Episode 10

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We come together to have a fascinating conversation with Sean. And, Sean and I are in this, group together, and I've been seeing his post more and more since I joined it.
And last week, I saw one about adultery that I thought was really interesting. And then right after that, he came and posted a great thread.
He's a fantastic writer about the 17. Yeah. Sorry. That's my Siri watch. About the the lies of the sexual revolution. And so we we're gonna we called the space based sort of in that second thread that he wrote.
But I think we're gonna start on the first one. But first of all, Sean, welcome. I know you're busy. Thank you for being here. Maybe start out by just sort of telling people what your account is about and what you write about.
Sure. And happy to be here, Shannon. Yeah. Thank you for having me on as well. I'm excited to be here and definitely excited to talk about these topics, today.
As far as just a quick idea of who I am, what I write about on here, I guess in short, as my bio says, you know, it's my mission here to try to help everyone find joy by sharing lessons from everything, true, good, and beautiful.
And maybe a bit as to what sort of inspired me to wanna write on such topics is I was, before I came onto Twitter, really about ten years ago, I was someone in university who was very unhappy with life, and I was probably a victim of modernity.
You know, the the sort of great lies that say, you know, life is really what you make of it.
You know, you make your own meaning, have fun, just, you know, do you, man. Like, you know, find your own freedom. And I found that very not a very good way to live. It didn't really answer any of the existential angst I had.
It it didn't really calm my soul. And then, you know, it was really a good, professor of mine in college. When I sort of started to share my qualms about how to find meaning in life, he said, well, how about you read books?
And I trusted him. And all of a sudden, I started, I was reading books like the Count of Monte Cristo, Dostoevsky, just classical literature, and that started to speak to my soul at a time when I didn't realize I even had a soul.
And in short, I I began to realize through literature and great books and eventually philosophy and then religion that, oh, there's things like truth, beauty, and goodness that can speak to you.
And they can't just, speak to you, but they can connect you with other people. And, they have a capacity to help you find and live a beautiful life.
That's what I discovered for myself ten years ago, and now I spend my time trying to evangelize books, philosophy, religion, you know, great books and trying to get people to fall in love with the true, good, and beautiful.
It's funny. You think everybody would wanna promote the true, the good, and the beautiful, but our society pumps out just the opposite sometimes. So we're very happy that you're doing what you're doing.
Your post from last week talking about, you know, adultery, which even when I was growing up, you know, a kid of the eighties, late seventies, you know, it was still kinda scandalous.
I don't think it's really scandalous anymore. What's happened to us?
You know, that's a very good question, and it's probably one that I've I've struggled with the most too. I mean, I remember, I'm a Catholic now, but at the time, I was raised Catholic and it was much more just a cultural thing.
I didn't take it too serious, but, out of all the, like, laws and the the isms, I think the one that made the least amount of sense to me was lust.
Like how is this a bad thing? Like finding other people beautiful, being attracted to people, you know, I guess that's kind of the, it was ideas of free love, like just, you know, let everyone live and, let us love each other.
So I think, and I don't think I was alone in that in terms of not even really understanding, you know, what could be wrong with lust or what's happened with sexuality.
I think a lot of it, if I were to just riff off the top of my system back to, for lack of better word, a a cultural ignorance.
You know, historically, we used to have a specific understanding of human sexuality as far as it was meant for a specific purpose, and you could use your sexuality to orient you to that which was true and good and beautiful and help you live a better life and help, the world be a better place through it, which almost sounds crazy now because, again, the culture for the past probably your fifty, sixty or so years is much more about, you know, love is love to each his own, which sounds really nice, but in practice, it it doesn't work.
Because if your sexuality was made for a specific purpose and you deviate from that purpose, it only follows that you'll start to hurt yourself.
So I really think it's much more of the idea that we're not even scandalized with these crazy ideas of sexuality that we see running through society today simply because we just don't even know what healthy sexuality is supposed to be anymore.
Anybody who, follows my account knows that I I post this sort of this one sentence a lot, several times a week.
You know, the family is the foundation of civilization. Usually, I'll post a picture of Saint Joseph or the Holy Family or something.
And as divorce has risen, and I grew up my father was divorced, like, six times. You know, I think it's really hurt our society, and it's really damaged people.
And it and it sort of perpetuates more and more sort of with each generation. And now we've come to a culture where, I mean, the last woman nominated to the Supreme Court was afraid to say what a woman was.
Like like, we've we're we're divorcing ourselves even from reality. And I think if all of this is related because we've moved away from respecting what the family is, like you said, what sexuality is for.
But let's let's get into this. Talk about that and and how you when you were putting together this thread, you know, this legend, this mythology of King Arthur, how does this tie into all this? Sure.
And I guess to share with everyone a very loose idea of, an agenda we may or may not adhere to today, I think we're planning to begin by discussing, the legend of King Arthur because it might sound weird that in a talk lies of a sexual revolution, we'd start with mythology.
But I think that the legend of King Arthur has one of the greatest warnings against mythology.
It's not just an antiquated story, but is a universal story that shows the disastrous consequences for society when you will commit adultery and destroy the sanctity of marriage and the family.
So first, we would discuss that myth to say, well, what is lust exactly? How does it destroy the society, the social fabric?
And then we would use that to sort of transition into the the more core theme today of what are the lies of the sexual revolution? Where did they come from and how are they starting to tear society apart today?
So the King Arthur myth, you know, I'll I'll just give, like, a very brief oversimplification of it. It's, it's a 700 year old myth now. It's part of what's called the matter of Britain.
Basically, it's what England used to give its nation its identity for centuries. And so there's, you know, there's a lot of great, lessons you can take away, far more than just the warnings of lust.
