Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Pat Flynn on Inequality, Egalitarianism, and Human Flourishing

Episode Date: August 21, 2020

This episode of the podcast isn’t your standard health and fitness fare. Instead, it’s about living well beyond fitness, and more specifically, a concept Pat Flynn refers to as “flourishing.” Pat Flynn is a repeat guest not only because I enjoy our conversations, but I’ve gotten great feedback from listeners who like hearing about these deeper, philosophical topics we dive into. In case you’re not familiar with Pat, not only is he a fitness expert who is known for his kettlebell prowess, but he’s also a podcaster, philosopher, and author who just released a book titled “How to Think About God,” a metaphysical and spiritual journey all about the philosophy behind this foundational belief. While I’m not a philosopher, I do have an interest in ideas I can use to improve my life and that I can share with other people to make their lives better as well. Plus, I always enjoy my conversations with Pat, and in this episode, we discuss several topics and questions listeners have been asking me, including … The problems with scientism and higher education Inequality and egalitarianism The concepts of equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome Economics and Marxism The health at any size movement The importance of virtues and the role of nuclear family units Justice, fairness, and “privilege” And more … So, if you enjoy philosophical tangents and want to listen to something a bit different for a fitness podcast, make sure to hit play and listen to this episode! 28:09 - What are your thoughts on equality being unfair? 32:51 - What is egalitarianism? 41:29 - Is equality unnatural? 1:10:49 - What about the idea of fairness? 1:25:05 - What are your thoughts on striving for equal opportunity? 1:35:45 - Where can people find you and your work? --- Mentioned on The Show: How to Think About God by Pat Flynn: https://www.amazon.com/How-Think-About-God-Flynn-ebook/dp/B08D7W9D6Z/ Pat Flynn's Podcast (The Pat Flynn Show): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-pat-flynn-show/id1253261458 Pat Flynn's Website (Chronicles of Strength): https://www.chroniclesofstrength.com/ Shop Legion Supplements Here: https://legionathletics.com/shop/ --- Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hey there, welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I'm your host, Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today to hear my discussion with Pat Flynn. Yes, he has returned, and that means that this episode is not your standard health and fitness fair that I serve around these parts. Instead, it is about living well beyond just fitness. And there are many ways you could break that down and describe it and many terms you could use, but Pat likes to use one in particular that I like as well, and that is flourishing, human flourishing. And in this podcast, he talks about what that term means and how it goes back to the classical Greek philosophies, and what it means in today's modern society.

Fortunately, not much has changed, because human nature has not changed whatsoever in the last couple of thousand years. It's just not enough time on an evolutionary scale to make a difference in the deeply ingrained, and maybe hardwired, to some degree, elements of our human nature and how they express themselves in our behavior. And specifically, today's discussion is going to be on several topics that greatly influence our ability to flourish, and particularly ideas related to inequality and egalitarianism. So we talk about the concepts of equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome, for example. We talk a bit

about Marxism and economics. We talk about justice, fairness, and privilege, mostly in the context of economics and more. And I'm not a philosopher. I'm not even a philosophizer, but I do have an interest in ideas that I can use to improve my life and that I can share with other people to help them do better, to help them flourish more. And I enjoy these discussions with Pat. He is more of an expert on this stuff than I am for sure. And if you're not familiar with him, he is not only a expert on this stuff than I am for sure. And if you're not familiar with him, he is not only a fitness expert, and you can find his work over at chroniclesofstrength.com, and he's particularly known for his kettlebell work, but he is also a podcaster. He is a philosopher. He is classically trained in it, formally trained in it, and he's

an author of several books, including a new one that he just released that I read and enjoyed called How to Think About God, which is a logical and metaphysical exploration of the concept of God, a deductive process of arriving at proof for God as opposed to an inductive process. And I really enjoyed it. I thought he did a really good job breaking down very complex topics or topics that can appear to be very complex and making them easy to access and easy to understand and easy to follow. And these are arguments that in some cases have many steps. And so you have to be able to build on each previous step. And as the reader, then you have to make sure that you understand, okay, step eight

before you can understand step nine and your ability to understand step eight stems from step seven and so forth. And he did a good job. He did a very good job. And so if you are into that kind of stuff, you know, theology, philosophy, metaphysics, check it out. How to think about God. It's 99 cents and you won't be disappointed. Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. And we're on top because every ingredient and dose in every product is backed by peer reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary

blends, for example, and everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. So that means no artificial sweeteners, no artificial food dyes, which may not be as dangerous as some people would have you believe, but there is good evidence to suggest that having many servings of artificial sweeteners in particular every day for long periods of time may not be the best for your health. So while you don't need pills, powders, and potions to get into great shape, and frankly, most of them are virtually useless, there are natural ingredients that can help you lose fat, build muscle, and get healthy faster, and you will find the best of them in Legion's products. To check out everything we have to offer, including protein powders and

protein bars, pre-workout, post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more, head over to www.buylegion.com, B-U-Y legion.com. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout, and you will save 20% on your entire first order. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, and if you also want all natural evidence-based supplements that work, please do consider supporting Legion so I can keep doing what I love, like producing more podcasts like this. Hey, Pat, thanks for coming back on my podcast, my friend. A joy as always, Mike Matthews. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These discussions have been well-received. I wasn't sure when we did the

first one. It was kind of just a, hey, why not kind of thing. And when I look at the data, the few that we've done, each of them have done a bit better than average, which was a nice, I wouldn't say I was surprised. It was just a nice outcome because obviously this is primarily a health and fitness podcast. But I would say that these discussions that we've been having and the discussion we're going to have today, okay, it's not related to fitness, but it's related to health. We're talking about wellbeing, right? And the word, the term that you used in one of our last discussions, flourishing, which I think we all want to do in life. And if you really want to flourish in life, it takes more than big muscles, right? Indeed, it does.

Unfortunately, unfortunately. And as much as I would like to flatter myself, it probably has nothing to do with me. I think it's just a subject matter. People are interested in the bigger questions about life, whether it's religion, like we talked about in the first conversation, or politics, or what have you. I see similar things on my podcast, Mike, for people who follow me. Most of the weekly content is fitness, but then every Friday, I do a Philosophy Friday episode. Then every Sunday, I do a theology-themed episode. And not always, but pretty often, it's those two episodes per week which get the most attention. So you might not know it on the surface, but there's definitely, I think, more interest in these conversations than may be obvious at first.

And more value in these types of conversations than many people might think without listening to them or looking into this stuff for themselves. I'd say I was even probably guilty of that to some degree when I was younger, thinking of the humanities and a liberal arts education as probably kind of a waste of time, especially if we're talking about making money, which is what life is supposed to be about, according to the TV and the whole machine that we have set up, right? Yeah, according to oligarchies, yep. Yeah.

And, you know, somebody pointed out to me, they sent me an email because I'd made a comment, I think in one of our discussions, that I didn't think that a degree in philosophy had much commercial value. And he sent me an article. I didn't look too much into the data, so take it for what it is, maybe with a whole lick of salt. But apparently, there's a correlation between, and it was philosophy degrees in particular, and higher than average earnings because, yes, while they're not teaching philosophy or writing philosophy

books or doing something that is very specific to what they learned. Apparently, the reason for the correlation is that people who have spent a lot of time studying this stuff tend to be good problem solvers and tend to have opened minds and tend to be able to look at problems from different angles. And those are very valuable qualities when you combine them with maybe a more specifically commercially viable skill, which these days with the internet, it's so easy to learn something that's commercially, like some specific skill, coding, for example, learn to code. You could do that for free online. There's so many things you

can learn online that if you just get good enough, marketing, any aspect of marketing, you don't have to go to school for that. If you read the right books and you have a knack for it and you get good enough, you will get hired. And if you're good, you will make a lot of money actually. So if you combine something that has some commercial value with the skills that you learn in terms of how to think from studying philosophy, you have a powerful combination for high earning potential. Yeah, that's interesting. I haven't looked at that data. It doesn't surprise me too terribly much. And I'll just add a few points. It echoes my experience a

little bit in the sense that my undergrad was economics. And I veered away from philosophy in my undergrad, not because I wasn't interested in it. I always was, but partly because I was under the impression that that wasn't going to be very fruitful for me. Now, it turns out I wound up being an entrepreneur, so it was kind of irrelevant. But philosophy for me was my master's program. And looking back, would I have done it the same way? It's really hard to say because I'm very happy what I'm doing. And I did certainly get value out of my undergrad in economics as well. But to your larger point, which I think is the critical thing here is, yeah, what should, I don't want to say what does a philosophy degree give you because I've had professors who had their PhD in philosophy that really were terrible at

basic logic. So you can, I mean, get a PhD in philosophy and just have a terrible understanding of what I would consider the fundamentals. So the things that you need to have a mastery of before you could even properly call yourself a philosopher. Credentialists need to maybe listen to that one again. Yeah. People who rely too much on supposed expertise or just bona fides. Oh, this person is a PhD. They must know what they're talking about. Now, that's not to denigrate PhDs. I instinctively admire anyone who has put in enough work to do that, for example, but it's a mistake. And I've run into

this and you probably run into this as well. The reason why I'm just highlighting this point is I run into a lot of credentialism from people in scientism, which is the over-reliance on science without, it's like giving science the benefit of the doubt to a fault. And assuming that, oh, if quote unquote, somebody says, and science comes down to interpretation too. So it's really, somebody says, science says, that's it. It's settled. They can't be wrong. Yeah. So I want to say a couple of things about all that to the first point of credentialism, certainly regardless of what you think of the current education system, it's not, it's not exactly easy to get a PhD, but so many of these departments like philosophy have become

hijacked by ideologies that really have little to do with what I would consider, you know, the true philosophy. So philosophy, if you're going to study philosophy, it should teach you things like the structure of thought. It should teach you how to think in consistent channels. You should understand logic. You should also be versed in metaphysics as well, which is kind of my area of focus. Jacques Maritain, who's one of my favorite philosophers, said a philosopher who doesn't engage in metaphysics is just not a philosopher. And I'm very sympathetic to that.

