Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind, where we pursue wisdom
Speaker 1: in the past between primary and secondary worlds. Andrew Snyder
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that you're here. Since recording the last episode,
Speaker 1: I'm glad to say that we've welcomed another boy into
Speaker 1: the world. This is a great time, but it also
Speaker 1: means that I've not been able to put out some
Speaker 1: fresh content for this episode. However, I have been posting
Speaker 1: some short videos to YouTube lately based on various thoughts
Speaker 1: that have come to me. Things that I'm working on,
Speaker 1: things I'm thinking about, things that I'm reading about, and
Speaker 1: so I've been posting these short videos and I'm going
Speaker 1: to provide those for you today. That is, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be dropping the audio from the last four short
Speaker 1: videos that I put up on YouTube, which gives us
Speaker 1: something like a normal podcast length episode. And you can
Speaker 1: see all these videos and be sure to sub to
Speaker 1: my YouTube channel by clicking the link in the show notes. Now,
Speaker 1: before we get started with that, I want to let
Speaker 1: you know about a special offer that valid only for
Speaker 1: the week that this is being released, That is the
Speaker 1: week of March sixteenth, twenty twenty five, until Saturday. If
Speaker 1: you purchase an annual Tier three subscription to Mythic Mind
Speaker 1: through Patreon, you will get access to all three of
Speaker 1: my upcoming courses that is a brief history of Ideas,
Speaker 1: Plato Stoicism Until we have Faces and the Elder Scrolls,
Speaker 1: and Philosophy. And you also get a half priced discount
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Speaker 1: intro to Latin course and a couple other courses that
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Speaker 1: if you do that this week, I'm also going to
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Speaker 1: here we go. In one of my on campus classes
Speaker 1: right now, we're studying Plato's dialogue called the Fata, which
Speaker 1: is it's about Socrates's account of why he's willing to
Speaker 1: die because see, Socrates was previously accused by the court
Speaker 1: of Athens for a number of charges, but principally for
Speaker 1: corrupting the youth as well as denying the gods of
Speaker 1: the city. Well, Socrates is found guilty and he's sentenced
Speaker 1: to execution. Well, as this sentencing starts to become clear
Speaker 1: during the trial in the apology, Socrates looks down the
Speaker 1: court of Athens and he tells them that even if
Speaker 1: you kill me, you cannot do harm to a good man,
Speaker 1: because he's identifying the value of his life with more
Speaker 1: than mere self preservation. He's identifying it with the good.
Speaker 1: He's identifying it with wisdom. And this is something that
Speaker 1: cannot be taken away through any external means whatsoever. Socrates's
Speaker 1: relationship with wisdom, the good, the life that he ought
Speaker 1: to be living. This can only be severed if he
Speaker 1: severs it by choosing the path of cowardice. Well, fast
Speaker 1: forward a little bit, and now he is awaiting his execution.
Speaker 1: There's a bit of a delay due to i mean,
Speaker 1: some ritual things going on. That's beside the point. There's
Speaker 1: some delay. He's able to spend some time with his
Speaker 1: friends and they come together and they tell him that
Speaker 1: pulled our money together, We've made the right connections that
Speaker 1: we can get you out of here. You don't have
Speaker 1: to die, however, you have to go into exile, but
Speaker 1: you'll live. You'll live in exile and soccrate says, no,
Speaker 1: I can't do that, because there are some fates that
Speaker 1: are worse than death, such as the fate of the coward.
Speaker 1: It would be cowardly for me to run away that
Speaker 1: the true path of wisdom is to stand firm, to
Speaker 1: accept the sentencing that was given to me, because I mean,
Speaker 1: who am I without the city of Athens? I would
Speaker 1: not be the person I am without the city of Athens.
Speaker 1: I owe myself to the city. So even if it's
Speaker 1: acting against the demands of wisdom in this moment, I
Speaker 1: still have a civil obligation to fulfill the demands that
Speaker 1: are placed upon me by the city, and I also
Speaker 1: have an obligation to maintain fidelity to wisdom, regardless of
Speaker 1: what those consequences are. And so, through fidelity to his
Speaker 1: civil duty as well as to his existential duty to wisdom,
Speaker 1: he decides to stay and says, no, I'm going to
Speaker 1: go through with death because that is not the worst thing.
