February 20, 2024 • 47 mins
In this episode, we advocate for capital-letter Truth, Morality and Beauty in our purportedly post-modern world, and we argue that these ideals are not quaintly outdated, but necessary for society to function and for you (as an adult) to be at your happiest: Pursuing truth, morality and beauty are worthwhile goals even in modern times,...
The post Truth, Morality and Beauty: Not Just for Victorians (Ep. 12) appeared first on The Morpheus Clinic for Hypnosis.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
When people carry these burdens, it causes insomnia,
it causes alcoholism, it causes so many issues
that people Maintaining a lie, particularly I'd say
lying to yourself is probably
a very damaging thing to do. Even the
points of view of a bully, even the
points of view of someone who just doesn't
think things through, the people pleaser tries to
account for and accommodate.
(00:21):
Welcome to How to be an Adult.
This is a podcast for people just like
you who've inadvertently become adults and have no
idea what to do about it. I'm Luke
Chao. And I'm Pascal Langdell.
And this is the trail guide to everything
your parents didn't tell you when you reach
the age of 18.
And we spread these thoughts and these, perspectives
(00:44):
in order to democratize them, so that you
can have a good life as an adult.
Today, we're gonna talk about
capital t truth, capital m morality and capital
b beauty
as valid concepts in this 21st
century
and not just concepts for the Victorians.
(01:04):
Why don't we just start off with the
the big t word? Sure.
Well,
so ever since the other big t, Donald
Trump, was elected to the White House Mhmm.
There's been extra chatter in the,
public sphere about how we're in this post
truth universe
where narrative is everything
and truth doesn't matter so much. It's really
(01:26):
just what you get away with.
Mhmm. And then we can also look from
the perspective
of, let's say, lawyers who have to advise
their clients to tell the truth and the
whole truth and nothing but the truth when
they, you know, make the oath on the
stand. We can look at the perspective of
engineers
who have to design bridges
and Wi Fi networks that actually work in
(01:47):
the material
universe.
So certainly there are multiple
perspectives
that would advocate
for this concept of objective
or capital
t truth, even if the very same people
would admit that it can be quite an
ordeal to arrive at
objective or capital t truth. I've been watching
(02:10):
a couple of things that has struck me.
There was
one TEDx talk that I caught of somebody
who
advocates for the idea that everything is a
story. So the idea America isn't real, it's
a story that we all agree. Also that
human rights
don't exist. It's not an objective truth that
(02:30):
we have. And he said, you know, if
you if you cut over a human
there's nothing inside which actually I disagree with.
There's quite a lot inside. But there's
this incredibly reductionist,
almost nihilistic I would say point of view.
It sort of ties in as well with
another trend with which a friend of mine
had a name for, she didn't realize it
had a name. It was called emotivism.
(02:51):
So basically, it's the idea that
if for instance I say, I think that
fraud is bad.
Mhmm. Right?
That there's nothing good or bad about that.
A fraud in itself.
It's only my opinion that it's bad. It's
my perspective. You might hold a perspective that
is,
that actually fraud is good.
Mhmm. And that we both have invalid points
(03:13):
of view
because they there is no objective truth. Mhmm.
There's only our opinions and our morality Yep.
That we carry around with us. But that's
problematic
because as you say, if I if you
say this is 10 centimeters and I say
it's 11 because I feel it's so and
that feels right,
then, you know, the Mars rover won't run.
Well, a few 100 years ago, David Hume,
(03:35):
the Scottish
philosopher Yeah.
Identified
a distinction
between what is and what ought to be
Mhmm. And he said famously that you cannot
derive an ought from an is.
In other words, the realm of morality,
the realm of what should be, like human
rights, for example Mhmm. Is a separate domain
(03:56):
Mhmm. From what is, like, if you cut
apart a human body, for example. It's true.
You're not gonna find the human rights in
a person's,
you know, physical heart or or lungs or
or brain,
but that's because you're looking in the wrong
place. You have to look in the realm
of a separate domain called morality or ethics
Mhmm. To find human rights. You can't just
(04:16):
look into the material world made of atoms
and molecules. So let's account for the fact
that there's sort of this moral realm, which
we're gonna talk about later in the episode,
and then there's also the material realm made
of atoms and molecules where we do have
things like bridges that can stay standing. That's
also lend itself to the idea of science
as well in the sense
that objective truth could be perhaps summarized as
(04:40):
if I see that and you see that
and we can all agree that we're seeing
it and we describe it in the same
way, then we can say this is the
closest thing we can get to at this
point for objective truth. But the scientific process
is falsification,
right? So this is where people somehow get
in trouble by saying of the science like
it was a thing, you
know, rather than a process.
(05:01):
But science is a process of reassessing objective
truth but with a certain amount of rigor
behind it rather than because I feel it
so. And even scientists will acknowledge
that sometimes their best hypotheses today
are likely
to to be falsified at some point decades
in the future. And and so and subject
(05:22):
to their own bias as well. Yeah. Yeah.
So Yes. You know, truth is a tricky
thing to to to isolate. But but the
difference between such a scientist and and the
friend you mentioned earlier Mhmm. Is the friend
is not even
trying to to arrive at some semblance of
of an understanding of objective reality. Yeah. The
scientist at least is trying to arrive at
some semblance of understanding about objective reality. And
(05:43):
that's and that's interesting. It's only odd when
you say that. I also kinda go well
that's
almost similar to a spiritual endeavor as well.
I I guess most difficult enough endeavors. Mhmm.
So whether to develop one spiritually or whether
to kind
of formulate a model of
reality that predicts what could happen in the
future. Any of these difficult endeavors, they're they're
(06:06):
gonna be worth
doing even if it takes a long time,
even a lifetime, even multiple lifetimes. So so
what what definition of truth are we gonna
work by? Because I mean Well,
maybe I'll borrow from Philip k Dick and
he he actually define reality as this.
That which does not go away when you
(06:26):
stop believing in it.
So so so the Mac truck that's bearing
down on you. It's not going away if
you stop believing in it. So let's say
that Mac truck exists in reality,
and you'd better get out of its way
because it's not just a figment of your
imagination.
But then something like you're imagining
that the next flight you take is gonna
(06:46):
go up in flames,
if that never manifests before your eyes, when
you stop believing in it that imagining goes
away. The imagining in other words is is
not actually the truth. So that's interesting because
going into the idea of what what is
truth for?
Because you could say, well, okay, well, what
use is it? Because I could live in
my own fantasy world. Mhmm. I could choose
(07:07):
to to believe anything. It might not do
me any good, but I'd be happy as
I as things went wrong.
Yeah. And that that that is I would
argue more more of like the child's perspective.
Right. Where, you know, one could be protected
from dangers or protected from scarcity
despite living in a fantasy play world
(07:27):
by the time we have to fend for
ourselves
So metaphorically by the time we're driving our
own cars.
We'd better have our eyes on the road.
Mhmm. So I'll extend this metaphor.
When we're driving a car, right,
we can't navigate the roads with only what
we imagine might be ahead of us,
(07:47):
nor can we navigate the roads that we've
taken a 100 times with only our memory
of what was on the roads the past
100 times we can only navigate the roads
with our eyes with our ears and then
with our hands
if with our eyes we can't see what's
over the next hill for example we just
kind of keep driving and then we reach
the crest of the hill and then we
(08:08):
can see with our eyes Oh, that's what's
over the hill, and we keep navigating accordingly
and thereby complete every journey that we begin.
So this is very much an argument in
support of empiricism
above just pure reason in that the evidence
of her senses though imperfect
will give us the best representation
of reality
(08:30):
that we could then use to navigate by
that a person could have.
So often we kind of go to conjecture,
you know, like, is this person gonna call
me back? We kind of like imagine stuff,
But but the future you is gonna actually
be perceptive and intelligent enough to have information
and then, you know, make decisions with information,
which absolves you from any need to make
(08:51):
decisions without information.
So so flipping around then,
saying that
lying or lying to yourself or deceiving yourself,
you could say, well,
at least you can start off by not
doing that because it's it's rather easy, right?
It's actually quite easy to kid yourself or
even other people for that matter. There's a
a study which I can share with you,
(09:12):
I think it's in the notes, that showed
that having successful small lies
leads to more lies because the social cost
of being found out in a lie is
close to death. Right? It's like there's death
and then there's social shame. Those are the
2 biggest things that the human old brain
is kind of afraid of, right?
But apparently if you put a scenario while
(09:32):
small lies are swallowed then the lies get
bigger and bigger because you can get away
with it. The self censorship
begins to disappear. So actually in some ways
you have to be your own best
monitor because even when you're telling things to
yourself
you could be kidding yourself. And it's and
you kid yourself to start off with, that
can snowball into
really going into territory where your perception of
(09:54):
the truth about your imaginings, for example,
is entirely wrong.
Often what we imagine in our heads and
I'm gonna say like all lies are basically
like imagined thoughts. Yeah. So what we imagine
it ends up obscuring
our view of what's in front of us.
So if you tell yourself that
(10:15):
your tires can handle that patch of black
ice, but you've not changed your tires for
the winter time. Mhmm. You're lying to yourself
and then you screw around and you find
out. Yeah. But but if if nothing happens
you might go, oh, well, okay. That calibrated
my my truth, I'm okay. You know, the
the more that your
your lies are swallowed and accepting you get
away with them, the worse your calibration can
(10:36):
become can become. Does that make sense? I
I guess so.
I'm kind of imagining that that maybe some
of our raters
have, you know, got
themselves caught in this pattern of like telling
little white lies to make other people happy
or to not rock the boat. Or we
can turn lies to themselves in order to
fill some kind of emotional hole.
