Chloé Valdary || Love & Race

After spending a year as a Bartley Fellow at The Wall Street Journal, Valderie developed the theory of enchantment in an innovative framework for social emotional learning, character development, and interpersonal growth that uses pop culture as an educational tool in the classroom and beyond. Chloe has trained around the world, including in South Africa, the Netherlands, Germany, and Israel. Her clients have included high school and college students, government agencies,

business teams, and many more. She's also lectured in universities across America, including Harvard and Georgetown. Her work has been covered in Psychology Today magazine, and her writings have appeared in the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Cooley, So glad to finally chat with you. Likewise, well, where do where do we begin? There's so many, so many potential starting points. But if it's cool with you, I'd

love to start with your Theory of Enchantment. I'm enchanted with it as a I know I'm so cordy, but anyway, I am enchanted with it because I you know, I have a deep interest in education and making sure that no kids fall between the cracks, and I'd just love to hear how your program addresses some of those issues and just you know what inspires you most about that

work that you do. Sure, So, Theory of Enchantment is a social emotional learning program that I designed about a year and a half ago, and it comes out of my design to construct a framework to teach people how to love using the things that we already love and

that we already gravitate towards. So things like pop culture, for example, because I believe that there are narratives within our pop culture that teach people how to believe in their own sense of self worthiness, believe in their ability to overcome obstacles, to endure hardship, and so by blending those elements of pop culture that teach these lessons with ancient wisdom. My theory is that you can teach people how to love themselves and then in the long run

be able to get along with and love others. And I'm really inspired and motivated by especially getting it in as many schools as possible, but really young people, teenagers and adults. I'm really excited for the possibility of seeing how many people become enamored with this approach. So how many years have you been doing that? Like, when did you create the program? So? I created it formerly a year and a half ago, right on, So how old are you right now? I'm twenty six at the moment.

Cool and yeah, So let's back up a little bit about your history. So what was your major in college? My major was International studies with the concentration in diplomacy. Oh wow, that's going to come in handy now. Yeah, I think so you're applying it well, I wouldn't say you're applying it on Twitter. You're applying those principles definitely try my best. Yeah, it's much much needed more people like that on social media and in the world broader.

So when did you get interested in education? So what was the point before you created this program? You're like, Wow, there really is this need. So basically, after I graduated, I graduated in twenty fifteen, and then I moved to New York in the summer of twenty fifteen because I got a job at a Wall Street Journal. So I was at the Wall Street Journal for a year working on the op ed desk, and for nine months while I was there, I worked on a thesis that ended

up being the catalyst for a theory of enchantment. And I was trying to again figure out how to create a framework for teaching people how to love within the context of conflict and diplomacy, because that was my background. But there was no framework that specifically and explicitly laid this out, like how do we get people to learn how to love? There were frameworks of how do we get people to stop fighting each other, but not necessarily,

you know, to start loving each other. So I created a thesis, came up with a theory, and then lectured on that thesis for two years. And then increasingly when I would lecture, I would get the response from parents and from people from all walks of life saying, Hey, this isn't just applicable within the context of conflict resolution. It's also applicable within the context of social emotional learning in the classroom. But when you're talking about high schools,

you're talking about interpersonal matters. What you're talking about just trying to create a society with more human flourid in general. So you might want to consider taking what you've done and expanding upon it and building upon it and developing it into a full course. So enough people told me that and I decided to run with it. Awesome. I see some perils there with the field of positive psychology that I work in, where we don't treat moving from

negative ten to zero as you're being done. When you go to see a therapist, it's like you come in with a therapist. I'm anxious. I'm anxious, and your goal really isn't just to not be anxious anymore in life. If you actually ask people what you actually want in life, it's much more than that, right, So I see some

great confluence there. Also see great influences in our interests with humanistic psychology and the idea of at its base, we all have fundamental human needs, we all want the same thing, and looking beyond really superficial characteristics of a human to really get at the character. I think character is something that's really important to you and a part of your value system. Definitely. Yeah, I think you know.

One of the first things that we teach in the theory of enchantment is the first principle, which is treat people like human beings, not political abstractions. But then we have to do the work of educating people and actually what it means to be a human being, what it what it means to have to navigate this human condition with all of its imperfection, with all of the suffering that's a part of life that comes with life because we are mortal, and so that's inevitable that there will

be suffering in life. So how do we how do we shore up ourselves and shore up our sense of self and agency and build up our character so that we can endure the hardships of life and even transcend back to the world that you love those those hardships and character building is a key part of that. Character development. Resiliency development is definitely a key part of that. What about this is a buzzword in the education field, social emotional learning. Yeah, so what how do you target that.