But where lust comes into play is towards the end of this mythology. It follows king Arthur who rises to power from obscurity and creates this beautiful kingdom. And it's, of course, the time of medieval times, which is chivalry.
So, you know, allegorically, it's also showing how mankind was transitioning from pagan, pagan values of glory and violence and trying to Christianize their, their violent ways to to bring virtue and goodness to, this a time that was marked with a lot of chaos and immorality.
And this is what really celebrated Arthur is at the the peak of his power, his kingdom was a noble, kingdom of knightly, virtues, knightly Christian men.
But it's also at the the peak of his power when his kingdom is in its greatest glory that, King Arthur gets betrayed by his greatest ally, which is Sir Lancelot. Lancelot's described as the perfect knight.
He's the strongest man on earth. He loves defending women, the poor, the weak. He is a perfect man in every way except for one. His one key and fatal flaw is that he loves queen Guinevere, who's King Arthur's wife, of course.
And while he's spending all these years being a hero and being King Arthur's greatest debt, at the same time he's, secretly having an affair with Guinevere.
Of course, over the years, rumors begin to circulate in Arthur's court, and eventually the new just breaks out.
Arthur discovers that, you know, his his queen's infidelity. The treason for infidelity at the time is, you know, death penalty for them both.
That Lancelot cannot bear the idea of his beloved dying especially at his own hands. So tragically, what happens is that civil war breaks out and, you know, Arthur and his forces battle.
I don't wanna get into spoilers, but in the the wake of the civil war, it's estimated there's a death toll of about a hundred thousand so people and king Arthur's kingdom comes down to a collapse.
I'll pause here for a second, but, and and toss it back to you, Shannon, for anything you'd like to commentate on.
But I think the important thing that we'll wanna draw out here is, well, what is lust specifically doing about this downfall?
Like, how does lust specifically tear man apart and, you know, aside from the obvious of adultery being bad, what does this do to society at large that can create devastation on both the personal scale and also the mass societal scale?
Yeah. It really is fascinating. You know, one of the from Catholic teaching, you know, one of the seven deadly sins with with some of the others are pride and sloth, greed, and gluttony.
But lust, it might have been it might have been Peter Kreeft, and I know you're a big fan of his.
Or maybe it was I'm not sure what what the writer was. But but, for example, if I'm, a glutton, what does that mean? That means I might eat two or three times what I should.
Right? But lust has this way. There's no other sin that consumes us so much that you go way beyond the natural order. Right? So, for example, you know, a man and a and a woman married, and they have children.
But but a man could become the father of hundreds of people with hundreds of different people. Like like, that sin, that drive is is very different than some of the others, which wouldn't quite be compounded as much.
I don't know if that makes any sense, but, we have so much to learn from, you know, we we talk a lot about the Catholic church built western civilization, but it also is the only thing probably that's gonna save us in terms of getting away from, fornication and adultery and contraception and getting back to the to the right moral order.
Yes. I would agree with that wholeheartedly because I think this is really the heart of the danger of lust is that it is a abomination against the natural moral order at the most, intimate level.
And I think what I mean by that is, you know, lust and in this case with Lancelot and adultery is that adultery is not just a a sin against yourself for one. It's not just that it's bad for your soul.
It's not just a betrayal of, the the person you've done the adultery with or the the the affair. So in the case of Lancelot per se, you know, his, cucking of Arthur isn't just bad for him nor Guinevere and Arthur.
It's actually an affront against the entire kingdom. And I think that's a really important point to meditate on, an affront against the entire kingdom because the same is true about sexuality today.
That when we denigrate our own sexuality, even if it's something like engaging with pornography in private and all of that, that, well, this yes.
It hurts us, but we're also not individual, souls. You know, we're not islands. We live in society. We have we're embedded in the culture. We interact with people on the daily.
If we harm ourselves, we're we're less virtuous and less, properly ordered, amongst our fellow man, and our actions begin to ripple. And I think what's beautiful about the King Arthur myth beautiful ironically.
What's so tragic about the King Arthur myth is that out of this lust is, as you said, the breach of the natural moral order, it's it it seems like hysteria seems to ripple outward throughout the kingdom.
And what I mean is civil war breaks out. That it's not just Lancelot is fending for his life against King Arthur.
That that brother is pitted against brother. If you get into the specifics, there are specific men that you've seen if you read the 750 page mythology. There are men who for 500 pages have sworn how much they love each other.
And at the end, you have people like Sir Gawain saying, I don't care what it takes, Lancelot. So long as both of us are on the earth, I'm going to fight you until one of us no longer exists.
That, you know, it it that this this act of adultery has pitted brother against brother and that, fraternal charitable love is dead. Societal trust is diminished, and what's replaced is wrath and a a loss of clarity altogether.
The story hints that this is really what leads to the downfall above all else is not just the fact that war breaks out, but that in this quest for vengeance and revenge, even the victims like Arthur have lost their their moral sense and their sanity.
And as such, all that's left is societal collapse as a whole. It's it's so wonderful how this this mythology like like, you were talking about how you do really discovered the true, the good, and the beautiful was through literature.
And it reminds me of how our culture what does our media what do our storytellers, the writers and the producers of television, they're they're trying to steer us in exactly the wrong direction where you look at this, mythology, which is sort of showing you the tragedy, the human tragedy when we go off off the path that we're supposed to be on.
Today, our culture defines freedom as the pursuit of pleasure. Right? Unbridled indulgence. Do whatever you want.
We've all heard that phrase. Right? If it feels good, do it. If it feels really good, do it twice. It's just that's freedom, and that's not the definition from classical education. Freedom is mastering your desires. Right?
Is freedom is is growing in those cardinal virtues and all of the virtues, really. But but having temperance, having, prudence, being able to say I want something or I wanna do this, but I'm not going to do it because it's not right.
