Doubt is Antimemetic

0:07[SPEAKER_00]: This is the Graceful Eighties Conference. [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome, welcome to the Graceful Eighties podcast. [SPEAKER_00]: My name is David, and I am trying to beat the Graceful Eighties. [SPEAKER_00]: Are you struggling with doubt the Dark Knight of the Soul? [SPEAKER_00]: The message of this podcast is that you are not alone. [SPEAKER_00]: you'll hear many stories of the people who have come through doubt and deconstruction to a healthy secular life on the other side.

0:43[SPEAKER_00]: If you'd like to join our decompersion anonymous group, you can find us at facebook.com slash groups slash decompersion. [SPEAKER_00]: All right, I'm going to jump right in. [SPEAKER_00]: This is a solo episode. [SPEAKER_00]: This is one of those episodes of ideas that [SPEAKER_00]: fascinate me that may or may not fascinate everyone else, but here we go. [SPEAKER_00]: I recently came upon the idea of anti-mamedics and we will explain what that means shortly, but there are two books out there that explore the idea.

1:20[SPEAKER_00]: One is a science fiction book that apparently was based off of [SPEAKER_00]: And that was super fun and I really enjoyed it. [SPEAKER_00]: But I was blown away when I read the nonfiction book by Nadia Asparova called Antimimetics why some ideas resist spreading. [SPEAKER_00]: Just in the intro of the book, I realized I needed to do this episode. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that Antimimetics applies to the doubt, deconstruction and deconversion process.

2:02[SPEAKER_00]: To talk about antibiotics, we have to begin with what is a meme. [SPEAKER_00]: The word meme was coined by Richard Dawkins decades ago. [SPEAKER_00]: We're not talking about can I ask cheeseburger memes of like pictures and things? [SPEAKER_00]: But the idea is that analogous to genes that spread DNA and change over time, a meme is an idea that gets spread culturally and may change over time. [SPEAKER_00]: And in our world, sometimes those memes can go viral.

2:37[SPEAKER_00]: In many ways, the existing set of religions that we have in our culture today, [SPEAKER_00]: are very successful means. [SPEAKER_00]: In some cases, they survive through centuries of [SPEAKER_00]: cultural change, adaptation, going from one culture to another, spreading across the globe. [SPEAKER_00]: So we already have experience with successful means. [SPEAKER_00]: These are ideas that get spread from human to human. [SPEAKER_00]: It's important to realize that they can be deeply important and meaningful, like scientific discoveries, cultural artifacts that are important to a group of people.

3:16[SPEAKER_00]: or they can be meaningless, you know, think earworms, they song, you just cannot get out of your head. [SPEAKER_00]: So everything from equals MC squared to a Britney Spears song that you can't get out of your head can be thought of as means. [SPEAKER_00]: We're not here to talk about memes today. [SPEAKER_00]: We're here to talk about anti memes. [SPEAKER_00]: And so the opposite of a meme is an idea that has some resistance to spreading.

3:49[SPEAKER_00]: Now, an anti-meam can be really important. [SPEAKER_00]: It could be as important as the equals MC squared, but for whatever reason, resists spreading. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, this means that humans are not spreading the idea, and that is what is interesting. [SPEAKER_00]: Nadia talks about anti-meams or ideas that are self-sensoring or actively resist being spread, unlike memes which are self-propagating. [SPEAKER_00]: They're often too consequential.

4:18[SPEAKER_00]: They're uncomfortable or complex for an attention-driven internet leading to self-silencing or being buried in whisper networks. [SPEAKER_00]: So she gives the examples of taboos, cognitive biases. [SPEAKER_00]: I think her most approachable example is daylight savings. [SPEAKER_00]: Almost everyone hates daylight savings. [SPEAKER_00]: At least the change of time. [SPEAKER_00]: And twice a year, we all get terribly upset [SPEAKER_00]: talk about it for two to three weeks and then immediately forget about it.

