Plato's The Republic, Book 2 Discussion, Part 2⧸2 (E-YKuTpDnGs)

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people hope them because so how would we summarize last week wants to do a summary so they were the three justices I’m trying to remember I gotta pull up my notes there are things that were so glaucon talked about there were these things that were good for their effect there were things that were good was the other one three types of goods ones that are those that are good in and of themselves but appear not be good there are ones that only appear good but are not good for themselves and ones that are both yeah and I I got a bunch of frames here right so you have the egoic frame the social frame and ideal frame and then they had different ways good versus wrong best versus worst and good evil right and then there was this tendency to get harmony up on each level and so there’s a pattern that the text is following and then there was also this thing about negative motivation for justice financial motivation and reputation and I want to get into the reputation a little bit later because I had an insight about that but yeah so just there’s definitely working with trees sets of tree there’s also definitely a systematic approach yeah we touched a little bit on the religious at the end which was really interesting so I guess I want to take that into well what what did it mean to me so I did I did think over these things a bit because I’ve been toying with these frames myself and in different ways so they feel quite natural to me but yeah I guess I have to admit that I’ve been slacking again in the level of integration with other things although I I do feel like my intention of last week did not get expressed as well as I I wanted to but it allowed me a different type of engagement like it did allow me to to see things differently and I guess I’m gonna set my intention for this week yeah I’m gonna try and remind people of their intention and takes back to the intention so that it actually becomes something that’s alive and participating in in the conversation instead of something that’s just on the background so yeah Danny what is your assessment my assessment of I think one thing I picked up on this morning that was just I think it’s a second or third sentence there’s some foreshadowing about the theme of appearance versus being when he says Socrates do you really wish to persuade us you do you only want to seem to have persuaded us right that kind of gets into this theme of the true lie so there’s like my my I’ve been there’s been like in life this week there’s been lots of lies you know so if my mind has been there and also it’s kind of been on the topic of boundaries as well I’ve used some lessons that I’ve learned from the first three sessions already like in business to have conversations and some of the skills especially when it comes to you know so I’ve kind of I’ve kind of put some of the practice to knowledge to use and I do recall this week many times I did remember that my the intention of engaging with this book has already has really been changing over time and I remember that I had a really big bunch of really interesting insights but I don’t remember what any of those things are because I’m exhausted but can confirm that it’s I’ve already gotten a whole lot of value out of this exercise and just you know so far so as far as intention goes I mean there’s problems in my life I’m working on solving it’s kind of hard to get away with them because they’re sort of overwhelming and all-consuming but a lot of that is basically I think at the bottom of it is basically gaining gaining clarity on where and what I want to spend my limited time and attention on you know and so like that that’s I’m increasingly becoming more clear about where my boundaries are with respect to okay like you know like like like we were talking about you can engage with some people but at some point you have to say okay I’m gonna go take my time and energy and spend it over there instead so I mean I’m going through that process I can’t really directly connect it to the text but that’s kind of I guess what’s going on in my head right now so that’s gonna inform how I interpret some of this text yeah I want to add something before I lose it I I did make a lot of connections between Christianity and how in some ways it’s reacting to play though I can I’m starting to see that connection way more clearly so that did pop out to me last week do you want to set an intention as well then I think I think for a minute my intention would just be to know more about justice and how to participate in it more and learn more about the world I don’t know if I can have a more yeah I don’t think I can yeah yes that would be it do you have any reflections this week yeah well I assume we were just we’re just gonna get into it right just the whole the whole of whole thing of bringing agency down from the from the gods down to the the persons the the humans that’s a big thing so it puts a lot on the it it’s really weird what he’s doing it it really like human beings are different like what it’s just like he’s totally changing things he’s flipping everything the accountability lies on yeah the human beings are responsible for justice not God’s is really it’s revolutionary I think it was before this is kind of getting into book three but but it’s there in book two like you know if you see gods doing things the humans are going to be doing just things as well and they they have no control over it they’re just they’re doing what they’re doing what they’re supposed to be I guess so to speak because that’s the gods that they worship so which what baffles me is how on earth they’re able to see that the gods are doing things that are unjust that’s what I don’t get I don’t understand how they can make that observation yeah we can get into that later because that definitely deserves some talk Jack for me really reflections on I had a ton of reflections on last week it was just really too much with my kids but as far as book two is concerned and that is a tremendous amount of I have a tourism I interested in talking about again their perception of the gods and also the idea that they speak of a one God which is very interesting to me towards the end of the book two and they are looking at the concept like Socrates is basically saying that you know God cannot these arguments that God cannot do anything evil obviously it’s very interesting as far as an intent is concerned really my intent is to be more engaged today I think gauge more and also to flesh out more of the concepts of my own mind actually still feels I’m playing a lot of catch-up with philosophical thinking in general okay well I hope we all are well Teddy needs to do his intention first I guess I don’t dude I don’t really have anything stay awake stay awake yeah that’s fine I think the steam of the true lie is kind of I just like to maybe understand a better understanding of that and understand how to integrate that idea a little bit maybe so mm-hmm stick with that okay um yeah so you could use that as like a way of filtering what we’re talking about right like it like a lens because when I was talking to Skylar earlier today he was saying well yeah it’s valuable to have someone looking in a specific way right in the community because that allows for a different type of engagement right and then I think this also goes to what you were saying Ethan right it’s like like how how can people see that the goats are wrong right like in some sense you can also be that person for yourself right like in some sense you can also look at things differently than than your assumption or your normal perspective but but that’s hard right like that requires immediate attention and then if someone they can contribute from that perspective and I actually think that was probably what the shaman was right like the shaman was the entity but within the community that was able to engage from a perspective that was alien to the people within the community and therefore allowing them to transcend the reciprocally narrowed space that they’re in. It’s really interesting because this is so right around the top. What’s that? I’ll have to put you louder. I can I can speak into this thing a little. So I think right around this time I see we’re kind of speculating I guess kind of looking at the history but one thing we do know I think is that this is right around the time that they were really embracing democracy in Athens so I don’t know if that has anything to do with this but like they’re bringing accountability onto the people like it’s coming down so like it’s very democratic in the sense that everyone is their own agent they don’t have that shaman at the top anymore that’s interpreting things or I don’t know I don’t know what you think about that or if that’s if that’s true or not or if I’m just speculating. Yeah I mean you get to get this very Spartan feel when they described the Guardian right it’s just very like and Athens just lost the Peloponnesian War right to Sparta so to bring in Homer and all this stuff is kind of kind of like an unorthodox perspective that Socrates is you know getting into right so I I kind of had some of those feelings but I kind of I was hoping Adam would be here to shed some light on this but I was really I was really hoping Adam would be here for this for the god stuff dude and the history stuff but uh dang it Adam yeah Let’s see if he’s playing games. Yeah yeah that’s the worst thing about this game. If he’s playing World of Tanks it’ll rat him out. It’ll tell you when someone’s playing a video game. I think there was somebody that I never mind I’ll bring that up later. So yeah that that goes to what where I started reading right so what I wrote down is there’s a negotiation with the gods right so effectively I’m gonna appease Mark a little bit here right like there’s the materialistic perspective which which basically says the injustice right like take what you can get right and then pay off every everybody or everything that’s not right and that’s effectively what governments are doing in some sense right it’s like oh we’re doing this and then it’s going wrong here and then we apply this patch here right we’re paying off our sin right we’re making a sacrifice to to this whatever so that it won’t pursue us right and it’s this endless patching you can do that later when we when we start building out the society that that’s somewhat of a necessary effect from from the building out of society as well at least in the method that they’re using right and then they’re also talking about God giving into the will of man right so it’s instead of man conforming to God like you can bribe God right like God is now an entity that you can ally with or something right so so I guess that that implies an equality in that relationship right what what what Plato is is trying to do is he’s trying to take the transcendent out of time right like like it’s not in the mutable and and I think I think that’s that’s the move right and so so so what does that allow you right like that that allows you to have uniformity I guess right because because before that that death polytheism but also pluralism right and implicit in the pluralism is might make right makes right right like this there’s a reason that he can’t make the arguments against it right because like yeah it is it is