Beyond Right and Wrong: A Journey into Moral Nuances and Self-Discovery
Apr 09, 2024
Frank Sloan / Jake Sebok / Noah German
Have you ever dared to imagine yourself as morally perfect? Jake leads us down the rabbit hole questioning the very fabric of morality itself. With candid conversations and challenging ideas, we paint a picture of morality as a collective construct that may not hold the absolute truth we once believed. Our dialogue veers into the realm of self-perception, where I propose that breaking free from external moral standards could lead to a more genuine understanding of who we are. Frank shares a fascinating perspective, suggesting our self-view has the power to transcend moral judgments entirely, potentially reshaping our identity in the moral universe.
As we venture further, the dialogue broadens to include luminaries of spiritual wisdom such as Jesus and Buddha, as emblems of Christ consciousness that transcend traditional religious boundaries. I posit that morality is not a dichotomy of right versus wrong but a spectrum where self-awareness plays a pivotal role in guiding our ethical compass. We grapple with the interplay between individuality and our place within the grand tapestry of existence, contemplating our unique essence as part of an expansive universal process. The conversation doesn't shy away from the contemporary either, as we examine public figures like Donald Trump through the lens of authenticity, truth, and the weighty responsibility of representation in the political arena. This episode isn't just a philosophical exploration; it's an invitation to redefine our personal ego and cultivate a broader sense of self that encompasses unconditional love for others. Join us as we reconcile these profound tensions within the human experience.
Have you ever dared to imagine yourself as morally perfect? Jake leads us down the rabbit hole questioning the very fabric of morality itself. With candid conversations and challenging ideas, we paint a picture of morality as a collective construct that may not hold the absolute truth we once believed. Our dialogue veers into the realm of self-perception, where I propose that breaking free from external moral standards could lead to a more genuine understanding of who we are. Frank shares a fascinating perspective, suggesting our self-view has the power to transcend moral judgments entirely, potentially reshaping our identity in the moral universe.
As we venture further, the dialogue broadens to include luminaries of spiritual wisdom such as Jesus and Buddha, as emblems of Christ consciousness that transcend traditional religious boundaries. I posit that morality is not a dichotomy of right versus wrong but a spectrum where self-awareness plays a pivotal role in guiding our ethical compass. We grapple with the interplay between individuality and our place within the grand tapestry of existence, contemplating our unique essence as part of an expansive universal process. The conversation doesn't shy away from the contemporary either, as we examine public figures like Donald Trump through the lens of authenticity, truth, and the weighty responsibility of representation in the political arena. This episode isn't just a philosophical exploration; it's an invitation to redefine our personal ego and cultivate a broader sense of self that encompasses unconditional love for others. Join us as we reconcile these profound tensions within the human experience.
Jake:
You guys want to talk about how I said. I am morally flawless.
Frank:
I mean, this can only be bad for you. So I say, let's do it yeah.
Jake:
I'm for it. Whatever, frank, you said it sounded interesting. What were you thinking when you said it sounded interesting?
Frank:
Oh well, it sucks because you won't talk about you being morally flawless, which is what we all really want, I mean, all of the audience. This is the most frequently requested podcast by far, but that wasn't the idea I thought was interesting. I thought it was interesting when you said everyone should think of themselves as morally flawless, which is just a totally different lens on the idea. Okay, so maybe you could start with talking about how you're morally flawless and then we could sort of talk about whether other people might want to adopt this idea too.
Jake:
Okay, sure, yeah, I do think it's actually valuable to talk about. I also think I am not an authority on this. This is solely my perspective. I like to open things up with a sort of reflexivity statement, which is to it's like in the beginning of a scientific article where you do a literature review like, hey, here's all the stuff that could invalidate what I'm about to say. Um, you have to know how the experiment was designed in order to understand the results. Well, jake grew up in a very sort of morally strict environment uh, religious environment where I felt a ton of shame as a result of my moral structures. So I do have a little bit of like a vendetta I know you guys like that word against rigid morality. Wait, hang on.
Frank:
As a morally flawless person. You seem to have made a error.
Jake:
Oh, I didn't do that.
Frank:
Well, also have we had extensive conversation. That's what I'm saying. What do we like? Vendettas have no memory at all.