But I mean, there's so many credentialed philosophers out there who have no experience in that sort of branch of philosophy. So part of the problem is just a hyper, hyper specialization as well. Philosophers just aren't sort of the great generalists you would get in terms of the classic and medieval philosophers, like a Plato or an Aristotle or even like a Leibniz or something like that. People can so hyper-specialize now that they can really miss the forest for the trees. Scientism is an interesting phenomenon because that is a philosophy, right? That's what's kind of ironic.

I would probably go as far as saying it's a religion at this point. Well, I think that's an insult to religion, to be honest. So scientism would be a sort of restricted epistemology that grows out of a history of another philosophy known as positivism or logical positivism, which tries to restrict how we know things to a certain domain. So somebody who would be an adherent of scientism would say something like, we should only believe what science can tell us, right? And anything you say, do you have a source for that? That's the midwit response always. It's even tighter than that, though, but it immediately runs into difficulties because just the very claim we should only believe what science can tell us is not a claim that can be

adjudicated by the hypothetical deductive method, right? That's a philosophical claim. You have to make philosophical arguments for that. So it doesn't even meet its own standard. It's got this issue of being, you know, internally inconsistent. So it's, I think it's pretty widely rejected. There are serious philosophers, like credentialed philosophers who are legit, avowed adherents of scientism, right? So there are people who push this as a serious worldview of saying like, look, if we can't get at it through say physics and chemistry, then it's meaningless. It doesn't exist. And of course, even that assertion is not something that you're ever going to get at through physics and chemistry. So- Meaning that you can't justify it with those domains. You have to go into the realm of philosophy and probably even metaphysics to even justify such a statement?

100%. It really is as simple as that. You don't need a PhD in philosophy to figure this one out, right? But there are serious adherents to that and they have their reasons. So there's kind of like popular level scientism of how it's kind of seeped down into the masses. And you see this all the time in culture, right? Things usually start in academia and they'll kind of trickle down and there's almost always a lag as well. And so, yeah, the people who will just, for whatever reason, kind of hold this popular scientism-y attitude without kind of understanding its historical or academic roots, I think is a little frustrating, a little dismaying. But when you analyze it, and I guess it's more rigorous

and academic form, you realize it's ultimately, I think, self-referentially incoherent. There's just no way that this could be tenable at all. And I understand though, in many cases, it's a shortcut. It's a heuristic that saves time is probably why many people turn to it. Even many credentialed people themselves who are very quick to just repeat whatever the quote unquote consensus is on something. And I do understand that. But the problem with that is if you're willing to look, there is so much evidence of, I mean, take academia. If you want to understand firsthand, well, not firsthand, secondhand, but if you want

to understand, let's say intimately, how thoroughly corrupted that system can become. And I'm going to, this is a book I'm going to do. I read it again just to go, cause I read it some time ago. I didn't have highlights. So I went through it highlights. I'm going to do a book club review on it. And it's a book I've recommended to you. And I've recommended it several times in the podcast, always in reference to anything related to quote unquote conspiracy theory. Anybody who even says should read the book, The Anglo-American Establishment by Carol Quigley, first look into who he was, read the book, and you will see how powerful the propaganda organs of the elite are.

And academia is a major one. And in that book, Quigley goes into a lot of detail of how it focuses mostly on the British aristocracy and how they used, how they controlled is mostly via Oxford, but how they controlled academia and academic publishing through that and how they controlled the media and how they controlled the bureaucracy of government. And they were very smart. They understood the power of leverage and that you don't need to control everything. You just have to control the right things that have a disproportionate amount of influence in other places. Like for example, in government, they

would avoid elective positions. They specialized in the bureaucracy of government. They specialized in controlling positions that were not voted on and that had that the elective politicians, the people they would go to basically to be told like, what do I do? Because these elective politicians have to spend most of their time just trying to win elections. And so these were the experts and there were key positions in intelligence and foreign services and other areas of the civil service world. There are key positions they would pass amongst themselves. They think of it as almost like a secret society of sorts. And so they might control these positions via different members of their group for decades. And academia is another game that they played where they would,

they had these professorships that they were able to bestow and they were very careful who they gave them to. And they used a couple key colleges in Oxford to recruit their people. And anyway, so I don't want to get us off on too much of a tangent, but I'm only bringing this up because if you read that book and again, look into who Quigley was and you're going to have no reason to disbelieve him. And I've seen no good refutation of any of his work. I've looked online. I've seen a couple points where people nitpick certain things, but no, oh, Quigley was a quack and here's why. And not that you can find that about people who actually aren't quacks and you actually take the time to parse through it. But if you read that book and you accept that Quigley was mostly right and the amount of research that guy, I mean, that book came after his magnum opus, which was Tragedy and Hope, which he hope, but it was just him focusing in on a specific period in Great Britain, then you can't accept that the book is mostly accurate and at the same time engage in academic credentialism. Because at that point, the curtain is pulled back.

You see, oh, this for over here, this was a complete scam. This whole system was a scam straight up. Now I'm not saying all of academia is a scam, but there are major scams that have been run via academic channels. Like this idea that ideologies or that the academy, right. Or that science or these things are completely pure, right, that they're free of ideological. It is, so I can't speak with Quigley. I just haven't studied him or read his work. I got it in the queue, so I will get around to it.

But yeah, just backing up, it's just so incredibly naive. I mean, you see, I mean, you have instances, I mean, recent instances of people who are just absolutely punished, sometimes alleviated of their positions at various institutions just because they don't fall in line with the mainstream rhetorical structure. And these are people who might otherwise side with that part of the political spectrum, right? Whether Steve's who at Michigan State University recently, people should look into that scandal. That was just an abomination, right? I mean, it's just, it's a horror out there. And, you know, as somebody who spent, I guess, enough time in college, like, and kind of

lived through the filth and seeing how the propaganda is poured on. How the sausage is made. Yeah, you know, it's true. And like, who has many friends, many of my friends who are professors in college that I just know, like they are afraid to publish on certain things, to ask certain questions, to make certain statements, to write certain books because they know that's that'll be it for them. That'll be the end of their career. They won't get tenure. If they do have tenure, their life will be made a living hell. Right. So, yeah, just the notion that it's just completely pure is it is it's incredibly naive. And, you know, whether you you might even agree with a certain side of it. But I think most people should admit that probably isn't what we want from higher education. Right. That certainly wasn't how it was advertised to us or is being advertised to us currently. I have more respect. There aren't many of these people out there who will openly admit it, but I have more respect for the people who are at least intellectually honest with themselves. And they would say, yeah, that's true. And it's unfair, quote unquote, if we're talking about how the rules are promoted, that's not how it works, but I'm okay with it because my team is winning. Or because I think this is just necessary. I think this is the good. Well, okay, make the

argument, but at least you're not being subversive about it. You're being upfront. And I agree. I appreciate people who are more upfront about what the goal is. I just hope that they would still be open to discourse on these issues. Now going back, because I don't want to hold up on this too long, but the scientism thing is one of my favorites. People talk about the science as if science is one gigantic monolithic, like there's just the thing called science as if there isn't any difference between physics and evolutionary biology, right? I mean, it's just, it's ridiculous. Or as if there's no difference between the worst example would be a study in the body of evidence or a pocket of evidence versus the body of evidence.

Right. And just to a general point, because sometimes people will hear me critiquing scientism. It by no means is a discredit or an insult to science at all. I'm a huge fan of science when it's done right. Like I love science. I love science. I'm constantly tapping the shoulder of my scientist friends and the literature to see what's relevant to any philosophical questions that I'm investigating. It's the philosophy of scientism that I think is dangerous and completely false. It's just important we draw these distinctions. Which maybe even just to give it a specific definition would be like the excessive belief in the power of science, right? I wouldn't even do that.

Yeah, I wouldn't even do that. For me, it's an epistemology. An epistemology is theories of how we know what we know. And somebody who is, adheres to scientism, I'm trying to think of a word like the scientismist or something like that, would say that if we don't know it through the hypothetical deductive method, then we just can't know it at all. That's really what I'm going after, right? And then there's going to be different debates, again, even among philosophers who would push that epistemology of, well, what exactly

at the end of the day is going to give us valid meaningful knowledge and some might go so far to say is is it's just physics right some people might just want to reduce it which is absolutely bonkers to me you could never support that epistemology from that viewpoint but in even in a broad sense unless you want to admit philosophy into science which would just make scientism irrelevant because then you're just considering pretty much everything science well then we don't really have a disagreement. But if you start cutting off philosophy or other broader epistemologies, then you're going to run into this self-defeat problem. It's just stupid. It's just stupid. It's so hard to take it seriously, but it has had enormous cultural

impact, which people are just largely unaware of. And it's got other roots too, back to other previous philosophies that kind of surged, but then collapsed like positivism, which I won't get into that now. But like these other philosophies that are very similar to scientism have come up in history before, had a huge impact, collapsed because people realized that there were these just internal problems that just couldn't be sustained. They went away, but their cultural impact still remained, right? So it's worth talking about. And it's, I think it's worth bringing attention to, but it's not to discredit science itself. And it's also a different issue between like science done well as a wonderful and

beautiful thing. But we also don't want to be naive and think that science is so pure that it's never untainted by, you know, essentially by sinful humanity, right? Of course it is. It doesn't mean we can't trust science at all. It just means we need to be prudent in how we assess things. That's really all I'm saying. At the end of the day, it's a people problem.

