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Aug. 23, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:30:49

Metaphysics and Art: A Philosophical Examination

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	Well, well, well. Hey everybody, good afternoon.
	Hope you're doing well. It is the 22nd of August 2022.
	Wow, 2222.
	That's a whole lot of eights.
	And we are going to eat up problems in philosophy today like you wouldn't even believe.
	Now... Let me tell you something interesting.
	And this is maybe a humble brag, maybe what?
	So I look at these problems, I sit down, and I'm able to solve them fairly easily.
	Now, this doesn't mean that I'm right.
	This doesn't mean that I'm so smart.
	But what it does mean, well, it means three possibilities.
	Either I am, you know, super smart and able to solve these philosophical problems.
	That's one possibility.
	The other possibility is that I'm, you know, mad, vainglorious, deluded, narcissistic, a megalomaniacal person who believes he's solved problems which he hasn't because of an inability to admit error.
	That's another possibility and something that always should certainly be on the table.
	The third is that I'm not particularly smarter than other philosophers, but because I'm willing to go to a blank slate because I've taken lots of therapy and done a significant amount of self-knowledge, that I'm able to Answer questions that other people have emotional blocks to.
	I guess there's four.
	Now the fourth is that these questions were always pretty easy to answer, but they were inconvenient to people in power if they were answered, right?
	If the question of the nature of reality is answered relatively simply, relatively easily, then the reason why it hasn't been answered to general satisfaction is Is that the answer is inconvenient or negative or harms the interest of those in power, in which case people just, you know, like salmon in a swift current, they just kind of line up that way.
	So I think it's more the latter, and because we have this technology, we have this conversation, and I have the self-knowledge and more than a few brain cells to rub together on the problem.
	Yeah, I think we've, I think we got it.
	Bagged and tagged! Metaphysics.
	So I'm going to read this article.
	And I'm happy to take questions, criticisms.
	This is probably not the final version, but it's a pretty darn good start, as I would say.
	All right. The Beautiful Truth About Reality by Stefan Molyneux, host of Free Domain.
	There is an old saying in philosophy, which is that metaphysics is not a problem to be solved, but a disease to be cured.
	Metaphysics is notoriously tricky but eminently solvable.
	The definition of metaphysics is the study of the nature of reality.
	This naturally begs the question, what is reality?
	Now, there are definitely challenging problems in philosophy, such as the definition of ethics and virtue, and morally appropriate actions in ambiguous circumstances and so on.
	However, philosophy should at least be able to answer the question that is easily and instinctually answered by every other living being.
	Single-celled organisms can tell the difference between themselves and others, between food and debris.
	Insects can navigate from one continent to another, as can birds.
	And babies can very quickly figure out the difference between themselves and the world around them.
	Is it reasonable to hope that philosophy can answer a question easily solved by tiny-brained organisms?
	Ethics is a discipline peculiar to human beings, but the need to differentiate between dreams and reality is common to countless creatures who never need to bother their minds about virtue.
	In other words, if little brains can solve a problem effortlessly, surely big brains can solve it as well.
	If a six-month-old baby can lift a weight, surely an adult can as well.
	The failure of philosophy to resoundingly answer a question easily solved by your average bee has not done much to enhance the reputation of philosophy.
	The general perception that philosophy is an abstract and useless discipline that has little or nothing to do with practical life is only further embedded in our minds when we wake from a nightmare knowing for certain it was not real and philosophers wag their fingers at us and claim that we have no way of actually knowing that.
	The vast majority of people have no trouble whatsoever navigating empirical reality.
	In fact, those who claim they cannot do this, who see visions or believe that they can fly, are defined as mentally ill and treated as such.
	The everyday tools and machines that we use to navigate empirical reality and survive within it are all designed, created, marketed, transported, and sold by people with a full and complete ability to differentiate waking reality from subjective impressions.
	Try giving a child the idea of candy rather than an actual piece of candy and see how he or she reacts.
	Even a toddler has no trouble differentiating between the contents of a mind, an idea, and something in reality, a piece of candy.
	We can only hope that giant brain philosophers can achieve the empirical wisdom of an 18-month-old toddler.
	The first thing to understand about metaphysics is that it is the study of everything in the universe except the human mind.
	Subjectivity, by definition, is that which occurs within the mind and therefore is not reflected or reproduced in external reality.
	You may prefer the color red.
	I prefer the color blue.
	The objective wavelengths representing red and blue exist in the world and can be measured objectively, but the preferences exist only in our minds.
	Now, you might be screaming at me and claiming that I am begging the question or jumping the gun because I have just casually tossed off a definition of subjective and objective without proving anything, and you might cry that these are all just assumptions without evidence.
	If you've ever played golf and really worked to improve your swing, one of the things a coach will do is take a video of you and then slow it down so that you can see every detail of your movements.
	Slowing down to see the details is essential for improvement in both sports and thought.
	You are reading this using your eyes or listening to it using your ears.
	Your reaction that I have not proven anything proves that you have already proven everything.
	If you say that I have not proven anything as yet, then when we slow down your thought process, we can understand that you have fully and completely accepted the following.
	I exist.
	I am responsible for what I have written.
	Language has meaning.
	Evidence is required for proof.
	These senses operate in an objective manner, in this case, your eyes reading my words, or your ears hearing them.
	An objective reality exists that both you and I inhabit.
	There is more, much more, But these are the most essential facts that you accept in order to both read and respond to my writing.
	The moment that you correct me or object to my arguments, you have established every root premise required for the acceptance of objective and empirical reality.
	If you disagree with me and want to argue with me rather than with yourself, then you accept that I exist independent of your mind.
	You also accept property rights, by the way, because you accept that I am responsible for the products of my actions, that it is my argument.
	By demanding that I provide proof...
	You are demanding that I conform to an objective standard of reason and evidence and that something is not true just because I say it is true.
	In other words, you accept a standard independent of consciousness to validate truth claims made by a human mind.
	Now, it could be the case that you believe that another personality within your own mind wrote the arguments above, in which case you will never contact me to correct me, or never tell anyone that I am wrong, but rather will descend into arguing with yourself, which will remain invisible to everyone else.
	If both you and I exist...
	And language has meaning, and arguments must conform to objective standards in order to be valid, and an objective empirical reality exists that we both inhabit, and the senses are valid, what answers required by metaphysics have not been provided?
	The question of whether other minds exist is easily answered.
	Does knowledge exist in the world that you have not yet attained?
	I don't speak Japanese, but I accept that the Japanese language exists and is valid and is spoken by millions and millions of people.
	I do not have the mathematical ability to plot a course for a spaceship to pass by the planet Pluto, but I accept that others do have this ability because spaceships have passed by the planet Pluto.
	I do not have the ability to forecast the weather, but I accept that weather forecasters exist and are usually accurate.
	I do not have the ability to build a computer from scratch and program voice recognition software to type out what I am saying, but this is how I am producing this article, so I accept that other people exist who possess knowledge that I do not.
	Songs come into my ears that I did not compose.
	I consume books I did not write, and I eat food that I do not know how to produce.
	I drive a car I did not create myself, cooled by an air-conditioning system I do not understand, powered by gasoline that I did not dig out of the earth.
	Since I am perpetually surrounded by the products of mines not my own, and, in fact, I need to accept the products of mines not my own in order to make this argument and share it, it would be truly perverse for me to deny that which I require to make my argument.
	This would be like a jazz trumpeter claiming that he did not need to breathe in order to produce music, or a dairy farmer claiming that he did not need cows to produce milk.
	So, if minds exist other than my own, the question must be, where do they exist?
	Remember, I said that metaphysics was the study of everything in the universe except the human mind.
	So naturally, if minds other than my own exist, they must exist in an empirical objective realm.
	Why must they exist in an empirical realm?
	Well, simply because I have no way of confirming the existence of other minds without using the empirical evidence of my senses.
	Since telepathy does not exist, I must read the products of other minds through their writing or view their paintings or listen to their music or touch their fabric or taste their food.
	Every single piece of evidence for the existence of other minds comes to me.
	Through my senses. Now, if I reject the evidence of my senses then no one has to worry about my arguments for very long because I will walk into traffic or step off a building or refuse to eat or drink.
