When The Grain of Sand Falls

[0:00] Matt: It comes like a fleeting memory. Whatever you grab just turns to dust. Like eye contact with a stranger. Okay, I think now we're ready.

[0:24] Michael: We are so ready.

[0:25] Matt: Clear vocal cords, clear minds.

[0:28] Michael: Did our voice exercises. Cheers. To the shores.

[0:31] Matt: To the shores. Maybe we should start doing some anchorman style voice warm ups.

[0:37] Michael: Oh, yeah.

[0:40] Matt: The arsonist was denied a bank loan.

[0:44] Michael: That's awesome. Well, yeah.

[0:49] Matt: Here we go. All right. Where are we going?

[0:50] Michael: We're going. We're getting in some DNA into some Space Selden crisis. Space? I was gonna say base.

[0:59] Matt: Base.

[0:59] Michael: Give me the base.

[1:00] Matt: Space is the base. Yeah, well, why don't we start with space? Because I feel like it's kind of interesting that Artemis 2 launched but just like an hour ago, hour and a half ago. We watched it. Yeah. But I feel like almost no one knew about it. Like it wasn't really talked about.

[1:18] Michael: I kind of thought it was a joke for when I first saw.

[1:21] Matt: I mean, I thought NASA was done.

[1:22] Michael: Yeah.

[1:23] Matt: So I was kind of surprised that they had this. All of a sudden they're like, oh, we're going back to the moon.

[1:26] Michael: Yeah. It really did come out of nowhere. Like, you know that they've been planning this for at least two years or three.

[1:31] Matt: They have to have been.

[1:32] Michael: Yeah.

[1:33] Matt: Because they haven't sent someone to the moon in 50 years. Yeah, I think literally exactly 50 years was the last time anyone went to the moon.

[1:40] Michael: And just so you know, guys, it's just going around it. They're not going to the moon.

[1:44] Matt: Well, they're going there. They're going to go circle the block.

[1:47] Michael: Well, I didn't even know that. And you and I drive by you and I love this stuff.

[1:50] Matt: Yeah.

[1:50] Michael: I don't understand why we didn't. I didn't know.

[1:53] Matt: I know. Well, I feel like it's kind of gotten that way even with SpaceX a little bit. Like the hype is worn off a little bit and it's like, oh yeah, they caught another rocket with the chopsticks.

[2:05] Michael: Totally.

[2:06] Matt: But watching NASA their whole livestream, it struck me that it just felt so antiquated and outdated. Like even the way the live stream was set up and the way they were running it, it felt like old NASA stuff where when you watch the SpaceX live streams, it feels very cutting edge and very new.

[2:26] Michael: It could have been the 1970s we were watching.

[2:28] Matt: Yeah, totally. A bunch of fat people sitting in lawn chairs with their phones. Yeah. It didn't feel any different than the 1970s, except for the people watching had iPhones and we were watching on A live stream. That's what it felt like to me. And it was also very strange because after Artemis 2 launched successfully and on time. So kudos to NASA. That's pretty impressive.

[2:51] Michael: Yeah.

[2:53] Matt: You know, it's called the SLS, I think is the name of the whole vehicle.

[2:59] Michael: Okay.

[3:00] Matt: And it starts shedding boosters and shedding bay doors and like all this, like you're watching it and it just becomes a cloud of debris because NASA's still making UN. Unreusable non reusable rockets. And that also feels really antiquated because you watch Starship Launch and it's like everything that goes up either stays up or comes back down. It is caught and reused. You don't see a bunch of debris flying off.

[3:29] Michael: Yeah. Probably the critics would say, like, or it blows up or it blows up.

[3:32] Matt: Yeah, I know when it blows up, that's a lot of debris for sure. It blows up in spectacular fashion.

[3:38] Michael: It does.

[3:40] Matt: Which kind of feels like a feature, not a bug. I don't know. But it just makes me wonder like, have we lost the awe for like things happening in the real world? You know, we're all just too consumed watching funny videos on Instagram or whatever. Watching TikTok people dance on TikTok Jujutsu Kaisen. Right, that. No, we're actually sending people 220,000 miles away from the Earth.

[4:11] Michael: Yeah.

[4:11] Matt: They just accelerated from zero to 5,000 miles an hour in three minutes, people. And we're just like, yeah, okay. Yeah, you ask, I would guess what, 90% of people, if they even knew that that happened tonight, they'd probably say no.

[4:27] Michael: Yeah.

[4:28] Matt: That seems really sad. It does.

[4:32] Michael: I mean, well, I mean, it's like we definitely have. There's just so many things to be concerned about. It just. It just kind of fades into the noise and whether you're. And it's always been true. It's just that media is like so much more readily accessible. It's like, you know, just. There's just so many things to. To take our attention.

[4:56] Matt: Right.

[4:56] Michael: Even important things. But like that seems to me like this. I don't know, I'm watching for all mankind right now and just absolutely loving it. Like, and just the whole idea. We were talking about this before, but what if we didn't stop at the moon and just kept going and where we would be now, I would say it would be a better world if we would have kept going, kept exploring,

[5:20] Matt: kept explosion the envelope. Yeah.

[5:22] Michael: Like already have a moon base by now. Maybe even on Mars by now.

[5:26] Matt: Do you understand why we Stopped.

[5:29] Michael: I think it was just unpopular. It's kind of like nuclear energy.

[5:32] Matt: Yeah.

[5:32] Michael: Just sort of like, why are we wasting our money? Uh, and also the.

[5:37] Matt: The Challenger explosion probably didn't help.

[5:39] Michael: Challenger explosion. Cold War was over. So that sort of like we're better than the Russians.

[5:44] Matt: Yeah.

[5:45] Michael: We don't have anything to prove anymore. I think once we started beating them on all quite a few levels, it was sort of. It just wasn't fun anymore, you know?

[5:55] Matt: Hmm.

[5:56] Michael: So I. I don't. I. I don't know the real answer to that, but that. That would. That would be my guess anyways.

[6:00] Matt: Yeah. I mean, I guess the last time we sent anyone to the moon was 1976. And I'm not sure whether they landed in that trip or not, but. Super interesting. These four astronauts are going to see the dark side of the moon for the first time any human has seen it in 50 years. Because the moon is in geostationary locked orbit. I think there's a different word for that, but. Meaning that it doesn't rotate.

[6:27] Michael: Oh, yeah.

[6:28] Matt: Relative to its orbital path. So you only ever see the same side of it. There's only been a handful of people in history that have ever seen the dark side. It's pretty crazy.

[6:39] Michael: Like Pink Floyd. Yeah. That's exciting. It's so. I think it's. It's becoming more apparent to me that we're like. We're all living in all these different worlds and just the possibility of space exploration kind of coming back and just the. I saw some, you know, the amount of satellites that Elon put up with this, like, super heavy or whatever it was, it's like insane. And it was like $350,000 for a slot, you know, so maybe your satellite takes up two slots, but just to launch one of those was like some billions of dollars. And here you can have a little slot for $350,000 and just the equalizing of that.

