#635： The Existentialist's Survival Guide
Episode Stats
Summary
Life isn t an easy road to navigate. We're moody creatures susceptible to a ray of psychological setbacks, emotional ups and downs, fruitless searches for meaning, and trials posed by anxiety, depression, and despair. The kind of journey one needs a survival guide for, and my guest today says, one of the best can be found in the writings of existential philosophers. His name is Gordon Marino, and he's a football and boxing coach, a professor of philosophy, and the author of The Existentialist Survival Guide: How to Live Authentically in an Authentic Age.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Life isn't an easy road to navigate. We're moody creatures susceptible to a ray of psychological
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setbacks, emotional ups and downs, fruitless searches for meaning, and trials posed by anxiety,
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depression, and despair. The kind of journey one needs a survival guide for, and my guest today
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says, one of the best can be found in the writings of existential philosophers. His name is Gordon
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Marino. He's a football and boxing coach, a professor of philosophy, and the author of
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Existentialist Survival Guide, How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age. Gordon and I
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begin our conversation with how he personally found existentialism and how his coaching intersects
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with his teaching. We then get into what existential philosophy is all about and the thinkers and
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authors who are considered to be existentialists. Gordon shares what he thinks is the greatest
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existential novel and which of Soren Kierkegaard's books he most recommends reading. From there,
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we delve into what Kierkegaard had to say about anxiety, how he thought existential angst was the
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ultimate teacher, the distinction he drew between depression and despair, and why he argues that
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procrastination is one of our greatest moral dangers. We then unpack the different models of living an
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authentic life that the existentialist espoused and what Nietzsche meant with his injunction to live
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dangerously. We then get into what the existentialist's take on love is, why love is actually hard to
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accept, and why you should presuppose love in others. And we end our conversation with what
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boxing can teach about existential philosophy. After the show's over, make sure to check out our show notes.
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All right. All right. Gordon Marino, welcome to the show.
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Thanks so much for having me. Been looking forward to it.
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Yeah. So you are a professor of philosophy at St. Olaf College. You're the author of the book,
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The Existentialist Survival Guide, How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age.
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Let's talk about your backstory of how you became a professor of existential philosophy.
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How did you discover existential philosophy? And just tell us about that. I think it's really
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interesting. Well, I was a football player at Bowling Green State University, and I had this
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wonderful, wonderful professor in a philosophy class. And he told me, well, you know about elite
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athletics and stuff like that. Well, you need to get some elite training in the mind. And so I
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transferred to Columbia University. And his name was Serge Kappa, a huge influence.
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So I studied philosophy there. And it was later on, I got into a, well, it was during a time when I
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went through a terrible divorce. It was a young man, a very hard time. And I was in a coffee shop
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and picked up this book of Kiergaard's. And it was like a light. It's just a beautiful, amazing page
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because one of the things I was having such a hard time. And one of the things I found was that
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Kiergaard and other existentialists really addressed the impediments in our lives,
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our inner lives and the difficulties we face and being decent people. I mean, it's really,
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it's easy to be a good person when everything's going well, but quite different when you hit the,
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when the, when the lights turn red. Right. It's, it's easy in theory, but when you actually have to
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do it, it gets a lot harder. And you're also a boxing coach at St. Olof.
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Well, I'm at St. Olof. I'm a professional boxing coach and a trainer and a, and a USA boxing
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coach. So I've trained both amateurs and pros and, uh, over 30 years, mostly kids in town.
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Although I've had a couple of boxes from St. Olof.
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And then how's that influenced your thinking about philosophy boxing?
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Well, the teaching and coaching really influence one another really go together in an important way
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that, uh, being a coach helps me be a better teacher, helps me read kids more accurately,
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know who to push, when to push that kind of thing. And, and it's really, uh, I coach also coach
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football here and I found that you really get the landscape of, when you have a, when you have
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somebody in class and in their, and in the gym and, or the football field, you really get to see
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the landscape of their mind in a way that you wouldn't have otherwise. And it's, uh, really
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more remarkable because, uh, some kids, if I, if I hadn't had them on the football field, I wouldn't
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have, they wouldn't have opened up and I wouldn't have known how rich their thinking was. So it's been,
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it's been marvelous like that. Now, of course I get a lot of questions of, uh, how can you train
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these people's brains and at the same time, get them bashed in and stuff like that. So I get a lot
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of, get a lot of jabs about that over the years, less so now, but in the beginning.
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Yeah. Well, what do you, I mean, how do you, what do you respond to that?
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I'm very, uh, I'm just, I'm very careful with, with my, with my boxers and, uh, I've never had
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anybody get hurt or close to it. So I don't think people understand that if you did it's a well
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Right. And I mean, we've had Mark Edmondson on the podcast.
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Yeah. And yeah, he wrote that book, why football matters. And I thought, I mean, he, he answers
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that too, that sort of question, like, how can you, you know, be in favor of a sport that where
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people get, you know, traumatic brain injury or whatever. And you know, it's, it's a tough
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one, but he, he still thinks there's value in the sport because it can teach you something
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about life that you can't otherwise learn in the classroom.
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Right. And there's also a risk in living a risk averse life. That's something you learn
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from Kierkegaard. It was very important. One of his main ideas is that
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to not to venture, not to risk is to take one of the greatest risks in life.
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Right. Well, that's a good transition, you know, sport as a way to transition to existential
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philosophy. But let's start with this. Like, what is existentialism for those who aren't
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familiar with it? You know, what philosophical questions are they, the existential philosophers
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Well, there's a, there are, there are a real motley crew and they're joined more by themes
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than by any kind of general theory. So the themes are very much things like the individual,
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there's a limits of rationality, limits of the idea of clarity, being concrete in your thinking,
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right? I'm relating your thought to your existence, not, not being too abstract. Again,
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dealing with addressing painful emotions like despair, depression, anxiety, issue of freedom,
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choice. Those are some of the themes that like, and every, everybody has a different roster.
