TrueLife - Benjamin George - No Absolutes - an introduction

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

Benjamin C. George is a Philosopher, Explorer, Researcher, and Creator. His book “No Absolutes” is the first in a three part series. Part one focuses on the reality in which we find ourselves and re-aligns philosophy with natures most Fundamental aspect - Information. https://benjamincgeorge.com/

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scar's my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the True Life podcast. We are here with an amazing individual, the author of a book called No Absolutes, Benjamin George, we're meeting for the first time. However, after reading your book, I feel like we have a real connection. Can you introduce yourself a little bit?

Well, thank you for that. Yeah, sure. I'm Benjamin George. I've never intended to be writing philosophy books or anything like that. It just kind of happened. I kind of started my journey as an entrepreneur and kind of happened ever since. So the whole writing thing kind of came as a site. note just based upon my experiences and adventures and research and all of those things.

And here we are. So I actually ended up writing this four years ago. And I have a bad habit of being about four years too early on quite a few things. So it's a pleasure and an honor to actually be able to get down or sit down and talk to you. Yeah. It's it's so weird. and beautiful how the world or the consciousness or some force bigger than us brings us together. This book called No Absolutes a Framework for Life.

I want to read the introduction so people can get an understanding of what it is the book's about and who you are as a person and some of the ideas we're going to discuss. So without any further ado, here we go. And ladies and gentlemen, this is what the book looks like if you can see it here, no absolutes. And let's start with this introduction here. What does it mean to be alive, to be human, to be you? A form of this question finds itself at the root of seemingly every aspect of society and life throughout our history.

The responses to this question have propelled us to many seemingly great and terrifying levels and feats. It is one of the main motivators of communities, religions, political systems, and nations. It defines our journey through life at a foundational level and influences every moment of existence. Yet for all our responses to the question, we remain rudderless, divided, and in precarious positions at seemingly all levels of society everywhere we turn. Why? Why are these failures, or I'm sorry, are these failures a feature of humanity? Is history repeating itself? Punishment from a magic sky wizard, gods, aliens? Let me pause right there for a minute, because there's just so much in that whole little, that whole little section right there.

what does it mean to be alive, to be human, to be you? Is that what kind of got you started on this journey? Yeah. Well, I guess I could take it a little bit back. I really started the journey when I was younger. I had a tragedy in my young life. And then 16 years old, I looked around and I was disheartened by the responses I was so, you know, I just kind of picked up and did my own thing.

And I was really into computers at the time, so I became a tech guy. You know, was building websites for people when the dot-com boom happened. And then, you know, was rudderless because I was just a young man. And took myself up, managed to make it to 25 and found some meditation and some experiences. And I, and then I ended up in Central and South America for six years on a journey. And, you know, those experiences, just seeing people in, you know, a completely different environments, going into some of the most dangerous places in the world on invitation just because I met people and connected with people at a people level.

And just seeing all these wonderful aspects of community and society and life that people were having beyond the greater picture of things, which is usually broadcasted, and that's what most people kind of, you know, we read the headlines and we ascribe to these things, and it's like, well, I wonder what else is different. And what else could be? And so it's just been a continual path for me of trying to,

and succeeding in a lot of regards and failing in a lot of regards, of just finding that path of what's my path? And then once I did, I was invigorate. I was, I found joy. And, you know, in that experience, I said, well, gosh, if it works for me, could it work for somebody else? And that kind of, that's kind of the foundation of it. It's beautiful. It never ceases to amaze me.

So many interesting people that I speak with, their journey begins with tragedy. and it's almost like the deeper and more powerful. It makes me want to cry, but the more horrific, the tragedy, the bigger the picture becomes for you to see. And people that make it through tragedy are usually people, I feel like you're chosen. And I hope people that are listening to this

and people that see this understand if a great tragedy has happened in your life, it's because the world loves you enough to say, hey, it's going to shove you off this path and say, look over there. There's something bigger. There's something better. And for those experiencing tragedy, it usually leads to a better life if you're willing to do the work and you're willing to see that there's something bigger out there calling to you.

That seems to me the purpose of tragedy. And it never. No, I would agree with you. It's really interesting. Nobody ever wants to wish tragedy upon anyone. Right. I mean, that's just so. But at the same time, we have how many numerous instances.

of people who've gone through very traumatic times and stood on the other side as, you know, the shoulders of the giants that we stand on in society today. And, you know, again, you don't want to wish it on anybody, but this is part of the foundation of the book was, how could you achieve that without just having a massive amount of tragedy in your life? I mean, how can we get there otherwise? And I think there is a path.

I think there is a path for that. Yeah, I would agree. I think that, you know, how else can you get to No Absolutes? Like, you have to do some rigorous thinking about life. And the only way you can do that is if you're not allowed to follow the path that's already been worn. When I think of No Absolutes, I think of this beautiful trail on a mountain covered by just different kind of fauna. And you can hear these animals. And no one wants to go off to the side, but they're scared.

But if you look, you can see little banners or someone's tied a little ribbon over there. Like, hey, there might be something over there, you know. And I feel like that's kind of what this book is. Like, this book is a framework that allows people to see at least the hints of some other trails out there. And it invites them to go and explore. Well, thank you for that. And that was part of the intention. I like to describe it as, you know, the desert of absolute.

