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. Hello everyone. I've got lots of questions here. And so welcome to the first live question-and-answer YouTube session that I'm hosting. So I'm going to get right into it and answer some questions. There's logs coming up on the screen here Mac one three five. Seven one nine seven nine asks, what does it mean people don't have ideas. Ideas have people. Are we okay because I've got an area of sorry about that. We're going to you're going to hear some technical talk during this because we don't exactly know what we're doing yet. Okay. So what does it mean people don't have ideas ideas have people I learned that mostly from Young. In fact, I think that's virtually a direct quote from from Carl Jung. One of the things I learned from Ewing was that it's perfectly reasonable to think of ideas as something that's living as a something that's alive an idea something that's alive and I think the reason for that is that the beings that have ideas and so that's us people are alive and we're trying to use our cognitive ability to further our living. and so we create ideas that and and the purpose about those ideas is to have them played out the embodiment to have them act out acted out because otherwise they don't have any utility and so We conjure up ideas. Let's say it originally, but they take on a life of their own overtime. And as they take on a life of their own their capacity to dominate someone increases to the point where the idea is arguably more powerful than the person know. So if you look at religious ideas, for example, maybe you could think of what happened with regards to Islam and the You know in the latter part of the first Christian millennium. A set of ideas exploded out of one source and and swept through a vast population the same thing happened with Christianity's and in fact, the same thing is happening with Christianity right now in China China in China Christianity is spreading faster than it did in the Roman times. Definitely something we really notice because our time frame is, you know, small compared to thousands and thousands of years. But ideas have their own goal and their own perception and their own way of interacting with the world and it's it's always possible for them to possess people. Why do we feel exposed and vulnerable when we know and do what we really like? Your words that does LH. well Lots of times people hide behind a shell even at cost to them because if the shell gets criticized then it's not really that relevant because it doesn't have any direct bearing on them. And so if you're not showing your true self, so to speak to the world and what you're showing is something essentially that's false or just constructed and that gets criticized. Well, you can always Comfort yourself with the idea that it's not really you that's under attack. So it doesn't wound to the same degree. now and I mean that's partly why people protect themselves with falsehoods and ideologies and and it's an attempt to Shield their genuine vulnerability from assault by the world. But the problem is that if you don't allow that vulnerability to manifest itself, then the probability that you're actually ever going to get what you really like or even discover. What it is is 0 so by protecting yourself to that degree you end up losing certainly losing it what it is that you're most trying to protect. I mean, I don't want to be Cavalier about that because it's understandable that people. Attempt to Shield their vulnerability because the vulnerability isn't just felt it's real and people are fragile. And you know, we're subject to the terrible forces of nature into the terrible forces of culture. So we put all sorts of masks in front of ourselves so that our exposures limited people even do that to themselves to some degree. If your front is false enough than it it's also false to you and I suppose people do that to some degree to protect themselves against their own self criticisms. David Guida says how can I School teachers best promote virtue cultivate morality and tackle the meaning crisis in the face of an increasingly chaotic violent and dehumanized Future. Well, I would say it isn't obvious to me that the future is increasingly chaotic violent and dehumanized that the past was pretty rough. Now. The future is definitely ill-defined. We don't know what's going to happen. And I think maybe that's more true in a general sense than the river has been in the history of mankind, but I don't necessarily think that there's reasons to be Particularly pessimistic. However, the first part of the question I think is is well worth addressing how can a high school teachers best promote virtue cultivate cultivate morality and tackle the meaning crisis. Well, I think the best way that people in general promote virtue and cultivate morality is by promoting virtue and cultivating morality within their own life. But I think that in order to do that for yourself, and then also in order to transmit that information to your students, you have to understand that morality isn't a set of injunctions. Of the nature of don't ever do anything impulsive that you like, which is generally how morality is put forth. You know, what you think about morality is something that a puritanical person might preach and that it has to do mostly with self control and self constraint and I think that that's a very shallow. That's a very shallow vision of morality. I think the way that you convince people to act morally if that's something that you're interested in doing is to meditate on the utility of the truth because I think the highest form of morality is following the truth. So you might say well why would you bother a following what's true? And the answer to that I think is quite straightforward. if you follow what's false, then you're going to end up somewhere that you weren't planning to go and the probability that that's going to be good is low mean following what's false is like attempting to use the wrong map for for for the territory that you occupy and if your eyes are open and you pay attention then the probability that you'll be able to maneuver around the terrible sharp obstacles that will emerge in front of you is is that much higher and so when you're having a serious discussion about morality with people there's a there's a couple of points that you make to begin with is