November 12, 2024 • 68 mins
Can you truly trust your senses, or are we all just players in a grand simulation? Join Angelo Cole, Chris Vigil, and Matt Maes on the Telos Initiative podcast as we challenge the boundaries of reality and uncover the layers that shape our world. From the tangible to the intangible, we dissect objective and subjective experiences, drawing parallels between the consistency of waking life and the unpredictability of dreams, which echo quantum-like realms. Our exploration includes the powerful influence of imagination, which acts as a bridge between mental manipulation and the profound, offering a unique lens through which we perceive reality.
As we journey through the intriguing interplay of mind and emotions, the metaphor of "mental hands" emerges to illustrate the dexterity of thought and perspective. The mind's ability to guide focus based on desires and goals is highlighted, as well as the significant role emotions play in crafting our personal realities. We address the collective aim toward truth, reflecting on societal progress through shared goals and the balance of tradition with new perspectives. The metaphor of clay captures the dual nature of reality—both solid and malleable—while acknowledging the existence of absolute truths, such as mathematical principles, which stand independent of human perception.
Finally, we venture into the realm of simulation theory, pondering whether our existence is part of a larger game. By referencing pop culture favorites like The Truman Show and The Matrix, we contemplate the philosophical implications of living in an artificial reality. Flow states and authenticity are discussed as we seek meaning beyond mere productivity, encouraging a harmonious blend of purpose and engagement. Through humor, insight, and a touch of whimsy inspired by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, we aim to connect listeners to the grand tapestry of existence and their unique place within it.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Angelo (00:01):
Hello everyone, welcome to the Telos Initiative podcast.
I'm Angelo Cole.
Chris (00:05):
I'm Chris Vigil.
Matt (00:06):
And I'm Matt Mas.
Angelo (00:08):
Today we are going to be talking about reality, ooh,
objective reality, subjectivereality.
We might get a little bit intosimulation theory.
Who knows, who knows?
So I guess, to kick us off, wealways like to start with a
(00:28):
general definition of what wemean by reality.
Chris (00:31):
Ah jeez.
Angelo (00:45):
So I know it's kind of tricky to define, but I think
implicit in the definition isthe idea that reality is what is
real, what is the mostobjective level of being,
ontologically or metaphysically.
Chris (01:00):
Those are some big words.
Angelo (01:03):
I think if you're talking about a dream, like some
people like to compare realityto a dream and say what if
reality is actually a dream,well, a dream, by definition, is
not reality.
It's an illusion, it'ssomething that takes you outside
of reality.
You know you're dreamingbecause you wake up into reality
(01:27):
and so if this level of realityis actually a dream, it by
definition is not reality.
Matt (01:40):
What if we thought of it in terms of density?
Maybe a good word, I think, tothink about it Like say, we've
got the, you know well if wereferred to them as different
levels of reality, right?
Say like the dream, like thereare things within dream, like
you know, like dream symbolism.
(02:01):
There are things that you knowthat have certain weight or
certain symbolism.
But when you're pulled out ofthe dream and you're in waking
reality, then the dream itselfthat you just had doesn't itself
, in your reality, affect yourwalking around in daily life.
Like this is, you know,physical reality.
(02:22):
Right, then you have yourpersonal reality and this is
something I you know, I wouldlove to get into that, this, uh,
this conversation too, like therelation between your you know,
your personal feelings and theway that the world is, and
reconciling the two.
You know like why, like why isit that there is a friction
(02:47):
there?
Why is there that that seemsthat we're so often out of sync
in the way that we feel aboutthe world, in the way that we
are able to respond to the worldand and cognizize our
navigating around?
Angelo (03:03):
I think.
I think reality has somethingto do with consistency.
So if you're able to wake upfrom a dream and you go and
you're able to get into aroutine, you go to the same
place.
Things are predictable.
I can go to work, I can comehome, I know where I put my
(03:26):
jacket and if I go back, myjacket's still there.
There's consistency there.
And if I'm in a dream, a lot ofconsistency breaks down.
I might put my jacket somewherein my dream and then a bunch of
random stuff happens and I comeback to that same spot and I'm
like wait, I thought I putsomething here.
(03:46):
Maybe I didn't, I don't know.
And so there's a level ofinconsistency and mystery yeah,
mystery.
Matt (03:55):
I think mystery is a really great word for it.
Chris (04:00):
I think what you just described is something like like
the dream reality is like aquantum reality, because when
you get down to things on aquantum level in terms of
physics, probability starts tobreak down in a way that you
(04:22):
can't predict things.
Okay, so it's like predictions,another um another tell along
with consistency so we'realready talking about like a
physical reality that we live in, right, that's bound to laws of
physics and mathematics to apoint, and then, beyond that, I
(04:45):
mean when we come down toourselves, we have like a
biological reality that we haveto live by.
Right, male, female, somewherein between their veins, our
central nervous systems operatein a certain way, they have
certain potentials, capacities,and then, beyond that, we get
into intellectual realities,right, like what is the way in
(05:06):
which I can, cognizant about mysalience landscape, right back
to our consciousness episode,and and what we're coming to
contact with the physical, thebiological, and then our
emotional reality, right, what'sour emotional response to that?
And then spiritual reality,somehow tying everything
(05:27):
together in a mysterious,mystical manner okay, so how
many levels was that?
Angelo (05:32):
that was um one, two, three, four, five, okay just
laying out again what was itphysical, physical reality, or
did you said quantum?
Let's, let's forget about thequantum just because it's, so
it's like it's tethered to likequantum where you use the word
(05:53):
quantum, quantum physics, right,and I'm not sure if that's what
you're trying to.
Chris (05:59):
So we could.
I would not call quantumreality dream reality.
Like dream reality is somethingelse, but I wanted to tether it
to dream reality as opposed towaking life.
But that's separate from therealities that I distinguished
in the second part, which wasthe physical reality, the
biological reality, intellectual, emotional and spiritual
(06:21):
realities.
Angelo (06:21):
Okay, it's interesting to me that you put emotional so
high, because I would think ofemotions as being tied to the
physical, to the body.
Okay, yeah, that's fine,Because emotions are chemically
based right Adrenaline andepinephrine, not epinephrine,
oxytocin Mm-hmm oxytocin and allthose things are biological
(06:46):
processes that kind of emergeout of the.
Okay, sure, the physical planeis what I was thinking.
Chris (06:57):
So I'm kind of curious about why you put it so high, so
everything that's like well, Iput it high because I I think
it's it's less, ah, specificmore abstract more abstract.
Angelo (07:19):
Yeah, okay then okay, so you're, maybe you're going
psychologically here you're,you're thinking of like external
to the internal and weexperience emotions closer to
the internal.
So this is like aphenomenological sort of scale.
Chris (07:37):
I like that.
Matt (07:38):
I think that's a good way to look at that yeah, you know,
it's like it's our relativerelationship to the world, or a
lot of our relative relationshipto the world, like if you think
about our, our skin you know,like the largest organ on our
body, and we can feel thingswith our, uh, with our skin,
(08:00):
right, and so emotions allow usto sense from outside.
We can feel pleasure through ourskin, we can feel pain through
our physical bodies.
Right, it's not necessarilytelling us how to navigate
around in the world, but it'sgiving us signals about how the
(08:21):
world is, uh, the world isaffecting us, how we, how we
feel about reality aroundourselves.
It's, like, you know, we couldsay, like a thermometer.
It's or maybe that's a good wayto put it, maybe you know even
broader than that, right, and wehave different, different like
flavors of emotions.
(08:42):
Right, I mean, you have sad, butthen you have like something
like you know, melancholy isalmost like a beautiful sadness,
but then you have depressionand all of these different you
know tints and shades ofdifferent emotions that give you
, that give you different senseof how you're relating with the
world, how you're relating withthe world, how you're relating
(09:06):
with yourself, and being able togive you kind of a starting
point to begin to think aboutwhat to do about those things or
how to think about them.
Chris (09:16):
So because time, as we've discussed before, is acting on
us in a forwardly manner,constantly, right, I think that
these different stages ofreality, especially like the
emotional reality that weexperience, informs the other
aspects of our reality and viceversa.
Right, like one minute I mightfeel really depressed and then I
(09:39):
read a book that will change myintellectual reality and my
salience landscapeintellectually and that will
inform my emotions, which mightmake me feel better, which will
inform my physical, mybiological reality, and those
things are also in a confluencewith each other.
Matt (09:58):
Yeah, I think when we talk about the salience, the
emotions are directly tied inthere.
It's a relationship between themind and the emotions.
I mean, what is it about?
What's important to you, whatwe would like to think of it as
you know, like mentally.
We would like it to be, justlike mentally, what's most
(10:20):
important.
I guess if we were juststrictly thinking from the mind,
you know, but what is it thatcaptures your attention?
What's most important?
I guess if we were juststrictly thinking from the mind,
you know, but but what is itthat?
What is it that captures yourattention?
What is it that captures yourinterest in these?
different subjects I mean, herewe are talking about reality.
What is it about?
What is it about talking aboutreality that so draws us in and
(10:42):
makes it, you know, makes usfeel like it's an important
thing to talk about?
And be able to throw our energyinto it.
Angelo (10:48):
That has to do with relevance right.
Matt (10:50):
Yeah.
Angelo (10:51):
There's a necessary component of identity here.
So everything you experiencethrough your salience, landscape
, even through things as deep asyour emotions, landscape
through, even through, um,things as deep as your emotions
or, um, things that you wouldn'tconsider, you know, mental
processes so much as biologicalbody processes all of these
(11:14):
things have like a sort of focusand, um, an aim.
So you, we we kind of talkedabout this a little bit before
you sort of direct yourattention based on relevance.
You direct it to things thatalign with whatever your current
(11:35):
goal happens to be.
So you know a floor is a thingto walk on.
You know, if you're hungry,your focus kind of aims towards
how can I get food and you'relooking at obstacles and tools
around you and your body andyour mind are kind of responding
to these things.
And there's like a peripherywhere there's things that you
(11:57):
completely ignore, necessarilybecause you can't pay attention
to all of the details in reality.
Chris (12:06):
You just can't, especially if you're hungry,
right?
Angelo (12:10):
You get really hungry and you kind of zone in and you.
Chris (12:13):
That's why hangry is the thing Like if I can't get food
right now and I have to keepworking and that emotion targets
, things that you view asobstacles in that moment.
Angelo (12:26):
So you know you've got a spouse or something and she's
angry and you're trying to feedher and all of that attention is
like you're in my way, whyaren't you getting me food?
True story.
Matt (12:51):
Some experience.
It's funny, there's thisthere's a relationship between
the, between the emotions andyour body, like what you can,
like they can influence eachother, like with happiness, like
if you're like you can, youactually can smile, you actually
can get into a differentposture and actually get into a
different state.
I think you can do that withyour mind and your emotions too,
(13:12):
when you're focusing on certainthings and then that thing
becomes, you know, importantthrough your focus, through
through your attention, and thenyour emotions can follow that,
follow what you're.
You know where your mind isgoing and it's through your
attention and then your emotionscan follow that, follow where
your mind is going.
It's like it's fascinating tome I've been thinking about the
(13:32):
mind's eye, but also the handsof the mind inside as well being
able to turn something aroundin your hands or turn something
around in your mind and seeingthe different that's an
interesting phrase.
Angelo (13:45):
I've never heard that before.
Matt (13:46):
Before the hands in the mind that one came to me pretty
recently.
Yeah, so being able to to lookat something in different
directions, in different,different, orientation your
orientation, yeah, and then youknow your emotions can sort of
feel around what it is that youare turning around in your mind.
Chris (14:06):
So so the the hands metaphor is about like trying to
get a grip on an event orsomething, or is it like maybe I
missed the?
Matt (14:15):
point.
Well, it's well, simply, thewell simply the subject that you
have in your mind.
It could be an event, it couldbe a certain subject, something
that you want to see, the I meanthe way I interpreted, it was
like you have the capacity inyour mind to change perspective
yes and so it's almost like youhave some sort of hand.
Angelo (14:35):
It's, it's a, obviously it's a virtual, but you're the
turning in there is the capacityto change your own view on an
idea.
Chris (14:48):
Yeah, that's my bad.
I took that way too literally.
Matt (14:51):
I was like okay, so I'm imagining a hand in my mind.
