Shores Of Ignorance

Can we be in relationship with things, ideas, people, politics, and still stand outside someone else’s unique relationship with those very same things? - Dropping the lens of perception - Finding the gold in people - Bill Maher meets Trump - What is good art? - Identity is a co-residence of heart - Gandolf not coming to a conclusion - Accepting and extending invitations Matt’s forthcoming book - h...

Trials, tribulations, temptations, tension. These are the X that marks the spot for where our understanding is limited and we don’t see clearly. If we forthrightly explore that space, we find that what we considered trials, were really invitations. The Cutting Edge - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104040/ Weights and wings - https://www.crosswalk.com/devotionals/desert/streams-in-the-desert-april-9...

This week on SOI: - The co-opting and devaluing of words - Does emotional intelligence exist? - Not knowing a words definition doesn’t indicate that you don’t know what it means - Reduction of meaning as a way to avoid life - Depression, anxiety, racism - Black Lives Matter - The coining of new terms like “lived experience” - Making implicit things explicit again - Finding yourself unable to defen...

Matt and Michael break their three day fast with whiskey and a podcast. This week on SOI: - Michael’s brain is working differently - Fasting - Routines - Turn down inputs and find God - Perceptions vs reality. Guilt vs using perception as an excuse - Resentment - Job, the leviathan - The biological drives of men and women - Chess, to win or to live with people who like playing chess - Parenting af...

“We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he ‘wants a woman’. Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition (one does not keep the carton after one...

This week on SOI: - Midlife crises - Wrestling with the question of “Who am I?” - The end of the enlightenment - Cultural lack of curiosity - Protecting the structures of identity - Identity becomes aesthetic and absurd when it lacks a center - The Fifth Element https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGfYLRCJZ1c - 22 Senators all read the same script - https://x.com/yalligatorgar/status/18969751610622530...

This week on SOI: - Matt’s experience cleaning his windows - Engaging the world vs receding from it - The feeling of failure - The allure of counterfactuals - The human need to tend to life - Resentment and the story of Cain and Abel - The Kingdom of Heaven is here and now - Discovering who you are, and what you’re capable of - Falling short is how we discover who we are Find us here: x.com/mattmc...

The age of tolerance has given way to the primacy of the in group. Principles, friendship, even family, matter less than allegiances. This week we grapple with how our culture got here, and what we might do about it. - The spiritual nature of division in the West - You’re included in my circle, but I’m not included in yours - The disturbing social division of politics - How do we tolerate our neig...

This week on SOI: - Do we see reality? Or are we in the Truman Show? - How to conceive of ideas like good, evil, honor, and righteousness - Believing children are worthy of their full potential, without evidence - The 1619 Project, and the suicidal direction of acting as if we are bad - USAID, and the man behind the curtain - What is the value of “acting as if” something is true? - Why did Gen X a...

This week on SOI: * Elon, DOGE, and USAID - https://x.com/rapidresponse47/status/1887151291895267553?s=42 * Trump and Gaza (King Solomon: “Cut the baby in half.”) * “If we are not being pulled by a promise, we are being driven by fear “ - Bill Johnson / (Clip) https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFOCPVXP0AM/?igsh=MXd3bW1sZ3RlbWU0dA== * The coddling of the American mind - https://www.thecoddling.com * G...

Our podcast friend, Matt’s dog Lukah, passed away last weekend. We pay our respects and reflect on grief and a man’s bond with his dog. Then we talk about Elon Musk, George Orwell’s 1984, and the difficulty of morality. Find us here: x.com/mattmccloskey
 x.com/michaelvaclav All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav Sovereign Goods - www.et...

Elon salutes Hitler? The Left has become “the boy who cried wolf,” and Americans seem to be over it. The problem is that there’s a danger in that - we don’t want the boy who cried wolf to die all alone when the wolf actually comes. We consider possible solutions to this danger, and contend that the only solution is spiritual, not legislative. After You’ve Loved Someone (Boy cried wolf lyrics) - ht...

