Speaker 1: Joy has aboutness about it. I rejoice over something right.
Speaker 1: This is not a simply feel pleasure, but I rejoice
Speaker 1: over something good that has happened. Wow.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good Wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Miroslav Wolf.
Speaker 2: He's the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale
Speaker 2: Divinity School and director of the Yale Center for Faith
Speaker 2: and Culture. He's published and edited nine books and over
Speaker 2: sixty scholarly articles. Today, Eric and Miroslav discuss his book
Speaker 2: Life Worth living a guide to what matters most him Miroslav.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: It's great to be with you.
Speaker 3: I'm really excited to have you on. We're going to
Speaker 3: be discussing your book, which is called Life Worth Living
Speaker 3: in a few moments. But we're going to start like
Speaker 3: we always do, with the parable and the parable. There's
Speaker 3: a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, represents
Speaker 3: things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other
Speaker 3: is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 3: hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about
Speaker 3: it for a second. They look up at their grandparents.
Speaker 3: They say, well, which one wins, and the grandparent says,
Speaker 3: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 3: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 3: your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, that is a really wonderful parable, very
Speaker 1: very simple and at the same time very profound. I
Speaker 1: love the parable. I think immediately what comes to mind
Speaker 1: is that these two sides that we have each in
Speaker 1: our personality, that the relationship to the good is the
Speaker 1: one of feeding, strengthening it, making it thrive. And that's
Speaker 1: where I see the concentration of the story to be.
Speaker 1: And the negative is just not given food to eat,
Speaker 1: not just given resources. And it seems to me, rather
Speaker 1: than simply combating the evil, as we tend to do
Speaker 1: most of the time, feeding the good is much more important.
Speaker 1: The other thing that occurred to me, and I mean,
Speaker 1: we could have a whole part hour talking about that story.
Speaker 1: But the other thing that occurred to me about the
Speaker 1: story is that the grandson, I think, in the typical
Speaker 1: way in which a child would and in which many
Speaker 1: of us would ask the question which one wins? But
Speaker 1: the moral of the story is that if each of
Speaker 1: us is that that actually there is no victory to
Speaker 1: be had strictly speaking, but it is how does one
Speaker 1: manage to give the upper hand to the good and
Speaker 1: to strength and increase the good? Rather than thinking, if
Speaker 1: I haven't managed to come to a victory, I haven't
Speaker 1: yet done what I'm supposed to have done. And that
Speaker 1: seems to me, in its modesty, this kind of approach
Speaker 1: seems to me both very hopeful approach. That is, every
Speaker 1: small step of the increase of good. It matters important
Speaker 1: is not necessarily all that matters.
Speaker 3: That's a very thoughtful reading of the parable. When you
Speaker 3: were talking about giving more to the good than the bad,
Speaker 3: it reminded me of an article I read a couple
Speaker 3: days ago. And this isn't anything new, but it was
Speaker 3: just saying it again, which is that there are certain
Speaker 3: figures out there in the media space, particularly online, that
Speaker 3: their whole bit is to say something outrageous enough to
Speaker 3: get everybody who disagrees with them to start disagreeing with them,
Speaker 3: and it just amplifies and amplifies and amplifies the message.
Speaker 3: And in essence, the article was arguing, again nothing new,
Speaker 3: that we are giving these people a platform by arguing
Speaker 3: against the bad in their case, we would do better
Speaker 3: just if we collectively ignored them. And it made me
Speaker 3: as you were sort of talking about, you know, giving
Speaker 3: our attention to the good, it just made me think
Speaker 3: of that article I just read the other day.
Speaker 1: It also reminds us that what we do and how
Speaker 1: we approach our our own in our lives is connected
Speaker 1: with how the setup is how society is organized, in
Speaker 1: this particular case, social media, and they want you to
Speaker 1: emphasize outrage they want you to bash negative because it
Speaker 1: finds more echoes in the wider audiences, and in that sense,
Speaker 1: they lead us astray in our own inner struggle. So
Speaker 1: the inner struggle about the soul is also struggle, but
Speaker 1: the conditions in which we live in what will feed
Speaker 1: us from outside and not just what will feed us
Speaker 1: from inside.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So when I saw the title of your book, I
Speaker 3: saw it in a library. I love to be in libraries,
Speaker 3: and I saw it and I was like, immediately, Okay,
Speaker 3: I have to have this person or these people on
Speaker 3: the show. Because when I started this podcast and it's
Speaker 3: been boy, almost ten and a half.
Speaker 1: Years now, congratulations, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I know, it's amazing. About ten and a half years ago,
Speaker 3: I wrote this line that said it takes conscious, consistent
Speaker 3: and creative effort to make a life worth living. That's
Speaker 3: in our intro that you hear every time this podcast runs,
Speaker 3: Life worth living. So it's obviously a concept that resonated
Speaker 3: with me way back then. As I've thought about that
Speaker 3: phrasing over the years, I still like it, but it
Speaker 3: raises a question to me, and I'm just curious how
Speaker 3: you think about this. It presupposes that there is some
Speaker 3: life that is not worth living, And I wonder how
Speaker 3: you think about that. Does that come to your mind
Speaker 3: at all when you hear that phrase life worth living?
Speaker 3: That raises the possibility that there are lives that are
Speaker 3: not worth living.
Speaker 1: It does, and often when I speak about those issues,
Speaker 1: you can almost see in the eyes of the audience
Speaker 1: a kind of flash us of fear that the very
Speaker 1: talk about life worth living might imply that there are
Speaker 1: lives that are lived in the way that they are
Speaker 1: not worthy of being lived. And I think for me
Speaker 1: it's always important to emphasize, and we do that at
Speaker 1: a very end of the book, that each of the lives,
Speaker 1: each of the persons is infinitely valuable, and just because
Speaker 1: of the value of each individual, we have to deliberate
Speaker 1: about what kind of life matches this infinite value that
Speaker 1: each of us has. And I think of these ways
Speaker 1: of failing our humanity in some ways, which is also
Speaker 1: a very difficult thing to say, But nonetheless I think
Speaker 1: it's not difficult to illustrate, be illustrated at the very beginning.
