I talk a lot... To my audiences about
what I believe to be incontrovertible facts.
And I think that the fundamental incontrovertible fact
is that life is is suffering.
And, I think that that's why that's
a primary axiom of religious belief.
In some sense, almost regardless of the faith.
(That life is suffering)
And, everyone knows that.
Although they don't necessarily like to admit it or to talk about it.
You don't have to scrape beneath the surface very far in someone's life
to find a tragedy lurking.
If the person that you're speaking with doesn't have something pretty awful
happening to them right at the moment, economically or socially or within their
family or physically or mentally, the probability that someone they love has
the problem of that sort is extraordinarily high.
And if you happen to be among the fortunate minority for whom that isn't true,
well, all you have to do is wait, and it will be true, soon enough,
and sooner than you think, and worse than you imagine.
And everyone knows that, and so...
It's easy to understand
why people become cynical and bitter and hurt and nihilistic.
I think there's a progression in life.
If you're naive, you think that life will be easy
and that people are basically good, and then you have some experiences,
if you're not sheltered too much and,
that gets taken away from you because
you betray yourself or other people betray you,
or you encounter a tragedy, and then your naivety is shattered and...
The most likely place that you'll go from there is
into something approximating cynicism,
because you don't know the alternative,
and your initial faith, which was not faith, but naivety,
is shattered by the terrible reality of what you encounter.
And then as a cynical person, you're more wise than you are as a naive person.
And then that's a strange thing, because you're worse in some sense than you were...
You're not as optimistic and you're not as filled with hope, and your life is more difficult,
and you're probably harder on other people and with more
of a tendency towards cruelty, and none of that seems positive, but...
There's a wisdom in cynicism that the naive lack.
But the problem is there that cynicism is not
a useful antidote to, let's say, tragedy and malevolence,
because there are places that you go past cynicism as you approach wisdom,
and it's wisdom that you need in order to fabricate yourself this sort
of vessel that will keep you afloat during...
Stormy times...
Life is difficult...
It's tainted by malevolence,
and it's cast in tragedy,
and you need something to offset that,
because otherwise it embitters you.
And if you're embittered, then you become vengeful and cruel, inevitably.
And then you make everything that's made you worse, worse in turn.
And there's no bottom to that.
As anyone who's even a moderate student of history, soon comes to understand,
there's an idea that hell is a bottomless pit, and the reason for that is
that there's no situation that's so terrible that there isn't some damn fool
thing that some idiot can do that will make it far worse.
And so the question is, what might constitute an alternative to that?
And if there is an alternative?
I learned a long while back reading religious mythology mostly,
that there is a difference between thinking and paying attention.
And of the two, paying attention is much more important.
It's not the same thing as thinking.
When you pay attention,
you're looking for what you don't know, you kind of detach yourself and you watch
and you listen and you see if things are the way you think they are and...
You hope they are because life is easier
if things are the way you think they are, but...
if you find out that they're not and you're paying attention,
then you can weave and you can bob, and you can adapt, and you can learn.
And so you have to learn to pay attention.
I just ask people when I'm speaking to pay attention to what they already know.
Here's something that everybody knows...
In a world that consists of suffering and malevolence.
Who is it that you admire?
Or who is it that you don't admire?
Those are the same question.
If you know who you don't admire, well,
then you have a negative model and you can go for the opposite.
And if you know who you admire, well, then you can copy that.
And the instinct for admiration is an instinct for imitation,
and we're very imitative creatures and...
Our instinct for admiration is the instinct for imitation.
And what would you call it?
A deeply biologically and metaphysically
rooted guideline to the proper path of life.
The question is, is there a proper path of life?
There are certainly pathways that make things worse.
That's something to know.
You could avoid those.
And if there are pathways that make things worse, then there are the opposite
pathways, even though those might not be so clear.
I think that's why we're often so enamored
of evil characters in fictional representations is because clear,
it's easier, in some sense, to make what constitutes the dark path clearer.
It's easier for people to understand.
Whereas the path that's positive is murkier and more difficult to ascertain.
But at the very least, you know it's the opposite of that.
So who do you admire or we could start by who don't you admire?
You don't admire...
An adult who won't take responsibility for himself or herself, and could.
I understand there are people
that are so broken and hurt that they need help, constantly because they can't take
responsibility for themselves, or they can in small ways, but not completely.
But you don't admire someone who won't take responsibility for themselves.
In fact, you have a sense of contempt for that.
And if you happen to be that person,
then you wake up in the middle of the night and berate yourself
with what's left of your conscience for failing to undertake your moral duty,
your intrinsic moral duty, and you can't escape that.
And that's so interesting, you know?
That you can't escape that. If you were the creature who could
invent your own values, as Nietzsche suggested,
as an antidote to the death of God,
then you just forgive your transgressions
and you wouldn't suffer the bitter pangs of conscience.
But you do.
And the reason you do is...
Because you're doing things that are wrong...
And you should stop, and you know it...maybe you can't.
Well, let's say then the opposite is that you
admire someone who can take responsibility for himself or herself.
That's a start.
And then maybe you admire someone even more if they've forged their characters
sufficiently to move past cynicism so that not only they take responsibility
for themselves, but they can take responsibility for their family,
and they are there for the people who love them when it's necessary.
And if you do that,
then you have something, I wouldn't say necessarily to be proud of,
but at least you have one less thing to upbraid yourself with...
And that's something...
And then you can move past that.
And you can say, well,
maybe if you put yourself together enough carefully enough, spoke the truth enough,
were courageous enough,
in spite of the reasons you have not to be...
That you could also be someone of benefit to yourself
and your family and your community.
And you partake in structuring things in a harmonious manner by living in that way.
It's not an individual focused ethos.
It's an ethos of harmony among levels.
You should do what's good for you, but it has to be what's good for your
family at the same time, and it has to be what's good for you
and your family and your community at the same time.
And that works musically.
It makes all the levels work in harmony, and you can tell when that's happening.
And this is another thing that's a great utility to know is that
when you're in that place where you're acting
in the proper manner and you're facing things courageously
and you're speaking the truth,
you're imbued with a sense of fundamental meaning,
and that meaning is the antidote to the catastrophe of life.
And it's the antidote psychologically because you have to have that meaning
because otherwise your life is too dark and too dreadful and it will corrupt you.
So it's the antidote psychologically,
but it's also the antidote practically because we're not nothing as human beings.
You know...they say we're made in the image of God.
It's hard to say what that means, but it means, at least in part,
to participate in the process of bringing the good into being.
And we can all do that and the opposite.
And if we accept our responsibility to ourselves
and to other people and to our communities, and we lift that load up,
then we live lives that are meaningful, and that stops us from being corrupt.
It provides us with a medication against catastrophe.
And it also,
practically improves the world.
That's the other thing.
It's not just psychological.
You can make things worse.
Everyone knows that.
And no doubt, you have, in many ways.
But you can make things better, and they actually get better.
And there's a reason for hope.
And there's something to be said to know that...
You're the sort of creature that can look...
Mortality, and catastrophe, and malevolence,
straight in the eye, so to speak,
and nonetheless, stand up, and do what's right.
And that all there is...
In that...
Is good.
And that's what I've been telling people...