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Who's on the, who's on the roster. Some people have Shakespeare on there, you know? So it's a
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quite a, quite a, quite a array of lack of agreement about who's really an existentialist. And actually
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only, only Camus and maybe Marcel and Simone de Beauvoir ever really identified themselves. I'm sorry,
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Sartre, not, not Camus. Camus denied he was an existentialist, but there's only two or three
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people that ever identified themselves as such and only for a short time. But I identify myself
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Right. Well, you said there's a motley crew. I mean, not only are there philosophers, but there's
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also that you lump in people lump in novelists in there as well. So yeah, let's talk about,
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yeah, let's like, who are some of the big names that people get usually thrown around as existentialists?
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Oh, okay. So, so certainly Kierkegaard, Sartre, Nietzsche, Camus. Those are, those are some of
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the main ones. Simone de Beauvoir. Okay. In terms of novelists, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky,
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Miguel de Anamuno. Those are some of the people that read. In fact, everybody should read Tolstoy's
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The Death of Ivan Ola, which is the greatest existential novel ever. Unbelievable. Amazing book.
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I've, I've also heard like, you know, Thoreau and Emerson thrown in there as well,
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every now and then. Yeah, there's connections, I think, there. Yeah. I mean, Nietzsche carried
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around, it was, there's a book that argues that, that European philosophy was very much influenced
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by American philosophy in the sense that Nietzsche always carried around a copy of Emerson,
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you know? And so, yeah, there's some overlapping themes. I mean, how, how does existentialist,
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because it kind of started coming to, I mean, the first existential philosopher was Kierkegaard.
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That's sort of how people point to him. That's how many people, right. But like, how does,
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how does existentialism differ from philosophy before existentialism? Like, what's the big
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difference? Okay. One of the big differences is that this understanding of the lack of limits of
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reason, right? So for Kierkegaard to become mature is to understand that there's a lot of things beyond
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our understanding that are important to life. So another thing is just idea of making your ideals
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concrete. So he thinks a lot of people, there's a lot of talk about, say, social justice or whatever,
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then you have to ask yourself, well, what really have I done to advance that at all? Have I done
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anything? Have I, have I walked the talk to use a cliche, you know? And so there's a lot of emphasis
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on that, on action that you don't find in other philosophies. And I mean, also it seems like
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existentialism is somewhat, it's psychological too. Yeah. Like, as you said, I think Kierkegaard said,
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like the idea of the self, like what is the self? And it's like, the self is the self relating to
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itself or something like that. Yeah, definitely. That's something like that. That's from the opening
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page of the sickness on a death, which I think is his greatest book. So if you're, if your listeners
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are interested in one book of Kierkegaard's, I would certainly recommend the sickness on a death.
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And in that book, I really found this distinction in him between despair and depression between a
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spiritual disorder and a psychological disorder. But for Kierkegaard, we're born with a self that we
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need to become. For him, it's that we're born a child of God, that we need to be loving,
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nurturing human beings, faithful. And with my students, a lot of time, I really press them to
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think not just about what they want to do, which they're kind of obsessed with, but what kind of
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human being do you want to be? What kind of, what kind of person do you want to be? And there's a lot
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of that emphasis in Kierkegaard. Well, let's talk about some of the questions you tackle in the
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existential survival guide that you think existentialism, and these are big life questions that you
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think existentialists have some, not maybe not answers, but like, you know, questions to help
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you start thinking about this stuff. And the one question that existentialists grapple with is
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anxiety. Because I think everyone here who's listening to the podcast probably heard this,
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or used the phrase, you know, existential angst. And the existential philosopher who really explored
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this idea the most of existential anxiety was Kierkegaard. So let's talk about what is existential
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angst and how does that differ from anxiety about, you know, a test that you're taking in college?
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Right, right. Well, existential angst, the way it's used today, it means it's a kind of a threat to
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our existence, right? That's the notion. But one of the things with Kierkegaard was that he insisted
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that the fact that we're anxious, anxiety is in a sense, our kind of visceral understanding of the
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fact that we're free. It's a blessing to be anxious, right? And it's not a symptom of an illness.
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It's something that marks us out of spirits itself, because we're free. It's an anxiety that you
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understand that you're free. And he thinks anxiety is one of the greatest, greatest teachers. It's
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contrary to what a lot of people in the medical profession would say that we need to be able to sit
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with anxiety. And today we have so, so little patience for that. It's just a symptom, get rid of
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it, this kind of thing. And so it's quite a different view between Kierkegaard and the medical
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Yeah. Didn't he say something that also like the human beings are unique in the, in the world
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that we're, we're the combination of the infinite and the finite.
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That's right. Yeah. You got it. You got it. You're going to get an A in the course. Yeah,
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definitely. Yeah. Yeah. That we're, we had these, um, he thought this is what you look at,
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you're referring again to sickness on a death and theory says we have these different aspects of
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ourselves, finitude, infinitude, temporality, eternity, possibility, and necessity. These are
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contradictory kind of aspects of our, of our lives. And as a human being, we need to, we have to be
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able to relate those things to one another, to be able to get some balance, to integrate them.
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Right. And so, I mean, that's hard to integrate the infinite with the finite and that it's,
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it's something you like, I don't, is it, I would, did Kierkegaard think it'd ever be resolved?
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No. One of the things, one of Kierkegaard's main messages is that life is an ongoing process. So
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you can never, so for people who say, well, I've been saved, it's all over. He'd say,
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that's balon, that's bull, you know, that it's always, life is always a struggle. You always have
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to, to battle against certain temptations or whatever. Right. There's no, there's no end to
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it. Right. Right. So it's, it's a process. He's very adamant about that. And then at any moment you
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could lose it. I mean, so he talks about, there's this one story in the book that you've looked at,
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a sickness on a death about a monk from India who's lived on do his whole life. He comes into the city,
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has one drink and becomes a, becomes an alcoholic. So that's what our, that's what our situation is.
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We're that vulnerable. We're that fragile. We need to remember that.
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And so, I mean, it sounds like for Kierkegaard, like anxiety can, can teach you. Yeah. I mean,
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like it would, if you didn't feel anxiety, would Kierkegaard say something's wrong with you?
