March 5, 2025 • 58 mins
Dive deep into the exploration of truth as we unravel its multi-dimensional nature in our latest podcast episode. We engage in thought-provoking discussions, examining how truth shapes our knowledge landscape and informs our understanding of the world. Listeners will journey from observable facts to the deeper layers of metaphorical truths embedded in our cultural narratives, shedding light on how these elements intertwine.
We also take an insightful look at the Dunning-Kruger effect, revealing how confidence in our knowledge can sometimes blind us to the vast complexities beneath. Through this lens, we discuss wisdom as a synthesis of knowledge and experience—a guiding force that shapes our perceptions and interactions in meaningful ways.
As we discuss the importance of collective wisdom, listeners will gain insight into how histories and narratives shape cultural understanding, influencing contemporary beliefs. The episode encourages a culture of humility and self-awareness in truth-seeking, allowing for a richer understanding of our thoughts and beliefs. The path to truth is not just about accumulating knowledge; it’s about the willingness to confront uncomfortable realities and learning from diverse perspectives.
Join us for this engaging exploration of truth and its diverse implications, and discover how aligning ourselves with a spirit of truth can lead to profound transformations. Listen in, and don't forget to like, share, and subscribe to stay connected as we navigate these essential conversations together!
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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 (00:06):
I'm Chris Vigil
Matt (00:07):
and I'm Matt Maes.
Angelo (00:09):
Today we are going to be talking about the third of the
three transcendental values,which is truth.
So before we've done a podcaston beauty and we also did one on
goodness, so this is the lastof the big three.
So we always like to start offwith at least trying to get a
(00:30):
sense of what we're talkingabout and maybe at least some
sort of loose definition.
So, uh, chris, why don't youkick us off?
What?
Chris (00:41):
okay, see, usually we wait to the end of the podcast
to do this.
I mean, I mean not necessarilysomething.
Angelo (00:49):
Usually we at least try to define our terms a little bit
, sure?
Matt (00:53):
um, you got a notepad man, thank you, I know it's so
professional you kind ofblindsided me with the whole
transcendental value thing.
Chris (01:01):
I didn't know that's what we were calling them, but I
like that.
It's good.
It's transcendental value, so Ithought truth, being one of the
three driving forces upon humanconsciousness, is a spirit of
being impressed unto realitythrough the mind a spirit of
(01:21):
being impressed unto reality, oron say unto reality through the
mind.
So, truth, right.
We like to think of truth asthis thing that's out there,
right, I think that was a sayingin the 90s, right, about aliens
.
The truth is out there, but, um, it's something that stems from
(01:42):
us, kind of like beauty.
Right, beauty is the elementwithin us that flows forth and
that enacts upon our minds.
I don't think truth is likethis thing that we can find and
that we can hold.
We can't even hold it in ourmind, but it's a spirit of being
that drives us forwardlythrough life.
Angelo (02:02):
That's interesting that drives us forwardly through life
.
That's interesting, so let mechew on that.
For a second Spirit of being.
I guess I usually associatetruth more with a spirit of
knowing, or rather more like theultimate goal of knowing.
(02:27):
Like if you A lot of times, thethree transcendental values I
kind of think of as, um, thegoals of their respective
domains.
So truth would be in theepistemological domain, right,
okay, yeah, you, there arethings you can know, and
ultimately, the thing that youwould like to know is the truth.
(02:48):
That's kind of the goal of whatthe pursuit of knowledge is is
to know the fullness of whatthings actually are.
And you can pursue truthwithout knowing what the truth
is.
Right, it's like this movingtarget that you sort of get
(03:08):
better at honing in on.
And the same kind of goes withgoodness.
Right, we were talking aboutgoodness as the goodness domain
is that of teleology or action.
Right, the goal of yourbehavior should be to achieve
the ultimate good, and beauty isa little.
(03:30):
That was the one that was alittle trickier, because beauty,
I would say, is in the domainof ontology, which is being,
which beauty?
The definition there wassomewhat tricky, but I think we
came up with something akin tolike.
Beauty is the hidden order thateverything strives to be
(03:59):
towards.
It's somewhat associated withlife.
A lot of things that arebeautiful we associate with life
, if you remember.
Chris (04:05):
The flourish.
Angelo (04:07):
Yes, yeah, so for something to be fully alive and
fully present and fully being isto be fully beautiful.
Matt (04:15):
So, like ontology, beauty, epistemology, truth, teleology,
goodness At least that's how Ilike to try and frame it yeah
and I think truth can be elusivein a similar sense as beauty as
well, because while there,there's truth in all things and
(04:41):
everything also has to do withtruth, and you and you could
even say that when we're talkingabout truth, we're talking
about, I should say, when we'retalking about any given subject,
we're really striving for truth.
That's really the centralsubject of what we're talking
about.
Angelo (04:58):
Why else would we?
Matt (05:00):
be talking about it Because we're trying to get to
it, yeah, to a true knowingsense of things.
Right, and it's an onionskinning as well it's like we
could say the truth is not justthis one point here.
There can be a point wherethere is truth, but you have to
(05:20):
be it's, it's multi-dimensional.
I mean, you have to be able tosee all these different facets
to really try and apprehendtruth.
And I think you really got itthat that it's something that
eludes our grasp.
We could say that we, we borrowtruth, we're speaking truth,
we're imparting truth.
It's, it's something that'scoming through us, but it's
(05:41):
something that's coming throughus, but it's something that we,
we strive for.
At the same time, we never wecan never get our minds beyond
truth.
There's nothing right that wecan like aim past or beyond
what's actually true right youcould.
Angelo (05:57):
You could say that you never come to fully know truth,
right, because if you did knowthe full truth, you would be
omniscient, and so truth is, um,something we're always growing
towards, and I want to press youon something a little bit.
You mentioned that you said yousee a little bit of truth in
(06:17):
everything, right?
What do you mean by truth whenyou say that?
Like, how?
How is truth within everything?
Do you mean in the sense thateverything?
Chris (06:32):
has a true nature.
Angelo (06:34):
Do you mean that there's something that you can fully
know about something there's?
Matt (06:38):
a level, because, because we're talking about truth, we're
talking about not only thingsthat are factual, but things,
but the way that things areinterconnected and wisdom and
there's so much.
I mean all these things aretied up within this truth, right
, Right, right.
So if you're truly seekingtruth, then you are truly trying
(07:02):
to investigate to the best ofyour ability all these different
things, which means you mayhave to go way over in this
direction and see things thatyou couldn't possibly see just
from this vantage point overhere, you may have to go all the
way over here to see this point.
And wonderful thing about beingable to communicate with people
from different perspectives andfrom different backgrounds is
(07:24):
you don't have to spend all thattime going all the way over
here and all the way over hereand all the way over here, when
we can simply communicateamongst each other and pass
information much, much fasterthan us having to go ourselves
to all those different places.
Right?
So then you can see truth asthis multi-faceted,
(07:45):
multi-dimensional thing and nothave to go through all the you
know, slings and arrows thatmaybe someone else went to.
But you have to be able toconnect through empathy, to be
able to, you know, put yourselfin their shoes, so to speak.
And then that I mean reallyloving truth, really loving the
(08:06):
pursuit of truth.
Even though you may know thatyou may never fully know truth,
you still love as much of it asyou can experience, as much of
it can be imparted through youso there's an element of uh
aligning your passions with thepursuit of knowledge and not
just pursuing it from a rationalbasis Loving it for itself.
Angelo (08:27):
yeah, I mean, maybe let's talk about different types
of truth, right?
Because you mentioned, there'sfactual truth and that's the
obvious one that everybody knows.
Hey, this is a thing thatactually happened, or this is
something that it's like anunchanging pattern across time.
Right, that is reliant, you canrely on it.
(08:49):
So that's kind of what scienceis ultimately based on.
You want to know this type oftruth, this type of truth that
if I look at it and someone elselooks at it, they're going to
get the same answer.
One plus one always equals two,no matter who you are, no
matter what species you areAlthough I don't know another
(09:13):
species that can do mathematicsbut I mean, hey, you never know,
we've got Mac the Buffalo overhere just doing calculus working
at NASA?
Matt (09:24):
I don't know maybe chimpanzees can do basic
addition.
I don't know.
You might be able to say that Iwould put it past them honestly
.
Angelo (09:32):
I don't know too much about chimpanzee intelligence,
not a monkey expert.
Chris (09:37):
So you don't have any biological scientific facts to
back up your understanding, Iguess, or your knowledge.
Angelo (09:47):
Well, I mean, I guess, not, I don't mean that.
Chris (09:50):
Yeah, like kind of like, thanks for calling me out, Chris
, Like yeah, I don't have factsto back up, but facts matter.
So I just mean, like you know,talking about factual truths,
right?
So there's scientific truthsthat we can potentially look up
on the internet, right?
Angelo (10:10):
Well, I would even go as far as to say the scientific
truths are ones that you canempirically observe for yourself
.
I can prove well, I can atleast demonstrate to myself the
basic addition sure, yeah, youcan demonstrate that to yourself
too.
Chris (10:29):
And if we get into oh, was it euclid who had like the
proofs right.
You can do some sort of weirdreason, logical thing where you
can prove that one plus one isin fact two.
Angelo (10:43):
I don't know about Euclid, but Well, that's
Euclidean geometry.
Chris (10:49):
Maybe you're right.
Angelo (10:50):
I think Euclidean I was thinking more Aristotle, with
axioms like the law of identityA does not equal or A always
equals A, and the law ofnon-contradiction is A does not
equal B, which are justfundamental axioms of knowledge,
and the law ofnon-contradiction is A does not
equal B, which are justfundamental axioms of knowledge
that you have to agree on inorder for anything to work at
(11:12):
all.
Okay so now we're getting intoepistemology 101, but before we
venture too far into that domain, this is just like one type of
truth that we're talking abouthere this is like let's just
call it factual truth, right?
Chris (11:31):
the type of truth that is empirically observed well, you
can empirically observescientific things, like you can
replicate experiments,potentially right right so you
got math down, we've got sciencedown, but well, it's, it's also
history, right, I can observe afact.
Angelo (11:52):
I can say this happened at this time at this place and
document it.
Chris (11:56):
You okay, and that's a type of truth chronological,
like history as a form ofchronological events.
I think that's true History astrying to come to terms with
humanity as a whole.
It's a little different, likewhat drove the.
Angelo (12:16):
Second World War.
Well, sure, you have your isand then you have your ought,
and I forget who said it.
But you can't get an ought froman is right.
So the factual truth deals withthe is domain, but there's also
the ought domain, and so ifyou're trying to get a grasp on
like history long term, you'relooking at motivations and which
(12:40):
direction are they heading.
Is it progress?
Well, how do you know if it'sprogress unless you have an
ought?
What are they aiming towards?
What are you aiming towards?
What are you judging this otherculture based on what values
and value structures?
Matt (12:54):
are we talking about here?
I love that you went there too,because we're talking in terms
of what different people'sstandards of truth might be.
Like say, you say the people whoare um are in the.
This is the tried and true,this is the way we've always
done it.
