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Interview with Thomas Flight (Patreon)

Published:
2024-02-28 23:15:01
Edited:
2024-02-28 23:15:28
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Thomas Flight kindly reached out to interview me!! You will never GUESS what I talk about (Peterson, social media, art, ego, philosophy)

Files

Art, Philosophy, Faith - A Conversation with CJ The X

A wide ranging conversation with CJ The X about art, media criticism, philosophy, and faith. Watch CJ's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@cjthex Kill The Internet: https://www.cjthex.com/killtheinternet/

Comments

sirathena

I love the work of Jaron Lanier. I attended a talk of his at World Science Festival a few years ago and immediately was done with social media. It was only during the pandemic that I went back to IG. I've been off and on social media like---ENTIRELY off for a long time, spending time away, coming back, observing peoples' behaviors from the outside, watching my behaviors change from the inside. I love when he talks about the internet when it was this new and hopeful and open thing, I'm 37 and remember a version of that, a version of not BEING THE PRODUCT sold to advertisers. Watching the advertising model take hold was really strange. I feel a deep sadness about it. I feel a deep sadness that most people who are on instagram/tik tok/twitter are like "yeah I hate it it's hell it's bad i wish there was something else" but we don't really demand specific from developers who make this stuff because of the mass addiction. I'm going through such a weird time right now because I've gotten a more minimal phone (it's tiny and I don't have apps basically) and peoples' FASCINATION with the fact that "THAT is your PHONE?!"---either they're kind of frustrated because I say "if you want to send me a picture or anything I can't get it on this phone so you could always email me. i check my email 3 times a day." ---like---I'm so annoying and eye-roll worthy to some people but to a lot of people they're like "WOW THATS AMAZING I WISH I COULD DO THAT" and it's sad to me because it DOES actually feel like people being like "Oh i could never quit cigarettes I know they're BAD but they're my vice" etc. Sometimes being more tech minimal and giving myself structure and parameters makes me feel like I am in a room full of smokers and I'm not a smoker and they all dream of quitting but they're also all around other smokers.

Emrys

Ok whaaat, I'm very stoked that you're going to break down Robert Pirsig. He was a huge influence for me when I was still a teenager, and the concept of quality still lives rent free in my mind in the process of making art. Keep it up Cj, you're killing it.

benedict.m

love how the conversation started to die down a little around an hour in but then y'all like found another layer and seemed to get even deeper into it. this confirmed my feeling that Thomas is a very good egg

SkateLouis

It 's interesting how I've watched Thomas Flight before but never thought he had all this background knowledge on filosophy and spirituality and such. That realization drove home the idea of how we divide and compartialize ourselves and other people's experiences online. There is so much more to someone's life that gets lost in bites and binary. And honestly, should we really strive to say everything about our own individuality? like, even outside the social media sphere, what is that for?

Josh Milburn

The bit near the end about meditation and the power of transferring practices, energy, etc in person reminds me of one of the parts of your Subjectivity in Art essay that really stuck with me where you talk about the difference between words and lyrics. In The Midnight Gospel (holy shit please watch it if you haven't; it supercharged my spirituality and outlook on life in a way that I can't even describe), one of the episodes is a discussion with a practitioner of Western Magic. At one point he describes the relationship between mentor and pupil, and how there's an energy that gets passed on that's necessary to make spells work; you need more than just the words on the page. Duncan makes the connection to a similar concept in Eastern spirituality, which you two also touch on. It just makes so much sense to me that, similar to when you talk about aesthetic testimony not being a replacement for 'seeing the movie,' there's an inherent, intangible energy to experiencing things in person that has really been diminished over time.

Jo

At around 1:23:00 you mention, and im pretty sure youve mentioned it before elsewhere, that in conflicts you sometimes run into this problem where the fact that you cant hold onto your ego better or want to empathize with the person youre having the fight with, ends up making it worse, than had you just said that they hurt your feelings. This is something I see quite a few people struggling with, myself absolutely included. Because of this ( and the fact that its a weirdly resonant phenomenon for the questions of the age i.e. the whole neo cartesianism / meaning crisis / brain rott thing-a-magig ) Ive thought A LOT about this. And I think ive cracked it, in theory at least, practice is of course a bit harder. Shortish version: the problem in these situations ( at least in my experience and if were talking about the same thing) is not actually that one isnt holding onto ones ego enough, it is incorrectly assessing what level of ones own ego is at play in or has been activated by the situation, precisely because one has experienced the truth of and values the state of egolessness and the magic it can make happen ( I always describe this as the moral interpersonal equivalent of Bruce Lees description of Wing Chun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJMwBwFj5nQ), thereby , perversely enough, using the language of egolessness to go ever deeper down the ego hole. For me when I reflect on it afterward it usually feels like what was happening is, that instead of being egoless flexible water, I wanted to be an "I" that is without ego, egotistically. What I mean is, that were it available ( by a mix of good luck and cultivation of openness towards that state) in the given situation to be SELF-less, there would have been no self whose feelings the other person could have hurt in the first place, and the whole situation would have been unimaginably different, in the litteral sense because it is Me doing the imagining right now. But by pretending to already be there when I am not, I actually take myself further away from the possiblity, while failing to pragmatically deal with the situation I am actually in or more precisely with the fact that it is "I" that is in it. One cannot be gracious if one is not currently in a state of grace. "The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath." - W.S.

spencer schoening

Holy shit Vervaeke IS the lightside Jordan Peterson. I was nodding along like 'yup I see it' for two of his meaning crisis videos and then he started talking about the bible!!

fall-girl

1:17:30 when CJ mentioned a political debate for beauty instead of “who’s right” it reminded me of a hebrew phrase: machloket, literally translated as Argument for the Sake of Heaven. which i really like