Leo D.M.J. Aurini - Knowledge, Truth, and Keeping a Clean Soul

00:00:00.000 I'm sure you've run into this before. We're trying to talk to somebody and explain that

00:00:08.920 they're sick, that their method of life is a suicide urge, that it's an ugly rot in their

00:00:20.880 soul, and you just can't get it across to them. I had this experience the other day talking to 0.62

00:00:27.640 an antinatalist on a YouTube comment thread. Well, and he didn't even know he's an antinatalist,

00:00:35.200 probably didn't know, just picked up the virus, the meme, the infection from our culture. But I've

00:00:43.240 been thinking a lot about that, about the nature of knowledge, nature of communication, and it really

00:00:50.440 struck me. Knowledge is revelatory. Our species acquires knowledge through revelation, not

00:01:06.440 through reasoning. I know how mad that sounds, but bear with me for a little bit. Because

00:01:14.440 we've all done the high school, university, a priori argument. Like, what is a priori knowledge?

00:01:27.000 And allegedly, supposedly, and we can all agree, that a priori knowledge constitutes things like

00:01:33.720 2 plus 2 equals 4. In theory, a mind existing in a black vast vacuum of nothing could still figure

00:01:46.680 out mathematics. In theory, they could even figure out the entire universe if they had enough time and

00:01:56.280 enough memory capacity to come up with all of that. And yet, here's the weird thing. Humans don't figure 0.69

00:02:06.280 out 2 plus 2 equals 4 on average, do we? It's the most obvious a priori out there, that 1 plus 1 equals 2,

00:02:15.880 2 plus 2 equals 4. This should be the very basis of a priori. It's the most a priori of a priori,

00:02:24.120 and yet very few people figure it out. In fact, there's good arguments that math wasn't invented until

00:02:33.560 after we had currency. And ain't that strange? There's tribes in the jungle that can't count past 3.

00:02:44.360 3. And what it boils down to is that truth is revelatory for us. Think about it. If we want to

00:02:56.040 actually talk about a priori, things that you just know to be true, there are certainly the obvious

00:03:05.160 physical ones. Hunger, lust, so forth. But on a deeper level, on an intellectual level, what's a

00:03:14.600 priori for a human being? Love is a priori. Righteousness is a priori. Justice is a priori.

00:03:27.640 These are things we just know that we already have in our brain. And the most basic of universal a prioris

00:03:39.240 are impossible for us to figure out without an external example.

00:03:47.880 And now what we've done, the amazing thing about science,

00:03:51.480 is that it combines both of these things. You can almost describe it as a meditation over numbers

00:04:01.400 until the revelation strikes.

00:04:06.600 A brain that actually operated in this universe, that actually understood the a priori nature of this

00:04:15.160 universe, that could think and come up with ideas, should have figured out science a lot faster. 0.54

00:04:22.200 And I don't just mean the scientific method. But I mean, in 1910, you put a brain that actually

00:04:29.080 thinks in that way, in that manner, it should have figured out the next two centuries of science,

00:04:36.520 should have been figured out within a few years. Maybe it hasn't done the experiments yet to confirm or

00:04:41.640 deny, but it's plotted out the paths. Why is it that we're so unable to plot out those paths?

00:04:56.360 Just checking my notes, people.

00:04:57.640 Yes, and when you do come up with the scientific discovery,

00:05:06.920 something like relativity, that there is no absolute location in the universe,

00:05:12.680 that comes as a revelation.

00:05:16.920 So that if you meditate upon the numbers for long enough, the idea pops into your head.

00:05:22.360 You don't figure it out logically. None of us do.

00:05:30.840 And imagine trying to communicate the message of relativity.

00:05:34.840 Or of quantum mechanics. The fact that the universe shatters into a billion possibilities

00:05:41.880 every nanosecond. That anything that can happen does happen. The universe is infinite,

00:05:47.720 not just in scope, but in possibility. And I'm sure that somewhere such a brain does exist,

00:05:54.600 such an a priori brain. But it's not us. And so you wind up with the inability to communicate

00:06:03.560 certain things to people. If you went back to ancient Greece and tried to explain about relativity,

00:06:09.560 about no absolute position, about the philosophical implications of this, you'd be completely speaking

00:06:15.880 over their heads. And when you try and speak to somebody that's spiritually sick, 1.00

00:06:23.800 you can't reach them, oftentimes.

00:06:26.920 Nowadays, we like to describe behaviors as being unhealthy for you. That relationship is unhealthy. That

00:06:43.640 lifestyle is unhealthy. Which is a really weird way of describing a sickness of the soul.

00:06:51.640 Because for one thing, health is objective. We can all agree on what a heart attack is. A heart

00:07:01.960 attack is an objective reality. Obesity is objective. Your physical fitness level is objective. We may

00:07:08.280 have debates on whether or not bacon is good for you. You know, I love to harp on that there's

00:07:13.880 health benefits to smoking. You know, certainly we can disagree on the facts or agree that we need more

00:07:20.440 facts. But ultimately, it's an objective opinion.

