Atheist vs Christian vs Spiritual Thinker: The Paperclip Problem That Exposes Religion!

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9 in 10 young people in the UK believe that their life is
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lacking purpose.
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And what are people turning back to religion?
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There is something going on.
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This is about the most important thing that anyone can ever
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find out about their life.
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And God has made us for a purpose and a purpose flows from that
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meaning.
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I kind of reject that because this is a perfect example of a
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solution being provided
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without explaining exactly why it provides a solution.
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And that's what people are doing in religious traditions.
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I hard disagree.
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For me, finding meaning in purpose is like a very practical
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thing.
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And that's what I want to talk about today.
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We are joined by an atheist, Christian, and spiritual thinker
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to find an answer to the purpose crisis millions are facing
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today.
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One of the reasons that I'm a Christian is because it's the
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best explanation for the way things are.
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But if Christianity would true, we would not expect the kind of
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suffering that's present in the world.
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So I'm very curious.
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What if I died from cancer one years old?
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So someone violated God's commands and that had an impact on
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the world.
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So children get cancer because of a few million years ago,
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someone ate it free.
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If you want religion to provide existential comfort for people
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who are suffering,
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you have to do more in the face of children dying of cancer.
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Then some reference to mythical human being sort of pure
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worldview
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does not have a way of making sense or moral intuitions about
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suffering.
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It's not an adequate worldview.
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What I would say to science and spirituality can really add is
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it's effective
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in terms of reducing suicidality, improving resilience,
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giving them a reason to wake up in the mornings and we'll get
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into that.
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And Alex, if someone's listening now and they feel lost in
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their life,
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is there any advice that you could give them?
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So as an atheist, I'm offering a psychological explanation.
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So I would recommend that you're a spot on Alex.
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So the first thing to understand is it is an internal feeling.
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And we found in our study that if you f*** your sense of
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purpose increases by 68%.
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Just give me 30 seconds of your time.
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Two things I wanted to say.
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The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning
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into the show.
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Week after week means the world's all of us and this really is
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a dream that we absolutely never had
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and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.
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But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just
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getting started.
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And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people
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that listen to this podcast regularly
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and follow us on this app.
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Here's a promise I'm going to make to you.
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I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as
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good as I can now and into the future.
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We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to
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and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you
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love about this show.
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Thank you.
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Ollic, Greg, Alex, the reason I wanted to speak to all three of
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you today is to discuss
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meaning and purpose.
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And there's some stats that I wanted to share that kind of
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frame the discussion.
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Three and five young Americans believe that their life lacks
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purpose.
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Nine and 10 young people in the UK believe that their life is
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lacking purpose.
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And when I look across other stats as it relates to things like
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mental health,
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59% of Brits said they lived a meaningful life compared to just
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25% who said they did not.
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In an October 21 survey, 34% of men in the UK said life had no
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meaning compared to 18% of women
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and 50% of the same group who said that their lives lack
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purpose in meaning,
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said that their poor mental health was linked to not knowing
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what to do with their life.
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And to give some further stats to try found really interesting
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around the rise of really
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curiosity in the UK, a belief in God amongst 18 to 24 year olds
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has risen from 18% in 2021 to 37%
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in 2020, 25% according to you, GOV. And in the UK monthly
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church attendance has risen from
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4% up to 15% in 2025. There is something going on and that's
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what I want to talk about today.
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But before we do that, I'd love to understand the perspective
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that all of you bring to this
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conversation. So if I start with yourself, Alok.
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You know, it's interesting. You mentioned a lot about mental
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health. I'm a psychiatrist.
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So for me, finding meaning and purpose is like a very practical
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thing. So literally a patient
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will come into my office. They'll say, I have no reason to live
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. There's there's nothing worth it
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in life. I am suicidal. I want to kill myself. So I have a job
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as a clinician to like fix
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that problem in a very like practical way. So I've got, you
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know, a couple of weeks, hopefully 15
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20 weeks to teach them how to find purpose. And so usually the
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way that I approach that is there's
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there's a lot of sort of evidence based scientific approaches
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to finding purpose.
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I think those tend to work really well, but I'm sure as my
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philosopher colleagues will point
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out and tear me apart, you know, science has a lot of
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shortcomings. And so then what I tend to
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find works incredibly well is adding a certain degree of
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spiritual practice to that.
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And usually when we put those two things together, things work.
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And the real proof point for me was when
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I started streaming 10,000 people reached out to me in one one,
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asking, Hey, like do you have room
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in your private practice? And so I started to think about, Okay
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, if this is a methodology,
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then can it be taught? So I started this coaching program and
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what we found in our pilot study of
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1,453 people is that if you stick with the program for about 20
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weeks, your sense of purpose
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increases by 68%. I'd love to hear from my colleagues, but I
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think, you know, if someone asks me,
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what is the meaning of life? I don't know. But if someone says,
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I have no meaning, can you help me
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with that? The answer is absolutely yes. And I want to attempt
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to just define two terms that
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you said that one is purpose, and it doesn't have to be a
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perfect definition, but roughly what
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you mean by that. And then you said you introduced spiritual
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practice. What did you mean by that?
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So what I think about is purpose is using something called
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factor analysis. So if you ask someone,
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do you have direction in life? Do you have purpose in life? Is
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there meaning in life? All three of
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those things clustered together to some thing, even being in
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control correlates with that. So
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if you were in control of your life, your sense of purpose will
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increase. So there are a lot of
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these like words that we use, but all of these words tie back
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to some internal sense of what is
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happening in your life. So that's how I would describe purpose.
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In terms of spiritual practices,
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what my experience is is that if you look at human beings who
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say they have purpose,
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and human beings who don't have purpose, they're lived
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experiences in life or different.
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So when I work with survivors of trauma, they have certain
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experiences, like literally we can
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scientifically sort of measure this. You have a particular
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experience, which destroys your sense of
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meaning in the world. I had a patient once who was attacked in
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a bathroom for about five minutes.
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And in five minutes, this person had a sense of what they were
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doing in life was dating,
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was doing while in college, had loving parents, and in five
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minutes, their compass for navigating
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the world was shattered. So if we sort of think about
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experience can lead to a loss of purpose,
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experience can also lead to a gain in purpose. Now the
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spiritual tradition that I come from is all
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about particular practices that evoke certain subjective
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experiences. And as people have those
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experiences, their sense of purpose increases. And this is
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where I think there's a major
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shortcoming of science. So science can tell you what you should
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do, but it doesn't create experiences
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in and of itself. So we can scientifically understand that the
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highest risk factor for pornography
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addiction is having no meaning in life. But even if we know
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that, that doesn't help us like fix
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the problem. And there's always a question of how, like, so we
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can discover something with science,
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but then there's a question of how do we actually like move
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from point A to point B?
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And that's where I find spiritual practices incredibly helpful.
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Would you classify yourself as
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religious? Yes. Great. What is the perspective you bring to
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this conversation? And what's the
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lived experience, the academia that lends itself to that
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perspective? Yeah, there's a whole
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bunch of that fitting it. And I relate to a lot, what you're
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saying a lot about people's challenges.
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Now what's interesting to me about this whole discussion, since
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I'm a Christian, and I understand
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the world from a theistic perspective, because I think it's the
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best explanation for the way
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things are just to give a definition to that. Theistic, what
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does that mean? A personal God, a good,
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there is a personal God who is involved with the world. He made
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the world and he still maintains
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activity as opposed to deistic, which just wound up the clock
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and let it go. Okay. So my view is
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God is still involved. In fact, so involved that he actually
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came to earth in the person of Jesus of
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Nazareth to create a rescue plan. Now what's interesting to me
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about this broader question we can
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get in more details too, is that it's not if there is a God who
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made the world for a purpose
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with meaning, people can participate in that meaning and
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purpose even if they don't know God.
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They're not, they won't be experiencing what they're made for,
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which is to be in friendship with
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Him with the plan that He's made for their flourishing, but
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they still can flourish in some measure
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insofar as they touch on these objective features. But insofar
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as we are able, even without belief
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in God to kind of get in that groove, the things that God made
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us for, the purposes that He
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intends in light of being made like Him in some way in His
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image, there's going to be measure of
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satisfaction, but what they'll be missing is the ultimate, and
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that is that friendship with God
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and being restored in that. Alex. Same question for you about
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what you bring to this
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conversation in terms of your perspective, your experience and
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maybe some of your personal journey.
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Well, for my own part, I was quite swept up in the new atheism
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movement, which was a mid 2000s
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publishing phenomenon with the likes of the Dawkins and the hit
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chens of the world, saying that religion
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is evil and terrible. And I think promising an alternative, a
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kind of secular, puminist utopia that
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if you're learning throw off these oppressive religious systems
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, you will regain your spiritual autonomy
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and be able to assert yourself and the intrinsic meaning that
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you have within yourself.
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People tried that and it didn't seem to work. And I think that
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's because the new atheist movement
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was quite philosophically shallow. It didn't seriously engage
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with the existential component
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of religious belief and why it exists in the first place. And I
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think that is why it exists.
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I think humans are in a strange predicament due to the mystery
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of consciousness.
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We find ourselves possibly uniquely amongst other animals in a
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position of being mortal,
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being physically embodied, being in a world, but also knowing
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those things. There's one thing to
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experience the world. It's one thing to be, it's another thing
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to be aware that you're experiencing it.
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Josh Rasmussen once said, there's a difference between noticing
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a tree and noticing that you've
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noticed a tree. We have this sort of second order abstraction
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that we can do. So we know that
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death is coming, for example, and death makes a mockery of
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everything that we do. It seems to just
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obliterate any sense of purpose or meaning because anything
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that we're building will ultimately as far
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as we're concerned be gone. And that may well be unique to
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human beings. And so I'm not the first to
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suggest that the principal motivating factor behind meaning
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infused activities that humans do
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is an engagement in death denial or some kind of immortality
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project. People literally
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for fear of, as a result of the knowledge that this will come
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to an end, engage in what we might call
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immortality projects. They engage in things which will outlast
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themselves, which give them a sense
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of escaping this death. The most obvious example is in
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religious traditions, which literally
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promise immortality for your own soul. But if you look just
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practically at where people
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subjectively report finding meaning, they find it in their
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children. They might find it in their
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job, but they're unlikely to find it in their job if they're
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doing something they don't really
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care about. They'll find it in their job. Maybe they're a,
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maybe they're like a barrister,
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and they find a lot of meaning and bringing justice into the
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world because they're participating
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in a system which they believe will outlast them and is bigger
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than them. So when people talk
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about meaning, we talk about transcendence, you know, something
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being above and beyond their own
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sort of material situation. And I think religion is the archety
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pal example of this. And I think it's
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why it evolves in the first place. There is this idea that we
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are living in a meaning crisis that
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has cropped up maybe in the past hundred years or so, or maybe
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in the last few hundred years or so
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as a response to the enlightenment and the decline of religion.
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I think that's far too easy. I think
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it's way too easy. I think that if there is such things as a
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meaning crisis, it is literally
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the human condition and the reason why these projects were
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invented in the first place. I think
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literally speaking what people are doing in religious
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traditions is realizing the finnitude of their
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existence and therefore trying to commune with something. Can I
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add a thought? That's fine. Of course.
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We have this hunger. I have no reason to believe that any
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naturalistic explanation can explain
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the consciousness is hunger for meaning and significance. That
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's all propositional. It's not
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molecules in motion. What's naturalistic mean? Naturalistic
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just means nature and that's all there is
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basically. So you have molecules in motion largely governed by
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natural law. There is no outside
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transcendent anything. There's no immaterial anything.
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Certainly not an immaterial God that has
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started the process of sustains the process and gives life
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meaning. There either is meaning
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objectively or not. Okay. If not, then it's up to us. For
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example, a moment ago you said
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that if there is a created God who brings us into existence,
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then you are designed and you are
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given purpose by God. And I think we need to investigate this a
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bit further. Because, for example,
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a quiet sort of boring and over at the moment is the extent to
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which we are engaged in the production
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of potentially artificially conscious agents with artificial
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intelligence technologies. And there's
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all this discussion about whether or not these things can be
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conscious, like, you know, whatever.
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Let's just suppose from a moment that they were. Let's suppose
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that I created an artificially
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intelligent machine and I gave it a purpose and that purpose
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was to produce paperclips.
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And because of the development of artificial intelligence
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technology, it became conscious in a
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recognizable sense. It had an interior sense of self. It sort
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of had say feelings or emotions about the
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world. But it is just an AI robot whose entire purpose in life
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is to make paperclips. Now, I could say
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that because that AI was designed by a creator with a purpose
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that was explicitly given to it,
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that that life is meaningful. But I think it would seem to most
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people that a life whose meaning
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consists in creating paperclips is not sufficient. It's not
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enough to address what people really want.
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It's not just some kind of purpose. It's not just even some
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kind of purpose which is given to
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you by an authoritative creative source. It's something which
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is further than that.
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Yeah. But if I can just relate this to the God question, the
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problem that arises is that you have to
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answer the question of why God infuses life with the meaning
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that he gives it. It's either something
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which he has sort of arbitrarily plucked up and chosen to
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create in which case we have this problem of
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arbitraryness or no. Or in fact, there are some reason why God
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had to give us a particular kind of
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meaning that's endemic to the human condition that he had no
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choice. But for that meaning,
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that more important kind of meaning to be given to human life.
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But if he was beholden to that,
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if he had to give us a particular kind of meaning, it seems
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like there's a standard of meaning
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which exists outside the God. So I'm not sure, in other words,
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the mechanism by which being
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created by someone who says this is your purpose would be
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fulfilling in the way that people want it to be.
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The reason the paper clip illustration doesn't match is because
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it seems to me that
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you're subtly taking the thing that's conscious that makes
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paper clips and comparing it to a human
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being. And for human beings who seem to have a different
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purpose, I would argue,
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be consigned to make paper clips. Well, that's dehumanizing to
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them. But if you have just to follow
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your illustration, if you have a creator that makes something
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for a reason that the creator has in mind,
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then it's fulfilling its purpose perfectly. You know, for a
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human being, that's not going to be
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satisfying making paper clips. And a lot of people who are
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making paper clips are not satisfied
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with it. Okay. I don't think it's arbitrary if God is making
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something for a purpose.
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If God decides that he wants to make creatures to be in
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friendship with him,
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because this reflects his loving character. And that purpose is
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to be in friendship with him.
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I don't see how that is somehow negligible or arbitrary at all.
383
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I guess you could have said that
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God could have done otherwise, but his love and desire for
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communion is seemed to me an adequate
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explanation for that. This is fascinating. So my first question
387
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is, what's the point of this conversation?
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Yeah. So I think that the ultimate answer that we're looking
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for is it appears that the numbers
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are on purpose and meaning of fluctuating at this moment in
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time. A lot of people are turning back
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to religion as Alex is, we were just chatting about a second
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ago. And I guess there's two questions,
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which is one understanding why that's happening. Why there's
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this fluctuation, why we're seeing
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a mental health crisis around purpose and meaning. And the
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second is to try and figure out if
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there's a truth one can arrive at. If there's an objective
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truth, that exists. So for y'all,
400
00:17:58.720 --> 00:18:02.020
I'm curious when y'all show up here, like what is the purpose
401
00:18:02.020 --> 00:18:03.440
for y'all showing up?
402
00:18:03.440 --> 00:18:08.000
It's literally trying to discover like it's the stated purpose.
403
00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:09.680
It's literally just artificially
404
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given purpose by being designed in a particular way. We're
405
00:18:12.330 --> 00:18:13.760
going to get together and we're going
406
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to have a conversation and see if we can figure out this this
407
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meaning stuff. Right. And by the way,
408
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like we're not going to solve that problem. I think it's worth
409
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pointing out that like these
410
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conversations have to be exploratory and subjective. If anybody
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thinks that the four of us out
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at this table are going to solve the meaning crisis and give
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people a five step guide finding
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meaning in their life and that'll be the sort of case closed,
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then they're delusional. I don't know
416
00:18:37.040 --> 00:18:41.200
if I agree that we can't find an answer, but we'll talk. Well,
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this is what I want to speak to
418
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it if, um, obviously we're talking about this broader issue of
419
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meaning and purpose or right.
420
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And as I mentioned earlier, there either is an objective one or
421
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it's only subjective. Okay,
422
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if it is an objective one, this is about the most important
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thing that anyone can ever find
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out about their life if they were created for a reason. In my
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view, the reason I'm here is
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because I'm convinced that that's the case and I'm willing to
427
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give reasons why. Okay, but I don't
428
00:19:06.080 --> 00:19:09.780
think I'm sympathetic to the concern that you can't sit around
429
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a table and in two or three hours
430
00:19:11.920 --> 00:19:16.100
solve the problem for any individual because people going
431
00:19:16.100 --> 00:19:18.000
through the process of trying to figure
432
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these things out. It takes a long time as they put the pieces
433
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together, but I think there's a
434
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lot of people in the world that think how they have put it
435
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together and they've come to
436
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conclusions about ultimate meaning and purpose and they don't
437
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come to my own conclusions,
438
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but many how. So what I would hate to do is leave people with a
439
00:19:34.290 --> 00:19:36.960
feeling like we can all search
440
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and the glory is in the search, but if you think you found the
441
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answer, then you have. Of course,
442
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this to me is a nihilistic enterprise, then I think it's
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possible to come to conclusions.
444
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Yes, I think so too to be clear, but I think what I'm trying to
445
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say is this will be something that
446
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one will experience for themselves and will discover for
447
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themselves in their own life. It's not
448
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going to be something that, you know, that's that old, is it l
449
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inchy, the sort of the Buddhist
450
00:19:59.760 --> 00:20:03.410
Cohen that says if you meet the Buddha, kill him, the idea
451
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being that, you know, if you think that
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the kind of enlightenment, which is necessary to spiritual
453
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fulfillment can be found through some
454
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kind of guru, you're missing the mark. It's something that you
455
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need to do for yourself.
456
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But doesn't that statement as self meant to be a truth about
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spirituality that you can actually
458
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count on? Can I jump in? I just want to make sure I understand
459
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y'all's points. So you're saying that
460
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the search for purpose, first of all, is never going to go away
461
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. Like, is a human condition, right?
462
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Yes. Like, so as humanity, humanity will never find its purpose
463
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. I can tell you why, if you like.
464
00:20:35.760 --> 00:20:38.170
No, no, I don't even know why. Yeah, I think, I think
465
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individuals can, but humanity,
466
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that's always, yeah, I'm just making sure I understand, right?
467
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So an individual can find
468
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their purpose, but as humanity, it's never going to be solved.
469
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And then you said something about
470
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purpose being tied to opposing to death in some way. So transc
471
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ending death that human beings
472
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basically look for purpose because death is inevitable. And if
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we can find purpose, then we can
474
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give our life meaning. But if death, if we die, and I don't
475
00:21:07.060 --> 00:21:09.040
leave something behind, can you talk
476
00:21:09.040 --> 00:21:12.070
a little bit about that? This is essentially a version of
477
00:21:12.070 --> 00:21:14.960
Ernest Becker's denial of death hypothesis,
478
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which famously suggests that the motivation for a great deal of
479
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human behavior is at least human
480
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behavior outside of immediate sensory concerns, like eating and
481
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stuff like that, anything that
482
00:21:26.960 --> 00:21:30.390
human engagement on societal level on an abstract level is
483
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ultimately motivated by an apprehension
484
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of death. I think that's probably too simple, but it's
485
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definitely a contributing factor.
486
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I think that for example, put it this way, right? Here's an
487
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example that comes from,
488
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I think it's named Sheffler, and he has this interesting
489
00:21:44.570 --> 00:21:46.080
thought experiment. Suppose,
490
00:21:46.080 --> 00:21:48.990
I don't know, maybe you're engaged in writing a book. Suppose
491
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you discovered, and this probably
492
00:21:50.480 --> 00:21:52.380
won't be the case for you because you believe in an afterlife,
493
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but suppose that you're an atheist
494
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for a moment. Suppose it were the case that you discovered that
495
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after you die,
496
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a meteor is going to come and wipe out all life on earth.
497
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Everybody's going to die almost
498
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instantly after you do, but you'll be dead. So you will live
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your entire life as it was anyway. And
500
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suppose the rest of the world doesn't even know this is going
501
00:22:08.210 --> 00:22:10.160
to happen, but you're told this is going
502
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to be the case. Would that motivate you to write your book more
503
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or less? Most people say that it
504
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would seem a bit pointless now, either what's the point now in
505
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writing this book? What's the point
506
00:22:20.240 --> 00:22:22.980
in having children if they're going to die 30 days after I'm
507
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going on? What's the point
508
00:22:24.160 --> 00:22:26.050
in doing any of these things? What will they still do? They'll
509
00:22:26.050 --> 00:22:27.200
still do the centuries after they'll
510
00:22:27.200 --> 00:22:29.750
eat, they'll still have sex, they'll still sleep, this kind of
511
00:22:29.750 --> 00:22:32.320
stuff. But the typically meaning
512
00:22:32.320 --> 00:22:36.120
laden activities of life, they would certainly be demotivated
513
00:22:36.120 --> 00:22:37.200
to do. And it's an interesting
514
00:22:37.200 --> 00:22:40.620
thought experiment to give us some insight as to the fact that,
515
00:22:40.620 --> 00:22:42.960
well, maybe this means that, at least in
516
00:22:42.960 --> 00:22:45.120
part, the motivation for these actors in the first place is
517
00:22:45.120 --> 00:22:46.800
that they will extend beyond data.
518
00:22:46.800 --> 00:22:50.180
I agree with so much of which I'll say, and I also like hard
519
00:22:50.180 --> 00:22:52.240
disagree with some of the fundamentals.
520
00:22:52.240 --> 00:22:56.480
So let's say you have this example of like, I'm right a book
521
00:22:56.480 --> 00:22:58.000
and then the world is going to end 30
522
00:22:58.000 --> 00:23:00.530
days later. And so you say, because a lot of what you're
523
00:23:00.530 --> 00:23:02.640
talking about is like what people say,
524
00:23:02.640 --> 00:23:06.470
right? So you'll say like, okay, so like people would say that
525
00:23:06.470 --> 00:23:08.240
this is a waste of time,
526
00:23:08.240 --> 00:23:11.140
and I'm not going to do it if the world ends in 30 days. And
527
00:23:11.140 --> 00:23:13.120
you're also saying people
528
00:23:13.120 --> 00:23:17.640
is an everlasting thing or struggling with purpose, right? You
529
00:23:17.640 --> 00:23:19.680
're saying both of these things.
530
00:23:19.680 --> 00:23:22.450
So here's my question to you. If you tell someone, you know,
531
00:23:22.450 --> 00:23:23.680
you're writing this book,
532
00:23:23.680 --> 00:23:27.100
let's say you write it and then you die because we'll simplify
533
00:23:27.100 --> 00:23:28.800
the example. And then 30 days later,
534
00:23:28.800 --> 00:23:32.720
the world ends. Let's take two people. One who says, I'm a
535
00:23:32.720 --> 00:23:34.960
right at any way. And one who says,
536
00:23:34.960 --> 00:23:38.730
there's no point, which one of those two people do you think
537
00:23:38.730 --> 00:23:41.120
has a greater sense of purpose?
538
00:23:41.120 --> 00:23:44.000
Probably the form. Absolutely. So this is the key thing.
539
00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:47.760
Purpose is absolutely because I love that
540
00:23:47.760 --> 00:23:50.590
you're asking about mechanisms. And I think maybe that's what I
541
00:23:50.590 --> 00:23:52.320
can provide. I think that's
542
00:23:52.320 --> 00:23:55.750
that's actually the answer, right? So it's not that people
543
00:23:55.750 --> 00:23:57.200
believe, and I think you're right,
544
00:23:57.200 --> 00:24:00.760
that the reason that this is a perennial problem is because
545
00:24:00.760 --> 00:24:02.560
most people do not live a life
546
00:24:02.560 --> 00:24:05.730
where they understand how purpose works. And what I think is
547
00:24:05.730 --> 00:24:07.520
really fascinating about
548
00:24:07.520 --> 00:24:10.760
sort of like this scientific clinical approach, like if you ask
549
00:24:10.760 --> 00:24:12.720
me, can I help people
550
00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:17.700
find meaning and purpose? I don't know. But if you ask me, can
551
00:24:17.700 --> 00:24:19.200
I help a person? The answer is
552
00:24:19.200 --> 00:24:23.570
absolutely. And we have like particular scientific things. And
553
00:24:23.570 --> 00:24:24.960
this is where it's really
554
00:24:24.960 --> 00:24:28.660
counterintuitive. So a big part of like finding purpose is
555
00:24:28.660 --> 00:24:31.040
doing particular things. And if you do those
556
00:24:31.040 --> 00:24:34.210
things, the likelihood that you will increase your sense of
557
00:24:34.210 --> 00:24:35.760
purpose in life, which is another thing
558
00:24:35.760 --> 00:24:39.180
that's very counterintuitive people, purpose is not binary. It
559
00:24:39.180 --> 00:24:41.200
's quantifiable. It's like a scale.
560
00:24:41.200 --> 00:24:44.460
So if I were to ask the three of y'all, right, let's maybe let
561
00:24:44.460 --> 00:24:45.840
's do this, not a thought experiment
562
00:24:45.840 --> 00:24:48.710
with this practical experiment. Do you know your purpose in
563
00:24:48.710 --> 00:24:51.280
life, like how confident are you that
564
00:24:51.280 --> 00:24:53.280
you're doing what you're supposed to be doing in life?
565
00:24:53.280 --> 00:24:56.630
How confident am I about the God part? Or that I'm doing the
566
00:24:56.630 --> 00:24:58.320
things that are appropriate?
567
00:24:58.320 --> 00:25:01.490
How confident are you that you're doing what God wants you to
568
00:25:01.490 --> 00:25:01.840
do?
569
00:25:01.840 --> 00:25:04.530
Well, in that general sense, extremely confident, or else I
570
00:25:04.530 --> 00:25:05.520
wouldn't be doing it.
571
00:25:05.520 --> 00:25:09.040
Perfect, right? So Stephen, what about you, bro?
572
00:25:09.040 --> 00:25:14.080
About five at a time. I knew it. Okay, right. So Alex,
573
00:25:14.080 --> 00:25:16.310
I don't want to be difficult, but I kind of reject the grammar
574
00:25:16.310 --> 00:25:17.040
of the question.
575
00:25:17.040 --> 00:25:19.840
Awesome. Um, Jack away, bro. I think it's what a logician would
576
00:25:19.840 --> 00:25:20.080
cool
577
00:25:20.080 --> 00:25:22.440
an exponable statement, something which needs to be broken down
578
00:25:22.440 --> 00:25:24.320
. You asked, "Do I know my own
579
00:25:24.320 --> 00:25:28.050
purpose?" That assumes that there is a purpose to know. It's a
580
00:25:28.050 --> 00:25:29.840
bit like the comparison I would give
581
00:25:29.840 --> 00:25:33.840
is if I asked you the question, the classic example in logic is
582
00:25:33.840 --> 00:25:36.000
, is the king of France bold?
583
00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:43.680
Yes, I know. I can rephrase my question. So do you have a lived
584
00:25:43.680 --> 00:25:45.600
experience of something called
585
00:25:45.600 --> 00:25:49.170
purpose? Oh, well, look, I think purpose is having some kind of
586
00:25:49.170 --> 00:25:50.560
reason to act or be.
587
00:25:50.560 --> 00:25:54.530
Yeah. And I certainly subjectively am motivated to do things. I
588
00:25:54.530 --> 00:25:55.360
think everybody is,
589
00:25:55.360 --> 00:25:58.160
otherwise you literally wouldn't be able to do anything. But it
590
00:25:58.160 --> 00:25:59.840
's a bit foggy to me what
591
00:25:59.840 --> 00:26:02.370
psychologically speaking on a personal level, that fundamental
592
00:26:02.370 --> 00:26:03.440
motivation actually is.
593
00:26:03.440 --> 00:26:06.420
Wouldn't your purpose be more the goal rather than the reason
594
00:26:06.420 --> 00:26:08.720
to act, what you're trying to
595
00:26:08.720 --> 00:26:11.930
accomplish? It's a semantic thing, but that's why it depends
596
00:26:11.930 --> 00:26:12.800
what you mean by the way.
597
00:26:12.800 --> 00:26:16.960
I'm with you. I'm with you. So I don't know what I mean with
598
00:26:16.960 --> 00:26:18.080
the word purpose, which is part of
599
00:26:18.080 --> 00:26:22.970
this challenge. So I'm just wondering. So a lot of people are
600
00:26:22.970 --> 00:26:24.800
motivated to act. Everyone is
601
00:26:24.800 --> 00:26:27.540
motivated to act every day. I get out of bed. I need to take a
602
00:26:27.540 --> 00:26:31.600
dump. But my guess is that if we were
603
00:26:31.600 --> 00:26:37.060
to administer a scientifically validated instrument that
604
00:26:37.060 --> 00:26:40.880
measures your subjective sense of purpose
605
00:26:40.880 --> 00:26:44.970
direction in life, that that would be north of five out of 10.
606
00:26:44.970 --> 00:26:47.920
Okay. Do you think that's fair or is
607
00:26:47.920 --> 00:26:50.880
that something that you don't maybe? Yeah. I don't know. Like,
608
00:26:50.880 --> 00:26:52.960
do you, do you wake up? Do you feel
609
00:26:52.960 --> 00:26:55.320
like you're no, you know what you want to do and what's going
610
00:26:55.320 --> 00:26:56.800
on and you're like doing good work?
611
00:26:56.800 --> 00:26:59.020
Like, I'm asking about the subjective. Not on a grand sense. I
612
00:26:59.020 --> 00:27:00.960
'm quite agnostic. I mean, I'm sort of
613
00:27:00.960 --> 00:27:03.720
I'm not talking about, okay, maybe I spent a really great,
614
00:27:03.720 --> 00:27:06.640
great, great, perfect. So, so not on a
615
00:27:06.640 --> 00:27:10.840
grand sense, but on some other sense. Yes, sure. Okay, great.
616
00:27:10.840 --> 00:27:13.120
So I think that this is like, this is,
617
00:27:13.120 --> 00:27:16.130
I think this is beautiful because I think what we have here is
618
00:27:16.130 --> 00:27:18.000
like, not on a grand sense. So I
619
00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:21.010
think on a grand sense, you're there. Right. Right. But you're
620
00:27:21.010 --> 00:27:22.800
absolutely motivated by particular
621
00:27:22.800 --> 00:27:25.960
things. So I think this is the first thing about purpose. Can a
622
00:27:25.960 --> 00:27:28.320
clarification real. Sure. Yeah,
623
00:27:28.320 --> 00:27:30.870
on a grand sense, yes, but there are distinctions that you were
624
00:27:30.870 --> 00:27:32.640
referring to a few moments ago. Great.
625
00:27:32.640 --> 00:27:35.040
There are a lot of things that are just satisfying in my life.
626
00:27:35.040 --> 00:27:36.560
But in terms of being on the right
627
00:27:36.560 --> 00:27:40.210
course, that's part of what life is. Being on the right course,
628
00:27:40.210 --> 00:27:41.520
lots of crazy stuff that's
629
00:27:41.520 --> 00:27:45.310
happening in between. Cool. So like, like the first thing that
630
00:27:45.310 --> 00:27:47.280
I've kind of noticed in my work
631
00:27:47.280 --> 00:27:52.000
is that I don't know whether a grand or purpose exists or not.
632
00:27:52.000 --> 00:27:52.960
I think that's a lovely
633
00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:55.510
discussion that I want to continue to have with you, but I'm
634
00:27:55.510 --> 00:27:56.640
sort of, here's where I'm sort of
635
00:27:56.640 --> 00:27:59.540
coming from in this discussion. Steven started this out with
636
00:27:59.540 --> 00:28:01.040
some really scary statistics that
637
00:28:01.040 --> 00:28:03.890
we're seeing, right? There's a mental health crisis. I think a
638
00:28:03.890 --> 00:28:05.600
lot of what we're seeing is,
639
00:28:05.600 --> 00:28:08.490
is while it may be perennial, I think it's like seems more
640
00:28:08.490 --> 00:28:10.640
acute right now. Yes. Maybe that's
641
00:28:10.640 --> 00:28:13.810
because of the atheist materialism, whatever. I'm not quite
642
00:28:13.810 --> 00:28:15.840
sure, but this is a problem. So just
643
00:28:15.840 --> 00:28:19.030
sharing where I'm coming from. My hope is that someone who is
644
00:28:19.030 --> 00:28:22.160
watching this will have moved forward
645
00:28:22.160 --> 00:28:25.670
some vague percentage points. I'm shooting for about 20% in
646
00:28:25.670 --> 00:28:27.520
their personal quest for purpose.
647
00:28:28.640 --> 00:28:32.130
And I think a big part of what I'm going to try to contribute
648
00:28:32.130 --> 00:28:34.320
here today is my understanding of
649
00:28:34.320 --> 00:28:38.020
like how to do that, that this is a quantifiable thing that we
650
00:28:38.020 --> 00:28:39.760
can sort of see at this table,
651
00:28:39.760 --> 00:28:44.360
people are sort of like at different places. And so the first
652
00:28:44.360 --> 00:28:46.880
thing that I kind of want to point out
653
00:28:46.880 --> 00:28:51.070
is I don't know whether there's purpose or not, but as a human
654
00:28:51.070 --> 00:28:51.920
condition,
655
00:28:53.760 --> 00:28:58.550
there is something that each of us feel or experience that
656
00:28:58.550 --> 00:29:00.880
gives us an answer, right? So you're
657
00:29:00.880 --> 00:29:04.050
like at 10, but what that means is that something is going on
658
00:29:04.050 --> 00:29:05.840
in your mind, something is going on in
659
00:29:05.840 --> 00:29:08.610
your heart, something is going on in your body where you wake
660
00:29:08.610 --> 00:29:10.320
up and you feel like you have purpose.
661
00:29:10.320 --> 00:29:13.160
Steven wakes up and he's like at a five out of 10. So he's
662
00:29:13.160 --> 00:29:15.040
getting some signals in that area,
663
00:29:15.040 --> 00:29:17.820
some signals and all that matter area. You have some signals in
664
00:29:17.820 --> 00:29:19.360
that direction too. You know why
665
00:29:19.360 --> 00:29:21.440
you're showing up at this podcast. You've got a book that you
666
00:29:21.440 --> 00:29:22.960
're working on. Awesome. Can't wait to
667
00:29:22.960 --> 00:29:25.610
read it. But on a grander sense, you're like, I don't know
668
00:29:25.610 --> 00:29:27.600
about this like objective stuff or whatever.
669
00:29:27.600 --> 00:29:30.560
So this is sort of like this quantifiable thing. And you.
670
00:29:30.560 --> 00:29:33.440
I'm going to let you all guess.
671
00:29:33.440 --> 00:29:37.520
Where would you put me at? I don't like to psychologize people.
672
00:29:37.520 --> 00:29:42.860
It's okay if you don't like to know you. I just met you. I don
673
00:29:42.860 --> 00:29:45.120
't know. I have no idea what
674
00:29:45.120 --> 00:29:47.440
what sense of meaning you have in your life.
675
00:29:49.120 --> 00:29:53.320
Okay, I mean, for me, I'm just motivated to try and find out.
676
00:29:53.320 --> 00:29:55.120
So I think I think the audience can
677
00:29:55.120 --> 00:29:57.770
guess too. Yeah, I would say you're pretty high. That's where
678
00:29:57.770 --> 00:29:59.280
you're here. That's where you're
679
00:29:59.280 --> 00:30:02.720
articulating your ideas. Probably, probably closer to 10 and
680
00:30:02.720 --> 00:30:05.600
five. Yeah, right. So it's like,
681
00:30:05.600 --> 00:30:08.510
it's okay if you don't want to do that because I'm guessing
682
00:30:08.510 --> 00:30:10.080
that there are certain things in your
683
00:30:10.080 --> 00:30:13.600
intellect that tell you. So do you have a subjective instinct?
684
00:30:13.600 --> 00:30:15.680
No, I just don't know you that well.
685
00:30:15.680 --> 00:30:18.640
I mean, I don't know. And also it depends what you mean, right?
686
00:30:18.640 --> 00:30:20.000
Because you'll say that you have a
687
00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:22.930
if you say that you're a 10, like you have this, this, there's
688
00:30:22.930 --> 00:30:23.920
this, you use the phrase
689
00:30:23.920 --> 00:30:25.940
earlier sense, a sense of meaning in life. And because you're
690
00:30:25.940 --> 00:30:27.600
talking about this from an empirical
691
00:30:27.600 --> 00:30:31.600
standpoint of whether people report having a sense of meaning,
692
00:30:31.600 --> 00:30:33.280
whereas I think that Greg is probably
693
00:30:33.280 --> 00:30:37.180
talking about literally speaking, whether there is actually, in
694
00:30:37.180 --> 00:30:38.640
fact, a real meaning,
695
00:30:38.640 --> 00:30:41.190
whether or not people sense it or not, you could say that you
696
00:30:41.190 --> 00:30:43.040
have a 10 out of 10 and Greg could say,
697
00:30:43.040 --> 00:30:45.950
well, that's great that you feel that way, but it's misguided
698
00:30:45.950 --> 00:30:47.440
because the purpose that you have
699
00:30:47.440 --> 00:30:49.970
identified in your life is the wrong one. And so to me, the
700
00:30:49.970 --> 00:30:52.160
important question is not so much
701
00:30:52.160 --> 00:30:54.810
whether you subjectively report feeling like you have purpose
702
00:30:54.810 --> 00:30:56.480
in life, but whether that purpose is
703
00:30:56.480 --> 00:31:00.660
grounded in something real and true. Yeah. So I think that your
704
00:31:00.660 --> 00:31:03.920
answer right now is the reason why you
705
00:31:03.920 --> 00:31:07.120
think some of these questions are unanswerable. So I think if
706
00:31:07.120 --> 00:31:10.480
you adopt that frame, you'll never
707
00:31:10.480 --> 00:31:17.220
know, but let me just finish. Okay. So my first experience of
708
00:31:17.220 --> 00:31:18.960
this, right, is that first of all,
709
00:31:18.960 --> 00:31:22.140
there is a subjective barometer like how do we know whether we
710
00:31:22.140 --> 00:31:24.960
have purpose? Maybe we listen to
711
00:31:24.960 --> 00:31:28.270
other people, but there is some sort of internal sense of this.
712
00:31:28.270 --> 00:31:29.680
And this is where the science
713
00:31:29.680 --> 00:31:32.070
becomes really important because if you look at people who have
714
00:31:32.070 --> 00:31:33.200
like a history of trauma or
715
00:31:33.200 --> 00:31:35.870
something, what you tend to find is that there are certain like
716
00:31:35.870 --> 00:31:37.280
neurobiological things that can
717
00:31:37.280 --> 00:31:41.370
happen to you, that will literally affect the parts of your
718
00:31:41.370 --> 00:31:43.840
brain that are able to detect purpose.
719
00:31:43.840 --> 00:31:47.460
So this is sort of like a subjective experience. And I think
720
00:31:47.460 --> 00:31:49.840
the way that, and I love your emphasis
721
00:31:49.840 --> 00:31:52.580
on mechanism, and I think this is what, in my opinion, science
722
00:31:52.580 --> 00:31:54.160
and spirituality can really add
723
00:31:54.160 --> 00:31:57.410
as they add the how, right? They add like, why is it that one
724
00:31:57.410 --> 00:31:59.360
person has purpose and another person
725
00:31:59.360 --> 00:32:02.700
doesn't have purpose? So first thing is that in my experience
726
00:32:02.700 --> 00:32:04.080
in the way that I operate,
727
00:32:04.080 --> 00:32:07.700
I'm not saying it's correct, it's just, it's effective in terms
728
00:32:07.700 --> 00:32:09.760
of helping people move the needle
729
00:32:09.760 --> 00:32:13.920
on reducing suicidality, improving resilience, giving them a
730
00:32:13.920 --> 00:32:15.360
reason to wake up in the morning,
731
00:32:15.360 --> 00:32:18.840
like it tends to work. And it's not just me, it's that there's
732
00:32:18.840 --> 00:32:20.880
a bunch of methodologies that we
733
00:32:20.880 --> 00:32:23.770
have in psychotherapy and stuff like that that accomplish these
734
00:32:23.770 --> 00:32:25.200
kinds of things, that there's some
735
00:32:25.200 --> 00:32:29.360
internal sense of purpose. Now, what I think surprises a lot of
736
00:32:29.360 --> 00:32:31.360
people is that there are two ways
737
00:32:31.360 --> 00:32:35.180
that you increase that sense of purpose. The first is a bucket
738
00:32:35.180 --> 00:32:37.600
of things that are kind of counter
739
00:32:37.600 --> 00:32:40.500
intuitive. And this is where we also have to understand that
740
00:32:40.500 --> 00:32:43.440
purpose correlates with certain
741
00:32:43.440 --> 00:32:47.410
other things in life. So if I feel like I am in control of my
742
00:32:47.410 --> 00:32:50.960
life, then my sense of purpose
743
00:32:50.960 --> 00:32:53.990
will increase. Those two things are correlated. It's not clear
744
00:32:53.990 --> 00:32:55.920
whether it's one thing that manifests
745
00:32:55.920 --> 00:32:58.820
in two ways or it's probably two discrete things because there
746
00:32:58.820 --> 00:33:00.640
's some subtlety there. But just
747
00:33:00.640 --> 00:33:04.060
as a very simple example, if you take someone who feels out of
748
00:33:04.060 --> 00:33:06.160
control in life and you help them
749
00:33:06.160 --> 00:33:09.330
get control of their life and there's a really great example of
750
00:33:09.330 --> 00:33:10.400
this, which is something called
751
00:33:10.400 --> 00:33:13.260
passive challenges versus active challenges. So there's a
752
00:33:13.260 --> 00:33:15.360
fascinating research on anxiety that shows
753
00:33:15.360 --> 00:33:18.840
that if you're someone in life whose life is happening to you,
754
00:33:18.840 --> 00:33:20.480
like you wake up one day and then
755
00:33:20.480 --> 00:33:23.010
like your boss wants you to come in for work and you have to
756
00:33:23.010 --> 00:33:24.560
pay rent at the end of the month and
757
00:33:24.560 --> 00:33:27.470
like you're logging on to Tinder and people aren't responding
758
00:33:27.470 --> 00:33:30.640
to you, life is controlling the
759
00:33:30.640 --> 00:33:34.490
direction that you move. And people feel overwhelmed by this
760
00:33:34.490 --> 00:33:37.040
and they want freedom, they want control,
761
00:33:37.040 --> 00:33:40.200
what they end up doing is they wish that they didn't have these
762
00:33:40.200 --> 00:33:41.680
things. So they run away from
763
00:33:41.680 --> 00:33:46.560
these problems. So passive challenges are challenges that life
764
00:33:46.560 --> 00:33:48.480
imposes upon you that you didn't
765
00:33:48.480 --> 00:33:52.420
sign up for. Then there's something really fascinating, which
766
00:33:52.420 --> 00:33:54.480
is your sense of control in life
767
00:33:54.480 --> 00:33:57.650
does not correlate just with the passive challenges. It
768
00:33:57.650 --> 00:34:01.360
correlates with the ratio of passive challenges
769
00:34:01.360 --> 00:34:04.530
to active challenges, active challenges are things that you
770
00:34:04.530 --> 00:34:06.240
choose to do that are difficult.
771
00:34:06.240 --> 00:34:10.100
So this is really fascinating, but if you're getting bodied by
772
00:34:10.100 --> 00:34:12.080
life in three different directions,
773
00:34:12.080 --> 00:34:14.950
the solution to that is not run away from those problems. It's
774
00:34:14.950 --> 00:34:16.720
actually to wake up and start to
775
00:34:17.600 --> 00:34:20.500
push yourself in a particular direction. I want to do this
776
00:34:20.500 --> 00:34:22.240
instead, if you want to learn how to like
777
00:34:22.240 --> 00:34:25.480
read, you know, learn philosophy, you know, start studying
778
00:34:25.480 --> 00:34:27.440
philosophical texts, you know, like,
779
00:34:27.440 --> 00:34:30.220
is you start to take on more, which is very counterintuitive
780
00:34:30.220 --> 00:34:32.000
because when most people feel
781
00:34:32.000 --> 00:34:35.000
overwhelmed, they don't feel like they can do more. The exact
782
00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:36.560
solution is to take on more
783
00:34:36.560 --> 00:34:40.930
active challenges, then you have some sense of control in life.
784
00:34:40.930 --> 00:34:42.640
And once your ratio of active
785
00:34:42.640 --> 00:34:45.500
challenges to passive challenges is more evened out, this does
786
00:34:45.500 --> 00:34:47.200
something really cool. It gives you
787
00:34:47.200 --> 00:34:50.040
a sense that I'm no longer out of control. Once you feel like
788
00:34:50.040 --> 00:34:51.840
you're no longer out of control,
789
00:34:51.840 --> 00:34:56.560
this is the really cool thing, then your capacity to deal with
790
00:34:56.560 --> 00:34:58.640
the stuff that life throws at you
791
00:34:58.640 --> 00:35:02.560
actually improves. So there's this, this is just one example of
792
00:35:02.560 --> 00:35:05.360
like one scientific neurobiological
793
00:35:05.360 --> 00:35:08.530
principle that has some psychology associated with where you
794
00:35:08.530 --> 00:35:11.440
can do particular things to give yourself
795
00:35:12.080 --> 00:35:15.250
a sense of direction in life. Now, some of the stuff around
796
00:35:15.250 --> 00:35:17.520
worship and spiritual practice that can do it
797
00:35:17.520 --> 00:35:22.080
too. But I think that usually what I tend to see is that, you
798
00:35:22.080 --> 00:35:24.640
know, if someone is lost in life,
799
00:35:24.640 --> 00:35:27.860
you can sort of answer it by these big questions. You can sort
800
00:35:27.860 --> 00:35:29.280
of think about this sort of
801
00:35:29.280 --> 00:35:32.080
transcendental purpose, which I'm happy to talk about. But I
802
00:35:32.080 --> 00:35:33.680
think there's a lot of like little
803
00:35:33.680 --> 00:35:37.610
stuff that you can do. And as you implement these things, the
804
00:35:37.610 --> 00:35:39.760
sense of purpose in your life,
805
00:35:39.760 --> 00:35:42.990
your internal lived experience of feeling out of control will
806
00:35:42.990 --> 00:35:43.600
change.
807
00:35:43.600 --> 00:35:46.400
Let me offer a few thoughts if I could. When I want to speak to
808
00:35:46.400 --> 00:35:48.240
something that you've said, Alex,
809
00:35:48.240 --> 00:35:51.840
um, that I just want to offer a caution about when we talk
810
00:35:51.840 --> 00:35:54.480
about motivation, the motivation for
811
00:35:54.480 --> 00:35:57.880
something we sometimes confuse that with justification. So
812
00:35:57.880 --> 00:35:59.920
someone might say to me, it's an atheist,
813
00:35:59.920 --> 00:36:02.450
for example, well, you're a Christian because you were born in
814
00:36:02.450 --> 00:36:03.920
America. If you were born in
815
00:36:03.920 --> 00:36:07.090
Saudi Arabia, you wouldn't be a Christian. You'd be Muslim. Of
816
00:36:07.090 --> 00:36:09.040
course, that's irrelevant to the
817
00:36:09.040 --> 00:36:11.030
question of whether Islam or Christianity or some other
818
00:36:11.030 --> 00:36:12.880
religion is true. It doesn't speak to them.