true in that way of being he’s definitely uncovering the concept of monotheism or transcendent God or one true God something that is unchanging and is unmanipulatable because if it’s I don’t know if we went over this last week or not but if if the if this God changes that means that it’s it’s if it’s if it’s a God that’s purely just and purely good what is it going to change into other than something that’s less than good so if the if you’re putting good at the highest place and the source of goodness it can’t change it’s unchangeable it’s a constant it’s it regardless of time it’s going to be the same which reminded me actually of the the burning bush that’s unconsumed yeah that’s the first time that the that’s the first time the monotheistic God appears in the the Israelite tradition or in the in the Bible there’s one one one thing that’s unconsuming it it’s unchanged I definitely picked up on I don’t know if it’s a democratic thing but the idea of in this metaphor of the state for the individual like it is the metaphor that they’re putting together is very resistant to change right that’s why they say well we have to we have to filter the you know we can’t we can’t be telling the guardians about Uranus lied about something and then Cronus retaliated and did something bad I guess we can’t we can’t be we better bury that in silence but there’s there’s there were many things like you know if it when things are at their best then then yeah I guess you know then then they will be more resistant to affect to affectations from the outside you know they mentioned that about here it is right here and and things which are at their best are also least liable to build to be altered or decomposed for example when healthiest and strongest the human frame is least liable to be affected by meats and drinks and the plant which is in the fullest vigor also suffers least from winds or the heat of the Sun or any similar cause and that they you know then they go on to say about same same thing about composite things like furniture houses garments etc when things are well made when something is well made then it’s less affected by time and circumstance and and that that kind of they hinted at that in many places I’m not really sure why they that was such a present prevalent theme but I did notice it no yeah for sure I remember the he actually uses a metaphor of a bush which was kind of weird he said a bush that stands out and is less is more resistant to wind and heat I thought was really peculiar right so so I think that’s right so so what what are we what are we doing we’re we’re having a measure right some sort of a qualitative measure but it’s it’s also inversely also the definition I said it’s really all it’s not really a measure it’s like the standard that you measure against it’s what I don’t see there’s something that’s immeasurable well yeah well you have to set the frame right and he’s pointing at that which sets the frame which is a quality and I actually have a I actually have a note about this quality quantity thing right because there’s this semblance of well when we make the state right like we we need to account for these quantities right so there’s a need right and then the need gets fulfilled right and then we can apply equality to the need right and now our potential space opens up right like there’s an optimization by putting quality on the quantity and now we get diversification so we go into this into this new space right so the first step is well we just get food effectively and things place to sleep right and then we get specialization right and because we have specialization now we have surplus right now because we have surplus now we have a opportunity for a new entity which is the trader or whatever to arise right and now we’re we’re entering in a new equilibrium right and then when we have established new equilibrium we can get qualities again right because now we’ve we’ve established this this axis not well it’s not that but but in some sense it is steps right because if you look at the Industrial Revolution or something right which was completely useless effectively right and then it’s not and and now we we dig out that space in whatever how many years right and now there’s a whole new economy right like this everything changed man well you robot it out for a second we said during the industrialization there wasn’t something and then there was what was that he said cool right cool was useless right it was worthless effectively right and then the steam engine came along and now it it had immense value and it gave immense agency right like it expanded the agency of humans in in in tremendous ways so like techne is that you think tech technology as in general will have what effect I guess well as you increase the quantity of like if you add a force multiplier or something are you making are you saying something you open up a space right like you open up a space of potential and then that needs to be filled right and then the question is is as how does it get filled right so there’s three stages in the city so he starts off with this flat nature city right which is in need right like it’s it’s on the edge it’s it’s not flourishing right and then he he goes to a city sufficiently providing for people right but now it doesn’t have luxury right and then the luxurious luxurious city he called in fever or something or inflammation yeah the sort of minimalistic city is in sound of health and luxury is an inflammation so it’s a blowing up right and he links war back to that as well so so war is a consequence of the pursuit of luxury which isn’t always true but sometimes it is in the event that these things become economically necessary it’s saying war is an offshoot of that that natural growth yeah that that that that is his case um so yeah do you guys want to pick something up from what I said or because I well I’m connecting that idea of I remember they said that war is an art and so I’m trying to connect that idea to what you guys were saying I’m just thinking through it right so they would require a guardian class that would it would specialize in and warfare which brings us into talking about the guardian class yeah I want to do a bunch of things before that but okay I have notes around that um so what so they’re going from these gods right and then they’re talking what they’re saying is what can the quick with with its young man right so they’re talking about without life experience effectively and no real proper grounding how how can that person decide whether to be a just person or an injustice right so I think they’re reframing the problem into a match maturation framing right like so when when you mature how can you have a healthy relationship to just as an injustice which was really interesting and also I think is really important and probably overlooked a lot you have um go ahead Ethan I was just gonna ask if you have that mark down which where that where he says that I could pull it up it’s it’s like in the first part of chapter 2 it’s like 30% away and yeah yeah 20% and or something and so what what is the place that this quick way that man comes from right so what is his starting position and from that perspective what what is the most obvious path to take right and then the way that they try to resolve that is by trying to establish what is profitable right so they’re they’re taking a somewhat economic but not strictly economic framing right and but it’s still materialistic right and so so what is the material gain that you can gain as a result of conforming to either justice and then this is where I got the insight what they’re talking about status right because what what is status well status is is a material capturing of the spirit right it is it is the spirit as if as it is recognized by humans that’s what status is so on the idea of conforming I have written my notes I don’t know how I thought this or where I got this from but I have good education or conformity or you know cultivation of the individual produces good souls or muses that produces an orderly life which is like harmony in the Guardian class which produces an orderly city I think that that may be that I think that’s kind of how I had that written my note somewhere that’s kind of how I interpreted the flow of the metaphor to go so like right a good education will be evidenced by someone who has the amuses integrated properly right and then evidence of that is going to be and then another another thing I have here in my notes surface thrive on ambiguity Socrates moves from words to meanings surface don’t usually spend time defining things real knowledge is held together by a logos or to say an account or reason so I was kind of taking trying to take so I think by the time they get to the warfare something’s gone wrong when you’d need to go expand the state out to get luxury goods maybe I don’t know but any of that’s how I observed right like he’s like yeah like we don’t want that so yeah and like so to finish off this early bit which was actually last week it’s not easy to be wicked which is an interesting thing to say right so there’s there’s even a challenge in being the the injustice and even provocation in some sense right or an inspiration and then this idea of secret societies that are necessary to reinforce well not only your perspective but your place in society and I was I was just thinking of modern times right where where like okay we need all these institutions to maintain our capacity to do injustice like that that’s literally what happened yeah it’s parasitical very interesting the more things change the more they say the same so to speak yeah so now we go into the gods or I go into the gods so they they they make this claim again from the perspective of this youth right like so mark is gonna love this middle out thinking right so what do we know about the gods the only accounts of the gods that we have are from the like we don’t have any direct experience or access to these gods right so there is a problem identified within the relationship and within the authority of the gods by their nature in effect right and so no one has proved that a soul can harbor no worse evil than injustice or no greater good than justice right so now that that is a that is a escalation of of the claim right because because now he’s putting it in the extremes right so he took the extreme cases as examples but now he’s having it as a test as well like okay like there’s no greater good than being just and then they go for less for fear less by wronging others that he should open his doors to the worst of all evil so there’s there’s this idea that that doing the wrong thing will corrupt you or whatever right and that again so we’re not doing the right thing out of the right this over but the fear of not getting corrupted which also took me back to the Bible right like fear of God is the beginning of wisdom so they seem to follow the same path with the fear argumentation which I don’t like so Manuel when they’re when they’re talking about the gods that’s the same argument that the later philosophers would make for everything but right the no direct access argument right we don’t have direct access to reality to the world but you see that argument here we don’t have direct access to the gods not we don’t have direct access to reality yeah I would I would be equivocating those two but yeah. Well it’s