Derek's Notes from a transformative conversation with James Kourtides
Derek's personal notes from a deep conversation on the possible end of the world and the eschatological optimism
Here are Derek’s personal notes from his powerful conversation with philosopher and cultural commentator, James Kourtides. We discuss the the end of time, how chaos can be used as potential for transformation, and the two most power things you can do in 2024 to give you "eschatological optimism" in the shadow of the apocalypse.
Derek’s Notes
Derek and James are going to meet in person for the first time at the Symbolic World Summit in Tarpon Springs, Florida - https://thesymbolicworld.com/summit
Derek lives at the edge of the world in California. The end of western expansion (and eastern). Where Spaniards brought Christianity to the West, and where Russians brought Christianity from the East. Spaniards went as far north as San Fransisco area, and the Russians at Fort Ross.
We live in the end times because life is extremely short. We have a personal eschatology. But there is a global eschatology too. And that is ramping up.
Eschatological Optimism by Darya Platonova Dugin, daughter of the late Aleksandr Dugin. When the war in Ukraine began, she was killed by a car bomb.
Matrix was a cultural moment.
The idea of the 'end of the world' is not precise. It is a fractal phenomena. It could mean the end of your physical life, the dissolution of your marriage, end of a job, a deep friendship, a parent's death. We live within nested realities at different scales and those bubbles pop all the time and that is the end of a world. The end of a world is always inaugurated by the beginning of a new world.
Y2k was one. 9/11 was another. We haven't yet metabolized the meaning of what 9/11 inaugurated. It burst the political bubble. In 2008 we saw the economic bubble burst. In 2020, the trust of the medical bubble has burst. We are seeing multiple levels of our bubbles bursting. How can we have optimism in the face of this? A question we should explore with our loved ones. The bubble bursting leaves us with what is most fundamental - our family and our friends in the cells that we live in. Right now we are in the wilderness to struggle to find our way. What we see is a return of a more ancient Christianity - there's your optimism.
Left Behind way of approaching the end times. How you see the end informs how you live. For example, the woman who had an abortion after reading the 88 reasons that Christ will return book because of the verse that talks about it being hard for women carrying children. The book was followed by the sequel 89 reasons Christ returns in 1989.
Dominion by Tom Holland quote about the scale of the crisis in the shadow of apocalypse was the difference.
Make friends with death. You gotta die so when you die you won't die. What a blessing to live during a massive transition. An optimism is born from the realization of your own mortality and the brevity of your life. During these times, your metal is tested. Requires something of you that wouldn't be activated in you otherwise. St. Siloan said, "keep your mind in hell and despair not."
Revelation brings transformation
Whether you are rich building a bunker or living paycheck to paycheck, everyone is feeling what's happening. In the end times (general speaking) things are being revealed.
It brings an opportunity to transformation. Use the chaos to define what is in you. For Christians, to find that more authentic relationship with Christ in your heart and focus to what is important in life - relationships, work, family. Everything else is noise you can't control.
Watch what is happening in the world and use it to prepare your house spiritually. If we do that it we will experience this time as beautiful blessing of revelation.
Christianity is changing. People are coming to an understanding of an original Christianity. The scaffolding of the watered-down Christianity seems to be falling.
"Standing on the threshold of eternity."
End times brings dread but also an intimation of transformation.
The meaning of life is: the transformation of the human heart.
Your physical body is like a glove that you wear for a time to do some heavy lifting. Repentance is the heavy lifting that brings about the transformation.
Generational trauma is like the scriptures passages about the sin carrying to the third and fourth generation. The blessing will be generational too. You have your entire lineage at your back. The dead are with us; the saints are with us. It's real. These things give us courage to contend with these things. Do the work you need to do to transform. Eschatological optimism living in these end times gives us the energy we need to transform more robustly and beautifully.
Science is born of Christianity
Science is the ability to explore the kingdom of God in the earth in a reliable way that gives you a footing.
Love of God in the human heart is absent from scientism and leaders of industry today.
We are building fractal towers of babel
Humanity spoke the same language and comes together to build an edifice that open a gate into the heavens. Constructed civilization out of hubris. Instead, we lost the universal language.
Today, science and mathematics are a universal language.
Derek writing an essay about Arrival that compares the tower of babel story. Acts 2 is the recapitulation of the tongues and nations of the world into the universal language, the Logos.
