In this video I ramble in response to a comment I received in my last video on fact checking.

The comment asked if I agreed with postmodern thought. Probably because I read a short story called ‘The Prince and The Magician’ which has the moral, “there is no truth beyond magic” …which sounds like the postmodern conclusion that truth is just a social construction from your culture.

So I clarify what I meant by that:

If you do any travel, you’ll find that cultures differ in seemingly arbitrary ways.

In some cultures they drive on one side and in others they drive on the other.

In some cultures you can have many wives in others you can only have one.

In some cultures they worship cows as a holy animal and in other they eat cows.

So who is right?

My argument is that we want to have many people trying many different things because we need to be different in order to even have trade.

In other words, different cultures set up different paradigms that allow for different exports and “produce”.

If everyone was the same our economy wouldn’t work because exchange first requires that people value things differently.

If we all behaved exactly the same there would be no foundation for expansion and growth.


But the question is one culture “righter” than another?

I hesitate to say that because there needs to be difference in order for there to be an economy.

…but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t certain rules that all cultures must conform to… as is suggested in postmodernism.


I introduce the idea of value hierarchies with the psychology experiment of the dancing gorilla.

The experiment demonstrates how what we value produces different perceptions of the world.

The same thing is true with cultures. We value somethings as a culture more than others and it creates a paradigm where we are better at producing things than other people are. (Which allows for the basis of exchange)

So is one of them "righter"?

Well in some sense yes because not all of these value hierarchies will survive. Some are going to fail because you’re not perceiving something that is important…

For example, if the dancing gorilla turns into an attacking gorilla only the people who valued people watching would survive.

So not all value hierarchies support survival.

…so this is where post modernism goes wrong. They say our truths are infinitely malleable and are just social construction… but they aren’t. They exist within bounds. Some work and some don’t.


…and the reason why there is value in religions and spiritual traditions is because the stories of these religions orient people in such a way that increases their ability to survive.

In other words, each story has a moral that influences people to set up their value hierarchy in a certain way.

…and if it works they survive (and so does the story) and it can last for thousands of years.

…but the story itself (especially whether it actually happened or not) and its set and the setting isn’t what is important.

What is important is the transfer of a moral that then influences behavior is…


So whose perspective is right?

Well you could say those who survive are right and those that don’t.

But what about among the ones that survive?


The point that I am making is that if you have different cultures exchanging perspective and produce…

Then you can have a more robust mechanism for survival.

For example, if the person who valued counting the score was buddies with the person who valued people watching…

…they could both benefit from each other’s perspective and get out of there if the dancing gorilla turned into an attacking gorilla.


So you don’t want to have such a strict definition of who is right and who is wrong.

…and attempt to conform the world into sameness.


But instead be open to others having different ways of perceiving the world.

…because we need diverse perceptions for trade, growth, expansion, and help in survival.

But I fully acknowledge that some of these are not going to work.



…another thought, who gets to be the authority of a culture?

I remember listening to this Joseph Campbell interview…

…where in tribal cultures they’d wear masks every time they disciplined the children into a behavior…

…but then as their right of passage into adult hood they would put the masks on the children.

Symbolizing that they were now able to decide on the rules that are somewhat arbitrary.

However, again the rules exist within certain bounds. Some are going to work and some aren’t.


Then I share my final thought of how to describe the universal laws.. or universal code for behavior:

It’s like an operating system… where you as the developer can create almost anything you can imagine…

…but you have to abide by the abstract rules of the system.

That abstract ruleset is universal law.

…and as long we follow that abstract base we can create any culture or set of rules we want.