[7:27] Matt: Meaning that it used to cost billions of dollars. Or are you making that number up?

[7:30] Michael: No, I'm not. I don't. I don't know the exact number, but it was like multiple millions of dollars.

[7:37] Matt: I don't think it was billions.

[7:38] Michael: Yeah, I don't think so either. There's like. No, no, I don't have. Exactly. I saw it. I can see the text, but I can see it.

[7:46] Matt: I just can't read it.

[7:48] Michael: But it was like, astronomical as far as compared to $350,000 for a little.

[7:54] Matt: I don't get how there can be so many satellites and we can still Launch something else into. Let's just be the grand scale of how much space there is, that you can actually have tens or hundreds of thousands of satellites and still be like, oh, we just shoot another rocket up there. It won't hit anything.

[8:11] Michael: Yeah, you just kind of guess, like close your eyes and hope you make it.

[8:16] Matt: Well, that kind of leads me to this little fun fact I learned about DNA this week, which is that, well, yeah, we don't understand the scale of things at all. There's this great. People don't understand exponentials. And my first sort of fun foray into this was learning about how many unique ways there is to shuffle a deck of cards. And that problem is called a factorial. So if you have a table and it has four chairs on it and you want to know how many unique ways is there to arrange the chairs or let's say four people, how many unique ways is there to sit four people at a table? You just do four times three, times two, times one. So there's 24 unique ways. That's quite a few unique ways. But what's crazy is when you get up to larger numbers. So a deck of cards has 52 cards. So that's called 52 factorial. So 52 times 51 times 50 times 49. Oh, okay. You get, I think 10 to the 52nd.

[9:29] Michael: That's what, that's a lot of zeros.

[9:32] Matt: I think that's what it is. You go look up the size of that number. It looks really big. But I read this analogy. Somebody said, okay, you're gonna stand in one place on the equator and you're gonna take one step. That's you're gonna count one, take another step two, another step, three. Your goal is to count up to 52 factorial. Okay. Once you've walked all the way around the globe, put a single sheet of paper where you started. Do it again, do that until that sheet stack of paper reaches the moon. Then put a single grain of sand into the Grand Canyon. Start over and repeat until the Grand Canyon is full of sand.

[10:21] Michael: Oh, you're still going.

[10:22] Matt: You're still going.

[10:23] Michael: Oh, okay. Wow. I was amazed just on the moon.

[10:25] Matt: So for every piece of grain of sand that you're going to put in the Grand Canyon, you got to walk all the way around the world and put a single sheet of paper and then do that until it hits the moon. Then you get to put another grain of sand in the Grand Canyon. That's how big 52 factorial is. Yeah, it's mind boggling. It's like the number of atoms in the Milky Way, which is unbelievable. Yeah, that's how many ways you can shuffle a deck of cards. Okay, so I learned this really interesting thing about D. So that was a warmer upper. Warmer upper. So a bigger number. So I was listening to this guy. He was talking about the idea of random mutation and natural selection. And I wish I would have written down the source. Maybe we can find it afterward. But this guy did an analysis where he said, okay, let's take the DNA sequence for a random protein, like a short protein, and imagine that that DNA sequence, which is basically digital code, that's what DNA is. It's a series of letters that can be in one space or another. And just like a computer program has a series of zeros and ones. And if those zeros and ones are in the right place, then the computer program does something. So that's the analogy. Okay, so to encode for this one single protein with DNA, all the letters in that sequence of DNA, that particular portion of the sequence have to be in a particular place. And the hypothesis that random mutation and natural selection could produce that protein is like saying, okay, you get eight bits of digital information, and through a series of random changes, we're just going to randomly change that sequence of zeros and ones until we have a computer program that does something. That's kind of the analogy. So he went to try to figure out, well, what are the chances that any given random mutation to this sequence of DNA which we want to encode for this protein, will produce something that works? And he came up with the fraction.

[12:46] Michael: Not even human beings, just something.

[12:47] Matt: Just the protein. Yeah, that's how I understood it. And what he came up with was a ratio. So one over one, meaning the number of times we come up with something that works over the number of times we have to run the experiment and come up with something that doesn't work. So just garbled code that doesn't produce any output. And the number is. The ratio is 1 over 10 to the 77. And then he said, there are 10 to the 56 atoms in the Milky Way. 10 to the 77 is like a trillion Milky Ways. Oh, because for every iteration.

[13:29] Michael: Totally. You can't comprehend that.

[13:32] Matt: It's so incomprehensible. So he said, basically, randomly coming up with the sequence to encode for a protein is like searching 10 trillion Milky Ways for a single marked atom. And he just basically makes the point that, you know, interesting hypothesis, but there's simply not enough time to run that experiment. Enough Times, given the suspected age of the Earth, to come up with an organism. And that was kind of mind blowing. And I thought that was interesting.

[14:07] Michael: No, that's. That's mind boggling. I can't even comprehend it. I mean, like, the, the counter to that is like, how many times is the. The, you know, it's like the universe respawned if, you know, like, went out and then came back in and collided and then went back out. There's some.

[14:24] Matt: Wait, how is that a counter?

[14:26] Michael: Well, it's just like. It's like we think of the Earth or the universe as so old, but it's like this universe, you know, this as we know it today.

[14:34] Matt: What are you appealing to, like, multiverse theory or.

[14:36] Michael: No, no, not even multiverse theory.

[14:38] Matt: You're just saying, like, this whole experiment could have been run before and extinguished itself.

[14:43] Michael: Well, sort of like the. Again, I don't know where we are on the, on the science of this, but sort of like the universe is expanding and at some point it pulls back in on itself and then it collides into another singularity and then back out. And then collides and then back out.

[14:59] Matt: Yeah. I don't know where you're getting all that. No, no.

[15:01] Michael: Oh, well, that's. I mean, that's like. Is, Is it a static universe or is it a, uh. Is it. Is it going to expand forever or is it expands to a certain point to where then the gravity and everything starts to pull everything back in into another singularity? I don't know. But that's back in the Hawking's days. I don't know.

[15:18] Matt: I mean, I understand it conceptually. I just don't hear people talking about it that way.

[15:22] Michael: Yeah. So, I mean, it's like you just

[15:25] Matt: kind of like, the Hawking stays. He just died. Like.

[15:28] Michael: Well, I'm thinking, like, I'm thinking a brief history of time. Like, that was. That was back in the day when I was like, I'm still super interested in it, but I think I, I kind of went down that deep dive of. Of that. So that was like early 2000s, late 1990s.

[15:44] Matt: Yeah.

[15:44] Michael: But anyways. But yeah, I mean, still, it's just like the numbers are just so astronomical, like.

[15:51] Matt: Yeah. Numbers are bizarre.

[15:52] Michael: Yeah. Or probabilities, too. The probability of even just producing one protein.

[15:58] Matt: Right.

[15:58] Michael: You're not even talking about, like, life as we know it.