That that is really freedom when you have this sort of freedom. Not that somebody's keeping me from, you know, going out with their wife, but freedom is I wanna do something, but I'm able to master my desires.
Exactly. And I think this is where it even makes sense to begin, transitioning into the the sexual revolution.
But I would say that to cap off, this King Arthur mythology and again, as you said, freedom as expressed in the the King Arthur world was not the freedom to do whatever you want.
Freedom was aligning yourself with virtue. And, again, this was what the whole idea of chivalry was.
Right? Let's let's Christianize the pagan within us. Yes. Let's still be great warriors who have a love of glory, but let it be the glory to serve maidens, the good, the meek, the humble, and serve God above all.
So the the idea that king Arthur was the mythology was trying to tell us is that, true freedom is voluntary servitude to a love of virtue and and goodness, and that you you find, you find yourself by losing yourself out of a love for God, which is where the glory of King Arthur comes for the the the majority of the mythology.
That's what builds this wonderful kingdom. But, again, it all comes collapsing as soon as its greatest or one of its greatest heroes turns to lust.
So I think that this is the the one key idea is that lust is a horrible, horrible force and a deadly sin because, again, it it perverts your your own personal sense of the natural moral order and lust that is consummated in adultery, essentially denigrates the sanctity of sex and, scoffs at the the love of the institution of marriage, destroys families, and that this, again, this this this consummation of lust and adultery will ripple out.
And if it's expressed, then it becomes a norm in society. It pits brother against brother, sister against sister, destroys your sense of charity, and fills you with wrath and distrust that wrecks civilization.
In other words, all this is a long, long winded way of saying that lust can be a, you know, lust can be a force that destroys the very fabrics of civilization itself.
And without getting too far ahead of ourselves, I think the the founders of the sexual revolution were very aware of this reality when they had, you know, plotted to begin this revolution in real life.
So I wanted to ask yeah. I wanted to ask you that because in in sort of the first or second post in this thread you did back on December 12, you said that there was a sinister there was something sinister from the beginning.
It wasn't just about, oh, I wanna have a lot of sex or I wanna there there was actually this idea of it's it's hard to even believe people would think like this, societal destruction.
Well, absolutely. So I guess now if we were to transition into the sexual revolution, what is it? Where did it come from? What was it trying to achieve?
It was really funny. The first time I was reading and studying about the sexual revolution, you know, it it almost felt like too, like, black and white, like, cliche. Like, okay, there's no way people actually felt like this.
Like, this feels like I'm putting on my tinfoil hat now. Like, yeah, people were plotting to use sex to destroy civilization. But for the sake of simplicity, yes, the sexual revolution was about societal destruction.
It's I don't want to go too deep into the rabbit hole because the sexual revolution can be hard to pin down in the sense that it was really a synthesis of a lot of different minds from different disciplines over the course of maybe one hundred years.
But the very short and sweet answer is that the sexual revolution gained mainstream relevance in America in the 1960s.
And it was where you could say maybe most of the people who were celebrating it in public were just well meaning college students who didn't know better. The thought leaders of the sexual revolution were trained Marxists.
I can think of two names specifically. There's one name in my thread, Kate Millett, who was a very famous Marxist. She was according to Time magazine, the Karl Marx of the women's movement.
And there is also Herbert Marcuse. So these these thinkers like Millette and Marcuse, they came from a school called the Frankfurt School, which was a Marxist school.
So for anyone not too familiar, the very, very simple idea of Marxism is that capitalist societies are built on oppression and they need to be deconstructed by any means. So how does this relate to the sexual revolution?
Well, you have Marxists like Herbert Marcuse and Kate Millet who are calling the family the institution of oppression in which the husband can dominate the wife and the children and exploit them.
And their their simple oversimplified plan was we are going to destroy the institution of family. And how are we going to destroy the institution of family? By celebrating lust in public.
That we're going to weaponize this this force of lust that can destroy the fabric society and we're going to use it so that we can dismantle the oppressions of a capitalist society and rebuild a sort of egalitarian Marxist future.
So I don't want to get too ahead of myself, but that's almost the, the sort of corrupt origins is the sexual revolution in practice in public says free love, sex, and liberation.
But in practice, when you look at where these thoughts came from, it came from Marxist leaders who were trying to, you know, weaponize lust.
If you're enjoying our space on the lies of the sexual revolution type, please give give us a repost.
And if you'd like to ask a question a little bit later on, you can go ahead and request the microphone. Sean, you mentioned those two names, Kate Millet, and I forgot the other one.
But I've never heard of those people, and I guess most Americans probably never have either. These this idea that there's people that are trying to sort of steer the culture.
And we look at this, when we look at at the movies, especially like movies starting in the sixties and the seventies and the eighties, how they glamorize infidelity. You know? It's it's it's just glamorized.
And and in our music, right, think about the the the well, I remember, like, in the eighties, like, I don't even remember what the song was, but It was like a it was like a Madonna song, and my aunt was, like, so shocked and so horrified.
And now that would be like a nursery rhyme compared to to what to what you hear in in musical lyrics today.
It's it's almost like the the, those of us who believe in truth, goodness, and beauty in in trying to live a more moral life, you know, we're at a disadvantage because the forces of darkness control these very powerful, weapons of communication.
And you can think of them as weapons because they just put they put on music and they put on movies and, you know, it's like the Borg.
They they get a a lot of people. They get millions of people just, you know, it's like like we're a biological computer garbage in, garbage out. It just kinda comes into our mind, and somebody says, this is cool. This is do this.
Let's do this. Let's have fun. We we tend to kinda believe the first thing we hear anyway. But, yeah, keep let let's keep going on this, because, like I said, this name, I've I've never heard those these names, Kate Millette.