This is very you know to themvery solid and very defined and
very like um, you know, verydense, right, but you may have
(13:19):
someone who can see past all ofthat or see a different way.
Those are the innovators peoplewho are, who are able to see
what may need improvement or waywhere some ways may have gone
astray, completely right, butthey in not going down this,
this path, they are.
They may look crazy.
(13:40):
So the people who are very intotheir insurance is the tried and
true, this is the way it'salways been, and and and all
that stuff.
And then, by the standards ofthe tried and true, people like
well, you don't know how allthis, all this works.
How did you and this persontruly it may not have immersed
themselves in all of the?
You know all the lore that wentinto the building up of this
(14:04):
thing, but at the same time,it's like that doesn't really
matter so much, because you seethe bigger picture, you see a
way that it could have gone in acompletely different direction,
that none of that would havebeen relevant.
Right, that's a key word rightthere.
Relevant, yeah, what's relevantlike, what's true, and then
what's the point?
Right, being able to identifythe point, that's a high level
(14:25):
skill.
Angelo (14:25):
Everything always comes back to the telos, right?
It's about your aim, and what'srelevant to your goal matters,
okay.
So I think truth in the contextof what's relevant to you
brings you closer to your goal.
(14:46):
That's what you're trying tocall truth, and that that is
where you can kind of see asubjective element of truth,
where it kind of variesdepending on different cultures
and different timelines andhistories and groups of people,
because they've all got thesedifferent aims that they're
(15:06):
headed towards, and so truthlooks completely different to
someone who's aiming towards,you know, a nationalistic
unifying of the country versussomeone who's aiming towards,
you know, reviving their culturethat's been discriminated
against, or a Globalist economy.
(15:27):
There they're all looking atdifferent aspects, and things
that are bad for one guy Seemgood for another guy.
Um, and to call those types ofthings true is tricky, and
that's why a lot of people kindof dismiss truth as being
(15:51):
entirely subjective, becauseit's kind of like Well, I think
the biggest reason too isbecause it doesn't submit to our
opinions.
Matt (16:01):
We have to submit to it.
Angelo (16:03):
Oh, there you go.
That's probably the difference.
Matt (16:07):
Yeah, and we can hardly talk about that without talking
about the.
You know, if you guys arefamiliar with the Dunning-Kruger
effect, where you know I lovethe way this is referred to like
you learn a little bit and thenyou're up here at basically
Mount Stupid and you have to godown and learn some more before
you realize like oh, how muchthere is to know actually.
(16:30):
And then as you learn and youlearn, and you learn and you
learn, then you can actuallyascend towards that point of
actually you actually knowsomething.
You actually you know you'veactually got a fair amount of
expertise, right yeah, you'veactually got a fair amount of
expertise, right yeah.
So for those of you who don't,know the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Angelo (16:46):
It's sort of like a bell curve of knowledge versus your
confidence in a topic.
So when you start off and learna little bit about a topic,
your confidence is actually veryhigh oftentimes and you think,
just because you did a fewGoogle searches and looked at
some of the first links onsomething, that you know what
you're talking about because youmade the minimal effort of
(17:08):
research.
And it's popular online toaccuse your opponent of the
Dunning-Kruger effect.
Matt (17:14):
If you're trying to insult their intelligence.
Chris (17:16):
Yes, Very well put Thank you.
Matt (17:20):
Thank you for breaking that down.
Chris (17:21):
It's funny because I googled truth right before I
came here.
Dunning-kr.
Very well put, thank you.
Thank you for breaking thatdown.
It's funny because I Googledtruth right before I came here.
Angelo (17:24):
Yeah, All it takes is a Google search.
Matt (17:31):
This is the frustrating paradox that comes with that,
too, is that the people wholearn more and submit to that
humility and the ones whoactually know what they're
talking about are actually lessboth less less bold than the
ones who actually are theseboisterous think they learn a
(17:53):
little, but they actually don'tknow what they're talking about.
And they're loud, right right.
It's like the wise people needto be louder and the people who
are more bold need to be morequiet.
And then I know, I know itdrives me crazy.
Chris (18:06):
It absolutely drives me crazy so a few things that you
said.
Like you know, we strivetowards truth and we have to
submit to truth.
Now, maybe I'm biased, but onjust hearing is my definition of
truth, which is that it's adriving force on the mind right
and it's a state of being,because that's what I mean.
(18:27):
So I, I have a, I have a talentfor talking to people about
their issues.
Um, that's why I got intopsychology when I was in college
, wanted to be a counselor.
Um, because when you have thatstate of being, that state of
truthful being, you can takepeople's personal, like private
truths, like their experience ofreality, and you can
(18:50):
transmutate that into wisdom soI would say a specialized subset
of knowledge and experiencethat permits one to realize in
both senses of the word.
both becoming aware and makingreal Wisdom is about realizing
(19:12):
meaning in life.
Angelo (19:14):
Realizing meaning that was beautiful Wow so wisdom is a
type of truth, would you say.
I would say wisdom is theservant of truth okay, so wisdom
is a like wisdom is more on thevalue side than the, than the
(19:35):
factual side, right.
What do you mean we were kindof talking about?
Yeah, so of truth.
Matt (19:41):
Wisdom is an output.
Chris (19:43):
Right, I am the system, wisdom is the output, and if I
have the spirit of truth, I cantake experience and other
people's truth and give themwisdom.
Matt (19:56):
Okay, it's like it's a synthesized form of
understanding.
Chris (20:02):
Sure yeah.
Matt (20:03):
Like wisdom is the synthesis.
Chris (20:05):
And you know what it takes.
It takes a lot of listening anda lot less.
Oh yeah.
So I say, bring on theboisterous, unwise people and I
will give them what I can it canbe.
Matt (20:19):
Well, I'll tell you one thing.
That can be frustrating is whenpeople are so completely heels
dug in their ways of thinkingthat change is an existential
crisis for people who have sosold into ideas that are not
(20:40):
founded in understanding and notfounded in truth, but they rely
on those things.
I like it's a it's.
It's a death to them yeah breakthat down and allow that truth
to come in right.
So they have these, these denseblockages.
So you could, you can bespeaking truth to them and they
(21:05):
could just well, what was it?
I think it was jesus who hadthe parable about the different
types of soil.
Like you have the rocky soilyou have the, the fertile soil,
you have have this dense soil.
It's a.
It's a matter of the people'sright it was.
Angelo (21:20):
That was the parable of the sower and the seeds so it's
hard ground, the seed can't takeroot.
Matt (21:26):
Exactly it's like if you have the soil that is not going
to accept that seed.
How are they going to have thatunderstanding?
How is your soil going to gointo the?
How are your seeds going to gointo the soil?
I?
Angelo (21:44):
think you have your you.
That's where the wisdom aspectcomes in.
Your heart has to be alignedwith, like a desire for the, the
truth, you.
You have to not just be wantingto know just for the sake of
being right.
You have to want to know, toalign yourself with something
greater than yourself, and youhave to be willing to admit that
(22:05):
you're wrong and changingyourself right.
Chris (22:08):
So, so don't forget that spirit.
The spirit of truth is not theonly spirit that we can possess
right.
We can have the spirit ofbeauty, spirit of goodness, and
with the spirit of truth, youdon't get to choose what kind of
soil you encounter out in thereal world.
And I'll give you a perfectexample of exactly the kind of
person you're talking about.
I encountered this I I, you know, I don't mean any offense, but
(22:33):
he was kind of a weird guy.
He was really, um, I guess heused to work for ibm.
He worked with computers andwith mathematics and I just
stood there and I listened tohim talk about his insights on
mathematics and how our quantumtheory of physics is completely
incorrect and Tesla had it right, and I just, you know, mostly
(22:56):
listened and I gave him a littlebit of feedback every now and
then.
You know, physics is not myspecialty at all, but when we
talk about, you know, he was anatural philosopher and we
talked about, like, the humanbody and human consciousness and
the ether and in all thesedifferent subjects, um, and at
the end of the, at the end of itall, I don't know if I had
anything to offer him.
(23:17):
But he thanked me for being ayoung, smart person and I think
that meant a lot to him.
Angelo (23:23):
Some people just want you to listen a bit, yeah
exactly there's a well, we and Iforget which podcast it was,
but we talked about dialogue andthe value of that.
We've probably talked aboutevery podcast but the value, the
value of just.
You know you put your ideas outthere and you're kind of want
inviting other people to testyour ideas and go up against
(23:46):
your ideas.
Sometimes it's not the resultsyou like and sometimes you're
going to have to try and defendyour idea, but there's a,
there's a wrestling going onthere, but there's also a mutual
um.
It's like we're to to turn aphrase.
It's like we're to turn aphrase.
It's like we're raising eachother's children, like if you
(24:09):
think of your thoughts and yourbeliefs as your, your children
takes a village right, we're all, we're all working together and
either you nurture these, thesethoughts, or you have to say,
hey, this thing is not alignedwith what's right, it's not true
, it's not.
Matt (24:31):
And that's really what truth is about right.
Angelo (24:34):
You're all aiming towards that same thing.
Chris (24:36):
This is why it's so valuable to me to have a spirit
of truth rather than a grandknowledge of the universe.
You know, you can have a grandknowledge of the universe and
that's great, but that's not thetruth.
Angelo (24:48):
Oh that's not so.
There's knowledge and thenthere's wisdom, right, sure,
yeah, so you can have all theknowledge.
Matt (24:55):
But if you don't have the wisdom that goes with it, it
means nothing but where?
Where are you going with?
Chris (25:01):
that uh just just about there.
I uh look at you guys finishing.
I was thinking about thisneoplatonic friendship
witnessing it.
Angelo (25:22):
I was, um, I was thinking about Dr Manhattan.
He's a character from Watchmen.
For those of you who don't know, he's basically just God,
because his power is being ableto reconfigure matter on the
particulate level, but he alsohas some level of omniscience,
(25:45):
at least on a scientific level.
So he, he's kind of like thematerialist wet dream of like I
know everything and canreconfigure everything and
ultimate physics superhero up tothe point where he can't even
die.
He can just.
And ultimate physics superheroup to the point where he can't
(26:07):
even die.
He can just put himself backtogether.
He is pretty freaking cool he'sunkillable that's kind of the
point.
There's no deus ex machina forDr Manhattan, there's no
possible way to really kill him,and he's just this.
(26:28):
You put a figure like that intothe superhero.
Well, watchman's kind of acommentary on the superhero
genre in general.
So him having all this power,not being being able to be
destroyed, is kind of like, um,they like they're playing with
the idea of superheroes.
But where I was going with thiswas Dr Manhattan.
(26:51):
He, he's kind of what peoplethink the culture's kind of
showing us what it thinksknowing ultimate truth looks
like when you look at thatfigure.
That's kind of showing us whatit thinks knowing ultimate truth
looks like when you look atthat figure.
That's kind of this idea of.
That's probably what we wouldbe like if we did know
(27:14):
everything.
And another uh character likethat is lucy from that uh that
movie, lucy it's a movie she is.
It's based on a faulty premisethat if we were able to use a
hundred percent of our brainpower, what would happen?
Which?
We already do well, we use allof our brains.
