TRIGGERnometry - Why We Have a Crisis of Meaning

00:00:00.840 So I am myself tired of hearing conservatives who say they believe in transmitting the wisdom

00:00:08.280 of the past to the next generation criticize as if simply this is the case, and we don't

00:00:12.760 know, look what the progressive left or whatever has done to us.

00:00:15.600 I mean, that's just a victimhood mentality that they're supposed to say that they don't

00:00:19.640 like.

00:00:20.640 And I think that what we see on the ground is that that is an inherently and profoundly

00:00:24.260 alienating, depressing, degrading worldview.

00:00:27.520 And we see that we see it play out in social media, we see it play out in the collapse

00:00:30.460 of our communities.

00:00:32.060 What is the life that you want?

00:00:33.500 And if we're not building from the answers that people give in those moments, you know,

00:00:37.520 we've got it wrong.

00:00:38.520 Stephen Blackwood, finally, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:42.120 Thanks for having me.

00:00:43.120 Oh, it's a pleasure.

00:00:44.000 We've been talking for a long time.

00:00:45.480 I've seen we actually had a chance to chat in America when I was on tour with Jordan.

00:00:50.400 You're one of the people working closely with him on ARC and many other things.

00:00:55.040 And we had the most fascinating conversations, which is one of the things we'd like to do

00:00:58.980 today.

00:00:59.980 And the first question, really, you are someone who's thought a lot and talked a lot about

00:01:04.600 what we call the crisis of meaning in the West.

00:01:08.860 What does that mean exactly?

00:01:09.920 And how would you describe it?

00:01:11.980 Well, I think I want to start with the question of, well, you know, what is meaning?

00:01:16.120 And you know, we're living in a kind of age that thinks that, you know, we can individually

00:01:19.420 define everything and kind of, you know, make ourselves up as we go, define ourselves whoever

00:01:23.660 we like.

00:01:24.660 And there's a certain kind of truth to that, but it also runs up into a hard limit.

00:01:28.780 And that is, you know, if meaning were something you could just generate on your own, you know,

00:01:33.780 you could just kind of go home one weekend and make a whole bunch of it.

00:01:36.920 And you'd just say, I've got so much meaning now, I'm never going to have to worry about

00:01:39.300 meaning again for the rest of my life.

00:01:41.040 That's just patently ridiculous.

00:01:42.660 We know that's not how it works.

00:01:44.420 You know, it's as if you could, you know, just go home and, you know, you were having

00:01:47.840 a cash crisis.

00:01:48.840 You're just going to print a bunch of money.

00:01:49.840 It turns out that doesn't work either.

00:01:50.840 Right.

00:01:51.500 But the point is, is that, you know, why doesn't that, why doesn't that work?

00:01:54.780 You know, why isn't meaning something that we can just, you know, you're feeling a bit

00:01:58.020 low or down or depressed or, or, or, or, you know, like a vacant life you're living.

00:02:04.960 Why can't you just, you know, you know, go create a bunch of it.

00:02:07.580 Can I be the impatient student that jumps in here?

00:02:09.920 You know, you're president of Ralston College.

00:02:11.820 I'll be the student for the purposes of this.

00:02:13.740 I would say, and this is, I'm sure something we'll talk about.

00:02:16.420 The reason you can't just go and create a bunch of meaning is that there's such a thing

00:02:20.260 as human nature.

00:02:21.320 And so human beings will derive meaning from a limited range of things that is defined

00:02:26.680 by the fact that we're human.

00:02:28.340 Well, I think that is no doubt.

00:02:29.740 There is no doubt true.

00:02:30.740 And we should get into talking about, you know, what is a human being and why are we constituted

00:02:33.500 in such a way such that we can only, we can, we only recognize as meaningful certain

00:02:39.020 kinds of things.

00:02:40.020 But I would say that the characteristic of meaning that is most fundamental is it has

00:02:43.820 to be something that transcends you, that you, that you think transcends you.

00:02:50.020 That is to say, you know, love of family or country or beauty or truth or whatever.

00:02:54.700 It can't be something that's simply self-generated.

00:02:57.260 And this is something that actually Viktor Frankl talks about very powerful in, in, in

00:03:01.380 Man's Search for Meaning.

00:03:02.380 He uses the word self-transcendence, that the, the way to fulfill the self paradoxically

00:03:07.500 is to transcend the self.

00:03:08.980 And so you become more and more yourself in a way that you think is worth living, the

00:03:13.420 more and more you are consecrating yourself to higher, to things you consider high order,

00:03:18.740 transcendent things.

00:03:19.860 And so I think that the, the, the, the meaning crisis is fundamentally about, you know, people

00:03:25.500 feeling alienated from the things that would enable them to live lives worth living.

00:03:30.140 And so the question is, well, what does that, what does that look like?

00:03:32.240 And I think it's actually not that complicated is that in it, to live a life that's meaningful

00:03:36.160 is to be able to day by day, not just in one big, you know, oomph of a decision, although

00:03:40.720 sometimes those are required, but day by day to have your, your horizon, one of which you're

00:03:45.800 in touch with things that, and again, I'm not preaching to someone you should find this

00:03:48.800 meaningful or that meaningful that you yourself regard as worth living for.

00:03:53.040 I think one of the things we have to accept, you know, of course we can talk about these

00:03:56.100 things from various angles, you know, philosophical and theological and all these things, but there

00:04:00.540 is a simple evolutionary biological, you know, fact here, and that is that human beings are

00:04:06.060 evolved as self-conscious creatures.

00:04:09.460 That means that, that the fact that they think about themselves and whether they are living

00:04:14.020 as they should, or whether they, they think they're, that they are doing the things that

00:04:17.540 are worth doing with the little time they have on this earth, that's a, that's a feature,

00:04:22.660 not a bug.

00:04:23.660 It's a non-negotiable fact of human existence.

00:04:26.460 And so I would argue that any culture that doesn't, let's say, enable human beings to

00:04:31.980 live lives that they themselves regard as worth living has failed by the most basic standard

00:04:37.140 of human evolution.

00:04:38.380 And so the meaning crisis, you might say is, is I think, you know, we could say it's, it's

00:04:43.900 consequent on a kind of widespread, you know, ideological nihilism.

00:04:48.180 We could give any number of, of different reasons for this.

00:04:50.180 There's ideological ones, there's material, cultural and technological reasons.

00:04:53.260 We should talk about them all in a sense, but one of them is from the universities and

00:04:57.380 elsewhere is a very prominent neo-Marxist view that, that there is no there, there.

00:05:01.940 There is no such thing as truth or beauty or goodness or forgiveness or justice or reconciliation.

00:05:07.780 These are all just constructs of the will to power, right?

00:05:11.140 There is no real there, there.

00:05:13.460 And what that leads to is a, is a situation in which, in which, you know, human beings are

00:05:17.980 alienated one from another, there is no, there is no high purpose left to live for.

00:05:23.780 And I think that what we see on the ground is that that is an inherently and profoundly

00:05:27.540 alienating, depressing, degrading worldview.

00:05:30.820 And we see that, we see it play out in social media, we see it play out in the collapse of

00:05:33.820 our communities and so on.

00:05:35.380 And so, you know, what would it, what would it mean to, to, to, to answer, to make an answer

00:05:40.380 to the meaning crisis?

00:05:41.380 Well, it's, it can only ever be fundamentally something that, that enables particular individuals,

00:05:48.540 you know, because, of course, human life can't be lived at, you know, the, the, at the level

00:05:51.760 of abstract humanity.

00:05:52.980 That's just not how it works.

00:05:54.020 There, there's only ever real human beings with names and, and, and histories and families

00:05:59.060 and so on.

00:05:59.700 But what it fundamentally means is to, is to foster a culture that provides a sufficiently diverse

00:06:06.220 range of pathways for people to be in touch with the things that really make life count.

00:06:12.580 And again, I don't think these are, these are, these are the big words we keep coming

00:06:16.420 back to, you know, beauty, love, truth, family, country, you know, the place you're from, home.

00:06:24.480 These words have purchase in our, in our self, self understanding, precisely because they're

00:06:31.200 the things that connect us with a world that we believe is worth laying our lives down for.

00:06:37.400 Isn't what we're also talking about here that we've lost religion and as a result of that,

00:06:45.240 we have no way to deal with the fact that we are mortal, which is why you see so many of

00:06:51.200 these crises happening.

00:06:52.840 I think a crisis of meaning, well, what does my life mean if I don't have religion to explain

00:06:57.720 my life to me, what does my life mean if I don't have something bigger than me to sacrifice

00:07:05.280 myself for?

00:07:06.280 Well, I, I certainly think that's a huge aspect of the, of the, of the dynamic that you might

00:07:11.880 say what religion does at its best, you might say the great world religions, the ones that

00:07:17.060 have proven themselves to work, you know, it's kind of like, there's an evolutionary facticity

00:07:22.320 to this that, you know, some have sustained over time.

00:07:25.600 Why is that because they appear to have helped people answer precisely those questions.

