Some Future Day

Marc Beckman: [00:01:00] Naomi Wolf, welcome to Some Future Day. It's such an honor to have you today. How are you?
Naomi Wolf: I'm good. Thank you so much for having me. It's, it's an honor to be here.
Marc Beckman: Great, great. Naomi, I did a deep dive. When I reached out to you first, honestly, I was like really impressed with your work with regards to feminism early on in your career. Um, but I went deeper and deeper and something really stuck out at me before today's conversation. And to frame our discussion, what I want to do is talk about A topic that people don't address enough, the concept of being kind.
Uh, In fact, a good friend, an old friend of mine, you might have heard of him, Seth Davis. It's Lanny Davis's son. Seth is on, television. He covers NCAA basketball. Every morning he wakes up and the first thing he posts is please be kind. Those three words. And I noticed in doing some [00:02:00] research about you, um, this concept of kindness really came, came out, um, in a major way.
my show is about technology and culture. And you talked about this te this, um, modern day I think tension between technology and humans, and in some cases, um, specifically as it relates to, new technology and vaccinations, you looked at demons in technology, or at least that was my interpretation. I went deeper and deeper, Naomi, and then I got to this incredible story about you, this backstory, where there was a moment in your life, I think you were hospitalized, maybe you were even on your Deathbed with sepsis and, um, at that point in time, I believe you had written a new book about female biology and sexuality, um, and then you, you talk about making this deal of sorts while you were laying in that hospital room, [00:03:00] um, and I'm curious, like, what was that deal that you put together?
Naomi Wolf: well, um, well, first, I'm not sure, I'm not sure I wrote about, I just have so many kind of enemies out there in the internet sphere. I'm not sure I wrote about demons in technology. I may have written about demons and technology. Um, it may be that there are demons in technology, but I have no evidence of that.
Um, I've definitely been writing, As a tech CEO, um, and, and as just someone who cares about, you know, the human condition and humanities and civilization and spirit, um, that technology is being deployed to, against humanity. Right. And in a demonic way, and I can definitely defend that position. Um, but yes, you're referencing an essay I wrote called Not Dead Yet, I believe.
And it was from July of last year. And in fact, um, I was hospitalized with sepsis after having actually gone into [00:04:00] Manhattan. And do you remember when there were orange clouds and smoke covering Manhattan from the Canadian wildfires
Marc Beckman: One hundred percent. I remember that. It was in my world in such a strong way with two children in the city. It really impacted me, Naomi. I totally understand.
Naomi Wolf: Well, it was, it was horrific. And also I grew up in Northern California where there were what we used to call forest fires. They were later, you know, renamed wildfires, scarier, but I'd never, you know, I, I don't remember, or bright orange, acrid, toxic smoke from fires ever in my life growing up. And they're kind of a feature of the last few years.
So was, you know, there was a meeting I couldn't get out of in Manhattan and I tried, but I couldn't. And. I remember driving in, in an Uber across the bridge from Brooklyn and the whole island of Manhattan was engulfed. I don't know where you were, were you in Manhattan that day?
Marc Beckman: I was in Manhattan in the Flatiron District.
Naomi Wolf: well [00:05:00] you were right in the thick of it, I remember it vividly. toxic orange cloud Mm hmm.
it didn't even feel like it was being blown in organically on the wind.
It felt to me like a chemical attack. You know, I literally at times saw. smoke coming up from the subway grates, you know, orange smoke coming up from the subway grates. And, um, you know, but however it manifested, it was clearly I mean, you know, the last time I remember a cloud of smoke that toxic was after 9 11 when I was in Manhattan in the West Village.
And you could just tell, don't breathe it, it's, it's, there's something really wrong here. Um, well. In any event, I went through my meeting, I got home, and I immediately got appendicitis. I looked it up later, and it turns out that air pollution can be a trigger for appendicitis because there's so many toxins that your body's filtering.
Um, and I was rushed to [00:06:00] the hospital, appendix taken out, or dealt with, I guess taken out, and then I got sepsis, and I was getting sicker and sicker and sicker. Um, and for some weird reason that I fear to even speculate about my, the procedure to clean, you know, kill the sepsis, which was a surgical procedure, kept being pushed off, pushed off.
