0:000 secondsWelcome to the Universal Podcast Network. One voice everywhere.
0:2323 secondsWelcome to abstract essay where the take shape thought find dep and every conversation explores
0:3232 secondsthe art of thinking beyond the obvious. I’m your host Daniel Lucas and today’s guest
0:4141 secondswell he’s a writer and thinker passionate about unraveling the mastery of our
0:4949 secondslives or the mystery of our lives. He is at heart skeptic and
0:5656 secondsas an individualist none other than Mr. John Bliss.
1:051 minute, 5 secondsWelcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, Mr. John. Thank you, Daniel.
1:121 minute, 12 secondsAnd can you please introduce more about yourself that I Oh, sure, sure. I uh actually I was trained as an engineer. I I started an
1:201 minute, 20 secondsengineering company, ran it for about 25 years. I sold it. Uh but for 13 years I
1:271 minute, 27 secondswrote a book and the topics probably we’ll we’ll discuss some of them in the book. Um but the book is basically just
1:341 minute, 34 secondsa uh questioning a lot of the assumptions we have about life because a lot of them are probably wrong and we
1:431 minute, 43 secondsbase our lives on these assumptions and that means our life plans are based on untruths which means unfortunately we
1:521 minute, 52 secondsmight you know when we’re 80 years old and dying you know lying in our death beds we might ask what did I do with my
2:002 minuteslife I should have and it’d be better to really it’d be better to not have to ask those questions and to get it right now. So, that’s kind of what the book’s about.
2:122 minutes, 12 secondsWell, thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and wisdom to us here on Abstract Assay. Mr. John, we salute you. We celebrate you.
2:242 minutes, 24 secondsThank you.
2:282 minutes, 28 secondsSo today let’s talk about your book itself. Your book argues that we were born without a rule book yet we
2:362 minutes, 36 secondsdesperately look to science, religion groups and others to guide us and they are fall short. For someone who finds
2:462 minutes, 46 secondsthe of that realization terrifying rather than liberating, what is the first step toward embracing the
2:542 minutes, 54 secondsabsence of a rule book without falling into anism or nehalism?
3:013 minutes, 1 secondOh my gosh, I don’t I don’t know the answer to that. I I I could just I honestly am flustered by that question.
3:093 minutes, 9 secondsThe first question and I don’t know how to answer it. Let’s see. Um well, let me see what I could do. Um, yeah. So, look,
3:163 minutes, 16 secondswe were born not really knowing much. We knew how to eat. We knew how to suckle at our mothers. We We kind of knew how
3:243 minutes, 24 secondsto crawl, how to move a little bit. Um, but that’s about it. You know, we were
3:313 minutes, 31 secondsthere was no there was no operating guide or manual given to us when we were born. It’s like, look, this is your
3:383 minutes, 38 secondsgoal. This is what you’re supposed to do in life. uh follow these rules, do these things, and this is, you know, what you should be spending your time on. We
3:473 minutes, 47 secondsdon’t have a damn clue. And so what do we do? We we look to other people. It’s like, well, what are they doing? So we follow people who we think are have it
3:553 minutes, 55 secondstogether. Um but they don’t know either, you know, and no one knows. We look to groups, you know, maybe these groups
4:034 minutes, 3 secondshave a great idea. So what’s a group? A group might be a church. It might be a political party. Um, it might be a group
4:104 minutes, 10 secondslike the Freemasons or something like that. We, you know, maybe do what they say. But who put those together? Oh, a bunch of people who also didn’t have a rule book. Oh, okay. So, where are we?
4:234 minutes, 23 secondsUm, yeah, that’s a problem. It’s It’s a big problem. Um, now, how do we avoid falling into nealism? Oh, boy. I I don’t
4:324 minutes, 32 secondsknow. I It’s never actually even occurred to me. So, um I mean I there’s no reason being angry or or being destructive or or believing in nothing.
4:424 minutes, 42 secondsUm you could believe in yourself. Um but I know that sounds really abstract. Uh granted that you don’t know anything.
4:514 minutes, 51 secondsI’m I’m just going to leave it at that.
4:524 minutes, 52 secondsI’m not going to be able to answer that question at this moment. Maybe you can ask it in a different way and I’ll be able to answer it.