Speaker 1: I think it's a very beginning. By invoking the figure
Speaker 1: of Albert Speer, Hitler's architect, who was seduced by Hitler
Speaker 1: as a young man by the promise of creating works
Speaker 1: of architecture that the world hasn't seen since Roman times,
Speaker 1: and then he got himself involved in what is deeply
Speaker 1: inhumane project. Fantastically successful as an architect, but failing as
Speaker 1: a human being. Now that's a big scale failure, I think.
Speaker 1: But I think when I look at my life and
Speaker 1: when I ask myself where it is that I'm failing,
Speaker 1: I'm atul failing in trivial kinds of ways. I don't
Speaker 1: take it seriously enough. I let myself be simply taken.
Speaker 1: Whatever it's before me takes me. And that seems to
Speaker 1: me the other very common and less egregious, but nonetheless
Speaker 1: a serious failure of our humanity. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, you made the Nazi reference, and it made me
Speaker 3: think of a recent movie you may have seen. I
Speaker 3: think it was called Zone of Interest. It's an amazing
Speaker 3: film and it takes place across the street from Auschwitz,
Speaker 3: and it's in the home of the director of Auschwitz.
Speaker 3: And the thing that's crazy about it, to me, the
Speaker 3: most amazing part of it is his wife, who is
Speaker 3: just focused on the things that we all want, you know,
Speaker 3: a happy family, a nice home, those things are what's
Speaker 3: so important to her that she's ignoring what's happening literally
Speaker 3: one hundred yards away. I mean, you never once in
Speaker 3: the movie see the inside of the concentration camp, and
Speaker 3: yet it's always there, this looming and I mean, I
Speaker 3: think the obvious thing that people take away from it,
Speaker 3: and I think it's part of the point of it,
Speaker 3: is this sort of banality of evil. And I think
Speaker 3: what you're saying is the reduced version of that, which
Speaker 3: is that my little choices may not fall into the
Speaker 3: realm of evil in that way, right, but they don't
Speaker 3: very often fall into the realm of good. And You've
Speaker 3: got a line somewhere in the book that has been
Speaker 3: bothering me since I read it, and it was Netflick
Speaker 3: Binges may not be evil, but in the final accounting,
Speaker 3: there's something regrettable about ours simply fritted away with no
Speaker 3: connection to the good we could and ought to do.
Speaker 3: And that's a damning sort of line. I mean, books
Speaker 3: like yours, I love reading them, and I also find
Speaker 3: them unsettling. It's like you reference Peter Singer a lot
Speaker 3: in the book. I read Peter Singer, I'm like, Oh,
Speaker 3: for God's sake, like he challenges you so profoundly on
Speaker 3: are you living a good life?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think to me it's important to kind of
Speaker 1: put things in the human scale. We can always place
Speaker 1: the demand so high that none of us can jump
Speaker 1: the hoop. On the other hand, we can excuse ourselves.
Speaker 1: And I think of that wife of that concentration camp.
Speaker 1: What was he officer there? He was in charge of
Speaker 1: concentration camp. I think of her, and in some ways
Speaker 1: you can say she was doing good, not just as
Speaker 1: maybe frittering time that we do. In varieties of ways.
Speaker 1: She's doing ordinary good things in life. And yet by
Speaker 1: doing only that that there is a kind of failure
Speaker 1: that shadows that goodness that she wants to instantiate by
Speaker 1: being blind to what's happening one hundred yards away.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I want to get into the book. There's so
Speaker 3: much great material in it. The core of the book
Speaker 3: is this question. You call it the question, which you
Speaker 3: could phrase, you know, what is a good life? What
Speaker 3: matters most? What is a life worth living? Talk to
Speaker 3: me about the importance of this question.
Speaker 1: So it dawned on me interestingly enough about ten and
Speaker 1: a half years ago, eleven years ago or so, when
Speaker 1: you started thinking about those questions, I did in a
Speaker 1: kind of concentrated way when we started designing this course
Speaker 1: we teach at Yale, and it was designed because of
Speaker 1: how I see the higher education going and leaving that
Speaker 1: question behind, and culture more generally doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: But occurred to me then and much I think it's
Speaker 1: true in our everyday life, we spend most of our
Speaker 1: times thinking about the means of getting from point A
Speaker 1: to point B, and then traveling from point A to
Speaker 1: point B. The means then to life ends up being
Speaker 1: the thing that we spend most time about reflect about it,
Speaker 1: and we have become, in varieties of domains, truly experts
Speaker 1: in means. I mean, just think you can send a
Speaker 1: vehicle to the other side of the moon, gather rocks there,
Speaker 1: bring the thing back down here, and we can inspect
Speaker 1: what's going there. Means to achieve that are absolutely staggering.
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine them, And in so many other
Speaker 1: ways we are doing just that, but we forget to
Speaker 1: ask the question what end is worth achieving coming to
Speaker 1: going to? So we design our life around getting from
Speaker 1: point A to point B, But what is the point
Speaker 1: B that I should be at? What organizes my life,
Speaker 1: what gives it purpose, what gives it a direction, so
Speaker 1: that actually I'm not frittering way wasting my time pursuing
Speaker 1: inhuman goals, as I am spending so much energy, so
Speaker 1: much intelligence in trying to get to the point that
Speaker 1: I wish to get. So that to me ended up
Speaker 1: being the central question, and in the essence, that is
Speaker 1: the question. The question is what's worth wanting? And that
Speaker 1: question of what is worth for me to want? Behind
Speaker 1: that question is what kind of human being is it
Speaker 1: worth being? Who am I? Who should I be? As
Speaker 1: a human being?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a big question. You have a line that says,
Speaker 3: if this all feels a little above your pay grade,
Speaker 3: it just means you understand the stakes, right, and it is.
