Nihilism: Living as if Santa Claus Isn't Watching.

so this is my first introduction to
nihilism and I always imagined it was more of the view that life is meaningless so you know get up on the weekends like just do you know don't you see there's a leaf between those two ideas baby let's get up those are two very separate philosophical yeah yes I absolutely see that but I mean it wasn't that obvious Banas Yin he did not think of himself as it as Annihilus but it's the same kind of thing of you know well I've debunked Santa Claus therefore I can drink whiskey every day after 4 p.m. these are not related it's true San exists what you do after 4 p.m. is up to you Santa Claus is no longer watching what you do after 4 p.m. so there's even more responsibility on you and you alone without Santa Clauses guidance without consequence Santa Claus to decide what you're doing after 4 p.m. but whether or not it's drinking whiskey [Music] baddest yen recently and a video we recorded about I think the title is stop treating Native Americans like infants uh-huh one of my least popular videos yeah you said that you were raised with two parents who are both atheist and they encouraged you to go to church services you did attend some churches and dogs and other stuff like that yeah sure right yeah so I was raised Christian by my parents I was I went through confirmation in the Lutheran Church when I was 12 or 13 so I went through this this class where I was a confirmed believer in Jesus and you know I was baptized he gave you your official get into heaven card yes yep yep card-carrying heaven applicant I guess yeah all right so that's just like the context of I'm going to describe so when I was growing up I had a friend who we met in choir but that's really the only reason why we were friends we were both in the same choir and this choir went on a three-week tour of Italy so you know I got to know this guy and he was like the polar opposite of me I knew that I never heard this story before and have no idea where that's going any preparation he already good yeah yeah so he was just he had a rebellious nature and he was very outgoing everybody knew and like he he was in multiple bands he played music he's saying and he was just you know he was just he just had an aura about him right a lot of people like he seemed like he could be a cult leader basically like his he really inspired like many many kids to do the same things as he did I knew that he liked I knew that he did drugs like I knew that he was sexually acted like I knew that he had like you know he was he was really mature for his age so anyway the reason why I bring this up is because he proclaimed himself as Annihilus and so that was this was the first introduction I had to nihilism I really didn't know what it was about but I knew that he like really liked Nietzsche and I knew this was a been age 15 or something yeah yeah so this was my first introduction to nihilism and I always imagined it was more of the view that life is meaningless so you know get up on the weekends like just do you know don't you see there's a leap between those two ideas those are two very philosophical yeah yes I absolutely see that but I mean it wasn't that obvious these are two separate they're gone right it wasn't you know I I didn't write research philosophy on my own I didn't do any reading I just knew that this that nihilism was something that you know and kind of like his band of followers were also vaguely nihilist and also Buddhism this this is my first interaction so yeah my first impression was that it was really reckless and yeah yeah so anyway then you know can I pop in yes you see how the other ministry but you know so another purely anecdotal thing I think part of what's going on there is a lot of people whether they're raised with it or not they assume that virtue rests on some belief and then when that belief gets refuted they think virtue itself becomes meaningless with a particular virtue becomes meaningless and I have an example this with one of my former bosses now I'm gonna try to keep this anonymous because the nature of the anecdotes is somewhat salacious saying I hope you can figure out who I'm talking about for it easily so one of my bosses one of my employers I he grew up at least culturally Christian I guess you'd say you know celebrating Christmas and Easter but not a lever and both of his parents had I had lost their faith in I don't know how it shows its extreme historical circumstances but anyway but nevertheless grew up around in Christian culture and so on and you know when he reached a certain age he decided as I see some young men of the Internet today he decided that the assumptions around him in his culture were all a lie and that therefore you know very specifically and especially you know laws and moral expectations surrounding sexual behavior we're all world nonsense and that therefore it was perfectly all right to sleep with prostitutes which he did in large quantities for the rest of his life and when he met me and you know I mean he'd been through his whole life obviously challenging others and being challenging us I mean his views on sexuality you can be around atheists who do not think it's cool to sleep with prostitutes you can be around people of all different you know religious and moral characters who you know say what's what's the matter with you you know in effect you know unjust or also people who just surprised and asked you know why don't you have a girlfriend or why don't you choose to live to live some other way and when he talked to me I think I can say in layman's terms you know it it him up because I think I was the first person to challenge his assumptions without taking any