Latest / Motivation Mindset Podcast / Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes: Jordan Peterson’s Motivational Truth

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Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes: Jordan Peterson’s Motivational Truth · 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.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: It's like, no, you're not, and the reason you're not
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: is good.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: You could be way more than you are. And so
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: what do you want to be? You want to be
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: okay as you are or do you want to strive
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: towards what's better? Human beings are insufficient and of themselves
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: and need the movement upward, and so they need to
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: conceptualize something like the highest good, and then to strive
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: for that. You should love and feel good about the
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: person you are now. And that's actually a dubious proposition
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: for a variety of reasons. One is, whatever yourself is
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: is not only what you are. Yourself is also what
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: you could become. And so to love yourself properly is
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: not only to love what you are, who you are,
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: whatever that means, but to love who you could become.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: One of the things things I've observed is that it's
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: very demoralizing for the typical young person who's miserable and
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: maladjusted psychologically and socially if you just go to them
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: and say, well, you should feel good about yourself because
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: they think you're good just the way you are. You're perfect,
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: just the way you are. You should accept yourself just
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: the way you are. It's like, well, okay, so what
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: does that say about who I should become? Is that
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: just now off the table because I'm already good enough
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: in every way?
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: So am I done or something? What about who I
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: should become?
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: And then, well, how should I feel good about myself
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: when I don't because I'm not getting along with myself.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: I'm anxious and hopeless and nihilistic and depressed, and I'm
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: not getting along with other people. So how is it
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: that that's all somehow something I should feel good about
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: without being deluded? And these are complicated questions because you
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: don't want to beat yourself with a stick, which might
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: be the opposite of that's, 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.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: And it's a much richer.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Conception because it also implies that there's a responsible adventure
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: to your life. You're not all you could be, and
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: there's pain in that, and there's the necessity for a
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: certain amount of judgment about that, and even a certain
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: amount of exclusion, because what you are that is insufficient
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: in some sense should be not be allowed to propagate further.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: But if it's conjoined with.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Encouragement, it's like yeah, you're in a rough situation there, kiddo.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: But you know, here's some things about you that are
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: virtuous and good and they're pretty powerful actually, and if
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: you just made those more manifest you could dispense with
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: a lot of this immaturity and misery and you could
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: expand yourself out into life physically and psychologically, and you
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: could start walking this pathway that makes things better. And
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: the thing is that as soon as you start walking
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: the pathway that makes things better, then things immediately become
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: better because your whole orientation changes. And you know, if
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: you're in a bad place but you're escaping, that's pretty positive.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Even if it's a bad place and you might think, well,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: it's still bad, but it's better, it's like, well, that's
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: a lot. That's a lot better than a bad place
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: that's getting worse, that's for sure, because that's hell. Hell
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: 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 3: 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 3: Than six months.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: You start laying down some criteria for becoming, for improvement,
• 4:41
  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 of value
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: that's intrinsic worth. Let's say that that's reflective of the
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: fact that you're made in the divine image. In the
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: most fundamental sense, you have intrinsic worth, and that's due
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: a certain degree of baseline love.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: But there's the becoming problem.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: It's like, well, especially when you're young, most of you
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: is still in the becoming phase, and so why wouldn't
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: encouragement be.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: The hallmark of love.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: It's like, get the hell up, get your act together,
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: adopt some responsibility, put your life together, develop a vision,
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: expand yourself beyond the narrow confines that are causing your misery.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: And we think you can do it. You could do it,
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: 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
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: everything work out better? And you're the person who could
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: do it. And you tell young people that, and they think,
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: although one I 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 doing it a
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: little bit on a broader scale. They try it out
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: and they think, Wow, people seem a lot happier with me.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: I have more friends, and I'm more popular, and I'm
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: a little more physically attractive because I'm standing up a
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: little bit straighter. And then away they go and unfold
