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In Hard Times, We Grow the Most: Strength Through Adversity · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Modern people think the fundamental issue is do you believe
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: in God? But that's not the fundamental issue. The fundamental
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: issue is what do you mean by God? And so
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: let me give you an example of this that will
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: make it clearer. So there's no there's a medieval idea
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: that God is the summum bonum, which means the sum
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: of all that's good, or the essence of all that's good. Okay,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: you might say, well, I don't believe in that. Now,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: remember this is a definition of God, right, God is
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the sum of all that's good. Okay, all right, so
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: you don't believe in that. All right, let's take that apart.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Do you believe that some things.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Are better than other things? Well? People will say yes, okay,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: So then you believe that there is a scale of good. Okay,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: is there something that all things that are good share
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: in common? And the answer that has to be yes,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: because otherwise you don't have a conception of good. Right,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: The word good implies that across good things, there's some essence. Okay, Well,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: the definition the medieval one, medieval definition of God is
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: the essence of good. Well, okay, let's say you don't
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: believe in that. Okay. Does that mean you don't believe
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: in anything that's good? Okay? Then how how do you act? Then?
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Because to act means to do something that's better than
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: what you're doing now? Right, there's no action without movement
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: towards the good.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: And what you might see.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: You might say, well, I don't believe that there's a
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: unitary good. Okay, you believe there's there's a fractionated good. Well,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: then what do you do when those things oppose one another? Right,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: which would be in a conflict of duty? What how
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: do you refer to? What do you refer to to
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: help you adjudicate between different goods? Well, generally what you
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: do is if you could pursue A which is good,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: or B which is good, and they conflict, then you
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: pick the higher good. Okay, do you believe in a
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: higher good? Well, if you don't, you can't decide between goods,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: which means you're paralyzed. If you do believe in the
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: higher good, then do you believe in the highest good? Well,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: the highest good is God. What do you mean by
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: that by definition? Okay, so now you have a definition. Now,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: then the next question might be, well, what's your relationship
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: with the highest good, and you might say, well, I
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: don't have a relationship. It's like, well, actually you do,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: because you act in relationship to it. You can't help it.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: One of the interesting things about the biblical corpus.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Is that it's based on the insistence that you have
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: a relationship with being and becoming a relationship like a
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: personal relationship.
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: The biblical narrative of Paradise in the Fall provides a
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: profound account of the nature of being and points the
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: way to a mode of conceptualization and action well matched
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: to that nature in the Garden of Eden, prior to
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: the dawn of self consciousness. So goes the story, human
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: beings were sinless. Our primordial parents, Adam and Eve, walked
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: with God. Then tempted by the snake, the first couple
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: discovered death and vulnerability, and turned away from God. Mankind
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: was exiled from paradise and began its effortful mortal existence.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: The idea of.
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  Speaker 4: Sacrifice enters soon afterward, beginning with the account of Cain
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  Speaker 4: and Abel and developing through the Abrahamic adventures in the Exodus.
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: After much contemplation, struggling humanity learns that God's favor could
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: be gained and his wrath averted through proper sacrifice, and
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: also that bloody murder might be motivated among those unwilling
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: or unable to succeed in this manner. When engaging in sacrifice,
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: our forefathers began to act out what would be considered
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: a proposition if it were stated in words, that something
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: better might be attained in the future by giving up
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: something of value in the present. The necessity for work
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  Speaker 4: is one of the curses placed by God upon Adam
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  Speaker 4: and his descendants in consequence of a original sin. Adams
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: waking to the fundamental constraints of his being, his vulnerability.
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  Speaker 4: His eventual death is equivalent to his discovery of the future.
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  Speaker 4: The future that's where you go to die, hopefully not
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  Speaker 4: too soon. Your demise might be staved off through work,
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  Speaker 4: through the sacrifice of the now to gain benefit later.
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  Speaker 4: It is for this reason, among others, no doubt that
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: the concept of sacrifice is introduced in the biblical chapter
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: immediately following the drama of the Fall. There is little
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  Speaker 4: difference between sacrifice and work. They are also both uniquely human.