819
00:36:12.880 --> 00:36:16.580
It speaks to psychology. Okay. And the fact is that if the
820
00:36:16.580 --> 00:36:18.480
atheist was born in Saudi Arabia,
821
00:36:18.480 --> 00:36:21.960
it would be an atheist either likely. The key question is what
822
00:36:21.960 --> 00:36:23.520
motivates people, for example,
823
00:36:23.520 --> 00:36:26.680
to think about purpose, death may be a fear of death. That
824
00:36:26.680 --> 00:36:28.560
might be a motivation. The question is
825
00:36:28.560 --> 00:36:31.790
whether the place they land in answering the question has any
826
00:36:31.790 --> 00:36:33.520
objective truth to it or not.
827
00:36:33.520 --> 00:36:36.480
It could be that there is a God and that there isn't afterlife.
828
00:36:36.480 --> 00:36:38.720
And facing death does give
829
00:36:38.720 --> 00:36:43.270
comfort to that, I should say when facing death, you have
830
00:36:43.270 --> 00:36:45.680
comfort because there is a God and there's
831
00:36:45.680 --> 00:36:48.650
something that you're going to. It's close to communion with
832
00:36:48.650 --> 00:36:50.880
him. Okay. Just because you're motivated
833
00:36:50.880 --> 00:36:53.610
by death doesn't mean that you're belief about the afterlife is
834
00:36:53.610 --> 00:36:54.560
somehow an error.
835
00:36:54.560 --> 00:36:58.220
I just want to add something in here. So I think part of the
836
00:36:58.220 --> 00:37:00.880
reason I've also convened you guys
837
00:37:00.880 --> 00:37:05.260
have this conversation today is because I've got several people
838
00:37:05.260 --> 00:37:08.560
in my life that I can literally
839
00:37:08.560 --> 00:37:11.550
lay out the personas, but I've got one particular friend who's
840
00:37:11.550 --> 00:37:14.000
35 between 35 and 40 years old,
841
00:37:14.000 --> 00:37:17.700
living in Dubai, living in a glass box, freelancer. So he wakes
842
00:37:17.700 --> 00:37:19.680
up in the morning. His bed is there,
843
00:37:19.680 --> 00:37:22.520
he then works there, then goes back to bed. He's single, no
844
00:37:22.520 --> 00:37:24.000
kids. In his life at the moment,
845
00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:27.170
he said to me that he can't get out of bed anymore. He feels
846
00:37:27.170 --> 00:37:29.440
stuck. And then about six months after
847
00:37:29.440 --> 00:37:32.300
the blue, it turns out without telling any of us and with his
848
00:37:32.300 --> 00:37:34.080
best friends, he's flown to America,
849
00:37:34.080 --> 00:37:36.510
he's been baptized. He's a Christian. Suddenly his life has
850
00:37:36.510 --> 00:37:38.080
purpose and meaning again. He's a
851
00:37:38.080 --> 00:37:41.420
completely different person. And this individual never ever, he
852
00:37:41.420 --> 00:37:42.880
would be the last person that you'd
853
00:37:42.880 --> 00:37:45.680
think would be religious. Got another friend, female just over
854
00:37:45.680 --> 00:37:47.440
30 years old, doesn't have kids,
855
00:37:47.440 --> 00:37:50.480
freelance works at home. When I asked her what her meaning and
856
00:37:50.480 --> 00:37:52.000
purpose in life, she said to me,
857
00:37:52.000 --> 00:37:55.490
she wants to get to having 200 plants, plants she can water.
858
00:37:55.490 --> 00:37:57.600
She names all of them. She then told me a
859
00:37:57.600 --> 00:38:00.220
week after she's in therapy because she feels lost and stuck in
860
00:38:00.220 --> 00:38:01.840
life. And so much of the central
861
00:38:01.840 --> 00:38:05.160
point why I've been motivated to have this conversation is it
862
00:38:05.160 --> 00:38:07.040
appears to me, and I haven't nailed
863
00:38:07.040 --> 00:38:10.930
this hypothesis yet, that freedom, independence, be your own
864
00:38:10.930 --> 00:38:13.120
boss, the decline in people having
865
00:38:13.120 --> 00:38:17.060
children, the glamorization of, as you said at the very
866
00:38:17.060 --> 00:38:19.360
beginning, like, you know, do it yourself,
867
00:38:19.360 --> 00:38:23.430
do it your way is failing people in some way. And then actually
868
00:38:23.430 --> 00:38:26.560
the push for independence was in some
869
00:38:26.560 --> 00:38:29.730
way, some kind of lie. I actually also went through the same
870
00:38:29.730 --> 00:38:33.040
new atheist baptism, but you went through,
871
00:38:33.040 --> 00:38:36.290
and I read all those books 18 years old and I was debating dog
872
00:38:36.290 --> 00:38:37.920
walkers on the street about God,
873
00:38:37.920 --> 00:38:40.720
I was so, yeah, such a staunch atheist. But I now find myself
874
00:38:40.720 --> 00:38:43.520
in a position where I'm almost back
875
00:38:43.520 --> 00:38:46.850
to being curious again, because it feels like independence wasn
876
00:38:46.850 --> 00:38:49.040
't the answer. So just wanted to
877
00:38:49.040 --> 00:38:52.020
be frame curious. I think, yeah, I mean, I think people need
878
00:38:52.020 --> 00:38:53.600
tasks. I think the purpose is
879
00:38:54.320 --> 00:38:57.740
intimately tied up with the idea of task to fulfil. It's why
880
00:38:57.740 --> 00:39:00.000
people tend to find meaning in projects
881
00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:02.420
which are not completed yet. In fact, Pascal writes quite
882
00:39:02.420 --> 00:39:04.000
compellingly about this when he writes
883
00:39:04.000 --> 00:39:08.160
about boredom, and he imagines a gambler, someone who enjoys
884
00:39:08.160 --> 00:39:11.520
gambling, and says, well, why is this
885
00:39:11.520 --> 00:39:14.070
person gambling? Because they're doing this thing with the
886
00:39:14.070 --> 00:39:15.680
chance of winning some money. Okay,
887
00:39:15.680 --> 00:39:18.040
so why don't you just give them the money? Just take the
888
00:39:18.040 --> 00:39:19.680
gambling and give him all the money that
889
00:39:19.680 --> 00:39:22.960
he could possibly receive without playing the game. And he won
890
00:39:22.960 --> 00:39:25.440
't be very fulfilled, even though he's
891
00:39:25.440 --> 00:39:27.560
getting ostensibly what he was trying to get. No, no, that
892
00:39:27.560 --> 00:39:29.200
wouldn't be fulfilling because he enjoys
893
00:39:29.200 --> 00:39:34.320
the gambling. Okay, says Pascal, then let him play the game,
894
00:39:34.320 --> 00:39:37.200
but make it such that he'll never actually
895
00:39:37.200 --> 00:39:40.100
win the money, but he gets to keep playing the game. And there
896
00:39:40.100 --> 00:39:41.680
's not going to be very fulfilled by
897
00:39:41.680 --> 00:39:44.340
that either. That's also going to be completely pointless. And
898
00:39:44.340 --> 00:39:45.840
so Pascal noticed that what you kind of
899
00:39:45.840 --> 00:39:50.110
need to avoid boredom, and I suppose to imbue your life with
900
00:39:50.110 --> 00:39:53.200
purpose, at least in this analogy is
901
00:39:53.200 --> 00:39:59.320
some kind of task to fulfill that you haven't fulfilled yet,
902
00:39:59.320 --> 00:40:00.400
that you don't know if you're going
903
00:40:00.400 --> 00:40:03.150
to fulfill, that you believe will bring you fulfillment when
904
00:40:03.150 --> 00:40:05.600
you get it, but you haven't got it yet.
905
00:40:05.600 --> 00:40:07.960
So what I think religion does it really well because it's the
906
00:40:07.960 --> 00:40:08.960
definition of something which you
907
00:40:08.960 --> 00:40:12.270
don't have now, which you can strive for, which when you get,
908
00:40:12.270 --> 00:40:15.440
you believe will be fulfilling.
909
00:40:15.440 --> 00:40:19.700
Yeah, so I love these examples because actually, we know
910
00:40:19.700 --> 00:40:22.000
exactly what's going on in that thought
911
00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:24.530
experiment, right? So now there have been, there's so many
912
00:40:24.530 --> 00:40:26.960
advances in neuroscience that we
913
00:40:26.960 --> 00:40:31.370
understand why people gamble, right? So we understand that
914
00:40:31.370 --> 00:40:34.640
giving someone money will satisfy a
915
00:40:34.640 --> 00:40:37.600
gambler in one of two cases that I've seen this. I work with
916
00:40:37.600 --> 00:40:39.200
people with professional group
917
00:40:39.200 --> 00:40:42.920
players. Some people that we describe motivation is actually
918
00:40:42.920 --> 00:40:44.480
like a dozen different things going on
919
00:40:44.480 --> 00:40:47.870
in your brain. So if you were a professional poker player in
920
00:40:47.870 --> 00:40:49.280
poker and I've literally worked with
921
00:40:49.280 --> 00:40:51.510
professional poker players who had no meaning in life, it's so
922
00:40:51.510 --> 00:40:52.960
funny. I'm thinking about a particular
923
00:40:52.960 --> 00:40:56.530
person. And then, you know, achieved a certain financial goal,
924
00:40:56.530 --> 00:40:58.160
that's why they play poker.
925
00:40:58.160 --> 00:41:02.320
So if your motivation is that I'm playing poker because I have
926
00:41:02.320 --> 00:41:04.160
a skill that I'm using to get
927
00:41:04.160 --> 00:41:07.580
money, if that is your internal motivation, that is going to
928
00:41:07.580 --> 00:41:09.440
come from certain circuits in your brain,
929
00:41:09.440 --> 00:41:12.130
it's going to come from places like your frontal lobe. Now, as
930
00:41:12.130 --> 00:41:14.400
Pascal pointed out, if you give the
931
00:41:14.400 --> 00:41:17.570
average person who gambles money, what are they going to do
932
00:41:17.570 --> 00:41:20.160
with it? They're going to gamble more,
933
00:41:20.160 --> 00:41:23.330
right? So that means that their motivation is coming from
934
00:41:23.330 --> 00:41:25.040
something more closer to the nucleus
935
00:41:25.040 --> 00:41:27.610
accumbens, a random reinforcement schedule. Maybe they're
936
00:41:27.610 --> 00:41:29.520
trying to suppress amygdala emotions.
937
00:41:29.520 --> 00:41:32.480
So we actually can like look at that example and we can
938
00:41:32.480 --> 00:41:35.440
understand why each of those things happens.
939
00:41:35.440 --> 00:41:40.010
And then the most beautiful thing is that there is absolutely a
940
00:41:40.010 --> 00:41:43.840
scenario where someone can gamble
941
00:41:43.840 --> 00:41:47.830
and never win and they can absolutely have purpose. So this is
942
00:41:47.830 --> 00:41:50.000
where I know that sounds insane,
943
00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:52.960
but if you look at some of these things from the Zen tradition,
944
00:41:52.960 --> 00:41:56.080
right? So these are practices that have
945
00:41:56.080 --> 00:41:59.260
no purpose to act with no meaning whatsoever. And the beautiful
946
00:41:59.260 --> 00:42:01.040
thing about that is as you explore
947
00:42:01.040 --> 00:42:04.890
that sort of angle and their sort of a neuroscience perspective
948
00:42:04.890 --> 00:42:07.280
to this as well is that if you really
949
00:42:07.280 --> 00:42:09.980
think about it, you're saying, okay, so people invest in this
950
00:42:09.980 --> 00:42:12.160
purpose, or in this purpose seeking
951
00:42:12.160 --> 00:42:15.450
thing like religion with the idea that I'll find payoff at the
952
00:42:15.450 --> 00:42:17.360
end, is that what you were saying earlier?
953
00:42:17.360 --> 00:42:20.070
I'm saying something a bit different. What I was going to go on
954
00:42:20.070 --> 00:42:21.520
to say is to point out
955
00:42:21.520 --> 00:42:24.750
that, and bear in mind, this comes from a part of Pascal's P
956
00:42:24.750 --> 00:42:26.720
once which is titled Man Without God.
957
00:42:26.720 --> 00:42:30.540
You know, he goes on to discuss Man With God. But I look at the
958
00:42:30.540 --> 00:42:33.520
development of the human species
959
00:42:33.520 --> 00:42:36.520
and our particular proclivities. Lewis makes this argument from
960
00:42:36.520 --> 00:42:37.680
desire that you mentioned,
961
00:42:37.680 --> 00:42:40.670
why do we have a desire for food? Well, because there is
962
00:42:40.670 --> 00:42:42.880
actually food to have. The evolutionary
963
00:42:42.880 --> 00:42:45.640
biologist says the reason that we develop hunger is because
964
00:42:45.640 --> 00:42:48.720
those who didn't died. And if you don't
965
00:42:48.720 --> 00:42:50.940
have some sense of hunger, you're not going to seek out food
966
00:42:50.940 --> 00:42:52.160
and you will die until it just so
967
00:42:52.160 --> 00:42:55.350
happens that those who develop this feeling of hunger will be
968
00:42:55.350 --> 00:42:57.120
more likely to survive and therefore
969
00:42:57.120 --> 00:43:00.910
hunger is a part of our human condition. Well, such is meaning.
970
00:43:00.910 --> 00:43:03.120
If you have two isolated communities,
971
00:43:03.120 --> 00:43:07.710
one of whom says, I just don't care. Whatever, man, no interest
972
00:43:07.710 --> 00:43:08.640
in having children,
973
00:43:08.640 --> 00:43:12.240
no interested in building societies, legal systems, constit
974
00:43:12.240 --> 00:43:14.560
utions, whatever the case, moral systems,
975
00:43:14.560 --> 00:43:16.920
none of those. They just don't care, nihilists. They're not
976
00:43:16.920 --> 00:43:18.720
even going to have children. That society
977
00:43:18.720 --> 00:43:22.200
will die out. Another society was just so happens to perhaps
978
00:43:22.200 --> 00:43:24.240
delusion in an exercise of delusion,
979
00:43:24.240 --> 00:43:27.630
just develop this inexplicable feeling. And of course, this
980
00:43:27.630 --> 00:43:29.200
evolves over time and starts with
981
00:43:29.200 --> 00:43:32.840
essentially the kind of random mutation of ideas that works on
982
00:43:32.840 --> 00:43:34.800
the genetic level and evolution,
983
00:43:34.800 --> 00:43:38.440
they call it memetics when it's ideas rather than genes. The
984
00:43:38.440 --> 00:43:40.560
society which just ends up developing
985
00:43:40.560 --> 00:43:43.490
this idea that actually, I can't quite explain why, but I just
986
00:43:43.490 --> 00:43:45.120
have this drive towards building
987
00:43:45.120 --> 00:43:48.690
a society and engaging in legal justice and moral systems and
988
00:43:48.690 --> 00:43:50.160
crimes. They're just more likely
989
00:43:50.160 --> 00:43:55.310
to survive. So we end up with this with this sense, this drive
990
00:43:55.310 --> 00:43:57.520
within us that we can't explain
991
00:43:57.520 --> 00:43:59.880
and yet we have. So imagine for the majority of our
992
00:43:59.880 --> 00:44:01.760
evolutionary history what it was like.
993
00:44:01.760 --> 00:44:04.920
Every single day you woke up and you did not know if you were
994
00:44:04.920 --> 00:44:06.320
going to have a roof over your head,
995
00:44:06.320 --> 00:44:07.930
you didn't know if you were going to have food to eat, you had
996
00:44:07.930 --> 00:44:09.120
to go out and you had to hunt it,
997
00:44:09.120 --> 00:44:12.560
you had to go and find it. Every single day, the game reset.
998
00:44:12.560 --> 00:44:14.800
And so I would imagine that those
999
00:44:14.800 --> 00:44:17.370
lives were probably quite meaningful, at least in the sense
1000
00:44:17.370 --> 00:44:18.880
that I don't think there will have been
1001
00:44:18.880 --> 00:44:22.670
many existential crises on a day to day because the purpose was
1002
00:44:22.670 --> 00:44:24.560
quite clear. And like Pascal's
1003
00:44:24.560 --> 00:44:27.330
gambler, they had a task that they think will fulfill them when
1004
00:44:27.330 --> 00:44:28.400
they get it and they don't know
1005
00:44:28.400 --> 00:44:31.040
whether it's going to be fulfilled. So what's happened today?
1006
00:44:31.040 --> 00:44:34.400
Well now we've been given the money
1007
00:44:34.400 --> 00:44:37.690
without the game. We've got houses, we've got food, we can go
1008
00:44:37.690 --> 00:44:40.320
next door and get some water,
1009
00:44:40.320 --> 00:44:43.800
get some food from all over the planet. That's it, that you've
1010
00:44:43.800 --> 00:44:45.120
got the money without the game.
1011
00:44:45.120 --> 00:44:48.520
So what do people do in the modern situation when they find out
1012
00:44:48.520 --> 00:44:50.400
their life is a bit meaningless?
1013
00:44:50.400 --> 00:44:53.570
They start intentionally doing things, which are difficult,
1014
00:44:53.570 --> 00:44:56.080
they start doing ice baths, they start
1015
00:44:56.080 --> 00:44:59.300
exercising, they start going into a room just to physically
1016
00:44:59.300 --> 00:45:01.280
exert themselves in order to sort of
1017
00:45:01.280 --> 00:45:04.720
build muscle and whatnot, like on purpose for its own sake. Why
1018
00:45:04.720 --> 00:45:06.240
? Because today we've got
1019
00:45:06.240 --> 00:45:09.810
the money without the game. So people are going out and seeking
1020
00:45:09.810 --> 00:45:10.960
the game without the money,
1021
00:45:10.960 --> 00:45:13.190
they're going and doing the ice baths and the gym. But it's a
1022
00:45:13.190 --> 00:45:14.160
truly meaningful life,
1023
00:45:14.800 --> 00:45:18.020
it's one in which you are playing the game in the service of
1024
00:45:18.020 --> 00:45:20.480
getting the goal. That is why I think
1025
00:45:20.480 --> 00:45:23.930
that literally just seeking out those things. I think that
1026
00:45:23.930 --> 00:45:25.600
there's a reason why they have a
1027
00:45:25.600 --> 00:45:28.430
psychological impact. It's not as simple as just like, oh well
1028
00:45:28.430 --> 00:45:30.320
if you go to the gym, it releases
1029
00:45:30.320 --> 00:45:33.030
endorphins and makes you feel good. So let's think a bit deeper
1030
00:45:33.030 --> 00:45:34.720
than that. What's actually going on?
1031
00:45:34.720 --> 00:45:38.050
People are seeking out the game without the money. Crucially, I
1032
00:45:38.050 --> 00:45:41.680
've talked about this as a death
1033
00:45:41.680 --> 00:45:45.110
denying pursuit, right? The idea that the things that you
1034
00:45:45.110 --> 00:45:46.720
engage in here, at least in terms of
1035
00:45:46.720 --> 00:45:49.420
grand projects like religion and society, are even if you're so
1036
00:45:49.420 --> 00:45:50.880
consciously an exercise in the
1037
00:45:50.880 --> 00:45:54.670
denial of death. What would that mean? It means that if you
1038
00:45:54.670 --> 00:45:57.040
encounter other communities,
1039
00:45:57.040 --> 00:46:01.200
if you encounter other traditions who just, just by their mere
1040
00:46:01.200 --> 00:46:04.080
existence, threatens the truth of
1041
00:46:04.080 --> 00:46:07.400
your claims, those traditions subconsciously represent death,
1042
00:46:07.400 --> 00:46:09.360
they represent nihilism. So what
1043
00:46:09.360 --> 00:46:12.030
happens in a society that develops the kind of
1044
00:46:12.030 --> 00:46:15.840
telecommunications technology whereby every single day
1045
00:46:15.840 --> 00:46:17.950
you open your phone and you are addicted to a process of
1046
00:46:17.950 --> 00:46:19.760
scrolling through every seven seconds
1047
00:46:19.760 --> 00:46:22.710
a new person with new ideas with different beliefs from all
1048
00:46:22.710 --> 00:46:24.400
over the world? Do you think that might
1049
00:46:24.400 --> 00:46:27.570
have something to do with the meaning crisis that we find
1050
00:46:27.570 --> 00:46:29.200
ourselves in? We're told that
1051
00:46:29.200 --> 00:46:31.730
what's happened is that people stop believing in God and now
1052
00:46:31.730 --> 00:46:33.040
they're all depressed and upset and
1053
00:46:33.040 --> 00:46:35.460
nihilistic. That's far too simple. You don't think it might
1054
00:46:35.460 --> 00:46:37.040
have something to do with the
1055
00:46:37.040 --> 00:46:41.900
fundamentally revolutionary change to our society that has been
1056
00:46:41.900 --> 00:46:45.600
brought about specifically by telecommunication,
1057
00:46:45.600 --> 00:46:49.420
by the ability to oftentimes unintentionally and non-cons
1058
00:46:49.420 --> 00:46:51.360
entially be confronted with
1059
00:46:51.360 --> 00:46:55.520
traditions and people from halfway across the world that just
1060
00:46:55.520 --> 00:46:57.440
remind you every single day,
1061
00:46:57.440 --> 00:47:01.530
zing, zing, zing every single day that your truth is not the
1062
00:47:01.530 --> 00:47:03.920
only truth, that the transcendence
1063
00:47:03.920 --> 00:47:06.450
that you've placed your trust in is completely subjective and
1064
00:47:06.450 --> 00:47:08.320
personal and there's someone over there
1065
00:47:08.320 --> 00:47:11.150
believes something totally different and seems to be living
1066
00:47:11.150 --> 00:47:12.720
just the same kind of happy life,
1067
00:47:12.720 --> 00:47:17.020
that I think is why people are struggling so much. It's not
1068
00:47:17.020 --> 00:47:18.960
just because they're atheists.
1069
00:47:18.960 --> 00:47:21.820
I have a lot to say about this. I'll try to keep it compact. By
1070
00:47:21.820 --> 00:47:25.040
the way, we're all kinds of different
1071
00:47:25.040 --> 00:47:29.660
options for a spiritually. That doesn't necessarily suggest
1072
00:47:29.660 --> 00:47:32.080
that none of the options are actually
1073
00:47:32.080 --> 00:47:35.660
accurate or that are. I'm making a psychology and implication
1074
00:47:35.660 --> 00:47:36.880
there and this is what creates
1075
00:47:36.880 --> 00:47:40.460
the kind of the angst because all we have is our own personal
1076
00:47:40.460 --> 00:47:42.320
subjective point of view.
1077
00:47:42.320 --> 00:47:44.950
I think that's why people experience that. Now, of course, as a
1078
00:47:44.950 --> 00:47:46.560
matter of truth, you could say,
1079
00:47:46.560 --> 00:47:48.830
for example, yourself, you could say, yes, I'm constantly
1080
00:47:48.830 --> 00:47:49.600
confronted by different
1081
00:47:49.600 --> 00:47:52.130
religious traditions that I believe the Christianity is true. I
1082
00:47:52.130 --> 00:47:53.360
think it has the best evidence.
1083
00:47:53.360 --> 00:47:56.530
This is not missing even true and even in the scientific realm,
1084
00:47:56.530 --> 00:47:57.440
you're all kinds of
1085
00:47:57.440 --> 00:48:00.110
different ideas, but no one wants to say just because there are
1086
00:48:00.110 --> 00:48:02.000
so many different ideas to explain
1087
00:48:02.000 --> 00:48:04.280
things then. Yes, no, but it can be correct. Which is why what
1088
00:48:04.280 --> 00:48:06.160
I'm saying is insensitive to the
1089
00:48:06.160 --> 00:48:09.100
truth or falsity of any of the traditions. What I'm saying is,
1090
00:48:09.100 --> 00:48:10.880
because I want to go to that next.
1091
00:48:10.880 --> 00:48:16.240
As an explanation as for the psychological phenomenon, the
1092
00:48:16.240 --> 00:48:17.920
literal feeling that people have,
1093
00:48:17.920 --> 00:48:21.090
because likewise, you would say that there is a meaning crisis
1094
00:48:21.090 --> 00:48:22.080
maybe. You would say that lots
1095
00:48:22.080 --> 00:48:25.060
of the statistics were just heard. You would say lots of people
1096
00:48:25.060 --> 00:48:26.720
don't feel meaning in their life,
1097
00:48:26.720 --> 00:48:29.030
and you'd want to offer an explanation for why that's the case.
1098
00:48:29.030 --> 00:48:29.920
You think their lives are
1099
00:48:29.920 --> 00:48:32.160
meaningful, right? You think that all of those people who say,
1100
00:48:32.160 --> 00:48:33.040
my life has no meaning,
1101
00:48:33.040 --> 00:48:35.570
they're wrong. Their lives actually do have meaning. Is that
1102
00:48:35.570 --> 00:48:36.080
what you think?
1103
00:48:36.080 --> 00:48:39.700
Well, this was the subject of response. They feel like they don
1104
00:48:39.700 --> 00:48:41.040
't help me. Exactly,
1105
00:48:41.040 --> 00:48:44.210
but they were made for a purpose. If they're not in in touch
1106
00:48:44.210 --> 00:48:45.360
with that meaning and purpose,
1107
00:48:45.360 --> 00:48:47.980
then they're going to feel be rough. Exactly. I believe there
1108
00:48:47.980 --> 00:48:49.280
really is a purpose for their life,
1109
00:48:49.280 --> 00:48:51.430
but subjectively they haven't either found it or they don't
1110
00:48:51.430 --> 00:48:53.440
feel it. What I'm doing is I'm offering a
1111
00:48:53.440 --> 00:48:56.840
psychological explanation for why they don't feel it, which is
1112
00:48:56.840 --> 00:48:58.640
completely insensitive to whether
1113
00:48:58.640 --> 00:49:02.730
or not. That's a truth. I'm so glad you put it that way because
1114
00:49:02.730 --> 00:49:04.000
this is exactly my point.
1115
00:49:04.000 --> 00:49:06.730
I don't want anybody to miss it. We're really offering two
1116
00:49:06.730 --> 00:49:08.560
different pictures of reality here.
1117
00:49:08.560 --> 00:49:12.040
People have to ask themselves two questions, I think. One is
1118
00:49:12.040 --> 00:49:14.080
they reflect on their own personal
1119
00:49:14.080 --> 00:49:18.670
awareness of the need for meaning and significance. Does it
1120
00:49:18.670 --> 00:49:21.040
seem to them that this is just a
1121
00:49:21.040 --> 00:49:23.400
psychological thing that people can satisfy in all kinds of
1122
00:49:23.400 --> 00:49:24.640
different ways depending on the
1123
00:49:24.640 --> 00:49:28.210
individual or does it seem to them, I'm asking these questions
1124
00:49:28.210 --> 00:49:31.520
because I suspect there is a truth about
1125
00:49:31.520 --> 00:49:35.890
life that might be discovered. That's the first question. I
1126
00:49:35.890 --> 00:49:38.880
think most people's awareness of this
1127
00:49:38.880 --> 00:49:42.370
is that there's something transcendent, something bigger than
1128
00:49:42.370 --> 00:49:44.960
them. Any kind of naturalistic
1129
00:49:44.960 --> 00:49:47.750
explanation is not going to ultimately satisfy that. The other
1130
00:49:47.750 --> 00:49:49.680
thing is, is there any reason to believe
1131
00:49:50.240 --> 00:49:53.510
that there is a transcendent reality that God exists that souls
1132
00:49:53.510 --> 00:49:55.520
exist, that there is an objective
1133
00:49:55.520 --> 00:50:00.400
morality, that guides our life. And if we're living virtuously,
1134
00:50:00.400 --> 00:50:02.320
that's going to be satisfying
1135
00:50:02.320 --> 00:50:05.170
even if we don't believe in God or not. Those are the two
1136
00:50:05.170 --> 00:50:07.600
things that stay here. Now,
1137
00:50:07.600 --> 00:50:10.900
this description, the story of reality, I just described that I
1138
00:50:10.900 --> 00:50:12.640
hold to it, it seems to me completely
1139
00:50:12.640 --> 00:50:16.360
coherent. Maybe not true, but it certainly is coherent that if
1140
00:50:16.360 --> 00:50:18.000
there is a God who made us for
1141
00:50:18.000 --> 00:50:20.530
ourselves in places eternity in our hearts that we're going to
1142
00:50:20.530 --> 00:50:22.400
year in for that and made the way
1143
00:50:22.400 --> 00:50:24.930
for us to live, and they're going to find good ways to live as
1144
00:50:24.930 --> 00:50:26.640
opposed to unsatisfying ways to live.
1145
00:50:26.640 --> 00:50:29.850
That makes sense. Doesn't make any sense to me at all to say
1146
00:50:29.850 --> 00:50:31.680
that my molecules are moving in a
1147
00:50:31.680 --> 00:50:34.940
certain way to create in my conscious mind, which Darwinist
1148
00:50:34.940 --> 00:50:37.520
would cannot offer an explanation for.
1149
00:50:37.520 --> 00:50:40.530
It has this right, Daniel Dennett said, "Consciousness and
1150
00:50:40.530 --> 00:50:42.720
illusion," you know, because he couldn't do
1151
00:50:42.720 --> 00:50:45.370
anything with it. Thomas Nagel wrote his book, "Mind the Cosmos
1152
00:50:45.370 --> 00:50:47.040
, you're familiar with this. I'm sure,
1153
00:50:47.040 --> 00:50:50.660
you know, why the Neo-Dorinian materialistic view of the world
1154
00:50:50.660 --> 00:50:52.320
is almost certainly false."
1155
00:50:52.320 --> 00:50:55.070
And he's an atheist, we're going to say, because he can't
1156
00:50:55.070 --> 00:50:56.320
explain consciousness,
1157
00:50:56.320 --> 00:50:59.140
not in a Darwinian way. So how is it that this mystery of
1158
00:50:59.140 --> 00:51:00.960
consciousness which contains
1159
00:51:00.960 --> 00:51:05.150
propositional thoughts, ideas, and purposes, if consciousness
1160
00:51:05.150 --> 00:51:07.520
can't be explained to Darwinian way,
1161
00:51:07.520 --> 00:51:12.340
how can some characterization of molecules in motion accomplish
1162
00:51:12.340 --> 00:51:14.880
that same end? That's my concern.
1163
00:51:14.880 --> 00:51:17.430
This way I'm not convinced about it all about the naturalistic
1164
00:51:17.430 --> 00:51:18.800
one, and this one seems so much
1165
00:51:18.800 --> 00:51:21.430
more plausible. What you're raising is the problem of
1166
00:51:21.430 --> 00:51:24.320
consciousness, which is, I think, a new question,
1167
00:51:24.320 --> 00:51:27.330
but an important one. I wanted to point out earlier that when I
1168
00:51:27.330 --> 00:51:29.200
gave an explanation as to why people
1169
00:51:29.200 --> 00:51:32.970
feel a lack of meaning, and you said that has no bearing on
1170
00:51:32.970 --> 00:51:34.320
truth, I think that's...
1171
00:51:34.320 --> 00:51:36.850
You admitted that too at the unknown way. I should have. I
1172
00:51:36.850 --> 00:51:38.720
admit it, I asserted. Of course,
1173
00:51:38.720 --> 00:51:41.520
that's the case. In the firm you weren't making the case. In
1174
00:51:41.520 --> 00:51:43.520
the same way that if somebody says that,
1175
00:51:43.520 --> 00:51:46.720
like, if you're a Christian and you say the reason everyone's
1176
00:51:46.720 --> 00:51:48.880
so depressed is because society has
1177
00:51:48.880 --> 00:51:51.780
become atheistic, somebody could say, well, yeah, I mean, that
1178
00:51:51.780 --> 00:51:53.040
might be the case, but that doesn't
1179
00:51:53.040 --> 00:51:55.580
mean atheism as false. It might be that it is true and just
1180
00:51:55.580 --> 00:51:58.160
depressing, right? Of course, the question,
1181
00:51:58.160 --> 00:52:01.330
if we're discussing their ultimate explanation, if you want to
1182
00:52:01.330 --> 00:52:02.960
know why somebody feels a particular
1183
00:52:02.960 --> 00:52:05.490
way psychologically, you can offer an explanation which has
1184
00:52:05.490 --> 00:52:06.640
absolutely nothing to do with the
1185
00:52:06.640 --> 00:52:08.900
truth or falsity of a worldview. You can then separately
1186
00:52:08.900 --> 00:52:10.160
discuss the truth or falsity of the
1187
00:52:10.160 --> 00:52:12.810
worldview, which is then gone on to do with specific reference
1188
00:52:12.810 --> 00:52:14.000
to the problem of consciousness.
1189
00:52:14.000 --> 00:52:18.320
It thinks it has absolutely nothing or it can be experienced
1190
00:52:18.320 --> 00:52:20.000
apart from the issue of worldview.
1191
00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:22.250
I'm saying that if you're literally just trying... I mean, if
1192
00:52:22.250 --> 00:52:23.440
the question I'm asked is,
1193
00:52:23.440 --> 00:52:27.230
why do people perceive a lack of meaning in their life? That's
1194
00:52:27.230 --> 00:52:28.720
just a question about their
1195
00:52:28.720 --> 00:52:31.580
psychological constitution. That's just... That's literally a
1196
00:52:31.580 --> 00:52:32.640
question about why they say a
1197
00:52:32.640 --> 00:52:35.420
particular way. So if a person was a total nailist, didn't
1198
00:52:35.420 --> 00:52:36.320
believe in anything
1199
00:52:37.120 --> 00:52:40.720
was important and then they were depressed and even suicidal,
1200
00:52:40.720 --> 00:52:42.080
would you say there wasn't a link
1201
00:52:42.080 --> 00:52:45.330
between that worldview and their feelings? Yes, there is, but
1202
00:52:45.330 --> 00:52:46.560
what I'm saying is that the link
1203
00:52:46.560 --> 00:52:48.870
between that worldview and their feeling has nothing to do with
1204
00:52:48.870 --> 00:52:50.000
the truth of the worldview.
1205
00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:52.150
Okay. You see what I'm saying? It doesn't... Nihilism can be
1206
00:52:52.150 --> 00:52:53.920
true, nihilism can be false,
1207
00:52:53.920 --> 00:52:57.470
nihilism can be an unintelligible concept. It can still be the
1208
00:52:57.470 --> 00:52:58.400
case that that person's
1209
00:52:58.400 --> 00:53:01.350
conviction is making them depressed. I agree. In the same way
1210
00:53:01.350 --> 00:53:02.480
that somebody could be a
1211
00:53:02.480 --> 00:53:04.480
Christian and that makes them really happy, that doesn't mean
1212
00:53:04.480 --> 00:53:05.920
Christianity is true. Someone can become
1213
00:53:05.920 --> 00:53:07.990
Christian and become really depressed. That doesn't mean that
1214
00:53:07.990 --> 00:53:09.360
Christianity is false. What I'm trying to
1215
00:53:09.360 --> 00:53:12.860
point out is it is just trivially true. So I still want to try
1216
00:53:12.860 --> 00:53:14.480
to understand a little bit about
1217
00:53:14.480 --> 00:53:19.320
what you're saying because I don't fully follow. And I think
1218
00:53:19.320 --> 00:53:22.240
that the reason I feel way more
1219
00:53:22.240 --> 00:53:26.400
confident in what you're saying is because Christ is pulling at
1220
00:53:26.400 --> 00:53:29.520
you 100%. Yeah. So I think
1221
00:53:29.520 --> 00:53:32.820
Christ, we both talked to Christ, so we're good on that. I know
1222
00:53:32.820 --> 00:53:34.240
where he's coming from.
1223
00:53:34.240 --> 00:53:37.360
So a couple of things that I'm... I don't trust you, you know.
1224
00:53:37.360 --> 00:53:39.800
Awesome. Does he talk back? He does not talk back. Yeah, that's
1225
00:53:39.800 --> 00:53:40.880
tricky. We can talk about
1226
00:53:40.880 --> 00:53:43.620
how to get you there. One person instead just read the gospels
1227
00:53:43.620 --> 00:53:44.080
aloud.
1228
00:53:44.080 --> 00:53:51.050
So a couple of things that I'm curious about. One is... So I'm
1229
00:53:51.050 --> 00:53:52.720
noticing that you're... I'm trying
1230
00:53:52.720 --> 00:53:56.880
to understand where... So I love the way you're sallying forth
1231
00:53:56.880 --> 00:53:59.440
to grapple with this problem of
1232
00:53:59.440 --> 00:54:02.920
purpose. You do a beautiful job of sort of talking about like,
1233
00:54:02.920 --> 00:54:04.480
okay, what's the truth?
1234
00:54:04.480 --> 00:54:09.310
And then there's this psychological perspective. And I want to
1235
00:54:09.310 --> 00:54:11.120
just try to understand this. So
1236
00:54:11.120 --> 00:54:14.750
are you of the mind that from a psychological perspective, you
1237
00:54:14.750 --> 00:54:16.640
can wake up one day and feel like you
1238
00:54:16.640 --> 00:54:20.400
have purpose, but that doesn't necessarily talk about purpose
1239
00:54:20.400 --> 00:54:22.400
transcendentally.
1240
00:54:22.400 --> 00:54:24.830
Capital pain. I'm saying that doesn't talk about the truth of
1241
00:54:24.830 --> 00:54:26.080
your belief. Okay.
1242
00:54:26.080 --> 00:54:29.680
So for example, you could you could you could believe that your
1243
00:54:29.680 --> 00:54:31.440
children are about to die.
1244
00:54:31.440 --> 00:54:34.940
And that suddenly your life feels really meaningless and really
1245
00:54:34.940 --> 00:54:35.920
purposeless.
1246
00:54:35.920 --> 00:54:38.280
It could be completely false. You could have been like misled
1247
00:54:38.280 --> 00:54:39.280
someone to lie to you,
1248
00:54:39.280 --> 00:54:41.920
but like what I'm saying is the psychological explanation for
1249
00:54:41.920 --> 00:54:43.280
why you feel a particular way
1250
00:54:43.280 --> 00:54:45.920
has nothing to do with the truth of the thing that you believe
1251
00:54:45.920 --> 00:54:47.280
that's making you feel that way.
1252
00:54:47.280 --> 00:54:50.880
Gotcha. Okay. So what I'm curious about is when you are
1253
00:54:50.880 --> 00:54:52.160
exploring purpose,
1254
00:54:53.280 --> 00:54:57.230
are you exploring it from are you trying to find the answer at
1255
00:54:57.230 --> 00:54:59.280
the top? Like what is the truth of
1256
00:54:59.280 --> 00:55:04.680
purpose? Or are you focused on the subjective experience of
1257
00:55:04.680 --> 00:55:05.680
purpose?
1258
00:55:05.680 --> 00:55:08.520
Depends on the context. If you're asking, I mean, we were
1259
00:55:08.520 --> 00:55:10.800
talking literally about a psychological
1260
00:55:10.800 --> 00:55:13.500
explanation for why people feel a particular way. You know, is
1261
00:55:13.500 --> 00:55:14.720
it due to a decline in religion,
1262
00:55:14.720 --> 00:55:16.790
that kind of stuff? In that case, it's subjective. It's
1263
00:55:16.790 --> 00:55:17.520
individuals. Yeah.
1264
00:55:18.640 --> 00:55:23.360
Yeah. So so do you think that the top one can be answered?
1265
00:55:23.360 --> 00:55:28.220
What the top one is in like they're being they're being purpose
1266
00:55:28.220 --> 00:55:30.000
, right? So that's not subjective at all.
1267
00:55:30.000 --> 00:55:32.180
So what does that mean? They're they're being purpose because
1268
00:55:32.180 --> 00:55:33.760
for me, that looks like some kind of
1269
00:55:33.760 --> 00:55:38.560
reason to act or to be that is not contingent on some other
1270
00:55:38.560 --> 00:55:40.560
fact. Just to be clear,
1271
00:55:40.560 --> 00:55:42.650
to make clear to the listener, I think you hear what I'm saying
1272
00:55:42.650 --> 00:55:44.400
, but like, suppose you woke up
1273
00:55:45.280 --> 00:55:47.690
and you were a Christian and that brought you meaning. What I'm
1274
00:55:47.690 --> 00:55:49.200
saying is that subjective sense of
1275
00:55:49.200 --> 00:55:52.900
meaning that you get from Christianity has no bearing on the
1276
00:55:52.900 --> 00:55:55.040
truth or falsity of Christianity.
1277
00:55:55.040 --> 00:55:59.700
Gotcha. Right. So so what I'm curious about is in your opinion,
1278
00:55:59.700 --> 00:56:00.560
and if you don't have one,
1279
00:56:00.560 --> 00:56:05.920
that's totally fine. You know, do you think that, so sure,
1280
00:56:05.920 --> 00:56:07.360
there's a subjective experience,
1281
00:56:07.360 --> 00:56:10.240
which doesn't speak to truth, right? It's just a subjective
1282
00:56:10.240 --> 00:56:12.640
experience. Do you think that
1283
00:56:12.640 --> 00:56:16.410
there is some way to grapple with that truth? Well, the truth
1284
00:56:16.410 --> 00:56:18.960
of Christianity or something is the truth
1285
00:56:18.960 --> 00:56:22.970
truth of purpose. We're shifting here, right? Because what I'm
1286
00:56:22.970 --> 00:56:24.960
saying is let me shift that I want
1287
00:56:24.960 --> 00:56:27.260
to do that. So then I'm going to go back. This is why I maybe I
1288
00:56:27.260 --> 00:56:28.480
'm not understanding your question.
1289
00:56:28.480 --> 00:56:31.670
What all I am saying, yeah, is that if you feel if you feel a
1290
00:56:31.670 --> 00:56:33.680
subjective sense of purpose from
1291
00:56:33.680 --> 00:56:37.990
proposition P, like the fact that you feel purpose from that
1292
00:56:37.990 --> 00:56:39.760
does not have any bearing
1293
00:56:39.760 --> 00:56:43.070
in the position P. And then you just ask, but is there a way to
1294
00:56:43.070 --> 00:56:44.720
discuss whether P is true?
1295
00:56:44.720 --> 00:56:47.760
Well, yeah, like so if proposition P is Christianity, then yeah
1296
00:56:47.760 --> 00:56:48.880
, we can talk about the historical
1297
00:56:48.880 --> 00:56:51.040
argument for the resurrection of Jesus or something. Gotcha.
1298
00:56:51.040 --> 00:56:52.720
Gotcha. Okay. I'm not trying to reach
1299
00:56:52.720 --> 00:56:57.680
into some mystical capital P purpose realm. Gotcha. So right.
1300
00:56:57.680 --> 00:56:59.600
So I think that's so helpful.
1301
00:56:59.600 --> 00:57:05.440
Thank you so much. Okay. So that's really helpful for me
1302
00:57:05.440 --> 00:57:07.520
because then you, I want to go back to
1303
00:57:07.520 --> 00:57:09.820
something you said earlier about, you know, cell phones and we
1304
00:57:09.820 --> 00:57:11.040
're scrolling on cell phones and
1305
00:57:11.040 --> 00:57:14.210
things like that. And we have this like like this worldview.
1306
00:57:14.210 --> 00:57:15.920
And then if we encounter a worldview
1307
00:57:15.920 --> 00:57:18.820
that is different from ours that could put us into some form of
1308
00:57:18.820 --> 00:57:20.240
crisis or difficulty. And we're
1309
00:57:20.240 --> 00:57:24.070
getting bombarded by all of these things. And so what that
1310
00:57:24.070 --> 00:57:26.400
means is that the individual, when they
1311
00:57:26.400 --> 00:57:28.780
wake up in the morning and they scroll through their phone,
1312
00:57:28.780 --> 00:57:30.880
right, we're not talking about whether
1313
00:57:30.880 --> 00:57:34.580
the proposition P is true or not, their subjective experiences
1314
00:57:34.580 --> 00:57:36.480
like I have no meaning and I have no
1315
00:57:36.480 --> 00:57:40.950
purpose in line. Right. And so you posited one mechanism, which
1316
00:57:40.950 --> 00:57:43.440
I think is a completely valid mechanism is a
1317
00:57:43.440 --> 00:57:46.160
philosophical mechanism, but we have a lot of neuroscience
1318
00:57:46.160 --> 00:57:48.560
mechanisms that support what you're saying.
1319
00:57:48.560 --> 00:57:52.050
So just, and this is where I think that we kind of, I'm going
1320
00:57:52.050 --> 00:57:53.840
to sort of restate that
1321
00:57:53.840 --> 00:57:56.510
what my experience of this stuff has been because I'm, I'm not
1322
00:57:56.510 --> 00:57:59.520
a philosopher is I don't really know
1323
00:57:59.520 --> 00:58:02.740
too well how to contend with whether proposition P is true or
1324
00:58:02.740 --> 00:58:04.400
not. That's why I was asking.
1325
00:58:04.400 --> 00:58:07.350
And it's not that you weren't being clear. It's that I'm just
1326
00:58:07.350 --> 00:58:09.040
ignorant of how philosophy works.
1327
00:58:09.040 --> 00:58:12.480
And so that's why I was kind of asking like, you know, can you
1328
00:58:12.480 --> 00:58:14.880
do that? So that's where it's also
1329
00:58:14.880 --> 00:58:18.150
where like I'm kind of coming from is that we have this crisis
1330
00:58:18.150 --> 00:58:19.520
that has a high suicide
1331
00:58:19.520 --> 00:58:24.000
ality, high addiction rates, people left the church in big ways.
1332
00:58:24.000 --> 00:58:25.360
And then we're sort of left
1333
00:58:25.360 --> 00:58:28.250
with like, okay, how do we navigate this? And that's where I
1334
00:58:28.250 --> 00:58:29.840
think if we look at a lot of this,
1335
00:58:29.840 --> 00:58:34.940
the influences on society, we see that there's profound
1336
00:58:34.940 --> 00:58:37.600
neurological influences.
1337
00:58:37.600 --> 00:58:39.690
And what I sort of found is when I was working, especially with
1338
00:58:39.690 --> 00:58:41.120
like patients with trauma,
1339
00:58:41.120 --> 00:58:44.760
that there is a set of things that is happening in the world
1340
00:58:44.760 --> 00:58:47.600
around them, that induce certain
1341
00:58:47.600 --> 00:58:51.170
changes to their how they experience the world. So a really
1342
00:58:51.170 --> 00:58:52.560
good example of this is,
1343
00:58:52.560 --> 00:58:55.830
if you want to find your purpose in life, you should reduce
1344
00:58:55.830 --> 00:58:57.760
your level of allexithymia.
