The Cartesian Crisis

[0:00] Matt: It comes like a fleeting memory. Whatever you grab just turns to dust. Like eye contact with strangers. Why did we, at some point, start that humming? Yeah. As soon as you hit record, it's like you just feel like you need to make a noise.

[0:34] Michael: Well, it's like. It's like you've been thinking into your head a while, and sometimes you just need to say something out loud.

[0:40] Matt: Just get it out.

[0:41] Michael: Yeah.

[0:41] Matt: Get it out of your body.

[0:43] Michael: I think that's why you do all those, like.

[0:45] Matt: Is that what OMs are all about?

[0:47] Michael: Yeah. Or the musical exercises that you would do before you sing.

[0:50] Matt: Oh, yeah. Mommy made me mush my M&Ms. Oh, know. That's what we were doing for our middle school talent show.

[1:02] Michael: I just lip synced the Beach Boys to the shores. To the shores.

[1:05] Matt: You lip synced the Beach Boys in elementary school?

[1:10] Michael: That was our talent show.

[1:13] Matt: I just remember all of us who were singing in the talent show. The director made us give up caffeine for the six months before the talent show.

[1:23] Michael: Why?

[1:23] Matt: She said it would mess up our voice.

[1:26] Michael: That's hilarious.

[1:27] Matt: Yeah. But this was in, you know, 1994,

[1:30] Michael: 1995, where you weren't supposed to eat eggs.

[1:34] Matt: Was that a thing?

[1:35] Michael: Yeah, it's like eggs and butter. How the 80s was like, you don't. It's bad for you.

[1:41] Matt: Yeah. Health fads, I guess, should make you question all of the health hackers that we're hearing about these days. Yeah. It's like, look at history. This stuff comes and goes.

[1:54] Michael: Yeah. They become more sophisticated, you know? Right.

[1:59] Matt: Well, hey, here we are.

[2:01] Michael: Yeah.

[2:03] Matt: I think that is actually one of the answers to the question that we were thinking about talking about grappling with. You mentioned to me earlier that you hadn't been paying much attention to, like, world events or social, cultural events, news, whatever. And I was like, yeah, I think that's true of me too. And you said, is that a good thing or a bad thing? And it really hung me up for a second. It's like, I don't know. But I started thinking about the reason for that, like, why it is that I. I seem to be paying less attention. And, you know, if you have listened to this podcast for a while, you probably have noticed that we have stopped talking about political, politics, or cultural events as much, and we've been talking a lot more about spirituality and religion, and that's probably just a reflection of where our attention is. But I think one of the reasons I've been paying less attention is because I've become more skeptical. I think There was a time in early 2020, it's like when you and I really started paying attention to things. We were kind of blissfully ignorant of a lot of cultural events and politics and all of that. And Covid just threw us into the deep end. And every time we'd see something, it was like, spin up a research project, shared, go Google Drive. Like, we gotta go figure out what's true and what's not true. Yeah. And I feel like now like if I'm scrolling X or I went scrolled Facebook the other day, which was real weird.

[3:31] Michael: I did that first thing today too.

[3:32] Matt: Did you? What was your take on it?

[3:35] Michael: Well, I have my 30 year anniversary and it's all through Facebook. And I was like, oh, shit, okay, I gotta figure out what my password is anyways.

[3:44] Matt: But yeah, I find myself just every time I see a news story of any kind of where I used to have this instinct to be like, oh my gosh, I need to go look into this. What's true, what's false, what's right, what's wrong. I just look at it and I go, I'm not going to spend any energy on that. It's going to change tomorrow. And then the day after that, the thing's going to bounce. We used to, I guess really the left still decries misinformation. We have more misinformation now than ever. And it's by design, it's on purpose. And I just like, I don't have the energy, I guess, to go figure out what's misinformation and what's not. I was noticing there was this. There was like a weird. I don't know if you've picked up on this, but I guess there's a battle over the term Judeo Christian right now. Twitter's hot on it. And Jordan Peterson tweeted about it, which, you know, nobody's heard from him in a little while. And he weighed in and oh my gosh, the people that came out for him, against him, I mean, it was crazy. It was like all these names that I know, a shocking number of them were against him. They were like, go back to bed and sit this one out. And I was like, what is going on here?

[4:57] Michael: That's weird.

[4:58] Matt: And I thought, what is this? Where. So there's this term, the Cartesian crisis. Bret Weinstein uses it a lot. And the idea is that apparently it's a reference to Descartes. Descartes? Is that how you say his name? Struggling with, how do you know that something's true or False. And I think it was his observation that pretty much everything he knew, he knew on authority, he didn't really know any very much from first principles, which just puts you in a state of kind of crisis, like, who do I trust? Can I trust these people? And we are living through a Cartesian crisis right now, especially with AI, we don't know what's true, what's false. And I think the general heuristic that we tend to use, and I think it's a good one, it's a right one, is I trust what I hear based upon the character of the people reporting it to me, and that has something to do with who I know, who I have a relationship with. And as that has all moved online and so many of the people I know I've never met before, whether I interact with them or not. I mean, this point has been made through all time. It's like, you spend enough time reading an author, reading his books, you kind of develop a relationship with that person. And that's true of podcasts. When you spend a lot of time listening to a podcast, you might think that you're a passive consumer of that conversation, but I think there's a very real sense in which you are actually an active participant in it, which is something like having a relationship with that person, even if you've never talked to them or met them. And so this heuristic that we use, like I'm going to believe or disbelieve something based upon what I know to be the character of the person, has maybe somewhat predictably, I don't know, it wasn't obvious to me, but it seems a little bit understandable in hindsight, led us to this point where the, like, there's a massive amount of energy in the culture being spent on character assassination, because that's how you win an argument. It isn't on the facts, it isn't on truth. It is on, well, can I discredit the person enough to discredit what they're saying in order to win that? And so I was watching all of these people, many of whom I don't know, weighing in on this Judeo Christian thing, and I was thinking, what is this? I want to get to the bottom of this. And I just thought, but I'm seeing this person say this thing in disagreement with this person, and I don't know how to trust this guy over this guy. I thought I could kind of. I was following them because I thought I could trust him. But now they're saying different things and playing at this character assassination kind of thing. And the thing that I thought was, you know, I've described woke as the actually people. Wokeism is basically saying, you know, whatever you think you know about history, whatever you think you know about racism, whatever you think you know about identity and about sexual attraction and about gender. Actually, here's the real truth, you know, and it's sort of a version of a clickbaity headline. It's like, this is going to blow your mind. It's the proliferation of people tweeting every tweet with the prefix in all caps breaking and two siren emojis. And I'm kind of noticing that the actually people are everywhere now. Everyone sort of thinks they have their own correct take on what's true and what's not, and they're here to correct the narrative. And it's gotten to the point where I'm so skeptical that even the people that I sort of thought I can trust, I have to take. I don't know if I have to. I do take with a grain of salt. And I think, well, something will flush itself out of this and maybe I'll check back in on it in a couple of weeks. And so my answer to your question, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know. And maybe one tentative answer is. And I learned this from Peterson, it's like skepticism is going to turn to nihilism, and that's a problem if it stops there. And what you should do is push past nihilism into wisdom. But skepticism is sort of the door that leads you to one or two or two of those things. I think we have to be skeptical about our skepticism a little bit.