Sure. I I think I might supplement it because I just gave the weighted accusation that, okay, Kate Millette, Herbert Marcuse, they want to, destroy society, which even now it still feels like a a weighted charge.
So I actually, pulled up the the thread I had because I I think I it it's helpful to give a very big, quote for word for word quote of Kate Millett's agenda.
This was pulled from, doctor Carrie Gress's book, The Auntie Mary. And, basically, in this little anecdote here, Kate Millet had a sister named Mallory who, since actually saw this thread and reposted it and followed me.
So that was cool. She said it was very well done. But, Mallory said that she had attended a feminist movement with Kate back in the nineteen sixties and was horrified by what she saw.
She said, she realized that Kate Millett was pushing a Marxist agenda, aiming for societal destruction. And she said in the midst of this, feminist chant in 1969 in New York, this was how the the meeting opened up.
It was the feminist circled around this one speaker in the middle of the room, and the speaker begins the chant by saying, why are we here today?
And the ladies answer back, we're here to make a revolution. And the lady says, well, what kind of revolution? They answer the cultural revolution.
She asks, how do we make cultural revolution? And they respond, by destroying the American family. How do we destroy the family? By destroying the American patriarch that cried. And how do we destroy the American patriarch? She probed.
And they answer by taking away his power. How do we do that? We destroy his power by destroying monogamy, they shouted. And how can we destroy monogamy? By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution, abortion, and homosexuality.
And that's the end of the chant in the passage. So I wanted to share that word for word because, again, the first time I had read this, it almost sounds like an over the top cartoon villain.
Like, okay. There's people who are plotting to to overthrow society through sex. Like, no, clearly people just wanted to have fun with sex. But once you actually, you know, read enough accounts from, you know, books like Doctor.
Cary Gress', and you learn more and more about where the thought leaders of the revolution came from, AKA the school of Karl Marx, you're like, oh, they're actually trying to use human sexuality to distort it in with lust and use lust as a destructive force to destroy the family.
And why would you wanna destroy the family?
Because if you destroy the family monogamy, like what happens in King Arthur, you destroy the very social fabric, turned society against each other, wrath runs, paramount, and society begins to fall apart.
So it's really you begin to understand the pernicious forces that it wasn't by accident that we're now starting to push notions of free love and just celebrate if it feels good, then it is good.
And it's not by accident that you have tragic, episodes like that girl, Lily Phillips, sleeping with 100 men in one day and thinking that that's women's empowerment.
It's like, of course, these are all lies, and they're insane. But it it it didn't just come out of nowhere.
It's it had been going on for, by these accounts, sixty years of people specifically trying to get us to destroy any semblance of sexual morality and celebrate lust and normalize, oh, to everyone, to each his own.
And it's a celebration of lust that has, you know, in many senses, perverted the natural order as far as our understanding of human sexuality that is normalized the the craziness we see nowadays, whether it's, you know, the Lily Phillips or OnlyFans or the multibillion dollar porn industry.
Like, it didn't happen overnight, but it was also, it was it was quite intentionally done. Did you say the name of that book was the anti Mary, as in, like, the Virgin Mary?
Yes. Can you, give us, like, a I don't know. A ten second, like it sounds like you love that book, and it sounds very, very interesting. Yeah. I mean, part of why I love that is doctor Carrie Gress is a, well, she's a Catholic as well.
And so, again, a lot of what she's doing is she's helping us bring to light the the pernicious roots of the sexual revolution. You know, where did all this madness come from? Everything that I had just said.
But again, I think the big idea to her title, the anti Mary, is that where it's also not an accident is that this is a specific perversion or inversion of what was once considered traditional morality that that Mary, in my understanding of Catholicism is, you know, also quintessentially like the the ideal that women ought to aspire to that she is a purity and perfection and that she is a completely unselfish charitable motherly love, not just a Christ, but, she's also the the most venerated of women in all God's creation, right, the symbol of purity.
And when you look at the Marxist agenda of we must destroy the family, they're not just saying, oh, women should go into the workplace because, you know, they should have equality of opportunity like all men.
They're saying, no, this beautiful thing of motherhood is represented by Mary. This is oppressive.
This is evil. It's not just let it to each his own do what they want. Women need to, reject this this evil oppressive institution. They need to reject motherhood, which is holding them back from their happiness and their potential.
And so, like, historically, I think motherhood is considered one of the most beautiful forces in history and and it's part of why I think Catholics love Mary so much is that through motherhood, of course, new life is begotten.
So mothers ushered a new life into the world, but there's also nothing more important and more valuable than a mother's nurturing love, that mothers nurture the souls of the new life they beget into the world.
It's like men are made in the image of God and made in love and they're taught to understand love through a mother's embrace.
And so to tragically attack the family is to attack motherhood and to say that the most important role in all of civilization in the history of man is bad and evil.
It's like that's not just an attack on the family, but an attack on the the force of love that holds societies together. That sounds like such a great book. I didn't mean to, like, distract us off of our off of our topic.
But, yeah, let's keep going in the in the sort of walking us through this thread, on the lies of the sexual revolution. Of course. And, And by the by the way, I did post a link to that book that Sean mentioned.
It's it's in the comments. Yeah. It's so it it is a a great book. So I would say if if we were to continue from here, the sorry. I was, finding my place. So, again, we have the the inversion of Mary.
Right? That, motherhood is, not just a subjective thing that, you know, it's for some women, it's not for others. But, no. Like, motherhood is bad because it holds women back from the workforce.
Again, to really hit the point at home as far as how on the nose Kate Millet is with wanting to destroy the family, the the main thesis of her work in direct quotes is the family is a den of slavery where the man is the bourgeoisie and the woman and the children are the proletariat.