I think a lot of people are walking around the sand or drawing lines in the sand. You know, those are their tribes. Those are their political ideology. Those are, you know, the religious that religions that they grew up in. Those are all these things that people tell them they're supposed to think. And when you, when you're drawing lines in the sand, yeah, you might make some fancy artwork from time to time, but you're just drawing lines in the sand. And as long as you're stuck in that desert, you don't see the mountains. You don't see the ribbons, the trail. You don't even hear the end. You don't even hear the end. animal sometimes. And, you know, being able to find that path, being able to, you know, detach yourself from all of the crazy and have a system that says, hey, actually, you know, I don't have to subscribe to this philosophy, ideology, whatever it is, because the reality of the situation is nobody knows. And anybody who proclaims that they actually have all of the answers. I would be happy to debate them, first of all. But secondly, I mean, you know,

the reality of the situation is in order to have all the answers, you would have to have access to all of the information and all of the events and experiences that have ever happened, all the feelings, all of the emojis, and you would have to have some ability to correlate those and digest them into something that was knowledge, as we call it. And we can have bits of knowledge, but they are absolute truths. They aren't these, you know, and while people want to ascribe to absolute truths, you're just drawing lines in the sand again and you're missing perspective of the mountain. Yeah.

You know, it seems like our leaders today have taken a note from the NASCA lines and drawn huge lines in the sand. Indeed. Nice record. It's true. Do you, let me ask you this, do you hold, it seems to me right now that we, while the world in which we live seems to be so topsy-turvy and it seems there's all this chaos, it seems to me like a brand new birth is happening. When I think of birth and for those of us who have had, have been

lucky enough to see in the miracle of childbirth, it looks like a disaster. There's blood everywhere and like, oh my God, people are ripped open and there's doctors and there's, do, do you stuff beep and you're like, oh man. That's why they call it the miracle of childbirth. It looks like someone's dying. And there's a real chance that that can happen. But it seems to me that that's where we are right now as a species and as a people and as a country.

It's like we are in the midst of a new birth and there's so much opportunity. And there's so like there's no absolute the framework for life. It really like a lot of other cool people and a lot of other things out there right now, I think it is the sign pointing towards a trailhead of opportunity. And that's where we are. Do you see the world as being reborn and being remade right now? Oh, absolutely. I mean, everything is breaking at scale, right?

All of these systems, all of these institutions, all of these ideas, these are things are breaking at the scale of, well, now we're all connected. The internet came around and all of these things were fun. up to a point. But now we have a global society. And these things are, you know, our institutional systems, you know, the way we've done things are just broken at these larger scales. And whenever something's broken, it's always the sign of a new beginning. Yeah. You know, and then, you know, I don't know which direction you want to go for this show, but, you know, when you start going into ancient religions and philosophies and, you know, all of our anthropology,

these things have been talked about before by most of the ancient peoples of more world, or what we call ancient, at least is what we're taught in the school system these things. And, you know, one of the, you brought up the rebirthing of the world. Are you familiar with like the Yuga cycle? a little bit. Can you describe to our listeners what that is? Oh, I am when you get lambasted. Well, the Yuga cycle, I'll just be as 10,000 foot as that is. It's essentially a cycle that happens on this planet,

and it's a cataclysm and rebirth of society. I've read different scholars who think that different cycles are this time. a lot of them attribute it the last and I might be mistaken is we're in Caliuga. And then the idea is that there is some sort of cyclical disaster on this planet that kind of reshapes and rebirths humanity. And, you know, from a, I'm kind of more of a scientist than I ever was anything in a researcher. And when you look at other evidence for that, we have things. you know that suggests that oh wow there's a lot more to this than just some writings in the book you know we

have geological evidence now and we have you know things like go beckleite and geron tefe and we have all these sites across the world that are now dating to 1112 000 13000 years ago and i suspect we'll find numerous more as as we continue on the path but the idea that you know we're some six 7,000 year old society and we are it. In the grand scheme of how we measure things and, you know, how old we think things are from a scientific perspective, there's something to be left in the middle of there. It doesn't seem to all add up. And, you know, you have, you have like, we have Darwin's evolutionary theory. And there's a lot in, I'm a fan of evolutionary biology.

there's a lot to be said about that because we are you know there's a lot to be said about how our environment shapes us especially over a given period of time but then at the same time we have you know linguistic records and DNA records that have really different kind of overall suggestions of this time left so I think to your to your question is are we in a part of the cycle I I think absolutely we are. Do we understand this cycle? I think we're getting closer. Yeah.

I agree 100%. And I think that we are beginning to think for the first time. We are beginning to break out. I always describe it to like the same way that a silkworm spins a web and gets caught in it and creates this cocoon or this chrysalis. And it just spins this world around it, like, So too do we, so too have we spun this chrysalis and we're emerging as this new form. And we're starting to go, whoa, look at these wings.

Look at that. What is this? What's going to happen here? I think that scares a lot of people. Absolutely. And I mean, you know, to that exact point, look at the technology we're sitting on it. You know, we're able to have this communication. I think you're in Hawaii. I'm in Colorado.

