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Jordan Peterson: One Hour That Could Rewrite the Next 60 Years of Your Life · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The modern ideas, you're supposed to accept yourself.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: I think that's an insane idea, by the way, really,
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: I think I can't think of a more nihilistic idea
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: than that you're already okay. It's like, no, you're not.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: And the reason you're not is could you could be
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: way more than you are? And so what do you
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: want to be?
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: You want to be okay as you are?
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Or do you want to strive towards what's better?
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Human beings are insufficient and of themselves and need the
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: movement upward, and so they need to conceptualize something like
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: the highest good, and then to strive for that. You
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: should love and feel good about the person you are now.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: And that's actually a dubious proposition for a variety of reasons.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: One is, whatever yourself is is not only what you are.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Yourself is also what you could become. And so to
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: love yourself properly is not only to love what you are,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: who you are, whatever that means, but to love who
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: you could become.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: One of the things I've observed is that it's very
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: demoralizing for the typical young person who's miserable and maladjusted
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: psychologically and socially if you just go to them and say, well,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: you should feel good about yourself because they think you're
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: good just the way you are. You're perfect, just the
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: way you are. You should accept yourself just the way
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: you are. It's like, well, okay, so what does that
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: say about who I should become? Is that just now
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: off the table because I'm already good enough in every way?
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: So am I done or something? What about who I
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: should become? And then, well, how should I feel good
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: about myself when I don't because I'm not getting along
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: with myself. I'm anxious and hopeless and nihilistic and depressed,
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: and I'm not getting along with other people. So how
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: is it that that's all somehow something I should feel
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: good about without being deluded? And these are complicated questions
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: because you don't want to beat yourself with a stick,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: which might be the opposite.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Of that, well, feel bad about yourself.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: It's like, no, be judicious and with yourself and think
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: that you need to accept yourself in some way the
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: way a mother accepts a child. But the maternal spirit
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: is not the only spirit that governs the love that
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: a child requires. Properly, you have the paternal spirit of
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: encouragement as well, which is, well, we need to shelter
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: and protect you and to provide for your security the
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: way you are, but you could be a lot better
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: and should be, and I have faith that you could be,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Which is the love that I'm delivering to what you're
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: becoming rather than what you are. And so love that
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: you direct towards yourself is partly directed towards that maternal
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: care that's sort of the minimum precondition for basic flourishing,
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: combined with an attitude of encouragement towards the possibilities of
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: your being. And so that's a much more sophisticated so
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: called self love, partly because it's the kind of love
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: that envisions you as something that unfolds across time, and
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: it's it's a much richer conception because it also implies
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: that there's a responsible adventure to your life. You're not
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: all you could be, and there's pain in that, and
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: there's the necessity for a certain amount of judgment about that,
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: and even a certain amount of exclusion, because what you
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: are that is insufficient in some sense should be not be.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Allowed to propagate further.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: But if it's conjoined with encouragement, it's like, yeah, you're
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: in a rough situation there, kiddo. But you know, here's
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: some things about you that are virtuous and good and
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: they're pretty powerful actually, and if you just made those
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: more manifest you could dispense with a lot of this
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: immaturity and misery and you could expand yourself out into
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: life physically and psychologically, and you could start walking this
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: pathway that makes things better.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: And the thing is that as soon as you.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Start walking the pathway that makes things better, then things
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: immediately become better because your whole orientation changes. And you know,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: if you're in a bad place but you're escaping, that's
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: pretty positive. Even if it's a bad place and you
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: might think, well, it's still bad, but it's better, it's like, well,
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: that's a lot. That's a lot better than a bad
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: place that's getting worse, that's for sure, because that's hell.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Hell is a bad place that's getting worse, that's for sure.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: And so if you take the bad place and it's
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: getting better, well it's already not Hell.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: That's a start.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: And so this notion of love, we've confused this with
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: the maternal instinct for an infant. It's like, because an
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: infant under six months, it's like, well, of course, your
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: attitude towards an infant is you're exactly okay the way
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: you are, But that's not what you do to any
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: child that's older.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Than six months.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: You start laying down some criteria for becoming, for improvement,
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: and some of that improvement because we can define it. Well,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: there's nothing more perfect than a child than a baby.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, but that's not true if the baby's
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: fourteen years old. Right, it's true if the baby's six
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: months old and actually a baby. But by nine months, well,
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: the child is going to be start to interact socially,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: and now there's some principles that the child has to
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: learn to abide by so that social interaction is optimized.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: You want to take the infant who's entirely dependent and
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: turn them into something that's autonomous and then socially integrated,
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: and then socially integrated in a manner that's moving them
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: towards individual responsibility. And the love is not only love
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: that's devoted to what they are at any point, which
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: is that encompassing maternal love say, but the love that says, yeah, kid,
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: you know, we're pretty happy you're around. But the new
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: you is going to even be better. And that's encouragement,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: and that's part of love. It's half of love, that's
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: for sure. And you want to direct that to yourself
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: as well. It's like, you don't want to judge who
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: you are so harshly that you just destroy yourself and
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: everything is cast into the pit. You want to take
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: a look at yourself and say, look, you know, you're
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: a person among persons, and you have intrinsic worth, and
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: you have your flaws, your sins, your domain of ignorance
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: and inadequacy. But that doesn't mean that you're entirely worthless.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Because of that, you have a base level value that's
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: intrinsic worth. Let's say that that's reflective of the fact
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: that you're made in the divine image. In the most
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: fundamental sense, you have intrinsic worth, and that's due a
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: certain degree of baseline love.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: But there is the becoming problem. It's like, well, especially.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: When you're young, most of you is still in the
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: becoming phase, and so why wouldn't encouragement be the hallmark
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: of love.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: It's like, get the hell up, get your.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Act together, adopt some responsibility, put your life together, develop
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: a vision, expand yourself beyond the narrow confines that are
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: causing your misery.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: And we think you can do it. You could do it,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: you should do it.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: The world would be better off if you did it,
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: You'd be doing better. If you did it, everything would
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: work out better. Why would we not work to make everything.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Work out better? And you're the person who could do it.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: And you tell young people that, and they think, on
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: the one ever told me that before in that way?