4:50[SPEAKER_00]: Legislation has just come to a screeching halt in the US Congress because people don't fight for it in the other 48 weeks of the year. [SPEAKER_00]: They only care about it twice a year when it affects them. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's a good [SPEAKER_00]: The other idea that she is talking about is the difference between the way that the internet molded into a public forum sometimes referred to an idealistic kind of way as a giant public town hall.

5:25[SPEAKER_00]: And then the argument in her book is that what we have seen over the 2010s, effectively, and early 2020s, is those ideas in such a large public forum led to tribalism. [SPEAKER_00]: Basically, we took sides, we railed against one another, and that to some degree or another, that is a predictable outcome of having such a public forum in order to express ideas. [SPEAKER_00]: One of the ideas that she has about anti memes is I'll retreat into the text group.

5:58[SPEAKER_00]: If you have a text group of friends on signal or just on your phone or what's app or what have you, you're able to express an idea that is a little more dangerous that requires the context of the friend group that you have in that text group to not put you on blast immediately. [SPEAKER_00]: They would understand if you're trying to say something. [SPEAKER_00]: and it might be on the surface controversial. [SPEAKER_00]: So I think it's really interesting that Nadia is describing what has actually happened.

6:30[SPEAKER_00]: We have retreated to these groups. [SPEAKER_00]: I have exactly such a group of friends where we chat about things, not necessarily controversial in any way. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't mean that. [SPEAKER_00]: But rather that it's a safe space. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a place where we know who's in that group and we trust everyone who's in that group. [SPEAKER_00]: The Facebook de-conversion anonymous group is exactly what this is. [SPEAKER_00]: It is a safe place where you can express ideas.

6:57[SPEAKER_00]: You can express doubt. [SPEAKER_00]: You can express your frustration, your anger. [SPEAKER_00]: You know that the people within that group have the context of the experience of deconstructing faith. [SPEAKER_00]: And so you are much safer there to express these ideas [SPEAKER_00]: anywhere else, even in a secular context where people don't have the context of what it means to be deconstructing. [SPEAKER_00]: So this is an a great example of an anti-memetic retreat to safe spaces.

7:33[SPEAKER_00]: One last idea from Nadia, before we jump into how to place this audience, [SPEAKER_00]: is the idea of truth tellers. [SPEAKER_00]: So individuals who surface ideas without necessarily popularizing them, they act as a kind of, almost like, think old school profits coming out and saying the truth. [SPEAKER_00]: They might be ignored entirely, but that doesn't say whether or not the message, the idea that they are spreading is correct or not.

8:03[SPEAKER_00]: I want to pause here and just say, I definitely don't want to fall into the heterodox sphere here, especially during COVID, there was a whole group of people who disagreed with things like vaccines and mask mandates and things of that nature, and it was [SPEAKER_00]: Contrarianism for contrarianism sake. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that is what Nadia is suggesting here, and I absolutely, it is not what I am suggesting here. [SPEAKER_00]: So just to be a hundred percent clear, I'm not talking about just doing your own research, and then thinking you have the truth and no one else does.

8:40[SPEAKER_00]: That's definitely not what we're talking about. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's the quick intro to what an anti meme is. [SPEAKER_00]: And like I said, as I was reading Nadiya's just the intro to the book, I immediately saw how this applies to the doubt, deconstruction, de-conversion experience. [SPEAKER_00]: Many people that I have interviewed on the show have talked about the process of doubt on the way to deconstruction, on the way to de-conversion.

9:19[SPEAKER_00]: My friend, Matthew Taylor, has a play on the quote about bankruptcy that it happens slowly and then all of a sudden. [SPEAKER_00]: He talks about suddenly being aware of his doubts and his lack of belief, and that actually [SPEAKER_00]: Amy Logan of X-Mormonology Podcast fame. [SPEAKER_00]: She described on this podcast that it was something that would make you go, but she would put it on the shelf for later. [SPEAKER_00]: Remember when you're in the middle of faith and something that causes you to think, causes you to stop for a moment [SPEAKER_00]: We would tend to then ignore it, right?

