Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Alex Tsakiris on Evil, Objective Morality, Post-Modernism, and Curt's film Better Left Unsaid

Episode Date: February 2, 2021

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/xrkQumFzwS0Alex Tsakiris is the host of Skeptiko (a podcast with guests such as Donald Hoffman, Michael Shermer, and others. It's can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/user/skeptiko)The film Better Left Unsaid can be followed here: http://betterleftunsaidfilm.com (release in Feb or March 2021)Patreon for conversations on Theories of Everything, Consciousness, Free Will, and God: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal Help support conversations like this via PayPal: https://bit.ly/2EOR0M4 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802 Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfP Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e Google Podcasts: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Id3k7k7mfzahfx2fjqmw3vufb44 iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802* * *00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:21 Alex’s introduces Better Left Unsaid (trailer) 00:03:01 Comments on Alex's book "Why Evil Matters" 00:04:56 Curt's theoretical background 00:07:21 Discussion on Donald Hoffman 00:13:30 The problem in Academia 00:13:21 Alex’s on “why are we here?" 00:15:21 The problem with rationalists (quote from Hildegard De Bingen) 00:21:01 Humanists ideologies... What do they believe? 00:22:01 Is Curt a Christian? 00:23:21 If values are a social construction, then what happens to morality? 00:25:21 Consciousness is an illusion 00:28:21 Near death experiences 00:34:27 Alex on Dennett and Dawkins being part of a conspiracy 00:37:01 "No, you didn't meet Jesus." 00:41:21 Alex's breakdown of Curt's film Better Left Unsaid 00:42:29 On utilitarianism 00:43:26 Curt on his own "destructiveness" 00:46:21 Who will you be judged by? 00:48:07 Unbounded forgiveness 00:50:21 What does "Psy-Ops" mean? 00:53:51 Feminism was co-opted by the CIA (Gloria Steinem story) 00:57:21 A bit more on Alex's Book "Why Evil Matters" 00:58:01 Love vs Power (a Jungian perspective) 00:58:40 Is the world supposed to be unintelligible? Should we not know all the answers? 01:02:59 Why does this world exist at all? 01:03:47 Kierkegaard on what it means to be a Christian 01:04:36 Doubt and faith as essential in spirituality 01:06:58 What is Better Left Unsaid's target audience? 01:08:41 The Horseshoe Theory 01:12:44 Curt's fasting -- why does he do it? 01:17:21 Alex's / Curt's meditation -- what do they do? (Wim Hof) 01:23:14 Where to find Better Left Unsaid?Subscribe if you want more conversations on Theories of Everything, Consciousness, Free Will, God, and the mathematics / physics of each.* * *I'm producing an imminent documentary Better Left Unsaid http://betterleftunsaidfilm.com on the topic of "when does the left go too far?" Visit that site if you'd like to contribute to getting the film distributed (early-2021).

Today's episode is a bit different, so if you will allow me, I'm going to read. Alex Akiris from Skeptico asked to interview me about consciousness, morality, and my upcoming documentary, Better Left Unsaid, which is about the extremism that characterizes the political left and the political right, though we do focus predominantly on the left, for reasons of intellectual curiosity. That is, it's fairly easy to discern when the right quote-unquote goes too far because it manifests itself in something like ostensive racism, whereas on the left, it cloaks itself, or at least seemingly does, in benevolence, such as wanting more equality, and so on. Because I'm most comfortable when eliciting the views of others, this interview became more of an exchange between myself and Alex. I found it to be a fascinating, fascinating discussion about religion,

what constitutes God, what constitutes a Christian or a Buddhist, does consciousness survive death, as well as all the other topics you've grown accustomed to on this channel except for physics, which I will be returning to in the next few weeks. In fact, soon I have the pleasure of speaking to Bernardo Kastrup, so if you have any questions there, please leave it in the Reddit link below. If you find this conversation to be interesting, then let me know, and I'll start posting more of me being interviewed by other people and me interviewing them simultaneously, since the release of the documentary Better Left Unsaid is ever closer,

and press starts ramping up closer to that date. Enjoy. Welcome to Skeptico, where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I'm your host, Alex Akaris, and today we welcome Kurt Jamungle of Skeptico. Kurt is a very accomplished filmmaker and actor based in Toronto. You know, I initially contacted Kurt because I was super impressed with his YouTube channel, which I'm actually showing up on the screen here, and some of his just excellent interviews on consciousness, atheism, free will, and all the interesting stuff we love to talk about on Skeptico, highlighting one that he did with Donald Hoffman with over 143,000 views.

Fantastic. We all know Don Hoffman was one of my favorite guests to have on and is featured in the book that I have. So since my initial contact with Kurt, he has released this pretty amazing movie, just extremely well done movie called Better Left Unsaid. So I thought what we'd do is kind of shift the focus a little bit over to this movie. And I'm showing his IMDb page, which is quite impressive as well. But we'll just kind of talk about a bunch of different things. I'm going to, of course, give him the usual Skeptico inquiry to perpetuate doubt treatment. He won't escape that, but he's a really smart guy, so I know he can take it. Kurt, welcome to Skeptico and thanks so much for joining me.

Thank you so much, man. I appreciate it. By the way, I read your book. Read it last night. It was way, it was far better than I expected. Not that I didn't expect it to be. Wait a minute. What kind of backhanded compliment is that? I was impressed.

And especially, let's say, the first 66, the first two-thirds, it's almost exactly in line with what I'm going to go there, but I think we can help people kind of jump into what we're talking about. Even better if we share a trailer from the new film, this is Better Left Unsaid and I'm going to play it and we'll just kind of listen. And then we'll ask Kurt to comment on it and tell us in his own words, what the movie is about. I, four little children, love be judged by the color of their skin,

but by the content of their character. You're a white male! You know what? You're still responsible! The world is upside down. I thought the whole idea was to not judge people by their skin color. That's what racism used to mean. I can no longer teach contemporary moral public. Anything that involved issues of race and gender

seems to me a minefield. Racism's been redefined. Sexism's been redefined. The up. This is all through the culture. And if we can't talk, what's left? I'm not a Nazi. Why are we not taught the historical consequences of those who view the world through optics of groups that have power and groups that don't?

Is this not the central problem of our time? Powerful stuff. Great stuff. Tell us more about this Kickstarter, super successful kickstarter that you did you obviously have resonated with a lot of people tell us about what the movie is all about and what the reaction has been so far sure so the reaction has an extremely positive from everyone who doesn't identify as being a leftist and people who identify as being not on the left but a part of let's say the extreme left or radical left they tend to not like the film

people who are center left center and center right seem to extremely enjoy the film okay as for what it's about my background is in math and physics, so I'm extremely analytical, and I hear clamoring of people on the, let's say, the radical end of the left. And I'm trying to make sense of it, especially in the university. That's where I was trained. So I'm like, okay, what's going on when people say that white people can't be racist and that it's an inveterate part of their constitution, racism, it's almost like original sin in the Christian doctrine. Can't get rid of it, you're born with it. You get they don't like to be called essentialists. Essentialist means that there are subsistent qualities of you that you can't get rid of.