But when you're doing anymental work of some kind too,
like imagine the hands insideyour mind actually working on
that thing, actually doing,actually having a working
capacity in that way.
Angelo (15:10):
Yeah, which brings us to imagination, because on some
level, imagination is aprojection of reality.
You could be imaginingsomething that you perceive to
be very real and it could besomething in the present.
It could be imagining somethingthat you perceive to be very
real and it could be somethingin the present.
It could be some, a memory ofsomething in the past, or it
(15:31):
could be a projection of whatyou're trying to do in the
future.
So it goes across time.
Chris (15:37):
So when I take this pen and imagine it to be a
lightsaber, I'm trying to be ajedi that's your, I'm guessing
future hope for your.
Yes, it is, I'm gonna get thecloak and everything it's gonna
be great sure, I mean obviouslythere's.
Angelo (15:55):
There's a component to imagination that it can explore.
Fantasy.
Right, you can imagine yourselfin something that you logically
know isn't actually part ofreality and you don't expect to
actually participate in that,but you entertain the idea like
(16:16):
being a jedi and living in thestar wars world well, actually
this gets into a reallyinteresting thing.
Chris (16:21):
Um, one of my favorite spiritual works is the imitation
of christ by thomas akampis,and one of the opening you know
things is that he says you needto detach yourself from the
physical world and find yourcenter in the invisible things.
And I, I just the way Ipractice that right, is when I
(16:48):
look at an icon of Jesus and Itry to, I guess, transmute right
that energy like his holiness,his everythingness, from that
icon onto and into myself.
Right, that takes myimagination, like what is it
(17:09):
like to, you know, be jesus?
Right, I mean, a lot of crazypeople they end up in in places
and they're like I'm jesus,because their imagination, you
know, kind of overtakes them ina way.
But I think there's there's agood idea there that we transfer
(17:33):
these immaterial ideas fromsymbols onto ourselves so that
they project through our mindsback into reality.
Matt (17:44):
Yes, and that's a really fun line to dance, I think.
And speaking of imagination, Ithink a lot of that is in like a
future tense and visionarycapacity as well, being able to
project something into thefuture, project, something that
could be, and then in some waymaking that real.
Angelo (18:04):
Right, I think that might be be.
If you're a materialist, thatmight be a an idea of how
imagination evolved, like thecapacity to project the future
and adapt to it.
Like perhaps, uh, if you canimagine that there might be a
(18:24):
predator in the bush, ratherthan actually testing it out
physically, that gives you anadvantage over a creature that
just purely acts on and reactsto whatever is happening to
right because, say, you haven'tseen that saber-toothed tiger
yet, so you have.
Matt (18:41):
No, you might not have or you haven't encountered yet, but
you've heard of people who have.
And so then you can say, ohwait, that might happen in the
future.
That could be just a rustlingin the bush over there or that
could be a dangerous creature, Idon't know.
But I can mentally account forthat, for for future action yeah
(19:05):
right.
Chris (19:05):
Well, you take those proverbial hands you have in
your mind and you're like itcould be a saber-toothed tiger.
It might now let's find themiddle ground here exactly be
safe those good old mental hands.
Um, actually, I think, uh, likeprojecting right, like throwing
a um, a javelin or something ata, at a, something we're hunting
(19:27):
right, that was one of the keyevolutionary steps that we had
to take, um, because you had toimagine right, your time still
acting forwardly.
You have to imagine where isthis animal going to be in 10
seconds so I can interestingproject it or shoot it with an
arrow that I made.
Angelo (19:47):
Yeah, perhaps it's linked to aim.
Yeah, that's pretty interesting.
Matt (19:53):
It is fascinating how much comes back to aim, isn't it?
Angelo (19:57):
Mm-hmm.
It all comes back to focus aswell, mm-hmm.
Chris (20:03):
And narrowing the sight and the periphery focus as well
and narrowing the site and theperiphery.
So so how do we take our mindsin, in, in our, in our single,
uh, egotistical reality thatmakes us who we are?
How do we transfer our ego ontoa greater context that also
(20:27):
focuses on what's important?
Angelo (20:29):
I think that's done collectively.
You do that with other people.
So you see, you see otherpeople and what they're aiming
at and, um, evolutionarily thatwould be why we have whites in
our eyes, by the way is you'relooking at other people and
you're the the ability to beable to see what they're looking
at, and we evolved togetherwhat yeah, think about it like
(20:53):
oh the reason that eyes andfaces are so important to you is
because you want to know whatother people are aiming at
interesting.
Chris (21:00):
So where did you read that?
Angelo (21:01):
well, that was actually from, uh, jordan peterson, huh,
and he probably got it from uh,an evolutionary biordan,
peterson, huh, and he probablygot it from uh, an evolutionary
biologist, I assume yeah, and heprobably got it from stone
tablets in china.
Chris (21:15):
Honestly, I have no idea.
Angelo (21:17):
The specific source for it, but it makes sense
interesting it's a theory, butyeah, it is.
It goes back to aim right, butif we, if we evolve to
understand how we, each other,is aiming, that's a positive
thing.
Chris (21:31):
It's, it's cooperative, it's not competitive that's
actually exactly why we're heredoing this right as the three of
us came together right, had a,had a lunch together and we were
like.
You know what we're aiming forthe truth here yeah, let's and
collectively
Angelo (21:47):
aim and and we sharpen each other's um ideas, we bounce
them off of each other, we trimoff the the bad ideas and
together we we get closer to thetruth that way, and that's how
society does it.
That's why it's so importantfor humans to connect we.
We all are working together,aimed at something bigger, and
(22:12):
we this is a idea that webrought up so many times in
other discussions is what's theidea behind the religious
impulse?
We're all collectively aimingat something you know.
To me, that's you can't do italone.
You just can't.
You.
You can.
You would have to reinvent thewheel all the time and even if
(22:35):
you're not a religious person,it's.
The scientific endeavor is acollective thing, because you
have to rely on what pastscientists have done and you
have to trust that what they'redoing makes sense and you have
to trust that there's a realitythere that they're testing
that's consistent, in order foranything to make sense.
Matt (22:57):
As far as truth goes, yes, and you know you really
inspired some idea I have toshare.
This, too, is in terms of thetraditional or the, the
generations that have built upthat, that work and have done
all that, you know, built up allthose foundations, and then the
ones who are trying to, youknow, push into the future right
(23:19):
, and that you know the growingpains and that that tension
right, and I think a lot of whatcomes with religion and what
comes with faith are things likemeaning and purpose and things
that are inherent are meaningfulin our lives.
But then you have, you know,someone who comes after you and
(23:40):
you can.
That person can say well, Imyself say, in the subjective
sense, didn't have a hand inowning, creating any of this
culture or creating any of this,any of this lore that's been
built up.
And I want to.
You know, you want to forgeyour own thing and you want to.
You know, you want to feel likeyou're building something on
(24:02):
top of that.
Right, but you know, but youcan't, just, you can't just cut
under what's been built up justin order to say like, well, it
could just be anything, you know, it could just be any reality,
and there's a lot of freedom andagency in that for sure.
Angelo (24:19):
Well, it's a destructive impulse because you're saying
everything that all these pastpeople have built and worked
together on.
I'm going to scrap it andconsider it fallible.
But you know, there issomething to the idea that
humans are fallible and they canmake mistakes and sometimes
(24:40):
rigid structures need to be torndown.
So there is a merit toskepticism.
You should test things and youshould recognize when certain
institutional structures havebecome corrupt, and you should
be willing to change your mind,even if it's difficult, if you
(25:01):
come to a greater knowledge youknow, I I feel like there's just
so much corruption, right anddarkness that's embedded in
everything across the planet.
It's perhaps pretty horrible um,perhaps that could be, that
(25:22):
could be a fear based on pastexperience.
Chris (25:26):
So one of my spiritual heroes right was when I was in
high school.
I read the Life of St Francisof Assisi and, as he was right,
spending all of his time A likerejecting his monetary
inheritance, rejecting hisfamilial inheritance like he
(25:47):
didn't want.
Rejecting his familialinheritance Like he, you know,
didn't want anything to do withhis dad.
His dad was super rich, but hewas like you know what?
I hear the poor just crying outto me.
So he gave up all of hispossessions, put on a brown like
tunic, right, which is justwhat poor people wore.
And then God told him Francisis,I need you to go and rebuild my
(26:08):
church.
So he physically rebuilds threechurches in italy I think
they're still there and then,but he can still hear god in his
mind saying like francis,rebuild my church.
And he gets it.
He goes oh, I need to go torome, I need to go to the
Vatican and show them what itactually means to be a Christian
(26:29):
, which is to give up everythingyou have and decentralize your
ego from yourself and let theSpirit of Christ act within me
and he completely reformed thechurch by his example.
Wow, and that was at the sametime with saint dominic too, who
, according to legend, we gotthe rosary from.
(26:49):
So we have the spirit of thepoor and spirit of christ in
francis and then the powerfulprayer of the rosary in tandem.
Interesting, I thought that wasreally cool yeah, that's.
Angelo (27:00):
That's pretty incredible .
Yeah, jesus, take the wheel.
Chris (27:05):
I just think if our world needs a response to the meaning
crisis and the corruption thatthe world offers, it's got to be
something radical that doesundercut some of what we've
built, but to replace it withthe eternal truth and the
eternal goodness that will lastlet's walk back to reality a
(27:28):
little bit more about realityand our salience landscapes so
how about we talk about the ideaof the difference between
objective and subjective reality?
Angelo (27:40):
is there such a thing as objective reality or are we all
, subjectively, just projectingour own reality through our
minds?
Like you know, renee descartes,yeah, sort of way.
Matt (27:56):
Here's the way I like to think about it.
At least, to begin to thinkabout it is say the objective
world around us is very solid inthe ways that it is like.
Imagine a piece of clay orsomething like a clay pot or
something like that it is.
You know, we're not going to goand say that it isn't clay,
(28:19):
right, but we can also shapethat reality in different ways
you know, we can.
We can move around and we can dodifferent things.
That that, while it's solid, itcan change and it is changing
all the time.
Right, but the substance ofthat reality is still the same.
(28:39):
Right, there's certain thingsthat are baked into reality.
That okay, that are not, thatare not changing things that are
that have inherently just beenthere since the beginning, right
I think the key, the key thinghere is you gotta try to
understand things that you mighttake for granted.
Angelo (28:58):
What gives you the capacity to call that clay in
the first place?
How are you identifying it?
What is clay and not clay?
Right yeah, you've got to drawa boundary around that thing
yeah and give it an identity andname it right.
Matt (29:13):
Yeah, oh, and let me round that out a bit too, there are
things that also you can't shape, also things that are in fact
around you.
Maybe you are the piece of claylike, say, there are different
levels again that that mirroreach other.
Right, so you, you can be acreative person in this world
(29:37):
and in fact are right but, thenthere are also events around you
and the, the thusness ofreality that is affecting you
and changing you know,fashioning you in different ways
, and you are able to co-createwith it.
Angelo (29:54):
Maybe the key to the idea of how to talk about
objective reality is this notionof discovery, because if
everything comes from the self,there is no such thing as
genuine discovery, because it'sall coming from you already,
right?
If you can genuinely discoversomething, there's got to be
(30:15):
something outside of you thatcan change you.
What do you think of that?
Chris (30:21):
I'm trying to think about it.
Angelo (30:23):
See here, because is it really discovery if you knew
everything the whole time?
You know, I've been thinking,because if everything comes from
you, then deep down you alreadyknew it.
Matt (30:37):
I've been thinking more and more recently about how much
we can think about ties into ahumanist perspective.
We can think about ties into ahumanist perspective right, like
say that you know that reallyis kind of that mindset of
everything is projected from thehuman mind, or all these things
like you know language, we madeup language and all this stuff,
(30:59):
but there's a substance to it,you know there's like you go
really down to it.
There's, there's a structurethere that precedes our
invention, that precedes our,our conceptions that we have
otherwise, like you said, youknow, discover, like it's.
Like einstein didn't decide eequals mc squared.
(31:21):
He discovered it right, youknow, he found it out, and you'd
have to say the same thingabout all mathematics right,
like one plus one equals two.
Angelo (31:29):
And if you wiped out the world and had to rebuild
society from the ground up andreinvent math, they might have a
different word for one and plusand two.