It's not a, it's not necessarily a methodological problem. Not to say that the scientific method couldn't be improved. Of course, anything could be improved, but the criticism and where the major problems enter the scene is through people perverting it really I guess intentionally or accidentally right it could be both right I mean some people make honest mistakes find a massive influence is that again different Sciences are conducted in different ways as well we have have to take that in consideration, right? So the person, the physicist is just doing something quite different than say the evolutionary psychologist. And there's just different methods of investigation for these different sciences. And I mean, there's other, and here's a funny thing, like what even counts as science? Because

there's stuff in the literature where people want to argue that evolutionary psychology isn't even a science. It shouldn't even count as a science, right? And there's different criteria of what should count as science. And how would you establish that criteria aside from philosophical considerations, philosophical? There's nothing that, there's no scientific test you could run that would generate the criteria of what counts as science, right? These are all philosophical questions. Yeah, because you're not doing science for its own sake. We're trying to obtain knowledge, right? And that's where it then bridges over into philosophy. And that's why we have, I think rightfully so, what's called philosophy of science,

right? Which is meant to probe the sort of philosophical foundations or all the assumptions that go into science, which are huge assumptions. Kind of like a meta discussion of the whole thing. Right. So science assumes a ton of things, right? It assumes logic. It assumes mathematics. It can't prove any of these things. It assumes some form of realism that there's actually a world outside of our head.

It assumes some form of identity over time, right? Of persistence through change. It assumes, I would argue, ethics as well, right? Like science assumes that it's better to not lie about results, even if people do. None of these things are given to us by science. Science has to assume all of these things. So like to think that science is the bedrock, bottom end all be all is just a very naive position. Yeah. That's an interesting take. With that, we should shift gears here and talk about, I guess some people would think it's been

proven scientifically. I'd say at this point, it's almost become a religion unto itself. But you would say that I guess that denigrates religion, which isn't my point, but you get what I'm saying. And that is the idea. And where this came about is I'm actually going to address one point in particular on another episode that I'm going to do called Says You. And somebody, where people, I invite people to just tell me something they disagree with me on. And I pick a few of the more interesting things and I give my thoughts. That's a cool thing to do. I like that. Yeah, those do well. People like them and I like it too, because I don't mind if people disagree with me. I find those

discussions that I'm having with myself, but more interesting than just the Q&A, right? And sometimes I learn something and sometimes it just gives me a chance to think a bit more about my position on something. And one of them is, and this is, I guess, a preview for when this episode comes out, although I might actually already be out by the time this goes up. So it might be an after the fact summary then. While the poor have it well today, wealth inequality slash hoarding is a massive issue. Now we don't have to talk about that in particular because I'm going to have already, I think with the timeline here, I'm already going to have really shared all of my thoughts on it. But I wanted to talk to you specifically about this

point of equality and this idea, and this has really become, if i don't want to use the term religion it has become a powerful ideology i guess we could say that and something that has been accepted by many people as as dogma really at this point that people everyone is equal inherently fundamentally everyone is equal therefore any inequalities that we see in our plane of existence, let's start with material inequalities, are unnatural and need to be rectified and that inequalities are essentially unfair. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, I'll just give it to you. Yeah, let's unpack that because there's so much there. So, you know, I probably won't be able to provide all the answers. And that concept is obviously driving so much of the current politics and cultural discussion.

100%. So let's just ask some questions. That's always a good thing to do. Philosophy is best done slow, I think. That's not my phrase. It's somebody else's, but I'm stealing it. And it's often best done first by asking, I think, just some important questions. You should just add a like sex to it.

And that makes it even more stimulating. So let's grant that we're all equal first. Like if we all are equal, why would that entail that there couldn't then be any inequalities that are immoral? Right. So that's one thing, right? Why would it follow that if we're all equal in some sense that it would be immoral or wrong if there were any inequalities, say, in what, like living status or income or access to education or whatever. I'm not saying that, I'm not giving an answer here. I mean, it could go as far even as aesthetics. Yeah, no, right. Your face, right? Yeah. Prettiness, whatever, hair. You're too pretty. That's unfair. You need to get this surgery.

Right. We'll get there. So just asking some questions and it might be the case that, you know, certain degrees might be unjust, but other degrees aren't. But let's just raise some questions. Of course, the more fundamental thing is, are we all equal? And in what sense, how? Now, that is a really interesting and important question, because it is true that we do kind of take this as a baseline assumption for a lot of political and moral argument. But how do we ground that? Where is this equality found? Because it seems to me like we're all, if we look at just physical characteristics, we're radically unequal, right? Mike, you're taller than me. I think you bench press more than I do. Some people keep going, keep going, keep going. So much handsomer,

you know, whatever. You know, people, keep going, keep going. You're so much handsomer, you know, whatever. You know, people look different. They sound different. They perform differently. They score higher or lower on tests. Some people have more limbs than other people, right? Some people were born with genetic defects. People were in different locations. So, like, you kind of, like, have to cast about in, like, kind of physical material reality. And I think to cast about in physical material reality.

And I think you cast about in air. I don't think you find any way that we're equal. But I'm not saying we're unequal. I think we are equal. But I think the only place you're going to ground equality, to use some traditional terminology, in our Aristotelian form, we're equal in our substantial form. You want to just clarify what that means? Yeah, it's our soul.

We're equal in our soul, right? In the essence of what we are. Our essence, right? Yes. Yeah. So I'm a classic Aristotelian and the Catholic tradition. Yeah, that's just our soul. Our soul is our substantial form, our essence. And our essence would be broadly rational animality. That's what we are. We could unpack that further. Philosophers like Alistair McIntyre would say we're dependent rational animals. We're dependent social rational animals. So, but here's the thing, right? As soon as you grant that, like science will never give you that ever, right? The essence of something, essences are something, another thing that science

presupposes, right? Science can maybe detect certain properties or behaviors that kind of flow from the essence of something. But essentialism, this is a philosophical position known as essentialism. I think science depends on that. Science has to assume that there's like an essence of what it is to act like an electron versus a proton, for example, that there's an essence of what it is to be a human being, right? There's an essence of what it is to be a dandelion. And this is common sense. Really, we just kind of sharpen it

up with some philosophical argumentation here and there. But if you're like committed to scientism or materialism, I don't see how you're getting equality in the world, right? At all. Like if you think that all human beings are, are just sort just the result of some haphazard accident where we emerged from some primordial goo and are hurling through space on some infinitesimal speck of dust doomed to ultimate oblivion, where do you find equality in that? I've never been able to find it at all. These are deep philosophical metaphysical worldviews. And it's not enough in today's society to just assume that anymore, because there are people who deny it. So we better have some arguments, and we better have a position to back up what it means to be equal.

But then once we kind of find out where we're equal, there might be different implications of whether egalitarianism actually follows from that or whether it might actually be a frustration from it and might actually be less conducive to our flourishing than contributive to it. And do you want to quickly define egalitarianism? Yeah. So there's different schools of egalitarianism, obviously, but it does come down to the idea that for whatever reason, we believe people should be equal in other respects, aside from say their inherent dignity or humanity or something like that. So you might have egalitarians who want say equality of outcome, right? That's kind of the traditional, you know, what does that mean? It typically means like economic outcomes, like income.

Or academic, right? Test scores. Right. So, but if we're talking income, the economist to me has to say, well, we have to talk about real income, not just any number, but purchasing power, stuff like that. And then you realize immediately we're going to have some issues there because how is that even... Forget about putting it in play. Is it even theoretically possible? Because how could somebody have the same purchasing power based on all these inequalities we just went through, right? People just live in different locations, right? So real income is like, what can it get you? Now, there's only so much, you know, land area in the Bay Area for housing, right? And some people might live there and other people might live in New Jersey and other people might live in the South. So how are we going to equalize all? It doesn't even seem possible, right?

It doesn't even seem possible at all, let alone something that we could even get close to implementing. But that's the idea. So you have equality of outcome. Traditionally and most forcefully, it's often economic, like we said, of purchasing power, but other things too, like academic performance and outcome. Then you have equality of opportunity. People might take a step back from outcome and say, okay, well, maybe we don't want equality of outcome.

Maybe we want equality of opportunity. And that sounds better, but I don't think it actually is better. Like, how would you ever have perfect equality of opportunity? Because now we need to, like, is everybody going to have the same parents, the same love and care from their parents, the same kind of economic status coming into the world? There are credentialed people who argue for things like that. I've seen arguments that all children should be educated in state run schools. Well, that's kind of where the logic leads you here is if you're committed to a quality of outcome, then you have to kind of try and eliminate any-

Go all the way. I mean, we have to get to Brave New World or we have to get to Harrison Bergeron by Vonnegut. Like that's where you have to go. Of course, yeah. So you would have to try and like have just a facility, right, some giant bureaucratic machine that eliminates the family unit,

that eliminates parents. unit, that eliminates parents. You're still not going to solve the issue because look, are all the teachers in that facility going to be the same? Are they all going to be the same competency? And again, are the facilities, these bureaucratic facilities in Atlanta going to be of the same quality as in Michigan, as in Japan? I mean, I guess the advocates of this line of thinking would say, well, we have to try just because we can't have it perfect right away doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive in the direction. Right. And if people aren't like immediately appalled and alarmed at this phase,

right? Like I hardly know what else to say at this point. Right. But you're right in bringing attention to that point, because there are people who will recognize these critiques and say, yeah, no, that's true. We do have to get rid of parents, right? Straight up. Wasn't that, or is it still a part of the Black Lives Matter plank? That was on their website. I know it was, they were talking about eliminating the nuclear family. Disrupting the nuclear family unit is a traditional leftist egalitarian theme. I can't speak as much specifically on Black Lives Matter just because I haven't spent that much time. I mean, that was on their website. It may still be on their website.