4:594 minutes, 59 secondsWell, so Mr. John, you make a provocative distinction between individual and humanity as a whole,
5:065 minutes, 6 secondssuggesting individuals are one of no consequence. But the aggregate is the
5:145 minutes, 14 secondsreal story that runs completely counter to our culture obsessions with individual legacy and personal
5:235 minutes, 23 secondssignificance. And pack that for us. And why should someone find comfort not despair in being forgettable sell in a larger body?
5:345 minutes, 34 secondsThat’s great. That’s great. Well, okay.
5:375 minutes, 37 secondsSo, first off, you Daniel and I in a 100 years will both be dead, right? Maybe 150 years no one will remember us. No
5:465 minutes, 46 secondsone will remember your podcast. No one will remember my book. It’ll all be forgotten and people will be thinking about different things. It’s just the
5:535 minutes, 53 secondsway it is. Um, and when you think about there’s 8 billion people here and all of them really are about as insignificant
6:016 minutes, 1 secondor significant as we are really not much and okay so yeah that’s all
6:096 minutes, 9 secondstrue people don’t like to hear that but it’s really true we all think that we are the center of the world I mean if I asked you or any of your listeners are
6:176 minutes, 17 secondsyou the center of the world they would all say no but they we kind of make decisions as if we are and That’s okay.
6:246 minutes, 24 secondsThat’s just I mean I do it, too. All right, let’s go into this this whole thing about the individual versus the aggregate. You know, I I first ran
6:326 minutes, 32 secondsacross this idea. I read some book a long long time ago, maybe about 40 years ago, about this guy was looking at a beehive, and he was saying, you know, a
6:416 minutes, 41 secondsbeehive is not a collection of bees. You know, there’s all these bees and they all have different jobs and it’s not
6:486 minutes, 48 secondsabout the individual bees. The hive itself is a creature. I never really thought about it like that, but you know, sometimes beehives, they just pick
6:566 minutes, 56 secondsup and go. They just leave. That’s what creatures do. Or sometimes beehives will split into two. There’ll be two queens
7:047 minutes, 4 secondsand maybe one queen will take off and take half the hive with her. That’s what individuals do. We call that procreation. Um sometimes hives will get
7:127 minutes, 12 secondsangry. You get close to them, they get mad at you, and they’ll attack you.
7:167 minutes, 16 secondsOh yeah, people do that. And and so in a way a beehive even though it’s comprised of all these, you know, thousands of
7:247 minutes, 24 secondsbees, it acts as one creature. And you could say the same about our bodies, right? There’s how many? I don’t know. I
7:317 minutes, 31 secondsthink I’ve heard the word trillion cells in us. You know, there’s a tons and tons of cells in our and they all are doing their own thing.
7:407 minutes, 40 secondsA blood cells thinking one thing and trying to do one thing and a eye cell is thinking a different thing and trying to do something different. They all have
7:477 minutes, 47 secondsdifferent functions. They probably don’t talk to each other. They don’t have anything in common except for they’re part of the same thing, which was which
7:557 minutes, 55 secondsis me. And and so together they all Yeah. So let let me try it a different
8:018 minutes, 1 secondway. Um I if if you were a skin cell, let’s say on the bottom of your he on the bottom of a person’s heel. So you
8:108 minutes, 10 secondsDaniel wore a skin sail on the bottom of someone’s heel and that someone decided to run a marathon and all of a sudden that someone got blisters and the
8:188 minutes, 18 secondsblisters ripped off and you were one of those skin cells that just got ripped off of the body of the rest of the body.
8:268 minutes, 26 secondsThat skin cell is going to die along with all the people next to him. It that’s kind of like what happens when like there’s a a small war or something or a massive tidal wave or something
8:348 minutes, 34 secondslike that where a whole city is destroyed. you know, thousands or millions of people die. Uh, but people are still here. And it’s kind of like
8:448 minutes, 44 secondsskin gets ripped off of the body. All those cells die. Uh, but the human is still continuing on. And he had a goal.