of the traditional moral high-ground that he was accustomed to dismissing or well you know what he felt he had grown out of in childhood so he at one point I mean at various points that I'd already knew before this particular conversation of what his position was on human sexuality and morality and what have you he did not think of himself as a nihilist but it's the same kind of thing of you know well I've debunked Santa Claus therefore I can drink whiskey every day after 4 p.m. these are not related it's true exist what you do after 4 p.m. is up to you Santa Claus is no longer watching what you do after 4 p.m. so there's even more responsibility on you and you alone without Santa Clauses guidance without consequence Santa Claus to decide what you're doing after 4 p.m. but whether or not it's drinking whiskey I mean it's like God is like a like a parental figure for a lot of people right right forcing them to behave you know and all of those objective moral standards like you know a lot of people here in Asia including China inclusive the instead of a specific God it was often a vague sense of the ghosts of your ancestors but they watched you like Santa Claus your deceased grandparents and great-grandparents were watching you and expecting you to get married and have kids and live up to a certain moral standards it was more permissive than the Christian Bible but still you know so to say it's not even necessarily a Christian God you can see that same pattern playing out of the disembodied objective moral standard haunting you right anyway then what happens to the class sir just finished thing with my with my boss he's so when I challenged him I remember sitting there he alluded to what I already knew his kind of you know anti philosophy of why he sleeps with prostitutes basically or self justification of why he sleeps apostates and I remember this particular conversation i sat there and I said to him if you have two young men and one of them openly says to you that he got into university because he paid bribes he didn't write the same exams everyone else did do you regard those two men equally he said well you know what you know what do you mean he was really kind of blown away by this I said you know I don't have any particular respect for university education there are a lot of videos on this channel criticizing university education my own experience to deforestation is really negative ersity student today this is the big-deal mode but nevertheless i said i don't believe in the university but if i know two guys and i know that one only gone into university because he cheated because he paid a bribe I regard him differently than the other people who went through the went through the process you know I don't have to believe it's virtuous to do well on your courses and then the next point was you know in terms of your actual grades in terms of graduate in terms what you achieved in university if I know that you paid bribes if I know that you bought an A+ instead of earning it I don't even have to believe that earning it is good to have a valorized fetish each what I mean I'll have to believe to believe that buying it is bad you know I mean and you could see where I was trying into this I said you know I don't have to believe in a Christian sexual morality for me to see that you paying someone to pretend to be your girlfriend is different from having someone who actually loves you and it's your girlfriend whatever it is you have to do to earn that which is again a very nebulous con what does it mean to earn an a-plus it's actually pretty nebulous from my perspective at least there is no simple sense of what you earn having a girlfriend but loving someone and being loved by them and having sex whatever even having an authentic one-night stand I mean it's not prostitution you didn't pay for it it's not phony virtue you know anyway I had other examples after that but that was the first one and he had never thought in those terms at all and for him it was like there was this you know Christian moral standard that he grew up adjacent to at least and then as soon as that crumbled you know again it says random as okay there is no Santa Claus therefore drink whiskey or there is no God therefore you get involved with drugs and self-destructive activities well on really that's more of a current believers mindset unless you your current faith is so strong that your faith is the only thing preventing you from acts of wanton self-destruction your faith is the only thing preventing you from drinking alcohol using drugs or sleeping with prostitutes that makes sense for someone who is a believer it doesn't make sense for someone who's not a believer right it's shallow and it's deep at the same time okay you'll have to rewind yes probably I said sounds like something I'd say yeah yeah yeah I don't know so I just I just had this was right no I think it's gonna look at but look I would they won't even believing in the university system we still have questions of virtue about you know actually doing your course actually learning and that's ultimately indirectly what it's about right like the virtue isn't getting an a-plus the virtue is learning and now you know well if you paid bribes if you paid cash on the table which is a big problem in many countries in the world if you pain tribes or let's say you're your father in the States this is more common your father is wealthy and he makes a donation to the University and then the university knows they have to bend the rules for you or something or your uh your hero on the football team and the sports team lets the professor's know you know you've got to get good grades if you didn't earn it yeah there's still our questions