[9:57] Michael: Well, that's interesting, because how does an argument start? Because if I disagree with you, how. And I have an alternative view, you're kind of saying, actually, it seems like it's a. It's a different spirit that you're talking about. You know, does that make sense?

[10:20] Matt: Yeah.

[10:21] Michael: I don't know how to name it, but we were saying it. I was like, well, we kind of do, actually, a little bit.

[10:29] Matt: Yeah, definitely. I mean, maybe that's another one of those problems with hijacked words or words that become redefined actually tends to mean something different when it is employed by a different kind of spirit.

[10:47] Michael: Because maybe the way that maybe if I were to put my words to it, maybe I would say my understanding is this, like, not saying, oh, actually, it's like, well, my understanding is now you make the argument of whatever it might be where I feel like as you were saying all that, I was just like, what is that spirit between actually means? It kind of is basically putting you down, saying you're dumb and you don't know what you're talking about.

[11:17] Matt: Right.

[11:18] Michael: And you're proposing something as if it is true.

[11:20] Matt: You're misinformed, you're uneducated. I was listening to a montage.

[11:23] Michael: Let me educate you.

[11:24] Matt: Yeah, I was listening to a montage of people's reactions to Charlie Kirk's murder because this was a one year anniversary of that like a week or two ago. And the number of Democrats in particular who were calling Charlie Kirk uneducated was shocking. It's like, what is that? What's that doing there? And what does that have to do with his murder? And I don't know how educated Charlie Kirk was, but if you spend any amount of time listening to him speak, he does not sound like an uneducated person at all. I think what they're saying is, is that he uneducated means he holds the wrong opinions, he's come to the wrong conclusions, which makes you uneducated. Educated doesn't mean that you have been educated. It means that you have adopted the right conclusions. And maybe there's a corollary there, I guess, because the university system has become super, what we might call woke, it has become an indoctrination mechanism, from what I can see from outside of it, to lead people to the right conclusions. Not to teach them how to think, not to teach them how to learn or to be critical thinkers, but to arrive at the right places. And maybe that's something of a problem with modern education in general. If you think about your primary education, it's like every class was about getting you to the right answers, you know, so that ultimately you could get the right answers on the SAT so that you could move forward into some kind of college.

[13:05] Michael: Which is interesting because like, college is supposed to kind of, well, even high school, but college is supposed to move you out of that. It's like it's really not supposed to be about the right answer. It's about. It's supposed to be teaching you how to think about it.

[13:17] Matt: Right.

[13:18] Michael: And to be able to discuss and engage with the complexities of that. So it does seem like there is sort of like the. We still think that there is a right answer, which I love your explanation of sort of skepticism kind of leading either to nihilism or to wisdom is. I think that's a really hard step to make because, you know, if, if you don't, if you're if you're a skeptic and you don't get wisdom from being a skeptic, you know, it kind of basically just kind of rips you apart inside because it's like, what do, what do you, what do you believe? It's like you go, so many people will tell you, like, what they don't believe in or what they, you know, what's wrong with something? But they'll very rarely put forward, like, okay, well, here's my solution or here's what I think about it and why. And that's what's like, Charlie Kirk is like, a lot of people attack him character wise because they don't want, they don't, they're not addressing the actual things he said. And that's the thing, like, because there's, I've watched quite a few people talk about this with other people that will say the same thing about Charlie Kirk and be like, okay, well what exactly did he say that was racist? Because that's one of the things. And not one person can name one thing.

[14:32] Matt: Right.

[14:33] Michael: And it's just because of picking up on the narrative of like, well, Charlie Kirk, of course he was racist and educated.

[14:38] Matt: I just want to, I want to say something about that, but I wanted to go back to nihilism. I think a decent definition of nihilism is full skepticism. It's like if I'm fully skeptical, then I arrive at a point where nothing matters because nothing is discoverable, truth is not reachable. Right. It may be one thing to be skeptical and to wait, but at some point you have to, as you said, sort of take the risk of proposing a solution and take the risk of living your life, formulating a worldview. Yeah. And connecting with reality, connecting with truth, however ill perceived you may be about it.

[15:25] Michael: Well, I think that's a dangerous thing, and that's the hardest thing is because once you start formulating your ideas about reality or how things work, you're going to come under criticism. I mean, Jordan Peter is a great example of this because he's done that so prolifically. It's like, it's like there's so much to engage, which is actually beautiful about it. And I think that's something you should expect is that as you start to propose how you view the world, it's like it's going to be met with resistance because now you're putting something out in the world that's worth resisting and that's. But I mean, it's like you and I do that with each other. It's like, here's what I think. It's like, well, I'm proposing something that you are. It's like I get a resistance from you, but it's healthy in a way that you need that.

[16:08] Matt: I love that. Something that's worth resisting. It makes me think of Jacob, who wrestled with God.

[16:16] Michael: Oh, yeah.

[16:19] Matt: Something that's worth resisting. My dad used to say to me when my son was younger and he was really angry about our divorce, he used to say, because my son was really angry with me. And my dad would say, I think that's because you're safe to be angry with. He's angry, and he's showing you your anger because you're safe to do that with. And he's like, I think you should be that for him. And that's that. I mean, all relationship is resistance. It's pressure, it's tension. And Jacob wrestles with God, which is to say, what? Something like, he wrestles with truth. He wrestles with ultimate reality, and ultimate reality wrestles back. And I think the thing that we find when we do that is that there is something that wrestles back and that that's a good thing. But if we're fully skeptical and we fail to push against something that's worth resisting, well, you spiral into kind of nothingness, I think.

[17:28] Michael: Well, it's like you're. As a skeptic, you're pushing against something, but you're also hiding behind something because you're. You're. Because you. Why are you pushing back on this? You must have some worldview that is that. That you're working from that you're not willing to put out in the open to be able to push back on. So sort of like, I can just disagree with you this entire podcast and just be like, well, that's kind of dumb. Why? Why would you think that? And the whole time you're like, well, here's why I think about this. It's like, well, that just doesn't make any sense. That's dumb. You know, And I'm not giving you anything to engage in the conversation with. And basically, you're. It just. You keep proposing these different ways of looking at it, and I'm not giving you anything to push back or give clarity to why I think it's dumb. You know, it's like, oh, well, he's a racist. Okay, well, okay, if that's true, it's the same thing with, like, you know, like, all the black being black people being killed by cops. Oh, if that's true, man, that's A big deal. Let's go see if that's actually true. What percentage? And looking at it from, like a. From. From different angles. And. And, you know, but it's just easier just to say, like, oh, well, you know, black people are disproportionately killed by cops. And that's like, whoa, that's sensational. And. And then if it's challenged, it's sort of like, oh, well, you're a racist if you don't think that. It's like, well, that's not an argument.

[19:01] Matt: Well, I mean, it does pass for an argument in most settings these days. It seems like, watch any news panel or pundits arguing about something.

[19:10] Michael: Yeah.

[19:10] Matt: You know, drop the R word. And that suffices for an argument for some people.

[19:16] Michael: Yeah. Or it's like the Moten Bailey type thing where, you know, you'll be arguing about police stuff, and then all of a sudden they'll shift to, like, another topic that's like, well, you know, black people have been discriminated in the US over, you know, 100 years. It's like, okay, yes, that's a whole nother subject. But right now we're talking about the police. And today, like, what subject are we going to talk about?

[19:40] Matt: Right, right, right.

