S1E8: Zhuan Falun by Li Hongzhi

The book club investigates how to achieve a milky white body with Li Hongzhi's Zhuan Falun.

Transcript

Intro

SPEAKER_05 0:00

But I also just felt nostalgic.

SPEAKER_03 0:01

I'm like, oh hey, that's nice. Don't you talk about the Bermuda triangle? No one's talked about that since like the fucking 80s.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Since I was a kid. What happened to that?

SPEAKER_03 0:08

I thought it was gonna be a big deal when I grew up. Like I thought Bermuda triangle stands. Yeah, it's all I worried about at night.

SPEAKER_07 0:17

To all the members president and worldwide, I hereby call this meeting of the Piece of Shit Book Club to order. I'm this week's esteemed chair and chief bibliophile. And I'm here to guide you, dear listener, through the world of shitlit. Fully charged today, my battery's at 100%. We got a great app for you today. I've let you know when some previous episodes weren't going to be very good. I have credibility in this department, so believe me when I tell you, we've got a jam-packed agenda for today's meeting. Also, we've heard the feedback loud and clear. Last week's chairperson, Booker Dubois, has been canned. We got some feedback that he was giving off some weird energy. He was kind of hostile. And actually, I listened back to the episode. There was there was a little bit of hostility coming from Booker last episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

That was with the worst parts cut out.

SPEAKER_07 1:16

Yeah. Well, he's done with. He's out. I'm in. We're guaranteeing less hostility, more interpersonal positivity on this episode. And to underscore that, let's bring in the panel. Let's bring in the boys. Where are my boys at? All right. We got this week Jane Lynch. Welcome in, Jane. Always a pleasure, Cecil. Thank you. We've got Bo Dashington. Dr. Bo Dashington. How do you do? Yeah, pretty good. Sorry, Cecil or Cecil? Cecil. Cecil.

SPEAKER_05 1:49

Cecil Cecil Cecil Cecil Sassam. Cecil Sassom. Cecil Sasson. Cecil Sassom. Cecil Sasson.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Okay. Cecil Sasson. It sounds like we picked you up off waivers.

SPEAKER_05 1:58

It's like a fourth line blog.

SPEAKER_07 2:00

In the MLD or though, right? And uh Chip Wilson. Welcome in, Chip. Hey, good to be here. Okay. This is this week's PSBC roster of reprobates, the standing committee of creeps, the panel of pendants. And it is a shame, again, it's as we observe International Women's Day, we couldn't book a single female PSBC member on the panel today.

SPEAKER_05 2:25

What better way to celebrate International Women's Day than a group of men reading and talking about Chinese mysticism? I mean, I'm sure there's some women in the Falun Gong, right? They need to be represented and heard. And who better to represent and voice for them than us? Better to mansplain. Yeah, because because the Falun Gong literature has no mansplaining. It needs us to step in and do it and do it for them, right?

SPEAKER_07 2:45

Dr. Dashington is uh getting ahead of the script here. So on today's episode, uh, well, look, let me take us back one step here. So the Pieceship Book Club podcast, we do a deep dive into one particularly odious book each week. We're not podcasters, we're not media types or internet influencers. We, for the most part, don't have any connection to the publishing industry. We're not, for the most part, writers. We're just four buddies looking for an excuse to connect and bullshit every week for a couple of hours. Um, and and it's really been actually great the amount of traction that we've been getting with this podcast. Uh, we're starting to see some uh response from our book club membership. We've gotten a lot of downloads on our Stephen Segal episode, on our Fetterman episode. So, as you said, Dr. Dashton, uh, what better way to build on this growing momentum than a deep dive into a relatively obscure text from a banned Chinese spiritual movement? It's the yes, it's the episode that it's the episode that no one's been waiting for. We look at Lee Hongjur's Juan Falan, the foundational text of the Falun Gong movement, which is either a evil and secretive cult or a fairly harmless woo-woo spiritual movement, depending on who you ask. So, book club members, stick with us. It's gonna be fun. I promise you. You're thinking, come on, but it's gonna be good. Uh, but before we get

Book Report

SPEAKER_07 4:13

into that, the book report segment, a roundup of news items, new releases, and a rundown of what we're reading. Before I open it up to the floor of you beautiful book boys, I have a motion I'd like to put forward. So in the past, the chair would discourage discussion of any books in this segment that weren't shitty. Anytime someone wanted to talk about an actual good book they were reading, they were kind of like poo-pooed. Now I was thinking about it. I propose that we officially permit discussion of good books in this segment. We're doing it anyways. It happens every meeting. We may as well formalize it with an official writ. What say you?

SPEAKER_00 4:49

But I only like doing it because it was bad.

SPEAKER_05 4:52

I say keep the poo-poo, but uh people can discuss whatever books they want.

SPEAKER_07 4:57

Well, it looks like the motion fails to pass. Uh, it's it got voted down. All right. Well, so so then it's official. There'll be no discussion of good books in the book report segment.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Okay. Copy. I checked out something really good last week, though. Um yeah, me too. I've got one I really want to recommend too. Oh, why? Uh all right, Ship. Yeah, jump in. Go ahead, please. Actually, it's I don't know how how much of a recommendation this honestly is, but um uh in in the process of of going through Falun Gong texts themselves, uh, I would say that this guy, Benjamin Penny, uh is uh Australian academic, has uh a very good book on the the religion of Falun Gong. If anyone is curious about maybe a a little bit more adult conversation following this podcast. Ben Penny.

SPEAKER_05 5:52

I am the only one who loves that name. Ben Penny.

SPEAKER_07 5:54

Ben Penny. Ben Penn. Duly noted. Uh, we'll be rushing out and picking that up, I'm sure. Bo Dashington. What uh what have you been reading?

SPEAKER_05 6:04

Well, I've only been reading a book I actually do want to recommend and really like. Um, I'd recommend it to everyone, but I was especially going to mention it to Chip. Um, there's there's a certain American reality television program where they maroon 16 people on an island. American Idol. Yeah, it's American Idol. It's American Idol on the island. But there's a former survivor contestant called Steven Fishback who wrote a book about reality TV called Escape, and it's a novel, and it's so fucking fun. I really, really like it. I just genuinely wanted to recommend it. If you're a survivor addict, which I am, um, it's so it's such a I don't know, just a very fun book.

SPEAKER_07 6:37

It's not a piece of shit book.

SPEAKER_05 6:38

It kind of sounds like a piece of shit. It's actually well written. Believe it or not. Okay. The guy's actually a writer. He's not just some he's a writer by profession, so he's not just some like random like reality TV.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Is it like fiction? A fictional book, or is it like came by reality TV? Okay. Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_05 6:53

It's a novel, but he he did like several hundred interviews to like with like producers and like recruiters and like casting people and all that type of stuff. So it's actually like a realistic depiction of of the world of reality TV. I feel like I'm not selling it well, but it's a very it's a very fun book, especially if you like Survivor.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

We actually have three of us that are following Survivor on this podcast. So, you know, we can add that segment once in a while.

SPEAKER_05 7:17

Who's the third? Oh, Jane. Do you watch do you watch it?

SPEAKER_02 7:19

Uh yeah, so I watched the first season. Uh, I've never seen any other season. And so uh Chip persuaded me to for the 50th. I've uh I've I've been enjoying it though, I will say.

SPEAKER_07 7:30

So I'm the only one stopping this from becoming an all-survivor podcast, then. Yes.

unknown 7:35

Exactly.

SPEAKER_07 7:37

Uh Jane, anything that you've been reading? Uh any items that you want to contribute to the book report?

SPEAKER_02 7:43

Just the uh book I mentioned kind of off uh recording before. Um I have been kind of skimming through it a little bit. Don't be Canada, How One Country Did Everything Wrong All at Once by Tristan Hopper, a uh reporter um who uh was kind of infamous a little while ago for killing a raccoon and posting it about it on Twitter and thinking about how brave he was. Uh-huh. Pretty nasty animals. And uh I mean, uh yeah. It's just an odd book. It's just like talking about you know the wokism and the how transgenderism is like ruining our country and how we're letting in too many immigrants, and it's just all the talking points, but each talking point is like a good, you know, what's already been said in clipbytes is now just extended to a few hundred pages.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

So yeah, I I find that stuff like even more aggravating when Canadian uh influencers or whatever try to do it, yeah, or reporters, because it's it's just like come on, you're it's Canada, guys. Like, you know, you're just co-opting like US talking points, it's just embarrassing on top of vile.

SPEAKER_04 8:53

Protecting our unique culture and history. The fuck are you talking about?

SPEAKER_07 8:58

What culture? Nothing unique about Canada, it's a copy of a copy.

SPEAKER_02 9:02

So, yeah, if anybody wants a really shitty book to read uh about Canada, so that's what I would recommend to our listeners.

