Caught in Your Own Moral Contradiction? Here's Why

Societal judgment often feels inconsistent. We explore why our moral standards shift depending on the context and the stakes involved.

This discussion analyzes how we apply moral labels to common actions like lying, cheating, and stealing. If you have ever questioned why society condemns certain behaviors while overlooking others, this breakdown provides a framework for understanding those contradictions.

We specifically examine the gray areas of ethical dilemmas through a thought experiment involving financial aid for those with less. By testing your own moral philosophy, you will gain clarity on whether your personal code of conduct is as consistent as you believe it to be.

Support Robert and Max by purchasing Stair Pits Below!
https://www.unbreakableorigins.com/

0:00 Intro and welcome
4:56 Jesuits Build Science Then It Bites
10:18 After God Is Dead What Is Moral
12:18 The Decision Triangle Of Being Human
21:06 Selective Sin And The Circle Of Morality
26:48 Building A Moral Compass From Scratch
39:29 Desire, Gratitude, And Not Disappointing God
45:48 Book Plugs And Electricity Buckets
48:33 Tupperware Theory For Legal Prostitution
51:12 Thank you For Watching

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Circle of morality and kind of how we view it, how we see it. And the world now today is it it said, you know, you lie but judge the cheater. You cheat, but judge the thief. You steal, but you judge the addict.

SPEAKER_04 0:12

Well, I could give 50 bucks to somebody in North Korea today and they could use that to bribe their way out of that country and maybe have a better life. So if I believe in life and I believe that things are good, the fact that I have a watch and I'm basically keeping one person living in a hellhole totalitarian state makes me seem like I'm a total asshole. Shadow and light. It's something that happens in the stair pit zone. We're live or kind of live. Yeah, so we're live and direct here in the studio. Um we had problems. We were gonna have a studio audience this week, but the problem with it was they um just you know, I think what happens is when you have the World Cup going on, everybody keeps waiting for us to score a goal or something like that. Or to faint. Yeah, or to faint, or to fall out of your chair or something. I actually did talk to it, and also welcome to the Stair Pits uh podcast by the book. Uh I'm R.A. Thompson. That's Max Christensen the third. I figured that you know, the 12 or 13 people that watch this actually know who they are. I mean, your family knows who you are, my family knows who I am. So we don't really what it is. Still me. Love you, mom. Actually, my mother is dead. That's kind of funny. Okay. Got hit by a bus, right? You talked about that a couple episodes ago. My other personal favorite is I think I told you the joke on as I went to my mother, and last thing that she said to me was, You're standing on my oxygen hose. Which I thought she'd say that she loved me more. Hey, too little too late. You know, made me feel bad, like I did it or something. Yeah. But anyway, um you know, you know, mom, a hundred years ago you just would have died in childbirth, so shut up.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Yeah, she lived a long, fruitful life, didn't she?

SPEAKER_04 2:28

You know, it's like you know, it's like cut off your air.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

There's always a positive side of the coin. Yeah, there is.

SPEAKER_04 2:32

I mean, you know, like you know, you lived 26 years after I was born and cut off the oxygen. Well, you know, could have been worse. Yes. Yeah. So it's probably wrong. Yeah, people people it's the worst example of anything. I love it. It's great. Yeah. Okay. That was pretty good. Yep. That'll go viral. It should. This will go really, really viral. It should. Yeah. Asshole climate rips women for goes on five minutes soliloquy about his dead mother. Yeah, this is it, yeah. Yeah. 17 jokes about it. Most people, most people don't have that many. No, no, they do not. That's it, yeah. Yeah. Um, but no, one of the one of the things I was thinking about talking about today in an attempt to actually come up with something that might be useful. Yeah, for sure. Other than just stupid shit that I did.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Yeah. Uh-huh. I'm I'm excited to see the pivot off your dead mom. I'm really, I can do this one as well. So watch this.

SPEAKER_04 3:28

Okay. Um one of the interesting things is, and I was thinking about actually your tattoo in a certain level, not the one that you should have.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Yeah, yep.