[19:41] Michael: Because then it's like this kind of. This shifts to sort of like a. Of sort of like, well, this has been happening for a long, long period of time. And it's like, oh, do you think

[19:48] Matt: the problem is something like, we tend to get ourselves in the position or we want to, because it feels like some kind of shortcut. Find and adopt a worldview from which all of our observations will be correct.

[20:03] Michael: Well, it's kind of a goal, too, I guess. Yeah. But I think. I think it maybe takes on a different face, is like, we try to adopt a worldview that most people around us are the people we find or think are the ones that we value the most in our lives, except so that we can be a part of that group. So it's really not about truth. It's more about belonging than it is about knowing or understanding, which is true. I mean, you see this, like, in, you know, Christian circles or, you know, religious circles. It's sort of like, you know, okay, whatever the group thinks, that's what I think. And that way I can be included in the group.

[20:42] Matt: Right.

[20:42] Michael: And so, you know, a lot of kids growing up, like, you know, when they have questions about, well, does God exist? Like, well, I don't believe in God. It's like, oh, you're. You're now the out group. It's like, instead of like, wait a minute, this is the place you're supposed to engage those questions and, like, those questions to flourish and to examine them. You know, Instead, it's like it's seen as a. It can be seen as a challenge to whatever worldview you have.

[21:11] Matt: Yeah, I mean, it just made me think about, like, I guess I wanted to use the word arbitrary, but I don't think it's arbitrary. But I was thinking about a sports team. It's like, there's a sports team, there's a jersey, so we all know who's on that team. And if somebody with a different jersey comes in and says, I want to be on your team, you're like, well, you're clearly not on our team. You're on the other team that we're playing against. You're the out group. You're the enemy. You know, stay on your side. And maybe that. That's sort of working at all kinds of levels.

[21:48] Michael: Well, that's interesting, too. Like, I was talking with someone, I think it might have been today about how we assimilate war. And this might be a connection. I'm not sure. It might take us a wrong way, but. But I kind of see, like, all the games that we have are kind of simulations of war, but that's safer, you know, so we get to act it out. Like your team, my team.

[22:11] Matt: Right.

[22:11] Michael: And. And there's actually something really healthy in that because it's like. It's like, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter if your team won or lost, you know, but if you go to war, it does matter if your team wins or loses. You know, obviously we get caught up in our teams and can get very passionate about it, but the consequences are less than if we go to war. And so I think there's something about, like, even ideas that, you know, it's better that we are able to talk about them or else we're going to go to war.

[22:43] Matt: Right.

[22:43] Michael: And I think that's the part where whenever people are not willing to engage in the ideas like, oh, he's a racist. Like, okay, well, why is he racist? Well, he just is. If you don't think so, then you're dumb, you're uneducated, you're uneducated. It's like, well, really, the escalation of that argument is war, you know, because now you're an out group and I'm an in group. And, you know, the further we take this into, it's like, it's like. And you're not willing to change your mind, then it's sort of like we kind of have to eradicate you. Yeah, because. Because we can't have. We can't live in a world with racists like you. You know, obviously, it may sound stupid, like on a kindergarten level, but it's. But. But you start thinking about, well, you saw this with families. It's like, oh, I can't be around here because you voted for Trump, or you believe this, or you're pro or against abortion or whatever it might be. And there's this sort of like, separation, ostracizing, you know, family groups and stuff like that. And so it's like, how do we.

[23:52] Matt: I don't know how this fits exactly, but it's almost as though in our secular culture, we have all these groups that seem to think there is a right answer, there's a truth, and we have it, and if you don't agree with us, then you don't have it. Right. Whereas the alternative to that is, no, we don't have it. We are all under it. We're all striving and failing to grasp it, and we need each other. It's a relationship. And it made me think about that story in. I don't know where it is, maybe in Exodus, maybe someplace in Genesis, this group of people, they have the ark, the ark of the covenant. And they're taking it down the road, and it's on some kind of wagon. The road gets rough and the ark starts to tip over, and one of the stewards who's pushing the wagon reaches up to secure it and put his hand on it, and it says that he was. He died immediately. God killed him for touching the ark. And I've always been kind of like, what is that? What is that about? Who is that God? Who's that God that I claim to know, that I claim to follow, to worship, that does something like that? There's a lot of stories that are inexplicable in some sense, especially on first reading, but maybe it has something to do with what we're talking about. It's like, if you think you have the truth. No, I've got it. You don't. You try to possess it, you die. I mean, just think about a relationship, a romantic relationship in which you try to possess the other person. I mean, what does that even mean, to inhabit them, to own them, for them to be yours in some sort of possessive way? I mean, a possessive girlfriend is generally thought of as. That's not what you want, Right. Maybe what is good dies when you claim to have the ultimate truth, you claim to have morality and others don't, rather than taking the proper position. Or maybe the alternative position, which is we all have access to it, none of us has it because we're all clearly fucked up anyway. We all must submit to it. And all this talk about being on the right or wrong side of history is sort of a prototype version of that. It's like, I'm on the right side of history. Are you now? You think you know what people are going to write about you in the future? I wouldn't be so sure. I think ultimately we're all on the wrong side of history. I mean, this is actually the biblical claim. It's like the second you left the Garden of Eden, you're on the wrong side of history in that sense. You're on the outside, you are banished. And the Bible says that if you are born of Adam, you remain of Adam. You were born into sin, you were born on the outside, you were born banished, and you remain that way unless you become born of the spirit. Which is why Jesus says, you must be born again. And Nicodemus so famously doesn't understand and says, how can I re. Enter the womb of my mother? And he's saying, no, that there's a. To be born again, to be born of water and blood. To be born of the spirit is to have eternal life. It's to be let back in.

[27:41] Michael: Well, Jesus even talks about, like, you know, you'll know my disciples by their fruit. And he kind of names, one of the fruits, is that you love one another. And I think that's really interesting because in a lot of these arguments that we're talking about is, are you loving somebody? Is that demonstrating love by calling someone a racist? You know, it's like, well, is it true? Are you having an argument in good faith?

[28:10] Matt: Well, maybe that's a great thing to point out. It's like there's a difference between calling someone racist.

[28:14] Michael: Yeah.

[28:14] Matt: And actually loving someone and saying, I think you're being. Arbitrarily critical. Isn't that what racism is? It's like I'm choosing an arbitrary, immutable quality by which to determine your worth.

[28:33] Michael: Yeah, your worth.

[28:35] Matt: To say you're treating that person in a way that. I mean, ultimately it doesn't really make any sense. And that is more about you than it is about that person. And maybe you ought to try to get to know that person.

[28:47] Michael: Well, it would seem like the. Like, if you're really wanting to love somebody, you're wanting to know them. And you know, if someone calls you maybe stop using the word using the racist thing, but like someone calls you racist, it's like, okay, well, how am I doing that? Like, I would hate to cause harm to you. It's like, how am I doing that? And in one sense, it's like they kind of in the, in the kind of the woke areas, sort of like they came up, come up with a whole bunch of arbitrary rules and ideas about what it means to be racist. And you're like, well, I don't see that. And then by just you saying that, that actually determines that you actually are racist. And it's just sort of like in that you're not even entering into an argument in good faith. That which I would say is like not in love is sort of. And you're declaring something that is pretty heavy heavy to like.

[29:46] Matt: It's almost like there's a tendency of the human heart to sort of. Group up and identify a category of things that we can categorically say of ourselves, well, I'm not that kind of person. And what do you put in there? You know, manipulation, discrimination, racism.

