0:00 - Introduction
1:05 - The Blueprint vs. The House
2:51 - Imperfection in Reality
6:02 - The Goal vs. The Steps
9:12 - The Ultimate Purpose
15:26 - The Ideal Manifestation
18:16 - Living in Reality
24:53 - Transfer of Neural Structures
30:17 - Copy-Pasting Ideas
34:27 - Purpose in Life
39:15 - The Gap Between Idea and Reality
40:24 - Manifestation Surpassing the Idea
42:06 - Overcoming Self-Criticism
In this conversation, we delved into the relationship between thoughts and reality, exploring how concepts in the mind are translated into tangible manifestations. Using the analogy of a blueprint for a building, we discussed how the idea of a house exists in the mind as a perfect concept, while the blueprint serves as a more concrete representation yet still slightly imperfect compared to the idea. The physical house, the final manifestation, is further removed from the perfection of the concept but serves its purpose of providing shelter and utility.
We highlighted how the goal or end product is superior to the steps that lead up to it, emphasizing that the purpose of concepts is to materialize them in the real world. The speaker touched upon the importance of bridging the gap between ideation and execution, noting that trauma or self-criticism can hinder this process by causing individuals to prefer living in the realm of ideas rather than facing the challenges of manifesting them in reality.
Furthermore, the conversation explored the concept of transferring neural structures from one person to another through language and various mediums, emphasizing how ideas are physical structures in the brain. The speaker shared personal experiences where the outcome in reality exceeded the initial concept or idea, illustrating the satisfaction that comes from seeing one's visions materialize into something even better than anticipated.
The discussion concluded with an invitation for feedback and engagement, along with a reminder of the opportunities available to support and engage with the content produced by the speaker. The overall theme revolved around the idea that manifestation in the real world can often surpass the idealized concepts in the mind, leading to a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment.
[0:00] Good morning, Stephen Mullin from Freedom Aid. I hope you're doing well. I've got a great question, a deep philosophical question in the live stream the other day. The relationship between thoughts in the mind and things in reality. It's a great, great question and I'm going to unpack it for you. It's a little bit of metaphysics, a little bit of epistemology, but don't worry about the words. They're not particularly important, but these are very important things to understand about the nature of truth, which is kind of what we're after. So, the way that thoughts and things in the world work is, the best analogy is, you think of a blueprint for a building, like an architectural blueprint for a building, what the building is going to look like, where the pipes are going to go, the spaceage, the floors, the HVAC and electrical and all of that. So you've got to design for a building, you know, if you've ever shopped for a house, then if you're going particularly to new construction, they have all of these models on the wall, you know, here's how this looks, here's how that looks in the square footage, and they have the two floors and all of that.
[1:06] So you know it would be uh pretty funny and obviously fraudulent in a way if someone were to say to you uh you know here's the blueprint for the house the house is four hundred thousand dollars you hand over the four hundred thousand dollars and they give you the blueprint and you'd say well i can't live in the blueprint i i need a place to live in blueprint's not going to give me much shelter from the rain and the snow so uh that would be kind of fraudulent where if they They said, look, the blueprint's right there on the wall. It says $400,000. And you spent the $400,000, you got the blueprint. People would say, no, no, no. I thought I was buying what the blueprint represented, not the blueprint itself. I wouldn't pay $400,000 for the blueprint of a house, which you could just photocopy. I want the actual house. So does the blueprint exist in the world? Yes.
[1:59] Does the blueprint represent something in the world? Yes. Is the blueprint an exact match of the thing in the world? It is not, right? So you could get some atomic measure and so on, and you could say, well, they said the house is 2,500 square feet, but when I measure it in every conceivable detail, tell it's 2,506 inches, right? Or it's 2,499 and 6. It's not going to be exactly say, oh, it's 2,500 square feet, but it's never exactly 2,500 square feet. If you look at the dimensions of the rooms, they're close. Obviously they have to be close enough that you're not just buying something unrelated to the blueprint, but they're not exact, right? Right.
