WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000 All right, welcome to episode six of the Drunken Philosophers. Today is May 13, 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:16.800 2026. This is Scott Jenkins and I'm here with my good friend Ben Cohn. Hello. And we're 00:00:16.800 --> 00:00:27.680 incredibly pleased to have you as a listener. The topics are diverse and we really 00:00:28.880 --> 00:00:37.120 not got a timely topic for today, but we thought we'd start out talking about some of the 00:00:37.120 --> 00:00:47.200 methods that people use to have a conversation. And in fact, primarily among those methods, 00:00:47.200 --> 00:00:53.760 you know, we would like to explore what creates a good faith and a bad faith conversation. 00:00:55.280 --> 00:01:02.720 How do you recognize people who are not negotiating or talking in a good faith? And then what do 00:01:02.720 --> 00:01:13.520 you do in order to coax that conversation into a more productive and profound frame? So, you know, 00:01:13.520 --> 00:01:26.000 with that, Ben, do you have an opening salvo to... Not real, not exactly no. Actually, I don't have any 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:35.200 smooth thing to start with here, but I think I just, I think that we were circling around 00:01:35.200 --> 00:01:40.720 it a little bit on our conversation last time. When we were, I was, I think, 00:01:42.320 --> 00:01:46.960 is pontificating the right word. I think I would have been pontificating a little bit less time on, 00:01:46.960 --> 00:01:56.480 like, trying to make inroads on someone's opinion that they've already committed to and built 00:01:56.480 --> 00:02:04.000 built a whole world view around, a whole nice neat little little box that they're not willing to 00:02:06.160 --> 00:02:15.200 to change. And I would consider that to be, I think, and I was kind of wondering about how do you do 00:02:15.200 --> 00:02:21.920 about that, right? How do you change somebody's attitude? And, you know, I think it comes back to, 00:02:21.920 --> 00:02:32.720 you know, are they, you know, speaking or thinking or talking in good faith or not? 00:02:33.680 --> 00:02:42.640 Which was, I honestly started to think about that, putting it in terms of good and bad faith, 00:02:42.640 --> 00:02:51.040 like, basically, as soon as we stopped the recording. Yeah. But, anyways, so... Yeah, right, so, 00:02:51.040 --> 00:02:58.480 it seems that another way of thinking of good faith and bad faith is the concept of creation or 00:02:58.480 --> 00:03:07.680 destruction. The people who are talking in good faith are hoping to contribute to a more complete 00:03:07.680 --> 00:03:16.880 understanding, whereas people who are talking in bad faith or are just looking to destroy. They're 00:03:16.880 --> 00:03:23.120 looking to throw branches in the works and throw rocks at the philosopher, so to speak, who is 00:03:24.480 --> 00:03:36.640 trying his best to say something meaningful. The rocks look different, but oftentimes the rocks 00:03:36.640 --> 00:03:46.080 look like whatabouts, the edge conditions that your idea doesn't address. 00:03:46.080 --> 00:03:51.360 Right, yeah. We've come across that a lot too in our discussion groups, I think. 00:03:53.520 --> 00:04:00.000 We're rather than trying to come upon or like come to a point of agreement, they try and seek out 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:07.280 where they can disagree or where they can tear your argument apart. I'm all for stress testing, 00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:14.240 you know, an idea, but are you doing it for the sake of strengthening that idea or, you know, 00:04:14.240 --> 00:04:20.560 improving it or are you doing it just to tear it down? Right, and I think if you're going to stress 00:04:20.560 --> 00:04:30.080 test an idea, you then, if you're actually going to be considered doing it in good faith, 00:04:30.080 --> 00:04:38.400 would then offer a way to improve it. You would be a contributor to the idea that, all right, 00:04:38.400 --> 00:04:45.760 since it didn't address this point, let's change the point to address it. And that person would 00:04:45.760 --> 00:04:56.240 then become that co-creator, but without that element of contribution, it is really just a gleeful 00:04:56.240 --> 00:05:10.000 imp, tossing rocks and hoping to hit something fragile. Right. So yeah, right. So why are we, 00:05:10.000 --> 00:05:16.960 like, why are we engaging in conversation in the first place, right? Yeah. Are we doing it to make 00:05:16.960 --> 00:05:24.000 progress to get somewhere or are we like doing it? What would be the other, I mean, I would hope that 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:31.920 would be the reason. Right. I mean, I think that one of the other reasons is because it's fun 00:05:32.640 --> 00:05:43.440 to watch someone's quorum. It's fun to be the aggressor and the destructor destroyer. 00:05:43.440 --> 00:05:47.520 Right. That's why you didn't make it a little very smart to be able to tear 00:05:47.520 --> 00:05:54.320 an idea down, right? That's, you know, that's a, it's a low-hanging fruit right there. Right. 00:05:55.520 --> 00:06:03.120 And, you know, it's done in ways that are oftentimes relying heavily on logical fallacies. 00:06:03.120 --> 00:06:10.560 They're not, you know, your idea is not bad by its nature, but they throw 00:06:13.440 --> 00:06:23.200 fallacious arguments in the path and just make you then, you know, sort away those really unsound 00:06:23.200 --> 00:06:31.280 objections. Yeah. You know, it's interesting to me. Hopefully this is on point, or if this is, 00:06:31.280 --> 00:06:43.360 this is relevant enough, but I think a lot about there's not, you know, trying not to call anybody 00:06:43.360 --> 00:06:50.960 out in particular, but there is a, sometimes when we've been talking about the truth of a statement, 00:06:50.960 --> 00:06:57.520 or I guess debating the truth of a statement, drunken philosophy. I can think of somebody who likes 00:06:57.520 --> 00:07:04.400 to point. I've noticed that they point at the philosophy sign on drunken, or the philosophy 00:07:04.400 --> 00:07:12.160 word on, on the drunken philosophy sign. And as if like to point out, like he stops me and points 00:07:12.160 --> 00:07:17.920 at the sign and says, what is this word, rattle philosophy group? This is philosophy. As if to say 00:07:17.920 --> 00:07:27.040 that if you're engaging in philosophy, there's no real answer. Right. That's what I, I guess, 00:07:27.040 --> 00:07:36.800 inferred from his, from from him doing that, what else would he be? Which is just really interesting 00:07:36.800 --> 00:07:45.440 to me that if people think of it that way. Right. Yeah. But I sure don't think that we all live in separate 00:07:45.440 --> 00:07:56.320 worlds. I think that we have separate experiences and, you know, separate sets of conformational 00:07:58.080 --> 00:08:09.200 experiences, biases, I guess. But those shouldn't be exclusionary. We'd live in a culture that is 00:08:09.200 --> 00:08:18.720 marginally unified. And that by its very nature indicates a shared experience. 