#62: Justice and the Nature of Evil

The sentencing of Brian Kohberger in the infamous University of Idaho murders triggers a discussion of justice. What is justice, even? How have our concepts of it evolved? How can justice be achieved? What is the relationship between justice and morality, and does serving justice require the commitment of immoral acts? What is the relationship between justice and “social justice?” How are justice and civic responsibility intertwined? And, as always, so much more.

Patreon: patreon.com/FoolsandSagesPodcast

X: https://x.com/sagetimepodcast

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/foolsandsagespodcast/

See the Fools and Sages show notes: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GVCVW1h2_-4JOU22KREzTO0lVDiN3icg?usp=drive_link

Episode Transcript

(00:14):
Hey, Brian. How are you doing, Sir?
I'm well, thanks. How are you?
I'm doing good eating some apricots.
From your tree. Yeah, yeah.
Nice, Are you just eating them fresh or are you doing some
stuff with them? Well, you know, I'm fighting it
out with the Blue Jays. Yeah.
And they're, because they got hail damaged.

(00:40):
They it, it, it broke their skinof impenetration, you know,
impenetrability. And so that's sort of so you
kind of got to go through and, you know, birds, they like, take
one bite and then they leave therest.
It's like, who? Who trained you to this?
We. What are you doing?
Take the best bite. They usually do.

(01:02):
Yeah. No, I can remember when, when
our first one was was, I don't know, probably 2.
And and she had got into a bag of apples and had taken the
first bite out of every one of these shiny apples.
That impulse, you know, But yeah, yeah.

(01:24):
It's probably not. It's probably frowned upon to,
you know, use the use the apricots that are damaged in
that way for like jam and stuff,but I.
I cut them, yeah, I cut the parts off that the birds messed
with and then the chickens get that.

(01:45):
So I figure the birds have already messed with it.
So it's got bird spit on it or whatever.
Exactly. And but they, they, the, the
chickens eat better than I do a lot of days, you know, so, but,
but it's interesting also because, you know, one of the
things that I didn't say in our,in our episode about

(02:06):
fruitfulness when I was telling the story about those trees was
they were all grown from seed. So they're all different.
Even though they're all apricots, the genetic variation
is it is evident and the way that fruit trees are usually
grown is a a tree farm will growone type of tree that's like a

(02:30):
generic to about two years old. And then they take just a
branch, a cyan off of the type that they want to reproduce and
they grafted on. And for a while both branches
will be there, the original treeand the graft.
And then once they see that the graft is taken, they cut off the

(02:51):
original and now they've got a carbon copy genetically of the
original. And I remember a few years ago
hearing that finally after 350 years, the original Concorde
grape Grapevine finally had died.

(03:12):
Now genetically it's alive because it's it exists all over
the place, clones, literally genetic clones taken from it.
But this one single plant with this, these particular sets of
characteristics became ubiquitous because of human
activity. But, and so these fruit trees, I

(03:35):
actually started from seed, which is a thing that hasn't
happened since Johnny Appleseed,right?
This is another thing people don't realize about apples.
Most apples for most of history were inedible.
They were what we would now callcrab apples, but they were good
for making cider. And the little bit of alcohol in

(03:57):
the cider would keep it would keep the liquid safe to drink.
So when water was sketchy, ciderwas was safer.
And then of course, it turned hard.
And that's why the the prohibitionists whose, whose
logo was that? The hatchet.

(04:19):
It wasn't just for smashing stills, which is what commonly
people think. It was for cutting down these
apple trees that people were using to make the hard cider.
And they figure, well, everybody's just sitting around
slammed all day on hard cider. But so these trees, what I'm
getting to see now is that they perform differently the fruit,

(04:42):
the timing of the fruit. Now some of that might be
location and where the the sun hits and all that, but also the
size of fruit and the quantity on it and the plants ability to
bear the fruit. One of the plants, one of the
trees has much significantly larger fruit on it than the

(05:02):
other does. But the other one, the fruits
became ripe much sooner. And then I have one that's way
behind both of them. And I wonder whether it's in the
shade of the house. I wonder whether the fruit will
ever get right. Maybe that was just like another
hard learning curve. But but anyway, you know, we're
in that middle part of the summer and the fruits there and

(05:22):
we've gone through most of the black currants.
And the same thing with the black currants.
I think one of them is much closer genetically to a
gooseberry. And the plants black Curry and
gooseberry are almost indistinguishable until they
fruit. And that's when you see is it a
black current? Is it a red current?
Is it a gooseberry? And so so the gooseberries

(05:42):
almost have like tiger stripes on them, just kind of an
interesting thing, but that. But again, one of them very
heavy with the gooseberries, theother one big black currants and
real sweet. The other one smaller current
occurrence that are black. But they never really get sweet.
They always have a tartness to them no matter how right they

(06:04):
get, which is kind of interesting.
Different profiles in plants that are to our eyes, identical.
But so I've been doing that and I did put goldfish in my fish
tank. I put some 5050 cent PetSmart
goldfish that started out like maybe 2 inches, 2 and a quarter

(06:27):
2 1/2 inches most. And now already they're like,
they're fat and they're, you know, when one has a couple of
them have black on the backs andthey look like little mini orcas
swimming around in there. And we've got the lights in at
night. So you see the bugs crash and
then, you know, one of them is very skilled in swimming

(06:49):
backwards. So he'll grab a bug from the
surface and then swim backwards to try to pull the body off the
wings, you know, And it's like, but it's like little orcas going
at these little creatures, you know.
So the simple things I get entertained by.
But what I'm amazed at is that we haven't fed these fish, of

(07:10):
course, at all. And they're much bigger than the
average goldfish and the averagegoldfish already.
And it's been what you know a month.
Yeah, yeah, In the winter I you'll, you'll probably have to
feed them more. I reckon there'll be fewer bugs
crashing in the water. You know, what we've done in the
past is they do eat algae too. And so but when things go cold,

(07:33):
their clock, their clock really slows down.
And you know, like reptiles are sort of closer to that end of
that evolutionary spectrum. And so the important thing is
that you keep water in there andour and our winters aren't super
deep freeze, although they may even be able.
I wonder if they can freeze and come back.

