Episode 243: Finding My Religion

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist Dave Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] I'm sorry I did that. I'm embarrassed that I did that. I did a bad thing but I'm a good person. Pay no attention to that man. Good man. Good. They think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. Anybody can have a brain?

[00:01:09] You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, we had YOL in bar on for an opening segment but we had to scrap it.

[00:01:25] So now we don't have any guests for this episode. How are we going to make up for the lost revenue? What we do is we, like I have a plan, don't worry. We mentioned YOL once, we'll mention Paul Bloom maybe once or twice in a flattering light

[00:01:39] and then I'll just enforce them. Yeah, I mean we probably can't charge them the whole appearance fee. It's not going to be the whole 10K or whatever. I think that works. Everyone's a winner, they get really influencers talking positively about them.

[00:01:59] You're of course referring to a conspiracy theory recently peddled on Reddit that Paul Bloom was paying to appear on our show. Which I get it. I get why you would think that somebody would pay for you. To be on Very Bad Wizards.

[00:02:17] But in this case, this is merely a conspiracy. I remember at some point realizing that in the music business, I don't know, like at least for sure in rap, you could just pay Snoop like 50K to be on your song. Like here I thought it was something organic.

[00:02:32] Like oh he must be really like co-signing this artist. Snoop has a price of course. It's like cameo but to be on the song. But like it is, there's an interesting topic there about authenticity where cameo you just know.

[00:02:49] Like there's a little watermark on the bottom right that says cameo. Right, if you have Snoop on it, it's like okay. Yeah, you think, I just thought there was integrity I guess. He's saying is Snoop not me.

[00:03:05] To be clear, we don't charge anybody for their appearance on Very Bad Wizards. But we also don't have very many people because it's a pain in the ass. The number of sort of PR emails we get saying like whatever Joe Shmo would love to be on your podcast

[00:03:20] to talk about his new book on like gardening in the 21st century or something. It's like I feel like I should just start an entirely new podcast that solely is for the purpose of charging these units.

[00:03:32] Right, and we'll just have them on like oh so you said you want it. It'll be called like Very Bad Wizards or something, no D. And we don't put it on any major platforms, we just send them a link.

[00:03:47] I want to hear about your amazing new book about how climate change would actually be addressed by strong AI and deep learning networks. Sounds really fascinating, I want to hear more about it. Tell me about your book. Yeah.

[00:04:02] You know, I'm just like on the phone with the contractor. Yeah, I want you to turn my garage apartment. They're very weird. These PR people like it's like they don't even pretend that they've listened to an episode which you know,

[00:04:15] I just feel like maybe three minutes of research would let you know. Yeah, I mean in their defense like it wouldn't matter so why should they do it would be a waste of their time.

[00:04:25] It's not like it's like oh okay, well no, sounds like she listened to that last one so let's have this random book author. Yeah, no it's true. I just want them to say something flattering to me.

[00:04:35] So we should pour one out for an opening segment that didn't happen. We were going to talk about a, in fact we did at some length. I talked about a paper that was published in qualitative research and it was about a man who had figured out you know,

[00:04:53] like a new ethnographic form of participation which was to himself only masturbate to Shota. Yeah right and which is apparently just Japanese boys, young boys 17 and under having sex and licking balls and sniffing balls. Apparently some self published. Yeah, yeah we had it was a great segment.

[00:05:27] It was amazing. We laughed, we cried, we read portions of it. But we're not releasing it. Why aren't we? Because you know, after we recorded which was sort of like the couple days after that had been posted by Neuroskeptid.

[00:05:46] And literally everybody telling us on every possible form of media that we needed to talk about this. It was like written for our show. Yeah, we read the paper, we discussed it.

[00:05:58] We even had like thoughtful things to say about like that were maybe about why it was well written and that we should at least I was like, well you know he sounds just lonely and it shouldn't. I didn't want to be quick to judge.

[00:06:10] It's also very funny like the paper itself not intentionally as it turns out but very very funny the paper. Right. Just the way like if you can find a copy of it I think it's been taken down right. Tamar will send you his copy.

[00:06:24] It's yeah there are all these puns like hard copy. And then and then like we came to find out as many people did that there's this is kind of dark man like this guy has been involved in in publishing.

[00:06:42] Like he had a zine back in the day that was sort of dedicated to like violence stories about violent acts real life stories about violent acts toward young boys and and it just became not funny and I it took on a new light.

[00:06:58] It was a judgment call but I just didn't feel right saying yeah some other things. Well because part of like it was very funny and we were making fun of it but we were also and I was I think you and I maybe more than you.

[00:07:11] We're also trying both for comic purposes but then also for real reasons to be more sympathetic to the methodology. Right.

[00:07:22] Then you know then most people would and because there was something very special about the way this paper was written it wasn't just another ridiculous you know social psych or Evo psych kind of paper. Right.

[00:07:36] It was weirder and as it turns out more genuinely fucked up and disturbed and then also like learning that Shota is illegal in a lot of countries just not Japan and stuff like that.

[00:07:48] So like we were we were making a lot of jokes but so anyway we're not doing it.

[00:07:53] So now like if you know if you as a listener want to start up some rabid like release the Snyder cut kind of community that's your right in a free country to do that.

[00:08:05] But as it but you won't be hearing that you won't be hearing that on this episode. We even had title. Can we say the title. Yes. I feel like the shoot the shoot your show to also told us to that one.

[00:08:28] That moment alone when we recorded it was by way yes bad bad bad guy. It seems like it's a bad like and it's so funny because all this happened like neuro skeptic did his neuro skeptic thing which is some kind of gift from God.

[00:08:47] Neurosceptic like exists to like give the world happiness and us opening segments and it was just him doing that and then all of a sudden like the right wing conservatives in because this guy's a UK institution we can attack you know non-scientists.

[00:09:06] And then we're going to be talking about the non-stem fields now because look at what they're doing because like what they're doing the one part of the conversation that that it's too bad we won't be able to publish is it was we all noted that it

[00:09:21] was like the other two days that the the mockery the criticism the attention was about this like masturbation as method and not about the fact that this guy was just openly admitting to like collecting like depictions drawn depictions of like sexual acts that would be illegal in most jurisdictions as far as I know.

[00:09:43] And it was all about just like the stupidity of like you know non-stem social sciences and masturbation and whatever. And we're like wait isn't this the worst part. The worst part that apparently this guy has a stash of like like stuck together comics.

[00:10:00] Yeah that he would talk about in very loving ways about masturbating to and it's true like like the the discourse around I think that's just because people didn't they read the abstract you know and didn't really get into what the show.

[00:10:16] Yeah what they did what they are and also just take another step to think well wait what why are you like forget about writing it and that you think it's a contribution to like methods and all of that and like a new way of continuing the pioneering work of some like

[00:10:35] anthropologists from the 30s but like why are you jerking off to like cartoons of like nine and ten year olds sniffing each other's cocks.

[00:10:48] Well he preempted that in his paper he said you know I might get shit for this method but I will no longer take it I'm proud of what I do and as an illustration of the pride in what I do I even bought a special lamp to jerk off to these comics with.

[00:11:06] Damn it.

[00:11:11] We even got into real critiques of like whether if this were a method what it would possibly show you know we're like we had our real you know our real very bad wizards hats on and and we couldn't do it and you well to his credit was uncomfortable the whole.

[00:11:26] It's awkward he was I he was here with visiting with me that's what made him. But what neuro skeptic giveth neuro skeptic take it away get the way.

[00:11:37] So what are we talking about instead so as the as the audible that we had a call in absence of that amazing introsegment I thought I don't even know who who tweeted about this but there is a paper that came out recently on conspiracy beliefs and.