00:08:19.360 --> 00:08:28.880 Yeah. Right. So we should be having holy separate experiences. One, I would not expect to talk 00:08:28.880 --> 00:08:38.160 with an inuit from Northern Saskatchewan and have them agree with my inner city experiences. No. 00:08:38.160 --> 00:08:47.840 However, I would expect someone who's lived in a city, pretty much any city in the United States, 00:08:48.480 --> 00:08:58.880 to have a good faith recognition of some of the observations that I might throw out. Yeah. 00:08:58.880 --> 00:09:10.320 I don't know. If we've, do you feel like we've defined or like fleshed out what we mean by a good faith 00:09:10.320 --> 00:09:15.440 versus bad faith? Well, we've been hammering away on bad faith. Well, I know. Yeah. I know. Yeah. 00:09:17.200 --> 00:09:28.800 I mean, maybe the inference is there. So, I mean, I would say, you know, in a succinct way, 00:09:28.800 --> 00:09:41.520 that a good faith argument is one that is saying yes and whereas a bad faith argument is saying 00:09:41.520 --> 00:09:53.680 yeah, but yeah, but I don't, yeah, you use the word and I honestly, I don't think you've brought it 00:09:53.680 --> 00:09:59.680 up yet in this recording, but I like the way you put it previously where you were talking about 00:09:59.680 --> 00:10:05.360 co-creation, right? Yes. And I think that's a good way of putting it. And that's what the yes and 00:10:05.360 --> 00:10:14.960 gets you. Right. Or the no end. Or when you actually are contributing with next part of your phrase, 00:10:14.960 --> 00:10:29.120 then allows the idea to grow and to become. Whereas the yeah, but is simply a, 00:10:30.800 --> 00:10:36.160 and yeah, and yeah, so holy different words in this context, even though they have the same root, 00:10:36.160 --> 00:10:48.880 our is not intended to do anything more than divert down a path that is, in fact, 00:10:48.880 --> 00:10:58.000 leads to nowhere. Usually it's leading to the point that, well, I guess I have to redirect that one 00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:04.640 and that one's for shit, I'll throw it in the garbage. No, that's a good idea. And let's continue to 00:11:04.640 --> 00:11:18.080 work on it, you know? Yeah. Yeah, this, I don't know, this attitude of like, I guess, like, 00:11:18.080 --> 00:11:25.520 they're not being any real truth out there. Oh, right. I feel like that has a lot to do with this 00:11:25.520 --> 00:11:33.040 kind of mentality of just, well, we can really do, you know, discussion group is show what's wrong 00:11:33.040 --> 00:11:40.160 with anybody's particular point of view, right? Right. Because there is no real truth, right? And 00:11:40.160 --> 00:11:48.320 I think, you know, I guess I just disagree. Like it just doesn't make any sense to me that there's 00:11:48.320 --> 00:11:52.000 not a truth. I cannot, if you're trying to say we can't get at the ultimate truth, yes, I think we 00:11:52.000 --> 00:11:57.920 talked about that before, but we can do better. All right. And I guess that's why I'm interested in 00:11:57.920 --> 00:12:04.240 philosophy and why I'm interested in discussing things with people because I think there is 00:12:04.240 --> 00:12:15.200 an actual progress to make. And it's worth trying. Right. Right. I mean, especially if your idea is 00:12:15.200 --> 00:12:25.840 transcendent, right? If your idea bridges cultures and bridges philosophies and helps people from 00:12:25.840 --> 00:12:36.800 groups that are divergent or diverse start to recognize their own commonalities and their own 00:12:38.080 --> 00:12:52.000 similarity in thought and in practice, that is really, I feel, the recipe for lower conflict and in 00:12:52.000 --> 00:13:03.520 higher contribution, higher productivity, you know, as a group, which to me is one of my hopes for 00:13:03.520 --> 00:13:10.800 the world is that we want that. We want to be more productive. We want to use our energy to help 00:13:10.800 --> 00:13:22.240 ourselves, our families and our community in that order. But if we choose to simply fight 00:13:22.240 --> 00:13:28.800 what we're doing is we're creating camps, we're creating little little tribes all across the 00:13:29.440 --> 00:13:36.160 globe. And you know, we're united through the memes, not through the block anymore. It's 00:13:36.160 --> 00:13:44.880 no, we're gangs of New York. We're gangs of the world, right? And we're not going to accomplish 00:13:44.880 --> 00:13:54.720 anything by pointing out each other's flaw. But if we are able to build this common language, 00:13:54.720 --> 00:14:02.240 common understanding, we aren't going to do that without people engaging in good faith argument. 00:14:02.240 --> 00:14:08.720 Well, you know, and I'm just not so sure that everybody's 00:14:08.720 --> 00:14:17.760 that interested in overcoming these problems. I think it's just more or less a rebel in the problem. 00:14:17.760 --> 00:14:24.240 They like the problem, right? Because it gives them something, it gives them a excuse, I think, 00:14:24.240 --> 00:14:29.120 it gives them something to feel bad about and to feel righteous about. Right. And I feel like the 00:14:29.120 --> 00:14:38.480 solving the problem would actually eliminate their purpose. You know, their purpose is to solve 00:14:38.480 --> 00:14:47.360 the problem. And if they solved the problem, they no longer have a purpose, right? And so many, 00:14:47.360 --> 00:14:55.120 they can go down many specific holes on that topic. Right. But you know, we don't necessarily need to 00:14:55.120 --> 00:15:04.960 explore those individual ideas right yet. Yeah. It's an interesting point, those people's whole 00:15:04.960 --> 00:15:13.680 whole careers are maybe not always careers, but like you say, their whole function on some level 00:15:13.680 --> 00:15:18.640 and sometimes careers are built on having a problem, having a particular problem there, right? 00:15:18.640 --> 00:15:22.080 Yeah. So I think that you're making a good point. Yeah. 00:15:22.080 --> 00:15:28.720 So again, but that's again, that's that's the point that it's not a good faith motive. 00:15:28.720 --> 00:15:37.920 And that's the whole issue. Nobody's really trying to do it. Not well, they aren't really trying to 00:15:37.920 --> 00:15:44.080 make an inroads into this issue. And I don't know what to do about that necessarily. 00:15:44.080 --> 00:15:53.280 I don't either. The oftentimes the people with the bad faith arguments aren't trying to change 00:15:53.280 --> 00:16:00.640 minds because what they're trying to do is change the system. They're changing the manner in which 00:16:01.200 --> 00:16:11.600 people can operate. And that means that instead of making people work together, 00:16:11.600 --> 00:16:24.880 they simply need to change the system so that their people get more of the pie. And that's maybe 00:16:24.880 --> 00:16:34.960 labor unions. That's maybe advocacy groups of all stripes. They're not looking to change minds. 