(07:54):
I know frogs can, but, but no, it's definitely a strange, you
know, there's a whole weird topic there, and that is that
the scientists have done these very interesting analysis, I
guess, of the nervous system of various animals.
And they started out, of course,with humans.

(08:15):
And we have this idea that we call persistence of vision.
And that means that human visionsees that I remember was about
50 or 60 frames per second. And So what that means is with
like a fluorescent light, as long as it flashes on and off
faster than 50 times or 60 timesper second, you'll just see it

(08:39):
as light. You're not fast enough to catch
the little dark spots in betweenthe flashings.
But it turns out that other creatures see at different frame
rates, if you will. And the idea is that, and maybe
there's a leap in there, but theidea is that they experienced
time based on that frame rate. So somehow they've found that,

(09:03):
you know, cats are a little higher frame rate than we are
and dogs are a little higher frame rate.
And of course it's relative to life length.
Also shorter the life length thehigher the frame rate, so the
longer the experience of the time.
That's a funny correlation. Is that bizarre?
So an insect, for example, has aframe rate of about 250 or

(09:25):
something like that compared to R60.
And that's why a family is like,yeah, right, you aren't going to
catch me. Because he's seeing this really
slow head coming. And for him, it's just like
stepping out of the way. You have to be really clever to
just catch them, you know, or really quick.
I think there is a knack you canget, but you've probably just

(09:47):
gave their instinctive flight pattern I think.
Yeah, in front of them. Like skeet shooting, I reckon.
Exactly, exactly. And I and I have had times when
I was really good at that. And then when it gets cold, if
there's flies, it'll slow the flies down and you can kind of
train on that turns on. But yeah, but yeah, if you're a
Kung Fu teacher, it's a good marketing skill, yeah.

(10:10):
Yeah, like a karate kid. You work your way up to
chopsticks. But so then what I where I was
going to with this is so you gotthese variable frame rates of of
the experience of reality for these different creatures.
Well, with reptiles, it seems that their frame rate dials back

(10:31):
and forth directly related to temperature.
So when a frog goes dormant intothe hillside waiting for the
next spring rain, that will moisten everything and make, you
know, turn it back into a momentary jungle to, you know,
wet, wet condition as far as they ever experience it.

(10:55):
But the idea is that when they're awake and they're out
there flopping around and they're in that wetness, they're
experiencing time at one rate. And when they're dormant in the
hillside, their experience of time is completely different,
you know, not unlike ours when we're asleep.
But but for them, it's months, right until the next rain comes.

(11:16):
And, you know, so, so this idea that creatures might experience
reality in these really, really different ways.
And yet somehow all these creatures form a web of like it
it, it isn't just that they livein the same environment, but
these odd time frame reality threads weave together, you

(11:41):
know, and it's in some sense it's another dimension, right?
A bee lives in another dimensionthan we do.
And yet those dimensions overlapsomehow.
Just you know. Yeah, it's kind of like, you
know, why would we assume that our five senses circumscribe the

(12:03):
ability to perceive reality? You know, I, I always thought if
if aliens landed, why wouldn't it be likely that they have
completely different senses thatwe can't imagine?
Yeah, it's a lot along those lines.
Turns out it's more like a flashlight in a dark room, and
the beam only illuminates a small part of the field, and the

(12:25):
rest of it is just, you know, whatever goes bump in the night.
It's a popular. So.
So I was wondering if we might talk about justice, because I
find this to be as slippery a topic as the self.

(12:46):
So I guess a couple of things brought that brought that up for
me. One is I, I've, you know, I
remember coaching a colleague who was motivated to be, you
know, a social justice advocate.And, and for that matter, a lot

(13:10):
of good people are motivated to be social justice advocates.
And, and I remember she asked meif I think justice even exists
or is even achievable. And that's not an easy question.
And then yesterday it's a very old.
Question. Brian Koeberger, the murderer in

(13:32):
Idaho of those 4 college students, took a plea where he
pled guilty to 1st degree murderto avoid the death penalty.
And some of the family members of the victims are irate because
they feel justice was subverted and they they wanted him to get
the death penalty. I mean, others are happy with it

(13:54):
because they don't have to go through the trial and the
potential risk of a mistrial or,you know, the prosecution's
failure to make the case adequately or, or anything like
that. So.
We've taken torture off the table now in modern times,
although in past times that was considered an element of

(14:17):
justice. Well, we we have to some extent,
right? Solitary confinement arguably
is. Exactly the form of that
sublimated it perhaps? Yeah.
So yeah, I'm kind of curious about how, like you said, it's a
very old question and I'm not sure we've gotten that much

(14:38):
smarter about it even as our world view has evolved so much.
So yeah, super curious to hear your thoughts about it.
You know, it, it backs up on ourconversations about ethics,
doesn't it? And and the the reason it's just
one lane over is because the twosides through history that have

(15:00):
polarized end up looking very similar in the arguments that
they make. We've made reference to the
legal argument and it shows up as the famous argument between a
man named Dworkin and another legal philosopher named Hart

(15:21):
Hart. And in that Dworkin takes the
almost the Platonic side, sayingthat there is an ideal of
justice that if we could, we we might imagine a a a perfect

(15:45):
judge that was all knowing of the facts that could then render
a truly just conclusion in any situation.
And that our human efforts and all our human imaginations and
all the processes and proceduresare to try to get a mechanism to

(16:06):
get us as close to that ideal aswe possibly can.
Because remember, we have this regular problem that we've
talked about before of we have this set of ideas or principles
or theories or doctrines, and then we have reality over here.
Pesky, uncooperative, recalcitrant, sluggish to

(16:32):
respond. Reality, whereas thought moves
so fast and it's so clear, right?
And it's so, so we have to make this bridge here is this case
with this guy. And and you know, we say first
degree murder or capital murder as if there's there's an, an
equatableness to different things.