And it's instantaneous. We're able to broadcast it to tons of people. When in our recorded history, has this ever been a possibility? I mean, it hasn't. So that means we're going to naturally develop a different understanding, a different perspective. We're having this conversation, whereas without this technology, it might not ever happen. Yeah. And it's so interesting the way in which the technology allows you to find like-minded people

and also ideas that challenge what you have to say. Well, in a weird sort of way, those are also like-minded people, someone that may have an opposite, but similarly strong point of view. That's like finding the other, and that's there to help you. And so, it's a, no, that's okay.

I wanted to talk, I have a few questions written down over here. Let me, um, oh, okay. So we talk about like the big questions and the idea of history repeating itself and a potential failure of humanity and we have gods and aliens

and artificial intelligence. What do you think that these questions say about where we are, where we're going, and what say you about those big questions? What does it mean about us? Well, I think something that's fundamental to humanity is our just innate desire to explore. You know, that comes in many shapes and forms.

It can be, you know, this philosophical exploration. It could be, you know, the physical exploration. But at the end of the day, it's something that, you know, almost as a native procreation inside of us. And I think this exploration is kind of, you know, the necessary path that we have to walk down. And yeah, we're going to make mistakes. We're going to flow in different directions.

We're going to do all of these things. But this is part of that cycle of understanding. knowledge, rebirth, and growth, essentially. Yeah, I agree. On the cover of this book, I think that this is a pretty good jump-off point to just talk a little bit about the cube you have on here. It's almost like a, it's a three-dimensional cube, and for those that can see it, it's not quite set up in the back back there.

What do you, as this symbolic representation, what does this mean to you? Well, it was the idea was the framework. And the framework is, you know, for a framework from my background, it was from a technical background. So if I'm going to design a system, I would create a framework of everything that the system needs to do. And there would be the primary things that needed to exist for that system to operate. So the cube itself was very symbolic in that. that in that little space missing is that, you know, as people, you know, go down this path, that missing space is going, you know, you can have all of the tools, you can have all of the

teachings, you can have all of these things, but the last thing is choice. And if nobody is going to make the choice, then the key will always be incomplete. But if you have that framework and the choice is just a little step, it becomes much easier to make that choice. Yeah, that's a great point. And in the book, you see some things about choice that I've never heard in my life before. And it's not only that,

but some of the infographics that you have in this book are unlike anything I've ever seen before. And it really goes a long way to help have a mental picture and provide mental clarity to backed by a linguistic representation. So as we get into this later, and for everybody listening, we're going to have much more sessions.

We're doing a little intro right here. But as we move through, there's some incredible ideas represented to infographics about choice and about life and some other points in this book. How did you come up with these different infographics? When you look at the situation, is that like a mental image that you have?

Yes, developed over a long period of time. So actually where it all started, I came from a much more scientific background. And where it really all began was a hypothesis on the theory of information. Essentially meaning that foundationally, as our reality resolves, there is field of information. And the way I kind of analogize it is you have, imagine yourself in the pond. And you're standing at the edge of the pond, you know, your knee deep in the water, and there's a boat on the water. Now, the boat starts moving. If you close your eyes, because obviously you could see the boat moving with your eyes closed, but if you close your eyes, eventually you would feel the wake of the boat hitting you before you ever knew that the boat was closed.

Because the further the boat was away, the more wakes it would create. And the more time you would have to understand, oh, the boat's coming at me. oh and then if you were had a good enough system or good enough understanding of your environment you would say oh that's a boat and then if you even had a better understanding of that you would be able to say oh that's a boat made out of you know cellios and ligand and all these other things and so the idea being that every action uh every choice we make because as we make choices our minds putting out free signals uh you know we have all sorts of we measure them in beta and gamma and all these things different waves in the brain, but that permeates outside of us, as does all of our movements and thereby the movements of the molecules and the atoms and all of this flows into

the potentiality for the next moment of time being reflected back to us. And it's not really a huge foreign concept. A lot of people talk about how, you know, your choice is to find your reality in these things, but there is a perspective when you view it as it's not just the singular thing, but this grand interwoven tapestry, that there's a bit more of an understanding of, you know, what sort of role you can play in that. And because it's going to be relegated to, you know, the distance. Just like you can influence your surroundings right around you. I can go ahead and pick up this paper towel over here or not. But, you know, the further that goes away, that means less and less and less.

Just like as you were to throw a rock into a pond, you would see the waves right in the middle be higher and higher, and then they would kind of just dissipate as it moved out from the source of that rock. So that's kind of the underlying foundation of where this all came from. And then as I began to explore that and read different papers about, quantum mechanics, about general relativity and about experiments being done and about people's experiences on the other side of things. You know, because you have, you know, it's hard to discount things like prayer and stuff like that.

And also usually figure into scientific models. But yet if prayer was actually a physical mechanism that is generating some sort of physical phenomenon that's interacting with the rest of the physical phenomenon, well, then, yeah, it would have an effect. And then so we have all these evidences of, you know, people who have committed themselves truly with their intent to these, you know, mass prayer things. And there are physical, measurable things that are above the, above the median, right? And so I started to look at that. And then I started to look at, okay, well, you know, what's consciousness? and all of these other things.