[00:11:55] It's it's a political scientist publishes paper this year called a Republicans and conservatives more likely to believe conspiracy theories and what the person tweeted was just this chart that had 20 conspiracy theories or more for I don't know for.

[00:12:13] And it ranked them from so they're listed in order of the degree to which liberals and conservatives endorse them so the farther along on the right the more conservative people are likely to endorse belief in them and the farther on the left.

[00:12:29] The more liberals are and I thought hey would be fun is to go down this list and in part see whether I've even heard of some of these and to really I want to know as a measure of political orientation because I know you're going to endorse some of these.

[00:12:45] I wonder just where you would stand. We'll see. It's funny like I think this whole debate is because of Trump and like the election and then QAnon which kind of rose.

[00:13:00] Yeah and then and then some ways helped Trump get into power and consolidate power. Like I think people think that the right are clearly more like prone to be in conspiracies but that's a pretty new fucking thing.

[00:13:18] Absolutely is the papers. The paper authors talk about this. I think they're very so this is Adam Enders at all. They're all at different institutions. They talk about this and I think they're absolutely right. I think you're absolutely right that that it's just recent memory where the conspiracy

[00:13:34] nut job seemed to be on the side of Trump. But like so many of the conspiracy theories that I would find annoying say from living around Ithaca are all peddled by the left.

[00:13:47] The left. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure like most of those are true but I'm sure you but they threaten the status quo your status quo and your ruling class position within it.

[00:13:59] Can I go down the list then and just ask you what you think. Are we going to talk. OK. Sure. Are we going to. OK yeah let's just do that. How about that. OK. So these this is a list that doesn't like we don't have at least I didn't track down any like

[00:14:13] full items. So this is just like in some cases it's just three words or two words describing a conspiracy theory. So define it. Tamela my instructions to you define it as you understand it from those three words. So covid threat exaggerated.

[00:14:31] I mean so this is a tough one to know like what they mean. Is it that the media exaggerated the threat of covid to like normally healthy people then and the CDC also did that and played a part in that then yes absolutely but if it's like did the government as some way of like hurting

[00:14:55] Trump or doing some you know or like with some overarching political goal. No it was just a way I think to try to get people to be more safe than sorry. Right.

[00:15:08] I'm glad that I'm glad that you put you made that clarification because I remember I wanted to read at least their definition of a conspiracy like they're working definition of a conspiracy theory

[00:15:18] to see whether this meshed with your intuition in talking about how there are different studies that find these inconsistencies across like some people find it's Republicans and people find this Democrats.

[00:15:29] I said they say we pause at that inconsistencies across findings are partially due to the concept of conspiracy theory itself. And here is the definition they offer a conspiracy theory is an explanation of an event or circumstance that accuses powerful actors of working in secret for their own benefit against the common good

[00:15:47] under mines bedrock societal norms rules or laws conspiracy theories theories and italics are not likely to be quote unquote true IE no even handed burden of empirical proof has been satisfied according to appropriate epistemological authorities.

[00:16:04] Right. Well all of that is very loaded language and very unclear. And like I do think calling something a conspiracy is a way of weaponizing like challenges to certain practices and the only thing I would say that I disagree with that is I don't think it's necessarily like they're doing it to enrich themselves somehow or for just their own interest.

[00:16:28] Like I think with the covid one. It might have been a somewhat maybe misguided and ultimately completely backfiring attempt to increase the common good not decrease the common good but it did violate norms of transparency and honesty and I think one of the reasons I think it backfired is just undermined even more than normal like the amount of trust people

[00:16:57] have in something like the CDC. Yeah so if if they say elevated the messaging about risk strategically to say well if people get more afraid that they might get covid then they're less likely to spread it right to people who really will die from it.

[00:17:17] Yeah. And that stops that sounds to me like a strategy and may perhaps even a bad fail tragedy or an immoral one but I don't know in my common usage I would call it a conspiracy.

[00:17:29] Wouldn't you call it a conspiracy if that may be the underlying reason why they're doing it but they are like they are sticking to the official story that this is what the science says.

[00:17:43] Yeah like that starts to get conspiracy. Yeah maybe like it's funny because what what's for me like the sort of sine qua non of a conspiracy is the part of their definition that says that it's like powerful actors working in secret.

[00:17:58] So like a small group of people doing something with a goal that's completely secret whereas I think the CDC probably in their meetings were like yeah let's let's raise the the messaging or whatever.

[00:18:11] Oh I think it was worse than that. I don't think it was let's raise the messaging like like I mean I don't know actually yeah but like that small group doing things in secret.

[00:18:20] The other thing I wanted to say is if we call it a theory and I think this is just definitional on their part that the theory part of conspiracy theory in what they're studying just means that we don't know either way for sure.

[00:18:31] Because obviously conspiracies exist like we know about some but like Cointel pro is no longer called a conspiracy theory it's just was a conspiracy. Right right right exactly and there's a lot of those.

[00:18:43] Yeah well you probably think there's more than I do but yeah okay Berther I take it to be. All I'm going to say is show me the long form Berther. Yeah okay my fears will be alleviated. No I'm not that's not one that yeah.

[00:19:06] Global warming is a hoax. Okay so no as a conspiracy no I don't think this is a conspiracy and I don't even think it's a hoax.

[00:19:16] I think one day maybe we could do a whole segment about like the epistemology from somebody like us just intelligent like I'd like to think we maybe people would disagree but like people who have absolutely no expertise in this incredibly complex scientific subject and how we're supposed to kind of have an opinion at all about something like global warming or threats to climate.

[00:19:44] But in terms of it this being a coordinated thing I know I don't believe that right in fact like it does because it doesn't seem coordinated.

[00:19:52] Like whatever is actually happening it just seems kind of very disjointed and yeah you're right to say that we have to set aside that there is a big question about how like expertise and who to trust. All right Soros controls the world.

[00:20:08] You know I like this is not one I know anything about. I know I barely like I don't know the all the stories about George Soros and so if he is controlling the world he is doing a great job keeping that under the radar from me.

[00:20:24] Okay I'm going to go I'm going to move around like and I listened to a lot of like leftist like I guess it's probably more of a right wing. I think it is yeah isn't Soros Jewish to you like doesn't have a like a bit of anti-Semitism.

[00:20:36] So you'd think I would know if he was at the meetings. Yeah it must suck to be a Jew who's not been let in on the conspiracy that Jews control. It does.

[00:20:46] It's like not going to the party that everybody else in your high school is going to you know. Okay I'm going to float around this list a bit. What is there one really Democrats infected Trump with COVID. I guess so that's definitely what I'd never heard of before.

[00:21:03] Yeah. Can we talk about one of them which I just don't think should be on this list which is Epstein murdered. Like if you think Epstein killed himself like you have the tin foil hat.

[00:21:14] But why like in the absence of like because like there's just not a convincing explanation for how that happened and like every functioning like like piece of recording equipment like happened to be out and the guards weren't there and like you know like I don't know what it was like.

[00:21:32] I really don't like with some of these like the official story is no more plausible than like the conspiracy story.

[00:21:40] You I think we know this our listeners want to know you see patterns more where I see noise and I think that whether or not Epstein killed himself or was murdered is to me just like well what's the evidence we have either way.

[00:21:57] And the huge push to see him as murdered comes not really from like oh we don't have a recording.

[00:22:03] I don't think it is that weird that we didn't have recording but really from the like belief that there was like this that the powerful who have like these pedophile rings. That people had reason to want him dead. Like I think but I think that's true right.

[00:22:19] I think also they had also had the the means of making that happen. That's arguable but like I don't think it's arguable that people wanted him dead that he knew he knew a lot about people that a lot of information that they didn't want divulged.