(16:54):
We put them all in that basket. But honestly, this murder really
deserves some adjectives along with it that maybe not every
murder, you know? And in some respect, for
intangible reasons, for reasons that that are hard to explain.
And, and it, it sort of has to do with the, the discomfort,

(17:23):
disgust, revulsion, you know, whatever that we feel about it
where we can't necessarily put our finger on why.
Right, right. Well, you know, and then what
Hart's argument was, was, you know, we look through time, we
look through history, we look through the diversity of

(17:44):
cultures, we look through the diversity of religious beliefs.
And he comes to the conclusion there is no absolute justice,
that justice is absolutely conventional, and therefore it's
based entirely on the society and the society's interpretation

(18:05):
of what just is in this case. And you know, I should know, I'm
sure Plato talks about this, andI should know off the top of my
head which dialogue it is, but it's not leaping to mind.
But I think that this conflicts with because our sense of

(18:25):
morality is very intimately connected with our sense of
justice. Doesn't doesn't he talk about
justice a lot in Socrates trial?Well, I'm sure it's going to be
in the it's going to be in the the three that that are involved
with that the apology and and those leading up to that, but

(18:46):
apology. I'm thinking.
Of and it's going to be in the Republic, but I'm wondering that
if there's places where he drills down even closer to this
particular issue because my knowledge isn't exhaustive of of
Plato and I'm sure Aristotle addressed it all probably in
politics, but but. You were talking about morality.

(19:08):
Yeah, just that morality, our sense of our sense of
indignation at certain crimes that we find heinous make us
feel a certain universality. But even if we all degree that
that this crime was heinous, oneculture would say, OK, justice

(19:33):
is we put the guy to death. Another might say, oh, but just
putting him to death, particularly with a lethal
injection or one big ZAP, how isthat just we need to do we need
to draw and quarter him right? That was an old traditional
thing, Say this is too an easy death is too good for this

(19:55):
person, right? And then other times in culture,
we've said death is too easy. We want this sucker to sit and
to Stew in his juices as long aswe possibly can.
And that's why many are people. I mean, the argument has been
made that death is a is an easier penalty than life in

(20:18):
prison in certain prisons. And I don't know if anybody's,
you know, people don't tend to visit South Sudan, but you can
imagine. Yeah.
Or is it El Salvador? Where?
Salvador. Yeah, yeah.
Or, or you know, I mean, you brought up torture too, as a, as
a, as a instrument of justice, which is also sort of reviled

(20:48):
in, in our current understandingof ethics.
As a tribal judge, just. Carrying the burden ourselves of
potentially doing something immoral, you know, as
retribution. So.
And we made the executioner one particular person that has to
carry that burden. Yeah.

(21:09):
And in firing squads, the idea was only one guy's got a real
bullet or, you know, or one guy doesn't have a real bullet.
So everybody can tell themselveswhy I wasn't, you know, but, but
tribal justice might say he killed these four people.
Now four people from his tribe need to be sacrificed to make
it. This would be Nebuchadnezzar,

(21:30):
right? Because Nebuchadnezzar says, you
know, if a man builds a house and it collapses and kills the
owner's son, then the man who built the house, his son shall
be killed. This is the literal eye for an
eye and a tooth for a tooth. So do you think there's I think

(21:50):
this is a religious question. Do you certainly a moral one,
but I think it's a religious one.
Do you think justice is an idealand when we attempt to implement
it, we can't ever do it perfectly because of the nature
of reality? Or do you think justice is all
relative and and we're just going to that's not about.

(22:14):
Yeah, that's the question. That's Dworkin versus Hark.
Right. And I mean, what's your sense?
My sense is that this is one of those issues that every time we
have the Book of Laws and the Book of Case laws, we are

(22:37):
supporting a particular event, which is to figure out this
case. And I think that the only thing
that can do that is human intelligence applied in each
case. Just like with a sick patient,
we have the doctrines of medicine.
This is how organs work, this ishow disease works.

(22:59):
We have this patient and this symptom and we have to connect
those two somehow to know what to do.
And that's where doctor's intelligence, his ability to
penetrate into the facts, which in the doctor's case would be
the symptoms in the court case, it would be the procedure to
bring out from witnesses exactlywhat the facts are as they can

(23:23):
be understood as objectively as possible.
And when we can't do that, then you know, because the way courts
work, a lot of people don't realize this.
A jury is there to figure out what the facts probably are, and
the judge is there to speak on law.
So if the facts are clear and on, on not in controversy that

(23:52):
both sides agree on the facts and the only question is which
law really applies, we usually don't see a jury in a situation
like that. Usually that's what they call a
bench trial, and the judge hearsthe arguments from both sides
and he judges, OK, in this case,the application of this law, I'm
going to come down on this side or that side.
And then hopefully a, he's honest, hopefully be he's

(24:16):
intelligent, Hopefully see, he'spatient and insightful.
And then all of those qualities kind of come up to a good judge.
And I think that do judges make mistakes?
Yeah. Are there bad judges?
Yeah. Are there bad judgments?
For sure. Are we doing better than we used

(24:39):
to? I don't know.
I hope, but again, this it really does come down to the
integrity of the people that areinvolved in the process.
And that's why I always come back as a one string banjo
around virtue, that if we have virtue that and and then we

(24:59):
apply intelligence and insight and true caring that the best
thing happens, then we will get our best results.
And then if we fail in any of those, we won't.
And that's why that's why I'm I'm hesitant to make a
pronouncement about what's rightin certain cases because I think
these kinds of calls about what's just and what's moral

(25:23):
really take that penetrating intelligence into the situation.
And I think that we've realized that, boy, that is a big burden
to put on one person. And whether it's a king making
imperial pronouncements or it's a judge making these judgments.
And that's the genius of the jury.
I've been able to be on juries enough to to be a little bit

(25:46):
like impressed at this aggregated processing that we
can just dip out of the pool. Random people out of the phone
book, as it were. And they're not entirely random
because you go through a voir deer process to try again,
procedures to try to get us to true impartiality and to true
competence and to true caring and insight into this particular

(26:11):
situation. And then we tell these people
and are just again, people out of the phone book.
OK, your life is going to stop with all this other stuff and
you're going to take this civic duty to sit down here and focus
on this and really do the best job that you can do.
And I admit, you know, I am somebody that has expressed

(26:31):
skepticism about the competence of the public in general, But
within this mechanism, I've watched it work.
And honestly, I've watched it and helped it and been a part of
it. And I feel like more often than
not, it has come up with the best solution that we could have