Speaker 1: And not only it's not the worst thing. Not only
Speaker 1: do we have reason to endure death, but maybe we
Speaker 1: actually have reason as philosophers to long for death, to
Speaker 1: look forward to death. Maybe death is actually the best
Speaker 1: thing that could happen to you. Now, to break that
Speaker 1: down a little bit to understand that full argument, Well,
Speaker 1: I recommend that you read the Phato and or take
Speaker 1: my upcoming course on Platonism Stoicism until we have faces,
Speaker 1: and in that course our Plato text will be the Fato. Well,
Speaker 1: I actually I'm not going to get into this main argument.
Speaker 1: I just want to give you some context here for
Speaker 1: what this dialogue is about. But what I want to
Speaker 1: highlight here is a statement made by one of his
Speaker 1: conversation partners here that is a really good job of
Speaker 1: demonstrating the sharp distinctions between pre modern philosophy and modern
Speaker 1: or postmodern philosophy in which we know outlive. And so
Speaker 1: let me just read this here. It's said that, for surely,
Speaker 1: no wise man thinks that, when set at liberty, he
Speaker 1: can take better care of himself than the gods take
Speaker 1: care of him. A fool may perhaps think this. He
Speaker 1: may argue that he had better run away from his master,
Speaker 1: not considering that his duty is to remain to the
Speaker 1: end and not to run away from the good, and
Speaker 1: that there is no sense in his running away. What's
Speaker 1: being said here is that we are part of a
Speaker 1: story that our life is not our own. Life itself
Speaker 1: is a gift. And if we're given a gift, that
Speaker 1: presupposes that there is a giver. There is that which
Speaker 1: is above us, that which has authority to give life.
Speaker 1: And if there is authority over the life that we have, well,
Speaker 1: then we would do well to pay attention to that authority,
Speaker 1: to listen to that authority, to listen to that wisdom,
Speaker 1: to look for that which stands above and beyond us,
Speaker 1: and which has authority to designate how we ought to
Speaker 1: be living our lives. And so for the pre modern world,
Speaker 1: whether we're talking about the Ancients, whether talking about the Medievals,
Speaker 1: there's a prevailing idea that we are born into a
Speaker 1: particular context, a context of what reality is, a context
Speaker 1: for what humanity is, a context for how we ought
Speaker 1: to be living our lives and the past to real
Speaker 1: freedom is found not in creating reality out of nothing,
Speaker 1: because well, reality has already been created. It doesn't need
Speaker 1: us to do that again. What we need to do
Speaker 1: is not to create reality, but to find our place
Speaker 1: within the story of reality. We need to find out
Speaker 1: what duties are placed upon us. And the way that
Speaker 1: you become an authentic human individual is by executing those
Speaker 1: human duties. Well, now, exactly what are those duties? I mean, Well,
Speaker 1: for Plato, that principally comes down to, we have a
Speaker 1: duty to love the good, and out of that, well,
Speaker 1: all of our other duties they spring out of that
Speaker 1: central duty to love what is good, that which is
Speaker 1: chiefly lovable. And again the details of that are getting
Speaker 1: in the course, but for now, I really just want
Speaker 1: to highlight this distinction that what Plato here through cibis
Speaker 1: this discussion partner with Socrates. What Plato says here is
Speaker 1: that it is the fool who decides to set off
Speaker 1: on his own, to divorce himself from transcendent wisdom and
Speaker 1: to establish his own path in life, his own wisdom.
Speaker 1: It's the fool that does that. It's literally the idiot.
Speaker 1: I don't just mean to be insulting when I say that,
Speaker 1: but I mean I don't just mean to be insulting.
Speaker 1: But when you look at what the word idiot means,
Speaker 1: it comes from the Greek idios, which means like your own,
Speaker 1: something you have of your own. And so imagine that
Speaker 1: you have a classroom of students and you're one of
Speaker 1: the students. You're all working on a math problem. And
Speaker 1: imagine everybody in the room concludes correctly that two plus
Speaker 1: two equals four, but you insists, no, two plus two
Speaker 1: does not equal four. Two plus two equals five. Well,
Speaker 1: in that conclusion, you have a private understanding of things
Speaker 1: divorce from not only what everybody else believes, because sometimes
Speaker 1: a minority opinion can be correct, but most essentially you,
Speaker 1: your understanding of that topic, of that subject, of that problem,
Speaker 1: is divorced from reality, the reality that binds us together.