SPEAKER_07 9:09

All right. Well, thank you for that. See, now I wanted to talk about a good book, which is why I put that earlier motion forward. But I guess I'll break, I'm breaking my own rules over here. So I've been um there's a podcast that I love, super popular podcast. Um, the rest is history. Uh, it's great, well, it's right in the name. It's a great history podcast out of the UK. They just wrapped up a six-part series on the fall of the Inca Empire and the insane brutality of the Spanish conquistadors in South America. And it's a it's a terrific sequel to their they did this 10 plus hour long series on Cortez and the Aztecs. So this is sort of a great compendium piece to it. And so I I I had only been vaguely aware of this story, and so it prompted me to pick up uh Kim Macquarie's The Last Days of the Incas, and it's a really breezy narrative history about Pizarro and Altahuapa in uh in Peru. It's and if you don't know the story, I mean the the really, really basic nucleus of it is 160 Spanish maniacs bringing down this complex empire of six million people, and then destroying each other in an orgy of violence in the aftermath after they've already conquered the empire. So it's it's it's just fascinating, it's brilliant. Uh so recommend that. Not a piece of shit. Um, and it's you know, it's it's not a dense academic tone, it's really readable and accessible. So that's what I've been reading. Turning towards

News and Doings

SPEAKER_07 10:44

some book news. I know in the last episode, the last meeting of the book club, we said, okay, no news because it was just all political stuff. But actually, something interesting came out of the Supreme Court in the US. There was a judgment just a handful of days ago over whether they were looking at the issue of whether machines can be authors. Can AI hold a copyright for a book? And the Supreme Court decided that actually, no, um, that human authorship is, quote, a bedrock requirement for copyright protection. So this prevents AI-generated work from being registered for copyright and reinforces the idea that creativity is uniquely human endeavor. Um, it'll be interesting to see what the consequences of this are. You can't also, if you try to generate something you through AI and then claim human authorship for it, that's fraud. It's it's there's a you know, there's legal rules, laws that prevent you from doing that. Uh, I don't have a pithy joke to end on, but that's you know something. It's look, this is a this is a book podcast, and this is book news. So, you know, I'm bringing it to you. The big time book news.

SPEAKER_05 11:57

Boring.

SPEAKER_07 11:59

Okay, um, moving on, we'll take a look at a few new releases, new and upcoming releases that are um we're keeping an eye on here. So the first one uh in celebration of International Women's Day. The title is Why Women Deserve Even Less by a fellow, yeah, by a fellow named Byron Gaines. I'm reading from the back cover here the proof is everywhere. More ghosting, harsher texts, faster upgrades, quicker divorces, endless orbiters getting drained. This isn't bad luck. It's the new baseline. Women just aren't into you anymore. Your sex drive, once the fuel for greatness is now your biggest weakness. Women extract value while giving crumbs or nothing. They'll take your resources and bounce to Chad, AI or the next wallet. This isn't hate, it's math, it's survival. Uh Chris gives it five stars out of five. Quote, must read for single and divorced men between 18 to 45. It's it's divorce core through and through.

SPEAKER_04 13:02

Oh, divorce core.

SPEAKER_07 13:03

Something says, because the reviews are all, there's about 150 reviews, they're all five star. Uh, if you don't know this guy, Myron Gaines, he's from the something called the Fish and Fresh and Fit podcast. He's a Sudanese American fellow. The podcast has been demonetized on YouTube. Um, frequent guests include Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

What's it called? Fresh and Fit?

SPEAKER_02 13:27

Sounds like a man that went through a divorce and turned a bad situation into a good situation by making lots of money off of it. Well, they've hosted Nick Fuentes a few times on their podcast.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

It's a really like it's a really I've seen clips of it. It's this like format where they often will bring on a bunch of women who are like OnlyFans models, or they they clearly scout people who are like maybe kind of superficial, maybe not. That's this guy, right? And then just kind of like treat them like shit. Yeah, it's I don't know, it's uh total garbage. So you're in luck.

SPEAKER_07 14:00

It came out uh recently, February 22nd, $20.61 on paperback. Get this 97 pages. Now, if that that shows just a lack of respect for your audience. If I was a grifter and I was writing a nonsense book, wouldn't you feel obligated to at least crack a hundred pages a bit? Yeah, come on. Like that's like putting out like a 45-minute feature film. It's like you've you've done half the work.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

Yeah, you need to go 160 pages to 200. I mean, that's that's your bar. Even a hundred. The guy was three pages short of a of a hundred. Check the margins on those pages as well.

SPEAKER_07 14:36

There's probably only a dozen or so words on each page. You know, Myron's using uh yeah, one and a half spacing on those those lines. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

Oh yeah. These um, yeah, it's like one of those podcasts, I think also that's like a live one that goes for like eight to ten hours, I think, on their broadcast, you know. No, respect to that.

SPEAKER_05 14:56

I'm exhausted after an hour of this. When you first mentioned this, I started I was just looking it up online and thinking, oh yeah, maybe that's like like a book that'll be interesting to cover, but then just reading more about it where it's all just like awful, awful shock content with nothing to actually analyze, and realizing, God, there's be no like reading that would just be such a nightmare.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Yeah, like even in the realm of like misogynist literature, I they're not uh bringing anything new to the field of research, so to speak.

SPEAKER_07 15:24

Uh the next book that we're taking a look at Young Man in a Hurry, a memoir of discovery from Gavin Newsome. It's the number one bestseller in US local government. 2395 on hardcover, 304 pages from the back cover. Go slow, his political elders advised him. But Gavin Newsom has never known such a speed. And Young Man in a hurry, Newsome traces the forces that have defined his ambitions as a politician and have pushed him to outpace the nation in myriad cutting-edge social issues that have since entered the mainstream. Now, again, I'm loath to label any of these piece of shit books without having read them, but and I love when books get these kind of reviews. This is from an Amazon reviewer. Four out of five stars, pagers too thin. Get a digital copy or an audio book. Paper is too thin. You can see the print from the next two or three pages through the one you're reading. I couldn't make it past the prologue with this being such a distraction for my reading. So it's when when the actual physical book is a piece of shit, and we've seen this before in some books.

SPEAKER_05 16:30

This is that's why you like that's why you hated the Prince Andrew book, isn't it? It wasn't because Prince Andrew was a notorious diddler, it was just because the book was low quality.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

You are getting at the heart of the matter. Do you think the thin, transparent pages are commentary on uh Newsom himself at all?

SPEAKER_07 16:45

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

That's uh that's a just adding critique.

SPEAKER_05 16:48

I just gotta say though, I think we've got a deeper like structural issue in the piece of shit book club because we managed to get a new host every week and they all fucking love Prince Andrew the Diddler. Like, so I don't really know what's going on there. Maybe we could set up a committee or something and get to the bottom of this one and look very strongly at it.

SPEAKER_07 17:03

You don't think a guy named Cecil Sasson is gonna be into Andrew Mombatten or whatever he's calling himself these days? Sounds like one of Prince Andrew's best buddies. Yeah, so that's uh young man in a hurry. And see, my thing with Newsom, I just he's too handsome to be the most qualified guy. It's the Trudeau syndrome. Like there's no way the sexiest fella is the best for the job. Look at history. Some of the greatest leaders. Churchill, slob, Lincoln, nerd. Jean Chrtien, ghoul. Totally unfuckable. So that's Young Man in a Hurry. And the last book that we're keeping an eye on is called Manufacturing Delusion: How the Left Uses Brainwashing, Indoctrination, and Propaganda Against You by a Fellow named Buck Sexton. Quote, a former CIA analyst draws on his experience combating jihadi terror movements and the history of totalitarian regimes to show citizens, excuse me, how to show how citizens lose touch with reality. He shows you how some of the early stages of mass delusion have already occurred right here in the United States of America on issues of public health, gender, and racial justice.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

How many of these books come out per week now?

SPEAKER_07 18:16

It's crazy because we're doing this show every two weeks, and there is just like there is a fresh haul of trash every time I look at the Amazon list. This one is number one in political freedom. Political freedom is the category? That's a category? Yeah, Amazon's got some great categories.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

It's political freedom is a category. Well, I'm just gonna do the segue here because I think the category of political freedom goes great into our main segment.

SPEAKER_05 18:40

Yeah, I was gonna say, are we gonna talk about Chinese mysticism today, or is that off the cards?

SPEAKER_07 18:45

Okay, uh, so that was the book report segment. Uh I'll now pass it over

Zhuan Falun

SPEAKER_07 18:50

to my esteemed book club colleague Chip Wilson for our feature segment on Zuan Falan by Lee Hong Zhur, the Bible of the spiritual movement, uh, outlawed by the Chinese government, Falong Gong. I just have one more thing to say, and then it's all yours. So you you would agree that we're not journalists on this show.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 19:10

But we have an obligation to our book club members to be transparent and to disclose any potential conflicts of interest, do we not?

SPEAKER_00 19:17

Yes, but we're also anonymous.

SPEAKER_07 19:19

We are anonymous, but if there were potential conflicts of interest, you wouldn't want them coming out later on, maybe future episodes, maybe if we're doxxed, and we wouldn't want to be accused of maybe being a Wu Mow podcast or people saying that, oh, Cecil Sasson is uh a ChICOM agent.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Okay, well, we're gonna get those accusations no matter what. You would you are you talking about our the the scam we tried to run?

SPEAKER_07 19:45

Uh is it not true that you previously resided in the People's Republic of China?

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Uh yeah, that's true. Is it not true that you did as well? That's not the point. We're not here to talk about it.

SPEAKER_07 19:54

Is it not true that you lived in fucking North Korea? We're not talking about North Korea on the podcast today, though. If we have an episode the next time we're doing, you know, Juche history, then yeah, that's something that I'm happy to disclose. But also, Dr. Bodajgan, you studied in China as well. So let's not point fingers.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

I was a student there, yeah, technically speaking. Jane Lynch and I have traveled in China together with you, Cecil. We're a WuMAU podcast, is true. You see, what goes around is all around.

SPEAKER_07 20:22

Furthermore, though, is it not true that in the past you've been on the payroll of Chinese state media as a commentator? Me? No. Okay. Uh, and with that, I turn it over to my esteemed colleague Chip Wilson.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

So I was really excited to cover something cultish. You know, just going back to what you're saying before, you know, thinking back to when we were all living in the same city and we were doing our religion tour, where we'd go to uh a different service each week, uh, dress our Sunday best, go to like Anglican thing, go to the Mormon thing. And you and I, Cecil, went to uh one from Share International. It was that cult who believed that the second coming of Jesus was uh a South Asian man living in London that hadn't been discovered yet. Yeah, I still get their emails. Yeah, for sure. I still get their emails too, yeah. But they're they're found or passed. But uh, I was I was I was just thinking back on that quite fondly. And I remember when that guy was presenting the structure of the universe, the order of our world, and he was going through the different kingdoms, you know, like the fungus kingdom and so on. And he kept calling the plant kingdom the vegetable kingdom.

