Empire of Lies: Charles Goyette on War, Propaganda & the Memory Hole

What does something as simple as a favourite colour reveal about the way we experience the world? In this conversation, we move through the strange territory between perception, memory, identity, and meaning: asking how the seemingly ordinary details of a human life can open onto much larger questions about consciousness. I checked with my dad afterward, and his favourite colour is still green. 🌿 It is a tiny slip of tense, but perhaps a fitting one for a conversation concerned with how we construct our understanding of other minds. We carry models of the people around us: memories, assumptions, fragments of conversations and sometimes reality quietly reminds us to check the map against the territory. Throughout the conversation, we explore the boundary between what can be observed from the outside and what can only be known through experience from within. How much of another person’s inner world can we actually know? What happens when subjective experience is translated into language? And beneath all our attempts to describe consciousness, perception, and identity, what remains irreducibly personal? 🔍 In this conversation, we explore: * Consciousness and subjective experience * Perception and the construction of reality * Memory, identity, and interpretation * How we understand other minds * The relationship between language and experience * Why seemingly ordinary preferences can carry personal meaning * The limits of objective descriptions of subjective states * What it means to truly know another person’s experience Sometimes the doorway into the deepest questions is remarkably ordinary. A memory. A conversation. A colour. And sometimes, apparently, it is still green. 🌿 Get full access to thegreengage at thegreengage.substack.com/subscribe