Video: https://dai.ly/k6hsuANH6VxMpTA9K56
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
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.
engaging discussion, philosophy, change, uncertainty, Heraclitus, ethics, decision-making, consistency, integrity, moral clarity
[0:00] 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' 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. Oh, yes.
All the deepities known to man, God, beast, and nature are put forward in this seemingly deep statements even bowie had a line watch the ripples change the sides but never leave the stream in any permanent way so oh you seek perpetual change the only thing constant is change oh change and flux and goop and swirl and cloudiness and subjectivity and permanence and And a man cannot step in the same river twice because it is not the same river and he is not the same man.
Well, what does this mean?
So I'll tell you something that has been a ferocious aspect of my will from the very beginning of getting into philosophy.
I don't know if it's just some waspy Anglo-Saxon manual labor common sense part of me.
[1:24] But I have always railed against, hated with a deep Old Testament viciousness in my soul, the idea that philosophers cannot understand what a child can accomplish.
It would be like a gymnast looking at a toddler learning to roll over or stand and saying, well, such feats are impossible for the mere philosopher.
What a child can do, a philosopher must be able to explain, must be able to explain, or philosophy is worse than useless.
Philosophy is denying conceptual understanding of that which a child or a doggo could accomplish.
Can you imagine? You're playing catch with a dog and a ball.
[2:11] You throw the ball the dog runs, jumps and catches the ball and you say well, there's no way we can predict the path of an object in space, it's impossible because if you shoot the arrow and you subdivide the time down to infinity the arrow's not moving at all and the...
[2:31] My daughter was understanding ethics in her second and third years. UPB is dead simple.
So how is it possible that philosophers cannot explain what children and dogs can easily achieve?
[2:48] It offends my very soul.
Oh, it offends my very soul that philosophers quail and fail and bow and scrape and self-dissolve before the basic principles of life, morality, and reality grasped by toddlers, children, and dogs.
An amoeba notices the difference between that which is food and that which is not.
But our immune system, hardly accredited with a Ph.D. in philosophy, knows the difference between a virus and a healthy cell.
[3:30] So philosophers with decades of experience, 15 languages under their belt and accreditation from the highest institutes of learning cannot achieve what our immune system achieves on a regular basis.
It says, our ancestors had to determine night from day, true from false, real from fake.
Eat the red berries good, eat the black berries bad.
[3:52] Hunt, eat, fish, have sex, raise your children, protect them from the elements and predators.
So the bodies of philosophers are able to determine health from illness, to promote health and attack illness.
Yet philosophers say, oh, we don't know what is true.
We don't know what is real. We don't, like, I, oh, part of me, and it's not the nicest part of me, I'm not saying it's defendable morally, 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.
[4:30] I do. I wish that people, because boy, would that ever cure philosophy in about 19 nanoseconds.
I have a dream, I have a dream, wherein all philosophical principles are codified down to physiological processes.
That if you don't believe in truth, then your immune system says, oh, no such thing as truth, no such thing as health, no such thing as objective right and wrong, good or bad.
That, okay, well, then we will start attacking healthy cells or not attacking bacteria and viruses, and what would happen?
Well, the consequences of people's philosophical abstractions would manifest in their bodies in the moment, and people would be like, whoa, let's pull back from that stuff. That's going to get us killed.
[5:14] Relativism, in the abstract, would be AIDS in the body.
[5:19] It would be to be a bubble boy. Well, of course, such abstractions can only exist in the realm of academia, which is where you sever people from practicality and pay them to lead all intellectually curious people off the windy cliffs of abstractions into the foggy chaos of subjectivity.
Oh, are you a clear thinker? Are you really good at sort of putting two and two and making four?
Well, you know, we're going to pay you a lot of money. You won't have to work that hard.
And all you have to do is teach all intellectually curious people that there's no such thing as truth and reality, so we can take over the world.
Most modern philosophy, particularly moral philosophy, is a skeevy porn-stache guy roofying your conscience in a bar called the university. adversity.
My man cannot step into the same river because he is not the same man and it is not the same river.
Okay, let's say that that's a curious thought that tickles your nose hairs one, blindingly boring Sunday afternoon.
All right, okay, fine, fine.
[6:24] Then how is it when you ask a toddler to get you a bottle of water, the toddler knows to go to the fridge and get a bottle of of water.
When you say, my daughter, from when she was very little, and I love this too, we would go river hiking.
