Hollowing Morality

[0:24] Michael: To the shores. You ready?

[0:26] Matt: Cheers. To the shores.

[0:28] Michael: Are we ever really ready?

[0:32] Matt: No,

[0:33] Michael: it's just life.

[0:34] Matt: Well, you're never really nature of. Of the shores of ignorance.

[0:39] Michael: True.

[0:40] Matt: We don't come into this with a plan.

[0:42] Michael: Nope.

[0:43] Matt: We're not reporting the news.

[0:44] Michael: Yeah. So

[0:45] Matt: it's not like we have an agenda.

[0:47] Michael: Nope.

[0:48] Matt: We're just exploring.

[0:49] Michael: Totally. We already had a fantastic conversation before this.

[0:53] Matt: Yeah. Let's hope it continues. You said something about how you haven't had allergies in three or four years.

[1:00] Michael: Oh, yeah.

[1:01] Matt: And I was like, yeah, I stopped having allergies three or four years ago, too.

[1:04] Michael: Yeah. And I almost hate talking about it because I'm afraid this May, this April, I'll just be like, jinx

[1:10] Matt: it.

[1:11] Michael: No, jinx it.

[1:12] Matt: Yeah.

[1:12] Michael: But yeah, I was talking to a friend of mine, a guy who works for me, and he's also a friend and he's got bad allergies. Like just pretty much from now until March, April. And I was like, oh, hey. Like, I stopped having allergies three or four years ago. I have no idea why. But here's three things that I changed. Was like doing Wim Hof breathing, cold plunge and sauna.

[1:37] Matt: Yeah.

[1:38] Michael: And you made the observations, like, after we read that book Breath by James Nestor. Yeah.

[1:46] Matt: That's when we started doing those kind of things.

[1:48] Michael: Yeah. And it's like. And I couldn't get into an explanation of why maybe that happened, but it's just fact, you know, maybe. Maybe they just stopped for you. And I

[2:01] Matt: know, I really do think it has something to do with that book. And I think it's the underlying understanding of how your airways work. And I changed a couple of other things. Like I changed where I keep my tongue in my mouth. And I also made a decision and have. Do this to this day, to consciously never breathe through my mouth.

[2:23] Michael: Totally. Me too.

[2:23] Matt: I always breathe through my nose. It used to always seem intuitive to me that when you're, like, working out or heavily, you know,

[2:32] Michael: exerting yourself.

[2:33] Matt: Yeah. Like out of breath. That you breathe through your mouth, but that's really bad for you. And the thing that when the light went off for me, he says in that book, he says if you ever see a horse panting from its mouth, that horse is not long.

[2:49] Michael: Oh, to die. Yeah.

[2:52] Matt: So, yeah. When you don't breathe through your nose, the way that your body accepts the oxygen and handles the carbon dioxide, which carbon dioxide is super important to oxygen transfer Totally changes in your sinuses. Your sinuses are made of erectile tissue, the same tissue as, like, nipples in the tip of your penis. And when you don't use, shrivels up and dries up. And I think that's why so many people have bad allergies.

[3:26] Michael: Yeah.

[3:26] Matt: Because they just don't use it all the time. They're breathing through their mouth, even slightly, and then that exasperates into, like, snoring, which is really bad for you.

[3:35] Michael: Yeah.

[3:36] Matt: So, yeah, I really think it was downstream of that book, because that's super fascinating. Mm.

[3:41] Michael: Yeah. It's been super thankful, man. Cause that's one thing I do do every day is do I breathing. You do do. I do do do do my breathing exercises. I mean, there's so many benefits to it. Like, just clears you. Clears your mind and it's like, opens up my lungs and.

[3:58] Matt: Yeah. You

[3:59] Michael: know, holding and then exhaling and holding and. Yeah. Which kind of. Though I don't know if we want to jump into the. The next part of that if we keep going on this. Well, yeah, so I was thinking about that too. It's like, there's all these sort of, like, life hacks and biohacks and all this kind of stuff, and I feel like probably you've heard me kind of allude to this over the last month or so of just this whole idea of longevity and healthiness and success. And it's like, but why? What for? It's really almost the question, not necessarily why, but what for? And I think that's something that's really bothered me in, is answering that question. Because there's a lot of things that I. You and I both. But just I was been thinking about, like, just like evolutionary psychology, the relationship between men and women, our needs, our different stages of life. There's a lot of these things that are built in biologically, and. But the one thing I can't. I keep running into is that the what for can't be for any of those things. Like, to have a better relationship. You need to understand the evolutionary relationship of men and women and how they were wired differently and how that. How we relate to each other and sort of like all those things turn into sort of programs to run, like a computer. If you just run the right program, everything's going to be. You're going to have a good life. And even the people who propose that kind of thinking, it just seems so empty to me. And so I can jump forward and give you my answer to this, but still, there's a Kind of incompleteness in between those two things. It has to be in service to something.

[5:52] Matt: Yeah, you were saying earlier that these things, Wim Hof, breathing, sauna, cold plunge, you know, we could make a very long list of things like that. But they're all good things. But you, and you put it this way, they're kind of useless in and of themselves. Can you expand on that? Because I think I see now what you meant by it. But yeah, maybe not fully.

[6:16] Michael: I don't know. Kind of when we started this out, out on the porch was. I don't really know where I'm going with this. And something that kind of like just kind of playing with. It's like they're kind of useless in and of themselves because I, you know, I see, I would generalize people in this, in this way because no one's as simple. But you know, if you're working out to have a healthy body, and you have a healthy body, okay, well, what for? Is it just to have a healthy body is to be more productive? Well, okay, you know, you're productive, but productive for what? And it just seems like you're, you're always doing something to be optimizing or maximizing your potential. But the, but the, the thing I think where we, where we, we fall short is like, it's sort of like, but what for?

[7:03] Matt: Yeah,

[7:04] Michael: for my family. Okay, so you're going to run the program of being, doing all these things for your family. And it just seems like this seems so base or animalistic or something that's just, it just seems very incomplete. It might be just because I have a belief in God and that just those ideas fall short of that. And again, that's the whole jumping ahead thing. So what I'm trying to do right now is just try to understand like, why, why not why? It's like maybe if you got rid of God, then you wouldn't have. Then maybe your family is enough or your wife is enough or, or you know, to reach certain goals in your life. Like, that's, that's, that's plenty. That's good enough. You know, is that, that seems like a very incomplete answer to me, but I'm trying to figure out like,

[7:58] Matt: why that is,

[7:58] Michael: why that is. It's like, is like because, like, is it because on the other side, just to kind of. It's like, well, yeah, it makes you feel good that you're in service to God, but like, but that's just kind of a fun. That's a, that's a fun or good idea. It's not a real thing. Because, like, when I say that, I think I. I see it more as a real. It has a real thing.

