Living On Common Ground
Does it feel like every part of your life is divided? Every scenario? Every environment? Your church, your school, your work, your friends. Left, right. Conservative, liberal. Religious, secular. From parenting styles to school choice, denominational choice to governing preference, it seems you're always being asked to take a side.
This is a conversation between a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who happen to be great friends. Welcome to Living on Common Ground.
Living On Common Ground
Building vs. Tearing Down: A Conversation on Truth
Dive into a fascinating exploration of applied postmodernism with hosts who bring contrasting worldviews to the conversation. This episode tackles the provocative idea that selectively applying postmodern principles amounts to "cheating" in philosophical discourse.
The conversation begins by unpacking postmodernism itself – a philosophical approach questioning whether objective reality can truly be known. While the hosts acknowledge value in considering multiple perspectives, they challenge the increasingly common practice of applying relativistic thinking only when convenient. Through engaging examples and thoughtful analysis, they examine how terms like "privilege" and "lived experience" have entered everyday language since 2015, often deployed inconsistently.
A highlight of the discussion centers around the "Mott and Bailey" fallacy – when someone makes a controversial claim but retreats to more defensible territory when challenged. This rhetorical tactic appears frequently in discussions about critical theory, allowing people to make broad statements but avoid defending them by shifting to easier positions.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when exploring morality. Can we truly speak of "good" and "bad" in a relativistic framework? One host suggests replacing these binary concepts with "constructive" versus "destructive" or whether actions "build up" or "tear down" others. Through examples ranging from helping a friend with unhealthy eating habits to appropriate contexts for profanity, they demonstrate how nuance matters in ethical considerations.
Whatever your philosophical leanings, you'll appreciate the hosts' commitment to intellectual honesty and their final agreement that consistency matters. Whether embracing or rejecting postmodernism, applying principles selectively undermines the integrity of any worldview. Subscribe now for more thought-provoking conversations that bridge divides and find common ground.
Does it feel like every part of your life is divided, every scenario, every environment, your church, your school, your work, your friends, left right, conservative, liberal, religious, secular? It seems you always have to take a side. This is a conversation between a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who happen to be great friends. Welcome to Living on Common Ground. Do you think if we met today we would still be friends?
Speaker 2:I don't know, but we're friends now.
Speaker 4:A mob is no less a mob because they are with you, man. So what? We won a few games and y'all fools think that's something. Man, that ain't nothing, y'all. And you know what else? We ain't nothing either. Yeah, we came together in camp, cool. But then we're right back here and the world tells us that they don't want us to be together. We fall apart like we ain't a damn bit of nothing, man.
Speaker 2:How you doing.
Speaker 3:I'm good. Are we recording?
Speaker 2:Krista's going to hit you. Awesome. Yeah, you deserve it, though. Probably. Usually it's like when you deserve it, though probably Usually. It's like when you're a kid and you get in trouble for something and then it turns out you didn't actually do what you got in trouble for, and then your parents say, well, you probably got away with something else.
Speaker 3:That's very good. Yeah, that's good. I don't know that I've ever used that. Oh, that was used against me. I like that Because.
Speaker 2:I never actually did anything wrong, obviously, and so every time I got in trouble it was an error. Uh-huh, all right. So this week, what I want to talk about is, in the list of topics that we're working from, you had written that applied postmodernism is cheating, uh-huh, okay. Now I wrote next to that one. Tell me more.
Speaker 2:All right, because I'm familiar with postmodernism, but the term, the phrase applied postmodernism was actually one that was relatively, uh, new to me. I wasn't sure exactly what that was, and so what I did is I looked, I looked, I typed in applied postmodernism and I immediately went to jordan peterson, okay, and checked out, like so this was not just a random google search.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Unlike most of my research for the podcast. Uh-huh, what this was was I've it, it, it. It had the sound of Jordan Peterson to me, just the phrase applied postmodernism and so I went and I looked up what he had to say, and then, of course, he has other things to say that relate to applied postmodernism. Yeah, that I think that we can touch on. I'll let you drive that conversation and see what we touch on. But what is applied postmodernism and why would you say it's cheating?
Speaker 3:Okay, so here's my argument, and I am not the this conversation has been going on for forever. Actually you can. You could say this conversation has been going on, you know, for decades and decades and decades.
Speaker 3:Um, well, since philosophy began to discuss post-modernism yeah yeah, um, there there's a French school of philosophy that talked about this quite a bit back in the 50s and 60s, and it's been going on for a long time here. Here's why I say applied post-modernism is cheating. I don't have a whole lot of problem with the act, with actual post-modernism. Um, do we need to define post-modernism? Well, it's really difficult to define. That is part of. The issue is that it almost defies definition, um, but essentially it's a collection of of um theories, um, or philosophies that that posits that um, no matter what I say, somebody's going to argue with me, so that's fine. Um, that that's not actually what it means do you want the oxford dictionary?
