The Origins of Ethics and Its Influence on Friendship part 3

ethics and the origins of it, understand ethics, bringing it back to how it is affecting our friendships, how it is affecting our society, and basically ultimately our lives. Ethics is philosophical and it deals, it concerns itself with conduct in questions of good and evil in right and wrong.

The definition- Ethical; derived from the Greek word ethos, which means character, and from the word, Mores, which means customs. Together they combine to define how individuals choose to interact with one another.

So let's make things better, create a better world, and try to understand the shenanigans that took place that created the whole basis for ethics.

We also explore Greek and Roman influence on us to this day. What do we do with this information? Understanding how we got where we are now and where we are now is the key. There are a lot of weirdness, differences, and change we need to look at.

Ethics 3 TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Fawn: Hello, everybody. Welcome back.

[00:00:01] Matt: Hello

[00:00:02] Fawn: okay. Guess what? We're gonna continue on talking about ethics.

[00:00:06] Matt: Oh dear

[00:00:06] Fawn: ethics and the origins of it. We're gonna break it down little by little baby steps. Oh my goodness. there is a lot of noise outside. Sorry. It's a hot hot day. We have to have the windows open.

You're gonna hear screeching, screeching cars and birds and screeching birds.

[00:00:27] Matt: Exactly.

[00:00:28] Fawn: And as soon as I said that the birds got quiet. Okay. So ethics where it came from. Well, the origins of it, we were starting to little baby steps, little bites, understand ethics, bringing it back to how it is affecting our friendships, how it is affecting our society, and basically ultimately our lives. So let's make things better. Let's make it a better world. Let's try to understand the shenanigans that took place that created the whole basis for ethics.

[00:01:05] Matt: And there you go. Yes. And if you'll remember, ethics is philosophical and it deals, it concerns itself with conduct in questions of good and evil in right and wrong.

And. And these are, these can be very distinct things, but

[00:01:18] Fawn: I like the definition I've found, which once again, I'll repeat, Ethical; derived from the Greek word ethos, which means character, and from the later word, Mores, M O R E S, which means customs. Together they combine to define how individuals choose to interact with one another.

[00:01:37] Matt: And there you go. So, yes. So in the previous episode we talked about boom, come. Yeah. Initially came down from God, whatever God was at the time, boom. Plato started to take us away from that. And then it started to evolve in the early Greek kind of traditions.

[00:01:52] Fawn: So Plato said this has nothing to do with the religion. This is something else,

[00:01:57] Matt: right? So if one of the 10 commandments I don't believe is right then it's not right. Mm. You know, cuz there are these universal truths that take us away from God, which then I guess diminishes God on some level.

Good job Plato.

[00:02:08] Fawn: So do you think ethics is really, uh, rooted in religions to keep people in line? So they're really rules made up by man.

[00:02:17] Matt: You can make these arguments, but you start getting into dangerous ground because when you deal with faith versus the intellect you're dealing with logic versus emotion. And as we've talked about a billion times, emotion always trumps logic. So be very careful.

[00:02:31] Fawn: So wait, which one is emotion? If you have religious based on religion

[00:02:35] Matt: because religious is emotion.

Yes.

[00:02:37] Fawn: E

[00:02:38] Matt: exactly.

[00:02:39] Fawn: I thought faith would be emotion.

[00:02:41] Matt: Faith is religion.

[00:02:42] Fawn: Faith is not religion to me. Faith is like

[00:02:45] Matt: my own faith is religion to a lot of people.

Again, we, we, well, maybe

[00:02:49] Fawn: that's because I don't follow a particular religion. Right.

[00:02:53] Matt: So we need to step lively.

[00:02:54] Fawn: All right.

[00:02:55] Matt: Okay. So, basically, after Plato, we got the Epicuren and Epicureans, as it turns out are not these people who enjoy food as they are now.

[00:03:04] Fawn: so what were they?

