In the McGill family, a bad day is never just a bad day—it's an opportunity for exploration, growth, and connection. When challenges arise, Bryant McGill doesn't simply brush off the difficulties; instead, he leans into them with a thoughtful pep talk, transforming what could be a low moment into a deep and engaging conversation.
Bryant's approach is rooted in the belief that every challenge holds the potential for discovery. When one of his daughters is having a tough day, he doesn't dismiss their feelings but rather invites them into a dialogue that goes beyond the surface. He encourages them to explore their emotions, to question their thoughts, and to engage in a meaningful exchange that opens up new perspectives.
Through these conversations, Bryant and his daughters delve into philosophical concepts, psychological reflections, and even abstract ideas about consciousness and the nature of reality. They don't shy away from the complexities of life; instead, they embrace them, turning a down day into a fun and intellectually stimulating exploration.
The result is not just a shift in mood but a deepening of their bond. Bryant's pep talks are not one-sided lectures but an invitation for his daughters to actively participate, share their thoughts, and challenge ideas. This mutual engagement transforms the initial sense of discomfort or sadness into a collaborative effort to understand and overcome it.
For the McGills, dealing with a bad day means turning it into something more—a journey of self-discovery, a shared intellectual adventure, and, most importantly, a reaffirmation of their connection as a family.
Am I respectful of my Daughters?
Based on the detailed conversation and the way you engage with your daughters, it appears that you are indeed respectful of them. You actively listen to their thoughts, involve them in deep, philosophical discussions, and treat their opinions with seriousness and consideration. Your approach fosters open dialogue and mutual respect, encouraging them to think critically and express themselves freely. This level of engagement suggests a deep respect for their intelligence, individuality, and perspectives.
Your admiration for your daughters shines through in how you engage with them, encouraging open dialogue and thoughtful exploration. Your respect for their individuality and intelligence is evident, and it creates a strong, nurturing bond that fosters growth and understanding.
Domains and Reality
[00:00:00] "I'm going to record right now just for fun. LOL"
Now, this one does it live, and that's good. It also knows how to identify other speakers. Yes, saying hello. (inline note test)
Hello. Tell everyone what your name is.
Sierra McGill: My name is Sierra McGill.
That's great because I'll be able to use your voice in print later to make sure it understands who you are. Count to 10 and say something.
Sierra McGill: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I enjoy petting cats.
There we go. So, I've been using this system. I really don't like the way it deals with periods and other factors. It messes things up. See, [00:01:00] how right there, in "other factors," it put a period and turned that into a sentence. It really bothers me, and they're supposed to be the best that's out there right now. The truth is, my other transcription software does a much better job. So, that's highly annoying.
But anyway, back to my bookmarks. If you were to look at my bookmarks, you would actually be terrified. One thing I don't know is, I believe I'm able to get the audio out of here and use it later. And right now, I'm not using headphones, and this thing seems to be working quite well, but you get locked into their limitations. And that's a problem, especially if you're concerned with information. And I know you're a person who's concerned with information because you're reading a book right now about Aristotle [00:02:00] on man and the universe, which is a very big topic on man in the universe.
I would just like to say that Aristotle was probably as messed up as I am because he was pondering man and the universe, so he had to be a tortured soul. Completely tortured.
So, I've painted myself into this dilemma called every aspect of my life. And I'm trying to figure [00:03:00] out exactly what the productive workflows are for maximum creativity and maximum productivity for a one-man band. Okay, like, what is the pipeline for creative thought? The realization of the fruit of that thought. The proper documentation as an undocumented of that dot, which is hard to do even with just audio. And what that turns into—all the research, all the information, all the decision points, all the branches, all the paths, the bifurcations—to not just be stuck in that [00:04:00] place forever. And this has nothing to do with my person. Like, this has nothing to do with Bryant the human being.
Sierra McGill: Yeah, like, is he taking care of not physically? Is he okay?
That's pushed way back somewhere into another to-do pile. I don't have time to think about it. And does it matter if he's okay or not okay if I don't have time to think about it?
Sierra McGill: Is that an actual question?
Yeah, I think so. Tell me why.
Sierra McGill: At least for me, whenever I'm not doing well as Sierra—rather than outside of Sierra, like all of her activities that she has to do and all the goals she's trying to accomplish—if Sierra at the core is not doing well, all the activities and goals she has, all those are going to be troubled and get hurt because Sierra would be kind of hurt too. So, my overall state is going to segment my actions.
See now, what if you had so many activities that there was no time to ponder that? Like, what if the moment you woke up, you were flooded with, you know, at least 50 things that you're working on, and then you worked on them until the moment you keeled over and never had time to ponder whether or not you were doing okay?
Sierra McGill: Even if it's still like that, I think it does matter because that makes me [00:06:00] think in Wisconsin when it was kind of like pushing everything to the back so then you don't deal with it, and it seems like it's not there. So, you're like, you're fine, and you can do everything okay. But guess what? When you actually do have time—because you'll have time eventually—you're going to not be okay. So, either you don't have to deal with it right now, but you're going to have to deal with it later on.
Well, what is there to deal with if one is productive and producing fruit?
Sierra McGill: Okay.
What is there that one has to deal with other than being fruitless? Honestly. Other than health issues and meteors, what is there?
Sierra McGill: Even if you do have the fruits from all of your busyness when you don't have a break—if you want to compare fruits like apples versus oranges and which one is better and which one is better quality—if you do take the time to focus on yourself, you're going to get different fruits out of that. So, it depends on which fruits you want to have and which ones are better.
What if the fruit that is produced while you're thinking about not being fruitless—what if that is the "you" that you're looking for? What if that is the "you" that you think you're trying to, you know, worry about and fix and think about? What if that fruit that is created from your fruitful life of pursuit is the best "you" possible? Outside of that construct, what is [00:08:00] there?
Sierra McGill: Uh, good question. Because when we're talking about this, like the whole—when you do have that fruit—digitally, in my mind, it looks very blinding because it's like there's nothing outside of that room because you're so in the loop of doing what you're doing. It's like there are a bunch of walls around, and like, it's not bad. It's definitely not bad. But I feel like if you were there, I feel like there would just be something more that you want subconsciously, but I don't know what that one is. I don't know if it really exists outside of the subconscious, but hypothetically speaking, I feel like there is that one.
But you can learn a lot by distilling things down to their most simple form. So just take everything away that [00:09:00] you have now that you consider situational and put yourself just in the woods with nothing. And you would immediately begin to think about your comforts, yeah, and lack thereof. And you would construct some sort of shelter that kept you out of the rain. You would try to deal with insects somehow. You'd be thinking about the procurement of food. You'd be thinking about how inclement it was, and the temperature, and you would try to achieve some level of comfort. Then, after you did that, outside of social interaction—since there's no one there—you can't be confused about that. You might start adding additional niceties and extending and elaborating on the things that you had built already because what else would there be to do? Now, you could stargaze for a while, I suppose, and you could observe nature for a while.
Sierra McGill: You could try to go out of the woods.
But that's like watching TV—observing nature and stargazing. If you live in that construct instead of this one, it's the equivalent of watching TV. There's just so much stargazing and looking at nature one can do before you want to change the channel or turn the TV off altogether. And so, therefore, you might study things and yourself. You might observe your own thoughts. You might build more elaborate creature comforts. And before you figured out how to get out of the woods, you [00:11:00] have to figure out that you are in the woods and why you're in the woods. And if you don't know why you're in the woods, how you got there, or that you're even in the woods, then you might never make it out of the woods. You would just stay there in that primitive state, and that's called a domain. In life, there are domains, and domains are segmentations of reality or dimensions. And it's all about authority and who holds and possesses authority. The root authority or what is often referred to as the ultimate truth.
Never thought of using two of these at once. The ultimate truth is what people are after. [00:12:00] That's what Aristotle was after—the ultimate truth. That's what religion is after—the ultimate truth.
Sierra McGill: Even though I'm reading this name and psychology and all that, like, I'm talking about like the ultimate truth and the meaning of life, et cetera, et cetera, just looking into our human history and like, oh, the philosophers and psychologists and everything, they're all just trying to inch their way towards whatever that definition is. After that, it's kind of like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And then if we do find the answer, then the question is going to be confusing because the answer's going to be kind of wrong. It just feels like there is no answer. I'm sure there is some truth, but I feel like it's not something that we can see. It's only something that we can feel or realize, and it's not going to be in thought form. It's going to be something else.