So I would say that a lot of thinking about social emotional learning in today's high schools comes from a belief in Maslow's hard hierarchy of needs. And well, that was a good that was a good signal, you know, all about self actualization. And actually, in the wake of COVID nineteen there have been mini schools. Because I follow a lot of school blogs education blogs, there have been a lot of high school all of a sudden realizing that oh, cl is like primary, it's not a secondary thing.

As student is not going to be able to learn math if their sense of self, if their sense of social emotional wellbeing is out of whack. And so yeah, with the with the idea that ultimately the student's sense of self actualization needs to be nurtured, I think that's what social emotional learning is meant to do. And that's that's something that's certainly an objective that my program is

trying to accomplish in the lives of its students. Awesome, And you also to teach and racism through the lens of developmental psychology and the study of texts by Baldwin May, Angelou Obama and others. How did how did you come about that curriculum because there are other different approaches, shall we say, to anti racism than your approach. How did

you what inspired you to go down this path? So what's interesting is that it's only, uh, it's only coincidental, it's almost coincidental that my my program happens to also be an anti racism program. And in that sense, I mean that, yes, like the rich texts that the theory of enchantment pulls from to teach character development happened to be texts from some of our most incredible leaders in

the contemporary sense. And many of those incredible leaders are African American, and so they include James Baldwin, as you said, doctor Maya, Angelou, Ralph Ellison, uh and others, and doctor King, who's whose writings we also teach in the course. And so in that sense, I teach anti racism, and I think a far more integrated way than some of what I've seen online, some of the programs that I've seen

being promoted. And part of the first this goes back to the first principle of the theory of a Chatman. Part of what we teach to supplement that is to teach people how to not caricature each other, to teach people how to not terial type and reduce each other to mutable characteristics like race. And Baldwin had a lot to say about this. Oh yeah that real quick. Sure, Yeah, I'm not your Negro. I think that was the title of the documentary. I saw that again the other day,

and I was like bawling the entire time. I kind of fell involved with him. I don't know if I allowed to say that, but I really did. Definitely are in a like, you know, in a deep sort of human connection sort of way, you know. Yeah, No, definitely. Baldwin was an artist. Many people don't necessarily think of him in that way, but I think in his most in the most purest sense above all, beside being a critic, and beside being a social critic, a writer and author,

he was an artist. And in my mind, the purpose of art is to teach people how to create order out of chaos and to create meaning out of chaos and meaning out of suffering. And that's what he did in his writing. So we teach them. We teach two pieces by Baldwin. We teach the Fire next time, and we teach Everybody's protest novel, which was a piece published in nineteen forty eight, one of his earlier pieces. So, yeah, Baldwin is like considered pretty sacred in the theory of

enchantment universe. But you know, I had to say, like, I feel like there have been a lot of people promoting Baldwin who haven't necessarily read Baldwin, right, yeah, and who haven't like seriously studied them in depth and parsed their writings and really wrestled with their writings. And that's what we encourage in the theory of enchantment curriculum. So I just love that another element of your courses to build holistic, transformational relationships with others. And here here's the

here's the here's the big part. Even with those you find, even even with those who you may disagree, Yes, that possible. Can you actually have transformative relationships with people that you disagree? Yeah. I mean, before our our politics became a sort of religious identity that we that we associated ourselves with, that we attached ourselves with so fervently, which I think is a relatively recent thing in our society, I think it

was easier. First of all, we were even even in our political silos, we were more closely aligned with each other in the past, and we also were more willing to have conversations where we disagreed with each other nicely.

But this logically follows this idea of not caricaturing each other, because once you understand what it means to be a human being, that we're all carrying imperfections and insecurities and trying to fulfill our untapped potential, you can be able to see where another person who is coming from, even while disagreeing with them, and that will make the disagreement less personal, I think, and therefore you will not feel the need to identify so fiercely with your own position,

or to put it in a better way. A person's disagreement with you, whether it's of a political nature or otherwise, will not threaten your sense of identity because your sense of identity is secure, and if it's secure, then there's nothing that anyone can say or do to thwart that or to undermind that and to take an extreme position.

