Latest / The Junto Podcast / E19: Perception vs Reality: Unraveling Ancient Philosophies and Modern Truths

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E19: Perception vs Reality: Unraveling Ancient Philosophies and Modern Truths · The Junto Podcast

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  Music.
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  Hello, America. Welcome to the Junto Podcast, where we promote the practical
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  applications of critical thinking and bold creativity.
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  I am your host, Edgar Mills. Thanks for joining us.
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  Music.
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  So, have you ever, during the course of a conversation, said,
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  perception is reality? Maybe.
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  I probably have before.
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  Have you ever said, I'm living my truth?
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  Now, I can tell you I've never said that. But what we're going to explore today,
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  good people, is the philosophical sort of foundations of these two phrases that I just said.
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  And then we're going to kind of juxtapose these two phrases and see where they
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  fit in and society and what they mean to different people.
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  So we'll break these concepts down.
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  Well, we're going to talk a lot about some philosophers, right?
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  The origins of these foundations. I feel like a lot of things we talk about today with whoever,
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  a lot of things we read today even, they say these things that have deep,
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  deep roots, but most people don't know the roots of these things.
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  So the overall theme here is what people perceive can feel very real.
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  They can feel very real, and they do affect how you think and act.
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  But it may or may not be objectively true yeah that's right you may you may
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  be believing or you may feel a certain way and it may not just it may not be
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  founded in an objective reality,
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  now that being said we're going to solve anything here today this topic especially
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  of perception as reality or is reality.
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  This has been up for debate for centuries, folks, since before Plato.
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  You know what I'm saying? We're talking about BC, 200, 400 something BC.
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  So we'll go into all these things. Now, look, I've got pages of notes here.
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  I understand folks, I read a little bit here, but one of the reasons I like
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  doing this podcast is that it forces me into some deep research.
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  And I like that. That has kind of not taken the place of reading.
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  Right now on audiobooks, I happen to be reading Milton Friedman.
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  No, no. What am I reading on audiobooks?
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  Audio books take time, folks. I do not have the time. I do not have the patience to sit and read.
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  But I do put audio books on when I get in the car.
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  Well, and I'm switching back and forth all the time between audio books and podcasts.
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  But what I am reading right now is Ludwig von Mises, however you want to say
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  that, Human Action, a Treatise on Economics. I've never been economically smart.
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  I became more of a libertarian because of different things.
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  Economics, yes, I like the foundation of the economics, but I want to dig deeper
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  into why the libertarians believe the things they do about economics.
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  And Ludwig von Mises is a damn good place to look.
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  So that's where I'm at, folks. I just started reading it. I'm still in chapter
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  one. At any rate, I digress.
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  Perception is reality, is it? Where did it come from? Who said it first?
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  Now, some of you are going to be shocked and amazed and probably a little disappointed
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  to discover who coined that phrase.
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  Now, the concept has been around, but who coined the phrase perception is reality?
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  Yeah, it's pretty new, relatively speaking.
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  It became popular in the 80s and 90s. Yeah, the 1980s and 90s.
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  And it became popular via politics and business. But I'll tell you who said it.
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  A guy named Lee Atwater, who was a political advisor for the Republicans.
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  Yeah. And he said it during George
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  Herbert Walker Bush's 1988 election campaign. Yeah, isn't that gross?
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  And it meant, in his context, what he meant by it was that what voters believe
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  from ads, campaign slogans, news, etc., etc., what voters believe, their perception,
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  is more important than verifiable facts in order to win votes.
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  How gross is that? Think about that for a minute. Political advisor to H.W. Bush.
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  Now, I said the phrase, right, is new. The idea has been around.
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  So actually, as far back as probably 400 B.C.,
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  a Greek philosopher named Protagoras said that people decide what's true or not.
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  Yeah. this means the truth depends on
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  what you think what you perceive no one
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  person necessarily has a lock on the
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  the truth people invent no one person invented a truth that it evolves from
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  ongoing you know experiences philosophy and psychology and all those things
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  so it's very loose right that the the originator of that idea that there is
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  no objective truth or objective of reality.
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  It's perception. It's what you think it is.
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  So that goes back a long way, folks. But well, we'll get to it.
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  And how did that proliferate through life, right?
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  From back then, 410 or so BC till now.
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  People usually link that to psychology or psychologists, but the term,
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  and the idea really took off really in the business world, marketing and branding
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  and these self-help gurus and stuff like that.
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  And where they really try to, well, do dig into the psychology of what people,
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  how to shape their perception.
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  We know marketers and branders, they're not interested necessarily in selling reality.
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  They're interested in figuring out how and why people, what makes people want
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  something, what makes people want to do a thing, and then they just exploit it.
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  So that's where that idea really, really took off.
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  Marketing, branding, and that kind of thing, and then these self-help books,
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  and these self-help gurus, and self-help camps, and all these things,
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  where they're not necessarily getting to the root of any problem or anything.
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  They're just kind of soft-shoeing it and letting your reality be what it is
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  and just, you know, whatever.
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  You can tell by my tone probably that I don't necessarily agree with that.
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  So what do we think? So we know where it came from and who said it first and
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  kind of how it got around. What do we think it really means?
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  Well, obviously, perception is how you how you see things and how you see things
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  shapes, you know, your your priorities and your life choices and all those things.
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  Probably more so than hard facts. Now, everybody knows that if you put $100
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  a month in a Roth IRA, starting at the age of 25,
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  by the time you reach retirement age, with interest and everything,
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  you'll have, I don't know, a couple million bucks or something,
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  one point something million bucks, most likely given typical returns and all.
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  Those are hard facts. I mean, you can do math on that. That's a hard fact.
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  Perception is, oh my God, I can't afford a hundred extra dollars a month.
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  And then we go buy energy drinks and, you know, dip and pouches and whatnot, fat pills.
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  So the term perception is, that's, now that's, that doesn't,
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  that doesn't mean to say that there are no real, there's not a real world or no reality.
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  There is, but what it does say
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  is that your views kind of act like
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  reality in everyday life so the
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  way you see a thing through your lens and your lens only as
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  far as you're concerned that's the way it is and that that's so so tempting
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  to seem true yeah so but the very simple meaning of it is that perception is
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  how your brain makes sense of what your senses take in,
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  what your eyes and your ears, what you hear, what it takes in.
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  And if you think something's scary, then you'll act scared, even though it may
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  not objectively be scary or dangerous.
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  I can't remember the term right now. I've got a quote right on the tip of my tongue.
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  I have no idea who said it, but we are, I have to come back to it. Sorry, I lost it.
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  It's one of those things, man. I have it and I'll lose it.
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  Let's see. I'll give you. I mean, for me, yes, sharks are objectively dangerous.
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  But my parents took me to see Jaws at the drive-in theater when it came out,
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  when I was probably seven.
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  Yeah, man. I've been scared of the ocean ever since, literally.
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  And only a very, probably I can count on my hand how many times I've been in
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  the ocean deeper than my knee deep because of that.
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  It's probably my perception is, you know, 20 feet away is a great white waiting to.
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  Take a bite. So yeah, that's probably sharks.
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  Yeah. They're objectively dangerous, but I'm probably, it's probably an irrational fear that I have.
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  But my perception is, well, my perception is that there's creatures under the
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  ocean that could eat an entire house.
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  So I don't want any part of that.
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  But as far as that term goes and the original use of that term,
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  yeah, it was purely politics.
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  And it's used a lot today in politics and media spin, especially.
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  But it's how they sway opinions.
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  And it's how they decide elections, not on facts, but on feelings.
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  And we can look at this last election cycle and the 2020 election cycle.
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  Oh my God, there's so many examples of that. But I don't want to make this a political thing here.
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  Protagoras used a similar idea for arguments.
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  So Protagoras, he was a teacher, right?
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  Well, we'll get to him, but he used this idea for arguments in ancient Greece
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  saying that truth changes based on the situation, but he also taught law and debating.
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  Yeah. So you can see, you can
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  see even from way back how lawyers and politicians were
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  shady in broader psychology though it kind
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  of perception creates these these
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  little mental shortcuts where we see kind of what we expect to see right we
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  see what we expect to see and you can kind of relate that to having a cognitive
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  bias about things or or when you answer when you ask a question and you get
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  the answer you want to hear you you drop it right Right.
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  This this is it kind of works that way psychologically.
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  And philosophy, though, it's like how how do we know what's real beyond our senses?
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  How do we know what's real? Well, we'll get into that.
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  So, again, what is perception is how we take in information and and how we think
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  of it in our head, how we process information in our head.
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  And the fact of the matter is that it's a very personal thing.
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  Our perception of anything, doesn't matter what it is, it's our own very personal
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  perception, and it's subject to be wrong.
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  With some people, it's very often wrong. With other people, it may or may not
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  be wrong. It's based in feelings, though. It's based in emotion.
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  Our senses take in the information. Our brain sorts it out based on what?
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  Our brain sorts it out based on our past, our feelings, our culture, our daily habits,
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  our cognitive biases, the things that we're sort of pre-programmed to think.
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  We think those things sometimes.
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  And that's how that's how we have this that's how we get to our perception of
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  of whatever it is we're talking about and it affects everything folks it affects,
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  where you're at what you expect and your
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  little shortcuts your brain shortcuts
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  but i'll give you an example that that
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  will straight away prove that perception is
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  fallible and and apt to be wrong and you
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  can look at any number of optical illusion games or
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  these paintings that are painted to
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  give you an optical illusion and your
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  eyes will believe a thing and that and your perception of what's on what you're
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  looking at it not only is it wrong but some of these optical illusions like
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  it changes based on you know the angle you're looking at it or whatever or how
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  close and far you get away and things like that.
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  So your perception, it's kind of delicate, right? It can change.
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  So it isn't always right.
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  It isn't always right at all. Your brain's telling a story that it's reading,
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  but our brains are imperfect, folks.
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  Our brains are vast. There's a lot of stuff going on in there that we haven't even accessed.