SPEAKER_08 21:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

And it's just always stuck out to me. Is this the vegetable kingdom? It's such a funny thing to refer to the plant kingdom as the vegetable kingdom. It's like, you know, you got the king potato and uh, you know. But, anyways, today we're looking at Zhuan Falun by Li Hong Jur. Uh, Zhuan Falun is the central text of Falun Dafa practitioners, uh, sometimes known as the Falun Gong. Falun Dafa is known primarily as a relatively peaceful Chinese spiritualist. Movement that is banned in China. It's most famous for its repression by the Chinese state, for the Shenyun dance performances, uh, for their own media empire, uh including Epoch Times, New Tong Dynasty. They've got a bunch, America Uncensored, China Uncensored. They have a whole lot of different outlets. And they're known, I think people are becoming aware more recently of their kind of critical role in what I describe as a sort of group project to make Western democracies kind of completely insane, pushing anti-science propaganda, their anti-evolution, anti-modern medication, anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigration. Miscegenation. You name it. They got their fingerprints all over it. Uh, and I think they fit very nicely uh in the current United States, that's for sure. In the 2020 election, also they spent more than any other group on Facebook ads for Trump. Uh, and Facebook actually banned them from purchasing ads due to the way they were trying to obscure it by buying from these uh different entities. So I think if Zuckerberg doesn't want your money, that's that's probably saying something. But one of our core principles on this podcast, if we have any. We do. I think I think we we do, right? We do. Certainly. Uh so we're principled here now. Now let me be clear. It's to focus on the text and the author, you know. So I'm not trying to shit on um people who are roped into a belief system or born into a belief system that might be exploiting them or harming them by, for example, teaching them not to seek medical treatment, or a group that is persecuted otherwise, as as they are in China. But that said, we're looking at effectively their Bible with uh Juan Falun and the guy who wrote it. It's a slog to read as a series of lectures that are, I would say, presented in a very conversational, kind of loosely organized style, uh, very repetitive. But it's uh a lot of the teachings are are really pretty bad shit crazy. Um to be judgmental, but yeah, I I can judge the text and and and the guy who's pushing it. Um teachings are bad batshit crazy. Uh I I think it's almost playbook style cult organization, uh embedded in like the logic and the the theology or the cosmic order of the universe that he's proposing. In particular, there's some things, for example, for me as someone in a healthy, loving, interracial relationship and the father of a mixed race child, I tend to disagree with Lee's idea that every race on earth was created by a different type of alien. Um, I tend to disagree with his idea that every race goes to a different heaven. And I disagree with his claim that mixed race people are inferior. I feel like I got thick skin, you know, thick white skin, if Master Lee is listening. But uh when someone says you've doomed your daughter to hell, it feels a little bit rude to me.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

You know what's kind of interesting that I would say like modern religious movements, like 20th century, seem to really focus on aliens, like Scientology and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Well, this is something I was thinking about with with regards to Falun Gong as well. Is like if you're starting a new movement, you you have to rectify your beliefs with existing knowledge and understanding of the universe in some way. And so that's why like you might bring in aliens, and then a lot of new religions they'll also try to incorporate other religions. They try to incorporate what it what exists in the world as well, or find some way to take it and mold it into their own faith.

SPEAKER_05 25:32

I remembered like there's I don't remember if it was Richard Dawkins who coined the term, but they talk about like the god of the gaps in religion and how how religious people will will use god, religion, or mysticism to fill in the gaps in their in their existing knowledge. Um, so if you know, 500 years ago it was about why is, you know, why are vegetables growing slowly this year, and now it's what you know, what's happening on other planets. But I'm pretty sure there's a section in Carl Sagan's book, um, The Demon Haunted World, like Science as a Candle in the Dark, where he makes this exact discusses this exactly as well. One of the reasons like the whole point of the book is pushing for science and scientific understandings of space and space exploration. But one of his points was also this like if you don't push science into those areas, then other people are gonna step into those areas. And yeah, people who maybe have very sort of different, different aims than you are going to kind of step in.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Well, and I think Lee Hongju would respond to Carl Sagan by saying that he's promoting uh alien technology and alien beliefs when he says that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_05 26:29

You know what I was gonna pick up on another point you made, Chip, is like you kind of said like this this book is like these texts are really kind of tough to get through. And I said, isn't that the case kind of for almost all religious stuff? Like what religious stuff, like core texts? Like, have you any of you ever read a core religious text that was actually a nice read? Dowdishing, I would say. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:50

It's a nice, simple some, you know, a few dozen poems.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Easy one.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

Nice and easy.

SPEAKER_05 26:57

That's a good point.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

I think the Sikhism one is uh is like the main, not like the text that they read over and over again for all time or whatever at the Golden Temple, but the the smaller, just kind of like their teachings or whatever of his story is not too bad, but I would say, yeah, the only one is Dow de Chun. Little red book's not bad.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

Yeah. The boy, I think I think what we can do first is try to I want to try and contextualize the work a little bit before we dive into it fully. Um and one thing to note also is that the belief system or the teachings from Li Hong Jur change quite dramatically. They evolve over time. But first off, I'd maybe we could talk a little bit about Li himself. So according to the his official biography from the Falun Gong, he was born in poverty around 1952, amidst the Great Leap Forward in a small town in Chilin province, I believe. And he was a prodigy uh at an early age. He studied Buddhist and Taoist teachings, training with various masters from the age of four, and by the age of eight, he'd already attained numerous supernatural powers, including invisibility, levitation. That's a good one to left.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

Teenager with invisibility?

SPEAKER_00 28:18

He had a good time.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

What can go wrong?

SPEAKER_00 28:22

Precognition, ability to heal others. I mean, you know, when you're a kid and you're like, what superpower would you have? He kind of got all of them, I think.

SPEAKER_05 28:30

That that sounds okay, but did he ever hit 11 holes in one in a single game of golf, like discovery leader Kim Jong il?

SPEAKER_02 28:41

Because I don't know, some work to do if you're gonna go against the supreme leader there.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Yeah, that's true. I think golf might be too western for him. And I think you know, clubs and balls might be alien technology, but but I gotta hand it to him. That's pretty good at eight, right? Um and so during the Cultural Revolution, he continued to study under several elite masters in the dark of the night. In the 80s, uh, China started opening up under Deng Xiaoping, uh, you know, internationally and and and domestically. And so Qigong, which is it's it's broadly, it's like nurturing your body's internal energy flows. Uh, it has its basis, you know, just in in Chinese medicine, Chinese tradition. You might cultivate it through meditation, through exercise like Tai Chi. So in the 80s, uh, they had the cultural revolution was behind them, you know, and they're pivoting away from the the Maoist perpetual revolution, smash the old communist revolutionary dogma. Uh, the state started permitting and not just permitting, but also promoting Qigong more widely. You know, this served a lot of purposes. It was part of rebuilding some kind of cultural continuity, realigning the CCP as like sort of China, Chinese nationalist first, communist second. And then also I think making sure that if spirituality was spreading, um, because you can think of the society at that time as especially following the Cultural Revolution, one where people maybe felt it was kind of spiritually devoid, which is, I think, what even here or anywhere else is like what attracts people to spiritualist movements, living in a uh a fast-paced modern capitalist society, whatever, uh, makes people kind of drawn to these things to find meaning. It made a lot of sense for them to permit this and promote it. Uh, because if it's if you're gonna get some spirituality flow into the country, make sure at least it's Chinese spirituality. Qi Gong, this whole thing had a huge boom uh in China uh from the 80s onwards, 80s until the mid-90s. Many, many different masters, many different branches of it. Uh, and that's where our friend Lee Hong Jur uh appeared on the scene in the early 90s. How lucky was he, you know, uh having all these gifts as a young child. Uh, and then lo and behold, uh 20 years later, turns out it's the biggest grift in the country. He starts to organize the Falun Gong. His first book was published in 1993 called Falun Gong, which details their approach to qi gong, this this uh process of cultivating your qi. And that one, I think you read that, Bo.

SPEAKER_05 31:23

I did, yeah. Yeah. I started trying to read read the book we were actually assigned, but I found it too, too. I I didn't have any of that context of understanding what is the religion actually asserting. And this introductory book, it's almost like the primer, if I understand correctly. It's really everything laid bare in the book that's called Falun Falungong or China Falong, sometimes it's published as, as opposed to the Zhuan Falong, which is then the the lectures and the more in-depth meet, which then you'll you'll dive into.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Yeah, exactly. Like that that first one was kind of it was more conventional, I guess, um, with um among popular Qi Gong texts at the time, where it was just and it's very basically just like a manual of like, here's the things you do to you know improve your spirituality and your health and and so on. Juam Falun is where it pivoted more into becoming like a little bit more like a proper religion. You can throw around cult, you can throw around whatever, um, but it's where you start to see these organization structures, like the specific hierarchy, uh, both in the the theology as well as uh in the how people are meant to organize around promoting it. And so that's kind of where it took that turn.