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: And they think, well, maybe I should get my act together,
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: And then they go out and try to get their
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: act together. Then they think, well, ha, turned out that work,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: and I'm less miserable. I could try to do in
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: a little bit on a broader scale. They try it
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: out and they think, Wow, people seem a lot happier
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: with me. I have more friends, and I'm more popular,
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: and I'm a little more physically attractive because I'm standing
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: up a little bit straighter. And then away they go
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: and unfold man be a force for good in the world.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Then that'll be the adventure.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: Of your life. Aimless is not nothing. Aimless is bad.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: Who Nitia said, if you had a why, you could
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: bear anyhow, Most people find the meaning in their life
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: through responsibility. I believe the fundamental religious truth of the
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: idea that life is suffering. It's suffering because we're mortal
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: and fragile, and because we're also subject to malevolence at
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: our own hands into the at at the hands of others.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: It's a constant existential problem, and that can make you bitter,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: and can make you hopeless and nihilistic and depressed and
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: anxious and likely to abuse substances of various sorts as
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: a medication or an escape. It can augur you in
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: in a very large.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: Number of ways.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: And I'm suggesting to people that there is a way
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: out of that, and the way out is to confront
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: that forthrightly and to adopt responsibility in your own life
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: and to try to make the world a better place,
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: and that it's necessary to do that, and that if
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: you don't do that that things go badly. I think
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: the deck is stacked against everyone to some degree because
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: life is very difficult, and we all die so but people,
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: some people do have it harder than others, and all
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: of us have it very hard at some times in
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: our lives. It's like, well, what's the alternative? You take
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: responsibility for that and try to struggle uphill because the
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: alternative makes everything worse. Find something in your life that's
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: so worthwhile doing that. The fact that you're going to
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: suffer is justifiable. Yeah, life's rough, no doubt about it.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: And if good luck comes your way, then you should
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: be grateful for it. And if happiness manages to manifest itself,
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: you should be grateful for that too. So then you
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: might ask yourself, well, what's the best antidote to the
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: discomfort of life? And you might say, well, it's comfort,
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: and I suppose that's what you act out when you
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: swaddle a baby. But a better antidote is something like
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: adventure to excellence, and that's far better antidote to suffering
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: than the mere absence of suffering. So nut ring then
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: the mere absence of suffering. So not to say that
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: the mere absence of suffering, that's not nothing. I've been
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: a psychotherapist for twenty years. I've seen things you can't imagine,
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: horror shows that you can't fathom, and people who have
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: been hurt in so many ways, so many mentions. It's
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: like should they be bitter, should they be resentful? Should
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: they become violent? These things don't help. They have to
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: struggle uphill despite their excess burden. And it's responsibility, not guilt.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: It's the female crucifixion. So, and that's exemplified best in well,
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: the best portrayal of that I've seen is Michael Angelo's Pieta. No,
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: it's it's a statue of Mary and she has Christ's
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: body on her as an adult, on her lap, and
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: he's broken and destroyed, and you know she's displaying that.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: That's that's the bravery of a mother to allow that
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: to happen, but not only that.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: To facilitate it, facilitated Here you go.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Kid, Where you go?
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: Where you go? Well, why it's dangerous out there.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, no kidding, it's more dangerous here if
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: you stay with me by a lot. So you might
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: lose your body out there in the world, but if
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: you stay here, you lose your soul.
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's a pretty competitive world. There's lots of
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: competition for young men in particular, there's competition for status
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: and limited resources and for the attention of women. And
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: just because you're nice doesn't necessarily mean that you come
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: out particularly well in those competitions. I would like to
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: say that you should all be smarter, But I don't
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: know how you could be smarter. We don't know anything
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: about how to improve intelligence, and I suppose we don't
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: really know anything about how to improve industriousness either. But
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: I can tell you that people who are industrious come
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: up with a strategy for solving the problem that's ahead
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: of them, and then they do whatever they can to
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: stick to the strategy. And so, for example, if you
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: sat down today or tomorrow for a couple of hours,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: three hours, and you filled in a Google calendar whatever
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: you happen to use, with a strategy for studying and
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: a list of when all your assignments are due. In
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: all of that and when you're going to sit down
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: and study, then you won't be in a position where
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: you have to cram for ten hours a day hopelessly
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: right before or you know, an important exam.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: Is beautifully put that love is the highest ideal to
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: reach for, and truth is it's handmade. I try.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: I thought about that for a long time, right, this
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: hierarchy of ideal and the thing about truth, that bitter truth.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: Let's say that cynical truth is it can break the
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: shackles of naivety and actually a burn cynicism is a
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: moral improvement over a blind naivety, even though one is
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: in some ways positive but only because it's protected, and
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: the other is bitter and dark but still better. But
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: you're not done at that point, you're just barely started.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: I think optimally we exist to have something like a
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: playful adventure.
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: We're built for an optimal challenge.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: It's partly why we like to play, because in play
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: you find an optimal challenge. It's almost like the definition
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: of play.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: And so.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: If if you can organize yourself and the world optimally,
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: then you have adventure, and maybe you have the adventure
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: of your life. And if you can do that brilliantly,
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: then you can do it in a spirit of play.
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: That's what you need and want.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: I saw an endless repetition in my clinical practice and
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: in my own private life when my eyes were open
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: the consequences of not saying what was true. It's like
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: whatever hell you might fall into by opening your mouth
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: when you have something to say that isn't popular, it's
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: nothing like the hell that you're going to envelop yourself
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: in if you lose control of your own tongue and mind.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: And like I said, in my clinical practice, I never
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: saw anyone get away with anything even once. And so
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: all you have in this situation like that is what
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: is the truth? Now you know, of course you only
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: have your approximations to the truth. But that's better than nothing.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: And so you need to be afraid of the right thing.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: And you should be afraid of contaminating your soul with deceit.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: That's what you should be afraid of. What happens is,
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: you know, garbage in, garbage out, the old programmer saying goes,
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: And so you'll fill your head with nonsense and no
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: one will call you on it except you. But you
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: can still that voice if you try hard enough. You
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: just wait until you get in real trouble. You know,
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: one day they'll come a point where you have to
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: make a decision. And the decision is the difference between
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: life and death, or worse, between someone else's life and death,
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: or worse between health and the suffering. That's worse than death.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: And because you've compromised yourself to such a degree, you
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: will not be able to rely on your judgment, and
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: you will make the mistake you shouldn't make, and then
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: you're done, and that will absolutely happen. Yeah, well, I
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: mean you set what's great against what's trudgic. Yeah, I
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: mean what else could you possibly do? And so then say, well,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: how do you find what's great in your own life?
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: And part of that is you watch. It's like, when
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: is it that I'm doing something that alleviates my suffering?
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Right, it's a real you have to ask that question
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: to yourself.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Honestly, one of the things you have them do is say, well,
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: why don't you just watch for a week, like watch
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: yourself like you don't know who you are, and just
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: see when you're not quite as miserable, and then let's
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: see if we can figure out what it is about
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: what you're doing in that situation that's lifting the gloom.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: It's like, okay, okay, there's something in that that's curative, right,
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: And that's something in that that's curative is related to, well,
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: you might say your purpose. It's like, maybe part of
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: the reason you're depressed is because you're too isolated.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: And now we can work on that.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: So let's see if we can increase the amount of
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: time you're spending with your friends by like twenty percent,
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: or maybe you need a couple of new friends, or
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: maybe you need to work on your comic material, you know,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: because you can set that against the tragedy of life.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: I've been trying to figure out what gives people's lives meaning,
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: and if you look at it technically, in order to
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: have any positive meaning in your life, you have to
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: have identified a goal and you have to be working
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: towards it, and there is a technical reason for that.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: And the technical reason, as far as I can tell,
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: is that the circuitry that produces the kind of positive
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: emotion that people really like is only activated when you're
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: proceeding towards a goal that you value, and so that
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: means that if you don't have a goal that you value,
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: you can't have any positive emotion. So technically that's the
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: incentive reward system, and it's the underlying circuitry is dopaminergic,
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: and when that circuitry is activated, then it's part of
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: the exploratory circuit.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: It makes you.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: It gives you the sense of being actively engaged in
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: something worthwhile. You tend to think of positive emotion as
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: something produced by reward, but there's two kinds of positive emotion.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: One is the reward that's associated.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: With satiation, and that's consumatory reward, and that's the reward
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: you get when you're hungry and you eat. But the
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: thing about eating when you're hungry is that it destroys
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: the framework within which you were operating, and it's time
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: to eat. While you eat, and then that frameworks no
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: longer relevant. So the consumatory reward eliminates the value framework,
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: and then you're stuck with, well, what are you going
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: to do next?