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  So our perception can be wrong.
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  Just take that and put it in your pocket all right let's look at some famous thinkers,
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  philosophers who kind of echoed or agreed with the concept that perception shapes reality,
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  and some of these they theorize that reality
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  depends on how we see it through our personal views and our own mind-made ideas
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  the things that we came up with so i mentioned protagoras earlier He died 420
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  BC He was a Greek philosopher And he was a sophist, right?
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  A sophisticate He and a group of other teachers Traveled around Greece Teaching
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  skills like public speaking,
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  debate And, you know Then what they considered practical knowledge To be successful
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  in public life Essentially grooming politicians and lawyers,
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  Which is gross enough as it is Now if you're a politician Well I don't know
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  many politicians folks But if you're a lawyer And you take offense at me saying
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  you're greasy I'm happy to debate with you.
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  He taught people how to effectively argue and succeed in politics and law. That's it.
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  How to effectively argue. Now, how in modern day, how do politicians and lawyers succeed?
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  Yeah, it's pretty gross. It's pretty gross. Now, I mean, I'm biased,
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  but I can point to many, many, many examples of objective fact where lawyers and politicians lie.
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  Protagoras said that man is a measure of all things, of the things that are,
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  that they are, and of the things they are not, that they are not.
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  Now, how cryptic is that? Can you win an argument with that?
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  Yeah, sure. You sure can.
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  Man, I hate to keep jamming on. I'm not going to keep jamming on lawyers. I'll stop.
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  So Protagoras was one of the first philosophers to sort of posit this thing
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  that we sort of create our own reality.
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  Now, we'll get to different contexts later. All right, then,
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  and fast forward to George Berkeley, who died in, he was around the 1700s.
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  He was an Irish philosopher, and he was also a bishop. and he was a very influential
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  thinker and known for the philosophy of idealism.
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  And he said, this is deep, folks, be with me here.
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  He said, to be is to be perceived.
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  And his thought was that things only exist if someone sees them,
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  someone perceives them. If no one sees or thinks about a thing,
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  that thing does not exist.
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  I think there's an old, like, if a tree falls in the woods, does anyone hear it?
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  Sort of similar sort of thing, I think. Maybe not. Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it?
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  Exist. Things only exist if someone sees them.
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  If no one sees or thinks of these things, they do not exist. Oh, that's pretty deep.
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  There's probably a lot of ways to attack that. We could probably do a whole
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  podcast on that, that statement alone.
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  All right, then fast forward to
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  the late, mid and late 1700s to a German philosopher named Immanuel Kant.
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  Sorry, K-A-N-T. So don't think I'm being foul language here.
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  Immanuel Kant. I'm just going to say Kant. My southern accent.
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  He argued that our minds shape how we see the world, which is very true how
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  we see things, how we perceive things.
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  But he split reality into two parts. Phenomena, which is what he says is the
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  world as we perceive it filtered through our minds.
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  And then naumena, which is things
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  in themselves that we don't have the capacity to truly know reality.
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  Because no matter what we see, we're going to look at it through our own lens of perceptions.
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  We see the world through our brains filter and in any reality is hidden underneath
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  all the things that we that we filter, you know, filter out so that we don't
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  we don't even have the capacity to see reality.
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  All right. And then one more. I'm doing four examples on these here.
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  And then the one everybody knows Friedrich Nietzsche and he's always quoted.
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  People quote Nietzsche all the time. He's got some profound stuff.
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  And some of his stuff sounds really cool out of context and whatnot.
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  But if you don't know Nietzsche, he was a German philosopher,
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  a cultural critic, a poet, a writer.
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  And he had very, very strong ideas that challenged what traditional beliefs
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  about morality and religion and truth in general.
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  And what he said was that there are no facts, only interpretations.
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  And all these things sound like you think of me man yeah that's right so what
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  he says with that is that what we call the truth i mean really wholly depends
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  on our perspective shaped by our
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  own biases and our own our own filters and he believed the reality is absolutely subjective.
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  So because nietzsche agreed doesn't necessarily mean that you should i'm just
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  saying i happen to be on the other side of the fence.
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  So who are some famous thinkers who disagreed with the concept that perception is reality?
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  We know Immanuel Kant said there's two realities out there.
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  But the guys we're about to look at, these guys said that there is a real world
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  and that our senses can trick us.
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  And that's why we need logic and proof and scientific method and things like
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  that in order to get to the truth of the matter, whatever the matter is. Excuse me.
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  So first, again, going back to the ancient times with Plato.
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  Everybody knows Plato. He was around in the late 300, well, from 428 to 348
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  BC is when his lifespan was.
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  And Plato, a famous Greek philosopher, one of the most famous Greek philosophers,
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  believed that the physical world we see and touch is like a shadow of a deeper, perfect reality.
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  Now, that's kind of artistic, isn't it? Like a shadow of a deeper and perfect reality.
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  And he thought our senses
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  can trick us making perception
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  like unreliable like our perception is probably wrong for finding truth he thought
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  and said and wrote and taught that we need logic and philosophy to discover
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  the eternal objective truths in the world of forms yep now he's a highly quoted philosopher.
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  And one of his students, most famous, I imagine, Aristotle, who came along,
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  he studied under Plato, I think, for 20 years.
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  And he took over Plato's academy.
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  Again, a Greek philosopher, a pupil of Plato. And he believed the reality exists
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  in a physical world around us.
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  And he said, we learn about the world through observation and reason,
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  using our senses as a starting point.
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  And of course, right? How else are we going to? Our senses are how we take in
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  everything. Of course, that's a start point.
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  And here's a little example, and it's a little out there. a tree's form or its
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  essence exists within the tree itself.
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  It's real and not in some abstract realm.
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  So we have to, how do we get to that? How do we discover that essence of that tree?
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  Yeah, man, that's a tough one right there.
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  But he believed that the physical world around us, there was a reality within that physical world.
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  Aristotle, another famous one. All right, and now we're going to fast forward
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  to the 1600s, the early 1600s.
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  Rene Descartes, a French philosopher and a mathematician and scientist.
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  Now, as soon as we start talking about mathematicians and scientists,
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  we know that there's not a lot of, that they believe in testing theories, right?
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  There's a method to discovering truth. He argued our senses can deceive us,
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  much like Plato did, as if they were dreams or illusions.
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  So they're not fully trustworthy.
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  To find truth, we must use reason and clear thinking.
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  Man, look at that. To find truth, we must use reason and clear thinking.
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  He believed that objective reality, to include God, by the way,
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  he believed in objective reality and God. And he said, our perceptions mislead
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  us unless they're checked by logic, right?
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  Check some balances. We have to use objective truth.
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  We have to use logic and reason to check ourselves.
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  Can't just run crazy with the
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  way we think the world is. Don't trust your senses. They might be dreams.
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  Use thinking to find sure truths, he said.
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  Now, you may or may not know this. I didn't know this.
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  Rene Descartes, this French philosopher, he said, cogito ergo sum. Any of you speak Latin?
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  Cogito ergo sum.
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  I think, therefore I am. Yeah, we've all heard that one, right?
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  Have you ever put any deep thought into that?
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  I think, therefore I am.
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  This means that the one thing that we can be absolutely certain of is our own existence.
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  Because we have the capacity to think,
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  think complex thoughts, by the way. Yeah.
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  All right. And then finally, one of the probably, definitely the most famous
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  physicist mathematician ever in history, but probably one of the most famous humans in history.
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  Albert Einstein said that reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
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  Yeah, he said reality is an illusion, but tongue-in-cheek, right?
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  Albeit a very persistent one.
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  Our perception of the world isn't the full truth at all, and he believed in
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  an objective reality discoverable through science, right?
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  He trusted science, methodology, experiments.
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  He trusted math to reveal objective truths about the universe,
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  any rejected idea the reject perception defines
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  reality you it has to be tested and
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  look i'm going to do another comparison here much like
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  your tactics you can do all the
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  tactics you want to but when you test it
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  under stress with with
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  with actual marksmanship standards objective reality
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  do your tactics hold up when you
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  test your your perception of reality
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  against scientific method does your perception hold up now this last bit here
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  he contributed to quantum mechanics and he was he was he was very skeptical
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  of its randomness and he said and i love this one God does not play dice.
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  So of all these philosophers we've listened to, there's a few in there that
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  explicitly we know believe in God.
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  And can you prove God exists?
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  Well, no, you can't, but guess what? Can you disprove God exists?
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  We're going to get to infallibility here in a little bit.
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  So what's my take on it? What do I think about it? Do I disagree with one and agree with the other.
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  Well, look, yeah, I know I was kind of ripping on the perception is reality
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  crowd a little bit, and that's true.
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  But folks, it's very, very nuanced, especially in the modern age.
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  It's a very nuanced gray area.
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  Now, if there was a right answer, we wouldn't be having this podcast.
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  There's still like some of the greatest minds to ever have existed have differing opinions on it.
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  And I agree that our perception of things is mighty damn powerful.
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  Some people can grab hold to an idea of their own making and put it in a death
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  grip and hold on to it, man.
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  And our perception definitely does guide the way we act. It guides the way we
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  interact with humans and build relationships.
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  And it guides the way we run society to include our politicians and our social
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  media and the things we see and hear on all the ads,
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  on all the podcasts and TV shows and whatnot.
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  And our brains, generally speaking, focus on what's useful to us and what confirms
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  or helps us, but may not necessarily be true.
• 28:27
  Yeah, I disagree that perception is the whole reality.
• 28:32
  Facts exist, folks. There are plenty of objective facts. And I'll give you one
• 28:38
  just simplistic example.
• 28:40
  Gravity exists. It doesn't matter what you think of it.
• 28:44
  It doesn't matter if you think it's sexist or racist or homophobic. It doesn't matter.
• 28:51
  There's nothing that matters. If you fall off of a 20-story building,
• 28:57
  you're going to fall to your death.