00:16:34.960 --> 00:16:43.360 They're simply looking to change the wheels of the society or the system in order to 00:16:43.360 --> 00:16:56.880 advantage their group that they've chosen to represent. Yeah. Right. And that makes, you know, 00:16:56.880 --> 00:17:07.680 philosophical discussions, holy moat. Then it becomes a power discussion. Who can wield the tools 00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:20.720 of power more effectively? And, you know, through intimidation, through, I guess, logical 00:17:20.720 --> 00:17:32.400 misdirection and, you know, making people believe things because you will. You change the 00:17:32.400 --> 00:17:37.360 definition of it. Therefore, I believe it to be one thing. And you said it's another thing. And 00:17:37.360 --> 00:17:41.360 well, I'm in favor of the one thing. So I must be in favor of what you're saying. 00:17:41.360 --> 00:17:50.880 Yeah. I mean, my favorite, of course, is all of everyone who knows me knows is anti-racism. 00:17:50.880 --> 00:18:00.800 Oh yeah. That is a term. How can you not be anti-racist? Well, of course. It wouldn't be. 00:18:01.840 --> 00:18:11.200 But the term anti-racist is really a code word for pro-racist in a whole different sense. 00:18:11.200 --> 00:18:20.320 And they're using the term. They co-opted the term. They redefined it. And now they're weaponizing it. 00:18:20.320 --> 00:18:25.440 Yeah. You know, this co-opting of definitions is something that, 00:18:26.800 --> 00:18:34.240 yeah, well, it merits some conversation at some point because it seems like a very insidious 00:18:34.240 --> 00:18:42.880 issue that, you know, I only just recently found out that racism is now being defined as 00:18:42.880 --> 00:18:51.120 only the, I guess, race or culture or whatever it is that's in power in racist. 00:18:51.120 --> 00:18:57.760 Right. Well, yeah. That's a convenient definition. I don't know how old that, I mean. Yes, decades old. 00:18:57.760 --> 00:19:06.480 That's decades old. Okay. I mean, when did it, has it caught on in like, in, you know, a lot of society 00:19:06.480 --> 00:19:12.800 for that law? It is, it has caught on in the, on the progressive left, like wildfires. 00:19:12.800 --> 00:19:19.520 What? Does that seem so like upside down to me? Oh, sure. Racism. 00:19:20.240 --> 00:19:28.800 It just seems like one of a few examples I can think of where, yeah, where a word that we all know 00:19:28.800 --> 00:19:38.720 what it means has been redefined and co-opted, I guess, in order to serve some bizarre agenda. 00:19:38.720 --> 00:19:46.880 Well, it's power. They're, they're really trying to gain power and through people who aren't exploring 00:19:46.880 --> 00:19:53.360 the term. Right. They're really just using that who wouldn't be anti, who wouldn't be anti-racist? 00:19:53.360 --> 00:20:01.360 My God. Right. But the idea that all people can't be racist, that's beyond absurd. 00:20:01.360 --> 00:20:11.440 And I would suggest that, you know, in my experience, which is several decades, 00:20:15.040 --> 00:20:26.320 that Northern Africans, you know, of Somali or, well, I forget the other country in that area, 00:20:26.320 --> 00:20:34.400 Nigeria, maybe, with people to whom I've spoken. They are in, beyond, they are absolutely the most 00:20:34.400 --> 00:20:42.160 racist people I've met. And in fact, I've said it. And the response is a smile and a spark. 00:20:43.120 --> 00:20:51.600 Because it's fucking true. All right. They, they, they recognize certain skin tone differences. They 00:20:51.600 --> 00:21:00.720 recognize certain accent differences, recognize certain hair, curly-ness differences. And they treat 00:21:00.720 --> 00:21:08.560 each other differently as a consequence. Now, by pure nature of the word race, it couldn't really be 00:21:08.560 --> 00:21:18.000 racist, because they're all the same race. But they're absolutely prejudice on skin color, hair, 00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:31.520 texture, all of those other elements of race. So, yeah, I wouldn't suggest that anyone who says 00:21:31.520 --> 00:21:41.760 that what Black people can't be racist are living under a rock. And that would be offensive, I'm sure, 00:21:41.760 --> 00:21:51.440 to whom ever I said that. But it is, anyway, but the redefining of terms is a tried and true 00:21:53.760 --> 00:22:02.800 method. And certainly, it plays a pivotal role in 1984. Right. And this is the sort of thing that 00:22:02.800 --> 00:22:10.000 it reminds me of. Yeah. Yeah. And that was 1948 when that book was written. That was right out 00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:20.800 right after the World War II ended. Yeah. And, you know, or well, you know, nailed it. But I guess 00:22:20.800 --> 00:22:31.440 the point really is that it's probably been that way for hundreds of years. And it wasn't that he 00:22:31.440 --> 00:22:38.400 predicted it for 1984. It was that he had seen it happening in his world around him. You know, he's 00:22:38.400 --> 00:22:50.720 seen, he'd seen Stalin, he'd seen Churchill and Wilson. Yeah, not Wilson, sorry. That was what 00:22:50.720 --> 00:23:04.800 over one. Roosevelt redefined things. Yeah. Well, yeah, if you want to, I mean, deep, you know, 00:23:04.800 --> 00:23:18.000 what it brings to my mind is another example, which I run into a lot lately. And I don't know if you 00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:26.240 want to get into this right now or not, but is the redefining of the word gender, which I feel 00:23:26.240 --> 00:23:36.480 like is, is it got to be like the example, at least right? Right. And what a man is what a woman is, 00:23:36.480 --> 00:23:46.800 we're going to probably, you know, I'm sorry, offend a lot of a lot of people maybe. Well, I don't 00:23:46.800 --> 00:23:51.280 know, but I mean, I would hope that people are open enough to recognize that it's not that we're 00:23:51.280 --> 00:24:02.960 opposed to people. Yeah, we're opposed to making shit up that is actually untrue. I'm in order 00:24:02.960 --> 00:24:13.200 to explain things that are natural. Yeah, absolutely. Gender is a spectrum. But it's not a, you can't 00:24:13.200 --> 00:24:20.640 be a different gender, right? You can be within your own as far as I'm concerned. You can be 00:24:20.640 --> 00:24:28.080 hyper male and you can be a feminine male, but you're still male. Right. So yeah, we're talking about 00:24:28.080 --> 00:24:36.240 like gender, like expression or gender traits or right, which is just to the degree that you express 00:24:36.240 --> 00:24:41.120 a particular gender, right? Which means that a gender is, I feel like implied in that as that 00:24:41.120 --> 00:24:50.240 gender is a binary. It is. Yeah. Yeah, you just have, you have a flavor or a 00:24:50.240 --> 00:25:04.880 yeah, I'm not incredibly masculine male and I don't wish to be. But I'm certainly not in any fashion, 00:25:04.880 --> 00:25:13.200 form or fashion, born in the wrong body. Yeah, that's