https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=PPtLn7aczPg
Well, I think one of the key elements of this is the very anti-modern, I think you said it very well, the individualism, the anti-modern practice of commitment. I think, I mean, John talks about self-transcendence. I don’t think there’s any more powerful self-transcendence than the sacrificial burden of a costly commitment. That happens when you, let’s say you marry because you say, okay, I’m sure that if I live another 50, 60 years after this marriage, I will find another attractive person that I think is better for me than you. I am sure that I am going to find jobs and opportunities that will take me away from you. And so in a commitment, you say, in the old English vows, forsaking all others. It’s like, well, you’re gonna do that in your twenties? Think about all of the optimization you’re going to turn your back away from for the sake of this. And so then with children, it becomes even more because children are these little, they start out these little parasitic bloodsuckers that they take all your money, they take all your time, they take all your attention. They, they’re just such greedy little things. But if you actually devote yourselves to them and you pour yourself into them, then they actually grow up and they themselves can become people who love and give and sacrifice for others. So it’s this dance that creates. But I think part of what this, what this depends upon is the making and keeping of commitments. And especially, I think the Orthodox Church has seemed, I don’t know, I don’t really know the church much, but the Orthodox Church has seemed to maintain some of that better than at least in a lot of Protestant churches now. Commitment is sort of the complete opposite of consumerism, where consumerism is, I’m going to act on what I perceive my best interest is now. And the moment that I perceive those interests and desires changing, I’m going to hop to the new thing. I’m gonna hop to the new partner, I’m gonna hop to the new job, I’m gonna, and there’s a degree to which, when it comes to where you buy your things or, that level is appropriate for a bunch of things in life. But if that then becomes connected, if that’s the way you approach everything in life, and I think, even, I’ve talked about my channel before, the churn, I mean, YouTube understands that, okay, you’re watching VanderKlay now, you’re watching Peugeot now, you’re watching Peterson now, you’re watching Verbeke now. YouTube doesn’t care who you watch, just that you watch. Yeah, yeah. So I think even though on one hand, we’re certainly making use of this medium, I think we do our audience a disservice if we don’t continue to remind them that it’s going to be in having in real life commitments to one another in a face-to-face way. All of this talk about self-improvement, self-transcendence, none of that is going to happen if the tyranny of the individual isn’t broken and the most obvious breaking of that is by making and keeping commitments. That makes sense, I think that’s true. And also the idea that commitments, you have scale of commitments, that’s super important too, because one of the issues, so when you were talking, I was thinking, there are right now, let’s say cults that will understand that and they use that, they weaponize it, right? So they actually demand so much commitment from you, they demand supreme commitment. And then in doing that, and so you think, why would anybody join a cult, right? And it’s actually because people know that it’s fulfilling to be committed to something and to kind of give yourself to it. And so cults will weaponize that. And so you can recognize the difference between a cult and a real commitment, whereas a cult or a parasitic type of relationship like that will demand all from you, right? Will demand all and will see any other commitment you have as competing with whatever commitment you give them. And so that’s a good way for just people watching or listening to know the difference. And you know it, it’s like even in your relationship, like if you’re in a relationship with someone, let’s say a man with a woman, and then that person wants you to give up all your friends and give up your family and give up, and renounce your parents and everything. It’s like, okay, well, no. Like that’s not a good relationship, that’s a bad relationship. That’s the only thing that, that’s what we have the idea of God. Like God is the only one who can demand all our commitment. And then thankfully he gives it back to us in fractal participation, right? In marriage and churches and in friendships and all of that. So that’s one way to see the difference, but you’re right that if we find these healthy places to commit ourselves, then that’s how, yeah, that’s one of the embodied ways that we can deal with the meaning crisis. As a minister, I’ve often found that car time with people in our culture is really valuable because the cell phone doesn’t work that well. You’re in a car, you’re in that confined space for a number of hours with people. You can gain a level of fellowship, of personal knowledge. You can find people that you actually click with and can maybe build longer friendships. Again, I just saw a video, someone was saying that Generation Z is the loneliest generation, which is astounding given the fact that we’re all running around with these little devices in our pocket that it supposedly connects us to the world. The quality of that connection is- Is weak, no, for sure. Yeah, kids don’t, right now kids don’t see each other a lot. They’re on Instagram or on Snapchat or whatever, sending each other photos and writing texts, but there’s hard, it’s not, I’ve noticed it, like even my kids, they actually, my kids see a lot of their friends, maybe more than a lot of people, but they still, I feel like, when we were kids during the summer, you would spend all day with their people. You would leave in the morning and then you’d just spend all day with people and then you come back home and that’s not the case. It might be happening somewhere, but it’s definitely not happening around here. So you’re right, these friendships are gonna become more and more, gonna become more and more precious as time can kind of move forward and we’ll have to be deliberate about it. We can’t just think it’s gonna happen. Well, and I also think a lot of the self-improve, so there’s a lot of this sort of self-improvement stuff on the internet right now, and in some ways we’re sort of adjacent to that, given Clean Up Your Room and Jordan’s sort of in a self-help thing, and a couple of his books, but I think, and a lot of that focuses on, people eating better and cleaning your room and having a better job. I suspect that part of what’s going on with Gen Z is that they haven’t developed the interpersonal skills to really build lifelong relationships with one another, because the only way you can actually build those skills is to be with people. A lot, a lot, huge amounts of time with people, exactly. And learn that talking in a certain way or talking about certain things, that doesn’t really progress the conversation, and then learning how to read the subtle cues from someone else to engage in a conversation, and as Jordan says, you engage in the conversation in order to have a next conversation and another conversation and to allow the relationship to go deeper and to be more stable, and so I think that, I think that part of all of these skills are, they’re basically necessary for having a satisfying church life, a satisfying romantic relationship, a satisfying relationship with a parent or a child or a cousin or a sibling, and it sounds, I hope that if people are, there’s a lot of digital, I won’t call them digital nomads, I won’t call them digital monks, I’ll call them digital recluses. For the digital recluses to get out from behind the screens and be in a car with people and have to do all of that difficult work of learning to relate, build a relationship, build a friendship, maintain a friendship, feed a friendship, because I think all of this is actually the knitting that builds these bodies that we’re talking about. Definitely. Thank you.