Leo の「真理こそ至上の価値、真理を追求せよ」…という根源的な誤謬

2025年9月13日 · 約197分

前置き

全ての宗教信者や精神世界ファン/マニア/信者が共通して抱えている根源的な誤謬があるが、その根源的な誤謬に彼らは全く気づいていない。

そこで、その典型例として Leo の最近(2025-09-08)の動画を取り上げる。この動画では、Leo がその根源的な誤謬を後生大事に抱え込み、声高に主張している。実際、Leo は 3.5時間もかけて長広舌の熱弁を振るっている。

Leo の主張は要約すると「真理こそ至上の価値、何よりも真理を追求せよ」というもの。

どこが誤謬なのか

この Leo の主張の核心である「真理」こそが根源的な誤謬。なぜなら、

真理(*1)は虚構であり、もともと実在しない。
実在しないもの（＝真理）は、当然ながら無価値。
実在しないもの（＝真理）を追求するのは無益。
実在しないもの（＝真理）を獲得することは不可能。獲得したと確信している神秘家/宗教家/精神世界信者は妄想に陥っている。

実際、いまだかつて誰一人として「「真理の実在」の確たる証拠」を提示できなかった。

喩えると、「この箱の中に真理がある」と主張して箱を掲げるものは大勢いたが、その箱の中身が公開されたことは皆無。真理がそれほど凄い実在なら、有無を言わせぬ明証性をもっており、皆が既に当然の事として受け入れている筈。

太陽の存在を誰が疑えようか。限られたごく少数の精神的エリートだけしか得られないような難解/幽玄な真理は、そもそも真理の資格（＝普遍性）がない。言い換えると、「その存在を明瞭に立証できない真理」は真理ではない。至ってシンプルな道理(*2)。

…と、ここまでで済めば、話は簡単だが、その先がある。

人間の社会は、この「真理という虚構」の上に構築されている。それが宗教であり、芸術であり、倫理道徳、社会正義、基本的人権、人間は平等…といった社会的価値観の束になっている。いわば、虚構の土台（＝真理）の上に構築された楼閣（＝社会的価値観の束）に喩えることができる。

Leo は、この楼閣の各所に目に付く施工不良や劣化、欠陥を批判し、本源となる土台に価値を見出し、それを追求せよと声高に叫んでいる。いわば、真理の原理主義者。

AI は

Leoの主張の根幹は、「人々は真実を気にしていない」という驚くべき指摘にある。

と要約しているが、全然、驚きではない。現代人は真理（＝神）が虚構だと薄々気づいている。それに比べ、虚構を真理だと未だに錯覚し続けている Leo の方が精神的に未熟で幼いと言える。

(*1)

ここで言う真理（＝ Ⅰ型真理）とは、宗教や精神世界でいう真理や、さらには哲学でいう真理のこと。芸術家が追求する真理（美）も同じ範疇に含まれる。Leo は真理を神と言い換えてもいる。

科学でいう真理（＝ Ⅱ型真理）はその対象が観測可能な事物に限定され、内容も厳密に定義されている。

この Ⅰ型真理と Ⅱ型真理の違いは後者は検証可能だが、前者は厳密な定義が不可能なので、検証しようにもできないという点。この記事では真理を前者の意味に限定する。

なお、数学には真理はないと私は判断している。いわば公理（or 数学的直観）というルール（土台）の上に構築した凝ったパズルの体系（楼閣）が数学。そして公理や数学的直観は真理ではない。それらが真理ならば公理や数学的直観を厳密に論証できなくてはならないが、数学者はそれを既に断念している。

(*2)

これはごく当たり前の道理であって、有り難みに満ちた難解/幽玄な「真理」ではない。つまり、

真理は虚構であり、もともと実在しない

という私の主張は（御大層な）真理ではない。ごく当たり前の平凡な道理でしかない。それゆえ、私のこの主張は虚構ではない。

要旨

真理と堕落の弁証法

提供された文章は、YouTuberのLeoによる「真理こそ最高の価値である」と題された講演の書き起こしの一部です。

Leoは、‌‌真理‌‌を‌‌人生における最高の価値‌‌として位置づけることの重要性を強く主張しています。彼は、‌‌人々が真理を軽視している‌‌ために、人生や社会全体が‌‌腐敗‌‌と‌‌自己欺瞞‌‌に陥ると説きます。

具体的には、‌‌お金、成功、権力、家族、友人、社会正義、宗教‌‌といった他の価値を真理よりも上位に置くことで、それらの価値自体が‌‌偽物‌‌となり、‌‌機能不全‌‌を引き起こすという例を多数挙げています。Leoは、‌‌真理‌‌こそが‌‌宇宙の基盤‌‌であり、‌‌神‌‌そのものであると述べ、真理を追求することが‌‌最高の愛‌‌や‌‌真の精神性‌‌へと繋がると強調しています。

概要

要約書: 真実を最高価値とすることの重要性

このブリーフィングドキュメントは、YouTuber「Leo」による動画「Why Truth Is The Highest Value」（「真実こそ最高の価値である」）からの抜粋をレビューし、真実を最高価値とすることの重要性、その欠如が個人や社会に与える影響、そして真実を探求することの意義について詳述する。

主要テーマと重要なアイデア/事実

1. 人類は真実を気にしていない

Leoの主張の根幹は、「人々は真実を気にしていない」という驚くべき指摘にある。これは、あらゆる文化、時代、性別、職業（科学者、宗教家を含む）に共通する普遍的な声明であると彼は述べている。

「人々は真実を気にしていない。」（0:00:56）
しかし、同時に誰も自分が真実を気にしていないと認めない。「誰も、もちろん、自分が真実を気にしていないとは認めない。誰もが自分が真実を気にかけていると信じている。」（0:02:16）
多くの人は自分の世界観をすでに真実だと見なしており、真実を気にかけることと、自分の既存の信念を守ることを混同している。

2. 真実の定義と他の価値との区別

Leoが語る「真実」は、単なる事実の羅列や特定の信念ではない。

「私がこのエピソードで話している真実とは、信念のことだけを言っているわけではない。」（0:03:32）
それは、「特定の心の内容が真実であることを必要とし、それを守ることや十字軍的であることとは違う。」（0:04:05）
真実を気にかけるとは、「真実を知りたいという非常に好奇心旺盛でオープンな心を持つこと。答えを守ることではない。」（0:05:25）
彼は、宗教、科学、特定の政治的信念（マルクス主義、リバタリアニズムなど）は、彼がここで語る「真実」ではないと強調する。これらは「心の内容」であり、真実そのものではない。

3. 真実を最高価値としないことの帰結：腐敗と自己欺瞞

真実を最高価値としない場合、必然的に腐敗と自己欺瞞に陥るとLeoは警告する。

「真実以外のものを人生の最優先事項に置くと、自己欺瞞、虚偽、幻想に陥るに違いない。」（0:12:35）
「真実を最高優先事項としないものは、どんなものであれ、腐敗につながる。」（0:14:00）
腐敗とは、「真実を気にかけず、優先しないこと」である。特定の政治家の汚職のような表面的な行為ではなく、より深い価値観のレベルでの問題である。
例として、愛や感情を最高価値とする女性の例を挙げ、真実を無視することで、偽りの愛、機能不全な関係、新時代の幻想、カルトへの傾倒など、人生のあらゆる側面が腐敗していく様を描写する。(0:15:08~)
家族や友人、民族、宗教、社会正義、さらには人類そのものを真実より上位に置くことの危険性を指摘する。これらの価値観を優先すると、結果として「偽りの家族、偽りの友情、偽りの社会正義」が生まれ、腐敗と紛争の原因となる。(0:43:43~)

4. 真実と他の価値の相互関係

Leoは、他の価値が真実とどのように関連しているかを分析する。

「あなたが大切にするすべてのものは、それが真実であるか、本物である場合にのみ価値を持つ。」（0:26:59）偽りの愛、偽りの友情、偽りの金、偽りの科学は無価値である。
存在そのものが究極の価値であり、他のすべての価値の前提条件である。「存在は数ある価値の一つではない。存在はあらゆる価値の前提条件である。」（1:07:22）
神は真実であると述べ、宗教的な意味合いではなく、存在そのものが真実であり、それが宇宙の基礎原理であると説明する。
愛と真実の関係も深く掘り下げる。「もしあなたが愛を最高の価値と設定するならば、あなたは最高の真実も最高の愛も得られないだろう。もしあなたが真実を最高の価値と設定するならば、あなたは最終的に最高の真実、愛、善、美、知性、そして神に到達するだろう。」（1:14:08）
人間が抱く「愛」は、人間的な感情や偏見によって歪められやすい（例：子供への愛ゆえに不正を働く、民族への愛ゆえに差別する）。
真実を追求することで、純粋で高次の「愛」が理解できるようになる。

5. 真実を追求することの困難さと報酬

真実の追求は困難であり、苦痛を伴うが、究極の報酬をもたらす。

「真実は重く、冷たく、難しい。」（1:22:16）
幻想の解体はエゴにとって苦痛である。「あなたが持っていた幻想や錯覚の多くは、解体されなければならず、それはあなたにとって、あなたのエゴにとって苦痛になるだろう。」（1:22:45）
しかし、真実を指針とすることで、「人生のすべてが適切な場所に収まる。」（1:22:45）
真実を追求することで、精神的な目覚め、神の実現、そして現実に対する深い理解に到達できる。

6. 真実を生きることの意味：自己責任とライフデザイン

真実を重んじることは、単に信念を持つことではなく、生き方そのものである。

徹底的な自己監査: 「真の自己開発とは、自分の人生をどのように生きているのか、なぜそのように生きているのかを深く監査すること。」（1:29:58）
キャリア選択: 自分のキャリアが真実追求と矛盾しないように、自らを妥協するような立場に置かないこと。「多くの不正直さは、単にあなたの仕事やキャリアの選択から生じる。」（2:31:00）
困難な真実への直面: 自分の間違いを認め、幻想を手放し、たとえ不人気であっても真実を語る勇気を持つこと。
独立した探求と質問: あらゆるもの（社会、現実、科学、宗教）を深く質問し、自身の世界観を問い直すこと。「誰かが真に真実を尊重しており、単なる嘘つきやふりをしていないことを知る方法は、彼らが自分の世界観を問い直しているかどうかである。」（2:20:31）
犠牲: 真実のために物質的な報酬（お金、権力、セックス、名声、成功、贅沢）を犠牲にすること。「もしあなたが生存のために真実を犠牲にしていないなら、あなたは真実を気にかけていない。」（2:21:20）

7. 真実追求の罠と注意点

Leoは真実追求におけるいくつかの罠についても言及している。

真実を他人に押し付ける: 他人に真実を無理に押し付けたり、「真実爆弾」を投下したりすることは、相手が準備できていない場合、かえって真実ではない行為となる。(2:48:08~)
独善的になる: 自分を「真実の十字軍」として祭り上げ、他人を裁くことでエゴを満たすこと。(2:49:53~)
真実を武器にする: 真実を自己の利益やエゴの増長のために利用すること。(2:50:25~)
過剰な正直さ: 思ったことを全て口に出すことが真実を気にかけることではない。相手の成熟度や状況を考慮し、言うべきでないことは言わない判断力も必要。(2:50:50~)
アイデンティティ化: 真実探求を自己のアイデンティティにすること。エゴが「真実探求者である私」という特別な存在を好む傾向に注意。(2:53:11~)
願望や信念を真実と混同する: 「自分が真実であってほしいと願うこと」や「すでに信じていること」を真実と見なすことが、真実探求を阻害する最大の罠である。(2:53:11~)
完璧主義にならない: 腐敗した世界で生きる以上、ある程度の「ごまかし」は必要。完璧を目指すのではなく、少しずつ改善していく姿勢が重要。(2:55:13~)

8. 真実を気にかけるメリットとデメリット

真実を気にかけることは、必ずしも「楽な人生」をもたらすわけではない。

「あなたが真実を気にかけていないなら、腐敗した愚者の生き方をし、楽しめばいい。」（2:34:25）
「動物のように生きるなら、ある意味では楽しいし、楽で、至福だ。」（3:09:39）
真実を追求することは、個人的な苦痛を伴う場合もある。「私は真実の探求から非常に多くの苦しみを経験してきたため、今ではマトリックスから脱出することが本当に良いことなのかさえ確信がない。」（3:11:20）
しかし、真実を追求しない人生は、自己欺瞞、幻想、腐敗に満ち、最高の知性、愛、美、善、神の実現を逃すことになる。それは「マトリックスの中に留まる」選択である。(3:10:14~)

9. 真実へのアプローチと実践

Leoは、真実を最高価値とするための具体的なアプローチを提案している。

真実の神聖さを理解する: 真実を神聖なものとして深く敬うこと。「真実を神聖なものとして崇敬すること。なぜなら、文字通りそうだからだ。」（2:19:18）
能動的な探求: 他人に教えられるのを待つのではなく、自ら探求し、問いかけること。「真実を重んじることは、真実探求へのコミットメントを意味する。受動的ではなく、能動的であること。」（2:27:55）
内省と自己観察: 自分が真実のために何を犠牲にしているか、なぜ他のものを優先しているかを意識的に観察すること。「自分が生存のために真実を犠牲にする瞬間を、その場で実際に気づいてほしい。」（2:57:54）
真実を愛する: 真実探求を義務ではなく、「真実との恋に落ちる」こととして捉える。これは、真実を神聖で神聖な経験として理解することにつながる。（2:36:53, 2:37:25）
長期的な投資: 真実への投資は即座に報われるものではなく、何十年もかけて実を結び、心の平和、自信、安全、現実との深いつながりをもたらす。(2:45:13~)

結論

Leoの主張は、真実を人生の最高価値として位置づけることが、個人、社会、そして人類全体の腐敗を克服し、純粋な生を送るための唯一の道であるというものである。

彼のいう「神」とは、特定の宗教の教義ではなく、真実そのものであり、宇宙の究極的な本質である。真実の探求は困難で苦痛を伴うが、それがなければ、私たちは自己欺瞞と幻想の深みに沈み、真の愛、善、知性、そして存在の深淵に触れることはできない。このメッセージは、聴衆に対し、自身の価値観を深く問い直し、真実との関係を再構築するよう促す。

Leo の真理探求の旅

レオの経験と教えのより大きな文脈において、これらの情報源は彼自身の真理探究の旅について、その‌‌動機、姿勢、困難さ、究極的な目標、そして彼自身の自己認識と成長‌‌という多岐にわたる側面を語っています。

真理探究の動機と本質

Leoの真理探究の旅は、‌‌「真理こそ最高の価値である」‌‌という根本的な主張に基づいています。彼は、真理を最高の価値として位置づけないことは、深い間違いであると断言します。その動機は、彼が‌‌「人類は真理を気にかけていない」‌‌という冷徹な認識に達したことにあります。彼は、科学者であろうと宗教者であろうと、老若男女問わず、社会のあらゆるレベルで真理への関心が欠如していると見ています。この真理への無関心が、政治、ビジネス、経済、さらには個人の精神状態に至るまで、あらゆる‌‌腐敗の根源‌‌であるとLeoは指摘しています。

Leoにとって、‌‌真理とは現実そのもの‌‌です。彼は真理を概念的なアイデアだけでなく、‌‌宇宙全体としての現実そのもの‌‌と捉えています。さらに、彼は‌‌神を真理と同一視‌‌しており、「神は真理である」と繰り返し述べています。この考えに基づけば、真理を最高価値としないことは、‌‌神よりも他の何かを優先すること‌‌であり、自己欺瞞、虚偽、幻想に陥ることが避けられないと彼は強く主張します。

真理探究の道のり：姿勢、困難、そして犠牲

Leoの真理探究の旅は、特定の信念や世界観を擁護することとは全く異なります。それは、‌‌非常に好奇心旺盛で開かれた心‌‌を持ち、自らの既存の信念や世界観を深く問い続ける「真理探究の旅に出たい」という意欲を意味します。彼は、人々が「そうあってほしい」と望むことや、既に信じていることを真理と見なす最大の落とし穴を警告しています。

この旅は決して容易なものではなく、‌‌多大な犠牲と困難‌‌を伴います。

‌‌痛みを伴う自己認識‌‌: 真理にコミットすることは、‌‌自分が間違っていることを認める‌‌ことを可能にします。これは自我にとって非常に苦痛なプロセスであり、Leo自身も自らの現実認識における間違いの痛みに何時間も浸ったと語っています。
‌‌他の価値の放棄‌‌: 真理を優先することは、お金、権力、名声、成功、快楽、さらには家族や人間関係といった、世間一般で価値とされる多くのものを真理の下に置くことを意味します。これらを真理よりも優先すると、それらの価値は‌‌偽物となり、腐敗する‌‌とLeoは警告しています。
‌‌キャリアとライフスタイルの選択‌‌: Leoは、真理探究を阻害するような妥協的な仕事やキャリアを選択しないことの重要性を強調しています。彼自身も、質の高い深い仕事をするために、大学でのさらなる学業や9時-5時の仕事を辞め、経済的自立を追求しました。
‌‌「重荷」としての真理‌‌: 真理を気にかけることは「重荷」であり、精神的労働と苦痛を伴うと彼は表現しています。彼は長年この重荷を背負ってきたため、多くの人々がこの重荷を負わずに生きていることに驚いたと語っています。真理の道を歩むことは、抵抗の少ない道を選ぶこととは異なり、正しいこと、すなわち「真理との関係を最大化すること」を追求することです。
‌‌社会との乖離‌‌: Leoは、多くの人が真理を気にかけていない社会で育ったため、真理を追求するロールモデルが不足していると指摘しています。また、腐敗した社会で生き抜く中で、名声、お金、性、愛といった「輝くもの」に惑わされてきたと彼は見ています。

真理探究の究極的な目的と恩恵

真理探究の旅の究極的な目標は、‌‌最高の真理、愛、善、美、知性、そして神に到達する‌‌ことです。Leoは、‌‌愛は真理なしには存在し得ない‌‌と主張し、最高のレベルでは愛と真理は同一であると述べています。真理を優先しない愛は「偽りの愛」であり、関係の破綻や自己欺瞞につながると彼は警告しています。

この旅は、‌‌「目覚め（awakening）」‌‌へと導きます。目覚めは、絶対的な真理の認識であり、真理が単なる知的追求ではなく、‌‌精神的で神聖な、神の性質そのものである‌‌ことを理解する瞬間です。目覚めに到達した後も旅は続き、真理はさらに深まると彼は説明しています。

真理探究の恩恵は多岐にわたります。Leoは、‌‌心の平和、自信、安定、純粋な生活、苦しみからの自由、神と現実との深いつながり、世界の理解‌‌などを挙げています。最終的には、個人の意識が真理に浸り、そこから‌‌最高の喜び‌‌を得る状態に至ると語っています。真理は自己を解放し、自己を超越し、すべての問題の解決策となると彼は主張します。人生の適切な崇拝の対象は、神＝真理であるとLeoは教えています。

Leo自身の旅と自己認識

Leoは、自身を「真理の王」や「真理の教皇」といった完璧な存在としては描いていません。彼は‌‌自分自身も「腐敗している」‌‌と認め、真理とより一致するためにまだ多くの努力が必要であると考えています。この動画自体が、彼自身の将来の発展のための計画であり、彼自身の「羅針盤（North Star）」であると述べています。

彼のこれまでの真理探究の旅は、‌‌劇的な変化と成長‌‌をもたらしました。過去10年間で彼の仕事は大きく進化し、より真実で深いものになったのは、視聴者数、コース作成、本の執筆といった外的な成功よりも、‌‌「現実を理解すること」を優先した‌‌結果であると彼は説明しています。彼はまた、‌‌知的にも多くの間違いを犯してきたことを自覚‌‌しており、その間違いを認める痛みを経験することで成長してきたと語っています。

彼の教えの特異性は、‌‌「腐敗」というテーマに中心的に焦点を当てている‌‌点にあります。他のスピリチュアルな教師がこれについて深く語るのを見たことがないと彼は感じています。また、彼は真理を他人に押し付けることの危険性を認識しており、人々が自ら真理を大切に思うようになることを促す役割を自覚しています。彼の仕事は、真理を気にかける人がいない世界で、‌‌真理をリードすること‌‌だと彼は考えています。

結論として、Leoの真理探究の旅は、個人的な成長と宇宙論的な理解が一体となった深い探求であり、真理を人生の最高価値として位置づけることで、腐敗に満ちた社会を越え、‌‌個人と世界の真の変革‌‌をもたらす可能性を示唆しています。

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動画(3:26:53)

Why Truth Is The Highest Value

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvNGha_g2U4

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31,400 views Sep 8, 2025

What is the importance of truth for living a good life? Why is truth important? How important is truth compared to other values and priorities?