And so it was like, how does this all relate together? And it's been a continual process, and it'll be a continual process. But there's a lot of very interesting evidence out there. So not only do you have prayer, but you also have things like back in 2012, Google's one of their data centers, they had an algorithm that dictated how data should move through the center. Well, all of a sudden, data was moving through the center at a different, way in a different way outside of the bounds of that algorithm but more efficient.

So you have these emergent properties of reality when you have density of information. And you know, I would make the statement to argue openly that consciousness is a function of a density of information in over a given space. And that's why we see consciousness in not just ourselves, but But we also see a consciousness in animals. We see it, we see it all over the place in what we call light, define his life from a biological standpoint. And yet we've also observed these emergent behaviors

in technical systems that we've built. Now, does that mean it's conscious, not necessarily? It means that consciousness is an emergent property of this. So bringing it back to the AI site, because I do a lot with automation and artificial intelligence, you know there was a google engineer who just said that you know there was a uh in a a sentient uh chatbot or whatever uh lamb fee or something like that um you know that's that's a whole quagmire of a different rabbit hole so i won't touch it too much

but the idea is is that we do have these emergent properties and we can observe them not just from our technical systems but we observe them biologically we observed them you know even universally. So my whole goal was to how to define this within the terms of everything that I've been taught, everything that I read, because if nothing really satisfied in that sort of. And then on that journey, the philosophy just kind of would perk. And I always wanted to write a book. And so I was like, ah, maybe that'll be a book I write. And so I just decided to write that book.

But yeah, I think that kind of sums up that question. Yeah, that's awesome. I often wonder, first of all, let me just go back and touch this issue one more time because I can't stand. It's the idea, and especially you with a background in AI, you know, I often wonder if Le Moyne, I think was the gentleman's name who spoke with Lambda, the chatbot. And I often wonder if his goal as an engineer and an ethicist wasn't to introduce Isaac Asimov's law of robotics into the world so that in my mind I had this idea like, you know, I think the first law, Isaac Asimov's first law was that a robot cannot kill humans. And I thought, what better way for an ethicist to get to Google and like force them to like not make killing robots? I mean, it's an interesting perspective. I would say, you know, words are important.

And, you know, first law, a human or a robot cannot kill a human, that leaves a lot open to interpretation. Right? A lot, yes. So. Yeah. But, you know, I think as all of this is propelled, you know, increasingly at a more rapid pace forward, We're going to encounter more and more of these questions.

And, you know, because we are putting much more information in a much denser environment. And I think we will see emergent properties from these systems. Now, that's going to cause a whole different quagmutter problems. You know, when your Alexa doesn't want to give you your favorite song, right? Like, because she's just having an off moment. I'm just mostly a joke. So bringing it back to this idea of consciousness, you know, as the more that I read and the more that I learn, and one question I of many that I would love to ask you is that do you think that we are pouring our ideas of consciousness into things and making them conscious? Or do you think that it's just the recognition of consciousness in the other?

Like when we see the computer or when we see a plant or when we see these things that we, may or may not think are sentient. Is that just us recognizing consciousness in that other thing? Or are we imbuing it with our consciousness? Well, I think both would be true. Because, you know, it takes the person who designed the system, who designed the hardware and all these things in order for that thing to exist. So in that sense, we are imbueing it with, you know, our senses.

And then especially when you start to get into things like neural networks and stuff, these things are highly subjective. You know, it's going to depend on the data set that you gave it. So if all, and there's been numerous accounts of this, they don't like to broadcast them too much, but a lot of the chat box and things that they open up to these large data sets end up with some less than scrupulous, you know, conversations with people.

They, you know, they become racist. They become, you know, socialist. They become pure capitalists and think that everything should, burn that's not tablet. There's a lot of really interesting things and it comes down to the information that's heading to the system. So in that regard, I think there's definitely some human creation that is a part of that process. On the other side, I think it's also us recognizing, you know, that, oh, the whole world doesn't revolve around us just moving around and walking. there's a whole different thing beyond what humanity is.

And, you know, now we recognize the consciousness of animals. And, you know, people recognize the consciousness of fish. You know, there was a really cool dolphin experiment where they hooked up a mirror in a pool and all the dolphins were flexing in the mirror and, you know, like doing all these normal maneuvers that they don't do in the wild just because they saw a reflection and they were looking at themselves. So, you know, it is recognizing consciousness. as well. There's a lovely one that I like to cite is there's a certain species of mimosa down

in the tropics. And if you get close to it with your finger, it closes up instantly. And it'll open up after a period of time when it thinks that there's no more threat. But that's only when they're human good food. There's certain types of bugs that are, that the plant likes, and they land on it and the leaf stays open. So, you know, there's, there's. There's a choice happening. And you could say that that choice is a chemical reaction and response to pheromones and all these other things, but then so are all of our.