8:518 minutes, 51 secondsHe was trying to get, you know, run this marathon and and he’s all excited about it and they’re all working together doing that. Oh, some died. That’s okay
8:598 minutes, 59 secondsbecause the body is continuing. And it’s kind of like the way humanity, you know, continues on to where we have no idea,
9:079 minutes, 7 secondsbut the individual cells ah a lot of them they they don’t make it, you know, and it doesn’t matter. The body just continues on. And it’s that’s kind of
9:159 minutes, 15 secondshow it works with us. Another way of looking at it is if you look at a university, um you know, they what what’s it composed of? Well, buildings,
9:239 minutes, 23 secondsprofessors, administrators, students, courses, all of those things come and go. Some buildings are torn down. New
9:309 minutes, 30 secondsbuildings show up. The basketball team, you know, maybe gets uh they get rid of the basketball team. They don’t have basketball anymore. The university is still there. Professors come and go.
9:399 minutes, 39 secondsThere’s new university presidents.
9:419 minutes, 41 secondsStudents come and go and still it is the university. All those individual parts go and you know every 30 40 years every
9:509 minutes, 50 secondspart is different. Oh maybe some of the buildings and trees are still around but it’s the same. So that’s the basic
9:569 minutes, 56 secondsconcept of us being uh individuals really of no consequence but really we are of consequence because we are part
10:0410 minutes, 4 secondsof one great thing which is humanity itself. But just like that those cells on the bottom of the foot have no idea
10:1210 minutes, 12 secondswhy they’re getting you know ripped and blistered and all this stuff and they’re all pissed off about it. They don’t have a clue what’s going on which is the
10:1910 minutes, 19 secondsguy’s trying to run a marathon. It’s the same that we individuals, you know, humans have no idea where societyy’s
10:2610 minutes, 26 secondsgoing, but it’s going somewhere. It it is progressing somewhere and it’s something we will never understand. We just cannot.
10:3710 minutes, 37 secondsWell said. Well said.
10:4010 minutes, 40 secondsMaster John, you spent 13 years writing this book. What is the question or the
10:4810 minutes, 48 secondsegg that started this journey? And did the book end of answering what you are originally set out to find or did it
10:5810 minutes, 58 secondslead you to somewhere entirely unexpected?
11:0211 minutes, 2 secondsYeah, it it actually So, first off, Daniel, um I I know all your listeners know it, but I don’t. What country are you in?
11:1011 minutes, 10 secondsYou’re originally from the Philippines. And where are you now? I’m from Vancouver, British Columbia.
11:1711 minutes, 17 secondsOh, you’re Canadian. Okay. Okay. So, um I um I’d say when I was in my early I I
11:2411 minutes, 24 secondsask you because this involves uh hallucinogenic drugs and I and some parts of the some parts of the world that it’s just you know not really
11:3311 minutes, 33 secondslooked it’s looked down upon or it’s illegal probably I don’t know maybe you even can’t talk about it. Um when I was in my 20s I was on the beach with my
11:4111 minutes, 41 secondsbrother and some of his friends and and we all took uh psilocybin mushrooms. It’s a hallucinagen.
11:4811 minutes, 48 secondsAnd it all worked for them, but for me it didn’t, or at least I didn’t think it was. And they all took off. I don’t know what they did. I didn’t didn’t see them
11:5511 minutes, 55 secondsagain for the rest of the night. And um I it it worked for me a lot slower, but then it did work. I have no idea what
12:0412 minutes, 4 secondshappened, but I do remember waking up or let’s say becoming conscious or let’s just say my I remember from this point
12:1212 minutes, 12 secondson at about 4:00 a.m. um lying face down on the beach all by myself. It’s
12:1912 minutes, 19 secondsnighttime out and this song kept going through my head which no one’s ever heard. I mean some Portuguese people have but I mean some Brazilians have.
12:2812 minutes, 28 secondsIt’s a song called Ok Sarra by Milton Aimento and Chico Borke Borqu and it’s a a beautiful sad song with with with it.
