WEBVTT 1 00:00:04.098 --> 00:00:05.618 Theistic, what does that mean? 2 00:00:05.839 --> 00:00:06.539 A personal God. 3 00:00:06.819 --> 00:00:07.099 A God. 4 00:00:07.399 --> 00:00:10.580 There is a personal God who is involved with the world. 5 00:00:10.900 --> 00:00:17.202 He made the world and he still maintains activity as opposed to deistic, which just wound up the clock and let it go. 6 00:00:17.482 --> 00:00:17.822 Okay. 7 00:00:18.423 --> 00:00:20.643 So my view is God is still involved. 8 00:00:20.703 --> 00:00:26.585 In fact, so involved that he actually came to earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth to create a rescue plan. 9 00:00:27.165 --> 00:00:31.907 Now, what's interesting to me about this broader question, we can get into more details too, is that it's not... 10 00:00:32.507 --> 00:00:40.318 If there is a God who made the world for a purpose with meaning, people can participate in that meaning and purpose even if they don't know God. 11 00:00:41.480 --> 00:00:45.305 They won't be experiencing what they were made for, which is to be in friendship with him. 12 00:00:46.298 --> 00:00:54.581 with the plan that he's made for their flourishing, but they still can flourish in some measure insofar as they touch on these objective features. 13 00:00:55.181 --> 00:01:10.566 But insofar as we are able, even without belief in God, to kind of get in that groove of the things that God made us for, the purposes that he intends, in light of being made like him in some way in his image, there's going to be a measure of satisfaction. 14 00:01:10.966 --> 00:01:12.247 But what they'll be missing is... 15 00:01:12.987 --> 00:01:17.149 is the ultimate, and that is that friendship with God and being restored in that. 16 00:01:17.749 --> 00:01:18.029 Alex. 17 00:01:18.609 --> 00:01:18.949 Yes, sir. 18 00:01:19.310 --> 00:01:26.833 Same question for you about what you bring to this conversation in terms of your perspective, your experience, and maybe some of your sort of personal journey. 19 00:01:27.493 --> 00:01:39.618 Well, for my own part, I was quite swept up in the New Atheism movement, which was a mid-2000s publishing phenomenon with the likes of the Dawkins and the Hitchens of the world. 20 00:01:40.458 --> 00:01:41.799 Saying that religion is evil and terrible. 21 00:01:42.320 --> 00:01:56.131 And I think promising an alternative, a kind of secular humanist utopia that if you'll only throw off these oppressive religious systems, you will regain your spiritual autonomy and be able to assert yourself and the intrinsic meaning that you have within yourself. 22 00:01:57.092 --> 00:01:59.153 People tried that and it didn't seem to work. 23 00:01:59.893 --> 00:02:03.395 And I think that's because the New Atheist Movement was quite philosophically shallow. 24 00:02:03.755 --> 00:02:11.499 It didn't seriously engage with the existential component of religious belief and why it exists in the first place. 25 00:02:12.319 --> 00:02:14.340 And I think that is why it exists. 26 00:02:14.380 --> 00:02:18.302 I think humans are in a strange predicament due to the mystery of consciousness. 27 00:02:19.322 --> 00:02:30.470 we find ourselves possibly uniquely amongst other animals in a position of being mortal, being physically embodied, being in a world, but also knowing those things. 28 00:02:31.090 --> 00:02:32.591 It's one thing to experience the world. 29 00:02:32.631 --> 00:02:33.632 It's one thing to be... 30 00:02:33.792 --> 00:02:35.834 It's another thing to be aware that you're experiencing it. 31 00:02:36.814 --> 00:02:41.938 Josh Rasmussen once said, there's a difference between noticing a tree and noticing that you've noticed a tree. 32 00:02:42.318 --> 00:02:45.020 We have this sort of second-order abstraction that we can do. 33 00:02:45.480 --> 00:02:46.081 So we know that... 34 00:02:46.880 --> 00:02:50.263 Death is coming, for example, and death makes a mockery of everything that we do. 35 00:02:50.283 --> 00:02:57.450 It seems to just obliterate any sense of purpose or meaning because anything that we're building will ultimately, as far as we're concerned, be gone. 36 00:02:57.710 --> 00:02:59.652 And that may well be unique to human beings. 37 00:02:59.672 --> 00:03:03.295 And so I'm not the first to suggest that the purpose. 38 00:03:04.535 --> 00:03:16.461 principal motivating factor behind meaning-infused activities that humans do is an engagement in death denial or some kind of immortality project. 39 00:03:16.861 --> 00:03:26.566 People literally, for fear of, as a result of the knowledge that this will come to an end, engage in what we might call immortality projects. 40 00:03:26.826 --> 00:03:29.347 They engage in things which will outlast themselves and 41 00:03:29.647 --> 00:03:32.390 which give them a sense of escaping this death. 42 00:03:32.750 --> 00:03:38.015 The most obvious example is in religious traditions, which literally promise immortality for your own soul. 43 00:03:38.475 --> 00:03:44.360 But if you look just practically at where people subjectively report finding meaning, they find it in their children. 44 00:03:45.041 --> 00:03:49.965 They might find it in their job, but they're unlikely to find it in their job if they're doing something they don't really care about. 45 00:03:50.005 --> 00:03:50.865 They'll find it in their job. 46 00:03:50.885 --> 00:03:59.932 Maybe they're like a barrister and they find a lot of meaning in bringing justice into the world because they're participating in a system which they believe will outlast them and is bigger than them. 47 00:04:00.392 --> 00:04:08.138 So when people talk about meaning, we talk about transcendence, something being above and beyond their own sort of material situation. 