https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=FSW6ZdtXeeM
Why don’t you just try to work as hard as you can at your damn job for like six weeks? Right? All flat out. You know, if you work 10% longer hours, you make 40% more money. That’s something worth thinking about. You know, you’ve got a job, maybe you show up 15 minutes early, and you leave 15 minutes late. You know, and you actually work, and your boss notices, because he would probably notice, and then maybe someone’s gonna get promoted, and maybe it’ll be you, because something’s gonna tilt the scales, and that little extra bit of work done without cynicism and resentment might be enough. Well, he said he started at 21 bucks an hour, and in six weeks he was making $37 an hour. And it’s not a king’s ransom, man, but it’s a hell of a lot more than zero, and it’s quite a lot more than 21. He said his life had turned around substantially, because he learned if he put some damn effort into it, and I’m not trying to be Joe Optimist here. Like, I know that people hit runs of bad luck, and that things can take you out of life, right? Unfortunate illnesses, and betrayal, and like, there’s no shortage of randomness and horror that can wipe you out even if you’re doing your best, but you don’t have a better bloody plan than to do your best, and it tends to work a lot better than you think. And what’s so interesting about the hierarchies that people set up is that that’s how they’re set up. They’re not set up on power. They’re set up on reciprocity and skill and trust. Not always. You know, and if you’re in a job where you work hard and you’re a good guy, and you’re doing your best, and your boss is a bloody tyrant, and you never get a break, it’s like, okay, fine. You’re in a Foucault world. Get the hell out of it, you know? Get your resume set up, write your CV, fill in the educational gaps that you have, send out your 25 resumes a day, and prepare to make a lateral move, because you’re in a bad place. But almost everywhere, and this is certainly being the case virtually everywhere I’ve worked, and I’ve had like 50 jobs, you know? If you go above and beyond the call of duty in an awake and intelligent way, interpersonally, socially, with regards to the diligence of your work, with regards to the truth of your attitude and your courage and all of that, that will work. And you know, if you try it for a year and it doesn’t work, then go somewhere else, because you can, right? You’re free. I mean, it’s not easy. You can’t just walk out the door and instantly find another job, but you’re not enslaved. You could make a move. You could even decide that you’re going to make a move and double your salary. You know, it’s not a bad goal, and it’s certainly a possibility. It’s like, it isn’t hierarchy. It’s ethics that determine success in a functional society. It’s ethics that determine success, not power. The rest of it’s a bloody lie, and that doesn’t mean that all our systems are perfectly ethical. You know, you’ve got to be awake. If you’re in a system, there’s going to be some corruption in it. Part of what you’re supposed to do is keep your damn eyes open for the corruption and your mouth speaking truth, so when the corruption starts to take root, you object to it, so the whole damn system doesn’t turn into a pathological power play. And that’s part of your ethical responsibility as a conscious being, an ethical being, a religious being for that matter, and a citizen, you know? And you’re charged with that. That’s why you vote. That’s why you’re the cornerstone of your state, man. You’re the, what would you call, you’re the wellspring of the ethical actions that replenish the dying world. That’s what you are. And if you act, that’s really, that’s what you are. And if you act that out properly, then things work. And that’s why that’s always been described as ethical behavior. It’s not because you’re supposed to be good, you know, and being good isn’t that easy anyways, and it certainly doesn’t mean being nice and harmless. It’s not an easy thing to be good. You have to be tough as a damn boot to be good, because you have to stand your ground when you need to stand your ground, and you have to be able to say no when it’s time to say no, and you have to mean it. And so then you have to think and plan strategically, so that when you’re going to say no, you can mean it and it will stick. You know, and that takes a certain amount of integrated malevolence, I would say. And once it’s integrated, it’s not malevolence, it’s strength. It’s strength of character. It’s the ability to stand your ground. And you have to cultivate that. And you cultivate that at least in part by telling the truth. And so you take your place in the world as a decent person and as a decent citizen, and then you play the hierarchical game properly. And that is to stand up straight with your shoulders back. It’s like the world’s an onslaught. You’ve got the tyranny of culture to deal with. You’ve got the catastrophe of nature. You’ve got your own damn malevolence and ignorance, right? All coming at you, plus the incredible complicated indeterminate potential of the future. That’s all coming at you, and it’s all your responsibility. And you can cringe away from it and be afraid of it and be victimized by it, and be bitter and cynical about it. And no wonder, because it can be painful. Or you can turn around and you can say, man, bring it on. Because there’s more to me than there is to the catastrophe. And this is what I discovered from looking at what I looked at. I looked at the darkest things I could look at, really, for 30 years. I was really a lot of fun to be around, I can tell you. I looked at the darkest things that I could think of, right? Not only what happened in Auschwitz and what happened in the Gulag, but personal issues, you know? It’s like, I wasn’t so much interested in the totalitarians as a group. I was interested in the people who undertook the terrible acts that the totalitarians required. You know, the people who I was just rereading, ordinary men. And it was a story about a police battalion in Poland that trained ordinary policemen to take naked pregnant women out into the fields and shoot them in the back of the head. It takes a lot of training, by the way, before you can bring yourself to do that. And you aren’t the same person by the end of it. It’s pretty goddamn horrific. You know, and I was trying to figure out, what would it be like to be that person? Because we are that person. And then what would it be like to not be that person, right? To refuse to do that, to not participate in that. You know, and what I discovered by making that totalitarian proclivity personal was that there’s more to us than there is to the horror. As nature is, bent on our destruction. Bad as culture is, tyrannical and bloody, back as far as you can look. As malevolent as you are, in the darkest part of your heart. And that’s plenty malevolent. The possibility that’s within you that can well up, the courage and the truth and the ability and the skill and the willingness to set things right, if you are willing to set them right, is more powerful than all of that. And so it’s so interesting. It was proof for me of an old saying I read from Carl Jung. It’s an alchemical motif in stir quillinus inventur, which is what you most want to be found will be found where you least want to look, essentially. And it’s so interesting because it means that if you’re willing to turn around and to stand up, say, and stand up straight and face the darkness like fully, what you discover at the darkest part is the brightest light. And that’s something that’s so much worth discovering because there’s going to be terrible darkness in your life. And it’s going to make you cynical and bitter. And it could easily be that you’re just not looking at it enough because if you looked at it enough and you didn’t shy away and you brought everything you had to bear on it, you’d find that there is more to you than there was to the horror.