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Oh yeah. I'd say you were spiritless. He literally says that in, in the concept of anxiety,
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right. That to, that it's, it's a mark that we're spirits. Right. And that we want to do it. And
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the anxiety is really about this, our spiritual potential. And he would say that what many of us
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do is concretize our anxiety, kind of finitize it in terms of, I'm afraid I won't get this job,
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or I'm afraid of doing this interview or doing this or doing that. Right. We, we try to turn our
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anxiety into these finite fears to escape it. Right. That's, that's one of his views. It's kind of a
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defense mechanism against the anxiety, but the anxiety is really about, we have the potential
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to become human beings, full persons for him, which again, for him means being a person of faith.
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But if faith, the idea of faith is offensive to you, it would mean, look, your main task in life
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is not to sit on the beach, not to, not to accrue a, build your resume up, but to be a decent human
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being. Yeah. And that idea of being spiritless, if you don't have anxiety, that reminds me of
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Nietzsche as like the last man, right? Yeah. Oh yeah. That's a good connection.
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Very good connection. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because Nietzsche did read some Kierkegaard
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late in the 1880s, apparently, and they disagree on a lot, but there's, they both agree that nihilism
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is this, this, this sense that nothing matters is the greatest danger. And for the last man,
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he just wants to, the last man is just concerned about when's my vacation, divides your life into
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work time and play time and, you know, what's on Netflix tonight. And, uh, you know, so yeah,
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that's a very good point. Yeah. The last man is like, I've heard it described as, I forgot the
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name of the guy who's like the Nietzsche expert. He died, Solomon. Yeah. He described the last man
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as the ultimate couch potato. That's right. That's a good description. He was very, Solomon was very
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good. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's, that's a really good description of the good couch potato.
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Yeah. Just watches Netflix and just blinks. That's, that's all, that's all life is. Okay. So we,
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we talked about anxiety and I guess Kierkegaard doesn't have much of a solution. Just kind of
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sit with it, learn what the anxiety can teach you with you. That's right. It's not a, there's no
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solution. Yeah. The solution would be to sit with it and not finitize it, not because he thinks it's
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dangerous. He says it can lead to suicide. So in that sense, he recognized it can be very dangerous,
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but yeah, to sit with it and not to translate it into what I'm really anxious about is whether or not,
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you know, I get into med school or this or that. Right. And it's okay to be anxious about those
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things, but that's not the, that shouldn't become your sense of identity. So can, can I make a little
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turn here? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So for him, I think there's, there's three, this is where we can get
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into this distinction for him between despair and depression for him. It's basically three selves.
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You have a concrete self, right? Right. The self you are. And then you have this ideal self. And then
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there's the self you were born to be, this child of God. Right. So when this concrete self doesn't
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become its ideal self, you might get all your anxiety, all your fears, or am I going to get,
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get into med school or whatever. Right. He says, when the concrete self doesn't get to be its ideal
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self, it can't stand, wants to get rid of itself. It can't stand being, being itself. Right. It's kind
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of a, kind of a self, self hatred. And, um, and he also says that for the person who, who does become
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successful, so that that's despair. Despair is wanting to be rid of yourself. Got it. Got it.
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Okay. Right. And it sounds, this, this kind of despair sounds a lot like depression. Okay. But he
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also says the person who realizes the dream is equally in danger because they become the big shot
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or whatever. Right. And they don't think about, look, I'm real. This is a, whether or not I'm the head of
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the rotary or all kinds of whatever stuff, you know, that, that, that's, that's not the aim in
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life. It's, it's to become this, a certain kind of human being. He says, they're also in despair,
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even though they don't feel bad. So for Kierkegaard, despair is not a feeling. It's a, um, state of the
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self of being unaware of being a self and, or being unwilling to be a self. Whereas depression is this
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kind of self hatred. And I think we've lost that distinction. Right. So yeah, with depression today,
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like it's, we've medicalized it. Like every time you feel sad, like we'd be like, well, here,
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even like grief, like here, take this, this antidepressant, you'll feel better. And Kierkegaard
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would say, wouldn't say, maybe don't, maybe don't do that. That's not, not, maybe that's not healthy.
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Yeah. Learn to, learn to sit with, and I don't think he'd be against all medications. I mean,
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there's times when we were just, when they can really rob us of our sense of, you know, life can
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rob us of our sense of agency at some point, but we've gotten to the point where we have a very
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low threshold for dealing with anxiety and being able to sit with our feelings, sit with bad
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feelings. And I think that that's, that's been, that's been lost. You know, I think we need to
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really work at that, you know, in our society. Yeah. As you said, I mean, sometimes though,
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when people are dying, doctors will prescribe serotonin uptake drugs or antidepressants to
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the family, it is a kind of prophylactic against grief. Right. So we've taken human predicaments
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that are, you know, that are going to hit us all and turn them into pathologies, illnesses.
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Right. And I think Kierkegaard would take great issue with that.
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And this idea, this distinction between depression and despair, like there's people,
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Kierkegaard was a depressive, you know, you quote these lines where he like, he, you know,
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he's at the party. Oh yeah. He was witty. And then when he came home, he wanted to kill himself.
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Right. And he'd write that in his journal, but he said, it's normal to feel down like that. The,
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the thing you got to be careful of, like you said, you can't let that depression fall into despair.
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Okay. But despair here would not be like, it would be giving up on the project of, I mean,
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suppose like you got some terrible disappointment and you said, ah, screw it, man. I don't care
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anymore. And you give up on the project of being a good, faithful person. Right. That's when despair
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comes in, not with the bad feelings. Right. It's when you give up on being a self, give up on being
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a human being. Right. You know, so that's where I think the distinction between despair and
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depression comes in. You can, I mean, he says, so he acknowledges depressive, but he doesn't think he
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was in despair. And how do you, how do you know if you're in despair or not? Okay. That's a,
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that's a complicated question for him because you have to have the right concepts. So he says a lot
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of people in this world will, they'll experience a jolt, you know, something terrible will happen
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and they'll, and they'll say they're in despair. Yeah, they're right. They're in despair, but they
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have the wrong concept. So you know what I mean? So they're right that they're in despair, but it's
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as though, uh, they don't understand what despair really is. The real despair is they've given up on
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being a self. Right. Right. They just, they just, you know, that's not a big, that's not an issue for
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them. So it'd be like, okay, let's, so the example of, I like the example of what to explore this idea
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with the person who's doing well in life, who's happy, got a great job, great family,
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but they're still in despair, Kierkegaard said, because maybe they've given up on being that,
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that self, that true self. Yeah, everybody's patting them on the back. Right.
