The Attack On Truth | Ep.20

We clear the air on past wording around gender and art, then track how algorithms fuel a false gender war, turning nuance into contempt. From AI fakery to the Jim Carrey saga, we dig into why shared truth is fragile, how 1984 reads as a manual for today, and why Descartes still matters.

• artistic intent vs depravity in storytelling
• algorithmic echo chambers shaping gender takes
• accountability over blame for dating patterns
• clone rumours, masks, and media illusions
• Jim Carrey controversy as a trust stress test
• 1984, memory, and editable history
• attention collapse and losing deep reading
• AI as thinking crutch and faculty loss
• censorship pressure during the pandemic
• objective truth vs relativism through Descartes
• practical steps to resist propaganda

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Transcript

Clearing The Air On Past Comments

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to episode 20 of the Ministry Man podcast. I'm your host, Isaac Anthony Turner. Now I've got to clear the air. Sometimes when I do a podcast, I listen to it. But I don't always listen to it. But sometimes I do. And I listen to it and I realize that when I say some things that don't come out the way that I intend. Or I might say something and I'm like, ooh, you know what? Listening to that, I think I I should have added a little bit more information because that sounds really bad. And I know all the things going on in my head and what I think of things, but no one else does unless I communicate it. And like I was listening, so two episodes ago, I was talking about Wuthering Heights, and I said, um, I was like talking about how smutty it was, and I was like, only a woman could think of this. And I'm like, um, and I didn't explain what I meant when I said that because it sounded like I thought women were more depraved than men because I was talking about depraved things in the movie. I said something along the lines of only a woman could uh come up with something like that for a movie, a man would never do that, some sort of thing, something along those lines. Uh but what what I meant was a man would never do that for cinema. I mean, he would do it, and he could do it, and probably does do those sorts of things, if not worse. I would I would suspect that the more depraved gender, if there is one, would definitely be men. Uh in com if if we're comparing the two. Um, but it's like uh it's not that I know women to be depraved, it's that I know men really well and I know what they would do if they were to make a movie. Um, they wouldn't they would they would put depravity in a movie to make sure that people know that this is depraved, whereas in Wuthering Heights, it seemed like the depraved things were to uh display some sort of deep complexities of a traumatic psychological relationship or something like that. That's how I would envision uh a woman to portray that, not that a man would never create depraved things. I think a good example would be like 99% of porn studios would be owned by men, but it's something of the actual, I don't know the exact statistic for that, but I think it's majority. And for smart literature, it's like 80% authors are women, and so it's not that men wouldn't write couldn't write depraved things or make depraved things. So I I didn't explain that, and um and I was just like I was just like, yeah, men would never do that. Men would do much worse, I'm sure. But it wouldn't be I think it would be a bit more blunt and it wouldn't try to be artistic in the way that Emerald Fennel was trying to be artistic with what she was doing with the movie. So men just aren't doing that much, you know. Uh but yeah, listening to that back, I'm like, damn, that just sounds like I'm like, yo, women are depraved, bro. Men would never, which is men would never. We're like um men are just in this innocent world, you know, and women are just like oh, just making everything just so perverted, and um like and it's just us innocent men, the uh that don't do anything wrong, and um oh man, it's crazy, dude. The gender war stuff is crazy. Um do not buy in, do not buy into the gender war. Like, I saw this thing the other day about there was this video of a girl who was waiting for her boyfriend or a partner to come home from a golf trip or something and said, he's gonna be home at two o'clock, and or he said he was gonna be home at two o'clock, and then she's filming herself and it's like 2.30, and he's like, still not here, and then at like 3:30, still not here, 4:30, still not here, and then he gets there at like five or something, and then um all of the comments that I saw when I saw the video were of guys saying, Oh, geez, like, have you got nothing else better to do? Like, you literally have no hobbies, or um geez, why are you trying to call out your man on social media like this? They were just like attacking the girl, basically. And then I saw a video of a couple that had seen the same video and they were looking at the the comments side by side, and on the guy's phone, he was seeing all the the men commenting hating on the girl, and on the girls' phone, she was seeing all the comments of girls being like, Wow, that guy's so