a whole thing. I mean, it just comes fresh to my 00:25:13.200 --> 00:25:21.520 mind because I did not that long ago had a whole, I don't know, I don't know. Somebody got very upset 00:25:21.520 --> 00:25:32.560 with me sticking to my guns, I guess, on that. Yeah, and I got a big, long lecture about gender being 00:25:34.560 --> 00:25:39.040 just a, like a self-expression kind of thing. Gender just means how you express yourself, 00:25:39.040 --> 00:25:44.080 which is just the more I thought about that, the more I realized that it has, 00:25:44.080 --> 00:25:50.640 that does not, it just doesn't work with the way we've ever used language ever. Like when did they 00:25:50.640 --> 00:25:56.400 decide that that's what it means? And I'm not bringing this up in order to like rant about 00:25:56.400 --> 00:26:09.520 that exactly so much as, as the, just the tactic behind it, I guess. Right. Well, I think what happens 00:26:09.520 --> 00:26:21.840 is they, they expand the definition and then retreat the definition when confronted by certain 00:26:21.840 --> 00:26:32.240 inconvenient facts. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, yeah, I've read a lot about this topic, but at the, 00:26:32.240 --> 00:26:41.280 you know, I couldn't have a tattoo, tattoo conversation with, you know, somebody that's 00:26:41.280 --> 00:26:51.120 adamant about this in opposition. You know, yeah, I'm going to say it comes down to the gametes 00:26:51.120 --> 00:27:03.920 in your particular wiring, right? The, the chemical and the, really, the chemical elements within your 00:27:03.920 --> 00:27:14.560 physiology determine your gender or your sex or whatever it is, but your willingness, 00:27:14.560 --> 00:27:23.040 your insistence, rather, that you can cross the boundary because you want to, because you feel it, 00:27:23.040 --> 00:27:35.200 is patently ridiculous. Yeah. And it is causing us to really enter this truly post-truth society, 00:27:35.200 --> 00:27:42.160 where nothing can be defined with any confidence. No words have a meaning. 00:27:43.920 --> 00:27:54.160 If we just want them to change. Right. Yeah. Um, the, uh, have you come across the, 00:27:54.160 --> 00:28:05.920 the term, the mountain Bailey, um, the mountain Bailey, uh, tactic, I guess, or, or maybe it's, 00:28:05.920 --> 00:28:13.360 maybe it's, could even be called the mountain Bailey fallacy. No. I'm not sure. Yeah. Well, 00:28:13.360 --> 00:28:25.280 so, do you, it's, um, I came across it in, uh, YouTube video, ironically, by somebody who's very pro, 00:28:25.280 --> 00:28:32.160 trans rights or whatever, but that's besides the point. The mountain Bailey, I guess, tactic is, 00:28:32.160 --> 00:28:39.280 I'm not going to do a great job of describing it, but I didn't get harkens back to, um, 00:28:40.480 --> 00:28:47.360 like, sieges in castles, right? And the mott was the, well, I guess we, we, also known as 00:28:47.360 --> 00:28:54.720 the moat, which is the, the, like, more expansive part of the castle, right? And then the Bailey is, 00:28:54.720 --> 00:28:59.760 like, the part that you, the area that you retreat to when you're being attacked. Right. Right. So, 00:28:59.760 --> 00:29:06.160 it's the mott when, when you feel confident enough and strong enough to go take an aggressive stance 00:29:06.160 --> 00:29:09.840 and put your opinion out there, which is why you want to use these words that we've always 00:29:10.720 --> 00:29:19.440 that we've always had certain associations to. Right. We're like gender and, uh, whatever else, but, 00:29:19.440 --> 00:29:24.240 and then when your perspective gets attacked, you can just retreat and say, well, that's not what I mean. 00:29:24.240 --> 00:29:31.600 Well, I mean something else. Right. But we all kind of have already a meaning behind gender and behind 00:29:31.600 --> 00:29:37.520 racism that when, and it brings an association to us, right? So, you kind of make it a truth claim, 00:29:37.520 --> 00:29:42.720 but you can retreat back and say, well, it really means this when it's attacked, when it gets attacked. 00:29:42.720 --> 00:29:52.000 And again, it's a bad faith argument. It's, uh, it's, uh, it's a sleight of hand. So speak, I think. So, anyways, 00:29:52.000 --> 00:30:06.000 yeah. Well, I, um, I, I think that the willingness of a lot of people to participate in this 00:30:06.960 --> 00:30:17.600 also speaks to this ameliorability of, of, of truth. And really, they're disinterest in finding it. 00:30:17.600 --> 00:30:34.640 Yeah. They're not that interested in, um, some raising of the specter of, um, thought. 00:30:36.160 --> 00:30:43.920 It's really just a matter of, I think, winning and, and finding your, your people and having a community and, 00:30:43.920 --> 00:30:57.760 um, being happy, which I, I think, you know, growing up in an ultra-religious community, um, I was of the 00:30:57.760 --> 00:31:08.160 opinion that when I left there for other pastures, for, um, you know, more of an atheist perspective, 00:31:08.160 --> 00:31:19.680 I was going to encounter people who were less inclined, just simply, um, insular, um, 00:31:21.280 --> 00:31:32.000 groups that to be amongst their people. And I have found that I'm well between places, right? There's 00:31:32.000 --> 00:31:40.080 no place that I actually believe I fit because I don't want to be, um, in another church. Yeah. 00:31:40.080 --> 00:31:47.840 I, I, and I think that there's so many people who call themselves atheists and subscribe to these 00:31:47.840 --> 00:31:59.520 other faith-based. Yeah. Other dogmas. Yeah. Yeah. I have had, I had a similar, uh, experience when I 00:31:59.520 --> 00:32:09.040 was going through my, I guess, whole, uh, transition from being a religious person to being an atheist. 00:32:09.040 --> 00:32:16.560 And I was very fired up to find all these open-minded people of these atheists who are going to be my 00:32:16.560 --> 00:32:22.240 people who I'm going to be able to explore the world with and really ask the real questions. And 00:32:22.240 --> 00:32:33.280 found a lot of groups where people were very much kind of not one like, on a, their own dogmatic path. 00:32:33.280 --> 00:32:41.200 And if you were politically not, you know, basically extremely left, then you were not particularly 00:32:42.240 --> 00:32:47.920 welcome. Welcome. And they would have their own, just yeah, their own dogmas that they would sign up for. 00:32:47.920 --> 00:32:57.440 And it was a very, very, it's felt, you know, uncomfortably similar to being in a religion. Yeah. Yeah. 00:32:57.440 --> 00:33:09.600 So I think I've noticed that there are these non-religious, religious groups 00:33:10.560 --> 00:33:20.000 that unite themselves through this concept of a liturgy that they have ways of speaking and that they 00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:31.520 recite the liturgy in order to attract people who will respond in a similar way to their, 00:33:32.560 --> 00:33:41.280 their call. So they put out a call and then the response is, you know, echoes it in