	If you write to me and tell me that I am wrong about something I will simply tell you that I never said such a thing.
	If you provide me evidence that I did, I will simply say that your senses have deceived you into misinterpreting that evidence, and we will never have to discuss anything of any philosophical or intellectual import.
	By rejecting the evidence of the senses, you exclude yourself from any participation in the realm of philosophy, since all philosophical material must be communicated through the evidence of the senses.
	Making the philosophical argument that you reject the senses is truly as insane as taking a train journey with me in order to prove that trains do not exist.
	And even if you pull a full Cartesian argument and say that your senses are all being manipulated by an external being of some kind, that you are really a brain in a tank being controlled for some unknowable purpose, You still have not proven that the senses are invalid,
	because in order to be controlled, that external being must have used the evidence of its senses in order to accept that you exist and to wire you up to manipulate you and to make sure your brain receives enough oxygen and nutrition to stay alive.
	And all of this must be accomplished by the acceptance of objective reality provided through the evidence of the senses for the controlling demon hell-bent on manipulating you.
	In the same way, a blind man cannot both demand a seeing eye dog and claim that there is no such thing as vision in any animal.
	If his own eyes do not work, but he wants a seeing eye dog, it's because he accepts that the dog can in fact see.
	His deficiency does not prove that eyes do not work, but only that his eyes do not work.
	In the same way, if you are a brain in a tank being manipulated and therefore cannot trust the evidence of your senses, this does not prove that the senses are invalid, since the being that is controlling you can only do so by accepting the evidence of its own senses.
	A proposition can never be accepted as true if there is no possible disapproof.
	If we combine this principle with the principle of Occam's razor, we can easily throw aside the Cartesian argument that our supposedly objective reality might just be a complex manipulation inflicted on us by an external being.
	In other words, if we have a perfectly rational explanation that only requires one reality, claiming, without any standard or disproof, that there is more than one reality is invalid.
	If we claim that we are a brain in a tank being manipulated by an external demon, and any standard provided that could disprove this hypothesis is rejected out of hand, then the claim fails, because that which is asserted without evidence can be rejected without evidence.
	Also, as I wrote in my previous book Essential Philosophy, the proposition that everything we experience could be artificially created by an external demon fails.
	Due to Occam's razor, because it falls under the umbrella of infinite regression.
	If we are being manipulated by a demon, there is no rational reason why that demon itself is not being manipulated by an external demon, and so on and so on to infinity.
	In other words, we would need infinite universes, which means infinite energy, infinite space, and infinite time, in order to even remotely be able to sustain our hypothesis.
	When none of this is necessary because we only need one universe for the objective reality delivered through the evidence of the senses hypothesis.
	Of course, if someone genuinely believes that he is a brain in a tank being manipulated by an external demon, he would never bother to share this hypothesis because he would only be making the argument within the experiment of the demon.
	Which the demon already knows is an experiment and accepts the facts.
	I don't bother making the argument to a fellow airline passenger that airplanes exist and that flight is possible because we are already in the air.
	So he naturally accepts that as a reality.
	In the same way, if you were just a phantasm created by a demon in my mind...
	I'm not going to bother trying to convince you of that because the demon which controls you already knows that that is true.
	That would be like trying to convince a puppet master that he controls his puppets.
	He already accepts that he does.
	So you're not convincing him of anything he does not already know.
	It is certainly possible to reject every shred of evidence against the Cartesian demon hypothesis and maintain that it is true or possible no matter what But then we face the empirical challenge of someone both claiming that you do not exist, while at the same time wanting to change your mind.
	This can only be shrugged off and walked away from.
	A person who cannot recognize this essential contradiction is beyond reason, and therefore beyond hope.
	Furthermore, for those of us who accept the prosaic reality that our minds require sustenance and that sustenance is only available in the objective world, it follows exactly that anyone and everyone who argues against the validity of objective reality has spent their whole lives finding sustenance within that objective reality in order to be alive to make the argument against it.
	It is even crazier than slapping me in order to prove that human beings do not have arms.
	If a 40-year-old man is arguing with me, claiming that objective reality does not exist, I know with absolute certainty that he has spent 40 years gaining sustenance from objective reality since we cannot fill our bellies by imagining food.
	Since he is only alive because he accepts objective reality, arguing against objective reality is arguing against his own existence.
	If someone screams in my face that he does not exist and sound does not exist and I do not exist, then I take some slow and very careful steps backward because that person has lost his mind and is extremely dangerous.
	If someone uses the evidence of my senses to attempt to disprove the validity of my senses, in other words, they make an argument, then they are equally deranged.
	If someone truly believes that I am an imaginary avatar created by a manipulative demon and then attempts to convince me of that fact, then they accept that I exist and do not know that I am the product of demonic manipulation.
	However, if I do not exist, then they are merely talking to the demon, which already knows that it is manipulating that individual.
	This is about as sane as attempting to convince a prison guard that you are in prison and he is guarding you.
	We can only pity the derangement that would produce such twisted and distorted arguments.
	Differentiating between objective and subjective experiences requires only that we accept that one realm provides consistent principles and properties, while the other realm does not.
	Dreams are notoriously chaotic.
	The rules of identity in physics do not apply consistently.
	Sometimes we can fly.
	Sometimes we can breathe underwater or walk through fire without being hurt.
	A time span of months can occur in a one-hour dream, or a moment can be stretched out to almost infinity.
	We abruptly change locations without any transition, meet people long dead, and encounter fantastical creatures with contradictory properties.
	In comparison, the waking world does not afford us such chaotic luxuries.
	Objects do not change their properties without cause.
	Physical laws are never violated.
	We cannot converse with the dead, fly, or handle fire without being burned.
	The waking world is absolute, objective, and consistent.
	Now, the reply from the Cartesian demon advocates is that the demon simply provides a more consistent reality for our, quote, waking world.
	However, this hypothesis does not reject or disprove the argument that other minds exist within an objective universe.
	The fantastical technology that the demon would use to manipulate every aspect of our mind could only be developed via science.
	And science can only be developed in the presence of objects and energies that have absolutely consistent properties.
	We could never develop airplanes if gravity randomly reversed itself.
	No. The Cartesian demon is a mind that exists in an objective universe whose objects and energies follow absolutely consistent patterns and behaviors.
	To return to the principle of parsimony, given that the Cartesian demon advocates accept that at least one other mind exists in an objective universe, the universe that the demon has studied in order to produce the technology that manipulates its victim, We can reject this argument out of hand.
	If the Cartesian demon hypothesis requires that other minds exist in an objective universe, what need do we have for this hypothesis at all?
	It is a ridiculous overcomplication to accept that other minds exist in an objective universe, the demon and his infernal science, But reject the far more simple and obvious explanation that the other minds that you can actually see, interact with, understand, question and debate exist in an objective universe.
	In other words, why would you reject obvious and provable empiricism for the sake of a ridiculously overcomplicated, self-contradictory and unprovable hypothesis such as the Cartesian demon?
	Especially since that hypothesis requires exactly the same principles.
	Why on earth would you reject the existence of the minds you can actually prove and interact with for the sake of a hypothetical mind you can neither prove nor interact with in any way?
	This would be like making an argument against gravity by claiming that all the gravity that we consistently experience is a total delusion made possible only by the existence of gravity in another realm that can never be experienced or proven.
	If you send me an email claiming that emails never get delivered, and you know this because emails in an alternate dimension that can never be experienced are consistently delivered, then clearly you accept that emails can be consistently delivered because you accept this in another realm, but you reject the evidence of your own actions and your consistent experience by sending me an email that you claim will never be delivered.
	If we are together on a sunny beach and you tell me that sunburns are a complete delusion, and you know this because an unknowable being in another realm told you that it got a sunburn, would you consider this a remotely sane argument?
	I know I am laboring the point, but this madness has infected philosophy for as long as there has been philosophy, and I'm pretty sick and tired of it.
	Which, of course, is not an argument, but it is a real motivation for me, as it would be for anyone, I think.
	The argument is crazy, and self-contradictory, and anti-rational, and is disproven by the very actions of the person making the argument, which is to communicate clear language through an objective realm, through the senses, to another mind he accepts exists.
