This podcast is brought to you and made possible by generous financial aid from Peter kanzler K. Ay n z l-- e-- r-- you can buy his Amazon books at your favorite Amazon Branch, for example, the original texts of lock Hobbs and the US Constitution of Pennsylvania put together into one book for only $15. Thanks for listening. I'm here today with Ben Shapiro Ben and I met about eight months ago a man came up to Toronto and gave a rousing talk. And talk about political correctness at that point quite a politically appointed political talk and I got a couple of questions for you one is what what what are you planning to do in 2018? What do you want to see happen in 2018 personally and what like so what are you aiming at? Why so I mean obviously I'm aiming it at broadening the reach of the the political messages that I espouse and the messages of I think personal responsibility and virtue that I tried to espouse. I'm also working on a book that I'm really interested in right now about the roots of Western Civilization. What is that makes for a happier and more fulfilled Western Civilization what generates purpose for civilization and for individuals and why it is that we seem to have lost purpose because my general theory is that the reason that we're trying to murder each other politically and the reason that we hate each other so much is that there is a purpose shaped hole in our heart that we are now filling with anger or tribal angered each other and I'm trying to trace back kind of backtrack and say okay. Where did where did we go wrong? Where? Where was purpose it sort of its high water mark and why are we now at low ebb? Okay, one of the things that I found in the discussions that I've had over the last year, especially the public discussions public lectures, let's say is that it seems perfectly possible to make a room go silent by speaking to especially if it's a room full of young men by speaking to them about responsibility and truth and this is really staggered me because those are not obviously saleable messages. No, especially for someone who's rather cynical about the fundamental nature of human beings. I'm not saying that I am but if you if you launched a business plan to the typical observers and said, well I'm going to Bass up public movement on the adoption of accessory sponsibility and the requirement to speak the truth and that's going to become hyper popular the probability that people would agree that that's a possibility is pretty much zero and so I've been thinking that we've spoken about rights for so long and spoken about freedoms for so long. Let's say since the early 60s just essentially speaking that we've actually left a conceptual hole in her culture. And that seems to be a kid into to the point that you're making with regards to this book. And now you you you mentioned responsibility and why that specifically well, I think that what you're talking about is exactly right people in the west have seem to pose rights in in direct opposition to duties. So the American founding particularly was obsessed with this idea of Rights and individual rights, but there was also this corresponding idea of Duties that's very clear in founding thinking George Washington talks about Duty Benjamin Franklin talks about Duty the eye. Was that Duty was to be socially generated not by government, but by Society Itself by small communities by Churches by her family and that that would fill the Gap that allowed you to actually have a functioning Society of Rights, but we seem to have left Duty completely behind now. It's just all about the rights and not about the duty and what's happened is that that's collapsed in on itself because the Society of only rights and no duties ends up generating generating duties masquerading as right positive rights that are actually not rights at all that Army imposing a duty on you. In order to further my own perception of my rights and that's I think where we've been going and it's in it's a dark place and it creates enormous amount of opposition. When you say Jordan when you when you talk about the fact that people would not have thought of building a movement on Notions of Truth and responsibility. That's because I think for a long time people just took it for granted. We all agreed on these things but there's been an actual forcible counter-movement for Generations now against both truth and responsibilities the idea that is there's no objective truth. It's socially defined Make it up as we go along. There's no Telos, right? I talk a lot in the new book about about the teleological way of thinking this idea that you actually have a purpose for which you were created and that it's your job to fulfill that purpose and that's completely been left by the wayside. So there's no truth. There's no capacity even write the scientific materialists worldview actually robs you of the capacity to even change yourself the studies that I have seen suggests that if you believe in a certain form of determinism, if you believe in hard determinism, you're less likely to go out and actually change your life and make it better because you buy into your your own philosophy and I think that a society with sort of bought into that that we're all victims of our own biology victims were on raised victims were on ethnicity or our situation and there's no way for us to get out of that. So we may as well throw up our hands or at least give the power to the only thing that can change things is this which is this massive Collective that comes in and is the boot stomping on the human face forever. Well, there's also that the strange misapprehension I think with regards to the nature of Rights because as far as I can tell I mean rights have rights are a multi-faceted. But I think the least metaphysical claim that you can make about rights is that if I have a right then that brings with it a parallel responsibility not only to myself to act in a manner that is in accordance with that. Right whatever that happens to be but I also have a responsibility if the right is universal to act in a certain manner towards you and so because