Transcript

We Need a Code · Underthrow

0:00
SPEAKER_00: The first is Résentément.
0:15
[music]
0:28
SPEAKER_00: That's Nietzsche's word for a bitter, impotent envy.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: When I feel powerless,
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SPEAKER_00: I can muster the will to do the work and change my life,
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SPEAKER_00: or I can convert all my feelings of powerlessness into moral outrage at the world.
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SPEAKER_00: Outrage is easier.
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SPEAKER_00: It feels righteous.
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SPEAKER_00: It lets me off the hook.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: But a culture soaked in Résentément produces fewer and fewer people
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SPEAKER_00: who take responsibility for anything.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: The second is enemy.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: Durkheim saw it coming more than a century ago.
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SPEAKER_00: When enemies shared with others, sacred norms erode.
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SPEAKER_00: The individual is The third is spectacle.
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SPEAKER_00: Debord and Baudrillard warned that we would come to live among images instead of in life.
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SPEAKER_00: Reality gives way to performance.
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SPEAKER_00: The territory gets lost under layers of maps.
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SPEAKER_00: Identity becomes a costume, staged for an audience also wearing masks.
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SPEAKER_00: We curate,
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SPEAKER_00: we signal,
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SPEAKER_00: and after a while, we forget anything genuine ever existed beneath our thin avatars.
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SPEAKER_00: Put plainly, people are growing more resentful, more adrift, and more fake.
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SPEAKER_00: And they know it.
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SPEAKER_00: So, they go looking for a cure.
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SPEAKER_00: False Cures.
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SPEAKER_00: Most reach for one of three modern curatives, politics, spirituality, or therapy.
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SPEAKER_00: Each promises relief, yet in its modern form, each makes the sickness worse.
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SPEAKER_00: Start with politics.
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SPEAKER_00: The instinct makes sense.
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SPEAKER_00: Win power, capture the institutions, fix things from the top.
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SPEAKER_00: But look at what those institutions run on.
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SPEAKER_00: Résentément fuels the campaigns.
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SPEAKER_00: Ennemi fills the ranks.
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SPEAKER_00: Spectacle is the whole show.
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SPEAKER_00: You cannot cure a society with heavy doses of the underlying pathology.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: The reformer who climbs inside a dying institution doesn't change it.
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SPEAKER_00: It changes him.
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SPEAKER_00: Then there's spirituality, or what passes for it.
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SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it's the California New Age variety.
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SPEAKER_00: Vibes without vows, bliss without discipline.
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SPEAKER_00: Maybe it soothes you for an afternoon.
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SPEAKER_00: Then it evaporates because nothing was asked of you.
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SPEAKER_00: Then there's contemporary psychotherapy.
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SPEAKER_00: Some of it can help, but too much of the modern therapeutic industry has become iatrogenic.
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SPEAKER_00: That is, the healer causes the harm.
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SPEAKER_00: Therapy addictions keep wounds open.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: Bad therapists keep your locus of control outside of you.
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SPEAKER_00: So the world is always to blame and you are never responsible.
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SPEAKER_00: That'll be $150 please.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: See you next week.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: Trauma becomes the client's identity.
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SPEAKER_00: Dependency becomes the therapist's business model.
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SPEAKER_00: None of that makes the client more self-possessed or sovereign.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: The Games Beneath
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SPEAKER_00: The philosopher James Kars described two kinds of games.
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SPEAKER_00: A finite game is played to defeat others.
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SPEAKER_00: It has a scoreboard, an ending, then winners and losers.
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SPEAKER_00: An infinite game, though, is played to keep the play going.
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SPEAKER_00: Its purpose is not victory, but continuous All three false curatives trap us in the first.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: Modern politics, spirituality, and therapy can hide games disguised as paths to fulfillment.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: Win the election, follow your bliss, blame the world.
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SPEAKER_00: Different scoreboards, same trap.
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SPEAKER_00: There's nothing wrong with playing finite games.
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SPEAKER_00: The mistake is making them the point of life.
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SPEAKER_00: So the first important move is to stop believing that winning these games will make us whole.
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SPEAKER_00: The board is all wrong and the rules reward the rot.
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SPEAKER_00: So the second big move is to play a different game.
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SPEAKER_00: In an infinite game, adversity is part of the play.
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SPEAKER_00: Obstacles appear, challenges arise.
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SPEAKER_00: We face them not merely to prevail, but to become more capable players.
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SPEAKER_00: Open more possibilities for cooperation and keep the play going.
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SPEAKER_00: The Turn So,
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SPEAKER_00: if modern politics is hollow,
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SPEAKER_00: modern spirituality is empty,
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SPEAKER_00: and modern therapy too often turns suffering into identity,
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SPEAKER_00: what feeds a malnourished spirit?
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SPEAKER_00: A high-trust community of people living by a code, for starters.
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SPEAKER_00: But not just any code,
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SPEAKER_00: one that helps us become the kind of people capable of building
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SPEAKER_00: the next great civilization.
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SPEAKER_00: It must also help us become cultural, social, and psychospiritual counterpower.
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SPEAKER_00: A growing fellowship of people who stopped asking permission to build what comes next.
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SPEAKER_00: But a community doesn't hold together on good intentions.
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SPEAKER_00: Every enduring order has held something sacred,
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SPEAKER_00: something its members would honor even at great personal cost.
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SPEAKER_00: That's the code.
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SPEAKER_00: And that's where the real work begins.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm Max Borders.
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SPEAKER_00: Let's criticize by creating.
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[music]
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SPEAKER_00: Underthrow is brought to you by Human Respect Labs,
5:33
SPEAKER_00: committed to advancing the philosophy of human respect worldwide.
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SPEAKER_00: Whether you're helping spread the philosophy or building voluntary alternatives
5:41
SPEAKER_00: to political power,
5:42
SPEAKER_00: we support strong startup projects with up to $30,000 in seed funding.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: Got an idea?
5:48
SPEAKER_00: Visit humanrespectlabs.org to see if you qualify.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: That's humanrespectlabs.org.