(27:37):
It's not all at the same time.
It wouldn't look like lucy, butit's fun to be like hey what if
you unlocked the secretsuperpowers in your head?
Chris (27:47):
I don't know.
I think if they had changed thepremise just a little bit to
something like Limitless, likethe drugs that she was taking,
like a lot of her full potentialthat would have been better,
but whatever but.
Angelo (27:59):
Lucy's the same thing.
She's just like Dr Manhattan.
Chris (28:02):
Yes, but Lucy's the same thing.
Angelo (28:03):
She's just like Dr Manhattan In the sense that the
writer of the show is like if Icould imagine what it would be
like to unlock 100% of knowledge, what would I be like?
And that's his take on it.
Matt (28:16):
Well, and here's the question on top of that too,
it's a classic premise of theultimate knowledge, or getting
all the knowledge.
Why do you want all thatknowledge?
What would you do with?
Angelo (28:30):
all that knowledge, I suspect just because Dominate
people on the internet.
Chris (28:35):
No, I was literally getting to domination.
Angelo (28:38):
It literally is about power, I think, and Nietzsche
talks about the will to power.
But you could even go as farback as uh aristotle he has um,
one of his dialogues is abouthim talking to one of the
sophists who's arguing that allof human motivation is
(28:59):
ultimately about power and beingthe biggest kid on the
playground.
And he's arguing against thatand he's like no, there's
something deeper that we have tostrive towards being, or else
we're going to be.
You know lost to.
Matt (29:12):
Uh, that might, is not necessarily right, right, right
and um.
Angelo (29:17):
What is the ultimate motivation driving your search
for knowledge that matters andthat will change your outlook on
what truth actually is?
Matt (29:26):
now we get to purpose right.
What is your purpose?
You know you can use that poweras a facility towards something
right.
So you have a massive amount ofinfluence, and by influencing I
don't mean manipulating ordeceiving people or trying to
get people to do somethingthat's against their best
(29:47):
interest.
I mean speaking to whatresonates with people, that that
that's relevant within acollective thing.
You could even say things thatthey already deeply desire, and
you're simply someone who ispointing in a direction.
Hey, this is a vision of whatcould be, and you unlock that
(30:08):
for people.
You unlock their imaginationsand their possibilities about
what could be and what ought tobe.
Yeah, I think that's truevision, that's's true, that's
true purpose.
Right, because when you as anindividual person see something
(30:29):
that also resonates with a largegroup of people for the greater
good.
Angelo (30:32):
Let's talk about stories and narrative right.
A lot of times we will speak toa story being true, even if
it's not factually true.
And what are we saying when wesay a story being true even if
it's not factually true?
And what are we saying when wesay a story is true?
You could maybe.
I don't know if I want toventure into the Bible per se,
(30:54):
but maybe we can.
Because that's like what elseis there?
Well, people use the Bible as asource of truth, capital T truth
.
And some people take that Bibleliterally.
They're like it's true becauseit's historically true and every
single thing in it is writtenas true.
And some people are like, well,there's metaphorical truth.
Chris (31:18):
Right.
So I mean there's this grindingproblem, right, the problem of
evolution, which isn't just anevolutionary problem, it's
really about anthropology, butthe way that the creation myth
is stated in Genesis.
There's no way that the Earthcould, like literally, factually
right, be created in six dayswith dinosaur bones.
(31:42):
Anthropology, our understandingof the way that humans have
evolved into who we are.
Matt (31:48):
That's a problem.
Chris (31:49):
That's scientific empiricism versus metaphorical
truth.
Matt (31:55):
Can I try and attempt to bridge there too?
Because if the one say God,who's speaking all these things
into existence, resides within arealm where time is not a
constraint, into a realm wheretime does exist, then from that
realm, where that potential isspoken, time would be like, but
(32:20):
in terms of our evolution, interms of our time.
Chris (32:23):
I see what you're saying.
It's a thought experiment.
Matt (32:25):
It's interesting.
It's true to me as we'retalking about it.
Angelo (32:27):
I think we're in a culture that's just obsessed
with factual truth and,ultimately, when a lot of these
stories were written, that's notwhat they were really trying to
say.
When they're talking about aday, a day can be a symbolic day
, I guess.
To put myself on one side ofthe argument, it's kind of like
(32:51):
if you really look at the storyin Genesis, it doesn't make
sense that you would have treesbefore you have planets and
stars, right.
So how are you going toreconcile that, even from a very
basic perspective, if youunderstand the Earth is a planet
(33:14):
that trees grow on, how are you?
you're going to have to do a lotof jumping through hoops and
and trying to shoehorn someideas in or just completely
poo-poo our entire understandingof science, and I don't think
that's really productive,especially when, if you were,
(33:38):
just give yourself the abilityto say, hey, there are other
forms of truth than factual,historic truth.
Clearly, the numbers weresymbolic to the Israelites and
Hebrew people.
They use them throughoutScripture all the time in
different ways, to not meansomething literal.
(33:59):
Yeah, like gematria is justvery prominent at that time.
So, like the number seven is,it has significance.
So to say something was createdin seven days doesn't need to
mean it's literally seven days.
Matt (34:15):
It's a different form of truth.
I think we come back to thething of.
I mean, it ties into thedunning-kruger effect.
But also when you can grasponto the most easily
understandable thing and you'relike I'm gonna plant my flag
here, this is all I am curiousto know, this is all.
This is all I need to knowright here.
Solid looks, looks goodwhatever, but that's not
(34:37):
necessarily all there is to it.
Right, and it's like the.
It's like those of us who aremore curious for truth and want
to really understand things aregoing to naturally want to
follow that path and naturallybe curious about the, the
numbers and the symbolism wherethis person over here is just
(34:57):
like well, you know, I don'tneed all that.
It's like it's more road, it'smore effort.
I don't want to go down allthat path.
It's like great, but then don'tclaim that you hold all of the
knowledge and all of the loreand the understanding because
you decided to plant your flagin one place and we're going
over here and we actually wantto understand, right.
Angelo (35:20):
Yeah, and the funny thing about knowledge that I
found about reality is that themore you dig and the more you
discover, the more you startrealizing how much you don't
know and the more lost you feel.
Yeah, there is, in a very realsense, an irreducible complexity
, and we make this presumptionthat the more you know, the
(35:42):
better grasp you're going to geton everything.
Matt (35:45):
But it's almost the opposite.
Angelo (35:46):
It's funny how we're even in science we're seeking
this grand unified theory whereeverything like you could trace
it like a domino chain all theway down, and we're finding that
quantum physics and classicalor general relativity we don't
even know how to reconcile thosetwo things.
(36:07):
We don't have this one workingsystem that makes sense from the
bottom tiny stuff all the wayup to the big stuff there's.
It just doesn't even work, andso people who are like oh yeah
we've figured everything out.
It's like what are you talkingabout, in fact?
Um, I read not too long agothat, uh, the some scientists
(36:31):
swabbed a bunch of people'sbelly buttons and discovered
hundreds of new, never beforediscovered bacteria just living
within people's navels.
Disgusting, but but in Europeyou don't even know what's on
(36:52):
your own body.
So for you to see like oh yeah,I totally get it like.
This whole thing is like this.
Matt (37:01):
You know, you know it's such hubris might be
subconsciously, they might havea fear of losing that confidence
or losing that that feel like.
Oh you know?
Because then like you have tokill your ego a little bit
exactly like the more you, themore you learn, the more you wow
.
Angelo (37:19):
You know you're it's the ultimate dunning kruger
everybody is super confident inlike this is the castle that
I've built for myself and theseare the walls.
And don't fuck with me right.
Matt (37:34):
Maybe you need that bottom end, getting you know the
combination of the humility andlearning and being humble to the
right thing so that you canhave authority in the world from
the right place, because thenyou know yeah you can say so
pissed I know I feel like itcomes up for me a lot in,
(37:55):
especially in this episode butlike so pissed off at all the
foolishness You're like.
No, I have to, I have to.
Wisdom must prevail in theworld.
Wisdom absolutely must prevail,and you have a boost to
yourself.
You have this combustion Like.
I must speak wisdom into theworld.
Angelo (38:16):
Right, like I must speak wisdom into the world, right, I
think everybody, everybody's,more forgivable when they
understand your underlyingintentions, so even if they can
tell that you are genuinelytrying to understand and know
and you're willing to say thatyou're wrong.
People are like, well, that guyis in the pursuit of truth, he's
(38:36):
he's aimed towards the rightthing, so his I'm willing to
trust this person more than thisguy who, even though he might
have a lot of knowledge in acertain topic, he's rigid and he
doesn't want to change his mindoh yeah, that's the biggest
sign, right there, I think, ofsomeone you watch out.
Matt (38:57):
watch out for, too, in terms of yeah, that can be
dangerous, extremely dangerous,because they can be convincing
while still not knowing andthinking that they know and
creating effects and ripples inthe world as if they know.
Angelo (39:11):
It's funny because I think everyone will agree that
we live in a time where, in theAmerican political climate,
we've seen things on both sideswhere people think that they
know something so strongly thatthey're willing to just die on
(39:34):
that hill all the way down toand it'll affect other people in
a very negative way to theextent where you have to just be
like why can't?
We even talk anymore.
It's people just like.
It's like two completelydifferent universes.
Matt (39:52):
Yeah, we have to have us.
We absolutely must, especiallyright now.
I'm glad that you say that havea set of unifying values that
we can say these things are true.
That everyone, just that we allagree on these certain things,
not for the sake of simply ouragreement, but because they're
actually valuable.
And they actually areuniversally true and good and
(40:17):
beautiful and we can unifyaround them, and that's really
what holds the fabric of thecountry together.
Chris (40:24):
Yeah, absolutely.
Angelo (40:26):
Let's talk about collective intelligence.
We've talked about collectiveconsciousness before.
We've talked about collectiveconsciousness and the collective
unconscious, but let's Thinkingabout knowledge in the sense
that knowledge passed down notjust through one person, but
(40:49):
through entire generations tothe next generation.
That's honestly what I thinkgeneration, that's honestly what
I think people are trying tosay.
(41:10):
The bible is at its core, isthis it's this wisdom literature
that is from a long, long timeago compiled and, you know,
translated, but neverthelessit's something that people
thought was so important thatthey wanted to, uh, put it at
(41:31):
the, the ultimate place in their, in their pursuit of truth that
they would say this thing isthe ultimate reference for, for
where I get my knowledge or mywisdom.
Chris (41:44):
So first of all, for the sake of clarity, you didn't say
wisdom at first.
You said collectiveintelligence and then you said
collective knowledge, I mean Iprobably was, and then when?
You said likeintergenerationally.
That brought to mindtraditional yes, traditional.
Angelo (42:02):
So I I think I was trying, I was talking while I
was thinking, so I probablydidn't.
I wasn't as precise as I wouldlike to be, but I I was thinking
probably more along the linesof collective knowledge than
collective intelligence.
Ugh okay or do you mean likecollective knowledge or
(42:26):
traditional wisdom.
I would say what I'm trying toget at is this idea that not one
person is going to encapsulatetruth in their own mind.