like and these are fundamental points one would be Do you want things to be better or do you want things to be worse? And you might assume that people are going to automatically answer that they'd rather have things better, but that's not so self-evident because to make things better usually requires that you adopt a tremendous amount of responsibility and that's effortful and difficult and frightening and and the bark sort of stops with you, which is also part of what makes it terrifying. But if you do want things to be better and you have your mind straight and oriented in that direction then The truth is your best possible guide because it'll help you get to that point. So I think one of the things that people who talk about morality. Fail to understand is that it's not abstract. It's practical. morality is precisely what's proved to be most practical over the longest possible span of time sort of like the Morrill Act is what's best All Things Considered and part of the reason that it's necessary for people to follow conventional rules is because convention is part of the wisdom of mankind and the wisdom of mankind has basically said no All Things Considered Here's a pathway that you could follow that is going to work out in principle best for you. And so you you know, one of the one of the considerations there speaking in terms of convention is, you know, the standard path through life say in Western culture has been to grow up to form an intimate relationship of some stability to Do something productive that other people approve of and and and will trade with you for to raise children and to establish yourself in a community. And the reason that that's conventional morality is because that's not such a bad deal compared to most of the Alternatives and if you can pull all those things off properly, then there's a reasonable chance that you'll at least have a life that isn't completely full of unbearable suffering with nothing positive in it, but there's also the there's What's a reasonable possibility that you'll have a good life? And so then you might want to try to do that correctly? Why act morally? Why act in a virtuous manner because it's in your interest and it's in everyone's in else everyone else's interest as well. And so that seems like a good deal. Now, it will mean that you'll have to put off certain forms of impulsive pleasure. But the problem often with impulsive pleasure is that well, you you have pleasure in haste and you repent at leisure and so part of what standard morality is trying to do is to Inform you about how you might act in the present so that the present is acceptable. But so that tomorrow is also good and next week is also good and next month is also good and next year is also good and for you and for your family and for your community for this broad swath of humanity and partly what you ask people you ask high school students is well, they want to be part of that or do they want to do something else and if they want to do something else, maybe they want to make things worse. Well, they should think that through because that's just not a very good plan. Unless your goal is to make the world a more miserable place and you know often people's goals are precisely not. Alex fee and harassed is mindfulness really beneficial or is it just a trend ma'am? Mostly it's a trend the problem with mindfulness as far as I'm concerned is that it's it's a it's a word that's like a giant box. You can put anything you want in it and claim that that's not only what it is, but that's what it does. And so I'm I'm You know, I would be very hesitant to make a blanket statement such, you know, like no one practicing mindfulness or teaching mindfulness is producing any benefit for their students. But yeah, I think mostly it's a it's a fat so how can Disney produce an archetypal Masterpiece in The mid-90s Lion King and then turn around and create propaganda in the New Millennium Frozen. That's why Sam call that God. That's a good question. But there's an even better question that goes along with it. It's like not only could it is knee turn around and create propaganda in the New Millennium because I do believe exactly that that's what Frozen is. But if I remember correctly, I think that that's the highest grossing animated movie now that's ever been made so it's not only That they created propaganda. It's the people are extraordinary hungry for it. Why would that be? well, one of the ideological motifs in Frozen is that you know the classic idea that the Sleeping Beauty needs a prince to awaken her is observed in old-fashioned. And that there are alternative ways of traveling through life. That don't require the subjugation that that particular story might appear, too. entail, I think that's really naive beyond belief because a story like Sleeping Beauty Where the feminine is waiting for the masculine to awaken? It's true. It's just as true for men as it is for women. It's not about men and women precisely it is to some degree. It's more about the masculine and The Feminine and The Feminine part of a man. Which is the part that enables him to have a relationship with a woman at all is awoken by the archetypal masculine qualities of clarity of mind. For example, just as much as the females. Femininity is awoken by masculine Clarity of mind and you can read those old stories Sleeping Beauty in all likelihood. It's a variable story at multiple levels simultaneously. so but I think that people want the propaganda because it tells them that what they already think is correct and that all the old wisdom or much of the old wisdom. It can just be dispensed with and people can conduct their lives in any manner that they want. Well that doesn't work. So Julian Tien says you have said that to study history is to study oneself, and that one will be much more grounded and strong if they do, so we please more talk on this. Please talk more on this. Well, you know it's easy for people to think let's say you're 30 years old. It's easy for you to think. That you're actually 30 years old, but you're not you're in many ways and at least at one level of analysis your three and a half billion years old because that's approximately how long the genetic structure that has given rise to you. At least in part has existed and your the consequence of this massive massively extensive evolutionary process extending back billions