SPEAKER_04 3:39

Right. Yep. But the one that you do have. Yes. And that, you know, your strength will be your right, it will be your undoing. Is that what it is? Or your strength will be your downfall.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Uh the uh victory has defeated you? Victory will defeat you. Yes. But it's the same general concept. 100%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:52

Yes. So if you look at Christianity and you look at the Catholic Church, that science exists because of the Jesuits and because of the uh the Catholic Church. I mean, they were they put so much time and so much energy into education. And the entire purpose of the Jesuits was to determine how God did things, right? Like how did God make this, how did God make that? And back then, for the majority of that time, science was just simply observation, right? You couldn't use an electron microscope and figure something out, and people had no idea what a molecule or an atom was or subatomic purpose, you know, particles. Yeah. All that stuff was just, you know, gibber jabber to us. But they did manage to come up with simple observations about physics that could be done, and they learned a whole bunch of things that came into it. And that created art and created poetry, created a whole bunch of things that came into it. It was really quite wonderful. And then all of a sudden, in like the mid-1800s, um Nietzsche comes up with this concept that God is dead. And one of the things that I think happened in there was at that point it was a new age of science. Like you have to think about it. In the 1800s, steel is, you know, how to make steel on easy and inexpensive. And that changes everything, because now you're not using wood or stone. You actually can have universal pieces to make something, right? So it's an age of incredible scientific discovery at that time. The the idea of um industrialism is kind of coming around in that point on it, right? Late 1800s is when industrialism kind of comes in, the Gilded Age in the United States. But the thing that Christianity created was this sense of proof. And then magically what happened was proof. So originally it was faith, and then, okay, how did God do it? How did God do it? How did God do it? How did I do it? Oh, look at this cool science thing. How did God do it? How did God do it? How did God do it? Were it the same. So now all of a sudden, you're gonna take what Christianity fostered, which was this idea of scientific proof or being able to prove something, and we're gonna throw that on top of the Bible. And the first thing that people are gonna run into is that a large part of the Bible is poetry. I mean, it's it's meant to give images on it, it's meant as a way to communicate with very, very primitive people that don't know a tremendous number of things. And so you're gonna look at things and say, well, this couldn't possibly have happened. It's stupid. It's at the wrong time schedule, it doesn't work. And this idea of the scientific proof that Jesuits created has now all of a sudden turned on, you know, has turned on the Bible and is ripping it apart. And this new concept at that point that there is no God, because using our limited understanding of science, we can now use that to attack scripture and say that scripture is to be interpreted the same literal way that one plus one is equal to two. And you can check me on that, that's correct. Um so that in the same way that one plus one is equal to two, the idea that, you know, God spoke the universe into existence. Well, God's you know, prove God spoke the universe into existence. If you were there and you saw it, you probably thought it was true.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:51

Right. But if you weren't there, then it's like, okay, God spoke that into existence. You can't speak something into existence. However, if you go to like, you know, Shaky's pizza and you tell them that you want to have like a large pepperoni pizza, you can speak that pizza into existence. It will come right to your table.

unknown 8:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

But that's absolutely right, but so it can be done. I was just more blown away at the fact that I had so many different examples of because I was going down the restaurant path same as you. Arby's, Wendy's, McDonald's, you know, like the fact you pulled Shaky's pizza out over everything. I've never even heard I am a pizza connoisseur, love pizza, it's my favorite food. Where is Shaky's Pizza at?

SPEAKER_04 8:45

Where were they um they they were spoken out of existence when customers stopped going there? Gotcha. No, Shaky's was uh bought out by Round Table. Okay. Okay. And then and then Round Table was sold out as franchisees, and then a lot of the franchisees just gave up the ghost when Domino's came around. Gotcha. So there's still the closest, if you happen to be in St. George, Utah today, the closest one to you is in Las Vegas on Eastern Avenue. Okay. Perfect. And if you're in Las Vegas, that's also the closest one to you.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Yes, 100%. Yes. Thank you for the education. I I was I just I was like, huh. Out of all the restaurants he could have said, out of all the food places, Shaky's Pizza.

SPEAKER_04 9:27

Just to let you know, if you'd be in Boulder's good pull, that's the uh closest one to you. Yes. Yes. So I could go through a whole bunch of cities that I do that.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Which hey, I know our most viral clips are cities. So I know we can lean on that at any time.

