RockneCAST

True/False: A Method (#299, 14 Mar. 2025)

If you think about it, nearly our entirely education is predicated about discerning what's true and what's false. I started thinking about this with the uptick in "conspiracy theories" and their relation to the pending release of JFK, RFK and MLK files. As I have followed those stories, the question arose:

Does this even really matter to me?

We need to marshal our energies to focus our true/false journeys. We only have so much time, energy and resources.

This episode is about an approach to focus and optimate our true/false journeys.

I know it sounds boring, but for whatever reason, this question fascinates me. In fact, I think its key to become the best version of you.

Duration:: 34m
Broadcast on:: 14 Mar 2025
Audio Format:: other

Have you ever thought about what's true and what's false? Has that something that's ever crossed your mind? What's actually true? And what's actually false? Well, this entire episode is going to be an exploration of that one question. I guess it's two. What's true in what's false? And a lot of you are like, holy shit, this whole episode is going to be on what's true and what's false? Oh my God, I'm going to turn this episode out right now, off right now. Well, hey, don't, because this is going to be an actual good one. This is going to be a good episode on the Rock New Gas. Because if you think about it, literally our entire education process, the whole thing is an exploration of what's true and what's false. So for this episode, I'm going to share with you several different aspects to what I think is this very, very fascinating topic. What's true and what's false? You know, one of my other episodes, I did a whole thing on my revelation that yes is connected to no. Well, this one's going to be an exploration of what's true and what's false. And I'll tell you, first off, what got me interested in this particular topic. Number two, I'm going to give you a principle from permaculture to give you kind of a framework for how you think about what's true and what's false. And then as we approach these different aspects of what's true and what's false, I'm going to give you several categories to think about. I'm your exploration of what's true and what's false. I have no idea whether you're going to like this particular episode, but you should. Some of the ones that I like the most absolutely bomb in terms of the numbers and other ones don't so much. But I think this is a fascinating topic. Who the hell knows? Maybe I'll even write a book on it because I think it's an important topic. So first off, I'm going to talk a little bit about how I got interested in this topic. And it had to do with the JFK conspiracy theories, the RFK conspiracy theories. There's been a lot of news associated with that. And if you think about it, what really a conspiracy theory is, at least in terms of how it plays out in the apopular imagination, is really what actually happened. It's a macro level determination of one individual trying to understand, like in the case of a JFK assassination, a historical event that possibly implicates large forces of today. And it is something that ultimately is subject to a determination of what actually happened, what is actually true about the JFK assassination and what's false. And I got thinking about that because a lot of times a lot of the people that attack people that are interested in that particular topic basically make a claim that these people are totally deluded and they're just making random associations based upon what they think are true and what's not and kind of impugn them that they're all really false. But that got me thinking about how we should actually prioritize what's true and what's false. Because if you think about it, that determination of whether JFK was assassinated by the CIA or whomever it was is a macro level determination of truth and falsehood. The question for you is, does that really matter? I mean, it's interesting. But how does it affect you day to day? And so in our search for what's true and what's false, I thought I would help you categorize first off how you should prioritize these true false questions. And to do that, I'm going to ask you to think about a set of concentric circles. You're probably out in a walk, so you're not going to be able to do this. But if you do get back to your house, do this particular exercise using concentric circles in terms of this truth, false journey that we are all on. And this should be a way of kind of prioritizing how we focus our time and our energy on what's true and false. So what am I talking about in permaculture? About 10 years ago, I was really interested in this particular topic. And permaculture is the system of agriculture that uses natural design philosophies to create abundant agriculture. So for example, a permacultural would look at an upper Midwestern landscape and ask, why the hell are they planting corn? That's a tropical plant from the Yucatan. What they should be doing is using a type of agriculture that mimics the original landscape surrounding the upper Midwest. And then in terms of the design, and so that's kind of the theory. So like for example, the upper Midwest, you would have prairie, buffalo, walnut trees to mimic the actual ecosystem that's present in the upper Midwest. So that kind of got me into that. I was really interested that. And so as I read deeper into this particular topic, excuse me, I'm going to have a soil your coffee here. I learned a lot about permaculture design principles when you're designing your homestead. And what they said when you're designing your homestead out in the country, what