The Archetypal Dude meets Moderate Evangelicalism and Likes It: Joe Rogan and Wesley Huff

But if he pops he'll definitely be a metagelical

Yep, I made a vidya about the thing peeps are losing their minds over...

I'll drop the points below.

1. Huff didn't say much of anything original. That's not a strike against him. I think he was the right guy for the right moment. He didn't need to say anything original.

2. Rogan is clearly moving in terms of what he thinks and where he is. He is the embodiment of an archetype, almost the first dude of the zeitgeist. You can see the culture moving by watching Joe. Amazing embodiment of both "everyman" and someone who's read/seen a lot and has great recall.

3. People love representation. Deep feeling of nostalgic paradise lost among evangelicals. I think this is from the long decline of the mainline and the retreat into fundamentalism/neo-evangelicalism. In some ways it's worse among Catholics and Orthodox who HAD major civilizations and then lost their platformed, formal pre-eminence. See the popes during WWII. To win Joe Rogan feels like MAGA.

4. But we’re still not going back to the way things used to be… The culture is not the same as it was, and it probably wasn't what you imagined it used to be anyway. Nostalgia is about wringing meaning out of the past but it tends to distort. It's an important and powerful psychological pleasure but never terribly clear eyed. See Aaron Renn on Negative World, Post-Christian Trump Presidency,

5. Moderate evangelicalism is far from dead. Huff put on a display of why it remains as potent a force as it does. It's a crowd sourced least common denominator Protestantism that isn't going away and can play in our culture still among a lot of normies.

6. Rogan is searching. He's trying to put things together. He researched Huff.

7. I'd love for this to debunk Protestant presentational idolatry. "If we can only get someone to give Joe 'the message' THEN...

8. Joe wants to match Huff with a skeptic. My expectations are low because many of those devolve into where we expect them to go.

9. Big Moments for me. #1. Rogan is moving past reductive materialism.

[Rogan] And, you know, I think most of what it means to be a human being in a, in a meaningful way is not measurable. Most of it, love and friendship and community, these things are not very measurable. They're very strange.

You know, the, the, the bond that people have with their family and their loved ones. And it's very strange.

[Wes Huff] (3:04:22 - 3:04:23)

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan] (3:04:23 - 3:05:01)

That love connection, whatever love is, whatever good is, it's a very real thing. And it seems to not exist, certainly not in the volume in other animals that exist in us. There's obviously nurturing in other animals, they nurture their loved ones, but their perception of life and death and all of it is very different than ours.

So it leads me to why, why, why is, why is our version of life so much more rich and complicated than any other being that exists? And why do we have this insatiable desire to learn and know more?

[Joe Rogan] (3:05:23 - 3:05:32)

We kind of know it and we don't know it, you know, but it's just, you can't measure it and you can't put it on a scale. And so people don't like that.

Wes Huff] (3:05:32 - 3:05:32)

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan] (3:05:32 - 3:05:46)

They don't like that. It makes them feel dumb to believe in that. It makes them feel dumb to even speculate, you know, to even just say, what do you think happens when you die?

Like even that conversation is like, people don't like that. Nothing. You go, it goes dark and that's it.

It's over.

[Wes Huff] (3:05:46 - 3:05:47)

That's it.

[Joe Rogan] (3:05:47 - 3:05:51)

You die. Like, how the fuck do you know? Have you died?

Like, you don't know.

10: Rogan is doing the imaginal work to try to incorporate the Jesus narrative into his worldview. He’s asking the right questions.

[Wes Huff] (3:05:51 - 3:06:04)

So in all of this, what do you think of Jesus? Like in terms of your own like journeying and trying to find answers to ultimate questions, what do you think of the historical person of Jesus?

[Joe Rogan] (3:06:05 - 3:07:03)

Well, it certainly seems like there's a lot of people that believe that there was this very exceptional human being that existed. So the question is, what does that mean? Does it mean he was a son of God?

Does it mean he was just some completely unique human being that had this vision of humanity and this way of educating people and spreading this ideology that would ultimately change the way human beings interact with each other forever? So what is, is he the son of God? Well, are we all?

That's another question, right? Do we all have that inside of us? Do we all have that ability to change everything around us, inside of us?

Do we all have that unique connection to the divine? And is he a representation of the best version of that? Or was he an actual person that was the son of God?

And is it important?

[Wes Huff] (3:07:04 - 3:07:04)

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan] (3:07:04 - 3:08:20)

I don't know. I mean, what does it mean? Just the fact that it's a question to ponder is a miracle in itself, in a way.

Just the fact that there's this concept of this person that died for our sins as the son of God, but you have to buy a bunch, you have to believe in a bunch of stuff to go that way. Like just the concept of that is interesting to people because what it can do to people is offer them a very unique way to change the way they feel about the world itself. And if you do follow that, I know a lot of Christians are hardcore Christians, or some of the nicest people you'll ever meet in your life.

So it does work, right? Like if you do live like a Christian and you do follow the principles of Christ, you will have a richer, more love-filled life. So it is true, right?

But you have to submit to this concept that this guy was the child of God who came down to earth, let himself be crucified, came back from the dead, explained a bunch of stuff for people, and then said, all right, see you when I come back.

[Wes Huff] (3:08:20 - 3:08:23)

And you don't know how you can wrap your head around that particular claim.

[Joe Rogan] (3:08:23 - 3:09:04)

And if he came back, here's the thing. If he came back, who the fuck would believe him today? With all the fake news and all the CGI and AI.

Imagine, that would be the most bizarre thing of all time. If we get to a point where artificial reality is indiscernible from regular reality, and Jesus chooses to come back at that moment, boy, that's the ultimate test of faith, right? When it's impossible to discern.

If we really reach a point where virtual reality is indistinguishable from regular reality, we're probably 100 years away from that or something. Maybe not even that.

[Wes Huff] (3:09:04 - 3:09:09)

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, that's probably why Jesus came in the first century and not the 21st century.

[Joe Rogan] (3:09:09 - 3:09:25)

But imagine if that's the big catch. Jesus does return, but when he returns, we're just so confused that we can't even tell. Or maybe that's how he returns in the first place.

Maybe he returns through AI.

11. The key take away is the vibe-shift. That's why evangelicals are losing their minds over this. Joe Rogan Christianity is going to be more metagelical. That doesn't mean he'll go Ortho or Trad Cath though. Maybe.

12. Part of the metagelical shift is that people "believe what they want" but get devoted to a "practice", even if it's idiosyncratic or idio-syncretistic. Metagelicalism is a bit more free-thinking than evangelicalism or old Orthodoxy and Catholicism that tried to create more confessional discipline. You can't listen to Jordan Peterson’s Gospel Seminar without catching in nearly every episode deconstructing confessional tyranny.

13. Will Joe Rogan give up his psychedelic drugs? Maybe? Maybe not. He already seems to be a devoted husband and family man. In that way there is a sense of already living a normie Christianish life and now adding icons or a Sunday mass onto a basically Christendom lifestyle. I hate to disappoint but Joe Rogan won't go all Russell Brand because he's not Russell Brand. He's already a settled shopkeeper podcaster who has personal discipline. He'll add a level of Christianity to this but still be very open and welcoming.

It's too early to tell if this current upswing in interest and attraction to Christianity is a sea-change or merely a market-correction.