[00:22:36] I mean he probably wanted himself dead too. I guess is all I'm saying. Sure. Yeah. He was right. He was right about that. So that can we switch right there to I'm going to go right to elite pedophile rings. Again it's like well there definitely were was that.

[00:22:57] What bothers me most about this is there are there bush league pedophile rings. Right. Why is it the elite ones. Yeah. Like I mean I like obviously the answer to that one is yes right like there's a lot of pedophile rings because you fucked up.

[00:23:13] So and this one is is strong to to the right but but like that there are rings of people who create child porn and sell the ability to have sex with children that there is sex tourism.

[00:23:26] I guess these turn on like how much organization and secrecy do you think is going on because like we know that there's sex tourism and stuff like where you know and we've heard plenty of very reliable accounts.

[00:23:39] I watched a recent recently I watched a video on Jared from subway the story of that guy and you know just even there it's like he would have his friend find mothers who are willing like poor mothers who are willing to let their kids like for money sleep with the guy.

[00:23:53] And that's like well that has to happen. I guess the question is whether or not like the Clintons go to some secret island right. Right.

[00:24:00] I think that's the thing that would because it is just a sad fact in one way of looking at it but if like is Tom Hanks a part of it is.

[00:24:08] You know it's like it's it's the elites that we've heard of that we wouldn't suspect of something like this is is the real question. Yeah. Okay I'm going to pick some just to ask you.

[00:24:21] Have you heard anymore since like the very beginning of COVID that 5G causes COVID or did that just die. Yeah it was 5G causes COVID. Yeah. I've never heard that cancer. I think I heard or no no but not.

[00:24:36] Yeah there are a lot of people who believe that all of the spectrum of energy that we're being bombarded by causes like all kinds of bad stuff but it just 5G towers were going up right when COVID started you know so for a little bit there people were like well obviously.

[00:24:49] Yeah.

[00:24:50] 5G is a little like MOOCs where for a while everyone was like this is the future like watch out like and then like I haven't heard anybody talk about 5G until like or in like in like six months like it's weird like we're I guess we don't have it in Houston or maybe we do I have no idea but like it just

[00:25:10] like left the public consciousness that at least I have access to. Meetings to discuss like the strategy Cornell strategy for MOOCs you know going forward like that kind of shit. No nobody wants to talk about it.

[00:25:52] No nobody like I think like people I just have like probably younger faculty haven't heard of it or like what's a MOOC. They're just called classes. Here's one I like I looked up because embarrassingly I've never read anything really about this but the RFK assassination being a consumer.

[00:26:09] Oh yeah. I knew that Sirhan Sirhan was like the person who killed him but yeah but I don't know any of the theories as to why.

[00:26:17] Yeah no I don't think there is a good theory as to why he would or and like and I also don't think that I think he clearly was a part of it now whether like whether he was in his right mind or not or whether he had been brainwashed

[00:26:30] or whether but but also there's a lot of theories that there are other people involved. Right. There are more shooters.

[00:26:37] I did quickly looking at the Wikipedia I saw like some yeah like you said my mentor in candidate kind of theories that he just got triggered at the things.

[00:26:47] Yeah I mean but it is this is one of them where the official story like with JFK I like I just think it's even maybe even more apparent with the JFK assassination but maybe that's just because I know more about it but like that the official

[00:27:02] story is extremely implausible too so you know like without necessarily casting your lot with the specific conspiracy theory about like what actually happened I think it's very reasonable to be skeptical of the official. The official story. Yeah.

[00:27:25] I'm going to ask you and I will regret immediately asking this but the JFK assassination part that you think is obviously bullshit.

[00:27:33] Is it the because there's the part about there being one shooter and that shooter being Lee Harvey Oswald but then there's the other part about why and like what his connections were and like what the motive was.

[00:27:44] It seems to me that the physical evidence of there being Lee Harvey Oswald being the shooter is fine. It's just that we don't know whether or not he had ties or is it both for you.

[00:27:54] It's more the second thing it's more just the whole thing with Lee Harvey Oswald defecting to the Soviet Union then getting kind of welcomed back it's not totally clear why or what and then him hanging out with FBI and CIA operatives and or at least allegedly being there's some strange trip to Cuba where he either did or

[00:28:17] didn't go because I did look into this.

[00:28:19] This was interesting like it was like a year ago but I did a bit of a deep dive into this probably prompted by one of the like I think the podcast true and on did some good stuff on this and yeah it just doesn't like it doesn't add up the stuff about Lee Harvey Oswald himself in terms of the physical evidence.

[00:28:38] I don't know. There's definitely some fucked up things about the idea you know like the other guy getting shot in the magic bullet or whatever but I'm not qualified to really weigh in on that part of like the grassy and old stuff and all of that like I just don't know about that stuff but given that other smart people have raised questions about that

[00:28:58] plus the the implausibility of like just anything regarding Oswald makes me doubt that he just acted alone and put and did this pulled this off. Yeah.

[00:29:07] So I know less than you have never done a deep dive. My understanding was that that that magic bullet thing was thoroughly debunked but

[00:29:20] it was there was another account that seemed like scientifically but it's never possible. I'm still with you that the like no one's ever explained to me what the fuck Jack Ruby was doing killing. No right.

[00:29:37] Never mind that. Yeah. No of course like that's a that's a huge one. There's absolutely no reason for him to do that because he said he didn't want Jackie to have to go through the trial. This like fucking pimp was like so concerned about Jackie Kennedy.

[00:29:57] Fluoride in the water. I recently was hit up. I think it doesn't have flirt in the water and we had somebody recently come over and say oh I heard you don't have fluoride in your water and I was like yeah doesn't that suck like me.

[00:30:09] And they were like no no it's a neurotoxin totally. And I was like oh stop talking. Like I was just like all right let's move on. Can I just ask you one question. Have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water.

[00:30:29] Vodka that's what they drink isn't it. Never water. I forgot about that. I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration communist indoctrination communist subversion in the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurefy all of our precious bodily fluids. Fluoridation.

[00:30:55] Is that what this is like is that what this is. That well yeah I don't know what fluoride is supposed to do but like that that it's supposed to be bad for you is like that they're hiding that it's bad for you at least.

[00:31:09] Right like that one of them is just Rothschilds. It must be incredibly uncomfortable to have that last name and just to not be. Alien cover up definitely I mean we know that. The the faked moon landing. I'm afraid to ask you what you think about that.

[00:31:30] Yeah I'm like if it weren't for the fact that Kubrick confessed to it in the shining I would be very skeptical but. Now that one doesn't seem like for me anyway. What's this government assassinate entertainers.

[00:31:45] I don't know that one was so generic that I didn't really even try to look it up. But like who. Like Brittany Murphy or somebody or like like Marilyn Monroe or. That one probably. To Pock you know maybe. To Pock if he was dead I would.

[00:32:11] Yeah I don't know about others it's very easy these are very easy you know when you have the flexibility of like overdoses are so often. It's hard to know what happened whether it was like suicide or whether it was like somebody actually recall it.

[00:32:26] When you put too much heroin in someone's dose. Oh hot shot hot shot yeah yeah. Banks manipulate the economy like I don't understand how that's like banks obviously manipulate the economy like what do you like what does that mean.

[00:32:42] Next thing we know like there be a federal bank trying to set an interest rate. I feel like they were trying to find ones that would get endorsement on the left.

[00:32:51] Right clearly because some of these like with GOP steals elections like that's not really like a conspiracy theory but.