12:3912 minutes, 39 secondsLook, I don’t know Portuguese. I have no idea what they’re singing about. But what I heard was just that they were they were singing about how sad and
12:4812 minutes, 48 secondstragic human life is and how beautiful it is, but it’s sad. And and what I saw
12:5412 minutes, 54 secondsas I was hearing this was I saw myself, you know, from an outer perspective, like I was looking down on my life and I
13:0213 minutes, 2 secondssaw that I was young and I had great ideals and that I was going to fall in love. I was going to be totally in love,
13:0913 minutes, 9 secondsreally into the whole thing. Um, and then have a child and you know, did my dreams happen or not? Don’t know. But
13:1813 minutes, 18 secondsthat child would then grow up and be just like me. And that child would
13:2513 minutes, 25 secondsfall in love and have a child, have dreams, and do the same thing I did. And that my father, I saw him, and he did
13:3413 minutes, 34 secondsexactly what I’m doing. And my grandfather did what we both did. And my great-grandfather did. And I saw at that
13:4113 minutes, 41 secondsmoment the cycles of our lives, and how we’re all repeating the same thing over and over and over. And that was it. It was so tragic, but also so beautiful.
13:5413 minutes, 54 secondsWhy tragic? Because for most of us, our dreams never really do come true. And and a lot of us, I mean, look, we all die in the end. We get sick. And when
14:0314 minutes, 3 secondsyou get old, you lose everything you have. You know, if you’re if you do get old, some of us just die young, but we lose our strength. The women lose their
14:1114 minutes, 11 secondsbeauty, we lose our friends, we maybe lose our spouses, we lose everything.
14:1714 minutes, 17 secondsAnd that’s really tragic. and and I just saw how it repeated over and over and that’s when I realized that that the
14:2614 minutes, 26 secondswhole the whole history thing it it the story of history is our story. It’s, you
14:3514 minutes, 35 secondsknow, even Phil, I know the Americans were in the Philippines, but that aside, you know, let’s just pretend that wasn’t
14:4214 minutes, 42 secondsthe case. Just that that all of humanity is re living the same life. The same thing I just mentioned. They’re doing
14:5014 minutes, 50 secondsthat in the Philippines, too. They’re doing that in China, too. It’s the same.
14:5414 minutes, 54 secondsAnd and I just realized how history is not it it’s the story of all of us. It’s
15:0015 minutessomething that we all share. It’s it’s actually what makes us all in a way cousins. You know, we’re really all on the same team. And a lot of times, you
15:0915 minutes, 9 secondsknow, we see ourselves as individuals and we’re all competing against each other trying to, you know, win or or make all the money so the other guy doesn’t or whatever it is. He insulted
15:1815 minutes, 18 secondsme and I’m mad. But that’s that’s all silly when we’re all really living the same story. We’re all really part of the same creature.
15:2715 minutes, 27 secondsThat’s kind of what the book started with. That’s how it all started. Well, that is interesting.
15:3515 minutes, 35 secondsMr. John, reason is the devil’s This is a subtle statement. What do you
15:4215 minutes, 42 secondsmean by it? And why do you believe that over reliance on a pure season and
15:4915 minutes, 49 secondsreason inevitably leads to tyranny and murder rather than enlightenment?
15:5615 minutes, 56 secondsYeah. Yeah, that’s quite a bit, right?
15:5815 minutes, 58 secondsUm, I could talk about that forever and I’m not going to. Um, I’m going to read a quote um from Martin Luther. So, Martin Luther is a guy in uh the 16th
16:0716 minutes, 7 secondscentury and he’s the one that started Lutheranism and he started the Protestant Revolution um which broke you know where the Protestants broke away
16:1516 minutes, 15 secondsfrom the Catholics. He was he said reason is the chief prostitute of the devil, a lousy, filthy and disgusting
16:2416 minutes, 24 secondsprostitute that ought to be trampled on and destroyed. both she and her companion wisdom. It would be a good thing to make her detestable by throwing
16:3316 minutes, 33 secondsfilth in her face for abominable rich that she is. She only deserves to be placed in the dirtiest place in the house, the privy. That’s Martin Luther.