1345
00:58:57.760 --> 00:59:01.160
So allexithymia is the inability to tell what you you're
1346
00:59:01.160 --> 00:59:03.760
emotionally feeling. And if we look at the
1347
00:59:03.760 --> 00:59:06.450
influence of things like cell phones, what they're doing is
1348
00:59:06.450 --> 00:59:08.960
they're suppressing the parts of our brain
1349
00:59:08.960 --> 00:59:11.860
that have that experience negative emotion. Sometimes they
1350
00:59:11.860 --> 00:59:13.040
provoke negative emotion,
1351
00:59:13.040 --> 00:59:15.910
sometimes they suppress negative emotions. And so if you start
1352
00:59:15.910 --> 00:59:18.960
to be able to feel more,
1353
00:59:18.960 --> 00:59:23.620
right? So this is literally shutting down the parts of our
1354
00:59:23.620 --> 00:59:26.400
brain that that give us an internal
1355
00:59:26.400 --> 00:59:30.600
sense of what we feel. And so as you shut down your ability to
1356
00:59:30.600 --> 00:59:32.400
detect what you are feeling on the
1357
00:59:32.400 --> 00:59:36.870
inside, that correlates with your not having a detection of
1358
00:59:36.870 --> 00:59:38.800
purpose on the inside.
1359
00:59:38.800 --> 00:59:41.970
So I think that, you know, this is you asked the question, why
1360
00:59:41.970 --> 00:59:43.520
is this happening? I think we're
1361
00:59:43.520 --> 00:59:46.950
disabling and I was working with people with trauma and sort of
1362
00:59:46.950 --> 00:59:49.040
sort of figured out a sequence of
1363
00:59:49.040 --> 00:59:52.210
things that is based on the literature that involves things
1364
00:59:52.210 --> 00:59:54.000
like reducing your allexithymia,
1365
00:59:54.000 --> 00:59:56.830
another big part is managing your ego. So I think this
1366
00:59:56.830 --> 00:59:58.880
relationship with God thing is a really,
1367
00:59:58.880 --> 01:00:02.170
really, really great example of like if you ask, what is the
1368
01:00:02.170 --> 01:00:04.800
mechanism of a relationship with God?
1369
01:00:04.800 --> 01:00:08.960
So we as human beings tend to be like I'm here, but then as you
1370
01:00:08.960 --> 01:00:11.440
relate to other people around you,
1371
01:00:11.440 --> 01:00:14.110
your sense of identity changes. And when you relate to
1372
01:00:14.110 --> 01:00:15.840
something that is transcendent,
1373
01:00:15.840 --> 01:00:18.390
I know that that's a scary word and I don't know exactly what
1374
01:00:18.390 --> 01:00:20.400
that word means, but as you relate
1375
01:00:20.400 --> 01:00:24.620
to something that is really big up here, that has noticeable
1376
01:00:24.620 --> 01:00:27.200
effects on your default mode network,
1377
01:00:27.200 --> 01:00:30.540
your sense of self. And as your default mode network no longer
1378
01:00:30.540 --> 01:00:32.240
becomes hyperactive, the more
1379
01:00:32.240 --> 01:00:35.130
hyperactive your default mode network is the more likely I
1380
01:00:35.130 --> 01:00:37.040
think you are to be like nihilistic,
1381
01:00:37.040 --> 01:00:40.310
to have a pessimistic worldview. As we start to make those
1382
01:00:40.310 --> 01:00:43.360
changes, then people start to feel
1383
01:00:43.360 --> 01:00:46.400
a sense of purpose. They start to feel a sense of connection.
1384
01:00:46.400 --> 01:00:47.600
And then the last kind of really
1385
01:00:47.600 --> 01:00:50.390
interesting data, which we can go into is if a psychedelics,
1386
01:00:50.390 --> 01:00:52.640
which is really, really fascinating because this
1387
01:00:52.640 --> 01:00:55.660
allows us to test subjective experience and the effective
1388
01:00:55.660 --> 01:00:58.240
subjective subjective experience on a person.
1389
01:00:58.240 --> 01:01:01.550
Is this opportunity, please? I'm just concerned that you might
1390
01:01:01.550 --> 01:01:02.800
have overstated something,
1391
01:01:02.800 --> 01:01:05.620
maybe reflecting back something you thought I was saying and I
1392
01:01:05.620 --> 01:01:07.200
was making the case about
1393
01:01:07.200 --> 01:01:09.950
the genetic fallacy and just because a person has a motivation
1394
01:01:09.950 --> 01:01:11.280
to believe something doesn't
1395
01:01:11.280 --> 01:01:13.960
necessarily mean that that thing is true or have a subjective
1396
01:01:13.960 --> 01:01:15.600
experience. I think it goes a little
1397
01:01:15.600 --> 01:01:17.960
further than that though. If you went to the doctor and you
1398
01:01:17.960 --> 01:01:19.520
weren't feeling well, then doctor gave
1399
01:01:19.520 --> 01:01:22.110
you a pill and then you went home and you took the pill and you
1400
01:01:22.110 --> 01:01:23.520
felt better. I think it would be
1401
01:01:23.520 --> 01:01:26.140
appropriate for you to say, well, that pill, taking that pill,
1402
01:01:26.140 --> 01:01:27.760
going that doctor, had something to do
1403
01:01:27.760 --> 01:01:31.670
with my experience that I'm having right now. Oh, yeah. I think
1404
01:01:31.670 --> 01:01:33.280
this is why I think it might have
1405
01:01:33.280 --> 01:01:36.030
an intention, unintentionally been an overstatement in your
1406
01:01:36.030 --> 01:01:38.160
part because I think just like your
1407
01:01:38.160 --> 01:01:42.040
friend Stephen who in Dubai, all of a sudden became a Christian
1408
01:01:42.040 --> 01:01:44.160
, everything changed. Okay.
1409
01:01:44.160 --> 01:01:50.000
Well, you I guess you could say the change of life isn't maybe
1410
01:01:50.000 --> 01:01:51.760
knock down drag down proof
1411
01:01:51.760 --> 01:01:56.160
that what he believes now is actually true, big P, big T that
1412
01:01:56.160 --> 01:01:58.080
like Jesus seems to be
1413
01:01:58.080 --> 01:02:00.610
part of me that like Jesus rose from the dead. It's got no
1414
01:02:00.610 --> 01:02:02.240
barrel and whether that's true or not.
1415
01:02:02.240 --> 01:02:05.410
Well, I'm speaking of a different thing right now. I'm thinking
1416
01:02:05.410 --> 01:02:07.280
about the experience now with
1417
01:02:07.280 --> 01:02:11.440
God that he's having. If he's having this change life, this,
1418
01:02:11.440 --> 01:02:13.360
this is evidential, this is,
1419
01:02:13.360 --> 01:02:17.000
this lens credibility to the belief system that he's now
1420
01:02:17.000 --> 01:02:19.360
adopted because it created this particular
1421
01:02:19.360 --> 01:02:22.530
significant change in his life. It may not be proof and that
1422
01:02:22.530 --> 01:02:23.280
word is a really
1423
01:02:23.280 --> 01:02:28.430
an oocygoosey word, just how to pin down. But nevertheless, it
1424
01:02:28.430 --> 01:02:29.840
still seems to be evidential.
1425
01:02:29.840 --> 01:02:34.640
It is, it speaks to the legitimacy and accuracy and truth
1426
01:02:34.640 --> 01:02:36.640
fulness of the belief system that
1427
01:02:36.640 --> 01:02:40.620
produced this change life. It's only evidence that belief in
1428
01:02:40.620 --> 01:02:43.040
that thing makes someone feel more fulfilled.
1429
01:02:43.040 --> 01:02:45.230
That's the only thing is evidence. Okay. So this is where we
1430
01:02:45.230 --> 01:02:47.920
differ just like just with him on this
1431
01:02:47.920 --> 01:02:52.290
one. Okay. Just because, uh, just because a certain, you're
1432
01:02:52.290 --> 01:02:54.560
saying just because they believe it,
1433
01:02:54.560 --> 01:02:57.730
this makes him better. It doesn't mean that the belief is
1434
01:02:57.730 --> 01:02:58.640
actually sound.
1435
01:02:58.640 --> 01:03:01.010
Greg, I've got a good way of coming at this then. So this is
1436
01:03:01.010 --> 01:03:02.400
where we differ. That's right.
1437
01:03:02.400 --> 01:03:05.990
If I had five friends, and they all picked five different
1438
01:03:05.990 --> 01:03:08.720
religions, and they all felt the same
1439
01:03:08.720 --> 01:03:11.050
thing that my friend did and to buy where they all felt better
1440
01:03:11.050 --> 01:03:13.200
for it, does, is that evidential
1441
01:03:13.200 --> 01:03:16.200
that all five religions are true? Well, see, I don't actually
1442
01:03:16.200 --> 01:03:17.840
think it works that way. You can
1443
01:03:17.840 --> 01:03:21.170
speculate and say and offer that illustration. Um, but I don't
1444
01:03:21.170 --> 01:03:22.960
think it actually works that way.
1445
01:03:22.960 --> 01:03:27.370
I think that universally the experience of Christians is very,
1446
01:03:27.370 --> 01:03:29.920
very quantifiable.
1447
01:03:29.920 --> 01:03:33.560
So in terms of transformed lives, and this is one of the
1448
01:03:33.560 --> 01:03:35.520
reasons that these transformed lives
1449
01:03:35.520 --> 01:03:38.690
led in credibility to the belief system itself. So in that
1450
01:03:38.690 --> 01:03:40.080
scenario where one of my friends
1451
01:03:40.080 --> 01:03:43.510
turns to Islam, one of my friends turns to Christianity, et c
1452
01:03:43.510 --> 01:03:46.480
etera, et cetera, the only
1453
01:03:46.480 --> 01:03:50.500
experience that's evidential of truth is the Christians. Well,
1454
01:03:50.500 --> 01:03:52.160
I think you have to look at every
1455
01:03:52.160 --> 01:03:56.560
individual thing. All right. And, um, here's my suspicion, and
1456
01:03:56.560 --> 01:03:58.640
I haven't quantified this across
1457
01:03:58.640 --> 01:04:01.000
the board. All right. Different people have different
1458
01:04:01.000 --> 01:04:02.320
experiences by engaging different
1459
01:04:02.320 --> 01:04:07.050
religious, uh, belief traditions, whatever. But insofar as
1460
01:04:07.050 --> 01:04:10.720
anybody's life is significantly altered
1461
01:04:10.720 --> 01:04:15.090
by that thing, this to me is evidence that something is going
1462
01:04:15.090 --> 01:04:17.920
on here, then merely the belief.
1463
01:04:17.920 --> 01:04:21.400
If it's just the belief, you're back to, uh, to marks again and
1464
01:04:21.400 --> 01:04:22.880
the opiate of the people,
1465
01:04:22.880 --> 01:04:26.080
you know, that would be Carl, not Groucho, although it's done.
1466
01:04:26.080 --> 01:04:28.630
It's just anybody knows who those two people are anymore. It
1467
01:04:28.630 --> 01:04:29.200
sounds as though,
1468
01:04:29.200 --> 01:04:35.480
you know, if I, if I lied to somebody and a cruel prank, and I
1469
01:04:35.480 --> 01:04:37.120
told them that say they're
1470
01:04:37.120 --> 01:04:39.670
really struggling with money, they're really, really suffering
1471
01:04:39.670 --> 01:04:40.880
for it. And they feel, and they
1472
01:04:40.880 --> 01:04:42.800
have these psychological effects of feeling that life is
1473
01:04:42.800 --> 01:04:44.400
meaningless, they want to kill themselves,
1474
01:04:44.400 --> 01:04:46.930
whatever it is, because they just, they cannot keep living. And
1475
01:04:46.930 --> 01:04:49.680
I tell them good news, um, you've
1476
01:04:49.680 --> 01:04:53.080
won the lottery. You've won a million pounds. And suddenly the
1477
01:04:53.080 --> 01:04:55.040
weight is lifted, the joy is brought.
1478
01:04:55.040 --> 01:04:57.600
Of course, money isn't sufficient for bringing about meaning.
1479
01:04:57.600 --> 01:05:00.400
This does, but I've lied to them,
1480
01:05:00.400 --> 01:05:05.080
like the fact that they feel this immense sense of meaning from
1481
01:05:05.080 --> 01:05:06.880
a belief that they've adopted
1482
01:05:06.880 --> 01:05:11.040
has, it bears absolutely no evidence. No, in that case, whether
1483
01:05:11.040 --> 01:05:11.920
it's true that they want a
1484
01:05:11.920 --> 01:05:15.570
million pounds. I'm just saying that to divorce all results
1485
01:05:15.570 --> 01:05:18.000
from belief systems is a mistake.
1486
01:05:18.000 --> 01:05:19.710
I don't want to do that. There can be a, there can be a
1487
01:05:19.710 --> 01:05:21.040
connection. There can be something
1488
01:05:21.040 --> 01:05:23.790
because you can mislead somebody by telling them a lie and they
1489
01:05:23.790 --> 01:05:26.000
can experience something emotionally.
1490
01:05:26.000 --> 01:05:28.940
Doesn't mean that the other person who's experiencing something
1491
01:05:28.940 --> 01:05:30.640
transcendent in their emotions.
1492
01:05:30.640 --> 01:05:34.150
And by the way, for Christians, it's not just a high because
1493
01:05:34.150 --> 01:05:35.520
Christianity is not a
1494
01:05:35.520 --> 01:05:39.680
continuous high. Even people who are suffering terribly as
1495
01:05:39.680 --> 01:05:41.520
Christians in persecution,
1496
01:05:41.520 --> 01:05:45.680
read Fox's books and martyrs, book of martyrs still have this
1497
01:05:45.680 --> 01:05:47.440
strong sense of value, purpose
1498
01:05:47.440 --> 01:05:50.610
and security, even so. I'm just saying there's an evident
1499
01:05:50.610 --> 01:05:52.560
relationship between those. It's not
1500
01:05:52.560 --> 01:05:55.390
enough to just simply dismiss it because you can tell a lie and
1501
01:05:55.390 --> 01:05:57.120
someone can have the same kind of
1502
01:05:57.120 --> 01:05:59.650
feeling. I'm even happy to say that like, I don't know if this
1503
01:05:59.650 --> 01:06:00.640
is true, but suppose it
1504
01:06:00.640 --> 01:06:03.810
was just the case that only Christianity brought about this
1505
01:06:03.810 --> 01:06:05.440
positive effect. Suppose we just
1506
01:06:05.440 --> 01:06:07.990
discovered that everybody who claimed to feel meaning it just
1507
01:06:07.990 --> 01:06:09.520
didn't compare. It's not what I'm
1508
01:06:09.520 --> 01:06:11.880
saying. But suppose that were the case, even if there was
1509
01:06:11.880 --> 01:06:13.680
something really special about Christianity
1510
01:06:13.680 --> 01:06:16.630
that gave some evidential credence to something specific about
1511
01:06:16.630 --> 01:06:18.080
Christianity, but it's true about
1512
01:06:18.080 --> 01:06:20.970
Christianity that it particularly infuses life with meaning. I
1513
01:06:20.970 --> 01:06:23.360
still think it just has nothing to do
1514
01:06:23.360 --> 01:06:26.360
with the truth of Christianity as a worldview. I mean,
1515
01:06:26.360 --> 01:06:28.720
Christianity hinges on the historical
1516
01:06:28.720 --> 01:06:31.250
fact of the resurrection of Jesus, right? And so the best way
1517
01:06:31.250 --> 01:06:33.040
of explaining this is to say that
1518
01:06:33.040 --> 01:06:35.730
if your friend from Dubai starts going to church and they start
1519
01:06:35.730 --> 01:06:37.280
feeling really like meaning,
1520
01:06:37.280 --> 01:06:40.590
like experiencing a lot of meaning in their life, that has
1521
01:06:40.590 --> 01:06:43.360
absolutely no evidential bearing on whether
1522
01:06:43.360 --> 01:06:45.520
that Jesus wrote from the dead. And if Christianity as a
1523
01:06:45.520 --> 01:06:47.520
proposition essentially is the resurrection
1524
01:06:47.520 --> 01:06:50.190
of Jesus, and this feeling that your friend had has no evident
1525
01:06:50.190 --> 01:06:51.680
ial bearing on the resurrection
1526
01:06:51.680 --> 01:06:54.280
of Jesus, then the feeling that your friend had had no evident
1527
01:06:54.280 --> 01:06:55.200
ial bearing on Christmas.
1528
01:06:55.200 --> 01:06:58.480
Well, it turns out that Christianity has multiple factors of
1529
01:06:58.480 --> 01:07:01.840
support, evidence crucial, obviously,
1530
01:07:01.840 --> 01:07:05.010
the crux, one might say, is the resurrection of Christ, the
1531
01:07:05.010 --> 01:07:06.320
death and resurrection,
1532
01:07:06.320 --> 01:07:09.070
because of the theological significance of that is in the whole
1533
01:07:09.070 --> 01:07:10.880
system. But there are lots
1534
01:07:10.880 --> 01:07:13.410
of other things too that I'm bearing. And actually, I think
1535
01:07:13.410 --> 01:07:16.240
there are people who have become Christians
1536
01:07:16.240 --> 01:07:19.410
without having a robust understanding even of the resurrection
1537
01:07:19.410 --> 01:07:22.640
of that. So even though theologically,
1538
01:07:22.640 --> 01:07:26.800
that is the crux, it doesn't mean that for subjectively every
1539
01:07:26.800 --> 01:07:28.720
person who enters in a relationship
1540
01:07:28.720 --> 01:07:31.690
with Christ has all of that in place. It is me. I'm really
1541
01:07:31.690 --> 01:07:33.120
interested to understand from my friend
1542
01:07:33.120 --> 01:07:36.550
in Dubai, if he came to you and he was your friend in Dubai,
1543
01:07:36.550 --> 01:07:38.960
and he said, "My life is lacking meaning,
1544
01:07:40.400 --> 01:07:44.880
I can't get out of bed anymore." What would you prescribe him?
1545
01:07:44.880 --> 01:07:46.080
What would you recommend? What would you
1546
01:07:46.080 --> 01:07:51.570
suggest as he's your friend? It's hard to know without knowing
1547
01:07:51.570 --> 01:07:54.240
that friend, but if it seemed to me
1548
01:07:54.240 --> 01:07:57.770
like going church or reading the Gospels might provide that for
1549
01:07:57.770 --> 01:07:59.200
him, then I'd probably recommend
1550
01:07:59.200 --> 01:08:02.770
that he did that. But I think that literally the subjective
1551
01:08:02.770 --> 01:08:05.520
feeling of meaning is usually tied up in
1552
01:08:06.240 --> 01:08:09.610
the identification of something that transcends your individual
1553
01:08:09.610 --> 01:08:13.040
self. And I think whatever is the most
1554
01:08:13.040 --> 01:08:16.200
plausible course of action for that person to engage in
1555
01:08:16.200 --> 01:08:18.720
something like that would be what I would
1556
01:08:18.720 --> 01:08:21.670
recommend for them. If they're maybe they're not particularly
1557
01:08:21.670 --> 01:08:22.800
interested in religion, I'd
1558
01:08:22.800 --> 01:08:24.890
recommend that they read some philosophy of mind and try to
1559
01:08:24.890 --> 01:08:26.480
understand the nature of consciousness,
1560
01:08:26.480 --> 01:08:29.300
and they might start. I might recommend, depending on who they
1561
01:08:29.300 --> 01:08:30.560
are, that they take a psychedelic
1562
01:08:30.560 --> 01:08:32.970
drug and try to experience something which cannot be put into
1563
01:08:32.970 --> 01:08:34.320
words, because a lot of the time
1564
01:08:34.320 --> 01:08:37.550
when you experience something like an ego death, and you might
1565
01:08:37.550 --> 01:08:40.640
realize that the the individuated
1566
01:08:40.640 --> 01:08:43.900
self is an illusion, and that these cliches that keep cropping
1567
01:08:43.900 --> 01:08:46.000
up when someone does psychedelics.
1568
01:08:46.000 --> 01:08:48.440
And I actually think that the problem of consciousness is
1569
01:08:48.440 --> 01:08:49.680
absolutely crucial to this.
1570
01:08:49.680 --> 01:08:54.640
I mean, I think the most plausible account of consciousness
1571
01:08:54.640 --> 01:08:58.480
implies that consciousness is something
1572
01:08:58.480 --> 01:09:02.210
which is sort of received by the biological organism rather
1573
01:09:02.210 --> 01:09:04.000
than produced by it. Because I
1574
01:09:04.000 --> 01:09:05.670
agree with you that you can't just put a bunch of molecules
1575
01:09:05.670 --> 01:09:07.120
together and get consciousness. That doesn't
1576
01:09:07.120 --> 01:09:09.720
make out any sense whatsoever. But it's interesting that some
1577
01:09:09.720 --> 01:09:11.520
of our best scientific evidence is
1578
01:09:11.520 --> 01:09:14.370
suggesting the fact not that the brain produces consciousness,
1579
01:09:14.370 --> 01:09:17.360
but that the brain inhibits and focuses
1580
01:09:17.360 --> 01:09:21.000
and organizes consciousness. It does not produce it. Yeah, so I
1581
01:09:21.000 --> 01:09:22.640
love your answer.
1582
01:09:22.640 --> 01:09:24.950
So you were saying, you know, depending on the person, you can
1583
01:09:24.950 --> 01:09:25.520
do different things,
1584
01:09:25.520 --> 01:09:27.380
you can read philosophy about them. But I recommend them to do
1585
01:09:27.380 --> 01:09:28.160
that in a word, you know,
1586
01:09:28.160 --> 01:09:31.330
so look at that, depending on who they are, read the gospels.
1587
01:09:31.330 --> 01:09:33.520
So I think what's interesting is that
1588
01:09:33.520 --> 01:09:36.700
when you, you know, when Steven gives the concrete example of
1589
01:09:36.700 --> 01:09:38.240
like if my friend comes to you who's
1590
01:09:38.240 --> 01:09:40.800
had this religious awakening or prior to religious awakening,
1591
01:09:40.800 --> 01:09:42.640
what would you recommend to them?
1592
01:09:42.640 --> 01:09:45.920
And I think what's really interesting is basically all of the
1593
01:09:45.920 --> 01:09:47.280
answers that you said,
1594
01:09:47.280 --> 01:09:51.440
I think can map onto mechanism. And I just love to talk about
1595
01:09:51.440 --> 01:09:52.800
that for a second. So the first
1596
01:09:52.800 --> 01:09:55.170
thing is, you know, you asked me at the beginning of my
1597
01:09:55.170 --> 01:09:57.920
religious, I think here's my understanding
1598
01:09:57.920 --> 01:10:01.710
of, and we were talking a little bit about, you know, people
1599
01:10:01.710 --> 01:10:03.040
can have the subjective feeling of
1600
01:10:03.040 --> 01:10:06.260
religion. What is the relationship to that thing being true? So
1601
01:10:06.260 --> 01:10:07.920
here's what I've sort of observed.
1602
01:10:07.920 --> 01:10:10.340
I don't know if y'all have ever been to like a really great
1603
01:10:10.340 --> 01:10:10.880
cathedral.
1604
01:10:10.880 --> 01:10:14.720
Oh, yeah. But like, you know, if you go to a great cathedral,
1605
01:10:14.720 --> 01:10:15.760
you have to be Christian
1606
01:10:15.760 --> 01:10:20.180
to be awe-inspired by what you see. So when I look at the
1607
01:10:20.180 --> 01:10:22.560
project of religion, which is a little
1608
01:10:22.560 --> 01:10:26.720
bit different from spirituality, one of the things that I've
1609
01:10:26.720 --> 01:10:29.040
observed is that religion is a series
1610
01:10:29.040 --> 01:10:34.760
of structures to evoke a personal experience. So the whole
1611
01:10:34.760 --> 01:10:38.080
point of reading the gospels is fingers crossed
1612
01:10:38.080 --> 01:10:40.970
and we'll get to how to optimize that fingers crossed. If you
1613
01:10:40.970 --> 01:10:42.560
read the gospels enough or you go
1614
01:10:42.560 --> 01:10:46.130
to church enough or you pray enough, if you keep on talking to
1615
01:10:46.130 --> 01:10:48.160
Christ, one day he'll start talking
1616
01:10:48.160 --> 01:10:51.330
back. But I think the really interesting thing is if you
1617
01:10:51.330 --> 01:10:53.360
struggle with purpose, you can read the
1618
01:10:53.360 --> 01:10:57.180
gospels. If you go into religion and I think what's changed now
1619
01:10:57.180 --> 01:10:58.560
is that we have so much
1620
01:10:58.560 --> 01:11:03.330
science to understand the mechanism through which religious
1621
01:11:03.330 --> 01:11:06.240
practices evoke subjective experience.
1622
01:11:06.240 --> 01:11:09.820
So you I can go to church until for my whole life. But until I
1623
01:11:09.820 --> 01:11:11.440
have that relationship with God,
1624
01:11:11.440 --> 01:11:15.600
that is a subjective experience that is evoked by the sort of
1625
01:11:15.600 --> 01:11:17.680
structure of the religious practice.
1626
01:11:18.400 --> 01:11:22.010
So that is absolutely one thing you can do. I think the cool
1627
01:11:22.010 --> 01:11:24.000
thing is that the problem with reading the
1628
01:11:24.000 --> 01:11:28.770
gospels is I can clearly see that you've done. And you know, I
1629
01:11:28.770 --> 01:11:31.360
see the striving for religion in you.
1630
01:11:31.360 --> 01:11:34.300
Like you're like you want to have that, right? Like you want to
1631
01:11:34.300 --> 01:11:35.440
know like what are these people
1632
01:11:35.440 --> 01:11:37.970
actually kind of talking about? I could be wrong there. But I
1633
01:11:37.970 --> 01:11:41.040
see this beautiful striving that you're
1634
01:11:41.040 --> 01:11:43.770
like you're trying really hard to figure this stuff out, which
1635
01:11:43.770 --> 01:11:44.960
is just awesome to see.
1636
01:11:45.920 --> 01:11:48.190
I think though that if we kind of look at it and you mentioned
1637
01:11:48.190 --> 01:11:49.440
kind of psychedelics as well,
1638
01:11:49.440 --> 01:11:54.000
and I think psychedelics is really interesting because we know
1639
01:11:54.000 --> 01:11:55.360
that so if you take someone who has
1640
01:11:55.360 --> 01:11:58.600
treatment refractory depression or someone who has PTSD and you
1641
01:11:58.600 --> 01:12:00.560
give them a psychedelic, the psychedelic
1642
01:12:00.560 --> 01:12:04.380
is not healing. What is healing is specifically whether they
1643
01:12:04.380 --> 01:12:07.120
have an ego death experience. So if I see
1644
01:12:07.120 --> 01:12:10.730
colors and things like that, that doesn't solve things. But the
1645
01:12:10.730 --> 01:12:12.960
ego death experience is what
1646
01:12:12.960 --> 01:12:16.550
correlates with clinical improvement. So psychedelics are a
1647
01:12:16.550 --> 01:12:17.760
good way to evoke
1648
01:12:17.760 --> 01:12:23.240
a subjective experience, right? So we know that there are a
1649
01:12:23.240 --> 01:12:24.720
couple of pieces.
1650
01:12:24.720 --> 01:12:28.420
And when I worked with people, so one of the things that we
1651
01:12:28.420 --> 01:12:30.800
know is that when you experience trauma,
1652
01:12:30.800 --> 01:12:34.980
it shatters your meaning of life. Yes. And so working a lot
1653
01:12:34.980 --> 01:12:36.320
with people with trauma,
1654
01:12:36.320 --> 01:12:39.760
and this is something that I kind of laid out in terms of like
1655
01:12:39.760 --> 01:12:41.440
making a guide about it.
1656
01:12:41.440 --> 01:12:44.420
But what I realized is that there's a set of things that you
1657
01:12:44.420 --> 01:12:46.720
can do relatively sequentially
1658
01:12:46.720 --> 01:12:50.000
to get your meaning back. And so I think the cool thing about
1659
01:12:50.000 --> 01:12:50.640
like, you know, reading the
1660
01:12:50.640 --> 01:12:53.850
gospels or psychedelics or things like that is those each have
1661
01:12:53.850 --> 01:12:57.520
some fingers crossed change in you.
1662
01:12:57.520 --> 01:13:00.180
But the cool thing is like if you start with something called a
1663
01:13:00.180 --> 01:13:00.880
lexithymia,
1664
01:13:00.880 --> 01:13:04.380
so as long as you are like using a bunch of substances, as long
1665
01:13:04.380 --> 01:13:06.960
as you are not able to detect
1666
01:13:06.960 --> 01:13:11.520
what is going on inside you, that is a fundamental prerequisite
1667
01:13:11.520 --> 01:13:13.280
of the subjective experience of
1668
01:13:13.280 --> 01:13:17.940
meaning. The second step to that is to go through some stuff
1669
01:13:17.940 --> 01:13:20.000
around ego. So this is like the other
1670
01:13:20.000 --> 01:13:22.530
like big thing that we try to focus on is like when your
1671
01:13:22.530 --> 01:13:24.400
default mode network is hyperactive,
1672
01:13:24.400 --> 01:13:27.150
this is the part of your brain that gives you a sense of who
1673
01:13:27.150 --> 01:13:29.520
you are. Hyperactive default mode
1674
01:13:29.520 --> 01:13:33.550
networks lead to depression. Hyperactive default mode networks
1675
01:13:33.550 --> 01:13:36.000
also lead to some degree of like
1676
01:13:36.000 --> 01:13:39.170
existential depression. And this is where so many of my
1677
01:13:39.170 --> 01:13:41.200
patients get tripped up when they start reading
1678
01:13:41.200 --> 01:13:43.980
philosophy. This is an against philosophy. But remember, this
1679
01:13:43.980 --> 01:13:46.000
is happening in a subjective mind.
1680
01:13:46.000 --> 01:13:49.710
If you're not careful, what we know is that philosophy can turn
1681
01:13:49.710 --> 01:13:51.600
into intellectualizing, that
1682
01:13:51.600 --> 01:13:55.380
there is a psychological defense where you start looking at
1683
01:13:55.380 --> 01:13:58.400
theoretical stuff and it sort of
1684
01:13:58.400 --> 01:14:01.310
shapes the way that your mind functions and it starts to become
1685
01:14:01.310 --> 01:14:02.160
maladaptive.
1686
01:14:02.160 --> 01:14:06.960
What does that mean in simple terms? So people, if you have a
1687
01:14:06.960 --> 01:14:08.080
problem in life,
1688
01:14:08.080 --> 01:14:11.680
you can think about it a lot. You can read about it a lot.
1689
01:14:11.680 --> 01:14:12.720
There are a lot of people that I've
1690
01:14:12.720 --> 01:14:16.420
worked with that just go on watching podcasts like chain,
1691
01:14:16.420 --> 01:14:18.640
watching podcasts and reading books and
1692
01:14:18.640 --> 01:14:22.190
things like that, right? But their life never changes. Yes. So
1693
01:14:22.190 --> 01:14:24.800
this is where, so there's a certain
1694
01:14:24.800 --> 01:14:27.970
amount of like, you know, learning how to ground yourself in
1695
01:14:27.970 --> 01:14:29.600
your experience, which involves
1696
01:14:29.600 --> 01:14:34.060
reducing exothermia, which involves dissolving your ego. And
1697
01:14:34.060 --> 01:14:35.760
this is another really, really important
1698
01:14:35.760 --> 01:14:38.930
thing that I think we find in people who have purpose, because
1699
01:14:38.930 --> 01:14:40.720
if we go back to the earlier example
1700
01:14:40.720 --> 01:14:45.570
of the person who 30 days after they die, the world ends, that
1701
01:14:45.570 --> 01:14:48.400
person, if they decide to still
1702
01:14:48.400 --> 01:14:51.700
write the book, I think that there is a certain egoless
1703
01:14:51.700 --> 01:14:54.080
involved in that, right? I'm doing it for
1704
01:14:54.080 --> 01:14:56.480
the sake of the work. It's not for the benefit of humanity. It
1705
01:14:56.480 --> 01:14:58.080
's not for some transcendent purpose.
1706
01:14:58.080 --> 01:15:00.690
It's not for something that goes beyond my death. Actually, it
1707
01:15:00.690 --> 01:15:02.640
's the opposite. I am doing this,
1708
01:15:02.640 --> 01:15:07.040
doing this thing here and now just for its own sake. And so
1709
01:15:07.040 --> 01:15:09.840
preparing for this podcast, I actually
1710
01:15:09.840 --> 01:15:12.730
texted and called a couple of my former patients. These are
1711
01:15:12.730 --> 01:15:14.320
people that I haven't seen in three
1712
01:15:14.320 --> 01:15:17.490
to five years. And I just asked them, I was like, Hey, bro, do
1713
01:15:17.490 --> 01:15:20.560
you have purpose? Tell me what it is.
1714
01:15:20.560 --> 01:15:23.920
And I was stunned by how their answers are not about what
1715
01:15:23.920 --> 01:15:25.600
happens after they die.
1716
01:15:26.480 --> 01:15:29.510
They're very like, I'm just here for the flow of it, right? My
1717
01:15:29.510 --> 01:15:31.440
purpose in life is to experience
1718
01:15:31.440 --> 01:15:34.960
what life has to offer. That's it. It's not about something
1719
01:15:34.960 --> 01:15:37.440
beyond you. And I think this is where
1720
01:15:37.440 --> 01:15:41.860
your spot on Alex, that a lot of people deal with the fear of
1721
01:15:41.860 --> 01:15:44.960
death by wanting to live past it.
1722
01:15:44.960 --> 01:15:49.440
But that is actually, that's the default mechanism that we use,
1723
01:15:49.440 --> 01:15:50.960
but that is actually ego driven,
1724
01:15:50.960 --> 01:15:55.250
right? I want to exist beyond when I die. And so that gives
1725
01:15:55.250 --> 01:15:57.840
people some sense of purpose. But I
1726
01:15:57.840 --> 01:16:02.510
think the deepest sense of purpose actually comes without that
1727
01:16:02.510 --> 01:16:04.960
comes from being able to make paper
1728
01:16:04.960 --> 01:16:08.940
clips every day and being content with that exercise. You're
1729
01:16:08.940 --> 01:16:11.280
describing Sisyphus being happy
1730
01:16:11.280 --> 01:16:14.920
is what you're doing. Yeah, so Sisyphus can be happy. Yeah. I
1731
01:16:14.920 --> 01:16:16.960
mean, that and that's
1732
01:16:16.960 --> 01:16:19.190
Sisyphus, for those that don't know about the guy pushing the
1733
01:16:19.190 --> 01:16:20.000
rock up the hill.
1734
01:16:20.000 --> 01:16:23.170
Camu, who is an existentialist, even though he doesn't call
1735
01:16:23.170 --> 01:16:24.640
himself an existentialist,
1736
01:16:24.640 --> 01:16:30.760
he found this school known as absurdism, which is a word I used
1737
01:16:30.760 --> 01:16:32.240
earlier to. And he
1738
01:16:32.240 --> 01:16:37.550
he tries to describe the absurdist condition of one in which
1739
01:16:37.550 --> 01:16:39.280
you have all of these desires about
1740
01:16:39.280 --> 01:16:42.450
the world, but the world literally just can't fulfill them. You
1741
01:16:42.450 --> 01:16:43.280
're looking for meaning.
1742
01:16:43.920 --> 01:16:46.670
It's not that it literally that you're your desire and the real
1743
01:16:46.670 --> 01:16:48.720
world are in conflict. And he
1744
01:16:48.720 --> 01:16:52.990
calls this the realization of this absurdity. And he writes
1745
01:16:52.990 --> 01:16:55.040
this this short treaty is called
1746
01:16:55.040 --> 01:16:59.000
the myth of Sisyphus, which is based on an actual ancient myth
1747
01:16:59.000 --> 01:17:00.800
of Sisyphus, who is condemned by
1748
01:17:00.800 --> 01:17:05.170
the gods as punishment to roll a boulder up a hill. And when it
1749
01:17:05.170 --> 01:17:07.280
gets to the top, it rolls back down
1750
01:17:07.280 --> 01:17:10.020
again. And he goes back down and he pushes the boulder up to
1751
01:17:10.020 --> 01:17:12.080
the top of the hill. And he does that
1752
01:17:12.080 --> 01:17:15.520
over and over again for eternity. The real torture of this is
1753
01:17:15.520 --> 01:17:17.200
not so much the suffering of the
1754
01:17:17.200 --> 01:17:20.150
pushing of the boulder. There's that. But the suffering in the
1755
01:17:20.150 --> 01:17:22.000
knowledge that it's meaningless.
1756
01:17:22.000 --> 01:17:25.590
And that that describes the absurdist condition. And Albert Cam
1757
01:17:25.590 --> 01:17:27.440
u tries to respond to this
1758
01:17:27.440 --> 01:17:30.920
by imagining Sisyphus being happy and essentially as an act of
1759
01:17:30.920 --> 01:17:32.800
rebellion against this condition,
1760
01:17:32.800 --> 01:17:35.350
just getting on with it anyway and being okay with it. I've
1761
01:17:35.350 --> 01:17:38.080
never been fulfilled by this. I've
1762
01:17:38.080 --> 01:17:40.330
sort of always thought that this may literally, and I
1763
01:17:40.330 --> 01:17:42.240
understand that there are people who could do
1764
01:17:42.240 --> 01:17:45.290
that. There are people who could write the book. And I thought
1765
01:17:45.290 --> 01:17:47.440
of Sisyphus when you said the person
1766
01:17:47.440 --> 01:17:49.710
who writes the book anyway, because it almost feels like an act
1767
01:17:49.710 --> 01:17:51.120
of rebellion. Because it's not,
1768
01:17:51.120 --> 01:17:53.120
you didn't just say they still write the book, you said they
1769
01:17:53.120 --> 01:17:54.800
write the book anyway. They do it
1770
01:17:54.800 --> 01:17:57.650
despite, they do it almost in protest of this condition. Some
1771
01:17:57.650 --> 01:17:59.600
people can do that. But I think that
1772
01:17:59.600 --> 01:18:03.040
that is probably a sort of psychological cope.
1773
01:18:03.040 --> 01:18:07.350
No, it's not, it's not a cope. It's a mechanism. What I'm
1774
01:18:07.350 --> 01:18:08.640
saying, I think it's a cope.
1775
01:18:08.640 --> 01:18:12.820
I think that it's not grounded in anything rational. I don't
1776
01:18:12.820 --> 01:18:14.640
know if it's grounded in anything
1777
01:18:14.640 --> 01:18:18.000
rational. It's absolutely grounded in something empirical. Sure
1778
01:18:18.000 --> 01:18:20.400
, but like again, you can empirically
1779
01:18:20.400 --> 01:18:23.290
like explain exactly why somebody's brain is doing what it's
1780
01:18:23.290 --> 01:18:25.840
doing, but that doesn't mean that
1781
01:18:25.840 --> 01:18:28.580
that there's any rationality or truth in the thing that their
1782
01:18:28.580 --> 01:18:30.640
brain believes. Sure.
1783
01:18:31.440 --> 01:18:34.780
Right. I think this goes back to the issue of whether there's
1784
01:18:34.780 --> 01:18:36.720
capital P, but I think that you can,
1785
01:18:36.720 --> 01:18:41.820
you can observe the world and you can make observations and you
1786
01:18:41.820 --> 01:18:43.200
can, I don't know what your
1787
01:18:43.200 --> 01:18:46.700
relation to scientific observations and truth is, whether those
1788
01:18:46.700 --> 01:18:48.400
things are connected or not.
1789
01:18:48.400 --> 01:18:51.690
But I think that we know actually, there are multiple
1790
01:18:51.690 --> 01:18:53.440
psychological mechanisms,
1791
01:18:53.440 --> 01:18:56.800
some of which are copes and some of which are not copes.
1792
01:18:57.680 --> 01:19:00.460
I suppose I mean like a philosophical, I mean like it's not, I
1793
01:19:00.460 --> 01:19:02.080
think it's untrue. I think that the
1794
01:19:02.080 --> 01:19:06.450
person who is content in such a condition is almost by
1795
01:19:06.450 --> 01:19:08.160
definition, delusory.
1796
01:19:08.160 --> 01:19:09.840
What does delusory mean?
1797
01:19:09.840 --> 01:19:13.860
Like under the influence of a delusion, I think that it is not
1798
01:19:13.860 --> 01:19:16.000
a happiness inducing condition
1799
01:19:16.000 --> 01:19:19.600
to be sort of us rolling his boulder up the mountain. Yeah. So
1800
01:19:19.600 --> 01:19:21.200
this is where I think the data's
1801
01:19:21.200 --> 01:19:24.550
actually against that. So what the data shows is that it is
1802
01:19:24.550 --> 01:19:27.600
your attitude towards the circumstance
1803
01:19:27.680 --> 01:19:30.850
of your life that determines your happiness or your lack of
1804
01:19:30.850 --> 01:19:31.520
happiness.
1805
01:19:31.520 --> 01:19:33.880
Well, someone can be in a happy delusion. In fact, that's why
1806
01:19:33.880 --> 01:19:35.280
most people suffer from delusions
1807
01:19:35.280 --> 01:19:37.860
because it makes them happy. That's not why most people suffer
1808
01:19:37.860 --> 01:19:38.880
from delusions.
1809
01:19:38.880 --> 01:19:42.970
So, but you understand, you understand what I'm saying that
1810
01:19:42.970 --> 01:19:44.800
like like, yeah, I understand what you're
1811
01:19:44.800 --> 01:19:47.350
saying. I just, I just think that it's, you can't empirically
1812
01:19:47.350 --> 01:19:48.480
show that something is not a
1813
01:19:48.480 --> 01:19:51.900
delusion because it makes people happy. Yeah. So you can
1814
01:19:51.900 --> 01:19:54.640
absolutely differentiate between a
1815
01:19:54.640 --> 01:19:58.820
psychological cope and an attitude towards life that is not a
1816
01:19:58.820 --> 01:20:01.120
cope. And the reason you can differentiate
1817
01:20:01.120 --> 01:20:04.490
that is because of what is underneath and people can be
1818
01:20:04.490 --> 01:20:06.960
delusional, but they're not necessarily
1819
01:20:06.960 --> 01:20:09.790
delusional to make themselves happy. In fact, quite the
1820
01:20:09.790 --> 01:20:13.040
opposite. So we have diagnoses like
1821
01:20:13.040 --> 01:20:16.740
schizophrenia of which one of them is having delusions. And
1822
01:20:16.740 --> 01:20:19.520
those delusions, generally speaking,
1823
01:20:19.520 --> 01:20:23.080
the more schizophrenic and the stronger your delusions are, the
1824
01:20:23.080 --> 01:20:25.280
more that inversely correlates with
1825
01:20:25.280 --> 01:20:27.350
your happiness. To be clear, I'm talking about like a
1826
01:20:27.350 --> 01:20:29.120
philosophical delusion. The question I want to
1827
01:20:29.120 --> 01:20:31.980
get an answer to is this idea of the person who writes the book
1828
01:20:31.980 --> 01:20:33.120
or pushes the boulder at the
1829
01:20:33.120 --> 01:20:38.000
hill and can that person be have a purposeful life? Absolutely.
1830
01:20:38.000 --> 01:20:39.200
So this is what this is what's so
1831
01:20:39.200 --> 01:20:42.700
confusing for people is that people think. So what Alex is
1832
01:20:42.700 --> 01:20:44.960
saying, I think is a really, really
1833
01:20:44.960 --> 01:20:48.790
common representation of what people think about purpose. My
1834
01:20:48.790 --> 01:20:50.880
purpose is to make something that is
1835
01:20:50.880 --> 01:20:54.360
greater than me. My purpose is to have some meaning or impact
1836
01:20:54.360 --> 01:20:56.400
in the world around me. What we know
1837
01:20:56.400 --> 01:20:59.160
is there's a great example of this called self-determination
1838
01:20:59.160 --> 01:21:01.200
theory, which is that if you ask people,
1839
01:21:01.200 --> 01:21:04.040
if you look at people who have purpose, what you find is it's
1840
01:21:04.040 --> 01:21:05.760
not about anything transcendent.
1841
01:21:05.760 --> 01:21:07.640
Have purpose or have a sense of purpose. Have a sense of
1842
01:21:07.640 --> 01:21:08.080
purpose.
1843
01:21:08.080 --> 01:21:12.170
Okay. We're asking them subjectively, right? So if we're like,
1844
01:21:12.170 --> 01:21:14.000
like, you know, that's what I think
1845
01:21:14.000 --> 01:21:16.940
and these people are less likely to be addicted to things or
1846
01:21:16.940 --> 01:21:18.800
more resilient tend to be subjectively
1847
01:21:18.800 --> 01:21:21.460
happier as well. So we're talking about subjective, right? What
1848
01:21:21.460 --> 01:21:23.280
you find is that they have three things.
1849
01:21:23.280 --> 01:21:26.240
The first is that they have some degree of self-direction. So
1850
01:21:26.240 --> 01:21:29.520
this is like, I choose to do something.
1851
01:21:29.520 --> 01:21:32.740
They're not just taking it from life. They're making choices.
1852
01:21:32.740 --> 01:21:34.720
And this is where people also get
1853
01:21:34.720 --> 01:21:37.890
confused because they think like which choice is right. That
1854
01:21:37.890 --> 01:21:39.680
kind of thinking is actually irrelevant.
1855
01:21:39.680 --> 01:21:42.410
There isn't a right choice or wrong choice. What correlates
1856
01:21:42.410 --> 01:21:44.400
with your sense of direction is whether
1857
01:21:44.400 --> 01:21:47.570
you make it or not. So you actually need to get away from the
1858
01:21:47.570 --> 01:21:49.120
concept of right and wrong.
1859
01:21:49.120 --> 01:21:51.200
The second thing is that they need a stretching of their
1860
01:21:51.200 --> 01:21:53.680
competence. So if you just take a bunch of
1861
01:21:53.680 --> 01:21:59.120
people who are not being pushed and finding themselves grow,
1862
01:21:59.120 --> 01:22:01.520
then their sense of direction or
1863
01:22:01.520 --> 01:22:04.190
purpose will decrease. And the third thing is a sense of
1864
01:22:04.190 --> 01:22:06.960
relatedness. So there's something where
1865
01:22:07.680 --> 01:22:12.830
I have to know who I am and have other people see that part of
1866
01:22:12.830 --> 01:22:15.280
me. And if you cultivate
1867
01:22:15.280 --> 01:22:19.740
these three variables, then your purpose will empirically, and
1868
01:22:19.740 --> 01:22:22.080
by empirical, what I mean is that
1869
01:22:22.080 --> 01:22:26.020
we can measureably, we can literally measure people's
1870
01:22:26.020 --> 01:22:29.120
subjective experience in an objective way.
1871
01:22:29.120 --> 01:22:33.430
And so like these kinds of things, I think can end up improving
1872
01:22:33.430 --> 01:22:34.400
your purpose.