a very 00:33:41.280 --> 00:33:51.280 culty way that I would love to be able to have it might back in call an example of that call 00:33:51.280 --> 00:34:04.160 in response, but I don't. It is, it is frightening and when you encounter because you don't really have 00:34:04.160 --> 00:34:17.360 a way to win that argument. The, you know, the counterpoint to the response of an echo is a response 00:34:17.360 --> 00:34:25.520 of a call to arms. So you will then inspire the person to immediately recognize that you are 00:34:25.520 --> 00:34:33.600 not of their people and that you are now going to turn into an adversary who we're going to 00:34:33.600 --> 00:34:45.920 treat in the most passive-aggressive dismissive way possible to, you know, ostracize and you know, 00:34:47.120 --> 00:34:55.920 eliminate. I had one of the more telling experiences at a gathering of democratic 00:34:55.920 --> 00:35:08.320 people at a house party last summer, leading up to the elections we were all delegates to the 00:35:08.320 --> 00:35:19.520 democratic convention and I stepped into a circle of people that I wanted to talk with and, you 00:35:19.520 --> 00:35:27.120 know, they were nice until they realized, hmm, I didn't just respond the way that they expected me to 00:35:27.120 --> 00:35:36.320 and then they turned on me. It was like five on one and it ended up that one person told me 00:35:37.760 --> 00:35:45.520 that she hopes that she never ever sees me again and it was really not because I was being a 00:35:45.520 --> 00:35:53.280 mean and offensive. It was because I didn't echo the appropriate call or response to her call. 00:35:57.440 --> 00:36:08.960 Yeah, well, and just for the record, I live in Ilan Omar's district and it is incredibly aligned 00:36:08.960 --> 00:36:21.840 to Ilan Omar. Her mindset resonates with 80 percent of the, 80 percent of the people in this district 00:36:22.800 --> 00:36:32.000 and I'm playing a little battle. So you're not quite on that train, huh? I'm not on that train. 00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:39.440 I'm not even on that station. Yeah. Yeah, no, I haven't seen much of Ilan Omar, but 00:36:39.440 --> 00:36:49.600 everything I have seen over a severely disliked so far. Yeah. But that's just me. I don't know. 00:36:49.600 --> 00:36:59.120 I don't believe that I could ever align with the Republicans again because there's way too many 00:36:59.120 --> 00:37:07.520 differences in my thinking. But I find that I'm between parties too. Maybe that's only because I live 00:37:07.520 --> 00:37:17.840 in her district and especially in the Northeast Minneapolis area. This is the epicenter of that stuff. 00:37:19.040 --> 00:37:22.240 If I were to live elsewhere, I'd probably feel a lot more welcome. 00:37:22.240 --> 00:37:32.400 So can I ask you about the famous apple cider attack? Not especially. Apple cider vinegar attack? 00:37:32.400 --> 00:37:39.200 Oh, apple cider vinegar attack. Yeah, I mean, if it was the real attack, you should have used 00:37:39.200 --> 00:37:44.080 some caustic material. So yeah, I wasn't going to ask you what you felt about that because 00:37:45.040 --> 00:37:51.280 yeah. So you, I think in our first recording, you mentioned your favorite conspiracy. 00:37:51.280 --> 00:37:55.680 Conspiracy. You know, right? Which is that Trump staged the stream, I guess? 00:37:55.680 --> 00:37:59.600 Yeah, not just the last shooting. I should think all three, all three, all three, so far. 00:37:59.600 --> 00:38:05.920 Okay. My mind is I'm so convinced that that was staged with Ilan Omar. 00:38:05.920 --> 00:38:10.640 Well, right. I mean, if you're just going to do vinegar, that's kind of, I don't think a person 00:38:10.640 --> 00:38:16.320 could be that crazy to do that for fun or, you know, for a purpose rather than a fun. 00:38:16.320 --> 00:38:27.360 That's incredibly misaligned, brain. And you're just doing it so that you don't really go to jail. 00:38:27.360 --> 00:38:33.520 You know, you had nothing worse to do than go to jail and get fed for however three months. 00:38:35.040 --> 00:38:41.280 But, you know, I think if it were real, yeah, I'm on your, I'm on board with you. I think it easily could have been 00:38:41.280 --> 00:38:50.880 staged. Well, I'm not a thing. It is, but it's so weird. A syringe. And 00:38:50.880 --> 00:38:55.920 yeah, the apple cider vinegar. I mean, who would have done both either of those things? 00:38:55.920 --> 00:38:59.920 Granted, you couldn't get a sport gun in there because it's a gun. 00:39:01.760 --> 00:39:07.840 But, if you're going to do it, you know, why don't you use, why don't you use, um, you know, 00:39:07.840 --> 00:39:15.040 arsenic or, or a battery acid or something, you know. No. So for me, like, 00:39:15.040 --> 00:39:22.880 even I know that, you know, before I heard anything about it, I just saw the, the video, the report. 00:39:22.880 --> 00:39:27.520 There was, and I didn't hear anything about Trump's saying it was staged or anything like that. 00:39:27.520 --> 00:39:32.720 Did Trump say it was staged? Yeah. I don't believe his ass. No matter what he says, it's a lie. 00:39:32.720 --> 00:39:37.360 Well, I feel like some people are just pushing back on the idea that it was staged just because Trump 00:39:37.360 --> 00:39:45.120 said it. But I don't know. But, but I'm only pushing back on Trump. Okay, well, but my point is, 00:39:45.120 --> 00:39:51.120 I was not influenced by anybody else's opinion. I saw the footage of this and I immediately 00:39:52.080 --> 00:39:58.640 told myself that is fake. That is so fake. None of that, that, that seems so contrived for the whole thing. 00:39:58.640 --> 00:40:09.440 I think my main thing is the, the reaction by her, like, her staff and her bodyguard, 00:40:09.440 --> 00:40:18.080 like this whole kind of, to me, very contrived look, like, argument back and forth of what we have 00:40:18.080 --> 00:40:23.840 to get you out of here. And she's like, no, I'm too strong and too much of a strong independent 00:40:23.840 --> 00:40:27.600 woman to do that. We're going to keep it going. And then letting that happen, like, I just don't think, 00:40:27.600 --> 00:40:34.400 I think in other as, like, situations like that, they, they brush the person out of there and they 00:40:34.400 --> 00:40:38.240 clear the room. Well, right. But she's not paying for real secret service. I don't think so. 00:40:38.240 --> 00:40:42.080 I mean, but nobody, the policy, it just doesn't make any sense to me that the policy would be that we 00:40:42.080 --> 00:40:47.680 let anybody in there because you don't know what just got into the air, right? It could be some, 00:40:48.080 --> 00:40:54.080 incredibly infectious, whatever it could be, anything. And it just, just continue on with the 00:40:54.080 --> 00:40:59.200 speech. Well, I think the argument against that would be that not everyone makes the right decision. 