[30:11] Michael: Narcissist.

[30:12] Matt: Narcissist, yeah. Greedy, vain, all these things. Well, I'm not that kind of person. And then you find people who agree with you that you're not that kind of person. And you all agree that, oh, you would never do anything like that. You're not that kind of person. Yeah, but obviously those categories exist because they are real things. And so there must be people that are that kind of person. And well, if my whole in group is based upon the agreement that we're not that kind of people, then anyone who's not in the group is that kind of people. Now you have sort of prototyped a version of morality which is, it's completely based upon an agreement, not upon any kind of reality itself. And this shocking thing is that everyone will be familiar with some kind of story. You know, you could see the documentary in your head. You're interviewing all these people. And I knew him. He, he was, he would never do anything like this. But then it turns out he did something like that. You know, he did murder that person or rape that person or steal from that bank or whatever, or commit the tax fraud. And, you know, it's like, think about the story of Martha Stewart going to jail, going to prison and actually serving time. It's like Martha Stewart was the picture of that kind of person. She's not that kind of person. You know, she's Martha Stewart. She was every mother's hero. She was the font head of grace and beauty and taste. And then, holy shit, she had something in her that we all didn't want to look at. And I think, going back to your point about love is. I think what love does is actually looks at us and actually looks at the kind of person we are, not at the kind of agreement that we would like to have, but says, I see some things at odds in you. On the one hand, I've known you to be very kind and generous with me, and on the other hand, I'm seeing you treat this other person in a way that's not commiserate with that. I'm noticing that. Is that what you want to do? Is that who you want to be? Seems to me like you've shown me that you want to be something different. And I think love says, you know, hey, you were manipulative just there. And I don't like to think of myself as a manipulative kind of person. Love says, yeah, but. But you are. That was there. You just did it, and it's okay. I forgive you. You should look at that though, you know, and come to terms with that.

[33:02] Michael: Whereas that's the whole thing about, like, you know, seeing the log in your brother's eyes or the speck in your brother's eyes, not removing the log in yours. And it's like in every single one of those situations you just mentioned, it's like if you can't see that in yourself, then, you know, whether it's racism, greed, whatever that is, it's like you're not seeing correctly. I mean, even if. Even if you can, like, try to. If you say, like, oh, well, white girls do this, you know, like, that's not seen as racist, but that's the same by definition, you know, and again, that's. That's said by, you know, white people and black people. It's like, I use that example because it's. It's not seemed as racist, you know, but that's the thing, is that we all possess all those things. It's like.

[33:55] Matt: Well, it's like I kind of feel like I want to put a sharper definition on the term, though, because we've lost the term. I don't think we really know what racism is anymore. I mean, there is such a thing as stereotypes, and stereotypes do have some grounding in reality. And to not be racist is to not notice reality. Do you know what I mean?

[34:17] Michael: Yeah, well, I think that's the Part is like, yeah, stereotypes are. Have some truth to them. And. And that's a whole nother thing to kind of deal with because it's like. Because you can judge people by a stereotype, but also, you know, when you go into a room and everybody's in a suit and tie, you're like, okay, oh, this is a formal event. I need to be serious. Well, that's a stereotype based on suit and ties, you know, and there's a certain formality that comes with that. And, you know, if you, you know, if you're going to college or something like that, there's a lot of different stereotypes that. That are good and healthy and helpful, you know, and then sometimes that can be taken too far, you know, as far as, like, just because someone's wearing a suit and tie doesn't mean they deserve your trust, you know?

[35:09] Matt: Yeah.

[35:11] Michael: So I think. I think kind of what you're saying is, like, stereotypes are useful, but they also can be, you know, they also can be actually racist. And. And I don't know what the example of that would be with trusting somebody just because they have a suit and tie on.

[35:32] Matt: Well, you do tend to trust people who are better dressed because, you know, you see a guy, it doesn't matter the color of his skin. He has his pants down below his dick and butt. He has underwear on. But he's, you know, he's dressing in a way that's signaling something to you. He's signaling to you that, I don't care about social convention. I don't care to play by anybody else's rules. It's basically saying, fuck you before he's even met you. There's a difference between dressing that way and putting a suit on, which is to say, I care to look good, I care to look presentable. I spent time doing it. I spent money doing it. Those are signaling to me that one of those people is less worthy of my trust. It's not because I'm reading that onto it them. It's because the way that they're dressing is signaling that to me on purpose.

[36:33] Michael: But it's interesting because it does carry different weights to it where, like, you know, somebody who's not dressing conventionally, like, I might trust them more than I would trust somebody in a suit. Because, like, I think I associate suits with, like, greed and corruption and wanting to take something from me. You know, where someone who's dressed unconventionally is, you know, I'll be like, oh, okay, cool. Like, this is like. Like, I don't have to worry about, you know, like, you're not a part of the system, the. That's. That's keeping us down or something like that, you know? So it's like. I feel like it does carry different weights depending on who you are and what you associate with those things. But generally speaking, like you said, though, depending on your background is like, if someone's dressed nicer, you do tend to, like, trust them faster. Yeah.

[37:25] Matt: I mean, I guess it just depends on the context. It's like, if I hire a guy to come over and give me a quote for trimming my trees, and he shows up in a suit, I'm gonna think, what are you trying to pull on me here? Like, you want the person who shows up dressed as if they know how to do the job, and they could do the job right now if we came to an agreement. I mean, do you really associate suits with greed, or are you just using that as an example?

[37:55] Michael: It is an example. I mean, I think of, like, you know, the whole Wall street thing. It's like, you kind of hear this right now. It's like, everybody who makes money is evil. We should take their money from them for the most part, you know?

[38:11] Matt: Right.

[38:11] Michael: So it's like.

[38:12] Matt: Which isn't that so interesting that we've arrived at a point in time where success is an indicator of evil. Elon Musk is evil not for anything that he's done necessarily, but just by virtue of the fact that he has a lot of money. He must have done something evil in order to acquire that money, because money is only acquired by evil methods. I guess

[38:36] Michael: I think it's hard because, I mean, I think that's the thing we're jumping around right now is like. It's like, what does. What do all these things signal to us? You know, I just had this conversation with my girls. I was like, you know, we were talking about tattoos and nose rings and how we dress and stuff like that. And I was like. I was like, however you choose to do these things, just know that people will judge you both good and bad. And so don't fault somebody. We're. We got to joking about this, but it's like, don't fault somebody if you put tattoos all over your face and they're staring at you like, what's up? Like, what is all that? Because nobody puts anything on their face. The thing that most people see and should not expect to be judged because you're putting in the most obvious place, so you're actually asking to be judged. And I mean, not necessarily good or Bad. I'm just saying, like you're basically telling someone to make a judgment about you, about you, because you're, you've written it on your face and don't get angry with that. It's like, like when people who get tattoos, like, I hate when people ask me like what they mean. I'm like, well, you put it on your body and I can see it.

[39:49] Matt: Yeah.

[39:49] Michael: I'm going to ask what it like, hey, why'd you get that tattoo? It's the same thing if you wear a necklace that has some sort of symbol on it. I'm like, oh, hey, where'd you get that necklace? What does that mean? Because you're gonna, you put things on your body, whether clothes or whatever, because you're wanting to communicate something whether you like it or not.

