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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this video I'm going to talk about good versus evil okay good versus evil of the classic battle right okay well let's dig into this and talk about what good and evil actually are this is going to be more of a philosophical video not going to be as immediately practical and applicable SMI others but actually at the end I'm going to go in and tell you why this is an important concept for you to understand it properly and the problem that I see is that most people don't really understand what good people are and how they actually operate and what's really going on in reality and so because of this it can lead to a lot of dysfunction it creates an adversarial relationship with reality which leads to closed mindedness and does not get you the kind of results that you want in your life and it keeps you from being happy so it is practical you just have to bear with me to see how it all interconnects here it's going to be a little more philosophical so good versus evil why is this topic even interesting to us well all of us have heard of good and evil many of us tend to believe that good and evil are out there somewhere and you know we ask ourselves questions such as why do evil things happen to good people or questions like why does evil sometimes prevail over good in this world why does that seem to happen why are there good people and why do there seem to be evil people and if that's the case how do you convert a good person to an evil person or an evil person to a good person is that possible so all these kind of interesting life questions start to come up and the critical thing here is that I have to warn you that this video requires an open mind it requires an open mind because what I'm talking about here challenges conventional wisdom and conventional wisdom on this subject is wrong conventional wisdom is what you get from the media the culture Society what you were raised to believe what your religion told you to believe and all of those views generally speaking are wrong on this issue so I'm going to talk about why that is all the details and how you can start to get your luck your life and your light and your your mind aligned with more of the way that it actually is rather than the way that we want it to be in some of these cartoon character versions of morality that we receive from from various sources in society now before we get there we have to ask because I'm really challenging your your notions of how life is and how the world works I'm really challenging your worldview here with some of these ideas and I have to ask you to to be able to step aside and separate yourself from your beliefs separate yourself from all the things that you were fed as a kid growing up or as a young adult or even that you experience in your own life and really open your mind to some of the possibilities that are here and the way that I'm going to do this is by asking you have you actually yourself really looked in and investigated this question of good versus evil have you actually done that see because most people believe that they know what good and evil are and they believe that they're very smart about this subject but what I find is that none of them have actually gone and done a personal investigation now be very careful about what this means a personal investigation does not mean that you're simply believing what you were told when you were a kid it does not mean that you believe whatever your society or your culture beliefs or whatever people want you to believe it means that you didn't read it in a book somewhere you didn't hear it from somebody you didn't see it in the news or on the television it means that you actually sat down by yourself unplugged yourself from all those external sources of information and actually started to think philosophize about what good and evil are maybe started doing some research on this topic started studying it started reading various books to look at different points of view see now it's very and that you answer this question honestly because if you've never done this I would say 99% of people have never done this then what is your opinion of good and evil really worth is the question and now it's okay if you haven't done this but I encourage you that if you haven't done this then keep your mind especially open because that means that you haven't really investigated it for yourself and I'm gonna help you to do an investigation here now you'd have to believe everything I tell you but just use this as a launching point to do your own investigation and I think that if you do an honest investigation by yourself you'll come to a lot of the same conclusions that I'm sharing with you here that I've come to okay so the next thing that I want to do is I want to do a little demonstration this is also a very important thing is to get you to start to see how tricky the human mind really is and the way I want to do that is I want to show you an image I'm going to show you actually two images I'm going to show one and then after it a few seconds later I'm gonna show a second one and we're going to see if your interpretation the first image changes after you saw the second image and then you're gonna come back here and we're gonna discuss it alright so here it is here is the first image you okay awesome welcome back so what did you see there you saw two images right two images the first one about plain wall socket the second one of a little addition that I made to a wall socket now what is the relevance of this what does have to do with good and evil the wall sockets not good it's not evil but here's the important point the important point is that what this is called is this is a phenomenon in human psychology that's called a Poe tinea what is Apple Fenian apophenia is the human tendency to recognize shapes and patterns where no shapes and patterns inherently exist now that's what happened in this example if you saw the first image of the wall socket and you thought that oh it's just a simple wall socket but then you also saw the face in the wall socket right you also notice that even though you knew it's just a wall socket but you also saw the human face in it then that was you seeing a pattern that wasn't really there and the second image helps to highlight that so it makes it really really clear makes it like glaringly obvious what's going on there and this is a phenomenon called apophenia now what does it have to do with anything this has to do a lot with good and evil