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So they don't think of the, they don't really think who their true self is. They ask themselves,
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have I, have I been a good, faithful person? Right. That's really, and if everybody,
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if you're rich and powerful, everybody's, nobody, nobody gives you any crap. Right. Right.
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You just pat you on the back and you're, you know, you're able to give money away without making
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any sacrifices and it's very, very intoxicating. So, uh, again, you could do that and, uh, you
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could be very successful and be very happy. He thought happy was happiness. It was really just
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a matter of, you know, we make a God term out of it for Kierkegaard. It was just a, um, it was a lot,
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had a lot to do with luck, fortune, you know, and it was a passing kind of thing and it shouldn't be
00:19:55.420
the aim of our life. Self-fulfillment, happiness. Right.
00:20:01.520
And, but even these like happy, successful people, they'll, they might have those moments
00:20:06.360
where they recognize, like they're lying in bed at night and they realize this is empty. This is
00:20:10.700
not, uh, so like they recognize the despair, but Kierkegaard would say, well, you, you might have
00:20:15.440
the wrong concept of it because what they probably end up doing is they just keep doing more of the
00:20:18.560
same, right? Yeah. It's interesting that you just bring that up. That's a good point because he,
00:20:22.080
um, he recognizes that kind of a person where they have this glimmers of like, yeah, everyone thinks I'm
00:20:27.380
really great, but something's missing. And he says they, they generally go right back to sleep.
00:20:33.720
They just jump into it again and try to forget those moments. He says that that's the ordinary
00:20:37.860
tendency, but yeah, it's a good, that's a good example of some, some big CEO sitting in bed at
00:20:43.660
night and he's placed on the beach or whatever. And he's thinking, well, you know, I'm very successful,
00:20:49.760
but right. Right. And the next day he's back to work or she's back to work.
00:20:55.960
And then when Kierkegaard say that as soon as you recognize that disconnect between who you are and
00:21:00.220
who you should be, you got to act like you have to do something immediately or otherwise you'll just
00:21:04.340
start rationalizing like, well, I got a mortgage to pay. I've got to do this thing. I got to do that.
00:21:10.180
You know, it's, it's, that's an excellent question because a lot of people ask about Kierkegaard's
00:21:14.680
ethics. And I think his greatest contribution to ethics was this idea that of our capacity for
00:21:20.120
self-deception and we don't need more ethics classes or workshops, whatever we need to hold
00:21:25.540
on to truths that are going to lead us against our self-interest a lot of time. Right. I think I
00:21:30.800
bring it up in the book, this case where, you know, I was going to tax resist because of our
00:21:34.820
involvement in Nicaragua, the Contras. And a friend of mine told me that it was down, they were saying
00:21:39.220
they were killing all the midwives, the Contras. Right. And I was going, I'm going to tax resist. Right.
00:21:43.800
But at the same time I was up for a finalist for a Fulbright and someone says, well, you're
00:21:48.000
tax resistant. Guess what's going to happen with a Fulbright? And I said to myself, well,
00:21:52.460
yeah, I bet, I think I better wait until later on in life. I can make a more, a stronger
00:21:56.360
stand. So he thought procrastination was one of our greatest moral dangers as you, as you're
00:22:01.560
mentioning. Right. Yeah. That you, if you think about it too long, you're going to convince
00:22:05.800
yourself that the right way is the easy way. Right. And that's a very important insight.
00:22:11.440
You know, I think really important insight that you can convince yourself that the right
00:22:15.860
way is the easy way. When in fact, the right way is oftentimes going to lead you into a
00:22:20.200
collision with the world. The example you just gave of your own personal experience of
00:22:24.040
like, that reminded me, we talked about Mark Edmondson not too long ago, but he had that
00:22:27.780
great book, Self and Soul, where he just, it's, I think it's an existential book. He explores
00:22:32.640
this idea. There's these two cells inside of you that are competing. And sometimes, you know,
00:22:37.820
the soul part, which is sort of our higher conception, you know, that true self that
00:22:41.900
could guard say. Right. And there's oftentimes in life when those, like their self part, which
00:22:45.900
is like, you know, our need for recognition, our need for money, whatever. Yeah. That
00:22:50.520
conflicts and you have to, you have to decide, you know, what is it you really want?