• 29:00
  Whilst you're wearing a parachute, which has a whole other set of physics that
• 29:03
  work for that, which is also fact, right?
• 29:07
  Most things we know about physics is factual.
• 29:10
  There is no perception.
• 29:12
  And if we ignore the facts, right, and we go based off feelings.
• 29:16
  Now, this is, you know, this is the same argument that men and women have or
• 29:20
  whatever is being rational versus is emotional, but if we go just based off
• 29:27
  our perception and our feelings and our emotions,
• 29:30
  you know, it causes problems and we propagate false information as truth.
• 29:37
  There are so many people in the social media space today pushing false information
• 29:42
  as truth or pushing out opinion or their perception as cold truth.
• 29:48
  And that's a problem because now we're in a world to where we have to question
• 29:55
  literally every single thing.
• 29:57
  I want to say, I can't remember, the CIA director from the 70s said that we'll
• 30:03
  know our program's working when everything the American public sees and reads is questioned. Yeah.
• 30:14
  Got to throw politics in there, man. I'm sorry. This is a problem.
• 30:18
  And if you believe, I'll get on, I'll move on.
• 30:23
  We got to, we, we have to have our own checks and balances, folks.
• 30:28
  We have to have our own checks and balances. If you just blanket believe everything
• 30:32
  your favorite influencer puts out there or your favorite TV channel,
• 30:37
  you're probably, you know, I can't put a percentage to it, but probably at least
• 30:42
  half the shit you're hearing is wrong.
• 30:44
  It's not objectively true. It's based on some kind of influence of people who
• 30:52
  have agendas and things like that.
• 30:54
  So we got to have our own set of checks and balances. We have to check our perceptions
• 30:59
  and the things that we're taking in against things we know to be objectively true.
• 31:04
  And we got to do that consistently and often. We've got to be consistent about
• 31:08
  our methodology, and we've got to do it frequently to know the truth and to know reality.
• 31:15
  And I don't think that's incredibly difficult to do at all.
• 31:19
  And to be quite honest, I think the most successful people among us,
• 31:23
  they do that as a matter of just a habit.
• 31:28
  You go through a critical thinking process when you take in new information,
• 31:33
  starting with who you're getting this information from.
• 31:36
  Yeah so these people that misuse this this philosophy this facts don't matter
• 31:42
  only what you think i want to say that aoc what's her name i can't remember her first name.
• 31:50
  Anastasia ocasio-cortez maybe something like that she was once quoted saying
• 31:55
  that damn you know i wish i wish i had i wish i thought of this when i was writing
• 32:00
  something to the effect of of,
• 32:04
  Basically that your feelings are more important Than,
• 32:08
  Objective truth And that's madness,
• 32:11
  People twist it They use it Sometimes as an excuse for lies Or maybe not outright
• 32:18
  lies But just to ignore Some truths Especially in politics Propaganda We get
• 32:26
  propaganda from both sides of the aisle 24-7 Non-stop up.
• 32:33
  Business and I'm going to say big pharma.
• 32:36
  Look, whatever side you came down on with this COVID thing, I mean,
• 32:43
  truth is slowly but surely coming out, right?
• 32:45
  Facts are starting to emerge, objective facts, real numbers of people that has been harmed by that.
• 32:54
  Yeah. The perception was that, oh my God, we're in the most dangerous pandemic ever.
• 33:02
  Millions are going to die if you don't do this, that, and the other.
• 33:05
  They hid the negative outcome.
• 33:08
  Well, they didn't even really properly test anything anyway.
• 33:12
  Hid all the negative outcomes and just touted positive benefits.
• 33:16
  And they didn't even really have to tout the positive. There were no positive benefits.
• 33:21
  But and then almost everything
• 33:26
  short of making it mandatory you couldn't
• 33:29
  work you couldn't go places you couldn't you know you
• 33:32
  couldn't do things unless you had the shot and all this and that that's a perfect
• 33:36
  example of how people use that concept of perception as reality to twist it
• 33:42
  for nefarious ends and ultimately this what does this do if you're if you're an
• 33:50
  objective thinker, and I don't mean on any side of the aisle,
• 33:54
  I mean, if you're just an objective thinker,
• 33:56
  this kind of behavior is going to break trust.
• 33:59
  If you're a rational, logical human, when these lies get exposed,
• 34:04
  it's going to erode your trust. Yeah.
• 34:08
  Now, the only thing that's good is by
• 34:11
  knowing how people think and that they do believe in such a philosophy of perception
• 34:17
  is reality at least gives you some insight and may help you understand their
• 34:22
  motives better you know at least but we and i say we as all we need critical thinking.
• 34:32
  To mix our personal perceptions and with our object with with objective reality
• 34:38
  checks reality check that used to be a catchphrase i think in the 80s or 90s
• 34:44
  hey let me give you reality check,
• 34:46
  bud, you know, shit like that.
• 34:50
  Reality, objective reality checks. We need them. Everybody needs them,
• 34:52
  folks. Everybody needs them.
• 34:54
  You can live in your own bubble. Well, we'll get to it. We'll get to it.
• 34:59
  So in today's world, you know, social media, man, it spreads,
• 35:04
  it spreads views and opinions and philosophies like, like a pandemic,
• 35:11
  whether they're true or false or otherwise, it spreads fast, man.
• 35:16
  It spreads fast. And, and social media, especially, why not,
• 35:23
  not, not especially, yeah, especially in mass.
• 35:26
  I think social media has touched more people than any newspaper ever has or
• 35:32
  any television show or any radio show ever has.
• 35:35
  And when I say social media, that's a big thing. Like maybe no one show.
• 35:39
  Joe Rogan, I think, is probably the biggest or possibly Sean Ryan.
• 35:45
  One of those two are there among the you know, they have one point something
• 35:51
  million followers. And that's not including people who get snippets of their
• 35:57
  shows on other social media outlets.
• 36:00
  No time in history has someone had that kind of reach to spread information.
• 36:08
  You know, to spread information. Sometimes that creates echo chambers.
• 36:13
  Oftentimes it does. I think people who are,
• 36:18
  and no matter what you think about Rogan, I think he's a genuine dude And I
• 36:24
  think he has Or feels as though He has a responsibility,
• 36:29
  To put out Objective truth Now he takes in a lot of perspectives He's got a
• 36:35
  lot of different types of humans On his show,
• 36:38
  I think He feels a responsibility to put out.
• 36:44
  Verifiable information I guess I would think I do I got like a few thousand folks listen to me.
• 36:53
  I feel an obligation to, now most of the things I put out as opinion,
• 36:57
  I kind of bat them off other things, history and philosophies and things like that.
• 37:02
  But I got a disclaimer. Yeah, it's all opinion. It's all opinion.
• 37:07
  Yeah. We need critical thinking folks, to give ourselves a reality check.
• 37:16
  Social media spreads like wildfire, like a virus.
• 37:22
  I think there used to be a responsibility among journalists,
• 37:26
  but all of the major outlets, folks, they're all bought and paid for.
• 37:32
  Whether it's the left or the right, they're all bought and paid for. And what does that mean?
• 37:36
  That means necessarily you're going to get the information that they want you
• 37:41
  to get. You're not going to get objective truth, folks.
• 37:44
  And if you don't believe that by now, oh, man, you've got to believe that.
• 37:51
  Friends operation mockingbird i mean come on you got
• 37:54
  to believe it by now that the mainstream media
• 37:57
  well any any media that commercial
• 38:00
  media is owned by someone with an
• 38:03
  agenda left or right and on
• 38:07
  social media folks you don't you know
• 38:10
  you'll get trolls making comments and things like that or
• 38:14
  you might get somebody to ask sort of a pointed question that
• 38:18
  you know maybe it's a
• 38:21
  respectful question and that'll get answered maybe but nobody you don't see
• 38:26
  a lot of anybody getting directly challenged intellectually challenged you know
• 38:31
  what i mean you'll see people just put comments up oh this guy's full of shit
• 38:36
  or this and that and the other but true intellectually,
• 38:41
  true challenge getting challenged intellectually you don't see that on social
• 38:46
  media you don't see Even on television,
• 38:49
  I mean, CNN will rip on Fox News and Fox News will rip on CNN,
• 38:52
  but I wouldn't call that being intellectually challenged at all.
• 38:56
  That's just rate baiting right there, I would say.
• 39:01
  Perceptions matter, folks. They do matter. They do matter.
• 39:05
  But you got to be able to, not juxtapose, you got to be able to,
• 39:11
  yeah, compare and contrast with hard facts.
• 39:15
  And this will help you make better and more sustainable choices.
• 39:23
  And that's where we're at because the information we take in and how we synthesize
• 39:29
  it and analyze it and then how it directs us to move in whatever direction,
• 39:35
  if we have some objective truth in there, we're going to move in better directions
• 39:42
  and we're going to make more sustainable decisions about our future or our family or whatever.
• 39:49
  We all have our illusions. I have mine.
• 39:54
  Objective truth will cut through the illusion, folks. Objective truth.
• 39:58
  And then what happens is your illusions, some people can call them dreams.
• 40:04
  And sometimes, you know, you think you have this big, crazy,
• 40:09
  unattainable dream just based on your feelings, right?
• 40:11
  But what if you do some objective analysis, and then suddenly that dream,
• 40:18
  that illusion doesn't seem so far off like, oh yeah, this can happen.
• 40:23
  It is possible. You know what I'm saying?
• 40:27
  So objective truth doesn't always crush your perceptions. It can reinforce them.
• 40:33
  It's not, you know what I'm saying? It's not necessarily good versus evil here,
• 40:38
  like you're right or wrong.
• 40:40
  It's that if you think in a critical way and you're honest with yourself and
• 40:47
  you make decisions based on, yeah, your feelings, right?
• 40:51
  I want to get this big range built. This has been a dream of mine since at least 2010.
• 40:57
  But if you start looking at objective truths, then you can start to see how,
• 41:00
  how, how can, is it possible?