of years. It's conditioned every Of you and so you're a very very ancient creature from a biological perspective. And if you don't view yourself across that entire span of time, so to speak you have the wrong idea about what it means to be a human being and then on the cultural end of things. Well, you're deeply shaped and and inhibited and offered opportunity Buy the entire history of human cultural Endeavor, which is also interactive in the causal manner with with the emergence of our biology across time and if you don't understand history Then you don't understand who you are because you're a product of History everything. You think someone else already thought every word that you use someone else came up with. and so a naive person thinks for example that the thoughts that they have are their thoughts but the probability that you're going to have a thought that's original is extraordinary low, and so just understand your own thought process. You need to be deeply. You understand your own thought process far more deeply if you were an astute student of History, you also understand the problems that confront you in the world. I mean, you're born into the world in a particular historical configuration. That's an archetypical truth. You know, your spirit is Born Into the world. when the world is a certain specific way and that certain specific way is also a consequence of vast patterns of processes that have laid themselves out on a historical timeframe mean just a simple example. I mean a lot of the Interpersonal complexities that young people face say in their in their intimate relationships are a direct consequence of the birth control pill. I mean that's only been around for 50 years. So it's not deep history, but it's certain it certainly history. And if you don't understand that the birth control burst in on Humanity like an act like an atomic bomb, maybe like a hydrogen bomb. You don't understand what it is that's driving your own interpersonal problems. So there's no difference between studying history and studying psychology and there's no difference between the study history and psychology and trying to understand who you are and what you should do history is about you. It's not about the world or it's about the world and you and like if you can't see the sense in it, then you're not approaching it properly or you have bad teachers or you don't know how to read or something like that because History's unbearably interesting. And so I suppose that's another marker that you can use to determine whether or not your attitude towards studying history is correct. If you're not fascinated and horrified by it almost beyond belief, then you're not studying history properly and I think if you were studying it properly You never asked why you should study it. It would be it would be so evident. So obvious that it was necessary. Why do humans enjoy sad stories that Selleck's beyonder? Well, I don't know if they actually enjoyed them. Although I think you could make a case that they do in sometimes maybe someone's watching a story. That's that's somewhat sentimental that'll make them tear up and you might say that that's an element of beat sad, but I would say that's more an element of being compassionate and participating in this fictional way in in the love and and intimacy that human beings are capable of so you can do that by pressing. And that can certainly produce sentimental emotions and and nostalgic emotions and those can be associated with tears. But you could go deeper than that and say well people will watch tragic stories. And that's certainly the case in any Shakespearean play virtually is is tragic in many regards and I think part of the reason that people are are compelled to do that is because we are compelled to understand the tragedies of our life. and so to see that tragedy laid out on a stage which means that it's distilled and Amplified in some sense is to symbol taneous Lee engage in the problem of wrestling with what it means to exist in a tragic world. And any information you can get about that is going to be well worth the momentary negative emotion that you might experience while you're engaged in the play. So people like sad stories because life is often sad and we have to figure out how to deal with that and stories can tell you how to deal with it well and how to deal with it badly and that can be observed Lee informative. If Christianity has much historical wisdom to offer why is it so derided in the academy? Is this a good thing or a bad thing why Brian Ross? I think that people generally think of Christianity as science for stupid people in something like that. You know and it's often reduced to its more fundamentalist manifestation. So, you know that the strawman version of Christianity is fundamentalist protestantism of the sort that makes the case that the Bible is literally true. And that the cosmos is roughly. several thousand years old well, it's easy to it's easy to make fun of that. I'm not sure so why is to make fun of it and people generally have reasons? for what they believe in sometimes it's fear and and narrow-mindedness and ignorance, but Sometimes what might appear to be fear and fear and narrow-mindedness and ignorance is actually the attempt to preserve something of extraordinary extraordinary value the value of which has not been fully articulated. I guess partly I see the so there's that there's the there's the ability for people to generate the strawman version of Christianity and then just feel intelligent by comparing their own knowledge to that and you know, that's pretty weak I would say I think Marxism contributes to it a lot. I mean, I think that the universities and our intellectual life in general is still saturated with Marxist the neo-marxist presuppositions, and I really think that's a terrible thing. I really don't think that that's any better than having our intellectual landscape populated by neo-fascist ideas. I don't see from a historical perspective that there's any reason whatsoever to assume that neo-marxist ideas are any more morally appropriate than neo-fascist ideas. and I think a lot of what drives them the neo-marxist analysis of Christianity is Some of its some of its simplemindedness mean the Marxist tend to reduce everything to power to economics and I mean power and economics are important but to reduce everything to that is