	So, what is going on here?
	I cannot answer this with any absolute accuracy, but I can create a hypothesis that accords with my considerable experience debating these matters over the last 40 years.
	For the average person, the Cartesian demon argument cannot be intellectually overturned, at least without practice and assistance.
	The average person just knows that it is wrong.
	It is a deep and powerful instinct to reject such delusions, because if we believed them, they would cause our near immediate demise.
	We want to survive, so we reject metaphysical madness.
	Or, to put it another way, those who accepted and practiced this metaphysical madness did not survive to pass on their deranged genes.
	So the average person knows that the argument is ridiculous and wrong, but they lack the expertise and language to rebut and dismiss it.
	The average person is left with an uneasy feeling, a sense that philosophy, as it is presented to them in this instance, is exceedingly dangerous and will get them killed if they pursue it.
	What do they do then? Why, whenever the topic of philosophy comes up, they roll their eyes, re-experience this existentially uneasy feeling, and back away as quickly as possible.
	In other words, the Cartesian demon hypothesis acts as an inoculation against the possible virtue, wisdom, and knowledge that philosophy could provide.
	In the same way, if for some sadistic reason you wished your child to be terrified of dogs, you would simply expose her to the loudest and most invasive and dangerous dogs you could find.
	And then, most likely for the rest of her life, she would feel uneasy around dogs.
	Of course, nature has programmed us this way.
	If we encounter something that interferes with our thriving and survival, we work very hard to avoid it in the future.
	We tend to be wary of uncontrolled fires, large predators, small poisonous insects, edibles that made us sick in the past, and so on.
	Pain, as a mechanism, is designed to help us avoid situations that cause injury and discomfort.
	When we experience something negative, or the threat thereof, we avoid the situation or stimuli.
	This is an instinctive practice common to all living creatures.
	In the Cartesian demon hypothesis, philosophy is a dangerous predator that has the power to infect someone with suicidal insanity.
	In their lizard brains, people respond to this argument in the same way that they would respond to someone trying to drug them with a vile concoction that would drive them mad and cause them to run off cliffs.
	The argument... It was essentially invented and has been prevalent for thousands of years in order to drive people away from philosophy.
	This is also a common practice in the realm of libel and slander.
	If someone has an argument you cannot answer, but it interferes with your interests or offends your sensibilities, then the usual tactic is to coat that person with negative labels so that people will steer clear and stay away.
	In the same way, philosophy tends to undermine political power by giving everyone the ability to think and reason for themselves, and by promoting virtue that reduces the need for police, governments, courts, and prisons. If I were an evil ruler, I could do little better than to create or fund a hypothesis that had people avoid and recoil from philosophy.
	I would make philosophy as ridiculous and dangerous as possible so that people would steer clear and continue to let me do their, quote, thinking for them.
	Rational thinking and empirical observation is the birthright of all human beings.
	The clear effect of the Cartesian demon hypothesis is to drive people away from philosophy by making it abstract, ridiculous, crazed, and deadly.
	What is perfect about this argument is how it describes itself in its own formulation.
	The Cartesian demon hypothesis is that an external authority is denying you reality by controlling your perceptions.
	This is a perfect description of the purpose and effect of this hypothesis.
	Rulers and their toadies deny you reality by controlling your perceptions.
	They accuse a theoretical demon of doing exactly what they are doing to you.
	Break out.
	Break free.
	Accept reality.
	Reject rulers and think for yourself.
	All right, so there is my...
	I'm quite pleased with it.
	And if you have comments, issues, problems, anything you would like to talk about with regards to this essay, I am more than happy to help.
	If you have other topics completely, that's fine, but let's just give people a chance if they have something they want to say on this topic.
	I would be very happy to hear about it.
	Let me just check comments here.
	Yeah, visceral reaction to that is it's a really great kind of common sense, salt-of-the-earth way to phrase it.
	A solution to that problem.
	The phrase vile concoction stood out to me.
	I don't know why, I just thought that was particularly artful.
	But having an undergrad degree in philosophy, I think you could have saved me about half of the credits by just publishing that essay.
	That's pretty good. And it's funny, yeah.
	I mean, the vile concoction, so you can receive madness through brain injuries, you can receive madness through some sort of poison or some sort of drug, and you can receive madness through Yeah, couldn't agree more. I'll let somebody else share their thoughts.
	Thanks again. Thanks, man. Appreciate it.
	Well, I was just curious, what inspired you to write this essay?
	Oh, yeah. I've always been fascinated by metaphysics, and I can't even tell you how many arguments I've had over the years with people who claim you can't trust your senses, and objective reality doesn't exist, and we could be a brain in a tank.
	It is an infection.
	And it is a slander on philosophy that keeps people away from wisdom.
	You know, just this slander on me keeps people away from philosophy.
	You know, sometimes you have to be more directed rather than creating crazy arguments.
	You just have to attack the messenger.
	But I had a debate a couple of weeks ago with a fellow who was very able in this area and had some very interesting arguments and so on.
	And it just, you know, it...
	Uncorked! You know, it's like the bottle that's shaken, you still need to open it.
	It uncorked my rage towards this argument, which I have talked about before, and I did the whole...
	It's called the simulation hypothesis, although I'm more familiar with it as the Cartesian demon hypothesis, but I... I get ferocious when I want to attack a particular argument.
	And I sort of sat down and wanted to write it, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't saying something that I already said before a million times or whatever.
	So I wanted to create sort of new arguments.
	So I really like the idea that if you're a brain in a tank, well, then you can only be being manipulated by some external consciousness that...
	It has an objective realm that it exists in so that it can develop the science in order to manipulate your brain.
	So I like that's a new argument.
	And the argument that the principle of parsimony or Occam's razor, which is basically hypotheses or arguments should not be or situations should not be multiplied.
	Entities, they call it. Entities should not be multiplied beyond Right?
	So if you were to say, well, gravity works by invisible spiders jumping down on things or something like that, you'd say, well, is there any other way to explain that gravity works without this invisible spider thing?
	It's like, okay, well, if there is, then let's go with that.
	Let's go with the simplest explanation.
	So I think if you take...
	Occam's razor and combine it with these arguments, then you get a very good way of rejecting it.
	But the thing that bothers people the most, the thing that makes people the most angry is when I kind of slow down and ask them what they're doing.
	And the other thing that bothers me too, and I'm not talking about the guy who called it, I don't know his motives, but I would say in general, the people who I've debated this with, what pisses me off about them is it's really a form of existential bullying.
	Because if you're trained on this stuff, then you can answer these questions pretty easily.
	I've explained all this stuff to my daughter and all of that, so she got it very early.
	The reality is real, that other people exist and all that.
	But for the average person, it's a tough argument to answer.
	Very tough argument to answer.
	And of course, if it was easy to answer and it didn't serve power so much, then...
	It would have been answered long ago.
	Like science doesn't sit there revisiting gravity, right?
	It doesn't sit there and say, well, maybe there is an ether and the speed of light isn't constant.
	It doesn't sit there and say, well, the theory of atoms doesn't hold true.
	Like 200 years ago, they didn't even know that the blood circulated around the human body.
	So they don't revisit that and say, well, maybe the heart is just like a little disco dancer in your chest that doesn't do anything and your blood doesn't need to circulate.
	You know, there's stuff that gets answered and you move on.
	And what bugs me about philosophy so much is that it doesn't answer things and move on.
	It's still doing the same circle to drain shit that it was doing 5,000 years ago.
	And that bothers me so foundationally.
	I can't even tell you that science doesn't make the same kind of progress that...
	Physics or biology or medicine or engineering or like any of these disciplines, chemistry, right?
	Nobody sits there and says, well, maybe water isn't two hydrogens and an oxygen.
	Maybe, just maybe. They answer stuff and they move on and they build on what they know.
	And philosophy of all the disciplines, and it should be the most noble, and it should be the discipline that has the greatest progress of all, because it is the most essential human discipline, because it deals with values rather than facts alone.
	Animals deal with facts.
	We can abstract facts to principles of science, but only philosophy deals with moral values, with the universally preferable behavior.
	So, I just...
	Here's the thing.
	I love philosophy...
	Oh, God, so much!
