amazon and get it. But Carl Truman and I aren't writing about the exact same thing, but there's some, we're in the same orbit in some of what we're writing.

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And that's what made me realize to some extent that, wait, there's things that I wrote about that Carl Truman's not, he's not even addressing.

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Why is that? Because it would make sense of some of the things that are happening today. And so one of the things he focuses a lot on is this inner psychology, feelings, intuition, but this inner self.

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And that's to blame for what's going on today, what people think of when they think of,

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I'm a man or a woman or a gay, straight, you know, when they think of their sexuality, who are they authentically inside, being their true authentic selves, right?

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That's what he's saying. And it's this obsession with who they are internally and ignoring then external things that would perhaps indicate who they are, like their body, like their biology, for example, being one of them, or like other people, the community being another.

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Those are the two primary things he identifies. And apply this though, just for one moment, just apply this to the

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BLM stuff, okay? Would we accept someone, in fact, there was someone who did this, who tries to say, you know what?

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I didn't have the quote unquote black experience. I grew up in the suburbs of,

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I don't know, Columbus, Ohio, and now I'm going to be the BLM chapter head.

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I'm gonna run for or head up somehow some black civil rights type organization.

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Now, what would we do with that? Well, in the society, that would be rejected. Well, why would that be rejected?

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Well, and the reason is, is because, well, that person doesn't have the experience. They didn't live in the community. They didn't have the experiences with whatever it might be, the police or the drug problems or whatever it is that this experience that you're supposed to have in order to, really it's an experience of oppression, in order to gain that special knowledge, the standpoint theory, okay?

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That knowledge that you have that others don't because they didn't walk in your shoes, in your skin.

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So that's a much different argument because when someone uses the same kind of logic that we would think is often used to justify, let's say, transgenderism, and they say, well,

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I can be whatever I want. I'm a black person when they're white. Well, it doesn't work. Why doesn't it work?

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That's a question I don't think Carl Truman really grapples with as much. I don't see it in the book. And the reason is the thing that would make sense of both these things is that, and you hear this all the time, race is a social construct.

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Gender is a social construct or is fluid. You hear that society, these hierarchies or hegemonies in society are what define who we are.

25:52

And identity politics, the whole basis for that, which is really, I think, what Carl Truman's capitalizing on because people are, they're seeing identity politics and they're running to books like this to explain it.

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Identity politics takes what are considered to be these negative pejoratives. So you're oppressed, you're worthless, you're not as important, you have barriers that we're gonna, society puts there because you're in this oppressed category, whether that be because of your disability or how much weight you have on you or your gender or your dietary restrictions, perhaps, or we know the whole panoply of things that are considered to be inhibitors or make you a victim.

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So those things, all of those things in identity politics are then turned around to be positives.

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So black is beautiful, right? Gay pride, right? We're not ashamed of this anymore as the

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Christian hegemony, the white Western Christian hegemony says we're supposed to be. Now we're standing against that.

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And we're doing so, we're kind of like self -actualizing, but we're doing so by taking these roles that have been assigned to us by the hegemony, by the power structure, by the community, and then we're actually reorienting the hierarchy so that now those who are on the bottom are on top and those who are on the top are on the bottom.

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That's the whole point of intersectionality. So the more oppression you have, the more people should listen to you, the more privilege you should be able to get distributed to you from the people that have the privilege because it was just arbitrarily assigned to them by society, by the hegemony.

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So that's all, what I'm talking about right now is all community -based, or that may not be the best term to use, but it's not individualistic, it's more corporate in nature.

27:53

It's a conception of the self that sees itself only primarily as part of a community, and perhaps more importantly, as against or a certain interpretation, this hierarchy, this hegemony, this overarching culture.

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So it sees itself in that particular place. It's within a framework of oppression.

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So that's what we're seeing today. And it's with the LGBT, it's with the BLM stuff, it's really with a lot of the things we're seeing, is this identity politics that's become weaponized and the individual or the self is seen as defined by an overarching narrative of some kind, a hegemony of some kind.

28:45

Now, that overarching narrative is not objective. That's where postmodernism comes in.

28:50

It's not an objective truth. It's not rooted in objectivity. It's arbitrary, but nonetheless, it's there and it must be combated somehow.

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And so when someone says, it comes out as, I'm gay or I'm transgender or whatever, I think initially, especially, this argument was given because it was more acceptable, especially to the old, the baby boomer generation.

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Because it seemed to be rooted in some kind of an objective reality that this is who

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I am inside. It's modernism more so. I am a woman trapped in a man's body or vice versa.

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And so my true self is this internal thing. I mean, it's just like when we were told that, hey, all we want is marriage.

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We're not gonna devalue your marriage. We're not gonna make your kids do anything. We're not gonna attack you in any way.

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All we want is the right to be married and that's it. We'll leave you alone after that. And of course, once they obtain that right, within about two seconds, the activists wanted to have transgender sports and that kind of thing.

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I mean, it didn't take that long. It was a matter of years, just a few of them. And we are where we're at today with this controversy over sports.

30:07

And so it wasn't true. It just wasn't true from the beginning. They wouldn't stop there.

30:12

They didn't stop there. And a lot of the tactics I think that had been used have been subversive to some extent.

30:18

To me, that explains why that was used. I wanna ask you a question though. When was the last time you heard someone say,

30:24

I'm a woman trapped in a man's body? When was the last time you actually heard that? I don't hear it much.

30:31

That's not the language. And I'm not saying no one uses it, but that's not the language that's popular to use today. What's the language that's popular to use?