to reduce everything to any one thing is a mark of a weak mind. I mean most problems are multivariate problems. They're not univariate problems. I think there's a hatred for the responsibility that genuine Christianity lays upon a person because at an archetypal level me if you just if you just speak about this psychologically young said, for example, the soul is naturally Christian. It's a hell of a thing to say but he had his reasons for saying that and part of what he was saying was that or what he believed and Aldous Huxley talked about this a bit too. Is that There are elements of Christianity that have taken conceptualization as far as it can go and that's what makes it archetypal so so I can give you an example of that. So there's a presupposition in Christianity speaking psychologically that Human beings make progress by making sacrifices. That's a good one. You see this act it out to begin to begin with to some degree in the Old Testament where the sacrifices that people make are. Are genuine archaic sacrifice that they take something that there? They believe has value perhaps a prize animal and burn it and offer it to God and the reason that it's burned as far as I've been able to tell is because the archaic conception of the world was that the world was a flat disk. And on top of that disc was a bowl and the bowl was the sky roughly speaking and then outside the bowl. That's where the gods existed and I think our cake people believe that for the same reason that we feel all when we look up in the night sky, we do, you know Want to make the mistake that just because people didn't know some of the things we know now that they were stupid. They looked up at the night sky or the day Steinfeld aw and part of the intuition that came along with that all was that while they were looking at the night sky or the day started they're looking into the infinite and and that's Allied very tightly with divinity. So there's those ideas going in the background. Well, if you burn something and offer it up to God the smoke Rises and God can detect the quality of your if I see you might think well, that's again. That's pretty Simple-minded but it's not it's the dramatic representation of an unbelievably profound idea. The profound idea. Is that sometimes in order to make things go properly. You have to let go of something that you deeply love or deeply want to do and what it means what it means to sacrifice is to let something go in the present so that the future can be better or to let something go personally so that other people can have it better and there's no difference between the Of sacrifice and the discovery of the future as soon as you discover the future one of the things you realize is that you have to sacrifice things in the present so that the future manifests itself in a more acceptable mattered. So then you think well, that's also an amazing Discovery. Here's the discovery human beings made if we change our behavior in the present better things could happen in the future. Well, no other animal really is ever discovered that okay, so that's very tightly linked into the idea of Twice so you might say well you have to sacrifice something of value. And so sometimes I ask my students. A lot of them are second part children of immigrants. What did your parents sacrifice so that you can go to university and I mean everyone understands that question the students immediately tell me of you know, the things that their parents have done they moved from some foreign country. They spent 18 hours a day working their selves to their fingers to the Bone at a laundromat or a dry cleaner so that their students could pursue that their children could have a richer and Fuller life. They're sacrificing and the sacrifice is based on its Faith and the faith in it's a essentially a form of religious Faith, but we don't have to get into that moment. But the fundamental driving idea is that the reality is can be positively shaped by sacrifice. Well, that's an amazing idea. Well, so then you might say well, okay the higher quality the sacrifice the more profound the positive effect on the future so reasonable proposition and so then you might say What's the most valuable possible sacrifice an answer? That is well, obviously yourself. So then you can say well that means that the ultimate moral Junction the ultimate moral injunction. Is to sacrifice yourself in a manner that makes the future better. Well, that's the central idea of Christianity the central idea like the central figure mythological figure at the core of Christianity is the person who voluntarily sacrifices themselves to the benevolent will of God. Well, if you have any sense, you're terrified of that idea and especially if you're if you're I would say if you're a rationalistic intellectual or rationalizing intellectual mean who the hell wants to believe that if that's your moral obligation is to sacrifice yourself for the best what God. You don't know what that means. I mean the archetypal story isn't means that you end up crucified. well There's lots of reason to be not very happy about that idea. But and then you say well is the fact that Chris Durant Christianity is derided in the academy a good thing or bad thing. Mostly. It's a terrible thing, you know, it's not like Christianity can't use some criticism. Although I think you know, Nature in many ways nature took care of that for us. But mostly I think what we're doing in the academy is running as fast as we can from the responsibility of burying our culture and revivify it and we were using any number of appalling rationalizations and ideological Maneuvers to try to not only make that acceptable personally but to proselytize about it to others, you know there the more I wouldn't say maybe I would the more cynical part of me sometimes thinks that the universities now these students more harm than good, especially on the humanities at because they take students at a very formative period of their life when they're all when their belief systems and their ability to identify strongly with life are already somewhat in question because they exist in a culture that's being badly fractured and they take those kids and they, you know, they expose them to ideas that are absolutely destructive and it's not like I have anything against ideas like that reading each if for example is or reading dostoievski, I mean that can