Ep. 51 - We Have Ceased To See The Purpose
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
152.13734
Summary
What happens when you stop assigning meaning to life? What happens when we stop finding meaning in it? What does it mean to be a human being if we don t know who we are, what we're here for, and where we're going?
Transcript
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So I wrote last week about the emptiness in our culture and in the hearts of many people
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in our culture, which I think is at the root of our current suicide epidemic, and also
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it's at the root of pretty much all of our problems in our country.
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We have fled from God, we've fled from meaning, we've fled from purpose, and we've embraced
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Although we don't call it nihilism, nobody would actually call it that anymore.
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We use other words and phrases to kind of soften it up a little bit, so we'll say things
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like, you only live once, and live your truth, and those sorts of things, but they all mean
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to communicate a nihilistic perspective on life.
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People are told that there's only one life, only one reality, it has no meaning aside from
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what you assign to it, and then the question is, well, what happens when you stop assigning
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What happens when you stop finding meaning in it?
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Well, our culture says, if you don't assign it, if you don't find it, then it's not there.
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Because there is no objective meaning, it's only what you find.
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Now, after writing that piece, I was on the plane home from Denver, where I was speaking
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at the Western Conservative Summit, which is a great event, by the way.
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And I was reading a collection of Solzhenistin writings, this book right here, which is a
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great book, by the way, I'd definitely picked this up.
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And I flipped to a speech that he gave in 1993.
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This is after I just so happened to write on this subject.
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And I was reading through this book, and I flipped to a speech that he wrote in 1993.
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I wanted to just pull this up, because it speaks exactly to what we were, what I was writing
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Now, it's not a coincidence that I happened to find that theme written about in a Solzhenistin
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book, because this is a theme that he talked about throughout his whole life, that he kept
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But the speech that he gave in 1993, who did he give this speech to?
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Okay, he gave this to the International Academy of Philosophy.
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And the speech is called, We Have Ceased to See the Purpose.
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I just want to read a little bit from it, because I think it's really powerful.
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He says, we have allowed our wants to grow unchecked, and are now at a loss where to direct
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And with the obliging assistance of commercial enterprises, newer and yet newer wants are
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concocted, some wholly artificial, and we chase after them en masse but find no fulfillment,
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The endless accumulation of possessions, that will not bring fulfillment either.
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Modern transportation has flung the world wide open to people in the West.
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Even without it, modern man can all but leap out beyond the confines of his being.
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Through the eyes of television, he is present throughout the whole planet, all at the same
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Yet it turns out that from this spasmodic pace of technocentric progress, from the oceans
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of superficial information and cheap spectacles, the human soul does not grow, but instead grows
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more shallow, and spiritual life is only reduced.
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Our culture, accordingly, grows poorer and dimmer, no matter how it tries to drown out its decline
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As creature comforts continue to improve for the average person, so spiritual development
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Comfort brings with it a nagging sadness of the heart, as we sense that the whirlpool of
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pleasures does not bring satisfaction, and that, before long, it may suffocate us.
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No, all hope cannot be pinned on science, technology, or economic growth.
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The victory of technological civilization has also instilled in us a spiritual insecurity.
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But an inner voice tells us that we have lost something pure, elevated, and fragile.
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Let us admit, even if in a whisper, and only to ourselves, in the hustle of life at breakneck
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So, I guess I should just end it right there, because Solzhenitsyn's already spoken, so I
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can't really add to that and say anything more profound than what he already said.
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And I think a person has to know both of those things, or he will be in despair.
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And if we have a culture, a country, a nation, a civilization of people who are confused on
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both of those points, then you will have a civilization of despair.
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And I think that we're living in a civilization of despair.
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Because we have a crisis of identity and a crisis of meaning.
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I don't mean to keep throwing books at you, but as I was thinking about this, I wanted to
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And then I remembered another book, Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, which is a very difficult
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It's not exactly a, you know, cover-to-cover, beach-read type of book.
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But The Sickness Unto Death, and Kierkegaard already talks about it.
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He explains in the introduction that from the Christian perspective, from the Christian
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understanding, even a sickness that kills you does not really lead to death.
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It is not a sickness unto death, because death is only the sort of gateway into eternal life.
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But if we reject this, and if we see ourselves as only temporal, then that is the sickness
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that leads to death, to despair, to destruction.
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On the first page of the first chapter of this book, Kierkegaard says,
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A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal,
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And he goes on, I won't read more than that, but he goes on to say that, basically argue
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that a man is in despair when he denies or rejects or gives up on one aspect of that synthesis.
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So when we give up on the eternal and infinite and truly free aspects of our being, and we
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don't see ourselves as spirit anymore, we don't recognize that part of the synthesis of our
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Because a man like that doesn't know himself, and thus doesn't know his purpose, and so he's
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And I think as a culture, we tend to fail on both counts.
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So I want to, let's just look at this one at a time.