Speaker 3: You also go on to say something that I think
Speaker 3: is important and it's very fundamental to my approach to things.
Speaker 3: I'm actually writing a book that's sort of focused on
Speaker 3: this idea of little by little a little becomes a lot.
Speaker 3: And you say that this question can be overwhelming, but
Speaker 3: we can break it down. What are some of the
Speaker 3: ways to think about breaking that question down? What sort
Speaker 3: of human is it worth being? Is the big question?
Speaker 3: What are some of the ways we make that smaller well.
Speaker 1: What we generally do. And we have about six or
Speaker 1: so questions that guide the students as they read various
Speaker 1: texts from various traditions, and that's how we teach that course.
Speaker 1: And the three central questions. First questions are, so, how
Speaker 1: do I imagine a flourishing life? If somebody asked me,
Speaker 1: what's a flourishing life? And then we say, well, that
Speaker 1: flourishing life will have at least three components. One element
Speaker 1: of that life would be that I act in the
Speaker 1: right way. That's a question of my agency, what defines
Speaker 1: what goals I should pursue. But I am then active agent.
Speaker 1: The other second aspect is the circumstances of life. What
Speaker 1: does it mean for life to go well? Not just
Speaker 1: what does it mean for me to act rightly? But
Speaker 1: what does it mean for life to go well? And
Speaker 1: I imagine myself as if I was a plant, and
Speaker 1: then ask myself what kind of soil, what kind of
Speaker 1: environment would I need, and what kind of nutrients would
Speaker 1: I need in order to live a life that is
Speaker 1: truly worth living. So agency and then circumstances in which
Speaker 1: we find ourselves, and finally a kind of emotional responses
Speaker 1: that we have. And some of those emotional responses are
Speaker 1: almost reactions, but other ones. In each of these reactions,
Speaker 1: there's also element of agency. How do I respond at
Speaker 1: an emotional level to what is going on in my life?
Speaker 1: And I need to have these three things aligned, agency,
Speaker 1: right kinds of circumstances, and write emotional responses, and then
Speaker 1: I can say, well, this is a life that is
Speaker 1: worth living. This is how it looks. It has these
Speaker 1: three components in a certain way. We asked the question.
Speaker 1: I asked the question often, well, what reasons do you
Speaker 1: have to live a life like that? Are there good reasons?
Speaker 1: Then the important question for me what kind of help
Speaker 1: do you need? And in this story parable with which
Speaker 1: we open this conversation, which you open regularly the conversations,
Speaker 1: it is well, the help is to have proper food
Speaker 1: to feed the one and make sure that you don't
Speaker 1: feed the other. The other question, also that eraise, is
Speaker 1: what happens when you fail? What do you do then?
Speaker 1: And there are different ways to answering that. So we
Speaker 1: have this set of questions that all point you to
Speaker 1: answer and give a shape to the life that is
Speaker 1: truly worth living. And people will disagree on that, but
Speaker 1: at the same time it will focus them to ask
Speaker 1: the question and then we can debate the answers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of the things I loved in the book.
Speaker 3: You start off by stating your biases. You personally, and
Speaker 3: I believe the other authors are Christian, your theologians, so
Speaker 3: you have a certain bias. And yet throughout the book,
Speaker 3: I thought you guys did a really nice job of
Speaker 3: presenting differing viewpoints around all of these questions from different
Speaker 3: religious traditions, from different philosophers, Like I think there's a
Speaker 3: very balanced menu there if we're talking about feeding right,
Speaker 3: that your good wolf can choose from a variety of
Speaker 3: different options that are there, and I thought you guys
Speaker 3: did a nice job with that. I want to come
Speaker 3: back to this agency, circumstances and effect because I think
Speaker 3: it's a beautiful way of thinking of things, but I
Speaker 3: think to fully understand it, I'm going to ask you
Speaker 3: to make an analogy that you make in the book,
Speaker 3: which is between the game poker and the game war
Speaker 3: as an analogy for sort of our lives. You're making
Speaker 3: the point that in the game of poker, there's a
Speaker 3: certain amount of skill that you bring to it, and
Speaker 3: there's a certain amount of chance. And then you also
Speaker 3: make the point the game of war, right, you just
Speaker 3: flip over one card after the other. But even within
Speaker 3: that there's a certain amount of choice, which is like
Speaker 3: how are you as you play? Which I think is
Speaker 3: talking about how much agency and control over circumstances we
Speaker 3: actually have. So I just thought it was a good metaphor.
Speaker 1: That rose out of the frustration of one of our writers, Ryan,
Speaker 1: who's a very good poker player. He had to play
Speaker 1: with his son war and happily did. Right. But it's
Speaker 1: very different, very much chance versus kind of skill in
Speaker 1: the game. You know, there are elements of chance in
Speaker 1: our lives. We don't choose our parents, we don't choose
Speaker 1: where those our parents live, We don't choose so many
Speaker 1: other things in our lives, and they place a kind
Speaker 1: of constraint upon our life. But much of what we do,
Speaker 1: much of how we think about ourselves, much of our
Speaker 1: exterior lives and interior lives, are subject to our choices
Speaker 1: and to our deliberation, and our subject also to engagement
Speaker 1: over longer periods of time. Again, in the story in
Speaker 1: the parable of the two wolves, which one you feed,
Speaker 1: feeding is not just a one time event. Feeding is
Speaker 1: what happens over the course of a life, and the
Speaker 1: strength of one depends on how much attention in terms
Speaker 1: of feeding it we give it. And in that sense,
Speaker 1: those are the important choices that we are making, including
Speaker 1: for many of us, the choice in which direction we
Speaker 1: would go. That is to say, the great religious tradition
Speaker 1: and great philosophical traditions always assume that you can step back,
Speaker 1: and that you can ask the question, am I on
Speaker 1: the right track? Or do I need something like a
Speaker 1: significant turnaround? In Christian tradition, we talk about it as
Speaker 1: a kind of conversion, but I have friends who used
Speaker 1: to be Christians but have become Atheists, whether Marxist or
Speaker 1: Nie chance. That was also a conversion of sorts, version
Speaker 1: from something and turning towards something else. In all of
Speaker 1: these areas, we have agency, and we can deliberate and act.