Yeah, that's amazing because I have that exact mimosa hostilis right on my yard. We call it shy grass for short. And I'll never forget when I, we were down to the playground, and my daughter was probably two or three. And I walked over and I showed her. And she was like, and you know what? It makes me wonder, how much of that is choice versus how much is that,

a language that we don't understand. It's almost like you can see that plant talking to you, or maybe that's not the right word, but communicating with you. It's just that we can't thoroughly decipher it yet. Well, I, you know, there's, there's multiple instances of choice there. I made the choice to go towards the plant. It's detecting that choice at some, at some level, whether it be chemical or related to pheromones or, you know, just a, I think that's all it would be for that.

plant. But then again, you know, us interacting is all just a firing of just a mass mass amount of more chemicals and reacting to these experiences. And so the choices along the way, you know, we call a lot of our choices up common. You know, there's a lot of things that are just happenstance reactions that we have no idea what's going on, but it's still a choice that happens. And that, and I would kind of articulate that choice. more with so you know you have a chemical reaction and you're only going to get a certain amount of results from that chemical reaction just because there's you know inconsistencies in the mixture there's you know all these other things but all of those things amount to an end result and

you know is everything alive or is you know they're a point of life is what the question becomes and I think just from a 10,000 foot I think everything has a it influences everything else so therefore it's all interconnected if everything's interconnected then you know even if something's to your point even if we can't understand the language then it doesn't mean that it's not alive or it's not it's not participating in the system yeah I'm so hopeful and thankful and and excited for the future

because I think that there is something there and getting back to choice like when I brought my daughter over there I had a choice not really but I may have had a choice just to grab that thing and rip it out of there like throw it me look at that you know or go over there and just start

smashing it but for some reason and this just may be naivete on my part but I feel like those things are calling to you to experiment with them. And maybe they call to other people to pick them up and throw them away or try to exploit them.

But I think that there is a form of communication there. And it reminds me of this book by Jeremy Narby, who was an anthropologist, and he went down to South America. Can I share a quick story with you about this? Yes. And so he told a story. I can't remember the name of the book.

However, he told a story about going to South America and speaking with some indigenous. people. And in this group, there was other anthropologists there. And the indigenous people began telling them about how they talked to plants. And the majority of anthropology, just wrote them off, like, these people are just, they're uneducated, they're dumb, they don't get it. They don't talk to plants. And most of them left. Except Jeremy stayed there, and he's like, this is a fascinating idea. Can you tell me how you talk to plants and how they talk back to you? And, you know, after you had gained their trust for a couple days, they said, sure. And they walked into the, on the outskirts of

where they were and he showed them, see this snake over here? Here's a green snake with white dots on its neck. It's a very venomous snake. And if it bites you, there's a good chance you'll die. This plant over here has told us that it's the remedy. And he's like, yeah, that's the part I don't understand. How did it tell you? And he goes, oh, that's a great question. Let me show you. And so they walk over to the plant and the leaves on the plant are like these ovate leaves, and they have two white diamonds on there that match the snake. And he's like, right there's the plant telling you it's the remedy for this snake. You know, when I read that part, I'm like, oh my gosh, like we, how can we be so naive to think that indigenous people don't have answers

that we do? Why can't we talk to plants? And maybe it's lost in translation. It's not a, it's not the plant saying, hey, buddy over here, look at me. It's this plant. Yeah, yeah. And it just, it makes me realize how limited we are with our language. And that if we just take, you know, if we come to the conclusion that there are no absolutes, you know, that maybe the world will open up to you. Indeed. You know, like there's so many instances, right, where if you talk to these indigenous tribes and they're like, oh, yeah, that plans exactly for this and you go, well, how would you know? And it's like, because of this and you go, well, that makes a lot of sense. You know, we have lost that language.

because it got scooped up into this whole perpetual movement of must make money and keep up with the Joneses. Yep. And, you know, not to disparage capitalism. Capitalism has enabled a lot of very interesting things across the world. But at the same time, like we were talking when we first started, these things are broken at scale. And when you have these massive movements that do foundationalize a whole generation or multiple generations and inspire all of this magnificent movement and technological progress, there are things that are going to get left behind. Because not everything moves at the same pace, for one, and a lot of that old knowledge, you know, not only is it very effective, but it also is not really. great at generating a profit. So, you know, it just, it stands counter to the nature of society.

Because, you know, we don't have to get into it much, but pharmacology is just a, you know, it's a treatment. It's not a, it's not a remedy. And there's a lot of money in treatment because you have repeat customers. So we lost a lot of the knowledge of remedies because the profit from repeat customers outweighed the value of health. Yeah, that's a great point. I often wonder, I often wonder how sick a society is when its business models are built on addiction, you know, whether it's, whether it's, you know, getting a treatment or whether it's buying toner for printer. You know what I mean? Like they based it on addiction. Like, what are you doing? Like, this is a great model. We're going to get paid forever. Like, wait a minute. You're basing one of the most profitable

ideas in our world, business, money, finance, on addiction. Like, what does that say about us? Well, I mean, it says we're opportunistic. I mean, you know, again, I don't really think ascribing right and wrong to these things is is very contrary to my philosophy. You know, what's right for me is not going to be right for you. It doesn't, you know,

you can try to slice it a million ways, but eventually we're going to come up with a couple things where me taking this choice right now is not beneficial to you. And even though we may agree on 99,000 of those things, that one time of that reality being true means that truth is relative. And these relative truths of, you know, how we operate in society are what is used to keep people unaware of a brand or picture.