bad. What's it, you know, it takes two seconds to send a message, or how can he not respect your time? And you know, why would he do this? Blah, blah, blah. And it was like, and she couldn't see the girl couldn't see any of the comments the guys were seeing, and the guy couldn't see any of the comments the girl was seeing. So it was to me clear that there was an algorithmic push to give you the content that is enforcing your ideology or your beliefs, or that you might be more inclined of, or if it's not even your existing belief, you're going to look at the comments and say, oh, the vast majority of people thinking that, but it's actually not true. The vast majority of people, you wouldn't know what they're thinking because they're not showing you that information. And that is feeding into a gender war. There's uh there's too much content out there, dude. Like everything is either men are the worst or women are the worst. Like you've got the incels that just hate women because they're like involuntarily celibate. For those who don't know, incel stands for involuntarily celibate, just means that they would want to sleep with a woman, but they are incapable of doing so because the women don't want to sleep with them. And they blame, instead of taking accountability and being like, okay, maybe I should look at why that is, they blame the women. Like one of the things that Jordan Peterson used to say is if you're a guy and all the women are rejecting you, who's got the problem? It's not all the women. Like, if you start to think that, that's insane to think I'm this person. Like, I saw a video of a girl who did the same thing. She's like, you know what? I realize that the the reason that I'm single and I go on all these dates, and the guys they they never want a second date. We um, you know, and my friend they would tell me, like, oh, I just don't get why you're single. Like, you're you're cool, you're successful, you're strong and active and all this stuff. She listed all these things, and then at the end of it, she was like, and you can be a girl too. And then um, yeah, like, and I realized that the guys are just intimidated by me. And then, like, all the all the comments were just like guys saying, well, all the comments that were available for me to see at least, were just the guys saying, Hey, just so you know, like the th all the things you listed aren't really appealing to guys. Like you said that you were um successful, you said that you were cool, you said that you were active. It's like that's all fine and well, but the last thing you said is like, and I can also be a girl as well, is kind of like that's the neglected part. We just want like most men just want a feminine girl, typically. I mean it's obviously every everyone's different, and but these are just what all the comments were saying, and her response to the comments were, you're just hating, you're a hater. Like, yeah, cool, heard that one before. And they're like, No, we're literally like there was some guys trying to give genuine advice, and she's like, Yeah, cool, like, like thinking that all the advice was like insulting her. She's like, No, all of you are the problem. It's like, nothing wrong with me. Like, it's the same with anything to think that everyone else is the problem and not you when like you're the common denominator that should signal something. I mean, it's not a guarantee. Maybe you're unlucky, maybe you're just meeting the wrong people, but it's worth thinking about. Um, but anyway, yeah, so you got the incels who are like blaming the women because they're not desirable men, like they don't want you because you're not desirable to want. Like you can't just expect people to want you when you're not like why should you? Why should anyone want you? You literally just play video games all day and watch porn and like you don't you're not ambitious, like you don't you couldn't provide for anyone. Why would you expect that to be a desirable thing anyway? And then you've got the feminists, like the extreme ones that just hate men for I don't I don't really know the ideology on that side of things. I've not really looked into the feminist stuff, but uh but I know that there's some that genuinely just hate men, and it's probably because they've been they've had really bad experiences with men. Like if imagine this, like you're a girl and um you really like this guy, and he's just like a narcissist dude, and um you know, kind of leads you on, sleeps with you, and then is just like ghosts to you, and then the girl's really upset, and then that what if that happens to a girl like two or three times? She's gonna get really angry and just gonna think this is this is what men are like. Like guys are like this, this is what their their goal is, is what they want, and uh and so they've been scorned maybe one too many times to the fact that they just think every guy is like that. And so, and maybe the the in in the way that the accountability for the for the men or the incels is to better themselves, maybe it's got something to do with the the choices. I don't know. I'd have to look into a little bit more. I was gonna say like the mate selection, like if you're if you keep picking guys that are like that, because