It seems contradictory, but part of what I like, part of one of the reasons I liked your book, by the way, Alex, is that even though I'm, let's say, a mathematician or a physicist, by training, I'm not a mathematician. Like, man, that's an honor that I can't claim. I'm not a physicist either. I just have training in that. Most physicists, as you know, most physicists, and most people who call themselves scientists, dislike ambiguity. They dislike what they can't define. They dislike what they can't prove or disprove. And they have a swift dismissal of what seems contradictory and meaningless. So I share almost all the traits with scientists except that. I find that part of, maybe that's my artist side. Anyway, so i'm trying to analyze this and see

why what sense is there in the senseless that's what this movie is about how did it get this way what's right about what they're saying what's wrong about what they're saying from my perspective with an analytical background that's pretty much it so you you touched on a couple interesting things there i might just return us to donald hoffman since we don't both have a couple of interesting things there. I might just return us to Donald Hoffman, since we both have a lot of respect for the guy. And you did an outstanding interview with him. And he was super impressed by your interview, which is always a great measuring stick, I think. You know, because YouTuber comments to me aren't quite as significant as when Don Hoffman says, wow, you really did a good interview. I kind of take that as a higher compliment, which he did for you.

You know, when I talked to Hoffman, one of the really interesting exchanges we had was I was talking to him about spirituality. And I was talking to him about Eckhart Tolle. And he paused for a minute and a smile came over his face. And he says, I have a lot of respect for Eckhart Tolle. And I meditate on a regular basis. And then he told me a story that I think gets to the first part of what you're saying. He says, one day I was giving a presentation and somebody came up at the end and in a very kind of smirky way said, the language of God is silence. Everything else is meaningless. And Hoffman said, he stopped for a minute and he thought, and then he said, okay, I can live with that. If we're going to be silent, then I can be silent.

But everyone who has a religious point of view about what God is, about what spirituality does, ultimately follows that up with pages upon pages upon books upon volumes about not silence, about what the rules are. And he said, so if we are going to speak, let's try and be as precise as possible. And he said, as a mathematician, that's what I love about math. It keeps me in check in terms of being precise. And I wonder if there isn't a strange link to what you were saying about your analytical approach and how much frustration you feel with academia, which has come, has overtly just disassociated themselves with precision, with reality. And we can argue that part of that is a reaction to what they see as an absurdity that was done in the past, either from a social justice standpoint or from a religious standpoint. But still, we wind up in this place where they've kind of left the dock of reason

and don't even pretend to have a need to go back to it. And that's what I think your movie does, just an incredibly direct and well-argued way of just exposing that for what it is. So do you have any thoughts on that? With regard to academia leaving precision, I think what you're referring to is the non-STEM fields. STEM fields are all about rigor, and I like that, but the non-STEM fields, their job is to be not precise. So that's not my problem. My issue in the film is you have to have a value. So you have to say, what is this for? Is this for the flourishing of society? Is this for the pursuit of knowledge wherever it takes me? So you have to have some value, you have to have

some aim. What seems to have happened in the non-STEM field is there's something called modernism, which is actually, people misuse. It's modernity. It's not modernism. Even though I use the term modernism in the film, it's just because most people use it that way. Modernism is the artistic movement. Modernity is the philosophical framework that comes along with that. So what came from modernity was the Enlightenment or the Enlightenment spread modernity, one of those two. Then you can think of that as skepticism. When I was talking to Michael Shermer, I asked him what what's wrong with postmodernism? Because to me, postmodernism is the same as skepticism, just applied universally. He didn't give me an adequate

answer, except to venerate science and just say, well, that's what we shouldn't be skeptical of. Going back to the non-stem fields, they have a postmodern bend, which means they dislike all values. And well, where will that lead you? It seems like they don't dislike all values. It also seems like they're influenced by what's called Marxism. And Marxism in and of itself doesn't seem so bad on the face of it, because it's all about sharing. It seems egalitarian. It seems even Christian. But yet it seems like there's something more darker and pestilential under the surface. So the non-stem fields are influenced by postmodernism, Marxism, and a few others, even some of what I like,

like existentialism, they're influenced by. But I don't bring that up in the film. It was just a moot point. So the non-stem fields, when you talk about lack of rigor, I don't care about that. That's fine because art is lack of rigor. And also remember, part of my core, it's like rigor and art because I'm a filmmaker. So I like art. It's just the value. What are you critiquing? And what are you aimed at?

It's basically what are you aimed at that I'm not quite sure of and I don't necessarily agree with in the non-STEM fields. See, I kind of look at it slightly differently. My approach is that fundamentally, there's only two questions that we're asking across the board, whether it's Don Hoffman at Caltech as a physicist, or whether it's one of the wacky quote-unquote philosophers that you're talking to in the postmodern academia. quote-unquote philosophers that you're talking to in the postmodern academia. The two questions are, who are we? Why are we here? Essentially, that's the question. It's also the question of religion. That's the question of religion. Who are we? Why are we here?

My feeling about the soft sciences, academia, are that they've built their castle on a foundation of sand. It doesn't hold, because they have a fundamental misunderstanding of consciousness. They've bought into this Michael Shermer-supported idea that consciousness is an illusion, consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the brain, and that therefore, there can never be a moral imperative. There can't be. If the universe is meaningless, if we're biological robots in a meaningless universe, there cannot be a moral good and bad. And so I think that the sleight of hand that's been done, and some of them are aware of it and some of them aren't, is that if you don't understand consciousness, if you accept the radically absurd idea that consciousness is an illusion, then you can't go anywhere. And I think that's what the extreme left in academia and then how it's manifested in society is built on. What do you think about that?

You've done a lot of work on consciousness. You've done a lot of interviews on consciousness. You really, really know your stuff. What do you think about what I just said? Okay, let's get to the fundamental nature of consciousness afterward. I'm going to comment on what you said directly with two religious references. So there's someone named Hildegard de Bingham, I believe. She was a Christian monk in the Middle Ages, and she has a passage that resonates with me. You're a Christian, right, Kurt? I don't know what I am. I'll say that.

Okay. I'll say, in many ways, I hope I'm a Christian, or in many ways, I hope that I hope that I'm a Christian. So Hildegard, she said, and pride germinated in the first angel, as he no longer could comprehend the source of his own light. And so he spoke to himself, I want to be master and want none above me. Now there's so much in that passage. Pride germinated in the first angel, so talking about Satan. Then he spoke to himself, meaning extremely individualistic. Now that means I'm a fan of individualism, but I think individualism gets taken to an extreme on the extreme left, which is about collectivism, and I'll tell you how that plays later. Well, I can give you a sneak preview right now, because they say, I assert what meaning is. So if I dress

up like a girl, it doesn't mean I dress up like a girl, because who cares about what society says? I create my own meaning, and if I dress up like a boy, so on, so on, so on, so on. I create my own meaning. That's extremely individualistic. Okay, Hildegard also said, I want none above me. I want to be master. Now, that seems to be what divides the religious, or some of the religious, from the atheistic, which is, I don't want an external imposer of values. I want to run it. And now, Jacobi said something interesting.