Speaker 1: And so in your private understanding, you are an idiot.
Speaker 1: Now jump forward to postmodernism, Jump forward to the likes
Speaker 1: of Jean Paul Sart, Look forward to Camu, look forward
Speaker 1: to these philosophers who argue that there is no such
Speaker 1: thing as human essence, there is no such thing as
Speaker 1: human nature. All you have is yourself, and you need
Speaker 1: to stop relying on transcendent wisdom, supposedly transcendent wisdom. You
Speaker 1: need to stop relying on the way that things should be,
Speaker 1: and you need to recognize that all of reality is
Speaker 1: up to you. It all comes down to your radical subjectivity.
Speaker 1: There is no meaning to reality, there's no part that
Speaker 1: you are supposed to play. All you can do is
Speaker 1: just create reality. You determine what is valuable, you determine
Speaker 1: what's right, You determine what it means to be human
Speaker 1: through the argely arbitrary decisions that you're making. And so
Speaker 1: this gets to the fundamentally different orientations of the ancient
Speaker 1: versus the postmodern world. That you go back to the
Speaker 1: pre modern world, and there's this idea that we are
Speaker 1: part of a story, are obligation to fulfill the duties,
Speaker 1: to play the role that is appointed to us, and
Speaker 1: so we find rest in the eternal reason that governs
Speaker 1: the cosmos. Go to the postmodern world, and there is
Speaker 1: no reason that governs the cosmos. They're not even anything
Speaker 1: like right reason that governs you. All there is is
Speaker 1: you deciding things out of nothing. And so the Sartrean,
Speaker 1: the postmodern radical subjectivist, would look back to the pre
Speaker 1: modern and say that someone like Plato is living in
Speaker 1: bad faith. They're not taking responsibility for their responsibility to
Speaker 1: define what existence is like, what reality is like, what
Speaker 1: wisdom is. So he would say that Plato's acting in
Speaker 1: bad faith. Plato would then look at Sort and say,
Speaker 1: you're an idiot, that you are divorcing yourself from the
Speaker 1: wisdom that you are necessarily related to, but that you
Speaker 1: are intentionally rejecting. You're intentionally seeking to oppose, and so
Speaker 1: you are ultimately running away from the good. And there's
Speaker 1: no sense in running away from the good because goodness
Speaker 1: is tied to that which holds reality together. And so
Speaker 1: there's no real specific point I'm trying to illustrate here
Speaker 1: other than just helping us to understand it's two very
Speaker 1: different ways of approaching the world. And it's worth noting
Speaker 1: that as far as a prevailing viewpoint, the postmodern radically
Speaker 1: subjectivist approach is relatively new again as a prevailing viewpoint,
Speaker 1: you can find these ideas in the ancient world. They
Speaker 1: just weren't widely accepted because people had a little bit
Speaker 1: more well, maybe they had a little bit more authenticity
Speaker 1: in their understanding of what it means to be human.
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you next time. Today's philosophy class, we're
Speaker 1: talking about what it means to live a meaningful life.
Speaker 1: How you go about doing meaningful things, doing meaningful work,
Speaker 1: engaging in meaningful relationships. You know, how do you, generally speaking,
Speaker 1: how do you live a meaningful life? One student really
Speaker 1: thought that he was onto something when he brought up
Speaker 1: something that he had read about the twentieth century philosopher
Speaker 1: Albert Camu dealing with Sissyphis, the Greek myth of Sisyphis,
Speaker 1: and the student suggested that, well, maybe I should backtrack
Speaker 1: a little bit here. Well, in case you aren't familiar
Speaker 1: with this guy, back here behind me. Sisyphis is said
Speaker 1: to be an ancient Corinthian king who had cheated death
Speaker 1: multiple times, and so as punishment for doing so, he
Speaker 1: was forced for eternity to push this boulder uphill. But
Speaker 1: he was never actually going to make any progress, and
Speaker 1: so it was this punishment, was this eternal act of futility. Well,
Speaker 1: according to Kumu, and according to this student, maybe we
Speaker 1: can rework the way that we view Sisyphis. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: not so much that he's living in a condemned existence
Speaker 1: of futility, but maybe he actually represents the highest that
Speaker 1: we can aspire to as humans, and that he had
Speaker 1: something to devote his attention to. He had some work
Speaker 1: he could apply his strength to apply his will to,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's all that we can actually hope for.