00:22:55.560
That's right. That, well, yeah. Well, it's not, not so much what you really want, it's what
00:23:00.760
you should do, right? What you should do. What's the right thing to do? Yeah. That's, that's
00:23:05.800
true. And a lot of times, I mean, I think, I think in the course of history, I've always
00:23:10.240
mentioned that, you know, the family's treated as the core of all moral values, et cetera,
00:23:14.340
et cetera. But a lot of times it's the biggest temptation to doing the right thing. For example,
00:23:18.980
when lynchings used to, these thousands of lynchings that took place in America, there
00:23:23.040
are people in those towns that hated them, disagreed with them, but you spoke out, you were
00:23:26.920
gone. And then if you're in that situation where you're going to speak, want to speak out and
00:23:31.340
you got kids, you say, well, you know, I got my family. What do you think Nelson Mandela? He had
00:23:35.480
kids, you know? So sometimes the family can become a moral temptation. I think to hide
00:23:39.960
by, I'm sure that was the case in Nazi Germany, right? I'd, I'd resist, but I have a family
00:23:46.100
to take care of. Right. You know? Yeah, that's hard. It's a, that's a tough one to do, to think
00:23:51.860
about. But it could also make life easy because then you're, you're free from any kind of having
00:23:55.860
to make some painful decisions too. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our
00:24:00.840
sponsors. And now back to the show. Well, uh, let's talk about another question that
00:24:07.440
existentialists grappled with is the idea of authenticity. And everyone talks about authenticity
00:24:13.380
these days. You think so? I don't care. I don't care. Well, they, they, but they talk about
00:24:16.880
it. I don't think in the way that existentialists like, cause I mean, I, while I guess like, you
00:24:21.000
know, a couple of years ago, you'd see companies really, you know, talk about, we have authentic
00:24:25.120
artisanal, whatever. Oh yeah, that's right. And I, but I, or like, you know, people on
00:24:33.200
your sort of self-help type people, they're like, you got to live your, your true self
00:24:37.520
living my, my truth. I'm living my truth. I got to be authentic. And I think we have the
00:24:43.420
existentialist to thank for, you know, this sort of, I don't know, this watered down version
00:24:46.880
of authenticity, but I mean, let's talk about what did the existentialists think what it meant
00:24:50.560
to be an authentic person. Well, Kierkegaard didn't, didn't talk about, use that term very
00:24:57.360
much, although it's dragged out of a lot. People find that in him. So for him, it would
00:25:02.800
become your true self. Okay. But I think there's someone like Nietzsche would have thought that
00:25:08.540
to become authentic would be to, it was an act of self-creation, which is a lot of what people,
00:25:13.880
I think at some levels think today, right? It's the not define yourself in terms of the crowd
00:25:18.780
to become what he calls the sovereign individual, you know? So there's this one,
00:25:23.680
one notion of authenticity that might involve, you have this true self, which you were born to
00:25:26.980
become, right? And the other is authenticity is creating yourself. And, and so those are two
00:25:34.980
different takes on it, but I think we also have to consider the possibility. Well, I mean, suppose
00:25:39.320
you're a real jerk and you're, you're authentic. I mean, so I, authenticity could be a bad thing if
00:25:45.000
you're, if you're an evil person, you know? So it's not, wouldn't always be a good, wouldn't
00:25:50.980
always be a good thing in that sense. But, but two different models there. Do you have this
00:25:55.080
self you're born to be, or is it one of creating yourself to doing what you feel like really,
00:26:00.500
you know, which is the one I think that's marketed most today, right? Follow your passions,
00:26:05.060
that kind of stuff. And what would the existentialists think about, I mean, would they like the follow
00:26:10.340
your passion thing? Would they, I guess, would some of them be on board with that? Or would
00:26:15.040
they be like, or you? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Again, they disagree on a lot. I mean, you have
00:26:20.700
atheists that are existentialists, you have true believers like CERN. But yeah, Kierkegaard was
00:26:28.700
very emphatic about the importance of passion, right? That's for sure. But he wouldn't, he wouldn't
00:26:33.740
say that our destiny in life is to follow our passions. I mean, suppose I have a, you know, a passion
00:26:40.220
for playing beach volleyball or something and I'm able to do it. Well, I wasn't put here on earth to
00:26:44.540
play beach volleyball, you know, even though I, right. I mean, so he would say we have duties and
00:26:51.140
things like that, that, that are, that are very important. Well, he would say like, I mean, I know
00:26:55.900
Kierkegaard didn't say the word authentic, but he would say the, I mean, if we were to pull it out of
00:26:59.300
him, like for him, the authentic self would be like, you know, a child of God or whatever.
00:27:04.400
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or a good, a good, I mean, for people who find talk of God,
00:27:10.060
blasphemy, it would be being a good person, being a good person, being, that's what you
00:27:14.880
were born to be. You weren't put here to hike all day or drive or ride your bike a thousand
00:27:20.400
miles. You were here to help each other. We're here to help hold hands and be together and help
00:27:23.980
each other. And I like this idea, you know, I think Nietzsche, he was saying, you're quoting
00:27:28.780
the poet Pindar, become who you are. Yeah. Your, your task in life is to become who you are.
00:27:35.060
And I think that's an interesting concept because it's like, okay, you have to first
00:27:39.560
you to know, who are you? Like what, what is the you you're supposed to become? And
00:27:46.840
Yeah. But I think for Nietzsche, it's an artistic process. Becoming who you are is not
00:27:51.520
like, it's not like Kierkegaard where you were born with a certain, you were born with
00:27:55.840
self before God or whatever. Right. For Nietzsche, it's more rise above the crowd, develop the
00:28:01.920
discipline. Don't, don't evaluate yourself in terms of the, you know, the market value
00:28:07.720
or the herd. Right. And it involves a lot of self-discipline and everything. And so he
00:28:13.300
talks about as a sovereign individual, but it's more, it's much more of an act of creation
00:28:17.800
for him. Gotcha. Right. Self-creation. And I think for, for Sartre as well, he thinks of
00:28:22.840
it as like an artistic project. And I think Kierkegaard and Dostovsky probably would
00:28:29.300
disagree with that. Right. But what do you think of authenticity? What, what are your
00:28:34.800
thoughts on it? I don't know. Like it's one of those, so I've read. What do you think
00:28:39.480
are authentic people? Who have you said, man, that person's authentic? Man. So, I mean, I've
00:28:45.580
met a few people like, so I think Kierkegaard described this person, you know, going back to
00:28:49.320
Kierkegaard sort of Christian roots, like the person without guile. Yeah. I think so too.
00:28:53.100
Like you, like you interact with them and you know, they've got no other agenda. They're
00:28:57.220
just nothing up their sleeve. I've interacted with a few people like that. And it's like
00:29:01.080
really refreshing because it's just like. And don't you think. You don't. And at home
00:29:06.280
on their skin in some way, at home on themselves without being, uh, without being arrogant or
00:29:11.220
something like that. I, I associate that with, um, yeah, but you're right. Being a little
00:29:15.180
in a, I think it's Nathaniel, the disciples made the tree and Jesus says something like he's
00:29:20.640
a person of no guile. Yeah. I, I, I agree with you. Yeah. Nothing up your sleeve.
00:29:25.960
And I also like, I mean, the idea of when I've thought about the become who you are thing
00:29:29.740
from Nietzsche. So it is an act of self-creation, but I think the way I've read it is that Nietzsche
00:29:33.800
would recognize there are limitations to your creation, right? You have to sort of understand
00:29:38.940
the limits that you have. So like for me, example, I'm not particularly athletic. So like
00:29:42.880
becoming an NBA or an NFL player, probably not in the books for me, but, but there's other
00:29:49.940
things that I could do with, with discipline and, and will that I could become who I am.
00:29:57.360
Yeah. Yeah. That's right. I think that, I think that's right. Yeah. He's certainly one that want
00:30:00.700
us to encourage you to recognize your, the necessity, the concreteness in your life. Yeah.