• 41:03
  Can it happen? What, what needs to happen? Right.
• 41:07
  And I want to use, let's see, who do I want to use the example of?
• 41:11
  I don't know if you guys know Robert Rodriguez. He was a, he's a director, right?
• 41:15
  And he made movies with, you know, Tarantino. And if you guys ever saw his first
• 41:19
  movie, well, his first major movie, and I don't mean Hollywood major,
• 41:24
  it was, it was, it was called El Mariachi. Yeah.
• 41:28
  I want to say, man, that dude had like a $70,000 budget.
• 41:34
  Something by Hollywood standards is minuscule. And it was the coolest movie, man.
• 41:40
  And the guy got wildly successful off it because he followed a dream.
• 41:45
  But he was pragmatic, and he did things within the scope of his limitations.
• 41:52
  And not only did his limitations, well, through his limitations.
• 41:57
  Some some different and unique unique creativity came from through his limitations
• 42:03
  and he made one of the coolest movies ever so yeah man in his mind i'm sure his perception was,
• 42:14
  that man i'll never be able to make movies but then he's he batted off some
• 42:18
  reality and said look i've got this much money i've got this equipment i can
• 42:23
  make it happen that might not been a good example, but El Mariachi was awesome anyway.
• 42:29
  Perceptions matter. You got to mix them with facts. You got to have both.
• 42:33
  All right. Now, all right. Those are my thoughts on perception versus reality, right?
• 42:39
  I talked about some of the people that, some of the philosophers that were on
• 42:45
  either side of that sort of philosophy.
• 42:48
  But now this is a thing. I mentioned this in one of my podcasts.
• 42:53
  It's a catchphrase. And now I happen,
• 42:57
  I don't want to say disagree, man, because I was saying that about perception
• 43:02
  is reality, but I'm an open-minded enough person to see how both sides of it, I think.
• 43:13
  Living my truth. Yeah. Your truth. I'm living my truth.
• 43:21
  Terms, that's about following your own beliefs and feelings,
• 43:24
  regardless if anybody agrees or disagrees or whatever, regardless of conventions or anything like that.
• 43:31
  And comparing it to perception as reality, right? There's living my truth and
• 43:35
  then there's perception as reality.
• 43:36
  Both of those concepts place the highest value on your personal views.
• 43:43
  But also, that both of those concepts can and often do clash with objective facts.
• 43:53
  What does living my truth mean and what's the roots of it?
• 43:57
  Well, yeah, living your own feelings and beliefs and who you believe you are
• 44:04
  inside, no matter who you are outside.
• 44:06
  Ignoring the rules, conventions, and opinions of other people,
• 44:10
  most especially, you know, religion and things like that is what we see these days.
• 44:15
  But it's about being real with yourself for your own personal happiness and
• 44:22
  maybe even inner strength, right?
• 44:24
  You, and that alone doesn't sound bad, does it? It's not bad.
• 44:31
  You should live, you should be who you want to be.
• 44:36
  You may think it's semantics, but your truth doesn't mean objective truth.
• 44:45
  And I said this before, nobody has a truth. Everyone has a circumstance.
• 44:52
  And now as we read, everyone has perceptions, but that doesn't make them true.
• 44:58
  So some of the philosophers, Nietzsche, obviously, you know,
• 45:01
  he kind of believed by, you know, making your own rules. And he was very critical
• 45:05
  of conventions and religion and things like that.
• 45:09
  And then there's a fellow from the 1900s.
• 45:13
  Well, his name is John Paul Sartre. And he was a French philosopher and writer.
• 45:20
  And he was instrumental in developing the idea of existentialism.
• 45:26
  Now, we hear this on the news all the time these days about existential crisis
• 45:30
  and existential this. and it's an existential problem, blah, blah, blah.
• 45:35
  And when you hear politicians say it, it just takes all meaning away.
• 45:40
  But at any rate, he emphasized freedom and I'm here for it.
• 45:45
  We're free to choose our path and I'm all for it.
• 45:50
  But it's caveated with this, but we are also fully responsible for our decisions.
• 45:58
  And this responsibility and this is
• 46:01
  this is where what you see in existentialism a lot and
• 46:04
  that we can make whatever decision we want but we're responsible for those decisions
• 46:09
  and that leads to angst or anxiety because once you accept that you got no one
• 46:16
  else to blame and there's a lot of victims out there who want to blame people
• 46:20
  everyone anyone for for their problems.
• 46:24
  But if you're being pure to this philosophy of existentialism and living your
• 46:31
  truth, you have to also accept the responsibility of your decisions.
• 46:37
  And from this is where we get the concept of authenticity, right?
• 46:42
  People who say they're living their truth, they want to be their authentic selves.
• 46:46
  They want to be true to their own choices, not society's expectations or your
• 46:52
  job's expectations or your church's expectations or anything like that.
• 46:56
  And then fast forward a few years, then we have Carl Rogers.
• 47:00
  He was an American psychologist. and he
• 47:04
  is among or he's one of the founders of the humanistic psychology
• 47:08
  and i liken this to like sort of
• 47:11
  the the self-help movement you know and he's known for having like very client-centered
• 47:16
  like therapy approach which emphasizes
• 47:20
  personal growth and understanding oneself and hell i i And I am,
• 47:28
  I use that sort of philosophy in two team guys courses, right?
• 47:34
  We do, it's all focused on leadership and team development, but yeah,
• 47:38
  also personal growth, right?
• 47:40
  And understanding yourself, why you do things and, and how things affect you
• 47:44
  and why you perceive things the way you do and how they bounce off of reality.
• 47:49
  And so his philosophy sort
• 47:52
  of encourages growth by matching
• 47:55
  your your real self your your authentic self with
• 47:59
  how you live your life and i think i think we can even see that and like say
• 48:06
  the christian community for instance is or or even military leadership how match
• 48:13
  matching yourself to how you live.
• 48:16
  Live by example.
• 48:19
  Lead by example.
• 48:21
  Be who you say you are or who you believe you are.
• 48:26
  Yeah. So this is not horrible philosophy, but I think modern day folks,
• 48:32
  and I'm going to even say, you know, really young people kind of,
• 48:37
  they take these catchphrases and then they kind of twist them to match.
• 48:42
  I don't even think young people. Shit, everybody does that.
• 48:46
  Everybody does that. They take a catchphrase for some deep philosophy and then
• 48:51
  squeeze it into their own little personal philosophies.
• 48:57
  So how does living your truth... Oh, no, no. No, we're not there yet.
• 49:01
  So here's the thing about living your truth, right?
• 49:04
  It can be good. It can help a person feel free and liberated,
• 49:12
  but can also lead that same person to ignore or outright reject other people's
• 49:19
  beliefs, opinions, cultural norms.
• 49:23
  And I'm all for that, really.
• 49:26
  But it also can lead you to ignore objective facts, reality.
• 49:35
  Ultimately, it can be liberating, but worst case scenario, it can also cause loneliness.
• 49:40
  It can cause conflict, either internal strife or external.
• 49:46
  Maybe you're very abrasive or not very accepting of other people.
• 49:54
  And then also it can lead to kind of self-isolation. And then even if you're
• 50:00
  self-isolating, you can kind of in your own mind perceive it as social oppression
• 50:04
  when in reality you're isolating yourself.
• 50:08
  Yeah. All right. So how does living your truth compare to perception as reality?
• 50:17
  Now, both of these philosophies, they both place the highest value on your own personal views, right?
• 50:23
  Your personal perception rules all. if
• 50:27
  you see something in a certain way and it feels real to you and
• 50:30
  it guides you and that's it but the problem
• 50:33
  is they both even question at
• 50:36
  a minimum they question objective truth but your
• 50:40
  own perceptions can twist facts through your feelings right like a like an optical
• 50:46
  illusion and your truth may your truth may may be good your truth may support
• 50:54
  something good If you're a young teenage Christian and you say,
• 50:58
  I'm living my truth when you're walking the halls of your high school and you
• 51:03
  get ridiculed and things like that, but you stand firm.
• 51:05
  Yeah, that's really a good thing, I think.
• 51:09
  But let's flip the script on that. What if you're a transsexual or like a boy
• 51:15
  who's gay and effeminate and you're living your truth and you're walking the
• 51:19
  halls of your high school and you get brutalized every damn day?
• 51:23
  You know what I mean? So, things like that shape the way we take in information.
• 51:29
  And it can further exacerbate that illusion.
• 51:34
  Or you can get away from that and liberate yourself.
• 51:41
  But you can't ignore the fact that other people don't share your truth. They might be assholes.
• 51:51
  Even if they're not picking on you or whatever, bullying you,
• 51:55
  and it's just some kid who doesn't speak to you because he don't share your truth.
• 52:01
  Yeah, they both, so both of these concepts, it's all about personal perception and personal views.
• 52:08
  It could be good, it could be bad, but generally speaking, ignores objective
• 52:14
  truth or objective reality.
• 52:18
  What's different about the two is perception is the concept of perception is reality.
• 52:24
  It's a little more practical in a sense that it affects more people usually.
• 52:31
  I mean, it can affect individuals, obviously, but like what candidate you choose,
• 52:36
  you know, in an election cycle.
• 52:38
  You've taken in all the propaganda and you've parsed it out in your mind and
• 52:42
  your perception is, oh, this guy's.
• 52:45
  Yeah I know they say this about him but it seems really good never mind objective truth,
• 52:53
  or even as mundane as is choosing one restaurant over another you perceive one
• 52:59
  restaurant might have the best food on the planet but it's kind of run down
• 53:03
  so your your perception is,
• 53:06
  that the food's probably shitty because it's run down and you you move on to
• 53:10
  another restaurant I know that's simple that's a simple example but i'm just
• 53:15
  pointing that out because my wife and i go to,
• 53:18
  restaurant that's run down and kind of crappy looking and
• 53:21
  it's and it's awesome yeah awesome food gondolas on shorter avenue i'm just
• 53:26
  gonna go ahead and pimp it they got good they got pretty good food so it's more
• 53:33
  of a external thing yeah it's more of an external thing.