interesting I wonder if well I wonder if one’s derived from the other directly or if or if it’s incorrect or if it’s only correct for certain like how did the Greeks divide it up right because that’s that’s more what I’m interested in is how did they how did they think about these things in the moment because from that it sounds like they thought you had direct access to everything that wasn’t we’ll say supernatural in this case or extra natural however you want to yeah however you want to frame it I really wish Adam was here man thank Adam but the way that I I don’t know much about the Greek pantheons but the way that I kind of thought of how this may be totally wrong so I don’t know but I thought like Zeus is kind of like the executive center or like the executive function kind of presiding over all the other gods and the other gods are like warring for you know like you’ve got the god of war you’ve got you know these other these other spirits right and like you’ve got all those things in you and Zeus is kind of trying to be the one to sort of resolve when they’re when there’s conflict between the two or something like that I don’t know if that’s how they thought of it well that that’s the impression that I got from from from the book yeah okay but that he’s the arbiter of justice effect he’s the arbiter of justice but I think you know in the minute he’s not trying to do that he only inserts himself when he has to and and when he oversteps his own boundaries he he he you know gets punished by the other gods right because it’s the same problem that that Peterson talks about with the champs it’s like you can have a tyrannical champ for a little while but any one chimp is not going to win against two or three chimps that conspire against him no matter how strong he is right and so there’s always attention and look the Greeks with the you know it’s obvious from most of the things that they say and and even the the the myths themselves that the Greeks thought of the gods as having the same effective patterns and essences as humans but having extraordinary skills such weaknesses of humans right so there’s no discernible difference between the behavior of zoo here of the king of a city right it and and the lightning that Zeus has is like the ultimate power which you know I don’t know if you’ve seen lightning strike near you but uh yeah sounds right to me lightning’s pretty powerful right besides that’s a case older brother right so like like Zeus is in some sense not really the most powerful or like it’s at least ambiguous no no the power is not the power is not with the age that’s the thing like it’s not lineage it’s not age it it is a separate item but and then and then it’s interesting too because you know once they agree to their roles no matter how like Hades gets stuck with a bad deal by all accounts once they agree to the roles they they stick to those roles right which isn’t to say there are transgressions like so it’s like there’s nothing there’s no clear bright lines even up there if you want to think of it that way right so even in the idealization exemplification and clarification that that this pantheon provides there aren’t bright lines there’s there’s this constant negotiation back and forth between you know what Zeus wants and what Zeus should do as a as a husband you know and and what what what Hades should be doing and kidnapping girls that he shouldn’t be kidnapped it’s a goddess basically kidnapping a god right there’s there’s always this and that and that’s really the stories of the gods knew as I can tell her deliberately used to exemplify the problems of man just again it’s it’s modern modern science fiction right we’re going to take away Star Trek we’re going to take away money we’re going to take away resources we’re going to mostly take away power generation and then we’re going to see what humans are like oh and then nothing changed like nothing none of the qualities of humans that you actually care about have actually altered as a result of having or not needing money not not needing to worry about food or type of food or preference really like your preferences on Star Trek are kind of taken care of especially the classic series but because of you know that that started the thing and the gods for the Greeks are the same the same sort of trope the same sort of mechanism in in storytelling it’s just the gods want for nothing and they have ambrosia and you know and a lot of the early myths though we’re there we’re right there with them in a sense which nuts they’re not ruling over the creatures they still are but you know there’s the whole there’s the whole story with Prometheus and it’s like there’s a tension even between the gods and the people or the humans or whatever the proto humans I don’t I don’t even know how they thought about that because that gets into the early sort of the early way versus the later way when they structured the gods a little bit a little bit and separated down because there’s a time when we’re together and now we’re separate there’s there is a fallenness in the in the Greek mythos so that that’s rather explicit so I think that when you’re you know when you’re dealing with the gods you’re very much dealing with this exemplification through a change of environment of the human condition right so struggling with well you know why do humans agree to get married and then cheat on their wife why do humans agree I’m going to stay down in hell and then kidnap people and why isn’t the older brother the one with the most power right and it turns out he’s not the most clever basically right and he’s also moody as hell that’s the other problem with Poseidon. Nobody wants him in charge right they only side with Poseidon when Zeus gets too big for his britches and you know I find that fascinating it’s like oh yeah so they don’t and he’s in the sea right which is also like chaos and stuff right so well yeah right so it doesn’t go by age it doesn’t go right they are struggling with all these same things through the projection up we’ll say so I you you missed the thing that I said but like so just to be clear sad but like so they’re in this materialist frame and honor is the materialization the material recognition of the spirit and so what are the gods right you could say that those are the ineffable side of the spirit or whatever right and and so if if you take the sacrifice deal interaction mentality with the gods it’s it’s like uh but it’s like the the modern I can be my best self by negotiating with myself or parts of myself and just become perfection within that right and then I can I can take an alignment to to one aspect of my spirit right and I can focus on that and then I become demigod right like that’s what what the wisdom of apatia was kind of uh set around so something I think I read this somewhere on the threes but glaucon is a courageous character eddi mantis is a moderate character and socrates is kind of an embodiment of a wise wisdom so in terms of like you have these three characters and that’s they’re sort of talking justice out so there’s this intersection between moderation wisdom and courage I think I don’t know I don’t know if there’s anything there but there’s they’re playing together and then on there’s a truth character coming up okay so yeah I think I think socrates is supposed to stand outside it um is it buddy okay yeah um so so so because like you know the reason I mentioned that is because some some of the things that they say like I don’t remember who said it are kind of preposterous like about like censoring like mark’s got his free speech extremist shirt on there you know like you know they talk about like hey well we got a you know we got to censor stuff right like what kind of person would say that would negotiate with the gods in that way you know what I mean um I don’t know I don’t know exactly if if that’s well person say that with regarding the negotiating with the what do you mean um so okay well I mean so let me on there’s this there’s a I don’t know if I connect this very well but um there’s nothing um ignorant the ignorance in the soul of him who is deceived may be called the true lie for the lie in words is only a kind of imitation and shadowy image of a previous affectation of the soul not pure unadulterated falsehood so um I’m wondering if I’m um trying to connect this um I don’t know I just noticed I just noticed I just noticed a three and I don’t know I don’t know if there’s anything there um so I don’t know well no there’s definitely something there right basically self-deception I’m wondering I’m wondering like if if one of these characters is deceived you know is it ignorance like where’s the there’s the boundary between ignorance and self-deception too that’s another thing I was wondering too well actually I was talking with that uh with mark about this yesterday yeah we had a big argument right and and the conclusion that I came to right is like if if you’re standing here then it’s clear right but there’s this this overlapping area in the middle where like it’s it’s nonsensical to to talk about either deceiving yourself or what was the other thing um but but because were you acting out of ignorance right or were you acting out of incompetence and the problem is that one you know one one has a valid review and the other doesn’t and so from an external perspective and this is where we get messed up like internally you can put yourself in the state of the other person and then do the internally I know right which is I would call that invalid in all cases because you’re not the other person you can say all right well from the fact that somebody failed they’re incompetent but that may not be true because let’s suppose they were in a job that they never understood their role and so if you were never trying to do that thing and you failed to do that thing you’re not necessarily incompetent like you don’t know you don’t know if the person’s incompetent just because they didn’t do something because if they’re ignorant of what it was they were supposed to be doing maybe they could have done it had only they pointed in the right direction and so like and that’s the same question really like where’s the line of of ignorance versus incompetence where’s the line of uh understanding what you’re doing trying to do it and failing versus just not doing the thing for some other reason right because it’s not it’s not so clear cut just because you failed from the outside doesn’t it doesn’t really tell you because you don’t know intent and you also don’t know it’s not just intent I mean we wrap a lot up in that you also don’t know what it was they were trying and so they could be intending to do a good job and not understanding the job then it’s not an intent issue it’s an aim issue right so you could have wrong aim and then I’m looking at that going well I know exactly what you were trying to do which I probably don’t uh and and then say ah you must be incompetent when when that might not be true but you can always take a meta perspective right because you can you can always take a matter of perspective wherein the person is incompetent because part of their aim should have been asking what they’re supposed to be doing and therefore or you could you could go the other way right like you can do a meta ignorance and you can reframe it in a different way and and that’s why you can’t use meta usefully ever yes