Speaker 2:yeah, go ahead and give me that all right, it's a late 20th century style and and concept the arts, architecture and criticism. That represents a departure from modernism. Yeah, that's always very helpful when you use the word to define it.
Speaker 3:And has I mean it's a reaction to modernism.
Speaker 2:Okay, great, that's clear, that clears that right up.
Speaker 3:Well, I can tell you how they describe modernism.
Speaker 2:Well, it, has at its heart, yeah, modernism. Well, it has at its heart and I think this is kind of what at least my understanding of the criticism of postmodernism lies here is that at its heart, it's a general distrust of grand theories and ideologies, as well as a problematic relationship with any notion of art, art, okay, okay.
Speaker 3:so modernism can kind of be defined as the idea that things can be known, that there are things that can be known. Yes, there are. There are principles that you can. You can pick up a rock and say this is a rock, it is hard, it is gray and there are ways, epistemological ways, of knowing a thing. It rests on the concept that objective reality does exist and can be measured right.
Speaker 2:So as a, as a philosophy, because I think that's we're not talking about postmodern art and stuff like that no what we're talking about here is um the the philosophy, postmodernism right, which then um it's a reaction to the modernist's emphasis on objective truth, reason and universal narratives Right.
Speaker 3:So it is a reaction to, and this is what always happens. Everything's always a reaction to something that exists right now A critical response to Okay, yeah that's right. So it is. It's a critical response to the idea of knowing, to the idea of knowing. So it'll say things like um, it will. It will posit ideas like you're. You say that you know x, but really you're just experiencing something and you don't have any idea if that experience is really related to some objective reality of x.
Speaker 3:So you're a post-modernist so this is why I say I don't actually have a whole lot of problem with postmodernism as, uh, as a um, as a subject in and of itself, okay, um, so a lot of the terms that we have, um, that are kind of in our common vernacular now that started showing up sometime in the in around 2015.
Speaker 3:That's important, okay, um. And then now we're just kind of part of common vernacular. Things like um, things like privilege, that term and the way that it's used, things like, uh, well, that's more applied post-modernism, but things like, um, lived experience. People started talking about my lived experience, right, people started talking about my truth. My truth is right different maybe than your truth, right?
Speaker 3:all of these things kind of work their way into the language and so people who are not in the academy, they start using this in the way that they think is accurate and, frankly, the way that language works. If you're using it and someone else kind of understands what you're saying, then it is being used accurately because language is a method of communication between between humans but can I give?
Speaker 2:can I give a quick example of uh, when you use the word privilege, I think, how it's shifted where it used to be. It used to be kind of a pot like, in a positive way, like you have privileges that should be something that you now it's often has. It carries a negative connotation that's right as a result of applied post-modernism I would call it applied post-modernism.
Speaker 2:Yes, so like connotation as a result of applied postmodernism. I would call it applied postmodernism. Yes, okay, so like, for example, as a gift and I didn't quite know how to receive it, but I said thank you, that's a good way to receive a gift.
Speaker 2:Yeah, someone gave me a book that was called Understanding your White Privilege. Mm-hmm, thank you, your white privilege, thank you, yeah. And so, um, and it sat on my bookshelf. I, I again, it wasn't like I wasn't interested in reading it, but I've got so many books that I have to read that. Yeah, it has to go down to the bottom and work its way up. Anyway, as we were moving offices this week it was last week one of the guys that was helping move found that book on my shelf and he has borrowed it and he wants to read it and I told him that'd be great and he can summarize it for me. But anyway, is that kind of what you're talking about?
Speaker 3:Yes, so all of the different types of privileges. So when we were young someone might have referred to the privileged, and in common vernacular we knew what that meant. Now again someone's going to argue with me because they're going to say well, in the academy, such and such was talking about privilege in 1992, because Kimberly Crenshaw was publishing articles about intersectionality and privilege and all that kind of stuff back in the 90s. And that's true. But in common vernacular we would have talked about the privileged If I said like they're privileged what do I mean?
Speaker 2:What I love is the face that you just made when you said that that nobody got to see except me.
Speaker 3:It meant that I was talking about somebody who was like a trust fund baby. Right, that's what we meant. We said the privileged.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it definitely did not include me. Okay, can I just say that often when we talk about the privileged, well, it used to not mean me, but now it's becoming a way of referring to ourselves in a self-deprecating way sometimes. That's right.
Speaker 3:So here's applied, so okay. So let me back up for a second.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, that's okay, this is a good conversation. So again, postmodernism itself. I don't have a lot of problem with Helen Pluckrose and James.
Speaker 3:Lindsay wrote a book called Cynical Theories. That's a play on the term critical theories. Helen Pluckrose is great on this. She's very even about any kind of criticisms. She's very well-researched. James Lindsay actually is very good on it as well. But I like Helen Pluck, she's very well researched. James Lindsay actually is very good on it as well. But I like Helen Pluckrose's takes on this and one of the things she talks about is how the actual postmodernists never really got very far and they certainly didn't break out of the academy, partly because most people couldn't understand what the crap they were talking about. They were just unintelligible in there. And that's part of postmodernism. It's all wrapped up in there that it should be unintelligible. Because part of the issue is I don't know from what perspective I would actually see, whether my perspective is a real perspective or not. I've never been outside of my perspective. I've never seen with anybody's eyes except for mine.
