How's life?
What's been going on?
Ups and downs.
With COVID,
Things are different,
But I started a new job three months ago now,
Programming and I love it.
It's great.
Great.
Yeah.
It's awesome.
How about you?
Are you writing still?
Are you doing your book?
Still working on it.
Yeah,
I've had a lot of projects.
You caught that episode.
I think part of what made me feel down is that I just kept adding on new projects and new projects,
But the short answer is yes,
I'm still working on my book.
That's the main thing I'm working on right now.
I started a new business.
Yeah.
You're going to be a dad,
Right?
That's the big thing.
Yeah.
That's a big thing.
Yeah.
I'm very excited.
I know back in the day we spoke about,
Well,
You've had kids,
But the idea of kids,
I think I've asked you about that before.
So anyway,
Yeah,
Here it is.
Yeah.
I mean,
I reflect a lot.
I'm introspective,
But my kids are six and four now.
One of my friends once told me having kids is like winning the lottery and getting paid a penny at a time.
I think about that from time to time because it's hard.
It sucks actually for probably four years.
It's not a good time.
It's a very,
Very hard time.
If you're interested in being married,
It's even harder.
But I mean,
Now that I'm more or less out of the real hell,
It's just a daily,
It's a family.
We're a family.
It's really,
Truly a family.
But I do introspect about it a lot.
What made the first four years hell?
I mean,
There's a few things.
It's probably a confluence of all of them.
I can only speak from my own perspective,
But I mean,
This is more or less validated by people who I'm friends with who are parents.
Most of them are married.
But you're a child until you have children.
Growing up,
You're forced to mature.
I imagine that some people probably do mature before they have children and it probably isn't as difficult.
That wasn't the case for me.
I'm guessing that probably the younger you are,
The harder it is.
But you're forced to mature,
Especially if you take it seriously.
That is very painful because you're confronted with your own immaturity.
You're also attempting to navigate in situations that occur naturally.
You are immature.
You know you're immature.
In my case,
I was frustrated with my immaturity.
What makes it painful or what made it painful for me was that I would respond and I still do in many cases,
I would respond to my children's immaturity with immaturity.
When it's painful is when you have the authority as a parent to enforce whatever you're attempting to enforce and you do it immaturely.
I have experienced profound regret over some of the ways that I've enforced rules and structure immaturely.
I think that's probably the biggest part.
But it's also really,
Really hard because the romantic relationship seriously suffers.
It just does.
There's actually a guy,
David Schnark.
Have you ever heard of him?
He's a psychiatrist.
He's actually a practicing clinical psychiatrist and he will counsel couples on,
I don't know what he calls it,
But it's basically sex.
He calls it a crucible,
Which I think is a very appropriate term.
It requires a certain degree of,
It requires you to look outside like a meta-narrative mainly where,
At least in my case,
I can see,
Okay,
This is the timeline of my life.
This period of purging,
Purgation that he would call a crucible,
Suffering,
He thinks is actually really beneficial to a long-term romantic relationship,
But it's hard.
It's hard for the same reasons that it's hard with children.
You're immature.
You're forced to mature.
You're not sleeping,
Especially at the beginning.
Differences in expectations become manifest and in many cases untenable,
Where I had expectations about how my children would behave or what we would expect as parents and she had different expectations.
I would handle disagreements petulantly and she would too.
Part of it's probably personal,
But I think a lot of it is not.
A lot of it's probably pretty common.
Yeah.
I'm curious about this,
The quick growing up thing because,
And I've obviously had children this,
This is all just my thoughts about things.
The idea that biologically at our age,
Our early thirties,
We're basically meant to be grandfathers,
Right?
If we were free of current society,
If we were Paleolithic men,
We probably have grandchildren by now.
We probably would have had kids at 15,
Et cetera.
I guess that growing up would have done,
Would have happened sooner because maybe most of us would have been dead by 40,
For instance.
I was wondering,
This is switching into philosophical mode,
But what do you think about that idea?
We're not supposed to be kids at 26 or whatever.
Well,
I'm glad you brought that up because this is actually,
This is actually part of the,
You've heard me refer to Wittgenstein a lot.
He has a term called a language game,
Which is basically attempting to communicate an idea,
A meaning,
Some meaning that you have,
And you're using different symbols to do that.
Language,
Different languages,
Connotations,
Words,
That kind of thing.
This is the one thing that's hardest for me to enter into your language game because you talk about evolutionary biology so often and I don't primarily relate to the world through that lens.
I think it's probably,
I think it probably is a language game.
I just don't play that language game and you do,
But I can tell from your spirit,
What I call spirit,
That you know you mean basically the same thing.
I think it is true that biologically what you say is the case.
But I mean like Augustine who wrote,
I don't know,
The fourth century maybe.
The Romans had terms for this,
Like senescence,
If you've heard the term senescence,
Which is like old age basically.
They had terms for periods of life.
Adolescence,
That's one that I know you've heard of.
These periods of life.