[00:03:05] Matt: These were people who pursued pleasure.

okay. Mm-hmm which sounds an awful lot, like a hedonist, right. Which is like pleasure at all costs. And that's something we'll talk about later, probably. But the Epicuren, they pursued pleasure, but, unfortunately, or fortunately the ultimate form of pleasure to an Epicuren is a tranquility of spirit.

[00:03:27] Fawn: Oh,

[00:03:28] Matt: and that's what gives them the most. That's what gives somebody the ultimate, theoretically, the ultimate amount of pleasure. It's not having sex for 27 hours or whatever, you know,

[00:03:37] Fawn: it's not eating Tiramisu

[00:03:39] Matt: all day every day. no it, as it turns out. And, and

[00:03:43] Fawn: so what is it again?

[00:03:44] Matt: They pursue pleasure. So it's the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain,

[00:03:48] Fawn: but what is their, um, sense of pleasure again?

What was it

[00:03:51] Matt: the highest sense is actually the tranquility of spirit,

[00:03:55] Fawn: the tranquility of spirit. Yes. Isn't that what we really all need and all want, basically.

[00:04:03] Matt: Right. And again, there's other traditions. The Buddhist would talk about that very differently.

[00:04:08] Fawn: All right.

[00:04:09] Matt: But that is what an Epicuren does and also but what also holds to that as well is, it's not about I get ahead at your expense because an Epicuren theoretically, and again, this is all, you know, we don't have an Epicuren in front of us, so we can't talk about it. But, an Epicuren would say that if I can only get ahead by doing something bad to you. I'll dwell on doing something bad to you, which will hinder my tranquility. So again, you know, I am pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain. So in order to avoid pain, if I hurt you, I'm not avoiding it. I'm actually bringing in more pain.

Mm-hmm so it's kind of a weird thing, but yeah, so you have the Epicuren and then you have the stoic and, and stoic is actually one of these terms that still works today. And stoic is a lot like me, a stoic is somebody who can astute or cast aside emotion in favor of logic and reason. And that's the definition today of a stoic.

So they're not really moved by emotional arguments. So a stoic, pursues wisdom and knowledge, and that's what they do. And that is their mode quote, unquote, their mode of ethics, their pursuing, truth basically; what they believe is truth. Most interesting thing about the Stoics back in ancient Greek days is.

They held that all people can do this and yes, they can. Everybody can, pursue wisdom and knowledge. And so guess what? This has interesting ramifications for Greek society because a slave is the equal of a citizen, which is interesting. The stoic are the ones who started giving us this sense of all men are equal mm-hmm , which is a fascinating thing.

It takes us away from, you know, you're only equal if you're born into the same faith as me, you're only, you know, all men are equal, so that's fascinating are

[00:06:05] Fawn: all humans are equal

[00:06:07] Matt: and there you go. Yes. I know I was using men in that. Yeah. I was using it in the universal term, but you are absolutely right.

It is all people

[00:06:14] Fawn: human. Yeah. All.

[00:06:16] Matt: So again, very, very interesting, point of view. And then going back to the Epicuren pursuing pleasure, tranquility, uh, Epicuren gave us now, which is probably the most popular and easily understood version of ethics. they gave us utilitarianism and utilitarianism is greatest good, greatest number. And then we can, now we can start playing ethical dilemma, but it, it's kind of nice having a philosophy like utilitarianism that can be summed up that way. Greatest, good, greatest number, or, you know, you're quantifying the pleasure and the pain, and you're not necessarily avoiding the pain, but you're making sure that that pain number is less than that pleasure number.

[00:06:59] Fawn: So if that could bring people, I would say men, in this case at war, men, It gives them the freedom in their psyche to say, okay, well, if I killed this many people, it's okay cuz it's for the greater good. Right, exactly. That's terrible. Mm. So that is again, a rule made up by man.

[00:07:23] Matt: Right. You know, you take a look at something like

[00:07:25] Fawn: a, and it's a very limited myopic way of thinking about it.

I'm sure there are other ways. Well, yeah, cause it always have to be,

[00:07:32] Matt: and indeed there are, but it, this one that way succinctly in a sentence it's hard to, I mean, you can tease it, you can tear it out, but it's easily understood. Not for me. Greatest

good. Greatest number.

