Hello my friends, this is the 80th episode of Patterson in Pursuit, part two of a conversation I had with Thaddeus Russell about postmodernism, and this week we really dive into the philosophy of it. One of, if not the central tenet of postmodernist philosophy is a fundamental relativism, or a rejection of the idea of objective truth. In some ways I appreciate the kind of skepticism and humility which comes with the postmodernist philosophy, but in other ways I think it's fundamentally mistaken. Though we can't know many objective truths, I think we can know some, even if they're extremely limited in scope. So this is what my guest Thaddeus Russell and I are debating on this week's episode. Part two of conversation with Thaddeus Russell. For the listeners, you guys will have listened to this last week, but we just stopped about five minutes ago talking about love. We were going to talk about truth and postmodernism, but we talked about love. That's the same thing. Okay. All right, so this is a natural segue. I'll give a little bit of preface, and then we'll dive right into where I think we will disagree. So where we just ended it is by saying that language seems to be unique to every individual, and our conceptual schemes seem to be unique to every individual. What I mean by the most elementary of things is going to be sometimes slightly different than what you mean, and sometimes radically different. A great example of this is basic objects. So like I have a pen here, and I've done, been doing enough philosophy to know that what I actually mean by a pen, what I'm actually referencing, is probably radically different from what most people understand by that word in the West, because I'm actually talking about my experience. I'm talking about the experience of the color blue in my visual field.  So even something elementary that we can have practical discourse about, and we both know what I mean by a pen for all practical purposes, can be radically different in terms of philosophy. So where I think a lot of people who are postmodernists would agree is with this, like, you and I are probably going to agree that language is very vague, it's very imprecise when we're talking about communicating between two people. My concepts are just not going to be your concepts, and if we can make any philosophic progress, you have to understand how imprecise language is. Would you agree? It's not the word I use, right, because imprecise, you know, obviously implies that there is something that is more precise, which implies that there is an external objective standard to which I think can be closer or farther from, right? How about how about imprecision in terms of, like, the intent behind the communication? So if I want to imply something by my words, and I actually imply something else, like in your mind, when you hear the words, couldn't that be a kind of imprecision? Intent, I'm not sure. That's a weird one. I don't think this matters. Well, so how about we just agree that we, that the difference is, is that there simply is a difference, whether it's radical or whether it's about tent or, you know, yeah, I agree with you that there is a difference in the way you and I think of that pen. Okay, so that, that I think is really essential to understanding what I would say is a clear, rational philosophy is how difficult sometimes linguistic differences between us are. Like if you can have a long conversation and not make any headway because you don't realize you're using a different definition for the same word. Let me just slightly clarify again. I guess I believe that most people you're calling postmodernists would say they would prefer simply to say that there is a difference rather than that language is imprecise or vague. Because that's, I think that's, that's how I read Foucault and Derrida. They simply, they point to differences in interpretations, differences in concepts, differences in language rather than they don't, they just don't say something is more vague or less vague or more precise or less precise. That's all, but that's, that's actually important, which we'll probably now unpack. Okay. So the importance of, yeah. So part two of where I would talk about this pin, I'm saying the contents of my experience, like I'm talking about the blueness in my visual field. However, I also have the belief that I think most people do that aren't relativists that would say there is a kind of correspondence with the contents of my experience with the blue pen in my visual field with some kind of external object. There's a thing out there in the world that is constructed in such a way that when my mind interacts with it, it gives me this experience. Yep. So that's what, that's usually like the realm of what we're talking about objective truth. There's this objective reality out there. That's something I'm very partial to. What do you, what's your position? Yeah, no. Well, no, sorry. I take it back. I've evolved on that. Okay. Uh, I don't know if I ever took a hard atheist position. But I think I tended to talk like I was an atheist on that. I'm an agnostic. So what I say now is, um, I don't know. Okay. I don't know. So what is your hesitation to, to, uh, to that kind of idea? Cause when we think about theories of physics, for example, they seem to be based on this idea of the external world that operates in a certain way. We observe it.  Would you say that those are all kind of useful and nice, like, uh, physical theories, but they're, we have no way of knowing whether or not they're true. Yeah. Uh, which is what Einstein said, you know, so he said that, you know, two things cannot occupy the same point in space or time. And so therefore no two things can, can perfectly correspond. And therefore we never know whether our thoughts, our ideas, our words, our concepts perfectly correspond with something else, meaning something outside of consciousness, meaning some objective reality. So, and I've heard other physicists say the same thing. In fact, recently, uh, I heard Lawrence Krauss just say this. In fact, on, I think Sam Harris's podcast or something. And he, he said, he said a great thing. I loved it. He said, yeah, you know, I, this idea about truth. That's not what we do. What we do is we disprove things. What scientists do is disprove things. We never prove anything, but, but he said, I couldn't get out of bed in the morning if I didn't believe in objective truth. Um, which I thought it was a great, really honest, um, I don't know, acknowledgement of a conceit, I suppose, that it's at the base of a lot of scientific inquiry. I don't think it's necessary. I think you can still operate as a scientist without that belief. But, um, I do think that has driven a lot of science, what we call scientific work. So what do you think about, um, propositions that make claims about the contents of our consciousness? So if we're not talking about, let's say, the physical external world that we don't really have a direct engagement with, because we're kind of, we engage with what we experience, which is the contents of our consciousness. Can't we say true and false things about what's going on in our minds? Um, we, what do you mean? Can we? I don't, sure. I don't, you can say whatever you want. I don't know if any of our, if, if any of my own claim is about my own consciousness or true, is that what you're asking? Uh, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Again, an agnostic position. So if, so from my perspective, right? If I'm, if I'm having the blueness experience, but I not say it is the case that I am having the experience of blue. I don't know what's causing it. I mean, it might be a hallucination, but that it is taking place is definitely the case. I, you can, again, you can say whatever you want. I don't know. I just simply do not know whether what you are saying has any relationship to an external truth or reality. Well, but, but it depends on what you mean by external. So, so I, so could you make a claim about kind of your, and I don't mean to can as in, like, do you have permission to make these claims?  It might be. Sorry. I know. Okay. Well, but hang on. So, so how could that be wrong? So for, I'll take from my perspective, I know we're two different minds. We're going to have two different perspectives, but you can imagine if you were doing this yourself, you know, blueness is taking place in my visual field. I'm just reporting on my experience. I don't know that it can be wrong. Well, if so, but if you don't know if it could be right, that would mean it has to, you have to have a possibility of it being wrong. Cause if it didn't have the possibility of being wrong, that means it would definitely be right. Possibility to be wrong. Possibility to be right. Is there a possible, is there a possible truth? Okay. There might be. I don't know. That's all I got for you. See, the thing is, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's I don't know. That's all I got for you. See, the thing is, when you say it might be, it implies it could be this way or it could be that way. So, so I, I think it's fine to say it could be the case that there is indeed blueness in your visual field. That could be the case. But to say it could be that there isn't blueness in your visual field. Well, that's not true because I'm directly experiencing them, whether or not there's blueness in my visual field. I'm, I'm missing, I'm not, I'm missing something here. Um, so when someone says there is a God, I say, maybe, I don't know. And then when an atheist says there is no God, I say, I don't know, maybe, I don't know what, what's wrong there? What am I, what am I, what am I admitting? So the difference is that when you're talking about God, you're talking about some external phenomena, you're like positing some mind independent entity out there. That's, I don't think that's the way to go but I'm, I'm saying I am, all I'm doing is reporting on the contents of my experience. So I'm not saying there is a God, there isn't a God, I'm saying it is the case that experience is happening a particular way. Oh, oh, does your experience exist? Does your consciousness exist? Okay, that's, that's not what I'm saying, but that's a good question. So, so, uh-huh, how would you answer that? Is, does your consciousness exist? Yeah, I mean, man, I'm totally fine answering this and it doesn't, doesn't bother me or challenge me at all. I just think it's not that useful, but whatever. Um, yes, I there, yeah, I guess I'm still an agnostic, like, I don't know, like it could be this thing that I might consider consciousness is, could be something else. It could be. But it is, it is conscious at the very least, even if it's like, if even if you're hallucinating, it still is experiential in nature, right? Oh, I see. So it's consciousness because it's conscious, because we're conscious. Like, that's a tautology, right? But it's, I think people, I think people give tautology is a bad rap. There are a few tautologies that I think are pretty interesting, but this wouldn't be one. This is just a way we use the word consciousness to describe something that's happening. So it's okay, we could use another word, but when you introspect, you understand English, most people mean by the English word experience. I'm guessing we have a shared experience. I don't know. That's the case. But when I introspect, there is perception taking place. There is consciousness. You could call it that there is experience that is going on or there are colors, for example, that are moving in my visual field is the way that I describe it. Right. So to prove that there that consciousness exists, you then use words like introspection and experience. And I'm not proving that consciousness exists by an argument. That would be backwards. That would be, yeah, I'm saying when you meditate on your experience, like if you are aware of your experience, is it the case that you can be aware of something taking place, that there is something? It is not the case that there is only nothing to which I say it's possible that I don't know and to which you say to which