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: man be a force for good in the world. Then
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: that'll be the adventure of your life.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Aimless is not nothing. Aimless is bad.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: Who Nitscha 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 number of ways. And I'm suggesting
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: to people that there is a way out of that,
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: and the way out is to confront that forthrightly and
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: to adopt responsibility in your own life and to try
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: to make the world a better place, and that it's
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: necessary to do that, and that if you don't do
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: that that things go badly. I think the deck is
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: stacked against everyone to some degree because life is very difficult,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: and we all die so but people, some people do
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: have it harder than others, and all of us have
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: it very hard at some times in our lives. It's like, well,
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: what's the alternative? You take responsibility for that and try
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: to struggle uphill because the alternative makes everything worse. Find
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: something in your life that's so worthwhile doing that. The
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: fact that you're going to suffer is justifiable. Yeah, life's rough,
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: no doubt about it. And if good luck comes your way,
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: then you should be grateful for it. And if happiness
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: manages to manifest itself, you should be grateful for that too.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: So then you might ask yourself, well, what's the best
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: antidote to the discomfort of life? And you might say, well,
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: it's comfort, and I suppose that's what you act out
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: when you swaddle a baby. But a better antidote is
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: something like adventure to excellence, and that's far better antidote
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: to suffering than the mere absence of suffering. So not
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: ring then the mere absence of suffering, So not to
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: say that the mere absence of suffering, that's not nothing.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: I've been a psychotherapist for twenty years. I've seen things
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: you can't imagine, horror shows that you can't fathom, and
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: people who have been hurt in so many ways, so
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: many mentions. It's like should they be bitter, should they
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: be resentful? Should they become violent? These things don't help.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: They have to struggle uphill despite their excess burden. And
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: it's responsibility, not guilt. It's the female crucifixion. So, and
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: that's exemplified best in well, the best portrayal of that
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: I've seen is Michael Angelo's Pieta. No, it's it's a
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: statue of Mary and she has Christ's body on her
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: as an adult, on her lap, and he's broken and destroyed,
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: and you know she's displaying that. That's that's the bravery
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: of a mother to allow that to happen, but not
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: only that, to facilitate it, facilitated.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: Here you go, kid, Where you go?
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Where you go? Well, why it's dangerous out there? It's yeah,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: no kidding, it's.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: More dangerous here if you stay with me by a lot.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: So you might lose your body out there in the world,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: but if you stay here, you lose your soul, 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.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: 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 burnt cynicism is a
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: moral improvement over a blind naivete, 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. Right.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: 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 1: And so.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: If you can organize yourself and the world optimally, then
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: you have adventure, and maybe you have the adventure of
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: your life. And if you can do that brilliantly, then
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: you can do it in.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: A spirit of play. 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
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: all you have in a 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 programmers 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 trudged. Yeah, I
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: mean what else can you possibly do? And so then
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: you say, well, how do you find what's great in
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: your own life?
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: And part of that is you watch.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: It's like, when is it that I'm doing something that
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: alleviates my suffering? Right, it's a real you have to
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: ask that question to yourself. Honestly, one of the things
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: you have them do is say, well, why don't you
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: just watch for a week, like watch yourself like you
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: don't know who you are, and just see when you're
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: not quite as miserable, And then let's see if we
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: can figure out what it is about what you're doing
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: in that.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Situation that's lifting the glue.
• 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, and.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: 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 1: It makes you.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: It gives you the sense of being actively engaged.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: In something worthwhile.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: You tend to think of positive emotion as something produced
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: by reward, but there's two kinds of positive emotion. One
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: is the reward that's associated with satiation and that's consumatory reward,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: and that's the reward you get when you're hungry and
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: you eat. But the thing about eating when you're hungry
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: is that it destroys the framework within which you were operating.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: It's time to eat.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: While you eat, and then that framework's no longer relevant.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: So the consumatory reward eliminates the value framework, and then
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: you're stuck with, well, what are you going to do next?