An extreme example of this is Darryl Davis. And Darryl Davis is an individual who is, in addition to being an amazing musician, his claim to fame is also that he basically gets members of the k cake to leave the KKK and I interviewed him in the Theory of Man Chatman podcast, which people can check out online. But I asked him, how do you handle this when like they're yelling obviously racist things at you when they first

meet you. And He's like, I get this question all the time, And I say, to my whole thing is like, but what does that have to do with me? That has nothing to do with me? Like, I know who I am, I know what they're saying is wrong. That has that has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with them. And I went, huh, that's a great answer. So so yeah, answer, yeah, So why

do you refuse to avoid white people? I just want to say that I was not the person to pick that title for that piece in the New York Times there disclaimer disclaimer no, But like I don't, you know, I don't really relate to this new wave of vocabulary that's being that's being promoted and certain quote unquote anti racist spaces that look at white people as like a conglomerate or a monolith or political abstraction. You know, I grew up around all kinds of people, black people, white people,

Asian Hispanics. I grew up in a very multicultural environment, and I grew up engaging with individuals as human beings. So I really don't. It's not even that I, you know, quote unquote disagree with the approach that some have taken when it comes to forming relationships with, you know, folks of other backgrounds. That's very like again caricatured and state and and really objectifying. It's not even that I disagree with it. It's that it's a foreign concept to me.

I cannot fathom that. That doesn't make any sense to me. That's like a I can't I can't even Yeah, I can't make sense of it. So so this this is a word that that's that's used a lot these days, woke. W Have you heard of it? Yes? Good question, Yes, I mean obviously you've heard of them. Is this something? Is that word? Is that a part of your identity? What are your thoughts? What's your relationship to that word? No?

So short answer is no. But the long answer is that woke is just a euphemism for the term enlightened. It's just a synonym. That's what people are trying to say. They're trying to say that they're enlightened beings, which is teeming with irony, right because they're alive. There's so many there's so many layers of irony. One of the layers of irony is that there is this movement right now

in certain small circles. I don't think it's a majoritarian movement, but there's this movement that says, we have to tear down the statutes of people, not of people who have represented, for example, horrible things like the promotion of slavery, and whose statutes were put out precisely to celebrate their promotional slavery.

And that's, of course the Confederate statutes. I'm not talking about those, But there are others who say that we have to tear down every statute of every person from the past that represented sort of America, whether or not the statute was put up in their honor to celebrate their good virtues. And they're doing this in the name of being woke, and they're doing this in the name of sort of casting off their quote unquote Western slash

European past. And what's ironic about this is that, again, the very concept of wokeness comes from a culture that is steeped in an obsession with the enlightenment, and so you cannot, even in the attempt to tear down your past. You're upholding your past. You're upholding this tradition of the pursuit of enlightenment, and so it's wrapped up, it's wrapped up in its rejection. So that's only one element of irony. But the point, so the major point, is that one

cannot cast off their past. One is a product of their past, whether one wants to admit that or not. And that's the good, the bad, and the ugly. And so that's again going back to the first principle. What we teach about what it means to be a human being is to have the capacity to do good and the capacity to do evil. This is always true. This is not something that is the exclusively true about the past or people from the past. This is true about us human beings in the present, and it will always

be true for us in the future. So our goal should be to keep ourselves in our minds and our souls, intact to develop our character, to have a moral ethic at the center of our movements, and to try to pursue that moral ethic. But if we are going to tear down relics of the past because those relics, because they represent individuals who also send. I'm sorry to be the one to tell people this, but we too will and have sinned in the present, and we will send

in the future because we are human beings. And so the question is not you know how to be perfect. The question, to sum up one of the main tenants of the book East of Eden, which is also taught in the theory of enchantment, is now that you know you cannot be perfect, you can strive to be good. That is the point. I just love that. Another irony is that the idea of enlightenment. See, I didn't even connect it to the that that period of human history,

the enlightened period. I connected it to the Buddha when I when I heard that word and kind of enlightenment that zen Buddhists talk about, or monks you know, who spend their whole lives meditating, is one where there is a oneness with all of the rest of humanity. Yes, And that was another irony I know this is that it seems like in a lot of woke ideology, there's the spirit isn't necessarily one of oneness with all of humans, you know, right, So I thought it's certainly a bastardization