00:07:29.420 And I think what religion does in a way that say philosophy can't do, let's say for the

00:07:34.120 masses is it gives you in the form of images or stories, a connection to that realm of the

00:07:41.160 transcendent.

00:07:42.160 And once you've, you know, I often use the metaphor of closing the horizon or darkening

00:07:45.880 the horizon, you know, that's, you know, you think about opening up of a horizon.

00:07:49.600 It's, it's a, it's a, you're able to see yourself on a plane or in relation to a future, to a

00:07:54.440 history, to a hereafter, to a goal that then gives your today meaning that makes all the

00:08:00.460 difference in the world.

00:08:01.160 I mean, you know, there's the, there's the famous example of, of, you know, you ask, you

00:08:07.500 ask a person who's carving a stone that's going to go into a cathedral, you know, what, what

00:08:12.540 they are doing.

00:08:13.540 And, and, and in a way there's two answers they can give, you know, one is, oh, I'm just,

00:08:16.940 just, you know, hitting this rock.

00:08:20.320 And the other is I'm making a cathedral and, you know, it's the same activity.

00:08:24.800 You know, but when I, when I, I said, I had the opportunity to have a conversation once

00:08:28.360 with the American author, Wendell Berry.

00:08:32.040 And he said to me, he said, that's not quite right.

00:08:34.780 He said, cause it has to be both of those at once, right?

00:08:37.400 It has to be both the craftsmanship of the here, that right here, this angle, this just

00:08:43.080 so, you know, and that's true in all of our relationships.

00:08:45.380 You know, it's, it's not all of our relationships and in the, the immediate fabric of our lives,

00:08:50.600 like they matter in their particularity, but also they matter in their particularity because

00:08:55.940 we understand them in relation to, to, to a wider expanse.

00:09:00.080 And so I think Francis, what you're saying about the, the loss of religion is, is that

00:09:03.800 that's one of the symptoms and one of the causes of this overall dislocation or unweaving

00:09:11.560 this, you know, unraveling of, but it's not only that, I mean, you can say the same thing

00:09:16.300 about architecture, you know, the difference between, you know, a beautiful building, maybe

00:09:21.180 it's your town hall or, or whatever the case, maybe it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's

00:09:25.040 a country house near you or a cathedral that you hear the bells ringing from or whatever.

00:09:28.400 It could be a very simple structure.

00:09:30.080 In fact, it's a, one of the things we need to remember is that for all of human history,

00:09:33.740 people generally built until about 80 years ago, buildings that were beautiful, trans-culturally,

00:09:38.860 trans-historically, it's just a fact.

00:09:40.980 And now, I'd say that's why I think architecture is such a good example of the ideology, because,

00:09:46.300 you know, as Marwa El-Sabuni says, buildings don't lie, they have their ideas right there.

00:09:51.480 And so if you compare the difference between a beautiful building that somehow speaks to

00:09:56.480 you about human scale and proportion and harmony, and somehow in relation to that, you see those

00:10:02.400 things in yourself or as you, as you walk towards and you encounter and you see reflected, you

00:10:07.520 might say those same ideals that you hope to live by, or somehow they reveal to you a certain

00:10:12.840 kind of way of being in the world versus on the other hand, a big, you know, horrific, brutalist,

00:10:18.640 stone, you know, formless thing that, that essentially telling you, you know, you don't matter.

00:10:25.400 You know, beauty is a construct, there's only this ugly, this, this ugly and oppressive reality.

00:10:32.660 That's kind, so what I'm saying is that architecture is, is another way of, of, it's another, it's

00:10:38.680 another way into understanding the difference between something that, that opens you up versus

00:10:44.720 closing you down.

00:10:45.720 And so I think religion's an example, architecture, we could go all the way, all the way through any

00:10:49.940 of the many aspects of human, of, you know, human culture is an ultimately infinitely complex

00:10:56.400 dynamic.

00:10:58.920 It's not as if you can say, well, there's just this ingredient and that ingredient, but what

00:11:01.820 we're seeing is that far too many of the ingredients in our current culture are unfriendly to human

00:11:07.760 beings.

00:11:08.140 But come back to me on the point about mortality, because I think this is something people don't

00:11:12.140 talk about enough.

00:11:13.360 So let's take your point about architecture, where you were talking about carving, you're talking

00:11:18.120 about a stonemason who spends years and years and years in order to master this particular

00:11:23.700 skill set, who will then be part of building a cathedral that will take maybe even centuries

00:11:31.560 to build, if we use the example of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

00:11:37.220 Why would you do that?

00:11:38.820 Why would you dedicate yourself to that?

00:11:40.920 Why would you be part of something that you are not going to see the results of if you think

00:11:46.900 that once you die, that's it?

00:11:49.160 It doesn't make logical sense.

00:11:51.080 I think that what we're really talking about here is how do you deal with the fact that

00:11:57.780 you are mortal?

00:11:59.760 And I think when you see a lot of what is happening in our society, I think that is a fundamental

00:12:07.380 part of the crisis.

00:12:08.520 Would you not agree?

00:12:09.380 I wholeheartedly agree.

00:12:10.900 I think that the question of mortality, in some sense, connected with our awareness of

00:12:19.420 that mortality, right?

00:12:20.500 If you don't know you're mortal, it makes a big difference, right?

00:12:23.300 You don't have that.

00:12:24.340 So that's why human self-conscious, our human awareness of our mortality is one of the defining

00:12:30.600 features, maybe the most defining feature of human existence.

00:12:34.360 That's why, in a sense, all of art and music and love and all the things that we give our

00:12:39.940 lives to, in a way, are premised in relation to that question, to making the time we do

00:12:44.920 have count.

00:12:46.180 And I think if you remove that horizon, you do end up with meaninglessness.

00:12:50.360 And so I think what you're saying, Francis, is, and this is what the ancients would say

00:12:54.220 and what all the religions teach, in a sense, is that paradoxically, the meaning in human

00:13:01.660 life emerges in our awareness of the relation of our finitude, you might say, our mortal,

00:13:10.780 the fixed nature of it, in relation to what is not fixed, what is eternal, what abides.

00:13:17.200 And so, you know, I think you see that in, you know, the love that parents then have and

00:13:21.900 the sacrifices they make for their children.

00:13:23.880 That is a kind of investment in something that transcends you, even temporally, because

00:13:29.380 your children, in the normal course of things, outlive you.

00:13:32.040 And so, too, I think your example of the cathedral is a beautiful one, that's true of most of

00:13:37.540 the great, you know, the really great edifices like that, from the Middle Ages up to the more

00:13:41.520 recent ones, like you were mentioning in Portugal.

00:13:44.300 And, sorry, yeah, but in Spain, what am I saying, in Barcelona?

00:13:48.500 The point is that, you know, those who started those buildings knew they would not finish them.

00:13:55.440 And those who completed them knew they had not started it.

00:13:58.640 And I actually think this is a very, you know, what is the last thing that we have done culturally?

00:14:04.100 That, you know, what can you point to here in London or around the UK or where I live in the

00:14:08.680 United States?

00:14:09.520 What are the things that we can point to that have that character?

00:14:12.680 And I would actually say that there's very little that is undertaken in that spirit.

00:14:17.600 And that's one of the reasons I think people feel so fundamentally alienated from each other,

00:14:23.640 from their past.

00:14:24.960 They have a hard time finding themselves both in time and place because we've, it's,

00:14:29.760 imagine as if you just shut the lights off.

00:14:31.980 You know, you actually do have a map and you have a pattern and these things are all there,

00:14:36.100 but you shut the lights off, you can no longer see it.

00:14:38.480 It's something like that, where we are living now.

00:14:41.260 It's so interesting, your point about architecture as well, because I can, my self-conception is

00:14:46.260 I'm someone who's incredibly uninterested in aesthetics.

00:14:48.660 But when I was traveling around America, I, you know, I was so relieved to spend like

00:14:55.420 half a day in the French quarter of New Orleans because you're going, and I love America.

00:15:01.700 I don't want anyone to get the wrong impression, but you're going from place to place to place

00:15:06.280 where the buildings are fairly functional, let's say, and uninspiring in many ways.

00:15:11.660 And then you turn up in this place where it actually looks appealing.

00:15:15.460 You, you, you actually physically want, even despite the fact that what's happening in

00:15:19.640 those buildings and around them may not be exactly what you want to take part in, but

00:15:24.040 just that experience of being in a place that's, uh, that has some kind of sense of history

00:15:29.200 and beauty.

00:15:29.900 And it was really revealing to me that that was the case.

00:15:34.300 Well, I think the thing is that's, that's, that we need to keep in mind about this is this

00:15:37.680 is not, this is not in the remotely pretentious or some kind of haughty or just for the elites

00:15:42.920 kind of idea, I really do think this is fundamental to human nature.

00:15:46.700 And you can look at, and the reason that this, that we know this to be so is that it's, it's

00:15:51.680 the case with those who were the poorest of the poor also throughout all of history.

00:15:55.900 So you can look at, at 17th century day laborers cottages in, in the Netherlands and they're

00:16:00.860 beautiful, simple structures.