There's a sense in which truthis learned and passed down and
discovered even more throughcultures, through this
(42:46):
collective mechanism, and that'swhat I'm trying to get at and I
don't know what to call thatyou know what you make me think
of.
Matt (42:56):
different teachers over time who have, through their own
life experiences, come to thesame self-evident experiences
yes like martin, luther king jr,like gandhi, like jesus, like
the buddha, you know, have haveall come to very similar
conclusions, not just because,oh you know, one of them heard
(43:17):
from another, one heard fromanother one.
You know there is some of that,but then you can hear a thing
and then dismiss it but they allhave been compelled and led and
done something about the thingsthat they discovered.
They all came to these similarconclusions, right?
Angelo (43:36):
it's also a matter of faith and trust, like how much
do you trust the source thatyou're getting your knowledge
from?
Some people will look attradition and they say, well,
it's a game of telephone.
Over time you pass this on andpass this on and the message
changes, and then the spirit ofthe message is actually
diminished because it'smistranslated along the way.
(43:57):
But I don't know if that'sentirely true.
I would like to say that thereis still hope in some traditions
that that people with the rightintention involved would want
to pass on the true message tothe next generation and that
something valuable has beenpreserved across time, across
(44:21):
human time.
Chris (44:23):
So I think if we look to the wisdom traditions, right
Christianity, islam, hinduism,buddhism they all reflect some
form of the spirit of truth.
Right um now there's a bit ofpagan non-christian literature
(44:47):
that I really keep close to mymind and heart and that's the
hermetic prophecy, which is thatum, it's complex, I'm not going
to repeat the whole thing, itwould take several minutes but
the idea is that no matter howfar we fall away from that
spirit of truth and, like yousaid, we're kind of in this
weird rigid time in Americanculture and intellect.
(45:10):
I honestly don't know if it'sgoing to last much longer.
We'll see.
I'm hoping for the best.
Right, there's perks to it.
Angelo (45:18):
But I think we've definitely gotten a lot out of a
lot of the positives out of theenlightenment period, yeah
right, but we're kind of at atime where things are starting
to get money muddy in.
This post-modernist mentalitywhere everyone has their own
truth is starting to infecteverything to the extent where
(45:42):
there people, people are hungryfor, for something real and
objective and they can't find itbecause their epistemology says
, hey, uh, it's all your, youropinions.
Chris (45:55):
So, no matter what humans are going to choose, as far as
their behavior goes right,enacting more or less violence
in the world, the counterforceof the will of God will always
bring us back to those spiritsof truth.
Or to the spirit of truth and Ithink that's our collective
wisdom tradition Is that if youhave the spirit of truth, you're
(46:20):
going to be okay.
Matt (46:21):
that spirit of truth, beauty and goodness, and let's,
let's define okay too, becausethat was not the thing I was
expecting you to define because,because, because in order.
In order to really pursue truth, it very often may require
(46:47):
giving up things painfully, thatyou've clung on to, things that
oh sure, that are built up onum, on, you know, false
substance.
I'm not.
I would go as far as to saydefinitely requires yeah
definitely.
and then it's this wholereconfiguration, because you
know it could be like, yeah,we're all gonna be okay in the
end.
Yeah, perhaps, sure, yeah, butyou have to be able to let these
(47:13):
things go that are keeping youin that false place.
That could mean changing yourwhole entire life.
That may mean changing yourwhole friendship Not to scare
all our viewers here, well, butfor this greater thing, that
when you come out on the otherside, then you can say this is
(47:35):
actually better than where I wasthere's always death involved,
right yeah, than well where Iwas, and there's always deaths
involved, right yeah, there'salways what there's always death
involved
Angelo (47:42):
death involved a little bit of death, when, when you
have to, when you have to getrid of a part of yourself, like
something that you held on to,like, let's say, you grew up and
you were in this specificreligion and you clung to that
religion and that was how youdefined everything in your life.
It was your way of life, it washow you defined your own
identity.
To let go of that is a deathand it's painful and it's
(48:06):
destructive, and that's whypeople, when you bring up
religion or politics at thedinner table, are like, oh my
god, you're trying to mess withwhat I define myself with and
they're going to fight you forit, because to lose that is to
die in some very real sense.
Yeah, and you're going to be inthe desert and wander and
(48:27):
you're going to have to rebuildyour in terms of the archetypes,
because we can't not right youknow the warrior you know the
warrior.
Matt (48:36):
the warrior being that part of yourself that is
defending, the part thatestablishes what your boundaries
are, and it's so much tied tothat sense of yourself that
you're willing to defend, andwe're talking about things that
die, right, the warrior is theone that goes and dies on the
battlefield Right.
(48:58):
So, in the boldness of puttingyourself out there, you may have
to suffer a death of some kindto something that you're deeply
defending in order that agreater life can come into you,
in order that a greater truthand a greater goodness can come
through you.
Angelo (49:17):
But you have to be able to surrender that I would say
that idea in and of itself is atruth that you have to come to
face.
How do you contend with thesuffering and death not just of
your physical body but of yourideas and your beliefs about
yourself?
I just want to put this outthere.
Chris (49:33):
That it's.
It's okay to deconstruct yourreligion and your philosophical
understanding of the world andeverything.
It's also okay to do that whilealso still adhering to your
religion.
Because I kind of did the mostextreme version of
deconstruction, which was notonly deconstructing my ideas but
(49:56):
also just giving it all up andpurging my christian identity
out of me.
I wish I hadn't done that.
I really do, I was.
That was a a grave mistake thatI that I made.
So I mean there's people who dothat.
Angelo (50:11):
You know the religion is kind of the uh, the most common
, uh way thing to talk about.
When you're referring to a verypersonal paradigm shift, sure,
but you can do it in theopposite direction too.
You can be very.
It doesn't have to bespecifically a religious
(50:33):
institution per se.
It can be your view on yourrelationship and that can be
shattered.
Someone cheats on you.
Your family was your sense ofmeaning and purpose and moving
you forward in life, and thatcan be just.
And your sense of who, who youare, who your partner is, what
(50:57):
your kingdom was, is completelygone.
Where's your sense of truth?
Next, you've got to havesomething stronger than that,
sure yeah, right, and that'swhere the truth, beauty and
goodness anchor comes in,because that's got to be.
If you rely, that's why it'slike.
If you rely on that, that's thelike most ultimate so source I
(51:21):
in my time I less will break anddie.
Chris (51:25):
See, I experienced a death of all of those things,
right my paradigm ofrelationship and religion, and
intelligence and experience.
What I failed to do wasexperience a death of my ego,
and I think you know so I I Iemptied myself of of of
(51:47):
everything that made me metrying to rebuild myself from
the ground up, when really Ishould have just let go of
myself and discovered myself inthe context of, I guess, my life
and the way I should have livedit.
So it was also a loss of values, right?
(52:09):
So the Christian values that Igrew up with.
When I purged the Christianidentity from myself, I lost my
guiding principles of living.
Angelo (52:18):
Your compass yeah.
Yeah, I definitely had a verysimilar experience, but I had
affected my telos.
Well, it's happened multipletimes in my life, right?
Chris (52:31):
You don't just do it one time.
I get there, you know, but Imean the nice thing is you.
Angelo (52:36):
You go through that a few times, it gets easier,
because then you recognize, hey,changes is part of life, yeah,
and to and change is healthy.
And I know when I make a bigchange in life, even if a huge
part of myself is shattered thatdoesn't happen to me that it's
the end.
I can rebuild from there yeahand that's the attitude to have
(52:57):
you always got to be movingforward.
Don't let you know, don't makesomething your idol.
In fact, I think that's whatscripture is actually referring
to when it's saying you know,don't make false gods.
It's not just talking aboutthese like invisible ideas of uh
some some personified beingit's talking about like, hey,
(53:18):
you can make money an idol, youcan make your relationship an
idol, you can make your sense ofpower an idol, like all of
these you can make your ownreligion an idol to yourself.
Where you're you're trying to,this specific ritual and way of
life is how you're trying tolive.
It's not the thing you shouldbe serving, the thing that that
(53:41):
thing's aiming at, not the thingitself right, I've never
thought of it that way and Ithink you're right.
Chris (53:47):
I think maybe that was maybe in some ways that was a
good thing that I well.
Angelo (53:50):
Well, when you're a child, you don't even understand
things you know.
To you like literally, god islike an invisible friend in a
child's mind.
Matt (54:01):
Could I Hold on?
You can even make yourself anidol.
Angelo (54:06):
Oh yeah, Absolutely.
Matt (54:08):
And then there's the whole .
Was it solipsism where youthink that everything revolves
around you, right?
Was it solipsism where youthink that everything revolves
around you, right?
Angelo (54:15):
Then you're like well, you know too proud to submit to
anything that isn't outside ofyour domain.
It's like the ultimatenarcissism.
That's right, I am.
Matt (54:24):
God.
Angelo (54:25):
That's right I believe in a higher power, it's me.
Matt (54:28):
Yeah, and metaphorically like what is the greatest sin?
Angelo (54:31):
right Pride.
Matt (54:33):
Pride, blasphemy.
Thinking of yourself as God,proclaiming yourself as.
Angelo (54:38):
God Right, that's the deepest message you think that
everything revolves around you.
Matt (54:44):
Well, who the hell are you ?
You know, honestly.
Chris (54:47):
Have a little humility.
Matt (54:49):
Humility, get yourself in that little squirt.
Get some humidifiers, put themall over your bedroom and then
get some humility, Cool downthat pride a little bit and have
the spirit of truth.
That's a difficult balance too.
(55:09):
You have these two poles.
Humidity and humility are, yeah,humidity and humility humility
and humility, yeah, where wherewe have the, the baseness of our
limitations as humans, as youknow, physical beings, but then
we're we also have this infinitedivinity within us at the same
(55:31):
time.
So we're like right in themiddle.
You know, it's like mythicallythink of, like think of what a
demigod is, who's from the earthbut also has this divine
connection at the same time.
Angelo (55:43):
It's like that's that's really kind of what we are it's
funny because there's thispowerful movement in the culture
to say that we are allconnected and we are all God,
but at the same time there'sthis sense that you don't want
to call yourself, go as far asto call yourself God, because
that's blasphemous.
Matt (56:01):
Like the big G right yeah.
Angelo (56:02):
So it's like the more humble you are and the more
you're like no, I'm not thebiggest center of the universe.
I should serve and loveeverything that makes you more
aligned with the center of theuniverse and the more you're
(56:23):
like I am the center of theuniverse, it's all about me the
more disconnected you are and soit's like a paradox I've never
wow, never heard it put that waybefore.
Chris (56:35):
Yeah, I mean I wouldn't.
I wouldn't say that there'slike, oh, it's so difficult.
I would not say that there isan element of divinity in and of
our own being.
But there's a divine potentialthere and that's why you have
humility and other forms ofvirtue to attain the spirits of
(56:57):
truth, beauty and goodness,because when those reside in,
your ego should shift fromyourself unto god, and then you
will gain the grace andknowledge and truth and power
and spirit to to enact on theworld in a holy fashion honestly
, I think that's a great placeto to end this one oh, okay, can
(57:22):
I get an amen?
