The Art of Manliness - #166： Self, Soul, and Living a More Idealistic Life

00:00:00.000 Brad McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. One of my

00:00:20.040 favorite books I read last year was a book called Self and Soul, a Defensive Ideal by a professor

00:00:25.220 named Mark Edmondson. Really fascinating book. I read it a couple months ago and I'm still

00:00:29.680 chewing on the things I read there. And in the book, he makes this bold argument that in the West,

00:00:35.360 our commitment to ideals or the world of the soul, as he calls it, is fading. And we've become a

00:00:40.660 culture of the self where material desires, even bodily desires, desires for comfort, for safety,

00:00:47.880 have taken precedence over these more transcendent ancient ideals that he points out are courage,

00:00:54.120 compassion, and contemplation. And he talks about why this transition happened,

00:00:59.260 and this transition from soul to self happened, and gives some hints about what we can do to bring

00:01:04.840 it back. Really great book. It'll get you thinking about your own life in a very profound way. So I

00:01:10.740 was really excited to get Professor Edmondson on to discuss Self and Soul and his work and how we can

00:01:16.060 be or live a more idealistic life. So without further ado, Mark Edmondson, Self and Soul,

00:01:22.520 a Defense of Ideals.

00:01:32.040 Mark Edmondson, welcome to the show.

00:01:34.300 Thank you so much. Glad to be here.

00:01:35.840 Well, I love your work. Your first book, as I said before we got on, that I read was Why Football

00:01:41.160 Matters. As a football player, I loved it. It gave me some new insights and nuance to the sport that I

00:01:47.540 played as a boy. But your latest book is something that I, one of my favorite books I read in 2015.

00:01:53.460 It's called Self and the Soul. And you make this really bold claim from the very get-go that

00:02:03.120 here in the West, particularly Western democracies, the world of the soul, or what you call,

00:02:10.200 you know, what's the world of ideals is declining. And we've become a culture of the self. Let's talk

00:02:17.960 about ideals first, because I think there's a lot of people who would be listening to this would say,

00:02:21.160 well, hey, Mr. Professor. You know, I have ideals. I love my family. I love freedom. I love Jesus.

00:02:30.900 I'm a social justice warrior. I'm out there protecting the environment. Aren't those ideals?

00:02:36.480 I take it that there are three main ideals in the Western tradition, and that they come to us

00:02:42.400 from the ancient world. And that the first one is courage, and that's exemplified in Homer

00:02:47.520 by Achilles and Hector. And the second one is the quest for wisdom, and that's exemplified by Plato and

00:02:54.680 Socrates in a combination. And that the third one is compassion, and that's exemplified first in the

00:03:02.220 West by Jesus of Nazareth, but they're predecessors to that particular ideal, and those are to be found in the

00:03:08.540 Hindu texts and in the teachings of the Buddha, and in some measure in the teachings of Confucius. So my study of

00:03:16.480 ancient writings and thought leads me to think that those are the three central ideals.

00:03:23.200 Gotcha. So let's delve into those a little bit deeper. So courage. I mean, aren't there soldiers out there

00:03:29.720 today who are, you know, in combat, who are being courageous? What is it that you have in mind as the

00:03:37.800 ideal of courage taken from Homer?

00:03:40.400 Sure. So in Homer, I find two ideals of courage. One of them is probably more available to us and more

00:03:47.800 congenial to us. And that's the ideal of Hector. And Hector is the great citizen soldier who defends

00:03:54.460 his city, Troy, against the onslaught of the Greeks. Hector's a very appealing character, as you probably

00:04:01.280 know. He's very humane and very decent. He's one of the only two males in Troy who treats Helen with

00:04:10.560 kindness and decency. And we see him with his wife and with his baby, and we see that he's a loving

00:04:16.100 husband who treats his wife, Andromache, as an equal and a friend. And he's a wonderful father

00:04:21.100 to his boy, Astyonyx. It's a very touching scene between them. But Hector is also a ferocious

00:04:28.120 warrior who fights and eventually dies in the process of trying to save his city. He said at

00:04:36.940 one point that he was not born to be a warrior, that he had to learn to be a fighter. And he probably

00:04:42.820 would have been better off, and Troy would have been better off if the Greeks never showed up, 0.76

00:04:46.280 and Hector had taken over the throne from Priam and ruled in a judicious and humane manner. But

00:04:51.700 when war came, Hector was willing to step forward and fight for his city. And he did so with great

00:04:59.140 valor. However, he lost. The other great idea is Achilles, which we can talk about in a minute. But

00:05:05.680 it seems to me that there probably are exemplars of Hector fighting for laudable causes in the world

00:05:14.980 right now. And I wouldn't doubt that there are some of those people representing America here and there

00:05:21.200 in the globe who have decided, as Hector does, that overall, the cause of Troy, the cause of America,

00:05:27.300 is just, and have decided that they're willing to risk their lives and everything they value

00:05:32.020 for them. We don't hear a lot of stories about those people, and I wish we did. And there are

00:05:38.020 lots of reasons for that that are very complicated. But I think that the ideal of Hector exists,

00:05:41.940 and I think that a lot of people in the military would still respect it. The question then becomes,

00:05:48.660 how much does the rest of America respect it? How many people who are sending their children to

00:05:53.580 college devoutly hope that those children will go out and be Hector-like fighters for the United

00:05:59.340 States? And I'm guessing not too many, some, but not too many. So we still respect that ideal, but

00:06:05.920 there's fewer and fewer actually living it, or, you know, I guess, living it in some way?

00:06:11.720 I think so. I think that's the case. I think most of the middle class wants the children to be

00:06:16.300 prosperous, successful, and decent, and not to risk their lives in the pursuit of, you know,

00:06:24.640 the preservation of the nation. That's for other people's kids to do. But I think everybody admires

00:06:30.820 the Hector figure still. It's just a little difficult to identify him or her. It's the Achilles figure

00:06:36.420 who is really problematic. The Achilles figure is the figure who I believe probably still exists,

00:06:41.720 and you can find him, and now her, because all the combat roles are open to both genders now,

00:06:47.820 recent development. You can find him in the Navy SEALs and in the Green Berets and sometimes just in

00:06:52.640 the ranks. And this is the person who will do absolutely anything to win the battle, anything

00:06:57.660 within reason and bounds, according to the rules of law, to win the battle and to bring his or her

00:07:05.420 colleagues home. This soldier fights for glory and doesn't spend a whole lot of time wondering

00:07:11.240 about whether the nation's cause is just. She signed on the dotted line, he signed on the dotted line,

00:07:16.180 and we'll go where he is sent, we'll go where she is sent, and do what needs to be done.

00:07:20.880 It's a much more difficult ideal to take in without some serious doubts, but I take it to be an ideal

00:07:28.840 nonetheless. And although the weight of scholarly opinion now is that Hector is the hero of the Iliad,

00:07:34.660 and Hector is the most admirable figure, I'm not so sure that's true.

00:07:37.520 You know, yeah, Achilles is problematic, and he's one of those, it seems like even Homer

00:07:44.380 had, you know, wasn't so sure about him as well, or even like Plato and Socrates.

00:07:51.080 No one is sure about Achilles, right?

00:07:53.340 Right.