have virtue here even if I don't believe in the University I don't believe in football I don't believe that an a-plus is actually meaningful sure there are still there are still questions of virtue so virtue doesn't exist or cease to exist on the basis of faith now if I really had to get into I've got other videos in this I can again compare that to the painter with the painting this is my standard he's a creative baseline image for nihilism and value and meaning of life I don't believe there's anything inherent in a blank canvas that's beautiful or meaningful but we can take some paint and put it on the canvas and we can create something that's meaningful and evocative so in that in that same way yeah what you're saying is really intelligent and I really like oh you know I I appreciate on like your been exposed to since I know I first saw it when I first started watching your channel and like just you know being in a relationship with you being exposed to this different idea of nihilism one that doesn't presuppose it as something that will allow you to behave recklessly because because life is meaningless because yeah because this is this is what I saw you know and this in this person that I knew well I think it's - yeah you know in a sense it's not like I um you know like it kind of like for a while like I admired him because I was just like wow this is just like really a different what I was raised with you know I was I was super anti-drug anti-alcohol even like in high school I did not drink at all like I was as you know as I've said like you know I was like the polar opposite of him in like every way so but and the same in this strange way we could be friends and like I could admire him and like see a different side of the story so like you know I appreciated my friendship with him but I think it gave me like a different view of nihilism that that you kind of broke broke that sure facade sure I mean I think you know nihilism isn't disillusionment ism you know what I mean right that's what it seemed like it right I mean disillusionment with one set of beliefs can lead to some other set of behaviors but I mean you said before I mean you seem to write down when I said it woke a the fact that I don't believe Santa Claus is watching me I mean it's part of the concept of Santa Clauses he's watching whether you're good or bad and then that determines whether or not you get good presents at the end of the other whether I should get good president we been naughty and who's been nice you know again it doesn't even take really a profound or adult person to realize you know wow okay there's nobody watching me there's nobody responsible for the consequences of my actions but me and then to see that as increasing you know my role in my importance and so on yeah I mean on the level of values too like even if you just think about it being a conformist versus a nonconformist because a lot of people don't believe in the Christian God but they conform to Christian values or something in a question way when you realize look these values are of my choosing and in my creation like I'm working actually I'm working from a blank canvas here I'm not working from a canvas handed down to me by my grandparents or by the culture I was born into if I wanted to I could subscribe to a more Hindu or Buddhist set of values or none at all or start from a blank sheet of paper you know but again that's and that's an even more awesome responsibility you know there was this song which is not a great song called be your own personal Jesus and I remember I was a child when I first heard that and you know I I saw in that way and if you listen to the lyrics that song it's not what it's meant to be saying but okay well what if we do taking our Savoy you say okay well I've got to be my own Moses I use Moses I've got to write my own Ten Commandments or have none or I write seven of them and then I try to live by those commitments and I realize they're flawed and I changed them because they're not written in stone because only I wrote them and I'm not tuned in well that's there's a sense of an awesome you know personal responsibility and a very changing set of horizons in your life that I think comes with nihilism or any any kind of breakthrough like that um so I don't I don't see it as leading to you know drinking alcohol and self-destructive behavior but on the other hand I mean something I said to you before we start this video I said you know keep in mind I do preach veganism to people I do tell people they ought to be vegan I don't tell people that they they are not less you know what I mean I don't feel this is something for everyone or something we're in a really simple way I can say you know everyone will benefit from it um I have a lot of videos one of my catchphrases here is you know stupidity is real and I haven't taken any sincere interest in how stupid people or extremely stupid people would cope with this kind of challenge I think that it and I think that's kind of a legit question now with that even said I don't easily or lightly think like well they're for stupid people should be part of destructive religions that you know preach that we should you know be in a constant state of holy war or something I mean there's obviously a lot of danger that comes out of stupid people having having faith in religion but I think you know obviously nihilism and historical nihilism is my personal philosophy a historical nihilism you really saw that in the dialogue with with Canada Jen Sam Kennedy says another youtuber other people criticize me I think reasonably by saying that I wasn't sincerely interested in bringing my argument down to her level or she could understand it I'm completely guilty