Speaker 1: And listening to this account of what the meaningful life
Speaker 1: might be, I mean I was, I was heartbroken, And
Speaker 1: I'm always heartbroken when I hear these kind of uh,
Speaker 1: these these assessments, these these philosophies that are set up
Speaker 1: as providing, you know, a pathway to meaning, set up
Speaker 1: as being you know, authentically human. But it's it's heartbreaking
Speaker 1: because the very things that people tend to identify in
Speaker 1: this postmodern context as meaningful, it's exactly how the ancients
Speaker 1: portrayed Hell. References in the last video regarding C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis that you know, the the inhabitants of Hell in
Speaker 1: his The Great Divorce don't really recognize that they are
Speaker 1: in Hell. They mistake it for freedom, They mistake it
Speaker 1: for unshackled horizons, for limitless potential, not realizing that even
Speaker 1: the homes in which they live are nothing more than illusions,
Speaker 1: or even rather delusions that don't actually hold anything at bay.
Speaker 1: It all does is provide a sense of comfort amidst
Speaker 1: their own subjectivity. But it is only that it's a
Speaker 1: sense of comfort. It's not real, it's artificial. Therefore it
Speaker 1: is inauthentic. But to really believe this, that the height
Speaker 1: of human potential is just running at a hamster wheel,
Speaker 1: You're not really making any progress. But at least you're
Speaker 1: doing something like that. That's so sad. It's like all
Speaker 1: you can hope for is just that you bide your
Speaker 1: time in your feudal existence until you fall into a
Speaker 1: feudal death. But in the end it really means nothing.
Speaker 1: You can never make actual progress. And that is what
Speaker 1: makes this a Greek hell, because I mean the Greeks,
Speaker 1: I mean moving from strictly the mythology to the philosophy,
Speaker 1: not that they could be entirely disentangled, but there's this
Speaker 1: idea that we can move toward what is real, we
Speaker 1: can move toward what is good, that there is a
Speaker 1: better way to live, and if we're honest with ourselves,
Speaker 1: no matter what ideology you claim to profess, like, we
Speaker 1: all believe that, we all believe that some things are
Speaker 1: better than other things. Otherwise you wouldn't be listening to
Speaker 1: this video right now, because what would matter about what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Because what new information or what confirmation or
Speaker 1: even what can you disagree with? You know, it's all meaningless,
Speaker 1: it's all feutile unless we have something standard, some standard
Speaker 1: between us, something like the real against which you can
Speaker 1: weigh my thoughts, weigh my words, you know, I'll ask
Speaker 1: my students, how many of you want to be better people?
Speaker 1: They'll all raise their hand and then in the next
Speaker 1: breath tell me there's no such thing as better or worse.
Speaker 1: And that's because there's something so inauthentic about the abolition
Speaker 1: of the real. We all know some ways of life
Speaker 1: are better than others. We all know some forms of
Speaker 1: thinking are better than others. This is why education done
Speaker 1: in the right way, real education is a good thing,
Speaker 1: because some ideas are better than other ideas. Knowledge is real,
Speaker 1: Knowledge is better than ignorance. And this better or worse
Speaker 1: language only makes sense if we're weighing ourselves against the
Speaker 1: norm of what is real, and we are striving to
Speaker 1: conform our lives accordingly. To really get to this position
Speaker 1: where we're consistently going to say, there is no up
Speaker 1: or down, left to right, There's no such thing as
Speaker 1: better or worse. There's nothing that's inherently meaningful. There's only
Speaker 1: whatever it is that we happen to be doing, like
Speaker 1: we have to so deconstruct our most basic experience as
Speaker 1: humans in this world. I mean, it's at this point
Speaker 1: I'm not getting dogmatic here, I'm just saying that it
Speaker 1: makes far more sense out of our most basic experience
Speaker 1: as humans, to presuppose there is something like the real,
Speaker 1: that there is something like the good that we ought
Speaker 1: to be orienting our lives toward, and we're honest with ourselves,
Speaker 1: we want to orient our lives toward. Despite our many failings,
Speaker 1: despite our often trading of the greater good for lesser goods,
Speaker 1: we all know that there are things that we ought
Speaker 1: to be doing, things we ought to be striving for.