of the term. I actually just read my first book on Buddhism, on Tantric Buddhism called Journey Without Goal. Be familiar with that with that text, No, but it sounds like something I would It was. Yeah, it was very it was very interesting. I actually got it because I got it because I was watching tron randomly and they but it was not the old version that like the latest one that's cool. Oh there's a yeah, the latest one in three D. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, it's I

mean it's like from an aesthetic perspective, it's beautiful. But one of the books that the main character mentions that he was sort of like meditating on and reading was that book. I immediately ordered it on Amazon. But yeah, no, there's an absence of this oneness or the sense of one oneness with the rest of humanity, unfortunately, and that you can't I mean, without that, there's it's not going to go. Well, let me tell you it's not going

to go. That's right, that's exactly right. So let's uh, you you just published a piece I believe at USA today, and you said, this is a quote from it which I tweeted this quote. I loved it. This attempt to correct injustice is laudable. But the work of anti racism must be rooted in the moral ethic of love and acknowledge the profound sacredness of human beings. Before you elaborate on it, I just want to note a connection between that quote and uh and and and what Really some

of the work really fascinates me. And I've been trying to get a you know, Abraham Assoh was a humanistic psychologist who created that hierarchy of needs. But people don't realize towards the end of his life that he argued that self actualization wasn't the highest motivation, I was actually self transcendence. And he viewed self transcendence a big part of it as And there's a great quote of his which I would bastardize if I try to remember it

right now, but I'll send it to you later. But it's basically self Actually, self transcendence is really about respecting theakness and sacredness of another human being, no matter how different it may be from yours. And that's really you know, some people like talk about self actualization as it's this really selfish thing, and and they misattribute his ideas in that way, and it couldn't be farther from the truth. He actually saw self act like you're never fully self actualized.

In the list, you pride you appreciate the self actuisation of another human. Yeah, I just wanted to put that forward. Yeah, yeah, that's a really that's a really beautiful that's a really beautiful point, I think. Yeah, I think, you know, this sort of sort of goes to the idea that no human being is an island, right, and so so we need nurturing of ourselves, but we also need to be

connected with one another. And actually, one of the things I think that's plaguing our society, and this is in part because of the byproducts of COVID nineteen, is this inability to physically connect with each other, to be in spaces with each other, to have a sent with each other.

One of the things I'm personally missing is like music and dance and concerts and things like that, because that is where I get a lot of my spiritual nourishment, as being in spaces with other people where we can actually connect over music and so because that has been decimated because of COVID nineteen, and there's no experience of synchronicity,

and there's no experience of physical connectedness between individuals. We're lashing out, I think in some ways that are very harmful, and I think that that reflects that teaching bi them as well completely in it, and it also reflects your own philosophy. Do you say to humanize a person is to treat them in a way that honors this complexity? Why do you think humans have such this tribal tendency

that overrides their ability to see greater complexity. It's almost like it's a more powerful innate drive than the drive to transcend it. So it's a great question. I would say, based upon my experience, I think that human beings societies aren't always exposed to the fact that we can transcend, that we are capable of transcending. I think that the

media plays a really unfortunately negative role. I won't say the media as if it's a monolithic, you know thing, because I use so much media in theory of enchantment, so that that would be unfair. But I think that I think that we're siloed and a lot of the media that we are exposed to is only showing us those tribalistic tendencies, is only showing us our capacity to descend into our base instincts, and it doesn't show us

enough our capacity to transcend. And one of the reasons why I put so much pop culture in the theory of enchantment curriculum is to get those images and get those stories and get those you know, musical compositions that capture human beings working together overcoming conflict incredibly enchanting ways.

So ask to remind people that this is possible. And the idea is that if I can do that enough, and if I can put enough images out there, you know, online that remind us of our common humanity, then we will begin to act in a way that reflects our common humanity. But I think that the media, parts of the media play a huge role in that. This is

really interesting. Do you think that sometimes the very well intentioned, well meaning derive from a lot of people in the Black Lives Matter movement to illustrate or to talk about race issues. Can that backfire sometimes in the sense it can make us even more paranoid or more focused on the issue of race. Then maybe we even have been before in a way that might not be beneficial. I'm

just curious if you thought that, thought that through. And I phrase that very sensitively because I'm not trying to be a provocatory at all. I'm trying to think it through,

you know. Yeah, No, that's a great question. I think one of the reasons why we teach James Baldwin's Everybody's Protest Novel is precisely to worn against this, because Baldwin wrote about this very phenomenon in nineteen forty eight at a time when there are a lot of protest novels coming out quote unquote protest novels that were quote unquote anti racists, but that actually caricatured both blacks and whites. And this was his point. His point was that this

