You know, if you take people (and I've told you this), and you expose them voluntarily
to things that they are avoiding and are afraid of, you know,
that they KNOW they need to overcome - in order to meet their goals, their self-defined goals.
If you can teach people to stand up in the face of the things they're afraid of, they get stronger.
And you don't know what the upper limits to that are.
Because you might ask yourself, like:
"If for 10 years, if you didn't avoid doing what you knew you needed to do,
(By your own definitions, right? Within the value structure that you've created),
to the degree that you've done that, what would you be like?"
Well, you know, there are remarkable people who come into the world from time to time;
and they're people who do find out over decades long periods,
what they could be like, if they were, who they [truly] were.
If they said...
If they spoke their being forward.
And they'd get stronger, and stronger, and stronger!
And we don't know the limits to that! We do not know the limits to that.
And so, you could say: "well in part, perhaps the reason that you're suffering unbearably
can be left at your feet, because you're not everything you could be, and you know it."
And of course, that's a terrible thing to admit, and it's a terrible thing to consider.
But there's real promise in it, right?
Because it means, that...
Perhaps there's another way that you could look at the world, and another way that you could ACT in the world,
so what it would reflect back to you, would be much better than what it reflects back to you now.
And then, the second part of that is, well...
Imagine, that many people did that.
Because we've done a lot as human beings, we've done a lot of remarkable things.
And I told you already, I think, before today, for example
about 250,000 people will be lifted out of abject poverty,
and about 300,000 people attached to the electrical power grid.
We're making people... we're lifting people out of poverty collectively, at a faster rate,
that's ever occurred in the history of human kind by a huge margin.
And that's been going on unbelievably quickly since the year 2000.
The UN planned to halve poverty between 2000 and 2015,
and it was accomplished by 2013.
So there is inequality developing in many places, and you hear lots of political agitation about that,
but overall, the tide is lifting everyone up, and that's a great thing.
We have no idea how fast we can multiply that,
if people got their act together and really aimed at it.
Because you know, my experience is with people, that we're probably running at about 51% of our capacity.
I mean, you can think about this yourselves.
I often ask undergraduates:
"How many hours a day you waste?" or "How many hours a week you waste?"
And the classic answer is, something like 4 to 6 hours a day.
You know, inefficient studying, watching things on YouTube,
that not only do you not wanna watch, that you don't even care about,
that make you feel horrible about watching after you're done.
That's probably 4 hours right there.
Now, you think "well that's 20-25 hours a week,
it's a 100 hours a month, that's 2,5 full work weeks,
it's half a year of work weeks per year!
And if your time is worth...
$20 an hour, which is a radical underestimate - it's probably more like $50,
if you think about it in terms of deferred wages,
[then] if you're wasting 20 hours a week, you're wasting $50,000 a year.
And you are doing that right now.
And it's because you're young, wasting $50,000 a year is a way bigger catastrophe
than it would be for me to waste it, because I'm not going to last nearly as long.
And so, if your life isn't everything it could be, you could ask yourself:
"Well, what would happen if you just stop wasting the opportunities, that are in front of you?"
You'd be... who knows how much more efficient.
10x more efficient. 20x more efficient. That's the Pareto distribution.
You have no idea how efficient people get, it's completely- it's off the charts.
Well, and if we all got our act together collectively,
and stop making things worse, because that's another thing people do all the time:
not only do they NOT do what they should to make things better,
they actively attempt to make things worse,
because they're spiteful, or resentful, or arrogant, or deceitful, or..
or homicidal, or genocidal, or all of those things all...
...bundled together in an absolutely pathological package.
If people stopped really, really trying just to make things worse,
we have no idea, how much better they would get just because of that.
So there's this weird dynamic, that's part of the existential system of ideas between
human vulnerability, social judgment,
both of which are major causes of suffering,
and the failure of individuals to adopt the responsibility that they KNOW they should adopt.
And that's the thing that's interesting too, is that
one of the another things I've often asked my undergraduate classes, is...
You know, there's this idea that people have a conscience.
And you know what the conscience is.