30:39

I'm transgender, okay? I just am. I am transgender. And what's the next thing?

30:44

What's the very next breath? And I'm oppressed. And if you say anything about it, if you try to correct anything about it, your speech is violence against me.

30:54

It's just happened to a congressman. I forget which congressman it was, but I was watching some committee hearing and it was some transgender activists who said, if you question whether or not men can have babies, if you question that idea, then you are committing violence against trans people.

31:14

I mean, that is truly happening today. That's not a myth.

31:22

So whether you're black, white, green, whatever, whether your gender is male or female, or you're some kind of, you think of yourself as transgender or something else, it's all a social construct today.

31:39

It's all just how society conceives of you is yourself. And that's why it's such a problem if society doesn't affirm who you are.

31:48

Then if the narrative, then that's oppression. That's not the narrative we want.

31:54

Because if society confers to you an identity, then that is your identity.

32:01

The truth is in, it's not objective, it's within society. That's what I'm seeing today.

32:07

It's public opinion matters so much. The Twitter mob matters so much. We don't even see debates hardly anymore.

32:15

I mean, we live in post -modernism at this point, but you're socially constructed.

32:22

You're the product. There is no objective you, this rooted you. You're just the product of all these other forces that are at work, that are having an effect on you.

32:34

And so anyway, that piece of the puzzle to me is missing from Carl Truman's critique, because he just wants to say it's all individualism.

32:44

It's just whatever I feel inside is who I am. And I'm not saying that the feelings don't play a role here.

32:50

They certainly do. What I'm saying though, is that today, it seems like more often than not, it's either not feelings or it's not just feelings serve as the objection to biblical morality.

33:07

It's more than that. It's socially derived identities and whether or not there's an oppression value affixed to them.

33:18

So if there's an oppression value affixed to the identity of transgenderism, then that becomes this protected identity that it's to someone's advantage actually to have.

33:30

And they have that identity, not necessarily because of some rooted by, in fact, most of them don't even really care about that much.

33:38

It's not because of some rooted biological feature. In fact, it's becoming more and more, even with these sex reassignment surgeries and stuff, that the people that are doing them are, they think of themselves as women.

33:56

Let's say it's a man that is gonna have a sex reassignment surgery, let's say. Sometimes they're doing these surgeries and it's not because they're trying to bring their body, objectively bring their body into conformity to what deep down they think of themselves and what they are.

34:18

Like they're a woman trapped in a man's body or vice versa. They're doing these surgeries because they want to bring their bodies into conformity to an experience.

34:33

Notice the difference here. What Carl Truman is saying, and I know I've barely started this critique, so I'm gonna have to zip through the rest of it, but what

34:41

Carl Truman is saying here is that it's inner psychology. But what you hear a lot of the people who are making these transitions say is they have an experience.

34:53

Which thing determines who you are? Is it inner psychology or is it experience? One's more internal, one's more external.

35:01

Experience is as you interact with the world, this is who you come to understand yourself to be.

35:09

You're the composite of all these different interactions, all these different things that take place in communities.

35:19

And so that's the difference. And that's what you have to understand is Carl Truman is giving you what

35:25

I see to be a problem, but he's not, he's giving you a diagnosis of this that isn't actually, it doesn't conform to what's actually happening on the ground out there completely.

35:40

So let's keep going though here. I wanna read for you some stuff. I don't know if, maybe I'll skim some of this. He says, the idea that we can be who or whatever we want to be is a commonplace today.

35:49

And he blames then consumerism or he says late capitalism. Now, one of the things with Carl Truman, I saw it in Republicrat, this book, he uses capitalism, consumerism, and the free market interchangeably, as if they're all the same thing, which is incredibly sloppy.

36:04

I'm just shocked as a scholar, he would do this because capitalism originally, Das Kapital, right?

36:10

It was a denigration really against commercialism was the word that was used at that time, but commercialism and then it became, well, commercialism and the free market.

36:22

Now, commercialism from, if you understand 19th century economics, commercialism and the free market are two different things.

36:28

Commercialism would be more, that term at least eventually became used as kind of like a substitute for crony capitalism.

36:35

That's what we call it today. It's hard because these terms keep changing. But Karl Marx, the

36:40

Marxist critique is that it's all the same basically. It's these, it's just, it's caring about, it's consumerism.

36:46

It's caring about stuff, caring about money, letting that drive your entire economy, that concern.

36:57

And the thing is though, Karl Truman sounds like them when he makes these critiques.

37:02

I've had Marxist professors, Karl Truman sounds like them because they would be the sloppy by just throwing these things around.

37:08

And they're not the same thing necessarily. And so he says that consumerism or late capitalism fuels this notion with a message to its customer as king and of the goods we consume as being basic to who we are.

37:19

So you are what you buy, I guess, or that is your self -actualization process.

37:25

You become the God of your own universe based on what you buy. Let's see, he says, you have the power to transform yourself by the mere swipe of a credit card.

37:32

The possession of this thing, that car, that kitten, that item of clothing will make you a different, a better, a more fulfilled person underwritten by easy credit.

37:39

Consumerist self -creation is the order of the day. Now, here's the thing, it matters where this is flowing from.

37:45

This is very key. Is it flowing from inside of you out or outside of you in?

37:52

Let me explain that. You're buying stuff, stuff you like. You like the green watch, you like the blue car, whatever it is, your style, you buy these things.

38:02

Is it because you have been an object or a subject? In other words, are you making these decisions consciously from something deep within you, determined by you, or are other forces having an impact on you that then contributes into giving you the desire you have to go get those things?

