Hello again, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of Freedom's Creed. I hope you are doing well today, and isn't time an elusive thing? We think we have all of this time to live on this planet. And we turn around and think, where has my life gone? How has time seemingly eluded me? It's not that I consciously thought I'm gonna be young forever. Yeah, um no, I didn't think that, but well, if you're younger, I'm gonna say, you know, 45 or younger, then you may not have these feelings that come across your mind every now and then. But when you're older, you tend to think more about it, I suppose. I don't know. My wife sometimes says, you know, age is just a number, and I always say, well, yeah, it's kind of a high number based on where you're at in life. But in any case, it's great to be alive, it's great to be on this planet, it's great to be able to have the opportunity to do what I'm doing, and I appreciate each of you for taking the time to listen. We are already in December of 2022, and a new year is upon us already. I don't know where the time goes again. It seems that the years just fly by and we realize that wow, time really does seem to creep up on us. And so that's why I always say if you want to do something, if you want to experiment or try something new, create a business, do anything you want to do, then you should definitely do it because what's the worst that's going to happen? Yeah, you could fall flat on your face. So what? You fail. We all have failed at something in our lives, and some of us multiple times, but that doesn't mean we stop trying. That doesn't mean we don't get back up, brush ourselves off, and try something else. Do something else, continue to strive to do what it is we have a desire to do, whatever that may be, it doesn't matter. But the thing is we just keep trying, we just keep doing, and that's what it's about to me, folks. So I trust that whatever it is that you are doing or that you want to do, that you keep pressing forward and that you do it. And again, if we fail, we fail. We just keep going. What other choice do we have, folks? We gotta keep on going. This episode today, ladies and gentlemen, is something that I've thought about a lot. And with each episode that I do, I try to think about it before I actually talk about it. I think that's important. I think it's important to think about what it is we want to say before we say it, and try to put something together, and in my case, put something together that I believe each of you will want to hear. Content that you want to listen to and that you would want to share with your friends and not be embarrassed because you got this clown that you're listening to on a podcast. Yeah, I know the clown is me, but please don't call me a clown, but well, you can call me whatever you want. I don't care, whatever. The point here is that your time is precious, and I don't want to just give you some sort of regurgitation of somebody else's thoughts. I want to give it to you straight from the horse's mouth. So there you have it. I'm a clown and a horse. What better combination could you have? Come on. Here's the actual impetus for today's episode. I was on a bit of a road trip recently, and while driving on the freeway, going the other way on the freeway, I saw a couple of pickup trucks pulling what looked like to me as horse trailers. And I noticed that on the top of the trailers they had a like a heater or uh maybe it was an air conditioning unit, maybe both, on top of this trailer pulling animals. Think about this for a second. I remember when I was younger and saw this same thing, but I can assure you that there were no heaters or air conditioning units on top of the trailers. You put some straw in the holding area where the horse or cow was going to be. Maybe you put a blanket on it and you drove down the road. If it was cold, you put a blanket on it. If it was hot, then I don't know. If you rigged up a fan to put inside there, fine. I don't know. I never did that before. But the point is, those people pulling the animals in these trailers when they got to where they were going didn't go back to the back of the trailer, open it up, and find a stiff animal because it froze to death. Okay, maybe that happened a time or two, I don't know. But it got me to thinking about how we baby everything today. Think about this. Obviously, people baby their horses or their cows or what have you. They baby their pets. People are babied, and that's probably the worst of the babying as far as I'm concerned. Is it any wonder why our society is so soft and that people get their feelings hurt so much today? Well, it's because we have people and parents who live in a culture that haven't let their children experience the bumps of life, which is reality. And I don't know, if you're a farmer and you pull a trailer with horses in it, maybe you baby your animals. Man, I don't know. I don't do that kind of thing. So I couldn't tell you. I could be totally wrong on this. And fine, I'm wrong, whatever. I don't think I am, but it's very possible, of course. Reality is if you don't teach your children how to deal with adversity and struggle in their lives, then they're going to grow up and baby everything that they touch. At least I hope that's what they don't do, but they probably will because that's how they're raised to their pets, their own children, and everything else. To me, it seems like sort of a poison. And I'm going to talk about this, and I hope that I can explain to you what it is that I'm thinking and why I consider it a poison. Because you can best believe that countries like China, Russia, Venezuela, etc., are not babying their people. Now, I'm not saying that we have to be a totally rough culture and we can't teach people how to be compassionate. On the contrary, you teach these things along with being tough. It is possible to do both, I believe. You can be tough and still be compassionate and have feelings for other people. We don't have to be a bunch of babies. Now, the only exception is if you are a baby, then you go on and be the best baby that you can be. You're entitled to it. Think about this though. When's the last time you ever watched a post-game interview or any interview of someone, be it in politics or whatever the field, where the questions are asked, and they're often asked surrounding the idea of how do you feel about this or that? Instead of what do you think? You know, what happened on that play where you were supposed to get the ball and then someone was supposed to set a screen for you, and then you curled around the screen and got the ball back and made a shot. What do you think about that play? How do you think it turned out? Do you think it was the right call? Not how do you feel about how that play transpired? So we have a society today that seems to focus more on feelings and how do you feel? Pay attention again. Next time you're watching people doing a post-game interview or a news show where the interviewee is asked to describe something, and even in casual conversation, we hear the word feel often used in place of I think or my opinion or I imagine, you know, etc. Since when did we start to focus more on using the word feel? Why do we do this, do you think? Well, I have some opinions and I'm going to share with those with you right now. Perhaps there's been a cultural shift in this regard, and we're just now starting to notice it. I don't know. I've noticed it for some time now. Perhaps you have too. I wonder, am I making a big deal out of nothing? Or is there some sort of shifting taking place in society that would have us feeling, quote unquote, about things