Speaker 1: And to dismiss that, you have just so deconstruct your
Speaker 1: most basic human experience, and I just I don't know
Speaker 1: how we can meaningfully call that authentic. I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you next time. As recently playing some Knights of the
Speaker 1: Older Republic for some upcoming patron chats. If you've not
Speaker 1: played these games, well you absolutely should. They are some
Speaker 1: of the best media of any kind that's come out
Speaker 1: of the Star Wars universe. Now, if you're jumping in
Speaker 1: for the first time, and these are older games, some
Speaker 1: of the mechanics a little bit dated, a little bit
Speaker 1: clunky if you've been there. If you're there at the
Speaker 1: beginning like I was, it's not a big deal. But
Speaker 1: even if you're starting in fresh I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: too hard to pick up, and you definitely should do that. Well,
Speaker 1: Like I said, we're going to be discussing these games
Speaker 1: for some upcoming patron chats for the Mythic Mind podcast,
Speaker 1: but for now, I want to provide some brief thoughts
Speaker 1: that I had recently. Now, in parton, I want to
Speaker 1: discuss one of these brief exchanges that takes place between
Speaker 1: Basila and Candoris. Now, if you haven't played these games,
Speaker 1: you should know something about these characters. And so Basila
Speaker 1: is this young but very accomplished, very significant, very powerful Jedi.
Speaker 1: So even though she has some accomplishments, she has the
Speaker 1: Jedi doctrine down, she does have some pride that really
Speaker 1: covers up some deep seated insecurities in her life. Which
Speaker 1: I mean, that's not entirely new when it comes to
Speaker 1: Star Wars storytelling, but that's the gist of who Basila
Speaker 1: is now. Candoris is a Mandalorian mercenary. The Mandalorians recently
Speaker 1: made famous or made popular again with the show The Mandalorian. Well,
Speaker 1: the Mandalorians are this warrior people. They were starting to
Speaker 1: gobble up some planets around them, and eventually they were
Speaker 1: met with the Republic who tried to push back their
Speaker 1: war mongering that their rating and fighting with the Republic,
Speaker 1: and as the Old Republic to be clear, fighting with
Speaker 1: the Republic who are the Jedi, of course, and of
Speaker 1: utmost importance in pushing back the Mandalorians and securing their
Speaker 1: defeat was Revin, this great Jedi warrior later known as Darthrobin. Well,
Speaker 1: following their defeat, the Mandalorians were a broken people. Instead
Speaker 1: of being these great warriors, they really just became guns
Speaker 1: for hire. There were still warriors, but not for great
Speaker 1: causes necessarily. They were indeed just guns for hire. And
Speaker 1: Candas is one such Mandalorian. At the time that we
Speaker 1: meet him, he's working for Da Davic, who is this
Speaker 1: local exchange boss. With the Exchange being this interplanetary organized
Speaker 1: crime syndicated it is essentially that the mob and Davic
Speaker 1: is this local mob boss. Well, at this point in
Speaker 1: the game, when we first start to really meaningful interact
Speaker 1: with this guy Candoris, he is actually working with the
Speaker 1: player to steal one of davic ship's so that way
Speaker 1: he can break through the fifth blockade and get out
Speaker 1: of the planet. And so he is actively working against
Speaker 1: his boss and it's in the midst of this heist
Speaker 1: that we get this brief exchange I want to talk
Speaker 1: about between Candoris and Basila, and so, making fun of
Speaker 1: the fact that Basila was previously captured by one of
Speaker 1: these under city gangs, Candoris says that, well, the Mandalorians
Speaker 1: likely would have won the war if they had Jedi
Speaker 1: like Basila fighting against them. So then Basila fires back
Speaker 1: by saying, bold talk from a broken down mercenary who
Speaker 1: was serving at Davic's heel, I'd call you as pet cathound.
Speaker 1: But they have enough loyalty not to turn on their masters.
Speaker 1: So this is where Basila strikes. She says that Candoras
Speaker 1: is disloyal. Now, this disloyalty might actually seem like a
Speaker 1: good thing, given that his boss is this wicked crime lord.
Speaker 1: But this actually reminds me of a line from Tolkien's Tomarillion,
Speaker 1: in what she says, in all the deeds of Melchor
Speaker 1: the morgoth upon Ardam, in his vast works, and in
Speaker 1: the deceits of his cunning Sauron had a part and
Speaker 1: was only less evil than his master, and that for
Speaker 1: long he served another and not himself. So the one
Speaker 1: good thing that Tolkien has to say about Suron is
Speaker 1: that for a time he served somebody else. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the great dark Lord, this devil like Morgoth.