[2:51] So, the thing in the world is not exact. Right. And the blueprint is more exact. Right. Because the blueprint will say 2,500 square feet and all of the measurements, right? They have the drawings and it's like, oh, this is 8 by 12 room. So, in a sense, that's perfect. The way that it's built, though, is imperfect relative to the blueprint, and the blueprint itself is imperfect relative to the mind of the designer, right? So, in the mind of the designer, he says an 8x12 room, just the concepts, right? So, an 8x12 room is perfect in the mind. It's exactly 8x12 because it doesn't have to be translated into coarse atomic imperfect reality. So, there's two degradations. There's the perfect 8x12 room in your mind. Then there's the blueprint that you draw and the blueprint is imperfect because you've got to print it out even on the screen the pixels are a little blurry so the blueprint is no longer perfect right and then when you build the house it's imperfect relative to the blueprint.
[3:58] Right because the blueprint is going to be closer to the perfect 8 by 12 concept that you have the blueprint is going to be closer to that and the house is going to be more distant from the blueprint, which is more distant from the perfection in your mind. So we can look at this as a sort of quality degradation. And there are people who say, well, but the perfect eight by 12 Roman, the perfect house in your mind, that's the truth. That's what really matters. And I would say, no, it's the other way around. So the house is the perfect thing because that's the thing that has use. That's the thing that will keep you sheltered. That's the thing that keep you warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and so on, right? So the house is the perfect thing because it has practical utility for survival and shelter. That's where you can raise your kids. It's where your belongings are protected, which means it's worth working to gather resources and so on. So the house is the perfect thing.
[4:56] Because if you think that the perfection is in the purity of the concept, then what goes on in the mind is infinitely better than the actual house in the world, right? However, if you think, which I think is accurate, if you think that the house is the perfect thing because it has practical utility and it is the purpose, right the manifestation of purpose has to be superior to the steps that lead up to it it has to be otherwise you wouldn't have any steps that lead up to it sorry that was badly badly phrased we'd we'd circle back and i'll take a take another run at that one right so if your goal is to get to las vegas is the road to las vegas superior or inferior to the goal well since your goal is to to get to Las Vegas, the highway that takes you to Las Vegas and the car and the gas and the driving and all of that, that is inferior to the goal because it is a means to an end.
[6:03] And the means to an end is generally inferior to the end, right?
[6:08] So if you're really thirsty, the goal is to drink water, right? Going to walk to the kitchen, getting the cup, turning on the tap, filling the tap drinking the water those are inferior now they're necessary to to to actually get the water into your system but getting the water into your system is the goal and the goal is superior or more important or of a higher status than the purpose so the purpose because the purpose is conditioned by the goal so if you're thirsty you've got to get up and get your water and drink your water and all of that serves the goal of satisfying your thirst so, when we have a goal the goal is the end product and all that leads up to it is inferior to the goal and i'll give you an example of that right so let's say you're thirsty and and you get up and you want to get some water from the kitchen right so you go to the kitchen you get the cup or the glass and you turn on the sink right so you say okay well that's how i get my water but every now and then you know freaky stuff's happened to your plumbing you get that you know the cough and you get that sputter of brown water and you're like oh well that's, that's not good so the purpose of.
[7:37] Satisfying, the goal of satisfying your thirst has been served, you think, by going to the kitchen and turning on the tap, but the tap is not working. It just coughs up yellow water. So you still need to satisfy your thirst. So you abandon going to the kitchen and turning on the tap, and maybe you go to the bathroom and turn on the tap, or maybe you go to the fridge, get a bottle of water, or maybe there's a little water dispenser on your fridge, but you find something. And if nothing in your house works, if your entire plumbing system is shot, then maybe you go to the neighbors is enough for a glass of water. Maybe you go to the store, I get a bottle of water, but you got it. So the goal is to get water into your system and the steps will change relative to that goal. So the steps are conditioned by the goal, but the goal is not conditioned by the steps. Again, I know this sounds a bit freaky, but just be patient with me because there's a big payoff at the end. It's all philosophy. It's good payoff the whole way along. So if you see you want to get the water into your body because you're thirsty and the steps that you take are conditioned by that goal if the steps you're taking don't meet that goal you turn on the tap in the kitchen, brown water champagne brown water and so you change your tap right can't get it from the bathroom go to the fridge can't get at the fridge go to the garage maybe you've got some water bottles of water in the garage oh there's nothing in the garage then you go to the store like you just keep changing your steps until you achieve your goal so all of the steps.
[9:05] Are conditioned by the goal. So the goal is the highest priority.