[00:07:47] Fawn: No, it's not, that's not so easily understood for me.

Well, I don't

[00:07:51] Matt: hence the ethical dilemmas and hence the splitting of hairs. Okay. So, you know, ethical dilemma, number one. So two countries are at war. And in this case it was more than two, but America and Japan were at war. Okay, fine. And the war it's in 1945, America has the atom bomb.

Do we drop it? Do we not drop it? Okay. If we drop it, it is beyond horrific. It is a terrible thing. It's civilians, it's women, it's children. It's millions of people with one bomb. If we don't, it's millions of Americans and Japanese soldiers fighting over every inch of Japan.

[00:08:37] Fawn: Again, that's a very male kind of archetypal arche, typical mm-hmm male perspective.

As in that's the only way to resolve the situation. No, there's always another way. So I would say that was evil unethical.

[00:08:56] Matt: Right. And again, we get into welcome back to good and evil killing is wrong. Yeah. That's a pretty simple one. Right? Right. That's that's real simple. Killing is evil. If you choose good and evil being the ethical viewpoint and then right and wrong is what is it in the moment we do it.

It's easy to say killing is wrong. It's it's a little harder to say if we don't do this horrific thing, then this will happen. I E um, but that thought is evil. America will have to invade Japan.

[00:09:32] Fawn: That thought is evil. Yes. And I think that our society has always been, uh, guided by that man perspective of like throwing down the hammer.

And I think that's how we have raised children is if you don't do this, this bad thing is gonna happen to you. There are consequences, whereas there's always a way to figure it out without bringing in that idea of, okay, I'm going to punish you and it's gonna hurt, but in the long run, it's good for you.

No, I think there's another way. I think that's an out, it should be an out moded way of thinking and living. And that is why I think there should be a different form of consciousness and a different, a different way to guide society, to have our society be. It doesn't have to be that way. I think we're all lulled into thinking that that is the way, that is the only option we have is to drop the hammer like that in pursuit of something better.

Right. And we're told that to make us feel better, like, okay, we're gonna have to do this in the long run. It will work out for the best. No. It's evil.

[00:10:57] Matt: Right, right. And exactly. But again, once you start getting into ethics, you deal with these kind of constructed situations and you're offered an a or B choice and life is simple like that.

And then you can discuss why you make these choices and how they tie to your ethics. You, you, you go into an ethics class. Oh my God. They love talking about Nazis. Cuz Nazis are literally, uh, history is now scapegoat of the ultimate evil. Well, it. It's not a scapegoat. What they did was an absolutely

[00:11:27] Fawn: horrific, that's saying terrible thing.

You sound like you're empathetic towards the Nazis. And I know you're not. So I don't like the way you just phrase that as a Jewish person, especially that I am.

[00:11:39] Matt: And you're in an ethics class. They love throwing the Nazis around

[00:11:42] Fawn: and, you know, and we should because we shouldn't forget. And that was it's one of the most current ones aside from Rwanda.

You know, like there there's constantly at atrocities mm-hmm that have happened even in ever, even after world war II. Even of course, after the, the Nazis it's, it's always happening. I just wanted to make clear that you don't empathize with Nazis.

[00:12:09] Matt: Right. No, absolutely. Absolutely clear. And again, I didn't like the wording you used.

It's a weird world where we yeah. Have to go out for a way to say these things, but anyways, we're in a weird

[00:12:20] Fawn: world right now. We are in a weird world. Things have to be made absolutely clear right. In our communication.

[00:12:26] Matt: No, and you're, you're absolutely right. So again, we have now utilitarianism, however, I forgot.

We gotta spin back that place that's near and dear to our heart, which is Nicomachean ethics. Yay. And Nicomachean ethics from Aristotle is teaching us, kind of a moderate path, more than anything else. It's not about ultimate pleasure, ultimate pain. It's about finding a place in the middle.

