Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel. This is Dr. B and today the topic I want to consider is actually I want to make an announcement and the announcement is maybe a secret for many many many people out there nowadays and it is regarding truth and this topic has a very very significant announcement I am going to make and the discussion I will have about it does have a significant impact and relationship, both with substance abuse and in general mental
health. Both of those areas seem to be growing more and more as we’ve never really gotten out of the epidemic. They just call it the fourth wave of the opiate overdose epidemic, but it’s much bigger than that. And in terms of mental health, it seems to be there’s more and more, in addition to younger and younger folks suffering from things like depression, anxiety, compulsive disorders, and it’s very intimately related and can give really fundamental explanation of
what’s going on. And this announcement I want to make is this really important. Pay attention. There is such a thing as an objective truth. There is such a thing as an objective reality. And you may be thinking, oh, why is that a big announcement? Listen to the whole thing. You’re going to get a lot out of this. Now, those that don’t understand that this may resonate with them because everybody seems to think they have the
truth. Those that understand the point I’m going to make are going to be far and few in between the larger crowd that seems to be the prevalent disposition in our society today. Nevertheless, if everybody can take something from this, we can get a little bit closer to where we need to be. When I’m talking about there is such a thing as objective reality and the truth of a matter, I certainly do not mean scientific reality or better described,
I certainly do not mean what is the ultimate nature of reality. That’s not what I mean. Whatever that ultimate nature of things happens to be, objective reality is sort of the scaffolding, like a spider’s web, that we can operate. And the term truth is a description of how is an approximation. How close are we getting to capturing what that spider’s web or scaffolding for us is? And the benefit of that is, you know, everything
from a meaningful communication to an understanding of the nature of things so that we can be on the same page and the things that we aim for, we have a meaningful understanding of the steps that we’re taking with potentially measured and statistically probable outcomes. Let me put it in two extreme ways what I’m talking about. Now, person X may actually believe that the moon is made out of cheese.
And that is their truth and that is their reality they can jump in a spaceship all else being equal meaning let’s take out every other variable like gravity the vacuum of space etc and you know just think you know this person’s gonna get in a spaceship and launch and hurl themselves at the moon at 25,000 miles an hour. And given the fact that their expectation is that the moon is made out of cheese, soft cheese, it will just kind of bounce right into it and bounce right off
or be captured by the moon and have a very soft, almost playground-like landing. If they did that, got on a spaceship and went hurling at the moon at 10,000 miles an hour, all else being equal, let’s take things like gravity and all of the factors that affect the speed, the mass, and all that stuff that when you hit the moon, you know, just take all of that out to make the point. And then they went at this big rock at 10,000 miles an hour. It’s going to be a disaster. Okay. That’s at one extreme bringing it down to everyday social issues it seems that it’s almost offensive
or shameful to aim for objective truth and personal relationships and I don’t mean personal like significant other, all personal relationships that a lot of people engage in in many different ways nowadays. And it’s almost something to be ashamed of if you have an expert opinion on something. If you have an understanding of formal thought, formal training, formal thinking, formal experience that makes it so you can judge an issue,
point to an issue, refer to science and literature that describe our scaffolding and the potential outcome. It’s almost rude, offensive, and one needs to be ashamed of that because it seems like more and more and more over the last 30, 40, 50, 60 years, it seems to be that one is compelled to talk about their feelings on an issue and make the argument,
oh, it’s just my truth. You can’t deny me that. It’s my right. And some have discussed this as sort of a post-modernistic issue as post-modernity has seeped into politics, social affairs, policy. I won’t get into that and I actually buy that discussion. I don’t think it’s an argument of any significance. It’s a nice argument to describe what’s going on. But essentially, all truths and every individual’s truth is equal. And if you’re to call somebody out on that,
you’re the bad guy, you’re the criminal. The problem with this kind of thing is that it has some really, really undesirable outcome for the individuals, all individuals involved, for that immediate herd or group of people involved. And I can certainly point at the higher levels of society, including the political and social infrastructure. And it really leads to a discussion that people have with each other that really is reduced to consistent and constant gaslighting of the other person.
And it’s legitimized, fashionable, and in fact, promoted. And you actually see therapists nowadays. There was a time you would go to these great great psychoanalysts of different traditions after freud from freud on and you go to that person not to validate your truth and how everybody else has turned you into it has you you’re the victim of everyone else’s viciousness you went to them and were comfortable with the fact that something’s
off and they were comfortable with agreeing with that reality, whatever that thing that is off may be, and setting you straight, helping you work through it and get to closer to the approximation of that web that you’re operating in so you can have more fruitful outcomes from your endeavors and even more importantly a more meaningful sense of yourself and relationships with others and
objective identifiable goals that you work to. This is a little abstract but I mean it at every level you can think of what is needed for that other individual,
for that patient, for the client to achieve success in having a meaningful life and getting to the root of the anxiety, depression, or whatever it is. And today’s talk therapists seem to be there only to validate your position, which is pathological and wrong, and it leads to more problems. What it ends up doing is everybody is validated in gaslighting each other, and it creates a situation where the most important critical ingredient in human relationships and the foundation of mental health, meaning in yourself,
meaning in the goal-directed activities you do within that dyad, two individuals, triad, family, or more, your work, and your society. If you think about what public policy is, now I’m jumping to the collective. If you think about what public policy should be, health policy should be, whether it’s domestic, international, finance, all of that stuff. It is a directive for a collective set of actions
and creating systems, institutions that may be needed to carry out those actions for the betterment of society and maintenance of a peaceful, meaningful status quo with minimal impact on resources, no more than what’s needed to be to get the job done with the benefit being greater than the impact that you are putting on resources to get that out okay you know let’s say a health care reality you say well it’s going
to be that people of this age have free health care and it’ll be paid by for this system and that this for the greater good something like that that’s what all policies should be from a political body. Most of the decisions, almost every decision made nowadays, public policy, health policy, international policy, has absolutely no foundations in data or evidence, period, end of story. And this is at the federal level, national level, international geopolitical level.