[00:33:01] They actually say in the paper that this is exactly what they were trying to do and but they said you know look it's when we read other papers that argue that conspiracy

[00:33:11] theories are driven solely by the right or by the left like it's obvious when you look at their list of theories that they've they've obviously chosen ones to make it seem like that whether unwittingly or not. Sure Trump is a Russian asset though it's a big one.

[00:33:26] That's a that's like one of the highest endorsed on the left. Yeah I don't think that that could possibly be true I think that he was probably manipulated but. I like that right and left like join hands to agree that the JFK assassination was probably a conspiracy.

[00:33:45] Well also that the Holocaust probably wasn't a thing. Yeah right yeah. Everyone can meet at those two points and close to that is that cell phones cause cancer there's a lot of.

[00:33:59] Yeah that's an old person thing because now we like are more familiar with the like more immediate effects of cell phones and how they're destroying our life. The fact that they might also cause us cancer in like 30 years is not really pressing.

[00:34:15] Yeah it just kills you by depressing.

[00:34:19] I'll say this there's one that says single group control and with that item they were just really trying to see if look if people on the right or on the left are more likely to endorse conspiracies in general then you should see a distribution of people more likely to endorse just in general there is

[00:34:41] one group that secretly controls independent of what that group is that you believe and that's pretty evenly split.

[00:34:47] Yeah yeah Koch brothers world control is a funny one just because like my impression of them is is definitely not like world control to write on the Roth child versus the Koch brothers. My money's on the Roth child.

[00:35:05] Maybe that's how the Koch brothers wanted it sort of like you know.

[00:35:10] What was the other one that's kind of like that where oh Soros yeah but Soros I like I do I had heard the Soros is controlling the world one even though I know nothing about how or why or even really who George Soros is and what he does.

[00:35:25] Yeah I don't know either like I feel like I feel though that there is a flavor of if I lump together pedophiles Soros Ted talk audiences and the Davos audiences. Yeah there's something going on. Only Laurie Santos knows for sure.

[00:35:50] Laurie went to Davos so she made she could tell us unless she's already in she's already plugged into all those networks. Yeah no wonder her podcast is so popular. No wonder her MOOC Tamler is the number one course on Coursera. Is it? Yeah it is.

[00:36:07] Well good for her. She really lapped us. Well we don't have one you know if we I'm sure ours would be higher if we did one. That's right. I didn't want a MOOC. Based on this on this opening segment like you can already tell.

[00:36:21] All right Coursera you can reach us at verybadwethered.com with your offer. All right when we come back we're going to finish our discussion on Tolstoy and his great memoir Confession about losing meaning in life and finding it not through belief in conspiracy theory and whatever communal

[00:36:44] benefits you might get from that but through faith of a different kind. Now a word from our longtime sponsor BetterHelp. You know look I'm a Gen X kid.

[00:36:58] I grew up in the 80s and as awesome as we are as a generation we were not a generation that spent a lot of time taking care of our bodies or our minds.

[00:37:07] We'd put any kind of horrific crap into our mouths like Wonder Bread, Fruit Loops, McRibs you name it. Like whatever disgusting thing they were putting out and therapy well you know therapy that was like something for people in like Woody Allen movies.

[00:37:23] At least where I grew up therapy was just not something people talked about if they did it at all and that's kind of amazing and unfortunate because physical and mental health are so important so deeply connected to happiness

[00:37:36] and you know we all want to make the most if we can out of this brief period that we're allotted on this planet. And therapy can be one of the ways to help us do that.

[00:37:47] I know so many people, students, colleagues, friends, family members who have benefited from therapy and in some cases who say that it completely turned their life around. So if you think that therapy might help you at this point in your life why not give BetterHelp a try.

[00:38:02] BetterHelp is online therapy that offers video phone and even live chat only therapy sessions. So you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to, you don't even have to hear someone's voice on the phone if you don't want to.

[00:38:15] It's much more affordable than in-person therapy and you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. And as usual our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash VBW.

[00:38:29] So give it a shot go to BetterHelp.com slash VBW that's BetterHelp H-E-L-P dot com slash VBW. Thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards.

[00:39:36] This is the time of the show where we like to take a moment, a brief moment and thank everybody for all of their support. All of our listeners, those who have been with us for years now, those who have just joined us.

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[00:40:46] Yeah, we get weekly kind of updates and when we see some nice reviews, it's always... They've been really nice lately so I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah. Like too nice. Did we lose our edge? The calm before the start. Yeah, maybe we did.

[00:41:03] Like I feel like you were saying I just wasn't arguing with you enough like in the intro segment. What's going on? Release the show. Am I low on testosterone? Release the show to cut. Oh god, maybe we'll have to put it in the vault.

[00:41:25] Anyway, thank you everybody for just reaching out to us and being part of our little community. We appreciate it. Yeah, and if you would like to support us in even more tangible ways, we always appreciate that. There are a bunch of different ways that you can do that.

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[00:43:28] No, I still have a few left to upload. It's a good reminder though. And you get access to a couple of my online lectures that I did during COVID on Plato's Symposium.

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[00:45:09] All right, let's get back to our discussion of Tolstoy's Confessions. So in the last episode we got about halfway through this. He has already talked about his kind of disillute youth and like earlier life becoming a famous writer hanging out with Russian aristocracy.

[00:45:28] He kind of lost his faith. He started believing religion was silly and it just played no part in his life. And then after he writes War and Peace and Anna Karenina arrives at this point of this is worthless.

[00:45:43] None of this means anything like what you know, he's not only like, you know, maybe written two of the top five novels ever written.

[00:45:51] He's like recognized for that, you know, like so he has a family who seems to love by all accounts and, you know, he's very wealthy.

[00:46:02] And he has land and he but he still goes out and works with the serfs, even though he's also working to try to liberate them. And he just still feels like the fact that he's going to die is stripping all meaning away from his life.

[00:46:17] It's kind of depressing. I mean, literally for him, but yeah, that you can be have that much success and still fall into like what obviously is such a deep, deep suicidal depression. I haven't talked about this with Bourdain and you know, Matt knock on. Yeah.

[00:46:38] And it's like it doesn't matter like how you know, like that some of that stuff but he doesn't see it that way. He feels like at least at this point he's reasoned his way to this position. Right.

[00:46:48] One of the images that kind of launched this crisis launched his description of this crisis was he felt like somebody who's been running away from this beast and jumped into this big pit where he's holding on to a branch for dear life.

[00:47:05] And if he goes back onto the, you know, the land that he was running from there's the beast but below him is a dragon that is just waiting like just licking its lips waiting for him to fall.

[00:47:20] And meanwhile there are these two mice that are on the branch kind of slowly eating away at it a black mouse and a white mouse.

[00:47:30] And as you said last time, like kind of probably symbolizing night and day but you could probably also have some kind of good and evil implications there. I guess it can mean a lot of things.

[00:47:43] And there's just this little bit of honey that's falling down from the branch which he can stick his tongue out and get the honey but ultimately he knows where this is going.

[00:47:55] The mice are going to get through the branch and he's going to fall and hit the dragon. And all of a sudden the honey is just not tasting sweet anymore. And so, you know, this is the situation he feels himself in.

[00:48:09] He is going to die and he's just hanging there kind of waiting for it to happen. He can find no justification for choosing one way or over another. Who cares? It all ends in death.

[00:48:23] And, you know, it doesn't matter that he's more famous than Molière and Shakespeare like so what? He says like who cares if I am? And yes, I love my wife and children but they'll all be dead too. So what does any of this matter?

[00:48:39] Yeah, and their toll story is in the dilemma that we're all kind of at. Is it fine to just sit here and drink the honey when these beasts are ready to devour me no matter what I do? Well, because he gives these four possible alternatives, right?

