0:02 Well, you don't get together in a damn
0:04 bob because all that does is allow you
0:07 to be as horrible as you could possibly
0:08 imagine and suffer from none of the
0:12 consequences. That's a bad idea. So, how
0:15 about we don't do that? Well, there's a
0:17 deep idea in the West, too. It's like
0:22 pick up your damn suffering and bear it
0:24 and try to be a good person so you don't
0:31 Well, that's a truth. You know, I read a
0:33 lot about the terrible things that
0:35 people have done to each other. You just
0:40 cannot even imagine it. It's so awful.
0:42 So, you don't want to be someone like
0:44 that. Now, do you have a reason to be?
0:48 Yes, you have a lots of reasons to be.
0:49 God, there's reasons to be resentful
0:51 about your existence. Everyone you know
0:54 is going to die. You know, you too. And
0:56 there's going to be a fair bit of pain
0:58 along the way and lots of it's going to
1:00 be unfair. It's like, yeah, no wonder
1:02 you're resentful. It's like, act it out
1:04 and see what happens. You make
1:06 everything you're complaining about
1:08 infinitely worse.
1:10 There's this idea that hell is a
1:11 bottomless pit. And that's because no
1:13 matter how bad it is, some stupid son of
1:15 a like you could figure out a way
1:18 to make it a lot worse.
1:20 So you think, well, what do you do about
1:23 that? Well, you accept it. That's what
1:26 life is like. It's suffering. That's
1:28 what the religious people have always
1:32 said. Life is suffering. Yes. Well, who
1:33 wants to admit that? Well, just think
1:35 about it. Well, so what do you do in the
1:38 face of that suffering?
1:41 Try to reduce it.
1:43 Start with yourself. What good are you?
1:45 Get yourself together for Christ's sake
1:47 so that when your father dies, you're
1:48 not whining away in a corner and you can
1:51 help plan the funeral and you can stand
1:53 up solidly so that people can rely on
1:55 you. That's better. Don't be a damn
1:58 victim. Of course, you're a victim.
2:01 Jesus, obviously.
2:04 Put yourself together. And then maybe if
2:06 you put yourself together, you know how
2:07 to do that. You know what's wrong with
2:08 you if you'll admit it. You know,
2:10 there's a few things you could like
2:12 polish up a little bit that you might
2:14 even be able to manage in your
2:16 insufficient present condition. And so,
2:18 you might shine yourself up a little bit
2:20 and then your eyes will be a little more
2:21 open. Then you can shine yourself up a
2:23 little bit more. And then maybe you
2:25 could bring your family together instead
2:28 of having them be the hateful, spiteful,
2:30 neurotic, infighting batch that you're
2:38 So then you fix yourself up a little bit
2:40 kind of humbly because you know God
2:42 you're a fixer upper if there ever was
2:44 one. And then you got to figure out well
2:45 can you figure out how to make peace
2:47 with your idiot brother and probably not
2:50 because he's just as dumb as you. So how
2:52 the hell are you going to manage that?
2:54 And so then you maybe you get somewhere
2:55 that way and your family's sort of
2:57 functioning and you find out well that
2:58 kind of relieved a little bit of
3:00 suffering although it reduced the
3:02 opportunities for spiteful revenge and
3:04 that's kind of a pain in the neck. And
3:07 so then you get your family together a
3:08 little bit and you're a little clued in
3:10 then at least a bit because you've done
3:12 something difficult that's actually
3:14 difficult. You're a little wiser and so
3:16 then maybe you could put a tentative
3:18 finger out beyond the family and try to
3:20 change some little thing without
3:23 wrecking it. It's like our society is
3:24 complex and we teach our students that
3:27 they could just fix it. It's like go fix
3:29 a military helicopter and see how far
3:31 you get with that. It's like what are
3:32 you going to do? You're like a chimp
3:35 with a wrench. Whack. Oh, look. It's
3:38 better. It's like no, it's not better.
3:40 Things are complicated and to fix things
3:43 is really hard and you have to be like a
3:46 a golden tool to fix things and you're not.
3:48 not.