1873
01:22:34.400 --> 01:22:37.290
What are you measuring when you're looking for? Alex, I just
1874
01:22:37.290 --> 01:22:38.640
would love to get your answer to this
1875
01:22:38.640 --> 01:22:41.330
idea. Can you do you think the person who is pushing the
1876
01:22:41.330 --> 01:22:42.960
boulder at the hill or is right in the
1877
01:22:42.960 --> 01:22:47.620
wood, even though the world's about to end, can still genuinely
1878
01:22:47.620 --> 01:22:49.440
live a subjectively and by
1879
01:22:49.440 --> 01:22:55.490
subjective I mean in their opinion, purposeful life? Yes. Yeah,
1880
01:22:55.490 --> 01:22:56.960
absolutely. I think
1881
01:22:56.960 --> 01:23:01.230
Sisyphus can be happy, but I think that's not the attitude that
1882
01:23:01.230 --> 01:23:03.120
I would have. And I don't
1883
01:23:03.120 --> 01:23:06.700
for myself find it satisfying any analogy, which is
1884
01:23:06.700 --> 01:23:10.640
sufficiently similar to the Sisyphus condition
1885
01:23:10.640 --> 01:23:13.850
that is in the attempted solution as well, just imagine Sisyph
1886
01:23:13.850 --> 01:23:15.200
us happy. And that's how he
1887
01:23:15.200 --> 01:23:18.520
literally ends the myth of Sisyphus. One must imagine Sisyphus
1888
01:23:18.520 --> 01:23:20.960
happy, and I can imagine him and say,
1889
01:23:20.960 --> 01:23:23.780
you know, good for him. Do you think that would be if you
1890
01:23:23.780 --> 01:23:28.000
believed in Greg's views of the world?
1891
01:23:28.000 --> 01:23:31.540
Or most certainly, but not because of Greg's views, but because
1892
01:23:31.540 --> 01:23:33.280
of the confidence and satisfaction
1893
01:23:33.280 --> 01:23:36.120
that they bring. I think I'd feel just as much meaning in my
1894
01:23:36.120 --> 01:23:38.160
life as I was a convicted Muslim,
1895
01:23:38.160 --> 01:23:41.990
or where I, a Jane, or something like that, I think I would
1896
01:23:41.990 --> 01:23:44.720
find that film. So the content of the
1897
01:23:44.720 --> 01:23:48.910
theology has no bearing in your mind on the way a person
1898
01:23:48.910 --> 01:23:51.120
experiences their life.
1899
01:23:51.120 --> 01:23:54.960
So of course it does. Can you explain the consistency? Well,
1900
01:23:54.960 --> 01:23:56.400
the content, well, you talk about
1901
01:23:56.400 --> 01:23:58.950
different religions and there's these different religions there
1902
01:23:58.950 --> 01:24:00.960
and yet, the, they cannot all be
1903
01:24:00.960 --> 01:24:03.910
true as Alex is pointed out. They have different content. They
1904
01:24:03.910 --> 01:24:05.600
say different things about human
1905
01:24:05.600 --> 01:24:11.480
human beings. For example, the, the, the view of the human
1906
01:24:11.480 --> 01:24:14.880
beings are just an illusion, the
1907
01:24:14.880 --> 01:24:17.160
reality is illusion, my own, that kind of thing. Well, that
1908
01:24:17.160 --> 01:24:19.760
seems to me to convey a certain
1909
01:24:19.760 --> 01:24:22.930
understanding to human beings about themselves and about the
1910
01:24:22.930 --> 01:24:25.360
world. If you have a view that human
1911
01:24:25.360 --> 01:24:28.370
beings are significant individuals, this is going to convey a
1912
01:24:28.370 --> 01:24:30.160
whole different experience that they
1913
01:24:30.160 --> 01:24:34.680
have. So in other words, the theology that they believe is true
1914
01:24:34.680 --> 01:24:36.640
is going to affect their feelings
1915
01:24:36.640 --> 01:24:39.650
and their experiences. This is what I was getting back at a
1916
01:24:39.650 --> 01:24:42.080
little bit ago when I talked about the
1917
01:24:42.080 --> 01:24:44.730
person whose life has been changed by becoming a Christian and
1918
01:24:44.730 --> 01:24:47.040
this aren't just what you
1919
01:24:47.040 --> 01:24:49.140
explained to your friend. These are not things that just
1920
01:24:49.140 --> 01:24:50.800
happened here and there, but there seems to
1921
01:24:50.800 --> 01:24:54.450
be a very, very broad experience of this. And a change that
1922
01:24:54.450 --> 01:24:56.560
doesn't depend on circumstances.
1923
01:24:56.560 --> 01:25:01.770
Okay. It's because they adopt a understanding of the world that
1924
01:25:01.770 --> 01:25:03.200
I think is an accurate
1925
01:25:03.200 --> 01:25:05.750
understanding and this is why their emotions and their
1926
01:25:05.750 --> 01:25:07.600
experience follows along because they're
1927
01:25:07.600 --> 01:25:10.950
choosing an accurate understanding of the world. When you look
1928
01:25:10.950 --> 01:25:12.640
at Jesus, the gospels, I think it's
1929
01:25:12.640 --> 01:25:15.860
so interesting to me that people read the gospels to be upl
1930
01:25:15.860 --> 01:25:18.160
ifted by the reading of it. It seems that
1931
01:25:18.160 --> 01:25:21.600
this is the point that Jesus is talking about the way the world
1932
01:25:21.600 --> 01:25:23.600
is. He's teaching about the nature
1933
01:25:23.600 --> 01:25:27.040
of reality. He was a Torah observant Jew. He wasn't a Hindu. He
1934
01:25:27.040 --> 01:25:29.280
wasn't a Buddhist. He was a Jew.
1935
01:25:29.280 --> 01:25:33.460
And he spoke in the context of that. Okay. So just to simply
1936
01:25:33.460 --> 01:25:35.840
read the gospels as if we're going to
1937
01:25:35.840 --> 01:25:39.010
read the some nice things that people said to make me feel
1938
01:25:39.010 --> 01:25:41.520
better is missing Jesus point when he's
1939
01:25:41.520 --> 01:25:43.880
trying to describe the nature of reality. I don't think that
1940
01:25:43.880 --> 01:25:44.880
other gospels should be read,
1941
01:25:44.880 --> 01:25:47.550
but I do think so. I mean, I have a question for you on that.
1942
01:25:47.550 --> 01:25:48.480
This is a personal question more than
1943
01:25:48.480 --> 01:25:51.660
anything. So I find myself in the same position as Alex where I
1944
01:25:51.660 --> 01:25:53.200
think I'd be happier, all things
1945
01:25:53.200 --> 01:25:57.450
considered if I had an anchoring in a religion. I think that's
1946
01:25:57.450 --> 01:26:00.000
like a subjectively true that I'd
1947
01:26:00.000 --> 01:26:05.150
be happier. Um, probably just because it would close a gap of
1948
01:26:05.150 --> 01:26:07.120
some sort. It would anchor me in some
1949
01:26:07.120 --> 01:26:10.290
way, answer a question. It would answer a question and then it
1950
01:26:10.290 --> 01:26:11.840
would give me more of a
1951
01:26:11.840 --> 01:26:16.060
structure to my decision making. And you know, it would mean
1952
01:26:16.060 --> 01:26:18.320
that when I have moments of suffering,
1953
01:26:18.320 --> 01:26:21.490
I'd have a solution to that moment of suffering except my
1954
01:26:21.490 --> 01:26:22.960
parents end up dying someday,
1955
01:26:22.960 --> 01:26:26.160
which I'm sure they will. I will believe that they are still
1956
01:26:26.160 --> 01:26:27.360
alive and they are somewhere
1957
01:26:27.360 --> 01:26:30.530
in their fine, which will ease my suffering. So I agree with
1958
01:26:30.530 --> 01:26:32.800
Alex in that regard. The problem I have
1959
01:26:32.800 --> 01:26:35.970
is in order to adopt that view, I need some kind of, I need to
1960
01:26:35.970 --> 01:26:38.560
believe it. It's true. Like people can't
1961
01:26:38.560 --> 01:26:42.410
aren't very good at lying to themselves. And also when you talk
1962
01:26:42.410 --> 01:26:45.360
about my friend in Dubai has
1963
01:26:45.360 --> 01:26:48.670
had this experience, he now feels better. He could have well
1964
01:26:48.670 --> 01:26:50.480
felt better. I believe if he had
1965
01:26:50.480 --> 01:26:57.600
believed that Islam was true and become a Muslim. So it's the
1966
01:26:57.600 --> 01:26:59.600
feeling itself, people can get
1967
01:26:59.600 --> 01:27:02.310
a lot of ways. I know people that actually would tell you that
1968
01:27:02.310 --> 01:27:03.600
they feel better now that they're
1969
01:27:03.600 --> 01:27:06.620
out of the coat and they're agnostic. Sure. And the coat made
1970
01:27:06.620 --> 01:27:08.080
them feel terrible. Now they're
1971
01:27:08.080 --> 01:27:11.890
agnostic. They feel better. Does that mean agnosticism is truth
1972
01:27:11.890 --> 01:27:14.400
? So the presumption that you made
1973
01:27:14.400 --> 01:27:17.030
is a presumption. We have to keep that in mind. I mean, the
1974
01:27:17.030 --> 01:27:18.480
people that I have talked to
1975
01:27:18.480 --> 01:27:22.020
who are former Muslims and are now Christians, very devout
1976
01:27:22.020 --> 01:27:25.360
Muslims, they did not have the experience
1977
01:27:25.360 --> 01:27:29.590
of satisfaction, fullness and connection with God with in Islam
1978
01:27:29.590 --> 01:27:31.120
that they do in Christianity.
1979
01:27:31.120 --> 01:27:34.150
Okay. So we want to be careful that we know there are people
1980
01:27:34.150 --> 01:27:35.040
who just don't believe it.
1981
01:27:35.040 --> 01:27:36.630
Yeah, there's people that would have gone the other way and
1982
01:27:36.630 --> 01:27:37.600
they'll be in the comment section
1983
01:27:37.600 --> 01:27:40.460
right now saying, well, I went from Christianity to Islam. Okay
1984
01:27:40.460 --> 01:27:42.640
. Well, sure, I'm just telling you what I
1985
01:27:42.640 --> 01:27:46.800
what I know of those people. Okay. And it, I think it's a
1986
01:27:46.800 --> 01:27:48.720
mistake to say, well, everybody has
1987
01:27:48.720 --> 01:27:50.980
their own religion. They have their some experience with their
1988
01:27:50.980 --> 01:27:52.080
religion because I don't think
1989
01:27:52.080 --> 01:27:54.640
that's the case. I'm not saying they are satisfied Muslims.
1990
01:27:54.640 --> 01:27:56.400
That's not what I'm saying or Buddhist
1991
01:27:56.400 --> 01:28:00.300
or Hindus or whatever. But what I'm saying is the, the, there
1992
01:28:00.300 --> 01:28:03.040
is an evidential element to the
1993
01:28:03.040 --> 01:28:05.930
change life. Okay. And it may not be decisive. There may be
1994
01:28:05.930 --> 01:28:08.000
other things that are involved. Okay.
1995
01:28:08.000 --> 01:28:11.170
I do think that for many Christians, I think you've made this
1996
01:28:11.170 --> 01:28:12.480
point in the past two. It's the
1997
01:28:12.480 --> 01:28:15.800
experience with God that makes the difference, but it's not
1998
01:28:15.800 --> 01:28:17.600
that the other evidence is for the
1999
01:28:17.600 --> 01:28:20.770
existence of God, maybe philosophical type of evidence haven't
2000
01:28:20.770 --> 01:28:22.320
made a difference because I've talked to
2001
01:28:22.320 --> 01:28:25.490
lots of people where they have made the difference moving them
2002
01:28:25.490 --> 01:28:26.400
in that direction.
2003
01:28:26.400 --> 01:28:29.280
The point never, it's evidential. That's a presumption.
2004
01:28:29.280 --> 01:28:35.840
What I mean by evidential is that there is information that can
2005
01:28:35.840 --> 01:28:37.520
be brought to bear that seems to be
2006
01:28:37.520 --> 01:28:42.850
evidence, um, indicating that the belief system is true. Is
2007
01:28:42.850 --> 01:28:43.760
that a presumption?
2008
01:28:45.040 --> 01:28:46.910
I don't know why you would call it a presumption. In the
2009
01:28:46.910 --> 01:28:49.040
evidence that evidence that
2010
01:28:49.040 --> 01:28:52.680
Christianity is true from the increased sense of purpose that
2011
01:28:52.680 --> 01:28:54.640
people get from becoming a Christian.
2012
01:28:54.640 --> 01:28:58.480
I think that's one of the evidence. It's a subject of evidence.
2013
01:28:58.480 --> 01:28:58.720
Yeah.
2014
01:28:58.720 --> 01:29:02.000
So, I mean, it's the truth of Christianity. Well, I wouldn't
2015
01:29:02.000 --> 01:29:03.360
build the whole thing, but it's
2016
01:29:03.360 --> 01:29:05.800
evident. It's contributing evidence to the absolute truth. Yeah
2017
01:29:05.800 --> 01:29:07.840
. Think of it as Christianity as well.
2018
01:29:07.840 --> 01:29:12.620
The story of reality is simply that God made us to be with him.
2019
01:29:12.620 --> 01:29:14.560
And then we find the way
2020
01:29:14.560 --> 01:29:17.420
that God intends for us to connect with him principally through
2021
01:29:17.420 --> 01:29:19.440
forgiveness and be restored
2022
01:29:19.440 --> 01:29:22.610
to our relationship with the Father. And then that gives us,
2023
01:29:22.610 --> 01:29:24.320
when we do that, a deep sense of
2024
01:29:24.320 --> 01:29:28.340
satisfaction, I do think that's evidential. You know, in Alex
2025
01:29:28.340 --> 01:29:30.080
field, he could explain that through
2026
01:29:30.080 --> 01:29:34.450
neuroscience, right? So, yeah. So, can I go back to something
2027
01:29:34.450 --> 01:29:35.920
real quick?
2028
01:29:35.920 --> 01:29:38.830
So, you know, I was thinking about the Sisyphus example. And I
2029
01:29:38.830 --> 01:29:40.160
was just thinking to myself,
2030
01:29:40.720 --> 01:29:44.380
you know, so many people go to the gym to do futile physical
2031
01:29:44.380 --> 01:29:47.200
activity, but not on its own
2032
01:29:47.200 --> 01:29:51.040
for eternity with no sense in which it's improving their life.
2033
01:29:51.040 --> 01:29:52.560
Right? Imagine going to the gym
2034
01:29:52.560 --> 01:29:55.740
and not only is it not making you healthier, it's actually just
2035
01:29:55.740 --> 01:29:57.600
making you fatter, and you have to do
2036
01:29:57.600 --> 01:30:01.760
it forever for the rest of eternity for no reason with no end.
2037
01:30:01.760 --> 01:30:03.600
And then someone says, well,
2038
01:30:03.600 --> 01:30:06.130
you've got to do with imagine that person being happy. Yeah. So
2039
01:30:06.130 --> 01:30:07.280
, that's kind of interesting because
2040
01:30:07.280 --> 01:30:12.640
then that presumes that the attitude through which you approach
2041
01:30:12.640 --> 01:30:15.600
the action is what determines it.
2042
01:30:15.600 --> 01:30:18.380
The determines what determines whether you're happy or not,
2043
01:30:18.380 --> 01:30:20.880
right? So, every time you eat,
2044
01:30:20.880 --> 01:30:24.180
you buy yourself a trip to the toilet. This is something you
2045
01:30:24.180 --> 01:30:25.280
can never escape. Sure.
2046
01:30:25.280 --> 01:30:28.060
It is true for all time. And yet, how do you feel about going
2047
01:30:28.060 --> 01:30:28.960
to the toilet?
2048
01:30:28.960 --> 01:30:34.170
I'm maybe I'm misunderstanding what you get. So, I think it's
2049
01:30:34.170 --> 01:30:36.400
interesting, right? Because the
2050
01:30:36.400 --> 01:30:40.310
problem of Sisyphus is in the way that he views it. And this is
2051
01:30:40.310 --> 01:30:41.920
exactly why I think the paper clip
2052
01:30:41.920 --> 01:30:45.140
example is like actually such a good one because I think what
2053
01:30:45.140 --> 01:30:46.800
we find when we look at some of these
2054
01:30:46.800 --> 01:30:49.760
things like radical acceptance, dialectical behavioral therapy,
2055
01:30:49.760 --> 01:30:52.000
sort of the ways in which people
2056
01:30:52.000 --> 01:30:56.240
become happy despite the fact that there are painful things in
2057
01:30:56.240 --> 01:30:58.640
life. It is an attitudinal shift.
2058
01:30:58.640 --> 01:31:01.000
Totally. I think I think one of the reasons why it might seem
2059
01:31:01.000 --> 01:31:02.240
like we keep talking across
2060
01:31:02.240 --> 01:31:07.050
purposes is because I think you are offering an explanation for
2061
01:31:07.050 --> 01:31:09.120
why people feel a particular way.
2062
01:31:09.120 --> 01:31:12.580
And I'm trying to see whether those feelings are. Shall we say
2063
01:31:12.580 --> 01:31:14.080
philosophically validated?
2064
01:31:14.080 --> 01:31:18.270
Whether they are, those feelings are our sense of to truth. If
2065
01:31:18.270 --> 01:31:19.680
the way you feel about the world
2066
01:31:19.680 --> 01:31:25.200
is accurate. So, I can perfectly understand that it's possible
2067
01:31:25.200 --> 01:31:26.880
for Sisyphus to be happy.
2068
01:31:26.880 --> 01:31:30.510
What I'm saying is that I think that the philosophical underpin
2069
01:31:30.510 --> 01:31:32.000
ning that would be required
2070
01:31:32.000 --> 01:31:36.400
for him to be content in that condition is unsatisfying at
2071
01:31:36.400 --> 01:31:41.520
least to me. So what is a philosophical
2072
01:31:41.520 --> 01:31:45.320
truth? I mean, maybe I shouldn't say philosophical truth, but I
2073
01:31:45.320 --> 01:31:47.280
mean to separate it from what you
2074
01:31:47.280 --> 01:31:50.930
might describe as like a neurological truth, which is to say it
2075
01:31:50.930 --> 01:31:52.480
could be true that your brain
2076
01:31:52.480 --> 01:31:56.570
believes this or believes that based on this or that condition.
2077
01:31:56.570 --> 01:31:57.920
I'm saying that totally.
2078
01:31:57.920 --> 01:32:00.640
But what I'm interested in is the thing that it believes, is it
2079
01:32:00.640 --> 01:32:03.680
true or false. It could be in the
2080
01:32:03.680 --> 01:32:07.030
same way that believing in Christianity can make you happy, it
2081
01:32:07.030 --> 01:32:08.800
can make you sad, and you can
2082
01:32:08.800 --> 01:32:11.610
scan someone's brain, you can put the MRI scanner and scan
2083
01:32:11.610 --> 01:32:13.360
their brain when they, at the moment
2084
01:32:13.360 --> 01:32:15.660
they convert Christianity and see that it starts going, "Hey,
2085
01:32:15.660 --> 01:32:18.320
what?" But the brain's not going to show
2086
01:32:18.320 --> 01:32:20.550
any beliefs. It shows you the truth and the very logical
2087
01:32:20.550 --> 01:32:21.200
activity. Exactly.
2088
01:32:21.200 --> 01:32:24.370
Exactly. The beliefs aren't in the brain. Yeah, we're going to
2089
01:32:24.370 --> 01:32:24.880
get to that.
2090
01:32:24.880 --> 01:32:29.360
I kind of agree. So Alex, I think this is what I think you so
2091
01:32:29.360 --> 01:32:30.240
much for pointing out how we're
2092
01:32:30.240 --> 01:32:32.790
kind of talking across each other because I think this is the
2093
01:32:32.790 --> 01:32:34.960
really weird thing. I'm going to say
2094
01:32:34.960 --> 01:32:37.320
something and then as we talk about consciousness and what we
2095
01:32:37.320 --> 01:32:38.960
just talked about, I'm going to torpedo
2096
01:32:38.960 --> 01:32:43.190
it. But I think what we sort of find is that from a practical
2097
01:32:43.190 --> 01:32:45.680
sense and this could be where like
2098
01:32:45.680 --> 01:32:51.520
philosophy, I don't know how the word practical ties together
2099
01:32:51.520 --> 01:32:54.000
with philosophy because I tend to think
2100
01:32:54.000 --> 01:32:56.360
of philosophy is sort of practical. We can go into that in a
2101
01:32:56.360 --> 01:32:59.440
second. But I think from the perspective of
2102
01:32:59.440 --> 01:33:03.840
finding purpose. Now, I'm not talking about purpose as a
2103
01:33:03.840 --> 01:33:07.280
capital P truth, right? Look, capital T
2104
01:33:07.280 --> 01:33:12.620
truth. Finding purpose, what it may not be philosophically
2105
01:33:12.620 --> 01:33:15.840
satisfying to you, but what we sort of
2106
01:33:15.840 --> 01:33:19.820
know from empirical evidence of people who are purposeless and
2107
01:33:19.820 --> 01:33:22.480
people who are purposeful is that
2108
01:33:22.480 --> 01:33:26.350
the subjective feeling of purpose is comes out of a number of
2109
01:33:26.350 --> 01:33:28.560
different things. Like I mentioned,
2110
01:33:28.560 --> 01:33:31.610
like kind of autonomy, being able to detect your emotions, also
2111
01:33:31.610 --> 01:33:33.440
a sense of like narrative identity.
2112
01:33:33.440 --> 01:33:37.230
So having a purpose in life requires a you and one of the
2113
01:33:37.230 --> 01:33:40.160
reasons that no one feels like they are
2114
01:33:40.160 --> 01:33:42.440
going somewhere in life is because they don't really have a
2115
01:33:42.440 --> 01:33:43.680
clear sense of who they are.
2116
01:33:43.680 --> 01:33:48.780
And so I think that it's a great kind of catch that we're sort
2117
01:33:48.780 --> 01:33:50.720
of talking across purposes because
2118
01:33:50.720 --> 01:33:53.890
I don't know the thing that you find philosophically not
2119
01:33:53.890 --> 01:33:56.400
philosophically true, maybe neurologically true,
2120
01:33:56.400 --> 01:33:59.800
but isn't philosophically true. I don't know how to approach
2121
01:33:59.800 --> 01:34:02.400
that. I mean, I think I sort of do,
2122
01:34:02.400 --> 01:34:04.760
because if we talk about consciousness and subjective
2123
01:34:04.760 --> 01:34:06.320
experience and how your friend was
2124
01:34:06.320 --> 01:34:08.610
transformed. And by the way, he may not be transformed. So
2125
01:34:08.610 --> 01:34:09.760
there's a speaking of coping.
2126
01:34:09.760 --> 01:34:13.000
There's a chance that when someone drastically joins a religion
2127
01:34:13.000 --> 01:34:14.400
and like this is great,
2128
01:34:14.400 --> 01:34:17.670
that is like the mother of all copes, right? So sometimes they
2129
01:34:17.670 --> 01:34:19.440
find they adopt the it's not
2130
01:34:19.440 --> 01:34:22.350
identity formation. It's actually identification where like, I
2131
01:34:22.350 --> 01:34:23.840
'm going to join this team and now I'm
2132
01:34:23.840 --> 01:34:26.500
on this team and now that I have this team, now I know who I am
2133
01:34:26.500 --> 01:34:28.080
, now I have a purpose like everything
2134
01:34:28.080 --> 01:34:31.560
kind of gets laid out. But oftentimes this is also why religion
2135
01:34:31.560 --> 01:34:33.920
is not like 100% at giving people
2136
01:34:33.920 --> 01:34:37.090
happiness and things like that because there is an internal
2137
01:34:37.090 --> 01:34:39.200
subjective experience of a relationship
2138
01:34:39.200 --> 01:34:41.590
with God or something like that, which I think we can say a way
2139
01:34:41.590 --> 01:34:43.440
to consciousness. That's ultimately
2140
01:34:43.440 --> 01:34:46.290
what determines whether you feel really good about it. And then
2141
01:34:46.290 --> 01:34:48.160
the other really interesting thing is
2142
01:34:49.120 --> 01:34:53.780
Through some of those subjective experiences, I think we, the
2143
01:34:53.780 --> 01:34:56.080
people who have these subjective experiences
2144
01:34:56.080 --> 01:35:00.240
believe that it gives them access to truth with a hierarchy,
2145
01:35:00.240 --> 01:35:02.960
like the Gnostics and folks like that.
2146
01:35:02.960 --> 01:35:08.600
I did something at 24 years old that has had a profound impact
2147
01:35:08.600 --> 01:35:10.480
on my life. I set myself
2148
01:35:10.480 --> 01:35:12.720
the challenge of posting every single day on my social media
2149
01:35:12.720 --> 01:35:14.160
channels. And at the time,
2150
01:35:14.160 --> 01:35:17.100
I was doing it to grow my following, but I had this profound
2151
01:35:17.100 --> 01:35:18.960
impact on my life and two remarkable
2152
01:35:18.960 --> 01:35:21.690
things happened when I did that. I managed to learn faster
2153
01:35:21.690 --> 01:35:23.520
because every single day I'm capturing
2154
01:35:23.520 --> 01:35:26.100
what is happening to me and trying to distill it down into
2155
01:35:26.100 --> 01:35:28.240
something that I can share with the world.
2156
01:35:28.240 --> 01:35:31.480
But more remarkably, it led me to building a following of many
2157
01:35:31.480 --> 01:35:32.960
millions of people and that's the
2158
01:35:32.960 --> 01:35:35.560
basis that I used to launch the driver's CEO. And that's why I
2159
01:35:35.560 --> 01:35:36.560
want to tell you about our
2160
01:35:36.560 --> 01:35:39.770
sponsor today Adobe Express. They are the platform that I use
2161
01:35:39.770 --> 01:35:41.280
to make all the posts across my
2162
01:35:41.280 --> 01:35:44.450
LinkedIn and across my Instagram. It's a couple of clicks and
2163
01:35:44.450 --> 01:35:46.160
you don't need to be an expert
2164
01:35:46.160 --> 01:35:48.300
And that is why I love using it because I'm not an expert in
2165
01:35:48.300 --> 01:35:50.160
graphic design. It's accessible to
2166
01:35:50.160 --> 01:35:53.320
use for all of us, even if we don't have the technical prowess
2167
01:35:53.320 --> 01:35:54.960
to design great things. So if you
2168
01:35:54.960 --> 01:35:57.400
want to start compounding both your reach and your knowledge
2169
01:35:57.400 --> 01:35:58.720
like I did at 24 years old,
2170
01:35:58.720 --> 01:36:05.150
then head to adobe.ly/steven and get started with Adobe Express
2171
01:36:05.150 --> 01:36:07.440
. That's adobe.ly/steven.
2172
01:36:07.440 --> 01:36:11.360
Let me just bring it back down to some of the popular questions
2173
01:36:11.360 --> 01:36:12.400
we had from our audience. One of
2174
01:36:12.400 --> 01:36:16.560
the most popular questions we had is, do we each have a
2175
01:36:16.560 --> 01:36:19.600
specific purpose or is it self-chosen and Greg?
2176
01:36:19.600 --> 01:36:24.490
Well, my view, if God has made us for a reason and he wants us
2177
01:36:24.490 --> 01:36:27.200
to be in relationship with us,
2178
01:36:27.200 --> 01:36:30.370
each individual person has different capabilities and
2179
01:36:30.370 --> 01:36:33.120
fulfilling those capabilities that God has
2180
01:36:33.120 --> 01:36:36.850
given him, general ones and specific ones like I have my own
2181
01:36:36.850 --> 01:36:39.280
particular peculiar capabilities,
2182
01:36:39.280 --> 01:36:43.590
doing that is going to make me satisfied, okay? So did God give
2183
01:36:43.590 --> 01:36:44.560
me a purpose?
2184
01:36:44.560 --> 01:36:48.720
Yes. And is it different from Alex's purpose? I would say in
2185
01:36:48.720 --> 01:36:50.960
the kind of the minutiae,
2186
01:36:50.960 --> 01:36:53.510
yes, you're a different individual than he is. Can I just do a
2187
01:36:53.510 --> 01:36:55.120
question that then springs to mind?
2188
01:36:55.120 --> 01:36:58.480
Yeah. Again, I'm very curious. If Steven Butler had gotten
2189
01:36:58.480 --> 01:37:00.400
cancer at one years old and I died,
2190
01:37:00.400 --> 01:37:04.160
I see. Yeah. Well, then you wouldn't be fulfilling the
2191
01:37:04.160 --> 01:37:07.040
particulars that God had intended for you,
2192
01:37:07.040 --> 01:37:09.650
but that kind of thing happens because we live in a broken
2193
01:37:09.650 --> 01:37:12.240
world. It isn't the perfect world,
2194
01:37:12.240 --> 01:37:15.520
it is that the good, it's not the totally good moral that God
2195
01:37:15.520 --> 01:37:16.000
made,
2196
01:37:16.000 --> 01:37:20.370
something happened that broke the world, human rebellion, human
2197
01:37:20.370 --> 01:37:21.120
rebellion.
2198
01:37:21.120 --> 01:37:25.190
At what point in history? Well, early on with our first parents
2199
01:37:25.190 --> 01:37:27.120
, okay. So the first humans,
2200
01:37:27.120 --> 01:37:30.660
the first humans, that's why all humans since then, what about
2201
01:37:30.660 --> 01:37:32.480
the same proclivity towards evil?
2202
01:37:32.480 --> 01:37:35.060
That includes pretty much quantifiable. Is that include other
2203
01:37:35.060 --> 01:37:35.840
species of human?
2204
01:37:35.840 --> 01:37:38.720
I'm an Neanderthal. Well, I know that's a question that a lot
2205
01:37:38.720 --> 01:37:40.240
of people are discussing right now.
2206
01:37:40.240 --> 01:37:42.770
Okay. And where exactly do you draw their line? And I'm not
2207
01:37:42.770 --> 01:37:45.040
that is the area that I go deep in,
2208
01:37:45.040 --> 01:37:48.340
but I do think that there was a an original progenitor to the
2209
01:37:48.340 --> 01:37:49.840
human races we understand it
2210
01:37:49.840 --> 01:37:55.170
right now. So that has the image of God and man and violated
2211
01:37:55.170 --> 01:37:56.640
God's commands,
2212
01:37:56.640 --> 01:38:00.060
rebelled against God, and that had an impact on the world. Okay
2213
01:38:00.060 --> 01:38:01.360
. And that is why they're
2214
01:38:01.360 --> 01:38:06.320
for us. That is why people aren't going to be fulfilling all of
2215
01:38:06.320 --> 01:38:08.560
their the ultimate purposes that
2216
01:38:08.560 --> 01:38:13.920
God has for them. Just to be clear, children get cancer. Sure.
2217
01:38:13.920 --> 01:38:17.360
Because say two million years ago,
2218
01:38:17.360 --> 01:38:19.740
roughly started the human species. I'm not going to set a date
2219
01:38:19.740 --> 01:38:23.040
on it. Somebody rebelled against
2220
01:38:23.040 --> 01:38:26.540
God's commands. And that is the explanation for that. This is a
2221
01:38:26.540 --> 01:38:28.560
fair question. And some of these
2222
01:38:28.560 --> 01:38:30.890
details I haven't worked out what about earthquakes and tsunam
2223
01:38:30.890 --> 01:38:32.160
is and all those kinds of things.
2224
01:38:32.160 --> 01:38:36.320
Okay. Clearly there is an impact of human rebellion upon the
2225
01:38:36.320 --> 01:38:38.880
earth. Okay. What the extent of that
2226
01:38:38.880 --> 01:38:42.050
impact is, I'm not entirely sure. But this is why you use the
2227
01:38:42.050 --> 01:38:43.760
word broken because it's a rather
2228
01:38:43.760 --> 01:38:47.260
broad term rather than trying to identify every instance of
2229
01:38:47.260 --> 01:38:49.360
things that seem anomalous to a good
2230
01:38:49.360 --> 01:38:52.970
world. Not the way it should be, so to speak. Okay. I think
2231
01:38:52.970 --> 01:38:54.400
that's an explanation for these
2232
01:38:54.400 --> 01:38:57.700
things, even though we can't necessarily itemize each
2233
01:38:57.700 --> 01:38:59.920
individual particular instance
2234
01:38:59.920 --> 01:39:02.280
and how it falls short. Alex, I want to put the same question
2235
01:39:02.280 --> 01:39:03.120
to you, which is,
2236
01:39:03.120 --> 01:39:06.720
do you think that you were born with a purpose that was endowed
2237
01:39:06.720 --> 01:39:07.600
for your life?
2238
01:39:07.600 --> 01:39:10.470
No, not in the literal sense. I think that there are that I was
2239
01:39:10.470 --> 01:39:11.120
born with
2240
01:39:11.120 --> 01:39:15.430
literal like proclivities built into my consciousness and my
2241
01:39:15.430 --> 01:39:16.160
DNA's.
2242
01:39:17.840 --> 01:39:21.860
Almost once the tendency is a great word. Yeah. For example, my
2243
01:39:21.860 --> 01:39:24.560
tendency to eat food.
2244
01:39:24.560 --> 01:39:28.200
I don't think I learned that. I think I was born with it. But
2245
01:39:28.200 --> 01:39:30.400
it's like, I would use the language of
2246
01:39:30.400 --> 01:39:33.000
what when you say, if you said, do you think that you were, you
2247
01:39:33.000 --> 01:39:35.600
were given hunger from birth? I could
2248
01:39:35.600 --> 01:39:38.770
like, no, in a poetic sense, maybe. What I mean, say, as I was
2249
01:39:38.770 --> 01:39:40.160
born with this thing called hunger,
2250
01:39:40.160 --> 01:39:42.280
which I didn't learn, which was just a part of my makeup, I
2251
01:39:42.280 --> 01:39:43.760
think the same thing is true for many
2252
01:39:43.760 --> 01:39:47.470
motivations of life, such as the sort of meaning that you might
2253
01:39:47.470 --> 01:39:49.280
report feeling. I think it's there
2254
01:39:49.280 --> 01:39:51.810
from from childbirth. Same question for you. I like, do you
2255
01:39:51.810 --> 01:39:54.400
think that we each have a specific purpose
2256
01:39:54.400 --> 01:39:57.880
or is it self-chosen? I think it's both. So I'm going to
2257
01:39:57.880 --> 01:40:00.240
introduce two concepts that we haven't
2258
01:40:00.240 --> 01:40:03.170
talked about yet. The heart of mind and karma. And I think
2259
01:40:03.170 --> 01:40:06.400
these are concepts that are sometimes
2260
01:40:06.400 --> 01:40:08.760
hard to understand. I'm going to do my best to kind of speedrun
2261
01:40:08.760 --> 01:40:10.240
them. So the heart of my is
2262
01:40:10.240 --> 01:40:14.030
the Sanskrit word that kind of gets translated as duty. The way
2263
01:40:14.030 --> 01:40:15.360
that I would describe the
2264
01:40:15.360 --> 01:40:18.320
hard mother reason, I think it's so important is right now, if
2265
01:40:18.320 --> 01:40:20.160
we look at the world, people are like
2266
01:40:20.160 --> 01:40:24.710
not having a good time. And oftentimes what they do is they're
2267
01:40:24.710 --> 01:40:27.120
stuck between this choice of
2268
01:40:27.120 --> 01:40:30.290
doing what they want and doing what they should. So doing what
2269
01:40:30.290 --> 01:40:32.080
they want is maybe dopaminergic is
2270
01:40:32.080 --> 01:40:35.910
maybe fun in some way, doing what they should is like painful
2271
01:40:35.910 --> 01:40:39.520
in some way. So for me, what I think
2272
01:40:39.520 --> 01:40:41.920
dharma is dharma is like sort of duty. But I think the key
2273
01:40:41.920 --> 01:40:43.680
thing that helps people once they find
2274
01:40:43.680 --> 01:40:47.840
their dharma is it's what allows you to choose the negative
2275
01:40:47.840 --> 01:40:50.560
thing. It's what allows you to choose
2276
01:40:50.560 --> 01:40:54.350
the hard thing. So if someone points a gun at me and I look at
2277
01:40:54.350 --> 01:40:56.640
that gun, that gun means pain, suffering,
2278
01:40:56.640 --> 01:41:00.060
death, you know, my life will end and then I will have nothing
2279
01:41:00.060 --> 01:41:02.560
to leave behind me. So my purpose will
2280
01:41:02.560 --> 01:41:06.410
end. So I try to move away from that thing. But if someone
2281
01:41:06.410 --> 01:41:08.880
points the gun at my child because I have
2282
01:41:08.880 --> 01:41:11.740
this overwhelming sense of love and joy or whatever, I step
2283
01:41:11.740 --> 01:41:13.280
into the path of that thing.
2284
01:41:13.280 --> 01:41:18.760
So I think once we understand what our duty is, that gives us a
2285
01:41:18.760 --> 01:41:20.320
sense of tethering,
2286
01:41:20.320 --> 01:41:23.600
it gives us a sense of direction. I think what confuses a lot
2287
01:41:23.600 --> 01:41:25.040
of people is that they think
2288
01:41:25.040 --> 01:41:28.220
duty is like some transcendental, it's like a big thing, like
2289
01:41:28.220 --> 01:41:29.680
duty with a capital D, like I was
2290
01:41:29.680 --> 01:41:33.100
born on this earth to do these like particular big tasks, like
2291
01:41:33.100 --> 01:41:34.480
I need to say cure cancer or
2292
01:41:34.480 --> 01:41:38.640
something like that. Oftentimes, the harma is really small. So
2293
01:41:38.640 --> 01:41:40.640
the way duty is not transcendent and it's
2294
01:41:40.640 --> 01:41:44.420
not tied to some moral transcendent thing. I think I don't know
2295
01:41:44.420 --> 01:41:46.560
about moral. So this is where I think
2296
01:41:46.560 --> 01:41:50.160
like I said should, yeah, sure should. So that's usually a
2297
01:41:50.160 --> 01:41:51.680
moral term in the west.
2298
01:41:51.680 --> 01:41:54.450
Right. So I think there's a whole different set of axioms. I'm
2299
01:41:54.450 --> 01:41:55.840
using the harma and that's what
2300
01:41:55.840 --> 01:41:58.720
people will like put morality onto the harma where I don't
2301
01:41:58.720 --> 01:42:00.400
think that that's actually fair.
2302
01:42:00.960 --> 01:42:05.120
So going back to I have a duty just to give another example and
2303
01:42:05.120 --> 01:42:07.040
y'all can decide whether this is
2304
01:42:07.040 --> 01:42:10.210
mortal or not. But when I'm sort of working in the emergency
2305
01:42:10.210 --> 01:42:12.400
room and you know a patient walks in,
2306
01:42:12.400 --> 01:42:15.040
I have a duty to that patient. So a lot of people don't
2307
01:42:15.040 --> 01:42:16.720
understand about Dharmaya's that it is
2308
01:42:16.720 --> 01:42:20.640
very environmentally determined. So your Dharmaya will depend
2309
01:42:20.640 --> 01:42:23.280
somewhat on the family that you have,
2310
01:42:23.280 --> 01:42:25.660
the responsibilities that you have. If you have children, you
2311
01:42:25.660 --> 01:42:27.040
have a Dharmaya to those people.
2312
01:42:27.920 --> 01:42:30.610
So I think that's one part of what we would call purpose. I
2313
01:42:30.610 --> 01:42:32.240
think the other part of purpose and I
2314
01:42:32.240 --> 01:42:35.800
think this gets really closer to the more Western conception is
2315
01:42:35.800 --> 01:42:38.720
karma. So going back to your question
2316
01:42:38.720 --> 01:42:43.120
about, you know, if a child with with cancer dies at the age of
2317
01:42:43.120 --> 01:42:45.600
one, is their purpose fulfilled,
2318
01:42:45.600 --> 01:42:48.440
arguably yes, because that could have been their purpose in
2319
01:42:48.440 --> 01:42:49.600
this life. Right. So their
2320
01:42:49.600 --> 01:42:52.370
purpose could have been. So there's a really interesting story
2321
01:42:52.370 --> 01:42:53.760
about, you know, many years ago,
2322
01:42:53.760 --> 01:42:56.810
there was a, there were a group of angels. This I'm just going
2323
01:42:56.810 --> 01:42:58.640
to use the Western terminology. They
2324
01:42:58.640 --> 01:43:03.010
have us who disturbed Shiva in his meditation. And so he cursed
2325
01:43:03.010 --> 01:43:05.040
them and he said, I'm going to,
2326
01:43:05.040 --> 01:43:07.610
the curse that you guys are going to do is y'all are going to
2327
01:43:07.610 --> 01:43:09.600
be born on the earth for one lifetime
2328
01:43:09.600 --> 01:43:11.970
of a human. And then that they have us were like, Oh my God,
2329
01:43:11.970 --> 01:43:13.280
like this is terrible. Like we're
2330
01:43:13.280 --> 01:43:15.900
going to be cursed to be born on the earth and the earth is
2331
01:43:15.900 --> 01:43:17.840
full of suffering and cysticis and there's
2332
01:43:17.840 --> 01:43:21.760
no meaning with a capital M. So then they go to Shiva's
2333
01:43:21.760 --> 01:43:24.560
daughter and they ask her, Hey, can you help
2334
01:43:24.560 --> 01:43:28.520
us out? Like, can you please go talk to your dad? Can you
2335
01:43:28.520 --> 01:43:30.560
please get him to change his sentence? And
2336
01:43:30.560 --> 01:43:32.990
she says that she was never going to change a sentence. That's
2337
01:43:32.990 --> 01:43:34.720
impossible to do. He's also kind of
2338
01:43:34.720 --> 01:43:37.510
this embodiment of karma and things like that. But so he says,
2339
01:43:37.510 --> 01:43:40.320
but I can help y'all out. What I can do
2340
01:43:40.320 --> 01:43:43.100
is I'm going to be born with y'all. And then there's this other
2341
01:43:43.100 --> 01:43:45.600
story in the Mahabharat where basically
2342
01:43:45.600 --> 01:43:48.420
she has seven children and then she drowns them the day after
2343
01:43:48.420 --> 01:43:50.880
they're born. And so she says,
2344
01:43:50.880 --> 01:43:53.280
the technical situation is you're going to be born for one
2345
01:43:53.280 --> 01:43:54.880
lifetime. I can make a lifetime
2346
01:43:54.880 --> 01:43:59.440
happen in a moment. Now, I don't know if that's true. I don't
2347
01:43:59.440 --> 01:44:00.560
know if that's moral. I don't
2348
01:44:00.560 --> 01:44:03.110
know if it's mythology. But a potential explanation for why
2349
01:44:03.110 --> 01:44:04.800
children get cancer. It's a potential
2350
01:44:04.800 --> 01:44:08.090
explanation for why children get cancer. Now, I think the the
2351
01:44:08.090 --> 01:44:09.840
garma thing is when you said,
2352
01:44:09.840 --> 01:44:13.140
is your purpose in life predetermined? So I think that you
2353
01:44:13.140 --> 01:44:16.960
inherit a certain amount of circumstances
2354
01:44:16.960 --> 01:44:21.990
and that part of your purpose will be in relation to the
2355
01:44:21.990 --> 01:44:24.800
circumstances that you inherit.
2356
01:44:24.800 --> 01:44:27.350
But the other thing about karma, which I think a lot of people
2357
01:44:27.350 --> 01:44:28.480
misunderstand is they think that
2358
01:44:28.480 --> 01:44:32.080
it means destiny. I think all it means is Newton's sort of law,
2359
01:44:32.080 --> 01:44:33.280
which is every action has an
2360
01:44:33.280 --> 01:44:37.440
equal and opposite reaction that while you may inherit a set of
2361
01:44:37.440 --> 01:44:41.360
circumstances, the way that you act
2362
01:44:41.360 --> 01:44:45.790
is sowing seeds for your future life. So this is where, like,
2363
01:44:45.790 --> 01:44:47.600
you know, I know I'm introducing
2364
01:44:47.600 --> 01:44:51.760
a bunch of concepts. And it's interesting. I, you know, we we
2365
01:44:51.760 --> 01:44:53.760
started a membership program here at
2366
01:44:53.760 --> 01:44:56.740
Healthy Gamer. And part of the reason we did that is because a
2367
01:44:56.740 --> 01:44:58.480
lot of these concepts, if you turn
2368
01:44:58.480 --> 01:45:01.650
them into like 50 minute YouTube videos, people just end up
2369
01:45:01.650 --> 01:45:02.960
with more questions than answers.
2370
01:45:02.960 --> 01:45:05.390
So we go into a lot of depth. And I think it requires some
2371
01:45:05.390 --> 01:45:07.120
depth because I'm sure everybody who's
2372
01:45:07.120 --> 01:45:10.050
listening has a ton of questions. But in order to succinctly
2373
01:45:10.050 --> 01:45:12.400
answer your question, I would say that,
2374
01:45:12.400 --> 01:45:16.880
yeah, you were born for, I don't know about a specific reason,
2375
01:45:16.880 --> 01:45:18.880
but there's a set of different things
2376
01:45:18.880 --> 01:45:22.880
which only you can do. Like you are a unique set of genetics,
2377
01:45:22.880 --> 01:45:24.880
you are a unique set of experiences,
2378
01:45:24.880 --> 01:45:28.360
you are a unique set of psychology. And this process in
2379
01:45:28.360 --> 01:45:30.880
psychiatry is something that we call
2380
01:45:30.880 --> 01:45:34.360
meaning making helps a lot when people have trauma. Right. So
2381
01:45:34.360 --> 01:45:36.640
to help someone understand why did this
2382
01:45:36.640 --> 01:45:41.200
terrible thing happen to you? And once you make meaning from it
2383
01:45:41.200 --> 01:45:42.880
, that helps you adaptively.
2384
01:45:42.880 --> 01:45:46.600
But I think that it's also not like predestined and necessarily
2385
01:45:46.600 --> 01:45:48.320
you can procrastinate
2386
01:45:48.320 --> 01:45:50.970
on fulfilling your carmas. And then they'll just keep coming
2387
01:45:50.970 --> 01:45:51.360
back.
2388
01:45:51.360 --> 01:45:54.550
So, Dr. Kay, I still have a question about this. You talk about
2389
01:45:54.550 --> 01:45:55.760
duty and I'd asked about
2390
01:45:55.760 --> 01:45:58.390
morality there and you kind of backed off on that. Well, not
2391
01:45:58.390 --> 01:45:59.680
really. But then you use the word
2392
01:45:59.680 --> 01:46:02.970
obligation and emergency room. And it sounds to me when you
2393
01:46:02.970 --> 01:46:04.640
talk about those things,
2394
01:46:04.640 --> 01:46:08.340
you are actually invoking moral categories. Things you ought to
2395
01:46:08.340 --> 01:46:09.920
do, you have an obligation to do,
2396
01:46:09.920 --> 01:46:12.700
you have a duty to do, maybe the right thing, you didn't use
2397
01:46:12.700 --> 01:46:14.240
this phrase. But it sounds like you
2398
01:46:14.240 --> 01:46:17.490
say, and this is the right thing to do, the virtuous thing to
2399
01:46:17.490 --> 01:46:19.200
do, as opposed to the wrong thing
2400
01:46:19.200 --> 01:46:23.360
to do. So, how might I understand those phrases if they are not
2401
01:46:23.360 --> 01:46:25.200
really invoking genuine moral
2402
01:46:25.200 --> 01:46:31.360
categories? So, when you say moral categories, are you
2403
01:46:31.360 --> 01:46:35.040
referring to a transcendental right or wrong?