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: And so the consumatory reward has with it its.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: Own problems, But the incentive reward is constantly what keeps
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: you moving forward. An incentive reward, because it's dopaminergic, also
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: is analgesic literally analgesics, So if you're in pain, you
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: take opiates and that will cut the pain, but so
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: will psychomotor stimulants like cocaine or amphetamines. And so it's
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: literally the case that if you're engaged in something that's
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: engaging and you're working towards a goal, that you're going
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: to feel less pain. And you can see this happening
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: with athletes who you know, they'll break their thumb or
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: something or maybe sometimes even their ankle, and they'll keep
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: 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
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: enthusiasm means that, well, the pain systems are in some
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: sense shut off. So that's an interesting thing because what
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: it suggests I mean, then.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: You can imagine I might say.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Well, how happy are you that you've made a certain
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: amount of progress? And if you think about it, what
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: you'd say is, well, it depends on how much progress
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: and in relationship to what. So hypothetically you're going to
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: be happier if you've made quite a bit of progress
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: towards a really important goal. And then you have to
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: think through what it means for a goal to be
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: really important, because that's not obvious.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Towards a desired goal.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: Then the more complete and weighty the goal is, the
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: more kick there's going to be in the observation that
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: you're moving towards it. And you know you kind of
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: already know this, because you'll have observed in your own
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: life that when you're engaged in something that you believe in,
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: that the time passes properly. You know you can see
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: this even if you're maybe you're reading a paper and
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: it's actually related in some intelligible manner to something that
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: you want to learn. So even though it's difficult, you
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: get engaged in it, you can remember it better, you
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: can process it better, and you're not so likely to
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: fall asleep, and you're not so likely to want to
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: find distractions.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: 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 1: 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.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Here's the choice.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: You could say, well, your life isn't meaningful.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: The nihilists have got it right.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: There's no meaning in your life, and because of that,
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: there's no reason for you to accept any responsibility.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: So you can live a responsibility.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Free life, and maybe one of impulsive pleasure seeking, but
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: a responsibility free life.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: But the price you pay is that it doesn't get
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: to be meaningful.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: Or you could say to someone not we're going to
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: do the opposite. We're going to say, you can live
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: a meaningful life, but it's only going to be as
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: meaningful as the amount.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Of responsibility that you're willing to bear.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: And then you might say, well, what would people choose,
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: because everybody also always makes noises about wanting to have
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: a meaningful life. But if the price you pay for
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: that is the adoption of responsibility, then it's not so
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: obvious that.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: People would choose meaning over you, over pointless pursuits. If
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: the benefit they.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Got for choosing the pointless pursuits was that they al
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: really didn't have to care about anything they ever did.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: It's no responsibility.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: When you go from a bad place to a better place,
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: you go to a worse place first. It's a great
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: thing to know because it also tells you why you
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: might be unwilling to take the next step you know
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: you're aiming up, but in order to aim up, you
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: have to let go of something you already have, and
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: then that'll put you into a state of chaos. And
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: 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.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden he is. And he
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: has a genuine moral conundrum.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: Right, he's going to die of lung cancer, and he
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: has a son who's got a lot of health problems.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: He's terrified that he's going to leave his wife and
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: his child behind with nothing, and so he decides to
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: do something that temporarily that he regards as what they
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: would normally regard as reprehensible, and of course he just
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: gets tangled up in that. 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
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: fact that he's got good motivations to do so.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: 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: himself as he walks down this.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: 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 1: 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 that.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Actually doesn't work, because.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: Well, things have changed and you've learned something, and that
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: isn't who you are anymore, and so it's like you
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: have to cut parts of yourself off in a destructive
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: manner to fit back into the person that you work.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: One of the times in your life when you actually
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: realize that you're an individual is when you'll go and
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: ask your parents something and you realize they actually don't
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: know any more about.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: What you should do than you do.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: That sucks, and that's partly why people are often willing
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: to maintain a tyrant slave relationship with their fathers.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Like on the one hand, you have to.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Be inferior in a relationship like that, you know, you've
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: always got the judge watching you. But on the other hand,
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: there's always someone who knows what to do. There's always
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: someone standing between you and the unknown that you can
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: go ask what should I do? Well, at some point
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: you'll realize that the reason you can't ask that anymore
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: is because they actually don't know any more than you do.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: And then that's a pain like that that is a
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: symbolic death. And that's also when you establish a more
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: individual relationship with your parents. It's at that point that
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: you could conceivably start taking care of them instead of
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: the reverse.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: And that's a time that should come.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: But you have to let that image of perfection go,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: and that exposes you. When you're doubtful, say you're trapped,
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: you ask yourself, phil why am I trapped? That's a
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: hard question, right, Some of it's your own inadequacy.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: You ask yourself.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: You sit on the bed and say, okay, man, I'm
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: ready to learn something, like, what's one thing i'm doing
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: wrong that I know i'm doing wrong.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: 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 3: You chose.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: It's the cards you're dealt. Now, some of those are
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: cards of privilege. Now, maybe you're born intelligent, maybe you're
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: born symmetrical, maybe you're born healthy, maybe you're born into
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: a culture where it's much easier not to be absolutely deprived.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: And so all of that, in some sense is unearned. Now,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: the way you pay.
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: For your privileges with your virtue.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: You have these opportunities and this existential guilt, and the
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: way you expiate that and atone is by doing your
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: best to live the best possible life you can manage,
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: to speak the truth, to treat people with respect, to
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: abide by the principles of the dignity of the individual,
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: and to put your house in order. And that's how
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: you pay for your unearned privilege.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: 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 3: 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 3: But the next thing you want is a higher hill
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: 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 3: 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 3: 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.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: You think, well, that's frustrating. It's like Ziziphus pushing the
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: rock up hill. But it's not because.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: As you pursue that goal, you put yourself together and
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: your life does get better and richer and more abundant.
