Mike
Max describes himself as a skeptical optimist with hedonic tendencies. He joins me for a stimulating conversation regarding responsibility and health.
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Majority Of Learning Is Visual
Max: That could be something worth talking about is like what makes up your experience?
Mike: I have heard visual is, is something that is we put a lot more attention on the, a lot of the other sensations in the body.
Max: Visual is like a life or death vision is a life or death kind of thing. Naturally. Now we have this like nice social safety net where you can go without sight and still function.
But I mean, imagine how brutal it would be to survive in nature if you could not see or hear. And those senses make up a huge percentage of our reality. And the more you reinforce those things, the more you attach yourself to that type of hunger for stimulus too. So you are really looking at visual stimuli and your whole mind is engrossed in that visual stimuli. It is going to reinforce that behavior pattern and your perception of reality is going to become highly visual and lowly tactile. And that is going to leave you feeling a disconnect between mind and body.
Mike: People do not really remember. I imagine that musicians do. And since you are a musician, I would like to hear your take on this. When I go to retrieve a memory, there is normally a picture or words, that take me to that memory that I can reproduce that memory with words are a thought or, a visual. But I rarely can reproduce a sound in my head. I’m not saying that I cannot because I can reproduce a sound in my head, but when searching for a memory, I usually go for a visual or a graphic representation of what's going on.
Max: I believe it always has a word at its core because a word is just well way that we derive meaning from that image. Like your vision is 75% of your perception. Only 25% of that is like raw data processing. The rest is how you relate to that image. So what happens is this. You take the end like data in the form of light hitting your retina. But then most of like the total vision process, the lion's share, like 80% is taking those colors and shapes and relating it to the story that you understand about that thing. Most of it is you're framing and the way that, the way that we make that work is through giving them meaning. Because like if you see like some shape and you don't have what it means to you in there. You're still going to be describing the meaning of those images with words and your precision in how you actively or passively determine those words creates your entire reality.
Basically what you're talking about is having the pure wisdom to know that your perspective is so small. How far you extend your perspective is going to be directly proportional to how much you tried to control the environment. And it is kind of like, I mean, that's the same thought behind social engineering.
Mike: What I heard was the more we centralize control the more arrogance is necessary to enforce that control.
Max: We are talking about like large groups now.
Mike: Sure. I mean, cause when you are talking about just within yourself, like whatever you believe, like that's what your reality is and how you frame that reality is really important. And it based on like one unique perspective, you believe that your control of the ambient environment would make it better. Then of course it must come at least a little bit from a place of I know best,
I mean that's, it's like impossible, but I'm not saying it's easy for a huge group of people to organize themselves, but generally speaking, if you use simple language, it's pretty darn easy. The reason I think there is so much conflict is because your bet the language so tragically deliberately to hide the truth. Like lawyers are basically word warriors as far as I am concerned.
And they'll like take any word and like then did around and the rules and like, ultimately, it's just like this weird, a circuitous path. To control a little bit more. Use the mind to capture resources little bit more.
Mike: I want to say anytime, a lot of the time and more often recently I have been, so I've been in the study of, of self, I've been in the study of um, individuals, others and, and their development. And something I have been tracking for a while is that it is not happening on the micro is also happening on the macro. the, the stages of development for a human being are the same stages of development for the culture. And we have small cultures, which may be a group of friends or a family unit in a house. And there's large cultures,
Mike: The United States in the entire country or the entire planet. We could say there is a global culture as well. And so, each culture fitting within the next and, and the more granular you get, the more variation you may get. what I'm so in regard to, in regard to culture and, and what you're talking about right now, how does that work?
Max: I mean, you basically said it There's always going to be an evolution of cultures and societies because you know, the way people organize themselves is a really interesting question so and naturally progresses. I mean, it can only go two ways, It can either be a more personal responsibility, which is the answer to your very first question in this discussion, which is lose responsible or their health, you, you're responsible for your health.
I am responsible for mine. Health and are not we lucky that if something is more serious, like I had two hernias repaired last year, that there's a place that we can go get that done. I’m incredibly grateful for the fabric of society in a big way. Ultimately your health is your own and you either go one of two directions, you either accepts more personal responsibility for your health, your finances your mental state of mind, or you, you have more responsibility to someone else. And that is really like what it is. It can only go one way. And once you give him the person with the stick, like too much control it, it tends to progress only one way. In fact, it only can regress one way.
Mike: What, what way is that what you mean?
Max: It can either progress toward more control or less control of the individual. I the organizers. And then you have everybody else. And the more control and responsibility also, you give it to the organizers, then the less responsibility is wanting to be in the rest of everybody else. And you know, it also just because, yes, it comes from a place of arrogance, but it also comes from an idea of goodness.
Like a lot of people, I've talked to lately., eventually it gets to this idea that, but people just are not smart enough to make the right decision for themselves. And um, but they really believe that like those people would be hard if it were not to like to make some rules and then rule them with a stick. Like that is the bottom line,
Mike: I mean that that is the only time that really comes into play is when you're raising. Totally. You are saying that you're more developed than somebody else. And, and not only more developed, but enough developed to not only not, not just your you are so developed then you actually do, can make choices for everybody is the best for each person individually.
And you come up with all these ideas in your mind about what is either the right way or the best way rather than recognize the simple reality that all we are is energy recyclers. And we traded psychic energy with like compliments and insults. we tried to acquire enough calories to stay hot and we make sure we drink enough water to stay wet. And we made sure to bring it up to stay ventilated.
The human body really needs, so why should I be diminutive of some dude in the South because the South always gets fucking beaten down and like Nebraska and all these places in the middle, that's been a lot of time on the coast and it's like, Oh well you know these people like, they talk like this so they know nothing about no. And Mike when you tell you what she is, I heard a lot people talk like this now 10 times smarter than I am. You would never know it.
Max: You got like a pleasant demeanor about you relaxing type of thing. Relaxing, relax. No, but serious. It is like, that's what it comes down to is like a teacher student, a relationship as opposed to lack the, the equals, right. Every time you, you give charity, you are actually just dropping their platform down a little bit lower. You are taking a little more responsibility owner and his dog, man.
Mike: Oh man. um, what I, what I've noticed is over the years, my impression, my belief, my imagination has created a scenario where and, and points out where, where fear is the greatest and where there's stress on the individual people are a lot more quick to give up personal responsibility for someone else to, to take that responsibility and give them power.
so what I'm witnessing right now in this the threat of the coronavirus, there's a lot of people, lot of people want to give up their personal responsibility and they really are hoping that president Trump or somebody with a vaccine or a scientist or a Democrat or a Republican are going to come in and save the fucking day.
so it's, it's interesting because when I, when I say I noticed this is, this is, this is the story I tell myself is when somebody, when somebody starts getting really excited about a potential vaccine or they're excited about a cure to the disease, or they're excited about some decision of who politician made or something that the media put out, it tells me is like they've yet to take 100% responsxibility for their health.
What, that is the story that, that, that's how I'm interpreting it is, aye. Aye. Red flags go up for me. It is not their fault. They have been conditioned to seek answers from authority since forever. of course, they would be desperate for something to save them because they already believe that the only thing that is keeping them alive and well is mama and Papa basically… makes sense given, given the sheer volume of your pornography, like it's no wonder people are a little bit, are you kidding me?
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