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  • Hi there. 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