SPEAKER_04 9:44

Tour Falls in Denver isn't the closest place. Possibly. Yeah, exactly. If anybody's in Denver. But I do love it. It's my it's for me, it's like totally nostalgic pieces. Okay, gotcha. Yes. But but that idea that, you know, when you're you're looking at something like that, that this thing all of a sudden comes in, and then once God is, you know, the idea that God is dead, at that point, where where is morality? I mean, how what is moral at that point? Without God, what is moral? And Nietzsche said that, you know, will, you know, you should have will goes to power. That if you have this capacity to do something, that that should give you power. And that morality was just a tool to um oppress weak men or cowardly men. And I think it's an interesting idea because once you get rid of once you get rid of the idea of God, or you get rid of the idea of morals that are universal, that are obvious. What happens at that point is you kind of go cascading down something. And the first thing that would happen in that situation, if there is no morality, and you decided that you wanted to have a really nice pair of um used on cloud shoes that would be too small for your feet, but you just wanted them nonetheless. You know, you could beat me to death with the microphone stand. Yeah. And that might makes right. But and that might makes right is an example of you have the capacity to do something, and I have no capacity to stop you. So as a result, you know, what you want is therefore right. But that only lasts until you come up with a group that is more powerful than you, at which point it goes into there. And if it's it's constant going back and forth on a might makes right strategy, you never achieve anything because existence is nothing more than the extension of your own whims. And I think that brings us to an interesting concept that in this kind of like a philosophical thing. I wish I would have invented this, but I wasn't alive early enough to come up with it. Yeah. So I'm just gonna steal it. But I think it's really good. Good. Okay. So if you look at it in terms of a triangle and you're looking at different ways of making decisions, right? So you have on this side, on one side of the triangle, we could do this in post-productions, it'd be really cool. So on one side of the triangle, you would have emotions, just like an emotional hit, right? The other side would be an experiential hit, right? So you have just in my experience, I want something that's a cool experience, or I previously experienced something and I want to experience it again. And then the third piece up here would be rationality, you know, like what is rational. And if you're going to look at proper proper decisions or proper thought would be based upon what is the emotional component, what is the experience component, and is it a rational thing? Is it something that could possibly have meaning? Right. Or is it a chance to actually occur? For sure. And at different points, you know, you can look at people that are totally given by rationale and they don't do anything because there's too many things that can go wrong. There's people that'll just do anything was we saw before. Well, you know, can you lick pickle the cat from the lovely video that we reviewed? Okay. Well, licking the cat is, I'm sure, a lot of fun. Yeah. But on the other hand, you now have like cat hair on your tongue and cat dandruff and whatever else Kitty was doing. So you don't it's there, but it it's a potential thing, it's experience. Doesn't necessarily make sense. So you notice how I worked in the previous video. Now people go back and we'll be forced to watch it.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Absolutely. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 14:08

It's how we get clicks. Oh, yeah. It's huge. So and then there was the one that we said that anybody that wrote down the name and sent it to us to get $10,000.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Yes. That was really huge. Okay. Yep.

unknown 14:18

It's a lie.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

It didn't really happen.

SPEAKER_04 14:20

Just subtle way of trying to get you to be able to get it. Go back to watch the video. Which one was it?

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Which one was it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. Yeah. It's a numbers game.

SPEAKER_04 14:28

Yeah, right, yeah. Damn industrial complex took that one out.

unknown 14:35

Idiots.

SPEAKER_04 14:36

Anyway, so um, but so that idea that, you know, you would look at it like, what is the experience? What is the emotional? I like it, I hate it, whatever it's going to be, I want it. And then you have like the rational component over of it, is it even remotely possible? And I think that when you get rid of God, that the other piece that probably comes underneath all of that in a well-balanced person would be how does that triangle fit over a base of morality? Right. And then you can say, well, what's moral for one person isn't moral for the other. But that just kind of turns, I think that turns into moral, you know, some type of mental masturbation that you're going to get overly excited about. Well, it's okay to steal under this circumstance. Well, yeah, I mean, everything is probably okay under certain circumstances, but let's not talk about outlying circumstances. Let's talk about just the regular things that are going to happen within a day. And I think that um the disappointment that I think people have, or the frustration that people have of where we're at right now as a society is there is no morality. I mean, morality is something that is we everybody's quote experience is the most valued thing. Yeah. The second most valued thing is their emotional state. And whether or not it's rational, I mean, that one was sold down the river weeks ago. Yes. And we don't I mean we don't even have a path to it anymore. Yeah. So it's what are you what are you experiencing, what have you experienced, what do you want to experience versus how do you feel about it? And that's all that matters. Yeah. And I think that the uh the level of satisfaction that comes into that leads to totally isolated individuals because I'm unwilling or unable to talk to somebody or to negotiate with somebody on anything or to engage in somebody because I don't want to have to deal with their reality. You know, and their reality in my universe is I have no experience in it, I have no emotional commitment to it, and unless it has a strong overlap with mine, yeah, it's not rational. Yeah. So I mean, for me, on that three-pronged thing, gone, history. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Which I feel like you've been like that for a while. Right. I mean, I mean, we talked about this again, this is in stair pits, right, in the book, which you should buy. Um you talk about even at a very young age not wanting to engage with your peers or really anyone in general, but especially kids your own age as a young kid, because you viewed it, hey, unless someone has in you know a large amount to offer to a conversation or to teach me or do whatever, what is the point of interacting with this person? Right? Right. Um, and and what what what if I can't take something tangible from this conversation, why why why put in the effort, why do it in the first place? Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_04 18:20

I there's a lot of it too. I think also as a younger person, part of the problem was they would talk about things that I had no idea what they were talking about.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Yes. Especially because you didn't have a normal childhood. Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:33