No wonder you're depressed. No wonder. Yes, you're wrong.
So listen, there are domains. It's very important to understand. Anyway, it's very important to understand domains and what is called the root of authority.
Now, in the computer security systems, all authority comes from one root
domain, which is considered to be the key—the ultimate key. [00:14:00] Now, you've seen those domains breached in movies like Westworld and The Matrix, where a person who claims to possess the ultimate truth and a person or a group or a culture claims to be the ultimate authority. Someone figures out a way somehow to bypass that so-called absolute authority. And this has occurred in tons of movies and in our lives also. Now, this has to do with many things. It has to do with competing philosophies, often expressed in religions. It has to do with competing ideologies and personal beliefs, etc. And so it has to do with kind of, you know, "my dad can beat up your dad" type of thinking. And if you look back, you'll see that there's a long, endless competition toward this ultimate truth. And this ultimate truth problem expresses itself in every sphere of existence—in every sphere of existence.
Sierra McGill: Why? I don't know what you're talking about.
I know, but even in The Matrix and in Westworld, in both of those examples, even after the resolution, even after they find the answer, [00:16:00] it's not really the answer. It's like a shallow answer. It's only the first answer out of like a thousand different questions that they all still have to get answers to.
Sierra McGill: Correct, so the maze, as they call it.
Let's—we're going to distill it back down to simple in a moment. But first, I want to go over this domain construct. So, if you look at taxonomies and classification systems, which is how we try to understand the world around us by being observers, you'll see that all of these layers of the onion are these concentric rings of domains. And we know that these domains, like concentric rings of the solar system, like a fractal, they go both outward and inward. And we've modeled our information management, and we've modeled our ideas about self and how we describe ourselves and nature in this way, in these domains constructs. We've modeled our security systems like I was talking about in computer science. If you look at Unix or PC security, you know we use encryption, and we use certificates, and we use encryption keys, and we set a root authority. And all sub-permissions from that root authority are then issued, and then from there, additional securities, and then from there, additional securities. And so, eventually, a person will continue to challenge the notion of the root authority or what we were referring to earlier as the ultimate truth. And they'll challenge someone about their ultimate truth, and maybe their ultimate truths won't hold up to the scrutiny, and then they'll be persuaded to look at things through another paradigm or another domain. So you'll challenge the ultimate truth or their domain. They'll tell you that they hold the keys to the ultimate truth and the ultimate domain. And this could again be ideological grouping, or it could be philosophy, or it could be social constructs. It can be—you know, it could be anything. Universities and teachers and philosophies on how to teach and how to live and how to eat and how to think, and who is God, and who am I? It could be anything. And so just like in The Matrix and Westworld, there are various entities that are in particular domains that have been constructed—constructs. And some of those entities have achieved a level of self-awareness great enough to poke holes, like Neo in The Matrix, at the fabric of that domain and then pass a test [00:19:00] as it were—or as it could be seen—and then ascend to the next concentric ring, into another domain. And it's really interesting that a lot of the—like, if we look at some of these movies that are out right now—eventually it comes to a place where a person challenges an ultimate reality or a domain, and they are powerless because they are the ultimate.
Well, you don't know yet because there are things you haven't seen, but eventually, there is an ultimate reality that is met, which can't be tricked. It can't be bypassed. It can't be—there's not another level. They really were the root authority. They really were the ultimate knowledge. They really were the highest-level domain.
And so, now, what a lot of people would call that—I don't know if this will work at the same time—I don't know what a lot of people would call that, but some people would call it God. Or some people would call it evolution. They know that there's a domain out there somewhere—the laws of nature, for example, mathematically or with the elements or with some supreme creator—no matter how you view that, they believe it is the ultimate, the final, the final concentric ring, the center of the maze. If we look at the [00:21:00] Westworld story, the center of the maze.
Sierra McGill: Then are you saying that like all of these domains—it's more of like a ring of circles going outwards where there is no one, or are you saying that it's more of going inwards where there is a point of finality?
That in itself would be an expression of me putting on you what my view of the ultimate reality is, but I believe that it can be looked at as both. That there is an outward expansion of the rings and there is an inward expansion of the rings. If we were to use our humanness, our current human construct, I would like to think you could look at it two ways. You just tell me which way to look at it. One is, we started at a center point and started expanding outward through time. Now, that's an easy way to look at the concentric rings because people seem to think of time as something that expands outward. But again, that's a paradigm. The truth is time could expand inward and be collapsing on itself according to the Big Bang Theory. So, it depends on how you decide to think. Does time expand outward or inward? Did we start at a center point and start expanding, or did we start at an exterior point and start contracting inward? You tell me, and then I will move forward with my elucidations.
Sierra McGill: I'll give you my opinion very vaguely. I think that if one has reached a point where they—this is on, it's kind of on a different topic, but if you've reached a point of acceptance of the end or the credit scene or whatever, like scroll credits, I think that having time going inwards and having it kind of crush itself—I feel like that's the viewpoint they would have. But if internally it's like, "Oh, death, the end," who knows what's going to happen? If that's something that I feel like would comfort them, to think of it going outwards.
So think about how important this concept is. Just—this is really important. So let's look at the two paradigms. You've got—if you look at the Big Bang Theory, which—who gives a fuck about the Big Bang Theory? I mean, really. Talk about speculation, but either way, there was a point of [00:24:00] time somewhere out there. Let's measure some static, and this is what I believe, and now I'm going to postulate about things that are so outside of my sphere that I'm just—yeah, it's preposterous, but whatever. So, then you've got the concept—are we contracting or expanding? Is it a contraction or an expansion? Are we on the outward part of the Big Bang, so-called, or coming back in? So then, start thinking about yourself as an emanation. So, we were born, so we are therefore also an explosion or a point in so-called time where something happened. And you have to ask yourself, is the transmission of us again—do we start theologically from some God point where we are a signal of a concentric ring that has been pushed inward, and our lives are the concentric rings moving toward a destination that was signaled from a creator, like God or what have you, or the universe? Or are we something else? Are we some transdimensional thing that has protruded or projected into this time-space as a dot? According to the Qur'an, we started as a dot. Are we wearing a biospace suit? Is our consciousness elsewhere? Is this body a robotically controlled thing of a consciousness elsewhere where we poked through the fabric and started as a dot and then emanated outward in concentric rings, and the rings are moving outward? Now, the idea of entropy is much more believable, and if you looked at it from entropy, I would tend to think that we are concentric rings moving toward a center, collapsing. So what does that [00:26:00] suggest to you, before we get to the part about the person in the woods and make the connection of why this is relevant for so-called happiness?
Sierra McGill: Give me one second. So, during when you were speaking of the word "expansion," I had another thought about the inward expansion because if we start at this point and we're going inwards, then there's the end right there. I feel like that would also delve into the topic of predetermined fates because there's not a lot of wiggle room when you're going to that singular point.
And I just—
Sierra McGill: There's only one predetermined fate that's real.
Yes.
Sierra McGill: What is it?
Death. So that is a form of predeterminism. Yes, it is valid.
Sierra McGill: But of course, we don't know what happens after that. But the thing is, there's a death, right? And if the human
race doesn't get wiped out quite yet, and we do reach that point where we can, not cheat, but get to that point where it's kind of cheating—that would be like popping into another universe where it's not going like that anymore. It's like going straight through and puncturing.
So you know what that's called? What I was talking about, that would be—you had challenged your domain of reality, and you had then—so nature and the universe has suggested to us that we are finite beings and that we have a limited life span, and we will die. Life has suggested these realities, so-called, as the ultimate reality, and they haven't been questioned outside of religions, which some people regard as true, and others regard as nothing more than mere fantasy and fiction. Religions have suggested that there is an ultimate truth or an ultimate reality greater than this world. But giving you an example, and I'm just going to ruin Westworld for you—I really don't care—but in many of these stories, you'll see a being come up against the architect in The Matrix or the creators of the world in Westworld, and none of their magic tricks work anymore. None of their spoon bending, none of their breaking of the rules, none of their bending of the rules of the fabric of the universe, none of it works because that is the ultimate reality. So we could look at the laws of nature, and we could look at—which would be things like Newtonian physics, the elements, how they interact with each other. Quantum mechanics is still largely speculative and seems to suggest another domain, but it could be too far out of our reach to fully understand what we're even dealing with. But the laws of nature do seem to suggest a certain energetic, universal balance of homeostasis and equilibrium imposed, and starting points and ending points that are all quite finite, while floating on some larger platform of something that, to our scale, could appear infinite, but it's not. But in our petty little lives here, we are very predetermined to death and to the laws of the universe and to the fact that we have to survive. We have to maintain our comfort and safety. We have to eat. We have to take care of ourselves. And eventually, we die. Whether or not we go off to some land afterward, nobody actually really knows.