00:16:02.340 My own, uh, on my mother's side, my own ancestors who came to Canada from the Ukraine.

00:16:06.240 I mean, the first year, and this is, this was to Western Canada, it was very hard, inhospitable

00:16:11.200 environment in the winter.

00:16:12.300 And the first year, uh, the, those sorts of immigrants in that period built sort of, uh,

00:16:17.060 grass mud huts.

00:16:18.560 But in the second years, they could cut down some trees.

00:16:21.000 They built very simple, but beautiful and simple structures.

00:16:25.180 And what does that mean?

00:16:25.960 I mean, I think it means that, that our self, we understand ourselves in relation to certain

00:16:33.360 realities, proportions, truths, and that, that, that we make every effort we can to, to, to

00:16:42.820 build our environment.

00:16:44.700 It's true of the, not only of the physical, but also of the relational.

00:16:47.600 I mean, what does it mean to live in a functional home?

00:16:50.040 You know, one where there's some reciprocity and you can make mistakes and forgive each other

00:16:54.600 and, and laugh.

00:16:55.600 I mean, I mean, these are simple things, but you know, versus one that isn't, that's inhospitable

00:17:00.360 and angry and unforgiving and abusive or whatever.

00:17:03.240 And so I'm just saying, that's another good example of what, you know, you know, why,

00:17:07.620 for example, Plato would say that there's an ontological difference, you know, you know,

00:17:13.300 unity, truth, beauty, goodness.

00:17:16.360 These things are actually just more real, more generative, more powerful than their, than

00:17:21.680 their, than their opposites.

00:17:22.400 And I think, you know, you can put that as an, as I just have tried to do in a, in a kind

00:17:26.500 of abstract sentence, say, well, what does that mean?

00:17:29.040 But we all know what it means in our, in our day-to-day lives.

00:17:31.400 Like what are the stakes, what, what kind of home life?

00:17:35.060 You might ask all of our listeners, what, how do you, what do you want your home to be

00:17:38.320 like?

00:17:38.680 What do you want your relationships to be like?

00:17:40.220 What do you, what would you consider?

00:17:42.740 That's it.

00:17:43.740 That's the life I want to live.

00:17:45.200 And that, you know, I think if we're not asking those kinds of very simple bedrock,

00:17:49.780 like not some kind of, well, what does this philosopher have to say about this?

00:17:53.440 I mean, I've given a lot of my life to asking those questions, but ultimately those questions

00:17:57.200 have to be funded fundamentally connected to this very most basic, like, let's call it

00:18:03.780 empirical to, to, to, to use the, the scientist word, let's say empirical realities, you know,

00:18:10.780 just with a gun to your head, what is the life that you want?

00:18:14.320 And if we're not building from the answers that people give in those moments, you know,

00:18:18.760 we've got it wrong.

00:18:19.940 Do you think sticking with architecture just for a moment, but I think it's an interesting

00:18:24.120 window into everything else.

00:18:26.380 Do you think that part of the reason that we, we have what we have is urbanization, that

00:18:33.220 we've got way more people living way more on top of each other.

00:18:37.080 You know, the guy I always quote is a guy called Desmond Morris, who wrote a book called

00:18:40.960 The Human Zoo, and his central thesis was essentially when you put animals in the conditions that

00:18:45.980 human beings now live in, you get exactly the same pathologies, you know, violence, mental

00:18:51.820 disease, lack of reproduction, something we talk about a lot nowadays, et cetera.

00:18:56.940 Do you think we've just got too many people living on top of each other?

00:18:59.660 Do you think this is a, is a bigger thing than that?

00:19:02.380 Well, you know, on the one hand, you know, cities are very important.

00:19:06.100 There are places of exchange of ideas and, and often they're, they're on ports, they're

00:19:10.700 chases of exchange of goods and so on.

00:19:13.000 So, you know, I'll be the last person to say that cities are not wonderful or places that

00:19:16.780 are great achieved, can be great achievements in Alexandria or Paris or whatever, of, of

00:19:22.880 throughout the centuries, great achievements of, of human civilization, of the human spirit

00:19:27.820 on the one hand.

00:19:29.340 On the other hand, you know, precisely because the city is abstracted from, you might say,

00:19:36.420 the more fundamental or natural conditions of survival, it can be, it is, and I mean,

00:19:44.900 the framers of the American constitution understood this very clearly, it is, you might say it's

00:19:48.120 abstracted, it's abstract.

00:19:50.040 And so you can have this kind of world in which, well, you know, we see this in the West

00:19:53.840 writ large now, there's a sense in which everyone's living on the accumulated wealth of certain

00:20:01.820 habits and we, and of the past, you know, we're not having a caloric deficit in the way

00:20:07.400 that we did.

00:20:07.860 I mean, just beyond living memory, like in the late 19th century, people died of starvation

00:20:12.000 over the winter in Sweden.

00:20:14.600 Okay.

00:20:15.020 That's, that's like 1970, 1880.

00:20:18.300 It's not very long ago that people, you know, just a few hundred miles from here could

00:20:21.900 not make it through the winter.

00:20:22.940 Okay.

00:20:23.360 So, so, you know, what am I saying?

00:20:24.860 I'm saying that, that, that we need to keep in mind that human beings, you know, if you

00:20:31.780 want to look at the, you know, the upper late paleolithic, I mean, the long history of what

00:20:35.740 we are, right, is constituted in relation to, to, you know, needing to, to provide for ourselves,

00:20:42.520 needing to have small communities that were actually the framework in which we could, you

00:20:46.640 know, want to hunt the, hunt the wildebeest or the mammoth or whatever, and, and, you know,

00:20:51.620 tell our stories in the cave and so on.

00:20:53.500 And so what, what I think we see in this abstraction is, is a loss of contact with realities that

00:21:01.320 are not negotiable.

00:21:02.540 Now you can survive that for a few generations, right?

00:21:05.020 Like if you, if you have lots of wood in your, in your, in your, in your shed, you might be

00:21:09.360 able to get through a winter or a few winters or whatever, but at a certain point it runs

00:21:12.820 out.

00:21:13.100 And if you've forgotten where to find the wood or, you know, where to find the calories

00:21:16.540 or whatever, you're, you're, you're in serious trouble.

00:21:18.780 And so I think that, you know, one thing we see is this, this leads to what I would say

00:21:23.400 is the, the presumption and kind of idiocy of certain, we call them the elites, but I

00:21:29.040 don't like using that word because they're so not elite.

00:21:31.060 There's no sense in which they're elites in the true sense of the word, like say people

00:21:34.580 chosen for rare talent to serve high purpose.

00:21:37.260 That's what I'd say a positive vision of what an elite could be.

00:21:40.100 Um, but the, the point is, is that, that right now, for example, in America, most of the

00:21:45.540 people making those kinds of decisions, they've never slaughtered an animal.

00:21:48.880 They've never had to, had to, had to cook for a large family.

00:21:52.500 They've never had to deliver a package.

00:21:54.480 They've never, they've never had to, had to grow their own food.

00:21:57.400 And so, you know, what I think we have is a moment, we're at a moment in time where people

00:22:02.480 making decisions in a sense for everyone are radically out of touch with the basic terms and

00:22:09.580 conditions of human survival, let alone, uh, thriving.

00:22:13.900 So essentially we've become a victim of our own success, which therefore means that in

00:22:21.300 order for us to reconnect with what made us successful, we have to become less successful.

00:22:28.480 That's a, that's a...

00:22:32.800 Typically depressing.

00:22:34.300 No, well, that's, let's put it this way.

00:22:36.120 That may in fact be inevitable.

00:22:38.020 Let's hope that it's not true.

00:22:39.860 But I, but you know, that, that of course is one of the ways of understanding certain

00:22:43.240 kind of cycles that, you know, that, that the very virtues that produce wealth are lost

00:22:47.460 with wealth because you don't have to have those virtues anymore.

00:22:49.860 And then you end up in a crisis in which you have to rediscover the virtues.

00:22:52.560 So I think there is a, there is a, you know, we see this in, in family histories and cycles.

00:22:56.200 You know, it's so interesting you mentioned that because that's something I've thought

00:22:59.040 about recently and talked a little bit about, which is that people are very wary and suspicious

00:23:04.520 of families that have been able to preserve wealth and influence over several generations

00:23:08.640 because of just how hard it is to do.

00:23:11.660 And it seems like the question for us now, very much speaking to your point, Francis, is

00:23:16.100 how do we find a way to be the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds and the whoever's instead

00:23:21.940 of being like most families where the first generation earn it, the second manage it and

00:23:26.220 the third squander it?

00:23:27.320 How do we do that?

00:23:28.880 I think that's the, so to speak, you know, million dollar question of our time.

00:23:32.860 I think it's a lot more money than that.

00:23:34.100 It's a lot more money than that, exactly.

00:23:35.760 After COVID, a million ain't a lot anymore.

00:23:38.860 We're in the deck of trillions now.

00:23:41.880 Well, let me say, give you a couple of possible answers to that question.