So they would talk about like my brother did this to me the other day, and it was really, really terrible. Well, here's a good question. You know, why didn't you tell your parents? You know, why didn't you hit him? Yes. You know, why didn't you scream? Why didn't you take it back? Yeah. It would never occur to me that the brother was a lot bigger than that person. For sure. And it didn't mean anything, you know, or you know, yesterday my dad and I went out and we went horseback riding and we did something. It's like, oh, cool. So okay, put that into the group of things that I've seen on television that fathers do, and a real life experience says that you might go horseback riding. Yeah. So it's like, okay, my my experience filter over here, nothing. I mean, you're just talking what happens on a different planet, it meant nothing to me. Yes. Yeah. And and it was just tat.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Yeah, and kind of to to echo your sentiment on kind of the triangles and think, well, kind of, you know, kind of what you what you were talking about. I watched a little video the other day, came across my social media. I apologize for for using a social media.

SPEAKER_04 19:36

Um you know Do you feel the only real valuable social media would just be outtakes from this show?

SPEAKER_01 19:41

It might be. It truly might be. And the rest of it's just a waste of time. At least we're out here teaching and educating. We're trying to make something better. Whether that is the the you know, the state capitals that end in city, right? You know, the state capitals that start with a D.

SPEAKER_04 19:54

Let's just do a better example of current, you know, what would be a better example of video today. Yeah. Max, how many different holes in your body do you think this straw would go in before you carry extreme pain?

SPEAKER_01 20:15

You know, um see what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_04 20:18

Right. But okay, that's there you go. You tell me that that's not a that's the essence of 90%.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Absolutely. And hey, you audiences at home, answer, maybe test that question out on yourselves. Because I no, I currently don't have the answer.

SPEAKER_04 20:34

We do not recommend anything that we say on this show. Anyone should even try or even think about. That was an example of being absurd in an attempt to demonstrate absurdity. Trying to insert things, you know, your mouth is an in valve. Okay, the rest of them, not so much. Okay, hope not.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Back to our show. But but go ahead and you look at it. Let me hit something a little profound here, okay? Let's circle the circle circle the wagons back. So, a little video that's kind of that that kind of kind of mimics your your point here. It talk, it said, you know, kind of talked about our circle of morality and kind of how we view it, how we see it. And the world now today is it it said, you know, you lie, but judge the cheater. Right. You cheat, but judge the thief. You steal, but you judge the addict. Okay? Every single one of us draws our own line of morality and pretends that we are standing on the right side of it. Okay? All of it, it was talking about selective sinning, really, was what the video was about. Okay. All of us have our own code of morality that's different than even the person standing next to us or the person sitting next to us. But yet I can draw a line right here and be like, hey, everything I do on my side of the line is okay and acceptable within my own circle of morality, right? By the way, that's. That's false, but go ahead. Absolutely. 100%. So if so, but the second you do something that breaches my circle or the or that crosses my line, all of a sudden I view you as a bad person. All of a sudden I judge you. Right. Even though we all have our own vices, we all have everything something that we we we gravitate towards or suffer through that someone else would view as that's horrible, that's awful, that's disgusting. And there are some things where we are able to unite as humans and point and say, actually, that is pretty bad. Actually, that is awful, right? There are a couple things in the world that at least we can circle the wagons as human beings and say collectively, all of us in this room can agree, yeah, that's bad. Right. Okay. Besides that, you know, a lot of time, yeah, like I said, we are picking and choosing our own sins, calling that moral, calling that acceptable, but then judging it when someone decides to do it differently.

SPEAKER_04 23:00

No, I would agree that there's no consistency. I mean, the the hypocrisy of conditional morals is that you don't have to hold that peace on the back side. You know, that there's whatever I do is right, and whatever somebody else does is wrong. And then it comes into the, you know, the prayer that God is the most tired of hearing is justice against my enemies and forgiveness for me. Because he hears variations of that thousands of times a day. Yes. And after a while, it's like, you know, please just stop. Yes. And um, but no, I agree that that idea of everybody feeling that their individual moral code is universal and should be applied to everybody else. But the idea of, you know, if if something works, it has to work for more than one person. So the idea is I should have everything that I want, and that I should have everything that I want works really, really well when I live with divorced lonely mom who's willing to give me everything that I want. Yeah. Now, my mom might want something in there, and she's not going to get it because you know what she everything that she wants isn't in my universe of everything that I want. And I have someone, I have enough pathology in that relationship, or it's an unhealthy enough relationship that this person will give me everything that I want, and I have to do nothing in return. Yeah. But, you know, if that's that's what it is, then you wonder, you know, then it then it comes up to this concept that is it virtuous to not sleep with every with every attractive woman that you see? I would say yes. I would say no. Okay. And the reason I would say no is this how many of those attractive women are throwing themselves at you or are available to you?