Matt (57:23):
amen, that was uh, amen, chris, so thank you all for
joining us on this journey abouttruth.
Angelo (57:33):
Hopefully you learned something and, if you made it
this far, we're very gratefulthat you are willing to watch
our content and listen to ustalk.
Please do your part Like, share, subscribe, comment, share your
thoughts.
Let us know what you'rethinking and we hope to see you
on the next one.
Chris (57:52):
It's been real All right.
Matt (57:54):
Thank you for listening, until next time.
Angelo (57:57):
Take care.
Hello everyone, welcome to the Telos Initiative podcast.
I'm Angelo Cole,
Chris (00:06):
I'm Chris Vigil
Matt (00:07):
and I'm Matt Maes.
Angelo (00:09):
Today we are going to be talking about the third of the
three transcendental values,which is truth.
So before we've done a podcaston beauty and we also did one on
goodness, so this is the lastof the big three.
So we always like to start offwith at least trying to get a
(00:30):
sense of what we're talkingabout and maybe at least some
sort of loose definition.
So, uh, chris, why don't youkick us off?
What?
Chris (00:41):
okay, see, usually we wait to the end of the podcast
to do this.
I mean, I mean not necessarilysomething.
Angelo (00:49):
Usually we at least try to define our terms a little bit
, sure?
Matt (00:53):
um, you got a notepad man, thank you, I know it's so
professional you kind ofblindsided me with the whole
transcendental value thing.
Chris (01:01):
I didn't know that's what we were calling them, but I
like that.
It's good.
It's transcendental value, so Ithought truth, being one of the
three driving forces upon humanconsciousness, is a spirit of
being impressed unto realitythrough the mind a spirit of
(01:21):
being impressed unto reality, oron say unto reality through the
mind.
So, truth, right.
We like to think of truth asthis thing that's out there,
right, I think that was a sayingin the 90s, right, about aliens
.
The truth is out there, but, um, it's something that stems from
(01:42):
us, kind of like beauty.
Right, beauty is the elementwithin us that flows forth and
that enacts upon our minds.
I don't think truth is likethis thing that we can find and
that we can hold.
We can't even hold it in ourmind, but it's a spirit of being
that drives us forwardlythrough life.
Angelo (02:02):
That's interesting that drives us forwardly through life
.
That's interesting, so let mechew on that.
For a second Spirit of being.
I guess I usually associatetruth more with a spirit of
knowing, or rather more like theultimate goal of knowing.
(02:27):
Like if you A lot of times, thethree transcendental values I
kind of think of as, um, thegoals of their respective
domains.
So truth would be in theepistemological domain, right,
okay, yeah, you, there arethings you can know, and
ultimately, the thing that youwould like to know is the truth.
(02:48):
That's kind of the goal of whatthe pursuit of knowledge is is
to know the fullness of whatthings actually are.
And you can pursue truthwithout knowing what the truth
is.
Right, it's like this movingtarget that you sort of get
(03:08):
better at honing in on.
And the same kind of goes withgoodness.
Right, we were talking aboutgoodness as the goodness domain
is that of teleology or action.
Right, the goal of yourbehavior should be to achieve
the ultimate good, and beauty isa little.
(03:30):
That was the one that was alittle trickier, because beauty,
I would say, is in the domainof ontology, which is being,
which beauty?
The definition there wassomewhat tricky, but I think we
came up with something akin tolike.
Beauty is the hidden order thateverything strives to be
(03:59):
towards.
It's somewhat associated withlife.
A lot of things that arebeautiful we associate with life
, if you remember.
Chris (04:05):
The flourish.
Angelo (04:07):
Yes, yeah, so for something to be fully alive and
fully present and fully being isto be fully beautiful.
Matt (04:15):
So, like ontology, beauty, epistemology, truth, teleology,
goodness At least that's how Ilike to try and frame it yeah
and I think truth can be elusivein a similar sense as beauty as
well, because while there,there's truth in all things and
(04:41):
everything also has to do withtruth, and you and you could
even say that when we're talkingabout truth, we're talking
about, I should say, when we'retalking about any given subject,
we're really striving for truth.
That's really the centralsubject of what we're talking
about.
Angelo (04:58):
Why else would we?
Matt (05:00):
be talking about it Because we're trying to get to
it, yeah, to a true knowingsense of things.
Right, and it's an onionskinning as well it's like we
could say the truth is not justthis one point here.
There can be a point wherethere is truth, but you have to
(05:20):
be it's, it's multi-dimensional.
I mean, you have to be able tosee all these different facets
to really try and apprehendtruth.
And I think you really got itthat that it's something that
eludes our grasp.
We could say that we, we borrowtruth, we're speaking truth,
we're imparting truth.
It's, it's something that'scoming through us, but it's
(05:41):
something that's coming throughus, but it's something that we,
we strive for.
At the same time, we never wecan never get our minds beyond
truth.
There's nothing right that wecan like aim past or beyond
what's actually true right youcould.
Angelo (05:57):
You could say that you never come to fully know truth,
right, because if you did knowthe full truth, you would be
omniscient, and so truth is, um,something we're always growing
towards, and I want to press youon something a little bit.
You mentioned that you said yousee a little bit of truth in
(06:17):
everything, right?
What do you mean by truth whenyou say that?
Like, how?
How is truth within everything?
Do you mean in the sense thateverything?
Chris (06:32):
has a true nature.
Angelo (06:34):
Do you mean that there's something that you can fully
know about something there's?
Matt (06:38):
a level, because, because we're talking about truth, we're
talking about not only thingsthat are factual, but things,
but the way that things areinterconnected and wisdom and
there's so much.
I mean all these things aretied up within this truth, right
, Right, right.
So if you're truly seekingtruth, then you are truly trying
(07:02):
to investigate to the best ofyour ability all these different
things, which means you mayhave to go way over in this
direction and see things thatyou couldn't possibly see just
from this vantage point overhere, you may have to go all the
way over here to see this point.
And wonderful thing about beingable to communicate with people
from different perspectives andfrom different backgrounds is
(07:24):
you don't have to spend all thattime going all the way over
here and all the way over hereand all the way over here, when
we can simply communicateamongst each other and pass
information much, much fasterthan us having to go ourselves
to all those different places.
Right?
So then you can see truth asthis multi-faceted,
(07:45):
multi-dimensional thing and nothave to go through all the you
know, slings and arrows thatmaybe someone else went to.
But you have to be able toconnect through empathy, to be
able to, you know, put yourselfin their shoes, so to speak.
And then that I mean reallyloving truth, really loving the
(08:06):
pursuit of truth.
Even though you may know thatyou may never fully know truth,
you still love as much of it asyou can experience, as much of
it can be imparted through youso there's an element of uh
aligning your passions with thepursuit of knowledge and not
just pursuing it from a rationalbasis Loving it for itself.
Angelo (08:27):
yeah, I mean, maybe let's talk about different types
of truth, right?
Because you mentioned, there'sfactual truth and that's the
obvious one that everybody knows.
Hey, this is a thing thatactually happened, or this is
something that it's like anunchanging pattern across time.
Right, that is reliant, you canrely on it.
(08:49):
So that's kind of what scienceis ultimately based on.
You want to know this type oftruth, this type of truth that
if I look at it and someone elselooks at it, they're going to
get the same answer.
One plus one always equals two,no matter who you are, no
matter what species you areAlthough I don't know another
(09:13):
species that can do mathematicsbut I mean, hey, you never know,
we've got Mac the Buffalo overhere just doing calculus working
at NASA?
Matt (09:24):
I don't know maybe chimpanzees can do basic
addition.
I don't know.
You might be able to say that Iwould put it past them honestly
.
Angelo (09:32):
I don't know too much about chimpanzee intelligence,
not a monkey expert.
Chris (09:37):
So you don't have any biological scientific facts to
back up your understanding, Iguess, or your knowledge.
Angelo (09:47):
Well, I mean, I guess, not, I don't mean that.
Chris (09:50):
Yeah, like kind of like, thanks for calling me out, Chris
, Like yeah, I don't have factsto back up, but facts matter.
So I just mean, like you know,talking about factual truths,
right?
So there's scientific truthsthat we can potentially look up
on the internet, right?
Angelo (10:10):
Well, I would even go as far as to say the scientific
truths are ones that you canempirically observe for yourself
.
I can prove well, I can atleast demonstrate to myself the
basic addition sure, yeah, youcan demonstrate that to yourself
too.
Chris (10:29):
And if we get into oh, was it euclid who had like the
proofs right.
You can do some sort of weirdreason, logical thing where you
can prove that one plus one isin fact two.
Angelo (10:43):
I don't know about Euclid, but Well, that's
Euclidean geometry.
Chris (10:49):
Maybe you're right.
Angelo (10:50):
I think Euclidean I was thinking more Aristotle, with
axioms like the law of identityA does not equal or A always
equals A, and the law ofnon-contradiction is A does not
equal B, which are justfundamental axioms of knowledge,
and the law ofnon-contradiction is A does not
equal B, which are justfundamental axioms of knowledge
that you have to agree on inorder for anything to work at
(11:12):
all.
Okay so now we're getting intoepistemology 101, but before we
venture too far into that domain, this is just like one type of
truth that we're talking abouthere this is like let's just
call it factual truth, right?
Chris (11:31):
the type of truth that is empirically observed well, you
can empirically observescientific things, like you can
replicate experiments,potentially right right so you
got math down, we've got sciencedown, but well, it's, it's also
history, right, I can observe afact.
Angelo (11:52):
I can say this happened at this time at this place and
document it.
Chris (11:56):
You okay, and that's a type of truth chronological,
like history as a form ofchronological events.
I think that's true History astrying to come to terms with
humanity as a whole.
It's a little different, likewhat drove the.
Angelo (12:16):
Second World War.
Well, sure, you have your isand then you have your ought,
and I forget who said it.
But you can't get an ought froman is right.
So the factual truth deals withthe is domain, but there's also
the ought domain, and so ifyou're trying to get a grasp on
like history long term, you'relooking at motivations and which
(12:40):
direction are they heading.
Is it progress?
Well, how do you know if it'sprogress unless you have an
ought?
What are they aiming towards?
What are you aiming towards?
What are you judging this otherculture based on what values
and value structures?
Matt (12:54):
are we talking about here?
I love that you went there too,because we're talking in terms
of what different people'sstandards of truth might be.
Like say, you say the people whoare um are in the.
This is the tried and true,this is the way we've always
done it.
This is very you know to themvery solid and very defined and
very like um, you know, verydense, right, but you may have
(13:19):
someone who can see past all ofthat or see a different way.
Those are the innovators peoplewho are, who are able to see
what may need improvement or waywhere some ways may have gone
astray, completely right, butthey in not going down this,
this path, they are.
They may look crazy.
(13:40):
So the people who are very intotheir insurance is the tried and
true, this is the way it'salways been, and and and all
that stuff.
And then, by the standards ofthe tried and true, people like
well, you don't know how allthis, all this works.
How did you and this persontruly it may not have immersed
themselves in all of the?