There was a power outage in the facility where this was planned for me. Like, have you ever heard of such a thing?
Marc Beckman: That's insane.
Naomi Wolf: insane. And I just kept dying. You know, I got closer and closer to death. didn't feed me, you know, no food, no water. I was being intravenously given liquids day six of this. And they said, Oh, don't worry.
You know, if we can't get you your surgical procedure, we'll just intubate you, you know, like, okay, fine. So, um, know, luckily my, my
Marc Beckman: No need to worry.
Naomi Wolf: Yes, right. No worries there.
Marc Beckman: Don't worry.
Naomi Wolf: I'll fast forward a bit, but my husband [00:07:00] did kind of motivate in that wonderful way that the US military has trained him as a, uh, someone embedded with special forces.
He motivated my physician to come on over, um, to the hospital and, and, um, You know, get me the treatment that I needed. But before that I did have a near death experience. I saw my dad who has passed. Um, you know, we had a conversation and I definitely was like, okay, well this, I'm dying, you know, it'll be sad for my kids and my husband, but I can't fight anymore.
And I did say to God, you know, I did like offer a deal. If you me live, I'll write all the I'm scared to write that I've, I've, you know,
And I've been trying to do that.
Marc Beckman: So I think there was one, um, story that you wrote titled, The Thing I Feared Most to Write. Mm hmm. Um, which I found so interesting, um, also, I have to [00:08:00] tell you, I have to compliment you, like, your choice of words is just gorgeous. You, you used four words, um, in that story, I believe it was, you used the words, Little Boats of Truth, and I thought that was so interesting.
It's such an interesting way of shaping up creatively a story that so many people might find difficult to believe. Um, but essentially, like, you're laying in the hospital. You make this deal and then you write this story about this experience that I believe you had in Oregon under hypnosis and, um, like, I guess my question to you is to start, like, did you find God?
Naomi Wolf: Well, I think God found me. Um, but look, I've always believed in God, you know, because why? Because I think most, probably just start out seeing the, you know, mystical spiritual essence of the world before it's kind of beaten out of them or, or before they're told, [00:09:00] oh, you know, you have to go through organized religion, which is like generally the least God ish. things humans can participate in, right? become convinced now that I'm reading the Geneva Bible and the Hebrew Bible that what you know, it shows how mistranslated far from the original text both Christian, most Christian, and most modern Jewish practices are that religion is kind of a substitute for direct experience of God or it's it's kind of there to You know, be a middleman to not let you get too much God all by yourself, but um, I did, well, so I've always believed in God.
I'm super Jewish. still think I'm Jewish, but under hypnosis, I did Walk into a room and encounter Jesus. Like absolutely my cognitive mind was horrified because that is not the person I wanted to see, expected to see, super problematic for me on a [00:10:00] conscious level, but my subconscious mind or my kind of soul mind was like, know, there you are.
Marc Beckman: So I got the sense from this story that, um, you were kind of sending a signal to humanity saying there's, um, an important part of our subconscious mind. Right, like, like, how do we unlock that important part of our subconscious, like, throughout that story, and we'll get into it today, Naomi, you, you talk about, you just touched on it, like, this friction, this tension between the ego and the conscious and the subconscious, um, labels of religion versus being, doing, acting in a way that is more human, so talk a little bit about the importance of subconscious consciousness.
just thinking and your subconscious mind. And how do we unlock that like you used hypnosis in that experience in Oregon, which was fascinating to me that you went into such a, um, [00:11:00] a room that was just, that you weren't expecting that for sure, from what I read. And then you unlock this life changing experience.
But how can everybody, how important is the subconscious mind, and how could everybody unlock it?
Naomi Wolf: So I love your question. Um, I, but I should clarify a little bit. I, I wasn't seeking hypnosis to have a religious or spiritual experience. I was honestly just looking for practical help with a writer's block, which I never encountered before. I'd never had a writer's block before. And my mom's a life regressions therapist who, who uses hypnotherapy in her practice.