you should do is, is you should literally start and think about one of the most important things that you're trying to grow. And what do you do most frequently? And you can have the greatest impact on need the greatest tending to. Well, you should have those plants most close, most most close, closest to your front door. So if there's a type of plant that requires a lot of TLC and a lot of frequent contact, that should be as close as possible to your front door. And other things may be a little bit less, require less TLC and can kind of handle stuff on their own. So for example, a tree, once you plant it, it's planted, and you don't necessarily have to have it super close to your front door, you still may attend to it. Now there's obviously other considerations, the aesthetics, the view of the landscape, these sorts of things. But you kind of get the idea, you design your landscape based upon utility and greatest impact based upon what you need to do most frequently, you want to make that as easy as possible. The stuff that you need to worry about least frequently, and you have the least impact, you put it far away as possible from your your homestead, or at least that's kind of how you think about that. As you consider others of these, other of these sort of philosophies in terms of your truth, false journey. Now a lot of you are thinking like, Oh my God, how does it apply to true fault? This sucks. Well, hey, I'm going to give you this approach. So think in a series of concentric circles and your truth, false journey. The most important thing, as you consider this journey, and the thing that you need to care to, and pay most attention to, is the inner you, your subconscious. Because if you're not tending to that, and that's the think of like an archery or a set of bullseyes. That is your bull that has negative impacts on your conscious world, which can have a negative impact on your ability, like, Oh my God, I'm feeling so much anxiety, which then you realize in your ego. And then all of a sudden you're like, Oh my God, I need to drink, which affects your body. And then once your body is affected, you don't feel like working. And then your finances go, you get the ideas. I'm going to give you some tools to actually focus on the inner you. So your truth, false journey should start with the inner you, the subconscious. And I would give you tick not on as your starting point on the three noble, there's four noble truths of Buddhism. But the first three are directly related to the subconscious. And you can apply it to the body as well. But look in the inner you. What are the things that you're suffering right now? Are you feeling anxious? Are you feeling depressed? Are you feeling like you need to lose some weight? Are you feeling like on we, you're kind of bored? You're feeling a set kind of negative experiences that you don't quite know why they're there. So the question is, why is that happening? What's the source? What's the root cause of that suffering? So that's step two. Look at those things. Like, so if you're feeling really anxious, you got too much on your plate, you got too many sources of toxicity in your life. Well, then the Buddha teaches stop doing those things. That's the third step. So there you got the three noble truths, and then there's the eight noble full path that will place you on your journey. So that's that should be the bullseye. And then as you go out of your, and the way to access this and think about what's true and false is through normally moments of meditation, that is how you can kind of access the inner world, whether you do that through a journaling practice, whether you do that when you unplug on an afternoon walk, and you just let your mind kind of freely associate whether you are engaged in conversation with a loved one, you need moments of silence so that you can reflect what's going on in the inner view. After you've done that, and you feel like you've tended to that, think about what you want, the things you're actually aware of. And that is something, that's the pilot house of your life. And when you think about that, your primary focus should be one of the things that I actually can control. And what are the things that I actually cannot control? Well, in your truth, false journey, you can think about what's going to, what should you worry about? Well, what actually is going to make your body healthy? Think about and focus your energies on what is true and false in nutrition, in exercise, in spiritual well-being. Focus your energies there. Think about what's true and what's false on your financial well-being. I'm kind of a Dave Ramsey guy, you know, no dead type thing. So that is what I believe to be true, and he uses a lot of proverbs. But yeah, so think about that. Think about what is true and what's false in your mind, in your body, and pay attention to those things. What are the optimal forms of exercise? What are the optimal forms of your diet? What are the optimal form and forms of your workflow? That's where you should be paying attention. Notice that has almost nothing to do with politics, because you can't control that. Nor does that has anything to do with whether JFK was killed by the CIA or not, or who's in charge of the governor's office. These are things all within your control that you can immediately control right now. Your optimal sleep pattern, you can control that. The time that you get up like me at five I slept in, I woke up at 5.25 this morning, but I get up every early. That's something I can control, so I can create this content for you. I'm focusing my true, false energies on the things that I cannot control. Notice I'm not focusing. I'm