Speaker 3: You guys say in the book, first you have some
Speaker 3: responsibility for the shape of your life. Second, that responsibility
Speaker 3: is not unlimited. It's constrained. And I just love that
Speaker 3: because it's pointing away from either of the extremes. Right,
Speaker 3: It's very easy to be like, well, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: just a product of my circumstances. And you know, I
Speaker 3: have the genetics I have, and I grew up where
Speaker 3: I grew up, and I went to the schools I
Speaker 3: went to. Or it's very easy for people to take
Speaker 3: the other thing, where they're like, well, you can do
Speaker 3: whatever you want. I'm like, well, no, it's actually both.
Speaker 3: It's both those things. Right. We have some degree of agency,
Speaker 3: and we have some constraints to that agency, even in
Speaker 3: the simplest way of you wouldn't be able to choose
Speaker 3: Christianity if you've never been exposed to it, right, And
Speaker 3: there are people in the world that are in that circumstance.
Speaker 3: So you know, even what we're exposed to is a
Speaker 3: constraint on our choices.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I think it's very important for us not
Speaker 1: to follow in either of these two extremes. In a
Speaker 1: certain tradition, respectable tradition which I admire, for instance, Stoic tradition,
Speaker 1: the sense of agency is such that actually want not
Speaker 1: to be able to live unperturbed life, irrespective of any
Speaker 1: circumstances that appear. That's a worthy goal. But most of us,
Speaker 1: even after long practice, find ourselves not quite able to
Speaker 1: do that. And we have to kind of take into
Speaker 1: account circumstances that are conducive to a life that we wish,
Speaker 1: that we think is responsible to leading. And that's why
Speaker 1: we talk about this, Well, what kind of soil do
Speaker 1: you need? Is necessary? What kind of environment is important
Speaker 1: for it?
Speaker 3: And so far you talk about four different modes of
Speaker 3: being in the world, and that each of those modes
Speaker 3: has a different question associated with them, and I thought
Speaker 3: it just would be good to talk through those.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we describe this as a deep dive. How do
Speaker 1: you get to the question that we think or to
Speaker 1: be asked? And most of our lives are led not
Speaker 1: particularly attentive to the question the big question. We think
Speaker 1: that's rightly so, if you're going in the right direction,
Speaker 1: if you know what's happening, you can just let go
Speaker 1: and be on autopilot and switch off the seeking of
Speaker 1: direction to following direction and simply simply ride, and which
Speaker 1: is actually the most pleasant kind of a life to live,
Speaker 1: but you want to make sure that you're doing it rightly.
Speaker 1: The next level what we tend to ask as a
Speaker 1: question is well, what do I want? That's the question
Speaker 1: that now you're becoming aware of where you are and
Speaker 1: you're asking for the direction what is my desire in
Speaker 1: particular desire? But then at the next step you ask yourself,
Speaker 1: but is what I desire really what I desire? Because
Speaker 1: we have these two levels, right surface level at which
Speaker 1: we articulate our desires, and in many instances we discover, oh, no,
Speaker 1: this is not really what I was wanting. I was
Speaker 1: going after something else. And often when we are in
Speaker 1: psychological therapeutic situations, a good guide would tell us, well,
Speaker 1: just think about what you want, really want, and what
Speaker 1: you're trying to achieve with what you're doing.
Speaker 2: Why do you want that?
Speaker 1: Why you want and what's driving this? And then the
Speaker 1: question behind all of these questions for us is is
Speaker 1: not just what question is deep down driving all of
Speaker 1: my decisions, but what kind of thing is worth really desiring?
Speaker 1: And that takes us at a level of transcendence self transcendence.
Speaker 1: We are no longer alone with ourselves with our desires.
Speaker 1: We are on the surface of desires. We desire what
Speaker 1: we desire, heart wants what the heart wants, right. And
Speaker 1: second we go a little bit deeper and says, well,
Speaker 1: who am I actually and who out of this authenticity
Speaker 1: of who I am, what should idea how do I
Speaker 1: want to live what's appropriate for me to desire? But
Speaker 1: that leaves unanswered the question whether the desires that we
Speaker 1: have are really worth desiring, are they worthy of my humanity?
Speaker 1: So our goal is then to think, well, once you
Speaker 1: come to the level of asking what's worthy of my
Speaker 1: humanity and start to move in that direction. Ideal case
Speaker 1: scenario is you know what you're doing, and you can
Speaker 1: go back onto autopilot and live your life without too
Speaker 1: much worrying about the question, the entire question about which
Speaker 1: we wrote this book. We want you not to have
Speaker 1: to read our book all the time or to think
Speaker 1: about the subject matter all the time.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: There's a bunch of things in what you said there.
Speaker 3: I mean, one points to the fact that our habitual
Speaker 3: response is to things that can be a good or
Speaker 3: bad thing, depending on what those habits are. You know,
Speaker 3: whatever our autopilot default is that could be good or bad.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: There's another level that you also insert in there, which
Speaker 3: is that you call it the effectiveness level. What we
Speaker 3: are doing getting us what we want, and you say
Speaker 3: something I think is really important. You say that oftentimes
Speaker 3: the effectiveness question is the most profound question many of
Speaker 3: us know how to answer, meaning we don't actually go
Speaker 3: deeper to figure out what it is we really want
Speaker 3: and is that thing worth wanting. We just take that
Speaker 3: surface level idea of what we want and we figure
Speaker 3: out how to do it better. Right, But doing the
Speaker 3: wrong thing better isn't really a victory. We use the
Speaker 3: extreme example of Albert Spear earlier.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: He became an amazing architect, right, and built amazing buildings,
Speaker 3: And yet we could argue, I think of us would
Speaker 3: disagree that he could have used some deeper reflection than that.