But guess what?
They can come to the sameconclusions because there's
consistency.
Yes, there's consistency inthis reality but, it's a
(31:50):
discovered thing.
There's genuinely somethingoutside of yourself that you can
learn and adapt to absolutelyokay, the fact I love at least
that's my position.
Matt (32:06):
Actually, I want to highlight that, yeah, like if
everything were wiped out, saythere were no humans like any,
anything like that then thatreality would still be the same
mm-hmm, and that's what we'retrying to talk about when we're
talking about objective reality.
Chris (32:24):
Yeah I've heard the idea before that if humanity was
wiped out, we had to some formof life had to evolve on the
earth again.
We would probably recreatescience books almost exactly the
same way.
It would be in a differentlanguage, right.
Angelo (32:42):
But they would be extremely similar.
You know, it's been so longsince we had our language talk.
I wonder if we touched on thisbefore, but I can't remember if
we did.
But I feel like, I feel likesomewhere in there I might have
mentioned the idea of umweltumwelt is that?
Matt (33:00):
definitely said that word yeah, so you may reiterate.
Angelo (33:04):
To reiterate, I remember you said, like two episodes ago
at least oh, okay, well toreiterate, for those of you, so
you don't have to go digging forthis word, it's a german, words
of content, it's a german wordthat mean it's basically means a
creature's entire subjectiveexperience summed up, so your
(33:27):
umwelt is all of your life, theall of the colors you see, all
of the experiences you have umpersonally like for you and your
umwelt can overlap with anotherhuman beings and there are
shared experiences.
Like you know what it's like tobe human, you know what it's
(33:48):
like to have skin and two eyesand, uh, what it's like to be
this age and what it's like tohave similar hair.
But me and a frog might havesome overlap as to what it means
to be an animal, but that frogis going to have a completely
different umwelt as far as thetype of eyes that frog has and
(34:11):
what it's able to see, and thetype of sentience that that frog
has and how things taste tothat frog it.
Matt (34:21):
It touches on this notion of the subjective experience and
how we all have such radicallydifferent takes on reality I
love that, that, that word Ilove, like words like this that
we have yet to express or, youknow, account for.
(34:42):
In english, that meanssomething we haven't quite put
our finger on, but it's likeyour unique experience, your
unique reality, but also thatwhich can overlap and relate to
another's reality who sharesyour same experience so what do
(35:03):
you guys think about gettinginto simulation theory?
Chris (35:08):
sounds good to me you know.
Matt (35:11):
Here's the question I have is whether or not we live in a
simulated reality.
What are the implications, youthink, of being in a simulation
versus a, let's say, more realreality based?
Angelo (35:28):
on all that we've, that we've talked about, you know I
think most people are fascinatedby simulation theory because it
means that there's a secret,higher level of reality that
could potentially be obtained,and it also kind of means that
the in a sense that theconsequences of this reality
(35:53):
don't mean as much.
So maybe there's a sort of likesecret escape, like, oh well,
none of this is actually real.
If you think about it deep down, there's actually another level
to reality so well, maybe,maybe it's some in our pop
culture too.
Matt (36:12):
They've presented this to us, like you know.
Think about the truman show orthe matrix, where you have this,
this, you know, artificialreality around you right and if
we look at culture, I mean Idon't want to get into society's
different things, but I mean ifyou look around, there's a lot
of artificiality around us.
(36:33):
There's a lot of things thatare not um life-giving and
sustaining and feel unnatural,you know and are very unnatural
around us.
So I think it is important to beaware of those things, whether
you believe that it's, you know,simulated, or whether we live
in a more.
What's a good word for it?
(36:54):
Uh, organic reality, right?
Chris (36:58):
the the only thing that's like really natural in this
room, right?
Our, our bodies, everythingelse that's surrounding us is
something that we engineered tofit, you know, our needs or our
wants.
And I had that same thought,too, not too long ago, that like
no wonder we think that we livein a simulation or some sort of
(37:21):
simulated reality, becauseeverything that surrounds us is
invented, like cars, modernhomes, computers.
It's also.
Angelo (37:31):
So in a sense, there's complete truth to that idea,
just not on the grandiose levelthat we think it is.
There's.
Yeah, we do live in a simulatedreality created by ourselves,
if that to some extent.
Chris (37:46):
I think that's very true.
We're extremely removed fromour primordial coming ups and
beginnings.
Matt (37:55):
I'd be curious about the psychology of different people
who believe that too, because Ithink a lot of the way that your
environment is the way that,like what it is about your
personality, your psychology,that can lead you to come to
certain conclusions.
(38:15):
You know, like what is, or whatis it, or here's here's a good
question, like what's the payoffof thinking in that way?
You know what's the payoff ofthinking in that way that we
live in a simulated reality?
Chris (38:30):
for some reason it's always most philosophers when
they write about this.
It's always justice, like you,justice.
They always bring up justice asan example.
But because we have a conceptlike justice, like mercy, and we
wonder where do theseimmaterial things come from?
Angelo (38:51):
and because that idea is so far removed from physical
reality, I think that leads usto wonder is there more to life?
So why?
Why justice?
What?
What makes you think it's aboutjustice?
Chris (39:04):
I didn't think it.
I don't think it's aboutjustice, and most people, when
they offer an example to provetheir points, just mention
happen to mention that one.
It's commonly referred to.
That doesn't mean as in so?
Angelo (39:19):
so you mean, like when someone brings up simulation
theory, there there's a sort ofmoral responsibility element
that they're shirking uh, sojustice, I could have said any
word.
Chris (39:34):
Justice was just a placeholder for the idea of
immaterial thoughts andimmaterial values.
Angelo (39:44):
Okay.
So, you're just talking aboutlike a value structure.
Yes, okay, I do think.
I mean, I do think that thereis some sense of like shirking
moral responsibility to anextent, because if all of this
isn't real, then it's just somelittle game that we're playing
(40:08):
Like.
Think about the Matrix youbrought it up earlier.
All of those people living inthe Matrix that are concerned
with their lives and concernedabout you, know what they're
eating and their problems andand all of this stuff.
Ultimately they're slaves torobots in the actual reality.
(40:29):
None of that is real.
They don't actually haveproblems in that world, in that
body.
If they were able to somehowescape from that reality, all of
those problems would just benull, they would be nothing.
So in a sense, it's kind oflike a coping mechanism to take
(40:51):
yourself outside of reality andto seek something else seek
something else.
Matt (41:04):
I think people can often throw the baby out with the bath
water in some ways too, youknow, like, like, for example,
when we talk about, when we talkabout flow state and we talk
about how you can be in the zoneand you can be, I mean that's a
state where you can be superproductive, like, let's say,
that's the you know, one qualitythat you have.
You can be really optimized inputting your energy towards
(41:25):
something right.
But then, on the flip side,people who are stuck in a job
that they have, a position thatthey have, and like I don't want
to give my, my energy, all thisenergy, and towards this other
thing that's not me, this otherthing that is not genuine to who
I am, all those things.
So in their minds, thatproductivity becomes this thing
(41:49):
towards this artificial thingthat they don't want to support,
when that's just, that's just afacility of using the energy.
Like the flow is an organicthing, it's a thing that's
actually natural and and goodand in fact you know it's.
It's.
It's an amazing state to be inright, regardless of your
(42:11):
position or whatever you're.
Chris (42:13):
You know whatever you happen to be doing right, but
it's you know, things like thatthat I think can can really
often be mixed up and mistakenfor the same thing you know,
I've come into contact with alot of people who feel like
their jobs, like their nine tofive, isn't real, like that's
not who they are, that's not whothey're meant to be, and so I
(42:37):
don't know.
I think you know people need tofind a way to incorporate a
higher reality into their lives.
Angelo (42:44):
I mean it's, it's probably touching on a mechanism
that's that has utility, rightso?
Chris (42:51):
okay, if you.
Angelo (42:53):
If you are able to step outside of something and break
your frame and look at it from ahigher perspective, say, you
know you are in some sort ofmonotonous job and you're,
you're kind of caught up in thepattern and the ritual and and
you need to break out of itbecause you've just you're bored
(43:15):
to death or you just don't feellike you're headed in the right
direction.
If you're able to take a stepoutside of that and it goes back
to the imaginal right andyou're able to imagine this
situation and and look at it andhow you can change it, you're,
you're sort of um, in a sensestepping outside of reality and
(43:37):
taking a higher perspective.
I think that simulation theoryis that same mechanism in the
brain.
They're kind of trying to takeeverything we know about reality
and step outside of it and tryto look at it from a higher
perspective.
Because of that, there's thissense of like oh, I have better
(43:58):
knowledge of what's going on, Ihave this better position that I
can understand the world from.
But it's almost a false senseof superiority.
Matt (44:11):
Well, it's like you have to wash your mind too when
you're in that perspective.
Wash your mind too when you'rein that perspective, like, say,
you've been so in this, in thisartificial reality, and so you
can be so cynical and you can beso, you know, skeptical and
skepticism, like doses ofskepticism, are a good or a good
(44:33):
thing for sure.
But then you, when you get outof it and you can be so critical
of that reality and you can beso like, oh, I'm a master of
this route, but there's no heartto it you know, there's no,
there's no soul, there's noredemptive quality in that
perspective, right, like youjust want to have the
(44:55):
psychological feeling that youknow the whole world and that
you are superior in yourknowledge capacity.
Right, and it's like you know.
Going back to the archetypes,it's like the magician trying to
be on the throne of thesovereign when it's really not
its place right, it's.
Angelo (45:12):
It's a power motivation, the, the will to power, as
Nietzsche would say.
Chris (45:26):
Did either of you guys read or watch?
Angelo (45:27):
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
I've definitely watched themovie.
I want to say I read the book,but I don't know if I finished
it.
Oh, it's so good, it's so good.
Matt (45:37):
So if you don't remember, if you haven't watched the movie
, it is really funny.
The.
Chris (45:40):
Earth is like a simulated , like a created thing by some
alien race, because we'reactually a supercomputer that is
trying to compute the question.
We already know the answer.
Right, the answer, he's famousfor it.
The answer is 42.
But we don't know what thequestion.
We already know the answer,right, the answer he's famous
for.
The answer is 42, but we don'tknow what the question is.
(46:01):
And then, later on in theseries, we learn that the
question and the answer cannotoccupy the same reality at the
same time.
So right at the last minute,right when earth is about to
compute its question, the grandquestion, it gets destroyed and
made to make room for like aspace super highway that they
(46:23):
don't even really need.
And it's so stupid bureaucracyit's hilarious, oh man but, um,
yeah, I mean, you know, createdthings and there was a point I
was about to make and I lost itas I was telling the story.
But what's the end of our?
What's the telos of oursimulated reality?
Angelo (46:48):
I think we've kind of touched on this idea before, but
I do think it has something todo with collective identity and
the impulse to love, right,that's kind of what everyone
secretly knows but doesn't sayout loud.
(47:09):
We're all motivated into adeeper form of connection, and
when I use the word love, Idon't mean sentimental, oh, oh.
I just really really have astrong emotion for a person.
Love is, uh is not an emotionin this context.
Love is.
(47:29):
Love is a word to describe the,the deepest connection.
Um, it's, it's almost.
It's interesting because it'salmost the idea of, uh, unity
and diversity coexisting at thesame time.
Wow, yeah, so you, in order tolove someone, you have to be
(47:57):
different from them, you have tobe separated in order to have
that bond.
So there's a uniting principlebetween you, but there needs to
be more than one.
I like that idea.
Chris (48:12):
I really do, that's great , that's brilliant.
Matt (48:14):
Like you have to cross a distance in order to meet that
person, otherwise it's otherwise.
I mean, how easy is that foreverybody?
You just love everyone, that'sjust yeah.
Chris (48:26):
Perfectly like you, otherwise we're just some weird
hive mind and we all look andsay I think and say the same
thing, yeah then it's just, thenit's just.
Angelo (48:36):
Unity and separation is an illusion.
But there's no love there, it'sjust.
You just are.
Love necessarily needsdiversity.
Chris (48:47):
That's powerful.
Angelo (48:52):
I love it.
Yeah, love it.
I like this idea of insight.
So we were talking aboutdiscovery before, and you kind
of brought up the flow stateeven too, and we're kind of
(49:14):
dancing around this topic ofinsight when it comes to reality
.