00:40:59.200 --> 00:41:09.040 Not, not, not all rapid response groups do exactly. The textbook response should be. 00:41:09.760 --> 00:41:21.120 And, you know, we've had this, this, this, this, this virus, this rat virus boat. Is it a prime example 00:41:21.120 --> 00:41:28.320 of that? We've got, if you, there's this boat that was doing a trans-world flight, a flight, listen to me. 00:41:28.320 --> 00:41:35.200 Yeah, well, the boat was floating. No, they were, they were, wait, trans navigating the world. 00:41:36.640 --> 00:41:48.720 And spent some time down in Australia. And they just, so some couple got off the boat or that they had 00:41:48.720 --> 00:41:55.440 maybe gotten on the boat, having been exposed to this rat virus. And so three people died in the boat. 00:41:55.440 --> 00:42:06.160 But they've had several people now be declared ready to travel, you know, from the boat. 00:42:07.120 --> 00:42:16.480 Only to find that in the air, they were having, you know, seizures or vomiting and they were infected. 00:42:16.480 --> 00:42:27.280 But they were allowed the CDC or whatever group allowed them to disembark. So, okay. Yeah, it happens a lot 00:42:27.280 --> 00:42:32.240 where people don't make the right choice. And they, you know, even though they're supposed to be 00:42:32.240 --> 00:42:40.480 professionals, they, they fuck it up. All right. Fine. Well, and then there's the, so I've heard, and this 00:42:40.480 --> 00:42:45.200 might just, I don't know if this is Republican, like propaganda or what, I haven't vetted this, but I've 00:42:45.200 --> 00:42:51.600 seen on social media that apparently the guy who squirted her with the syringe actually do her, 00:42:51.600 --> 00:42:57.680 and like had ties to her and his super, super very liberal kids and stuff. So again, I still got to 00:42:57.680 --> 00:43:03.600 check that out and see if that's actually real. Yeah, but regardless, okay, fine. Anyway, I got that 00:43:03.600 --> 00:43:12.080 out of there. Just, um, just a bit of that up to me. Sure. But again, well, okay, yeah. So, no, I brought 00:43:12.080 --> 00:43:20.800 that up once before trying to philosophy. And somebody said, somebody objected to my conspiracy theory 00:43:20.800 --> 00:43:25.600 by saying, well, they're gonna, like, it's, but she knows they would, she would know that that would 00:43:25.600 --> 00:43:31.760 get out there that people would find out that it's vinegar, right? And so why would she do that? 00:43:31.760 --> 00:43:40.480 She's just setting herself up for, right, to be exposed later. And I guess my response to that would be, 00:43:40.480 --> 00:43:49.360 I worked on you. I mean, like, people don't follow up with this stuff that much. So all you gotta do, 00:43:49.360 --> 00:43:54.160 you gotta get that initial impression and then people make up their minds about it and they move on. 00:43:54.880 --> 00:44:00.640 And so if somebody's looking for clout, I just don't think that most of the constituents are out there 00:44:00.640 --> 00:44:07.360 like following up on this or really caring, right? You know, so I mean, it would work, I think, I think it 00:44:07.360 --> 00:44:16.400 did. It does. It does work. You're right. And I think you've also run, you brought up another 00:44:16.400 --> 00:44:24.560 bad faith argument, though, of me having to imagine someone else's motives. And since maybe I'm 00:44:24.560 --> 00:44:30.640 not good enough at imagining a motive that, in fact, the motive must have been pure. I don't know 00:44:30.640 --> 00:44:40.240 that that should be the default. I think that it only is the default. Well, the default is whatever 00:44:40.240 --> 00:44:50.000 you give as your benefit of the doubt. So if your benefit of the doubt is positive, then you're going to 00:44:51.600 --> 00:45:00.960 default to saying, it's plausible. And I can't believe it. I might believe it. If you benefit of the 00:45:00.960 --> 00:45:08.160 doubt is negative, then you're going to err on the side of that error. You're going to side on 00:45:08.160 --> 00:45:17.520 the negative and try to poke holes. But it really comes down to your preponderance or your predisposition 00:45:17.520 --> 00:45:29.520 rather than my preponderance toward the topic at hand. And are you an advocate or are you a nace error? 00:45:29.520 --> 00:45:38.160 Yeah. Right. I'm reminded a little bit of this audiobook. And I was trying to find this audiobook 00:45:38.160 --> 00:45:41.760 the other day because I can't remember the name of it, but I listened to this. It was really, 00:45:42.320 --> 00:45:47.600 I got it. I listened to it on Audible, the app, but it wasn't really an audiobook. It was more of a 00:45:47.600 --> 00:45:57.280 lecture series by Peter Pagogian, who's a fantastic philosopher and professor of something smart. 00:45:57.280 --> 00:46:04.960 I can't remember exactly. But he was getting this lecture on how just I guess, like I guess, 00:46:04.960 --> 00:46:14.160 and I got to find it because it's worth listening to. Basically, it was on how people, I guess, reason, 00:46:14.160 --> 00:46:21.760 like our reasoning patterns as human beings and our flaws that we're susceptible to, basically, 00:46:21.760 --> 00:46:25.440 right? And so how to look out for that. It was the whole idea behind listening to this lecture 00:46:25.440 --> 00:46:35.280 series is how to look out for your own reasoning traps and overcome them. And one of the things I 00:46:35.280 --> 00:46:42.800 got out of that, which I've cared with me ever since, it was just, a lot of it depends on where you 00:46:42.800 --> 00:46:52.160 invest your ego, because we all do have, as human beings, we all have an ego. We're going to invest 00:46:52.160 --> 00:46:57.120 our ego in something like we're not going to not, like we're not going to do rid of our ego and we 00:46:57.120 --> 00:47:03.280 shouldn't. It's a useful thing, but you got to learn how to, it was like a little hack or trick about 00:47:03.280 --> 00:47:13.840 where you, where you assign that ego, right? What you pride yourself in because a lot of us pride 00:47:13.840 --> 00:47:21.200 ourselves in our particular opinion or our religious beliefs or political beliefs or what, 00:47:21.200 --> 00:47:27.040 essentially, we'll, like, what intellectual tribe we decide to be a part of, right? We've got to be 00:47:27.040 --> 00:47:33.280 right. We invest our ego in being right about a particular thing. So anytime it's challenged, 00:47:33.280 --> 00:47:43.760 it's an attack on us, on our identity, on our ego. Whereas what he was saying was to, rather, 00:47:43.760 --> 00:47:51.920 you should invest your ego in the kind of reason that you are, and in being an open-minded person who 00:47:51.920 --> 00:47:58.880 wants to learn more and change and develop over time, right? So then when I, particular opinions or ideas 00:47:58.880 --> 00:48:05.360 get challenged, it's an opportunity, not an attack, to grow, right? And it's a way to prove, it's an 00:48:05.360 --> 00:48:14.960 opportunity to prove, to validate your ego as a growing, developing person. Right. And I think since the 00:48:14.960 --> 00:48:34.240 orthodoxy of each political extreme is unwilling