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: 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 unconsciousiness.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: 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.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: To be found at the level of the individual. Jung said.
• 30:18
  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
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: and dependent, someone who's never left home. Part of their
• 30:44
  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
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: to terms with your inadequacies in humility. 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. We
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: have to contend with that wisely. And then you ask, well,
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: how 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 2: wise decisions. That's why you shouldn't lie. You're warping the
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: mechanism that orients you.
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: In the world. I think Pinocchio is brilliant work of art.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: And if you're a puppet and an actor, and Pinocchio
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: is both at times in that movie, both a puppet
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: and an actor, So why an actor? Like, why is
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: there something wrong with being an actor? Well, the first
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: question is who sets your role? And then the second
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: question is who's pulling your strings? Because you have to
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: act out your ideals to some degree, right, and you
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: also have to formulate a avatar of yourself in some sense.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: That's a mediator between you and other people.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: 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. That's a much better way
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: of thinking about it. You know, psychologists of the careless sort,
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: I would say, have been pushing the idea of self
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: esteem for a very long time, probably since the early sixties.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: You should be content with yourself the way you are.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: It's like, no, you shouldn't seriously like you're nowhere near
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: what you could be.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: You're not even cloth.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: Right, And so that's a way more optimistic message, like
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: you ain't seen nothing yet.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: 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
• 34:12
  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. You have all the power that
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: there is right where you are to put things right
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: around you.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: You start now.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: You develop a noble vision right of who you could be.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: You start to put that into practice. Develop some discipline,
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: familiarize yourself with the great works of the past.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Learn to read, learn to write, learn to speak, learn
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: to think. 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. You start thinking about if you could be
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: who you could be. What would that look like. That's
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: the beginning of a mature philosophy of being. If you
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: could be the person that you would admire, who would
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: that person be? How would you configure yourself? How would
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: you configure your career, your education, your family, the use
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: of time outside of work. If you wanted to be
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: the noblest person that you could be, who was adopting
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: the maximal amount of responsibility, how would that look? Then
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: you need a strategy to put that into place. And
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: that's the way you change things properly, and also the
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: way you do the least amount of harm while you're
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: changing them. And so it should be an individual, an
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: individual focused set of ideas, and that way you can
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: sidestep the identity politics traps, and that would be a
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: very good thing.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: And I think a modern.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Conservatism, which isn't really all that distinguishable from a classical
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: liberalism as it turns out, is to put tremendous stress
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: on the responsibility of the individual. And one of the
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: things that's wonderful about that, as far as I'm concerned,
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: and I've made reference to this you minutes ago, is
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: that you need a meaning to offset the tragedy of life.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: Otherwise you just suffer stupidly, and you tend to make
• 36:08
  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. And what's also so fascinating about that
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: is you know you're characterized by an indefinite potential. It
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: isn't easy to understand exactly what that is, that potential,
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: but you know it's what people call you on when
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: they say, you know you're not living up to your potential.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Whatever that is. That potential will be called forth from you.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: As a consequence of adoption of responsibility because it won't
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: manifest itself unless you take on a load. You're not
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: going to develop in all the ways you could develop
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: unless you set yourself a serious challenge, because it takes
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: the challenge to pull that out of you and also
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: to motivate you to rid yourself of all the weaknesses
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: and personality flaws that you've accumulated across the years and to.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Let those disappear and burn on.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: You need to load yourself up before the demands of
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: life will be such that you will discipline yourself properly.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: And a noble goal is a very good way of
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: beginning that the truth of the matter is, as far
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: as I'm concerned that each of us has enough potential character,
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: power of character, let's say, if it's properly manifested, to
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: contend with that in a noble way and to rise
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: above it and to transcend and to deal with it
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: in large part because we can make the world a
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: much better place than it is for each of us individually,
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: and for our families and for our community, and we
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: can constrain them malevolence, at least in our own hearts,
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: and perhaps have a positive effect on those around us
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: as a consequence, and that actually does make things better,
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: And we actually can do that, and that's where the
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: meaning in life is to be found. And that meaning,
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: you know, that goes along with the adoption of that
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: kind of responsibility, is actually the antidote to the suffering.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: You know that perfectly well, because all of you need
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: a reason to get out of bed in the morning,