is a problem. This is stereo typing both racist, This is reducing both races to these immutable characteristics. And the failure of the protest novel lies in its rejection of the human being. And this is sort of like I think this is more or less a quote he said, the failure of the protest novel lies in its rejection of the human being and his power, in his beauty and in his dread, and it lies in its insistence that it is the human beings category alone which is

real and which cannot be tran sended. So yes, I think that there is exactly exactly that's that's why I love to emphasize how much of an artist Baldwin was. But and I think that that's the artist, the true artists that really understand this. Ralph Ellison of course, also talked about this a lot in his writings. But so yeah,

I think there is a danger. It's important to highlight injustice and when it when it happens along racial lines, but we must not lose sight of the fact that if we reduce each other in the name of ending that injustice, we will be at risk of perpetuating the very thing that we're trying to end. And I think it's what's insightful to think about. Also, here is the Smithsonian African American Museum in DC. I was having a

conversation with a friend about this the other day. What's brilliant about that museum and the way it's designed is that it starts out, so it has four floors. There's four floors and it starts out. The bottom floor is really about mostly about slavery and the experience of slavery. It's a little bit about the civil rights movement as well, but I think that the most compelling part is about slavery. And then the second floor is about black enterprise, black education,

blacks in the military. The third floor is about gives you the opportunity to explore on your own, So explore whatever topic that you want to dive deeper into. But the fourth floor is about art, and it's about all of black representation in the arts, from music to dance, to cooking, to TV entertainment, comedy, film. And what's brilliant about that? I was like, Oh, these guys, they did

this on purpose. What's brilliant about this is that it is literally designed to transcend from slavery level of the hierarchy of needs, yes, yes, yes and each and it's like from slavery to the art and it's absurd to self actualized transcendence. Yeah, it's a it's a brilliant commentary not only on after American life, but on the human spirit and the ability of the human spirits arise above well. You I literally just got to chill. It's amazing that

the Yeah, I love it. I can't emoji emoticon more what you just said. I started to think in terms of emoticons because I got my new touch bar for my new MacBook and at the top there's an emoticon automatically shows up for anything you type. So now I've been starting to overuse moticon anyway. That was ation, but love what you just said. And then the final part of this article you wrote for USA Today is about

a push for inclusive policies. You say, will we push for policies that reflect the spirit of democracy, that seek out the well being of all black and white, civilian and cop, poor and rich, conservative and liberal. I love that, But that way of thinking really requires us to transcend a zero some way of thinking. It seems like that zero sum way of thinking is what's prevalent right now. How can we get people to kind of see that promise land so to speak, that you outlined there. Yeah,

that's a great question. I think societies begin to start thinking in zero some ways when there's a great deal of scarcity. And again this is exacerbated by COVID nineteen. The fact that we're dealing with so many issues right now, whether it's from an economic issue. We're dealing with poverty, unemployment, We're dealing with people perceiving their livelihood is going on their people's actual livelihoods are going on there. We're dealing

with all of these perception issues. And again, for me, it goes back to the perception issue, because perception is reality. And so in terms of what I can do as a human being and with my company, theory enchantment is to change the perception by putting out these images, by putting out these videos, by engaging folks in the theory of enchantment course so that they can begin to imagine that their lives are far less narrower than it actually seems right now, and that there is far more potential

than it actually seems right now. So that's what I try to do, at least in the you know, in the articles that I create. And it's useful to study you know, I quote King at length in that piece. It's useful to study those who have come before us, who had to endure incredible discrimination, racism, hardship. And it's crazy to me because it's like, obviously, if these people of incredible moral strength, moral fiber, and caliber were able to have this wide expansive view of humanity, of our

ability to transcend. Then surely we in twenty twenty can adopt some of their outlook and arm ourselves with the love and the grace that they arm themselves with. I mean, we are we are, on the one hand, dealing with incredible problems with scarcity, but on the other hand, we're nowhere. It's I think it's no way, in no way is shape or form comparable to what you know many who came before us endured. And so this speaks to us to yes, economic impoverishment, but also to a spiritual impoverishment

that we're dealing with right now. And I hope that there even it can speak to that and help change that. I love that. And you know, technically someone could make the case there's more slavery around the world on mass now than there was in eighteen seventy, So it seems like we have there's a lot to address in this world, right yeah, large and really getting it. You know, great. I love what you're saying, and I thought maybe we