[40:07] Matt: See? Yeah, I see that a little bit differently. I don't think it's about people are going to judge you based upon your appearance. I think it's that your appearance is meant to tell the world what you want them to think about you. Right.

[40:23] Michael: Which they judge.

[40:25] Matt: Well, no, this is another problem where I think we have sort of condemned the word judgment. As if judgment is always a bad, a negative thing.

[40:34] Michael: I don't mean it as a negative thing.

[40:37] Matt: Dave Chappelle had a great bit about this in the early 2000s about women sort of saying in response to the attention that they get from men, just because I'm dressed like this does not mean that I'm a slut or whatever. He's like, that's like me dressing up as a cop and standing on the corner and somebody runs up and says, officer, oh my God, thank you. I'm, thank God you're here. And I go, excuse me. Just because I'm dressed like this does not mean that's crazy. It's like, however conscious we are of our intentions, I think that the way that we present to the world is communicating to the world how we want to be treated. And you know, I think, I think the people that do things like, for example, put tattoos on their face, what they are communicating to the world is. I am more powerful and self actualized than your perception. Something like that.

[41:49] Michael: Yeah.

[41:51] Matt: There's this thing I notice, especially with homeless people, if you're driving down the street, they're not using the crosswalk, they're not even looking to see if cars are coming or not. There's almost a masochistic sort of I'm God. The fact that I'm surrounded by multi ton pieces of steel, traveling at 50 miles an hour, and I'm unprotected by anything. I'm just going to assert my dominance and the cars are going to bend to my will. It's something like that. And I think part of that comes probably in the case of people who are homeless with a certain amount of depressive desperation and nihilism. But I think that there's some of that which is acting in all of us. I mean, in order to gain confidence, I think you sort of have to play with that a little bit. That's why people might change their name when they leave their hometown or start dressing differently. And maybe in its extreme forms, trans is a kind of that. It's like I'm going to. Rather than to submit to my inability to control reality, I will demand that reality conform itself to me. And if it doesn't, well, fuck them. Right? I mean, I think that's at play in all kinds of dimensions, in all kinds of ways. And we play with that in good and bad ways. You know what I mean? I was reading some article, and it's like Tips for Success, something like this. And they said, always slightly overdress to get used to the attention.

[43:38] Michael: Interesting.

[43:40] Matt: And maybe there's something to be said about that. I mean, I have a saying which is, show up, pay attention, formulate something to say, and then say it courageously. And I developed that by sitting in meetings with a lot of people who were a lot more powerful than me. And the thing I noticed about them was that they didn't seem to me to have ever gotten there by means of greed or manipulation, but it was one simple thing. And that simple thing was that they were willing to speak up. And most people are afraid to speak up. Most people in a meeting are afraid to say what they think. And so I made a commitment to myself. I was just like, I'm always going to make sure I have said one thing in every meeting that I go to or when I moved to Austin, I moved to Austin 20 years ago, and I made my first record, and I was playing shows and I was going out, and I just decided every time I show up to a venue. Because when you're trying to break into a music scene, it's like you don't know anybody, and you call up, you're a nobody, they're not going to give you a show. So I just said, I decided that every venue that I went to, I was going to make sure that I went up to and shook hands with every single person that worked there and looked them in the eye and Told them my name, first and last name. I'm Matt McCloskey, and I developed a lot of relationships that way. And there's something about that, which is. It is kind of playing with this. I'm going to do what I can to have. Have the world see me in a particular way that hopefully will help me move in a direction that I want to go in.

[45:21] Michael: Yeah, it's so interesting, too, because there's a. It's. Because then I think when you do that, and this is the scary part, when you do it intentionally, is then you're going to be faced with, am I actually that person?

[45:33] Matt: Yeah.

[45:34] Michael: And I think that's the scariest thing. And so, which is funny because, like, you also have. The opposite is like, when you don't do that, you kind of disappear into the background and,

[45:49] Matt: well, maybe don't be surprised if you don't want to be noticed, that people don't notice you.

[45:54] Michael: Yeah, well, I kind of was. I was kind of pausing there, too, because we do signal that by what we wear, you know, and what we. How we display ourselves. I think in Austin, I think it's become so normal now that it's not as. As shocking. It's like a lot of people moved to Austin because, you know, wherever they live, they kind of did things that were for shock value. Where in Austin, it's like, not shock value at all. It's sort of like. It's just. Is normal. Oh, you got 20 nose rings. Okay, all right, fine. You know, and I think that's. That's something. That's. That at first is kind of like. It kind of feels good to be around other people that are subversive like you. But then after a while, it's like you start to tell yourself that you're subversive. But when you're around other people that are subversive like yourself, it's like you're really not that subversive.

[46:51] Matt: When everybody's subversive, nobody's subversive.

[46:53] Michael: And so then you're like, like, okay, what are you trying to be subversive to? I think then it starts to kind of, like, it really starts to kind of call yourself out, because when you're the only one, then it can just. You can just kind of. You can play the subversive person, you know, but whenever you start being around other people that are similar, it's. It starts to actually be challenging. Okay, what am I really subverting, man?

[47:16] Matt: Eric Neumann talks about that in the Origins and History of Consciousness, about how. And I Think it's really Carl Jung's idea that it is our goal, natural goal, and somewhat our duty as we go through life to individuate, which is like to move out, to move out of our parents house, to individuate, to start a new family. But then he says that but the process of life can't end there. You have to, as you get older, start reincorporating what you have individuated, which is really fascinating. It reminds me of this story that I took this. I went to a film conference, this was in the early 2000s, and I attended this lecture. This guy was talking about script writing and he said, if you're going to write a script, you first have to have a genre. People think they don't have to have a genre. He's like, you have to have a genre. There are five genres, here's what they are. And you might think that you're in two of those. He goes, nope, you have to have one. And he's like, the reason you have to have one is because genres have rules and you have to write by the rules. Otherwise people will have no idea what they're watching. They won't have categories by which to understand you. You have to play within the rules so people understand what you're doing. And he goes, but then that's not good enough. Then you have to start breaking the rules. And that's where the surprise comes in, that's where the delight comes in. Because you first establish that you know the rules, then, then you break the rules creatively and with skill. And then you have to basically at the end reincorporate and recapture that genre. And you might think that what you've done is bounce between them, but the proper way to do it is like that. And I think that that's such a powerful. I've remembered it for 20 years or more because that's what life is, right? It's like if you're going to be subversive, one, you have to track what you're subverting, otherwise you can't properly be subversive.

[49:20] Michael: And you have to know what it is actually. Really? Well, yeah, you can't just be subverting like climate change.

[49:27] Matt: Right?

[49:27] Michael: Okay, well what is that? What are you subverting? It's like, is it an idea, an ideology? Yeah, it can be really surface because once you start, once you start to get challenged, then your whole what you're subverting, it just, it just kind of crumbles.

[49:42] Matt: Yeah, Well, I would say the two examples that Just popped into my head are David Bowie and Bob Dylan. David Bowie was subversive. He was subversive of gender. He was subversive of politics, of all of these cultural norms. But he was also very put together and could talk very intelligently about those things. At the opposite. Maybe not the opposite example, but the Bob Dylan example is. Bob Dylan was very subversive. He subverted folk, and then he famously went electric and subverted his audience. That he won in the folk. And then he's kind of just gone on to be sort of ultimately subversive. Like, last time I saw him live was a while ago. And that dude didn't give a fuck what anyone who showed up to hear him play thought about what he was doing. You know, he played songs completely differently. You could barely understand what he was saying. He was just doing what he was doing with no regard for the audience. And it's like, that's sort of the full skepticism which becomes nihilism. It's like, who are you? Even if you can't track yourself against what you're being subversive against, then you spin off into something which has no definition. And with something which has no definition, how do I address it or think about it?