00:23:46.860 And I think the first is very important, the first, your observation, Francis, that there's

00:23:53.960 a sense in which, you know, either we're going to come up against a very hard reality,

00:24:00.160 you know, war, famine, whatever, that's one option, or is there another way?

00:24:06.300 Is there another way?

00:24:07.900 And, well, that other way would have to have a kind of voluntary character to it, right?

00:24:13.160 Because you have the involuntary, you know, the crisis, and then the other is you, you

00:24:17.000 understand, you look down the horizon, you see what's coming, and you say, well, how

00:24:21.180 can we adapt to this massive, you know, tsunami of crisis of meaning or of Western civilization,

00:24:26.880 however you want to put it?

00:24:27.980 And I think that's where we come around to another kind of necessity, and that's the necessity

00:24:35.880 of human meaning itself.

00:24:37.400 And I think that when, you know, given that we are, I think, living in a massive crisis

00:24:42.260 of meaning, it's a bit like if we were to understand the crisis of meaning by the metaphor

00:24:48.020 of hunger.

00:24:49.300 And if you imagine that you have a group of a controlled population, and you give them,

00:24:54.060 you know, just exactly the number of calories they need to live, you know, on day one, but

00:24:59.040 every day thereafter, you reduce it by one calorie.

00:25:03.620 Well, weeks go by, and no one even notices, right?

00:25:05.820 Like, what's a few dozen calories?

00:25:07.840 But after a few months, you're starting to think, you know, I feel a little bit hungry.

00:25:11.060 Maybe I won't get something to eat tonight, but I'll just eat in the morning.

00:25:13.680 I'm not that hungry.

00:25:15.160 But, you know, after a couple of years of this, as you can start, you get to the point

00:25:18.880 where you're so hungry, you'll do anything to get something to eat.

00:25:22.640 Now, most of us have never been in that situation.

00:25:25.800 But the point I'm making is that I think that's what's happening with the crisis of meaning.

00:25:30.100 It's gone from a kind of, you know, dull, you know, throbbing in the background to a roar

00:25:38.520 in the present.

00:25:39.540 Which is why more and more people are noticing it.

00:25:41.520 Yes.

00:25:42.200 And once that's the case, sorry, just to say, once that's the case, you know, when people

00:25:45.780 get to the point where they're awakened, they think, no, the most important thing to me,

00:25:49.960 it's not that I have a fancy house.

00:25:51.640 It's not that I get, you know, the right internship at the right law firm or whatever.

00:25:55.660 The most important thing to me is that I live a life that I regard as worth having been lived.

00:26:01.320 Then once you get to that point, I think there are all kinds of opportunities that come into

00:26:05.940 view because you have hundreds of millions of people wanting to do precisely the things

00:26:12.620 that would answer the crisis of our time.

00:26:15.040 And so in a way, the crisis is also an opportunity and the opportunity is the answer to the crisis.

00:26:21.640 Do you not think as well that we talk about meaning, but meaning and self-sacrifice are

00:26:28.020 linked?

00:26:28.660 Like, take this show.

00:26:29.640 The reason this show works is because when we interview people, we accept that we are

00:26:34.460 not the most interesting person in these chairs.

00:26:37.640 It's the person we're inviting onto the show.

00:26:40.800 But if we were going to be one of those people who are going to be like, well, actually, it's

00:26:44.120 all about me, the show wouldn't work.

00:26:46.460 The interviews would be unwatchable.

00:26:48.020 No, it would be terrible.

00:26:49.200 And actually, what we're seeing more and more is people going, well, no, it's all about

00:26:53.780 me.

00:26:54.620 Well, then if it's all about you, then you're never going to create anything of value or

00:26:59.340 worth because you can't work in a team.

00:27:02.660 And that's what you need to do in order to create cathedrals or businesses or sports.

00:27:09.340 The best teams aren't necessarily the ones with the best players.

00:27:12.920 They're the ones who play as a team.

00:27:15.300 We're very, very shortly after England losing in the finals.

00:27:17.980 Mate, just, please, still.

00:27:20.380 Breathe.

00:27:20.960 Too soon.

00:27:21.480 Too soon.

00:27:21.800 Too soon, mate.

00:27:23.140 Yeah.

00:27:23.520 But I think Francis' point about sacrifice is exactly what Jordan was talking about on

00:27:27.680 the tour and continues to talk about.

00:27:29.780 Right?

00:27:30.360 Well, I can only say that I think that's completely right.

00:27:34.680 I think this comes back to what Viktor Frankl says about self-transcendence.

00:27:41.100 I mean, self-transcendence is inherently a sacrifice.

00:27:45.080 I mean, you're sacrificing the short-term or the momentary or the now or whatever to something

00:27:50.580 that you regard as higher.

00:27:52.020 And I think that's one of the reasons.

00:27:56.580 It's actually, you talked about religion earlier, Francis.

00:27:58.540 I think that's one of the reasons that it is actually, you know, some people who don't

00:28:02.580 grow up with robust, you know, religious traditions think, well, you know, we'll just let our children

00:28:06.720 decide for themselves when they get to be 18 or whatever.

00:28:09.020 I do think that does a fundamental disservice to children because it's very important early

00:28:14.580 on that you are able to locate yourself relative to that horizon of the transcendent, to something

00:28:22.320 worth living for.

00:28:23.740 And, you know, whether that's in this form of a story or the love of your parents or,

00:28:27.540 you know, beauty or music or community or whatever the case may be.

00:28:31.100 And so I think that, you know, very, very early on, I mean, you know, children, you know,

00:28:37.700 I was with a family with a young sort of three and a half year old over the weekend.

00:28:43.140 And it's very interesting to see the girl want to imitate her mother and want to help

00:28:46.580 her mother and was worried, you know, was her mother, you know, had her mother not been

00:28:49.660 feeling well or, you know, are you okay?

00:28:51.520 And so on and so forth.

00:28:52.320 I think, you know, very, very deep in us is a longing to find our purpose through,

00:29:01.020 you see, because that finding the purpose requires the sacrifice through only through which

00:29:06.100 you're able to give yourself to that which is highest and best.

00:29:10.220 And so all forms of reciprocity.

00:29:12.640 I mean, what could you point to that was meaningful that didn't, at some level, have a kind of sacrifice?

00:29:18.700 But we don't always regard it as sacrifice because we know that in that we're finding

00:29:25.360 a meaning that transcends ourselves.

00:29:27.060 And it's why you see, you know, you see it with great bands, you know, and as a collective,

00:29:34.280 they are incredible.

00:29:36.220 But when you break them apart and they go, well, it's all about me now, I'm going to have

00:29:40.800 this amazing solo career.

00:29:42.320 Most of the time they fail because what they don't understand is when you have a collective,

00:29:49.420 it helps you to transcend and it helps you to balance out the things in yourself that

00:29:56.700 maybe prevent you from transcending.

00:29:59.520 It's so well said because you might say at the simplest level, what does this mean?

00:30:02.980 Like, what advice would you give someone who, and this is, I think, actually true.

00:30:06.080 If you're depressed or lonely or whatever, you can spend all day, you can spend all day

00:30:11.440 thinking about yourself.

00:30:12.640 You can spend all day thinking, oh, you know, what are my real problems?

00:30:16.320 And I need to go a little deeper into my history and a little more, you know, excavation of

00:30:20.880 my childhood.

00:30:22.040 And I'm not saying we shouldn't think about ourselves, but you can spend all day and just

00:30:26.340 feel worse at the end.

00:30:27.780 I mean, try, you know, just look around you and think of one thing you can do for someone

00:30:34.500 else.

00:30:34.860 I don't know what it is.

00:30:35.820 Go to an old folks home.

00:30:37.100 Go volunteer to shelter.

00:30:39.200 Maybe it's actually very simple.

00:30:40.380 It's go do something for the person you're living with that you're too goddamn selfish to

00:30:44.740 think of in this moment, and then see how you feel.

00:30:46.840 Spend just one or two days doing two or three things a day, and then see how you feel.

00:30:50.440 And I think what that does is it not only illustrates the fundamental limits of a self-oriented,

00:30:56.580 selfish view, but it also practically provides you with the beginnings of habit that can open

00:31:02.620 the world up for you in the way that you're saying.

00:31:04.380 I think that sports analogy is, in fact, very good.

00:31:06.540 That, you know, you can have the best basketball or football player in the world who can't win

00:31:11.980 the title because, you know, one man can't take on five or whatever sport we're talking

00:31:16.120 of.

00:31:16.980 And one of the things we've talked a lot about in this conversation and more broadly is

00:31:22.280 Western civilization.

00:31:24.060 What is that, Steve?

00:31:25.560 What is Western civilization?

00:31:26.660 You do have a knack for asking the impossible questions.

00:31:33.440 Well, you know, I would give you two answers.

00:31:36.820 On the one hand, I think, you know, it's a very broad phenomenon that encompasses, you

00:31:44.740 know, in a certain sense, it starts with the Greeks and that, you know, it goes through,

00:31:49.060 it takes up very much, you know, Christian culture and Jewish in certain places and times

00:31:54.720 Islamic and it's a certain sense in which it then, you know, becomes a kind of worldwide

00:31:59.340 phenomenon in a way.