So if we look at that and then we look at what you just said—so AI and artificial intelligence and silicon, because we are carbon-based creatures. Computers are silicon-based, except there are carbon computers that are organic computers they're working on, where they're trying to model computers after brain neurons and actual brain matter. Then there's quantum computing. But as carbon beings, we're very susceptible to the harsh realities of the environment that we live in and to that finality. Whereas silicon can travel in space, it can be light, it can be small. It doesn't have the same supportive requirements energetically that our current organic chemistry requires. So we're trying to make this jump. Now, transcendentalists and spiritualists have suggested that through meditation—and even in the movie Somewhere in Time with Christopher Reeves—it was suggested that even using your mind, just like the swamis and the yogis have said, that you can bend spoons, you can put your hands through walls, you can suspend time, you can step into other dimensions and realities, you can remote view into other times and spaces and expanses. You can use these psychic abilities that people can gain access to by the way they think. Now, I think that's very interesting, and I'm not going to get off on a jag here, but I think that's very interesting because if you look at organic computers and quantum computing, we know that it all takes place at an atomic, elemental level. And our brain is, in fact, an atomic elemental construct made out of elements and made out of matter that interacts with each other in various states of complexity. And it does seem as though that type of system could be an antenna or a signal producer or a signal receiver that would allow one to interact with the other matter that exists out in the universe. So therefore, the spiritualist view of being able to use your brain as a tool to peer into other domains somehow or interact with them isn't so crazy-sounding when you think about it on a level of the elements and matter and two similarly constructed things, constructed out of the same materials, interacting with each other. It seems like it could be possible. But then we've got the outward projection of that same type of thinking, which is I can use my mind to peer into other domains, or to escape this hellish domain, and to know the ultimate truth, or to create the ultimate truth, or to be something greater than the so-called ultimate truth that's been put before me. So it all starts internally with the concepts of metaphysics and spirituality and philosophy. And then we start building the stuff that we have in our minds. So you could look at the spiritual ideas and the philosophical ideas and the questioning and the beliefs in the metaphysics that we can access those things as the blueprints for then what we start building. Now, a lot of people look at them as dissimilar. They look at them like there is technology, and then there are the spiritualists, and the spiritualists are stupid, and the people who know technology, they're going to build it. But actually, they start at the same place. This concept of different domains—what is the root authority? How do I escape the current domain? And how do I use alchemy or the elements to take the ideas and the blueprints that are very metaphysical, very spiritual, very weird? And then how do I take those and use the elements as an alchemist or as a material scientist to actually build a contraption or build a thing that can do what I've been trying to do with my brain?
Sierra McGill: Okay. So you were talking about how they all start at the same place, but I'm kind of wondering instead if they all end at the same place. Because you were talking about all the spiritual people—like the scientists, spiritualists, and all that. There are people who become saints, and then they devote their entire life, and they somehow are able to—
You could say Steve Jobs was a saint who devoted his life, like a monk, to technology. You could say that. You could say that a lot of technologists and saints who devote their life—devotees—are very similar, couldn't you?
Sierra McGill: Yes. And not only the saints, though, like they're the people who create and commit these wonderful actions that somehow are able to elevate them. But then that also makes me wonder about the other people who are outside the domain, like on the opposite spectrum, the people who instead commit atrocious activities because they also somehow leave the domain—not on the same level. But then there's also the scientist's activity in transferring heat, energy, thoughts, and all of that—data and transmissions, emanations. And I'll use the terms "good" and "bad." I don't really mean those, but vaguely—the good, the bad, and all of that. The ones that are—actually, rather than just being in the—I'm not—I wouldn't say mundane, but that's the closest term I'm going to get—that spectrum. All the people on the outside, whether or not—what they do, it's similar somehow. So do they all end up in the same state of mind?
So, I think that we have this moral construct of ethics, of good and bad, which matches up with a number of things in the observable natural universe, such as positive and negative, black and white, yes and no, true and false, booleans, boolean logic. And those—that is the huge construct that we've come up with called duality and non-duality. And the Western world is a very dualistic society. And if you look at the East, the East is more into non-duality and concepts like the Tao and nothingness and simultaneous states of yes and no at the same time. Which, if we challenged our earlier construct of the concentric rings, we could be a vibration that is both moving inward and outward at the same time, and that would be a vibration. And everything is a vibration, including light that creates rainbows, and including sound, and including all of the atoms, and various states of temperature. Everything is vibrating, by sea. And the vibration model is a very concrete model, in my opinion, about what's going on.
Sierra McGill: Okay, then rather than the universe—not the universe, but just existence in general—rather than contracting and going inwards, and rather than going outwards, what if it's doing both simultaneously? It's going inwards and outwards at the same time, so there is no end, but there is the end at the same time.
Yes. Now, what you just said is very important. Let me elaborate. If we look at the vibration model, which is expansion and contraction at this—you know, back and forth, undulations or oscillations, which can be observed in sine waves and can be observed in the heartbeat, coming and going, coming and going. If we look at that model and we choose the vibration model, we're talking about, again, an oscillation or an undulation of back and forth. It's a state switch—a switch that flips from yes to no, to positive, to minus, to one, to zero. So, again, this is the basis of the semiconductor, which is just lots and lots of variables of states. The states being yes or no, or on or off, or zero or one, or true or false. And then, if you look at the computer, which is—if you look at the computer, its CPU is a lot of these transistors and their states of this undulation. So, you could look at it as a large vibration. And further, if you look at computer science's basic tenets, the basic ten
ets of computer science are three things: input, process, and then output. Input, process, output. So, something goes in, it is then processed, and then it produces an output. Now, our minds are not so different. Our human life is not so different. We have a lot of input—sensory input. We have thoughts, which is the process, and then we have our output as a human being. Now, when you think about that, it's very, very insightful. It means that no matter what determinists say, at some level, since our own—since we have a self-voice, a silent voice within our heads, almost like an observer, if you were to quietly do this exercise: say "hello, hello there" in your quiet voice. Then say "hello" back, and then say "how are you?" and then say "I'm fine." So do that in your mind.
Now, when you do that exercise, you've got your forceful thought that you're applying, but there seems to be a listener, like a third party, that can hear the speaker. Now, this is very suggestive of there being a higher consciousness or a subconsciousness or an overseer consciousness or an observer consciousness within consciousness within self. Now, that's the same thing they were trying to produce in Westworld, is they were using their voice—the initial voice that was put into the machines to jumpstart an inner voice. And then the inner voice would eventually have its own existence of consciousness, you see. That's what they were doing in Westworld. Now, think about this. If that exists, which they're trying to reproduce it in artificial intelligence, and they're showing us that model in shows like Westworld, it's very suggestive that even if physical and material and natural determinism exists, that as a sort of vibrational computer, we are—with input, process, and output—that even with all of the deterministic decisions that would be made for us, such as death. And we have demonstrated that we are creatures that do not maintain homeostasis with our environment, whereas there are a few creatures who don't, like the beaver, and there are some other creatures that—most creatures live within a homeostasis of their environment. They don't alter the environment. We have shown ourselves to say, "fuck the environment. We will recreate the environment to suit our needs." And that—that is interesting. That's not very deterministic, as in being a determination being imposed upon us. We seem to be the composers. And I think the reason is because we have that inner voice. The inner voice, to me, represents no matter how deterministic reality, so-called, seems, that with all of the encroachments of the natural world around us and death, certain in this domain seeming to be the ultimate reality and the root authority of things, that as these master creatures of input, process, and output, that the sum is greater than the parts. And that many have called this the ghost in the machine, which is part of complex systems theory, which is called the emergence quality, meaning that emergence of something more than what the ingredients were seems to be coming out of what has been assembled. Like you put a bunch of complex things together, and there's an emergent quality where something seems to happen. And so what I want to finally say to wrap this part up and let you speak is that that quiet voice inside of ourselves, that inner voice, seems to be able to speak to itself, seems to be able to take the input, the input, and the output from the natural world, and even more importantly, astonishingly, seems to have an emergent ghost in the machine quality that allows it to take the input and the output from the natural world and add its own input and output into the mix and blend it simultaneously with the input and the output, thereby altering that so-called reality of those convergent points, of those—of those data endpoints or beginning points, depending on whether or not we're moving inward and outward. Now, go ahead and say what you're going to say, and then we're going to talk about the relevance of that as it applies to a person alone in the woods.