not saying you never focus your true, false inquiry under what you cannot control. But as you go out in this series of concentric circles, you should focus what's true and what's false on this third ring, what you can control in your mind, body and spirit to activate and focus your energies on there. And then after you've done that, you move outward. You think about your home, things you can control related to your home, your family, your loved ones. Notice that's not even your town. After you've kind of make sure that you've addressed that, then you go to your community and you address that. After that, you go out to your state and then the president and then to international relations. Many of you may think that this is totally frickin obvious like duh, but think about how many people spend all of their time and energy, like on nuclear disarmament, or I know like 10 years ago, there were so a whole bunch of people that were like putting their life on the line to stop a pipeline that was gonna come through Iowa and like getting arrested and getting felonies for this kind of stuff. They were literally focusing nearly all of their energies and things that they barely could control. And the most level of control that they had was basically equivalent to like sticking your stick in the spoke of a wheel. That's what they were focusing their energy on. And I don't exempt myself from this. There was a time when I was a community activist and I was focusing a lot on things that I could not control. Like whether a tower would be built, I was able to have somewhat of an impact. But it really dawned on me one day as I was reading a biography of, well I thought it'd be much earlier than this, but as I was trying to focus on these things that I could not control, like politics, and trying to master others, that my life itself was a train wreck. And so rather than focus on things that I have very little control over, I thought it was much better to focus on the things that I could control, like my own emotional well-being, like my own body, like my own finances, in furtherance, so that I could become healthy, so I could serve other people more effectively. One of Vince Lombardi's, there was a book by I think David Marineris, one of Vince Lombardi, one of the greatest coaches of all time, said, "Master thyself before that attempt to master others." Think about people that are all animated about Ukraine, or the Palestinians, or what's going on in college. I was interested in Latin American concerns, and I spent time and energy trying to worry what was going on in Guatemala, or El Salvador, rather than focusing on building my own skill set, my desires, my finances, my energy. And of course I focused on those things, but I think we need to prioritize and transform yourself before that time to transform other people. And you know, I think about my El Salvador, there's a new president there that I think is really good, and he said, "We want these level of citizens. We want people to think about global world." And I want that too, like I want to study the great philosophers and current events, and kind of have an educated opinion on that. But if you think about this in this truth, false journey that we're on, you could be, what if you're like an expert in geopolitics, but you're a total fat ass, and your life is a train wreck, and you're absolutely miserable. If any one of those things is true, you need to stop worrying about what's going on in the Ukraine, what's stopped and fix your, get your own house in order first before you start worrying about other people. That's ultimately what my detour outside of politics was, is like, "Hey, I'm kind of a train wreck at this point. I don't have my life in order. I better pay my attention to things that I can actually control on the true, false inquiry." And of course, this applies to things like conspiracy theories and things like that. Now, I kind of find these things very interesting. I have weighed in, I think it's kind of a fun intellectual exercise to determine what's true and what's false. But if you think about it, the farther and farther you go out in terms of what you can't control, the less and less likely number one, are you able to ascertain the truth in any kind of way that's more unique than someone else? And not only that, but less and less likely you're able to persuade anyone else as to what's true and what's false. And moreover, you're not able to address what should concern you, which is you being healthy for you so you conserve other people and to place your attention on that so that you can make sure that you are the best version of you and not putting your time and attention on others without mastering yourself. Now, your poll star in this true, true false journey should be making sure that it's not all about you. So you don't become totally self-indulgent, that it's balanced with service. But that should be your focus. You think about someone like Bernie Sanders, all of his energy is spent, at least he has some impact on worrying about what other people are doing. If you think about the Dems, one reason why I'm not a demany more, all of their energy is focused on blaming other people and identifying someone else. None of it is focused on the interior world, healing the interior world, and taking control over the interior world. Now relating to this true false inquiry, I think the other thing that's incredibly interesting as we determine what's true and what's false. And maybe this could be a separate podcast altogether, but let me kind of pick your interest on this question of, because if you think about education really is a search for truth, right? Capital