Speaker 1: If you feel like the price of your work is
Speaker 1: too high in terms of your existential meaning, or your
Speaker 1: sense of significance, or your sense of being worthwhile, then
Speaker 1: the job is too much. It's asking too much, the
Speaker 1: costs are too high, and you need to change.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 3: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 3: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 3: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 3: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 3: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 3: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 3: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 3: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 3: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 3: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 3: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 3: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is John Kaig,
Speaker 3: an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University
Speaker 3: of Massachusetts Lowell. He specializes in American philosophy and is
Speaker 3: the Donna Hugh Professor of Ethics and the Arts at
Speaker 3: UMass Lowell. He's also the External Professor at the Santa
Speaker 3: Fe Institute and advisor at Outlier dot org. John is
Speaker 3: published in many periodicals and is the author of many books,
Speaker 3: including Six Souls, Healthy Minds, How William James Can Save
Speaker 3: Your Life, American Philosophy, A Love Story, Hiking with Nietzsche
Speaker 3: on Becoming who You Are, and is the co author
Speaker 3: of the book discussed here, Henrie at Work throaw On
Speaker 3: Making a Living.
Speaker 2: Hi, John, welcome back.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me back.
Speaker 2: I don't remember when it was, but we talked about
Speaker 2: your book William James about Healthy Mindedness, and I loved
Speaker 2: that conversation. And when I saw you had a new
Speaker 2: book called Henry at Work thereaw on Making a Living,
Speaker 2: I thought it would be wonderful to talk again. So
Speaker 2: we're going to be discussing that book in a moment,
Speaker 2: but we'll start like we always do with the parable.
Speaker 2: In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking to their
Speaker 2: grandchild and they say, in life there are two wolves
Speaker 2: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 2: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 2: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 2: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 2: grandchild stops and they think about it for a second.
Speaker 2: They look up at their grandparent and they say, well,
Speaker 2: which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 2: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 2: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 2: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: It's such a good question, old one. The last three
Speaker 1: years have been rather tough. When I was forty three
Speaker 1: years ago, I had cardiac rest and had bypass surgery,
Speaker 1: and when the EMTs brought me back after the arrest,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of reevaluating to do about life,
Speaker 1: but more specifically about my work life. And it gave
Speaker 1: it a lot of thought and decided that when it
Speaker 1: came to my work, I had been really feeding the
Speaker 1: wrong wolf. I'd been feeding the wolf of greed and
Speaker 1: self possession and fear. And what I needed to do
Speaker 1: is reorient myself back to my teaching, back to my family,
Speaker 1: back to those experiences that really nourished me. And thankfully
Speaker 1: I had a chance to do that with the help
Speaker 1: of Henry David Throw and his position on work.
Speaker 2: So when you say you were feeding the wrong wolf
Speaker 2: at work, you didn't make a career change, correct, right,
Speaker 2: You're still a professor at Harvard, you still write books.
Speaker 2: So what was the nature of the change, or what
Speaker 2: was the nature of the way in which you were
Speaker 2: feeding the bad wolf and hopefully are feeding the good
Speaker 2: wolf today.
Speaker 1: When it comes to work, I think that as you
Speaker 1: grow older and have a family, it's oftentimes very easy
Speaker 1: to get sucked into working for money that supports your
Speaker 1: family household. And one of the insights that throw gives
Speaker 1: us is that you don't need nearly as much as
Speaker 1: you actually do. And I had gotten sucked into this
Speaker 1: almost manic workpace. I was producing books almost every year.
Speaker 1: I was signing up for textbooks and lecture series based
Speaker 1: on monetary value rather than what I actually found meaningful.
Speaker 1: And when you realize that life could be cut short
Speaker 1: at any moment, all of a sudden, you say, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, I need to actually think about whether my
Speaker 1: time is being well spent. So you're right that I've
Speaker 1: not changed my job. I teach it, lul I'm a
Speaker 1: professor there, and I've taught writing at Harvard. It's not
Speaker 1: that I changed my work as much as my orientation
Speaker 1: to why I was undertaking the tasks at hand and
Speaker 1: concentrating what actually drew me into philosophy in the first place,
Speaker 1: which was a study of ethics, the study of the
Speaker 1: good life, a study of what is the good life,
Speaker 1: and also drew me back to thinking about my students
Speaker 1: more carefully, and also my children and my partner more carefully,
Speaker 1: and not just blining for what seemed to be the
Speaker 1: sort of most expedient or lucrative move.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and I think
Speaker 2: that you know, we're going to get into work and
Speaker 2: lots of different types of work and all that. But
Speaker 2: for those of us who are extremely fortunate enough to
Speaker 2: be in the type of work that probably best suits us,
Speaker 2: you know, that is, to use a word, our calling
Speaker 2: or something that we care deeply about or that matters
Speaker 2: to us, right, And that's a very fortunate position to
Speaker 2: be in. However, that alone does not mean that we
Speaker 2: have a wise relationship to work. And I think that
Speaker 2: was my orientation for a long time, given that I
Speaker 2: kind of tried to come from a software career to
Speaker 2: doing this that I thought, well, once I get over here,
Speaker 2: it's all going to be straightforward, right. And since I've
Speaker 2: gotten over here, I've had to continue to reevaluate my
Speaker 2: relationship to work that does matter to me that I
Speaker 2: do think is important, but can also just start to
Speaker 2: run everything, and you're right, the motives that are in
Speaker 2: it can get very confusing. You know, we all have
Speaker 2: different metrics by which we're measuring our work, and they
Speaker 2: tend to be money or approval or if you're in
Speaker 2: my business, it's downloads. You know, you've got all these
Speaker 2: sort of things. For me, it's been this consistent practice
Speaker 2: of over and over and over again going back to
Speaker 2: what is it about this that matters to me?
Speaker 1: And I think that what you describe is very similar
Speaker 1: to my experience decide on what profession I was going
Speaker 1: to go into. I mean, I was brought up in
Speaker 1: a family that did not have a lot of money,
Speaker 1: and so the drive to get money, especially from my
Speaker 1: single parent mother, was very very intense. My brother became
Speaker 1: a surgeon. I was supposed to go work for Goldman
Speaker 1: Sachs right out of college, and I made a decision
Speaker 1: to go into grad school in philosophy, primarily because I
Speaker 1: didn't want to follow that path. But that does not mean,
Speaker 1: or it didn't mean for me that I didn't then
Speaker 1: just simply import that drive and that logic into my
Speaker 1: own trade publishing, into my own scholarly pursuits. And I
Speaker 1: ended up publishing papers like crazy as if they were
Speaker 1: you know, Wall Street trades. And it's very easy to
Speaker 1: import your past, even if you think that you're escaping it.
Speaker 1: So I take your point really seriously.
Speaker 2: I think that's absolutely true, and I think it's also
Speaker 2: confusing when you do you enjoy what you do, or
Speaker 2: you do see value in it, that makes it a
Speaker 2: little bit more confusing. But we'll come back around to
Speaker 2: this threat, I'm sure, But let's start with Thereau. And
Speaker 2: you say that work was at the root of Therew's philosophy,
Speaker 2: It's at the root of Walden. So say a little
Speaker 2: bit more about that.