2404
01:46:35.040 --> 01:46:38.640
I'm talking about ethical principles, ethical rights and wrong.
2405
01:46:38.640 --> 01:46:40.480
They are transcendent because they're
2406
01:46:40.480 --> 01:46:44.850
not simply in the molecules, as it were. They're above us. Okay
2407
01:46:44.850 --> 01:46:46.720
. So, yes, in that sense.
2408
01:46:46.720 --> 01:46:50.730
Okay. Yeah. And there are consequences to our behaviors one way
2409
01:46:50.730 --> 01:46:51.920
or another. And the consequences,
2410
01:46:51.920 --> 01:46:57.310
it's not just utilitarian. It's not just, well, if I put toast
2411
01:46:57.310 --> 01:46:59.200
into long, it'll burn the toast.
2412
01:46:59.200 --> 01:47:02.950
But you ought to do the things that you just described. You
2413
01:47:02.950 --> 01:47:04.800
ought to help that person. Okay.
2414
01:47:04.800 --> 01:47:09.180
I think it's fairly common sensible word, a moral category for
2415
01:47:09.180 --> 01:47:11.120
a true vice kind of thing.
2416
01:47:11.120 --> 01:47:15.280
I think whether it's common, sensical depends on what's common,
2417
01:47:15.280 --> 01:47:16.560
right? So, I think that this is
2418
01:47:16.560 --> 01:47:22.450
where these concepts I don't think are one to one. So, I think
2419
01:47:22.450 --> 01:47:23.760
doing your dharma is basically the way
2420
01:47:23.760 --> 01:47:27.850
I would describe your dharma is when I throw a ball in the air,
2421
01:47:27.850 --> 01:47:30.080
it comes down. Okay. Right. So,
2422
01:47:30.080 --> 01:47:34.640
dharma is kind of doing what is the second part of what you've
2423
01:47:34.640 --> 01:47:36.560
kind of signed up for.
2424
01:47:36.560 --> 01:47:39.110
So, when you say you ought to help the person in the emergency
2425
01:47:39.110 --> 01:47:40.800
room, all you mean is you're not
2426
01:47:40.800 --> 01:47:45.800
morally compelled to do that in terms of a virtue, but there is
2427
01:47:45.800 --> 01:47:48.880
a consequence for you to do that as
2428
01:47:48.880 --> 01:47:52.380
opposed to doing the opposite. Yes. And I think there isn't a
2429
01:47:52.380 --> 01:47:54.240
layer of morality, but that is not
2430
01:47:54.240 --> 01:47:57.410
within dharma. So, for example, there are yamas and yamas,
2431
01:47:57.410 --> 01:47:59.360
which are things like truthfulness,
2432
01:47:59.360 --> 01:48:02.050
a hymsa, which means nonviolence. So, there's a set of
2433
01:48:02.050 --> 01:48:04.160
different things that we would generally
2434
01:48:04.160 --> 01:48:07.500
speaking call morality and doing those things as usually in
2435
01:48:07.500 --> 01:48:09.760
accordance with dharma. But, you know,
2436
01:48:09.760 --> 01:48:13.480
the maha part is a great case of someone saying, I don't want
2437
01:48:13.480 --> 01:48:15.200
to kill my cousins and I don't
2438
01:48:15.200 --> 01:48:18.920
want to kill my teacher. And Krishna saying, you absolutely
2439
01:48:18.920 --> 01:48:20.800
should because it is in accordance with
2440
01:48:20.800 --> 01:48:24.650
dharma. So, I think dharma oftentimes gets like translated over
2441
01:48:24.650 --> 01:48:26.320
to morality, but I think you lose
2442
01:48:26.320 --> 01:48:28.540
something in translation. Great. Can I ask you, do you think
2443
01:48:28.540 --> 01:48:30.160
you have that you can have a fulfilling
2444
01:48:30.160 --> 01:48:34.530
life without having a transcendent purpose? In some measure, in
2445
01:48:34.530 --> 01:48:36.720
some measure, what I described earlier
2446
01:48:36.720 --> 01:48:39.600
is if God made us for a purpose and made the world for human
2447
01:48:39.600 --> 01:48:41.360
flourishing. And I think we get a
2448
01:48:41.360 --> 01:48:43.960
basic description of that in the beginning of our story, for
2449
01:48:43.960 --> 01:48:46.000
example, then people who don't even
2450
01:48:46.000 --> 01:48:51.340
believe in God or even about, even anything religious at all,
2451
01:48:51.340 --> 01:48:53.840
if they fall within the pattern
2452
01:48:53.840 --> 01:48:56.740
of the things that God has created for flourishing, they're
2453
01:48:56.740 --> 01:48:58.480
going to flourish in some significant
2454
01:48:58.480 --> 01:49:01.380
measure. You mentioned a few moments ago about having children
2455
01:49:01.380 --> 01:49:02.880
and this is somewhat of a universal
2456
01:49:02.880 --> 01:49:05.130
experience. Now, you made a kind of a naturalistic
2457
01:49:05.130 --> 01:49:08.720
characterization of why we feel that way. My sense is
2458
01:49:08.720 --> 01:49:11.890
that God made us for that purpose be fruitful, multiply, subdue
2459
01:49:11.890 --> 01:49:13.520
. And subdue doesn't mean rape,
2460
01:49:13.520 --> 01:49:16.940
the earth, it means to work productively. What God has given us
2461
01:49:16.940 --> 01:49:19.680
to serve. Now, somebody can get married
2462
01:49:19.680 --> 01:49:25.180
and stay married and have children and fulfill that purpose
2463
01:49:25.180 --> 01:49:28.480
there and be very satisfied in doing it
2464
01:49:28.480 --> 01:49:31.780
as opposed to all kinds of other variations that's just going
2465
01:49:31.780 --> 01:49:33.280
to mess up their life. And they're
2466
01:49:33.280 --> 01:49:36.490
going to experience satisfaction and fulfillment in it. But
2467
01:49:36.490 --> 01:49:38.320
that's because they're in a certain sense,
2468
01:49:38.320 --> 01:49:43.280
they're doing the things that God has made human beings to do
2469
01:49:43.280 --> 01:49:44.400
so that they would flourish.
2470
01:49:44.400 --> 01:49:47.920
It's just like you can think of it in very mechanistic terms.
2471
01:49:47.920 --> 01:49:49.200
You have a vehicle that
2472
01:49:49.200 --> 01:49:51.420
meant to operate a certain way. And if you do the things
2473
01:49:51.420 --> 01:49:53.200
properly for that vehicle, it's going to
2474
01:49:53.200 --> 01:49:56.060
run well and do. So I can have a, I can have a grand feeling of
2475
01:49:56.060 --> 01:49:58.320
purpose. If I do many of the
2476
01:49:58.480 --> 01:50:02.340
things that are considered virtuous within scripture without
2477
01:50:02.340 --> 01:50:03.760
needing to believe.
2478
01:50:03.760 --> 01:50:07.810
Yeah, you could still be virtuous. Certainly you can do those
2479
01:50:07.810 --> 01:50:09.920
things. My argument, this was getting
2480
01:50:09.920 --> 01:50:13.820
at a little earlier, Dr. K is that if, if there is no God
2481
01:50:13.820 --> 01:50:16.320
establishing a right wrong, then there
2482
01:50:16.320 --> 01:50:19.490
is no right and wrong because there is no law that we're, we're
2483
01:50:19.490 --> 01:50:21.840
, we're conforming ourselves too.
2484
01:50:21.840 --> 01:50:24.490
We're just doing stuff. All right. Now, if you believe this
2485
01:50:24.490 --> 01:50:26.160
sort of evolutionary perspective,
2486
01:50:26.160 --> 01:50:29.860
I don't know. Take it as a whole. I don't know. Not the way
2487
01:50:29.860 --> 01:50:32.000
that our Alexis take it as a
2488
01:50:32.000 --> 01:50:34.530
grand explanation of pretty much everything. It's not an
2489
01:50:34.530 --> 01:50:36.080
explanation of everything. It's an explanation
2490
01:50:36.080 --> 01:50:38.970
of the variance of life on earth. Because evolution does, I was
2491
01:50:38.970 --> 01:50:40.080
thinking about my dog,
2492
01:50:40.080 --> 01:50:42.220
thinking about Pablo, and I was thinking, why does he have sex
2493
01:50:42.220 --> 01:50:43.680
with other dogs? Why does he,
2494
01:50:43.680 --> 01:50:46.980
why does he protect his puppies? Yeah. Yeah. Why does he do
2495
01:50:46.980 --> 01:50:49.280
these things that it's somewhat in
2496
01:50:49.280 --> 01:50:53.200
Dr. K's example where he takes care of things. He takes care of
2497
01:50:53.200 --> 01:50:54.320
me when I'm not in the house,
2498
01:50:54.320 --> 01:50:56.880
if someone comes in and my girlfriend's there, he takes care of
2499
01:50:56.880 --> 01:50:58.880
my girlfriend he box. So anyone,
2500
01:50:58.880 --> 01:51:01.810
she's, she's in a home alone. So he seems to be expressing some
2501
01:51:01.810 --> 01:51:04.320
form of morality. He seems to
2502
01:51:04.320 --> 01:51:07.220
understand his own sort of idea of right and wrong. But I, as
2503
01:51:07.220 --> 01:51:09.600
well, I wouldn't characterize it that,
2504
01:51:09.600 --> 01:51:12.640
that way. As if he's thinking, I ought to do this. And if I don
2505
01:51:12.640 --> 01:51:14.240
't do that, then I'm doing something
2506
01:51:14.240 --> 01:51:17.940
wrong. I think animals have instincts that they're in, in, in,
2507
01:51:17.940 --> 01:51:19.680
imbued with that can be influenced
2508
01:51:19.680 --> 01:51:23.040
by natural factors to some degree, I guess. But they are made
2509
01:51:23.040 --> 01:51:25.200
for purposes. And this is the reason
2510
01:51:25.200 --> 01:51:28.680
that many of the creatures act the way they do is because of
2511
01:51:28.680 --> 01:51:30.960
these very sophisticated instincts
2512
01:51:30.960 --> 01:51:35.000
that allow them to get along in life and do well. I don't have
2513
01:51:35.000 --> 01:51:36.800
any reason I think that there's,
2514
01:51:36.800 --> 01:51:39.580
yeah, survive and reproduce, of course. But I don't have any
2515
01:51:39.580 --> 01:51:41.360
reason I think that they're thinking,
2516
01:51:41.360 --> 01:51:45.330
I'm doing the moral thing. And if they didn't do the thing that
2517
01:51:45.330 --> 01:51:47.840
we would be, it would be appropriate to
2518
01:51:47.840 --> 01:51:50.790
which it cures them of doing something immoral for us. History
2519
01:51:50.790 --> 01:51:53.680
has almost shown that even in times
2520
01:51:53.680 --> 01:51:56.400
where we look back and go, that was not the moral thing, like,
2521
01:51:56.400 --> 01:51:58.640
you know, that season in World War II.
2522
01:51:58.640 --> 01:52:02.530
They acted in a way that was help them survive in the context
2523
01:52:02.530 --> 01:52:04.560
they're in. So the Nazi that would,
2524
01:52:04.560 --> 01:52:06.640
you know, go to the concentration camp that come home and be
2525
01:52:06.640 --> 01:52:07.840
really nice to his family. He thought
2526
01:52:07.840 --> 01:52:10.520
he was doing the right thing. This is why one of the reasons I
2527
01:52:10.520 --> 01:52:12.080
think this is the evolutionary
2528
01:52:12.080 --> 01:52:15.380
explanation is inadequate, okay? Because it seems that there
2529
01:52:15.380 --> 01:52:17.280
are lots of things that people do that
2530
01:52:17.280 --> 01:52:20.450
seem to be good for them or for their tribe that character
2531
01:52:20.450 --> 01:52:23.040
istically will look at and will assess it.
2532
01:52:23.040 --> 01:52:26.700
And the assessment is that that is wrong. It's evil. It's
2533
01:52:26.700 --> 01:52:28.800
wicked. And I think that our assessments
2534
01:52:28.800 --> 01:52:32.300
are reliable in that regard, okay, that we have moral intu
2535
01:52:32.300 --> 01:52:34.240
itions that allow us to see things
2536
01:52:34.240 --> 01:52:36.770
that are real about that. And these things are relatively
2537
01:52:36.770 --> 01:52:38.480
universal. I mean, it doesn't matter where
2538
01:52:38.480 --> 01:52:40.840
you live or when you live, people are asking the question about
2539
01:52:40.840 --> 01:52:42.800
the problem of evil in the world, okay?
2540
01:52:42.800 --> 01:52:45.500
And I think it's an information of what evil was, seems to
2541
01:52:45.500 --> 01:52:47.200
change over time because me,
2542
01:52:47.200 --> 01:52:49.830
I mean, I wouldn't be sad at this table many a couple hundred
2543
01:52:49.830 --> 01:52:51.200
years ago because I'm black
2544
01:52:51.200 --> 01:52:55.000
and everybody at the time thought that that was the right thing
2545
01:52:55.000 --> 01:52:56.000
. They didn't think that
2546
01:52:56.000 --> 01:52:58.360
was an evil thing at the time. Well, everybody at the time didn
2547
01:52:58.360 --> 01:53:00.080
't think that. There are going to be
2548
01:53:00.080 --> 01:53:03.720
social moorays and that are going to change over time and do
2549
01:53:03.720 --> 01:53:05.600
people do respond in different ways.
2550
01:53:05.600 --> 01:53:08.580
But just because you have variations in the way people believe
2551
01:53:08.580 --> 01:53:09.520
about morality,
2552
01:53:09.520 --> 01:53:13.010
it doesn't mean that there isn't a morality that's a sound
2553
01:53:13.010 --> 01:53:14.720
morality. And Lewis is,
2554
01:53:14.720 --> 01:53:17.660
see us Lewis has done a study of this, looked at the kinds of
2555
01:53:17.660 --> 01:53:20.080
things that seem to transcend
2556
01:53:20.080 --> 01:53:23.380
culture in terms of assessments, moral assessments that seem to
2557
01:53:23.380 --> 01:53:25.200
be true about every culture.
2558
01:53:25.200 --> 01:53:29.200
A lot of times the differences are not differences in moral
2559
01:53:29.200 --> 01:53:32.160
facts, but they're like the
2560
01:53:32.160 --> 01:53:35.520
morality has actually changed, but a difference in perception,
2561
01:53:35.520 --> 01:53:38.080
okay? So what counts as
2562
01:53:38.080 --> 01:53:42.100
heroism in some cases would not count as heroism in other cases
2563
01:53:42.100 --> 01:53:43.920
, even though heroism is considered a
2564
01:53:43.920 --> 01:53:46.780
noble kind of thing. I've been waiting for an opportunity to re
2565
01:53:46.780 --> 01:53:48.400
wind to the fact that we just brushed
2566
01:53:48.400 --> 01:53:53.200
over to of what I think are the best available, at least first
2567
01:53:53.200 --> 01:53:55.760
again to mine explanations as to
2568
01:53:55.760 --> 01:54:00.760
why children get cancer. And I just wondered as a question
2569
01:54:00.760 --> 01:54:04.560
whether you consider whether
2570
01:54:04.560 --> 01:54:07.500
your explanation sounds to you, as your explanation sounds to
2571
01:54:07.500 --> 01:54:09.200
you, as I think both of them sound to
2572
01:54:09.200 --> 01:54:11.820
me and I don't know how they sound to you, the idea that the
2573
01:54:11.820 --> 01:54:14.880
thing that we are most fundamentally
2574
01:54:14.880 --> 01:54:18.400
confronted with, I think on an existential level is suffering.
2575
01:54:18.400 --> 01:54:21.040
And there's our own suffering,
2576
01:54:21.040 --> 01:54:23.110
and then there's the suffering of others, and the seemingly
2577
01:54:23.110 --> 01:54:24.880
meaningless suffering of a child who's
2578
01:54:24.880 --> 01:54:30.440
undergoing cancer and does not survive it. And I'm told that in
2579
01:54:30.440 --> 01:54:36.960
the face of such existential tragedy
2580
01:54:36.960 --> 01:54:40.580
I turn to religion to give us a sort of sense of fulfillment
2581
01:54:40.580 --> 01:54:42.400
and sense of explanation,
2582
01:54:42.400 --> 01:54:45.570
but when asked about the mechanism of how, I'm told it's
2583
01:54:45.570 --> 01:54:48.240
because at some undisclosed
2584
01:54:48.240 --> 01:54:51.100
number of years ago somebody committed sin against God, and
2585
01:54:51.100 --> 01:54:52.960
that's why your child has now died
2586
01:54:52.960 --> 01:54:56.130
of cancer, there are millions of people who listen to this show
2587
01:54:56.130 --> 01:54:57.280
, there will be people listening to
2588
01:54:57.280 --> 01:54:59.520
this who's children have died of cancer, I wonder if that
2589
01:54:59.520 --> 01:55:01.040
brings them any kind of consolation,
2590
01:55:01.040 --> 01:55:04.680
or similarly the idea that maybe it's some disgruntled angels
2591
01:55:04.680 --> 01:55:05.920
who didn't want to come down to
2592
01:55:05.920 --> 01:55:08.120
earth for too long, and so if anything you're actually doing
2593
01:55:08.120 --> 01:55:09.760
them a favor by killing them of cancer,
2594
01:55:09.760 --> 01:55:11.120
I don't know if that's bringing the kind of...
2595
01:55:11.120 --> 01:55:13.290
Well I don't know what you're looking for, what's your answer
2596
01:55:13.290 --> 01:55:13.600
to that?
2597
01:55:13.600 --> 01:55:16.770
I don't think I have one, but I don't like people professing
2598
01:55:16.770 --> 01:55:17.840
that they do have an answer,
2599
01:55:17.840 --> 01:55:21.000
but when it comes down to it, actually saying something which I
2600
01:55:21.000 --> 01:55:22.720
think will provide the opposite effect,
2601
01:55:22.720 --> 01:55:25.080
which, and I don't mean this personally, I mean as a point of
2602
01:55:25.080 --> 01:55:26.480
ridiculous explanation,
2603
01:55:26.480 --> 01:55:29.360
the idea that this is going to come for everyone's going to get
2604
01:55:29.360 --> 01:55:30.080
transferred to this.
2605
01:55:30.080 --> 01:55:30.640
Sorry, so.
2606
01:55:30.640 --> 01:55:35.480
The idea that this even approximates an explanation as to why
2607
01:55:35.480 --> 01:55:37.360
this happens, I would ask you to
2608
01:55:37.360 --> 01:55:41.800
consider what you find more likely if we assume that we are
2609
01:55:41.800 --> 01:55:44.000
essentially existing here as
2610
01:55:44.000 --> 01:55:48.270
accidental, accidental organisms just competing in a struggle
2611
01:55:48.270 --> 01:55:50.160
for survival with no endowed
2612
01:55:50.160 --> 01:55:53.050
meaning or supervision, what might we expect to find? And I
2613
01:55:53.050 --> 01:55:54.480
would ask what you would expect to find
2614
01:55:54.480 --> 01:55:56.840
if we were created with purpose by loving God who wants us all
2615
01:55:56.840 --> 01:55:58.160
to come into communion with him,
2616
01:55:58.160 --> 01:56:01.440
but for some reason things are necessary that we exist in this
2617
01:56:01.440 --> 01:56:03.440
veil of tears, in this material world first.
2618
01:56:03.440 --> 01:56:05.040
What would you expect to find?
2619
01:56:05.040 --> 01:56:08.650
I don't think, and then look at what you do find, look at what
2620
01:56:08.650 --> 01:56:10.400
you do find in the natural world,
2621
01:56:10.400 --> 01:56:12.980
even if you just take into consideration non-human animal
2622
01:56:12.980 --> 01:56:13.600
suffering,
2623
01:56:14.720 --> 01:56:19.170
just an unfathomable amount of negative experience, the
2624
01:56:19.170 --> 01:56:20.400
seemingly no reason,
2625
01:56:20.400 --> 01:56:22.760
not to mention the fact that children are getting cancer, as
2626
01:56:22.760 --> 01:56:24.960
you say, and as you've already alluded to,
2627
01:56:24.960 --> 01:56:27.320
there are evils that humans commit like the Holocaust, but
2628
01:56:27.320 --> 01:56:28.320
there are evils which they don't
2629
01:56:28.320 --> 01:56:30.640
like earthquakes and tsunamis and the lying human.
2630
01:56:30.640 --> 01:56:34.730
Why don't we think we would expect to see any of this if we
2631
01:56:34.730 --> 01:56:35.920
assume that hypothesis,
2632
01:56:35.920 --> 01:56:38.910
but if we assume that we are just accidental existing organisms
2633
01:56:38.910 --> 01:56:40.240
in a struggle for survival?
2634
01:56:41.120 --> 01:56:44.320
Not only do we explain this, but we also come to expect it, so
2635
01:56:44.320 --> 01:56:45.680
I think it provides a much better
2636
01:56:45.680 --> 01:56:50.240
explanation that is not to say justification. The idea, we were
2637
01:56:50.240 --> 01:56:51.120
talking about evolution,
2638
01:56:51.120 --> 01:56:53.680
you said the problem that you have with the Darwinian worldview
2639
01:56:53.680 --> 01:56:55.600
, is that it seems to say that
2640
01:56:55.600 --> 01:56:58.130
it seems to favor survival of the fittest, and yet there are
2641
01:56:58.130 --> 01:56:59.600
things which evolution seems to
2642
01:56:59.600 --> 01:57:02.000
point to that we would morally condemn. Well, of course,
2643
01:57:02.000 --> 01:57:03.600
because evolution by natural selection
2644
01:57:03.600 --> 01:57:06.790
is an explanation for how things got the way they were. It's in
2645
01:57:06.790 --> 01:57:08.160
no way a justification for
2646
01:57:08.160 --> 01:57:11.080
behaviors. It doesn't even function that way. No scientific
2647
01:57:11.080 --> 01:57:13.360
theory of why things happen are any kind
2648
01:57:13.360 --> 01:57:16.900
of justification, any more than Newton's laws of gravity are a
2649
01:57:16.900 --> 01:57:19.040
justification, a moral justification
2650
01:57:19.040 --> 01:57:21.570
for the motion of the planet. Of course, it's not the case, it
2651
01:57:21.570 --> 01:57:22.720
's just an explanation.
2652
01:57:22.720 --> 01:57:26.060
But I just really want to drive home at this point that it has
2653
01:57:26.060 --> 01:57:27.840
to do more. If you want
2654
01:57:27.840 --> 01:57:30.490
religious traditions to do what you claim that they do, which
2655
01:57:30.490 --> 01:57:32.160
is provide existential comfort for
2656
01:57:32.160 --> 01:57:34.960
people who are suffering, you have to do more in the face of
2657
01:57:34.960 --> 01:57:36.880
children dying of cancer than some
2658
01:57:36.880 --> 01:57:41.450
reference to mythical human beings who existed in a way that is
2659
01:57:41.450 --> 01:57:43.680
completely unintelligible.
2660
01:57:43.680 --> 01:57:47.600
There's a lot there, okay. I don't expect it could be comfort
2661
01:57:47.600 --> 01:57:49.840
to anybody to say who's suffering from
2662
01:57:49.840 --> 01:57:53.620
whatever to say that there was a fall, okay. The fall is just
2663
01:57:53.620 --> 01:57:56.320
the explanation for what went wrong
2664
01:57:56.320 --> 01:57:59.870
and why there is wrong in the world. Like I said earlier, doesn
2665
01:57:59.870 --> 01:58:00.960
't matter where you live or when
2666
01:58:00.960 --> 01:58:03.980
you live, everybody knows something's wrong. And the way they
2667
01:58:03.980 --> 01:58:05.680
express that concern about something
2668
01:58:05.680 --> 01:58:08.910
wrong is in moral terms, the world is not the way it ought to
2669
01:58:08.910 --> 01:58:10.560
be, should be different.
2670
01:58:10.560 --> 01:58:12.980
There are, and then when you give examples of it, sometimes
2671
01:58:12.980 --> 01:58:15.040
there's natural evil. But generally,
2672
01:58:15.040 --> 01:58:18.410
it's examples of moral evil, what we will call moral evil, okay
2673
01:58:18.410 --> 01:58:21.040
, things that people shouldn't do,
2674
01:58:21.040 --> 01:58:22.960
okay. That's why I particularly avoided those.
2675
01:58:22.960 --> 01:58:30.320
No, right. You didn't include any examples. But the implication
2676
01:58:30.320 --> 01:58:32.720
is, and this is where Richard Dawkins
2677
01:58:32.720 --> 01:58:35.370
is famous statement that this is exactly the kind of world we'd
2678
01:58:35.370 --> 01:58:37.840
expect. If there was at the basis,
2679
01:58:37.840 --> 01:58:42.000
you know, no design, no justice, no evil, no good, nothing but
2680
01:58:42.000 --> 01:58:42.480
buying.
2681
01:58:42.480 --> 01:58:45.920
It'll listen to this. Well, I actually think this isn't the
2682
01:58:45.920 --> 01:58:48.080
world that we find when he just described.
2683
01:58:48.080 --> 01:58:50.750
Yes, it's a world filled with suffering and there's a way of
2684
01:58:50.750 --> 01:58:52.560
explaining that, which you just did.
2685
01:58:52.560 --> 01:58:56.160
There's also another way of explaining it that has a solution,
2686
01:58:56.160 --> 01:58:56.560
okay.
2687
01:58:56.560 --> 01:58:58.560
What is that explanation?
2688
01:58:58.560 --> 01:59:01.340
Just pardon me, that God is in the process of solving the
2689
01:59:01.340 --> 01:59:02.640
problem of evil over time.
2690
01:59:02.640 --> 01:59:05.300
I mean, that's why the evil's there in the first place. You
2691
01:59:05.300 --> 01:59:06.000
said the fool.
2692
01:59:06.000 --> 01:59:08.100
And I don't mean to interrupt, but you said it, you've
2693
01:59:08.100 --> 01:59:09.360
referenced the fool twice now.
2694
01:59:09.360 --> 01:59:12.080
And the last time I tried this, it seemed like you sort of said
2695
01:59:12.080 --> 01:59:12.800
that you don't really know.
2696
01:59:12.800 --> 01:59:16.240
But if the fool is... I wasn't giving particular details about
2697
01:59:16.240 --> 01:59:17.360
the ancestry of human
2698
01:59:17.360 --> 01:59:20.240
evolution. What is the fool? Historically, what is the fool?
2699
01:59:20.240 --> 01:59:23.940
The followers when our first parents, characteristically known
2700
01:59:23.940 --> 01:59:25.440
as Adam and Eve in the story,
2701
01:59:25.440 --> 01:59:29.960
and the account of reality, rebelled against God and when they
2702
01:59:29.960 --> 01:59:31.200
rebelled at God,
2703
01:59:31.200 --> 01:59:34.360
they disobeyed him as what's important. He had given them
2704
01:59:34.360 --> 01:59:36.720
restriction. They disobeyed that.
2705
01:59:36.720 --> 01:59:40.080
And when they disobeyed that, they broke their relationship
2706
01:59:40.080 --> 01:59:41.760
with God through rebellion,
2707
01:59:41.760 --> 01:59:44.400
they broke their relationship with each other, they broke their
2708
01:59:44.400 --> 01:59:46.240
relationship with the environment.
2709
01:59:46.240 --> 01:59:49.450
All of that had these kind of cosmic effects. There's a
2710
01:59:49.450 --> 01:59:51.360
solution though. That's just the
2711
01:59:51.360 --> 01:59:53.480
first three chapters. Do you know what the pond was if it is
2712
01:59:53.480 --> 01:59:54.320
the thought?
2713
01:59:54.320 --> 01:59:59.040
Okay. The principle issue is rebellion or disobedience. Okay.
2714
01:59:59.040 --> 01:59:59.760
There are different ways as
2715
01:59:59.760 --> 02:00:02.660
characterized, but that's the point. In my view, the
2716
02:00:02.660 --> 02:00:03.680
disobedience.
2717
02:00:03.680 --> 02:00:06.560
Okay. Of what the pardon me? Disobedience of what?
2718
02:00:06.560 --> 02:00:09.840
What was it? God's disabled? Not to do one thing. What was the
2719
02:00:09.840 --> 02:00:09.840
thing?
2720
02:00:09.840 --> 02:00:13.200
What was the thing? The tree of the knowledge of good and evil
2721
02:00:13.200 --> 02:00:14.080
and they disobeyed.
2722
02:00:14.080 --> 02:00:16.700
Do you interpret that literally? Like an actual tree and an
2723
02:00:16.700 --> 02:00:17.680
actual tree.
2724
02:00:17.680 --> 02:00:20.620
I do take that as a straightforward account, but that's not the
2725
02:00:20.620 --> 02:00:21.680
important part. I don't want to
2726
02:00:21.680 --> 02:00:25.060
to get cancer because somebody hired me. So children get cancer
2727
02:00:25.060 --> 02:00:26.240
because a few million years ago,
2728
02:00:26.240 --> 02:00:28.080
someone made it free. Let me just back up and give you the
2729
02:00:28.080 --> 02:00:28.880
entire account.
2730
02:00:28.880 --> 02:00:31.840
Okay. Please. This would be, I think, more help.
2731
02:00:31.840 --> 02:00:33.870
I'm not trying to be difficult, by the way. I just really, I
2732
02:00:33.870 --> 02:00:34.960
don't want to just brush over
2733
02:00:34.960 --> 02:00:36.970
these points when we're interested. I mean, people listening
2734
02:00:36.970 --> 02:00:38.400
might be like, I've never understood
2735
02:00:38.400 --> 02:00:40.530
what I understand. They don't even know what it's like. The
2736
02:00:40.530 --> 02:00:41.840
point I'm making is that there was a
2737
02:00:41.840 --> 02:00:45.170
disobedience by human beings that had an impact on their
2738
02:00:45.170 --> 02:00:47.120
relationship with God, which they were
2739
02:00:47.120 --> 02:00:51.070
created for and had an impact on the rest of the world. And
2740
02:00:51.070 --> 02:00:53.840
since then, that problem of evil
2741
02:00:53.840 --> 02:00:58.000
broadly read. Since then, the world's been broken and God has a
2742
02:00:58.000 --> 02:01:00.080
plan for bringing that back together,
2743
02:01:00.080 --> 02:01:03.250
not only for making the world whole again, but also for
2744
02:01:03.250 --> 02:01:05.200
bringing human beings back in proper
2745
02:01:05.200 --> 02:01:08.070
relationship with him when they're in rebellion with him. And
2746
02:01:08.070 --> 02:01:09.440
this is where Jesus comes in.
2747
02:01:09.440 --> 02:01:13.880
Now, I've written a piece called "The Story Reality" a book
2748
02:01:13.880 --> 02:01:15.760
that's meant to characterize that in fairly
2749
02:01:15.760 --> 02:01:18.770
clear terms and more general terms. It doesn't meant to answer
2750
02:01:18.770 --> 02:01:20.400
all of these questions because some of
2751
02:01:20.400 --> 02:01:24.610
them, frankly, are imponderables. But the larger picture can be
2752
02:01:24.610 --> 02:01:26.720
understood and is in the story. It's
2753
02:01:26.720 --> 02:01:29.310
in the account of reality and the scriptures and the Hebrew
2754
02:01:29.310 --> 02:01:30.640
scriptures and in the Christian
2755
02:01:30.640 --> 02:01:34.410
scriptures. They form a unit. Okay. And these are the things
2756
02:01:34.410 --> 02:01:36.160
that Jesus spoke to. And Jesus
2757
02:01:36.160 --> 02:01:39.040
took these things seriously based on what he had to say about
2758
02:01:39.040 --> 02:01:41.280
these particular things. Okay.
2759
02:01:41.280 --> 02:01:43.880
So because we're broadly speaking now, because we live in a
2760
02:01:43.880 --> 02:01:46.320
broken world, there is an answer that
2761
02:01:46.320 --> 02:01:49.200
we have to that. We have a possible answer. You know, it was a
2762
02:01:49.200 --> 02:01:51.760
Bertrand Russell who famously said,
2763
02:01:51.760 --> 02:01:54.310
how are you going to talk about God when you're kneeling at the
2764
02:01:54.310 --> 02:01:55.600
bed of a dying child, which I
2765
02:01:55.600 --> 02:01:59.030
think is very emotionally compelling. But I listened to
2766
02:01:59.030 --> 02:02:01.440
philosopher William Mike Craig, who you
2767
02:02:01.440 --> 02:02:04.140
also know, I think, who said, what is Bertrand Russell? The
2768
02:02:04.140 --> 02:02:05.280
atheist going to say when he's
2769
02:02:05.280 --> 02:02:08.460
kneeling at the bed of a dying child. He's talking like too bad
2770
02:02:08.460 --> 02:02:10.240
. That's just the way it goes.
2771
02:02:10.240 --> 02:02:14.480
There is no answer that he has to come with your responses off.
2772
02:02:14.480 --> 02:02:17.600
Sure. First of all, Alex, I want to
2773
02:02:17.600 --> 02:02:24.560
thank you for bringing up and being a bit bulldogish. I mean,
2774
02:02:24.560 --> 02:02:25.680
that in a good way. You grabbed
2775
02:02:25.680 --> 02:02:27.800
something. You were like, this is not okay. Well, we forget
2776
02:02:27.800 --> 02:02:29.040
that people are listening to this.
2777
02:02:29.040 --> 02:02:31.640
Your children have died of cancer. I totally get it. I think we
2778
02:02:31.640 --> 02:02:32.880
just need to keep it in mind, you know,
2779
02:02:32.880 --> 02:02:37.170
100%. So I'm really glad you said that because I realized that
2780
02:02:37.170 --> 02:02:39.200
I offered a terrible example.
2781
02:02:39.200 --> 02:02:42.560
And I say this as someone I can remember the day I was a third
2782
02:02:42.560 --> 02:02:44.720
year medical student on my first
2783
02:02:44.720 --> 02:02:48.030
pediatric rotation. I was working in the ICU overnight and
2784
02:02:48.030 --> 02:02:50.800
there was a nine year old child who had
2785
02:02:50.800 --> 02:02:56.970
I think lymphoma. And I watched and was with their parents as
2786
02:02:56.970 --> 02:02:59.600
that child moved towards death.
2787
02:02:59.600 --> 02:03:04.150
I have worked in offices where people will come into my office
2788
02:03:04.150 --> 02:03:06.160
and they'll say,
2789
02:03:06.960 --> 02:03:09.790
you know, they'll they'll ask me about karma and they'll be
2790
02:03:09.790 --> 02:03:11.840
like, I was nine years old when I was
2791
02:03:11.840 --> 02:03:15.550
sexually assaulted. Are you telling me that this is like part
2792
02:03:15.550 --> 02:03:17.120
of purpose or whatever?
2793
02:03:17.120 --> 02:03:23.600
I also remember when I was in India. One of my best friends,
2794
02:03:23.600 --> 02:03:24.960
the first time I went to India,
2795
02:03:24.960 --> 02:03:27.050
I spent about seven years studying to become a monk. I
2796
02:03:27.050 --> 02:03:29.840
discovered a lot of really cool stuff,
2797
02:03:29.840 --> 02:03:34.140
like meditation, had some transcendental experiences altered my
2798
02:03:34.140 --> 02:03:35.840
worldview. And one of my best
2799
02:03:35.840 --> 02:03:38.790
friends who was also a very accomplished meditator, I kind of
2800
02:03:38.790 --> 02:03:40.320
got to talking about religion.
2801
02:03:40.320 --> 02:03:42.970
And I was like, you know, what do you think about like Hinduism
2802
02:03:42.970 --> 02:03:44.160
and some of these concepts?
2803
02:03:44.160 --> 02:03:49.260
And he said, I can't accept any religion that says, if you were
2804
02:03:49.260 --> 02:03:50.960
raped, it's your fault.
2805
02:03:50.960 --> 02:03:55.690
Yes. So that stuck with me. And so for a long time at the very
2806
02:03:55.690 --> 02:03:56.880
beginning, Stephen asked me a
2807
02:03:56.880 --> 02:03:59.250
question, am I Hindu? I mean, am I religious? And I guess I
2808
02:03:59.250 --> 02:04:02.080
would say yes. So that thought really
2809
02:04:02.080 --> 02:04:05.660
stuck with me. I think for a long time, I was an atheist. I
2810
02:04:05.660 --> 02:04:08.000
think I'm still an atheist. I think there are a
2811
02:04:08.000 --> 02:04:10.360
couple of other things that are a little bit unusual. So like
2812
02:04:10.360 --> 02:04:11.600
people think like in the West,
2813
02:04:11.600 --> 02:04:14.770
we think that atheism, polyphism and monotheism are
2814
02:04:14.770 --> 02:04:18.400
contradictions. We don't really think that
2815
02:04:18.400 --> 02:04:22.390
in Hinduism, like those things can coexist. So and what I'm
2816
02:04:22.390 --> 02:04:24.800
really grateful for you for is because I
2817
02:04:24.800 --> 02:04:28.000
think when I'm so glad you said that, because I think when I
2818
02:04:28.000 --> 02:04:30.160
offered the example that I offered,
2819
02:04:32.240 --> 02:04:34.010
it's so interesting because I was thinking about why I
2820
02:04:34.010 --> 02:04:36.960
mentioned that we have a membership.
2821
02:04:36.960 --> 02:04:40.320
And the reason I mentioned it is because this is this is one of
2822
02:04:40.320 --> 02:04:42.640
those things that I've lectured about
2823
02:04:42.640 --> 02:04:46.940
for four to six hours. And if you listen to that lecture, then
2824
02:04:46.940 --> 02:04:49.600
you will understand the context that
2825
02:04:49.600 --> 02:04:52.930
I'm coming from. But without that context, and if you sort of
2826
02:04:52.930 --> 02:04:54.960
assume there's so many axioms about
2827
02:04:54.960 --> 02:04:59.550
morality and deserving, that that that example without the
2828
02:04:59.550 --> 02:05:02.160
appropriate context sounds awful. It's
2829
02:05:02.160 --> 02:05:04.810
like your kid died at the age of one. Oh, there's some greater
2830
02:05:04.810 --> 02:05:06.720
purpose. You just don't know what it is.
2831
02:05:06.720 --> 02:05:11.000
Fuck you. Right. That is not comforting at all. So here's where
2832
02:05:11.000 --> 02:05:12.960
I am now. I really think this is,
2833
02:05:12.960 --> 02:05:16.820
I think God was good in the sense that it helps people. I also
2834
02:05:16.820 --> 02:05:18.560
think it's true, but
2835
02:05:18.560 --> 02:05:22.080
here's kind of where I am now. So that was sort of my journey.
2836
02:05:22.080 --> 02:05:23.280
I realized it was out of order,
2837
02:05:24.160 --> 02:05:28.320
transcendental experience, karma seems awful. There's this
2838
02:05:28.320 --> 02:05:29.600
concept of deserving.
2839
02:05:29.600 --> 02:05:33.910
Then many years later, through practice with people who have
2840
02:05:33.910 --> 02:05:36.080
been sexually assaulted and watching
2841
02:05:36.080 --> 02:05:38.810
children die in the pediatric ICU, grappling with these
2842
02:05:38.810 --> 02:05:40.640
problems, not just like there are people
2843
02:05:40.640 --> 02:05:43.290
out there. It's like you're in the room with these people when
2844
02:05:43.290 --> 02:05:44.800
their child is dying. What do you
2845
02:05:44.800 --> 02:05:47.970
say to them? And even more so now is a psychiatrist with end of
2846
02:05:47.970 --> 02:05:49.520
life care and things like that.
2847
02:05:50.080 --> 02:05:53.680
So I think the first thing to understand, first question that I
2848
02:05:53.680 --> 02:05:55.600
have for you is when I say the word
2849
02:05:55.600 --> 02:06:01.660
"garma," what does that mean? To you. I don't know. Okay. I don
2850
02:06:01.660 --> 02:06:02.560
't know what you mean,
2851
02:06:02.560 --> 02:06:05.230
what do you mean by that. So I think the first thing to
2852
02:06:05.230 --> 02:06:06.800
understand about garma is it's just the
2853
02:06:06.800 --> 02:06:10.120
principle of cause and effect. So when a child dies of cancer,
2854
02:06:10.120 --> 02:06:12.080
what would you say is the cause of their
2855
02:06:12.080 --> 02:06:17.290
death? Well, I don't know about the signs of cancer very much,
2856
02:06:17.290 --> 02:06:19.280
but I would suppose it's the cancer.
2857
02:06:19.280 --> 02:06:22.160
Perfect. Right. So that is in accordance with the law of garma.
2858
02:06:22.160 --> 02:06:24.000
Now, what is the reason they got cancer?
2859
02:06:24.000 --> 02:06:29.100
I don't know. Okay. I mean, what if pick any reason you like it
2860
02:06:29.100 --> 02:06:30.240
? There could be a genetic
2861
02:06:30.240 --> 02:06:33.660
mutation and random chance things like that. So what I think
2862
02:06:33.660 --> 02:06:37.280
that all garma is is action and reaction.
2863
02:06:37.280 --> 02:06:41.590
That's it. So if you understand the doctrine of garma, what it
2864
02:06:41.590 --> 02:06:43.600
helps you do is see the way that
2865
02:06:43.600 --> 02:06:47.360
causes and effects link to each other. It does not have
2866
02:06:47.360 --> 02:06:51.200
anything to do with deserving more so than
2867
02:06:51.200 --> 02:06:54.530
if I have a genetic mutation and I wind up with cancer, that is
2868
02:06:54.530 --> 02:06:56.160
an action that has an effect.
2869
02:06:56.160 --> 02:06:59.770
This is why I was reluctant to engage with morality is because
2870
02:06:59.770 --> 02:07:01.040
I think there are certain
2871
02:07:01.040 --> 02:07:05.410
assumptions that I think come from this kind of Abrahamic or
2872
02:07:05.410 --> 02:07:07.760
Judeo Christian worldview
2873
02:07:07.760 --> 02:07:12.640
that get injected into these concepts like garma and tarma,
2874
02:07:12.640 --> 02:07:14.800
which is why I hate translating them
2875
02:07:14.800 --> 02:07:18.120
because anytime I translate something, it's going to be filled
2876
02:07:18.120 --> 02:07:19.280
in. So you really have to
2877
02:07:19.280 --> 02:07:22.440
understand garma, but I would say all garma is devoid of,
2878
02:07:22.440 --> 02:07:24.880
remove it, denude it of all morality,
2879
02:07:24.880 --> 02:07:30.140
remove it of all deserve beyond simple Newtonian mechanics and
2880
02:07:30.140 --> 02:07:32.480
that actions have consequences.
2881
02:07:32.480 --> 02:07:35.800
Now the reason that this is helpful, now I'm realizing I'm
2882
02:07:35.800 --> 02:07:38.000
making a functional claim here,
2883
02:07:38.000 --> 02:07:41.190
not a claim about philosophical truth because I don't know what
2884
02:07:41.190 --> 02:07:42.720
else to call it. I do think it's
2885
02:07:42.720 --> 02:07:44.640
philosophically true, but that's not what I'm talking about
2886
02:07:44.640 --> 02:07:48.560
right here, is that when you're
2887
02:07:48.560 --> 02:07:54.170
sitting with a human being, because your primary concern is
2888
02:07:54.170 --> 02:07:58.480
when a child with cancer dies or is dying,
2889
02:07:58.480 --> 02:08:02.410
how do you deal, how do you, there are people who are suffering
2890
02:08:02.410 --> 02:08:03.920
, if we're not careful, we're going to
2891
02:08:03.920 --> 02:08:08.010
hurt them, right? That's what you're saying. That's one thing.
2892
02:08:08.010 --> 02:08:09.200
Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying,
2893
02:08:09.200 --> 02:08:12.640
right? So I think what I sort of fit is how it makes people
2894
02:08:12.640 --> 02:08:14.080
feel, but there's also the
2895
02:08:14.080 --> 02:08:17.010
literal explanation for why they suffer. It's one thing to say
2896
02:08:17.010 --> 02:08:20.160
that this religious narrative will
2897
02:08:20.160 --> 02:08:22.910
bring you some comfort, but it's another thing as well. I think
2898
02:08:22.910 --> 02:08:24.080
that's something you need to keep
2899
02:08:24.080 --> 02:08:26.870
in mind, but you're saying more than that as a religious person
2900
02:08:26.870 --> 02:08:28.080
, you're not just saying that this
2901
02:08:28.080 --> 02:08:29.860
narrative will bring you the comfort, you're saying this is why
2902
02:08:29.860 --> 02:08:31.360
it's happening. This is why your child
2903
02:08:31.360 --> 02:08:35.210
has cancer. So what I would say, so here's my kind of response
2904
02:08:35.210 --> 02:08:36.880
to that. So the first is
2905
02:08:36.880 --> 02:08:41.980
I think that when I sit with people who were sexually used at
2906
02:08:41.980 --> 02:08:44.080
the age of nine, didn't do anything to
2907
02:08:44.080 --> 02:08:46.080
deserve it, you know, people will say like, oh, like, you have
2908
02:08:46.080 --> 02:08:47.360
to be careful what you wear and stuff
2909
02:08:47.360 --> 02:08:49.960
like that. I mean, I, you know, I have patients that were in
2910
02:08:49.960 --> 02:08:51.520
one'sies and overalls and all kinds of
2911
02:08:51.520 --> 02:08:55.440
nine at the age of nine. Yeah, people say all kinds of stuff.
2912
02:08:55.440 --> 02:08:57.280
So um,
2913
02:08:57.280 --> 02:09:00.700
and what I find with working with them and there's plenty of
2914
02:09:00.700 --> 02:09:02.400
data to back this up is that there's
2915
02:09:02.400 --> 02:09:07.610
a certain amount of meaning making that is necessary to comfort
2916
02:09:07.610 --> 02:09:10.000
those people to heal from that
2917
02:09:10.000 --> 02:09:14.190
thing. And the meaning making, if we're talking about empir
2918
02:09:14.190 --> 02:09:17.280
ically, making meaning out of things
2919
02:09:17.280 --> 02:09:20.560
that are bad is one of the ways that you alleviate suffering.
2920
02:09:20.560 --> 02:09:23.120
So one of the things that I find
2921
02:09:23.120 --> 02:09:26.670
is helpful as an option for that meaning making is
2922
02:09:26.670 --> 02:09:29.440
understanding the doctrine of government.
2923
02:09:29.440 --> 02:09:32.610
And when I share it with people, it doesn't work for everybody.