	Oh, so much!
	Oh, you want to marry it?
	Well, I kind of did, but I love philosophy enormously, and it frustrates me so much that to get into philosophy...
	In the way that it's traditionally practiced, I would have to give up a sense of reality and of truth and of reason and of evidence and of objectivity, and I would just be involved in a nookie-cookie circle jerk of ridiculous hypotheticals that can't ever be disproven.
	So I love philosophy, but I basically had to mold philosophy into something that could answer some questions and get on with things.
	Get on with things. I don't know if you've ever been a designer or something like that, but in the design realm, you design the software.
	You was involved in building software from scratch.
	You design the software.
	At some point, you've got to build it, and stuff has to work, and it has to fulfill a need, and it has to have economic value, and then you have to go sell it, and then you have to maintain it.
	You can't just sit there drawing on nothing forever and claim that you're doing anything other than wasting everyone's time.
	So I really, really wanted to work very hard to rescue the reputation of philosophy, and I did such a good job of rescuing the reputation of philosophy that I had to sacrifice my own personal reputation to rescue the reputation of philosophy.
	It's not a bad deal.
	It's not a bad deal, because if we don't get philosophy to answer some shit and move on, we're literally doomed as a species.
	I mean, it is. You know, life-affirming to get philosophy to answer stuff and move on to the next thing.
	And it's fine to revisit things, and the way you revisit things is when you explain things, right?
	So I don't revisit two and two make four, except when I was teaching my daughter that two and two make four, right?
	Then you revisit it in terms of instruction.
	So if people are instructed on how to answer these questions and they sort of reason through it for themselves and so on, then they have a defense against the bullies, right?
	Who come in and say, well, maybe you are a brain in a tank, and maybe objective reality doesn't exist, and maybe your senses are all manipulated, maybe this is all a dream, and maybe the dream life is the real life, and this is your dream life, right?
	I mean, it's an assault!
	It's an assault on someone's reason.
	It is pile-driving railway spikes of infective madness right into their neofrontal cortex.
	It is an assault. On their humanity, on their essential capacity to reason and think for themselves and know what is true.
	And it's bullying. It's people who've become very sophisticated in delivering these arguments to defenseless people.
	It literally is like watching Muhammad Ali in his prime punch out a troop of girl guides.
	It's horrible. And so, yeah, I mean, like many good things in my life and in this world, it comes out of a particular anger at an incredibly frustrating and solvable situation.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, is my audio better now?
	Yes. Good.
	Yeah, well, you know, I think we're all here because of your passion for philosophy and its, like, real-life consequences.
	You know, when you hear about, like, the brain and the vat argument, it sounds kind of, oh, it's interesting, it's kind of cool, you know, it's kind of benign.
	It's like... It's seductive in that it's like, oh, what if it was?
	What if that were true? And it takes you down this road that, like you said, can destroy your life.
	Well, you have to shrug it off and just say, okay, well, I can't do that.
	I can't do that. I've got bills to pay.
	I've got children to feed.
	It's interesting, but I can't stay there.
	I've got to run away, right? Yeah.
	And if more people had the kind of Passion about moral philosophy, they wouldn't be walking around having these arguments and basically destroying the sanity of people in general,
	which is what they're doing. Well, I think it's because there's something in the realm of – it's the mind-body dichotomy stuff that happens in society where people say, well, you know, philosophy means that you get a Buddhist type of abstracted and distant wisdom and that passion, you see, passion is anti-rational.
	And to be rational, it's the spark of bullshit, right?
	So passion is anti-rational.
	And to be rational, you must think like a computer.
	You must think without emotion because emotion will withdraw.
	That is a terrible, terrible idea.
	The passions, the emotions are extraordinarily rational.
	Extraordinarily rational. Do you think pain just drives us away from that which is good for us and has us mutilate ourselves?
	No. It takes an extraordinary amount of...
	Abuse for people to end up voluntarily mutilating themselves.
	The passions, and this is, I think, the combination of my artistic side and theater training and body training and self-knowledge and therapy, I have an enormous amount of respect for my passions.
	So here's the thing. So I think the reason why people haven't just ferociously or get into this Nonsense, this Cartesian demon nonsense, is they get angry, they get frustrated, and they say, well, you know, that's just an irrational overreaction.
	Maybe I'll just, you know, mull it over a little more.
	And they fight their emotions.
	The emotions are trying to help you.
	The emotions are trying to help philosophy.
	I get these emails and be like, can you stop yelling?
	It's like, well, I'll stop yelling.
	When people start listening.
	But occasionally, yeah, I can do quiet shows, I can do loud shows, but I'm not going to hide my passion.
	And the reason versus emotion argument has never really made much sense to me.
	But if you love philosophy, and it is a beautiful thing to think and reason for yourself, and it is the salvation of Of the species.
	If you love philosophy and you see people slashing at it, well, my God, if anyone you love, someone comes up and starts beating her up, don't you jump in and you get angry?
	Do you not sit there and say, well, I don't want to get too passionate about this situation and I've really got to fight my fight or flight mechanism and I've really got to find some way to calm things down in myself and you don't focus on yourself.
	You say, hey, adrenaline, give me cortisol, give me the strength of ten men so I can stop these people from beating up on someone I love.
	And I see philosophy as a beautiful woman being held down and pillaged and being made ugly so that people won't want to marry her.
	And yet the marriage is how we survive as a species, so yeah, I've got to...
	You've got to throw the people off who are brutalizing philosophy.
	I mean, if you love art and you've got a favorite art gallery and people have broken in and they're spray painting and slashing and setting fire to the art, you do something, you wouldn't sit there and say, well, I don't want to get too emotional about this.
	I don't want to get too passionate. It's like, no, no, no, you need your passion to save the art.
	And that's just beauty, which is nice enough, but I'm talking about morality, which is the most essential thing.
	So yes, I get very passionate about these things, and I think most people, deep down they do, But they say, well, come on, it's just an abstract argument.
	Why would you get so upset?
	Or, you know what, it's just an interesting hypothetical.
	And then, of course, if you get too passionate about these things, you get too angry about these things, what do people say?
	They say, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, you're kind of overreacting here.
	I guess I must have touched some kind of nerve.
	It's got nothing to do with, hey, I'm just making a theoretical here.
	I'm just talking here. We're just having a debate.
	What are you getting so mad about? Oh, my God, right?
	This was the guy I was debating with where he's like, well, where is objective reality?
	And I'm like, it's where you get your food from!
	It's like, it's that simple.
	It's where, you know, you go to the fridge, you get something to eat, so you have enough energy to make a debate.
	That's the objective reality we're talking about.
	And people are like, I think some people get turned off.
	I mean, that's sort of a natural, right?
	Because passion is vulnerability, right?
	To be passionate about something is to be...
	Vulnerable, right? I mean, if you're passionate about asking a woman out, you're vulnerable to her saying no.
	Anytime you show passions in this world, people can dismiss you based upon your passions.
	Say, oh, it is too emotional.
	You can't trust that.
	It's not rational. It's just way too emotional.
	He's obscure. This is why in the essay I talk about how this stuff pisses me off, just talking about it as motivation because it does.
	But people will say, well, I'll just dismiss him because he's too passionate.
	He's too worked up. He's not thinking clearly.
	And then you have to be this monotone Sam Harris narcoleptic dude, which is like a historical guy speaking very calmly.
	But you can't have this passion.
	So then people dismiss you based upon your passion.
	But if you're not passionate... Then they're not interested and there's no emotional force behind the arguments.
	And so I think your only chance to get this stuff across is to be passionate.
	And if you can't harness your passions in the pursuit of truth, then you're not really respecting the truth.
	If art doesn't move you, you don't love art.
	If music doesn't elevate you, then you don't appreciate music.
	And then, of course, people scrub themselves free of passion because they believe it somehow interferes with their rational pursuit of the truth.
	They cut out the heart of their passion and then they sit there and say, you know, man, life doesn't seem to have much meaning.
	It's like, well, yeah, because the meaning is in the feeling.
	The meaning is in the passion. So sorry for a little speech there.
	Is there anything you want to add? No, I mean, I agree totally with your perspective about it.