3:50 So, and that's the other message of the
3:53 west. It's like how do you overcome the
3:55 suffering of the of life? And I'm not
3:57 saying it's only the message of the
4:00 west. How do you overcome the suffering
4:03 of life is be a better person. That's
4:06 how you do it. Well, that's hard. It
4:08 takes responsibility. And I think, you
4:10 know, if you said to someone, you want
4:12 to have a meaningful life, everything
4:15 you do matters. That's the definition of
4:17 a meaningful life. But everything you do
4:20 matters. You're gonna have to carry that
4:21 with you.
4:23 Or do you want to just forget about the
4:26 whole meaning thing and then you don't
4:27 have any responsibility because who the
4:29 hell cares and you can wander through
4:31 life doing whatever you want gratifying
4:34 impulsive desires for how useful that's
4:36 going to be. And you're stuck in
4:38 meaninglessness but you don't have any
4:40 responsibility. Which one do you want?
4:43 Well, ask yourself which one are you
4:45 pursuing? And you'll find very rapidly
4:48 that it isn't the majority of your soul
4:50 that's pursuing the whole meaning thing
4:52 because well look what you have to do to
4:55 do that. You have to take on the fact
4:56 that life is suffering. You have to put
5:00 yourself together in the face of that.
5:02 Well that's hard. Christ it's amazing
5:05 people can even do it. I'm stunned every
5:08 day when I go outside and it isn't a a
5:10 riot with everything burning. Really
5:13 God. You talk to people, it's like I
5:15 knew this guy, he'd been in a motorcycle
5:17 accident and it really ruined him and he
5:19 was like a linesman, you know, working
5:20 on the power and he was working with
5:22 someone who had Parkinson's disease. And
5:26 they had complimentary inadequacies
5:28 and so two of them could do the job of
5:30 one person. And so they're out there
5:32 fixing power lines in the freezing cold
5:34 despite the fact that one was
5:36 threequarters wrecked with a motorcycle
5:37 accident and the other one had
5:39 Parkinson's. It's like that's how our
5:41 civilization works. It's like there's
5:43 all these ruined people out there.
5:45 They've got problems like you can't
5:47 believe. Off they go to work and do
5:49 things they don't even like. And look,
5:51 the lights are on. My god, it's
5:53 unbelievable. It's It's a miracle. It's
5:57 a miracle. And we're so ungrateful.
5:59 College students, the postmodern types,
6:01 they're so ungrateful. You know, they
6:03 don't know that they're surrounded by
6:05 just a bloody miracle. It's a miracle
6:07 that all this stuff works. that all you
6:09 crazy chimpanzees that don't know each
6:11 other can sit in the same room for two
6:14 hours sweltering away without tearing
6:15 each other apart because that's what
6:26 anyways, so what happened? Well, I made
6:28 some videos and I got to the bottom of
6:30 some things, at least as far as I can
6:31 tell. So I told you what the bottom is
6:33 and then I've got this idea about what
6:35 you might do about it, which isn't my
6:38 idea. It's like it's not my idea. It's
6:40 an old old old old idea. It's far older
6:43 than Christianity. It's old. It's the
6:46 oldest story of mankind.
6:49 Get yourself together. Transcend your
6:51 suffering. See if you can be some kind
6:54 of hero. Make the suffering in the world
6:57 less. Well, that's the way forward as
6:59 far as I can tell. If there is any way
7:01 forward, that's what's under assault by
7:03 the postmodernists.