this is the problem you can do that for yourself right because you can say well I should be the person that when he’s in a situation is capable of finding a place to participate well that’s that’s interesting that you say that Manuel because I’ve been playing around with the thesis that you from the perspective of an individual valid um the only valid abstraction is an abstraction of layer one and that’s very much what’s in book two is we’re going to abstract from the person to the city we’re going to do one one layer of abstraction right and the gods is a similar roof right it’s one layer of abstraction away from materiality we’ll say into into you know the ethereal realm if you will right or at least into the non-material realm however you want to however you want to frame it and so yeah I think that if you’re if you’re only going one layer of abstraction and the type of abstraction matters right because when you’re when you’re when you’re abstracting to the gods you’re abstracting individuals to individuals without a certain set of constraints when you’re abstracting to get justice which is what what we’re doing right this is the problem of scale right abstraction is a change in scale so what what what Socrates does is we need to talk about cities and now I have to wonder why anybody read politics into this book because it’s not there which I find fascinating there’s no politics in this book the the stated purpose is to explore justice not to create a perfect city that’s not the you know to create a just city sure but not to create a perfect city not to create say the type of city you want to live in right because they’re only going after justice and and I would argue that that a city that was only just is not the kind of city you want to live in justice isn’t a sufficient a sufficient sufficiently high enough bar so yeah the idea of abstraction you can always cast somebody in the you know in the mode wherever in the play wherever right a third party one of the characters or or you know your personal perspective but you can’t do much else in terms of abstraction because you get you get stuck in these in these loops yeah so if I if I rephrase what you’re saying so I think what what you want is when you abstract you want to have a grounded interface right and so yes right when when he starts talking about luxury uh and and saying that that is what is the word that he’s using again disease uh inflammation of society uh I think I think that’s the thing that he’s pointing at right like so there’s a dysregulated connection to to its needs right because luxury is actually not a need so you’re dysregulating the connection between reality and the last sentence that I I was having about my knowledge was you must make clear what good and harm come following justice and injustice does to its possessor right and so in other words does does it allow you to be in alignment reality right which in other words is do you have a proper interface like does it allow you to have a proper interface with being and I think that’s that’s the question and like you can even turn it around and frame justice in these terms things are just or or in order for things to to be just they need to have that quality yeah I I like that you’re right it is that it is the grounding right so the abstraction is all about how far away you are from the grounding right I think that’s good that’s good good way to think about it and then when you get too far away so the statement of luxury is that you have all of your needs met and access to so much more that you’re living way above your needs like all the time like there’s something there’s got to be something about time in in luxury right because you’re not you’re not living in luxury if if you go out to eat once a month like that you know like there it going out to eat may still be a luxury fair enough like I think probably always going to a restaurant is a luxury even if it’s fast food joint because you’re not you’re not ground you’re not close enough to your food in some sense right you’re not close enough to the difficulty of food even if you’re buying your food and creating it yourself that’s way more involved with food than you know there’s the old joke about what what why do we need farms I get my meat from the supermarket it’s like yeah okay uh-huh but also you know so but imagine now you’re not even at the supermarket like uber is bringing you your meal you don’t even have to leave to go to mcdonald’s get mcdonald’s delivered right when you’re living in that all the time you’re so disconnected and ungrounded from my food comes from wrenches and farms and and you know and and all these places and then and then I have to compile that food into you know into a recipe and and and and interesting what else are you away from I would argue you’re away from art because cooking like like any other skill there’s an artistic aspect to it and so when you get that far out in abstraction it’s a problem and I think that’s you know the modern problem we get too far away from the original intent and the original boundaries which interestingly was the top of my live stream last night then then you you lose the ability to orient in the world and things spin out of control eventually right it’s probably not quick I think that’s that’s the problem like the computer industry is collapsing and taking a long time to do it but it’s so far away from you know nobody really understands how anything works anymore or the purpose of versions or you know why it’s important to compile code and not try to run everything bytecode interpreted and and crazy things like that right that things are just breaking down I think it’s the same with the government the government no longer understands its role right and so it’s sort of breaking down and and trying things that maybe it tried before it maybe should know it doesn’t work and and and this is all the problem of abstraction they’re so far away from the grounding to your point that that it everything just breaks down in terms of of being able to enact enact the things in the world so I want to go back to the government thing sometime but I I want to take some of the notes right because there’s the notes on the text by the author and it says plato denies that society’s unnet either as being the artificial outcome of an arbitrary compact or as rewarding the individual’s natural instincts I’ll leave early here in a couple minutes what can’t leave early that’s illegal all right we’re headed to San Francisco we’re gonna go to the symphony so oh nice dude that’s that’s luxury that’s cool dude yes I want to see pictures okay I’ll take some pictures I want to come dude we’re gonna we’re going to Mahler six you can come I don’t know if you’ll make it in time though I don’t know if I’m familiar with that piece listening to a lot of classical lately you play you end up so far abstracted that there’s bugs you can’t fix because you don’t know about them because you didn’t write the code yes that’s exactly the problem we’re talking about all right hopefully the memory leak thing is fixed we’re recording okay okay so plato denies that society is unnatural either as being the artificial outcome of an arbitrary compact or as rewarding the individual’s natural instincts and then society is considered merely as an economic structure providing for the lowest needs healthy animal existence and then he’s intentionally separating the higher needs right which is I guess right so so so that’s three layers again so we’re back in trees right so lowest needs higher needs which which are still necessary in some sense and then then there’s the luxury which is also the setup that they have in wisdom of ipecia I think although a little bit different but but but to to go back right to the disconnectedness right so what what are these these levels of needs well these are in some sense the amount of integration in in a patient they use natural needs and natural needs well whatever um it’s the integration give me it’s necessary the epicureans is that what you’re yeah um so so it what what they’re effectively talking about is is your integratedness right like how much of you is necessarily participating with these aspects right and then there’s more voluntary nature in your participation the further you you go away from from the needs um so you are you are you mapping so yeah I don’t I don’t even like the mapping here right it’s sufficiency and necessity in in epicureanism yeah well yeah yeah I don’t like it because like there’s this this this this shady boundary again just like we had earlier right like when like there’s there’s these two edges right like luxury is obvious right because like it’s if you remove it it’s it doesn’t matter right and then necessity is obvious because if you don’t have it you die and then there’s this space in between space in between which is also again uncategorizable it’s really there no but but I think that is the problem right there’s always these three things and there’s one thing in the middle that we never have access to right which is like the question between competence and ignorance right are you being competent or are you just stupid I don’t know right you can’t you don’t have access to that and then we confuse we we try to collapse that well if somebody didn’t do the right thing then they’re incompetent even though you know you can’t know that right unless you’re them uh and then maybe not even then because like we sometimes we don’t know what we’re up to to to Jordan Peterson’s excellent point we have no idea so yeah it’s hard to disambiguate these things Does anybody have comments or like I want to have a moment to reflect on your intention participation maybe uh probably got to take off guys so okay see you man see you next week there look um I don’t know if this is still comments or actual text but and I think this is my comment right so the argument that they’re starting to have and this is this goes to the letters right like but but what’s the move that Socrates makes in his argumentation is a move of humiliation right like I don’t really know right like the letters are too far away from each other a move of humiliation right like I don’t really know right like the letters are too far I’m incapable and I and this other step in order to to gain assemblers of uh of relationship right and and so um then I got this thing of quality as a category transcending attribute um so that’s maybe the way if if you have similar qualities we were talking about the the fractals right or the self-similarity of the fractals and the ability to move within them right I think I think that’s based upon qualities right like the qualities are the means by which there’s consistency um we did we were talking about fractals off before we started recording could we should we summarize what we were talking about about how it’s well I don’t know if I can it’s about uh it’s about intelligibility right um I’m trying to remember what we were talking about well so so so I’m connecting it to logical and non-logical identity and I don’t like it right but the there’s this problem with with logic right because like well what is logic right like why why is why is the similarity between a ball and a planet not logical but uh the similarity between one and two is logical like that that doesn’t make sense right like there’s there’s a a qualitative distinction between those