Chapters
0:00:00 Introduction: The State of Philosophy
0:02:10 The Certainty of Three-Year-Olds
0:03:52 Philosophy: Denying Basic Understanding
0:05:19 Philosophy in Academia: A Skeevy Reality
0:08:04 Children's Understanding vs. Philosophers' Confusion
0:08:58 The Ever-Changing Nature of Existence
0:13:19 The Certainty of Children vs. Philosophical Doubt
0:17:44 Change and Identity: The Same, But Different
0:20:01 Philosophers' Lack of Certainty: A Problem
0:21:09 The Imposition of Subjectivity in Philosophy
0:24:49 The Essence of Identity: Changing Yet Same
0:27:40 Children's Understanding of Ethics and Morality
0:29:43 Imposing Moral Absolutes vs. Relativism
0:32:50 Doubt and Certainty: The Power Imbalance
0:34:55 Integrity vs. Philosophical Confusion
Long Summary
In this passionate discussion, I dive deep into the concept of change and uncertainty in philosophy, particularly focusing on Heraclitus' famous statement that a man cannot step in the same river twice. I express frustration with the perceived complexity and obscurity in philosophy compared to the clarity of children's understanding of basic concepts like truth, morality, and responsibility. I challenge the notion that philosophers struggle to explain what children and animals effortlessly comprehend, emphasizing the importance of philosophy in providing objective ethics to protect individuals from manipulation and guide moral decision-making.
I draw parallels between the absolute certainty with which rules and punishments are imposed by those in power and the relative subjectivity invoked when these principles are challenged or applied back to the rulers. I critique the contradictory nature of these dual standards, highlighting the need for consistency and integrity in moral reasoning. I reflect on personal experiences and anecdotes to illustrate the straightforward logic that children apply to navigate ethical dilemmas and comprehend the world around them.
Throughout the discussion, I underscore the essential role of philosophy in cultivating moral clarity and ethical guidance, lamenting the perceived dilution of this purpose in modern philosophical discourse. I explore the implications of embracing relativism and doubt in moral decision-making, contrasting these with the necessity of objectivity and certainty in upholding justice and integrity. Ultimately, I advocate for a return to foundational principles of truth and virtue in philosophy to ensure moral grounding and societal harmony.
0:00:00 Introduction: The State of Philosophy
0:02:10 The Certainty of Three-Year-Olds
0:03:52 Philosophy: Denying Basic Understanding
0:05:19 Philosophy in Academia: A Skeevy Reality
0:08:04 Children's Understanding vs. Philosophers' Confusion
0:08:58 The Ever-Changing Nature of Existence
0:13:19 The Certainty of Children vs. Philosophical Doubt
0:17:44 Change and Identity: The Same, But Different
0:20:01 Philosophers' Lack of Certainty: A Problem
0:21:09 The Imposition of Subjectivity in Philosophy
0:24:49 The Essence of Identity: Changing Yet Same
0:27:40 Children's Understanding of Ethics and Morality
0:29:43 Imposing Moral Absolutes vs. Relativism
0:32:50 Doubt and Certainty: The Power Imbalance
0:34:55 Integrity vs. Philosophical Confusion
Long Summary
In this passionate discussion, I dive deep into the concept of change and uncertainty in philosophy, particularly focusing on Heraclitus' famous statement that a man cannot step in the same river twice. I express frustration with the perceived complexity and obscurity in philosophy compared to the clarity of children's understanding of basic concepts like truth, morality, and responsibility. I challenge the notion that philosophers struggle to explain what children and animals effortlessly comprehend, emphasizing the importance of philosophy in providing objective ethics to protect individuals from manipulation and guide moral decision-making.
I draw parallels between the absolute certainty with which rules and punishments are imposed by those in power and the relative subjectivity invoked when these principles are challenged or applied back to the rulers. I critique the contradictory nature of these dual standards, highlighting the need for consistency and integrity in moral reasoning. I reflect on personal experiences and anecdotes to illustrate the straightforward logic that children apply to navigate ethical dilemmas and comprehend the world around them.
Throughout the discussion, I underscore the essential role of philosophy in cultivating moral clarity and ethical guidance, lamenting the perceived dilution of this purpose in modern philosophical discourse. I explore the implications of embracing relativism and doubt in moral decision-making, contrasting these with the necessity of objectivity and certainty in upholding justice and integrity. Ultimately, I advocate for a return to foundational principles of truth and virtue in philosophy to ensure moral grounding and societal harmony.
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00 All right, good morning. This is going to be an unabashed rant at the state of philosophy and the history of philosophy centered around Heraclitus.
00:07 Famous statement, "A man cannot step in the same river twice because it is not the same river and he is not the same man."
00:22 Oh yes, all the deepities known to man, God, beast and nature are put forward in this seemingly deep statements.