48 00:04:08.158 --> 00:04:08.258 Yeah. 49 00:04:09.058 --> 00:04:13.659 And I think religion is the archetypal example of this. 50 00:04:13.679 --> 00:04:15.720 And I think it's why it evolves in the first place. 51 00:04:16.200 --> 00:04:27.082 There is this idea that we are living in a meaning crisis that has cropped up maybe in the past hundred years or so, or maybe in the last few hundred years or so as a response to the enlightenment and the decline of religion. 52 00:04:27.523 --> 00:04:28.743 I think that's far too easy. 53 00:04:28.763 --> 00:04:30.023 I think that's way too easy. 54 00:04:30.603 --> 00:04:37.085 I think that if there is such thing as a meaning crisis, it is literally the human condition and the reason why these projects were invented in the first place. 55 00:04:37.565 --> 00:04:48.394 I think literally speaking, what people are doing in religious traditions is realizing the finitude of their existence and therefore trying to commune with something less finite. 56 00:04:48.714 --> 00:04:49.014 Of course. 57 00:04:49.815 --> 00:04:51.576 We have this hunger. 58 00:04:52.097 --> 00:05:02.905 I have no reason to believe that any naturalistic explanation can explain the consciousness's hunger for meaning and significance because that's all propositional. 59 00:05:03.165 --> 00:05:05.127 It's not molecules in motion. 60 00:05:05.267 --> 00:05:06.448 What's naturalistic mean? 61 00:05:06.668 --> 00:05:11.392 Naturalistic just means nature, and that's all there is, basically. 62 00:05:11.932 --> 00:05:16.535 So you have molecules in motion largely governed by natural law. 63 00:05:17.076 --> 00:05:19.478 There is no outside transcendent anything. 64 00:05:19.818 --> 00:05:28.444 There's no immaterial anything, certainly not an immaterial God, that has started the process and sustains the process and gives life meaning. 65 00:05:28.765 --> 00:05:30.226 There either is meaning or... 66 00:05:31.343 --> 00:05:33.025 objectively or not. 67 00:05:33.266 --> 00:05:33.606 Okay? 68 00:05:33.907 --> 00:05:35.228 If not, then it's up to us. 69 00:05:35.429 --> 00:05:45.322 For example, a moment ago you said that if there is a creator God who brings us into existence, then you are designed and you are given purpose by God. 70 00:05:46.223 --> 00:05:48.366 And I think we need to investigate this a bit further. 71 00:05:49.187 --> 00:06:02.774 Because, for example, a quite sort of boring and overdone debate at the moment is the extent to which we are engaged in the production of potentially artificially conscious agents with artificial intelligence technologies. 72 00:06:03.294 --> 00:06:07.256 And there's all this discussion about whether or not these things can be conscious, like, you know, whatever. 73 00:06:07.776 --> 00:06:09.317 Let's just suppose for a moment that they were. 74 00:06:09.477 --> 00:06:13.439 Let's suppose that I created an artificially intelligent machine and I gave it a purpose. 75 00:06:13.579 --> 00:06:15.940 And that purpose was to produce paper clips. 76 00:06:16.860 --> 00:06:24.226 And because of the development of artificial intelligence technology, it became conscious in a recognizable sense. 77 00:06:24.266 --> 00:06:25.947 It had an interior sense of self. 78 00:06:26.487 --> 00:06:29.469 It sort of had, say, feelings or emotions about the world. 79 00:06:29.910 --> 00:06:34.853 But it is just an AI robot whose entire purpose in life is to make paperclips. 80 00:06:34.873 --> 00:06:35.294 Mm-hmm. 81 00:06:35.914 --> 00:06:44.142 Now, I could say that because that AI was designed by a creator with a purpose that was explicitly given to it, that that life is meaningful. 82 00:06:44.782 --> 00:06:49.447 But I think it would seem to most people that a life whose meaning consists in creating paperclips is... 83 00:06:51.085 --> 00:06:56.248 is not sufficient, is not enough to address what people really want. 84 00:06:56.288 --> 00:06:58.749 It's not just some kind of purpose. 85 00:06:59.029 --> 00:07:03.972 It's not just even some kind of purpose which is given to you by an authoritative, creative source. 86 00:07:04.232 --> 00:07:04.552 Can I respond? 87 00:07:04.572 --> 00:07:05.933 It's something which is further than that. 88 00:07:06.253 --> 00:07:15.098 Yeah, but if I can just relate this to the God question, the problem that arises is that you have to answer the question of why God infuses life with the meaning that he gives it. 89 00:07:16.058 --> 00:07:23.502 It's either something which he has sort of arbitrarily plucked up and chosen to create, in which case we have this problem of arbitrariness, or no. 90 00:07:23.702 --> 00:07:35.047 Or, in fact, there is some reason why God had to give us a particular kind of meaning that's endemic to the human condition, that he had no choice but for that meaning, that more important kind of meaning, to be given to human life. 91 00:07:35.467 --> 00:07:43.091 But if he was beholden to that, if he had to give us a particular kind of meaning, it seems like there's a standard of meaning which exists outside of God. 92 00:07:43.151 --> 00:07:52.715 So I'm not sure, in other words, the mechanism by which being created by someone who says this is your purpose would be fulfilling in the way that people want it to be. 93 00:07:52.955 --> 00:07:57.818 The reason the paperclip illustration doesn't match is because it seems to me that – 94 00:07:58.898 --> 00:08:04.222 You're subtly taking the thing that's conscious that makes paperclips and comparing it to a human being. 