Speaker 1: But nonetheless he at least serves somebody beyond himself, and
Speaker 1: that is a good thing. Now, why exactly is this
Speaker 1: a good thing? In this contact with Saluron, Well, he
Speaker 1: may have been serving the wrong lord, but in serving
Speaker 1: someone beyond himself, he recognized something like reality, a broader reality.
Speaker 1: He had a perceived good, a target, a goal. He
Speaker 1: recognized that he needed to not only produce meaning, but
Speaker 1: he needed to receive meaning. And even though he was
Speaker 1: receiving it from the wrong place, he nonetheless recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of doing that, of receiving meaning, discovering meaning, aspiring
Speaker 1: for some ideal beyond himself. Even a misperceived good means
Speaker 1: that there's some kind of hope of freedom, of escape
Speaker 1: from the living hell of radical isolation, isolation from reality,
Speaker 1: isolation from the world. You know, it's just like the
Speaker 1: dwarfs that the end of Narnie, at the end of
Speaker 1: the last battle, who just can't see the world around
Speaker 1: them because they're not gonna be taken in by anything,
Speaker 1: and because they're not gonna be taken in by anything.
Speaker 1: They can't give themselves over to anything, and so they
Speaker 1: become just lost in their own delusions, lost in their
Speaker 1: own minds, in their own psyches. And this really is
Speaker 1: the point that Bastila is making. Candoras has no allegiance
Speaker 1: at this point to anyone beyond himself, and in his
Speaker 1: own emptiness, he can only find emptiness. Regardless of her motivations,
Speaker 1: Basila is not merely throwing insults at Candoras, but she
Speaker 1: is rather exposing the imprisoning, pitiful despair that is rampant
Speaker 1: in our own age. I'll talk to you next time.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned in a recent video, I've been replying
Speaker 1: Knights of the Old Republic in preparation for some upcoming
Speaker 1: patron chats with Mythic Mind. And so if you want
Speaker 1: to make sure that you catch that, then go ahead
Speaker 1: and subscribe to the Mythic Mind podcast on whatever you
Speaker 1: prefer platform. Is Well, today, I want to briefly talk
Speaker 1: about this scene here between Malick and Bastila. Oh, and
Speaker 1: there will be some spoilers by this game is over
Speaker 1: twenty years old, since I think that's okay at this point.
Speaker 1: So Basila is a Jedi and one of the main
Speaker 1: companions in the game, and Malik is the big bad Sith.
Speaker 1: And at this point, Basila has been captured by Malick.
Speaker 1: And actually, I'm gonna go ahead and play a bit
Speaker 1: of the scene here.
Speaker 2: You are a strong child, but I will break you.
Speaker 3: I'll never fall to the dark side. You think torture
Speaker 3: will tell me, Malick, you are a.
Speaker 2: Fool torture No, dear Basta, you misunderstand. This is but
Speaker 2: a taste of the dark side to whet your appetite.
Speaker 2: When you finally swear loyalty to me, it will be
Speaker 2: willingly never such resolve in your words. But I see
Speaker 2: the truth in your heart. The dark side calls to you, Basula,
Speaker 2: your hunger to taste it. Become my apprentice and all
Speaker 2: its can beyond.
Speaker 1: Now this is really dark, but it's also really significant.