	To me, it's almost surprising when I find someone who actually is passionate about ideas, and it's very exciting when you meet somebody like that, because most people, it is very just theoretical, and they don't see how this stuff affects their life and how they live their lives, and everything that happens in their lives is because of their Their philosophy or lack thereof, you know, when it really breaks down to it.
	I was thinking about the Vulcan archetype from Star Trek when you were talking.
	That's like the pinnacle of philosophy, is like the stone-faced, never-reacting-to-anything logical machine.
	Yeah, that's the stoicism argument, right?
	That you just have to sort of sit and bear it and anytime you allow facial expression to pass your cheeks, you have fundamentally failed in your pursuit of wisdom.
	And yeah, it's really tragic.
	It's really tragic.
	And it's not accidental, right?
	Saying that people need to be without passion in the pursuit of philosophy I mean, can you imagine saying to an actor, well, in the pursuit of acting, you can't allow any emotions to guide you.
	You can't feel anything.
	Well, you just have a really bad wooden actor, right?
	If you were to say to a poet, you can't love language.
	You can't be passionate about words and the way they can describe and evoke imagery.
	If you were to say to a painter, you can't Love painting.
	You can't have any feelings about painting.
	You'd end up with no literature, no art, no painting, no dance, nothing.
	It's the passions that drive the creation of these beautiful things.
	And so when you say to someone, you can't be passionate about philosophy, you're saying, don't pursue philosophy.
	And I, yeah, I don't understand the people who aren't outraged and passionate about these things.
	I think, I honestly feel that it's just kind of a scam for them.
	I very clearly remember when I was at Glendon campus of York University, back in my undergraduate days.
	I graduated from high school and then I did a year and a half working up north as a gold panel prospector, as everyone knows.
	And then I went to the Glendon campus of York University and took my very first class on philosophy.
	And I write about this in my novel, Almost.
	But there was this superannuated, just completely doddering old guy who went over the whole Cartesian demon argument.
	Now, and it's a funny kind of coincidence, because what happened was I had just spent a year and a half working with very dangerous machinery in a very remote location.
	And, you know, sorry for the language, but this is a place you simply cannot fuck up.
	Like, it is not an option.
	You have to be very careful when you're using flamethrowers and heavy drilling machinery and carrying stuff around and snowmobiling and all of that and going pretty far into the bush.
	You've got to be able to find your way back in the snow and the ice.
	You can't fuck up at all.
	Like, there's no room for error.
	So I just spent a year and a half doing this kind of stuff.
	And then someone comes along, you know, who spent his whole life in academia, in comfortable cities, in air conditioning, and so comes along and says, well, you can't really trust the evidence of your senses.
	To which I'd say, you know, come work, you'll learn more about philosophy, working a dangerous manual job, than reading all of Plato.
	Genuinely believe that, because it drives the abstracts down into the real.
	Into the factual. You work with your hands, then you work with your mind.
	But people who work with their mind without working with their hands are just helium balloons in the wind.
	They don't exist in terms of tangible, practical reality.
	And it's why they can't imagine all this crap.
	You know, and I was very aware of this when I was working up north.
	Once slip up, you're at least two to three days away from a hospital.
	Because, you know, if you slipped up, you know, you slipped on the ice, you tumbled down the side of a hill, you cut your hand badly with the drill, any number of things.
	You burnt yourself with a flamethrower.
	Okay, then you've got to, you know, say you broke your leg.
	Well, then people have to carry you for hours just to get back to the camp.
	And they have to carry you over deep snow.
	Can you imagine having a broken leg being carried over deep snow?
	And then you sit in the tent and you'd maybe have a couple of aspirin for your pain.
	Good luck with all that.
	And they'd have to radio in for a plane to come and get you and the planes were usually booked quite ahead of time.
	It would be an emergency. They'd come in faster.
	And then you would have to fly to a town and then from those remote towns you would then have to get driven to a hospital and it would be a long ass time.
	And this has also taught me a lot about economics.
	Which is, when things are more dangerous, people are just more careful.
	You just adjust what you do.
	So it's like Roe v. Wade.
	It's like, oh my gosh, it could be harder to get an abortion.
	Okay, but then people would just be more careful about getting pregnant.
	Increased danger is increased caution.
	If we didn't have that pendulum going as a species, we never would have survived.
	People tend to be a little bit more cautious around a lion than a rabbit.
	Holy grail, accept it.
	So I'd been working this very hard, physical, manual, difficult, but exhilarating in a way, job, where I had courted death, like, not kidding, had courted death on a number of occasions.
	I mean, I was sitting, my friend was snowmobiling, a friend I worked with was doing the snowmobile, and I was sitting on the back with all the drill bits, he was pulling a sled, and I He wanted to go down a steep hill, and I'm like, ooh, I don't know, maybe I'll just walk down this hill.
	It looks a little wobbly. So he went down the steep hill, and the snowmobile jammed at the bottom straight into the snow, and all the drill bits tore loose and went flying through the air like giant spears.
	These things were like six feet long and weighed probably 60 pounds each.
	And fortunately, they just missed my friend, but if I'd been sitting on the back, I would have been seriously injured, and maybe worse, right?
	One of those hits your head at high speed, you're dead, right?
	I mean, a number of times, and another time we got lost and couldn't find our way back, and it was like minus 40 at night, so it was crazy cold.
	We had to mix in jet fuel with our propane just to stay warm enough.
	I woke up, there was snow on the bottom of the It's called a prospectus tent.
	It's like a big giant wooden hut.
	No, sorry, a canvas hut.
	And I remember bathing.
	I had to bathe every now and then, obviously, right?
	And I remember bathing in cold, crazy cold weather and scrubbing myself.
	And the ice was freezing on my body.
	The water was freezing on my body as I was washing myself.
	So I was in a pretty harsh and challenging environment.
	And there was no room for screwing up.
	No room at all.
	You had to be super careful with everything.
	And I did.
	I came out without any injuries.
	And so then this guy is like, well, reality might not be real.
	And you can't trust your senses.
	And it's like, and I do.
	I remember raising my hand.
	And I said, well, you're teaching us, though.
	Do you accept that we're real?
	Well, I can't prove it.
	It's like, well, you came to the class on time.
	Do you accept that time is a real thing?
	Well, I can't prove it.
	And you could see, see, this is not an inconsequential thing because there was, I mean, it was not a huge class.
	But there were probably 40 young people in that class, all being told that they couldn't prove if anybody existed.
	Now again, does that mean that they go insane?
	No, but it means that they have to steer clear of philosophy, that they have to be muscle without a mind, which of course is what the whole Prussian school of education, you know, that you just want to be a doer without a thinking, right?
	Muscle without a mind, meat without mentality, a mammal without a soul, a being without virtue.
	So, I mean, everybody, yeah, they wrote their essays, they moved on, but it just, it leaves a residual, like any inoculation, it's a little bit of a tug, a little bit of a pinch, a little bit of a sting, and then, you know, you're just kind of immune from there on, you don't really think about it.
	And so they encounter this kind of stuff, and then they're like, you know, philosophy, I mean, it's all just about trying to prove whether people exist or not, and they just...
	Avoid philosophy. Like philosophy doesn't have any, all it is is uneasy questions without answers.
	Like what's the point of that? And also knowing that philosophy, philosophy is really the oldest discipline outside of theology.
	And theology is really a form of philosophy in attempts to systematize religious thinking.
	So philosophy is certainly mankind's oldest discipline because no other animal exists.
	Does philosophy. So, and of course he was talking about, you know, he would be talking about the pre-Socratics and he would be talking about Socrates, of course.
	And, you know, we're going back 2,500 years and you could go back to the Egyptian philosophers even earlier.
	And so the other thing which is real, it's a slander and a spray paint and a slash on the Mona Lisa's face of philosophy, which is to say, well, we've had this discipline for 5,000 years, you know.
	And it's never quite got round to proving whether anything can be true or not.
	It's never quite got round to proving whether reality is valid or not.
	It's never quite got round to proving whether other human beings exist or not.
	They're 5,000 years.
	And what they do is they look at their fucking cell phones.
	Right? Of people taking these classes.
	Not when I was there, but now.
	They look at their cell phones and they say, shit, my cell phone is way better now than it was two years ago.