So, again, this is Marxist language that women and children are slaves oppressed by the father, and they need to use their sexual freedom to disrupt the oppressive forces of marriage and family.
And that if they do this, they will destroy not just the family, but society is large.
So, again, same thing that this is just like in King Arthur. Kate Millet and the leaders of the sexual revolution were trying to weaponize lust to destroy society.
I think the other figure I brought up, Herbert Marcuse, he says it more on the nose in his 1956 book, Eros and Civilization. He says that what we fundamentally need to do is redefine our understanding of the human body.
It's not that the human body is a vessel that has been made to reflect the image of God that is a body of love, but, no, we must now train people to understand that the body is an instrument of pleasure.
Again, the the body is an instrument of pleasure, and I think we need to dive deep on that.
And he goes that if we do this, if we change the value in the scope of the libidinal relations, which is his jargon of saying if we convince people that the body is an instrument of pleasure, this will lead to a disintegration of the institutions of interpersonal relationships, specifically monogamy and the family.
So the body is an instrument of pleasure.
Why do I keep harping on that word? Well, this is essentially the specific redefining of human sexuality itself that this, this this redefines our purpose and understanding of what is human sexuality.
So to maybe maybe this also helps by sharing, well, what was how do we historically conceive of human sexuality, right? Like, what what made it virtuous? And and what is it specifically that they are rebelling from?
I mean, specifically, according to Catholicism, sexuality was virtuous to my understanding when it is, expressed in marriage and it is procreative, that it is able to create new life.
And the idea as to why these two rules, isn't that a little arbitrary to some extent?
Well, again, marriage is a a vow of unconditional love. Right? That as as Ephesians says that what you're called to do in marriage is the the husband is to love his wife as Christ is to love the church.
And same thing the the the wife and the children are called to trust and surrender, unconditionally to their their husband.
So the idea is that husband and wife have a mutual loss of self and charitable love for the other. And this expression of charitable unconditional love for the other is expressed, through sex and marriage.
This is what John Paul two, John Paul the second, brings up in his theology of the body that every time that husband and wife are having sex, they are, reconstitmating their marital vows.
So in other words, sex and marriage between husband and wife is an expression of unconditional love and charitable love. So the other point, well, why does sex need to be procreative?
And, well, the idea is if sex between husband and wife is an expression of unconditional love, it is the same expression of unconditional love that begets new life, that the the love that is said to reveal the image of God is the same love that creates new life, that that creates little humans that are made in the image of God, beings that are made of love.
All of this is a long winded way of saying that human sexuality was meant to be a force to affirm love for one another and beget new life grounded in the institution of family.
That families are the, foundational and fundamental unit of civilization because they are meant to aspire towards a love of God and a love of the other or love of neighbor.
The the golden rule of Christianity. And it's this force of love that, you know, ushers back, trust and charity and virtue into society.
We didn't talk about mentioning this, but I'm just gonna mention this. You know, pope Paul the sixth has that famous encyclical Humanae Vitae.
As we talk about human human sexuality and married couples being open to life, You know, this this rise of of, contraception, certainly in the sixties, really has had such an effect on our society.
He wrote, a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman and disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.
And, that's exactly, where we've where we've sort of ended up, isn't it? 100%, which again gets back to that's exactly what Herbert Marcuse was getting at when he said, we need to redefine the body to be an instrument of pleasure.
Ex exactly that. It's like, well, the moment that you think sexuality is about pleasure and not an expression of love, it it leads to these this dehumanizing aspect.
And I think that's one of the tragedies of contraception is if John Paul the second says that, you know, love is a gift of self, I don't see how you can properly give yourself if you have a, you know, in this case, a literal barrier between you and your your beloved.
Right? You're you're literally holding back.
So in in both the literal, the figurative, and the metaphorical, it's like contraception or sex that divorces the unitive from the procreative is the sex that is disrupting the the natural order in a way that it it hinders the ability for charitable unconditional love to flourish.
And this idea that redefining the human body to be an instrument of pleasure means, as you just said, you begin to dehumanize others and those around you. You start to express your sexuality in ways that are more selfish.
What can I get out of it? And you begin to, you know, look at people, completely different. It it completely disrupts and disorients the relation between man and woman, even in in in courting, you know.
You know, like I said, I was, you know, I'm I've reverted back to Catholicism, but I had my my years of agnosticism where I was much more worldly.
And I can kind of now that I'm many years detached, I can see a clear difference in before and after in terms of how I perceived women and how I perceived my role in terms of recording, approaching, and talking to them.
And, like, like, it was, like, it was so much more unhealthy. And if you even just think of, like, my emotions, like, there was much more of the, you know, not the fruits of the Holy Spirit, but the fruits of the flesh.
Like, there were just times where I was a lot more jealous or insecure or had, like, wrath coming through or or fear and anxiety, you know, and and that's really just I think that's another product of lust that this this weaponization of lust destroys the social fabric and trust of the sexes even at the most, individual level, not just on the the societal level.
It really reaps discord where there should be peace, harmony and love. So that's why and to your original question way back, where did we go wrong?
We can't even have a discussion anymore on the more cultural level as far as what is healthy sexuality should look like. I mean, it's been for decades now the the idea that to each his own love is love.
You know, the the free love, which sounds good on paper, but it's completely destroyed our, you know, our cultural understanding of what healthy sexuality even should be, that we have just normalized many, many destructive behaviors while thinking that they aren't good and sometimes virtuous.
We're called to even celebrate them.
Exactly right. And when we when we make and promote sex as being about pleasure, then there really are no boundaries. I I've sort of looked how far the culture's come down since I was, say, a teenager.
