Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles apologies for my prolonged absence I've been dealing over the last few weeks with my somewhat Shaky current health It seems probable that I can use arrest if I had the opportunity And I knew how I [should] probably be having a rest right now But be that as it may I have prepared this letter presumptuously to the world Or at least to that corner of it with which I can communicate here at the dawn of the new year in these perilous times Although I usually speak extemporaneously That takes a level of capacity that I cannot quite currently manifest, so I'm going to read instead It's also a careful argument. [I] hope and it required the editing for which only the written word can suffice Dear World On January sixteenth, I'm going to talk with Sam Harris on his podcast Waking up with Sam Harris Dr.. Harris is one of the so-called new atheists of which there are four like the other three Christopher hitchens Dan Dennett and Richard Dawkins who by the way. I always wanted particularly to debate Dr.. Harris is a smart guy And I'm certainly not complaining that [I] will encounter him instead of Darkens So I'm preparing my arguments carefully although. I have been doing so for years the specific ideas. I'm going to share with you today We're obsessing me from the moment. I woke up Somewhat fitfully this morning So I dictated them to my son and then edited them with his help The central problem of human beings isn't religion as the new atheists insist [it's] tribalism We know this in part because Chimps are closest biological can go to war And they're not religious Although they are tribal Tribalism also has a central problem, and it's not competition Despite the tendency of competition to produce at least temporary early winners and losers The problem of tribalism is cooperation Because cooperation is what allows us to exist is bounded groups group by definition is a collective Cooperatively aiming at something it can't be aimed at nothing because nothing cannot unite It only divides Thus attacks on collective purpose because of its tendency to Produce tribalism merely divide The politics of identity which emerged when the central purpose is criticized to destructively? Inevitably produce the situation described in the story of the tower of babel Everyone fragments into primitive tribes and speaks their own mutually in comprehensible language One alternative to fragmentation is of course union under a banner a collective ideal cause or purpose The problem with uniting under a banner as the postmodernists to push identity politics rightly point out is that to value something? means simultaneously to Devalue other things And thus to value is an exclusionary process But the alternative is valueless pneus which is equivalent to nihilism Denialism does not produce freedom from exclusion It just makes everyone excluded and that's an intolerable state direction. 'less uncertain chaotic and Angst-ridden When such uncertainty reaches a critical level the counter Response appears first the unconscious and then the collectively express demand for a leader possessed by the spirit of totalitarian certainty Who promises above all to restore order? The Society without a unifying principle oscillates on Lord between Nihilism and totalitarianism Human beings have been wrestling with this problem since the beginning of civilization In our capacity to form large groups for all its advantages also started to pose a new threat that of the hyper domination of the state Collective or purpose, but without the state. There's just fragmentation into smaller groups the group itself cannot be done away with Because for better or worse human beings are social animals not loners like Sharks are tigers We're team players But being on one team means not being on others this means that any given team sidelines Marginalizes and alienates those who cannot play their game as well as conflicting with other teams In the west starting in the middle east thousands of years ago a new idea began to Emerge Evolved is not too strong a word In the collective imagination you might following darkens consider this a mean although. This is far, too weak a word This idea whose development can be traced back through egypt to mesopotamia before disappearing into unwritten history Is that of the divine individual? This eons old work of the imagination is a dramatic presentation of an emergent idea Which is the solution to how to organize social being without falling prey to nihilistic divisive pneus or deceitful? totalitarian certainty the group must unite but under the banner of the individual The [individual] is the source of the new wisdom that updates the antiquated nihilistic or totalitarian D'Ăªtre tests and Glory of the past for better or for worse That idea reaches its apogee and Christianity The Divine individual is Masculine because the feminine is not individual The Divine Feminine is instead mother and child However, it is a hallmark of Christian supposition that the redemption of both men and women comes through the masculine And that's because the masculine is the individual the Central realization [Express] dramatically and symbolically is that the subordination of the group to the ideal of the divine individual? Is the answer to the Paradox of Nihilism and totalitarianism? The divine individual is the man that every man admires and a man who all women want their men to be The divine individual is the ideal from which deviations are punished by the group with contempt and disgrace And finality to which is rewarded by the