what there is no difference between rights and responsibilities fundamentally there just the mirror image of one. Now that that's to say nothing about their potential metaphysical origin that I don't want to talk about that but it doesn't seem to me to be logically tenable to have an infinite conversation about rights without having a parallel conversation about responsibility. So there's a logical flaw in it that leaves that Gap that needs to be filled and then the other thing that's occurred to me is that that the genuine meaning in life and I do believe that life has a genuine meaning I think I could make that claim without even making it. Physical although I don't mind the metaphysical addition to it. It seems to me that almost all the things that people find meaningful in life that aren't merely impulsive Pleasures, which of course create their own entanglements have to do with the voluntary adoption of responsibility. So I families like that. Okay, so alright so then okay. So here's here's the next question. What do you think it is that's driven our loss of that half of the conversation what's happened? So I think that this has been basically a 200-year movement that first manifested itself in Europe and is finally reaching American Shores about a hundred years later, which seems to be the pattern all the bad stuff from Europe hits Europe about fifty to a hundred years before it hits here. And now comes here. I think that what happened here is that the enlightenment mentality was built on certain fundamental premises including the use of human reason the capacity for free will and all of that. Arrested on assumptions about the universe including the idea that the Universe has a discoverable design that we can actually find and pursue and that in doing so we will find happiness. The Aristotelian idea of happiness is very much bound up with the idea of you fulfilling your Telos the judeo Christian idea of happiness. Is you fulfilling God's purpose for you. There's always this idea of a higher purpose that you were seeking and I think what happened is that the the enlightenment project which started off in an attempt really in the 13th century by people like Aquinas maimonides to unite. Religion and science fell apart when they started to divide the two instead of its we're seeking the same thing religion and science are both seeking a universal truths that can be applicable to our own lives and make us more fulfilled the project of science became to destroy one pole to destroy religion and then by doing that science almost turned in on itself reason almost ate itself. So I think reason basically turned into okay, we're going to follow to the logical endpoint all of the all of the non-religious basis of human thought and once you do that, it's very Called not to fall into a set of sort of self refuting trap about human thought you're just a set of neurons that are firing neurons don't have responsibilities. Your dog doesn't have responsibilities. Do you have responsibilities? You are a product of your environment your biology. Does that carry with it? Any sort of moral responsibility don't have the capacity to choose if you don't have the capacity to choose. How do you have moral responsibility? I debated Sam Harris on particularly this issue and I thought that actually the most telling point of the the debate and discussion was not anything the two of us said it was a woman who got up at the very and instead of Sam. I totally agree with you. There's no free will in the hard sense. You can't make any see you. There's no choice other than to write you you will have to do this just driven by your biology and environment but have a five-year-old son. What do you want? What what should I say to him? And Sam basically said lie exam is really said well tell her that he's capable of making a choice and that that's the truth about civilization either you believe that's a lie and you're actively engaging in Plato's good lie, basically or your or you have to believe in Free Will and I don't think it Don't think the capacity to choose in the capacity to self better is is a lie. I think that people do have the capacity to do that. I think even Sam believes that but he refuses to acknowledge it because otherwise I don't think he would be in the educational position that he is right. He spends his life trying to educate people so that it's all weird. I mean I actually said in the discussion. Why are we all in this Auditorium? We were just sort of predestined by the universe to be in this auditorium at a certain time. Like do you do feel fulfilled by that? If so, you really have no choice in the matter? Well, one of the things that's always bothered me about the new atheist types and the hyper rationalist. Is that there as far as I can tell their conduct is full of performative contradictions. They say they believe certain things but they don't act that way and and my sense because I'm an existentialist at heart. Is that what you believe is what you act out what you say might be in accordance with that and it might not but but and there's no reason to assume that your beliefs are transparent to yourself regardless of your claim. And so I also don't see any evidence whatsoever that a society can exist that functions over any reasonable period of time in any reasonable manner without predicating itself on the belief that people are both capable of Free Will and that they're responsible. And so the fact that it seems to be impossible to build a functioning Society or even functioning dyadic relationships for that matter in the absence of the presupposition of Free Will and the capacity for voluntary. Change indicates to me some evidence for the existence of those capacities and you have to be a staggeringly cynical person to think that no, we just have to believe that that's true. Even though it's a lie and predicate or cultures on that and that's first of all, I don't I think it's a weak claim. I don't think that it's it's also not the rock upon which you want to find your culture. So one of the things that struck me about the mythological