Elizabeth Oldfield speaks to Jared Yates Sexton 01/02/2023
Elizabeth
Hello, and welcome to the sacred. My name is Elizabeth Oldfield, and this is a podcast about the deepest values of the people who shaped our common life. Every episode I speak to someone with some kind of public voice or platform, and dig into the principles that drive them, how they think about their role, and what they’ve learned about engaging across our many differences. In this episode, you’ll hear a conversation I had with Jared Yates Sexton, Jared is an American author of short stories, a crime novel and four non–fiction books about policy and history. He is the host of The Muckrake Podcast, which provides progressive political analysis. We spoke about his childhood in a fundamentalist family, why he is more convinced than ever that there is a spiritual element to our many crises, and the problems with Marvel films. I really hope you enjoy listening. As usual, there’s some reflections from me at the end.
What is sacred to you? Jared Yates Sexton’s answer
Jared, you have had your morning coffee. So I feel slightly less bad about pouncing on you with the kind of question that you don’t get asked every day, which is about what is sacred to you. And maybe as a chance to let you have a little bit more of a warm up: because I know you’re a writer, and you care about words, how does that word land with you? How does it feel? Is it off–putting? Is it warm? Would you like to reject the whole premise? What’s your initial experience of it?
Jared Yates Sexton
Well, you know, what’s funny about it is – we’re actually having this conversation at a really interesting point in my life. I have to tell you, when we talked about having this conversation just around the word “sacred”, I wanted to like crawl into it like a womb, and I just wanted to live in it for a little bit. I have to tell you, I’ve been on a little bit of a personal journey of sorts, and in so many different ways. And a lot of what I have done of recent times, is I’ve really had to come to terms with a lot of my background, with a lot of what I’ve gone through. A lot of the experience that I have had. And the word “sacred” to me, I have to be honest with you, Elizabeth, it used to be radioactive. It used to be like a really frightening concept for me. And you know, I think in the past, because of the background I come from – and people who might not know me, I come from a really, really radical evangelical extreme background – like when I was little I was (and obviously, we’ll talk about this) but I was exposed to some really noxious stuff. And, you know, I think there are only a couple of ways to go with something like that. You either run from it, and you get angry at it, or you stay within it, and you sort of marinate in it. I ran away from it. And so for a very long time, the idea of anything being sacred was really terrifying to me, and angry–making. You know what I mean, it felt like a really awful, ugly idea. And for reasons that we’ll discuss. But I do have to tell you, as maybe it’s that I’m getting older, maybe it’s that I’m discovering more and more things to love and care about and maybe it is that I’m finding an idea of self, right? The idea that there’s something inside of me and there’s something inside of you and there’s something inside of listeners, that is sacred, that is beautiful, that is important and even magical to a certain extent. So I guess I would go ahead and start the conversation by saying at this point in my life – as I’m coming into a new era in my life, I’m coming into a new place in my life – what I am discovering for myself, is that what I find sacred is whatever it is that dwells, right. Like, whatever it is, there’s obviously something within us that knows Truth, it knows Beauty, it knows Inspiration, it knows courageousness but also it identifies with someone else. And I’ll go ahead and – since you’re trying to make me uncomfortable, I’ll make you uncomfortable on the other side of this – which is… You know, you and I have now been on a call for, I don’t know, six/seven minutes. I can already tell, you know – I don’t want to pull the curtain back too far, that Dan was on here in a second ago – y’all are kind people. And I can already tell you’re kind good–hearted people, and you know how sometimes you meet people very quickly and you know that they’re good people. And you know that there’s an energy and a warmth radiating from them. That there’s kindness and safety from them. That ‘self’ recognising ‘self’, to me, is sacred. And it gives me hope. And I think that we’re living in very strange (I would argue very dangerous) times. But even though, like, I think I’ve garnered maybe rightfully a little bit of a reputation as sort of a prophet of doom, when it comes to politics and economics and structures, I remain incredibly hopeful. And the reason that I remain so hopeful, and the reason that I remain optimistic is that. Because I do recognise that there is something sacred and beautiful between not just individuals, but society as a whole. I think that there’s something really, really important and immutable there that I’m only starting now to really open myself up to. And because of that, I find it intoxicating. I find it wonderful, I find it one of the most lovely things imaginable.
Elizabeth
Thank you so much. Yeah, I often want to just… I don’t actually frame sacred in a necessarily religious way, although some guests will really want to take it there. But because of the history of the way that word’s been used, I do always want to take just a little bit of extra care, particularly with people who have experienced religious trauma, or who have kind of been bearing kind of scars of contexts in which the sacred is being used as a weapon. And I would say that can be in religious and non–religious contexts. But it is… It’s a volatile word, right? It’s a powerful word. And that can work in all directions.
Religious childhood trauma and being curious
I do want to dig into a bit more of your childhood in as far as you are kind of comfortable talking about it. Because, particularly coming from a British perspective – and full disclosure, I am a Christian of the kind of British Anglican very distant cousin, I think, but cousin, of what you what you grew up in, and it’s not legitimate for me to distance myself entirely. But I’d love to hear a little bit more about maybe the kind of lived experience, the daily practice of it, of what your childhood felt like, being brought up in that very fundamentalist community.