as opposed to thinking about things? What do you think? And for the rest of you, how do you feel? Sorry. Okay, I'm not really sorry, but don't get me wrong, feelings do have their place. Look, I even believe this for myself. Think about uh in a religious setting or a spiritual context, we tend to feel a certain way when moved upon by some higher power. In this case, I believe that higher power is God. And He's the one that gives us these feelings of love and peace, joy, contentment, etc. Those are great feelings to have within the context of that situation. Now, of course, we can have those feelings at any time. Of course, that's natural, right? We should have those feelings, but they shouldn't necessarily be the thing that guide us in the way that we think. It's a fine line, and I think it's something for us to give thought to and to take some time to actually think about and try to understand it and put it into better context. Think about this. When you've attended a sporting event, for instance, where tens of thousands of people are in the stadium, and when the home team makes a touchdown or hits a home run or has a thunderous dunk, think about the way you feel when that kind of thing happens. It's exhilarating. We tend to experience that feeling of euphoria almost, that incredible feeling of exhilaration again. It's it's like no other. If you've never been to especially a huge stadium or indoor arena and felt that, then you're missing out on something. It's really a cool, cool feeling uh to have. And it's happened to me before and it's happened to a lot of people. And it's a very cool feeling. And that is what I think about that. These kinds of feelings and many other situations that we might be in create in us these feelings that are almost inexplicable. You know, that area of the brain that senses exhilaration, that senses excitement, that wants more of that feeling. In many cases, that's the problem with the brain and our not controlling that part of the brain, because it has to do with addictions. And addictions are and can be really debilitating in nature, because once we become addicted to whatever it is, it's very difficult to just flip the switch and turn that off. It's almost impossible without help. So let me conclude this episode really by talking about some things that I hope will help you understand more of where I'm coming from. So feelings about science, mathematics, engineering, evidence in a trial or whatever really don't matter, do they? For instance, reaching a scientific hypothesis has nothing to do with how we might feel about it. We do A and B and C is the result. It doesn't matter how we feel about that. The outcome of it is prearranged based on the hypothesis that we conduct. Prearranged in the sense that if we do this and this, then that will happen. That has nothing to do with feelings. An algebraic or any other advanced mathematics equation needs to be solved using a prescribed method, irrespective of how we feel about a particular equation. When I was taking algebra in high school, I felt like I hated it, and I did, and that never ever once helped me to solve the equation. How we feel about it will not help us solve the actual problem. We may be confused about how to solve the problem because we can't remember the steps to actually solving it, but the way we feel about it won't help us in the least to solve it. Furthermore, how we feel about the construction of a bridge that literally millions of drivers will utilize in the bridge's existence has nothing to do with the soundness of the bridge. The engineering evolution of a bridge, accounting for gravity, weight, mass, and all that business, which I don't understand, and a whole lot more, will be what safely carries those millions of people safely to the other side of the bridge, and not on how the engineer felt about its design. That has nothing to do with it. Zero. And how about evidence that's presented at a trial? Now, I get it. Sometimes evidence can be subjective because what one person may have thought they saw will be different from what someone else actually saw. And often that evidence cannot be corroborated by two people. But let's say you have forensic evidence, whether it's DNA, whether it's a footprint or a tire track, those things are irrefutable. It's evidence that's presented that doesn't care what the jury thinks about it, doesn't care what the judge thinks about it or the attorneys or anyone. The only thing that matters is the actual forensic proof, the evidence that this particular situation happened because of the evidence that was presented. Now, I'm not a scientist, I'm not a mathematician, I'm not an engineer, and I'm not a lawyer. But what I am is a reasonably intelligent human being, and I realize that the things that I have presented can be easily understood. Think about this. If we haven't babied part of our society in a generation today, then you try to explain to me the reasoning behind why people act the way they do in certain situations, such as when their candidate doesn't win and the emotional outbursts that are presented. Or when someone goes onto a college campus to do a presentation, and they may be say conservative and the student body is a little more on the left leaning side, the things that will happen to try to get that person shut down from saying even one syllable is unreal. And the demonstrations of feelings that people have, they'll shout obscenities, they'll use expletives, they will say these things that are driven by emotion and by feeling. There is no concrete thought about them. I mean, for heaven's sakes, we live in a society where we're supposed to have freedom of speech, not freedom from speech. Those are two different things. It doesn't matter what you think in terms of what you believe. What matters is you believe it, you have the right to say it. So my vote is go ahead and say it. Now, obviously we don't yell fire in a crowded theater, or we don't do things that will potentially harm other people, but actually saying that something that you believe in and in other people, losing their minds over it and allowing their emotions and feelings to get the best of them is absurd. And it's I'm sorry, but it's baby-ish. We have a society today where this babying has got to stop. If it doesn't stop, then we're gonna raise the next generation coming up is going to be the softest ever. They're not going to be able to know how to deal with adversity, they're not gonna know how to deal with trials because they'll think that everything is gonna be laid out for them and they're gonna have this nice yellow brick road to go to this castle where there's some fool behind a curtain trying to tell them what they should do. And that person has no idea what to do. So the thing we need to start doing is teaching people how to deal with struggle, how to realize that that opposition that you're having is probably a good thing for you because it's teaching you how to overcome it, not to submit to it. No one has to submit to whatever it is they dislike, but what they do have to do is they have to think about what it is they're doing and not feel what it is they're doing. And I think if we can do more of that, then we'll have a much more pleasant and happy society. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I think of that. Perhaps it was John F. Kennedy who said it best when he said, quote, too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. End of quote. And perhaps, ladies and gentlemen, it is this episode that will help you to understand why I end every episode by saying, if you can think it, you can plan it. If you can plan it, you can do it.