	Or five years ago.
	Man. The progress in science and engineering is staggering.
	Just in two years.
	Medicine. Until recently.
	Constantly coming up with new wonderful things to help and cure the species.
	Physics. New discoveries.
	Engineers. Unbelievable progress.
	Really the greatest progress because it's the most practical.
	So, people look at their cell phones and they look at their computers and they look at their TVs and they look at their internet speeds and they say, damn!
	Look at this progress!
	Just since I was a kid, just in 10 years!
	It's unbelievable! I mean, over the course of my life, I've gone from no computers to incredible computers and no internet all the way through, I mean, my very first...
	I had a notebook... A 386-SX25 notebook.
	And it had a 2400-baud modem, which was really kind of cool because it was faster than the 300-baud modem.
	And then there was 96, 14.4, and then, I mean, people kind of went to DSL and cable and all that.
	But now look at all that progress.
	It said the world is transformed by science and medicine and engineering.
	The world is transformed.
	Every year has, in some fields, every year has little in common with the last.
	Look at this progress!
	And then you look at moribund quicksand bullshit philosophy.
	Oh, well, it's been 5,000 years, but we still have no idea what is true.
	Within 5,000 years, we still don't even know if we exist or not.
	No! No!
	A thousand times no!
	No! Either kill the discipline or get it moving!
	Stop wasting time or make it do something!
	That's been my passion for 40 plus years.
	Make it do something.
	Have it help people.
	How about it actually helps people?
	Is that possible? Can we get philosophy to actually help people too?
	Produce value in their lives.
	Well, yeah, I mean, the way that I talk about it and practice it, if you can't do anything about it, I mean, this is kind of why I got up politics, right?
	If you can't do anything about it, stop pursuing it.
	Stop wasting your time. All right.
	If you have comments, issues, anything you like, anything that's on your mind.
	Let's do things quick, Steph.
	First, is it fair to say that the yelling will continue until philosophy improves?
	Absolutely. And then the yelling will continue, because the only way it can improve is through continual yelling.
	But go on. Do you see the parallels between kind of modern art and how the obvious ugliness is used to kind of gatekeep?
	Whereas, like, when I'm hearing you read that essay, and you talk about, hey, you know, toddlers have this intuition that things are real.
	Kind of like when you see modern art for the first time, a lot of people have that same reaction of, like, this is obviously ugly.
	And then you kind of get the intellectualization comes in as, oh, it's a big trap.
	You know, you think it's ugly because you're just not bright enough.
	I'm just kind of curious if you want to riff on that for a little bit.
	Yeah, what are your thoughts on it?
	I mean, I think you capture a lot of this in the early essay right there.
	It's clear that before philosophy attempts to intervene or attempts to try to organize your thinking, everyone knows.
	I mean, I guess there is a pre-object permanent state, but pretty early on, you know, you take metaphysics more or less for granted because, as you point out, there's really no way to operate without taking it for granted.
	You can't feed yourself. You can't drink water when you're thirsty.
	And art, in its evolution, when you get to kind of the postmodern movement and, you know, you can sign a urinal and that's art.
	If you say it's not, it's just because you're not bright enough.
	It seems to me like when you're talking about how this serves power, that maybe there's a connection there that, you know, if you're somebody who gets stuck on metaphysical or Cartesian skepticism kind of problems, that's a way to sort of say, well, you haven't gone to school or there's an institution that you would need to spend time in to consider the problem more deeply.
	That's a way you can kind of keep people out or kind of make philosophy more of an elite project.
	Same thing in art, right?
	There really is, I mean, art as far as I understand it, like high art world is really just sort of this nepotistic, incestuous network of, well, my parents are very rich and they knew your parents were also very rich.
	And so the purpose of gatekeeping modern art and pretending that, you know, having ugly or unappealing aesthetics is, you know, somehow making a statement about what art could or couldn't be.
	That's not really about intellectualizing art or driving art forward or producing anything anyone wants.
	That's really just about you're not in our club and you can't be in our club and we're trying to make up good reasons that you're not in our club but there really aren't any.
	Yeah, what is that inspiring you?
	Well, have you ever looked into the life of Andy Warhol?
	Not deeply or meaningfully.
	Andy Warhol, to me, is the poster boy.
	I'm sorry, you're going to need to mute because I'm getting echo.
	Andy Warhol is the poster boy for this kind of stuff.
	I mean, a really repulsive fellow who produced, you know, these lithographs, these famous sort of copies of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe.
	And he's the guy who's Campbell's soup can!
	That's art! And, I mean, he was just a repulsive human being as a whole.
	And, I mean, he was shot by one of his, well, there was a woman, part of the Scum Manifesto, the Society for Cutting Up Men.
	She wrote a play, and she wanted him to produce it, and I think he lost the manuscript, and she shot him.
	And the doctor worked enormously hard to save his life, although he ended up with health problems, Andy Warhol, for the rest of his life.
	But he never even paid the doctor.
	The doctor had to beg and threaten to try and get paid for saving the guy's life.
	Andy Warhol, I mean, gay, whatever, right?
	But also was very, very keen on drawing nude pictures of little boys.
	And he doesn't have the excuse of the cherub thing, right?
	And Andy Warhol, so the question is, I never look at these things as organic at all.
	I never look at these things as organic.
	Why was Andy Warhol selected and promoted?
	Was it because there was a massive demand in America for pictures of a Campbell's soup can that you could see in any supermarket on any day of the week?
	What I really need to see is a soup can.
	No. It's not organic.
	It's promoted. Powerful forces at work promote this stuff.
	It is not that there's a demand for, hey, here's a couple of pictures of Elvis with different colors on them.
	I'm a genius! No, nobody believes that.
	Nobody believes that.
	Like the Jackson Pollock stuff.
	There was one in Canada here called The Voice of Fire.
	Voice of Fire!
	And it was a blue stripe, a red stripe, and a blue stripe.
	Like, there's not a big demand in Canada or any place in the world from the average person to say, I'd really like three stripes and I'd like to pay a million dollars for them.
	Like the Jackson Pollock crap.
	Spilled paint from an airplane is not art!
	These people are not organically put into production or become famous or become wealthy.
	They're not put there Or they don't achieve their notoriety because of market demand.
	I mean, I assume some of it has something to do with money laundering, which seems to be quite common in the art world, but even that's not even close enough.
	So where does the modern art and the brutalism in architecture, you name it, right?
	Where does all this modern art stuff come from?
	Well, it comes from a cabal.
	I don't know what the cabal is.
	I have no idea what it is, but these things are not organic.
	They're picked out and their work is promoted.
	And they're given galleries and then powerful people buy their art and they do it in part to corrupt art and they do it in part to make money by reselling it.
	It's a scam for the most part.
	These artists are picked out of relative obscurity.
	Their crap art is promoted so that people can make a bunch of money.
	And what it does, you see...
	It twists the next generation.
	That's one of the key purposes, is it twists and corrupts the next generation.
	Because what happens is, like anybody, you look at the art and say, Andy Warhol, it could be any number of people, look at that Andy Warhol, right?
	And it's like, that's barely graphics design, let alone art.
	Here's a well-done picture of common objects.
	It's more difficult to paint a dust bunny than to essentially photocopy a Campbell's soup can.
	But what happens is the artists are like, oh my gosh, that's really popular, really powerful, really money-making art.
	I guess I'm going to go do that.
	Now, the purpose, of course, of all of this stuff, and I assume that the leftists, you know, I mean, certainly since the 20s, they've been all over the place in American culture and so on, right?
	So what's the purpose? Well, the purpose is to demoralize.
	The purpose is to give you nothing to defend.
	The purpose is to have you cease loving your culture so that you won't fight for your culture.
	I think people will fight pretty hard for Angrae, for Rembrandt, for Leonardo da Vinci, for Rubens.
	People will fight pretty hard for that because it's pretty beautiful stuff.
	There's an elevation to it.
	So Art can be a kind of benevolent drug that elevates your spirit.
	I mean, we all know this sort of cheesy...
	I still know the workout music that I worked out to like 30 years ago.
	I had one tape that I would just take to the gym.
	And when I was playing Macbeth, I really bulked up pretty hard by doing heavy weights and short reps.