You know, you get some water shoes or flip-flops or whatever, and you go into a river and you hike up the river and you catch the little fish and the little crustaceans and And you wobble when you hit a sudden depth and you see the fish and it's a blast.
[7:04] We even have taken ducks on multiple occasions. We've taken ducks swimming, and it's a great way to get yourself followed by a very large coterie of hawks.
And then you have to scoop them up when the dogs come by.
So we went river walking. And 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, I'd say, let's go river hiking. And she'd be like, yay, right?
[7:32] Now, here's the interesting thing. what if philosophers cannot explain what a three-year-old can do philosophers are propagandists and service and tools of the powers that be and the roofiers of the conscience being well paid to obfuscate basic common sense so that people can be plowed under the wet earth of statism so i would say to my three-year-old daughter let's go river walking she'd be like yay and we'd get ourselves ready and my wife would pack us a bunch of necessary and unnecessary necessary stuff because that's the way she is.
[8:04] And we would go to the river.
Now, when we got to the river, my daughter would not stand there and wonder and say, what on earth is that?
What is that channel of gently rushing water?
And then she wouldn't turn to me and say, and who are you, Mr.
Tall Guy? I think you're bald, but I don't know because you don't bend over that much, but I'm going with that. Don't see any bangs.
She wouldn't say to me, who the hell are you?
And she wouldn't say to the river, what the hell is that? So isn't that interesting?
[8:39] And if we would go to a river we'd been to before, right?
If we'd go to a river we'd been to before, she wouldn't say, where are we?
She'd say, oh, let's go to X river. I like river X.
And we'd go there and she'd say, yeah, I love this place.
[8:59] Look at that. She would recognize me, and she would recognize the river.
Now, certainly it was true that the river would be very different sometimes.
If it had rained a lot, the river would be swollen and gorged, like Fabio on a harlequin cover.
But she wouldn't say, what is this? She'd say, big river.
River's big. Lots of rain. River's big. even though the river would have significantly changed, like it would have got two or three times deeper at times.
[9:35] Similarly, if we would go to the river in the winter, she would say, river's frozen over.
She wouldn't say, what is mystery's strip of white iron, frigid glass, eight river, like she'd just say, the river's frozen.
Even though it weren't moving, at least not on the top, and we could walk on it. We couldn't walk on the river when it was water.
She didn't say, oh my gosh, I guess we've ascended to the divine cause we can now walk on the river.
She got it. Now, obviously my daughter is a little bit smaller than your average bear, 99.9% of kids can do this at that age.
At that age. Now, over the course of my daughter's 15-plus year life, I have changed a smidge, maybe even more than a smidge.
I've changed a smidge and a half, double smidge, triple smidge.
There has been much smidging in my changes.
I have, well, I was already bald, but my hair has gone white.
[10:42] My height has remained the same, my weight, I guess I've dropped, I guess over 30 pounds over the course of my daughter's, well, I dropped it a little bit before, but yeah, I've definitely dropped weight, and I have gone up and down in my career.
Up and down in my career.
I have gone from giving public speeches to doing private shows.
I've gone from her seeing me in halls speaking to a thousand or more people to me strolling around doing individual call-in shows.
She has seen me write books.
She's helped me write a book. So there have been lots of changes.
I've aged, of course. A little more weather, a little more wrinkles.
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?
You don't look like the person in my childhood pictures.
You are doth more slender and doth more snow-capped on the peak head.
So how is it that a three-year-old knows what a river is and who I am, and philosophers say, Well, but there is such change. The man cannot step at the same river twice because it is not the same river.
And it's just one of these things that just sounds deep, and you pull it apart, and it's like, it means nothing.
It's a drug. It just gives people a sense of depth and truth and meaning.
[12:18] Oh, so much meaning. Sorry. That's an annoying voice. That's not meaning.
An annoying voice to someone I knew when I was young. so it gives people a sense of meaning it's just a drug you know how like a drug gets you a sense of hey man i made all these connections i got all these insights you write them down the next morning you're like the card has two spines in its eyeball and it's like nope that doesn't just gives you a sense of oneness of right like like the buddhist who goes to the hot dog vendor and says make me one with everything gives the money ask for change hot dog vendor says no no change Change comes from within.
What is a contract? Gosh, a contract is so hard for some philosophers to understand, mostly because the philosophers' contracts are shameful scribblings 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, I remember going to Porkfest back in the day, driving all day, get to the motel. I'm wiped.