Speaker 3: So there's this effectiveness question.
Speaker 1: I can talk a little bit. I don't know whether
Speaker 1: that's where you want to go, but we could talk
Speaker 1: what we need at the level of this surfers not autopilot,
Speaker 1: but effectiveness. Sure, how the goals that we set for
Speaker 1: ourselves are generally feltrated to us by observing how others live,
Speaker 1: and these kind of comparisons than that we made with
Speaker 1: others are what drives the decision making. I want to
Speaker 1: be like that. Somebody has a I drive a perfectly
Speaker 1: fine car, let's say Honda Fit. It's sparked front of
Speaker 1: my garage. I've had so many miles and the car
Speaker 1: never breaks down. It's amazing car that I'm driving. And
Speaker 1: the next the door my neighbor buys new Audi or
Speaker 1: new Portion. It's suddenly, this wonderful car that I have
Speaker 1: has shrunk to insignificance. When I look at the Porsche
Speaker 1: that stands in front of my neighbors driveway, I want
Speaker 1: a portion now. But what kind of desire is that?
Speaker 1: What has it done to the value of my car?
Speaker 1: What has it done to me that I've simply just
Speaker 1: because I saw something, have desired it, and then I
Speaker 1: pursue it with vengeance and want to be effective in
Speaker 1: achieving that. Right. Yeah, those are the kinds of questions
Speaker 1: that we need to interrogate if you want to live
Speaker 1: fulfilled lives rather than lives that constantly are chasing after
Speaker 1: something that cannot be achieved. Hi.
Speaker 3: Everyone, One of the things that I know many of
Speaker 3: you struggle with is anxiety, and very recently I shared
Speaker 3: some tips on managing anxiety in our newsletter. Specifically, I
Speaker 3: shared a practice on clarifying your values. In the practice,
Speaker 3: you write down one or two of your core values
Speaker 3: and then identify one action step that aligns with them.
Speaker 3: I find that taking one positive action towards things that
Speaker 3: matter to me really helps reduce anxiety. Also, I have
Speaker 3: a reflection question, what positive experiences have you had today
Speaker 3: you could focus on instead of your anxiety. Every Wednesday
Speaker 3: I send out a newsletter called a Weekly Bye to
Speaker 3: Wisdom for a wiser, happier You, And in it I
Speaker 3: give tips and reflections like you just got and it's
Speaker 3: an opportunity for you to pause, reflect, and practice. It's
Speaker 3: a way to stay focused on what's important and meaningful
Speaker 3: to you. Each month we focus on a theme. This
Speaker 3: month's theme is anxiety, and next month we'll be focusing
Speaker 3: on acceptance. To sign up for these bits of weekly wisdom,
Speaker 3: go to Goodwolf dot me slash newsletter. I do almost
Speaker 3: no social media, and if I'm watching TV, I'm watching
Speaker 3: a movie or I'm watching a series where I don't
Speaker 3: encounter commercials. And the reason that I do that, one
Speaker 3: of the big reasons is I think I am very
Speaker 3: susceptible to what you're talking about, which is this mimetic desire.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden, I see something and it looks good,
Speaker 3: and there's a vague sense of dissatisfaction in me, which
Speaker 3: I have for a variety of different reasons, and so
Speaker 3: it would latch on to all sorts of nonsense if
Speaker 3: you put it in front of me. Yeah, And I
Speaker 3: think I know that about myself well enough that I
Speaker 3: avoid it because I know that you see the Porsche,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to go so far as to go
Speaker 3: get the Porsche. Probably nothing wrong with having a Porshe,
Speaker 3: by the way, we're just making an example here, but
Speaker 3: it still causes an internal turmoil in me of wanting
Speaker 3: something that I don't have. I feel like I can
Speaker 3: do that well enough on my own without advertisers doing
Speaker 3: it for me. So I just am very sensitive to
Speaker 3: this thing that you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, both in terms of what the other tises are
Speaker 1: doing and what other people actually have. And I think
Speaker 1: some of these comparative judgments about value are what drives
Speaker 1: the problems that the specialty teenage girls have with social media.
Speaker 1: One constantly compares oneself with the image of the other
Speaker 1: and this striving for certain kind of striving for superiority,
Speaker 1: to be just slightly better than the other person. It's
Speaker 1: devastating for us and it's not worthy of our humanity,
Speaker 1: and yet's very hard to escape it.
Speaker 3: You're on a college campus, I'm curious about whether you
Speaker 3: think this has gotten worse because it's always been there, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, I was in high school. I don't know,
Speaker 3: thirty years ago. Let's say it's hard to keep track anymore.
Speaker 3: I mean, I remember comparing myself to the other guys,
Speaker 3: and that's always been there, But it does seem amplified today.
Speaker 3: Do you detect it in your time being at a university.
Speaker 3: Do you see a change over time that it's gotten worse.
Speaker 1: I don't have any hard data, but it strikes me
Speaker 1: that it has become worse, especially with social media, because
Speaker 1: you have immediate comparisons here and not just comparison with
Speaker 1: living and breeding people whom you know. Like my neighbor,
Speaker 1: for instance, I might pretty soon realize I know why
Speaker 1: he wants to have Porsche. That's where he's references are.
Speaker 1: I can frame that relatively easily if I know something
Speaker 1: about the person. But if I don't, If my image
Speaker 1: of others is mediated only through the images that come
Speaker 1: to me, then it becomes a very difficult issue. Maybe
Speaker 1: when we had traditions to which we deeply belonged, which
Speaker 1: defined what is valuable for us, we were less susceptible.
