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Taylor returns to take Milo and Jack through ten great works of American "Gnostic" literature, beginning with Emerson’s Nature and ending, exactly a century later, with Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! Along the way: Jones Very believes himself to be Christ, Hawthorne discovers the stain in creation, Ahab declares war on visible reality, Whitman meets the “real Me”, Dickinson confronts an inaccessible God, and Melville, Bierce, West, and Faulkner push the American suspicion of the world into ever darker territory.

Part two of our Gnostic Bonanza; the first part - on the original Gnostics - available here: https://youtu.be/brOyXDlaA-Y?si=DQGCLCq61lwZm4PG

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

03:24 I. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Nature (1836)

11:15 II. Jones Very – Essays and Poems (1839)

18:48 III. Nathaniel Hawthorne – Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)

24:46 IV. Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (1851)

34:55 V. Walt Whitman – Sea-Drift / “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life” (1860)

41:21 VI. Emily Dickinson – Poems (1861–65)

50:53 VII. Herman Melville – Clarel (1876)

59:01 VIII. Ambrose Bierce – Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891)

1:04:10 IX. Nathanael West – Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)

1:07:38 X. William Faulkner – Absalom, Absalom! (1936)

1:21:04 American Gnosticism – Final Thoughts

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In this episode of Solomon and Smith, Jack and Milo speak with Taylor Caron about the Gnostics: those strange, alluring, heretical early Christians who believed that the physical world was corrupt, that its creator was not the highest God, and that salvation came through secret knowledge of the divine world beyond this one.

This is the first part of a two-part conversation. In this episode, we begin with the original Gnostics: the lost gospels, the Nag Hammadi texts, the Gospel of Thomas, the Secret Book of John, the Gospel of Judas, Valentinus, the Gospel of Truth, Thunder, Perfect Mind, the Epistle to Flora, the Gospel of Philip, and the Second Treatise of the Great Seth. In the next part, we turn to American Gnosticism and the strange afterlife of these ideas in modern literature.

What is Gnosticism? Is the material world evil? Was Yahweh the demiurge? Who or what is Barbello? Why does Jesus keep appearing as a child, an old woman, a voice, a double, a robe, a cosmic emissary, or a being laughing from outside the crucifixion? And how did a collection of bizarre early Christian texts found in Egypt in 1945 come to haunt modern religion, literature, conspiracy, pop culture, Harold Bloom, The Da Vinci Code, and the idea of hidden knowledge itself?

Chapters:

00:00 Was Valentinus better than the Bible?

01:10 Introduction

05:47 Taylor enters

07:50 What is Gnosticism?

09:30 Nag Hammadi and the lost texts

11:01 The basic Gnostic worldview

15:18 I. The Gospel of Thomas

20:30 II. The Secret Book of John

23:18 Barbello, Sophia and the demiurge

29:42 III. The Hymn of the Pearl

34:15 IV. The Gospel of Judas

38:38 Crucifixion, flesh and anti-natalism

40:09 V. Valentinus' Fragments

45:24 VI. The Gospel of Truth

52:16 VII. Thunder Perfect Mind

56:20 VIII. The Epistle to Flora

1:01:18 Jesus and the Hebrew Bible

1:05:27 IX. The Gospel of Philip

1:10:46 X. The Second Treatise of the Great Seth

1:15:48 Orthodoxy, heresy and the stakes of the crucifixion

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What is a view? What is attention? Does a number become more real if it is larger? Are advertisers being ushered into a hall of mirrors? And if every video, every creator, every athlete, every billionaire, and every man on earth can be given a bigger number, have we made the world better — or simply made value meaningless?

We discuss YouTube views, attention inflation, dead internet paradise, advertisers, Zimbabwean trillionaires, egalitarianism, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, cinema box office inflation, World of Warcraft stat squish, the psychological horror of decline, the impossibility of measuring attention, the parable of the workers in the vineyard, angelic value, Christianity, equality, and whether every mote of dust has infinite worth.

Chapters:

00:00 The number goes up

00:51 Introduction

04:45 YouTube changes the view count

08:02 Advertisers and the fantasy economy

12:40 Do labels change reality?

14:47 Egalitarianism, power and resentment

19:03 Do big numbers hide inequality?

22:35 Cinema, inflation and fake success

24:22 Stat squish and the horror of smaller numbers

27:14 What can value actually measure?

31:07 Can attention ever be quantified?