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  Speaker 4: Sometimes animals act as if they are working, but they
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  Speaker 4: are really only following the dictates of their nature. Beavers
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  Speaker 4: build dams, they do so because they are beavers. And
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  Speaker 4: beavers build dams they don't think. Yeah, but I'd rather
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  Speaker 4: be on a beat in Mexico with my girlfriend while
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  Speaker 4: they're doing it.
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  Speaker 3: Prosaically.
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  Speaker 4: Such sacrifice work is delay of gratification. But that's a
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: very mundane phrase to describe something of such profound significance.
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  Speaker 4: The discovery that gratification could be delayed was simultaneously the
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  Speaker 4: discovery of time, and with it causality, at least the
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  Speaker 4: causal force of voluntary human action. Long ago, in the
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  Speaker 4: dim mists of time, we began to realize that reality
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: was structured as if it could be bargained with. We
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: learned that behaving properly now in the present, regulating our
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: impulses considering the plight of others, could bring rewards in
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  Speaker 4: the future, in a time and place that did not
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  Speaker 4: yet exist. We began to inhibit control and organize our
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  Speaker 4: immediate impulses so that we could stop interfering with other
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: people and our future selves. Doing so was indistinguishable from
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  Speaker 4: organizing society. The discovery of the causal relationship between our
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  Speaker 4: efforts today and the quality of tomorrow motivated the social contract,
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  Speaker 4: the organization that enables today's work to be stored reliably,
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  Speaker 4: mostly in the form of promises from others. Understanding is
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  Speaker 4: often acted out before it can be articulated, just as
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  Speaker 4: a child acts out what it means to be mother
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  Speaker 4: or father before being able to give a spoken account
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  Speaker 4: of what those roles mean. The act of making a
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  Speaker 4: ritual sacrifice to God was an early and sophisticated enactment
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  Speaker 4: of the idea of the usefulness of delay. There is
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  Speaker 4: a long conceptual journey between merely feasting hungrily and learning
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  Speaker 4: to set aside some extra meat smoked by the fire
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  Speaker 4: for the end of the day or for someone who
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  Speaker 4: isn't present. It takes a long time to learn to
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  Speaker 4: keep anything later for yourself or to share it with
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  Speaker 4: someone else, and those are very much the same thing
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  Speaker 4: as in the former case, you are sharing with your
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  Speaker 4: future self.
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  Speaker 3: It is much easier and far more.
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  Speaker 4: Likely to selfishly and immediately wolf down everything in sight.
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  Speaker 4: There are similar long journeys between every leap and sophistication
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  Speaker 4: with regard to delay and its conceptualization short term sharing
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  Speaker 4: storing away for the future representation of that storage in
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  Speaker 4: the form of records and later in the form of
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  Speaker 4: currency and ultimately the saving of money in a bank
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: or other social institution. Some conceptualizations had to serve as
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  Speaker 4: intermediaries or the full range of our practices and ideas
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  Speaker 4: surrounding sacrifice and work, and their representation could have never emerged.
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  Speaker 4: Our ancestors acted out a drama, a fiction. They personified
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  Speaker 4: the force that governs fate as a spirit that can
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  Speaker 4: be bargained with, traded with as if it were another
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  Speaker 4: human being. And the amazing thing is that it worked.
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  Speaker 4: This was in part because the future is largely composed
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  Speaker 4: of other human beings, often precisely those who have watched
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  Speaker 4: and evaluated and appraised the tiniest details of your past behavior.