It's about moderation in all things. If you wanted to summon up in acute little pithy sentence, the same way I summed up utilitarianism, I ironically moderation in all ways and all things means actually moderation in moderation. So sometimes you gotta go for it, but not most of the time.

[00:13:05] Fawn: Yeah. I, it's a tough thing to be human.

It's not so easy. Right. And, and we make our own rules really because we are free individuals. Mm-hmm no matter what we all have the, uh, the choice. Free will. Right. We have that. We do mm-hmm so, you know, again, we can go back into what is truly bad. What is truly good? We don't know. We don't know, but we do know what hurts another person.

We do know what hurts another living thing. Right. We do know what hurts and what doesn't. And we do

[00:13:39] Matt: know ultimately what makes us as an individual happy versus makes us unhappy. Which again, starts taking us into, uh, an Epicurean point of view, pursuing pleasure, because I'm going to avoid things that make me feel bad.

[00:13:54] Fawn: Yeah. And that's one thing "Days of Our Lives" has taught me, oh, dear. I'm addicted to this soap opera ever since I was a kid, I stayed home from school one day with the flu. And that has sucked me in never since childhood. Now, our kids are sucked into it too, because of me, but looking at a show like a soap opera, like that, you look at all the pain that is caused by the ethical dilemma,

It is caused by not telling the truth, hiding something. Really, those are the main things. Right. And hurting someone,

[00:14:30] Matt: whereas killing someone again, an Epicuren would say,

[00:14:34] Fawn: I, I now I'm, I'm

[00:14:35] Matt: an Epicuren I need to, I need to suck it up. I need to tell somebody because I'm gonna feel worse. Yeah.

[00:14:40] Fawn: If I don't just, just to avoid all that pain, I'm never going to lie.

I will always communicate and not hurt. Not hurt anybody if I can. But

[00:14:50] Matt: what if I say, is this a nice hat? And you think it's God awful, ugly. What do you say?

[00:14:54] Fawn: I don't say it's God awful. I'm like good for you. Who cares about my opinion? So what do you think of my hat? What do you care

[00:15:03] Matt: about? My opinion? I'm saying ethical dilemma.

You start splitting things smaller and smaller and smaller. Is it enough to, you know, I don't know.

[00:15:10] Fawn: Very, very rarely have I said to someone that's ugly. unless I'm mad at you. I'm like, by the way, that is ugly. Does stress make me look fat? No, . But it's it doesn't, uh, suit you perhaps, you know what I'm saying?

I'm so hurt. You need to tailor it. no, I'm serious. like, if you look at the Kim Kardashians, if you look at the beautiful curvy women, well, Kim is sometimes not curvy, but I don't know if these girls are starving themselves. It's ridiculous. A human, a human woman is curvy. Hello? You're supposed to have breasts and hips.

Hello. But anyway, to, to make you to make yourself look like a pre-pubescent boy as a woman, there is something pedophelic pedaphelicly wrong with that. What is that? It it's just don't get me started.

[00:16:17] Matt: I didn't get you started on it. And yet here we are. You did you, did. You did. Oh, does this make me look fat?

That's all it took. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Sh

[00:16:24] Fawn: she splits off folks. Yes. Because you know, what is that? What is that? That we are so obsessed by curvs. Does it make me look fat? And so for me to answer that question, would I tell you that it's like, no, I wouldn't answer it the way you think I would. but I would say it needs to be tailored.

And I'm just saying, when you look at curvy actresses, mm-hmm they look good if they wore off the rack, what you're wearing. They would look not so great. but if they tailor it, which they do, they look phenomenal. Right. I, okay. Okay. Fine. If you wear a t-shirt off the rack. Yeah. It's frumpy. I always wear t-shirts

[00:17:05] Matt: off the rack and that's oh my God.

Oh God. Now I look frumpy

[00:17:10] Fawn: so there you go. That's how I answer that ethical dilemma

[00:17:12] Matt: right there. Fair enough. Okay, so let's continue on. Shall we on our little history lesson? Okay. And unfortunately, now we have to talk about what was once a tiny little sub subsect if you will, of Judaism known as Christianity.

