Transcriber: Kevin Vick Reviewer: Denise RQ
All right. Hi everybody!
So I think I'm going to give you three different options
for how to be happy, and you can decide which one you like the best.
The first one was inspired by my hero, Gordon Gekko.
And basically, this option is that you maximize your rational self-interest,
You do whatever you can to make as much money as possible,
and not only that but to control the world around you as much as possible,
to manipulate everybody around you
so that you get the highest status, the most security,
you have everybody under your control and you win, win, win.
This might seem like a monstrous way to live,
but you might notice that there's all kinds of forces around you,
that conspire to push you in that direction.
For example the money system,
which certainly seems to encourage that kind of behavior
really [by not] taking other people's feelings or well-being into account.
But one thing I want to point out here is
the context that prescribes this kind of path to happiness
is present with us on such a deep level that we almost don't even recognize it.
It's written in the stories, the mythology by which our civilization operates.
Our answers to the deepest questions you can ask kind of imply this way of being,
so for example, the questions like:
"Who are you?","What is it to be human?", "What is it to exist?"
The answer to that question
for several hundred years increasingly, maybe several thousand years, has been
"Well, what you are is this separate, discrete being,
this bubble of psychology, wandering around the world that's external to you,
and there's a whole bunch of other bubbles of psychology out there too.
You're this skin-encapsulated soul."
Biology says it in a different way,
it says you are the phenotypic expression of your genes
which program you to maximize rational self-interest.
Physics says that you are this mass, this flesh machine
and there's an universe out there with lots of other masses,
and so, implicit in this worldview,
is that more for me is less for you, and more for you is less for me.
Whoa, how did it get to that?
Oh, this is my old presentation. OK.
(Laughter)
Well, I'm going to actually just forget about the presentation then, and...
I'm just going to leave it that for now.
I had a little diagram of me in my little bubble,
you in your little bubble, this universe out there,
and we're competing to maximize our rational self-interest.
And this isn't very nice.
There's an addendum to this story,
that is shared by science and religion both,
and it says: "Yeah, OK, that's the nature of your beingness
to maximize rational self-interest, or reproductive self-interest."
But, human beings are different because we have this other part, too.
This part that doesn't abide by this law of biology,
or this law of economic self-interest;
we have a good part to go along with the bad part,
it's called the soul, or it's called the spirit,
or it's called the consciousness, or it's called the civilized part,
or it's called the mind, the reason.
If we can listen to that part, and obey that part,
win the war against our evil part then we can be happy.
So this is the second path to happiness
that I'm going to offer you for your consideration:
it's basically to overcome yourself.
And it's going to be a long slog, but at the end,
finally, when you've conquered your sinful nature,
or you've conquered your ego, and so forth,
then you'll get to be happy.
And along the way maybe you can allot yourself a little bit of happiness
with each victory over desire, and each success at self-restraint.
And that's pretty grim, this choice, isn't it?
Between wanton indulgence
and a lifetime of control, a war against yourself.
Both of these strategies, though,
come out of what you could call the separate self.
They come out of the understanding
of what you are is this bubble of psychology,
what you are is this Cartesian mode of consciousness in an external universe.
But that's not the only way
to think of the self, to understand the self or to experience the self.
And, in fact, you might recognize
that that understanding of self is becoming obsolete.
We've built a civilization on it.
Inside, we try to overcome our nature; outside, we try to overcome nature.
We try to conquer nature, we try to conquer disease,
we try to become the lords and masters of nature.
And we can look around the world, and see how well it's worked.
Not very well.
And we don't resonate with it anymore,
and all of our technologies of control seem to be breaking down,
as crises converge upon our civilization,
and the solutions that used to work don't work very well anymore.
And even scientifically,
we're understanding that this picture of the world as a war of all against all,
isn't really the truth.
So, in biology for example,
one might think
that the foxes would be better off if the wolves were exterminated,
because after all, they compete for-- there's a large overlap among their prey,
they compete for rabbits, and rodents, and things like that,
and if the wolves were out of the way, the foxes would be better off, right?
But now we're understanding ecology,
that each being has a contribution to make to all other beings.
And so if you eliminate the wolves, then the deer population explodes,
and they strip all the ground cover,
then the ground birds have nowhere to nest,
and the tick population explodes, and the foxes are plagued by ticks,
and there's no ground birds for them to eat anymore.
And we're learning
that the welfare of all beings depends on the welfare of all other beings,
and that we're all in this together.
And so this sense of the separate self is a delusion.
Primitive people, as we call them, tribal people, understood very well
the interconnected nature of all-being,
for one thing because they were keen observers of nature
but also because that's the way that their societies worked.
Their economies were gift economies,
they didn't engage in barter as the economists fantasize about,
but they were gift economies.
So, in those economies, your good fortune was my good fortune too,
because you would have more to give then, because people didn't accumulate,
and your bad fortune was my bad fortune too.