I think it's from the 1800s. He said that man chooses either God or nothingness. Okay, now either there's a God or there's nothingness. Now let's say man chooses nothingness. Then man turns himself into a God. Why? Because it's impossible if there is nothing that everything I see is merely an apparition. I mean, it's impossible that that is not the case. In other words, it's all an illusion, like you referenced with Michael Shermer. Therefore, I'm the only thing that's real. Therefore, I'm God. So J. Covey said, it's either God exists beyond me, or I am a God. There is no third option.

is that modern day science as we know it, scientism, is not referencing inside a framework of God, inside a God framework. As consciousness is an illusion, is an assertion that there not is nothingness to be above, but that your existence doesn't exist. The voice inside your head is not real. And so I kind of feel like when you go around this, you kind of miss two things that I think are central. One is the absolute absurdity of that. And I think you as a spiritual person who obviously understands that you are more, that you're not meaningless, that you have free will. These obvious things are taken off the equation. But the other thing that I think people who haven't processed the Christian thing completely, they kind of don't see how Christianity has been complicit in this whole thing and how they've

set it all up and that a lot of this stuff that we're seeing on the left is reactionary to the absurdity of a pedo-pope, the absurdity of a cosmology within Christianity that is completely ridiculous and yet we have to placate and be nice to Christians and quote-unquote respect Christian beliefs about Adam and Eve or Noah's Ark or the special day or any of the rest of that stuff. So there's two parts of that. One is Christians have to understand the absurdity of their proposition and of their cosmology and that the reactionary component of that. And then secondly, I think to misunderstand Shermer and to suggest that Shermer is an atheist in this kind of Gnostic, create better than the creator gods. I don't

think that's where he's coming from. He's asserting that there's that there's he's okay as a biological robot and a meaningless universe who dies and then there's nothing he hasn't processed how absolutely ridiculous that is. Yeah, I would say that he. Well, first of all, I like Michael Schirmer. Let's get that out of the way. He's one of my favorite frenemies I always call him. Hey, I've had him on a couple of times and always have good times. Good natured guy. And he seems to love the film Better Left Unsaid. And that puts him in the ranks for me. Okay. With regard to what he says, you have to also disentangle.

This is why part of the film is firstly an exposition as to what's happened in the past couple of years, then a historical analysis, and then a psychological, and almost, well, as you get deeply psychological, it's difficult to not sound religious, or let's say mythical. Then it gets psychological and mythical toward the end. As for Schirmer, as for people who say that it's meaningless, I'm also skeptical that they don't underneath, because there's a difference between professed beliefs and what they actually believe. I'm skeptical that they don't actually believe that, well, they're humanists. So that means that they believe that they contrive their own values. Well, they believe values are a social construct, which doesn't require any of

the, again, I think you come at this from a Christian lens where you don't really accept the extent to which these people have bullshitted themselves into taking this absolutely philosophically absurd position that any culture throughout time would roll on the ground laughing with the idea that consciousness is an illusion that you don't exist and that you're not in there. It's an absurdity that I think you're trying to kind of wrestle into something that makes sense rather than just calling it for what it is. And then the real question that falls out for me for that is how have they perpetuated such a silly, silly idea? And that's where you have to ask the question, is there a social engineering motivation behind it?

When you say that I'm coming at it from a Christian lens, what are you referring to? Because I don't consider myself necessarily to be Christian or Buddhist or whatever it may be. When you say that you got to believe that Shermer can't really believe what he's saying. I get you. I'm saying that differently, though. I'm saying no. He has bullshitted himself, as the other atheists have, into really believing that life is meaningless, that the world, that the universe is meaningless, and that life is meaningless. And they are now in a state where they really believe that. They're not going to bed and tossing on their pillow with the idea of wrestling with that. You and I can't quite get there because

we can't even really wrap our heads around how someone could embrace such a silly idea. But I'm suggesting that they really have. There's no fake to it. Well, even if they say they have no values, their body acts as if they have values because they move. So they value something above sitting still. And they value something above not talking if they talk. Just by their actions, they convey their values. And again, I just think you go back and talk to Shermer and ask him and see what his answer is. But what I've done with Shermer is... You can ask him, do you value science?

Do you value truth? And he might say yes. He values it as a social construct. That's fine. That's fine. say yes. He values it as a social construct. That's fine. That's fine. He can say he values it as a social construct. He still values it. No, I don't think it's fine at all. I think it completely skates the issue. The issue is, as you've put your finger on, I think, is there a moral imperative? The question is, who are we? Why are we here? the question is who are we why are we here and the the question that falls out of that is is there a moral imperative is there a good is there an evil what schirmer will say and what they all say is well that's really a moral that's really a social construct there isn't

any real objective good or bad and you would i I say, well, of course there is. From the time that we're a little kid and we stole candy from the candy store, we knew it wasn't the right thing to do. And we knew it as more than a social contract. It was just something that wasn't right at a higher level that we didn't really understand, but intuitively we got it. that we didn't really understand, but intuitively we got it. I don't see what you're saying as contradicting what I said. So there's two sources of values, or at least in Jacobi's formulation, that is either objective or external, which is God, or it is you, it is man.

Even if man says it's socially constructed, that's still man creating it. That's almost by definition man creating it. So that's in line with what I was saying. No, I don't think we're in disagreement. Well, again, I think I tell me that you disagree that I agree. No, no, no. I'm just saying've done here, the sleight of hand, is to suggest that they can live with consciousness as an illusion. And then we can still talk about man and not being gender specific, but they are, when they say man, they are really alluding to consciousness, to a self of who, a sense of who you are in yourself. So their inherent contradiction that we have to get to the bottom of, if we're going to make any sense of this, is that they are self-contradicting themselves when they say that it's a social construct created by man.

There is no man if consciousness is an illusion. Yeah. Well, about consciousness as an illusion, just so you know, I've never understood exactly what that means. For example, Dennett, I think, is a proponent of the illusory nature of consciousness. And I read his book. I read at least one of his books, maybe two or three. And I think Darwin's Dangerous Idea is another one. But I don't quite, I don't understand what it means

for consciousness to be an illusion. So I don't, I can't argue that that view is in contradiction or in coherence with something else because I don't actually understand what it means. But hold on,

when I talk to... Hold on, full stop. We have to be able to process that because that's what the whole thing is built on. The whole thing is built on consciousness as an epiphenomenon of the brain, that there is no you in there. Now, philosophically, that requires a miracle because the only thing you can know philosophically is that you are in there. Now, philosophically, that requires a miracle because the only thing you can know philosophically is that you are in there. I don't know if you're in there. I don't know if you're AI, but I know I'm in here. So what the sleight of hand that they've done with Dan Dennett, and I always play Neil deGrasse Tyson because he's the kind of one of the modern mouthpieces. And you can hear him directly say, I'll play the quote, but I've played it 500 times on this show. You know, I think when we get to the bottom of it, we'll find out that consciousness is nothing. So they're all saying the same thing.

And Shermer is saying the same thing. I talked to Shermer about near-death experience, because the good thing about near-death experience science is it puts to bed once and for all the question of consciousness, because consciousness is proven to survive bodily death. So now we can't really lean on the idea that's an epiphenomenon of the brain, because the brain is gone. But this again, I mean, I'm hammering on this, but it is the fundamental issue that there's, it's the fundamental misstep that the whole left has built its whole house on this foundation that is completely wrong. Okay. When it comes to near-death experiences, because I haven't studied it, what do they see? Do they see themselves after they die, or do they see other people, and do those other people retain their personality, the same relationships and proclivities that they had when they were alive? Or is it just you see them as an entity, or you feel them, you feel their consciousness? What is it exactly?