00:32:01.300 But why is that?

00:32:02.180 And what is it really about such that it is able to do that?

00:32:04.940 And that's the second thing I want to say.

00:32:06.280 And that is, I think at its most fundamental, you can put this different ways.

00:32:13.120 You could say that Western civilization is about the individual, but what does that mean?

00:32:18.300 Because what does it mean to be about the individual?

00:32:19.860 What it is really premised on is the idea that the human individual by his or her own

00:32:24.720 nature is connected with reality in a way that, so you could take rationality, for example.

00:32:32.820 What does it mean that we are able to think for ourselves?

00:32:35.640 It means that we are able to connect by our own natural faculties, our own abilities, our

00:32:43.580 own what's in us is able to help us unlock what's really out there.

00:32:48.040 And so, you know, we see this in some sense, one of the most, I'll give you two examples

00:32:53.740 of this.

00:32:54.460 You see this in the Greeks and, for example, in Homer, you have this sense that Odysseus,

00:33:01.280 the hero, as he's finding his way through all the difficulties and challenges and through

00:33:06.580 his own stupidity and pride and so on, that the principle of his homecoming, his being able

00:33:12.700 to come home, is being able to, as you might be putting it earlier, Francis, to be able

00:33:20.120 to subordinate himself to a wider whole or good.

00:33:24.740 That is to say, he starts out very proud and very much, you know, disdainful of Poseidon.

00:33:29.260 He's a rationalist.

00:33:30.180 You might say he's not quite fair to call him a rationalist, but he's confident in his own

00:33:35.440 abilities, let's say, and he's disdainful of Poseidon, which is kind of like brute necessity

00:33:41.100 or nature or whatever.

00:33:43.340 And, you know, it's a long story, but fundamentally, he can only, the principle of his homecoming

00:33:49.640 is needing to recognize the opposite of what he starts with.

00:33:55.980 And so he has to, in a way, come to contain the whole of the cosmos in principle, in his

00:34:01.380 own subjectivity.

00:34:02.380 So what you see in Homer is this relation between Odysseus and Athena, and Athena, the

00:34:12.320 goddess Athena, and Athena as participating in, you might say, the council of Zeus.

00:34:17.960 You might say an account of the cosmos in which all of the disparate parts or powers are reconciled

00:34:25.840 into dynamic unity.

00:34:27.420 And something very similar is going on in the first words of the Gospel of John.

00:34:33.080 You know, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and there was nothing made

00:34:36.820 except through the Word.

00:34:38.360 What does that mean?

00:34:38.980 It means that the cosmos, everything is inherently intelligible.

00:34:43.500 That doesn't mean that we come to, that we, that doesn't mean that we understand everything,

00:34:47.920 but what it means is that in principle, the world is understandable, and we are understanding

00:34:53.880 agents.

00:34:54.720 So I think fundamentally, you know, this is the premise of Western civilization, that

00:34:59.340 the individual matters because the individual is connected with what is most real.

00:35:04.380 And we can put that in terms of truth or beauty or the sacrifices we make to get there.

00:35:08.020 But you have to ask yourself, you know, what are fundamental human rights premised on?

00:35:11.480 I mean, if you don't have the ability to make, like, actually the ability to navigate and

00:35:16.600 decide for yourself, well, you shouldn't have any rights.

00:35:18.600 You shouldn't have any, you know, let's put it, you should not be delegated the choices

00:35:24.280 for yourself if you do not have the choice-making faculty within you.

00:35:28.940 And so, you know, at its most fundamental, you know, the Western civilization is based on

00:35:35.360 something like the idea that human beings are made in the image of God.

00:35:40.760 And, you know, you can put that in a theological framework, but you can also put it in a philosophical

00:35:45.580 one or in an economic or market-based one.

00:35:49.480 It really fundamentally means that we ourselves, by our own nature, have within us a connection

00:35:56.400 to the principles that govern the entire cosmos.

00:36:00.940 And why has this idea of what I call the sanctity of the individual, why has this idea allowed

00:36:08.880 the West to be as successful as it has been?

00:36:12.060 Because it feels to me that whenever we talk about the West, when I was in Australia, they

00:36:17.020 asked me to talk about this and I was feeling my way towards some kind of answer, that what

00:36:23.000 we've lost is the ability to know deep down why the idea that you just described is directly

00:36:32.900 connected to the outcomes that we experience and would hope to preserve.

00:36:37.540 So how does that work?

00:36:38.600 Why is the idea that you and I and Francis and everybody listening to this has worth and

00:36:42.980 value in and of themselves?

00:36:44.300 How does that translate into economic success, military success, geographical, you know, all

00:36:48.560 of that?

00:36:49.380 Well, I say, quickly, I say two reasons fundamentally.

00:36:52.040 The first is that, you know, if you treat people in a degrading way, you know, you coerce

00:36:58.360 them, you take away their agency, you enslave them, whatever.

00:37:00.860 Um, well, they don't, they don't like it very much, you know, they, you know, and you know,

00:37:06.020 I mean, you know, I, I, I, I'm not, I'm not trying to be cute here.

00:37:08.760 I mean, that, that just what that does to your own psyche, to your own sense of yourself,

00:37:13.860 I mean, of course, it's going to make you less productive either because you don't have

00:37:17.600 the choices that you would otherwise make if you were free or, or because you've, you've

00:37:22.180 been abused and demeaned in such a way that you no longer can realize that agency.

00:37:28.420 So that's one reason.

00:37:29.960 And then, you know, to put, to put it positively, uh, you know, it's, it's simply a fact.

00:37:34.240 I mean, this is why, you know, complex systems can't be centrally managed.

00:37:37.100 It's why, uh, you know, free markets are ultimately, you know, broadly speaking within

00:37:41.700 the rule of law and so on with certain incentive structures and so on, why they are far more

00:37:45.540 efficient, why they produce far more wealth.

00:37:47.880 And that has fundamentally to do with the fact that you were, you were, you were delegating

00:37:53.740 or you were distributing the, the decision-making power at the level that the information is.

00:37:59.760 And that's just how reality works.

00:38:02.100 I mean, you know, you can take, you've got a number of kinds of examples, but it's, it's

00:38:10.260 the principle that enables the maximum discovery and creation of value at every level.

00:38:16.060 It's true economically, but it's also true relationally.

00:38:19.200 I mean, what, someone who lives over there is going to tell me, you know, whether I should

00:38:22.680 get married and to whom, or whether I should pray and how, or, or what kind of a house I

00:38:27.200 want to live in, or, or what kind of music I want to make, or what kind of world I want

00:38:31.480 my children to grow up in.

00:38:32.720 I mean, what I'm trying to say is that, is that this isn't, this isn't just a kind of

00:38:36.260 ideal or kind of, you know, well, it's one way of doing things among others.

00:38:39.620 I'm saying this, I, this, this idea is powerful because it's true, because it's actually

00:38:45.780 representative of the fundamental nature of human beings and their relation to the world.

00:38:51.120 And it's not just human beings.

00:38:52.480 I mean, you can take, take other examples.

00:38:54.980 You can take, you know, imagine it's tending a plant, an apple tree or, or, or, or whatever.

00:39:01.440 I mean, you know, that can't be done remotely.

00:39:04.940 It's only here, right?

00:39:06.360 It's only here.

00:39:06.920 You have to feed this one in this way in order for it to grow with the right kind of sunlight

00:39:10.860 and so on.

00:39:11.720 And so what I'm, what I'm trying to say is that there's no one size fits all solution

00:39:15.900 for human beings, other than to affirm their particularity in their realization of themselves.

00:39:24.760 And of course, there's a universal human nature in the sense that all human beings have that

00:39:28.540 in them, but it has, it can only be by definition realized in free and particular ways.

00:39:35.360 Do you think that's part of the reason as well, why the, our civilization and our culture appears

00:39:42.440 far more stable than communist societies, for example, totalitarian societies, authoritarian

00:39:48.500 societies, where they broadcast the appearance of stability and strength, but deep down, they're

00:39:57.600 fundamentally unstable.

00:39:59.180 I think that's well said.

00:40:01.120 And I, I think that brings out two points and, and one is that, you know, this is why

00:40:06.520 the rule of law is so important, uh, to, you know, financial stability, for example, people

00:40:12.860 don't trust that their banks, the money they put in their bank is still going to be there

00:40:15.880 tomorrow.

00:40:16.800 You know, a lot follows from that.

00:40:18.640 Like the entire society begins to crumble in any kind of complex way.

00:40:23.400 And so on the one hand, you need that kind of bedrock stability, I would say, which the

00:40:29.680 tradition of free agency of individual rights and freedoms and common law here in England

00:40:35.660 and so on, all, everything, all of that follows from that.

00:40:39.580 But there's another sense in which Western civilization is way less stable.

00:40:43.400 And that's in, in a mostly good sense.

