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One of the things that I’ve come to realize it’s taken a long time. It’s unfolded over a long time is that our Protestant liberal Definition of sanity is wrong. We tend to think of sanity in terms of Internal psychological organization. So you’re saying if your psyche is well constituted you can say you’re saying if you’re Biologically healthy in relationship to neurological function. It’s it’s an individual thing a well-constituted Psyche means you’re saying and the idea of self actualization sort of goes along with that if you’re a sane person you’re a sane individual and sanity is the sanity is the description of the well-constituted individual and so one of the corollaries of that might be that you could regard any social constraint on the flowering of your individuality as Antithetical to your sanity and I would say corrosive criticisms of social institution tend to Presume that axiomatically. That’s right. Nothing should interfere with my self actualization all social constraint is antithetical to that Spontaneous organization and to sanity itself. It’s like yeah, hold on a minute there cowboy I don’t think I don’t think you’ve got the notion of sanity right here. It’s too atomistic It’s too individual. So let me ask you this how sane are you gonna be in a terrible marriage? And I don’t care how well Constituted you are individually this is a different question So, you know when people would come to me and they were depressed sometimes I would try to find out well always Are you depressed or do you just have a horrible life and those are not the same question because if you’re depressed You have a life that in principle should work but isn’t and so you come and say look I’ve got a lot of things going for me. You know, I I’ve got a good job. I’ve got a good family My wife loves me but man, I’m miserable all the time. It’s like, okay Well, let’s delve into that a bit more deeply, but that kind of sounds like depression But then you might come and say well, I’m miserable. I’m suffering. I don’t even want to be alive And then I might ask well, do you have an intimate partner? Well, no, not really in and and I have had a history of catastrophic Relationships do you have any friends? Well, you know, I I have this one person I phone like once every month or so and but other than that, no, I don’t really see anyone Well, do you have any close family? No, my family’s pretty fractured. I don’t get along with my mom and dad I don’t see my sisters or my siblings much It’s like well, how about a job or or how about a career or failing that a job? it’s like well, I’ve always kind of been underemployed and I just lost my job and you know, I’m I’m That’s not going very well on and so on you can walk through someone’s life and you can find out if If if what if what if what if they’re reasonably embedded in a hierarchy of social institutions? And if the answer is no no intimate partner no family no children no friends no job no career No educational pathway no engagement in civic responsibility Let’s say no church attendance no spiritual life no routine. It’s like Well, you’re not depressed. You just have a horrible life Multi-dimensionally like it’s no wonder you’re depressed. There’s nothing in your life that is working but it’s interesting because That’s not exactly a diagnosis at the level of the individual it’s a diagnosis in relationship to the relationship between the individual and this structure of Containing social institutions one of the things I have a program online called the self-authoring program And one of the things it does is have people develop a vision for the future The and it’s very it’s very useful thing to do and if you spent 90 minutes doing it by the way future authoring at Self-authoring.com it would change your life, especially if you’re not doing very well. It doesn’t Do wonderful things for people who are already doing well, but that doesn’t matter because they’re already doing well It does wonderful things for people who aren’t doing very well and it asks you it’s a meaning of life program in some sense But it’s practical. It’s like well, do you have an intimate relationship? And if not, would you like to and if you did like to if you like to what would that look like in principle? Same with your friendship same with your job or career your educational opportunities It fragments your life or differentiates your life into practical domains and says well You know you probably need these things because most people do and maybe you don’t need all of them and fair enough because you’re so creative or Deviant or whatever it is that you think you are that isn’t like other people and sometimes that’s true but most of the time if You don’t have an intimate partner and you don’t have a family and you don’t have any friends and you don’t have a career or job or any civic involvement or any Involvement, let’s say with religious institutions And you don’t have any creative striving all you’ve got left is pain and so that’s what you have and so So here’s a different way of thinking about sanity Sanity isn’t being well constituted as an atomized individual Sanity is what makes itself manifest if you’re properly situated in a hierarchy of social order now some of that’s going to be internal, you know because you’re a mess of Fragmented sub personalities you can be right because anger can pull you in one direction and anxiety can pull you in another direction and impulsive enthusiasm can pull you in another direction and Lust can pull you in a direction. Those are all subpersonalities in some real sense. They’re ways of perceiving and acting in the world and You need to integrate them within yourself so that as an individual you’re integrated But the nature of that integration is dependent on your integration within the broader social context and so you can think of sanity as a distributed phenomenon and that’s That’s another reason you don’t want to casually denigrate social institutions Because we are social creatures We’re deeply social creatures and you can tell that because you can even take Antisocial people the most antisocial people the most violent predatory and parasitic criminals and you can punish them By putting them in solitary confinement right, so just think about that right the people who like other people the least and Who are most likely to Pathologize their social relationships and those would be long-term habitual sadistic violent criminals even those people find it virtually unbearable to be forced into isolation, so we’re unbelievably social we’re ridiculously social and miraculously social and one of the corollaries of that is that To be well constituted you have to be a harmonious player in a multi-dimensional symphony and some real sense of social Interaction it’s very hard to stay on the straight and narrow without a partner who doesn’t share your blind spots Correcting you constantly, you know now that’s annoying. There’s a tussling about it, right? There’s a there’s there’s a fractious and Adversarial element to that because if you’re married You don’t see eye to eye and thank God for that because sometimes in your foolish Insistence on being right you’re wrong and wrong in a way that’ll take you out And so you better have a partner who doesn’t think the same way you do and Fortunately, if you have a partner you have a partner who doesn’t think the same way you do and so if you can get the dialogue flowing then that’s a Mutually corrective mechanism and so then you might say well the truthful dialogue between Partners in a marriage is actually it’s the process by which sanity itself is generated and I mean technically It’s like you’re too complex to regulate yourself Period and so you need other people to help you do that So if you have a wife or husband someone who knows you and is there for the long run They can help you can help each other find the Meaningful path and stay on it and you can’t do that alone and probably just having a partner isn’t enough You you need kids likely to keep you sane or to drive you crazy depending on the nature of your children. Let’s say you need Family you need your parents. You need your siblings. You need you need another community around you That’s not merely your wife because you’re so crazy that it takes a village to keep you sane and so And then surrounding that more intimate Web of kinship you need friends and Friends keep keep you sane. Well, how well You have to act in a manner that once That makes them want to be around you to have friends And that means that to maintain your friendships you have to be Saner than you really are Right. You have to be They have to be able to enjoy their time with you