[8:18] Matt: Right. Well, also, I might just take a little bit of issue with the statement, it feels good to be in service to God. I don't think that's really true in some demonstrable ways. Just take a look at the life of any of the disciples. I think it feels good in a way that's not count, that is counterintuitive, not in the way that we mean. Like if you. So maybe we could try to build this up from first principles, for lack of a better term. So the question is, your observation is that something like Wim Hof is a good thing, but sort of useless in and of itself, which is to say that it doesn't justify itself. And maybe this is foreshadowing for the larger arc of this conversation. So you might ask yourself why you do Wim Hof? You know, I do it every morning at the Springs. I do two or three rounds and while I'm doing it, I'm thinking about. Sometimes I'm thinking about why I'm doing it. Because it has benefits that I look forward to. It clears my head. It wakes me up. I feel like it has overall improved, like my circulation and improved my health. I believe, for example, Wim Hof, when he says, it activates your vagus nerve, which turns on your immune system. Okay, so why am I doing this? I'm doing it because it feels good. I'm doing it to be healthy, let's say those two categories. So there's pleasure in it. Okay. There's pleasure in a lot of other things. Why am I choosing to do this one? There's pleasure in alcohol. There's pleasure in cocaine. But I'm presumably, I've never done cocaine. I'm just using a different example. There's pleasure in alcohol, right? This is our ritual. We drink whiskey and we talk every Wednesday night. I very much enjoy that. But there's no part of me at 8am at the springs that is like, oh, I should have brought my flask.

[10:30] Michael: Yeah,

[10:30] Matt: okay, so it feels good, but that doesn't seem to justify its existence because you can swap other things in for feeling good. It makes me healthy. Okay, let's say the first entry to that point of health for me is it clears my head. It wakes me up and clears my head. I could say, well, why do I want that? Why do I want my head to be clear? That seems like a state of putting your preparing yourself to be in a state for the thing that's coming. What is the thing that's coming? Well, it's the day. And if you begin your day by consciously trying to put yourself in a particular position, that means you have some hope for that day. There's something for you to do in that day. The day isn't just going to happen to you.

[11:21] Michael: Well, just the act itself is saying, hey, I'm preparing myself. So there's almost a symbolic aspect of that too.

[11:31] Matt: Well, which means that there's something symbolic that isn't you to be interacted with. And so this becomes a very different kind of question and it gets more into the what is it for? It isn't just to make you feel good, it is to make you feel good and clear headed and healthy so that you can. And that's where it gets hard. So that I can maybe I could say not suffer as much as if I wasn't feeling this way. But what does it matter? Pleasure or suffering, those are very relative things. Things that feel like suffering when you first begin a task like learning to ski, let's say, turn into pleasure. I mean pleasure and pain exchange sides of the coin all the time. Or

[12:26] Michael: to lose a lover, it's like that's painful, you know, it's like you'd rather have had. Yeah.

[12:31] Matt: Better

[12:32] Michael: to have loved and lost.

[12:34] Matt: Yeah. Well, you know, some relationships need to end for reasons that are insurmountable and doesn't mean you don't feel the heartache.

[12:41] Michael: Yeah.

[12:44] Matt: So when you say they aren't much use in and of themselves. I think all of the reasons that we sort of are laying out here don't. What we're saying is in and of themselves, they don't justify themselves. They seem to be pointing at something bigger, a bigger why. Who was it that says a man who has a why can bear any how?

[13:08] Michael: Nietzsche.

[13:08] Matt: Nietzsche. And so the question becomes what is that? Why? Why am I doing this? And it seems to me to become a fractal. So as you expand out and you might start going into your line of thought about being a good husband. Well, I want to feel clear headed and healthy so that I can enjoy my time with my wife and kids. Because I've noticed that if I'm not clear headed and healthy, then I'm much less present with them. They're asking me questions that I feel like I know the answer to but I just kind of can't come up with them. I'm a little bit more quick tempered and I tend to snap at my wife. And our arguments are worse. So you might make that kind of argument, but then it seems like you're doing something of a similar order on a larger magnitude, which is that I'm starting to give reasons that don't necessarily justify that larger why in and of itself. And so you kind of have to go beyond that. And it seems like the question does start to become, well, why do I want to be healthy? Or why do I want to do a wim hof well in service of my health, why do I want to be healthy? In service of my family? Why do I want a healthy family? In service of community, why do I want a healthy community? Well, one, to safeguard and protect all of those things that are in service of it. Two, to be in service to something larger and to do good for other communities, to be a safe place for other people to come in, to be a nice place to visit for our friends and family. But it keeps getting larger and larger and simultaneously more singular the higher up you go, which is that what is the ultimate. Why? Which is not. Which is in a sense self justifying. Because I think that while I haven't made the case very well, I think that all of those other things are not necessarily self justifying. There's always an alternative or a trade off that can be made to where. So like again, self justifying or not self justifying. You know, we're talking about a family and I'm assuming we're having a conversation about a man and a woman and children. But if you say that the purpose of a family is my, my own pleasure and comfort, well, it doesn't necessarily need to be those things. Right? It could be a man and two women or three, it could be two men, it could be two women, it could be multiple men, multiple women, polyamorous. What's the relationship with the children? It doesn't really matter as long as they're happy. Right? Does it matter when two gay men have a child via surrogacy? You might say, well, no, it's a good thing because those men want a child. They can't have one otherwise and they're taking great care of that child. Okay, so it doesn't matter and will never matter to that child that that child did have a mother who's no longer in their life. Well, okay, there's just all kinds of ways that if you, that when an idea self justifies itself, you start realizing how many parts are interchangeable and you start changing them out and things start falling apart in ways that you didn't Expect so if you don't try to self justify at any level and you say, well, no, there's a purpose to this. I learned this word teleology recently, which is to define things in terms of their purpose rather than their cause and effects. So the teleological, what is the teleological version of the family? What is the purpose of a family? And if you start wrestling with answers to that, I think eventually you get to a why that is self justifying, which is in and of itself sufficient. And that's when you start thinking about the way that God defines himself, particularly in the Old Testament. I am. That I am. I am. He is self justifying.

[17:54] Michael: I think I might need you to walk that. I agree with that first part. Like the family self justification.

[18:03] Matt: Family was maybe a harder one to stand on there, but

[18:07] Michael: I can see it. I think that's the part that, I mean there was a few jumps too many that I, I, I think I can make those, but I don't, I don't have the, maybe the words for it.

[18:20] Matt: Yeah,

[18:21] Michael: I can try if you want.

[18:22] Matt: Yeah, try.

[18:23] Michael: Okay.

[18:24] Matt: Because I'm, I'm thinking through this on the spot. So.

[18:27] Michael: Yeah, totally. We're totally worried.

[18:28] Matt: We'll refine it as we go.