So let's imagine that we we kind of
(10:57):
have listeners who have these kinds of fantasies
obscuring
their view of the truth,
right? So they think they're a better driver
than they are,
so they'll take like tighter turns than they
ought to, or they're gonna drive on the
black ice even though they've not changed their
tires to winter tires yet. In such a
situation,
could we say it's inevitable that a bad
(11:18):
thing is gonna then follow?
Could could we say that? It's likely.
Okay.
Okay. So not inevitable,
but it's likely on a long enough time
that if you, you know, if you overestimate
your driving ability ability, that you're probably gonna
get into some kind of, you know, 1
person accident, 1 car accident.
If you tell, like, white lies to to
your friends, eventually, you're gonna suffer that social
(11:40):
shame you've been alluded to of being called
out as untrustworthy.
Mhmm. And and I think the same thing
happens internally as well. So you could have
somebody who tells himself, I am a bad
driver.
And repeats that and it may not be,
you know, let's say it's not true. Yeah.
They're neither good nor bad, they're they're just
a driver. Let's say, but I'm a bad
driver. And then you believe that and then
(12:00):
repercussion is that you don't drive, so you
feel safe. But it also justifies
and reinforces the idea that you're a bad
driver because you don't drive and so on.
Well, one one thing I often end up
saying to my clients is that when when
you put in a really good effort
to ascertain the truth about a situation,
that most likely you're gonna be better off
(12:22):
afterward.
So
when one is, like, self deceptive, you know,
to to, like, pump themselves up or or
to feel okay about themselves,
They are neglecting their best qualities.
So they're making up fake qualities to feel
good about at the same time that they're
neglecting their better qualities where they can still
feel good,
(12:42):
but also have their feet on the ground.
Or if someone is overestimating their driving ability,
let's say that they're neglecting the fact that
they could just, like, take some extra driving
lessons
to have the false idea that that they
can handle it. So, like, maybe their vision
is failing.
You know, they're neglecting going to the optometrist
Mhmm. You know, in favor
for for for for the lie.
(13:04):
So there was another study that also showed
that
maintaining a lie
has
really bad outcomes for as your health is
concerned. It can reduce how is the classic,
it'll reduce your life by 10 years. So
so the bad outcomes were things like, you
know, high
stress levels,
heart disease,
I think diabetes was mentioned as well. And
(13:25):
it's the theory goes that it takes a
cognitive load to maintain a lie.
That
cognitive load increases stress and stress causes
the issues. And then, so that then plays
into the idea, why is it a cognitive
load? What's so important about maintaining a lie?
And because when you're a kid you grow
up you kinda have to learn about lying,
(13:46):
you know? And kids learn about lying pretty
early on as well. And so
there's gotta be something that you
learn that is about the social
damage that's possible with the lion. That creates
this, sort of,
this mental overload that creates the stress.
So generally speaking it's not just that truth
(14:06):
is a good thing, I suppose.
Is that,
maintaining a lie particularly I'd say lying to
yourself
Mhmm. Is probably a very damaging thing to
do. Yeah. Well, I'll share with you that
when I think back to me in elementary
school, right, I can think of a few
incidents where I kind of like experimented with
(14:27):
lying. And it was very clear to me
in elementary school that the adults around me
could just plainly see through. Mhmm. Whatever it
is I was telling my fib about, and
I just couldn't get away with it. And
I could only gain their respect by being
truthful. And, you know, if I had to
own up to something or apologize for something
that I own up to and apologize. And
that's how you kind of have the trust
(14:49):
and the respect of of the adults around
you.
So that's kind of what I learned about
lying when I was experimenting with lying as
a kid.
I don't know if everyone has had that
that experience, but I imagine if if my
experience had been
that life is grand when I tell lies.
Maybe
(15:09):
then today I wouldn't have as much of
a positive regard for speaking truthfully and candidly
and honestly.
Well, it's it's a downside of lying where
enough of the adults around you
care about
truth and being respected enough that you tell
the truth to them. Mhmm. That you end
up losing friends over lies. You end up
losing jobs over lies. You end up losing,
(15:31):
you know, relationships over lies
because it's, you know, once trust is broken
Yeah. It's very hard to regain
because people see you as someone that they
can never just quite believe in and, you
know, that adds extra stress in their minds
when they're speaking
to you. Mhmm. So in the idea that,
(15:54):
you know, you didn't get your eyes checked
and then because of that
you ran somebody over or something terrible happens,
right? So then the question moves on to
the other big topic which is morality.
And as we've already
discussed, you know,
well somebody saying, It's good to get your
eyes checked if you drive a car. And
(16:14):
then the motorist might say, that's your opinion.
That's not a that's not a truth, right?
So
how do we
derive our morals? Where do we get them
from? How do we know that they're useful
or good?
In the context of driving Mhmm. We could
sort of identify a duty
to your fellow drivers on the road or
(16:36):
even pedestrians
on the sidewalk
to make sure that you are a competent
driver.
So if you were to somehow lose your
competence
to to drive,
such as if you lose your eyesight, if
you're taking, you know, medications that make you
drowsy, if your car is so much in
disrepair that it's a hazard,
(16:58):
well, then your duty
to your fellow citizens of the road or
even pedestrians crossing the road will be
to get yourself back up in in into,
competent shape. Mhmm. In in order to drive.
So in order to not hurt people and
not kill people.
Exactly. Exactly. It comes it comes back to
(17:18):
the idea of, again, a pro social idea.
Yes. Morality being based in something that's pro
social. Exactly, because you're not the only driver
on the road. To your point,
we keep seeming to arrive
at this definition that
a universal
human kind of morality, if we're going to
be like,
(17:38):
you know, not absolutist, but if we're
if we're gonna be,
definitive
about things,
it's going to be
behaviors that are prosocial behaviors that are good
for your friends, for your neighbors, for your
family, and not only for yourself.
It happens that when you are good to
your friends and your neighbors and your family
(18:00):
and your coworkers, that it ends up coming
back to you in a positive way, so
it's good for you too. But it it
seems like if we're gonna try to define
a universal morality, it's gonna be to act
in ways that foster
community and, you know, good trusting social relationships.
And I suppose this also does relate to
truth as well because you can't do that
effectively
unless you're on guard against lies,
(18:21):
external lies or internal lies. Because you could
kid yourself that I don't know, forcing everybody
in the office to shave their head is
a social good. You could whatever it is,
I'm thinking something ludicrous, right?
And who's to say no? You know, like
I said, well it's prosocial.
But is it true? And so that's where
morality and truth do have a relationship is
(18:42):
that
you can judge a moral
to some degree,
surely, by the degree of truth that supports
the moral.
Because otherwise I don't know because otherwise you
could anybody could say like you could say,
I'm sure the Nazis in in Germany thought
that their final solution was pro social in
their terms, as horrifying as that is. And
(19:04):
that that to me, the roots of that
is self deception.
Well, you could also argue in this 21st
century
that
because we kind of draw a boundary around
humanity
and we don't really, like, include
cattle and,
geese and goats and chickens and other poultry
(19:25):
that
were delirict in our duty
to the fellow
species on the planet Mhmm. Even if we
are fulfilling our duty to our fellow human
beings.
So there is sort of
this culturally determined or socially
determined
aspect to morality,
even though it might be uncomfortable
(19:48):
to kind of examine
you and see your own flaws, right,
or emotions or whatever else is in there,
like,
behind the scenes.
It is also something that I wish to
normalize for for one to kind of look
look inwardly and to see one's flaws and
emotions in all of one's humanity. Mhmm. Yeah.
Yeah. So we we've defined morality as prosocial.
(20:10):
And just so I'm not a hypocrite, I
am excluding the animals. Right. Yes. Fair enough.
Yeah. Except for the cute ones. Like Right.
Cat cats and dogs, I count among, you
know, social species I socialize with. Some people
don't, right? Yeah. And like even horses, I
I include among like social species who I
might socialize with. But that's because I've never
eaten horse before. I have. Oh, okay. So
(20:30):
And I've ridden horses as well. Yes. So
Yeah. I'm a true hypocrite and I Well,
yeah. At least conflicted.
I see it as being a part of
being of my version of a human being
at the moment. Well, yeah. I mean, like,
I I participated in jet travel recently, even
though I am aware that we had a
very very hot year last year and I
contributed to that for this
(20:52):
this season. This is struggle session. Well,
I mean
it's it's it's it's an We're talking about
morality. So, yes. Yeah. We're
we're talking about, yeah. We're talking about morality.
One way to bring all of this self
flagellation to a point is
to say
these kinds of thoughts and these kinds of
(21:12):
discussions
where we are talking about capital m morality
are worth having even if the participants in
the conversation
start start getting uncomfortable
because we realize our failings. We realize our
moral failings, you know, because I ate meat
and I flew in a jet airplane and
I try to be a climate conscious person
at the same time. And how do I
reconcile all of this? The only way
(21:35):
to end up eventually at an old enough
age coming to a reconciliation
Mhmm. Is if we have these thoughts and
this kind of introspection
and then these kinds of conversations where I
actually believe that at some point I'm gonna
stop eating meat and stop doing jet travel.
Mhmm. There's also an argument that says that
the
prosocial course still needs to have
(21:56):
some kind of backing.
And so therefore you go- and then that's
when you go back to the idea of,
you know, God is dead, so now we
have to make him. Is that one one
role that religion
does have and certainly did have more in
the past
was
a
a foundation of these things are true because
they're ordained by something
(22:17):
or you know some other
spiritual
thing. Humans didn't make this up. Right? So
delegates it to somebody else that you can't
really argue with.
Right?
So if you take that away,
then
you are in a situation where you do
have to figure out your own moral touch
stones. And that's
actually no small thing. I actually think that
(22:39):
if you ask somebody who says they don't
believe in God for example, Well, how do
you know what's right and wrong?
Often
it can be a problematic question because they
go, Well, I decide. And I say, Okay,
what if I decide differently? What does that
mean? And everything becomes relative and suddenly you're
in trouble.