7:05 So look out because they know exactly
7:07 what they're doing and they know exactly
7:09 why they're doing it. To pursue
7:11 something that makes you happy in the
7:14 immediate present risks sacrificing your
7:17 well many things but at least let's say
7:19 your hedenism in the medium to long
7:20 term. And of course that is one of the
7:22 major problems with drug use and alcohol
7:24 is a really good example of that because
7:27 whatever hedonic kick you might get from
7:29 it that moment at night you're going to
7:32 pay for almost completely or maybe even
7:36 more so because the next day you're
7:38 much more jittery and anxious and that's
7:39 a that's a direct consequence of
7:41 withdrawing from the drug. So when
7:42 you're in when you have a hangover
7:45 you're in alcohol withdrawal. So that's
7:49 how fast you you get roughly speaking
7:51 addicted to it. And so if you take
7:52 another drink when you're hung over,
7:54 it'll cure it. But it's not a very
7:56 useful cure because all you do is push
7:58 the inevitable hangover one more step
7:59 into the future. And so part of the
8:02 problem with the hedonic answer is
8:06 happy when exactly and over what period
8:08 of time. And also who's happy? Because
8:09 maybe something makes you happy but
8:11 makes your family miserable. Now you
8:13 could say, "Well, I don't care." But you
8:14 do care if you have to live with your
8:16 family because they're going to take it
8:19 out on you. So, so the the impulsive
8:22 hedonism which is also fostered say by a
8:24 positive emotion. It it tends to put
8:26 people into a state of the pursuit of
8:28 short-term hedenism. It's not a good
8:31 long-term or medium to long-term
8:33 solution. I actually think that's why
8:36 people evolved conscientiousness,
8:38 right? Because conscientiousness is not
8:41 happy. Conscientious people aren't
8:43 conscientious because it makes them
8:45 happy. We're starting to think that
8:47 they're conscientious because they
8:48 actually feel terrible if they're just
8:50 sitting around doing nothing. And so
8:53 it's a way of staving off
8:55 stress, the stress that's related to
8:57 enforced leisure, something like that.
8:58 You know, you if you know industrious
9:00 people, some of you will have some of
9:02 you are industrious. Some of you will
9:03 have industrious parents. They just
9:05 can't sit around and do nothing. They
9:07 have to be working. They don't feel good
9:09 unless they're working. So what thing
9:12 about conscientiousness is that it it
9:14 involves continual sacrifice, right?
9:15 You're doing difficult things in the
9:17 present hypothetically to make the
9:19 future better, but that's not driven by
9:20 hedonism by any stretch of the
9:22 imagination. And conscientiousness is
9:23 actually a pretty good predictor of
9:26 long-term life success in stable
9:28 societies because there's also no point
9:31 in being conscientious and saving things
9:33 up and storing things if a bunch of
9:35 thugs are going to just come in randomly
9:37 and and take it all away. So
9:38 conscientiousness actually only works
9:40 intelligently in societies that have
9:42 some medium to long-term stability, you
9:44 know, because you can get wiped out by
9:45 hyperinflation too because
9:47 hyperinflation kills off the
9:48 conscientious people. The people who
9:50 acrewed debts are thrilled when
9:52 hyperinflation kicks in because it wipes
9:53 out their debts. But of course, those
9:55 debts are the things they owe to people
9:58 who were conscientious enough to save.
10:00 So anyways, Pinocchio was transformed
10:03 into a victim and he's offered this he's
10:06 offered this identity and he takes it.
10:07 Now, it's partly because he's deceived
10:10 and and manipulated, but it's also
10:12 partly because the fox offers him the
10:15 abandonment of responsibility as payment for
10:17 for
10:19 as payment for adopting the victim
10:23 identity. So, this is where his own lack
10:24 of morality, let's say, because this is
10:27 all about Pinocchio's development as a
10:30 character plays a role in his demise. So
10:32 So
10:34 if I'm a victim, then everyone else owes
10:36 me something and I don't have to take
10:38 any responsibility. And so one of the
10:40 things I've wondered, here's something
10:43 to think about. It might be that the
10:45 sense of meaning that that life can
10:47 provide to you is proportionate to the
10:48 amount of responsibility you decide to
10:51 take on. That that'd be very strange if
10:52 it was the case, you know, because
10:54 responsibility of course is a kind of
10:56 weight obviously and it's difficult to
11:00 take on responsibility. But if any
11:02 positive emotion that you feel and your
11:05 control of anxiety and the control over
11:08 pain is dependent on the activation of
11:10 these systems that watch you move
11:13 towards a desired goal, then the more
11:16 complete and weighty the goal is, the
11:18 more kick there's going to be in the
11:20 observation that you're moving towards
11:22 it. And you know, you kind of already
11:24 know this because you'll you'll have
11:25 observed in your own life that when
11:27 you're engaged in something that you
11:29 believe in
11:33 that the time passes properly. You know,
11:35 you can see this even if you're maybe
11:37 you're reading a paper and it's actually
11:40 related in some intelligible manner to
11:42 something that you want to learn. So
11:43 even though it's difficult, you get
11:45 engaged in it. You can remember it
11:47 better. You can process it better. And
11:49 you don't you're not so likely to fall
11:51 asleep. and you're not so likely to want
11:53 to find distractions, all of that. You
11:55 can get into it. And it would be very
11:57 interesting if that was proportionate to
11:59 the degree of responsibility that you're
12:01 willing to shoulder. And I I think you
12:03 can make a strong case for that. I've
12:05 also often wondered, imagine you could
12:08 offer people a choice. Here's the
12:10 choice. You could say, well,
12:12 your life isn't meaningful. The
12:13 nihilists have got it right. There's no
12:16 meaning in your life. And because of
12:17 that, there's no reason for you to
12:19 accept any responsibility.