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  Speaker 4: It's not very far from that to God sitting above
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  Speaker 4: on high, tracking your every move and writing it down
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  Speaker 4: for further reference in a big book. Here's a productive
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  Speaker 4: symbolic idea. The future is a judgmental father. That's a
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  Speaker 4: good start. But two additional archetypal foundational questions arose because
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  Speaker 4: of the discovery of sacrifice of work. Both have to
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: do with the ultimate extension of the logic of work,
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: which is sacrifice. Now to gain later. First question, what
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  Speaker 4: must be sacrificed. Small sacrifices may be sufficient to solve small,
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  Speaker 4: singular problems, but it is possible that larger, more comprehensive
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  Speaker 4: sacrifices might solve an array of large and complex problems
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: all at the same time. That's harder, but it might
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  Speaker 4: be better. Adapting to the necessary discipline of medical school will,
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  Speaker 4: for example, fatally interfere with the licentious lifestyle of a
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  Speaker 4: hardcore undergraduate party animal. Giving that up is a sacrifice,
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  Speaker 4: but a physician can, to paraphrase George W really put
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  Speaker 4: food on his family. That's a lot of trouble dispensed
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  Speaker 4: with over a very long period of time. So sacrifices
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: are necessary to improve the future, and larger sacrifices can
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  Speaker 4: be better. Second question, set of related questions. Really, we've
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  Speaker 4: already established the basic principle sacrifice will improve the future.
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  Speaker 4: But a principle, once established, has to be fleshed out.
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  Speaker 4: Its full extension or significance has to be understood. What
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  Speaker 4: is implied by the idea that sacrifice will improve the future.
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  Speaker 4: In the most extreme and final of cases, where does
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  Speaker 4: that basic principle find its limits? We must ask to begin,
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  Speaker 4: what would be the largest, most effective, most pleasing of
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  Speaker 4: all possible sacrifices, and then how good might the best
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  Speaker 4: possible future be if the most effective sacrifice could be made.
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  Speaker 4: The God of Western tradition, like so many gods, requires sacrifice,
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  Speaker 4: but sometimes he goes even further. He demands not only sacrifice,
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  Speaker 4: but the sacrifice of precisely what is loved best. This
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: is most starkly portrayed and most confusingly evident in the
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  Speaker 4: story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham, beloved of God, long
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  Speaker 4: wanted a son, and God promised him exactly that after
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  Speaker 4: many delays and under the apparently impossible conditions of old
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  Speaker 4: age and a long barren wife, but not so long afterward,
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  Speaker 4: when the miraculously born Isaac is still a child, God
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  Speaker 4: turns around and, in unreasonable and apparently barbaric fashion, demands
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  Speaker 4: that his faithful servant offer his son as a sacrifice.
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  Speaker 3: The story ends happily.
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  Speaker 4: God sends an angel to stay Abraham's obedient hand and
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  Speaker 4: accepts a ram in Isaac's stead. That's a good thing,
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  Speaker 4: but it doesn't really address the issue at hand. Why
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  Speaker 4: is God's going further necessary? Why does he Why does
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  Speaker 4: life impose such demands, will start our analysis with a
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  Speaker 4: truism stark, self evident, and understated. Sometimes things do not
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  Speaker 4: go well. That seems to have much to do with
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: the terrible nature of the world, with its plagues and
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  Speaker 4: famines and tyrannies and betrayals.
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  Speaker 3: But here's the rub.
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  Speaker 4: Sometimes when things are not going well, it's not the
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  Speaker 4: world that's a cause. The cause is instead that which
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  Speaker 4: is currently most valued subjectively and personally. Why Because the
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  Speaker 4: world is revealed to an indeterminate degree through the template
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  Speaker 4: of your values. If the world you are seeing is
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  Speaker 4: not the world you want, therefore it's time to examine
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  Speaker 4: your values, it's time to rid yourself of your current presuppositions.
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  Speaker 3: It's time to let go.
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  Speaker 4: It might even be time to sacrifice what you love
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  Speaker 4: best so that you can become who you might become
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  Speaker 4: instead of staying who you are.
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  Speaker 2: More radical than necessary change.
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  Speaker 1: The more pain that accompanies it, the more opportunity as well.
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  Speaker 1: But and a lot of what we learn we learn painfully,
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  Speaker 1: and so it's not surprising that people shrink away from
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  Speaker 1: learning we learn in pain and anxiety.