[18:30] Michael: Well, I mean that's, there's the thing that, that when you said this really kind of like rung a bell for me. Like, and again, just through like, oh, that's a, like two males or two females raising a child. At some point the question's going to be where is my mother, where is my father? And so like that's, that's a natural thing because that's how this works. And so you can kind of see this sort of like,

[18:56] Matt: yeah, every

[18:56] Michael: purpose,

[18:57] Matt: every child, every single child, no matter their circumstances, has or had a mother and a father.

[19:05] Michael: Yeah, it's the same thing if like divorced parents or if your parent died or whatever. It's like who is my dad or my mom that left or died or whatever? You know, it's like, it's like there's something really like you can see the purposefulness in that and, and then we can also see the whole idea of, of. And maybe this is too obvious to me and maybe, maybe it's not as obvious as I'm, I'm making out. So if I push back, if it doesn't sound obvious, but we all can see whenever there is a good mother or a good father or a bad mother or bad father or some combination of that in, in a family. And again, I'm not talking about perfect, but I'm talking about good. And because you can see a father who neglects his kids and, you know, doesn't spend time with them and, and then, you know, it's like that impact or their mother who is absent, you know, or you see the father who steps forward and like, you know, know really is there for their kids and the mother's not, or vice versa. So you see something that I think it's, that's like, it's like obviously true what that is, and we know that we can call that good, you know, not perfect, but good. So I think this is like, well, why is that? It's like, is that just because that's the most optimized or efficient way of doing family, that's. That's best, or is there actual purpose built into that? And again, because there's difference between like one's almost more like computer logic, like how, how a family functions best, computer logic. But then if you, if you look at it for more like purpose, it actually adds that element that is there without the optimization. Does that make sense? Like, it's like you can check all the boxes and do all the things, but if it's not purpose driven, it's like that family's missing something altogether. It's like, oh, we're gonna optimize for university. Or, you know, you start pushing for these things and filling that. What, what, what a good, what a, what a healthy family looks like for other things. But you might, it might look good from the outside, you know? Do I kind of. Maybe.

[21:23] Matt: Well, I'm not totally following you, but are you saying, you know, that maybe it would be possible to come up with the idea of what the good family, what a good family looks like by trial and error and optimizing towards it?

[21:36] Michael: Yeah,

[21:40] Matt: I mean, we kind of do do that. Yeah, right. Maybe I'm struggling with a little bit with the word optimization, but maybe there's something good in there because, you know, if you imagine what a good parent is, you might say that a good parent optimizes for university. We're going to raise our children so that they can be successful through the school system and go get a good degree so that they can get a good job. But if your whole concept and idea of parenthood, fatherhood or motherhood is optimized for that, what happens once you get past that? Your child goes to university and now you don't see them much anymore. They graduate with honors and go get a job. And problem is, you're still a mother. You're still a father. So what is your relationship now? What you've optimized for is now in the past. So the position you took was a position which could not self justify because the outcome is that now you're no longer a good mother or father because you have no concept of what that means past that one benchmark that you set

[22:53] Michael: totally.

[22:54] Matt: So it may be that a good father or mother does optimize for college, but it has to be within a larger optimization. It has to be within some larger idea that honestly incorporates the entire rest of your life because you are going to be a father until you die. So how do you come up with something like that? It's very difficult to just sort of sit down and describe what that would be and what that would mean and necessarily puts you in a position of humility. Because I think the only possible answer which isn't just incredibly cynical and obviously harmful for your child, which I don't know why you would ever sit down and try to describe what a good father is if you didn't care about harming your child. Obviously you want what's good for them if you're trying to figure out what a good father is. But if you sit down and try to say what that is, you have to say something like, well, I want to love my son. What does it mean to love someone? It means to will the good of the other, which means that there are things that I can do which will bring goodness into his life. And it isn't willing his good is also not me controlling him because. Well, because it feels terrible to be controlled. And you know, maybe you try it out and you see that he doesn't respond well to that and you realize that even if I could control him, he's a different person living a different kind of life. I don't understand the inputs to really understand the equations of what control would look like. And so I kind of have to give that up and recognize that this is another person who I'm ushering into the world through different developmental stages, that some of them, well, I went through them, but I've maybe largely forgotten them. And so I have to have a position of humility to say, I don't exactly know what it means to love you, but I know that I can put myself in a position where I'm best able to do that. I mean, it's something like preparing yourself for the day. It's like, why do you want to feel healthy today? Why do you want a clear head today? You don't know what the day's bringing? Well, because I know that I'm in the best position to interact with that day in the context of my larger life that will hopefully make me something like a good father. Incorporate it throughout all life's stages, my own and my children's, until the day that I die.

[25:39] Michael: I feel like you were hitting on some things that kind of led me to more questions, too. And one of them was like, you know, there's also. Also humility in that. I don't know what is good, you know, because it's like there's this part that I can almost tell you what is bad, but I can't tell you what is good.

[26:00] Matt: Well, it's really interesting. It's just kind of thought went through my head just then that as we're talking about this, I can imagine that there's someone listening to this, thinking that this is just kind of pedantic and like kicking a dead horse. Well, it's like, why would you ask a question, why is it better? Why would you want a clear head? Why would you want to be healthy? The answer to that is obvious. It's better to be healthy than to be sick. And then I think. I'm not sure that that's exactly so obvious.

[26:27] Michael: Yeah, well, explain. I think I follow you, but.

[26:31] Matt: Well, tons of us are sick in ways that we do nothing about all the time. Almost none of us really make decisions to be healthy. And we do that because it's a lot more comfortable to be less healthy. Being less healthy justifies a lot of things. I mean, my grandmother, at the end of her life, you know, she was famously sick. Really. I think since my dad was a boy, you know, being sick allows you to get out of a lot of things that you don't want to admit you don't want to do. It allows you to escape things that you don't want to admit you don't want to be around.

[27:08] Michael: Yeah,

[27:09] Matt: there's all kinds of reasons to be sick. You know, Ferris Bueller is like, just the most simple example of that. If we can be sick, then we don't have to go to school. So it isn't obvious that being healthy is better than being sick. I mean, on one level it is, and yet on another level, we don't act that way.

[27:31] Michael: Oh, interesting.

[27:34] Matt: So I think we actually do have to be somewhat pedantic and say, well, we can't really take it as a given that being healthy is better than being sick. We actually have to, like, sort of consciously remind ourselves of that. And. And Then once we've decided that that is better, we actually have to go act that out in the world. And that turns out to be a lot harder than the alternative. So by what are you measuring good versus bad? Are you measuring it by difficulty, by effort? I mean, shouldn't good things be easier than bad things? That's obviously not the case in our lives. I mean, you said that you can identify bad, but it's harder to identify good. Maybe there's some tie in there. Like, why is it easier? I mean, I don't know that I necessarily accept that that is the case. But why do you think it's easier to identify bad?

[28:30] Michael: Well, it's just more of the whole idea of like, you know, going to a university. It's like, you know, you're preparing your kids to do that. Well, it might be good for some of your kids and might be bad for others, but in general going to university is good. And. But you just. Why

[28:46] Matt: would you come to that conclusion?