Jared Yates Sexton
Well, you know, I want to say – and I’m more than happy to talk about it. I’ve written about this, because I think it’s important to hear from people who have gone through this. I certainly needed it as a child, because, you know, depending upon the reality that you live within, it’s almost impossible to imagine something outside of it, right? Unless you are exposed to it, unless somebody else speaks to you. So I am more than fine talking about it. And it’s something, I think, that has defined me in a lot of different ways. It’s defined the people that I love, it’s defined my community. And quite frankly, I think it’s changed this nation, the United States of America, in a lot of different ways. And this is one of the reasons I actually… I think I was able to recognise some of the threats that this country was under early on, was because it comes from the same circles that I was sort of born from. So I’m from – for people who might not be aware – I’m from a Midwestern state called Indiana. I’m currently there right now, waiting four to six inches and also 50 mile per hour winds. It is a beautiful state that has my heart. It’s sometimes a rough place, right? This is a state that has been sort of hollowed out when free trade happened in the 1980s, then into the 1990s. You know, we lost a lot of our jobs. My people are factory workers, they’re prison guards, they’re miners, they’re service workers, they’re poor, rural people. And because they’re poor rural people, there is sometimes a fundamental worldview that maybe the world is unkind, maybe it is cruel. And as a result, you have to sort of harden yourself. And you have to go out into the world, do what you’re doing, you sacrifice your body to your labour, you and your family might not necessarily talk about things, you might not necessarily have, you know, big, emotional conversations outside of outbursts and stuff like that. The religion that we were in was reflective of that, and probably instructive of that. It was… You know, I grew up in a family. I had a grandmother. I wrote about her in the “Midnight Kingdom” a little bit as a framing mechanism. I had this little sweet grandma weigh no more than maybe 70 pounds. A tiny, tiny little woman who was so sweet and so loving at times, but also was absolutely convinced that the Apocalypse was around every corner. That not only was the world on the precipice of ending, but that every single day you were doing literal battle with the supernatural Devil. And we’re not just talking about a trickster. We’re talking about the most evil being that you can ever imagine. We’re talking about, you know, possession. We’re talking about, you know, just really, really evil things happening every single day. We were taught as children what to do if the literal Devil appeared in the room with us, because it was a spiritual warfare. And not only was that happening…
Elizabeth
What do you do if the literal Devil appears in the room with you? Just for future reference…
Jared Yates Sexton
You know, Elizabeth, I’m so glad that you brought that up, because I’ve mentioned that in certain interviews before, and people just go right past it, right? Because I can talk about this for a while. No, what you do immediately is you bring up Christ, you affirm your own sort of beliefs, and if necessary – and this was the case in my childhood homes – there’s a crucifix in every single room. That’s not just there to bless the room, it’s there as a weapon. It’s the literal, like, equivalent of there being a gun out on the table. So you can snatch off the wall a crucifix in case you need to do battle with a literal demon. So that wasn’t just like my grandmother’s thing. Because my grandmother was an incredible chef. She would bring together elements of every religion possible and like, bring them together and synthesise them, right. She was on the lookout for all of this. And I have to tell you, like, it was really, really frightening, you know. And then you would go into church, and we would go in from everything from Pentecostal to our main sort of branch [which] was like very, very fundamentalist Baptist. And every single sermon was from the book of Revelation. Like it never possibly ever moved beyond apocalyptic battle. And so basically, what you’re seeing now in the United States was reflected back then in the 1980s/1990s, which was: Satan is not only real, but Satan is attacking the world, and Satan is in every plot that is being carried out by politicians, by the wealthy by the powerful. These giant conspiracies are being carried out. And so basically, every single moment of your day – and it’s not just the idea of like a literal embodiment of Evil showing up – it’s the culture, right? It’s what movies are being released, it’s what music is out there. Your friends could very well be agents of Evil, you know? They could be trying to tempt you into sin in order to take your soul. It was a literal living nightmare, is the only way that I can put it out there, with not just nationalism, but also elements of white patriarchal supremacy. You name it. It was a really bad environment. And it was always tinged with the… You know, I think for some people, they can have conversations about religion, where they discuss elements of it, their doubts, elements of faith. That was never on the board. If you brought this up, if you talked about it, you faced almost instant excommunication from your family, which you know, would mean economic and personal ruin. A really bad environment. Like a really, really bad environment. And so for me, for the longest time, when I thought of the idea of religion – and again, sacred, right – when I heard those elements, it was always almost a lure. You know what I mean? Trying to walk you into a trap in order to sort of bring you into a worldview of sort of power and oppression. I’m healing from that, which I do have to tell you. I think that that is one of the most wonderful things that’s ever happened to me, is the ability to start to move beyond that and start to start to look for elements of community and elements of sacredness and elements of beauty. Because I, as a podcaster and as a researcher, I’ve been reaching out to, you know, people within the faith. And what I keep finding is people saying, “hey, it’s not like that everywhere”, you know what I mean? Like, you can have these things, you can actually take, you know, we can get into the idea of what Christianity is or what it’s supposed to be. And it absolutely has been co–opted for powerful purposes and exploitative purposes. And there is a crisis and a schism within religion, obviously – there always is – but my ability to sort of start to look at that past and to start to recognise what it was, what it wasn’t, and what it could be, and what it should be… That has been, for me, it’s been revolutionary.
Elizabeth
How did you… were you excommunicated? How did you exit? And I realise even as I asked that, it can’t help but be a painful story.