00:30:06.340
Now what, but I'm like, you're guarding. We wouldn't have any normative kind of moral
00:30:10.500
parameters on that. So if you wanted to become, if you were like a Viking type person or a killer
00:30:17.300
or something like that, and that's what your true passion worked at, I don't know what there
00:30:20.960
is in nature that would say you can't do that, but that's wrong. Right.
00:30:24.100
So he's, he's kind of, um, he's, he doesn't have a lot of normative force there. Right.
00:30:29.980
But he has things that teach us about the moral life. I mean, in particular, not to be that much
00:30:35.660
of our lives driven by resentment and the emotions like that. So I think he's, and even for people of
00:30:41.920
faith, I think he's, he's very, uh, he's very refreshing and very insightful. Yeah. And to let
00:30:47.980
things go like, uh, he, and he read, um, before he wrote the genealogy of morals, which is one of
00:30:53.060
his greatest books, he read, uh, Dostoevsky's notes from underground. And it's all about this
00:30:58.640
capacity for self laceration, for tearing ourselves apart for nature. You recognize there's something
00:31:04.160
wrong. You let it go. I mean, forget about it. I mean, you know, you try to change your ways,
00:31:07.440
but you don't like just chew yourself up about it. Right. And he thinks there's a lot of that
00:31:12.620
in our society, a tendency to what he calls bad conscience to turn all aggressions inward.
00:31:18.420
So he says like, for example, to, to forgive someone is to just forget it. Right. There's a
00:31:24.700
lot of like, yeah, I'll forgive you. Cause I need to move on in my life as though forgiveness
00:31:28.460
were a form of therapy. It's not, he said, you need to forget it, let it go. So that's, that's
00:31:34.620
an important moral insight on his part. Yeah. I guess each would say the noble soul
00:31:38.340
would do that. Like the noble, he would just, they'd forget it, but like the resentful person
00:31:42.040
filled with resentment would hold that grudge forever. Even basically. That's right. Yeah.
00:31:48.000
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a beautiful, that's a refreshing insight the way he describes
00:31:52.680
it to anybody. He says that even with respect to our own lives, right? Like, have you ever,
00:31:58.980
I don't know, I've had times when I just gone over, I can't believe I did such and such. Oh my God,
00:32:02.960
man. You know, like stuff from 50 years ago, whatever. And it's like, let it go, man. Like
00:32:08.380
don't, don't last. He thinks this kind of self-laceration is part of a, of part of what
00:32:14.360
he calls a slavery bull, but that's, that's another story. And Camus would agree. And if
00:32:17.800
you read Camus, The Fall, amazing book, right? This tendency towards self-laceration.
00:32:23.120
You know, speaking of Nietzsche's sort of ideas about ethical and moral decision, one thing
00:32:27.280
you taught, you kind of suss out from him is that Nietzsche is a, his, he has a call
00:32:32.660
for people to live dangerously. What do you, what do you think he means by that?
00:32:37.700
Well, to take risks, right? And so that's another, that's something, again, where Kiergaard
00:32:41.820
and Nietzsche would compliment one another is that this willingness to take risks, to venture,
00:32:46.140
right? Which he thinks in our, our society is, you know, you know, keep all their bases open.
00:32:51.420
And, you know, we live, you know, very pragmatic. And he says, no, man, live dangerously, take
00:32:56.780
chances. I yell at my students when they don't speak up in class. I'll come on, live dangerously,
00:33:01.620
ask a damn question, will you? Right? I mean, they're like, you know, we're reading Nietzsche
00:33:06.580
and they're afraid to raise their hand. So I say, come on, live dangerously, ask a question. We're
00:33:12.740
not leaving until I get three questions, I'll say. But yeah, so this, this willingness to take risks.
00:33:17.400
Well, the story you give that was related to that, you know, you talk about how around exam
00:33:23.380
time, you get all these emails from your students asking like, what's going to be on the test? You
00:33:27.120
know, is this answer, would this answer be right? And you finally tell them, it's like, you guys just
00:33:30.880
need to get a grip, right? Because like, they're concerned about, you know, I got to get the A so I
00:33:35.300
can graduate and get the internship, whatever. They're thinking last man, they're being like last men,
00:33:40.460
Nietzsche would say. And you would say, you guys got to get a grip. Like, you know, you talked about,
00:33:45.100
you know, it was like the anniversary of D-Day. And you're saying, that's right. There was 20 year
00:33:49.740
olds who were just, they were storming Normandy. And you're worried about whether you're going to
00:33:54.440
get an A on this test. That went over really big. Yeah. I said, hey man, about this time in 1944,
00:34:00.460
Eisenhower came out and said, a bunch of you, most of you people won't be coming back tomorrow, baby.
00:34:05.060
Most of you people won't be coming back. I said, that was something to be anxious about.
00:34:09.160
Get it in, get a grip. And oh man, that was, some people didn't like that talk.
00:34:14.280
Right. But I mean, yeah, they wanted to play it safe. Like they wanted to know what, like the,
00:34:20.240
they wanted to fill in the box, but you would say, Nietzsche would say like for a test about
00:34:24.580
existentialisms, like Nietzsche would say, be bold, live dangerously, answer something that,
00:34:29.080
you know, it's coming, you know, from yourself that creates something. Even if the professor
00:34:33.600
doesn't like it, like he would say, just go for it. Yeah. Well, I wouldn't say. I don't know.
00:34:39.860
I've had some students go for it, but yeah. Yeah. Rather than leave the blank, but yeah,
00:34:45.060
but do your study in, but, but don't be so, don't be so scared, scared of like, I mean,
00:34:50.000
I love students. They'll freak out if they don't get an A and they get an A minus. I mean,
00:34:56.680
that kind of stuff. They're just so frightened of not being successful, you know, not, you know,
00:35:03.680
this kind of obsession with her, you know, whatever, right. And, uh, as opposed to, uh,
00:35:08.700
they don't, they don't, well, I mean, academically what happens all the time is they won't take any
00:35:12.900
risks. The only people will only take courses. They know they can get a good grade in. They won't
00:35:17.000
study. They'll come to a liberal arts college and won't, I won't stretch themselves. Won't study
00:35:22.280
things that they wouldn't, you know, they don't run in their ballywick. So yeah. Uh, but
00:35:27.700
that's where the coaching comes in though. When I, when I had times like that, where I'm like,
00:35:33.000
get a grip, stop the baby stuff. We take a punch. Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they'll
00:35:40.080
come. Uh, yeah. So, well, and, and going back to sort of Kierkegaard's idea of like, you know,
00:35:45.160
he, he's, he would agree with Nietzsche about this idea of you had to live dangerously for him.