00:07:53.560 Especially thinkers. Achilles may go into a rage when he fights to revenge Patroclus,

00:08:01.720 and that may well be something that Homer finds abhorrent. He does that amazing scene

00:08:08.320 where a river becomes so furious at Achilles for filling it with the bodies of the Trojans

00:08:14.260 that the river attacks Achilles himself. Now, is that the revulsion of nature against Achilles?

00:08:20.820 It's a very bizarre scene, and not like anything else that occurs in the poem. Homer easily could have dropped it,

00:08:27.420 but he doesn't. The river tries to kill Achilles. That suggests a strong level of ambivalence.

00:08:33.340 But a simple question, you know, if you were, or I were, probably not in the position to be,

00:08:39.020 going out on a combat mission, who do you want in front of you?

00:08:43.720 Yeah, I'd want Achilles.

00:08:45.640 I think you probably want Achilles.

00:08:46.780 Yeah.

00:08:47.680 He will win. I mean, when Hector and Achilles fight, everybody roots for Hector,

00:08:51.340 but it's clear who's going to win, and it's pretty clear why.

00:08:55.320 Yeah. And I mean, so is someone like Achilles, who like lives for this ideal of,

00:09:00.320 I don't know what you would call it, is very martial and, you know, visceral courage.

00:09:08.860 Are these folks born? Do they have something in them, like a muse?

00:09:12.300 You know, telling them, this is what you're destined for,

00:09:15.280 and this is what you're going to do with your life, or is it something...

00:09:18.600 Yeah. This is one of the hardest questions in the book, and I, this is,

00:09:23.340 it's an easy question in a way because I simply don't know how to answer it.

00:09:26.240 Sure.

00:09:27.280 Where does the urge to this kind of excellence come from?

00:09:31.720 Is it because there are gods on high who love this kind of behavior?

00:09:37.280 That would be Homer's answer, I think, though how metaphorical the gods are in Homer is an open question.

00:09:42.300 I don't know where it comes from, but there will be all over America and all over the world right now,

00:09:47.960 boys and girls who sit and thrill to the tales of heroes, and some will simply sit and thrill,

00:09:53.680 and a few others will say, that's what I've got to do, that's me.

00:09:57.800 And where that comes from, nobody knows.

00:09:59.600 Whether it comes from God or comes from the devil, it is their destiny, and some of them will embrace it.

00:10:05.660 And I dare say, though I'm not quite a pacifist, but prone to the peaceful solution myself,

00:10:12.220 you can't have a civilization without them.

00:10:14.620 Right.

00:10:14.900 People, progressive people, liberal people like to forget about them,

00:10:18.600 but when it gets really dark and bad days come, you look for those people and you desperately need them.

00:10:24.280 Right.

00:10:25.120 As I was reading that section on courage and thinking about Achilles and sort of this veneration for violence,

00:10:32.880 for, you know, as a way to get glory and the respect and the esteem of your peers,

00:10:38.600 it made me think about, for some reason, the Islamist terrorists that we're seeing right now.

00:10:44.800 Because I've noticed in the West, at least, whenever you hear people talk about terrorists in the Islamic world,

00:10:54.240 it's like, well, you know, if they just had jobs, or, you know, if we just, like, gave them money,

00:11:00.320 and, like, they had prosperity, then, like, they wouldn't do this.

00:11:03.620 And as I was reading that, I thought, well, maybe not, right?

00:11:06.160 Maybe they're not creatures of the self.

00:11:08.560 I guess we need to talk about what the self is, but they're doing something for an ideal, right?

00:11:14.260 And, like, we're just sort of, like, in different wavelengths here in our comfortable middle-class American world.

00:11:19.940 Is that what's—do you think Islamist terrorists are sort of—

00:11:22.280 It's on a problematic dimension of the book.

00:11:24.740 That is, is the ISIS fighter who blows himself or herself up in the middle of a group of civilians an accolade hero?

00:11:33.320 My answer to that is a pretty unequivocal no.

00:11:35.660 Okay.

00:11:35.840 But Achilles fights according to the rules of war in his time.

00:11:38.840 He stands up chiefly against other warriors who see him coming and are prepared to fight against him.

00:11:45.300 And his heroism consists in matching his prowess against the prowess of other fighters.

00:11:50.260 Now, you know, not against women and children and defenseless civilians.

00:11:55.880 So somebody who blows themselves up in the middle of women and children and defenseless civilians is not a hero

00:12:02.300 and is not courageous from this point of view.

00:12:05.280 There's also a misunderstanding that's quite possible on the subject of ideals.

00:12:10.240 And what I would want to suggest here is that just believing in something strongly,

00:12:15.080 like, you know, the destiny of the United States or the necessity for the caliphate or whatever it is,

00:12:20.660 that's not an ideal, right?

00:12:22.320 To me, the ideals are, you know, courage, contemplation, compassion, and maybe creativity.

00:12:30.180 And they tend to be, with some qualifications applied to compassion, very personal commitments, right?

00:12:36.180 You attempt to reach a standard.

00:12:39.840 And it's not about believing in America or believing in the caliphate.

00:12:43.440 It's about believing in a standard that's been generated for thousands of years

00:12:46.740 and a life you want to participate in based on being inspired by that.

00:12:50.680 Okay. All right. That makes sense.

00:12:53.320 Well, let's, I mean, do you think we've covered courage enough?

00:12:57.100 Yeah, sure.

00:12:57.660 We got the gist of, well, let's move on to this idea of the contemplative life.

00:13:00.980 And you use Plato and Socrates as the exemplars of that.

00:13:05.180 Now, again, like people would say, well, no, we, us here in the 21st century, we think a lot.

00:13:10.280 We got TED Talks, right?

00:13:12.080 We've got think tanks.

00:13:14.380 We have professors who are thinking about lots of deep issues.

00:13:18.180 How is what we, you know, kind of consider the ideal of contemplation different from this ancient ideal of contemplation

00:13:26.620 that exemplified by Socrates and Plato?

00:13:29.860 Well, let's start.

00:13:31.220 Let's start early.

00:13:32.440 Socrates comes along and fundamentally his effort is to clean house.

00:13:35.940 Okay.

00:13:36.680 He goes through Athens and he questions people about their beliefs.

00:13:40.460 And he finds that their beliefs are based on confusion, contradiction, and self-promotion.

00:13:45.640 Okay.

00:13:46.740 And he is continually able to show that, you know, what these people are involved in as truth is nothing more than shadows on the wall.

00:13:55.040 You see it continually in the dialogue.

00:13:57.420 And so that's a demystifying and debunking kind of tendency.

00:14:00.640 I'll honor to it.

00:14:01.640 But it doesn't complete philosophy.

00:14:04.000 Philosophy aspires to be completed at the point where Plato comes along and he offers what he takes to be truths that are eternal truths.

00:14:11.720 That is, Plato isn't just talking about Athens and he's not just talking about Greeks and he's not just talking about the world in his particular time frame.

00:14:20.100 He believes that he has gotten out what the good life is, what good government is, what education is, what the relationship between men and women is, what a philosopher is, all of those things for all time.

00:14:30.100 But you may refute him.

00:14:31.100 You may not like it.

00:14:32.020 You may struggle against him.

00:14:33.520 But that is what he thinks he's doing.

00:14:36.300 And other philosophers have come along to give that a try, too.

00:14:39.000 You know, Schopenhauer surely has and Kant surely has and Hegel surely has.

00:14:42.800 So, you know, that ideal, I think, is pronounced and it made its way all the way through Western culture with the kind of toss-off observation that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato.