Speaker 2:I feel like I've heard you give this argument before, right.
Speaker 3:So it is unintelligible. That is true, and also I don't see how I can escape it as a real thing. I don't have any problem with it. Here's the other thing that I see, though. The logical conclusion of that is that it's even across everyone. Everyone gets an exact value of one of one. If one is to say you can't tell me how I should feel about this experience, that I had because that's my lived experience.
Speaker 3:That's true. Also, you can't tell me about my experience, because that's my lived experience. You literally don't know if, under postmodern thought, you literally don't know if I am moving through the world in a way that every single person around me that sees me thinks is a completely calm, normal way of moving around the world, and yet I am under the greatest torment and misery that any human has ever experienced. You would have no way of knowing that under a postmodern thought. Right, because you don't experience the internal experience. You have to believe what I say is my experience, right, just like I have to believe what your experience is if I'm going to interact on that level at all.
Speaker 2:So what about like empirical evidence?
Speaker 3:Okay. So what postmodern thought would say is you never touch empirical evidence ever. What you do is interact. You have an experience that interacts with something you believe is empirical evidence. You also have a priori positions that determine how you interact with that empirical evidence, that give you intuitions about it that are prior to consciousness and prior to reason.
Speaker 2:Okay, so. So if you're experiencing let's say, you and I are sitting here and you're experiencing this massive inner turmoil, yeah, but you're telling me that everything's okay, but I can look at you and I can read body language then I'm being told that I can't actually trust my interpretation of your body language. How would you know? Right, because the only way I would know was by my own personal experience.
Speaker 3:Yes, you would when. I experience inner turmoil, my face looks like this, you wouldn't even know, then how would that be any different? Because that's still your experience, right?
Speaker 2:that's what I'm saying, the only way you'd know is, if you were me Right, because your facial expression of joy could actually look like you just sucked on a lemon whatever it is right.
Speaker 3:The only way you could have my experience is if you were me, and if you were me, you would not be you to know you were having my experience. This is post-modernism and you can see how frustrating it could be right, you're getting these conversations and part of the whole thing is like you can't have a conversation with somebody. Right, it's well, it's very difficult, because I'm rejecting the very idea that you could know anything that I could know and that I could know anything that you could know and right.
Speaker 3:So Shared experience is right out the window. Right, so A shared experience is right out the window.
Speaker 3:There's no place to stand in order to know if you could have a shared experience. Possibly you could. You could have a shared experience, but you'd never know. But how would we know? This is postmodernism, okay, this is part of postmodernism, okay, and I don't have any problem with that. But part of what that does is it puts everyone on an even playing field. Nobody knows anybody else's experience, okay, all right. Applied postmodernism is where you take that concept and you only apply it to certain groups of people or certain individuals, but you don't apply it to other groups of people and other individuals, so would it be more accurate to call it like selective applied?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you could you could say selective, you could say applied Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay call it applied and then they um. They also talk about reified, um postmodernism, which I don't think they need to go into, but but they see as a distinction, as like it's the highest, it's the highest good. But this is, this is where you get these terms like intersectionality, which is the concept that the part of well and one of the basis for critical theory, which is the concept that you can know some truths. But the only truths that you can know are the truths that come from being outside of the main society or oppressed by the main society, or oppressed by the main society. If you're not oppressed by a group, then you can't know what's happening, because you're the fish in the water trying to talk about the water.
Speaker 3:That's the postmodernism part. But if you're the one that's being oppressed by the water or you're outside of the water, then you can know that. So it's incumbent on all the fish in the water, or you're outside of the water, then you can know that. So it's incumbent on all the fish in the water who don't know to listen to the ones who do know. This is, this is critical theory, and right and post.
Speaker 2:The oppressor needs to in order to know reality, has to listen to the oppressed right, and and so this is where I think that's, I think it's cheating, and so this is where I think that's, I think it's cheating. Okay, so this is then connects to I almost.
Speaker 2:I almost got the a clip from Jordan Peterson talking about this. Yeah, um, so you're just going to have to go with my paraphrase of what he said instead, because I didn't record it. Um, if you want, I can include it. You tell me right now, otherwise I'm going to press on no, press on okay summarize, all right.
Speaker 2:So what he talks about in this, in this lecture that I was watching online, is that he believes that applied post-modernism is just a um is putting a new face on communism in that, because he said he talks about how fail, how communism failed as a political system, and so what happens now is we just we just rename things, but basically it's the same thing. Right where before you had the oh, the term just went right out of my head the, the. Help me out. What were the proletariat?
Speaker 4:You had the proletariat and you had the bourgeoisie.