文字起こし

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（以下は、精神世界のグルを気取った Leo と名乗る Youtuber の一人語り動画の文字起こしです。動画のタイトルは "Why Truth Is The Highest Value" です。長いので 2分割し、以下は前半部分です。）

Okay, are you ready for some serious philosophy? Let's go. So we're only making one radical claim in this entire episode, which is that truth is the highest value. If you don't place truth as your highest value, you are making a profound mistake. People don't understand this. They don't see how this is true. So this needs a lot of explanation, which is what the next couple of hours of explanation are going to be. Here's the first key insight out of many in this episode. (00:00:56)

It's that people do not care about truth. I'm going to be making some very simple, basic points here. Basic insights that are going to turn into something extremely profound. But the points... they're going to seem too simple. They're going to seem too obvious, to the point where your mind is going to skip over and say, Okay, yeah, so what? I really want you to take every one of these key insights very seriously. Really think about the depth of what's being said here. (00:01:35)

So this is it again. People do not care about truth. This is a general statement that applies to all of mankind, across all cultures, all times, all eras. Man, woman, child, anybody. Scientists, religious people, it doesn't matter. Everybody. Literally, what I want you to notice, first of all, this is the foundation for really understanding all of mankind. What's going on, everything in society, all of politics, everything. Business, economics, everything. (00:02:06)

What's going on is that nobody cares about truth. But, of course, don't believe me. Check. Check for yourself if what I'm saying is true. Now, here's the next trick that the ego mind plays. Is that nobody, of course, admits to themselves that they don't care about truth. Everybody believes that they care about truth. Everybody already regards their worldview as the truth. This entire episode, the point of it, is just to communicate to you one simple thing. Is that you need to care about truth. (00:02:54)

And that caring about truth is going to make a profound difference in the trajectory of your life. Just caring about truth makes an enormous difference. This is an attitudinal thing, right? It's an attitude. What does it mean to care about truth? We're going to go into more detail on that in about an hour. But, to give you a little, kind of like, to set this up. Because there's layers to this. (00:03:18)

What does it mean to care about truth? Like, it's an attitude. Do you actually genuinely want the truth? Which is different from defending your worldview or your belief system. Or what you already think is true. And when I say truth, of course, how do we define truth? Well, that's a very deep topic. I have a whole episode. You can go check that out. What is truth? And I've discussed it elsewhere. But, when I'm talking about truth in this episode, I'm not just talking about beliefs. (00:04:05)

Like, whether you believe the Earth is round or flat. Whether that's true or false. Of course, that's part of it. But that's a very tiny part of it. That's too superficial. What we talk about... It's not a truth. Caring about truth is not about needing some particular content of your mind to be true. And then defending that. Or crusading for it. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about actually caring about knowing the truth. (00:04:35)

Which is different. This is so difficult to communicate because the people who need to hear this the most, they already think they have the truth. That's not what I'm talking about. Your religion is not the truth that I'm talking about. Science. You might think, well, then science. No, I'm not talking about science. Science does not count as truth. In what I'm talking about here. If you care about science, that does not mean you care about the truth. (00:05:02)

You see how sneaky this is? And if you have some political belief system, like you're a Marxist or you're a Libertarian or something, and you think that's the truth, that's not what I'm talking about. All that is content of the mind. Defending and arguing and debating about that stuff does not demonstrate that you care about the truth. To care about the truth is to have a very curious and open mind to want to go on a truth-seeking journey. Not to be defending answers. (00:05:37)

I was thinking about what accounts for the success that I've been able to have throughout my life, specifically in the philosophical domain. In my sense-making. And I tracked it back all the way down. I did a genealogy of my own intellectual development. Back into my teenage years. And I thought about where did I go right? Because it's kind of shocking to me that other people haven't done this. And that other people go so wrong in their sense-making approaches. (00:06:21)

Including scientists and academics and philosophers and so forth. Otherwise very intelligent people. Where do they go wrong? And the number one place that they go wrong is that they don't actually care about truth enough. It's so fundamental. It's so simple. And yet it makes all the difference. And we'll explain why in this episode. Another key insight is that caring about truth is necessary for proper life. You can't live properly without this. (00:06:54)

A key question of philosophy is how do you live the good life? What is the good life? What does that mean? Well, the central pillar of that is caring about truth. Living truthfully. Whatever that means. And look, truth, it's not just about a collection of knowledge. It's not about do you have false knowledge or true knowledge. It goes way beyond knowledge. It's your entire attitude. It's your whole lifestyle. It's your value system. It's what motivates you. (00:07:30)

It's what you prioritize in your life. That's what we're talking about. And this will become much more clear as we go on here. Now, don't get me wrong. In general, values and lifestyles are very relative. And I'm very open to that. There's no one right way to live. There's no one right set of values. No one correct worldview. So, I'm not trying to be absolutistic about this. And you might say, well, Leo, given all the stuff you said in the past about relativity and all that, how can you now come out and say that truth is the highest value? (00:08:04)

That sounds rather dogmatic and closed-minded and absolutistic and rather biased. Leo, isn't that just your bias? Like, you care about the truth. And aren't you just now projecting that concern and value of yours onto the rest of the world? Like, trying to get everybody to do what you're doing. What about other values, after all, Leo? There's other great values, like, what about love? What about beauty? (00:08:27)

What about goodness? What about family and loyalty and religion? What about tradition and freedom and tribe and nation and social justice and equality? What about happiness? What about ending suffering in the world? Aren't those higher values than truth? How can you just say that truth trumps all those? Well, of course, I'm saying something quite nuanced here. What we're going to have to do is we're going to have to examine these different value systems and see what are the logical consequences of placing certain values as your highest. (00:09:08)

And, of course, that raises the question of, like, what sense does it even make to say that one has a highest value or one should have a highest value? Does that even make sense? After all, you know, what are values anyways and why are they important? Well, that's a sort of a deep topic, the topic of values. Values are basically what drives your whole life. My Life Purpose course, if you want to go check that out, takes you through a multi-hour long process for figuring out your values which will then drive your whole life. Rather important. (00:09:40)

But then the question is, like, what do you place as your top value? What should be driving your life? Is this just subjective? Anybody just gets to pick whatever they want? Or is there something deeper to it? Obviously, I'm suggesting there is something deeper to it. And we're going to explore that here. With respect to this idea of having a highest value, see, life is going to force you to make choices. Difficult, painful choices. (00:10:06)

Values are really priorities. If we put a gun to your child's head and we say we're going to pull the trigger unless you go do X, whatever that X is that we want you to do, the question is, are you going to do it? And then if you're going to do it or not going to do it, that determines, essentially, your value system. And, see, values are very tricky because there's, again, this is so self-deceptive, because you have an idea of what your values are, and then you have how you actually live out your life, and those are, like, your actual embodied values. So you might fancy yourself as having values of love and truth and whatever, you know, helping mankind and all this sort of stuff, but then the way that you actually live out your life is not about that. (00:10:52)

It's about sex, it's about money, it's about drugs, whatever. So then those are your real values, right? So be very careful, you're going to have, we're dealing with two sets of values here, the real ones and then the fantasy that you tell yourself. So, your life, you can think of your life as a series of decisions. Your life is going to present you with profound, important, life-altering decisions. Little ones throughout the day, but then major ones, you know, every few years you're going to have some major decisions to make, like what job, what career, who to marry, who to have sex with, who not to have sex with, who to get involved with relationship-wise and not, and so forth. (00:11:31)

And those decisions are going to make or break your life. And then you're going to be making those decisions based on certain values. Like, for example, some job offers you more money, so you go with that option. What does that demonstrate? That demonstrates that your value in that situation is money. Not happiness, not long-term career potential or something like that, it's money. And then of course that has all sorts of consequences. So why is truth the highest value? Because reality is truth. So when I say truth, I don't just mean conceptual ideas in your mind. I literally mean, of course I do mean that as well, but it goes much deeper than that. (00:12:19)

We're really talking about reality itself. So we might say the entire universe as a whole is truth. And then your idea about it, your worldview and your beliefs about it, that's also, that's a derivative form, a second-order truth. Conceptual truth about the universe. And then how well that reflects the actual universe, that determines how truthful your concepts are, and so forth. So truth is reality itself. There is nothing more fundamental in existence than truth. So if you don't place truth as your highest value, what's going to happen is that you're going to prioritize other things over truth. You're going to prioritize survival over truth. Meaning that then you must fall into self-deception, falsehood, and illusion. This is not a maybe or an if, this is a guarantee. (00:13:09)

Even if you place truth as your highest value and your highest priority, you're still going to fall into self-deception. But if you don't, you're completely hopeless. There's no chance for you. It's guaranteed. So if you're conscious of this, then you're making a choice about, you know, how you want to live your life according to what values. To choose self-deception would be a lower form of intelligence. Why would any mind want to deliberately deceive itself? Choose the option that's going to lead to its self-deception. So the key for you in this episode is to realize that if you place any other priority in your life above truth, you will fall into self-deception. And that's something that should concern you. And if it doesn't, it's because you're not thinking very far ahead. You're thinking too short term. But we're going to help you to think a little bit further here. (00:14:00)

Anything less than truth as your highest priority must lead to corruption. This episode is going to have a profound connection to the topic of corruption. People don't understand what corruption is. They think of it too shallowly. What corruption really is, is that corruption just is the not caring and not prioritizing of truth. Try that as a technical definition of corruption. Corruption is not taking a bag of money under the table or doing some shady deal as a politician. Corruption is the non-prioritization of truth. To prioritize anything above truth, that's corruption. So, if you're going to prioritize other things over truth, your life is going to slowly become more and more corrupt. And not just your life, but your mind. And the way that you understand what reality is. And it's going to snowball and it's going to get worse and worse. (00:15:08)

Here's an example to take this from the abstract into the very practical. Consider the case of a woman, sort of a new age type of woman, maybe in her mid-twenties or thirties. And she places love and feeling as her highest value. So, she doesn't prioritize truth. And, you know, a lot of... this is true of many feminine women, is that they do place love and feeling over truth. You know, truth, after all, is sort of a masculine... of course, these are gross stereotypes. But, you know, for an example, we need a kind of a stereotype. Truth is seen as a sort of a more masculine pursuit, more masculine interest. Of course, not to say that women couldn't be interested in truth, but generally, if you give a woman a choice between love and truth, she's going to choose love. (00:16:03)

So, imagine you have one of these types of women. So, how does her life unfold? She chases attractive men who give her the strongest feelings, because feelings and love is what she's after. That's her highest priority. She falls in love with these kinds of men without checking their character. Since she cares about strong feelings more than truth, she picks untruthful men. Because, after all, what does it matter to check for a man's character if all you want, if what you're really interested in is feelings? Because a man with very bad character can give you great feelings, can make you feel strong emotions and romantic love. And if she doesn't care about truth, then why would she care whether her man cares about truth? She doesn't care about that either. (00:16:55)

She cares about how much he emotionally stimulates her. That's what she cares about. That's how she judges the quality of a man. She's also, of course, untruthful with herself and creates fantasies about her men to herself. So she doesn't see the men she's dating and sleeping with realistically. Because that's not a priority for her. It never was in her life. Her relationships therefore fail, but she can't see why because she just trusts in love. She believes in love. And looking at the truth hurts too much because it doesn't feel good the way that fantasies do. She and her lovers fall into deep self-deception because neither of them care much about truth. And none of her friends care about the truth because if they did, they would conflict with her. There would be a clash there because if they would speak the truth to her, that would hurt her feelings and her fantasies. And she doesn't want that. (00:17:57)

So she selects her friends very carefully to select friends that are not very interested in truth. Because that just makes it easier to get along. Her lovers cheat on her, but she wants love so badly she lies to herself and she gaslights herself. She's easy to gaslight because she's so ungrounded from a lack of truth. That's essentially what gaslighting is. Go see my episode, What is Gaslighting? She has love in her life, but it's a false love. Not a true love. It's fantasies of love. It's dysfunctional and toxic love. She has defined love too narrowly as relationships with the human. And good feelings. And romance. And that's not really what love is about. (00:18:40)

She is lost in the social domain, not realizing that the social domain is not existentially true. And so she spends a lot of her life just trying to fit into the social domain. And this brings up a lot of struggle for her. She looks at girls on Instagram, not realizing how fake and untrue Instagram photos are. Because she doesn't care about the truth. So she falls for those illusions. And then she starts to feel ugly about herself. And she goes to get plastic surgery to make herself feel more beautiful. Because she falsely believes that it will get her the love that she craves. Since she places relationships, feelings, and love about truth, she cannot be alone for a few hours to contemplate reality clearly. Because that doesn't feel good. (00:19:29)

She doesn't care about truth. And she never cares to distinguish, for example, true yoga from fake yoga. So she's going to waste the next 10 years of her life going to fake yoga classes and doing fake yoga. Thinking that's going to develop her and get her somewhere. And it doesn't, of course. She never realizes infinite love because she never cared enough about truth to contemplate what love is. She assumed she knew. She assumed her feelings would be enough to get her true love. And that turns out to be false. Since she values feelings over truth, she never introspects deeply enough because it feels boring. Instead, what feels good is to run off to Burning Man with her new exciting hippie boyfriend. At Burning Man, she does psychedelics. And not caring about truth, she has some mystical vision of Jesus and she takes Jesus now as the truth. She distorts mystical visions to suit her feminine needs, confusing God and love with her feminine survival. (00:20:30)

Lost in new age fantasies of law of attraction and soulmates and twin flames and astrology. Lost in fake spirituality. She spends 10 years doing fake spirituality. And at the end of all that, her emotional state and maturity has not developed. She's still as emotionally out of control as she was 10 years ago. Because she's been doing fake spirituality. She gets addicted to weed because it makes her feel loved and it feeds her fantasies. Her new age fantasies. She joins a cult because they love bomb her and they promise her relationships and community. And that's what she was really looking for. That's what she values. That's what she prioritizes. But she ignores that truth cannot be found collectively. In any collective, there is no truth to be found. But she doesn't care about that. (00:21:24)

And of course, this cult ends up sexually violating her boundaries. But then she rationalizes it to herself for a long time because she never cared to learn about self-deception mechanisms that I teach, for example. That's not of interest to her. Because, you know, learning self-deception mechanisms, that's kind of like nerdy, logical, analytical type of stuff. And she just wants feelings and community and connection. Human connection. And so she gets it through this cult. But of course, at a cost. When she goes to the bookstore to look for spiritual books, what kind of books does she select? The ones that feed her fantasies. Ignoring the truthful books that could actually help her solve some of these problems. (00:22:06)

Her ideas of love and God and spirituality get corrupted over time. She's lost in her emotions and justifies it as divine feminine energy. Since she's ungrounded, she's always getting gaslighted, but she never takes responsibility for it and she feels herself to be the victim. Men use her for sex, but that truth is too painful for her to admit to herself. Her family tries to help her by telling her some truth. Because the only way you can help somebody, really, in these kinds of situations, is to give them some truth. But of course, she's been living the last ten years untruthfully in fantasies. So anything truthful they tell her that could actually help her resolve some of these situations and problems permanently, she rejects these because it hurts her too much. It doesn't feel good to hear the truth now that you've been living and you've constructed your whole life around a fantasy. (00:23:03)

She goes to therapy, but that doesn't work either because real therapy, true therapy, is about facing the truth. And that doesn't feel good either. And so she blames her therapist, and that doesn't work for her. She's acting out unconsciously due to past trauma in her life, but she cannot face it and heal that trauma because healing it, facing the truth, which would be necessary to heal the trauma, that doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel very loving. She enrolls in an AA program and follows it dogmatically without bothering to question whether the actual theory of the AA program is true. She just assumes that it's true. Because she never learned how to question assumptions. (00:23:49)

Finally, she finds a healthy man, a mature man to go on a date with, a conscious guy. But he's so truthful with her on that first date that she gets offended and she never calls him back. Next, she stumbles upon an actualized.org video, but as she's listening to it halfway through, she unsubscribes and clicks away. Because I say something rude or crass or something that rubs her feelings the wrong way, it doesn't feel very good, I say something kind of harsh and cold and truthful, dump some truth on her. Because what she's looking for is that kind of fake New Age positivity. So she goes looking for that kind of spirituality and of course she finds it, but does that really help her resolve her problems? Then she goes to a fortune teller who gives her some bad advice and she believes in it and then she bases her life on that. Because she has no epistemic rigor to evaluate the quality of the information this fortune teller gives. And then maybe she gets diagnosed with cancer and she goes to some New Age healer because she believes in New Age healers. (00:24:56)

And that healer ends up being a fake healer who also lives in various kinds of fantasies and he bullshits her and gives her all sorts of fantasies and really he's just using her for sex. But she believes in the healer because she found him through her friend and it's this kind of New Age synchronicity. So she gets lost in this healer kind of fantasy. And then this kind of keeps going and going and going, right? What I want you to see here is that truth is not just a couple of wrong ideas that she has, it's... what is the problem with the way that she's living this entire life? It's her attitude towards life. See, she was never interested in the truth from the very beginning. She was prioritizing something else in life, she was chasing after something else. And she's so deep in it now, ten years later, living out this life, that it doesn't even occur to her that all of these things, you can trace them all back to the source. What is the source of it all? Is that her mind is getting corrupted by all sorts of wrong ideas about how the world works, how mankind works, how men work, how love works, how feelings work, how suffering works, how happiness works, all of that is corrupted in her mind. (00:26:10)

She's not making proper sense of it because she never cared to in the first place. Because she never thought through all of these consequences. And how it would all play out. And so now she's so deep in it, she can't even see what's really causing all of this. To her, it's going to feel like this is just how life is. Men just are this way. Love just is this way. Life just is this way. Spirituality just is this way. And that's a very difficult illusion to bring her out of. That's going to take years of work. And it's actually not going to be possible until she makes a fundamental shift in her attitude and starts caring about the truth. (00:26:59)

Here's the next key insight, is that all the things you value only have value to the extent that they are true or real. To say that truth is the highest value is to say that existence or realness is the highest value. After all, what good is your love if it isn't real? If it isn't true? What good is a friendship if it isn't true? What good is money if it's fake money? What good is science if it isn't true? Really think this through. Because here's what's going to happen, is that truth by itself, for most people, it's too abstract, it's too philosophical, it doesn't seem like, why should I want it? Why should I be interested in it? Like, what is it going to do for me? (00:28:02)