So, um, I, you know, I didn't fear it. I knew that it was a, you know, very, um, well studied, well regarded methodology to help people with things like, uh, phobias, um, when, you know, writer's blocks of phobia. So I, I totally did not expect or anticipate, you know, this encounter. the other thing I, I just want to clarify, and it's so [00:12:00] hard because language is so inadequate, right?
But my experience, pardon me, of that. room and that moment and that space and that encounter with that being It wasn't like I'm unlocking my subconscious. It was like My subconscious or this place in my non conscious being was the same dimension as the universe outside of myself, you know, It was the same dimension as heaven.
It was the same dimension. Like, in other words, what I experienced was that our, um, materialist kind of very reductive idea that we're living on a physical plane and there's heaven and there's our unconscious is quite wrong. And that there are parts of us when we access them, just connect us with a dimension of God beyond, or, you know, spiritual truths beyond.
You know, they're not in, they're not [00:13:00] out, they're all around and they're in, right? That the way we think of kind of lateralness is not correct, right? and that's a very interesting idea because I've become increasingly persuaded that right now on Earth, are different. People are living in different dimensions on the same planet, right?
Because we're so clearly seeing populations that believe things that aren't true, that are fixed in their beliefs, that seem possessed by delusion, you know, and other populations living in the, on the same planet, you know, that, that do see things accurately and see danger and can react to The Modern Hotelier, David Millili, Steve Carran, Stayflexi, SOPs, Clingendael Institute, friend shoring, Revinate, Jon Bumhoffer, Revinate, CRM, CEO, LodgIQ, Dr.
Elizabeth Haas, Pierre Gervois, AIG. You know, there's no distinction between your dimension of consciousness and reality, right? Um, that makes [00:14:00] sense, right? We can be living on the same physical planet, but in different dimensions of consciousness, meaning different realities. So, how do you access it? Well,
Marc Beckman: So wait, I got, wait, I have a question just before you go there. so are you saying it's not really a subconscious experience, it's like a higher conscious experience and all of these people that are walking around the world with us are living in different levels of consciousness perhaps?
Do I understand correctly? we're, we're heading in the right direction or the Okay. I'm trying to communicate. But I guess what I'd like to challenge, um, and it's human nature, especially Western nature is to make a map that goes like this, like, Oh, this was a higher consciousness and these people are at a lower consciousness that that was not my experience.
Naomi Wolf: Like, my experience was that space folds. In and time folds in at a
Marc Beckman: So it's more of an ecosystem, like a circular type [00:15:00] of concept.
Naomi Wolf: like you, you have a very spatial imagination, what I'm really, and this is very normal, like all of our teaching is that, you know, can be mapped, right? a spatial way, but I can't believe we're getting into this, but, um,
Marc Beckman: getting into it.
Naomi Wolf: okay, that's fine with me. Remember how much Jesus tried to talk about the kingdom of heaven.
Right, and the way he talked about the Kingdom of Heaven and later theology, in my view, grossly misinterprets and misrepresents the Kingdom of Heaven as something in the future or something that's going to come down from the sky when Jesus returns again or something, you know, uh, unattainable to us that we can only get to through death or from Him somewhere else, right?
know, I've been reading the Hebrew Matthew, it's right here, in Hebrew, which could be, could go back to a Hebrew version of [00:16:00] the gospel from the first century, and, but even in translation, when, when Jesus talks about the kingdom of heaven, he's talking about a state of consciousness, and when he says, in Hebrew, it's so mind blowing, because he says, Malkut, Malkut, Malkut, Malkut, Hashim.
And what that means is the kingdom of Hasim, of the sky, right? It's not heaven, it's the sky. They're the same term. Ro, that's a, that's an adjective and a verb. I, I mean, Hebrews amazing that way, but, but it means nears and is near right. So he's, he's really saying the kingdom of the sky is near, it's like right next to you.
It could be inside of you. Right? That's what he's saying in context. Like, when you act with love, when you align with, you know, his teaching, his true teaching, not the theological teaching, which [00:17:00] I believe came later, but, you know, love and compassion and kindness and, you know, Charity and justice. Um, then you're living in the kingdom of heaven, right?
And, and it's near. It's not some, it's not far away. It's like, it's, it's between us. It's in us. Um, we can make it here on earth by changing our consciousness. That's how I read what he was saying. And that was my experience that I was in a dimension that was incredible, but it wasn't like below, it was within, but it was also accessible to everyone.