16:4316 minutes, 43 secondsSo what? Why? And that’s that’s actually Oh, you can’t see it, but that’s the name of one of my chapters of of this
16:4916 minutes, 49 secondsbook. Um it the the point of that is well there’s a there’s a few a few streams of of thinking here but one is
16:5816 minutes, 58 secondspeople you know we tend to be we tend to intellectualize everything right and um
17:0517 minutes, 5 secondsand reason gets really divorced unfortunately from what is really true and what I mean what is true is is is
17:1417 minutes, 14 secondsreason doesn’t doesn’t really work with love you can’t really reason love um you reason who am I? But I’m going to put
17:2217 minutes, 22 secondsall that aside. I don’t even care about that. Let’s talk about something a little bit different in that respect. Um
17:2817 minutes, 28 secondsso people who let’s say become idealists let’s say you know believe all people should be brothers and sisters and we
17:3717 minutes, 37 secondsshould all share or something like we hate uh we hate tyrants and we want a democracy um where everybody can share
17:4617 minutes, 46 secondsin a government or what’s another one oh um let’s see oh here’s one uh so well
17:5417 minutes, 54 secondsI’ll get to that one later but um these a lot of folks uh who are idealists um even you can even go back to Plato’s
18:0318 minutes, 3 secondsRepublic where he had these philosopher kings that were supposed to be in charge and rule everything. You can have these wonderful plans of how society could be
18:1118 minutes, 11 secondswonderful, you know, and and you know, utopian. But the problem is there’s always going to be people who say, “No, no, I don’t want to do that. No, that’s
18:2018 minutes, 20 secondsbad.” Because, you know, every plan you have is good for some people and bad for others. And the one it’s bad for, those guys are going to oppose it. Well, if
18:2918 minutes, 29 secondsthey oppose it, what do you do? What do you do? If you, let’s say, were the king of the world and you could bring about a
18:3618 minutes, 36 secondsperfect society where everyone was happy and everybody had enough, wouldn’t you do it? The answer is probably yes. Well,
18:4318 minutes, 43 secondswhat if you had 10 million people who are going to be destroyed by this? Who would say no? Or trying to stop you and maybe they’re really powerful. What do
18:5218 minutes, 52 secondsyou try to do? Well, maybe if we could just silence those 10 million, we could make this happen and then everyone will be happy, right?
19:0219 minutes, 2 secondsexcept for those 10 million. And and in fact, what often happens when people have these idealistic, you know, let’s
19:0919 minutes, 9 secondssay idealistic philosophies and and they have the power to make it happen is they don’t just silence them, they murder them or jail
19:1819 minutes, 18 secondsthem or put, you know, get rid of these people and then and then, you know, utopia, it’s just around the corner.
19:2519 minutes, 25 secondsIt’s just around the corner. We’re going to get it if we just get these people out of the way. Well, that’s what we did with the communist revolution, right? I mean, it was going to be great where
19:3319 minutes, 33 secondseverybody’s going to have enough and everybody’s going to share. We’re all going to work for everybody and and oh yeah, there’s these people in the way.
19:3919 minutes, 39 secondsWe need to get rid of them. And so then you end up doing really evil things. Or there’s the French Revolution. Ah, another one. So let’s get rid of the king and the church. They’re running
19:4719 minutes, 47 secondseverything. They’re rich. It’s not right. And next thing you know, we’re just we’re killing all these people who are who are threatening the revolution.
19:5319 minutes, 53 secondsIt’s like these people are keeping us from getting where we want to what we want what we need. So yeah, let’s get rid of them. Um that’s the problem with
20:0120 minutes, 1 secondidealism. It leads to tyranny. Um if idealists get in power and uh a guy
20:0820 minutes, 8 secondsnamed um Albert Kamu who’s you know I’m sure most of your listeners have heard of him. He’s a very famous French existentialist um writer. Uh he wrote a book on this and he did a great job.
20:1920 minutes, 19 secondsIt’s called the rebel. uh and he it’s an essay and and he wrote about at the time uh the problem was the anarchists who
20:2620 minutes, 26 secondswere doing all these bombings all over Europe because they they were trying to I don’t know destroy the the system which they found as evil. Um but yeah
20:3620 minutes, 36 secondsbasically he just said idealism needs a mass murder. But I want to take it one further step and then I’ll I’ll stop this answer and that is that the new way
20:4520 minutes, 45 secondsof or let’s say it’s not an idealism. We we have kind of the opposite of an idealism going on nowadays and that is
20:5220 minutes, 52 secondsthis whole idea this doom and gloomism you know the fact that the world’s going to end there’s a CO2 problem there’s too
20:5820 minutes, 58 secondsmany people uh what else uh you know the the oceans are dying I mean some of this stuff is true I think the oceans are
21:0521 minutes, 5 secondsreally troubled and the nuclear problems you know Fukushima is a problem there’s pollution problems a lot of this stuff
21:1121 minutes, 11 secondsis legit it’s real um but you know if if you really follow a lot of these
21:1921 minutes, 19 secondsphilosophies and really think about them. What’s the obvious solution? Well, let’s say CO2. What’s the obvious solution? Oh, you could try doing all
21:2621 minutes, 26 secondsthis, you know, solar and all this other stuff, but really the obvious solution is if you have less people, you’re going to have less problems. Well, how do you
21:3421 minutes, 34 secondsget less people? Well, there’s a few ways you could do that. One is you could just um you could just kill half of them or twothirds of them and then we
21:4321 minutes, 43 secondswouldn’t have a global warming problem anymore, right? According to the theory, we wouldn’t we didn’t wouldn’t have a pollution problem. We wouldn’t have any problems if we lost twothirds of the people. Oh, well, how about this one?