Speaker 1: So we all oftentimes think about Henry David Thoreau as
Speaker 1: this lotus eating, tree hugging loafer of a guy who
Speaker 1: took two years, two months, and two days to go
Speaker 1: hang out at Walden and escape all the pressures of
Speaker 1: modern life. We basically think of Walden as a vacation,
Speaker 1: but we oftentimes forget that Thoreau went to Walden to work,
Speaker 1: to support himself, to figure out what was actually required,
Speaker 1: what was actually necessary in modern adult life. And Thoreau
Speaker 1: goes to Walden not long after his own brother, who
Speaker 1: was very close to dies in his arms, dies of
Speaker 1: gang in Henry David Throw's arms. And at those moments
Speaker 1: you really have to wake up and think what am
Speaker 1: I doing with my life? And what Throw does at
Speaker 1: Walden is famously he says I went to the woods
Speaker 1: to live deliberately. But really what I think it is
Speaker 1: is that he went to the woods to work deliberately.
Speaker 1: He built his own house to a large extent, made
Speaker 1: his own clothing, grew his own food, really tried to
Speaker 1: think about what his life's work or as you said,
Speaker 1: the vocation or his calling is. And I think that
Speaker 1: that is very directive if we read Throw and read
Speaker 1: Walden as basically sort of handbook for how you might
Speaker 1: think about your own working life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so many things that I learned about Throw
Speaker 2: that I did not know reading this book. And one is,
Speaker 2: like you said, his sort of natural tendency towards work.
Speaker 2: I mean you say early on that you know nobody
Speaker 2: who has a two million word journal by the age
Speaker 2: of forty four is a loafer. And that Thereau even
Speaker 2: as he was walking, you know, he believed you were
Speaker 2: working while you walk, you were ruminating. And he was
Speaker 2: using that term in the positive sense, not the negative
Speaker 2: sense that we often tie it to today, but that
Speaker 2: he was very industrious.
Speaker 1: He was, and sometimes we don't think about writing or
Speaker 1: thinking as work, but it is. But Threeau then on
Speaker 1: top of that sort of occupation or vocation really undertook
Speaker 1: a handyman's life. I mean, he grew up middle class
Speaker 1: but also rural middle class, which basically meant that he
Speaker 1: lost a toe cutting wood. At the age of nine,
Speaker 1: he falls off a cow. I don't know what he
Speaker 1: was doing on the cow, but must have been some
Speaker 1: type of work in his teenage years and breaks something.
Speaker 1: He then basically goes through eleven different jobs in his
Speaker 1: life and is trying to think about the relationship between
Speaker 1: manual work meaningful work, you know, and then also try
Speaker 1: to bring a sort of critical eye to immoral work,
Speaker 1: but also meaningless work and drudgery. So I think he's
Speaker 1: giving us some guidelines to rethink the concept of work,
Speaker 1: which in the West, if we think about work, sometimes
Speaker 1: we just view it like in the Bible, it's views
Speaker 1: as a curse. I mean, God gives it to human
Speaker 1: beings as a curse. And oftentimes we think about work
Speaker 1: that way, and really, according to Throw, we ought not,
Speaker 1: because work is what sets us free.
Speaker 2: For Threau, yeah, and we'll get into what degree is
Speaker 2: being able to think of work in that way what
Speaker 2: we would call privileged or elitist in a later part
Speaker 2: of the conversation. But you say Throw questioned why we work,
Speaker 2: and that he claimed that men labor under a mistake?
Speaker 2: What is that core mistake?
Speaker 1: The core mistake, and I think we've alluded to it
Speaker 1: in the early section of this interview. The core mistake,
Speaker 1: for Thoreau is believing that we are rich only in
Speaker 1: terms of our monetary wealth, and that the riches of
Speaker 1: work and the returns of work ROI return on investment
Speaker 1: is really about monetary gain and about self interest and greed.
Speaker 1: And that while we think that that approach, which has
Speaker 1: been encouraged in modern capitalism and modern consumerism, that that
Speaker 1: approach is either inescapable or is in fact beneficial for
Speaker 1: individuals because it makes them secure, it makes their houses secure.
Speaker 1: Thoreau is suggesting that we think about the health of
Speaker 1: a human being and the wealth of a human being
Speaker 1: in terms of what sort of experiences he, she or
Speaker 1: they can have in life and what sort of value
Speaker 1: can we add to the world at large through the
Speaker 1: workings of our hands or minds. And I think that
Speaker 1: that's a very very important point, especially in our post
Speaker 1: pandemic age, when people are really rethinking how much do
Speaker 1: they want to work? Do they go back to the
Speaker 1: brick and mortar office, do they stay at home? And
Speaker 1: Throw's there saying, hey, if you feel like the price
Speaker 1: of your work is too high in terms of your
Speaker 1: existential meaning, or your sense of significance, or your sense
Speaker 1: of being worthwhile, then the job is too much. It's
Speaker 1: asking too much, the costs are too high, and you
Speaker 1: need to change. In this midst of the discussion about
Speaker 1: the Great Resignation, when people are more and more leaving
Speaker 1: their jobs, Threeau is right there at the first part
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century saying you can resign, you can
Speaker 1: drop out in order to reconnect with work that you
Speaker 1: find meaningful.
Speaker 2: In the book, you talk about how Threeau believed that
Speaker 2: manual labor could be made into something beautiful, that work
Speaker 2: can be something that is beautiful. And there's the other
Speaker 2: view that says work is a curse, right, And I
Speaker 2: would say most of us float somewhere in between those
Speaker 2: two things. And I've worked with a lot of people
Speaker 2: over the years who come to me for coaching, and
Speaker 2: their core dilemma is do I need to get a
Speaker 2: new job slash career or do I need to learn
Speaker 2: to relate to it differently? Do I need to change
Speaker 2: the meaning that I see? Or do I need to
Speaker 2: change the connection that I have with people? And I
Speaker 2: think this is a really big dilemma for a lot
Speaker 2: of people. It can be very difficult to figure out,
Speaker 2: you know, is this okay and the challenge is inside me?
Speaker 2: Or is this not okay and the challenge is outside
Speaker 2: of me.
Speaker 1: It's such a great point. I mean Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Speaker 1: and it is his birthday. Today's birthday is true mine too.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, Ralph and I share a birthday.
Speaker 1: Oh You're lucky. One of his best friends, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Speaker 1: your giant follows you wherever you go. In other words,
Speaker 1: you are yourself no matter where you go, no matter
Speaker 1: what work you take on, no matter what occupations. So
Speaker 1: sometimes it's not going to matter if you change occupations
Speaker 1: without changing yourself beforehand, changing your orientation to the world
Speaker 1: or your coworkers or compensation. So I think the point
Speaker 1: that maybe sometimes the best thing to do is to
Speaker 1: try to change your angle of vision, try to change
Speaker 1: the way that you see things in your current situation.
Speaker 1: I think that there's a lot of wisdom to that.