[9:12] So the purpose of satisfying your thirst is not served by going to the kitchen with a cup of water and turning on the tap. Even if you fill it, right? Let's say the kitchen tap is working properly. You fill it, but then your finger slips, your finger slip and you drop and you break the glass and you can't drink the water from the broken glass puddle. So you have to keep changing your steps until you satisfy the goal so the goal is the highest purpose the goal is the ultimate purpose the goal is what it's all for it's the final purpose in a sense right, so if we understand that the goal is superior to the steps because all the steps must change if they don't achieve the goal. Whereas the goal doesn't change if you change the steps, right?
[10:07] So, you know, if you're thirsty, it's a really hot day, and you decide to go out and lick grass, well, you've changed your steps, but you haven't satisfied your goal, right? So the goal is the final purpose. It is the intended end.
[10:22] And everything that you do has to serve that goal. Now, of course, we say that that which is served is superior to that which serves. You think of a sort of master-slave relationship where the king and his courtiers and so on, the courtiers serve the king and the slave serves the master, and therefore, in that sense, the slave is lesser than the master. At least that would be the case legally, though, of course, not morally, if slavery is allowed. Yeah, so the end goal is superior and more important and more foundational to the steps.
[11:03] So, to return to our house, if that is the case, that the end goal is superior to the steps that preceded, then the house is superior to the blueprint and the blueprint is superior to the concept to the idea right so you have an idea of a house you make a blueprint and then you build the house now for a lot of people they send this is sort of the platonic idea they say well the concept is pure and perfect and therefore is superior to the blueprint the blueprint is more accurate to the concept than the house itself and therefore in priority of importance and perfection you go idea blueprint house right idea is highest blueprint is next highest in terms of accuracy and purity to the concept the um.
[11:56] Idea is the most pure and perfect, this platonic realm of forms, right? Or the new and minimal realm of Kant or Nirvana or whatever, right? The idea. So, or the social good, right? The idea of the society. Collectivism, right? The concepts are superior. So the concept of the house, or let's just say the 8x12 room, that's perfect and pure and excellent and fabulous.
[12:16] The highest level of accuracy and perfection. And then the blueprint is less accurate and the house is even less accurate. So it's a degradation from the purity of the idea. Bum, bum, bum, bum, goes down, right? And people have this, you know, to take it in a sort of more visceral manner, people have this with regards to long distance relationships or affairs, right? So, you know, you have a long distance relationship, you yearn and you burn for each other, and then you make a big trip and you have a lot of sex and you do all of these wonderful things. You go for dinner, you go for walks, you go for hikes, you fall into each other's arms, you talk about all the wonder of each other and so on. All beautiful stuff, nothing wrong with it. But then people say, well, that's the ideal in a relationship and then uh you know there are times when the relationship you you get married you you live together you have children and there are times when the relationship is you know a little ugly a little messy a little right you know somebody's uh bleeding uh somebody's sick and throwing up uh somebody has a dental pain some like that's just that's sort of and people say well there's this ideal the platonic perfect love and and then it's all just a degradation like people really mess up their lives with this perfection stuff right they really really mess up their lives because they get these standards that can't be maintained. Like everybody has the best day of their life. And then if you look at that as the norm and everything else, right, is bad. But now, of course, the purpose of romantic love, the purpose of pair bonding is the production and raising of children.
[13:38] So, if you sit there and say, well, you know, when we were dating, we would just, we'd go away for the weekend, have sex all weekend, go and have wonderful meals and blah, blah, blah. That's the ideal. And then the kid who's up all night with colic and so on, that's just, that's a bad fall from grace tag relation. Or, this is true for women, I think, like why do women sometimes get so dissatisfied in relationships? relationships. A, because I'm taken, but B, because, you know, they have this wedding day that's perfect and this is the ideal. And then everything after that is like, you know, my husband's farting and scratching and yet he looked so great in his tux and you have this ideal and this perfection and then everything else is a degradation from that.
[14:16] And of course, the purpose of marriage is not the wedding day. The purpose of marriage is a reliable pair bonding for the secure and provided for raising of children, right? That's the purpose of marriage and lust and sex and romance and love and attachment and pair bonding. It's all for the having and raising of children. And so the having and raising of children is the perfection of marriage and everything else is a means to the end, right? The means to the end. So you get married so that you can have the pair bonding or the legal connection to get married and so on, right? Right? So, the having and raising of children is the perfection of marriage. Everything else is a step up to it. And so, you know, when the kid has colic, yeah, I know it can be, you know, you're crying a lot and all that. But that's perfect. That is the perfection because that's the raising and having and raising of children and all the other stuff. Like, even sexual activity before you have children is designed to release the oxytocin and the dopamine and the pair of bonding chemicals and so on so that you will be reliable and secure to raise the children.