00:40:46.220 And that is that, you know, free and independent human beings, they're always creating, they're

00:40:52.400 always destabilizing, they're always asking why they're always saying, Oh, you know, we've

00:40:56.220 done it this way in the past, but maybe we could do it this way.

00:40:58.480 And so, you know, one of the amazing things about Western civilization is, is how unbelievably

00:41:04.640 productive and in that sense, unstable it has been.

00:41:07.540 So you, if I go back, it's only 2,500 years ago that, you know, you know, the ancient Greeks,

00:41:11.580 you know, we're talking about Plato and so on from now to here.

00:41:14.160 I mean, look at what has happened in that.

00:41:16.140 There were, there were, you know, millennia in Egypt from what I can tell in which, you know,

00:41:20.840 there was, it was fundamentally stable, right?

00:41:23.120 I mean, how can you tell this year apart from that year?

00:41:25.520 Now I'm not an Egyptologist, so, you know, maybe I'm very ignorant about this, but there

00:41:29.420 is a sense in which you have thousands of years of stability.

00:41:34.120 What we've had in the West are, is a very short period, fundamentally, in terms of human,

00:41:40.220 the human species, a very short period that has been unbelievably dynamic.

00:41:45.540 And it's been unbelievably dynamic precisely because it has unlocked the power of that

00:41:51.760 free agency in relation to the kind of stability that, that enables that unlocking to take place.

00:41:58.020 And I think the dangerous moment that we're in is that there is now this accepted narrative

00:42:04.060 that this Western civilization is evil and disgusting and it must be dismantled without actually

00:42:15.200 understanding the ramifications of what it means to dismantle our civilization.

00:42:20.840 Completely right.

00:42:21.620 I mean, you know, I mean, what the hell do people mean when they say that?

00:42:24.860 I mean, what, what, what do they really mean?

00:42:27.200 Uh, let me give you an example.

00:42:32.360 When I was a boy, my family moved from Western Canada.

00:42:36.020 We lived in the frontier, you might say, in Alberta to all the way to the Far East,

00:42:39.660 to Prince Edward Island.

00:42:40.440 And they bought an old fixer upper house that had been a farmhouse built in 1867, I think it was.

00:42:46.380 And, uh, uh, there had been a modern porch added to the house, uh, and, uh, uh, wasn't very well done.

00:42:54.500 And so my dad wanted to make that part of the, part of the house.

00:42:57.000 And so he, it was Mother's Day 1984, I think.

00:43:00.340 He was a big six foot five guy.

00:43:02.120 He took out his, his, uh, sledgehammer.

00:43:04.020 He just, you know, he was huge and strong.

00:43:06.120 He just went to town on this wall and, you know, uh, you know, wood and, you know, debris

00:43:10.940 flying everywhere and got everything cleared out.

00:43:13.380 And there was this one, you know, post and he just started hammering on this post.

00:43:17.240 And as the post began to come out, the entire roof of the house began to sag.

00:43:21.980 And, uh, you know, it's a simple metaphor, but the fact of the matter is, if you don't

00:43:26.100 know what the load bearing structures are, you shouldn't take a sledgehammer to them.

00:43:29.700 And I think what we see in our own, in our own, in our own period is people thinking,

00:43:34.820 oh, well, you know, free speech.

00:43:36.200 Oh, well, you know, uh, protection of property rights.

00:43:38.980 Oh, well, you can go down through the list.

00:43:40.360 What does this matter?

00:43:41.080 Let's knock that one out.

00:43:41.920 Knock that one out.

00:43:42.280 At a certain point, the house falls down.

00:43:44.320 And I think we're actually at a point in which the, the, the assault on things that are

00:43:50.540 holding up the entire edifice, you know, our trust in each other, our ability to provide

00:43:56.100 for ourselves, our ability to live in safety, our ability to navigate complex geopolitical

00:44:01.180 environments.

00:44:01.900 Those very things are, I would say, existentially at risk.

00:44:05.300 But I would put it to you, Stephen, that in your father's case, he, I am sure would have

00:44:09.700 noticed the roof sagging and stopped hammering at the pole.

00:44:12.500 The problem is, I think that when we live in a large society, there are different agents

00:44:17.540 with different motivations.

00:44:19.280 And quite a lot of the people who've been allowed to be knocking down some of these poles, they're

00:44:24.860 not motivated as your father was by the desire for improvement.

00:44:28.700 They're motivated by a sense of deep nihilism and self-loathing.

00:44:34.200 It feels to me, just as an outside observer who came here from a different society, when

00:44:38.700 I see people gleefully ripping down things that, and, and it's not just like, no, I think

00:44:45.940 the contemporary examples we might give is, you know, statues of slave owners.

00:44:50.720 Let's say it's a very contentious issue.

00:44:52.800 We're sitting here in Westminster, a hundred yards away from the statue of Winston Churchill,

00:44:58.100 which was dogged with the words, was a racist.

00:45:00.640 Like these are, if you want to think about the core belief structure of what it is to

00:45:06.860 be English or what it is to be British, most people would, would view Winston Churchill

00:45:11.660 as like the bedrock of that.

00:45:13.260 And to see that happen, and then this is the more important bit, the police response, which

00:45:19.580 was just to board it up.

00:45:21.260 There was no real defense.

00:45:23.200 It was more like, oh, please don't hurt us.

00:45:25.420 You know, that to me is telling of something completely different.

00:45:29.180 This is not well-motivated people trying to, you know, build a new porch.

00:45:33.340 This is people who just don't like the house at all.

00:45:36.660 I think that's well said.

00:45:37.580 And you're right.

00:45:38.420 I should have added to the story that my father stopped hammering and called in a contractor

00:45:42.620 and they had a steel beam put in to replace that one.

00:45:45.640 And they beautifully and slowly and painstakingly renovated this old farmhouse over many years.

00:45:53.560 So you're right to say there was a responsible and positive ethic present there.

00:45:58.540 And I do think that with the iconoclasm or destruction of the moment, there is, you know,

00:46:07.080 there's something very evil.

00:46:08.720 I mean, let's use the word at work.

00:46:10.300 I mean, it's inert, it's impotent, it's destructive.

00:46:14.560 It leads to only net loss.

00:46:16.760 Can I stop you there?

00:46:17.660 You use the word evil.

00:46:19.700 First of all, what do you mean by that word?

00:46:21.340 And why do you use it?

00:46:22.700 Because that's a very strong word to use.

00:46:24.960 Because there'll be other people who go, well, this is misguided,

00:46:27.640 or this is just, you know, kids being kids or whatever else.

00:46:30.800 Why did you use the word evil?

00:46:31.960 Well, I think that it's important to use words carefully.

00:46:37.080 And, you know, one could have a very interesting conversation about what the statute, what is evil?

00:46:43.840 You know, what is evil versus good?

00:46:45.340 What do we mean by those words?

00:46:46.620 And we should have that, the word time is limited today.

00:46:48.340 But I suppose I want to use that word for a very simple reason.

00:46:53.940 And that is to register the net destructive character of what is being done.

00:47:00.620 You know, there are times when you say, well, you know, someone meant well and so on.

00:47:05.660 And that is true.

00:47:06.240 And I think it's actually very important to be sympathetic with people whose motives, frankly, we don't understand.

00:47:11.920 But it is also possible, I mean, if you see someone, I don't know, the abuse of a child, for example,

00:47:17.380 let's take somebody that's just incontestably evil.

00:47:20.900 It's important to call that by its name.

00:47:22.940 It's important to acknowledge the stakes of the moment, rather than being caught up in, you know,

00:47:29.360 an endless kind of, you know, quibbling of nuance.

00:47:31.800 Oh, well, there's, and I love thinking.

00:47:34.040 I love nuance.

00:47:34.880 I love trying to get to the complexity of, it's not just two sides, it's often 20 sides of an issue.

00:47:39.320 Let's get into that.

00:47:40.140 It's the only way we can get an adequate answer to any real problem.

00:47:44.020 But we should never let that desire to grasp the details and the complexity of things to

00:47:54.080 close us off from fundamental, you might say, existential realities.

00:47:59.860 Like, you know, you get this kind of way in which you can end up equivocating about something

00:48:04.840 and you end up sort of saying, well, I guess that's true too, and that's true there.

00:48:07.740 And you end up assenting to something that's just wrong and that you know is wrong.

00:48:12.420 And so you have to let your thinking be in touch with that.

00:48:15.740 And let me say, let me say one other thing about this.

00:48:17.620 And that is that, that on the one hand, I think we have to be very clear about things

00:48:25.180 we think are really profoundly destructive.

00:48:28.640 Because if we're not, well, you know, you do end up, you can burn it all down.

00:48:33.460 You can knock out all the pillars holding everything up.

00:48:35.700 And what are we going to have left?

00:48:37.400 I mean, this isn't a moment for endless equivocation or pacification of elements of contemporary life

00:48:47.360 that are profoundly destructive.

00:48:50.300 I also want to say that it is nonetheless, precisely because the stakes are so high,

00:48:56.660 it is nonetheless very important to understand what is going on.

