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This is my message to Millennials about how to change the world and I would say how to change the world properly [of] course the question, then is well exactly what do you mean by properly and of course that's the fundamental issue So I'm going to walk through that little bit So I'm gonna and I've also got an offer to make to any millennials that are willing to watch this so This was triggered in [part] by something I read recently by Jonathan hate and Jonathan haidt is the professor of ethical leadership at the nyu Stern school of business, and he's been a very astute Commentator recently on some of the political battles that have been going on in the social sciences [noting] for example that there is very little political diversity in the views of social scientists and perhaps even less on the part of the people in the humanities And hate recently wrote something which all all what are you linked to in the and the description of this video? Where he claimed that universities have to decide between Social justice and truth and on the side of truth he puts Philosopher call named John Stuart Mill an English Philosopher who said He who knows only his side of the case knows little of that His reasons may be good and no one may have been able to refute them But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side if he does not Does not so much as know what they are he has no ground for preferring either opinion And then he juxtaposes John Stuart Mill with Karl Marx who said the Philosopher's have only interpreted the world in various ways the point is to [change] it He considers Marx the Patron Saint of Social justice University which is oriented around changing the world in part by overthrowing power structures and privilege It sees political diversity as an obstacle to action male on the other hand according to hate is the Patron saint [of] what he calls truth you which sees truth as a Process in which flawed individuals challenge each other's biased and incomplete reasoning and in the process all become smarter Hate points out the truth university dies when it becomes intellectually uniform or politically, orthodox So I guess this video is in part my call along with Jonathan haidt for young people to join Truth universe versity, but there's a problem with that because the university is where the truth is being sought That's the university, but there's a problem and that is that young people want to change the world and it's part of what Piaget the developmental psychologist piaget called the Messianic stage and there's some real utility in that because we're social creatures and As we construct ourselves and formulate ourselves and bring our own character into being predicated on our on our biological Platform our biological being we also simultaneously have to integrate Adjust to integrate with and negotiate with Society which sometimes needs to be changed The structure of [Society] has to be preserved But it has to be [updated] and proved as it moves forward and so part of the problem is how to update and improve it without doing [that] so rapidly that you destroy everything of any value, so The problem I have with the marxist perspective, and I've had this problem with it for a long time Is that I don't think [that] you should trust people whose primary goal? when when when they're attempting to change the world for the better is to change other people and you can tell who those people are because they're always blaming other people and they're looking for victims they're looking for perpetrators and victims and then they're going off to stop the perpetrators, and I think that's wrong because as Alexander solzhenitsyn said he's a great Russian writer who helped bring down the soviet union He said the line between good and Evil runs down every every [humans] heart So that so the real battle as far as I'm concerned And I think this goes along with the true tradition in [which] John stuart mill is is firmly placed in is that? to overcome Tyranny and malevolence and Chaos and Nihilism and the Desire to bring everything to a halt you have to repair the fissures And-And-and the rift that's in your own soul, basically and that means that you have to confront the the Evil that lives in your own heart and there's a there's a statement from the new testament [that] I think is very much apropos with regards to this particular idea and this is This is part of the sermon on the mount which is a central text in in western in the western tradition I would say [obviously] central to Christianity but central to everything that western civilization has built and so christ says to his followers Why be holdest thou? the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye or How wilt thou say to thy brother let me pull out the mote out of thine eye and behold a beam is in [thine] own eye thou hypocrite first cast out [the] beam out of thine own eye and then Shalt thou see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brother's eye Well, I like that quote because it places the responsibility For change at every level of being on the individual and obviously the individual interacts with society But the idea here is that unless the individual straightens out his or her [own] soul There's no possibility that the impact the individual can have on society can be anything, but [buts] a harmful in proportion to the harm That's still in the soul. These are important [things] to know they're vitally important things to know So okay, so but then we're faced with the conundrum that young people also want to change the world but that's no problem because I [think] you can bring you could bring truth university together with the desire to to make real change, but change Change change has to start [at] the right place so I'm going to tell you how I [think] you should change yourself so that you can change the world and So that the world that you bring into being will be a better world and all the worst one Remember remember you need to know about this that the world that the followers of Marx brought into being in the 20th century Killed more than a hundred million people say in China and russia. [I] mean the soviet Union and [in] places like Cambodia and Vietnam