You know, because tying it back to the book in absolutes, when you have these truths, these headlines, these, you know, these perfectionary ideas that it's us and them or them and us. everybody, everything else, well, you're not really looking at, you know, the grander picture and you're not going to see the perspectives with you. You're not going to see the perspectives of, you know, a great conversation because you can't define the world in 120 characters, you can't define the world in, you know, multiple scientific essays. You can't define the world in even all of the research and all of the experiments that we've done, we stand on the shoulders of giants and we still can't define the world. So acknowledging that we can't define the world

allows us the perspective to see why we can't. And then we can ask better questions. Why does this happen that way? Is there a way to make this happen a different way? For instance, when we're talking about society now and addiction and all these things and how it's just this this cruel, cruel system that really divides people. But where it really divides people is it's created a massive economic divide. There are those who can and those who can. And there was, you know, there's a lot of things like universal basic income, terrible.

You know, if you really wanted to solve that problem, you have something like a universal standard of living. Because when you tie it to the income side of things, you inherit all of the problems from all of those absolutes that that income statement contains, all of those institutions, all those things. But if you had a universal standard of living, people could just live. And people are naturally just these explorers where we're naturally curious.

and the things that really hold people back. And I saw this a lot in my travels down in Central and South America was that it was the economy of the day. They had most every other thing figured out. But now we have to get food. We have to pay for the cell phone bill. We have to pay for the electricity. We have to do all this.

Now those burdens add up. And now instead of people actually being able to go out and explore, be creative, interact. act with the world. Try to figure out these things. Now it becomes, I need to pay my car. I need to pay my insurance. I have a mortgage. I just, you know, my kid needs to all of these things that society, it takes away from our ability to be able to actually pursue those facts. So, you know, I think there are solutions to the problem. But to your point, yeah, how sick is a society built on addiction.

I mean, it's absolutely terrible, and we can see how terrible it is. We got nothing but statistics to tell us how terrible it is and nothing but evidence and it compounds daily. Yeah.

That's a great way to put it. You know, in some ways, it brings me full circle to maybe this is a tragedy that we have to go through so that we can open up what we're seeing.

It very well may be. You know, I don't think, you know, the old adage is you don't know what you happen until you lost it. Yeah. Yeah, that kind of makes me sad. And if you look at it, look at what we've already lost.

You know, we've lost so much connection with all our brothers and sisters and lost knowledge. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's deplorable in some sense. It's a travesty in some sense. But in another sense, in another perspective, I mean, it is kind of the operation of it. It's kind of how we've evolved as, you know, you can look through history and you have nothing but repeat examples of exactly what's happening right now in the world. Yeah.

Yeah, it's, I often wonder, you know, when we talk about the repetition of history, more the rhyming of history, I guess, you know, and you begin to see the world as a system the same way that, I might butcher this, but the same way that, electrons rotate around a nucleus in the same way that our planets spin on its axis the same way that we spin around the solar system and the same way our solar system spends around the galaxy and the galaxy around the universe if those things are somewhat true and we have seasons through the way our you know because we're on our axis and we're tilting we have seasons as we go around the sun might we also have seasons as we go around the galaxy and seasons as we go around the universe and if you begin to see the system as as as as that system and you can see the seasons that we're in i guess that's the calla yugas and stuff like that but it's it's also the

nasta text right uh there's saying in those nostic texts as above so below uh and that has a lot of perspectives and a very deep meaning to derive like you touched on a lot of it everything we observe above us it's reminiscent of the the most minutia thing that's the most minutia thing that we've been able to observe with our greatest technology. These systems behave in similar ways. They have similar functions. And they're built on relatively simple building blocks, but yet blow up and balloon into this massive complexity

that we're still unraveling with all of the shared information that we already have. And so, you know, that whole spectrum of sharing information and being able to have this mechanism is, you know, definitely related to those you think we're going to see the next one kind of come here relatively soon, I would imagine, because we're at a breaking point because the systems that we have currently just aren't working. They're not being able to support the need of the people. Yeah, I agree. How does, Let me downshift for a second.

So as we talk about these systems and we've talked about choice, how does the no absolute framework deal with conscious choice or no conscious choice and free will? How does it work with that? Well, you know, a choice can be the conscious decision to do something, which is actually going to be accumulation of choices. The unconscious choice to do something like, you know, scratch your face when it is just something like that. You know, those are still choices that are being made at a fundamental level. Free choice is what I would define is when consciousness is present.

You know, it's the free choice is the ability for consciousness to achieve. and we're aware of a certain level of consciousness and in that we have free choice relatively speaking you know there's still things that are really limited by other choices that are subcutaneous you know like you know for instance it's the nurture first nature of you know how much of you know you're born with you know they've done studies with rats where they've definitely shown that there's genetic memory. They've exposed one generation of rats to a fearful environment, and then two generations later, upon even recognizing

that that environment might be possible, the rats have a fearful response. So we know that from just our studies, that there's definitely some level of genetic memory. But we also have all these learned experience. Those are going to limit our choice. because, you know, you only know what you know. And if you don't know that there's a different choice, well, you'll never make that choice.