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: especially on a rough morning, you know, when things aren't
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: going so well in your life, and there will be
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: plenty of times when things aren't going so well in
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: your life, and you still need a reason to get
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: up and get moving and get out there, and if
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: you have adopted the responsibility at an individual level to
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: make things better given how bad they are, if you've
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: adopted the responsibility to make things better, then you have
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: a reason to get up. And so one of the
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: things that I've been stressing to people is that there's
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: very little difference between the meaning in life that gives
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: you fulfillment and that engages you in existence, and the
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: willingness to shoulder as much individual responsibility as you can
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: possibly handle. Those are the same things. And that's a
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: really useful thing to know. And you kind of know this, right.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: Everybody knows this because first of all, if you're not
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: living up to your responsibilities even to take care of yourself,
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: the probability that you're going to be ashamed of that
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: at some levels extraordinary high. And so your own soul
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: tells you that you're in error, so to speak. But
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: also if you look at who you spontaneously admire, which
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: is a good indication of where your value system really sits,
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: you'll see that the people you admire are always people
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: who take responsibility for themselves and responsibility for their family,
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: and responsibility for their community.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: Get your act together. You've got things to do in
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: the world.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: The absence of your full being in the world leaves
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: a hole that is filled by terrible things.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: At minimum, So at minimum you have an.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: Ethical responsibility to ensure that the world doesn't evolve into
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: something approximating hell.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: And at maximum you.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: Have the responsibility again, the ethical It is a heavy
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: ethical responsibility to do everything that's in your power to
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: make things as good as you can possibly make them
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: in this sophisticated manner that takes you and your family
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: and your community into account. And it's on you, right,
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: And that's meaning. You know, we'll say, well, I'd like
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: to have a meaningful life. It's like Bob fair enough.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: But the price that you pay for the meaning that
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: transcends tragedy is the adoption of responsibility for the catastrophe
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: of existence.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: But that ennobles you, right.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: It makes you into someone strong and someone competent in
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: someone who who's worthwhile and who lives in a manner
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: that justifies their own suffering. And that's what There's nothing
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: better than you could possibly do than that. Although there
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: is a very large number of ways of looking at
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: the world, or perhaps a near infinite number of ways
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: of looking at the world, there isn't a near infinite
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: number of ways of acting in the world in a
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: manner that actually is successful, and so there are constraints
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: on how you can how you can interact with the
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: world in a successful manner. Let's assume that you don't
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: want undoe pain and anxiety. We could just start with that,
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: and I think that's a reasonable proposition. You can tolerate
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: some pain and anxiety if it's in the serve of
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: something greater, obviously, but I just mean pointless pain and anxiety.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: We don't want any more of that than is necessary.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: And that means that you have to take care of
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: yourself to some degree. But the manner in which you
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: take care of yourself is severely constrained. This is partly
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: why you have to be intelligent and careful and plot
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: your way through life properly. 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, the 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 1: 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 1: And not just your.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: Family now, but also your family into the future. And
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: then not just your family either, but also your community.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: And so you have to set your aspirations so that
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: they serve you in the broadest sense over a long
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: period of time, and they also serve your family, and
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: they also serve your community. And that's a very tight
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: set of constraints and I think that the best solution
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: to that set of constraints, from a philosophical perspective, or
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: maybe even a theological perspective, is to view the world
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: as a place not of groups, but of individuals, of
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: sovereign individuals who are responsible for their destinies, responsible for
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: their families, and for their communities. You learn to use
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: minimal necessary force. It's like, you don't defend yourself any
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: more than you have to, like, be careful, don't push
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: any harder than you need to, because all you do
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: is you generate a counter force by pushing harder than
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: you need to. And then you're in conflict, and you think, well,
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: I like a little conflict. It's like, look, fair enough,
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: a little conflict, man, no problem. It keeps your life
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: kind of interesting. And maybe that's on the problem solving edge.
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: But a little conflict can become a lot of conflict,
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: very very rapidly, and if you have any sense at all,
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: that's not what you want, you know, especially if you
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: have other things that are better to do, and you
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: should have other things that 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 beings where a cancer
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: on the planet. We're headed for an environmental apocalypse. The
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: entire historical structure is nothing but atrocity, et cetera, et cetera.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: You got to crush yourself down. You shouldn't even have
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: any children.