It seems like it's much better to just be interested in something tangible like money, or relationships or family, something like that. But what you have to realize more deeply is that the only things in your life that are really worth anything is if they're real, if they're not fake. And what happens is that if you stop caring about whether you're actually doing things with reality behind them, or fakely, what's going to happen is that your mind is just going to, if you don't care deeply enough about it, your mind is just going to fake stuff. It's going to fake happiness, it's going to fake friendships, it's going to fake money, it's going to fake jobs, it's going to fake politics, it's going to fake its way through life. (00:28:49)

And then you're going to be living a fake life. To the point where even your face will be fake. Because you will be putting all this fake shit on your face. Fake makeup, fake piercings, fake tattoos, fake Botox. And this goes much deeper than just plastic surgery, your mind will also be fake. This is what I mean by this kind of corruption. Let's examine some of the various alternative values that you could have, and see what happens if you place them above truth. See the problems. So, the easiest one to start with is money. What do you think would happen if you place money as your highest value in life? If your whole attitude in life is about money? (00:29:35)

Well, of course, that means now you're free to lie. Not just to others, but to yourself. You're free to bullshit others, and of course yourself. You're going to start to believe whatever you need to believe in order to make as much money as easily and quickly as possible. Think about how that's going to play out. In the most extreme example, it might get so bad that you might actually start printing money. Literally printing money on a printer in your house. Fake money. But of course, for most people, it's not going to be that, but it's going to be... (00:30:17)

This is actually the case with most of what you see in society. What is happening right now in our late-stage capitalist, dystopian, techno-oligarch society... This is what's happening, is that in practice, people are placing money, corporations, Wall Street, Washington D.C. is placing money as the highest priority. And it's so pernicious. And it's so toxic and corrupting. And it corrupts everything. It corrupts politics, corrupts government, it corrupts every corporation, it corrupts art, the way art is done. Hollywood. Just think about the significance of this. It makes people miserable and unhappy because they choose jobs for the money and not for higher values. (00:31:09)

And of course, as all of this is happening, people are lying through their teeth. They're bullshitting everybody around because their job forces them to bullshit. You see, there are many, many jobs. The highest-paid jobs, you know why they're paid so highly? It's because you have to bullshit others. And then of course, to not have that cognitive dissonance, you have to then bullshit yourself as well. You're going to start to believe in fantasies. In practice, a lot of high-paying jobs, all that it is, is it's the perpetuation of a fantasy for others, and then also within yourself, you're going to have to believe in that fantasy too. (00:31:45)

What happens if you place success above truth? Well, we have a very good example of that right now in the White House. What is Donald Trump but the living embodiment of what happens to your life if you place success above truth? And look, interestingly enough, some people watching this will say, well, Leo, but that's a good thing. Look, Donald Trump, they actually like this. They look at Donald Trump and they look up to him as a role model. It's like, well, Leo, yeah, look how successful. He's a billionaire after all. And Leo, who are you to be talking about success? Yeah, but look at the price that Donald Trump has paid. Look at the corruption that his life is. (00:32:35)

He's a living, walking, festering wound of corruption, spreading like a virus into everything it comes into contact with. Now imagine that everybody in society lives like that. Completely detached from truth. Just saying whatever is convenient, bullshitting left and right. Imagine if all of society ran that way. Well, you don't really need to imagine it very far because we're heading down that direction. This is what this capitalist dystopia is turning into. It's exactly that. It's people who prioritize money and success above everything else, especially truth, and then this is what you get. (00:33:22)

This is the corruption that you see. This is the real source of the corruption. It's at the level of values and attitude. It's what you care about. You see, the problem here is that when I say that you don't care about truth, or that people don't care about truth, most people think of themselves as caring about truth. Religious people, Christians, Muslims, if they're listening to this, they're going to say, Leo, what are you talking about? I care about truth very much. Christianity is truth. Islam is truth. And that's why I worship it. (00:33:59)

No, that's not truth. That's not what I'm talking about. And look, a lot of these tech oligarchs, if they're listening to this, they're going to say, Leo, of course I agree with you completely. Yes, truth is my highest value. Of course truth is so important. But this is the fantasy. You see, every one of these tech oligarchs, or politicians, they have a fantasy of what they really value. They tell themselves that they value conservative values, or family, or that they're all about helping mankind advance. (00:34:38)

Look at someone like Elon Musk. Does he think to himself that his top priority is money and success? No. He thinks that his top priority is saving mankind from the woke mind virus, or whatever. And that that is the truth. Fighting and destroying woke, that's the truth. No, that's not caring about the truth. The way that Elon Musk lives his life is not a demonstration of someone who cares about the truth. Nor Mark Zuckerberg. Nor any CEO of any top Fortune 500 company. These people do not care about the truth. (00:35:12)

That's why they lie. That's why they bullshit. That's why they put out fake press releases. That's why they are comfortable cozying up with Trump, and saying whatever Trump wants them to say, and telling Trump whatever he wants to hear. You see? Because in practice, regardless of whatever fantasies they have about themselves saving the world, and creating super AGI that's going to save mankind, and whatever fantasies they have, in practice, look at how these companies are run. What runs these companies is money, maximization of profit, and success. (00:35:46)

That's the real value system that runs every corporation. It's not truth. It's not human flourishing. It's not the betterment of mankind. None of these values actually run any corporation. You know, major corporation. That's traded on Wall Street. What if you place sex as your highest value? Well, then you're going to turn into a classic pickup guy. One of these pickup scumbags. What is that going to be? That's going to be that you're going to tell women anything to get laid. That's what a pickup guy is. (00:36:19)

And then that's going to become your whole attitude, right? It's not just going to be that you tell women little lies here to get in their pants. It's that you're going to have a belief system. Now, you're going to fall into that kind of manosphere, red pill belief system. You're going to have a twisted view of women. You're going to start misunderstanding the feminine, because you're just looking at it from a selfish point of view of how you can get sex out of it. See? To understand women, you literally can't understand them as a man if you prioritize sex over truth. (00:36:58)

Because the sex is going to be so tempting and alluring, and you're going to want to maximize your sex that you're not even going to care about understanding what you're interacting with. It's so illusory and seductive to fall into that trap. Conversely, if you prioritize truth over sex, what's going to happen? You're going to lose a lot of sex. Because you're going to tell women the truth, and it's going to offend them, and they're not going to sleep with you. You're not going to tell them what they want to hear. (00:37:32)

And women are going to have sex with the guys who tell them a bunch of fantasies and a bunch of bullshit, not the truth. The truth doesn't get you laid. Trust me. On that one. But hey, don't trust me. Go test it out for yourself. Go tell your girlfriend the truth and see how long until she breaks up with you. What if you prioritize fame over truth? There's actually a great example of this. I posted this on my blog a little while ago. (00:38:02)

You see this with celebrities. This is what celebrities and pop stars do. Mega pop stars do this. They sell their soul to the devil for fame and success. A great example of this is Katy Perry. I posted a video on my blog about her kind of backstory. And here, I'm literally quoting her own words. I'm not demeaning her or anything by citing her as an example of this. But in her own words, so Katy Perry's backstory is that she started out as a very deeply religious, Christian, Evangelical sort of a musician. (00:38:37)

And she sang her Christian songs. And that career wasn't taking off just because it's not mainstream enough. It's not popular enough. And she wanted that big mega pop star success. So she turned her back on that whole thing. She threw it away. She did a 180 turn and she turned to the most sort of poppy, sexy, sort of glamorous, you know, what was popular at the time, sort of pop music. And then she started making that. And in an interview that I posted, in her own words, she said, I sold my soul to the devil. (00:39:10)

And she did. And she became a mega successful pop star. But look what happened. Like, imagine if you were like a deep Christian and you really believed in that. That was your truth. You thought that was the truth. Okay, fine. I'll just grant it to you for now. Let's say that Christianity was the truth. But then see, if you want to live a life of truth, that means you have to like now make your songs, if you're going to be a musician, make your songs about that, about what you really believe in, your true values. But see, when then you look around and you see nobody's buying my songs, I'm not becoming mega famous the way that, you know, Britney Spears or something was. (00:39:46)

And you're looking up to that. See, you're then ditching your true values now for something fake. And now you're going to become fake because you're chasing fame. And now you have to ask yourself, well, why am I chasing fame? And then this, of course, goes deep into your ego and your psyche. Why does your psyche need the fame? Probably because you weren't loved enough as a child. Your ego craves that thrill of attention and fame that you get of people adoring you and loving you, having a big fan base, all that kind of stuff. That's very addictive to a certain kind of ego, especially if you have certain traumas in your childhood, like your parents didn't love you enough. (00:40:20)

And so, see, now you're going to be living a fake life, not caring about the truth. You're going to be looking around, like, what is the most hip, popular way of making a song these days, whatever that is, even if it violates my values, you know? As a Christian, maybe, you know, having a bunch of casual sex, maybe that goes against my values, but hey, I'm going to make a song about that anyways, because that's what's kind of salacious and that's what's going to get me the clicks and the views and all that. And then you're going to build a whole career, you know, 20 years building a career on this, but deep down, you're going to be hollow, it's not going to be satisfying, you're going to get all the fame and all the success and all the money that you wanted, but something deep down is still going to be wrong and you're going to be depressed. (00:41:06)

At the end of the night, when you come back from your concert performance, you're going to be depressed, because your music is shallow, it's fake, it's not authentic to you, it doesn't have a deep meaning or significance. See? But you're going to be so wrapped up in this that you're going to have no idea that this is in any way connected to this deeper concept of caring about truth. See, if you cared about truth, and this is what therapy would do for you, is you would go into your need for fame and you would really analyze how true is fame, what is the truthfulness of fame? (00:41:41)

And then you would see it as an illusion. The next value and priority is power. What happens if you prioritize power as your number one value over truth? Well, that's called a dictatorship. That's called tyranny. We have 10,000 years of human history of that happening in every government, every nation around the world. That's exactly what you have in every dictatorship. It's also what you have with guys like Trump, guys like Musk. Elon Musk, what is his real true value? (00:42:18)

He says it's like sending mankind to Mars and all that, but that's not his real value. His real, actual, lived, embodied value is power. He's in it for the power. He wants to feel powerful. He wants to feel important. Right? And so that's why he falls into all sorts of untruths. Because to him, what matters is the power. And if he needs to tell some lies about that, spread some fake news, have some false political views, who cares? That's what's really going on there. (00:42:59)

And that's what's going on with every major politician around the world. And the more that's the case, the more of a dictatorship and a tyranny it is. And you can see that that's literally what political corruption is about. It's people who value power over truth. What happens if you prioritize... Now see, now we're getting into some very interesting territory. Because what we just covered, money, sex, success, fame, power, these are like the obvious things that you shouldn't base your life chasing. Isn't it like, if you follow my work, if you have any sense of wisdom whatsoever, if you're any kind of philosopher, it should be obvious to you that basing your money around money, sex, fame, success, and power, that this is foolishness. (00:43:43)

This is the definition of foolishness. But now the next one is real interesting. This one will trick you. Because people will say, well, Leo, yeah, I'm not into all those things, that's very shallow, but you know what? My top value is family, and friends, and relationships. What's wrong with that, Leo? Shouldn't family go above truth? After all, like, if you held a gun to my child's head, and you forced me to tell a lie, or pull the trigger, I'm going to tell a lie just to save my child. So this is the crux of the matter here. (00:44:17)

This is the crux of the matter. People don't understand that actually truth is more important than your family, or your friends, or your relationships. Why? Because, look, you're assuming that you're going to have a true family, true friends, true relationships, if you just place family as your top priority. But that's not going to happen. What's really going to happen is that if you place anything above truth, whatever you place above truth is going to become fake and corrupt. So what's going to happen is you think you're doing something good by placing family as your highest value, and friendships, and so forth, but what's really going to happen is that you're sacrificing truth, and then your family, and your friendships, and your relationships are going to become corrupt, and they're going to become fake. (00:45:09)

And they're going to become toxic and dysfunctional. And you're not going to know how to fix them. Because, see, if you place family up here, but your family is fake and corrupt, and maybe even doing something illegal, living in toxic, inhumane ways, you place family here, but truth down here, maybe the truth, if you sit down in a therapy and you analyze the situation, you might realize, you know, my family is very toxic, I need to separate and divorce from my family. Cut contact with my family. But see, if you value family number one, you can't do that. (00:45:42)

So you're being loyal to a fake, false family. What good is that? This is literally what the mob is. The Italian mob. What is that? That's what happens when you place family and friends over truth. This is what classic corruption is in most governments. What is nepotism? It's favoritism towards family and friends. And people think, well, Leo, how could it possibly be bad to value family and friends? Well, because what's going to happen is that you're going to benefit your family and friends at the expense of everybody else. Of other families and other friends. (00:46:28)

You're going to try to enrich your family and your friends at everybody else's expense. And a lot of people in the world have such low levels of development and truthfulness and consciousness that they don't understand what's wrong with this. This is how many third world governments work. The expectation in a third world government is that, for example, in African countries, certain Asian countries, South American countries, is that if you get into power, if you get a political position, the point of that political position is to give all of your friends and family other positions in the government and then to give them the most lucrative contracts that can be given by the government. Like, that's the point of being in government in third world countries. (00:47:11)

That's the definition of corruption. And what happens if you place tribe, race, and ethnic group as your top priority? Loyalty to your ethnic group above truth? Well, we don't need to imagine very far because that's exactly what's happening with Zionism. That is what Zionism is. That's what's happening in Israel. That's what creates genocide. That's what creates war. That's what creates ethnic cleansing. That's what creates atrocities throughout human history. The Zionism example is just one tiny example out of a hundred examples that we could cite. That's what Nazism is. That's what Fascism is. That's what Nationalism is. (00:48:01)

That's what Tribalism is. That's what most war is about. See, if you place your ethnic group as number one, you're going to start to believe all sorts of myths and fairytales and fantasies about your ethnic group. You're going to create a fantasy of your ethnic identity, and you're going to get attached to that, and then you're going to be living that, and then all sorts of corruption will come from that. Because you're living a fantasy. A racist fantasy. (00:48:33)

What happens if you place religion as your top value? For a lot of people, that's what they do. Spironamic Stage Blue places religion as its top value. Christianity, Islam, Judaism. Well, see, you're assuming that if you prioritize religion above truth, that's fine. But it's not fine, because that means that you're okay with fake religion. You can have a false religion, and you won't care. Because all you care about is the religion, but you don't care that it's true or not. Because that wasn't your value. That wasn't what you cared about, from the very beginning. (00:49:15)

And so in practice, what happens is that if you place religion as your top value, you're going to have fake religion. What good is fake religion? Are you seeing this? Anything that goes above truth will get corrupted and become fake. That's not a maybe, that's going to happen. Why? Because there's nothing within you that's stopping it, because you don't care about the truth. You care about that thing instead. (00:49:51)

So you're going to have fake money, fake sex, fake success, fake power, fake fame, fake relationships, fake ethnic groups, and fake religions. And then the next very sneaky one is social justice and equality. So this is for the social justice warriors. This is the stage greens, the leftists out there, the socialists, the Marxists, the postmodernists, the LGBTQ activists. You think you're doing something good by placing social justice as your top value. But what you're failing to recognize is that if social justice and equality goes above truth, that means you're going to end up with fake social justice, not true justice. (00:50:37)

Fake equality, not real equality. Corrupt political activism, that's what you're going to have, and that's exactly what you see in all these leftist movements. As soon as they get power, it becomes corrupt. Every socialist, every Marxist, every social justice warrior, you give them power, you see how quickly they become corrupt. Why? Because they're disconnected from truth. They never cared about the truth, they never cared about understanding reality, they never cared about epistemology. What they cared about is just their social justice agenda. (00:51:09)

And this is so seductive because you might think, well, Leo, but placing human, you know, the ending of inequality, like what could be more noble of a value than that? Surely that must be the best way to live life. And it turns out, no, that's the wrong way to live life. That's a corrupt way to live. If you want the purest way to live, you have to put truth first. Truth is more important than human well-being. Truth is more important than mankind. So look at this, look how crazy this gets. (00:51:43)

What if you place, what if you're like one of these kind of like, humanist, you're like a humanist, and you want to place the human race as the number one priority. You know, you're all about saving the human race, that's your life purpose, to save the human race. But see, you never bother to stop and wonder, wait a minute, is the human race actually worth saving? Is the human race good? Or is the human race evil? What's the truth? No, see, you just assume the human race was good. (00:52:20)

But see, if you cared about truth and you prioritized truth over mankind, then you would actually stop and ask the question, wait a minute, should we be promoting the human race or should we be destroying the human race? That's an open question. That's an open question. I don't know, let me go on a deep truth-seeking journey to find out what the answer is. And then maybe you go on that journey and then you realize, wait a minute, mankind is evil, we should destroy mankind. And then your life purpose becomes about destroying mankind. And that's legitimate, that's correct. (00:52:45)

Leo, that's a mistake, right? No, that's not a mistake. That's correct. Now, I'm not saying that's what you should do, I'm just saying, if truth was your highest priority, that is the order of operations that would happen here. And you say, well Leo, that's so awful. No, it's not awful. If mankind is truly evil, then destroying mankind is not awful, that's good. You just need to think of it that way, right? Like, just because you are human doesn't mean that automatically you should assume that that's good. (00:53:17)

This is what caring about truth really means. If you really cared about truth, and then you realized that mankind was evil, then you would make it your mission in life to destroy mankind, and that would be a good thing. That's correct, that's not a mistake. The mistake is just assuming it, that's the mistake. Now, okay, don't misquote me here, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying to do any of this, these are thought experiments, and I'm not saying mankind is evil, I'm just putting it out there as a possibility that you would want to investigate that. You know, you come to your own conclusion, I'm not telling you whether it is or isn't. (00:53:57)

Okay, what about if you put reduction of suffering as your highest value? Well, what's going to happen then is, see, when you do that, notice, you're assuming that it's true, that the reduction of suffering is a net good for the world. But what if it isn't? Well, how could that be? Well, look at this scenario. Imagine you say reduction of suffering is the most important value, so you have a child, and then you raise her in such a way that you reduce all the suffering, you coddle her, you give her all the money, you give her all the luxury, everything, so that her suffering is minimized to the lowest extent possible. You give her everything in life. (00:54:44)

And then she grows up to be a spoiled, drug-addicted, rotten, corrupt mind. Because she never suffered in her life, she never faced the challenges that are necessary to actually develop character. And see, when you said reduction of suffering is your top value, you never thought deeply enough about why suffering exists in the first place. And that maybe suffering is actually good, and that maybe suffering develops character. And that maybe without suffering, you would just be a fat, 500-pound slug sitting on the couch, eating Doritos, and that would be your whole life. (00:55:18)

And then see, when you're going to go on a crusade to reduce suffering in the world, see, you're assuming that your methods of reducing the suffering are true. But they're not going to be true if you don't care about truth, they're going to be fake. So you're going to fall for fake ideas of how to reduce suffering. And then what's going to happen is that you're going to think you're going to reduce suffering, but actually you're going to increase it for people. And maybe the thing that will reduce the suffering the most for mankind is by being truthful. (00:55:55)

Maybe by prioritizing the truth, that will lead to a reduction of suffering. What about if you prioritize feelings and pleasure as your number one value? Well, that's called becoming a drug addict. If you prioritize pleasure, if you orient your entire life about pursuing pleasure, this is a very bad way to live. That's drug addiction, sex addiction, lost in decadence. What about freedom? For those libertarians out there, freedom is the highest priority, right? That has to be the highest good, right? (00:56:36)

But how do you know? What if that's not true? See? It hasn't even occurred to a libertarian that freedom is not good. Freedom could be bad, but then you'd have to actually get to the truth of what is freedom, and what is good and what is bad. And how much freedom should we have? What is the truth about that? Well, if you don't care, if all you care about is just freedom, freedom, freedom, as a dogma, you see the problems. That's all the problems of libertarianism right there, playing out right now, in our libertarian, anarcho-capitalist dystopia. (00:57:11)