[16:01] Matt: It's nearly impossible. I mean, you would think it would be impossible if we didn't look around and see it. It's like it's Here. So it's clearly possible. But even our own minds trying to come up with the mechanisms for it, it's like, we can't. The best explanations the theory of evolution gives us, as far as I can tell from what I've heard, is just basically like, well, given enough time, it works. It's like you're dealing with some crazy numbers.

[16:29] Michael: Yeah, well, it's like, I feel like either way you get into God territory, like evolutionist and creationist, because there's creation, evolution, there's all sorts of variables, but I'll just kind of like put the two opposing ends to each. But you kind of get into this sort of like at some point you end at faith, like, okay, well, both

[16:55] Matt: explanations have to start with a miracle. Give me one miracle and I'll explain everything to you. Yeah, Both have to say that.

[17:05] Michael: Yeah. But just one couches it in scientific terms.

[17:09] Matt: Yeah, but it's technically a miracle. The big Bang or the virgin birth. Which one do you want to go with?

[17:16] Michael: Totally. That's funny. Yeah. Time is a crazy thing, For sure.

[17:27] Matt: You want to elaborate?

[17:29] Michael: I don't know. I was just like. I'm kind of like. Well, it's things like this, like when you talk on this scale, like you kind of took us through a story of time and space and sort of like comparing it to, you know, DNA and, And the probabilities of how this. How it could have even formed one protein or something like that. And it's just like you start seeing a scale that sort of. It's. It's just hard to even.

[18:02] Matt: Not to mention, approach the DNA that can form a full human being.

[18:06] Michael: Yeah.

[18:06] Matt: Not to mention the diversity of DNA that all can also form a tree or a newt or a horse or a turtle.

[18:16] Michael: Well, I think that's kind of where we get to, is sort of like at some point you kind of get to like the. Of course that happened.

[18:23] Matt: Yeah.

[18:23] Michael: So it's like. But it's like, no. To even get to the. Of course it happened. Like, oh, why is there different types of humans? It's like, well, because of these different things. You're like, oh, of course that's how that worked. But you're missing a whole part of how you got to that place, you know, which is because I think that's why evolution makes so much sense to us, because it's kind of after the fact that you've accepted so many other presuppositions. You're like, oh, of course, if you live near the equator, it's probably darker skin. Would Be more helpful.

[18:55] Matt: Right.

[18:56] Michael: Lighter skinned and colder places.

[18:59] Matt: Isn't that interesting that we take things that make sense to us as true? When as you were just talking right there, I was like, it isn't self evident to me that because something makes sense to me that it's true. Yeah, I mean, it feels true when it makes sense. And it's all tidy in my brain and I'm like this, therefore that. But we were talking earlier today about how rationality leads you into such crazy places. What's logical and rational to us doesn't always end up with something which is true or good. Like we were talking about this recent Supreme Court decision where they were ruling on that law in Colorado about conversion therapy. And it's like you hear about that case one way and you think, oh, it's about this. It's about the idea of conversion therapy that we all understood in the 90s and about LGBTQ rights or what we thought that was about in the 90s. But then the court case today is about whether or not basically somebody can provide therapy to someone with gender dysphoria. And the contention of the Colorado law was they can provide therapy, but they may only affirm the gender that the person is not. They may not affirm the gender that the person is biologically. And the Supreme Court ruled that basically, no, sorry, you can't do that. But in the one case our rationality says, yeah, this makes sense. In the other case you say, wait, this doesn't make sense. And it's almost like the same rational principle applied in both places leads you to a place you unexpect or you don't expect.

[20:42] Michael: It's funny because you and I had this conversation before the podcast, and I think I'm just as confused as I was whenever we talked about it. At some point when you were explaining to me, I was like, oh, okay, that. How'd that happen? That's weird. It's like, that's like the, the thing that so many people fought for in the 90s or 80s or whatever it was, that was like a good thing. So like, you know, for like, you know, not conversion therapy as far as, like, you know, if you're gay to make you straight or something like that.

[21:10] Matt: Right.

[21:11] Michael: Like, there was like, there's. That was a big intention 80s and 90s. Now we're actually saying the opposite of that.

[21:21] Matt: Yeah, in one way it's the opposite. In another way it's not. I mean, I thought the Supreme Court's ruling was actually, like, actually made sense of it because they Said, well, you're just legislating that you may only take one position on a certain view.

[21:36] Michael: Oh, interesting.

[21:36] Matt: And that's an infringement of free speech. And that seems clarifying to me because the ramifications of the law were if a young girl or boy was experiencing gender dysphoria and they didn't know. I mean, gender dysphoria, by its definition, is confusion. And if they don't know which way they want that to go, a therapist could only talk to them about going the transition route. They could not talk to them about becoming more comfortable with who they were. And the, the Supreme Court says, no, you can't legislate that.

[22:10] Michael: Oh, okay, interesting. See, I, I don't think I, I, there's so many, like, Whereas. Double negatives. Yeah, right.

[22:17] Matt: Well, I think, Whereas in the 90s, like, it was just broadly sort of demanded that we all a priori accept that homosexuality was something that you were born with and it was innate and inalienable. Inalienable. And so it would be cruel to try to convert someone who was gay to someone who was straight. And then we overlay that on the trans thing. But the trans thing is so different because what is it to be homosexual? It's to have a particular desire. And that's where that conversation ends. It's to have a particular preference for essentially what? Sexual relations of a certain kind. Yeah, but to be trans, what is that? Well, there is actually something of evidence in reality that doesn't have anything to do with your desire, an individual's desire, or an individual's preferences. There is biology. And so to say that it would be conversion therapy to affirm someone in what their biology said about them, whereas to affirm them, to deny their biology is not conversion therapy. It's to apply a concept that's borrowed from another social justice movement that doesn't exactly apply. At least that's how I see it.

[23:41] Michael: It's a swirl of things to me.

[23:48] Matt: Well, I guess I'll just take it back to that idea that I think we really do think that when things make sense to us, it must mean that they're true. And this sort of maybe connects on something that you and I have been talking about for a long time, which is that we tend to think that a fact is just something you observe. It's something which is measurable and identifiable and observable in the world, the external world, that has nothing to do with you or anybody else. And that's just not the case. It never has been the case. I mean, there's some element of truth to that. But then, well, consult physics and you get the Schrodinger's cat experiment. You consult the double slit experiment. There's plenty of scientific experiments in which the second you measure something, it changes. Basically. The second you look at it, it changes.

[24:48] Michael: So that's fascinating because I would say that that is actually kind of leads you to truth because I think sometimes we think of facts or truth as something that is stationary. You know, it's like. But it's actually something, I think, that actually lives in paradox.

[25:06] Matt: Well, I think that's. My whole point is like, when I

[25:08] Michael: say it doesn't make it. But that's, but still true. It's like there's, there's something to be known and it's, and it's, and it's, it is observable. But you also have to like, take into account of like, your limitations too. So maybe we're saying the same thing.

[25:27] Matt: Sounds to me like we are.