Speaker 2:And now we talk instead of using those terms. We use oppressed and the oppressor, but it's the same concepts. Does that sound familiar to you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so this is an argument that's been developed over the last 10 years or so.
Speaker 2:Is he the one that has developed it? No, not necessarily. He's been part of the conversation. Yeah, because the clip was like for 11 years old.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So that's why I say I don't know how to do this again, but the reason 2015,. 2015 is important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you said 2015 is important.
Speaker 3:Why that's 10 years ago it's kind of when this breaks out of the academy. So this has been. These concepts have been percolating within the academy for the last several decades.
Speaker 2:And they've been dripping out of the academy. In the early 2000s there was some concern by some people, some writers and intellectuals that look, there's these concepts that college students are being taught. That to these people were very concerning, right? Well, 17 years ago I remember a big deal in theology. I was, I had already finished seminary, I was, uh, serving a church and the idea of relative truth became like I mean, this was a huge deal, yeah, within christian circles, like pushing hard against that, yeah, and now it almost seems like it's just commonly accepted yeah, well, and this is what so?
Speaker 3:okay, so again.
Speaker 2:This is where I say like as a culture, I would say I still think that within certain christian circles especially, it's still very much pushed against yeah, well, and it's, it's a.
Speaker 3:This is where I say like I think most of the time, the way that we talk about um relative truth or relativity um, is again cheating. It's. It's what's called a mott and bailey um argument, which is which is? I always get this wrong. I should have looked it up, but um.
Speaker 1:One of them is a yeah, do my deep research.
Speaker 3:You can look up which one is, which I'll tell the the concept, but then you can tell which one is, which. It doesn't matter the name, but a mott. And bailey was a uh, a medieval structure where you had a fortress in a center that was easily defendable and then you had a larger area where people would hang out and then you had kind of a ring around that so you'd hang out in that area in the front. I think the mot was the uh, the fortress here.
Speaker 2:It is interestingly enough because my computer is listening to us. It came up before I. I typed mo and it came up. Uh, the mott and bailey fallacy is a rhetorical tactic where someone presents a controversial claim which is the Bailey.
Speaker 3:The Bailey. Yes, and then I got it right. The Mott is the fortress.
Speaker 2:Yep and then, when challenged, retreats to a more defensible, often vague or ambiguous position called the Mott.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's very clear. Like you can, I'll do a crude example of this. You push to have taught in high schools books that are explicitly promoting critical theory concepts. We don't have enough time to get into actually what critical theory is and how. It was born in the law school and it was really a legal defense and all of that. But the idea that fundamentally the United States is a racist country it was born on racism, it was built on racism, it was built on racism is built on oppression.
Speaker 3:It is fundamentally an oppressive country, right, and that I'm just gonna say. There, there are writers I can point to. The robin d'angelo is a huge proponent of this, okay, and she's very, she's very popular. Um, that, uh, that minorities cannot be racist and that all white people are racist. Okay, so that's the Bailey. You push back against the Bailey and you'll find that people typically will retreat into the mott of I just want to teach history, I'm just trying to teach history and real history, okay, and people have suffered real oppression, and right. So they retreat into the smaller, easily defensible argument yeah, they don't.
Speaker 2:You can't, yeah, you can't argue against that.
Speaker 3:People have experienced racism so that that is a typical, and it's not that. It's not that people who are promoting post applied post-modernism or intersectionality or whatever are the only ones who do this. This is a typical argumentative. Well, I just, I just watched, I just watched fundamentalists do that same device.
Speaker 2:Yes, or maybe. This was a little bit different. Theirs was the um. This is another. This is another topic, maybe, but the straw man. I hate the straw man when you're trying to debate with somebody yeah where they build up this fake you, yeah, and then tear that down, yeah, and feel like they have now somehow won, yeah, or achieved, made their point. So it's a little different, I think.
Speaker 3:It's a little different, but it's related. It's a rhetorical fallacy, yeah.
Speaker 2:I hadn't, so I hadn't been. I was not familiar with the term Mott and Bailey.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you can watch people do it where they'll retreat Again. It's just a very simple day. They'll make implications that are wide ranging and very strong and then they'll retreat, as a defense, into something. That's what happens with relativity. I think people do that when it comes to relativity and what happens is that they want to apply non-relative truth to some people, because we all do. We all want to apply some non-relative truth to some people because we all do. We all want to apply some non-relative truth. Give me an example. Well, we want to say this is bad, right. We want to say, yeah, let's say we want to say slavery is bad, okay, yeah, but if you're a true relativist, if you're really applying those principles, that is an impossibility to say right.
Speaker 2:Sure, so then you get— Unless, of course, you're the oppressed by slavery, then you're the only one that actually knows the reality.
Speaker 3:This is what the argument would be okay. The argument would be okay, but what I'm saying is true. Relativity would say even if I am being oppressed, I can't know that it's wrong, right, maybe I just have the wrong perspective. Maybe I'm not right. I'm not making these arguments. I'm saying like this is the relativistic argument, sure, so if you, but but you want to apply relativity yeah, just to be clear, lucas is not saying that he agrees with slavery do we?