[15:21] So, the concept is inferior to the blueprint.
[15:27] The blueprint is inferior to the manifestation. station. The idea is inferior to the blueprint, and the blueprint is inferior to the house. The house is the perfection. It is the ideal. It is as good as things can get. It is exactly, right? So the idea, the blueprint are all necessary. You've got to have the idea, then you've got to have a plan, and then you've got to execute it and build a house. So the idea is necessary, but inferior. Necessary, but inferior. So in order to be happy, you have to eat, right? Because if you're starving to death, you won't be happy, right? So in order to be happy, you have to eat.
[16:12] So eating is a means to the end of being happy, right? But of course, not everybody who eats is happy. A guy getting his last meal in jail is probably not super happy, although he is in fact eating. Some people eat, of course, and then regret it at an extreme. They might be binge purging, like throwing up and so on. There are people who eat something and then find out, oh no, it has peanuts in it and I have a peanut allergy. Now I've got an EpiPen and get to emerge or something. So they eat and they regret, right? So eating is necessary, but not sufficient for happiness. So if your goal is happiness, yes, you need to eat, but eating doesn't make you happy. But eating eliminates hunker to the point where the doors to happiness are at least open and you You can get through some usually productive work in the realm of manifesting or transmitting moral excellence. That's the best way to be happy in the long run. So people have this dreamers thing, right? The idea is perfect and the planning is inferior and the manifestation, right? So there's the idea, the planning, and the manifestation. The idea is the idea of the house. the planning is the blueprint for the house the manifestation is the actual house the actual house is the goal it is the superior it is the perfect it is the wonderful it is the what it's all for and everything that leads up to that is imperfect.
[17:38] And it's imperfect because it does not achieve the goal of, the house right you can't live in the idea of a house you can't live in blueprints for a house what's it there's an old uh um a friend's episode where where joey and chandler go to london and joey puts the map down and jumps into the map right i'm in the map right and but he's obviously it's in the map he's stepping on a piece of paper he's not walking around in in london itself.
[18:17] So you can't live in the idea of a house. You can't live in the blueprints of a house. You can only live in the actual house. And therefore the idea is inferior because it doesn't serve the purpose of a place to live. The blueprint is inferior because it doesn't serve the purpose of where to live. The house is the ideal. That which is manifested in the world is the ideal. The end goal of the necessary steps. And it's not even that necessary. I mean, you could just, you know, slip together a lean-to. You don't need blueprints, right? You can lean to in the woods. You can go and live in a cave, which does not need a concept and doesn't need a blueprint and doesn't even need to be built, right? So there's places you can live that would be natural, right? I mean, or even if there's an abandoned house, I mean, I guess if it's legal or whatever, you could, I mean, it's sort of free in a free society. You could, if a house was abandoned, you could go and live in that house and you wouldn't need an idea of the perfect house. You wouldn't need to plan it. You wouldn't even need to build it. You wouldn't need to transfer any resources for it. You could just go, you know, some cabin in the woods or whatever. You could just go live there, right?
[19:26] So the shelter can be provided. I mean, other people usually have to plan things, but you don't have to, right? So the shelter can be provided without the concept or the the planning without the idea or the blueprint but any sophisticated dwelling can't be created without some concept and and planning doesn't necessarily have to be ideas and blueprints and so on but you have to have some idea what you're doing so the physical manifestation is the ideal and the concepts are inferior so people say ah yes but the 8 by 12 room is perfect and the 8 by 12 room looks really the angles are perfect on the computer but then when you build them that's It's slightly off-perfect, and it's like, no, no, no, no. The purpose of the house is not to conform to the blueprint. I mean, obviously, it has to have some relationship to it. Otherwise, there'd be no point for the blueprint. But the purpose of the house is to be lived in, not to conform to the blueprint.