like as uh as a guy, I know that I'm not like that, and I know many guys that aren't like that either. I know very like a lot of my friends are married, and so they're just in healthy, successful relationships. And so you have to think, like, okay, well, is this girl just what is it about this girl where this keeps happening to her? Is she choosing the wrong people? Maybe that's a train of thought. I don't really know. I'd have to do a bit more, maybe asking questions and looking into it, but don't fall into the gender war. That's what I'm trying to say. Because there is one, I feel like there is one going on. Um, and then the other thing before I get into the the brunt of what I want to talk about, uh last week I I spoke about clones. I'm not convinced of clones, so I didn't really make that clear that I'm like that the like I'm not like fully like that's impossible, but I I haven't seen any convincing evidence to say that clones definitely exist, and so like that's not like a view. Like I believe in a bunch of conspiracies, but like the clone one is like I don't know, like I'm more of the idea that it would be prosthetics or uh masks, or I don't know, like something if if that was to be a thing, like one where it was like tall Biden. If you get a chance, Google tall Biden because this one's one of the funniest ones. He's like in like one of his tours or one of his like speeches that he did, he was standing at like 6'3 or something, and he's like he was so insanely tall. Like I um that was that might be one of the funniest ones where you're like, dude, that's not that it's a different dude. What is happening? But but yeah, like I'm not I don't think that that was a a clone. So a lot of people believe in clones and whatever. So I don't necessarily think that. But here's the thing here's um an interesting thing that really was like kind of annoying is that the Jim Carrey stuff, it was like, okay, so many people was like, that's not him. A lot of people said it was a clone. Whether it was that or just prosthetics, we didn't really know. And then this this guy, um, Alexis Stone, his name is, posts a photo and it's like Jim Carrey at uh Alexis Stone as Jim Carrey, posts two photos of Jim Carrey and one photo of the mask, some teeth, a wig, and a perfectly placed Eiffel Tower in the background. It was the most AI photo you could possibly imagine, for one. Clearly AI. Uh, but the thing is the thing. All of the people that were defending Jim Carrey saying that is Jim Carrey, he's just had a bit of work done, you know, all these conspiracy theories that all these conspiracy theorists that think it's not him, and they go, it is him. And then the Alexa Stone thing comes out, they go, ha, see, it wasn't a clone. It was this guy. It was like, no, you thought that it was him, though. You originally thought that it was him, and you were defending that, calling the other people saying it's not him crazy, and then now you believe in the Alexa Stone thing saying that confirms that it really genuinely wasn't him, and then you're still calling the conspiracy theorist crazy. It's like they were right, they were right, it wasn't him, even though I don't even believe it was Alexa Stone either, because that was just they have one photo of just the thing, not that he's even wearing it, like all of his other things that he does, there's like videos, there's you can see the process of him getting the makeup done on, and this one just happens to be some random photos. Like, yeah, that's that's not him, okay. Um, yeah, so so many AI things going around, but yeah, the people that were defending Jim Carrey originally should be embarrassed either way. Um anyway, and this is the thing because Jim Carrey hasn't spoken out, he doesn't have social media, so no one can like check his socials. There's not really been any word from it since like of him. There's all these like random articles coming out, and there's all these I don't know, theories, there's AI videos coming out, there's more AI photos, there's all this like fake stuff coming out. And we do not know what the truth is anymore. And I think this is a a telling example or a perfect example, the Jim Carrey stuff of this distortion of truth. No one knows. We're trying to figure it out, but someone knows because if that really wasn't Jim Carrey, it was someone else, and they know, and they're not just gonna do that on their own volition. I don't know if Jim Carrey's just pulling a prank, if this is just like a thing he's doing, could be that. Although it would be weird and kind of disrespectful to like get someone else to accept an award for you, but whatever. That's who cares. He doesn't really like those award things anyway. So maybe he was like, Yeah, look, I don't I hate these award shows. I'm gonna get someone to do a lookalite thing. It could have just been him just doing it, like you know, it doesn't need to be some sinister thing. He could have just been like, I hate award shows, this one's in France, you know. Maybe they're not gonna know. Uh I'll get I'll pay someone to do this and they'll go and do it. It could literally be, I mean, he's scheduled in movies for like 2027. So, yeah, I don't know. I my my current theory of it is that he's