It's this feeling or voice you have in your head, just before you do something, that you know is stupid,
telling you, that probably you shouldn't do that stupid thing.
You don't have to listen to it, strangely enough,
but you go ahead and do it anyways,
and then of course exactly what the conscience told you
was going to happen, inevitably happens,
so that you feel even stupider about it than you would, if it happened by accident.
Cause, you know...
"I knew this was going to happen,
I got a warning it was gonna happen,
and I went and did it anyways."
And the funny thing too, is that conscience operates within people, and we really don't understand what the hell that is.
So you might say: well, what would happen, if you abided by your conscience for 5 years or for 10 years?
What sort of position might you be in, what sort of family might you have, what sort of relationship might you be able to forge?
And you can be bloody sure, that a relationship that's forged on the basis of who you actually are,
is going to be a lot stronger and more welcome, than one that's forged on the basis of who you aren't.
Now, of course that means that the person you're with, has to deal with the full...
...force of you, in all your ability and your catastrophe - and that's a very, very difficult thing to negotiate.
But if you do negotiate it - well, at least you have something, you have somewhere solid to stand,
and you have somewhere to live, you have a real life.
And it's a great basis, upon which to bring children into the world, for example,
because you can have an actual relationship with them, instead of
torturing them half to death, which is what happens in a tremendous- a tremendously large minority of cases.
Well, it's more than that too, because - and this is what I'll close with,
and this is why I wanted to introduce Solzhenitsyn's writings to you. You see, because...
It isn't merely, that your fate depends on whether or not you get your act together,
and to what degree you decide, that you're going to live out your own genuine being.
It isn't only your fate. It's the fate of everyone, that you're networked with.
And so you know, you think: "Well,
there's 9 billion- 7 billion people in the world,
(we're going to peak at about 9 billion by the way, and then it will decline rapidly),
but - 7 billion people in the world, and who are you?
You're just one little dust mote among that 7 billion,
and so it really doesn't matter what you do or don't do, but that's simply not the case.
It's the wrong model, because you're at the center of a network.
You're a node in a network.
Of course, that's even more true, now that we have social media.
You'll know a thousand people at least, over the course of your life.
And they'll know a thousand people each - and that puts you one person away from a million.
And two persons away from a billion.
And so, that's how you're connected! And the things you do, they're like dropping a stone in a pond.
The ripples move outward, and they affect things, in ways that you can't fully comprehend.
And it means, that the things that you do and that you don't do, are far more important than you think!
And so, if you act if... well of course, the terror of realizing that, is that it actually starts to matter what you do.
And you might say: "well, that's better than living a meaningless existence; it's better for it to matter."
But I mean, if you really ask yourself - would you be so sure, if you had the choice?
"I can live with no responsibility whatsoever, the price I pay is that nothing matters."
Or, I can reverse it, and: "Everything matters,
but I have to take the responsibility that's associated with that."
It's not so obvious to me, that people would take the meaningful path.
Now, you say: "Well, nihilists suffered dreadfully, because there's no meaning in their life, and they still suffer."
Yeah, but the advantage is, they have no responsibility.
So that's the payoff, and I actually think that's the motivation.
Say "well, I can't help being nihilistic, all my belief systems have collapsed."
It's like: yeah, maybe.
Maybe you've just allowed them to collapse, because it's a hell of a lot easier than acting them out.
And the price you pay is a meaningless suffering, but you can always whine about that and people will feel sorry for you,
and you have the option of taking the pathway of the martyr, so that's a pretty good deal, all things considered.
Especially when the alternative is to...
bear your burden properly, and to live forthrightly in the world.
Well, what Solzhenitsyn figured out, and so many people in the 20th century,
it's not just him, even though he's the best example.
Is that,
if you live a pathological life, you pathologize your society.
And if enough people do that, then it's HELL,
really.
Really.
And you can read the Gulag Archipelago, if you have the fortitude to do that.
And you'll see exactly, what hell is like.
And then you can decide, if THAT'S a place you'd like to visit.
Or even more importantly, if it's a place you'd like to visit AND take all your family and friends.
Because that's what happened in the 20th century.
[Applause]