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Pro yeah, less I would say less than the number you would want to sleep with.

SPEAKER_04 25:12

Right. So as a result, you're not particularly virtuous. You're just not suitable to a certain number of women.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

That's very fair.

SPEAKER_04 25:22

Right. So as a result, you know, as opposed to saying, I will now change myself to make myself more attractive or make myself more socially able. No, I'm gonna say I don't have to change anything and I'm moral. Gotcha. Well, you're not moral, you're a coward, you're unwilling. You're unwilling to change.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Yes. Yes. But but and yeah, like like you just showed, you can you can frame it to where you can view, you can look in the mirror and be like, I'm the good one. Yeah, oh totally. I'm the good one. I'm I'm I'm one of the few good men out there that's striving to, you know, be virtuous amongst women. Right. Because when but that's just only because you frame it like that.

SPEAKER_04 26:06

Yeah, right. Well, yeah, and the fact that I, you know, shower every six weeks and you know, I'm wearing the same clothes that I wore, you know, I only have one shirt. I've had it for six years. You know, I don't really think I think brushing your teeth is wrong. And so, you know, yeah, well, I mean, the answer is yeah, you're virtuous, dude. You're I mean, you know, whatever, you know, insert popular starlet here is just hanging around your whole house the whole time saying, please, please, I need you. Yeah, no, it doesn't happen.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Let me ask you this. Um stair pits. Yes. Book, buy it. Go ahead. Adambreakable origins.com now. Go purchase. Um you had a rough childhood, you had a rough upbringing, we've hammered that home half a million times. But where did you then find your compass of morals? Okay, having grown, was it simply because you grew up in such an obviously horrible environment that you're simply like, ha, I'm gonna do the opposite of whatever this shit is? Or did you learn step by step, line upon line, precept upon precept, as they say, to then build your moral compass and moral code into the man you are today? Kind of, or was it kind of a combination of both?

SPEAKER_04 27:34

I think it's I think that there's a couple of pieces on there. One is when you look at something, do you see the object or do you see the use?

SPEAKER_01 27:52

I think it to for me, it is object to object. It is it is thing to thing. If if I have never that's a really good I would say if I've never actively used the object or don't use it very often, I think about the object before the use. If it's something I use every day, scissors, fork, spoon, not utensils, whatever, I simply think about the use, not the object itself.

SPEAKER_04 28:21

Right. But and and I would agree with that because when you first look at it, it's like, well, like for instance, our beloved um fake plant. Or is that a real is that a real or a fake plant, Caleb? Okay, our beloved real fake plant. It's so fake.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

Yes, it's but it look it's so real it looks fake. It looks fake, right? Or so fake it looks real.

SPEAKER_04 28:39

So if you look at our beloved real fake plant back there, and um what you know, what is its value? It gives something, a potential third living thing here on, and it looks better than the other one. The little plant here doesn't look as good. That one looks a little bit better, maybe because it's far away. But um, you know, but just trying to give that example on it. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

So yeah, but you'd also say that big plant is dying. Yeah, that's actually which who knew that could happen. It's sad. It's gonna be eight. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:10

Yeah. But we have the giant plant, giant man, yes, squawny little plant, squawny little man. So we have a plant for each of us. Gotcha. And then later in this, later in the episode, they're gonna fight to the dead. Okay, it's great. It's really cool. Um, but when you look at that plant, you know, when that plant was purchased, somebody didn't say, oh, look, plant. They said, great prop for a studio. Yeah. We're looking for props for the studio. What do we need? Plant. Right. And I think that our way our the way we are designed, and if you go back to one of the things that I kind of look at, is that if we are created in God's image, therefore we are creators, which might be one of the most common things I've said on this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Hey, keep echoing that. That's a good that's a good message.

SPEAKER_04 30:00

Or other than Max, do you do you know? That would be the other one. So let's have two.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

That might be your your your most your most repetitive line for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:09

Or just no, because I just say that think again, idiot. No, so other words like that are really fun. But um I think the way that we're designed is because we are creators, our brain sees the utility in something and then gives it a name to go forward. So, like for instance, like a stump, a beanbag chair, and this chair are all chairs. They're all things you can sit on. Yeah, but they have very little in common. I mean, particularly if you looked at like beanbag and stump, right? If you were to say what is the commonality between those, the answer is you can sit on both. Yes. Because that's their utility. Other than that, they don't they have nothing in common. Yeah. I mean, they have no physical characteristic that's in common. I mean, you could say, well, made out of matter, but dude, let's be really, really clever. Exist in time and space. Oh, yeah, dude, you're you're really making specific things there.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

Okay, so I was hoping we would get to this point where you would start to have arguments with yourself on points that you made. So I I love it. No, I don't. You started in this direct, and then you're like, you're like, well, hey, someone's gonna make this argument, so let me address this point. Someone out there is gonna think of this, or hey, let me cover that too.