Speaker 3:maybe we should put that in bold in the notes. Yes, that is. I am not promoting slavery.
Speaker 1:I do not agree with slavery.
Speaker 3:yep, not a fan of hitler say this. Okay, but but what I'm saying is that typically, when people want to apply relativity or postmodernism, they want to apply it when it gets certain groups out of having to engage in the back and forth between two people, between humans. You can't tell me, you don't get to have a voice in this, and this is where people like Jordan Peterson will say this is just another power struggle. This is an appeal to power, right, and actually there are critical theorists who would completely agree with him on that. What they would say is there are critical theorists who would completely agree with him on that. What they would say is actually, the world is only power. That's all human interaction is. And so, yes, we agree, that's so disappointing, but they would say that's just always the case is that human civilization is defined by groups that have power and groups that have less power. That's what intersectionality is. Also defined by groups that have power and groups that have less power. That's what intersectionality is. Also, intersectionality is the idea that there is a hierarchy of oppressor and oppressed, and every different possible grouping that you could find yourself in has some level of either being an oppressor or being an oppressed, and intersectionality is the coming together in an individual of multiple of those groups. The thing is, it could be it gets the groups should be under. That philosophy should be infinite.
Speaker 3:You know, like you have glasses, like I know, if you started defining the groups that you fall into, I know the groups that you would say because of the groups that have been given to you, you would talk about how you're white. You talk about you're male, cis, heterosexual. You would talk about your socioeconomic class. You talk about the fact that you consider yourself a christian. You talk about the fact that you're american. Those are some groups. I'm a fan of star wars. You're a fan of star wars. Those are some groups you fall into.
Speaker 3:a billion other groups oh sure that are just never talked about, because those are not ones that we care about or that some people care about, um, and so that's why I say I think applied post-modernism is cheating, because it takes this concept, which I think is coherent post-modernism, and it applies it in some places and not in other places.
Speaker 2:So you feel that it's not applied enough I think you got to stick with it.
Speaker 3:If you're going to stick with it, you can reject it I think some people reject it, and that's okay you can have that argument I'm not like.
Speaker 2:James lindsey rejects it.
Speaker 3:He says we can know, we can't. He's a mathematician. Okay, he says we can know, we can measure. He modernist? Okay, I'll have that argument. But I don't think you get to jump in and jump out. That's what I'm saying, right, when it's convenient.
Speaker 2:Okay, so a couple thoughts. One is I could see where 2 plus 2 equals 4, and someone would say that that is something that we can actually know. But you could also argue that two plus two equals four. Only because we agree that it does Base 10,?
Speaker 3:that is specifically an argument that happened for like three years, four years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was like blew up on Twitter.
Speaker 2:Well, and the thing is too like-.
Speaker 3:It's now a code word or a code phrase.
Speaker 2:What is?
Speaker 3:Two plus two.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 3:For whether or not you adhere to this.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right, um, and also, you know you get into, you can get into the whole idea. Then where you can, we could run down the rabbit hole of all. Words are simply mouth sounds, yep and um, and the only thing that actually gives it meaning is that we agree that that's what it means, and it's a dance right which is reminds me of a conversation I recently heard where a fundamentalist was asking an atheist whether or not, where does sin fit in?
Speaker 2:What does he believe about sin? And the atheist simply said I don't believe in sin, and I love the fundamentalist's response to that, but it's in the Bible, which that's always a convincing argument. And then his next argument was but it's in the dictionary. And so, as I'm sitting there listening to this conversation, I did not give the same response that the atheist gave, but my response would have been there's all kinds of things that are in the dictionary that I don't believe in, and what I'm actually saying is that that mouth sound is not something that I agree with.
Speaker 2:Like I don't believe that, that mouth sound actually carries any weight to my understanding of reality. It doesn't describe anything in my reality. That sounds very postmodernist, doesn't it? Kind of yeah? So here's the question then Do you believe that there is good and bad in the world?
Speaker 3:I act as if I believe that there is good and bad.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:I clearly live my life as if I believe that there is good and bad.
Speaker 2:I don't. I don't believe there's good and bad. I believe that there's helpful and harmful. Okay, I believe that there is things that build up and things that tear down, and then I think that the easiest way for us to describe those things is to use the mouth. Sounds good and bad? That's just my opinion on that.
Speaker 3:What would you call sin? Would, you be able to give a meaning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sin is one of those words that I don't have a, I have no problem if I'm with a group of people that are persons of faith to discuss sin. Sin is not a word that normally shows up in my everyday language. I would not use the word sin when discussing or having a discussion with persons who are not of faith, to discuss things in this world that appear to be tearing down or to create conflict, or I think that if I were to be pushed for what I would define sin as. Sin to me is, um, is sort of the failure to live up to our potential as human beings.
Speaker 3:It's the, it's the destructive portion of ourselves okay, okay, okay, when let's go down that road, when you're talking about the um how did we end up?