Speaker 1: Writing here, you see Malick isn't just torturing Basila to
Speaker 1: get some information to discover the location of a hidden base,
Speaker 1: or even to just like force her under the threat
Speaker 1: of pain to do his bidding. No, it's not what's
Speaker 1: going on here. Malick clarifies that this is not mere
Speaker 1: torture to get something, but it's supposed to be a
Speaker 1: torture to transform Basila into something. He is inflicting the
Speaker 1: power of the dark side upon her so that she
Speaker 1: can taste that power, turn crave that power, and eventually
Speaker 1: to give herself over to that power. So this is
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a torture of transformation, and this
Speaker 1: kind of thing is something that really happens when people
Speaker 1: encounter the shadow, when people encounter suffering, and people encounter
Speaker 1: the dark side of human experience in this world. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a probably a little cliche at this point, but
Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of true that hurt people tend
Speaker 1: to hurt people if you've been dealt a rough hand
Speaker 1: or maybe you've encountered some particular human malevolence, and first
Speaker 1: of all, you have my sympathy, but they're really there
Speaker 1: are multiple ways that people respond to that, to the
Speaker 1: dark side of human existence. One hand, okay, you can
Speaker 1: just play the victim that you can feel like your
Speaker 1: agency has been ripped away from you, that things just
Speaker 1: seem out of your control. So why try why execute
Speaker 1: your agency? Why be so concerned about what you're doing
Speaker 1: because things just happen to you and you don't really
Speaker 1: have any control anyways, and so you surrender your human
Speaker 1: freedom and you essentially become driftwood floating down the stream
Speaker 1: of life. That's one way that you can respond to
Speaker 1: the darkness that you encounter in this world. Another option
Speaker 1: is to maintain your human freedom to decide who you
Speaker 1: are in a world of changing fortunes. Now, notice I
Speaker 1: said decide, I didn't say create. So I'm not proposing
Speaker 1: some kind of sarchry and radical subjectivity where you create
Speaker 1: your own existence out of nothing and that you, by
Speaker 1: yourself can just define what it means to be human.
Speaker 1: That's not suggesting here. But when I say that you
Speaker 1: have to decide who you are, like you have a
Speaker 1: real choice to make, and you can get that wrong,
Speaker 1: you can get that right. But you have to ask
Speaker 1: yourself the question, regardless of changing fortunes, whether things seem
Speaker 1: to be going really well for me regarding circumstance, or
Speaker 1: things seem to be going very poorly for me regarding circumstance,
Speaker 1: Who am I? Who is the me that endures across
Speaker 1: time and across different circumstances. Find out what it means
Speaker 1: to be you, what it means to be human? And
Speaker 1: that's going to give you a kind of grounding, a
Speaker 1: kind of length of will that allows you to survive
Speaker 1: any particular situation, no matter how malevolent it may be,
Speaker 1: because whatever external malevolence you may be facing, that doesn't
Speaker 1: determine who you are. You already know who you are,
Speaker 1: Like how Socrates can look down the court of Athens
Speaker 1: that's about to execute him, and so that you cannot
Speaker 1: do harm to a good man even if you kill me.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of grounding that I'm talking about here.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of exercise of human freedom that you
Speaker 1: always have available to you, as hopeless as things may
Speaker 1: seem in an external sense, because well, real life, real
Speaker 1: goodness is not external. It is something that we approach
Speaker 1: internally through an exercise of the will, through a reaching
Speaker 1: out to the hand that is always reaching down to us. Now,
Speaker 1: another option, which brings us to the bastless scenario, is
Speaker 1: to recognize that the present power on your life is real,
Speaker 1: and it is just that it is powerful, and so
Speaker 1: you know firsthand the power of the dark side, You
Speaker 1: know firsthand the power of the shadow, You know firsthand
Speaker 1: the power that suffering has over a person. And instead
Speaker 1: of simply wanting to get rid of the suffering. Instead
Speaker 1: of simply instead of wanting to rise above the suffering,
Speaker 1: you instead simply desire the power that is present within suffering.
Speaker 1: And so instead of desiring the end of suffering, you
Speaker 1: just want to be on the other side. You want
Speaker 1: to be in the position of power. This explains a
Speaker 1: great deal of political outrage as well as just your
Speaker 1: run of the mill malevolence that comes from people who
Speaker 1: really just want to see things broken down because they've
Speaker 1: been broken down, and so they feel like it's some
Speaker 1: kind of act of justice now to get their opportunity
Speaker 1: to pull things down around them, to see the world
Speaker 1: burn because their own world has been burned. They've been
Speaker 1: victimized by the dark side of human existence, and so
Speaker 1: now they seek justice in being a victimizer. Now, such
Speaker 1: a person rarely would would articulate things in that way
Speaker 1: that they rarely have that level of self consciousness. But
Speaker 1: I think we've all known people like that, maybe at
Speaker 1: least for sometimes in our lives, like we've been people
Speaker 1: like that. It's really easy to fall into that kind
Speaker 1: of mentality of warped justice. I'm sure even Malik or
Speaker 1: Vader whoever, like you know, the villains of Star Wars,
Speaker 1: and that's where we started with this, that they were
Speaker 1: all they all felt justified in what it is that
Speaker 1: they were doing. Right, I'm just bringing order to my
Speaker 1: new empire. And so the dark side definitely sees itself
Speaker 1: as something real and something justifiable. And of course I've
Speaker 1: been speaking for the most part in very general terms
Speaker 1: regarding suffering, regarding the dark side of human existence. That's
Speaker 1: because I wanted it to aim for universal applicability with this,
Speaker 1: and that we've all experienced some kind of suffering, we
Speaker 1: all experienced something of the dark side of human life.