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: It's like, no, there's no excuse for that. There's zero
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: excuse for that. I saw a professor at an event
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: something like this. He came out and trumpeted this bloody
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: environmentally friendly house he built. And you know, fair enough, man,
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: it was a pretty interesting house. But not everybody had
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: the four million dollars that it took him to build it.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: And I'm not criticizing his money even it's like he's
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: had some money. Good for him, he built a house, okay,
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: But then to trumpet that as a moral virtue, well,
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: you're pushing it there. And then he came out to
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: all the kids and he said you know, my wife
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: and I decided that we're only going to have one child.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: And I think that's one of the most ethical things
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: we could have possibly done. And I would strongly encourage
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: you to do the same. I thought, you, son of
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: a You get up in front of these young people.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: A lot of these kids were children of first generation
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: immigrants 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 1: 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 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 is rather uncomfortable, and he stomped off
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: the stage. But that's no message for young people. There's
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: no excuse for that. And you think, well, you know,
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: we're going to.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Destroy the place it. We have to do this, we
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: have to demoralize the youth to be ethical. It's like, yeah, really,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: that's your theory. You're going to demoralize young people to
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: be ethical. That's your theory. It's like, you should go
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: 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 1: You have no idea. I see people everywhere all over
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: It's like, 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.
• 46:54
  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 ques 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 necessity,
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: not by desire. What do you want to have on
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: your side when you're contending with the unknowable future and
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: its vagaries about truth?
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: How about beauty? How about justice? You want allies? Those
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: 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, now 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? You look to yourself, put your house
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: in order. Don't be worried about some other person walking
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: the satanic path.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: And that's what activists do all the time. Right, it's you.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: 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 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, then we won't end up in hell,
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: because we certainly could.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: So that'd be a vision of heaven. Let's say, no,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: you need to also be terrified of hell.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: Think, well, there's no such thing. It's like, just because
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: you haven't been there doesn't mean there's no such thing.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: So you have to be pretty bloody naive to think
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: there's no such thing.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: How much evidence do you need and how does it
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: come about?
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: Well, it comes about at least in partial consequence of
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: the sins of men. And I think that's true. So
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: I go around and I talk to people. I say, look,
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: there's not only more to you than you know, there's
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: more to you than you can imagine. You have an
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: ethical responsibility to act in that light. And you might
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: claim not to believe that but I would say, well,
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: your whole culture is predicated on that belief, and insofar
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: as you are an active member of that culture and
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: a believer in its structure.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: This notion of what the divine sovereign individual is.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: That not what your culture is predicated on, that idea,
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: the logos inherent in each person. It's something other than that.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: I've never seen a credible argument made to show.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: That it's anything other than that.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: You know, you can say, well, rights are attributed to
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: you by the state. It's like, sorry, that's a weak argument,
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: because the state's dependent on your actions. So you know,
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: to believe that, you have to believe that the state
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: is the entity and that individuals are just subordinate in
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: some fundamental sense to the state. It's like, no, the
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: state is dependent on the individual to exactly the same degree.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: 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 1: 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. M You feel that one as well.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: 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,
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: and we tend to overestimate its epistemological potency.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: It's only been around.
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, you can stretch it back to the Greeks
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: if you're inclined, But in a formal sense, it's only
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: been around for about five centuries, and it's only thrived
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: for a very short period of time, and it's perfectly
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: reasonable to assume that there were particular preconditions that made
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: its rise and descendants possible.
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: It is a historical phenomenon. It happened at a specific
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: moment in time, right.
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: And at least in principles for conditional reasons, yeah, I
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: think one of the conditions, well, there's a bunch of them.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: One is, for example, there is an intense insistence in
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: the Christian tradition that the mind of God in some
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: sense is knowable. So we could say, well, the structure
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: of the cosmos, and you have to believe that that's
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: the 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.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: But logos is a.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: Much broader concept than logic, that's for sure. You have
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: to believe that there's some relationship between that and the
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: structure of the cosmos. 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 1: Life is suffering?
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: Why well, one reason is because of society's arbitrary judgment.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: Every single one of us has traits and features and.
• 54:16
  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 constituted so that the tyrannical element doesn't take full control,
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: and fair enough, you have to stay awake so that
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: that doesn't happen. But the thing is, it doesn't matter
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: what societ idea it is, although they vary in the
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: degree of their tyranny. The mere fact that you're grouped
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: together with other people and have to come up with
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: a common value structure in order to live together means
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: that many of the things that characterize you are going
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: to be suboptimal. And so the price you pay for
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: social being is that much of you is deemed insufficient. Now,
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: hopefully there are various ways that you can be within
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: a society that's sufficiently diverse, so that you can find
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: a place where what's good about you in the eyes
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: of others and perhaps in your own eyes, can flourish
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: of its own accord, because you don't have to be
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: good at everything.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: Certainly societies can become so tyrannical.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: That they don't The other element of it, clearly is
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: the mere fact of the arbitrariness of the natural world.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: If you have a lifespan.
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: That's going to be counted in the number of decades
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: that you can out on two hands, and that has
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: nothing 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
• 56:28
  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 1: 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.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: At you and the way you're built. It's inevitable.