two or whatever but there’s no really good means hey what is logical and what is not not logical so I never like the non-logical thing but but the non-logical aspect is adjudicated right effectively it’s adjudicated by equality I think and so that’s that’s where I I went with that can you frame of reference are you go ahead can you frame of reference are you go ahead go ahead Danny oh I was just gonna ask you I was gonna ask if you could substitute the word poetic for um I’m sorry since we stumbled on each other I forgot what word I was about to so so poetic right like so so so it’s it’s basically what what a symbol symbol is a better word that you can use right like so a symbol so I can say round which which is symbolizing the ball and the planet right so so the roundness is is like a quality that is common between the ball and the planet and therefore they’re similar right so within that I can put an equal sign between them but but the equal sign is only within that symbolic relationship and that’s the challenge that I think uh what are the name Glock on any methods are putting to Socrates is hey justify justice for justice’s sake right and it’s like well it’s kind of hard to do that right so yeah well that that is I think that that is the point is that yeah how do you resolve the framing problem and and I would say this is the problem living now is that the post-moderns convinced everybody that framing doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter or all friends are equal and then you can’t use logic reason rationale believe that or don’t understand that but that’s very much Peterson’s point uh nowadays a lot of people make the point but Peterson probably makes it the best right especially when he’s talking to Breveke or something he says like no it’s all narrative and narrative is is is poetic very interesting you know Manuel what I was going to ask you with the genesis for this question is there’s not long ago I heard a quote from Elon Musk he talks about learning he talked about get to the trunks of things right don’t get hung up on the leaves and the branches and what I see here is it looks like in terms of the philosophical discussions you gentlemen having I don’t know that I have the trunk yet so I’m fine you have to go to the roots like you don’t go to the trunk okay uh valid valid I think well we were talking about the connections right the interface that’s what the roots are right so to that point I guess my question really was what is that framework where are you getting the idea or where where is the benchmark that says that the relationship between one and two is logical but the relationship between a sphere and a planet or a world is not logical well that’s that’s what science did right they wanted two categories they wanted to say well this category is justifiable within the scientific framework which is logical and then there’s this other stuff that people seem to adopt but I can’t justify it like there’s no scientific means of of establishing that category right so the thing the the the thing that I was talking about so you you can fractal the better way is to look at it as a tree right so a programming tree right how do you compare a a part of the tree with another part of the tree right like how how can you say that this part of the tree is like that part of the tree like you you need to have a different perspective right like you need to have a different way of evaluating your data than the your data than the normal binary whatever evaluation that that the programming is using well the binary that I think that the point and to the point of the trunk right the the point is in order to use logic and reason reasoner rationality they require a frame and the point of the republic is oh you know you want to take something out of context like justice right connect it to nothing and then have it and then justify it but you can’t do that right and so the first move in in in book two is well when you like what Socrates is doing in in in book one is he’s he’s showing the inconsistencies that arise when you try to talk about justice from the perspective of a single individual I’m not saying you’re not including other individuals I’m saying your perspective is flat right you’re you’re in the world you’re saying from this person if this happens to him it is unjust and if this happens it is just there’s no formulations that you can use this is the whole point of book one there’s no formulations zero that you can use that are consistent to make that work consistency for justice you have to go one layer up one abstraction to the city so we’ll construct we don’t intend to live in right but just to highlight justice that’s the purpose of of book two is to is to say why do we need a city and what are the qualities of the city oh well you need censorship because there’s such a thing as forbidden knowledge because children which I just find absolutely fascinating nobody mentions this about book two because it’s right there oh and by the way the statement of Gnosticism again is right there and so because you have these problems at you don’t have those problems at the scale of a single individual because when you’re talking about a single individual either you’re the individual and you quote know everything about yourself which you know is already pro it’s already a problem it’s already not true right and so I could just point that out too right or or you’re trying to be a person that you’re not and you’re you’re pretending have access to information that you don’t have so you can’t do that so we scale up now when we scale up all these other problems come in about forbidden knowledge and children and right because now we have to account for all the other things that aren’t say a single individual you know the fact that they’re living with other individuals that there are functions that have to be done so that everybody can live right and and and the fact that there are going to be imbalances and excesses as the result of that abstraction and and so the whole point is you’re not going to find a pure right unconnected way of talking about justice it’s not possible so let’s get as close as we can without going too far without going all the way up to the gods right what we’re struggling with is yeah the gods don’t resolve the justice problem either and that’s certainly true in the mythos the gods are not just right there’s which is not to say they don’t try to be just or there’s not elements of justice right like zeus cheats he loses another kid that happens a few times right like okay i mean is is it just for his wife to take out a child or two yeah there’s a form of justice there i don’t know if i like it i don’t know how just it is but it’s not like it’s it’s at least an attempt at at a rebalancing if you will but so i think that’s the issue is that you know the whole socratic method is all is in essence all about how do you get to the trunk where exactly are you starting to to you know axiomatically to make knowledge statements to make epistemological statements where are you getting this from and that’s the whole socratic trick and the example that you had with the gods right like what is happening well like the authority or whatever like there’s a change right and now the skills are tipped right and now we need to reestablish that and i think this is why they’re going into we can’t have the gods be fallible right because they’re then they’re in this eternal zigzagging right and and and as a consequence we are also in an eternal zigzag and like you could argue that that is unjust right like so okay so i’ll just go on a key of things that are needed right and then they go into second order effects that’s effectively the way that these cities are built right and then this is where my insight was like so you you establish a quantity right like a fulfillment of quantity and then new types of quality can arise and then at a certain point that escalates into luxury which is effectively reestablished a a being too far from the source of from from being and now i actually thought of that making things sacred actually fixes that problem but that that is a uh that was a good insight yes yeah you’re too you’re too far away from the things you depend on no that’s that’s like i’m just reading my stuff and i’m like oh like what what is making things sacred right like it’s it’s making them necessary it’s really re-infusing the yeah it’s re-infusing the connection with need right it’s saying well maybe i don’t need this physically but but i need it i need it on that on that other ethereal realm or something right i needed in the you know in order to understand the forms because i’m surrounded and we’ll say an exhaustive amount of materiality all right i just i just have you know uber eats come into my house 24 seven and and so i just have no you know no no understanding and i think you can just pave over all ranch land with uh solar cells to fix some uh some problem with electricity or something equally absurd um and that’s that’s how you get there get there with that disconnection and that lack of sacredness and i would say it was actually a common a sort of common thing that the that the wealthy bad guys were going to church in a lot of literature uh you know not too long ago from the you know from the 70s and oh yeah the my yeah yeah exactly the mafia are very uh very very catholic which is strange right you’re like what what what um but but they live in luxury and they and they need to keep something sacred and that trope is definitely in a lot of literature yeah so now we go back to the comments uh so socrates problem is not to build an utopia in the air but to discover the least changes would radically cure the distampers of the tenions and then uh he also says that a war state sorry can you say that one more time so so he’s he’s he’s not trying to build utopia right so he’s not saying well like the perfect society would be like this that’s not as working but but he is trying to deal with what is attins doing wrong right so so it’s a more abstract uh and non-idealistic thing right and then the the the world state right like this is what what the chinese continent was doing right like they were there the conquerors of the world right and then they could establish a world order and then there would be no more war right and i think this is also what the romans did in in some sense right but that that is not a consideration as a solution to to to the problem um so so uh that that is a some interesting context so i don’t know if you wanted to i don’t know if i wanted if it’s appropriate to interrupt your flow but you know they did mention like when you exceed the limit of necessity that’s how you then you get to the unlimited accumulation of wealth but i don’t know why they didn’t meant i didn’t pick up on any like temperance or moderation as like they didn’t meant did they mention anything like that as a solution to that problem or did they mention any solution yes so so so prudent fear of poverty or war will keep them from begetting children beyond their means okay so again there’s an appeal to fear right okay like there’s these these citizens and they’re gonna act rationally and therefore they’re not they’re not gonna exceed their means because then they know that they’re gonna get into trouble which is also not true but whatever uh okay then yeah the minimalist is out held