People seeing Christianity differently
Tom Holland in the process of writing Dominion came back to Christianity.
James's heart is to impart this understanding Christianity to others. It's not about this religion being the best one. If you contend the history of our western world, it is a Christian world. They would come to an appreciation of the Christians values without making them an idol - a tower of babel.
Towers of Babel
Building a social media enterprise can be a tower of babel if done improperly. James channel was demonetized and the views diminished. James considers it a blessing because it slowed him from being a slave to commenting on "the next thing" for audience capture. It ended the tower of babel feedback loop.
We can make anything a fractal tower of babel - working, exercise, reading theology. It all depends on the heart. The heart seeks union with God, and it longs for communion with others in their union with God. Tower of Babel is a false communion or an anti-church. Solution is to do the self work strengthening union with God and to become part of something more in communion.
We know the end, but we don't. We know the heroes journey but not how the particular story is going to carry it out.
Healing Generational Trauma
James had a phobia of parents getting divorced. His parents would fight and promise it wouldn't happen, but it did. It was a childhood apocalypse. It inaugurated a lot of sin. The intense emotion of the dissolution of your world as a child trying to cover it up can turn into addictions and even substance abuse. Takes the experience into his marriage. Marriage is a garden of Eden. Parents are growing children.
Repenting of generational and childhood trauma, metabolizing that to pass on as little as possible to the children.
Jordan Peterson: in order to contend with the dragon, you need a place to train - prayer, quietness, healing work. The space needs to be cleansed.
The two vectors of the Cross. The vertical is loving God with all your heart, and the horizontal is loving your neighbor as yourself. That's Eschatological Optimism. If you work on them, it will have fractal ripple effects in your family, healing generational trauma, and your church and so on.
Transformation through repentance
The heart is rarefied through repentance. Unfortunately, "repent" has so much baggage these days. The truth about repentance is that it means to transform. Sin is to miss the mark, and repentance (metanoia) is to aim appropriately again. The act of reorienting yourself is transformational. It can't help but scale up. Christ comes back slowly through each individuals repentant heart affecting others, so when he comes back you have eyes to see and a heart to perceive his glory. "We are living on the threshold of eternity."
The end cycles to a new beginning
Why would we think that death is the ultimate end of one's life, when every other cycle has its renewal.
"Faith is not believing in things without evidence; faith is a mode of perception that allows you to see the inklings of eternity that are here now." 57:46
The most powerful things in the world are your heart, and your communion with others. Not A.I., the WEF, political turmoil, whatever it may be. The two most important things are your heart, and communion with others.
How you frame the end informs how you live now
How to approach Christian eschatology and the book of Revelation
Any time you read the Gospel it has a transformative effect on you.
Take your time reading Revelation, a lifetime even.
Christ trampled death by death. A tree dies and the next trees gathers up that death and grows new life.
Jordan Hall recently announced that he is a Christian. James encouraged him to read the church fathers. Someone invited him to church and he felt a twinge that he explored.
Read the church fathers - even if you are not Christian - like St. Maximus the Confessor and St Gregory of Nyssa. James has read their books on his Channel.
Courageous Conversions
We are seeing more people that are intellectual atheists that discovered authentic Christianity and was transformed.
Like Seraphim Rose, Marshal McLuhan, and Rene Gerard.
It is amazing to see intellectual giants go from dismissers of Christianity, in the face of all the critiques, have the courage to be transformed, to have humility before wisdom.
Andrew Huberman, the popular neuroscientist, said that he reached the realization that reason can only go so far. You can only know so much. Beyond that is a mystery, a cloud that covers the peak of the mountain.
Humility before Wisdom
Humility was the ultimate catalyst of Jordan Hall's transformation. His struggle with grief triggered his transformation. You have to drink the grief at the center of your soul. You've already paid for it, so drink it. There's no better thing.
Lean into the grief. Lean into the depression. Give yourself to repentance. Repent like your life depends on it. At some point the shift will happen to new life.
If we could get to a more original understanding of "sin" and "repentance" it would reveal what "salvation" really means.
Can have a social repentance. Curing cancer is repentance. Returning our aim to healthy eating and eating.
From the film Arrival, "I'm not so sure I believe in beginnings and endings." That's eschatological optimism. At the end, there is always the arrival of the new. That is a fundamental structure of the world and that should give us hope.