Exactly. Well, there's all sorts of different experiences that people have. And a lot of folks have spent a great deal of time trying to understand them and categorize them in a scientific way, which is useful, but is limited. It's limited because we don't really have a way of understanding what consciousness would mean if it extends beyond bodily death. Because back to our scientific and philosophical implications, let's stick to scientific. The fundamental question in science, for as long as we've looked at the double-slit experiment, is, is consciousness somehow fundamental? So is matter not fundamental? Consciousness is fundamental. If everything is built in emerging out of consciousness, emerge is a bad word because they go the emergent property of consciousness. But if everything is out of consciousness,

then we have kind of a different thing where we can't really even talk about any of these things very clearly. But to answer your question, the most important thing that comes out of the near-death experience science, in my opinion, is just this point that clearly the neurological model of consciousness has been falsified. Because for the last 60 years, we have good science, if you will, on what it takes for a brain to generate consciousness. We have EEGs, we have fMRIs on animals and in people and under all different sorts of conditions. So we know that the condition that the brain is in, when someone has been pronounced clinically dead in a hospital for three or four minutes before they're resuscitated, we know that neurological state should not be able to generate

consciousness. So when someone is resuscitated from that and is able to recount in great detail their resuscitation process, you know, the guy, yeah, the guy wheeled me in and they tried the paddles and that didn't work. So somebody else jumped on me and then a nurse came in again. When they're able to, again, in controlled peer-reviewed studies, they're able to give that information. And people who didn't have a near-death experience, but also had cardiac arrest, when they're not, that's your control group. Those kind of studies are highly suggestive of the idea that consciousness survives bodily death and that consciousness is not an illusion. And it's really game over, not just for Shermer, but for Dawkins,

for Dennett, for all the atheists in academia. They have to reboot everything, and they are no way prepared to do that. But the whole thing in Better Left Unsaid and the extreme radical left, hey, man, we're with you 100% on the problem with microaggression and postmodernism. But I trace it all back to the consciousness is an illusion foundation that it's built on. That's an interesting way of tying it. I didn't, well, when you think about this, if you were to randomly sample some people and they said consciousness is an illusion versus consciousness is not, it's fundamental, or that I have a spirit or a soul, I think there would be an immoderate correlation between the right, which would say that I exist in some non-corporeal form, and then the left that would

say, no, it's identical to the physical matter, or in some way emergent from it. So that's an interesting angle. I need to explore that some more. It sounds like what you're saying is, given these near-death experiences, and there are other experiences that I'm sure you can reference, but let's just talk about near-death. Given that, and the brain has zero neurological activity as far as we can measure, but also keep in mind that the measurement of neurological activity is in high enough resolution to ever determine that there is zero activity for sure. Just at our resolution, there's zero activity. Just like with a camera, you don't have infinite resolution. Okay. Despite that, let's assume

there's zero activity. Then while associated, that's why I would make the distinction. I would say it's associated with the brain, but not necessarily dependent on the brain. And the reason why I would make that distinction is because when someone says that consciousness is independent of the brain, well, then why is it that a lesion would make you more impulsive or rash or emotional or artistic when you weren't? So there seems to be an association. There doesn't seem to be an equivalence, which is what Dennett would say. And by the way, here's something interesting in an equivalence in mathematics. That means you have an implication arrow in both directions, which means if consciousness is the same the same as a brain state then that means you can replace brain states with the word consciousness so when dennett says that while

your brain states are equivalent i don't i don't know enough man dennett like i said when it comes to the illusory nature of consciousness i don't have a handle on the theories enough to articulate them back to the people who are exponents of them in a manner that they would agree so i can't say that i understand their theories enough i know that there's something of dennis that i still need to read into called quining qualia and it seems interesting because apparently it would explain why is it that red has the color red and blue the color blue and hunger the feeling of hunger and so on. Okay, let's get back. I'm going to wrap up quick. Okay, but it's all just gobbledygook.

Trust me. What's gobbledygook? Dennett is all just gobbledygook, but go ahead. Okay, so here's a question about that. Why do you think that someone who's extremely bright, now Dennett is extremely bright, Dawkins is extremely bright. Why is it that they believe what they believe?

You mentioned conspiracy. So I'm curious to know, is it something that they are willfully going against? Like I referenced with Hildegard de Bingen that I want to be master. Or is it something else that much like if you're a Christian or a Muslim or a Buddhist, you grew up that way.

You were just taught that way by society. And so you believe it. Is there something else that they were taught that they believe? Or did they come to some conclusion? Are they evil in some way? Are they resistant in some way? What is their motivation for believing what they believe? I don't know.

And I'm curious to know what you think. Well, I think it's a really, it's a really deep question. And I think it requires kind of a multifaceted answer. One part of it, I think that I mentioned was the reactionary part. And that's the part where I think we really have to square up Christianity's being complicit. Now explain to me what you mean when you say that, because it sounds like much of your view is already Christian, but then at the same time you say that you dislike christianity now are you referring to institutionalized christianity because that's the difference there's no there's really no other kind you know whenever i talk to uh christians

okay let me let me let me let me interrupt right here because that's a mistake that's a huge mistake there's christian mystics there's christian anarchists like tolstoy there's kirkagard individualistic Christianity. One of my favorites. It's not true that there's no Christianity outside what's institutionalized. So again, I have, folks, this is classic skeptical inquiry to perpetuate doubt. If you're new to this, let me tell you, Kurt is a next level thinker, super smart. Check out his website, check out his YouTube channel, his fantastic interviews. They're

captivating, spellbinding, and they're great. And his movie, this one and the other ones are terrific. So I want to pursue this dialogue that we're having, but I don't want people to get the wrong impression. I'm sitting here learning from Kurt by pushing him, and hopefully he's pushing me. So that's what this dialogue is about. But, you know, returning to the question or the topic that we're talking about in terms of Christianity. And I guess I'd take that a couple of different ways. But the one way is that Christianity is fundamentally, whenever I talk to people who are Christians, one thing I always start with is to say, I have come to accept that Christ consciousness is real. And a lot of times the reaction I get from Christians is a very negative one. They go, what do you mean Christ consciousness? You know,

that's some kind of Gnostic bullshit that you're trying to pass off. And what I say is, no, I'm talking about it quite literally. When I interview someone who has had, like I have, several people who have had a near-death experience and have encountered Jesus, who they understand to be Jesus Christ, I have to pause and say, I accept that you've entered an extended consciousness realm that we can't explain, again, because the medical neurological data doesn't allow us to go there, and we can't introduce some promissory some way in the future. No, everything we know says that the neurological data isn't there to support that. I'm now willing to support or be open to what you're saying about your experience, but you have to be open to the fact're saying about your experience, but you have to be open to the fact that you didn't experience Jesus per se. You experienced a consciousness connection with Jesus at that level. Neither one of us know what that is. I'm going to call that

Christ consciousness, for lack of a better term. I don't know why Christians sometimes have a hard time with that, but I'll accept that, and I'll bracket that and say, I believe not just that I accept it. I believe that to be evidential because it's come up too many times from too many different people across culture and across time, which are the usual ways we'd look at verifying that kind of data. But I suggest to you, Kurt, that we need a disintermediation process here. You can access that Christ consciousness with throwing your Bible out the window. You don't need your freaking Bible. You don't need Kierkegaard. You don't need any of those people. You can directly access that consciousness. Again, that seems to be the data as

it comes back, and not just Christ consciousness, Buddha consciousness. I could list all the different ones, but you get the idea. So that's how I read the data, is that we need a serious disintermediation that Christianity doesn't allow. Christianity, by design, puts itself in the middle and says, I will mediate your interaction with that hierarchy of consciousness that is God. Okay. So let me see if I understand what you're saying. It is God. Okay. So let me see if I understand what you're saying.