	And I still remember.
	I would go through the whole thing.
	It started with... Gosh, what was it?
	Paul Simon, his Brazilian, the obvious child.
	And then it went to Yes is Leave It, and then it went to Dragon Attack by Queen, and just stuff that...
	And in there was a great song by Pete Townsend called Face to Face, which is just heart-pumpingly good.
	And it gave me energy to exercise.
	Art can give you elevation.
	Now, art, of course, like all drugs, art can be both an upper and a downer.
	Art can lift you up. Art can elevate you.
	And when you get used to that elevation, when you get used to that drug of art lifting you up in a positive way, in a good way, art releases the endorphins.
	Art gives you a sense of happiness.
	It gives you a sense of power.
	It gives you a sense of contentment.
	It gives you a sense of connection and deep warmth to humanity with beautiful art, positive art.
	And so when you have a culture that is regularly delivering you beauty, Then you get benevolently and positively addicted to that beauty and therefore you are willing to defend that culture because that culture is the source of your spiritual elevation.
	You're happier because the culture is producing.
	Now, if you think of a silly example where there's just one drug dealer in a small town and you've got a bunch of drug addicts and they will work to defend that drug dealer because he's providing to them The drug that initially keeps them happy and then at least prevents them from being unhappy through withdrawal.
	And in the same way, people will defend the welfare state because they believe they need it to survive and so on, right?
	So if you get addicted to something, you will defend the source of the drug that gives you that high.
	And I'm sorry to be using the term drug here because art is a very positive and benevolent spiritual uplifting when it's done right, when it's Beautiful and proportional and elevating.
	So when your culture delivers you this drug that makes you happy, then you'll work to defend that culture.
	At a very sort of deep level, you will work to protect that culture.
	In the same way, the cocaine addict will work pretty hard to protect his last bag of cocaine.
	Again, not the most elevated analogy, but it occurs at a physical level.
	We are addicted. To the endorphins of beautiful art.
	And so when trash art comes along, when ugly art comes along, when brutalism comes along, when spatter crap comes along, what they're saying is, I'm sorry, you're going to have to deal with withdrawal.
	There's no more beauty for you.
	The drug of benevolent and beautiful art is gone.
	It's gone. We're replacing the uppers with the downers.
	We're replacing surgery with sadism.
	We're replacing beauty with beating up on beauty.
	And we're replacing hard work.
	You think of the Enlightenment painters or the Renaissance painters.
	A lot of them would actually...
	Dissect corpses in order to figure out how the body worked and how the muscles worked and how the bones worked.
	Angra in particular, just amazing stuff.
	Caravaggio. So, the notorious difficulty of painting hands is not to be underestimated.
	There was some beautiful art in my house.
	Well, it's funny because when I was growing up in the apartment that I grew up in, we had some really bad art, like Paul Klee, that little...
	It's like a round moon face with two little squares for the mouth.
	It's really pretty terrible.
	But we also had some beautiful stuff, too.
	There's a wonderful painting of, I think it was a Finnish woman reading a book, and one of her hand was just like a tentacle going into the table because the artist, I guess, got kind of tired of doing hands, which are notoriously difficult, and so on, right?
	I did get to see both sides in terms of art when I was growing up, and I did spend some considerable time at the British Art Gallery when I was younger, just going from...
	I mean, some of the art is just beautiful and so uplifting and so spiritual.
	So people, if they have beautiful art...
	They get physical endorphins from exposure to that art.
	They feel happier.
	They feel more positive. They feel more energetic.
	They feel more powerful.
	But then the radicals, the revolutionaries come along and they take that away.
	And they promote this ugly crap.
	And then people no longer have the endorphins and the beauty to defend.
	It's a form of demoralization.
	And the next generation is like, oh, that's cool, man.
	Soup cans is where it's at.
	Reprints of Elvis is where it's at.
	Three stripes is where it's at.
	For me, three stripes and you're out.
	And so the next generation, I remember very clearly, and I did a whole drawing of this.
	I used to be quite the sketcher and drawer.
	And I did a whole drawing of this.
	I remember being in an English class.
	I still remember my professor's name, hot-tempered fellow that he was, sometimes rightly so.
	But I was in my English class, and for some reason the professor, mildly creepy now in hindsight, He handed out this book of a theatre production somewhere in Europe where everybody was naked.
	Now, at least they had nice physiques and so on, so it wasn't like, you know, ugly naked guy from Friends or whatever, right?
	I'm not sure now in hindsight why the professor, just thinking of it now, why was he handing out pictures of naked people to his class full of, well, a lot of girls in English, right?
	Not quite, right? But I do remember being quite fascinated by this.
	But it was corrupting in a way as well, because nudity is not art.
	Now, of course, nudity can be a component of art, such as, you know, David by Michelangelo, but just being naked is not art.
	But it's a way of stimulating the senses, or in this case, stimulating the physical senses without inspiring the soul, so to speak.
	And some of the very early art that I produced was ugly.
	I've been raised in this kind of environment where there's a market for ugly.
	People want ugly. Now, not only does that degrade your sense of beauty and the physical elevation that beautiful art can give you, but it also denigrates humanity as a whole.
	And I think you're right.
	This is to the caller.
	There is a bit of the emperor's new clothes in it.
	Like everyone's sitting there saying, wow, a soup can, man, that's super deep.
	The elevation of bland consumerism to high art, man, that's so deep.
	It's all garbage, right? And, you know, a kid would come in.
	A kid would come in and say, well, that's just a soup can.
	We saw that at the store yesterday.
	How's that art? A banana on the wall.
	How's that art? But the point is, you can't look at that and feel elevated and feel beautiful.
	And it gives you the perception that what people want...
	It's three stripes, banana peels, garbage, and soup cans.
	Not beautiful things.
	And you see the beauty. Ah, you see, that's just motel art.
	That's just low-rent art of sunsets and unicorns and clowns and dogs playing poker.
	That's low art.
	That's trashy art. But the high art, the elevated, the perfect, the beautiful is no longer divinity.
	It's no longer the perfectibility or perfection of Jesus.
	Now, the highest aspiration of the human soul is not to gaze deep into beauty and be rewarded and elevated by the reflection, and to become beautiful and have a lust and desire for beauty by absorbing beauty.
	Beauty is no longer transmitted through the medium.
	No, you don't get that anymore.
	And there's a sense, of course, that everybody now doesn't want to see beautiful things.
	They want to see... Multicolored Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and soup cans.
	That's what they want to see.
	And so, you feel a certain contempt, and you feel like you're surrounded by people who, what, this is what they want?
	I remember, oh yeah, I remember, I had a writing teacher, I've had a couple of writing teachers over the course of my time, and...
	I had a writing teacher when I was at the National Theatre School and he took me to a play and I fled the play.
	This sort of dark-hearted Pouty, snarly, French Galatoire, Quebecois kind of stuff.
	It was just really dark and really sinister and everybody was horrible and everybody was abusive and there was a pedophile in the play and I was just like, I fled the play.
	I literally left the play because it felt like an assault on me and it was an assault on me.
	And I fled the play and And I remember putting my headphones on when I was walking home.
	It was a long walk. I put my headphones on, and I listened over and over again to a song by the Honey Drippers called Good Rockin' at Midnight.
	Just because, while I have my moral issues with Robert Plant, to put it mildly, it at least is an uplifting, positive, and energetic song.
	And it was like I was taking an antidote.
	Like I'd been bitten by a snake that was going to rot my soul, and I had to wash away the poison with music.
	And it was at that moment where I said, if I can't do beautiful art, I'm not doing art at all.
	And that's what put me on a collision course with the theater school, to put it mildly.
	So then you think everyone around you just wants to look at soup cans and call it art, and it's all just...
	The emperor's new clothes, and it's just wretched.
	You no longer feel elevated.
	You now avoid art because it depresses your spirits, depresses your soul.
	I mean, I remember when I was a kid, I first saw these soup cans.
	I'm like, is that a joke?
	The fuck is that? That's a soup can.
	No, it's art! It's like, no, it's a soup can.
	No, it's art because it's in a frame.
	It's not art.
	You put beautiful things in a frame, that doesn't mean everything.