Jake:
I once said that Noah had a vendetta against Slack and it was the topic of conversation.
Frank:
Oh yeah, that's the Slack conversation, though. Oh, I don't think I have a vendetta. Yeah, you do.
Jake:
You were on a pogrom to eradicate Slack Slack. If you want me to like, you be better.
Frank:
That's all I got.
Jake:
That's all, or?
Frank:
sponsor our podcast. I don't think that would make me like them. I would accept their money, though anyway what I really?
Jake:
uh, I think that was enough right. So I do have sort of like a bias against rigid moral structures, but I also think, like, what is morality? Morality is for a lot of people? They believe that there's some sort of like outside authority that says what is right and what is wrong. This is universally the case, and either we ascribe to that standard or we fall short of it. If we ascribe to it and we do what that standard is, then we are moral beings, we are are great. Um, if we fall short of it, we're sinners in some way, or, whatever right we're, we're a worse person, and what I have done in my own life is just really thrown away that authority.
Jake:
I believe that we are the ones who created that moral structure, and that's great and it's fine to ascribe to it as well. But that does say something about the nature of it, which is to say that it's collectively created. We all are agreeing to this and that's the only reason it exists. If so, here's an example. We are stuff of earth. We are these animals that have cultures, just like hyenas do, just like lions do.
Frank:
And we have more Starbucks than them. We do.
Jake:
It's a different culture. They have more naps than we do too.
Frank:
Good for them.
Jake:
Yeah, they look like they're loving it, do you think?
Frank:
Starbucks is the only difference between us and Lions. It's the main one, yeah it's the main one.
Jake:
It would be a long time to list it. It might take 14 hours.
Frank:
Right, but it's the main one.
Jake:
My point is I just imagine Frank going on safari and being like man there's no Starbucks here.
Frank:
These lions never there's lions.
Jake:
and zebras and giraffes, but no Starbucks, yeah that's it, that's happened.
Jake:
My point is, though, that if a lion goes and kills another animal, maybe just plays with its dead carcass, you're not going to be like, oh, that lion is just so bad, he's a bad, bad lion, but if I go and kill someone and play with their dead carcass, you're going to be be like that dude is weird.
Jake:
We really need to lock him up and get away from everyone. Bad, he's bad, right, and that's fine. I'm cool with it because we've agreed on it, but I am just as much a thing of nature as that lion, and there is nothing intrinsic about that act that is wrong, other than we have said, life is valuable, and to destroy it is against our rules, and I think that this sort of idea allows us to to give ourselves license to stop repressing the aspects of ourselves that we've been afraid to look at because they were unacceptable, and I can choose not to express everything that's inside of me, but, by sort of relinquishing the need to not be the bad thing, I can look inside and actually find myself on realistic terms okay, I like it.
Frank:
I think I have a different insertion point for the you have a what now? Different insertion point for this sort of layer. Great, in my model, or whatever, of the world, in your musculoskeletal system of the world, uh-uh. No, I probably would be closer to where I would insert this block of code in my code. That operates the world, or something, yeah.
Jake:
It's a Weltanschauung.
Frank:
Yeah, you can put like self-view the self-view block of code, Like you can put it under moral good, bad and like run it there if you want, or you could put it just under self. Yeah.
Jake:
What's the big circle?
Frank:
I don't have a true false on good, bad, on personal self-referential, whatever. It's literally like just doesn't exist. Those lines are not there. I do have that for like societal view of things. Sure, like foreign war or something I'm like, oh, the society has this strong set of view about that topic.
Frank:
I'm like oh, society has this strong set of view about that topic. But for me, if I thought the worst thing you can imagine about foreign war, I wouldn't say you're bad, frank, like never could come up. It's just how I feel about it. Sure, whatever it is, it is, it is so, it's all. It used to be really weird to me that so much of it, um, for you is under this sort of good, bad, true, false, like block. But I think that the like for me, almost all of the sort of get lost stuff is self-referential, it's just. It is like this coffee thing happened to me. Because God hates me, maybe, or because I may have a bad day today, or the world's against me, or whatever. It's all includes me and not including me seems to be like just a hold on loosely uh sort of approach to life seems to serve me better. I think it's the same for you. It's just sort of under the true, false, good, evil block. You're like this isn't good or evil.