because what I'm going to tell you here is that good and evil are really a creation of your mind just that the way this pattern of the face in the wall socket isn't inherent to the wall socket it's not the wall socket looks like a face it's simply that your brain has certain wiring in it that gives you image recognition especially with human faces the human mind this has been proven in various psychological cities are they done is very very good at image detection even just has a baby a baby is able to instantly recognize simple facial patterns even just something as basic as two dots and a little horizontal line the human mind will immediately interpret that as a face even though on the really what's going on there so you just got two dots and just a little line but the human mind will see it as a face or a smiley face or sad face now the same is really the case with good and evil and I really want to ask you to ask yourself this question what is good and evil what is the substance of it better ask yourself that like what actually is it in the world how how is it in reality is it like a physical object does it have that same kind of physicality and reality to it is it the same as as an emotion is that a thought where does evil and where does good exist does it exist out there in the circumstances of everyday life or does it exist up here in the mind it's a very important question now you might say well leo there are clear examples of evil that exist out in the world and if we saw it we would all recognize it and we could point our finger at it you might see a scene where something is happening in life and you you clearly know that that's that's wrong and that's evil like maybe you see somebody getting murdered and obviously that's wrong and evil now the question is okay I agree with you on that kind of kind of basic level but then is the evilness of that act where is it actually located is it in the person is it inside the person's doing the murdering is it the the combination the whole scene of the murder and the victim where is the actual evil happening there and what complicates this is even further is then consider some other scenario where you have the same scene one person murdering other person kill another person but this time it's done in self-defense so now it being done in self-defense is that act no longer evil most people would say it's no longer evil but then what's the difference is it the physical arrangement of atoms that has changed is that the circus has the intent of the person and where is that actually like physically substantially located well what you're going to find you look at these scenarios and really dig deep and ask yourself honestly what's going on you're gonna agree that evil doesn't actually exist out there you can't actually point a finger at evil evil is not a like a physical tangible thing what evil is is evil is a thought evil is an interpretation evil is a judgment that you're making on reality and very very simply evil is this and good is this good is simply what you prefer and evil is simply what you don't prefer in life that's it there's nothing very complicated here there's nothing very deep or metaphysical to it except the problem is that something even as simple as this such a simple truth for most people it doesn't sit well it doesn't resonate well and it seems like it's not true or that there must be something more to it because if that was the case léo you might say then all these sorts of problems start to come up in my worldview and we're gonna start to address those right now but this is the general thesis that I'm throwing at you here is that good is simply what you prefer and even listen to what you don't prefer it can be extremely intellectually honest to to see this to admit this to yourself because there are various ego defense mechanisms at work here there's also a lot of social conditioning at work because you grow up in a society where you're fed with all sorts of different theories and information and different worldviews and beliefs which are now running on a subconscious layer in your brain so this idea that that good and evil are just a personal preference ultimately what does that make it I mean good and evil completely relative it means that if your mind didn't exist if you didn't exist if humanity didn't exist then there would be no good and evil in the world this means that the world and reality itself is entirely neutral it's devoid of any meaning it's devoid of any good or bad characteristics it just is it just is now this is a Buddhist concept really and this is a powerful console I love this concept this concept is so beautiful to me that reality is in neutral we want to believe that it's not neutral but really if you look at and you investigate it then you see that it's neutral the meanings that you're creating those are being created in your mind by your thoughts the meaning doesn't exist out in the world and this model is very beautiful to me because first of all it I mean it liberates us it gives us a lot of freedom but second of all this freedom it's always existed it explains the lot it explains a lot about how humanity works how human beings interact with one another why there are awards it explains a lot of historical events and I'm going to cover that a little bit in detail right now so the idea here is that it exists only in your mind any meaning but especially something like good and evil when you're really dichotomizing that drastically okay so this being the case you might now start to get objections right so here are some of your objections that I want to address one objection that I commonly hear when someone hears this is that well what about things like murder and rape and theft I mean clearly oh we don't want to say that those are our neutral things those are clearly evil things don't you agree isn't it's silly and ridiculous to have a theory of life and the world that goes against this this kind of common sense notion that those things are wrong now really notice what's going on there I'm not saying that it doesn't disturb you in fact the fact that it disturbs you is evidence of the fact that it's a preference right who is being disturbed by this you are being disturbed by this and that's what we're saying here is that when you see an evil act all that really means is that you get a tingle in your brain now saying it just as a tingle that makes it seem like it's not very substantial but in fact it can cause a very big impact on you so I'm not saying that your beliefs about this don't influence you