00:49:01.040 And being a reactionary is not understanding them.

00:49:04.840 You actually, if you cannot account for why someone is taking down that statue,

00:49:08.760 like really figure out, because people don't do things without motives.

00:49:11.120 I mean, is it just self-interest or cynicism or whatever, or masquerading in the public sphere

00:49:17.080 or getting clicks or likes?

00:49:18.320 I don't, the point I'm making is if you can't really understand it,

00:49:21.880 you can't possibly hope to have an answer that will transcend it.

00:49:25.940 And, you know, maybe this is appropriate just to quickly say that I was once on a,

00:49:33.320 there's a story that I think is illustrative.

00:49:34.940 I was once in an airplane sitting next to a woman who had, as we've got to talking,

00:49:40.500 had adopted two children from a very profoundly dysfunctional home

00:49:45.460 in which the, just a very sad story, in which the mother was unable to care for her children at all.

00:49:52.380 And she would say, well, no, baby doesn't want to be picked up.

00:49:54.700 You can tell her doesn't like being picked up or whatever.

00:49:56.760 So it was a very sad and dysfunctional home.

00:50:01.440 And so they adopted both a girl and a boy from this home.

00:50:04.460 And the two children exhibited, you might say, opposite forms of a kind of a detachment disorder.

00:50:11.480 And, you know, that's to say they had grown up in a situation profoundly alienated

00:50:16.120 from the kinds of human connection that are like the bedrock of being a human being.

00:50:20.540 And in the girl's case, it took the form of wanting to be like constantly, even inappropriately,

00:50:27.700 always in physical touch with her parents, right?

00:50:30.000 That's just because she was so hungry for that.

00:50:32.160 And that's, it's very sad to see.

00:50:34.260 I'm glad to say that both of these children sort of stabilized over the years of stable and functional

00:50:39.120 love that their parents gave them.

00:50:40.740 But in the boy's case, it took the opposite form.

00:50:43.140 And that was of, of saying, no, no, I don't, no, I don't need, I don't need, I don't need

00:50:47.820 your affection.

00:50:48.480 I don't need your love, which in a sense is even sadder.

00:50:51.180 And the reason I tell the story is because I think that in a way we have both of these

00:50:55.640 responses to the crisis of meaning at present today.

00:50:59.560 On the one hand, you have the, the, the, the, the sense of immediacy.

00:51:03.480 Like I will create myself.

00:51:04.780 I will change my, my gender.

00:51:06.140 I will do, I, I am the, I can, I can, through my own existential will bring about any, you

00:51:11.860 know, I, I can, I want it and I want it now.

00:51:14.100 But on the other hand, you have this profound iconoclasm or just cynicism saying, no, I

00:51:20.940 don't, I don't need these things.

00:51:22.680 And so I think at a, at a 50,000 foot level, when you see people tearing things down, you

00:51:30.000 know, things of beauty or, you know, whether it's first amendment or, you know, sculptures

00:51:34.800 or statues or, you think you have to stop and ask why, like, what is really going on here?

00:51:41.160 And I think that, that we can say for sure one thing about that, that you don't have

00:51:47.840 young people lighting your cities on fire and tearing them down and saying they hate your

00:51:52.720 fundamental political structures if they have come to love them.

00:51:58.040 And so I think that we need to take a hard look at ourselves and say, you know, how did

00:52:04.400 we get here?

00:52:06.740 Because this is fundamental, this is a fundamental failure of stewardship of our civilization.

00:52:16.420 I mean, if your parent, if you, if your children end up hating you and hating your home and hating

00:52:20.060 everything you come from, they're going to say, well, where did I go wrong?

00:52:23.460 I mean, I have these great inheritances and, and, you know, and whether it's wealth or,

00:52:28.400 uh, uh, uh, religion or, or, or, or customs or, or, or tradition or whatever.

00:52:33.980 And I met, I completely failed to give them to the next generation.

00:52:38.100 You might say if the, if the mama bears don't teach the baby bears how to hunt and be a bear,

00:52:42.480 there's no more bears.

00:52:43.960 And at a fundamental level, that's where we are.

00:52:46.400 So I am myself tired of hearing conservatives act, small C conservatives, I'm not a political

00:52:53.300 person, but small C people who say they believe in transmitting the wisdom of the past to the

00:52:58.340 next generation criticize as if simply this is the case that we don't know, look what

00:53:03.320 the progressive left or whatever has done to us.

00:53:06.000 I mean, that's just a victimhood mentality that they're supposed to say that they don't

00:53:09.560 like.

00:53:10.580 I'm tired of this idea that somehow there's not a deeper architectonic responsibility.

00:53:16.400 For the transmission of culture that we as a society, as a West have radically failed

00:53:22.820 to fulfill.

00:53:23.880 Well, you would say that as a president of Ralston College, that does the exact opposite of the

00:53:28.360 thing you're criticizing and the very thing that you advocate for, um, and, and very well

00:53:33.720 too.

00:53:33.960 I have said many times that if I ever retire, which is highly unlikely, I would definitely

00:53:38.900 love to take a course with you guys because they look so interesting.

00:53:41.360 Um, however, the question I want to ask you is, is it possible that this is something that

00:53:47.820 isn't about the West?

00:53:49.780 Is it possible that when I look around at the world and I see that there's a population

00:53:54.520 crisis in non-Western countries, they're not reproducing themselves either.

00:53:58.880 Um, is it possible that this is just the material conditions of humanity for many, many people

00:54:07.160 are such that we're just too, we've got it too good now.

00:54:12.140 And it's too, it's literally too good.

00:54:14.240 And that if life is suffering and we're no longer suffering, then we invent mental suffering

00:54:19.200 that prevents us from doing the physical suffering, which actually prevents us from moving forward.

00:54:23.860 And so the only places that are replenishing themselves are places where people are still

00:54:27.440 struggling, Africa and others, you know, developing parts of the world.

00:54:31.920 And this isn't, I mean, the Western story is part of it, but actually just as humanity,

00:54:37.140 we've just got it so good.

00:54:38.960 It's too good now.

00:54:40.520 Well, I think that's, that's a powerful analysis.

00:54:43.540 I think it's probably largely right.

00:54:45.160 And I think we need to be alert to the fact that though, on the one hand, we can give this

00:54:52.300 genealogy of an ideological, ideological analysis of our present day.

00:54:57.180 That's by no means the only, the only reality.

00:54:59.460 There are huge material, cultural and technological realities that are like tsunamis sweeping across

00:55:06.260 the entire world.

00:55:07.640 I mean, you know, one of them is a good thing.

00:55:09.720 It's, it's, it's plenty.

00:55:10.560 It's, you know, technology that has enabled us to, to, to feed ourselves more, more, more,

00:55:14.960 more readily than, than just, you know, a hundred years ago.

00:55:18.740 There are other forms of material, cultural change, you know, the ease with which people

00:55:23.120 can move around.

00:55:24.080 You know, we can, you know, we can, you know, I got over here from the United States, you

00:55:27.400 know, in, in a, you know, just a few hours compared to what that would have been a very

00:55:31.380 dangerous and months long journey that very few people would ever have undertaken.

00:55:34.760 And what that means is that, that, you know, my, my, my great grandfather grew up not, not

00:55:41.300 too far from here in, in, in a town in Devon on my, my, anyway, the point is, is that, is

00:55:47.580 that for most of human history, though, of course, of course, there was a global economy in some

00:55:52.560 way, even in the ancient world, of course, of course, you know, people could travel and

00:55:57.020 make long journeys to, you know, other cities and travel across Europe and so on.

00:56:00.500 And it is actually the case that for most of human, human history, people lived within

00:56:06.340 a circumference, you know, or a, a, a, a radius that they could easily walk there and

00:56:11.720 back in a day.

00:56:12.420 And what is that?

00:56:13.120 A, you know, an hour this way and an hour back.

00:56:15.520 I mean, what is that?

00:56:16.080 Three miles out.

00:56:17.400 And so what that means is that, you know, just as a fact of, of all times and places in

00:56:22.840 human history until recently, our lives were constituted in, in relation to a more, a more

00:56:29.940 local reality of people, of places, of climate, of foods, of language, of metaphor, and so

00:56:34.820 on.

00:56:35.360 And that's been, I mean, just think about this, been radically changed in the last seven

00:56:38.680 or 80 years.

00:56:39.660 And, and so the sense of dislocation that people have, that's not simply, you can't

00:56:44.300 simply blame, I don't know, Marx or, or Freud or Nietzsche or something for this, though

00:56:48.780 they are articulators of that in a way.

00:56:50.680 You have to say, well, hold on, we're living in situations that human beings have actually

00:56:54.840 never on a, on a global scale faced before.

00:56:58.860 Let's take, let's take, let's take another quick example of technology.

00:57:02.240 And that's the, you know, the devices we all have in our pockets and the ways in which

00:57:06.260 these devices are algorithmically optimized to exploit our dopaminergic cycles such that,

00:57:15.600 you know, they do things to our brains that, that we are, we are effectively powerless to

00:57:20.180 resist, except by a radical act of consciousness, say, no, I'm just going off the phone, I'm

00:57:25.580 deleting all these apps, whatever.