as charged I'm really not I'm really not interested in dumbing down and I do I do think she's a she's a very stupid person and she may she may have some kind of undiagnosed learning disability I don't know but like my school of nihilism historical nihilism with this big emphasis on if you want to say it's learning from history taking history seriously and so on there are people I think like her who will never be capable of doing that they'll never be capable of just sitting down and looking at oh wow so to use the same example what is the historical reality of slavery you know just which is one example of thousands we can kind of learn so much about it learn so much about ourselves learn about the human condition and politics and everything and learn about belief systems and ideologies and how they work another break or there's a lot we can learn from from slavery but she's the kind of person who can't even get on those kind of first baby steps to you know what I think of as you know philosophical nihilism so it's not gonna work for her but what would that having been said I look at someone the current have said sympathetic things and it's like wow it's really pathetic and really tragic that you've now converted to Islam that you've lost the little inch of freedom of thought and creativity you had in your life maybe you didn't have much but that's all you had and now it's gone because this faith has taken over your life you know it's it's very very sad so I don't say that to dehumanize people but you know veganism is something for everybody it's you know and I've said that in different videos if you really believe veganism is for everybody that's very challenging too because that means veganism is for people who don't agree with you politically and people come from different backgrounds and veganism is for people who are religious who are Christian or Hindu or with religions there's there's a lot in that to challenge me too but I don't I don't feel nihilism is for everyone and I think I think your 15 year old friend I think he probably was the opposite he probably thought it was no he probably thought it was for everybody that everybody should just get rid of their inhibitions and booze up on Thursday night or whatever you know yeah yeah I think so I think nihilism can be devastating to some people I think like that the concepts that there is no sure belief like there is nothing to believe nothing to believe in you you know like you know I became atheist basically like I I lost my faith when like when I was in college I didn't really know what that about you'd be honest I didn't know what point you could yeah like when I I guess it was you know I guess it was like you know I kind of am under estimating like like the the sorry I'm so inarticulate about this at the moment but um how this friendship or like play played a role in this like you know um like I said I admired this person because they were like the polar opposite of me but it was still like you know we were in a band together for like some some school event so I went over to his house to to practice to rehearse and it was just like really just like grody and like you know like he and his band members were smoking weed and you know I like I said I was extreme like I was totally anti-drug it and I didn't smoke or anything and I kind of like saw just the I guess the poverty that like he lived in dude um and it was kind of I don't know sorry we don't have to include this but I think but you know this this kind of also had an impact on me um you think that you think that what is like who who is who is this for like who is this belief system for like what kind of people as it people that have been raised and certain circumstances or not because you know sorry but you think that lit a spark for you that led to you questioning Christianity in a different way oh no I mean oh yeah and generally like once I went to college I didn't attend church every week you know um and I really was thinking about it more and you know why am i praying at night why do I pray every night when I get into you know like Who am I talking to like am i talking to anybody you know there it always been like you've told me stories about your own kind of skepticism or semi atheism as a child yeah but you did actually continue praying until like early colleges Wow god I didn't know that yeah but it was like I think I was in a rebellious phase when I first started college in a variety of ways and I you know I didn't become like it I didn't then like oh you know it must be nihilism or something you know when you said before that um you know you think it would be devastating for some people to lose faith or transition a nihilism or something I have trouble imagining that but I mean the main form of belief like real world belief that matters to people a lot that they they cling to that I've that I've seen in my life is probably belief in nation and nationality like belief that Canada is a great country or belief in the United States or this this kind of thing that can mean a lot to people and you know for me growing up in Canada Toronto Canada having everyone constantly telling you that's wrong that Canada is the best place in the world and Toronto is the best place in Canada yeah but you know this this kind of thing but I'm being constantly told that Canada is better than the United States that was the ego trip that's the comparison that everything Agana was better and Americans think America is the greatest country in the world but it's not and this kind of thing so I mean you know when you said that like Oh what would cause people lot of suffering um you know I see a lot of suffering in people trying to maintain those delusions