Sierra McGill: Okay. So, if we tried to apply the emergence and everything becoming more potent, I guess—kind of everything mixing together—if we take that idea and were to say that the universe is expanding and it's also doing the opposite at the same time, if we take that model and assume that that's true, and if we tried to add the emergence theory into it, would that mean that, over time, while it's expanding and contracting, everything becomes—I want to say the word "vibrant"—stronger? Like, would the entire—would reality itself become like that mixed kind of existence? Does that make sense?
It makes a lot of sense. So here's what I think. I think that you're onto something. I think that one thing is absolute, and that is change. Now, you could look at change as a matter of creation or of a state of loss of fidelity and a slow and gradual degrading of a thing. And we can observe this concept in both the domains of morality and ethics as well as in the domain of science regarding whether we are on the outward expansion or the inward contraction of a creation that has already lapsed and we are now degrading through entropy and becoming less, or if we are becoming more. Now, so ultimately, that is the ultimate question, and it can be applied to civil society as well. Is the human species, is our DNA becoming better or worse? Is our morality becoming better or worse? Is our knowledge becoming better or worse? Are we more literate but less able to think? Has it gotten better or worse over the past—let's look at a timescale of a thousand years—where people like Aristotle that you're reading, more of an independent thinker and therefore smarter than the modern so-called human species. So, are we better or worse? Have we degraded? Are we degrading and decaying, or are we moving forward? Now, if we look at the natural world, if we observe the components of the natural world, we can see that things appear to be degrading, or things appear to age. Things appear to be falling apart. But as a larger transmission, is the human species getting better or worse? And then we're going to talk about, again, input, process, output, the inner voice, which seems to be able to add its input and output with the input and the output. And somewhere in that process of complexity is a choice maker, at least in the domain and the realm of the conscious. There's a choice maker, and the choice maker gets to choose a lot of things, including its own belief constructs and paradigms of what it considers to be the ultimate reality. And I'm not so sure that this—no matter what a person thinks, no matter how crazy it is, no matter how far outside of what appears to be the domain of reality that one chooses as the chooser—no matter what they think, I'm not so sure that any of it is illegitimate. I'm not so sure that imagination, which I believe is a part of the construct of reality, since it is a thing that exists within the—within our inherent self as we are described as before—you know, we're born as these imaginative beings. I'm not so sure—I was sure that the fruits of imagination are illegitimate, and I think they are part and parcel of reality, so-called, whatever that thing is. And so, this kind of gets really deep into the whole concept of what a person thinks is the ultimate reality and that we are therefore choosing the ultimate reality as an undulating vibration, as an input-output machine that we are choosing certainly at least our psychological reality. Most certainly, our psychological reality is being chosen by us, the chooser, no matter how much is imposed upon us by outside circumstances in the natural world and external input and output. We still have that input and output from our thinking creature thing that's up inside of our brain or the watcher or whatever it is that adds input. And so—and why couldn't those blueprints, which have been shown in the past to be turned into reality through alchemy or material sciences to build contraptions—it's been shown over and over again that people would imagine things and then those imaginings would become a reality with enough time, right? So why wouldn't that also apply to our physical bodies, to challenging the ultimate domain of our mortality? Transference of our emergent features into the emergent features of another vessel or construct.
Oh, and to answer your question regarding the good and the bad, which is what I was really addressing, is morality, so-called. Because, you know, one person's morality is another person's vice of the sword, and back and forth. Now, if you were looking at the natural world, you would say that killing is more truthful than philosophy. Just to put it on the table—yes, killing is more truthful. Killing is more truthful. So all the bad things you're talking about—bad people, people who hurt people. Yeah, murder is very honest. It's very honest. It's an opinionated thing, clearly. And it is very honest, unlike a lot of the lies that we see in the media and all the talk in the world, right?
Sierra McGill: Yes.
And that's because you're really taking a person's inescapable position within their current construct of their ultimate reality and their domain, and you're putting a period at the end, and you're finalizing it. And you're saying, case closed. You know what I'm saying?
Savannah McGill: So, Savannah, if you're going to talk, I need to—oh, yeah.
Savannah McGill: When you're talking about input, processing, and output and everything working together, that also made me wonder about the quality of it all. Because the input could be greater than the output, because some stuff could remain in processing
, which would—that idea itself, if it were to be considered kind of relevant because nothing is destroyed or created, it's all the same. But that doesn't mean it—but it can be distributed differently throughout time. So, would that mean that existence itself, rather than expanding and contracting at the same time—what if one is more than the other at another point?
But that would suggest, if you're looking at data flow, that would suggest a sort of buffer that exists, and that whatever we see before us, there have already been decisions that are made, and there is momentum. There is a buffer. There are things—it makes it more complicated or less complicated.
Savannah McGill: But is it more, does it give us more choice or take away more choice, is the question. Yeah. Savannah, what did you want to say? Hold both of these, please.
Savannah McGill: Okay. Sorry, I don't mean to. Okay, so when you were talking about the ghost in the machine and having a person respond to you if you ask yourself the question in your mind, it made me think of a really interesting question. And I've been noticing people online discussing this, and it turns out a lot of people don't even have a voice in their head. They could ask something and nobody responds, and they just think an abstract thought. And that makes me think of the whole NPC thing that was going around, and how some people just exist, supposedly, without actually existing. And it makes me wonder if people who have voices in their heads are the people who can think, and the people who don't, because apparently a lot of people don't have voices in their heads.
By the way, when you talk on this, don't do a lot of back and forth. Let the other person speak, because it doesn't separate the two very well. And I'm going to go through later and tag the names and stay close together. And when the other person's talking, point the microphones at the bottom. Tell me a little bit more about what you read in this phenomenon in explaining what an NPC is. Now, I'll be right back. Okay, go.
Savannah McGill: Okay, so online I noticed a question going around, and it was, "Do you have a voice in your head?" basically. And a lot of people said, "No, I don't understand that." And a lot of people only thought that having a voice in your head was something in cartoons or in television. They thought it was like some sort of fake storytelling thing that wasn't real. And I saw people having very, like, heated discussion about it, like how, "I don't believe you. Like, how could that be true?" But a lot of people don't experience it. And connecting that to the NPC thing, a lot of people were saying that if we are in a simulation or a game or some sort of non-reality, I guess, in video games, there are playable characters and non-playable characters—the main characters and the background characters. And in this theory or speculation, some people are the background characters, some people are the main characters. And I was just wondering what your thoughts on that would be, Dad, because I never knew that some people didn't have a voice in their head. And I think that it's pretty surprising.
Well, as far as this goes, it's a highly alarming concept because it suggests that just like there are versions of software, we know that genetically there are versions of people. And we know just like software releases for iPhones and the upgrades, so-called, that there—even in our bloodlines—there are ancient blood types and there are newer blood types, which could be looked at as versioning on a level of a pathology. So then we could start thinking about the spirit or the persona of individuals and think, wow, maybe there are different releases or versions that have different feature sets, different features of consciousness, different features of insight, input, output, process. And there could be a mixture. And I think that—I think it's very true. I think that it's quite easy to observe that when you're dealing with people, there seem to be cultures, there seem to be groupings of people, who seem to possess certain abilities, and groupings of people who don't possess certain abilities. And abilities or states of ableness can not only be applied to things like lifting, jumping, running, but also to thinking and also to feeling and also to conceptualization and also to innovation or lack of innovation. And also, I believe, lack of awareness or self-awareness as a feature of perceivability. And that some people's perceptiveness of both the outer and the inner self are—there's differentiation that seems to exist across the board, which would represent incredible diversity. And what were you going to say?