Speaker 2:how did we end up interviewing me on sin?
Speaker 3:I don't know, but I like this conversation when, um, when you're talking about the potential. I'm not trying to catch you here. Oh, I want to hear.
Speaker 2:Go ahead when you're talking, because if you, here's the thing if you catch and I interrupted you if you can catch me in in a, in something that is not um, an inconsistency in my thinking, that actually is really good for me, because it forces me to go back and either give up on what I was thinking or, uh, to really reevaluate it and come up with a better way, yeah, you do, you do a good job of that.
Speaker 3:You do a good of that, but that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm just actually genuinely interested. When you're talking about not living up to the potential which I think I could get behind as a definition, as a meaning for sin. Do you think that that potential comes from within? Is that something that is expressed internally that you, it's, whatever potential you believe you have for yourself or do you think that there is some objective potential for you that you can either succeed at living up to or fail at living up to?
Speaker 2:Okay. When I say succeed, I'm talking about in terms of us as humans. Okay, Right. Not so specific at that point, and so what I would say is if you look at this world today, are humans living up to their potential?
Speaker 3:Oh, hang on. So do you think that sin applies to an individual? Ever, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so do you think that sin?
Speaker 3:applies to an individual. Ever, yeah, oh, okay.
Speaker 2:So when you said not living up to the potential, Do you think that we as humans could do better than we're doing?
Speaker 3:As far as this is funny, I don't, but I do believe in that concept on an individual level. Okay, I like that on an individual level.
Speaker 2:I think that we as humans maybe it starts at an individual level, but I think that we as humans could do better. And when I say do better, I'm not talking about financially better, I know, financially better, I know I'm not talking about like, uh, intellectually better. I'm just talking about like, could we, could we have, could we be working towards creating a better society for all people?
Speaker 3:what would it mean that? What would be better? And, and that's subjective okay, but wait a sec now. How could I just do the?
Speaker 2:how could you know, bailey, yeah, yeah, how could you know if you succeeded or if you were? Yeah, there's a potential and that's the problem, right? How could?
Speaker 3:you know, Martin Bailey. Yeah, how could you know if you succeeded or failed? If there's?
Speaker 4:a potential.
Speaker 2:And that's the problem. How could you? Know if we were moving toward or away from it, and that's the thing that does become a problem. Yeah, the more general you can keep it, the more we can agree to it. The moment it starts becoming specific is when it becomes debatable how so?
Speaker 3:What do?
Speaker 2:you mean the more general. If we can all say that we think that as humans, we could do better, 90% of the population is going to say, yeah, we could do better at taking care of one another.
Speaker 3:At taking care of one another. Okay At taking care of one another. Yeah, let's just say it's that.
Speaker 2:Okay, nietzsche's going to argue with you? Of course he is. That's why I said 90%, because I'm wondering if Lucas is going to argue with me. So Nietzsche was a depressed individual. Doesn't mean he was wrong, well, it just means that he needed to get out and have a little more fun.
Speaker 3:Needed to get over that girl?
Speaker 2:So wasn't Nietzsche the one that ended up never speaking again and was like found hugging a dead horse?
Speaker 3:uh, yes, and he has a uh, and he had a nightmare about um, a horse being like beaten and uh.
Speaker 2:Anyway, that yeah, that's yeah, yeah and he was and he read like brothers karamazov or something like that, and he believed that. Who wrote? That book Dostoevsky Dostoevsky yeah, that he somehow knew him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he was writing about his life. He was writing about his life. That is a very, very interesting story.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, absolutely, but it doesn't relate, no. Okay, so you think, as humanity, we can be better I think that I think, in general, humans could treat each other better than we do treat each other better. Okay, that there could be a greater kindness in this world now greater kindness. Okay, so now we're good all right, but the thing is, the more I try to define it, the more holes that you're going to find in it and the more that we could debate.
Speaker 3:I'm not interested in debating, no, I'm just saying that in general.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you like, keeping that's when we begin to break down, okay. So, as a whole.
Speaker 3:Wait and sin.
Speaker 2:So then, sin. Yeah, I'm going to get back to sin. Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 3:So then, sin is the not living up to that potential as an individual or as the race Both.
Speaker 2:I think that there is such thing as systemic, I think that there is institutional, I think that there is individual. We could use the word sin, sin, but the best way that I can identify what I might call sin is those moments where am I building up or am I tearing down? And I think it's in those moments when I'm tearing down right. Am I contributing to good, which, whatever?
Speaker 3:that like I don't think and then see that's where good and bad and that could be building up or tearing down yourself, then yes, yeah, absolutely, it can also right.
Speaker 2:Am I, um? Am I, am I improving the things around me myself, or am I tearing them down? Um, like in individuals? And that's where, like the idea of of just sort of a general good or bad, I struggle with. Because let's just take this, for example I just had this conversation yesterday with bucky, by the way, um, and bucky just looked at me and said I I can't go there with you, which is fine. Um, bucky, by the way, is very self-deprecating and he's brilliant.