Because we're in this giant sea of potentially incredible, beautiful, blissful, blessed dimensions if we change our minds.
Marc Beckman: So when you talk about dimensions, you're talking about also light and sound and communication, Naomi?
Naomi Wolf: Well, now it gets really fun and tricky. [00:18:00] Um, wasn't specifically because Because light and sound weren't, um, part of what I was trying to describe there, which was just like, there's a space in our hearts, which connects to, is part of, continuous with the space of God, which is endless, but in within which our three dimensional world set up home, but it's not the ultimate reality, right?
but did have like, uh, uh, uh, A witnessing to a super cool thing about light and sound. my encounter with this guy, because he was visibly, um, surrounded by rays of beautiful light, you know, like, rays of light, like, kind of like the way it's represented in early Renaissance, um, uh, auras, or, uh, what is the word?
Halos, right? But all around his body, not just his head. But also When he moved [00:19:00] like he moved his arm at one point and the rays of light were three dimensional. They came toward me They weren't going up. They were just coming out of him three dimensionally holistically in every direction But also I recognized that they were on a spectrum of love and on a spectrum of sound So yes, it is one spectrum love and light and sound.
I can't explain it But that was what was given to me to understand.
Marc Beckman: So you believe that this guy is Jesus?
Naomi Wolf: There was no question that this guy was Jesus I mean, I,
Marc Beckman: and you also, I found it very intriguing. You also spoke about this like mind to mind communication where you didn't have to speak to him verbally. Right. There was no like overt speaking. It was a mind to mind type of communication. I thought that was very interesting. Can you talk about that as
well?
Naomi Wolf: I mean, a lot of, a lot of people who have, you know, for lack of a better term, mystical experiences or, you know, near death experiences or see a loved one in a dream who's passed on, [00:20:00] um, or kind of in a vision even, will describe this kind of, um, no need for verbal speech, moving your face, you know, you, it's just direct mind to mind communication.
Right. you know, I can't. Describe it very well, except that it's incredibly efficient, like you just, know, it, it, it just makes verbal speech seem very clumsy compared to, um, I mean, I guess what I'm trying to say is, for instance, what some of the things I experienced were like insights that I was supposed to receive, and wasn't like, oh, I learned or my brain processed or I absorbed.
It was like, oh, That's why I keep using language like I was given to receive, right? I, and I'm not trying to claim I'm a seer or a mystic or a visionary, anything like that. I think we all, you know, this is just around the corner for everyone if we open ourselves up to that whole dimension we have from childhood, but it's [00:21:00] more like, um, ideas from this person you're communicating with kind of appear received in your mind, your consciousness without verbal communication.
Marc Beckman: Yeah. I, I don't really care what, um, naysayers or doubters, um, Um, have to say about you with regards to this writing, because you could pull out a lot of concepts that are both important and beautiful, and one of those ideas that you, uh, developed is during that communication, um, this idea of The concept of co creation with humans.
Um, I thought that was really powerful and really important. And I think that's like the segue, like to me, that was like the gateway into being kind. Can you talk a little bit about that idea? Like how that communication opened up and enlightened you to come up with the concept of co creation with humans?
Naomi Wolf: Absolutely. And I, I mean, again, I didn't come up with the concept. This is one of those things that I kind of [00:22:00] you know, in this
Marc Beckman: Yeah, you gotta excuse me for, I don't, I'm not sure how to articulate it personally. It's the first time I'm talking about these things. So,
Naomi Wolf: Co creation. This person, this guy, Jesus, was at a table in a, rustic kind of cave like workshop, which is very much like the workshops that are still in the old city, um, you know, ancient workshops, kind of car Like, almost carved out of the rock, um, the old city in Jerusalem and, um, everything was very pre, you know, pre industrial, like, you know, I mean, I noticed things like the table had no metal nails.
It was held together through dowels, for example, and the, you know, nothing was made with, um, things were made with hand hewn. right? um, and to my surprise, this guy was barefoot. You know, you, you, you see him represented in sandals and with beautiful clean robes and he was barefoot. [00:23:00] He was also very poor.