to really entertain ideas that are in any way 00:48:34.240 --> 00:48:48.800 expansive, right? They are not trying to do what you're suggesting, and learn, and grow, 00:48:48.800 --> 00:48:56.560 and have a better idea, because they already think that they have the truth, not a version of the 00:48:56.560 --> 00:49:06.560 truth, or a modicum of the truth. But I would suggest that that really underscores the point that 00:49:06.560 --> 00:49:21.440 progressiveism is not liberal. Progressivism is another form of conservatism. And they are using their 00:49:22.720 --> 00:49:33.200 the dogmatic rigidity to enforce the compliance amongst their faithful. And there's no longer 00:49:33.200 --> 00:49:43.280 following the principles that you are underscoring of trying to become a better 00:49:43.280 --> 00:49:53.440 reasoner, a better listener, a better understander. It is not that. It is trying to criticize anything that 00:49:53.440 --> 00:50:02.160 is blocking at the door, and turn it away. And because we've already got the truth, we don't need 00:50:02.160 --> 00:50:08.320 to challenge our thinking. And obviously if I ended up challenging my thinking, where would I be? 00:50:08.320 --> 00:50:15.760 I would have no community. I would have no standing. And of course, I have invested everything in that 00:50:15.760 --> 00:50:24.000 community so far. Right, right, right, exactly. So do you have off the top of your head, do you have 00:50:24.000 --> 00:50:38.000 like a definition of a conservatism versus liberalism? Oh, well, I do actually have a whole list. 00:50:38.000 --> 00:50:43.840 That is in the other hand. A whole list. Yeah, it doesn't sound like a definition. It's not a 00:50:43.840 --> 00:50:52.000 definition. No, it's a list of different traits and differences. Yeah. But I guess if push comes 00:50:52.000 --> 00:51:03.040 to shove, a conservative is a person who is unwilling to bend or adjust thinking based on the 00:51:04.240 --> 00:51:12.960 information that being presented, the influx ability, the attractability of that mindset, I think, 00:51:12.960 --> 00:51:28.080 is very emblematic of both the extremes of MAGA and of progressivism. Yeah. And the funny thing 00:51:28.080 --> 00:51:39.040 is, it's funny and not funny at the same time, is that anything that is considered not progressive 00:51:39.040 --> 00:51:47.680 immediately becomes MAGA to the progressive. Yeah, right. And so I don't have a lot of exposure 00:51:47.680 --> 00:51:57.920 to the opposite. Most of my family is MAGA, but they don't feel the same. They don't feel like a 00:51:57.920 --> 00:52:10.000 person who is expressing opinions that I have is progressive, right? They don't think I'm progressive. 00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:18.320 They just know that I'm not MAGA, right? It's the opposite. It's not the same extreme. And so 00:52:19.040 --> 00:52:29.360 it feels like the progressive left needs to, they've lost all of their nuance. They have lost all of 00:52:29.360 --> 00:52:43.040 their ability to discern between gradations of opinion. It's funny. So it kind of makes me think 00:52:43.040 --> 00:52:53.360 of how I think often about how ironic it is that Soviet Russia for all their, or there's other 00:52:53.360 --> 00:53:02.800 examples too, like North Korea and communist China and whatever, all their criticism of religion, 00:53:02.800 --> 00:53:14.480 how exactly some of them are in religion, right? Incorporating the same patterns of thinking. 00:53:14.480 --> 00:53:23.520 And iconography, iconography, you know, patterns and all of that. The whole thing, all of the relevant 00:53:23.520 --> 00:53:29.840 parts, so the recognizable parts at the same time in system that they're the complete opposite, 00:53:30.720 --> 00:53:37.520 which is, that's funny. It's just funny. It kind of does make me think a little bit of like the 00:53:37.520 --> 00:53:47.040 woke left versus like the MAGA extreme, right? Just swap out different, different claims, 00:53:47.040 --> 00:53:54.240 different specifics. You've got the same general pattern, right? It's weird. Right? Yeah. 00:53:55.760 --> 00:54:09.200 But, right. So, you know, I left the right. And I thought, wow, I'm going to find open-minded people. 00:54:09.200 --> 00:54:18.960 Yeah, I have. However, I have found an astounding number of people who have 00:54:21.760 --> 00:54:33.360 an intractable, immovable perspective. And it's hard to talk. 00:54:33.360 --> 00:54:50.080 Hard to make a reasonable argument with them, a philosophical argument. And so I think the real 00:54:50.320 --> 00:55:07.520 life skill would be to simply not talk about philosophy amongst the people who are intractable. 00:55:07.520 --> 00:55:17.920 And just get along with them. Work with them, talk about the weather, talk about the twins, 00:55:19.360 --> 00:55:28.560 Minnesota twins, that is. Talk about, as opposed to twins. I mean, if our listeners may not 00:55:28.560 --> 00:55:46.640 recognize that spaceball team. And so, you know, just have life experiences that are 00:55:48.240 --> 00:56:01.440 unencumbered by philosophy. It is unfulfilling for a lot of people, but it is manageable. 00:56:01.440 --> 00:56:13.920 Yeah. I need to learn how to manage who I like to discern, who I like talk to about 00:56:13.920 --> 00:56:23.920 deeper stuff, deeper stuff, and who not to. And it sounds maybe like aloof and arrogant to say 00:56:23.920 --> 00:56:30.720 things like that, like I want to be, you know, equal opportunity, like anybody can talk to anybody 00:56:30.720 --> 00:56:36.640 about the stuff. Yeah. Well, you can tell though, the telltale signs are looking away. 00:56:38.080 --> 00:56:44.480 It's that looking away, then you know you lost them. Well, there's that. That indicates to me 00:56:44.480 --> 00:56:49.600 just somebody who's disinterested and doesn't want to talk about it. But there are those who really, 00:56:49.600 --> 00:56:57.520 like, really want to talk about it. And I want to give them a chance. But it's just not going to work. 00:57:01.120 --> 00:57:11.520 It's a little mean. Well, I mean, I think that most of the people you speak to who are like that are 00:57:11.520 --> 00:57:21.520 unwilling, not unable. They were, you know, they were, they are able, they're able to comprehend 00:57:21.520 --> 00:57:28.320 the ideas. That's true. They're just not willing to confront those ideas. Right. I agree with you. I 00:57:28.320 --> 00:57:38.320 wouldn't, I wouldn't um, uh, describe it in most cases to like intelligence, so much as like their 00:57:38.320 --> 00:57:46.880 attitude. Yeah. Right. So I agree with that. But I got to learn to discern what, yeah, I guess 00:57:46.880 --> 00:57:56.320 who's got the right attitude forward or not. I know. Well, it would be great to know if, you know, 00:57:56.320 --> 00:58:03.600 everybody could wear their own badge, right? You know, we have our own arm bands for our philosophy. 