I don't know. It was. I know that was. And I don't think it's any surprise that a lot of their leadership is extremely far left and they come from Marxist schools of thoughts. Well, one of the co-founders, I saw an interview with her where she said she's a trained Marxist. Those are her own words. Yeah. Yeah. Again, this shouldn't be surprising to anybody who's followed kind of far left wing organizations for a while. It's pretty well known. I don't know why it's controversial. A lot of people who associate with Black Lives Matter are totally unaware of this, however. So I'm not saying that that's everybody who is. Yeah. I don't mean this as a criticism to even everything that Black Lives Matter stands for, that people who support it. I'm just saying I definitely disagree with Marxism. Well, yeah. And a principled person could say like, hey, I agree with you

there, but I strongly disagree with you there. And so, yeah, I think that just seems obvious to me. But yes, this is traditional. I mean, Marxist thought tends in this direction, of course. So yeah, those are the two primary kind of egalitarian, I guess, frameworks of both outcome and opportunity. I think at the end of the day, when you really try to think those through, it's like worse than utopian thinking, because there's some utopian thinking that I think is like at least kind of worth striving for. Like it's utopian to think we shouldn't have murder, right? Yeah. I was going to say the libertarian utopia is nice. It would be nice if we could have that. Well, I think there's even more moderate, like it's utopian to think we

should strive to not have murder in the world because that's at least conceptually possible. And it's like, I think that's like a good thing, right? But it's at the same time, I think we all want to admit we'll probably never get there. Right. But this egalitarianism is like a utopian form of thinking. That's just not like, it's hard to even see in just like conceptual space, how this could ever be accomplished, you know? And so you have to wonder, I mean, there's a point where, again, if I see people who are in positions of influence and they're advocating for this ideology that it, I'm so cynical that I have to assume it's power. At the end of the day, it's about power and it's about self-aggrandizement. I think you do have the true believers, but there are many people who know that it is essentially

impossible. It's like, did Mao really care about the principles of communism? No, he used it as a means to an end. And when he achieved power, he implemented something very different than what he was pitching to get there. You know what I mean? Of course. Of course. Yeah. And you have the olds, right? Destroying all the olds and malism and people, you know, watching this happening in our society today of people wanting to tear down all the statues and the statues of even the Catholic saints, right? Which like boggles my mind. Oh, really? I didn't hear that. Yeah. Gennippe Rosera out in California, like this man was a missionary who really fought for the dignity of the Native American people.

And like they're tearing him down. But this is just the same. Out of curiosity, why? Why him? Well, I guess he was just part of the old, you know, regime. So, but that is Marxist thought, right? He's an old, very old white guy.

Gotta go. And so, you know, the idea is you have to tear down all the olds, old customs, old beliefs, old arts, old religions like that's how that's the only way you're ever going to get in the utopia. So anybody who studied the history of this should be, I think, alarmed to see what's going on right now because it's the same old playbook. Now, Marx, like good old fashioned Marxism, and I think Marx had so many things fundamentally wrong. fashioned Marxism. And I think Marx had so many things fundamentally wrong. You know, he was a dialectic materialist, which I think is like the silliest metaphysical position somebody could hold. He was an economic reductionist. So he thought like all of history could be reduced or explained

to like economic class wars, which is just patently ridiculous. He adhered to economic theories like, you know, labor theory and surplus theory of value, which no economist holds to those anymore. It's just silly. But older forms of Marxism were really just trying to pit economic classes against one another. But it's the same thing going on now, where now we just have the kind of classes of intersectionality. It's the same thing. It's the same old thing. It's the same pig with just different lipstick. And you don't even have to be like a deep specialist on this stuff. Even just like a superficial understanding of the history of not just Marxist politics, but cultural Marxism and implementation should really get people to take a step back and

reconsider whether they want to support a lot of the stuff that's going on right now. going on right now. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. And bringing this back to egalitarianism, I would say that there's a relationship there, right? This is one of the weapons, I guess, in the arsenal to get people to move away from something that you had mentioned earlier, which is, and this is something I touch on in this podcast. It's already going to be live. And I also should probably preface this with this. I don't consider myself an expert in this topic and I've done a bit of thinking on it. That's all I have to say

for my own opinions. But if we look to nature and we see all kinds of inequalities, which you talked about, the inequality is everywhere. And then the argument that we should strive for equality over everything. Could you say that is unnatural? Because now we're getting behind the, can it actually be done? And it's not hard, especially equality of outcome. I want to come back to equality of opportunity and get your thoughts on that. But I think we don't need to say too much more on equality of outcome because really anyone listening, just really start thinking through what it would take to do that.

And then ask yourself, would that even be good? Would that even be a life that you would want to live? Yeah. Read the book, Brave New World, and read Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut. And ask yourself, is that a life? I personally would rather just, I'll just see what happens next. I would rather just, I'll skip that phase of civilization. So, yeah, let me circle back to your, I'll need you to remind me of your second point

there again. Yeah. But to real quick, what's the connection here between egalitarianism and Marxism? Well, you know, we have to think about communism and socialism, right? So people sometimes differentiate the two, but traditionally, you know, Marx was, he was an anarchist, right? So the whole idea of communism is that we would get to a stateless society where we have effectively egalitarianism, right? That's the outcome.

And socialism is just the intermediary state where you just need that bureaucratic apparatus to get you to the point where eventually that can dissolve. So it's just kind of all on the same spectrum traditionally. And people think, forget that. And of course, people now, there's a lot of equivocation and ambiguity in terms of how people use the term socialism. But if we're understanding it traditionally, that's how it was understood. And trying to keep it well distanced from communism because socialism is palatable to many younger people find it palatable, whereas communism less so. Right. So, and in the sense that if you're just talking about an expanded welfare state like the Nordic countries, that's not socialism at all.

That's not even close to what socialism has traditionally been understood as. Would you agree that that's capitalism with a strong safety net? Yeah, with an expanded welfare state. And I mean, because what at the heart is it that socialism and communism are after? Well, one thing is the abolition of private property, right? So the fact that there's still private property and lots of it in these countries is itself an indicator that this is just not a traditionally socialist state. Right. and how it's really a, it's one of the pillars of the economic system that has, if we're talking

about results, lifted more people out of poverty. I understand you can criticize capitalism, especially the highly corrupt form. It's almost like a consumerism, commercialism, the system that we have, but still, despite its flaws, it still has worked the best in history in terms of raising people out of poverty and allowing for upward mobility. And there's a book called The Birth of Plenty that I would just recommend that talks about that, plus a couple of other factors. Yeah, and even just reading Milton Friedman's books, The Great Chicago Economist. Or start with his, there's a lot of lectures on YouTube you can- Yeah, he's got, right, yeah. He makes a lot of good points. Now, I don't agree with him on everything, and i have my own many critiques of

capitalism but it's not so much the system as it is the lack of virtue and people it's the culture that is kind of feeding into capitalism i think is more more of the issue and that capitalism can't preserve or conserve a a workable. It can't alone. It will devolve into tyranny as we're seeing with like these woke corporations right now, honestly. And I think that should give our libertarian friends out there

somewhat pause who think that the market is the answer to everything. That's clearly ridiculous. The market will just efficiently allocate goods until it's swallowed up in tyranny. That's what it will do. Until it achieves its goal of consuming everything.

It's kind of like cancer in that regard. Right. If you want efficient allocation of resources, then yes, free exchange, private property is the best means to do that. But to think that that's the answer to everything is like, it's kind of like a parallel to scientism, but in economics, right? It's like, no, like clearly we need to broaden the conversation here. It doesn't reduce to this. I've tried to have this discussion with at least one of my libertarian friends and he refuses. He has a couple of sources he likes that it's complete revisionist history of the robber baron, the gilded age and what actually happened there. How Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, Morgan, how guys like them acquired so much wealth so quickly. It wasn't just because they offered the best products at the best prices.

No, they were ruthless business people who destroyed competition at any cost. They broke every law. They did anything it took to destroy their competition. And now I would actually have, it'd be a more interesting discussion if my buddy would say, yes, that's true. But it was better because in the case of John Rockefeller, he was better. He was just better at business than in the market was better. There was less volatility.

The oil was at a very high standard in terms of how it was refined. And he got rid of the booms and busts. And I think that actually, that argument makes more sense than saying, no, no, no, we don't need government to be involved at all because Rockefeller just, he out-businessed everybody. Yeah. It's revisionist history in the sense that the market can never do anything wrong or that as long as we have a market system, nothing could ever go wrong. And that's completely empirically and historically false. And this is coming from somebody who supports market systems, right? Like I'm a fan, but again, it doesn't reduce to that.

So yeah. So to your other points, then you wanted to talk, I guess, about, about nature. Well, I guess we can kind of just grab that little, that little thread there and pull it right back to the point of equality, inequality. I think that that's a good example of what happens if you just allow nature to take its course. You have the majority of ability and intellect and agency possessed in the minority of people. And so if an economic system reflected that in a very pure way, then you would expect all of the resources essentially to go to those people, right? way, then you would expect all of the resources essentially to go to those people, right?

Well, yeah. So I just want to be careful here because there's often equivocation over nature and the way that I might use nature, it might be very different than how other people use nature. So in terms of ethics, I'm a traditional natural law theorist. So when we use the term nature, we really mean something like essence or substantial form, right? Right. More of a metaphysical meaning. Yeah. Yeah. And it's very specific, right? Right, more of a metaphysical meaning. Yeah, yeah. And it's very specific, right? Like that first organizing principle that makes something the kind of thing that it is, like us being a rational animal, human nature, or the nature of triangularity or the nature of being a dog, whatever that is, you know, right?

So there's definitely those out there. And then when you say, when you talk about like what the good of something is, you have to consider its nature, its specific nature and what makes for a good instance of that kind of thing. Now, what you don't want to do is you want to just say like mother nature or nature at large, because then you're going to, you're just going to conflate and confuse the conversation. And certainly I don't think anybody wants to just base like human morality off of like quote unquote mother nature. Like just because one shark forcibly copulates with another shark, does that mean that we should do that with each other?