I say it when you say it's possible that implies there's a possibility of being A or a possibility of being B. Right. So when you say it's possible, whether or not there's consciousness, you're saying it is a possible case that there is no conscious phenomena taking place. Maybe that's going on. No, you're you're positing the binary. Yes or no, I'm not. Yeah, I'm not positing a binary. I'm just, I don't know. Do you I don't know is not to say that there's an A or B or yes or no. It's just I don't know me. So you're positing if someone were to posit A, God exists or that pen or your consciousness is a thing is is a true thing. And I say I don't know that doesn't posit that there are that there are two or only one alternative. What what is I don't know mean? So would you say I don't know doesn't mean it could be X. It could be not X. I don't know where you're going to. I don't I'm not. I'm having a hard time finding this fruitful or maybe I'm missing something here. I yeah, I don't know. There it could exist. It could not exist. There could be yet another category. There could be no categories, I guess, is what I want to say. Maybe that's what you're driving at or that's what you want. OK, or that's the that's the only real answer to what you're saying. That there are no categories. That's another possibility if there. So let's say there are no categories, because I think you could might even be able to say that like you know, you could come up with a coherent worldview, I think that would say there's no categories, but that doesn't mean existence. There's there still is something, right, even if you're just purely awareness, for example, awareness is a word that describes something that is right. Huh? Yeah. Well, OK, so awareness is a word which and we attach we have attached meanings to it. Those meanings are made up of other words, which are defined by other words, which are all part of the same language. So it's a and when the same so it's all circular, it all circulates within the same language structure. This is Daryodon deconstructionism, OK, and nothing there's nothing outside of that system. You can't ever show that any one word in that system is closer to something outside of it. Well, well, there's there's two things on that one. That implies that words are necessarily about communication. And I don't think that needs to be the case. It could be the case that, for example, the only thing that exists is your awareness. And you just come up with words to talk to yourself. You could do that. We that would be the case. But if that's true, you still have awareness. But and two, is it the case then that at least words exist? That is a something. I don't I don't know. I don't know. Maybe maybe not. I don't know. So. Yeah, I don't I don't know. I guess. Is this I'm trying to get at what you're there's this you're there's a strategy here, which is fine. I'm just wondering what you're driving at like what you're trying to establish something, right? No, this is the strategy is to have this conversation about the objectivity of truth. This is this idea is, I think, what the Jordan Peterson's of the world find sinister. You know, when they when they look at the postmodernist or they look at what they mean by postmodernist, this is what I think they say. This nugget here that can't even say that awareness is happening or that we can't. That's disingenuous or it's not true or it's bad. So I think it's it's it's central. No, no, I know. I know that's the question we're dealing with. It sounds to me like your answer to that is yes, there is truth. And here's here's where it is. It's in something you're calling awareness or consciousness. You know, I'm asking you questions if you admit the existence of the contents of your own consciousness. If that's the case, then, yeah, there are other things we could say. But because it's a natural step to say if it's the case that there is consciousness, then at the very least, that's truth. So the contents of your consciousness taking place, however they're taking place, that is something that is the way that it is. And it isn't some other way. It's truth. No, I really don't know. I could be schizophrenic. So that's one alternative. OK, but that wouldn't invalidate the idea of your awareness. It might just be that your awareness is schizophrenic in nature. You did that I have awareness. Whether I have awareness is the question. Whether I have awareness. Yeah, I don't know. Because that. Yeah. This has gotten to the level of abstraction that I find actually borders on obscurantism. I don't know if this is even helpful. But it is because there's so many people that there's so many people that will take these ideas and run with them in either direction because there are people are going to say, I can't really answer that question because it's too abstract and I'm not going to deal with questions of truth. There are other people like myself who would say, ah, there is actually truth to be discovered right here. This is where you can discover truth, even if it's obscure, abstract. And then we can build a somewhat of a structure of knowledge based on some things that we can discover about our own awareness. Yeah, so my answer was originally and still is I don't know. And so what am I admitting by saying that? OK, so that's what I was asking you. So when you say, I don't know what I what I think most people mean by that is so let's say I claim proposition X is true. And I ask you, do you think X is true? When people say I don't know, that means it could be the case that X is true or it could not be the case that X is true and I don't have a position. I got it. Is that what you mean? Yeah. OK, so what I'm saying is if that is the dichotomy, it could be or it could not be, then that implies something could not be. So like if I'm talking about consciousness, you're saying, well, whether or not there is awareness is a matter of maybe there is, maybe there isn't, which means maybe it's possible that in some way there isn't awareness. So that's what I'm saying. When you say I don't know if there's awareness, you're saying it might be the case that there isn't. Yeah, yeah. OK, so right. And again, I don't know. And what you can do, I suppose, an answer to this, OK, what a postmodernist would do. What Foucault definitely would do, what Derrida would definitely do is simply trace the genealogy, the history of those words and those concepts that you're using in having this discussion and asking those questions. So awareness, what does that mean? What is its meaning been? And you can actually trace it. You can show how people have thought about it over the years and how it's changed and where it started. People have thought about it, though. I care about, for me, my consciousness or my awareness, my mind having access to correct information and whether or not it's encoded in a particular language, I don't really care. If I could communicate to anybody else, I don't really care. I just want to know for myself. But if it turns out that it's historical, meaning social, meaning created by human beings, right, then it invalidates any truth claim you make about it. But that's not, that wouldn't be the case. So let's say it's the case that awareness is something that's somehow socially constructed wouldn't make a difference of whether or not it exists. It would still exist. OK, I take it back. It doesn't invalidate it, but it certainly challenges it, doesn't it? And more importantly... Not as hard as that. Not its existence, even if it's socially constructed, so what? Right, but again, so, OK, more importantly, I guess for my purposes, it makes it impossible to answer the question satisfactorily because, again, I would ask, what do you mean by awareness? What do you mean by consciousness? Right, and so, and those words have been used in infinite ways. OK, but... So I don't know exactly what you mean. So there is no exact meaning. There's like a... There's a... appeal to the public nature of language here, which is that, well, if we can't really have precise communication, we can't really have precise thought. I disagree with that. I'm saying I don't really care if we can't communicate precisely. I have a meaning in my conceptual scheme, what I mean by perception. And based on my conversations with most people, I think most people mean the same thing. Like if I, let's say, I poke somebody with a needle, they say, oh, that hurts. I have a theory which says, OK, they have an internal experience as well. They generally use the same language. So that's all I'm doing in this conversation, is saying, is it the case that for the individual, you can have some access to truth, the way that things are in the world, simply by being aware that your awareness is happening, that your perception is happening, your consciousness is happening. Even if you can't communicate it to anybody, you can still know that it's taking place. I don't know. I don't know how that advances the ball at all here on the quit. Wouldn't it be truth? I mean, gosh, that would be a discovery of truth. What could be more exciting? Oh, it would if I said, yes, that's true, but I don't, I say I don't know. Yeah, but you said you don't know why it's important or what it gets at. And that's like a goal itself. Wow, true. Well, fine, I'm just still an agnostic on it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That's my answer to every question, you know? On this, I don't know. And so you haven't gotten me any farther. Okay, so what if, so what do you think about this idea? Because this is kind of my perspective on it and I want to know your thoughts. I think it's the case that there is experience happening that when I use the words, the contents of my perception, I'm actually talking about things that are, so balloonus in my visual field, actually references something in my mind. And the way that I know that is just through being aware of my experience. Like it is the case because there it is. It's like a self-evident truth, even if I can't encode it in a way that other people understand. This is self-evident truth. And if somebody were to say, as I think you are, that I don't know if self-evident truths exist, essentially, or that if they are self-evident, it's kind of, it's almost like leading a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. It's like my claim is, I'm not trying to persuade you that this is the case. I'm just saying, look, I think you can have an experience, like maybe like love experience. I think you can have the experience of a nature in which you will also conclude, I must have some access to truth because I am aware that something blue exists in my visual field or balloonus is happening. Yeah, is this your riff on Cartesianism, basically? Like I think therefore I am, is it kind of your version of this? Yeah, I guess the necessariness of awareness, sure. I don't like the Cartesian cogito because it implies I exist, and then you have to try to define what I is, but if you just say experience is happening, you don't even have to define that. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. It's the honest, so you can know. You can know, though. That's what I'm saying. You can know. I might not be able to persuade you. No, no, Steve, Steve. Yes, here's the thing. You want me to know. No, no, no, no. Why are you bothering with this? Otherwise. Love, my friend. See, that's it. That's it, no, for real. That's it. No, totally, I agree with you on that. It is a kind of human peership that I've discovered something which I found exciting, which is that I do have access to some kind of limited set of truths about the conscience of my consciousness, and so I am freely sharing it with you. I love it. Here's your problem, my friend. Okay. You know, so you're, the apple hasn't fallen too far from the tree, it turns out, I think, which is that, you know, when the missionary went to Peru and stood in the jungle looking at the Indians there and said, God is real. And they said, no, he's not. Our God is real. Yeah. Then they're engaged, right? They're locked in this struggle between this and that. There's this binary opposition going on, which becomes co-constitutive, right? They constitute each other. We are good, which is the opposite of them, right? And then it's a fight, and they're both trying to win over the other, and they're both really worried, and they both are concerned about the other. I don't care. If the Indians had said, I don't know if your God exists, right? Then it's just up to the missionary whether he pulls out the guns, right? Because he can't convince them. The onus is on the person who makes the truth claim. It's not on us. It's not on the relatives. But you're again taking it from a public perspective. I'm not, screw the evangelists, screw the missionaries, good riddance. I'm just saying, hey friend, I have meditated and I've become aware that there are things taking place in my visual field. And I'm guessing, because I think you're another conscious being, that if you are aware, if you've got a white shirt on, so I would say, if you do this thing with your head, where you look down, you will have an experience of a certain nature. That's all. And to say you don't know, and my response is that, well, I'm not gonna persuade you. I'm just gonna, like, you can know. All you have to do is be aware. Okay, does it give me access, are you claiming that it gives me access to a universal truth? That would be part two. So here's why, here's why. In the most limited of senses. And this is where people go crazy. They become dogmatic rationalists. My position is that the truths that you can get access to immediately are within the contents of your experience. And you can have some extremely abstract truths about the nature of logic by meditating on the nature of your experiences. Something like, for example, the blueness in my visual field is the way that it is. And the blueness in my visual field is not the way that it is not. So there's like a white part here and a blue part here. The blue part is not the white part, the white part is not the blue part. Now that actually gets out a very abstract principle of logic, the idea of identity and non-contradiction. Things are the way they are, and they aren't the way they aren't. So in that sense, I do consider that kind of universal. That's true for everything. It is the way it is, and it isn't the way it isn't. It doesn't get you particularly far, it doesn't get you a religion, but I do think that is something that is universal. Okay, so what is your act of love offering me? Like, what will I get from this? If I were to believe you, agree with you? I think that you would get a new belief and the existence of some very limited form of truth. Actually, I'll tell you, I'll give you the hook and then I'll give you the truth. Okay, so the hook is it's kind of, you may discover truth. If you find that interesting, then great, you found something that's interesting and it may set the stage, there may be other things that you can discover. The way, like I wrote a book called Square One, The Foundations of Knowledge, I tried to build a very limited set of knowledge based on these kind of very elementary truths. So that's the hook. The truth is I think that if people pursue this line of reasoning and they discover some objectivity of truth in their life and maybe even think that it's very important, they go, oh, well, I wanna discover more of these. I think that sets them up for having a love experience. Uh-huh, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. It all began with your wife. This whole, the pursuit, the pursuit. Patterson's pursuit began with the love of your wife. Did it not? Nope, it didn't. So I had the idea that it was gonna be Patterson and pursuit indefinitely. Like I had this idea, okay, I have some access to truth, but I just gotta, I'm gonna sort this out. I figured it was gonna take a lifetime. I thought there's no, you're not gonna discover truth, the idea like a whole worldview. You just get maybe a little bit and then keep pursuing. And then totally out of the blue, I found love. And I go, okay, well, so now I discover the most important truth kind of upfront, you know, a few years after discovering these very distant abstract truths. And now it's like, and now it's more important than a lot of, it's more important for my life, but this is still all part of the pursuit of truth. Like this is not. Yeah, but I am right that it is, that's the current pursuit of Patterson's pursuit is stems from your love experience. In a very distant way, yes. So if I were to speak highly of myself, I would say something like, yes, this is all a sinister plot to get people to be ready for love experiences. No, it's not sinister. Well, so that would be a way, I would think highly of myself if I thought that. I was like, okay, I'm doing this only for the purpose of having people pride themselves for love. Well, hang on, hang on, but the reality of the matter is that's part of the motivation. And part of the other motivation is my nihilism, that I am just myself really obsessed with the idea of the truth and figuring it out just for pure curiosity's sake. And I know there are other people out there that are very curious. And so I'm also creating content for them. For them? You discovered a truth about yourself or you think you discovered a truth about yourself and you would like to give access to it to other people? If they're interested, but it's not for them. That's what I'm saying, there's selfishness here. This is why I said, it's like a less romantic way of talking about it, that it's also in my interest because in order to do the kind of research I wanna do, I gotta be outside the academy, which means I gotta find my people and create value for them, that kind of thing. Right, so what was the benefit of what you found for yourself? What was the benefit to you of finding this truth? Which truth, the love truth or the abstract truth? Either one. Well, the love truth, I mean, totally reoriented my life in the sense that it answered a lot of nihilistic questions, so why continue existing? Well, the love is good, something like that. So it's kind of, it's very much fundamental in terms of my own personal actions. In terms of discovering the abstract truth, I don't know, it primed me for my own love experience. So I was maybe 17 or so and I was in Florida doing some research, writing in my notepad and I discovered logic. I discovered basic logical laws. A is A type thing, things are things and I thought, huh, this actually, I think this is true and that just set me up for diving into philosophy and then having this love experience on top of it. Yeah, you're just describing your chronology. Like what was good about it? What was, well, what was good is that as somebody who's seeking truth, I found truth. Right, that's like, what is good about achieving your goal, it's achieving your goal. And in terms of love, I would say love is good. I would say for me, love is like the meaning of life. It's like, it's kind of like, it might be a drug, right? If you take a physicalist approach to how the world works, it might be that in falling in love, I discovered like the most extreme meth that is out there and it's so good that I like want to orient my life around it, I think of that too. But so replace love with God and everything you just said and what's the difference? I mean, I don't see how what you're saying is different than what the missionary said. I don't see how it's not also tautological, which is that if you want good, God is good, therefore you should embrace God. Because if you want, and then what you're saying is if you want good, love is good and therefore you should have love. But I'm not saying that at all. I haven't said should at all. All I'm saying is hello, fellow peer, hello, fellow human. I have discovered some things that if you're interested in the pursuit of truth, I've discovered a very limited set of truths and if you want to know what the good life is, that's a pursuit you have to take but let me just tell you about my experiences. Okay, well then I would say you're not answering my question, though. My question is what did you gain from it and you simply said the good and you don't define good. Ah, okay, well it's not really a conceptual. In other words, that is the question, like what is good here, right? And so you're saying love is good, but that's not an answer. Okay, so let me give you the answer as I might understand it then when this experience happened. I would say that as an idealist, nothing is good and then I directly experienced the incorrectness of that belief. Oh, love is good. And it might just be for me. But how did you know it was good? That's what I'm saying. It's part of the nature of the experience. It's like how do you know that an orgasm feels good? I mean, it's just part of it. You're not telling anybody. You're not saying anything about why it's good. It's like you're holding a secret from us. You're like saying, well, it was good but I can't describe it to you. No, no, it's like seeing a color that you've never seen before.  No, I'm just saying I've experienced an unbelievably beautiful color and if that interests you, then let me tell you about how I got there. If you think I'm wrong, don't believe me. I don't see, I don't, in your description, I'm not hearing anything that's beautiful or good. I'm just hearing the words beautiful or good. But I'm not trying to persuade you. I'm not saying you need to go out and have a love experience. I'm not really not. I'm just saying this is about truth. If you care about truth, it's the hook, right? The hook is if you care about truth or you care about these ideas, you can understand a little bit of truth and then I'm guessing that that will lead some people down the path of discovering what is good on their own. But if you don't, that's fine. Their own good or your good? My guess is their own good. Right, so I don't know. I don't know how people are oriented. All I know is that my values shifted. They changed after this experience. And so I have reason to believe that if I'm structured like other people are structured, their values would probably change too. I'm really not trying to cover you. It's like, I was the first person that ever jumped out of a plane. I was like, oh my gosh, this experience was so amazing. Like, wow. And somebody says, well, why was it good? It's just, well, it just was. You gotta experience it for yourself if you care. I know, you gotta give us something more, man. Like, look, Christians have often said, not always, but often they've said things like, oh, it gives you peace.  