38:22

Like you watch a commercial and wow, that guy looks cool and I had this experience of thinking he's cool, so I wanna go get it and be cool.

38:31

If you read what Karl Truman's saying here, it's consistent with what he talks about with individualism and inner psychology, that this is something that just, you're the god of your own universe, it's coming from inside of you, but I don't think that's how people think of it today.

38:46

I think that postmodernists today, and people in general who've been affected by this, they think of themselves as like a tapestry that's been woven together by all these different experiences and social forces that have come together to make them want to go get that car or that thing.

39:10

And so that's an important thing to ask, and I think it might go to the heart of why maybe my analysis of some of this stuff has been different than Truman's.

39:21

He talks about, but here's the thing though, he also talks about consumerism and capitalism again, and he says that Marx and Engels noted in the

39:30

Communist Manifesto that the capitalism of the Industrial Revolution depended on the constant recreation of markets, and today we witness that continuation, and he talks about iPhone models and how you always need to get the newest one, and he personifies commercialism, or he calls it consumerism, capitalism, markets.

39:47

He personifies them and says that's what they're doing, they're looking, capitalism is looking for these new markets that will bring these new and better delights.

39:57

All this is predicated on the creation and exploitation of future -oriented desires, and therefore serves quietly and perhaps imperceptibly to downgrade the value of the past.

40:06

So he's trying to explain why people don't value tradition, why they're able to break these long -held traditions about, hey, there's only men and women, that kind of thing, and they're able to go past that, and he's blaming, what does he blame for it?

40:20

Capitalism. Well, capitalism's part of this. Now, I have so many mixed thoughts on this, and I don't have time to give them all.

40:27

I think there's a kernel of truth in what he's saying, in that in the Industrial Revolution, when you see all these improvements all over a very short period of time to all this technology making our lives better, then perhaps there's an association there that everything's gonna get better.

40:41

I mean, that's kind of the utopianism of the early 20th century and late 19th century, that technology's gonna save us, and there's still people who think that.

40:49

I don't think, though, there are people who think that still. You see the

40:55

Fourth Industrial Revolution folks, but there's also, with common people who've been affected by postmodernism especially,

41:06

I don't know that they think that as much today. I'm just not getting that sense. Over the weekend, I was, I don't wanna get into the whole story about this.

41:13

Maybe I'll talk about it later on the podcast. There's a lot of things I've done on the weekend, which is why I couldn't do a podcast for a few days, but one of the things

41:19

I was doing was I was doing evangelism at a local county fair and talking to people, and there is a lot of depression out there.

41:26

I don't see optimism out there that technology's gonna save us or anything's gonna save us. People really need real hope, and I think that was even true to an extent that when

41:39

Carl Truman was writing this. It's not like this is a new thing, but I think the issues over the last two years have exacerbated it, especially the

41:46

COVID stuff. So, to what extent is this feeling out there?

41:52

I'm sure it is, but to blame it, I think it's an oversimplification. That's really what I wanna say, and I don't wanna get into the weeds anymore on it, but it's an oversimplification,

42:00

I think, to say that it's the free market or capitalism or consumerism that is driving this disregard for things like gender.

42:11

Like fixed gender or sexual mores. In fact,

42:17

I remember a philosophy professor I had in grad school who talked about the slackening hand of Plato as being responsible for this, and I actually think there's converging things going on, but I think that's actually a much bigger part of this, and it's not

42:31

Plato per se. It's the belief in objective forms that the particulars can be assembled and categorized according to these general things, these general categories, and that God has created the general categories.

42:46

God has created the forms, that there is a plan beyond us. That's gone out the window a bit more, because it's all subjective.

42:55

There's no objective plan. It's all subjective tyrants trying to rule us through their hegemony, and we gotta strike back against them.

43:04

So, Karl Truman, even in his descriptions of what the problems are, I think he's missing something from this.

43:12

He's missing the postmodern issue. He's missing the experience, as opposed to inner psychology.

43:23

He's missing, I think, the reason that so many people justify throwing out old traditions today, which is they're oppressive, they're evil, they're immoral, because they represent an evil system of some kind that's imposing itself and benefiting the few at the expense of the many.

43:46

He's blaming it instead on capitalism, which is like, it's odd to me, it's odd to me.

43:52

So, these are just my thoughts, but the narrative in this is that there was a psychologization of the self, and he blames

43:59

Descartes, Rousseau, that who you are became who you are internally. Then the sexualization of psychology, that's

44:06

Freud. So, who you are is really who you are sexually, and then the politicalization of sexuality in Herbert Marcuse and the

44:14

Frankfurt School. Now, I think there's a lot of truth to what he's saying here. I just think it's missing, that's all. There's some good things here.

44:20

I wouldn't dissuade you necessarily from reading the book. I just think that there's some missing things here, because beyond this, you have to talk about postmodernism.

44:29

You have to talk about Foucault, and I think he actually talks about Foucault a little bit, but he doesn't bring in,

44:38

I think, the key contribution that Foucault's made. And as Foucault looked at the body as this kind of, this object, this passive agent that gets abused by the system, and we hear this language actually all the time.

44:53

We hear it when you listen to BLM activists talk about, they have to mention black bodies.

45:01

I don't know if you ever heard that, but they don't just say black people. They have to say black bodies specifically. That's Foucault.

45:07

And that's postmodern talk that you're hearing there. It's actually Marxist materialistic talk to some extent that you're hearing there.