[25:28] Michael: Yeah. I mean, this is like my, this is like my favorite area. I love, I love the whole Schrodinger cat. I love the double slit. I love the paradox of, of knowing. I think that's just something that, that is, that, that's a tension that you have to be able to comprehend and live with. And if you can't, I think it makes your life really difficult because it's just difficult to, to live that understanding the paradox.

[25:59] Matt: Well, that's good. And maybe that's, you know, one of the antidotes to the issue of thinking that because things make sense, they must be true. Because what's required is that, well, it might be a helpful tool that makes things make sense to you at the moment. But if you're not tracking carefully the assumptions you brought to the table about the things that made them make sense, then pretty soon you're going to end up upside down because new information is going to come in that's going to show you that your picture was incomplete.

[26:31] Michael: Yeah, well, I think that's the part. I think that's what it teaches us. Like there's a humility in knowing and, and sometimes knowing actually produces more pride than it does the humility. And I think that's whenever you start to see the trueness of, of facts and truth and stuff like that, is that it's, it's a. There's a humility that's kind of built into it because at any one point that you start to hold on to something too tightly, it's going to change on you.

[27:02] Matt: Well, I don't think it's built into it. I think you have to choose it. I mean, that's why you have, let's say the contrasting myths, let's just put it in that space. The contrasting myths of the tree of knowledge and the serpent in Adam and Eve and the eating of the apple. And Socrates, who, the oracle says, you are the wisest man because you do not believe that you are wise. So Socrates is humble enough to actually bear wisdom. Whereas there's another kind of knowing which as you said, is more prideful and that's the Adam and Eve story. It's well, I want to know what I want to know and damn the torpedoes. And so I think you have to choose. You have to say I want, well, I want my knowledge to be sufficient for my own purposes. And that's the Luciferian intellect. That's my knowledge can become sufficient and I will work to make it. So Whereas the choice to say I must always be humble to that which I feel like I know because I understand that my knowledge can never be sufficient and if I start believing that it is sufficient, great, with great power comes great responsibility and I won't be able to wield that responsibility.

[28:33] Michael: Yeah, it's as, as you're kind of laying out that whole like line of reasoning, it was just, maybe you can help me with this. But I was, what caught my eye was sort of like, sort of a Socrates and Christ like figure or Jesus. And specifically is like, there's a sort of like understanding your position. So like, you know, even Jesus talks about it's like, it's not mine to know, it's the Father's. And there's a sort of like understanding with that humility. The same thing with Socrates. It's like the oracle tells him sort of, you know, you don't, you know that you're not wise, so that makes you wise and you're able to sit in that paradox. But on one side you have the Luciferian sort of like, I will take it and it is mine. But then you also have sort of like, on the other side of that is a sort of nihilistic, sort of like there is no meaning, there's nothing and you just kind of float into the ether.

[29:32] Matt: Right.

[29:33] Michael: And so, and so I think that's kind of like the kind of that fascinating space you see, that sort of, that teetering between order and chaos. Let me take it and it is mine. And the other is sort of like there's is nothing, there is no meaning. Meaning is whatever you make of it.

[29:53] Matt: Well, at the risk of just overquoting Lord of the Rings at this period of time in my life, in this season of the podcast, it's like you see all three of those archetypes in Lord of the Rings. You have, well, Gandalf and. Who's the lady of Lorien? Lothlorien.

[30:18] Michael: Oh, Galadriel or Galadriel. Yeah.

[30:22] Matt: Who both crave and covet the Ring and are tempted to take it and then are wise enough to know that leads to a different kind of hell that I don't want anything to do with. And then you have. Who's the guy who tries to take it from Frodo?

[30:44] Michael: Oh, Boromir.

[30:45] Matt: Boromir, who succumbs to that, as well as sort of everyone in Mordor. But then you have Denethor, who is the warden of Minas Tirith.

[30:57] Michael: Oh, yeah.

[30:58] Matt: And he looks into one of the glasses, one of the oracle balls, the palantirs. Sorry, that's what they're called. He looks into one of the palantirs and basically stares into Mordor and into Sauron and is convinced that there is no hope. No hope. And what does he do? He goes straight to the funeral place, takes his sickly son Faramir and demands that his servants light them both on fire while they're alive. And that's that kind of nihilism that says, just doesn't fucking matter. You know, we're gonna end. End on my own terms. How about that? And it's so sad. Wow. And then I could contrast that. Maybe there's sort of a fourth, like Tom Bombadil who is left out of the movies entirely, as far as I can remember. Who's this wonderful character that the band of travelers meet in the first book and he takes the ring from Frodo and just sort of looks at it, like, with interest. Interest, but just kind of like, whatever. And everybody's amazed because he doesn't go invisible. The ring has no power over him whatsoever. And he just gives it back to Frodo. And that's sort of the. He's sort of the godly archetype. Not really above or below, but not beholden.

[32:19] Michael: So that's fascinating that. So now there's a lot of other characters, like, even the orcs, like something that's unnatural. But what is that? Because I feel like there's another category here which is sort of like the nihilist. Is that even represented in.

[32:39] Matt: Well, I was using Denethor as the nihilist, but.

[32:41] Michael: But something about him that when you. Because I would have Gone that way, too, until you made that one statement as far as, like, he's like, I'm going to die on my own terms. But that is that. But that's kind of like you're still grabbing hold on something. Like, I have control over something, even though he. I feel like. I think it's correct in how you said that, but it's just sort of like, that's the thing that struck me, is like, I still have control over my life. It was not a complete nihilism.

[33:10] Matt: Well, I don't feel like nihilism necessarily means that you've given up control. I mean, maybe we could try to think of a version of that or a character that represents that. But I think that nihilism often leads to narcissism because if nothing really matters, if reference Descartes and I think therefore I am, if that's all I can really prove to be true, then it's my way or the highway. Nothing else matters anyway. And I can't prove anything outside myself. And so I either basically like Denethor, commit suicide and end the whole charade, or I try to exert some power over myself. And suicide is the ultimate power over yourself. You know, Eric Neumann calls that ouroboric incest. It's to will your way into oblivion, to reunite with the chaotic, undefined.

[34:11] Michael: I wish I could remember now. Camus talks about this same sort of idea about suicide, and it's the ultimate act of freedom. And I don't remember the particulars of it, but yeah, it is a nihilism. Like not seeing or being able to hold the tension of reality. Like, where you see, like, Gandalf and Galadriel do that, you know, which is. Which is interesting, I guess, when I.

[34:42] Matt: I'm struggling to keep my brain from going to the big Lebowski. When we talk about nihilistic.

[34:47] Michael: They're nihilists, man. I was going there, too. So you're not alone, you know.

[34:54] Matt: But even those characters in that movie, because they were nihilists, they were just after chaos. Chaos was the only interesting thing to them because, you know, they're nihilists, man.

[35:08] Michael: Yeah, I guess. Kind of trying to think of, like, nihilism in the. In the truest sense, which is sort of like nothing really matters. Like, even if I commit suicide, doesn't really matter. Like.