And it's kinda scary because I know it doesn't stop here. Like, we're that escalator is still going down. You know, the things they do, like, I don't know, even, like, some show, like the, let's say, the Grammy Awards.
Right? Sort of the things they will do on stage, they wouldn't have done in 1965, you know, when you had, like, maybe Diana Ross or somebody that who had who was classy.
Right? But in twenty five years, I mean, what what would be going on? I mean, when when sex is about just pleasure, where does that lead you?
That leads you to things like bestiality. Right? If somebody says, well, I get pleasure from that. If that is your defining, characteristic of what sex is, it is a very deep and dark place that that takes you to all all kinds of things.
Absolutely. And, I mean, not to get too far down into the rabbit holes of opening up other topics, but, I mean, you see how the slope does continue.
I I think the the new one that's the topic of the day is pedophilia is now being redefined as minor attracted persons.
So you have this this weird, you know, sympathy and normalization for, you know, sexual perversions that in the in the past were I'd I'd say, you know, you don't hate someone for having them, but you should have zero tolerance or sympathy for the urge itself.
Right? You know, hate the sin but not the sinner. And now it seems like there's a need of okay. Well, no.
If we have to love if love is love and we need to accept all types of love, then we need to at least have pity and sympathy for minor attracted persons. And, you know, if I look at history, it's certainly not going to stop there.
It it touches back on the idea that, you know, sin is a never ending spiral just as hell is a never ending spiral. So sin begets sin, but on the other side, virtue does, beget virtue.
I think this also ties into the idea of that lust by disrupting the harmony of the sexes, it also leads into a a sort of disruption of an understanding of your own sense of masculinity and femininity, which I I would attribute at least in part to why we've seen in recent memories the the rise of gender dysphoria and now this sort of, you know, the the rise of transgenderism being much more prominent than it's ever been before.
And now even conscious attempts on the societal level to redefine the very intrinsic definitions of what it means to be a man and a woman.
And we tied back to, like, why did, Carrie Gress title her book the the anti Mary is because that's really a product of the sexual revolution is, again, a specific inversion of Christian morality. It's not like, okay.
Let's, you know, ditch this religion stuff and go our own ways and be free. It's no. Let's completely do the exact inverse and opposite of everything that Christianity had said in the past, whether they know it or not.
So now it's, in this case, the when when you're destroying the sanctity of sex, it it leads to all all sorts of spirals, including not understanding the role of your body, your your your gender, the the role that you're meant to be as a man or a woman, and it leads to these ideas of, well, I don't think there's any differences at all.
You know? Like, love is love, and also man is man, and woman is a man, and man is a woman, and and and so on. And, also, we can create genders. It it just it opens up a Pandora's box real quick. You know?
Hence, again, lust is the force that can destroy society. I read one of the replies to you. First of all, if you're not following Sean, please make sure you go to his profile and give him a follow. His his feed is just incredible stuff.
On this thread you posted about the lies of the sexual revolution, one of the replies I wanna read this. As a young man shaped by the sexual revolution in the nineteen seventies, you've described its destructive forces well.
You should have been at my fiftieth high school reunion. Many sad stories associated with so called liberation. Me too. In retrospect, awful ideas.
Talk about that. Yeah. I remember that comment. It's funny. That one had, that one had resonated with me too. For one, I think that this is this is where I'd like to be a bit more sympathetic in general. You know?
Because I think one of the missteps that a lot of our, you know, fellow, Catholic brothers and sisters might do on here is be, so quick to chastise, those who have fallen victim to the the the lies of the cultural revolution by the wayside.
I I think of one public person is Brie Solstad, who has since, repented of being a, porn star, and, she's now a very prominent Catholic.
And people don't want to give even her grace. Right? That it's like, oh, you know, like, you you you people, like, you follow your bodies and you're you're making a mockery of the faith.
It's I I think that it's my point is when you you look back to repentant, sinners like her, and, again, we're all sinners, so we all repent. This young man himself, what he seems to be speaking of is a lot of sad stories, regret.
Like, he calls it tragic. Right? And it is tragic because, again, like, if I let me use my own self for an example to to really get to the point here.
Like, I made a lot of, very dumb and stupid mistakes with my my sexuality for, at the very least, the first twenty five years of my life, if not a little more than that.
But it wasn't really until about a year or two ago that I even had an idea that sexuality, like, could be healthy.
The best I knew was that, you know, people told me, like, no sex till marriage. And, you know, me is like, well, why? And, like, because you have to.
And I'm like, okay. Well, what if I don't believe this? You know, it's like when and then, you know, you can cut and pile that by we live in a society where as soon as you open up your phone, you're inundated with lewd images.
You're inundated with media that is, you know, celebrating, you know, celebrating at the very least, promiscuity, if not, you know, different types of nontraditional uses of sexuality.
You know, you're you're consistently being indoctrinated to this, this craze of the sexual revolution without realizing it.
Like, that's the point I wanna get home is I don't think we realized just how much even to this day at this very moment we are completely indoctrinated by the sexual revolution because what we consider normalcy today is really the the perversion that they were trying to set up in the sixties.
So the tragedy of these people in the, like that young man who commented it is that we're basically now living in a world where almost every single aspect of the mainstream culture is set up against our destruction, the the destruction of our soul.
That if, you know, if if you're a vigilant Christian, you have to be on guard twenty four seven just to watch for yourself and not fall.
And if you weren't lucky enough to be born into a community that can guide you or or shepherd you or if you're left to your devices, like, yeah. Good luck figuring all of this out on your own.
Like and it really gets back to the idea of, well, how can we get the world right? One of the things I always try to get back to is the, you know, the idea that we ourselves were not forgiven until we learn to forgive.
