A conversation with Josue Peralta. We talk about Josue’s romance novel, trying to unlearn the need to always be productive, Josue’s travels, traveling solo, what Josue does for a living, Josue and my religious upbringings, when I left christianity, our schooling history and the impact of books on our thinking, what would it take for me to believe in god, my perspective on people who do believe in god, the benefits of religion, physicalism and determinism, anthropocentrism, narcissism, and caring about one’s offspring, religion’s place in the founding of the U.S. and church taxation, the bad parts of Christianity and Catholicism, the “religious” tendencies of the political left, the politicization and polarization of society, words losing their meaning, the lack of accountability for those in power, and critical thinking and the greatest generation.
You can find Josue on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/itsattractive/
Edits:
- Correction at 15:30, after thinking again about my odometer the 10,000 miles number is not right. I probably put like 30,000 on it (I think I bought it around 80k and sold it at around 120k). So not as low, but still 10x less than Josue put on his car in the same time.
- Note for the section starting at 37:48, as I think about it now junior year of high school might’ve been more of a transition away from christianity than senior year not least due to the appeal of hanging out with my then girlfriend with minimal parental supervision over going to youth group.
- Here’s another way of putting what I was trying to say around 1:02:00. On the one hand (believing in god) is like thinking that somebody loves you, and on the other hand (trying to think yourself out of depression) is like trying to convince yourself that somebody loves you when you know nobody does. Your knowledge of the truth inhibits your ability to believe a falsehood, and maybe that falsehood is beneficial to your emotional state. Ignorance is bliss basically.
- For the conversation at 1:44:19, in case anybody is worried that we’re dog whistling about pronouns and gender identifiers (because I realized I just used an example, “pond,” without stating what was probably Josue’s main concern itself): I’ve talked about this topic more directly at least twice before on the podcast. I want to say in episode 27 “Dangerous Ideas” and in episode 35 “Identity, Friendship, and Wonder.”
- I think I said it poorly but around 1:50:00 what I was trying to say is that you can vote with your wallet and with your attention to live mindfully and only give to things that you think are good, but you don’t have to end or ruin your personal relationships over these things.
Books to read:
- The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
- The Stranger by Albert Camus
- 1984 by George Orwell