• 53:40
  Whereas living my truth is more of an individual internal
• 53:43
  thing it's individual or to at least
• 53:46
  a small tribe identity you know what i mean like the
• 53:49
  let's say i don't
• 53:52
  know who's furries you guys know what furries are this this is like semi new
• 53:57
  stuff to me man but there's some bizarre folks out there they dress up like
• 54:01
  little furry animals that's got to be a very small community right and these
• 54:06
  people think they're living some kind of truth, like they're actually animals or something, I think.
• 54:10
  I don't know. I think it's some kind of sexual fetish. I'm not sure.
• 54:14
  But what I'm saying is the perception is reality is sort of a almost external
• 54:20
  thing, whereas living my truth is more of an individual internal thing.
• 54:25
  And you do it purposefully or purposely, right, to do what you want to do and be who you want to be.
• 54:32
  But I think at some point, some people even do it in protest of objective truth.
• 54:40
  And then not only that, but sometimes despite objective truth.
• 54:46
  I said something about, I want to say in Seattle, Washington,
• 54:50
  on some government property there, they got like a statue of some like Moloch
• 54:57
  or some devil, satanic icon.
• 55:01
  Those people, you know, yeah, living their truth, right?
• 55:04
  But out of spite, they fought to have this satanic icon put up on state property.
• 55:14
  Madness. So it's not always healthy. I mean, I think oftentimes it's not healthy, in fact.
• 55:21
  Excuse me. So when our views, when our perception, our truth doesn't match facts,
• 55:29
  one of the differences here is that perceptions can admit mistakes.
• 55:36
  And I'll go back to the optical illusion, right? We look at it and we see it,
• 55:40
  but we know because it's a game or something And that we know that it's not
• 55:44
  what we're looking at. It changes.
• 55:47
  And you can make that right in your mind.
• 55:51
  Somehow, though, when it comes to deeper things, we can't make that right in our mind.
• 55:55
  But usually we can change our perception, right? Because sometimes it's only surface level.
• 56:02
  Like you can think a guy, you can meet someone at like an industry event,
• 56:08
  you know, name it. Or a friend of a friend who your perception up front is like,
• 56:15
  man, this guy's an asshole.
• 56:16
  But then over time you interact a little bit and then you realize this guy's really cool.
• 56:22
  Your perception of this guy changed. Had nothing to do with your truth.
• 56:25
  Had to do with just the way you interact and you learned, you learned truth.
• 56:30
  Your perception changed based on new information.
• 56:34
  Yeah. But then my truth, yeah, my truth, those folks, that can get combative. Yeah.
• 56:42
  That can get, people who are living their truth and if you question it or don't
• 56:50
  fully support, I mean, sometimes, you know, they'll see it as a personal attack.
• 56:55
  And I've talked about this plenty of times too. This all or nothing mentality
• 56:59
  where if you're not my ally, I don't mean if you tolerate me.
• 57:04
  Or even if you accept me for who I am, but if you don't fully ally with me,
• 57:09
  then they see it as a personal attack.
• 57:12
  And that's the difference there. That's how that can twist because it's such
• 57:16
  an inner personal thing.
• 57:19
  What's a moderate, what's a fair way to look at these things?
• 57:23
  So looking back on Immanuel Kant, yeah, your truth empowers personal growth
• 57:29
  for your own consumption.
• 57:31
  But you are responsible and accountable for your decisions.
• 57:36
  But in shared life, in society, in a functioning, high-trust society,
• 57:44
  it requires that you also, whatever your truth is, you also act.
• 57:49
  Whatever your perceptions are, you also act based off of real facts,
• 57:55
  right? Off of objective facts.
• 57:57
  You can have your truth. You can have your perception.
• 58:00
  But for instance, the red light is the red light.
• 58:05
  If you run through that red light, the consequences of your actions may be that
• 58:09
  you get T-boned by somebody doing 80 miles per hour.
• 58:12
  There are objective facts and truths out there.
• 58:17
  Right so this concept of sort of moderation kind of plays here like you can
• 58:24
  have your own personal growth and you can feel the way you feel about a thing
• 58:29
  but again your truth is yours only,
• 58:33
  you're responsible and accountable folks for your own decisions and then i'll
• 58:37
  go back to plato and he warns us don't and i love this i love the way this shakes
• 58:42
  out here don't mistake shadows for the real thing.
• 58:46
  A lot of shadows out there, folks. A lot of shadows out there.
• 58:50
  Do not mistake shadows for the real thing.
• 58:53
  All right, we're going to look at some examples in today's society.
• 58:58
  Now, again, man, I'm not picking on transgender people.
• 59:05
  In fact, I'm just trying to make sense of everything partly for myself partly
• 59:12
  for you partly to help everyone listening.
• 59:17
  Maybe strengthen your critical thought process a little bit, possibly.
• 59:23
  But gender, right? The whole transgender and gender transitioning stuff that
• 59:29
  we see in the news for the past five or six, seven years here.
• 59:35
  In practice, for sure, transgender people live their truth.
• 59:40
  Absolutely. And they match their persona, their physical looks.
• 59:46
  Their names their their pronouns their
• 59:49
  sometimes even like social roles and
• 59:53
  in business and whatnot with whatever their inner truth is right and this is
• 59:59
  where you yeah they do that and and we see them in society now i'm gonna say
• 1:00:06
  that there's probably maybe on the high end there the percentage of the U.S.
• 1:00:13
  Population is transgender, somewhere like 1.3 or something. That's one of the stats that I found.
• 1:00:20
  So I think this is an outsized issue for the numbers of people that it affects,
• 1:00:26
  but the transgender community is among the loudest in America.
• 1:00:33
  Now, we can examine why that is at another time.
• 1:00:39
  So they live their truth. Yeah.
• 1:00:42
  They live their truth and they'll go, you know, and they'll,
• 1:00:46
  to, to the extent to where they may get the medical procedure,
• 1:00:50
  they may go all the way. You know what I mean?
• 1:00:52
  Surgery and hormone therapy and the whole works.
• 1:00:55
  Now I would argue that looking back in the longterm, I don't think that that's been a wild success.
• 1:01:04
  I think, you You know, people who attribute the transgender,
• 1:01:08
  there's a pretty high suicide rate amongst transgender.
• 1:01:13
  And I don't think that's all, you know, that community will say it's from bullying
• 1:01:19
  and from prejudice and all that. I don't believe that.
• 1:01:22
  I believe a lot of that is from just ultimate realization that I've made a huge mistake.
• 1:01:30
  But for some, you know, never mind the surgery, right? Just let's say just the
• 1:01:36
  social, you know, I've taken on the opposite sex's name.
• 1:01:42
  I've dressed as the opposite sex.
• 1:01:45
  I've changed all my legal name and everything like that, you know,
• 1:01:51
  and I'm working in a job that's typically reserved for the opposite sex, right?
• 1:01:57
  Let's say that. I think there probably are numbers that support that that reduces
• 1:02:06
  stress from gender dysphoria that they feel,
• 1:02:10
  and it helps them to feel more authentic in their daily life. Yeah.
• 1:02:17
  Feel more authentic in their daily life. Now, there's a fact,
• 1:02:21
  and then there's a hard objective fact that by basic biological sex at the genetic
• 1:02:27
  level just simply can't be changed.
• 1:02:30
  And that's where the rub is with the general public, I think.
• 1:02:35
  And some in that community completely reject any actual scientific objective facts whatsoever.
• 1:02:42
  Others understand where they're at and what they're doing and how it affects other people.
• 1:02:48
  So when you're in that ladder there where you understand how it affects other
• 1:02:54
  people, you understand where you're at and you can balance your life,
• 1:03:00
  but some can't, some don't have that.
• 1:03:03
  The idea of living my truth, they put their
• 1:03:07
  personal view and gender identifying gender
• 1:03:11
  they put it first above above everything and
• 1:03:15
  this guides their their identity it guides their actions
• 1:03:18
  it guides it guides the way they interact with other humans and
• 1:03:22
  they and it's their reality right it's and they're trying to be perceived as
• 1:03:28
  whatever now most people well i would say can tell the difference one way or
• 1:03:35
  the other sometimes you can't but still there's a perception though even though
• 1:03:39
  you know the difference that's still,
• 1:03:42
  outwardly and superficially like okay whatever but for them that's very much their their reality.
• 1:03:50
  Damn any scientific facts or social norms or anything else this it can be very
• 1:03:58
  empowering it can be very empowering and i think to the point that it's empowered
• 1:04:02
  a lot of that community to be so vocal,
• 1:04:05
  to be so vocal, they can, based on these theories,
• 1:04:12
  build more of a self-acceptance and build more of a sort of resilience against outside judgment.
• 1:04:19
  And it perfectly fits within the perception of reality by letting their inner
• 1:04:22
  feelings shape the way they see and move through the world, right?
• 1:04:26
  So for some, this leads to better mental health and for others,
• 1:04:30
  suicide. I don't think there's a whole lot of middle ground there.
• 1:04:34
  And maybe I just don't know enough transgender people to know this, but I think I do.
• 1:04:41
  But obviously, for other people, this obviously raises a question about balancing
• 1:04:48
  personal truth and objective facts, right?
• 1:04:51
  Some biologists, a lot of feminists, they see this as ignoring unchangeable
• 1:04:56
  parts of a human, right? You cannot...
• 1:05:01
  A trans woman, I think a man who wants to be a woman or believes that he's a
• 1:05:08
  woman, cannot, will not have a baby.
• 1:05:11
  It's the way it is, not biologically.
• 1:05:15
  And so this causes bigger societal issues anyway.
• 1:05:19
  And then we have all kind of arguments and laws being passed over things like
• 1:05:25
  literal definitions of man or woman.
• 1:05:28
  And, you know, one year, I think, I don't know, Cosmo or somebody had Caitlyn
• 1:05:34
  Jenner as a woman of the year.