[13:20] My daughter loves to swim. the pool was closing in like 15 minutes and i was like no let's i promise i'll take you the morning before we go i promise in the morning she jumps up and down on the bed time to go swimming she was very young i don't know three and of course i get up and i take her swimming because if i hadn't she'd have said everybody says in unison who's been a parent or spent time around kids you promised, you process three-year-olds understand commitments and promises and contracts acts and honesty and truth and virtue you should keep your word you should keep your promises don't lie right but it's such a mystery to the philosophers how could we possibly know and understand what three-year-olds implicitly get i would be i would be ashamed in the foundations, of my self-recrimination i would be deeply humiliated and ashamed to bow down before for the mystery of what a three-year-old knows.
Well, a three-year-old can understand these things, but I, in my infinite wisdom, say that they are incalculable, incomprehensible.
They are too deep and mysterious for the mere mortal mind to plumb.
[14:36] Wouldn't that be embarrassing? I mean, that would be, for me, like a three-year-old doing some basic math, and me sitting down and saying.
[14:46] Man, this can't be answered. Thank you.
83-year-old, what does two and two make for? You ask the philosopher, he says, it cannot be understood. It cannot be plumbed.
It cannot be reconnoitered. I send the scouts out of my curiosity and they're felled down by the fogs of incomprehensibility, like ancient ghostly warriors dissolving them with their acidic vapor of confusion.
My daughter, I taught her to read early on.
Particularly important if you have an only child, right? So I taught her to read early on.
And she read the Bob books. Oh, wait, we read the Bob books together. We read the Bob books.
[15:31] And my daughter, imagine my daughter confidently reading a sentence in the Bob books and saying, Dad, you read it. I'm like, I cannot.
It is incomprehensible to me. It is but a fog of waving tentacle letter-ish objects which cannot fix themselves upon my consciousness and from which i cannot extract any human meaning of languageness i am a little on fire today that's fine hopefully the recording works that would be ridiculous a man cannot go in the same.
[16:08] River twice he is not the same man it's not the same river okay then how do you know it's the man and how do you know it's the river right that's a contradiction in the very statement, he's not the same man well how do you know you're still referring to that man it's called the man Bob after the books it's called the man Bob right, say well Bob, cannot go into the same Dave River River Dave River Styx River Nile let's say River Nile Bob, cannot go into the River Nile twice because he is not the same Bob and it is not the same River then why are you calling Bob Bob and the River Nile Wow.
Course it's the same Bob. Of course it's the same river.
And the fact that you say walks into the river cannot, right?
Not walk on the river. It's the same river. It has the same properties.
So Bob is Bob. Otherwise you wouldn't be calling him Bob. He's not the same Bob. Well, then why are you calling him Bob?
If I lend someone my car and they come back with some crapped out rust bucket old Lada from the 1980s Soviet production line, I'd say that's not the same car.
[17:16] Because it's not the same car, right? I happen to have a second-hand car and if he brings me back some fifth-hand Lada, we'd say, I'd say, that's not the same car. Why? Because it's not the same car.
My daughter can identify that it is me walking on the river or walking in the river, depending on the season, at the age of three. She knows it's me, she knows it's the river.
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? I am not.
Am I similar enough that you still listen to me rather than dialing up the random podcaster of infinity? Well, you still listen to me.
Thank you, by the way, freedomain.com slash donate. freedomain.com slash donate to help out.
So you still listen to me because I'm not the same person.
Exactly, because that wouldn't be possible. I mean all atoms are somewhat in flux somewhat in motion I mean even a rock is not the same rock that it was even a split second ago because the atoms well the electrons are in motion so when if I have a favorite singer when that singer releases a song he doesn't sound exactly the same as he did in the past and you can actually if you're curious at all I found it quite interesting to listen to say, Freddie Mercury or Sting.
You can listen to Sting at some polytechnic concert when he was very young, hitting all the high notes, and then you can hear him with the Berlin Philharmonic, 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, you just say goodbye to certain notes, like you just don't do them anymore.
And some people's voice ages well, I assume it's because they've got some training.
Some people's voice voices age badly because they i know yell or scream too much i mean paul mccartney shredded his voice and billy joel actually sounds pretty pretty good even though he's getting up there which i used to think when i was younger of course i think like most young people you think that aging is fairly it's just vaguely disgraceful and then you realize that it's the only thing that beats the alternative and that a man in his 90s is a victor is a winner he has won the lottery I mean, earned it, I assume, to some degree.