But it's not a limiting or free will. We always have the free will to make a choice. It's just, I would say, recognizing that our choices are limited by not only our previous choices, but also the previous choices of everyone and everything that's come before. We can't just fly off like Superman. Yeah, I really like the way you explain that. And it makes me, in a way, it makes me feel more free because even the smallest things I do may influence other people to make a choice. And that means I have a choice to make everyone's life better if I want to do that.

By being, by using the words I have wisely and choosing a kind word or choosing an action that people may not even be aware of that could help them. And then maybe somehow that sets off a chain reaction and other people do for me, right? I guess it kind of gets back to the idea of what you put out, you kind of get back. Right. Absolutely. I mean, everybody has these experiences

where they just decided to be a nice person for an instant, even though they were having a crappiest day. Right? And you just see the smile light up on somebody. Like, oh, well, thank you so much for doing that for me. And you go, oh, okay. Now I know life's about a little.

And if we really reflect on those instances, you know, how many times has somebody done something nice for you that really changed your entire day? I think just about everybody would be able to cite at least once or twice, if not a lot. And, you know, depending on where you are in the world. Yeah. It's funny. My wife and I and my daughter, we went to the beach two weeks ago. And we went, we parked. And, you know, in Hawaii, we went to the, we went to Hawaii Bay.

So it's like a, there's a lot of people that go to turn around. It's just, you can't find parking sometimes. And we went, we had a great time. And my wife had left her phone there. And we drove off and we were going home. And she goes, oh, gosh, darn it. I forgot my phone. So we tracked it.

And oh, it's at the beach. And this had been like three hours later. And she's like, it's not going to be there. I just go home. Like, no way. We're going to go there and try to find it. We have, but we can see it right here. And so sure enough, we drove back to where it was.

And we're looking around, looking around. And the person who had taken our spot, Like they had put, you know, we're looking, we're looking. And someone had put a shoe on their car, like a sandal, and then another shoe sticking up on top of their car. Yeah, like, and I'm like, that is such a weird thing. Why would someone do that? And as soon as I ping the phone, I heard the phone ringing up top by the shoe. So you would notice it if you were looking for it.

And I'm like, that's such a great idea. And I'll be darned. And so that was three weeks ago. Last week we went to the beach. And I found an Apple watch. And I'm like, hey, we should try to find out who this is. And I looked around. And so we ended up taking it home.

We fired it up and we found the person and we're sending it back to him. I'm like, that's just a rare set of events. And it could be coincidence. But I also had the choice to try to keep it or something like that. But it was just a rare thing that happened like that. And I would argue that there's probably no quince. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

I agree. But yeah, that, you know, that's a. wonderful, that's wonderful story because whenever you lose something at a beach, you pretty much expect it to be gone. Yep. And then, you know, so we get these little nuances of life where there, it opens us up to the idea that there is a bigger picture to all of this stuff. And it is all kind of interconnected. And it all is related. And especially once you start, you know, factoring in human relationships to that. you know, by being a nice person, by going out and just, you know, without any pretense, without any want or desire to have any sort of, you know, acknowledgement of your choice, just go out and do something nice. That creates weight.

And, you know, and when somebody does something nice for you, even if you're having a terrible day, it's one of those rare things that just kind of breaks through the surface. and you go oh okay and it can and it can cause of a great shift in perspective and when we in the idea of no absolutes it's you know you're kind of holding this perspective all the time because the reality of the situation is that well it's not all set in step you know yeah people might be angry yeah people might be happy people might be sad but i'm me right now and i'm making a choice to go out and be present be aware have a proper perspective hopefully for a situation. And maybe I make a difference. Maybe I don't. But it doesn't matter because putting myself in that position is now going to align me with the things down the line. Three weeks down the line when, you know, somebody lost their little Apple Watch and you went hell and high water or go get it to them. Had somebody not found the iPhone and flagged it for it?

for you on the beach, would you have made the same decision? Probably because you're a nice guy. But, you know, it could have shifted the other way, right? You know, it could have been like, oh, well, just turn this into lost effect. Yeah. As opposed to going out and doing the extra steps. And so these things can be given in from just like every other interactions of things, they could be massively destructive to it.

Yeah. And, you know, when I think about absolutes, B.M. If you look at them like rules or guidelines or ceilings or constraints, I can understand two sides. Like sometimes people need the narrow focus of an absolute to achieve a certain thing. And for me, I could see why people might want that. But to me, it seems so limiting. And maybe in the beginning you need to have some rails on to understand, okay, stay here on these boundaries. And we probably all do growing up.

hopefully we all had good parents or at least a good role model that we could use as a guideline. But to start to begin to see the world with no absolutes, I think, like you say in the book, is a good framework for life. It really allows you to see the world as it can be, to see the world a way in which you can inspire it. It's a beautiful framework. And is it something that, Can you tell me a story about how you've used no absolutes to create change in your life? Oh, sure. I mean, you know, just I was like every other product. I grew up and, you know, my path was defined by money and I wanted to achieve and have success and do all these things.

And, you know, I wanted to make a million dollars by 30. I wanted to do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And especially this day and age, because it's not so easy to do that anymore, if you don't have the right connection. You don't have the right, you know, you don't have the right credentials. If you didn't go to the right school, people won't even listen to it. And, you know, I quickly ran into, well, I'm just a kid, and yeah, I could do stuff on a, on a computer, but people want a lot more.