12:22 So you can live a responsibility-free
12:24 life and maybe one of impulsive pleasure
12:26 seeeking, but a responsibility free
12:28 life, but the price you pay is that it
12:30 doesn't get to be meaningful. Or you
12:32 could say to someone, "No, we're going
12:33 to do the opposite. We're going to say
12:36 you can live a meaningful life, but it's
12:37 only going to be as meaningful as the
12:39 amount of responsibility that you're
12:41 willing to bear." And then you might
12:43 say, "Well, what would people choose?"
12:45 Because everybody also always makes
12:47 noises about wanting to have a
12:49 meaningful life. But if the price you
12:50 pay for that is the adoption of
12:52 responsibility, then it's not so obvious
12:55 that people would choose meaning over,
12:59 you know, over pointless pursuits.
13:02 If they had to, if the benefit they got
13:03 for choosing the pointless pursuits was
13:05 that they really didn't have to care
13:07 about anything they ever did, right?
13:09 It's no responsibility. And that's
13:11 really what Pinocchio is offered and
13:12 that's what the coachman offers him.
13:15 That's interesting because,
13:17 you know, so far it's been the fox and
13:19 the and the cat and they're kind of two
13:21 bit hoods. And so the pathological
13:24 pathway that they offer Pinocchio is not
13:26 the worst of the pathological pathways.
13:28 But here, at least as far as the
13:30 imagination, the collective imagination
13:32 that created this movie is concerned is
13:33 this is where you get to the most
13:37 pathological form of let's call it
13:39 temptation. And that's the temptation to
13:41 engage in
13:43 to abandon responsibility and to engage
13:47 in impulsive pleasure seeking,
13:49 short-term pleasure seeeking. So here's
13:51 the fox pretending to be a doctor investigating
13:53 investigating
13:56 um Pinocchio's illness and he makes some
13:59 notes which is all
14:02 just meaningless
14:05 scribble, right? It's like white noise.
14:07 And it doesn't matter that the arguments
14:09 that he's making is are completely
14:11 incoherent. And it doesn't matter that
14:12 he actually doesn't know anything. He
14:16 what he's selling is easy to buy. And so
14:19 Pinocchio buys it.
14:21 And by the end of the conversation with
14:24 the fox, he's pretty convinced that he's
14:27 useless and that he needs a vacation.
14:29 You know,
14:31 this is an eatable sit an edible
14:33 situation as well, which I touched on
14:40 it's very, let's imagine that you have a
14:42 child that is a little on the neurotic
14:44 side, so high negative emotion, and
14:46 maybe one that's also a little bit on
14:48 the sickly side, so has a variety of,
14:50 let's say, relatively minor ailments,
14:53 but ailments nonetheless.
14:56 And so what that means as a parent,
14:57 we'll say mother for this example
14:59 because I want to use the edible
15:02 example. You have to make a decision all
15:03 the time about exactly how you're going
15:05 to treat that child.
15:08 One decision is well I'm not going to
15:09 you don't have to go to school today
15:11 because you're not feeling well. It's like
15:13 like
15:15 fair enough.