And, and again, like don't usually stress this or show it, but he was like, know, he was wearing like a burlap, practically shirt or robe that, didn't have hems. It was like trailing. I mean, I'm stressing this because there was such a sense of verisimilitude, right? That there were so many details that, you know, even my subconscious mind would not have come up with because I just don't think about Jesus being poor, you know, very much at all in my subconscious mind.
But There were these very, very distinct, you know, uh, real seeming details, right? Like, I wouldn't have thought he'd be barefoot. I wouldn't have thought his feet would be in dust. You know, I wouldn't have thought, that there Anyway, just very vivid. But, he was at one point, um, showing me on a work table, his work table, that he was [00:24:00] creating a beautiful glass, um, Like, I, you know, but I mean, symbolic I, right?
And in the old, in the old city, still, they, they make these beautiful blue glass, um, uh, they're called hamsas, I think, against the evil eye. uh, but this was like a circular one or not circular, um, globular, like a globe, like a little sphere, spherical. uh, and it was beautiful. It was blue, but he said that the only way to like finish creating it was for humans and him to create it together, that it was an act of co creation and that the goal of it was to be, um, part of our, our third eye, our consciousness, our higher consciousness.
So basically he was showing me that, His job, and this is how I experienced him, right, was as I didn't, I was very worried about saying this in front of Christians, but no [00:25:00] one seems very offended. I didn't feel that I was in the presence of God. I felt that I was in the presence of God. Something of God, right?
Like, the metaphor I use in my essay is, your mom's hug isn't your mom, but it's of your mom. Right? I felt like I was in the presence of the way God is trying to talk to his humans, right? Trying to connect with his humans, trying to get aligned with his humans. And, we kept not getting it, right? We kept Not understanding or choosing not to understand what God was asking, which is pretty simple, right?
It's 10 commandments. It's not that complicated or difficult, but we wouldn't do it. We wouldn't do it. So finally, he's like, okay, fine. You know, I'll send this guy, So you can't miss it. And so back in that, like, workshop, this guy was indicating that this has to be an act of co creation. It doesn't work if he does it by himself.
It doesn't work if humans do it by themselves. We have to do it together.
Marc Beckman: So what is it that the [00:26:00] humans are supposed to co create? Is that the kindness?
Naomi Wolf: You could say so. I mean, I think the whole thing is summed up in the phrase the Kingdom of Heaven, right? You co create a personhood of love and charity and kindness, a family of charity and love and kindness, then a city of love and care, charity and kindness and justice, you know, then a nation. I mean, that's the, I think that's the co creation as well as the.
You know, just the loving and aligning with God, um, I mean, the Hebrew Bible and this wasn't really embedded in what I got from that moment, you know, with this person I recognized in myself as Jesus, but, um, like, it's, it's all, like, the perfection of the human project aligned with God isn't just me.
You know, love and kindness [00:27:00] and a just society. It's also like art and music and, you know, all the ways that we praise and celebrate the human God Right. there was also like an element of beauty, you know, that, that God loves it when we make beautiful things or make beautiful music or write beautiful books, um, because that's all where we intersect with God.
Marc Beckman: that's interesting because
Naomi Wolf: just because it was a beautiful object,
Marc Beckman: interesting that you're bringing the concept of music out because I thought one of the most gorgeous concepts in that writing of yours was this idea of humans scratching their own records and the symbolism, um, about that as it relates to being judged by, let's say, society or societal standards, um, versus individuality.
Can you, can you share that concept of humans scratching their own records a little bit with our
audience?
Naomi Wolf: yeah, that was, um, like the second important of [00:28:00] communication I took away or received. basically what I got in addition to the co creation, communication, whatever message, was that there is, if, okay, how can I put this? We wouldn't and the word sin is also wrong because it's like, and in Hebrew it's the same, it's more like err, right, make errors, right, like miss the mark.
We wouldn't go out of alignment with our path and with God and God's will and mess up if we understood how important we were to God. most sin or error or messing up comes from our not believing we're important to God or just not believing we're important. But what I was that, you know, it was literally the reference to, um, a [00:29:00] sparrow doesn't fall without my father knowing, which I think is out of Matthew.