[51:03] Michael: It's funny because I would imagine some people would say, oh, yeah, that's what I want to do. And as you're saying, I didn't know how to really say that. That's not good, actually, just to be subversive for subversive sake. If you're not, like, again, I know we're kind of putting words into Bob Dylan's mouth right now, but if you don't care about your audience, you don't care about the other. You know, like, love your neighbor as yourself. It's like, well, what are you really doing? It's like you're just subverting. You're just. It's. It's basically nihilism. And I mean, is that. And maybe, I mean, again, just like nihilism. Nobody can actually be fully nihilistic. It's like, oh, I don't do my music for anyone. It's like, that's never true for anybody. You know, I do it for myself. It's like, no, if you did it for yourself, you wouldn't go on stage, right? If you did it for yourself, you wouldn't be doing this interview right now.

[52:01] Matt: Right?

[52:01] Michael: It's like, obviously there's more to this than just doing it for yourself.

[52:05] Matt: Well, that's kind of that external reference point. You have to have an external Reference point for any sort of internal consistency.

[52:14] Michael: Yeah.

[52:14] Matt: I mean, the person this reminds me of, GK Chesterton, talks about men who truly believe in themselves. Somebody saying to him, you know, that we're going to be okay because we got men who believe in themselves. And he said, you want to know where the men who truly believe in themselves are? They're in that insane asylum. They believe in themselves against all external realities. That's true belief in self. There's no difference between belief and self and insanity when taken to its full conclusion. And I would say Bob Dylan, to me, looks more like the insane, the guy in the insane asylum than David Bowie. But, I mean, not fully. I mean, Bob Dylan's been creating incredible music for decades and decades. I don't want to speak poorly of him, but I will say that the last time I saw him play, I felt like, yeah, you don't really care about what we think of this. Which makes it a little bit, no fun for me. I showed up, I paid my money because I wanted to enjoy it. And I felt that way about other bands. I went to see a band that I. For totally different reasons, but I went to see a band that I really liked, and I was excited to hear them play the songs. And the lead singer was quite drunk, really couldn't keep up, was getting lyrics wrong, getting kind of angry. And I left the show. I was like, this isn't fun for me. You know, we came to all do this together. We came to sing along with you because we love you. We love your songs. And you sort of disrespected that. And I feel disrespected. I want to go home.

[54:02] Michael: Yeah. So many things kind of shoot through my head in this area because it's like. Because there's a certain amount of like. Like, fuck you, that is enticing and. And that you want to embody, in a sense, you know, as far as, like, I don't care what the world thinks about me. And there's something, like, very. Seems, anyways, very freeing about that.

[54:33] Matt: Well, because that's. That's the beginning of individuation. I think that's the beginning of the moving out of your father, your mother and father's house.

[54:41] Michael: It's kind of like an immaturity almost.

[54:43] Matt: Yes. Well, if you. If you stay in that.

[54:45] Michael: If you stay in that.

[54:45] Matt: Which is why Jung says that as you mature, you have to reincorporate. It's like. I remember, I think, when I would say, was the first time in my life that I sort of found Myself, it was in college, second or third, second year after my sophomore year. And that summer, I didn't go home to my parents house. I moved to a different city and lived with a friend. I felt like I really kind of became my own person. I started taking some more risks socially and stylistically in the things that I wore. And actually, I think that was the summer that I went to this film conference that I was telling you about, and I developed what I would say was confidence. And then I went back to school for my junior year, you know, had been gone for just really three months. And I was kind of different. And I remember I had a friend who sat me down and in love, said, hey, I've noticed that you kind of like, you found something. You came back with some confidence. And I was like, yeah, I kind of feel like that too. And he said, you're also kind of being a dick. You didn't used to be a dick. So it's kind of like, yeah, be confident, but don't be a dick.

[55:56] Michael: It reminds me of like Rage Against a Machine, like in the early 90s or late 80s. And it's like, fuck you. I won't do what you tell me. Yeah, love that song. Just have blaring in my Bronco and just be like, sing. It was a Jimmy, actually. But most people know what a Bronco is better and. And just like, it's like, you know what, there's something really beautiful about that. But then as you grow and mature, it's like, you know that there's a. There's a time and place for that. It's not like, you know the world. I won't do what you tell me. It's like, actually, no, it's like there's a time and place for that. And now as you get older, you need to learn surgically when to use

[56:36] Matt: that well, and also what to do when using that turns out to not have been the right thing. It's like to be able to come back and say, hey, really sorry that I was such a pain in the ass about that. I was trying on this new thing and it clearly fucked things up and I caused more trouble than I needed to. And that's the reincorporation, I think, is to say, you know, what is it to individuate? And in Neumann's example, he talks about the Ouroboros, which is the round everything. It's the snake that eats its tail, which is constantly consuming itself and feeding itself. It is the everything, but the everything is indistinguishable. From everything. Nothing inside the Ouroboros is distinguishable from anything else. To be a person, you have to leave that. You have to individuate to leave the Ouroboros. But in my mind I imagine something like, well, if we're on this planet and we need to leave the planet, it's like it's one thing to go out and just sort of start drifting in space, but if you don't have a lifeline and you can never come back, that's not good for you or anybody else. You're just drifting in space alone in the vacuum of utter darkness. So to individuate and then come back to and have something to say. I had a good friend tell me once that that's what artists do. Artists go into the deep, dark places inside themselves which to the places most of us don't want to go. It's like they stare into the abyss and they wait for the abyss to stare back. But the thing about a good artist is they actually have the ability to come back from that and report and give us something, give us a glimpse into something. That's what a good artist is. And you know, so many artists become like manic depressives or have all kinds of.

[58:31] Michael: Drug addicts.

[58:31] Matt: Yeah, drug addicts. Because they can't do it. They can do it maybe for a while and then they lose the ability to do it. And there's a great risk there.

[58:39] Michael: Or they think drugs is the only way they can get there anymore.

[58:41] Matt: Yeah, right.

[58:42] Michael: And which is a hard. It's hard on the system.

[58:45] Matt: I think I've heard Paul McCartney talk about that, that when they were younger in the Beatles, they thought drugs was the only way they could get there.

[58:51] Michael: Oh, I thought so. Yeah.

[58:52] Matt: And I think he changed, which is why he's, you know, still alive. Well, not only still alive, but playing three hour long concerts at the age of 80 and still nailing it.

[59:02] Michael: Yeah.

[59:03] Matt: Like, good for him.

[59:05] Michael: Yeah, there is something about that. It's. I mean, as you know, you and I are older now and it's something to like also for older people to not discourage that sort of behavior in our youth, you know, But I think there's also a certain amount of like guidance that we have a responsible. We're responsible for is like, okay, hey, this is good. Okay. But let's, let's kind of direct this in a healthy way. You know, I think there's. I think that's kind of the idea behind elders is. Is elders can allow the youth to individuate yeah, but still provide a, an environment where they can, they can still have that sort of like touching reality. Like your friend, he was that kind of for you, it's like, hey, you're kind of being a dick. You know, you are different. I think there's some good things here, but you kind of need a little bit of a reality check here.