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: And so the consumatory reward has with it.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: Its own problems, But the incentive reward is constantly what
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: keeps you moving forward. And incentive reward, because it's dopaminergic,
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: also is analgesic literally analgesics, So if you're in pain,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: you take opiates and that will cut the pain, but
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: so will psychomotor stimulants like cocaine or amphetamines. And so
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: it's literally the case that if you're engaged in something
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: that's engaging and you're working towards a goal, that you're
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: going to feel less pain. And you can see this
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: happening with athletes who you know they'll break their thumb
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: or something or maybe sometimes even their ankle, and they'll
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: keep playing the game. Of course, afterwards they're suffering like mad.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: But the fact that they're so filled with goal directed
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: enthusiasm means that, well, the pain systems.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: Are in some sense shut off.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: So that's an interesting thing because what it suggests, I mean,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: then you can imagine I might say, well, how happy
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: are you that you've made a certain amount of progress,
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: And if you think about it, what you'd say is, well,
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: it depends on how much progress and in.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Relationship to what.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: So hypothetically you're going to be happier if you've made
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: quite a bit of progress towards a really important goal.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: And then you have to think through what it means
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: for a goal to be really important, because that's not obvious.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: You could say, you're in this class and you're listening
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: to some information, and maybe there's two reasons for that.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: You might find the information interesting per se, but let's
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: forget about that for a minute. You need to listen
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: to the information so that you can do well on
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: the assignments, so that you can do well in the class.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: You need to do well in your classes so that
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: you can finish up your degree. You need to finish
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: up your degree so that you can find your place
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: in the world. You need to do that so that
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: you're financially stable and maybe you can start a family
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: and have a life, and that's all part of being
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: a good person something like that. And so that's a
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: hierarchy of goals, and you might say that being a
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: good person would be the thing, however vaguely thought through,
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: that's at the top of that hierarchy. And then when
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: you're doing things that serve that ultimate purpose, then you're
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: going to find those more meaningful. And that meaning is
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: actually produced as a consequence of the engagement of this
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: exploratory circuit that's nested right down in your hypothelamus. It's
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: really really old. It's as old as thirst, and it's
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: as old as hunger. It's really an old system, and
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: so you want to have that thing activated. It might
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: be that the sense of meaning that life can provide
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: to you is proportionate to the amount of responsibility you
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: decide to take on. That'd be very strange if it
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: was the case, you know, because responsibility, of course is
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: a kind of weight, obviously, and it's difficult to take
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: on responsibility. But if any positive emotion that you feel,
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: and your control of anxiety and the control over pain
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: is dependent on the activation of these systems that watch
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: you move towards a desired goal. Then the more complete
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: and weighty the goal is, the more kick.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: There's going to be in the observation that you're moving
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: towards it.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: And you know you kind of already know this, because
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: you'll have observed in your own life that when you're
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: engaged in something that you believe in, that the time
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: passes properly. You know you can see this even if
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: you're maybe you're reading a paper and it's actually related
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: in some intelligible manner to something that you want to learn.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: So even though it's difficult, you get engaged in it,
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: you can remember it better, you can process it better,
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: and you're not so likely to fall asleep, and you're
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: not so likely to want to find distractions.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: All of that, you can get into it.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: And it would be very interesting if that was proportionate
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: to the degree of responsibility that you're willing to shoulder.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: And I think you can make a strong case for that.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: I've also often wondered, imagine you could offer people a choice.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Here's the choice. You could say, well, your life isn't meaningful.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: The nihilists have got it right, there's no meaning in
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: your life, and because of that, there's no reason for
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: you to accept any responsibility. So you can live a
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: responsibility free life, and maybe one of impulsive pleasure seeking,
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: but a responsibility free life. But the price you pay
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: is that it doesn't get to be meaningful. Or you
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: could say to someone not, we're going to do the opposite.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: We're going to say, you can live a meaningful life,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: but it's only going to be as meaningful as the
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: amount of responsibility that you're willing to bear. And then
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: you might say, well, what would people choose, because everybody
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: also always makes noises about wanting to have a meaningful life.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: But if the price you pay for that is the
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: adoption of responsibility, then it's not so obvious that people
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: would choose meaning over you, over pointless pursuits if the benefit.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: They got for choosing the pointless pursuits was that they.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Really didn't have to care about anything ever did right,
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: it's no responsibility. When you go from a bad place
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: to a better place, you go to a worse place first.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: It's a great thing to know because it also tells
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: you why you might be unwilling to take the next step.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: You know you're aiming up, but in order to aim up,
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: you have to let go of something you already have,
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: and then that'll put you into a state of chaos.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: And unless you're willing to undergo that intermediary state of chaos,
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: and you might not recover from it, you're not going
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: to get to the next level. Many of you, I
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: presume have seen breaking bad. You have this ordinary high
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: school teacher who really thinks that he's an axe, and
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: his family as well, you know, like your typical persona
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: roughly speaking, he's just a normal guy. But part of
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: the reason that he's a normal guy is because he
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: actually hasn't been put in abnormal circumstances. And then all
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: of a sudden he is. And he has a genuine
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: moral conundrum. Right, he's going to die of lung cancer,
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: and he has a son who's got a lot of
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: health problems, and he's terrified that he's going to leave
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: his wife and his child behind with nothing, and so
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: he decides to do something that temporarily that he regards
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: as what they would normally regard as reprehensible, and of
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: course he just gets tangled up in that.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: But then, as the story unfolds.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: You see that there's it's more complicated because it's not
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: that he was just innocent, good guy and he decided
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: to turn bad. He's also very resentful and angry, and
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: it's partly because he's a bit of a pushover at
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: the beginning, or maybe more than a bit of a pushover,
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: and also that he didn't really fulfill his own potential
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: and that, you know, he had friends who walk down
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: the entrepreneurial path and maybe they weren't quite fair to him,
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: but whatever, he ends up not very successful as a
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: high school teacher. So he's really angry about that, and
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: so there's more motivation for him opening up the door
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: to the terrible elements of his personality than just the
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: fact that he's got good motivations to do so.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: And that unfolds, you know, so you see.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: The warps and twists in his resentful character increasingly manifest
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: themself as he walks down.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: This road to really total brutality.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: So it's one step at a time, and that's the
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: thing is that you end up in very bad places
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: one step at a time.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: So you've got to watch those steps.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: Sometimes you take a leap forward and you learn some things,
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: but you can't catalyze a new identity, so you try
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: to go back and hide in your old identity, and
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: that actually doesn't work because.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: Well, things have.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Changed and you've learned something, and that isn't who you
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: are anymore, and so it's like you have to cut
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: parts of yourself off in a destructive manner to fit
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: back into the person that you work. One of the
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: times in your life when you actually realize that you're
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: an individual is when you'll go and ask your parents
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: something and you realize they actually don't know any more
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: about what you should do than you do. That sucks,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: and that's partly why people are often willing to maintain
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: a tyrant slave relationship with their fathers. Like, on the
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: one hand, you have to be inferior in a relationship
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: like that, you know, you've always got the judge watching you.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: But on the other hand, there's always someone who knows
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: what to do. There's always someone standing between you and
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: the unknown that you can go ask what should I do? Well,
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: at some point you'll realize that the reason you can't
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: ask that anymore is because they actually don't know any
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: more than you do. And then that's a pain, like
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: that that is a symbolic death. And that's also when
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: you establish a more individual relationship with your parents. It's
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: at that point that you could conceivably start taking care
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: of them instead of the reverse. And that's a time
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: that should come. But you have to let that image
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: of perfection go, and that exposes you. When you're doubtful,
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: say you're trapped, you ask yourself, well, why am I trapped?