2924
02:09:32.610 --> 02:09:34.240
So from a clinic clinical standpoint,
2925
02:09:34.240 --> 02:09:37.060
I'm not saying you should believe in the doctrine of karma. I'm
2926
02:09:37.060 --> 02:09:38.560
just, and I'm not saying you should
2927
02:09:38.560 --> 02:09:40.630
believe in Christianity or anything like that. The important
2928
02:09:40.630 --> 02:09:42.560
thing is this is what the science shows is
2929
02:09:42.560 --> 02:09:46.610
you should make a concerted effort to make meaning. And because
2930
02:09:46.610 --> 02:09:48.960
of my background, because of my
2931
02:09:48.960 --> 02:09:52.400
expertise, helping people understand things from a karmic
2932
02:09:52.400 --> 02:09:54.800
perspective, I would say is helpful
2933
02:09:54.800 --> 02:09:59.350
about 80 to 90% of the time. But there's a very important
2934
02:09:59.350 --> 02:10:01.600
caveat there from a data standpoint
2935
02:10:01.600 --> 02:10:04.500
is that there is a huge selection bias to who comes into my
2936
02:10:04.500 --> 02:10:06.160
office. There's a good chance that
2937
02:10:06.160 --> 02:10:08.690
these people are already open to that concept and are
2938
02:10:08.690 --> 02:10:10.960
interested in learning more. So I make
2939
02:10:10.960 --> 02:10:15.680
no claims about that concept being superior to anything else.
2940
02:10:15.680 --> 02:10:18.240
But I think what we know from
2941
02:10:18.240 --> 02:10:22.930
psychiatry is that it's not so clear which one is the best, but
2942
02:10:22.930 --> 02:10:25.280
that you just have some way
2943
02:10:25.280 --> 02:10:28.150
of like making sense of what happens to you. And that's just
2944
02:10:28.150 --> 02:10:29.920
one thing that I think is
2945
02:10:29.920 --> 02:10:34.290
an option. And I happen to believe in the principle of cause
2946
02:10:34.290 --> 02:10:36.720
and effect, which is all karma is
2947
02:10:36.720 --> 02:10:39.630
there's no morality tied to sounds like it's saying that it's
2948
02:10:39.630 --> 02:10:41.600
just something that it just happens.
2949
02:10:41.600 --> 02:10:44.630
What do you mean? It just happens. It just happens. No,
2950
02:10:44.630 --> 02:10:47.200
absolutely not. I'm saying the exact opposite.
2951
02:10:47.200 --> 02:10:52.660
So it just happens does not imply a cause. I mean, it just
2952
02:10:52.660 --> 02:10:53.920
happens as the result of some
2953
02:10:53.920 --> 02:10:56.530
series of calls. It's like, why did children get cancer? It's
2954
02:10:56.530 --> 02:10:57.760
just the result of a series of
2955
02:10:57.760 --> 02:11:01.580
causes. Yes, that's it. Yes. There's no redemption. There's no
2956
02:11:01.580 --> 02:11:04.000
meaning. There's no intention. It's just
2957
02:11:04.000 --> 02:11:07.350
it just happens. And that's fine because I believe that's the
2958
02:11:07.350 --> 02:11:08.640
case. I think that's true.
2959
02:11:08.640 --> 02:11:12.480
No, no. I mean, I think that we have overwhelming evidence
2960
02:11:12.480 --> 02:11:16.480
overwhelming that if you have a
2961
02:11:16.480 --> 02:11:21.030
bracket negative mutation on both sides that you have a 98 to
2962
02:11:21.030 --> 02:11:23.280
99% chance of getting breast cancer
2963
02:11:23.280 --> 02:11:27.250
that having this mutation here warrants a prophylactic double
2964
02:11:27.250 --> 02:11:29.440
mastectomy, which means removing both
2965
02:11:29.440 --> 02:11:32.840
breasts before the cancer even shows up. But I think the reason
2966
02:11:32.840 --> 02:11:34.160
why I maybe I'm wrong about
2967
02:11:34.160 --> 02:11:35.880
this, but I think the reason you brought this up, Stephen was
2968
02:11:35.880 --> 02:11:37.200
not because you were interested
2969
02:11:37.200 --> 02:11:39.730
when you said like, I don't think you were to do like this, but
2970
02:11:39.730 --> 02:11:40.720
you know, why does the child get
2971
02:11:40.720 --> 02:11:43.140
cancer? Why would young Stephen have gotten cancer? I don't
2972
02:11:43.140 --> 02:11:44.800
think you mean in the scientific sense.
2973
02:11:44.800 --> 02:11:48.130
I don't think you mean literally explained to me the process by
2974
02:11:48.130 --> 02:11:50.080
which cancer develops in my brain
2975
02:11:50.080 --> 02:11:53.580
gives me leukemia. I think you mean, why does this happen if
2976
02:11:53.580 --> 02:11:55.840
being supervised? I mean, you asked it
2977
02:11:55.840 --> 02:11:59.810
to Greg in the context of religious supervision of the universe
2978
02:11:59.810 --> 02:12:04.080
. And I think the irony is that we're
2979
02:12:04.080 --> 02:12:07.310
in a context of a discussion where usually the boots on the
2980
02:12:07.310 --> 02:12:09.120
other foot. And I'm sort of being
2981
02:12:09.120 --> 02:12:13.540
told that as a as a non-religious person, as an atheist ag
2982
02:12:13.540 --> 02:12:16.400
nostic, I don't have a satisfying
2983
02:12:16.400 --> 02:12:19.650
explanation. You know, what am I going to say at the footstool
2984
02:12:19.650 --> 02:12:21.280
of somebody who's dying of cancer?
2985
02:12:21.280 --> 02:12:24.590
But it sounds to me, at least today, like we don't have a very
2986
02:12:24.590 --> 02:12:26.080
plausible alternative in
2987
02:12:26.080 --> 02:12:28.720
Christianity. For example, I did have a few questions, which
2988
02:12:28.720 --> 02:12:30.560
maybe I'll be permitted the time
2989
02:12:30.560 --> 02:12:34.060
to ask. And I don't want to bang on about this, but it's
2990
02:12:34.060 --> 02:12:36.720
important because this is, ultimately,
2991
02:12:36.720 --> 02:12:39.450
you're here to represent your view and a world view more
2992
02:12:39.450 --> 02:12:41.840
broadly. And this is, to me, the question
2993
02:12:41.840 --> 02:12:46.320
is the question of suffering. And you've explained your views
2994
02:12:46.320 --> 02:12:48.240
about the fool. And I wanted to
2995
02:12:48.240 --> 02:12:51.040
let you put them in full before I asked a few questions. But
2996
02:12:51.040 --> 02:12:53.440
the first question that jumps out at me
2997
02:12:53.440 --> 02:12:58.700
is the question of pre-human suffering. We're not the first
2998
02:12:58.700 --> 02:13:01.040
species to inhabit this planet. And before
2999
02:13:01.040 --> 02:13:04.600
we existed, billions of years, I don't know if you believe the
3000
02:13:04.600 --> 02:13:06.000
earth is four and a half billion
3001
02:13:06.000 --> 02:13:09.700
years old. But billions of years, hundreds of millions of years
3002
02:13:09.700 --> 02:13:12.720
, at least, of animal suffering.
3003
02:13:12.720 --> 02:13:17.890
And that is experienced. And you could say that it somehow is
3004
02:13:17.890 --> 02:13:20.240
less relevant or doesn't matter
3005
02:13:20.240 --> 02:13:23.630
as much. But if you saw me right now, step on a dog's tail and
3006
02:13:23.630 --> 02:13:25.440
watch it squeal, you tell me to
3007
02:13:25.440 --> 02:13:28.810
stop because you know that absent just the effect that it has
3008
02:13:28.810 --> 02:13:30.640
on a human situation, that's bad
3009
02:13:30.640 --> 02:13:32.790
for the dog. That kind of stuff was going on for hundreds of
3010
02:13:32.790 --> 02:13:34.240
million years before humans were around.
3011
02:13:34.240 --> 02:13:36.600
That means before the fool. And that's true. The second
3012
02:13:36.600 --> 02:13:37.840
question, the second question I have.
3013
02:13:37.840 --> 02:13:40.710
Let's do one at a time. Yeah. And I don't entirely know how to
3014
02:13:40.710 --> 02:13:43.360
answer that. Part of the problem comes
3015
02:13:43.360 --> 02:13:47.520
when you create a world in a certain way that has certain cause
3016
02:13:47.520 --> 02:13:49.600
and effect kind of thing. So
3017
02:13:49.600 --> 02:13:52.770
pain is there for a reason. Pain is there so that you can avoid
3018
02:13:52.770 --> 02:13:54.960
something that's harmful to the body
3019
02:13:54.960 --> 02:13:57.640
when you start feeling pain, you withdraw from it, okay, in a
3020
02:13:57.640 --> 02:13:58.880
very simplistic sense.
3021
02:13:59.440 --> 02:14:04.060
It also has a downside and the downside is that pain is painful
3022
02:14:04.060 --> 02:14:07.120
and sometimes dying is very painful too.
3023
02:14:07.120 --> 02:14:09.650
So there's a trade-off there. Now, I haven't worked all those
3024
02:14:09.650 --> 02:14:12.480
details out, okay. But what I look at
3025
02:14:12.480 --> 02:14:16.050
is a larger picture because I can't refine all of those things
3026
02:14:16.050 --> 02:14:17.520
from my own thinking.
3027
02:14:17.520 --> 02:14:21.680
The larger picture is we both, we all live in the same world
3028
02:14:21.680 --> 02:14:23.920
that is filled with pain and suffering.
3029
02:14:23.920 --> 02:14:27.690
So then the question is, who has the best explanation writ
3030
02:14:27.690 --> 02:14:30.640
large about how that works? No explanation,
3031
02:14:30.640 --> 02:14:35.760
or maybe some, are going to go very granular and get the, here
3032
02:14:35.760 --> 02:14:37.200
is why your baby is suffering
3033
02:14:37.200 --> 02:14:39.750
this moment for this thing. We're not going to be able to do
3034
02:14:39.750 --> 02:14:41.360
that. But we can understand why the
3035
02:14:41.360 --> 02:14:44.940
world is broken. Now, if you, if you don't hold that the world
3036
02:14:44.940 --> 02:14:46.960
was made for something better,
3037
02:14:46.960 --> 02:14:50.460
then the world we see right now is not broken. It's just the
3038
02:14:50.460 --> 02:14:51.920
way it is. There is no moral
3039
02:14:51.920 --> 02:14:54.710
assessment whatsoever that we can make that would make any
3040
02:14:54.710 --> 02:14:57.040
sense. But we constantly make moral
3041
02:14:57.040 --> 02:14:59.260
assessments, which is why you're bringing this issue out about
3042
02:14:59.260 --> 02:15:01.680
suffering. I've been very careful to
3043
02:15:01.680 --> 02:15:05.320
avoid moral language. Let me explain how it, what it, it seems
3044
02:15:05.320 --> 02:15:07.520
to me that you are bringing kind of
3045
02:15:07.520 --> 02:15:11.550
smuggling in moral categories with the suffering issue. Because
3046
02:15:11.550 --> 02:15:13.200
if I said, I don't care about the
3047
02:15:13.200 --> 02:15:16.370
suffering of millions of years of organisms that have
3048
02:15:16.370 --> 02:15:19.600
experienced pain, that kind of cast me in a kind
3049
02:15:19.600 --> 02:15:23.020
of a negative moral light. You don't have to say that, it does
3050
02:15:23.020 --> 02:15:25.360
seem to me that you're smuggling in
3051
02:15:25.360 --> 02:15:28.760
the notion that suffering is bad moral. I know that people
3052
02:15:28.760 --> 02:15:30.720
often do that. I'm specifically avoiding
3053
02:15:30.720 --> 02:15:33.410
that because I've had this conversation 100,000 times. And that
3054
02:15:33.410 --> 02:15:34.800
's that's the accusation that
3055
02:15:34.800 --> 02:15:37.330
gets going up. And some people do do that, but I'm specifically
3056
02:15:37.330 --> 02:15:38.560
, you can rewind the tape,
3057
02:15:38.560 --> 02:15:40.960
I make great pains. I don't say the problem of evil, for
3058
02:15:40.960 --> 02:15:42.720
example. I say the problem of suffering.
3059
02:15:42.720 --> 02:15:45.080
Okay. If you said that you didn't care about suffering, I would
3060
02:15:45.080 --> 02:15:46.160
say that you're probably just being
3061
02:15:46.160 --> 02:15:48.520
inconsistent with your Christian worldview, for example. I
3062
02:15:48.520 --> 02:15:49.440
wouldn't say that you're doing anything
3063
02:15:49.440 --> 02:15:51.970
a moral in the context. So I'll accept the qualification. What
3064
02:15:51.970 --> 02:15:54.240
I'm saying is that if Christianity
3065
02:15:54.240 --> 02:15:57.410
would true, we would not expect the kind of suffering that is
3066
02:15:57.410 --> 02:15:58.800
present in the natural world.
3067
02:15:58.800 --> 02:16:01.970
I'm not saying that on my worldview, that suffering is wrong
3068
02:16:01.970 --> 02:16:03.920
and must be fixed and there's some moral
3069
02:16:03.920 --> 02:16:06.450
element. I'm not saying that at all. All I'm saying is that it
3070
02:16:06.450 --> 02:16:07.920
is unexpected. If Christianity
3071
02:16:07.920 --> 02:16:11.620
were true, that that suffering would be as it is. Well, the way
3072
02:16:11.620 --> 02:16:13.120
in particular, the nonhuman animals.
3073
02:16:13.120 --> 02:16:16.080
No, I understand that. Okay. And the way I'm looking at it.
3074
02:16:16.080 --> 02:16:19.250
Do you understand that I'm not smiling in those moral? Sorry,
3075
02:16:19.250 --> 02:16:20.240
because you said that I'm
3076
02:16:20.240 --> 02:16:24.000
smuggling in moral. No, okay. That's okay. I'm not. I'm not. I
3077
02:16:24.000 --> 02:16:24.000
'm not.
3078
02:16:24.000 --> 02:16:27.590
Okay. Question. I did, which is that if the fool is the
3079
02:16:27.590 --> 02:16:30.320
explanation for, shall we say,
3080
02:16:30.320 --> 02:16:32.630
the moral evils that people commit like the Holocaust, the
3081
02:16:32.630 --> 02:16:33.520
reason why people have a
3082
02:16:33.520 --> 02:16:36.770
proclivity to commit the Holocaust is because of the portrayal
3083
02:16:36.770 --> 02:16:39.200
of God's trust a few
3084
02:16:39.200 --> 02:16:45.870
million years ago, whenever it was you think it was, if Adam
3085
02:16:45.870 --> 02:16:47.680
and Eve's transgression is the explanation
3086
02:16:47.680 --> 02:16:52.100
for why humans have a sinful nature and act upon sin, then why
3087
02:16:52.100 --> 02:16:54.320
did Eve act upon the sin before the
3088
02:16:54.320 --> 02:16:58.330
fool had happened? Eve must have had a proclivity to sin in
3089
02:16:58.330 --> 02:17:00.640
order to, in order to portray God in the
3090
02:17:00.640 --> 02:17:04.210
first place. And so I don't think it suffices to say that the
3091
02:17:04.210 --> 02:17:06.000
explanation for why we have human
3092
02:17:06.000 --> 02:17:09.810
being completely delivered to sin by God. Is because of the
3093
02:17:09.810 --> 02:17:12.960
fool, if the fool is a result of a proclivity to
3094
02:17:12.960 --> 02:17:17.630
sin from Eve. Well, the nature of freedom in my understanding,
3095
02:17:17.630 --> 02:17:20.320
my view is that it can initiate things.
3096
02:17:20.320 --> 02:17:23.680
Okay. You don't have to have it in a certain sense, deter
3097
02:17:23.680 --> 02:17:26.320
ministic element in your in your
3098
02:17:26.320 --> 02:17:30.790
soul that forces you to act a certain way. Why did Adam and Eve
3099
02:17:30.790 --> 02:17:32.800
, even this case, act the way
3100
02:17:32.800 --> 02:17:36.170
she did, because she was capable of initiating a free action.
3101
02:17:36.170 --> 02:17:37.600
Do you think she did more
3102
02:17:37.600 --> 02:17:40.800
free action in terms of rebellion? Okay. That's the nature of
3103
02:17:40.800 --> 02:17:42.720
freedom. Okay. I can't get into
3104
02:17:42.720 --> 02:17:46.380
her mind. And I think sometimes asking questions like this. Why
3105
02:17:46.380 --> 02:17:48.320
did she under those circumstances
3106
02:17:48.320 --> 02:17:51.190
do what she did? I can't answer that. Do you think she did
3107
02:17:51.190 --> 02:17:52.320
something immoral?
3108
02:17:52.320 --> 02:17:55.820
Yeah, she did something. And what did she eat from the tree of
3109
02:17:55.820 --> 02:17:59.120
the, I'm not sure she ate from the
3110
02:17:59.120 --> 02:18:01.670
tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So she ate from the
3111
02:18:01.670 --> 02:18:03.280
tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
3112
02:18:03.280 --> 02:18:05.690
implying that the four she ate of it, she didn't have an old,
3113
02:18:05.690 --> 02:18:06.400
you're good and evil.
3114
02:18:06.400 --> 02:18:09.400
Well, she have done something immoral in the four she ate. Can
3115
02:18:09.400 --> 02:18:10.320
I ask you a question? Hold on.
3116
02:18:10.320 --> 02:18:13.470
Hold on. No, it just goes to a comment. You understand? You
3117
02:18:13.470 --> 02:18:14.080
understand my view. So I just need
3118
02:18:14.080 --> 02:18:16.050
to clarify that. You understand what I'm saying, right? Like, I
3119
02:18:16.050 --> 02:18:18.000
understand entirely. If she hasn't
3120
02:18:18.000 --> 02:18:19.930
eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, she
3121
02:18:19.930 --> 02:18:21.840
doesn't know good and evil. How does she
3122
02:18:21.840 --> 02:18:23.370
know that it's evil and that she hadn't yet eaten from not good
3123
02:18:23.370 --> 02:18:25.520
and evil? Okay. Because the knowledge
3124
02:18:25.520 --> 02:18:28.070
of good and the word knowledge oftentimes in the Hebrew is
3125
02:18:28.070 --> 02:18:30.720
talking about experience. Okay. It is not
3126
02:18:30.720 --> 02:18:34.950
talking about a mental awareness. Okay. She wouldn't have been,
3127
02:18:34.950 --> 02:18:37.040
she wouldn't have not been able to
3128
02:18:37.040 --> 02:18:40.540
even understand the command not to do something. If she didn't
3129
02:18:40.540 --> 02:18:42.560
have those moral categories, I think
3130
02:18:42.560 --> 02:18:47.270
that's part of the image of God and man. Consequently, she knew
3131
02:18:47.270 --> 02:18:49.680
she ought not to it, but she still
3132
02:18:49.680 --> 02:18:53.120
chose for whatever reason to do that. And that act of
3133
02:18:53.120 --> 02:18:55.840
disobedience created a big mess. What that
3134
02:18:55.840 --> 02:18:58.830
means is that the fool does not explain the proclivity to sin
3135
02:18:58.830 --> 02:19:00.640
because he've already had it.
3136
02:19:00.640 --> 02:19:03.900
It does not explain the existence of evil because knowledge of
3137
02:19:03.900 --> 02:19:05.600
that already existed before
3138
02:19:05.600 --> 02:19:07.870
she committed the fool. It also doesn't explain the origin of
3139
02:19:07.870 --> 02:19:09.280
suffering because of course
3140
02:19:09.280 --> 02:19:11.120
eats punishment for eating from the tree of the knowledge. Well
3141
02:19:11.120 --> 02:19:12.320
, you're talking about suffering
3142
02:19:12.320 --> 02:19:16.100
prior to human beings in animals. I'm talking about suffering
3143
02:19:16.100 --> 02:19:18.320
in human beings. It does. It does
3144
02:19:18.320 --> 02:19:21.490
explain the fall of man because human beings made a choice that
3145
02:19:21.490 --> 02:19:24.000
they could they could have made
3146
02:19:24.000 --> 02:19:27.840
differently, but they didn't. And the rebellion against God had
3147
02:19:27.840 --> 02:19:28.960
had a consequence.
3148
02:19:28.960 --> 02:19:33.520
But this is why the rest of the world has unfolded the way it
3149
02:19:33.520 --> 02:19:35.280
has why there is suffering
3150
02:19:35.280 --> 02:19:40.420
evil in the world. A naturalistic explanation can explain or
3151
02:19:40.420 --> 02:19:42.320
suffering before suffering after,
3152
02:19:42.320 --> 02:19:45.540
but even very careful to make it clear that there's no moral
3153
02:19:45.540 --> 02:19:47.520
ramifications to this at all.
3154
02:19:47.520 --> 02:19:50.230
It seems most people are pretty aware that there are moral
3155
02:19:50.230 --> 02:19:52.880
ramifications. So if your worldview does not
3156
02:19:52.880 --> 02:19:56.050
have a way of making sense or a moral intuitions about
3157
02:19:56.050 --> 02:19:58.160
suffering, even animal suffering,
3158
02:19:58.160 --> 02:20:01.680
it's not an adequate worldview. Just give me a minute of your
3159
02:20:01.680 --> 02:20:02.800
time and I'll tell you about a
3160
02:20:02.800 --> 02:20:06.100
device that my team has been using that they won't seem to shut
3161
02:20:06.100 --> 02:20:07.440
up about. It's called the
3162
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3166
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3182
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02:21:28.560 --> 02:21:31.560
complete them, then you'll send a personalized summary with
3193
02:21:31.560 --> 02:21:33.520
insights back by doctors and thousands
3194
02:21:33.520 --> 02:21:36.710
of hours of research. And if anything critical shows up, you'll
3195
02:21:36.710 --> 02:21:38.080
get a call from a doctor.
3196
02:21:38.080 --> 02:21:41.010
These are the insights most people never get, but you can get
3197
02:21:41.010 --> 02:21:42.880
them now. So if you want to learn more,
3198
02:21:42.880 --> 02:21:49.540
head to function health.com/doc where you can sign up right now
3199
02:21:49.540 --> 02:21:50.080
. And for the first thousand of my
3200
02:21:50.080 --> 02:21:54.450
listeners, you can get $100 credit towards your membership when
3201
02:21:54.450 --> 02:21:56.400
you use the code D-O-A-C-100,
3202
02:21:56.400 --> 02:22:02.640
but do not tell anybody. That's D-O-A-C-1-0-0. Alex, how do you
3203
02:22:02.640 --> 02:22:06.000
categorize your belief or lack of
3204
02:22:06.000 --> 02:22:09.320
belief? Are you atheist, agnostic, religious? Agnostic is
3205
02:22:09.320 --> 02:22:10.800
probably the best term.
3206
02:22:10.800 --> 02:22:14.240
And how do you define the word agnostic? It means that I don't
3207
02:22:14.240 --> 02:22:15.440
know. I think that a lot of
3208
02:22:15.440 --> 02:22:19.230
religious language escapes us. And I'm also not entirely sure
3209
02:22:19.230 --> 02:22:20.800
always what people are
3210
02:22:20.800 --> 02:22:25.360
exactly talking about. So if I asked you the question, how did
3211
02:22:25.360 --> 02:22:26.400
life come to be on the earth?
3212
02:22:26.400 --> 02:22:29.070
What would your answer to that be? Oh, I have no idea. Of
3213
02:22:29.070 --> 02:22:30.240
course I have no idea.
3214
02:22:30.240 --> 02:22:34.490
And how does someone who is agnostic create a really meaningful
3215
02:22:34.490 --> 02:22:36.960
life in your perspective?
3216
02:22:36.960 --> 02:22:40.800
Well, I don't know how would somebody else might do that
3217
02:22:40.800 --> 02:22:42.480
because because crucially,
3218
02:22:42.480 --> 02:22:44.720
I mean, we talked about this earlier when we talked about like
3219
02:22:44.720 --> 02:22:46.800
we have this brief
3220
02:22:46.800 --> 02:22:51.600
interlude where you were sort of saying meaning for humans and
3221
02:22:51.600 --> 02:22:52.480
meaning for individuals.
3222
02:22:52.480 --> 02:22:54.290
And the reason I make that distinction is because if you
3223
02:22:54.290 --> 02:22:55.040
consider the way that
3224
02:22:56.400 --> 02:22:59.930
take like scientific progress right from Galileo's time to
3225
02:22:59.930 --> 02:23:01.840
today, the idea is that there are some
3226
02:23:01.840 --> 02:23:04.860
kind of scientific innovations. And then you have a child and
3227
02:23:04.860 --> 02:23:07.200
you teach that child the latest
3228
02:23:07.200 --> 02:23:10.020
science and then that child will build upon it and teach their
3229
02:23:10.020 --> 02:23:11.280
children the latest and they'll
3230
02:23:11.280 --> 02:23:15.190
build and so as generations go on, the starting point for each
3231
02:23:15.190 --> 02:23:17.120
individual human is like further
3232
02:23:17.120 --> 02:23:19.500
along, right? So you can have a child who's like 12 now and
3233
02:23:19.500 --> 02:23:20.960
those calculus, you know what I mean?
3234
02:23:21.520 --> 02:23:25.130
And with successive generations, the starting point for each
3235
02:23:25.130 --> 02:23:27.520
individual is like further along the
3236
02:23:27.520 --> 02:23:30.960
part of the discovery with like meaning and existential
3237
02:23:30.960 --> 02:23:32.960
concerns. It doesn't work like that.
3238
02:23:32.960 --> 02:23:36.000
It resets every single time. It's not something you can't
3239
02:23:36.000 --> 02:23:37.760
figure out like how to live in meaningful
3240
02:23:37.760 --> 02:23:40.510
life and experience meaning and come to some kind of spiritual
3241
02:23:40.510 --> 02:23:41.920
enlightenment and then teach that
3242
02:23:41.920 --> 02:23:45.090
to your children and that's their starting point. For them, it
3243
02:23:45.090 --> 02:23:48.240
resets. It's new. So I think that every
3244
02:23:48.240 --> 02:23:51.410
individual has to do it on their own for themselves, right? And
3245
02:23:51.410 --> 02:23:52.960
we're all doing that together
3246
02:23:52.960 --> 02:23:55.210
as it were going around the world. So the way that I'm
3247
02:23:55.210 --> 02:23:57.360
approaching this, we were going
3248
02:23:57.360 --> 02:23:59.610
to talk about consciousness, which we didn't and perhaps it's a
3249
02:23:59.610 --> 02:24:00.720
good job that we didn't because
3250
02:24:00.720 --> 02:24:06.020
it's it's just such a big topic. But my views on consciousness
3251
02:24:06.020 --> 02:24:08.080
are crucial to my
3252
02:24:08.080 --> 02:24:12.980
to my sense of sort of what it's all about as it were because
3253
02:24:12.980 --> 02:24:15.360
the greatest mystery that we are
3254
02:24:15.360 --> 02:24:18.720
confronted with every single day, if you just take a moment to
3255
02:24:18.720 --> 02:24:21.440
remember it, is that we are conscious,
3256
02:24:21.440 --> 02:24:23.820
is that we are experiencing things from a first person
3257
02:24:23.820 --> 02:24:25.520
perspective that I have thoughts which are
3258
02:24:25.520 --> 02:24:27.830
inaccessible to you and you have thoughts which are
3259
02:24:27.830 --> 02:24:30.160
inaccessible to me. It's extremely strange.
3260
02:24:30.160 --> 02:24:34.580
So there's a view that I'm quite attracted to in the philosophy
3261
02:24:34.580 --> 02:24:36.320
of mine called panpsychism,
3262
02:24:36.320 --> 02:24:41.190
which literally means sort of like the view that consciousness
3263
02:24:41.190 --> 02:24:43.200
is everywhere or in everything.
3264
02:24:43.200 --> 02:24:45.120
It's not, it doesn't mean that everything is conscious. It
3265
02:24:45.120 --> 02:24:46.880
doesn't mean this pen is conscious.
3266
02:24:46.880 --> 02:24:49.740
What it means is that the stuff that the universe has made out
3267
02:24:49.740 --> 02:24:51.120
of, so the fundamental matter of
3268
02:24:51.120 --> 02:24:55.280
the universe has at least mental properties or might be mental
3269
02:24:55.280 --> 02:24:57.120
properties because when you say,
3270
02:24:57.120 --> 02:24:59.890
for example, you know, we're in a world of like molecules in
3271
02:24:59.890 --> 02:25:01.680
motion, right? I understand that
3272
02:25:01.680 --> 02:25:05.160
sentiment. But if you ask a scientist, what is stuff actually
3273
02:25:05.160 --> 02:25:07.680
made out of? Ultimately speaking,
3274
02:25:07.680 --> 02:25:10.440
they will not be able to tell you. For you personally, what
3275
02:25:10.440 --> 02:25:11.840
makes your life full of purpose
3276
02:25:11.840 --> 02:25:14.840
I can't just jump there, but it won't make much sense because
3277
02:25:14.840 --> 02:25:16.640
what I would say is something like
3278
02:25:16.640 --> 02:25:24.370
a recognition of the illusion of divisible selves, which doesn
3279
02:25:24.370 --> 02:25:25.760
't make a ton of sense,
3280
02:25:25.760 --> 02:25:29.960
unless you lay the groundwork, which can be explained in many
3281
02:25:29.960 --> 02:25:31.360
different ways and in fact
3282
02:25:31.360 --> 02:25:34.090
it's something which most, like the Vedic tradition, it's one
3283
02:25:34.090 --> 02:25:35.760
of the reasons I'm so attracted to it
3284
02:25:35.760 --> 02:25:39.280
and particularly the the Upanishads is because they seem to
3285
02:25:39.280 --> 02:25:41.760
embody this idea. They're constantly
3286
02:25:41.760 --> 02:25:46.020
banging on about how the individual self, the individualated
3287
02:25:46.020 --> 02:25:48.720
person is an illusion and there is one
3288
02:25:48.720 --> 02:25:51.980
ultimate self. They call it at man. But are you going to have
3289
02:25:51.980 --> 02:25:54.240
kids? I don't know. Do you want to have
3290
02:25:54.240 --> 02:25:56.830
kids? I hope so. Yeah. So you do want to have kids. Oh yeah.
3291
02:25:56.830 --> 02:26:01.520
Why? I'm not sure. I don't know.
3292
02:26:03.920 --> 02:26:06.450
It just feels, it feels as though I've got, it's a bit like
3293
02:26:06.450 --> 02:26:07.120
asking, you know,
3294
02:26:07.120 --> 02:26:10.560
that there's a, there's a literal explanation. If you ask me,
3295
02:26:10.560 --> 02:26:11.360
am I going to have dinner today?
3296
02:26:11.360 --> 02:26:14.040
I'll say yes. You say why? I could say, well, because I'm
3297
02:26:14.040 --> 02:26:15.280
hungry, but if you ask me like,
3298
02:26:15.280 --> 02:26:17.980
but like, why? Like, why? Why do you care about being hungry?
3299
02:26:17.980 --> 02:26:19.520
Why do you care about satisfying?
3300
02:26:19.520 --> 02:26:22.690
Well, I would say, I just cannot do. I want to have kids
3301
02:26:22.690 --> 02:26:23.840
because I think it'll bring a lot of joy to
3302
02:26:23.840 --> 02:26:26.370
my life. I think I'll enjoy the challenge. It's proven to be
3303
02:26:26.370 --> 02:26:30.880
awesome. Yes. So it's not for that sake.
3304
02:26:32.880 --> 02:26:35.730
I think everything can be moral to that. No, no, no, no, no. I
3305
02:26:35.730 --> 02:26:38.320
think everything everyone does at some,
3306
02:26:38.320 --> 02:26:41.310
you can look at the neurological level. Yeah. It's for the sake
3307
02:26:41.310 --> 02:26:42.640
of the reason why people,
3308
02:26:42.640 --> 02:26:45.920
why Dr. K works on that ward and saves the life is ultimately
3309
02:26:45.920 --> 02:26:47.840
because it's so then,
3310
02:26:47.840 --> 02:26:51.380
you know, in a way, I agree with you. But if, if it is true
3311
02:26:51.380 --> 02:26:53.200
that there is this sort of
3312
02:26:53.200 --> 02:26:55.560
thing called consciousness that the universe has made out of
3313
02:26:55.560 --> 02:26:57.680
and brains are kind of complex
3314
02:26:57.680 --> 02:27:00.850
organizations of consciousness, then when you ask me like, you
3315
02:27:00.850 --> 02:27:02.400
know, what, what's wrong with
3316
02:27:02.400 --> 02:27:04.930
harming another person on this, on this, on this, on this
3317
02:27:04.930 --> 02:27:06.560
materialistic worldview. Well, I think the
3318
02:27:06.560 --> 02:27:09.340
material of the universe is consciousness. And I think that
3319
02:27:09.340 --> 02:27:10.960
when I harmed someone else, it could
3320
02:27:10.960 --> 02:27:13.360
literally in a fundamental sense be a, be a case of self harm.
3321
02:27:13.360 --> 02:27:16.160
By the way, can I just say, because
3322
02:27:16.160 --> 02:27:19.050
it sounds a little bit insane, um, without the space to explain
3323
02:27:19.050 --> 02:27:20.320
the pants like it's worldview,
3324
02:27:20.320 --> 02:27:22.460
it sounds absolutely mental, but there's some, there are some
3325
02:27:22.460 --> 02:27:23.760
really interesting clues. Here's,
3326
02:27:23.760 --> 02:27:26.290
can I give you one clue? This is really, really fascinating
3327
02:27:26.290 --> 02:27:28.000
about the fact that the brain,
3328
02:27:28.000 --> 02:27:31.040
as Aldous Huxley said, it was a tool focusing the mind. Aldous
3329
02:27:31.040 --> 02:27:32.320
Huxley writes in the, in the doors of
3330
02:27:32.320 --> 02:27:34.630
perception, essential reading to anybody interested in
3331
02:27:34.630 --> 02:27:37.920
consciousness, by the way. Um, Aldous Huxley,
3332
02:27:37.920 --> 02:27:41.090
in the 20th century, takes a psychedelic drug, and he writes
3333
02:27:41.090 --> 02:27:42.560
about his experience, and he writes
3334
02:27:42.560 --> 02:27:45.260
about it beautifully. And one of the things he realizes is that
3335
02:27:45.260 --> 02:27:46.320
his mind has been opened,
3336
02:27:46.320 --> 02:27:50.020
and he thinks, okay, well, if my mind has been opened during
3337
02:27:50.020 --> 02:27:52.240
this experience, and that means that in
3338
02:27:52.240 --> 02:27:57.640
normal waking hours, something must be closing my mind. What
3339
02:27:57.640 --> 02:28:01.120
could be closing my mind? Answer,
3340
02:28:01.120 --> 02:28:06.800
the brain. He concludes that the brain is a tool for focusing
3341
02:28:06.800 --> 02:28:09.920
the mind. So the psychedelic experience,
3342
02:28:09.920 --> 02:28:12.160
this is before we've done any scientific experiments on this.
3343
02:28:12.160 --> 02:28:14.640
You can scan people's brains in
3344
02:28:14.640 --> 02:28:18.260
like an MRI scanner, right? Okay. So when you take a
3345
02:28:18.260 --> 02:28:21.280
psychedelic drug, your experience just
3346
02:28:21.280 --> 02:28:23.470
blows up, right? You start seeing colors. You didn't know
3347
02:28:23.470 --> 02:28:25.200
existed. You start experiencing things
3348
02:28:25.200 --> 02:28:28.080
as if they were new. It's like the experience is unimaginable.
3349
02:28:28.080 --> 02:28:30.240
So we've taken people,
3350
02:28:30.240 --> 02:28:32.150
and we've measured their brain activity and their, and their
3351
02:28:32.150 --> 02:28:33.440
brain activity is at a certain level,
3352
02:28:33.440 --> 02:28:36.220
and then you give them a psychedelic drug, and you put them in
3353
02:28:36.220 --> 02:28:37.440
the MRI scanner, and their brain
3354
02:28:37.440 --> 02:28:44.830
activity goes down. Brain activity goes down as the mental
3355
02:28:44.830 --> 02:28:47.920
experience expands and goes up,
3356
02:28:48.960 --> 02:28:53.200
which for the person who experiences the psychedelic drug, they
3357
02:28:53.200 --> 02:28:54.800
will report this as a feeling
3358
02:28:54.800 --> 02:28:57.660
that they just get from the experience. The scientist who
3359
02:28:57.660 --> 02:28:59.440
measures the brain activity, the
3360
02:28:59.440 --> 02:29:04.870
sage is writing the, the panichads, the Buddhist monk after a
3361
02:29:04.870 --> 02:29:07.120
series of long meditation will all
3362
02:29:07.120 --> 02:29:11.280
say the same thing, which is that in some inexplicable way,
3363
02:29:11.280 --> 02:29:13.760
consciousness is more foundational
3364
02:29:13.760 --> 02:29:16.930
than the brain is, and the brain is focusing consciousness, and
3365
02:29:16.930 --> 02:29:18.800
in some sense that means that our
3366
02:29:18.800 --> 02:29:23.470
individualated selves are essentially illusory. I'm going to do
3367
02:29:23.470 --> 02:29:24.480
my best in the same way that
3368
02:29:24.480 --> 02:29:27.070
distinction between objects are illusory. To support what you
3369
02:29:27.070 --> 02:29:29.680
're saying, I totally empathize with
3370
02:29:29.680 --> 02:29:32.850
having fallen into this mistake of invoking God or mine, not
3371
02:29:32.850 --> 02:29:34.880
having the bandwidth to explain
3372
02:29:34.880 --> 02:29:37.470
what I mean by opening myself up to misinterpretation. That's
3373
02:29:37.470 --> 02:29:38.320
also why I completely understand
3374
02:29:38.320 --> 02:29:44.770
we use that a moment ago. So I think the funny thing about this
3375
02:29:44.770 --> 02:29:45.680
is, if we look at the quantification of
3376
02:29:45.680 --> 02:29:48.850
meaning, I think everything that I said about self-
3377
02:29:48.850 --> 02:29:52.000
determination theory, you know, make choices
3378
02:29:52.000 --> 02:29:54.580
in life. Doesn't matter what they are, we get so caught up
3379
02:29:54.580 --> 02:29:56.160
about making the right choice,
3380
02:29:56.160 --> 02:29:58.350
where does the concept of right or on come from? It comes from
3381
02:29:58.350 --> 02:30:00.160
the social conditioning around us.
3382
02:30:00.160 --> 02:30:03.000
When I was nine years old, my grandmother was like, oh, you're
3383
02:30:03.000 --> 02:30:04.160
going to be great doctor,
3384
02:30:04.160 --> 02:30:07.070
one day, great doctor, great doctor, great doctor. And so that
3385
02:30:07.070 --> 02:30:08.240
I went to medical school, I was
3386
02:30:08.240 --> 02:30:11.580
pre-med, and I promptly failed out because the reason I wanted
3387
02:30:11.580 --> 02:30:12.960
to be a doctor is because I thought
3388
02:30:12.960 --> 02:30:14.580
it was going to be cool. And I was going to go to Harvard, by
3389
02:30:14.580 --> 02:30:15.760
the way, I was going to be the best
3390
02:30:15.760 --> 02:30:18.930
doctor, not just a doctor. And that didn't really align with my
3391
02:30:18.930 --> 02:30:20.480
motivational system at all. It was
3392
02:30:20.480 --> 02:30:23.960
coming from the ego. And so I kind of failed out. And then
3393
02:30:23.960 --> 02:30:26.160
seven years later started med school,
3394
02:30:26.160 --> 02:30:29.520
a few years later, that wound up ironically training at Harvard
3395
02:30:29.520 --> 02:30:31.040
and being faculty there.
3396
02:30:32.000 --> 02:30:35.750
And so going back to karma for a second, I share this example
3397
02:30:35.750 --> 02:30:37.280
because a lot of times when we
3398
02:30:37.280 --> 02:30:41.080
look at things that we think are bad. And I'm not saying that
3399
02:30:41.080 --> 02:30:42.960
cancer applies here clearly,
3400
02:30:42.960 --> 02:30:45.740
but this is what the meaning making the practical functional
3401
02:30:45.740 --> 02:30:47.840
work of when someone comes into my office,
3402
02:30:47.840 --> 02:30:50.840
who was the result, who was sexually abused or something like
3403
02:30:50.840 --> 02:30:52.320
that, how do we help that person?
3404
02:30:52.320 --> 02:30:55.820
We make meaning. So for me, this was, I used to think that
3405
02:30:55.820 --> 02:30:59.040
there's no scenario in which a 2.5 GPA
3406
02:30:59.040 --> 02:31:03.950
is better than a 4.0 GPA, that in school, getting F's is in no
3407
02:31:03.950 --> 02:31:06.080
way better than getting A's.
3408
02:31:06.080 --> 02:31:10.770
Now years later, I realized that all of those experiences of
3409
02:31:10.770 --> 02:31:14.080
suffering, of struggling, of having no
3410
02:31:14.080 --> 02:31:17.000
meaning in life, playing video games for 20 hours a day,
3411
02:31:17.000 --> 02:31:19.040
joining a fraternity when I was a freshman,
3412
02:31:19.040 --> 02:31:22.190
which is lots of great times. You know, made me the person that
3413
02:31:22.190 --> 02:31:23.520
I am, and though even if you look at
3414
02:31:23.520 --> 02:31:26.900
the brand of Dr. K, the whole point was I was a college dropout
3415
02:31:26.900 --> 02:31:28.720
and then ended up as faculty at
3416
02:31:28.720 --> 02:31:32.470
Harvard Medical School, right? So in this context, that a lot
3417
02:31:32.470 --> 02:31:34.560
of times that if we sort of,
3418
02:31:34.560 --> 02:31:38.720
the more we are zoomed into our life, the less we will see this
3419
02:31:38.720 --> 02:31:40.240
broader perspective.
3420
02:31:40.240 --> 02:31:43.020
And this is really fascinating. If you look at the work of
3421
02:31:43.020 --> 02:31:43.920
Victor Frankl,
3422
02:31:43.920 --> 02:31:47.680
because Victor Frankl was a neurologist, went through the
3423
02:31:47.680 --> 02:31:50.560
Holocaust, became a psychologist,
3424
02:31:50.560 --> 02:31:53.400
and then he sort of, literally, his work is something called
3425
02:31:53.400 --> 02:31:54.880
logo therapy, which is,
3426
02:31:54.880 --> 02:31:57.910
how do we consistently help people make meaning in life? And he
3427
02:31:57.910 --> 02:31:59.440
designed a system of therapy.
3428
02:31:59.440 --> 02:32:03.930
And the first part of it is de-individualation, is the ability
3429
02:32:03.930 --> 02:32:06.160
of zooming out from your thing. When
3430
02:32:06.160 --> 02:32:08.900
someone feels like my life is falling apart, there's no point
3431
02:32:08.900 --> 02:32:11.200
anymore, why? Because I just got dumped,
3432
02:32:11.200 --> 02:32:13.920
and she's never going to talk to me again. Zoom out a little
3433
02:32:13.920 --> 02:32:15.360
bit. This is not the end of the
3434
02:32:15.360 --> 02:32:18.780
world. Your life is bigger than this one thing. So the more
3435
02:32:18.780 --> 02:32:20.800
that we zoom out from a mechanistic
3436
02:32:20.800 --> 02:32:24.130
perspective, the more meaning we find in life, and what is the
3437
02:32:24.130 --> 02:32:27.120
ultimate zooming out? Relationship with
3438
02:32:27.120 --> 02:32:29.870
God, because now we're way out here. Right? This isn't about
3439
02:32:29.870 --> 02:32:31.680
you. This isn't about someone dying of
3440
02:32:31.680 --> 02:32:34.560
cancer. This is about something that goes way bigger than you.
3441
02:32:34.560 --> 02:32:36.800
So what I would say is you can do
3442
02:32:36.800 --> 02:32:39.560
all the scientific stuff. It'll get you to eight out of 10,
3443
02:32:39.560 --> 02:32:40.800
maybe nine out of 10.
3444
02:32:40.800 --> 02:32:45.380
But, and this is what's so crazy, the scientific stuff I am
3445
02:32:45.380 --> 02:32:48.160
incredibly confident I can defend.
3446
02:32:48.800 --> 02:32:51.650
I can point to studies. We can talk about psychedelics, the
3447
02:32:51.650 --> 02:32:53.520
default mode network, self-determination,
3448
02:32:53.520 --> 02:32:56.390
theory, logo therapy. There are tons of studies, radical
3449
02:32:56.390 --> 02:32:58.640
acceptance, dialectical behavioral therapy,
3450
02:32:58.640 --> 02:33:01.450
all of these things, acceptance and commitment therapy, all of
3451
02:33:01.450 --> 02:33:02.640
these things have to do with
3452
02:33:02.640 --> 02:33:06.000
making meaning in the world. But if you really want to find
3453
02:33:06.000 --> 02:33:08.000
that meaning, you keep on asking this
3454
02:33:08.000 --> 02:33:10.260
question. I mean, you selected that question because you're
3455
02:33:10.260 --> 02:33:13.120
looking for it. Right? And you won't let
3456
02:33:13.120 --> 02:33:17.160
him get away with some philosophical explanation. You're like,
3457
02:33:17.160 --> 02:33:18.960
no, you tell me when you wake up,
3458
02:33:18.960 --> 02:33:21.150
where is it? Show me where it is. Show me how to get it.
3459
02:33:21.150 --> 02:33:22.320
Because you're understanding his
3460
02:33:22.320 --> 02:33:25.150
shit because you've never had a direct experience of buying.
3461
02:33:25.150 --> 02:33:26.960
And so you're like, bro, you don't know,
3462
02:33:26.960 --> 02:33:31.120
God, how do you find it? The desperation of like, no, no, no
3463
02:33:31.120 --> 02:33:33.360
slipping away, Alex. No random
3464
02:33:33.360 --> 02:33:36.670
stories and ending up in it. Not random. Sorry. No stories that
3465
02:33:36.670 --> 02:33:38.880
end up in a delightful way. Right?
3466
02:33:38.880 --> 02:33:43.250
So how do you find that last chunk that last way that last step
3467
02:33:43.250 --> 02:33:45.600
of the way there is through the
3468
02:33:45.600 --> 02:33:51.130
direct experience of Brahman? So when he says pan-psychism in
3469
02:33:51.130 --> 02:33:54.880
the Hindu system, we believe that
3470
02:33:54.880 --> 02:33:58.400
consciousness is the foundational element of the universe. That
3471
02:33:58.400 --> 02:33:59.120
man is Brahman.
3472
02:33:59.120 --> 02:34:03.670
At one is not, well, sort of. Yes and no. At one is individual
3473
02:34:03.670 --> 02:34:06.080
soul. Brahman is the cosmic soul,
3474
02:34:06.080 --> 02:34:10.270
the cosmic consciousness that the fundamental thing that is out
3475
02:34:10.270 --> 02:34:12.400
there is transcendent and having
3476
02:34:12.400 --> 02:34:17.270
a relationship with that thing is how we get meaning. This is
3477
02:34:17.270 --> 02:34:19.680
how we get a nine out of 10 or a 10 out
3478
02:34:19.680 --> 02:34:23.260
of 10 meaning because this guy has done something where he had
3479
02:34:23.260 --> 02:34:25.040
this experience where he's been
3480
02:34:25.040 --> 02:34:28.840
talking to God, but one day someone answered the phone. And
3481
02:34:28.840 --> 02:34:31.760
when you have that transcendent experience,
3482
02:34:31.760 --> 02:34:34.520
when you have this direct experience of the Brahman, and this
3483
02:34:34.520 --> 02:34:35.600
is why I've been avoiding saying
3484
02:34:35.600 --> 02:34:39.300
it because it's completely undefensible. It is what I believe
3485
02:34:39.300 --> 02:34:42.400
is philosophically true. It is what I believe
3486
02:34:42.400 --> 02:34:47.110
is absolutely true. And it is not transmissible. It can only be
3487
02:34:47.110 --> 02:34:48.240
witness. Exactly.