stories that I've immersed myself in and is that there's always three there's always three prime characters in a mythological story. There's culture right? So that's the great father. Let's say in this many mythological guises and there's nature. That's the great mother and so you could say that that's the biology and Society of the I'm scientist, but then there's the independent individual as a causal Force who has a nature that enables enables choice and Free Will and all of those things and that that independent third factor is something like the logos that gives rise to being at the beginning of time like the cast that calls order forth out of chaos, and the fact that we can't account for that scientifically, although I don't think we can deny it either doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And of course I enjoy maps of meaning so I'm pretty familiar with the terminology that you use because I've read a book but I think that you know, there's this idea that you can find meaning in a meaningless universe that we're just meatballs wandering through space with a little bit of sentience understanding that we are meatballs wandering through space. I have a hard time building any sort of system on that and the refusal of the new atheists to even recognize that the morality that they promulgate right the rip that they have on religion typically is that religion is barbaric and backwards and promulgates all sorts of Arbol moral values that with which they disagree and what they refused to acknowledge that their moral values are predicated within that system for the vast majority of human time the values that they are espousing are not not only not Universal. They're not even minority values. They didn't exist for the vast majority. Yeah, I'm feelin time. They are absolute creations of the judeo Christian system that is combined with a Greek reason to come up with what we have today. And this is essentially the theory that I have come up with is that and this is the thesis of the book that I'm writing right now, which is that In order for an in our society or an individual to feel fulfilled you basically have to have four things. You have to have an individual purpose. You have to feel like you have a purpose in the world. You personally have a purpose in the world. You have to feel like you have an individual capacity. You have to feel like you are capable of pursuing that with alacrity. You have to have a communal purpose. You have to feel like you owe on with others. We are pursuing a higher goal. That means something and you have to have communal capacity to A system that has been built that allows that Community to activate when it needs to activate and back off so that the individual can exist in that vacuum and and We have torn away at all the roots of those things because all of those things that I think the apotheosis of the I think the Apex of modern thought was basically the unfulfilled but Universal theories of the American founding fathers. I think it's about as good as it got in terms of governmental Theory. I don't think it's gotten better since then. I think that it's been extended more broadly. I think the universalism that they were implying has now been applied in many ways. And that's a great thing. Right the founders obviously still held slaves many of them, but their principles were not in favor of slavery. And so the principles that they espoused were based on again these two competing poles that are constantly in tension with one another in this sort of Leo Strauss intention with one another between reason Revelation the judeo Christian tradition and the Greek tradition of reason and the tug and back and forth is what allows you to have one foot in rights and one foot in duties. so it'd be really good to have a lengthy conversation about this at some point because there's some things in here that really have to be dealt and deeply like the the you have to find your own purpose argument was one that was put forth very strong and by Nietzsche when after he announced the death of God, he said that people would have to revalue Good and Evil and to come up with their own definitions of what constituted morality and like the nietzschean criticism of Christianity is about as deep as it got with the possible exception of Dostoyevsky, but There's one of the things I really liked about Carl you and that it's really struck me as as is irrefutable is used fundamental response to Nietzsche was that well, let's take the argument of the death of God to its logical conclusion. And then let's investigate the idea that human beings have to be the creator of the creators of their own systems of meaning Humes idea. And this was also the case for the other psychoanalysts was that's just Paul probably false because it turns out that You're not the sort of creature that can create your own meaning you're the sort of creature that has to discover the meaning that already exists in coded within you and part of that is that you're not your own slave. And so so it's a critique not only of the idea that you can will your own destiny in its entirety while completely ignoring the fact that you have a nature but it's also a profound critique of the Socialist utopian ideas that human beings can be molded in any way that they see fit and so Young's objection was something like well, Try to generate a meeting on your own out of nothing and then try to force yourself to follow it and see how far you get what you'll find is that you Rebel your own nature rebels in every possible way against the arbitrary imposition of a certain kind of just any old moral framework on the matter, which you're going to conduct yourself. And so yeah, I think this is it's such a it's such a deep critique and I think that it's so telling because what we've come up with is the substitute for what you're talking about, which is this meant that there is a universal purpose that we ought to be aspiring to discover that it's actually out there. There's a purpose out there and it's our job to uncover it as opposed to self-creating it then that is a really deep