It's the opposite of the way it is in a money economy
where something bad happens to you, that's one less competitor for me.
It didn't work that way.
So it was very easy to understand 'self, '
to understand the nature of existence as being cooperative,
so that the answer, "What am I?"
it's not this separate being in a world of other,
but it's an interconnected being,
it's the sum total of all relationships,
and you're at the nexus of all of these relationships.
This is a truth that we can feel.
Maybe you've had those moments where you look into someone's eyes,
and you realize, "Here's the same being looking back at me,"
or maybe just being in love,
and this other person's happiness affects your happiness,
like why should that be?
It's crazy, from Gordon Gekko's perspective,
it's crazy from the perspective of the separate self;
why should I care?
But we care,
and that's because we feel what's happening to other beings.
When you look at those photographs
- maybe I can find them, yeah, here's a seabird soaked in oil -
why should it hurt to look at that?
And these children, they're in Congo, or Somalia;
why should that hurt?
It's evidence of our connected being. It is happening to us too.
From the perspective of the connected self,
happiness takes on a very different character.
If the nature of the universe is
that all beings participate in this circle of the gift,
then, to be a fulfilled being, you have to make your contribution too,
you have to participate also in this circle of the gift.
And this is also a desire that we can feel, it's primal.
If you've ever had a job where your gifts are not being engaged,
then you get a feel, "I wasn't put here on Earth to do this."
It's an overwhelming desire, you see those photographs,
and you feel the gift stirring in you, you feel it, there's a need out there,
and you know that you have something to contribute to the welfare of all.
I think that this is a product of our primal gratitude,
at being born into this universe, helpless and naked,
not having the capacity to earn anything,
and yet we're gifted with breath, and food, and life, and care, and water,
and this entire planet that supports us and nourishes us,
and we receive so richly and we want to give in turn.
And we understand...
When we experience it, we understand that this feels good to give,
even on a tiny level, as when somebody asks you for directions,
and you give them directions, "Yeah, you go down here,
you turn right, you turn left, and you'll find it," you know,
and they walk away, and you feel good, and what are you getting in return?
There hasn't even been anybody witnessing your good nature
so you can get social credit for it,
it just feels good to be part of this web of giving and receiving.
Even though it seems crazy,
and even though that part of ourselves that's steeped in the logic of separation
says: Well, what good did that do me,
and what good is it really going to do the world, also?"
Here's our dog
that my wife, Stella, took with her when she moved in...
And Luna, her name's Luna, is a 16 year old dog
and has really nothing concrete to offer us except for peeing on the rug.
Which she does regularly.
The separate self, the rational self might say:
"Well, why am I spending my time feeding this animal?
What effect does it have on the Universe?
What effect could it have on the Universe?"
But something inside me understands that even these small acts of kindness
- as the last speaker was talking about -
even these small acts of kindness have significance,
and have an effect on the world.
So the third option for happiness, you could say it's to step into the gift,
It's to approach a situation, any situation, or your life,
and ask yourself: "Well, what am I called on to give here?"
The pictures of starving children...
maybe you want to go to Africa and do something about it directly,
but maybe it just stirs in you that idea that, "Yeah, I'm here for a reason,
and I want my life to make sense given all of that that is happening."
Even if you don't know about... and you're ignorant of all these things,
it still hurts to be alive in a world where that kind of thing is happening.
We can't even identify the source of the pain,
we call it boredom maybe,
when there's nothing to separate ourselves from ourselves,
but this constant state of subliminal aloneness.
We can remedy that by reestablishing all of these connections to nature,
and to other people that affirm our basic, connected nature,
and giving and receiving is one way to affirm that.
In a gift relationship, you become connected to somebody,
unlike a financial relationship.
I give you something, and now you want to give something to me too,
and so we have a bond.
And this is what we're hungry for,
and this is one reason why the life in the developed world
is so devoid of happiness.
So I'm going to offer you a little experiment
that you can do today or soon in your life,
which is to take some new step into living in the gift.
You might know what that new step is already,
or it might be something that's just on the edge of your courage,
that doesn't make sense from the point of view of separation,
from that old story of the self,
but from the new story of the self, from the understanding
that you've always known: "Yeah, I'm here to do something for the world,
I'm here to do something for other people, for my family,"
from that understanding it makes total sense.
And you can do this experiment and see the magic that happens
when you step into service; is something larger,
and that larger thing begins to arrange synchronicities in your life,
make new things happen and enable you to accomplish the impossible.
"After all, you know the state of the planet,
we've tried everything possible and it hasn't worked," as Sun Ra said,
"So now we must try the impossible."
I don't want to pretend
that I occupy the state of the gift more than anybody else
but I like reminders from people I meet, beautiful people that I meet
who are living in that spirit in some way that I'm not,
and who remind me of what I know,
but I'm not yet capable of believing on my own.
So I guess that's my goal here,
it's to remind you of this thing that you already know,
so that you go out there and believe it just a little bit more.
Thank you.
(Applause)