The world certainly changed as a consequence of Marxist doctrine But it didn't [change] in in a good direction and of course the Marxist doctrine is Making itself heard in a massive way across the west again now so all right So what should you do about that? Well? Here's an idea? The first thing you have to do is orient yourself now You probably have all watched pinocchio and pinocchio is about how a marionette someone who's whose strings are being pulled by Forces Beyond his comprehension [that's] the situation of the undeveloped individual Geppetto who's a Benevolent father so a benevolent? Symbol a symbol of benevolent culture makes a puppet his son and then wishes on a star now a star is something that glitters up in the sky and it's and it's associated with the Transcendent and Beyond and the divine and you know if you look up in the night, [sky] And it's very dark [you] get a feeling of awe it's because you're confronting your soul so to speak your individual soul is confronting the cosmos and you can feel a relationship between you and and and and the totality so looking up into the sky is like a religious experience if it's a starry sky and to wish upon a star is to find in a light that orient's you like the North star and To pick a highest goal to pick the highest goal You can conceive of and so that's what geppetto does he raises his eyes above his his Day-To-day concerns and tries to establish a relationship with the highest of all possible values and And and he has the most profound of wishes and the most profound of wishes is that the puppet that he's created Could become a genuine individual genuinely fully fully developed human being and that's what you can wish for [yourself] That's you can wish and and and and aim for that in yourself and then You see that's how you deal [with] the suffering that's attendant on life because life is suffering and because life is very hard and people Get sick, and they become mentally ill and and and there's malevolence in the world And there's tragedy and so life is very very hard and if you're not properly oriented with regards to life the fact that it's hard and the fact that it's full of suffering can can warp and twist and Bend you until you become murderous and resentful and and even go Beyond murderous and resentment to wish for for genocide and evil even to wish for [the] destruction of everything and So you have to learn [how] to strengthen yourself as an individual [so] that you can bear? the Burden of being without becoming corrupt you have to decide that that is what you're aiming [for] is that you want to become [a] fully developed human being and stop being a Pathetic Marionette whose strings are being pulled by Horrible Forces behind the scenes So I would say to wish on a stars to Aim at the highest good in the question, then is well What what is the good? well We can answer that in two ways We could say that the good is the opposite of evil And I can tell you what evil is evil is the conscious desire to produce suffering where suffering is not necessary and so if you read about What happened in the NaZi Concentration? camps for example or in the in the Russian concentration camps during the soviet time of the soviet union you'll get a good flow favor for what constitutes evil and evil is the desire to exploit the vulnerability of other people to self-consciously exploit the Vulnerability of other people and to elevate their suffering beyond their or anyone's ability to tolerate and so the good is the opposite of that Whatever the opposite of that is the good is harder to get a handle on but here's one hint and I got this from reading jean Piaget partly who's a developmental pSychologist and Piaget talked about the Equilibrated state and in equilibrated state is like a game the children play Where every child wants to play the game you have a little social group? And that's the children's play group and any of us the individuals within it those are the individual children and the structure is the game and it's a good game if everyone wants to play it and And piaget noted that a game like that will outperform a game that people have to be terrorized to play because it doesn't entail it doesn't require any enforcement cost and so I've sort of developed the idea of [nil] equilibrated state to think that if If you're aiming at the good, then you want what's good for you? And I mean good [for] you as if you were taking care of yourself, and we're good to yourself We were treating yourself like someone you loved That was good for you in a way that [would] also be good for your family, and then it would be good for you And your family in a way that was also good for society and then it would be Good for you, and your family and society in a way that would [be] good for the world And then it would be good now And it would be good next week and the week after and a year from now and is long into the future [as] you can See, so the good is something that's equilibrate across multiple levels of being in multiple time frames simultaneously And it isn't necessarily that you know what that is going to be at any given moment, but you can orient yourself So that's the state that you [want] to exist in and I can tell you As far [as] I [can] tell when you exist in that state even moment by Moment Your life is imbued with a sense of meaning and that sense of meaning can help you transcend Suffering the Philosopher Nietzsche said he who has a why Can Bear [anyhow] he who has a why? Can bear [anyhow] and so Nietzsche's idea was that if there was purpose in your life of sufficient grandeur that? not only could the suffering in life be a but maybe it even be appreciated like it could be that you're willing to bear the burden of being because of the Exciting things that you can do with being the things you can build and the things that you can bring about and that might be The highest imaginable state of being and that's that's a form of paradise, but it's not a paradise that you attain by transforming others It's a paradise that you attain by transforming yourself and That's a very difficult thing to do and it's a very frightening thing to do because it means that you're you're Retooling your soul, and that's that's a job for a real That's the job for a