just paid someone because he just hates those events, maybe. I don't know. That's probably the most likely. But but regardless, is that there's truth has been distorted, we don't know, and it's a common thing. I've been reading the book 1984 recently, which is a classic novel of a dystopian future, in which a big theme of it, the protagonist, Winston, is his job or his his day job, is to rewrite certain parts of history, or he he he erases certain articles that have certain information. One of the themes of the book is that they distort um history so much, or they just change it altogether and they erase every shred of evidence of the real story that ever existed. So you do not have access to it, and therefore, even if you have memory of it, there's nothing to anchor that memory against the truth. So you could say, I remember it this way, but all of the books and all of the written information doesn't confirm what you support. And so you end up questioning, okay, do I remember it the way that I think that I remember it? Because uh nothing's really backing me up on this. And everyone's too afraid to talk about their memories because they have thought police, basically. And so they would be um executed essentially if they break the law. So an eerie example of what's kind of happening today, like some of the other things. One of the quotes in the movies, sorry, one of the quotes in the book, it says, Whoever controls the past controls the future, and whoever controls the present controls the past. So, Ergo, if you have the monopoly or the authority over the present, you can change the past. And in doing so, you're able to steer where people go into the future. So um, truth is basically lost, history is lost. Um, even the people that do remember, like there's some elements in the book where people do remember the old days, but they're so old now that they don't remember anything relevant or important. They're kind of senile, they're kind of like don't really have it all together, so their memory can't even be trusted anyway. And it's it's uh it's a scary kind of thing, man. It's like it's it's easy to do, I think. It's very easy to do, especially because we're moving away from the material world and everything is going digital. So a lot of the books and the information, like there's less books being printed because people are using their Kindle, or people are just, you can buy books as a PDF. You can um, I mean, uh, and people just aren't reading as many books anymore. Like now that we have so much entertainment and access to information, books are kind of becoming a a lost art, or like reading books has become a lost art. And I've mentioned before, but it's like it's like they they don't need to worry about having book burnings anymore because people just don't bother to read the books anyway. So they can kind of print these these books and no one's really got the the ability to read it, and even if they do, they probably don't have the the ability to retain what it is that they're reading because their attention span is so small because they're just constantly feeding themselves with 30-second, 10-second videos that to sit there to read a book is that that's like a mount, that's like climbing Mount Everest for a lot of people. It's like a lot of people say like they can't even watch a movie. Like they've lost the ability to sit there and just watch a movie without going on their phone or getting bored or being distracted. And even the idea of watching a movie sounds daunting and exhausting to some people because it's like what like two and a half hours like to sit there and watch something. It's like like people just don't want to do that. They could they could easily do that on their phone, like given the person, a lot of people could sit there on their phone for two and a half hours just scrolling through reels and TikToks, or they could watch, you know, maybe four hours of a TV show if it's broken up into 20-minute episodes. They could sit there and do that all day. They could sit there and maybe play a video game all day. But sitting there and reading a book or even just watching a movie is like it's very hard for people to do. It's you should be worried about that. You should be worried about that, and you should be doing something about it as well. If that's you, like if you're that type of person, if you can remember what it was like to sit there and watch a movie and not be bored, like that's crazy that you can be re be getting entertainment and still just be meh. Someone was like, Yeah, look, I'm not really interested so much in this$100 million blockbuster movie with the best directors in the world and A-list cast, like, meh, it doesn't really interest me, but I'll watch this like little TikTok, you know, I'll watch a few of those. That interests me. I'm interested in that. What's this dude got to say? And it's just like, whoa, bro. Pretty crazy. But but yeah, like it's so easy as well. Like that that now that things, as I was saying, now that things are moving off of the The analog world and the uh the material world, moving digital, it's very easy to change what things say, what certain news articles say. We don't have news articles anymore in the paper, but