36:01 The workers in the vineyard

38:01 Earthly numbers and angelic value

42:36 YouTube views in heaven

43:38 Christianity, equality and infinite worth

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Thinkers mentioned: Richard Dawkins, Noam Chomsky, Jerry Fodor, Charles Darwin, Paul Grice, Fred Dretske, Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Saul Kripke, Richard Montague, Iain McGilchrist, Alfred Tarski

00:00:00 Introduction

00:04:49 Knife Throwing, Other Athletic Activities

00:11:57 Poetic Epigraph

00:13:05 How to integrate Philosophy, Linguistics, and Biology? Should philosophers read Dawkins? Should biologists read Tarski?

00:20:15 Origins of language. Are any aspects of language as old as consciousness?

00:27:39 Can we only discuss language in language?

00:29:06 Are all philosophical problems linguistic? Analytic philosophy

00:32:45 Fodor and the Language of thought. Language without communication

00:34:50 Consciousness and the limits of knowing

00:39:38 Can something exist without you knowing it?

00:42:40 Can we understand/build a mind?

00:43:49 Links between Mysterianism and Apathatic theology?

00:48:13 Does McGinn's Mysterianism conflict with his Naturalism?

00:50:10 Why do we have introspection?

00:55:28 Do our brains see the world dualistically to support the existence of language?

01:01:35 Wittgenstein's Investigations. Split brains. McGilchrist.

01:03:43 The brain has over-invested in spatial reasoning.

01:06:16 Communication without symbols, without linguistic utterance.

01:11:38 Philosophers don't pay enough attention to animals. Darwin, etc.

01:14:35 Philosophers read too much psychology, and don't understand it.

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Kirwin's article on mathematics is available here: https://kirwinhampshire.substack.com/p/the-dark-night-of-mathematics

In this episode of Solomon and Smith, Jack and Milo speak with Kirwin Hampshire, mathematics PhD and author of the Substack Ossuray Lost at Sea.

Is mathematics discovered or invented? Is it a formal game, a spiritual art form, a machine for generating truth, or the highest expression of human creativity? And what happens when AI begins solving open problems, producing counterexamples, and doing the thing mathematicians thought belonged to the strange, private, intuitive life of the mind?

We discuss what a number is, why mathematics feels certain in a way other forms of knowledge often do not, whether infinity and zero expand the limits of thought, and why mathematical discovery can feel closer to art, wizardry, or religious revelation than to ordinary technical work. Then we turn to the nightmare: AI-generated mathematics, the psychology of being scooped by a machine, and the possibility that human mathematicians may be reduced to checking, verifying, and understanding what machines have already produced.

Is AI killing maths? Or is it revealing what mathematics really was all along?

Topics include: AI and mathematics, mathematical creativity, open problems, counterexamples, proof, intuition, infinity, zero, Gödel, Cantor, mathematical beauty, the philosophy of maths, AI art, chess engines, human purpose, dangerous knowledge, truth versus goodness, and whether machines are about to ruin the most beautiful thing humans ever made.

Chapters:

00:00 AI and the human gap

01:15 Introduction

05:58 The challenge

07:37 Kirwin enters

10:00 Poetic epigraph

11:37 What is a number?

17:11 Maths, mind, and reality

20:37 Mathematics as creativity

22:30 Infinity and the machinery of thought

26:45 Falling in love with maths

32:15 Discovery, invention and the unfinished painting

37:14 Has maths become too arcane?

41:35 AI enters mathematics

44:11 AI counterexamples and open problems

49:39 Chess, machines and the loss of spark

52:36 Humans as the AI’s assistant

57:22 Intuition and the human gap

1:02:34 Dangerous truth and the Copernican trauma

1:06:50 The Impossible Luddite

1:13:40 Why does AI hurt?

1:16:12 Is AI just another tool?

1:21:17 Truth, beauty and incompatible desires

1:24:08 Process versus result

Performance of the second movement from Bartók's second quartet by the Carmel Quartet, used under the following license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

*Emma's list is pasted below*

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1710s - Robinson Crusoe: Daniel Defoe

1720s - Roxana: Daniel Defoe

1730s - Manon Lescaut: Abbé Prévost

1740s - Pamela: Samuel Richardson

1750s - The Female Quixote: Charlotte Lennox

1760s - Barren Decade - TBR: Castle of Otranto, A Sentimental Journey

1770s - The Sorrows of Young Werther: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1780s - Dangerous Liasons: Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

1790s - Justine: Marquis de Sade

1800s - Corinne, or Italy: Madame de Staël

1810s - Frankenstein: Mary Shelley

1820s - Barren Decade - TBR: The Betrothed

1830s - The Charterhouse of Parma: Stendhal

1840s - The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

00:00:00 Intro

00:04:35 What's so interesting about the 1700s?