I don't necessarily think that they are entirely biological.
They may be edified by biological impulse,
But I think we're primarily not biological.
I mean I think our primary mode of existence is ontological,
Especially as humans.
If that's the case,
Then maturation takes on different forms of meaning because one way that you could mature is by growing in time biologically.
An apple matures,
A tree matures biologically.
But generally what we mean by maturity and what I mean by using the term in relation to my kids is that there is some kind of psychological or spiritual or metaphysical maturation that takes place.
And because I think that we're primarily ontological,
I don't necessarily think that you can use the biological mode of space-time when you're describing this.
So obviously maturation implies time because you're passing through time.
I'd agree with you except for the reproductive part.
I have a lot of female friends who are in their late 30s.
I mean I talked about this a lot,
But they followed the feminist consumerist paradigm of focus on your career first and they're all freaking out.
Some of them have come to terms with the fact that they missed their window to have a baby easily or at all.
Or they're having trouble conceiving at 38 or something.
Our bodies haven't evolved to match the way that we grow up in society.
And then with guys,
Men have a little bit more flexibility.
But then I think if we were expecting to die at 45,
Everything would happen sooner and maybe society has gone a little bit too far in letting people grow up later.
What do you think that there's a certain element of social habituation or formation that contributes to because in the past when life expectancy was what it was and because women were mostly expected to bear children,
That the social pretense that surrounded them contributed to their idea of what they expected to receive from their life.
And that is the case as well now.
And we're just chained because life expectancy has increased.
It sounds like what you're saying is there's somewhat of a tension and I think there is.
I would say there is a tension between the biological fact,
Our inherited social expectations and a new reality where people are living,
Especially since the 20th century,
Far,
Far,
Far longer than they ever thought.
Yeah.
Well,
I'm imagining,
Let's say life expectancy goes up to like 300 or 1000 or something,
But our reproductive organs still only work on the schedule that they work now.
Menopause happens when it happens,
Whatever.
I would think if that was the case,
People would have children really young,
Get it out of the way because most of your life is as a non-fertile.
It was a senescence.
Senescence is most of your life.
We were not having kids.
You would have kids as a kid and then move on.
I've even thought like in China,
I don't know if we've talked about this before,
But in China for a while until I think this generation,
It was normal to have kids young and then your kids were raised by your parents who were then retired.
All of my Chinese friends who are my age,
They were raised by their parents.
They barely saw their parents because their parents were young working on their careers.
That kind of interdependence seems more natural and has less biological tension,
I think.
Yeah.
My dad was primarily raised by his grandfather.
I don't want to say raised,
But his father worked on the railroad and he was gone for weeks at a time.
His main paternal figure was his grandfather who was alive when I was alive.
He remembers him with profound affection.
My dad is a typical product of the 50s.
He is not very,
He doesn't communicate effectively with family.
He doesn't really generally express that kind of tenderness.
My dad and I have a very good relationship.
He has talked to me about what it was like having his grandfather as his paternal figure.
The sorts of expectations that he had.
He was a plumber.
My dad would do jobs for him.
From what I have gathered,
He seemed like a demanding but fair man.
He didn't extend praise very often.
I'm interested in,
Especially after having been exposed to neo-masculinity or the red pill,
I'm interested in both things.
I will always ultimately relate to things spiritually through the figure of Christ.
When Jesus was talking to the disciples about eunuchs,
He said some were born eunuchs,
Some were made eunuchs for the empire,
Basically,
And some will become eunuchs for the kingdom of God.
I actually think that celibacy as an idea is interesting.
I think it probably bears upon the topic that you and I are discussing.
Celibacy isn't necessarily beneficial to the tribe.
I guess,
Insofar as maybe a medicine man would be celibate so that he could dedicate himself to the matters of the tribe.
Maybe the tribe would benefit,
But I don't know.
What do you think about that?
Well,
I'm thinking.
.
.
I have to yell at my dogs.
Okay,
Stop.
I think this is in Sapiens,
Noah Harari's book.
It's like,
Or maybe Selfish Gene.
It might be mixing up.
I read them at the same time,
But he had this idea that.
.
.
It's a whole idea of memes.
Celibacy inside the Catholic Church doesn't promote genes.
It actually doesn't make sense from a genetic standpoint because any man who's celibate isn't going to have children,
But it is promoting the meme of that belief in celibacy,
Whatever religious beliefs are attached to it.
That's why that idea has propagated,
Not through genetics,
But through minds.
I mean,
This is maybe not what you're asking,
But that's what came to mind.
That's why the meme of celibacy has passed on,
Not through the body.
Yeah.
I mean,
In my own experience,
I went through a period of real trial,
I would say,
Where I was confronted with a lot of these ideas and it was basically juxtaposed against my own biological reality.
My desire to have sex,
My desire to have a family,
To be a father and a husband.
Some of my own spiritual experiences where.
.
.
I guess maybe I was confronted with mortality in different ways because you can be confronted with mortality in maybe the Vedic way.