Oh dear. Oh dear O dear O. Dear.

[00:17:30] Fawn: I'm biting my lip.

[00:17:31] Matt: There you go. Now again, this was a tiny little fanatical, yeah, almost cult if you will, at one point it was what, because there was only like 12 people involved. 13 people involved, Christians, Christians,

[00:17:45] Fawn: Christianity. Right, right.

[00:17:47] Matt: Okay. Now what the Christians gave us.

cause if you start looking at this historical code of Harabi the 10 commandments,

[00:17:58] Fawn: uh, wait, can you go back and explain the The Code of Hammurabi

[00:18:01] Matt: again, this was the initial, how do you spell that? The Code of Hammurabi yeah, well, again, it's a Babylonian word, so I can only spell it the way the English

[00:18:08] Fawn: people do. Okay. Can you say it slowly?

[00:18:11] Matt: The Code of Hammurabi okay. Got it. And this was the original kind of laws that were passed down in Babylon way, way, way back when Babylon is of course, Iran, Iraq, um, The Tigris–Euphrates river, or we're talking real early civilization anyways, and then you've got Moses' 10 commandments. And then what the, what the, what this little Christian cults gave us was,

they give us the freedom of the letter of the law and into its spirit. Cuz all of a sudden it's like, you know, you do right by by JC you're. Okay. and JC of course Jesus Christ. But you do right by him and you're okay. Which is interesting. Uh, it's interesting, but they took us away from the letter of the law to the spirit of the law.

And this is why you know, certainly, as I think perhaps it should be, but it allows for some compassion inside of laws and it, it gives kind of the rise of like the judge who's gonna then, interpret all the circumstances of what it is. I mean, it could be that you're guilty of stealing bread and in exchange or in yeah.

In the Japanese tradition, you get accused of stealing a smell.

[00:19:24] Fawn: What?!

[00:19:24] Matt: You, this was a famous case. Um, Judge Oooka O O O K a is how it is. It is, uh, somebody brought a trial to him where this guy was living above a fish shop and he would eat his rice when the guy was cooking the fish and he could smell it.

So the rice tasted a little better. And so this guy was like, no, you gotta pay me for that. what, and is this for real man? Yeah, this is for real. This is one of those like wisdom of Solomon type stories. So, you know, this is, this is the wise judge, and this is the role of a judge. And he said, you are absolutely right.

You should be paid

[00:19:56] Fawn: what?

[00:19:58] Matt: And he was like, clink your money. Uh, and he did. And he. That is your payment. The smell of Phish is paid for by the sound of money. Oh, okay. Again, this is what led us. And unfortunately I went with a Japanese example just because it's so poetic. And I like that story so much.

[00:20:15] Fawn: I was gonna say, it's so messed up.

It is

poetic.

[00:20:18] Matt: It, it is poetic and that was the whole point, but again, it allows for a judge to rule on something that says, yes, what you did was wrong, but this is, this is your punishment for it, right. It, it, it's not gonna be, it's gonna be in proportion to the, effrontery of the sin.

Right. Mm-hmm as it were. So that was interest. So what that brought us to is kind of now this conflict, cuz you've got these Greeks and these Romans cuz the Greek and Roman kind of empires were kind of foremost, I guess in the quote unquote Western world. And you've got Christian ethics kind of butting heads and the Greeks and Romans, they prized independence,

self-reliance magnanimity.

[00:21:03] Fawn: Mag, mag

[00:21:05] Matt: magnanimity, which is kind of this grandiose, like I'm going to help you. And I'm going to be because of my wisdom and, you know, whatever and worldly success.

These are the things they pro they, they prized the most, whereas the Christians. Christians. They, um, they, they prized meekness, obedience, patience, and resignation. Hmm. So a Christian to be humble is best. Whereas a Greek would say, but I'm awesome. I need to recognize my awesomeness. I need to embrace my awesomeness.