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: And that's a hard question, right. Some of it's your
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: own inadequacy. You ask yourself. You sit on the bed
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: and say, okay, man, I'm ready to learn something, like
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: what's one thing i'm doing wrong that I know i'm
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: doing wrong.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: That I could fix? That I would fix.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: It's like you meditate on that, you'll get an answer,
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: and it won't be one you want, but it'll be
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: the necessary one. We kind of experience life as if
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: we're tossed into it. You're male and not female, you're
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Hindu and not Christian, you're tall and not short. You
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: have an arbitrary range of talents and an arbitrary range
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: of limitations, none of which, in some sense.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: You chose. It's the cards you're dealt.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: Some of those are cards of privilege. Now, maybe you're
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: born intelligent, maybe you're born symmetrical, maybe you're born healthy,
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: maybe you're born into a culture where it's much easier
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: not to be absolutely deprived. And so all of that
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: in some sense is unearned. Now, the way you pay
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: for your privileges with your virtue. You have these opportunities
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: and this existential guilt, and the way you expiate that
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: and atone is by doing your best to live the
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: best possible life you can manage, to speak the truth,
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: to treat people with respect, to abide by the principles
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: of the dignity of the individual, and.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: To put your house in order.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: And that's how you pay for your unearned privilege.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: And we all have our privileges and our curses.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: All of us have thou that's why it's not useful
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: to be envious of people, Carl Jung said. People in
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: the modern world don't see God because they don't look
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: low enough. And so imagine you're in your messy bedroom
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: and you're sitting on the edge of the bed trying
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: to have an honest dialogue with yourself, and the little
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: voice says, you know, it's pretty disgusting in here, and
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: you think well, I'm way above such trivial niceties as
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: organizing my room.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Well that's pride.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: If you're above organizing what's actually yours, how in the
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: world are you ever going to organize anything else. Well,
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: it's time to take a brush to the toilet, and
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: maybe that's where you start, and that works. You start
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: making those micro improvements, like real micro improvements, real on
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: the ground, actual micro improvements to things you know that
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: are wrong. You'll improve unbelievably rapidly. Just look at how
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: much opportunity you have to make things better. Not that
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: it's easy to walk up hill and when you reach
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: the pinnacle of the hill you want to stop and
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: appreciate the vision.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: But the next thing you want is a higher hill
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: in the.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Distance, because it's from the uphill clim that we derive
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: our value.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: And I mean this technically.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Almost all the positive emotion we feel, especially the emotion
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: that fills us with enthusiasm that's experienced in relationship to
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: a goal.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: You want a goal that you can never attain.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: So you can always move closer to the goal that
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: recedes as you move towards it. You think, well, that's frustrating.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: It's like sisyphus pushing the rock up hill. But it's
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: not because as you pursue that goal, you put yourself together,
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: and your life does get better and richer and more abundant.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: You're here to live, not to sleep.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: The problem with the vision of my ties on the
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Beach is that, first of all, that's a vision of
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: drug induced unconscious business.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Second, it's only going to work for about a week.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Third, you're going to be a laughing stock in a
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: month and depressed and aimless. I think the right solution
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: to the most serious problems is to be found at
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: the level of the individual.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Jung said.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: For example, we all acted out a myth, and whether
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: we knew it or not, and you know, maybe you're
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: acting out a tragedy. Maybe you're acting out in narcissus.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: You don't know, because you've put that on yourself in
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: an attempt, in some ways, to deliver to people what
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: they want, or more accurately, to look as though you're
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: delivering to people what they want. Someone who's really infantile
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: and dependent, someone who's never left home, part of their
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: problem is that they haven't crafted a persona. So you
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: don't want to denigrate it entirely, but it's no substitute
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: for the real thing. And it turns out that not
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: only is what we want from each other the real thing,
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: but that's also the adventure of your life if you
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: aren't truthful, and that means, unfortunately, especially at the beginning,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: when you start to be truthful, it means deeply coming
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: to terms with your inadequacies in humility.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: So it's very painful.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: Without that, you don't have the adventure of your life
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: if you have the role that you've acquiesced to. In
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: my clinical practice, in twenty years working with every sort
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: of person you could imagine, I never ever saw anyone
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: get away with anything, even once. We're all subject, not
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: least to the judgment of our own conscience. Try to
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: escape from that. No one can escape from that.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: We have to.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Contend with that wisely. And then you ask, well, how
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: do you contend with things wisely? And I would say, well,
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: don't pollute your thoughts with deceit. You compromise your own wisdom.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: How are you going to make intelligence, not intelligent decisions.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Wise decisions. That's why you shouldn't lie.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: You're warping the mechanism that orients you in the world.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: I think Pinocchio is brilliant work of art. And if
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: you're a puppet and an actor, and Pinocchio is both
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: at times in that movie, both a puppet and an actor,
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: So why an actor? Like, why is there something wrong
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: with being an actor? Well, the first question is who
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: sets your role? And then the second question is who's
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: pulling your strings? Because you have to act out your
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: ideals to some degree, right, and you also have to
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: formulate a avatar of yourself in some sense. That's a mediator
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: between you and other people. You need this functional shell.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: The problem arises when that functional shell is all that
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: there is, and then the real person underneath is just
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: desperate and unhappy because nothing of what's being acted out
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: reflects a true, underlying reality. You don't want someone else's fate, man,
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: your fate's enough, So you speak truthfully and you watch
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: what happens. Well, Truth, beauty and love save the world.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Well you can find out. Don't overestimate yourself, but don't
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: underestimate who you could be.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: That's a much better way of thinking about it.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: You know, psychologists of the careless sort, I would say,
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: have been pushing the idea of self esteem for a
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: very long time, probably since the early sixties. You should
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: be content with yourself the way you are. It's like, no,
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: you shouldn't seriously like you're nowhere near what you could be.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: You're not even cloth right, And so that's a way
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: more optimistic message, like you ain't seen nothing yet.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: That's the right message.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: And so I would say, don't overestimate yourself now, but
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: don't underestimate your future self. And you have so much
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: influence as an individual if you get your act together
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: that you can't believe it. There isn't anything that has
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: more influence than that.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: You have all the.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: Power that there is right where you are to put
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: things right around you. You start now. You develop a
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: noble vision right of who you could be. You start
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: to put that into practice. Develop some discipline, familiarize yourself
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: with the great works of the past. Learn to read,
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: learn to write, learn to speak, learn to think.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: Man, you'll be deadly. What you could bring.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: To the table that hasn't been brought to the table
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: for years is an emphasis on individual responsibility. And the
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: right way to do that, as far as I'm concerned,
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: is to start with yourselves is develop a vision for
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: your life.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: You start thinking about if you could be who you
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: could be, what would that look like.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: That's the beginning of a mature philosophy of being. If
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: you could be the person that you would admire, who
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: would that person be? How would you configure yourself? How
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: would you configure your career, your education, your family, the use.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: Of time outside of work.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: If you wanted to be the noblest person that you
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: could be, who was adopting the maximum amount of responsibility,
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: how would that look.