21:5321 minutes, 53 secondsMaybe we could do a pandemic and we can we can kill them that way. Or or we could sterilize people. We could
22:0122 minutes, 1 secondsterilize people. And and people in the past, at least the United States, uh there was a big eugenics movement in the
22:0922 minutes, 9 seconds1920s where they did look to sterilize quite a lot of people. Um, at the time the idealists then thought uh and it may
22:1722 minutes, 17 secondsbe true. I don’t know. I’m not I I don’t know. But they believed that uh criminality ran in families and
22:2522 minutes, 25 secondsdrunkenness ran in families. Drug abuse ran in families. People who are just stupid. Um some people just aren’t very
22:3322 minutes, 33 secondssmart that ran in families. Um poverty ran in families. So if you could just take all these people who have these
22:4122 minutes, 41 secondsproblems and sterilize them, uh they won’t have children and the next generation will have a lot less drunkenness, less drug abuse, less poor
22:5022 minutes, 50 secondspeople, etc. And the society will be better and better and better. We used to that was a big movement um in the 1920s.
22:5822 minutes, 58 secondsIn fact, the uh birth control movements uh came out of that and I just want to read a quote or two of that. Um, so
23:0523 minutes, 5 secondsMargaret Sanger, she’s uh really well known in the United States at least because she’s the one that really uh pushed she started something called Planned Parenthood, which is a uh uh
23:1423 minutes, 14 secondsbirth control um clinic uh system in the United States. Um but here’s a quote. Um I see I have so many of them. I’m only going to read one or two of them.
23:2523 minutes, 25 secondsShe said, uh, we need, uh, okay, we need more of the fit, but fewer the unfit. The
23:3323 minutes, 33 secondspropagation of the degenerate, the imbecile, the feeble-minded should be prevented. That’s what I’m talking about. Um, let me see. There’s one.
23:4023 minutes, 40 secondsThere’s I’ll read one more quote and then I’ll stop talking about this and finish the whole topic. Um, uh, here’s one. So, let’s see who said this one.
23:4823 minutes, 48 secondsThis was a Oh, uh, Edward East. He said it in in Margaret Zanger’s uh birth control review, but he said well-intentioned philanthropy and social
23:5723 minutes, 57 secondsservice is nothing but a brutal gesture to posterity. In other words, you know, people are poor and they’re miserable
24:0524 minutes, 5 secondsand they’re, you know, illiterate and all that stuff. Well, let’s just don’t let them breed anymore and then we won’t have it next generation. Well, that that’s kind of what they were thinking.
24:1524 minutes, 15 secondsUm and that that whole movement fell apart actually when Hitler picked up those ideas and started applying that. Um he just took it a little bit further.
24:2324 minutes, 23 secondsUm the eugenics thing to the Jews and the Slavs.