00:32 Even Bowie had a line, "Watch the ripples change the sides, but never leave the stream in any permanent way."
00:40 So, oh, you seek perpetual change. The only thing constant is change.
00:45 Oh, change and flux and goop and swirl and cloudiness and subjectivity and permanence and blech.
00:54 A man cannot step in the same river twice because it is not the same river and he is not the same man.
01:04 Well, what does this mean?
01:08 So, I'll tell you something that has been a ferocious aspect of my will from the very beginning of getting into philosophy.
01:16 I don't know if it's just some waspy Anglo-Saxon manual labor common sense part of me,
01:23 but I have always railed against, hated with a deep Old Testament viciousness in my soul,
01:32 the idea that philosophers cannot understand what a child can accomplish.
01:39 It would be like a gymnast looking at a toddler learning to roll over or stand and saying,
01:45 "Well, such feats are impossible for the mere philosopher."
01:49 What a child can do, a philosopher must be able to explain, must be able to explain,
01:57 or philosophy is worse than useless. Philosophy is denying conceptual understanding of that which a child or a doggo could accomplish.
02:07 Can you imagine? You're playing catch with a dog and a ball.
02:12 You throw the ball, the dog runs, jumps and catches the ball and you say,
02:17 "Well, there's no way we can predict the path of an object in space. It's impossible."
02:24 Because if you shoot the arrow and you subdivide the time down to infinity, the arrow is not moving at all.
02:31 My daughter was understanding ethics in her second and third years. UPB is dead simple.
02:38 So how is it possible that philosophers cannot explain what children and dogs can easily achieve?
02:48 It offends my very soul. It offends my very soul that philosophers quail and fail and bow and scrape and self-dissolve
03:00 before the basic principles of life, morality and reality grasped by toddlers, children and dogs.
03:10 An amoeba notices the difference between that which is food and that which is not.
03:17 Our immune system, hardly accredited with a PhD in philosophy, knows the difference between a virus and a healthy cell.
03:29 So philosophers with decades of experience, 15 languages under their belt and accreditation from the highest institutes of learning
03:38 cannot achieve what our immune system achieves on a regular basis.
03:43 Our ancestors had to determine night from day, true from false, real from fake,
03:48 eat the red berries good, eat the black berries bad, hunt, eat, fish, have sex, raise your children,
03:55 protect them from the elements and predators.
03:57 So the bodies of philosophers are able to determine health from illness, to promote health and attack illness.
04:05 Yet philosophers say, "Oh, we don't know what is true, we don't know what is real, we don't..."
04:12 It's like, I... part of me, and it's not the nicest part of me, I'm not saying it's defendable morally,
04:18 but part of me, I'll be frank with you, part of me wishes that our bodies listened to our philosophical bullshit and acted accordingly.
04:29 I do. I wish that people's... because boy, would that ever cure philosophy in about 19 nanoseconds.
04:35 I have a dream, I have a dream wherein all philosophical principles are codified down to physiological processes.
04:43 That if you don't believe in truth, then your immune system says, "Oh, no such thing as truth, no such thing as health,
04:50 no such thing as objective right and wrong, good or bad.
04:53 Okay, well then we will start attacking healthy cells or not attacking bacteria and viruses and what would happen?"
05:02 Well, the consequences of people's philosophical abstractions would manifest in their bodies in the moment,
05:08 and people would be like, "Whoa, let's pull back from that stuff, that's gonna get us killed!"
05:14 Relativism in the abstract would be AIDS in the body.
05:19 It would be to be a bubble boy. Well, of course, such abstractions can only exist in the realm of academia,
05:27 which is where you sever people from practicality and pay them to lead all intellectually curious people
05:33 off the windy cliffs of abstractions into the foggy chaos of subjectivity.
05:38 "Oh, are you clear? Are you a clear thinker? Are you really good at sort of putting two and two and making four?
05:43 Well, you know, we're gonna pay you a lot of money, you won't have to work that hard, and all you have to do
05:49 is teach all intellectually curious people that there's no such thing as truth and reality so we can take over the world."
05:55 Most modern philosophy, particularly moral philosophy, is a skeevy porn-stache guy roofing your conscience in a bar called the university.
06:05 "My man cannot step into the same river because he is not the same man and it is not the same river."
06:13 Okay, let's say that that's a curious thought that tickles your nose hairs one blindingly boring Sunday afternoon.
06:20 All right, okay, fine, fine. Then how is it when you ask a toddler to get you a bottle of water,
06:29 the toddler knows to go to the fridge and get a bottle of water?
06:33 When you say, "My daughter from when she was very little, and I love this too, we would go river hiking.
06:40 You know, you get some water shoes or flip-flops or whatever and you go into a river and you hike up the river
06:50 and you catch the little fish and the little crustaceans and you wobble when you hit a certain depth
07:00 and you see the fish and it's a blast. We even have taken ducks on multiple occasions.