And oftentimes I think at least for me, like forgiveness often means forgiving when you don't want to, when it hurts or when the person least deserves it.
That mercy is not about being just in your own eyes. Like, Christ forgave all of us and, you know, none of us deserve it.
That Christ isn't fair. He's merciful. And I think that if we wanna even begin to try to overcome this craze of the sexual revolution, it's meeting people in their pain.
Like, of course, do not, like, celebrate the the wayward ways of the world as good things. Do not call sin good.
Like, be honest, but I think that if we lead with grace, maturity, and forgiveness, and at least first recognize the tragedy that all of us are living in a fallen world and specifically in this day and age, a fallen world that is weaponizing itself to destroy us via lust at every moment that it gets.
I think if we lead with that patience, that would be a great step forward in trying to begin to change the course as far as leading our culture towards a more healthy sexuality.
I wanna encourage people. I I love this phrase about truth, goodness, and beauty. And there's a lot of great accounts that that post this, but I I just wanna encourage.
I see every person that has an x account as being in this battle for truth, goodness, and beauty. If you have one follower, post something every day that's true, good, and beautiful.
A Bible verse, a picture of the Virgin Mary, a beautiful architecture, a basket of flowers. Put out some positive thoughts. Don't just read or retweet other people.
Of course, retweet Sean and retweet me. But no. But, I mean, don't just consume content, but, like, we all have a sphere of influence. So we might not think we do. I mean, well, I might say, well, just have one follower.
Well, tomorrow you'll have two or five or 10, and people might scroll down and see what you posted a month ago. So everybody has to be in this fight to promote the true, the good, and the beautiful, not just big accounts.
Right, Sean? I would 100% agree with that. I think that specific note is something I couldn't you know, I don't like to preach too much maybe, you know, contrary to what this conversation sounds like.
But if there's one thing I would get on my soapbox about, it's really the power of the true, the good, and the beautiful, and just what the the individual has as far as the power to really change society for the better.
I include myself in this when I say that I think each and every one of us always underestimates our power as an individual to to change the community at large. I I really do believe that.
And I think that the the the quintessential idea of how we cultivate the faith and hope, those virtues comes down to having trust in that power that even the small acts of kindness can can really change the world.
I I like to think of Bishop Robert Baron when he talks about, like, how can we as Catholics, better evangelize today. Right? Like, we're losing a lot of people. We're not the the mainstream, cultural force we would like to be.
How do we get through to people? And he talks about the transcendentals. He talks about truth, beauty, and goodness. He says that when the, you know, the early Christians, you know, won Rome, it was their their goodness above all.
I forget which emperor it was, but the emperor who who made, Christianity the official religion, he was in awe at just the the goodness of these Christians that, yes, they are willing to die and and martyr for their savior, but also just the the amount of charity they they gave to one another.
Like, if we're all human beings who are made in love, then all of us yearn for love.
And if we can give people love each day, like, you do not know how much that can change someone's life. I think one personal anecdote I I love to share.
I I spent, quite a few years in the service industry, which is, an industry that's known for attracting lost souls and and wayward people and and definitely worldly types. And it had a lot of stories there. Right?
But I found that when I was a lot more intense about my faith in the latter years in in trying to, you know, help people out, I found that I was most effective in getting people to open up when I led with goodness above all else, not when I was either, like, preaching or trying to share what was true, but just the the simple acts of being a good neighbor or coworker.
I think of my friend Trey. He was a big, big Andrew Tate guy. He loved the red pill. Right? And he just he loved all these things.
And then he was shocked when I he found out I didn't like the guy so much. And he's like, well, why? Like, you know, we're we live in a emasculated world that hates men, and then this is a strong man he's throwing us out to.
And I'm like, yeah. Well but, you know, pin thing is not really a good thing for one. And, you know, he kinda laughed at that. But over time, like, he he kept saying to me, he's like, well, why do you seem so, like, calm and all that?
Like, why do you seem like, you you don't get so angry around here all the time? And it's like, aren't you ever, like you know, don't don't don't you ever feel angry about this job or the world and all of that?
And I'm like, well, yeah. But, you know, I just I I I don't really try to look to the world for for peace. I just look to God. He's like, well, what do you mean? I'm like, you know, just Christian.
Like, you know, just to try to follow God, be a good person and all that. And he's like, wait, like Christian, like, you know, you don't even have sex girls and all that? Have you guys lost me? It says I, I lost connection.
Am I still good? Yeah. No. I'm still here. Okay. Sorry. And I was like, yeah. No. So I'm not sure. It's it's that I had lost connection, but basically he he lost it when he found out I was absent and and doing all these things.
I'm like, no. It's it's good. It's happy for me. And then over time, he eventually, told me that, well, now he doesn't follow Andrew Tate anymore and he started going to church.
And I was like, oh, that's cool. It never came from me trying to change his mind about anything, but he just by his own words, he said that he was just curious and attracted by what he thought was a sense of calm.
He's like, oh, if that works for you, I guess I'll try it. So, yeah, man, I've been rambling, but that's, I'm a very big believer. Truth, beauty and goodness is the best way we can evangelize.
And if you lead with goodness, you soften up people's hearts. And when people's hearts are softened, you know, we're all yearning for love in a world that is filled with lust and not love.
When we can give people love, that tenderizes them. And I found that a tenderized heart will open you up to the truth that much more. Absolutely. And it's hard to evangelize people by preaching at them.
Right? There's a couple guys I know do a a great podcast on evangelization in the workplace, and they talk about you have to have a relationship with somebody to evangelize. Oh, no. Now we're kinda losing you a little bit there.
I'll talk for a few seconds, and maybe it'll reconnect. But, yeah, you have to have relationship with somebody. When when you have a relationship and when you treat people well, they're watching. They're watching how you act.