We're kind of dancing aroundthis topic of insight with with
when it comes to reality.
I do think that insight is is akey component in understanding
that you are not the center ofthe universe.
There's something about thisreality that you're part of,
(49:38):
like a grand narrative, and whenyou and when you have an
insight, it has something to dowith relevance that I was
talking about earlier, with thisrelevance realization where you
let me think how to phrase itwhen, whenever you have an
(50:04):
insight, it's aligning youcloser to your telos in a sense.
That's what the insight is, isyou feel like you're closer to a
pattern of whatever that deepermotivation is, and that's
genuine discovery.
You're like, oh yeah, I'm onthe right path or there's some
(50:28):
truth here.
That's that insight.
Matt (50:32):
It's a compass and something lights up within you,
and I've been thinking a lotrecently about communication
like wise communication, youknow, and the speech as a
junction between the mind andthe heart.
(50:54):
Even think about how yourthroat, your mouth, is
equidistant from your heart andyour mind.
You know it's like being able togo deep and think about wells
within your mind and you'rebeing able to go down.
In that capacity, you're beingable to dive deep down and
that's where the insights are.
(51:15):
Where the insights are, youknow, the further down you're
able to hold your breath and godown into the depths and find
that insight, bring it up andbring it through you in your
mind.
You realize it and to be ableto communication, to communicate
it, but also it's salient,you're passionate about it.
You can communicate it withgusto, you know, and that's what
(51:37):
makes people feel it, you know,and it becomes reflected in the
places that they come from.
You can affect somebody intheir mind, but also change
their hearts at the same time Iwant to say we, if you know that
insight.
Angelo (51:52):
If you notice, we use higher and lower a lot in our
analogies yeah, and I'm a lot ofpeople do, like there's
something to that.
I almost want to do a wholeepisode like altitude or
something oh, please, but yeahbut think about it like when you
say you're reaching down intosomething lower, what?
(52:14):
what exactly are you talkingabout?
Or when we say we're, we'regetting higher consciousness,
what's higher about it?
Right, and because there'slower isn't necessarily negative
, like sometimes we associate itwith negative, but in the
context that you used it there'sa sense of I'm reaching down
(52:35):
into.
It's almost like some somethingprimordial, right?
yeah, oh, I was it's got to be Iwant to say there's, there's
like it's tied to something,like um instinct or subconscious
, like even calling itsubconscious.
It's beneath consciousness,it's something to do with, it's
(52:59):
built into your body, almost,and that's why the heart is
lower than the mind,metaphorically.
The heart is tied closer toyour primordial instincts.
Your emotions, your, yourconnection to mother earth is
down, yeah, and when you'retalking about getting something
(53:20):
higher, you're talking aboutlike order, right, sacred order,
something maybe epistemological, the knowledge or time or
something above that gives you ahigher perspective of what's
going on.
So the mind, necessarily, ishigher.
Matt (53:40):
Yeah.
Angelo (53:42):
And they meet in the middle.
There's this conjoining of thehigher and the lower.
Matt (53:47):
The confluence.
Think about if we in ourselvesare the confluence.
Another example I think of islike the roots, you nailed it
with the primordial, theearthiness, you know, like
reaching your hand down into itand gripping something that you
have to.
You know you have to dig to getto it.
(54:11):
You know it's in the soil, it's, you know it's like a thing
that you unearth right and thenthe higher right, that's like
what's another good word.
Like satori, you know, like that, you know that brilliant
insight, that brilliant you know, those ideas, that kind of
(54:32):
light you up, you know, andthink about like the sun being
above, right the sun, like thelight coming above, yeah, that's
, I think that's it like thelike the lower is, like you're
reaching down into the dark.
You know, reaching down intothe, into the darkness, where
that's the void the void.
Yeah, that's further away fromthe light, and then you have the
(54:55):
light above and then, if youthink about a tree.
The tree both reaches down intothe ground with its roots, but
it also reaches up for thesunlight yeah, that's why trees
are absolutely great metaphorsthere's in.
Angelo (55:13):
There's something to the structure of reality.
When you talk about a tree likeI don't know, insights pop off
for some reason, but it's hardto like, really nail it down and
get a grip because it's likethe symbol is there.
So I think what we're somewe're dancing around.
Chris (55:28):
A key piece that we're missing is that?
Yeah, sure, if, if we aremetaphorically right that the
tree in this example, yeah, Ithink our roots are reaching
down into the void, but it's notjust the void that's down there
.
As we plunge down into theearth, we're unearthing some
part of ourselves.
(55:51):
So it's not just like, oh, we'rereaching into this dark void to
pull something that'scompletely unknown we're
discovering about ourselvesbecause physically and literally
, you are everything else so youhave to have this like right
right understanding of ourselfand trying to grasp the higher
values and the higher spiritualunderstandings into a middling
(56:17):
reality, right that allows us toknow ourselves and to reach up
into the heavens at the sametime and be grounded I rooted, I
see this idea of a, the shapeof a triangle, we, we, we touch
on a lot of similar topicsbecause we totally talked about
(56:37):
the triangle before as well.
Angelo (56:39):
But there's like, at the bottom, the base, there's
separation, right, the twopoints at the bottom of the
triangle, and as you move upthere's unity and I like to
think the up direction is movingtowards something like gestalt,
moving towards like commonidentity and form, and as you go
(57:03):
down there's more idiosyncrasyand separation and subjective
things and they can, they canwork together, hand in hand, but
when?
But when you cut one off fromthe other.
If you have gestalt without theI guess I'll just call them the
(57:28):
idiosyncrasies, thespecificities you've got a
disembodied idea.
It's worthless.
Matt (57:36):
Oh yeah.
Angelo (57:37):
And when you have all of these things without the
gestalt, there's no unityamongst them.
Matt (57:41):
You've just got dust you know, if there isn't already,
I'm a thing called like the lawof variance.
Um, I think there should be,like, if you have a like whole
body of, you know, fish like,say, fish are the summit of that
triangle.
But then, beneath all of that,and you know, going back to
(58:02):
diversity of all these differenttypes of fish, right with we
got sharks, we got whales, we'vegot goldfish, we've got we've
got all these different kinds offish, and then we've got
cephalopods, we've got, you know, octopus, we've got jellyfish,
right, and then what are theylike?
How are they related, you know,are they within the same?
Angelo (58:24):
I mean, then that's like , an even higher triangle, just
all sea life but the fact thatyou're able to mentally link all
of them together and call themfish, giving them a higher
identity, that ties them alltogether.
There's something to thatnotion.
(58:45):
Yeah, I think that's whatreality is about.
Is this, this bringing togetherof of identities?
I really do.
I really think that's whatwe're aiming towards.
I really think that ourcapacity to look at all of these
separate things and and sort ofunite them and recognize their
(59:10):
distinct properties at the sametime that's, that's the magic
right there yep, what's like,what's common, and then then
what's distinct, and lovingthrough the distinction.
Wow, god, you just made thatmake sense, wow wow, I mean I'm
(59:33):
having the same insight on thespot as you and like this is I'm
just in the flow state rightnow it's brilliant, it's
absolutely brilliant I'm surethere's some people listening.
It's like what the hell are youtalking about?
If you get it, you get it, mancome on you gotta get a follow
(59:57):
with it, you guys.
Yeah, I, I'm definitely, I Icome from like, uh, I have a
love for the the empirical, uh,observation side of reality.
Like I think there's no,there's no real way to get a
(01:00:22):
truly objective perspective.
You're always going to see itthrough a human lens, through
your lens, through your umwelt,like there's no way for you to
step outside of that.
Even when you think that you'retalking about something
objective, it's only objectivelyhuman.
Like the idea that the Earthgoes around the sun, you might
(01:00:47):
say, well, that might be like anobjective fact that we can
discover.
But understanding around is ahuman thing, understanding
around is a human thing.
Understanding, like Earth as aplanet.
You're thinking of somethingmoving in time, the fourth
dimension, moving through threedimensional space.
(01:01:10):
Like all of that has to befunneled through your empirical
observation, through yourphenomenological experience.
Matt (01:01:18):
Yes, yes, and.
Angelo (01:01:23):
There's no outside of it .
Matt (01:01:27):
Like what you said about love too, and loving through
diversity and loving throughcrossing that distance from
where you are to the point oflove, and there's a traveling,
there's you moving towards itand say it moving towards you
(01:01:52):
too?
And say if you're doing thatwith objective reality, if
you're doing that with truth, ifyou're doing that with
objective reality, if you'redoing that with truth, if you're
(01:02:14):
doing that with the way thatthe world is and you all in the
same place at this.
Chris (01:02:19):
At the same time, you know that there's that there's
like a distance to be crossed Ithink, in the similar way, that
there's kind of like a perennialscience, right, um, and
perennial in you know, in caseyou don't know, like, like just
kind of means something thatkeeps reappearing year after
(01:02:40):
year.
Right, you have perennialflowers it's really just a
different word for eternal butyou have like a perennial
science, but you also have likea perennial reality, a perennial
spiritual reality that you cankeep falling back to, right,
(01:03:01):
something that's beyond language, something that's, um, beyond
our, the paradigm through whichwe see the world.
Like, like, ever since wediscovered science, right, and
we keep learning, particularlyabout astronomy.
Like, we learned that the earthis round and not flat, and
(01:03:23):
learned that we go around thesun, not vice versa.
Those were paradigm breakingdiscoveries when they came
around.
Maybe we're kind of justwaiting for the next one, but
even if we do discover the nextone, there's still going to be a
value system that we can fallback on.
Like, don't take things forgranted.
Love people, just like youwould love yourself.
Angelo (01:03:47):
It's funny because we discovered that you know the
earth goes around the sun andthat's why you see the sun move
in the sky the way it does, butwe still call it a sunrise.
We still experience it as thesun going up, and it's hard,
even knowing that we areactually the ones moving,
(01:04:12):
relatively speaking.
It's hard to break that frame.
You still, in the back of yourmind, view the sun is moving
yeah, it's, and you're made thatway and that that's more
relevant to you almost than theidea that the earth moves around
the sun.
Because to what extent do youuse that information?
(01:04:35):
You pay attention to theseasons and they affect you
personally in your life.
You know you prepare for, um,the winter coming and and you
almost have to treat reality ona local level as if the sun is
rising, rather than treatreality as the earth going
(01:04:58):
around the sun.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, and I get the idea, likeyou know, believing as the earth
going around the sun.
Matt (01:04:59):
Does that make sense?
Yeah?
Angelo (01:05:00):
And I get the idea, like you know, believing that the
earth going around the sun is,there's a utility in it on a
certain level.
Right, if you're trying to makebetter scientific predictions
on a grander scale, definitelygo with heliocentrism what's
(01:05:22):
relative to us, and like what wecan, what we can measure, and
you know it's.
Matt (01:05:28):
It's funny.
Um, there's this.
There's this clip from this showuh, young sheldon, like sheldon
from the big bang theory rightthere's this one moment where
he's talking with his, his mom,and she's, you know, kind of in
this nihilistic type mindset,right, and you know he's very
scientific, he's very, you know,very petty right.
(01:05:51):
But what he says, did you did,you know?
Um, basically something like ifgravity was a little bit off
either way, if it was a littlebit stronger or just the tiniest
fraction less powerful than thewhole universe would fall apart
.
You know, it's exactly thedegree that it needs to be.
(01:06:11):
You know, we don't even thinkabout this, we just we just wake
up and it's, you know, the nextright.
But all of these things thathave to go right, that go right
like clockwork every single day,that you know we have miracles
all around us, we're lucky.
Chris (01:06:33):
We are lucky beyond imagination.
Matt (01:06:36):
Stupendous.
Chris (01:06:37):
Like how, Like what even because it's a simulation.
Yeah, right, yeah.
Angelo (01:06:46):
I mean.
Matt (01:06:48):
I mean, it's all fake?
Oh no, stupendously,stupendously well dialed into
the fact that we can't evenreally comprehend how Our minds
can go so far as what to adegree.
(01:07:09):
I think Like trying to measureit right, but it's the how
question that we can't wrap ourminds around.
Chris (01:07:16):
You know, yeah, I'm going to do the thing that I usually
do, which is offer a definitionfor reality.