[28:48] Michael: Well, it's like, again, I think that's the part where it's on a surface level that's good. It's like, it's good to be healthy, you know, it's like, well, how healthy, like, do you have? Like, is it bad to be semi healthy? Is it? Or is it good to be semi healthy? You know, or is it actually good to be super healthy? And it's just, it's just sort of like, it's just hard for me to kind of like understand that sort of like, well, what is good? Because like, because someone could say, like, oh, well, you're semi healthy. And that's not good, that's bad. Actually,

[29:22] Matt: I'm not going to be able to make this case very strongly, but this is a great example, I think, of why things. There's only one self justifying thing. When you try to self justify other things, you get very disoriented about what is good, what is bad, what is the definition of these terms, even, like, what does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be super healthy? What does it mean to be sick? We don't really even know what it means to be sick. In many ways, you know, you start digging into, you know, just very simple questions about like SARS COV 2, for example, like, what is it? How does it get in your body? What does it do to your body? There are not black and white answers to these questions. So everything becomes sort of undefinable and uncategorizable in terms of morality and this book that I've mentioned has helped the rise and triumph of the modern self has helped me to understand that slightly. And it has something to do with the fact that when you remove the one self justifying thing, which I'm just going to make the claim because you've already made it, is that is what we call God. In you and I's case, we're referencing the God of the Bible. When you remove that, you might say that you can appeal to an order of morality without God, because what is moral is obvious. It's obvious that you should be a good father, a good husband. You should do obviously good things like don't litter and recycle and pay your bills and you should be healthy and not be resentful. But then when you really start thinking about what those things mean now that they're no longer in service of a higher order, why, it becomes very difficult to figure out why what you think is good is good. And that's been kind of a mind blowing realization for me. And it's helped me understand why without God not only does it get difficult to be to identify what is good and what is bad, you will find that people will switch and go opposite of what they used to think was good and what was bad and reverse the two. You see this all the time in modern day politics. I was really puzzled over the past couple of years about some of the reversals on the left in American politics. Like in the 90s they were totally pro strong borders, they were totally anti war. Come 2020 to 2024, totally pro open borders, totally pro war. And I think how do you switch? These are pretty simple topics politically as far as like figuring out whether you're pro or con. Like how do you go from. Has a whole party of people go from believing one on one side to one on the other. And I think it's because. And I'm just going to make the claim that we live in a culture, a post God culture. And so it doesn't so much matter if I believe in God and you don't. Once we're post God as a culture, you can only appeal so high when you're coming to having political conversations about policy that is making moral claims. So all of us are making moral arguments on the political level that are an anti God argument, not against God, but without God in that place, which is because there's no other way to have the conversation. There's no conversation possible without appealing to something lesser. And so you see people switching back and forth on what would seem like fairly simple ideas and that switching, I'm starting to lose the. But that switching is based upon the confusion that comes in defining terms and understanding what is good and what is bad without a higher order principle.

[34:03] Michael: Well, I think that's the part that I get in trouble with is because I try to understand the world from, you know, in a, in a, in a, in a post God way. And I, and I, I want to understand, I want to be able to make those arguments. I never actually can. And I think that's, it's kind of frustrating for me in a sense, just because like there's, I think I've used, I've seen people use this argument in a way that's more manipulative than actually sincere. Like, as far as, like, you know, there is a God. But really what I'm doing is I'm trying to get my own way and I'm going to use this in a way that manipulates you. You know, so I think there's that part rather than trying to get at the truth, it's like, you know, should we have orders or no. Or open borders? You know, how porous should they be? Zero porous. You know, it's like there's all these sort of like nuances and stuff like that. And so, you know, and they're like, kind of like a wisdom and applying knowledge is something that's really difficult to do. But whenever you have, whenever you. I find that when I have this idea that there is a right answer for today and that might change and shift as it goes, but it's nothing to do with truth. It has to be with knowledge applied to, to today. And I think that's the only way that you can really like kind of have these things make sense in a way that, you know, doing Wim Hof being a good father, being a good husband, it's, it's sort of like, what does that look like? It's like, well, it has to be always in service of something you're looking to, something to help you kind of reference what is good at that time. Like, you know, being a good father might be, hey, I want to let that one slide. I'm going to give you space. Another time might be, hey, I'm, I'm up in your face right now. We need to do something about this, you know, and it's like, it's, it's this whole, it's this relational aspect that's really difficult. But there is, there is you. We've all experienced it. Whenever we don't do the right thing at the right time where, you know, whenever I've been more disciplinary, when I should have been more gracious to my kids, sometimes I've been more gracious to my kids when I should have been more disciplinary. And you can you see that as you, as you reiterate or iterate this over time and you start to kind of hone in because you see that there is something good, but that the application, the knowledge applied to the situation is always different. So you always have to be listening and hearing something outside of yourself.

[36:59] Matt: Let me see if I can catch what you're putting down. It seems like you started by saying that if you try to have conversations with people about the way that things should be, let's just stick with the example of in our country, have a conversation about borders and what should they be and what should the specifics be. And you try to have that conversation in a post God world. And so you leave God out of it. It's very difficult to come up with anything other than what's the best thing for today? Which is problematic because it's very shortsighted. Today doesn't last very long.

[37:41] Michael: Well, today could also be an epoch of time. Yeah, like a week or a year or whatever. Ten years, five years.

[37:48] Matt: Well, but that you can't use those interchangeably.

[37:52] Michael: Well, I think like, what I think of today is like, is like, like right now, whatever season that we're in, let's just say like, you know, since we've had this huge influx and you see this in Europe of immigration or you know, that the country cannot handle that, so we need to really clamp down on it. But it might be in five or ten years from now. Hey, actually we need to loosen that up a little bit more because we actually can, we can actually help. We have the resources to have more people here. So that's what would change. But it's having the wisdom and understanding knowledge to apply to the situation. Like right now it's like Europe is being overrun by immigration and so that there is no cohesion to bring somebody into. And it's actually providing more chaos, which is not helpful for the country itself. Is that more clear? I guess the day maybe I should have done that was too semantic, but I was thinking more like epochs of time than it could be a day or it could be a season. Five years.

[39:00] Matt: No, I can work with that. I think the question becomes, well, what does it mean to have the wisdom to understand when it is good to change rules? Let's say, where does that wisdom come from? And it brings you back to the question of, well, because you might say, well, I've been doing this for a long time. I know when it's good to change rules. Good for who? What is good to you? And again, I think you come back into this definitional problem of there is no basis for good.

[39:40] Michael: Yeah.