You're saying that there are a variety of views that come up when one meditates or has near-death experiences or altered states of consciousness. And those are of a multiplicity of religions. And therefore, if Christianity, institutionalized Christianity, would say that Vishnu doesn't exist, Sushet, Mekhanet of Egypt doesn't exist, Buddha doesn't exist, or Buddha exists, but he's not a saint of any sort or divine in any way, then Christianity can't be correct. Is that what you're saying? Is that close to what you're saying? That what Christianity, finish the sentence, then Christianity can't be correct. Is Christianity saying that Buddhism and Hinduism and ancient Egyptian religion is incorrect, and therefore they're invalidating or denying these near-death experiences where someone sees or feels Buddha

and so on? I guess, you know, the more simplified, this has kind of turned into you interviewing me, which... Well, like, here, I don't even know why I'm being interviewed by anyone, because I feel like I know almost nothing. So I'm... it'll eventually turn to me asking you because you're much more knowledgeable. Well, I don't know. You've just produced a fantastic movie, Better Left Unsaid, which is in a way we are kind of in sync here, like we said initially about so many things. I just end up interpreting it slightly differently. What better left unsaid, the way it speaks to me is, again, I hate using this word absurdity, because when you overuse a word, then people get all bent on it. But you're just saying,

isn't this ridiculous? Isn't this exactly, how can we be trying to overcome racism by being racist? How does that make any sense? How did we get here? And then how do we get out of there? But I find the first part of that question, how did we get here to be the most powerful part of the movie, get here to be the most powerful part of the movie better left unsaid can you speak to that as well whether you'd agree that there's these two parts of like how did we get here and then how did we get out of there and then how you deconstruct those two parts if you agree with that as for how we get out of here, that's a tricky one, man, because... You have to want to get out of here. If you watch Better Left Unsaid, now there are two versions.

I sent you the public version. There's a director's version, which is about a half hour longer, and it is much more philosophically and psychologically oriented. So I'll send you that one, because you can just watch the last part. It's not... Well, I'll send you that one as well. You watch the last part. It's not, well, I'll send you that one as well. You might like it a bit more, especially given our conversation.

It seems like there's a mistake that people make that people like Sam Harris and people like Cosmic Skeptic, who's a YouTuber, is extremely bright. It's a utilitarian approach that they think that we're aimed ultimately at the good. And I don't think that everyone is aimed toward something good. I think that most people, including myself, are aimed at destruction.

And if you were aimed at the good, it would be an earth-shattering, transfiguring event. And I don't think any single person on this planet is fully aimed at the good, except maybe Jesus, except maybe Buddha. fully aimed at the good, except maybe Jesus, except maybe Buddha. Okay, could you, so what do you mean you are aimed at destruction? That really struck me. I don't sense that at all. I sense that you're on the same journey that I'm at, trying to find the truth, trying to be a better person, trying to be more aligned with the light. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I would say I'm a liar.

I'm a selfish person. I'm when I say I'm a liar, I mean not right now, but I lie to myself. I'm exceedingly selfish. I'm not anywhere near as loving as I could be. I don't visit my parents as much as I should. I don't give homeless people, I don't give them enough credit for what they're going through. I dismiss their problems.

Often, I don't give enough. I think that if I speed slightly, even if it's more than slightly, that it's okay because I know better. I know how to drive. How fast do you go? You look like somebody who likes to drive fast. No, absolutely not. Actually. Like my wife yells at me all the time because I drive slow. So that one is a bit of an exaggeration.

See, but hold up, bro. Hold up. So you said you read my book. I hope you got to the last chapter because to me, it's the most meaningful chapter for me that I got to in my many year investigation of this. I came to two conclusions, Kurt. Number one is we are more we are not the biological robots in a meaningless universe that science is telling us we are more but the second part of that that i would have to strongly disagree with you we are good we are fundamentally good the evil thing the dark thing gets way overplayed bro it's about the light and the light is always fucking shining all's we have to do is look up and whenever we look up it's there i make i am in a constant dialogue with myself about all the things that i fail on a regular basis, on a minute by minute basis that you're talking about. I get it. I have four kids. Do you imagine how much I've messed up those four kids? And I have a wife of 30 years. Oh, I've tormented her for 30 years. But it doesn't

matter. The light always shines, always drawing me towards being better, making better choices and forgiving everything that I could have ever done. That's, I don't, I don't agree. Did you say forgiving? I don't understand your sense of instruction. Did you say the word forgiving? What's that? Did you say that? Did you say the word forgiving? I did. The light forgives you okay okay but but i think let me go back and i know i kind of did a little sermon there but let me tie it back so

people understand where i'm coming from the most profound information we get from the near-death experience science and at this point there's over 200 peer over 200 peer reviewed papers on near-death experience science. There's thousands of accounts that have been reviewed by medical doctors and said, yes, this sounds like someone who would be a candidate for having the amazing transformative experience that they have. Here's the number one thing that comes out. You, Kurt, will be judged. You will be judged for all the things that you just said that you do wrong. And you will be judged not by God, not by Jesus, not by Buddha. You'll be judged by you, just like the way you are now. And in that extended realm, you will be loved and supported and told, it's okay, Kurt. You were just there to learn and experience and do the best you can.

But you will still be in that state that you were in 10 minutes ago, as will I, when I'm saying, how could I have been so cold? How could I have been so unloving to my daughter at that moment? How could I have missed making eye contact with that person who just wanted me to smile at them as they crossed the street? How could I have done it? And I will feel that, but I will be the one who will say, I'm human. I'll do better next time. Jesus won't judge me. God won't judge me. They're just trying to lift me up. I will judge my own soul. That's what comes through from the near-death experience. I'm not making this up. That's what comes through from the near-death

experience science. Like 90% of people, that's what they're saying. They're saying there is a God. It's all loving, all forgiving, and your judgment will be yours. There's a quote that hell is a prison locked from the inside. I think that's true. I think that the sins we commit, if you hold your, if you have a conscience, which is difficult to have, but if you have a conscience and you feel bad about it, you don't realize. It almost brings you to tears. Now, let me bring up Jesus just for the sake of this, even though you said that it's you that forgives yourself. But there's also some analogy between you and God in the Christian faith anyway, where it

says you're made in the image of God. So it can go both ways depending on your interpretation. But let's just take Jesus as an entity. That you go to Jesus and almost angrily you say, man, yeah, yeah, right. You forgive me for everything that I've done, even though I did it and I liked it when I did it. And then Jesus just says, yes, I forgive you. And then you just sit with that. And you realize, you just want to cry. You don't realize that despite all that you've done, despite all that you've done, that you are actually forgiven. It's just you that has to accept that you're forgiven. And that's tricky, man. That's not easy at all. Well, this is what's so beautiful about some of the beliefs that are interwoven into the

Christian tradition. I still strongly believe that we have to disintermediate and that there's a cultish aspect of bringing along these truths, having these truths bring along some untruths that can be really destructive in our life, and I think Christianity has to own that, but I fundamentally agree with you. That is a wonderful, deep, deep truth that you can build your whole life on and, and I ride on. I'm many, many, many great in, in many traditions have, have kind of expressed similar ideas. Yeah. I wrote some notes on your book. I wrote that. Yeah. You surprised me with this book. It's interesting to me. And that's not easy though. The cover needs work. Cause that's what I wrote. Okay. so there's one quote it's near the beginning i like this he said mention evil and folks look for a bible behind

your back i like that that's true i didn't understand what psyops was and why he titled it the devil is a conspiracy yeah i don't understand what psyops is is this relevant to the conversation because if not then we can talk about that another time i think it is relevant because i think there's a it's relevant on a bunch of different levels one of the things that i came to understand in this journey that i've been on i mean i really started as a science guy i was computer science in school i went back to get a PhD in artificial intelligence. I love the precision, you know, of it's not a math precision, but it's like programming is a wonderful thing. If you get one little semicolon wrong, the whole thing doesn't work. You want to talk about precision,

you got to be precise. It's great training, particularly for someone like me who's more of an abstract thinker. So when I started answering the big questions, who are we, why are we here, I was drawn to science. I was drawn to Rupert Sheldrake, Dean Radin, Don Hoffman, who I really interviewed 10 years ago, even though I just did a second interview with him now. What's the second interview? What's that? When did you do the second interview? Like about a year ago. Okay. Okay. But those were the people I was drawn to. But the one thing that I came to realize in all that is one that science as we know it is best understood from a conspiratorial framework from a psyop psychological operations and it's not anyone who doesn't accept that that that is the role of government you know we look at north kore we go, wow, I mean, they're running such a fucking psyop of psychological operation on their population. How could they do that? We look at China and we say it the same. How We seem to not look at it that way. But we never look at Canada. We never look at the United States. So as things gets revealed, you know, MKUltra, that we were

actively pursuing mind control and it's released into the public, we still deny that governments always felt that one of their jobs is to control the population through social engineering, if you will. The example I use all the time on this show, and people get tired of hearing it, is that Gloria Steinem and the women's movement. Gloria Steinem was CIA. She acknowledges that. You can go Google an interview and she says, yeah, I was in the CIA. They weren't such bad guys. If you go and really research it, it wasn't that she joined the CIA, that the CIA tapped her when she entered the women's movement. No, no, no. We could understand that. She was CIA from Jump Street. She was CIA from college. She was off doing university student rallies and doing that. So that is clearly social engineering. That's clearly a side. What's that?