10:10[SPEAKER_00]: We're done with that. [SPEAKER_00]: We've gone through the darkened out of the soul and now our faith is stronger. [SPEAKER_00]: And we would put it to the back of our minds or on the proverbial shelf. [SPEAKER_00]: Many others have described this in different metaphors, but the same idea holds true. [SPEAKER_00]: When we are in the middle of belief and we have all of this pressure to conform and remain a part of the group, when an idea comes that is, [SPEAKER_00]: a little bit dangerous, and we have a maybe not even conscious or admitted thought that if we follow that doubt further, bad things would happen.

10:48[SPEAKER_00]: We would lose faith, we would lose our community, and we're unwilling to do that. [SPEAKER_00]: If any of you have seen the HBO television show called Westworld, very quickly I'll set this up. [SPEAKER_00]: There are nearly sentient robots, spoiler alert, they become sentient, who are in this western-like town. [SPEAKER_00]: that is basically Disneyland for very rich people and whenever one of the robotic characters sees something that is from the real world, say like a power generation shed or something like that.

11:27[SPEAKER_00]: They'd be looking right at it, but they would say that doesn't look like anything to me. [SPEAKER_00]: At, oh man, that strikes home. [SPEAKER_00]: I feel that in my bones that as a believer when I would see something that was real and countered my worldview, it didn't seem like anything to me at the time. [SPEAKER_00]: It was anti-limetic. [SPEAKER_00]: So not only would I hold onto the idea, I would forget it immediately, I would, many ways actively work against remembering it.

12:06[SPEAKER_00]: Again, because what's on the line? [SPEAKER_00]: Relationship with God, a sense of purpose and faith belonging to the group. [SPEAKER_00]: I have to conform to belong to the group. [SPEAKER_00]: So then let's move beyond just doubt. [SPEAKER_00]: In my blog posts, how to dig in certain 10 easy steps, I talk about those beginning phases of the doubts that I just described as precipitating events and critical mass. [SPEAKER_00]: As the precipitating events or doubts start to pile up, you hit some critical mass.

12:39[SPEAKER_00]: And at some point in time, you begin to give yourself a little bit of freedom to doubt. [SPEAKER_00]: A little bit of freedom to go and explore outside of the prescribed or allowed sources of information. [SPEAKER_00]: Until that point, you may have never been willing to read secular authors. [SPEAKER_00]: And here I don't mean atheists. [SPEAKER_00]: I just mean non-Christian, non-whatever tradition you came up with. [SPEAKER_00]: Authors, writers, blog posters, podcasts, what have you?

13:11[SPEAKER_00]: And at some point, you start to allow yourself. [SPEAKER_00]: You give yourself permission to doubt. [SPEAKER_00]: You start to reach out. [SPEAKER_00]: This is obviously the beginning of deconstruction. [SPEAKER_00]: However, this is not something you talk about with anyone. [SPEAKER_00]: You might feel tremendous guilt about it. [SPEAKER_00]: You might feel like you are the worst person ever because you're having these doubts. [SPEAKER_00]: You're potentially starting to explore outside of what is allowed within your particular faith tradition.

13:38[SPEAKER_00]: And so you can't tell anyone. [SPEAKER_00]: You can't tell your friends who are also believers. [SPEAKER_00]: You can't tell your family who are also believers. [SPEAKER_00]: It can be very, very lonely. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is because it is antimemitic. [SPEAKER_00]: The idea is so dangerous that you can't spread it. [SPEAKER_00]: You can't talk about it with anyone else. [SPEAKER_00]: And that is part of why it feels like you're the only one who has ever gone through this.

14:05[SPEAKER_00]: For those of you who are listening now who might be believers, I'm here to tell you, we've all been through this and many of us have come out the other side. [SPEAKER_00]: So you are not alone, and that is the most important message that you can get from this episode and this podcast. [SPEAKER_00]: Another anti-mamedic aspect of deconstruction and de-conversion is the fact that when you are going through it, you don't know what those terms are.

14:32[SPEAKER_00]: You probably have never heard the term deconstruction or de-conversion before, and as you're experiencing the doubt, you don't know where to go look. [SPEAKER_00]: You don't know that there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of us out there, because you don't even know what the word is, unless you happen to have heard it from your pastor or an apologist online. [SPEAKER_00]: So deconstruction itself is antimemitic. [SPEAKER_00]: It resists spreading.