Speaker 1: And Threau does that many different times in his life,
Speaker 1: especially around the way that he've used his own writings.
Speaker 1: In other words, are they public? Are they private? Are
Speaker 1: they spiritual? Are they politically oriented? He's constantly thinking about
Speaker 1: how to reorient himself in what looks to be a
Speaker 1: fairly stable job. But he is also and Emerson would
Speaker 1: also say that sometimes you do need to break out,
Speaker 1: especially if you find yourself in a situation where you
Speaker 1: really have what you deem to be in a moral job.
Speaker 1: In other words, the compensation that you get is actually
Speaker 1: derived by taking money from others or exploiting others. And
Speaker 1: this was the case for Thereau when it came to teaching.
Speaker 1: Quite famously, one of his first jobs was as a teacher,
Speaker 1: and the headmaster asked Thereau to exact corporal punishment on
Speaker 1: his students, and Thereau thought about it for a day,
Speaker 1: tested it out, and then quit. He just couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: He couldn't go ahead working in a sort of immoral situation.
Speaker 1: So I think there has to be a certain balance
Speaker 1: between resigning too quickly and staying on for too long.
Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah, everybody's situation is kind of different in figuring
Speaker 2: out the pros and cons the trade offs. I mean,
Speaker 2: everything has a cost, right, and so what costs are
Speaker 2: you willing to incur? Which makes sense. I want to
Speaker 2: turn a little bit to this idea of work as
Speaker 2: a beautiful thing because it was reflecting before this conversation.
Speaker 2: And my father passed not too long ago, and one
Speaker 2: of the things I said at his eulogy, and I
Speaker 2: had been thinking about, is that what I got from
Speaker 2: him was a really good work ethic. I started to
Speaker 2: examine that statement a little bit more closely after reading
Speaker 2: your book, and I thought about, like, why did I
Speaker 2: used to work so much, particularly as a teenager, Like
Speaker 2: I worked a lot and I didn't have to. I mean,
Speaker 2: I kind of wanted the money. I don't think that
Speaker 2: was the driving factor. It wasn't like I was trying
Speaker 2: to please my parents. What I realized is that I
Speaker 2: actually really enjoyed it. I worked in the restaurant business,
Speaker 2: but there was something about being in a kitchen and
Speaker 2: being with other people and the fun that we had there,
Speaker 2: and there was something about that activity that was deeply
Speaker 2: satisfying to me. Now eventually it became unsatisfying, and I'm
Speaker 2: glad I don't still do it. But I think this
Speaker 2: idea that our work can be a satisfying thing is
Speaker 2: another element that I'd like to explore a little further.
Speaker 1: Sure, I mean, Threau came at the issue of the
Speaker 1: satisfaction of work in a number of different ways, one
Speaker 1: of which was work at its base is the means
Speaker 1: by which we support ourselves in the natural world, in
Speaker 1: the world in which we live. And you might think
Speaker 1: about that very quickly, and you say, yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: I get a paycheck and then I get to go
Speaker 1: buy my food and my gas. That then gets me
Speaker 1: to back to my job where I can work some more.
Speaker 1: But that's not exactly what Thereau meant. Thereau was living
Speaker 1: through a period of American history where individuals were being
Speaker 1: caught in the industrial commercial complex that we now call
Speaker 1: modern day life. The mills up in loll and Lawrence
Speaker 1: in the Industrial Revolution were basically within Thereau's site. And
Speaker 1: in response to that, Row returns to his little plot
Speaker 1: at Walden and he says, what can I do so
Speaker 1: that I am self sufficient in Emerson's words, self reliant?
Speaker 1: And can I redirect my work back to those very
Speaker 1: simple practices that allow me to support myself, grow my
Speaker 1: own food, shelter myself, sustain myself. So there's one aspect
Speaker 1: that we oftentimes forget that work really is a form
Speaker 1: of self possession, a way to be self possessed. The
Speaker 1: other aspect, I think that you push on really nicely
Speaker 1: when you describe your teenage jobs where you're connecting with
Speaker 1: others and you feel connected to the world. This is
Speaker 1: a Thorovian and Emersonian impulse too, that our work connects
Speaker 1: us either to the land or to the people, or
Speaker 1: to the community of mind. It connects us to something
Speaker 1: much bigger than our very local interests, which note is
Speaker 1: very different than the sort of self reliance model. What
Speaker 1: it does is it allows us to reach out into
Speaker 1: your garden or into the natural world, for example, to
Speaker 1: sort of change the landscape in a productive way, or
Speaker 1: to make something that is out in the world that
Speaker 1: others get to enjoy and participate in. That sort of
Speaker 1: engagement is meaningful because I think it gives us a
Speaker 1: break from feeling so imperially alone in our little, as
Speaker 1: David Foster Wall says, skull sized kingdoms. So work gives
Speaker 1: us that outlet and that communion and connection as well.
Speaker 2: You say, THROW believe that a certain type of work
Speaker 2: allows us to inhabit the world in a way that
Speaker 2: makes us actually at home. And you know, I think
Speaker 2: that's work in its most beautiful state. Is it makes us,
Speaker 2: like you said, feel connected at home, purposeful. It's funny.
Speaker 2: I have this little device on my wrist. It's called
Speaker 2: a whoop band. It's an exercise fitness tracker, right, and
Speaker 2: it's okay. They introduced a new feature and it's called
Speaker 2: stress response, So it's basically trying to tell you when
Speaker 2: it thinks that you are a little bit more stress
Speaker 2: than normal, that your heart rate is a little more elevated,
Speaker 2: not from exercise. It's very interesting, and this is only
Speaker 2: a couple weeks of data, and again, this thing isn't
Speaker 2: one hundred percent accurate, so I don't want to make
Speaker 2: too much out of this. But what's interesting about it
Speaker 2: is that I find that my stress level is often
Speaker 2: at its lowest when I'm working, which is an interesting
Speaker 2: phenomenon because we tend to think of it the other way.
Speaker 2: But what I realized is that I'm much happier working
Speaker 2: than I am worrying about actually working. There's an element
Speaker 2: I've always noticed in my life that when I am
Speaker 2: at work on something that matters to me in any way,
Speaker 2: shape or form, and that can take lots of different forms,
Speaker 2: I do feel more at home.
Speaker 1: What's interesting the experience that you're describing, I think is
Speaker 1: the way that many individuals describe play like hobbies that
Speaker 1: they are really in meshton or immersed in. But the
Speaker 1: very interesting thing is that you can do that and
Speaker 1: should do that in your work. So one of my
Speaker 1: students came up to me, and I'm very engaged in class.
Speaker 1: I talk to them like real people, they talk to
Speaker 1: me like real people. It's very back and forth. And
Speaker 1: one of my students said, doctor Keg, you seem so excited.
Speaker 1: Why do you teach this way? And I thought about
Speaker 1: it for a little while, and the reason is is
Speaker 1: because first of all, I want them to get something
Speaker 1: out of the experience. I find that meaningful. But I also,
Speaker 1: for better or for worse, it is an anxiety blocker.