You feel anxious all the time. You feel alone, depressed, worried. You feel alienated. All these things that people can relate to, these feelings, and they say, once you embrace Jesus Christ as your savior, you will feel contentment, peace. You will feel oneness. You will feel connection. You will feel all these things. And they give me more words to describe what I felt before and what I will feel once I have this thing. And same with America and Americanism. If you live like us, you will have a wealthier nation, a more prosperous nation. You will have a more peaceful nation. So I don't hear anything except if you do, if you, you'll just find the truth. No, what I'm saying is there's a pitch. People are pitching you something. I could say some of those things just as a description that is peace part of the mindset, partly. It's also partly terrifying. So part of the being in the love mindset is at least in my experience worrying about losing the love mindset or losing the love that I had or losing Julia in that case. So it wasn't just pure peace. It wasn't pure tranquility. So I certainly wouldn't pitch it that way. But I'm really not looking to pitch anything. This is why I take this as pure philosophy. If it's the case that you can't know, if it's the case that there's no truth, you can't know anything, then that's important. And you can live your life however you want based on the non-existence of objective truth. But if there is something like objective truth, then it might be the case that just like you can discover it in terms of the contents of your experience, you might be able to discover it in terms of what is good. It's just something that just like you have to, you have to be aware of your experience of blue to know that it is happening. You have to be the one that has to experience verb in order to know that it's good. But again, I'm not saying it as a pitch. It's just a description. Which is to acknowledge that or accept that I have consciousness. Okay, okay. Is that it? Don't you feel bliss? Yeah, no. I feel like I'd rather be a Christian, frankly. Is it? Well, of course there's glints here. Like what I'm saying, a lot of Christians, I'm sure would agree with what I have to say and a lot of other religions as well. But is that the case that there is at least some acknowledgement or like, okay, yes. You can't, you don't have to take a religion but consciousness is happening however it is happening. Oh, I didn't acknowledge it. I was just saying that's what you're asking for. You got my hopes up, okay. No, that's what you're asking for. And I'm not. No, I'm not asking for anything. I want to know your thoughts. If I'm wrong, I want to know if I'm wrong and why I'm wrong, that's all. Yeah, and I've said this for how long? An hour now, hour and a half, you know. I don't know, I don't know. It could be something else. It could be none of the above. But mostly I just don't know what on earth I'm going to get from it. So, okay, if I were to accept that as a truth that I have what you call awareness, okay, consciousness, what particular doors does that open? Well, for one, you're going to have to go back on the Joe Rogan show and you're going to say, dude, I was converted. There's this guy. I'm now a card carry truth seeker. That's what this is about, Steve. You want to get on the Rogan show? Okay. That's what it is. So honestly, and I say from the ethical nihilist standpoint, I'm not pitching anything. I don't really, so from my perspective, because it really was nihilism and you say, what do I get from it? I think I don't care. You get whatever you get from it.  Hello, you do want me to think that way, don't you? You are trying to convince me of this, aren't you? To be honest, if it were the case that I were wrong. You said it was love. You said it was love. Well, so here's what the love is. The love is me trying to discover truth myself and if I discover it to try to share it with people who care. So if I'm wrong about this, no, I don't want to convince you. I want you to convince me. I want to be in your, I want to be, I want to discover that maybe it's all wrong, if it's all wrong. So my goal is actually genuinely to discover truth if it's out there. And I think it is, which is why I went through the examples that convinced me to see if they would convince you as well. Okay, let me tell you about my happiness. Yeah. So I have been happier since I chose to orient myself toward the world as an agnostic. It grants me the feeling that I have is one that I would call freedom. I feel freer than before. For the reason I was sort of describing in the jungles of Peru with the missionary and the Indian who they're trying to convert. I no longer have a mission to convince you of one thing or another. All I am doing really, and this is what Foucault says he was doing, I think, is trying to stop people or at least get in their way of trying to convert us. Right, because that's really all he's doing. He's not saying this doesn't exist.  You're making truth claims about me and my body and what I should do and where I should be and maybe you might even wanna put me in prison because of that, right? And so all I'm gonna do it to you is say, oh, here's this category man and here's the history of it. And I can show you how it changes over time, radically over space, places, people have thought about it really differently over time and it keeps getting added to and blah, blah, blah.  It's historically contingent. There is nothing in nature or God where it's rooted. I'm very partial to a lot of that except it sounds like the purpose of communication is different between us or between the postmodernist and the non-postmodernist because my claims are, I'm presupposing that there may be objective truth and that if there is, that will be what my beliefs will be oriented around because they're true. If we say we choose our beliefs based on them giving me power and freedom, then the whole conversation is very different, right? So then it's like, well, what ideas make me feel better or what ideas make me happier and more fulfilled with my life? But that's a very different, that's a whole different paradigm. So is that what you're saying that whether or not there is truth is not really relevant because it's not something that's practical for your own life? Well, no, it's all tangled together.  They all have a history and you'll see when you write the history, when you study the history of all the truth claims, whether they're scientific or moral, you'll find that there is a history, meaning that there is an origin and the origin is in human minds. What about logical history though? So let's not, I mean, I'm a radical, I got a radical worldview, but there are logical truths dating back, we're talking pre-aristat all about the law of identity and non-contradiction that really haven't changed. No, logic is a language. It's just like English. It's a language with its own internal structure, it's self-referential, it's a closed system. So sure, one plus one equals two within logic, within mathematics, but does that mean that that has some connection to an objective truth outside of mathematics or logic? Logic is a language if you state that it's a language. Logic, I think, is something like a description of the rules of existence is the way that I would put it. But there's actually a more modern idea that I think of logic as a type of language. There was a bunch of, I would say, anti-progress made in the turn of the 20th century with mathematical logic in particular, which is the idea of treating it purely as a language that you can quantify over and make universal claims, like, and then set theory gets involved and I don't even think it's all murky, but historically speaking, I don't think it's the case that the law of identity was something that's seen as like a convention that we hold within a logical system versus other non-logical systems where something could be contradictory, right? It's something that's pretty, it's universal, at least in almost every world, other than the worldviews of the 20th century. It's pretty much universal. Logic is universal in the worldviews of... The idea of... Of all ages, really? Of the idea of the law of identity, yeah. Things are things, they are what they are. Now, there's a few people like the cradleists back in ancient Greece that might say, oh, there are contradictions out there, but the vast majority of thinkers, Western philosophy and Eastern philosophy, agreed that things are what they are, regardless of what they are. Oh, okay. Maybe we're talking about different things here. I thought you were talking about rationality and reason. No? Not necessarily. So like a good example would be an Eastern philosophy. There's this idea that truth has to be experienced. It's not something to be rationally comprehended or rationally understood. So when you try to describe it, you're not actually describing it because you can't describe the experience correctly. But even they would say or would explain that your experience has the nature that it has or it is the way that it is, which is another way of talking about the law of identity. We're talking about ontology here. Is that right? These are ontological claims. The philosophy of being... No, it would be that throughout ontology, any ontological claim that you make is going to presuppose the law of identity, that the thing you're talking about is whatever it is. That I'm saying is universal, nearly universal. Okay.  What do you mean? How is that logic? So what I'm saying is more fundamental than that, that if Muhammad said that Allah is God, that is the same thing as saying Allah is God, which would be different than saying Allah is not God. So there's a difference between an affirmation and a negation. If I say X is X, it's different than saying X is not X. So there's actually a modern strain it's called Dialethiasts. Grand priest is the most popular one who says that in some circumstances you can have a logical contradiction. You can have something be true and false at the same time. That is very much the exception to the rule of pretty much all of recorded history. Oh. That I have read. Okay. So yeah, I mean, so I'm a deontologist, right? I mean, so I don't make claims of being, of identity. Other people do, like Muhammad did and you do. I don't. So I wait for them to come to me and say, this is this and that is that. And I say, really? Oh, no, no, no. C, C, C. Okay, so the difference is you're saying X is Y.  That's like an identity relationship. That's what it is. That's that what I'm talking about. I'm saying it is what it is. You can name it however you want. Muhammad is Muhammad, God is God, right? That's what I'm saying is the law of identity. Not like naming things and saying, my name is correct. It's just they are things are what they are, which is why, which is why I say that the, this grand priest idea of dialecticism is saying something is and is not at the same time. So like this sentence is false is true and false at the same time is an example they give. Yeah, that's, that's what you're saying is the counter. That's the exception that you're saying. They try to say that the exception to the universality of identity that things are the way they are is a look at the liar's paradox. This is something that is true and false at the same time. It's a contradiction. So they say, ah, therefore the law of identity is not something universal. And I'm saying, I'm saying that dialectism, that idea that there are true contradictions is like very much the extreme minority. You might find it in ancient Greece. One dude with the cradle. So what is, what does the law of identity have to do with logic? So I would say that logic is the rules of existence, the way that I describe it. Lots of people mean different things by the word, but one of the rules of existence is that things are the way they are. And it's an extent, a corollary is the law of non-contradiction. Things are not the way that they are not. Contradictions don't exist because things are the way they are. Those are both logical laws. Okay. And so you are saying, what, what are you saying is true? That the pen is a pen? The pen? And it can't, well, or sorry, it can't be, it can't be pen and non-pen. Is that what you're saying logic is? To the extent that the pen is, it is the way that it is. Right, yeah. Yeah, this is an absolute identity claim. Is that what you mean? Yes, except I'm not claiming that it is a pen. So there's a difference. No, I know, but I know, but there is something. There is a, yeah, so it's an exclusive claim, right? That it's, to the extent that it's a pen, it can't be not pen. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. They can't be X and not X simultaneously. A thing cannot be two contradictions simultaneously. It can't be something it isn't. Or a contradictions, yeah, yeah, yeah. It cannot be, it cannot have a contradictory identity or two, it can't have contradicting identities, I suppose, what do you mean? But I don't even see why that's logic. That's just an assertion. Well, that is logic. I mean, I would say that would you get down to the bottom of it. Now, there are languages you can build on top of logic, right, so you can have like higher order logics that have different types of rules, but I'd say that logic is a word that means lots of different things. If you talk to an mathematician about logic, he'll tell you something different than a historian will tell you something different, right? Indeed, indeed, yeah, right. Driving out here, yeah, so. But you can hung up on the word. I'm saying that rule that I'm talking about, the identity of everything, doesn't matter what it's called, that is something that really is not like a social construction. Like that's something that everybody in every culture with very few exceptions, all the way back since the Greeks, that's not changed. Well, wait. First of all, according to you, there have been people who have not made that social construction, right? You're saying there's a very small minority, but there are some people who have not constructed that thing in that way, so that means. They were wrong, so all you're saying is they were wrong and everybody else was right? That's right, however, the reason I'm saying that is because you brought up the valid point, which is that unlike theories of science, there's not been radical revision. In science, there's been every generation or two or whatever, every hundred years, radical revision, radical revision, radical revision. Oh, wow. It is not so with the law of identity and non-contradiction. You have the very few people that have said, oh, things aren't the way that they are, but other than that, that's really not been revised. In fact, for a long time, I think it was Kant actually said, logic has essentially made no progress since Aristotle for that reason, because it's kind of a sorted out system. Okay, so when you say people, who do you mean? You actually mean every person who's lived on earth? Since the origin of the hominid? Like, who are the people you're talking about who have not refuted this or challenged this idea of the law of identity? What you're calling the law of identity? Yeah, so I would say, unfortunately, I can only reference the people that made history books because I can't know about all the other people whose ideas weren't recorded, but general public intellectuals going back to when we have recorded history have been saying, essentially the same thing, that this is something that's fundamental. Okay, what about Eastern philosophers? Same thing. Really? You'll see that? Okay. I got an interview on my show with a Buddhist teaching at Harvard, who we were talking specifically about the law of identity, because in the West, a lot of people who try to make the claim that, oh, maybe you could have contradictions will appeal to Eastern mysticism and Eastern philosophy, and she kind of laughed and said, you know, that's, no, they weren't stupid. Like, obviously things are the way they are. They were, that's like either a horrible translation or that's a way, when they speak in paradoxes, you know, they speak in contradictions, that's a way to illustrate a point about language more than it is to make it a claim about, you know, the law of identity. Okay, so that according to you, and I'll just take your word for it for now, 99.9% of philosophers East and West have agreed on this. And any other thinker on any other topic who has thought about these kind of fundamental ideas, so it's not just philosophy. Mathematicians, what also, a lot of them would say the same thing. Philosophy, philosopher broadly defined. Okay, so 99.9%, maybe 99.99% of thinkers, public thinkers, right, have agreed on this thing. Steve, please tell me you're not saying this and therefore it's true? Of course not. Sounded like you were saying that because they all agreed on it, must be true. I only brought that up because you were talking about ideas being radically revised, scientific ideas being radically revised, cultural ideas being radically revised, and I'm in total agreement, but so if it's the case that there are objectively discoverable truths that are abstract and maybe at the fundamental logical level, what you would expect to see is precisely what has happened, that everybody disagrees and revises about all of the contingent theories about how the natural world works or whether it exists. The thing that everybody agrees on is the thing that is actually discoverable just by meditating on your experience that things are the way that they are. Oh, it's the introspection that gets us to the truth. If it's the case, well, yes, of course. If it's the case that the truth is that there's experience taking place, then you have to introspect in order to understand that experience is taking place. So you're a Platonist in this way? I don't think so. I mean, I don't exactly know how that category would apply. Well, that's how we arrived at the truth, right? Was by thinking about, you know, just thinking. That's what he was about. And rather than Aristotle who was like, no, go out into the world and study stuff and observe things and measure it. I don't think that would be a fair position to summarize. I mean, maybe you could call it Platonism. I don't get that. I mean, I'm not a Platonist. I'm like a definitely not a Platonist in my metaphysics, but to the extent that Aristotle and Plato covered the law of identity, they agree that things are the way that they are. And I forget that there's a Muslim philosopher, early, early philosopher who was talking about the law of identity. And he said anybody that claims that there's not, that contradictions are possible should be beaten and burned to the point until they admit that to be beaten and burned is not the same as to not be beaten and burned. In other words, that contradictions aren't possible. No, no, no. I was getting at Patterson's pursuit, like what it is and what, am I right? That it presupposes that introspection looking inward, thinking inward, is the general direction toward which truth will be ascertained.  I would say that there is some truth you can discover by being aware of what you're experiencing. But that's what you're trying to get me to do though, right? Look inward and think about my own consciousness. No, don't forget inward. Just look. But look inside myself, right? No, just look. That implies there is a self and all that. Just look to be aware of what is happening. Oh, okay, okay, okay. But it's about my awareness and my awareness alone. Yeah, I would say that because that's what you have direct access to. Yeah, okay, yeah. And so you wanna say that there's something universal about that. No, well, kind of, kind of. In the most limited of sense. It is the case that there is experience of a certain nature taking place, which means I have this amazing ability to take a personal truth or like a conscious experiential truth and turn it into something that's objective. So I can say something, well, of all the things that exist in the world, at least one experience of blue is taking place. So now, so if for anybody that were to claim anywhere in the world at any time that blueness is not taking place, I could say you're actually objectively wrong because blueness is taking place. So that kind of turns the subjective into the objective. Meaning it's taking place in your consciousness. Yes. Yeah, yeah, so you can't write. Well, taking place in my consciousness and my consciousness is something that exists. So if somebody's making a claim about things that exist in the world, at least my consciousness exists in the world. Oh, oh, well, that sounds right there. Like you and I might actually be converging, maybe. I don't think we really are, but at least that sentence or a couple of sentences right there, taken in isolation, converged with my own thinking. Okay, because... Which is this, leave me alone, right? Because that's my whole mission, right?  You make all these claims about me and my consciousness and who I am and everything about me, right?  How do you, first of all, how do you know? Second of all, you're gonna, all you're trying to do is manipulate me and try, I know you're not trying to do this, but that's, you know. So when you say that, that when someone makes a claim that that pen is not blue, to you, your answer is yes, it is, it's blue to me and that's my truth. Kind of, but that's the way that you would phrase it. I would say you're objectively wrong. If you're making a claim that there are no such things as experiences of looking into a computer right now, I'd say you're wrong. I'm certain that there are such things that exist.  You flip it right immediately and start making claims about others. It's not imperialism. I'm just stating what is the case. If somebody is claiming that my mind is not experiencing what my mind is experiencing, they're wrong. No, but you're making claims about my mind and what it's experiencing right now, aren't you? No, I don't know. I don't know that there's any other mind out there. I can't know that. So you're an agnostic on me? I am an agnostic as to whether or not there is another type of consciousness like my own. I have a positive belief that there are lots of them because if I were to go, if I were to have the experience of poking you, I think you would say ow, which makes me think, okay, maybe this is another conscious being but I don't claim any kind of certain knowledge about it. All right, well, I like that too. So what, and if I said that pen in your hand is red, you would say what? Well, I would say if you're having the conscious experience of seeing red, then it is, if we speak the same language, we're having different conscious experiences. If your claim, however, is that it is red in my visual field, I would say you're making an objectively wrong claim about the nature of the world because the blue experience is what's taking place. This is where I get, okay, so it sounds to me like you're, sometimes it sounds like your truth claims are universal and sometimes it sounds like they're particularistic. I call it the objectivity of subjectivity that I can say subjectively true things. I am experiencing blue, but I can make them objective very easily. The blue experience is part of what exists in the world and maybe the ugly part, I don't know. Because you, okay, because you perceive it that way because you, yeah, right? And we're talking about my perception. Yeah, so if you leave it at that, we're good. We're good, I think. I just sounded many times like you weren't leaving at that and I got really nervous, but yeah, no, sure. I don't, I just wouldn't, I wouldn't use terms like objective and truth. So what if I were to say that is not having the experience of looking into a computer right now? Oh, I would say, well, you know, I don't know. And I would disagree. That's what I think that you can know, though, but imagine you were actually having that experience that you described that way. Somebody can be wrong about that. No, I can prove that. I don't know. I don't know how you can prove any of this stuff. You don't have to prove it. You just know it. It's like it's just religious belief, your Christian. It's not religious to say that my experience is of a nature that I know the nature that it is and I describe it with the word blue. And if you use the word red, that means something different to me in my language and it is certainly not the case that the experience is red. I know it. This is why I say it's a big deal because that then that immediately gets you to the laws of logic. It is the way that it is and it isn't the way that it isn't. And suddenly, yeah, we're all Christians now. Let me leave you with something. You may have come across this. Do you know what Nietzsche said about the writing of philosophy? In a concrete sense, like a quote or the general idea. Yeah, yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't. He said that all philosophy is biography. OK. I like that. I like that. So I don't know. I just I'm very I'm taken with this your narrative of, I don't even know exactly what's going on. I'm not trying to say, you know, this explains you or your ideas in any particular way. But I'm just taken. I love this that you that you have a narrative about it about the pursuit Patterson's pursuit, which or Patterson in pursuit, which is that, you know, it kind of began with this sort of general vague idea about there being a truth and that you like that you were attracted to it. Maybe that if it's the case, I know about it. And if it's the case, I don't I want to live my life in a way that is like, oh, there's no such thing as objective truth. Yeah, you