[20:17] We have the blueprint so we don't waste resources when we're building the house. We don't build something, oh my gosh, this room is too small. Oh, I don't have a load-bearing wall. Oh, the structure is not secure. I didn't dig deep enough. Like you have planning so you don't waste resources. So you can build more houses. That's what the purpose is, right? The purpose of conceptualizing and planning a house is so you can build more houses with fewer resources and less time. Like you plan out software, you don't just sit down and start coding, right? To some degree anyway. Anyway, so once you understand that the concept is inferior to the manifestation because the concept doesn't serve the purpose of the manifestation, you can't live in the idea of the house or the blueprint of the house. You can only live in the actual house. So that is the ideal. The ideal is the house because that's what you can live in. So when you think of a house right you've gone through a planning phase for a house when you think of a house you have visions and ideas in your head and.
[21:21] That is a configuration of neurons in your mind right the imagination the creativity if you close your eyes you sort of picture your ideal house then that is the aligning of particular creative or imagination neurons in your brain. Like you close your eyes and you picture it, the neurons are firing up. Like when you have a dream at night, your eyes are closed, but you see things. So the visual spatial centers of your brain are being activated. And, you know, the more you meditate on your ideal house, the more your neurons will change to go in accordance with that ideal. So you are getting your physical structures in your brain to match what is going to happen out there in the world eventually right so you are building a house through your neural architecture in your mind.
[22:14] Right you again you close your eyes you imagine your perfect house then through that imagination your mind is building something in your mind the neurons are firing a particular kind of way your Your visual centers are firing in a particular kind of way. Your imagination is firing in a particular kind of way. So you are literally building the house using neural structures within your brain. And then you copy-paste those neural structures in your brain to the blueprint. And then you copy-paste the blueprint into somebody else's mind, right? So the blueprint is a way of taking the neural structure of the house in your brain and copy-pasting it into somebody else's brain. Now, we don't have mind melds or anything like that, although this show is very close. We don't have mind melds. So how do we copy the neural structures of our mind to somebody else? Well, we have artist visualizations, we have blueprints, we have detailed schematics and so on.
[23:12] And so, you know, the guys who built the game Doom, right, the Karmak guys, the id guys, the guys who built Doom were transferring their vision of, you know, hell and fighting and demons and so on. They were copy pasting through the medium of software to other people. It's a way of copy pasting a dream or a concept, right? Right? So you have structures in your mind that are physical, right? The neuron structures in your mind. UPB, I mean, I felt that flash of inspiration. It also happened with the DRO system, right? There's a flash of inspiration, which is the neurons connecting, right? There's got to be a way to solve the problem of ethics. I'm going to think about it, turn it from different angles. And we've all had this at one point or another, flash of inspiration. That's when the neurons ones connect. So now I have a structure in my brain called UPB. And the book and the debates and the articles and the arguments and the speeches and so on. That is a way for me to copy and paste the structure of UPB from my mind to your mind.
[24:19] So it is a form of the transfer of neural structures from one person to another. I mean, it's not just UPB, education as a whole fashions in this way so if you learn another language your brain is copy pasting the language structures from someone else through the medium of grammar and memorization and practice and pronunciation and so on right so you have an idea for house.
[24:54] That idea is a neural structure, a physical neural structure in your brain. We don't have the technology, I don't think, to be able to analyze that, but we absolutely have those neural structures in our brain, right? I mean, I close my eyes, I think of my perfect house. It's pretty much the same as it was a few seconds ago when I did it, and I'm sure the same is maybe little details and so on, right? So you have a physical house structure in your mind. It's not just an airy-fairy concept, like it's physical neurons. Physical neurons have connected to create the house in your mind. But then the question is okay so how do you get the house in your mind out there in the world, well you need to plan it and make sure that you know there's some maybe some limitations if you have some house that's kind of an inverted pyramid on a swamp you know it's it's impossible to actually make in reality then you're going to need to adjust that or maybe build it on the moon where that might be possible or something like that i guess not a lot of swamps on the moon.
[25:47] The moon is anarchic so so you have to find a way to copy the physical structure of the neural connections in your brain to other people and we do that through language you do that through education do it through books we do that through mime even uh we do it uh through visual mediums we do it through a song and so on like i'm really really sad i'm gonna write this heartbreak song and i'm gonna be adele and i'm gonna copy paste my heartache to uh to other people right that's That's how it's going to kind of work. Ideology works the same way. It's copy and pasting particular false prejudices and so on. So we have neural structures in our brain, and that is the dress rehearsal for creating things in the world and transferring our neural structures from ourselves to others. I have a neural structure around empiricism, rationality, objectivity, UPB, self-knowledge, respect for the unconscious, like all of these things that I have. And of course, the purpose is to copy-paste these to other people.