95 00:08:04.722 --> 00:08:12.308 And for human beings who seem to have a different purpose, I would argue, be consigned to make paperclips, well, that's dehumanizing to them. 96 00:08:12.988 --> 00:08:18.492 But if you have – just to follow your illustration, if you have a creator that makes something for a reason – 97 00:08:19.293 --> 00:08:22.957 that the Creator has in mind, then it's fulfilling its purpose perfectly. 98 00:08:23.978 --> 00:08:27.841 For a human being, that's not going to be satisfying making paperclips. 99 00:08:27.881 --> 00:08:31.244 And a lot of people who are making paperclips are not satisfied with it. 100 00:08:31.825 --> 00:08:35.228 I don't think it's arbitrary if God is making something for a purpose. 101 00:08:35.929 --> 00:08:43.896 If God decides that he wants to make creatures to be in friendship with him because this reflects his loving character— 102 00:08:44.757 --> 00:08:47.840 And that purpose is to be in friendship with him. 103 00:08:48.280 --> 00:08:51.843 I don't see how that is somehow negligible or arbitrary at all. 104 00:08:52.344 --> 00:09:00.932 I guess you could have said that God could have done otherwise, but his love and desire for communion is seen to be an adequate explanation for that. 105 00:09:01.272 --> 00:09:02.213 This is fascinating. 106 00:09:03.294 --> 00:09:06.837 So my first question is, what's the point of this conversation? 107 00:09:09.605 --> 00:09:17.930 Yeah, so I think that the ultimate answer that we're looking for is, it appears that the numbers around purpose and meaning are fluctuating at this moment in time. 108 00:09:18.290 --> 00:09:22.613 A lot of people are turning back to religion, as Alex, we were just chatting about a second ago. 109 00:09:23.313 --> 00:09:30.838 And I guess there's two questions, which is one, understanding why that's happening, why there's this fluctuation, why we're seeing a mental health crisis around purpose and meaning. 110 00:09:31.278 --> 00:09:37.962 And the second is to try and figure out if there's a truth one can arrive at, if there's an objective truth that exists. 111 00:09:37.982 --> 00:09:38.223 Yeah. 112 00:09:39.003 --> 00:09:44.573 So for y'all, I'm curious, when y'all show up here, like what is the purpose for y'all showing up? 113 00:09:45.612 --> 00:09:49.415 literally trying to discover, like it's the stated purpose, right? 114 00:09:49.455 --> 00:09:53.217 It's literally just artificially given purpose by being designed in a particular way. 115 00:09:53.537 --> 00:09:59.501 We're going to get together and we're going to have a conversation and see if we can figure out this meaning stuff, right? 116 00:09:59.662 --> 00:09:59.862 Awesome. 117 00:09:59.882 --> 00:10:02.403 And by the way, like we're not going to solve that problem. 118 00:10:02.544 --> 00:10:07.547 I think it's worth pointing out that like these conversations have to be exploratory and subjective. 119 00:10:07.627 --> 00:10:08.708 If anybody thinks... 120 00:10:09.288 --> 00:10:16.114 That the four of us sat at this table are going to solve the meaning crisis and give people a five-step guide finding meaning in their life and that will be the sort of case closed. 121 00:10:16.634 --> 00:10:17.535 Then they're delusional. 122 00:10:17.855 --> 00:10:21.999 I don't know if I agree that we can't find an answer but we'll talk about it. 123 00:10:22.019 --> 00:10:23.640 Well, this is what I wanted to speak to. 124 00:10:25.922 --> 00:10:28.745 Obviously, we're talking about this broader issue of meaning and purpose, all right? 125 00:10:28.765 --> 00:10:28.945 Right. 126 00:10:29.288 --> 00:10:33.769 And as I mentioned earlier, there either is an objective one or it's only subjective, okay? 127 00:10:33.889 --> 00:10:39.891 If it is an objective one, this is about the most important thing that anyone could ever find out about their life if they were created for a reason. 128 00:10:40.551 --> 00:10:46.273 In my view, the reason I'm here is because I'm convinced that that's the case and I'm willing to give reasons why, okay? 129 00:10:46.693 --> 00:10:56.936 But I don't think – I'm sympathetic to the concern that you can't sit around a table and in two or three hours solve the problem for any individual because people – 130 00:10:57.736 --> 00:11:03.177 Going through the process of trying to figure these things out, it takes a long time as they put the pieces together. 131 00:11:03.777 --> 00:11:09.519 But I think there's a lot of people in the world that think how they have put it together and they've come to conclusions about ultimate meaning and purpose. 132 00:11:09.539 --> 00:11:12.419 And they don't come to my own conclusions, but many have. 133 00:11:12.920 --> 00:11:19.561 So what I would hate to do is leave people with the feeling like we can all search and the glory is in the search. 134 00:11:19.721 --> 00:11:22.362 But if you think you found the answer, then you haven't. 135 00:11:22.642 --> 00:11:25.402 Of course, this to me is a nihilistic enterprise then. 136 00:11:25.863 --> 00:11:27.483 I think it's possible to come to conclusions. 137 00:11:28.484 --> 00:11:29.544 I think so too, to be clear. 138 00:11:29.584 --> 00:11:35.188 But I think what I'm trying to say is this will be something that one will experience for themselves and will discover for themselves in their own life. 139 00:11:35.589 --> 00:11:42.714 It's not going to be something that – you know, there's that old – was it Linshi, the sort of the Buddhist koan that says if you meet the Buddha – 140 00:11:43.234 --> 00:11:43.634 Kill him. 141 00:11:44.355 --> 00:11:54.980 The idea being that if you think that the kind of enlightenment which is necessary to spiritual fulfillment can be found through some kind of guru, you're missing the mark. 142 00:11:55.020 --> 00:11:56.581 It's something that you need to do for yourself. 