can transition to some Twitter questions. Okay, sure, I don't know if you saw, Oh boy, did you see that? I put up a call today for I did see that anyone. What do you want to ask Quale? So here's some things. John asks, what's your view on cultural Marxism and the reduction of attitudes that increase polarization. I mean that those are two separate questions. I feel like polarization. I think I've spoken to a little bit earlier in

this in this talk cultural Marxism. I'm not quite sure what he means by that, So I would have to ask him to expound upon that if he's asked me what I think about Marxism in general. I think that what Marx lacked in his political philosophy was a sense of the existential. The existential piece was missing from his philosophy. The sense of the metaphysical was missing from his philosophy. Camil Poglia talks about this in some of her writings.

There's no sense of the expansiveness of human life and his philosophy, and there's no sense of the spirit of the of the existence of the spiritual life and inner life that exists in his philosophy. So which is which is why there's an irony in calling for material solution to what is fundamentally a spiritual problem. So that's That's what I would say in a nutshell, because I can't really have a three hour conversation about Marx right now,

but that's that's what I would say. That isn't to say that some of his observations about about a hyper consumerist society, you know, wasn't accurate, but I think a lot of his solutions were off so great. Michelle Carol, who used to host the wonderful Exploring Minds show. I'm a big fan of Michelle Carroll, so I thought I

pulled her a little bit. She asked, would would love to know how maintaining a constant presence in social media and exploring sensitive topics has affected your mental health and life online? How do you handle the toxicity of trolls slash haters that comes with a growing audience. Great questions for yourself as well, Scott, That is a great question.

It's a learning curve, especially as I as it seems my social media platforms have been taking off in the past few weeks, so this is something very new to me. I definitely am going to try to build a team as I build a real en gentlemen, so that I won't have to be on social media as much. As possible, so I can export that duty to a team that can handle it. So if anyone's listening to this podcast and would like to be interested in helping me with that,

please feel free to reach out. But I also, like you know, try to engage in my own forms of practice. I meditate for an hour every single day. I try to read every single day, like do some long form reading for two hours every day. And I also try to practice dance and making music on my at least once a week, whether that's actually producing music or playing guitar and or dancing. So those are some of the ways that I try to maintain sanity and balance and

stay off my phone as much as possible. I think that's very very smart, very smart. Jacob Forensic asked some questions which you may not want answer, and if you don't, I'll just edit out. I totally respect that is what problems she has with David Rubin Oh's one question and the second questions, and I was answered. I'll put to both questions and feel free to pass on both of them.

The second one, this is a double whammy. What would you tell Candace Owens on her intentional misinforming of the public? For personal political gain. Do you want to respond to either of those two? So I'm not going to respond to the Dave Ruben one, but I will respond to the candaces. My message to Candace Owens is first of all, that there's there's a lack of internal moral consistency message. So I was actually thinking about this the other day.

One of the things she does. One of the things she did was she talked about some of the flaws or sins, so to speak, of George Floyd. She talked about George Floyd's raps. She for example, and suggested that that rap sheet, that criminal rap sheet should should sort

of stop us from turning him into a martyr. And there's so many There's so many things here because you know, it's ironic because on the one hand, kind of someone's talks about criminal justice reform, which is rooted in this idea that the worst thing that you do shouldn't shouldn't define you. You shouldn't be defined by the worst thing

you've done. So on the one hand, Sheets promoted that, and on the other hand, she says that this sin that George Floyd committed should stop him from being a symbol of a lot of our protests, and I think that that that it's telling that there's a contradiction in that number one. But number two, the other more glaring thing that she does is that she she points out the sins of you know, these individuals very very readily.

But then when it comes to asking, you know, seeing conversations she's been engaged in about Thomas Jefferson or Christopher Columbus, it's a very simple and easy sort of write off. It's like, oh, well, yes, they did all those things, but they but they you know, discovered the New World in the case of Christopher Columbus, or they you know, talked about or they wrote the Decoration of Independence in

the case of Jefferson. And I think what I would say is that we need to be internally and morally consistent here if we can, we have to be able to hold both the sins and the saintliness of individuals across the board, whether they're in the contemporary sense or whether they come from our past, whether they're black or whether they're white. And I think that what Cannie owens lax is an ability to do that across the board.