The reason why I said it is because that's what people say. Like, I know that that's a line of thinking. It is. And that's like, like, so when I, you know, introduce traditional natural law, people will sometimes bring that up. And it's just a straw man. It's a misunderstanding of what I mean by nature. They're like, oh, well, this happens in nature, so it must be okay, right? Well, no, that's not what we're talking about. We have to consider what human nature is as rational animality. And what might cause us to flourish as humans is obviously a lot different than what causes an acorn to flourish, for example. You mean I can't flourish on just like photosynthesis?

Yeah, like, you know, you got like an intellect and will, and I don't think acorns have that. The best evidence we have shows that they're probably not rational. Right. So whatever is, I have to ask for a source on that. Whatever is, yeah. What's the science on that friend. Right. Well, that's a funny thing. Like, can you scientifically prove that like an acorn isn't conscious? Of course not. Right. You can't even scientifically prove that human beings are conscious. So that not, right? You can't even scientifically prove that human beings are conscious. So that's, you know, that's the funny thing. Like science assumes that we have this sort of this qualia, as it's called a philosophy of mind, like this, you know, awareness, this inter subjective awareness. And even when you do neuroscience, like you never find that,

right? You find physical brain states that seem to correlate with it. So imagine like, this is kind of a cool thought experiment. Like imagine you were an alien or whatever. You come to earth and like, you're doing like all this neuroscientific imaging of a human brain and you've never met a human before or anything else. You would never know from the science that there's an inner first person sense of experience like in that person. You would never know that ever. The only reason we do know it is

because we experience it and we infer that other people are like us. So in philosophy, this is known as the problem of other minds, right? How do we know that people have other minds? And science can't answer that question at all. Marketing gives us a practical answer because the principles work of persuasion, influence, and sales. They work consistently from person to person. But you can play the skeptic and maybe they're just really cleverly disguised androids, right? Okay. Right. So they really seem like they have it and nobody denies that.

But how do you really know, right? How do you really know that they're conscious and they have this interior subjective awareness like you do? That'd be a strange way to live. I would argue that even if it were true completely or in some way, it would not be conducive to good living. It would not help you flourish. You would not have a good time. So maybe just don't even worry about it. It's not true. So don't worry about that. And there's no, I know, but what I'm saying is like,

there's a point of live as if it is true and see how that goes. And you don't want to be a solipsist. Yeah, for sure. That might be enough to discourage you. Be like, yeah, well, who knows what's true, but I'm not going to play by those rules. The point of raising these questions is just to get people to think about assumptions. They're just kind of fun. Now don't stare up at the ceiling at night. There's good answers to these. I'm not going to give them now, but they can be argued. Yeah. So, but yeah, in terms of human flourishing, I mean, yeah, the great thinkers in this tradition, the way you go about this is you think very deeply about what human nature is and then what would be perfective of it or cause it

to be the most excellent instance of its kind. Right. So let's start with a simple example, like a triangle, because it's a lot easier to think about a triangle than a human. We know when a triangle is carefully drawn with straight sides and sharp angles for the protractor, we say that's a good triangle, right? Because we have a concept of what triangularity is three sides, whose angles add up to 180 degrees, something like that, right? And if somebody like hastily draws a triangle in the backseat of a school bus, and it's real squiggly sides and rounded angles, we say that's a bad triangle. And we don't mean that as like, we're talking about social constructs, right? We mean, no, objectively as a matter of fact, that like fact and value are not distinct on essentialism. That's the key.

Although at this point, there are probably people who would say, no, there's no such thing as a bad triangle. It's all subjective, right? So if people are going to try and just make everything a projection of the mind, right? Like your mind, just everything is a construct of the mind. That's the argument, right? There's no like objectivity to be discovered in the world. You're going to have another self-defeat problem because then what is the mind? Is the mind itself a construct of the mind? If there's no objective reality to the mind itself, well, then we have like causal sui of like the mind causing itself. And that's obviously incoherent. Nothing can cause itself because then it has to exist prior to itself. So again, I think you're going to be in this radically self-defeating position if you try to make everything just like a construct of the mind. But once you grant that there's at least one like objectively real thing in the world, then there's no kind of reason to arbitrarily

deny that there are other objectively real things in the world, especially when it seems so obviously the case that there are. And especially if you love science and especially if you love philosophy, you better be committed to essentialism because you're going to need that to ground things like the identity of things, their endurance over time, and even just concepts and language. We're going to need all of this in order to have any type of rational discourse, philosophical conversation, scientific experimentation, any of it, right? So somebody could try and push that radical line. I think at most, everybody would have to seem that

just seems really weird, but there's ways to push back against it by showing that it just becomes incoherent at the end of the day, right? Once you understand that there can be better or worse instances of something, of like what a good instance is, well, these principles carry over to humanity as well. Now, the problem is humans are a lot more complicated, right, than geometric figures. So it takes a lot more thinking and contemplation on human nature to discern like, what is a good life? That's kind of what we're asking, right? What is a good human life? What is it that makes a good person? So we do want to be committed to the idea that you can be a good person, or you could be a bad person, just like you can have better or worse triangles, you can have better or worse trees. and just notice that there's already implicate, like you're going to need this again for even medicine to work, right? Because to even diagnose disorders, you have to have some like range of normativity where you say, no, this is good. This is what we want. That's under attack as well though, right? Healthy at any size. I can be 400 pounds and have

diabetes and metabolic syndrome and not exercise ever and eat five cheeseburgers a day and smoke and drink. And I'm healthy because I say I'm healthy. And when I have the heart attack and die, that was a social construct. These are the consequences of these types of broadly egalitarian, very left philosophies, I think are deeply incoherent. It leads people into this line of thinking, which I think is both not just dangerous, but immoral, right? Because moral content comes from fulfilling these various potencies that we have to be excellent, to be the best instance of the kind of thing that we are. So morality comes online. And physical excellence would be one aspect. Right, not thwarting your flourishing because you're really just kind of, you're harming yourself by neglecting the virtues of temperance and fortitude would be two ones that

are related to health. So it's interesting you bring that up because you're right, it is under attack. But I mean, take another instance, take like something like clubfoot. Unless we have an understanding of what like a human foot should be, why should we treat things like that, right? Or any medical disease, right? Unless we have an understanding that there's like a range of normativity of what like a good instance is, then medicine's gone, man. Like it makes no sense. So it's not just that these sort of radically subjectivist, very skeptical postmodern philosophies are incoherent.

They also are going to undermine all the things that we think are good and necessary and important in the world, science, philosophy, medicine, all of it. Right. And we're just seeing some of these implications in a real annoying sense. And yeah, this like healthy at any size movement. And I'll just say a few things about that. Obviously, I don't think it's true unqualified, but like part of what makes it attractive is it's like pushing back against something that is also not true and also unhealthy that I think is also a failure of liberal culture, which is this idea that you only have value if you have a certain body fat percentage, right? Or that you only have

value if you look a certain way. And I think that that's stupid too. I think they're both stupid, right? So like people like can sympathize with that. And I think rightfully so that, uh, you know, become really obsessed and they feel kind of worthless unless they look a certain way. I'm with you. And women in particular, a lot of pressure. And I'm with you. I condemn that 100 percent. But we don't go to the other end of the insanity spectrum. Right.

And then just say that there's no health consequences. There's nothing wrong with, you know, becoming morbidly obese or something like that. And it's not even to say, and that itself is not to say that if you are morbidly obese, that you're worth anything less as a person. But you are failing to flourish in an important way. That is true. And you are, in the long run, we know empirically, you might be healthy at any snapshot in time. But in the long run, you're just increasing your risk for any number of diseases from cancer, diabetes,

stroke. I mean, you name it, they all just go right through the roof once you pass a certain threshold of weight. Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully, I don't think in my experience that idea hasn't gained as much currency as the media, some of the media outlets that push it. Some, you have definitely a minority of people who are, I think, giving it a disproportionate or being given a disproportionately large voice, but it hasn't gained much currency with most people. Most people in my interactions. Now, of course there's a selection bias there, but I would say that they are pretty balanced with it, actually, and are more in the middle where they don't care. And I deal mostly with like normal, same as you, normal everyday people. They have jobs.

They have families. They care about their fitness, but they're not in the gym three hours a day and they don't live and die by their body fat percentage. However, they do recognize the value of being fit and they understand that fit is a range of, it's called body composition. And they just want to be somewhere in the range of being fit. And that is healthy. That's where I would be maybe a little bit, I mean, because of my work, I have to be, would almost appear a little bit neurotic about it to look a certain way to say,

hey, I walked the walk. I don't feel like I'm neurotic about it, but it might seem that way. If people understood like, okay, here you want to know how to stay at 8% body fat as a guy. Here's what it takes. Actually, like you're not going to be eating out much. You're not going to be varying your food much. You're going to be watching your calories. You're going to not be missing workouts, blah, blah, blah. It just is what it is. And if I wasn't working in the industry, I might be a little bit looser with it, but I kind of like it. I've gotten used to the routine. I like the discipline of it. So maybe not. But again, I think it's a hard idea to sell even that you're just the average person on because their instincts immediately kick in.

They go, no, there's just something wrong with that. I don't care how many big words you throw at me. And I don't care how many studies you say, show this, that, or the other. No, it's just something wrong with that. I don't care how many big words you throw at me. And I don't care how many studies you say show this, that or the other. No, it's just wrong. People do have a fairly decent internal BS detector. That's definitely true. And I agree, you know, the vast majority of people I've worked with have really no interest in that movement at all, at least not like a full on serious interest. But yeah, just coming back to again, like the nature of humanity, it's important to just kind of unpack it a little bit and then we can tie this back in and wrap this up. I could jam all day on this.