Speaker 1: But of course this scenario that I'm presenting to you
Speaker 1: is really heightened when we are dealing with particular human
Speaker 1: malevolence aimed against you, aimed against somebody, rather than just
Speaker 1: the mere nature of human mortality and entropy. The same
Speaker 1: basic framing I think definitely applies here. So what do
Speaker 1: we do with this? Well, you don't give into the
Speaker 1: dark side, you don't give into bitterness and resentment. You
Speaker 1: think this is going to bring you some degree of justice,
Speaker 1: some degree of satisfaction, but it's not. It's just going
Speaker 1: to leave you radically alone. Not to mention the impact
Speaker 1: you have on the people around you, and so that
Speaker 1: is not a pathway to powers, not a pathway to freedom.
Speaker 1: As we learn from Dostowevsky, the darker the night, the
Speaker 1: brighter the stars. If you have been dealt a particularly
Speaker 1: bad hand, then you should see more clearly than most
Speaker 1: the need for beauty, the need for light, the need
Speaker 1: for goodness. I know that in my own suffering that
Speaker 1: I have seen this, that I have developed a far
Speaker 1: greater sense of meaning, a purpose of identity through the
Speaker 1: suffering that I've experienced than if I had never experienced that.
Speaker 1: I'm not a big fan of Stephen Colbert, but he
Speaker 1: does give me this great line in an interview he
Speaker 1: did with Innerson Cooper, when you're talking about his own suffering,
Speaker 1: and he says that, you know, I've learned to be
Speaker 1: grateful for the things that I most wish didn't happen.
Speaker 1: I think that's good. I think it's a phrase that
Speaker 1: we ought to hold on to, and so never forget
Speaker 1: that the shadow is but a brief and passing thing,
Speaker 1: and that there is light and high beauty forever beyond
Speaker 1: its reach. It is with this vision that we gain
Speaker 1: true freedom and true power. I'll talk to you next time.
Speaker 1: As always, thank you for listening. If you enjoyed these,
Speaker 1: welcome you to go ahead and subscribe to my YouTube
Speaker 1: channel with the link and the show notes. But until
Speaker 1: next time, God speak. When you go to the roots
Speaker 1: of the word philosophy, you find the love of wisdom,
Speaker 1: which unfortunately is not what you find at the roots
Speaker 1: of all who call themselves philosophers. Now, how do we
Speaker 1: get here? What are the ideas that shape our world?
Speaker 1: And what can the old world tell us in response
Speaker 1: to the perennial questions of what it means to be human,
Speaker 1: what is our purpose? And what, if anything, ought we
Speaker 1: aspire to? In a brief history of ideas, we will
Speaker 1: navigate major epics of thought and survey some of the
Speaker 1: most important figures in the Western canon, including Plato, Aristotle, Boethius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Nietzsche,
Speaker 1: Sart and carec. Guard and of course we will consider
Speaker 1: even more names. But these are the thinkers that will
Speaker 1: supply our primary readings. Each week will include primary sources
Speaker 1: that will be provided as PDFs. Although these are all
Speaker 1: texts that do belong in your personal library, you will
Speaker 1: be recommended some secondary texts you'll be provided with some
Speaker 1: recorded presentations for you to watch at your leisure, ongoing
Speaker 1: discord chats, and weekly life meetings to discuss their readings.
Speaker 1: Taching philosophy for many years, and I can say with
Speaker 1: confidence that you will leave this six week course with
Speaker 1: a better understanding of the foundation to Western thought than
Speaker 1: most contemporary philosophy majors enrolled today by going to patreon
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Speaker 1: or you can gain access to all courses past present
Speaker 1: in any course that begins during the term of your
Speaker 1: subscription by purchasing a Tier three annual subscription. So again,
Speaker 1: purchase a Tier three annual subscription, and I'll give you
Speaker 1: a special code that gives you access to all courses
Speaker 1: that either have taken place or do start in this term,
Speaker 1: and I sincerely hope to see you there.