15:16 But do you make the same decision the
15:19 next day? And do you make the same
15:21 decision the next day? And let's imagine
15:24 that you enable the child to avoid
15:26 responsibility as a consequence of
15:28 capitalizing on their illness.
15:30 Well, then that's not going to be very
15:31 good for the child. The rule with an a
15:34 sickly child has to be something like,
15:35 I'm going to push you right to your limit
15:36 limit
15:39 because otherwise, how is the person
15:40 going to figure out what they can do?
15:42 And if they can't figure out what they
15:44 can do, then they're not going to be
15:45 able to make their way in the world at
15:47 all. And then that gets muddied very
15:49 badly if you're not exactly sure that
15:51 you want them to make their way in the
15:52 world. You know, maybe you're just as
15:54 happy because you'd be sitting at home
15:57 alone if your child was there with you.
15:59 And maybe you'd be just as happy at some
16:01 level if they never grew up at all
16:03 because then they won't leave.
16:05 And so, and maybe that's because you
16:07 have a terrible marriage and you're
16:08 lonesome. You know, maybe it's an
16:10 abusive marriage and your husband has
16:12 chased away all your friends and so you
16:13 don't have anything at all. And maybe
16:14 that's cuz he didn't stand up for
16:16 yourself very well, apart from the fact
16:19 that he was, you know, tyrannical in his
16:22 central nature. And so then all those
16:24 little warps and bends in your psyche
16:27 are going to manifest themselves right
16:29 right in the background of every single
16:32 one of those decisions.
16:34 My daughter had a lot of illnesses when
16:38 she was adolescent and they were very
16:40 serious and it was very difficult to
16:42 figure out what to do about that because
16:44 you you couldn't exactly apply normative
16:47 rules, right? And we always had to
16:50 figure out if she was
16:52 communicating her symptoms to us, how
16:55 seriously to take those. And the answer
16:56 was the least amount of serious
16:59 possible. It's something like that because
17:01 because
17:03 we needed to know and she needed to know
17:05 what she could do in spite of the fact
17:07 that she had problems. And one of the
17:09 things I really tried to instill in her
17:12 and I think it worked is that you don't
17:14 ever want to use your illness as an
17:16 excuse for not doing anything not
17:18 consciously. You know, sometimes you
17:19 might not know I'm not feeling well. How
17:21 what can I do? Well, you don't know,
17:24 right? Because sometimes when you're not
17:25 feeling well, you can do more than you
17:26 think and sometimes you can do less than
17:28 you think. It's not like it's obvious,
17:30 but sometimes it's obvious. You know,
17:31 this little temptation flips through
17:33 your mind and you think, well, I don't
17:34 really want to do what I'm doing today,
17:36 and I'm not feeling very well, so I
17:37 don't have to do it. You do that a
17:39 hundred times. Then you don't know how
17:41 sick you are anymore. And then you're
17:43 then you're in real trouble because not
17:45 only are you sick, but you actually have
17:48 you've muddied the waters. And so you
17:50 have both problems then is you're
17:54 actually ill and you've betrayed
17:57 yourself by using that as an excuse not
17:59 to pursue your responsibilities. And
18:01 that I think if you do both of those
18:02 both of those things happen to you at
18:04 the same time you're in real trouble.
18:05 It's really hard not to have that happen.
18:07 happen.
18:09 You're in a class it's near the
18:11 beginning of the semester. You write an
18:12 exam or you hand in an essay and you
18:14 don't get the mark that you desired.
18:16 Okay. So what are your options? Well,
18:17 one option would be, so you've hit an
18:19 anomaly. Things didn't happen the way
18:21 you wanted them to happen. And so maybe
18:23 you say, geez, that was a boring and
18:25 stupid class anyways. This gives me an
18:27 excuse to get out, and so that's not
18:30 such a negative thing. Or you think, oh
18:31 well, I really better buckle down and
18:33 study. And you decide to stay in the
18:35 class. So basically, what you've done is
18:37 maintained your framework. I'm going to
18:39 work through this class, but you're
18:41 you're you've decided to modify some of
18:44 the sub routines that make up that
18:46 frame. you say, well, I should study
18:47 more next time or I have to prioritize
18:49 this class compared to other classes.