[00:48:52] He's like so number one you could just not really understand the problem. Like you could either, you could be like me for like most of my life and arguably maybe still today. You know you're going to die but not really. You know, like I get it.

[00:49:07] Propositionally you know it but it doesn't but it does not like invade your life. So that's one he's like well that's too late for that because I now know that I'm going to die. I'm facing these questions. I'm aware my eyes are wide fucking open.

[00:49:20] So then the second one is one which is interestingly he attributes to everybody in his class. The educated Russian aristocratic elite. But also to the author of Ecclesiastes which he calls Solomon but he also says or whoever wrote it. Ecclesiastes, yeah.

[00:49:41] It's kind of interesting but the general idea is the Epicurean kind of well we should enjoy the pleasures that we have while we're here. And I think it's like it's a very, I don't know, it's not a fair way of describing Epicureanism it sounds.

[00:49:54] Yeah I feel like I was going to ask you in fact whether Epicurus did believe all the things that people attribute to him in using the phrase, I mean using the word Epicureanism which I think is just like egoistic hedonism is what he's talking about.

[00:50:12] But one that isn't selfish or vain in the way that I think Tolstoy is kind of intimating is true about everybody in his class and everybody.

[00:50:21] It's not just fuck a lot of people and eat a lot of really good food and it's a lot more aesthetic than that. It's kind of halfway between that and Stoicism. It's not totally bloodless and cold like Stoicism can sometimes be.

[00:50:39] No, there are certain things in life that you can depend on for the most part and enjoy good simple foods and friendship. And then like friendship is so important to Epicureans and relationships in general.

[00:50:53] That's what I thought that's why I wanted to ask you whether like I think he's just misusing like he's talking about hedonism of the selfish kind

[00:51:05] and like you I was annoyed that he thought that this is what you know the eat, drink and be happy kind of thing that that that Ecclesiastes says that this is a selfish simple hedonism.

[00:51:20] There certainly is that and maybe those people did live that way but enjoying things and being a selfish asshole about them is not the same thing.

[00:51:30] Yeah, so one of the charges he levels against it is how can you enjoy all the like we are among the top 001% of people in like in terms of luck and privilege.

[00:51:43] He's talking about himself in and his class of people so they can just go and get three bottles of wine and the really good oysters and like caviar and stuff like that.

[00:51:53] But the vast majority of people live lives of like deep suffering and they can't enjoy all these pleasures, these fine pleasures of life. And so how does that not ruin it for you is kind of the idea here.

[00:52:07] But again this is one where it's like I he almost makes it seems like it's self contradictory but it isn't self contradictory. It's the fact you might have hit the lottery in terms of your ability to have access to these pleasures.

[00:52:22] Should that make those pleasures less pleasurable given that you know the vast majority of humanity doesn't have access to them and it's like well that's just a moral question kind of a temperamental question almost of right of, you know how you're able to enjoy things but right.

[00:52:43] Yeah, no I totally agree.

[00:52:45] We're talking about the solutions that he has but there is a section that we sort of skipped over where he says look my belief that at the core right that there's a there's it's rotten at the core that life is there is no meaning.

[00:53:01] That belief is supported by some of the world's best thinkers Socrates Solomon Schopenhauer and the Buddha who all arrive at this same conclusion that that really life is meaningless and that's suffering a balance. Right. And so then those they all offer different solutions to that same conclusion.

[00:53:25] It's like so these are ways of responding to the conclusion that life is ultimately meaningless and one of them is to be ignorant but you can't do that if you've already realized it obviously the second is what he attributes to the author of Ecclesiastes and the Epicureans.

[00:53:42] The third he says is to just actually end your life and this is what like young strong willed courageous people do but he's not and then the fourth people is knowing that number three is the right response but not being able to have the guts to go through with it.

[00:54:00] And he says that's where I was. You know cowardly clinging while knowing life is meaningless. Right.

[00:54:08] So this is the real crisis like he's come to a point where he thinks that the right answer to the problem that we all face is ending your life but you have to have some courage and balls to do that and he doesn't have that. I never quite.

[00:54:29] I get again the emotion that he's feeling but it's like well why not live out your life like right. Why like why do you have to end it doesn't follow.

[00:54:38] You know unless you're unless this is somehow shaking your fist at existence and being like you know whoever is laughing behind the curtain like fuck you I'm going to kill myself. Right. But if there's not that then just live out your days. It's a positive step.

[00:54:55] It's like an action to end your life. Why not live it.

[00:54:58] This is the thing this is why I don't he feels like the his characterization of the Epicurean alternative is ruled out but it's not totally clear why like it seems to me it's just the honey not tasting sweet to him anymore but that's not like honey tastes sweet to other people.

[00:55:16] It's not and so I think the only real kind of argument as to why you can't just live out your life and enjoy what you know ring whatever like goodness you can get out of it before the mice hit you know finish off the twig and you go to the dragon.

[00:55:33] I think the only answer to that is but if I taste this honey and these other people can't have the honey that's not fair or something like right. It's like maybe wrong to do that.

[00:55:45] Which is I think then why wouldn't you conclude that my soul goal in life would be to ease the suffering of others like as a privileged person that I can't I can bring honey to others because I think that that what he might be saying is that I can't live authentically believing this.

[00:56:04] Right. Yeah. I think it's almost like if I think this is where I think I part with Tolstoy if I can do that.

[00:56:14] It's like he almost thinks that to enjoy something that's pleasurable whether it's something as purely sensory as like the taste of caviar or sex or whatever you have to think that it matters somehow.

[00:56:29] Like to enjoy spending time with your family you have to think that that's meaningful in some way. And just justified external to that. Right. Like he thinks that it needs to be justified outside of that thing.

[00:56:43] And that's you know this is the Nagel point and the absurd paper and this is I think something we agree on like no it definitely doesn't. So that's where he is. This is the bottom bottom. He's hidden bottom at this point. Yeah.

[00:56:57] But he ends this section like chapter seven with this doubt. He has just like a bit of a doubt that maybe he's wrong. He says I see now that if I did not kill myself it was due to some dim consciousness of the invalidity of my thoughts.

[00:57:16] However convincing and indubitable appeared to me the sequence of my thoughts and those of the wise that have brought us to the admission of the senselessness of life. There remained in me a vague doubt of the justice of my conclusion. Yeah.

[00:57:29] This one quote I love he said it I always put this in the when I teach it it occurred to me that there's still might be something that I did not know after all ignorance acts precisely in this manner. Ignorance always says exactly what I was saying.

[00:57:42] Whenever it does not know something it says whatever it does not know is stupid. It's so good and it's like all the people who like like mock me and yell at me about ghosts and. Like read this and God using this for that.

[00:57:58] I should have known but no it's such a good point and like we've all been there we've all been that person where we don't fully understand something and so we think what I don't understand or know it's got to be stupid because because that's our way of like justifying to myself that we don't know it.

[00:58:17] Right. It's interesting that that Tolstoy has framed this whole thing as is a series of logical steps that he's made when really like in talking about this and my as it sinks in what I've read. This is an emotional journey that he's going through.

[00:58:34] Yeah, this is the reason you know to to to give a little bit to height a little bit of credit. The reason is following his emotional journey. Yeah.

[00:58:46] It's that little bit of hope that he has that maybe he's wrong about his conclusion is I think just hope that's living in him. It's it doesn't feel like it's really guided in the way that he thinks it is by by like this rationality.

[00:59:01] It's funny, like I think you're totally right in the broader point of that this is an emotional temperamental response to the same set of facts that other people are just as aware of as he is but have a different emotional.