(26:52):
given. Not always, but most of the
time. Like enough to make me step back
and go OK, wow, there is some generational intelligence put
into this process. Yeah, I think I want to hear
more about that because I think we all know kind of the meme
about, you know, no one can guess the way to the cow or the

(27:14):
number of Jelly beans in the jar.
But if you aggregate everybody'sguess, you're going to come up
with something pretty darn close.
Surprisingly close. And the juries in the time of
the Greeks had 500 members in the jury.
Well, and that that's going to my question, but, but the

(27:34):
typical jury of 12 in the UnitedStates probably doesn't
represent a broad enough sample of guesses that could be
averaged or aggregated into the right answer.
So there's something else going on for you to feel that, you
know, these people presumably onaverage are of average

(27:57):
intelligence. And, and I wouldn't necessarily
trust anybody of average intelligence to parse the
subtleties of facts and how lawsapply to those facts.
So, and, and to kind of discern because I mean, I, I guess, I

(28:21):
imagine I haven't been a jury member, even though I've been
selected a number of times and I've been excited to go and then
not, I wasn't called. But you know, I, I imagine that
there's plenty of lying that goes on despite the oath taking,

(28:43):
I think, I'm sure witnesses lie.I'm sure lawyers lie.
So, so there's also like a a degree of discernment that has
to take place too. And there's some subtlety to the
way the lies get told, for sure.Yeah.
So what do you attribute the success to?
Because it's, it's kind of like somehow maybe the the idea of

(29:05):
participating in the legal process calls people to their
higher selves or something. Well, it isn't just that,
because remember, when we're guessing the cow, the weight of
the cow or the number of Jelly beans, nobody's really got a
vested interest in one weight over another weight.
Yet when we go into court cases,there are two sides, and we

(29:28):
divide the room up into those two sides.
Yeah, well, there's actually four sides, if you want to think
about it. There's the public side, which
you could say we have the defendant and the plaintiff,
plaintiff being the one making the complaint, right.
And the defendant obviously being the one defending against

(29:49):
the complaint. But then we also have a wall
that runs the other way down, usually in a courtroom.
And the, in the, the, as you walk in, there's a left and a
right and one is the defendant and one is the plaintiff.
But there's also a wall and the,the audience stays on one side.

(30:10):
And the, the, there's usually a table for the defendants.
And then there's the court and the jury and the court reporter
and the bailiffs. And they sort of represent
another dichotomy between the public and the and the mechanism
of state or the mechanisms of justice on which the jury, on

(30:33):
which side the jury is in the jury does.
And all those people on that side, they don't even come in
the same doors. This is more like a theater,
right, Where all those people that are actually part of that
play, they all come from anotherdoor and they disappear back
into that door in on breaks and you know, and the public comes

(30:56):
and goes along with the defendants and the plaintiffs
from the other door. So we have these two sides that
are meeting and then on one of those sides it's bifurcated into
the defendant and the plaintiff.The other side, it's like the
the populace represented by the jury and the mechanisms of state

(31:16):
represented by the court, the bailiff, the the the reporter,
any of the court clerks, all thesupport staff and everything.
The metaphor of the two doors seems meaningful.
Makes me curious, like how far back that practice goes, because
it seems like something that theancient Greeks would be doing to

(31:38):
symbolize the, the meeting of kind of the mundane and the and
the profound, if you will, right?
Maybe even the sacred, I don't know.
And now there's a case that's become very controversial where
the judge allowed a plaintiff ora, a defendant rather, and their

(32:02):
counsel to go out the other door, the door that the.
Was it like a safety issue or? If this was be to hide the
defendant from the ICE agents that were waiting at the public
door, right. So they used that distinction.
And so there's a sort of an effrontery to process by that

(32:24):
apart from the legal arguments on either side.
And, and it's sort of it messed with that tradition if there is
one. And whatever is about it, it
sort of flew in the face of thatas if there is a privilege to be
a part of that other side that goes out of that other door.
And if you think about it, beinga judge is obviously a

(32:47):
privilege. Being on the jury, everybody
sees it as kind of a bummer. But honestly being like, when
you come to understand the jury process, I think it is an honor.
And it's an honor to be a memberof a of a society that relies on
juries. And that's why this is you.

(33:08):
That you actually have a voice in the in the legal process.
And this is like Magna Carta stuff, right?
To be trial by jury of your peers.
And so, so no, I thought there was a fascinating thing here
that's kind of been handed on asit is intergenerational
intelligence. And we sort of arrived at this

(33:28):
and like, we can actually make this work with mostly normal
people without everybody having to be educated beyond the, you
know, the what's practical. And so, so I've been very
impressed by that, honestly. And, and I got why it was so
important that people spilled blood over it because for there

(33:51):
not to be people represented on that other side that come in
that other door, as in the jury,then you're just looking at the
mechanism of state without, you know, the representation of the
population somehow. And so they're not dealing out
the people's justice, they're dealing out the state's justice.
And so, so I find the jury thingto be really important And, and

(34:17):
also, you know, it's a shame that everybody can't have the
exposure to it that, you know, that, that I've had, I was on a,
a big federal trial for almost 6weeks.
And then I've been on at least one occasion with a local, just
a more local trial. That was that was not the funny

(34:39):
story about that one was they said, if anybody's got any
reason to be prejudice, then we want to hear about it now.
And you said, raise your hand and you tell us, right.
So I'm like, oh, great, I've raised my hand because I can't
live on $40 a day for that long,right?
It might not have even been 40. There might have been 30.

(35:01):
I think the federal court was 40.
And I said, your Honor, I'm prejudice against both sides.
And one was a big old company and I'm like, you know, I'm
prejudice against the way these big old companies do business.
God knows because I've been dealing with them my whole life
and I think they're not straightup people.
And the other one was, well, I don't want to get into it, but

(35:24):
it was another group of people that I also find pretty damn
annoying. I'll just put it.
Just leave it at that. And so I said to the judge, I
said, you know, so I'm prejudiceagainst these people for that
reason. I'm prejudice.
Like there's no shortage of prejudice in here.
And you know, of course, what happened, right?
I ended up first one seated on the jury.