The claim is that feminism is a government conspiracy or a second or first wave feminism is? Always. Or second wave? Everything, everything is always co-opted because that's what government's job is. You can't astroturf the whole thing. But once it gets going, you have to have some ability to direct it. This is what's proven over and over again by every major social movement. It is like this. This is the history of our intelligence organizations, of our government in general. But the fact that what I'm saying about Gloria Steinem is just something that anyone can go verify. Kurt, we can end this interview and you go do your other interview and then you can

spend 30 minutes or I'll send you the link and you can confirm everything I'm saying. You can watch Gloria Steinem, say it, watch her lips move. And you can read the release documents and you can prove that to yourself as hard as it is to believe. And then it just sounds like from what you're saying that she said that she was a part of the CIA when she was younger. But that doesn't necessitate that the whole feminist movement engendered by her is CIA driven. You know who outed her? Is a feminist. Is a feminist, a group of feminists that said, what the fuck are you doing? You're taking this thing in a whole different direction. And they outed her as being a faux feminist, as being introducing another agenda. So this is a, you know, I had this great discussion with this with terrific woman, I so admire her openness, but she started the women's study program at University

of California, Chico professor. So imagine she wasn't aware of this. So imagine her openness to being able to say, wow, that's true. That does give me pause in understanding feminism at a whole deeper level. And until that's on the table, then we can't really, there's a lot there to kind of process. Okay. How does that relate to Christianity? Okay. How does that relate to Christianity? Well, I think what it relates to is when we're saying, you were saying in my book that you didn't really understand the idea of the CIA, under the direction of the CIA,

is the closest thing I can do to putting my finger on a PSYOP that would be particularly relevant to better left unsaid and the left. Here's what I'm wondering. Let's imagine that's true. Then does the government also play PSYOP games, if you can call it that, with the right? And then what is their... So what is their... So they don't have a political orientation. Left to right doesn't matter to them.

They just want control. Is that correct? I would... I don't know, but that certainly rings true to me. I mean, you don't want the guys with the torches and pitchforks storming the castle. You know, going back to your book, it's called Why Evil Matters.

Something when we first spoke, something I'm interested in is what I call the source question, which is an innocuous question. It's usually binary, maybe yes or no, that taken to its logical extreme leads you down to a route of evil versus good. I think I mentioned it to you and I'll explain what I mean. But going back to the government's acquisition of power, Carl Jung said that love is the opposite of power. And that's so interesting because that means when you're fully driven by love, you don't want power. You give it up. And when you are driven by power, it's the opposite of being loving. And there's in the Christian faith, as well as others, there's an extreme association between love and the divine.

I think that's incredibly meaningful to me personally. And I hadn't remembered that. It's great. It's a great thought bomb to drop on somebody in, you know, I have Jung up here in the corner, but you just reminded me of one of his most profound quotes there. I appreciate it. Okay. Do you think that the world is meant to be unintelligible? That is to say that we are not meant to know the answers? Or is it meant to be intelligible, and we just have to open ourselves up to it, and then we get the knowledge? Or is it just meant to, we're not meant to know whether God exists, whether the devil exists, whether there are any definitive answers to the questions that plague us at our... Let's just leave it at that. I think my answer would be your awesome Jungian truth bomb.

your awesome Jungian truth bomb. It's like the difference between consciousness is fundamental and matter is fundamental. If consciousness is, and it's unimaginable, it's incomprehensible, but if consciousness is fundamental, then love is all there is. And we're constantly in this shadow dancing game of our attachment to the material, our desire, our interest in dark, but really the game is about love. And that's unintelligible, as you're saying, to put it your way. Love

is the ultimate unintelligible, right? Okay. Now, why is it that if consciousness is, as Deepak would say, ontologically fundamental, why is it that love comes in there? Because in Donald Hoffman's model, it's just experiences. There's nothing that privileges one experience over the rest. Let me say it like this. People who say that consciousness is fundamental. Now, I'm not saying that I disagree. I'm just saying people who say that generally also tend to believe that there is a God and

that love is also fundamental in some manner. and that love is also fundamental in some manner. And love is somehow pervasive and overriding of all the rest of the experiences and qualia. And I don't see how consciousness is fundamental, implies God, nor do I see how it implies love. And I'm not saying I disagree. I just don't see how it implies. So please help me out.

I don't think the word that pops to mind for me, Kurt, and I want you to riff on this as much as I am, is transcendence. That's why all the spiritual traditions point to transcendence, transcending, transformation, being born again. It's that they are not the same. They are completely in a different state. They're not intelligible. And another way to approach the intelligible thing that maybe you've run across, but people have extraordinary spiritually transformative experiences, and they'll come back and say, I knew everything. I no sooner could even formulate a question in my mind that it was answered completely for me. And yet when I came back, I wasn't able to retain that. I don't have that knowledge. There's no worse truism than the spiritually enlightened individual that comes back

and doesn't manifest that into their life, doesn't reintegrate it. And they truly had the experience, but at this level, they aren't able to reintegrate it. That's just, we all see it, you know? Okay. Okay. That's interesting. Let me riff on that. So Dostoevsky had a particular kind of seizure that when it was occurring, it would feel as if God was giving him all the answers. And right when he was about to reach that point of comprehension, he would have a seizure. He would seize up. That's interesting because it sounds like perhaps this world, this material world, even

though the material seems in some accounts to be engendered by the conscious world, this material world is the world that we, for whatever reason, cannot have all the answers. And as soon as we do have all the answers, that's something like transcendence. And then you no longer are in this world. That makes me wonder why at all was this world created? It seems like the other world is blissful and it's where we're meant to be regardless. What's the point of this one? Well, that gets back to the perspective question. Are you at the top of the mountain looking down or the bottom of the mountain looking up? So maybe from our vantage point, back to your point, it's not that it's designed to be unintelligible. It's that, you know,

the monkey brain that we have just doesn't have the processing power to, or not just the processing power, because that always puts it in the kind of this computer model that I think fails. But it's just that, no, we're doing what we can with what we have. You see, this is why I like Kierkegaard. Let's get back to that. He said that most Christians, he would call them religious fanatics and zealots and militant Christians rather than true Christians. Because if you say, I know God exists, if you say that, you're not a Christian. Why?