Like that video that I sent you,
Adyashanti,
Recalling that Zen koan where the guy is hanging from the tree by his teeth.
Ultimately,
The point of the koan is to bring to your attention the fact that you will die no matter what you do.
You will die.
Just to fill in the story,
Guys holding onto the branch from his teeth,
A sage comes by and says,
Say the one thing that'll save your life.
The conclusion is what you said.
There's nothing you can do to save his life,
So he might as well accept it.
It's really a beautiful parable.
It's so rich,
But that's a very different way of confronting mortality than when I look at my son and I realize there's a 20,
However many year gap between us.
I see myself in that.
I see the rhythms and patterns of life ebbing and flowing.
I don't know.
I guess it probably is in some ways probably more visceral for a woman to your point because she is trapped in some ways by the biological reality.
Maybe she won't experience it as a trap,
I guess,
But from a young age,
Women have a relation to rhythms and patterns and cycles that men just don't and never will.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wait,
Hold on.
Can you hold on one second?
There's a stray dog in the yard.
Yeah,
Go for it.
Hey,
Sorry about that.
There's all these wild dogs in this area.
I didn't want my puppies to get eaten.
Are they roaming about regularly or has it happened more recently?
That's just where they are.
We're in this other town for the month.
We've been traveling around.
We rented this house in the mountains.
How's Thailand these days?
Good.
Yeah.
As far as COVID stuff,
People wear masks,
It was otherwise non-existent.
It doesn't affect my life much,
I should say.
Yeah,
That's interesting.
I live in a rural part of a blue state.
It's pretty rural from what I'm used to,
Especially growing up.
I really do appreciate it,
But yeah,
It's largely the same.
You see some masks,
But for the most part,
People go home with their lives.
Yeah.
Does it really affect you much?
Not really.
No.
I don't have Facebook or anything.
My wife does,
And so she'll send me articles or texts or whatever.
Generally,
I get my impression of the world from what little media publications I listen to,
Like Joe Rogan.
I listen to that somewhat frequently,
Maybe once a week or so.
I'll go on Reddit and read about crypto and stuff.
My experience of it actually is almost completely firsthand.
My dad and I went to go play golf in California a year ago,
And that was like another planet.
That was a completely different reality.
My sister got married in Chicago a week and a half ago.
That was the first time I'd been up in the city for probably three years,
Probably.
It was maybe largely what you'd expect,
Certainly nothing like California.
Then my parents live in Florida in the winter.
I've been down there a couple of times,
And that's a lot like it is here.
Maybe a little bit more pretense,
But not much more.
It's interesting to see all of the different disparate ways of relating to.
.
.
Yeah.
They really are.
I mean,
I've been in Thailand the entire time,
But it does seem like America has split into two totally different realities based on your area,
But also the beliefs that people have about vaccines or not and everyone's so hard on one end.
Yeah,
It's just two different worlds.
It's already becoming two different countries.
It's two different countries.
Yep,
That's exactly right.
I think in large part,
It's probably a rural-urban thing.
In that regard,
It has been two different countries for a while.
What I think the coronaviral mitigatory measures have brought to the surface is the fact that now there is an emblem by which you can identify someone very easily and readily.
Whereas before,
It wasn't always easy to know who amongst you held certain beliefs.
Now,
It's plain.
The raiment is on your face.
I think that that has actually probably exacerbated things a little bit because all of the ways that you believe the other to be the other without actually experiencing the other person,
You are then just projecting on this mask or non-mask wearing person.
I think in point of fact,
It's probably more nuanced in reality than that,
But it's hard to escape.
Yeah.
It's kind of what you just said.
I forget the Wittgenstein thing of language.
You said language something?
Essentially like,
What was it?
Language?
A language game.
Language game,
Yeah.
Totally different language games.
Anyway,
These are things that may be obvious to say,
But news has split more than ever before into two different belief systems about what's true with science,
Which is supposed to be objective.
South Park parodied this years ago.
If we split into two different sciences,
It's no different than an ideological Christian Protestant,
Christian Islamic war.
It's just two different worlds about what reality is.
Anyway,
Hopefully it doesn't become a physical war.
I'm less and less hopeful of that.
I'm so removed from the news that I don't really know what to think.
At least around here,
You learned early on not to confront people over it.
It's just not worth it.
Further south of me,
Which is even more rural,
People were getting stabbed over them.
It just isn't worth getting stabbed.
Really?
About who's stabbing who?
I don't know.
I really don't know.
This woman I worked with said that she was in a grocery store and these two women got into a fight over the masks.
Then their husbands came over and then the husbands got into a fight representing whatever side they were on.
She said in that conversation with her that there had been a stabbing near her over them.
I don't know how much you follow this.
I follow it only insofar as I'm interested in what I may or may not be coerced into doing.
I'm following the OSHA mandate,
Which is in the US like OSHA's occupational something and health association or authority or agency,
Something like that.