(35:45):
So this is just a little word ofthe wise.
If you think you're going to getout from prejudice, pick a side.
Yeah, right. We can't.
Be equally prejudice, yes. Exactly the.
Horseshoe effect. Exactly.
So, so maybe let's talk about social justice a little bit
because I was just listening to the, the interview that Jordan

(36:06):
Peterson did with Helen Lewis six years ago or something like
that. It was like an hour and 40
minutes. It was rare, I think for I think
it was BBC and it was rare for there to be that much air time.
And, you know, you really, you really hear Jordan go into depth
on on some topics and it was controversial at the time, at

(36:29):
least his take on some topics. But one of the things he says is
that he doesn't is, is that the reason ideologies work is
because they are attractive. And and they're attractive for
good reasons. That, you know, the idea of
social justice sounds perfectly worthy of support.

(36:52):
That, you know, if, if there arepopulations that have been
marginalized, what does making it fair look like, right?
What does judges look like and how?
How can we do that as a society?Which lives on the side where
the law lives as a from any particular incident or event or

(37:16):
case, but as a sort of a genericattitude towards the thing in in
general. Yeah, this whole thing reminds
me of onion peelings, right? A joke of the of the general at
the expense of the particular. Or is it the other way around?
Well, it's a joke of the a joke of the general at the expense of

(37:36):
the particular. Yeah, because the particular,
that's the case law which set, which is where we see whether
those ideas had any unforeseen consequences, because that's
another law, the law of unforeseen consequences, right?
And so sometimes with the best of intentions, you know, the

(37:56):
road to hell pretty smooth. That's why, because it's paved
with good intentions is what theold saying always is.
And so, so it's kind of like akin to that saying that I've
referred to a couple times from one of the local from Sun Bear,
which is good ideas are nice, but they don't all grow corn.

(38:18):
In fact, some ideas that seem nice, not only do they not grow
corn, but they'll fuck your field up for quite a few seasons
and make growing corn very, verydifficult.
But it seemed like a good idea at the time.
You know, I mean, how, how oftenis that the case?
Right? Seemed like a good idea.
That's right up there with hold my beer.

(38:39):
It's so, so, so we have to go through a process to understand
the actual effects of our actions.
And in that process, you know, we've, we've, I know we're going
to talk about it more when we talk about specific practices of
dialogue, but we talked about itwith phenomenology.

(39:01):
We've talked about it with Aristotle and, and Confucius.
And that is that we have to go through a process ourselves to
be A, to remove that, that that idea of the Greeks called
apoque, the phenomenologist called bracketing, which is to
see the relativism of our perspective as a result of our

(39:27):
foot being nailed down through our birth in a particular place
with a particular perspective. And the idea is pervasive that
to get to truth, and therefore to get to justice, to get to the
good, we have to expand ourselves.
We have to go through a process.And this is a fascinating thing

(39:47):
because the way it presents itself is that the problem is
out there. But then we go through this
long, lot of intelligent people go through a long process, and
we end up, and we're going to gothrough this in details,
historical details in the comingweeks.
We end up coming to the conclusion that the problem is
our thought and that our thoughtand its relationship to reality

(40:12):
is not always a clear arbiter. I've said before, not all the
voices in our head are ours. Well, those voices in their
head, they have some degree of say based on how we regulate
them on the whole process of ourperception of reality.
And and it's and that is what isbased our ideas of justice, our

(40:36):
ideas of truth. And it's connected with our
passions. You know, passions are, we
mentioned before the idea of their emotions that have us
rather than emotions that we have.
Like we might have an emotion tocare for somebody or somebody.
We, we, we move in a positive way under the motivation of
that. But then on other passions, they

(40:58):
get grab a hold of us. And if that's when we do
injustice and that's when we're uncaring and that's when we're,
we lack compassion, right? So, so the idea is that
something has to happen inside the human to rise up.
You know, this idea of the Lotus, born 1 The Lotus is this
beautiful, pristine flower, but it grows out of the mud.

(41:20):
Well, that's the mud that we grow out of, right?
Do what? What?
What? Thoreau called that mud and
slush of opinion and prejudice and that alluvian which covers
the globe from London to Boston to Paris to Concord, right, That
we have to lift ourselves up in thought, emancipate ourself from

(41:43):
mental slavery. Today's rock'n'roll reference.
I'm sure we've referred to him before, right?
But that but that it really, it's turning that that outward
focus and saying the problem is out there to to to focusing on
our relationship without there through our thoughts, through
our cognitive models. That's why we started this whole

(42:06):
series it with fools and sages looking at this idea of
cognitive models, because that sort of becomes this bridge to
all, to understanding all sorts of different things.
And, and it's, it's interesting because we've gone through all
these different philosophers whoall kind of have their own angle
on things, but we kind of distill it back to our thoughts

(42:31):
and our relation, our, our personal relationships with
reality and with each other. That seems to be where we
naturally end up. The lesson of history, if you
will. I'm thinking of the when the
Israelites were in the desert for 40 years, after they, they

(42:52):
escaped from Egypt, they developed a judicial system.
Then, if I remember correctly, like they, they set up judges in
the desert and they had all kinds of stuff going on that the
judges had to deal with. And I think Aaron was the the
main dude there who was. The whole book called Judges.
Yeah. Is that part of Exodus?

(43:14):
That's a good question. That's not sure.
You can you can look that up forthe show notes, but but you
know, reading that as a as a metaphor, right?
And, and seeing the time in the desert as a period of refinement
of something like the connectionbetween consciousness and the

(43:35):
implementation of a system of living together, politics or
ethics or, or what have you. Like, you can't get to the
promised land without going through that that process,
right? Escaping from oppression isn't
enough. Well, remember, where were we
coming from? Was a place where justice and

(43:57):
the power to enforce justice were were were the same.
You didn't even get to have an opinion on justice unless you
had the power from the sword in your hand to enforce justice.
That was the real issue was having the power not doing the
right thing with it. That's secondary.
You never even get to that question until you've your sword

(44:19):
is pretty bloody. And so, so that might put a
certain pragmatism, a certain Machiavellian flavor to what's
passed for justice for a lot of human history.
But so where does that power come from?
It it stopped even with chimpanzees, it isn't directly
the power of the sword because what we noticed about

(44:40):
chimpanzees as it isn't the biggest, baddest chimp that's
able to take all the other chimps in one-on-one, because
nobody can win six on one. There is no bad ass chimp they
they can stand against 6 or 7 or8.
So it turns out that that sword quickly went from, you know,

(45:04):
being Vlad the Impaler to being the politic one that can
manipulate the opinion and the will of the masses.
And this is where these pesky rhetoricians started to spring
up, right, That Plato gnashed his teeth about and and called
evil, right? And it's pretty easy.