you you have a website and they could easily go in and just alter what things were said. No one would really have a good way of proving that right or wrong. It's kind of scary. Uh, I know that even with things like the other day, I tried to find a photo in my last podcast. I was trying to find the photo of Gizaine Maxwell when she was like, I don't know, in her hearing or whatever. The photo that went viral that wasn't her. It was obviously not her, it was just some glasses and a weird wig of just like some chick that looked like like maybe like half resembling her, just like smallest bit. But I Googled it and I could not find the photo. Like Google was obviously censoring that because that went viral. I saw so many things on like social media, like Instagram and Facebook, it was showing it, but Google would not show me the photo. And I thought that was insane because because of how viral it went. And and it was so new, and usually a lot of search engines, when you type it in, it shows like somewhat of a recent thing, especially if it's like being spoken about a lot recently. But no, I couldn't find it. I was I was like, what is going on? It took me a lot of effort to try and dig it up. And I was like, that that shouldn't be the case. So Google's definitely doing it. It would be very, very easy to get ChatGPT to do it, which everyone seems to be obsessed with now. And I think you should be careful of that too, because people are also losing their ability to think. They're getting Chat GPT to do the thinking for them. And they're not problem solving and they're not using their brain. You have to understand, like when you start to export an ability that you have or a faculty that you have, you export that to something else, you will lose that faculty, or you will your effectiveness to use that that faculty will decrease. So the more that you export out your whatever task it is that you can do, you will, you will then lose that or decrease in the functionality of that faculty, the more that you do that. So it's like if I go to the gym, I need to, I need to use like lift the weights myself. I have to use the resistance of the weights in order for me to grow and to get stronger. If I go to the gym and I and I'm doing a bench and I do half the reps and I go, hey bro, can you um can you finish these reps for me? And I get someone else to do the reps, like as silly as that sounds, that's literally what happens. Like, if you Google the answer to everything, so if you're reading a book and you go, look, I just want to get like a chapter summary of what this is talking about and what this means before you even read it, and it's like you haven't used your mental faculties to actually figure it out and to listen to what they're saying and explaining, and you're just like, you already know what it is before it's like figuring out a puzzle, and you just like Google, okay, well, how do I figure the puzzle out? And then you oh, okay, so that's how you do it, and then you do the puzzle. And it's like, well, the whole purpose of the puzzle is to figure it out, so it's not just to know the answer to it, like you've that's you've lost the the per the purpose of the puzzle, and so you should you should be so careful when using chat GPT or just exporting exporting any kind of I don't know human function out to something else. Like you you're uh the more you do it, the less you're going to well, I'll say the more you do it, the more you're gonna have to do it. So that's scary. Yeah, but I wouldn't be surprised if they uh if they start doing that with COVID. I mean we start they were doing it with COVID in real time, actually. With like information, that they were censoring information. Like Mark Zuckerberg came right out and said, like, yeah, they were pressuring us to they pressured us. They pressured us to censor information during that time for political reasons and for probably financial reasons. They probably probably got uh we apparently got threatened by the Biden administration. But whatever. I mean, it's so easy to do. There is a a war on truth that is very, very easy to implement. Like if you think that we're living in a time where they don't use propaganda, you are crazy. You are the perfect person to be to have propaganda used against. The person that doesn't believe that they even use propaganda is 100% under the influence of propaganda. Like that's there's no perfect candidate that would be susceptible to that. And there's people that genuinely like, no, like the government has our best interests at heart, like they just want the best for us. Anyone that's in power is pure of heart. Everyone knows that. That's the rule. Govern me harder, daddy. That's what they say. One of the worst attacks on truth that you can see vividly that everyone knows what's happening is the the trans issue. Because they try to they go, all right, so like gender's just like a spectrum, right? Like, we can all agree on that. Like, gender's just a spectrum. And it's like, no, no, we can't all agree on that. Like that, like when you look at things in humanity, gender is quite literally one of the only binary things that we have in like biologically speaking. There are many things that are a spectrum. So someone's