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: There's not very much of you, and there's a lot
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: of everything else, and so you just don't last that long,
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: and you're fragile across multiple domains. And then you're harshly
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: treated by society, and there's no doubt about that.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: And then there's responsibility that can be laid at your
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: own feet. The proper pathway through that is to.
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: Adopt the mode of.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: Authentic being, and that is something like refusing to participate
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: in the lie in deception and the lie, to orient
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: 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.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: The arms of totalitarians.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: To begin with, you need something to shelter you against
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: your own vulnerability, and you can adopt a comprehensive description
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: of reality that's formulated for you by someone else that
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: neatly divides the world into those who are innocent and
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: perhaps innocent victims, and those who are guilty and perhaps
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: the perpetrators of the suffering.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: 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 that the suffering is built in.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: The existentialist take is now, that's just how it is.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: 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
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: by the adoption of responsibility for the conditions of existence
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: and some attempt on your part.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: To actually rectify them.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: And the thing that's so interesting about that is there
• 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,
• 59:42
  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 1: Get stronger and stronger and stronger. And we don't know
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: the limits to that. We do not know the limits
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: 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 2: than what it reflects back to you now. And then
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: the second part of that is, well, imagine that many
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: people did that, because we've done a lot as human beings,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: we've done a lot of remarkable things. I often ask
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: undergraduates how many.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: Hours a day you waste or how many hours a
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: week you waste.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: And the classic answer is something like four to six
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: hours a day, you know, inefficient studying, watching 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 1: 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 1: It's one hundred hours a month. That's two and a
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: half full work weeks. It's half a year of work
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: weeks per year.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: And if your time is worth twenty dollars an hour,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: which is a radical underestimate, it's probably more.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: Like fifty if you think about it in terms of
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: 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 1: And it's because you're young.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: Wasting fifty thousand dollars a year is a way bigger
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: catastrophe than it would be for me to waste it,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: because I'm not going to.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: Last nearly as long.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: And so if your life isn't everything it could be,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: you could ask yourself, well, what would happen if you
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: just stopped wasting the opportunities that are in front of you.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: You need something meaningful, just set against suffering. That's what
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: you have to set against suffering, not happiness.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: Sometimes you don't have.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: That's not an option.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: Sometimes happiness is like, you know, I don't think I
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: had any happiness at all for three years pretty much when.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: It was dire. Well.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: My wife, she spent a year hovering on the brink
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: of death in a variety of different ways. Before that,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: my daughter had catastrophic health problems, which have mostly resolved,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: and then I got extremely ill. So we've been in
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: and at the same time, we were facing the social
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: pressure of like an unparalleled magnitude people trying to, you know,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: bring this enterprise to a halt. I suppose, if that's
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: probably the right way to think about it. Most of
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: that time I was hoping that I would die. I've
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: been grateful for the good things that have happened to me,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: but I don't think I was grateful enough before, just
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: for mundane normality, you know.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: You think you don't have everything you could have, and
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: perhaps that's true, But if you can sit down and breathe,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: there's lots people who don't have that. Life is brutally difficult.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: And sometimes unbearably brutally difficult.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: And you can see the progressive playing with that notion.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: It's warped into this sense of victimization, but it does
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: reflect some understanding of the underlying tragic reality of life,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: and so it's good to get that right out on
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: the table to begin with. Say, well, you're miserable. You
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: have your reasons, and they might be deep reasons. But
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: if you let the misery demoralize you and make you
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: bitter and cynical and cowardly and make you withdraw, then,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: first of all, that's a failure in the highest sense
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: on your part, and all it's going to do is
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: make everything worse. And then you might think, well, what
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: do you have to respond to that? How do you
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: respond to that catastrophe and challenge? And the answer is
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: terrible as things are, there's a lot more to you
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: than you can possibly imagine, and that if you face
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: those things forthrightly and with some faith and courage.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: Then you.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: Can have the adventure of your life and prevail even
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: over catastrophe. People have difficult lives, and that life itself
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: is full of suffering, and that we make it worse
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: with our own voluntary stupidity and willful blindness, and even malevolence,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: and that's what we contend with, you know, we contend
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: with suffering and malevolence, and as a consequence, it's necessary
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: to pursue something that has substantive meaning to set against that.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: And I think that it's self evident once it's articulated anyways,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: that most people find deep meaning in their life as
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: a consequence not of their rights or their impulsive pleasures
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: even but as a consequence of bearing responsibility for themselves,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: for their family, for their community. And the heavier the responsibility,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: the better well. Professor Stephen Holking, before he died, gave
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: me his last television interview, and he said that the
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: biggest threat to the through mankind was when artificial intelligence
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: learned to self design.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: What do you think the biggest threat to mankind is?