(45:27):
It's pretty easy to see, well, if it's a guy with a sword and
he's coming through your village, he's chopping
everybody's heads off. Evil is pretty straightforward.
But as we spoke about in our ontological sorting into Hitler,
it was actually the sword becamethe people and the ability to

(45:48):
wield the sword became rhetorical and and through
through psychological manipulation.
And you know, and like I said, we've seen this with Charlie
Manson. We see this with with cult
behavior in general, where a certain function, you know,
often maybe we under we can understand the a healthy

(46:10):
function by understanding when it breaks down.
So maybe understanding the down the the downfall and thinking
that ends up people in cults might might point us to the way
to not fall into bad thinking inthe future.
And and yet somehow the same people who are susceptible to

(46:37):
the madness of crowds, as Douglas Murray puts it, still
can serve on a jury effectively,which is kind of interesting
also. It's one of those bell curve
phenomenon. But I'm I'm saying it's the same
people. Well, I think that there it may
be or maybe not. And we didn't completely

(46:57):
explicate that because in the jury situation you do have two
sides, unlike the weight of the cow or the number of Jelly beans
where every guess is kind of stands on its own.
We have to find a way to balancethose interests in the
procedure. And that's where this voir deer
and the judge sort of because the way this works, a lot of

(47:18):
people don't realize this. But when you start, at least the
way that it works here is you get your pool of people and
they're given a number and they sit in the order of the number.
And you would think of it as OK,now the first 12 people that won
that number +2 alternatives, alternate people in case

(47:40):
somebody gets sick or, you know,can't appear, those are going to
be the jury. But now both sides get to have a
say about this. And you've been asked to vordeer
means to see and to hear in French.
And so that means that both sides get to and the judge as a

(48:03):
as a neutral party get to ask questions of the pool of people.
And the judge is looking for people to strike for what they
say no cause just because the judge sees that for some reason
this person is not neutral. But then the defendant, I gets
to strike a number of folks. And I believe it might be, I

(48:25):
don't know, as many as five. And the, the prosecutor gets to
strike people, but not as many. So there is a little tilt and
that I'm sure came out of running the machine and seeing
and fine tuning it to say, OK, let's we're tipping a little bit
too much this way to try to, because, you know, Jay Justice

(48:46):
is always pictured with two important characters
characteristics. 1 is the scale with the idea that things are
balanced. And the other one is that it's
blind. There's a, there's a blindfold
on Justice because it's supposedto be impartial, right?
So our procedures are taking that as our model.
And so this group that we end upwith is supposed to be impartial

(49:10):
because they were chosen at random and they, if they, we've
already been through that. If you know anybody involved in
this case, then you have to tellus.
And then your immediate, you know, for no 'cause that doesn't
count as one of either sides personally.
The judge launches them, right? So that we've already moved

(49:32):
towards neutrality and then we try to pick out any of the
obvious things that might not beneutral and then we move from
there. And and then we try to have a
process that continues that the,I don't want to say the
sterility, but the, the non contamination of that pool.

(49:58):
And, you know, by by rules of evidence and by by the fact that
when everything, anything happens that looks like it might
tip things unfairly one way or the other, someone has the power
to object. So, Your Honor, I think this is
screwed up and we're moving awayfrom justice.

(50:19):
And here's why. And then the judge has to make a
judgement on that. And sometimes it's not easy.
Sometimes they'll actually send the jury out and they'll have a
sit down and they'll bang it out, just the attorneys and the
judge. Or sometimes they may just turn
off the microphone and call bothattorneys up to what they call a

(50:42):
sidebar and the two attorneys will make their little arguments
to the judge and nobody else canhear.
And sometimes they'll actually play white noise so that you
can't hear whispering or any of that.
And this is all to preserve thisidea of neutrality and and
impartiality, right? So, so, so then you go through

(51:09):
this entire procedure with always this ability for either
side to say, wait, I think we'reskewing from balance here.
And and yeah, given that it does, it's not a perfect system,
of course. And like any system, it's only
it only has the integrity of thepeople who are involved in

(51:31):
making the system work. I don't think that we're trying
to build a system that insulatesus from that, but I'm not sure
we ever can. That's a real question.
We, we referred to evil a littlewhile ago and it strikes me that
maybe our understanding of evil is also in a lane adjacent to
our understanding of justice. So, you know, if if we tend to

(51:58):
ascribe behavior less to the existence of evil in a person,
which is kind of a bizarre idea when you think about it, and
more to this is a person that themselves was harmed,
obviously, and they are therefore damaged and they they

(52:23):
may have committed some heinous acts and.
That's called the Adam and Eve theory.
We want to have some compassion for them also, right versus evil
needs to be eradicated from society or whatever is on the
other extreme. Right, right.
See, the Adam and Eve theory is that I didn't, you know, I'm not

(52:43):
responsible because of my parents.
But then we apply that, well, how are your parents
responsible? Because isn't there really your
grandparents? And then we end up at turtles,
right? Which is to say we we we run the
danger of an infinite regress. My question is not about
responsibility. It's about how do we actually

(53:04):
define evil? Like there's no question that
that being harmed is going to mess up your your psyche and and
you're going to potentially act that out in some way.
So Adam and Eve is a real thing,but I'm not raising it as a
question of responsibility, but as a question of like, you know,

(53:27):
it's, it's easy to to just say Brian Koburger was evil, right?
But what does that actually mean?
It gets a little slippery. Well, we now we get into
psychology. And religion.
Yeah, because we do. We do.
I mean, I think that, you know, this idea of evil and of society