00:35:49.280
This kind of segues nicely to Kierkegaard's concept of faith. You know, for, for Kierkegaard faith was
00:35:55.180
kind of a, it was a scary thing. It was a dangerous thing for Kierkegaard. Yeah. I would
00:35:59.560
disagree with Freud. It was someone who Freud or who says, uh, believe because we want protection
00:36:04.600
for, yeah, to stand before God to, to realize that's, that's terrifying for Kierkegaard and
00:36:09.840
to stand out from the crowd. He thinks he requires great imagination, right? Cause you know, this,
00:36:16.080
he says to both the faith is an offense to reason. It's a collision with the understanding,
00:36:20.280
you know? So it's very, it's very scary. I mean, I never, right. I mean, like,
00:36:24.140
I don't see proof of Jesus and I'm going around or anybody getting up from the grave and the
00:36:28.700
lately, you know? So yeah, it's, it's very, it's, it's scary for him. Yeah.
00:36:33.500
So, I mean, another, another concept or an idea that existentialist grappled is his idea of love.
00:36:39.420
Yeah. How do they, I mean, obviously they had differing ideas about what love was or what it
00:36:43.900
meant in life. What sort of kind of bird's eye view of what existentialists thought about love?
00:36:48.540
For Kierkegaard, it was a passion, a duty, right? It involved a feeling. He has all these, it's a lot
00:36:55.440
of different admissibles, but it's primarily a duty. We have a duty to love others. And that involves a
00:37:00.320
lot of things like becoming blind to their sins and that kind of, that, that kind of a thing.
00:37:08.020
I don't, I don't, Sartre doesn't write about it that much, but I found one of the most illuminating
00:37:13.400
passages was from Dostoevsky in the Notes from Underground where he, he thinks that we have a
00:37:20.040
hard time accepting, I mean, it's so amazing to be, to be loved by someone who freaking knows you,
00:37:26.200
right? I mean, who knows what an ass, what a jerk you can be, right? And that's just remarkable. I
00:37:32.100
mean, we all want to be loved for like being cool or, you know, our accomplishments, right? But
00:37:37.780
I've said this at weddings, I guess, but to be loved by someone who really knows you good and
00:37:45.600
bad qualities is just amazing. And Dostoevsky said, we have a hard, because the power dynamic,
00:37:54.460
we don't want, the problem is a lot of time to accept being loved for who you are, right? It's
00:37:58.960
not, we always think of love as, I want to get as much as I can, or I want people to love me.
00:38:03.380
Now he says, it's, it's really one of, of being able to accept love from someone who knew you. I
00:38:08.960
had a, and I think, and he thinks that's the problem. That's one of the offensive things about
00:38:13.000
Christianity is that, that Jesus knows us and loves us and forgives us. And there's nothing that
00:38:19.860
makes, Dostoevsky thinks there's nothing that makes people more angry than to be told, I forgive you,
00:38:25.880
right? So we don't often think about the task of being able to accept love from people who know all
00:38:33.360
our flaws. And I think that's a beautiful insight, right?
00:38:38.400
No. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I like this quote in the book that you have. He says, we need,
00:38:42.540
we need the love of others to love ourselves, but in order to be nurtured by the love of others,
00:38:47.160
we need to love ourselves sufficiently to accept that love.
00:38:50.840
Yeah. And that's why I think one of the issues today with issues about race and social justice,
00:38:55.820
I mean, just, you know, all the boxers that I train and Mexican immigrants, man, they get nothing
00:38:59.940
but crap half the time, you know, everyone looked down on them like invisible, right? That can affect
00:39:05.000
your ability to love yourself. Now we think we need to think of racism and the social injustice as
00:39:11.420
infecting people's ability to love themselves. Because a lot of times when you have that kind
00:39:15.460
of social injustice, you also have economic things going on at home that are bad. Parents are always
00:39:21.520
pissed off or split up. You go to school angry, you get nothing but crap from teachers, you know?
00:39:26.860
And so we, they say, and I think Kierkegaard missed the boat on this one, that to truly love
00:39:33.020
ourselves, it really helps to get love from others and not be treated as dirt or invisible, which is
00:39:43.540
Well, Kierkegaard did say this thing, he talks that you need to presuppose love in others, that other
00:39:49.740
Yeah, that's right. You've been doing your studying, man. Yeah, well, that's impressive. Yeah, that's
00:39:53.400
right. And I think there is saying, this is hard stuff because I like to hate certain people. There's
00:39:58.820
certain people I really like to be angry at. But yeah, the task of love is to assume that the love
00:40:06.600
in the other person, which I take to mean that it's to presuppose their ultimate goodness, which is,
00:40:16.200
I mean, really, like somebody just, don't think it's a monster, but just somebody
00:40:20.480
irritates the hell out of you, right? I mean, some of them are just like, ah, I just, you
00:40:24.880
know, argh, right? To just, you know, David Foster Wallace said, you probably heard, what
00:40:33.540
Yeah, a beautiful, beautiful graduation speech. Almost up there with some of Kurt Vonnegut,
00:40:38.280
whom I love. But this idea of like, just thinking about what might be going on in someone else's
00:40:42.680
life. Like a lot of times I've gotten pissed off at people and then found out later what
00:40:47.340
they were going through. And that, so sometimes the impediments, so we feel like we're having a
00:40:53.340
hard time presupposing love. We're caring about somebody who irritates the hell out of us.
00:40:57.640
So at that point, we might want to catch that feeling and say, amen, something might, something's
00:41:00.960
going on here. Or maybe, you know, could be something, something I don't know.