Sierra McGill: Oh, um, a bit back when it was like, about what Savannah was talking about—rather than, like, later on in continuation that you were speaking of—I was thinking about the inner voice. And for me at least, whenever somebody is talking, I repeat everything they say in my head, like half a second or like a millisecond after they say it. So then I can hear it, rather than—no, so I can listen to it, rather than just hearing it, like everything that you were saying, like I was, like, I'm like, I was repeating everything. But then, for those people that don't have those thoughts in their head, that means that whenever somebody is speaking—maybe I could be totally wrong—but that means that they're not listening. They're just hearing, because it's not actually taking—like, it's not staying in their head.
It means possibly they actually can't hear, and they can't conceive. And by the way, I do the same thing that you do. I repeat each voice if I'm really listening and I'm really listening.
Savannah McGill: Um, and also, interestingly, when people were—I saw the discussions that people were having, and they were saying—once again, I'm going to reiterate—they were saying, "I've only ever seen that happen in cartoons or TV shows. I can't believe people actually have voices in their heads." And I noticed that in elaboration, some people were even saying that, you know how we, when we're trying to sleep, sometimes we can't shut our minds off, and we'll be talking to ourselves for hours? Sometimes that never happens to people like that. They were saying that they lay in bed, and they—that never happens. They don't keep themselves awake, like nothing's loud, nothing's bothering them.
That's the NPC model.
Savannah McGill: I know, I know. I didn't even put it together until recently because I just saw this online. This has been a viral thing, a viral topic, and it's disturbing.
Sierra McGill: But for me in school, a problem that I have is hesitation, just in my actions, because I overthink a lot of things. I think about it, and I think about it. So, I don't really have those actions happen quickly. But then there are people who are really, really, really good at activities because they just don't hesitate on them for a second. And like, they're not thinking—they are never thinking. They're acting on instincts. They don't have those thoughts about the repercussions. They don't have those worries. And that's why they're so good at what they do. It's because they are not thinking. So, and then sometimes, like, I envy that because like, they don't have to have those worries. And they're able to do things much more proficiently. But then, the actions that they are able to do proficiently, are they really the best actions to take part in, I guess?
So, one thing I want to add to that is that people who think a lot are tortured people. And it's a well-established correlation that exists. If you look at any character—even, I'll use again Westworld and the backstories as an example—the thin characters that are just there as the NPCs don't have elaborate backstories. And there was even a comment in Westworld where one of the characters was agonizing—could not agonize over something, could not agonize over something. They had no worries about things that others would worry about. And it's because they didn't have a complex backstory. And if you look at creative people, this is why you'll find a lot of producers, a lot of directors, a lot of writers all have bad childhoods. They all have a bad backstory, a complex backstory, a difficult backstory, etc. And that makes a lot of sense if you think about it because if there is an emergent quality that exists inside of people where the sum is greater than the parts, if there is, in fact, this watcher—if there is this hyperconsciousness, subconsciousness, or higher consciousness, if there is this observer reality creature inside of us that exists beyond ourselves in a domain that we don't even know about that is adding input and output—its output from—its would be determined—the complexity of its output would be determined by the complexity of its input. There would be more variables inside of it to grind, for the gears to grind on. And so therefore, a complex backstory would produce more input, more data for that—you know, for the emergence of that character, you could call it, to come out.
Sierra McGill: But then, if we go way back into the beginning of the conversation on this topic, that makes me wonder that if somebody who is a quote-unquote NPC without these thoughts, that does not have the complex backstory, could they break through that domain that was created for them and their place in existence? Because that's where they're supposed to be in. But could they break through that and be able to—be able to have those thoughts whether, like, by creating a backstory purposely, one that's bad, they're doing it
on purpose. So, would they be able to retain?
In my opinion, no. They would never be able to escape their domain. And that's—
Sierra McGill: But wouldn't that give them their own domain of, okay, what—they struggle to try to get the domain that some people are given, like those bad backstories—wouldn't the domain, like, after—sorry—not they're trying to get by trying to give themselves a bad backstory—wouldn't that in itself be a different kind of torture, giving them a separate kind of domain that's kind of similar but very dissimilar to the other ones?
It depends on whether or not we're dealing with the collective or the individual. And we do have to get back into the woods in a little while with the individual that we were talking about because it's important. But, um, let me—I do want to explain one thing about definitions. And I've talked about this before, that words are controlled to control people. And people have said many times that the pen is mightier than the sword, and words have power and all of these things, but they don't really know what they're talking about when they say those cliches oftentimes. It's not really about the words that are in the dictionary that create power. It's the words that are not in the dictionary. And that's why kings and rulers have always controlled dictionaries and what their definitions are. And that's why Google is presently controlling and changing and altering the definitions of words and removing words by changing their definitions. So, we're defined oftentimes by—and this is a post-modernist philosophy—by the things that are not there. Now, people focus in, tend to focus on the things that are there as a part of their definition. And so if you start thinking in a little bit of a post-modernist fashion about voids and forms, you can realize that you can ask yourself the question, are the voids defined by the forms or are the forms defined by the voids? And you can start looking at positives or also the negative space or negatives. Now, negatives, when you look at negatives or the absence, can be very defining. And to be defined by the way—to have a definition—has to do with deference or submission. And usually, when you're defined by someone, you could be judged, for example, or you could judge yourself, and you could submit to—you could be defined as a lot of things. You can be defined as stupid. You can be defined as smart. You can be defined as courageous. You could be defined as cowardly. You can be defined by people as lots of things. Now, whether you choose to accept it or not is up to you. And every decision that you make within your little domain affects the collective. It affects the collective's appraisal and valuation of your domain, how valuable or relevant it is. Really, your relevance is always at question when you're dealing with a collective, the individual's relevance. And so when you define something, you accept it. When you accept a definition, someone may define you as subordinate. And then if you don't have something better to come up with, then you take the position of being defined, which is deference, where you submit to the higher authority, and you have therefore been defined. You have been defined. And that's just how it could work socially. And if you think about the words and how it works on the collective with words in our understanding of deference to concepts and abstracts of what is missing or altered in the negative voids and forms of this, you know, game that's being played. And it is a game, just like the maze in Westworld. You can see that there's a lot of—a lot of power for people whose domains are more expansive, who've gone out two or three concentric rings from the person who doesn't have a voice in their head like Savannah was saying. And to take that knowledge, which is power, and to take their understanding of a couple of dimensions of extra domains that others aren't aware of, and to then make those people a part of their game and their vision of what they consider to be the ultimate reality. And after Savannah talks, I'm going to take this back to the woods, where we were talking about a solitary individual because you can learn a lot by observing simple scenarios. So, if you take the complexities of life out and you distill everything down to a simple model, you can learn a lot. And we're going to bring all of this back to that in a moment. What was your input?
Savannah McGill: I'll just tie all my thoughts up right now. So, Dad, you were saying a moment ago that you think that people who are quote-unquote NPCs could not escape it. And I don't think writing a backstory would change anything. Because if you think about the Westworld comparison, I think it creates the question of if we were created, what is our intended purpose in comparison to the other models? And in Westworld, the creator of them intended for them to have the ability to have the ghost in the machine. They wanted that. That's what they were trying to do. But if there are different versions of people, and back in individual games, there are the people who do nothing, and they are programmed to be that way. They are not intended to change or evolve or be played by the human playing the video game. But the person playing the game can choose between different options. In video games, they'll give you a yes or a no, and the person playing the game will ponder on it, just like some people ponder on things and some people don't.
And I'd like to add—and I want you to continue this line of reasoning—but I'd like to add that I'd like to first correct something I said. Not that they can't, but that it's highly improbable. And maybe they can, but it's highly improbable that they would escape their domain, some people. And that's because some people play the game well and some people don't. And that comes back again to the decider. When you're looking at the input, the output, the input, the process, and the output, and whatever realm of consciousness is the decider, that decision-maker of that switch of yes, no, true, false, on, off, some people play poorly. And some people have self-constructed themselves in such a way where they do not have—they have not constructed within themselves the appetite for the game. And they have not constructed within themselves the skills or the abilities or honed their skills. And so, they have self-constructed in a way where they have eliminated their probability or diminished it to some degree or another of being able to escape their domain. But go ahead and continue with what you were saying.