Speaker 1: When I immerse myself in my classroom, I'm worried about them.
Speaker 1: I'm not worryorried about myself. I get lost in the
Speaker 1: flow of the conversation and in the flow of the lesson.
Speaker 1: And it's really the case that that losing yourself, that sense,
Speaker 1: all those petty worries that you had before your work,
Speaker 1: once you quote and unquote get into it, all of
Speaker 1: those worries tend to go away. And I know that
Speaker 1: I'm describing a very very specialized and privileged sort of
Speaker 1: situation where you might say to me, hey, John, like,
Speaker 1: I work a job that is drudgery, and it's very
Speaker 1: hard to lose myself in these situations. And Throw has
Speaker 1: very clear positions on that as well. And it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily that you need to just be zen about your
Speaker 1: forms of drudgery. He has a certain type of cultural
Speaker 1: critique about systems of occupations and employment that rest on
Speaker 1: large scale forms of drudgery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is an interesting point because Throw talks
Speaker 2: about the value of manual labor, right, like you can
Speaker 2: actually be at home and connected to the world through
Speaker 2: manual labor. You mentioned Zen. I've been a practicing Zen
Speaker 2: student for a long time. And how in Zen the
Speaker 2: phrase I've used is called samu means work practice, and
Speaker 2: it's basically taking something that is extraordinarily ordinary, sweeping the floor,
Speaker 2: chopping vegetables, whatever it might be that you can do
Speaker 2: without thinking about at all. But the point is actually
Speaker 2: to give it very very close attention, thus elevating it
Speaker 2: into something that is beautiful. So on one hand, we've
Speaker 2: got this idea that this sort of manual ordinary, what
Speaker 2: could be drudgery labor, can be elevated into something beautiful.
Speaker 2: And then we have the experience of people who have
Speaker 2: to do that work as a living and it feels deadening,
Speaker 2: and that, you know, throw is also say and you
Speaker 2: know in those situations you maybe shouldn't do it. How
Speaker 2: do you think through that what appears at one level
Speaker 2: to be a little bit of a contradiction.
Speaker 1: It's a great question. I mean, Threau is famous for
Speaker 1: his positions on abolitionism and slavery, which in the middle
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century. When we're talking about work, we
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge that lots and lots and lots and
Speaker 1: lots of people were working basically against their wills and
Speaker 1: forced to work. And Threau was not ever a person
Speaker 1: who would say, Oh, you're in this horrible situation, let's.
Speaker 2: Pick your cotton mindfully.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, pick your vegetable of choice mindfully. But what
Speaker 1: he did suggest and who he was writing to, was
Speaker 1: a large number of middle class Americans, middle upper class
Speaker 1: Americans who had forgotten that very local, very manual labor,
Speaker 1: very mundane labor, can be very meaningful, and you can
Speaker 1: make it not only beautiful, but for Threau sacred. And
Speaker 1: what he was suggesting I think is that individuals who
Speaker 1: read Walden, for example, or read Civil Disobedience would notice
Speaker 1: that if you change your orientation to material wealth, he says, simplify, simplify.
Speaker 1: At Walden, I mean he lived in a ten x
Speaker 1: fifteen foot cabin. It wasn't a big mansion. He ridiculed
Speaker 1: individuals with big mansions outside of conquered. So if you
Speaker 1: reorient your position to material wealth and change the way
Speaker 1: that you think about quote and unquote good jobs, good
Speaker 1: jobs in thros day were becoming more and more capitalist jobs.
Speaker 1: In other words, owners of factories. Those were the good jobs,
Speaker 1: jobs in which you don't necessarily have to work with
Speaker 1: your hands, jobs where you hire others to do work
Speaker 1: that you don't want to do. So Threaw is pushing
Speaker 1: on both of those points. Reorient yourself to material wealth,
Speaker 1: reorient yourself to manual labor, and you'll notice that you
Speaker 1: don't have to live in a society that is so
Speaker 1: dependent on the labor of others, in other words, forced labor,
Speaker 1: or on a government that would perpetuate in moral policies
Speaker 1: like the government of Throw's day that he pushes up
Speaker 1: against in civil disobedience. So it's all these different aspects
Speaker 1: of work and work life, balance and manual work are
Speaker 1: all related. And so Threau is suggesting to us who
Speaker 1: maybe need to slow down a little bit and appreciate
Speaker 1: the sacred potentials of manual labor to do so. And
Speaker 1: it not only affects our own lives, but it also
Speaker 1: affects the societies in which we live.
Speaker 2: Now, it seems that a big piece of this is
Speaker 2: is about choice, right, you know, when you are forced,
Speaker 2: whether by economic reality. And again I get that Throw
Speaker 2: would say not as many of us are forced as
Speaker 2: much as we think we are, because we could live
Speaker 2: on less than we do. But let's talk about people
Speaker 2: who are barely subsisting, right when you're forced either by
Speaker 2: in his day slavery in our day what we might
Speaker 2: call wage slavery, right, meaning that I've got to do
Speaker 2: all this in order just to survive. It's very difficult
Speaker 2: then to elevate that work into something beautiful and meaningful,
Speaker 2: because it's not a choice. You're not choosing exactly of
Speaker 2: your own free will in the same way I would
Speaker 2: be choosing to go outside and chop would and be
Speaker 2: engaged in the process. Is that a fair way of
Speaker 2: sort of summarizing.
Speaker 1: That's a fair way of summarizing it. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think about this. We live outside of conquered Massachusetts where
Speaker 1: through I live very close to Walden Pond, and there
Speaker 1: are a lot of big houses here with big lawns,
Speaker 1: and I see lots and lots of people who don't
Speaker 1: live in the houses working the lawns of these big mansions.
Speaker 1: And I just asked myself. My wife Kathleen said to me,
Speaker 1: she goes, why do you like to take care of
Speaker 1: the lawn and the gardens? And one of the reasons is, yes,
Speaker 1: it connects me to the earth. But another aspect is
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily have to pay someone a very low
Speaker 1: wage to do something that I could actually enjoy doing.
Speaker 1: And the relationship between employing individuals to do work that
Speaker 1: you would rather not do. That issue was very much
Speaker 1: on the Roe's mind, and he was worried about choice
Speaker 1: but also exploitation, exploitation of those individuals who don't have
Speaker 1: choices to work elsewhere. If you think about his location
Speaker 1: at Walden, it was right next to the railroad where
Speaker 1: Irish workers really on a sort of subsistence level, had
Speaker 1: to get by working on the railroad. And then similarly
Speaker 1: he was surrounded by former slaves and he lived on
Speaker 1: the outskirts of conquered and so Threau is very much
Speaker 1: aware of the way that our needs and desires have
Speaker 1: a tendency to place others under pretty onerous obligations to
Speaker 1: fulfill our own desires.
Speaker 2: As you were talking, I was thinking about there's a
Speaker 2: show I love called Downtown Abbey. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you've watched. I just think it's a brilliant, brilliant show.
Speaker 2: But there's a scene in it where there is, in essence,
Speaker 2: the main character suddenly without knowing it inherits downtown Abbey.