143 00:11:56.841 --> 00:12:01.583 But isn't that statement of self meant to be a truth about spirituality that you can actually count on? 144 00:12:02.004 --> 00:12:02.524 Can I jump in? 145 00:12:02.944 --> 00:12:04.725 I just want to make sure I understand y'all's point. 146 00:12:04.825 --> 00:12:08.926 So you're saying that the search for purpose, first of all, is never going to go away. 147 00:12:09.427 --> 00:12:11.147 Like, it's a human condition, right? 148 00:12:11.487 --> 00:12:12.188 Yes. 149 00:12:12.228 --> 00:12:15.729 Like, so as humanity, humanity will never find its purpose. 150 00:12:15.769 --> 00:12:16.810 I can tell you why, if you like. 151 00:12:16.950 --> 00:12:18.990 No, no, I don't even know why yet. 152 00:12:19.050 --> 00:12:22.172 I think individuals can, but humanity can't. 153 00:12:22.212 --> 00:12:24.032 Yeah, I'm just making sure I understand, right? 154 00:12:24.052 --> 00:12:27.134 So an individual can find their purpose, but as humanity— 155 00:12:28.094 --> 00:12:29.035 It's never going to be solved. 156 00:12:29.455 --> 00:12:36.639 And then you said something about purpose being tied to opposing to death in some way. 157 00:12:36.659 --> 00:12:42.442 So transcending death, that human beings basically look for purpose because death is inevitable. 158 00:12:42.722 --> 00:12:45.644 And if we can find purpose, then we can give our life meaning. 159 00:12:45.684 --> 00:12:50.987 But if death, if we die and I don't leave something behind, can you talk a little bit about that? 160 00:12:51.087 --> 00:13:07.401 This is essentially a version of Ernest Becker's denial of death hypothesis, which famously suggests that the motivation for a great deal of human behavior is at least human behavior outside of immediate sensory concerns like eating and stuff like that. 161 00:13:07.761 --> 00:13:14.487 Anything that humans engage in on a societal level, on an abstract level, is ultimately motivated by an apprehension of death. 162 00:13:14.727 --> 00:13:16.548 I think that's probably too simple, but it's... 163 00:13:17.508 --> 00:13:18.789 Definitely a contributing factor. 164 00:13:19.610 --> 00:13:21.693 I think that, for example, put it this way, right? 165 00:13:22.033 --> 00:13:24.796 Here's an example that comes from, I think his name's Scheffler. 166 00:13:25.036 --> 00:13:26.518 And he has this interesting thought experiment. 167 00:13:26.598 --> 00:13:29.421 Suppose, I don't know, maybe you're engaged in writing a book. 168 00:13:29.921 --> 00:13:35.347 Suppose you discovered, and this probably won't be the case for you because you believe in an afterlife, but suppose that you're an atheist for a moment. 169 00:13:36.148 --> 00:13:42.710 Suppose it were the case that you discovered that after you die, a meteor is going to come and wipe out all life on Earth. 170 00:13:42.790 --> 00:13:45.311 Everybody's going to die almost instantly after you do, but you'll be dead. 171 00:13:45.571 --> 00:13:47.632 So you will live your entire life as it was anyway. 172 00:13:47.652 --> 00:13:49.732 And suppose the rest of the world doesn't even know this is going to happen. 173 00:13:50.513 --> 00:13:51.733 But you're told this is going to be the case. 174 00:13:52.313 --> 00:13:54.414 Would that motivate you to write your book more or less? 175 00:13:55.074 --> 00:13:57.775 Most people say that it would seem a bit pointless now. 176 00:13:58.755 --> 00:14:00.617 what's the point now in writing this book? 177 00:14:00.837 --> 00:14:04.700 What's the point in having children if they're going to die 30 days after I'm gone? 178 00:14:04.720 --> 00:14:06.321 What's the point in doing any of these things? 179 00:14:06.361 --> 00:14:07.102 What will they still do? 180 00:14:07.142 --> 00:14:08.123 They'll still do the sensory stuff. 181 00:14:08.143 --> 00:14:08.643 They'll still eat. 182 00:14:08.663 --> 00:14:09.364 They'll still have sex. 183 00:14:09.384 --> 00:14:11.165 They'll still sleep, this kind of stuff. 184 00:14:11.765 --> 00:14:17.290 But the typically meaning-laden activities of life, they would certainly be demotivated to do. 185 00:14:17.730 --> 00:14:27.738 And it's an interesting thought experiment to give us some insight as to the fact that what maybe this means, that at least in part, the motivation for these actions in the first place is that they will extend beyond our death. 186 00:14:28.078 --> 00:14:33.319 I agree with so much of what you all say, and I also, like, hard disagree with some of the fundamentals. 187 00:14:34.039 --> 00:14:39.641 So let's say you have this example of, like, I'm going to write a book, and then the world is going to end 30 days later. 188 00:14:40.281 --> 00:14:44.082 And so you say—because a lot of what you're talking about is, like, what people say, right? 189 00:14:44.402 --> 00:14:52.043 So you'll say, like, okay, so, like, people would say that this is a waste of time, and I'm not going to do it if the world ends in 30 days. 190 00:14:52.824 --> 00:14:54.184 And you're also saying people— 191 00:14:56.084 --> 00:14:59.147 is an everlasting thing or struggling with purpose, right? 192 00:14:59.267 --> 00:15:00.388 You're saying both of these things. 193 00:15:00.909 --> 00:15:02.010 So here's my question to you. 194 00:15:02.630 --> 00:15:04.833 If you tell someone, you know, you're writing this book. 195 00:15:05.453 --> 00:15:08.857 Let's say you write it and then you die because we'll simplify the example. 