Okay, all right, let's do it.
Reality is a perennial patternof the structural substrate,
lending one a salient landscapeto consciousness.
Matt (01:07:36):
Wow.
Chris (01:07:36):
Whoa, I don't know.
I think it works.
Angelo (01:07:39):
I might have to refine it a little bit Wow, wow, I
don't know, I think it works.
I might have to refine it alittle bit, sure, but it sounded
pretty good to me.
Thanks, and on that note, Ithink let's wrap this one up All
right.
Thank you all for joining us.
Thank you, reality was probablyone of our most in-depth
discussions, yet we had a lot offun doing it and if you stuck
(01:08:02):
around this long, thank you somuch for hanging out with us.
Thank you, and we hope to seeyou next time.
Chris (01:08:09):
It's been real, all right Peace.
Hello everyone, welcome to the Telos Initiative podcast.
I'm Angelo Cole.
Chris (00:05):
I'm Chris Vigil.
Matt (00:06):
And I'm Matt Mas.
Angelo (00:08):
Today we are going to be talking about reality, ooh,
objective reality, subjectivereality.
We might get a little bit intosimulation theory.
Who knows, who knows?
So I guess, to kick us off, wealways like to start with a
(00:28):
general definition of what wemean by reality.
Chris (00:31):
Ah jeez.
Angelo (00:45):
So I know it's kind of tricky to define, but I think
implicit in the definition isthe idea that reality is what is
real, what is the mostobjective level of being,
ontologically or metaphysically.
Chris (01:00):
Those are some big words.
Angelo (01:03):
I think if you're talking about a dream, like some
people like to compare realityto a dream and say what if
reality is actually a dream,well, a dream, by definition, is
not reality.
It's an illusion, it'ssomething that takes you outside
of reality.
You know you're dreamingbecause you wake up into reality
(01:27):
and so if this level of realityis actually a dream, it by
definition is not reality.
Matt (01:40):
What if we thought of it in terms of density?
Maybe a good word, I think, tothink about it Like say, we've
got the, you know well if wereferred to them as different
levels of reality, right?
Say like the dream, like thereare things within dream, like
you know, like dream symbolism.
(02:01):
There are things that you knowthat have certain weight or
certain symbolism.
But when you're pulled out ofthe dream and you're in waking
reality, then the dream itselfthat you just had doesn't itself
, in your reality, affect yourwalking around in daily life.
Like this is, you know,physical reality.
(02:22):
Right, then you have yourpersonal reality and this is
something I you know, I wouldlove to get into that, this, uh,
this conversation too, like therelation between your you know,
your personal feelings and theway that the world is, and
reconciling the two.
You know like why, like why isit that there is a friction
(02:47):
there?
Why is there that that seemsthat we're so often out of sync
in the way that we feel aboutthe world, in the way that we
are able to respond to the worldand and cognizize our
navigating around?
Angelo (03:03):
I think.
I think reality has somethingto do with consistency.
So if you're able to wake upfrom a dream and you go and
you're able to get into aroutine, you go to the same
place.
Things are predictable.
I can go to work, I can comehome, I know where I put my
(03:26):
jacket and if I go back, myjacket's still there.
There's consistency there.
And if I'm in a dream, a lot ofconsistency breaks down.
I might put my jacket somewherein my dream and then a bunch of
random stuff happens and I comeback to that same spot and I'm
like wait, I thought I putsomething here.
(03:46):
Maybe I didn't, I don't know.
And so there's a level ofinconsistency and mystery yeah,
mystery.
Matt (03:55):
I think mystery is a really great word for it.
Chris (04:00):
I think what you just described is something like like
the dream reality is like aquantum reality, because when
you get down to things on aquantum level in terms of
physics, probability starts tobreak down in a way that you
(04:22):
can't predict things.
Okay, so it's like predictions,another um another tell along
with consistency so we'realready talking about like a
physical reality that we live in, right, that's bound to laws of
physics and mathematics to apoint, and then, beyond that, I
(04:45):
mean when we come down toourselves, we have like a
biological reality that we haveto live by.
Right, male, female, somewherein between their veins, our
central nervous systems operatein a certain way, they have
certain potentials, capacities,and then, beyond that, we get
into intellectual realities,right, like what is the way in
(05:06):
which I can, cognizant about mysalience landscape, right back
to our consciousness episode,and and what we're coming to
contact with the physical, thebiological, and then our
emotional reality, right, what'sour emotional response to that?
And then spiritual reality,somehow tying everything
(05:27):
together in a mysterious,mystical manner okay, so how
many levels was that?
Angelo (05:32):
that was um one, two, three, four, five, okay just
laying out again what was itphysical, physical reality, or
did you said quantum?
Let's, let's forget about thequantum just because it's, so
it's like it's tethered to likequantum where you use the word
(05:53):
quantum, quantum physics, right,and I'm not sure if that's what
you're trying to.
Chris (05:59):
So we could.
I would not call quantumreality dream reality.
Like dream reality is somethingelse, but I wanted to tether it
to dream reality as opposed towaking life.
But that's separate from therealities that I distinguished
in the second part, which wasthe physical reality, the
biological reality, intellectual, emotional and spiritual
(06:21):
realities.
Angelo (06:21):
Okay, it's interesting to me that you put emotional so
high, because I would think ofemotions as being tied to the
physical, to the body.
Okay, yeah, that's fine,Because emotions are chemically
based right Adrenaline andepinephrine, not epinephrine,
oxytocin Mm-hmm oxytocin and allthose things are biological
(06:46):
processes that kind of emergeout of the.
Okay, sure, the physical planeis what I was thinking.
Chris (06:57):
So I'm kind of curious about why you put it so high, so
everything that's like well, Iput it high because I I think
it's it's less, ah, specificmore abstract more abstract.
Angelo (07:19):
Yeah, okay then okay, so you're, maybe you're going
psychologically here you're,you're thinking of like external
to the internal and weexperience emotions closer to
the internal.
So this is like aphenomenological sort of scale.
Chris (07:37):
I like that.
Matt (07:38):
I think that's a good way to look at that yeah, you know,
it's like it's our relativerelationship to the world, or a
lot of our relative relationshipto the world, like if you think
about our, our skin you know,like the largest organ on our
body, and we can feel thingswith our, uh, with our skin,
(08:00):
right, and so emotions allow usto sense from outside.
We can feel pleasure through ourskin, we can feel pain through
our physical bodies.
Right, it's not necessarilytelling us how to navigate
around in the world, but it'sgiving us signals about how the
(08:21):
world is, uh, the world isaffecting us, how we, how we
feel about reality aroundourselves.
It's, like, you know, we couldsay, like a thermometer.
It's or maybe that's a good wayto put it, maybe you know even
broader than that, right, and wehave different, different like
flavors of emotions.
(08:42):
Right, I mean, you have sad, butthen you have like something
like you know, melancholy isalmost like a beautiful sadness,
but then you have depressionand all of these different you
know tints and shades ofdifferent emotions that give you
, that give you different senseof how you're relating with the
world, how you're relating withthe world, how you're relating
(09:06):
with yourself, and being able togive you kind of a starting
point to begin to think aboutwhat to do about those things or
how to think about them.
Chris (09:16):
So because time, as we've discussed before, is acting on
us in a forwardly manner,constantly, right, I think that
these different stages ofreality, especially like the
emotional reality that weexperience, informs the other
aspects of our reality and viceversa.
Right, like one minute I mightfeel really depressed and then I
(09:39):
read a book that will change myintellectual reality and my
salience landscapeintellectually and that will
inform my emotions, which mightmake me feel better, which will
inform my physical, mybiological reality, and those
things are also in a confluencewith each other.
Matt (09:58):
Yeah, I think when we talk about the salience, the
emotions are directly tied inthere.
It's a relationship between themind and the emotions.
I mean, what is it about?
What's important to you, whatwe would like to think of it as
you know, like mentally.
We would like it to be, justlike mentally, what's most
(10:20):
important.
I guess if we were juststrictly thinking from the mind,
you know, but what is it thatcaptures your attention?
What's most important?
I guess if we were juststrictly thinking from the mind,
you know, but but what is itthat?
What is it that captures yourattention?
What is it that captures yourinterest in these?
different subjects I mean, herewe are talking about reality.
What is it about?
What is it about talking aboutreality that so draws us in and
(10:42):
makes it, you know, makes usfeel like it's an important
thing to talk about?
And be able to throw our energyinto it.
Angelo (10:48):
That has to do with relevance right.
Matt (10:50):
Yeah.
Angelo (10:51):
There's a necessary component of identity here.
So everything you experiencethrough your salience, landscape
, even through things as deep asyour emotions, landscape
through, even through, um,things as deep as your emotions
or, um, things that you wouldn'tconsider, you know, mental
processes so much as biologicalbody processes all of these
(11:14):
things have like a sort of focusand, um, an aim.
So you, we we kind of talkedabout this a little bit before
you sort of direct yourattention based on relevance.
You direct it to things thatalign with whatever your current
(11:35):
goal happens to be.
So you know a floor is a thingto walk on.
You know, if you're hungry,your focus kind of aims towards
how can I get food and you'relooking at obstacles and tools
around you and your body andyour mind are kind of responding
to these things.
And there's like a peripherywhere there's things that you
(11:57):
completely ignore, necessarilybecause you can't pay attention
to all of the details in reality.
Chris (12:06):
You just can't, especially if you're hungry,
right?
Angelo (12:10):
You get really hungry and you kind of zone in and you.
Chris (12:13):
That's why hangry is the thing Like if I can't get food
right now and I have to keepworking and that emotion targets
, things that you view asobstacles in that moment.
Angelo (12:26):
So you know you've got a spouse or something and she's
angry and you're trying to feedher and all of that attention is
like you're in my way, whyaren't you getting me food?
True story.
Matt (12:51):
Some experience.
It's funny, there's thisthere's a relationship between
the, between the emotions andyour body, like what you can,
like they can influence eachother, like with happiness, like
if you're like you can, youactually can smile, you actually
can get into a differentposture and actually get into a
different state.
I think you can do that withyour mind and your emotions too,
(13:12):
when you're focusing on certainthings and then that thing
becomes, you know, importantthrough your focus, through
through your attention, and thenyour emotions can follow that,
follow what you're.
You know where your mind isgoing and it's through your
attention and then your emotionscan follow that, follow where
your mind is going.
It's like it's fascinating tome I've been thinking about the
(13:32):
mind's eye, but also the handsof the mind inside as well being
able to turn something aroundin your hands or turn something
around in your mind and seeingthe different that's an
interesting phrase.
Angelo (13:45):
I've never heard that before.
Matt (13:46):
Before the hands in the mind that one came to me pretty
recently.
Yeah, so being able to to lookat something in different
directions, in different,different, orientation your
orientation, yeah, and then youknow your emotions can sort of
feel around what it is that youare turning around in your mind.
Chris (14:06):
So so the the hands metaphor is about like trying to
get a grip on an event orsomething, or is it like maybe I
missed the?
Matt (14:15):
point.
Well, it's well, simply, thewell simply the subject that you
have in your mind.
It could be an event, it couldbe a certain subject, something
that you want to see, the I meanthe way I interpreted, it was
like you have the capacity inyour mind to change perspective
yes and so it's almost like youhave some sort of hand.
Angelo (14:35):
It's, it's a, obviously it's a virtual, but you're the
turning in there is the capacityto change your own view on an
idea.
Chris (14:48):
Yeah, that's my bad.
I took that way too literally.
Matt (14:51):
I was like okay, so I'm imagining a hand in my mind.
But when you're doing anymental work of some kind too,
like imagine the hands insideyour mind actually working on
that thing, actually doing,actually having a working
capacity in that way.
Angelo (15:10):
Yeah, which brings us to imagination, because on some
level, imagination is aprojection of reality.
You could be imaginingsomething that you perceive to
be very real and it could besomething in the present.
It could be imagining somethingthat you perceive to be very
real and it could be somethingin the present.
It could be some, a memory ofsomething in the past, or it
(15:31):
could be a projection of whatyou're trying to do in the
future.
So it goes across time.
Chris (15:37):
So when I take this pen and imagine it to be a
lightsaber, I'm trying to be ajedi that's your, I'm guessing
future hope for your.
Yes, it is, I'm gonna get thecloak and everything it's gonna
be great sure, I mean obviouslythere's.