Speaker 2: He becomes the guy who's going to take it. He
Speaker 2: had no idea it was coming, he had no idea
Speaker 2: he was related. But he's the next male heir, and
Speaker 2: it's in a world where male heirs are there, and
Speaker 2: he comes and he arrives at downtown Abbey and the
Speaker 2: servants are trying to take care of him, and he
Speaker 2: is saying, no, no, no, no, I can do that myself.
Speaker 2: I can do that myself. And there's a scene where
Speaker 2: suddenly there's a sense that by doing that he is
Speaker 2: taking someone and not allowing them to do what they
Speaker 2: think their job or their role is. I just was
Speaker 2: thinking about that as you were talking, because I do
Speaker 2: think a capitalist would say, well, you know, the person
Speaker 2: mowing the lawn for twelve dollars an hour has a
Speaker 2: job that they wouldn't otherwise have. Maybe they've come from
Speaker 2: Mexico and suddenly that's a much better living than they
Speaker 2: would be having. And so I think these are really
Speaker 2: interesting and sort of challenging questions.
Speaker 1: I think so too. I think what Threat does is
Speaker 1: that he repeatedly goes and works with day laborers, and
Speaker 1: goes and actually works alongside of people cutting ice in
Speaker 1: very cold conditions in the middle of a pond. And
Speaker 1: I think that his willingness to work alongside people who
Speaker 1: make manual labor their living is I think an important
Speaker 1: instruction for us, because we if we're going to hire
Speaker 1: someone to do our lawn, at least we need to
Speaker 1: know how hot it is in July. At least we
Speaker 1: need to know how thirsty you get when you're out there.
Speaker 1: At least we need to know. And this is not
Speaker 1: wholly dissimilar from William James. He has this famous essay
Speaker 1: called The Moral Equivalent of War, where he says that
Speaker 1: the gilded youth, in other words, the golden boys, girls
Speaker 1: and people of his time need to get the ideals knocked,
Speaker 1: the false ideals knocked out of them, with a good
Speaker 1: amount of manual labor. And he thinks that walking in
Speaker 1: the shoes, or trying to walk in the shoes of
Speaker 1: someone who lives very differently and by other means of work,
Speaker 1: gives us some indication about how we are to treat
Speaker 1: those individuals who we might hire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And there's certainly an element of I think
Speaker 2: treating everybody, regardless of the station of their work, with
Speaker 2: a great deal of dignity, right, I mean, I think that,
Speaker 2: just to me is sort of a fundamental principle. Somebody
Speaker 2: who's a stockbroker is not better than a waiter, you know,
Speaker 2: like they both deserve dignity and they're both equal. So
Speaker 2: not so much of the class hierarchy that we often
Speaker 2: think about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think about the way that the
Speaker 1: work of our lives is a certain type of leveler
Speaker 1: between people. What I mean by that is each of us,
Speaker 1: at the end of our life gets a chance to
Speaker 1: look back and say, what have I worked on? What
Speaker 1: have I done? And am I happy with that? Was
Speaker 1: that my choice? Was that my life's work. And I
Speaker 1: think about Throw's famous comment in Walden that he goes
Speaker 1: to Walden so that he didn't reach the end of
Speaker 1: his life and discover that he hasn't lived as a
Speaker 1: real stop you in your tracks moment, my mother would say,
Speaker 1: like when it comes to your work, because do you
Speaker 1: want to get to the end of your life and
Speaker 1: just say, hey, I shouldn't have spent that extra hour
Speaker 1: in the office, or I wish I would have spent
Speaker 1: more hours in the office. And so oftentimes we don't
Speaker 1: have those moments of pause but Threau says, take the
Speaker 1: moments because at the end you really would have wanted to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's one of the things I love about
Speaker 2: your work is you take philosophy and put it back
Speaker 2: into very practical terms that can cause us to do
Speaker 2: what I think is one of the most important things
Speaker 2: that we can do, which is to ask ourselves, like
Speaker 2: what am I doing and why am I doing it?
Speaker 2: Or what's important to me? And as my life oriented
Speaker 2: that direction, and to ask that question often because things change,
Speaker 2: you know, And I think that that practice is so fundamental,
Speaker 2: is that questioning of what am I doing and why
Speaker 2: am I doing it?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: Is it right? And I do love what Threau is
Speaker 2: pointing at, which is that we have more economic choice
Speaker 2: than we think. I mean, I interviewed a guy recently
Speaker 2: who wrote a book called The Pathless Path. His name
Speaker 2: is Paul Millard, and you might actually enjoy the book
Speaker 2: given your interest in work. But he got into I
Speaker 2: don't know what, Ivy League school and he grew up
Speaker 2: fairly lower class, but he got into an Ivy League school,
Speaker 2: which then led to graduate school, which led to like
Speaker 2: trying to work in the top consultant, you know, management
Speaker 2: consultancies and doing all of it and just did not
Speaker 2: like it, and so he quit basically and now lives
Speaker 2: far more simply doing far less. And you know, I
Speaker 2: asked him, I said, to the fact that you just
Speaker 2: had a child, does it change your perspective on the
Speaker 2: choices that you've made? And his answer was really interesting
Speaker 2: because the thought where my head was orienting was now
Speaker 2: I've got a child, I've got to be more secure,
Speaker 2: and his was, it makes me more confident in the
Speaker 2: choices I'm making because I am with my child far more.
Speaker 2: It sort of flipped that idea on its head of secure.
Speaker 2: You know, where my sort of standard middle class brain
Speaker 2: would go to, which is like, now I've got a child,
Speaker 2: I must provide His was we can get by with
Speaker 2: way less. What I want is to be with the child.
Speaker 2: And anyway, I just thought that was an interesting thing,
Speaker 2: and to see someone and talk with someone who's really
Speaker 2: making that choice, you know, who's making the choice to
Speaker 2: say like, I'm walking away from lots of money in
Speaker 2: order to have way less, which I mean, I guess
Speaker 2: is the same choice you make if you leave a
Speaker 2: job as a software executive and become a podcaster as
Speaker 2: a personal example might be a similar, similar type choice,
Speaker 2: but I did that at a different phase in my life.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's been so enlightening to write this book
Speaker 1: with my co author, Jonathan van Bell. And Jonathan is
Speaker 1: about my age. He's a little younger, but he's a
Speaker 1: frugillionaire he calls himself, which is basically he's frugal and
Speaker 1: so he feels like a millionaire and he works on
Speaker 1: projects that he wants to and does not worry about
Speaker 1: having a full time job. But he lives on next
Speaker 1: to nothing and he is happy that way. And what's
Speaker 1: interesting is that I had a father who was a
Speaker 1: banker at City Bank. He left when I was three.