196 00:15:09.117 --> 00:15:10.579 And then 30 days later, the world ends. 197 00:15:11.908 --> 00:15:16.849 Let's take two people, one who says, I'm a writer anyway, and one who says, there's no point. 198 00:15:17.809 --> 00:15:21.950 Which one of those two people do you think has a greater sense of purpose? 199 00:15:22.290 --> 00:15:22.950 Probably the former. 200 00:15:23.670 --> 00:15:24.150 Absolutely. 201 00:15:24.190 --> 00:15:25.131 So this is the key thing. 202 00:15:25.871 --> 00:15:32.192 Purpose is absolutely – because I love that you're asking about mechanisms, and I think maybe that's what I can provide. 203 00:15:32.832 --> 00:15:35.033 I think that's actually the answer, right? 204 00:15:35.053 --> 00:15:36.193 So it's not that – 205 00:15:36.673 --> 00:15:45.503 People believe, and I think you're right, that the reason that this is a perennial problem is because most people do not live a life where they understand how purpose works. 206 00:15:46.988 --> 00:15:55.514 And what I think is really fascinating about sort of like this scientific clinical approach, like if you ask me, can I help people find meaning and purpose? 207 00:15:56.115 --> 00:15:56.495 I don't know. 208 00:15:57.296 --> 00:15:59.798 But if you ask me, can I help a person? 209 00:15:59.858 --> 00:16:01.018 The answer is absolutely. 210 00:16:01.519 --> 00:16:04.641 And we have like particular scientific things. 211 00:16:04.981 --> 00:16:07.003 And this is where it's really counterintuitive. 212 00:16:07.443 --> 00:16:11.265 So a big part of like finding purpose is doing particular things. 213 00:16:11.326 --> 00:16:18.210 And if you do those things, the likelihood that you will increase your sense of purpose in life, which is another thing that's very counterintuitive to people. 214 00:16:18.690 --> 00:16:20.031 Purpose is not binary. 215 00:16:20.291 --> 00:16:21.112 It's quantifiable. 216 00:16:21.472 --> 00:16:22.232 It's like a scale. 217 00:16:22.833 --> 00:16:28.036 So if I were to ask the three of y'all, right, maybe let's like, let's do this, not a thought experiment, but this practical experiment. 218 00:16:29.017 --> 00:16:30.257 Do you know your purpose in life? 219 00:16:30.998 --> 00:16:33.960 Like how confident are you that you're doing what you're supposed to be doing in life? 220 00:16:34.545 --> 00:16:39.389 How confident am I about the God part or that I'm doing the things that are appropriate? 221 00:16:39.629 --> 00:16:42.551 How confident are you that you're doing what God wants you to do? 222 00:16:43.092 --> 00:16:46.455 Well, in that general sense, extremely confident or else I wouldn't be doing it. 223 00:16:46.735 --> 00:16:47.375 Perfect, right? 224 00:16:47.395 --> 00:16:47.515 Yeah. 225 00:16:47.816 --> 00:16:49.937 So, Stephen, what about you, bro? 226 00:16:50.238 --> 00:16:51.379 About five out of ten. 227 00:16:52.199 --> 00:16:52.560 I knew it. 228 00:16:52.620 --> 00:16:53.160 Okay, right? 229 00:16:53.200 --> 00:16:53.881 So, I – 230 00:16:54.621 --> 00:16:54.921 Alex? 231 00:16:55.381 --> 00:16:58.022 I don't want to be difficult, but I kind of reject the grammar of the question. 232 00:16:58.242 --> 00:16:58.582 Awesome. 233 00:16:58.862 --> 00:16:59.642 Reject away, bro. 234 00:16:59.762 --> 00:17:03.703 I think it's what a logician would call an exponable statement, something which needs to be broken down. 235 00:17:03.763 --> 00:17:05.964 You asked, do I know my own purpose? 236 00:17:06.504 --> 00:17:08.605 That assumes that there is a purpose to know. 237 00:17:08.925 --> 00:17:17.187 It's a bit like the comparison I would give is if I asked you the question, the classic example in logic is, is the king of France bold? 238 00:17:17.247 --> 00:17:17.807 Yes or no? 239 00:17:17.967 --> 00:17:20.268 I can rephrase my question if you have problems with my question. 240 00:17:22.975 --> 00:17:27.139 Do you have a lived experience of something called purpose? 241 00:17:27.880 --> 00:17:31.583 Oh, well, look, I think purpose is having some kind of reason to act or be. 242 00:17:31.723 --> 00:17:31.903 Yeah. 243 00:17:32.143 --> 00:17:35.667 And I certainly subjectively am motivated to do things. 244 00:17:35.727 --> 00:17:36.507 I think everybody is. 245 00:17:36.547 --> 00:17:38.609 Otherwise, you literally wouldn't be able to do anything. 246 00:17:39.730 --> 00:17:44.555 But it's a bit foggy to me what psychologically speaking, on a personal level, that fundamental motivation actually is. 247 00:17:44.655 --> 00:17:47.998 Wouldn't purpose be more the goal rather than the reason to act? 248 00:17:48.558 --> 00:17:50.380 What you're trying to accomplish. 249 00:17:50.420 --> 00:17:54.203 It's a semantic thing, but that's why it depends what you mean by the word purpose. 250 00:17:54.683 --> 00:17:55.063 I'm with you. 251 00:17:55.083 --> 00:17:56.645 I'm with you. 252 00:17:56.745 --> 00:18:00.107 And I don't know what I mean with the word purpose, which is part of this challenge. 253 00:18:00.228 --> 00:18:02.409 But, okay, so like I'm just wondering. 254 00:18:02.469 --> 00:18:05.572 So like when you – so a lot of people are motivated to act. 255 00:18:05.632 --> 00:18:07.273 Everyone is motivated to act every day, right? 256 00:18:07.293 --> 00:18:07.994 I get out of bed. 257 00:18:08.194 --> 00:18:09.355 I need to take a dump. 258 00:18:09.875 --> 00:18:14.339 But my guess is that if we were to administer purpose, 259 00:18:15.175 --> 00:18:25.845 A scientifically validated instrument that measures your subjective sense of purpose, direction in life, that that would be north of 5 out of 10. 