Right. Which isn't, which is a complete difference. Right. And I. Certainly the Western world is still kind of grappling with where we stand between those two things. It also seems

[00:21:52] Fawn: very male and female to me, yin yang, like one is soft and one is very ego and like I'm more muscle and I'm better,

[00:22:01] Matt: which is ironic.

Cuz uh, yeah, nobody would necessarily accuse Christianity being particularly a feminine. I'm just saying,

[00:22:08] Fawn: if you forget they're labels, it seems very male.

[00:22:11] Matt: Female mm-hmm no, no, no. And I, I have a hard time arguing that, but.

[00:22:15] Fawn: Which is interesting, cuz they've obviously like have transformed into other things.

Well, like Christians now are, well, I'm gonna say something terrible. It's it's too much of a blanket statement, but I'm just thinking about the fundamental Christians who are running the country in the United States. It's not very feminine and it's not particularly

[00:22:37] Matt: humble.

[00:22:37] Fawn: No is downright egotistical, but that

[00:22:41] Matt: is the, the Greek influence on us to this day.

The Greek and Roman influence on us to this day.

[00:22:47] Fawn: I don't know. I think it's just like morphed into some crazy

[00:22:51] Matt: and again. Yes. And we'll talk about that in, in, later in a future

[00:22:54] Fawn: ethical episode

[00:22:55] Matt: in later episode, ethical dilemma, but, uh, it, it, I, I did find it,

uh,

[00:23:00] Fawn: you know what? We could have a whole podcast, like every day, every week, just on the ethical dilemma, but we're just gonna do a few.

So we have a couple minutes. What else, what else you've got to say?

[00:23:13] Matt: That's most of what I wanna kinda handle inside

[00:23:16] Fawn: of this. So what do we do with this information? What do we

[00:23:18] Matt: do with it? It's it's, it's more about just we're we're trying to understand how we, how we got where we are now and where we are now is, there's a lot of weirdness difference and change.

And it's, it's one of these things and, and it's one of these things actually Christianity went through because, as it turned out, and something they don't necessarily teach is that literally like the initial disciples of JC, they all thought that the end of the world was coming right now. What do you mean right now?

Like literally in their lifetimes, in their lifetime, in their lifetimes, which kind of really tweaks. How you behave. It's, it's one of those things, like if you knew you were going to, you only had one day left to live, well, how would you live differently? And that's what they did. Cuz they believed that the world would be ending in 20, within 20 years, 20, 30 years.

Really? Yes. So they gave away everything. What made them think that way? JC said I'm coming for you. I'm coming back for you.

[00:24:11] Fawn: So they took that as like, Ooh, I'm dead.

[00:24:15] Matt: That is I'm coming for you soon. Ooh. Like I'm coming for you.

[00:24:18] Fawn: Like I'm coming to get you,

[00:24:19] Matt: like before you pass from this world, I will have come for you.

But what

[00:24:24] Fawn: does that mean? Like they obviously knew they did something wrong.

[00:24:27] Matt: No, not necessarily because they were gonna be ascending into, you know, Nirvana, heaven, whatever you wanna call it. So, but, but no,

[00:24:35] Fawn: but dictate, like I'm trying to ask you is, do you think they thought, oh. I'm gonna get my butt handed to me or I'm coming for you.

I'm gonna make your life better. I'm coming again to like,

[00:24:46] Matt: I'm gonna make your life better actually. But it also meant that that any suffering you had in this world would be transitory, transient as far as for the rest of eternity. Right? So all of a sudden you have. The, the rich disciples, giving away everything they owned, you had, you know, the poor disciples, embarking on various pilgrimages to spread the word and let everybody know that, stuff was coming down and, and this is what it was.

and it was incredibly selfless

in that regard.

[00:25:16] Fawn: So is this, they went through their own. What's the Marie Kondo. What's what's that woman's name? Oh

[00:25:22] Matt: God. Does it bring you joy?

[00:25:25] Fawn: They Marie Kondoed everything well. Yeah,

[00:25:28] Matt: because whatever, I don't know. I'm sure that the poor people around them were very appreciative of all the, all the stuff, all the food, all the, everything else they got.