Speaker 1: We are always tempted by that this is a part
Speaker 1: of our human DNA, this is one of our bad
Speaker 1: wolves which is there to stay. But we've become much
Speaker 1: more susceptible when we kind of lost a deeper grip
Speaker 1: onto values which we ought to pursue, And then value
Speaker 1: of myself ended up being always indexed to the perform
Speaker 1: my own performance in comparison with other people's performances. That
Speaker 1: ends up accentuating competitive nature of things and certain kind
Speaker 1: of devaluating my own self as just valuable because it
Speaker 1: is the self.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep, it's funny you bring up the car thing.
Speaker 3: I have a car similar to yours probably it's about
Speaker 3: maybe a decade old, and it runs fine, and it
Speaker 3: was a nice car at the time. Like it's fine.
Speaker 3: I mean, it gets me everywhere I need to go.
Speaker 3: And yet I've had the experience of riding in both
Speaker 3: a Tesla and a brand new BMW, and I get
Speaker 3: back in my car after driving one of those, I
Speaker 3: feel like I'm driving the Flintstones car. Right now, I
Speaker 3: drive my car a little bit longer, I just kind
Speaker 3: of forget all about that. But that comparison is so stark.
Speaker 3: I'm like, wait, a minute, Am I on a horse?
Speaker 3: These new cars are incredible anyway. You talk about something
Speaker 3: called the Walgreens vision of life that I think we
Speaker 3: as a culture have very much adopted and adapted, and
Speaker 3: I certainly know I have to a large degree, which
Speaker 3: is this idea of a happy, healthy and long life
Speaker 3: that becomes the sort of core value that everything orients around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and interesting thing here is right that there's absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing wrong about any of these goals. To live a
Speaker 1: healthy life, to live a happy life, to live a
Speaker 1: long life, all of those are appropriate goals, and in
Speaker 1: some ways what's lacking for them is they're lacking a
Speaker 1: larger frame in which one can situate those goals. We
Speaker 1: pursue them as if they were the very pinnacle of
Speaker 1: life that is truly worth living, whereas there may be
Speaker 1: constitutive elements of a very good life that we should
Speaker 1: be willing to sacrifice for something that's much more important.
Speaker 1: And so we give examples how people who have not
Speaker 1: had long life, like Martin Luther King, nonetheless had absolutely
Speaker 1: splendid and great life, and that we should rather desire
Speaker 1: to have life as his than the life that is long. Wards,
Speaker 1: we admire the courage that he had to stand by
Speaker 1: his principle that's the feature of the truly good life,
Speaker 1: rather than desire simply to prolong one's life. And so
Speaker 1: one can relativize these natural goals that we have, situate them,
Speaker 1: and they become an interesting then window how much we
Speaker 1: are willing to stake so as to live a life
Speaker 1: that we truly think is worthy of our humanity, or
Speaker 1: you can flip it on the other side. I've just
Speaker 1: recently watched some movie on Netflix, so this is my
Speaker 1: free turning away my life.
Speaker 3: Do you know how many illiterate children you could have
Speaker 3: helped in that hour?
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I know. And ended up being
Speaker 1: interesting when it was a movie where there was a
Speaker 1: technology that you could suck the years of a life
Speaker 1: of a person. They can sell you or give you
Speaker 1: a certain number of years, and you can then place
Speaker 1: this into another person and so they be I'm younger,
Speaker 1: you become forty years older, and they become forty years younger,
Speaker 1: which is completely crazy idea, but it's interesting as an experiment.
Speaker 1: And then you have this case where people are desperately
Speaker 1: wanting to prolong lives go into this inhumane treatment of others.
Speaker 1: So as to be able just to add a few
Speaker 1: years of life. And the whole movie is about reflection
Speaker 1: of longevity and significance of youth, and what the significance
Speaker 1: of pursuing youthfulness as a main goal, what effects it
Speaker 1: would have on others.
Speaker 3: So this idea of a happy, healthy, long life, and
Speaker 3: that there may be more that's worth wanting than that.
Speaker 3: You make the example not not long life, Martin Luther King.
Speaker 3: You talk about it not a happy life, Abraham Lincoln,
Speaker 3: and you also talk about not healthy life. A woman
Speaker 3: who basically by doing hunger strikes has dramatically shortened her
Speaker 3: healthy window, you know, caused yourself to get sick. And
Speaker 3: so these are sort of examples of something that might
Speaker 3: be worth wanting more. I referenced Peter Singer earlier, who
Speaker 3: always calls out this level of morality that is like
Speaker 3: very hard to achieve. Right, I'm wondering how you personally
Speaker 3: think about squaring the natural desires of a happy, healthy life,
Speaker 3: which we all have and this other calling, which is,
Speaker 3: for lack of a better word, I'm going to call
Speaker 3: a more ethical life for simplicity's sake, those things to
Speaker 3: me feel like they are always intention do you feel that,
Speaker 3: and is that sort of just a sign that you're
Speaker 3: paying attention.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do feel that tension. I feel it almost
Speaker 1: every day. It's behind all the financial decisions I make.
Speaker 1: It's a difficult tension to keep inviting into your life,
Speaker 1: and I consciously do because I think that if I don't,
Speaker 1: I will just slide into whatever I want and whatever
Speaker 1: I can afford. I can simply satisfy my needs my family.
Speaker 1: Maybe here and there a person that I know, but
Speaker 1: I feel that I have an obligation to do and
Speaker 1: care for people who aren't just in my immediate surroundings.