group with attention and honor The divine individual is not the winner of any individual game But the player who plays fairly and is therefore continually invited to play the divine individual is the builder Maintainer an expander of the state he who boldly goes where no man has gone before And someone who eternally watches over the windows and the children His power of Direct and honest communication is that which identifies? discusses and then resolves the continuum urgent problems of human existence It is for this reason that he is regarded as the savior of the world The primary image for women is not the divine individual because of the heavy burden they bear for reproduction It is instead the divine mother and child [this] is not to say that man is the divine individual and woman is not although such confusion is understandable given the complexity of the problem Man like women have the divine mother and child as an element of their personality In man however, it's in the background, so to speak as the divine individuals in the background of the psyche for women men by Necessity play less primary Role in the care of Children This frees them to act as individuals in a manner that up to now has been nearly impossible for women Identification with these images is belief in the belief is not the statement of agreement with a set of facts But the willingness to act something out to become something to stake your life on something for men and women alike this means voluntary adoption of responsibility responsibility for oneself Family and State It's in that responsibility and not in rights that meaning itself resides the meaning that makes life bearable Societies that refused to honor both of these elements therefore doom their inhabitants to purposelessness unhappiness sterility And the out for mention dangers of nihilistic to visit pneus and deceitful oppressive totalitarian certainty The meaning and responsibility is the necessary meaning in life Which can serve as a counterbalance to its terrible fragility and tenuous? people must unite under the banner not of their group and not of nothingness, but of the individual This is a brilliant and intrinsically paradoxical solution to the problems of nihilistic nothingness and too rigid group identity alike [it's] the consciousness of the individual which transforms the Chaos of potential [into] habitable cosmos as the greatest origin stories repeatedly insist It is that same consciousness which stands up rebellious and revelatory? To break down the pathological and too rigid order of that cosmos when it has become old Infirm Willfully blind and corrupt It is that consciousness. Which is the image of [God] dwells within every embodied human form the fact of its existence Is the reason that the law of the land itself? Must be bound by ultimate respect for the individual regardless of his or her sins and crimes It is that consciousness not the objective Material substrate of being which should be regarded as the ultimate reality There's no self-evident reason why Dead matter should be given ontological primacy over living spirit Although doing so has produced a massive increase in human technological power Is left that power in the hands of an increasingly disenchanted [populace]? And that presents a mortal danger Such power must be wielded by those who have truly and voluntarily accepted the responsibility of being less [to] [Prove] Fatal The west has long being the civilized embodiment of the idea of the divine individual Who does exactly that? That's what the voluntary lifting of the cross of suffering symbolically represents For all its faults which are manifold the west has therefore served as a shining beacon of hope To those destined to inhabit places too chaotic or too rigid for the human spirit to tolerate About the west is in grave danger of losing its way the negative consequences of this can hardly be overstated a close reading of 20th century history indicates as nothing else can the horrors that accompany loss of Faith in the idea of the individual It is only the individual after all who suffers The group does not suffer Only those who compose it That's the reality of the individual must be regarded as primary of suffering Is to be regarded seriously? Without such regard there can be no motivation to reduce suffering and therefore no respite instead the production of individuals suffering can and has And will be again rationalized it justified for its supposed benefits for the future and the group Effective birth control has emerged as one of the consequences of our powerful technological materialism This has been accompanied by the rise of [state] sufficiently Civilized so that women who inhabit them can walk the streets unaccompanied Din safety We do not yet know how to balance the opportunities that's provided for expanded female individuality With the eternal necessity for a woman to serve as the mother of the divine individual Dividing our civilization into polarized ideological camps of female group identity and male group identity is certainly not the answer We have to be honest male and female alike about what we really want as individuals And talk it out We [don't] beyond dispute. The [Society's] whom emancipate their women are more productive and peaceful and that the relationship is causal Thus it's not a matter of if but how But such amounts of emancipation places a dual burden on the now more autonomous woman who is required to balance? manifesting the potential of our individual spirit With the necessity of desire to Bear and rear the next generation of mankind