luxurious and inflammation and with this manner of life positions would be in much greater request so he’s he’s tying the luxury to need of more physicians which i was and like what do you what do you guys think about that he was tying the need for well he was saying well if we get gold and ivory and all that stuff right um of course because we get you’re not what we create but but you’re not exercising this basically what like you get to remember what luxury man like relative to the average person like in the old days before they had cars and planes and stuff right everybody was always walking everywhere all the time and in luxury people come to you you don’t go to them and when and when you do go to them you have four people carrying you on it and you know like it’s crazy right it’s absolutely crazy you’re riding on a horse uh you’re not walking anymore right and that’s why the sort of philosophy early philosophers in ancient greece for example that’s what they did they walked from from city city and it’s not that they would never accept a ride but past a certain point they want to want to ride because like hey i’m walking from city city for a reason and so they were healthier like it just the and they knew that in ancient greece how we lost this this information i i don’t i don’t quite understand but yeah the more luxury you have the the more you’re disconnected the more you’re ungrounded from nature and the more you’re ungrounded from nature the sicker you are yep that’s 100 correlated we’ve proven that and about six billion times so far uh i suspect we’re not going to learn that lesson anytime soon we’ll probably continue to reprove it right crazy people end up going to the gym nowadays because they don’t walk everywhere they sit on a computer and they write some abstract code to solve a problem and it doesn’t work because javascript never worked and oh sorry again my bad i agree so on the physician thing yeah like if you think about like modern there’s a lot of really weird words for this because really niche a lot of the a lot of the you know the modern like say dsm and psychology for example becomes maybe increasingly disconnected from but also the second thing is it’s the a physician is to the individual as access to the state right so i think it’s also a metaphor because we’re in this right so like now now you have a state that gets bigger we need police we need maybe judges we need we now need a bandit we have all these new problems so we need all that have to wrap duct tape and band-aid around them right and and they’re like maybe maybe increasingly nuanced so i don’t know if there’s anything there yeah i like that explanation way better actually yeah yeah yeah yeah well yeah like there’s there’s there’s gonna be more things but i i would i would call that judges or something right like like that that would make make may more sense because there’s more conflict that needs to be resolved if you look at exodus for example i think you can imagine right like with with moses trying to get this judicial system right there there’s this there’s this element where where certain states of being together or whatever they they just result in more laws and and more sophisticated right regulation in some sense um so yeah now we come to the guardians and i i didn’t finish reading that stuff before we started um so this is based upon the commentary the guardians are a spirited group uh and they’re based on the spirits of anger and pregnancy prognosity in righteous indignation allied with honor and competitive ambition so that that is the definition that they gave of the guardians um and then he he goes on and they they are segregated uh based upon the need of war that will create two classes uh one is the masses effectively right those those who deal with nature right and then like this this extra classes in some sense dealing dealing with luxury and first and foremost with the protection of the luxury and to be able to fulfill that role they need to be excellent right and and so then uh yeah he starts differentiating in qualities of of man and qualities that are needed to to establish things and he’s gonna he’s separating the philosopher from from the guardians but they’re still part of the class and the other part interesting is that he’s ignoring the other class effectively so he’s he’s basically establishing it as self-sufficient or like self-corrected or obvious um so we want to go into the guardian a bit here yeah you just have a lot i’m thinking what else is there to say about the girl i mean it’s just a again it’s just a trope to um exemplify the need for a class system right and and and also i guess the noblesse oblige right right yeah well i mean being given much a lot shall be expected yeah i don’t know if i’d cut it that way try cut it the other way actually right so like um and they’re supposed to be actual yeah but i don’t know that that’s given and and they’re actually unable to participate in the way everybody else does right it’s another sort of sharp line you can draw easily you can say oh you you know warrior class because there are warrior things that have to be done and because you have a warrior class they have different needs and therefore they need to be catered to in a special way but right and then of course you have to be able to be able to be right and then of course the real point of that is that’s true for a bunch of groups you know within for example you don’t need to deliver food to the farmer he already took care of his food needs and so can’t treat everybody equally because they’re not equal and they’re not equal in every possible dimension right and so uh at at what point do you have an abstraction which is guardians right where you’ve got a class of people that needs to be treated differently for the sake of protecting things larger than themselves outside of themselves because it’s easy to to you know cry self-defense or or whatever so the defense of a city is obvious the method of defense of the city is not because you can’t have the women and children you know throwing rocks you know untrained at the enemy and expect a good result right which is why you need these other classes right you need you need these special especially catered to group things thanks does that sound does that sound accurate manual yes uh although that was that was taken care of the materialistic side right so you could also say these children and women also need courage right so that’s a team of a lot of anime that that i’m watching right where where like the spirit that these people are embodying is is really important like because like you you can just if you cut off the head of an army like sometimes they turn away like that that happens right like you get the general uh they’re like yeah what are we doing here like uh but but yeah sometimes it doesn’t matter right like sometimes you cut off the head and they’re like yeah okay now we’re gonna double down like you just you just doomed yourself um and so it matters uh what what what is the thing that is co-hearing the group of people right and then well we’re gonna go back to to the spiritual right and to the sacred right like if if something sacred is is is guiding them then they’re gonna be much more formidable is that the reason you think that they are seeking not to tarnish the ideas of the gods they suppress this is the point of censorship in this particular regard uh yeah yeah well yeah that’s to cultivate right spirit yes i i that is totally true establishing the necessity of uh i guess having a sound mind right so so and this this is one of the problems in modern life is like okay like you are going to reference the things that you’ve experienced or seen right as as a way to understand other things right so it’s it’s it’s okay to see something crazy once right but if the crazy thing is normalized right like drag queen story hour or whatever right like if if you start normalizing that then your adjudication is going to be shifted right because because now you’re you’re going to think that this this thing which is is not normal is is part of normality and and and so that that is that is what the culture war is right or like like oh like i’m i’m gonna have this this whatever campaign to to make awareness of this right like it’s it’s trying to make things normal in in order to shift the behavior of a group of people right so they’re all doing this principle right and then but i’m not saying that’s not okay to do right like but like you you have to have that connectedness right like if it’s not rooted in your relationship to reality but if it’s it’s rooted in in your ideal fantasy right then that’s not good like it that disrupts the capacity of society to operate right and so that’s that’s the justification for uh for the for the creation right of all of these materials right and and i think they also say well so they started talking about like what is what is the perspective of a youngster that is going to participate in in the society like how are they going to make their judgment right and and then they also think they say that these these things are okay for a certain class of people to engage with but we’re not talking about that class of people right and and that’s that’s what the censorship is about and we censor stuff all the time like like that is happening right so if you were to put it into a modern context it seems that nation states used to have the idea and a lot of them still do that positive propaganda for the state is a good thing simply for the national defense and perhaps we’ve lost that right we don’t do that as much anymore right when you look at the for example the perception of american history uh 50 years ago versus today right um a lot of what we didn’t get right was not heavily exposed and you know a lot of that i think was like hey man like yeah we made some mistakes but we’re not focusing on those because why you know we for part of it at least is like you don’t want people thinking the country’s rotten like why do i wanted to go defend this why do i want to go to vietnam to you know do what the country the country alleged i don’t have any faith in the country’s ideals because i think they have a rotten history right my making sense here well that’s the way that they’re trying to do that but i don’t think that’s good right like we’re going to the moon or we’re going to rebuild after the second world war right like that that are good things like that that are things that you can bind around and you could call you could call it propaganda but i would say it’s like an ideal right like it’s like oh like some something has happened or can happen and we need to rally the troops in order to make that happen well take for example the constant manifest destiny right like hey this is we have a right to this right because we are righteous innately right and we believe it i don’t yeah i don’t it’s not how they thought about manifest destiny i think this is the problem right the problem the problem is i’m i’m i’m always having a problem trying to discern propaganda everybody can tell me propaganda was nobody can tell me what propaganda is nobody i don’t think it’s possible i think propaganda is a hindsight bias thing that doesn’t and then you have to ask yourself what is the utility of it right and if it’s only to look back then propaganda is just a statement that winners uh write history that’s