Workplace safety.
They're going to have a rule over vaccinations and testing and that kind of thing.
It's going to apply to employers who have more than 100 employees.
I currently work for one.
I'm following it to see.
Anyway,
Because of that,
I kind of follow the.
.
.
I have my finger on the pulse a little bit.
In Chicago right now,
The police union is in an astonishing argument with the mayor over mandatory vaccination.
The language that they're using is very strident.
Someone is going to have to eventually say.
.
.
One of two things will happen.
Either eventually we will just say,
Okay,
We can't continue to do this.
This is getting too confrontational.
Or it's just going to keep amping up and amping up and amping up.
I think that there will be a burst of violence somewhere.
I'm not saying it's going to be from the police,
But yeah,
I don't know.
Have you read any Korzybski by any chance?
No.
He's the guy who invented general semantics.
A lot of quotes that we use like language creates reality and the map is not the territory come from him.
I'm reading one of his early books.
It's pretty dense,
But he was saying how everything in society is interlocking.
The level of advancement with politics and science and all the different social sciences and hard sciences,
Whatever.
That's what makes up reality.
This is my interpretation.
That's what makes up reality.
Some of these things advance way faster than others.
Science advances at a geometric or exponential level,
Whereas law advances at an arithmetic level.
Obviously after a generation or two,
They're super far apart.
The only way that society has ever correct this imbalance,
Because it stretches reality,
Or at least the laws no longer fit in with the lifestyle at the time,
The only way that society has ever correct that is through violence.
Every so often there's a revolution,
Specifically when usually it's science outpaces politics or law.
He wrote that in 1921,
Because it was right after World War I.
He was saying,
Oh,
World War I was basically a correction.
But anyway,
Nowadays it seems even worse.
I was actually thinking about David Foster Wallace.
I think about him a lot.
He wrote a book called Infinite Jest,
Which takes place in the 90s.
No,
You should read it.
It's good.
There are so many pieces of it that are applicable.
A lot of his essays are too.
One of the motifs that he had in the book and throughout many of his essays was on appearances.
In one short story,
He wrote about a woman who was going to go on Letterman,
I don't know,
In the 80s,
Maybe late 80s,
Early 90s.
She kept repeating over and over,
My parents,
My parents,
My parents.
He intended a double or table on tone by that term.
Her appearance on the show,
Her appearance,
How she appeared on the show,
And then also kind of a meta commentary on the concept of appearance.
But I think about that a lot because my opinion is that the masks,
Especially now,
Are largely an act of pretense.
It's an appearance.
It's promoting or denying some other thing.
I think writers from the past,
I mean,
I'm often drawing parallels between them,
But I don't know what to think about all of them.
I mean,
It doesn't really seem to prevent anything from happening.
So I sometimes wonder,
You know,
I mean,
That does cause you to view life differently,
I think,
Confronted with the fact that people can have a pretty perspicacious view,
But it doesn't ultimately make much material difference in the cycles of human history.
Yeah.
I mean,
I do notice,
I mean,
The only reason why I ever wear a mask,
Even though there's no mask mandates here,
I mean,
For some stores you have to wear a mask,
But it's mainly because I'm a foreigner in Thailand.
Thai people all wear masks and I don't want to come off as a rude foreigner in the same way that I bow or like,
You know,
Put my hands together when they do.
I use their language when I can.
I'm really just,
I'm only wearing a mask for cultural simulation so that I'm respectful of their culture.
But then I was thinking,
You know,
I mean,
I would feel differently if I was in New York,
But maybe,
Maybe I wouldn't actually,
Maybe I would feel so much pressure from the New York liberal culture that I would have to wear a mask for show purposes.
I don't know.
I experienced this and I will reflect on it sometimes,
But I actually have gotten,
I've gone from ambivalent,
Largely ambivalent about politics to very,
Very convicted and I won't wear a mask.
I don't do it.
I avoid places where they require masks.
Now I am admittedly in a position of some luxury because where I live,
You don't have to wear one anywhere at the hospital,
I guess,
To go to the hospital.
But even there,
I mean,
People don't really wear them.
But in Chicago,
I mean,
We were in the church and I did put one on.
I did it for my sister,
You know,
But we all had them off.
And one of the guys that was there,
I don't know what he was doing,
But he was a representative of the archdiocese and he got up at the lectern and said,
You know,
His spiel.
And then at the end,
He said,
You know,
For everyone's safety,
Which I chafed out a bit.
And he,
You know,
I was,
The air in the room completely changed,
You know,
Because now,
Whereas before we were at ease,
We were together,
We were,
You know,
Now we were subject to chastening and coercion.
And so,
You know,
You could feel the energy in the room,
In the chapel completely changed.
Everyone just wanted to get through it.
You know,
I just looked forward the whole time.
And at the end,
You know,
And I was visibly not happy about this.
And at the end,
It came up to me and confronted me about it,
Just to kind of twist the knife a little bit.
You're in Chicago now.