Speaker 1: In different religious traditions have a different ways in which
Speaker 1: that is being reinforced. When I was growing up, my
Speaker 1: parents used to give twenty percent of their income. Whatever
Speaker 1: they got, twenty percent went to some kind of cause
Speaker 1: that is outside of the family concern. I've said for
Speaker 1: myself similar kinds of requirements, and that helps me then
Speaker 1: to say not to have a tortured relationship to my choices,
Speaker 1: even though even in these kinds of settings, can I
Speaker 1: do more? I probably could do more, but I'm not
Speaker 1: doing more. Why am I not doing more? I think
Speaker 1: this kind of conversation is healthy unless it is completely
Speaker 1: obsessive and paralyzing, and it shows that these moral decisions
Speaker 1: have wait for us. I was reading recently Schoppenhauer and
Speaker 1: Schoppenhauer at one point, right, you can sometimes disregard the
Speaker 1: demands of morality, but if you slap morality in the face,
Speaker 1: you've done something wrong. So that's roughly right. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, I as a Christian, we are famous
Speaker 1: for feeling guilty and kind of this guilt of not
Speaker 1: having done as much as I could have is always
Speaker 1: always there, and I called it just a minute ago,
Speaker 1: maybe unhealthy, but in some ways I think also is
Speaker 1: a sign of health. And I think that's where you
Speaker 1: partly were gesturing with your question.
Speaker 3: That's fine, you can look away from it, but don't
Speaker 3: slap it in the face. It makes me think of
Speaker 3: a long, long time ago when I first started my
Speaker 3: first business and I was like, well, okay, there's a
Speaker 3: little bit of a line here between like my personal
Speaker 3: expenses and my business expenses, right, like, you know, what
Speaker 3: do I claim where? And my accountant said, well, you know,
Speaker 3: you just want to remember pigs get fat, but hogs
Speaker 3: get slaughtered, which I think is similar to slapping morality
Speaker 3: in the face versus just looking away from it for
Speaker 3: a little while. Yeah, I think this right here speaks
Speaker 3: to this question of is a happy, healthy life the
Speaker 3: only thing that's worth wanting? Because I can tell you
Speaker 3: that when I'm wrestling with moral questions, I don't feel
Speaker 3: particularly happy because inevitably I feel like it's not enough.
Speaker 3: I can just look around me and be like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, I mean I try and do lots
Speaker 3: of good things for people. My work is in helping people,
Speaker 3: and I can find examples all around me all the
Speaker 3: time of people who sacrifice way more for people than
Speaker 3: I do. So that question is an uncomfortable one that
Speaker 3: sort of makes me unhappy, and yet, like you said,
Speaker 3: it's one that I feel compelled to at least invite
Speaker 3: into my life from time to time.
Speaker 1: And you know this struggling with moral choices that we make,
Speaker 1: feeling a pressure of a moral demand that cross and
Speaker 1: seems to undermine a certain kind of happiness that is
Speaker 1: identified with pleasure. I have pleasurable experience. But I think
Speaker 1: where it takes me is to try to broaden the
Speaker 1: concept of happiness rather than look at it at simply
Speaker 1: in terms of a particular moment, extend it across of
Speaker 1: my life, and include into this sense of satisfaction and pleasure,
Speaker 1: include a span of time, whether I have lived aligned
Speaker 1: with who I think, Yes, that I am that I
Speaker 1: should be. If there's there's no alignment, I can look
Speaker 1: back and if I'm honest with myself, I'd be unhappy
Speaker 1: with myself. So that I think these serious considerations are
Speaker 1: part of discernment of the kind of life that will
Speaker 1: give us a judgment as a whole. This was a
Speaker 1: life that had wait. This was not some superficial sliding
Speaker 1: through a life in the easiest possible way with as
Speaker 1: much pleasure as we could and as little pain. I
Speaker 1: think it's very good for us to then also define
Speaker 1: different emotional responses we have in the light of those
Speaker 1: moral choices. I say that there is a distinction, for instance,
Speaker 1: between pleasure and joy. Now there is such a thing
Speaker 1: as a pleasure pill, right or pleasure smoke. You feel
Speaker 1: really cool. All is great, but joy has about ness
Speaker 1: about it. I rejoice over something. This is not simply
Speaker 1: feel pleasure, but I rejoice over something good that has happened.
Speaker 1: And that seems to be kind of a proper way
Speaker 1: to think of one's own emotional states when it comes
Speaker 1: to life that is lived. Ah, I need to rejoice
Speaker 1: about the life. I don't just need to feel pleasure
Speaker 1: at any given moment, and that's joy.
Speaker 3: You make the example in the book, or you give
Speaker 3: an example in the book of if you could just
Speaker 3: take a pill that would cause you to be ecstatic
Speaker 3: all the time? You know, would you do it? Is
Speaker 3: that a good life? Now? As a former heroin addict
Speaker 3: who ended up homeless and possibly going to jail for
Speaker 3: a very long time, I have tried this experiment. Fortunately
Speaker 3: or unfortunately, in the world we live in, that thing
Speaker 3: doesn't exist right because what comes up has to come down.
Speaker 3: Kind of, I guess is a simplified way of summing
Speaker 3: up many years of agony. But it raises the question
Speaker 3: of would you do it if you could you know?
Speaker 3: Or the idea of like if you were just a
Speaker 3: brain in a vat that was just being stimulated to
Speaker 3: feel happy all the time, is that a good life?
Speaker 1: We've asked this question of students or time, and the
Speaker 1: character of answer shifts. I think increasingly students, at least
Speaker 1: that we ask increasingly they're happy with being that being
Speaker 1: brains in the that just simply have enjoyable experiences. I
Speaker 1: want to push against that idea, against the unreality of
Speaker 1: that and artificiality of just having goodness at the level
Speaker 1: of emotional experiences without any touch with real life. And
Speaker 1: I realized that, as is the case with other questions
Speaker 1: about nature of the good life, there is a fundamental
Speaker 1: question here about who we are as human beings that
Speaker 1: is being always at stake when we talk about what
Speaker 1: the good life is? What is the life that is
Speaker 1: worthy of our humanity? And my sense is that something
Speaker 1: like truthfulness to the circumstances of life is essential to
Speaker 1: being properly human, so that I might have enjoyable experience
Speaker 1: over a period of time, but I would deny something
Speaker 1: fundamental about my humanity, and that almost is part and
Speaker 1: parcel of it. We discuss our anthropology, when we discuss
Speaker 1: ways of living and ways of living.