You know all the lore that wentinto the building up of this
(14:04):
thing, but at the same time,it's like that doesn't really
matter so much, because you seethe bigger picture, you see a
way that it could have gone in acompletely different direction,
that none of that would havebeen relevant.
Right, that's a key word rightthere.
Relevant, yeah, what's relevantlike, what's true, and then
what's the point?
Right, being able to identifythe point, that's a high level
(14:25):
skill.
Angelo (14:25):
Everything always comes back to the telos, right?
It's about your aim, and what'srelevant to your goal matters,
okay.
So I think truth in the contextof what's relevant to you
brings you closer to your goal.
(14:46):
That's what you're trying tocall truth, and that that is
where you can kind of see asubjective element of truth,
where it kind of variesdepending on different cultures
and different timelines andhistories and groups of people,
because they've all got thesedifferent aims that they're
(15:06):
headed towards, and so truthlooks completely different to
someone who's aiming towards,you know, a nationalistic
unifying of the country versussomeone who's aiming towards,
you know, reviving their culturethat's been discriminated
against, or a Globalist economy.
(15:27):
There they're all looking atdifferent aspects, and things
that are bad for one guy Seemgood for another guy.
Um, and to call those types ofthings true is tricky, and
that's why a lot of people kindof dismiss truth as being
(15:51):
entirely subjective, becauseit's kind of like Well, I think
the biggest reason too isbecause it doesn't submit to our
opinions.
Matt (16:01):
We have to submit to it.
Angelo (16:03):
Oh, there you go.
That's probably the difference.
Matt (16:07):
Yeah, and we can hardly talk about that without talking
about the.
You know, if you guys arefamiliar with the Dunning-Kruger
effect, where you know I lovethe way this is referred to like
you learn a little bit and thenyou're up here at basically
Mount Stupid and you have to godown and learn some more before
you realize like oh, how muchthere is to know actually.
(16:30):
And then as you learn and youlearn, and you learn and you
learn, then you can actuallyascend towards that point of
actually you actually knowsomething.
You actually you know you'veactually got a fair amount of
expertise, right yeah, you'veactually got a fair amount of
expertise, right yeah.
So for those of you who don't,know the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Angelo (16:46):
It's sort of like a bell curve of knowledge versus your
confidence in a topic.
So when you start off and learna little bit about a topic,
your confidence is actually veryhigh oftentimes and you think,
just because you did a fewGoogle searches and looked at
some of the first links onsomething, that you know what
you're talking about because youmade the minimal effort of
(17:08):
research.
And it's popular online toaccuse your opponent of the
Dunning-Kruger effect.
Matt (17:14):
If you're trying to insult their intelligence.
Chris (17:16):
Yes, Very well put Thank you.
Matt (17:20):
Thank you for breaking that down.
Chris (17:21):
It's funny because I googled truth right before I
came here.
Dunning-kr.
Very well put, thank you.
Thank you for breaking thatdown.
It's funny because I Googledtruth right before I came here.
Angelo (17:24):
Yeah, All it takes is a Google search.
Matt (17:31):
This is the frustrating paradox that comes with that,
too, is that the people wholearn more and submit to that
humility and the ones whoactually know what they're
talking about are actually lessboth less less bold than the
ones who actually are theseboisterous think they learn a
(17:53):
little, but they actually don'tknow what they're talking about.
And they're loud, right right.
It's like the wise people needto be louder and the people who
are more bold need to be morequiet.
And then I know, I know itdrives me crazy.
Chris (18:06):
It absolutely drives me crazy so a few things that you
said.
Like you know, we strivetowards truth and we have to
submit to truth.
Now, maybe I'm biased, but onjust hearing is my definition of
truth, which is that it's adriving force on the mind right
and it's a state of being,because that's what I mean.
(18:27):
So I, I have a, I have a talentfor talking to people about
their issues.
Um, that's why I got intopsychology when I was in college
, wanted to be a counselor.
Um, because when you have thatstate of being, that state of
truthful being, you can takepeople's personal, like private
truths, like their experience ofreality, and you can
(18:50):
transmutate that into wisdom soI would say a specialized subset
of knowledge and experiencethat permits one to realize in
both senses of the word.
both becoming aware and makingreal Wisdom is about realizing
(19:12):
meaning in life.
Angelo (19:14):
Realizing meaning that was beautiful Wow so wisdom is a
type of truth, would you say.
I would say wisdom is theservant of truth okay, so wisdom
is a like wisdom is more on thevalue side than the, than the
(19:35):
factual side, right.
What do you mean we were kindof talking about?
Yeah, so of truth.
Matt (19:41):
Wisdom is an output.
Chris (19:43):
Right, I am the system, wisdom is the output, and if I
have the spirit of truth, I cantake experience and other
people's truth and give themwisdom.
Matt (19:56):
Okay, it's like it's a synthesized form of
understanding.
Chris (20:02):
Sure yeah.
Matt (20:03):
Like wisdom is the synthesis.
Chris (20:05):
And you know what it takes.
It takes a lot of listening anda lot less.
Oh yeah.
So I say, bring on theboisterous, unwise people and I
will give them what I can it canbe.
Matt (20:19):
Well, I'll tell you one thing.
That can be frustrating is whenpeople are so completely heels
dug in their ways of thinkingthat change is an existential
crisis for people who have sosold into ideas that are not
(20:40):
founded in understanding and notfounded in truth, but they rely
on those things.
I like it's a it's.
It's a death to them yeah breakthat down and allow that truth
to come in right.
So they have these, these denseblockages.
So you could, you can bespeaking truth to them and they
(21:05):
could just well, what was it?
I think it was jesus who hadthe parable about the different
types of soil.
Like you have the rocky soilyou have the, the fertile soil,
you have have this dense soil.
It's a.
It's a matter of the people'sright it was.
Angelo (21:20):
That was the parable of the sower and the seeds so it's
hard ground, the seed can't takeroot.
Matt (21:26):
Exactly it's like if you have the soil that is not going
to accept that seed.
How are they going to have thatunderstanding?
How is your soil going to gointo the?
How are your seeds going to gointo the soil?
I?
Angelo (21:44):
think you have your you.
That's where the wisdom aspectcomes in.
Your heart has to be alignedwith, like a desire for the, the
truth, you.
You have to not just be wantingto know just for the sake of
being right.
You have to want to know, toalign yourself with something
greater than yourself, and youhave to be willing to admit that
(22:05):
you're wrong and changingyourself right.
Chris (22:08):
So, so don't forget that spirit.
The spirit of truth is not theonly spirit that we can possess
right.
We can have the spirit ofbeauty, spirit of goodness, and
with the spirit of truth, youdon't get to choose what kind of
soil you encounter out in thereal world.
And I'll give you a perfectexample of exactly the kind of
person you're talking about.
I encountered this I I, you know, I don't mean any offense, but
(22:33):
he was kind of a weird guy.
He was really, um, I guess heused to work for ibm.
He worked with computers andwith mathematics and I just
stood there and I listened tohim talk about his insights on
mathematics and how our quantumtheory of physics is completely
incorrect and Tesla had it right, and I just, you know, mostly
(22:56):
listened and I gave him a littlebit of feedback every now and
then.
You know, physics is not myspecialty at all, but when we
talk about, you know, he was anatural philosopher and we
talked about, like, the humanbody and human consciousness and
the ether and in all thesedifferent subjects, um, and at
the end of the, at the end of itall, I don't know if I had
anything to offer him.
(23:17):
But he thanked me for being ayoung, smart person and I think
that meant a lot to him.
Angelo (23:23):
Some people just want you to listen a bit, yeah
exactly there's a well, we and Iforget which podcast it was,
but we talked about dialogue andthe value of that.
We've probably talked aboutevery podcast but the value, the
value of just.
You know you put your ideas outthere and you're kind of want
inviting other people to testyour ideas and go up against
(23:46):
your ideas.
Sometimes it's not the resultsyou like and sometimes you're
going to have to try and defendyour idea, but there's a,
there's a wrestling going onthere, but there's also a mutual
um.
It's like we're to to turn aphrase.
It's like we're to turn aphrase.
It's like we're raising eachother's children, like if you
(24:09):
think of your thoughts and yourbeliefs as your, your children
takes a village right, we're all, we're all working together and
either you nurture these, thesethoughts, or you have to say,
hey, this thing is not alignedwith what's right, it's not true
, it's not.
Matt (24:31):
And that's really what truth is about right.
Angelo (24:34):
You're all aiming towards that same thing.
Chris (24:36):
This is why it's so valuable to me to have a spirit
of truth rather than a grandknowledge of the universe.
You know, you can have a grandknowledge of the universe and
that's great, but that's not thetruth.
Angelo (24:48):
Oh that's not so.
There's knowledge and thenthere's wisdom, right, sure,
yeah, so you can have all theknowledge.
Matt (24:55):
But if you don't have the wisdom that goes with it, it
means nothing but where?
Where are you going with?
Chris (25:01):
that uh just just about there.
I uh look at you guys finishing.
I was thinking about thisneoplatonic friendship
witnessing it.
Angelo (25:22):
I was, um, I was thinking about Dr Manhattan.
He's a character from Watchmen.
For those of you who don't know, he's basically just God,
because his power is being ableto reconfigure matter on the
particulate level, but he alsohas some level of omniscience,
(25:45):
at least on a scientific level.
So he, he's kind of like thematerialist wet dream of like I
know everything and canreconfigure everything and
ultimate physics superhero up tothe point where he can't even
die.
He can just.
And ultimate physics superheroup to the point where he can't
(26:07):
even die.
He can just put himself backtogether.
He is pretty freaking cool he'sunkillable that's kind of the
point.
There's no deus ex machina forDr Manhattan, there's no
possible way to really kill him,and he's just this.
(26:28):
You put a figure like that intothe superhero.
Well, watchman's kind of acommentary on the superhero
genre in general.
So him having all this power,not being being able to be
destroyed, is kind of like, um,they like they're playing with
the idea of superheroes.
But where I was going with thiswas Dr Manhattan.
(26:51):
He, he's kind of what peoplethink the culture's kind of
showing us what it thinksknowing ultimate truth looks
like when you look at thatfigure.
That's kind of showing us whatit thinks knowing ultimate truth
looks like when you look atthat figure.
That's kind of this idea of.
That's probably what we wouldbe like if we did know
(27:14):
everything.
And another uh character likethat is lucy from that uh that
movie, lucy it's a movie she is.
It's based on a faulty premisethat if we were able to use a
hundred percent of our brainpower, what would happen?
Which?
We already do well, we use allof our brains.
(27:37):
It's not all at the same time.
It wouldn't look like lucy, butit's fun to be like hey what if
you unlocked the secretsuperpowers in your head?
Chris (27:47):
I don't know.
I think if they had changed thepremise just a little bit to
something like Limitless, likethe drugs that she was taking,
like a lot of her full potentialthat would have been better,
but whatever but.
Angelo (27:59):
Lucy's the same thing.
She's just like Dr Manhattan.
Chris (28:02):
Yes, but Lucy's the same thing.