00:14:57.540 Philosophy is no longer a footnote to Plato in that all the people in the think tanks and all the people who are doing exercising punditry on TV and all the people who are writing books about, you know, social justice or whatever it is, are not trying to find eternal truth.

00:15:14.100 Now, they may have good reason for giving up eternal truth, but I don't want that aspiration to die.

00:15:19.980 I don't want it to be a laughingstock as it currently is in most philosophy departments.

00:15:25.400 So there is an interest, I should add a footnote there, there's an interest in philosophy departments in finding what is essentially a good argument, a true argument, a just mode of representation.

00:15:35.560 And there's something of the eternal in that particular pursuit.

00:15:38.680 But virtually nobody who is, you know, sitting at a think tank does much thinking about eternal truth.

00:15:47.220 Mostly they think tactically and pragmatically.

00:15:49.400 What do we need to say and know and think in order to get what it is we want and need at present?

00:15:54.560 So there are much more children of John Dewey and William James and my good friend and former colleague who might greatly mourn, Richard Rorty, than they are of Plato and Socrates.

00:16:05.180 Okay, so the idea of contemplation is for an eternal truth, not just for short-term pragmatic results.

00:16:11.920 Yep.

00:16:12.080 Okay.

00:16:12.980 And it seems, too, that, I mean, you have to be willing to sacrifice yourself, right, for this ideal, right?

00:16:20.520 You give up the self, right?

00:16:22.660 You sort of, okay, I don't care if I'm dirty, if I'm, like, people think I'm a laughingstock.

00:16:28.740 I don't care if even if they want to kill me, like in the case of Socrates, like, I'm still going to stick to that ideal.

00:16:33.980 Well, yes, they, the true ones are like that.

00:16:42.000 I mean, Schopenhauer, who might take to be the most profound philosopher after Plato, gave his lectures in proximity to Hegel.

00:16:50.220 And, you know, Schopenhauer got about seven students and Hegel got about 7,000.

00:16:54.140 And Schopenhauer was ignored virtually his whole life.

00:16:57.480 And he was not in disgrace or disdain in particular, but he had no disciples and he had no readers.

00:17:05.120 And so he lived in not poverty.

00:17:07.460 He had a little bit of money, but he lived in complete neglect, and he was humiliated by it.

00:17:12.960 And he was historical about it.

00:17:14.580 He said, they will find my work after I'm gone.

00:17:16.920 But then late in his life, he was reviewed a couple of times in England, of all places.

00:17:21.620 Long review essays written by young people.

00:17:24.140 And he said in Latin, I don't know the quotation, I am red and I shall be red, and came close to breaking into tears.

00:17:30.800 Which, for Schopenhauer, he's very tough and a rather nasty person in a lot of ways.

00:17:34.880 This was quite something.

00:17:37.740 So, you know, every authentic philosopher doesn't end up in poverty, neglect, and on trial for his life.

00:17:43.660 But I think that what Nietzsche, the word that Nietzsche uses about true thinking, his own included, is that it has to be untimely.

00:17:50.440 It's going to be out of joint with the times, because the times are always going to gravitate.

00:17:53.520 In the direction of a certain kind of intellectual conformity, and apologists, apology for that kind of intellectual conformity.

00:18:01.700 So, you know, I think that it's never going to make its way easily, if it's true.

00:18:06.620 Right, right.

00:18:07.380 I thought it was interesting that you noted how, or I think one of the philosophers noted that you quoted in the book,

00:18:11.620 how most major philosophers or great philosophers were bachelors.

00:18:15.720 Except for Socrates, right?

00:18:17.960 Because they didn't have to worry about kids and a wife, like they just wanted to think.

00:18:22.380 Yes, yes, that is true.

00:18:23.720 There's a kind of, there's an undercurrent of suspicion about family life in the book that I don't think most people will find agreeable.

00:18:31.240 I mean, family is now the American religion.

00:18:33.020 You can justify anything by way of recourse to your family.

00:18:35.920 You know, I've, you know, I sold off the company, I fired 20 people, I, you know, thinned it down,

00:18:43.060 and now it's, you know, much more profitable, but a couple of people can't pay their mortgage.

00:18:47.720 But I did it for my family.

00:18:48.680 Oh, you did it for your family.

00:18:49.800 Well, they needed to eat, that's like that.

00:18:51.460 You know, family is kind of the universal excuse and the universal value.

00:18:55.200 But, you know, there's that moment in the Gospels where, and I have a family, and I love my family, and I do what I can,

00:19:00.960 but my relationship to familiar life is maybe a little more skeptical than most people.

00:19:05.460 There's that moment in the Gospel where they say to Jesus, your family's outside waiting for you.

00:19:09.680 It's odd to imagine that Jesus has brothers and sisters, right?

00:19:11.800 I mean, Jesus, he does.

00:19:14.140 And Jesus says, I haven't got any family.

00:19:16.260 You're my family.

00:19:17.120 He's like his disciples and his friends.

00:19:18.780 You're my family.

00:19:19.540 I haven't got any family.

00:19:20.240 And most of the heroes of this book are non-familial people.

00:19:27.560 They're non-familial people.

00:19:28.660 And they don't affirm family.

00:19:33.420 I, you know, we can talk in the end about, you know, kind of combinations of self and soul.

00:19:39.000 I take myself to be aspiring to a combination of those things.

00:19:42.220 They're somewhat difficult and maybe somewhat compromised.

00:19:45.020 But pure soul is skeptical about family and all involvement with self.

00:19:49.200 Okay, yeah.

00:19:50.240 Yeah, well, let's talk about Jesus for a second.

00:19:52.940 Let's move on to compassion.

00:19:54.660 Because I thought, you know, as a guy who considers himself a Christian, this was just a really fascinating chapter for me.

00:20:01.980 And also the insights we get from, excuse me, the Buddha was interesting as well.

00:20:07.360 So this ideal of compassion.

00:20:08.960 I think it's interesting.

00:20:11.540 You argue that, you know, Jesus has, even though like, you know, compassion and courage, we often sort of think as diametrically opposed.

00:20:21.080 But Jesus and Achilles had a lot in common.

00:20:25.540 So how can these two virtues, like compassion and courage, have something in common when they seem on the surface opposed?

00:20:33.200 Well, I think that what they have in common is that they reject the life of money and home and tranquility and satisfaction and the professions and respectability.

00:20:44.460 But I do think that also they are ideals and idealists who are going to chafe each other, you know?

00:20:53.640 You know, I mean, Jesus really does want the cessation of war and would like to imagine a world in which peace reigned.

00:21:00.360 Achilles would not be at home in that world, and that would be the end of that. 0.98

00:21:05.280 And in the book, I attempt to justify this tension among the ideals by saying that, you know, to everything there's a season.

00:21:12.800 And, you know, when a nation is at war, the way, and at, you know, just war, the way America was, I believe, in World War II, then you need Achilles and you need, you need Hector.

00:21:24.380 You need him more than you need Jesus, probably, because the people who are fighting you are absolutely remorseless and absolutely relentless.

00:21:32.360 But, you know, when any time that it's possible, you know, recourse to Jesus and the thinkers is by far preferable.

00:21:38.760 So, they have things in common, their relative insubordination, insouciance, and, you know, their laws unto themselves, it appears.

00:21:48.820 But they respond to a higher law, the law of kindness on the part of Jesus, and the law of courage on the part of Achilles and Hector.