What kind of outcome and impact do you think that’s going to have in the long run when you’re talking about millions, billions, and trillions? Well, I can get into the outcomes that we’re seeing. Right now, one is an international one that’s horrendous and a nightmare. And the impact and outcomes are far reaching or we all will suffer the consequences. That will eventually lead to the corrosion and destruction of a thoughtful evidence-based social movement that’s for the greater good. At the individual level, decisions and demands are made from separate individuals, oftentimes in a relationship of two be on both sides, is that it’s my truth and I have a right.
These also have disastrous consequences. Look at the divorce rate, the promiscuity. Look at the rising rates of anxiety and depression and suicides and getting younger and younger and substance abuse. Unless we come to value truth, formal knowledge, and utilize those things and appreciate them for what they are in contributing to the growth and development of who we are as individuals, we’re also going to never attain
a meaningful moral and ethical disposition towards ourselves and others. Unless if we become comfortable with the fact that our natural state is not one of reason, like the folks during the Enlightenment thought, but we’re constantly driven by affective, by emotional whims. And to become reasonable, or rational, or utilize formal thinking is actually a practice, a meditative, long, hard practice and takes years of study. Unless if we start to value and appreciate
those things, we’ll never have that moral structure to make, to be able to look at ourselves and admit our faults and shortcomings. And to put it in a Jungian sense, to be able to face our dark shadow, come to terms with it, and utilize it in the right way to continue to move forward as individuals and society. And in many senses, the lack of appreciation of truth and objective reality and the continued disconnection it creates between
individuals or groups of individuals and actually, as I pointed out, in the bigger societal infrastructure, we will continue to have to use drugs and alcohol as these empty, vacuous, quasi-selves continue to develop in this pathological societal structure, in this celebrity culture that we aspire to be those who don’t even know who they are. And we will suffer the anxiety, the depression,
the loneliness, the emptiness, and the endless substance abuse, which all collectively leads to dissipation of all of our resources both physical in this world and eventually the collective emotional and psychological and human humane world that we have always had to draw on to create a better world and you get to a place where people are so sensitive about being
told, you are wrong. This is not going to work for you. You are wrong. That’s not how you should do A, B, and C. If you’re aiming to get your child to be in a certain place in a few years, I don’t mean physical place, I mean emotional psychology. And we will all hit a wall. So there is an objective reality and the truth. So let me give you a couple of examples of this. Maybe one to get you to see the reality of this if you’re questioning this.
And really what we’re describing here is facets of pathological narcissism have become the way to be at every level from the individual on up and this will lead it can lead to the extinction of our species so much for solving the substance abuse crisis mental health crisis, and the many, many, many, many other crises that are going on in the undercurrent that will tear our society apart.
And it is really fundamentally all based on a complete disregard for truth as the measure of reality. reality and along with that is throwing away any value in the expert opinion position to lead us towards a better and healthier life let me read this this is newt gingrich in 2016 i think it was after a speech by trump and i couldn’t care less about the politicians it’s all the same across the board across the planet at this point right now again we see some of the
outcomes of this and they’re talking about crime okay and i think there was a speech made by the candidate trump at that point that really described this dark horrible situation we are in in terms of crime in america and in 2016 the cnn anchor was talking to Newt Gingrich regarding this frightening speech about where we are in crime in America. And this is what was kind of said. She pointed out that the speech did not
accurately describe the statistics in crime in the country, which had sharply decreased. And Gingrich responds sharply saying, I understand your view. The current view is that liberals have a whole set of statistics with theory, which theoretically might be right, but it’s not what human beings are. I’m not sure what he’s trying to describe here, but it’s bizarre. But I want you to know he’s basically saying, screw the truth in regards to human beings and making their lives better and the policy decisions that we make and the reason
the people are not there is because they were told a whole bunch of lies in the first place people are frightened people feel that their government has abandoned them. Then the reporter points out these aren’t liberal statistics they’re from the FBI and Gingrich responds no but what I said is equally true people feel it. Well why do they feel it? Because they were told lies and it’s so easy nowadays to tell people lies
because it’s been compounding on top of each other as we move away from critical formal thinking and truth and to our natural state of emotional and affective dispositions decisions and beliefs which is really psychosis the reporter says they feel it yes but the facts don’t support it the facts don’t support it and The facts don’t support it. And Newt Gingrich says, as a political candidate, I’ll go with how people feel and I whether it’s issues with the borders those
guys are the bad guys these are the good guys our reality is being distilled and watered down into a caricature cartoonish bestial tribal them and us for the advancement of a few and at the individual level this has been destroying relationships, which destroys meaning, one’s sense of reality on that web of reality. And some of the outcomes are substance abuse, declining mental health, and mental health issues with younger and younger within our population.
So how does one combat that? I guess this is the beginning of it. See you guys next time. Don’t forget to like and subscribe. I’ll get back to making videos about medications, substance abuse, and grounded, truthful, clinical outcomes so that you can benefit. See you guys next time. Peace.