Leo D.M.J. Aurini - March 17, 2017


Why Lent Matters


Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

107.90468

Word count

1,295

Sentence count

119

Harmful content

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Lent is a time of self-imposed suffering where Catholics choose to give up something they habitually do for six weeks to do a little bit of suffering. I discuss why this is a good idea, and why you should do the same.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Music
00:00:29.980 I recently received a donation from Joachim. You might remember him. He's done some excellent requested videos in the past.
00:00:37.140 But this wasn't a requested video. It was a donation with a request attached to it, asking me to talk about Lent.
00:00:48.160 And really, it's probably something I should be doing anyway, isn't it?
00:00:51.180 Now, Lent. I'm sure you guys are familiar with it. It's the time of the year that Catholics, they pick something that they habitually do to give that up for six weeks. 0.97
00:01:06.520 To do a little bit of self-imposed suffering.
00:01:10.320 Now, I'm not going to get into the history of it or the why of it, partly because that's what your catechism is for. Just go read that.
00:01:19.840 And second, if I try to talk about it, I'm quite certain I would get something wrong and look like an absolute fool and you might figure out what a bad Catholic I actually am. 0.77
00:01:28.000 So I'm not going to be talking about those issues. 0.89
00:01:34.240 What I want to talk about is the psychology of it.
00:01:36.740 Why it's so useful.
00:01:39.680 Why it's such a good thing to do.
00:01:41.940 And why it's a ritual that, even if you're a non-Catholic, atheist, Hindu,
00:01:50.100 you might want to consider adopting.
00:01:53.940 And for the record, I'm sure Hindus do actually have something a lot like this.
00:01:57.860 Most human cultures have.
00:01:59.920 Most human cultures have had this forced upon them just by nature, if nothing else.
00:02:05.980 And it's something we really miss in our present-day lives by not having, by not giving something up.
00:02:13.860 We have a little bit too much luxury nowadays.
00:02:18.180 Now, it doesn't have to be something big.
00:02:20.760 My brother-in-law gave up drinking for Lent.
00:02:25.520 And upon being informed that Lent wasn't five weeks, it was six weeks, he reacted with great emotional distress.
00:02:33.880 Maybe I'll give up drinking one time for Lent and really focus on an exercise program or something,
00:02:41.080 because I'll be going nuts with excess energy.
00:02:45.320 But it doesn't have to be something big.
00:02:47.640 It can just be a small luxury.
00:02:49.480 And I think starting off with a small luxury is actually the better maneuver.
00:02:59.240 Give up carbonated soda.
00:03:03.640 Give up, like I did last year, video games.
00:03:06.960 Because it's interesting to find out just how addicted you are.
00:03:15.960 See, we keep most of our addictions in check, right?
00:03:24.000 And there's a satiating point.
00:03:26.960 The reason that drug addictions are so heavily criticized is, you know, like blow.
00:03:32.720 When you're doing blow, all you want to do is even more blow.
00:03:35.740 And so you can burn through your entire bank account in one evening.
00:03:42.500 And drugs in general, particularly the ones that are currently deemed illegal, tend to have very, very destructive cycles.
00:03:51.160 And they all have cycles.
00:03:53.460 That's the thing.
00:03:54.020 Serial killers have cycles.
00:03:56.140 When the FBI is tracking a serial killer, there's going to be a cyclic pattern to what they're doing.
00:04:04.560 You know, they only kill every five weeks or eight weeks or what have you.
00:04:09.640 There's a predictable pattern to the rate of killings.
00:04:13.140 And so with myself, let's take video games.
00:04:18.500 I don't generally play that many video games.
00:04:22.220 I like video games.
00:04:25.280 I could easily just piss away an entire evening playing Civilization or The Long Dark or Minecraft or what have you.
00:04:38.560 But I hate myself the next day.
00:04:40.320 So I try and keep the video games in check.
00:04:43.820 I try and keep them as a bit of a reward.
00:04:46.560 It's like, okay, I've accomplished something today.
00:04:48.080 I get to play a video game.
00:04:51.280 And so they're a small part of my life.
00:04:53.480 The same way, I mean, I drink a fair bit.
00:04:55.860 But for other people, my brother-in-law, for example, you know, drinking probably isn't that much a part of his life.