07:06 We've taken ducks swimming and it's a great way to get yourself followed by a very large coterie of hawks
07:13 and then you have to scoop them up and the ducks come by. So we went river walking.
07:20 One of the things I couldn't help but notice is that when my daughter was, I don't know, let's just say three years old,
07:27 I'd say, "Let's go river hiking," and she'd be like, "Yay!" Right?
07:31 Now, here's the interesting thing. If philosophers cannot explain what a three-year-old can do,
07:38 philosophers are propagandists and servers and tools of the powers that be,
07:44 and the roofiers of the conscience being well paid to obfuscate basic common sense
07:49 so that people can be plowed under the wet earth of statism.
07:53 So I would say to my three-year-old daughter, "Let's go river walking." She'd be like, "Yay!"
07:58 And we'd get ourselves ready and my wife would pack us a bunch of necessary and unnecessary stuff
08:03 because that's the way she is and we would go to the river.
08:07 Now, when we got to the river, my daughter would not stand there and wonder and say,
08:12 "What on earth is that? What is that channel of gently rushing water?"
08:18 And then she wouldn't turn to me and say, "And who are you, Mr. Tall Guy? I think you're bald,
08:23 but I don't know because you don't bend over that much, but I'm going with that.
08:26 Don't see any bangs." She wouldn't say to me, "Who the hell are you?"
08:32 And she wouldn't say to the river, "What the hell is that? So isn't that interesting?"
08:39 And if we would go to a river we'd been to before, right?
08:43 If we'd go to a river we'd been to before, she wouldn't say, "Where are we?"
08:49 She'd say, "Oh, let's go to X River. I like River X."
08:55 And we'd go there and she'd say, "Yeah, I love this place. Look at that."
09:00 She would recognize me and she would recognize the river.
09:04 Now, certainly it was true that the river would be very different sometimes.
09:09 If it had rained a lot, the river would be swollen and gorged, like Fabio on a Harlequin cover.
09:19 But she wouldn't say, "What is this?" She'd say, "Big river. River's big. Lots of rain. River's big."
09:28 Even though the river would have significantly changed.
09:31 Like it would have got two or three times deeper at times.
09:34 Similarly, if we would go to the river in the winter, she would say, "River's frozen over."
09:43 She wouldn't say, "What is mystery strip of white iron? Frigid glass. Eight river."
09:52 Like she'd just say, "The river's frozen."
09:54 Even though it weren't moving, at least not on the top, and we could walk on it.
09:58 We couldn't walk on the river when it was water.
10:01 She didn't say, "Oh my gosh, I guess we've ascended to the divine because we can now walk on the river."
10:07 She got it.
10:08 Now, obviously my daughter's a little bit smaller than your average bear,
10:11 but 99.9% of kids can do this at that age.
10:17 At that age.
10:18 Now, over the course of my daughter's 15 plus year life, I have changed a smidge.
10:26 Maybe even more than a smidge.
10:29 I've changed a smidge and a half, double smidge, triple smidge.
10:33 There has been much smidging in my changes.
10:37 I have, well, I was already bald, but my hair has gone white.
10:42 My height has remained the same.
10:44 My weight, I guess I've dropped, I guess over 30 pounds over the course of my daughter's...
10:52 Well, I dropped it a little bit before, but yeah, I've definitely dropped weight.
10:57 And I have gone up and down in my career.
11:01 Up and down, not yes, there it is.
11:03 Up and down in my career.
11:05 I have gone from giving public speeches to doing private shows.
11:11 I've gone from her seeing me in halls speaking to a thousand or more people
11:14 to me strolling around doing individual call-in shows.
11:20 She has seen me write books.
11:23 She's helped me write a book.
11:26 So there have been lots of changes.
11:28 I've aged, of course, a little more weathered, a little more wrinkled,
11:32 but still north of the six-foot-deep dirt nap, which is always a plus.
11:38 So my daughter doesn't come home and say, "Who the heck are you?
11:42 You don't look like the person in my childhood pictures.
11:46 You are doth more slender and doth more snow-capped on the peak head."
11:51 So how is it that a three-year-old knows what a river is and who I am,
11:55 and philosophers say, "Well, but there is such change that man cannot--
11:59 the man cannot step at the same river twice because it is not the same river
12:04 and he is not the--" It's just one of these things that just sounds deep
12:07 and you pull it apart and it's like it means nothing.
12:10 It's a drug.
12:12 It just gives people a sense of depth and truth and m-m-m-m-meaning.
12:19 "M-m-m-m-meaning."
12:21 Sorry, that's an annoying voice.
12:24 "M-m-m-m-meaning."
12:25 An annoying voice to someone I knew when I was young.
12:27 So it gives people a sense of meaning.
12:30 It's just a drug.