So it's really important to figure out
the foundation
of your
(23:01):
moral underpinning. Whether it's religion or not, it's
neither here nor there. But you've gotta have
something. I think that's probably Well, well what
it comes down to. Where do you think
it would come from if not from organized
religion?
Again, the idea
of reciprocal
benefit, I suppose. Okay. So so from from
reason
and to some degree enlighten self interest?
(23:23):
Yeah. Yeah. Although, yeah. To some degree. Yeah.
So but it's yeah.
That's that's a good start.
It's not easy. Yeah, well there definitely
is, even in the absence of formal or
organized religion, there is sort of
like these socially
enforced norms
(23:43):
where,
like, if someone finds out that all the
art in your home is stolen,
from from a country that, like, your grandfather
invaded Mhmm. And you tell proud stories about
the war. Right. Like, I just made up
that that, you know, in that made up
scenario,
you're gonna get social heat.
(24:06):
Mhmm. I mean, you might not have broken
any laws. Mhmm. But you're gonna definitely get
social heat
because you're speaking so flagrantly about these stolen
artifacts.
So
I think that even in the absence of
religion or, you know, even laws mandating certain
behaviors,
there are going to be social pressures
(24:29):
that prevent people from acting in certain ways
or doing certain things. And there's gonna be
also social incentives
for you to make a big show out
of donating the artifacts back to the country
that your grandfather stole them from. As I
do know, somebody,
a friend Michael John Dower, who's a director
in the UK, and he comes from a
rich family, well, originally,
(24:49):
that
significantly benefited from the slave trade. And so
he and his family got together
and funded an institution in the country where
those,
slaves were taken from and were used in
order to redress
the effects of slavery
that were still manifesting there. Yeah. I think
(25:09):
that's but when I see a direct line
like that, it seems pretty clear. When it's
a direct line. I mean, when it's more
indirect, I find it more problematic. Yeah. But
that I could see the logic behind that.
Yeah. Well, in some cases,
you know, having extra wealth is not the
main point.
Being able to be happy with your
(25:34):
most toys. Mhmm.
As a hypnotherapist,
I I often see
that
the the anxiety,
sometimes even the depression that my clients
present with and and believe they have
are actually problems of demoralization.
(25:54):
And once I help them to find their
moral center,
once I help them to to feel that
their sense of right and wrong counts.
Once I help them to be able to
say, no, I can't abide by that, but
let's do it this other way instead. Once
they're able to say that,
then they're not so anxious. Then they feel
(26:14):
a lot better about themselves, then they sleep
better at night and they don't have to
like drink as much or smoke cigarettes.
This I don't hear talked about that much
where we are kinda treating like anxiety as
a mental illness
and not as a problem of demoralization.
In fact, it's considered to be an outdated
Victorian thing to consider mental illness to be
(26:35):
a moral issue. Mhmm. But I'm actually going
to, you know, in 2024, make a case
here
that
many of the problems that a hypnotherapist might
see
are problems that are solved by having the
client connect with their moral center.
So people pleasing, people who won't set boundaries,
(26:56):
people who are are afraid to feel or
to express anger in a healthy way.
These are problems
of being out of touch with your moral
center.
Once you get in touch with your sense
of right and wrong and good and bad,
and you feel that that you're an adult
and you're in equal to the the person
who's wronged you,
(27:17):
then there's so many burdens
you unshoulder.
Mhmm. Right?
When people carry these burdens, it causes insomnia,
it causes alcoholism, it causes so many issues
that people come to a hypnotherapist for.
I mean, I'm not saying in every case,
but in the cases
specifically that I'm thinking about and talking about.
And
I think that,
(27:37):
for example,
when one is a people pleaser,
he or she
feels
the need to consider
every point of view as valid.
Right?
Even the
the points of view of some jerk,
even the points of view of a bully,
even the points of view of someone who
just doesn't think things through. The people pleaser
(27:59):
tries to account for and accommodate all of
these views.
So when I have such a person tap
into their moral center
and develop a strong sense of right and
wrong and good and bad and the willingness
just to say, Well, no. Hold on. I
can't abide by that.
Then it's not just
(28:20):
that they're no longer people pleasing. It's not
just that they're setting and enforcing boundaries.
It's that a lot of the the other
problems,
which is often what they present with, go
away.
Is there also to again tie back
morals with truth is that the people pleaser,
or somebody who's very high in agreeability
(28:40):
is in essence
kind of lying to themselves that every opinion
is of equal merit or lying to themselves
that their own opinion
has equal or less merit than somebody else's.
It it it's it's usually that everyone's opinion
counts except for theirs. Everyone's needs count except
for theirs. Every one else counts except for
(29:00):
them. The the the lie is the erasure
of them as a person.
So so, yeah, I mean, the the truth
thing was basically I'm saying
epistemology
matters. Sound epistemology
makes happier,
more even keeled, clear headed people. Mhmm. Now
we're saying morality matters because
being connected with your moral center Mhmm. Allows
(29:22):
for also happier, more even keeled level headed
people. That's actually been true in my practice
as a hypnotherapist.
So
earlier today, I talked about
when when I was a kid, I kind
of like experimented with lying. Right? Well, what
happened? I was kind of a brat back
then. But that's not just a lesson about
why truth matters.
(29:43):
It's also a lesson about why morality matters.
So it's not just like the content of
what I'm saying. It's also, you know, the
fact that I've chosen to lie or tell
the truth to begin
with, that that matters.
So
the judgment that I would get,
it's not just that the teacher
thought I was mistaken.
(30:05):
Mhmm. That wouldn't have hurt as much. It's
that that teacher who I trusted
now thinks truthfully that I lied to them
and that cuts a lot more deeply.
So we'll use the the the same story
about me being like grade 3 experimenting with
lying,
you know, to to make the point not
just about why telling the the truth matters,
(30:27):
but also, you know, the the moral argument
for doing the right thing. So so if
people judge you as just ignorant, I mean,
that kinda hurts,
but it's not gonna hurt as much
as if they judge you and truthfully to
be a liar, to be untrustworthy. I think
the roots of a lot of negligent lying
or,
instantaneous
(30:48):
lying both to yourself and to to others
is normally drive from
fear. Mhmm. Some It can be even a
small fear. You know that thing when somebody
says, Oh, did you watch so and so
that that film? I don't know if anybody
else has done this. But but I can
I know that I've gone, Oh yeah? Like
I saw the film. I didn't see the
film. But in that instant, there's like this
thing that sort of goes, Oh well, you
better show that you know the movie. It's
(31:10):
quite silly, why do that? Right? But then
again, with kids as well, you see this
all the time that
the the the fear of telling the truth
will define whether they tell the truth or
not. And if they are allowed to
admit their vulnerability, their wrong, their, and they
they're in a safe place, they will come
clean.
Most people, not everyone, but most people have
(31:30):
a conscience.
So even if you quote get away with
the lie,
in your own head you didn't really.
Yeah. So And that's
probably gonna play on you. So that's And
that's what causes insomnia. That's what can cause
alcoholism.
I mean, often
when people present with anxiety,
(31:50):
there is an element of a guilty conscience
in there somewhere. Now that doesn't mean they've
done anything wrong, but usually there is some
element that they could be a bad person.
Yeah.
So let's round out the trifecta
of branches of philosophy
that we're going to advocate
for here in 2024.
(32:12):
We've advocated for epistemology. We've advocated for morality.
Now we're gonna advocate for aesthetics,
for beauty
because those let's be honest, a lot of
really ugly architecture in Toronto
That there really is and I I I'm
not a fan of brutalism.
Right? Robarts library at U of T looks
(32:32):
like a giant turkey
And it was novel at first,
but you know, it's it's a big ugly
concrete sculpture or not not sculpture, it's a
it's a building. Mhmm. But I mean it
it it it it it's not pretty to
look at. I do have theories about that
which we'll get. Okay. Please. Please. You're Okay.
Okay, you want it. Okay, I'll give it
to you. So, okay.
So, this is Pascal's grand idea about beauty.
(32:55):
Alright. Ready? Go. Okay. So,
the Greeks,
and particularly Plato,
saw beauty
as kalos or kalos. I think that's the
right right way to say it. Yep. And
this could be translated also as something that's
not just beautiful but noble as truthful as
well to some degree as well. So in
English, it sort of transferred to often translated
(33:15):
as fine, like fine dining.
And I was thinking this, I think, what
is what is that exactly? And I was
thinking, well, I was thinking that really the
the beauty
in nature, beauty in art,
beauty in politics or whatever it is, is
this to me it's like the balance between
chaos and order.
Right? So if you have string and an
(33:37):
instrument, you have two points where they're anchored,
that's the constraint.
And then you pluck the string and it
vibrates and it creates a sound and the
oscillation
is actually quite even.
Right? So it's balanced.
And balanced over time.
And to me that's like, that tautness if
you like is the definition of what makes
(33:58):
something beautiful. Because
if you think
of those
poems, pieces of music,
stories or whatever it is that persist over
time,
they do tend to show this
balance between
chaos
and the constraints and the order
put together in a good way.
(34:20):
Now that doesn't mean that it can't be
messed around with and that's where we could
come to your library, right? So
there is also merits and this is what
the artist does,
is to create discordance.
Right? So something that's,
you know, an Elgar piece that's very discordant
for example, some modern music,
you might hear the discordance and go (34:40):
Well,
that's ugly.
Well,
if your touchstone is that there should be
a balance between chaos and order then sure
you might call it ugly. But the honest
answer might turn around and say yes. But
there's what what I'm doing is that in
doing this I'm
revealing
something
that resonates with, my audience.
(35:00):
A discordance,
a
a feeling, a sensation.
And that in itself is that's the purpose
of art if you like, is to create
that relationship.
But that means that those
that fall away from this ideal are necessarily
culture bound. Mhmm. Because what's discordant to one
culture won't be to another.