And,
You know,
This is how we do things up here.
And I was incensed,
Enraged.
And,
You know,
I mean,
If you did that here,
You probably get your ass kicked.
But I am somewhat surprised and in some ways not surprised at how convicted I have become about this whole thing.
And I really object to pretense.
I don't like it.
I never have since I was a kid.
I just think pretense is the enemy of introspection.
And I think that's dangerous.
I also think personally,
That you should encourage introspection in yourself because ultimately,
That's all you'll have to take with you.
The pretense will be burned away.
And whatever form your life takes after your bodily death,
Your pretense will have no part in it.
Yeah.
On conviction,
I go back and forth because I have the same opinion as you.
And at times,
Especially with the example I just shared,
Like,
I'm like,
Well,
If I was really living by,
Let's say,
Master morality and not caring about collectivism,
I just wouldn't wear the mask and I wouldn't care about the judgment.
And I do think about that every time I put one on.
But at the same time,
I feel like part of the danger,
Like if America goes into civil war,
The winner will be the enemies of the United States.
Neither side of the United States will win.
China will take over America and that will be that.
And I'm like,
If that is a bit conspiracy,
But if this is a play of enemies of the United States to divide the country and take it over,
We're basically playing into their hands by really digging into one side or the other.
Right.
I do think that at times it's kind of hard because my ego certainly wants to be like,
You know,
Don't tell me what to do with masks or whatever.
I don't know.
Yeah,
I think ego plays into it a lot.
And that's where I'm given pause.
I also,
You know,
When you were saying in your Dark Night of the Soul video where,
You know,
There's a cost and there is a cost and there's actually a very real cost.
You know,
My wife is she doesn't care about the masks or vaccines or whatever,
But she does it.
I think partly because it's probably a little bit more natural for a woman to just kind of go along,
But also because she's from a very homogenous small town and,
You know,
You fit in.
But there are there are costs,
You know,
Like she well,
I mean,
There have been I didn't go to church for a year.
I didn't take my kids.
I would not wear I don't I wouldn't wear a mask.
So I stopped going with it.
If we go to a city and she wants to go into Target,
I don't go in.
And,
You know,
At a certain point,
You know,
I am sacrificing time with my family and as a family with my wife as a couple in order to do what I'm doing.
For dignity,
Impractical dignity.
And is it worth it?
And how do you judge its worthiness?
What what are the different factors that you weigh?
And how much of it is my own ego?
Yeah,
I mean,
That's not an easy thing to answer.
But yeah,
It's hard because if everyone goes,
I mean,
If everyone looks at that,
I'd be like,
Oh,
Well,
It's I'm skipping out time with my family,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah.
So they take the other route.
If everyone does that,
Then there's no resistance against,
Let's say authoritarianism or anything,
Which which is what happens,
Which is what happening in some countries,
Canada and Australia seems to have bent over immediately.
I am,
I will admit,
And I don't know if I'm ashamed of it or not.
I really don't know.
And when I say I don't know,
I mean,
I don't know.
But I will admit that when I read the stories of the police union and the language they're using,
Hold the line.
I'm like,
Fuck,
Yes.
You know,
I mean,
I really,
I mean,
I feel very,
Very,
Very passionately about it.
You know,
And I don't know,
I mean,
I do agree with you to a certain extent,
But I always try at least to manage my egos.
You know,
It can be it can be it can cause damage,
You know,
If you let your ego just run rampant.
You know,
You can lose a piece of your humanity.
Yeah,
Yeah.
I want to go back to this language game thing,
Because I'm just remembering something related.
Christina,
Who works for me lives in Serbia,
I was asking her what the vaccine COVID stuff was going on there.
And she was like,
She said the same thing as everywhere else.
Like there's certain pressure,
If you're not vaccinated,
There's certain social pressure.
But they she said something like,
They haven't enforced anything seriously yet.
So we're still pretty liberal,
Right?
She used the word liberal,
Which I thought was really interesting.
Like she used the word liberal,
As its actual definition as an adjective,
Which is kind of the opposite of what the word liberal means in the West now,
Which is associated with a party's ideology.
And I just was like,
Oh,
Okay,
I mean,
She's speaking the way that the word is supposed to be used,
Which is freedom.
And I thought that was interesting,
Because the word is,
Yeah,
It just means something different now.
I love these kinds of language,
Tricks,
Puzzles,
Games.
It's one of the things about really,
Really good rap,
Hip hop,
That I appreciate,
Where turns of phrase or where they'll subvert your expectations or where they'll make a wordplay.
And what I actually think about this a lot,
And what I like about it more than say,
Like classic poetry,
Is that it includes,
You know,
Classic poetry was high art.
And what I like about hip hop is that it isn't.
It's not high art.
It's popular art.
It's vulgar,
You know,
Literally,
It's the Vulgate.
And it's what Jesus did with his parables,
Because he was speaking in,
You know,
Largely Aramaic,
Not Hebrew.
