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George and Virgil talk about the parallels between our 21-century times and Nietzsche's 19th century. Things have gotten worse: as society became more and more equal, we got more and more rivalry and competition. Youth of today are confronted by their own Wagners at every step. We then swerve into talking about the anthropology of mimetic crises and how the Bible irreversibly opened our eyes to how they work.

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We explore the patron saint of Modern Malaise Martyrs: Friedrich Nietzsche. The famous 19th-century philosopher was an incel before there were incels, alt-right before there was alt-right, a sperger before there were spergers, a racist before ... never mind... ; the original ubermensch railing against the worms and slaves of this world (almost everyone other than himself)... We look for the motivations for Nietzsche's philosophy in the cultural background of Europe of his day and in his personal history, and especially his relationship with the composer Richard Wagner. Tracing René Girard's footsteps, we explain how Nietzsche's unhealthy views contributed to his ultimate madness. 

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George's old friend Virgil joins the studio for the start of another season of George Boreas Podcast. This season is a project of about seven episodes that will be turned into a book. The goal is to study an increasingly influential internet subculture that goes by many different names (trad? vitalists? frogs? alt-right? etc.), but that involves the rejection of modern western "degeneracy" and a creation of its own vision based on a philosophy emphasising virility and mental and physical fitness. It proposes a 21st century version of Nietzsche's "revaluation of all values."

In this first episode, Virgil and George try to map out what the subculture considers wrong with today's soft and degenerate Western society - the modern malaise.

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How one goes from trying to conquer the universe with artificial intelligence to being fascinated with cute cats. Electronic omertà. Eight billion flawless AI robots. Being on spectrum as a free pass for being a prick. The perpetual orgasm of knowing the mathematical mysteries of the universe. Etc.

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Is historical progress guaranteed? Is history moving definitively in one direction, or is there a chance that our civilisation might collapse and we go back to ground zero? If progress is definitive, what drives it? What is the motor and guarantor of that movement in one direction, rather than in a circle? George goes over the common philosophical perspectives and gets to the Girard's perspective: historical progress is real, and its motor from the beginning was and still is the gradual uncovering of the victimary mechanism, which amounts to the recession of the sacred. Tune in to hear where that came from and how it works.

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"In reaction to the continuous humiliation that is poverty, the underprivileged enter a life of self-destructive sadomasochism, which according to René Girard is the final state of all frustrated desires."

The poor aren't fine. They are possessed by demons, and the demons are the privileged. So they can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Neither can they be healed by money alone. What they need is an exorcism.

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Seasteads: self-governing communities floating upon the ocean. Utopian communities  free from oppressive government, or super-villain lairs plotting their own takeover of the world? Charlie and George discuss this and other visions of libertarian dreams.

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According to René Girard, sadomasochists have an obsessive yet accurate understanding that all desire feeds on obstacles placed between it and its goal. The obstacle, and the pain it creates, convince desire that transcendence is within reach. For sadomasochists, this pain is the sacrament through which they partake of that evasive transcendental being that is the goal of all desire.

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Charlie and George tackle the controversies of immigration politics. The historical motives behind immigration and against it in the USA and elsewhere. Immigrants as assets in the progressive-conservative conflict of Western democracies. Discussion of the libertarian view of immigration. & more.

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Total social equality is neither possible nor desirable. I explain why this is true with arguments from mimetic theory: desire is imitated, and so it always and everywhere creates celebrities and outcasts. On the other hand, I think it's true that "all men are created equal," as the Declaration of Independence proclaims. I explain how the sense of violent sacred allowed societies throughout history to hold to the idea of essential human equality while being highly stratified and practicing all forms of oppression. Finally, I discuss how the recession of violent sacred means that we no longer know how to establish peaceful differences. 

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