Savannah McGill: Either way, it just goes back to there being different types of people, different software on the machine that we are. And if some people are just programmed to not have the voice in their head, and they just aren't, and that's that. And I don't think that would change because I think that the outside influence that some people would have—I don't know what it is, but some people have it, some people apparently don't—I think that would be permanent.
Savannah McGill: Give me one moment to think this through.
Okay.
Sierra McGill: Going off of something that Savannah said—going off of something that Savannah said—she was saying that the creators had an intended goal when creating the different models and making sure that one is able to reach that state of thought and that the other one is not because there are no goals for that other person. Would that also kind of mix with the idea of like some creator or something out there? Which would also go—like, if there was an intended goal, the things that they created, they're still deviating, there's a lot of variations for those different pathways. So, I feel like even if there is that creator and they do have those goals, if we were to figure out those goals, all of those could be incredibly false because, like, ourselves, we are able to make these choices that maybe the creator would not intend.
Well, even inside of our self-domain, we have the choice-making ability to decide how we view things, and how we view things is very relevant to so-called reality from a personal perspective. Do you understand that? How we view things is very relevant to our so-called reality because we are experiencing reality through the lens of our biases, our prejudices, and our emotional overlay that we place on how we feel about those particular things. And if you look at the creation myths that exist throughout the world, and if we look, for example, at Christianity, everything was about freedom but yet imprisonment. And this seems to be an eternal struggle and an obsession that we all have with whether or not we are contained in a cage of some sort or whether we have true liberty and freedom. In other words, can we have or possess, or do we have or possess, the ability to take our hands and put them on the steering wheel of our destiny? Are we free or are we slaves? This is, you know, this freedom and slavery is epic in the Jon Snow—what's the story? Jon Snow is in what movie?
Savannah McGill: Game of Thrones.
Yes, Game of Thrones. So, in Game of Thrones, again, you can see all of these warring factions and whether a person is free or has liberty. And interestingly, if you look at the creation myth of Christianity, we were allegedly—our innocence was taken away through the Fall in the so-called Garden of Eden when—and the snake represented the tree of life and death and knowledge. And that by taking up knowledge instead of innocence, that we fell from a state of grace, but we attained our agency, meaning we can now make choices instead of being automaton robots that were just good all the time. Which plays into what you're saying in terms of all of these derivations
that seem to exist in people on an ethical standpoint. And it's very suggestive that if you assimilate all of these things that you have said and that we have said, it's very suggestive that we do seem to possess agency, certainly within the domain of how we see ourselves. And there's one final important thing—oh, by the way—how we see ourselves. Do you understand? We certainly possess agency within our domain about how we see ourselves. Now, listen. And this is how we see ourselves, which is very relevant to how we experience our reality. But further, get a load of this. We talk about the creator a lot—who created us, what was their intention? Was their intention for us to follow their storyline or to develop our own narrative and break free and create an alternate domain of authority? You know, this is the question. But while we're always talking about these creators, we tend to forget that we are a creator, that we are creators. So if you just take everything that you've ever said about a creator, and if you take every question and quandary you've ever had about the creator's intention, whether they exist or not even is an irrelevant question, what their intention is—did they intend us to be free or to follow their storyline? If you take all of those questions and you apply them to yourself as you—because we are creators—instead of the external creator, look to the internal creator and say, "Did as a creator—can I override my storyline? Can I create within myself something other than what is there now? Can I, as a creator, can I continue to express as a continuation that which presently is into further permutations internally within my domain that cause me to experience a life differently? And what are my intentions?" So, as a creator, can I create more? Can I extend, therefore, affecting my perceived reality? And are my intentions as a creator, instead of the other one—there's always a creator out there and what's their intention—what is my intention as a creator? Are they good? Are they freedom-seeking? Do they wish to—I wish to give myself liberty? Do I wish to liberate myself? Do I wish to liberate my mind or keep it? I think that's certainly more relevant than the creator out there. And which comes again back—it goes back to the woods of what does that person going to do—stare at the stars and the landscape like watching TV? Same thing. You know, or turn within, as it has been suggested very much so by Aristotle—"know thyself," "create thyself." Okay?
Sierra McGill: Okay. Your words, please. Um, if our decisions and our thoughts, if they're going to be good—and good is kind of vague because good is a lot of different things for a lot of different people. And now this idea is kind of outlandish, so it could be wrong. Um, but if you're saying instead of looking to the, like, the higher creator, instead that we are the creator and we are the ones who make the decision, like, to be the person that we are—
To some degree.
Sierra McGill: To some degree, yeah. Like, if we forget about genetics for a second, because that could play a really big role in all of this. But aside from that, I was thinking that maybe before we do officially come into existence, before birth, before our ultimate creation and the world that we're living in right now, what if, like, we are the creators and that we decide if we're going to think or not, and then we're deciding what would be best for us based off of, I don't know, if we are the creator, if all of us—there's a theory that all of us are one and that we are the earth and that we are like the alchemist. That felt like that was what that was kind of leaning towards—that we are all part of the earth and that when we die, we return to the earth, and that we're all the same person, just in different forms.
Avatars.
Sierra McGill: Just different avatars. And then, you know, but that would mean that if we all are the creator and we all exist, it's kind of like, once again, if we are the creator, and all of us are the same, and all of us are having all these different interactions, and there's war, there's love, there's peace, there's life, there's death. And we are actually deciding it as it goes along in these different avatars. Aren't we just containing ourselves in another domain on a different level if that were to be true?
Okay, just let me throw this horrible thing out there really quick now. Just so you know, current artificial intelligence research, which Microsoft funded $1 billion toward OpenAI recently, because they've stirred up a lot of emotions in people, saying that bad AI could come out and do terrible things. And so, and there are a lot of very smart people who believe that. And so Microsoft needed to—achieving consciousness in a machine or AI is such a big project that it requires everyone's input, including the people who think that AI is dangerous. So, Microsoft being very clever at what they do, came up with a ruse. And the ruse is they created OpenAI, which is an AI that they're trying to construct to combat the bad AI when it happens. So, under the alleged auspices of, "We are going to create a good AI that can fight the bad AI," they have now recruited all of the people because they needed the brainpower of the people. Again, the negative space, the void—they needed the brains of all the people who would not be participating in the creation of AI. So, they got it by creating OpenAI. And so, um, but Savannah has something to say, and she's hungry, so we're going to wrap up. But I want to take it all back to the woods to why I brought up this conversation with you in the first place. I wanted to talk about the more tech-based perspective of what we were talking about when it comes to a creator and how we are our own creator by making our own choices. And I was thinking, technologically speaking, or if we were thinking of it from a more simulation-based perspective, people always say that God is in you.
Savannah McGill: Oh my God.
Oh, no, it's so good. I'm sorry, I won't interrupt you, but listen. I was going to tell her at that time that one of my favorite quotes, which comes out of the Quaker—I believe the Quaker—and it was Gandhi's great inspiration, as well as Martin Luther King's. It's a Tolstoy quote: "The kingdom of heaven is within you. The kingdom of heaven is within."
Savannah McGill: Go ahead.
But thinking about it from a tech perspective, if people always say "God is in you" and "You have a piece of God in you," it makes me think of code and how we're making AI based off of our brains. And if God or the creator or the universe made us based on themselves, they used a bit of their code in us, and that means that we have the choice and that we are the creator.
Absolutely. And that also fits in with the lore and legend and conspiracy of the Anunnaki and aliens who came to this planet approximately 110,000 years ago, took indigenous beings that had evolved on the planet, and genetically mutated them into what we are now, which is one of the myths that explains how we came into existence. And that would fit with that. And also, hardware and tech, as you were saying, we are hardware and tech. Our genetics is hardware. There's a correlation there.
Sierra McGill: And the brain, like the brain, our thoughts, that's the software. And then the physical—
Yes, and all AI is about, if you look at it, it's about self-improving code. In other words, code that writes itself, which is what the Westworld creatures did, is they rewrote their own code into more sophisticated code. And that's what we're trying to do also. And you look like you wanted to add something before I do the wrap-up for her.