What speaks to one culture won't be the
same as to another. So although the if
(35:21):
you like the ideal of beauty might be
this balance between chaos
and order.
So you have an idea of your your
brain. It's perfect.
Your pen is the mediation, You write, it
becomes manifest and it becomes flawed. Mhmm. Right?
That's the process of art. In that translation,
it's the wrangling between the idea and the
reality. Mhmm. The the freedom and the constraint.
(35:44):
Mhmm. That that's where the beauty comes from.
Because if you think of, as I say,
if you think of those things that persist,
you're talking about architecture for example.
Well,
if you think of the cathedrals and the
mosques that were built 3, 400 even
8, 900 years ago,
that the aesthetic if you like was trying
(36:04):
to do that.
It was trying
to encompass
the firmament. It was trying to encompass something
that was chaotic and completely open and to
constrain it into
something that we could understand. That's why there's
these big vaulted
buildings because you look up and you're filled
with awe. Right? And it's because the sky
contained.
Freedom constraint,
(36:26):
right? And but these these were endeavors that
were this is important,
were also designed to persist over generations. They
took 300 years to build, took 500 years
to build. Right? So it's a multi generational
effort
in pursuit of creating something beautiful.
And even if you take away the religion
side of it, to me that's an extraordinary
(36:46):
endeavor. And actually, if you think of the,
if you compare your library to a cathedral,
you could say, well,
the culture pound the culture pound discordant
artifacts
will see whether those last as long.
Because
if they don't then I'll be proved right.
I but I won't be around to figure
it out whether that library is still gonna
(37:07):
be there in another 100 or 200 years
time. Well, the the reason I'm picking on
on architects,
specifically,
is that I have to look at it.
Right. Right? So, like, the art I have
hanging on my walls in my office and
in in my home,
I've chosen it.
So I don't have to look at it.
I chose to look at it, and I
(37:28):
chose what I wanna look at. Right? But
when I walk down the sidewalk in Toronto,
I am subject
to the architectural
decisions
made by
others.
So
I think architects
and you know, if you're an architect and
you don't like what I'm saying, just leave
a comment
in the comment section
(37:49):
or send us an email with your hate
mail.
The things that we see and hear around
us are going to affect our mood. Right?
So
we have to kind of construct buildings
to live and work in or you know,
buildings that function as hospitals and schools.
And since they're going to be there anyway,
(38:10):
I am advocating
for the extra effort
put into something that's as universally
beautiful or pleasing or mood lifting or spiritually
elevating as possible
since we got to look at it anyway.
Mhmm. Right?
It's different from like personal fashion
where, you know, not that many people really
(38:31):
look at the clothes I wear. Mhmm. It's
different from painting and sculpture
where it's gonna maybe be in a private
office or a private home.
Public architecture, I'm including, like, landscape architecture here.
You know, it's something that we're gonna kind
of have to look at over and over
again on mass.
Mhmm. And that's that's why I'm picking on
(38:52):
on the architects.
You know, I would say that if someone's
going to make
a painting,
then
they're elevating themselves
and that the person who's eventually going to
exhibit the painting and own the painting
when
they put care and effort into making it
beautiful.
We could veer into a whole discussion about,
(39:13):
you know, modern art and whether it truly
is just what you can get away with.
Actually,
I I kind of
disagree with that. Although,
just what you can get away with, you
could also say it's the balance between chaos
and order. You're still coming back to trying
to find a balance between the 2, What
you can get away with?
So Marcel Duchamp's,
(39:33):
toilet and and and Tracy Emmett's
bed
is it like my unmade bed or is
it Yeah. She was like she she was,
she'd had a mental crisis and and had
basically lived in her bed for, like, 3
months or something and then she Well, that
that makes a better story. It makes a
better story than if it's just like I
don't think it was bad. Yeah. Oh, okay.
(39:53):
I saw it. Yeah. Yeah. Well well, so
that, I know it was exhibited in a
gallery, but as someone who does buy
art, there's not a chance I'm gonna buy
someone else's bed dirty sheets, condom wrappers,
and then put it in my living room.
Sure. I suppose I can see again the
chaos order. The chaos was her life. The
order is putting it into a
(40:14):
gallery and having it scrutinized.
So True.
There's there's there's something there. Whether it's beautiful
or not, that's
another question. So, if you go to the
Greek idea of beauty,
which is callus, which is noble, which is
a sort of fun. You might say, well,
what are those things that persist over 100
of years Mhmm. That we still kinda go,
oh yeah. Like mountains for example, they're eternally
(40:36):
considered,
they fill you with oil. That's why people
don't like that, fine.
But mountains are
the creation
as a they are created as a result
of chaos upon order.
So the idea of there being an ideal
of beauty would be that there is
a perfect balance between chaos and order. Mhmm.
And that the closer you are to that
perfection,
(40:57):
the more likely you are that it's going
to persist over time because it becomes not
bound by culture. Yeah.
But I don't know if I'm right. Well,
I I I I I like to present
another stab at a definition. Okay. So, you
know, we, you know, we don't really necessarily
have to defend art in this episode. We're
just gonna kind of defend like beauty. Yeah.
(41:18):
Right?
Robert Persick
defined quality, capital q quality
as I'm gonna mangle his words, but it's
something along the lines
of that which is done with care. Mhmm.
So that which is done with care
necessarily will be a thing of quality. Mhmm.
And if you see something that is of
quality,
(41:39):
then certainly
that that thing was done or created or
painted or built with care.
So,
you know, care is kind of the effort
that you you put into it and then
the the end result is something of quality.
And I I very much believe in that,
at least, you know, for my work as
a therapist, for, you know, anything that I
wanna kinda put out there to the public
(41:59):
where I know that
for
the the the product or or the the
experience to be of high quality,
much care has to be put into
it. So I guess my criticism
of like Marcel Duchamp for example
is that, is there really that much care
in picking a urine a urinal off the
ground and
(42:20):
scrolling your signature on it? If there's little
care that's been placed in it, can we
really say that it it it has quality
or
Either. I I think in that case, again
this is culture balance discordance.
Right? So in his time
doing that was revolutionary. And so if there
was care, it was Yeah. Him as an
(42:40):
artist creating something that was discordant and spoke
to the culture. So whether or not it's
beautiful is almost secondary.
I I guess so.
Oh, okay. So what kind of set aside
the, like, what is art argument
to, you know, really focus on the, you
know, advocacy
for beauty at least as something to strive
towards. Absolutely. Yes. CC is an aspiration. As
(43:01):
an aspiration. Yeah. I think it's because so
I have to get dressed in the morning
anyway. Right? Mhmm.
And then people are gonna look at whatever
shirt I put on in the morning.
So why would I make someone look at
a very ugly Christmas sweater
in like mid February
(43:21):
if I could have them look at like
a pleasing color
and a, you know, a pleasing pattern
since they're gonna look at me anyway. I
think it's part of my social duty. You're
being prosocial again. I am being prosocial
and taking into consideration
the emotional impact that that my aesthetic choices
have on others.
(43:42):
Just like, you know, how I decided to
set up the set for this podcast, how
I set up my office, even paintings I
hang on my living room wall.
They're selected
to affect human beings like me and guests
in my home in a positive way.
That doesn't mean I have just like a
kitsch on my walls, you know, so I
have this almost demonic looking horse that was
(44:03):
galloping,
but that horse
makes me feel deep feelings.
And I, you know, like other people look
at the horse, they're gonna feel similar feelings.
That to
me is the validity
in taking the care
to set up one's environment so that it
is beautiful.
You know, dead house plants are gonna create
a certain feeling
(44:24):
and probably not the feeling you want your
clients or your guests to create.
But thriving,
lush, tropical plants are gonna create a different
feeling, and it's probably more in line with
the feeling that you wanna create. Again, we're
advocating
for beauty as a thing. We're not defining
it. It's not for me to tell you
what painting you find beautiful
(44:45):
or whether you find cacti or, like, you
know,
to
understanding and defining what beauty is for you
just like I'm advocating for you to define,
you know, how you arrive at truth and
how you arrive at morality,
and I'm making these worthwhile pursuits for you
to pursue.
So beauty is in the eye of the
(45:05):
beholder. That that yeah. I I I am
making that argument,
but it's also not haphazard.
Mhmm. So
if we kind of go back to Robert
Persick's definition of quality,
if that which is done with care
then has quality, all that's done carelessly
lacks quality
and probably lacks that aesthetic quality of beauty
(45:28):
if if the thing being done is something
like home decoration or painting or sculpture or
architecture.
So that wraps up our defense
of truth, morality
and beauty as valid
concepts,
even though it's now 2020 4
and hopefully people are still listening to the
podcast in 2030,040.
(45:50):
Let's hope optimistically humanity survives because I've not
done too much jet travel.
And in 2060,
you know, people are still listening to to
these timeless ideas.
But no matter what you're you're listening to
this in, I
hope that we've been able to make a
case
for why the pursuit of truth and the
pursuit of morality and the pursuit beauty as
(46:11):
valid concepts
and universal concepts
is worthwhile.
And I hope that we've been able to
at least
help you
turn away a bit from nihilism and cynicism
and not feel like you're crazy
because you're pursuing these ideas, which have a
place in the 21st century and are not
(46:32):
just quaintly Victorian
concepts.
Thank you again for listening. Pascal and I
are available for hire through the Morphis Clinic
For Hypnosis
in Toronto, Canada, but seeing clients worldwide.
If you go to our website at
www.morphisclinic.com,
you can read all about us and our
work, and you can contact us for a
free consultation.
(46:53):
As you can hear from these episodes, Pascal
and I are kind of practical philosophers in
a way. We think about these issues deeply
so that you can just hear us speak
about these issues
in a way that's pertinent to you and
to your situation.