weight, you you could say, like, you know, obesity or you know, there's uh from skinny to to overweight is a spectrum. Like you could be anywhere on that, you could fall in line. There isn't just like this this distinction. But gender is like quite literally one of the only binary certainties that we have. There's this guy that goes around uh onto people's, like logs into people's Zoom chats or whatever. You know how they do those Zoom rooms or the chat rooms, and um, he'll be talking to like a trans person and they asked if they have a pet, and they go, I go, yeah, yeah, I got a cat. And like, oh, is it a boy or a girl? And they go, Oh, it's a girl. And they go, oh, how do you know it's a girl? And then they kind of you just watch the cogs turning, they go, How do I how do I know it's a what is what? And like they don't know how to answer it because like the answer is by the genitals. That's how you know it's the main, it's the main reason. Like it's their biology, that's how we know that your cat is a girl or a boy, and so that is a a gross attack on truth. And uh they want they like when you start to attack truth, like everything, everything falls apart. If you don't have a clear idea or guide of what truth is, like if something could be false that everyone knows is true, so let's say you you could look at something and be like two plus two equals five, and everyone's like, well, it's always equaled four, we know it's four, it's true that it's equals four, but then all of a sudden it goes, no, well, sometimes it can it can actually equal five. It breaks the foundations of reality for across the board. Because if if something as fundamental as the logical truth is broken, then that opens the floodgates to literally everything else falling into the same thing. We no longer have a ground of reality, we no longer are able to push forward or go anywhere, really. Like everything kind of just gets chaotic. It's just it's the epitome of chaos. Um, so it's a it's a it's a problem, and truth must be fought for. You shouldn't allow people to just tell lies or at or get you to admit lies because it it's more significant than just make it well, why what's it so why is it such a big deal? Like it makes this person happy. It's like, no, it is such a big deal because you're not you're attacking truth, the concept of truth is being attacked, and so it's not just like making someone feel good or like, oh, you don't want to offend anyone. It's like, no, what you're trying to do is distort truth, reality. This is what we need. We need a grip on reality as a society, as humans, the mind, it's it's it's so unloving to allow lies to live within people's heads uh because it does far more harm than it will ever do good. Um, truth will set you free. Come on now. Yeah, and so yeah, there's just so much propaganda, man. I mean, apparently America's never done anything wrong. They're uh they're the hero of every historical story that's in existence. No one really seems to know what happened in World War II anymore because there's all like all this new information coming out about the painter and the Nazis, and then uh one side saying this is the real story, and another side saying no, it's propaganda, and then no one knows what to believe. And because we've been lied to so much from the media, trust is broken. So people could be like, well, you lied to us about this and you lied to us about that, so why wouldn't you lie to us about all these other things as well? And so no one can really believe anything, it's all kind of murky. There's no there's no firm truth on history now, uh, which is very worrying as well. And man, like, and the thing is, like, people are just so quick to believe and to to consider truth. Whatever is the easiest thing to believe, and what it what conforms with their own reality, they're they're terrified of the implications of something being false if it means that they have to change a belief that they hold, or they're quick to believe something that uh discredits something else. So there was this thing that circulated for a little while of Jesus actually being another name for Zeus, the Greek god Zeus. So this circulated for a little while. It didn't gain much traction because it was nonsense, but the idea behind it was this that Jesus is is actually pronounced Jesus. So that's what they actually say in Spanish countries, they say Jesus. And so someone drew a line of they're saying Jesus, and that actually links back to Zeus. So when you're saying uh like to like hail Zeus, they're saying Jesus is hail Zeus. That's what you're saying when you're saying Jesus, you're actually saying hail Zeus. And like anyone that knows anything about the Bible for one knows that Jesus' name isn't Jesus, it's Yeshua, which is descent from Joshua. So Joshua and Jesus are both translated back to Yeshua. One is translated back from Greek, the other is translated back from Latin, and that's why we have two different names. But technically, Jesus and Joshua is Yeshua, they're both the same name. So, um, and Zeus in the Greek isn't, doesn't sound anything like Zeus, it's dios. Looks completely different. So, like Dios and Yeshua are just two completely different words etymologically and are