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  Speaker 3: Very frequently everyone knows that.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: The things that really that you really learned in life.
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  Speaker 1: It's like it was no joy man that it took
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  Speaker 1: you out, and so the fact that people flee from
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  Speaker 1: that is hardly surprising. But it doesn't help, that's the thing.
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  Speaker 1: It just stores up the catastrophe for later. And so
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  Speaker 1: the better, the better idea is to eat a little
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  Speaker 1: poison every day so that you don't have to overdose
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  Speaker 1: in a month. It's something like that. And it is
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  Speaker 1: the case that I think because you don't you aren't forced.
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  Speaker 1: First of all, you don't learn unless you're forced to learn.
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  Speaker 1: I know there's alternatives to that. There's the voluntary search
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  Speaker 1: for knowledge, and that's a fine thing, and that is
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  Speaker 1: an antidote to this. But apart from that, speaking more practically,
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  Speaker 1: you tend not to learn unless you're forced to learn,
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  Speaker 1: and it's and what you tend to learn by force
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  Speaker 1: are difficult lessons, and so people are very.
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  Speaker 3: Prone to not to not seek that out.
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  Speaker 1: It's not surprising, but it's because they don't understand the
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: consequences very well.
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  Speaker 2: You know.
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  Speaker 1: It's because maybe it's because they're convinced that there's some
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  Speaker 1: way of forestalling the necessary learning, and there isn't any
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  Speaker 1: way of forestalling it. All you do is make it
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: worse in the future. You make yourself smaller and you
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: make the lesson harder. And so that's why in so
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: many religious doctrines there's emphasis on humility, you know, and
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: humility isn't to debase yourself. It's to understand that you
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: don't know enough so that your life isn't going to
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: be miserable. And so every chance you get to grab
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: something new that will help you along your way, you
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: should take it as fast as you can. But you
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: have to have a very tragic, i would say, view
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: of reality and also a harsh one, because it's not
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: just tragedy, it's also malevolence. You have to understand that
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  Speaker 1: those are waiting for you, and that makes you desperate
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  Speaker 1: enough to learn, and that might be make you desperate
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: enough to fall out of your ideology. But that's a
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: hard way of looking at the world.
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  Speaker 3: It beats living through.
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  Speaker 4: It though, Aim up, pay attention, fix what you can fix.
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: Don't be arrogant in your knowledge. Strive for humility, because
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: totalitarian pride manifests itself in intolerance, oppression, torture.
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  Speaker 3: And death.
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  Speaker 4: Become aware of your own insufficiency, your cowardice, malevolence, resentment,
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  Speaker 4: and hatred. Consider the murderousness of your own spirit before
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: you dare accuse others, and before you attempt to repair
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: the fabric of the world. Maybe it's not the world
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: that's at fault. Maybe it's you. You've failed to make
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: the mark, you've missed the target, You've fallen short of
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  Speaker 4: the glory of God. You've sinned, and all of that
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  Speaker 4: is your contribution to the insufficiency and evil of the world.
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  Speaker 4: And above all, don't lie. Don't lie about anything ever,
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  Speaker 4: lyingly leads to hell. It was the great and the
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: small lies of the Nazi and Communist states that produced
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: the deaths of millions of people. Consider then, that the
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: alleviation of unnecessary pain and suffering is a good.
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  Speaker 3: Make that an axiom.
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  Speaker 4: To the best of my ability, I will act in
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: a manner that leads to the alleviation of unnecessary pain
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: and suffering. You have now placed at the pinnacle of
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: your moral hierarchy, a set of presuppositions and actions aimed
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: at the betterment of being. Why because we know the alternative.
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: The alternative was the twentieth century. The alternative was so
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: close to Hell that the difference is not worth discussing,
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: and the opposite of hell is heaven. To place the
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: alleviation of unnecessary pain and suffering at the pinnacle of
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: your hierarchy of value is to work to bring about
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: the Kingdom of God on earth. That's a state and
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: a state of mind at the same time.