18:51 So, it's a micro alteration within the
18:53 overarching framework. But another thing
18:57 you can do is say
18:59 to hell with the class. I just won't
19:01 I'll just drop it.
19:04 And so the advantage to that is problem
19:06 gone. The disadvantage is well now you
19:09 have a different problem which is okay
19:10 fine you dropped the class. Do you have
19:12 another class that you can replace it
19:14 with? Is that a good way of dealing with
19:17 a micro failure? You know, to move up a
19:18 level of analysis and throw out the
19:20 whole frame because you could also say,
19:22 well, maybe I should just drop out of
19:24 university and maybe I should go hang
19:26 myself. You know, that's well, it's the
19:28 same line of logic. It's just taken up
19:30 to a higher degree of abstraction. And
19:32 so, generally speaking, you don't want
19:35 to solve a problem by moving up a level
19:37 and wiping out the frame within which
19:39 the problem was experienced. you you
19:41 want to do that carefully because in
19:43 principle the frame that you were
19:46 working within had already you'd already
19:48 assigned value to it and worked at it.
19:49 You've already invested in it. It's a
19:51 big sacrifice to blow out the whole
19:54 frame. Now sometimes you can do it. So
19:57 anyways, what happens is well, you get
20:00 the bad grade and you're upset about it.
20:02 And so you've been plunged from your
20:05 happy, satiated state, let's say, into a
20:08 state of relative chaos. And the chaos
20:11 is, oh, I hit an obstacle. I didn't
20:13 expect it. And now I don't know what to
20:15 do. And so what does it mean to not know
20:18 what to do? Well,
20:21 it can mean I need to study harder.
20:24 It can mean I should drop this course.
20:26 It can mean I should major in a
20:27 different subject. It could mean maybe I
20:29 shouldn't be in university. It could
20:31 mean maybe my future plans have been
20:34 formulated badly. It can mean my future
20:36 plans have been formulated badly because
20:38 I don't understand myself very well and
20:39 I've been telling lies about my past.
20:42 Right? The thing can really expand on
20:44 you. And that's what the chaotic domain
20:47 is. That's the remanifestation of those
20:49 things that you had considered
20:51 irrelevant. Right? Because when you go
20:53 to pick up the exam, you've got your
20:55 identity as a competent student intact.
20:57 You're not questioning whether you
20:59 should be in the course or whether you
21:01 should be in that major or whether you
21:02 should be in university. None of that.
21:05 That's all in the implicitly accepted
21:07 category. And as soon as the anomalous
21:09 event emerges,
21:10 all of those things that you had
21:13 rendered axiomatic start to become
21:16 questionable. And that's like the shark
21:18 coming up out coming up from the depths
21:20 to pull you down. And that's the classic
21:23 way of of representing that and of
21:24 symbolizing it. That's Jonah and the
21:27 whale for example. So it's something is
21:29 manifest itself from the deep unknown
21:32 and pulls you under like an alligator at
21:34 a at a water hole which is I'm sure one
21:36 of the sources from which we derived
21:38 that particular kind of mythological
21:40 representation because you can imagine
21:43 that when we were on the after living on
21:45 trees we had to go down to the damn
21:47 water holes and you've you've watched
21:48 enough nature programs to know what a
21:50 Nile crocodile can do to a water
21:53 buffalo. It's not pretty. And so to go
21:55 down to the water, the chaotic water and
21:58 the source of all life as well, right,
21:59 is to risk an encounter with the
22:01 terrible thing that lurks in the depths.
22:04 And so we use that as a central metaphor
22:07 for for for mapping the sorts of things
22:08 that happen happen to us in a much more
22:11 abstract space. And you you know that
22:12 because one of the things you're going
22:18 to do, let's say that the the professor
22:20 uh there's a professor obviously who
22:24 gave you the bad grade. Okay. So one
22:26 logical presupposition is that you're in
22:28 some sense insufficient in relationship
22:32 to the course. But another logical and
22:34 instantaneous categorization is to throw
22:35 that person into the category of
22:38 malevolent predator. And you'll do that
22:40 by becoming upset and cursing the person