Speaker 1:He is very brilliant, he's brilliant and he doesn't think so, which is just blows me away.
Speaker 2:But, um, okay, so think about this. Let's just say that we, we agree that feeding people is good. Okay, let's just say that we, we agree that feeding people is good. Okay, we say, we say that's good, Okay.
Speaker 2:However, let's say that I have a friend who struggles with obesity and has no self-control and he comes over to my house and he goes into my pantry and he takes out my son's cookies and he starts eating the cookies and I take it away from him and I tell him you are not allowed to eat while you are at my house. Well, if feeding people is good, then I have. I'm not being good, right, and that's where I think that I I can't buy into like just sort of good and bad I. I think that it all is relative and that's where I have to come away with. Is it building somebody up or is it tearing somebody down? So allowing someone who struggles with obesity and has no self-control to just eat whatever they want while they're at my house, that's actually what I would define as bad if I had to use those terms.
Speaker 3:Okay, but you just defined it, you just said that it was bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's why I said if I had to use those terms, okay, but you just defined it. You just said that it was bad, yeah, and that's why I said if I had to use those terms. It's better to think, though, that what I'm allowing that person to do is tear themselves down.
Speaker 3:So okay, so that's fine. What I'm saying is it sounds like— it's destructive to that person.
Speaker 2:Is it destructive or is it constructive? I think those are better terms than good and bad. Because then? Because I think that we could, you know, to just say like this is what is good and this is what is bad, it depends. So I just so, but, and so I like descriptors better.
Speaker 3:How's that? Okay, but it sounds. It sounds to me like when I have not removed good and bad from my line, from my vocabulary, of course, because you're, because you are still describing it Mm-hmm, because you're, because it sounds to me like. What you're saying, though, is that it just needs to be a higher resolution, meaning it needs to be, it needs to be kind of in a moment I can determine if this is good or bad Mm-hmm, but it's based on something, it's based on it's's, so then you're just saying there's a higher good than giving a piece of food to somebody.
Speaker 2:Yes, there is a good which you can use, the word good trying to keep somebody healthy.
Speaker 3:Somebody else could easily say it is good to be polite. Somebody else could say it is good to not make someone feel ashamed of themselves. Someone else could right. So so what's?
Speaker 1:so what's?
Speaker 3:interesting is that I don't know that we're getting away from the concept but you can even say bad, but you can, okay, right.
Speaker 2:And again I'm just saying that, yeah, okay, that's a fine way of putting it. And that's where I'm saying, like it's, to me, it's hell. It's more healthy to use like sort of descriptor words than just, than just good and bad. Because you want to get more detailed, I do, I want to know exactly what we're. And so to me, I don't think about well, is that good? I think about, will that build someone up? Will that tear someone down? Is that constructive, is it destructive? So go back to the obese friend. Yeah Right, there would be a constructive way to keep them from raiding your pantry every time they come over, and there would also be a destructive way of doing it.
Speaker 2:So ultimately— At least in theory there would be. So ultimately, the constructive thing very possibly would be do not allow them to eat a bag of donuts at your house, right? But it would be destructive if you said, hey, fat ass, don't eat the donuts right. Because you're tearing them down. But if they're a good friend of yours and you're like, hey, fat ass, I would say don't eat them If they're a good friend of yours.
Speaker 3:maybe that works. Maybe, who knows, who knows?
Speaker 2:right.
Speaker 3:Yes, but that is the point. We are applying principles there for different things, to determine a good and a bad.
Speaker 2:It's just more precise Something as dumb as that's a bad word. Yeah, that's not dumb.
Speaker 3:That's not dumb. That is dumb. No, it's not. See, this is the thing. Okay, here's the deal. Is dumb a bad word? It might be it depends.
Speaker 2:And what do we mean by bad? Is it offensive? Is it not well used? Is it not a good enough description?
Speaker 3:It's socially not acceptable, and we all know when something's socially not acceptable, unless we don't, because we need to learn more about what's socially acceptable. Listen, it is true.
Speaker 2:There are some people, by the way, that will never learn what's socially acceptable.
Speaker 3:Yes, that is true, which is why I think there is a place for a low resolution good and bad. I think for maybe 70 to 80 percent of the human population, it's not a bad thing that religion crafts kind of a low resolution vision of good and bad. Just don't do this. Just don't murder, okay, just don't beat your wife. I hear what you're saying don't murder, okay, just don't beat your wife. I hear what you're saying Just don't have sex until you get married, just don't. You know what I mean. Like sure, I hear what you're saying. However, and I'm still gonna I still disagree that the term bad word is dumb. I think that it is true. I think it absolutely has a place.
Speaker 2:I would want to know what you like to me, don't say bad word.
Speaker 3:there are people who would say words in places that are inappropriate because they almost dropped an F-bomb. They frigging know it's inappropriate and there's some part of them that gets a little cathartic enjoyment out of dropping an F-bomb around grandma and Okay and I'd say that's bad, that's inappropriate Right, because I think that there's sometimes when dropping the F-bomb is the appropriate thing to do.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Right. I don't have a problem with that.