12:31 You know how a drug gives you a sense of, "Hey, man, I made all these connections.
12:34 I got all these insights."
12:35 You write them down the next morning, you're like,
12:37 "The card has two spines in its eyeball," and it's like, "Nope, that doesn't--"
12:41 It just gives you a sense of oneness of--
12:43 Like the Buddhist who goes to the hot dog vendor and says,
12:48 "Make me one with everything."
12:50 Gives the money, asks for change.
12:52 The hot dog vendor says, "No, no, change comes from within."
12:55 What is a contract?
12:56 Gosh, a contract is so hard for some philosophers to understand,
13:00 mostly because the philosophers' contracts are shameful scribblings
13:04 of subjugation to the powers that be.
13:08 But, you know, if you're a parent and you make a commitment to your kids--
13:12 I remember going to Porkfest back in the day, driving all day,
13:17 get to the motel, I'm wiped, my daughter loves to swim.
13:22 The pool was closing in like 15 minutes, and I was like,
13:26 "No, I promise I'll take you in the morning before we go. I promise."
13:30 In the morning, she jumps up and down on the bed, time to go swimming.
13:33 She was very young, I don't know, three.
13:35 And, of course, I get up and I take her swimming
13:39 because if I hadn't, she'd have said, everybody says, in unison,
13:42 who's been a parent, I spent time around kids,
13:44 you promised!
13:46 Three-year-olds understand commitments and promises and contracts
13:50 and honesty and truth and virtue.
13:52 You should keep your word, you should keep your promises.
13:55 Don't lie, right?
13:57 But it's such a mystery to the philosophers.
13:59 How could we possibly know and understand what three-year-olds implicitly get?
14:05 I would be ashamed in the foundations of my self-recrimination.
14:12 I would be deeply humiliated and ashamed
14:17 to bow down before the mystery of what a three-year-old knows.
14:20 Well, a three-year-old can understand these things,
14:23 but I, in my infinite wisdom, say that they are incalculable, incomprehensible.
14:30 They are too deep and mysterious for the mere mortal mind to plumb.
14:36 Wouldn't that be embarrassing?
14:38 I mean, that would be for me, like a three-year-old doing some basic math,
14:43 and me sitting down and saying, "Puh, man, this can't be answered."
14:48 Say to the three-year-old, "What does two and two make four?"
14:51 You ask the philosopher, he says, "It cannot be understood,
14:55 it cannot be plumbed, it cannot be reconnoitered."
15:00 I send the scouts out of my curiosity,
15:03 and they are felled down by the fogs of incomprehensibility,
15:06 like ancient ghostly warriors dissolving them
15:09 with their acidic vapor of confusion.
15:13 My daughter, I taught her to read early on,
15:18 particularly important if you have an only child, right?
15:21 So I taught her to read early on, and she read the Bob books.
15:26 Oh, wait, we read the Bob books together.
15:28 We read the Bob books.
15:30 And my daughter, imagine my daughter confidently reading a sentence
15:35 in the Bob books and saying, "Dad, you read it."
15:40 I'm like, "I cannot. It is incomprehensible to me.
15:44 It is but a fog of waving tentacle-letter-ish objects
15:49 which cannot fix themselves upon my consciousness
15:51 and from which I cannot extract any human meaning of languageness."
15:55 I am a little on fire today. That's fine.
15:58 Hopefully the recording works.
16:00 That would be ridiculous.
16:02 "A man cannot go in the same river twice.
16:09 He is not the same man. It's not the same river."
16:11 Okay, then how do you know it's the man, and how do you know it's the river?
16:14 That's a contradiction in the very statement.
16:16 He's not the same man. Well, how do you know?
16:18 You're still referring to that man.
16:20 It's called the man Bob, after the books.
16:22 It's called the man Bob, right?
16:24 Say, "Well, Bob cannot go into the same Dave River, River Dave.
16:30 River Sticks. River Nile. Let's say River Nile.
16:33 Bob cannot go into the River Nile twice
16:37 because he is not the same Bob and it is not the same river."
16:41 Then why are you calling Bob Bob and the river Nile?
16:44 Of course it's the same Bob. Of course it's the same river.
16:48 And the fact that you say "walks into the river" cannot, right,
16:52 not walk on the river. It's the same river. It has the same properties.
16:55 So Bob is Bob, otherwise you wouldn't be calling him Bob.
16:59 He's not the same Bob. Well, then why are you calling him Bob?
17:03 If I lend someone my car and they come back
17:07 with some crapped-out rust bucket old Lada from the 1980s Soviet production line,
17:13 I'd say, "That's not the same car."
17:16 Because it's not the same car, right?
17:18 I happen to have a second-hand car and if he brings me back some fifth-hand Lada,
17:24 we'd say, I'd say, "That's not the same car."
17:27 Why? Because it's not the same car.