00:07:28.200 Whereas your well-being is unique to you.

00:07:34.680 When you do start to see the difference between healthy and unhealthy of the soul, the spiritual

00:07:40.840 sickness, and even I'm using these terms, you can start to see the sickness in other people,

00:07:46.040 but there's no way to explain it to them. There's a great book that describes this phenomenon.

00:07:55.800 Let me just confirm the title. The Wind in the Door by Madeline Lengel, which I might reread the whole

00:08:02.520 series. It's been quite some time. It's an amazing, amazing science fiction series. Where

00:08:08.520 the young boy in the story, the brother of the sisters, the protagonist, is sick because the

00:08:17.160 Ferrandale, these organisms that live in his mitochondrial DNA, are no longer following their

00:08:23.640 life cycle. They're not rooting down and becoming mature adults. They're playing at

00:08:29.320 at being a teenager their entire life. And as a result, he himself is sick.

00:08:39.160 And so these spiritually corrupt people wind up doing things that feel good to them.

00:08:47.160 And so you can try and explain that, no, it's not healthy to act like a teenager your entire

00:08:58.840 life. That a 20-year-old woman, using her looks to get attention and all the sex she craves, 1.00

00:09:07.720 that this is going to hurt you in the long run. This is going to destroy and sap you and turn you into 0.99

00:09:13.160 this ugly little Cro-Magnon creature, that there will be nothing human left to you. 1.00

00:09:21.320 But she won't believe you. Because in her mind, the life feels good. 0.95

00:09:27.720 So what do you do with these people?

00:09:38.280 This is where we get to narratives, to stories. This is why our species tells stories.

00:09:46.200 Because the story gives you a catharsis. It allows you to have that revelation.

00:09:57.880 I mean, the whole feminist issue with women destroying themselves and going mentally ill 0.99

00:10:03.400 from the constant bad boy sex and no love, it should be bloody self-evident. It certainly is to 0.99

00:10:10.600 us men, but we're not the women living it, are we?

00:10:19.720 Any piece of true fiction has redemptive qualities in it. It has an element in it that allows you to

00:10:29.640 achieve some sort of epiphany. Even...and I'm going to use this as an example of very bad fiction. Atlas

00:10:37.560 Shrugged is very poorly written. And yet reading it, you get to stare into the souls of socialists.

00:10:50.440 There are a lot of problems with that book, but how evil and dark and rat-like the socialists were,

00:10:58.600 that's not one of them. That's exactly what they look like on the inside.

00:11:02.200 I see people daily with these sad, dark beasts inside of them, and they don't even know that

00:11:10.760 they're there. And if you try to tell them that they were there, they'll mistake you for an oppressor,

00:11:17.880 or some sort of old curmudgeon-y, fuddy-duddy, or something like that.

00:11:27.640 Of course, this leads to the question,

00:11:31.240 if logic can help you find your soul, what can?

00:11:35.640 And the answer is just seeking after the thing. Just seeking after the truth

00:11:45.720 will find you enlightenment.

00:11:49.640 And that's all it is. That's what most religions basically boil down to.

00:11:55.240 The problem is that this isn't the sort of thing you can put in numbers. It's not the sort of thing you can

00:12:04.280 do a good study on.

00:12:09.160 So let me tell you a story.

00:12:14.040 Two POWs in Korea. And they had brutal brainwashing techniques there.

00:12:20.040 Well worth studying, so that you know how to resist them yourself, should the day ever come.

00:12:25.240 The first one cracks. And they start playing his voice on radio,

00:12:35.480 broadcasting it to the United States, going on about how great communism is, and how evil and

00:12:41.960 imperialistic Americans are. The other holds true to their oaths. 0.76

00:12:48.360 They don't crack. And they spend the next 20 years in that camp, forgotten about by their country,

00:12:57.720 until finally the world political climate ships, and they're allowed to go back home. A shell of a man

00:13:04.360 that they once were.

00:13:08.920 Who was the spiritual victor?

00:13:13.000 You can't say from that story.

00:13:14.360 If it was the first man, it's not because he cracked. It's because he never should have joined the military.

00:13:22.760 And if it's the second man that failed, it's because he wasn't ready for the pressures of

00:13:33.000 a military that was going to abandon him for 20 years. And yet he followed their dictates anyway.

00:13:38.280 And of course you can easily reverse things. That's what I mean about it all being subjective.

00:13:47.720 You can't really see another person's soul. You can see their body, and you can see the

00:13:52.120 sickness residing in that, and how it infects their soul. But ultimately everybody has their own struggle

00:13:59.960 that they have to deal with. Success in your struggle might lead to riches, it might lead to happiness,

00:14:08.600 or it might lead to misery in a Soviet gulag. But that seeking after truth, that struggle,

00:14:18.360 winning that spiritual struggle, is ultimately the only thing we have in life. Your dignity is the one

00:14:26.360 thing that can never be taken from you, if you can only give it away.

00:14:34.040 Greeny out, folks.

Leo D.M.J. Aurini - November 10, 2012

Knowledge, Truth, and Keeping a Clean Soul

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