15:02[SPEAKER_00]: And I can tell that because outside of social media, the most available content is from Christians, pastors talking about deconstruction. [SPEAKER_00]: And I have to tell you, every time I've heard a pastor talk about deconstruction, it proves to me that they have never spoken to anyone actually going through deconstruction. [SPEAKER_00]: And I know this because this podcast, we've got 150 plus interviews of people who have gone through it.

15:32[SPEAKER_00]: If there's a very common set of milestones along the way, and when pastors, evangelists, apologists on YouTube, what have you talk about deconstruction, it's absolutely clear they have never actually talked to somebody who is actually going through deconstruction, because deconstruction is [SPEAKER_00]: So let's take it even further. [SPEAKER_00]: Some of us complete as it were, deconstruction and de-convert entirely. [SPEAKER_00]: We completely abandon faith and in my case, completely abandon supernatural explanations for anything.

16:11[SPEAKER_00]: I think of those who have de-converted or late-stage deconstruction, the vast, vast majority barely talk about it. [SPEAKER_00]: not only because many of their friends, their community, their family, may still be believers, but also because you don't want to take away someone else's faith. [SPEAKER_00]: listeners know that my wife Michelle is very much a believer and I have zero interest in having her deconvert. [SPEAKER_00]: I know how much her faith means to her and unless she were to come to deconstruction and deconversion on her own, I will not be the one who pushes her towards that because I know what that means to her and how difficult that process is and this is because deconversion is [SPEAKER_00]: it resists spreading.

17:05[SPEAKER_00]: It's a dangerous idea. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm using dangerous almost with scare quotes. [SPEAKER_00]: It's important to remember that the idea can be significant. [SPEAKER_00]: It can be important even. [SPEAKER_00]: It can be absolutely true, as I think de-conversion is, but it still resists spreading. [SPEAKER_00]: And that is what makes it anti-momedicine. [SPEAKER_00]: So some of us, like yours truly, start blogs or podcasts. [SPEAKER_00]: Some of you start Instagram or TikTok or YouTube channels where you talk about deconstruction, a deconversion, and the loss of faith.

17:44[SPEAKER_00]: And even though it may seem like, because we all talk to each other, that there are a lot of us, I posit that we are actually the very few, that there are very few of us who are out publicly talking about deconstruction and de-conversion. [SPEAKER_00]: and that we who are publicly out front and center are in some ways and I know this is a bit self-serving. [SPEAKER_00]: Some ways that truth teller that Nadia talked about. [SPEAKER_00]: We are the exception to the rule.

18:15[SPEAKER_00]: I think the vast majority quietly go about their lives and grow new communities and talking about religion or the breakdown of religion is not a major part of most people's lives. [SPEAKER_00]: After de-conversion, I refer to myself as an atheist. [SPEAKER_00]: I understand how difficult that is for people after they have deconstructed and de-converted. [SPEAKER_00]: The term atheist has so much baggage with it that most people reject it.

18:50[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever you look at Pew Research Studies, it's a handful of percentages of people [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people want to refer to themselves as agnostic, which is totally respectable. [SPEAKER_00]: Again, I'm not about the labels, but there are definitions of words. [SPEAKER_00]: Atheists just means not atheist. [SPEAKER_00]: I am not atheist. [SPEAKER_00]: I am an atheist, and I have no problem with the moniker. [SPEAKER_00]: But my point here is that atheism is anti-memetic.

19:23[SPEAKER_00]: And that's contrary to the early 2000s, 2010s rise to fame of, let's say, the Four Horsemen and atheism had a moment in the spotlight. [SPEAKER_00]: So that is true. [SPEAKER_00]: But still, I think atheism itself resists spreading. [SPEAKER_00]: Again, contrary to some of the YouTube channels that exist out there, atheism is not evangelistic. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a hard sell to people. [SPEAKER_00]: To go out there and say, have you heard the good news that there is no God?