17:29 My daughter can identify that it is me walking on the river,
17:33 or walking in the river, depending on the season,
17:36 at the age of three. She knows it's me, she knows it's the river.
17:39 How can the three-year-old know that and the philosopher be confused?
17:45 Now, am I exactly the same as I was when my daughter was three?
17:50 I am not.
17:52 Am I similar enough that you still listen to me rather than
17:57 dialing up the random podcaster of infinity?
18:00 Well, you still listen to me.
18:02 Thank you, by the way, freedomain.com/donate.
18:05 freedomain.com/donate to help out.
18:07 So, you still listen to me because I'm not the same person.
18:11 Exactly, because that wouldn't be possible.
18:14 I mean, all atoms are somewhat in flux, somewhat in motion.
18:20 I mean, even a rock is not the same rock that it was
18:24 even a split second ago because the atoms, well, the electrons are in motion.
18:29 So, if I have a favorite singer, when that singer releases a song,
18:34 he doesn't sound exactly the same as he did in the past.
18:37 And you can actually, if you're curious at all,
18:39 I found it quite interesting to listen to, say, Freddie Mercury or Sting.
18:43 You can listen to Sting at some polytechnic concert when he was very young,
18:47 hitting all the high notes, and then you can hear him with the Berlin Philharmonic,
18:52 and he's gone, you know, baritone and a half.
18:56 Billy Joel has said that, you know, when you age as a singer,
18:58 you just say goodbye to certain notes, like you just don't do them anymore.
19:02 And some people's voice age swell.
19:04 I assume it's because they've got some training.
19:06 Some people's voices age badly because they, I don't know, yell or scream too much.
19:12 I mean, Paul McCartney shredded his voice.
19:15 And Billy Joel actually sounds pretty good, even though he's getting up there.
19:19 Which I used to think when I was younger,
19:21 because I think like most young people, you think that aging is fairly,
19:24 it's just vaguely disgraceful, and then you realize that it's the only thing
19:27 that beats the alternative, and that a man in his 90s is a victor, is a winner.
19:34 He has won the lottery. I mean, earned it, I assume, to some degree.
19:38 So, it is the same man, although he is not identical.
19:43 Identical would be impossible.
19:46 Identical would be impossible.
19:49 Identical would be to be frozen in time, but to be frozen in time
19:52 would not allow the generation of a new thought.
19:54 So, a new thought means that there has been a change.
19:58 Now, you understand, this is nothing particularly radical.
20:02 I'm merely expressing a frustration at the cowardice and surrender
20:09 and weakness and abandonment of humanity that the average philosopher,
20:16 certainly in the present and to some degree in the past,
20:19 the average philosopher does not provide the certainty of a three-year-old.
20:26 Does that not trouble you? Does that not trouble you?
20:28 Does that not bother you?
20:29 That three-year-olds are certain and right.
20:31 It's one thing to be certain and wrong, but three-year-olds are certain and right.
20:36 And yet, all this fluxy, changey, subjectivist, relativist nonsense
20:40 is where the philosophers go.
20:42 Philosophers are arguing with the correct certainty of three-year-olds and losing.
20:47 And it is just embarrassing.
20:50 It is ultimately humiliating, of course, to say that your profession is a fraud
20:55 and continue to draw money is the ultimate fraud.
20:57 Hey man, there's no such thing as truth.
21:00 Now, if you could pay me to teach people and test them on the objective knowledge
21:05 that is true, that there's no such thing as objectivity and truth, well.
21:09 I mean, I remember thinking about this when I was taking philosophy in university
21:13 and in both undergraduate and in postgraduate work, in graduate degree work,
21:19 that the philosophers who were teaching me would mark me.
21:25 And I would get opposed or marked down if I claimed there was any such thing
21:32 as objective truth.
21:33 And of course, the fantasy was, I mean, I argued with them to some degree,
21:37 but I couldn't get to this level.
21:39 I was a bit skittish, of course, when I was younger and needed to make my way
21:43 in the world.
21:44 So, of course, I wanted to get to, how do you know what I wrote?
21:47 Well, it's right here.
21:48 Okay, so that's objective truth.
21:50 Objective and true.
21:51 Not what I wrote is objective and true, but that I wrote.
21:55 Not the content, but the form is objective and true.
21:58 So, if you mark me down for saying there's such a thing as objective truth,
22:02 you are giving me objective marks based upon a true interpretation
22:06 of what my objective statements are.
22:09 So, to mark me down for saying there's such a thing as objective truth
22:13 is to self-detonate your own arguments.
22:16 And, you know, here's the thing.
22:18 I wouldn't particularly mind if the philosophers, well, you know,
22:24 like they said, that's kind of the fashion these days.
22:26 It's, you know, I kind of got to do that to keep my job,
22:29 and this is kind of the thing these days.