45:17

But he's missing that kind of thing. He's missing, I think, key elements that would help him, like the standpoint theory that contributes to so much,

45:27

I think, of what we see today. All right, I don't wanna beat the dead horse. We gotta get through this. So let me get you to the next slide, and we'll go quicker through some of these.

45:36

Hiram Diaz's critique, and he wrote a whole thing. I think it's worth, like I said, looking at. You may not agree with all of it, but I think it's worth interacting with.

45:43

He said this, and I'm gonna summarize his critique. He says, rather than giving us an accurate picture of the contemporary self, the book frames the modernist slash individualist self for the crimes of the postmodernist constructivist collectivist self.

45:56

So what he's saying, he's saying, Truman is blaming the wrong thing for the present state of affairs. He's blaming the wrong criminal.

46:03

It's like if you were robbed, and you didn't see the person who robbed you, but you're pretty sure you know who it is, and then you go blame the wrong person.

46:09

He said that's what Truman's doing. He's blaming the wrong person for the crime. The crime is actually postmodernist, not modernist.

46:15

Now, I think there's something to be said here. Modernity, broadly speaking, I think there are ties between modernism and postmodernism, but there's some vast differences between them, too.

46:25

And so I don't think Truman's book, I think this is a fair critique. I think

46:30

Truman is leaving out, again, a pivotal piece. And I think the reason he's leaving it out is because Truman, he's kind of on that train a little bit, to some extent.

46:40

He's a communitarian. Now, what is a communitarian? And what I mean by that train, I mean the postmodern and the really more socialist light kind of train.

46:53

Communitarianism is very hard to define. He talks a lot about some communitarian thinkers in the book.

47:03

He seems to be influenced by communitarian thinkers. Let me read for you what Michael Byrd says in his book, in the intro to Republicrat, or the endorsements.

47:11

Michael Byrd says, Truman's attempt to indigenize British communitarianism with libertarian America in the name of Christian political responsibility is sheer genius.

47:19

This is political ecumenicism at its very best. So I'm not even the one saying he's a communitarian.

47:26

It's not Hiram Diaz, primarily. It's even people that he's put on endorsements to his book. Michael Byrd says, yeah, he's a

47:33

British communitarian. And generally, communitarianism is seen as this anti -individualism, this pro -collectivism, but not quite socialist.

47:44

And they don't like the term socialist. But some of the people who are communitarians, I don't see a huge difference with some of them, to be honest with you.

47:51

It's very hard to parse it out, exactly what makes them different. And so if I was doing a longer critique here, we'd probably try to parse that out a little more, if possible.

48:03

It makes it even more difficult though, because Carl Truman himself does not call himself a communitarian.

48:12

I can't find anything, at least, of him calling himself that. So it's attributed to him. But let me read for you just a few quotes that seem to me to indicate a third way, and that's kind of communitarians, there's a third way kind of between capitalism and socialism or something like that.

48:27

Here's what Carl Truman says. He says, if the church is to avoid the absolutizing of aesthetics by an appropriate commitment to Christianity as first and foremost doctrinal, then second, we must also be a community.

48:38

If the struggle for Christianity is the struggle for the nature of human selfhood, then it is worth noting that Hegel's basic insight, so compelling elaborated by Taylor, that selves are socially constructed and only come to full consciousness in dialogue with other self -consciousnesses is of great importance.

48:53

Each of us is, in a sense, the sum total of the network of relationships we have with others, with our environment.

48:59

Yes, we possess a common human nature, but that nature has expressed and does express itself differently in different eras and cultures.

49:07

That, if I didn't know who Carl Truman was, if I just read this, I would say, oh yeah, this is like a postmodern, probably socialist guy.

49:14

That's what I would say. He's saying here, it is worth noting that Hegel's basic insight, so compelling elaborated by Charles Taylor, who was a communitarian, that selves are socially constructed.

49:26

Listen to what it says. Selves are socially constructed. Let me repeat it a third time. Selves are socially constructed.

49:33

What do we hear today over and over? What's the problem with identity politics? Race is a social construct.

49:38

Gender is a social construct. It's all just a social construct. What does Carl Truman say? Selves are socially constructed.

49:46

Don't miss this. The very problem that we're seeing, the reason for it, or one of the main things, at least the coming out of the mouths of the activists, that gender is a social construct, race is a social construct, is kind of in a form coming out of Carl Truman's mouth here.

50:03

We are all socially constructed and only come to full self -consciousness in dialogue with other self -consciousnesses.

50:10

What? We only, we don't have, we're missing some of who we are if we don't come into dialogue with other self -consciousnesses.

50:19

Each of us is, in a sense, the sum total of the network of relationships we have with others and with our environment.

50:25

So that's what makes you, you. Now look, those things have an effect on you. There's no doubt about it.

50:32

But what's at the core, deep down, fundamentally, what makes you, you?

50:39

Is it your experiences? See, what Carl Truman's trying to do here is he's trying to make an argument for, it is experience that makes you, you.

50:51

Experience in community. And this individual self, this more romantic version of the self, that deep down inside, there's some fixed meaning there.

51:03

That's what has led to the problem that we have today. When in actuality, the missing piece that I talked about, that Carl Truman doesn't critique, that's part of his solution.

51:14

You see what I'm saying? Carl Truman is giving the solution, but the solution is actually what's contributing to the disease.

51:23

Yes, we possess a common human nature, but that nature has expressed and does express itself differently in different eras and cultures.

51:29

So at least he says we have a common human nature. But, and of course, who argues with that? That nature, well, that people express themselves differently.