SPEAKER_07 32:33

If we're talking about Li Hong Chur, one of the the things that's interesting about this guy and sort of disarming. So if you if you're like me and you're imagining what a Chinese spiritual leader maybe looks like, you might have this orientalist fantasy of a guy with a Fu Manchu mustache and like flowing silk robes. What's funny about this guy is Li Hong Zure, first of all, he's doughy. He's not the picture of health that he claims he could be or is. He has a really friendly face and he's always pictured in sort of what looks like a cheap polyester suit and a tie. And most of the pictures of him are from about 20 years ago because he's I'm sure you'll get into it, he sort of disappeared a little bit. But he looks like, like he doesn't look like a spiritual leader. He looks like he maybe he's middle management at a shoe factory in Guangdong, or he's like local party cadre or something like that. You can imagine from his appearance him like force feeding you like shots of Baijo and like Siggies if you met him at a banquet or like a Chinese nightclub or something like that. But he's just yeah, yeah. He he looks like sort of everyman uh in China.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Yeah, and I and I think that's part of his appeal. A lot of the masters and stuff really did play more into you know the maybe being like uh kind of mysterious and so on. And outside of his own, you know, the hagiographic story of his upbringing, there's no documentation of what this guy did. Nobody knows really what he was doing until early 90s when he suddenly started um pushing Falun Gong. But yeah, he bursts onto the scene, he's wearing a suit. Uh, you know, he's 40 years old, he's younger than most of the masters. The way that he promoted was different. Like he went to the cities, he did these conferences, you know, in a very uh uh organized sense that a lot of them weren't doing. So he had a lot of success with that.

SPEAKER_05 34:24

Where has he actually disappeared to? Is he just out of the limelight? Like I read that there's a huge compound somewhere in like upstate New York or something, which is like the global headquarters. Is he just hiding out there?

SPEAKER_00 34:35

He lives, yeah, he lives in New York. Um he left prior to the Falun Gong getting banned. Across the 90s, he started doing uh a ton of international trips uh and expanding expanding abroad and going to the US regularly. And uh yeah, he ended up setting up shop there in New York. If you you can look up pictures of commune, it's pretty impressive.

SPEAKER_07 34:56

I totally thought he was there. Is he seen as a financial grifter, though? I don't want to jump ahead in in your plan if you sort of you're planning to address this, but it's not a a movement that calls on its members to tithe. He seems like a guy who's withdrawn publicly, he's removed all of his biographies from Falun Gong texts. It doesn't you never hear about financial improprieties when it comes to the organization, or at least so is he, you know, what's his angle?

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Well, I know that, for example, like Shenyun is has 300 million in assets or something. And that's that's the the dance troupe. But they're they're not the dancers, basically aren't paid and it's run directly by him.

SPEAKER_07 35:41

There was a New York Times expose about it last year or so.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

So you have to pay to like attend his seminars and things. Um, it is opaque in terms of what is exactly required of practitioners. Like officially speaking, they don't have to tithe. Um, but it seems to be there's this understanding that they they must volunteer their time uh in certain ways. And I mean, that guy's got a hell of a 500-acre commune uh in upstate New York, so he's clearly getting funding from somewhere.

SPEAKER_07 36:12

I feel like the Pisa Ship Book Club could learn a thing or two from him.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

You know how much revenue we're getting from our membership? Zero. It's it's kind of inspiring for us, though. I think he, you know, coming out of nowhere in your 40s to build an empire, we still got a chance. Well, I'm starting from nowhere, so um so Juan Faluner. Well, let's I'm gonna focus on the text a little bit. Um, Juan Faluner is writings from the transcripts of his lectures in the mid-90s, and they form the core of the Falun Gong belief system. It has evolved over time, and we can look at kind of three phases of the Falun Gong. The first phase was the straight Qigong practice up until the mid-90s, and that is the era that sort of ended with this text uh when it became more focused on cementing top-down leadership. Um, in their teachings, they start to talk more about moral decay of the world coming catastrophe. They start to present more supernatural powers that uh Li Hongjur has. That's when they start to bring in things like more discussion of aliens um, you know, interfering with Earth's affairs, demons and animals possessing their enemies, this sort of thing. Uh, that lasted kind of until their ban in China and their and their subsequent persecution. After that, they went underwent a kind of further radicalization. Um, they really started to frame that crackdown as a kind of cosmic intervention by literal demons or aliens uh in the form of the Chinese Communist Party. And since then, their teachings have become kind of more and more conspiratorial. Uh, you know, and it's I'll I'll I'll finish with some of this later, but uh, some of their very later readings, it's it's really, really become full-on like millenarian um end of days movement. Um, but but that's that's that's a few years hence from where we are right now. Just to mention a little bit on on the banning of the Falun Gong, you know, they were banned in the late 90s in China. Your buddy Jiang Zemin, right? Jiang Zemin, yeah, yeah. The frog prince himself. He was the last good one. Yeah, yeah. He was kind of beloved. And then the Chinese Zen Gen Z kind of this meme of worshiping him because there's all these pictures of him, you know, when he's swimming and stuff, he just looks like a little toad in the water. But um, but basically the Falun Gong uh were growing and they started to get some criticism from various places. A Beijing university newspaper criticized them as a cult. Uh, and they went and protested at that university, and there was a local security crackdown on them. A bunch of them were beaten uh in that process. And then a couple days later, they organized a follow-up protest where they went to Zhangnanhai, which is the center of the government in China, uh and surrounded it with 10,000 Falun Gong members uh in a peaceful protest. Uh, they just kind of stood around and like cleaned up a little bit and meditated things, but kind of stood there for a day. But it's a very interesting incident because it was basically a total surprise to the Chinese government that these guys were able to organize so efficiently and so quickly uh without without them realizing. Um they're probably already wary of this group that at this point had tens of millions of members, potentially as many members as the Chinese Communist Party itself. Uh, and then uh I think specifically its ability to just suddenly have 10,000 people show up and surround the government office uh really freaked them out. So that's when they banned it. They did not ban like the Qigong practice or anything, but they banned numerous other groups that were that were teaching it, arrested a lot of the leadership, that sort of thing. Uh, and so that's when we get into the Falun Gong in exile uh since about 2000.

SPEAKER_02 40:11

Right around there is when he got Nobel Peace Prizes. Uh he didn't win them, but he was like nominated or something.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

Yeah, a nomination for sure. That ban also sort of, if you think of development of religious movements, it it really became their like it became part of their their kind of cosmic journey as like their exile moment. Um, and and sort of confirming this belief that there's an ongoing cosmic battle of evil and good in the world that they're on the right side of.

SPEAKER_07 40:42

It's it's sort of reminds me of a lot of the rhetoric you hear for um right-wing conspiratorial types where they talk about, you know, you know you're over the target when you're yet in all the flack. That if you're a loudmouth racist and people criticize you for it, it's because, well, because you're speaking the truth and people just can't handle that.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

Yeah, and it I mean, it goes with the same. I mean, we'll get caught- I'll get called a woman either way. Obviously, I don't believe that people should be persecuted or that uh, you know, you should really ban religions from any any given place. Um, but nonetheless, I think that for most Westerners, they only re they don't really know much about it and likely just see it as, oh, these are just some peaceful guys that that are persecuted.

SPEAKER_07 41:23

I often think about them in the context of the Taiping Rebellion and that China, you know, PRC may have banned them one way or another because they don't like other centers of power competing with the party. But when you have this traumatic, horrific event in your relatively recent history and and other millenarian movements that have existed throughout Chinese history similarly, you're gonna, it's it's gonna raise the hair on the back of your neck when this guy shows up with millions of people and the ability to mobilize them. And you know, he's he has this kind of charismatic, messianic persona. And he has superpowers too. Yeah, he's superpowers, right? So I don't know how much that actually played into their thinking, but it's you know, I always connect the two of my mind. Uh I yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_00 42:11

That is like one of the sensitivities on the on the Chinese state side, and and not just Taiping Rebellion, also like the Boxer Rebellion. Um, another group of maniacs. And and also Chinese leadership at that point was terrified of uh the excesses of the cultural revolution as well, like anything that's sort of like disruptive. Um, is so like some some fear of that sort of thing as well. Uh, don't rock the boat, and also don't uh it's like this is cartel territory, you know, don't sell your stuff here. Right. Um we own this street corner, bitch. Yeah. Um, but preamble right to the core text at last. Um to start it, I think Lee has this fantastic preamble to Juan Falun, which I'll read. Um, on the surface, Juan Falun is not elegant in terms of language, it might not even comply with modern grammar. If I were to use modern grammar to organize this book of DAFA, a serious problem would arise wherein the structure, though the structure of the book's language might be standard and elegant, it would not encompass a more profound and higher content.

SPEAKER_07 43:16

So I've got that in my notes as well. That one it's like I don't think any other author or writer that we've covered on this podcast in the in the book club has said right in the prologue, look, the book's a piece of shit. Okay, I can't write, but cut me some slack.

SPEAKER_00 43:29

Yeah. I was thinking it's it's even better than Elizabeth Gilbert's ghost of forgiveness at the start of all the way to the river. It's just like saying at the very beginning of the book, if this thing's a piece of shit, it's just because words aren't good enough. That yeah, that's good. That's good. But this is a persistent device that that Lee uses in all of his teachings, where it's kind of like, Well, the divine is all around me, but you just can't see it because like uh, you know, you're not you're not advanced enough. And so it's consistent with his. You know, rhetorical device he does to explain his lack of explanation for things.

SPEAKER_05 44:05

Um God moves in mysterious ways.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 44:09

And who are you to question it?

SPEAKER_00 44:11

So in the book, a lot of it is dismissing other Qigong masters. And this is probably the dullest part. They're too focused on Qigong just for healing rather than for spiritual ascension, uh, so on and so forth. And these are very, very detailed discussions of uh of these things. I'll probably skip over it because unless you're deep into Qigong otherwise, I don't think it's too interesting.

SPEAKER_02 44:35

Are any of these like no are other masters like kind of like household names like the same? Or is he just like shitting on all the other small guys? Uh like a big rivalry.