Speaker 1: The money kind of ran out for my family, but
Speaker 1: he left me with a legacy of thinking that my
Speaker 1: self worth was bound up with how much money I
Speaker 1: was making. And what Jonathan's father, Jonathan Van Bell's father
Speaker 1: did was told him at a very early age, he said,
Speaker 1: the best type of job is the job that allows
Speaker 1: your mind to be free. And he works. Jonathan's father
Speaker 1: works as a driver for a hospital from what I understand,
Speaker 1: in other words, he shuttles patients back and forth all
Speaker 1: day and does not make a lot of money, but
Speaker 1: he has this mentality, a really Thorovian mentality, where you
Speaker 1: don't need that money, and when you don't need that much,
Speaker 1: it frees up your mind to work different types of jobs.
Speaker 1: And he likes the job that he has because it
Speaker 1: allows him to write songs in his head or to
Speaker 1: write poetry while he's waiting for his patients to come out.
Speaker 1: And I think that we oftentimes forget that when we
Speaker 1: just base our self worth so much on either monetary
Speaker 1: worth or status. And I think about Threau a little
Speaker 1: bit here, because Threau he never owned his own home.
Speaker 1: He lived with others, and that freed him up to
Speaker 1: actually work on jobs that did not pay that much.
Speaker 1: He never had kids, he did not have dependence, and
Speaker 1: we can think, oh, poor Threeau, but we can also
Speaker 1: think that that was a conscious decision to sort of
Speaker 1: limit the economic necessities of life so that you could
Speaker 1: make different choices about the work that you take on.
Speaker 2: We all know that genuine self compassion and self love
Speaker 2: are absolutely crucial in the quest for healing, transformation and
Speaker 2: everyday growth. But what if we struggle to get there.
Speaker 2: One of the most powerful, yet effortless ways to settle
Speaker 2: our nervous system and reconnect with our true selves is
Speaker 2: by spending quality time in nature. It's for this reason
Speaker 2: that this August I'll be offering an in person Awakening
Speaker 2: in the Outdoors retreat at the Beautiful Cropollu Center. This summer,
Speaker 2: I'll be co teaching the retreat with Ralph de l Rosa,
Speaker 2: who's a three time guest of the podcast, author, psychologist,
Speaker 2: meditation teacher and friend. During these five days together, will
Speaker 2: enjoy hikes, outdoor meditations, art, insightful workshops, and lively discussion.
Speaker 2: Our goal is for you to walk away feeling restored,
Speaker 2: with a firm awareness of new resources and a new
Speaker 2: relationship with the gifts nature holds for us. To learn
Speaker 2: more about this special retreat and sign up, go to
Speaker 2: one you feed dot net slash nature. That is deeply
Speaker 2: countercultural to our general world and culture because we are
Speaker 2: all embedded so deeply in that mindset of more money
Speaker 2: is a good thing, and more things are a good thing,
Speaker 2: and fancier things, And it really is a question that
Speaker 2: I'm always sort of asking, which is like what is
Speaker 2: enough and what causes happiness? And you get used to
Speaker 2: a certain station, right like, oh, well, now I've lived
Speaker 2: in a place like this. It feels hard to go backwards,
Speaker 2: but you can. You know, those choices can be made,
Speaker 2: but they are countercultural. But I do think you're right
Speaker 2: that we are at a moment where more and more
Speaker 2: people are asking themselves those questions, and this idea that
Speaker 2: we have to do what we're doing is not as
Speaker 2: true as we think it is, right. I mean, we
Speaker 2: may have to do what we're doing in order to
Speaker 2: keep what we currently have right, we get caught up
Speaker 2: in this standard of living situation. But those choices can
Speaker 2: be made differently, but they're hard choices to make, you know,
Speaker 2: I think culturally, oftentimes, our family, you know, our spouses
Speaker 2: might have very different opinions. You know, to make this
Speaker 2: choice to say I'm going to scale this all back
Speaker 2: right economically is a choice that I think takes a
Speaker 2: lot of courage and a lot of thought.
Speaker 1: My wife, Kathleen is in corporate America, and in corporate
Speaker 1: America you don't have tenure, and so you change jobs
Speaker 1: pretty often, maybe every two years or every year, every
Speaker 1: three years, something like that, and so this question about
Speaker 1: like which job do I want to take is on
Speaker 1: our mind pretty often. In this sort of last iteration
Speaker 1: of job selections. I said, you know, we could move
Speaker 1: out of the house that we have and we can
Speaker 1: live anywhere who live in a much smaller house, and
Speaker 1: it might allow us to pick different jobs. And that
Speaker 1: never really crossed either of our minds before that point,
Speaker 1: and it was thanks to Throw Thereau basically says, you
Speaker 1: can live in any type of house right that you want,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden your choices change. And that's,
Speaker 1: like you said, it's a very humbling and very disorienting
Speaker 1: thought because everything that you thought was so stable, and
Speaker 1: that what really mattered in life is this sense of
Speaker 1: security and having a particular type of home and car
Speaker 1: and all the acouterment of life, like that stuff doesn't
Speaker 1: factor that forcefully into what makes one feel happy and
Speaker 1: meaningful and flourishing. And so thereat's a nice reminder to
Speaker 1: say you can live otherwise. He walked through our backyard,
Speaker 1: throw and Emerson two hundred and some years ago, and
Speaker 1: there were large what Thereau calls family farms in the area.
Speaker 1: And these family farms were not just subsistence farming, but
Speaker 1: I mean they were surplus farming, taking vegetables all over
Speaker 1: New England, and Thereau watched these farmers kill themselves on
Speaker 1: their family farms. But they were very respectable members of
Speaker 1: the community, and they had these amazingly large farms. And
Speaker 1: Thereau said to his readers in Walden, I never want
Speaker 1: a family farm. The cost is simply too high, existentially speaking,
Speaker 1: morally speaking, personally speaking. And I think that that's a
Speaker 1: really important message for us today.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think one of the things we hear
Speaker 2: about the gig economy these days, and we often hear
Speaker 2: the negatives of it, right, that people don't have benefits,
Speaker 2: they don't have steady work, and so there are definite
Speaker 2: downsides to it, right. But the flip side of benefits
Speaker 2: and steady work and all that is sort of a
Speaker 2: full time job. And I think if you want to
Speaker 2: be more intentional, the opportunities are better than they have
Speaker 2: been in the past. You know. I often when I
Speaker 2: was in a software world, which was originally software startups
Speaker 2: but eventually became consulting in big corporations on very complex
Speaker 2: software projects. You know, one of the things that I'd
Speaker 2: bemoaned frequently was that, like, what I wish I could
Speaker 2: do is just say, you know, what I would like
Speaker 2: to work twenty five hours a week here, I would
Speaker 2: like to take this down a notch, but that wasn't
Speaker 2: sort of on offer in standard corporate America. That's not
Speaker 2: the way it works. You just either work full time
Speaker 2: or you don't work. I mean, like in the sort
Speaker 2: of professional level I was at, and I think that
Speaker 2: has started to change. And so I do think there
Speaker 2: are some positives about the way the work world has changed,
Speaker 2: and there are also negatives, but there are positives if
Speaker 2: we are trying to be a little bit more intentional
Speaker 2: and craft a life, I think I think there are
Speaker 2: choices now that we're not around ten or fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1: I think you're right. And I think also the way
Speaker 1: that the pandemic made everything virtual, and the way that
Speaker 1: work time and clocking in really became a thing of
Speaker 1: the past, and efficiencies of scale really began to matter
Speaker 1: a lot more. And the way that if I can
Speaker 1: get a task finished on my own time at two
Speaker 1: in the morning, because I'm a night owl, that's how
Speaker 1: it's going to be. And that I think is Thorovian
Speaker 1: in the sense that his body and his natural rhythms
Speaker 1: determined what sort of work he was going to do.
