and this idea of discipline obviously uh I talk about discipline a lot and one of
the things you were talking about earlier with regards to veterans and
people that have listened to your lectures and it's the same thing with me
people that listen to this podcaster or read the books and and one of the things
that I've noticed and I've talked about and I've gotten a lot of positive
feedback on is you know when you're in the military you have this discipline
and beyond that beyond the discipline that's imposed on you you also have a
lot that you have to just hold the line yourself I mean when you're in the
military sure you go through boot camp where there's a drill instructor that
yelling and all that but once you're in the military you're doing what you have
to do it's self discipline that you learn that and you become self
discipline and what happens is guys get out and that's that's gone and that
hurts them and the other thing that hurts them is they don't know what their
mission is anymore and and my big thing with people that I've been telling vets
now is find what your next mission is go find whatever your next mission in I
don't care what it is but it has to be something and I was listening to you
talk on something the other day and and you were you were talking about how not
doing anything when people are not going anywhere when they're when they're
failing when they're when they don't have the drive it's because they're not
accepting responsibility for anything and and so my way of saying that is like
you need a new mission you can't be responsible for something and you need
to go and move towards some new mission and and do you encounter people that or
you see people that's very problematic in the civilian side as well where
people they just don't know what they're doing yeah don't take responsibility for
anything that's a part of this nihilism you know is that because first of all
you learn the truth is relevant relative and that there's no real moral order and
you know that alleviates you of responsibility and that's why that's
such an attractive message to people but the problem is is that it kills you it
kills your soul so to speak because well when we can talk about this technically
so you know there are systems neurological systems that underlie your
experience of negative emotion and there are
neurological systems that underlie your experience of positive emotion and there
are separate systems they obviously interact but they're separate systems so
but the positive emotion system well there's two of them but one of them sort
of kicks in when you get something that you want so you know you're hungry and
you eat and that feels good and so that's kind of the simple one but
there's a more sophisticated one that I think is even more active in people and
it's the one that tells you that you're moving forward towards something
worthwhile and that's actually the one that gives people that sense of a
meaningful engagement in their life on a moment-to-moment basis so and and it's
also it's also something that doesn't have to go away like if you're hungry
and you eat well that's good but it's over and then you're on to the next
thing right it's not exactly sustaining it's just necessary that's called
consume Ettore reward by the way this other reward system is incentive reward
and the incentive reward system works on dopamine this neurochemical dopamine
which is also the neuro chemical tracks that opiates and cocaine and
amphetamines the drugs that people really like to abuse alcohol often for
some people activate and so you might say if you don't have enough meaning in
your life then you're more prone to addiction and that's definitely the case
even with rats if you take a rat you put him in a cage by himself and he has
nothing to do and then you give him access to cocaine he'll get addicted to
the point where he won't do anything but take cocaine but if you throw the rat
back in with a bunch of other rats and he gets to do rat things then it's very
hard to get him addicted to cocaine and so the purposeless rat is prone to
addiction well it's the same with human beings now here is a corollary to that
which is really cool so the magnitude of the reward you experience as you're
moving towards a goal is proportionate to the importance of the goal so that
means the more important the goal you pick the more possibility there is for
the kind of reward let's say it's really a state of being that is life-affirming
and it is directly life-affirming in that you know like if you're in a
football game and you're and it's an important football game and maybe you
break a finger and you know normally that's that's
problem it hurts and you're gonna stop doing whatever you're doing but if
you're right in the middle of the game then you'll be so amped up on this
reward system that its analgesic it stops the pain it also suppresses
anxiety so if you have a purpose then its analgesic it take some of the pain
out of life it's very positive in that it motivates and energizes you and
focuses you and makes you able to remember and pay attention and it quells
fear and so those things are all direct and so then you might think well what's
the best possible goal well and that's that's the purpose I would say of
religious training and philosophical training it's like just what the hell
are you doing in the world you know when I would say well that's actually fairly
easy - also - also lay out and this is why nihilism is a much weaker
philosophical position than it might appear to be it's like well there are
lots of terrible things happening in the world if you're not I don't care if
you're a believer in a theater or a cynic of the highest sort you listen to
a story like the one that you wrote read at the beginning of the of this podcast
and no one says well in a hundred thousand years who the hell cares so why
does it matter no one says that they listen to that not if they're human they
listen to that story and they think that's not good it's like that's right
that's not good it's not good you should do something about that because it's
it's it it's it's self evidently not good so you might say well at least you
can start your self organization by improving those things around you that
are self evidently not good and that's easy man anybody can do this you can sit
down for 10 minutes say well I'm going to be honest with myself like that's a
horrible thing to do I'm going to be honest with myself okay I'm probably
doing a dozen stupid things that I could quit doing that are making my life less
more wretched and also the people around me and so you think okay what are those
things and you know if you really want to know you have to want to know and
you're gonna get a bunch of information that you don't want to hear but you'll
know it's true and you already knew it in some sense and then you can ask
yourself okay that's sucks and it's miserable and it's
not very self affirming is there one of those things I would I would be willing
to do something about that I would actually do something about you know
that I could do something about that I would do something about which is also
another horrible question because as soon as you get an answer to that then
you have a responsibility right it's like oh god I have to go do that and
it's something you don't want to do you don't want to do it that's why you've
been avoiding it and so then it's right in front of you and it's like it's some
little trivial horrible thing that you're not gonna get a pat on the back
for no one's gonna give you an award for it and and most people would just say
Jesus you should have done that a long time ago you moron and but then you go
do it that's kind of humility I would say and then you keep doing that and
it's like there's this injunction in the New Testament against praying in public
you know and it's like virtue signaling it's like you don't pray in public
because then you go out and you show everybody just what a great believer you
are and how good you are it's like well that's what you're doing you're not
trying to get your act together that's something you do in private at home you
think okay what kind of moron am i and what stupid things am i doing and then
what could I possibly do to get rid of one of those a little bit now well
anybody can do that and that's associated with these great evils you
know in this way that we've already described it's like you're constraining
you're improving your character and you're constraining the kinds of actions
and perceptions that you have that are going to make you sick of life and work
against it because failure does that that's the Kanes story it's like keep
screwing up man see what happens if you think that isn't gonna make you bitter
and if that isn't gonna make you vengeful and if that isn't gonna make
you work to hurt people around you or at least not to help them which is the same
thing then you're just not paying attention everyone knows that's true
so well that's responsibility right and then so you take on this great task of
putting yourself together it gives you life meaning and that also helps you be
brought just against the fact that there's lots of suffering in life and
there's lots of m---eleven it's like yeah true man absolutely it's
worse than you think even but you can do more about it than you think and there's
nothing in it except good but you also have to take responsibility so that's
the thing you got to decide if that's what you're gonna do but you don't get
to whine about it if you don't because you haven't tested it