And I would also say that she's selective in the grace that she extends to the people, and it does seem to it does seem to me to be rooted in a political objective, and she she's more far more willing to extend grace to though she considers to be in her own camp, than those that are outside of it, which is not the definition of grace. That's not what that's not what grace is by definition extending it to folks who don't belong in your camp, in your community,

in your and how you choose to see yourself. So that would be how I would. I would I would challenge Cannas on that, and I would I would challenge her to take more nuanced that way. So thanks for offing your thoughts on that. Maybe I'll get both of you on the podcast some time to luck good luck with that one. Thank you. I'm gonna try so well. Have a question, are you how much do these values

do you derive from religion? Are you religious? Question? I think a lot of what you're saying to me resonates with a Christian philosophy, and perhaps other not. I didn't mean his hone in specific and Christian, but an idea of universe love, you know, Jesus Jesus would love a lot what you're saying. I think, yeah, yeah, I think that's true. I think, you know, it's hard for me. It's a pinpoint. I definitely, first of all, derive a lot of what I say from from religious teachings I was.

I was raised as a Christian. I am firmly settled or nested within the Judeo Christian ethic and the Judaio Christian worldview, but I pull from various different faiths in mind and the way that I curate content and the way that I have curated my own philosophy, Buddhism being one of them. Judaism definitely, I've you know, I studied Jewish philosophy at an institution here in New York, and I'm very much rooted in I find that I'm my moral sense is definitely rooted in the writings of many

Jewish teachers and philosophers and rabbis. In addition, and you guys can't see it, he's dancing on the screen right now, in addition to the writings of Christian theologians. You know, Terrence Malick is probably my favorite film director, and he's very much a Christian filmmaker, but Abraham Joshua Heschel is a is a Jewish Rabbi that I relate to. Mayor Salivachik is a Jewish Rabbi that I relate to. Again, I said earlier that I'm just not getting into Buddhism.

So that's that's that'll be a that'll be a journey. I teach a lot of Stoicism as well in the theory of enchantment, both through the writings of Marcus Aurelius Epictetus, but also through the lens of the Disney film The Lion King, which I actually considered to be a sacred text. So there's a lot there. But yes, answer your question. For answering it, I appreciate it. Yeah, I do consider it to be a spiritual exercise, so I know it's a really deeply personal question. So thank you for for

being so gracious to answer the question. Connor Eden says, why do we prefer our mythological heroes to be morally ambiguous? For example, not all good, not all bad, like King David or Ironman? But we demand moral purity in our brothers and sisters, especially when they are leaders in the conscious world. I thought this was a terrific question, and I've been trying to wrack my brain over it as well.

I'd alive to hear your thoughts. So this goes to why I believe it's important for us to study pop culture. I think that it's because we see these mythological stories too often. We see them as vehicles of escapism. You know, we go to the movie to watch The Avengers, and you know, we read about King David and the Bible, but we don't actually really study what we're reading, I think, and we don't really wrestle with iron Man. We don't we don't really wrestle with the character of Iron Man.

We just go to the movies, we see the Avengers, and then we move on, right. And so what I'm trying to get us to do, and especially to young people, is to consider that the things that they gravitate toward have deep lessons, deep wisdom to teach them and to teach us. And so I'm trying to get us to pause and reflect instead of rushing onto the next movie for purely entertainment purposes. And so I think that's why we don't actually take take these mythological teaching seriously as

serious as we should. Fascinating. Okay, so I'm just going to end with two not questions you're off the hook with. In terms of questions you can take a side. Just some positive Twitter comments that are just complimentary. Richard Saint Marie said you are a breath of fresh air and hope regarding the future and super galactic hippiecheck who. I just absolutely adore adul this person's handles. I love this

person's handle, they said. Can you tell her thank you for sharing her inspiring her inspiring beauty and brilliance question mark exclamation point. I am inspired and excited to learn more from her. So I just want to end here today with my favorite quotes from you, which I thought would really put a nice ending to this chat we had today. Will we develop the inner conviction to have compassion for each other this fiercely in spite of our

tribal brawls and bickering, we gather the strength of love. Cooley, I love the work you're doing and I truly appreciate you coming on the Psychology Podcast today. Thank you, Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way, to something you heard. I encourage you to join in on the discussion at the Psychology

podcast dot com. That's thus psychology podcast dot com. If you can, please add a rating and review on iTunes. I read all of the reviews and really appreciate your feedback. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.