19:54[SPEAKER_00]: That is a difficult idea to spread. [SPEAKER_00]: I personally think that the logical conclusion to deconstruction is deconversion and atheism. [SPEAKER_00]: We're about to talk about humanism, which is on the other side. [SPEAKER_00]: But all signs are pointing towards a lack of theism. [SPEAKER_00]: And yet, atheism itself is not popular. [SPEAKER_00]: Does not spread well. [SPEAKER_00]: It is adenomatic. [SPEAKER_00]: Even as I'm describing this, many of you listeners are probably getting nervous or having a reaction to the words that I am saying, and that shows how anti-memetic atheism is.

20:39[SPEAKER_00]: It is often said that perception is reality. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think the perceived baggage that comes along with the term atheism is a reality for many people. [SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, the idea does not spread well. [SPEAKER_00]: We live in a time of social media and mass communication and ideas flow very quickly, sometimes to our detriment, which is another point that Nadia is making. [SPEAKER_00]: But imagine being in almost any time in history prior to the internet and going through deconstruction and de-conversion, you would have no idea what those terms were.

21:20[SPEAKER_00]: You would be very alone and finding others would be incredibly difficult, especially if you called yourself an atheist. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's keep going. [SPEAKER_00]: When I de-converted, the first thing that I realized was that I had been unwittingly, unknowingly, a religious humanist. [SPEAKER_00]: And what I mean by that is I absolutely believed in God. [SPEAKER_00]: I was very much an evangelical Christian, even though I had deconstructed lots of things without even knowing what the word deconstruction meant.

21:59[SPEAKER_00]: But what I mean by religious humanist is I was because of that deconstruction, very focused on people. [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, the concept of grace was a major part of both my faith and after faith. [SPEAKER_00]: And part of that deconstruction for me was taking grace to its logical conclusion. [SPEAKER_00]: If you take grace seriously, even within the confines of Christian belief, it leads to universalism, it leads to accepting people for who they are, accepting the people who are typically defined outside of the circle of Christians because they are human beings.

22:45[SPEAKER_00]: And so I began to appreciate [SPEAKER_00]: the humanity of people and recognize it's great value, it's deserving of kindness, love, respect, and dignity. [SPEAKER_00]: And so when I de-converted, I was a secular humanist. [SPEAKER_00]: Humanism itself is anti-memetic. [SPEAKER_00]: As I'm speaking, it's actually hard to come up with the definition of what humanism is. [SPEAKER_00]: In a few words, humanism is a focus on human beings without reference to a supernatural entity, a human rights aspect, giving rights dignity and respect to other human beings, both at a local level and at national levels.

23:39[SPEAKER_00]: A simple way to describe humanism is being good without God, having ethical principles that guide your life without a reference to the supernatural or to God. [SPEAKER_00]: One of my favorite authors in the secular world is Jennifer Michael Hatt and in her book doubt a history, she calls this a graceful life philosophy. [SPEAKER_00]: So humanism is a graceful life philosophy. [SPEAKER_00]: Catherine Osmett has a book that is called Grace Without God.

24:11[SPEAKER_00]: So you can continue the idea, this idea of goodness without God, grace without God. [SPEAKER_00]: humanism also describes the artistic form from the Renaissance as painters began to focus on the human form. [SPEAKER_00]: So it is this wide idea that is all encompassing in some ways and very difficult to describe. [SPEAKER_00]: Humanism itself is antinemitic. [SPEAKER_00]: And the fact that humanism doesn't spread evangelically, there are very few people who actually refer to themselves as humanists as I do.

24:51[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's because it's antimemetic. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not an idea that spreads easily. [SPEAKER_00]: The religious will reject it because they will say that you're just worshiping yourself or worshiping human beings, which it definitely is not. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks to my friend, Captain Cassidy, who talks about one of her community members referring to the fallacy of the conservation of worship that believers believe that [SPEAKER_00]: We always worship something, and so if we are not worshiping God, we're worshiping ourselves, or money, or drugs, or alcohol, or whatever.