[39:41] Matt: Without a higher order ideal. And so you have these conversations without that higher order ideal and everything becomes very arbitrary and you might come up with a solution that is good. And let's just use a definition of the word good as acceptable to the majority of the people, which is not a good definition of good, obviously, because majorities have done obviously bad things, even though I'm making the case that it's not obvious, which is really the point is in there. Right. Like they didn't think they were doing terrible things. So we find ourselves. But let's just for right now say that good is acceptable to the majority of the people. Okay. That might satiate our moral needs for today. And you can use your longer term definition of day. But tomorrow comes, things are different. If what is acceptable to the people is the only acceptable definition of good, then who could have the wisdom to know when things need to change tomorrow or how they should change tomorrow? I mean, you end up just as a dog chasing its tail if you go with the definition of the majority, because that's what majorities do. And this is why our founding fathers were actually very anti democracy and that's why they established the United States as a constitutional republic and not a democracy, because mobs do awful things. So majority rule is not a good idea.

[41:31] Michael: Yeah.

[41:36] Matt: So just driving toward the point that, Well, maybe the king can rule with wisdom. For some period of time, but if the king is not subject to something higher, the king will always become a tyrant and be overthrown. And I think that that analogy works within us all of the time, within the individual, within our psyches. Like, you know, it's part of the reason why somebody would choose to be sick. I mean, this is the struggle of being a human. We think we have a good idea of what's good for us and we go and we try to implement it and we're thrown into chaos, psychically, relationally, health wise, spiritually, because we go try to enact our version of utopia for ourselves and we find that, oh, I didn't take into account 90% of the things that just threw this off the course. The king always has to be subject to something higher. And I think the example of making policies that are acceptable to the majority and Appealing to somebody who has the wisdom to know when it's good to change is to sort of put someone there in that higher place that we're all subject to. But how high does that person need to be? And I think the claim that you and I are trying to sort of poke at and drive towards, well, see if we can drive towards in a way that is cohesive is that there is only one self justifying answer for who is the, who is the person to whom all are subjugated.

[43:41] Michael: Yeah, I think that's the part where, So I think that's, that's where we get all wonky is that like most people, I would say, act as if there is a God but don't actually believe in God. So like when I say that as like, as like, like most people say that there is some, like there is good, this is what good and it's objectively good. And you, you know, but you, you probe that further and it's just more of like, it's just obvious and it's like, you don't need a God because it's just obvious. Like it's better to love your neighbor than to kill your neighbor in most instances, you know, you know, so it's like if there's this appeal to a higher, a higher ideal, but there's, there's there, but in that, in the, the person's actual belief, there is no, there's no substance in it. Does that make sense?

[44:50] Matt: It, it does, but it's really hard to make that point.

[44:54] Michael: I agree. I agree and I, I think that's the point. I, I find myself in that, in that same, that same spot is. I feel like many times I make this appeal to a higher idea, not God, to a higher idea, thinking that that in itself will justify what I'm saying. And in a sense I can kind of do that with people because we share this sort of like idea. So it's like, you know, whether or not you and I believe in God doesn't really matter. But like we both would agree, like, hey, like being nice to people generally speaking is a good thing. We're like, yeah, of course. Well, all of a sudden we just appeal to something higher and we, we have no, but we have no real basis for it.

[45:37] Matt: Is the, is the higher thing in that sentence? The. Of course that's the higher thing.

[45:43] Michael: I guess so. Yeah. I don't, I don't. I just, it just, it's just more of an observation of like we, we appeal to something outside of ourselves without actually believing, realizing that

[45:58] Matt: we're doing it.

[45:59] Michael: We're doing it. And it seems like it's like. It's like. It's sort of like where, you know, Nietzsche talks about. It's like God is dead. And. And that's actually a really scary thing because now we're talking in religious language and ideas without the actual substance of it.

[46:15] Matt: Yeah.

[46:16] Michael: And. And I think that's. That's kind of where we find ourselves right now. And that's why it's. The. The water is so murky, is because we think we can actually agree on what is. What is good. And then we just try. Then all we do is we just get people around us that agree with what we think is good. We're not actually now appealing to something higher. We're. We're appealing to agreement.

[46:45] Matt: So. There are a lot of people who I have not read directly, but just learned, have learned about most primarily through that book, the Triumph of the Modern Self, that, for example, Rousseau and the Romantics tried to justify building a morality on aesthetics, which is basically the admission that, well, what is good is obvious. It's beautiful. You know, like you say, you would be nice to your neighbor. It's obviously a good thing to do because there's beauty in it. You have a good, positive relationship with your neighbor. That's beautiful. You have a negative relationship with your neighbor. He's an asshole, you're an asshole. We all know that that feels bad. So we can build a morality on aesthetics, on beauty. What feels good? The problem becomes what you just said. It's something like, well, what feels good to the people at that time? So the morality that you build on aesthetics becomes nothing more than the emotional preferences of that person or that people at that particular time. It isn't actually rooted in anything at all, which is another reason for interesting reversals. If you go back in time, you will Notice that before 2016, the left loved Donald Trump. You'll notice that before Elon got behind Donald Trump, the left loved Elon Musk. They've obviously reversed on all of those things. Well, how do you reverse on all of those things? Well, because morality is a demand that the world fall in line with your emotional preferences at that time. And my emotional preferences are going to be at the whim of the manipulation of any narrative that makes me feel a certain way. I mean, think about trying to think of a good example of this. But I think we could all probably understand that at some point in our life, we learned something and felt one way about it, and then maybe saw a documentary and we're like, oh, I was wrong. It's really this way. You feel a whole different way about it. Well, if your morality is based on way you feel about something, the way you perceive it, the way it presents itself to you, then you end up with a morality that has no persisting structure. And that's a big problem. And I think that's underlying a lot of what we're seeing in western culture and politics, especially over the last two decades.

[49:37] Michael: Yeah, yeah. This is such a hard thing to kind of suss out because. And I think you kind of put your finger on it's really the emotional, like truth has become. Has been turned into an emotional thing. And it's not that truth isn't emotional, but it's. It's not. That's not what truth is, is the emotional feeling towards something, you know, like, oh, that feels good. So that must be good for me. It's like, you know, going on benders every night might feel good for a period of time, but it's actually not healthy for you. Well, it's not good for you.

[50:15] Matt: If you think about it, morality itself is statements or claims to truth. I believe this to be true. It is better to love thy neighbor than to hate them. And if that morality is based on my emotional preferences and perception of aesthetics and beauty, then my claims to truth are also resting on my emotional preferences. And when my emotional preferences change, my claims to truth change. But truth remains definitionally true whether I know it or not. Which means that I then have to erase the past inside of myself, which previously came to a different claim to truth.

[50:59] Michael: Kind of reminds me of like was it the Eurasia or the. In 1984. I forgot the.

[51:04] Matt: We've always been at war with East Asia.

[51:06] Michael: Yeah, yeah. And then you, once it changes, you have to shift your entire emotional, like, oh, we've always been.

[51:13] Matt: Yeah, you have to rewrite the past.

[51:17] Michael: And it's not just a matter of accepting it intellectually, it's about accepting it wholehearted. Like whole. Wholeheartedly.