And when you have that kind of like communal language,
You know,
That you like when you're with an old friend,
And you have a mode of communicating that is easy and effortless.
You're communicating,
You're using other symbols than just the words,
Right?
When you use the Vulgate,
You have access to all of that.
That's kind of like my that's like,
The easiness,
The correlation would be the Vulgate to the easiness of the conversation with your friend.
How do you define Vulgate?
Vulgate is like,
Well,
Yeah,
Like popular,
Like high art versus popular art.
Vulgate is like,
When it's basically Italian.
So like,
When Latin was the lingua franca,
The Vulgate was the dialect,
Basically,
In the Roman areas.
It's Italian,
Basically.
And when you have that easiness,
But then subversion is introduced,
It causes you to think like,
You were expecting one thing you were expecting,
You got lazy,
You got complacent in,
You took for granted.
You became enmeshed in the symbols,
You became enmeshed in the medium of exchange,
And lost the meaning.
And these kinds of like word games,
Like wordplay,
Turns a phrase,
When they subvert your expectations,
They kind of snap you out of it.
It's the same thing that a Kohen does.
It's the same thing that the parables of Christ did and do.
And I think,
Now I'm an unabashed admirer of Wittgenstein.
But I think that language is really at the heart of it.
It's at the heart of it.
Yeah.
I mean,
Symbols,
Maybe,
If you want to use symbols.
But language are our primary form of symbols.
Yeah,
I remember you turned me on to Barfield many years ago now.
And the one thing I remember from whatever number of essays I read was how words originally were just to describe objects and things you could do with objects.
And then metaphor turned the,
You know,
I mean,
All of our words are rooted in physical objects,
All the nouns,
Rather.
All of our verbs,
Even the abstract verbs are rooted in physical actions.
And they,
Using metaphor,
Became abstracted,
Abstracted,
Abstracted.
So you have words now that,
Like,
I don't know,
Justice,
That you can't really,
Unless you're an etymologist,
You can't tie to an object,
But it did have a root in that.
But people then forget,
And kind of what's happening in modern culture now is these weird definition of terms of,
Yeah,
And it's actually changing reality,
Or changing,
It's an attempt to change reality,
Or perception of reality.
Yeah,
That's exactly what it is.
I don't know if it's always,
I don't know if people are always doing it with the understanding that that's what they're doing.
But,
Like,
Your example of the word liberal,
I think,
I always chafe at the sort of soundbite culture,
The Fox News and CNN kind of culture.
And what ends up happening is that you hear the same combination of symbols so often that you just repeat them.
And they aren't your own,
They're someone else's.
So you're not really,
You're not really actually communicating any meaning.
You're just repeating another's symbols.
And when you're confronted with,
Like the word,
Like liberal,
I mean,
You're an introspective person,
So it doesn't surprise me that,
You know,
This is something that you noticed,
But that forces you to like consider,
Oh,
What is this word?
What does it mean?
How did it come to be what it is?
When I'm speaking,
When I speak,
What am I doing?
And I oscillate back and forth,
Because especially after having been exposed to neo masculinity,
I mean,
The plain fact of the matter is that especially with women,
You know,
There is a there is a game that you play.
But I really,
In my heart,
I just don't like playing the game because you aren't communicating.
In some ways,
You're communicating differently.
So when you're in a really good rapport with a woman,
I mean,
I've said this to you before,
But,
You know,
You don't actually really ever have to use a pickup line.
Because if you're in a bar or something,
You just know,
I mean,
I can look around and I know,
I just know,
Like,
I can walk up to that woman right now,
And I wouldn't really have to say anything.
Or it wouldn't matter what I said.
Because there's a connection or I don't know what the term is these days.
The language is sub-verbal,
The communication rather is sub-verbal.
Actually,
Does it make me think of like the assumptions that we don't even question like with feminism,
For instance,
Both feminism and we can say whatever anti feminism,
Obviously,
They have opposite opposite beliefs on the surface.
But they both run on this assumption that a certain,
I mean,
I'm using this as an example,
But that power is good.
Right.
They both,
You know,
If you look at the arguments on both sides,
They both,
You know,
The goal,
You know,
Is actually my criticism of feminism is that it runs on a very masculine paradigm,
Very masculine values of like,
Being a CEO is the best thing for a woman over having children,
For instance,
Right?
Like that kind of thing.
But it isn't spoken are the assumed values of both enemies.
Like they both assume the same.
They're in the same framework.
Is this making sense?
Yes.
Yeah.
And actually,
I picked feminism just because you brought up women,
But you know,
Same thing goes for like super left and super right beliefs about healthcare,
Right?
Whether private or public,
But they both agree to the same value system,
Actually,
Which is not the case in some countries.
North Korea doesn't believe in healthcare,
For instance.
Like,
I think people forget,
Or the people don't see the water basically,
From the fish perspective.
Yes,
I wholeheartedly agree with you.