they do but look at what's going on in reality it's you that's getting disturbed it's your ego that's getting either offended or when you see something good it's your ego that's getting satisfied and gratified I mean else is going on besides that is there anything else you have to look within yourself to see if there is anything else if you do look and you look honestly and you remove the social conditioning what you're going to find is that there is nothing else it's just thoughts whatever you think is evil is going to be perceived as evil whatever you think as being good it's going to be perceived as good now the next objection might go like okay leo well even if that's the case I mean your theory here is very dangerous I mean what happens if everybody in the world believes this what happens if everyone buys into this is everyone now gonna believe that murder is okay and it's just neutral and rape is okay it's just neutral and theft is okay it's just neutral so society is gonna turn into a chaotic mess it's not a case well let's take a look at that it might not be quite as drastic as you might think how about taking a pride of lions have you ever seen them on to the Discovery Channel or some animal channel you see a bunch of lions maybe 10 or 20 of them sitting in a nice little patch in the grass on the savanna somewhere and they're just lying around and they're enjoying themselves basking in the Sun maybe they go off do a hunting but they're just sitting there and a pride so take this pride of lions now what about a pride of lions would you say that a pride of lions has morality it has a concept of good and evil or do they not what do you think what would you say I think most people would pretty readily admit that lions don't have a sense of morality and lions don't have a good and evil they don't understand what good and evil are they don't even know about good and evil that's outside their cognitive abilities so they don't have that but then the question is it's kind of curious when you have 10 lions sitting there basking in the Sun next to each other what is preventing them from tearing each other apart from killing each other from murdering each other why are they not doing that kind of interesting because is your thesis is that if you get rid of my sense of morality then the whole world goes to hell Society goes to hell well yet we have this little Society of lions here and they're doing quite well they sure they fight sometimes just like humans do you know they scuffle they might even buy each other and maybe even sometimes they'll get into a fight so bad that they'll maim each other maybe even one of them gets killed in a fight but generally it's pretty clear that lions coexist very peacefully together they generally don't have problems beyond just kind of you know the normal problems that we would expect with any kind of creatures or organisms in a society who are trying to take care of themselves and look out for themselves so that's interesting huh what does that mean then that means that morality isn't quite as important as maybe you thought it was to society running and functioning well in fact what you're gonna find is that there is no need to have a sense of black and white morality of good and evil there so there's no need to have that in order to be quote-unquote good yourself what you're going to discover is that what's really going on here is that it's not a sense of theoretical morality that's keeping you in line in society that's not really what's going on what's really going on is that the morality that you're exhibiting that all of us are exhibiting the reason we're coexisting peacefully is really because that has been hardwired into our brains just like it is with the Lions that's what's going on with the Lions right as part of the evolutionary process it wouldn't work if a pride of lions came to be and evolved to that level and they were able to just indiscriminately savagely murder each other it wouldn't work right they could never evolve to that level so what happened through the evolutionary process is that wiring was installed where they're really not allowed to harm each other generally speaking they have not they have no programming no reason to do it so they don't and the same thing goes on with human beings we generally don't have reason to harm one another the only reason we harm each other is when we report into dire circumstances and we'll really put into a zero-sum game and it has high stakes of life and death then we start to get physical and we start to get nasty but other we have no reason to and in fact we have a lot of programming in our brain that makes us generous towards each other that makes us friendly and makes us accommodating and empathetic why is that because that's important for a social organism of any kind that's how society is created that's how a society of bees works that's how a society of ants works they couldn't work if they were busy slaughtering each other all the time so that's really what's going on here it's not some sort of theoretical lofty religious morality that you're using you might feel like you've got a layer of that running on you but really that's not what's keeping you in line it's actually a very good thing that it's not that easy to take the morality out of you it's hardwired so to speak because if it wasn't hardwired then it would be very very easy for you or somebody else in society to just change beliefs and then they could easily go and start doing all these antisocial things that are damaging to them species as a whole so it makes sense that it's really deeply hardwired now in human beings it's hardwired now does that mean that it can never be unwired no you can see examples for example with suicide bombers and terrorists where they're successfully able to unwire this because they do so much training literally drilling the mind the subconscious mind so much that eventually they're able to sort of get those defenses down but with most normal people that's not the case it doesn't happen so very interesting how how that works now why then do people want to say that good and evil exist and that they're they're clear and they're external out in the real world why is there this need to do this it's very interesting this is a philosophical concept it's called normativity this is something that you will encounter in an ethics class or you'll encounter it in a psychology of morality class normativity what it means is it means that what I believe you should believe what I do you should do it means that your belief or