not relevant at all. But people see that and they go, ha, because I think that religion is silly or I don't like Christianity, I'm just gonna believe this because someone said it and it sounds like without doing any due diligence, without looking it up, without just doing one 10-second Google search, you would have figured that out. Like it's very easy to come across like the truth of the matter. But that uh that circulated went viral for a little while, and obviously, like I said, it got stamped out because it's nonsense. But there's the there's so many things that people are just so quick to jump on, and then they'll post about it, and they might have a big following, and they'll post about it to a bunch of people. That's why Wes Huff blew up so much, is because he debated one of these people. I think it was Billy Carson um over a year ago now, it was a little while ago now, but just completely shut him down. He was like, Oh, yeah, all those things you're talking about, yeah, that's not true, and this is why, and uh, because he's actually studied it and there is information there. So this is the thing. One of the things that I've been reading recently, or just just finished reading, is Renee Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy. And he's the the guy that coined the phrase, I think, therefore I am, which is not the best translation of what he actually said. But the gist of it, uh, of his he writes six meditations basically, that he's trying to prove that there's a distinction between the body and the soul, for one. And he he also goes on to prove the existence of God, and he does it through reason and and and rational thinking. So it's it's brilliant, it's super hard to understand, it's not very long, but it's dense. And uh, and the first two meditations he goes into the into the idea uh of let's say, like, how do we know what's true? Let's say everything's false. Because every everything could be false. Like it's it's hard to know when you're in a dream, it's hard to know the difference. Um, so what he kind of tries to do is I'm gonna okay, I'm gonna reduce myself to assuming that everything is false. So, because you we could be being deceived, like something could be false. Our senses, as we know, can deceive us, where we we think we um, you know, our phone buzz in our pocket and it was like, oh, it's a phantom thing. We there's phantom limbs that people have. Their limb isn't there, but they sense that it's there. We we we think we hear things that we didn't hear, we see things we didn't hear. The senses can be very deceptive, which we know. He's like, okay, well, let's say that it's constantly deceptive. Let's say that he makes a distinguishing um difference between being in a dream and uh and being awake. He's like, when you're in the dream, you don't even know necessarily that you're in a dream. Uh, we only know that we're not in a different sense of reality. So when I'm awake, I know that I'm not in a dream. But what if I'm in something else? What if there's another thing that uh that I wouldn't become aware of until I came out of it? So you're not aware oftentimes that you're in the dream until you come out of it and you go, I'm a dreaming. What about now? What about the reality that when you're awake, what if there's another thing that to wake up from, let's say? So you how can we be sure that this is the reality that we live in? Furthermore, there's there's certain elements in a dream, let's say, where hands and feet and eyes are still in the dream, shapes still exist within a dream. So there's all these things that happen. So he goes, okay, so let's imagine that all doesn't exist. He he goes as far to say that even an artist, when they're creating the most novel and non-existent things uh like that could possibly be perceived in reality, still have some bearing of reality within it. So even if you create some creature or something, it would still have something, it would still either be, let's say, something that moves, like movement is a thing that exists. Or if it doesn't move, it could be still. And stillness is a thing that exists. And so it doesn't really matter what you create, colors, it would be a color, like that exists. So it doesn't really matter how far you drag it out, there's still something. And so Descartes saying, let's doubt all of it. Let's doubt all of the corporeal things, all of the things that are material in some sense. But then he goes on to say we also have things like physics and astronomy and medicine, things that are the study of other things. That is a thing still. The study of something is something. Um, even if it's not material, it's still a thing that exists, even if it's in only in the idea of the thing. He goes on to say things like geometry and arithmetic, two plus two equaling four is is something that is true inside and outside of a dream. And so he's like, let's say that even all of that is is deception, everything. So he's like, what if there's this evil, he calls it an evil genius or an evil demon, depending on the translation, because he was French. And so what if all of that is is fake? And so he goes, I'm going to reduce myself to assume that I am being deceived, that all of the truths that I know, all