So if you like what you've heard and
you want to keep on listening to some
of these good ideas and perspectives, then,
(47:16):
follow us on YouTube at Morpheus Hypnosis
or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, wherever it
is that you get your podcasts.
We will look forward to, producing more of
these over the coming months. So stay tuned
and keep posted.
When people carry these burdens, it causes insomnia,
it causes alcoholism, it causes so many issues
that people Maintaining a lie, particularly I'd say
lying to yourself is probably
a very damaging thing to do. Even the
points of view of a bully, even the
points of view of someone who just doesn't
think things through, the people pleaser tries to
account for and accommodate.
(00:21):
Welcome to How to be an Adult.
This is a podcast for people just like
you who've inadvertently become adults and have no
idea what to do about it. I'm Luke
Chao. And I'm Pascal Langdell.
And this is the trail guide to everything
your parents didn't tell you when you reach
the age of 18.
And we spread these thoughts and these, perspectives
(00:44):
in order to democratize them, so that you
can have a good life as an adult.
Today, we're gonna talk about
capital t truth, capital m morality and capital
b beauty
as valid concepts in this 21st
century
and not just concepts for the Victorians.
(01:04):
Why don't we just start off with the
the big t word? Sure.
Well,
so ever since the other big t, Donald
Trump, was elected to the White House Mhmm.
There's been extra chatter in the,
public sphere about how we're in this post
truth universe
where narrative is everything
and truth doesn't matter so much. It's really
(01:26):
just what you get away with.
Mhmm. And then we can also look from
the perspective
of, let's say, lawyers who have to advise
their clients to tell the truth and the
whole truth and nothing but the truth when
they, you know, make the oath on the
stand. We can look at the perspective of
engineers
who have to design bridges
and Wi Fi networks that actually work in
(01:47):
the material
universe.
So certainly there are multiple
perspectives
that would advocate
for this concept of objective
or capital
t truth, even if the very same people
would admit that it can be quite an
ordeal to arrive at
objective or capital t truth. I've been watching
(02:10):
a couple of things that has struck me.
There was
one TEDx talk that I caught of somebody
who
advocates for the idea that everything is a
story. So the idea America isn't real, it's
a story that we all agree. Also that
human rights
don't exist. It's not an objective truth that
(02:30):
we have. And he said, you know, if
you if you cut over a human
there's nothing inside which actually I disagree with.
There's quite a lot inside. But there's
this incredibly reductionist,
almost nihilistic I would say point of view.
It sort of ties in as well with
another trend with which a friend of mine
had a name for, she didn't realize it
had a name. It was called emotivism.
(02:51):
So basically, it's the idea that
if for instance I say, I think that
fraud is bad.
Mhmm. Right?
That there's nothing good or bad about that.
A fraud in itself.
It's only my opinion that it's bad. It's
my perspective. You might hold a perspective that
is,
that actually fraud is good.
Mhmm. And that we both have invalid points
(03:13):
of view
because they there is no objective truth. Mhmm.
There's only our opinions and our morality Yep.
That we carry around with us. But that's
problematic
because as you say, if I if you
say this is 10 centimeters and I say
it's 11 because I feel it's so and
that feels right,
then, you know, the Mars rover won't run.
Well, a few 100 years ago, David Hume,
(03:35):
the Scottish
philosopher Yeah.
Identified
a distinction
between what is and what ought to be
Mhmm. And he said famously that you cannot
derive an ought from an is.
In other words, the realm of morality,
the realm of what should be, like human
rights, for example Mhmm. Is a separate domain
(03:56):
Mhmm. From what is, like, if you cut
apart a human body, for example. It's true.
You're not gonna find the human rights in
a person's,
you know, physical heart or or lungs or
or brain,
but that's because you're looking in the wrong
place. You have to look in the realm
of a separate domain called morality or ethics
Mhmm. To find human rights. You can't just
(04:16):
look into the material world made of atoms
and molecules. So let's account for the fact
that there's sort of this moral realm, which
we're gonna talk about later in the episode,
and then there's also the material realm made
of atoms and molecules where we do have
things like bridges that can stay standing. That's
also lend itself to the idea of science
as well in the sense
that objective truth could be perhaps summarized as
(04:40):
if I see that and you see that
and we can all agree that we're seeing
it and we describe it in the same
way, then we can say this is the
closest thing we can get to at this
point for objective truth. But the scientific process
is falsification,
right? So this is where people somehow get
in trouble by saying of the science like
it was a thing, you
know, rather than a process.
(05:01):
But science is a process of reassessing objective
truth but with a certain amount of rigor
behind it rather than because I feel it
so. And even scientists will acknowledge
that sometimes their best hypotheses today
are likely
to to be falsified at some point decades
in the future. And and so and subject
(05:22):
to their own bias as well. Yeah. Yeah.
So Yes. You know, truth is a tricky
thing to to to isolate. But but the
difference between such a scientist and and the
friend you mentioned earlier Mhmm. Is the friend
is not even
trying to to arrive at some semblance of
of an understanding of objective reality. Yeah. The
scientist at least is trying to arrive at
some semblance of understanding about objective reality. And
(05:43):
that's and that's interesting. It's only odd when
you say that. I also kinda go well
that's
almost similar to a spiritual endeavor as well.
I I guess most difficult enough endeavors. Mhmm.
So whether to develop one spiritually or whether
to kind
of formulate a model of
reality that predicts what could happen in the
future. Any of these difficult endeavors, they're they're
(06:06):
gonna be worth
doing even if it takes a long time,
even a lifetime, even multiple lifetimes. So so
what what definition of truth are we gonna
work by? Because I mean Well,
maybe I'll borrow from Philip k Dick and
he he actually define reality as this.
That which does not go away when you
(06:26):
stop believing in it.
So so so the Mac truck that's bearing
down on you. It's not going away if
you stop believing in it. So let's say
that Mac truck exists in reality,
and you'd better get out of its way
because it's not just a figment of your
imagination.
But then something like you're imagining
that the next flight you take is gonna
(06:46):
go up in flames,
if that never manifests before your eyes, when
you stop believing in it that imagining goes
away. The imagining in other words is is
not actually the truth. So that's interesting because
going into the idea of what what is
truth for?
Because you could say, well, okay, well, what
use is it? Because I could live in
my own fantasy world. Mhmm. I could choose
(07:07):
to to believe anything. It might not do
me any good, but I'd be happy as
I as things went wrong.
Yeah. And that that that is I would
argue more more of like the child's perspective.
Right. Where, you know, one could be protected
from dangers or protected from scarcity
despite living in a fantasy play world
(07:27):
by the time we have to fend for
ourselves
So metaphorically by the time we're driving our
own cars.
We'd better have our eyes on the road.
Mhmm. So I'll extend this metaphor.
When we're driving a car, right,
we can't navigate the roads with only what
we imagine might be ahead of us,
(07:47):
nor can we navigate the roads that we've
taken a 100 times with only our memory
of what was on the roads the past
100 times we can only navigate the roads
with our eyes with our ears and then
with our hands
if with our eyes we can't see what's
over the next hill for example we just
kind of keep driving and then we reach
the crest of the hill and then we
(08:08):
can see with our eyes Oh, that's what's
over the hill, and we keep navigating accordingly
and thereby complete every journey that we begin.
So this is very much an argument in
support of empiricism
above just pure reason in that the evidence
of her senses though imperfect
will give us the best representation
of reality
(08:30):
that we could then use to navigate by
that a person could have.
So often we kind of go to conjecture,
you know, like, is this person gonna call
me back? We kind of like imagine stuff,
But but the future you is gonna actually
be perceptive and intelligent enough to have information
and then, you know, make decisions with information,
which absolves you from any need to make
(08:51):
decisions without information.
So so flipping around then,
saying that
lying or lying to yourself or deceiving yourself,
you could say, well,
at least you can start off by not
doing that because it's it's rather easy, right?
It's actually quite easy to kid yourself or
even other people for that matter. There's a
a study which I can share with you,
(09:12):
I think it's in the notes, that showed
that having successful small lies
leads to more lies because the social cost
of being found out in a lie is
close to death. Right? It's like there's death
and then there's social shame. Those are the
2 biggest things that the human old brain
is kind of afraid of, right?
But apparently if you put a scenario while
(09:32):
small lies are swallowed then the lies get
bigger and bigger because you can get away
with it. The self censorship
begins to disappear. So actually in some ways
you have to be your own best
monitor because even when you're telling things to
yourself
you could be kidding yourself. And it's and
you kid yourself to start off with, that
can snowball into
really going into territory where your perception of
(09:54):
the truth about your imaginings, for example,
is entirely wrong.
Often what we imagine in our heads and
I'm gonna say like all lies are basically
like imagined thoughts. Yeah. So what we imagine
it ends up obscuring
our view of what's in front of us.
So if you tell yourself that
(10:15):
your tires can handle that patch of black
ice, but you've not changed your tires for
the winter time. Mhmm. You're lying to yourself
and then you screw around and you find
out. Yeah. But but if if nothing happens
you might go, oh, well, okay. That calibrated
my my truth, I'm okay. You know, the
the more that your
your lies are swallowed and accepting you get
away with them, the worse your calibration can
(10:36):
become can become. Does that make sense? I
I guess so.
I'm kind of imagining that that maybe some
of our raters
have, you know, got
themselves caught in this pattern of like telling
little white lies to make other people happy
or to not rock the boat. Or we
can turn lies to themselves in order to
fill some kind of emotional hole.
So let's imagine that we we kind of
(10:57):
have listeners who have these kinds of fantasies
obscuring
their view of the truth,
right? So they think they're a better driver
than they are,
so they'll take like tighter turns than they
ought to, or they're gonna drive on the
black ice even though they've not changed their
tires to winter tires yet. In such a
situation,
could we say it's inevitable that a bad
(11:18):
thing is gonna then follow?
Could could we say that? It's likely.