What about love? Love is your highest value. Well, we touched upon that with the previous example, and we're going to say more about that going... Love is a really tricky one. We're going to save that one for a little bit later, because I have some advanced things to say about that. Now you're starting to see what's really going on here. The question is, what do you place your loyalty in? A lot of people think that their top loyalty should be family, tribe, humanity, versus the truth. (00:57:46)

Or loyalty to science and reason versus truth. I'm trying to show you that these are mistakes. Now, of course, I'm not saying that you should never value family, or relationships, or freedom. Of course, there's value in all these things, and you don't need to have just one value. Your life is run by an assemblage, a constellation of values. In my Life Purpose Course, I help you find your top ten values. So, part of your top ten values probably will be family, and love, and mankind, and other things like that. (00:58:18)

But, really what we're concerned with is what should be the number one value. Now you might say, but Leo, truth is a masculine value, isn't it? If you're feminine, maybe your highest value shouldn't be truth. Isn't it kind of biased? Because Leo, you're a man, and your teachings are coming from this masculine angle, a lot of times, this masculine style. So, again, isn't this like Leo, your projection? Because, in a sense, it's like Leo's philosophy is saying that truth is more important than feelings, and human suffering, and relationships, and compassion, and love, even. (00:59:03)

And my answer is yes, that's what I'm saying. And that must obviously be the case. Why? Because, look, suffering, horror, bad feelings, injustice, these things exist in the world. These things are true. They are real. They do exist. Now you have to wonder, why do they exist? How could these things exist if, for example, positive feelings was the highest value in the universe? Now, I'm going to bring God into this, right? So, if you're listening to this and you're kind of new to my work, you might be put off by this idea of God. I'm not speaking about it in a religious sense. (00:59:53)

But it's important to bring God into this, because now we're getting into the structure of actually reality, God, and we're getting into real spirituality here, right? So this is a spiritual topic, it's not just a secular topic. And when I speak about God, I'm not just speaking about Christianity, I'm speaking about something way beyond religion, or Christianity, or any of that kind of stuff. So, when I say God, think of it as the universe. If you want a more secular version of that, that doesn't rub you the wrong way so much. (01:00:26)

When I say God, just think universe. The universe as a whole. So obviously the universe exists. So, if God exists, and God is good, and God is intelligent, and God is love, then God cannot be wrong in its creation of the universe. The universe contains suffering, injustice, horror, and bad feelings, obviously. So here's the logical problem you're going to have, is that if you know that God exists, and you also know that injustice, and suffering, and horror exist, and bad feelings exist, then either God is evil for creating these things, or you're misunderstanding the creation. God is good, but these things exist, and you're misunderstanding why they exist. (01:01:19)

So obviously if God exists, and God is good, and God created all these things, then all these things are good, but you're not seeing why they're good. Because you would think if God is all powerful, and all good, and all loving, God could just create a reality where all you have is just positive feelings, endless orgasms, and positive feelings, and no suffering. So why didn't God create it that way? Well, the atheist answer is that there's no God at all. That's wrong. (01:01:54)

The real answer is that God created it that way because God's highest value is not your feelings, but it's truth. Obviously reality cannot be subordinate to positive feelings. There must be a higher purpose to reality than human feelings. Obviously. So the reason I have to bring God into this is because God is truth. I'm not saying a belief in God is truth, I'm saying reality itself is God, and reality itself is truth. Obviously reality itself is more fundamental than your feelings about it. (01:02:40)

Obviously it's more fundamental than money. Obviously it's more fundamental than sex. Obviously. Because you need reality first before you get everything else. You see, reality is the foundation for everything, like the universe. So see, there's something extra special about this notion of truth, unlike all other values. Because you might think, well, Leo, values, people can pick and choose their values however they want. But think of it in a much more profound way. Imagine God was sitting there at the beginning of creation. (01:03:18)

And God, of course, saw all of these different values out there. God saw that, you know, what should God value? If God is creating the universe, what should God create the universe around? What should be like the organizing principle of the universe? Should it be sex, maximizing sex? Should it be maximizing money? Is that what God should be thinking about? Should it be about family? Should it be about tribe and ethnic group? Should it be about reduction of suffering in the world? (01:03:46)

No, none of those things, obviously. None of those things. That's why those things exist. As parts of the universe, not the entirety of the universe. See? Do you see, like, really get this. Do you see that existence itself cannot be about making money? I mean, it's so obvious, but like, really get it. The creation of reality cannot be based about getting money. What would money mean to God? What does the universe care about money? (01:04:25)

It's so trivial. Same thing with sex. Same thing with pleasure. Why would God care about pleasure? Why would God care about an ethnic group? Why would God care about Zionists? Why would God care about white people? Or Asian people? Or Jews? See? Obviously, that's not what existence is about. So, think of it this way. It's as if God said to himself, Of all the things that I could choose to create something wonderful based upon, what is going to be the one central organizing principle? (01:05:08)

And it has to be, of course, truth. Truth is so important that it's as if God said, Not only am I going to follow this organizing principle of truth, I'm literally going to make truth my being. I'm going to become truth. Of all the things I can be, I can be a chicken, or I can be a Jew, or I can be a stack of dollar bills, or I can be a diamond, or I can be a planet. (01:05:39)

What am I going to be? I'm going to be truth! Not any of those things! I'm going to be truth! That's the highest basis, right? What I'm saying here is so profound, I'm saying ontologically, the highest value is truth. Not because I like truth. Not because I have some sort of quirk, or a bias. Or because of my philosophical background. I'm literally saying that the only foundation for creating a universe must be truth. Because truth is an absolute. (01:06:17)

Truth is not like good feelings. Good feelings come and go. Humanity comes and goes. You can have a universe without humanity. But you can't have a universe without truth. It turns out that truth is literally necessary for the universe to be self-consistent. Without truth, the universe would not be self-consistent, and it would fly apart and break. It literally could not exist. So that's what it means to say that God is truth, and that truth is the foundation for everything. (01:06:51)

It's not just that truth is a value. Truth is the only thing that exists. Truth is existence. Also notice that the only value anything has to you, is that if it exists. So when you assume money, money is valuable only to the extent that it exists. If it doesn't exist, it can't have value. Sex, what is the value of sex? Sex only has value if it exists. What is the value of your children and your family? (01:07:22)

Only if they exist. Existence isn't just a value out of many values. Existence is the precondition for the value of anything at all. Existence isn't just a value. Existence is infinite value. So of course, God and it's infinite intelligence doesn't select a specific kind of value. It selects the foundation for the possibility of infinite value. God is infinite value. Truth is infinite value. And no one understands it. No one understands. No one cares. (01:08:25)

No one cares. Precisely because truth is the foundation for the existence of anything. You don't need to care about it because God is holding it for you. You don't need to worry about existence existing because it always exists for you. Because that's the function of God is to create the foundation, the platform. God is the platform for everything else that you find valuable and important. God's job is not to micromanage the content of the platform. (01:09:12)

God's job is to maintain the integrity of the platform. To make sure that the platform is not corrupt. Everything else that's finite in the universe can become corrupt. The one thing that cannot become corrupt is the platform itself. Existence is the only incorruptible thing. Why is it incorruptible? Because truth is true. Truth by logical necessity, tautology, truth cannot be corrupted because it must be what it is. Truth is the very nature of whatever anything is. (01:10:03)

Whatever something is, is what it is. That's the truth. That cannot be corrupted. The goodness of God is to create a platform that is incorruptible. God creates an incorruptible sandbox in which everybody else can play. That is the highest good. That's the highest love. That's why truth is love. It can't be about your feelings. It can't be about your human biases. It can't be about your family. Your family is not the highest love. (01:11:00)

Your children are not the highest love because that's just one child. There's millions of other children that need to be taken into account. And not just children, but creatures. And not just creatures, but the consistency of physics. Everything hinges on truth being true. So, ontologically, the only incorruptible thing is God. The universe as a whole, existence as a whole, as the entire mechanism, as the entire platform, that's the only incorruptible thing. Everything else can be corrupted within. (01:11:57)

Depending on how you use your consciousness. But that doesn't matter because you can always, you know... That's all variable. Those are all variables. That's not absolute. Truth is the only absolute. Existence cannot be based on your feelings. And it cannot be based on human relationships. Because that's not fundamental enough. Ontologically, the only thing that's fundamental is truth. Truth is bigger than good feelings. Because bad feelings are also true. They also exist. (01:12:41)

See, God doesn't discriminate between good and bad feelings. Suffering also exists. The elimination of suffering is not the highest priority. Because if it was, then there wouldn't be any suffering. The highest priority is to create the platform. The highest priority is consistency and truth. Discovering feelings, sorry, discovering truth also often leads to bad feelings. And living in falsehood and illusion often leads to good feelings. So obviously you can't, you know... Existence cannot be about your feelings. (01:13:24)

And it cannot be about compassion for others either. Because a lot of uncompassionate things happen in the world, in the universe. So you can't equate truth with good feelings. And it also isn't true that good feelings are better than bad feelings. That's false. That's a bias. Good versus bad is a bias. No human bias is ultimately true. Now let's look at this issue of love. Because this is one that's very tricky. (01:14:08)

What I'm going to claim here is that if you set love as your highest value, you will get neither the highest truth nor the highest love. And if you set truth as your highest value, you will eventually reach the highest truth, love, goodness, beauty, intelligence, and God. Now you might say, well but Leo, didn't you say in the past that truth equals love? So shouldn't these two be equal values? And now you're somehow prioritizing truth above love. (01:14:33)

Well, yes. In the absolute sense, ultimately truth does equal love. The problem is that people don't know what love is. They don't understand. So what happens is that if a human being sets love as their highest value, since they haven't actually gone through a truth-seeking process to understand what love is, they're going to have a finite, limited, corrupt version of love. Truth is what purifies you and gets you to understand that truth and love are actually equivalent. You actually don't know that if you just set love as your highest value from the very beginning. (01:15:11)

Because you don't know what truth is. And you don't know what love really is. And what's going to happen is that your love will get corrupted because you place truth below it. And love is also very, very seductive. You're going to confuse love with romance and with lust. And with positive feelings. Stuff like love for your children. You're going to mistake that human love with capital L love. Absolute love. (01:15:41)

And so, of course, that can't be the foundation for the universe. The foundation for the universe is truth and it is love, but it's not human love. It's not love for your Zionist ethnic group. And it's not love for Jesus. And it's not love for your children. And it's not even love for mankind. It's a much higher degree of love. See, God has to select the purest and highest love, not your corrupt ideas of love. And if you want to understand that, you better make truth your highest priority. (01:16:23)

Because caring about truth will get you to understand what God really is, and the logic of God, and why God works in the ways that it does. Then you can appreciate that, and then you have a... You have a sort of a compass that helps you and guides you towards true love. Without that, you won't have true love, you're going to have fake love. If you place love as your highest value, you will fall into self-deception and corruption. You will fail to distinguish ontological love from your human emotional stuff and your biases. (01:16:56)

Here are some examples of how love fails as a value. If you love your children, you're going to do corrupt, evil things for the sake of your children. If you love your tribe and nation, you're going to do corrupt things to benefit your tribe and your nation at the expense of the rest of mankind. If you go for romantic love and sex and you confuse that with love, then you're going to fall into infatuation, attachment, and that illusion is going to be confused with love. And you're not going to actually be able to live it out. (01:17:32)

You're not going to truly be able to love your partner through the thick and thin and through the hard times. See, love is easy when it's just romantic infatuation the first few months. You're going on chemicals and hormones and it's exciting and it's new and it's dopamine and all this sorts of stuff. But to truly love someone for life, in a marriage, till death, and to love them even if they get in a car accident, even if they get sick, even if they get cancer, even if they get disabled. To truly love somebody, that kind of love, you will not be capable of that kind of love until you have a profound connection with truth. (01:18:16)

So, in reality, most human beings, what they're living out is they're living out fake love. Which is why they have a string of broken relationships. And so you see all these people who are these sort of like new age bunnies who run around and wax on about love this and love that and how much they love the world and the world loves them. This is bullshit. This is not real love. These people don't know how to love, they're incapable of it, they're too immature, they're too unconscious, they're too selfish, they're too narcissistic and egotistical. (01:18:47)

And they don't understand the foundations of existence, they don't have the ontology, they don't have the epistemology, they don't have the philosophical depth that is necessary to truly love. And so, they're living in new age fantasies of fake love. That's what happens when you place love above truth, in practice. If you love mankind, the way that's going to fail is that you will do evil to plants and animals and to the planet, to the environment. And if you love Christ, that's going to turn into a corrupt, idle worship and denial of other forms of spirituality and religion. (01:19:27)

And you will not reach the highest realization of God because God is way beyond your ideas of Christ. So be very, very careful about this love business. Which is not to say you can't place a high value on love, you still can, maybe you can put truth as number one, love as number two, that's a good scheme. I recommend trying that one, if that suits you. For everybody, their value system is going to be uniquely different, but the logic of some of these values, this is universal. (01:20:01)

Ontological love is truth, not human love. Humans cannot be trusted to know what love is. Human love is too seductive, it's too easy. Truth is difficult and painful, and therefore it's more honest. Love is like pleasure, and truth is like suffering. And there's this great saying from Shinzen Young, where he says that you can awaken through two paths. You can awaken through a path of profound suffering, or you can awaken through a path of intense love and pleasure. But the pleasure path is way rarer and harder, and in practice it won't happen. (01:20:51)

Because the pleasure is going to lull you into a dream state. See, what happens if you're just bombarded with pleasure? With drugs, with heroin, with food, with dessert and ice cream, and sex, and you just constantly keep getting this. Are you going to awaken from this? No, you're going to fall into a deep, corrupt state of reverie. And you're just going to be sort of like zonked out of your mind. Whereas, if we shoot you in the foot, that's an awakening. (01:21:26)

See, you can awaken people with suffering. Suffering is a much surer way of waking somebody up. Out of that kind of state. When someone is in that kind of drunk stupor, you know, you slap them across the face, that wakes them up. Exactly. So suffering and the challenge of facing truth, that is actually the thing that is going to mold you. Because you're this weak, corrupt, brainwashed, deluded organism. And then by placing truth as your North Star, using that as your compass to guide you in life, what's going to happen is that slowly, by confronting that truth, that's going to mold you into a hard shape, and it's going to build character within you. (01:22:16)

You're going to go through difficult, challenging times, and face difficult emotions, and you're going to work your ass off, and you're going to struggle. And through this truth-seeking process, eventually you will actualize God, and you will get into real spirituality, and you will have mystical experiences, and so forth. But you're going to have to work towards that. It's not going to be pleasant and easy. If it was pleasant and easy, everyone would have done it by now. The whole point is that truth is heavy, and it's cold, and it's difficult. (01:22:45)

You're going to have to face some very stark truths when you go on this truth-seeking journey. A lot of the fantasies and illusions that you had will have to be deconstructed, and that's going to be painful for you, for your ego. So what I'd like you to notice is that if you set truth as your North Star, as your top value, then everything else in your life falls into proper place. This is what is meant by proper living. (01:23:12)

And when you don't, nothing else can be right. Corruption will always creep its way in, through the cracks, as it were. Because that's just the literal ontology of existence, you see. God, knowing this, has to be truth. Because that's the only thing that you can't corrupt. Everything else is slowly corrupted. Your relationships become corrupted, your family becomes corrupted, your politics becomes corrupted, your nation and tribe becomes corrupted, your science and rationality becomes corrupted, your love becomes corrupted, your integrity gets broken, your spirituality gets corrupted with fantasy. Here's a little example of the self-correcting qualities of setting truth as your highest value. (01:24:10)

There's this self-correcting mechanism that gets established here. Consider, for example, two people who are into debating, they're like these kind of debate bros, you've seen these people online, who love to debate. One debate bro, he actually genuinely cares about truth and he prioritizes truth above everything else. Sure, he wants to win debates, but really, he wants truth more than he wants to win debates or to be right. Whereas the other debater, is more like your typical debate bro, who just cares about winning and being right. (01:24:39)

So what happens if we play this out over the next 20 years? Well, these people are going to debate, many other people, and eventually what's going to happen is that the first guy, who really cares about truth, he's going to debate. And eventually he's going to realize, wait a minute, why am I doing all these debates? What I really care about is truth. Are these debates getting me closer to the truth? No. So then why am I doing it? Oh, okay, I have to change, I have to stop being a debate bro. (01:25:06)

Okay, that's a huge epiphany he's going to have, it's going to change his whole lifestyle. He's going to give up the debate bro lifestyle, and then he's going to go into real truth seeking, spirituality, and eventually, you know, deep epistemology, ontology, and eventually he's going to realize God and love, and he's going to get to truth. Whereas the other guy, who just wants to be right, he's going to spend the next 20 years of his life just doubling down on bullshitting himself, cherry picking facts and data, creating narratives and fantasies in his mind, studying various ideologies, brainwashing himself slowly over 20 years. Winning debates, he's going to get very good at winning debates, he's going to have all the tricks, and he might become the best debater in the world. (01:25:46)

But, none of it is going to be really about truth. It's going to be fake. His whole lifestyle is fake, his career is fake, everything he's doing, everything he's debating, this is sophistry, these are verbal rhetorical tricks that have nothing to do with a deep contact with reality. So, that's just one example. I mean, you can think of hundreds of these kinds of examples of how this plays out in the world. I've shared a few with you, and I'm sharing more as we keep going. So, there is a profound relationship between truth and corruption. The source of all corruption is not setting truth as your highest priority. (01:26:28)

Remember, God, truth, reality, these are the same thing. By not setting truth as your highest value, you place something else above God. In effect, you are saying, I know better than God, I'm going to worship something other than God. You see that? The corruption that's going to seep into you is going to be profound, subtle, virulent, broad, and very extensive. And it's going to happen over the course of your entire life. It's going to be so long-term and subtle that you're not going to notice it. You're going to get slowly boiled alive like a frog. Your life will start going wrong and you won't even understand why. (01:27:20)

And you're going to be stuck in this vicious cycle of wrongful living. And the worst thing about it is that your mind is going to become so corrupt that you will not even be able to understand truthful teachings anymore. Because they're going to be so in conflict with your fantasies and your twisted worldview, that when you do stumble upon very profound, truthful teachings, such as this one here, or actualize.org as a whole, your mind is going to reject it. And so you will literally cut yourself off from being able to reach God through this subtle, virulent form of corruption. (01:28:03)

And then this corruption will spread to your family, to your friends, to your tribe, and to your community through you. You're going to become a host for this virus. There are a lot of examples in our culture right now, in the zeitgeist, of this connection between truth and corruption. For example, comedian podcasters are very popular these days. With comedian podcasters, you see this connection. You see that over time, these comedian podcasters have become more and more corrupt. Listening to more and more conspiracy theories. Why do they talk about conspiracy theories so much? Because they need easy, cheap content that's salacious, that gets them lots of views and clicks. (01:28:50)

So they talk a lot about conspiracy theories, but over time, the people that they bring on their podcasts, all of this has a subtle effect on their mind, slowly corrupts their mind over time. And so that's what you're seeing. These people are not actually developing, they're not reaching new stages of cognitive development or spiritual development, they're stuck. They're permanently stuck running their podcast, laughing it up, because their highest value is what? It's not truth. Their highest value is something like entertainment, success, being a celebrity, being a podcast host, being well-known, being this influential public influencer. (01:29:27)

This is their highest priority. It's not truth. Because if it was truth, their podcast would be structured completely differently. So here's something I want you to really know, this is an important point, right? Caring about truth is not just something that you say, like, oh yeah, I'm a champion of truth. Or you say, yeah, whatever I believe, you know, my world view, like, for example, science is the truth and I'm going to be a champion of science. No. Caring about truth, if you really cared about truth, I want you to see how powerful this is. (01:29:58)