They're open to I had this friend, and I I thought this was so horrible that she said this. But when I mean, I've known her for thirty years. She's Catholic. And she said this this phrase to me, which I was horrified at the time.
She said, if people start telling me how much of a Christian they are, I run the other way. And I thought that was, like, anti Christian. And she she said, no. You will know people are Christian by how they treat you, by the fruits.
And it really has has sort of borne out that if you are treating people well, if you have a job and people know you're a person of integrity and you're not trying to steal from people, and it conversations become possible.
People, I'm gonna send you on the microphone again. People are open to what you say, which is very different than if you just sort of tell people, well, you shouldn't do this, and you shouldn't do that, and you shouldn't do this.
When all those things might be true, it's it's not so much the message, but it's how you how you deliver it.
You don't you don't want people to be, defensive. Are you back, Sean? Yes. I'm back. Can you hear me? Yes. I don't know if you heard my rambling there.
But I also don't know where I got cut off, but, yeah, I I got the last thirty seconds or so. Yeah. So Yeah. So, I I think that's just so important to to have a relationship with people and and, you know, lead lead by example. A %.
And and what I've also found in my own life is to the extent that I try to, you know, lead with goodness, it's and, yes, it's of course, you wanna try to help others, but I find that that's, you know, that's also good for yourself too.
Like, I I don't just try to be like, oh, I'm gonna go save the world. It's like, well, I I want to, you know, try to love others because I wanna be like Christ.
And I find that the more that I this is just me anecdotally. So I don't know if this sounds weird, but I found that the more that I've sought to try to love others, the more and I'm talking to the last few years of my life.
The more I think I've understood what it means to genuinely, you know, love myself too.
So I'd it's to me, it's just this idea that the more that you give out love, the more that you actually help usher out love in your soul in in the real sense, not the more, like, self help, like, oh, you should love yourself just the way you are.
I had plenty of good reasons to hate myself in the past.
But, and, of course, we you know, we're always struggling and we'll always have sin, but I think it really helps you to get a very healthy sense of yourself when you immerse yourself in a community of like minded people and try to lead with love.
It's heal healing not just for those around you, but for yourself as well.
So I I can't I can't get back to enough. I think all of us just completely underestimate the power we have to change the world just by trying to be kind people in our own community.
And I I think that's why the golden rule isn't go change the world. It's, you know, love God with all your heart and love your neighbor, you know, as yourself.
That that is really where the where where you change souls starting with yourself and that those with you meet, and you do not know just how much that might ripple.
You know, if we saw through the the King Arthur myth that lust can ripple out and destroy society, well, love is stronger than lust. So if our lust can ruin the world, how much more can we get things right with an act of love? You know?
Like, I I really I'd say this to myself all the time because I wish I could know it better. Like, I think it's almost unfathomable just how much power each and every single one of us has that we have are are completely unaware of.
Absolutely. We all have to be agents of truth, goodness, and beauty. Maybe soldiers is a better a better word, and because it does it does ripple out, and light is more powerful than darkness.
And we do affect people in ways we don't even know. I had somebody today tweet something at me. They're like, you're the reason I'm one of the three people three reasons I'm going back to church.
I'm like, I haven't done anything. I just host spaces. I'm like nobody. Like, I'm not you know, I have I'm the paragon of morality and virtue.
I you know, we all strive every day. It reminds me when, the radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, there was sort of a scandal because he was addicted to OxyContin, that very powerful narcotic.
And, of course, he was, you know, a conservative and against drugs and all this, and people thought he was a hypocrite.
And I I love what he said. He said that you just had just decide you're not gonna have any standards, and then you never fall.
But as people of faith, if we have standards, we're we are going to fall sometimes, so we need to be charitable to other people when they do fall and not not be preachy, but, again, have that, that relationship.
So, well, I don't wanna keep you too long, Sean. I appreciate you. I know this is a little later than you normally do spaces.
I know there's a rosary coming up in a few minutes. I don't wanna interfere in that in that space, but I do just wanna give you a couple minutes if you wanna make any final closing thoughts.
And I hope we can do this again at some point on some other incredible topic you write about. Absolutely. I share the same sentiment. You know, this, I'd like to consider this the first of many more good conversations in the future.
I suppose maybe then on the the last few notes to wrap up here because, one, I just love this topic of how much we can be a a force to change.
I do think that it's very easy for us to to feel the temptations of despair or to lose a bit of hope in today's day and age where where things do seem dark and we we don't seem to be, you know, as as Christian as as we'd like to be as far as a country or world goes and, you know, very polarized communities.
And maybe there's even a lot of discord in our own communities and and personal lives as well.
But I found it in my past, one of the the the fathers of the church that I always have turned to that has helped strengthen me is, Saint Augustine.
I I really like him because, if nothing else, he was writing at a time of right after Rome had collapsed.
And not only had his the empire and his home collapsed in front of him, but people were also blaming Christianity for that collapse.
So if you wanna think of a, you know, tragic end times, I think his time was far more worse than any sort of collapse the West where the West may or may not be going through right now.
But what one of the his famous quotes that he was saying to his people in the times is I'll just pull it up right here.
The quote goes, bad times, hard times. This is what people keep saying. But let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times. Such as we are, such are the times.
And that's the quote. It's just it's always brought me peace because it brings me back to just the simple truth of again, if we live good times, then the times are good. That, you know, all of the power comes down into us.
You know, we're not meant to be saviors of the world. That's Christ's job. It's not our job to save the world from itself, but we we save others and try to save ourselves just by leading with love, you know.
Be charitable, forgiving, above all, forgive others and you will be forgiven. And if you you lead with charity, you know, such will be the times and your times will be good.

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