https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=XbND14anVxo
in something like the age of madness or the first law trilogy or a lot of the best fiction that’s happening. Even, I mean, I think we don’t know exactly how Martin’s story is gonna end. We kind of know, but I suspect it’s ultimately gonna end with nihilism. I think they’re all stuck in this place of nihilism. Yeah. So, yeah, and like you said, it’s, I get it, right? We get it, but in the end, that’s not what people want to believe. And if they do believe that, then they just get depressed and they don’t care anymore. And so it’s like, if you’re gonna care, you’re gonna care for something which is good. That’s actually how it works. Right, it works like that at every level. That’s what we end up caring about things that at least, even if they’re relative goods and we twist it and we take them to be more than what they are, we are always aiming towards the good. Yeah, and I think a lot of this fiction is based on the idea that there is no transcendent good and everybody’s individual good can just be seen as the other person’s evil. And ultimately, there’s some value to doubt, right? And there’s a lesson in epistemic humility, but you can’t achieve the good if you can’t believe in the good. And so there’s- It’s like, it leads you into, so you can see it, right? Because people, a good example for me is people who are kind of universalists, right? And they just look at all the religions and they say, just basically the same, they all have their rituals, they all have their this and all their that. And it’s all kind of these relative goods, right? That are just kind of doing their thing. And some people might even recognize that they’re valuable. They’re like, oh, Christianity is one way, Islam is one way, Judaism is one way, Buddhism is one way. And then those people, they don’t do anything, they don’t practice anything. And that’s the kind of nihilism which comes at having that approach where you’re cynically trying to escape the story and then looking at all the story and seeing how all the stories are incomplete. And it’s like, it’s an illusion because you’re actually supposed to be inside that pattern. You can’t step out of it. If you try to step out of it, you’re lying to yourself. It really is the Bhagavad Gita again. Like it’s the whole situation of saying, you have to go back. Even after you have your mystical vision, you go back into the fight. You have to go back to combat. Yeah, I mean, that’s, sorry, I recognize that in the sort of Buddha, right? The Buddha has his moment of nirvana. He achieves enlightenment after all these things. And then he sacrifices being within enlightenment in order to go back into the world to guide other people. But I don’t remember that. I was a child the last time I heard the Bhagavad Gita. So can you tell me how that’s represented in the story? I think it’s Arjuna. Yeah, he doesn’t wanna fight, right? He sees the, and it’s extreme because it’s actually a war. It’s like he’s a Kshatriya. He’s in the warrior caste. That’s his role, right? You’re a warrior, your role is to fight. And so he doesn’t want to. He kind of moves away from the battle. And then he encounters Krishna, I guess. And then Krishna reveals his totality to him, like gives him an epiphany. But in that encounter, he tells him, you’re a Kshatriya, go fight. Yeah. Like that’s your role in the world. I always wonder why people like that, like that text, because it’s so against the, I guess the only reason why they can like it is because they don’t think that they have to do that or they don’t think that they have to now say, okay, you’re a Canadian, you’re a Christian, you live in this world. This is the world that is possible for you. And so it’s like live in that world. Don’t try, don’t, why are you looking for some Yogi from India? Like, what are you doing? Like, why are you trying to escape, constantly escape this reality that you should embody, that you should kind of live in? Anyway, so that’s kind of my take on, I mean, let’s say this, we’re kind of going away from the return of the king idea, but I kind of get it when people are annoyed with the lot that they’ve been given, but I also see that people who try to step out of it, they don’t, their fruits are withered.