Right. And, and that leads us into, you know, you'll see a lot of selflessness in more, as you get more and more quote, unquote, fundamental Christian, it is stripped down, bare bones,

[00:25:48] Fawn: Christian, is it truly selflessness or are they just trying to do it because they're trying to get to a better place. And there

[00:25:53] Matt: you go.

Well, in this case, the better place was coming regardless of what they did. So like, well, why not do with the good

[00:26:00] Fawn: or like, maybe they were like, I just need to unload my stuff. but we're moving.

[00:26:06] Matt: Uh, I got too many books in the bookcase. We gotta get rid of

[00:26:08] Fawn: some, are you putting stuff out on the curb saying for free, not out of the kindness of your heart, but because you gotta, cause you don't wanna

[00:26:14] Matt: move it junk.

nice.

[00:26:19] Fawn: Anyway, how does this come back to friendship? I'm a little bit lost right now. I

[00:26:23] Matt: know. Hopefully it'll all come together before it's all over. I

[00:26:28] Fawn: mean, this is why I don't like these conversations because it just doesn't make me feel hopeful about humanity. It doesn't, it scares me. I don't like these ethical conversations, but I think it is important to discuss mm-hmm because in.

Allows for truth to come out. Like when we first met, we would go out for coffee and talk about the ethical dilemma. Yes. And I would say, I would never. And you're like, yeah, you would. And then you would break it down. I'm like, oh crap. Maybe I would, well, yeah, maybe I would do the unethical thing. I

[00:27:01] Matt: remember it was always like, I would impose for Playboy for a million dollars.

It's like mm-hmm yeah. Yep. I know your price. Tag's a lot lower than that. When the rubber hits the road. Oh my God. When somebody's got the green backs in front of you, but

[00:27:12] Fawn: it's good to. That it's good to know for your own spirit. What you would, you, you are capable of anything. You never know. You have to put yourself in other, uh, people's shoes.

You have to be empathetic. Yes, very much. So when, when someone else, when a friend out there does something wrong or UN unethical mm-hmm when you have that unethical friend, you can understand it better. You can't judge because guaranteed you'll probably be in a similar situation at some. And then that feeling is terrible, right?

Like, oh God, I'm here. I am. Right. But once you understand that, then I think we're able to make better decisions based on the unethical friends. Yes. Right. Anyway. And that's the whole point is to understand each other. And so therefore we're going through this minutia of what is ethical and what is not ethical and who knows and who made up these rules?

It's all about really following love, but it gets more complicated, always when money comes into it and food comes into it and everything else that is wrapped up in society. And so that's why we're talking about this. That's why the art of friendship is so good to remember because once we remember the art of friendship, we know that, Hey, we're not in it alone.

It's not so black and white. There is always another option. There is always a way to figure something out and there's always a way to proceed with kindness and friendliness to achieve something for the greater good.

[00:28:46] Matt: Right. Right. And of course the other part, other kind of key point for me is, you know, you never know what somebody's going through and you never know how your words will affect them for good and for bad.

So for, for the love of whatever, Leave people with good feelings and not bad ones for

[00:29:02] Fawn: the sake of love. Yeah. And you know, it happens. I mean, it's happening right now. There are friendships breaking. There are governments break, everything is breaking down, but it's a wonderful opportunity to begin anew and to think about truly other possibilities instead of the possibilities, instead of the ways we've done things before let's figure out

a whole other possibility, whole other solution. So with that in mind, keep that in mind and we'll talk to you in a few days. Please go to our friendly world podcast.com WW dot www.ourfriendlyworldpodcast.com. Please click on contact, reach out to me. That's my email and let us know. Do you wanna come on our show?

Would you like to talk about

[00:29:56] Matt: this? Am I wrong? We're all wrong. We're all right. Call me out. It's all good.

[00:30:02] Fawn: Yeah. All is well. We love you so much. Take care. Be

[00:30:07] Matt: well.