• 1:05:37
  Caitlyn Jenner, formerly Bruce Jenner, Olympian.
• 1:05:41
  So that's, you know, and things like that is what asses the feminist up so bad.
• 1:05:46
  This conflict shows how my truth, where it can bring personal happiness,
• 1:05:51
  it can create a vast, a vast divide between humans and society and culture.
• 1:05:57
  And it happens when one person's view affects shared realities
• 1:06:00
  we have a shared reality no matter what
• 1:06:03
  you you share reality with
• 1:06:07
  some with other humans whether you want to or not
• 1:06:10
  and this is what ends up leading to talks about whether too much unchecked personal
• 1:06:17
  view stuff can weaken scientific fact and societal fabric and then you get crazy
• 1:06:25
  laws being made and you get people,
• 1:06:27
  you know, I've got my own opinions. We're going to come.
• 1:06:31
  So in action, as of August, so these views, right, as they are today.
• 1:06:39
  This month, 27 states have passed laws restricting gender-affirming care for minors.
• 1:06:47
  Now, I happen to believe that there should not be gender-affirming care for
• 1:06:52
  minors. I believe if you want to make those decisions, whether you think you're
• 1:06:58
  born that way or not, I believe age of majority is the age of majority.
• 1:07:01
  The parents should not be pushing kids one way or the other.
• 1:07:08
  Well, you shouldn't push for hormones and things like that, in my opinion.
• 1:07:13
  The Supreme Court has upheld a Tennessee ban on the treatments for people under 18.
• 1:07:19
  And then obviously states like California, Massachusetts have laws protecting
• 1:07:24
  access to care, gender-affirming care, even allowing people from other states to come in there.
• 1:07:34
  So is that well thought out? Is that in good faith? No, it's not.
• 1:07:41
  And across America, this is a sticking point. And I believe it's purposely used
• 1:07:50
  as a political sticking point, purposely. Yeah.
• 1:07:55
  Sort of chaos across the country. But surveys show that most people agree that, and when I say most,
• 1:08:05
  I want to say something like two-thirds believe that trans athletes shouldn't
• 1:08:11
  be allowed to compete in whatever their chosen sport.
• 1:08:17
  It should be your birth sex.
• 1:08:21
  And then probably somewhere around two-thirds agree
• 1:08:25
  that there should be restrictions on youth transitioning things
• 1:08:29
  and then there's always lawsuits you got
• 1:08:32
  the aclu whatever glad same uh friggin usual suspects and then you got other
• 1:08:42
  organizations trying to make sure
• 1:08:47
  that well they call it the society for evidence-based gender medicine,
• 1:08:52
  which is there on the other side of the ACLU.
• 1:08:55
  They don't believe that gender transition, especially for minors, should be a thing.
• 1:09:02
  And these perceptions, folks, on both sides have shaped policy over the years. Yeah.
• 1:09:09
  Somewhere in the 70s, transgenderism was classified as a mental,
• 1:09:13
  you know, gender dysphoria or something to that effect. Somewhere in the 70s.
• 1:09:18
  I mean, it had always been up until the 70s.
• 1:09:20
  And then the political activists pressured the doctor, and I can't remember his name right now.
• 1:09:29
  Who under political, literal political pressure and the threat of,
• 1:09:37
  you know, outing him as or targeting, being targeted and losing his job and things.
• 1:09:44
  No new studies no new
• 1:09:47
  science exist existed and
• 1:09:50
  he edited the the textbooks or the or the the manual for you know mental disorders
• 1:09:56
  and whatnot to to declassify that as a as a as a mental problem so even if you're
• 1:10:04
  a transgender today and you're listening to this and you think man man,
• 1:10:09
  this guy's kind of a phobe, a transphobe.
• 1:10:13
  I'm definitely not, but I want you to know, and you should look at objective
• 1:10:18
  truth and see that, yeah, it's there.
• 1:10:22
  Now, just because it's written in a book, does that mean it's so?
• 1:10:26
  Now, we can argue about that too, but is there truly gender dysphoria there
• 1:10:35
  is that truly a psychological issue well objectively that was changed based
• 1:10:41
  on political pressure not not science.
• 1:10:48
  Enough of that man i'm gonna
• 1:10:51
  probably get some hate on that well speaking
• 1:10:54
  of hate i'm gonna get some hate on this too now we're going to talk about crime
• 1:10:57
  statistics and the black community oh man i'm stepping
• 1:11:00
  in it and i'm stepping in it good fbi data
• 1:11:04
  tells us that black americans
• 1:11:08
  make up 13 or 14 percent of the u.s population but they're
• 1:11:12
  over represented in violent crime arrests and they
• 1:11:15
  account for somewhere between 51 and 56 percent
• 1:11:18
  of homicide arrests or violent
• 1:11:23
  offenses in america yep
• 1:11:27
  that's those are objective numbers so check it out before you before you jump
• 1:11:32
  up start calling racist and things like that also those are objective numbers
• 1:11:36
  those are stats now i know that there's a book called lying with stats and things
• 1:11:41
  like that i understand numbers can be manipulated.
• 1:11:45
  But even margin of error on these, that's still an outrageous ratio.
• 1:11:51
  It's still an outrageous. And now I'm going to say this, and I read this just
• 1:11:56
  the other day, unrelated to the research I was doing here.
• 1:12:01
  Of the black population that makes up 13% to 14% of America,
• 1:12:07
  the crime statistics, overwhelmingly, the crime is committed by black males
• 1:12:14
  between the ages of like 15 and 45.
• 1:12:16
  And then that number makes up about 4% of the population.
• 1:12:23
  So if you want to really get down to it, you got 4% of the population committing
• 1:12:28
  between 50 and 55% of the crime in America, violent crime in America. Now that's a problem.
• 1:12:36
  It is a problem. Now it's a complex problem and I've talked about it before
• 1:12:42
  even, But let's compare it to perception as reality and living our truth.
• 1:12:49
  Living my truth in the black community, you know, the black community, generally speaking,
• 1:12:57
  the views crime stats through the lens of their experience, right,
• 1:13:03
  their own experience, and what they consider, well, and what is systematic,
• 1:13:08
  injustice starting way back, like way back.
• 1:13:13
  I mean, we can go back to racism, but let's, slavery, but let's,
• 1:13:16
  let's scoot forward into the, the 1900s.
• 1:13:21
  All right, there was still a whole lot of residual from the slave days up through
• 1:13:27
  the end of the 1800s and then into the 1900s.
• 1:13:31
  But essentially, slaves just, generally speaking, just became,
• 1:13:36
  you know, low paid workers, you know, labor.
• 1:13:41
  So basically, you're still a slave anyway. Once they got freed as actual slaves,
• 1:13:45
  then they went and took their place next to the Irish as indentured servants.
• 1:13:51
  But yeah, racial profiling, economic.
• 1:13:55
  So talking about the current state of crime is a fact. It's an objective fact.
• 1:14:01
  But then living my truth is kind of almost like I'm kind of trying to dodge
• 1:14:10
  responsibility and accountability for that.
• 1:14:12
  Now, living your personal truth, it can empower communities.
• 1:14:16
  And there are a lot of awesome truths.
• 1:14:21
  And I mean really grassroots ones that are pushing for change and pushing for
• 1:14:27
  education and training and getting people sort of looking at things in a different way,
• 1:14:37
  changing their perception, right, of just the American life and ultimately the American dream.
• 1:14:44
  But yeah, there's a lot of emotion wrapped around that subject and a lot of
• 1:14:49
  history wrapped around it.
• 1:14:51
  And to some of these people living their truth, that emotion and that history
• 1:14:56
  matters more than the current crime statistics.
• 1:15:00
  Now, look, every morning in Atlanta, you hear about some little girl getting
• 1:15:05
  shot by an errant round from some gang shooting or whatever,
• 1:15:11
  just thugs doing thug stuff.
• 1:15:13
  Every morning, there's somebody dead in Atlanta. And I got news for you folks, it ain't gun crime.
• 1:15:19
  That's the problem, right? It's the culture and it's the living my truth culture.
• 1:15:27
  Because when you listen to music that glorifies the ghetto and you live in the
• 1:15:31
  ghetto, you kind of are being encouraged to live that lifestyle.
• 1:15:37
  Kind of. That's what I think. If you don't think that, give me a call.
• 1:15:41
  But to the critics, right? So living my truth, right?
• 1:15:46
  They're living their truth, and it's not very helpful to the crime statistics
• 1:15:52
  in their own neighborhood.
• 1:15:53
  Now, on the other side of that, you got sort of, I guess you could say conservative.
• 1:15:59
  I don't break it up into politics.
• 1:16:02
  White people who say that, and it's kind of a perception is reality thing for them.
• 1:16:08
  They look at the news, they see black people committing crime. They assume it's.
• 1:16:16
  Thank you.
• 1:16:17
  Know real critical thinking and looking at very specific
• 1:16:20
  culture and stuff like that so they see
• 1:16:23
  the black community as avoiding
• 1:16:27
  personal responsibility avoiding accountability and perpetuating a ghetto culture
• 1:16:32
  so this tension but you know the racism that does now look i don't think so
• 1:16:38
  much there is racism folks i keep i keep saying yes i'm not telling you there's
• 1:16:44
  no racism But I'm saying things like that.
• 1:16:47
  That's one of the biggest factors that continue. Other than politicians.
• 1:16:52
  Okay, let me caveat by saying the crime statistics will be exploited by politicians
• 1:16:58
  on both sides of the aisle to push an agenda.
• 1:17:01
  They have no interest in seeing those crime statistics go away. Either side.