25:28[SPEAKER_00]: Complete fallacy, not true, we are not worshiping ourselves, or human beings. [SPEAKER_00]: What we are doing is acknowledging the importance, the value, the dignity, the rights of human beings. [SPEAKER_00]: And that is what it means to be a humanist. [SPEAKER_00]: So I find it sad, really, that humanism is anti-memetic, that it is difficult to spread, that it is difficult to give away to other people. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that humanism will help many, many people who are going through the deconstruction process and those who fully de-convert.

26:08[SPEAKER_00]: I think regardless if you remain within the faith, religious humanism is a real thing. [SPEAKER_00]: or if you were out of the faith, secular humanism is a real thing, and it is a ethical guide to living out being a good human on this earth, being good to each other, being good to the earth itself, all the way up to the political ideas of pluralism and secularism, which refer to allowing the ideas within the market, even ones that you disagree with.

26:41[SPEAKER_00]: So my point is that I think humanism would help many more people if people were even remotely aware of what humanism is or how to engage with it. [SPEAKER_00]: But because of its anti-mamedic properties, it is difficult to spread. [SPEAKER_00]: And now I've already hinted about grace being such a significant part of my life, both as a believer and now as a secular humanist, [SPEAKER_00]: And a major theme of the podcast is what I call secular grace.

27:15[SPEAKER_00]: My realization, as I was doing the final stages of deconstruction and de-conversion, was that grace is much less about the vertical aspect between a non-existent deity and the human beings, and much more about person to person, how we treat each other, [SPEAKER_00]: we have done episodes in the past about how many many movies portray secular grace. [SPEAKER_00]: My favorite of which not just the movie, but book and play lay miserable, particularly the scene between Jean-Veal John and the priest.

27:55[SPEAKER_00]: Jean-Veal John is stealing the silverware and the priest helps him put it in a bag and sets him on his way. [SPEAKER_00]: I think this was just such a beautiful expression of secular grace. [SPEAKER_00]: There was no reference to God. [SPEAKER_00]: It happened to be a priest, but it was two human beings. [SPEAKER_00]: And the priest was showing kindness and love and respect to another human being because he recognized the need that John Bell John.

28:27[SPEAKER_00]: Every dog movie you have ever watched where the dog sacrifices itself at the end is an expression of secular grace. [SPEAKER_00]: Every more movie you've ever seen where one person or a group of people sacrifice their lives is an expression of secular grace. [SPEAKER_00]: It's so much embedded in our culture and I would argue that it predates Christianity. [SPEAKER_00]: I hear the college is screaming now that no, we get this from Christianity, but I think that's not true.

29:00[SPEAKER_00]: I think that secular grace predates that and the idea of laying down your life or sacrificing for others is a deeply human expression of morality and goodness. [SPEAKER_00]: I love this so much. [SPEAKER_00]: So this one is [SPEAKER_00]: is a little bit different. [SPEAKER_00]: The underlying idea of sacrifice, I think, is mimetic. [SPEAKER_00]: It has spread wildly as the movies and books and cultural references I've just described.

29:30[SPEAKER_00]: But talking about it, kind of outwardly, giving it the name that I do, secular grace, that is really difficult to [SPEAKER_00]: I've talked a lot about how it starts to sound saccharine sweet. [SPEAKER_00]: Kind of good at tissues and too good to be true and maybe fake even. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's difficult to carry the line of how powerful I believe secular grace is, how much I believe it is a human need that we need acceptance and love from one another, that we crave it.

30:10[SPEAKER_00]: an earlier podcast I did with a very good friend of mine, Mark Diaz, who is still a believer, but he talked about craving that acceptance and respect from others. [SPEAKER_00]: I just think this is a human need. [SPEAKER_00]: And when we [SPEAKER_00]: connect with one another when we are a safe place for someone to be authentically themselves to be able to come out for various things to be able to acknowledge very strong emotions, maybe acknowledge abuse.

30:44[SPEAKER_00]: If we're a safe place for that, we are expressing secular grace. [SPEAKER_00]: Even if the idea secular grace is anti-memetic, [SPEAKER_00]: the behavior, the caring, the kindness, that can be magnetic, it can spread. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that you, listener, can be a powerful force in the world for goodness, to connect with your other human beings, to acknowledge their humanity, show them respect and dignity, and that is so powerful, it is life-changing, and it can overcome the ridiculous craziness of the world that we experience today.