SPEAKER_00 44:46

No, uh, he's not he's not going after any big dogs. Rivalry. No. Well, he he definitely wouldn't like that. They're not a fan of uh homosexuality, let me tell you.

SPEAKER_07 44:56

He acknowledges that there's a number of other guys who are legitimate masters, and he says, you know, some of them are you could follow them, but pick a lane. Like don't go running after every master that's out there. Pick one guy, stick with it. If it's not me, make sure that the guy's legitimate. And but don't go running from master to master.

SPEAKER_00 45:16

Yeah, and there's a and a one specific thing he he says several times is that that mixing beliefs will ruin you. So if you're following him and you also start to follow some other stuff, it's gonna fuck up all your qi. It's gonna fuck up all your karma. You're you're gonna get AIDS. Spiritual or real? Re uh real. There's no distinction for Li Hongjur between the spiritual and the real at a basic level. For him, all physical ailments are a manifestation of lack of spiritual alignment. Right. So if you're not aligned properly with the universe, if you have bad karma, that's why you get cancer or something like that, right? Uh so the only way to truly heal these things rather than putting a band-aid on with Western medicine is to forego Western medicine and uh simply cultivate, meditate, do his practices.

SPEAKER_05 46:10

If it's not working, it's because you're not doing it properly, basically. So you stop taking medicine. If it doesn't heal your sickness, then yeah, that's kind of your own fault for questioning the process.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

And also it may be he also says that it may be the natural process. Like perhaps you have a lot of bad karma stacked up from a previous life. So, sorry, you just have to suffer through that illness. And if you don't suffer through that illness, you're not gonna break the cycle of this bad karma.

SPEAKER_07 46:40

Plus, it's also it can be karmic interference if you try to interfere by healing somebody. So if you're a doctor and you're trying to cure cancer, you don't know the karmic relationship, what this event might be connected to. It might be repayment from a debt in previous lives. So who are you to cure the cancer within the uh the guy?

SPEAKER_00 47:04

And there's there's also this, he has this concept that um, you know, all of us exist in multiple dimensions, replicas of us. And so the physical body here, if you're curing something and it won't necessarily cure it in the other ones. This was a little vague to me, but I I think a lot of this is deliberately vague.

SPEAKER_05 47:22

But what's the um just to get our terminology straight, um, there's qi, there's gong, and then there's qi gong. So qi is like, and I'm gonna say this probably in probably like a lay person's way, which is probably wrong, but qi is sort of like the the universal energy of some type kind.

SPEAKER_00 47:42

Qi is the energy in the body. Gong is to like gong is in as in like move or work. So qi gong is is the is doing something to activate your qi.

SPEAKER_05 47:51

Right. Because they're talking the book talks about constantly about cultivating gong, and that just means because a lot of like the first book is talking about um yeah, cultivating gong and your gong potency. I'm trying to avoid saying gong, it's it's surprisingly difficult when saying these phrases.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

Yeah, I I think it's like it's like your power to affect your qi.

SPEAKER_06 48:12

Okay. My gong potency is just fine. I need to cultivate it.

SPEAKER_05 48:17

You're hanging gong already.

SPEAKER_06 48:19

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

So some of the things that Lee introduces in this book as well, uh, there's a lot that start to structure the the movement. So there's rules on spreading the faith. Uh Lee charges for his seminars, etc., but no one else along the way is allowed to charge. If you spread any of his teachings and you charge, um his invisible army of spirits will come and take your Falun Gong away. So you'll lose all your energy.

SPEAKER_07 48:47

Can we adopt that for our podcast? Only we get to charge for piece of ship book club information, knowledge, and entertainment. And if anyone else tries to monetize this, that'd be a waste of time for them, anyways.

SPEAKER_00 48:59

They're not making anything.

SPEAKER_07 49:00

The army of a million spirits will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

SPEAKER_00 49:04

I want to get to those, uh, the invisible army of spirits because they're important. Um, in addition, nobody is permitted to teach the practice in the manner that he does, as in, no one is allowed to teach it in large-scale lecture formats or anything like that. He's the only one allowed to address crowds. Um, you can introduce people to Falong Gong, you know, person to person, but uh if if you're caught giving a presentation, you're going to hell. At the same time, you cannot call any practitioner who passes it on, teacher or master. Uh, there's only one master in Da Fa, and that is Li Hong Jur. All practitioners are his disciples, no matter how advanced they are, no matter when they began the practice.

SPEAKER_07 49:48

That way it's like PC Book Club, because if you've ever listened to even a second of this podcast, you are a member of the book club. There's there's no opt-in, there's no opt-out, there only is.

SPEAKER_02 50:02

Can I ask, is there has there ever been uh any discussions of like a successor or succession planning or something like that? Because like the guy's like in his 70s.

SPEAKER_00 50:13

Um I I I don't think so because it's also they've moved very much into end-of-world stuff. So they believe the world the the universe will end imminently. Um, and that's that's where all the teachings pivot around. Gotcha. I don't know what they're gonna do when he dies and the world doesn't end. Uh they'll figure it out, I guess. Um, so there's a moral order to the physical universe uh governed by higher-level divine creatures, which in other lectures a couple years later, he'll explicitly refer to them as aliens. Um, but here he just kind of, and and then much later he he starts to introduce an ultimate creator. And the pitch is kind of that most major religions on earth thus far have gotten some way to deciphering this, maybe they've had some sort of connection with them. Um, but Li Hongcher is the guy who has really figured all of it out. The universe is is you know has a moral order to it. Um, it also follows these cycles of you know generation, decline, regeneration, uh degeneration, rather. And we are at present in a age of degeneration.

SPEAKER_05 51:22

Figures.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

Yeah, I think we all agree with that. I don't think that is yeah, you can see you can start you can start to see why it appeals to people, right? Yeah, yeah. Um yeah, and so Earth has existed for a long time, and he believes that humans were created by divine beings placed on earth, and have actually existed on earth in our form for millions of years. Uh, they did not evolve from anything, right? Evolution is a sham. He borrows from Taoist and Buddhist notions of like cyclical periods of growth, decline, and cataclysm here to say that Earth has successively gone through these periods of development and then collapse, development and collapse. He says at one point, he says, physicists say that the motion of matter has patterns. Our entire universe's changes also have patterns. The movement of our planet, when it's in this vast universe, and when it's in this turning milky way, there's just no way it could have always been smooth sailing. And chances are it's run on run into other planets or had some other problems, and these would have brought about some catastrophes. And then he says, one time I traced it back carefully and found that there have been 81 times when mankind lay in ruin and only a few people survived, and only a little left of the prehistoric civilization survived. Then they enter the next period and lived primitively.

SPEAKER_07 52:45

He gives this interesting um example as to why that's true. So he asserts that there's a uranium mine in the Gabon Republic that was actually, it wasn't a mine, it was a large-scale nuclear reactor that was built two billion years ago and operated for 500,000 years. And that's it's irrefutable evidence of the advancement and decline and this and the sort of building and decay of human civilizations, um, these cycles of annihilation that you mentioned.

SPEAKER_00 53:17

When you look into that, it's a it's a natural reactor uh that I didn't know could occur. So you have the uranium underground and then it has groundwater flowing through it that could basically acted sort of like a really low-grade nuclear reactor.

SPEAKER_07 53:32

Uh he makes for a long time and then so many bullshit claims so mined the uranium out of it and found that it had been slightly matched or created or keep track of all of the nonsense that comes out of that guy's mind. Piece of geology. It's a it's a it's a Herculean task. I'm impressed you actually fact-checked it because he makes so many bullshit claims so quickly, they come and go, and they're never repeated again. That to sort of keep track of all of the just the litany of nonsense that comes out of that guy's mouth, it's a it's a it's a Herculean task.

SPEAKER_00 54:06

Yeah, that's uh that's that's why I'm having a bit of trouble jumping around with my notes here. But but yeah, that's but that that kind of thing. He makes a bunch of claims like that, right? He also claims in a separate lecture, not in this book, but but just after. And this is this is important that uh you know the biblical flood uh was real, uh, all of Earth was flooded at that time. In China, because of the high mountains, a lot of people were able to protect themselves and survive it. But Western civilization, including the destruction of Atlantis, he says, um, was all destroyed. And so what that meant is that the Western civilization, only a couple of people survived, they lost everything. So they had to start over. And that's why the West started these sort of deviant uh belief systems and and a progress, this this technological progress that is separate from the correct teachings, like which the qigong are and things. He says that those were preserved in China, and the qi gong is something that has uh persisted through all these hot all these millions of years of cataclysms and things. It's it's like the original teaching of the order of the universe that's been passed on, but the the the Caucasians were cut off from it. And well, it's important because there is there is a little bit of a, you know, you could call it like a Chinese revivalist nationalist thing, but there is a xenophobic component, I think, to Li's teachings in the beginning, because all of these things like West Western medicine, uh, part of the reason they don't like communism is because it's a Western interference in China, a Western belief system, right? Um, Western technology, it's all alien. Well, he's talking about supposedly real aliens. Um, there is this uh perhaps there's these undertones of of uh of xenophobia, I think there.

SPEAKER_05 55:58

Glad you mentioned the um the bit about Atlantis, because I was trying to think of a way to kind of shoehorn that in a conversation. He just really liked it. Well, just in the mention, I think it's in the first lecture, which is one of the only ones I read, in full honesty, before I gave up. But he just kind of mentions, yeah, and obviously we all know about Atlantis and there's Atlantis under the sea. But he also likes he he he drops in all sorts of random shit like that. Like at one point he's going on about the Bermuda Triangle as like more evidence. He's like, and of course, there's the Bermuda Triangle where all the planes and boats are going missing. Part of it seemed to this, but I also just felt nostalgic. I'm like, oh hey, that's nice. Someone's talking about the Bermuda Triangle. No one's talked about that since like the fucking 80s.