• 1:17:09
  Understand that and believe that shit the politicians have no interest in seeing
• 1:17:15
  those crime statistics and the divide that they cause they have no interest in seeing that go away,
• 1:17:22
  so they're going to perpetuate it and they're going to exploit the numbers but living your truth,
• 1:17:29
  you know it's kind of a form of relative relative relativism and living your
• 1:17:36
  truth right being the champion of the ghetto,
• 1:17:39
  and hating white people because white people enslaved your people 500 years ago,
• 1:17:46
  now you're creating your own barriers that might block viable ally relationships,
• 1:17:55
  viable team solutions to helping to change the perceptions and to helping,
• 1:18:03
  you know, create a better environment
• 1:18:07
  in what was purposely created as a ghetto,
• 1:18:10
  dependent on the state and things like that.
• 1:18:14
  So these subjective views, do they build empathy for your cause or do they cause more division?
• 1:18:24
  I think they cause more division. I don't think that in modern day that there's
• 1:18:32
  any reason for a black neighborhood and white neighborhood to look any different.
• 1:18:37
  In the modern day. But we've got so much history to fight through,
• 1:18:42
  to change, to overcome, essentially. There's so much history.
• 1:18:49
  And some factions on either side don't care to change any of that.
• 1:18:55
  Mainly, chiefly, the ones who benefit from it. And that's, I'll say,
• 1:19:00
  Politicians, black and white, the rap industry, yeah, the rap industry has no
• 1:19:07
  reason to change that dynamic.
• 1:19:12
  Rappers these days grew up in upper middle-class neighborhoods,
• 1:19:15
  went to private schools and shit.
• 1:19:17
  I think these hardline views, these subjective my truth, my reality,
• 1:19:25
  my perception of reality, I think they don't build any empathy.
• 1:19:29
  They don't help to foster any teamwork or team building or getting any allies for your cause.
• 1:19:38
  I think they cause division on both sides.
• 1:19:42
  Throughout the past couple of years, there's been a lot. Now, look, let me say this.
• 1:19:48
  Crime numbers are down in general.
• 1:19:53
  Crime numbers are down.
• 1:19:55
  There's a whole lot of community-based programs that help to bring in young
• 1:20:03
  black kids in these inner cities like Chicago and Baltimore and Atlanta and
• 1:20:07
  Philadelphia that are educating and training and giving these people,
• 1:20:14
  these young people, something to look forward to.
• 1:20:17
  They're helping shape their perspective to be more positive.
• 1:20:22
  And yeah, crime rates are reflecting that.
• 1:20:25
  Now we see, it doesn't seem like that because social media and because everything
• 1:20:29
  we see is such a frigging, you know, all the news, they're going to exploit
• 1:20:35
  everything that happens.
• 1:20:36
  So we look at it on TV and on social media, we don't see it.
• 1:20:40
  But the fact of the matter is the crime is in fact down.
• 1:20:44
  And I'm going to, and I've talked about this guy before and we're talking about
• 1:20:47
  it again, community movements like Black Guns Matter.
• 1:20:50
  And that's a fellow by the name of Maj Touré.
• 1:20:53
  And I want to say he's running in Philadelphia. I want to say he's going to
• 1:20:58
  be running for possibly city council.
• 1:21:03
  But I've watched that group grow and evolve, and they focus on education,
• 1:21:08
  training, shared experiences, experiential advocacy.
• 1:21:14
  They do events that emphasize personal impact. You know what I'm saying? Personal impact.
• 1:21:23
  And they also, I'm sure, now I've never sat in one of his classes,
• 1:21:27
  I'm sure he engages people with or encourages people to get kind of proactive
• 1:21:34
  in the electoral efforts, especially at a local level.
• 1:21:38
  Maj, the guy I'm talking about, Maj, he is a libertarian. Yeah.
• 1:21:45
  Libertarians, though, yeah, the big Libertarian Party, we always want to get
• 1:21:49
  people up on the national stage.
• 1:21:53
  But the reality is, I think the local efforts are more likely to get Libertarians
• 1:21:58
  into office because they're closer down to the people. They're more grassroots.
• 1:22:03
  You can go out in your district and be known to people and make your platform known.
• 1:22:11
  But yeah man i i think there's
• 1:22:14
  a lot of there's a lot of things affecting the the the
• 1:22:17
  crime rate going down a lot of things affecting
• 1:22:20
  that now public opinion now some
• 1:22:24
  of these polls now these polls you can call those objective truth but some of
• 1:22:30
  these polls man you know they get a sample they might be kind of skewed they're
• 1:22:34
  it's like a small sample from certain play whatever so put whatever value you want in those,
• 1:22:41
  but even the polls that are coming out these days currently are showing some nuance in the thing.
• 1:22:48
  About two-thirds of the American people believe police treat black people less
• 1:22:53
  fairly, and this by simply acknowledging systematic issues, acknowledging cognitive biases, etc.
• 1:23:03
  And acknowledging that kind of shit is very important, folks.
• 1:23:06
  But there's also support for more police funding.
• 1:23:11
  So there was this time period there where we wanted to defund the police,
• 1:23:14
  and liberals were pushing that.
• 1:23:18
  What is defunding the police going
• 1:23:19
  to do? Now, again, I have a love-hating relationship with the police.
• 1:23:23
  I think the police are misused.
• 1:23:26
  However, when you defund the police in places, let's say Portland.
• 1:23:32
  Oregon, or Seattle of Washington, chaos, chaos ensues.
• 1:23:39
  And that's not doing anything for anyone. It's not a positive move.
• 1:23:43
  But even in high crime areas, your average citizen that lives in these areas
• 1:23:48
  want to see more police presence.
• 1:23:51
  Yeah. And it's pretty equal divide, you know, politically on that.
• 1:23:56
  So a lot of these cities, by the way, yeah, crime has gone down overall.
• 1:24:00
  But some of these cities that did all this defund the police junk
• 1:24:03
  their crime you know started getting like out
• 1:24:06
  of control so they kind of reversed they're
• 1:24:10
  starting to reverse stuff on that so yeah your perception versus reality your
• 1:24:16
  perception is oh police are bad they're all racist thugs who are just looking
• 1:24:21
  to shoot black people that that's but then you defund the police crime goes up you have.
• 1:24:30
  Some objective facts. You got to balance some objective reality with your perceptions.
• 1:24:36
  Man, I hope you guys didn't just hear that outro music. I forgot to mute it.
• 1:24:41
  I hope you didn't hear it. We're not over yet.
• 1:24:45
  I know this was going a little long as well. All right. Now let's go ahead.
• 1:24:51
  Last thing we're going to talk about politics. And I know, you know,
• 1:24:55
  I know lies, lack of accountability, lack of transparency.
• 1:25:01
  Recently, Congress, members of Congress, they're facing some heavy scrutiny
• 1:25:07
  on alleged insider trading.
• 1:25:10
  They leverage non-public information, right? Privileged information.
• 1:25:15
  And that could be knowledge of programs that are going to be instituted or defunded
• 1:25:22
  or whatever, or regulations that are going to affect certain industries.
• 1:25:31
  Regulatory, you know, all these things. And then they make these bizarre,
• 1:25:38
  awesome stock trades that outpace even the most brilliant financial guys out there.
• 1:25:44
  That's amazing. How do they do that? How are they so, how are these lawmakers
• 1:25:49
  so insightful as to what the market's going to do, right?
• 1:25:53
  They should be making policy and working for the betterment of America,
• 1:25:58
  But instead, it seems like they're just tracking the stock market all day,
• 1:26:02
  every day. Is that correct?
• 1:26:04
  Or do they have some kind of foot on the scale? Yeah, that's probably what it is.
• 1:26:10
  Some of these politicians believe they're entitled, you know,
• 1:26:13
  like, oh, yeah, it's just a perk for the job.
• 1:26:14
  And that's probably the way it's been looked at for many years. But it's shady.
• 1:26:18
  It's shady as hell. And it's bending truth to and misrepresenting their own
• 1:26:25
  intent to enrich themselves, to enrich others, to pad pockets, et cetera, et cetera.
• 1:26:32
  And I wrote here, whether intentional or not, it's intentional.
• 1:26:37
  You don't accidentally do insider trading.
• 1:26:41
  Yeah, they lie and they manipulate. They distort facts to avoid,
• 1:26:48
  like, you know, the public knowing about it.
• 1:26:50
  But in the day and age of the Internet here, people know you can find out.
• 1:26:56
  And, you know, they're like, oh, it's innocent. No.
• 1:27:01
  Is it Pelosi, her husband? I mean, that's what he does. That's what he does for a living.
• 1:27:06
  They're trying to manipulate your perception of what ethical conduct of a politician should be.
• 1:27:14
  Now, in the framework of living my truth, I guess maybe some of these politicians
• 1:27:20
  think that their insider trading is legitimate.
• 1:27:27
  Do you think that? No, I don't.
• 1:27:32
  Smart enough to understand the nuances that they're really allowed to do this,
• 1:27:36
  even though it seems like there's a conflict of interest there.
• 1:27:40
  But in reality, you just don't understand true integrity.
• 1:27:45
  They're living their truth, right? They're smarter than you, and that's their truth.
• 1:27:51
  So yeah, insider trading. They're dirty. They're greasy.
• 1:27:59
  They're liars. And I would say most most all of them.
• 1:28:04
  Yeah. If you're insider trading as a politician, you're just a slimy,
• 1:28:10
  you know, you're a slimy thief.
• 1:28:13
  You're a slimy thief and you have no integrity.
• 1:28:17
  Your truth, whatever, already we probably understand that politicians feel like, well, they are.
• 1:28:24
  They're in the ruling class. They're in the elite class.
• 1:28:27
  But any politician, save
• 1:28:32
  a few no understand there's a few out very few
• 1:28:35
  out there that are not not don't fit this but they lack
• 1:28:39
  any humility whatsoever the hubris
• 1:28:42
  the the arrogance of these people right and and they try to build this perception
• 1:28:49
  of they're up there doing such critical work that we we we underlings just cannot
• 1:28:56
  understand the difficulties they go through.
• 1:29:01
  They're entitled to these trades.