You're going to have to sit down and you're going to say, why am I running this podcast at all? Why am I being a comedian at all? What does that have to do with truth? What does that have to do with truthful living? Right? Like, see, this is really how you develop yourself. If you're talking about personal development, and you're talking about real personal development, it requires a deep audit of how you live your life and why you live your life at all the way that you live it. Why you structure it the way that you do. Why do you have a family? Why do you want a family? Why do you have your job? Why do you have your career? (01:30:36)

Why do you care about science? Why are you sitting in a university getting a paycheck? Why are you in government? Most people never audit these things at all. What they do with self-help is they just, like, they sprinkle a little bit of, like, techniques to help them do the corrupt stuff they're already doing to do it a little bit more effectively. Right? It's like, if you're a comedian podcaster, it's like, well, how could I do even more of that? And become even more famous? That's how, like, most people would think. And you can apply self-help techniques to do that. (01:31:08)

Or, like, if you're a politician, you say, well, how can I be even more of that and be even more of a corrupt politician? That's not real development. You're not actually developing. Real development is a confrontation with truth to see the untruthful ways in which you're living, interacting with people, managing your money, thinking about mankind, all that, and then correcting all those things. Now, of course, this is where it gets very painful. Because now you have to face down some very, you know, brutal truths. Another example of the truth-corruption connection is this sort of tech bro, Silicon Valley oligarchy corruption that we're seeing now. (01:31:51)

You see all of these tech bros just cozy up to Trump, lie to him, lie to the public, you know, kiss his ass, kiss the ring, get favors from him, give him favors in return. Scratching each other's backs. This is the very definition of corruption. And this tech bro corruption goes so much deeper than just Trump, but it's all these social media platforms that we now use, the entire information ecosystem of mankind, now dominated by Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Google, Microsoft, some of these other major players out there. Twitter, X, Elon Musk. None of these platforms act like they care about truth, because they don't. (01:32:48)

Google does not care about truth. Facebook does not care about truth. Their management does not care about truth. They care about maximizing profit, and they care about power. That's what they care about. And then this, therefore, then leads to the erosion and corruption of the information ecosystem, which leads to the erosion of democracy and the rise of fascism. That's literally what we're living through. All of it, trace all of it down to the root. What is the root? The root is that the founders and organizers and managers of these corporations, they don't care about truth. If they did, they would run these corporations totally differently. They would not have these algorithms pumping out the most salacious, reptile brain content. (01:33:32)

They would be doing more like what China is actually doing. China, with their algorithms, is actually prioritizing not the salacious, sexy stuff, but science, math, some self-help stuff. Stuff that actually helps develop their populace, rather than video games and a bunch of salacious garbage. Which is not to say China doesn't have its own problems. Of course it does. China has massive corruption problems, but that's a separate issue. Another example of this truth-corruption connection is, for example, our intelligence agencies. The CIA doing coups and meddling in foreign governments. (01:34:18)

And the government in general, the way they manage military and war. This is all corrupt. The corruption of the government all boils down to, number one, is that they don't tell the truth. People in the government just expect to lie and get away with it. And they do it all the time, and with Trump it's even worse than it's ever been. But of course, every government lies, no matter who the president is. They lie. And they don't even understand that every lie they tell is a corruption of the government. All the secrecy and lying that the CIA does, they think that this is saving America. It's not saving, it's corrupting America. Every intelligence agency is a source of profound corruption in the world. And the direct cause of many wars. (01:35:12)

Because these different intelligence agencies are covertly waging a cold war against each other, stealing secrets from each other, trying to sabotage each other, assassinating each other's people, threatening, destabilizing neighboring governments, doing proxy wars, all this shadow stuff. This is all based on lies. And all of it is classified top secret. Why? Because it all has to be lies. When they classify something top secret, that's a lie, basically. Imagine, if you will, a government that had no classified secrets at all. Everything was made transparent and public. There were no secrets. (01:35:58)

That's such a crazy idea, that sounds like a fantasy, right? And yet, that would be the healthy form of government. That's what proper government is. Complete transparency. You don't need a CIA to hide top classified documents of assassinations that they're planning because the people are so conscious and so good and so loving that they don't want to assassinate anybody. I mean, that's healthy. What's sick is that you're so paranoid that you have a gigantic army, ten times bigger than any other army in the world, and yet you still need a CIA who is constantly plotting to assassinate and to overthrow governments and this kind of stuff. That's sick. That's literally sickness. And yet, this is official government policy. This is considered normal. It's considered good. It's considered patriotic. It's considered loyal. (01:36:49)

This is what nationalism demands. This is what patriotism demands. Placing patriotism above truth. And then, what do you get in return? What you get in return is you get fake wars. You get false wars. The Iraq war. You get lies in the military. You get cheating with military industrial complex stuff. This is the source of all corruption. Truth is the antidote to all of this. I've said in the past that there needs to be a constitutional amendment that forbids any government official from lying. If any government official is caught lying more than three times in their entire career, they're permanently barred from ever joining government again. They can never get a government position. And this should apply to everybody. From the military, to the CIA, to the president, to every senator, and every politician. (01:37:43)

If we pass that one constitutional amendment, this would fix like 90% of the problems of government. Of course, that's why this amendment will never be passed. Because if you pass this amendment, everybody in the government would need to be fired. Because that's how much they lie. And that's how corrupt they are. And it doesn't matter if they're democrats or republicans. How about as an example, the Manosphere and Red Pill, as this truth-corruption connection. See, Manosphere and Red Pill, they are so obsessed with sex, and needing to be superior to women, and needing to control women, and just treating women as sexual objects. Either being frustrated they're not getting enough sex, or figuring out ways to get more sex, or thinking about women just purely in selfish terms, that they never are able to actually understand women. (01:38:37)

And then they develop very toxic forms of relationship with women. And then of course, this bleeds from the political domain and the ideological domain into their own private lives, where they struggle with women. Because they don't understand them. They don't care to understand them. Because they never care to understand anything. Because they just wanted sex. Or they just wanted to be right. Or they just had an ideology. What's the solution to that? If you're stuck in Manosphere, if you're stuck in Red Pill and Black Pill ideology, what's the solution? The solution is simply to actually genuinely care about the truth. (01:39:11)

And if you start to care, and you start to work that, as a process, I guarantee you that you will eventually dismantle all of the Man Pill, Red Pill, Black Pill ideology, and you will escape. And you will free yourself of that, and you will become a healthy person, and you will be able to have healthy relationships. Or, you could just keep doing more of what you're doing. Another example of the truth-corruption connection is Zionism. Oh my God, it's insane, just look at the amount of corruption that comes from Zionism. This ethnic narrow Jewish identity, this Israeli identity, and then you just keep doubling down and brainwashing yourself with this identity so much, that you can believe that you and your government do no wrong. (01:39:53)

You and your ethnic group do no wrong. And then you're just completely blind to all the distortions. The amount of distortion of truth that Israel does is just insane, it's insane, it's just shameless. It's just utterly shameless, the propaganda they do, the Hasbara, the twisting of history, the rationalizations, the cherry-picking, the lying about the news stories, it's just disgusting. I'm not even talking about the Palestinians and what's happening to them, I'm just saying, just the amount of bullshit, and lies, and rationalizations, and just biased history, and cherry-picking of data, and just profound self-dissection mechanisms that are running in the Zionist mind, and the Zionist project, it's just, I mean, it's just epistemic, it's an epistemic cesspool, is what it is. And you might say, well Leo, you're so biased! No, I'm literally just talking about epistemology here. I'm not even concerned about the morality of genocide or whatever, I'm just talking about truthfulness, just truth. (01:41:00)

Communism is another great example. Just to show you that I'm not some lefty here, I can criticize socialism and communism all day long. I'm not playing favorites, I don't care about some ideology or some political agenda, I'm talking about something existential here. We're talking about truth. Not petty politics. But with communism, see, people become communists, but then what they do is they make communism their top priority, not truth. They don't really question Marxism. It never even occurs to a Marxist to deeply question whether Marxism is true. So then you start to build a government based around this Marxism, and then you get what you get with Soviet Russia, Soviet era China, communist China, and other experiments in Cuba and so forth, and then what you see is that the untruthfulness of communism turns into a profound corruption. (01:42:10)

What about, as an example, Wall Street's toxic influence on society? Why is Wall Street such a toxic influence on society? Because Wall Street doesn't care about truth. It only cares about profit. So everything becomes about profit. Look at this. Why is America becoming so dysfunctional? It's ironic, because the Christian nationalists, which are buffoons, ignorant buffoons, but the one thing that they do get right in their twisted Christian way is that they're correct when they say that... When Christian conservatives and evangelicals say that America is going to hell in a handbasket because we're losing contact with God, that's literally true. But it's not true in the way they think. It's not true in the way that they want... (01:43:12)

（以下は、精神世界のグルを気取った Leo と名乗る Youtuber の一人語り動画の文字起こしです。動画のタイトルは "Why Truth Is The Highest Value" です。長いので 2分割し、以下は後半部分です。）

What they mean is that, well, you're losing contact with Jesus, and you're losing contact, you're not going to the church, and you're not reading the Bible enough, and you're not believing in Christian ideology and dogma enough, and that's why America is going to hell in a handbasket. That's nonsense. The truth, though, is that you are literally breaking contact... America is breaking contact with God in the sense that it's just becoming this secular society that's about nothing but profit. It's just about profit maximization. That's what America has become. Nothing else. And then the scientific materialist mindset thinks that, well, this is fine. We can have secular humanism and it's fine. It's not fine. Because it's corruption. That's corruption. Because that's godlessness. (01:43:52)

You don't know what God is. God is truth. When you place profits above truth, that's you disconnecting from God. But see, we can't even have a discussion about this. We can't have a public, national discussion like adults about this, because one side believes in ridiculous Christian dogma, and the other side is so disgusted by that Christian dogma that they are just atheists and they refuse to talk about anything spiritual at all. Quantum mysticism, woo, and whatever. They ridicule that stuff. So they don't want to talk about God. They think you can have a healthy government without God. And you can't. You literally cannot. (01:44:39)

That's not a religious dogma. That's just a recognition of the existential power and necessity of truth. And now the atheists will say, well, but Leo, we can have truth without God. No, you can't. You literally can't. When you deny God, you're literally being false. You're self-deceived by definition. Because God is truth. So you don't understand what truth is. You think, well, Leo, no, we can secularize truth. No, you can't. You literally can't. That's the point. Look at Putin's Russia and the propaganda coming from Russia. The Russian population is so propagandized. That's another example of the connection between how truth and corruption works. (01:45:44)

See, Russia is so corrupt that their entire population believes in delusional history, delusional ideas of politics, delusional ideas about themselves, delusional ideas about what corruption is, delusional ideas about Putin. And then that delusion leads to even greater corruption. And then war. And of course, I'm not blaming the war just on Putin or Russia, America. American corruption has a lot to do with it as well. I already criticized America. So you can see that I'm not playing favorites here, right? And people will accuse me of being, oh, Leo, you're so anti-Semitic, so anti-Zionist. It's like, no, don't you see that I have no problem criticizing... (01:46:17)

I am Russian. I was born in Russia. I'm also half Ukrainian. I'm also American. And I have no problem criticizing Russians, Ukrainians, Americans, American Empire, CIA, Zionism. I have no problem criticizing any of that. And you say, well, Leo, then you're pro-Arab. It's like, no, I have no problem criticizing the ridiculous absurdities of Islam and the dogma there as well. And the backwardsness of Arabic governments as well. All of it is about corruption. I don't have any favorites. Of course, a great example of the corruption of truth, you know, the connection of truth and corruption is religion and religious indoctrination. See, when you place religion as your top priority above truth, you're going to indoctrinate your children. Of course you will. Why wouldn't you? (01:47:11)

But if you place truth above religion, then you wouldn't indoctrinate your children because you realize that indoctrination doesn't actually lead to them getting to truth. See, a religious person who places religion as their top thing believes that indoctrination will actually get the child to truth. Someone who cares deeply about truth and has gone through the truth-seeking process understands perfectly well that indoctrination is the obstacle to truth-seeking. So that's the difference. The Christian indoctrinates their children, whereas, for example, I talk about God, but if I had children, I would not indoctrinate them with my ideas. In fact, I would be very careful about even... you know, you would think, well, Leo, if you had a child, you would just bombard him with all this actualized content, right? No! Because if I did that, the child would probably fucking hate me, would probably hate this content, would hate truth, would hate philosophy, and would hate God and would hate all this stuff. (01:48:11)

The key here is to realize that you can't push truth on anybody. They have to care about it themselves. And then what you can do is you can nurture and guide them in their truth-seeking process. I can't push truth on you, I can inspire you to care about it, I can explain why it's so important, and so forth, but I can't indoctrinate you into it. Even New Age spirituality is corrupt because it doesn't prioritize truth enough. Even Buddhism, in a sense, is corrupt because it prioritizes escaping suffering versus truth-seeking. (01:48:52)

I don't see Buddhist teachers talking about caring about truth and seeking truth. I see them talking about helping you meditate, helping you calm your mind, helping you reach enlightenment, but reaching enlightenment is not the same thing as caring about truth. And ending suffering or reducing suffering is not the same thing as caring about truth. These lead to different places. Notice how people who don't prioritize truth become. Their minds are deluded. They lie to themselves. They cheat, they steal, they kill, they do violence, they hurt others. They live like animals. They're addicts. They are fools, they lose money, they have a criminal record, they spend time in prison. All their relationships are broken, and toxic, and dysfunctional. They are depressed, they have anxiety, they have mental illness, they are emotional wrecks. (01:49:45)

They spread misery through the world. They hurt the people closest to them, their friends, their family, their children. You know, that family that these people profess that they love so much? Family at their highest value? You go and look. You look at their actual life with a hidden camera, and you see how nasty they are to their friends and family. Really. When the rubber meets the road. How they abuse their children while they profess how much they love them. The key thing I want you to understand here is that people who don't take truth seriously, they're incapable of love. When these people tell you that they love, they're full of shit. Their love is a fantasy. Love is not something you can fake. Love is an honest signal. Which is why it is so connected with truth, and it literally becomes truth at the highest level. At the ontological level. Love is truth. Because you can't have one without the other. (01:50:49)

So anybody, any human who's telling you that, oh, truth is not so important to me, love is, they're full of shit. You just don't see it, because they're good at putting up a facade. They show you their fake family. Behind the scenes, their family is falling apart. People who don't prioritize truth, they spread delusion and propaganda. They spread toxic and hurtful politics. They create war. They're unreliable, untrustworthy, and unstable. They're insecure. Because truth creates security. And fantasies create insecurity. Look at all these Zionists, they're insecure. Because their whole identity and worldview is false. It's a fantasy. Look at these Christians, they're also insecure. Look at all these MAGA people. Look at all these Manosphere people. They're all insecure man-children. (01:51:46)

Puffing up their chest, pretending like they're strong and macho and secure. They're not. They're deeply insecure. That's why they're doing all this stuff. Look at Elon Musk. Is he secure? No, he's insecure. Look at Trump. He's a poster boy for insecurity. Look at Mark Zuckerberg. Look at how he dresses. He's insecure. These are children. These are children that have been given billions and trillions of dollars and positions of the highest power. And they behave like children. They don't even understand what truth is. They don't care what truth is. They don't know what they're doing. They're completely unconscious. They're playing an act to convince themselves and others around them. And because others need their money, they play along and act as yes-men for them. Which just feeds into their fantasies even more. (01:52:42)

And notice, for example, with Elon Musk. Over the last five years, he has become more and more corrupt. Why? Because he doesn't care about truth. He's becoming more and more disconnected from truth. Why? Because he hangs around Twitter, tweeting stupid things, getting his worldview from Twitter. From idiot political YouTubers. Not doing serious politics. Not doing serious personal development, spiritual work. Why? Because he's surrounded by yes-men. And ultimately, people who don't care about truth, they are incapable of love. We're doing all this to make you very capable of love. But this is a long, circuitous approach. It's not a direct approach to love. You're not just directly jumping towards your love. You're going to love through truth. That's the proper way. (01:53:54)

Now, again, here's a trap. Be very careful here. You might find yourself agreeing with everything I said in this episode. And you might say, yeah, Leo, truth is so important to me. But now, we have to get very honest. How important is truth to you, really? Really? Are you actually living it? Or are you just agreeing with this stuff? Because it's very easy to create this kind of identity of a truth-seeker. Or of this champion of truth. A truth crusader, if you will. This is not true. This is not real truth-seeking. Real truth-seeking is actually genuinely caring about understanding reality. Not putting on a front. Not acting like you already know. Not acting like your beliefs are right and your worldview is the truth. It's about going on that journey. Over the last few years, I've been really studying and making sense of society as a whole. What is going on in society, especially with all this political upheaval we've been having with Trump and so forth. (01:55:10)

And these authoritarian movements and fascistic movements around the world. What's going on with all this sort of tech-bro stuff, with this AI developments. Everything that's going on. What is going on? Because it's like a giant mess. The mess that's going on in our political media system. People debating each other, different sides, all fighting and yelling at each other. None of it makes sense, initially. Why is it all so sick and disgusting? And then, I got it. I figured it out. It's because for my whole life, I've been assuming that everybody cares about truth the way that I do. And then it hit me, it took me some 35 years to realize this, it hit me that actually nobody does. (01:55:55)

And then I said, oh my god, yeah, I can totally see it. If I go back to when I was 16 years old, and I just stopped caring about truth, and I just live out my life, it's like, oh yeah, you would get exactly the society that we have. If everybody was doing that, you would have exactly our current society. Oh, of course, yeah. Makes sense. The reason mankind is so sick and corrupt is simply because no one cares about truth. What is integrity? It's placing truth above everything else. That's why integrity is so difficult. Why is being good so difficult? You might say, why are people so evil? It's because to be good, you have to care profoundly about truth. That's the only way to be good. Because literally, truth is good. Good and truth are identical. That's an equality. At the highest level. Absolute truth is absolute good, is absolute love. (01:57:08)

Is God. You must surrender your personal, selfish desires and needs for something as abstract as truth. That's difficult for people to do. Because most of us live in such a survival pressure cooker. I mean, especially in third world countries, people are barely making rent, barely getting food, barely avoiding starvation and war and crime. That's in third world countries. But in first world countries, it's still the same thing. People are still struggling. Even your spoiled Beverly Hills school girl who's sitting on Instagram, addicted to Instagram, depressed about how she's not beautiful enough as her friends and so forth. And she's feeling suicidal and whatever. That girl, she's in a survival pressure cooker even though she's sitting in Beverly Hills. And her parents are millionaires. She's still in a survival pressure cooker. Because those millions are not going to help you feel good. Because the only way to truly feel good is to ground your life in truthful, proper living. And to keep doing that for decades. And to build a truthful life. That is the good life. That is the proper life. And that girl is not doing that. She's so lost. She's so far away from that that she doesn't even know how to get on track with that. And no amount of money will help her. (01:58:28)

And being in Beverly Hills is not going to help her. In fact, it's going to hurt her. Because she's going to be seduced by the parties, the drinking, the weed, the sex, the boyfriends, the college, the university life, and all this sorts of stuff. Political activism. All this is going to distract her from what she should really have been doing from an early age. But her culture never taught her. Because her culture is deeply sick and corrupt. And doesn't care about the truth. How could her culture teach her to care about the truth when culture doesn't care about the truth? Her teachers never cared about the truth. Her professors never cared about the truth. Her parents never cared about the truth. Her bosses never cared about the truth. Her friends never cared about the truth. And her lovers never cared about the truth. And she goes to the Buddhist teacher, and even the Buddhist teacher never cared about the truth. (01:59:20)