Angelo (15:55):
There's a component to imagination that it can explore.
Fantasy.
Right, you can imagine yourselfin something that you logically
know isn't actually part ofreality and you don't expect to
actually participate in that,but you entertain the idea like
(16:16):
being a jedi and living in thestar wars world well, actually
this gets into a reallyinteresting thing.
Chris (16:21):
Um, one of my favorite spiritual works is the imitation
of christ by thomas akampis,and one of the opening you know
things is that he says you needto detach yourself from the
physical world and find yourcenter in the invisible things.
And I, I just the way Ipractice that right, is when I
(16:48):
look at an icon of Jesus and Itry to, I guess, transmute right
that energy like his holiness,his everythingness, from that
icon onto and into myself.
Right, that takes myimagination, like what is it
(17:09):
like to, you know, be jesus?
Right, I mean, a lot of crazypeople they end up in in places
and they're like I'm jesus,because their imagination, you
know, kind of overtakes them ina way.
But I think there's there's agood idea there that we transfer
(17:33):
these immaterial ideas fromsymbols onto ourselves so that
they project through our mindsback into reality.
Matt (17:44):
Yes, and that's a really fun line to dance, I think.
And speaking of imagination, Ithink a lot of that is in like a
future tense and visionarycapacity as well, being able to
project something into thefuture, project, something that
could be, and then in some waymaking that real.
Angelo (18:04):
Right, I think that might be be.
If you're a materialist, thatmight be a an idea of how
imagination evolved, like thecapacity to project the future
and adapt to it.
Like perhaps, uh, if you canimagine that there might be a
(18:24):
predator in the bush, ratherthan actually testing it out
physically, that gives you anadvantage over a creature that
just purely acts on and reactsto whatever is happening to
right because, say, you haven'tseen that saber-toothed tiger
yet, so you have.
Matt (18:41):
No, you might not have or you haven't encountered yet, but
you've heard of people who have.
And so then you can say, ohwait, that might happen in the
future.
That could be just a rustlingin the bush over there or that
could be a dangerous creature, Idon't know.
But I can mentally account forthat, for for future action yeah
(19:05):
right.
Chris (19:05):
Well, you take those proverbial hands you have in
your mind and you're like itcould be a saber-toothed tiger.
It might now let's find themiddle ground here exactly be
safe those good old mental hands.
Um, actually, I think, uh, likeprojecting right, like throwing
a um, a javelin or something ata, at a, something we're hunting
(19:27):
right, that was one of the keyevolutionary steps that we had
to take, um, because you had toimagine right, your time still
acting forwardly.
You have to imagine where isthis animal going to be in 10
seconds so I can interestingproject it or shoot it with an
arrow that I made.
Angelo (19:47):
Yeah, perhaps it's linked to aim.
Yeah, that's pretty interesting.
Matt (19:53):
It is fascinating how much comes back to aim, isn't it?
Angelo (19:57):
Mm-hmm.
It all comes back to focus aswell, mm-hmm.
Chris (20:03):
And narrowing the sight and the periphery focus as well
and narrowing the site and theperiphery.
So so how do we take our mindsin, in, in our, in our single,
uh, egotistical reality thatmakes us who we are?
How do we transfer our ego ontoa greater context that also
(20:27):
focuses on what's important?
Angelo (20:29):
I think that's done collectively.
You do that with other people.
So you see, you see otherpeople and what they're aiming
at and, um, evolutionarily thatwould be why we have whites in
our eyes, by the way is you'relooking at other people and
you're the the ability to beable to see what they're looking
at, and we evolved togetherwhat yeah, think about it like
(20:53):
oh the reason that eyes andfaces are so important to you is
because you want to know whatother people are aiming at
interesting.
Chris (21:00):
So where did you read that?
Angelo (21:01):
well, that was actually from, uh, jordan peterson, huh,
and he probably got it from uh,an evolutionary biordan,
peterson, huh, and he probablygot it from uh, an evolutionary
biologist, I assume yeah, and heprobably got it from stone
tablets in china.
Chris (21:15):
Honestly, I have no idea.
Angelo (21:17):
The specific source for it, but it makes sense
interesting it's a theory, butyeah, it is.
It goes back to aim right, butif we, if we evolve to
understand how we, each other,is aiming, that's a positive
thing.
Chris (21:31):
It's, it's cooperative, it's not competitive that's
actually exactly why we're heredoing this right as the three of
us came together right, had a,had a lunch together and we were
like.
You know what we're aiming forthe truth here yeah, let's and
collectively
Angelo (21:47):
aim and and we sharpen each other's um ideas, we bounce
them off of each other, we trimoff the the bad ideas and
together we we get closer to thetruth that way, and that's how
society does it.
That's why it's so importantfor humans to connect we.
We all are working together,aimed at something bigger, and
(22:12):
we this is a idea that webrought up so many times in
other discussions is what's theidea behind the religious
impulse?
We're all collectively aimingat something you know.
To me, that's you can't do italone.
You just can't.
You.
You can.
You would have to reinvent thewheel all the time and even if
(22:35):
you're not a religious person,it's.
The scientific endeavor is acollective thing, because you
have to rely on what pastscientists have done and you
have to trust that what they'redoing makes sense and you have
to trust that there's a realitythere that they're testing
that's consistent, in order foranything to make sense.
Matt (22:57):
As far as truth goes, yes, and you know you really
inspired some idea I have toshare.
This, too, is in terms of thetraditional or the, the
generations that have built upthat, that work and have done
all that, you know, built up allthose foundations, and then the
ones who are trying to, youknow, push into the future right
(23:19):
, and that you know the growingpains and that that tension
right, and I think a lot of whatcomes with religion and what
comes with faith are things likemeaning and purpose and things
that are inherent are meaningfulin our lives.
But then you have, you know,someone who comes after you and
(23:40):
you can.
That person can say well, Imyself say, in the subjective
sense, didn't have a hand inowning, creating any of this
culture or creating any of this,any of this lore that's been
built up.
And I want to.
You know, you want to forgeyour own thing and you want to.
You know, you want to feel likeyou're building something on
(24:02):
top of that.
Right, but you know, but youcan't, just, you can't just cut
under what's been built up justin order to say like, well, it
could just be anything, you know, it could just be any reality,
and there's a lot of freedom andagency in that for sure.
Angelo (24:19):
Well, it's a destructive impulse because you're saying
everything that all these pastpeople have built and worked
together on.
I'm going to scrap it andconsider it fallible.
But you know, there issomething to the idea that
humans are fallible and they canmake mistakes and sometimes
(24:40):
rigid structures need to be torndown.
So there is a merit toskepticism.
You should test things and youshould recognize when certain
institutional structures havebecome corrupt, and you should
be willing to change your mind,even if it's difficult, if you
(25:01):
come to a greater knowledge youknow, I I feel like there's just
so much corruption, right anddarkness that's embedded in
everything across the planet.
It's perhaps pretty horrible um,perhaps that could be, that
(25:22):
could be a fear based on pastexperience.
Chris (25:26):
So one of my spiritual heroes right was when I was in
high school.
I read the Life of St Francisof Assisi and, as he was right,
spending all of his time A likerejecting his monetary
inheritance, rejecting hisfamilial inheritance like he
(25:47):
didn't want.
Rejecting his familialinheritance Like he, you know,
didn't want anything to do withhis dad.
His dad was super rich, but hewas like you know what?
I hear the poor just crying outto me.
So he gave up all of hispossessions, put on a brown like
tunic, right, which is justwhat poor people wore.
And then God told him Francisis,I need you to go and rebuild my
(26:08):
church.
So he physically rebuilds threechurches in italy I think
they're still there and then,but he can still hear god in his
mind saying like francis,rebuild my church.
And he gets it.
He goes oh, I need to go torome, I need to go to the
Vatican and show them what itactually means to be a Christian
(26:29):
, which is to give up everythingyou have and decentralize your
ego from yourself and let theSpirit of Christ act within me
and he completely reformed thechurch by his example.
Wow, and that was at the sametime with saint dominic too, who
, according to legend, we gotthe rosary from.
(26:49):
So we have the spirit of thepoor and spirit of christ in
francis and then the powerfulprayer of the rosary in tandem.
Interesting, I thought that wasreally cool yeah, that's.
Angelo (27:00):
That's pretty incredible .
Yeah, jesus, take the wheel.
Chris (27:05):
I just think if our world needs a response to the meaning
crisis and the corruption thatthe world offers, it's got to be
something radical that doesundercut some of what we've
built, but to replace it withthe eternal truth and the
eternal goodness that will lastlet's walk back to reality a
(27:28):
little bit more about realityand our salience landscapes so
how about we talk about the ideaof the difference between
objective and subjective reality?
Angelo (27:40):
is there such a thing as objective reality or are we all
, subjectively, just projectingour own reality through our
minds?
Like you know, renee descartes,yeah, sort of way.
Matt (27:56):
Here's the way I like to think about it.
At least, to begin to thinkabout it is say the objective
world around us is very solid inthe ways that it is like.
Imagine a piece of clay orsomething like a clay pot or
something like that it is.
You know, we're not going to goand say that it isn't clay,
(28:19):
right, but we can also shapethat reality in different ways
you know, we can.
We can move around and we can dodifferent things.
That that, while it's solid, itcan change and it is changing
all the time.
Right, but the substance ofthat reality is still the same.
(28:39):
Right, there's certain thingsthat are baked into reality.
That okay, that are not, thatare not changing things that are
that have inherently just beenthere since the beginning, right
I think the key, the key thinghere is you gotta try to
understand things that you mighttake for granted.
Angelo (28:58):
What gives you the capacity to call that clay in
the first place?
How are you identifying it?
What is clay and not clay?
Right yeah, you've got to drawa boundary around that thing
yeah and give it an identity andname it right.
Matt (29:13):
Yeah, oh, and let me round that out a bit too, there are
things that also you can't shape, also things that are in fact
around you.
Maybe you are the piece of claylike, say, there are different
levels again that that mirroreach other.
Right, so you, you can be acreative person in this world
(29:37):
and in fact are right but, thenthere are also events around you
and the, the thusness ofreality that is affecting you
and changing you know,fashioning you in different ways
, and you are able to co-createwith it.
Angelo (29:54):
Maybe the key to the idea of how to talk about
objective reality is this notionof discovery, because if
everything comes from the self,there is no such thing as
genuine discovery, because it'sall coming from you already,
right?
If you can genuinely discoversomething, there's got to be
(30:15):
something outside of you thatcan change you.
What do you think of that?
Chris (30:21):
I'm trying to think about it.
Angelo (30:23):
See here, because is it really discovery if you knew
everything the whole time?
You know, I've been thinking,because if everything comes from
you, then deep down you alreadyknew it.
Matt (30:37):
I've been thinking more and more recently about how much
we can think about ties into ahumanist perspective.
We can think about ties into ahumanist perspective right, like
say that you know that reallyis kind of that mindset of
everything is projected from thehuman mind, or all these things
like you know language, we madeup language and all this stuff,
(30:59):
but there's a substance to it,you know there's like you go
really down to it.
There's, there's a structurethere that precedes our
invention, that precedes our,our conceptions that we have
otherwise, like you said, youknow, discover, like it's.
Like einstein didn't decide eequals mc squared.
(31:21):
He discovered it right, youknow, he found it out, and you'd
have to say the same thingabout all mathematics right,
like one plus one equals two.
Angelo (31:29):
And if you wiped out the world and had to rebuild
society from the ground up andreinvent math, they might have a
different word for one and plusand two.
But guess what?
They can come to the sameconclusions because there's
consistency.
Yes, there's consistency inthis reality but, it's a
(31:50):
discovered thing.
There's genuinely somethingoutside of yourself that you can
learn and adapt to absolutelyokay, the fact I love at least
that's my position.
Matt (32:06):
Actually, I want to highlight that, yeah, like if
everything were wiped out, saythere were no humans like any,
anything like that then thatreality would still be the same
mm-hmm, and that's what we'retrying to talk about when we're
talking about objective reality.
Chris (32:24):
Yeah I've heard the idea before that if humanity was
wiped out, we had to some formof life had to evolve on the
earth again.
We would probably recreatescience books almost exactly the
same way.
It would be in a differentlanguage, right.