you know like the same way people trying to justify their own religion and justify their place in their religion and justify the you know the crimes committed in name of the religion or nettie I see a lot of suffering in that and even even within Buddhism we're relatively you know nonviolent relatively you know religion doesn't have a kind of obvious sexual sexual and psychological problems that you know Islam does terms interfering with your your normal life it's not repressive in the same way but still people trying to justify to themselves and others you know that this religion if anything you know I can see a you know a sense of relief in escaping from that but I mean I think probably one that's the most troubling is nationalism and belief in your nation and then living without that afterwards I mean you know just on a really practical level like during the time we've been together during the last six months or eight months you know I've talked about with you moving to a long list of countries you know when I talk about whatever universities in Canada or education options Canada I'm openly saying to you like well maybe our time would be better spent in Germany or New Zealand or you know like Taiwan this is kind of amazing long list now you know like this isn't some kind of you know ooh tray theoretical 80 nationalism you know I mean this isn't like a critique of what's wrong with Canadian problems which I also do do criticize the throne Canadian problem but that's you know that's living with this kind of grim awareness well my country is just one country among many you know maybe it's better than some other countries in a few particular ways but then it's worse in other ways there are advantages and disadvantages and so on so I mean that's that's one that definitely haunts me and causes suffering and so on and it it's connected to real world you know questions and definitely just even but the kind of self confidence of the sort of stereotype American bumpkin and I've met a couple of British people like that to British people who really think that jolly old England is the best place they puzzler I do but even if it's just in that harmless way you can see how that gives people's lives you know shape and direction I would not say meaning I think it oh but it gives their lives kind of shape and direction that mine absolutely doesn't have yeah and I'm left I'm left instead with a very sincere constant questioning of you know okay like let's say I'm a painter let's say I'm a visual artist is my time being wasted by being a painter in Canada or in Victoria Canada specifically one place to get as opposed to being in Madrid you know the same effort I'm putting into this art would there be better outcomes or audience for it and that's I mean I think it's a question we should ask ourselves but I'd say my life is really drowning in those questions all the time because of my lack of nationalism and my negative relationship towards Canadian nationalism as ideology and in practical reality so yeah honestly this is just a response to having say you know we cause people a lot of suffering in some ways I don't feel that way at all but that's an example of something where I can I could see that coming out of it yeah okay I guess what I could say for my experience I don't I don't think it was really I wouldn't say devastating you know but um as you said like you know throughout my younger years like I had questioning about Christianity the mean the main thing that really I was questioning um is the concept of death I think was a huge part of it um and belief in Christianity because when he died you will go to heaven um and I felt this because when I was growing up my dad was often very sick and like he was a real threat like my dad could die like I don't want him to like die and never come never like you know have any hurt to die and cease to exist and you know like I I remember just you know lying in bed in bed thinking about this and really like examining like is this at all plausible as this is this really is this just something made up so that you feel more comfortable with with um life and death so I think that was a big part and I I think it would be devastating to some people and I remember like at funerals also having discussions about it and at the funeral of one of my grandparents one of my cousins said like you know I I don't know if I don't know if Christianity is you know right about everything but I might as well believe in because then when I die I'll go to heaven you know like I might as well just kind of go along with it cuz if I don't believe in it then fine you know then then I'll be screwed but if I do believe in it and it's not real then I won't know the difference it was just like really strike you know it was um I think that was in highschool for me too so ya know it's fun but for me I don't see that being being difficult for some people to process that sure but for me the challenge of both religion and philosophy and thus nihilism is you know how am I gonna live a meaningful life which is you know different from and similar to the question of what is the meaning of life but how am I gonna live a meaningful life is putting the putting the onus on me clearly you know you know one again what's what's the meaning of this blank canvas as opposed to how am I gonna take this canvas and make meaningful out of it and yeah some people including some you know theories of psychology put a lot of emphasis on this this confrontation with death but I've you know I've never really been risk-averse that way I've never you know been afraid of death or dying you know the process of dying or or death which for some people are two very distinctive things some people