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: Then you need a strategy to put that into place.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: And that's the way you change things properly, and also
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: the way you do the least amount of harm while
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: you're changing them. And so it should be an individual,
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: an individual focused set of ideas, and that way you
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: can sidestep the identity politics traps, and that would be
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: a very good thing. And I think a modern conservatism,
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: which isn't really all that distinguishable from a classical liberalism
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: as it turns out, is to put tremendous stress on
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: the responsibility of the individual. And one of the things
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: that's wonderful about that as far as I'm concerned, and
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: I made reference to this few minutes ago, is that
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: you need a meaning to offset the tragedy of life.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: Otherwise you just suffer stupidly, and you tend to make
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: people around you suffer the same way. The way that
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: you find that meaning is by adopting as much responsibility
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: as you can.
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: And what's also so fascinating about that is.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: You know you're characterized by an indefinite potential. It isn't
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: easy to understand exactly what that is, that potential, but
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: you know it's what people call you on when they say,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: you know you're not living.
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: Up to your potential. Whatever that is.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: That potential will be called forth from you as a
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: consequence of adoption of responsibility because it won't manifest itself
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: unless you take on a load. You're not going to
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: develop in all the ways you could develop unless you
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: set yourself a serious challenge, because it takes the challenge
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: to pull that out of you and also to motivate
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: you to rid yourself of all the weaknesses and personality
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: flaws that you've accumulated across the years and to let
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: those disappear and burn off. You need to load yourself
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: up before the demands of life will be such that
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: you will discipline yourself properly and a noble goal is
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: a very good way of beginning that. The truth of
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: the matter is, as far as I'm concerned, that each
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: of us has enough potential character, power of character, let's say,
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: if it's properly manifested, to contend with that in a
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: noble way and to rise above it and to transcend
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: and to deal with it in large part because we
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: can make the world a much better place than it
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: is for each of us individually, and for our families
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: and for our community, and we can constrain them malevolence,
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: at least in our own hearts, and perhaps have a
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: positive effect on those around us as a consequence, and
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: that actually does make things better, and we actually can
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: do that, and that's where the meaning in life is
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: to be found. And that meaning, you know, that goes
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: along with the adoption of that kind of responsibility, is
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: actually the antidote to the suffering. You know that perfectly well,
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: because all of you need a reason to get out
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: of bed in the morning, especially on a rough morning,
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: you know, when things aren't going so well in your life,
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: and there will be plenty of times when things aren't
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: going so well in your life, and you still need
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: a reason to get up and get moving and.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: Get out there.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: And if you have adopted the responsibility at an individual
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: level to make things better given how bad they are,
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: if you've adopted the responsibility to make things better, then
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: you have a reason to get up. And so one
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: of the things that I've been stressing to people is
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: that there's very little difference between the meaning in life
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: that gives you fulfillment and that engages you in existence,
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: and the willingness to shoulder as much individual responsibility as
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: you can possibly handle.
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: Those are the same things. And that's a really useful
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: thing to know.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: And you kind of know this, right, everybody knows this
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: because first of all, if you're not living up to
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: your responsibilities even to take care of yourself, the probability
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: that you're going to be ashamed of that at some
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: levels extraordinarily high. And so your own soul tells you
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: that you're in error, so to speak. But also, if
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: you look at who you spontaneously admire, which is a
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: good indication of where your value system really sits, you'll
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: see that the people you admire are always people who
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: take responsibility for themselves and responsibility for their family, and
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: responsibility for their community. Get your act together, you've got
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: things to do in the world. The absence of your
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: full being in the world leaves a hole that is
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: filled by terrible things.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: At minimum, So at minimum you.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: Have an ethical responsibility to ensure that the world doesn't
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: evolve into something approximating hell. And at maximum you have
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: the responsibility again, the ethical It is a heavy ethical
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: responsibility to do everything that's in your power to make
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: things as good as you can possibly make them in
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: this sophisticated manner that takes you and your family and
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: your community into account. And it's on you, right, And
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: that's meaning. You know will say, well, I'd like to
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: have a meaningful life. It's like, well, fair enough. But
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: the price that you pay for the meaning that transcends
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: tragedy is the adoption of responsibility for the catastrophe of existence.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: But that ennobles you, right, It makes you into someone
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: strong and someone competent in someone who who's worthwhile and
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: who lives in a manner that justifies their own suffering.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: And that's what There's nothing better than you could possibly
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: do than that. Although there is a very large number
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: of ways of looking at the world, or perhaps a
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: near infinite number of ways of looking at the world.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: There isn't a near infinite number of ways of acting
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: in the world in a manner that actually is successful,
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: and so there are constraints on how you can how
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: you can interact with the world in a successful manner.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: Let's assume that you don't want undoe pain and anxiety.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: We could just start with that, and I think that's
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: a reasonable proposition. You can tolerate some pain and anxiety
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: if it's in the serve of something greater, obviously, but
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: I just mean pointless pain and anxiety. We don't want
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: any more of that than is necessary. And that means
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: that you have to take care of yourself to some degree.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: But the manner in which you take care of yourself
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: is severely constrained. This is partly why you have to
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: be intelligent and careful and plot your way through life properly.
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: You have to take care.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: Of yourself today, but you have to take care of
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: yourself today in a way that doesn't interfere with you
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: taking care of yourself tomorrow and next week, and next month,
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: and next year and five years from now and ten
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: years from now. So you can't do just what you
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: want to in the next hour because if it's impulsive
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: pleasure seeking, let's say something like that, excess alcohol use
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: or excess drug use, or careless sexual behavior, or betrayal
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: of people to gain you some gain you something in
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: the moment, You're gonna pay for that. You're gonna pay
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: for it tomorrow. You're gonna pay for it next week
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: and next month and next year. Because you're going to
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: exist in the future, and because you have to live
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: with yourself, there's only a certain number of ways that
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: you can act that are going to work.
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: But it's more than that. It's not just that.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: You're responsible to your future self or the set of
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: all your future selves, is that you also have to
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: act in a way that works for your family, because
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: otherwise your family's going to disintegrate and break down and
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: cause you and them all sorts of misery and grief.