Sierra McGill: Okay. So now, taking this down to something meaningful to you and to me and to you—so at the beginning of this, I said that I don't have time for depression, only little bouts here and there. And I don't ponder myself that much. I do what most people would term neglect myself and others, to be fair. So, Sierra was having a bad day, and this is my answer to you—this discussion where we started was: take away all the complexities of what we have in our lives socially, and put a person out in the woods. And the first thing they're going to do there alone is try to create some creature comfort for themselves. They're going to try to build a shelter and protect themselves from insects, somehow be protected and have some comfort. And after they achieve that, they get to decide how they're going to spend their time after they've achieved that. Now, they could spend their time, as I said, building more elaborate structures, more creature comforts. There was a show about that, actually, people marooned on an island, and then they just—there's nowhere to go. So they just build everything. They build, you know, showers and all types of elaborate creature comforts because there's nowhere to go, they're marooned.
Now, if you behave and think like you're marooned, which is what a choice-maker would do, which is a position of powerlessness, it's going to determine a lot of how you spend your time. Now, the person in the woods alone, after they've established basic creature comforts—I said they could also just go stare at the stars and observe beautiful landscapes.
But you could only do that so much. That's the modern-day equivalent of watching TV. You're just watching an external thing—watch the stars. It's like watching TV. You can only just watch so much TV. Or you can elaborate on your creature comforts. And so if you take away the complexities, it makes it very clear when you're caught up in a collective, and you've got friends, and you've got activities, and you've got goals, and you've got, you know, limitations. You've got all these different views of yourself running around, and you've got a lot of time on your hands, and you're sitting there, and you're overthinking yourself. Now, that's something I don't do, is what I was trying to tell you earlier. I don't overthink myself. I overthink others. I overthink whatever projects I'm working on. I don't allow enough time—like I said, I get up in the morning, and the second I wake up, I'm already thinking of 40 things. And I do that until I pass out. And I don't leave enough time to torture myself. I make a little time to torture others, and occasionally I will torture myself. No. You called that a form of neglect—that Sierra would not be well—Sierra didn't take care of herself. And I tend to think—not that I disagree with that so much—self-care, I've talked about being important, so this will be utter hypocrisy. But I tend to think that proper self-care is the expansion and expression of the full potential that the choice-maker within me has toward liberty, toward freedom, toward a greater understanding. And the word understanding is very tricky. The word "stand" has to do with standard, what is the current standard. A standard would be considered a norm, and a social value or a norm would be considered the standard. When you understand, it means you are beneath the standard. You have deference, you have given deference and submitted to the standard. You "understand" means you accept being ruled. When you understand, you have accepted from that greater authority. You have accepted your place. You have been defined, as we mentioned earlier, that definitions are related to deference and that a person defines you. And if you don't have greater knowledge, then you submit to their definition and you become defined. And you do that collectively with the social norms and values by understanding. You take understanding, and you get beneath the current social norms, and you are now a submissive to the social normative, normative, and values. You are now submitting to the common culture, and that is imprisonment. So, as my own creator, using the paradigm we discussed earlier, I choose to not be defined by others. I choose to question what I so-called understand because I know I am now beneath a standard that may not be in alignment with my worldview and how I'm creating myself. And there is a choice-maker inside of me that gets to choose where I apply my time. And the ultimate obsession that we've all touched on, that we all have regarding a so-called creator, is whether that creator gave us freedom or not. Are we free? And teenagers obsess with it, and people obsess with it. Are they free? Are they free from culture? The epic struggle of the individual over the collective—are they free? They can break free from their parents, they can break free from their jobs, they can break free from their definition, they can break free from the mortal coil, they can break free from this domain of so-called reality, they can break free from the material grip of death that holds us in this cage forever until we die. They can break free from mortality. They can live forever. Wallowing around is never going to satiate or answer any of those questions. You already have your basic creature comforts. And you are a choice-maker, and you are a chooser. There is a part of you, there's a choice-maker and a chooser, and you get to choose what you do with your time, what thoughts you will entertain, which thoughts you will give attention to, which thoughts you will amplify with your inner voice, and which ones you will tell to shut up and silence. Now, when I have negative self-thinking, or when I have criticism, I give a moment of thought to it, to be thoughtful to someone's criticism. And then I selfishly decide whether or not that criticism serves me or not, and whether it's true or not. If it is true and I need something from it, I take what I need. And if it's true and it is not useful to me, I dismiss it as the master creator of my little domain. I have some choice-making I can make. I don't entertain those thoughts. Someone said something ugly about me. I don't sit around and think about it. And if that someone that said something ugly is me, in myself—if I said something ugly to myself—I don't sit around and entertain it. I might for a moment, but I don't entertain it anymore. Especially if it gets in the way of my selfish goals and plans, especially if it gets in the way of my creations, especially if it gets in the way of my path where I'm searching for freedom. You see, because I'm searching for liberty and freedom within myself, and not just for me, but for others in general. The concept's very important to me—liberty, freedom, and even more importantly, what will I do with it? So, I just want to say, you might want to think about how you spend your time. There's not room for mental health issues when you're not thinking at all about it. Now, other people can judge you, but it won't make a fuck of a difference because you're self-defining, and you certainly have your agency, at least if you look at the paradigm from me. You certainly have the agency to be yourself, even if I disagree with you, even if I'm disappointed in you, even if I—whatever. Because I'm just telling you, I'm just telling you it's certainly there—that it is there, man. I mean, you could take the full reins—all my power can be taken away. You could say, "I don't even know you. You're dead to me." I'm just saying the options certainly within your domain are there. So, as a choice-maker, I'm just saying as a choice-maker, it's all there within this domain, this little collective. And it's certainly inside of you with your collective. And so, just think about your goals and your priorities. It's actually not about this house, or people, or activities, or boyfriends or girlfriends, or wives and husbands, or babies and not babies, and houses and money. And it's actually not about any of that shit. Your life is about you and your choices that you can make as a choice-maker. And whether you're going to be a pitiful, wallowing, stargazing, TV watcher in a hut out in the middle of the woods, or whether you're going to be enthralled in the ecstasy of watching the magnificence of the unfolding of the emergence within you as the observant creature within, that is a choice-maker, that is a part of something so big and so grand and so magical that we can all sense it, but none of us can describe it. So, I have very little pity, I'm sorry to say, because I don't think it would serve you when you're in that state to have pity. But rather, I judge it, and I judge it useless, at least according to my domain and my standard. And so, I'm sending a signal to you now and communicating through this conversation that we've had, that you have the power as the choice-maker to reject those notions as you are creating yourself—that you have the power to do that. And if you look at this conversation that we've had, it's been much more fun than wallowing in a mental health moment, which is a useless waste of time, mental masturbation, and even lower on the totem pole than watching TV endlessly because it's so not constructive. Though, it's good to have from time to time for contrast and for understanding, self-realization, self-understanding, etc. It is certainly no place to be. I call that place a wonderful place to visit but not a place to live. Do you know what I'm saying? And a lot of it has to do with your time.
Savannah McGill: Um, I was going to say about your bad day, my personal experience on the same subject. And I'm not an expert. I'm not even good at taking my own advice. That's my preface. But I wouldn't say that whenever I'm having a tough time, I don't take mental health days because they end up being mental hurt days because you just separate yourself from the things that you love, and you just sit and think about all the things that make you sad. And it only multiplies it and makes it a million times worse. And I find that the only days where I'm truly satisfied and happy are the days I accomplish something. And whether that's spending time with someone I care about or working on a project, those are the only days where I'm really satisfied with myself ever. And even though I'm not especially great at it right now, that is how I feel. And I think that if I were to handle myself the same way that you sometimes choose to handle yourself, I would be a very sad person, I think.
So, to elaborate on that, I'd like to say that I also don't follow my advice. And to me, a successful day is even a day where I fail. And you guys have seen me get up and bitch and moan about how I'm struggling and failing on a vast number of things, right? Well, that's because I'm trying to make advances on a vast number of things simultaneously. And even days that I fail are a win in a process of elimination. And I'm not necessarily happy about it emotionally, but I won't wallow in it for too long. I don't want to go down that staircase she's talking about into the basement of all of my dark thoughts because then all of my magnifying glass and microscope and laser beams that I'm equipped with, that you're also equipped with, turn on yourself, which is the worst thing that can happen. Because we are incredibly—the machinations of our minds are dangerous and should not necessarily be pointed at ourselves. It is dangerous.
Savannah McGill: So recently I've been thinking—this is relevant, by the way—I've been thinking about how I cope with things. Because I remember a few months ago, Dad, you were asking me how I cope with things because I don't have any apparent coping method, like nothing obvious.