24:2724 minutes, 27 secondsOkay. So that that kind of reasoning though is perfectly rational rational
24:3424 minutes, 34 secondsthinking. It’s like, okay, let’s, you know, if it’s true that criminality and illiteracy and drunkenness, drug abuse
24:4324 minutes, 43 secondsruns in families, then let’s just stop them from procreating and then we’ve solved the
24:4924 minutes, 49 secondsproblem. That is rational. If global warming really is going to destroy the planet, then the wise rational thing is
24:5724 minutes, 57 secondslet’s get rid of twothirds of the people. Rational. Okay. Um the problem is that rational thinking uh by itself
25:0625 minutes, 6 secondsis unhinged and leads to really terrible things as I mentioned. So that’s you
25:1325 minutes, 13 secondsknow killing twothirds of the population or sterilization etc. And and so it
25:2025 minutes, 20 secondsreally should be tempered with uh with I guess you could say a moral type of thinking or not. Yes. and and the the
25:2825 minutes, 28 secondsmoral thinking that I think, you know, everyone should have. You know, I can’t prescribe what people should believe, but if I could, I would. It’s something
25:3625 minutes, 36 secondsthat Albert Schwitzer came up with. Um he was a Nobel Prize winner. I don’t know, maybe the 1940s or 50s, a long time ago. Everybody, he’s dead and everybody’s already forgotten who he is.
25:4625 minutes, 46 secondsUm but I did find some of his stuff in some books. And so I remembered and and what he said was all life is sacred. And
25:5525 minutes, 55 secondsbased on that basic principle, life is sacred. That’s where you make decisions based on that. And that that may be it
26:0326 minutes, 3 secondsmay be that these people who are, you know, so concerned about global warming and pollution, all these things, maybe they they’re well aware of this and that’s why they haven’t, you know,
26:1126 minutes, 11 secondsadvocated of of destroying twothirds of us because they recognize, yeah, life is sacred. But yes, if you’re just being
26:1926 minutes, 19 secondstotally rational, it is it’s it’s that’s that’s devilish. That’s awful. It’s diabolical.
26:2626 minutes, 26 secondsFinally, I finished that answer.
26:3126 minutes, 31 secondsSo, Mr. John, to wrap up our discussion for today, can you please invite our listeners to support their book itself?
26:3826 minutes, 38 secondsAh, yes. Okay. Um, so the book is called, it’s a long name unfortunately,
26:4526 minutes, 45 secondswhich makes it really hard to sell. It’s called the false paradigms of today and the timeless truth of tomorrow. Essays
26:5226 minutes, 52 secondson meaning. Okay, that’s too hard to remember. If you tried to write it down, I mean all three of you. Um, you you didn’t get it. I said it too fast. So,
27:0127 minutes, 1 secondif you want to look for it, you just you could type in John Bliss. So, jo L I SS and then the word essays and you’ll find
27:1027 minutes, 10 secondsit that way. That’s the easy way to find it. It’s on Amazon. It’s at Barnes & Noble. Um, it’s also on my website,
27:1727 minutes, 17 secondsskepticapress.com. And I think Daniel’s gonna give you a link for that. And you can buy through my website. I think it’s a little cheaper on my website than on
27:2627 minutes, 26 secondsAmazon. Um, it’s it’s available in hardback or in in Kindle. Um, and also audio book. And the audio audio book is
27:3427 minutes, 34 secondsreally really good. It’s got some Australian guy with a great accent and it’s really well done. Um, okay. And if
27:4227 minutes, 42 secondsyou uh want a free copy, you can do that as well. You can go to my Skeptic Skeptica Press website and if you click
27:4927 minutes, 49 secondson about the book, you’ll see there’s a place to to get uh download the book and you can get it in PDF. I personally
27:5727 minutes, 57 secondsdon’t like reading PDFs. I think it’s a real pain in the butt. Um I prefer Kindle format, but some of you guys do that. So, um yeah, if you want a PDF for
28:0528 minutes, 5 secondsfree, you can go do that. If you want to buy the book, you can. And by the way, um, in my case, and it’s probably true true for most authors, I don’t make jack
28:1528 minutes, 15 secondssquat on these books. So, uh, I make about $21 to $2 per book sold. Maybe $2.
28:2228 minutes, 22 secondsUm, so if so, if you’re trying to support me, you’re not going to help me any. I mean, you’re better off just sending me what
28:2928 minutes, 29 secondsloads of cash. Um, which I I don’t expect you to do. So, so don’t buy the book, you know, to try to be nice to me.
28:3528 minutes, 35 secondsif if you would just as well read on a PDF, go get it for free. I I have no problem with that.
28:4428 minutes, 44 secondsWell, so Mr. John Bless, thank you so much for your time. Hey, thank you, Daniel.
28:5128 minutes, 51 secondsSee you soon.
28:5428 minutes, 54 secondsThank you for joining us on the Universal Podcast Network. One voice everywhere.