[26:44] Right? I mean, surgeons will copy paste other surgeons so that they know how to do a good surgery. A guy who's your personal trainer will copy paste his training regimen to try and get you to follow his ideal. Nutritionists do the same kind of thing. Your doctor, by giving you, got to quit smoking. He's trying to transfer hostility or negativity towards smoking from his mind to yours and so on. And so the sort of copy-paste is happening all the time, which is why I say personalities, ideas, arguments, perspectives can be very infectious. Because through the medium of language, but not just language, but largely it's through language, through the medium of language, we are copy-pasting our ideas, arguments, personalities, and perspectives to each other all the time. All the time it's happening. You're trying to infect others, so to speak. Other people are trying to infect you. I don't mean necessarily it's not bad, right? A yawn can be infectious. Laughter can be infectious, which is why they used to add laugh tracks to comedies. Laughter can be infectious. An infectious smile, you know, it can be a positive thing. Obviously, peaceful parenting is a structure within the mind that I'm trying to copy-paste to override the fairly awful parenting procedures and processes that people have in their minds.
[28:01] But although you may say and i i've said this before but it was a very vivid memory i had when i was a little kid i was maybe three or four years old and i had the idea that i wanted to paint, a little boy with rosy cheeks and a scarf flying behind him on a nice wooden sled with the curly front going down a snowy hillside with fir trees in the background and little bits of snow flying And, you know, what do they give you? They give you that crappy half cardboard paper. They give you these giant watery pots of quasi paint. And then they give you these big brushes that you could use to sweep a factory floor. And then I just remember the idea, which is I still very vividly hold it in my mind, you know, more than half a century later, I have this vivid idea in my mind. And then what I actually created on the paper, obviously lack of skill, but also lack of any decent medium, was vastly different. And I just remember looking at that and saying, that's nothing like...
[29:05] What's in my mind. And people who lack skill and all of that, they say, well, what's in my mind is vastly superior to what's in reality, therefore reality is at fault. They don't say, I need to increase my skill to the point where what I have in my mind is able to be recreated in reality, and the recreation is perfect. My description of UPB, my arguments for UPB are perfect. Does that mean they can't ever conceivably be improved no no that doesn't mean that but it does mean that you know millions of people have been exposed to upb and understand now the rational proof of secular ethics and may be difficult to defend at times i get all of that because when you hit that really caustic nihilistic skepticism you can all everyone can feel the foundations of their brain beginning to dissolve because something like nihilism is a way of detonating or deconstructing neural structures, right? The sort of cynicism, nihilism, ideology, and so on. It's a way of using aggression and intimidation to undo the physical structures of accurate thought in your mind. Look at Jesus. He made arguments for morality and reality.
[30:18] Socrates, of course, made these arguments for Socratic questions and so on.
[30:22] Socrates invented internal debate in many ways, and a lot of people without an inner voice viewed it as a kind of possession. But those of us with slightly more sophisticated views of our own inner processes welcome the inner debate because that's how we get to the truth.
[30:38] So ideas, yeah, they're physical. Ideas in the mind are absolutely physical. They exist in reality because ideas in the mind are particular structures of neurons that connect. right? I mean, philosophy is growing neurons, neural connections. It's growing neural connections. It's copy pasting rational structures of a neuron connections from one person to another. I mean, think of mathematics, two plus two is four. Everybody understands that the world over, and that is a copy paste of a mathematical concept. And so if you say two and two make four.
[31:20] And you say, well, two bananas are never exactly the same. Therefore, two bananas in the concept of the mind is superior to the inferior of each banana is a little different and so on. But the purpose of numbers is to quantify interactions, right? So if you're buying two bananas for $2, then you need the concept of $2, you need the concept of two bananas, and that's how you facilitate the transaction. And the purpose of facilitating the transaction is to satisfy both people. So the bananas don't have to be perfect for that to occur. And therefore, the numbers are inferior to the manifestations because the purpose of, say, two bananas for $2 is to transfer the dollars to the guy who wants the dollars more than the bananas and transfer the bananas to the guy who wants the bananas more than the dollars. us. So both end up happy. It's a facilitation of happiness or positivity for the purpose of productivity, right? So the guy with the two bananas is going to give it maybe to the farmer who's going to use that to be able to produce more bananas by, I don't know, more fertilizer or a scarecrow or something like that, or an old coat for a scarecrow to scare off the birds. So the purpose is to facilitate positive interactions.