So it is the same man, although he is not identical. Identical would be impossible.
Identical would be impossible.
[19:49] Identical would be to be frozen in time, but to be frozen in time would not allow the generation of a new thought. So a new thought means that there has been a change.
Now, you understand this is nothing particularly radical.
[20:01] I'm merely expressing a frustration at the cowardice and surrender and weakness and abandonment of humanity that the average philosopher, certainly in the present and to some degree in the past, the average philosopher does not provide the certainty of a three-year-old.
Does that not trouble you? Does it not trouble you? Does it not bother you?
That three-year-olds are certain and right. It's one thing to be certain and wrong, but three-year-olds are certain and right, and yet all this fluxy, changey, subjectivist, relativist nonsense is where the philosophers go.
Philosophers are arguing with the correct certainty of three-year-olds and losing.
And it is just embarrassing.
It is ultimately humiliating, of course, to say that your profession is a fraud and continue to draw money is the ultimate fraud.
Hey man, there's no such thing as truth.
Now, if you could pay me to teach people and test them on the objective knowledge that is true, that there's no such thing as objectivity and truth.
[21:10] And I remember thinking about this when I was taking philosophy in university and in both undergraduate and in postgraduate work, in graduate degree work, 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 as objective truth.
And, of course, the fantasy was, I mean, I argued with them to some degree, but I couldn't get to this level. I was a bit skittish, of course, when I was younger and needed to make my way in the world.
So, of course, I wanted to get to, how do you know what I wrote?
Well, it's right here. Okay, so that's objective true.
Objective and true. Not what I wrote is objective and true, but that I wrote.
Not the content, but the form is objective and true.
So if you mark me down for saying there's such a thing as objective truth, you are giving me objective marks based upon a true interpretation of what my objective statements are.
And so to mock me down for saying that such a thing as objective truth is to self-detonate your own arguments.
[22:16] And, you know, here's the thing, like, I wouldn't particularly mind if the philosophers, well, you know, like they said, it's kind of the fashion these days.
It's, you know, I kind of got to do that to keep my job. And this is kind of the thing these days.
So, you know, let's just roll with it for now and whatever. whatever, right? Okay, I can respect that.
I mean, obviously it's corrupt, but it's not bottomlessly corrupt, because at least the corruption is acknowledged.
But all of the people who had been studying philosophy for decades and had no sense of certainty, and particularly of moral certainty, the job of philosophy is to deliver unto mankind objective morality.
[22:59] Physics is matter and energy, engineering is productive tools, medicine is health and well-being, nutrition is good eating.
What is the purpose? The purpose of philosophy is confined to philosophy, and the purpose of philosophy is the delivery to humanity of objective ethics.
The purpose of your immune system is to protect you from harmful bacteria and viruses, and the purpose of philosophy is to teach you objective ethics to protect you from the sophists who will exploit you and destroy your civilization, civilization and often aid those murdering humanity by the hundreds of millions.
But philosophers, a lot, not all, a lot of philosophers these days, and I would say particularly in academia, are somewhat complicit in the mass murder of reason around the world, which in general leads to the mass murder of people.
There are tons of exceptions, but that's something that I have have noticed and would make a strong argument for.
So Aristotle talked about that which was essential and non-essential, right? What is the essence? The essence.
[24:02] So the essence of a man is how you recognize him, right?
If you've ever been back to a high school reunion, there are some people who look kind of the same and some people who look quite a bit different.
Well, in fact, but those who look the most different generally don't show up.
Like if you've gained a huge amount and a weight and lost all your hair, you tend not to show up to your high school reunion because you don't want people's shock to remind you just how much you've let yourself go, especially if they don't even recognize you.
And I remember this very clearly. I never planned to go to a high school reunion, but I was meeting up with a friend of mine who happened to live near the high school we both went to, and we were driving to go someplace, and we saw that there was a high school reunion, so we dropped by.
And I saw everyone from my high school who showed up.
[24:50] Everybody was the same like the shy girls with the shy girls the extroverts with the extroverts i mean everybody was the same and people literally came up to me and said you've barely changed right now obviously i lost my hair or most of it but i mean you said you you know you're still the same guy same smile same like still same guy i remember peter gabriel was a fairly good looking and guy of course founder of genesis and went solo and did well and then he went through a lot of depression and i assume that's not just from doing a duet with kate bush there are probably other factors as well i'm sure he was on antidepressants so i don't know for sure and he gained a lot of weight and he lost his hair and he just looked i remember i was down at air canada for some show and i saw peter gabriel coming and like i looked at the guy and i was like holy crap Holy crap. Holy crap.