[00:59:15] Or temperamental response like I like me like but I think with this actual quote that we're talking about like I actually think that's a reasonable epistemic position to arrive at is well hold on. Like I feel like I have this down.

[00:59:32] I feel like I understand everything and everybody else who thinks there's a solution to this is an idiot because I already know all the parameters and I've and and like I think when you do get it.

[00:59:44] I think when you do get to that point whatever it is it could be about like methodology and psychology, you know, like with me right like you should be saying to yourself wait we have this tendency to always think that things are stupid if we don't fully know them or understand.

[01:00:01] Yeah. Well OK two things one. It's not that I'm saying that that isn't actually a reasonable conclusion because I actually think the reasons that he gives for the meaninglessness of life and like the reasons that he gives for having hope that these are all.

[01:00:18] I think good like the reasoning as he's laid it out is not fallacious necessarily it's just that I think that it's following like these insights of rationality are following his emotional journey like one he has hope.

[01:00:34] He then says ah like maybe it's that like we shouldn't be so quick to this should be so close epistemically yet. I feel like it's his hope that drove that not that he realized that and then had hope. Right the emotional dog.

[01:00:50] Yeah he says as much in the in that quote that I read that there was something that didn't sit right that he still had this desire to live so it must be that his reasoning was fully like was wrong.

[01:01:03] And then he starts looking all around him and seeing how come everybody else is not having this existential crisis.

[01:01:09] I get my class we've come up with all this bullshit progress and or you know we just like stuff ourselves with oysters and wine and but look at all these other people who can't afford any of that and they seem to like have no problem.

[01:01:22] They're not they don't have any existential crisis like look at all the peasants and the working people and they're living and they don't seem to have a problem with it.

[01:01:32] So maybe I'm maybe I'm missing something and then I love this quote where he says how strange and utterly incredible it seems to me now that in my reasoning I could have overlooked the life of humanity all around me that I could have fallen into such a ridiculous state of error as to think that my life

[01:01:48] and the life of a Solomon or a Schopenhauer was the true normal life while the lives of millions of others were not worthy of consideration.

[01:01:56] And it's like it's so good because like he lulled you into thinking that like they this is like the apex of wisdom is all these people that you know he's quoting and then he only to subvert it now and say what a fucking moron I was to think that they have these people are the ones that are the norm and they've fallen into such a

[01:02:18] that they have tapped into like the reality of the ethical reality of living. They were the weird ones all along. Yeah, that's what it is. It's like they're the weird people.

[01:02:29] It appeared that all mankind says it appeared that all mankind had a knowledge unacknowledged and despised by me of the meaning of life.

[01:02:37] And yet he just thought in his complacency is just I don't know sense of superiority which you alluded to that they're too stupid to have figured out like an answer to this question. You know, right? Right.

[01:02:53] And he's like but yet like these people they're not Epicureans because they don't have access to the pleasures. They're not ignorant.

[01:02:59] They know that people die but they not only do they not like all kill themselves on mass but they treasure life and they actually see killing people and suicide as like like the greatest of all evils. Right.

[01:03:12] And so they have some kind of knowledge that I lack and it's this moment of humility. I think that he needs to get to get his way out of his crisis. Yeah.

[01:03:24] So he I guess arrives at this point that what it is that they have that he's lacking is faith. Yeah. And so irrational not which he equates with irrational knowledge like everything I've been doing is rational and you can't have a rational answer to this question. Yeah.

[01:03:41] But what they have is an irrational answers irrational knowledge. Yeah. Which is interesting reasonable knowledge had brought me to acknowledge that life is senseless. Right. Yeah.

[01:03:52] And so the faith is what was giving answers and he says what then is this faith as and I understood that faith is not merely the evidence of things not seen.

[01:04:01] We're just quoting the Bible there and is not a revelation is not the relation of man to God.

[01:04:06] It is not only agreement with what has been told one but faith is a knowledge of the meaning of human life and consequence of which man does not destroy himself but lives. Faith is the strength of life.

[01:04:17] If a man lives he believes in something if he did not believe that one must live for something he would not live. It's a little circular there.

[01:04:25] Yeah, it is just circular like I think this is a strange thing like all these people live so they must they must have some reason for living or not reason for living but they must have knowledge of something that allows them to live.

[01:04:42] I feel like he was already saying you don't need knowledge of something to live.

[01:04:47] It's just the normal response the Schopenhauer will, you know we were evolved creatures, you know like dogs don't need that and moreover he didn't need that when he was in his disillet youth you know it's a weird thing here.

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[01:07:15] That's wren.co.vbw. Start making a difference. Our thanks to Ren for sponsoring this episode of Very Bad Wizards. So he has this discussion about the relationship between the finite and the infinite that I must confess. I didn't quite follow what he was saying.

[01:07:37] Yeah, I mean, I think that the finite, the finitude of life is the thing that led to the crisis. So I think he feels like the infinite is the only way out of the crisis. And yet we can't rationally make sense of a kind of infinitude spiritually.

[01:08:02] And we can't make even make sense of it religiously. Like he talks about you could believe in Christian doctrine, but then you have to think that three is one and like all sorts of other in like incoherent like just stuff that's irrational. It's inconsistent.

[01:08:20] And but yet these people still believe in it enough to live or believe in something enough to live. And whatever that belief is, is the knowledge that is necessary according to Tolstoy, I guess, to not end your own life.

[01:08:40] Yeah, he says the conception of an infinite God, the divinity of the soul, the connection of human affairs with God, the unity and existence of the soul, man's conception of moral goodness and evil are conceptions formulated in the hidden infinity of human thought.

[01:08:54] They are those conceptions without which neither life nor I should exist. Yet rejecting all that labor of the whole of humanity, I wish to remake it afresh myself and in my own manner.

[01:09:05] But so then he comes full circle, right? Which is this once he accepts that faith is what is required to live to get out of this logical or emotional whole of despair.

[01:09:19] He turns to the church again. He says, all right, let me go see what Christianity or like the Orthodox Church has to say. And he's quickly disillusioned that, you know, he quickly realizes that religion as it is, as it is practiced there has has no real answers.

[01:09:38] He says, I saw that what they gave out as their faith did not explain the meaning of life but obscured it and that they themselves affirm their belief not to answer that question of life which brought me to faith but some but for some other aims alien to me.

[01:09:50] Yeah.

[01:09:51] This is the part that we don't ever get to. So I'm pretty much reading it for at the most the second time after skimming it through and this part was really interesting because it does seem like he's going to arrive at a place where it's like, okay, so I need to believe in Jesus' love and like a lot of these other like the simple pure peasant.

[01:10:15] And then he's quickly disillusioned with all that. First of all, he never admits like the doctrine part of it could be true in some sense. Like he thinks it's false at best. It's kind of getting at something but it's not.

[01:10:30] You can't make sense of all the contradictions and then also that the people who practice it don't really seem to believe it because they wouldn't do the things that they do if they...

[01:10:41] Right. This is a theme of his which is like if you're not living like a good person then I just don't believe you that you have the answer to anything. He has this, I think really nice

[01:10:54] realization where he says that when I was saying earlier that life was evil and absurd, I was making a mistake to say all life is evil and absurd when really I was talking about my own life. I was evil and absurd.

[01:11:14] So he says the only mistake was that the answer referred only to my life but I had referred it to life in general. I asked myself what my life is and got the reply, an evil and an absurdity and really my life, a life of indulgence of desires was senseless and evil.

[01:11:30] And therefore the reply life is evil and an absurdity referred only to my life but not to human life in general. I understood the truth which I afterwards found in the Gospels that men love darkness rather than the light for their works were evil.