Jared Yates Sexton
Well, it’s, you know, it is and it isn’t. I’ll be honest with you: I’m a really weird guy in my family and in my community, and I always was. I mean, I wrote a book about this a little bit, the man they wanted me to be. I wrote about how, you know, I grew up in like a very traditional patriarchal framework, right? Men are supposed to be hard. Men are not supposed to feel. Men are supposed to just, sort of, not really communicate, right? Their bodies do basically throw–in labour. And then, you know, they’re the king of the household, or however we want to put it. I was always different. I don’t know what it is about me. I’m still trying to figure that out. I was always very curious. I wanted to talk about emotions. I wanted to learn. You know, it was a very interesting thing for me. And from a young age, you know, it was like the religious aspect of it: I was interested in the theory of it. I was interested in sort of the minutiae behind religion, right? Like I was the one that like, as we talked about creation in Genesis, I want to know where God came from. You know, I wanted to know the story behind the story. I wanted to talk about the idea of omnipresence. What is that? You know, how do all these elements work? And when I started asking those questions – I have to be honest with you. And this is a defining element, I think of my character even now and what I do and what I write about, if people don’t like the question that I’m asking, that makes me want to know the answer more. Because obviously, there’s something there that needs interrogated. There’s something there that needs dealt with. It actually only sort of feeds my appetite for the question. So I was asking questions constantly. By the age of, I want to say, seven, my family – like my family, again, was evangelical Christian – they were reaching out to Catholic priests being like, “Is there something wrong with this child? He’s asking too many questions.” And what happened to me actually is… I want to say it sounds salacious, but also, it’s all too common because of the corruption of religion and faith. We had a very charismatic preacher, just an incredible performer and just, like, galvanised our church. And like, I wanted to be him. I wanted to, like, grow up and like, I would talk to him and I would talk about like, how do I follow in your footsteps? How do I do this thing? It’s kind of ironic I ended up as a professor for a while, because these are elements of the same sort of idea. But, you know, like a lot of charismatics, and a lot of people who I think sort of enjoy those performances, he went down a road of scandal. There was a major, major issue at our church – I’ll just say that – where he had to make a quick exit. And that sort of for me was the moment of clarity to start questioning the elements and structures of power. And then as I got older, I was able to talk to other people, almost like a Shibboleth, you know. Like, I was able to talk to other members of these churches who had gone through similar things, and we were able to form our own community. But no, I wasn’t excommunicated, but I do not know if my family knows exactly what to do with me. And I’m not sure that they always have… I’ve always felt a little orphaned in every community, I don’t necessarily feel completely comfortable at home. I was in the academic world for forever, I never felt particularly comfortable there as a working class person. And you know, I work in politics and history and all these things, and I’ve never felt particularly comfortable in any of these communities.
Elizabeth
Yeah. Sometimes that’s what we need in order to be able to see things and narrate them, I fear.
The original idea of God
This is gonna sound super British, but it always feels more private than asking about someone’s sex life, which is to go even more vulnerable, which is about the God question, or the Divine question. Not just the structures, not just the religions. Did you have a sense of belief in God that you lost? Did you never have one? Do you still have one? All of that language is complicated and questionable anyway, but if you’re willing to just dig that a tiny bit more, I’d love to hear about that.
Jared Yates Sexton
My relationship with God. I have to be honest with you, the more that I think about it, and the more that I deal with it, I feel like my original relationship with God was a patriarchal “Father” relationship, which of course is, you know, the communication that a lot of these churches have, because they create patriarchal structures of power. If a man created the universe, then men need to be, you know, obeyed. And that’s the power structure. And of course, the Christian mythology is wrought through with the idea that women are weak, and that women are the ones who have caused the problems that, you know, humanity suffers. And as a result, we have patriarchal structures of power. So I believe, if you were to trace my relationship with God, I think for a very long time, I had a father–son relationship with God. And as a result, like all fathers, you reach a point where you realise that your father is not perfect. And you realise that your father is not necessarily fair. And eventually, at some point, they lose… like, you know, the scales fall from your eyes. And you start to question well, you know, the question of suffering. And, you know, for me, it was one of those things where it’s like, “if God is in control of all this, he obviously hates my family, because the suffering that my family is undergoing is just like, not even like in the realm of fair”. But I will tell you, as I’ve gotten older – and now, I have to be honest with you. And maybe this is deeper in the weeds than even this question wanted to get into, but I’ll go ahead and do it. I think a large part of the problem in our world, I think a large part of the reason why we’re going through the myriad crises that we are, is because systems of power and systems of exploitation have so affected us, and so traumatised us and so changed us, that we have come to believe that we are essentially sort of soulless automatons, who go out and buy things and work. And then that’s it. And not only that, but we can’t trust one another. That everybody’s trying to get one over on us, and everybody is our enemy. And that includes our families. You know, listen, I want to go ahead, and I’m gonna put my marker down and make it very clear before I say what I’m about to say: I am a leftist. I want to make that clear. But what I’m about to say will sound conservative to some people, and I think it’s important that we talk about these things. I do think that there is a loss of meaning. I do think that there’s loss of bonds. I do think that there are things that have been whittled away and poisoned and destroyed. And by the way, in my research, from what I’ve done for this book, I have to tell you: that wasn’t unintentional. A lot of it was very, very specifically done in order to create new structures and to make us do certain things. But as I’ve come to realise the problem, that atomisation, you know, that idea that we are all out to get one another. This distrust, this idea that we can’t bond, because you might be trying to get something that I have, and I might be trying to get something that you have… I have come to a better understanding. And this goes back to that idea of self, that idea of sacred. What we do have to rediscover is spiritual. And spiritual is almost more loaded than the idea of sacred, right? There has to be a rediscovery of something that is larger than me trying to make my money, and you trying to make your money, and my property, and your property. And what I have found is this: my idea of God has evolved to what I think now what the original idea of God was before all of these things were co–opted, before all of these things were perverted, which is: “I am connected to you, you are me, I am you”. We are all living separate lives, but deep down, on some level that a microscope can’t get to, there is something that connects me to you.