of these ideas, all of it I'm being deceived with. That's kind of his starting point. Let's just let's let's uh say that that is uh true. We can't prove it. Let's say that that's that's true. Um but then he and then he kind of starts and builds from there. So where he goes from there in the second meditation is uh in order that I might doubt that all of these things um um that I'm being deceived, that all these things aren't real, there has to be something that's doing the doubting. And so if I am being deceived, there has to be a me that is that is to be deceived. And so he's starting from this certain point of uh for in in the time that I am thinking, I exist. So he goes, he says, I am, I exist. The experience of it's impossible to doubt and not exist, basically, is what he's trying to say. Because there has to be a doubting subject, and you are the one that's doing the doubting. So, and it's not it's not so much that you uh you have the capability of doubting that you know that you exist, it's in the in the current present state of doubting that you exist because your memory could also be false. So, in even in the instance where you go, yeah, I did the experiment of doubting and then I concluded that I exist, your memory of that could be false. And so it's in the process or the act of the doubting that you know that you do exist. And so it's like, I am a better rendition of I think, therefore I am, would probably be like, I am thinking, therefore I exist, um, or there is an I. So you can basically conclude that that is at least an objective truth. And so if that is true, objective truth exists, which is huge for one. You can prove that there is objective truth. Um, there's kind of no real way around it. The idea was actually first created, I think, by Saint Augustine many, many uh maybe in the fourth century, I think it was. It was a long, long time ago. Similar sort of premise. So that there is, you can you can kind of conclude on objective truth based on this one premise. So that's a good starting block. I won't go through the other, there's four more meditations that kind of go in there. They're really cool. And um, I think I'll do a maybe a full episode on that, maybe if I can wrap my head around it because it's so dense. But it's a good starting point to know that objective truth exists. If something can be objectively true, that's important. Because if everything is just subjective, well then there is no real truth. Truth doesn't, if everything's subjective, truth actually doesn't exist. It's um it's relative. And this is why I don't believe in relativism, whether it's moral relativism, why I don't believe that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I believe in objective good, objective beauty, and objective truth. Um, and when I say beauty, I'm not talking about physical attraction, I'm talking about the definition of beautiful as a as a as a thing or as a or as a something, not as anyone could be could be attracted to anyone. It's that's not a thing. I think it's important to know that truth exists, objective truth exists, because I think there one, there is an attack on it, and two, if we lose that battle or the war on truth, the ramifications are disastrous. You gotta think of the ramis, bro. Like I feel like no one's considering the ramis of what it means if truth is lost, uh, and we just we concede to the idea that you know someone can have their truth and someone else can have a different truth is like it just means if someone says I have my truth and you have your truth is like then there is there is no truth, and it could also just be a contradiction. Like the fact that two plus two equals four, I mean, that's obviously true. I mean, in in the in Descartes world, he's he's basically saying it could I could be being deceived. He goes on to prove that God is real and perfect, and if God is perfect, because he has to be, it's it's a logically, it's illogical that God would exist and not be good and not be perfect. Uh, he goes on to to prove that. And so he concludes that it's not an evil genius that would deceive me and things. And so he's he's safe to move on from his idea of deceit or being deceived, and then start to rebuild his philosophy and ideology and um truth claims from there. I haven't learnt it well enough to explain it properly, but pick it up for yourself. Like if you're interested in reading. Like that's pretty hard to read, but like it's only 60 pages. Uh, it's called Meditations on First Philosophy, and it's an interesting read. It's it's obviously very famous. The I think, therefore, I am is a very famous quote in philosophy. So it might be worth reading. And 1984 is a I'm not only just over halfway through the book, but um, another brilliant book. So I'll leave it there for now. Um, so thanks for listening. And also just remember this: like, obviously, Christ is King, that's true. Jesus loves you, that's true. He's coming back soon, that's also true. So these are these are truth claims, these are objectively true. So if you don't remember anything, if you didn't get anything from that, at least know those three things. That is the that is a good starting point for your truth. All right, thanks for listening and peace out.