[60:04] Matt: I'm trying to think about. How and why it is that kids have something to do with this. Because you do. I think you want your kids to rebel to some degree. What's that phrase? Show me a. Show me a young person who's not a liberal and I'll show you a person without a heart. Show me an old person who is a liberal and I'll show you a person without a brain.

[60:37] Michael: It's not a conservative.

[60:38] Matt: Yeah, it's like when you're young, you want to rebel because that is finding yourself. It's individuating. We want our kids to do that, but then also they have to grow up to be the people who can provide the structure for the next generation to do that. And so it's like why we naturally go from liberal to conservative as we age. I don't think it's a political thing, it's not a party thing. I actually take quite a bit of pleasure in the responsibilities in my life that provide security and stability to my children so that they can be children and grow in a safe way. But that makes me a fairly conservative person. And I'm not talking politically, I'm just talking about, you know, I have some. I'm much more risk averse now than I used to be. You know, I used to go climb the outside of skyscrapers as a, you know, as a hobby. Nothing like. Did you see that? What was that couple that climbed to the top of the Empire State Building recently and flew that flag? Nothing like that. But I used to do all kinds of dangerous shit. And you know, I owned and rode a motorcycle when I was younger and I always wanted to get another one after I sold it. And these days I'm thinking, I think I'd just rather be here when my grandchildren are born, you know, because the saying is if you ride a motorcycle, not if you crash, but when. And part of me is like, you know, I'm good. I had one, I've done that. I don't necessarily need to do that again, you know, and more conservative with my finances because I want to make sure that this house that I'm raising my kids in stays their home and stays the place where they Live. I mean, so I think it's just. I guess my initial question was, like, how and why kids are a part of this. And I think when you realize that life isn't just about you and the things that you're doing, it's about the next generation. It's about things that are going to happen after you're dead. It does change. It does change the way that you think about the world, the way that you see things and the risks you're willing to take and how rebellious you're willing to be. It's like, you know, from this, at this point, you know, when I was younger, I might have been more rebellious at work and done things that might have gotten me fired or might have lost me clients or lost a job, you know, but whatever. It's like, I'll start another one. I'll find another one. Now it's like, yeah, but I also need to make sure that the home that is not just my home, it's like, there's a bunch of other people who live here and they're all depending on me. None of them can keep this place up.

[63:26] Michael: Yeah. And plus, as you get older, too, it's like you start to form a reputation, and that does have value to it. As far as, like, I'm someone who follows through all my projects. I'm someone who, you know, shows up every day or.

[63:41] Matt: Right.

[63:42] Michael: You know, there's some. There's actually some real value in that. If you're completely erratic, then people don't depend on you and you're like, well, forget about them. Who cares? You know, it's like, yeah, well, that kind of ends up being in a lonely place. Like, nobody wants to be around somebody who is not somewhat dependable. You don't to be like, you know, super dependable, but at least somewhat dependable.

[64:03] Matt: Right.

[64:04] Michael: You know, because you can't. You can't build a relationship on something that's not there. It's like the. The fun uncle who shows up and it's a good time, but he's never there during the hard times when you need him.

[64:15] Matt: Yeah. He's not going to bail you out in a pinch.

[64:17] Michael: Yeah. And obviously we're talking about stereotypes here, but.

[64:21] Matt: Yeah.

[64:23] Michael: So I don't know.

[64:23] Matt: I mean, I'm talking about specific people. I'm just not naming them.

[64:26] Michael: I'm not even names.

[64:27] Matt: I'm kidding.

[64:28] Michael: No, my uncles.

[64:31] Matt: I mean, maybe it is worth it to say. It's like we are talking about archetypes in a sense. I think we all do know people by name that fit these archetypes, because that's what the world consists of, these archetypes. We've all run into them totally. We all embody them.

[64:51] Michael: What do you think this. Do you think any of this has to do with kind of what we first started talking about as far as, like, are not paying attention to kind of what's going on right now? Like, as far as far as, like, the world occurrences? I mean, is it just that our attention has shifted elsewhere? Or, you know, as far as, like, what is important to us is that maybe part of it? Because even like you're talking about in the podcast is like, we've kind of shifted from a lot of political and social issues that we've kind of dived into for a while into more spiritual, philosophical kind of kind of areas. The reason why I bring it up is just because I was like, how did we get here?

[65:38] Matt: The through line was.

[65:40] Michael: And we kind of talked about racism and some of these things that don't have definitions.

[65:46] Matt: Well, it's interesting. We were kind of wrestling last week with trust. We were talking about whether or not trust has to be earned. And I suggest that I think we live in a society in which trust is the default, and maybe it needs to be earned back if it's lost. But maybe part of this Cartesian crisis idea and part of the reason that I have stopped paying attention or so much attention to the news and to the world's goings on, is that trust has been violated. I mean, whether it's just take the word racism. It's like that word got hollowed out. I don't know what you mean when you say it. I can't trust whatever it is that you're saying there. Unless you want to add some more corroborating information. I've been doing a lot of. I posted to my LinkedIn that I've been looking open to work, I'm looking for a job, and I can't tell you the number of recruiters who have reached out to me. I'll just tell you this brief story. They all seemed really sketchy, but not in a way where it was like this was obviously spam, and I could respond to them and they'd respond to me. So I finally, with this one guy, I was like, hey, can we talk on the phone? He said, yeah, sounds good. I said, I'm going to send you a meeting invite. He said, okay. So I sent it to him. He agreed to it. Had a LinkedIn profile that seemed legit. White guy, mid-60s, used to be a pastor of a church in Tennessee for 15 years, like in the early 2000s. And I joined the call. And what comes back from the other end? First of all, the camera's not on. I had my camera on. What comes back from the other end is what is clearly a very thick African accent coming from a male in his probably 20s. And I was like, I can't remember the questions I asked him. I was like, hey, could you turn your camera on? And he hemmed and hawed and declined. And I said, it's really strange. You don't look anything or sound anything like your profile picture. And again, he was very evasive about it. And finally after a while, I was kind of like, look, if you can't do anything to corroborate your identity for me, like, show me your face. Give me some reason to believe that you are who you say you are. The inconsistencies are just too many for me and I'm going to have to just end this call. And I feel like so much of our reality has gotten to a place like that where I'm just not responding to recruiters anymore. What is this? I'm finding myself in this very upside down position where I'm looking for a job and I'm asking, like I'm posting, saying, I want attention here. And then the attention comes and I can't trust it. And so the best thing I can kind of figure out to do is

[68:44] Michael: to ignore it or distrust the whole category.

[68:47] Matt: The whole category, which, well, that's nihilism, right? That's full skepticism and that's not good. And I'm sort of finding that everywhere, whether it's browsing X or listening to any news article or really anyone's opinion on anything, I'm like, I can't trust your opinion because I don't think that you are connected with source material at all, because I don't think anybody is. It's like we're living in a world in which reality is somehow unintelligible and the narrative rings king. Are you saying that? Because I kind of wanted to talk about Joe Biden's book for a second and we could just do this here at the end and we can wrap. But Joe Biden apparently has written a book and he just put out something on X where he was introducing, saying, I've written this book about my time as president and it's like, is there a single person in America who believes that Joe Biden wrote a book?

[69:47] Michael: Well, honestly, none of them do.