SPEAKER_01 56:36

Since I was a kid. What happened to that?

SPEAKER_03 56:37

Yeah. I thought it was gonna be a big deal when I grew up.

SPEAKER_01 56:40

Like, I thought it was all gonna be Bermuda Triangle in Sancho.

SPEAKER_02 56:43

It's all I worried about at night. Did he write the English one as well that's been publicized? Or is there like is there any translator that's been accredited?

SPEAKER_00 56:50

It's been translated. Yeah, there there are several editions of it, uh, but I'm using using the one from from their site. There's an there, but there is an official translation into an English one.

SPEAKER_02 57:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 57:00

Yeah, yeah, it's official. Sanctioned. I'm just trying to cover all like the main stuff. Uh Lee can install the phalun in your stomach. This is like what he what he really brings to the table. He's able to install the falun, which means like fa as in law, uh, and then lun as in like a wheel. It's a law wheel that goes in your stomach and is a rotating sort of microcosm of the universe that allows you to tap into the moral cosmic order better than anybody else. And when you meditate, when you do the exercises, you're just leveling up so much quicker than anybody else can. It's it's the only way that you hit this higher level of cultivation that he talks about that the other masters don't provide access to. Uh, Lee is the only person that can install it in people, and he can remove it from people at any time, uh, even remotely. So if you cross him, he can just look out, take it away. Wow.

SPEAKER_05 58:09

There goes your imaginally stomach law wheel. You look like you have an asshole mouse Cecil.

SPEAKER_07 58:13

Yeah. And it is this he's talking about a literal wheel. This isn't some sort of like metaphysical concept that he's implanting inside of your body spiritually. He's talking about like an actual spinning wheel that contains every grain of sand in the universe inside of your your lower abdomen.

SPEAKER_00 58:30

He means very literally when he's like installing things into people, or how the practice, you know, actually regenerates your cells and and and has a physical change to your organs as you as you meditate and things.

SPEAKER_05 58:43

I was gonna say that the in the in the first book, which is the one that one I read, like this is the quote that I copied into my notes about the law wheel. Once developed, a person's law wheel exists as a living, intelligent entity. Uh, it it automatically spins ceaselessly, it goes nine times uh clockwise, nine times counterclockwise. And the and this is a segue to a really important question I wanted to ask. But the goal is stated very explicitly, is to attain the quote, milk white body, end quote. Um, which is something that maybe that's on your reached that.

SPEAKER_07 59:16

Yes, maybe it's have ascended true retention.

SPEAKER_05 59:22

That's gong potency. Um so yeah, that's I'm not sure if that's on your notes to kind of talk about and contextualize, but what the fuck is that about?

SPEAKER_00 59:30

Milk white body. So he talks about karma as black and milk as good, the milk white. So there's these two forces. Is it the duh and the I think the duh is the good, right? The white one. Negative karma, for example, is like a blackness that that lives in your body, uh, and it can manifest in you know bad luck uh uh or illness or whatever. And then the white is this material that that can fight against it or or override it. So the milk white body is one that is like totally purified of of negative karma.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:04

It is duh. It's it's this virtuous white substance. Yeah, it's duh, yeah. Like no one's gonna make a joke.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:10

Well, virtuous white substance. Come on.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:14

I'm really starting to feel like this is like a real grab bag of things. Like you got this like wheel, like which sounds like Buddhism. You've got you you've got this alien stuff thrown in, you've got these like Western Atlantists and stuff. Like he's just really going for whatever people kind of know about already, and just kind of making it more physical instead of just being a concept, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:39

And and and and as as time goes on a little later, like he doesn't explicitly claim to be an alien himself. Um, but he'll often say things like, Yeah, you can view me as a human if you want. And he also he does say all the time that the highest masters are aliens or inter interdimensional beings. And so given that he's the highest master of them all, we can presume he believes himself to be uh an alien. Law bodies are something I want to talk about. Uh the fa shen. So the fa shen, uh, and a lot of these terms in the translation are just like literal translations translations, so they sound kind of odd in English. Fa is the law, like the cosmic law of the universe. So the law bodies are physical manifestations of that. I'll give you his description here. A fa shen is born in one's Dantian area and is made up of fa and gong. It manifests in other dimensions. Fa shen has much of a person's power, but its mind and thoughts are controlled by that person. Yet Fa Shen itself is a complete, independent, and realistic individual life. Therefore, it can do anything independently on its own. What Fa Shen does is exactly as what the person's main consciousness wants it to do. Yada yada yada. Its body is not a fixed one. This is I just thought this was a funny detail. Its body is not a fixed one that cannot change. Instead, it can become large or small. Sometimes it becomes very large, so large that one cannot see its entire head. Sometimes it becomes very tiny. So the Fashan is if you're a master, you can basically create this spirit, this invisible spirit that to do your bidding. And this is really important because Master Lee, surprise, surprise, has created a whole lot of these things. He says, My Fashan in another dimension knows everything in your mind. What I want to do can be done by all my fashion, such as adjusting the bodies of true practitioners. My Fashan are countless and take care of the practitioners. So part of his pitch is that he has this huge, invisible KGB that follow all of his disciples around, influence their lives. When we're talking about taking the falloon out of someone, his fashion can do that remotely. Uh, he can see everything that everyone's doing at all times. He can read their minds. Uh, so it's it's uh I maybe that's why the CCP doesn't like him. They're just jealous of the surveillance state he's able to set up, you know.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:12

Um he's mastered their vision.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:15

Yeah, they're like, God. Um, but yeah, so Lee has an army of autonomous spiritual agents under his control. They can travel anywhere instantaneously, they can be in multiple places at once. They're here right now listening to us as we record this podcast. There's probably one of them in the room with each of you. So uh hope you made extra tea. So if you're a true cultivator, though it will protect you. Like as in it, they can they can affect what's happening around them as well, might be able to protect you from like a car crash, might be able to uh help protect you from illness and so on, but also they're there to ensure that you don't do anything wrong. So, this thing is where it's like part of really establishing the control in the system, uh, the the very heavy top-down control. One thing he introduced that I liked that's uh novel to me is this the assistant consciousness. Did you get into this one at all? Uh Cecil?

SPEAKER_07 1:04:10

I've been sitting here, hadn't been called out for two hours. I just wrote in the chat that I'm getting up to P and then I'm called on by teacher. I didn't use piss bottles at your desk like the rest of us, man.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:23

Come on. Jugs.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:24

It's it's the way the rare boys they're all full up.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:27

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:28

So there's there's something he introduces called the assistant consciousness. The main you have your main consciousness, which is what you're trying to cultivate, right? It's because it's like you're gonna keep getting reincarnated in this world unless you hit the level of enlightenment that he can take you to, and then you go to like the super heaven. You have your main consciousness, but you also have this assistant consciousness that sort of helps with your day-to-day tasks. Everybody has this, and he makes this point that a lot of different religions and and uh qigong practices accidentally give all the good energy to the assistant consciousness, which can steal it and uh and run away with all your good karma you've built up, and then you just get I know, and then it's it's not going to your main consciousness, so you just end up reincarnated just where right where you were. All that all that good work went to went to waste.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:19

That explains this.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:22

Explains my life. It's like having like a lawyer or uh it's like a manager if you're an athlete or something. It's just this parasitic force. As as I mentioned before, he believes that all races on earth were created by different aliens, and each race more or less goes to its own heaven. So noting here, and that mixing races is bad because each of these different aliens made the races in their own likeness. And then if you show up and so I gotta go to the whatever alien's my likeness when I die, I gotta go to that one. But if you're mixed race, nobody's gonna know where you belong. So I think mixed race people. Basically, go to purgatory. It's also it reminds me a little bit of a book that someone posted in the subreddit that was called like Gods and Spacemen of the Ancient East.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:10

Yeah. We spoke about that. I think we mentioned that last episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:16

We did, yeah.

unknown 1:06:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:17

So that I mean, that's this what what uh what Lee is proposing is kind of similar to their that uh different aliens created uh Chinese people and things like that. Um modern technology is the work of malevolent aliens who are seeking to invade Earth and steal our bodies, uh especially once cloning is enabled. Um he basically has this belief that at the end of the day the the human body is like the best vessel to achieve um enlightenment. And there's always different aliens and creatures that live throughout the universe, uh, but they really want the human body. Modern technology has been introduced to the earth uh as a means of them getting access to our bodies. So he talks at times about computers uh having things built into them to sap away at your your life force or or slowly replace your life force. He believes in possession as well, and that you know, certain people are literally possessed by aliens or possessed by animals. For example, CCP, they pretty much believe are are just possessed by demons, and uh people pushing Western technology may also be possessed by those aliens who want to develop some kind of technology to take over the human body. Uh alcohol and homosexuality, uh they wipe out all your good duh. You get the cream just drips out of you as soon as you drink.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:41

Doesn't rise to the top, it drips out.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:44

It just pours right out of you the second you have a drink.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:47

Wait, so man-on-man love causes all the uh the white goodness to pour right out.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:52

Is that what you're suggesting? Yeah, exactly. Uh, but but okay, you say you don't like them so much. Let's talk about some of the pros. Pros of cultivation because there's a lot of pros here. Number one, you will regain your youth, you'll look incredibly young if you start cultivating.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:07

I've got my shirt off right now. You guys, we're all sitting across from each other. You can see I haven't been cultivating. No, you're not cultivating. I'm not cultivating anything but mass in the gym all day. I I look youthful, my physique is great. I agree. Full of cream, you look great.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:23