are not afraid of death but are afraid of dying and that kind of thing so for me I've you know maybe that's why I don't relate to the kind of you know the reasons why people cling to you I think because you weren't raised with this initial belief when you were a child that like death wasn't finite you know like a lot of like at least I was raised that way like you you know when you die that's not it you know like there's something greater after you die and of course you know I obviously I don't believe that at all anymore like you know it's it seems like Santa Claus it's just some fancy some fanciful thing to tell kids and it's just sad because like if you grew up if you grow up not thinking that way I think it's just I think it's really beneficial and it's also you know just coming back to what I said in the beginning like it's also beneficial for you for your parents to have recommended like hey you can go to these church services and choose for yourself like what religion you know rather than being yeah doctrine eight into one and say like this is what you will be I don't think they I don't think they thought it through that much but you know what would be the outcome of my going and attending different route I really don't think they thought that through because of course they'd be horrified if I did convert I was like a social experiment for you to like could have been could have been bad parenting on their part but you you know you did just point out one one positive aspect of it but yeah this issue with belief in the afterlife I mean it fundamentally is the same as Santa Claus because then the point is not just you know this doesn't liberate you it binds you yeah then you have to leave your life beholden to the grave then your whole life becomes defined in terms of how you're gonna live visa vie you know these this set of Commandments you have to live up to or what defines what happens after you after you die so yeah very very strange very strange way of thinking I remember reading a Christian criticism of Buddhism so I was interested in all these things you know in all these countries like Cambodia and Laos sure like there were Buddhists who choose to convert to Christianity and one of the questions this is a Cambodian guy who converted to Christianity from Buddhism he said you know in Buddhism you just have to do good deeds all the time and it's never enough and he said in Christianity you know you know when you're saved so it's stuff like that Co comfort know there's a checklist and then I think you can't commit murder they're a few you know you can't you're a pen okay say you're sorry it's really absurd but some lists there's some checklist you can live up to it and then be and then be confident he said whereas you know if you believe in Buddhism you're just kind of running around trying to do the best you can all the time it's you know it's terrible and I remember reading this saying like yes that's exactly why Buddhism is better than Christianity you know there's no there's none of this it's just do good deeds all the time you know of course I mean Buddhism as its own has its own but I also thought of the you know how observe the concept of sufficient virtue you know I've done enough yeah you know now I can just watch football or I don't even know go skiing whatever the third to you know they've done enough to satisfy you know God and heaven and the grave so nothing more can be demanded from that that also seems to me a very dangerous idea you know sufficient virtue sufficient virtue leads to leads to evil seems to me yeah because a lot of people say like well you know I do enough good for the environment I have an electric car you know so why do I need to go VII I talked with a guy online you said very sincerely he said I've done enough because he'd been a gay rights activist you know yet he was like I had 15 years experience being a bro there for and it's like dude you know that's not the way it works you know it's not like you were gay rights activist for 10 years now you can go in your backyard and slit the throat of a pig and watch the blood pouring into the gutter in front of you and be like well you but sucks to be you Pig too bad for the environment you had for my health too bad for this pig it just doesn't make sense you know yeah alright nihilism freeform video why I appreciate your views on nihilism and how they affected yeah and I mean I guess the thing is what you said earlier was that you know when you first met me it was it was just to challenge your assumptions about nihilism because you you associated nihilism with this kind of hyper self-indulgent disillusioned life sorry sex and drugs and alcohol yeah and and very fundamentally just say well you know there are no there are no gods above me you know I'm not relying on some legislature like Moses to write my laws but for me that that only increases I guess yeah the final thing that I was thinking of I did mention this when one day when we were walking around is that a lot of the things that a lot of practices of yours are commonly associated with certain religions so not drinking is you know so you have these you have these things about you that people might assume it's religious but it's not it's really obviously you know like do you have no belief and so it's just it's yeah I think I think there too you know there are two really simple suitable whether it's you know not drinking alcohol or living in kind of discipline and score the lifestyle or something yeah I mean you know I think people can can look at that and say well you know if you're not doing this just for its own good why are you doing it like would you be doing these things just because God tells you to