be a very destructive act but the purpose of Nietzsche's writing and Dusty as he's writing is not to destroy its to remove detritivores so that something new can spring forth and I'm I just don't really see that happening in the University's I think they're too cynical and I think that there's also a strong streak of serious anti Humanity among moderate intellectuals and that's been the case for Least a hundred years you hear people saying no, like I think this was a statement from the club of Rome the people who are so concerned about a population explosion back in the mid-1960s that the world would be better off if there were fewer people on it or maybe that there were no people on it. Well, man. You can't say anything that's more appalling than that. You know, if you said the planet would be better off if there were fewer black people on it. It's like well, no one's going to put up with that or the planet would be better off if there are fewer European colonizers on it. Well, you might be able to get away with that a little bit more but probably not but as long as your Sentiments expand extend to humanity as a whole is perfectly reasonable for you to say something like that. And that's the most horrific thing. You can possibly say I mean the kids should go into high schools and shoot them up and call my kids. That's certainly what they believed. The planet would be a lot better off if there were fewer people on it. Maybe we'll take a few steps in that direction. So Bob Smith says nice jacket. Thank you for appreciate that. All right. Can you explain Nietzsche's General philosophy and some of his most famous ideas? He's really hard to comprehend. Nietzsche's General philosophy I probably can't do that. I've been putting together with my students here. I've been starting to plan a seminar on existence realism and which would focus a lot on each and those two have ski I think nature is so damn complicated that it can't really do that. I don't think you can explain Nietzsche's General philosophy. First of all, he wasn't really a systematized ER he he was skeptical of systematized. It's very difficult to distill someone. Not as systematized ER into you know, a few general principles and the thing is with with with some of the greatest thinkers. You actually have to read what they wrote. You have to read the original writings because the Brilliance is encapsulated in the original writings, and they can't be condensed. So So, let's see. Can I do any better than that? Can I explain HS General philosophy truth serves life. That's a good one. And I guess we can unpack that a little bit. I mean It's a good example of exactly what I need you. So stay really brilliant. One of the things he presumes me makes a statement like that is that a human being is in? An existential situation that's characterized by the necessity of determining what he or she will actually accept as truth. You know, you might say well truth is something you can prove and that's how you know, it's true. But unfortunately, it's not that simple because you have to decide what criteria you're going to accept as proof and there's an Act of Faith in that and and there's an inalienable word. Argument seems to be lacking and this is the famous is ought conundrum. The David Hume described is okay. Well, let's say that you use science to lay out a very detailed description of the nature of the objective World. Well that still doesn't mean that you know how to act in that world. And that's a big problem. It might be a fundamental problem if the fundamental problem of people isn't what is the nature of the objective World thought How is it that you should conduct yourself while you're alive? Well meet you believe that. the fundamental question was how you should conduct yourself while you're alive how should you act and if I would say that's the fundamental question of meaning and science can inform you but it can't really solve that problem for you. And that's a problem and then science also has this other terrible attribute some sense, which is that because science can't solve the problem of how you should act in the world. It impels people towards the conclusion that there is no answer to the question. How should you act in the world? And so that way that opens up a door to nihilism and nihilism is is its destructive. It does not facilitate life. In fact, it has the opposite effect. It takes the spirit of people. It takes the motivation of the people. It makes them better and makes them resentful and makes them hateful. It's not a good thing. Also Nietzsche is primarily concerned in some sense with how to act. And part of the reason that he decomposes Christianity to the degree that he does is because he believed that Christianity. Was a very very serious attempt to answer the question how should you act and he also believed that it had become fatally flawed for a variety of reasons. At least it is typical socially socially instantiated form. So he took it upon himself to subject it to a criticism but I've always thought of Nietzsche is a terrible image, but I've always thought Nietzsche as like a maggot in a wound. So what he's doing is clearing away dead and diseased tissue so that something else can live and it's a terrible thing to watch. It's a terrible thing to apprehend and it's a it's a terribly destructive thing to involve yourself in as Nietzsche is he said philosophize with a hammer and that's certainly true. But he was trying to clear the path for something new and that's something new he was trying to formulate with this conception such as like this the the Superman that the next version of human being so to speak and he thought of them as people who would create their own values. And that that would be the way forward out of the wreckage of Christianity. Let's say I think nietzschean was wrong about that and I say that with all due respect believe me and I say it cautiously and I don't think it's an original idea of my own that Nietzsche was wrong and I think the reason that he was wrong is because people don't create values they discover them or maybe they co-create them, but you can't create values By Conjuring them out of non-existence. You could say if you were scientifically minded that values are in some sense arbitrary. And then if you believe that values are arbitrary, you might then believe that people could create them out of