Jake:
Yeah, yeah, it's. It's sort of the intrinsic thing that I'm pointing at, like there are two layers to reality. There's the layer that just exists. Philip k dick said that reality is the thing that when you stop believing it and it doesn't go away. There's that layer and there's no intrinsic right or wrong. The asteroid that destroys a planet wasn't bad and that planet getting destroyed wasn't bad. It was an event that occurred. So, as long as I don't say, um, I don't know, it was bad to hit my sister, right From a social aspect, it was bad to hit your sister, your sister, um, it doesn't allow us to all interact on an equal playing field.
Jake:
But from an intrinsic aspect, on that level of reality, it was an event that occurred yeah and those are the two levels we're always playing on, and so it's very difficult for me, specifically in in religious circles where you know this religion says this is good and this is bad and, by the way, god is the authority who laid it down and this one says exactly the same thing, but they disagree on the details and all of a sudden, a war starts, because it's like you are bad for the earth and now you've got a foreign war on your hands. Right? That is based on not understanding that there are two levels here and we're just different types of people yeah, yeah.
Frank:
Well, I mean, I just think so much suffering comes from the self-referential thing like my religion is right or my whatever, and if everyone just does what they think is cool and lets everyone else do what they think is cool without some need to change them to mine yeah the whole thing seems to run better right.
Jake:
Right, this is and I won't go too far down this but this is why mythology is a language that speaks to me specifically, because, if I look at these religions through a mythological standpoint, joseph Campbell, who is a leading expert on I mean, maybe the foremost expert of the 20th century on mythology and comparative religions, said that a good mythology must always remain transparent to the transcendent, the transcendent here being that level of reality that exists whether or not we believe in it. And so we're saying this story is great because we can talk about it, but it should be like a window that allows us to see ultimate reality through it. And when we start treating that window like it's a painting and saying, oh look, here are the details that really matter, that's when we get the conflict. When we treat it as a window and I say you're Muslim and I'm Christian and look, we're both looking through these windows to see the same thing, then we get to actually see that we're connected.
Frank:
Yeah, religion's a really good one to talk about. I mean, it still has the risk of someone being upset by it. But you know, people have asked me why I don't like strongly believe in evangelism or something truly, because when I think of things like does their life bear fruit? As a window, it does, like someone who is muslim, if their life bears fruit, what? Who like? I don't care what window they look through, um, and I think other people like get real upset about that. But yeah, it's just like do what you think is cool and follow your heart, and like you'll find yourself wanting the world to flourish.
Jake:
Yes.
Frank:
Through whatever windows they use. Yeah, something like this.
Jake:
Yeah, and I've been on both sides of that. I have looked at it as a painting. That was how I was raised.
Jake:
It was taught to me as concrete reality. This is true, you ascribe to it and I have extreme empathy for that viewpoint. That is no longer a tenable position to take and I've seen more and I mean I do believe that I'm correct. But the thing about my perspective is that it says everyone is. It allows room for your story to be true and your story to be true, and it doesn't say we have to go to war because we have different stories, right?
Frank:
yeah, well, that's, and it might end up with, like you know, the thing that gets a lot of people is like did they accept christ in their heart or whatever? And if you don't accept christ in your heart, you can't go to heaven? Or yeah, um, and I'm you know, maybe if you sort of join them in looking through their window there, it may be a day where they do accept Christ in their heart or something. But if you just say that's not how it is, let's kill each other, like you can't get to heaven through your way, right, we're going to kill each other instead. Like what, heaven through your way, right?
Jake:
we're gonna kill each other instead, like what? And it's funny because you know that also is a translation of this thing. You know, I get both sides of it. A lot of people, when they talk about christ, uh, they make it synonymous with this historic figure, jesus, because he sort of talked about Christ and Christ was exposed through his experience. I personally would say that Buddha also had Christ consciousness and that he had Christ in his heart. He used a different word for it, but through his expression in the world, he was showing Christ. So when people say you must accept Christ in their heart, what they're really saying is ask Jesus into your heart. And, and I I'm saying, okay, that's one story, um, but the truth here is that the fruit is, is Christ, it's beingness, it is accepting this world and treating it like heaven and treating you like you're divine, because you are, and, uh, that's the type of fruit that makes the world flourish right, yeah but yeah, I mean that that was sort of a branch off of this original thing which was like morality and um.