were attracted to it. You were moving. So you decided to move forward toward it, toward it, right? And then and then along comes this woman and then you fall in love. And then in that experience, you feel like you have discovered a truth about yourself that you didn't know previously. And then that became much more specifically your pursuit in a way. And you also wanted to give other people access to this thing that might possibly might possibly help them and in various ways. And so that's why you're doing this. And so I just think that that's I think that's really interesting. And I like it. I don't know. Thanks. That's a fair summary. I would say that just as an addendum, I do find truth far more important than the specifics of love. So sure, I might get it. I might be wrong about love being important. And it may very well be totally a hallucination. And it may just I have a brain structure that's susceptible to serotonin in a way. But I wouldn't say that about truth. Whatever the truth is is more if I get unplugged from the matrix and I'm like, hey, Steve, bro, you know, remember that love experience? Yeah, this is what happened. I'd be like, OK, that's more important. I don't know, though. See, because you're saying I see what. So on one level, the overarching mission is the truth, right? OK, cool. But the fact that the love experience confirmed your belief in truth and seemingly accelerated your pursuit of truth. But the love experience didn't concern my belief in truth. I had already logic is the thing that can that that conveys the truth as real. Yeah. And then it was love was totally unexpected. And just like, oh, this is like this is something human. The most important. But my hearing what your own narrative was that it did something to your pursuit, right? It did. There was a moment that was a turning point. It turned me from a nihilist into whatever I am, a love person. But wait, a nihilist does not believe in truth, right? Right. So I say that ethical nihilist and ethical nihilist things that that truth that there is no such thing as like objectively true morality or that statements about morality don't really have meaning to them. But technically, I might be an emotivist, an emotivist, which is like their statements of preference. I think that is the case. Except now I had this love experience is like, OK, this is actually meaningful. Here's here's the meaning. This is what human life can be oriented around, at least my human life. And so that's why it changed me. Yeah. OK. Yeah. And and when I asked you, why are you doing this right now, talking to me this way? You said one word. Love. Yeah. Well, I mean, all right. So I think it's a it's a two-pronged approach for the intellectuals who just want to know about truth. Great. I'm happy to share it. But for those those crazy people that will follow these conclusions wherever they lead, well, they might have a love experience, in which case, I, you know, I would feel pretty good about that. I just want you to think about that. Biography, philosophy, and also one last thing. You know, for Foucault, discourse, all all power is discourse number one. And then number two, he says that discourse, power does not go from top to bottom or even from the bottom to the top of a society. It circulates. It goes laterally. It goes up and down sideways, backwards, diagonally. It goes all the way. It's constantly circulating, right? So that ideas, discourse, concepts, categories, words, claims, truth claims, the color blue, the idea of the color blue, the idea of pens, the idea of Steve, of that, of all these. They're circulating. They have no they have no origin, right? There's no you can't sort of you can't identify a an origin, a Genesis moment to be more apt here. Genesis, right? Inside of a person or anywhere, anywhere, either in the Bible or nature in a person, that it's just all you can see is just these all these things circulating between people among people and back and forth. You say this, I I hear the thing and then I make it into my own concept and I give it back to you. Then it goes back and forth and it goes to your wife and then it goes to my girlfriend. It goes all around the world.  Maybe, but one of the benefits of being somewhat anti-social is that like three quarters of that story doesn't apply to me. This is I'm on my own pursuit. I don't really I I'm fortunate to have discovered the love meth crack that is like the best thing ever. And if I persuade people or don't, it's not as important as me discovering truth myself. OK, but I have kept you much longer than we agreed to. This has been a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I think it's the love and the and the truth conversation. So that's great. All right. Thank you, man. This was fun. All right. That was part two of my conversation with Darius Russell. What do you guys think after listening? Do you walk away a relativist or are you now a dogmatic zealot like myself? Either way, I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. I'm going to try to get that is back on the show to talk about his project Renegade University. We're going to talk about that at the beginning of our conversation, but we just started right off with post-marinism, so we didn't get around to it. But he's actually doing some interesting work outside the Academy. All right, that's all from me today. I hope you guys enjoy your week.


He said Where in there can you find your true self? Where can one find his true self? Well before I answer this question, I think we need to be very clear about what We are going to categorize the true self what we're gonna define as a true self on one hand. We have the self or the idea That our true self is Who we were Before the corruption of societal ideas Who we are at the core? What our natural affinity is to send things but this self here is often shaped still by the events our lives by our parents by our upbringing by Egoic forms By egoic influences. This is the egoic self who we perceive ourselves to be the problem with the egoic self is that it is malleable Who I think I am now my version of myself Can be entirely and completely different to who I think I am in 10 years and it's often different to who I think I was 10 years ago my ideas change My thinking patterns change the variety of other things change These things change because the egoic self is malleable as we said before Now We can't have the egoic self as the grounds or as the basis of the true self because it is too volatile It can be changed by small things if I was brought brought up by Religious parents by Christian parents in Europe, I will be a completely different person to if I was brought up by Islamic parents in Pakistan These two variables the religion and the location can change Your idea of yourself completely So how can we have the true self be something that's so volatile so easily changed by one or two variables? The things that happen in our life that determine our egoic self the events are not in our control So who we become or who our ego believes we are Cannot be our true self. It's doing our control Our true self needs to be something that's consistent something that's constant Something that was has been there since we were born and the only thing I can think of and a lot of Eastern philosophers is Our relationship with awareness our relationship with consciousness itself Our consciousness is simply our relationship with life our subjective experience The field this is the only thing that's there from the time that you are a baby To now that you're an adult the physical form changes Every cell in your body changes Your organs get more complex your brain gets more complex Everything about you besides the fact that you think you're the same person changes Even your thoughts change each time you think about them your memories Your brain changes itself We've all heard about neuroplasticity So consciousness or your Relationship with awareness is the only thing that change is that only that's consistent. That's constant Now you might bring greater awareness to your consciousness That makes any sense awareness being aware of itself But that doesn't mean that it wasn't there. You might stop paying more attention to it, but it was always there Since you're born and this is where the true self can lie because in your relationship with awareness You can find out who you truly are once All the egoic Forms of your identity are stripped away And Meditation is a very good process for this because meditation is the only process in which it's still exhaling ourselves outwards You are observed inwards It's a very special process. I'm sure sim can Tell you all about it. He's done a lot of these retreats where he goes away and just meditates all day so when you meditate you get closer to your true self and After maybe a couple years meditation, you might actually find out who your true self is Or what your true self is? But what I'm gonna hint at in this video. I'm gonna do that is that your true self is Found through your relationship with awareness So to try investigate that and you'll get closer to finding your true self and going through egoic forms Anyway, that's the video guys. I hope I Somewhere answer that question If you like that, make sure you like subscribe comment or a good share. Let's discuss down the bottom So, who are you truly? Who is your true self? peace


Gotta farm stuff for something else for my next weapon. I'm gonna stay on bow But I need to farm something else. I'm trying to figure out what what I want to go with next It's happening to okay Google What's the best Back pipe Because there is no best weapon, but tell me anyway What should be the first one I should get that I should say Nergy and Legiana nergy, so what does he offer that? I did do forage. I Can't see the the skills. Can I don't have anything selected nergy on up and Legiana hovered over a hit to to hit the songless Okay, it has earplugs. That's good. That one doesn't have earplugs Bone horn is usually really good because it gives attack up And you can use an element less less jewel on it too and it has earplugs small As I don't know what s means. I'm assuming small. Oh The longest short I got you. I got you. Okay All right, we'll start with bone and then I mean, there's a lot of options on the bone So I can start on history Man that's scrolling is so weird. Good God. That's a lot of songs on Dragonbone. I Kind of don't want too many songs. I Like having to tack up and I like having earplugs.  I'm done eating dinner. So we can start playing again soon I just go bone. I can back and I can build that one all the way up to the top I'm just short on money. I don't think I need to farm anything now Which one of these is similar to the original bone though earplugs and Attack up best void Ratabon Dragonbone Karen Black steel stamina use reduces Zeno attack and defense up whoa That's Zeno horns looking good.  I think you're nuts, sir. Let's go ahead and down great. That's I equipped it. Um Let's go down the best void Then go here It's part of Dragonbone, but don't you have to go to Best void to get to Dragonbone I can't do this yet I gotta do something here You sure about that man?  I'll keep the bone I'll keep the bone. I'll take the bone up to uh And then I'll craft that separately Where's my money? 18k I better stop It's hard to see. There we go. Honeyhorn. Okay. Uh, let's find Dragonbone Um, I can do that one Wait, it's black steel. Oh, that looks interesting And sufficient funds a black steel All right, so I got $6,000 But I do have the gems for it I can sell some stuff for it and then I can come down here And then I'm gonna need two Xenotales and a gem He's mad. He's completely mad That guy's nuts Just like zinc row. All right. How far can I go with this? Uh Two All right, zinc row have a have a have a bed And I'm broke Have a bed Look at this thing sticking out of my back Um sell items All right, let's see. What do we got? I've already neutered all of my freaking ore Um So like 50 of these 40 I guess. No, let's do 30 Don't need that many and keen bones 30 of these Them bones them bones them bones You just made a katana. Why would you do that? I didn't mean to equip this. I don't know. I got it. Um Do the gamma do the gamma All right, we're broke But we got it top tier bone Six rarity six right. Yeah rarity six Top tier bone and we're going to be white or wishlisting The zeno which we already did. All right, cool. So I got a bone to level up with I got a bone to pick with you, sir Um armor What kind of armor do I need for this?  