Angelo (28:03):
She's just like Dr Manhattan In the sense that the
writer of the show is like if Icould imagine what it would be
like to unlock 100% of knowledge, what would I be like?
And that's his take on it.
Matt (28:16):
Well, and here's the question on top of that too,
it's a classic premise of theultimate knowledge, or getting
all the knowledge.
Why do you want all thatknowledge?
What would you do with?
Angelo (28:30):
all that knowledge, I suspect just because Dominate
people on the internet.
Chris (28:35):
No, I was literally getting to domination.
Angelo (28:38):
It literally is about power, I think, and Nietzsche
talks about the will to power.
But you could even go as farback as uh aristotle he has um,
one of his dialogues is abouthim talking to one of the
sophists who's arguing that allof human motivation is
(28:59):
ultimately about power and beingthe biggest kid on the
playground.
And he's arguing against thatand he's like no, there's
something deeper that we have tostrive towards being, or else
we're going to be.
You know lost to.
Matt (29:12):
Uh, that might, is not necessarily right, right, right
and um.
Angelo (29:17):
What is the ultimate motivation driving your search
for knowledge that matters andthat will change your outlook on
what truth actually is?
Matt (29:26):
now we get to purpose right.
What is your purpose?
You know you can use that poweras a facility towards something
right.
So you have a massive amount ofinfluence, and by influencing I
don't mean manipulating ordeceiving people or trying to
get people to do somethingthat's against their best
(29:47):
interest.
I mean speaking to whatresonates with people, that that
that's relevant within acollective thing.
You could even say things thatthey already deeply desire, and
you're simply someone who ispointing in a direction.
Hey, this is a vision of whatcould be, and you unlock that
(30:08):
for people.
You unlock their imaginationsand their possibilities about
what could be and what ought tobe.
Yeah, I think that's truevision, that's's true, that's
true purpose.
Right, because when you as anindividual person see something
(30:29):
that also resonates with a largegroup of people for the greater
good.
Angelo (30:32):
Let's talk about stories and narrative right.
A lot of times we will speak toa story being true, even if
it's not factually true.
And what are we saying when wesay a story being true even if
it's not factually true?
And what are we saying when wesay a story is true?
You could maybe.
I don't know if I want toventure into the Bible per se,
(30:54):
but maybe we can.
Because that's like what elseis there?
Well, people use the Bible as asource of truth, capital T truth
.
And some people take that Bibleliterally.
They're like it's true becauseit's historically true and every
single thing in it is writtenas true.
And some people are like, well,there's metaphorical truth.
Chris (31:18):
Right.
So I mean there's this grindingproblem, right, the problem of
evolution, which isn't just anevolutionary problem, it's
really about anthropology, butthe way that the creation myth
is stated in Genesis.
There's no way that the Earthcould, like literally, factually
right, be created in six dayswith dinosaur bones.
(31:42):
Anthropology, our understandingof the way that humans have
evolved into who we are.
Matt (31:48):
That's a problem.
Chris (31:49):
That's scientific empiricism versus metaphorical
truth.
Matt (31:55):
Can I try and attempt to bridge there too?
Because if the one say God,who's speaking all these things
into existence, resides within arealm where time is not a
constraint, into a realm wheretime does exist, then from that
realm, where that potential isspoken, time would be like, but
(32:20):
in terms of our evolution, interms of our time.
Chris (32:23):
I see what you're saying.
It's a thought experiment.
Matt (32:25):
It's interesting.
It's true to me as we'retalking about it.
Angelo (32:27):
I think we're in a culture that's just obsessed
with factual truth and,ultimately, when a lot of these
stories were written, that's notwhat they were really trying to
say.
When they're talking about aday, a day can be a symbolic day
, I guess.
To put myself on one side ofthe argument, it's kind of like
(32:51):
if you really look at the storyin Genesis, it doesn't make
sense that you would have treesbefore you have planets and
stars, right.
So how are you going toreconcile that, even from a very
basic perspective, if youunderstand the Earth is a planet
(33:14):
that trees grow on, how are you?
you're going to have to do a lotof jumping through hoops and
and trying to shoehorn someideas in or just completely
poo-poo our entire understandingof science, and I don't think
that's really productive,especially when, if you were,
(33:38):
just give yourself the abilityto say, hey, there are other
forms of truth than factual,historic truth.
Clearly, the numbers weresymbolic to the Israelites and
Hebrew people.
They use them throughoutScripture all the time in
different ways, to not meansomething literal.
(33:59):
Yeah, like gematria is justvery prominent at that time.
So, like the number seven is,it has significance.
So to say something was createdin seven days doesn't need to
mean it's literally seven days.
Matt (34:15):
It's a different form of truth.
I think we come back to thething of.
I mean, it ties into thedunning-kruger effect.
But also when you can grasponto the most easily
understandable thing and you'relike I'm gonna plant my flag
here, this is all I am curiousto know, this is all.
This is all I need to knowright here.
Solid looks, looks goodwhatever, but that's not
(34:37):
necessarily all there is to it.
Right, and it's like the.
It's like those of us who aremore curious for truth and want
to really understand things aregoing to naturally want to
follow that path and naturallybe curious about the, the
numbers and the symbolism wherethis person over here is just
(34:57):
like well, you know, I don'tneed all that.
It's like it's more road, it'smore effort.
I don't want to go down allthat path.
It's like great, but then don'tclaim that you hold all of the
knowledge and all of the loreand the understanding because
you decided to plant your flagin one place and we're going
over here and we actually wantto understand, right.
Angelo (35:20):
Yeah, and the funny thing about knowledge that I
found about reality is that themore you dig and the more you
discover, the more you startrealizing how much you don't
know and the more lost you feel.
Yeah, there is, in a very realsense, an irreducible complexity
, and we make this presumptionthat the more you know, the
(35:42):
better grasp you're going to geton everything.
Matt (35:45):
But it's almost the opposite.
Angelo (35:46):
It's funny how we're even in science we're seeking
this grand unified theory whereeverything like you could trace
it like a domino chain all theway down, and we're finding that
quantum physics and classicalor general relativity we don't
even know how to reconcile thosetwo things.
(36:07):
We don't have this one workingsystem that makes sense from the
bottom tiny stuff all the wayup to the big stuff there's.
It just doesn't even work, andso people who are like oh yeah
we've figured everything out.
It's like what are you talkingabout, in fact?
Um, I read not too long agothat, uh, the some scientists
(36:31):
swabbed a bunch of people'sbelly buttons and discovered
hundreds of new, never beforediscovered bacteria just living
within people's navels.
Disgusting, but but in Europeyou don't even know what's on
(36:52):
your own body.
So for you to see like oh yeah,I totally get it like.
This whole thing is like this.
Matt (37:01):
You know, you know it's such hubris might be
subconsciously, they might havea fear of losing that confidence
or losing that that feel like.
Oh you know?
Because then like you have tokill your ego a little bit
exactly like the more you, themore you learn, the more you wow
.
Angelo (37:19):
You know you're it's the ultimate dunning kruger
everybody is super confident inlike this is the castle that
I've built for myself and theseare the walls.
And don't fuck with me right.
Matt (37:34):
Maybe you need that bottom end, getting you know the
combination of the humility andlearning and being humble to the
right thing so that you canhave authority in the world from
the right place, because thenyou know yeah you can say so
pissed I know I feel like itcomes up for me a lot in,
(37:55):
especially in this episode butlike so pissed off at all the
foolishness You're like.
No, I have to, I have to.
Wisdom must prevail in theworld.
Wisdom absolutely must prevail,and you have a boost to
yourself.
You have this combustion Like.
I must speak wisdom into theworld.
Angelo (38:16):
Right, like I must speak wisdom into the world, right, I
think everybody, everybody's,more forgivable when they
understand your underlyingintentions, so even if they can
tell that you are genuinelytrying to understand and know
and you're willing to say thatyou're wrong.
People are like, well, that guyis in the pursuit of truth, he's
(38:36):
he's aimed towards the rightthing, so his I'm willing to
trust this person more than thisguy who, even though he might
have a lot of knowledge in acertain topic, he's rigid and he
doesn't want to change his mindoh yeah, that's the biggest
sign, right there, I think, ofsomeone you watch out.
Matt (38:57):
watch out for, too, in terms of yeah, that can be
dangerous, extremely dangerous,because they can be convincing
while still not knowing andthinking that they know and
creating effects and ripples inthe world as if they know.
Angelo (39:11):
It's funny because I think everyone will agree that
we live in a time where, in theAmerican political climate,
we've seen things on both sideswhere people think that they
know something so strongly thatthey're willing to just die on
(39:34):
that hill all the way down toand it'll affect other people in
a very negative way to theextent where you have to just be
like why can't?
We even talk anymore.
It's people just like.
It's like two completelydifferent universes.
Matt (39:52):
Yeah, we have to have us.
We absolutely must, especiallyright now.
I'm glad that you say that havea set of unifying values that
we can say these things are true.
That everyone, just that we allagree on these certain things,
not for the sake of simply ouragreement, but because they're
actually valuable.
And they actually areuniversally true and good and
(40:17):
beautiful and we can unifyaround them, and that's really
what holds the fabric of thecountry together.
Chris (40:24):
Yeah, absolutely.
Angelo (40:26):
Let's talk about collective intelligence.
We've talked about collectiveconsciousness before.
We've talked about collectiveconsciousness and the collective
unconscious, but let's Thinkingabout knowledge in the sense
that knowledge passed down notjust through one person, but
(40:49):
through entire generations tothe next generation.
That's honestly what I thinkgeneration, that's honestly what
I think people are trying tosay.
(41:10):
The bible is at its core, isthis it's this wisdom literature
that is from a long, long timeago compiled and, you know,
translated, but neverthelessit's something that people
thought was so important thatthey wanted to, uh, put it at
(41:31):
the, the ultimate place in their, in their pursuit of truth that
they would say this thing isthe ultimate reference for, for
where I get my knowledge or mywisdom.
Chris (41:44):
So first of all, for the sake of clarity, you didn't say
wisdom at first.
You said collectiveintelligence and then you said
collective knowledge, I mean Iprobably was, and then when?
You said likeintergenerationally.
That brought to mindtraditional yes, traditional.
Angelo (42:02):
So I I think I was trying, I was talking while I
was thinking, so I probablydidn't.
I wasn't as precise as I wouldlike to be, but I I was thinking
probably more along the linesof collective knowledge than
collective intelligence.
Ugh okay or do you mean likecollective knowledge or
(42:26):
traditional wisdom.
I would say what I'm trying toget at is this idea that not one
person is going to encapsulatetruth in their own mind.
There's a sense in which truthis learned and passed down and
discovered even more throughcultures, through this
(42:46):
collective mechanism, and that'swhat I'm trying to get at and I
don't know what to call thatyou know what you make me think
of.
Matt (42:56):
different teachers over time who have, through their own
life experiences, come to thesame self-evident experiences
yes like martin, luther king jr,like gandhi, like jesus, like
the buddha, you know, have haveall come to very similar
conclusions, not just because,oh you know, one of them heard
(43:17):
from another, one heard fromanother one.
You know there is some of that,but then you can hear a thing
and then dismiss it but they allhave been compelled and led and
done something about the thingsthat they discovered.