22:31 So, you know, let's just roll with it for now and whatever, right?
22:34 Okay, I can respect that.
22:37 I mean, obviously it's corrupt, but it's not bottomlessly corrupt
22:43 because at least the corruption is acknowledged.
22:45 But all of the people who had been studying philosophy for decades
22:49 and had no sense of certainty, and particularly of moral certainty,
22:52 the job of philosophy is to deliver unto mankind objective morality.
22:59 Physics is matter and energy. Engineering is productive tools.
23:02 Medicine is health and well-being. Nutrition is good eating.
23:06 What is the purpose? The purpose of philosophy is confined to philosophy,
23:10 and the purpose of philosophy is the delivery to humanity of objective ethics.
23:16 But the purpose of your immune system is to protect you from harmful bacteria and viruses,
23:20 and the purpose of philosophy is to teach you objective ethics to protect you
23:23 from the sophists who will exploit you and destroy your civilization,
23:27 and often aid those murdering humanity by the hundreds of millions.
23:33 But philosophers, a lot, not all, a lot of philosophers these days,
23:36 and I would say particularly in academia, are somewhat complicit
23:40 in the mass murder of reason around the world,
23:44 which in general leads to the mass murder of people.
23:47 There are tons of exceptions, but that's something that I have noticed
23:51 and would make a strong argument for.
23:53 So Aristotle talked about that which was essential and non-essential, right?
23:59 What is the essence? The essence.
24:02 So the essence of a man is how you recognize him, right?
24:07 If you've ever been back to a high school reunion,
24:09 there are some people who look kind of the same,
24:11 and some people who look quite a bit different.
24:14 Well, in fact, those who look the most different generally don't show up.
24:18 Like if you've gained a huge amount of weight and lost all your hair,
24:21 you tend not to show up to your high school reunion
24:23 because you don't want people's shock to remind you
24:26 just how much you've let yourself go,
24:28 especially if they don't even recognize you.
24:31 And I remember this very clearly.
24:32 I never planned to go to a high school reunion,
24:34 but I was meeting up with a friend of mine who happened to live
24:37 near the high school we both went to, and we were driving to go someplace,
24:40 and we saw that there was a high school reunion, so we dropped by,
24:44 and I saw everyone from my high school who showed up,
24:49 and everybody was the same.
24:51 Like the shy girls were the shy girls,
24:53 the extroverts were the extroverts, I mean, everybody was the same.
24:57 And people literally came up to me and said, "You've barely changed."
25:02 Now, obviously, I'd lost my hair, most of it,
25:04 but I mean, you said, "You're still the same guy."
25:08 Same smile, same face, "Still the same guy."
25:11 I remember Peter Gabriel was a fairly good-looking guy,
25:15 of course, founder of Genesis, and went solo, and did well.
25:20 And then he went through a lot of depression,
25:22 and I assume that's not just from doing a duet with Kate Bush.
25:25 There are probably other factors as well.
25:27 I'm sure he was on antidepressants, though I don't know for sure,
25:29 and he gained a lot of weight, and he lost his hair.
25:31 And he just looked--I remember I was down at Air Canada or for some show,
25:35 and I saw Peter Gabriel coming, and I looked at the guy,
25:37 and I was like, "Holy crap. Holy crap."
25:42 I mean, you know, Phil Collins looks pretty rough now.
25:44 He always had that weird little Full-Lock Superman question mark hair thing.
25:47 That was his excuse for a hairdo.
25:49 But, yeah, it kind of looks the same.
25:52 But, you know, you see people age out, and of course I'm at the age now
25:55 where the entertainers of my youth are dying off, right?
25:58 But they're the same. They're the same.
26:02 Some people sound the same.
26:03 What was it? Was it Journey?
26:05 They wanted to tour, but Steve--what's his name--
26:08 who was their singer, wasn't singing anymore.
26:10 I think he blew out his voice or had problems or something like that,
26:13 just didn't want to tour.
26:14 So they got some guy from the Philippines who'd won some Sound-A-Like contest
26:19 for the singer for Journey, and they just toured with him.
26:22 Or a queen, of course, with--oh, gosh, who did they tour with?
26:26 The Bad Company singer, Paul Rogers.
26:28 And they toured with him, and then they toured with, of course,
26:31 the American Idol guy, Adam something or other.
26:35 Adam--no, I can't remember.
26:37 Anyway, so, you know, same songs, different singer, different interpretations.
26:42 Actually, when Queen toured with Paul Rogers, they had a We Are The Champions
26:46 double CD, and it actually was very cool.
26:49 There was a very slow, half-bluesy intro to Hammer To Fall,
26:55 which was actually really good.
26:57 I think it was actually--there was some guitarist on the tour
26:59 who was noodling away, and Brian May's like,
27:02 "Hey, that's really pretty. That's really cool. What is that?"