We can make it a series if we want. Yeah, well, specifically what I would want just to say for myself. So let's take this point of that there's inequality everywhere. Is that part of the nature of humanity? And then there's the feeling because there are people who would say they would probably agree with what you're going to say but they'd say but it's just unfair it's just unfair we just we have to fix that right so let's talk about like the good of of humans right so i already talked about that there can be like good instances of things so what what is proper to a human like what should a human have by nature that if a human is

missing that we can say like that yeah that's a by nature that if a human is missing that we can say like that, yeah, that's a bad thing. Like if a triangle is missing straight sides, well, the classic, you know, philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, they harped on, and I think they were right about this, the virtues, right? The virtues. And then this gets extended throughout, you know, throughout the kind of natural law history. And it's kind of broken off into two categories, ultimately by Thomas Aquinas, who would hold that there's kind of supernatural virtues and there are natural virtues. Now, the highest end, somebody like Aquinas would argue, and I would agree with him, is that in virtue of being rational animals, we have intellect and will, the highest end is to know the truth about everything and to love that which is truth itself. And ultimately,

that means finding, seeking, and knowing God. And the pagan philosophers were interesting about that because Aristotle kind of like got to that position himself. Aquinas just kind of extends it in light of what he thinks is authentic revelation. So if there is like any like proper ultimate supernatural end for humanity, it's going to deal in the sort of theological realm. I think that's correct. We can bracket that off for another conversation. But it's important you don't bracket that off too much because if you miss that, you miss the whole point of what it is to be human. But I guess before you make the leap to Aquinas and classical theism, you'd say it's the supreme creator of everything.

Right. Plato would say, you know, we have the form of the good and stuff like that, right? So, when you read Plato, you know, it seems to him like, yeah, the highest end for us is to contemplate the form of the good, prudence, temperance, and fortitude, these are kind of the four cardinal virtues, right? That really mark us off as excellent humans, as good humans when we exhibit and develop these virtues. And virtues are habits. They're good habits. That's what they are.

So prudence is practical, good reasoning, right? And this is being able to use the experience from the past to make good decisions in the present for better outcomes in the future, right? And this is being able to use the experience from the past to make good decisions in the present for better outcomes in the future, right? So prudence is like the chariot virtue that helps you to figure out how to apply all the other virtues in various situations, because the world is complicated and we're complicated, right? So that's why we need prudence. Justice is giving to somebody what they are owed. Now this will tie into egalitarianism, giving to somebody what they are owed. Now, this will tie into egalitarianism, right? Because are people owed absolute equality of outcome? Well, it doesn't seem like it. This is this point of fairness right there.

And right there, it doesn't seem like it because it seems like humans, in virtue of being rational animals, have some sort of true freedom, right? And that we can merit certain things. Now, some things I think we can argue are owed just in virtue of what we are, right? That there are some things that we are owed. For example, like we are owed the love and respect of our neighbor. Now, not all ideas are good, but all people deserve to be loved and respected. That's something that everybody is owed in virtue of what they are. Are they owed the same amount of-

Would you not think that respect is more something to be earned than just given? There are connotations to respect. No, I think respecting people in virtue of what they are, as for me, being made in the image and likeness of God is owed to them no matter what. That doesn't mean you have to agree with them. It doesn't mean that you have to respect all their opinions, but you do have to respect them in virtue of what they are ultimately. So a basic level of admiration. Yeah. Of, of, you know, trying to steer away from degrading somebody's character, slandering people. And now there's other vices attached to that too. So the vice is the opposite of virtue, right? It's a deficiency where you should have a perfection. That's what a vice is.

So, you know, lying about people that would be vicious behavior, stuff like that. what a vice is. So, you know, lying about people that would be vicious behavior, stuff like that. So there are certain things. And for example, like children in virtue of what they are, are owed my parental love, respect, and education in the virtues. So I'm, I believe totally in positive rights that positive rights do exist, that people can be owed something in the order of justice and children are owed the love, respect, and education, especially moral education, from their parents. And if I don't deliver that, I am incurring guilt upon myself. I am not fulfilling my obligations of justice to my children. Conversely, children owe their parents admiration, respect, attention, honor, all these things.

Now, we can see that when these obligations are both fulfilled, that everybody benefits, right? Like we could see that when the parents care for their children, love for their children, raise their children right, when the children respond to the teachings of their parents, when the children respect their parents and the parents are sacrificial self-leaders, everybody is going to flourish from that, right? Now, not everybody hits that standard, but we can see that if those standards are fulfilled, it's good, right? And also in the order of nature, because we have that bond of justice between parents and children, it would be massively unjust for the state to eliminate the family unit,

right? Like we have a massive injustice on something that has been set out that is conducive to our flourishing, that helps us to be excellent humans thinks there should be a 100% inheritance tax because that would have no negative impact on the incentive to produce because who cares? You're dead. Why do you care where your money goes? And Friedman had a good response to that, that essentially, no, you're so wrong. You can't be more wrong. Look at what parents are willing to do. Look at how much they're willing to sacrifice of their life for their children. And so he's good because he makes the kind of prudential and economic arguments. I want to make a stronger statement. I want to make a moral argument because whatever the economics are, they're secondary to the moral case, right? The moral case is the more important case. So what would be the case for some sort of inheritance? Well, one is that

parents have an obligation to care for their children. And from that, we actually have a moral case for private property. How can I care for my children? How can I provide for them unless I can save something, right? And plan for the future. If you're denying me private property, you're denying me what I owe to my children in the order of justice. You're thwarting my flourishing. You're thwarting me developing in virtue and being a good human. Well, at that point also, the same people would say, well, yes, your children don't even belong to you though. They actually belong to the state and to the collective. Right. And that's clearly ridiculous, right? Now you would need some type of moral framework to justify that. And if you're going to abandon traditional natural law, which I

don't think can be coherently done, because if you're holding to traditional natural law, right? So we're building off of assumptions. So if the assumptions of what I'm working from here, essentialism and teleology, that there really are essences, right? And that these essences are oriented towards particular outcomes that are perfective of them. Well, then these consequences that I'm drawing out just kind of follow naturally from that. So you would have to go back and try and argue with the assumptions themselves. And I just don't think you can coherently do it, right? And then what are you going to replace with it? Utilitarianism, pragmatism, consequentialism, egalitarianism, all this stuff is horrific

nonsense, right? And it doesn't have any sort of sound philosophical foundation that could even justify it, right? The assumptions are just kind of, it's like suspended in mid air. That's what people don't realize about a lot of these sort of modern ethical theories is they're kind of like they're based off of rejections of traditional ethics, but nothing sound has ever come in to replace it at its foundation, like ever. They just took off. And that's why I think they're so horrible. And we could go through each one of those if we wanted to, or we could do it in a different podcast. But it just wouldn't be enough to just assert that, right? You would have to say, well,

what's wrong with the philosophical worldview that I'm articulating right now? Because if you grant me these things, then it's just going to seem to follow that within the sort of natural order of things, the family unit is far more essential than the state and the collective. And in fact, this is why we call the family unit the first society, because whatever else the nation is, it's an extension of the family, and that a good nation should be doing everything it can to support and protect and create healthy family units, because a healthy family unit leads to a healthy state, right? But if you don't have healthy family units, you start to get a corrupted and degraded state. So any attempts of a state trying to undermine or degrade the family unit is always

going to be inherently immoral, but it's also going to inherently corrupt the state. And there's plenty of evidence for that. There's a lot of research that the body of evidence makes that clear. 100%. If they don't have a strong family unit, they do not do well on average. They're more likely to get into crime, drop out of school, get into drugs. It is not a workable system for, it's not, and again, like you said, it's not just about, oh, the family and the kid. No, that then turns into the entire culture, the entire society, the entire civilization. Right. And so on kind of the tradition we're working from, we do have positive obligations to justice. And there can be cases made from the

traditional natural law perspective, I think good cases that the state has a role to play in at least providing some level of welfare for the people, right? At least some level of base needs for the people. Now, there's great room for debate within traditional national law theory of how much, in what areas, et cetera. And I just, it'd be way too much to settle now. But certainly, it's rejected unanimously that any form of utilitarianism could ever forget the outcomes, right? We have, in principle, moral problems. This could never even be moral to start with because it so undermines and frustrates what is necessary for human flourishing to begin with, right? By undermining human property, by undermining the family unit, all these things are just so athwart human nature and what we need

to really flourish as the kinds of beings that we are, that you can't even get it off the ground philosophically, let alone make an economic or prudential case for it. And what about this idea of fairness though, where people would hear a lot of this and say, well, and a lot of this comes down to material comfort, right? So egalitarians assume that all people deserve material comfort, right? Which is almost like a religious opinion. How are you going to prove that? I think it's more of a preference, but that it's unfair that some people have a lot and

other people don't have anything or that it's unfair that some people are treated worse than others and so forth. Right. Yeah. So I would say a couple of things. One, if we're going to talk about fairness, we have to have a good conception of justice and justice is this kind of constant and perpetual will to give to somebody what they are deserved. And I've argued that there's at least some things and probably a good number of things that are owed to people in virtue of what they are,

but there are other things that are owed to people in virtue of what they do. That of course is going to bear heavily on this conversation. Are people just owed the same amount of income no matter what, or is it fair, to use that terminology, to compensate people more who do harder, more difficult jobs or put in more hours, etc., etc.? I think most people's instinct here would be the correct one to say no. The people who do the harder, more difficult jobs, the more tiring jobs, the jobs that require more training and expertise because they sacrifice more probably deserve some higher level of compensation. And it would be unfair in a sort of Marxist way to equalize that. And that's kind of one of the other problems of egalitarianism is like, say you did equalize that. is like, say you did equalize that. Okay. But then, so you're going to, you're not going to have resentment on income anymore, but now you're just going to have resentment of like, why does

this guy get the same amount of money that I do when he's got a way better job? Why should I not just spend all my time pursuing pleasure? Why should I sacrifice so much for, for people who are outside of my, it comes back to the family, right? You know, so there's two kind of perennial problems, I think. Like he gets to just have a good time. He just eats food and has sex all day. And I'm here in the mines. Now I'm the plumber, right? Yeah. Like what's going on with this? And what are you going to do? Like rotate people through every possible job at the exact amount? I mean, it gets ridiculous to try and think this stuff through. But say, I mean, these are kind of the two perennial problems