Corruption is the placing of personal material gain or survival over truth, over love. The reason that being good is so difficult... Why is it so much easier to be bad than it is to be good? Because to be good means that you have to combat illusion, fantasy, and self-deception. Whereas to be bad, all you have to do is just do nothing. And automatically, you fall into fantasy, illusion, and self-deception. And automatically, you are a survival zombie. (02:00:01)

To be good, you have to become so conscious that you become fully conscious of all of your zombie survival mechanisms. You have to stop being a survival machine, and you have to become god-like, saint-like, conscious. That's what it means to truly be good. You can't fake being good. Being good is not about giving somebody money. Being good is about your relationship to truth, and to reality, and to consciousness. That's what it means to be good. Not starting a charity. That doesn't make you good. (02:00:35)

These people who run these charities, when they come back home, they're still assholes to their children and to their wives. They cheat. They steal. Where do they get that money? They stole it. Their charity is fake. It takes very high intelligence to understand the value of integrity and truth. Any fool can see the value of money, sex, power, fame, luxury, and survival. Only a sage understands the value of truth. That's what it means to be a sage. That's what it means to be a real philosopher. (02:01:16)

Not one of these fucking academics, who writes fucking papers and shit. And has no clue what truth is. A real philosopher is one who knows truth. Has pursued truth their whole life. Lives for truth. Breathes for truth. Loves truth. Philosophy is the love of truth. By compromising on truth, you actually compromise on love. Truth is the highest value, because it is necessary to ensure the highest form of love. This is why God must be selfless, because only a selfless thing can hold truth and love. (02:01:57)

Truth and love and selflessness are identical. This is an ontological identity. This is not just a philosophy, or some beliefs that you hold. This is an ontological fact of existence. God himself can't change that. Any selfish desire or need in you, like the need to survive or to live, compromises truth and love. See, ideally, truth would be your highest concern, but you as an animal need to survive. So you sacrifice truth for survival. (02:02:43)

You lie to get a job. You fake your resume. You bullshit as a political actor, because you need to, to get someone to vote for you. You bullshit to get a sale. You bullshit to run your corporation. You publish some bullshit press release, whatever. You make some bullshit promise about some deadline that you're not going to meet, the way Elon Musk does. You build fantasies of AGI and super AI is going to save the world. These fantasies, see, this is a disconnection from truth. (02:03:22)

But you need to do it to keep your investors happy, to get a higher valuation, to keep the whole charade going. The ego wants other things than truth. It wants pleasure, it wants certainty, it wants knowledge, it wants to be right. It wants thrill, excitement, it wants religion, it wants attachment, it wants family and sex and power and money and luxury. The easy life, it wants comfort, it wants the avoidance of suffering. It wants to be lazy and to not work. (02:03:53)

And truth-seeking is work. All lying happens because you want some goody or you want to avoid some pain. Credit to Peter Rolson for that insight. And think of it this way, if you want to get a little poetic about it. Satan, and I use the word Satan poetically here, Satan is the master of untruth. All evil, and I use the word evil poetically as well, begins with untruth. The power of God is that since God is nothing, it is selfless, it has no self. (02:04:34)

Since it is selfless, it cannot die, and it doesn't have to compromise truth for survival. That's why God is selfless. Because if God had a self, then it would have to compromise to survive as that self. And therefore, God would be corrupt. The ultimate power in intelligence is to surrender all attachment to any form, any particular way of being, for the highest love. Which is exactly what God's infinite intelligence has done. That's why infinite intelligence is identical to infinite love. (02:05:12)

See, if God compromised on truth, that would make God corrupt. If God was corrupt, God would be evil. If God was evil, the entire universe would be hell. Notice that science and academia gets corrupt by lack of prioritization of truth. This is a very sneaky one for you scientists and academics. See, if you're in a university, you think that you care about truth. No, you don't. You don't. I cared about truth so much, I left university. (02:06:00)

I would have been in university. I would have been in academia. And don't get me wrong, I finished my university degree, I didn't quit. I finished it, but I decided not to go further. I would have gone further, but I decided not to. Because I cared about truth so much, that I realized that no way I can't put myself in a university that would conflict with my value of truth. And so, here I am. (02:06:28)

Science is not truth. Scientific method is not the same thing as truth-seeking. The political activism that goes on in universities, this is not the same thing as truth-seeking. Academic positions, what professors do, the way they teach, the assignments they give, the material, the department that they're a part of, this is not conducive to truth-seeking. Which is why you're not going to find truth, serious truth-seeking inside of a university. And you're not going to find God in a university. (02:07:06)

See, a scientist places science above truth. They don't know that they're doing this. They're doing this unconsciously. But in effect, what they are doing is they're prioritizing science over truth. Because in their mind, they think, ah, well, but science is the thing I should be loyal to. That's what deserves loyalty, because science is like the source of truth, right? No, no, not right. Where'd you get that idea? (02:07:39)

See, scientists were so indoctrinated through the school system that they just assumed that, well, science just is what truth is about. That's what truth-seeking is, it's just the doing of science. No, that's not what it's about. See, when science rises above truth, what happens is that you get false science. And there's a lot of false science out there. Here's another very interesting one that will screw with your mind. Why is equality less important than truth? (02:08:14)

You know, for you social justice warriors and leftists, you think equality is the most important thing. But is it? No, it's not. Why not? Because first, you would need to know whether it's true that all things deserve to be equal. Is that true? Do you know that's true? How do you know that's true? You don't. You don't know that. Not a single social justice warrior knows that. And yet, they're fighting for equality. (02:08:44)

You're putting the cart before the horse. That's a perfect example of cart before the horse. Is it true that men and women are equal? Is it true that whites and blacks are equal? Is it true that all beings and creatures are equal? Is it true that all cultures and nations are equal? This is why postmodernism is corruption. Postmodernism denies the existence of truth by relativizing everything. This leads to corrupt research, corrupt academics, corrupt political agenda, corrupt research papers and research projects, corrupt gender ideologies and so forth. (02:09:25)

Postmodernism places political agenda over truth. This is absolutely wrong and must lead to evil. Of course, postmodernism is literally godlessness. That's what it is. It is not an exaggeration to say that postmodernism is devilry. Now, of course, see, I'm saying it from above. Like a fundamentalist Christian would say that from below. They would call a postmodernist a devil or a Satan worshiper or something. They're just saying that from dogma. They don't understand what devilry is. (02:10:00)

A Christian is a devil. Christians are the biggest devils out there. Christians are bigger devils than postmodernists. But when you really understand what I'm talking about, you'll start to understand what I mean by postmodernism is devilry. I have a few episodes about that. If you doubt what I'm saying here, investigate the origin of all corruption. Look, for example, at why relationships become corrupt. Why romantic love becomes corrupt. Why politics becomes corrupt. (02:10:27)

Why tribalism becomes corrupt. Why ethnic identity becomes corrupt. Why academia becomes corrupt. Why society becomes corrupt. Why spirituality becomes corrupt. Why science becomes corrupt. Why business becomes corrupt. Why socialism becomes corrupt. Investigate all that. I'm not giving you an ideology of truth here. I am inviting you to investigate for yourself how profound caring about truth is. And also how profound not caring about truth is. The profound implications of that which play out throughout our society in the form of corruption. Just observe what happens to people who don't care about truth. (02:11:09)

Notice people in your life, family members and so on, how they become more and more corrupt from this. Notice what happens in your life when you stop caring about truth. When you stop taking it seriously. Notice your life starts to slip. You start to fall into more self-deception and fantasy and illusion. Notice how hard it is to be a guardian of truth. Notice how enticing it is to stop caring. How each day the devil whispers in your ear with some new fantasy, some new illusion. (02:11:39)

All the devil needs to do to win is to loosen your relationship to truth. Caring about truth is self-correcting. If you care about truth, you will find and fix your own epistemic errors over time. I won't need to babysit you. You won't even need my episodes anymore. You will just go on a truth-seeking journey for yourself. Your worldview will improve itself over time. Otherwise, your worldview will become more corrupt over time. Look at people in the media. (02:12:17)

You know, popular comedians and podcasts, podcast interviewers and so forth, and various political people out there. You notice that over time, after COVID, and after some economic collapse, and after various political events, you notice that their mind becomes more and more unhinged. They fall for ridiculous ideologies. They become more politically radicalized. Look at Jordan Peterson, poster boy of that. That's what happens over time. See, with Jordan Peterson, I would propose to you that... I mean, Jordan Peterson, if you talk to him, he's a perfect example of the trap here. (02:12:56)

If I said all this to Jordan Peterson, aside from all the bashing I did of Christianity, he would agree with a lot of what I said, and he would say, you know, Leo, yeah, truth is very important, of course, and, you know, that's why, Leo, for me, as Jordan Peterson, truth is one of my highest values. No. It's not. It's not. You're kidding yourself, if you think that. Because the way that Jordan Peterson acts is not like someone who is on a truth-seeking journey. (02:13:24)

He is acting like an ideologue. He's participating in these culture wars. He's doing these debates. He's prioritizing Christianity above truth. He's prioritizing conservative politics above truth. If he truly cared about truth, he would have an existential crisis, and he would stop doing all the stuff that he's doing, all the chasing of success and fame and his status as a public intellectual. He would have to give all that up and go on a real truth-seeking journey. That would be very painful, which is, of course, why he doesn't do it. (02:14:08)

But he can't admit to himself that. You see, in his mind, he needs to believe that he's a champion and a crusader of truth. And so this is the power of this self-deception. Right? Because nobody... it's kind of like that old saying, you know, nobody believes they're evil. Even Hitler didn't believe he was evil. Well, nobody believes that they're false and they don't care about truth. Everybody, even Hitler, thought that what he was doing was aligned with truth. (02:14:37)

So be very careful. You have to be very honest with yourself. How much of what you're doing is really about caring, about understanding reality, and how much of it is about survival and other stuff that you're doing. Because, of course, all of your survival is unconscious. Right? Jordan Peterson isn't even conscious of all the survival that he's doing. With his podcast, and his shows, and his tours, and his books. He doesn't even see that as survival. (02:15:08)

The appearances he does, the interviews he does, like, survival is so sophisticated. Right? That's not even recognized by him as survival. And likewise for the stuff that you're doing. Notice my body of work, how much it has changed and evolved over the last 10 years. How much it's improved. How much more, like, grounded it's gotten. Over the last 10 years, I could have been like one of these Jordan Peterson types, who veers into audience capture, chasing algorithms, chasing clicks and views, you know, going into weird ideology, right-wing stuff, Manosphere stuff, far-left stuff, you know, Marxist stuff, weird gender ideology stuff, MAGA delusions, you know, anti-vax delusions, conspiracy theories, you know, religious dogma, New Age dogma, scientism, rationalism. (02:16:06)

I could have gone down all of those paths. Why didn't I? And that's not to say I didn't make mistakes. I am very conscious of many mistakes that I've made, intellectually, let's say. But overall, intellectually, the work has just gotten better and better and better, more truer and deeper, because I really prioritized understanding reality, above getting viewers, above making courses, above writing books, above even making videos. And be careful here, I'm not trying to portray myself as some sort of king of truth, some sort of pope of the truth, you know, a truth lord over here. (02:16:56)

I'm not always truthful, I have a lot of work to do on corruption, I am corrupt, and I have a lot of work to do to align myself more with truth. In fact, this entire episode is really me talking to myself, laying out my plan for my future development. This is my own, like, rubric that I'm using for developing, this is my blueprint. This is the stuff that I need to tell myself, to understand my North Star and where I need to go. Before you know where you're going, you have to figure out which way to go. (02:17:36)

This is me figuring out which way to go, now that I know which way to go, now a lot of work needs to be done to actually walk that path. Remember my episode, the psychology of being wrong? One of my most powerful episodes. That's such an important episode. I can't stress enough the importance of becoming conscious of how wrong you are. This is the critical aspect to actual, serious development. Caring about truth is what allows you to admit that you're wrong. (02:18:12)

If you don't care about truth, you're not going to do it, and admitting that you're wrong is so painful for the ego. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent sitting on the couch, just in the pain of basking in how wrong I am, about my views of reality. Fucking painful, right? It's painful, it's embarrassing. And yet, that's what comes when you're committed to truth. So what does it really mean to be committed to truth, to value truth? (02:18:43)

Do not mistake valuing a truth with honesty. Now of course, honesty is nice, but it's not primarily about honesty. And it's not just about propositional knowledge, like making sure that all of your scientific beliefs are valid. It's not about that either. Most fundamentally, it's to genuinely want to understand reality as it is. Not fantasies, not as you want, not as you need, but as it actually is. And to actually love that. To love knowing how things actually are, their true nature. (02:19:18)

That's the essence of it. But there's more. It's having reverence for truth. Treating truth as something sacred. Because it literally is. You're not just treating truth as if it's something sacred, literally truth is God. It doesn't get any more sacred than that. If you understood that, you would stop doing all the untruthful stuff you do. But you're not conscious of that. Yet. Hopefully one day you will be. (02:19:54)

But by then you'll have so many bad habits that you won't be able to stop yourself from being untruthful. Even once you know that truth is God. So it's not so easy. Also what it means is doing independent inquiry and questioning. Like really getting serious about questioning. Doing deep questioning of everything. Society, reality, science, religion. That's what it means. To value truth. See, the way that I know that somebody truly values truth, and isn't just a bullshitter, and just pretending, is that they're questioning their own worldview. (02:20:31)

If I see a Christian who's seriously questioning Christianity, that's someone who cares about truth. If I see Jordan Peterson seriously questioning all of his beliefs, that's when I'll know that he cares about truth. When I see a leftist questioning leftism, that's how I know he cares about truth. When I see a MAGA person questioning MAGA, when I see an anti-vaxxer questioning anti-vax, when I see Joe Rogan questioning Joe Rogan, and his whole show, when I see Elon Musk questioning everything Elon Musk does, and his whole business strategy, when I see Mark Zuckerberg questioning Facebook's algorithms, when I see tech oligarchs questioning the validity of oligarchy, that's how I'll know that they care about truth. (02:21:20)

And not until then. Valuing truth means deeply caring about epistemology and studying it. It means epistemic responsibility. I have a powerful episode on epistemic responsibility coming soon. Stay tuned for that. It means investing time and energy into truth-seeking. It means paying the cost, sacrificing survival for truth. This is the critical key. If I don't see you sacrificing your survival for truth, then you don't care about truth. And what do I mean by sacrificing your survival? (02:21:57)

I mean sacrificing material rewards. I mean, I want to see you sacrifice money, power, sex, fame, success, and luxury. If you're not sacrificing these things, you are not a real philosopher, you are not doing philosophy, you are not doing real spirituality, and you are not doing consciousness work. You don't care about God, and you don't care about truth. Clear? This cuts through the shit. For Elon Musk to claim that he cares about truth, I want to see him sacrifice power. For Jordan Peterson to say he cares about truth, I want to see him sacrifice his podcast and his viewers. (02:22:39)

For Mark Zuckerberg to say that he cares about truth, I want to see him sacrifice his Facebook share price. Until they do that, they're kidding themselves. Valuing truth means doing hard work. You can't value truth and be lazy at the same time. This is a contradiction. Nor can you value truth and leech off other people. See, a lot of people in society make a career, and a business, and a lifestyle out of leeching and extracting value out of others. This is antithetical to truth. (02:23:35)

You can't just be the rentier class, and then, you know, live on a tropical island while you're collecting your rent as a landlord, and then not working, not doing anything, and then calling that truth. That's not in alignment with truth. Valuing truth means undertaking proactive emotional labor and suffering from truth-seeking. Truth-seeking is laborious in and of itself, and it comes with its own kind of suffering. It's a healthy, proactive kind of suffering. (02:24:10)

Because you're dealing with the fire before it's even started, rather than putting it out once it's in full flame. So, there's an emotional labor that comes with that, which is why people don't care about truth, you know? I've cared about truth so much, that I've been carrying this burden of caring about truth. And I didn't even realize, I've been carrying it for like 30 years, I didn't even realize how heavy this burden was, until one day I was sitting on my couch, not that long ago, thinking about this episode, and it kind of hit me like an epiphany, it's like, oh my god! (02:24:47)

Because I was thinking about, why don't people, why doesn't everybody care about truth like I do? And it's like, oh my god, because I've been carrying the burden for so long, that I don't even register. It's sort of like, you know, when you're on Earth, in Earth gravity, you don't realize how heavy it is until you live in space for a year. And then you come back down to Earth, and you realize, oh my god, living in gravity is so heavy, astronauts can barely walk after living for a year in outer space. (02:25:13)

Well, it's kind of like that, it's like, I've been like, to me the analogy is this, it's like, I've been living on this Earth, and then everybody else has been living out in outer space, floating in zero-g. And now, when they become truth seekers, it's as though now they're living on Earth, and now all their muscles are atrophied, they don't know how to walk, they can't walk in Earth's gravity. Whereas for me, I'm just walking normally. (02:25:35)

But in truth, walking in normal gravity does weigh on you, and it is a burden, and it is exhausting. And so I've been doing it for so many decades now, that like, it's hard for me to even imagine what it's like to not have that burden. But then I realize, oh my god, most people don't even have that burden, they've been living their whole life not carrying that burden, it's like, wow, that must have been such a relief. Life is so much easier when you're not carrying the burden of truth. (02:25:58)

Like, wow, so much easier. Because you can cut corners, you can cheat, you can lie, you can manipulate to have sex, you can manipulate to earn money, you can do all these things. And I'm not saying I didn't do some of that in my life, of course I have. Of course I have. But see, even the guilt that comes with doing that is very heavy. For a lot of these billionaires and capitalist type and oligarch types and so forth, and a lot of these public influencers, they don't even feel the guilt or shame. Trump doesn't even feel the shame of his corruption. Elon Musk doesn't even feel the shame of it. (02:26:36)

Jordan Peterson doesn't feel the shame of what he's doing. Even that is a burden. So that's why people don't care. They don't care because it's heavy to care, because it's much harder. It's much harder to be in university and care about truth. Because you're going to have all sorts of cognitive dissonance. It's much harder to be at work and care about truth. It's much harder to be in the government and care about the truth. Or to be in the military and care about the truth. (02:27:04)

Or to be a podcaster and care about the truth. Because, you know, podcasting is so much easier if you just allow yourself to bullshit. For example, I could have become a Twitch streamer. How fun is that? I get to sit and play video games all day and earn millions of dollars doing it. Cool, I could have done that. I could have a politics channel where I just rant about politics, just bullshit and scream at people who annoy me. I could have that and make millions of dollars doing that. (02:27:36)

But literally, my value system prohibits me from doing that. I can't do that. As a career. Why? Because it's not aligned with truth. Those avenues are literally closed off to me. There are so many businesses I can't do. There are investments I can't make. There are videos I can't publish. There are things I can't say. Because of commitment to truth. Valuing truth means a commitment to truth-seeking. Being proactive versus passive. Love of the process. So what it means to be proactive is that you don't just wait for me to explain it all to you. (02:28:21)

You go out there. You find the books. If you don't know which books you research, you go find the books. Through some trial and error process. In the end, if you care about truth enough, you're not going to need me to guide you, to tell you. You're not going to need a guru. You will figure it all out for yourself. If you cared about truth deeply enough, you would literally derive the entire actualize.org body of work from scratch. By yourself. Sitting on a couch. That's what you would do. If you really cared. (02:28:49)