nothing but values aren't arbitrary and most of the time people discovered them. And maybe they co-create them and one of the reasons that I was so have been so attracted to you stinking is because young is in many ways a nietzschean a student of Nietzsche. Also a student of Freud's but more primarily a student of Nature and use lifelong Endeavor was to understand what the way forward might be given the situation that needs you described and the situation that needs you described in some sense was that Christianity late so much emphasis on truth that it ended up undermining its own axiomatic presuppositions. And so then you thought following needs you. Well, okay in principle, we have to create new values, but that's partly why you can got so interested in the unconscious because one of the things he found particular in his analysis of the collective unconscious that was that the values that Nietzsche thought people should create were actually lying dormant in well in our imagination. That's one way of thinking about because that's a good way of thinking about the collective unconscious and that it was a return To the deepest the way forward in terms of the generation of new values was a return to the deepest recesses of human existence and a rediscovery of what was actually there. I touched on that a little bit today when I was talking about the necessity for sacrifice. Like there's an archetypal idea that the Savior the Messiah is is by definition the person who is willing to sacrifice him or herself for the ultimate good whatever that Ins to be and that that's the appropriate pathway forward. Well, that's that's an argument for teak of Christianity. And I think that you almost right. I think he's correct. that's a terrible thing to say because I mean Union such a radical thinker that it's it's funny because healing is subject to a lot of criticism mean I read Richard Knowles book on Nietzsche. I think it was called the area in Christ and Noel basically who I think was a very is or was I'm very resentful person. I think he did a hatchet job on you. He the cover of his book made you look like he was a Nazi. I mean how what a cheap shot that is but you know, he accused you and of basically fomenting a cult and I read those books and it just made me laugh because What you was actually up to is so much worse. So to speak than merely starting a cult. It's like accusing an Ax Murderer of what? Annoying annoying his pet cat, you know, it's that the difference is that extensive the sort of sorts of things that um was actually messing around with our soul complicated and terrible compared to just building a little cult that you know, it's absolutely clear that Noah had no idea what he was talking about. You only said like nature like Dostoyevsky, it's a terrifying person and I think part of the reason that you own is not well regarded in the academy. And also why Christianity is subject to such He'll rationalist and criticism is because people open up young and take one. Look at what he's doing and either just don't get it at all or they get a little bit of it. It scares them. So badly think there's no damn way. I'm going there and and cans I can really understand that. I think I think anybody with any sense would be very very careful about trying to figure out what you was talking about. It's cognitive behavioral. Sorry here. I miss that. Sorry about that. It's a good idea to believe in something healthy delusions like Karma or life after death. That's a knee wall socket. Well, there is a whole line of social psychology. That was very popular about 15 years ago. In fact most cited social psychological paper ever written was about the necessity of positive Illusions, you know, the basic hypothesis was life was so tragic and dismal that unless you bolstered yourself against it with you know, Defensible optimism I suppose if you're being charitable or just positive Illusions lies is what I think are that life would actually be intolerable and I think that's an unbelievably nihilistic and vicious philosophy. I think the fact that that was actually seriously put forward by by a generation of social psychologists as a medication for the modern disease of meaning it was an out is an absolute indictment of the entire field. No, there's nothing about illusions that are healthy. But that doesn't mean that cynicism and despair are forms of Truth or that nihilism is a form of Truth. There's no such thing as healthy delusions. Now, you know any wall socket says like Karma. Well, I don't know karma is a healthy delusion, and I'm not so sure about Me there's some elements of karma that I think are extremely interesting from a psychological perspective. I'm going to scrap The Reincarnation element of it because I well for obviously at least for the sake of Simplicity, but I believe in karma. I think that no one gets away with anything ever. I think every single thing you do that is immoral because the moral thing is an attempt to warp the structure of reality everything you do that's immoral comes back to haunt you and it generally comes in multiplying form now that doesn't mean you'll be able to draw the causal connections like you might have done something immoral who knows five years ago and that produced like a crack in the structure of your being and like it's five years later and all sorts of things are falling into that crack and you have no idea that that initial Act was what produced is, you know cascading consequences of events, but that doesn't mean it didn't so what did Camus mean by Revolt in the myth of Sisyphus? What are some ways to revolt without being destructive or should one simply be a good at? Thank you. Well, that's 19k Mitch. Well, the first thing I should say about is it's not those so simple to be a good end. I think being a good amount is better than just being a chaotic and and useless and and so you should probably go from chaotic and useless and to good and that's a process of maturation. That's what happens. When you're you know, you move from being a child to an adolescent to a young adult. You adopt the strictures and responsibilities of your culture to discipline yourself. Now if you stop at the point where you're a good Aunt well then I think you know, that's not so good then Then you're you're an avatar of the pathologies of your culture as well as an avatar of the virtues of your culture. So