27:04 It's like, "Oh, that's your song. Just really slow it down."
27:06 So they did that, which was actually pretty good.
27:08 It's worth listening to.
27:09 Hammer To Fall, Paul Rogers, We Are The Champions, or something like that tour.
27:14 So, yeah, kids know what right and wrong is.
27:17 They know what true and false is.
27:18 They know what promises are.
27:20 They know what taking is.
27:21 They know what initiating the use of force is.
27:23 They understand self-defense.
27:25 You see two little boys in a fight.
27:29 You pull them apart.
27:31 I mean, I worked in a daycare for years.
27:33 You see the boys in a fight.
27:34 You pull them apart, and what does each one do immediately?
27:38 It doesn't matter how old they are, really.
27:39 He started it. They just pointed at each other.
27:41 He started it. So they understand the initiation of force,
27:44 the legitimacy of self-defense, and so on.
27:47 I remember sitting by a pool,
27:50 horsing around with some friend of mine.
27:52 Like one of these kind of frenemies that you have sometimes when you're younger,
27:55 where you kind of horse around, but there's an underlying level of aggression to it
27:59 that's not particularly frenzied.
28:01 But anyway, so I pushed him in the pool when we were supposed to be sitting
28:04 on the edge of the pool getting one of these endless lectures about safety
28:07 from people who are currently spending our entire future with national debts.
28:10 It's really important to be safe and be responsible.
28:13 By the way, we're basically economic vampires drinking your blood for our boomer pensions.
28:17 But hey, it's really, really important.
28:19 So anyway, I got called out by the teacher.
28:22 Now, my friend and I, my frenemy and I, were kind of wrestling on the edge of the pool,
28:26 trying to push each other in, and the gym teacher,
28:30 who was this aggressive guy who always smelled of tobacco and other unmentionables,
28:36 he was like, "Did you push him in? Did you push him in?"
28:40 You know, this is the big thing, right?
28:43 I mean, there's a lot of bullying and drug use in the school, promiscuity and problems,
28:47 and this is the big moral intervention.
28:50 "Did you push him in the pool? Did you push him in?"
28:52 And I said, "Well, kind of. Sort of."
28:54 Because we were both wrestling with each other, trying to push each other in, right?
28:57 So I just happened to get a bit of leverage.
28:59 "Did you push him in?" "Well, sort of."
29:02 That's like being sort of pregnant.
29:04 So he dismissed any complications.
29:08 And, you know, he kept his job, so I assume that this is with the approval of the school.
29:12 That's his whole epistemology.
29:15 Or if you say you follow along with some kids doing stuff,
29:20 and then they say, "Well, why did you do that?"
29:22 And you say, "Well, the other kids were all doing it."
29:24 And they say, "Well, the other kids were all jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge.
29:26 Would you jump off too?"
29:28 CN Tower was the example used in Canada, of course.
29:31 The other kids were all jumping off the CN Tower.
29:33 So think for yourself. Don't follow the herd.
29:35 Have your independence. Have your integrity.
29:37 Don't blame other people for your actions.
29:39 These are all moral absolutes imposed upon me as a kid.
29:44 Of course, the fact that these teachers were always championing democracy
29:49 while saying it's immoral to follow the herd.
29:55 Well, other people should be able to vote all your rights away,
29:58 but it's really, really important that you act with your own integrity
30:00 and don't follow the herd.
30:02 When I was in a complicated situation in mutual edge pool wrestling,
30:06 it was black and white.
30:08 You can't sort of push them in.
30:10 It's like being sort of pregnant.
30:12 Pregnant is binary. It's absolutely not sort of pregnant,
30:14 even though technically you could be sort of pregnant
30:16 if you're going through a miscarriage.
30:18 Sorry. Got a little dark there.
30:21 I mean, these were all the moral lessons that were imposed upon me as a kid.
30:24 You know, when I climbed over the fence to get the ball in boarding school,
30:27 and I was ratted on by some older prefect, sadist ass, white,
30:32 then nobody said to me, "Well, we can't be sure if you exist.
30:39 We can't be sure if the fence exists.
30:41 And given that the fence is rusting a little bit every day,
30:45 and you're growing because you're six years old,
30:48 you know, it's technically it's not the same fence.
30:53 You're not the same kid."
30:55 I mean, you could have had vivid dreams last night
30:58 that have given you a different mindset.
31:00 So, you know, although this kid says, "He saw you climbing over the fence.
31:06 You're not the same kid. It's not the same fence.
31:08 I don't know really what's true."
31:10 I didn't say any of that.
31:11 Like, you know, "We're going to beat your ass with a cane."
31:14 There was no doubt, no uncertainty.
31:16 So, you see, you only encounter all of this fog, this nonsense,
31:21 this corrosive doubt, doubt being the salt seeded in the fertility
31:27 of the agricultural productive mind trying to produce fruits of wisdom.