I'm giving you the key to how I did it. Rather than just giving you beliefs, I'm showing you where did it originate from. Valuing truth also means extreme open-mindedness. Why am I so open-minded? And why do I preach radical open-mindedness so much? It's simply because I love truth. If you actually loved truth, and you cared about truth, you would be extremely open-minded. Because you know that through closed-mindedness you could not expand your understanding of reality. (02:29:41)

It's literally impossible. Open-mindedness should not be something that I force you to do. It's just something that comes naturally to you because you love truth so much. That you are afraid to close your mind to any of it. Valuing truth means a commitment to turn towards difficult truths, not to try to escape them, avoid them, bullshit, or rationalize. If someone points out, for example, an error in your thinking, rather than getting defensive, you actually appreciate it. Because you appreciate corrections that people make for you. (02:30:21)

Rather than wanting to be right. Valuing truth means being serious about not knowing. Catching yourself claiming to know things you don't actually know. This is a discipline. Making a periodic practice of admitting of the deepest things that you don't know. A commitment to stop speaking things you do not know. To stop bullshitting. If people just made this one commitment, half the podcasts in the world would disappear overnight. Because most of them are just people talking about things they don't know. (02:30:56)

Because they need content. Easy content. Valuing truth means a commitment to admitting you're wrong. A commitment to surrendering fantasy. It also means not selling out. This is huge. Not placing yourself into compromising jobs and careers. This is such a big one. A lot of untruthfulness simply comes from your choice of job and career. And putting yourself into a compromising position. It's not really that you're lying, it's that your entire lifestyle... For example, when you become an academic, you have to understand that you are in a compromising career. (02:31:37)

When it comes to truth seeking. When you become a politician, same thing. When you become a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, same thing. I could have placed myself into many compromising positions. In university, working for some boss... and so forth. Then I wouldn't be able to do this work, this quality and depth of work that I do. It's only possible because I consciously avoided placing myself into those compromising positions. Where I would have to compromise on truth. (02:32:13)

Because if I had a boss, I would have to do what he tells me. And of course, what's he going to tell me? He's going to tell me to do the things that maximize profit for him. He doesn't care about the truth. So there's a deep responsibility when you care about the truth. You're so responsible that part of your epistemic responsibility goes into what careers you're allowed to have. Most careers you're not allowed to have anymore. (02:32:34)

You see that? It's not just about being honest. Being honest is easy. What's hard is designing your life so that you're not in a compromising career. That's hard. Most people can barely feed their family and pay their rent. Never mind strategizing ten years into the future how to create a career where there's no conflicts of interest with truth seeking. You see how much thought needs to go into this? How much more difficult that is than just to get a random job that pays the most money. (02:33:05)

That's like what every idiot does is just get the highest paying job that's available. That they can get. Well if you do that, then you can't do this work that I'm doing. Valuing truth means living in an honest way, doing honest work. It also means a commitment to speak truth even when it's difficult and unpopular. So just, this whole episode is just underscoring again and again, do not underestimate how precious and powerful just caring about truth is. If you care about truth genuinely, really, that puts you in the top .01% of humans. (02:33:50)

But that's not just something you do once, that's something you have to keep living out every day. And you have to keep asking yourself, how can I deepen my relationship to truth? Imagine just for a moment, a world in which everybody placed truth as their highest value. What would that society and world look like? It would be totally different from what we have today. Now you might say, sometimes I get this question, you know, but Leo, what if I don't care about truth? I just don't care. Like I want, I even want to care, but I still just don't. It's like somehow it just doesn't interest me. (02:34:25)

I'm interested in other things. Well, three points on this. Point number one is that, ultimately if you just don't care, then go follow your passion. I'm a big fan of the cliche that you follow your passion. So if your passion isn't truth, go follow your passion and just see what happens. And that could be self-correcting in a certain sense. But also, you know, it just might be the case that in this lifetime, you're not going to be a truth seeker, you're not going to be a sage, you're not going to be a philosopher, you're not going to be spiritual, you're not going to realize God. And so just go have fun, do whatever. (02:34:56)

Live the corrupt lifestyle of a fool and have fun. But if that doesn't appeal to you, then what I recommend is that you have to contemplate more deeply your values and consider their consequences. Really think about the consequences. Really think about what it means to have values. What does each value that you have mean? What does love mean? What does family mean? What does truth mean? What are the logical consequences of those? And then lastly, connect to the sacredness of truth and reality. (02:35:27)

Like really, you're not conscious of the beauty of truth, of the beauty of knowing reality. You just, like, have to... it has to soak into your mind, penetrate into your mind. Think about all the stuff in this episode, and if you think about it long enough, you should start to develop a more of a caring and appreciation for the importance of truth. That's the whole point of this episode. How do you make truth your highest value? (02:35:56)

Well, contemplate why truth is so important. Your mind needs to get traction with its importance. Develop a deep reverence for truth and reality. Start to see it as sacred. Not just as a chore, or you just trying to, like, avoid lying or something, you know. That's a negative reason. No, you are pursuing understanding of reality as it actually is. You're interfacing with reality, with consciousness, with God. And you're understanding what it really is to be alive, to exist. (02:36:26)

Now, ultimately, to really appreciate truth, you need to have an awakening. But, of course, it's kind of a catch-22, because if you don't care about truth in the first place, you're not going to reach awakening. You already need to have a profound care for truth to reach awakening. But, um, once you do reach awakening, your journey is still not done, but at least now you're going to see that truth. At your moment of awakening, what you realize is that truth was not just some, you know, intellectual pursuit, which is nice. (02:36:53)

That's how academics pursue it, but that truth is spirit. Truth is a spiritual pursuit. It's sacred. It's literally sacred. It's divine. Truth is divine. That's what you realize during awakening. So, you're going to have to kind of power through for years until you get there. But don't just value truth. Really, it's about falling in love with truth. You need to love truth. When you love truth, then truth-seeking isn't a chore, it's really why you're here on earth. (02:37:25)

Why do you exist? You don't exist to eat and to fuck and to go to work and to make your boss rich or to collect, you know, a paycheck. You exist, really, to interface with existence and to understand what it is and to exist in the, um, you know, in the most beautiful and conscious and good way possible. And that way is the path of loving truth. See, love of truth is the spiritual practice. (02:37:55)

Truth should be a divine experience, but it's not going to become a divine experience until awakening. Until you have a mystical experience of God, then it becomes divine. Here's a way of helping you to see the divine aspect of truth. Like, have you ever gone and watched, like, the starry night sky in the desert? And you, you know, you wonder, you look up at the stars and you wonder how many planets could be out there and, you know, aliens flying around, and you're just kind of like in awe. It's that moment of awe. (02:38:31)

That's a little taste of divinity. Or when you're watching a beautiful sunset, that's a little taste of divinity. Or a beautiful nature, like you're in a beautiful forest or on a beautiful beach, secluded beach by yourself. That's a taste of divinity. But to the secular atheist mind, it's not clear, Leo, how is that divinity? It's like, that's just nature. I mean, yeah, it's kind of like a moment of awe, it's kind of beautiful, but there's nothing more to it. It's just like a human feeling. (02:39:00)

It's like, no, that points to a deep mystical experience that you're missing, which will come with awakening and with God-realization. But that gets you a little bit of a taste, right? When you're looking up at the stars and your consciousness and mind are coming into contact with the magnitude and the scope of existence in the universe, you're getting a little taste of the awesomeness of truth, how epic truth is, how beautiful and majestic truth is, how awesome truth is. So, the whole point of doing spirituality is to get more of that connection to divinity. (02:39:41)

And ultimately, look, if you're a religious person, look at it this way, to not love truth is to not love God. And to not love yourself, because of course you are God. See, by not caring about truth, you're literally prioritizing the devil over God. That's effectively what you're doing if we want to speak about this in sort of a poetic, religious language. Even though I'm very against religion, but you know what I mean. So, contemplate for yourself, what does it mean to love truth? (02:40:20)

And how can I embody the love of truth more each day? And keep contemplating and deepening your relationship to truth. Don't think that it's done after you've had your awakening, even. It's not done. Even after you've had your mystical experience of God, it's not done. You're just beginning. Truth will get so much more deep for you, awakening after awakening. So, keep going. Think about it, why wouldn't you care about truth? Why wouldn't everybody just love truth by default? (02:40:46)

It's because you are distracted chasing shiny objects, survival stuff. It's also because of lack of good role models. You've probably never had a serious philosopher or sage or mystic or lover of truth as your role model. Your parents probably didn't care, your siblings didn't care, your boss didn't care, your friends didn't care, and your professors didn't care. So, really, you need a really good role model for truth-seeking. Otherwise, you're not going to see the value of it, and you're not going to know how to do it, and you're not going to revere it. (02:41:26)

That's why, for example, Socrates is such a role model for many philosophers. Because he sacrificed his life for truth. Also, why you don't love truth, why everybody doesn't love truth, is because you were born into a corrupt society, where everybody you know is corrupt. And decades of survival in this survival pressure cooker that you have been born into, and lived through, and grew up in, they corrupted you, and they distracted you from what truly matters, the existential dimension of reality. So, somewhere along the way, in your teenage years, you got hoodwinked, bamboozled by fame, money, sex, romantic lust and love, power, one of those things. (02:42:20)

And then you started chasing that, and you thought that that's what life was about. And now I'm telling you otherwise. If you've been living a corrupt life full of lies and not caring about truth, now you're in a deep hole. You're kind of like a long-term alcoholic. It's hard for you to change. It's hard to just start caring about truth when you've been living with fantasies for 30 years, when you've just been surviving. It's gonna feel like you're now fighting with one hand tied behind your back. For example, if you're in business and you start caring about truth, business becomes a lot harder. (02:43:00)

Because you can't just bullshit your way, and lie your way into money, the way that you could if you didn't care about truth. It's sort of like a stripper who now has to get a real job. Stripping pays a lot of money for relatively little work, compared to something like construction or scrubbing toilets. But stripping isn't a real job. I'm not discounting that it's hard work. I'm sure it's exhausting and all that. But what I mean by it's not a real job is that it's not a proper way to live. (02:43:38)

It's not ultimately conscious or truthful. And don't get me wrong, I love strippers, but I'm saying for the stripper herself, it's a bad job. The money's good, but there's a cost, right? This is why it's so important to get serious about truth-seeking from your teenage years. The further you push it off, the harder it gets. It's really one of those habits you want to build young. One of the best things you can do if you're a parent for your children is to help them develop a love and a passion for questioning reality, sense-making, epistemology, and truth-seeking. (02:44:30)

Don't force it upon them, but help them to discover the joy and love of it. Give them the resources they need, the concepts, certain theories, certain principles of how to do that. And then give them a little idea of where that can lead and the benefits that will come, and also the negative consequences of them not doing it. So that by the time they're 20 years old, and they're adults, they have a firm grounding in truth-seeking. They ask powerful questions, they care about epistemology, they take epistemic responsibility, they're very open-minded, they actually do labor and work to find the truth. (02:45:13)

And they're willing to question their own worldview, and they're not dogmatic, they're not ideological. This is the best thing you can do for your children, to set them up for life. Because once they're older, it's going to be very hard to kick fantasies and ideology once it's already cemented into their minds. And truth is one of those long-term investments, right? You don't get an immediate payoff. It takes years, it really takes decades. I've been investing in this for decades, so now I get a payoff. (02:45:45)

But if you just started and you just want an immediate payoff, it's probably not going to come to you within a year. You invest in truth and then it grows and grows, your connection to reality deepens. And then, decades later, you enjoy the fruits such as peace of mind, confidence, security, purity of life, clean mind, freedom from suffering, deep connection to God and reality, justice, understanding of the world and society so you're not confused and deluded. These are all the benefits. (02:46:16)

And then, ultimately, just a deep appreciation is sort of a... you reach a state of luxuriating in truth. You literally derive pleasure, your greatest pleasure comes from just a consciousness, your consciousness luxuriating in truth. Just being conscious of truth is enough for you to be happy. So, you should be working towards awakening, that should be your long-term goal, because awakening is the realization of absolute truth. But, also, don't confine truth to just absolute truth, there's more to it than that. Because, look, I spent the first 15 years of my life, I didn't even know what awakening was. (02:47:05)

I mean, I don't mean the first 15, I mean like the first 15 years of my adult life, doing personal development and so forth, and I didn't even know what absolute truth was or what awakening was or what God was. That all came later, but I still cared about truth all that time. It's just that I cared about more relative truth, I cared about understanding reality, I cared about making sense of science and religion and philosophy and other things. I cared about epistemology. (02:47:35)

So, see, there's a lot more to it than just having your awakening. And, in practice, you're not going to get your awakening until you do care deeply about epistemology and all this other more relative stuff. That's your, sort of like, these are stepping stones. But even after you have your awakening, your job is not going to be done. You're not going to now automatically be truthful. You're still going to make shit up, you're still going to bullshit people and yourself, and you're still not going to be free of self-deception. (02:48:08)

And still much more work is to be done after that. Okay, here's a list of traps on this topic. Trap one is confusing truth-seeking and love of truth to mean pushing truth onto others. Remember, even if you develop a deep love for truth, most of the people around you will not have it. And you will not be able to make them have it by forcing it upon them, by badgering them, by lecturing to them. Trap number two is expecting and needing others to value truth-seeking as much as you do. (02:48:43)

Yeah, most people are not going to be truth-seekers, and you're going to have to resign yourself to that. And also, you want to be very careful not to bash people with the truth. Because there's going to be this tendency, like, you value the truth, but that doesn't mean that your spouse values the truth. Your girlfriend values the truth, or whoever values the truth. And now you just want to, like, dump hard truth. You want to truth-bomb people. This is the trap, is truth-bombing people who aren't ready for it. (02:49:18)

And that turns out to be untruthful. Why? Because eventually your understanding of truth becomes so profound that you realize that truth is such a serious topic, that most people are nowhere developed enough to handle it. And that means throwing this burden on them when they are not able to handle it. This is like, you know, giving a child a weapon. It's irresponsible. They need to grow themselves to the point where they can handle such deep truths. Truth can be traumatizing if the person is not equipped for it. (02:49:53)

So be careful. Also, be careful with the trap of moralizing and getting all self-righteous and becoming this sort of, like, truth crusader. This is a big problem. You now virtue-signal about how everyone else is not as truthful as you, and you criticize and judge others, and you get an ego-thrill out of that, from crusading and holding yourself as more righteous than they are, more truthful. This is an ego thing. You don't want to fall into this trap. (02:50:25)

This kind of moralizing. The other trap here is turning truth into a weapon to advance yourself. See, the ego is very sneaky. It's going to co-opt this idea of truth, and then it's going to somehow find a way to weaponize it, and then to make a career out of it, and then to make money out of it, and to get sex out of it, and to build a bigger ego. Another trap here is being too honest. (02:50:50)

Do not make the mistake that caring about truth means that you are brutally honest and tell everyone every thought in your mind. This is a mistake. There are many ideas and thoughts that you should just keep to yourself. When in doubt, shut your mouth. Don't talk, and just think it through. If you have some heavy, difficult truth, rather than just blurting it out immediately, spend a few days, spend a week really thinking about it, and how the other person is going to react to it, whether they're capable of handling it, whether they're mature enough, and so forth. (02:51:25)

And only then, you know, you can have that conversation. But like I said, most people are not really equipped to handle serious truths. And also, people don't need to hear your every stupid little intrusive thought. There's a lot of nasty, intrusive thoughts that you have that you don't need to tell to others around you. So just be careful. Part of truth means also being concerned about the sovereignty and well-being of other people that you communicate with. It's not just all about you blurting out whatever comes to your mind immediately. (02:52:04)

That's not what caring about truth means. Another trap is talking about truth, but not actually sacrificing or questioning yourself. You know, you can make a big, public, virtue-signaling display of how much you love truth and care about truth. But you're not sacrificing any of your survival, and you're not really questioning your own worldview and beliefs and your own lifestyle. You're sort of like externalizing. This is sort of like the same problem you get if you're too showy about donating money. (02:52:44)

You make a big show of it, and so you spend more time bragging about how much money you donate than actually helping people. So you want to spend most of your time helping people, and very little time bragging and talking about how much you help people. That's if you really care about helping people. Likewise, if you care about truth, you want to spend less time talking and preaching about it, and more time actually making yourself more truthful. Another trap here is turning truth-seeking into an identity. Be careful. (02:53:11)

The ego loves the identity of a truth-seeker. It's like, I'm a truth-seeker, but nobody else is, and that makes me very special. Be careful with that one. And perhaps the biggest trap in truth-seeking is to regard what you want to be true as truth. Or what you already believe to be, to be truth. You have to get very good at introspecting to identify what you really want to be true, and then drop that. Truth-seeking is actually inhibited by what you want to be true. (02:53:48)

It shouldn't matter what you want, it should matter what's actually true. So here's a contemplation question for you that's very powerful. What are all the things I want and need to be true? Make a list, identify those, and then drop them. Go watch my episode called Developing Introspection, it's a powerful one that connects here with this. Because see, if you were a Christian, one of the easy ways to break out of Christianity is that you can, if you're a Christian, you can just kind of ask yourself, very honestly, what do I want and need to be true? And you will realize that Christianity and Jesus and all the dogma of Christianity will be on that top of that list. (02:54:26)

And then that's how you know, through just very careful, honest introspection, that's how you know to drop it. The fact that you want it and need it to be true is exactly why you need to drop it. Because truth has nothing to do with what you want or need. That's why it's beautiful. Be careful taking truth to mean your religion, your political agenda, your worldview, science, your business, your philosophy, your conspiratorial anti-mainstream views, your tribe, or anything to do with your survival. Anything to do with your survival, your emotional needs, pleasure, your worldview, your tribe, is not what I'm talking about when I talk about caring about truth. (02:55:13)

Also, do not become perfectionistic about truth and corruption. We live in a very corrupt world. Life requires some corruption. And you need some wiggle room to make your way forward in the world and to develop and grow and to become successful. Make small improvements rather than trying to be perfect all at once. There's a lot of work to do, so you know, you're not going to eat the elephant in one night here. Just work towards improving your integrity, your honesty, your prioritization of truth, your alignment with truth, your accuracy, your epistemology. (02:55:50)

Just work on those things patiently in small bits. That's all we're talking about here. Nothing too extreme. And also just be careful in certain very dangerous, life-threatening situations. You want to be careful about this. Don't get yourself killed over being brutally truthful in some life-and-death situation. In certain situations, when someone has a gun to your head, you might need to tell a lie. And I don't want you in that moment to be like, well, Leo told me that I have to value the truth, so I have to be honest. (02:56:28)

Look, you are so dishonest. Everybody is so dishonest that one additional little lie here and there is not going to make much difference. Although you do have to be careful with this kind of rationalization because, you know, it can easily become an excuse and turn into a nasty habit. But I don't want you to think that you need to be perfectly truthful in order to realize God or to become very developed. I'm not always truthful, and yet I've gotten so much value from this practice of caring about truth. (02:57:03)

That doesn't mean I'm perfect all the time, I never lied or any of that kind of stuff. It's just that, you know, you don't need to be perfect. Just be like 80% is good enough, 90% is good enough. At least to get started. Now, once you build it up, you know, after decades of doing this, if you get to a very advanced spiritual stage, maybe you reach a point where, you know, you want to be very perfectionistic about it. (02:57:24)

And by that point, you'll be ready. But if you're just starting off, you don't need to get all perfect about it. A few other practical tips here for you. Carefully observe, as a practice, how no one around you cares about truth. This observation itself is important, and you need to actually do it, rather than just taking my word for it. Do it. Observe. Observe signs. How do you know that someone doesn't care about truth? Observe instances where people profess how much they love truth, but then they actually aren't living it. Observe that. (02:57:54)