51:37

But the nature, I don't even know what that means quite. That nature has expressed and does express itself differently?

51:44

That people express themselves differently. Being part of the Imago Dei is just, it doesn't express itself differently.

51:52

That's a fixed thing. What makes you you can't, I don't think, be quantified in a, it's not abstract.

52:02

It's more complicated than that. And it's something that God has given to each of us.

52:07

He's given us a personality. He's given us who we are. We have, the environment certainly has an impact on who we are to an extent.

52:16

It does. There's no, no one's arguing that it doesn't. I have never seen anyone argue. That's not even the question though.

52:21

This is more of a, this is more of a base level question here.

52:28

This is a question, this is a metaphysical question. This is a definitional question.

52:34

At deep down, the core of who you are, what is it? Are you a sum total of your environment and your experiences, or is there something else?

52:42

Has God programmed you in a certain way? That's the question. Now, of course, we have choices throughout life.

52:50

No one argues that, but this is, I'm trying to give you the two basic positions here and trying to show you that if you're looking at modernism, and I think there's some stuff in common with Christianity here in the sense that there's at least fixed reality, okay?

53:06

And then you have postmodernism over here, which means if you're just socially constructed, you never know who you are.

53:12

That's why it's Hegelian, because you're always coming into who you are. You're a development.

53:20

But there is something at the core that makes you you, okay? Those two beliefs are at war odds with one another.

53:29

And right now it's this one, it's the postmodern one that's holding sway, okay?

53:34

And Carl Truman is blaming this one. He's saying this is what's causing the problem with moral failures in this country.

53:41

And we need to go to this, when it's this that's actually, I think, causing the problem more so. This is what's being used.

53:47

This whole gender and race are social constructs. That's what's being used to then critique society, to rip down everything because society must, society's flawed in some way.

53:59

Society, we must have critical theory that teaches us where to rip society down and how to do it.

54:06

And that's where the totalitarian government comes in, because it's to blame. It's systemic, right?

54:13

Right, systemic. All right, so Carl Truman says, whether it is intellectual iconoclasm of critical theory or the more banal impact of consumerism, could say capitalism, he could say free market, he uses them interchangeably, the untethering of what it means to be human from any kind of metaphysical framework has rendered the notion of universal individual dignity something that threatens to push the

54:34

West into a kind of totalitarian anarchy to use an oxymoron. So I see the communitarianism kind of coming out in statements like this, where it's like, well, you have on one hand the intellectual iconoclasm of critical theory.

54:48

So you have critical theory on one hand, and then you have consumerism on the other. So it's, let me just be blunt.

54:53

You have communism and you have the free market, okay? And that these, both of these things are real problems.

55:00

And so, and because both of them are rendering the notion of universal individual dignity, something that threatens to push the

55:08

West into a kind of totalitarian anarchy. There are metaphysical frameworks that have, what he says, rendered this notion of dignity, something that is threatening.

55:26

And that's what I'd expect to hear from someone who's trying to push a third way here. How does the free market do that?

55:33

It's people's internal hearts that do that. It's not the products they're seeing, it's their hearts. You could talk about a world system,

55:40

I guess, and part of that being the coveting. And of course, the free market probably makes that easier to acquire things.

55:49

Socialism, though, has plenty of coveting in it. In fact, it's run on coveting, because you're trying to take from other people.

55:56

And then you're not working and making money yourself to go get something, you're taking from others to get something. So it's stealing.

56:03

But anyway, what Carl Truman's trying to do is navigate this third way here.

56:09

And that's typical of communitarians. So I don't really, I wish I could give you more of a fine -tuned approach to this, but either,

56:17

I think a combination of, I just don't know what to say completely about communitarianism.

56:23

And Carl Truman's just kind of, there's a vagueness about him on this. And that's one of the things

56:28

I think my biggest critique about the book is it's just, there's some really good parts of the book,

56:34

Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, where he explains some things in history. Like, he explains Freud. I think he does a decent job with that, from my limited understanding of Freud.

56:42

But there's just a, his solutions, his assessments, when he applies them to today's situation, it's vague, it's general, or it's, he just does, he fails to make the distinctions that he should make.

56:56

And so it confuses me a little bit why this is such a big thing, why people rave about the book so much.

57:02

I'm being honest about that. I can see it in one sense. I can see, because people who have wanted an explanation, finally, here's an explanation.

57:10

But if you just start asking some questions about the explanation, it doesn't seem to make sense. And his cure seems to be the thing that actually contributes to the disease.

57:20

On identity politics, Truman, this isn't Truman. This is, let's see, do we have time to go through this?

57:26

Let's just read through this. Andrew Hayward, who writes textbooks, and he wrote a textbook on identity politics.

57:32

And I think these are good descriptions. Hiram Diaz included this in his articles. He says, identity politics is a broad term that encompasses a wide range of political trends and ideological developments, ranging from ethnocultural nationalism and religious fundamentalism to second wave feminism and pluralist multiculturalism.

57:47

What all forms of identity politics nevertheless have in common is that they advance a political critique of liberal universalism.

57:55

Hmm, liberal universalism is a source of oppression, even a form of cultural imperialism, in that it tends to marginalize and demoralize subordinate groups and peoples.

58:05

It does this because behind a facade of universalism, the cultural of liberal societies is constructed in line with the values and interests of what?

58:12

Men, whites, the wealthy, and so on. Okay, so that's what identity politics is.

58:18

And I've just explained this already, but it's against this liberal universalism, which is basically the hegemony, okay?