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Um, so first, know yourself, know your identity.
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It's no coincidence that the discussion of, you know, things like gender identity have,
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have gripped a hold of the nation at the same time that the suicide rate climbs through the
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It's no coincidence that trans, quote unquote, transgender people have such an astronomically
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I believe that transgender people attempt suicide at a rate of about 40%.
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Now the rate for the rate for the entire nation is climbing, but the general rate for everybody
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is like four or five percent, which is still high.
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Why would you have 40% of people in a particular demographic who attempt suicide?
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It's not enough to say, well, I know, I know the claim that what leftists will say is, well,
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There have been many groups of people who have fared much, much, much worse in society than
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modern day, quote, transgenders do, and yet they never attempted suicide anywhere near
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I mean, think about Black people up until civil rights.
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Well, they certainly had it worse in terms of their liberties and their treatment in society
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Yet actually, what you find usually among persecuted groups in any country throughout history is you
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You find that the suicide rate will actually go down most of the time in the face of real
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harsh persecution, because there's this kind of resilience that is sparked.
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Well, because I think Kierkegaard was onto something.
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There's a profound despair that comes with not knowing who you are, with not knowing your
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When you don't recognize the synthesis, there's a despair that comes.
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And it seems like a lot of us are very confused on this point.
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Even if we don't identify as a sex opposite from our physical one, it seems like a lot
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And from there, you get everything from gender identity to plastic surgery and beyond.
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I mean, think even of the people who are, I mean, this manifests itself in so many ways.
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Think about the people who are obsessed with fashion trends.
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They develop the same interests as everybody else.
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And the trends and the fashions and everything, it's more like camouflage for them, because it's
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Or think of all the people who call themselves super fans of sports teams or super fans.
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Superheroes or sci-fi franchises or what have you.
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I mean, people who are utterly obsessed with some form of entertainment.
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And if you say anything critical of it around them, they will lose their minds.
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They, I remember there was a, there was a national review writer a year or two ago who wrote
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a critical column about Star Wars and she got death threats for, for insulting Star Wars.
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Now think about the kind of people that would send death threats because you don't like the
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So they have just found one in this make-believe story.
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Whether it's your sexual fetish, there's a community for every sexual fetish.
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There's a community for every obsession, for every enthusiasm, for every interest, for every
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No matter what it is, you're part of a community of people who share that with you.
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People look for their identity and their shared love for things and experiences and entertainments.
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And then there's probably the worst symptom of our identity crisis as a culture.
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Maybe not the worst, but still a pretty bad one.
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Those who identify themselves primarily and mostly, mainly, first and foremost, as Republican
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Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with having a party affiliation, although, I mean,
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increasingly, I do think there's something wrong with it, actually.
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I'm talking about people who have tailored their whole identity, everything they think
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and believe, according to what the party says or to what a politician says.
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There's a very common phenomenon these days on both sides of the spectrum of people who,
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They'll say the next thing, a totally opposite thing the next.
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Their principles change by the minute, it seems, according to what their party says, to what
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their politicians say, to what their talking heads say.
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They have no capacity to think or reason beyond that.
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I think if I'm going to have any chance at being a well-rounded, happy person, I need to
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have a clear understanding of myself, of who I am.
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I need to have an identity that's rooted in something solid and unchanging.
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So I have to know first that I'm a human being and that I'm a man.
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This is the most basic physical form of identity.
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That's my most basic physical identity, and I've got to know that.
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If I can't even get past that, then there's just, there's no hope of me forming any kind
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And then I have to know my identity at sort of a deeper kind of level.
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And then from there, all the little branches and twigs and leaves and everything, those
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are all the kind of superficial things that are also part of who I am, but they don't
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I like to read books written by dead Russian guys.
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I'll do a separate video on that some other time.
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Those are all, those are all, in a sense, part of who I am, but they don't matter that
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And those are the branches, the leaves, the twigs.
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They could, they could change, um, you know, they, and it doesn't matter.
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I'll continue along being the same sort of person because my identity is rooted in something
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more solid, more real, more eternal than just my interests and my affiliations and my
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I think a lot of people today are, they don't have roots and they don't have a trunk.
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They're just a bunch of branches and twigs and leaves.
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I think there are a lot of leaves being blown around, detached and weightless and helpless
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A person who identifies themselves first and foremost by some interest of theirs or some
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They've reduced themselves to just a leaf laying on the ground and they can easily be blown
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Even if I know who I am, now I need to know why I am and where I'm going.
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And this deep desire for purpose and for meaning, that's what separates us from animals.
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Your cat never sits around thinking, what, what, what am I?
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You just, your cat just wants to eat, use the litter box, whatever, knock your drinks
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It's also what, what separates us from machines.
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I know atheists will talk about people as if we're just a bunch of biological machines.
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They'll talk about us as if we are computers covered in skin, basically.