00:58:03.600 --> 00:58:09.520 Well, like, I'm a reasonable person versus a, you know, you'd have to wear the star of David. Oh, yeah. 00:58:09.520 --> 00:58:18.400 Okay. Sure. Oh, yeah. Just try that sometime. Yeah. You should try that sometime. Yeah. I don't know 00:58:18.400 --> 00:58:30.720 what I would wear. I don't know. I have to come up with one for you. Yeah. But yeah. Um, so 00:58:30.720 --> 00:58:38.160 we're probably coming on time here pretty soon. But yeah. I, um, used to talk on the phone a lot with 00:58:38.160 --> 00:58:48.320 this guy. We were friends from one of my, uh, carpentry trade programs that I went to. And he 00:58:48.320 --> 00:58:54.800 used, we would talk on the phone a lot. And he became like gradually through our friendship more and 00:58:54.800 --> 00:59:01.600 more conservative Christian over time until I got to a point where it was just a little bit hard 00:59:01.600 --> 00:59:10.240 to even talk to him. But he gets on trying to insist. He really tried to persuade me at a certain point 00:59:10.240 --> 00:59:16.800 to, you know, just accept that I'm a conservative, like just call yourself a conservative. A lot of my 00:59:16.800 --> 00:59:24.560 opinions were the same as is in terms of, um, you know, uh, I don't know, economy or, um, the 00:59:24.560 --> 00:59:29.120 trans things or whatever that we were talking about before. There's other ones too. And is we, 00:59:29.120 --> 00:59:36.800 we had a lot of common ground. Yeah. Um, so he's just like, dude, you, we agree enough, at least in 00:59:36.800 --> 00:59:41.600 his mind. I don't think we agree as much as he thought. Yeah. Then in his mind, we agree enough, 00:59:41.600 --> 00:59:46.080 why don't you just call yourself a conservative? Like come over to the table like there's a seat right 00:59:46.080 --> 00:59:53.440 next to you. He didn't use, uh, for ideology like that. And I would ask him, what do you mean? Like, 00:59:53.440 --> 00:59:58.160 what is a conservative to you? Like I kept trying to pin in down a definition. And I guess to him, 00:59:58.160 --> 01:00:05.760 it was just a conservative is just like, um, part of a club. Like we're one of the guys. Basically, 01:00:05.760 --> 01:00:12.160 what it's not, it really felt like, uh, it really did seem to me like it was just, he wanted to be 01:00:12.160 --> 01:00:17.120 part of a group. Okay. And he chose Christian conservativeism. And he wanted me to be part of his 01:00:17.120 --> 01:00:23.440 group. Okay. And I did really didn't know what a conservative was versus a liberal. So I wasn't 01:00:23.440 --> 01:00:30.880 going to put a label on myself. Anyway, eventually I came across a definition of conservative and liberal 01:00:30.880 --> 01:00:35.040 that made sense to me, which was similar to what you were saying. A conservative somebody who sticks to 01:00:36.640 --> 01:00:44.400 past like ideas, you know, established ideas like, this is how we do things. And kind of a rigid. 01:00:44.400 --> 01:00:54.320 Yeah. It's so hard for me for some reason when we actually start to recording. It's so hard for me 01:00:54.320 --> 01:01:01.120 to come up with the words I want. But I think they'd be idea. Whereas, whereas a liberal is an 01:01:01.120 --> 01:01:08.880 innovator and somebody who tries to find new, like, tries to improve upon old ideas and find new and 01:01:08.880 --> 01:01:17.200 improved ways of doing things. Which is why I definitely, by that definition, definitely fall 01:01:17.200 --> 01:01:22.800 in the camp of a liberal because I believe in innovation always. That doesn't mean casting off old 01:01:22.800 --> 01:01:28.800 ideas because they're old. No. It means improving upon things. And when old ideas work, you should keep 01:01:28.800 --> 01:01:38.880 them, but innovate when you can. And I would say I am as liberal as anything. Probably not as 01:01:38.880 --> 01:01:44.320 liberal as you can get. But see, that's a weird thing, right? Because liberal itself is, you know, 01:01:44.320 --> 01:01:54.400 being able to accept a whole parcel of ideas and incorporate them into a philosophy or a life 01:01:57.520 --> 01:02:13.200 direction and that is immense. But it also requires you to assume the groups of people who don't 01:02:13.200 --> 01:02:21.360 subscribe to those inclusive or expansive ideas. And you have to identify the people who are 01:02:24.080 --> 01:02:31.440 in your way. The people who are trying, they're damnedest, to insist that there is one way or the 01:02:31.440 --> 01:02:43.520 highway. And it's those people who have, you know, set up their little collates stand on the side 01:02:43.520 --> 01:02:53.440 of the highway and are just inviting all, you know, all pastors by to drink it. Yeah, drink my 01:02:53.440 --> 01:03:04.800 fucking fulite. No, my fulite's better. And I'm sorry, it's just a very exclusive group. And the 01:03:04.800 --> 01:03:14.880 concept, you know, we see on mon signs all over the place would suggest that, you know, when they say 01:03:14.880 --> 01:03:25.600 all people are welcome, they really only mean all of my people are welcome. Yeah, they don't mean, 01:03:25.600 --> 01:03:36.160 oh, y'all, because y'all ain't welcome. Interesting. Yeah, it's so funny. The the the the the 01:03:36.160 --> 01:03:44.960 the disparity between how they how they present themselves versus like they actually like act. 01:03:44.960 --> 01:03:56.240 Yeah, it's just a polar opposite. Yeah, so I think the lesson here, if there can be one, yes, 01:03:56.240 --> 01:04:05.920 be open-minded. And when you're open-minded, you're going to be able to find a path 01:04:06.480 --> 01:04:20.320 that is way more inclusive and accepting and useful to more people than if you simply want to enforce 01:04:20.320 --> 01:04:32.160 compliance to your own to A mindset. Yeah. Right, sure. I also think though that 01:04:33.280 --> 01:04:41.680 wants to drag it on the conversation on longer, but I don't know. So there's a little in my head, 01:04:41.680 --> 01:04:45.680 a little bit of a caveat to this, just being inclusive of ideas. The ideas have to 01:04:45.680 --> 01:04:52.720 have to earn your respect to it. I didn't mean inclusive ideas. Okay. I mean, inclusive of people. 01:04:52.720 --> 01:05:00.960 Okay. You know, and help them come into the tent, right? Yeah. Help them 01:05:02.560 --> 01:05:11.920 use your better reasoning to incorporate into their own reasoning to help build a better 01:05:11.920 --> 01:05:22.320 perspective. Yeah. Not dilute the perspective, but create a better, more expansive and in fact, 01:05:23.920 --> 01:05:34.880 true, yeah, perspective. Absolutely. Yeah. I agree with that. And that's that agreement. I think 01:05:34.880 --> 01:05:46.480 that's a wrap. I, and Ben, are incredibly grateful for your rapt attention and would welcome to hear any 01:05:47.840 --> 01:05:57.680 of your pointed criticisms. But you have to come to Drunken Philosophy to do that. So go to the 01:05:57.680 --> 01:06:02.080 meetup and look up Drunken Philosophy in Minneapolis. We'll hope to see you at one of our 01:06:02.080 --> 01:06:08.720 several gatherings in the Twin Cities. Thank you so much. Thanks.