How can we protect ourselves from doing evil in the name of good?

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

This week on SOI:
- AI vs Reality
- Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift
- The culture of compliant
- Is there a man behind the curtain?
- JFK, 9/11, Covid, and conspiracy theories
- Does evil exist?
- Evil is always done in the name of Good
- Buhdism vs Christianity
- The Chinese Farmer parable
- The Pieta - the good mother fails - the pieta by michelangelo
- The People of the Lie - https://www.amazon.com/People-Lie-Hope-Healing-Human/dp/0684848597

Find us here:
x.com/mattmccloskey
x.com/michaelvaclav
All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav
Sovereign Goods - www.etsy.com/shop/SovereignThreadGoods
Cafe Medici - mediciroasting.com/?srsltid=AfmBOo…9eDe2OliQmjTc2A


Ep 248: How do I know my good is not evil?

- Isaac Asimov, Fiction, and the Future of AI
- How is trust built?
- How can we live in a world where we don’t know what’s true?
- Can robots feel pain?
- What is heartbreak?
- You need the Divine to functional experience anything
- Pretending to be good always deteriorates 
- Astrology as a replacement for spirituality
- Paradox: He who will save his life will lose it

Find us here:
x.com/mattmccloskey
x.com/michaelvaclav
All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav
Sovereign Goods - www.etsy.com/shop/SovereignThreadGoods
Cafe Medici - mediciroasting.com/?srsltid=AfmBOo…9eDe2OliQmjTc2A


Ep 249: The functional need for the Divine

Remembering Charlie Kirk: The reverberations of his life and assassination in our culture.

“When people stop talking, really bad stuff starts” - Charlie Kirk
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0vL5uZBLk7s

Charlie Kirk - https://x.com/charliekirk11
The rise of the Modern Self - https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Triumph-Modern-Self-Individualism/dp/1433556332
Cliffe knechtle - https://x.com/askcliffe?s=11
Colin Wright’s graph - https://x.com/SwipeWright/status/1966288413939659079

Find us here:
x.com/mattmccloskey
x.com/michaelvaclav
All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav
Sovereign Goods - www.etsy.com/shop/SovereignThreadGoods
Cafe Medici - mediciroasting.com/?srsltid=AfmBOo…9eDe2OliQmjTc2A


Ep 250: When people stop talking, really bad stuff starts

This week on SOI:
- Will we ever know the reality of what’s happened?
- Reality isn’t a team sport
- What does it mean to pursue truth?
- What’s in between the fool and the prideful intellectual?
- Recursive injury
- Are humans purposefully diabolical?
- How does one become a monster?
- Forgiveness, and it’s rarity in our culture
- If he really knew what he was doing he wouldn’t have done it


Find us here:
x.com/mattmccloskey
x.com/michaelvaclav
All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav
Sovereign Goods - www.etsy.com/shop/SovereignThreadGoods
Cafe Medici - mediciroasting.com/?srsltid=AfmBOo…9eDe2OliQmjTc2A


Ep 251: Reality isn’t a team sport

This week on SOI:
How’s it going? Is there a true answer to that?
Some people like to stay in suffering
Political (Oppositional validation)
Personal (fear of tradeoffs)
Intellectual (Falling in love with it - Gollum, Notes from Underground)
Death, grief, and the ways Michael and Matt process emotions.

Find us here:
x.com/mattmccloskey
x.com/michaelvaclav
All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav
Sovereign Goods - www.etsy.com/shop/SovereignThreadGoods
Cafe Medici - mediciroasting.com/?srsltid=AfmBOo…9eDe2OliQmjTc2A


Ep 252: Who likes to suffer?!

There is only one self-justifying thing, and without it, claims of good and bad, right and wrong, are simply the expressions of personal preference.

Find us here:
x.com/mattmccloskey
x.com/michaelvaclav
All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav
Sovereign Goods - www.etsy.com/shop/SovereignThreadGoods
Cafe Medici - mediciroasting.com/?srsltid=AfmBOo…9eDe2OliQmjTc2A


Ep 253: Hollowing Morality

Identity is relational, to love is to will the good of the other, relationship requires submission, and the loss of humility and forgiveness in modern culture.

Find us here:
x.com/mattmccloskey
x.com/michaelvaclav
All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav
Sovereign Goods - www.etsy.com/shop/SovereignThreadGoods
Cafe Medici - mediciroasting.com/?srsltid=AfmBOo…9eDe2OliQmjTc2A


Ep 254: Love is not transactional

We compare ourselves both to other people, and to the “inner possibilities” of the life we’re meant to live. In this episode we draw wisdom from Carl Jung and Theodore Roosevelt, and discuss social media, identity, AI, and Cain and Able.

"The world is full of people suffering from the effects of their own unlived life. They become bitter, critical, or rigid, not because the world is cruel to them, but because they have betrayed their own inner possibilities. The artist who never makes art becomes cynical about those who do. The lover who never risks loving mocks romance. The thinker who never commits to a philosophy sneers at belief itself. And yet, all of them suffer, because deep down they know: the life they mock is the life they were meant to live.”
—  Carl Jung

“I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, 1899


Find us here:
x.com/mattmccloskey
x.com/michaelvaclav
All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav
Sovereign Goods - www.etsy.com/shop/SovereignThreadGoods
Cafe Medici - mediciroasting.com/?srsltid=AfmBOo…9eDe2OliQmjTc2A


Ep 255: The Conundrum of Cain

This week on SOI:
The brokenness of the world
Finding hope after you’ve lost it
Asking your real questions
Falling short of the law
Remembering to play
You are not Christ
You are called to participate in the mystery of God

Find us here:
x.com/mattmccloskey
x.com/michaelvaclav
All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav
Sovereign Goods - www.etsy.com/shop/SovereignThreadGoods
Cafe Medici - mediciroasting.com/?srsltid=AfmBOo…9eDe2OliQmjTc2A


Ep 256: On brokenness and falling short

We discuss Chase Hughes’ concept of frames and scripts, using personas in design, and beauty in art and the concept of Deathworks developed by Philip Rieff.

Chase Hughes - https://www.instagram.com/chasehughesofficial/?hl=en
Frames, scripts, and personas
Intent is required for beauty to exist
Philip glass, Tacit (Matt got it wrong, it’s John Cage and the piece is called 4’33”) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4′33″
Can art be malicious?
Deathworks - art as mockery
Seeing the ugly is is sometimes necessary
Lord of the rings - “Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them?”

Find us here:
x.com/mattmccloskey
x.com/michaelvaclav
All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav
Sovereign Goods - www.etsy.com/shop/SovereignThreadGoods
Cafe Medici - mediciroasting.com/?srsltid=AfmBOo…9eDe2OliQmjTc2A


Ep 257: Beauty and Mockery

A podcast by Matt McCloskey and Michael Vaclav

Ep 254: Love is not transactional

Shores of Ignorance