• 1:29:06
  Yeah, they're entitled. Right now, I think there are 10 members of Congress
• 1:29:12
  from either side of the aisle who are under probes,
• 1:29:18
  ethics probes, from the Senate Ethics Committee and the Office of Congressional
• 1:29:24
  Ethics for insider trading.
• 1:29:28
  And and worse yet man and and like trading on
• 1:29:31
  health stocks when they're up here doing things like
• 1:29:34
  making these vaccines mandatory shit like
• 1:29:37
  that and they're up here trading health stocks or they're
• 1:29:40
  giving these gigantic contracts to let's say palantir and then they're trading
• 1:29:46
  in the tech stocks it's it's so greasy it's so greasy all right all right moving
• 1:29:56
  on all right Perception versus reality and living my truth.
• 1:29:59
  Yeah, there's some good that can be found in that, right?
• 1:30:04
  Especially living your truth. You can build inner strength, inner resilience.
• 1:30:11
  And this can help these marginalized groups, you know, sort of tell their stories, right?
• 1:30:18
  And that's good. There's nothing wrong with that.
• 1:30:21
  That's good. But what's bad? The downside of these living my truth and this
• 1:30:29
  perception is reality is they can and often do create these closed groups, these echo chambers.
• 1:30:38
  They create or propagate false information and cultural chaos.
• 1:30:46
  It's something as simple as ignoring crime facts and then becoming an obstacle
• 1:30:53
  to help fix the problems, right?
• 1:30:58
  Or politicians who lie with impunity, bureaucratic appointees who just daily,
• 1:31:07
  daily erode public trust.
• 1:31:10
  So, yeah, the good side is you can build some inner strength and ability.
• 1:31:17
  Is you can create tribes that can find no middle ground with other tribes.
• 1:31:27
  A great modern philosopher named Karl Popper pushed the idea of critical rationalism,
• 1:31:35
  and he opposed the concepts of perception of reality or living my truth.
• 1:31:40
  And he thought and
• 1:31:43
  believed that subjective beliefs have to be
• 1:31:46
  tested against empirical evidence to
• 1:31:50
  avoid deceiving not only others but yourself
• 1:31:53
  and to avoid dangerous ideologies empirical evidence subjective beliefs batted
• 1:32:02
  off of empirical evidence to avoid negative bad things to avoid fooling yourself
• 1:32:08
  folks and that's why And I always say this on most of my,
• 1:32:12
  you got to be honest with yourself about whatever the situation,
• 1:32:16
  whatever topic we're on. I don't care if we're talking about pistol training.
• 1:32:19
  Be honest with yourself about your skill level and about how much you're willing
• 1:32:23
  to listen to someone else versus just do what you've been doing.
• 1:32:27
  When it comes to whatever your religious beliefs are, you know,
• 1:32:31
  do you reject God because your dad beat you?
• 1:32:36
  And you thought, well, there can't be a God because my dad beat me.
• 1:32:40
  Well, be honest with yourself, not that you deserve the beating,
• 1:32:43
  but does one have anything to do with the other?
• 1:32:46
  Do you know what I'm saying? There's so much. So in Popper's philosophy,
• 1:32:52
  he talked about some falsifiability criterion.
• 1:32:57
  That's the cornerstone of modern science is helping distinguish real science
• 1:33:04
  from pseudoscience. All right.
• 1:33:08
  Now, evolution. Yeah, a lot of people believe in a blanket. They look at it
• 1:33:14
  like I got to believe in God or I got to believe in evolution.
• 1:33:16
  Evolution is falsifiable.
• 1:33:19
  There are gaps in evolution as big as any gap in the biblical God and Jesus.
• 1:33:29
  All right. Astrology.
• 1:33:31
  Astrology is not falsifiable, right? There's hard science. There's numbers. There's math behind it.
• 1:33:39
  So falsifiability, if you can prove something false, then there you go.
• 1:33:46
  It's a perception and not a reality.
• 1:33:49
  All right. These are my final words, folks. I know it's going long.
• 1:33:52
  These are my final words.
• 1:33:54
  And I think this is the middle ground here, I believe.
• 1:33:59
  Your truth is great for you, right? But it is yours and yours only.
• 1:34:05
  You can't believe in your truth and not acknowledge that anyone else and everyone
• 1:34:12
  else can have their own truth too.
• 1:34:14
  And chances are their truth conflicts with yours.
• 1:34:18
  So if you believe in your truth and that your truth shouldn't be questioned,
• 1:34:23
  then then how can you question
• 1:34:26
  other people's truth objective facts
• 1:34:30
  folks objective truth objective reality is the middle ground you have to acknowledge
• 1:34:38
  objective facts and truth for society to function harmoniously we are a high
• 1:34:43
  trust society we are a high trust society in contrast to, say.
• 1:34:51
  Somalia, right?
• 1:34:52
  And in order to function harmoniously, which we see on the news every morning that there's crime.
• 1:34:59
  We just had a shooting here on last Friday at Emory University.
• 1:35:04
  I think five people were wounded, and the police officer was shot dead.
• 1:35:08
  And then the shooter, I think, shot himself. That is not harmonious.
• 1:35:13
  And that guy, the shooter, was out there executing his truth.
• 1:35:17
  He did not probably put a lot of thought into subjective, or sorry, objective reality.
• 1:35:27
  And that's it. Our perceptions affect our lives, folks.
• 1:35:32
  But you have to honor the truth because that's the place in the middle.
• 1:35:38
  That's the true north between personal and shared realities.
• 1:35:43
  Okay folks that was my thoughts on perception versus reality and living my truth
• 1:35:51
  there was a lot there i know it went kind of long but now i.
• 1:35:58
  Always say, oh yeah, this has been weighing on me. It wasn't necessarily weighing
• 1:36:02
  on me, but it was definitely something that I've been thinking about lately
• 1:36:06
  because I've heard that multiple times.
• 1:36:09
  And yeah, I just thought I needed to speak on it.
• 1:36:13
  Now there was nothing well, there was nothing very controversial there.
• 1:36:19
  I don't think I heard any feelings. If I did, you know, hit me up and we can
• 1:36:24
  talk about anything you want to talk about.
• 1:36:26
  All right good people please follow
• 1:36:30
  you know the Juneto podcast 1727 on
• 1:36:35
  Instagram Osprey Shooting Solutions on Instagram Osprey
• 1:36:39
  Shooting on X Robert Edgar Mills on Facebook to Team Guys on Instagram and Facebook
• 1:36:49
  come out and shoot we got a pistol workshop coming up on 23 August.
• 1:36:56
  We have a wild card coming up on 30 August.
• 1:37:00
  And on 1 September, we have a pistol match coming up, action pistol match.
• 1:37:07
  And we're going to give away a free course on that for the winter.
• 1:37:13
  Sometime in September, there's going to be a land navigation course,
• 1:37:17
  and that's a three-day. It's going to be a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
• 1:37:20
  So more to follow on that when that gets scheduled, hopefully in September.
• 1:37:28
  And just for other news, there's a fellow out there named Michael Kersina,
• 1:37:33
  and he runs an organization called We Fight Monsters, and his podcast is Spotter Up.
• 1:37:41
  He and I are going to be recording an episode. I'm doing his podcast on 17 August.
• 1:37:47
  I don't know when it's going to air, but I will, when that does,
• 1:37:50
  I'll put the link on the Jinto, I'll put it on all the websites.
• 1:37:55
  Please follow, like, share, comment, and review, you know, all those things
• 1:38:00
  that help the algorithms.
• 1:38:04
  I made the mistake, folks. There's a company out there called Path Social.
• 1:38:09
  And I paid an X amount of dollars to do a profile on there and they're supposed
• 1:38:15
  to try to get you followers, right?
• 1:38:18
  Like genuine followers who follow the things that you do, the kinds of things
• 1:38:23
  and it's been absolute garbage.
• 1:38:27
  So I went from something like 2,800 followers to something like 6,000 followers and pretty quick.
• 1:38:37
  And, and every one of them over 2,800 were the garbage, their bots or whatever it is.
• 1:38:45
  I'm not technically savvy enough to know, but they're not, they're not legitimate profiles.
• 1:38:50
  And I don't, I'm trying, I've.
• 1:38:54
  That past social thing, but you can only delete so many profiles a day from your followers.
• 1:39:01
  So I can't keep up deleting.
• 1:39:04
  It's out of control. So look, please, if you're a real human,
• 1:39:09
  please follow, right? The bots are no good.
• 1:39:13
  I'm trying to do good things for good people, folks or anyone really.
• 1:39:17
  So yeah, please, please go check out the websites, Ospreyshooting solutions.com.
• 1:39:22
  It's where all the shooting happens. That's training.
• 1:39:25
  Two team guys.com is where all the adventure based leadership development and team building happens.
• 1:39:33
  And those are, are, are on demand courses. Those are, you get,
• 1:39:37
  you get four more humans who want to do a thing and then we can get you on the schedule.
• 1:39:41
  And then the Juntopodcast.com.
• 1:39:45
  Yes, the podcast can be found there, but the podcast can be found on all podcast platforms.
• 1:39:51
  But also on my website are blogs that I post up every so often.
• 1:39:58
  Sometimes if I'm feeling particularly creative about a subject,
• 1:40:03
  I'll write a paper because I think I use more colorful language when I write.
• 1:40:09
  And and then if you are interested in
• 1:40:12
  writing a blog on a given topic you know please reach out and and send it if
• 1:40:18
  it's semi-well written you know we'll post it up on the website and quite possibly
• 1:40:23
  talk about it on the podcast other than that folks thanks very much be good to each other,
• 1:40:31
  Think critically, folks, even about people you may or may not like or have some biases toward.
• 1:40:40
  Think critically.
• 1:40:41
  Think through. Bat your perception off of some objective truths,
• 1:40:47
  okay, and then form your opinions. Do that.
• 1:40:52
  Meanwhile, again, be good to each other. Be safe.
• 1:40:56
  And I'll talk to you guys next time. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you.
• 1:41:00
  Music.