And I also think that this is another thing about,
There's a science fiction writer who wrote,
He writes short stories,
And they're pretty profound.
Stephen.
.
.
Joe?
I can't remember,
I'll have to think of his name,
But he wrote a short story called Rememe,
Or about this technology called Rememe,
Where you can replay your memories.
And he had gotten a fight with his daughter.
And anyway,
It flashes back.
So half the story takes place in the future,
Where you have this brain thing where you can manifest your memories.
And the other half is in Africa,
In,
I don't know,
16th century,
15th century,
And a Jesuit is teaching the people how to write.
And his point,
The author's point is that,
You know,
We sort of vilify AI,
Say,
But language is a tool.
And the reason I'm bringing this up is because I have noticed in myself,
And my suspicion is that this is probably happening broadly.
When people say,
You know,
You need to get down into your body,
You're in your head too much.
I think the fish metaphor that you're using,
The way that you're relating to the world is to the language.
You're relating to the language,
You're relating to all of these ideas,
You're relating to the precision of the word that you're using,
You're relating to the differences in the words,
Like how the Catholic Church is just obsessed with the right words and getting into arguments with the Greek Church over these words,
What these words mean.
And then the opposite is just experiencing life as life.
You know,
The words may be a part of it.
You may be using them,
But it's the place from which you're relating.
Does that make sense?
You follow me or is this too?
Have I gone off the rails?
A little bit.
Yeah.
Language games.
That'll be the title of this episode.
I didn't finish Mano.
I read three-fourths of it.
That was a few months ago.
I forgot about it.
Then I read about half of it again.
I'm curious what had you suggested to me?
Well,
I can tell when people,
Like I met this guy at a job I was at before,
And I think I mentioned him to you like a Morpheus sort of figure.
And he is of the spirit.
I don't know of a way to say it.
I mean,
There isn't really a good way to describe what I mean.
But I guess maybe we had a connection or I don't know.
But in the Mano,
Socrates is arguing with this guy.
Socrates is sort of in trouble with the Athenian people because he's getting these people to consider things.
They don't really like that.
He's challenging quite a bit.
The guy that he's in an argument with is a rator.
What's the term?
Sophist.
He's a sophist.
When the sophists speak,
They're doing what I was describing before.
But he's doing basically what a politician does.
If you're on a panel and someone espouses some idea that you disagree with,
You don't actually engage with the idea.
You try to construct some elegant rhetoric to create the impression that you do understand what they're saying and this person is wrong.
At one point,
Socrates knows this is happening and he's Socrates,
So he's just setting this guy up the whole time.
Socrates does what Socrates does and he just keeps asking questions.
Whenever the guy will say,
What about this?
Socrates will say,
What about this?
He's Socratic.
At one point,
He pulls over this slave boy and he's trying to demonstrate a point to his conversational partner.
The slave boy obviously has no education,
But he uses him to demonstrate some basic principle of geometric reality.
I think he has a draw,
A square,
Some basic shape and draw conclusions about that.
It's a pretty profound point within Socrates because what Socrates is trying to demonstrate is that there's something within us that recognizes.
You could have someone tell you,
Like this is where the term education comes from,
A jucare,
A draw out.
You can have someone help you.
You can have someone draw out what is already present,
But ultimately you're the one who recognizes it.
I actually wrote down this quote.
There's the one thing that jumped out from the dialogue.
Socrates says,
Isn't retrieving knowledge from inside yourself the same thing as remembering?
Yeah.
This is very platonic.
Plato was the one who wrote these and this is integral to him.
The reason I brought it up to you was because there is something like recognizes like.
In my own language game,
I call it the spirit.
The spirit recognizes the spirit.
I recognize it in you.
When I do recognize it,
I feel satisfied at ease because.
I'm we're now below the surface.
You know,
The symbols are what they are.
And the reason I brought it up to you is because I think you had mentioned that you were trying to get.
You know,
A realer experience with some of the people who you knew.
And.
It isn't I was having a difficult time explaining to you what I mean when I say the spirit.
And so I tried to.
You know,
Say,
Hey,
Well,
You know,
This is kind of what I'm talking about in the minute.
OK,
OK.
Yeah,
Because the dialogue,
I mean,
This guy,
Minot is asking Socrates the question.
Can being good is being good something you can teach or people are just good and you know,
Basically.
At least the three fourths that I read is Socrates making the guy look like an idiot.
So I was like,
Oh,
What is what exactly?
What is the point?
I mean,
I was just curious.
Yeah,
Yeah.
I mean,
From what you just said,
I mean,
The closest thing.
Comes to mind is when I'm writing.
Sometimes I'll have a line that doesn't fit in the chapter or whatever I'm writing,
But I just feel and in writing they say,
Kill your darlings like and there is,
You know,
Sometimes we get attached like a cute phrase that we just want to keep in,
Even though it takes away from the piece.
But sometimes it feels like.
The house needs to be built around this door knob like this line has I just I just recognize that this line has to go into this part of the book.