(53:49):
needing to address it is not a new one.
In fact, it might be the reason that we or have to organize as
civilizations at all. We're all like in some sense,

(54:11):
like the famous painter who was stuck with the the Fauve, the
beasts. We are all in some sense
vulnerable to the beasts. And which is to say that human
nature is complicated. And there the question of evil

(54:32):
is one that I think we have trouble asking from a just a
logical, rational viewpoint. I think I came to understand the
nature of evil as a real, as a different type of force, only
after I saw things shamanically.And as a result of that

(55:00):
training, it's almost becomes a technical term rather than a
expression of emotional revulsion or moral revulsion.
It's more like, you know, why doas a scorpion have a sting and
why, you know? And this is sort of like, this
is the story of life, right? This is the fight of life

(55:23):
against entropy or of mind against matter, that matter
wants to move down the ladder, and mind wants to move up the
ladder. And there is this dynamic
tension that doesn't just show up as mind versus matter, but it
also comes to show up as evolution versus devolution or

(55:46):
life versus death, or freedom versus slavery and entrapment.
These all sort of show up as a re reification of that same
fundamental conflict and which is I think part of why we come

(56:11):
to identify the issues is happening in thought where it's
initially we thought that we could solve it all on the
outside with stuff, but we just haven't organized the stuff
quite well enough. And when we and there's still
people that believe that that ifwe just were to organize the
stuff and give everybody universal basic income and so

(56:37):
nobody would be in want and nobody would have any reason to
do evil. So what's the assumption there
that there's something reasonable about doing evil?
Well, have you looked around andhow that works?
Right. So, so I think it need, it's one

(56:59):
of these things that maybe the way that we've been looking at
it is on the level of a back andforth and maybe to resolve that
we need to actually pick up another dimension somehow.
And that's what I think Freud was trying to do with the
discovery of the unconscious mind.

(57:21):
We discover that, well, when people are doing these things,
they're doing it for what might be only semi conscious or
unconscious motivations. Expression of energies even.
But motivations implies a reasonableness to it.
But to say that it's an expression of an energy might be
more intruded. Yeah, I mean, you know, the the

(57:44):
distinction between murder 1 andmurder 2, I I think one of them
is premeditation, right? And, well, is that so?
So premeditation might show up above the surface as doing some
planning, but below the surface,what isn't premeditation, you
know, as an expression of energy?

(58:06):
And where do we get? Where do we say it's just
insanity? Right.
Is it not? When they.
Mean to be in this situation? And the idea is to, well, we say
that they're insane if they don't know the difference
between right and wrong. But what is it?
Is it not? Is it not also insane to know
the difference, to know the difference between right and

(58:28):
wrong and choose wrong? Is that also not insane if it's
brutal, wrong, if it's, you know, lacking of all human
sympathy, wrong if it's really that you know?
And so some societies have just said, well, you got to put that
Mad Dog down. And then I think this is where

(58:51):
psychology and, and also, you know, the other thing that Freud
brought in was sort of the idea that, you know, we've mentioned
before that you pull the babies out of the river, of course.
But at some point you say, who'sthrowing the babies in the
river? And in some sense, the criminal
justice system is just pulling babies out of the river, which

(59:13):
is which is why there is a validargument to say maybe we do need
more social services. But there is also a certain
naivete there from not really understanding the depth of human
psychology and where some of these things come from.
Someone doesn't commit a type ofthe type of murders that the

(59:35):
Idaho murders you referred to isn't just because they were
they they wanted to do somethingbad or, or they were unclear
about what's right and what's wrong or they thought that
somehow they could get away withit and then and things would be
better or somehow for that. Like at some point we have to

(59:59):
say no, there is such a thing asthe expression of a demonic
energy. And I mean that in a technical
sense, like looked at from a shamanic viewpoint and.
What happens to the human soul exactly when it turns to that?

(01:00:21):
Whether it is still even a humansoul at that level?
I haven't had enough direct experience to really microscope
that. I kind of like true crime stuff
and it in in particular I've I've watched a lot of interviews
and interrogations with serial killers and mass murderers and

(01:00:43):
it's bizarre how normal a lot ofthem seem.
And I wish I could be there in the room actually to run the
meters that I can't get, yeah, that I can't get from the video.
Your comment about soul is interesting because my, my first
reaction was the shamanic response might be to try to
exorcise the demonic energy, right?

(01:01:04):
To, to try to separate the humanfrom the evil.
And, and, and I think there's kind of a premise that in
general that's possible. But what I think you were saying
is that when you get so far downthe road in expressing that
demonic energy, or maybe even ifyou don't express it, but just

(01:01:24):
like experiencing it internally,something does happen to the
soul. And, and the soul is a religious
word for the self, right? And, and we've talked a lot
about if the self even exists, what is it?
And and and so the loss of it isa pretty interesting idea, and

(01:01:47):
what could be there in its place, if anything, is a pretty.
Interesting. Or the transmutation of it into
something else, something distinct from what it started.
Can you say more about that? Because I, I guess I, I think of
the soul at least as a religiousconcept, as you know, like as
transcending certainly physical reality, but I think

(01:02:12):
psychological reality too. I think maybe I think maybe this
is a question of levels and thatthat things do ride around on
people. And I don't know the, the, the
spectrum of the possibility within that, whether, whether,

(01:02:33):
when it, whether the recycling is complete on reincarnation or,
you know, there is this idea that somebody is making the bad
decisions that get them a worse birth within, you know, and I
jokingly say, when I look at some people, I'll jokingly say,
well, they're going to come backas a Barnacle for a few
lifetimes before they make it back up the, the life chain,

(01:02:58):
right? But, but you know, there's the
instance, for example, there's one of the sutras and who knows
how they come up with these things.
But one of the stories of the Buddha is when he's on a pirate
ship with 500 pirates, or he's one of the 500 and he kills one
of the pirates to prevent that pirate from killing 499 of the

(01:03:18):
other pirates and taking all thejust that's the story.
And then so obviously there's some idea here that that it's
better to be spared evil negative karma by turning the
wheel than it is to actually have harbored that through
manifesting it. And so, so this is part of the