[32:36] And therefore, the fact that each banana is not identical does not mean that the concept of two bananas is superior because it's, quote, perfect. No, because the purpose is to facilitate interactions between people, win-win interactions, in an economic sense. There's other reasons for math, of course, but the purpose of math is to facilitate win-win interactions, and the degree to which it does that, and it does that very well, is the degree to which math is perfect. So saying, well, two Two bananas are slightly different. Therefore, two bananas in the mind is superior to. It's like, no, but that's not the purpose of two bananas is not for the two bananas to be identical. The purpose of the two bananas is to facilitate a trade, win-win trade, at least from an economic sense.
[33:21] So, once we understand that it's the things in the world that are the purpose of concepts, then the things in the world that are only manifested by concepts, having the idea of a good house, therefore leads you to build a good house, the purpose of concepts is manifestation in the world, and therefore the concepts are inferior to the manifestation. Now, of course, we can say, well, if you say, oh, my idea is a small house with three bedrooms and you end up with somebody building you a giant house with 12 bedrooms, then you can say that the manifestation is not good relative to the concept. I get all of that, but that doesn't really happen. I mean, unless you agree to it and change your conception so your ideal house becomes 12 bedrooms or something like that. People don't, you just pay people three bedroom houses and they build you 12 bedroom houses. That doesn't happen in the world, right? So I think it's important to recognize in life as a whole, you say, okay, well, what is the purpose? What is the purpose of my day? What is the purpose of my life? What is the purpose of my thought? What is the purpose of my energy? What is the purpose of eating? What is the purpose of exercising? And so on, right? What's the purpose of all of this?
[34:28] The dreamers, can you put you it's a great song by super tramp can you put your hands in your head oh no so you put your head in your hands right you can't reach into your head and live inside the concept of the house that's in your mind which is a physical structure right the concept of the house is a physical structure in your mind it's neurons it's not a ghost it's not a fantasy it's not an abstraction it's not uh uh plato's forms that don't manifest it's physical right the ideas in your head are physical things physical connections between neurons right so when you're learning another language you're firing up neurons to process that other language and if those neurons don't connect you can't learn the other language right so it's all about uh drawing lines between things right uh drawing lines between things so since the purpose of concepts is manifestations of things in the real world, then the manifestations of things in the real world is the ideal. And the, the, the blueprints and the concepts are inferior, right? So if, if platonic perfection is your ideal, then sure, the concepts are perfect. And then the drawing is less good and the house is less good, but that's complete reversal of cause and effect. And that's just a bunch of dreamers, people who want to live in their head, people who want to.
[35:49] Get an ideal without putting in the work or and you know that the ideal thing is is from people who are particularly uh brutalized when they're when they're growing up so many years ago we had a free domain barbecue some people showed up early and i didn't mind that they showed up early but i was still doing some stuff around the house and and doing some stuff in the garden and so on to sort of get ready for it and people were happy to step in and help and i still appreciate it you know 15 years later and i remember uh people who were helping were like wow some some of the people were helping were like but this is really strange like i'm helping in the garden and i'm not getting yelled at because my dad would always say you're doing it wrong and the weed whackers at the wrong angle and you went to you've set the the lawnmower too long just yelling right, so when you get yelled at for physical manifestations right like i want you to cut the grass, oh, you did it wrong. I want you to wash the dishes. Oh, you did it wrong.
[36:47] Then people's concept to manifestation, the ideal to the execution is blocked. And so you end up having to try and find satisfaction within your own mind rather than in reality. And because you've been traumatized or yelled at, abused, maybe beaten for doing things wrong in the world, then the path of concept to manifestation is blocked because manifestation becomes too fearful and therefore you prefer the ideals in your head rather than the manifestation in the world. And there's lots of people, oh, I've got this great business idea, they never put it into practice. Or like the guy who 21 years ago says he came up with the idea of a fifth dimension, not X, Y, Z time, but a fifth dimension that's still accessible to the human mind and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's never done anything with it, so he'd rather live. And I sympathize with that. You know, I think all of us had this you should do X and then when you manifest it even if you've never been abused for this.
