Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.

Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.

The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.

To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at to mystic institute.org.

The following lecture is based off my new book, Your Eucharistic Identity,

a sacramental guide to the fullness of life.

The book is available in some places where books are sold,

most especially at Amazon.com and Ignatius.com.

And from November 15th to December 2nd,

Ignatius runs a Black Friday sale. So you can head on down to Ignatius.com for 40% off.

In their contemporary culture, there's a certain tendency to define ourselves against,

which is to say there are a lot of settings in which we kind of have it in our minds,

okay, these people say thus and such, these people are dumb,

so I say whatever is contrary to thus and such.

And there's a kind of cottage industry of this type of self-definition,

especially on the internet.

You know, you can think about like reaction videos,

especially social and political commentary-based reaction videos, are often like, you know, uh-huh.

Okay, and they tend not to be terribly substantive because the algorithm promotes outrage and scorn and contempt and kind of consequent feelings of superiority.

But the problem with defining against is that while we may know in some sense, like what we are not,

we don't have too profound an appreciation of what we are.

And it can actually lead us into false or erroneous self-conceptions.

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