but you it's fighting against mirror enculturation is that's that's not virtue that's failure. That's just failure to mature. You know, that was actually one of Nietzsche's questions of conscience. Are you leading or are you just running away? Well, the answer that almost always is you running away. You might think you're leading but the probability that you're leading especially if you haven't seriously considered the possibility that you're running away is like really, what's the what's the chances if you if you really think about it's not that easy lead as pretty easy to run away. So if you're not doing what other people are doing, you're probably running away and you might say well that's pretty rough. It's like fair enough, you know, if you've got some absolutely unique destiny that You have to manifest more power to you. But most of the time what I see are people who think they have a unique Destiny and really what they're doing is wandering off the beat batch into some Thorn ridden ditch where things are not going to be good for them. So what are some ways to revolt without being destructive revolt against what? That would be the question. I mean, it's a very you could try revolting against your lack of discipline. Like that's good. That's a war. That's a war if you want a war maybe you do because people need War, you know, I think it was William James who said that people need a moral equivalent to War. I think that's what um was trying to discover by the way the moral equivalent to war and I think he did discover it as well and that's tied up with the idea of sacrifice. If you want to revoke you should revolt against your own pathology and inadequacy in uselessness and resentment and cruelty and blindness. And yeah, you could have a war against that you could revolt against that that give you something to do. Pete Professor MRA people are often quite smart. Why do they have this strong tendency towards atheism. Oh, well, you know people who have Smart get atheistic right away because you know, it's obvious you really believe in God you believe in an old man in the sky. You really think the world's only 7,000 years old. It's like he really believed Christ turned Wine Into Water, you know, no one who wasn't foolish would believe that well, that's the statement of someone who's I guess who's smart enough to start to notice something about what people believe but you know, they're ten steps along a 50,000 mile Journey. So and then the other thing I already mentioned this about atheism. People like to think that the reason they're atheistic is because they're clear-headed and rational. It's like well first of all, no, probably they're not because how often you meet someone who's clear-headed and rational like I'm being psychoanalytically minded. I'm always way more likely to look for the dark reason that someone is doing something rather than the light reason, you know, the reason that's moving them towards the light because it's hard to move towards the light and so I would say most of the time people are atheistic Well, it's kind of its fashionable in some significance in fashion way to be a to revolt if you're rational and if you're kind of an intellectual, but also you can just dispense with responsibility if you're atheistic and I think that's 90% of the reason that it's especially in modern world. That's why people Are proponents of atheism, you know where they have some particular hatred for the church. I think Richard Dawkins has a particular hatred for the church. I would I would I would I've thought of this many times I would swear that something happened to him when he was a kid that wasn't good and that the church was involved because he has such an animus against the church. It's that It's it possesses him. There's a reason for that. Alright, so, let's see here. Can you explain why the conventional wisdom about ancient people are sort of words with your ideas about each and people? Yeah, that's Harold Bloom. I can explain that people like to think they're smart and they like and the easiest way to think you're smart in many ways to think that other people aren't and so we think well the people who came before us all these thousands of centuries, you know, they just didn't know what we knew. Well their cultures didn't have the same degree of Staggering technological capacity that our skin, but that didn't mean that they Stupid mean throw the average person back into ancient Athens. They're not going to last very long. Its lack of respect and you know that is a definite Hallmark of modern cultures that you can hardly even tell, you know, you can hardly even say well being respectful. It sounds like you're from 1819 be respectful well. if you're not if you don't want to be nihilistic, you better be respectful because being nihilistic and having respect for nothing are exactly the same thing. So you can start by having some respect for your ancestors and try to figure out what the hell they were talking about. He read the Old Testament for example has a very weird book. It's very very very very weird book. Lots of people wrote it. Lots of people added it it got sequence together and turned into this volume for reasons that we just can't understand. It's a collective work of the human imagination and people read it. So simple in such a simple minded way. They read it like Fundamentalist, like simple-minded fundamentalist Protestants think about science. Now the fundamentalist Protestants think the Bible is literally true science is literally true. Thus the Bible is science. Well, you know know the people who wrote the Bible word scientists, that's just not how it works. But then this modern critics mm of religious thinking of traditional religious thinking they're just they're the same they do the same thing except backwards. And they say no no no religion was science. It's just bad science. And so, you know, we don't have to pay any attention to it. Well, it's not science. It's something else. It's ethics its morality its drama its all of that. And reminisce about how to live and religious drama is it's a definitional issue. There's nothing deeper than religious drama. And the reason for that is that depth defines what's religious and like I know this firsthand partly because in my clinical practice like I often see people who are in terrible terrible terrible trouble and often that trouble is