Okay.
Okay. So not inevitable,
but it's likely on a long enough time
that if you, you know, if you overestimate
your driving ability ability, that you're probably gonna
get into some kind of, you know, 1
person accident, 1 car accident.
If you tell, like, white lies to to
your friends, eventually, you're gonna suffer that social
(11:40):
shame you've been alluded to of being called
out as untrustworthy.
Mhmm. And and I think the same thing
happens internally as well. So you could have
somebody who tells himself, I am a bad
driver.
And repeats that and it may not be,
you know, let's say it's not true. Yeah.
They're neither good nor bad, they're they're just
a driver. Let's say, but I'm a bad
driver. And then you believe that and then
(12:00):
repercussion is that you don't drive, so you
feel safe. But it also justifies
and reinforces the idea that you're a bad
driver because you don't drive and so on.
Well, one one thing I often end up
saying to my clients is that when when
you put in a really good effort
to ascertain the truth about a situation,
that most likely you're gonna be better off
(12:22):
afterward.
So
when one is, like, self deceptive, you know,
to to, like, pump themselves up or or
to feel okay about themselves,
They are neglecting their best qualities.
So they're making up fake qualities to feel
good about at the same time that they're
neglecting their better qualities where they can still
feel good,
(12:42):
but also have their feet on the ground.
Or if someone is overestimating their driving ability,
let's say that they're neglecting the fact that
they could just, like, take some extra driving
lessons
to have the false idea that that they
can handle it. So, like, maybe their vision
is failing.
You know, they're neglecting going to the optometrist
Mhmm. You know, in favor
for for for for the lie.
(13:04):
So there was another study that also showed
that
maintaining a lie
has
really bad outcomes for as your health is
concerned. It can reduce how is the classic,
it'll reduce your life by 10 years. So
so the bad outcomes were things like, you
know, high
stress levels,
heart disease,
I think diabetes was mentioned as well. And
(13:25):
it's the theory goes that it takes a
cognitive load to maintain a lie.
That
cognitive load increases stress and stress causes
the issues. And then, so that then plays
into the idea, why is it a cognitive
load? What's so important about maintaining a lie?
And because when you're a kid you grow
up you kinda have to learn about lying,
(13:46):
you know? And kids learn about lying pretty
early on as well. And so
there's gotta be something that you
learn that is about the social
damage that's possible with the lion. That creates
this, sort of,
this mental overload that creates the stress.
So generally speaking it's not just that truth
(14:06):
is a good thing, I suppose.
Is that,
maintaining a lie particularly I'd say lying to
yourself
Mhmm. Is probably a very damaging thing to
do. Yeah. Well, I'll share with you that
when I think back to me in elementary
school, right, I can think of a few
incidents where I kind of like experimented with
(14:27):
lying. And it was very clear to me
in elementary school that the adults around me
could just plainly see through. Mhmm. Whatever it
is I was telling my fib about, and
I just couldn't get away with it. And
I could only gain their respect by being
truthful. And, you know, if I had to
own up to something or apologize for something
that I own up to and apologize. And
that's how you kind of have the trust
(14:49):
and the respect of of the adults around
you.
So that's kind of what I learned about
lying when I was experimenting with lying as
a kid.
I don't know if everyone has had that
that experience, but I imagine if if my
experience had been
that life is grand when I tell lies.
Maybe
(15:09):
then today I wouldn't have as much of
a positive regard for speaking truthfully and candidly
and honestly.
Well, it's it's a downside of lying where
enough of the adults around you
care about
truth and being respected enough that you tell
the truth to them. Mhmm. That you end
up losing friends over lies. You end up
losing jobs over lies. You end up losing,
(15:31):
you know, relationships over lies
because it's, you know, once trust is broken
Yeah. It's very hard to regain
because people see you as someone that they
can never just quite believe in and, you
know, that adds extra stress in their minds
when they're speaking
to you. Mhmm. So in the idea that,
(15:54):
you know, you didn't get your eyes checked
and then because of that
you ran somebody over or something terrible happens,
right? So then the question moves on to
the other big topic which is morality.
And as we've already
discussed, you know,
well somebody saying, It's good to get your
eyes checked if you drive a car. And
(16:14):
then the motorist might say, that's your opinion.
That's not a that's not a truth, right?
So
how do we
derive our morals? Where do we get them
from? How do we know that they're useful
or good?
In the context of driving Mhmm. We could
sort of identify a duty
to your fellow drivers on the road or
(16:36):
even pedestrians
on the sidewalk
to make sure that you are a competent
driver.
So if you were to somehow lose your
competence
to to drive,
such as if you lose your eyesight, if
you're taking, you know, medications that make you
drowsy, if your car is so much in
disrepair that it's a hazard,
(16:58):
well, then your duty
to your fellow citizens of the road or
even pedestrians crossing the road will be
to get yourself back up in in into,
competent shape. Mhmm. In in order to drive.
So in order to not hurt people and
not kill people.
Exactly. Exactly. It comes it comes back to
(17:18):
the idea of, again, a pro social idea.
Yes. Morality being based in something that's pro
social. Exactly, because you're not the only driver
on the road. To your point,
we keep seeming to arrive
at this definition that
a universal
human kind of morality, if we're going to
be like,
(17:38):
you know, not absolutist, but if we're
if we're gonna be,
definitive
about things,
it's going to be
behaviors that are prosocial behaviors that are good
for your friends, for your neighbors, for your
family, and not only for yourself.
It happens that when you are good to
your friends and your neighbors and your family
(18:00):
and your coworkers, that it ends up coming
back to you in a positive way, so
it's good for you too. But it it
seems like if we're gonna try to define
a universal morality, it's gonna be to act
in ways that foster
community and, you know, good trusting social relationships.
And I suppose this also does relate to
truth as well because you can't do that
effectively
unless you're on guard against lies,
(18:21):
external lies or internal lies. Because you could
kid yourself that I don't know, forcing everybody
in the office to shave their head is
a social good. You could whatever it is,
I'm thinking something ludicrous, right?
And who's to say no? You know, like
I said, well it's prosocial.
But is it true? And so that's where
morality and truth do have a relationship is
(18:42):
that
you can judge a moral
to some degree,
surely, by the degree of truth that supports
the moral.
Because otherwise I don't know because otherwise you
could anybody could say like you could say,
I'm sure the Nazis in in Germany thought
that their final solution was pro social in
their terms, as horrifying as that is. And
(19:04):
that that to me, the roots of that
is self deception.
Well, you could also argue in this 21st
century
that
because we kind of draw a boundary around
humanity
and we don't really, like, include
cattle and,
geese and goats and chickens and other poultry
(19:25):
that
were delirict in our duty
to the fellow
species on the planet Mhmm. Even if we
are fulfilling our duty to our fellow human
beings.
So there is sort of
this culturally determined or socially
determined
aspect to morality,
even though it might be uncomfortable
(19:48):
to kind of examine
you and see your own flaws, right,
or emotions or whatever else is in there,
like,
behind the scenes.
It is also something that I wish to
normalize for for one to kind of look
look inwardly and to see one's flaws and
emotions in all of one's humanity. Mhmm. Yeah.
Yeah. So we we've defined morality as prosocial.
(20:10):
And just so I'm not a hypocrite, I
am excluding the animals. Right. Yes. Fair enough.
Yeah. Except for the cute ones. Like Right.
Cat cats and dogs, I count among, you
know, social species I socialize with. Some people
don't, right? Yeah. And like even horses, I
I include among like social species who I
might socialize with. But that's because I've never
eaten horse before. I have. Oh, okay. So
(20:30):
And I've ridden horses as well. Yes. So
Yeah. I'm a true hypocrite and I Well,
yeah. At least conflicted.
I see it as being a part of
being of my version of a human being
at the moment. Well, yeah. I mean, like,
I I participated in jet travel recently, even
though I am aware that we had a
very very hot year last year and I
contributed to that for this
(20:52):
this season. This is struggle session. Well,
I mean
it's it's it's it's an We're talking about
morality. So, yes. Yeah. We're
we're talking about, yeah. We're talking about morality.
One way to bring all of this self
flagellation to a point is
to say
these kinds of thoughts and these kinds of
(21:12):
discussions
where we are talking about capital m morality
are worth having even if the participants in
the conversation
start start getting uncomfortable
because we realize our failings. We realize our
moral failings, you know, because I ate meat
and I flew in a jet airplane and
I try to be a climate conscious person
at the same time. And how do I
reconcile all of this? The only way
(21:35):
to end up eventually at an old enough
age coming to a reconciliation
Mhmm. Is if we have these thoughts and
this kind of introspection
and then these kinds of conversations where I
actually believe that at some point I'm gonna
stop eating meat and stop doing jet travel.
Mhmm. There's also an argument that says that
the
prosocial course still needs to have
(21:56):
some kind of backing.
And so therefore you go- and then that's
when you go back to the idea of,
you know, God is dead, so now we
have to make him. Is that one one
role that religion
does have and certainly did have more in
the past
was
a
a foundation of these things are true because
they're ordained by something
(22:17):
or you know some other
spiritual
thing. Humans didn't make this up. Right? So
delegates it to somebody else that you can't
really argue with.
Right?
So if you take that away,
then
you are in a situation where you do
have to figure out your own moral touch
stones. And that's
actually no small thing. I actually think that
(22:39):
if you ask somebody who says they don't
believe in God for example, Well, how do
you know what's right and wrong?
Often
it can be a problematic question because they
go, Well, I decide. And I say, Okay,
what if I decide differently? What does that
mean? And everything becomes relative and suddenly you're
in trouble.
So it's really important to figure out
the foundation
of your
(23:01):
moral underpinning. Whether it's religion or not, it's
neither here nor there. But you've gotta have
something. I think that's probably Well, well what
it comes down to. Where do you think
it would come from if not from organized
religion?