00:21:56.140 So, they have things in common, but the values they endorse are in conflict with each other. There's no way around that.

00:22:03.040 Right. So, what do you mean by compassion? Like, what do you think the Buddha and Jesus are, we're trying to get at, trying to get us to think about and live in our own lives in terms of being compassionate?

00:22:14.800 I mean, this is the toughest of all, really, I think, to put into practice all the time.

00:22:21.300 And, you know, and Schopenhauer, actually, who, harsh as he is, loves the Buddha and loves the Jesus that he imagines, says that, you know, most of us walk down the street and we see another person and we say, that's another person.

00:22:34.900 That's he, that's she, that's somebody else.

00:22:36.520 The compassionate person, just as the Hindu sages said, says, that's me. That's, that's me. We all share one life. And anything that hurts me, hurts them. Anything that hurts them, hurts me.

00:22:49.240 And so, I must do everything that I can for my brothers and my sisters. It's a really, it's an absolutely daunting kind of ideal. But you do see, I think, I mean, you know, there are people who give their lives over to the poor.

00:23:01.900 And I still think those must be the most miserable people in the world. But they're laughing all the time. Yeah. They know what they're supposed to do and they do it. Right. I think, uh, yeah. I mean, how many of us know what we're supposed to do and do it? Right. I know what they're supposed to do. Yeah. I know what they're supposed to do, but I, I don't do it. Um, we are, though. The little sisters of the poor, right? They don't get any food that's any good. They don't go on dates. You know, they don't have any fun. They don't get to ride Cadillacs or anything.

00:23:29.380 Right. But when I saw them, when I was a boy, they'd be laughing all the time. Right. Right. They were supposed to do.

00:23:35.480 So, I mean, like maybe this can be into this tough question I've been thinking about. Maybe you maybe don't have the answer to it, but all right. So Jesus, right. He said, uh, his yoke is easy. Right. We're just to take upon his yoke and our burdens will be light.

00:23:48.840 But, but I'm like, when I think about it, like, man, no, Jesus, like your yoke is kind of hard. Uh, like loving your neighbor and forgetting about, you know, what I'm supposed to eat and wear the next day. Like he told his disciples to do. That's hard. Um, so we've got Jesus, you know, ideals are hard to live by. We've got Jesus saying, no, it's really not. So what's going on there? Is it the ideal is hard or is it, I'm trying to hold on to the self, the sort of my, my, uh, my desires, personal desires. Is that what's going on?

00:24:17.820 I think it's like, I think it's more like once you've made the breakthrough, you'll be, you'll, you'll, you'll be surprised at how easy it is. You know, once you've decided to live for the poor, once you've decided that you're not going to amass wealth, once you've decided that everybody's your brother or sister, it's just not as hard as you think. Uh, it looks impossible, but it's not as hard as you think. Um, I mean, I say this, this is, I'm, um, as Schopenhauer said, well, this is an extreme example. Schopenhauer said, you know,

00:24:46.800 you talk about compassion and this and that, but you're really a difficult person. I'm not a difficult person, but I'm far from the compassionate ideal. Um, and it strikes me as the very hardest one, but the most available in another regard, you know?

00:24:59.700 Yeah, it is. It is the most available. I think you, you, you are, you make that case, that point in the book that anyone can be compassionate. Not everyone can be an Achilles, right?

00:25:08.260 Yeah.

00:25:08.640 Cause you don't have, you have to be born probably with some sort of inherent ability to, you know, have that drive to conquer and be excellent in the martial field.

00:25:18.420 Yeah. Um, and you want to be fast and strong too.

00:25:21.580 Right, right. You got to be fat, have to be physically adept to it as well. And not everyone's going to be, you know, have, be able to do the contemplative life.

00:25:27.900 Cause you know, maybe they have something wrong, you know, their brain that just doesn't allow them to do that, but everyone can be, everyone can be kind.

00:25:34.000 Yeah. Everyone can be kind. And you know, if you take the gist of my last chapter about, um, Whitman, uh, and about Walt Stevens, um, there's the mixture of self and soul,

00:25:44.120 the protection of soul by virtue of some kind of a development of self or defensiveness or position of continuity.

00:25:52.380 And I think that can work for self. Self is devil and wants to take over all the time. You know, um, Jesus, there was never any danger that Jesus was going to want a trophy for being the most compassionate person in devil.

00:26:03.040 But, you know, some of us could give ourselves to compassion and then start looking for awards two years later because self is still alive and protecting us and keeping us alive and keeping our families going.

00:26:11.780 But I think that, that combination is possible to make. I just wanted to be as clear as possible about what these ideals were.

00:26:19.860 And so it made sense to have recourse to the purest forms of the manifestations.

00:26:24.120 Yeah. Um, I mean, you could be, if, you know, Christ is your ideal, you could, there are ways in which you could become more Jesus-like,

00:26:31.260 a way in which I can become more Socrates-like, you know, for instance, not, you know, when I see something that I think really needs to be commented on, 0.98

00:26:37.840 but it's going to get me a lot of shit for doing it. I, you know, I, I guess I could step up and do that more often than I do. 0.83

00:26:44.180 Right. So you use these characters like Achilles, Jesus, Socrates as forms, kind of, right?

00:26:50.300 Yeah, that's a good way to put it. I hadn't thought of that. They're absolute forms, right?

00:26:54.800 And, you know, I could have picked up people who were kind of part self, part soul, part this, part that, but the clarity would have been missing.

00:27:00.400 There's, I wouldn't say that it's quite a cultural emergency, but from my point of view, these ideas are sort of gently passing out of our can.

00:27:11.280 And so a dramatic reintroduction of them is a, uh, is the best way to go.

00:27:16.820 Okay. Well, so, I mean, we've been kind of, we've been talking about this throughout the podcast about the idea of the self.

00:27:22.220 Uh, and I think people, when they hear it, they understand and inherently, like, you know, they understand what it means on the surface, but what is it, do you mean, what is a, a person who has been taken over or captivated by the, a culture of selfhood?

00:27:35.480 What they look, what do they look like?

00:27:37.740 Well, first of all, I think that there, there are more and less admirable forms of selfhood, right?

00:27:42.560 But basically the self is what it says. It are, it, it, it radiates around the individual as himself or as her, uh, self. Um, and, uh, the ideals on the other hand are aimed at the betterment of all, or that's, that's the, that's the aspiration, right?

00:28:03.200 Um, self is involved with the betterment of self, right? It, it, it's involved in, um, uh, getting a wife or a husband, taking care of one's children, taking care of one's family, during one's job, uh, paying one's bills, being a citizen, um, getting prestige, getting promoted.

00:28:22.860 Um, and, uh, there are more and less decent ways to do that and more and less admirable ways, um, to relate to the rest of the world while one is in the process of, uh, of doing that.

00:28:33.680 But the ultimate horizon of the self is the benefit of the, uh, self.

00:28:41.140 Right.

00:28:41.660 And the ultimate, uh, horizon of the idealist is the fulfillment of something outside the self, the ideal, that has, um, positive results, or it should, uh, for other people.

00:28:52.860 So that the, the, the, the, the person in the world of self is not sitting there saying, I'm doing this for other people.

00:28:59.340 And by other people, I mean people outside his family, her family, uh, he's basically thinking, these are my desires and I'm trying to fulfill it.

00:29:07.640 Another way to answer the question is to say that the self is, um, lives in a world of desire, right?