Jake:
So, yeah, I say crazy things like that. I know that it sounds divisive. I am morally flawless. Um, I guess it's maybe me vocalizing an inner voice for myself. I did grow up thinking this behavior makes you a good person or this behavior makes you a bad person, and so that voice still speaks in my mind and I counter it with no, there was nothing good or bad. This doesn't make you a good or bad person, because what else is in you is the decision not to express those things that would be, uh, counterproductive in a social setting. You might have the desire to hit your sister, but you chose not to write. In a social setting. That means you're good. That you wanted to doesn't make you bad.
Frank:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just think in execution, for me it's it's just a different insertion point. This is what I mean. So, yeah, you hit your sister and you start to say I am bad or whatever. You notice this thought, um, or you don't hit your sister and you say I am good or whatever, but I think I just go to the I and you say I am good or whatever, but I think I just go to the I. Like when I have found myself in the I mean it doesn't even have to be good, like it doesn't, it's not good, or bad because it's like I am annoyed, I am the problem.
Frank:
For me it's the I. That's the problem. Sure, that's sort of where I look at it, like that's where I catch it, or something. Yeah, it's's the problem. Sure, that's sort of where I look at it, like that's where I catch it, or something.
Jake:
Yeah.
Frank:
It's usually the problem. For me it's a self-referential. Like I am annoyed. Is that really what's going on here in this moment? Like that is only the experience of me, and all the world and all of creation may or may not be annoyed. Like the cars are just going down the road. All the rest of the people are doing whatever they're doing, so the eye is the problem.
Jake:
I love that because that, to me, is the exact same thing that I said in this. In the two layers concept, it is like I am Jake, right, I'm not going to take that away. I'm not going to say Jake doesn't exist. Jake is a happening and he is happening right now. But at the other layer, I am also the universe unfolding, I am also this entire planet happening at once. I am part of this great thing and on that level, I am Jake and I'm also, uh, trump and I'm also, uh, mahatma Gandhi, and I'm also Trump and I'm also Mahatma Gandhi and I'm also like I am all of these things happening and on that level, if I take that eye away, yeah, there is no good or bad, it's just happening.
Frank:
Yeah, how much shared experience do you identify with with Trump?
Jake:
I don't know Trump. You know there are lots of parts of me that dislike parts of him. He expresses things that I have deemed unacceptable within myself. Can I call him morally good or bad? No, I can say that I would make different decisions as me if I were in his position.
Frank:
But if I were him, I would be him and I'd be doing what he's doing yeah, sometimes people ask about like, what's most attractive about trump or whatever, and I think it is the thing that he will say what is on his mind okay, so it's the five minute podcast thing yeah, it's just like that's the thing, because it's definitely not the content of his character or his words or something, but it is that it seems to be unfiltered or something like that.
Frank:
But that's only attractive still to 50% of the people. Oh well, no, it only results in a vote or whatever for 50% of the people, a vote or whatever for 50 of the people. But I think I think everyone on some level is like has some draw to that. It just might be overpowered by a draw to like I'm not gonna let that dude be in charge of our country yeah, I wish that there was more of that in politics.
Jake:
Yeah, I will say what's on my mind, because, um, we do have this sense that they're just saying the thing that people want to hear, right. So, on the surface, him just saying what's on his mind looks really desirable and different. Unfortunately, the thing that is on his mind always seems to be spinning the truth, you know, toward what he wants to achieve. So it's like halfway toward that and on the surface it looks like that.
Frank:
Yeah, I mean, he's probably I don't know what he. I don't know anything about him really but yeah, it's probably a program it's. It's probably not really what he's thinking or something, you know. I don't know, maybe he's doing it on purpose, but it does.