I want money. I have it all these years. I got the money. I got a money mantle Anybody that money mantle Oops All right, so now max That's level two Oh my goodness all these years. I wasn't even touching my nirgagante stuff Wow And I have no money I think because I couldn't it wouldn't let me No, yes And I think once I hit a certain hr. I could again. I gotta get some money. Let's go sell some more monies I'm running out of a lot of things that I have All right, let's go kill something. What do you guys want to farm? I want to learn this I probably should go practice it first, huh? This is the ugliest thing I've ever seen in battle. It's ridiculous. What is this? Sprint please Here what we got I need money Here we go. I'm going to horn you to death Sir Okay Strong combo when the enemy is vulnerable All right, here we go The hunting horn is a close range support weapon that plays status buffing melodies Buff yourself and the team to gain the upper hand Wait, right click Plus w all the buttons Plus both the buttons And then w then both the buttons Okay, that is a lot of heavy swings Combo including self-improvement W plus that guy I mean what? W plus that guy Left click Shift shift Let's bust out the hunting horn to get some tempered buns. I'm down with that I'm actually am I actually am all right. Combo in place right click left click Lightning bolt w plus space Wet What's the w plus space supposed to do? There we go No, I'm not I'm not looking at the music right now I'm just looking at the combos that they're they have on the bottom left That does nothing. It's just a roll all right Right click wait W plus, okay, left click Ooh Plus this guy Plus this guy Plus play I'm learning the basics. Don't tell me how to learn Okay, this is a song of learning literally Okay, so attack up L Wait, what? Okay, that's purple says What's okay? That's right click Left click okay both and then right click And they perform That's attack up I have to map the colors to the buttons. So it's like purples left click Red is right click The blue is both buttons and then Yeah, so if you want earplugs You do bam Bam Bam Bam That's kind of difficult I'm just thinking about doing this around a monster Right And you're like, all right, I got to play a thong and then he kicks you kicks you All right, I'm gonna play a thong left click Right click Body blow Left click I think I did it right Wait, why was that extra long? Oh because I already had it playing all right Slaying with the power of song. All right, let's do it. I got it Left click right click both click left click Left click right click both click left click left click Right click I'm gonna be playing every all the wrong songs by the way So be be be be You have to sharpen this Are you kidding me? I mean, I don't want to be flat chat Chat I don't want to be chat chat. You're over this chat chat I don't want to be flat So I need to sharpen my weapon What on god's name is you holding? It is a giant bagpipe made of bone. All right, we're gonna go fail Oh, let's hunt something Xeno G finds a period chat. Let's do it. Let's go. Let's go. We're gonna fight xeno That's a sign. That's a sign right there He just the guys is not gonna show up for no reason man We gotta fight them. Come on. Let's go Yes Yes Yeah, yes Xeno, let's do it. Let's go make some point session and chat. Um I suppose the bowl. Yeah, this this this uh, yeah Yeah, this this ought to be fine, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's go. Let's go Let's go. Let's do this Come on. Where's everybody? Let's go make some point session join up I'm gonna do attack. Oh, that's pretty I'm barely falling with hammer. So I kind of know I just need to hang around this front feet And dodge all the stuff All right, so it's right click left click both click left click Just gotta keep this up All right, we go No Oh, I'm not gonna commit the full combos. I I'm gonna we're gonna we're gonna play hammer style We're just gonna we're gonna smash them up And when I get a free moment, I'll play the buffs I am no way gonna be committing the full what you call it. All right. I need to put on some armor I got the bandit mantle hook you up with that Armor scan Nope Or the footsies That hit me You know what I really should have the vitality mantle chat So that's the song I played That was just self-improvement. All right I saw I saw I saw um Movement speed up up here I'll see if I can do it now No, I can't actually Yes Yes Yes Play that funky music. Why boy? I will heal team Actually, I didn't get the song off, but that's cool Lay down the bro. Ah, oh that was close Would you please put this away put the song put stop playing Would you sir sir sir? All right, we're good Play up funky. Okay on the back. I got this So whatever I've done on the top left. That's what will happen If I play the music and now it's getting it's getting kind of get kind of heavy chat It's getting it's getting it's getting kind of heavy Okay, that's what it is. All right. Cool.    I don't think is it Crap I keep hitting the wrong buttons Okay, so tab So let's click Play that song boy Oh, I'm breaking it down That wasn't quite what I wanted to do, but that's okay Play that funky. Okay.


Before we get into the video guys, I'm giving away 11,500 Apex coins to be with a chance of winning them. Make sure you are subbed to this channel, drop a like on the video and leave a comment down below. More details are in the video description. What is going on guys, welcome back to the channel and I appreciate you being here. Today I bring you my Apex Legends Community Highlights Clips Video, Episode 3. I hope you guys do enjoy it. If you want to click featured, send it into the email I just linked at the top of the video description. I want to thank you all for the support and the great clips you have been submitted. I hope you enjoyed the video and hopefully I will see you on that next one. I'm sorry dude, I just hit that, yeah, I hit like an InSpec 360 off a building. You are the Apex Champions. Ah, that was actually, my mom just called me, that's it, I'm sorry. No way bro, what do you have on that gun? Hit a marble, yeah I just seen him, I'm coming in with Mozambique. I think, have they buffed Mozambique, I just hit a 30 shot with it, I, yeah, it's better than people are saying it is. I've just been finished but, I just hit two 30 shots, er, 50 shots with it.  And they're just literally, they're literally through all, you want to try and get me in?


Today we're going to be talking about why I'm still in a hospital. So those of you who don't know, I've been in a hospital for the past 10 months under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act. So why am I still in a hospital? There's a few reasons. One, I'm receiving treatment, that being medication. Those didn't see my last video, I started Lithium. I've also had my health, Herodotus changed and my medication in general has just been changed while I've been here. The next bigger reason is that we're waiting to find placement for me to leave Heart Bill. It's in the works, like right now as I'm speaking. Looking at supported living or a residential rehab. Another reason why I haven't been discharged yet is because legally I'm homeless. I don't have anywhere to be discharged to. Which is why getting a placement is so, so important. So that's kind of it really. I'm sorry it's not a very long video, but that's why I'm still in a hospital. Treatment, waiting for placement. Thanks for watching this video and I'll see you in my next one.


My name is Armando Alfredo Chitica Holguín and I'm from Mexico and I'm studying water management with the specialization in water conflict management. Well academically it's the first models were not so easy that as a lawyer I have a hard time with the mathematics hydrogeology and hydrology so and socially that helps us because our peers from other parts of the world help us to understand and remember the math and algebra and the basic calculations and then we help them to the with the other models that were more of analyzing the data and more about rewriting stuff and essays. Well the city is great I love Delft the city is beautiful the Institute by itself it's it's not a huge campus but has a perfect environment to study and make friends and learn a lot professionally and academically. Well the water management group we went to first Spain and then Portugal in Spain we were able to interview people from the government and from NGOs and well first Spain it's the main country in Europe with greenhouses so that's where they supply all the food in in Europe in the winter because they have a very good climate but because of all the production they have there's a lot of water scarcity in the groundwater so we came to to help and analyze the situation and to give recommendations to the government on how to act to help the over exploitation of the aquifers and then we did we did the same thing in Portugal because they shared a river basin so as a water conflict management it's very interesting to see the the situation they have between both countries how they manage the water resources between both countries. Well first of all we applied what we learned in class but also between our peers we get to know each other better and yeah to create a synergy in the group that is very positive for our relations professionally. My favorite class well I have two favorite classes one was water conflict management with the professor Saki Schubert and the other one was water law and environmental law with Fran Jasper and Jojita Gupta which is not a coincidence because with Saki Schubert she's the coordinator of my specialization and water law it's my mentor and my supervisor for the thesis. My research will be in Mexico first Mexico City and then in Chihuahua State as the case study and the topic is about the water property in Latin America we'll focus on the 18 countries in Latin America to see how the water property is in the law in the constitution of each of the countries that speaks Spanish that's where the focus will be on and then we'll focus on the case in Mexico to see how is the the relation between the existing laws and how is their applied in the in the ground. It's it's it's starting in IHDELF it's both very helpful for for the future and for the experiences you have before coming but also will give you the tools to to be a better student and to learn more about the water which is the main topic in the incident. The social evenings in IHDELF it's it's great because you get to meet people from all the continents here in a more relaxed manner you get to to taste different kind of dishes from the Netherlands. Well the student housing duo in in this case has in Papenstraat a really nearby apartment that's where we live it's six minutes from here when you are very in a hurry six minutes you can do walking normally you can do eight depends on how early you wake up to classes and well after classes in my free time I like to run I am in the running group here in IHDELF. Time passes really quickly here I cannot believe that with the juniors here one month ago I was still junior and now I cannot believe that I'm always I'm a senior now and all these last year went very fast so what I recommend to the future students is to study hard because time flies by. Well it's it's beautiful to see how in real life the politics in both countries can have conflicts and here in IHDELF you grow friendships between those countries so it's it's incredible to see people yeah I don't want to mention maybe the the countries but here yeah you cross that barrier of of the friendship that maybe governments can learn from.