00:29:13.240 Um, desire for the good things, desire for success, prosperity, or even just protection and calm and tranquility.

00:29:18.480 Um, whereas the, um, the idealist, um, lives with, um, hope, uh, hope to make a contribution to the, the larger world.

00:29:27.960 Um, and, uh, the idealist is also, uh, uh, wanting to live at whatever cost with, um, meaning, right?

00:29:35.080 Ultimate meaning.

00:29:36.180 Um, the, um, uh, person in the world of self is looking for, I don't know, significance.

00:29:41.860 It's, uh, I don't know, I'm not getting the pairing exactly right, but I think that, uh, pairing and, and some kind of orientation to the other is part of what, uh, uh, soul is, uh, soul is all about.

00:29:51.400 Okay.

00:29:51.560 So it's like the, the, the, the self person, the self sort of like Nietzsche's last man.

00:29:56.120 Or are you just.

00:29:56.400 You know, that's, that's Nietzsche being nasty.

00:29:58.420 It's one of my favorite castes.

00:29:59.400 I know.

00:29:59.960 I love it too.

00:30:00.720 He blinks.

00:30:01.440 He hops and he blinks and he watches TV.

00:30:03.620 If Nietzsche had ever seen TV or Buster and God, I think.

00:30:06.020 Um, uh, but that's the worst manifestation of self.

00:30:10.300 Okay.

00:30:10.880 I think there are higher manifestations of self, right?

00:30:13.340 Where people are interested in, um, uh, some of the things that you were describing, right?

00:30:18.580 Um, environmental issues, uh, justice, good neighborliness, supporting a church.

00:30:26.920 All those things seem to me in the higher reaches of, uh, of self.

00:30:30.700 Um, and, uh, they do leave the region of pure selfishness, uh, but they never arrive at the

00:30:39.480 level of the sacrifice of the self for something that is higher or more, uh, more demanding and

00:30:45.640 ultimately better for other people.

00:30:48.060 Right.

00:30:48.260 Because sometimes, you know, even those good things that are part of the self, uh, they can

00:30:52.860 clash with the ideal that it's, I guess, trying to emulate or trying to achieve.

00:30:59.100 I'm trying to think of like an example.

00:31:00.080 Yeah.

00:31:00.560 One of the central points of contention there, and I think I could really be richly argued

00:31:05.160 against here, something I've turned over in my mind a whole lot, is the contention between

00:31:08.640 compassion and justice.

00:31:10.180 Right.

00:31:10.940 I mean, I think of justice as a virtue of the, uh, of the self, and it's an admirable virtue,

00:31:16.240 uh, but ultimately it, um, it's based upon dividing up the pie in a way that you find, uh,

00:31:24.820 fair, but also congenial, and it satisfies often a sense of guilt.

00:31:29.080 But, um, the, um, uh, the compassionate person just, you know, take any pie, take, take the pie.

00:31:36.740 I don't really care.

00:31:37.340 Right.

00:31:38.300 So it's sort of a, uh, sort of a different, uh, sort of different thing.

00:31:42.520 And then there, there are levels of complexity here that involve motivation.

00:31:46.360 I used to think that as an American pragmatist, I used to think what matters most was, uh, results.

00:31:51.520 Right.

00:31:51.840 What does it happen to?

00:31:52.760 So, but by reading the Eastern thinkers, I began to get more interested in, um, motivation.

00:31:58.180 Um, why do you do a certain thing?

00:32:01.360 Um, and, uh, I think, um, you ask a compassionate person, a truly compassionate person is compassionate

00:32:07.420 because of love for others, love for the world and love for others.

00:32:09.840 A, um, uh, a just person, uh, who lives in the provinces of self may well be being just

00:32:17.340 to satisfy what Freud called his superego, his sense of guilt because he has more than

00:32:21.600 others, um, his sense of anxiety about that.

00:32:24.280 So it's a matter of satisfying a portion of the psyche so as to live more peacefully with

00:32:29.900 the plenty that, uh, that one has.

00:32:32.700 Uh, so motivation comes into it in a, uh, in a big way and you can never tell really what

00:32:37.620 motivates anybody else.

00:32:38.560 And most of us can't tell what the hell is motivating us at any given time.

00:32:41.020 Anyway, we could think about it.

00:32:43.220 Right.

00:32:43.940 Um, let's talk, transition to your argument you make about why the, the, the world of ideals

00:32:49.900 began to fade in the West.

00:32:51.440 And I'm sure that there's any English teachers listening to this right now.

00:32:55.240 You're not, they're going to be like, wait a minute with this part, but you argue that,

00:32:58.740 uh, Shakespeare, uh, sort of kicked things off in a big way in the modern world, but,

00:33:05.280 uh, in the decline of ideals.

00:33:07.620 Um, a couple of, yeah.

00:33:08.940 So what, what, what does Shakespeare do to be like, yeah, ideals aren't that great?

00:33:13.300 Okay.

00:33:14.080 Um, first of all, um, I mean, the, um, general demystification, if that's what it is, or the

00:33:21.120 general denigration of ideals would have happened with a Shakespeare lived or did not, the general

00:33:25.820 demystification of denigration of ideals would have lived, whether his contemporary, also

00:33:29.600 a demystifier, uh, Cervantes ever lived or not.

00:33:33.340 Okay.

00:33:33.440 Um, they simply are manifestations of a strong urge, uh, that has to do with lots and lots

00:33:40.280 of factors, historical and cultural factors, um, among them, the rise of capitalism, um, a

00:33:47.040 certain amount of turbulence in the area of, uh, religion, the movement to a Protestant or

00:33:52.640 a decentric kind of, uh, uh, uh, kind of faith, which gives the individual, uh, more possibilities

00:33:58.800 for determination and moves them away from a transcendental ideals and, uh, and, uh, uh,

00:34:04.700 authorities.

00:34:06.120 Um, but, um, uh, fundamentally, uh, when one reads Shakespeare, and there have to be a couple

00:34:11.820 of caveats here, but when one reads, uh, Shakespeare, one sees that there's an overall, overriding

00:34:18.520 tendency, um, that he's not somebody who is, um, a figure of negative capability, uh, with

00:34:26.360 the power of being uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts after, uh, without irritable fact

00:34:30.100 or, uh, reaching after irritable fact or reason, as Keith says, it's a pretty strong

00:34:34.040 polemical purpose.

00:34:35.160 It's just that most of us agree with that strong polemical purpose so that it becomes transparent.

00:34:39.500 Right?

00:34:40.480 Um, Shakespeare's chief skepticism, from my point of view, is about, um, uh, martial ideals or

00:34:46.220 about, um, uh, the, the, uh, the heroic ideal.

00:34:49.820 So when a heroic figure, uh, gets onto the stage in, uh, Shakespeare, he's going to be

00:34:54.760 almost inevitably destroyed.

00:34:56.040 Now, that, that could just be a tragedy, but in the process of being destroyed, he's going

00:34:59.740 to be anatomized, and he's going to be humiliated.

00:35:03.780 And in that process, um, uh, not only destroyed, that's tragedy, uh, but discredited.

00:35:10.140 That's polemics.

00:35:11.340 That's cultural polemics.

00:35:12.700 Um, so an example would be Macbeth.

00:35:15.500 Um, what makes Macbeth brave?

00:35:18.280 In the beginning of the, of the play, we see how brave he is.