260 00:18:26.286 --> 00:18:26.586 Okay. 261 00:18:27.267 --> 00:18:30.490 Do you think that's fair or is that something that you don't? 262 00:18:30.570 --> 00:18:31.351 Maybe, yeah. 263 00:18:31.371 --> 00:18:37.997 So like do you – when you wake up, do you feel like you know what you want to do and what's going on and you're like doing good work? 264 00:18:38.017 --> 00:18:39.198 Like I'm asking about the subjective sense. 265 00:18:39.218 --> 00:18:40.139 Not on a grand sense. 266 00:18:40.239 --> 00:18:41.159 I'm quite agnostic. 267 00:18:41.219 --> 00:18:42.821 I mean, I'm sort of— I'm not talking about it. 268 00:18:42.841 --> 00:18:44.162 Okay, maybe a grand sense. 269 00:18:44.262 --> 00:18:45.883 I really don't know what you mean. 270 00:18:45.983 --> 00:18:46.283 Perfect. 271 00:18:46.363 --> 00:18:50.086 Okay, so not on a grand sense, but on some other sense. 272 00:18:50.666 --> 00:18:50.826 Yes. 273 00:18:50.846 --> 00:18:51.147 Sure. 274 00:18:51.407 --> 00:18:51.827 Okay, great. 275 00:18:52.448 --> 00:18:58.852 So I think that this is like—this is—I think this is beautiful because I think what we have here is like not on a grand sense. 276 00:18:58.912 --> 00:19:01.314 So I think on a grand sense, you're there, right? 277 00:19:01.634 --> 00:19:04.256 But you're absolutely motivated by particular things. 278 00:19:04.276 --> 00:19:06.718 So I think this is the first thing about purpose, right? 279 00:19:07.430 --> 00:19:09.091 Can I – a clarification real quickly. 280 00:19:09.132 --> 00:19:09.312 Yeah. 281 00:19:09.532 --> 00:19:13.315 On a grand sense, yes, but there are distinctions that you were referring to a few moments ago. 282 00:19:13.375 --> 00:19:15.958 There are a lot of things that are dissatisfying my life. 283 00:19:16.318 --> 00:19:19.801 But in terms of being on the right course, that's part of what life is. 284 00:19:20.021 --> 00:19:23.925 Being on the right course, lots of crazy stuff that's happening in between. 285 00:19:24.165 --> 00:19:24.465 Cool. 286 00:19:24.605 --> 00:19:28.409 So like the first thing that I've kind of noticed in my work – 287 00:19:29.723 --> 00:19:33.087 is that I don't know whether a grander purpose exists or not. 288 00:19:33.267 --> 00:19:35.990 I think that's a lovely discussion that I want to continue to have with you. 289 00:19:36.010 --> 00:19:38.893 But I'm sort of – here's where I'm sort of coming from in this discussion. 290 00:19:39.554 --> 00:19:42.858 Stephen started this out with some really scary statistics that we're seeing, right? 291 00:19:42.878 --> 00:19:44.139 There's a mental health crisis. 292 00:19:44.640 --> 00:19:50.446 I think a lot of what we're seeing is while it may be perennial, I think it's like seems more acute right now. 293 00:19:50.466 --> 00:19:50.847 Yes, I agree. 294 00:19:51.207 --> 00:19:54.409 Maybe that's because of the atheist materialism, whatever. 295 00:19:54.429 --> 00:19:55.250 I'm not quite sure. 296 00:19:55.290 --> 00:19:56.451 But this is a problem. 297 00:19:56.531 --> 00:20:04.817 So just sharing where I'm coming from, my hope is that someone who is watching this will have moved forward some vague percentage points. 298 00:20:05.277 --> 00:20:08.619 I'm shooting for about 20% in their personal quest for purpose. 299 00:20:09.880 --> 00:20:16.685 And I think a big part of what I'm going to try to contribute here today is my understanding of like how to do that. 300 00:20:17.105 --> 00:20:20.948 That this is a quantifiable thing that we can sort of see at this table. 301 00:20:21.949 --> 00:20:23.950 People are sort of like at different places. 302 00:20:25.171 --> 00:20:33.037 And so the first thing that I kind of want to point out is I don't know whether there's purpose or not, but as a human condition – 303 00:20:34.956 --> 00:20:41.679 There is something that each of us feel or experience that gives us an answer, right? 304 00:20:41.699 --> 00:20:42.660 So you're like at 10. 305 00:20:42.700 --> 00:20:45.941 But what that means is that something is going on in your mind. 306 00:20:46.001 --> 00:20:47.442 Something is going on in your heart. 307 00:20:47.502 --> 00:20:51.444 Something is going on in your body where you wake up and you feel like you have purpose. 308 00:20:52.164 --> 00:20:54.405 Stephen wakes up and he's like at a five out of 10. 309 00:20:54.425 --> 00:20:57.586 So he's getting some signals in that area, some signals are not in that area. 310 00:20:58.146 --> 00:21:00.027 You have some signals in that direction too. 311 00:21:00.047 --> 00:21:01.848 You know why you're showing up at this podcast. 312 00:21:01.868 --> 00:21:03.308 You've got a book that you're working on. 313 00:21:03.408 --> 00:21:04.389 Awesome, can't wait to read it. 314 00:21:05.209 --> 00:21:08.730 But on a grander sense, you're like, I don't know about this like objective stuff or whatever. 315 00:21:08.790 --> 00:21:11.151 So this is sort of like this quantifiable thing. 316 00:21:11.391 --> 00:21:12.932 And you? 317 00:21:13.672 --> 00:21:14.592 I'm going to let y'all guess. 318 00:21:16.253 --> 00:21:17.253 Where would you put me out of 10? 319 00:21:17.273 --> 00:21:18.594 I don't like to psychologize people. 320 00:21:20.245 --> 00:21:21.406 It's okay if you don't like to. 321 00:21:21.426 --> 00:21:23.027 Will you? 322 00:21:23.207 --> 00:21:23.787 I just met you. 323 00:21:24.048 --> 00:21:24.528 I don't know. 324 00:21:24.548 --> 00:21:28.550 I have no idea what sense of meaning you have in your life. 325 00:21:30.372 --> 00:21:30.612 Okay. 326 00:21:31.973 --> 00:21:34.735 I mean, for me, I'm just motivated to try and find out truth. 