T. Truth. I have a friend named Kevin who's obsessed with this topic, but he always states it in a conclusory fashion. In other words, he states what's true as self-evidently true to him and him alone, rather than identifying the various categories of truth. And by that, I mean, what's verifiably true and verifiably false? What can you prove with a hundred percent certainty verifiably? Like a mathematical theorem is proven deductively where you can establish and everyone agrees that you've proven that thing to be true. What's verifiably false? A claim, for example, that all swans are white. Well, if you established one case of a black swan, you've then proven that that claim is verifiably false. So there are these categories. That's the first category. What is verifiably true 100% of the time? What's verifiably false? Where you can prove with a hundred percent certainty, it's false. The second category is what's true-ish and what's false-ish. And if you think about this, this is most of peer-reviewed statistical data where you try to tease out correlations with causation. And this is massive. Very few things are a hundred percent true and a hundred percent false. So, for example, even as something as elementary as smoking kills and causes premature death, it does not hold true for all cases. It is not verifiably true 100% of the time. There are some people that have smoked their whole life. They've been, breathed just fine. They are very healthy till the end of their life and they smoke like a pack a day. That doesn't mean that smoking is good for it, but a lot of the health, one of the reasons why so many of the health advocates and the detractors of health advocates, whether it's vegan or meat eaters, people involved in exercise science, what we're talking about are things that are true-ish. And then we have to have an assessment as to what's, quote-unquote, statistically significant, which is itself a very valued laden. I mean, it's arbitrary determination as to what we're going to recognize is important, what we're going to recognize as false. So, a lot of things are kind of true-ish. You can get a glimpse of the truth. To think of my junior high algebra teacher, there's in high school math teacher, some things you can kind of asymptotically approach 100% truth, but never with 100% certainty. You kind of get glimpses of partial truth enough to make you act on them. For example, I can't say it's 100% guaranteed that I'm going to get on a plane, that it's not going to crash, but I'm confident enough that it's probably not going to crash based upon the probabilities that are out there, although I always kind of concerned about the one I actually get on a plane, but I'm comfortable enough that I don't have an issue with getting on an airplane. So, there are certain things that we just can't really prove. When you think about it, in the personal context, that's the whole ball of wax. You don't even have probabilities. You can't have an argument with your spouse and say, "Hey, I think I'm 52% truth. She's going to come back and say you're 100% false." But in personal relationships, and this is why they can get so nasty, so vitriolic, because you can't verifiably prove or disprove an emotion, and I think that's a lot of times what we try to do, and it's extraordinarily difficult to do that because these truths emanate from the interior world, and it's very, very difficult to either prove true or false emotions that are people feelings and to whether they should have them. So, there's certain categories of things that we cannot even use. We can't verify that they're true. We can't even establish through probability that they're true, yes. We just have to kind of come to a consensus through dialogue and discussion and listening to be able to address these things. So, they're not even subject, absolute truth or absolute falsehood. They're just subject to consensus, logic and persuasion, and ultimately agreement if you can both feel that it's essentially true. And then finally, there are some things that you just got to accept as true. I think you can look for various proofs to establish the truth of it. I mean, so for example, I accept as true that there is a source of all creation called God who manifests himself in the Holy Spirit and who bore a son named Jesus. I just accept those things as true. Now, I think in that acceptance of its truth, it is, I think, important to receive the fruits of that truth. I mean, for example, if every time I went to church, I felt miserable and I wanted to cry or jump off a bridge, I, that would probably call into question a little bit of my truth, although I think a lot of times, you know, in Christianity, and this is not a time to be some extended conversation on Christianity, there's this thing about you got to suffer, you got to carry across. So, you know, I kind of resist that a little bit because I think the whole point is, is if you get alignment, you get joy, you get power. And if you have the falsehoods and the darkness illuminated by the light, you'll see very clearly, and you'll discover ultimately what is true through that ultimate source of the light. But ultimately, I'm not going to do some sort of analytical proof of the existence of God. I have very little interest in that. I'm sort of certain things he just kind of got to accept as true, just got to accept as true that we're here. You know, it's kind of like Dick Hart's, he could you to go soon. I'm here, I'm something's thinking, and he kind of makes a series of deductions from that. And then related to all of these different things, how do you access this truth? What are the skills that you