[01:11:41] For everyone that doeth ill hath this light and cometh not to the light lest his work should be reproved. You sounded like the reverend there. Just being coherent. I think this part is... Well, no, here's what I want to say about it.

[01:12:01] I wonder if a lot of the objections that we're making, he's agreeing with now.

[01:12:07] Like he's saying like I was generalizing from my own experience and making the mistake of thinking because I found life meaningless in the way I was leading it, that this was just true for everyone when in fact I didn't need to like fix humanity and like find some ultimate solution for humanity as much as I needed to do that for myself.

[01:12:29] Yeah, I think so. So it's not the human condition, it was my condition. But he is also saying that it was the way I was living.

[01:12:40] So like somebody who could live the way I was living but just think it was great, like I don't think he would have thought that was okay. No.

[01:12:50] So there is something about the way I was practicing my day to day did not allow for a meaningful life to be led. So here's where he starts. This is a bit of the noble savage part that you were referring to.

[01:13:04] He's talking about, he says, so those who do his will, the simple unlearned working folk whom we regard as cattle do not reproach the master but we the wise eat the master's food but do not do what the master wishes and instead of doing it, sit in a circle and discuss why should that handle be moved?

[01:13:19] Just talking about the handle of a pump. Isn't it stupid? We have decided that the master is stupid or does not exist and that we are wise. Only we feel that we are quite useless and that we must somehow do away with ourselves.

[01:13:30] He's almost just getting to the conclusion that like, just live well, do your work and don't think too much about these questions. That's the solution.

[01:13:42] Yeah, except so he says, I realized that in order to understand the meaning of life it is necessary first of all that night life not be evil and meaningless. And then one must have the power of reason to understand it.

[01:13:54] I realized why I had been wandering around such an obvious truth for so long and that in order to think and speak about the life of humankind, one must speak and think about the life of humankind and not about the life of a few parasites.

[01:14:07] The truth had always been the truth like 2 times 2 equals 4 but I had not acknowledged it for an acknowledging that 2 times 2 equals 4.

[01:14:13] I would have had to admit that I was not a good man and it was more important and more pressing for me to feel that I was a good man than to admit that 2 times 2 equals 4.

[01:14:24] But I came to love good people and to hate myself and I acknowledged the truth. So I think he's really saying that like you need to, you can not think about these things and but only if you're living a good life for others.

[01:14:39] You know and the thing his mistake was he was living a bad life and selfishly and that's what led him to think that life is meaningless.

[01:14:53] And I get the sense that he feels like if you're going to live like that it almost follows that life is meaningless but if you don't then life meaning kind of emerges out of your living well, practicing good, being a good person, caring about others, living for others.

[01:15:12] Yeah he does then get to this point though where he's looking at the religions.

[01:15:20] He gets to this realization that religion really isn't like there's so many beliefs that are ridiculous and contradictory and absurd that for a while he was fine you know being religious again but he just then he was like

[01:15:36] he would just try to not think about like the various rituals like when he took the communion and they were like yeah this is really his body and his blood. He was like yeah I'm not really.

[01:15:46] And he there's this is now in section chapter 15 he says how often I envied the peasants their literacy and lack of learning those statements in the creeds. So he's talking about the it's like the Nicene Creed where you express your belief in the Trinity.

[01:16:01] Those statements in the creeds which to me were evident absurdities for them contain nothing false they could accept them and could believe in the truth in the truth I believed in only to me unhappy man was it clear that with truth falsehood was interwoven by finest threads and that I could not accept it in that form.

[01:16:17] Yeah.

[01:16:18] And he goes on this journey which I think is his sort of solution in the faith that he arrives at which is he never explicitly says is so I want to check with you to see if you're getting the same sense that he looks at all of the religions that he can not just the various forms of Christianity orthodoxy and Catholicism and Protestantism and whatever old believers are in Mulligan's.

[01:16:43] And he also looks spreads him you know he spreads his wings a little and goes and looks at Islam and Buddhism.

[01:16:53] And I think that he's just trying to see the common denominator across all these things because he feels deeply that there is a truth there that humans have arrived at this truth it's just been mucked up by layers and layers of dogma and and sort of stupidity. Bullshit.

[01:17:11] Bullshit when you look for instance I was reading a little bit about the great schism which is when Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy split and they split because of like stupid little disagreements about you know like very small trivial bullshit disagreements and then you know these huge divisions become like elevated to be the most meaningful of them all.

[01:17:34] And he's trying to cut through all the bullshit and find the truth in maybe some sense that God exists and that we should be good that touching the infinite as finite beings.

[01:17:47] And it's not clear because yet he definitely arrives at a situation where I'm not subscribing to this or that particular sect or this and that interpretation of and then he says that like you said about the truth and the lies being entangled.

[01:18:02] And then gives this dream as a way of like interpreting it and the dream is that he's in this he's lying on some sort of like rope.

[01:18:14] Yeah, it's hard to understand I was trying to understand he's in bed feeling neither good or bad I'm lying on my back but I begin to whether whether it's a good thing for me to be lying there and it seems to me there is something wrong with my legs they're too short or uneven.

[01:18:26] And as I start to move my legs I begin to wonder how and on what I'm lying something that up till now has not emptied my mind so I don't know foundations and then he sees that he's lying on cords woven together and attached to the side of the bed so it's kind of like a hammock.

[01:18:42] Yeah, that's holding his bed up like you know like a few ropes a few strings holding his bed up.

[01:18:48] Somehow I know these cords can be shifted moving one leg I push away the furthest cord it seems to me that it'll be more comfortable that way but I've pushed it too far I try to catch it but this movement causes another cord to slip out from under my legs leaving them hanging down.

[01:19:03] I rearrange my whole body quite certain I will be settled now but this movement causes still other cords to shift and slip out from under me and I see that the situation is only getting worse and then my body is sinking hanging down.

[01:19:17] And below him are like it just seems like a total abyss and he's horror and it seems like he keeps every time he struggles against the cords it gets closer to the abyss he thinks he's going to be more comfortable but he's not going to but it turns out like he's making himself less comfortable.

[01:19:33] And it just raises new problems to like move his leg in one way and so at the end he says you know when he's wondering whether it's a dream or not.

[01:19:44] He looks up he's so he has this horror that he's going to fall down into the abyss he can't even look down there and at some point he it occurs to him that maybe this is a dream and what is he supposed to do.

[01:19:59] And he finally looks upwards and above him which hadn't looked up before above there's also an infinite space.

[01:20:07] I look into the immensity of sky and try to forget about the immensity below and really do forget it the immensity the immensity below repels and frightens me but the immensity above attracts and strengthens me.

[01:20:18] I am still supported above the abyss by the last suspenders cords that have not yet slipped from under me. I know that I'm hanging but I look only upwards and my fear passes.

[01:20:30] Yeah, so yeah, so like I take a couple of things from this but I'm not sure how to interpret it you know the abyss is that kind of meaningless void that led to his crisis up is this kind of uncertain but calming belief in the infancy.

[01:20:48] And it and that fussing like moving around and trying to get yourself like that almost always just makes things worse. Right, I was trying to understand like if that was his in his seeking different religions or different philosophies of life like everything was sort of failing him.

[01:21:08] No one cord was going to be able to keep him up and when he moved to another one you would just lose the support from the previous one.

[01:21:16] Yeah, yeah it was making me think of Ivan Ilych this and like what had said before where it was like he had to admit to himself that he wasn't a good person.

[01:21:27] And I think doing that allowed him to kind of relax with the cords and also have the humility to just look up and not try to figure all of it out. Right, right. It's only when he gave up these the fidgeting. Yeah, like intellectual or emotional fidgeting.