327 00:21:34.755 --> 00:21:36.756 So I think the audience can guess too. 328 00:21:37.056 --> 00:21:38.497 Yeah, I would say you're pretty high. 329 00:21:38.577 --> 00:21:39.378 That's why you're here. 330 00:21:39.578 --> 00:21:42.600 That's why you're articulating your ideas. 331 00:21:42.780 --> 00:21:43.941 Probably closer to 10 than 5. 332 00:21:43.961 --> 00:21:44.221 Yeah. 333 00:21:45.041 --> 00:21:45.462 Yeah. 334 00:21:45.742 --> 00:21:46.182 Right? 335 00:21:46.262 --> 00:21:48.564 So it's like it's okay if you don't want to do that because – 336 00:21:49.364 --> 00:21:52.407 I'm guessing that there are certain things in your intellect that tell you. 337 00:21:52.787 --> 00:21:54.769 So do you have a subjective instinct? 338 00:21:55.529 --> 00:21:56.670 No, I just don't know you that well. 339 00:21:57.011 --> 00:21:57.872 I mean, I don't know. 340 00:21:57.932 --> 00:21:58.472 Okay. 341 00:21:58.612 --> 00:21:59.733 And also it depends what you mean, right? 342 00:21:59.753 --> 00:22:06.779 Because you'll say that you have a, if you say that you're a 10, like you have this, there's this, you used the phrase earlier, a sense, a sense of meaning in life. 343 00:22:06.799 --> 00:22:15.046 And because you're talking about this from an empirical standpoint of whether people report having a sense of meaning, whereas I think that Greg is probably talking about 344 00:22:16.131 --> 00:22:23.338 literally speaking, whether there is actually in fact a real meaning, whether or not people sense it or not, you could say that you have a 10 out of 10. 345 00:22:23.539 --> 00:22:30.206 And Greg could say, well, that's great that you feel that way, but it's misguided because the purpose that you have identified in your life is the wrong one. 346 00:22:30.766 --> 00:22:39.195 And so to me, the important question is not so much whether you subjectively report feeling like you have purpose in life, but whether that purpose is grounded in something real and true. 347 00:22:40.145 --> 00:22:47.147 Yeah, so I think that your answer right now is the reason why you think some of these questions are unanswerable. 348 00:22:48.027 --> 00:22:51.789 So I think if you adopt that frame, you'll never know. 349 00:22:52.129 --> 00:22:53.149 I don't think they're unanswerable. 350 00:22:53.589 --> 00:22:54.869 Okay, let me just finish. 351 00:22:55.110 --> 00:22:55.950 Okay, so... 352 00:22:56.982 --> 00:23:02.343 My first experience of this, right, is that first of all, there is a subjective barometer. 353 00:23:02.403 --> 00:23:04.283 Like how do we know whether we have purpose? 354 00:23:05.323 --> 00:23:09.224 Maybe we listen to other people, but there is some sort of internal sense of this. 355 00:23:09.824 --> 00:23:24.887 And this is where the science becomes really important because if you look at people who have like a history of trauma or something, what you tend to find is that there are certain like neurobiological things that can happen to you that will literally affect the parts of your brain that are able to detect purpose. 356 00:23:25.087 --> 00:23:25.547 Right. 357 00:23:25.707 --> 00:23:27.850 So this is sort of like a subjective experience. 358 00:23:28.310 --> 00:23:36.941 And I think the way that – and I love your emphasis on mechanism and I think this is what, in my opinion, science and spirituality can really add is they add the how, right? 359 00:23:37.021 --> 00:23:41.246 They add like why is it that one person has purpose and another person doesn't have purpose? 360 00:23:41.487 --> 00:23:41.667 Yeah. 361 00:23:41.887 --> 00:23:46.230 So first thing is that in my experience and the way that I operate, I'm not saying it's correct. 362 00:23:46.290 --> 00:23:56.537 It's just it's effective in terms of helping people move the needle on reducing suicidality, improving resilience, giving them a reason to wake up in the morning. 363 00:23:56.557 --> 00:23:57.598 Like it tends to work. 364 00:23:58.418 --> 00:23:59.419 And it's not just me. 365 00:23:59.439 --> 00:24:07.525 It's that there's a bunch of methodologies that we have in psychotherapy and stuff like that that accomplish these kinds of things, that there's some internal sense of purpose. 366 00:24:08.265 --> 00:24:14.187 Now, what I think surprises a lot of people is that there are two ways that you increase that sense of purpose. 367 00:24:15.288 --> 00:24:19.249 The first is a bucket of things that are kind of counterintuitive. 368 00:24:19.629 --> 00:24:25.511 And this is where we also have to understand that purpose correlates with certain other things in life. 369 00:24:26.132 --> 00:24:29.133 So if I feel like I am in control of my life— 370 00:24:30.399 --> 00:24:32.760 then my sense of purpose will increase. 371 00:24:33.000 --> 00:24:34.620 Those two things are correlated. 372 00:24:34.660 --> 00:24:40.762 It's not clear whether it's one thing that manifests in two ways or it's probably two discrete things because there's some subtlety there. 373 00:24:41.383 --> 00:24:48.605 But just as a very simple example, if you take someone who feels out of control in life and you help them get control of their life— 374 00:24:49.205 --> 00:24:53.467 And there's a really great example of this, which is something called passive challenges versus active challenges. 375 00:24:53.487 --> 00:25:09.033 So there's a fascinating research on anxiety that shows that if you're someone in life whose life is happening to you, like you wake up one day and then like your boss wants you to come in for work and you have to pay rent at the end of the month and like you're logging on to Tinder and people aren't responding to you. 376 00:25:10.134 --> 00:25:12.955 Life is controlling the direction that you move. 377 00:25:14.116 --> 00:25:17.137 And people feel overwhelmed by this, and they want freedom. 