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: And not just your family now, but also your family
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: into the future. And then not just your family either,
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: but also your community. And so you have to set
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: your aspirations so that they serve you in the broadest
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: sense over a long period of time, and they also
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: serve your family, and they also serve your community. And
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: that's a very tight set of constraints. And I think
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: that the best solution to that set of constraints, from
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: a philosophical perspective, or maybe even a theological perspective, is
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: to view the world as a place not of groups,
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: but of individuals, of sovereign individuals who are responsible for
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: their destinies, responsible for their families, and for their communities.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: You learn to use minimal necessary force. It's like, you
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: don't defend yourself any more than you have to, like,
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: be careful, don't push any harder than you need to,
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: because all you do is you generate a counter force
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: by pushing harder than you need to. And then you're
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: in conflict, and you think, well, I like a little conflict.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: It's like, look, fair enough, a little conflict, man, no problem.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: It keeps your life kind of interesting. And maybe that's
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: on the problem solving edge. But a little conflict can
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: become a lot of conflict very very rapidly, and if
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: you have any sense at all, that's not what you want,
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: you know, especially if you have other things that are
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: better to do, and you should have other things that
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: are better to do.
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: Eighteen year old kids, one sentence, What would you say
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: to them? What's the restorative, the redemptive sentence. What should
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: they do?
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: Don't be thinking your ambition is corrupt, you know, because
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: that's part of the message now. And beings were a
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: cancer on the planet, were headed for an environmental apocalypse.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: The entire historical structure is nothing but atrocity, et cetera,
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: et cetera.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: Anyone with any ethical aim whatsoever is just gonna pull back.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: You don't want to manifest any ambition, support the patriarchal structure,
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: exploit the environment. You got to crush yourself down. You
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: shouldn't even have any children. It's like, no, there's no
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: excuse for that. There's zero excuse for that. I saw
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: a professor at an event something like this. He came
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: out and trumpeted this bloody environmentally friendly house he built.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: And you know, fair enough, man, it was a pretty
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: interesting house. But not everybody had the four million dollars
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: that it took him to build it. And I'm not
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: criticizing his money even it's like he's had some money.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: Good for him, he built a house, okay, But then
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: to trumpet that as a moral virtue, well, you're pushing
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: it there. And then he came out to all the
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: kids and he said, you know, my wife and I
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: decided that we're only going to have one child, and
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: I think that's one of the most ethical things we
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: could have possibly done. And I would strongly encourage you
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: to do the same. I thought, you, son of a
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: You get up in front of these young people. A
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: lot of these kids were children of first generation immigrants
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: from China, and he showed all these images, you know,
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: of these terrible factories in China, these endless rows of
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: sterile mechanism that were subordinating all the Chinese people to.
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: This terrible, you know, capitalist machine.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: And I thought, you don't understand half the audience is
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: looking at those factories and thinking that's a hell of
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: a lot better.
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: Than struggling through the mud under Mau buddy.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: And so I don't know where he thought he was,
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: but to come out in front of all those kids
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: and basically tell them that the whole human enterprise is
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: so goddamn corrupt that the best thing they could possibly
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: do is limit their multiplication, and to think of himself
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: as a scholar and educator. I did say something, by
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: the way, who was rather uncomfortable, and he stomped off
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: the stage.
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: But that's no message for young people's no, there's no
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: excuse for that.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: And you think, well, you know, we're going to destroy
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: the we have to do this, we have to demoralize
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: the youth to be ethical.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, really, that's your theory. You're going to
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: demoralize young people to be ethical. That's your theory. It's like,
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: you should go and think about that for like a year.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: And I'm passionate about this, you know, because you have
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: no idea how many people that's killing.
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: You have no idea. I see people everywhere all over
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: the world.
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: They're so demoralized, especially young people, especially young people with
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: a conscience, because they've been told since they were little
• 46:33
  Speaker 5: that there's nothing to them but corruption and power. It's like,
• 46:36
  Speaker 5: how the hell do you expect them to react?
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: If you orient yourself ethically in the most fundamental sense,
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: then in some sense you have the force of God
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: on your side, and then maybe you can prevail despite
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: the difficulty. And I think that's I think that's right.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: I think it's I think that's true. So and you
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: can ask yourself. I try to ask these questions seriously,
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: you know. And I would also say that I've been
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: driven to my religious beliefs such as it is by
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: necessity not by desire. What do you want to have
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: on your side when you're contending with the unknowable future
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: and its vagaries?
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: How about truth? How about beauty? How about justice? You
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: want allies? Those are powerful allies.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: People have to they have to act as ethically as
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: they are powerful. And so I've been trying to convince
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: people to do that, I suppose, or to put forward
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: not to convince them precisely, but to put forward an
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: argument about why that's necessary and why it's on them.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: It's like, no, this is on you. You got to
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: understand this, this problem, it's you. You don't get it right,
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: It isn't going to work. And so how do you
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: do that? While you start with what you have under
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: control in your own life, because where else are you
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: going to start?
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: You look to yourself, put your house in order.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: Don't be worried about some other person walking the satanic path.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: And that's what activists do all the time. Right, it's you,
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: it's the corporations, like it's someone else. No, No, it's you.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: And I think that's also fundamental to the Judeo Christian doctrine,
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: is that it's you, it's on you.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: Redemptions in individual matter.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: And so my hope is that if enough people take
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: themselves with enough seriousness.
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: Then we won't end up in hell, because we certainly could.
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: It's a high probability.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: And so, and I also don't think that you can
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: be or you can be motivated enough to put your
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: house in order to the degree that's necessary merely by
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: being attracted, let's say, to the potential utopia that might
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: emerge as a consequence of that. So that'd be a
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: vision of heaven. Let's say, No, you need to also
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: be terrified of hell. Think, well, there's no such thing.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: It's like, just because you haven't been there doesn't mean
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: there's no such thing. So like, you have to be
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: pretty bloody naive to think there's no such thing.
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: But how much evidence do you need and how does
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: it come about?
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: Well, it comes about at least in partial consequence of
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: the sins of men.
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: And I think that's true.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: So I go around and I talk to people as say, look, there's.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: Not only more to you than you know, there's more
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: to you than you can imagine.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: You have an ethical responsibility to act in that light.
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: And you might claim not to believe.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: That, But I would say, well, your whole culture is
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: predicated on that belief, and in so far as you
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: are an active member of that culture and a believer
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: in its structure.
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: Then you believe it.
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: You might not be very good at believing it, you
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: might be full of conflict and doubt, and you might
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: not be able to articulate it, but it's still right
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: at the bedrock of your culture. This notion of what
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: the divine sovereign individual is. That not what your culture
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: is predicated on, that idea, the logos inherent in each person.
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: It's something other than that.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: I've never seen a credible argument made to show that
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: it's anything other than that. You know, you can say, well,
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: rights are attributed to you by the state. It's like, sorry,
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: that's a weak argument, because the state's dependent on your actions.
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: So you know, to believe that, you have to believe
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: that the state is the entity and that individuals are
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: just subordinate in some fundamental sense to the state. It's like, no,
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: the state is dependent on the individual to exactly the
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: same degree.
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: So we're the active agent of the state in some sense.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: We're the seeing eye of the state, the speaking mouth
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: of the state, because the state's dead without the individuals that.