[51:25] Matt: Well, that's a thing that Truman, the author of this book I'm talking about, claims is a feature of what he calls Third world societies. Third World cultures has nothing to do with our colloquial definition of Third World, nothing to do with geography or economics. In his usage, Third world means no God. And in those cultures tend to be anti history. They always have to erase their own history. And it's so interesting. I mean, Orwell understood this when he wrote that book. And you see it happening all around us you know, both sides of our political aisle are accusing the other side of erasing history. And, you know, maybe one's right and one's wrong, maybe not. But if you just look around and think about how many statues you've seen torn down in the last five years, how many roads have been renamed in Austin, how many, you know, why are we arguing about banning the books? Both sides think they're right. But the fact that in general, we are trying to erase history so that our present views are consistent, that's an indication that we have lost the higher order ideal. Because if you have a higher order ideal, if you have a God, then you say that, well, morality is not. Is not something that I'm coming up with and justifying through myself. It is an observed sacred order which we are instantiating and registering into our culture as ethics. That way, if it turns out we're wrong, we actually don't have to erase history. We have to say, we need to get a better understanding of morality, and we need to be more nuanced and specific with ethics. And we could admit that, yeah, that was a darker time, but without God, you can't do that.

[53:47] Michael: Yeah. It comes back to our Chesterton fence type thing where, you know, over the centuries and millennia, like, we've been kind of working this out in sort of like in a biblical way of, like, you know, working this out with fear and trembling. It's like, what is good. And I think that's something that societies and individuals have been trying to understand what that is. And I think we've got a lot of great examples of how we've done that well and how we haven't done it very well. And I think that's the part. But in saying that, you have to acknowledge that there is a truth, there is something to be known and something to be intimate that's outside of our. Ourselves. It has nothing to do with my feelings or judgments. It is what it is.

[54:34] Matt: Well, that's a God claim. Yeah, it is what it is. What it is that that is. I am what I am. That is God.

[54:42] Michael: Yeah. So I think that's. That's the part. I mean, we can. We can look on it like, we can always deal with, like, the, maybe the bigger things and, and say, like, you know, like, slavery, like most of the world now does not think we should have slavery. Like, to have ownership over another individual is like, Is not a good thing. And part of that is, like, it built into our constitution, even though maybe it didn't apply to everyone at the time.

[55:09] Matt: That's explainable with changing emotional preferences. Most of the world agrees that slavery is bad because that's the emotional preference of the world right now.

[55:18] Michael: Totally.

[55:19] Matt: I mean I'm not going to try to make a counter argument to that, but I'm going to say that you could look back several hundred years in this country and find Christian individuals making that argument, not only making that argument, willing to go die for it.

[55:36] Michael: Yeah.

[55:36] Matt: So it's clearly possible to believe wholeheartedly that it is a good thing to own other people. So it's interesting that I think moving from a Christian society into a post God society, we think we're, we're more moral because we learned something from the past. Than the people that thought just fell apart on me. Like people in our arrogance we think we're more moral, but we have given up. We've ceded the claim to any fundamental basis for morality at the same time. And we haven't realized that our, our self righteous morality is nothing but a statement of our own preferences.

[56:29] Michael: Well, because at the time, you know, it's like, that's like it was, it was you know, Christians who led that sort of like the anti slave movement, you know, whether it be James Boulevard 4th all the way through is like because they, they, they are appealing to a higher ideal and that all men were created equal.

[56:48] Matt: Right

[56:49] Michael: in God's eyes. You know, we're all created in his image. And it came from that, that, that the anti slavery movement kind of moved into the. And then it's like, sort of like then we co opted as like oh okay, yeah, that's a given. And then kind of going into what you're saying is like now it's an emotional thing and it's no longer rooted in the, in the, we are created in God's image, you know.

[57:11] Matt: Yeah.

[57:11] Michael: And that's where it all begins. I think that's, I think this is kind of the interesting thing to. And I don't know how we can really suss this out because I feel like that kind of hits on the meat of the thing is a lot of times we'll grab these truths and they'll be, and it's, and it's, it's something like all men are created in the, in the image of God and, and it'll, it'll start working its way through society and it starts to, it starts to actually the, the, the power of the, of the source starts to kind of diminish.

[57:45] Matt: Yeah.

[57:46] Michael: And it becomes more of a. Of course.

[57:49] Matt: Well, I just saw something in my head for the first time, which is that in the west, we sort of arrogantly lay claim to morality and say that what is good and what is bad is obvious. And yet you'll notice that no one really has anything to say about the fact that there are. I don't know how many Uyghur Muslims in slavery in China right now

[58:17] Michael: or the. The Christian genocide in Nigeria. Is it. I don't get the wrong country.

[58:22] Matt: I don't know anything about it.

[58:23] Michael: Oh, it's like hundreds of thousands have been killed, like

[58:25] Matt: right now.

[58:25] Michael: Yeah, it's like this going on currently, so.

[58:28] Matt: Well, I just want to make two points. We say it's obvious that slavery is bad. Right. Yet we don't seem to have anything to say about active slavery in the world right now. We say that it's obvious that acceptance and celebration of LGBTQ plus whatever is obviously good and unacceptance is obviously bigotry and bad. Yet the people who say that most loudly don't have anything to say about the rights of LGBT people in Islamic countries, the Gaza Strip, or about the way that the Taliban treats women and children and the fact that women there have absolutely no rights, not allowed to be educated, not allowed to show their face, not allowed to drive a car. That seems to be totally okay. As a matter of fact, if you're against that, you're the bigot. And this is another example, I think, of how when your morality is not instantiated on a sacred order, it betrays the fact that your morality is simply a statement of your own preferences. So we don't want that here, but it's okay that happens in Afghanistan. It's okay that it happens in the Gaza Strip, but because those are different people, they have different preferences. And so you sort of. You're sort of admitting that what is good and what is bad is a result of the preferences and culture of that. Of that people. And so that should be respected. Whereas here, it should be

[60:15] Michael: obvious.

[60:17] Matt: Yeah, it should be obviously wrong. So that's so interesting to me because the evidence for it is right there. But I think because we live in a culture that still hangs on the skeleton of Judeo Christian values. Like you were saying, the north went and fought the south to defend the idea that all men are created in the image of God. Once the battle was won, we assumed the righteousness for ourselves and the morality for ourselves, and we gave up the idea that undergirded that fight. And we don't see that our righteousness and our morality has a hollow center that cannot be Principally and predictably applied across situations.