00:06:53 1710s

00:11:30 1720s

00:14:54 1730s

00:20:19 1740s

00:24:04 1750s

00:29:38 1760s

00:33:00 1770s

00:36:00 1780s

00:43:40 1790s

00:49:26 1800s

00:54:51 1810s

01:05:34 1820s

01:09:03 1830s

01:13:05 1840s

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You can buy Igor's books directly from his publishing house here: https://songpublishing.org/?v=b6bb43df4525

In this wide-ranging conversation, artist and spiritual teacher Igor Kufayev talks with Jack and Milo about consciousness, meditation, Kashmir Shaivism (Trika Shaivism), aesthetics, creativity and the relationship between spiritual experience and everyday perception.

He reflects on a profound early meditation experience that transformed his relationship with his body and consciousness, and the moment he put Heidegger aside in favour of seeking direct experience rather than intellectual understanding.

The conversation moves from Western philosophy to the Bhagavad Gita, Kashmir Shaivism, Abhinavagupta and the concept of camatkāra—the rapture or astonishment of aesthetic experience. We also explore how ordinary reality became dull, whether consciousness actually creates the world we experience, and why the promise of extraordinary spiritual experiences distracts us from the extraordinary nature of everyday life.

00:00:00 Introduction

00:05:33 Uzbek Fruits/Raisins - Poetic epigraph

00:09:07 The meaning crisis began with the search for meaning

00:12:19 Bronze Age Greece, The Odyssey, Greek sculpture

00:16:10 Modernity and Meaning - Life Under Socialism

00:23:57 The Anatomy of Experience - Fire and Karl Marx

00:32:10 Loving the West in Central Asia

00:37:37 Disillusionment with Michelangelo, waiting for the Muse

00:41:04 Adi Shankaracharya vs. Abhinavagupta

00:47:52 Existentialism. Kung-fu Art Philosopher Musician Sage, murdered by the Mafia

00:52:05 Tragedy, Faith, Sri Aurobindo

00:56:39 Initiation into Meditation in a Dream

01:01:56 Can you have a moment of absolute transcendence which you don't notice?

01:07:10 Idealism. We animate reality by perceiving it.

01:11:35 Outright rejection of Heidegger and Western Philosophy

01:17:50 Outright love of Western Art

01:19:47 Reading Indian Spiritual Classics

01:23:55 Swami Muktananda and discovering Trika Shaivism

01:26:54 Camatkara, the bridge between art and spirit

01:34:32 Final Question

*- Cecily's list is pasted below -*

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Check out Cecily's Substack here: https://cecilycarver.substack.com/

Tremolo expertly demonstrated by Edson Lopes, who can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTBiNRT3GPM

1800s

The Earthquake in Chile - Heinrich von Kleist

1810s

Persuasion - Jane Austen

1820s

The Tale of Kieu - Nguyen Du

1830s

The Queen of Spades - Alexander Pushkin

1840s

Cousin Bette - Honoré de Balzac

1850s

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

1860s

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

1870s

Middlemarch - George Eliot

1880s

The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James

1890s

The Seagull - Anton Chekhov

1900s

The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton

1910s

In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust

1920s

The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann

1930s

Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier

1940s

Mildred Pierce - James M. Cain

1950s

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

1960s

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark

1970s

Fifth Business - Robertson Davies

1980s

Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner

1990s

A Place of Greater Safety - Hilary Mantel

0:00 Introduction

2:42 Cecily arrives

6:47 1800s

11:21 1810s

15:05 1820s

19:02 1830s

22:37 1840s

30:00 1850s

33:52 1860s

37:57 1870s

42:38 1880s

46:42 1890s

50:51 1900s

56:57 1910s

1:04:03 1920s

1:10:12 1930s

1:13:58 1940s

1:19:04 1950s

1:26:01 1960s

1:30:47 1970s

1:34:37 1980s

1:40:00 1990s

1:49:31 Conclusion