[01:21:52] Yeah, his desire to answer it all himself his desire to kind of save himself from the abyss all that fidgeting was his own with his own action and an attempt to save himself.

[01:22:03] And when he looks up to the infinite and this is very different than the Eastern fable that he tells us because when looking up there was the beast. But here he looks up and he's infinite to the infinite and he feels a sense of peace.

[01:22:16] And he finally feels like he is secure and that he once he looked up he says when I look upwards I lie on it in the position of Secure balance and that it alone gave me support before.

[01:22:28] A voice is saying mark this, this is it. Like this is the solution. Like he says in the dream. This is what it's all about. It's this realization, but it's not clear what the realization is. It's irrational. It's not going to be able to be articulated in.

[01:22:42] There is something common to a lot of religious traditions which is to submit. Surrender yourself. Islam means submission where we surrender ourselves in all our imperfections to Christ.

[01:22:56] And there only when he surrenders does he finally get the support to stop from falling into the abyss whereas he thought he could find it on his own. It's very mystical.

[01:23:08] He thought through action and like the intellect he could, but it turns out that it was actually surrendering or like I also got Eastern philosophy of vibes like ceasing to resist.

[01:23:22] That doesn't mean that you're surrendering yourself to a particular God or a particular, but it's that you are surrendering to life as it is and not trying to change it or figure it out.

[01:23:35] Or you are just it's a kind of acceptance. You know, like I don't think it has to be read as submission as much as a kind of radical acceptance.

[01:23:47] Well, what you say I was reading. I don't remember where but that very point that you're making which is that it seems as if this is more of an Eastern like approach to things and you get the sense that that he was treading on dangerous territory in publishing this.

[01:24:09] In fact, they wasn't published in Russia. So if he was arriving at some sort of like Buddhist or more Eastern conclusion, he couldn't write it out that way. He still has to be kind of loyal to the tradition that he's from.

[01:24:28] But but yeah, so like unlike the Kierkegaard's leap of faith, which is very agentic and which is moving him doing the action. It really does seem like you say that this is more of a let go. Let go is the exactly that deeply in Christianity.

[01:24:48] There's deeply that's you as the agent. You as the agent exist and you're coming to God. And there's a submission in a way that I don't think there is in the more Eastern traditions of like because your submission makes it seem like you're submitting to another agent. Yeah.

[01:25:05] And in this case, it's just submitting to the bed and to the environment. Yeah. It's interesting again, compared to that Eastern fable where the beast is awaiting you up above and you're precariously perched. The ants are going to gnaw at the twig and you're going to die.

[01:25:24] It's very similar, you know, and I don't I he must have realized that it's he's in a similar predicament. It's just that when he looks above and the infinite gives him peace in a way that that the beast scared him.

[01:25:38] And like, could he have just looked in a different direction like the other way from the beast? Yeah. That's right. Because nothing not at the dragon like not at the beast, not at the dragon. You sort of wonder what's changed exactly.

[01:25:49] Exactly because your circumstances, your material circumstances are the same. Yeah. And maybe it's the faith that he's accepted that is making the beast not appear so beastly anymore. It is. Yeah. That's just a dragon not appear and even yeah. Or I guess he's not even thinking of that.

[01:26:08] I don't know. It's almost like is he denying it by just not looking at the abyss or maybe that's what faith. Yeah. Well, he's not looking at the abyss because the abyss scares him. So he's looking up and he sees this calming infinite thing.

[01:26:19] And it does seem to me that this was all just his his shifting of the frame. And that's what faith is. Faith. Faith is what converted the inevitable, which is we all end up becoming nothing, but faith has converted that into something. It's calming rather than something daunting.

[01:26:38] So here's what I struggle with because you know, like sometimes I read this stuff and I'm like, is there something wrong with me?

[01:26:44] Because like the thing that he had with his brother, like I had that with my mom, you know, like I watched my mom in the prime of her life just dive from cancer. And it was a fairly protracted death.

[01:26:55] Like when she's like 40 years old and more full of life than anybody I knew and still know and like just snatched away from her. But I didn't have this existential crisis.

[01:27:05] Like I didn't think what is life for and like none of that, you know, like I was obviously devastated and never made me question the meaning of life on this level.

[01:27:16] And so like, you know, sometimes I think am I just the kind of fundamentally unserious people like that he's talking about? And I do sometimes think about myself that about myself that I'm kind of a fundamentally unserious person.

[01:27:31] But then other times I think that the thing that faith is for him is a label for something that I just kind of had naturally, which isn't a delusional thing as much as just, I don't know, a zest for life might make it too strong.

[01:27:48] But certainly just this like excitement about being alive and that like to the point of even though like so much about it sucks.

[01:27:57] And yes, there's so much of their suffering just it never would occur to me that this is something that you want to question at that level. It's like, well, you know, like the simplest stupid sounding solutions have always been like, we're alive now.

[01:28:13] So let's make the best of it for as long as it lasts. Is that just faith for him? You know, just whatever that is that I don't know because I can't get into your mindset. I am so we are so different in so many ways.

[01:28:29] It's hilarious that we can even have conversations that are meaningful with each other. The the meaninglessness of life, the potential that is that we are all just going to be food for worms is something that is enters my mind on a daily basis.

[01:28:46] It is. I feel like I have a zest for life like you. That's why I don't want it to end. And that's why the thought that well, this ball of rocks will keep spinning until the heat death of the universe.

[01:28:59] And what does it matter that I was here for a brief flash? You know, man is but a mist that that eats at me. And I think that maybe I can arrive at a similar place as you and Tolstoy, but it takes effort.

[01:29:16] It really takes for me to say no, life is worth living because of these the meaning that is inherent to all the who we love and our consumption of art and our living of the good life. That is all meaningful.

[01:29:31] And I have to constantly remind myself that that and that's why and that's me not looking down at the pit. Right? That's me trying really hard to look up. It sounds like you just look up. I'm the simple peasant.

[01:29:45] You can or you or you've always looked up like or maybe I've always looked up or maybe looking down wasn't that bad. I don't know. It's hard for me to see. That's what it always was for me is that looking down wasn't that bad.

[01:29:56] What you're saying is that you have a zest for life so you want it to go on longer. Like, yeah, of course, but that doesn't mean you should, you know, all the more reason not to stress out about like it's inevitable end. It's inevitable end right now.

[01:30:10] I don't know. It's like this is why I really do think like you said it's an emotional journey and I appreciate it. I'm so glad, but like I don't fully relate to it as much as I think a lot of people do. It's interesting.

[01:30:26] I'd be curious what our readers think about this. Readers would imply that we're listening to something. We don't write. That I don't taste that sweet honey. That honey is tasteless to me. Yeah, because I don't like I don't think that it is an error that we're making.

[01:30:48] Like it really does seem like constitutionally like our philosophical journeys are different because of the way that we're made up. Yeah, but we're staring at the same facts. Yeah, yeah. And it's the same facts as we understand.

[01:31:05] Yeah, and it's deeply interesting to me that maybe just I was born with like a touch of more of anxiety than you and that that's made that's made a big difference in the way that we approach things. Like, I don't know.

[01:31:19] My wife always says that I'm like I get like stressed out about small things but I'm very relaxed about the big things. And that's how opposite. I am so not stressed out about small things. Yeah, it's true. Totally. And that's just how we're like. That's so wired.

[01:31:36] Yeah, that's so funny. I'm yeah, it's it's I'm low on that daily neurosis and I'm high on the existential neurosis. All right, well on that note, keep staring up at the peaceful infinite above. That's right. That's where we are. Come join us.

[01:31:56] Come join us there and join us next time. I'm very bad with it. Anybody can have a brain. A very good man. Just a very bad wizard.