https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Fdnjkvh110o
If the foundation of society is family, where do you see the breakdown of family happening? And what can we do as individuals to help build society back? I think a big part of the breakdown in the family is our idiot concept of of our idiotic, idiotically one-sided conception of right and freedom. It’s something like that. And the reason I say that is because, well, let’s say why would you be disinclined to engage in the process of building a stable family? And one answer might be, well, you’re just utterly useless, right? You can barely take care of yourself, much less someone else. But let’s leave that aside for a moment, although that might be a contributing problem. That’s just sheer inability. Another problem would be, well, it’s kind of an immature hedonism in some sense. Why would I want the burden of a family? Why would I want the constraints of a permanent relationship when I can have all the freedom to choose? It’s like, well, first of all, why do you think that a family is a burden? And second, why do you think that all that choice, which I doubt you have anyways, is freedom? Well, many people say, well, you know, I don’t want to limit myself to one partner. It’s like, no, you don’t want to limit yourself to one partner, but pretty much everyone else wants you to, wants to limit you to maybe even less than one partner. So, so I, it’s a deep immaturity and ignorance that’s gripped us because we don’t understand. Here’s something we don’t understand. Here’s something we don’t understand. We don’t understand, here’s, here’s a, it’s a three-part set of propositions, thesis. You need a meaning to sustain you in the face of suffering or you become bitter and nihilistic and malevolent and hopeless. The meaning that will sustain you through suffering is to be found in the adoption of responsibility. Now, every time I’ve said that, and it happened again tonight, every single person goes silent. Why? It’s because no one said that for 60 years. And everyone knows it, you think, well, and I can be very concrete about this. My wife and I both were very ill over the last three years. My daughter was also very ill, and ill in a very brutal way, and ill in a brutal way that unfolded over months and years. And we’ve had ample opportunity to reflect on what made that bearable to the degree that it was bearable. And the answer is pretty clear. What made it bearable? The love we had for our children, the love we had for each other, the love we had for our friends, and mutually so, the love that was reflected back to us by the broader community. When Tammy was in the hospital, she was in the hospital extensively in 2019, and there were people sending prayers, essentially, from all over the world. My sister would print them out in the morning and put them on the hotel, hospital room, hotel. It was no hotel, hospital room. And all of that, and my family, not just my kids, my wife, my friends, my parents, my siblings, all pulled together in a remarkable way. Well, I’ll tell you a story, or you can tell the story if you want. You want me to tell the story? Okay, well, Tammy was diagnosed with a very slow-growing form of cancer in 2018, and we were assured that it was nothing to worry about, and then she had surgery for the cancer, and then when we came back a month later, she had some pain in her side near the surgical site, and we were informed within the span of about 10 minutes that she had been misdiagnosed and that the cancer she had was not only fatal, but 100% fatal, extremely rare, 100% fatal within 11 months. And so that was rather shocking, as you might imagine. And so Tammy reacted to that with her customary bravery and grace, and in some sense accepted it. And as she told me, many of her relatives had died in their late 50s, and she had learned to accept that as part of the potential natural course of events. But then she went and told our son, and he wasn’t nearly as sanguine about it as she was, and she realized that the significance of her life wasn’t precisely to be measured by its significance to her, that it had its own intrinsic significance, and that it was possible that her son saw that even more clearly than she did, and that, and I would say, being an observer of both of them, that part of the reason that that experience made itself manifest is because Tammy really loves her son, and was a very good mother to him, and in all possible regards, I would say, and that was reflected back to her, that responsibility that she had taken was reflected back to her in that moment, and that was, I would say, a cardinal part of her decision to do whatever was necessary to survive. Now, why she survived is a complicated issue, and we don’t know, except that she did, but that’s just a small story about where the meaning that sustains you come from, you know? If you’re in pain, if you’re suffering, if you’re deteriorating, if you’re desperate, you have, you’re fortunate if you have a web of relationships that you’ve cultivated to buoy you up. That’s what you have in a marriage, if you make the right sacrifices, and you’re fortunate. So I would say, well, why take responsibility? Well, because that’s where you find meaning. You find the meaning there that will sustain you through the catastrophe of your life, and the more you bear that responsibility, the more meaning will be there when you need it. And then I would say, too, there’s an idea that’s deeply embedded in our culture, an extraordinarily deep idea, that it’s an incumbent upon all of us to voluntarily bear our crosses as we stumble uphill, and that’s a celebration of the heaviest possible responsibility, right? To take on yourself the literal burden of betrayal, death, pain, torment, tyranny, atrocity, all of that. To take that on voluntarily, to lift it onto your shoulders, and to walk uphill, and perversely and paradoxically, it’s in the willingness to adopt that responsibility that you find the meaning that allows you to to bear precisely that load. And that’s the answer to that question. Thank you.