00:35:20.560 He's done extraordinary martial deeds.

00:35:22.460 Um, but then as the play unfolds, we see that Macbeth has an amazing kind of anxiety

00:35:29.020 and insecurity about masculinity.

00:35:31.280 And when Lady Macbeth wants him to do anything, all she has to do is tell him that, uh, he

00:35:36.300 is not truly a man.

00:35:37.740 And if he were truly a man, he would do it.

00:35:39.620 And then he goes on to do these absolutely horrendous kinds of, uh, kinds of deeds.

00:35:43.320 Now, Shakespeare's play isn't suggesting that everybody is a, who is a hero, is anxious

00:35:48.640 about his masculinity.

00:35:50.440 Um, Macbeth fully cannot, uh, produce children the way a previous husband, a paramour of Lady

00:35:55.540 Macbeth can.

00:35:56.460 Um, but this is a relentless blood, blood-making hero who, uh, who does have enormous insecurities

00:36:07.320 about masculinity.

00:36:08.620 So, um, compensatory activity becomes a way to explain Macbeth.

00:36:14.600 And so, after watching Macbeth, we go off and we, uh, start looking at heroic warriors

00:36:21.460 in, with a new lens.

00:36:23.400 Uh, and that lens is, what, what's being compensated for here?

00:36:25.980 Yeah.

00:36:26.280 You know, what, uh, what kind of inadequacy does this individual possess?

00:36:30.660 And as Shakespeare brings one after another of the heroic individuals onto the stage,

00:36:35.540 he gives us another lens by which we can demystify, as it were, if you believe in it, um, their

00:36:42.660 claims to heroism.

00:36:44.240 Um, and I think that's one of his larger polemical, uh, purposes.

00:36:47.980 And, you know, does it not make sense that it's time culturally and historically and especially

00:36:53.140 economically to clear the ground of these useless aristocrats and to replace them by a 0.93

00:36:58.940 new generation of men and women with new values?

00:37:01.200 That is, the values of the, um, uh, up-and-coming bourgeoisie.

00:37:04.700 Now, Shakespeare doesn't seem to be thrilled with those people, either.

00:37:06.900 Shakespeare's not thrilled with anybody.

00:37:07.900 Yeah, the Merchant of Venice, right?

00:37:09.520 Like, that's kind of...

00:37:10.120 Yes, exactly.

00:37:10.940 Exactly.

00:37:11.480 I mean, if, you know, how does the Merchant of Venice end?

00:37:14.800 It ends with, um, the slightly admirable, but rather Doc Shylock, you know, absolutely

00:37:21.640 scapegoated, destroyed, and in the most sadistic way possible.

00:37:25.840 And it also ends with Antonio, um, who has a love for Bassanio that is probably homosexual, 0.73

00:37:31.460 um, being mildly scapegoated and marginalized and sent even more deeply into his melancholy,

00:37:37.980 and then the rest of the rich, happy people can party on.

00:37:41.780 Um, you know, is this, is this paradise after we've gotten rid of people like Othello and

00:37:47.300 Macbeth?

00:37:47.800 I don't think it's quite paradise, even from Shakespeare's point of view.

00:37:50.700 Um, so, it's not a rosy picture overall, uh, but I think there's strong skepticism bordering

00:37:57.960 on contempt for heroic individuals.

00:38:00.860 And in terms of our other great ideals, um, religion just doesn't play much of a role

00:38:06.240 in Shakespeare.

00:38:07.080 Right.

00:38:07.180 Like Santana says, you could read the whole thing from end to end and not realize that

00:38:10.780 humanity has a religious life of any import at all.

00:38:12.880 Um, and in terms of high thought, Shakespeare is truly not a verse to it, and there are

00:38:19.440 moments, particularly in Hamlet, where people say things, characters say things, that may

00:38:24.980 have a transcendent, transcendent truth to them.

00:38:27.640 But mostly in Shakespeare, people do what Dr. Johnson says they do.

00:38:31.240 They talk for victory.

00:38:32.560 They talk in order to get what it is they, uh, they want.

00:38:35.840 And when they seem to be philosophizing, they're really trying to get an angle on the person

00:38:39.280 they're talking to.

00:38:39.880 Um, so I think Shakespeare hasn't got much use for religion, um, has a little bit of

00:38:45.100 use for high philosophy, but not too much.

00:38:47.520 Um, and particularly has no use for the heroic ideal.

00:38:51.400 So what, what does Shakespeare, Shakespeare believe in?

00:38:53.520 Like nothing sort of like a, is he a nihilist or I mean, is he a worldliness?

00:38:57.260 A couple of things.

00:38:58.880 Being hip, you know?

00:39:00.360 Yeah.

00:39:00.640 Um, realizing that most people in the world are not disinterested, but are function out of

00:39:09.780 desire, uh, are out to get what they want and often are able to disguise what it is their

00:39:16.980 program is, unless you have read Shakespeare, in which case you will be able to see right

00:39:20.940 through them because he did too.

00:39:22.840 Um, so if you were sending your son or daughter out into the world to be a lawyer or a business

00:39:27.480 person, no one better to read than, uh, than Shakespeare.

00:39:30.820 Um, the other thing that you can associate with Shakespeare with as an ideal, and this

00:39:36.640 is a little bit precarious, um, is that of the writer or the creative force, the creative

00:39:41.240 individual, right?

00:39:42.380 Um, his eloquence is so astonishing.

00:39:44.800 His productivity is amazing that he goes on to inspire, um, lots and lots of writers

00:39:50.540 and some thinkers too, whose objective in some measure is to change the world, right?

00:39:55.080 He inspires the English and American romantics in a major way, right?

00:39:59.440 But I don't really think Shakespeare's objective is to change the world, you know?

00:40:03.800 Yeah.

00:40:04.160 It is to render it in its authentic guise, which is that of contending desires.

00:40:14.240 So be the creature of the self.

00:40:17.360 I don't know if there's any recommendation there.

00:40:19.800 No, there's not.

00:40:20.240 I think Shakespeare just says, this is how it is.

00:40:22.400 Okay.

00:40:22.700 Um, and, uh, sink or swim.

00:40:26.760 This is nothing else, you know?

00:40:28.800 You know, after, if, if my, and Cervantes's, and Montan, whom he clearly adored, uh, once

00:40:34.740 our demystifying work is done, what you're left with is the Merchant of Venice and, you 0.61

00:40:39.740 know, Bassanio and Portia, a couple of hustlers, though alluring and beautiful, no doubt.

00:40:44.560 Um, that's not so great, but it's probably better than being lorded over by people like Othello

00:40:52.340 and McFath.

00:40:53.880 Gotcha.

00:40:54.460 Gotcha.

00:40:55.260 Okay.

00:40:56.080 Well, let's talk about the other big figure who you argue helped the decline of ideals,

00:41:01.360 and this is Freud.

00:41:02.760 Uh, what did Freud do to help diminish ideals in the West?

00:41:08.100 Well, um, Freud believes that every single action we perform and every thought that we

00:41:19.400 have is based upon desire and that it is based upon a desire to do something for the self,

00:41:25.900 to gain something, to achieve something, to have something.

00:41:28.360 Uh, and this is manifest in something like Freud's theory of dreams, right?

00:41:31.860 In the theory of dreams, uh, Freud says a dream is a disguised fulfillment of a repressed

00:41:36.600 wish, but that repressed wish is always a wish for satisfaction of your own, okay?