58:26

Christian, Western European culture, that's what it's designed to take down, to critique. Identity politics, he says, seeks to challenge and overthrow oppression by reshaping a group's identity through what amounts to a process of political cultural self -assertion.

58:39

This reflects two core beliefs. The first is that group marginalization operates through stereotypes and values developed by dominant groups that structure how marginalized groups see themselves and are seen by others.

58:49

These typically inculcate a sense of inferiority, even shame. The second belief is that the subordination can be challenged by reshaping identity to give the group concerned a sense of pride and self -interest.

58:59

For instance, black is beautiful or gay pride. In seeking to reclaim a pure or authentic sense of identity, identity politics expresses defiance against marginalization and disadvantage and serves as a source of liberation.

59:10

This is what gives identity politics its typical combative character and imbues it with psycho -emotional force.

59:18

This is what we're seeing today. This was written in 2013, okay? This is what we're seeing today, exactly what we're seeing today.

59:24

It is a goal of liberation. Liberating from what? From a Christian understanding of reality, from Western European values that were shaped by Christianity, from the white man, again,

59:34

Western European. That's what it's against. That's what it's trying to rip down.

59:40

It's a move of liberation. And it's the same thing with the LGBT movement. It is a move of liberation to liberate ourselves from the supposed constraints, the oppressive constraints of marriage and of gender and of these concepts that are seen to be not objective, but subjective.

59:59

That's broadly speaking what's going on. It's a political movement, but underlying it is a certain metaphysic.

01:00:05

It's a certain understanding of reality. And Karl Truman, I think, seems to miss this to some extent because he's so focused on it's individualism, it's individualism.

01:00:15

He doesn't see, well, no, there's actually, there's a broad thing here. One of the things, let me just say this. One of the things that I, before reading anything from Hiram Diaz, just reading the book,

01:00:25

I thought this at the end, other than wondering when BLM was gonna come up, this was my other big critique. I thought,

01:00:31

Karl Truman seems to just, he brings in Freud, he brings in, you know, Descartes, he brings in Marcuse, and he just kinda like said, well, there was, this led to the, or this happened, and then this development happened, and then this development happened, and voila, the modern self.

01:00:47

And when I was writing my book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict, I saw all those things as connected. Like, yeah, we all have the same goal.

01:00:54

What Freud was doing in psychology, you know, Marx was doing with economics, what

01:01:00

Gramsci was doing with society, culture. I could just see all the, okay, they're all going, they're all after the same thing.

01:01:08

They're trying to liberate in their minds, but really it's to tear down and replace this

01:01:14

Western European Christian culture. That's what they hate. And they're all united in doing that.

01:01:21

Karl Truman doesn't present it that way. Karl Truman presented as, well, this development happened, and this development happened, and, you know, the psychologization of the self, and the sexualization of the self.

01:01:31

So he has these developments that kind of like, well, this happened, and you almost wonder whether, if history developed differently, whether it would all develop differently.

01:01:39

Like if you had, you know, Freud never came around in his thinking, then, you know, that next stepping stone wouldn't be there to develop the modern self we have today.

01:01:50

Whereas I'm looking at this and saying, no, there's a unified goal here, and it's just different people in different fields, and they might have little disagreements with each other, but they're all working towards the same goal.

01:02:00

And I think that's actually a more accurate take on this whole thing. And so when you read someone who actually can correctly describe identity politics here, like Andrew Hayward, I think he's describing what

01:02:13

Carl Truman, I think, seems to miss. So Andrew Hayward also says, the central theme within all forms of multiculturalism, and by extension, all forms of identity politics, is that individual identity is culturally embedded in the sense that people largely derive their understanding of the world and their framework and moral beliefs from the cultures in which they live and develop.

01:02:30

And that's what we see today. That's exactly what we see today, is it not? So Carl Truman, though, on the other hand, this is what he says about identity politics.

01:02:40

Contrast this. Carl Truman says this, if, as I argue in future chapters, it is true that we now live in a world in which the therapeutic needs of reef psychological man stand at the center of life, it would then perhaps be possible to offer an explanation as to why human identity has become so plastic in statements such as,

01:02:55

I'm a man trapped in a woman's body come to make sense. If the inner psychological life of the individual is sovereign, then identity becomes as potentially unlimited as the human imagination.

01:03:04

Yet this would still leave some questions unresolved, questions that have a particular urgency in our current political climate.

01:03:10

Why, for example, have the politics of sexual identity become so ferocious that any dissent from the latest orthodoxy is greeted with scorn and sometimes even legal action?

01:03:23

So what he's saying here is that the plastic man, that's what he calls the modern self, the plastic man, is a result of this inner psychologization.

01:03:38

It's this internal process that's happening, this priority given to the thinking and the emotions and what happens in you.

01:03:48

And I'm a man trapped in a woman's body. That's what's contributing to believing that the real you is the you that you conceive of inside.

01:03:59

So that's, so here, and I'm getting to the, it's a few pages down. I think that's what we have to read first to understand what he says about identity politics.

01:04:07

He says this, the question of why some identities find acceptance and others do not is simply a version of the question of how identity is formed in the first place.

01:04:15

Much of the book focuses on the rise of the psychological self, the turn to epistemology and the enlightenment and the work of men such as Rousseau led to an emphasis on the inner life as characterizing the authentic person.

01:04:25

Yet before I address the historical narrative of the rise of modern plastic psychological expressive self, it is necessary to note that for all psychological man's inward turn, individual personal identity is not ultimately an internal monologue conducted in isolation by an individual self -consciousness.