378 00:25:17.177 --> 00:25:17.978 They want control. 379 00:25:18.278 --> 00:25:23.400 What they end up doing is they wish that they didn't have these things, so they run away from these problems. 380 00:25:24.340 --> 00:25:30.202 So passive challenges are challenges that life imposes upon you that you didn't sign up for. 381 00:25:31.803 --> 00:25:38.266 Then there's something really fascinating, which is your sense of control in life does not correlate just with the passive challenges. 382 00:25:38.686 --> 00:25:43.468 It correlates with the ratio of passive challenges to active challenges. 383 00:25:44.332 --> 00:25:47.394 Active challenges are things that you choose to do that are difficult. 384 00:25:48.114 --> 00:25:49.275 So this is really fascinating. 385 00:25:49.295 --> 00:25:55.579 But if you're getting bodied by life in three different directions, the solution to that is not run away from those problems. 386 00:25:55.899 --> 00:26:00.642 It's actually to wake up and start to push yourself in a particular direction. 387 00:26:01.143 --> 00:26:02.203 I want to do this instead. 388 00:26:02.223 --> 00:26:07.567 If you want to learn how to, like, read – you know, learn philosophy, you know, start studying philosophical texts and – 389 00:26:07.967 --> 00:26:14.912 You know, like as you start to take on more, which is very counterintuitive because when most people feel overwhelmed, they don't feel like they can do more. 390 00:26:15.393 --> 00:26:18.515 The exact solution is to take on more active challenges. 391 00:26:19.035 --> 00:26:21.417 Then you have some sense of control in life. 392 00:26:21.958 --> 00:26:27.922 And once your ratio of active challenges to passive challenges is more evened out, this does something really cool. 393 00:26:27.942 --> 00:26:29.964 It gives you a sense that I'm no longer out of control. 394 00:26:29.984 --> 00:26:30.484 Mm-hmm. 395 00:26:30.804 --> 00:26:40.430 Once you feel like you're no longer out of control, this is the really cool thing, then your capacity to deal with the stuff that life throws at you actually improves. 396 00:26:41.431 --> 00:26:54.560 So there's this – this is just one example of like one scientific neurobiological principle that has some psychology associated with where you can do particular things to give yourself a sense of direction in life. 397 00:26:54.720 --> 00:26:55.120 Mm-hmm. 398 00:26:55.565 --> 00:26:58.886 Now, some of the stuff around worship and spiritual practice, that can do it too. 399 00:27:00.387 --> 00:27:08.250 But I think that usually what I tend to see is that, you know, if someone is lost in life, you can sort of answer it by these big questions. 400 00:27:09.090 --> 00:27:12.852 You can sort of think about this sort of transcendental purpose, which I'm happy to talk about. 401 00:27:13.332 --> 00:27:15.813 But I think there's a lot of like little stuff that you can do. 402 00:27:15.833 --> 00:27:16.273 Yeah. 403 00:27:16.753 --> 00:27:24.496 And as you implement these things, the sense of purpose in your life, your internal lived experience of feeling out of control will change. 404 00:27:25.016 --> 00:27:26.478 Let me offer a few thoughts if I could. 405 00:27:26.578 --> 00:27:32.283 One, I want to speak to something that you've said, Alex, that I just want to offer a caution about. 406 00:27:32.303 --> 00:27:38.609 When we talk about motivation, the motivation for something, we sometimes confuse that with justification. 407 00:27:39.130 --> 00:27:43.995 So someone might say to me, as an atheist, for example, well, you're a Christian because you were born in America. 408 00:27:44.255 --> 00:27:47.138 If you were born in Saudi Arabia, you wouldn't be a Christian. 409 00:27:47.158 --> 00:27:47.918 You'd be a Muslim. 410 00:27:48.479 --> 00:27:52.944 Of course, that's irrelevant to the question of whether Islam or Christianity or some other religion is true. 411 00:27:52.984 --> 00:27:53.965 It doesn't speak to that. 412 00:27:54.005 --> 00:27:55.947 It speaks to psychology, okay? 413 00:27:56.408 --> 00:28:01.433 And the fact is that if the atheist was born in Saudi Arabia, he wouldn't be an atheist either, likely. 414 00:28:01.934 --> 00:28:03.796 The key question is what motivates people— 415 00:28:04.216 --> 00:28:07.720 For example, to think about purpose, death maybe, a fear of death. 416 00:28:08.100 --> 00:28:09.162 That might be a motivation. 417 00:28:09.182 --> 00:28:14.548 The question is whether the place they land in answering the question has any objective truth to it or not. 418 00:28:14.788 --> 00:28:17.311 It could be that there is a God and that there is an afterlife. 419 00:28:17.751 --> 00:28:21.576 And facing death does give comfort to that. 420 00:28:22.317 --> 00:28:24.839 I should say when facing death, you have comfort. 421 00:28:25.380 --> 00:28:27.942 Because there is a God and there is something that you're going to. 422 00:28:27.963 --> 00:28:29.724 It's closer communion with him. 423 00:28:30.245 --> 00:28:30.585 Okay. 424 00:28:31.085 --> 00:28:35.490 Just because you're motivated by death doesn't mean that your belief about the afterlife is somehow an error. 425 00:28:36.891 --> 00:28:41.315 What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. 426 00:28:41.455 --> 00:28:44.618 If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. 427 00:28:44.798 --> 00:28:45.619 Check the description. 428 00:28:45.919 --> 00:28:46.280 Thank you.