your idea has a certain need to be transferred it has a certain universality to it so the reason that really people are interested in making these morals and values and good and Eve black-and-white an objective is because when you make something objective that means that you can now justify to others to believe that thing as well so it's a really convenient way to transfer values so here's how it works if you've got a normative idea then what happens is that you say okay it's out there in the real world it's true it's a fact of the luck of life we all need to accept it and now everyone looks at that and says oh yeah you know what yeah that's true it's a real fact of life it's out there so all of us must accept it and you can go around telling people hey you're wrong you have to accept this and you can tell that person hey look you're wrong look at this fact accept it that's normativity now if you've got a concept that has no normativity then here's how it works your concept has no normativity so you tell yourself that you're believing it okay nice but then you go and tell this person hey you should believe what I believe you should value what I value and that person will look at it and say you know what that's a nice idea but I don't really like it I'm gonna keep believing what I believed and you look at them and you say well you know what if you if you want to keep believing what you believe that's okay because this is a non normative concept what's a non normative concept a non Nordic concept or phenomenon life is something like ice cream flavor right we usually wouldn't go around saying you know what I like chocolate ice cream so you should like chocolate ice cream most people don't do that we tend to be honest with ourselves and say you know what I like chocolate ice cream because I just like it I happen to like the taste it titillates me in a certain way and that person he or she likes strawberry or whatever other flavor and that's fine with me I don't expect everybody to like chocolate I don't I'm not gonna come up with some sort of elaborate theory to say that chocolate is the one that everyone should like just because I like it now what happens with morality is the exact opposite of that with morality whatever you believe you want to make sure that everybody else believes it too because you need it to be true and actually this is a this kind of a weakness and a crack in the system because it already tells you that something is going wrong there when you really strongly need to fight for something and to defend something it usually means that it's a it's an ego defense mechanism of a sort because your ego needs to be validated by all the extra no circumstances so that it can maintain this adversarial relationship with reality because ultimately when you believe that there is a good and an evil what's what's happening is that you're you're not really being honest you haven't really introspected enough and so now you have to work really hard to keep that worldview into place because you're gonna see things and phenomena in the world that don't make sense to you under this model a lot of stuff doesn't make sense when you believe that there is a good and an evil and if you believe that good and evil are totally neutral and they don't really exist they're just in your mind their personal preferences all the sudden everything makes sense it's so simple it's like duh why would you believe anything else and here's some examples if you're a student of history then these should start ringing bells for you immediately and especially like really start clicking into place when you start adopting this this model so for example George Bush versus bin Laden right Battle of the new millennium what was going on there is George Bush good and bin Laden evil or the vice versa I mean what was happening there I mean George Bush believed he was good and the lawn was evil would appeal on the belief below Madonn believes the exact opposite of that now which one of them is true none of them are true it's just it just is what it is reality is just neutral without our layers of meaning and added on top of it so none of them are correct or right now I'm not saying that I condone the actions of bin Laden over Bush that's not the case you can still have preferences for what you want again we're talking about preferences right so Bush prefers one thing but not on prefers another thing we prefer our own thing and our own thing hopefully is in line with what Bush believes rather than what Milan believes because we don't want a world where there's a lot of terrorism and violence but some people prefer that and they have reasons to prefer that okay we don't like it I don't like it now that does that mean that I'm a good accept it no but it just it just means that it's it is what it is and it's our own stories in our minds right there's no need to build up this grand theory of normativity there's no need to say that you know what bin Laden is actually evil and what Bush tries to espouse is actually good there's no need to do that unless you've got some sort of insecurities within yourself an intelligent open-minded intellectually honest person could say you know what there's no actual normativity here but I'm still confident in what I prefer and I prefer a life that's happy and peaceful I prefer a society that way and so that's just all there is to it and I don't need anything more that's enough that's enough for me to go and really live my life and be motivated and still have a family and still go to work and still do everything that I want to do in my life I don't need this elaborate theory of why someone is actually evil I don't need to demonize anybody whenever your demonizing somebody it's generally a very big clue that you're off the track and that you're doing it for egoic reasons not for actual any reason in reality so Bush bin Laden how about the Conservatives versus the Liberals same sort of thing I mean who's right nobody's right everyone has their own stories and ideas personal preferences what about the Israeli Palestine conflict who's right there is there somebody that's objectively good and objectively evil no one side prefers one thing another side prefers another thing that's all there is there's nothing more this is actually what you fight find is that you find a lot of conflict in situations where this is the case because when you believe that everybody must believe what you believe then you're gonna be willing to go out there and fight for it creates a lot of tension creates a lot of war creates a lot