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But even the most advanced computer in the world doesn't desire meaning.
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Even the most advanced computer in the world could never want to be anything more than a
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I know science fiction, we like to think about, well, what if a computer ever becomes self-aware?
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Now we, we want to be something more than flesh and bone.
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And I think even some of the struggle with, some of the struggles with identity, people
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wanting to change their gender and so forth, some of that I think is rooted in a real, true
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and healthy desire that we all have to be more than what we physically are.
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It's just that they have missed, they have wildly misdirected those desires.
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He points out that nature would never, on its own, create in itself a desire for something
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If we are nothing but the result of natural processes, we never would have developed the
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ability to think about those processes or analyze them or be skeptical of them or question
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C.S. Lewis says that, you know, the fact that I, that I desire something beyond this world
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means that I was made for something beyond this world.
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If there really is no God in the universe, I never would have found out that there is no
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God because I wouldn't have the consciousness to know that there is no God.
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So there's clearly some other component to the human person.
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There's something else in us, something immaterial, something that can't be grasped, something that
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can't be seen and thus could never be transferred or programmed into a computer.
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And that thing is consciousness, self-awareness, the capacity to make moral choices, the ability
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to recognize and appreciate beauty, the ability to love our souls.
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That's the, that's the, the extra component that we have.
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We have eternal souls and it's our souls that crave for truth and meaning and purpose beyond
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Our culture may tell us, well, live in the moment.
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You got to just live in the moment, enjoy the moment.
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In fact, the only people who really live in the moment are the people who are in absolute
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A person right before committing suicide, that is a person living in the moment.
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So really live in the moment is to despair of anything else but this moment.
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But those of us who are not at that point, we know that there's more to life than that.
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We know that we're rushing towards something, towards tomorrow.
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You know, there's always another night, always another morning just around the corner.
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And we know that we're just barreling, we're barreling at breakneck speed towards something,
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But our enjoyment of the journey really hinges quite significantly on what we are journeying
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I remember when our twins were born and they were our first kids and they were born premature
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and there were health complications and they had some breathing trouble.
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So they had to immediately be whisked away up to the NICU.
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And I remember when the nurses came down to get me and bring me up to the NICU to meet our children.
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I remember even how it, what it felt like, the temperature in the building.
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And at that time, there was joy mixed with a lot of fear and anxiety and everything else.
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But looking back on it now, it's all joy to me now.
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I remember that walk down the hallway as a moment of joy.
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It was a kind of very short journey to my new life as a parent.
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And my point is that the journey was joyful, was joy, because the end was joy.
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But what if I had been walking down a hospital hallway?
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What if instead of walking down a hospital hallway to greet my newborn children,
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what if I was walking down that hallway to say goodbye to a dying child?
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But you can't say that because I know where the journey ends in that case.
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And it's leading to despair and death and just emotional ruin.
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There's no way to live in that moment without dying in it.
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The point is that our ability to enjoy the moment and to enjoy the journey
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depends very much on the end, on the destination.
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If we believe or we've told ourselves that the destination is eternal nothingness,
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if we believe that we're hurtling towards obliteration and the cessation of our being,
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Especially a life that unavoidably is going to involve so much suffering and sadness.
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And suddenly, in that case, it all becomes a cruel joke.
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Our consciousness, our ability to understand the joke,
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Nature, in that case, has put all the creatures on the earth,
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And the obliteration of their beings and their essence.
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But then it gave human beings the knowledge of this fact.
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And if that's the case, then we got the raw deal, didn't we?
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Because at least they could just live their lives and not think about it.
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But this idea that nature created consciousness in a human being,
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just so that we could spend our lives dwelling on the nothingness and pointlessness
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I mean, that view of life is just, it is pure, unadulterated, black despair.
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And if you look at life that way, you know, you look at bugs and dogs and cats,
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and you might think, I'd like to be one of them, but you can never be them.
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But it's very hard for us to live with the knowledge of the futility of our existence
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And so then we begin to think that maybe the second best alternative
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That's the result of a life lived without a sense of purpose or destination.
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But if we embrace our true purpose, if we come to believe in that destination
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and the God who created us for it, if we know our meaning and our purpose and our identity,
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and our substance, then we've opened ourselves up to the potential for joy and hope.
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It's also the only way to function as a society and as a culture
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And the great thing is that to have this sense of identity and purpose,
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it not only is the best path to joy, it's also the only path to truth.
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that there is more to life than just, there's more to me than just this.
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The very fact that I can contemplate this and wonder about it
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and thirst for something more is proof that there is more.
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Because nature would not create a desire which is doomed to just be eternally frustrated.
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That's not in keeping with the Darwinian theory of things.
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So, it's best we become more functional and more joyful
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And it's also true that we have identity and purpose.
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So, that's, I think, the really good news here.
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That is the good news, right, in the entire universe.
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That's the good news, is that there's more than this.