Jake:
I think it's attractive to a lot of people because it feels like he just live streamed what he really felt For sure, and there's, there's an interesting balance here. I mean you talked about, like the foreign war conversations at work in the last episode and virtue signaling and stuff like that. There is a side effect of looking at I am, I am morally uh flawless this concept and that everyone is, and that is that there's the potential for apathy. There's the potential that everything is as it is, it should. There is no should. It shouldn't be this way or that way you start to have questions about social justice.
Jake:
Should we really be fighting for all of this stuff? Yeah like does it make a difference or is this just how it is? Those questions come up in my mind, um, because I want to accept the world as it is, but there's still like this. They're still striving.
Frank:
Definitely, this is like such. I want to have this conversation because all I think shoulds are so powerful for the self-referential conversation, like when it's you, what are you going to do? Like not you, not me telling you, I mean I yeah, like an individual I hate the foreign war.
Frank:
What can I do about it? Do it for for sure I hate the foreign wars. I'm going to post on Instagram about it or whatever. Is it doing something? Maybe it is, I don't hate it, but it seems like there's a lot more people posting about it than doing something about it. Sure, maybe I'm wrong, but that should, I feel like is valuable for an an internal conversation.
Jake:
Yeah.
Frank:
What should I do about this? This thing is making me angry. What should I do? Sure, yeah. But as a societal pressure to like everybody's talking about.
Jake:
I'm failing to do the right thing because I don't know what the right thing is. There's a lot of assumption there though. A hundred percent. Yeah, you don't know what the right thing is.
Frank:
There's a lot of assumption there, though, 100% you don't know what they are or are not doing you don't know the half of it, right? That's all, jake, why do you hate Andrew Hiller?
Jake:
He seems to criticize for clicks. There was a. There was a question that came up in the CrossFit community recently which is like is Andrew Hiller good for CrossFit?
Frank:
which is a really blanket statement, but I do a little um 22 second preface on who this person is Andrew.
Jake:
Hiller. He used to be a CrossFit Games athlete, I believe. I think he's still a coach. Two or three years ago he got a lot of traction on YouTube for videos that essentially called CrossFit out for all the things that they were doing that he thought were bad. Called CrossFit out for all the things that they were doing that he thought were bad. Like look at these deadlifts in this workout and nobody's calling this elite athlete on all these. No reps, they're not locking out. Sure, you know why aren't they doing that? They're famous, right. So the critique is really great. But I think that people latched onto that and then you get that very human thing which is I just want to complain and complain and complain, and so it became less of a generative critique and more of an aggressive critique. Yeah, I would say that's. That's what it is Like. I see value in some of what he said. I just hate that it's driven by this sort of rage impulse, or seems to be.
Frank:
And what, for you personally, is wrong about the rage?
Jake:
It's blind. I think that it has the potential to be blind. The rage can be inspired by anything. The rage is contagious and once I'm looking for things to be mad about, I see other things to be mad about, whereas if it's from a generative place, I can get angry at something because it's not doing what it says it's intended to do and I can call it out on not aligning with its own values. But I can also say and here's what they're doing, that's great. And that balance allows me to see things objectively, as opposed to I'm angry about this, so I'm talking about it. Do you think?
Jake:
hillary is a legalist where he shouldn't be no, I I mean like, as a human, there's, there's the human and there's the persona, right, um, I think that it legitimately came out of a desire to help. The way it has been expressed is very, very emotional, which I think got in the way of the intended message, and then the sort of subsequent relationship dynamics between he and his followers started to spiral more and more and become something it wasn't really intended to be, and now it's all just clickbait, angry. Look at what they're doing wrong. Look at all these people doing bad things that I find annoying, and it's just a friction that I have.
Jake:
I can honestly say both of these things. I really dislike this person. I feel animosity toward them, and good things have come from what they are doing. Both of those things are true, sure, but I I worry about that spirit, and I find that it's generally not productive for humans to be focused only on things that make them mad. It makes you blind. Why do you hate Noah Olson? Because I see myself in him and he does things that I didn't allow myself to do.
Frank:
They just seem opposites to me and I was curious.
Jake:
Oh yeah. I think that this is a perfect sort of example of the local and the global, the. I am morally flawless on the global scale and I am morally flawed on the local scale. Jake, the ego, jake, the I can have issues with these people and Jake, at the sort of I am, I am all universal level is like it's nothing but love. This is me and I am being.