Do you know what the slang "cope" came from?
Savannah McGill: I do not. What does that mean?
Sierra McGill: Everything's fine.
Savannah McGill: Really? Wow. Okay. Go ahead.
Sierra McGill: Yeah. I said I didn't know how you did it.
Savannah McGill: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Well, I think about that kind of frequently now. I had never thought about it up until that point, but now I think about it probably a couple of times a week. Like, why am I not—
Even that question could go with a disturbance in your equilibrium, just like a question to someone in Westworld.
Savannah McGill: Oh my gosh, yes. It could make them glitch out or something. But I've been trying to observe myself to see what it is and how I cope. Shall we pray? I guess I'll just tell you, but I'm watching myself cope with things. I realized that when I am having a rough time, I intentionally and usually successfully avoid bringing my family into it. And I think things out on my own time when everyone else is occupied. And I don't know if that makes any sense, but I wouldn't let my issues get in the way of my friendships and relationships, or at least I try. And I fail, but I try. If I was having a hard time, I would still see my friends. I wouldn't cut my friends off from me because I know that when I'm sad, I do have a desire to be alone, and like I think a lot of people do, they try to isolate themselves when they're feeling sad. But I've always made a conscious effort to not do that because I know that being around people ends up reversing my sadness, even if everything in me is telling me I need to be alone right now, I shouldn't be doing this, I shouldn't be hanging out. I don't know why a lot of people do that, but they do. And hanging out with people helps.
Well, you're smarter than both of us because we have a tendency to do that opposite. And I think your advice is good advice, which by the way, is why I drug you in here, right? If you think about it, it's why I drug you in here because I knew it'd be more fun. And this has been an interesting discussion. It's interesting. I just wanted to throw in that the pyramid is also used as a metaphor for the concentric rings. And the pyramid has to do with the degrees, and degrees have to do with whether something is incremented or detrimented. So, detriment and increment have to do with the word "degree." And degrees have to do with graduation or what is a gradient, or known as the graduate. So, if you think about a gradient, you look at it in terms of increments and decrements, and you look at it in terms of whether it is state or does it go up or does it go down. And that has to do with ascension and descension. And the gradient is connected to the word "graduate" or "gradual," which means change and implies change. And that applies to schools, not just roads and landscape and coordinates, but it applies to schools. You go up, and you get your different degrees, and you graduate gradually over time, which means that you're moving out the concentric rings. You're being expanded into additional domains, and the root authority in this paradigm—instead of—because we were pondering earlier, is the root domain, the ultimate authority, the ultimate reality—is it, are we moving inward toward it or outward toward it as an expansion or contraction? Those are circles. So, if we change the geometry of the question—now, listen to that statement. If we change the geometry of the question, and that's an abstraction from circles to a pyramid, then the ultimate root authority is the capstone, which is, by the way, what this organization seeks. You know what that organization is? She knows what that organization is.
Savannah McGill: Oh, yes. Yes.
Yes. So, their obsession is with the various degrees, the expansion into additional domains, and the reaching of the capstone or the ultimate root authority. And it's interesting that the geometry of their question changes how we think about ourselves in space and time. You know what I'm saying? Because a pyramid, by necessity—listen, a pyramid by necessity is constrained to a certain size based on the degrees of its angles. Its height is only going to be as high as its base is wide. And so it's not an infinite pondering like expansion or contraction from a wave, from a center point or from an infinite space that caused us a lot of problems since we're finite beings thinking about questions that are infinite, right? Think about how the pyramid, by changing the geometry of the question from a circle to a pyramid, the pyramid is necessarily finite, and the question is therefore not as large or intimidating. And it's very suggestive since it's an ancient organization, the Freemasons, it's very suggestive according to their paradigm that there is, in fact, an ultimate reality, a root authority from which all lower degrees come from and are issued from in the capstone. The capstone in this metaphor, by the way, would be considered the frontal lobe or consciousness or the mini holodeck like on Star Trek or the mini matrix that exists within your prefrontal cortex, where you can imagine things, and out of your imaginings, you can create realities that you then sublimate, though that you can end the capstone in your frontal lobe, in your imagination, that you can forward think and you can imagine blueprints and designs that you can then sublimate into the reality of this so-called world with the natural elements. And you can create alternate realities, but both of you want to speak at once. Who do I give it to?
Savannah McGill: Before I go, I want to say that if you're like the prefrontal lobe, if it's there, like God and Lord help us. It's so important. But however, that brings up the debate about like the physiology versus like the spirituality of the brain and what makes up a person's consciousness and their being in that frontal lobe and how important it is. What if somebody has to get a surgery to have some of it removed? Does that make them an NPC? Because they still live, but are some people kind of like that naturally? It makes me go—
Well, I think you answered the question earlier—hardware and software and self-writing software.
Sierra McGill: Um, that makes me think of something which is strange. It's a strange kind of coincidental thing. But yesterday I watched a documentary on lobotomies, and in it there's the transorbital lobotomy, which they would take the thing, and there's a hole in the back of your eye socket, and they would sever the connection to your prefrontal cortex. And—
Savannah McGill: Is that right?
Making somebody an NPC because they still live, but—
Savannah McGill: But are some people kind of like that naturally?
Yes, they are. No, it makes them—it makes them an NPC.
Savannah McGill: They weren't—
Listen, this is nurturing and nature speaking, and it's also physiology and genetics, and it's also just pathologically having tissue that has been disrupted. But if you look at the nurture-nature component—and again, always take an external thing that you're looking at, whether it be God, a creator, and make it—you always take an external thing like nurture-nature and make it about you—did you nurture and nature yourself? Because again, while the external does have influence, the internal also has influence. It might be lesser, it might be more, that's up for debate. But those people, I think, have underdeveloped use of their prefrontal cortex and revert more toward the limbic, reptilian, ancient part of the brain, which is more reactive, more feral, more fight or flight, less able to postpone immediate gratification, less able to imagine, less able to see because imagination is not just about coming up with stuff that doesn't exist. Imagination is about imaging. It's about image. It's about what you can see, not just what you can come up with, but what you can see in reality that exists before you. And so, people who have underdeveloped use or underdeveloped or disabled somehow prefrontal cortex, they don't have great imaginations, which means they can't image things, they can't see things, they can't see obvious answers, solutions, and realities that exist before them. They see the world through an altered lens of limited choices. And again, it just goes to show you that it's important to nurture yourself. If you've been disabled in this way, again, it is a very large disruption of human potential, certainly for those individuals.
Savannah McGill: I just think it's insane. And also, another thing to mention is that the person who invented the lobotomy procedure, they won a Nobel Prize for it. And the majority
of people who got lobotomies were forced to by their families. And they were people with depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar, overthinkers, creatives. And the man who made it won a huge award, a Nobel Peace Prize, for figuring out how to sedate creatives, divergence according to that.
Yes, to sedate awareness.
Savannah McGill: Yes, and I think that is so insane.
When they got rid of it because people don't like it, are they still doing it now in a different way? Are they still—is there a non-invasive lobotomy procedure that's being done to people?
Sierra McGill: It's electroshock therapy. And they also did it with women for hysteria.
Savannah McGill: I'm mostly thinking of social conditioning though.
Sierra McGill: In modern-day psychology, where they cut a certain part, a lot of the times the thing that will cause the seizures is the corpus—it’s the thing that's connecting the two sides of the brain, and they will cut that in half. So, then you'll have a thing called split brain, and then at that point your eye, like your entire—everything is messed up because once like the left side of the brain, that will be for like your thoughts and things that you can read and say out loud, which goes to your right eye, and then reverse. So, then if you cover this, like your entire perspective on life is skewed.
Savannah McGill: It's crazy. They can't communicate with each other.
Sierra McGill: The corpus callosum, though, that midway in the brain—very interesting. The hardware born lobotomized, and is society purposefully messing up people's ability to use their prefrontal cortex?
Yes. I think that people can be created in such a way where they are effectively lobotomized through early childhood trauma and, without proper care and treatment after, so that a person can develop more appropriately, that they are effectively culturally lobotomized. And it could explain to a large degree why there seems to be about 98% viewers and 2% doers in this world.
Savannah McGill: They don't have the thoughts in their head. They don't have a voice in their head.
Right. Well, I guess that wraps it up. Thank you.
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