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: Narcissistic compassion?
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: Now AI's you know it's a threat too, But I
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: were if we had our act together ethically, it's possible
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: that AI could become a useful servant rather than a
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: tyrannical master.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: You don't want to automate your tyrannical masters.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: The ideal that you're observing that makes you jealous and
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: resentful is in large part an illusion that's created by
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: your own mind. You know, I can give you just
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: one example, like, I know a fair number of extremely
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: wealthy people, and I tell you, man, they have a
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: burden of responsibility that would crush me, would crush the
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: typical person. They're just working flat out, like ninety hours
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: a week. You know, they have their money and they
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: have their status, and that's not nothing. But don't be
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: thinking that there isn't a price to be paid for that.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: You know, they don't see their families. They're often divorced,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: they don't see their children grow up.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: And they don't have time off.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: Now, there are wealthy what would you call playboy types
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: I suppose, who live out the dreams of wealth of
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: a foolish fourteen year old, But they're not that common.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: And you have to be careful of what you're jealous
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: of because you don't really know what it is.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: And then the other thing to understand.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: You're quite different from other people and you shouldn't be
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: comparing yourself to them because.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: They're not like you.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: You know, they don't have your family, they don't have
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: your temperament, they don't have your troubles. They don't have
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: your abilities. The only person that has those is you
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: compare yourself to who you were yesterday and not to
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: who someone else is today. And see, that's a game
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: you can win because you could be a little better.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: Today than you were yesterday.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: Most of the time, when you're discussing something that needs
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: to be discussed, everybody's actually rather upset about it. You know,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: if you're actually talking about something important, right, because why
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: talk otherwise unless you're just shooting the breeze. But if
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: there's an issue at hand that has to be discussed,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: then people are already upset and they have different viewpoints, and
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: the offensiveness in some sense is built into that. And
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: you know that because if you have a family, if
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: you have a wife, if you have an intimate relationship
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: and you're discussing something that's difficult, the probability that you're
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: not going to offend each other if you're actually having
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: the conversation is zero, And so you don't have to
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: think unless you have a problem. And if you have
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: a problem, then when you think, you're going to offend people,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: and so what are we not going to think?
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: That seems like a bad idea.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: Liberals are higher in openness that's trait creativity, and lower
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: in conscientiousness, especially orderliness, And that seems to me because
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: they believe or their niche is an informational niche. They
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: believe that the free flow of information is worth the risk.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: So that'd be the free flow of people across borders,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: the free flow of ideas across borders, the free flow
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: of concepts across categories. They'd rather that the borders were permeable. Now,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: the conservatives are low in openness and high in conscientiousness,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: especially orderliness, and they take the opposite attack. They think, well, yeah,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: there's danger in too much openness. There's danger in borders
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: that are too permeable. Things can change too fast. Entire
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: societies can become destabilized, and everyone can end up not
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: knowing which way is up. And the thing is is
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: that both of those attitudes are correct. It depends on
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: the time.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 5: You know.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: Sometimes things are changing so fast that everybody's knocked off
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: their feet and things are falling apart. And sometimes things
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: are so rigid that there isn't any new water flowing
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: and everything's ground to a halt. You need liberals because
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: now and then the right thing to do is to
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: come up with something new. And you need conservatives because
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: now and then the right thing to do is to
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: do what everybody has always done. And the reason you
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: need political dialogue is so that the liberals and the
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: conservatives can continue to argue about.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: Which of those solutions is appropriate.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 6: Right now, the game of dividing human beings up by
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 6: their group identity ends in disaster, no matter who plays it,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 6: and no matter what the reasons are.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: Adopt a stance.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: Of ready engagement with the world and to reflect that
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: in your posture. And the reason that I write about
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: lobsters is because there's this idea that hierarchical structures are
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: a sociological construct of the Western patriarchy, and that is
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: so untrue that it's almost unbelievable. And I use the
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: lobster as an example, because the lobster we divulged from
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: lobsters in evolutionary history about three hundred and fifty million
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: years ago. Common ancestor and lobsters exist in hierarchies, and
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: they have a nervous system attuned to the hierarchy, and
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: that nervous system runs on serotonin, just like our nervous
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: systems do. And the nervous system of the lobster and
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: of the human being is so similar that antidepressants work
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: on lobsters. And it's part of my attempt to demonstrate
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: that the idea of hierarchy has absolutely nothing to do
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: with sociocultural construction, which it doesn't