00:41:05.940
Yeah, no, I mean, like sometimes, yeah, whenever we, someone's annoying, we sometimes justify
00:41:10.160
ourselves to not care about or love that person. It's like, well, they're annoying. They deserve
00:41:17.360
But I mean, so Kierkegaard would say, I mean, by presupposing love and others, Kierkegaard
00:41:21.360
saying, I think maybe this is what he said, maybe tell me if I'm wrong, is that you're recognizing
00:41:25.440
that the other person is spirit or has the potential for an authentic or whatever.
00:41:30.480
So let's, let's bring back boxing into this. What do you think boxing can teach us about
00:41:39.980
Well, it's not what boxing can teach us. It's what, how boxing can change your life.
00:41:44.300
Okay. So in order to be a decent, I guess there's connection with existential, I keep harping
00:41:49.880
on and preaching in order to be a good person, we've got to be able to deal with emotions
00:41:53.960
like anger and anxiety, but we don't get many workshops on that in everyday life.
00:42:00.480
Most people live in these protect circumstances, right? You know, where they're never, you
00:42:06.860
know, take some medication for your anxiety and anger sometimes treated as more taboo than
00:42:12.240
sexuality, you know? So, and those are really key emotions. And, and in boxing, there's a,
00:42:18.960
it's like a workshop for dealing with those. You can't be in your, George Foreman once told
00:42:23.840
me, cause he's a devout Christian and very, man of great faith, a lot of respect for him.
00:42:28.440
And he once told me, man, you know, boxing makes people less violent because you can't
00:42:33.900
be successful at the sport unless you learn to control your emotions. You should see people
00:42:40.760
in the first three or four bouts if they ever, I mean, they just, it's just, it's just fight
00:42:45.400
or flight. But over time they learn how to control their emotions. But more, more than that,
00:42:50.500
he said, you know, cause he was, he came back, his comeback, he started his comeback after
00:42:56.560
about being out of boxing 13 years to finance his gym he was running. And he said, man, there's
00:43:02.000
a lot of people, there's a lot of kids in that gym that their parents never, their fathers
00:43:06.660
never, never around, but as soon as they start, start boxing, the folks are there. So all of
00:43:13.080
a sudden, some people will get this affirmation that they don't get anywhere else in life.
00:43:17.480
You know, and we all need affirmation somewhat, like most of us, you know, a lot of us are
00:43:22.080
patted on the back. Oh, you're smart. You're this, you're that. There's a lot of kids who
00:43:25.100
never get that affirmation. And then they go to the boxing gym and they work at it. And
00:43:30.060
man, they're going, you're cool. You're this, you know, that's really, you're something.
00:43:33.220
We don't want, we don't, you know, we don't want just, you know, this kind of well respect
00:43:37.480
for each other. We need more than that. There's a, we need intimacy and a kind of, a kind
00:43:42.320
of closeness that you get, that you also get in a boxing gym. It's like a family, man.
00:43:45.680
There's no racism in boxing. I mean, everybody, it's a family, but more than that, you get
00:43:50.400
affirmed just by, just by getting in the ring. And so that, that need for affirmation, I
00:43:55.860
think is huge and can make people blossom. I was a boxing writer for the Wall Street Journal
00:44:00.500
for many, many years and HBO and everything. And you meet these champions who come from rough
00:44:06.240
circumstances and you see how they've been molded by, how they've been changed by, you know,
00:44:11.280
Mike Tyson's different. I mean, how they've been changed by, by the love they've gotten
00:44:15.720
from the sport, you know, so self-discipline and affirmation can come out of boxing. And
00:44:20.840
it can, and again, there's not many other places, even when coaching football, nobody
00:44:24.160
talks about courage anymore. It's all about strategy and all this technique and stuff like
00:44:27.520
that. Boxing, man, it's like, stick in there. You got to be courageous. You know, you got to
00:44:31.900
deal with your fears. It's a workshop on that, but it's got to be in a place where, in a gym
00:44:37.060
where people know what they're doing and it's safe. Yeah. We've had a podcast guest on about
00:44:41.620
that idea of affirmation. He says, he said, he made the case. People need two things. They
00:44:45.080
need to be noticed and they need to be needed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah.
00:44:50.180
That's right. That's right. And a lot of time we just talk about respect. Respect is such
00:44:53.940
a cold idea, right? I mean, we've got to respect others. Yeah. We've got to respect others,
00:44:57.560
but we need more than respect. We need, we need love, man. We need, we need togetherness. We need
00:45:03.860
to be sometimes to be told we're good at something. And it also involves telling people
00:45:08.320
when they're screwing up. I mean, I think one of the things I learned from in boxing from
00:45:13.140
my mentor, a Marine, when I used to head coach at VMI was to love somebody to tell them stuff
00:45:18.960
they don't want to hear. And so, you know, the loving thing to do sometimes, because most
00:45:23.960
people don't want to do that because it leads to, you know, it's, it's not fun. Person might
00:45:29.440
get pissed off that we need to be able to, as, as mentors to tell people they don't things
00:45:35.540
they don't want to hear sometimes, you know, and they're still, and you got to have that
00:45:40.340
base of love where they, they know you're not rejecting them wholesale. Right.
00:45:44.560
Well, Gordon, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your
00:45:49.480
Well, my book is the existential survival guide. It's published by Harper and I can just go
00:45:54.080
on Amazon and get it in most bookstores. Uh, people, if people have questions, they can
00:45:57.980
email me at Marino at Stoll of dot edu. If I'm happy to take questions, I'm on Twitter
00:46:03.860
at Gordon Marino and, um, I have a website, but I haven't got my kids trying to help me
00:46:09.620
get it up, up and running. And so I'd be happy to take any questions. And it's been a real
00:46:13.960
joy talking with you. That's you did. And, uh, really appreciate your knowledge of
00:46:18.340
care card, et cetera. So I'm going to, I'm giving you a, I'm giving you an A for the class.
00:46:23.540
I appreciate that. Well, Gordon Marino, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:46:29.580
My guest today was Gordon Marino. He's the author of the book, the existentialist survival
00:46:33.140
guide. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. Check out our show notes at awim.is
00:46:37.420
slash existential. We find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.
00:46:47.780
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at artofmanliness.com
00:46:52.260
where we find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles rewritten over the years.
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00:47:20.520
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