Speaker 3: Well, Yeah, this points towards another question that I've had
Speaker 3: with a number of guests that has come up recently,
Speaker 3: and I've just been reading about a little bit, and
Speaker 3: it's this idea of AI companions, and I think I
Speaker 3: take a middle road on this. I think that an
Speaker 3: AI companion would not be as good as a real companion,
Speaker 3: and there are a lot of people who are incredibly
Speaker 3: lonely who have no companion, and an AI companion is
Speaker 3: a better companion than none. But once you start doing that,
Speaker 3: you start having to ask very fundamental questions about what
Speaker 3: does it mean to relate to something and what's real there,
Speaker 3: what's not real? What should be real? I mean, I
Speaker 3: think these are really deep questions that I think we're
Speaker 3: start starting to face far faster than we may have anticipated.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't think five years ago, if we'd
Speaker 3: had this conversation that any of us might have thought
Speaker 3: that I could reasonably have an AI companion, like a
Speaker 3: chat companion that would be indistinguishable from a human. And
Speaker 3: I think we're there, or we're very close to it.
Speaker 1: I think so. And I think Japan is ahead of
Speaker 1: us from little reading that I have done, because.
Speaker 3: They need to be right because of their age crisis.
Speaker 1: You need to be and they've had those companions almost
Speaker 1: the way somebody might have an animal, say a dog,
Speaker 1: You could have a AI little companion that is there,
Speaker 1: present in a sense with you. I can completely see
Speaker 1: why somebody would want that, just like I can see
Speaker 1: why somebody would want to have a dog or some
Speaker 1: other animal as a companion. So for me, I think
Speaker 1: the decision would be made what am I seeking? First?
Speaker 1: I think, as you put it, am I consciously removing
Speaker 1: myself from human company? Or am I for a variety
Speaker 1: of reason being thrust where I cannot get any other
Speaker 1: help or company than that? And the other is what
Speaker 1: am I actually trying to achieve? What am I seeking?
Speaker 1: And my question is often is we're so zeroed in
Speaker 1: on the pleasure of experience that we have unlearned how
Speaker 1: not to have pleasure in order to have deeper experiences
Speaker 1: that have deeper meaning. I can imagine a situation in
Speaker 1: which you know, human beings are difficult to live with,
Speaker 1: AI might be unless they kill us, they might be
Speaker 1: much more a program to be much more conducive to us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I think about my partner's mother.
Speaker 3: We took care of her through about a six sometimes
Speaker 3: I say eight years, sometimes they say six years.
Speaker 2: I don't know how long was.
Speaker 3: It was a long time battle with Alzheimer's where we
Speaker 3: were of her primary caregivers. We were lucky that we
Speaker 3: were able to get additional help. But I think often
Speaker 3: that like a robot might have been a better caregiver
Speaker 3: for her right than us or any of the other caregivers,
Speaker 3: because we're human and after a certain point, you get
Speaker 3: tired of answering the same question you answered three minutes ago.
Speaker 3: But a computer doesn't care if she didn't know the difference.
Speaker 3: But yet, there was something profound for us in being
Speaker 3: the caregivers to her, and I hope for her on
Speaker 3: some level, you know, on some level that was not cognitive.
Speaker 3: There was a comfort there, right, but it was not
Speaker 3: a pleasant experience. We used to make the joke all
Speaker 3: the time that, like, living life according to your values
Speaker 3: is not necessarily all that fun.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of times where like I lived
Speaker 3: in Columbus and had to take care of my mom.
Speaker 3: She lived in Atlanta, and we went every month, we
Speaker 3: drove from Columbus to Atlanta, back and forth, and there
Speaker 3: was just a lot of time was like, well this
Speaker 3: is really a drag, But it's an example of we
Speaker 3: weren't happier at the time. But I think then and
Speaker 3: particularly now looking back, I think we're very glad that
Speaker 3: that's the way we chose to handle things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in some ways, I think if I'm hearing you rightly,
Speaker 1: I always think I don't have necessarily problems with technological
Speaker 1: solutions to kind of daily chores and care. That we've
Speaker 1: introduced a lot of those in our life, ordinary life.
Speaker 1: It seems that it is fine. But I think that
Speaker 1: if this is an occasion for kind of human detachment,
Speaker 1: if it's a help to human interaction, that seems to
Speaker 1: me really great. If it is a substitute for it,
Speaker 1: it seems to me that there is a loss, and
Speaker 1: there's a loss not so much in some cases of
Speaker 1: the person who is sick, but of the person who
Speaker 1: is supposed to in some ways feel connected with that
Speaker 1: person and with a state of human condition in which
Speaker 1: they are.
Speaker 3: Yep, absolutely well. We are at the end of our
Speaker 3: time here. You and I are going to continue in
Speaker 3: a post show conversation where we're going to talk about
Speaker 3: the question who do you answer to? And how Smoky
Speaker 3: the bear and the forest fire campaign is a very
Speaker 3: fascinating way to think about this. Listeners, if you would
Speaker 3: like to get access to the post show conversations, become
Speaker 3: part of our community. We have monthly community meetings and
Speaker 3: all sorts of other great things. We'd love to have
Speaker 3: you oneufeed dot net, slash join rislov Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: I can't recommend the book enough, although it will, as
Speaker 3: we've discussed here, make you profoundly uncomfortable at points, uncomfortable
Speaker 3: in a good way. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's great to be here. It's a wonderful conversation,
Speaker 1: your great conversation partner.
Speaker 3: Oh well, thank you very kind.
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