Speaker 1: If you read Walden. You notice he's working the whole time,
Speaker 1: but his days are partitioned in this very natural way.
Speaker 1: So he'd get up and he'd read, and then he'd
Speaker 1: go out and plant before it gets too hot, and
Speaker 1: then when it did get hot, he'd come back and write.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's this ebb and flow of life which
Speaker 1: just suits certain types of people and certain types of bodies.
Speaker 1: And listening to that ebb and flow on a very
Speaker 1: personal level is very hard to do if you have
Speaker 1: in a certain corporate brick and mortar establishment where you
Speaker 1: have to clock in it a certain day and you
Speaker 1: have to go to lunch at a certain time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you say in the book today most of
Speaker 2: us are threaded by the TikTok, TikTok, right, time to
Speaker 2: wake up, time to shower. You say, the clock is
Speaker 2: after you, a crocodile that devours your adult life. I
Speaker 2: love that, and I was thinking about it because I
Speaker 2: work for myself. I get to choose kind of what
Speaker 2: I do when I do it, and yet the clock
Speaker 2: is still it's there, you know, it's like, well, the
Speaker 2: time to show for this, time to show for that.
Speaker 2: But it's been interesting for me to internalize and it's
Speaker 2: taken me several years to really do it. I think
Speaker 2: like I could choose to schedule interviews in nine in
Speaker 2: the evening if I wanted. That's not what I have
Speaker 2: done traditionally, and there may be less people would be
Speaker 2: willing to talk to me, But that is a choice
Speaker 2: I can make. I could upend all these things that
Speaker 2: seem like they're defaults. And I love what you said earlier,
Speaker 2: where we import, you know, corporate beliefs into working as
Speaker 2: a professor. You know, it's amazing the beliefs that I
Speaker 2: imported from so many years working in a standard sort
Speaker 2: of software development profession. How much of that I imported
Speaker 2: into working for myself. I just feel like, even four
Speaker 2: years in, I'm still unraveling so much of that learning
Speaker 2: to be more deliberate and thoughtful.
Speaker 1: I have so many responses to that comment. I think
Speaker 1: that if you think about the way that education has
Speaker 1: been structured as a certain type of corporation, like I
Speaker 1: entered philosophy to teach. I love teaching, but the way
Speaker 1: that incentive structures work at lots of universities, they don't
Speaker 1: incentifize teaching. In fact, you're doing better if you teach
Speaker 1: fewer students, less classes, and you publish more the way
Speaker 1: that corporate life is then internalized and reflected back into
Speaker 1: spheres of work that we really don't expect that occur
Speaker 1: in So that's one comment. The second comment that I
Speaker 1: make is that Threau goes to Walden in order to
Speaker 1: he says, improve the nick of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that phrase
Speaker 2: with like, I don't fully understand what that means.
Speaker 1: So each of us, as surely as I am sitting here,
Speaker 1: time is passing. I'm getting closer to death. Like that's
Speaker 1: just the fact of the matter. Like, life goes in
Speaker 1: one direction to the end, and each of us have
Speaker 1: a chance to make those increments of time that lead
Speaker 1: to our grave more or less meaningful. And when he
Speaker 1: says improve the nick of time, what he's actually saying
Speaker 1: is can I make those moments that lead to my
Speaker 1: own demise more meaningful in the inter And that's really important.
Speaker 1: I mean, when Socrates says that philosophy is preparation for death,
Speaker 1: it's just a euphemism for philosophy is figuring out how
Speaker 1: to live a meaningful life so that when you get there,
Speaker 1: you're not in big trouble. That's what he means, I
Speaker 1: think by improve the nick of time. And I think
Speaker 1: that comment about the alligator and the clock, I mean,
Speaker 1: I was watching Peter Pan with my kids, and for
Speaker 1: the first time ever, did I notice that Captain Hook
Speaker 1: looks a heck of a lot like Peter's dad, who
Speaker 1: works too much. And that clock, which is inside that
Speaker 1: alligator who bid off Captain Hook's hand, is always after
Speaker 1: the father. The clock is always after the adults. And
Speaker 1: I think that that's a lesson that sort of throw
Speaker 1: wanted us to take home, which is pay attention to
Speaker 1: the clock because it's coming for us no matter what.
Speaker 2: Let's pivot away from Threau for a minute. You've written
Speaker 2: about a number of philosophers, one of which is Nietzsche.
Speaker 2: Am I saying that correct? Yeah, Nietzsche, I butchered that
Speaker 2: for about the first twenty five years of my life.
Speaker 2: That's what happens when you're somebody who kind of reads
Speaker 2: a lot but never went to school or anything, so
Speaker 2: you never know how anything is actually said. Anyway, that's
Speaker 2: off topic, but I'm tying this back to what we're
Speaker 2: talking about, because in Nietzsche you talk about something called
Speaker 2: the transvaluation of values. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you asked, and I'll try to also
Speaker 1: tie it to the Transcendentalists, because Nietzsche is reading Ralph
Speaker 1: Waldo Emerson, and we oftentimes think about Nietzsche as the
Speaker 1: person who said God is dead. But you know who
Speaker 1: actually said it. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson. He said
Speaker 1: it first. And what Emerson and Nietzsche, then Nietzsche in
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties was saying, is that our belief in
Speaker 1: institutions like the church, like standard political models, like standard
Speaker 1: forms of education or traditional forms of education, these institutions
Speaker 1: which we had often turned to to give us a
Speaker 1: sense of value. In fact, during our day and age
Speaker 1: and even his these institutions and the respect for these
Speaker 1: institutions was waning. That's what he meant when he said
Speaker 1: God was dead. And in the face of that lack
Speaker 1: of meaning, that vacuum of human significance, humans like you
Speaker 1: and me and all of your listeners are tasked with
Speaker 1: making meaning for themselves, which is where the transvaluation of
Speaker 1: values comes in. The transvaluation of values, for Nietzsche and
Speaker 1: also for Emerson, was the task of figuring out how
Speaker 1: to create a moral system and a fountain of significance
Speaker 1: for individuals in the absence of tradition. The way that
Speaker 1: he does this, at least for Nietzsche, is to figure
Speaker 1: out how to live in such a way that we
Speaker 1: emphasize creativity, feelings of power, originality, flourishing life over resentment, guilt, fear,
Speaker 1: and materialistic greed. And the transvaluation of values is overturning
Speaker 1: the values of the past and recreating values for yourself.