Because Christianity requires faith. If you say, I know this table is here, there's no faith in that. You know it. What faith is, is having doubt and uncertainty and making the leap regardless. So perhaps one, I'm just spitballing and freestyling in a sense. Perhaps one of the reasons we are here is to have faith. Because if we had all the answers, there is no faith. I love where you're going with that. And Kierkegaard, fear and trembling unto death is awesome. It is skepticos. When I started this show and I named it Skeptico because I have a Greek heritage on half my side, and I just was looking up skeptic,

skepticos, and I just didn't even know what it meant. Five years later, I went back and read about these philosophers and their ethos, inquiry to perpetuate doubt, they were saying the exact same thing that Kierkegaard was saying, that doubt is the most spiritual. Doubt is the most spiritual because you are in the state of openness once something is decided. and I would suggest that even faith, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh, the famous Buddhist teacher, Vietnamese Buddhist teacher nominated for the Nobel Prize and obviously super well known. faith because faith is an impediment. Faith is a barrier. Faith is a way of holding back from truly accepting your predicament, from truly being open. I'm not saying I said- That sounds like the opposite. That sounds like the opposite of what Kierkegaard is saying. Well, I think all these things, it gets into a semantics kind of thing, because I love what you just said about Kierkegaard in terms of, you know, if you believe in God, that you're a believer and you're not leaving open, you're not open. You're not open to the experience.

How can you be open to the experience if you've already decided? And so maybe you're using faith in a different way than I would. But it was interesting for me to connect that with Thich Nhat Hanh, who said, you know, people who have faith, quote unquote, will not be able to see, will not be able to accept the transcendence because they're closed. They're like, no, I just follow this. I see what you're saying. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. Let me think about that. Hey, man, you have been one, this is one of the most amazingly interesting,

turn it on its head interviews I've ever done. Let's return to the, to the movie if we can tell folks what the best way is for them to connect with better left unsaid who it's for. Maybe we could go back to the beginning. Who's the movie really for? Who's it targeted at? Who's going to get the most out of it? And then how do they get their hands on it? The people who will get likely get the most out of it are people who are in the center, center, left center, center, right. If you're, it seems like if you're more than center left, that you won't like it. And same with if you're more than center, right? Because I do have my critiques of the extreme right. The movie, again, is focused on the left. Now, people have said, that's biased. It is. It actually is biased because I'm focusing

on the left, but in a sense, it's also not. It's almost like they're saying, well, you know, there are other problems in the world. Yes, there are other problems in the world. So when someone, let's say, designs a table cleaner, like an all-purpose cleaner, are they doing the world a disservice because they're not working on the abolishment of nuclear holocaust or the abolishment of the potential of nuclear holocaust? Well, they're focusing on something else. So I'm focusing on the problem of the extreme left. And during that journey, it also takes me to the problem of the extreme right and i see it in a similar manner of the horseshoe theory though well you know it's extremely close to

the horseshoe theory but regardless if you're interested in what the heck is going on touch on that a little bit more because i thought that was a great great point uh in the film and i think you can hit on it really quickly in a way that will suck people in because it's a great point the horseshoe yes okay yep the horseshoe theory essentially says at the extremes they become the same which means the extreme left and the extreme right have more in common than they have dissimilar and it seems like the only thing they have dissimilar is the extreme right have more in common than they have dissimilar. And it seems like the only thing they have dissimilar is the extreme right has racial inferiority or some genetic inferiority of some other group. It pretty much just seems like that. Like racism. It pretty much just seems I couldn't figure out what else separates them. Because fascism, as much as the

left or the extreme left dislikes it, the sorry, let's say the communists dislike fascism, I would say fascism is closer to communism than fascism is close to capitalism. And one of the reasons is that, well, there's a term called, I think it's Gleichschaltung. It's a German term, and it means the political unification,

the unification of economic, cultural, and social institutions. The standardization, sorry, of that. And that's a term that was popularized in the 1930s, Nazi Germany. So the standardization is a form of, is what fascists like, as well as, you know, like you said, we get into semantics. What is communism? What is Marxism?

What is socialism? And so on. And I actually like semantics. I dislike when people say, you're just quibbling, you're hair-splitting. No, yes, yes, you're right, because the term quiddity, okay, what does quiddity mean? It means a hair-splitting distinction, but it also means the peculiar essence of something, the odd eccentricity of it. And I'm interested in that. Getting back to communism, Marxism, and the association between that and fascism.

Well, at the extremes, they have something in common. What do they have in common? That is what I propose in the film. I come up with some tenets, I think four of them. And you'll have to watch the film to see which four. I think now that I've had some distance, I can distill that down to three. I think three of them implies the fourth, or the fourth is not required. But either way, there's three or four tenets that unify both the extreme left and the extreme right. And they're, I want to say, equally pestilential because it's difficult to say what was the cause of people dying.

So was it communism that caused millions of deaths? Or was it, you know, causation is an extremely, extremely difficult thing to point out. So for example, when people die from COVID, what was the cause? By the way, I'm germaphobic extremely. So I love the lockdown. Like I love when people wear masks. I mean, I'm like, I would want to wear masks my whole life. I would want to disinfect my hands. I've been doing that.

I disinfect my phone every single time I come in. And my wife, she gets mad at me because she's not allowed to take her phone out of the house and bring it in without it being disinfected. So I'm a fan of that. So what was the cause of COVID? Was it that there weren't more people like me that are germaphobic? Or was it that there was a government that was fast and loose with some policies of travel and cross-animal contamination and so on, what is the cause? It's not clear what the cause is. So that's another reason in the documentary I steer clear of saying communism caused these deaths. Instead, I look at some of the deaths that I think are extremely closely tied to the philosophical doctrine underlying communism, and those are much less

deaths but there's still plenty and the same with fascism so either way at the extremes the philosophy that that foments both communism and the extreme right seem to be similar and i outline what that is in the film quite quite beautifully originally, even though it's been done before your spin on it really drove it home to me in a way that I hadn't had never really thought about. So yeah. Thank you. I apologize for just looking down. I'm just, I didn't get much sleep. And like, like I told you, I'm somewhat famished and I can't eat until later. I can't maybe, maybe not until tomorrow. Cause I have to. What's the fasting thing? I do the fast five. I eat inside of a five hour window every day. You obviously have a different fasting routine.

What is yours? Okay. So what's the deal with the fasting? I tend to fast before any of my interviews for about 48 hours to 72 hours if I'm being ascetic. What it helps me do is accomplish plenty of work the prior two days. And usually when I interview anyone, I'm trying to, there's much that I'm learning that is outside the interview because I feel like any sentence, this is something else about the film. Virtually every single sentence I say in that film, I can back up with a page of, not references, but let's say a page of justification, apologetics. Here's something else about apologetics, just so you know, when I read, I subscribe to these anarchists and communists and Marxists and socialists subreddits, because I just want to know what's good about what they're saying what's true about what they're saying what's false what do i

agree with what do i disagree with what do i what's what have i not considered they tend to hate a part when something like oh this guy's a christian apologist not me but someone they'll say this guy's a christian apologist or this girl is a capitalism apologist yeah i'm an apologist, or this girl is a capitalism apologist. Yeah, I'm an apologist for apologists. And the reason is that if you look up what an apologist is, it's someone who comes up with a written formal defense of what they strongly believe in. I think it's a great thing to have justifications for what you believe in. And apologists, in general, that's wonderful. Great. Defend what you believe in. And you could be wrong, but defend it.

And then modify if you're wrong, but defend it. Okay. Getting back. Getting back to why I fast. I want to make sure that I understand all of what I'm saying when I'm speaking to an interviewee. I know their background. I know whatever.

Also, there's health benefits as well it's usually that i'm exhausted on the second day or third day like right now but that's more from drinking an inordinate amount of caffeine and it affecting my sleep either way you said that you fast and i'm curious why it's a health benefits or for the health benefits. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Mine is just cognition.