Speaker 3:That was a good word to use. That's right, that's right, absolutely Right. Yeah, okay, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Right. Yeah, okay, that's right, so good and bad, but it is bad.
Speaker 3:It's still a bad word.
Speaker 2:No, it's a good word.
Speaker 3:And it's a good word here. Yes, and also, by the way, I'm going to say a few things, which is why it's more important to be able to say was it constructive, was it destructive?
Speaker 2:destructive, did it lift up, did it tear down, like what I just think? And here's why I just want real quick yeah, because it is, we got to wrap this up. Yeah, because, um, you've got things to do, um, and I've got episodes to edit, okay, but um, um, the problem that I have is then, when we, when we just create these categories of good and bad, yeah, and we don't how did you put it? I really liked the way you just described that a moment ago when I was talking a higher resolution, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Is that when someone does something that we have determined is bad, yeah, something that we have determined is bad, yeah, even if, even if, then what? Then? The next step is that somehow we have to ostracize them or we have to shame them because they have done bad. And what I'm saying is that when you do that, when you begin to inappropriately shame someone, or you begin to ostracize them or villainize them, you have now done bad Because you have torn somebody down Right. And so that's why the very simple of this is good or this is bad, mm-hmm, I feel like it needs to be a little more nuanced.
Speaker 3:I think this somehow in some ways goes back to a previous episode where you had made kind of a side comment of how you can't help but think about your faith intellectually and parse it and dissect it and continue to think about it. Continue to think about it and try to keep it in the front of your mind Deconstruct, deconstruct, deconstruct and construct and deconstruct again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I got thoughts about just the word deconstruct, by the way.
Speaker 3:And yeah, we should talk about that, and that's I mean just to be clear, like that was something I like about you, I know.
Speaker 3:I know that is it, didn't bother me it. I know, I know that is it, didn't bother me, it, it, it. It's part of what I like about you, right, it's part of the reason that, part of the reason you and I are friends, I think, is that we connect on that level. What I'm saying is, though, I think the vast majority of people don't, and and that's not, I think that's- just a personality thing, and so I think that it's useful.
Speaker 3:For a lot of people to go drinking too much is bad, whereas I would go. Why, in what circumstances? Did you cause any other harm? Did you debase yourself? You know, like there's a lot of other right, but I think that it's. It's useful and good and fine for a lot of people just to go drinking too much is bad.
Speaker 3:Dropping an f-bomb is just bad. What it? Is it ever going to hurt anybody to never drop an f-bomb? No, probably not. Probably not. Now there's some you could get down the road of. Like there's some correlation between somebody who would never drop an f-bomb, um, and also would be really rigid and maybe cause other problems in other areas. We could have that conversation. I think that'd be interesting, you know. But I'm just saying, like, the reason I don't have a problem with the, the good and bad, uh, concepts and and even lower resolution probably than you would have a problem with, is not because, because I think that it makes any sense to say you know, pick whatever. Dropping F, like an F word is a bad word. Like in and of itself, obviously it's not. I'm going to say a word joder, that's nothing to you, right? If anybody from Spain 20 years ago maybe the idioms have changed this in 20 years heard that they'd be like. I can't believe that. You just said that on the like you got to get a explicit rating.
Speaker 2:That's don't need to put the e on this, yeah it's, it's, it's essentially an f-bomb.
Speaker 3:It's not exactly, it doesn't translate, but it's, uh, it's like their harshest, it was their harshest um word, but it means nothing to us. So obviously these are just mouth sounds, yes, on a fundamental level, but I just think that there's. There is usefulness in these low resolution ideas of good and bad. Just don't have sex till you get married. That's going to help a lot of people. Sure, right, a lot of teenagers. Now people are going to point out it's going to cause a lot of shame. It's also going to cause a lot of people Sure, right, a lot of teenagers. Now people are going to point out it's going to cause a lot of shame.
Speaker 2:It's also going to cause a lot of people to go out and have sex because they've been told not to and they're not going to have.
Speaker 3:I know that. That's the argument. I know that's the argument I'm not, we're going back to a previous episode, anyway.
Speaker 2:All right, so do we have common ground.
Speaker 3:That's the first thing. The other thing is what does?
Speaker 2:it. Say about me that I'm having this sudden urge to just yell out the F word. That's some of our common ground.
Speaker 3:I could beep that. All right, go ahead. So what's?
Speaker 2:our common ground Is our common. Well, you tell me.
Speaker 3:Because, remember, our topic was actually postmodernism.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is our common ground, that Applied postmodernism. That you've got to stay consistent with your philosophies. If you're gonna, if you're gonna apply that absolutely, you gotta stay consistent. I think we both agree that, ultimately, you need to strive for consistency and a modern daily. I'm gonna start using it now because I know it.
Speaker 3:Uh, that's cheating so is straw man.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Yep, yeah, all right.
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