And if I have to write the whole of the rest of the chapter to if it's a rewrite the chapter to make this line make sense as a transition,
I have to do that.
And very often I've said no to that impulse and I've just scratched out the line and it felt shitty.
And then I write a chapter very much from my head.
But through this Dark Night of the Soul experience,
I'm like practicing listening to that feeling of like,
I don't know why,
But this line has to fit.
Even it means I have to rewrite a hundred pages like I need to make this line fit.
So yeah,
I don't know with all of this stuff is kind of spiritual.
I don't know if I'm just making myself crazy.
But so far it's felt better than trying to force things to fit.
Yeah,
I mean,
That's common with an artistic endeavor.
You know,
You hear people,
Musicians and artists and writers say that they feel like something's channeling through them as they're writing.
But yeah,
I mean,
I do think I try to like the Dark Night of the Soul or the crucible of marriage.
I do try to take a step back when I can,
When I'm not in the middle of it and view my life from the third person maybe and try to appreciate the process of time,
Personalize it.
But you know,
It's not always,
There isn't really a good way to express that to someone else.
In a lot of cases,
It is personal.
And I think either you follow the thread or you kind of stuff it down for a while.
And then,
You know,
Who knows what happens later.
Maybe you find it again.
But it sounds like that's what you're doing.
You know,
Like when you're talking about these lines,
There's a thread and you just kind of tug on it and see where it goes.
Yeah,
You know,
Because like one of the things that has gotten me really down periodically is how long my book has taken.
Like I've spent a lot of time on it.
I'm even embarrassed to talk about it because there's people who've known me from years ago who heard me say the same thing.
And I've written way more pages than needed to fit in the book,
But it's just not done because they don't feel right.
They just aren't right.
Like I wouldn't be proud of it,
Even though it tells the story that I meant to tell.
And I'm coming to terms with the fact that maybe what I should have been doing this whole time is what we're talking about,
Just not deciding from my head what belongs in the book and instead just following the thread.
Yeah,
I mean,
That's at least the hypothesis I'm working with now.
I think,
You know,
The more you follow the thread,
Or at least in my experience,
The more I follow the thread,
The happier I am.
To me,
It really is religious or spiritual or whatever you want to call it.
You know,
I mean,
In many ways,
I mean,
It's a relationship.
You have to relate to it.
You know,
You can't control it,
Just like a relationship.
It's kind of,
You know,
You are relating to it,
But it's subject to its own whims and fancies,
Comes and goes as it pleases.
You know,
The wind blows where it will.
And,
You know,
You kind of have to just calm down.
You know,
In my own life,
It's just calming down and having faith or trust.
And,
You know,
I mean,
Yeah,
It's hard because after the last podcast I put out and I sent that email out,
He's a friend,
He's a YouTuber.
He's like,
Oh,
I mean,
I'm surprised you're making all this meaning out of YouTube,
Whatever example I said,
Like it's just a vehicle for people to know you.
It's like just 1000 subscribers.
Like,
Basically,
He was like,
You're making a big deal out of this thing.
It's a practical thing.
Why'd you delete it?
And part of me was like,
Yeah,
Actually,
Yeah,
He is making a good point.
Like,
You know,
Why was I making such a big deal about it?
But on another level,
Yeah,
It just didn't,
It just spiritually didn't work.
I don't know.
I can't really explain it.
It wasn't working.
Not because of the results,
But because of how it made me feel.
It just didn't fit.
And I don't know why.
I don't know why this line is the right line as far as whatever actions I've made.
But it just seems,
I feel at peace,
Whereas I didn't feel at peace before and I can't explain it.
And that's its own,
I mean,
That is its own benefit.
You know?
Yeah.
The older I get,
The more I realize peace is hard earned.
And,
You know,
You,
At some point,
I mean,
This is probably Vedic,
But at some point you just decide to kind of just let some things go.
And it doesn't seem like it.
I think that's probably why it's hard to have conversations with people like the YouTube guy,
Because from his perspective,
You're not like from his perspective,
Letting it go would be just staying on YouTube.
But it's,
It's,
It's like shearing away the layers that are covering you,
You know,
Shearing yourself of all of this extra crap slowly but surely over the course of time.
And maybe in the end,
You'll find what you've been looking for the whole time.
You know,
I mean,
It's,
It's,
It's like going the other way.
You know,
Whereas he's saying,
Well,
Just let it go and use this thing.
You know,
From your perspective,
You're letting it go.
Like you're just letting go of it.
Just letting it no longer be tethered to your person.
Yeah.
Cool,
Man.
Well,
It was great catching up with you.
Yeah.
You're floating head in the dark.
I'm glad we're not on video.
But I don't know.
I mean,
It probably does look sort of ominous.
Yeah,
But I got to have my pipe.
Yeah.
Cool,
Man.
Well,
Glad to know you're doing well.
Things seem to be good over there.
Yeah.
Thanks for being on.
Yeah.
Cool.
See you,
Everyone.