Elizabeth
That is so helpful, thank you. And I think we’ll come back to it in relation to kind of power and where we are with political crises.
From fiction writer to political commentator
But I just want to fill in a little bit of your story. So, you are now known as a kind of political theorist, political commentator, but originally you were a fiction writer and a short story writer. So tell me, what drew you to that? What was the thread you were pulling on as you were trying to tell stories and kind of carve out a space in that world?
Jared Yates Sexton
Well, so I’ve always been interested in politics. And it goes back to when I was a child. I always wanted to know the story behind the story. And I wanted to know, like the secret histories of things. And it turns out, there’s secret histories to everything, which makes it fascinating. I started out with my trade as a fiction writer. I’ve always been into fiction, I’ve always enjoyed it. I still write fiction. But then in 2015/2016, I had this failed novel. I mean, it was such a mess. I believe that when I left it, it was up to 540 pages, and it was not ready to end. It was a big giant just shambling Frankenstein’s monster of a mess. And I was just like, “I have to stop”. It just ended up being a dead end. I was like, You know what, I’m going to follow the 2016 presidential election. I, like a lot of other people, thought it was going to be boring. I thought it was going to be an absolute snoozefest, it was going to end up being Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. And I just wanted to… like, I was gonna go out and write some essays about it and just basically, you know, shuffle around. What happened was, I was one of the first people to go into like Donald Trump’s rallies and talk to the people. And what I discovered very, very quickly talking to people at Donald Trump’s rallies, is that people like my family, people who had been very angry for a very long time and stewing in these conspiracy theories, that they had not only come to accept Donald Trump that they had… It wasn’t about him, I want to make that very clear. Whenever Trump gets brought up, he sucks up all the oxygen in the room. He’s a symptom of a larger disease. That problem became very obvious to me very, very quickly. And because I was like one of the first people to go in these rallies and understand the gathering threat, I quickly went viral, which is a modern condition. And I was sort of thrown into the deep end of the pool. And the next thing I know I suddenly have a platform: people want to know what I have to say about things, Neo Nazis are showing up at my house. Like, it was a wild thing that even now, six years removed from it, it still seems like a fever dream.
Elizabeth
Hmm. So it wasn’t so much, “I’m done with writing stories – I need to write politics”. It sounds like it was much more accidental than that. As you were transitioning and going from having this kind of voice and a platform as someone who wrote stories to having a voice and a platform as someone who has to be much more direct about how the world is, and maybe how it should be? Did it feel like a vocational shift? Did you feel a sense of growing responsibility as that platform grew?
Jared Yates Sexton
Yeah. To be honest – and it’s always weird to talk about this, so I hope that you and your audience can have a little bit of patience and grace with me, because it’s a very odd thing that I have to talk about in therapy quite often. You know, it’s one of those things. We’re now six years down the road from me getting thrown into that deep end of the pool. I always just want to be a fiction writer, and I’m a really good fiction writer, and I’ve got so many good ideas, and I have so many things that I would much rather be doing. But in 2016, when I realised this, I suddenly realised that I felt a calling. I understood this stuff in a way that obviously other people either didn’t, or they were unwilling to. You know what I mean? Unfortunately, a lot of the journalists and a lot of the writers out there, they come from places of privilege. And as a result, maybe they don’t have the antenna that I do when it comes to these things, or these communities. And maybe they don’t want to take a look at their own privilege and their own things that, you know, are tied into the crisis that we’re facing. But I suddenly realised, in the middle of this thing – and I’ll never forget it. I did a radio interview, and a white supremacist tried to break into my home. And I was in the parking lot dealing with the aftermath of that, and I just had a moment where like, a switch flipped. And the switch flipped, and I was like, “I’m doing this. I have to do this. If I don’t, I’m going to spend the rest of my life feeling bad about it.” This, for at least the next few years, is going to have to be the vocation shift. I am going to have to go with this thing and try and do my part in it, because it is a struggle, it is a fight. You know, I assume some of your listeners and I have different political ideas, but you have to understand that there is a problem, and that there is a crisis. And I think that all of us… I think in the future, we have to look at what has happened and where things are going. And at some point or another when you’re going to sleep at night, in the deep, deep dark at night, you have to think to yourself, “what did I do?” And there are so many different things to do. And I felt personally responsible for my role in it. And that’s, that’s something I’m still sort of wrestling with.