31:33[SPEAKER_00]: final thoughts on the episode. [SPEAKER_00]: I've reached out to Nadia Asperova and unfortunately she's already working on other projects and is no longer available for podcasts about anti-meminics. [SPEAKER_00]: So I had to do the podcast on my own. [SPEAKER_00]: I still think the antibiotics is such a great idea. [SPEAKER_00]: Ironically, I think antibiotics is anti-memetic. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a difficult idea to spread. [SPEAKER_00]: It's difficult even to explain it.

31:59[SPEAKER_00]: But if you are more interested in the topic, I highly recommend Nadia Asperova's book, anti-memetics, why some ideas resist spreading. [SPEAKER_00]: The other book that I mentioned that she also refers to is called, there is no anti-memedics division by quantum, a science fiction story where the characters have to fight monsters that they immediately forget about. [SPEAKER_00]: So all kinds of fun as well, I recommend that book also.

32:25[SPEAKER_00]: There will be links in the show notes for those books, and I recommend you check them out. [SPEAKER_00]: The secular grace thought of the week. [SPEAKER_00]: For me, I have been thinking a lot lately [SPEAKER_00]: the people who are going to be changing their minds about politics. [SPEAKER_00]: Saturday Night Live, Amy Padilla did a fantastic sketch a few months ago where she was playing a character who had been a Trump fan who was just coming to the acceptance that maybe possibly Trump was wrong and a liar.

33:02[SPEAKER_00]: And of course it's, you know, very, very funny, her kids are just jumping up and down like we told you we told you and [SPEAKER_00]: but I think we're going to see a lot of that. [SPEAKER_00]: I think we're going to have a lot of friends and family who are going to be going through the process of changing their minds. [SPEAKER_00]: And I can hear you out there saying just like the kids did, but they don't deserve it. [SPEAKER_00]: You're 100% right.

33:27[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what secular grace is. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is why I mean it's not about God to people. [SPEAKER_00]: It's about person to person. [SPEAKER_00]: horrific, terrible, destructive, painful ideologies are human themselves, and if we stay in our tribes and push people away and punish them for having been wrong, [SPEAKER_00]: All of that leads us to more strife, more anger, more tribalism, more of what we are currently experiencing.

34:08[SPEAKER_00]: So I know it's crazy to ask, but we need to be accepting of the people who are changing their minds. [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the criticism of secular grace that I have received over the years is correct and valid, [SPEAKER_00]: allowing an abuser to continue to abuse, allowing a gaslighting to continue to gaslight. [SPEAKER_00]: I do not mean that. [SPEAKER_00]: We absolutely have to have strong boundaries in those kinds of abusive situations.

34:40[SPEAKER_00]: What I do mean is for people who are in the process of changing their minds, [SPEAKER_00]: rather than punishing them to relieve our anger at the world and the entire situation, they need it all of branch. [SPEAKER_00]: They need a way home. [SPEAKER_00]: They need a way back. [SPEAKER_00]: It's the prodigal son coming home and we get to either be the brother or the father to use a religious [SPEAKER_00]: Steve Hassan, who does a lot of work on cults, talks about being in the monies and his entire family rejected him, but his sister would speak to him.

35:21[SPEAKER_00]: His sister didn't punish him for having the wrong ideas. [SPEAKER_00]: And when he broke out of the monies, it was his sister that he went to first. [SPEAKER_00]: So again, I appreciate that I am talking about something that is incredibly difficult and not easy in any way and goes against our human nature in some way or another. [SPEAKER_00]: But that is my friends, secular grace. [SPEAKER_00]: Until next time, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist.

35:59[SPEAKER_00]: Join me and be graceful human beings. [SPEAKER_00]: If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show, email me atracelavius.jr.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations, and full episode transcripts head over to www.racelavius.com. [SPEAKER_00]: This is the Graceful Avius Podcast.