31:33 When you try to become certain about any morals that might interfere
31:37 with the powers that be, suddenly everything's subjective and relative,
31:42 and you're not the same man, and it's not the same river,
31:44 and you can't be certain, and blah, blah, blah.
31:47 When the powers that be want to impose their rules,
31:51 they're absolute, forceful, certain, violent, without doubt,
31:57 to the point where you're willing to beat a six-year-old child with a cane.
32:02 You are so certain of your rules and their justice and the reality
32:07 of what he did by climbing that fence to get the ball,
32:10 even though he was not the same child.
32:12 According to Heraclitus, it wasn't the same fence.
32:14 It wasn't the same ball.
32:15 He's changed even since he came up to the headmaster's office.
32:18 Nope, none of that matters.
32:20 So when they want to impose rules on you, everything's absolute.
32:23 You can't be sort of pregnant.
32:25 If everyone else is jumping off the CN Tower, would you jump off the CN Tower?
32:29 Now go vote when you get older.
32:31 You see, when they want to impose their rules on you,
32:34 everything's an absolute, and we've heard this a million times
32:38 in the call-in shows, right?
32:40 Bad parents want to impose their rules on you.
32:42 They'll hit you. They'll yell at you.
32:45 They'll isolate you. They'll withhold food or water.
32:48 They'll lock you in your room, whatever, right?
32:50 Absolute, right?
32:51 But then when you question them as adults, everything's,
32:53 "Hey, man, we did the best we could, but the knowledge we had is subjective.
32:55 It's relative. You don't remember. It's not real.
32:57 It's not factual. It's not true. You're misunderstanding,
33:00 and you're a bad person for bringing this up."
33:02 And suddenly everything becomes goopy and relative, right?
33:06 Doubt is debilitating.
33:09 So when those in power want to impose rules upon you,
33:13 everything's an absolute, and all the rules they have
33:16 are perfectly moral, perfectly just, to the point of beating children with canes.
33:20 But, but, you see, if you take the principles of the rules
33:25 that the rulers inflict upon you, and you try to impose them back,
33:29 well, no, whoa, whoa, whoa, not the same river, man.
33:32 Not the same man, man, if you are in fact the same man, man.
33:37 Right? That's not allowed, right?
33:39 When they want to impose on you their rules, their morals, their standards,
33:42 their punishments, their beatings, man, holy, that's all absolute and factual,
33:47 and don't you dare try to wriggle away with subjectivity
33:51 from the responsibility for your actions.
33:54 But when you take the rules and apply them back,
33:57 oh, whoa, whoa, let's not get too far here.
34:01 Let's not get too crazy here.
34:03 Everything's subjective and relative, don't you know?
34:05 That's what Martin Luther said about when he was trying to reconcile
34:08 "turn the other cheek" with "an eye for an eye."
34:10 He said, well, an eye for an eye is the justice of the king and the prince
34:15 and the ruler. That's an eye for an eye.
34:18 So, when you all wrong each other and the king is imposing his justice,
34:21 an eye for an eye is fair.
34:23 However, if the king wrongs you, then "turn the other cheek"
34:26 and forgiveness is the moral absolute.
34:29 When power is imposing itself on you, it's an eye for an eye.
34:33 You must be meek and Old Testament vengeful.
34:35 You must be certain and violent and aggressive and without doubt.
34:39 But if the king wrongs you, oh, forgiveness, "turn the other cheek,"
34:42 relativism, subjectivism, your reward will be in heaven, ah, right?
34:47 Philosophy is a drugged meat thrown to the side to distract the animals
34:52 designed to protect virtue and integrity.
34:55 It's not to say bad, it's not the same river.
34:58 Then why do we have the concept of the same man and the same river?
35:01 There has to be enough in common that a three-year-old can figure it out
35:05 with no problems at all.
35:07 Had a favorite mall. When my daughter was younger, we called it
35:10 the "Dum-Dum Mall" for various reasons and if I said, "Let's go to the
35:13 "Dum-Dum Mall," and I took her to a different mall, when she was a little,
35:16 little, little kid, she'd say, "Well, it's not the same mall.
35:19 "This is the wrong mall."
35:21 "Well, but you can't go to the same Dum-Dum Mall twice
35:24 "'cause you're not the same kid and it's not the same mall."
35:28 She'd look at me like I was trying to poison her brain
35:30 if I said any of that nonsense to her.
35:32 But it's regularly considered deep in the realm of philosophy,
35:36 which is about castrating integrity in the service of those
35:40 who definitely do not serve us.
35:43 All right, thank you everyone.
35:44 Freedomain.com/donate.
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35:49 at freedomain.locals.com or subscribestar.com/freedomain.
35:54 And I will talk to you soon.
35:56 Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful day. Bye.