Political storytelling and authoritarianism
Elizabeth
Yeah. And you’ll kind of… I confess, I haven’t read everything that you have written, but from what I have read and listened to, the thread seems to be a very strong central theme about this rising threat of authoritarian forms of power – of fascism, essentially – that uses particular myths and stories, often drawing on religious myths and stories, in a way that is fundamentally destabilising our societies. And sometimes when you talk, you’re understandably very angry. And there’s a strong sense of kind of “Them”, you know, the guys with the power, often the actual guys. But then there’s also a strong sense of wanting to empathise with the people swept up in it, with the people like your family, with the people who you met at those Trump rallies. And I’d love to hear something about that bit, that “what is it within us as human beings that can tempt us, or can draw out the worst parts of ourselves, politically?” What do you see in people – the kindest interpretation?
Jared Yates Sexton
Yeah, and I’m so glad you asked that. I take a lot of flak for that, because I think one of the hardest things in the world right now…
Elizabeth
Really?
Jared Yates Sexton
Yeah, it really makes people angry sometimes. And I think it really makes people angry, because it is much easier to believe that the people on the other side of the line are Evil. And I mean, capital ‘E’ evil. That there’s something that is fundamentally wrong with them. You know, it goes back to the idea of original sin or the idea that there’s something that is wretched and ugly about people. And basically, that the baseline level for people is evil, right? Like we are wicked, self–interested, self–dealing people, and unless we transcend that – and there is an American ethos in that that is part of the problem (and I assume it’s, you know, in western civilisation writ large) which is, some people are capable, right? Some people make themselves better, some people have made themselves better. And there is also – to go back to the idea of like, capitalistic ideas sort of corrupting us a little bit – there’s also an advertising of that, which is: “here are my principles, I’m a good person, you should trust me, I’m the type of person who deserves success, or I’m the type of person who deserves this.” But when it really boils down to, and this is important, authoritarianism, Fascism, Nazism, whatever name we want to give it, it is not a phenomenon that just took place in the early to middle 20th century in Western Europe. This was not just something that just popped up out of nowhere. And it wasn’t just a really charismatic leader who gave some incredible speeches, right, and just hypnotised everybody, and he was imbued with some sort of evil secret power than infected everybody. Humans, by nature, they can be courageous, but they can also be terrified. And, you know, there are reasons right now to be terrified. There are reasons to be angry, there are reasons to be frightened about the future. The systems that we – and listen, I’ll lay it on the line. I’m 41 years old, which means that I grew up in the 1980s and the 1990s. America was the superpower of the world, nothing was ever going to change. It’s not like anything happened in England like that, you know. And suddenly, things have started to shift. And you’re starting to be like, “oh, wait a minute, maybe I was born a little too late.” “Maybe I missed something”, right. And as these things happen, people need explanations. And in America, for instance, we are raised in a steady diet of what used to be American exceptionalism. And that is religious. The idea is that God, or the universe, or fate, or history, has chosen the United States of America as its author and as its champion. And as a result, there’s a reason why life is so good here and why life will always be good. And why there’s an opportunity for your life to get better if you work hard. If you put your head down, you move forward. Well, all those things are stories. And parts of them are very, very strong lies. And when you have those stories and those mythologies at the heart of what you do – when things start getting a little bit rough, when your job goes away, when your family isn’t getting ahead anymore, when your lifespan is shortening, when all of a sudden, the economy isn’t good, when all of a sudden your politics don’t make sense, when the events of the world don’t make sense – you have a problem. And you need it explained to you in some way, shape, or form. But what do they do? They go ahead, and they listen to people who tell them stories about why this happened. And it just so happens that those stories tap into prejudices, they tap into experiences that they’ve had. It stokes anger, but it also tells them something else: “the problem’s not you”. You don’t have to do anything except for: give money over here, buy these products, arm yourselves with weapons and protect yourselves from the people who are out to get you. Those stories are incredibly compelling. But they’re especially compelling for another reason: nobody is telling another story. There’s no other story about how all this has happened. Most of the politicians – and this is true in the United States, this is true in Great Britain – the politicians who should be offering alternative explanations, they don’t want to talk about it. They have no desire whatsoever to talk about why the systems aren’t working because they are so intrinsically tied to the systems. You know, in America, Republicans are telling a story about evil conspiracies, right. And by the way, like antisemitic conspiracies, they’re talking about, you know, evil satanic cabals. The Democrats are like, “hey, everything’s fine. There’s no problem. Why is everybody so upset?” Things aren’t fine. And of course the Conservatives and in Great Britain are basically carrying out austerity and just sort of smiling and making fools out of themselves. Labour, meanwhile, has nothing. There’s no real alternative explanation in any of this stuff. And as a result, you have people who are going to ping between the different things. It ends up being an educational, rural/urban divide. It ends up becoming a cultural war, as opposed to a conversation about what is happening and where we’re going. So I feel very bad for the people who have been taken in by this, who have been built by this. I think that they can heal. I think that they can do better. There are some people you’re not going to reach. But I do not believe that people are evil. I believe that there are people who are engaging in things we could consider unhealthy, bad, evil, if you want. I think there’s a lot of manipulation that’s happening. But no, I do not believe that people at that their natural default setting are evil.
The power of the people
Elizabeth
This is a really unfair question to ask because I do think people have different gifts, and you’re kind of positioned as a kind of analyst, a sort of “prophet in the wilderness”, a critic of the current political order as an entirely legitimate one. But I did want to ask, and it was just coming through right at the end of ‘Midnight Kingdom’ like little seeds, a bit, what your positive vision is? What your political philosophy is? What – and I’m not saying you have to know how to get there, no one does – but what would you love to see as our kind of political settlement if it’s definitely not this fascist–leaning conspiracy theories?