Again, the idea
of reciprocal
benefit, I suppose. Okay. So so from from
reason
and to some degree enlighten self interest?
(23:23):
Yeah. Yeah. Although, yeah. To some degree. Yeah.
So but it's yeah.
That's that's a good start.
It's not easy. Yeah, well there definitely
is, even in the absence of formal or
organized religion, there is sort of
like these socially
enforced norms
(23:43):
where,
like, if someone finds out that all the
art in your home is stolen,
from from a country that, like, your grandfather
invaded Mhmm. And you tell proud stories about
the war. Right. Like, I just made up
that that, you know, in that made up
scenario,
you're gonna get social heat.
(24:06):
Mhmm. I mean, you might not have broken
any laws. Mhmm. But you're gonna definitely get
social heat
because you're speaking so flagrantly about these stolen
artifacts.
So
I think that even in the absence of
religion or, you know, even laws mandating certain
behaviors,
there are going to be social pressures
(24:29):
that prevent people from acting in certain ways
or doing certain things. And there's gonna be
also social incentives
for you to make a big show out
of donating the artifacts back to the country
that your grandfather stole them from. As I
do know, somebody,
a friend Michael John Dower, who's a director
in the UK, and he comes from a
rich family, well, originally,
(24:49):
that
significantly benefited from the slave trade. And so
he and his family got together
and funded an institution in the country where
those,
slaves were taken from and were used in
order to redress
the effects of slavery
that were still manifesting there. Yeah. I think
(25:09):
that's but when I see a direct line
like that, it seems pretty clear. When it's
a direct line. I mean, when it's more
indirect, I find it more problematic. Yeah. But
that I could see the logic behind that.
Yeah. Well, in some cases,
you know, having extra wealth is not the
main point.
Being able to be happy with your
(25:34):
most toys. Mhmm.
As a hypnotherapist,
I I often see
that
the the anxiety,
sometimes even the depression that my clients
present with and and believe they have
are actually problems of demoralization.
(25:54):
And once I help them to find their
moral center,
once I help them to to feel that
their sense of right and wrong counts.
Once I help them to be able to
say, no, I can't abide by that, but
let's do it this other way instead. Once
they're able to say that,
then they're not so anxious. Then they feel
(26:14):
a lot better about themselves, then they sleep
better at night and they don't have to
like drink as much or smoke cigarettes.
This I don't hear talked about that much
where we are kinda treating like anxiety as
a mental illness
and not as a problem of demoralization.
In fact, it's considered to be an outdated
Victorian thing to consider mental illness to be
(26:35):
a moral issue. Mhmm. But I'm actually going
to, you know, in 2024, make a case
here
that
many of the problems that a hypnotherapist might
see
are problems that are solved by having the
client connect with their moral center.
So people pleasing, people who won't set boundaries,
(26:56):
people who are are afraid to feel or
to express anger in a healthy way.
These are problems
of being out of touch with your moral
center.
Once you get in touch with your sense
of right and wrong and good and bad,
and you feel that that you're an adult
and you're in equal to the the person
who's wronged you,
(27:17):
then there's so many burdens
you unshoulder.
Mhmm. Right?
When people carry these burdens, it causes insomnia,
it causes alcoholism, it causes so many issues
that people come to a hypnotherapist for.
I mean, I'm not saying in every case,
but in the cases
specifically that I'm thinking about and talking about.
And
I think that,
(27:37):
for example,
when one is a people pleaser,
he or she
feels
the need to consider
every point of view as valid.
Right?
Even the
the points of view of some jerk,
even the points of view of a bully,
even the points of view of someone who
just doesn't think things through. The people pleaser
(27:59):
tries to account for and accommodate all of
these views.
So when I have such a person tap
into their moral center
and develop a strong sense of right and
wrong and good and bad and the willingness
just to say, Well, no. Hold on. I
can't abide by that.
Then it's not just
(28:20):
that they're no longer people pleasing. It's not
just that they're setting and enforcing boundaries.
It's that a lot of the the other
problems,
which is often what they present with, go
away.
Is there also to again tie back
morals with truth is that the people pleaser,
or somebody who's very high in agreeability
(28:40):
is in essence
kind of lying to themselves that every opinion
is of equal merit or lying to themselves
that their own opinion
has equal or less merit than somebody else's.
It it it's it's usually that everyone's opinion
counts except for theirs. Everyone's needs count except
for theirs. Every one else counts except for
(29:00):
them. The the the lie is the erasure
of them as a person.
So so, yeah, I mean, the the truth
thing was basically I'm saying
epistemology
matters. Sound epistemology
makes happier,
more even keeled, clear headed people. Mhmm. Now
we're saying morality matters because
being connected with your moral center Mhmm. Allows
(29:22):
for also happier, more even keeled level headed
people. That's actually been true in my practice
as a hypnotherapist.
So
earlier today, I talked about
when when I was a kid, I kind
of like experimented with lying. Right? Well, what
happened? I was kind of a brat back
then. But that's not just a lesson about
why truth matters.
(29:43):
It's also a lesson about why morality matters.
So it's not just like the content of
what I'm saying. It's also, you know, the
fact that I've chosen to lie or tell
the truth to begin
with, that that matters.
So
the judgment that I would get,
it's not just that the teacher
thought I was mistaken.
(30:05):
Mhmm. That wouldn't have hurt as much. It's
that that teacher who I trusted
now thinks truthfully that I lied to them
and that cuts a lot more deeply.
So we'll use the the the same story
about me being like grade 3 experimenting with
lying,
you know, to to make the point not
just about why telling the the truth matters,
(30:27):
but also, you know, the the moral argument
for doing the right thing. So so if
people judge you as just ignorant, I mean,
that kinda hurts,
but it's not gonna hurt as much
as if they judge you and truthfully to
be a liar, to be untrustworthy. I think
the roots of a lot of negligent lying
or,
instantaneous
(30:48):
lying both to yourself and to to others
is normally drive from
fear. Mhmm. Some It can be even a
small fear. You know that thing when somebody
says, Oh, did you watch so and so
that that film? I don't know if anybody
else has done this. But but I can
I know that I've gone, Oh yeah? Like
I saw the film. I didn't see the
film. But in that instant, there's like this
thing that sort of goes, Oh well, you
better show that you know the movie. It's
(31:10):
quite silly, why do that? Right? But then
again, with kids as well, you see this
all the time that
the the the fear of telling the truth
will define whether they tell the truth or
not. And if they are allowed to
admit their vulnerability, their wrong, their, and they
they're in a safe place, they will come
clean.
Most people, not everyone, but most people have
(31:30):
a conscience.
So even if you quote get away with
the lie,
in your own head you didn't really.
Yeah. So And that's
probably gonna play on you. So that's And
that's what causes insomnia. That's what can cause
alcoholism.
I mean, often
when people present with anxiety,
(31:50):
there is an element of a guilty conscience
in there somewhere. Now that doesn't mean they've
done anything wrong, but usually there is some
element that they could be a bad person.
Yeah.
So let's round out the trifecta
of branches of philosophy
that we're going to advocate
for here in 2024.
(32:12):
We've advocated for epistemology. We've advocated for morality.
Now we're gonna advocate for aesthetics,
for beauty
because those let's be honest, a lot of
really ugly architecture in Toronto
That there really is and I I I'm
not a fan of brutalism.
Right? Robarts library at U of T looks
(32:32):
like a giant turkey
And it was novel at first,
but you know, it's it's a big ugly
concrete sculpture or not not sculpture, it's a
it's a building. Mhmm. But I mean it
it it it it it's not pretty to
look at. I do have theories about that
which we'll get. Okay. Please. Please. You're Okay.
Okay, you want it. Okay, I'll give it
to you. So, okay.
So, this is Pascal's grand idea about beauty.
(32:55):
Alright. Ready? Go. Okay. So,
the Greeks,
and particularly Plato,
saw beauty
as kalos or kalos. I think that's the
right right way to say it. Yep. And
this could be translated also as something that's
not just beautiful but noble as truthful as
well to some degree as well. So in
English, it sort of transferred to often translated
(33:15):
as fine, like fine dining.
And I was thinking this, I think, what
is what is that exactly? And I was
thinking, well, I was thinking that really the
the beauty
in nature, beauty in art,
beauty in politics or whatever it is, is
this to me it's like the balance between
chaos and order.
Right? So if you have string and an
(33:37):
instrument, you have two points where they're anchored,
that's the constraint.
And then you pluck the string and it
vibrates and it creates a sound and the
oscillation
is actually quite even.
Right? So it's balanced.
And balanced over time.
And to me that's like, that tautness if
you like is the definition of what makes
(33:58):
something beautiful. Because
if you think
of those
poems, pieces of music,
stories or whatever it is that persist over
time,
they do tend to show this
balance between
chaos
and the constraints and the order
put together in a good way.
(34:20):
Now that doesn't mean that it can't be
messed around with and that's where we could
come to your library, right? So
there is also merits and this is what
the artist does,
is to create discordance.
Right? So something that's,
you know, an Elgar piece that's very discordant
for example, some modern music,
you might hear the discordance and go (34:40):
Well,
that's ugly.
Well,
if your touchstone is that there should be
a balance between chaos and order then sure
you might call it ugly. But the honest
answer might turn around and say yes. But
there's what what I'm doing is that in
doing this I'm
revealing
something
that resonates with, my audience.
(35:00):
A discordance,
a
a feeling, a sensation.
And that in itself is that's the purpose
of art if you like, is to create
that relationship.
But that means that those
that fall away from this ideal are necessarily
culture bound. Mhmm. Because what's discordant to one
culture won't be to another.
What speaks to one culture won't be the
same as to another. So although the if
(35:21):
you like the ideal of beauty might be
this balance between chaos
and order.
So you have an idea of your your
brain. It's perfect.