[61:09] Michael: Yeah, you kind of see, I think that's a great word, is the hollowing out. Like, even the way that we've set up the Constitution is to kind of, you know, whether it's free speech. You know, it's like free speech, but only speech that I agree with. It's like, well, it's not really free speech. And it's like, why is free speech so valuable? And it's like, because a lot of the people that came here from other countries were persecuted and they weren't allowed to speak, and they wanted to protect that because without that, there's a tyranny that happens that you have to think the way that you're told to think. And I think that's something that, you know, and to be able to explore your faith in a way that you. That's. That's. That's. That you're inspired by. I think that was one thing that kind of inspired that sort of the speech element in that. Oh, shoot. Kind of forgot where I was going with that. No, the hollowing out. I think that's. There's something with that. Like, whenever something starts with substance, and then the actual, like, the substance is gone, and all you're left with is the shell. And I think there's a lot of that happening right now, whether it be marriage, whether it be love, family, service. And I kind of. I see, like, how I'm guilty of this, too. And it's something I've been kind of, like, working through right now over the last six months or more. And I think a lot of this, I kind of got jaded during COVID and just tired of, like, really serving other people. And I felt like it was something that was ingrained in me and that I learned through my faith was just like, there's something very amazing about serving somebody. There's like, there's value in that. And then I feel like I started losing the. The center of it, and it was just the shell acting that out.

[63:29] Matt: Right.

[63:29] Michael: And it's like, then there's this bitterness that came afterwards, you know? So even though I had the. I had the core value, it was sort of like it was leaking. It was leaking out. And I've kind of seen over the last few years, like, it's like, wow, I didn't really need to fill that back up because it's like, it's not the service. It's what the service is for.

[63:51] Matt: That's what the service serves.

[63:52] Michael: Yeah. And I think that's. I can see aspects of my life where I've lost that. I mean, whether with my kids or with my wife or with you or with, you know, it's like. And I feel like there was a point in my life where that, that center was being filled more and more because actually at, it was, it was at service to something else. And this all seems very. I feel like I'm using a lot of like,

[64:13] Matt: well, maybe

[64:14] Michael: poetic words here, but that's the only way that I can really describe that.

[64:17] Matt: Maybe that's why I was pushing back earlier when you said serving God feels good. I mean in, in a way it does.

[64:24] Michael: Yeah,

[64:25] Matt: but not in a lasting way.

[64:27] Michael: Well, I guess what I say when it feels good, it's the same way of like, you know, if I were to jump in front of a bullet, if there was someone shoot, going to shoot you and I jumped in front of it and I got to save your life, like that would feel good

[64:47] Matt: to who?

[64:48] Michael: To me.

[64:48] Matt: But you're dead.

[64:49] Michael: Well, that's the thing is like, I mean, I'm just kind of, again, I'm playing this out of my head, but if I, but if I had, If I had 30 seconds in between like just sitting there and going awesome, you know, like, like that would be, that would be something. Like I would just, I would, that would, it would make sense to me that.

[65:06] Matt: No, but here's the point I'm trying to make. Serving God doesn't feel good in any kind of,

[65:20] Michael: That's kind of a secondary, any kind of way

[65:22] Matt: that lasts. Because what, what happens is that to the. You do something, you serve other people and you feel good while I'm serving other people. That's a good thing. That feels really good.

[65:35] Michael: Yeah,

[65:36] Matt: but then you stop serving God and you start serving that feeling.

[65:39] Michael: Yeah, exactly.

[65:40] Matt: And then the core leaks out and all of a sudden you realize that you're doing the thing and you're feeling bitter and so you have to readjust your eyes back up to God. And I think that that process is constantly in play, which is why it doesn't really matter in a sense how it feels. You can understand and enact the right answer by looking at the one self justifying thing. And you will have times when you feel really good and they will often feel very paradoxical. I mean, if you read the writings of Paul, he doesn't exactly sound like a man who's suffering. But his circumstances we would certainly describe as suffering. And there are, you know, plenty of examples of people who have much brighter circumstances who are afflicted emotionally and Spiritually, the pain and the pleasure go back and forth. And you have to look above both, I think and say, I am serving the one thing worth serving. And by definition, the result of that is whatever is happening is the best thing that could happen. It isn't about how I feel. You know, if you jumped in front of a bullet for me, you know, I certainly would not feel good about that because I just lost my best friend. Whether or not. Whether or not you had a few seconds of like,

[67:14] Michael: oh, God,

[67:15] Matt: I gave up my life for my friend. If that was what was going on in your mind in that moment, I would just be like, dude, Michael, there's way other. You should be thinking about many other things in your last few moments there.

[67:32] Michael: 45 seconds.

[67:34] Matt: No, but that would be the way that it happened. It's like you would jump in front of the bullet. You'd be lying on the ground. I'd be like, michael. And you go, oh, that's really interesting. I just gave up my life for my friend.

[67:46] Michael: We should put this on the podcast.

[67:52] Matt: What was the last thing he said to you?

[67:56] Michael: Well, I think it might be semantical because, like, I guess again, with most things, like, there is an emotional aspect to it because even when you do something hard, it doesn't feel good, but it also feels good.

[68:12] Matt: What feels good once you understand what's on the other side.

[68:14] Michael: Yeah, totally. Yeah. It's like once you're in service to. Of the higher thing, then it's like you can even feel good in the absolute mire of things.

[68:25] Matt: Well, here's a great, just, like, microcosm example of that. And you and I have talked about this example before, but, like, when I finally reached the age when my dad would let me use the riding lawnmower, that was the best day of my life up until that point. The second time I rode the riding lawnmower was one of the worst days of my life. Because I realized now, oh, one, it's not as much fun as it looks. Two, it's a lot of work. And three, now that he knows I can do it, he can tell me to do it. And he has been now telling me to do this every week. Oh, my God, I just lost my rollerblading time on Saturdays. Something like this. So it's terrible.

[69:10] Michael: Yeah.

[69:11] Matt: But because I was subjugated as a child to my father, and I respected and honored my father, I did it when he asked me to do it. And enough time went by when I realized that there is a reward on the other side of mowing the lawn that makes any suffering absolutely worth it. And that reward is my mom coming out and saying, the lawn looks really good.

[69:38] Michael: Totally.

[69:40] Matt: That reward is, you know, not at the time when I was a kid, but now sitting on my porch with a cold beer and smelling the fresh cut grass

[69:48] Michael: or like you just mowed. And the rains. And it's like the rain and the fresh cut grass.

[69:52] Matt: The best.

[69:53] Michael: Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah,

[69:54] Matt: you can. You can hardly exceed that. I mean, in a sense, I think as we get older, we get more simple. You know, we're simpler men. And that. That's one of the best feelings. But it was only by submitting myself to my father that I got through the throes of that first ecstasy, turned to hell, turned to a slow build, build back up of one of the best feelings that I can think of.

[70:23] Michael: And then there's like this also this pride of taking care of something and doing a good job. And there's something very visually that is revealing. And so you start in a way,

[70:36] Matt: but you don't learn any of that unless you do it. And if at any point along that line you trust your feelings over, in my case, when I'm a kid, the higher order ideal of my father, you can't go against him. If you trust your feelings, you'll never learn any of those things. So it's almost like your feelings, your emotional preferences have to be pushed to the side in order to follow something higher so that you can learn what is good and desire what is good and develop your. And develop as a consequence of that wisdom.