Full of white goodness.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:24

There's no point. I just wanted to milk white body. You guys want to take off you guys want to take off your shirts as well? Have like a shirts off podcast? It's you it's winter here. You know what? Yeah, it's quite cold in my room, so no. For for women's day, even for the ladies out there, the lady listeners of the podcast, you know, take off your shirt. For the fellas too.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:46

For the listeners know to note to the listener, he's just doing a little dance while he's saying all this for some reason. Swinging his arms around. I think he's trying to flex. What is that flexing? Yeah. Flexing. You're just dancing a jig.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:59

Okay. But why are you why are you flexing like that's like an olden days kind of flex? Like, why aren't you just kind of going for a classic, like there you go. Anyway, this is bad podcast. We're getting off topic. See this.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:11

Yeah. Uh on I think it's a welcome break. This has been this is pretty heavy stuff. So you regain your youth. You don't want to go to the gym though. That that is, he is anti-exercise. He it's kind of interesting. I used people talk about this idea that like Trump believes in a Trump bad idea. Yeah, but he had he believes that specifically, that you have a certain amount of energy that you expend, and like if you're an athlete, you're you're burning it all out too quickly. I don't know. Maybe that's why they ended up love loving Trump so much.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:39

It's the idea of like finite cell division. So like you can cells have a they can only divide a certain number of times, and athletes are aging prematurely because they use up these divisions through high metabolism to maintain their peak performance.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:54

Yeah, and I think if you start practicing phylum gong, it's just your cells stop dividing, I think. The cells themselves are affected, and like your organs become like unbelievably great organs, like they're just the best organs on earth.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:08

You mentioned Trump, and I'll just say that we should mention that the the Epoch Times or whatever they were, they promoted uh during the campaign, they ran ads for uh for him uh without like they love him, without being just promoting all of his stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:23

Um they love Trump, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:26

Yeah. On that note, did were you all aware that the Epoch Times has a film division and they've released one film so far? No that is film, it's really odd. It makes no fucking sense to me. But the the film is called The Firing Squad and stars the noted actor, star of Snow Dogs, and Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. And star of Hercules' The Legendary Journey, Kevin Sorbo, and infamous asshole, Kevin Sorbo. And and the movie is Cuba Gooding Jr.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:57

also an asshole? I mean, he did rape people.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:00

I actually didn't know that. Well, then yeah, then I guess yeah, thumbs down. But the plot of the movie is about this group of Australians called the Bali Nine who were caught in Indonesia smuggling hair like 10 kilos of heroin like 20 years ago, and then they were all executed. And the plot of the movie is how they they discover Christianity in their like dying moments in the prison. So it's this really weird. I makes no sense to me. Because it's not like they discover Fallen Duffa in the dying.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:25

I was gonna say, why would they why would they produce this film?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:28

That's partially because all of this stuff recovering, that the the belief system has like changed dramatically over the years. And Falun Gong today is is has a lot of Christian links. But that's that so I imagine that's why they're they're uh kind of into that. But some other things if you cultivate your metabolism will eventually stop and you won't need to eat. Pretty good. You get to go to the best heaven, that's nice.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:53

Whoa, Chinese people different races go to different heavens. So which one's the best, Jip?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:59

Uh I'm assuming it's the Chinese heaven. Yeah. You will develop multiple eyes on your face like a fly to see different dimensions. Pretty good. No one else will be able to see those eyes, but you'll get them. Um, you'll get you'll develop a celestial eye in the pineal gland. Uh, a person with even a low-level celestial eye will be able to have to be able to have penetrative vision to see through a wall, see through ladies' clothes. X-ray specs. Yeah, you get x-ray specs. When your celestial eye reaches the level of pha eyesight, rocks, walls, or anything can talk to you and greet you. Hope you're a social butterfly. However, even if you get that power, Lee will probably keep it locked for you because if you used these powers, society would collapse. And this is a thing that he does a lot about all these superpowers he promises, the ability to fly and so on. He'll he'll constantly say, You will attain this power, but it may be locked because if you did it, it caused society would collapse. People wouldn't be able to handle it. Or if you're at such a high level that you can do it, you would also be so humble at that point that you would never show it off.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:10

It's not about subscribing to a higher tier and paying more.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:13

But you know what's funny is that I got there's an interview he did with the Times.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:19

The Epoch Times or the New York Times? Failing New York Times.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:24

It's an interview with Time magazine on this. And I think they did fail. And they said, In your book, you talk about people levitating off the ground, but you say they should not show other people. Why is that? Lee says, It is the same principle that Western gods in paradise should not be seen by ordinary mortals because they cannot understand its meeting. Time says, Have you seen human beings levitate off the ground? Lee says, I have known too many. Time asks, Can you describe any that you've known? And Lee responds, David Copperfield, he can levitate, and he did it during performances. That's his that's his one example.

SPEAKER_07 1:14:01

The famed illusionist. It's like arguing with a third grader. He's like, Yeah, no, I I I got magic powers, you know, I could levitate. And he's like, uh, oh yeah. He's like, yeah, but I don't want to. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:14

There's a great back and forth when he's talking about with them in that same interview about the aliens. They ask, they ask, what do the aliens look like? Lee says, some look dissimilar to human beings. US technology has already detected some aliens. The difference between aliens can be quite enormous. Time asks, Can you describe it? And Lee says, You don't want to have that kind of thought in your mind. Time says, Describe them anyway. So Lee responds, Well, one type looks like a human, but he has a nose that is made of bone. Other ones look like ghosts, and that's it. Pretty dull.

SPEAKER_07 1:14:52

So I can't, yeah. How did this guy I don't see the hook? Like the book is a loose collection of just sort of bullshit claims and facts. The guy himself isn't he's not particularly handsome or charismatic or cool or sexy. He doesn't he doesn't interview well. I mean, what he's he he has a huge Johnson? Like what is his what's the cache?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:20

Yeah, I think it's just that it was this era of Qi Gong being so popular in China. And he kind of, it seems to me that he kind of came in and was the most like organized about doing his presentations, getting people to organize with him, that he got this little bit of a lead. And then when the when the crackdown happened, that gave them this whole martyrdom thing. They had a little sympathy abroad. Um, they're able to add a bunch more to their to their history and so on. So that's kind of what it is to me, I think. But yeah, like he doesn't seem particularly charismatic. Yeah, just I don't know, right place, right time. Right. Uh so some downsides of cultivation. Demons. So demons, fucking demons. Much we're going back to TB Joshua here. Uh, demons may want to interfere with your meditation. So they might appear in front of you, they might attack you. Uh, demons might uh infect people around you to try and prevent you from meditating. So if you're meditating too much and it's bothering your wife, um, you're too you're too dedicated to this process and she needs you to spend more time with her, that might be a demon possessing her.

SPEAKER_07 1:16:31

Are you gonna do your Jeff Foxworthy bit there, Po if you're meditating too much and your wife's annoyed, it might be a demon. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:42

Uh of course demons appear and try to have sex with you in your dreams, too. Uh that's a common one. Nice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:16:48

Straight out in TB Joshua, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:51

Yeah, yeah. Demonic seduction.

SPEAKER_07 1:16:53

Please, tuberculosis Jonathan.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:55

Tuberculosis remembers remembers us. Please.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:00

Um try to possess you. This can happen to anyone, by the way. Anybody can be possessed by an animal. Uh, a dog might take over your brain. But this can happen to anyone, but you're exposed to it when you're practicing uh because you're starting to, you know, you're elevating yourself, but you're also opening yourself to all these cosmic forces. So you have to be cautious of perhaps a stray dog taking over your brain. I worry about that all the time. Well, we got friends, you know, like a mutual friend of ours, you know, when you see that guy dancing with a stray dog on the beach. Mind melt.

unknown 1:17:34

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:36

After you start practicing, you might have bad things happen to you, including sickness or just bad luck in life. Um, but everything bad that's happening to you is just because of the process of exercising your bad karma. It may, it may manifest as it gets pushed out of your body. So don't worry, it's just part of the process. If you find yourself in financial ruin, if you lose friends while you're joining Falun Gong or if you get sick, you just gotta hang out and stick through it.

SPEAKER_07 1:18:04

Initiated tretinin treatment a couple of years ago as part of my skincare routine. It's like an anti-aging thing, and it has a side effect for a lot of people when they initiate treatment of this this topical cream on their face of purging. And so it's often used as an as an acne treatment, but can also cause your entire skin to break out. And so it's kind of like that. It's like, well, yeah, this is gonna help you, but in the process, you might end up with like a total pizza face, it's just part of the process. Trust the process. Well, I mean, look at the end results. I got the I got the face of a 32-year-old. I'm cultivating duh.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:43

One thing is uh your spouse, another downside, he says your spouse might get angry with you about what you're doing. And he doesn't fully recommend to divorce your spouse, but you're gonna have to ignore them.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:56

Done.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:00

Yeah, and so that's that's most of what I take from this book from Juan Falloon, the central text.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:10

Um I'm impressed by how I'm impressed by how comprehensively you went into this.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:14

Uh yeah, and I'll I'll just as a final note, like this other stuff we can discuss about about them, but um, you know, why is this a sent the central text I was thinking about? And I think because there's a lot of writings, a lot of teachings. Um, I think it's because this is the one that establishes the rules and the hierarchy of the religion uh very clearly. But it's ambiguous enough uh on a lot of things that are introduced in later lectures that that maybe might like uh push people away. But like the main things it establishes is that Lee uh has the power, has superpowers, Lee has an invisible army that can watch over all of his practitioners at all times and influence their bodies physically, and so on and so forth. So I think that's why it's the central text.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:03

What would be your uh your rating? How many logs? How many logs? But also I would I would say I would want two ratings, one for just like a piece, you know, a piece of literature or text, and then one as like a religious, like you know, how how how urged were you to uh to join this movement and uh I was not too urged, I have to say, as I said, there's I have personal reasons.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:30