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: Compose it, sees Louise.
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: If I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, meaning
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: only all that exists is what we can perceive through
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: our senses, then not only can I not fit in religion,
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: dependent on brain, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry in
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: the long run, on the meaningless flux of the atoms,
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: I cannot understand how the thought of minds should have
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: any more significance than the sound of the wind in
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: the trees. You feel that one as well.
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, that's a complicated problem that.
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: First of all, I do believe that I don't think
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: science is possible outside of an encompassing Judeo Christian ethic. So,
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: for example, I don't think you can be a scientist
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: without believing, as an axiom of faith that truth will
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: set you free, or that will set us free. So
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: we don't know the conditions under which science is possible,
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: you know, and we tend to overestimate its epistemological potency.
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: It's only been around I mean, you can stretch it
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: back to the Greeks.
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: If you're inclined.
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: But in a formal sense, it's only been around for
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: about five centuries, and it's only thrived for a very
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: short period of time, and it's perfectly reasonable to assume
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: that there were particular preconditions that made its rise and
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: descendants possible.
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: It is a historical phenomenon. It happened at a specific
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: moment in time, right, and at least in principles for
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: conditional reasons. Yeah, And I think one of the conditions, well,
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: there's a bunch of them.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: One is, for example, there's an intense insistence in the
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: Christian tradition that the mind of God in some sense
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: is knowable. So we could say, well, the structure of
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: the cosmos, and you have to believe that that's the
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: case before you're going to embark on a scientific endeavor.
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: You have to believe that there's some relationship between logos logic,
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: let's say, but logos.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: Is a much broader concept than logic, that's for sure.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: You have to believe that there's some relationship between that
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: and the structure of the cosmos.
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: You have to believe that the.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: Pursuit of truth is in itself an ethical good, because
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: why would you otherwise bother you have to believe that
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: there is such a thing as an ethical good, and
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: those aren't scientific. Those are not scientific questions, which is
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: why I think the arguments of people like Hitchens are weak.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, Hitchens, Dawkins, people like that they have
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: a metaphysic which they don't know, and they assume that
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: metaphysic is self evidence, like well, sorry, guys, it's actually
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: not self evident. And they assume that it can be
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: derived from the observations of empirical reality. And the answer
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: to that is no, there's going to be axioms of
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: your perceptual system that aren't derivable from the contents of
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: your perceptual system. And you might think, well, that's not
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: very scientific. And I would say, well, take it up
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: with Roger Penrose and see what he thinks, because I
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: just talked to him for like three hours about partly
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: about this topic, about and say, the role of consciousness
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: and the structure of consciousness. And it's by no means
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: obvious that the materialist reductionists have the correct theory about
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: the nature of consciousness. And not surprisingly, it's like, we
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: don't understand the relationship between consciousness and being at all.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: The conditions of human life are such that suffering is
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: an integral part of existence.
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: Life is suffer.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: Why well, one reason is because of society's arbitrary judgment.
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: Every single one of us has traits and features and.
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: Quirks and idiosyncrasies that are far from ideal and that
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: are judged by the standards of society as insufficient. And
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: so you suffer because of your imperfect insufficiency in the
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: eyes of others. And you can certainly make the claim
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: that fairly frequently that's arbitrary. And so that's the claim
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: that society is tyrannical and judgmental and needs to be
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: constantly we constituted so that the tyrannical element doesn't take
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: full control.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: And fair enough, you have to stay awake so that
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: that doesn't happen.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: But the thing is, it doesn't matter what societ it is,
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: although they vary in the degree of their tyranny. The
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: mere fact that you're grouped together with other people and
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: have to come up with a common value structure in
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: order to live together means that many of the things
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: that characterize you are going to be suboptimal, and so
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: the price you pay for social being is that much
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: of you is deemed insufficient. Now, hopefully there are various
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: ways that you can be within a society that's sufficiently diverse,
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: so that you can find a place where what's good
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: about you in the eyes of others and perhaps in
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: your own eyes, can flourish of its own accord, because
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: you don't have to be good at everything.
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: If you can be good.
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: At one thing well enough, that might allow you your niche,
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: and hopefully a healthy society allows for that. Certainly societies
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: can become so tyrannical that they don't The other element
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: of it, clearly is the mere fact of the arbitrariness
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: of the natural world. If you have a lifespan that's
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: going to be counted in the number of decades that
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: you can out on two hands, and that has nothing
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: to do technically with the tyranny of the social structure. Now,
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: you could say, if we got to act together more completely,
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: perhaps you could live longer and fair enough. But the
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: fact of the limits of your lifespan and the suffering
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: that's necessarily a consequence of that, the death of your
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: parents and the death of most people that you will
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: know before you, means that that part of suffering is
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: an integral part of existence itself, and so that can't
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: be laid at the feet of an insufficient social structure,
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: except in so far as it's tyrannical and blind.
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: It's a condition of existence.
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: And then by the same token, you have your own
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: responsibility for some of your unnecessary suffering, because there's things
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: you could be doing to make your life better and
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: to make life better for other people that you know
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: perfectly well that you're not doing. So there's three reasons
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: why you suffer, and one is, well, look at you
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: and the way you're built. It's inevitable. There's not very
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: much of you and there's a lot of everything else,
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: and so you just don't last that long, and you're
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: fragile across multiple domains. And then you're harshly treated by society,
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: and there's no doubt about that.
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: And then there's responsibility that can be laid at your
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: own feet.
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: The proper pathway through that is to adopt the mode
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: of authentic being, and that is something like refusing to
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: participate in the lie, in deception and the lie, to
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: orient your speech as much as you can towards the truth,
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: and to take responsibility for your own life, and perhaps
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: also for the lives of other people. And there's something
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: about that that's meaningful and responsible and noble, but also
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: serves to mitigate the very suffering that produces, say the
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: nihilism or the flee into the arms of totalitarians. To
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: begin with, you need something to shelter you against your
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: own vulnerability, and you can adopt a comprehensive description of
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: reality that's formulated for you by someone else that neatly
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: divides the world into those who are innocent and perhaps
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: innocent victims, and those who are guilty and perhaps the
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: perpetrators of the suffering.
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: But none of that has anything to do with you.
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: And in addition, it's not a reasonable way of assessing
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: the world.
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: That the suffering is built in. The existentialist take is now,
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: that's just how it is. That's just how it is.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: You don't have to necessarily have done anything wrong for
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: things to get completely out of control. It's a terrifying doctrine,
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: but it's not a hopeless doctrine because it still says
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: that there's a way forward. There's a pathway forward, and
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: the pathway forward is to adopt a mode of being
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: that has some nobility so that you can tolerate yourself
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: and perhaps even have some respect for yourself as someone
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: who's capable of standing up in the face of that
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: terrible vulnerability and suffering. And that the pathway forward, as
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: far as the existentialists are concerned, is by well, certainly
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: by the avoidance of deceased, particularly in language, but also
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: by the adoption of responsibility for the conditions of existence
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: and some attempt on your part to.