	Oh, you put art in a frame.
	That doesn't mean everything you put in a frame is art.
	You put bullets in a gun, but not everything that goes into a gun is bullets.
	You can put sausages in guns.
	You can put marbles.
	You can have thumb.
	I don't know. It's just strange logic.
	So it's there to decay your love for your culture.
	It's there to give you the withdrawal of the absence of beauty.
	And it's there to give you contempt for your fellow man so that there's nothing left for you to defend.
	There's nothing left for you to defend.
	And now, you know, the Nicki Minaj and Lizzo stuff and other artists, it's just, I mean, it's almost reaching the bottom levels of hell itself.
	So, yeah, I really, really work hard to avoid arts that generates contempt.
	It's a very rough emotion and experience to go through.
	So I would, you know, I recommend trying to avoid that kind of stuff.
	But of course, it's utterly, utterly up to you.
	All right. If you have any other comments or...
	Thank you for the question. It was great.
	If you have any other comments or issues...
	And when I made the commitment to...
	If I can't do beautiful art, I'm not doing art at all.
	After that, I began to...
	My brain just kind of flipped over.
	And instead of spreading horror, I have worked very hard to spread beauty and depth in the art that I produce.
	And, of course, there would be a lot more money...
	In art that was corrupt.
	That's sort of the point, right? I mean, the devil doesn't offer you nothing, otherwise you wouldn't accept anything.
	So there would be a lot more money and prestige and acceptance and so on.
	But, you know, here's the thing when it comes to integrity, just sort of by the by.
	You know, there are already so many people selling out, right?
	Already so many people selling out.
	That market is saturated.
	That market is saturated.
	I mean, just about every time I watch any kind of interview or whatever it is, I'm just like, yep, sell out, sell out, sell out, sell out, sell out.
	I get it. I get it.
	There's so many people already selling out for fame, for fortune, for respectability, which, you know, you're given respectability only on the condition that you don't really disturb the interest of any evildoers.
	And there are already so many people doing that, I don't need to be added to their number.
	And, you know, it is a saying, well, it's not saying, it's immoral from the Bible.
	What does it profit a man if he gained the whole world but lose his soul?
	What would it profit a man if he gained the whole world but lose his soul?
	And I've heard enough reports.
	A friend of mine knows some seriously wealthy people.
	And the reports of their lives, it's not great.
	They've got all the money in the world, but no particular joy or meaning or virtue.
	Just working hard, getting by.
	So... There are already so many.
	They don't need one more person to sell out.
	That's just not, you know, that's not really a thing.
	It might be a little bit more tempting if nobody was selling out because then at least you differentiate yourself.
	I say this from a sort of amoral standpoint.
	Not that I'd ever really do it, but… There are only so many people selling out.
	Don't need me. Don't need me for that.
	It's okay. Let one get away.
	Let one exception to the rule.
	The world will survive.
	Hopefully flourish to some degree.
	But yeah, I mean, basically all the progress in the world is committed by people who don't sell out.
	And there are lots of people holding back progress by selling out, even to their own values.
	They don't need another one.
	So didn't need another...
	Didn't need another playwright glorifying horror and dysfunction and instead have a little beauty in the world.
	A lot of beauty in the world.
	And again, I really strongly urge people to listen to my novels so you can get...
	My new one, The Future, my greatest one, in my opinion, at freedomand.locals.com for a subscription.
	And the other ones are free.
	There are three free ones. almostnovel.com, justpoornovel.com, fdrurl.com slash tgoa.
	The audiobook, that's my modern comedy, so...
	And it's funny too, like I wrote The God of Atheists in the late 90s, and in it there is a philosopher who speaks wisdom to the world through a camera, which really wasn't around at the time.
	It's pretty funny how it was kind of premonitionary.
	Premonitionary? The premonitionary position, when you just lie back and have philosophy do its way with you.
	All right. Any other thoughts, comments, issues, problems, questions?
	I'm happy to chat.
	I have a wee bit of a break this afternoon, so I have some time.
	Somebody said, as somebody who is working with heavy equipment, even as you speak, you're absolutely right about dealing with objective reality.
	Work with hands first, then the mind.
	Well said. Yeah, I've said this before.
	I don't trust anybody who's never worked with their hands.
	Like if you've just gone from like, I don't know, some middle class thing to some university to some job in a cubicle or some professorship or like you've never actually just gone out and worked with your hands.
	I don't.
	I don't know.
	Like I just, I don't care.
	I don't care what you have to say because it's all theoretical.
	You haven't actually have to deal with reality.
	Don't tell me about things with which you have no experience.
	If you've just lived in the world of language and you've lived in the world of manipulation, you know, like if you have a bad mark in a class, you can go and complain to the teacher or you can beg the teacher to give you another chance or you can try and get your grade improved and so on.
	You know, you break your leg in the wilderness.
	You can't talk to anyone.
	Like there's no one you can talk into or out of anything.
	And so, yeah, the people who've never had a real job working in the real world with real consequences, I don't really care what you have to say about stuff.
	You're talking about things you just don't know about in any way.
	All right, I'll give people another second or two.
	They say Jesus was a carpenter first.
	Yeah, Jesus was a carpenter first.
	Measure three times, cut once.
	And if you've ever worked with your hands in this kind of way...
	Working with reality is where you get rationality because reality can't be manipulated.
	People can be manipulated.
	Reality can't be. You can talk people into giving you stuff.
	You can't talk crops into emerging and providing you food.
	You can talk someone into giving you $5.
	You can't talk reality into giving you values.
	Somebody says, my first job was assembly line.
	Yeah, I did a lot of manual labor.
	A lot of manual labor. At the time, of course, you kind of grumble about it, but...
	In hindsight, like many things in life, like in hindsight, it just turned out to be absolutely fantastic.
	You know, this is part of my sort of growing religious side is that if I wanted to create a life that would create a philosopher who actually changed things for the better, I would look at my life.
	And I'd say, okay, well, the first thing you want to do is put him in an anti-rational environment so that he sees the horrors of subjectivity and mysticism and anti-rationality.
	And then you would give him a lot of restrictions, and you would give him a lot of need for physical labor, and you would give him, you know, even the people who've got a lot of money.
	Even people who've got a lot of money, they, you know, when they talk about the poor, like, you've not lived it.
	It doesn't mean you can't say anything about it, right?
	I mean, I get that. But you haven't lived it.
	So one of the, I mean... If you really have to count your coins to get to the end of the month, which I've done for many, many years in my life, you know, we used to get eviction notices when I was a kid and be like, hey, I wonder if we'll be here in a week and where we would be because back then I think you could even evict people in the winter.
	So yeah, it's pretty, pretty challenging.
	So yeah, then you have to go to work and then you have to hand over your money to your mother so she can make the rent from the age of like 12 onwards, right?
	So I started paying my own bills when I was 15.
	Didn't have a parent at home.
	So you just... You know, there's an absolute to numbers.
	There's an absolute to math. There's an absolute to physical reality that you just...
	You question it.
	Like, if you've...
	If your parents are paying for a whole bunch of stuff and you never have to worry about money and you never have to work with your hands, you can come up with all the theoretical bullshit known to man.
	It's just kind of meaningless, right?
	It's cultural appropriation of the hardworking and the factual.
	And of course, as I said in the essay, everyone who uses technology...
	Is using the value of people who know how to distinguish between fact and fiction, truth and dreams, reality and subjectivity.
	And so to use the products of people who accept this in order to argue against it is profoundly ungrateful in a way.
	All right. Well, thanks everyone so much for dropping by today.
	I will stop the show here and freedomain.com forward slash donate to help out the show, to help me continue to do what I do.
	Really would appreciate that.
	Free books abound, essentialphilosophy.com.
	You can go to artoftheargument.com.
	You can go to freedomain.com forward slash books.
	And don't forget my documentaries, freedomain.com slash documentaries.
	Some wonderful stuff there as well.
	You might particularly be interested in the one in Hong Kong where I was actually there, I think, when COVID was first circulating and took facefuls of tear gas for the cause.
	So I hope that you will enjoy those.
	And I thank you for your time and attention today, as I do every time I speak.
	Have yourselves a wonderful day.

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