Why don't you just try to work as hard as
you can at your damn job for, like, six weeks, right?
All flat out.
You know, if you work 10% longer hours, you make 40% more money.
That's something worth thinking about. You know, you've got a job.
Maybe you should up 15 minutes early and you leave 15 minutes late and you
actually work and your boss notices because he would probably notice.
And then maybe someone's going to get promoted.
And maybe it'll be you because something's going to tilt the scales and that little
extra bit of work done without cynicism and resentment, might be enough.
Well, he said he started at $21 an hour,
and in six weeks he was making $37 an hour.
And it's not a King's ransom, man,
but it's a hell of a lot more than zero, and it's quite a lot more than $21.
He said his life had turned around
substantially because he learned if he put some damn effort into it...
And I'm not trying to be Joe Optimist here.
Like, I know that people hit runs of bad luck
and that things can take you out of life, right?
Unfortunate illnesses and betrayal.
And like, there's no shortage
of randomness and horror that can wipe you out even if you're doing your best.
But you don't have a better bloody plan than to do your best.
And it tends to work a lot better than you think.
And what's so interesting about
the hierarchies that people set up is that: that's how they're set up.
They're not set up on power, they're set up on reciprocity and skill and trust.
Not always.
If you're in a job where you work hard
and you're a good guy and you're doing your best and your boss is a bloody tyrant
and you never get a break, it's like, okay, fine.
You're in a F***o world.
Get the hell out of it.
Get your resume set up, write your CV, fill in the educational gaps that you have,
send out your 25 resumes a day and prepare to make a lateral move
because you're in a bad place.
But almost everywhere,
and this certainly been the case, virtually,
everywhere I've worked and I've had, like, 50 jobs.
If you go above and beyond the call
of duty in a wake and intelligent way, interpersonally, socially with regards
to the diligence of your work, with regards to the truth of your attitude
and your courage and all of that... That will work.
And if you try it for a year and it
doesn't work, then go somewhere else because you can, right?
You're free. I mean, it's not easy.
You can't just walk out the door
and instantly find another job, but you're not enslaved.
You could make a move.
You could even decide that you're going to make a move and double your salary.
It's not a bad goal, and it's certainly a possibility.
It's like it isn't hierarchy.
It's ethics that determines success in a functional society.
It's ethics that determines success, not power.
The rest of it's a bloody lie.
And that doesn't mean that all our systems are perfectly ethical.
You got to be awake.
If you're in a system, there's going to be some corruption in it.
Part of what you're supposed to do is keep
your damn eyes open for the corruption and your mouth speaking truth.
So when the corruption starts to take root, you object to it.
So the whole damn system doesn't turn into a pathological power play.
And that's part of your ethical responsibility as a conscious being,
an ethical being, a religious being for that matter,
and a citizen.
You're charged with that.
That's why you vote.
That's why you're the cornerstone of your state, man,
You're the...what would you call?
The wellspring of the ethical actions that replenish the dying world.
That's what you are.
And if you act, that's really, that's what you are.
And if you act that out properly, then things work!
And that's why that's always been described as ethical behavior.
It's not because you're supposed to be good.
And being good isn't that easy anyway.
And it certainly doesn't mean being nice and harmless.
It's not an easy thing to be good.
You have to be tough as a damn boot to be good, because you have to stand your
ground when you need to stand your ground and you have to be able to say no when
it's time to say no, and you have to mean it!
And so then you have to think and plan strategically, so that when you're going
to say no, you can mean it and it will stick!
And that takes a certain amount of integrated malevolence, I would say.
And once it's integrated, it's not malevolence.
It's strength, it's strength of character.
It's the ability to stand your ground.
And you have to cultivate that.
And you cultivate that, at least in part by telling the truth.
And so you take your place in the world as a decent person and as a decent citizen.
And you play the hierarchical game properly.
And that is to stand up straight with your shoulders back.
It's like the world's an onslaught.
You've got the tyranny of culture to deal with.
You've got the catastrophe of nature,
you've got your own damn malevolence and ignorance, right, all coming at you.
Plus the incredible, complicated, indeterminate potential of the future.
That's all coming at you!
And it's all your responsibility, and you can cringe away from it and be
afraid of it and be victimized by it and be bitter and cynical about it.
And no wonder because it can be painful or you can turn around and you can say, man,
"Bring it on!", because there's more to me than there is to the catastrophe.
And this is what I discovered.
From looking at what I looked at, I looked at the darkest things I could look at.
Really, for 30 years, I was really a lot of fun to be around, I can tell you.
I looked at the darkest things that I could think of,
not only what happened in Auschwitz
and what happened in the Gulag, but, personal issues.
It's like I wasn't so much interested in the totalitarians, as a group.
I was interested in the people
who undertook the terrible acts that the totalitarians required.
You know, the people who... I was just re-reading ordinary men.
And it was a story about a police
battalion in Poland that trained ordinary policemen to take naked pregnant women out
into the fields and shoot them in the back of the head.
It takes a lot of training, by the way, before you can bring yourself to do that.
And you aren't the same person by the end of it. It's pretty goddamn horrific.
And I was trying to figure out what would
it be like to be that person because we are that person.
And then what would it be like to not be that person, right?
To refuse to do that, to not participate in that!
And what I discovered by making that totalitarian proclivity personal was
that there's more to us than there is to the horror.
Nature is bent on our destruction,
bad as culture is tyrannical and bloody back as far as you can look, as malevolent
as you are in the darkest part of your heart, and that's plenty malevolent.
The possibility that's within you that can well up the courage and the truth
and the ability and the skill and the willingness to set things right if
you are willing to set them right is more powerful than all of that.
And so it's so interesting.
It was proof for me of an old saying I read from Carl Jung.
It's an alchemical motif in Sterquiliniis Invenitur, which is:
"What you most want to be found will be found where you least want to look."
Essentially.
And it's so interesting because it means that if you're willing to turn around
and to stand up (say) and stand up straight and face the darkness, like fully,
what you discover at the darkest part is the brightest light.
And that's something that's so much worth discovering, because there's going to be
terrible darkness in your life, and it's going to make you cynical and bitter.
And it could easily be that you're just
not looking at it enough, because if you looked at it enough and you
didn't shy away and you brought everything you had to bear on it,
you'd find that there is more to you than there was to the horror...
Drop what you're doing that's foolish that you know is foolish, and pick an aim
that's worthwhile, you know, to make things better for yourself like
you're worth taking care of, like you're worth something, you know.
And to surround yourself with people who believe the same and who are rejoicing
in your accomplishments and unhappy when you fail.
And you're comparing yourself to your accomplishments of yesterday and not
to someone else's today, so that you're not jealous and bitter,
and you put your own house in order so that you're not cursing the world when
some of its disarray might be your fault, and you're trying to pursue something
meaningful and you're doing your best to tell the truth and all of that.
And then you see what happens.
Who the hell are you?
You think you're a miracle of some bloody, bizarre sort?!
We've been around for three and a half billion years.
Every single one of your relatives propagated successfully.
And here you are, against all possible odds
in this world of hell in some sense and bitterness
and tyranny and malevolence.
And yet, God only knows what's inside you.
This capacity for consciousness,
the capacity to confront potential and to turn it into something good.
That's us, man!
That's the Western story.
That's the individual as the cornerstone of the state, that's our responsibility.
And it really is who we are.
And so we need to know that.
And we need to remember it, and we need to act it out.
And then maybe we can see we'll what we can do about it, you know?
And see how good we could make things.
And maybe that would be the purpose of your damn life, right?
Not to be happy.
It's like, there's problems to be solved.
Be happy after you solve the goddamn things.