of bad situations when you have this more Buddhist type of mindset that you know what reality is very neutral and actually what that does it doesn't make you a moral it actually makes you super moral it's a very interesting idea because look at the way that a true Zen Buddhist for example or an Indian yogi how he will behave himself I mean he's not out there raping and pillaging he sees reality is totally neutral and that actually makes him super moral he's actually extra caring because of this because his ego is gone he shed the ego and now it's just like pure love and joy for everything that's out there and why is that that's just simply because the human brain was programmed with that that's your natural eight except most of us don't feel that because we're so wrapped up in our own egos trying to survive try to fight for our own security and defense when you let those offenses go actually you become very very peaceful the more you put those defenses up and the more you protect them the more conflict you have which is perfect example what's going on in the Israeli Palestine conflicts about Hitler versus Churchill what was going on there can we clearly say that Hitler was evil no it's a preference he thought that he was doing good for the German nation now do we agree with that no but again that's our preference how about Rome the Roman Empire versus the barbarians what was going on there have you studied that well the Roman Empire was trying to expand and basically dominate the whole world in a similar fashion to what Hitler was doing from from within Germany except they were doing it from Rome now they were collecting all these little satellite states and nations and they were conquering barry's barbarian tribes and forcing them to work and to become subjects and pay taxes of course the barbarians didn't want this they thought that they were being subjugated and enslaved so they fought back but the Roman Empire just called the barbarians demonize them right that's where we get the word barbarian from but what's going on there who was right and who was wrong in a situation who is objectively good or evil nobody was one side has its own agenda and other side has its own agenda and those agendas just clash what about Rome versus Christianity similar kind of conflict happened there the Roman Empire tried to crack down on Christianity especially in the in the early days and again who is right or wrong there nobody just preferences about capitalism communism same thing so if you go through history in your real student history you'll see that almost every conflict every single conflict on the social scale has happened because of this and a lot of personal interpersonal conflicts happen because of this as well because we demonize each other and we we need a way to prove to ourselves that our judgement of the other person is somehow justified and in fact no judgment of anybody has ever justified there's no reason why you are right in judging somebody so really think about this think about all these examples and see if this is starting to make more or less sense than the model that you may have had before I think you'll start to see that it makes more sense so now this case being made what is bad about having a black and white model what's bad about believing that good and evil are actually external fact of life I think the problem here is like we already mentioned in a couple of examples is that it's an ego defense mechanism it's a lack of intellectual honesty it's an adversarial relationship with truth and reality when this happens then you tend to start to contort yourself and build your life around this and you kind of have to put yourself in this little bubble we're not able to accept everything that's out there you deny things to yourself you become judgmental of other people you start to believe that tension and conflict are actually justified in certain circumstances it tends to make you more extremist and less accepting of life in reality it tends to lead to a certain closed mindedness it tends to lead to this effect where you're you're putting the blinders on in certain parts of your life and you're isolating yourself from certain realities and ultimately what this is doing is it's creating suffering because all of your suffering is being created because you have this ego it needs to defend itself from everything that's going on constantly having to defend and work and work and work you get tired of that you suffer you have to concoct elaborate theories and stories about why this is the case you have to run around and change other people make sure that other people believe just like you do so that it becomes a little bit more palatable to you to believe some of the the incorrect things that you believe because when you have a whole group of people all believing in the same wrong idea or belief then if you're a sort of history you also know how that works that makes it very easy for that whole group to buy into a bunch of and to should each other blow smoke up each other's asses and basically stay comfortable in that why are they comfortable because that person is telling me that I'm right and that person's telling me and I'm right and I'm telling him that I'm right so it just becomes a self-fulfilling self self-serving sort of sort of way of life and way of being within the world and I just find that you can't really become happy and you can't really become successful in life if you comment life from this perspective so consider that and see where you are relative to this and see maybe if if your notions of good and evil might need a little bit of fine tuning and tweaking now if any of this stuff rub you the wrong way or you think that it does make sense you know what I don't expect you to just believe it don't just take it I'm just throwing out an idea here go ahead and take it for yourself and maybe explore it and maybe if you find that it doesn't work for you then toss it aside but do an honest investigation be very open-minded in the way that you do this be very objective be very rigorous spend some time really thinking it through and I think you might be surprised by what you find and also how beautiful this idea is it's not threatening at all you'll find how beautiful it is okay this is Leo I'm signing off this is what I have to say about good and evil go ahead and post your comments down below please like this if you did click the like button right now share it throw it on Facebook wherever you like to share videos and then of 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