00:05:04.140 I don't know.
00:05:04.580 Maybe it is.
00:05:05.040 I don't know him that well.
00:05:05.780 So you would think that giving up drinking, if you only drink socially, like you drink once a week and you only have three beers, it should be really easy to give up drinking.
00:05:18.640 You'd think.
00:05:20.920 But it isn't.
00:05:21.720 When I gave up video games, I would constantly find myself turning on video games.
00:05:33.420 And then I'd have to remind myself, no, no, you gave it up.
00:05:39.680 Put it down.
00:05:40.720 And then I'm like, okay, now what am I supposed to do with myself?
00:05:46.120 What you find out is that these casual addictions, these addictions that you keep in check, are no less an addiction.
00:05:55.500 And you start to really question, just how much control do I have over my life?
00:06:10.860 All the martial arts training in the world isn't going to tell you who you are when the chips are down.
00:06:17.400 When things start going sideways, are you going to stand and fight or are you going to cut and run?
00:06:28.040 You don't know that until you've actually been in a fight.
00:06:32.320 And, you know, training is a great idea.
00:06:35.660 You should definitely train.
00:06:36.840 But you don't know that about yourself until you're there.
00:06:39.620 And similarly, you don't know how addicted you are to something until you try and stop doing it.
00:06:54.920 And, you know, giving up something like video games or, you know, alcohol or sugary soda.
00:07:04.080 Giving it up for six weeks shouldn't be that difficult.
00:07:09.620 But you'll find out that it is.
00:07:14.200 You'll find out just how weak you are.
00:07:22.120 That it actually takes a lot of willpower to maintain all of this.
00:07:28.160 And that self-knowledge is invaluable.
00:07:33.840 One of the ideas I've expressed in the past is how...
00:07:37.840 Is how with modern technology and conveniences and so forth, we...
00:07:46.840 We think that we're gods.
00:07:53.240 Okay?
00:07:53.840 You don't know what a man's like until he's hungry.
00:07:58.500 And how many of us have ever been hungry?
00:08:00.960 How many of us know what we are? 0.99
00:08:02.180 There's a really ugly sort of atheistic self-righteousness in the whole damn thing. 0.97
00:08:16.940 Where we dismiss our ancestors as being superstitious or credulous or what have you. 0.98
00:08:24.160 When we've never experienced adversity ourselves.
00:08:28.860 And so Lent, it's a little bit of that adversity to remind you of who you are.
00:08:38.360 And how hard it is for the spirit to overcome the body.
00:08:43.020 So that's the one big benefit of Lent.
00:08:52.600 The other is it's mirror inverse.
00:09:00.100 Because sometimes you develop a bad habit.
00:09:03.100 And again, it could be alcohol, video games, sugary soda.
00:09:10.160 It could be social media.
00:09:12.780 It could be news.
00:09:14.300 It could be any number of things.
00:09:21.200 And so maybe you give that up for Lent.
00:09:23.900 And you see a dramatic improvement in your life.
00:09:36.180 And then you get rid of that vice.
00:09:38.520 That thing that's been eating up so much of your time.
00:09:45.420 And you think, well hey, what else is eating up my time?
00:09:48.120 What else is not growing wheat?
00:09:54.760 What else should I get rid of?
00:10:00.560 So Lent, it shows you quite a bit about your own nature.
00:10:06.140 Without even needing to do anything too drastic.
00:10:09.480 Because it's such a radical and temporary imposition.
00:10:20.640 And you're doing it in a social scene.
00:10:26.200 You're doing it with others.
00:10:28.660 So you're expected to adhere to what everybody else is doing.
00:10:34.300 That strengthens you.
00:10:39.480 Because at the end what I'm saying is that Lent
00:10:43.620 is useful psychologically.
00:10:50.580 And it's a great example
00:10:52.480 of why culture
00:10:54.120 is so damned important.
00:10:58.220 Why connecting with your fellows is so important.
00:11:04.420 And so we're halfway through Lent season right now.
00:11:07.660 But I would invite
00:11:09.060 all of you to pick something.
00:11:11.260 Not something that's super difficult.
00:11:14.040 Something minor.
00:11:16.320 That you think is minor.
00:11:19.740 And give it up
00:11:21.180 for the next few weeks.
00:11:25.500 Deus Volt.
00:11:27.220 Irini out, folks.
00:11:28.080 I'll see you next time.
00:11:41.120 I'll see you next time.
00:11:42.840 We'll see you next time.
00:11:58.080 You