Jared Yates Sexton
Well, I think there’s a lot to that, obviously. You know, on one hand, I’m always very cognizant that you can’t answer “Let’s all hold hands and sing Kumbaya”. You know what I mean? That we can’t just all of a sudden, like, wake up one day. Yeah. And I wish that was true. But I will say: with us. I think it starts honestly, with conversations like we’re having. You and I are engaging in intimacy right now. I don’t know you, but I like you very much. And I already feel very comfortable talking to you, and having these conversations. And by the way, I think podcasts are an incredible example of these things, which is, if we’re not just engaging in sound bites – and I have to imagine that you and I, if we were to get into political ideas and policy, we have different ideas, I guarantee it, right. But right now, we’re talking about individuals, we’re talking about feelings, we’re talking about backgrounds. Now all of a sudden, you and I could probably have policy discussions. And I understand that you’re a true broker. I understand that you would be coming from a place not where you’re trying to screw me over, but where you’re trying to come to something, right. You’re trying to find some sort of an answer, some sort of a thing. That feeling is not only powerful, it’s addictive. It’s a much better way to experience the world than the default setting of looking around every corner and literally thinking everyone’s trying to steal your kids, or trying to steal your stuff. On the individual level, we have to remember that we’re not just consumers, that we’re not just watching politics unfold on a screen. We have been taught that basically politics is ‘American Idol’, right? You watch and then you vote, and then you watch and then you vote, and you just go and you go and you go. We have to learn that democracy is participatory, that it has to be something that we engage in constantly. We have to meet our neighbours again. We have to solidify things not necessarily with families, but also like the people around us: they’re community. We have to talk to our co–workers. The regime of austerity that neoliberalism has put into place has made us all miserable. It’s time that we all talked about that misery and what is possible and what can change. And everybody now looks at how politics works: it’s top–down, it feels so large, the machine and the system is so powerful it’s beyond our reach. That’s by design, but it can be changed. What has been shown over the past few years, even if we’re talking about Trumpism – which was faux–populism – it’s that when large numbers of people come together, they can still affect politics. The Republican party didn’t want Trump until they had to have Trump, right? They pushed against him, they thought he was great for fundraising, you know. He got ratings on the debates, and then someone serious would take over. No, the people came around Trump, and they made that happen. Same thing with like something like a Brexit, right? That was something that was, you know, a political manipulation. But it was done in order to stoke the fires of faux–populism. It turns out, when people remember that they have power together, that things can shift. It’s going to take a spiritual reawakening, it’s going to take a movement that I think is already there. I think is already starting to happen. You have people who have no understanding necessarily of history or organising, they are holding up Amazon and Starbucks, and Apple. They are literally beating the most historically huge corporations in the history of the world. And they are just mounting victory after victory after victory against these people. There is an energy that is present. We forget it. And I think what has to happen is a rediscovery of who we are, and what we’re capable of, and what are relationships, and what we refer to on the left as “solidarity”. When you realise that that intimacy and trust can grow, you start to realise that, “oh”, all of a sudden, those structures that seem immovable, they are very, very movable, and they are very changeable. And so I think that’s, I think, an entry point to my philosophy of why I’m hopeful at the moment.
Elizabeth
That’s so helpful. And you basically said what is the methodology behind this podcast at one point, which is: if I start with someone’s positions, like if I said, “Hi, Jared, tell me why Fascism is bad?” Hopefully, not everyone would disagree with you, but you tell me your main position, and I speak to my conservative guest and say, like, lay out why you’re conservative, lay out why your gender–critical lay out whatever it is… then everyone switches off immediately and shuts down, who doesn’t already feel connected to that position. Whereas if you start with someone’s deeper values, and their childhood, and their story, and you let them come into focus as a whole human person who is complicated, and fragile, and longing, and lonely, and you know, egotistical, and all these things that we all are, and then you get to “and this is my vision of a good life”. So much easier to hear it, even if we still don’t agree with them. You can go, “okay, that sort of makes sense”. Or “I can sort of see how you got there”. And then you’re right, there’s – I love that phrase, a good broker – you can then have a good faith conversation, you can then start from human to human. “We disagree on these things”, rather than tribe to tribe, you know, enemy to enemy, which is what we let ourselves slip into so, so easily. And I see that dynamic playing out…
Jared Yates Sexton
Well, and our politics, prioritises that. You know, the top–down structures of the party structure is absolutely… I do go ahead and lay my full cards on the table, I’m not a Democrat. I do not trust the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is an expression of a very certain type of wealth and power in the United States of America. And it happens to be an expression of “oh, we mean well”. “We’re so sorry that these things hurt, but I promise you that we’re not racist, or sexist, or transphobic, or whatever”, right? They’ll say the social capital part of it out loud. But meanwhile, they’re like, “we have to cut so many jobs, and you just can’t have health care, and my apologies.” I am not aligned with that party. But what I do want to point out is that the party system and the structures of power, they have been co–opted and corrupted by wealth. I mean, they were designed that way. Sometimes democracy sort of changes them. Occasionally there is a shift in power and who they represent and how they represent them. You and I – I’m sorry, Elizabeth, if I’m wrong in this assumption. I have to assume that you don’t have enough wealth to have your own private space programme, right? That you weren’t considering buying Twitter this morning and being able to use it for whatever you want, right? You and I, I think, can be honest brokers with one another, because I think we also have an understanding about top–down power structures, right. We do understand that we are living within a world that has been defined beyond our purview, right? We live with laws and trends and even algorithms that we didn’t create and that we don’t necessarily always benefit from. So you and I can have an honest broker conversation. The problem is that we can’t go looking for that with the people who created those algorithms and who do benefit from that top–down power structure. And when you start having that conversation, all of a sudden, you’re not talking Biden–Trump, right? All of a sudden, you’re talking, “hey, we are really honestly on the same side of a different schism”. And when you start doing that, all of these traditional political paradigms that we all feel trapped in – I always call them trenches, right. They’re you know, like World War One trenches, where there’s no movement one way or another. You couldn’t possibly gain ground, you couldn’t possibly lose ground. Those trenches, they evaporate. You know what I mean? And it’s the same thing as engaging in intimacy with somebody who maybe you had a grudge with, maybe there was some sort of a perceived slight. I mean, think about how families fall apart, right? Somebody says something, somebody does something, both sides think that they know what happened, but they never talk about it. And then what do they do? They clear the air, and suddenly they realise, “oh, my God, we could live better”. And in this situation, I think that that that intimacy, that trust that that honest broker–ship, as you were saying, I think that is the key. And I think that if we can get to that point, if we can start to gain critical mass with that – and that’s what’s happened in the past, that’s how revolutions occur – is, you suddenly start to realise, “oh, the old ways that I thought that we were living were reality, but it turns out all along those were imaginary”. Like illusions and boundaries. And I think that that’s how it has to start.