Since my first days in office, I vowed to transition Pennsylvania to a simple, traditional Medicaid expansion plan in order to simplify a previously complicated process and ensure that hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians would have greater access to the health insurance they need. Last April, we did just that by launching the expansion of Pennsylvania's Medicaid program known as Health Choices. This expansion alleviated confusion, removed unnecessary red tape, and streamlined the system so that people can see a doctor when they're sick and health care professionals have more time to concentrate on providing quality care. One year later, more than 600,000 Pennsylvanians who were not previously covered now have health care coverage. The Commonwealth's uninsured rate has dropped more than 6 percentage points in the last three years, and the state general fund costs have been reduced by more than 500 million. I am thrilled to see the success of this expansion in the one year since its announcement. Because of the expansion of Medicaid, hundreds of thousands of people have a brighter future and better potential health outcomes. We are excited to enroll even more Pennsylvanians in our next outreach efforts. To find out how you or someone you know could enroll in Health Choices, go to the website below.


Water control is one of the most important considerations in planning your next stream-smart road crossing project. Without adequate water controls, excavation becomes very difficult, sediment can end up in the stream, violations can then occur, project costs can go up and your schedule can be thrown off, not implementing the project successfully. In this video, we'll share some issues that are important to keep in mind and avoid in your next stream-smart road crossing project. The first piece is timing. In-water work here in Maine typically is required to occur between July 15th and September 30th, and that's the driest time of the year in the middle of summer. This is when streams and rivers are at their lowest, so there's less water to manage and reroute and control, making the project run more smoothly and effectively. In preparing your schedule, it's also important to make sure you have all of your permits in hand before construction starts. Consulting early and often with your local natural resource agency will help make sure you get your permits on time. Coordinating early and often with natural resource agencies to make sure you're accounting for any state or federally-listed species that may be present in your work zone. This helps you plan and make sure you're accounting for the mitigation measures that you will have to implement in order to meet the compliance that's required. In preparing to mobilize your equipment, the first step will typically be to remove the fish that are within the work zone. Coordinating with local natural resource agencies to have qualified biologists on-site to implement this work is key. They'll first install block nets above and below the work site so that once fish are removed, they cannot swim back into the work zone. Typically, the biologist will electrophish the entire reach to capture those fish and then relocate them into appropriate habitat. This is also a great opportunity to see what fish are in the stream that will benefit from your Roadstream Crossing project. In addition to having the water controlled within the stream so that your work area is dry, you need to also make sure that the erosion controls on-site are in place and functional. Silt fences and hay bells are some examples of best management practices that make sure that sediment that's moving around on-site do not make it into the stream or the river or the adjacent wetlands. In planning the equipment needed to have on-site, it's very important to make sure the pumps are adequately sized given the stream or river that you're working within. These pumps are important to move the clean and dirty water in and out of the work area so that the equipment can move efficiently and effectively and the project can stay on schedule. Not having appropriately sized pumps or enough fuel on-site or having someone not pay attention to these water control measures will easily result in project delays, especially when an unexpected rainstorm sweeps through. This can result in violations, it can result in higher project costs, and then it could result in a project not getting done on time. Let's talk a little bit more about the details of water control in the process of constructing a StreamSmart crossing. A StreamSmart construction project definitely demands good water control, and that water control happens in two different ways, and there are quite a few details too I'd like to discuss with you. We need to control stream flow, so even in a summer time like this with low stream flow, we have water to deal with. With fish and other organisms we've talked about controlling and removing from the work site, we need to allow that flow to continue somehow through or around the work site. And we also are going to be generating some dirty water in the process of construction. We want to keep the site as dry as possible to make excavation as simple as possible, and then we need to remove that dirty water from the work site. So depending on the type of crossing we're building, either a closed bottom crossing where we excavate the entire site, or an open bottom crossing where we often are digging simply two trenches, one on either side of the center of the crossing in the stream. We need to do these things differently, but we still need to control the water. The simplest approach we like to use in handling the flow of the stream through or around the site is to simply leave the existing culvert in place to carry the water right through the middle of the site and dig on either side of it for our footings and abutments to put in a new stream smart crossing. Sometimes that doesn't work because the current crossing is simply not competent enough, it's rotting and falling apart and it just can't carry the flow. In other times it's not long enough or it's at the wrong angle and so we need to use a different approach. Sometimes in those cases we can simply remove the old culvert while we pump water around and add a temporary plastic pipe that's at the right length and the right elevation to carry the water right through the site. If we're going to build a big closed bottom structure like this one, we need to excavate the entire site and that means running the water all the way around the site either with a bypass pipe or a bypass channel or the simplest method that we often use that does take a little bit more maintenance and work and energy is to pump around the site. When we have our upstream cofferdam in place to back up water there, we pick up the water from there and we pump it around the site with a series of hoses to distribute the water back down to the downstream area below the downstream cofferdam keeping the work zone free of any incursions of stream flow. This ensures that the fish living in the upstream area and the downstream area are able to continue their living in the stream while we do our work. It's really important when using pumps to divert stream flow to be sure you have screening on the pump intake so you're not sucking fish up into your pumps and it's also really important to think about how far that water has to go to be sure you have enough hoses and know where those hoses are going to run to be sure that you're passing the water effectively and not interrupting the construction zone unneededly. It's also really important to have somebody assigned to manage that whole system of pumps and hoses and fuel it takes to keep them going to keep from getting fuel in the stream and in wetlands but also to be sure the system works and continues to work throughout the process of construction. The other aspect of water control is handling the dirty water that gets generated. Once we've blocked off the clean stream flow and are pumping it around or bypassing the work site we're going to be generating some dirty water and we need to manage it. There are several ways to filter it in the nearby forest with a couple of different methods. One way, the simplest way, is to simply pump that water out of the work zone into the nearby forest and diffuse the flow at the outlet of the hose or pipe with some filter fabric so that there is no exposed soil. The forest floor is not eroded but that water can simply seep into the forest floor and eventually make its way either perhaps across the surface of the forest floor or through the ground water back into the stream. Sometimes when you have a lot more water to handle it's really important to have a series of filter basins. The simplest form are composed of hay bales and filter fabric where the water can flow from one into the other and the other to be able to filter out any fine sediment that is suspended in that dirty water before any of the water makes its way back to the downstream area. Another approach we use often is to use a filter bag where the outlet hose of the dirty water pump is flowing into a filter bag that does that filtration itself. The water then oozes and sort of seeps out of that filter bag into the forest floor and eventually back down into the downstream area. Several of the common problems we see in controlling water at our sites relates to the size of the crossing. On a lot of smaller crossings, let's say six feet wide to even up to twenty feet wide, we don't generate a lot of dirty water so often just a little two inch pump can do. It's really important to look at the weather and to do some calculations about how much water you're really able to move around your work site with whatever pumps you've chosen. Make sure you have extra capacity, make sure you have pumps on standby in case you need them and plenty of extra hoses to be able to reach where you need to go. And often we've had hoses with holes in them leaking dirty water in places it shouldn't be. The best way we've found to solve that problem is to run a pipe under the roadway where the work is going on. Excavators and dump trucks are going back and forth and the dirty water hoses and for that matter the clean water hoses can be rooted through those pipes to keep from being damaged and to keep from limiting the construction activity to make it a little bit more efficient.  The best solution for that is to dig that sump hole quite large and fill it with three-quarter inch clean crushed stone and have your pump intake embedded in the middle of it and that way the surface of the crushed stone can act as a filter to hold out the dirty woody debris from clogging up the intake of the pump and hopefully provide enough water flow through the stone to evacuate that dirty water out to where you need it to go. When we're finished with our site, we've built a beautiful new crossing, we've built our stream bed and banks inside, we need to remove our water control and water diversion approaches and mechanisms which is the upstream cofferdam and a downstream cofferdam and all the hoses that were involved in that. And so that takes a little bit of time and planning and should be done carefully. What we usually do is slowly release the upstream flow from the upstream cofferdam and keep pumping all the dirty water that that sometimes generates out into the area where we're filtering the dirty water. We do that slowly in a controlled way so that we can manage that dirty water flow and eventually as the water clears up we can release the cofferdam entirely and allow the stream to flow naturally as we would want it to be after we're absolutely finished with our stream crossing construction. By having a good plan for water control and moving through it very carefully, being sure you have backup plans for big summer storms that do sometimes come during our construction projects, by attending to these details, keeping people on staff knowledgeable and responsible for controlling the water. These projects can go very, very smoothly and efficiently and costs can be kept within budget and problems can be avoided. When we're finished with our StreamSmart crossing, we always remember our key goal. We know that we want habitats to be connected for aquatic critters and for terrestrial animals. We know we want to protect the roadway against the threat of future storms and large flood events. We know that we're accomplishing our goal when we build a StreamSmart crossing according to our design. We want the stream to be able to act like a stream.