00:57:27.100 But otherwise, you end up in a situation in which, you know, it's constantly out of your

00:57:31.220 pocket.

00:57:31.640 I mean, this is the whole business proposition of these, of these, you know, multi-billion

00:57:35.340 dollar companies, is the exploitation of your attention.

00:57:39.660 The point I'm making is that nothing in human history, nothing has prepared us evolutionarily

00:57:45.680 for devices that are designed to co-opt our attention in so powerful a way.

00:57:51.380 And of course, this is, this is clearly related to the meaning crisis because, you know, people

00:57:56.320 are trying to live through phones rather than in relation to the persons that are across

00:58:00.280 the table from them.

00:58:01.260 And so I'm simply trying to say that there are very, there are, there are material, cultural

00:58:07.520 and economic forces that have nothing obvious to do with ideology that are vastly determining

00:58:14.360 our present moment and the challenges and opportunities of it.

00:58:17.200 And they are not, they are not remotely limited to any kind of crisis in Western civilization.

00:58:23.200 But I would say that the remedy to the crisis of meaning in China is similar to the remedy

00:58:31.360 for the crisis of meaning in the United States or in the UK or wherever.

00:58:36.280 Coming back to the point about human nature, you know, the thing about ideology is, it seems

00:58:41.000 to me that, um, if you look at certain very influential ideologies that we've already mentioned,

00:58:47.320 you know, communism, fashion, et cetera, they were obviously a response to the industrial

00:58:53.400 and revolution and technological changes that caused all sorts of processes within society.

00:58:59.400 So I remember thinking of this a long time ago when I used to do standup, the reason that joke works

00:59:07.000 is not only that it's a good joke and it's well written, there has to be something in the person

00:59:12.040 that you're speaking to that recognizes the joke, right? If you write a great joke about something

00:59:17.800 that the person doesn't know about, it's not going to work. And ideology seems to me to be working

00:59:22.520 the same way. The reason that, you know, people have talked a lot about neo-Marxism, but the reason

00:59:28.360 that it's having an impact must be something to do with where we are materially and societally and

00:59:35.880 culturally. It can't, it's not just, it's not like there's this narrative on the right, which is like,

00:59:41.480 you know, these evil Marxists have taken over the university and they've brainwashed our kids,

00:59:45.480 which I agree with, like that has happened, but that isn't what's caused. Do you see what I'm saying?

00:59:52.360 Yeah. No, no, I think that's, that's very, it's very well put. I mean, you can look at long

00:59:56.120 stretches in the late Roman empire where what you have is a kind of, you know, massive regime

01:00:03.480 that is very, that, that is very hard for an individual on the ground to find a meaningful

01:00:09.720 life within, right? So it's a huge kind of like behemoth. There's no care for the individuals.

01:00:14.600 So it's very interesting at that time, you know, broadly speaking, you have these Hellenistic

01:00:18.840 philosophies emerging of Stoicism and, and, and Epicureanism and skepticism, you know, because what

01:00:24.280 those really are, are ways of individuals trying to navigate this huge unfriendly reality and say,

01:00:29.560 well, wait, how can I find some, some self-possession or, or, or peace or, or, or

01:00:37.240 atorexia, that is one of the words that they use, you know, a kind of, a kind of freedom from all of

01:00:41.880 this contingency and the madness of the world. And so, of course, I think it makes sense that in an

01:00:46.680 age in which, which these larger structures or vehicles of meaning have been deconstructed,

01:00:52.440 that you should have people, I mean, can you blame people for thinking, I'm trying, I'm just

01:00:56.840 trying to figure out where the meaning is here. And this is one, you know, of course, we all know

01:01:01.720 there's a sense in which, you know, some of these movements are, they are, you know, cynical, you know,

01:01:06.040 totalitarian, you know, neo-Marxist, whatever. But that doesn't mean that the people who are finding,

01:01:13.640 thinking that there's truth in them, that they are that way. It may be that, you know, say BLM,

01:01:18.200 for example. It may be, and I think it actually is the case, that there were millions of people who

01:01:22.440 were moved by that because they thought it actually isn't right. These, you know, that there

01:01:27.960 are kids in this inner city who are, you know, getting shot up by gang violence. There's something

01:01:32.920 wrong there. Anyone with a modicum of an appreciation or love or desire for justice can recognize that.

01:01:39.640 And if no one else is talking about justice in a way that is adequate or powerful,

01:01:45.880 then the ones who are making some point, however, you know, problematically or cynically or whatever

01:01:52.040 it may be taken to be, well, then of course, that's where someone is going to say, well,

01:01:56.360 hold on, there's a real point here. And so, you know, I think what's important is that

01:02:01.240 is that we acknowledge that underneath, here's another example. You know, there's a way with some of the

01:02:06.040 the woke stuff that, you know, it's always a, it's giving an account of why you feel like a victim

01:02:11.880 or why you feel that you've been, and well, so of course, I mean, you, everyone encountered,

01:02:19.080 everyone has at some point been damaged or hurt by others, or, you know, that's the,

01:02:23.560 that's the sad truth of a finite world. I mean, we all grew up with wounds and some,

01:02:27.560 some of us with terrible ones. And, and then the question is, well, how do we understand those?

01:02:32.520 And if we don't have, as you were saying earlier, Francis, a, a framework that actually understand,

01:02:36.920 allows us to understand this and in a big sense, which has a story of, of suffering and redemption

01:02:42.680 and of, of triumph over adversity and love for others and forgiveness and, you know, big things,

01:02:48.680 well, then of course you, you, you might end up with a much shallower account, like I'm a victim

01:02:53.080 and these people should be destroyed. And so I think that the sympathy, we need to step back

01:02:58.040 so we can actually understand the mechanisms of how these ideologies are unfolding, the reasons

01:03:04.440 people are taking them up. And only then could we provide, you might say, a more substantial and

01:03:10.360 adequate alternative that would transcend the, the, the, the very problematic and destructive outcomes

01:03:19.960 those ideologies are having on the ground. Stephen, it's been an absolute pleasure to have

01:03:24.440 you on the show. Thank you so much. Before we go over to locals where our supporters get to ask you

01:03:31.160 their questions, we always end the show in the same way, which is what's the one thing we're not

01:03:35.560 talking about as a society that we really should be. Before Stephen answers, when the interview is

01:03:41.720 over, make sure you head on over to locals, click the link in the description to see this.

01:03:46.200 Is religion the only true lifelong solution to the crisis of meaning or are there secular alternatives?

01:03:52.200 And if so, what are they? I think there's a very important moment that we're living in

01:03:57.560 culturally, historically right now, and that's artificial intelligence. Do you think one can

01:04:03.000 simply choose to believe in God in a kind of Christian utilitarianism or must we inherently be

01:04:08.760 believers of the divine for it to fulfill us and lead us to a meaningful life? I'm going to go with human

01:04:15.800 nature. What is a human being? We don't have an answer, a real answer to that question. We don't

01:04:21.800 have a hope in hell of fostering or building a culture that can be adequate to those things we call

01:04:27.400 human beings. What is a human being? A human being is, on the one side, an animal that has material needs,

01:04:40.760 and so on. We can never neglect that reality. We're not brains in a vat, but it is an animal that is

01:04:49.160 self-conscious and that needs to understand itself in relation to this horizon of the transcendentals we've

01:04:54.680 been talking about, truth, beauty, goodness, and so on. And so I'll just say quickly that I live in Savannah,

01:05:03.720 where we have these beautiful oak trees, live oak trees, and every year in the season, you know,

01:05:09.640 the oaks put off these acorns, you know, hundreds of thousands of acorns around the city. Well,

01:05:17.400 every single one of those acorns is potentially a magnificent oak tree, but almost none of them

01:05:24.280 become oak trees, right? And why is that? Well, because they don't have the conditions for the

01:05:28.760 realization of that potential. They don't get in the right place in the ground with the right

01:05:32.680 water and sunlight and so on. Now, by extension, human beings have a nature, right? They have a

01:05:40.040 potential. Each individual has a potentiality to become something great, and that could be great

01:05:47.160 at any number of different ways, and I don't mean that they're all going to be Bach or Churchill or

01:05:51.800 something. It can be people who love, people who live lives that are meaningful, but that potentiality is

01:05:59.240 not inevitable that it will be realized. And if we don't have a robust sense of, let's call it,

01:06:06.760 the nature, the spiritual nature of the human being as an entity that needs to understand itself

01:06:12.440 on a horizon of beauty and truth and goodness and so on, then we can't possibly foster a culture

01:06:18.120 that enables that realization. Stephen, thank you so much.

01:06:22.440 Join us on Locals where you get to ask Stephen your questions.

01:06:28.360 How did Aristotle manage to be right about almost everything?

TRIGGERnometry - September 22, 2024

Why We Have a Crisis of Meaning - Stephen Blackwood

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