01:04:41

On the contrary, it is a dialogue between self -conscious beings. Here we go.

01:04:47

We each know ourselves as we know other people. A simple example of why this is important to understand is provided by Descartes famous idea that in the act of doubting my own existence,

01:04:57

I have to acknowledge that I do exist on the grounds that there has to be an I that doubts. As plausible as that sounds, a key question that Descartes failed to ask is what exactly is this

01:05:07

I that is doing the doubting? Whatever the I might be, it is clearly something that has a facility with language and language itself is something that typically involves interaction with other linguistic beings.

01:05:17

I cannot therefore necessarily grant the I the privilege of self -consciousness prior to its engagement with others.

01:05:23

The I is necessarily a social being. Now this, if I didn't know who

01:05:29

Carl Truman was, I would read that and especially after reading a book by let's say

01:05:35

Roger Scruton, let's say on leftists, on postmodernists, I would think that Carl Truman is one of those postmodernists, one of the

01:05:47

French deconstructionists or something. I would think that that's where this is coming from. I really would because his critique of Rene Descartes, I think therefore

01:05:56

I am is that, well, the I has to be no language and that if the

01:06:01

I is linguistic, that his meaning is granted. Where does the meaning come from? Where does the I come from? Where does the identity come from at a base level?

01:06:09

The very definition of who a person is, who they are at the core of who they are, what is it?

01:06:15

Well, it's this arrangement that develops through social interaction, according to Carl Truman.

01:06:22

That's what he's saying here. That's what makes you, you. And that's the authentic person.

01:06:30

And the problem is the psychological self that Rousseau gave us. That's the real problem.

01:06:37

Rousseau's a problem, but I don't buy this. I actually think that what

01:06:44

Carl Truman's describing here, this idea that within, that you are this sort of tapestry of other experiences with other people or the other, as I guess would, philosophers would say postmodern deconstructionist or post -structuralist philosophers, they would say that your definition is, you come into being as you interact with the other or the text, or that sounds like what

01:07:17

Carl Truman is saying here. Now he says, and here's the bottom line here. His solution is number one,

01:07:24

I've already read for you the communitarian stuff, so that's number one. The church has to get on board this sort of communitarian train.

01:07:30

But he also says this, Protestants need to recover both natural law and a high view of the physical body. Some will immediately object that natural law will not persuade the wider world to change its opinions about anything.

01:07:40

I would concede that. My concern here is not primarily for the outside world, but for the church. She needs to be able to teach her people coherently about moral principles.

01:07:48

It is unlikely that an individual pastor is going to be able to shape a Supreme Court, but he is very likely to be confront with, let's see, let me skip ahead here.

01:07:58

He says this, but to tear identity away from physical embodiment and to root it entirely in the psychological would be to operate along the same trajectory as transgenderism.

01:08:08

Let me read that again. To tear identity away from the physical embodiment and to root it entirely in the psychological would be to operate along the same trajectory as transgenderism.

01:08:19

A recovery of a biblical understanding of embodiment is vital. And closely allied with this is the fact that the church must maintain its commitment to biblical sexual morality, whatever the social costs might be.

01:08:29

And he's right on that last statement. Here's what the thing though. Now, I don't like the term psychological here.

01:08:37

Let's use biblical language, the heart, the soul. Who are you deep down? What are you?

01:08:43

Karl Truman puts a big emphasis on the body, that your body is who you are. And I think one of the reasons for this, there is a sense, especially for gospel coalition types, there's a fear of this.

01:08:55

They don't have a fear of the Gnosticism they're engaged in, the standpoint theory, but there's a fear of this other Gnosticism that sees the body is not important.

01:09:03

And so we gotta see the body is important and we gotta be about works and we gotta be about political engagement and cultural engagement and that's part of that.

01:09:09

That's part of being reformed. And it's a Kuyperian kind of understanding here. That though is, and that may be where Karl Truman's coming from here.

01:09:19

I suspect it is. There's another ditch you can fall into.

01:09:27

And it's the ditch that you put too much importance on the physical, okay? And Karl Truman here,

01:09:35

I think is starting to fall into that ditch. He says,

01:09:41

Protestantism is vulnerable to downplaying the importance of the physical. I don't think it is. I don't think it should be.

01:09:48

That's a common thing you'll hear, but I don't think that's true. I don't know why it would be. But to tear identity away from the physical embodiment and to root it entirely in the psychological would be to operate along the same trajectory as transgenderism.

01:10:00

Except to operate, transgenderism, again, like I said, it's experiences. I have the experience of living as a woman.

01:10:07

So maybe I'll get a sex reassignment surgery because I already have the experience. I am a woman. I am, and because it's not based, it's not even based, it's not based on what he's talking about here.

01:10:17

It's not based on this inner psychology or anything. It is based on, it's actually something more external.

01:10:26

But he wants to say that if we just can get back to the body, if we can just, that that's the solution is to seeing ourselves as we're physical, that our body is who we are.

01:10:37

I wanna read for you some Bible verses here. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him male and female.

01:10:44

He created them. Now, if you read the whole passage, you see that God makes plants and he makes animals.

01:10:50

What makes man different? What makes man different is not that he has a physical body, animals do too, he has a soul.

01:11:00

That's what makes him like, God is spirit. Those who worship him must worship in spirit and flesh. Man is a spirit, an eternal spirit.

01:11:09

That's what makes man different. How about 1 Corinthians 6? Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the

01:11:15

Holy Spirit within you with whom we have from God and that you are not your own for you've been bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body.