00:41:41.380 No one has ever dreamed, according to Freud, at night, of world peace, okay?

00:41:47.200 And if he did dream of world peace, it was an illusion for dreaming about, you know, uniting

00:41:51.900 with his mother or sister in some unsavory way.

00:41:54.860 So, um, there is nothing but the self in, uh, in Freud.

00:41:59.100 What about aspirations to soul?

00:42:01.200 What about aspirations to soul?

00:42:02.920 Oh, Freud hates them all, right?

00:42:04.960 Um, and he hates, uh, he's just overt about it, you know?

00:42:08.400 So, if you say to Freud, what is heroism?

00:42:11.000 What is heroism?

00:42:12.140 Oh, Freud says that heroism is becoming intoxicated with the approval of the father, right?

00:42:17.780 So that the state becomes the father or the general becomes the father.

00:42:20.980 And seeking the approval of the father, we were going to run out and get ourselves killed.

00:42:25.160 If you want to call that heroism, I wish you the best, right?

00:42:28.400 What is romantic love?

00:42:29.640 Which is the next ideal, really, in line of the next possible ideal, therefore it's particularly

00:42:33.820 fiercely disposed against.

00:42:35.480 Um, romantic love is a lot of nasty things in Freud.

00:42:37.660 It's the overestimation of the erotic object.

00:42:39.720 It's putting the beloved in the place of the ego ideal or, or super ego.

00:42:44.900 It's, it's just, it's one mystification after another.

00:42:48.040 Um, the great mystification of religion is the mystification that all people are brothers

00:42:52.340 and sisters.

00:42:53.220 And as soon as you try that out, Freud tells us those people that you thought of as brothers

00:42:57.100 and sisters will disappoint you in some profound way.

00:42:59.700 And they'll probably take your wallet to boot.

00:43:02.000 Um, so anytime there is a, uh, an aspiration to transcendence, uh, Freud is against it.

00:43:09.940 Now, why, um, do we aspire to transcendence then from Freud's point of view?

00:43:15.220 Not because transcendence legitimately exists, but because transcendence or the ideals deliver

00:43:20.420 us temporarily from our pain.

00:43:22.520 Suddenly we have purpose.

00:43:23.740 Suddenly we have meaning.

00:43:24.520 And the psyche, which is usually in Freud at war with itself is united into one piece,

00:43:31.080 one coherent piece, right?

00:43:32.500 And that makes us feel pretty good.

00:43:34.100 In fact, it's very much like getting drunk, right?

00:43:36.420 You drink, you have two, three drinks and suddenly you're not this kind of mass of contending

00:43:40.620 aspirations and desires.

00:43:42.080 Suddenly you're one.

00:43:43.240 So you commit yourself to the heroic ideal or you fall in love, which is for the paradigm

00:43:47.600 for all these things, or you become, you aspire to Jesus-like, um, uh, uh, compassion

00:43:54.400 or you seek, um, uh, true wisdom, which psychoanalysts call epistemophilia.

00:43:59.980 Um, you unite the psyche temporarily, but then, uh, after a certain amount of time passes,

00:44:05.340 you become disillusioned.

00:44:06.300 You find that the beloved isn't truly worth loving or as much as you thought.

00:44:10.120 You find that heroism is a suck in a cell, so on down the line, and you become disillusioned.

00:44:14.300 And as Freud says, he, she could have quoted Wordsworth, feed me Wordsworth, um, as high

00:44:19.820 as we have mounted in delight in our dejection, do we think as low, except it's really about

00:44:24.700 10 times as low from Freud's point of view.

00:44:26.960 Once you're disillusioned, you really crash very hard.

00:44:29.680 Um, so the best life is the one that doesn't go in for illusions, but realizes that we're

00:44:33.600 fragmented and contending, self-contending beings and tries to live with it.

00:44:37.420 Rather noble, I think.

00:44:38.320 Right.

00:44:39.940 So, I mean, is that like, I mean, is Freud the reason why whenever someone who does aspire

00:44:45.140 to live an ideal, we're like, that person's crazy, right?

00:44:48.380 Like, you know, I mean, like he's like, he's, he's, he sold all his stuff and he's giving

00:44:52.260 it to the poor. 1.00

00:44:53.660 Man, he's a crazy person.

00:44:55.140 I, um, I gave a talk once, uh, to a group of psychoanalysts, uh, and they were very bright 0.65

00:44:59.080 and very responsive and, uh, it was just, it was a pleasure to talk to them because they're

00:45:03.480 very candid as well.

00:45:04.300 And one of them said to me, if somebody came into my office and said, I want to be a compassionate

00:45:08.640 individual, I want to be a hero, I want to be a great thinker, I would say, um, you're,

00:45:14.500 you know, probably suffering from some kind of neurosis and we should begin treatment fairly

00:45:17.620 soon.

00:45:19.060 Right.

00:45:20.140 Right.

00:45:20.980 So, yeah, that's interesting.

00:45:22.700 That's interesting.

00:45:23.760 Yeah.

00:45:23.880 Cause I mean, I, I even, I mean, you probably even see this in parents.

00:45:27.040 Uh, you've, you've seen this before, like sort of, it's the, uh, stereotypical tale of

00:45:31.240 a young person who has this ideal, they're going to go for it.

00:45:34.380 Right.

00:45:34.780 Whether it's going to, they're going to join the army and be a Navy SEAL, or they're going

00:45:38.920 to devote their life as a missionary in some foreign field, but their parents are like,

00:45:44.000 no, wait, you know, you should go to college and like, you need to get a job and like make

00:45:48.340 a living.

00:45:48.800 Don't, don't do that thing.

00:45:51.040 And I guess we have Freud to thank for that.

00:45:52.620 Well, you know, also just, you know, bourgeois safety and security.

00:45:59.780 I was reading a book by Jonathan Haidt.

00:46:01.860 I think his name is a happiness hypothesis.

00:46:04.380 And he said that people now live for happiness, by which he means middle class happiness, because

00:46:09.980 happiness is now so much more available than it was in the past.

00:46:14.260 Um, you can expect to live a long time.

00:46:15.720 You can expect to be secure and have a good job and have a good family.

00:46:17.980 But, um, he wasn't quite at the point where he wanted to contend with the idea that what

00:46:22.120 is called bourgeois happiness doesn't really make people happy.

00:46:26.260 Right.

00:46:26.760 It surely doesn't make everybody happy, you know?

00:46:28.960 Right.

00:46:29.360 And this sort of leads to like my next question.

00:46:31.760 So you, you argue in the book that, you know, there are glimmers of these ideals, but

00:46:39.220 they're simply simulations of the ideals.

00:46:43.820 Yeah, that's the last chapter.

00:46:44.920 And it's one of the reasons that I talk about Freud's, uh, sense of the psyche as

00:46:49.700 noble, um, because Freud lives in a world where you repudiate the ideals and what you're

00:46:58.180 pretty much left with is a rather pained and rather anxious and sometimes depressive psyche.

00:47:03.860 And you have to live with that, but it's worse than the exhilaration of commitment to

00:47:08.780 an ideal and then the dejection that follows upon disillusionment.

00:47:12.400 Okay.

00:47:13.420 Um, and in Freud's time, there were ways to compensate the self for its, um, its limitations.

00:47:21.920 Okay.