“It is sometimes so bitterly cold in the winter that one says, 'The cold is too awful for me to care whether summer is coming or not; the harm outdoes the good. But with or without our approval, the severe weather does come to an end eventually and one fine morning the wind changes and there is a thaw. When I compare the state of the weather to our state of mind and our circumstances, subject to c...

From the Pharisees to Jesus, from the cable channels to podcasts, from the Oscars to Instagram, the arbiters of fact, truth, and celebrity seem always to loose their grasp as the world rejuvenates around them. Show Notes: Wesley Huff on Joe Rogan: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0alzUZNnXcEL9MJzE9KD9P?si=qqE2YbplQDeuEsynf7ONeg C.S. Lewis Quote: https://x.com/tillwehvfaces/status/18769610464868231...

"The beauty of doing nothing is that you can do it perfectly. Only when you do something is it almost impossible to do it without mistakes. Therefore people who are contributing nothing to society, except their constant criticisms, can feel both intellectually and morally superior." -THOMAS SOWELL- x.com/mattmccloskey 
x.com/michaelvaclav All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey All Michae...

Our last episode of 2024! We look back on the year, and the super-cycle that was 2020-2024, and talk about the possible renaissance that 2025 may bring. Stick around til the end for an unexpected heated debate about whether love languages exist. x.com/mattmccloskey
 x.com/michaelvaclav All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav Sovereign Go...

Tonight we apply the philosopher’s thought experiment of The Ship of Theseus to the issues of meaning, and Matt tells the story of rebuilding his father’s table. Plutarch in his Life of Theseus: The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as t...

We discuss Fyodor Dostoevsky’s advice about lying, Matt’s desire to be a good father, sourdough bread, and turtles all the way down. “Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love...

How do you have productive conversations with people who disagree with you? How do you discuss things that are hard? Good question. We appeal to grace and humility. Elizabeth Gilbert TED Talk - https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_creative_genius?subtitle=en The History of Glass - https://youtu.be/2oDXbFcHliM?si=shDdxQjAU2zgsh95 x.com/mattmccloskey
x.com/michaelvaclav All Matt’...

We discuss the reactions to the 2024 election results over the last week, and the way women’s rights were handled by the two campaigns, the media, and on social media. x.com/mattmccloskey 
x.com/michaelvaclav All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav Sovereign Goods - www.etsy.com/shop/SovereignThreadGoods
 Cafe Medici - mediciroasting.com...

Americans have spoken in a stunning referendum. We try to understand what this 2024 election result says about our country, and discuss what it means to be an American. Show Notes: Bureaucracy swapped with Democracy: https://x.com/Banned_Bill/status/1853842945767592429 Konstantin Kisin’s 10 Reasons: https://x.com/KonstantinKisin/status/1854151133385613690 x.com/mattmccloskey 
x.com/michaelvaclav A...

We’re under a week away from one of the wildest elections of our lifetimes. We make some predictions, and talk about how we see the race. Two years ago we had a rule that we wouldn’t talk about politics on SOI - and yet, here we are. Show References: Darkhorse podcast - https://open.spotify.com/episode/6z2NBMHmqbIJeUDJuYmSSH?si=89e24d2c141b407c Heather’s article - https://naturalselections.substac...

We grapple with the question "is there a 'best' way to live?" We make our way through subjects of energy, adventure, wisdom, tradition, marriage, fatherhood, and ultimately decide that Peter Pan is not to be aspired to, but growing up certainly is. Matt’s Essay - https://mattmccloskey.substack.com/p/theres-no-right-way-to-play-a-song?r=12nd17
 Sovereign Goods - www.etsy.com/shop/SovereignThreadGoo...

The western world seems to be locked in an ideological battle between freedom and creativity vs safety and assurance. x.com/mattmccloskey
x.com/michaelvaclav
Sovereign Goods - www.etsy.com/shop/SovereignThreadGoods
Cafe Medici - mediciroasting.com/?srsltid=AfmBOo…9eDe2OliQmjTc2A All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav

When truth is moved from the external to internal, the world becomes inverted. G.K. Chesterton says that a man should be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth. If we jettison our highest ideals every virtue and every vice races to the bottom, and extinguishes. "The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When...