Um, like, There's no such thing as cheating. There's no such thing as theft. There's no such thing as lying. There's no such thing as adultery, you know, that doesn't get disclosed because of it is known, right? Like God literally knows everything and not in a way, but like, are you doing this?
It's, it, you know, it doesn't go away. There are no secrets. Right. But that what happens is we, we all have like a beautiful, new record, you know, vinyl record, right? With grooves and that, and, and there's music that we're supposed to manifest, right? But it manifests best when we're aligned with those grooves, which is God's will for us in our lives, you know, helped by prayer and good actions and following the commandments and all those things.
when we do that, like when we cheat or lie or whatever, or cruel, we scratch our own records, right? And make [00:30:00] disharmonious music. And that comes Creates a less blessed environment for us in our lives, right? And I'm not saying we get punished, but like, we're creating our own conditions. And I can't answer, because I kind of ask this, what about, you know, bad things happening to good people, right?
That eternal
Marc Beckman: Sure.
Naomi Wolf: And I get the answer to that, except that kind of, and it's always, even before this moment, Seemed compelling to me that, you know, this Buddhist thing, there are two arrows. There's the arrow of unfortunate things that happen because who knows why, you know, making them worse by regret, hostility, guilt, you know, bad behavior.
so we can't avoid know, if we're gonna kind of lose a child or a marriage isn't gonna work or whatever, and that's in our music for our lives, that's gonna happen. But we can, by [00:31:00] being aligned with God and our higher purpose, you know, go through that in as blessed a state as possible, you know, bringing out the blessings of whatever we're supposed to learn from that.
And we don't have to suffer additionally from it. Bad decisions like theft, lying, cruelty, etc, which create bad conditions in our lives, attract bad things.
Marc Beckman: So,
introspecting to like the individual's moral reality, right? Like how I'm interpreting bad things that I might do versus the way that God looks at it. Am I, am I right in interpreting?
Naomi Wolf: I'm sorry, I don't understand the question.
Marc Beckman: I guess my question to you really is, um, is it an analysis of the way I might look at my moral reality? Is the tension here that you're describing, like how I look at my moral. My morals, like what my moral reality [00:32:00] is versus, um, the way that religion or faith might actually interpret it. Because you're saying like, essentially like God knows it all, right? Like it's already there. There's no lying. There's no cheating.
There's no adultery because it's already there. It's baked in.
Naomi Wolf: So I might make my reality. There's no secret line. You can't get away, like, people think, oh, I'll just steal this. I'll just cheat. I'll just lie. I'll get away with it. And there's no such thing as getting away with it. That's what I meant. Yeah,
Marc Beckman: Right. Right. It's interesting. So then, then you get into later on, like, I, I realize we're pressed for time. So, like, I just want to, like, skip to this concept of, you know, where we are today with religion, because I, I feel like, um, something you touched on earlier is really interesting. This concept of, like, symbols of religion, like, whether or not, you know, Today's interpretation of faith is really driving what Jesus had, um, you know, perhaps hoped religion was.
Like this concept of like the banner of religion versus actually acting in a [00:33:00] way that is kind.
Naomi Wolf: that's the essence of everything. And so it goes back to the question you just asked me, which is, You know, whose morality? And so definitely the takeaway from this encounter, as well as my reading of the Hebrew Bible, is that totally religion, Christianity and Judaism, in most of their manifestations, are not what he was getting at, and not what Yahweh was getting at, right?
And that, you know, the, the morality is pretty simple. It's literally, like, ten requests. It really is, like, don't kill people, don't commit adultery, don't, you know, Steel, you know, like, honor your father and mother. It really is simple. And Yeshua said over and over, I, you know, I haven't come to replace the law.
Basically, I'm just trying to distill it for you because you guys are going in the weeds and, you know, forgetting that the essence of, essence of the law is very simple, you know, love one another [00:34:00] and love your neighbor as yourself. And Everything else flows from that, right? So, totally, okay, so the last, I guess, major thing in this, in this experience of Yeshua that I had was, you know, he sort of indicated, um, stages of the cross behind him, and again, not literal, quite impressionistic, but visual.