(01:03:41):
mystery of the human soul and what goes on with it.
And you know, I worked in the psych ward.
So I've, I've, I'm fascinated bythe question and I have
literally tried to look at it from every accessible angle that
one can look at it. I've worked in the state pen
used to teach Tai chi and, you know, locked in the cell with

(01:04:02):
people that were murderers and, you know, and had normal human
relationships with them given the circumstances.
And so, you know, and I've counseled people.
I haven't counseled any, any serial killers, but but I have

(01:04:24):
worked with some people that hadsome pretty nasty stuff on them
and they had to wonder what the soul underneath was going to
have to go through to resolve this situation.
And and maybe at some point we can get some guests.
It might have some interesting viewpoints on on this.
It would be interesting. But but so I mean, I think that,

(01:04:47):
you know, this is kind of related to that idea that not
everybody that you meet is goingto be concerned with truth or do
with the idea. You know, there's this Buddhist
idea of a mind that's oriented towards enlightenment, which is
basically says that, yeah, they're not necessarily the
Buddha and they're not necessarily, you know, of, of

(01:05:10):
any particular attainment, but their boat is pointed in the
right direction and they're paddling it to the best of their
abilities. And and then there are people
that are definitely paddling it the wrong way, you know, and
like my neighbor who had an encounter with a fentanyl guy

(01:05:33):
who and I had a shotgun at the time my neighbor did that.
And the guy said to him, shoot me, you'll be doing me a favor,
right? Well, this is a person whose
everyday behavior was basically spreading suffering and sucking
other people into this black hole.
And they were they were expressing the opinion that the

(01:05:58):
Buddha was had expressed in that, which was to say that you
might I might be better off not do on the Jag that I'm on being
run around by the thing that I'mbeing around by spreading
negativity and throwing other people's.
Lives that would not stand up ina court of law.
It turns out well, he asked for it.

(01:06:19):
I'm sure that's been tried many times.
I got recorded. Well, sorry.
I'm sure it's been tried a lot, you know, I mean, what one
version of the he asked for it or another.
But but yeah, I mean, and then there is, you know, I I have had
the flash that all of this gnashing of teeth is all just

(01:06:39):
the price to be paid for coming to higher levels of
consciousness. And that, you know, to me it's a
strong argument for reincarnation.
Not that I can, you know, prove one way or the other, but
clearly there's a process that needs to go work that needs to,
to to unfold before certain of these people are going to be

(01:07:03):
back in the light of creation and positivity and who goes
through that and, and who suffers?
Because you know, that's one of the questions my Zen master
would ask, ask yourself, who feels this pain with this idea
of again, understanding the truenature of the self and the

(01:07:25):
nature of the attachment. And I think in those cases, it's
a, it's an attachment to physicality.
And so again, if you think aboutit, or materiality, right, or a
certain physical sensation, thisis all the stuff at the lower
end of Finnegan's ladder, right?And so, so it's it, it, it's in

(01:07:47):
harmony with that force that moves towards entropy, as
opposed to the force of mind that moves things towards higher
organization and more fulfillment and more of the
creative force of the universe. Because we have attachment in
that direction too. And what do rich people do when
they're driven in a materialist direction?

(01:08:08):
They don't say, oh God, great, I've got my billions of dollars
now I can really study Plato andunderstand justice and truth.
They never do that. They say I want a huge yacht and
I want a bunch of beer commercial chicks, you know, in
the bikinis as young as I can not get arrested for.

(01:08:30):
And I want everybody to have to bow and show me all these things
that Aristotle went through and said.
This is not life, this is not fulfillment, this is not
happiness. They go through that list.
Money, influence, power. You know, not unfolding your

(01:08:51):
intellichy and expanding in thatdirection in the in the
direction of spirit and mind. But it's always stuff.
It's always materiality. I want to eat better food.
I want to drink more expensive liquor.
I want to have sexier women thathave bigger diamonds.
I mean, this is all matter, matter, matter, matter, matter,

(01:09:11):
matter, matter, right? It's all the descent down
Finnegan's ladder, right? And then we have the mind
oriented towards enlightenment that is going to say, Gee, maybe
I shouldn't cause suffering justso I can get the yacht and the
beer commercial chicks. Maybe that's, you know, but then

(01:09:34):
we end up on that question of justice.
Well, if it's all convention anyway, then the more beer
commercial chicks and the biggerthe yacht, the better, the more
expensive Dom Perignon, whatever.
And that's the theory that whoever dies with the most toys
wins, right? Matter, matter, matter, matter.
So the we've inverted the pentagram.

(01:09:55):
Now the four elements are on topof spirit, which is that
creative force of life. So what's going to come with
this? Well, who plants corn and
expects beans, right? So, so materiality will generate
more materiality and awareness and more mind will generate more

(01:10:16):
mind and more awareness and moreevolution of consciousness.
And so it's like you pick what you want.
What do you think? If you really think it's all
about the stuff, that's OK. The Dow is in the very
excrement. That's just not the prettiest
part of the Dow. That's all from my seat, you
know. But you know, I haven't seen all

(01:10:36):
the beer commercial chicks they're talking about either.
So you know the the flesh is weak, even though the spirit
might have it might will in other direction.
And that's where you see people that sometimes unlashed for
unleashed forces that they cannot handle.
This is the story of the lotterywinner, right?

(01:10:58):
Where it's like, all of a suddenmy dreams come true and I just
can't handle the power behind this reality.
It is. It just blows my gaskets, right?
Because I've never been trained to this.
I haven't done the push ups to be able to handle this.
Yeah. Higher up the mountain, the
harder the wind blows. Good.

(01:11:23):
Well. I think we probably exhausted
that, or at least a day's. I, I think, I suspect we'll come
back to it, especially the the question of evil.
I That's just like a continuous.Perennial thing.
Thing. Yeah, perennial question.
But enjoy the apricots. Absolutely.
And yeah, the big ones, maybe when you're back, maybe we'll

(01:11:46):
have some of those big ones. We'll see if we can.
Just about four weeks. Yeah, yeah, very cool.
Cool. All right, Brian.
OK, we'll see you then. See everybody later.
Onward through the fog.