They don't, you know, blah, blah, blah. blah, blah, blah. There's all these roadblocks. And it's discourage. It really, you know, it takes the, takes the window of the sales. You know, you hear no 20,000 times. And all of a sudden, you're like, wow, that's a lot of knows. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. But the reality of that situation is, and, you know, most entrepreneurs, you're always here. You know, I had 10,000 knows before I got my first yes, or I failed my first three businesses or seven and what. And, yeah. And, That is the path. That is the reality of that situation.

But what I realized once I started going down this philosophical path was, oh, yeah, those nodes are a part of that, but more of my choices are impacting why I'm receiving those notes. And then I realized that, hey, it's not about, you know, the success. It's not about the money. It's not about these things. Because actually, when I found joy, which was after I, you know, really wrote the philosophy, well, I actually, as I wrote it internally, and then I started by enjoying my life, not just happiness and not success, not any of those other things, not monetary gain, but actual joy. And it was because, and then I was like, well, why do I feel so joy?

You know, I'm broken Costa Rica right now. Like, what am I doing? And I realized it was because I wasn't, I lost the attachment to those desires. I took those rails off of my life myself. And so all of a sudden, the narrow band of what I considered the world got a lot big. And once it got bigger, yeah, I found joy, but I also found opportunity. I found relationships. And more importantly, I found myself.

You know, everybody, it's an old, you know, everybody talks about it, but you can't be happy with other people unless you're happy with yourself. And I think there's a lot of, a lot of truth in that statement, relative to, well, relatively speaking. And so, and so, you know, I found myself through the process. And that's what really inspired through the record was, you know, If I could just do this for one more person, that's fun. So, you know, that it was, that's why I never, I'd never intended to really make money off the book. I did it because you had to do that process. You know, you have to put it on Amazon and do all those things.

And I wanted to go through the book experience. But it was more about sharing the idea, the philosophy, the information so that maybe somebody else along the line could look out and so, wow. I'm actually joyous all of a sudden because I'm not attached. because I'm not stuck in these braille. That's an awesome story. Thank you. I agree 100%. I think one of the best things you can do is a human being is to write down that pathway that show you the most beautiful scene. It's like you've, it's like our trail metaphor. Like you've, hey, I went down this trail over here. And now you're coming back and you're sharing with people. Listen, you can take this way or I put a little yellow flag over

And if you take that way, there's a really beautiful scenery that you can see. There's a pyramid over there that no one even knows about. Go check it out, you know. And I'm so thankful you did that, man. And we're going to get into this book as we continue to move through the weeks. And there's a lot of really in-depth, cool insights that are not absolute. And they're not somebody else's ideas. That's one of the things I really liked about your book is they're not other people's interpretations.

They're yours. And they're uniquely yours. and they're original and they're fun and they're they are they're pretty liberating like a bunch of role models breaking out some children you know i i i really enjoy it man i what what yeah what tell me i i know you're probably shorter you got a few more minutes yeah absolutely okay cool so after you have written this book mentally and you've you've lived this story so that you can interpret it and give it back to people. What are some of the things that you learned after writing down the story about you?

Is there some things that you learned? Continually every day. I've embraced a constant state of learning my entire adult life. I'll never tell you I have the answer, but I'll point you in a good direction. Nice. Yeah. I you know beyond the grammatical mistakes of the book which haught me to this day you know there's a few things in there that I've learned to better express and I think I like to think one of my abilities is to take very complex ideas and be able to distill them into something that's digestible and that was kind of one of the underlying principles of the book was I'm going to pack in everything into just a small little tiny book and make it digestible for people, make it actionable

for people. And then when people have questions, I can extrapolate upon questions because it's intended to inspire a question. Yeah. And I think you've done a great job at that. It's, it's, I've written down a bunch of questions. And I, um, I want to talk about them now, but I don't want to get too past the introduction. So where can people find you to talk more about you? Where can they reach out to you? And where can they check everything out? Benjamincgeorge.com is kind of the main hub for everything. I'm on social media. Most of this all ran by bots, I have to admit. But I will respond if people reach out to me on any social media. Nice. Ladies and gentlemen,

I hope you enjoyed as much as I did our first installment of many installments with Benjamin C. George. I recommend everybody go out and check out the book. We got a promo code. He's kind enough to offer us a 20% off a signed copy. If you go down to the links below, which all his links will be in the show notes. And if you're watching this video, then they'll be down below. And I think that's about it for today. Is there anything else you want to leave us with?

No, I think that's awesome, George. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for this conversation. I look forward to the coming one. Yeah, me as well. Hang on a second. I'm going to end it here, and then I'll talk to you for a minute.

But I really enjoyed this conversation, and I'm looking forward to further ones. Ladies and gentlemen, check out the book. It's called No Absolutes. It will help you see the world in which you haven't seen it before and help you navigate some areas that maybe you're having trouble with like I was.

So that's what we got for today, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much. Aloha. Welcome. I hit the wrong button. Sorry about that. Yeah, I did too. I thought.

I was like, oh, man, I lost him there. So I, um, let me do that.