[69:48] Matt: Honestly, I don't care. I mean, he's playing the game, right? The same game that Michelle Obama plays. And all of these people who aren't writers who write books, it's like, no, somebody else wrote that book. But at least in these other cases, like, you could sit down with Michelle Obama and talk to her long enough and understand her well enough that I could probably write a book in her voice. And there's something credible to that. But it's like, don't you. Like, it was not that long ago where Joe Biden was deposed for mishandling classified information, and the prosecutor declined to process because the interview went so badly. And he declined to release the interview or even the transcript of it because that's how bad it was. And it's like Joe Biden didn't even sign his own pardons at the end of his term. This is not a person who can write a book, nor is it a person who. Which you could interview well enough to write a book on their behalf. So there's something else that has absolutely nothing to do with Joe Biden, which is producing this for reasons that have nothing to do with him, for reasons that are not obvious to me and not discernible by me. So this falls into the category of it is not possible for me to know what to think about this. And so I guess I'm just going to ignore it. And not to mention his own video announcing the release of his book was nearly unintelligible. You couldn't understand what he was saying because the man hasn't been able to speak for years now. So it's wild. I'm just like, what is this? Who's doing this and why? I don't know. And it almost feels to me like if I say, what am I supposed to think about this? That almost feels like a trick. It almost feels like getting me to think about it is the trick and they've already won.

[71:43] Michael: Yeah, well, it's. I'm trying to think. There's. You see, in this example, too. It's sort of like the reality is like somebody else wrote the book for him, and you know, how much he actually played into, like, giving the information that's in the book, as I would think is clearly questionable. But it's like, I think that's what people are hungry for is like, okay, what. What is that? What is this person saying? And does it match up with the reality that they're living? And I think that's the part of, like, you know, we want to see people's fruits, you know, with your you're on this call with this guy. He's like, hey, you've presented all these things. Just give me some fruit that I can experience, and then I can maybe

[72:34] Matt: trust you so that I can taste and know it's good.

[72:36] Michael: Taste and know it's good. Exactly. And, you know, I experienced with business, there's so many people that can fix my business. And I've had conversations with many of these people, and they don't actually care about my business. They care about me paying them money. So they give me some formulas that supposedly would fix my business. And this is over the years, you know?

[72:57] Matt: Right, right.

[72:57] Michael: And it's like. It's like we're posing as something, but we're not actually. We are not the thing itself. It's sort of like, you know, you're in a marriage, but are you married? Like, you are. You're in a friendship, but are you a friend? It's like. It's like, Matt's my best friend, but, like, is it like, are you. Are we really best friends? You know, it's like.

[73:19] Matt: It's like.

[73:19] Michael: It's like there's. There's something tangible that. That. That has to come behind whatever it is, you know? And I think that's something I've been really, you know, struggling with, is. Because, like, with. With. In the business world especially, it's like. It's like. It's like I know who we are, and I also know a lot of these other companies. And then it's like they. They put out this image and this marketing, and it's sort of like. It just seems like I'm trying to portray something that I'm not.

[73:52] Matt: Isn't it so interesting that God says I am, That I say I am? He's saying I'm actually who I say I am.

[74:02] Michael: Yeah.

[74:03] Matt: All the rest of us who aren't God, we aren't who we say we are. And that goes. It runs in both directions. I mean, there's fake it till you make it.

[74:11] Michael: Yeah, totally.

[74:12] Matt: There is confidence, which is out over its skis, and sometimes that's necessary. There's also manipulation and deception.

[74:21] Michael: Well, also, there's the maturity, because I think with younger companies, I kind of tend to kind of respect that too. It's like, hey, we're trying to do this thing. And it's like. And there's an excitement behind, and there's passion about it. And it's like. It's really like you're three and you're five. It's like, okay, are you that thing well, yeah, And I think there's a maturity that comes as like, oh, wow. And every person in every business should. Should come up against this is like, I am not that thing. It's like the. Like, our U.S. constitution is like, we will never be that thing. We're aspiring to that.

[75:00] Matt: But it's good to be asked. It's good to be aspirational.

[75:03] Michael: Totally. Exactly.

[75:04] Matt: I mean, that's why we have, you know, our high school cheerleaders on the side of the football field holding up signs saying that we're the best, and then they lose the game. And it's like, so actually, you're not the best. Does that make them liars? No, it doesn't. It makes them encouraging and supportive. It's like, you have to believe. I mean, this is Ted Lasso. It's like, you have to believe. You have to believe. Otherwise, you're getting nowhere. And your belief is going to be proven false a lot of times. And I think, man, just an example of, like, the wisdom of the word. It's like that it told us all of this. Your belief is going to falter, you know, Peter. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't believe. Or it's Paul saying, I do the things I don't want to do, and I don't do the things that I want to do. Should I give up faith? No.

[76:16] Michael: Well, that definitely seems like that's a part of the process, is like, whether you're a business or a person is. You need to state what you believe in and aspire to it and then

[76:28] Matt: act according to it.

[76:29] Michael: Yeah. And it's like. And there's a reality that, yes, you will fall short of that. And if you're not falling short of it, then you definitely are not believing in something big enough. And, you know, it's like, I'm spending a lot of time right now in customer service, and it's like. It's like I have this whole idea of what that means, and it's like, if I'm really honest about myself, is like, we'll never achieve it. But it's like, but that's what I want. That aspiration is what I want, you know? And it's like, yeah, but I think that's the part, too. Like, that. That's the part that's kind of humbling, is whenever you. When you do fall short of that or when someone tells you you fell short of that, you know, you get a review, or somebody says, this happened at your store, and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's not what I want to hear. Just lie to me. Just tell me I'm beautiful.

[77:24] Matt: Tell me lies. Tell me sweet little lies.

[77:26] Michael: Exactly. Yeah. But kind of coming back to that whole thing of, like, you know, not being able to trust sort of our information that was coming to us and getting sort of disenchanted with that, I think that's something that is healthy, you know, And I think that's something we'll go through in different seasons.

[77:52] Matt: Well. And I think the interesting question is, where is that going to drive us? And I've been suspecting for a while now that that's going to drive us to God, to many people, to God. Because by definition, God is the only thing you can trust. God is, by definition, his own definition, the only one who really is who he says he is. And I think there's going to be a significant amount of the ship being righted because people are fixing their trust and belief in the highest place. I also think there's going to be quite a bit of conflict and chaos as a result of it. I mean, I think you're already seeing it. It's like Twitter's arguing about the term Judeo Christian. It's like, what are we on about? What are we doing? There's.

[78:43] Michael: Yeah, I'll have to look into that. Sounds an interesting little. Yeah, little side.

[78:48] Matt: Be curious to hear what you think about it. All right, well, let's wrap this one. Yeah, it's been a good chore.

[78:57] Michael: Thanks for coming out, guys.

[78:58] Matt: We have a website now. Go check it out.

[78:59] Michael: Yeah. Shoresofignorance.com Matt whipped it up and it looks snazzy.

[79:04] Matt: We'll put that in the show. You have to add that to the show notes.

[79:06] Michael: Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Okay, guys.

[79:09] Matt: Love you out there.

[79:10] Michael: Ciao.

[79:10] Matt: Bye. It's funny we have a website now. I'm not really sure why we have a website. Yeah, it's not really giving anybody anything that's not available on Spotify.

[79:32] Michael: Well, it's got more.

[79:33] Matt: I think it's just got more complete.