[35:23] Matt: Well, I mean, I think in a sense, atheism is the ultimate nihilism, which is why Dostoevsky has Ivan say, if there is no God, everything should be permissible to man. I mean, that's the ultimate nihilism, nothing matters. So there is no judgment of good and bad. There is no basis for morality. So to each their own right?

[35:50] Michael: But even then, it's like you're putting value on something which is what I value or what you value. It's like the individual, what they value.

[36:00] Matt: Well, I think that's why I say nihilism certainly must lead to narcissism.

[36:04] Michael: Well, I think it leads to narcissism. Whenever they're not, they find that they can't actually complete the nihilism journey. It's sort of like to complete the nihilism journey, you have to even denounce your own desires. I want this. It's like, well, it doesn't really mean anything.

[36:29] Matt: Well, in that way, would you say Buddhism is nihilism. The ultimate goal of nirvana is a cessation of all desire.

[36:39] Michael: Wow, okay. I hadn't put that together. I'd have to think about that. But that's actually really interesting. It's like the complete. Oh, wow, that's fascinating. Because it's like the. And Buddhism also steers away from this, but I think it's heading down the right idea of what nihilism actually is like. The essence of nihilism is to. To get rid of everything. The struggle, the suffering.

[37:03] Matt: To get rid of self.

[37:04] Michael: To get rid of self. So suicide has no meaning. Just gratifying yourself has no real meaning. And man, that's really fascinating. I'm trying to think of where Buddhism pulls away from nihilism. Well, I guess in that sense Buddhism would be saying if you accept the full weight of nihilism, there's actually something on the other side of that. So there's an escape hatch, which is nirvana. So even that has an escape hatch. It's like when you release everything, you will find everything.

[37:45] Matt: Well, and there's something true enough in that there is no.

[37:47] Michael: No, exactly.

[37:48] Matt: Yeah. So I understand why it's appealing. I don't think it goes all the way.

[37:53] Michael: Yeah, exactly. But I think that's the funny thing is nobody can actually go all the way because we just try to grab on to something. Even Buddhism, with getting rid of everything, there's still something which is nirvana.

[38:11] Matt: So let's try. Another example is depression. Nihilism. Is depression. Nihilism combined with a inability to let go of something. And the pain of depression is nothing seems to matter and I can't seem to let go.

[38:33] Michael: Oh, that's fascinating. Yeah. Oh, that's like a painful thing because it's like you're experiencing the dread of nothing really mattering. And you feel it physically. But. But why are you feeling it? And Because. I would say because there's something. There's something there. So that's like. So there's something. Because if you. If. If you wouldn't be depressed if there wasn't anything there. Oh, man. Dude, I don't know if I can think through that right now.

[39:07] Matt: Well, in one.

[39:08] Michael: I feel like this conversation already has given me, like, too many. Too many side. Side trips. Like, can I come back real quick?

[39:16] Matt: I think when you're depressed, you in one sense can't let go of something that isn't there, and in another sense can't let go of your suspicion that there actually is something there that you can't seem to reach for. So. And the pain of that, I think, is why people. The typical picture of depression, at least in my mind, is like, I can't get out of bed. I can't go do anything I need to do. Nothing seems to matter. And it's causing me extraordinary pain. And the only thing I can do to assuage that pain is to sort of stand as still as possible. But I think there's an admission there in depression that's different maybe than in nihilism. And the admission is, no, there really is something good. I just don't have it, and I'm holding on to something that isn't it. I think the. The root of depression and really of all neuroses, as Carl Jung puts it, is that all neuroses are always the alternative to legitimate suffering. There is something legitimate to suffer, which is you need to let go of the thing that doesn't matter and reach for the thing that does. And that reaching often feels like. Have you ever been, like, when you were a kid, like, on a ropes course? Maybe you're in a harness, or maybe you're just at a friend's house in a big old oak tree. And this rope, and it's just far enough away from the branch that you can't reach it. But just a little jump and you could. It's like you're not going to reach the rope unless you let go of the branch. You also might not reach the rope if you do. And that's a sacrifice. It's to take that risk and say, I'm going to let go of what I have and reach for what I know is better. What I know means something, even though it might slip right through my fingers and I'm going to fall down to the ground and hit my back. And get the wind knocked out of me. True story. I did that several times.

[41:45] Michael: I thought you were going to pull a Garth on me. You know, it's like climbing the rope in gym class. Can I feel like I. Bunny,

[41:54] Matt: um, are you making a Wayne's World reference? I'm not for sure whether or not I've ever seen Wayne's World.

[42:00] Michael: Really?

[42:01] Matt: Yeah.

[42:01] Michael: Whoa. And you call yourself.

[42:03] Matt: I've certainly seen some clips.

[42:05] Michael: All right.

[42:06] Matt: But it's just slightly before my time.

[42:08] Michael: Yeah, that's true.

[42:12] Matt: Sometimes those, what, six, six, seven years between us seem irrelevant. And sometimes it's like, well, those are mind blow.

[42:20] Michael: Those are pivotal. Like that sort of like Oregon Trail, Gen X. Older millennial.

[42:25] Matt: Yeah, it's.

[42:26] Michael: There is so much drastic difference in that, like group right there.

[42:29] Matt: Totally.

[42:30] Michael: Even though we're all so close, you know.

[42:32] Matt: Yeah.

[42:32] Michael: Which is fascinating, man. I just want to keep like rolling on this. This whole nihilism and. And hope and. Yeah. I mean, because one of my favorite authors is Herman Hess and he does this so well. And then sort of like in Steppenwolf and Sid Hartha and all of his books. It's like all of his books kind of portray this idea of like you're reaching out for something and it's like something really tangible, but you're always just centimeters short of whatever it is. But the character's always left with there was something there. Or was it. But there was something there. You know? And also adagio for. You've heard me say this many times, but Adagio for strings by Barber. It's like it just crescendos and crescendos and it's like gets this point. You're just like. It can't go any higher. And it does it again. And you're just like. You feel like you're about to hit like the heavenly realms or whatever you want to call it. And then it just drops and it goes. And then it sort of kind of crawls back up, but with hope. Because it's like you experience something, you didn't quite grasp it, but you saw it.

[43:54] Matt: Yeah.

[43:54] Michael: And there's something about the. There's a limitation and I just love that. Sort of like the existentials really kind of like kind of hit that. Sort of like almost grasping something. But.

[44:06] Matt: Yeah.

[44:07] Michael: You just can't.

[44:11] Matt: I mean, I feel like that thing, that insight, suspicion, knowledge that that thing is there is in us a priori. I think we're born with it.

[44:24] Michael: Yeah.

[44:25] Matt: It's innate. I don't think we learn it. I don't Think that it's. Well, it's passed down to us in one way or another. We all experience that as true. And I think C.S. lewis does the best with it when he talks about the inconsolable secret which we cannot hide and cannot tell. We cannot hide it. We cannot tell it because it doesn't actually exist in our experience. And we cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it. We're stuck in that paradox.

[45:00] Michael: I feel like that's something that we've also just embedded in culture, and then it gets corrupted, and then we think we don't need it, and then cultures fall apart.

[45:11] Matt: Well, I would say that's the nihilism. We think we don't need it.