They all came to these similarconclusions, right?
Angelo (43:36):
it's also a matter of faith and trust, like how much
do you trust the source thatyou're getting your knowledge
from?
Some people will look attradition and they say, well,
it's a game of telephone.
Over time you pass this on andpass this on and the message
changes, and then the spirit ofthe message is actually
diminished because it'smistranslated along the way.
(43:57):
But I don't know if that'sentirely true.
I would like to say that thereis still hope in some traditions
that that people with the rightintention involved would want
to pass on the true message tothe next generation and that
something valuable has beenpreserved across time, across
(44:21):
human time.
Chris (44:23):
So I think if we look to the wisdom traditions, right
Christianity, islam, hinduism,buddhism they all reflect some
form of the spirit of truth.
Right um now there's a bit ofpagan non-christian literature
(44:47):
that I really keep close to mymind and heart and that's the
hermetic prophecy, which is thatum, it's complex, I'm not going
to repeat the whole thing, itwould take several minutes but
the idea is that no matter howfar we fall away from that
spirit of truth and, like yousaid, we're kind of in this
weird rigid time in Americanculture and intellect.
(45:10):
I honestly don't know if it'sgoing to last much longer.
We'll see.
I'm hoping for the best.
Right, there's perks to it.
Angelo (45:18):
But I think we've definitely gotten a lot out of a
lot of the positives out of theenlightenment period, yeah
right, but we're kind of at atime where things are starting
to get money muddy in.
This post-modernist mentalitywhere everyone has their own
truth is starting to infecteverything to the extent where
(45:42):
there people, people are hungryfor, for something real and
objective and they can't find itbecause their epistemology says
, hey, uh, it's all your, youropinions.
Chris (45:55):
So, no matter what humans are going to choose, as far as
their behavior goes right,enacting more or less violence
in the world, the counterforceof the will of God will always
bring us back to those spiritsof truth.
Or to the spirit of truth and Ithink that's our collective
wisdom tradition Is that if youhave the spirit of truth, you're
(46:20):
going to be okay.
Matt (46:21):
that spirit of truth, beauty and goodness, and let's,
let's define okay too, becausethat was not the thing I was
expecting you to define because,because, because in order.
In order to really pursue truth, it very often may require
(46:47):
giving up things painfully, thatyou've clung on to, things that
oh sure, that are built up onum, on, you know, false
substance.
I'm not.
I would go as far as to saydefinitely requires yeah
definitely.
and then it's this wholereconfiguration, because you
know it could be like, yeah,we're all gonna be okay in the
end.
Yeah, perhaps, sure, yeah, butyou have to be able to let these
(47:13):
things go that are keeping youin that false place.
That could mean changing yourwhole entire life.
That may mean changing yourwhole friendship Not to scare
all our viewers here, well, butfor this greater thing, that
when you come out on the otherside, then you can say this is
(47:35):
actually better than where I wasthere's always death involved,
right yeah, than well where Iwas, and there's always deaths
involved, right yeah, there'salways what there's always death
involved
Angelo (47:42):
death involved a little bit of death, when, when you
have to, when you have to getrid of a part of yourself, like
something that you held on to,like, let's say, you grew up and
you were in this specificreligion and you clung to that
religion and that was how youdefined everything in your life.
It was your way of life, it washow you defined your own
identity.
To let go of that is a deathand it's painful and it's
(48:06):
destructive, and that's whypeople, when you bring up
religion or politics at thedinner table, are like, oh my
god, you're trying to mess withwhat I define myself with and
they're going to fight you forit, because to lose that is to
die in some very real sense.
Yeah, and you're going to be inthe desert and wander and
(48:27):
you're going to have to rebuildyour in terms of the archetypes,
because we can't not right youknow the warrior you know the
warrior.
Matt (48:36):
the warrior being that part of yourself that is
defending, the part thatestablishes what your boundaries
are, and it's so much tied tothat sense of yourself that
you're willing to defend, andwe're talking about things that
die, right, the warrior is theone that goes and dies on the
battlefield Right.
(48:58):
So, in the boldness of puttingyourself out there, you may have
to suffer a death of some kindto something that you're deeply
defending in order that agreater life can come into you,
in order that a greater truthand a greater goodness can come
through you.
Angelo (49:17):
But you have to be able to surrender that I would say
that idea in and of itself is atruth that you have to come to
face.
How do you contend with thesuffering and death not just of
your physical body but of yourideas and your beliefs about
yourself?
I just want to put this outthere.
Chris (49:33):
That it's.
It's okay to deconstruct yourreligion and your philosophical
understanding of the world andeverything.
It's also okay to do that whilealso still adhering to your
religion.
Because I kind of did the mostextreme version of
deconstruction, which was notonly deconstructing my ideas but
(49:56):
also just giving it all up andpurging my christian identity
out of me.
I wish I hadn't done that.
I really do, I was.
That was a a grave mistake thatI that I made.
So I mean there's people who dothat.
Angelo (50:11):
You know the religion is kind of the uh, the most common
, uh way thing to talk about.
When you're referring to a verypersonal paradigm shift, sure,
but you can do it in theopposite direction too.
You can be very.
It doesn't have to bespecifically a religious
(50:33):
institution per se.
It can be your view on yourrelationship and that can be
shattered.
Someone cheats on you.
Your family was your sense ofmeaning and purpose and moving
you forward in life, and thatcan be just.
And your sense of who, who youare, who your partner is, what
(50:57):
your kingdom was, is completelygone.
Where's your sense of truth?
Next, you've got to havesomething stronger than that,
sure yeah, right, and that'swhere the truth, beauty and
goodness anchor comes in,because that's got to be.
If you rely, that's why it'slike.
If you rely on that, that's thelike most ultimate so source I
(51:21):
in my time I less will break anddie.
Chris (51:25):
See, I experienced a death of all of those things,
right my paradigm ofrelationship and religion, and
intelligence and experience.
What I failed to do wasexperience a death of my ego,
and I think you know so I I Iemptied myself of of of
(51:47):
everything that made me metrying to rebuild myself from
the ground up, when really Ishould have just let go of
myself and discovered myself inthe context of, I guess, my life
and the way I should have livedit.
So it was also a loss of values, right?
(52:09):
So the Christian values that Igrew up with.
When I purged the Christianidentity from myself, I lost my
guiding principles of living.
Angelo (52:18):
Your compass yeah.
Yeah, I definitely had a verysimilar experience, but I had
affected my telos.
Well, it's happened multipletimes in my life, right?
Chris (52:31):
You don't just do it one time.
I get there, you know, but Imean the nice thing is you.
Angelo (52:36):
You go through that a few times, it gets easier,
because then you recognize, hey,changes is part of life, yeah,
and to and change is healthy.
And I know when I make a bigchange in life, even if a huge
part of myself is shattered thatdoesn't happen to me that it's
the end.
I can rebuild from there yeahand that's the attitude to have
(52:57):
you always got to be movingforward.
Don't let you know, don't makesomething your idol.
In fact, I think that's whatscripture is actually referring
to when it's saying you know,don't make false gods.
It's not just talking aboutthese like invisible ideas of uh
some some personified beingit's talking about like, hey,
(53:18):
you can make money an idol, youcan make your relationship an
idol, you can make your sense ofpower an idol, like all of
these you can make your ownreligion an idol to yourself.
Where you're you're trying to,this specific ritual and way of
life is how you're trying tolive.
It's not the thing you shouldbe serving, the thing that that
(53:41):
thing's aiming at, not the thingitself right, I've never
thought of it that way and Ithink you're right.
Chris (53:47):
I think maybe that was maybe in some ways that was a
good thing that I well.
Angelo (53:50):
Well, when you're a child, you don't even understand
things you know.
To you like literally, god islike an invisible friend in a
child's mind.
Matt (54:01):
Could I Hold on?
You can even make yourself anidol.
Angelo (54:06):
Oh yeah, Absolutely.
Matt (54:08):
And then there's the whole .
Was it solipsism where youthink that everything revolves
around you, right?
Was it solipsism where youthink that everything revolves
around you, right?
Angelo (54:15):
Then you're like well, you know too proud to submit to
anything that isn't outside ofyour domain.
It's like the ultimatenarcissism.
That's right, I am.
Matt (54:24):
God.
Angelo (54:25):
That's right I believe in a higher power, it's me.
Matt (54:28):
Yeah, and metaphorically like what is the greatest sin?
Angelo (54:31):
right Pride.
Matt (54:33):
Pride, blasphemy.
Thinking of yourself as God,proclaiming yourself as.
Angelo (54:38):
God Right, that's the deepest message you think that
everything revolves around you.
Matt (54:44):
Well, who the hell are you ?
You know, honestly.
Chris (54:47):
Have a little humility.
Matt (54:49):
Humility, get yourself in that little squirt.
Get some humidifiers, put themall over your bedroom and then
get some humility, Cool downthat pride a little bit and have
the spirit of truth.
That's a difficult balance too.
(55:09):
You have these two poles.
Humidity and humility are, yeah,humidity and humility humility
and humility, yeah, where wherewe have the, the baseness of our
limitations as humans, as youknow, physical beings, but then
we're we also have this infinitedivinity within us at the same
(55:31):
time.
So we're like right in themiddle.
You know, it's like mythicallythink of, like think of what a
demigod is, who's from the earthbut also has this divine
connection at the same time.
Angelo (55:43):
It's like that's that's really kind of what we are it's
funny because there's thispowerful movement in the culture
to say that we are allconnected and we are all God,
but at the same time there'sthis sense that you don't want
to call yourself, go as far asto call yourself God, because
that's blasphemous.
Matt (56:01):
Like the big G right yeah.
Angelo (56:02):
So it's like the more humble you are and the more
you're like no, I'm not thebiggest center of the universe.
I should serve and loveeverything that makes you more
aligned with the center of theuniverse and the more you're
(56:23):
like I am the center of theuniverse, it's all about me the
more disconnected you are and soit's like a paradox I've never
wow, never heard it put that waybefore.
Chris (56:35):
Yeah, I mean I wouldn't.
I wouldn't say that there'slike, oh, it's so difficult.
I would not say that there isan element of divinity in and of
our own being.
But there's a divine potentialthere and that's why you have
humility and other forms ofvirtue to attain the spirits of
(56:57):
truth, beauty and goodness,because when those reside in,
your ego should shift fromyourself unto god, and then you
will gain the grace andknowledge and truth and power
and spirit to to enact on theworld in a holy fashion honestly
, I think that's a great placeto to end this one oh, okay, can
(57:22):
I get an amen?
Matt (57:23):
amen, that was uh, amen, chris, so thank you all for
joining us on this journey abouttruth.
Angelo (57:33):
Hopefully you learned something and, if you made it
this far, we're very gratefulthat you are willing to watch
our content and listen to ustalk.
Please do your part Like, share, subscribe, comment, share your
thoughts.
Let us know what you'rethinking and we hope to see you
on the next one.
Chris (57:52):
It's been real All right.
Matt (57:54):
Thank you for listening, until next time.
Angelo (57:57):
Take care.
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