SPEAKER_04 31:40

Just shame them. Shame them into signing. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

Yeah, like you, you just broke down every counterpoint someone could have said to to your beanbag stump comparison. I love it. Keep going.

SPEAKER_04 31:51

I just like to show people that you know, kind of like how you'll do this with me occasionally, all guns firing. Oh, dude, I've got it.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

I love it. I love it. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 32:00

Shows pathology.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Talk about covering your bases. You you you and you do every single argument that could have been drawn out from that, yeah, you hit it. And and you and you argued it for yourself. Right.

SPEAKER_04 32:10

Well, yeah, but the the idea of that level of pathology is a sign of like just craziness, unpeered for, unknown. It's great, man. But but that idea though, that when we look, I believe that we look at things and then we determine what is their function versus what are they? So, like, for instance, you know, in the exciting world of looking at things online, it's entertainment. What you're looking at is entertainment, what you're looking for is distraction. What you're looking for is stimulation. Right. I mean, you're not looking for, I mean, it means nothing to you that Corning came up with this real cool glass that you could pressure and then could be able to turn it into something. That doesn't mean anything to anybody.

unknown 32:59

Right.

SPEAKER_04 33:00

What matters is that okay, I can look at this, I can make something happen. You know, I look need stimulation. Yes. And so I I think that where I learned it was a couple of things, is that I looked at the majority of people in my life had no capacity to do anything even remotely normal. I mean, we couldn't even really produce food for the table. Yeah. So we were missing on virtually everything. So I had a whole bunch of things that were real, but had no bearing on any sense of success. And then I looked at selected other people who seemed to be successful, who seemed to be happy, who seemed to be able to accomplish things and could accomplish more than just basic things. And I looked at what they did, and it didn't make sense at first, and then it made sense, but then the problem is as a young person is life is between, right? It's the give everything, give nothing. And the correct answer is in here someplace. And I saw both of these, and it was very hard to determine the gray space in between. And it took a long time to determine what's there and the fact that it could potentially be conditional. The idea that um I could sell my watch today and probably get fifty bucks for it, and I could send fifty bucks to some generic person in a country that was starving. Well, I could give fifty bucks to somebody in North Korea today and they could use that to bribe their way out of that country and maybe have a better life. So if I believe in life and I believe that things are good, um the fact that I have a watch and I'm basically keeping one person living in a hellhole totalitarian state makes me seem like I'm a total asshole. Okay, the other version of that is, well, you know, how many of them am I gonna save? You know, I don't have that many watches. Yes. So you run into that little problem on it. But I think that for me it was a I learned more from how to interact off of television than I did from people. Okay. Because television had much more consistent television and movies had much more consistent behavior than humans did. Yeah. And so that's kind of what I learned was okay, well, this is how they do it in television, this is how they do it in movies, and then there's life. And what role can you play? And at that point, it turned into how could I be useful? I mean, it turned into the simplest thing, you know, as opposed to being me, am I a use? What can I be a use for? And what can I do? And how does something and then therefore, how does something work, and what is the value of knowledge? What is the value of systems, where's strength, where are weaknesses, and how do you come into it? And then eventually it occurred to me much later in life, but I think it was on that path, that what you'll do, what most people will do for community. You you will you will do things or you won't do things for community. Like within your family growing up, when it's your siblings, there's one sense of conduct. Within certain, you know, with you and a favored sibling, you know, dealing with a lesser sibling, yeah, there was a certain conduct that was a lot of fun. Yes. And then if there were two siblings that didn't like you, they might try to have a different sense of reality. But the fact that you could just go, you know, and you could just basically, you know, you could impose physical will on them, yes, and they might be able to, you know, be mean to you, but at the end of the day, it was just a shut up or I'll kill you.