And, but they weren't the stages of the cross that we're, we see in Western art of, you know, the, Jesus is suffering on the way to be, uh, sacrificed. On as a crucified person. Um, these are stages in his life of, know, feeding the hungry, uh, healing the woman who touched his, him, um, you know, rape, you know, helping the sick girl on her bed, you know, like, like teaching people how to, you know, How to live in better alignment with, with, with God and love.
And he said something very clearly, like, [00:35:00] it's really sad that people keep pointing to my death, but they ignore my life. And, like, I totally got the, um, impression is too weak a word, but the sense, the understanding that, um, most religion is a red herring. know, from Jesus point of view, that it's a way to avoid these very simple things that both he and Yeshua, you know, before him, asked us to do.
Um, we don't want to love each other. You know, we just don't want to. We, we want to, you know, and I can't hear you. We want to go to confession or go to Yom Kippur or make it, you know, write a check to the synagogue. will do anything rather than just Love each other, and tell the truth, and not cheat, and, you know, be faithful, like, we'll do literally anything to avoid it.
So, I definitely got the sense that he was indicating that, you know, much of religion was very annoying to him and to God, because it's people trying to avoid, [00:36:00] um, just doing what they very clearly asked us to do.
Marc Beckman: So it's kind of interesting, Naomi, if you pull that thread now all the way into modern day technology with regards to legacy media, social media, cancel culture, that idea of, of, um, uh, the community pushing their standards, their moral, um, standards upon the individual and as a result cancelling people and, and hurting people, honestly, is, um, uh, I, I think in many ways analogous to what you're talking about as it relates to, uh, The Coda or the label of religion versus being, um, looking at, at what's true versus saying or interpreting, misinterpreting something as, uh, being realistic.
Do you see that as like a big issue in society today?
Naomi Wolf: I think I understood what you were saying. And I, if I understood, I'd have to say for sure, yes, but it's either side, right? Christian fundamentalists can do it, [00:37:00] be very judgmental about Yeah. lives. And, you know, left wing, you know, wokesters can be very judgmental and both can cancel people. And think, those both in both cases is a really good examples of what this guy sick of.
I mean, I don't want to like overstate the negative, but it was definitely like, this has got to stop. Because it's, I definitely got this sense of if people want to follow him or follow his dad, our dad, right? We, We should be too busy looking at our own lives. I mean, that line again, you know, why are you pointing out a beam in your neighbor's eye instead of, wait, why are you pointing out the splinter in your neighbor's eye instead of removing the beam from your own?
And like, why are you such a hypocrite? If we wanted to make him happy, we would be spending all of our focus on being good people instead of pointing fingers at others. And, um, [00:38:00] You know, canceling them, you know, we'd be loving them. I mean, that's the solution, right? That's, I try to love my enemies.
Marc Beckman: There you go.
Naomi Wolf: it's not fun, you know, but I try.
I, I'm not saying I'm perfect. It's a struggle all the time, but mean, having had this experience, I definitely understand that the littlest argument in, or, you know, exchange with a waitress in which I am impatient or projecting onto them or making their lives more difficult, or, you know, not making up with someone in my immediate circle, uh, I'm, I'm scratching up my own record.
You know, that's my first job. Like that's my main job. So, I definitely want to keep fighting injustice and I want evildoers to be brought to the law, you know. But I, I think, I mean, so did Jesus, you know, he overturned the tables of the moneylenders, and he, [00:39:00] you know, ran a kind of revolution, a moral revolution against a giant empire, and he got, you know, killed for it, but I don't think these things are contradictory.
I think, you know, the great Warriors that I admire, like Dr. Martin Luther King, or you know, RFK Jr. for that matter. You know, if you listen to the way RFK Jr. speaks, he's always speaking from a position of love, for even the people who are most horrible to him.
Marc Beckman: Naomi, I know you, I need, I know you spent a lot of time. You need to go. I end every episode the same way. I start, um, a sentence and my, my guest finishes it. Can we just get that, um, get that in? Okay. So in some future day, the concept of love will evolve to be.
Naomi Wolf: Um, something that you don't wait for the future to
Marc Beckman: All right, Naomi Wolf. Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. It's been a pleasure having you.
Naomi Wolf: I do too. Thank you so much for having me. Take care.
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