[25:41] I mean, you know, Phil Collins looks pretty rough now. He always had that weird little forelock Superman question mark hair thing that was his excuse for a hairdo.
But yeah, it kind of looks the same. But you know, you see people age out.
And of course, I'm at the age now where the entertainers of my youth are dying off, right? But they're the same.
They're the same. them. Some people sound the same. Was it Journey?
They wanted to tour, but Steve, what's his name, who was their singer, wasn't singing anymore.
I think he blew out his voice or had problems or something like that, just didn't want to tour.
So they got some guy from the Philippines who'd won some sound-alike contest for the singer for Journey, and they just toured with him.
Or a queen, of course, with, oh gosh, who did they turn with?
The Bad Company singer, Paul Rogers. and they toured with him and then they toured with of course the American Idol guy Adam something or other.
[26:36] No, I can't remember. Anyway, so, you know, same songs, different singer, different interpretations.
They'd actually, when Queen toured with Paul Rogers, they had a We Are The Champions double CD, and it actually was very cool.
There was a very slow, half-bluesy intro to Hammer To Fall, which was actually really good. And I think it was actually, there was some guitarist on the tour who was noodling away and Brian May is like, hey, that's really pretty.
That's really cool. What is that? It's like, oh, that's your song. Just really slow down.
So they did that, which was actually pretty, pretty good. It's worth listening to. Hammer to Fall, Paul Rogers, We Are the Champions or something like that tour.
[27:15] So, yeah, kids know what right and wrong is. They know what true and false is.
They know what promises are.
They know what taking is. They know what initiating the use of forces.
They understand self-defense.
You see two little boys in a fight, right? You pull them apart.
And, I mean, I worked in a daycare for years. You see the boys in a fight, you pull them apart, and what does each one do immediately?
It doesn't matter how old they are, really. He started it, they just pointed at each other.
[27:41] He started it, so they understand the initiation of force, the legitimacy of self-defense, and so on, right?
I remember sitting by a pool, horsing around with some friend of mine, like one of these kind of frenemies that you have sometimes times when you're younger where you kind of horse around but there's an underlying level of aggression to it that's not particularly funsies but anyway so i pushed him in the pool when we were supposed to be sitting on the edge of the pool getting one of these endless lectures about safety from people who were currently spending our entire future with national debts really important to be safe and be responsible by the way we're basically economic vampires drinking your blood for our boomer pensions but hey really really important so anyway i got called out by So the teacher, now we were kind of, my friend and I, my friend and me and I were kind of wrestling on the edge of the pool, trying to push each other in.
And the gym teacher, who was this aggressive guy, always smelled of tobacco and other unmentionables.
And he's like, did you push him in? Did you push him in?
[28:41] This is the big thing, right? So much, I mean, there was a lot of bullying and drug use in the school, promiscuity and problems.
And, you know, this is the big moral intervention. Did you push him in the pool?
Did you push him in? And I said, well, kind of, sort of, right?
Because we were both wrestling with each other, trying to push each other in, right?
So I just happened to get a bit of better leverage. So did you push him in?
Well, sort of. That's like being sort of pregnant, right? So he dismissed any complications.
And, you know, he kept his job. So I assume that this is with the approval of the school as to this whole epistemology.
Or if you say you follow along with some kids doing stuff and then they say, well, why did you do that?
And you say, well, the other kids were all doing it. And they say, well, the other kids were all jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge. Would you jump off too?
Or if CN Tower was the example used in Canada, of course, the other kids were all jumping off the CN Tower.
So think for yourself. Go and follow the herd. Have your independence.
Have your integrity. Don't blame other people for your actions.
I mean, these are all moral absolutes imposed upon me as a kid.
[29:43] Of course, the fact that these teachers were always championing democracy while saying it's immoral to follow the herd.
[29:54] Oh, well, other people should be able to vote all your rights away, but it's really, really important that you act with your own integrity and don't follow the herd.
When I was in a complicated situation in mutual edge pool wrestling, it was black and white.
You can't sort of push him in. It's like being sort of pregnant.
Pregnant is binary. It's absolutely not sort of pregnant. Even though, technically, you could be sort of pregnant if you're going through a miscarriage.