00:47:22.440 You could read a novel in which, which Freud loved to read novels that were kind of wish

00:47:26.560 fulfillment and escapist.

00:47:27.500 He didn't know it.

00:47:27.820 He didn't care.

00:47:28.820 Um, and you could read an escapist novel and you could become the hero.

00:47:32.180 Right.

00:47:32.420 And so suddenly you kind of make your way out through a fantasia, uh, into, um, uh, into

00:47:38.460 a heroic satisfaction.

00:47:40.320 Um, but still it was tough.

00:47:42.160 It was definitely tough to live without God, to live without romantic love, um, to live without

00:47:48.660 heroism.

00:47:49.800 All this is very difficult to do this.

00:47:51.200 Uh, and so there was something admirable and noble about it, but what we've created since,

00:47:56.480 you know, Freud died in 1939 or so, what we've created is a, is a technology of, um, mock

00:48:04.760 ideals of mock transcendence.

00:48:06.640 I just, my nephew taught me to play a heroic, uh, role playing, uh, game this, uh, this weekend

00:48:12.640 because I thought that I was going to kind of gas on about these things.

00:48:15.140 I should know a little more about them than I do.

00:48:17.500 Um, and it was sort of great, you know, you, you became this creature with all these powers

00:48:21.840 and you went off banging and shooting and racking up scores.

00:48:24.520 I was actually pretty terrible at it.

00:48:26.240 Um, but, you know, multiply this times about a million and the most really dangerous of

00:48:32.460 all of the, um, ideas from the parents, but if it is shown to have, uh, these compensatory

00:48:38.700 or, uh, simulacrum or manifestations in the culture.

00:48:43.940 Uh, and you could find almost anything, any one of the ideals in simulation form in our

00:48:49.200 contemporary culture.

00:48:50.760 And, uh, so there's a technology of mock or false transcendence that far exceeds anything

00:48:56.860 that was around during, uh, Freud's time.

00:48:59.420 Now, somebody could easily come along and say, look, we've got this figured out.

00:49:02.160 You live a safe, safe, reasonable, middle-class life and you do miss certain things, but you

00:49:07.660 compensate for that missing by virtue of playing video games and watching the news a lot to get

00:49:11.860 your wisdom and, uh, watching a lot of football to get your, uh, courage.

00:49:15.520 And overall, that's the best way to live.

00:49:17.500 Well, that's overall, that's the best way.

00:49:18.640 It's the least dangerous and you'd less likely do harm to other people.

00:49:21.420 I could understand that argument, it seems to me.

00:49:23.900 Um, but I do want the possibility of something else to be out there for people who are spirited,

00:49:30.120 who don't like it the way it is now in the culture and maybe don't quite know why.

00:49:33.980 So, so that's what you're, the whole thrust of this book is.

00:49:37.840 It leads up to this, you know, the final chapter too about ideals today.

00:49:42.220 Um, and as you're reading this and you read the book, I'll be honest, I, sometimes I got

00:49:46.240 a little depressed.

00:49:46.960 I was like, man, like, is it, is it possible to live these ideals?

00:49:50.200 Because there are instances where I think like, yeah, I am living this ideal, but then

00:49:54.080 I think, well, maybe this is just a simulation of the ideal and it's not really it.

00:49:58.500 And, uh, so it is, is it possible to live the life of the soul in the 21st century?

00:50:06.100 Or as you said, is there, is it, are you looking for maybe a hybrid of self and soul?

00:50:10.680 Yeah, I think it's always possible to take a step in the direction of, um, of soul, right?

00:50:17.000 I mean, if you've thought hard about a subject, if you have done the research and the work and

00:50:23.040 talked to people and you have something to say that's out of keeping with the norm and you

00:50:27.920 bring it forward and do it modestly and intelligently and with humor, uh, and it, um, achieve some

00:50:33.780 interest and some unpopularity, you've taken a step in the direction of Plato and Socrates.

00:50:38.660 If you show up at the hospital a few times and visit and talk to people and, uh, hurry,

00:50:43.540 hurry in pain, uh, maybe, uh, volunteer for a little while and do your best, you've taken

00:50:48.700 a step in the direction of, uh, of compassion.

00:50:51.220 I, I think those things, uh, remain, uh, remain available.

00:50:55.760 Um, it's too much to ask somebody who's 35, 30 or 40 years old to drop it all and tell

00:51:01.300 their children goodbye and that I'm going to go become a saint in India.

00:51:05.420 Um, uh, I think it's too much to do that, but I think that it's quite possible to take

00:51:09.660 steps in this, uh, in this direction.

00:51:11.840 Um, and you know, you know, you're there when it both hurts and feels good, you know?

00:51:17.580 I like that.

00:51:18.320 That's a good, that's a good way to, to know you're there because you always, you often

00:51:21.000 wonder, am I doing it?

00:51:22.420 And that's a great way to put it.

00:51:23.520 It hurts and feels good.

00:51:24.400 I mean, it's not about happiness. 0.95

00:51:26.000 So as my, one of my favorite writers, Camille Polly says, happiness is for slugs. 0.51

00:51:32.260 Happiness is for the last man.

00:51:34.360 Yeah, that's right.

00:51:35.020 He's happy.

00:51:35.660 Yeah, he's happy.

00:51:36.300 Absolutely.

00:51:37.060 Happy, happy, absolutely.

00:51:38.080 Happy it could be.

00:51:38.500 All right.

00:51:39.640 Well, Mark, this has been a, just a fascinating discussion and I hope the people who are out

00:51:44.200 listening to this will go out and get your book because it really has a lot of, uh, a

00:51:48.020 lot of great stuff to chew on in your brain.

00:51:50.640 Um, I'm still chewing on stuff that I read a month ago.

00:51:53.680 Um, thanks so much for your interest.

00:51:54.900 I really appreciate it.

00:51:55.920 The book's only gotten one really real review so far, so maybe we stimulate a couple more.

00:51:59.460 All right.

00:51:59.820 Well, I'll put my review on there as well.

00:52:02.180 Beautiful.

00:52:02.800 Well, thank you.

00:52:03.080 Knock it down.

00:52:03.720 Okay.

00:52:03.860 Awesome.

00:52:04.240 Well, Mark, thanks so much for your time.

00:52:05.500 It's been a pleasure.

00:52:06.800 My pleasure.

00:52:07.200 Thanks for the great questions.

00:52:08.020 You really thought about it hard and I'm most, uh, uh, it really was helpful to me.

00:52:12.100 Well, thank you so much.

00:52:13.020 I really appreciate that.

00:52:14.380 My guest today was Mark Edmondson.

00:52:15.500 He's the author of the book Self and Soul.

00:52:17.360 And like I said, it's one of the best books I read in 2015.

00:52:20.480 Go out there and get it.

00:52:21.280 I think you'll, you won't regret it.

00:52:22.760 A lot of things to chew on there.

00:52:24.200 You can find it on amazon.com.

00:52:28.840 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:52:32.120 For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at

00:52:35.060 artofmanliness.com.

00:52:36.040 And if you enjoy this podcast, I'd really appreciate it.

00:52:38.500 If you give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, help us, uh, get some feedback on how we can

00:52:42.100 improve the show as well as get the word out about the podcast.

00:52:44.800 Until next time, this is Brent McKay telling you to stay manly.

00:52:47.680 We'll see you next time.

The Art of Manliness - January 05, 2016

#166： Self, Soul, and Living a More Idealistic Life

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