Speaker 1: So to overcome it's a process of overcoming the past
Speaker 1: and even overcoming yourself to some extent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it ties back to everything we've
Speaker 2: been talking about with the row too, right. It's a
Speaker 2: question of saying what matters to me? What do I
Speaker 2: believe in? What work life balance which is not a
Speaker 2: great term, but do I want to have? How important
Speaker 2: is money to me versus time with my family? Like,
Speaker 2: these are all individual questions. They have to be worked
Speaker 2: out by the individual, and I think that's kind of
Speaker 2: what is being pointed to there in the Nietzsche. I
Speaker 2: want to go one more step with that because there's
Speaker 2: an idea. I think there's a term that is used
Speaker 2: called the genealogy of morals, which I believe means looking
Speaker 2: at where did I get the morals and beliefs that
Speaker 2: I have, Where have they filtered down from? And what
Speaker 2: are actually mine? And I think this is a very
Speaker 2: confusing process. And it's confusing because and I'm going to
Speaker 2: read something else that you wrote, which is you say,
Speaker 2: as it turns out, to become who you are is
Speaker 2: not about finding who you have always been looking for.
Speaker 2: It is not about separating you off from everything else.
Speaker 2: It is not about existing as you truly are for
Speaker 2: all time. The self does not lie passively in wait
Speaker 2: for us to discover it Selfhood is made in the active,
Speaker 2: ongoing process. And I think this is what makes trying
Speaker 2: to figure out what our values are oftentimes very confusing,
Speaker 2: because we are conditioned so deeply and thoroughly by so
Speaker 2: many countless causes and conditions that to figure out what
Speaker 2: mine is and to try and tweeze it apart from
Speaker 2: what came before, feels to me often impossible.
Speaker 1: It's good. One of the problems is that the investigation
Speaker 1: to figure out where you came from is always enacted
Speaker 1: by a person namely me or you in your case,
Speaker 1: that was given birth to and is in large part
Speaker 1: those very instances of the past.
Speaker 2: That's a good analogy, yes.
Speaker 1: And so it's kind of like a snake trying to
Speaker 1: catch its own tail, right, And we should be comfortable
Speaker 1: with that fact because we're never ever going to get
Speaker 1: out of it. So we try to figure out where
Speaker 1: I came from or what sort of inheritances took on
Speaker 1: from my father or my grandfather or my deep past.
Speaker 1: And those efforts are really valuable because they give us
Speaker 1: some sort of insight about both our limitations but also
Speaker 1: what might enable us to move forward. And so that
Speaker 1: process of looking back to try to figure out why
Speaker 1: do I believe what I do, Why do I value
Speaker 1: this and not that, Why are my most cherished beliefs
Speaker 1: my most cherished beliefs. Those questions are all good Nietzschean
Speaker 1: and I would also say Emersonian and Throvian questions. But
Speaker 1: the idea that you would come to a single, one
Speaker 1: and fast answer to those questions and that you would
Speaker 1: be done the process, that's where all three of the
Speaker 1: thinkers believe that you've gone awry. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you don't end up and you say, oh, now I
Speaker 1: understand my past completely. I can move forward to victorious
Speaker 1: Promethean self. No, like that does not work. It's an
Speaker 1: ongoing process of revision. Emerson says, I am but an experimenter,
Speaker 1: and he says that in what I like one of
Speaker 1: my favorite essays called circles. I'm an experimenter. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: go in circles, right, I return everything, Emerson says, I
Speaker 1: unsettle everything is Emerson's words, and I think that that's
Speaker 1: one of the upshots of Nietzsche's philosophy and why he
Speaker 1: admires Emerson so much is that Emerson and Thureau were
Speaker 1: willing to unsettle things, even themselves, and that takes a
Speaker 1: great amount of courage, patience, and humility. I think, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and oftentimes I'm not up for the task. But it's
Speaker 1: hard work. But you have to be patient with yourself.
Speaker 1: I think I.
Speaker 2: Love everything you said there, particularly that becoming comfortable with
Speaker 2: the fact that it's an ongoing process, that we are
Speaker 2: an evolving creature, and in many ways we are as
Speaker 2: you were talking about. I was thinking a little bit
Speaker 2: about like quantum physics, like the minute you observe it,
Speaker 2: you change it, and you are the observer of yourself,
Speaker 2: and that's an ongoing sort of dynamic process, which is
Speaker 2: why I often think about when it comes to values
Speaker 2: and what's important to us, that asking that question often
Speaker 2: is really important, instead of the way that many of
Speaker 2: us think about it, which is like I'm going to
Speaker 2: go off on a mountaintop for three days and write
Speaker 2: out my mission statement and then I'm done. You know,
Speaker 2: that's a good exercise. But the recognition that I sort
Speaker 2: of have to keep interrogating that at least has been
Speaker 2: my experience. If I want to be dynamic and alive
Speaker 2: and evolving is to consistently be saying what matters to me?
Speaker 2: Why does it matter to me? Does it really matter
Speaker 2: to me? Knowing that you'll never totally tweeze it apart, right,
Speaker 2: you know, the minute you're like, now I'm letting go
Speaker 2: of the values of my parents, and I'm like, but
Speaker 2: oh god, but then I adopted the values of like
Speaker 2: that cool skateboarder in seventh grade, Like oh, crying out
Speaker 2: loud telling me that, you know, Derek Newle has been
Speaker 2: influencing my my sense of what's important for fourteen years now.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just this constant, funny process. That's why
Speaker 2: I love that Buddhist idea of countless causes and conditions,
Speaker 2: like you can't figure it out, but you can make
Speaker 2: decisions and informed decisions and have a way of living
Speaker 2: as close as you can to what you value.
Speaker 1: I also think that in this process that you're so
Speaker 1: nicely describing about self recovery, discovery, actualization, this process, you
Speaker 1: do have feelings about the process, and tapping into how
Speaker 1: you feel about the process, I think is really important.
Speaker 1: So I know, for example, that I'm getting somewhere if
Speaker 1: I feel uncomfortable, like genuinely uncomfortable, and I know that
Speaker 1: when I get scared in the process, or I see
Speaker 1: something that's scared or that I'm afraid of, that that's
Speaker 1: a moment when I'm supposed to go toward the thought
Speaker 1: rather than away from the thought. And that I think
Speaker 1: is present in both Emerson and Throw but also in Nietzsche.
Speaker 1: So Nietzsche says we must have courage for the forbidden
Speaker 1: and forbidden questions. The forbidden questions are those that we
Speaker 1: don't even feel comfortable asking to ourselves, so it's hard
Speaker 1: to eat and give voice to them. But if I
Speaker 1: feel like they're forbidden, if I feel scared, then I
Speaker 1: know that there's something there that I need to take
Speaker 1: a closer look at, because it's probably the case that
Speaker 1: there might be some sort of prohibition or gag order
Speaker 1: on me asking this question, and why is that? And
Speaker 1: that's the type of Nietzschean move that I think is
Speaker 1: really useful at least in my own life.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that is a beautiful place for us
Speaker 2: to wrap up. John is same as the last time.
Speaker 2: I love talking with you. I really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 2: And again your latest book is called Henry Att Work
Speaker 2: Thoroau on Making a Living and I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed having you on.
Speaker 1: Oh thanks so much. It's such a wonderful program.
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