3488
02:34:48.240 --> 02:34:51.600
That's the most important point is that it is why I say that
3489
02:34:51.600 --> 02:34:52.960
this is something that everybody has
3490
02:34:52.960 --> 02:34:55.940
a side of fresh because if there is an answer to this question,
3491
02:34:55.940 --> 02:34:59.040
it is something that you cannot
3492
02:34:59.040 --> 02:35:03.200
syllogize. By the way, this isn't just some like Hindu thing.
3493
02:35:03.200 --> 02:35:04.480
Christian say the same thing about
3494
02:35:04.480 --> 02:35:08.420
their religious experiences. The ineffable quality, William
3495
02:35:08.420 --> 02:35:11.120
James famously tried to identify the
3496
02:35:11.120 --> 02:35:14.290
characteristic aspects of religious experience. And one of the
3497
02:35:14.290 --> 02:35:16.160
most important was the ineffability,
3498
02:35:16.160 --> 02:35:19.370
the inability to explain to what that means. The inability to
3499
02:35:19.370 --> 02:35:21.120
put into words and to explain
3500
02:35:21.120 --> 02:35:23.900
and to say what it's like. And interestingly, some of my
3501
02:35:23.900 --> 02:35:26.240
favorite examples of this throughout history
3502
02:35:26.880 --> 02:35:31.160
have been some of the most important Christian thinkers of all
3503
02:35:31.160 --> 02:35:33.440
time who have essentially abandoned
3504
02:35:33.440 --> 02:35:37.200
the project of communicating ideas to other people. I mentioned
3505
02:35:37.200 --> 02:35:38.720
Blaise Pascal earlier,
3506
02:35:38.720 --> 02:35:41.560
he famously had his night of fire where he has a religious
3507
02:35:41.560 --> 02:35:43.200
experience and he's one of the greatest
3508
02:35:43.200 --> 02:35:46.370
writers in Christian history. And he has this experience of God
3509
02:35:46.370 --> 02:35:48.000
and he writes in his diary and later
3510
02:35:48.000 --> 02:35:51.730
has it etched into his jacket, fire, he writes, not the God of
3511
02:35:51.730 --> 02:35:54.880
the philosophers, the God of Abraham,
3512
02:35:54.880 --> 02:35:57.900
the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Because he realizes that he
3513
02:35:57.900 --> 02:35:59.120
's experienced something which is
3514
02:35:59.120 --> 02:36:01.810
not this abstract first cause, design of the universe, it's not
3515
02:36:01.810 --> 02:36:03.200
that it's something more deeply
3516
02:36:03.200 --> 02:36:07.390
personal. Thomas Aquinas, undoubtedly the greatest metaphys
3517
02:36:07.390 --> 02:36:10.240
ician of Christian history, writes the
3518
02:36:10.240 --> 02:36:12.770
Sumer Theologica, which is to this day, one of the most
3519
02:36:12.770 --> 02:36:15.200
celebrated works of Christian metaphysics,
3520
02:36:15.200 --> 02:36:18.900
trying to explain and analyze the nature of God, it's where we
3521
02:36:18.900 --> 02:36:20.720
get his famous five ways of
3522
02:36:20.720 --> 02:36:23.690
showing the existence of God and all of this kind of stuff and
3523
02:36:23.690 --> 02:36:25.520
it's really long and still studied
3524
02:36:25.520 --> 02:36:31.090
in depth to this day, he left it unfinished when he died. Why?
3525
02:36:31.090 --> 02:36:33.360
Because one day he was performing
3526
02:36:33.360 --> 02:36:36.120
the Eucharist and he had a religious experience, he believed
3527
02:36:36.120 --> 02:36:38.000
that he experienced the presence of God
3528
02:36:38.000 --> 02:36:42.840
and he stopped writing it and he was he was practically begged
3529
02:36:42.840 --> 02:36:46.320
by a friend and patron like Thomas,
3530
02:36:46.320 --> 02:36:50.620
you've got to finish the book and he wrote back and said, I can
3531
02:36:50.620 --> 02:36:52.960
write no more after what I've seen,
3532
02:36:52.960 --> 02:36:55.490
it's like straw compared to the experience I've had. So quite
3533
02:36:55.490 --> 02:36:57.760
clearly, when you look at people who
3534
02:36:57.760 --> 02:37:00.930
actually report the stuff that people want, which is the
3535
02:37:00.930 --> 02:37:03.120
certainty, the experience where they say,
3536
02:37:03.120 --> 02:37:06.970
I've met God and I know what that feels like, the number one
3537
02:37:06.970 --> 02:37:09.520
characteristic of such experiences is that
3538
02:37:09.520 --> 02:37:11.930
they are not transmissible, is that you cannot write it down
3539
02:37:11.930 --> 02:37:13.760
and give that experience to somebody else.
3540
02:37:13.760 --> 02:37:17.720
So here's the beautiful thing, you can't write down the
3541
02:37:17.720 --> 02:37:20.480
experience, but you can absolutely write
3542
02:37:20.480 --> 02:37:24.950
down the process of finding that experience. Yes. So I'm with
3543
02:37:24.950 --> 02:37:27.440
you, that is an individual journey.
3544
02:37:27.440 --> 02:37:30.430
And I think this is where something really interesting, I don't
3545
02:37:30.430 --> 02:37:31.840
know if this is like accurate or not,
3546
02:37:31.840 --> 02:37:35.720
I sort of notice that all of our most common religions have
3547
02:37:35.720 --> 02:37:38.160
spiritual traditions that are not
3548
02:37:38.160 --> 02:37:41.200
necessarily the same as the religion. Yeah. So in Hinduism, it
3549
02:37:41.200 --> 02:37:42.560
's really interesting because we have
3550
02:37:42.560 --> 02:37:47.270
priests and then we have swamis. A priest is not a yogi. So the
3551
02:37:47.270 --> 02:37:48.960
person who does the practice of the
3552
02:37:48.960 --> 02:37:51.760
religion is not the same as the person who sits in the Himalay
3553
02:37:51.760 --> 02:37:53.680
as and meditates for 12 hours a day.
3554
02:37:53.680 --> 02:37:57.270
And even if we look at like Christianity, you know, I know, so
3555
02:37:57.270 --> 02:37:59.440
I read a Gnostic text for the
3556
02:37:59.440 --> 02:38:03.600
first time, which one, Thunder Perfect Mind. And what I
3557
02:38:03.600 --> 02:38:05.840
realized is, oh, I know exactly what
3558
02:38:05.840 --> 02:38:08.780
this is. I read some stuff about it and people were like, oh,
3559
02:38:08.780 --> 02:38:10.400
it's talking about this. I'm like,
3560
02:38:10.400 --> 02:38:13.430
no, it's not. Thunder Perfect Mind is a series of meditation
3561
02:38:13.430 --> 02:38:15.040
techniques. That's what it is,
3562
02:38:15.040 --> 02:38:19.800
right? That that's what it's a series of meditations. And if
3563
02:38:19.800 --> 02:38:22.000
you do these meditations and there's
3564
02:38:22.000 --> 02:38:24.930
all kinds of stuff, and I think, you know, Sufiism was there. K
3565
02:38:24.930 --> 02:38:26.560
abbalah is there in Judaism. There's
3566
02:38:26.560 --> 02:38:31.320
the Gnostic tradition. Every religion has this spiritual
3567
02:38:31.320 --> 02:38:34.560
component, which sometimes comes down
3568
02:38:34.560 --> 02:38:37.220
to going to church, witnessing God, but you know, the whole
3569
02:38:37.220 --> 02:38:38.880
thing is like you gotta have fingers
3570
02:38:38.880 --> 02:38:41.640
cross, which is part of the way why it's designed because there
3571
02:38:41.640 --> 02:38:43.200
's no definitive way to do it. You
3572
02:38:43.200 --> 02:38:46.420
have to have God's grace to get it. There's a certain amount of
3573
02:38:46.420 --> 02:38:48.240
surrender. There's a certain amount
3574
02:38:48.240 --> 02:38:51.460
of ego that you have to get rid of in order to open yourself up
3575
02:38:51.460 --> 02:38:53.760
to God. But there are a series
3576
02:38:53.760 --> 02:38:58.230
of practices that you can do that will cultivate the right
3577
02:38:58.230 --> 02:39:00.880
setting for God to pick up the phone.
3578
02:39:00.880 --> 02:39:04.600
These are things that we will sort of use psychedelics. It's
3579
02:39:04.600 --> 02:39:06.000
very good evidence for these psychedelics,
3580
02:39:06.000 --> 02:39:08.770
I was about to say. Yeah. So psychedelics will do this kind of
3581
02:39:08.770 --> 02:39:10.960
thing where it takes you to that
3582
02:39:10.960 --> 02:39:14.380
state to a certain degree, but there's way, way, way further to
3583
02:39:14.380 --> 02:39:16.240
go than what psychedelics can do.
3584
02:39:16.240 --> 02:39:18.790
I would say psychedelics take you to a helicopter to about 6,
3585
02:39:18.790 --> 02:39:21.120
000 feet. You can go to 20,000 feet,
3586
02:39:21.120 --> 02:39:24.540
30,000 feet, have experiences of Brahman. And this is where all
3587
02:39:24.540 --> 02:39:26.080
of these like weird esoteric
3588
02:39:26.080 --> 02:39:29.560
practices from the science of yoga, kind of like now that we
3589
02:39:29.560 --> 02:39:31.520
have so much like mug mindfulness
3590
02:39:31.520 --> 02:39:33.880
everywhere where everyone's got apps and stuff like that. We've
3591
02:39:33.880 --> 02:39:35.280
lost a lot of the most important
3592
02:39:35.280 --> 02:39:38.840
stuff that if you want to have a transcendent experience, there
3593
02:39:38.840 --> 02:39:40.080
are things you have to do with your
3594
02:39:40.080 --> 02:39:42.150
diet. There are things that you have to do with your
3595
02:39:42.150 --> 02:39:44.480
respiratory rate. You have to set up your
3596
02:39:44.480 --> 02:39:49.510
body's capacity to handle metabolic acidosis because yeah. And
3597
02:39:49.510 --> 02:39:51.200
you've done this yourself.
3598
02:39:51.200 --> 02:39:55.820
I will not answer that question. You can answer the question
3599
02:39:55.820 --> 02:39:56.880
whether you've done it or not.
3600
02:39:56.880 --> 02:39:59.280
I can. I will not. Why?
3601
02:40:00.800 --> 02:40:06.400
The cost to my Shakti is too high. So I asked you this question
3602
02:40:06.400 --> 02:40:07.440
before, do you remember?
3603
02:40:07.440 --> 02:40:12.190
What did I say? You told me that you have seen things and gone
3604
02:40:12.190 --> 02:40:14.400
to a place. But when I asked you
3605
02:40:14.400 --> 02:40:18.820
what you saw, you told me you wouldn't tell me. Yeah. But you
3606
02:40:18.820 --> 02:40:20.480
're happy to say that you have
3607
02:40:20.480 --> 02:40:23.350
done this. No, I didn't say that I've done this. So you said to
3608
02:40:23.350 --> 02:40:24.960
me last time. Well, maybe I
3609
02:40:24.960 --> 02:40:27.890
made a mistake. I mean, sort of. So if that's what I said last
3610
02:40:27.890 --> 02:40:29.920
time, that's my answer then. My
3611
02:40:29.920 --> 02:40:32.450
answer today is I will not talk. I will not answer that
3612
02:40:32.450 --> 02:40:34.160
question. And the reason you answer the
3613
02:40:34.160 --> 02:40:36.760
question is because the depletion of the Shakti is too high.
3614
02:40:36.760 --> 02:40:37.920
And what does that mean?
3615
02:40:37.920 --> 02:40:45.990
Okay. So us, okay. So it sounds like I'm locked out of the
3616
02:40:45.990 --> 02:40:46.960
house like I can't.
3617
02:40:46.960 --> 02:40:50.130
There are many reasons, but okay, so panpsychism. There's this
3618
02:40:50.130 --> 02:40:51.440
idea that there's this weird
3619
02:40:51.440 --> 02:40:54.610
collective consciousness. That's the basic unit. I think we can
3620
02:40:54.610 --> 02:40:56.560
easily call it God, a relationship
3621
02:40:56.560 --> 02:40:59.490
with that thing. So I'm down here. It's up there. So the key
3622
02:40:59.490 --> 02:41:01.680
thing is if we look at psychedelic
3623
02:41:01.680 --> 02:41:05.690
usage, if we look at dark night of the soul, if we look at
3624
02:41:05.690 --> 02:41:07.840
these moments of rapture, where
3625
02:41:07.840 --> 02:41:10.450
you go into church and one of two things is happening, either
3626
02:41:10.450 --> 02:41:12.400
your psychological defense mechanisms
3627
02:41:12.400 --> 02:41:14.930
are creating the ultimate cope. And you're saying now I'm
3628
02:41:14.930 --> 02:41:16.800
healed even though you're not,
3629
02:41:16.800 --> 02:41:19.830
or you actually have a direct experience of God and you are
3630
02:41:19.830 --> 02:41:22.320
transformed. What is the nature of
3631
02:41:22.320 --> 02:41:25.570
that transformation? It is the loss of ego. That is the most
3632
02:41:25.570 --> 02:41:27.760
conserved thing we surrender before God
3633
02:41:27.760 --> 02:41:29.990
before God, we are nothing, right? Doesn't matter which
3634
02:41:29.990 --> 02:41:31.440
religion you talk to. This is all,
3635
02:41:31.440 --> 02:41:34.350
this is where I think that there's like evidence of truth with
3636
02:41:34.350 --> 02:41:36.080
a capital T because human beings
3637
02:41:36.080 --> 02:41:40.270
from all over the planet have done these explorations using the
3638
02:41:40.270 --> 02:41:42.160
technology of our mind and our
3639
02:41:42.160 --> 02:41:45.580
consciousness and we arrive at very similar conclusions. So the
3640
02:41:45.580 --> 02:41:49.120
beautiful thing is that when our ego is
3641
02:41:49.120 --> 02:41:54.010
active in the most powerful way, it becomes narcissism also
3642
02:41:54.010 --> 02:41:56.560
becomes things like depression,
3643
02:41:56.560 --> 02:42:00.020
still actually a very ego. I'm terrible. I'm pathetic. I'm
3644
02:42:00.020 --> 02:42:01.680
worthless. The world would be better
3645
02:42:01.680 --> 02:42:04.530
off without me. The focus is on me, me, me, me, me. It's hyper
3646
02:42:04.530 --> 02:42:06.000
active default mode network.
3647
02:42:06.000 --> 02:42:09.970
So in order to connect to the divine, you need to dissolve your
3648
02:42:09.970 --> 02:42:11.520
ego as much as possible.
3649
02:42:12.480 --> 02:42:16.950
So the reason you don't tell me is because if I say it, my ego
3650
02:42:16.950 --> 02:42:22.320
will increase. You also will not, what will happen is
3651
02:42:22.320 --> 02:42:25.820
you'll get an idea of it, right? The more I talk about it, the
3652
02:42:25.820 --> 02:42:28.400
more that your mind will create a map without
3653
02:42:28.400 --> 02:42:31.950
experience. So I do not discuss my experiences in meditation.
3654
02:42:31.950 --> 02:42:34.160
What I will absolutely say though, and
3655
02:42:34.160 --> 02:42:36.940
this is what I love about it, Alex said, this is the one thing
3656
02:42:36.940 --> 02:42:38.640
we cannot stand on the shoulders of
3657
02:42:38.640 --> 02:42:42.530
giants, you have to walk this whole journey by yourself. No one
3658
02:42:42.530 --> 02:42:43.920
else can walk it for you.
3659
02:42:43.920 --> 02:42:48.470
So I won't tell you how far I've gone. Maybe I'm a, maybe I'm
3660
02:42:48.470 --> 02:42:50.720
just, you know, talking shit who knows,
3661
02:42:50.720 --> 02:42:53.710
but what I will tell you is that you don't need the answer from
3662
02:42:53.710 --> 02:42:55.360
me. Why are you asking me
3663
02:42:55.360 --> 02:42:57.630
because you want to know that you walk it? If you see the
3664
02:42:57.630 --> 02:42:59.440
Buddha kill him, that's the meaning of this
3665
02:42:59.440 --> 02:43:03.600
one interpretive meaning of this, if this Buddhist Cohen is
3666
02:43:03.600 --> 02:43:06.160
stop looking for gurus and start looking
3667
02:43:06.160 --> 02:43:08.710
inside yourself. Do you think I could then sit here and say
3668
02:43:08.710 --> 02:43:10.240
what your experience is not true?
3669
02:43:10.240 --> 02:43:14.470
And I absolutely. Yeah. Of course. And I could, I could pick it
3670
02:43:14.470 --> 02:43:15.600
apart and stuff like that.
3671
02:43:15.600 --> 02:43:17.890
Absolutely. So this is the thing that I said. Is there any
3672
02:43:17.890 --> 02:43:21.040
value in that from what for me doing that
3673
02:43:21.040 --> 02:43:24.750
to you? Of course, there's value for you. If you wanted to, if
3674
02:43:24.750 --> 02:43:26.400
you want to pick me apart,
3675
02:43:26.400 --> 02:43:29.010
if you want to continue to live the life that you, you live, if
3676
02:43:29.010 --> 02:43:30.560
you want to continue to get
3677
02:43:30.560 --> 02:43:33.760
five out of 10 meaning, because you've accomplished a lot. If a
3678
02:43:33.760 --> 02:43:35.360
company, you have a lot of stuff,
3679
02:43:35.360 --> 02:43:38.100
I mean, so many videos that you have left, so many people that
3680
02:43:38.100 --> 02:43:39.440
you help millions of people
3681
02:43:39.440 --> 02:43:42.660
across the globe, right? I say this because that's what's
3682
02:43:42.660 --> 02:43:46.000
happening here. What that Alex is picking
3683
02:43:46.000 --> 02:43:49.170
apart. Fine. So I have no problem with picking things apart. If
3684
02:43:49.170 --> 02:43:50.320
you want to pick things apart,
3685
02:43:50.320 --> 02:43:53.000
pick things apart, but be very clear about what picking things
3686
02:43:53.000 --> 02:43:54.320
apart does. What does it do?
3687
02:43:54.320 --> 02:43:57.800
So it's a great question. I have a different way of answering
3688
02:43:57.800 --> 02:43:58.000
it.
3689
02:43:58.000 --> 02:44:02.240
So when I listened to philosophers, like these guys were just
3690
02:44:02.240 --> 02:44:04.000
in it about evil and if
3691
02:44:04.000 --> 02:44:07.440
if evil was created when Eve ate the apple, was she evil when
3692
02:44:07.440 --> 02:44:08.640
she made the apple, right?
3693
02:44:08.640 --> 02:44:11.040
It's so great. It's picking things apart. So it's so
3694
02:44:11.040 --> 02:44:13.280
interesting because as a psychiatrist,
3695
02:44:13.280 --> 02:44:17.560
my training is actually the exact opposite. What I've trained
3696
02:44:17.560 --> 02:44:20.480
myself to do is to twist
3697
02:44:20.480 --> 02:44:24.120
in turn in mental gymnastics to understand somebody else's view
3698
02:44:24.120 --> 02:44:25.680
. When a patient walks into my
3699
02:44:25.680 --> 02:44:28.100
office and they say, I'm suicidal, I don't want to pick their
3700
02:44:28.100 --> 02:44:29.520
view apart. No, you have so much
3701
02:44:29.520 --> 02:44:32.730
to live for, it doesn't work. I try to understand them. So
3702
02:44:32.730 --> 02:44:35.600
there is value to picking things
3703
02:44:35.600 --> 02:44:38.540
apart in terms of political debate, in terms of your arguing
3704
02:44:38.540 --> 02:44:40.240
with your wife, whether you should buy
3705
02:44:40.240 --> 02:44:43.180
a car or lease a car, there are all kinds of values to picking
3706
02:44:43.180 --> 02:44:44.800
things apart. But the question is,
3707
02:44:44.800 --> 02:44:48.960
what do you want? Now, I think if you take Alex's road, which I
3708
02:44:48.960 --> 02:44:50.400
think is going to change real quick
3709
02:44:50.400 --> 02:44:58.000
if it hasn't. Why? Be honest. I think he's going to go down the
3710
02:44:58.000 --> 02:44:59.920
road of Gnosis if he isn't already.
3711
02:44:59.920 --> 02:45:07.980
Gnosis. What is Gnosis? Alex. Gnosis is a Greek term. Gnosis
3712
02:45:07.980 --> 02:45:09.760
means knowledge, but it's attached to
3713
02:45:09.760 --> 02:45:13.680
I guess a kind of an ancient school of philosophy which
3714
02:45:13.680 --> 02:45:18.240
believes that truth is obtained from looking
3715
02:45:18.240 --> 02:45:22.610
inward. Do you mean Gnosis isn't? Not in our system. So I think
3716
02:45:22.610 --> 02:45:25.200
if you want to, Alex, it's not a
3717
02:45:25.200 --> 02:45:28.560
philosophy. It's a practice. But what do you mean when you say,
3718
02:45:28.560 --> 02:45:29.440
I mean, see when I asked you,
3719
02:45:29.440 --> 02:45:32.210
you said, I'm going to go down a, you got to walk down the Gn
3720
02:45:32.210 --> 02:45:34.160
ostic road. Would you tell us
3721
02:45:34.160 --> 02:45:39.520
what you're going to do that? What does it mean that I think
3722
02:45:39.520 --> 02:45:40.320
you're going to do that?
3723
02:45:40.320 --> 02:45:43.220
What is the thing that you think I'm going to? Yeah, I think
3724
02:45:43.220 --> 02:45:44.160
you're going to have to start
3725
02:45:44.160 --> 02:45:48.320
practicing Gnostic stuff. What does that mean? So Thunder
3726
02:45:48.320 --> 02:45:49.840
Perfect Mind is a series of
3727
02:45:49.840 --> 02:45:54.560
meditations. If you look at that and you do what it tells you
3728
02:45:54.560 --> 02:45:56.720
to do, you will understand what the
3729
02:45:56.720 --> 02:45:59.890
Gnostics understood. You have to walk that path that they
3730
02:45:59.890 --> 02:46:02.880
walked. But doing so does not involve
3731
02:46:02.880 --> 02:46:07.090
the philosophy of Gnosis, right? That the part of Gnosis, I don
3732
02:46:07.090 --> 02:46:07.840
't know what the philosophy,
3733
02:46:07.840 --> 02:46:10.040
I mean, I get what you're saying from philosophical perspective
3734
02:46:10.040 --> 02:46:11.280
, but the Gnostics were
3735
02:46:11.280 --> 02:46:14.450
practitioners, as far as I understand, I read one Gnostic text
3736
02:46:14.450 --> 02:46:16.000
and I was like, Oh, this is like a,
3737
02:46:16.000 --> 02:46:18.200
this is like a meditationist. So what is it that makes you
3738
02:46:18.200 --> 02:46:20.320
think? What do you look at me and say, that's
3739
02:46:20.320 --> 02:46:25.590
I mean, you've read one Gnostic text. I have an intuition. So I
3740
02:46:25.590 --> 02:46:28.000
wonder what will you mean?
3741
02:46:28.000 --> 02:46:32.660
It's not explainable. But, but you have an intuition based on
3742
02:46:32.660 --> 02:46:33.920
pattern recognition,
3743
02:46:33.920 --> 02:46:37.410
sure, that an individual like Alex, I don't know, no, not
3744
02:46:37.410 --> 02:46:39.600
pattern recognition. This is indefensible.
3745
02:46:39.600 --> 02:46:44.760
Okay, I get told a lot by a lot of different people that I'm
3746
02:46:44.760 --> 02:46:46.720
quite clearly on a particular
3747
02:46:46.720 --> 02:46:50.500
road of Christians. Christians very often say that it seems as
3748
02:46:50.500 --> 02:46:51.680
though I'm on the verge of
3749
02:46:51.680 --> 02:46:54.280
Christian conversion. And I think that's often just a result of
3750
02:46:54.280 --> 02:46:55.680
having nice conversations with
3751
02:46:55.680 --> 02:46:57.760
them where I don't jump down their throat and say, actually,
3752
02:46:57.760 --> 02:46:59.760
there's some, there's some
3753
02:46:59.760 --> 02:47:01.540
truth in there. So actually, there are some good arguments with
3754
02:47:01.540 --> 02:47:02.720
the resurrection of Jesus or
3755
02:47:02.720 --> 02:47:05.250
this kind of stuff. And certainly I have people saying, you
3756
02:47:05.250 --> 02:47:06.160
know, he's so close.
3757
02:47:06.160 --> 02:47:08.470
Is that because he's kind of annoying. Really a man searching
3758
02:47:08.470 --> 02:47:10.320
for meaning something about
3759
02:47:10.320 --> 02:47:12.390
you don't know what notice is you said it's a series of
3760
02:47:12.390 --> 02:47:14.640
practices, but like what so is, you know,
3761
02:47:14.640 --> 02:47:19.600
so as vegetarianism. So I think no, from what reading one text,
3762
02:47:19.600 --> 02:47:20.720
I'm not a Gnostic expert.
3763
02:47:20.720 --> 02:47:25.570
Okay. So there's a set of practices that if you do them have a
3764
02:47:25.570 --> 02:47:27.280
high probabilistic chance
3765
02:47:27.280 --> 02:47:30.480
of having a direct experience of God, like what?
3766
02:47:31.520 --> 02:47:34.740
Yeah, so own chanting is a simple example, right? But there are
3767
02:47:34.740 --> 02:47:36.240
things that you can do to
3768
02:47:36.240 --> 02:47:40.800
increase the likelihood of having a transcendent experience of
3769
02:47:40.800 --> 02:47:42.640
own chanting. So for example, if you
3770
02:47:42.640 --> 02:47:46.850
adopt Sidhassan, so Sidhassan is a particular yoga posture
3771
02:47:46.850 --> 02:47:50.240
where your left heel is placed against
3772
02:47:50.240 --> 02:47:54.560
the perinium of your body. So the perinium is the, the taint,
3773
02:47:54.560 --> 02:47:56.560
the area between the anus and the
3774
02:47:56.560 --> 02:48:01.710
scrotum. So if you also do certain baronium practices, so these
3775
02:48:01.710 --> 02:48:03.600
will do things that induce a very,
3776
02:48:03.600 --> 02:48:06.910
very, very low respiratory rate. And one of the things that we
3777
02:48:06.910 --> 02:48:09.840
know about transcendental experiences
3778
02:48:09.840 --> 02:48:14.260
is that high levels of CO2 tend to make, actually, we don't
3779
02:48:14.260 --> 02:48:16.400
know this, but this is kind of the
3780
02:48:16.400 --> 02:48:19.940
best hypothesis that I've read that I happen to think is true
3781
02:48:19.940 --> 02:48:21.600
that if we alter the neurons of
3782
02:48:21.600 --> 02:48:25.480
our brain chemistry, we can evoke transcendental experiences.
3783
02:48:25.480 --> 02:48:27.760
So if you look at some of these esoteric
3784
02:48:27.760 --> 02:48:30.740
traditions, what'll happen is, is you have all of these
3785
02:48:30.740 --> 02:48:33.120
different practices. And as you do these
3786
02:48:33.120 --> 02:48:36.380
practices, I think you are very clearly refining your
3787
02:48:36.380 --> 02:48:39.360
physiology and your neurology to induce certain
3788
02:48:39.360 --> 02:48:42.860
states. And let's remember that psychedelics don't create
3789
02:48:42.860 --> 02:48:46.240
anything. Yes. Psychedelics simply activate
3790
02:48:46.240 --> 02:48:50.990
the circuitry that is already there. Right. But yeah, that's,
3791
02:48:50.990 --> 02:48:53.440
that's a crucial point to make.
3792
02:48:53.440 --> 02:48:56.790
I love to understand why you think he's going to go around that
3793
02:48:56.790 --> 02:48:57.120
path.
3794
02:48:57.120 --> 02:49:01.280
Let's call it intuition, but I need something a little bit more
3795
02:49:01.280 --> 02:49:02.160
than that. So you're saying,
3796
02:49:02.160 --> 02:49:07.660
okay, so I'll give you more. So in the system of, so can I
3797
02:49:07.660 --> 02:49:09.920
answer truthfully or defensively,
3798
02:49:09.920 --> 02:49:14.130
which ones do you guys watch? So in the system of Kundalini
3799
02:49:14.130 --> 02:49:16.320
yoga, there are seven chakras.
3800
02:49:16.320 --> 02:49:22.460
So 21 years ago, almost 22, I went to a teacher who taught me
3801
02:49:22.460 --> 02:49:24.720
the first of a Kundalini practice,
3802
02:49:24.720 --> 02:49:27.720
which is based on the Agnet chakra. So the Agnet chakra is your
3803
02:49:27.720 --> 02:49:30.320
third eye chakra and gives you,
3804
02:49:30.320 --> 02:49:35.680
it is the chakra that governs understanding. So if you want to
3805
02:49:35.680 --> 02:49:36.960
understand things,
3806
02:49:38.240 --> 02:49:41.810
then Agnet chakra practices are the right thing to do. So many
3807
02:49:41.810 --> 02:49:42.640
years ago,
3808
02:49:42.640 --> 02:49:47.360
back in a former life, when I was still an academic at Harvard,
3809
02:49:47.360 --> 02:49:48.800
I was trying to develop
3810
02:49:48.800 --> 02:49:52.960
an evidence-based meditation program for different diagnoses.
3811
02:49:52.960 --> 02:49:54.640
And part of what I leaned into,
3812
02:49:54.640 --> 02:49:57.420
and initial results were good, but never really, you know, then
3813
02:49:57.420 --> 02:49:58.160
I started doing this.
3814
02:49:58.160 --> 02:50:01.990
But so as one example, there's this chakra called the mula dhar
3815
02:50:01.990 --> 02:50:02.720
achakra,
3816
02:50:02.720 --> 02:50:05.890
which is our root chakra. So the mula dharachakra governs our
3817
02:50:05.890 --> 02:50:07.360
primal impulses in life.
3818
02:50:08.240 --> 02:50:11.210
So I looked at my patients with addictions and I was like, okay
3819
02:50:11.210 --> 02:50:13.440
, these people have a problem with
3820
02:50:13.440 --> 02:50:15.970
impulse control and they want something and they can't restrain
3821
02:50:15.970 --> 02:50:17.200
themselves from getting it.
3822
02:50:17.200 --> 02:50:21.620
So I wondered, can I teach them mula dharachakra practices to
3823
02:50:21.620 --> 02:50:23.360
sort of basically like
3824
02:50:23.360 --> 02:50:28.310
reduce their flow of wanting the basic things? And I found that
3825
02:50:28.310 --> 02:50:30.800
that was efficacious. Now,
3826
02:50:30.800 --> 02:50:34.560
meditation works for addictions. Then, but the question is, can
3827
02:50:34.560 --> 02:50:36.160
we do a specific meditation
3828
02:50:36.160 --> 02:50:39.680
for a specific mental illness? So there are, there's one study,
3829
02:50:39.680 --> 02:50:40.720
for example, that looks at
3830
02:50:40.720 --> 02:50:43.390
a nahat, their heart chakra meditation specifically for
3831
02:50:43.390 --> 02:50:45.120
depression, because it cultivates like
3832
02:50:45.120 --> 02:50:48.460
compassion and self-love and stuff like that. And they found it
3833
02:50:48.460 --> 02:50:50.640
's a very small study. Hopefully,
3834
02:50:50.640 --> 02:50:53.820
the, the, we'll do more research in this, but they found that
3835
02:50:53.820 --> 02:50:55.520
the effect was superior to other
3836
02:50:55.520 --> 02:51:00.200
forms of meditation. So hypothetically, theoretically, there
3837
02:51:00.200 --> 02:51:02.640
are specific meditation practices,
3838
02:51:02.640 --> 02:51:06.120
which work in different ways. And I teach a lot of the stuff in
3839
02:51:06.120 --> 02:51:07.120
, in the doctor case,
3840
02:51:07.120 --> 02:51:10.290
guided meditation and stuff, but so they're these specific
3841
02:51:10.290 --> 02:51:13.280
practices. So I specifically did a practice
3842
02:51:13.280 --> 02:51:17.650
based on a nahat chakra stuff like intuition, right? So then
3843
02:51:17.650 --> 02:51:19.520
like something weird happens,
3844
02:51:19.520 --> 02:51:23.680
which is when I sit with people, I have intuitions about them.
3845
02:51:23.680 --> 02:51:26.080
Now, is this real, is this fake,
3846
02:51:26.080 --> 02:51:29.500
is it delusional? I don't know. You could argue that I'm just a
3847
02:51:29.500 --> 02:51:31.120
really good psychiatrist with
3848
02:51:31.120 --> 02:51:35.590
really good cold reading, right? But this is a, I don't, so if
3849
02:51:35.590 --> 02:51:37.680
you want to know the real answer,
3850
02:51:37.680 --> 02:51:39.530
like I'm not a great psychiatrist, people think I'm so
3851
02:51:39.530 --> 02:51:41.280
brilliant design. I'm not, I'm cheating.
3852
02:51:41.280 --> 02:51:45.130
I'm using us a layer of information that I don't think most
3853
02:51:45.130 --> 02:51:46.640
people have access to,
3854
02:51:46.640 --> 02:51:52.920
which I know is a completely undefensible claim, except if you
3855
02:51:52.920 --> 02:51:54.880
do a nahat chakra practices too,
3856
02:51:54.880 --> 02:51:58.240
you will see what I'm talking about. Alex, if I were to ask you
3857
02:51:58.240 --> 02:51:59.120
that if someone's listening
3858
02:51:59.120 --> 02:52:02.030
now and they feel lost in their life, is there any advice that
3859
02:52:02.030 --> 02:52:03.040
you could give them
3860
02:52:03.040 --> 02:52:09.070
or a simple action that they could take that would help them to
3861
02:52:09.070 --> 02:52:09.600
find
3862
02:52:09.600 --> 02:52:14.640
to remove the feeling of feeling lost in life?
3863
02:52:14.640 --> 02:52:20.080
It's always difficult because it's such an individual thing
3864
02:52:20.080 --> 02:52:21.280
that it's difficult to give
3865
02:52:22.560 --> 02:52:31.250
advice, writ large, also because I'm no paradigm of meaning and
3866
02:52:31.250 --> 02:52:32.880
purpose in life and not some
3867
02:52:32.880 --> 02:52:36.830
fountain of wisdom from which people can drink. So I wouldn't
3868
02:52:36.830 --> 02:52:39.360
presume to do so, but if a friend,
3869
02:52:39.360 --> 02:52:41.890
so if they came to me as I'm the guy on the camera with the
3870
02:52:41.890 --> 02:52:43.840
microphones and stuff, so what do I do?
3871
02:52:43.840 --> 02:52:46.470
I would say probably the reason a lot of people click this
3872
02:52:46.470 --> 02:52:46.800
video.
3873
02:52:46.800 --> 02:52:49.970
Yeah, I would say that firstly, stop doing that. Don't stop
3874
02:52:49.970 --> 02:52:50.800
clicking the video.
3875
02:52:50.800 --> 02:52:55.920
Everybody is like and subscribe. Stop thinking that you're
3876
02:52:55.920 --> 02:52:56.560
going to find
3877
02:52:56.560 --> 02:53:02.860
some kind of teacher or guru who is going to give you the
3878
02:53:02.860 --> 02:53:04.320
answer. Instead,
3879
02:53:04.320 --> 02:53:07.580
the most valuable form of person to listen to, I think, and I
3880
02:53:07.580 --> 02:53:09.280
found is somebody who's quite clearly
3881
02:53:09.280 --> 02:53:12.560
also trying to do the same thing. There are people out there
3882
02:53:12.560 --> 02:53:13.680
who think they've achieved
3883
02:53:13.680 --> 02:53:15.550
certain things. They've found meaning, they've understood the
3884
02:53:15.550 --> 02:53:16.720
truth, and you can learn a lot from
3885
02:53:16.720 --> 02:53:18.960
them trying to explain their worldview to them. I don't claim
3886
02:53:18.960 --> 02:53:20.160
to be such a person, so the only
3887
02:53:20.160 --> 02:53:22.230
thing I can do is say, "I'm actually doing this at the same
3888
02:53:22.230 --> 02:53:24.640
time as you." I can't give you advice
3889
02:53:24.640 --> 02:53:26.850
from experience. I can't say, "Here's what to do to find
3890
02:53:26.850 --> 02:53:28.960
meaning. Here's what I did." What I can say is,
3891
02:53:28.960 --> 02:53:31.790
"Here are some things that I'm trying. For example, I'm really
3892
02:53:31.790 --> 02:53:33.200
interested by this question of
3893
02:53:33.200 --> 02:53:36.360
consciousness and what it means to say that reality is
3894
02:53:36.360 --> 02:53:38.480
fundamentally mental and that we've made a
3895
02:53:38.480 --> 02:53:42.110
mistake in thinking that complexity produces consciousness and
3896
02:53:42.110 --> 02:53:44.960
rather a complexity allows consciousness
3897
02:53:44.960 --> 02:53:48.360
to do particular things, like memory and emotion and stuff like
3898
02:53:48.360 --> 02:53:50.160
that. That's really exciting,
3899
02:53:50.160 --> 02:53:52.470
and there are some implications of seeing the world in that way
3900
02:53:52.470 --> 02:53:55.680
. Implications about the unity of
3901
02:53:55.680 --> 02:53:57.360
experiences. >> Are you saying pursue answers?
3902
02:53:57.360 --> 02:54:03.970
>> Yes, pursue answers, but also try to experience it. I kind
3903
02:54:03.970 --> 02:54:05.680
of depends who it is, and I don't
3904
02:54:05.680 --> 02:54:08.840
like to say on camera exactly, but psychedelics can be really,
3905
02:54:08.840 --> 02:54:10.640
really useful for a lot of people.
3906
02:54:10.640 --> 02:54:15.800
They can, if you are not in the right mindset as they say, if
3907
02:54:15.800 --> 02:54:17.440
you're a bit disintegrated,
3908
02:54:17.440 --> 02:54:21.360
if the reason I don't like to advise it is because it can bring
3909
02:54:21.360 --> 02:54:22.720
about a very bad experience for a
3910
02:54:22.720 --> 02:54:24.790
lot of people. >> Are you saying within the right set and
3911
02:54:24.790 --> 02:54:25.120
setting?
3912
02:54:25.120 --> 02:54:27.190
>> Something like that might be what I'd recommend. It depends
3913
02:54:27.190 --> 02:54:28.080
who I'm talking to, but there are
3914
02:54:28.080 --> 02:54:31.320
friends in my life, for example, who I would say don't take
3915
02:54:31.320 --> 02:54:34.480
psychedelics. From my experience,
3916
02:54:34.480 --> 02:54:36.410
I just don't think it seems like the right thing to do, but
3917
02:54:36.410 --> 02:54:37.840
there are other friends who I would say,
3918
02:54:37.840 --> 02:54:40.800
if you did, in the right circumstance, I think this could blow
3919
02:54:40.800 --> 02:54:41.280
open.
3920
02:54:41.280 --> 02:54:44.490
>> Would you come across yourself as being lost and direction
3921
02:54:44.490 --> 02:54:44.960
less?
3922
02:54:44.960 --> 02:54:48.880
>> To some degree, of course, yeah, to some degree, everybody
3923
02:54:48.880 --> 02:54:52.640
is. Lost is quite a heavy word.
3924
02:54:52.640 --> 02:54:55.520
When people say I'm lost, by volunteering that information,
3925
02:54:55.520 --> 02:54:58.160
they tend to be implying that
3926
02:54:58.160 --> 02:55:01.330
it's a strong enough feeling that they're troubled by it and
3927
02:55:01.330 --> 02:55:02.800
want to make it that happy.
3928
02:55:02.800 --> 02:55:05.970
That's why people say it, but when you ask, well, there are
3929
02:55:05.970 --> 02:55:06.960
different questions here, right?
3930
02:55:06.960 --> 02:55:10.240
>> Yeah, I might be happy right now. >> Sure.
3931
02:55:10.240 --> 02:55:13.840
>> Tomorrow you can continue your life. >> If you had to rate
3932
02:55:13.840 --> 02:55:13.920
your
3933
02:55:13.920 --> 02:55:16.880
contentment in life out of 10, I'll do the same. It's not a
3934
02:55:16.880 --> 02:55:18.720
very easy thing to quantify.
3935
02:55:18.720 --> 02:55:24.160
>> But I asked 100s of people, 400 people this question.
3936
02:55:24.160 --> 02:55:25.760
Everyone in the podcast has been
3937
02:55:25.760 --> 02:55:28.640
asked Dr. Kay this question. >> And they'll just finish this
3938
02:55:28.640 --> 02:55:29.040
train of thought.
3939
02:55:29.040 --> 02:55:32.960
>> I'll just say to you, for example, I'm like a five out of 10
3940
02:55:32.960 --> 02:55:33.680
contentment.
3941
02:55:33.680 --> 02:55:34.560
>> Is that true?
3942
02:55:35.440 --> 02:55:37.810
Like maybe, yeah. >> Let's just, I'll give you a simple way to
3943
02:55:37.810 --> 02:55:39.440
quantify, I literally can't
3944
02:55:39.440 --> 02:55:41.360
quantify. >> I'll give you a way to quantify.
3945
02:55:41.360 --> 02:55:43.840
>> Give you the yardstick. So, you think about how old are you?
3946
02:55:43.840 --> 02:55:46.080
>> 26. >> 26, so you think about those 26 years.
3947
02:55:46.080 --> 02:55:51.920
Has there been months of your life where consistently you've
3948
02:55:51.920 --> 02:55:54.080
felt really fulfilled
3949
02:55:54.080 --> 02:55:57.920
and positive for weeks, months in a row?
3950
02:55:57.920 --> 02:56:02.000
>> Um, I'd probably, yeah. I think so.
3951
02:56:02.000 --> 02:56:06.730
It was the last time for a full month, for a full 30 days, you
3952
02:56:06.730 --> 02:56:09.760
felt really good on average.
3953
02:56:09.760 --> 02:56:11.280
>> Out of 10, what counts?
3954
02:56:11.280 --> 02:56:12.400
>> Really good on average.
3955
02:56:12.400 --> 02:56:15.380
>> I don't know, it might have been, usually when I have some
3956
02:56:15.380 --> 02:56:16.480
kind of project.
3957
02:56:16.480 --> 02:56:19.160
As I've said, I think meaning is intimately tied up to having a
3958
02:56:19.160 --> 02:56:19.840
task of fulfilled.
3959
02:56:19.840 --> 02:56:24.080
So, when I've been touring for the purpose of filming podcasts
3960
02:56:24.080 --> 02:56:25.200
and doing talks and stuff,
3961
02:56:25.200 --> 02:56:27.440
I feel pretty content because I wake up and I know what my task
3962
02:56:27.440 --> 02:56:28.560
is for the day and I get it done.
3963
02:56:29.200 --> 02:56:32.100
So, on like a subjective psychological level, those are
3964
02:56:32.100 --> 02:56:33.680
probably the times when I wake up with the
3965
02:56:33.680 --> 02:56:37.120
most, let's say, drive the feeling that I've got a task of
3966
02:56:37.120 --> 02:56:38.160
fulfilling.
3967
02:56:38.160 --> 02:56:40.880
>> Other days when you feel the weeks, sometimes, or months
3968
02:56:40.880 --> 02:56:41.760
where you feel the opposite,
3969
02:56:41.760 --> 02:56:44.200
which we might be characterised in a clinical context as
3970
02:56:44.200 --> 02:56:44.960
depression.
3971
02:56:44.960 --> 02:56:46.160
>> Of course, that's interesting.
3972
02:56:46.160 --> 02:56:50.240
>> Can I ask why you were interested in my, in my answers?
3973
02:56:50.240 --> 02:56:52.560
>> I was trying to see how similar we are.
3974
02:56:52.560 --> 02:56:54.160
>> Uh-huh. >> That's really it because we're both,
3975
02:56:54.160 --> 02:56:58.250
we both sit in the same agnostic camp, but actually we're very,
3976
02:56:58.250 --> 02:56:58.960
very different.
3977
02:57:00.000 --> 02:57:01.890
In terms of our, I wake up in the morning and I work up this
3978
02:57:01.890 --> 02:57:03.600
morning and I'm very happy.
3979
02:57:03.600 --> 02:57:05.280
And I feel very, very driven and I couldn't wait.
3980
02:57:05.280 --> 02:57:07.200
I was actually the night before I couldn't wake up.
3981
02:57:07.200 --> 02:57:09.270
I was annoyed, I had to sleep because I couldn't wait to get up
3982
02:57:09.270 --> 02:57:09.920
in the morning.
3983
02:57:09.920 --> 02:57:11.200
And that's typically my experience.
3984
02:57:11.200 --> 02:57:13.510
I'm like, I can't wait to get the sleep done with because I can
3985
02:57:13.510 --> 02:57:14.720
't wait to get back to life.
3986
02:57:14.720 --> 02:57:16.000
>> So, what's it all for?
3987
02:57:16.000 --> 02:57:18.480
>> I don't really, this sounds crazy.
3988
02:57:18.480 --> 02:57:20.790
And it also somewhat links to what you're saying about, at the
3989
02:57:20.790 --> 02:57:21.520
very beginning,
3990
02:57:21.520 --> 02:57:23.120
about people being really obsessed with not dying.
3991
02:57:23.120 --> 02:57:25.600
I don't really count, I'm a great time.
3992
02:57:26.320 --> 02:57:30.240
And I love having these conversations because I get to learn
3993
02:57:30.240 --> 02:57:31.440
more about different people's
3994
02:57:31.440 --> 02:57:33.800
strategies to having a great time and to making their lives
3995
02:57:33.800 --> 02:57:34.960
more meaningful and more exciting
3996
02:57:34.960 --> 02:57:36.000
on a daily basis.
3997
02:57:36.000 --> 02:57:39.370
>> But does that, that sounds quite nihilistic, in a way,
3998
02:57:39.370 --> 02:57:41.440
because it, you sound like Cohele,
3999
02:57:41.440 --> 02:57:44.330
in the book of Ecclesiastes, who's sort of eating and drinking
4000
02:57:44.330 --> 02:57:45.200
and being married,
4001
02:57:45.200 --> 02:57:48.900
who one day might look at it and realize that although you feel
4002
02:57:48.900 --> 02:57:49.360
in the moment,
4003
02:57:49.360 --> 02:57:51.890
this is all very good, it's all hevel, and realness that there
4004
02:57:51.890 --> 02:57:52.480
needs to be something more.
