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Joshua P. Warren Daily
Joshua P. Warren Daily: Do You Have Free Will?
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Hello, I am Joshua P. Warren, and this is Joshua P. Warren Daly. I want to start by telling you something kind of stupid. You know, I have made a lot of TV programs and movies over the years with my buddy C. Eric Scott. And he is a graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts. And he got his degree in editing from there. And it's always been funny to me over the years that Eric has told me that he was going to school the same time as Danny McBride and Ben Best and Jodie Hill and all those guys who have had uh sort of great success as uh a clique, if you will, um producing movies like The Foot Fist Way and TV shows like Eastbound and Down. They got involved with Will Farrell, and I have always found the stuff that that group of guys produced to be just hilarious. Uh I love their sense of humor, and um I have uh happily followed their work for years, and so uh Lauren showed me, oh, probably less than a week ago, this trailer for uh a movie called Dundee that had Danny McBride apparently playing the son of Crocodile Dundee. And instantly I was excited. I said, Oh man, I have got to see this movie because I guess I was the right generation or whatever, but I love the crocodile Dundee movies. And uh so I I told Lauren, I was like, I'm gonna be right there first in line to see this movie Dundee, where Danny McBride and uh I I think Chris Helmsworth supposedly was gonna be in uh are are doing this sort of spin-off of the crocodile Dundee movie. And it turns out I today they announced that that's actually fake. That this is some kind of uh a fake movie promotion for um the Super Bowl. And this was, I guess, thought up by the Australian Tourism Commission, that's what I understand. They produced an IMDB page for it and everything. And so um the reason I'm bringing this up first and foremost is that I hope that this sort of fake trailer or fake series of trailers for this movie has gotten enough people excited like myself that they will actually say, Wow, holy crap, and they'll make that movie. So I'm just putting my you know two cents out there. Um I I hope that the movie Dundee with Danny McBride actually gets made. And it's kind of funny when you think about the relationship that we have with movies, because it's not something that you necessarily think about directly, but movies shape our lives these days in the same way that um great literature shaped our lives one hundred, two hundred years ago. Poetry used to shape our lives in a certain way, and we have to think about you know, what is this artistic format where we look at art and we compare it to our own experiences, our own realities, and the joy that we get from thinking that certain pictures are going to be made or something else creative is going to be produced. I talked to a producer many years ago who told me he said, you know, it's funny when you sit there and you watch a movie, what are you looking at? You're looking at lights flashing on a screen. And yet those lights flashing on a screen can make you laugh, can make you cry, can take you on this journey. And yet at the end of the day, all it is is lights flashing on a screen. And so you have to think about how that is sort of a model of reality itself and how it sort of breaks down what reality actually is. Um, how we use that as a convenient reference point, how you might be telling a story to somebody else. You say, well, this is like this scene that happened in Indiana Jones, or this is like this scene that happened in Star Wars, or oh, this is like this scene that happened in Kremlins, or whatever. We use lights flashing on a screen and the patterns that we get from that to think about a way of referring to our lives. Now we all know that movies aren't real, and we know that TV shows aren't real, we know that songs are just expressions of people wailing into a microphone and all that. But it but it is funny how that we need something that we have to sort of grasp onto in order to, again, refer to our lives. And that's the magic of art. Uh I guess you could say a podcast is the same thing, or a radio show. I mean, you know, what what is this? I mean, why are you listening to this? Uh just a guy talking into a microphone, and yet already I've taken you down some train of thought. Um this is what the power of vibration and the power of electromagnetic transmission can do for you. And so that said, last night I was watching this movie with uh Jim Carey. It was a uh documentary about Jim Carey using method acting to portray Andy Kaufman in the movie Man on the Moon, which is a great film. And, you know, Jim Carrey is one of the most successful actors in history. Uh I find it hard to believe that anybody in America has not seen a Jim Carrey movie, and furthermore, I think I could easily say you've probably seen a movie that has Jim Carrey in it that you enjoyed, maybe even loved. And Jim Carrey has become one of those people who talks a lot about these concepts that we would consider related to law of attraction and uh using your imagination to manifest what you want. Uh as a matter of fact, Oprah Winfrey is one of those people who also talks a lot about it. There's a whole list of people you can go through in my book, Use the Force, a Jedi's Guide to the Law of Attraction. I um I pointed out certain you know quotes by celebrities where they're uh talking about how that they used what we would consider law of attraction to create a mold for themselves that they lived up to. And in this documentary with uh Jim Carrey, uh a guy who uh has made millions and millions of dollars and and gained so much fame, and by the way, I don't know Jim Carrey, I have no connection to Jim Carrey. At one point um the interviewer asked him a question, and I'm paraphrasing here because I you know I didn't record this scene, but but but basically the the topic of um free will came up, and this is very interesting to me, and it should be to all of us freedom versus determinism, uh, something