[45:14] Michael: Yeah.

[45:15] Matt: You know, we're getting along just fine.

[45:17] Michael: Which kind of. I feel like that's kind of where we are or have been in for a little bit now is I sort of. We don't need that. Or it is whatever you Is. It is whatever you want it to be.

[45:27] Matt: I think that's breaking down right now.

[45:29] Michael: Yeah, I do, too.

[45:29] Matt: But I think a lot of the. A lot of the craziness of our culture has been the result of that. I mean, it really started in the 90s. Right. Things are the way that you want them to be. And things were good enough in the 90s where you could kind of get away with that because, man, things were just ticking along, and everything was great. And then we really doubled down and tripled and quadrupled down on that. Things are whatever you want them to be. Till we got to the point where it was like, you know, you have convicted rapists raping more women in prison because they claim that they're a woman, and we're all like, that makes sense. We should allow that. And then finally, people were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[46:12] Michael: Yeah.

[46:14] Matt: I mean, the sort of absurd representation of that was that advertisement that, I guess the Trump campaign put out about Kamala Harris that said Kamala Harris wants to give sex changes to criminals. And it was kind of like the absurdity was laid bare. The emperor has no clothes on these ideas. And then I saw Ryan Long, the comedian did a bit about that where he's like, it kind of would deter crime, though, right? Good boys don't get dicks.

[46:49] Michael: Ryan Long is guilty. He pushes it.

[46:51] Matt: He pushes it.

[46:52] Michael: He's really good. Well, it's. It's funny because you're. We're. We kind of get into that. The other part that you and I were talking about earlier, this. The. The Selden crisis, which is which is fascinating because you were, you were making this point how in the 90s we could kind of get away with it because it was like, it was. It was just coming into sort of flourishing. And so the world was built around it in a way that you could kind of not. The impacts of it were not severe to. Almost everything's permissible. You can kind of do whatever you want for the most part. But sometimes at some point, if you live that out to a certain degree, at some point everything starts to fall apart around you. When you start dismantling society at some point, sort of like the idea of reality starts to snap back and say, actually no, that's not how this works. And so like the. The Seldom Crisis is out of the Isaac Asimov trilogy, or what's more than a trilogy, but the foundation and sort of like this idea of. You could probably say this better than I can, but this idea of psycho history, which is kind of made up in this book, where you could kind of predict how mobs of people were going to act and in the future they sort of hit this crisis moment where it can only go one of two ways. And that's sort of like. That's a Selden crisis is that point where it hits that it can only go one of two ways. And did I do a good job of.

[48:35] Matt: I think so. Let's get there by way of self organizing criticality.

[48:41] Michael: This is a great rabbit hole.

[48:43] Matt: So you were talking to me about this before the podcast and I was trying to remember this concept that I had heard of. And so we looked it up. It's called self organizing criticality. And the idea is that if you take, let's say like an hourglass, but it has no bottom, the idea is that it can stream out a very small stream of sand, right? And you just let that pour onto the ground. It will start building up a mound of sand. And that mound of sand will be sort of conical in shape and look a bit like a pyramid. And it will keep building and building and building and building until at some point, and that point is defined by a single grain of sand which falls from this, you know, make believe half hourglass. And that single grain of sand hits the pile and it causes an avalanche and the whole pile falls down. And who was it? Pa Kaw, I can't remember his name. Something like that. In the 80s, I think 1987, coined this term called self organizing criticality. His point was that there is a. There's a point at which a system is stable and then a very Small thing changes, almost the smallest of things changes and the whole system flips. And so we were learning, you and I, a bit about this just by talking through it with Grok and some other examples of self organizing criticality are starlings, the birds that flock in these really amazing patterns. They look like a cloud and then all of a sudden, somehow the whole cloud shifts. You watch it like a wave ripple through into all of these crazy motions. Schools of fish do the same thing. They're all aligned in a stable system. And then one fish detects an alert warning of some kind. And through some unknown mechanism, the entire system flips and changes to something completely different. The point is that the system is stable until it's not. And there's a point at which it's not. And that point isn't a big point, it's a very small point. And there's all kinds of examples of this in the animal kingdom and ecosystems and economics. Stocks are like this. Even your own brain is kind of like this. Like you can handle kind of a certain amount of stress and a certain amount of worry and a certain number of problems and you can remain stable until you break. You don't just sort of destabilize a little bit, you break and the system flips and you have to start building back up. So Isimov takes this idea, not clear to me. I guess he wouldn't have known this idea by name because it wasn't coined that name self organizing criticality, it wasn't coined until the 80s. And Asimov was writing in what, the 60s? Yeah, but maybe he's noticing the same patterns. And so he has his main character of the series foundation basically predict the future. And Seldon can't predict the future of any individual, but he can predict the future of large societies of people, mobs of people even. And then he says, well, given my predictions, I can force things to go in a certain way by basically when something reaches that point of criticality, I can push it over the edge in order to expedite or delay the avalanche that is inevitably coming.

[52:28] Michael: God, you did that so beautifully, man.

[52:30] Matt: Thanks.

[52:31] Michael: I think I stumbled around that for like two hours.

[52:35] Matt: You just like blah, blah, like a Mac starting up.

[52:41] Michael: Totally.

[52:44] Matt: Yeah. And you were making the point that you were talking about how this like this idea of the Seldon crisis and Asimov's version of that with the Selden crisis, it's not the same as self organizing criticality because the whole point of that concept is it's self organizing. There is no external input that determines the point at which the system flips. It's almost like the system is tuned to flip at a certain point, but you don't know what that point is until it comes. And. Asimov.

[53:21] Michael: Let's go with Asimov.

[53:22] Matt: I think Asimov has his character Seldon, sort of be the God of that system and say, no, actually I can exert the control that will determine when the systems flip. But you were sort of pointing out, and I haven't read the series,

[53:39] Michael: you're

[53:39] Matt: pointing out that the picture he draws is that what is inevitable is sort of one of two outcomes. What is not inevitable is how we get to those. To that ultimate branch of divergence, at which point, once you pass that branch, it doesn't go back.

[54:02] Michael: Yeah, well, I think that's a. And the fascinating thing too, with him in this is that he actually couldn't tell people what was going to happen or how he got to those conclusions, because that would actually affect the outcome. And so he had these little.

[54:19] Matt: Is that just the classic time travelers dilemma?

[54:22] Michael: Yeah, yeah. It's like if you knew what was going to happen, then. So then the butterfly effect. Butterfly effect, exactly. And it would change history. So his whole thing was what he saw was the empire was crumbling and that it was going to be 30,000 years of turmoil. But he actually figured out a way that it could only be a thousand years instead of 30,000 years, and that there would be prosperity at the end of this 1000 years if these certain things happened at these certain moments. And so he couldn't tell people what those things were because it would change the trajectory.

[55:00] Matt: Do you think the Thousand Years was a biblical reference?

[55:03] Michael: Oh, interesting.

[55:05] Matt: Because doesn't, I guess, Revelation say that Jesus will come and rule Earth for a thousand years?