Uh he sort of thinks my I live a life of sin. So wants to go to Chinese heaven. Yeah, I want to visit Chongqing again. But yeah, and also as you know, as as a as a Wu Mao CCP chill, I I I you know I legally cannot say anything nice about the Falun Gong as well. So he did these lecture series right around this era, QA and things like that. A student asks, I have no problem with reading the books and doing the exercises on my own. But when I go to the practice site, I feel as though we're doing politically driven indoctrination. Li Hong Zhu responds, perhaps you loathe politically driven indoctrination. And so that's caused by your strong sense of aversion. The form is unimportant. What's important is the essence. Isn't that a strong attachment you have? An attachment of aversion. So to speak. What you got a problem with indoctrination? What's your what's your aversion to that? Sounds like a you problem, buddy. Yeah. Um yeah. Um yeah, I mean, it's it's quite interesting, you know, as a very politically charged organization. You know, they're in a perpetual like propaganda war against the CCP. Um, I would suggest that people maybe people don't trust either side on certain things that they say. What's kind of interesting, I I don't I don't know if you wanted to do a little bit of the Shenyun stuff. You know, Shenyun is is one of the big money makers, this uh big dance troop traveling all around the world uh that are basically unpaid, mostly volunteer like youths, um dancers. Uh I think they're under investigation currently in New York for a variety of reasons for abuse and things. I ran into them once in the mall and I didn't know what it was. I remember here. I'd been to China before and I was like, Oh, what's this? Like a Chinese dance thing. I was like, this is cool. Like, are you guys here from Beijing or something? And they were like, no, dancing is forbidden in China. I'm like, what? Like, no, it's not. I've seen a bunch of shows like this in China with the hell are you talking about? But it's apparently quite a quite a fun show because there's a big dance, Chinese dancing, and then you know, uh, a big image will display that says like evolution is a lie in the background, that kind of thing. So I think it's quite a bad ship performance. If anyone wants to yeah, maybe do some mushrooms and watch it, maybe fun. But I've been thinking about going for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:53

Yeah, I've I've also considered going, but I never have. But it does remind me of the uh ship uh in what was that traveling traveling um circus act that was also anti-oil. And uh I think I think it kind of has that vibe to me where it's like this is entertaining, but then they're just trying to like really just shove down your throat their political messaging um as you go through it.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:19

But yeah, the evil robots singing about oil.

SPEAKER_08 1:23:22

Oil, oil, oil.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:24

Well, they're on the yeah, that was awful. And we were on mushrooms with the trapeze, and it was still with the trapeze artists were great, it was fun. That's the angriest I've ever seen you, ever seen you be, Jane. That's the angriest I've ever seen. I remember that lady who was sitting next to us watching and just bullshit in the middle of the show.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:41

We were drinking 40s of malt liquor for some reason, sitting on the dock watching this pirate ship show, and you got so angry that you tossed your, and it's totally out of character, you tossed your empty bottle of malt into the ocean. I literally contest the pro-environmentalist message that the guys on the ship show were giving.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:01

Even though I am an environmentalist. And I was so upset about that because I bought that malt liquor for Jane that Jane signed a note that I still have on my phone that you probably you probably can't see in the text. I'm gonna send a screenshot that says Jane owes ten dollars for malt liquor.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:20

Yeah, and that you refuse to collect on.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:22

And I refuse, I still refuse to collect on it. Um getting back to Fall No.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:30

But one funny thing I found about them was that uh in in Ottawa, the uh they're not invited back to Ottawa, uh, one of the performing arts.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:40

Big loss. I play subs.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:42

I'm not sure which. And the reason is there was someone with mental uh mental disability in the crowd making too much noise. And so the the Shenyun organizers kicked the guy out. And so they were not welcomed back because of that. But then in all their promotion, they're saying that it's because uh the Chinese state has somehow infiltrated this uh this theater that they were trying to perform in. And then and then, but they do admit to kicking out this poor kid that had uh some kind of developmental disability for making noise. But they said the only reason they're doing that is because they're on high alert for CCP agitators.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:15

I wonder if that's what happened at the BAFTAs when that guy was screaming the N-word. Maybe that guy was a Chinese agent too.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:20

Oh, you yeah, the Chinese put him up to it. Yeah, that's that that's that's uh pretty much all else I had. There's a few more things here and there I found were funny, but I think we've probably got most of the meat off that bone.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:32

Chair recognizes Bo Dashington, Dr. Dashington, the floor is yours.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:36

Oh well, thank you so much, uh Cecil. Yeah, so I'd like to introduce a new Cecil, sorry. I'd like to introduce a new bit bit to the show. It's a very simple bit to wrap up uh each book after we've had heard our thoughts for a bit. The name of the bit is Is It Worse Than Hitler? And what we're gonna do is I we're gonna use as a benchmark Mein Kampf. And it's ranking on Goodreads. Mein Kampf is 3.18 out of five on Goodreads. That's a pretty good score. It's surprisingly high. Um, I ask you, fellas, if you think this week's book is ranked higher or lower on Goodreads than Mein Kampf. Just to warm us up, let's let's start with with a few things we've done in the past. Let's say uh Wave the Shadow Wolves by Steven Segal. Do you think that's better or worse than Hitler? Is this an anti-Semitic trap that you're setting for us?

SPEAKER_02 1:26:30

It is not. I think that that Steven Segal book is rated worse on Goodreads. Then three three point what? Three point three point one eight for Mein Kampf. 3.18. Yeah, I think uh the Wolves one is rated worse. That's my guess.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:44

Oh, I misunderstood. So we're deciding whether or not those books are rated better or worse on Goodreads, not whether we think they're better or worse than the Holocaust.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that's fine. Okay, we'll play this game. I've so Jane is right. Way of the Shadow Wolves comes in at 2.34. Way of the Shadow Wolves is confirmed worse than Hitler. Let's do maybe do one more. Um Unfettered by John Fetterman. Better or worse than Hitler? Worse. I think it's rated higher. Oof, deciding vote, Jane Lynch is correct again. Unfettered is 4.09, astoundingly.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:23

I got I had a sense on that one.

SPEAKER_07 1:27:26

He has a lot of people on the political right who are now in his corner who are probably bumping up the score. Hitler has fewer supporters on Goodreads.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:35

It few Hitler has fewer supporters in the political right. Are you sure about that? Summer skate, my Sean Avery and uh someone whose name I forgot.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:46

Lower. Better worse than Hitler.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:49

It would be higher. I think I don't think it's successfully bombed.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:52

I'm gonna go lower. This guy's three for three. Uh Summerskate is worse than Hitler. Summerskate comes in at 2.65. So lastly, and of course in the future we'll just do it for the book of the week. Uh let's see if Jane Lynch can maintain a perfect record. Is the Juan Falun better or worse than Hitler? That's a toss up.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:12

I'm gonna go higher.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:14

Better. I guarantee it's a lot of people volunteered to give a five-tar-star review.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:21

That's my thinking as well. What can I say?

SPEAKER_05 1:28:23

This guy knows his Hitler and how other books compare or don't to Hitler. Uh he's correct again. Juan Falun comes in at 4.35. Confirmed better than Hitler. I I love this game.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:32

Can we do just one more before we wrap up? Can we go? I can give you one. I've got more. No, I want to look at uh why women deserve even less. The the book that we discussed at the beginning from uh the podcaster uh what Myron Gaines. I know the answer.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:51

Before I answer that one, I want can I ask how many reviews that one has?

SPEAKER_04 1:28:58

It has one. It has one review.

SPEAKER_07 1:29:01

So Myron rated his own book. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:06

Uh then I'm gonna go with higher.

SPEAKER_07 1:29:10

Five stars. Is it? It's five stars? Yeah, because he rated his own book and he's the only person who reviewed it. It's five stars across the board. Wow, it's wild. It might be a book to look at. I don't know. We may have been too quick to judge. Okay. Well, anything else that we wanted to add before we uh we bid adieu to our lovely book club members.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:31

I was looking at uh Li Hongjur's New Year's message from 2023, and he's talking about the divine creator, like a single creator that created Earth. Uh it's very, very like sounds much more just kind of straight Christian millenary movement. And uh and the new thing that they're talking about now is not just that the world is in a sort of state of decline, but that there's a coming cataclysm very soon that will wipe out all existence in the universe and only their followers will be saved. So I just wanted to end on a happy note.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:05

That's a rapture.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:06

Yeah, it's like proper rapture stuff now.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:08

Well, Chip, thank you for giving us something to believe in and look forward to. And sincerely thank you for the amount of work and effort that you put into this uh this episode today, today's book club. Really, it's uh it was a fascinating tour through a uh fella and a movement that I really didn't know a whole lot about going into this. Um I like Dr. Dashington had tried to read the book. I made it to lecture number three and then gave up. It was just it was too ponderous for me. So hats off to you. Apparently you read it twice to prepare for this episode. So real glutton for punishment. Um and you set the bar real high. It's uh, you know, this Dr. Dashington, Jane Lynch. Next time you guys do a book, uh, you know, just keep in mind what uh what the standard is. To the rest of you, uh thank you so much for tuning in, for sticking it out to the end of this podcast. It was, as I said, a real doozy. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Like, comment, subscribe, send us hate mail. We don't have any Apple comments or reviews yet, so give us a hand on Apple Podcasts, shoot us a two or three star rating, uh, whatever you think we deserve, you know, whatever. Visit our PizzaShip Book Club on Reddit, um, www.posbookclub.com at POS Book Club on YouTube. To all Pizza Ship Book Club members, again, thanks so much for attending today's meeting. We look forward to welcoming you back next time. We'll see you there. Bye-bye.