that I explored when I was in college in philosophy class. And Jim Carey said, I'm not even sure about the whole free will thing. He said, I have this cup of tea beside me. Um why do I drink from that cup of tea? Because I'm thirsty. He says, Is that free will? Is that free will that I drink from that cup of tea because I'm thirsty, or do I just drink because I'm thirsty? And if I'm thirsty, well, what was that thing that made me thirsty? And that's a very simple way of describing this conundrum, this problem that we have trying to figure out how much of you is free and how much is predetermined? And is anything about you really free? Or is everything determined? So let me repeat that. He says, I have a cup of tea next to me. Do I drink from that because that's free will? Or do I drink from it because I'm thirsty? And if I'm thirsty, what made me thirsty? So in examining our own lives, you have to ask yourself, where is the boundary? Is there a boundary? Is it possible that on one hand you have absolutely no free will, that everything is predetermined, and that you can sort of fool yourself into thinking that it's free will just because somebody's not standing there holding a gun to your head and making you do something? Or is it possible that everything is laid out in a plan. And it may seem like you're acting freely, but that's only because that you're reacting to things that don't have a particular obvious appearance. I'm not sure what the answer to that question is. But I do think, however, that some of us go through life thinking that we are completely free and that we can do whatever we want, and some of us go through life thinking that everything is predetermined and nothing matters and screw it all and you just have to f go with the flow. Is there an in-between? Is there some boundary where choice makes a difference? I want you to think about that. Is there a blurry spot where you have freedom? Or could we look back and look at your childhood, look at how you were born, look at how you were raised, look at the things that happened to you, and all the little pieces would just bounce off each other like balls on a pool table, and someone could say, Oh yeah, this is exactly the path that person is going to take. This is one of the great questions of philosophy, the nature of free will, freedom versus determinism. And I find it intriguing that um even though I don't know uh the answer to that, and I seriously doubt you know the the answer to that, um we explore that when we represent our lives through art, because animals don't really produce art in the same way that humans produce art. Uh animals may do things that we interpret as artistic and they may look artistic in various ways, but humans go out and intentionally believe that they are creating art, that they're making something happen. But it could be that um that's not the case at all, that actually every one of us is sort of just responding to invisible forces that are guiding us to do a particular thing at a particular time. That's one of the reasons that I'm so intrigued by chance. Luck. I was watching an interview, uh I guess it was the one that David Letterman did with Barack Obama the other day on Netflix, and you know, David Letterman sat there and interviewed Barack Obama for I don't know, an hour or so, and at the end, Barack Obama said, you know, like I have a question for you. Do you think you've been lucky? And I thought, huh. Why would Barack Obama ask David Letterman that? It shows you that even somebody who's been the president of the United States, who was not just a president, but a an historic president who beat all kinds of odds? Why would he bring that up? You know, why would that be important enough for him at this point when he's not a politician to ask that question? I think it's something that we're all dealing with. Uh what is chance? What is luck? What is the wiggle room that you have that you might be able to work with when it comes to either being graced by something that allows you to change reality or something that you can influence yourself to change reality. These are the things that I'm thinking about right now as I'm writing my new book called Finding Your Magic slash hacking reality. These are the things that are going into my um my big event that I'm going to do in Las Vegas in May, where we get together and we explore this together, and we have exercises. And I have a feeling that I'm going to have more insight into this as time passes, as as every day goes on. I have something that I I I feel like I need to share with you. Those of you who are, I guess, meant to be there. Because there are some of you who might think, well, I need to be there. I'm going to make the choices in my life to be there. And then there are some of you who just were like, boom, I'm going to be there. Um, one way or another, that's what we're going to dig into at my event in Las Vegas in May. Uh my life is constantly changing, your life is constantly changing, and that's what growth is. That's what productivity is. And you're listening to this podcast right now because we're growing together, we're thinking about these things together. It doesn't matter if you're on the other side of the world, we have the ability to explore these questions together. Um I hope that you will go to my website, joshua PWarren.com. There's no period after the P, Joshua PWarren.com. Uh click around. Uh just give me your thoughts on what you find there, on all the strangeness, wondrous parts of life's mysteries. Um while you're there, at the top of the homepage, you can click the link to this podcast. It's called Joshua P. Warren Daily. I try to record one every day for you. It's always free, it's always short. There are no commercials other than the things that I just promote to you on my own. Uh you can subscribe, you can follow me on Twitter if uh you're interested at Joshua P. Warren, and I usually tweet when a new one is there. So that's where my head is tonight. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your support. Uh thank you for staying curious, and I will talk to you again soon.