SPEAKER_00 37:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:21

Kind of a thing that can work there. But around your parents, there's an additional layer of, you know, how do we all behave when we're all together? Yeah. And so that was never some I never had those layers. It was ignore my parents or get away from them as fast and as far as I could, or sit around them and just be quiet. Or if my mother and I were there, we might engage with something, but we never discussed my stepfather. That was just something that, you know, he didn't exist. And I think the answer was, I think we, I think I knew that she didn't really like him that much, but she was caught in a role. And so it's it's a hard thing to know. And I think eventually I tried to get to the point that I don't feel I had like a lot of community attachment to people. But what I thought was that the standard that I tried to hold myself to a while was what would Auntie do, what would the Kleins do? And then that eventually morphed into try not to disappoint God. And the fact that you're going to get him to shake his head. I mean, there's a point you can get him to smile, there's a point you get him to shake his head, and you get him to the point that just wondering, you know, what. Yeah. Right. And to try not to disappoint him. So if you're doing things that don't disappoint God, you're probably doing it right. If you're doing things that disappoint God, you're probably doing it wrong. And then there's you know, that that middle ground of you're you're just being a nerd. And so, well, you know, what am I doing? I'm doing nothing. You know what I'm saying? Just gonna stare here for a while. And it's I think that's the issue. Yeah. And I think that even, you know, if you take that back to the concept of like what is morality, kind of going back to what we're talking about on it. If you look at it like in Buddhism, the idea is that you want to divorce yourself or you want to separate yourself from desire, that you shouldn't desire anything, you shouldn't want anything, you should just have a sense of being grateful with what's existing. Right. And to me, that sounds a lot like a cow. You know, every time somebody tells me that, I just want to I just want to try to do that. Right. And there's I because it just doesn't like what are you doing? It's like, okay, I'm sitting here and I'm grateful and I'm, you know, chewing grass and it's going to one of my you know stomachs.

SPEAKER_01 40:13

Yeah. The fact that that that is not the first time you've mooed on this podcast either. Yeah, no, I'm just trying to get that out. Impressive. But it but it's good though.

SPEAKER_04 40:21

I just want to show you that I got that, you know. You know, I just have certain things that just can drop at any given moment. I can just hit bovine on it right off the bat. Absolutely. But I think that um that idea of um how do you how do you live your life, it's not by suppressing desires, it's by prioritizing desires. And I believe that in Christianity, they give you an example of how to prioritize your desires. And if you're prioritizing your desires and you're trying to work towards the highest priority or towards the highest, the highest good. And people will say, well, you can't determine what good is. Uh I disagree. When good is being done to you, you can tell. And when bad is being done to you, you can tell. And you put a lot of fancy words in between, but it's believe me, it comes down to you can pretty much tell yes, no. Yes, no. Right. So it's don't I just find that well you can't tell what's it could be good for them. Of course it is, you know. Uh Kurt Vonnegut wrote this wonderful story uh called Breakfast of Champions. Brilliant book. Not quite as good as Stair Pitts, but it's still a very good book. 100%. And um in the book, there's a uh piece in it where the main character uh r gets a book that's in the form of a novel from the creator of the universe to whoever is reading it. And the novel says, you know, I'm the creator of the universe, I have created everything, and I've created you. You're the only person on earth with free will. Everybody else is just a machine. And he said that, you know, your mother was just a machine that liked to feed you, and your dad was just a machine that liked to speak, to spank you, and Hitler was a machine that liked to kill Jews, and Jews were machines that liked to be killed by Hitler, and that I made all of this stuff just to see what you would do. Wow. And the guy reads it, and as Varnegut says, at one point he had bad chemicals in his brain. And he felt that it was real. Yeah. So he then like freaks out and he goes on this rampage and he's saying he's just so freaked out that it's that way that he just he's at a restaurant or something, and he like throws, you know, he throws food at somebody and he just says, You're just a machine that likes to have food thrown at him. And you're just and he just, you know, he goes through this whole everything that he does is just you're just a machine that likes this, and you're a machine that likes to do that. And eventually they're able to subdue him and you know, put him into an asylum. Yeah. But when I read that book the first time, I cracked up because at certain points I really felt like, okay, I'm just looking for something from God or from the creator of the universe just to tell me that all the weird shit that happens is just to see what I'll do. Yes. And the reality is, I think all the weird crap that happens on the planet is from God just to see what we'll do. And I think that's I kind of think that's ultimately what it is. And if you have some sense of morality, and if your morality is I don't want to disappoint God, then it's very easy to, you know, give food to the person that's starving. It's very easy to shake somebody's hand. It's very easy to say, have a nice day. It's very easy to try to be positive to the person. And I think that's that's one of those things that you learn from you learn from experience. And it's guided by a rationality, and that leads to an emotional impact on the backside. Because I think that if you're just going to be ruled on the emotion of it, it's far too easy to be overwhelmed by man's cruelty towards man. And I think that you have to look at it as, you know, how can we take this experience in a rational way and use all available resources, all things that are current that are currently available to be able to come up with the best possible result that we can have that can get us to the point of shared gratitude. Yeah. And I think that that runs into the big problem is that we are happy because we are grateful. We are not grateful because we are happy. Yep. And that people get that totally the wrong way. 100%. So that's my that's my thought. So I think I've probably blathered on for enough.