4005
02:57:52.480 --> 02:57:55.660
And I wonder if the same thing will happen if the, if the North
4006
02:57:55.660 --> 02:57:57.920
Star that you have for your life
4007
02:57:57.920 --> 02:58:00.600
and your projects and your career is that you just sort of feel
4008
02:58:00.600 --> 02:58:02.000
good while you're doing it.
4009
02:58:02.000 --> 02:58:05.600
>> And why isn't that good enough reason?
4010
02:58:05.600 --> 02:58:07.570
Because, because in your presumption that you're saying,
4011
02:58:07.570 --> 02:58:10.160
because someday I might get hit by this
4012
02:58:10.160 --> 02:58:12.160
bus of realizing that it was worth nothing.
4013
02:58:12.160 --> 02:58:16.440
But for the, for the seven years up until I die, I'm going to
4014
02:58:16.440 --> 02:58:17.840
wake up in the morning,
4015
02:58:17.840 --> 02:58:18.800
feel good.
4016
02:58:18.800 --> 02:58:21.520
I'm going to love spending time with my girlfriend and my dog.
4017
02:58:22.480 --> 02:58:24.850
>> And whatever neurochemicals in my brain are going to
4018
02:58:24.850 --> 02:58:30.240
reinforce me to keep doing that. And does it bring meaning?
4019
02:58:30.240 --> 02:58:30.240
>> Yeah.
4020
02:58:30.240 --> 02:58:32.400
>> What does that mean to you?
4021
02:58:32.400 --> 02:58:34.930
>> Because, because, and the reason I ask that is because conce
4022
02:58:34.930 --> 02:58:37.120
ivably, you can imagine someone who's
4023
02:58:37.120 --> 02:58:39.200
happy, but their life isn't meaningful. And you can imagine
4024
02:58:39.200 --> 02:58:40.480
someone who's suffering, but their life
4025
02:58:40.480 --> 02:58:42.590
is meaningful, like a victim of the Holocaust or something,
4026
02:58:42.590 --> 02:58:42.960
right?
4027
02:58:42.960 --> 02:58:44.320
>> I'm hearing this as well.
4028
02:58:44.320 --> 02:58:46.850
>> And so you've got the happiness part, but you also think
4029
02:58:46.850 --> 02:58:48.400
that you've got sort of meaning.
4030
02:58:48.400 --> 02:58:50.830
And what, what, where's the, what is that meaning and where's
4031
02:58:50.830 --> 02:58:51.680
that coming from?
4032
02:58:51.680 --> 02:58:53.610
>> So meaning for me is something that I create by the
4033
02:58:53.610 --> 02:58:55.120
decisions that I take. And this might go
4034
02:58:55.120 --> 02:58:57.250
down to what you were saying about having certain tendencies. I
4035
02:58:57.250 --> 02:58:58.480
have certain tendencies.
4036
02:58:58.480 --> 02:59:01.700
I have nature and nurture acting against me to make certain
4037
02:59:01.700 --> 02:59:03.360
things feel meaningful to me.
4038
02:59:03.360 --> 02:59:08.350
And one of those things is this pursuit of more information. I
4039
02:59:08.350 --> 02:59:11.280
do it when you go. And I get some
4040
02:59:11.280 --> 02:59:15.110
free time tonight. I'll be on YouTube learning about humanoid
4041
02:59:15.110 --> 02:59:15.600
robots.
4042
02:59:15.600 --> 02:59:18.900
Or I might stumble across a video. One of your videos, which I
4043
02:59:18.900 --> 02:59:19.920
've watched many times, and I've
4044
02:59:19.920 --> 02:59:22.170
watched your videos many times, and I've watched your videos
4045
02:59:22.170 --> 02:59:24.000
many times, not because I necessarily
4046
02:59:24.000 --> 02:59:27.500
believe I'm ever going to get to the final answer, because it's
4047
02:59:27.500 --> 02:59:29.840
the, the, the doing itself that
4048
02:59:29.840 --> 02:59:33.550
I find so enjoyable. And actually, I can kind of relate to the
4049
02:59:33.550 --> 02:59:34.880
guy that knows the world's going to
4050
02:59:34.880 --> 02:59:38.050
end, but writes the book. Because it's the, it's the writing of
4051
02:59:38.050 --> 02:59:39.040
the book that I love.
4052
02:59:39.040 --> 02:59:42.060
>> Yeah, so here's what I think is beautiful. So I think if you
4053
02:59:42.060 --> 02:59:43.680
guys go back and you watch this,
4054
02:59:43.680 --> 02:59:47.690
every scientific principle is what Stephen is doing. So self-
4055
02:59:47.690 --> 02:59:49.840
determination theory, right? So he's
4056
02:59:49.840 --> 02:59:53.830
self-directed. He stretches his capacities. He relates to other
4057
02:59:53.830 --> 02:59:55.440
people. And I think this is, it's,
4058
02:59:55.440 --> 02:59:59.140
it's a really brilliant example of sort of like this problem of
4059
02:59:59.140 --> 03:00:00.560
finding like meaning with a
4060
03:00:00.560 --> 03:00:04.200
capital M and relates to this kind of idea of, you know, if you
4061
03:00:04.200 --> 03:00:06.400
're feeling directionless in life,
4062
03:00:06.400 --> 03:00:10.950
I don't know that you need to figure out with a capital M. And
4063
03:00:10.950 --> 03:00:11.920
if we listen to some of your
4064
03:00:11.920 --> 03:00:14.350
questions, right, is it enough for you? And then Stephen's like
4065
03:00:14.350 --> 03:00:15.600
, why wouldn't like, you know,
4066
03:00:15.600 --> 03:00:18.330
why do you assume that you need sort of this very natural like
4067
03:00:18.330 --> 03:00:19.600
reaction? And then he's kind of
4068
03:00:19.600 --> 03:00:22.340
like, no, I'm actually pretty content. And I think that my
4069
03:00:22.340 --> 03:00:24.320
favorite thing about your answer is that
4070
03:00:24.320 --> 03:00:27.220
getting as far as you have, I think you've got your instinctual
4071
03:00:27.220 --> 03:00:29.040
answer of five out of 10 is still
4072
03:00:29.040 --> 03:00:33.590
correct. Because this is as far as you go. And I think you feel
4073
03:00:33.590 --> 03:00:36.400
this hunger for like something else.
4074
03:00:36.400 --> 03:00:39.620
And that thing is going to be big, right? And I think that's,
4075
03:00:39.620 --> 03:00:41.440
that's what maybe Greg can help us
4076
03:00:41.440 --> 03:00:44.460
out with, right? Because I mean, I think that's, it's, it's, it
4077
03:00:44.460 --> 03:00:46.000
's a beautiful way of embodying,
4078
03:00:46.000 --> 03:00:48.420
I think how we find meaning in life. There's a bunch of
4079
03:00:48.420 --> 03:00:50.640
psychological stuff that you can do,
4080
03:00:50.640 --> 03:00:54.100
but it appears that doing some of this weird transcendental,
4081
03:00:54.100 --> 03:00:55.520
like, you got to like find it
4082
03:00:55.520 --> 03:00:58.960
and sort of this big way. And I think you're a perfect
4083
03:00:58.960 --> 03:01:02.000
embodiment of how far you can go.
4084
03:01:02.000 --> 03:01:04.730
Let me offer clarification based on the question you're asking
4085
03:01:04.730 --> 03:01:06.240
Alex, because I feel in many ways,
4086
03:01:06.240 --> 03:01:10.610
very sympathetic to Alex, as he described his subjective states
4087
03:01:10.610 --> 03:01:12.800
, you know, are you happy,
4088
03:01:12.800 --> 03:01:15.190
are you fulfilled? Do you have meaning in your life? And I
4089
03:01:15.190 --> 03:01:17.120
guess, and I think the tendency sometimes
4090
03:01:17.120 --> 03:01:19.720
is to talk to somebody who is very confident of their
4091
03:01:19.720 --> 03:01:21.520
understanding of the big picture.
4092
03:01:21.520 --> 03:01:26.180
And think that everything's going wonderful for them. You know,
4093
03:01:26.180 --> 03:01:26.880
you look at their life,
4094
03:01:26.880 --> 03:01:29.730
say, well, everything's just great. Are you happy? I'm happy
4095
03:01:29.730 --> 03:01:31.280
all the time. I have the truth,
4096
03:01:31.280 --> 03:01:34.600
kind of thing, but that's not exactly how it works. I'm fully
4097
03:01:34.600 --> 03:01:37.280
convinced of the truth of the
4098
03:01:37.280 --> 03:01:40.450
Christian worldview of God's existence, Jesus, all the things
4099
03:01:40.450 --> 03:01:42.000
that relate to that human beings made
4100
03:01:42.000 --> 03:01:45.190
the image of God. I think it's the best explanation. All things
4101
03:01:45.190 --> 03:01:47.440
considered for the way things are.
4102
03:01:47.440 --> 03:01:51.140
Nevertheless, I'm still a fallen human being learning to be
4103
03:01:51.140 --> 03:01:53.600
virtuous with God's help. I am still
4104
03:01:53.600 --> 03:01:57.240
living in a world that is fallen and broken. And I have to live
4105
03:01:57.240 --> 03:01:58.960
with all the contingencies
4106
03:01:58.960 --> 03:02:01.990
of a fallen world. So if you were to ask me the question that
4107
03:02:01.990 --> 03:02:03.600
you asked Alex, I would have the
4108
03:02:03.600 --> 03:02:07.310
same difficulty answering that Alex did because it's so varieg
4109
03:02:07.310 --> 03:02:09.280
ated one's life. When I wake up in the
4110
03:02:09.280 --> 03:02:12.920
morning, do you feel good? Sometimes, sometimes not. Am I
4111
03:02:12.920 --> 03:02:15.520
confident that no matter what happens in my
4112
03:02:15.520 --> 03:02:18.690
life, the good, the bad, whatever, that there is a foundation
4113
03:02:18.690 --> 03:02:20.560
there that gives me stability? Yes,
4114
03:02:20.560 --> 03:02:24.650
because I think that foundation, God, eternal mind exists. And
4115
03:02:24.650 --> 03:02:26.800
I'm in proper relationship with him.
4116
03:02:26.800 --> 03:02:31.070
But part of the reality is this is a veil of tears. You know, I
4117
03:02:31.070 --> 03:02:32.560
hired a Joe, Joe put it something
4118
03:02:32.560 --> 03:02:36.040
about the about the sparks flying upward. You know, it's like
4119
03:02:36.040 --> 03:02:38.480
life is difficult. Actually, I like
4120
03:02:38.480 --> 03:02:42.260
the saying life is hard. And then you die, you know, it gives
4121
03:02:42.260 --> 03:02:43.920
me a perspective on things.
4122
03:02:43.920 --> 03:02:47.090
Jesus himself said, in this world, you'll have tribulation,
4123
03:02:47.090 --> 03:02:49.280
that's the experience. But the underlying
4124
03:02:49.280 --> 03:02:52.670
is be of good cheer, Jesus said, because I have overcome the
4125
03:02:52.670 --> 03:02:53.840
world. Are you happy?
4126
03:02:53.840 --> 03:02:57.760
We're back to that question again, how you characterize it.
4127
03:02:57.760 --> 03:03:00.450
You said earlier on that you felt there was a certain path that
4128
03:03:00.450 --> 03:03:02.000
Alex was going to go down,
4129
03:03:02.000 --> 03:03:06.160
but Greg did not gonna go, gonna, gonna go down. Should, or
4130
03:03:06.160 --> 03:03:07.680
something. It's ready for him.
4131
03:03:07.680 --> 03:03:10.120
Okay, it's ready for him. I mean, he didn't say that about Greg
4132
03:03:10.120 --> 03:03:10.960
. Yeah.
4133
03:03:10.960 --> 03:03:13.320
And so when you look at these two individuals, and you think
4134
03:03:13.320 --> 03:03:14.560
about contentment and happiness,
4135
03:03:14.560 --> 03:03:20.020
and whatever that word it, what is, can you, can you feel your
4136
03:03:20.020 --> 03:03:21.200
intuition? That's sort of.
4137
03:03:21.200 --> 03:03:23.910
So first thing is, this is what I know, it's kind of saying,
4138
03:03:23.910 --> 03:03:26.000
like I'm tanking my brand right now,
4139
03:03:26.000 --> 03:03:31.840
because I used to be believable, I guess. But, um, so first
4140
03:03:31.840 --> 03:03:32.960
thing about intuition,
4141
03:03:32.960 --> 03:03:36.240
right, if we look at intuition technically, I can't activate it
4142
03:03:36.240 --> 03:03:36.560
.
4143
03:03:37.120 --> 03:03:40.330
Right. When you have an intuition, it comes, it happens. So
4144
03:03:40.330 --> 03:03:42.640
that's what's so frustrating about this,
4145
03:03:42.640 --> 03:03:45.520
is everyone thinks like, okay, if you do a nichakrasatana,
4146
03:03:45.520 --> 03:03:47.040
which is a weird,
4147
03:03:47.040 --> 03:03:49.840
third eye stuff, then you can do this thing. I can't do
4148
03:03:49.840 --> 03:03:52.720
anything. I am before God, and when God
4149
03:03:52.720 --> 03:03:57.000
chooses to let me know something, that's when I get it. Now, if
4150
03:03:57.000 --> 03:03:58.640
I had to answer,
4151
03:03:58.640 --> 03:04:02.840
I think I am not surprised about the difference in baseline
4152
03:04:02.840 --> 03:04:06.160
contentment between these two people,
4153
03:04:06.160 --> 03:04:10.090
right? So if you were to ask, why do I relate to Greg in this
4154
03:04:10.090 --> 03:04:13.600
way? Now, whether this is at a conscious
4155
03:04:13.600 --> 03:04:17.260
level, neurological level, whether those, whether there's truly
4156
03:04:17.260 --> 03:04:18.720
a spiritual level or not,
4157
03:04:18.720 --> 03:04:22.590
right? So am I just reading into him, doing pattern recognition
4158
03:04:22.590 --> 03:04:23.920
based on what he says and stuff like
4159
03:04:23.920 --> 03:04:27.400
that? But that's not what my lived experience of it is. I know
4160
03:04:27.400 --> 03:04:28.720
this man has seen God.
4161
03:04:28.720 --> 03:04:32.420
And it's, it's not, is it his behavior, his body language, his,
4162
03:04:32.420 --> 03:04:33.600
no, I mean, I don't think so.
4163
03:04:34.240 --> 03:04:37.060
Right? So so I've met some people who have very unhappy lives
4164
03:04:37.060 --> 03:04:38.560
who still have that foundation of
4165
03:04:38.560 --> 03:04:44.010
spiritual contentment and some people who have very unhappy,
4166
03:04:44.010 --> 03:04:46.800
can have unhappy life with spiritual
4167
03:04:46.800 --> 03:04:51.080
contentment or spiritual contentment with a happy life, or be
4168
03:04:51.080 --> 03:04:53.040
have a great life and have no
4169
03:04:53.040 --> 03:04:55.400
spiritual contentment. I think all of those variables. What
4170
03:04:55.400 --> 03:04:58.560
about me? Yeah. What's your intuition
4171
03:04:58.560 --> 03:05:02.760
about me? I think you're getting their way faster. You've
4172
03:05:02.760 --> 03:05:04.160
changed in the last time I talk.
4173
03:05:05.200 --> 03:05:08.230
I think you're getting there. And I think you're going to get
4174
03:05:08.230 --> 03:05:10.160
there. Oh, thank God.
4175
03:05:10.160 --> 03:05:14.710
Are we going to go there being contentment there being what
4176
03:05:14.710 --> 03:05:18.000
there? So, so this is this, there is,
4177
03:05:18.000 --> 03:05:20.740
it's not something that can be put into words. I'm just going
4178
03:05:20.740 --> 03:05:21.680
to call it there.
4179
03:05:21.680 --> 03:05:24.500
If someone's listening right now and they feel stuck in their
4180
03:05:24.500 --> 03:05:26.240
life, which is where I asked Alex,
4181
03:05:26.240 --> 03:05:29.080
what is something that they can do tomorrow, a small step that
4182
03:05:29.080 --> 03:05:30.560
they can take to become unsnuck
4183
03:05:30.560 --> 03:05:34.000
in your love? Yeah. So, I would start by sort of, you know,
4184
03:05:34.000 --> 03:05:36.400
Alex offered a beautiful answer. And I
4185
03:05:36.400 --> 03:05:39.760
think he kind of mentioned that I wouldn't be airing it enough
4186
03:05:39.760 --> 03:05:41.360
to give people things because
4187
03:05:41.360 --> 03:05:43.270
they're, you know, give people an answer because everyone's an
4188
03:05:43.270 --> 03:05:44.320
individual and stuff like that.
4189
03:05:44.320 --> 03:05:49.540
So, the funny thing is I have a super concrete answer. I think
4190
03:05:49.540 --> 03:05:50.960
the difference in sort of the way
4191
03:05:50.960 --> 03:05:53.560
that I perceive it is I don't think you have to be someone
4192
03:05:53.560 --> 03:05:55.520
great to do that. And that's, I think
4193
03:05:55.520 --> 03:05:58.420
precisely what sort of science tells us, right? Like is that
4194
03:05:58.420 --> 03:06:00.400
you don't have to be some enlightened
4195
03:06:00.400 --> 03:06:02.650
being and I don't claim to be that. I'm not a guru or anything
4196
03:06:02.650 --> 03:06:05.280
like that. You know, so I think it starts with
4197
03:06:05.280 --> 03:06:08.720
understanding first and foremost that purpose,
4198
03:06:08.720 --> 03:06:13.320
how do you know whether you have purpose? Something within you
4199
03:06:13.320 --> 03:06:15.120
tells you, right? You can have
4200
03:06:15.120 --> 03:06:17.670
everyone in the rest of the world telling you, oh, you're doing
4201
03:06:17.670 --> 03:06:19.120
great. You're going to get married in a
4202
03:06:19.120 --> 03:06:21.480
month. You know, there's a baby on the way. You have a career.
4203
03:06:21.480 --> 03:06:23.200
You have all this stuff. You should
4204
03:06:23.200 --> 03:06:25.850
feel fulfilled. So, the first thing to understand is it is an
4205
03:06:25.850 --> 03:06:27.040
internal feeling. And then the
4206
03:06:27.040 --> 03:06:30.810
question becomes, how do we create, how do we find that feeling
4207
03:06:30.810 --> 03:06:32.880
? So, this is where things that get
4208
03:06:32.880 --> 03:06:36.060
in the way at the top of the list right now, which Alex alluded
4209
03:06:36.060 --> 03:06:40.000
to, is technology. So, unless you can
4210
03:06:40.000 --> 03:06:43.840
feel what is going on inside you, you will never feel purpose.
4211
03:06:43.840 --> 03:06:46.320
What are the things that get in the way
4212
03:06:46.320 --> 03:06:49.220
of feeling? So, when you feel bad, what do you reach for? Right
4213
03:06:49.220 --> 03:06:50.880
? How do you manage those negative
4214
03:06:50.880 --> 03:06:53.580
feelings? And it's not about making the feelings go away or not
4215
03:06:53.580 --> 03:06:55.120
making them go away. It is simply
4216
03:06:55.120 --> 03:06:59.520
about stopping the process of severing yourself. That process
4217
03:06:59.520 --> 03:07:02.160
is, I think, Alexa Thyme is what I
4218
03:07:02.160 --> 03:07:04.760
kind of refer to it as. That's colorblindness of your internal
4219
03:07:04.760 --> 03:07:06.480
emotional state. Like, I have a whole
4220
03:07:06.480 --> 03:07:09.320
lecture about it. You know, so first thing you have to do is
4221
03:07:09.320 --> 03:07:11.520
learn how to feel again. Because if you
4222
03:07:11.520 --> 03:07:14.420
look at most people who are meat, oh, whose life has no meaning
4223
03:07:14.420 --> 03:07:16.080
, what they're actually doing is
4224
03:07:16.080 --> 03:07:19.920
trying to create a life that is running away from bad feelings.
4225
03:07:19.920 --> 03:07:21.120
So, I don't like the way I,
4226
03:07:21.120 --> 03:07:23.190
my boss yelled at me. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm
4227
03:07:23.190 --> 03:07:24.480
going to pull out Reddit. I'm going to
4228
03:07:24.480 --> 03:07:27.030
scroll on at whatever. Right? They're running away from the way
4229
03:07:27.030 --> 03:07:28.240
that they feel. And it's not about
4230
03:07:28.240 --> 03:07:30.320
good or bad. It's just you have to reconnect with yourself.
4231
03:07:30.320 --> 03:07:33.920
Second thing is focus on your ego. And
4232
03:07:33.920 --> 03:07:37.460
as best as possible, probably for most people dissolving parts
4233
03:07:37.460 --> 03:07:39.680
of your ego. And ego is,
4234
03:07:39.680 --> 03:07:43.600
anytime you say, I am dot dot dot. It is what's that dot dot.
4235
03:07:43.600 --> 03:07:46.000
So, if I say I'm a doctor, that's part of my
4236
03:07:46.000 --> 03:07:50.160
ego. I'm a man. That's part of my ego. So, a lot of times what
4237
03:07:50.160 --> 03:07:52.160
gets in the way of us finding purpose
4238
03:07:52.160 --> 03:07:56.250
is what we believe we are. Right. So, I may think to myself, I
4239
03:07:56.250 --> 03:07:59.600
am a doctor. I am this or I'm a loser.
4240
03:07:59.600 --> 03:08:03.090
I'm an incel. Right. So, it's all of these identifications that
4241
03:08:03.090 --> 03:08:04.560
get us away from purpose.
4242
03:08:04.560 --> 03:08:09.590
Third thing to do is find your narrative sense of identity. So,
4243
03:08:09.590 --> 03:08:10.320
there's some ego,
4244
03:08:10.320 --> 03:08:12.890
dissolution, practices like junior meditation and stuff. And
4245
03:08:12.890 --> 03:08:14.240
then third thing is we want to
4246
03:08:14.240 --> 03:08:18.030
develop a story for ourselves. This is when people have purpose
4247
03:08:18.030 --> 03:08:19.440
in life. What is that
4248
03:08:19.440 --> 03:08:22.610
presumed? That presumes that there's a temporal quality, that
4249
03:08:22.610 --> 03:08:23.840
there's a directional quality. Does
4250
03:08:23.840 --> 03:08:26.490
that make sense? Like purpose or direction is like literally
4251
03:08:26.490 --> 03:08:28.240
moving from A to Z. So, there's time
4252
03:08:28.240 --> 03:08:32.230
and then there's like a particular distance. That involves
4253
03:08:32.230 --> 03:08:34.320
going through the most important
4254
03:08:34.320 --> 03:08:38.130
emotional experiences of your life and stringing them together
4255
03:08:38.130 --> 03:08:39.760
is a sense of who you are.
4256
03:08:39.760 --> 03:08:44.860
And then I think the last most important step is recognizing
4257
03:08:44.860 --> 03:08:47.360
that everything that has happened to you.
4258
03:08:48.880 --> 03:08:50.590
Well, I don't know if it's karma. I don't know if it's the will
4259
03:08:50.590 --> 03:08:52.320
of God. Whatever. It has happened to you.
4260
03:08:52.320 --> 03:08:55.250
It's made you in this way. But it does not determine your
4261
03:08:55.250 --> 03:08:58.320
future. Your future is determined by how
4262
03:08:58.320 --> 03:09:01.700
you act in the now. And this is where I would lean into, I
4263
03:09:01.700 --> 03:09:03.680
would just go back and listen to the
4264
03:09:03.680 --> 03:09:07.470
way that Steven talks about his life and try to do the same
4265
03:09:07.470 --> 03:09:09.920
thing. So, try to decide what you're
4266
03:09:09.920 --> 03:09:12.690
make a choice for today, stretch your capacity and try to
4267
03:09:12.690 --> 03:09:16.160
connect with another person. The last thing
4268
03:09:16.880 --> 03:09:20.750
is if all of that stuff doesn't isn't sufficient or you want
4269
03:09:20.750 --> 03:09:23.760
more, I would say engage in some kind of
4270
03:09:23.760 --> 03:09:29.120
spiritual practice or go to church. Both work equally. I don't
4271
03:09:29.120 --> 03:09:30.960
know about equally well,
4272
03:09:30.960 --> 03:09:32.860
but I think they're both options. So, do the thing that appeals
4273
03:09:32.860 --> 03:09:33.360
to you more.
4274
03:09:33.360 --> 03:09:36.560
And the same question for you, Greg, for someone that's stuck.
4275
03:09:36.560 --> 03:09:38.160
What do they do tomorrow to take
4276
03:09:38.160 --> 03:09:42.690
an action to become unstuck in your view? Well, there's a lot
4277
03:09:42.690 --> 03:09:44.800
of practical things that have
4278
03:09:44.800 --> 03:09:48.200
already been shared that I think are helpful. So, I have a very
4279
03:09:48.200 --> 03:09:51.920
simple suggestion. I have
4280
03:09:51.920 --> 03:09:56.870
represented a particular view of the Christian worldview. Didn
4281
03:09:56.870 --> 03:09:58.800
't get into a lot of detail.
4282
03:09:58.800 --> 03:10:02.960
But a lot of people have prayed a very simple prayer that has
4283
03:10:02.960 --> 03:10:04.800
helped them at whatever junction
4284
03:10:04.800 --> 03:10:07.530
they're at trying to figure things out. This kind of goes to a
4285
03:10:07.530 --> 03:10:08.960
point that Alex made earlier.
4286
03:10:09.840 --> 03:10:13.540
And it was a prayer that turns out I prayed in 1973. I was in
4287
03:10:13.540 --> 03:10:14.800
the army and I was in the
4288
03:10:14.800 --> 03:10:17.750
middle of nowhere and I just prayed this prayer. And the prayer
4289
03:10:17.750 --> 03:10:20.400
was very simple. God, if you're real,
4290
03:10:20.400 --> 03:10:23.650
in the way that my brother, the Christian was explaining to me,
4291
03:10:23.650 --> 03:10:26.720
if you're real, I want to know it.
4292
03:10:26.720 --> 03:10:30.110
Show yourself to me. That was it. There was no coconuts falling
4293
03:10:30.110 --> 03:10:30.880
from the tree,
4294
03:10:30.880 --> 03:10:34.760
no lightning or anything like that. It was just a man praying.
4295
03:10:34.760 --> 03:10:36.320
Maybe the first real prayer that
4296
03:10:36.320 --> 03:10:40.480
had ever prayed. But I do know that after that, things became
4297
03:10:40.480 --> 03:10:43.680
more obvious to me. It's the best way I
4298
03:10:43.680 --> 03:10:46.390
can explain it. Though I'm a Christian apologist, I make the
4299
03:10:46.390 --> 03:10:48.000
case for the truth of Christianity.
4300
03:10:48.000 --> 03:10:53.010
It wasn't any particular argument that persuaded me. It was
4301
03:10:53.010 --> 03:10:54.720
more the experiential thing and not
4302
03:10:54.720 --> 03:10:58.320
even a pizzazz thing, just a deep awareness that this was true.
4303
03:10:58.320 --> 03:11:00.000
And this is something I course
4304
03:11:00.000 --> 03:11:03.440
since then. There are a lot of people who prayed that simple
4305
03:11:03.440 --> 03:11:05.280
prayer. It's a genuine prayer that
4306
03:11:05.280 --> 03:11:08.440
people can pray. And I've heard many people tell me that this
4307
03:11:08.440 --> 03:11:09.680
is what happened to them,
4308
03:11:09.680 --> 03:11:12.580
even apart from my suggestion to it. So if people are looking
4309
03:11:12.580 --> 03:11:14.000
for ultimate purpose in their life,
4310
03:11:14.000 --> 03:11:16.930
they're looking for to do meaningful things, lots of
4311
03:11:16.930 --> 03:11:19.120
suggestions on the table. If they're
4312
03:11:19.120 --> 03:11:22.060
looking to integrate meaningful things into the ultimate
4313
03:11:22.060 --> 03:11:24.000
purpose, I think that's the prayer they
4314
03:11:24.000 --> 03:11:28.000
need to pray. I want to give you an opportunity on it to to
4315
03:11:28.000 --> 03:11:30.640
give us deliver your sort of closing
4316
03:11:30.640 --> 03:11:39.190
thoughts and reflections and arguments. Well, I want to re-em
4317
03:11:39.190 --> 03:11:40.720
phasize that
4318
03:11:40.720 --> 03:11:45.720
this topic of meaning and purpose is difficult to even define,
4319
03:11:45.720 --> 03:11:47.520
let alone communicate to another
4320
03:11:47.520 --> 03:11:50.880
person. I think it's individual. Even if there is an objective
4321
03:11:50.880 --> 03:11:52.560
meaning, even if God exists in
4322
03:11:52.560 --> 03:11:55.280
Christianity is true, it's not going to be enough to just tell
4323
03:11:55.280 --> 03:11:56.720
somebody about Christianity,
4324
03:11:56.720 --> 03:11:59.540
they're going to have to live it. So it's not going to be
4325
03:11:59.540 --> 03:12:01.840
enough to just sit around reading. I also
4326
03:12:01.840 --> 03:12:05.210
understand the sort of allergic reactions some people have to
4327
03:12:05.210 --> 03:12:07.760
philosophy. And you ended it earlier,
4328
03:12:07.760 --> 03:12:11.920
this idea that philosophy is just mind game literally
4329
03:12:11.920 --> 03:12:15.680
philosophical like mass debating if you like,
4330
03:12:15.680 --> 03:12:18.460
you know, we just literally sat like throwing concepts at each
4331
03:12:18.460 --> 03:12:20.480
other. But on meaning and purpose,
4332
03:12:20.480 --> 03:12:25.510
you're unlikely to find the best advice from someone who's
4333
03:12:25.510 --> 03:12:26.560
never gotten out of that arm
4334
03:12:26.560 --> 03:12:29.350
chair. And even the person who has and claims who have
4335
03:12:29.350 --> 03:12:31.920
experienced it for themselves and those
4336
03:12:31.920 --> 03:12:34.650
what the truth is, I think anybody who says to you with the
4337
03:12:34.650 --> 03:12:36.400
straight face, I know what the meaning
4338
03:12:36.400 --> 03:12:40.180
in life is, is either lying or will instantly tell you that
4339
03:12:40.180 --> 03:12:42.880
they're not going to be able to convey
4340
03:12:42.880 --> 03:12:45.410
that information at least not very easily. So it's going to be
4341
03:12:45.410 --> 03:12:46.800
difficult and don't trust anyone
4342
03:12:46.800 --> 03:12:49.720
who says you can do it in five easy steps on a podcast or
4343
03:12:49.720 --> 03:12:51.600
something because I think we've got a bit
4344
03:12:51.600 --> 03:12:55.760
of an endemic of that at the moment, people sort of just saying
4345
03:12:55.760 --> 03:12:58.160
that they've sort of discovered this
4346
03:12:58.160 --> 03:13:00.690
path or this truth. And if only people would understand that
4347
03:13:00.690 --> 03:13:02.320
the Stoics were right all along, even
4348
03:13:02.320 --> 03:13:05.270
though I don't care about any of their philosophical views,
4349
03:13:05.270 --> 03:13:06.960
just their ethical views. I don't
4350
03:13:06.960 --> 03:13:08.910
even know what they thought about the nature of matter and
4351
03:13:08.910 --> 03:13:10.320
stuff. It doesn't matter that that's
4352
03:13:10.320 --> 03:13:13.910
why they thought the way that they did ethically, you know,
4353
03:13:13.910 --> 03:13:15.600
just become a stoic and everything
4354
03:13:15.600 --> 03:13:18.170
will get better. But I do recognize some of that and people
4355
03:13:18.170 --> 03:13:20.480
saying, do but just become a Christian
4356
03:13:20.480 --> 03:13:23.650
and it will get better too. It's always going to be a bit more
4357
03:13:23.650 --> 03:13:25.280
nuanced than that, too.
4358
03:13:25.280 --> 03:13:27.360
Dr. Keil, you're closing thoughts and arguments on this today's
4359
03:13:27.360 --> 03:13:27.920
discussion?
4360
03:13:27.920 --> 03:13:31.270
You know, to kind of push back a little bit against what Alex
4361
03:13:31.270 --> 03:13:34.640
said, so I'm with you that there's
4362
03:13:34.640 --> 03:13:39.740
an endemic of five easy tips. And you know, as someone who is
4363
03:13:39.740 --> 03:13:41.520
guilty of doing that,
4364
03:13:41.520 --> 03:13:44.680
and what I'll do is I'll see especially, so I saw a recent
4365
03:13:44.680 --> 03:13:47.040
study that showed that 95% of
4366
03:13:47.040 --> 03:13:51.590
TikToks about ADHD are incorrect. And so there's absolutely an
4367
03:13:51.590 --> 03:13:53.920
oversimplification that's going on.
4368
03:13:53.920 --> 03:14:00.960
I think at the same time, though, we have such an amazing
4369
03:14:00.960 --> 03:14:04.640
amount of knowledge as human beings.
4370
03:14:04.640 --> 03:14:09.740
We have such amazing access to knowledge that human beings have
4371
03:14:09.740 --> 03:14:11.600
. So the human race has so much
4372
03:14:11.600 --> 03:14:14.590
knowledge and we have the greatest amount of access to it. And
4373
03:14:14.590 --> 03:14:16.400
so while I don't think it is like
4374
03:14:16.400 --> 03:14:20.920
as simple as, one of the most shocking things as a psychiatrist
4375
03:14:20.920 --> 03:14:22.400
, you know, who works with people is
4376
03:14:22.400 --> 03:14:27.360
how little it takes to make a big change. Big questions and big
4377
03:14:27.360 --> 03:14:29.520
changes don't always need big
4378
03:14:29.520 --> 03:14:32.690
effort or big answers. It's such an interesting thing. Like,
4379
03:14:32.690 --> 03:14:34.400
you know, when I talk to people who
4380
03:14:34.400 --> 03:14:38.050
struggle with addiction for 14 years, it seems to be a small
4381
03:14:38.050 --> 03:14:39.440
thing that just clicks.
4382
03:14:40.800 --> 03:14:45.590
And so I think the key thing for people is don't assume that
4383
03:14:45.590 --> 03:14:49.440
just because you have a big problem,
4384
03:14:49.440 --> 03:14:55.280
it requires a lot of effort. And you know, I remember my
4385
03:14:55.280 --> 03:14:57.760
daughter was trying to close a box,
4386
03:14:57.760 --> 03:15:00.930
right? So there's like a box and she's trying to slam the lid,
4387
03:15:00.930 --> 03:15:02.080
but the lid is not like
4388
03:15:02.080 --> 03:15:04.260
oriented correctly. Does that make sense? So it kind of gets
4389
03:15:04.260 --> 03:15:06.000
tilted. And then no matter how hard she
4390
03:15:06.000 --> 03:15:09.850
pushes, it doesn't close. And so in her mind, this is a problem
4391
03:15:09.850 --> 03:15:11.520
that requires pounds and pounds.
4392
03:15:11.520 --> 03:15:14.350
I need to be a full grown adult. No, you're just not doing it
4393
03:15:14.350 --> 03:15:16.480
in the right way, right? If you
4394
03:15:16.480 --> 03:15:19.010
understand a little bit how it works, if you sort of orient
4395
03:15:19.010 --> 03:15:19.760
yourself properly.
4396
03:15:19.760 --> 03:15:23.600
And I do think that I've seen time and time again, you know,
4397
03:15:23.600 --> 03:15:25.440
that in terms of an individual
4398
03:15:25.440 --> 03:15:29.240
perspective, if you feel purposelessness, there's a reason for
4399
03:15:29.240 --> 03:15:30.960
that, right? We know that there's
4400
03:15:30.960 --> 03:15:34.380
systemic factors. People are going to church less. People are
4401
03:15:34.380 --> 03:15:35.840
using technology more
4402
03:15:35.840 --> 03:15:41.200
all of the way that the world has, has been changed affects you
4403
03:15:41.200 --> 03:15:43.440
once it crosses the barrier. The world is
4404
03:15:43.440 --> 03:15:46.730
out there and then it crosses the barrier into us and then
4405
03:15:46.730 --> 03:15:50.560
affects us. And that if you understand
4406
03:15:50.560 --> 03:15:53.730
that process and if you change a couple of things and sometimes
4407
03:15:53.730 --> 03:15:55.680
it's amazing how small they are,
4408
03:15:55.680 --> 03:15:59.040
right? Like just waking up and making a decision for yourself,
4409
03:15:59.040 --> 03:16:01.760
pushing yourself a little bit more
4410
03:16:02.640 --> 03:16:05.190
relatedness is the hard one because that requires another human
4411
03:16:05.190 --> 03:16:07.520
being. But like it's amazing how
4412
03:16:07.520 --> 03:16:11.590
much you can do with very little. Thank you. I'm Craig. It's a
4413
03:16:11.590 --> 03:16:12.800
close-off. You're closing thoughts
4414
03:16:12.800 --> 03:16:16.020
and I thought I'd just given them a few moments ago. But I
4415
03:16:16.020 --> 03:16:18.880
guess the distinction that I guess
4416
03:16:18.880 --> 03:16:21.550
I want to emphasize is when it comes to purpose and meaning, I
4417
03:16:21.550 --> 03:16:22.720
think actually meaning
4418
03:16:22.720 --> 03:16:28.240
proceeds purpose. You have to know who you are and why you're
4419
03:16:28.240 --> 03:16:30.320
here if you're here for any reason
4420
03:16:30.320 --> 03:16:34.480
before the purpose matches. It turns out that there is no big
4421
03:16:34.480 --> 03:16:36.400
picture. It's just you and the
4422
03:16:36.400 --> 03:16:39.010
purpose is going to reflect your individual desires and ain't
4423
03:16:39.010 --> 03:16:41.840
given time. And pursue that as long
4424
03:16:41.840 --> 03:16:45.000
as you want. But if there is a grand purpose that's the thing
4425
03:16:45.000 --> 03:16:46.560
to discover. I'm convinced there
4426
03:16:46.560 --> 03:16:49.920
is and I think this is why we have this hunger for answering
4427
03:16:49.920 --> 03:16:52.880
these kinds of questions. And there's
4428
03:16:52.880 --> 03:16:56.050
a lot of variables that are involved here. But there and I
4429
03:16:56.050 --> 03:16:58.000
mentioned before the things that stand
4430
03:16:58.000 --> 03:17:01.850
out for me is we have this internal sense that I think is there
4431
03:17:01.850 --> 03:17:04.960
because we are a spiritual being.
4432
03:17:04.960 --> 03:17:07.490
People say, well, I'm religious. I'm spiritual, but I'm not
4433
03:17:07.490 --> 03:17:08.800
religious. I said, of course,
4434
03:17:08.800 --> 03:17:12.510
you're spiritual. God made you that way so that you could know
4435
03:17:12.510 --> 03:17:14.240
him. There is that element.
4436
03:17:14.240 --> 03:17:17.420
This is subjective. Okay. I think we're all aware of it. And
4437
03:17:17.420 --> 03:17:19.520
then there is objective things
4438
03:17:19.520 --> 03:17:23.570
that we can appeal to. You mentioned earlier the resurrection
4439
03:17:23.570 --> 03:17:25.520
of Christ, the existence of the world,
4440
03:17:25.520 --> 03:17:28.170
the order that the world is in, the existence of morality, the
4441
03:17:28.170 --> 03:17:29.280
existence of free will,
4442
03:17:29.280 --> 03:17:33.190
all kinds of other things that are part of the package of the
4443
03:17:33.190 --> 03:17:34.240
Christian worldview that
4444
03:17:34.240 --> 03:17:37.080
are well explained by that worldview. And one of the reasons
4445
03:17:37.080 --> 03:17:38.480
that I'm a Christian is because I
4446
03:17:38.480 --> 03:17:41.250
think it's that all things considered, it's the best
4447
03:17:41.250 --> 03:17:43.360
explanation for the way things are.
4448
03:17:43.360 --> 03:17:46.070
Not because all of the questions are answered for me. You have
4449
03:17:46.070 --> 03:17:47.680
raised issues that I'm
4450
03:17:47.680 --> 03:17:50.380
talking about that. It's a mystery. Some of these things. But
4451
03:17:50.380 --> 03:17:52.640
life is filled with mysteries. All right.
4452
03:17:52.640 --> 03:17:55.830
And this seems to be one mystery, the big picture that is
4453
03:17:55.830 --> 03:17:57.840
resolved by Christianity,
4454
03:17:57.840 --> 03:18:00.720
by the Christian understanding of reality. I call it the story
4455
03:18:00.720 --> 03:18:01.440
of reality.
4456
03:18:01.440 --> 03:18:04.390
Thank you so much for all being here today. It's truly
4457
03:18:04.390 --> 03:18:06.480
fascinating discussion. And it has
4458
03:18:06.480 --> 03:18:10.000
actually pushed me forward. I share how it's pushed me forward,
4459
03:18:10.000 --> 03:18:10.800
but it certainly pushed me
4460
03:18:10.800 --> 03:18:12.510
forward in a number of ways. And it's helped me to understand
4461
03:18:12.510 --> 03:18:14.160
you all. I'm big fans of all of
4462
03:18:14.160 --> 03:18:17.400
yours. You will make a lot of great content on YouTube in
4463
03:18:17.400 --> 03:18:19.120
various ways. Alex, I've watched your
4464
03:18:19.120 --> 03:18:21.330
channel so many times. I've watched so many of your videos for
4465
03:18:21.330 --> 03:18:22.720
so long, because you help you kind of
4466
03:18:22.720 --> 03:18:25.900
represent one part of my perspective in curiosity. And you're a
4467
03:18:25.900 --> 03:18:29.520
very intelligent, thoughtful,
4468
03:18:29.520 --> 03:18:34.560
philosophical master of playing with ideas. And you've really
4469
03:18:34.560 --> 03:18:36.720
done your homework. So it's
4470
03:18:36.720 --> 03:18:38.480
fascinating to watch what YouTube's doing like that. I highly
4471
03:18:38.480 --> 03:18:39.520
recommend people. But it's quite
4472
03:18:39.520 --> 03:18:41.280
the accolade. That's very kind. No, but it is. It's all going
4473
03:18:41.280 --> 03:18:43.600
on the front of my book. Good. And your
4474
03:18:43.600 --> 03:18:46.630
book is on the way. We're very excited. One day, one day. Who
4475
03:18:46.630 --> 03:18:48.640
knows when, but it will come eventually.
4476
03:18:48.640 --> 03:18:51.030
Well, keep doing what you're doing because, you know, you're,
4477
03:18:51.030 --> 03:18:53.920
you're a vessel for, for people. And
4478
03:18:53.920 --> 03:18:57.760
who knows where that vessel ends up going? But it's okay. And
4479
03:18:57.760 --> 03:19:00.800
thank you, Dr. K. You're a master
4480
03:19:00.800 --> 03:19:02.750
of what you do. And actually, when you talked about your, your
4481
03:19:02.750 --> 03:19:04.480
shacker, the one, the intuition
4482
03:19:04.480 --> 03:19:06.840
one, I was like, Hey, giggling, because I've never felt so
4483
03:19:06.840 --> 03:19:08.080
naked in front of someone in my
4484
03:19:08.080 --> 03:19:12.090
entire life, as I do in front of you. And I can only attest to
4485
03:19:12.090 --> 03:19:14.080
the, the great work that you do
4486
03:19:14.080 --> 03:19:16.840
as a result of that bizarre intuition. I think I told you the
4487
03:19:16.840 --> 03:19:18.240
first, I think I told other people
4488
03:19:18.240 --> 03:19:20.120
after the first time I met you that I think you have a magic
4489
03:19:20.120 --> 03:19:22.480
power. And it's quite unnerving to be
4490
03:19:22.480 --> 03:19:24.850
around someone that I feel like has a magic power. I highly
4491
03:19:24.850 --> 03:19:26.240
recommend people go and check out your
4492
03:19:26.240 --> 03:19:29.290
YouTube channel. Um, you've been on the show a few times and,
4493
03:19:29.290 --> 03:19:30.960
um, the response I get out and out
4494
03:19:30.960 --> 03:19:33.380
and about in public is profound. So thank you for coming back
4495
03:19:33.380 --> 03:19:35.280
again. It's really, really appreciated.
4496
03:19:35.280 --> 03:19:37.060
And thank you, Greg. Thank you for writing these incredible
4497
03:19:37.060 --> 03:19:38.480
books. There's actually one here,
4498
03:19:38.480 --> 03:19:41.650
which is what you ended on called the story of reality, which I
4499
03:19:41.650 --> 03:19:42.960
think is a great start in place for
4500
03:19:42.960 --> 03:19:46.840
people that are trying to tease out some of the truths in their
4501
03:19:46.840 --> 03:19:48.720
own life. Actually, we have a chapter
4502
03:19:48.720 --> 03:19:50.610
that we would like to give to your listeners, so they can give
4503
03:19:50.610 --> 03:19:52.000
the landing show. I'll link all
4504
03:19:52.000 --> 03:19:54.170
of that below. So I'll link all of your books below, but also
4505
03:19:54.170 --> 03:19:55.600
that free chapter. Thank you so much,
4506
03:19:55.600 --> 03:19:59.760
everybody. Thanks for that. Thank you. Thank you. Make sure you
4507
03:19:59.760 --> 03:20:02.480
keep one about to say to yourself,
4508
03:20:02.480 --> 03:20:05.430
I'm inviting 10,000 of you to come even deeper into the
4509
03:20:05.430 --> 03:20:08.720
diversity. Welcome to my inner circle.
4510
03:20:08.720 --> 03:20:11.490
This is a brand new private community that I'm launching to the
4511
03:20:11.490 --> 03:20:12.880
world. We have so many
4512
03:20:12.880 --> 03:20:16.320
incredible things that happen that you are never shown. We have
4513
03:20:16.320 --> 03:20:17.680
the briefs that are on my
4514
03:20:17.680 --> 03:20:20.230
pad when I'm recording the conversation. We have clips we've
4515
03:20:20.230 --> 03:20:22.240
never released. We have behind-the-scenes
4516
03:20:22.240 --> 03:20:25.440
conversations with the guests and also the episodes that we've
4517
03:20:25.440 --> 03:20:28.480
never ever released. And so much more.
4518
03:20:28.480 --> 03:20:31.650
In a circle, you'll have direct access to me. You can tell us
4519
03:20:31.650 --> 03:20:33.040
what you want this show to be,
4520
03:20:33.040 --> 03:20:35.940
who you want us to interview and the types of conversations you
4521
03:20:35.940 --> 03:20:38.240
would love us to have. But remember,
4522
03:20:38.240 --> 03:20:41.730
for now, we're only inviting the first 10,000 people that join
4523
03:20:41.730 --> 03:20:43.120
before it closes. So if you want to
4524
03:20:43.120 --> 03:20:45.370
join our private close community, head to the link in the
4525
03:20:45.370 --> 03:20:50.000
description below or go to d-o-a-c-circle.com.
4526
03:20:50.000 --> 03:20:59.360
I will speak to you then.
4527
03:21:08.240 --> 03:21:17.600
[Music]