01:11:20

Now this is a verse, I wanted to include this because I wanted to place some emphasis on the body.

01:11:25

The body is important, it's a temple of the Holy Spirit. We should glorify God in our body. A body, other passages talk about it being an instrument.

01:11:32

Don't give your body over as an instrument to unrighteousness. But it's something that, it's something we control.

01:11:40

The I, the self, okay, is not actually the body. The body belongs to the self, but the body is not the self.

01:11:49

If we're trying to boil down what the self actually at the root level is, what is the self?

01:11:55

Romans 6, therefore sin is not to reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts and do not go on presenting the parts of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead and your body's part as instruments of righteousness.

01:12:07

I just referenced this before. Matthew 22, but regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read that what was spoken to you by God?

01:12:15

I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. So Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob died, their bodies decayed, and yet they're the living.

01:12:25

In their spiritual form, they're living. They never stopped being them when their bodies were gone.

01:12:31

How about 2 Corinthians 5? For we know that if our earthly tent, which is our house, is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made by hands, eternal in the heavens.

01:12:39

For indeed, in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, since the fact, in fact, after putting it on, we will be found naked.

01:12:46

For indeed, we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed, but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.

01:12:55

Now, he who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave us the spirit as a pledge, therefore being always faithful of good courage and knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the

01:13:05

Lord, and for we walk by faith, not by sight. It goes on to be, prefer to be absent from the body and to be at home with the

01:13:13

Lord. We are of good courage and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord, it says. Therefore, we also have our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to him, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive compensation for his deeds done through the body, in accordance with what he has done, whether good or bad.

01:13:33

Now, what we see in scripture is that the body's important, but the body is an instrument of the actual self, and the actual self is the soul, the heart, sometimes the spirit, but the internal self, the non -physical part of us that remains eternally.

01:13:49

That's what makes us who we are, ultimately. And we're gonna be given new bodies.

01:13:56

Now, Jesus' body, there were marks in his hands, so there is a sense in which, I believe when we get our new bodies, it is possible, at least, that there's gonna be a similarity in some way.

01:14:10

And again, I think the body's important, but I think at the core, the biblical teaching is that the self is actually, it's the non -physical part of you.

01:14:18

That's who you are. And we govern our bodies. Our bodies are, oh,

01:14:24

I think someone can say my body's part of me, and he's not in heresy or anything. I mean, we understand what that means.

01:14:32

But if we're talking about what Karl Truman's talking about, this, at a base level, at a epistemically, what is the self?

01:14:46

We're talking about your soul, your spirit. And I can't give you an abstract list of what that is exactly.

01:14:54

There's a mystery to it to some extent, but that's who we are. And so the solutions that Karl Truman gives, the communitarianism, some of this stuff isn't bad, like being active in your church, in a community there.

01:15:08

I mean, that's necessary for other reasons, but it doesn't necessarily solve, I think, the issue that he thinks it's gonna solve, which is that if we were just, because for him, if we put more emphasis on who you are as a social being, and you are really the experience, the social experiences, the interactions you have, that's what makes you you, and that your body is part of that, your body's interacting, that's not going to stop this flood of identity politics and transgenderism, and really the things that I think people are going to this book to find solutions for.

01:15:49

What will stop it? Well, I don't think it's necessarily going back to some radical individualism or anything like that, some internal, what he calls a psychologization of the self.

01:16:02

I think it's just going back to this, it's going back to scripture. What does the Bible teach about man? You are who

01:16:08

God created you to be. Your body does certainly reflect and give you an indicator of who he created you to be, but inside my personality and my soul,

01:16:18

I am a man, even if I didn't have my body. There's something about me internally that God created me this way, it's evidenced in my body, my physical body, absolutely.

01:16:31

But here's the thing that Karl Truman I don't think says, and this is what I think needs to be said, gender is not a social construct, and neither is race or ethnicity, whatever word you want to use for that.

01:16:44

These things aren't just created willy -nilly by a hegemony or a culture or some kind of framework that man created, these are actually things that exist in objective reality.

01:16:59

So the solution is to get back to objective reality. You are who you were created to be, and it's as simple as that.

01:17:07

You are who you were created to be, not who society says you are or the experiences you think you have.

01:17:15

It's not some internal psychologization or anything like that, some romantic idea deep down, ultimately, it's who your creator made you to be.

01:17:26

That's who you are. So that's my critique of "'Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self." Like I said, there are some good things in there,

01:17:33

I think, but it's probably not a book I would recommend. I think there's probably better stuff out there that you could be reading.

01:17:41

Go read some of the, I mean, I've been impressed with some of the paleo -conservative works. I've been impressed with even people who aren't overtly

01:17:48

Christians like Roger Scruton, who I think he's

01:17:54

Anglican, if I'm not mistaken. No, he's Catholic, I think he's Catholic, but there are good books out there that help describe what's happening today.

01:18:05

Richard Weaver, you could start with that. You could read, Ideas Have Consequences.

01:18:11

And you, I think, get the ball rolling in a better direction for understanding the current state of affairs and how we got here, at least in part, or you can understand better philosophically how

01:18:21

Western culture has arrived at the place it's at, more than probably reading a

01:18:27

Carl Truman book. But we need more Christian scholars, we really do, to write good books on this stuff. And so that's what

01:18:35

I'm gonna leave you with. I hope that helps many of you out there. God bless, more coming later. And don't forget to sign up for the retreat if you're a man and you wanna come.