of critiques of Marxism even today is that you have incentive problems and you have economic calculation problems. The incentive problem is what we're talking about, which is kind of more, again, of a pragmatic issue. Forget the kind of moral questions for a second. But it's like, if somebody is guaranteed equal outcome, what incentive is there to do anything but the bare minimum of what you're assigned? And what's going to prevent people from being massively resentful of the people who get the better, easier, cushier jobs, but still have the same outcome? I don't think there's any good answers to that, honestly. I mean, if you want a good example of how it goes, just look to

the problem that the USSR had with their farms, right? Where you had these massive farms that were underproducing and you had individuals that got so bad, they would have their own little like mini farms because they just wanted food. So they started growing their own food. And then if that did too well, then the state would come destroy their little farm. Imagine living in a society like that. Yeah. Who would want, who would ever want that? Right. And then you have the kind of economic calculation problems, which people like Friedman articulate beautifully, right? It's like, if you don't have markets there to give price as a signal to allocate resources efficiently, you're just going to have massive inefficiency in the system, which will probably ultimately lead to severe famines, stuff like that. Right. Which

we've seen time and time and time and time again in these communist socialist countries. So those are just kind of two, I guess, on the ground pragmatic issues that I think are serious, real critiques of egalitarian Marxist, you know, regimes. In one sense, I do want to say, right, that there's obligations on us, In one sense, I do want to say that there's obligations on us, individuals, family units, I should want to do things to care for the poor in any way that I am personally able to, right? And I think that's an obligation everybody has, and that everybody needs to fulfill to really flourish as a human being. But that doesn't mean that the state should come, that the state should take all that over. In fact, it would be frustrating to an extent if the state did that. Now, obviously, I can't take care of everybody

by myself. And this is where nations come into play. But there should still be principles of subsidiarity where you try to handle things as locally as possible first, right? That you try to handle whatever issues you can in a governmental sense by a government that is as close and as attentive to the community's needs as possible. So on a smaller scale first possible, if it can't happen there first, then you kick it up a level. Maybe you go from kind of the local community to the state, for example. And if it can't happen there, then you kick it up a level after that, you know, to the federal government. But this is a principle that often gets massively overlooked, but can't be overlooked when we're talking about things like

justice and fairness. And because the needs of people in one community might be massively different than the needs of people in another community. And the only way to be able to try and establish any type of justice there is you need some degree of attentiveness and alertness to the situations on hand. I always find it ironic when people who are on the other side of this opinion or debate give no money or no time to helping anyone in need. They just whine a lot on social media and they vote for politicians who say that they'll just, yeah, we'll take everything from the people who have stuff and we're going to give it to the people who don't. We're going to make everything free. There must be so much cognitive dissonance, like way to live to your principles, buddy. I mean, there's studies on this.

I don't have the numbers fresh off the top of my head right now, but they do find that, yeah, conservative and more religious people do tend to be more charitable as well. Isn't the Catholic Church the biggest charitable organization? One out of every six hospital beds in the world is because of the Catholic Church, right? It always has been and probably always will be the world's largest charitable organization. I mean, everything we love about the world, people don't realize comes from in Western civilization comes from the Catholic Church, hospitals, hospices, universities, I mean, you name it, if the Catholic Church didn't invented it, at least brought it to the masses, where before it was only just for a restricted kind of elite at the times. There's a good book

by Tom Woods. He's a historian out of, is it Harvard or Columbia? I forget which one he's out of, but he's got a book called How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. And he just goes to show like, hey, this thing you love, here's where it came from, right? This other thing you love, here's where it came from. So before people go and want to tear down all this stuff, I think it would be useful for them to understand where it came from and the principles that made them possible. I agree. Now, another thing that a lot of people are saying is they would agree with a lot of what we've said, but they would say that, is it fair that just through the circumstances of birth? So let's just say that somebody would accept that, okay, you do deserve

the people who work more and sacrifice more deserve more. And some of those other points that you were making, they'd say, sure, but you are only in the position to be able to do that because of things that are outside of your control, because you were born to loving parents and you have an above average IQ. You didn't work for that. You just got it given to you and so on and so forth. You know where this argument goes. What are your thoughts on that? So they would say, well, I don't know what you're supposed to do about it, but minimally you're supposed to have a deep sense

of guilt and shame that you represent this inequality. And it is not that person's fault that they didn't work as hard as you. Yeah. People use the term privilege, right? And I think that this is, again, another equivocation, another kind of redefinition. Privilege was always something that was given by a corporation or the state to give somebody the ability to do something or some... Here's a good example of an actual privilege in a traditional sense would be affirmative action, for example. That's like a true privilege. What people are using when they mean privilege now in today's society, like, you know, you have white privilege or family privilege or something like that. They really just mean unearned benefits, right? That's what they mean. Unearned benefits. Now, why on earth should I be ashamed of my unearned benefits?

Because everybody, most everybody has unearned benefits in at least something, right? Whether it's exactly of some kind, you also have unearned, you came into the world, we all had unearned penalties as well. Right. Now, so I want to acknowledge some things that I think are right, because I think people will find that I'm kind of much more in the middle than they might initially seem in a sense that should you ever be ashamed for unearned benefits? Absolutely not. That's ridiculous. Do you have moral obligations to your fellow human beings that you need to fulfill? Yeah, of course. Right. And if you study traditional virtue ethics, you'll realize that to be a good person is to be a charitable person, to try and lift other people up who might not

have the same benefits as you, but to do so voluntarily and freely. That's what we want to foster in people, right? We want to foster the desire to love and care for other people because we know that that is what is conducive to all of our flourishing. What we don't want to foster is what's being fostered now, which is just resentment, right? Resentment of all their classes of people, which just breeds hate and division. So that I just stand completely opposed by. But if you say, well, what about people who were born in dire situations? Shouldn't we give them a helping hand? I want to say, yeah. And let's talk about the best ways to do that. First, on a local level, if possible, maybe through private organizations and charities. And then if we need to have some state intervention,

let's do it. And so at least on basic principle, there probably wouldn't be much disagreement there. It just maybe come down to application, instance, and are we trying to instill virtue or breed resentment? Because those are two radically different things. If we're trying to get people a virtuous population, I'm all for it. If you're trying to get class warfare based on economic status or race or anything like that, then I have nothing but contempt for that. I think it's evil and corrupt and will lead to tyranny. With those distinctions being made, again, I think some people are deserved of something in virtue of what they are, no matter what.

And we need every type of protection, including from the state, if necessary, to do it. Life is one of those things. So I think abortion should be completely outlawed. It's like hard to make sense of how anybody could be owed anything else if they don't first have the right to life, right? Because any other rights we have are just instrumental, like the right to property or the right to privacy, right? All that just extends from us having inherent value of being the kinds of things we are. So it would make no sense to say that we need to protect a woman's right to

privacy, but at the same time, it make human life absolutely indispensable. Because the only reason privacy has any value is instrumentally because of what it attaches to, first off. So I think things like abortion in society are horribly unjust. That is our society's slavery. It is. And that's something that people need to realize is that just because we're living in contemporary times doesn't mean that we don't have moral blind spots like other societies have. There's a lot of great research on this of kind of the cognitive bias, especially of people who are more educated and intelligent of how they just have these moral blind spots. A lot of it's probably the result of the education. Of course, but just as people were morally blind to atrocities in the past, we shouldn't just assume that we're not morally blind to atrocities now. And I think abortion is the hallmark example. I'm sure we will, but hope it comes sooner rather than later that we'll look back

on abortion with as much horror and grotesqueness as we look back on slavery. It's despicable. So that's something where I think we need more justice, you know, coming in from even if it has to be at a higher up level. Other things would be like, yeah, you had two good parents. Actually, I didn't. I'm the product of divorce. So I didn't, I guess, have that unearned benefit. But obviously, as you said, Mike, people who have good loving parents who stay together and don't get divorced have better

outcomes. This is absolutely true. And that's kind of what we would expect as well, given the arguments I've made. So what should society do for people who don't have that? Well, I think we should try to make sure that we stabilize family units, that we support family units so we don't disrupt them. So let's get rid of stupid laws like no-fault divorce and stuff like that that really have subversively undermined the family unit. Let's make sure that we get clear on what marriage is and how important family stability is. And of course, there's deeper issues of just making sure that when we educate people on public education, that it's not just about gender theory, which I don't think should be taught at all. That seems ridiculous to me, but about virtue. That was the

whole kind of Aristotelian platonic idea of education to begin with. We need a virtuous citizenry. That's the only way a society is going to be sustainable. So if education should do anything, it should be first to make sure that our citizens are virtuous, not resentful, right? So we have the opposite. We're just so inverted in society today. I guess the general point is I would agree with many of the initial sentiments, but I would probably disagree with how they're enacted and what exactly we're targeting or how we

would target it. Yeah, well put. And it starts with the individual, which you've made that point. I mean, I don't talk about it because I'm not interested in virtue signaling. Because it's relevant, I'll say that for years now, I've given on average 10% of my personal income to charities, to causes that I believe in and support. And my purpose of supporting those causes is because I, like you, want to see a more virtuous society and a society full of people who are just doing better. I like to see people do well. For anybody listening who wants to try to make a difference, you can start there. You can just

start with giving some of your money. I don't give any of my time because all I do is work, honestly. And outside of that, I'm with my family. That will probably change in the future. I'm not against giving my time. That's a different discussion. Why? The opportunities I have and I have some strategic goals, but I've given a lot of money and I think that counts for something. Or good ideas, you know, is just to do like voluntary activity with your family too. Like what a great way to train your kids in virtue and to see stuff like that, right. You know, it's really. I do agree. I do agree.