[55:12] Michael: Oh, yeah, yeah. I hadn't put that together. I'll have to look at that. But I think it's just really fascinating that there's these moments that are sort of almost inevitable if you look out and like, maybe we can look out in. Well, if you're honest with yourself, I think that's. The other part too, is like you have to be sort of brutally honest. Almost more of like a Socrates kind of like. And I think that's kind of what. That Seldon is sort of a Socrates kind of character, or Christ like character, and that he's looking out and saying, hey, if we continue in the direction that we're going, this is the outcome that we're going to have. And the honesty and the humility behind that is sort of. I think that's what allows you, allows you to see those things. And so I don't know where I was going with that, but.

[56:14] Matt: Well, I, I, I got a bit lost on the idea of these binary outcomes and just sort of searching my brain about wondering whether or not everything is ultimately like that. I mean, what kind of is?

[56:30] Michael: It's like, is Matt and Michael are going to be best friends for

[56:36] Matt: forever.

[56:37] Michael: It's like, it's like it either is or isn't. It's like, it's like, am I going to marry Allison? I either am or I'm not. It's like, am I going to get this job? But it all boils up to a point in time where that happens. It's like almost everything has a sort of. Like

[56:59] Matt: everything either happens or it doesn't. Well, I was just thinking through, I guess, games. It's like if you play musical chairs, everyone has a binary outcome every given round. You're either going to end up in a chair or you're not. You watch a football game, one team's going to win, one team isn't going to win. That's just the way that it's going to be. I guess there's such a thing as a tie or whatever, but there's, like, much deeper. We have deeper suspicions about that of our own hearts. It's like, I have this limited amount of time on earth. I'm going to die 100%. I can either become the person I felt, feel that I am meant to be, or I cannot. And isn't that, like, part of our deepest struggle is wrestling with ourselves about that? I mean, ultimately, I think that's a wrestling with God kind of thing.

[58:00] Michael: Yeah. And the acceptance of falling short, you know, like, there is no such thing as you becoming the person you think or have in mind. It's like you just will, you just will fall short. Like, that's just a fact.

[58:13] Matt: Right.

[58:13] Michael: Or you're. If you're, if not, then you're definitely not aiming high enough.

[58:21] Matt: Yeah. I had another example I was going to give, but it, it's lost me. It lost me. Well, there's not my fault.

[58:28] Michael: Well, there's a bunch of, like. There's a bunch of examples of this, too. I think the, the Israelites kind of prove this out in a lot of different ways where they weren't willing to wait for the Selden moment and they take it, force it through. Yeah. And build the golden calf or, you

[58:45] Matt: know, I mean, that's taking knowledge for yourself rather than being humble to it and waiting for the revelation.

[58:52] Michael: Yeah.

[58:52] Matt: I mean, that's Moses striking the rock with his staff.

[58:56] Michael: Totally.

[58:57] Matt: When God told him just simply to ask. And he was punished quite severely for that. That's something that's really interesting to me about the God of the Old Testament is his punishments are often sort of like uncalled for.

[59:10] Michael: Totally.

[59:11] Matt: Like I was reading recently the story of David and there's this really bizarre story at the very end of that book. Which book is the story of Davis in? Oh, dear, I can't remember.

[59:27] Michael: Samuel.

[59:28] Matt: It's not Samuel's after that.

[59:30] Michael: No, Samuel's the one who picked David.

[59:33] Matt: Oh, yeah. Maybe it's Samuel. I think that sounds right. Regardless, it's a very bizarre story where David has had this long and fraught but very fruitful career and he's kind of known as the apple of God's eye and all of this.

[59:47] Michael: And he's the biggest fuck up and

[59:49] Matt: the apple and the beloved. Yeah, so many really interesting stories in there. But at the very end, it tells the story about how David decides to hold a census and count the number of people in Israel and has his military carry that out. But God, I guess through Nathan, warns him not to do it, but he does it anyway. And God punishes him by what is it like issuing a seven year drought and killing off all of their animals and a bunch like 70,000 people and all of this.

[60:25] Michael: I think he had a choice of like three things.

[60:27] Matt: Yes, he did.

[60:27] Michael: That's true. I don't remember what they all were.

[60:29] Matt: And David chooses sort of the lesser of the three things, but still really bad. And you read the story and you're like, all he did was count people. What is the lesson of this? This is crazy. And I mean, the only thing I really came up with was that like David tried to take his own understanding of the power of his kingdom into his own hands. Rather than saying, the power of my kingdom is in God. He said, the power of my kingdom is what I can see with my own eyes, what I can count, what I can count, what I can observe. It is my own facts. And maybe this is one of the points that the Old Testament God is trying to make all the time and maybe ultimately makes. In the story of Jesus and the crucifixion and resurrection, it's like, no, all of that will always fail you. The law will always fail you. Or you will fail it, depending on how you want to look at it. If you try to lean on your own understanding, as Proverbs warns against, God's going to Smite you to teach you a lesson because your power is not in your numbers. And it's like, you know, the book of Samuel doesn't explicate this, but all the previous stories about David do. David's power is never in his numbers. He's always outnumbered. He's always the smallest and the weakest. He's always the underdog. And yet he always prevails. And he always says, God gave us this victory. And then finally, in his old age and his security, he says, I'm going to count, basically I'm going to count my blessings now. And God says, yeah, you're going to pay for that.

[62:10] Michael: Golly.

[62:12] Matt: And I think that goes back to the point I was trying to make earlier about facts and about how we take things to be true. That makes sense to us rather than what is that story telling us. It's that the things that make sense to you don't make true what you want to be true. The thing that you really want to be true. That thing that you were, that rope that's just far away enough that you can't reach it. Or reaching it is a great risk. That thing that you know is there, that you're scared to reach for. That is what truth is and it is there. But you have to let go of the branch and you have to let go of your own understanding and your own sense making and your own fact observations and your own what, analysis, measurement, all of this.

[63:02] Michael: Well, it's interesting too because it's not that any of those things are bad, but it's sort of like the law where, you know, the Pharisees kind of exemplify this is you start to think that it's in following the law that you gain your righteousness. But all that is is it's a pointer to, I mean, to God ultimately, but just also to your inability. It's like honestly, if you try to follow the law, you actually figure out how, how much, how incapable you are of following the law. And so like any sort of.

[63:35] Matt: Like that's the entire Sermon on the Mount.

[63:37] Michael: Yeah, all facts, all facts do is just really reveal how much you don't know.

[63:42] Matt: Yeah.

[63:43] Michael: And it's kind of a marker of like, wow, now it's just one more thing that leads me to more that I don't understand.

[63:52] Matt: So do you want to tie this back to the short analogy or do you want me to?

[63:56] Michael: But it fits so well though, you know, as my island of knowledge expands, so the shores of my ignorance is sort of. It's like it there's there's a sort of pridefulness that you have in your island of knowledge. And if you, if you hold on to that, it's like you're gonna miss the whole other aspect of that, which is the shores of ignorance and the chaos and the, the, the. The rejuvenation of that knowledge too, that adds to it and that expands it. It's like you just can't live in this island of yourself as you kind of build these walls around yourself.