have to make your determination as to what's true and what's false? Is it a government source? Is it a the internet? Is it your own intuition? Is it symbols that you see? Is it just your own mind? How do you access this truth? And we have all of these fights, whether it's academia or whether it is in politics in terms of what's true and what's false. A lot of times it's a fight over what the sources are. And then two, what we even accept as authentic, you know, in terms of what's true and what's false, let me just play that out. You know, the JFK assassination, for example, if you accept, and I think this is all verified, the findings of the original treating physicians in terms of their determination of the entrance wounds and exit wounds on JFK's body, if you accept those as true, that dramatically changes the location of the shooter, the probability that the Harvey Oswald killed JFK and the whole theory that we have of that case. So I think as we, you know, and that kind of got me thinking about this conspiracy theory and that conspiracy theorist, I mean, I have a conspiracy approach, which is, can we first agree before we get to the conclusion, can we focus on what the facts are or are not? What's true and what's false before we make the inference or the deduction from those facts? I don't know, I think this topic is really, really interesting. So in summation, focus and pay most attention on the interior you, that's the spirit within. Then go to your mind, the ego, the thing that directs your life. Then think about the body in terms of focusing on what's true and false, what makes a healthy you. And after you've done that, focus on your finances, the things that you can control. And then after that, think about what's true, beyond that, in terms of what's true, in terms of your family, your town, your estate. JD Vance got criticized for talking about an order of love, and he got a lecture from a lot of liberals about the priority of what people should care about. But if you think about it, he absolutely is true. Of course, you should pay attention to your child, to your spouse, to your mom, to your dad, to your church, the things that you can actually control. And then to let go of what you cannot control what other people do, you can only control how you respond. So that's it for this episode of The Racking Cast. I wanted to do it kind of as an antidote to what I had previously talked about, using Bayesian statistics to solve the Jeffrey Epstein case, I think was the topic, in terms of whether he committed suicide or murder. And that got me thinking about, yeah, I think that's an interesting topic. But ultimately, I don't really give a flying back. It does not impact me. It does not impact my well-being. But it does intrigue my curiosity. And keep in mind, there are certain times where it's just kind of good to just think about things. Think about Albert Einstein. He literally came up with the theory of relativity laying the foundation for all modern physics, all just kind of walking around in the hills of Vienna. So there are values to this in terms of making your subconscious activate itself and to empower itself in this true false journey. But I think we need to prioritize what we're actually focusing on, what's true, and pay particular attention, which you can really observe to be verifiably true and verifiably false. That should be the focus because that's going to have the greatest impact. And you will be able to have the greatest control over your life if you focus on your sphere of influence. That is the essence of being the best version of you. And I would never encourage a child to be involved in activism until they had mastered themselves, mastered the things that they controlled, whether they worried about things that they couldn't. So I hope you found this particular episode interesting. If you don't, I don't really care because this is about what I'm interested in and trying to share what I've learned. Hopefully, though, to the benefit of you. So if you found this particular episode, interesting, reach out to me at rockbacast@gmail.com, or like me, cool@gmail.com. And I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on this episode. And it totally sucked. If you like it, if you liked it, share it. If you didn't like it, share it too. Share it. I haven't gotten any hate mail yet. No one has said that this podcast sucks. I did get one negative review on Spotify. So I'm not I'm not big enough podcaster for people to rage against me. I haven't even swatted for quite a while. So apparently, my voice isn't significant enough. But here's the key, folks. Just remember that all of these things about developing you, is so that you can serve other people. That is your divine mandate is service. But serve so you can be an eternal spring of service to other people. Because just remember, let's make great Grandma Carver Todd, that what we do for others brings us the greatest joy. That's it for this episode of The Rocking Cast. We'll continue to do high quality episodes on The Rocking Cast. I'm using the books, a really good book on US Grant that I think I'm going to share. And we'll continue to do these episodes. So that's it for this episode of The Rocking Cast. Until next time you and I see each other, on the Ruckley cast.

Does this even really matter to me?

We need to marshal our energies to focus our true/false journeys. We only have so much time, energy and resources.

This episode is about an approach to focus and optimate our true/false journeys.

I know it sounds boring, but for whatever reason, this question fascinates me. In fact, I think its key to become the best version of you.