Angelo (32:42):
But they would be extremely similar.
You know, it's been so longsince we had our language talk.
I wonder if we touched on thisbefore, but I can't remember if
we did.
But I feel like, I feel likesomewhere in there I might have
mentioned the idea of umweltumwelt is that?
Matt (33:00):
definitely said that word yeah, so you may reiterate.
Angelo (33:04):
To reiterate, I remember you said, like two episodes ago
at least oh, okay, well toreiterate, for those of you, so
you don't have to go digging forthis word, it's a german, words
of content, it's a german wordthat mean it's basically means a
creature's entire subjectiveexperience summed up, so your
(33:27):
umwelt is all of your life, theall of the colors you see, all
of the experiences you have umpersonally like for you and your
umwelt can overlap with anotherhuman beings and there are
shared experiences.
Like you know what it's like tobe human, you know what it's
(33:48):
like to have skin and two eyesand, uh, what it's like to be
this age and what it's like tohave similar hair.
But me and a frog might havesome overlap as to what it means
to be an animal, but that frogis going to have a completely
different umwelt as far as thetype of eyes that frog has and
(34:11):
what it's able to see, and thetype of sentience that that frog
has and how things taste tothat frog it.
Matt (34:21):
It touches on this notion of the subjective experience and
how we all have such radicallydifferent takes on reality I
love that, that, that word Ilove, like words like this that
we have yet to express or, youknow, account for.
(34:42):
In english, that meanssomething we haven't quite put
our finger on, but it's likeyour unique experience, your
unique reality, but also thatwhich can overlap and relate to
another's reality who sharesyour same experience so what do
(35:03):
you guys think about gettinginto simulation theory?
Chris (35:08):
sounds good to me you know.
Matt (35:11):
Here's the question I have is whether or not we live in a
simulated reality.
What are the implications, youthink, of being in a simulation
versus a, let's say, more realreality based?
Angelo (35:28):
on all that we've, that we've talked about, you know I
think most people are fascinatedby simulation theory because it
means that there's a secret,higher level of reality that
could potentially be obtained,and it also kind of means that
the in a sense that theconsequences of this reality
(35:53):
don't mean as much.
So maybe there's a sort of likesecret escape, like, oh well,
none of this is actually real.
If you think about it deep down, there's actually another level
to reality so well, maybe,maybe it's some in our pop
culture too.
Matt (36:12):
They've presented this to us, like you know.
Think about the truman show orthe matrix, where you have this,
this, you know, artificialreality around you right and if
we look at culture, I mean Idon't want to get into society's
different things, but I mean ifyou look around, there's a lot
of artificiality around us.
(36:33):
There's a lot of things thatare not um life-giving and
sustaining and feel unnatural,you know and are very unnatural
around us.
So I think it is important to beaware of those things, whether
you believe that it's, you know,simulated, or whether we live
in a more.
What's a good word for it?
(36:54):
Uh, organic reality, right?
Chris (36:58):
the the only thing that's like really natural in this
room, right?
Our, our bodies, everythingelse that's surrounding us is
something that we engineered tofit, you know, our needs or our
wants.
And I had that same thought,too, not too long ago, that like
no wonder we think that we livein a simulation or some sort of
(37:21):
simulated reality, becauseeverything that surrounds us is
invented, like cars, modernhomes, computers.
It's also.
Angelo (37:31):
So in a sense, there's complete truth to that idea,
just not on the grandiose levelthat we think it is.
There's.
Yeah, we do live in a simulatedreality created by ourselves,
if that to some extent.
Chris (37:46):
I think that's very true.
We're extremely removed fromour primordial coming ups and
beginnings.
Matt (37:55):
I'd be curious about the psychology of different people
who believe that too, because Ithink a lot of the way that your
environment is the way that,like what it is about your
personality, your psychology,that can lead you to come to
certain conclusions.
(38:15):
You know, like what is, or whatis it, or here's here's a good
question, like what's the payoffof thinking in that way?
You know what's the payoff ofthinking in that way that we
live in a simulated reality?
Chris (38:30):
for some reason it's always most philosophers when
they write about this.
It's always justice, like you,justice.
They always bring up justice asan example.
But because we have a conceptlike justice, like mercy, and we
wonder where do theseimmaterial things come from?
Angelo (38:51):
and because that idea is so far removed from physical
reality, I think that leads usto wonder is there more to life?
So why?
Why justice?
What?
What makes you think it's aboutjustice?
Chris (39:04):
I didn't think it.
I don't think it's aboutjustice, and most people, when
they offer an example to provetheir points, just mention
happen to mention that one.
It's commonly referred to.
That doesn't mean as in so?
Angelo (39:19):
so you mean, like when someone brings up simulation
theory, there there's a sort ofmoral responsibility element
that they're shirking uh, sojustice, I could have said any
word.
Chris (39:34):
Justice was just a placeholder for the idea of
immaterial thoughts andimmaterial values.
Angelo (39:44):
Okay.
So, you're just talking aboutlike a value structure.
Yes, okay, I do think.
I mean, I do think that thereis some sense of like shirking
moral responsibility to anextent, because if all of this
isn't real, then it's just somelittle game that we're playing
(40:08):
Like.
Think about the Matrix youbrought it up earlier.
All of those people living inthe Matrix that are concerned
with their lives and concernedabout you, know what they're
eating and their problems andand all of this stuff.
Ultimately they're slaves torobots in the actual reality.
(40:29):
None of that is real.
They don't actually haveproblems in that world, in that
body.
If they were able to somehowescape from that reality, all of
those problems would just benull, they would be nothing.
So in a sense, it's kind oflike a coping mechanism to take
(40:51):
yourself outside of reality andto seek something else seek
something else.
Matt (41:04):
I think people can often throw the baby out with the bath
water in some ways too, youknow, like, like, for example,
when we talk about, when we talkabout flow state and we talk
about how you can be in the zoneand you can be, I mean that's a
state where you can be superproductive, like, let's say,
that's the you know, one qualitythat you have.
You can be really optimized inputting your energy towards
(41:25):
something right.
But then, on the flip side,people who are stuck in a job
that they have, a position thatthey have, and like I don't want
to give my, my energy, all thisenergy, and towards this other
thing that's not me, this otherthing that is not genuine to who
I am, all those things.
So in their minds, thatproductivity becomes this thing
(41:49):
towards this artificial thingthat they don't want to support,
when that's just, that's just afacility of using the energy.
Like the flow is an organicthing, it's a thing that's
actually natural and and goodand in fact you know it's.
It's.
It's an amazing state to be inright, regardless of your
(42:11):
position or whatever you're.
Chris (42:13):
You know whatever you happen to be doing right, but
it's you know, things like thatthat I think can can really
often be mixed up and mistakenfor the same thing you know,
I've come into contact with alot of people who feel like
their jobs, like their nine tofive, isn't real, like that's
not who they are, that's not whothey're meant to be, and so I
(42:37):
don't know.
I think you know people need tofind a way to incorporate a
higher reality into their lives.
Angelo (42:44):
I mean it's, it's probably touching on a mechanism
that's that has utility, rightso?
Chris (42:51):
okay, if you.
Angelo (42:53):
If you are able to step outside of something and break
your frame and look at it from ahigher perspective, say, you
know you are in some sort ofmonotonous job and you're,
you're kind of caught up in thepattern and the ritual and and
you need to break out of itbecause you've just you're bored
(43:15):
to death or you just don't feellike you're headed in the right
direction.
If you're able to take a stepoutside of that and it goes back
to the imaginal right andyou're able to imagine this
situation and and look at it andhow you can change it, you're,
you're sort of um, in a sensestepping outside of reality and
(43:37):
taking a higher perspective.
I think that simulation theoryis that same mechanism in the
brain.
They're kind of trying to takeeverything we know about reality
and step outside of it and tryto look at it from a higher
perspective.
Because of that, there's thissense of like oh, I have better
(43:58):
knowledge of what's going on, Ihave this better position that I
can understand the world from.
But it's almost a false senseof superiority.
Matt (44:11):
Well, it's like you have to wash your mind too when
you're in that perspective.
Wash your mind too when you'rein that perspective, like, say,
you've been so in this, in thisartificial reality, and so you
can be so cynical and you can beso, you know, skeptical and
skepticism, like doses ofskepticism, are a good or a good
(44:33):
thing for sure.
But then you, when you get outof it and you can be so critical
of that reality and you can beso like, oh, I'm a master of
this route, but there's no heartto it you know, there's no,
there's no soul, there's noredemptive quality in that
perspective, right, like youjust want to have the
(44:55):
psychological feeling that youknow the whole world and that
you are superior in yourknowledge capacity.
Right, and it's like you know.
Going back to the archetypes,it's like the magician trying to
be on the throne of thesovereign when it's really not
its place right, it's.
Angelo (45:12):
It's a power motivation, the, the will to power, as
Nietzsche would say.
Chris (45:26):
Did either of you guys read or watch?
Angelo (45:27):
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
I've definitely watched themovie.
I want to say I read the book,but I don't know if I finished
it.
Oh, it's so good, it's so good.
Matt (45:37):
So if you don't remember, if you haven't watched the movie
, it is really funny.
The.
Chris (45:40):
Earth is like a simulated , like a created thing by some
alien race, because we'reactually a supercomputer that is
trying to compute the question.
We already know the answer.
Right, the answer, he's famousfor it.
The answer is 42.
But we don't know what thequestion.
We already know the answer,right, the answer he's famous
for.
The answer is 42, but we don'tknow what the question is.
(46:01):
And then, later on in theseries, we learn that the
question and the answer cannotoccupy the same reality at the
same time.
So right at the last minute,right when earth is about to
compute its question, the grandquestion, it gets destroyed and
made to make room for like aspace super highway that they
(46:23):
don't even really need.
And it's so stupid bureaucracyit's hilarious, oh man but, um,
yeah, I mean, you know, createdthings and there was a point I
was about to make and I lost itas I was telling the story.
But what's the end of our?
What's the telos of oursimulated reality?
Angelo (46:48):
I think we've kind of touched on this idea before, but
I do think it has something todo with collective identity and
the impulse to love, right,that's kind of what everyone
secretly knows but doesn't sayout loud.
(47:09):
We're all motivated into adeeper form of connection, and
when I use the word love, Idon't mean sentimental, oh, oh.
I just really really have astrong emotion for a person.
Love is, uh is not an emotionin this context.
Love is.
(47:29):
Love is a word to describe the,the deepest connection.
Um, it's, it's almost.
It's interesting because it'salmost the idea of, uh, unity
and diversity coexisting at thesame time.
Wow, yeah, so you, in order tolove someone, you have to be
(47:57):
different from them, you have tobe separated in order to have
that bond.
So there's a uniting principlebetween you, but there needs to
be more than one.
I like that idea.
Chris (48:12):
I really do, that's great , that's brilliant.
Matt (48:14):
Like you have to cross a distance in order to meet that
person, otherwise it's otherwise.
I mean, how easy is that foreverybody?
You just love everyone, that'sjust yeah.
Chris (48:26):
Perfectly like you, otherwise we're just some weird
hive mind and we all look andsay I think and say the same
thing, yeah then it's just, thenit's just.
Angelo (48:36):
Unity and separation is an illusion.
But there's no love there, it'sjust.
You just are.
Love necessarily needsdiversity.
Chris (48:47):
That's powerful.
Angelo (48:52):
I love it.
Yeah, love it.
I like this idea of insight.
So we were talking aboutdiscovery before, and you kind
of brought up the flow stateeven too, and we're kind of
(49:14):
dancing around this topic ofinsight when it comes to reality
.
We're kind of dancing aroundthis topic of insight with with
when it comes to reality.
I do think that insight is is akey component in understanding
that you are not the center ofthe universe.
There's something about thisreality that you're part of,
(49:38):
like a grand narrative, and whenyou and when you have an
insight, it has something to dowith relevance that I was
talking about earlier, with thisrelevance realization where you
let me think how to phrase itwhen, whenever you have an
(50:04):
insight, it's aligning youcloser to your telos in a sense.
That's what the insight is, isyou feel like you're closer to a
pattern of whatever that deepermotivation is, and that's
genuine discovery.
You're like, oh yeah, I'm onthe right path or there's some
(50:28):
truth here.
That's that insight.