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: Actually rectify them.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: And the thing that's so interesting about that is they're
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: up two as far as I'm concerned. And some of
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: this is from clinical experience. You know, if you take people,
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: then you expose them voluntarily to things that they are
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: avoiding and are afraid of. You know that they know
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: they need to overcome in order to meet their goals,
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: their self defined goals. If you can teach people to
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: stand up in the face of the things they're afraid of,
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: they get stronger. And you don't know what the upper
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: limits to that are, because you might ask yourself, like
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: if for ten years, if you didn't avoid doing what
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: you knew you needed to do by your own definitions,
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: right within the value structure that you've created to the
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: degree that you've done that, what would you be like? Well,
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: you know, there are remarkable people who come into the
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: world from time to time, and there are people who
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: do find out over decades long periods, what they could
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: be like if they were who they were, if they said,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: if they spoke their being forward, and they'd.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: Get stronger and stronger and stronger. And we don't know
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: the limits to that. We do not know the limits
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: to that.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: And so you could say, well, in part, perhaps the
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: reason that you're suffering unbearably can be left at your
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: feet because you're not everything you could be and you
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: know it. And of course that's a terrible thing to admit,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: and it's a terrible thing to consider, but there's real
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: promise in it, right, because it means that perhaps there's
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: another way that you could look at the world, another
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: way that you could act in the world, So what
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: it would reflect back to you would be much better.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: Than what it reflects back to you now.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: And then the second part of that is, well, imagine
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: that many people did that, because we've done a lot
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: as human beings, we've done a lot of remarkable things.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: I often ask undergraduates how many hours a day you
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: waste or how many hours a week you waste, And
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: the classic answer is something like four to six hours
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: a day, you know, inefficient studying, a watch things on
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: YouTube that not only do you not want to watch,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: that you don't even care about, that make you feel
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: horrible about watching after you're done.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: That's probably four hours right there.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: Now you think, well, that's twenty five hours a week,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: it's one hundred hours a month. That's two and a
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: half full work weeks. It's half a year of work
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: weeks per year. And if your time is worth twenty
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: dollars an hour, which is a radical underestimate, it's probably
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: more like fifty if you think about.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: It in terms of deferred wages.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: If you're wasting twenty hours a week, you're wasting fifty
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars a year, and you are doing that right now,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: and it's because you're young. Wasting fifty thousand dollars a
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: year is a way bigger catastrophe than it would be
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: for me to waste it, because I'm not going to
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: last nearly as long. And so if your life isn't
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: everything it could be, you could ask yourself, well, what
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: would happen if you just stop wasting the opportunities that
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: are in front of you. Most people find deep meaning
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: in their life as a consequence not of their rights
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: or their impulsive pleasures, even a consequence of bearing responsibility
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: for themselves, for their family, for their community. And the
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: heavier the responsibility, the better well.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: Professor Stephen Holking, before he died, gave me his last
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: television interview, and he said that the biggest threat to
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: the future of mankind was when artificial intelligence learned to
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: self design. What do you think the biggest threat to mankind.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: Is narcissistic compassion? Now AI's you know it's a threat too.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: But if we had our act together ethically, it's possible
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: that AI could become a useful servant rather than a
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: tyrannical master.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: You don't want to automate your tyrannical masters.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: The ideal that you're observing that makes you jealous and
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: resentful is in large part an illusion that's created by
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: your own mind. You know, I can give you just
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: one example, Like, I know a fair number of extremely
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: wealthy people, and I tell you, man, they have a
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: burden of responsibility that would crush me, would crush the
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: typical person. They're just working flat out, like ninety hours
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: a week. You know, they have their money and they
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: have their status, and that's not nothing, But don't be
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: thinking that there isn't a price to be paid for that.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: You know, they don't see their families. They're often divorced,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: they don't see their children grow up, and they don't
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: have time off.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: Now, there are.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: Wealthy what would you call playboy types, I suppose, who
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: live out the dreams of wealth of a foolish fourteen
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: year old, but they're not that common. And you have
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: to be careful of what you're jealous of because you
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: don't really know what it is.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: And then the other thing to understand.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: You're quite different from other people and you shouldn't be
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: comparing yourself to them because they're not like you. You know,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: they don't have your family, they don't have your temperament,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: they don't have your troubles, they don't have your abilities.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: The only person that has those is you. Compare yourself
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: to who you were yesterday and not to who someone
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: else is today.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: And see, that's a game.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: You can win because you could be a little better
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: today than you were yesterday. Most of the time, when
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: you're discussing something that needs to be discussed, everybody's actually
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: rather upset about it. You know, if you're actually talking
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: about something important, right, because why talk otherwise unless you're
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: just shooting the breeze. But if there's an issue at
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: hand that has to be discussed, then people are already upset
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: and they have different viewpoints, and the offensiveness in some
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: sense is built into that. And you know that because
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: if you have a family, if you have a wife,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: if you have an intimate relationship and you're discussing something
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: that's difficult, the probability that you're not going to offend
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: each other, if you're actually having the conversation is zero,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: And so you don't have to think unless you have
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: a problem. And if you have a problem, then when
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: you think, you're going to offend people, And so why
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: are we not going to think? That seems like a
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: bad idea. Liberals are higher in openness that's trait creativity,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: and lower in conscientiousness, especially orderliness, And that seems to
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: me because they believe or their niche is an informational niche.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: They believe that the free flow of information is worth
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: the risk. So that'd be the free flow of people
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: across borders, the free flow of ideas across borders, the
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: free flow of concepts across categories. They'd rather that the
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: borders were permeable. Now, the conservatives are low in openness
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: and high in conscientiousness, especially orderliness, and they take the
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: opposite attack. They think, well, yeah, there's danger in too
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: much openness. There's danger in borders that are too permeable.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: Things can change too fast. Entire societies can become destabilized,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: and everyone can end up not knowing which way is up.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: And the thing is is that both of those attitudes
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: are correct.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: It depends on the time. You know.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: Sometimes things are changing so fast that everybody's knocked off
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: their feet, and things are falling apart, and some things
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: are so rigid that there isn't any new water flowing.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: And everything's ground to a halt.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: You need liberals because now and then the right thing
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: to do is to come up with something new. And
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: you need conservatives because now and then the right thing
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: to do is to do what everybody has always done.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: And the reason you need political dialogue is so that
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: the liberals.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: And the conservatives can continue to argue about which of
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: those solutions is appropriate. Right now, the game of dividing
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: human beings up by their group identity ends in disaster,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: no matter who plays it, and no matter what the
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: reasons are.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: Adopt a stance.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: Of ready engagement with the world and to reflect that
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: in your posture. And the reason that I write about
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: lobsters is because there's this idea that hierarchical structures are
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: a sociological construct of the Western patriarchy, and that is
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: so untrue that it's almost unbelievable. And I use the
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: lobster as an example because the lobster we divulged from
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: lobsters in evolutionary history about three hundred and fifty million
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: years ago, common ancestor and lobsters exist in hierarchies and
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: have a nervous system attuned to the hierarchy, and that
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: nervous system runs on serotonin, just like our nervous systems do.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: And the nervous system of the lobster and of the
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: human being is so similar that antidepressants work on lobsters.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: And it's part of my attempt to demonstrate that the
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: idea of hierarchy has absolutely nothing to do with sociocultural construction,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: which it doesn't