Elizabeth
Yeah, it’s making me think about how, all the way through reading or writing, I was… The ways religious stories get used so differently, right? That Christian stories and the stories of your childhood can be used to exclude and to create kind of conspiracy theories, and in–group and out–group dynamics, or the Christian reconciliation tradition. You know, the nonviolent peace–building tradition that motivates me so much, which is basically “Love your enemy”. Like, “love your neighbour”, seek moments of intimacy, like, commit to the process, even when it’s hard. Like, take the slap on the cheek, you know, “turn your other cheek”. It’s such a… that we can’t get out from under our need for stories and for kind of organising narratives.
Marvel movies and the mythology of the Old Order
I want to end on one question, which is gonna seem frivolous – and I really didn’t want to ask you it because, full disclosure, I use Marvel films to relax. As does, I’ll have you know, a former guest, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. When I asked him how he relaxes, he said “fish and chips and a Marvel film”. But I gather that you have some concerns with Marvel films, and I’m gonna make myself listen to them as a responsible citizen.
Jared Yates Sexton
Well, I… Okay, so here’s the thing. I enjoy Marvel films as well. I mean, they’re great spectacles. But I also… And listen, I’m actually really glad you brought this up, because I think that this is pertinent to the conversation. Marvel films are mythology. They just are. They’re the creation of new mythologies in front of us. And by the way, I always say this, like, professional wrestling is the same thing. You know, it’s like anytime that you have large–scale storytelling, what you’re doing is you’re creating and carrying out mythologies, because human beings, in art, in culture, are always expressing their beliefs about how the universe works. And then they’re absorbing those beliefs and then expressing them and going forward. So for instance, I enjoy Marvel films as well. But it’s also important to point out why they are happening when they’re happening, and what it is that they’re saying, right? The Marvel films are an incredible mythology of the Old Order. And here’s the reason why. Think about what the Avengers are: they’re a group of incredibly talented, powerful individuals who are out there in the world where you can’t see them. They’re taking care of the problems. There’s a lot of evil sinister powers in the world, almost like the Devil, right? There is an energy that is Evil in the world – there’s a group out there taking care of it. Look the group. People roll their eyes, but you cannot avoid this. It’s Captain America, the embodiment of the United States of America. It’s Iron Man, which is technology plus also weapons and the, you know, the military industrial complex. You have the literal embodiment of nuclear power, nuclear weapons, in the Hulk. You have The Vision, which is an AI construct. You have the reformed Soviet Union in the Black Widow, right? And also, you have Hawkeye shooting some arrows every now and then. And you have S.H.I.E.L.D, which is intelligence communities. What are they taking on, right? They’re taking on Evil, ancient evil Loki, which is the same as the Trickster, right? The Devil. You’ve also got Ultron, which is “oh my God, Ultron comes along just as we’re afraid of bots and people being able to create programmes and internet warfare”. All of a sudden you have Thanos, who is the embodiment of climate change. They are literally fairy tales and mythologies about how the Old Order will protect us if we just pay patronage, and if we just believe in them. And the reason why people are so drawn to them is because things like Christianity are starting to dwindle in terms of, like, the number of people going to churches, the number of people who are engaged in community groups. What we’re being fed is this idea that through consumerism, and through consuming, we’ll still have the old powers to protect us. We’ll still have these ideas that will go ahead and give us meaning and give us purpose. But we don’t have to even go to church, we can just fire up Netflix. We don’t have to go out and fight for democracy, you stream. And it doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy them. They’re wonderful spectacles. I’m sorry, but Endgame is just a fantastic spectacle. And like, I left, and I was just like, I saw something amazing, you know. Like, it makes you… it does make you feel because it’s incredible propaganda. And by the way, when I talk about this stuff, I bum people out, and I’m so sorry about that. And I can shut off my brain and I can watch stuff, and I can enjoy it, I promise. But we also do need to understand what these stories do and what’s happening with them. It’s when we consume mindlessly, that’s when the problems occur, right? When we just sort of take it as sort of our experience, when we don’t interrogate it, we don’t really think about it. But we do have to find a middle ground between consuming the things that we enjoy – because I’m like you, when I when I’m cooling down or I need to turn my brain off, like, I love entertainment as much as anybody and I can turn my brain off. But also, I can sit there and do that, and I can understand how these power structures continue, and how they proliferate, and how they sort of protect themselves. So yeah, when I take a look at that stuff, I have to give it a critical eye but also – yeah, I wish there was another Endgame coming up, I gotta be honest with you.