So it helps me in the previous two days. It exhausts me by the third. Anyway, the other reason is, like I said, I'm a destructive person. So I'm filled with velocity and avarice and I love to eat so much. Like I loved just go full out, like a whole pizza, a whole pizza on my own. I love it. So sometimes I have to fast for my own health because I go, I go nuts. Okay. So that's the deal with fasting me as for, by the way, before we go, you mentioned that you're a spiritual person and you meditate. Now here's the thing about me. I've tried meditation many, many, many times. In fact, yesterday I meditated for an hour and a half. I don't get the benefits that people get from it. And I know what the meditators would say. It's my intellect. I'm too analyzing. I'm arrogant and egotistical to the core, even though I try to go, I'm so arrogant that

when I try to not be arrogant, I congratulate myself for not being arrogant. I'm like, look how humble I am. And I just don't get it. There is a dilemma there. I really appreciate someone saying that because I've often thought the same things, the same thing in terms of, do you want me to be arrogant or do you want me to be condescending? Because you got to kind of pick which fucking one you want, you know, because if you want me to pat you on the head and treat you like a child, I can do that. If you want me to be direct, then I'm going to kind of come off like sharing what I believe, what I think I know. So yeah, I get, maybe that's not exactly what you're saying, but that's how I've kind of

processed it. Yeah, what you're saying is more about being assertive and disagreeable and that's fine, but I don't call that arrogant. Arrogant is thinking you're superior to others and thinking you know better. Well, you know, on the meditation thing, the one thing I threw out there personally, because I've been interested in yoga for a long time, long, long time. And even when I, I had my own company and I started my company and kind of, I always had this deeper sense of, there must be some spirituality. So I was doing correspondence classes with Yogananda who now I live, you know, seven miles from the ashram,

but I was never able to connect with those people. I was never able to connect with any of those yogis and their sage on the stage kind of bullshit. Because again, to me, ultimately, it's about disintermediation. But my favorite yogi of all time, the guy who I love is Wim Hof. Yeah. Oh, you call him a yogi. Okay. Interesting. So I do Wim Hof every morning.

I mean, I do the breathing exercises. I do Wim Hof every, do you do, I built an ice bath. I've taken a thousand ice baths. The wonderful thing, the wonderful thing about an ice bath is that every day, invariably, because this is how my mind works. I'm trying to talk myself out of why I don't need to do it today. So again, I've done maybe 1000 2000 ice baths, I don't know for years. Yeah, every day, it doesn't stop. It doesn't get any better. It doesn't get any easier. Every day, the monkey mind says, well, there's a reason you don't need to do that. That's going to be uncomfortable. You don't like that. And that's what I love about

Wim is when I heard Wim say, I hate the fucking cold. I go, oh, okay. I get it. This is a way of meditating in a real way that I can get my hands on because I can't meditate either. I do yoga because the physical part of it allows me a little bit to get out of that busy mind, but nothing does it like the ice bath. The ice bath is brutal, but it's fucking honest, man. It is honest. You see it as a transformation of your mind from being a slave to being what you want in the manner that you see fit. Now, see, there's an association between that and thinking that you're God at the same time. So that's why I'm torn. Because on the one side, do you want to be like the Tony Robbins?

Even me. I was a baby Tony Robbins Epigon for two years. I walked down the coals. I'm right there. Fucking great. Great stuff. Right. He says, well, I do it because I tell my mind what to do, not the opposite.

So when there's the cold bath, his is a cold shower or a cold water enveloping, a cold environment where water envelops you. He says, well, I don't want to do it, but I tell myself I'm going to do it. And then that translates to other areas of my life where I say, I don't want to do this, but I do it. And there's some utility to that. But I can also see that going off the rails. And I still take cold showers. I still do Wim Hof despite it. But I'm torn because I don't know how much of my life should be guided by what i want versus what i think is versus something else you know

my buddy uh sam tripoli i just did his show his magnificent show called zero it's a spiritual show and we were talking about i mean sam sam tripoli is a comedian, right? Fucking Hollywood, fucking scumbag. So he says, what's zero? He goes, the reason I named it zero is I'm trying to get to zero. That's my spiritual journey to get to zero. I think there's an essential truth in that. That's what I think the ice bath is about. It's about the opposite of ego. It's about the opposite of the satanic do what thou wilt. I can be greater than the creator gods. It's about humility. It's about meeting that divinity on the level of emptying, you know, which is a Christian kind of idea. So that's how I spin it. You know, everyone's their own way. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Okay. So the act,

see, to me, that means the act in and of itself is not what brings you closer to, let's say God or the divine or the spiritual. It's the intent behind the act because yes, yes, you can take that act and you can use it to, let's say, be more entrepreneurial and run a company. But then in some sense, and I'm criticizing my former self when I say this, in some sense, you're doing that promulgation of your ideas for your own ego as a power trip. And you're using the ice bath as a method for you to be more productive in a certain domain that I don't think is, that I think is a contrived domain, a forced one. And I don't think that's necessarily good, but you can use it for good. So it's more like a tool. I see. I see. Okay. For me to be, you know, some of the things that smaller, smaller, I want to be smaller. Well, something gets smaller. That's for sure. To Sam, when he says zero, my ego needs to be reduced.

And if it ultimately is reduced down to zero, then I'm ultimately closer to what I seek, not further away. So get in the ice bath, I'm automatically smaller. My ego cannot expand. It contracts just naturally. And the other word I use is stillness. There's a stillness to it that is inescapable. But hell, this is the weirdest one we've ever done. Thank you. I appreciate it, man. I look forward to it again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so where do people find this? do people find something to eat right beforehand where do people find this really great documentary left it's called better left unsaid better left

unsaid film.com better left unsaid film.com is where you can find it you can also just search better left unsaid on youtube and the trailer is there you get you get right the links are in the description of the trailer as well as i think there's a twitter account too yeah so that's that it's been fucking great so great having you on you're such you embody so many of the wonderful things that you talk about and the greater sense of light and goodness that the movie brings forth. Thank you. I appreciate that. You're glowing, man. You're glowing. That's awesome. Okay. I want to say one other, I want to give a tweak about the film. Yes.

An amendment. Okay. So there are two versions of the film. Like I mentioned, there's a public version. That's an hour and a half. Then there's the director's version. That's my version. It's two hours long. The director's version is sesquipedalian. It's also tedious and abstract.

So people, if you like this podcast, you're more likely to like the two-hour version because it means you're someone who engages with ideas. And you like to think, but for the general public, like, let's say you're listening to this. And you're thinking, well, my friend should watch this, they should probably watch the public version, it goes by much quicker. It's not slow. The director's version is more for academics. And it can be boring if you're not an academic. Even if you're an academic, it can be boring. You'll see. So when you go to betterleftonsaidfilm.com, I think in about one month, so February 2021 or March 2021, you'll be able to choose between the public or the director's cut.

If you buy it from iTunes, you won't be able to. You have to do it on our website because iTunes doesn't allow two versions of the film. So we're just going to release the public version on all the other streaming platforms. But the director's version is same price. You get access to both if you buy it directly from the website. So I just recommend going to the website and then buying it. Fantastic. And we'll have this out. We'll try and sync it up with exactly the date that it comes out so people can listen to it and immediately pop on over. So you and I offline, we'll kind of figure out the best way to do that. But again, a man, congratulations, job well done. And thanks so much for joining me. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening.

Again, if you'd like more of this, then please let me know. That is to say more of me interviewing other people and me being interviewed myself. If you would like to support this channel in any way, shape, or form, then please visit patreon.com slash Kurt Jaimungal and contribute whatever you can. I appreciate even a single dollar. Thank you so much.