[64:36] Matt: Well, you can, but then suddenly a band of Vikings come and take you all as Irish slaves.

[64:42] Michael: I love that McCraskey.

[64:49] Matt: Paradox is rich with these ones.

[64:52] Michael: Yeah, well, it's interesting. Like kind of through line with all that we've talked about is sort of, you know, there's this idea of the paradox that we kind of saw in Socrates and Jesus specifically, like being able to hold the paradox. But then there's this part where because you do come to these moments and you see this with Socrates and with Jesus too, where they were able to hold the paradox and remain true to it, and it led to their death. It's like, no, I'm not going to sacrifice this because it's so much more valuable than anything that you could give me. And I think that's, that's. I think that's really the, the most valuable thing is to die for something that you believe in. And it doesn't mean you have to physically die, but it's, it's kind of a positioning yourself in life. It's like, do I believe in something big enough that I'm willing to die for it? I think we substitute lots of minor things for that that are not worth dying for.

[66:11] Matt: I don't know how true this is. It's always been an assumption of mine and I ought to look it up. But maybe you could confirm or deny it. But in the Bible, there's the parable of the seed, and seed which is thrown on this ground. And it says that seed dies when seed is planted. The verb is it dies.

[66:40] Michael: You got two different parables. But yeah, it's the same idea.

[66:42] Matt: Same idea. That's really interesting to me. What is death? When you say you believe in something that you're willing to die for, does that mean that you cease to exist? Or does it mean that you cease to exist as a seed and you become a flower, or you cease to exist as a caterpillar and you become a butterfly? Is there such a thing as ceasing to exist? I think that it's really fascinating to imagine that the process of a seed becoming a plant is the seed dying because the seed does go away. There is no seed there anymore.

[67:24] Michael: Well, I think that's the fascinating because you see this with both Jesus and Socrates in this area. It's like because they believe like what they believed so deeply to their core, they were willing to die for. They were willing to die the small deaths along the way. And so like kind of going back to your seed analogy is sort of, you know, you know, in order for something to come from it, the seed has to die and then something comes up. It's like, it's like there's all a small deaths. But it's. I feel like in both of those you see it's almost in reference to the ultimate example of that. Like, but being willing to pay that price I think allows you to experience those small deaths along the way. But if you're not willing to pay that ultimate price, it's like it's harder to experience those small deaths along the way.

[68:14] Matt: Well, it's almost like the seed that does not die perishes or like the seed that dies is the seed that is planted and is transformed totally.

[68:24] Michael: Well, it's like the other parable that you were talking about is like seed that was scattered on the road.

[68:31] Matt: The rocky soil.

[68:31] Michael: Yeah. Birds came up and ate it up really quick and. And in the rocky soil that they couldn't take any root, you know. And so but the seed that fell on good ground was able to grow and like grow ten hundred times more than right. Yeah.

[68:51] Matt: Well, Soul Conversation has been some rich soil.

[68:55] Michael: Definitely. For me it's just kind of like. It just kind of takes me all over the place with like the Selden crisis has really been like this week's kind of really been turning around in my head just because. I find myself wanting to build the Golden Calf and not waiting for that moment.

[69:20] Matt: It's a really good admission.

[69:22] Michael: And it's like I think that's really difficult and sometimes I don't know if I'm building the golden calf or if I'm actually walking towards what I need to be walking towards because it's like along the way it's like I'm trying to protect myself and control the situation and it's hard because it's like some parts of like I don't know if I'm being apathetic and not actually taking responsibility for what I'm supposed to take responsibility for because that's the whole thing is like it's like you're still an active participant. It's not like these things are just going to happen. Whatever. It's like you're an active participant in the world, but you also have to know your limitations. And I think that was a part with the Selden crisis is like, he didn't want to talk about how we got there, but then once we were there, he would reveal how we got there, and it would sort of. The epiphany would happen, and then they would know, okay, yes, now we're moving forward. But you would never have gotten there if you would have known from the beginning what that was, where you were going, where you were going. Because then you would try to engineer it.

[70:38] Matt: Right. You're saying that's the golden calf.

[70:41] Michael: That's the golden calf. Once you start to try to engineer modifies the future. Unless you have some sort of intervention. And you see that with, you know, Moses was kind of. That intervention is the, you know, the Israelites were building this golden calf in order to sort of save them. And Moses comes down and says, no, you have gone wayward.

[71:10] Matt: Yeah.

[71:13] Michael: So it's like getting people back onto the timeline, if you will. But also, he didn't know that until that moment when he went up on the mountain. In fact, he didn't even know until he came down. But he saw when he went up there. He saw. So when he came back down, what the Israelites had done, he knew was not good, was not right.

[71:38] Matt: What's. What's the lesson there for us in our lives?

[71:40] Michael: Dude, I don't know. I mean, part of it is, is just like having a community around you that you're not always going to be the one on Mount Sinai coming back and reorienting to people. Sometimes you might be the golden calf person. You know, I think that's why I think I appreciate, like, you and Allison specifically, and also just kind of a greater network of friends that we have. That kind of help mirror that back

[72:09] Matt: to me, helped you to see the truth of things. The other thing that it made me think is sometimes if you wonder whether or not you're working on something good or building your own golden calf, maybe the answer lies in going away and coming back.

[72:29] Michael: Explain.

[72:32] Matt: Well, Moses is constantly going away, right? Like, he's going to the mountain. And the way that it talks about it, like it's not like it's a day trip. You know, he goes away and a bunch of shit happens. And by the time he gets back, things are different. And he's like, okay, here's what I got to say to you about what I'm coming back to see here. You know, the insinuation, at least it seems to me, is that he's not in the mountains and he goes into the mountains and what does it take to go into the mountains on foot or with a donkey or whatever he had.

[73:01] Michael: Yeah.

[73:01] Matt: And a tent. Supposed. You know, presumably, or whatever. It's like it's. He's gone for a while. Don't we always experience this whenever you take a trip somewhere? Especially if you take a trip, you know, in our case, somewhere out west. Someplace less. It's like. I don't want to say less civilized, but less urban.

[73:22] Michael: Yeah.

[73:23] Matt: It's like you see things different. Yeah. Go into nature, go camping, or even just go for a hike. Doesn't take much, but if you want to know whether something is what you think it is, or maybe it's something that's about to betray you, maybe you're building yourself a snake that's about to bite you, maybe step away and then come back and look at it, that's

[73:46] Michael: actually a really good advice.

[73:50] Matt: Well, you know what they say about advice.

[73:53] Michael: Makes an ass out of you and me. Or is that an assumption?

[73:58] Matt: No. With advice, the wise don't need it and the fool won't take it.

[74:05] Michael: There we go.

[74:06] Matt: Hey, cheers.

[74:08] Michael: Cheers. Thanks for coming.

[74:09] Matt: Love you. Yeah, love everyone out there.

[74:14] Michael: Sam.