SPEAKER_01 45:42

No, hey, the great teachings. Well, it's probably pretty good. It was it was decent. Great, and you know where you can get more teachings from?

SPEAKER_04 45:48

Well, I was thinking life, the serial has all sorts of stuff on the back.

SPEAKER_01 45:57

It does. And so does the Stair Pits book.

SPEAKER_04 45:59

Oh, dude, way to segue that. Okay. I want you to know none of this is planned.

SPEAKER_01 46:05

Has a has a has a little soliloquy about the book, a top 10 list. I mean, you know, and just teachings about life, about morals, about the struggle of being down on your luck, but not letting that affect the outcome of your life.

SPEAKER_04 46:22

Right. It also has, you know, things about stairs. And pits. Both. So it has basically, I will tell you, in that book, at least one of every letter is used. So if you just wanted to use it as kind of a where's Waldo, you could go in there and just with a friend, you could like think of a random letter and see who could find it first.

SPEAKER_01 46:49

Yeah. I think the next book you need to write, you need to pick one letter of the alphabet and leave it out completely, and then have everyone needs to go search the book.

SPEAKER_04 47:02

Somebody already did that though. Really? James Thurber, I think, wrote a book without any letters E in it. No way. Yeah. Which I thought was like really quite remarkable. That is clever. He had a story in one of his things, and I don't know if it was a true story or something that he just said, but I loved it. That he talked about how when electricity first was a thing and his grandmother's house was wired with electricity, she used to put buckets underneath the outlets in case any electricity seeped out. Wow. Well, but at the time though, you know, but if you think about it, in that time, right, it's like she doesn't know what electricity looks like, so she couldn't tell if it had spilled. Yes. She's scared that somebody else might find it.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

Uh-huh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:48

Right. And then, you know, you don't want to have a mess. Yes. So, and it's a current, right? Current is in water. Therefore, you know, it could come out, and there's no valve. Yeah. Right? So anyway, that was, but I thought that that was when I thought about that, I just thought, well, that's just that's just so brilliant. I mean, it's it's I mean, it's silly to a certain level because we know what it is, but at the time it's a very rational act.

SPEAKER_00 48:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:20

So that's what I would do. You know, make sure she probably was right. Go out today, buy little Tupperware containers. I'll just as a secondary thing, just to close on something that might accidentally be funny. So um I did come up with my own theory of how to legalize prostitution. Go for it. Okay. Please, by all means. So let me walk you through this idea. Do generally do more men or more women buy Tupperware? Women, I would say. Yeah, I would say tremendously. And probably by like better than 90%, wouldn't you say? So if you look at the population, Tupperware sales are overly committed to one particular gender, right? Yeah. Cool. So there's a whole group of people out here that never buy Tupperware. So let's say you were an ambitious and perhaps overly passionate Tupperware saleswoman, right? Who's opposed to having Tupperware parties because you don't want to have the people in your house. So you're just going to try to sell them on the street corner. Yeah. Right? And so you're selling like a celery crisper. Guy comes by, and um, you know, you say, Do you want to buy a celery crisper? He goes, I don't know. Tell me about it. So, you know, the girl gets in his car, they talk about the celery crisper for a couple of minutes. They developed a very, very deep and meaningful bond that is then expressed in an act of physical love, and then the guy buys the celery crisper.

SPEAKER_01 50:05

You're in Vegas a lot. I think you need to pitch this to some different entities down there.

SPEAKER_04 50:12

But it's already legal. I mean, they have a Tupperware factory in Searchlight Nevada. No, it's no, they actually they do have a house of ill repute. It's already illegal. Yes. I'm just saying, though, that give it a whirl. Yeah, that's just my thought on being able to look at that as a way of being able to legalize it through the act of celery crispers.

SPEAKER_01 50:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 50:36

Impressive, at least. That's it. It's the idea of see we look at function before we look at the two. People look at it as a celery crisper. Yes. Something that can be sold. 100%. Yeah. Of course, the weird thing is like you're married and your husband's got 47, you know, celery crispers. But just couldn't a sign of a particularly good marriage. But I'm just saying, you know, could uh yeah. If you're doing that, just throw them out.

SPEAKER_01 51:02

That's how women can know if if men are cheating. They've come with a lot of Tupperware. That's it, just the whole thing. So maybe it helps girls out too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:09

So see, look, way to find the silver lining. Absolutely. That's why you're a better person.

SPEAKER_01 51:13

And hey, long story short, buy the book.

SPEAKER_04 51:16

Buy the book. That's what it is. Buy the book. Thank you very much. See you next week. Bye.