Also, contemplate deeply why you prioritize other things over truth. Observe that mechanism in action. What does it get you? I want you to actually make your survival conscious. I want you to actually notice yourself in the moment when you are sacrificing truth for some survival goody. For sex, for money, for pleasure, for comfort, convenience, whatever. Observe and study the deep consequences of not prioritizing truth. What does that lead to? Look at those consequences. (02:58:28)

Notice the difference between spiritual pursuit to avoid suffering or gain happiness versus truth. True spirituality is about wanting to know the true nature of reality and God. That's true spirituality. Fake and misguided spirituality, corrupt spirituality, is when you're trying to avoid suffering and trauma. Or you're chasing after pleasure. The intent behind your spiritual practice matters a lot. Why are you doing your spirituality? Why are you doing your philosophy? What are you doing it for? Maybe you're doing it because you want to be special and unique. (02:59:13)

This kind of ego thing. That's a mistake. That's a corruption. Maybe you're doing it because you want to prove other people wrong. That's also a corruption. Maybe you're doing it for the fame and attention and the status. That's also a corruption. What's the non-corrupt way? Because you actually want to know the true nature of the universe. That's healthy. That's proper. A few objections I want to answer here. (02:59:42)

But Leo, you're rich in privilege, so for you it's easy to care about truth. Truth is really a luxury that you can afford, but most people like me can't. Well, like I've said, I've always cared about truth. It isn't something that I just picked up once I became rich and famous from YouTube or something like that. I cared about it long before YouTube. Long before you knew about me, I cared about it. Long before I had a bunch of money. (03:00:11)

And yes, I did in a sense have a privileged childhood in that I wasn't born into some war zone. I was raised in a pretty decent state, in a decent town, in a decent family that didn't abuse me too much and that kind of stuff. And so, in that sense, I was lucky. And if I was born, let's say, in Gaza, in a war zone, and my family was bombed to death and I was the only child, an orphan, would I still have the same kind of passion for truth that I have now? (03:00:46)

Would I be able to prioritize it? Because my survival would be so impinged and threatened in that situation that I probably wouldn't have much time to care about truth or philosophy. Yes, that's true. I definitely have benefited from just the luck of having a decent family and a decent country and a decent society that I lived in. And was raised in, went to decent schools, that all helped me a lot. In a sense, that is a kind of a luxury that then allows me to care about truth. (03:01:16)

But then again, be careful, because there are a lot of people who live in first world countries and have relatively comfortable lives, decent families and so forth. But still, they have that kind of luxury to care about truth, but they never do anyways. And in fact, what happens is that, look at all the rich and powerful people in the world. Look at all the politicians, the tech CEOs, oligarchs, and all this kind of stuff. Look at the millionaires and billionaires. The richer they get, the less they care about truth. (03:01:43)

It's not like, you know, Elon Musk made his hundreds of billions and he's like, okay, now I have the luxury to finally step away from all the survival stuff and just focus on truth. No! He did exactly the opposite. He doubled down on bullshit and survival stuff. So... money, having a lot of money is not going to make you care about truth. In fact, it'll be the opposite. Money will seduce you away from truth. And so will success. You will get lost chasing success. (03:02:23)

And remember what I said, a lot of what it means to be true, to really care about truth, is how you position yourself in life. I could have positioned myself poorly, such that I was compromised. You can position yourself such that you end up in a war zone. That's a bad positioning. Yes, once you're in a war zone, it's very difficult to care about truth in a war zone. Likewise, once you're working in a Fortune 500 company as a CEO, and you position yourself that way, it's very difficult now to care about truth. (03:03:08)

And once you're a politician, it's very difficult to be truthful. You have to have that before you enter into those domains. And if you happen to be in those domains, now you have to, if you care about truth, you have to work your way out of those domains. Which I did, too. I deliberately quit my 9-to-5 job so that I could develop financial independence, so that I had the autonomy to do the creative work that I want to do. That aligns with my values. That was very important to me, and I sacrificed for that. I worked for that. (03:03:43)

I cried for that. That was painful to do. Much easier not to do that, and just to kind of go with the path of least resistance. So, a commitment to truth means that you're not following the path of least resistance. You're not doing the easiest thing that just comes to you in life. You're doing the right thing. The right thing is the thing that maximizes your relationship to truth. That's the right thing. Now, you might say, but Leo, if you had children the way that I do, for example, then you wouldn't say all this, because you would know that your children are your highest priority. (03:04:24)

And this whole talk about truth, this is just only someone without a family and without children could talk this way in these kind of abstractions. Well, again, be very careful. I'm very well aware of the compromising position that having children puts you in. Consider this, that the reason I don't have children is not by accident, but perhaps by design, by intention. Because I know the kind of compromising position that that would put me in with respect to truth. Now, I'm not saying that if you have children that you can't be truthful or you can't value truth, but obviously having children creates a huge conflict of interest. (03:05:09)

Because now that's your bias, that's your priority. Who wouldn't lie to feed their children? Who wouldn't lie to save the lives of their children? Who wouldn't lie or invent illusions and fantasies to provide for their children? Of course. Of course. By having children, what you're doing is you are increasing the survival pressure cooker. So yes, life is much easier without children. But then again, why do you have children? That's part of your survival. See, you have to get really serious about why you have children. (03:05:57)

It's not just all, you know, I want to have fun with my children, I love my children. You're doing something survival. Very much related to survival there. And that's fine. Nothing wrong with having children. By all means. You know, everyone has different values. I'm not saying you should not have children. But just understand, appreciate the kind of biases that gives you. Appreciate how that distorts your ability to understand reality. And to think clearly about morality, and to think about God, and to think about the higher good, and truth, and love, what love really means. (03:06:32)

Another objection might be, but Leo, you act like truth is your highest value, but in practice, you know, if we put you under torture, then you would crack. I don't deny that. I don't profess to be some sort of, you know, invincible truth lord who is immune to human frailty and all this sort of stuff. Of course. Yeah, if you put me under torture, I would crack. As would pretty much anybody. And that doesn't really say anything other than that you have to be very, very careful how you position yourself in life so that you don't end up in these compromising situations. (03:07:24)

Because once you're in a compromising situation, once somebody has you by the balls, yeah, truth will... you're not going to be conscious or strong enough to be truthful. You've failed somewhere earlier in the process. Right? Why are you in a position where you're being tortured? That's really what you should be thinking about. And here, torture is just an extreme example of survival pressure, and so survival pressure comes in an infinite diversity of forms. Torture is just one extreme example of it. Now look, you might wonder, but Leo, you know, how much of this kind of like... being a stickler on truth is really important? (03:08:16)

Like, isn't it possible to just kind of like chill out and relax? And just like, live your life and not really care very much about truth? I mean, it seems like most people just kind of live normal, chill lives. The normies. And they're kind of happy, they have a family, and a white picket fence house, and a car, and they go to their 9-to-5 job, and they seem like fine, they're living fine. I mean, is their life so terrible? Do they really need to like, be so anal about truth? (03:08:41)

And the truth is that no, you can definitely just live like a normal human that lives, and you're going to get the exact same kind of results that a normal human gets, the kind of, you know, mediocre results that they get. Or, you can even get fantastical results, like you can go become a rich, you know, Wall Street broker, and have a bunch of sex, and all this, you can live this kind of unconscious life. You can live the material, what you're really talking about is materialism. And I don't mean as the philosophy, I mean materialism as just consumerism. (03:09:11)

If you want to live a materialistic sort of life, and that's all that you want out of life, I can't really make an argument against that. I mean, of course you're going to suffer, and you're going to miss God, and all that stuff, you're going to miss a lot of amazing stuff, but... You're also going to save a lot of misery. The kind of misery that I go through doing all this philosophy, you're going to save yourself all that. So, there's actually some, you know, some benefit to you living that way. (03:09:39)

If you want to live like an animal, I mean, in a certain sense, living like an animal is fun, it's easy, it's blissful, unless you get into some nasty situation. But, generally speaking, in a first world country, you can live like an animal, unconsciously, materialistically, and it's like, okay, fine. But, then you're missing spirituality. You're saying no to spirituality, and you're saying no to real serious personal development. If you care about spirituality, personal development, you care about God, you care about understanding the nature of reality, well, then you have to care about truth. (03:10:14)

So, really, I'm talking to those kind of people. But, if you just don't care, then you just don't care. And there's nothing particularly wrong with that. I'm not saying that you have to care about truth. I'm not trying to force it upon you. But, you will be missing some profound stuff. I mean, you're going to miss God. You're going to miss the highest fruition of philosophy and spirituality. You're going to miss crazy mystical experiences, crazy insights and understandings. You're going to be self-deceived, for sure. You're going to be living in a fantasy, for sure. (03:10:49)

You're going to be corrupt, for sure. You're going to promote corruption. You're not going to unlock the highest intelligence, love, beauty, and good. You're not going to be a good person. You're going to be evil, and you're going to contribute to evil, and that's your choice. In a sense, you're kind of like that guy in the Matrix, the first Matrix movie. What was his name? Cypher or something? Who made a deal to stay inside the Matrix. He didn't want to leave the Matrix. Yeah, you can stay inside the Matrix. That's basically what you're choosing in that case. (03:11:20)

And so, you have a choice. You can leave the Matrix, you can stay inside the Matrix. If you follow my work, I'm leading you out of the Matrix. And... should you leave the Matrix? I don't know. There's a case to be made that it's better to just stay in the Matrix. I've actually... I've suffered so much from truth-seeking, that... Originally, I thought that, like, well, this is right for everybody, and there's no way that staying in the Matrix is better. But I've suffered so much from pursuing spirituality, that... (03:11:57)

At this point, I'm not even sure that exiting the Matrix is better. Just from a pure... if you're doing a calculus of just, like, pure... How you feel, how good it feels, how happy you are in, like, raw, you know, feelings... Then, just staying in the Matrix, in a first-world country, pursuing success... There's an argument to be made that that just is a net positive... But then, for some of us, like, escaping the Matrix is, like, a duty. (03:12:27)

We feel like we have to escape the... If we know that we're in a Matrix, we have to escape it. Even if that's going to cause us more suffering, we have to do it. So that's part of a commitment to truth. Actualized.org is unique as a spiritual teaching in that we have a central focus on the topic of corruption. I really don't see other spiritual teachers talking about this. Maybe they do, but I really haven't seen it in any of the stuff that I've read, and I've read quite a wide variety of stuff... (03:12:57)

In this domain. I don't see anybody teaching what corruption really is, at an existential level. And how to understand where corruption is coming from, and also the solution, of course, therefore, to corruption. And so that's part of what I'm focusing my work on. I'm going to have some powerful videos, advanced videos in the future, coming about corruption... Advanced explanations of corruption, how that ties in with humanity, with society, with politics, with human nature... With spirituality, with God, with truth. (03:13:28)

We're going to talk about power, how power works. We're going to talk about human nature. All that is coming soon. Very advanced understandings that I've developed just in the last year on this topic. Because I've had a profound existential understanding of what corruption is. Like, what it is, why it exists. So profound. I'm really excited to talk about that. And that also takes God and makes it more practical. Because, you know, God is just this airy-fairy thing. (03:13:59)

But when you're talking about corruption, especially with all the corruption that we're seeing now in society... Now people start to get interested, like, well, what is corruption? And what is the source of corruption? And what is the ultimate solution to corruption? So I have powerful insights for you on that front, that are coming soon. I want to actualize that work to be the deepest, most profound explanation, instead of teachings on the nature of what corruption is and why it exists. And even though I have those insights that I want to share, I don't claim to be above corruption. (03:14:30)

So I'm not perfect in that regard. I have a lot of work to do. But I do have a deep, philosophical understanding of what corruption is and where it comes from. So, see, in conclusion, now we're going to start to wrap up here... Not caring about truth makes self-deception intractable. You know how much I talk about the theme of self-deception in this work. And I was thinking, like, well, what is the ultimate solution? And then, what I realized is that the ultimate solution is caring about truth. (03:15:01)

If you don't, then self-deception is just... it's impossible. It's almost impossible even if you do care about truth. But if you don't, then you have no hope at all. Caring about truth is paramount to bootstrapping your mind. Caring about truth is necessary to jailbreak your mind and escape all human bias and groupthink, to achieve sovereignty of mind, which I'll have an episode on as well, coming soon. Without truth, your default is going to be groupthink and conformity, which leads to madness of crowds. (03:15:34)

Truth forces pursuit of insight versus belief and fantasy and ideology. Truth forces you to hold yourself accountable, to counter confirmation bias and cherry-picking. Truth keeps you from making stuff up to serve your survival, from just being an unconscious survival machine. Being truthful forces pure and right living. Lying forces wrongful living. Truth makes you fair and just. Equitable. Truth makes you compassionate. Truth means you care the most about cleaning up the lens of your glasses, your telescope, your microscope. The most intelligent thing to do is to clean and calibrate your instruments before you do your science. (03:16:24)

Otherwise, all of your science is going to be wrong. And that's why truth is... you can think of truth as the cleaning of your instruments. And calibrating of your instruments. And then after you discover absolute truth, through awakening, this gives you an Archimedean point. A powerful leverage point that you can use to then clean up your understanding of the rest of reality. It gives you that truth that you get from awakening. That gives you your only one pristine, completely uncorrupted thing that you have in your mind. (03:17:07)

And then you're going to use that one pure point of absolute truth to clean up the rest of your mind. And then, from there, you're going to clean up the rest of the world. This is how you cure the world and yourself of corruption. Notice that truth doesn't market and sell well. And that should counter-intuitively alert you that this is exactly why you should pursue it. You should intuit that the least marketable thing is the most valuable thing, and the thing that you should pursue. (03:17:40)

The most important thing. So, a few key insights here to wrap this up. Mankind is corrupt at the level of values. People value the wrong things and don't understand what their values will result in. The logical consequences. Another key insight here is that why is truth purifying? Because truth is selfless. It is not about serving you. Evil isn't about content. Evil is the structure of serving yourself. At the expense of others. (03:18:18)

Why is truth so great? Because it doesn't care about you. Because it's not about you. You see, your problem is that you're too much about you. Counter-intuitively. That's the trap. Truth will free you of yourself. That's the beauty of it. What is ugly human behavior? When humans are ugly in their behavior, what are they doing? They're being selfish. They're being self-absorbed. What about beautiful people in their behavior? (03:19:04)

Beautiful behavior is selfless people who are not doing things for themselves, but are doing things for a higher good. In alignment with truth. That's what truth is about. That's why truth is ultimately beautiful. Key insight. The avoidance of truth creates evil. And the last key insight is this. And this is a profound one. This is very deep. In the end, what are you surrendering to? In spirituality, we talk about surrender. What are you surrendering to? Are you surrendering to sex? (03:19:42)

No. Are you surrendering to money? No. Are you surrendering to power? No. Are you surrendering to a king? No. You're surrendering to truth. In the end, you're going to die. What is death? Death is going to be your forced surrendering to truth. To infinity. Truth is the solution to all problems. The more you surrender to truth, the less problems you have. See, survival is about resisting. It's about resisting truth. Manipulating reality to resist what's true. (03:20:32)

On your deathbed, eventually, you're going to be forced to surrender. No matter how much struggling and manipulation and lying and bullshitting you've done your whole life, all the fantasies, everything, at the very end of your life, you're going to be forced to surrender. And what are you going to surrender to? You're going to surrender to the truth of your death. And in that moment, you will understand why I said that truth is the highest value. Because every manipulation, every game that you play, every fantasy, everything you do in your whole life, in the end, for everybody, everybody ends up in the same spot. (03:21:13)

And that is the moment of your death. And at that moment, you are going to meet your maker. In that moment, you are going to have to face the ultimate truth. And there is no bullshitting out of it, there is no manipulation, there is no technology, there is no AI is going to save you, no billionaire is going to save you, no amount of money is going to save you, everyone is going to be in that same spot. Because in the end, the truth is the truth. (03:21:39)

And the truth is that your self, your finite self, that is a dream. And it will melt away, and you will melt into infinity. That's the truth. That's God. And there is no amount of feelings, no amount of bullshit, no amount of religion that will change that. Now, you will never live up to truth perfectly. The point here is simply to get you to understand the right target. We are trying to realign you in the right direction. (03:22:17)

What is the proper target of worship in life? The proper target of worship is God-slash-truth. You have been so corrupted by growing up in a corrupt society, that no one even ever told you what the right target of worship is. I am probably the first person in your life to explicitly explain to you what and why the right target of worship is in life. That is God-slash-truth. Now, the Christians of course tell you about God and so forth, and the Muslims tell you about Allah, to worship Allah, but they don't explain to you what you are actually worshipping. (03:23:07)

You are not worshipping Allah or Jesus or any of that stuff. What you are worshipping is truth. Because truth is God. You see? It all makes sense. It all makes sense. Religion, science, personal development, spirituality, all of it comes together and all makes sense. Philosophy. When you have thought about it very clearly, and you really care to understand it. You see? It's just that people are so confused that they don't even tell you these things in a clear way, the way that I am able to tell you. (03:23:42)

And why do I know these things so clearly? Because I actually cared to know them so clearly. That's the only reason. And if I didn't care, then I wouldn't have this knowledge, and I wouldn't be able to share it with you. I would share instead with you corrupt, wrong ideas of how to live, and how to think. That's the cost of not caring about truth, and also the benefit of caring about it. Spirituality is not just about realizing God and awakening. (03:24:13)

Spirituality is about becoming pure. More pure. Why become pure? Because it gets you closer to God. How do you become pure? By loving truth more than you love everything else. That's it. I'm done here. Please check out my blog. I work so hard on the blog. I post so much stuff on the blog. Hundreds and hundreds of posts that you probably haven't seen. All for free. Amazing insights and examples. Go check that out. (03:24:44)

Check out my Life Purpose course. Check out the book list. I recently added some 50. I made the biggest update to my book list. Around 50 powerful books about politics. Unique books that you're not going to find anywhere else. Go check those out. If you have the book list, that update is free for you. You can go find it. If you log in. And lastly, I'll conclude on this. Consider this. What would actualized work be if I didn't prioritize truth? (03:25:12)

What if I prioritized, for example, science, or social justice, or Marxism, or the Democrat Party, or Christianity, or Buddhism, or academia, or making money, or cliques, or becoming more popular, or more famous, or power, or my family, or my sex life, or my audience's feelings? Do you see that actualized.org to be as potent as it is? My number one job had to be to prioritize truth. And to the extent that I don't, actualized.org loses its potency. (03:25:45)

It becomes infected with human bias and survival noise. My job is to lead on truth in a world where no one cares about truth. Nothing I say has value unless it is true. The lesson here that I want you to take is that your values really matter. Your values determine your destiny. Have you thought through the logic of your values? What values do you stand for and why? As a leader, what values are you leading your followers towards? (03:26:19)

Are you leading them towards truth or fantasy? Are you leading them towards the highest love? Are you leading them towards true love? (03:26:27)

(2025-09-13)

前置き​

どこが誤謬なのか​

(*1)​

(*2)​

要旨​

目次​

概要​

1. 人類は真実を気にしていない​

2. 真実の定義と他の価値との区別​

3. 真実を最高価値としないことの帰結：腐敗と自己欺瞞​

4. 真実と他の価値の相互関係​

5. 真実を追求することの困難さと報酬​

6. 真実を生きることの意味：自己責任とライフデザイン​

7. 真実追求の罠と注意点​

8. 真実を気にかけるメリットとデメリット​

9. 真実へのアプローチと実践​

結論​

Leo の真理探求の旅​

真理探究の動機と本質​

真理探究の道のり：姿勢、困難、そして犠牲​

真理探究の究極的な目的と恩恵​

Leo自身の旅と自己認識​

情報源​

動画概要欄​

文字起こし​

前置き