divide in America. I think in the west generally because what people have said is okay. We finally realized that we do need this thing called purpose right weekend should be hedonists all the time drugs and sex aren't going to cut it. We're actually going to need to come up with some purposes hydrous, right? But we're not going to be able to but but at the same time we don't want a government or a society or a church or a community. Reinforcing down its Universal perception of values on us. And so therefore our happy medium is going to be you define your own your own Freedom. You define your own your own rights and you define your own view of the universe. Well, that is always going to just evolved into this pathetic sort of solid system that can never be escaped from and doesn't provide happiness. Anyway, I mean the people who quote unquote Define their own meaning are some of the least happy people that you will ever made because they don't believe that their in consonance with anything larger if you're looking Into yourself yourself is not that big. There's not that much there right there has to be something Beyond you whether you find it in God or whether you find it in a community or in nature. There has to be something that speaks to you beyond the guts that exists inside you or you're just examining your own intestines. I think too that you can make a strong scientific case. This is something I never got to in my discussions with Sam Harris has you can make a strong scientific case for the reality of meaning as an as an for the let's just call it for the reality of meaning. Think about it as a psychological reality, but you can think about it as a metaphysical or a biological reality to because as far as I can tell and and there's good neurological evidence for this your brain is adapted to two modes of being and one mode of being is that mode that obtains when you're where you know what you're doing and you know what's going on. So you can call that explored territory. Let's say and there's another mode of being that is that which obtains in when you don't know what's going on when you're an unexplored territory. You can say well Anna Well, since the beginning of time have adapted to some combination of explored and unexplored territory and that's roughly akin to known and unknown which I think is what symbolized in the yin-yang symbol and as far as I can tell the sense of meaning that people experience that spontaneous and deep is an indication that they're functioning well and explored territory, but simultaneously increasing their capacity to deal with unexplored territory. So it's like the zone of proximal development or even the flow states that chick. Harley is talked about but see the best thing to be is where things are going well for you, but also where you're expanding the capacity of things to go well for you simple taneous Lee and then you can add to that the fact that that's not going to be solved cystic because we live in a social world if I'm pursuing something that's deeply meaningful than what if things are constructed fortunately. Then I'm going to be pursuing something. That's very good for me now and me later and me. Me deep into the future at the same time. I'm pursuing something that's good for you now and you later you deep into the future. Now, I believe that that sense of of deep engagement that envelops people in fortunate periods of their lives is actually a neurological signal that that they layers of being are stacked on top of one another properly and that your oriented properly within them and that it's the it's see to me I've often thought that the most real thing is pain and then I'd say well if there's an antidote to pay that would be something that would be even more real than pain and it seems to me that the sense of meaning that I'm talking about here that's associated with this with this sense of ultimate responsibility is an antidote to pain and therefore is something that's most real. I'll see anything you can make a metaphysical Claim about that and that's perfectly reasonable. But I know you don't have to you can make a bloody hardcore scientific claim for that and I think it's extremely difficult to refute. Why aren't you have I tend to agree with that and I think that you know, you you referencing the Flow State. That's something that where we are happiest right from scientific research is in that flow State and that flow state is exactly what we're talking about. Now this this feeling that you have Mastery over your capacity to explore the unexplored and that the unexplored is worth is worth exploring right? I mean, that's the other thing is that what drives you to explore the unexplored? It's not just that you got up in the morning and you feel like wandering outside into the forest. There's some of that but I think some of it is that you feel like there's Natural necessity for you, as a human being to do that. There's a moral duty for you to try and Conquer New worlds and adding the moral layer more at the moral impetus on top of I just have a decision to to go out and explore unexplored territory is what I think allows civilization to create rather than destroy and I've talked a lot on my show about a male-male toxicity, you know what people to the toxic masculinity and all this new idea and what and what and the binary nature I think of human beings particularly men. Is that men have a little boy who's a year and a half old and he's either he's either building a stack of blocks of he's destroying the stack of blocks. There is no in-between. And so if you are honest if you're exploring unexplored territory there only two ways to deal with that one is to actually take a fire and set it in the unexplored territory or the other is to cultivate that unexplored territory and adding that moral layer of it's your job to forge out into the universe and make that cultivated territory to bring that into the known that adding that moral Dimension is I think what both the Greeks and And tradition are about and I think it's more of a group. That's what video question but the idea that