all it is right because in essence you’re deciding what propaganda is so like it’s not like the government isn’t going to put out a message true right and so you what you’re doing is you’re judging the message that was put out no matter how it was derived it’s like okay but but how’s that discernible from anything else because it’s not like the government is hidden from you it’s not like these things can be hidden from you like the uh ted kaczynski writes a manifesto is that propaganda oh i mean i don’t i literally don’t know like i i don’t know how to parse that because a lot of what he says in his manifesto is not wrong uh i would say it’s also heidegger but whatever uh it’s also not new right there’s nothing new in kaczynski’s manifesto is it propaganda i you know because because and you know well it can’t be propaganda because it’s not said by a government i know i i you know what are you talking about the government is going to do things and that’s going to signal things the government government’s going to message things and that’s going to so and that’s sort of part of the war on marketing but marketing is just telling you about stuff that’s available and i would say that’s unavoidable or people can’t cooperate like if you don’t know i have eggs for sale you can’t buy eggs for me so if i put a sign on my property advertising eggs am i marketing i mean i i would say i am i just don’t have any animosity towards marketing right or or you know if i and this goes back to justice like if zeus cheats on his wife and she takes out one of his kids you know it seems a little heavy-handed uh but but is it unjust because it she can’t do nothing right there have to be consequences and so good justice versus bad justice good marketing versus bad marketing right good action in the world like i’m not seeing a difference at that point and and so is there such a thing as propaganda i i just i don’t that’s not interesting i i can tell you what happened yesterday in the netherlands right so i’m listening to to this uh well press meeting right and so they’re they’re talking and they come out and then they say we’re we’re gonna increase the speed in which we’re gonna implement these processes right and in the same thing there’s this there’s one party who says we’re gonna wait until the local governments have formed their own plans and then we’re gonna renegotiate it’s like that’s not speeding up right so so what what they’re doing is they recognize that there’s a delay and then they they try to put in a message up front of something that is speeding up and then they they hope that people are stupid enough to just stick with the speeding up aspect but like is that propaganda like like does it even matter what they say so let me relate this back to like say if you guys remember the go from talking incident hmm so tonkin was basically a friendly fire incident between two ships in a rainstorm off the coast of vietnam in 1967 and it was reframed a sole act that was an escalation by the north vietnamese it was then utilized in congress to authorize significant additional money to manipulate the war against north vietnam and so fairly black and white guy i work on that by the way but um so to me that is like okay propaganda would be intent like we want to steer a particular direction we want to achieve an outcome and this is what we’re saying to get it right which is something that you could see obviously during the cold war a lot of this posturing in terms of public information went back and forth that to me is but again am i living in subjectivity here well no i like i want to reframe that right so it’s like yeah there’s a spirit right there’s a spirit like there’s all of these people and they’re like anxious about what’s happening over there and now there’s this one spark just like in the second world war right like this guy gets killed and like they start a world war over this guy getting killed it’s like no like they start a world war because that spirit is there and like like just like when there’s a this this glass of salt right and it’s super self-solved or whatever right and then it gets this one blip on the radar right and then everything crystallizes immediately around it right so that’s the way that you should think about it because if if those spirits and and and these forces aren’t already present that that propaganda is not going to have an effect right and you you look you have to remember that reporting anything ever talking about an event has a goal and the question is what is that goal and so what what you’re arguing over is whether or not that goal should ever be put to use you know in a positive fashion you can do a much easier one right you can do the second iraq war and you can say the the whole thing around uh you know the nuclear nuclear capability or or perceived ability to have nuclear capability in the near future of iraq the the so-called weapons of mass destruction which is a very complicated issue as i’m sure you know uh it’s not anything like what it seems i have a video about that by the way on navigating patterns uh where i go through the whole thing right but the the in the argument that i make is that the war the second gulf war was justified by so many other things that the fact that that’s the spark they used to set it off to manuel’s point is irrelevant it doesn’t matter that they had to use and look and i make the argument in my video too that you can you can say they knew and i would say there’s no way that colin powell and those guys could have known not saying nothing they didn’t i’m saying they couldn’t have known and therefore they erred on the side of caution with all the other evidence that well they’re breaking treaties they do have these other weapons which are not nuclear but are certainly in violation of a the treaty b un uh and c you know they’re they’re uh harmlessness right they’re supposed to they’re actually have big weapons that they’re offensive instead of defensive this is kind of a big deal how are we going to deal with this the strength of fortitude to do anything about the fact that they’ve been violating the treaty for years right and and pursuing nuclear weapons what you know and and the thing they were pursuing almost certainly by the way is the is the dirty bomb with the with the yellow cake like that definitely happened there’s no there’s so much documentation on that from three different countries um that that definitely happened now you can argue that they would they would always have failed but that’s kind of a stupid way to to argue that so is it propaganda to prop up something like that or was it sinking in the main right i mean there’s so many examples right is it propaganda because you’re just boosting in to manuel’s point an already existing signal there’s already a spirit there so there’s already a spirit and all you’re really doing is is fearing people in a direction uh you know and and it conspiracy theory is somebody believing information without evidence like you can’t have evidence that ancient aliens built the pyramids that’s not options available to you right and and so and you can’t you can’t have evidence that colin powell knew that they didn’t have a nuclear plant up and running you you that you can’t do that in science like science can’t prove a negative it doesn’t it’s not designed to and so people get very wrapped up on that asymmetry and and so what is propaganda at that point is it just adding the extra salt is it you know what what is it the supersaturation or supersaturation justified because that’s sort of my argument about the second iraq war is that i don’t care how they got there they needed to go there and it needed to have uh and that’s probably a controversial take but you know it had to be done so you can say right go ahead oh with with ukraine right like a lot of people were worried about false flag operations right and so what is a false flag operation well the false flag operation is basically saying i need a public justification for the action that i’m gonna take anyway yes yes and like if you don’t care right which putin didn’t then you don’t need it right right and and so if all these people are playing with these fantasy rules and put us as if but i’m not playing your game they were looking for the poland 1939 hey they’re too many atrocities blah blah but yeah i remember it was reported like oh is this gonna start happening very interesting yeah go ahead dandy i was gonna kind of change this conversation topic slightly uh go ahead if you had something that was on that same track track okay no i was gonna appreciate the big picture thought since we’re coming up on on 11 i wanted to ask if i could read this epic john f kennedy moon section and ask is this enchantment or propaganda as someone infected with the protestant work ethic this really gets me going but i’m not sure what this is really gets me going but if you don’t mind i’d like to read this for its emotional valence because i love it but we shall send to the moon 240 000 miles away a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall on an untried mission to the to an unknown celestial body and then return it safely to earth but why some say the moon why choose this as our goal and then may ask why climb the highest mountain why 35 years ago fly the atlantic we choose to go to the moon we choose to go to the moon we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills because that challenge is one that we’re willing to accept one that we are unwilling to postpone and therefore as we set sail we ask god’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure that man has ever gone so you want to you want to speed up your uh your process instead of saying we got to hold up on the process you know maybe maybe we need a little bit more of that i don’t know but is that propaganda is that enchantment i don’t know but i like it it’s the rinse it’s our flavor of propaganda right nanny if indeed we’re going to call it that whatever it is it’s it’s it’s positive in our book it speaks to us so whatever it is is effective in my opinion and it makes an us out of all of the members we’ll say citizens of the country but it builds the it defines the us as the members of the citizens of the country paying taxes you know and it is right but and then people will go that’s positive propaganda not negative and now you’re back into the problem that’s like well just do away with propaganda instead and worry about the message relative to the spirit because the problem is right now we have a world where everyone’s worried about the massive racist and somebody calls me racist i just literally didn’t hear that it’s like i just it doesn’t even register to be honest it never did i like i was just like resistant to other people telling me about my attitude about certain people based on the color of their skin in fact a fascinating conversation about that where somebody had to ask me hey you know these meetings that you go to what does everybody look like and i had to think about it because i literally don’t see what people physically look like i mean to a large degree like not just skin color like if you have a limp i probably won’t even notice i’ll probably just talk to you because i you know i just don’t know the difference between people sometimes it’s like yeah we’re all here together sounds good to me right and so that’s the problem is that