So let's touch on one more thing. And that is this point of equality of opportunity. So what are your thoughts on striving to accomplish that? Right. So there's, yeah. And I would just say that if you're thinking that you're ever going to achieve true equality of opportunity, you're going to be led down to the same absurd results. Like essentially you're going to collapse into equality of outcome. That's the funny thing, right? Yes. We're back to the brain. So by like trying to take a step back,

you've just fallen into the same hole, right? However, does that mean that like we shouldn't try to provide public education? No, that doesn't mean that at all, right? It just means that we realistically understand that the whole idea of equality of opportunity is not only just not feasible, it would be in practice immoral. But there's nothing to stop you from admitting that to saying, well, look, I still think that we should try to get everybody as much as we can. Yeah. And that's just kind of, again, in the order of justice and how you do that again, individually, as a family, locally, and greater society is for me, that is a wide open, both philosophical and empirical debate, right? So some of these questions are empirical, like we put policies in place and then we just got to see, well, what are the outcomes, right? So some of these things I just, I wouldn't have the answer to, because I just don't know the data. So I think you can lay down moral principles, but then, and then you can work within those moral principles, but then a lot of the questions really just are empirical

questions. Okay. Let's, and that's kind of the cool thing about the idea of federalism, at least as originally conceived as like the States could be somewhat testing grounds in a way, right? Like we could see like, wow, what policies would really, you know, produce the kind of results that we want. And that's, again, another reason for kind of subsidiarity, not just efficiency, but we could kind of have a sort of testing ground to see like, okay, the state is doing it this way. They're doing public education, you know, from this model, the state's using voucher systems or something like that. Let's compare and see the results and, you results and try and control for important relevant variables, which is always difficult in social and economic sciences. But what I'm saying largely is some of these questions really,

to me, would just be only answerable once we start to get data in on it. Yeah, I agree. And there's first, though, at least agreeing with some element of the premise. Should we even pursue this? Yes, we should pursue it in the right way and see what works and what doesn't. And that not by accident, like you had said, that many, we seem to be inverted in many ways. I don't think that's by accident. No, it's not. Believe something like that just happens out of the random chaos of existence. Yeah. And I want to be clear. I don't think everybody's like in a big conspiracy theory. I just mean that certain intellectuals have been very successful at getting certain philosophies into institutions, right? And that many people have just been trained in that.

They've been studied in that. And they just, they aren't even aware of competing theories oftentimes. So I'm not saying like there's great conspiratorial malice out there. I mean, I think there is. I think there's good evidence that there is. And that's the theme of history.

I mean, I've said this so many times. If you, how can you study history, even just briefly and say the phrase conspiracy theory, you mean like the most common theme in history when it comes to power and politics? Like since the beginning of time, powerful people have been conspiring by definition. It's like, you think we're not doing that anymore, though. Let me clarify. Let me clarify. So I definitely believe that there are wicked people who have purposely done wicked things.

There's no doubt about that. There's absolutely no doubt. Of course. And people who are in power and actually have some influence. Right. And have influence. All that I would say is that a lot of the people who go along with this are just not that people.

They're just not those people. Right. And many of them go along with it with perfectly good intentions. They just don't see alternatives or know better, right? Stalin's useful idiots. Yeah. I think it's a lot more of it is attributable to ignorance and malice, but I concede your point that there is a good amount of it that is attributable to malice, for sure. So I just, I just want to, it's all about making distinctions, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Well, I, those are all the main questions that I had for you. I think this was, I mean,

I enjoyed the discussion and I think people listening will enjoy it. I look forward to hearing any feedback, anybody listening, you can shoot me an email, mikeatmusclefullife.com. Pat, if they want to reach out to you, what's the best way for them? Yeah. Pat Flynn at chroniclesofstrength.com is my email. Always happy to see questions and feedback. It would certainly be welcoming to that. And yeah, man, this has been a ton of fun. I know we kind of bounced all over the place. I'm trying to think if people are some like resources, if people want to- And let me just quickly throw in just is this would you agree with this statement just to wrap up this point of fairness that it is fair in the sense of how

you've defined justice it's not your definition this is you know this is uh there's a lot of thought that has gone into why that word is defined that way by many people who other people would agree were very smart people and very conscientious people that it is inequality can absolutely inequality of opportunity inequality of outcome can be fair in the sense that it can be deserved it is not just inherently unfair because there are inequalities between people yeah i think I'd be willing to endorse that. It doesn't mean that there aren't other inequalities that we might want to pay attention to and try to reduce, right? So I think I just want to make that. I mean, just take inequality of wealth. I don't want to go off on a whole tangent on that. But of course, you're going to

always have some of that if you're going to have a system that runs on markets and that's the best we've got, right? But you're going to have some of that. But if it gets too out of hand, then it just becomes destructive to the society and people can no longer flourish. I mean, I think it's funny when people complain about what's going on today and you just look at what was happening toward the end of before the Roman Empire became the Byzantine, before that split. There's interesting parallels to be sure. Oh, for sure. There are many, but it got so bad. I mean, people, you had enormously wealthy people. So you had the Bezoses and the Gates and these guys,

and you didn't just have the poor. I mean, you had the dismally poor, you had the starving in the streets, literally have nothing left to even live for poor. Right. Yeah. So then if you were to say is that just i'd say absolutely not right yeah absolutely not so but yeah if you're just saying like is it just to have any inequalities at all i say yes of course it's not only justice to be to be expected but there are of course degrees to all this that need to be carefully considered and you know it ultimately comes down to like, you know, do you think that people are, have any moral responsibility whatsoever? And I think the

answer there is obviously yes, they do. But that again, we can do like a whole another conversation on free will maybe at some point there. That could be a good one. But yeah, a book, a real good book, Introductory Textbook to Natural Law. Grab, I would recommend if you're interested in ethics, there's a great book called Right and Reason by Austin Fugothi. Right and Reason. And that's a great book because it will introduce kind of competing moral theories. So you'll kind of get like a nice overview of the different philosophical schools of thought on ethics. And then of course, he's going to make the case for why the traditional natural law and the virtue ethics, you know, from Aristotle to Aquinas is the way to go. So I'd recommend that one. I just added it to my be smarter books list on Amazon. Groovy. Well, thank you as always. I

really enjoy these discussions. I look forward to the next one. And let's wrap up with, why don't you tell people about your newest book that I am like maybe 60% through and really enjoying. I've been going through it carefully because it is intellectually rigorous and you have to take your time, but I found it very interesting. And again, it's an area that I haven't studied too much about. So for me, an introduction to some of these concepts that you're talking about in the book. Cool. Yeah. So the book is called How to Think About God, and it is a snippet from a larger book project

I'm working on. And it itself is a sort of re-presentation or repurposing of some work I did in my master's program on philosophy and metaphysics, trying to present what's called natural theology, which is just armchair philosophical thinking about the ultimate foundations of things. Can we give arguments for God's existence? And from those arguments, can we learn anything about God? And I want to say yes to both of those questions. So it's a work of philosophy, not theology. And I'm borrowing insights, again, from Plato, Aristotle, Guston, Aquinas, but also many great contemporary thinkers on the scene as well, and trying to

incorporate them into a contemporary argument for what's called classical theism. And that's a tradition that holds to a very robust conception of monotheism of an absolutely simple God. So if people are interested in that, and I think like, how can you not be right? We're talking about the ultimate foundation of things. And once you and that's kind of the interesting thing about politics, you start asking enough political questions, you'll get to ethical questions, right? You start asking enough ethical questions, you'll get to metaphysical questions. So I would argue you might as well just start with metaphysics, get yourself straightened out there and then work everything else out downstream. Probably save yourself some time and some frustration and get better results

along the way. Right. So it's only a buck. And like I said, it's just a snippet. So it's very short, like 40 pages. And it's just a kind of a preview from this larger book project I'm working on. And for me, it was just a matter of getting some feedback and skin in the game as I kind of a preview from this larger book project I'm working on. And for me, it was just a matter of getting some feedback and skin in the game as I kind of try and pull the bigger thing together. And it's on Amazon. So How to Think About God by Pat Flynn. There's another book called How to Think About God by Mortimer J. Adler. And he's a great thinker. I actually borrowed the title from him because his book was one of the first books I read on natural theology. And now I disagree with him. I think he was wrong on a couple of fine points that are probably too boring to acknowledge now, but I'm kind of giving a nod to him.

Adler's a brilliant thinker. He's also got a book called How to Read a Book, which is one of the best books in the world. He teaches you how to- Yeah, the name sounded familiar. I was like, didn't it? So yeah, just to be clear, there's my version of it, which is the $1 ebook, but Adler's is still worth picking up in and of itself.

Awesome. Well, otherwise, where can people find you to check out your other stuff, your fitness stuff? And if you have anything else on the way that you want people to know about, this will probably go up two to four weeks from today. So if there's anything else you want people to know, let's let them know. Yeah, no, thanks. I appreciate it.

Yeah. My podcast is the Pat Flynn show. So if you enjoyed this jam session, you'll probably enjoy some of the content there. Like I said, I do philosophy episodes every Friday, some theology on Sunday, and then, you know, kind of like a mix of fitness and business and stuff during the weekdays. So that's the Pat Flynn show. My website is chronicles of strength.com. And if you like kettlebell workouts, I got a nice compendium of 101 free kettlebell workouts. And you can get that at 101, the number is 101, kettlebellworkouts.com.

And that should do it. Awesome, man. Well, thanks again. I look forward to the next one. We'll have to figure out what we want to pontificate on next. For sure, man. This has been a blast. All right.

Well, that's it for today's episode. I hope you found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and you don't mind doing me a favor, could you please leave a quick review for the podcast on iTunes or wherever you are listening from? Because those reviews not only convince people that they should check out the show,

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Thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope to hear from you soon.