or Moses right but for me I think that the really dangerous step is to be out there trying to do good without even believing in good and evil you know what and that's I mean I think that's the precipice nihilism puts you on but I think it's a very powerful position to be in because you know again even with the humanitarian work you meet people who say like well how dare you question X Y or Z they really believe in things being good and evil programs or whatever it is they're both they may believe in the American bombing of Vietnam is good whatever it is because they're all kind of leaves you can believe in that are not gods and are not really and so I will know I'm able to take this you know truly skeptical position of saying well I don't know if this is good or evil I was involved serving you know real-life examples approach until this now but you know I was involved with a humanitarian program and they were supposedly improving agriculture to prevent people starving and even something as obvious is that you really have to ask well is this good or is this evil or do I not know yet you know when something is extensively I mean who could question that like you just use a word like improvement improving agricultural methods to help the poor of course of course it must be good well get involved and keep your wits about you keep a kind of skeptical or nihilistic attitude and you start to see all the ways and in which it's bad you know again this is very not vegan but you know in one of my villages where I did this humanitarian work the people used to eat frogs and they would really go out and gather frogs and mass because a lot of these a lot of these forms of Agriculture in Southeast Asia are in puddled so there's the the like rice farming where there's the water level is called puddling the land so there's you know so frogs come and you get a lot of frogs living in reproducing it and burrowing in whether it's your rice crop or your whatever it is you're farming in those conditions you got intentionally wet land that way and they would go out and kill hundreds and hundreds or maybe you know more than a thousand folks and then have them in big wooden barrels which I which I saw well then they start using improved meaning modern meaning Western agricultural methods now they're spraying the crops of pesticides reportedly I mean I can believe this reportedly the frogs so soak up the pesticides and people eat the frogs and get sick now I mean hey you know footnote obviously I don't have hard scientific proof but everyone there was observing this they said oh now that we spray the the crops as best as we can we can't heat the frogs anymore and some things that just disappeared from the ecosystem they said we used to get mushrooms and these other plants growing and this stuff is now probably because there were fungicides in the olden whatever they were spraying on the crops and so on you start to see how the whole community changes the whole ecology changes shifting from swidden agriculture which is actually called shifting agriculture also moving from sweat and agriculture to western-style permanent agriculture well we used to regrow the forestry stem all this wildlife we used to live in a different way you know and then you're imposing a modern Western scheme of farming on them and so on and I met people up there I don't take this view I met people there who were even challenging the idea that we should stop these people from growing opium they'd say well look before they farmed OPM and this is part of the traditional culture and now your forest where's a modern Western belief I love it so much anyway on that one I do genuinely believe their communities are improved by getting rid of opium if that makes me feel Sophia but yeah things as obvious as that so no I mean there's there's there's undertaking you know to do to do something good just because you believe it's good you don't believe Santa Claus is watching you you don't believe there's a reward and your afterlife or everything else but then there's undertaking to do things with the profound knowledge that the difference between good and evil is an idea in our own heads like the difference between a weed and a vegetable you know vegetables are weeds weeds are vegetables you know you can you can farm dandelions or you can intentionally kill them all you know it's just in your own mind and with the kind of you know profound anxiety about the limits of your own knowledge and awareness and that you may not know what's good or bad what's destructive or constructive until it's until it's too late as that whole circumstance unfolds so that's that is what I practice and you can see already why that's not something that's easy to preach it's not even in that context like it's not easy for me to say to someone else who's working in humanitarian work like well you shouldn't you really shouldn't believe in this stuff you should remain profoundly open-minded to the busboy that what you're doing here is wrong and destructive and is ruining these people's livelihoods and is ruining their village and I new examples that I can show you one that's that's written up a village that was completely depopulated that ended up with the population abandoning the village because of humanitarian intervention from the French government in Laos it's hilarious empezar and from those people they believed they were doing good they believed they were lifting these people out of poverty instead they were taking them from poverty to homelessness plus poverty they they completely destroyed their village through a humanitarian intervention all of which could have been described I'm sure in ideologically very pleasing terms all right bonus yen