ethical and if the trouble they're in is bad enough, there's no other language to conceptualize it in that. Isn't religious because the religious language comes into its own when you're dealing with problems normal way of life and death but literally of Heaven and Hell and you know modern people think well, there's no such thing as heaven and there's no such thing as hell. It's like okay fine. There's no such thing as Heaven let's accept that but if you think there's no such thing as held it's like I can't see how someone who's educated would ever dare to make that claim. After everything that happened to us in the 20th century. I can't see that someone could ever say that there's no such thing as hell without being terrified that a bolt of lightning would obliterate them on the sparkle. You know he'll is real and if you want to talk about use religious language, and if you want to figure out how to get away from hell, you use religious language, and that's what religious language is for. So, you know the that's actually understandable. Now, I would say if if you want to learn about this you can you can read nature. You can read Dostoyevsky. You can read young it's hard. You can read young student Eric Northman Eric. Norman was a genius like a lot of this information. Is there waiting for people to begin to understand it, but it's hard slogging and and part of the problem is that you get to Hell way before you get to have You know and one of the things you own is sometimes conceptualized as a new age thinker and I think that's absurd. I think it's it's completely observed. One of them's fundamental propositions is that if you follow a meaningful and truthful path that will take you to the worst place you can imagine and then possibly having gone there the journey uphill, you know towards the light can begin in earnest. well who wants top? Well, no one if they have any sense, but you know young also made another statements which really taught me the bone when I first understood it he said Anything you don't thoroughly understand you act out in the world as fate. And so one of the one of the lessons I took away from that is that you know, if you don't want hell to manifest itself in the world, then you better understand your role in producing it. Let me say that's actually the primary religious injunction and I would also say that that's a big part of the reason why. Belief systems such as Christianity I'm talking mostly about Christianity because that's what I'm most familiar with but and also because it's definitely out of the you know, it's the foundation of Western Civilization actually quite a fan of Western Civilization. Mean that the fundamental moral injunction is in Christianity or one of them. I mean, they're all tangled together. I guess to some degree is like you want to constrain hell within yourself. Well, that's no joke, man, I mean you know one of what another thing I learned from um from Egypt was that if you if you if you look at the sorts of things that happen say Nazi Germany or are in the Soviet Union or the mouse China or that are still happening around the world where their systematic torture and persecution of millions and millions of people where where the entire state was devoted towards making things as bad as they could possibly be and then making them even worse after that that people played a role in that and they were people like you That means that people like you play a role in that. And so then the question is what's your role? And is that the game that you want to be playing? Well, that's a serious question because it is people like you who were responsible for that and it means that to the degree that you're a person and you don't want that to happen anymore. You have to sort that out within yourself so I can I can explain it. I think I'll close with this another. Deeply religious idea there's another idea. This is an archetypal idea about the image of the savior of the Messiah. The Messiah is the person who takes the sins of the world unto himself. That's a classic archetypal idea it's like what does that mean It means that you look for the motivations that drove Hitler in yourself because they were there. And that's what it means to take the sins of the world on to yourself. It means that you have to view yourself as the perpetrator of archetypal evil. You know, one of the things you said for example was that if you take a small moral failing that a person manifests and you dig into that. As deeply as you can you end up in the center of hell like the roots of that unethical Behavior go all the way down to the to the to the archetype and in my experience, that's being true. That's that's right. That's why people want to have conversations about this sort of thing. You see it happening in Intimate Relationships all the time where there are things that the two people who are involved in the relationship will just not talk about why because they don't want to go there. And where is it that they don't want to go? They don't want to get to the bottom of things. Well, no wonder because you know That's an archetypal idea to hell is a pit. It's at the bottom of things. It's like yeah, that is where it is. And you have to go there if you want to straighten things out. It's like who the hell wants to do that? Well, the alternative is that it plays itself out in the world and we've seen that and that doesn't look like a good idea to me. So well, I guess we should probably end there because I'm getting fuzzy minded that's always a good time to stop. So thank you very much for tuning in. And if this seems to have been successful kind of had a slow start as far as I was concerned, I was kind of muddled headed to begin with but You know, maybe we'll let it all that out. Anyways, I'm thinking about doing this on a regular basis. So, you know, let me know what you think and and we'll see how many people watch it and we'll see what happens and like thanks to all my Ras and there's lots of research assistants here really helping me out with this. So mastering the technology and figuring out what to do with YouTube. So thank you very much for tuning in and hopefully I'll see you again. Ciao. This podcast is brought to you and made possible by generous financial aid from Peter Ken's Le 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.
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