Dostoevsky said that in Notes from Underground, a great, great book.
And, you know, he said, I love this.
It was an early criticism of the notion of a political utopia.
He said, look, if you gave people everything they wanted,
they had nothing to eat but cake and nothing to do but sit in warm pools
and busy themselves with the continuation of the species.
That was his lines.
That the first thing they would do, well, maybe after the first week was,
go kind of half insane and smash everything up
just so that something that they didn't
expect would happen so that they'd have something interesting to do.
And it's so right, because the utopian notion that if you just had
all the material stuff you wanted, that you'd be, well, what would you be?
What would you do?
You just sit in the couch and watch TV?
I don't know why... You'd be cutting yourself just for entertainment in no time flat.
And that's the sort of thing that people do.
So we're not adapted for security and utopia.
We're adapted for a certain amount of security because we are vulnerable,
but mostly we want to have 1ft out where we don't know what the hell is going on,
because that's where you're alert and alive and tense and with it,
I think, I believe this.
And I believe it actually has something
to do with the hemispheric structure of the physiology of your brain,
because the right hemisphere looks roughly adapted to what you don't know.
And the left hemisphere,
this is an oversimplification, but a useful one,
is adapted to the world that you do know,
and the right place for you to be is halfway between them,
because then you can tell that. That's what's so cool.
And this tells you that this is actually
reality that's manifesting itself to you, that sense of active engagement you have
in the world when things are working well for you, where you should be at the right
time, you're alert and on top of things and engaged.
And you don't have much of a sense of time.
And the sense of the tragedy of life sort of recedes.
And that's when you've got 1ft where it's secure and 1ft out in the unknown.
And your brain signals to you that you're
in the right place by making what you're doing meaningful.
And that sense of meaning is actually a neurophysiological signal that you've
got the forces of the Cosmos properly balanced in your being at that moment.
And that's why it feels so good.
What else could it possibly be?
I mean, our brain is capable of looking beyond our vision.
That's what it's for.
And that sense of engagement.
There's no reason to assume that that's
anything but a real signal, and you can reduce it.
You could say, well,
the problem with being where you know, only, is that
you don't know everything,
and that's going to be a problem in the future.
And the problem with being where you know
nothing is that's just too much, man like you go into panic mode,
and because anything can happen there and you can't handle it.
So you got to mediate between those two things.
You want to be secure enough so that your physiology isn't revving out of control
and you want to be out there in the unknown enough so that you keep
updating yourself constantly, constantly, constantly.
And that's the place where information flow is maximized.
And you know that because that's where you
are when you're having a really interesting conversation with someone or
you're gripped by a book or you're really into a movie, or maybe something that you
do apart from your work, or maybe even in your work, you're into it.
And that's because you are in the right
place at the right time, and your whole nervous system is signaling that to you.
And I would say that's the sort of place
that you should be all the time, of course you can't be because no one's
perfect, but that's the recreation of paradise on Earth.
It's something like it because you are
in the right place at the right time when that is happening.
And so we're mobile creatures, right?
We need to know where we're going because
all we're ever concerned about, roughly speaking, is where we're going.
That's what we need to know. Where are we going?
What are we doing and why?
It turns out that the way that we're constructed neurophysiologically is
that we don't experience any positive emotion unless we have an aim,
and we can see ourselves progressing towards that aim.
It isn't precisely attaining the aim
that makes us happy.
As you all know, if you've ever attained
anything, because as soon as you retain it, then the whole little game ends,
then you have to come up with another game, right?
So it's sysyfus, and that's okay.
But it does show that the attainment can't
be the thing that drives you because it collapses the game.
That's what happens when you graduate from University.
It's like you're King of the mountain
for one day, and then you're, like, serf, at Starbucks for the next five years.
So what happens is that human beings are weird creatures because we're much more
activated by having an aim and moving towards it than we are by attainment.
And what that means is you have to have an aim.
And that means you have to have an interpretation.
And it also means that the nobler,
the aim, that's one way of thinking about it, the better your life.
And that's a really interesting thing
to know, because you've heard ever since you were tiny, that you should act like
a good person and you shouldn't lie, for example.
And you might think, well, why the hell should I act like a good person?
And why not lie?
Even a three year old can ask
that question because smart kids learn to lie earlier, by the way,
and they think, well,
why not twist the fabric of reality so
that it serves your specific short term needs?
I mean, that's a great question.
Why not do that?
Why act morally if you can get away
with something and it brings you closer to something you want?
Well, why not do it?
These are good questions.
It's not self evident.
Well, it seems to be tied in with what I just mentioned.
It's like you destabilize yourself
and things become chaotic, and that's not good.
And if you don't have a noble aim,
then you have nothing but shallow, trivial pleasures and they don't sustain you.
And that's not good because because life
is so difficult, so much, it's so much suffering, it's so complex.
It ends and everyone dies.
And it's painful.
It's like without a noble aim, how can you withstand any of that?
You can't. You become desperate.
And once you become desperate,
things go from bad to worse very rapidly when you become desperate.
And so there's the idea of the noble aim.
And it's something that's necessary.
It's the bread that people cannot live without, right?
That's not physical bread.
It's the noble aim.
And what is that?
Well, it's to pay attention.
It's to speak properly.
It's to confront chaos.
It's to make a better world.
It's something like that.
And that's enough of a noble aim so that you can stand up without cringing
at the very thought of your own existence so that you can do something that's
worthwhile to justify your wretched position on the planet.
And whatever it is, that is you, has this capacity to experience
reality and to transform it, which is a very strange thing.
You can conceptualize a future in your
imagination and then you can work and make that manifest.
You participate in the process of creation.
It's an amazing idea because it gives
consciousness a constitutive role in the Cosmos.
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 what what we can
do about it 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.