Elizabeth
Jared, thank you so much for speaking to me on The Sacred.
Jared Yates Sexton
Thank you. It’s my pleasure.
Elizabeth Oldfield’s reflection on her conversation with Jared Yates Sexton
Elizabeth
Well, Jared is going on my tally of men having midlife spiritual awakenings. Metaphysical, quite midlife crises, I’d say. They’re more the opposite of that. But it feels like everyone I speak to at the moment between the ages of sort of 30 and 60 – various specially men, many of them, you know, who would not self–describe as religious – are really coming around to this sense that the spiritual element of life is more important, and that it’s possible that religion still has a huge amount to teach us, which I am intrigued by. I talked to a friend of mine recently, who is an academic, an academic in kind of experimental psychology, evolutionary psychology of religion, and said, you know, “how would I measure my hunch and see if I’m, you know, making the plurable of anecdote into data?” And it’s tricky, it’s tricky. So at the moment it’s just a hunch, and we’ll see if it ever becomes measurable. Anyway, Jared was one of the people that I was a bit more nervous about interviewing. Just stylistically really, there’s a real gap, I think, between British political commentators and American political commentators. And American radio shows and podcasts with political commentators are very forceful, you know. They’re very sure of everything. And everything is underlined and in italics, right? There’s very little light and shade. And from my impression of Jared – obviously I read a lot of his stuff – but my public impression of Jared was more in that box than he in fact turned out to be, as is almost always the case with my guests. The impression that I have of them in my head is very much complexified when I get in a room or in a Zoom room with them. And I immediately realised that Jared is a lot more thoughtful and complex and self–aware and humble, actually, than his kind of public political persona sometimes suggests. I’m sure he won’t mind me saying that it. It took me on the journey that I often go on with this podcast of moving from expectations and prejudices about someone to an encounter with a real person. And now, I’m not going to tell you every time that happens – it happens a lot – but I like to, you know, maintain the illusion that I like everyone and I’m completely open–mind, no prejudices, or allergies. But it’s clearly not, in fact, true. And actually it was a lovely thing, to be able to really connect with Jared on that human level. And his story and his telling of it reminds me how careful we have to be about listening to where people are coming from, and particularly those who have… who carry pain, who carry scars from their childhood. I’m a person of faith and I am as tempted to tribalism as the next person and, you know, want to defend my team. But listening deeply to where someone is coming from and acknowledging where they’ve been hurt is a sort of prerequisite, really, for being able to have an honest human conversation. And a lot of people who have rejected a kind of childhood – and it happens also with politics and philosophies, and… anyhow, quite intense ideological childhood, often later in life, I think, people are able to realise there’s a broader spectrum around that idea, or that they actually received a lot of gifts from that childhood. But unless they feel safe and listened to and respected and their pain acknowledged, it’s very difficult to get there. So I was reminded about that. And we talked obviously on various quality themes about what it takes to see each other as fully human when we disagree, what it takes to be good brokers, to be in a good faith conversation, to resist that fight–or–flight in us that causes us to shut down and withdraw from each other. And I remember starting The Sacred and various members of my team at the time, understandably, thought it sounded a bit fluffy. And that, you know, “why are you talking about talking” was one of one of the comments, you know. When people are very interested in politics, or very interested in policy, or in working in charity or business, something does kind of matter. Whereas something as reflective as this does sound… can sound like a waste of time, right, can sound like a talking shop. You’re not building anything, you’re not fixing problems directly, you’re not feeding anyone. But I’m more and more convinced that actually, it’s the skills that I’m seeking to learn and hold open some space for that. We really need, in order to protect democracy in order to protect a common life, in order to living in any way in which we flourish alongside our neighbours and build a society marked by the common good, these habits are really difficult. And as you’ve heard, I’m still practising them. But I was reminded just how important they are, even though they’re hard to describe, and they sound fluffy and soft. These habits of the heart, as Parker Palmer calls them – who’s a kind of Quaker activist theorist of democracy – these habits of the heart of turning towards rather than away from each other, bearing with each other, of listening, of seeking to understand, of kind of putting the best interpretation on something rather than the worst; that these are the habits by which we will stand or fall. And finally, Marvel movies, which I really enjoyed talking about. But I went away and did some reading after I had come across Jared’s position on this and something he didn’t mention is, there’s quite a strong financial link between the Pentagon and Marvel movies, because they’re basically impossible to make without some military input around the weapons, I think, and the the scale of some of the filming. And so, very often, the Pentagon collaborates on Marvel films and possibly other action films, I’m not sure, but won’t sign off on that if the script is unnecessarily negative about military, which is a whole new thing to think about when I’m trying to relax and watch Captain America. And I hope you’ll think about it too, but maybe still enjoy it.
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