[37:47] When you manifest your ideal, like for me when I was a kid and I wanted the beautiful picture of the boy with the scarf and the sled, when I manifested it, it looked like crap. And I knew that it looked like crap. It was like a zillion miles away from what I wanted to do. Now, I have an uncle who was really good at copying paintings. He was really, really skilled. He would copy other people's paintings. Really skilled at that. He didn't make his own paintings, but he would really copy other people. So you look at people like Collinius Krieghoff, who was an expert at painting cracked ice, like he was a Canadian painter, skating cracked ice, very, very tough to paint. Or, you know, the amazing Michelangelo webbed marble with the cloth over time. It's just absolutely incredible stuff. And the people who are best able to transfer their concepts into reality are the people we call the most skilled.
[38:37] Sitting and dreaming about the concepts without taking the time to manifest them into something real is a mark of trauma or a mark of excessive self-criticism you say well i've got this perfect house and then when i blueprint it it's really frustrating because i can't get it right and then if i build it it's going to be a long way away from my perfect house and i can't stand it so i'd rather live in the realm of ideas and i'd rather live in the realm of concepts and i'd rather live in the realm of abstractions because manifesting into reality is too damn damn painful because the gap between the dream and the manifestation between the idea and the execution, the gap is so huge.
[39:15] T.S. Elliott writes about this in, uh.
[39:19] And between the ideal and the execution lies the shadow, the shadow of self-criticism, the shadow of self-hatred, the shadow of frustration that what is going on in your mind is not, I mean, we have this karaoke, right? You've done karaoke, right? You have the song in your mind, you have a great singer, usually the song is sung, and then you sing and it just come across the way, right? I was singing the other day, Sting does, have you ever had the feeling that the world's gone and left you behind? Angel Eyes, Sting does a version of it for the Leaving Las Vegas soundtrack, sings it very well. I tried singing it and it's too high for me and it was just like, oh, that's not pleasant. I mean, I can get the notes, but they kind of get me back. I can hit the notes, but only with a club. So, you know, what's going on in your mind versus what actually happens and that level of frustration is tough. It is tough. That should be the go to close that gap so that what you create in the world is.
[40:18] Close to what you imagine in your mind, and maybe sometimes even better. So I'll tell you something.
[40:24] One of the reasons I keep doing these shows, I mean, obviously, I think I have great things to add in the realm of philosophy. But one of the reasons I keep doing them is the shows often end up even better than I think, right? So I haven't, I had an idea about this show. And it ended up at The copy-paste stuff came up sort of in the flow, right? The sort of recreation of neural structures, usually through language in other people's heads. That's a great idea. So one of the reasons I do it is that I have an idea for shows, and this is true in call-ins. I go in with an idea, and then it usually ends up being even better than I think. So one of the reasons I still keep doing these shows is I have ideas.
[40:59] Ideas about how they're going to go, and they end up better. So for me, this is what's so addictive. I think about having some expertise in a field is it ends up even better than you think. And that's really heady. So for me, one of the reasons why I accept that the manifestation is superior to the idea is I have ideas. Like when I'm writing novels, I have ideas for scenes and the general story flow. And then there's a spontaneity that occurs within the writing that just blows me away and seems vivid and real to me in a way that the idea wasn't. So when it manifests on the page, I see it so vividly. When I do a show like this, the language flows so well, the ideas and arguments flow so well. We're doing highly complex technical stuff in a way that I'm sure you're following. You may need to listen to it a couple of times, but you'll get the general idea.
[41:48] So for me, the house that I build with a podcast is much better than the idea of the house or the podcast in my mind. So what I actually manifest in the world is better than what I have in my mind ahead of time. In other words, the building improves upon the fantasy.
[42:07] And if you can do in reality better than you can fantasize, that's about as good as life gets. So I hope that this makes sense to you. Please let me know what you think. You can leave feedback below, of course, or join the community at freedomain.locals.com. Don't forget this month's almost the end of the month. Everybody who donates gets access access at freedomain.com slash donate. You get access to the Peaceful Parenting AI, the audio book, the ebook, and so on. And you can share that with as many people as you want. People who don't share your language or who don't speak English can use the AI in whatever language they want. So I hope you'll check all of that out. Thank you, my friends, so much for the greatest life in history. We're doing amazing stuff. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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