Your pen is the mediation, You write, it
becomes manifest and it becomes flawed. Mhmm. Right?
That's the process of art. In that translation,
it's the wrangling between the idea and the
reality. Mhmm. The the freedom and the constraint.
(35:44):
Mhmm. That that's where the beauty comes from.
Because if you think of, as I say,
if you think of those things that persist,
you're talking about architecture for example.
Well,
if you think of the cathedrals and the
mosques that were built 3, 400 even
8, 900 years ago,
that the aesthetic if you like was trying
(36:04):
to do that.
It was trying
to encompass
the firmament. It was trying to encompass something
that was chaotic and completely open and to
constrain it into
something that we could understand. That's why there's
these big vaulted
buildings because you look up and you're filled
with awe. Right? And it's because the sky
contained.
Freedom constraint,
(36:26):
right? And but these these were endeavors that
were this is important,
were also designed to persist over generations. They
took 300 years to build, took 500 years
to build. Right? So it's a multi generational
effort
in pursuit of creating something beautiful.
And even if you take away the religion
side of it, to me that's an extraordinary
(36:46):
endeavor. And actually, if you think of the,
if you compare your library to a cathedral,
you could say, well,
the culture pound the culture pound discordant
artifacts
will see whether those last as long.
Because
if they don't then I'll be proved right.
I but I won't be around to figure
it out whether that library is still gonna
(37:07):
be there in another 100 or 200 years
time. Well, the the reason I'm picking on
on architects,
specifically,
is that I have to look at it.
Right. Right? So, like, the art I have
hanging on my walls in my office and
in in my home,
I've chosen it.
So I don't have to look at it.
I chose to look at it, and I
(37:28):
chose what I wanna look at. Right? But
when I walk down the sidewalk in Toronto,
I am subject
to the architectural
decisions
made by
others.
So
I think architects
and you know, if you're an architect and
you don't like what I'm saying, just leave
a comment
in the comment section
(37:49):
or send us an email with your hate
mail.
The things that we see and hear around
us are going to affect our mood. Right?
So
we have to kind of construct buildings
to live and work in or you know,
buildings that function as hospitals and schools.
And since they're going to be there anyway,
(38:10):
I am advocating
for the extra effort
put into something that's as universally
beautiful or pleasing or mood lifting or spiritually
elevating as possible
since we got to look at it anyway.
Mhmm. Right?
It's different from like personal fashion
where, you know, not that many people really
(38:31):
look at the clothes I wear. Mhmm. It's
different from painting and sculpture
where it's gonna maybe be in a private
office or a private home.
Public architecture, I'm including, like, landscape architecture here.
You know, it's something that we're gonna kind
of have to look at over and over
again on mass.
Mhmm. And that's that's why I'm picking on
(38:52):
on the architects.
You know, I would say that if someone's
going to make
a painting,
then
they're elevating themselves
and that the person who's eventually going to
exhibit the painting and own the painting
when
they put care and effort into making it
beautiful.
We could veer into a whole discussion about,
(39:13):
you know, modern art and whether it truly
is just what you can get away with.
Actually,
I I kind of
disagree with that. Although,
just what you can get away with, you
could also say it's the balance between chaos
and order. You're still coming back to trying
to find a balance between the 2, What
you can get away with?
So Marcel Duchamp's,
(39:33):
toilet and and and Tracy Emmett's
bed
is it like my unmade bed or is
it Yeah. She was like she she was,
she'd had a mental crisis and and had
basically lived in her bed for, like, 3
months or something and then she Well, that
that makes a better story. It makes a
better story than if it's just like I
don't think it was bad. Yeah. Oh, okay.
(39:53):
I saw it. Yeah. Yeah. Well well, so
that, I know it was exhibited in a
gallery, but as someone who does buy
art, there's not a chance I'm gonna buy
someone else's bed dirty sheets, condom wrappers,
and then put it in my living room.
Sure. I suppose I can see again the
chaos order. The chaos was her life. The
order is putting it into a
(40:14):
gallery and having it scrutinized.
So True.
There's there's there's something there. Whether it's beautiful
or not, that's
another question. So, if you go to the
Greek idea of beauty,
which is callus, which is noble, which is
a sort of fun. You might say, well,
what are those things that persist over 100
of years Mhmm. That we still kinda go,
oh yeah. Like mountains for example, they're eternally
(40:36):
considered,
they fill you with oil. That's why people
don't like that, fine.
But mountains are
the creation
as a they are created as a result
of chaos upon order.
So the idea of there being an ideal
of beauty would be that there is
a perfect balance between chaos and order. Mhmm.
And that the closer you are to that
perfection,
(40:57):
the more likely you are that it's going
to persist over time because it becomes not
bound by culture. Yeah.
But I don't know if I'm right. Well,
I I I I I like to present
another stab at a definition. Okay. So, you
know, we, you know, we don't really necessarily
have to defend art in this episode. We're
just gonna kind of defend like beauty. Yeah.
(41:18):
Right?
Robert Persick
defined quality, capital q quality
as I'm gonna mangle his words, but it's
something along the lines
of that which is done with care. Mhmm.
So that which is done with care
necessarily will be a thing of quality. Mhmm.
And if you see something that is of
quality,
(41:39):
then certainly
that that thing was done or created or
painted or built with care.
So,
you know, care is kind of the effort
that you you put into it and then
the the end result is something of quality.
And I I very much believe in that,
at least, you know, for my work as
a therapist, for, you know, anything that I
wanna kinda put out there to the public
(41:59):
where I know that
for
the the the product or or the the
experience to be of high quality,
much care has to be put into
it. So I guess my criticism
of like Marcel Duchamp for example
is that, is there really that much care
in picking a urine a urinal off the
ground and
(42:20):
scrolling your signature on it? If there's little
care that's been placed in it, can we
really say that it it it has quality
or
Either. I I think in that case, again
this is culture balance discordance.
Right? So in his time
doing that was revolutionary. And so if there
was care, it was Yeah. Him as an
(42:40):
artist creating something that was discordant and spoke
to the culture. So whether or not it's
beautiful is almost secondary.
I I guess so.
Oh, okay. So what kind of set aside
the, like, what is art argument
to, you know, really focus on the, you
know, advocacy
for beauty at least as something to strive
towards. Absolutely. Yes. CC is an aspiration. As
(43:01):
an aspiration. Yeah. I think it's because so
I have to get dressed in the morning
anyway. Right? Mhmm.
And then people are gonna look at whatever
shirt I put on in the morning.
So why would I make someone look at
a very ugly Christmas sweater
in like mid February
(43:21):
if I could have them look at like
a pleasing color
and a, you know, a pleasing pattern
since they're gonna look at me anyway. I
think it's part of my social duty. You're
being prosocial again. I am being prosocial
and taking into consideration
the emotional impact that that my aesthetic choices
have on others.
(43:42):
Just like, you know, how I decided to
set up the set for this podcast, how
I set up my office, even paintings I
hang on my living room wall.
They're selected
to affect human beings like me and guests
in my home in a positive way.
That doesn't mean I have just like a
kitsch on my walls, you know, so I
have this almost demonic looking horse that was
(44:03):
galloping,
but that horse
makes me feel deep feelings.
And I, you know, like other people look
at the horse, they're gonna feel similar feelings.
That to
me is the validity
in taking the care
to set up one's environment so that it
is beautiful.
You know, dead house plants are gonna create
a certain feeling
(44:24):
and probably not the feeling you want your
clients or your guests to create.
But thriving,
lush, tropical plants are gonna create a different
feeling, and it's probably more in line with
the feeling that you wanna create. Again, we're
advocating
for beauty as a thing. We're not defining
it. It's not for me to tell you
what painting you find beautiful
(44:45):
or whether you find cacti or, like, you
know,
to
understanding and defining what beauty is for you
just like I'm advocating for you to define,
you know, how you arrive at truth and
how you arrive at morality,
and I'm making these worthwhile pursuits for you
to pursue.
So beauty is in the eye of the
(45:05):
beholder. That that yeah. I I I am
making that argument,
but it's also not haphazard.
Mhmm. So
if we kind of go back to Robert
Persick's definition of quality,
if that which is done with care
then has quality, all that's done carelessly
lacks quality
and probably lacks that aesthetic quality of beauty
(45:28):
if if the thing being done is something
like home decoration or painting or sculpture or
architecture.
So that wraps up our defense
of truth, morality
and beauty as valid
concepts,
even though it's now 2020 4
and hopefully people are still listening to the
podcast in 2030,040.
(45:50):
Let's hope optimistically humanity survives because I've not
done too much jet travel.
And in 2060,
you know, people are still listening to to
these timeless ideas.
But no matter what you're you're listening to
this in, I
hope that we've been able to make a
case
for why the pursuit of truth and the
pursuit of morality and the pursuit beauty as
(46:11):
valid concepts
and universal concepts
is worthwhile.
And I hope that we've been able to
at least
help you
turn away a bit from nihilism and cynicism
and not feel like you're crazy
because you're pursuing these ideas, which have a
place in the 21st century and are not
(46:32):
just quaintly Victorian
concepts.
Thank you again for listening. Pascal and I
are available for hire through the Morphis Clinic
For Hypnosis
in Toronto, Canada, but seeing clients worldwide.
If you go to our website at
www.morphisclinic.com,
you can read all about us and our
work, and you can contact us for a
free consultation.
(46:53):
As you can hear from these episodes, Pascal
and I are kind of practical philosophers in
a way. We think about these issues deeply
so that you can just hear us speak
about these issues
in a way that's pertinent to you and
to your situation.
So if you like what you've heard and
you want to keep on listening to some
of these good ideas and perspectives, then,
(47:16):
follow us on YouTube at Morpheus Hypnosis
or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, wherever it
is that you get your podcasts.
We will look forward to, producing more of
these over the coming months. So stay tuned
and keep posted.
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