[71:20] Michael: Yeah, it's kind of interesting because it's like as a kid, it's almost like a microcosm that you're. Your parents are as God to you. And as you get older, it's like your parents become less efficient of a substitute.

[71:39] Matt: Yes.

[71:40] Michael: And so there's a sort of like there's. I mean, that's a whole thing with teenagers. They then they push away from their kid, from their parents, which is healthy and good because they're supposed to learn that their parents are not. Not sufficient higher powers.

[71:57] Matt: Yeah. I feel like it's a fairly. I think maybe it was my therapist who said this to me, said everybody has to realize at some point that they have to take their parents off the pedestal. And sometimes that happens naturally, sometimes you have to do it consciously. But at some point you realize that your parents aren't God.

[72:19] Michael: Yeah.

[72:22] Matt: Like Nate Bargets, he talks about being at a friend's house when he's young and they want to watch a movie. And he's like, I don't think I'm allowed to watch that movie. And the friend's mom was like, well, why don't we just not tell your parents? And he goes, this was the first time I'm learning you could lie to these people. It's the first time hearing about this. At some point, we all have to realize that our parents. Parents aren't God and we're better off for it because they aren't.

[72:52] Michael: I think it's also crushing for kids. I mean, it's really difficult. Can

[72:55] Matt: be.

[72:55] Michael: Yeah, can be. I mean,

[72:57] Matt: or for adults, if it takes that long.

[72:59] Michael: Yeah, true.

[73:01] Matt: I mean, I think most. Maybe most going back to the idea of what does it mean to be a good father. It's like most primarily, it's to introduce your children to the real God and to say, I'm not God. I was wrong in this scenario, in this circumstance, I'm not God. I'm a disappointment.

[73:25] Michael: It's almost. It's very interesting. It's kind of like it was too esoteric, but sort of like there's this part that you're also releasing your dominion over your kids as they get older and that they have to choose and to submit to something greater than themselves. And they have to go. Sometimes they have to go through that. Some people call it the dark night of the soul. But it's a place where it's a real conundrum of like, okay, is this real? Is. Is what I believe or what I've been told, is this something that's. That I'm going to take hold of? And I think that's part of. I think that's a lot of people's journeys, is they. They start acting in the world and they start seeing that it's not as they thought it would be. Like. Like this idea of good. It's. It's not an idea. And not everybody has it. And that you have to discover that it's something more than.

[74:26] Matt: Yeah. Not everybody has your idea of good.

[74:28] Michael: Exactly. Yeah.

[74:29] Matt: Or your community or your culture or your country's idea of good.

[74:33] Michael: And that's. It's easy then to get spun off into relativity is sort of like, you know, well, you have your truth, I have my truth. Or your good. You. I have my good. And. And.

[74:45] Matt: Well, that would seem to be a fairly benign, innocuous kind of idea. But I think that you find that very quickly, if you sort of accept that you have your truth, I have my truth, you're going to find out that Those two truths are going to go to war with each other

[75:02] Michael: totally,

[75:02] Matt: and you're going to get caught up in it, however much of a pacifist you want to be.

[75:09] Michael: Yeah,

[75:09] Matt: I mean, I think that's such an interesting way to think about, like, actual wars that have happened. I mean, World War II was several ideas of truth going to war with each other. I mean, yes, men went to war with each other, but it was about truths. Same, I think we kind of outlined with the Civil War. It's like, well, what is true? Are all men created equal in the image of God? We went to war over that. And some people might have thought it was about slavery or other things. It was really about that core idea. What is the truth that undergirds our actions or that beckons our actions, rather, that calls us forward. In World War II, it was sort of. Or maybe even more in the Cold War, capitalism versus communism, it was sort of totalitarianism versus the west in World War II. But these are truths going to war with each other, and we're in service of those truths. And that's one way to look at it. We go to war because we're in service of that truth. I think it's easier for us to understand why the north went to war in the 1860s than it is for why the south went to war. Because we were bequeathed, a priori, the conclusion of that, the conclusion that the right side of history won. And so we know what the right side is. But I think that we've lost the thing that served, that those men were serving, the idea that won, the truth that won. So it isn't clear to me that, well, that the next battle for that idea will be over slavery, first of all, or that the people that you would expect to find on the right side of that argument will show up for it.

[77:22] Michael: Well, I think even just kind of hopefully before that, I think there's something that Charlie Kirk really stood for was like, you know, we need to be able to discuss things and battle with words and come to an understanding, you know, or try to come to an understanding. If not, then it does lead to actual physical war. And I think that's. That's the part that I feel like. Like going forward from here, just the. Like. I think that return to the higher truth, return to God, as far as, like, in service of, is such a valuable thing. And I think that's something that we're going to discover in the next five or 10 years, that it's just sort of like there is no higher truth. Because we're doing our damnedest to do all of this without that. And I feel like we're kind of where we are right now because that we're trying to do this without that understanding of a higher truth that we're in service of and we're trying to make our own truths.

[78:31] Matt: I think the cracks in that are showing, and I. I think that there is going to be a revival of religion in the West. Perhaps insufficient in one way or another. Most certainly insufficient in one way or another. But I think that the number of people who have been more openly talking about God or publicly announcing a return to God, especially in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, was very surprising to me. I think that the futility of our conversations is evident to most, even though. Most couldn't say that or explain why it does seem futile. And it seems obvious that we are thirsty for living water, even though we don't know what that means.

[79:42] Michael: Yeah.

[79:44] Matt: And revival in whatever shape or form I think is imminent. What that means for the United States of America, I don't know what that means for the west or the. Continuance of the ideas that undergird the West. I don't know.

[80:10] Michael: Yeah. I think that's good right there, man.

[80:20] Matt: Yeah. I think we should wrap it.

[80:21] Michael: Yeah. Thanks for exploring this with us. I mean, this was something that Matt and I were kind of. As we were talking beforehand, we're just kind of interested in and. I don't know, just being able to hash it out here with you guys is a lot of fun.

[80:32] Matt: I feel like we made some headway.

[80:33] Michael: I think so, too. I've got. I feel like I've got some things I want to explore a little bit more and put some. Put some more meat around.

[80:40] Matt: Yeah.

[80:42] Michael: So cool. Cool. Thank you, guys.

[80:44] Matt: Good combo.

[80:44] Michael: Yeah. Love

[80:45] Matt: you out there. Thanks.

[80:54] Michael: Yeah. That was definitely more of an exploratory

[80:57] Matt: show. Yeah, for sure. This is definitely on the edge of my.

[81:05] Michael: Yeah.

[81:06] Matt: Thinking. Huh. So many of these concepts I want to understand better and

[81:16] Michael: better articulate.

[81:17] Matt: Yeah. And just be able to work with. Because I feel like when we explore them, it opens my. It opens my sight up into much. A lot of other places. Oh. I didn't.