Sorry, got a little dark there. But, I mean, these were all the moral lessons that were imposed upon me as a kid.
You know, when I climbed over the fence to get the ball in boarding school, and I was ratted on by some older prefect, sadist, us, white.
[30:33] Nobody said to me well we can't be sure if you exist we can't be sure if the fence exists and given that the fence is rusting a little bit every day and you're growing because you're six years old you know it's technically it's not the same fence it's you're not the same kid i mean you could have had vivid dreams last night that have given you a different mindset so you know although Although this kid says he saw you climbing over the fence, you're not the same kid, it's not the same fence, I don't know really what's true.
I didn't say any of that. We're going to beat your ass with a cane.
There was no doubt, no uncertainty.
So you see, you only encounter all of this fog, this nonsense, this corrosive doubt, doubt being the salt seeded in the fertility of the agricultural productive mind, behind trying to produce fruits of wisdom.
When you try to become certain about any morals that might interfere with the powers that be, suddenly everything's subjective and relative and you're not the same man and it's not the same river and you can't be certain.
[31:47] When the powers that be want to impose their rules, they're absolute, forceful, certain, violent, without doubt, out to the point where you're willing to beat a six-year-old child with a K.
You are so certain of your rules and their justice and the reality of what he did by climbing that fence to get the ball, even though he was not the same child.
According to Heraclitus, it wasn't the same fence. It wasn't the same ball.
He's changed even since he came up to the headmaster's office.
Nope, none of that matters. So when they want to impose rules on you, everything's absolute. You can't be sort of pregnant.
[32:26] I was jumping off the CN Tower. When you jump off the CN Tower, now go vote when you get older.
You see? When they want to impose their rules on you, everything's an absolute.
And, you know, we've heard this a million times in the call-in shows, right?
Bad parents want to impose their rules on you. They'll hit you. They'll yell at you.
They'll isolate you. They'll withhold food or water. They'll lock you in your room. Whatever, right?
[32:50] Absolute, right? But then when you question them as adults, everything's, hey, man, we did the best we could, but the knowledge we had is subjective, it's relative, you don't remember, it's not real, it's not factual, it's not true, you're misunderstanding and you're a bad person for bringing this up and suddenly everything becomes goopy and relative, right?
[33:06] Doubt is debilitating. So when those in power want to impose rules upon you, everything's an absolute and all the rules they have are perfectly moral, perfectly just to the point of beating children children with canes.
But, but, you see, if you take the principles of the rules that the rulers inflict upon you, and you try to impose them back, well, no, whoa, whoa, whoa, not the same river, man, not the same man, man, if you are in fact the same man, man, right?
That's not allowed, right? When they want to impose on you their rules, their morals, their standards, their punishments, their beatings, man.
Holy, that's all absolute and factual, and don't you dare try to wriggle away with subjectivity from the responsibility for your actions.
But when you take the rules and apply them back on, oh, whoa, whoa, let's not get too far here.
Let's not get too crazy here. Everything's subjective and relative, don't you know?
That's what Martin Luther said about what he's trying to reconcile.
Turn the other cheek with an eye for an eye.
He said, well, Well, an eye for an eye is the justice of the king and the prince and the ruler. That's an eye for an eye.
So when you all wrong each other and the king is imposing his justice, an eye for an eye is fair.
However, if the king wrongs you, then turn the other cheek and forgiveness is the moral absolute.
[34:30] Power is imposing itself on you, it's an eye for an eye. You must be meek and Old Testament vengeful.
You must be certain and violent and aggressive and without doubt.
But if the king wrongs you, oh, forgiveness, turn the other cheek, relativism, subjectivism, your reward will be in heaven, right?
Philosophy is a drugged meat thrown to the side to distract the animals designed to protect virtue and integrity.
[34:56] It's not the same bed, it's not the same river. Then why do we have have the concept of the same man and the same river there has to be enough in common that a three-year-old can figure it out with no problems at all had a favorite mall when my daughter was younger we called it the dum-dum mall for various reasons and if i said let's go to the dum-dum mall and i took her to a different mall when she was a little little little kid she'd say well it's not the same mall this is the wrong mall well but you can't go to the same dum-dum mall twice because because you're not the same kid, and it's not the same mall.
She'd look at me like I was trying to poison her brain if I said any of that nonsense to her, but it's regularly considered deep in the realm of philosophy, which is about castrating integrity in the service of those who definitely do not serve us. All right, thank you, everyone.
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