there is a God worth exploring and that God has reached down to man and uplifted him is I think relevant to jail Christian religion and is really the essence of judeo-christian religion. If you'll get polytheism that notion that you're out there to try and understand God. It doesn't it doesn't exist in polytheistic religion the notion that you're supposed to look Beyond you're supposed to look Beyond yourself to a broader understanding of the universe. No, you're subject to forces in the universe. Right? And those were represented by the different gods not this idea that there's Is a universal system that's at least partially knowable that if you spend your life trying to investigate and live in consonance with you will be happier. That's a lot closer to the Greek system, which is why you end up with this common idea of the logos that you talked about being in the Book of John but also really springing from from Greek thought I mean, that's that's that's the idea there. Right? Right, right. Yes. It's an unbelievably brilliant synthesis. Now you you you touched on the idea of cultivation. So I wanted to ask you about that. I'm going to Amsterdam to talk to this event at this event sponsored by a group called The Dutch lion and that's going to happen to so January 19th and got about 2,000 people attending this event and it's going to be a national discussion about Dutch in European identity and immigration and so in principle, it could be a big deal and one of the things I've been meditating on is what it is that Western Civilization got right. And so the first thing I think is that we got the idea of the logos, right? That's a big deal the sovereignty of the individual and the sovereignty and then Necessity for respect of the capacity of the exploring individual to conquer new territory and make it habitable. We got that. Right and so and I mean fundamentally right but then that seems also to be to tie interesting Lee into the idea of property rights because the fundamental marks is claim. There's a number of them but one of the most fundamental claims is that property is in some sense theft and so that might even mean the property that you accrued as a consequence of being successful and I think it might be worth giving The devil is dude say well are there conditions under which my occupation of a space to the exclusion of you isn't merely theft and the idea of cultivation I think is exactly the right answer to that is that the point is for each of us to allow the other to occupy a particular place and time in the hopes that we'll each take care of it for our own benefit and for the benefit of others and then what happens is that everyone wins? Yeah, and this is a very obviously lock-in idea, right? This is this is Locke's idea of what makes property worth while I'm property rights worthwhile as you mix your labor with the land and you cultivated it which is why lock specifically talks about the notion of adverse possession, right if I own a piece of property and I just decide to leave it trashed somewhere and then someone comes in and cultivates the property even though I own the property. I should have a good legal case to actually make against a toner because I'm not cultivating the property the idea being that cultivation and uses of the land is actually your individual Duty. It's your individual duties. Also York Little Duty. So I think that the moral legitimacy of property rights is in Locke's thought particularly is very much tied to cultivation and your personal stake in what you've done with with the property that you own again. It's exactly your point that there's a mix of Rights and duties property rights are linked to duties. It's not just property own. Okay, so maybe we can close with this, you know, the the idea of a garden is very interesting to me. And of course the natural environment of the human being is the garden according to Genesis. Right. It's the Garden of Eden and I thought for a long time. Well, why is it garden? And the answer to that is that a garden is the optimal juxtaposition of Nature and culture, right? So a garden is nature blooming of its own accord but tended very carefully. And so then the rule would be something like you're allowed to you're allowed to own something. You have the right to own something. You have the privilege to own something if what you're doing is transforming into a bountiful Garden. That's exactly right. I think that's true. And I think that's true in every area of a successful life. It's true with how you raise your children. Yeah, they lose the right to raise your children properly. If you're raising your children improperly. I think it's true of marriage marriage is break down when you don't cultivate cultivation is the the ultimate human need is called salvation and when we cultivate whether it's in the realm of knowledge or science or whether it's in the realm of religion and relationships, then we are happier and when we don't cultivate and we and when we deprive ourselves of the capacity and both the capacity and the purpose of cultivation Then everything falls into Anarchy then just through entropy. Everything will fall apart. I think okay. So the right objection to privilege is cultivation. It's like I'm not privileged. I'm cultivating. I like that. I like that a lot. Yeah, what's necessary to get to grip these things by the neck, you know, and so okay. That's good. Well look, thanks very much for talking to me. I hope we get a chance to talk again in the relatively near future because there's some things we could really sort out. I think that'd be great. I'd really appreciate it and big fan of zahle work obviously. Yeah Felix. Mutual thanks so much good talking to you. Happy New Year a you to buy this podcast is brought to you and made possible by generous financial aid from Peter kanzler K. Ay n z l-- e-- r-- you can buy his Amazon books at your favorite Amazon Branch, for example, the original Lovelock Hobbs and the US Constitution of Pennsylvania put together into one book for only $15. Thanks for listening.
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