Matt (50:32):
It's a compass and something lights up within you,
and I've been thinking a lotrecently about communication
like wise communication, youknow, and the speech as a
junction between the mind andthe heart.
(50:54):
Even think about how yourthroat, your mouth, is
equidistant from your heart andyour mind.
You know it's like being able togo deep and think about wells
within your mind and you'rebeing able to go down.
In that capacity, you're beingable to dive deep down and
that's where the insights are.
(51:15):
Where the insights are, youknow, the further down you're
able to hold your breath and godown into the depths and find
that insight, bring it up andbring it through you in your
mind.
You realize it and to be ableto communication, to communicate
it, but also it's salient,you're passionate about it.
You can communicate it withgusto, you know, and that's what
(51:37):
makes people feel it, you know,and it becomes reflected in the
places that they come from.
You can affect somebody intheir mind, but also change
their hearts at the same time Iwant to say we, if you know that
insight.
Angelo (51:52):
If you notice, we use higher and lower a lot in our
analogies yeah, and I'm a lot ofpeople do, like there's
something to that.
I almost want to do a wholeepisode like altitude or
something oh, please, but yeahbut think about it like when you
say you're reaching down intosomething lower, what?
(52:14):
what exactly are you talkingabout?
Or when we say we're, we'regetting higher consciousness,
what's higher about it?
Right, and because there'slower isn't necessarily negative
, like sometimes we associate itwith negative, but in the
context that you used it there'sa sense of I'm reaching down
(52:35):
into.
It's almost like some somethingprimordial, right?
yeah, oh, I was it's got to be Iwant to say there's, there's
like it's tied to something,like um instinct or subconscious
, like even calling itsubconscious.
It's beneath consciousness,it's something to do with, it's
(52:59):
built into your body, almost,and that's why the heart is
lower than the mind,metaphorically.
The heart is tied closer toyour primordial instincts.
Your emotions, your, yourconnection to mother earth is
down, yeah, and when you'retalking about getting something
(53:20):
higher, you're talking aboutlike order, right, sacred order,
something maybe epistemological, the knowledge or time or
something above that gives you ahigher perspective of what's
going on.
So the mind, necessarily, ishigher.
Matt (53:40):
Yeah.
Angelo (53:42):
And they meet in the middle.
There's this conjoining of thehigher and the lower.
Matt (53:47):
The confluence.
Think about if we in ourselvesare the confluence.
Another example I think of islike the roots, you nailed it
with the primordial, theearthiness, you know, like
reaching your hand down into itand gripping something that you
have to.
You know you have to dig to getto it.
(54:11):
You know it's in the soil, it's, you know it's like a thing
that you unearth right and thenthe higher right, that's like
what's another good word.
Like satori, you know, like that, you know that brilliant
insight, that brilliant you know, those ideas, that kind of
(54:32):
light you up, you know, andthink about like the sun being
above, right the sun, like thelight coming above, yeah, that's
, I think that's it like thelike the lower is, like you're
reaching down into the dark.
You know, reaching down intothe, into the darkness, where
that's the void the void.
Yeah, that's further away fromthe light, and then you have the
(54:55):
light above and then, if youthink about a tree.
The tree both reaches down intothe ground with its roots, but
it also reaches up for thesunlight yeah, that's why trees
are absolutely great metaphorsthere's in.
Angelo (55:13):
There's something to the structure of reality.
When you talk about a tree likeI don't know, insights pop off
for some reason, but it's hardto like, really nail it down and
get a grip because it's likethe symbol is there.
So I think what we're somewe're dancing around.
Chris (55:28):
A key piece that we're missing is that?
Yeah, sure, if, if we aremetaphorically right that the
tree in this example, yeah, Ithink our roots are reaching
down into the void, but it's notjust the void that's down there
.
As we plunge down into theearth, we're unearthing some
part of ourselves.
(55:51):
So it's not just like, oh, we'rereaching into this dark void to
pull something that'scompletely unknown we're
discovering about ourselvesbecause physically and literally
, you are everything else so youhave to have this like right
right understanding of ourselfand trying to grasp the higher
values and the higher spiritualunderstandings into a middling
(56:17):
reality, right that allows us toknow ourselves and to reach up
into the heavens at the sametime and be grounded I rooted, I
see this idea of a, the shapeof a triangle, we, we, we touch
on a lot of similar topicsbecause we totally talked about
(56:37):
the triangle before as well.
Angelo (56:39):
But there's like, at the bottom, the base, there's
separation, right, the twopoints at the bottom of the
triangle, and as you move upthere's unity and I like to
think the up direction is movingtowards something like gestalt,
moving towards like commonidentity and form, and as you go
(57:03):
down there's more idiosyncrasyand separation and subjective
things and they can, they canwork together, hand in hand, but
when?
But when you cut one off fromthe other.
If you have gestalt without theI guess I'll just call them the
(57:28):
idiosyncrasies, thespecificities you've got a
disembodied idea.
It's worthless.
Matt (57:36):
Oh yeah.
Angelo (57:37):
And when you have all of these things without the
gestalt, there's no unityamongst them.
Matt (57:41):
You've just got dust you know, if there isn't already,
I'm a thing called like the lawof variance.
Um, I think there should be,like, if you have a like whole
body of, you know, fish like,say, fish are the summit of that
triangle.
But then, beneath all of that,and you know, going back to
(58:02):
diversity of all these differenttypes of fish, right with we
got sharks, we got whales, we'vegot goldfish, we've got we've
got all these different kinds offish, and then we've got
cephalopods, we've got, you know, octopus, we've got jellyfish,
right, and then what are theylike?
How are they related, you know,are they within the same?
Angelo (58:24):
I mean, then that's like , an even higher triangle, just
all sea life but the fact thatyou're able to mentally link all
of them together and call themfish, giving them a higher
identity, that ties them alltogether.
There's something to thatnotion.
(58:45):
Yeah, I think that's whatreality is about.
Is this, this bringing togetherof of identities?
I really do.
I really think that's whatwe're aiming towards.
I really think that ourcapacity to look at all of these
separate things and and sort ofunite them and recognize their
(59:10):
distinct properties at the sametime that's, that's the magic
right there yep, what's like,what's common, and then then
what's distinct, and lovingthrough the distinction.
Wow, god, you just made thatmake sense, wow wow, I mean I'm
(59:33):
having the same insight on thespot as you and like this is I'm
just in the flow state rightnow it's brilliant, it's
absolutely brilliant I'm surethere's some people listening.
It's like what the hell are youtalking about?
If you get it, you get it, mancome on you gotta get a follow
(59:57):
with it, you guys.
Yeah, I, I'm definitely, I Icome from like, uh, I have a
love for the the empirical, uh,observation side of reality.
Like I think there's no,there's no real way to get a
(01:00:22):
truly objective perspective.
You're always going to see itthrough a human lens, through
your lens, through your umwelt,like there's no way for you to
step outside of that.
Even when you think that you'retalking about something
objective, it's only objectivelyhuman.
Like the idea that the Earthgoes around the sun, you might
(01:00:47):
say, well, that might be like anobjective fact that we can
discover.
But understanding around is ahuman thing, understanding
around is a human thing.
Understanding, like Earth as aplanet.
You're thinking of somethingmoving in time, the fourth
dimension, moving through threedimensional space.
(01:01:10):
Like all of that has to befunneled through your empirical
observation, through yourphenomenological experience.
Matt (01:01:18):
Yes, yes, and.
Angelo (01:01:23):
There's no outside of it .
Matt (01:01:27):
Like what you said about love too, and loving through
diversity and loving throughcrossing that distance from
where you are to the point oflove, and there's a traveling,
there's you moving towards itand say it moving towards you
(01:01:52):
too?
And say if you're doing thatwith objective reality, if
you're doing that with truth, ifyou're doing that with
objective reality, if you'redoing that with truth, if you're
(01:02:14):
doing that with the way thatthe world is and you all in the
same place at this.
Chris (01:02:19):
At the same time, you know that there's that there's
like a distance to be crossed Ithink, in the similar way, that
there's kind of like a perennialscience, right, um, and
perennial in you know, in caseyou don't know, like, like just
kind of means something thatkeeps reappearing year after
(01:02:40):
year.
Right, you have perennialflowers it's really just a
different word for eternal butyou have like a perennial
science, but you also have likea perennial reality, a perennial
spiritual reality that you cankeep falling back to, right,
(01:03:01):
something that's beyond language, something that's, um, beyond
our, the paradigm through whichwe see the world.
Like, like, ever since wediscovered science, right, and
we keep learning, particularlyabout astronomy.
Like, we learned that the earthis round and not flat, and
(01:03:23):
learned that we go around thesun, not vice versa.
Those were paradigm breakingdiscoveries when they came
around.
Maybe we're kind of justwaiting for the next one, but
even if we do discover the nextone, there's still going to be a
value system that we can fallback on.
Like, don't take things forgranted.
Love people, just like youwould love yourself.
Angelo (01:03:47):
It's funny because we discovered that you know the
earth goes around the sun andthat's why you see the sun move
in the sky the way it does, butwe still call it a sunrise.
We still experience it as thesun going up, and it's hard,
even knowing that we areactually the ones moving,
(01:04:12):
relatively speaking.
It's hard to break that frame.
You still, in the back of yourmind, view the sun is moving
yeah, it's, and you're made thatway and that that's more
relevant to you almost than theidea that the earth moves around
the sun.
Because to what extent do youuse that information?
(01:04:35):
You pay attention to theseasons and they affect you
personally in your life.
You know you prepare for, um,the winter coming and and you
almost have to treat reality ona local level as if the sun is
rising, rather than treatreality as the earth going
(01:04:58):
around the sun.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, and I get the idea, likeyou know, believing as the earth
going around the sun.
Matt (01:04:59):
Does that make sense?
Yeah?
Angelo (01:05:00):
And I get the idea, like you know, believing that the
earth going around the sun is,there's a utility in it on a
certain level.
Right, if you're trying to makebetter scientific predictions
on a grander scale, definitelygo with heliocentrism what's
(01:05:22):
relative to us, and like what wecan, what we can measure, and
you know it's.
Matt (01:05:28):
It's funny.
Um, there's this.
There's this clip from this showuh, young sheldon, like sheldon
from the big bang theory rightthere's this one moment where
he's talking with his, his mom,and she's, you know, kind of in
this nihilistic type mindset,right, and you know he's very
scientific, he's very, you know,very petty right.
(01:05:51):
But what he says, did you did,you know?
Um, basically something like ifgravity was a little bit off
either way, if it was a littlebit stronger or just the tiniest
fraction less powerful than thewhole universe would fall apart
.
You know, it's exactly thedegree that it needs to be.
(01:06:11):
You know, we don't even thinkabout this, we just we just wake
up and it's, you know, the nextright.
But all of these things thathave to go right, that go right
like clockwork every single day,that you know we have miracles
all around us, we're lucky.
Chris (01:06:33):
We are lucky beyond imagination.
Matt (01:06:36):
Stupendous.
Chris (01:06:37):
Like how, Like what even because it's a simulation.
Yeah, right, yeah.
Angelo (01:06:46):
I mean.
Matt (01:06:48):
I mean, it's all fake?
Oh no, stupendously,stupendously well dialed into
the fact that we can't evenreally comprehend how Our minds
can go so far as what to adegree.
(01:07:09):
I think Like trying to measureit right, but it's the how
question that we can't wrap ourminds around.
Chris (01:07:16):
You know, yeah, I'm going to do the thing that I usually
do, which is offer a definitionfor reality.
Okay, all right, let's do it.
Reality is a perennial patternof the structural substrate,
lending one a salient landscapeto consciousness.
Matt (01:07:36):
Wow.
Chris (01:07:36):
Whoa, I don't know.
I think it works.
Angelo (01:07:39):
I might have to refine it a little bit Wow, wow, I
don't know, I think it works.
I might have to refine it alittle bit, sure, but it sounded
pretty good to me.
Thanks, and on that note, Ithink let's wrap this one up All
right.
Thank you all for joining us.
Thank you, reality was probablyone of our most in-depth
discussions, yet we had a lot offun doing it and if you stuck
(01:08:02):
around this long, thank you somuch for hanging out with us.
Thank you, and we hope to seeyou next time.
Chris (01:08:09):
It's been real, all right Peace.
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