it’s about what you’re paying attention to and if you’re paying attention to only outcome and then you’re assigning a value well that that started a war that must have been propaganda right and then you have the example like danny gave now it’s like well what’s propaganda now buddy because he just basically spun a whole story which is an enchantment i would argue and and it was great like so many good things came out of that spending that people have no idea like it’s not just right it’s sort of in some ways what what kennedy did and i’m from boston i’m actually big john f kennedy admirer so you know all the biases out on the table in some ways what he did was he steered the excess spending of the government away from the military industrial complex without losing the advantages of spending at that level right because so many things come out of nasa in medicine and everything else the only way things came out was either individual rich people which is a terrible system because they’re never as wealthy as a nation or at least not never in mott and uh yeah i don’t want to use the word modern what do i want to say uh in post-feudal times they’re never as wealthy as a nation right before that they were kings and nations were almost the same they were very close so he’s taking that budget away from the military industrial complex and still getting the advantage of having a military industrial complex to some extent and like that cannot be over appreciated although it’s been corrupted since then but at least he he started that that ball rolling and he did it through that particular piece of propagandistic enchantment i think it’s a fair way to say it but again i don’t like the term propaganda because i can’t differentiate it from any other type of signaling in the world and signaling is inevitable because you’re taking action in the world people respond to that even if you don’t say anything so again can you restate where your focus is then the focus is on the spirit versus the message and again the reason why that’s important is because yeah if somebody calls you a nazi or hitler or something that doesn’t mean that that is within the spirit of what is happening and and that’s why like oh you know you don’t care about the planet and and this is a big one for me because i’m like i literally have a lower carbon footprint than anybody talking about the planet because the people with lower carbon footprint than me don’t have even have computers and so we’re not hearing from them their signal is zero which is fine by me like you know respect but i’m not giving up my computers dying with computers buried within me and on and online that’s that’s how i’m going now that’s how i’m going out of this world you’re not taking these away okay i’m keeping my electricity of my computers everything else there you know i don’t need cars you know whatever but i i need this so so understanding the spirit which is part of your intuition versus the signal the message that’s that’s coming through is important and that’s all that matters and if you’re focused on that and you’re focused on hopefully goodness or the true the good and the beautiful better yet then that’s all you need to orient the world which is a very sad message for people who want to be smart and want to come complicated and complex uh thing that only smart people can do you know like sam harris right it’s bad news for them and it’s good news for all the people that can’t play that game right all the people that aren’t smart enough to you know read and understand the republic which i’m now realizing is most of the people who’ve told me they’ve read it i’m like are you sure you kind of missed some important bits there buddy yeah it’s it’s strange to me uh so so focusing on those things without having to engage in this you know in some sense a luxurious uh intellectual uh exploration which i’m very grateful for and i love and again computers right we’re all enabled by technology and things but not necessary not necessary to live a good true and beautiful life so a couple things i would add is so you can look at this that justifies spirit that’s already there and then there’s there’s things that try to summon a new spirit right so saying going to the moon or whatever right like that’s not a spirit that exists like that is actually saying we all should recognize this as a valid spirit and cooperate in it and sometimes that works right and sometimes that fails and like you you can kind of like feel whether that is possible or not right like you need to have the proper ground to to set that spirit but i had this experience on discord where someone started talking to me about the abuse of aboriginals and how horrible it was um and i said like why are you telling me this and she said but you need to know it like why do i need to know it well because we need to spread awareness about this thing it’s like why do we need to be aware of this thing well so so that it can change like yeah but like it’s in in australia like it’s too far away i’m never going to do anything about it like it has nothing to do with me like like why do i need to notice like like like i said like i’d i’d listen to you if you’d go there and and you’d help them and you want to talk about that like i’ll talk about that but like i i don’t i don’t need to have awareness of a thing that that doesn’t affect me and i can’t affect it like you want me to move over to australia like for real like for real and and and that’s what people do all the time like like well you need to have trans awareness this you need to have uh this disability awareness that because in the odd chance that you might actually face one of these persons you you you have like ingested enough propaganda that you can react to them appropriately it’s like well that’s never gonna happen yeah but like that’s that’s literally what what the thinking behind it is right it’s like that’s literally the spirit that they’re following it’s like you just oh if you just know about it then you’re not good to do the wrong thing it’s like no like that ain’t working that way that’s a lot of food for thought was i love hope so that’s the goal the train is still moving faster than my brain it’s okay it’s good it’s good that’s good so we are coming up on 11 um i i was curious about this idea of the noble lie i don’t know if we wanted to i have mocha to skip over the dad i don’t even have any thoughts on it um so i don’t know but if we wanted to wind down is that in chapter two yeah uh because i kind of didn’t register it yeah i didn’t register either do you know what section it’s in it doesn’t ring a bell and well i guess it’s just the idea oh no you’re right they made they made a distinction between a true lie and a noble lie there’s right i’m trying to remember um that jumped out at me and not because it’s a good movie although it is true lies it’s also it’s all yeah that’s a great that’s a great film uh well i mean i mean this is getting into another theme they talk about imitations um it kind of gets back to the greek pantheon thing it’s sort of the end yeah it’s towards the end so maybe maybe we can save it um because i think it kind of maybe ties into chapter three chapter three is all book three is awesome too so i’m okay to wrap you know wrap it up yeah i was gonna say i think they i think they brush the concept and move on and then they cover it later is my suspicion i haven’t read ahead so uh which which i i’m actually very happy that i have i’m not reading ahead because it’s way more exciting than when i read it at the last minute so yeah so the last note i don’t know if i did it uh so socrates is perplexed and then he’s reflecting on what transpired within the conversation right so so he he’s noticing that the the things are manifesting outside of his control his will his intention right so but when we’re talking about socrates as this great manipulator or whatever right like here we’re is he really manipulating or is he just going with what is um yeah they’re trying to say he’s going with the spirit that they’re they’re you know that that’s what he’s known for is surfing the the tides of this and that’s why people can’t pin him down because he’s he doesn’t tend to make uh truth claims and that’s what everyone’s basically angry with him about so yeah that’s that’s interesting yeah they do they do touch on lies they don’t i didn’t see in the searchable version i didn’t see noble lie i don’t remember reading noble lie in the other translation so i i they are talking about that concept though danny so i think that’s correct yeah you lied to the soul above the things right and then there is that sense that that socrates you know it play don’t makes it clear that socrates is just going where things go and not trying to steer things so we want to wrap it up manwell yeah i think we we’re ready to wrap it up um anybody any last thoughts or whatever um yeah so uh let’s do a reflection um maybe at the end of your reflection uh set an intention for the week and and how you’re gonna integrate what you’ve reflected upon in in your week um so yeah um and then we’ll talk afterwards i guess you you you you you you so yeah does anybody still want to point out something uh the only the only thing i want to point out manuel uh is i heard a story yesterday from somebody and he was saying when he went to school they uh watched a film on the you know one of the holocaust films right one of the prison camp concentration camp survival films and it’s a it’s a it’s a bit of a longer story uh which i can’t do justice to but the interesting thing to me is he said at the end i’m gonna stop the film and i’m not gonna turn the lights on right away uh you know so that people didn’t have to feel bad because basically everyone was in tears uh and and i thought about oh he allowed you time to integrate and i think that the integration and just not moving to the next thing immediately stopping and taking that time as we’ve discovered i think uh you know it obviously was in use you know forever and we’ve lost that and so yeah we should we should uh make sure that you know we do this in all our events we take time between events to integrate what happened uh and maybe every event like maybe when you’re done cooking it’s good to stop and reflect well in university we have 35 minute lessons and on 15 minute breaks and i was always talking all right yeah no integration well no there was integration right like it was reflection upon what happened it was like like that that did have occur naturally and i was watching this crazy toronto whatever must be accessible but they also said like they had this mission statement at first right it’s like we’re here to to do this to provide community blah blah blah and then they went into world peace and stuff but but like they they kind of did it right like like it’s like the prayer at the start of anything like we get it here together and we hope that god will provide us the ability to commune for this purpose effect right like that’s no i think i think that stuff is really important right and then um yeah so it exists if if you if you start looking for it but then might like the the fact that you never recognized it also means that you did not participate in that properly or maybe just by chance right right yeah i agree like stuff just comes flooding in at 20 30 seconds you know slowing down it’s crazy it’s legit you know