https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=u3ySceWGcOc
Are you hopeful about the future? Well I’m I would say I’m hopeful and desperate about the future and I think that’s actually the right attitude to have at the moment because I Think there are compelling reasons to believe for example, you know that between 2000 and 2012 the Number of people who are in absolute privation economically in the world plummeted faster than it ever had in history part of that was a consequence a delayed consequence of the fall of the of the Soviet Empire and the fact that Fewer countries around the world were pursuing absolutely counterproductive economic Visions, but in any case as the population radically increased Everyone around the world got much richer now there are still a large number of people who are absolutely poor and There’s an even larger number of people who are relatively poor but all things considered man We were cruising there for a good while and I see Absolutely no reason why we couldn’t eradicate absolute poverty Pretty much everywhere. I see no reason other than voluntary willful blindness stupidity and malevolence That would interfere that would necessarily interfere with the complete eradication of absolute poverty by 2035 we could do that. It’s quite obvious that we could do that there’s enough food for everyone for example, there are distribution problems and and It’s possible to provide educational resources to everyone. I mean YouTube alone can do that to a huge degree and you know, you might be cynical about that, but You know TV made people smarter not stupider It might have made Really smart people somewhat stupider, but it made the children who would have under otherwise been Abandoned alone in their cribs watching absolutely nothing for hours at a time much smarter than they would have otherwise been and so and this provision of universal information that platforms that the electronic platforms allow Allows us to disseminate information Almost all information at almost no cost and so I think things could be Radically better if we got our aim, right and Part of that’s a consequence of our elevated technological power elevated computational power which is cheaper and cheaper and more and more powerful at an extraordinarily rapid rate and so the the vision of a future of plenty on the material and spiritual front that beckons like it never has before But but Along with that increased power comes the requirement for increased responsibility and wisdom and We could easily break things apart and produce a hell that would make what happened in the 20th century look like a trial run And I would say that’s all that’s up to each of us in the most in the most fundamental way I mean part of the reason that Tammy and I are doing what we’re doing is because There’s a lot of reasons, but I concluded Forty years ago that The Trajectory that we walk towards heaven or hell Is fundamentally dependent on individual choice now? I don’t really understand how the universe can be Constructed so that that’s true but I believe it is true Solzhenitsyn said for example that one man who stops lying can bring down a tyranny and and he did that so he knew and He wasn’t the only person who did that but we each bear Ultimate responsibility in some sense for the direction of our mutual striving forward I think that’s the core Doctrine of the West, you know that each individual is sovereign and of divine and ultimate worth and there’s a commensurate responsibility with that and so I thought when I Realized that partly from reading Solzhenitsyn partly from reading Jung partly from reading Dostoevsky Frankel many people were pointing in that direction Nietzsche to some degree that It was necessary for us to become aware of that and to take that responsibility on our own shoulders And so I’ve been talking to people as individuals ever since McGill at Harvard at the University of Toronto and then more broadly publicly inviting people to the adventure of their life, let’s say the moral adventure of their life Driven by my conviction that it actually matters whether you get your act together Like it matters eternally in some sense it it matters in a heaven or hell manner You know in a totalitarian state People are locked into tyranny because every individual lies every single one and That’s the grip of the totalitarian state and to the degree that you are living in deceit. Let’s say you’re contributing to Tyranny in the hell that accompanies it and and not in some little way Not only are you not saying what you should say when you should say it But you’re not doing what needs to be done when you need to do it You’re turning a blind eye and allowing it to happen But you’re also not bringing into the world what you could bring into the world if you brought everything you could into the world and That lack on your part of bringing into the world what could be there if you would reveal yourself You would reveal your light let’s say that’s cataclysmic And And that’s a painful realization But it goes along with being a locus of divine worth and so I Believe that I believe that if You fail to say what you know to be true you corrupt the world you corrupt being if you lie you corrupt being corrupted being is hell and If we all lie enough then we have hell and Whether we all lie enough to bring about hell is actually Dependent in Much larger part than it’s What would you say it’s That you might desire to admit dependent on your choice and So one of the reasons we love doing what we’re doing I would say is because we come to these events with thousands of people and everybody at the event is there because they’re trying to aim up and Often doing so especially in contrast to their previous efforts, and that’s unbelievably Motivating and wonderful to see but also Necessary we are very powerful now all of us with our incredible technological gadgets our computational power and that’s going to get way more we’re gonna get way more powerful than that really fast and So you better get your act together because children can’t wield that sort of power without all hell breaking loose and So I’m very optimistic because things could be maybe better than we could even imagine but If we want to we could sure make them worse So we all have to decide you know are we aiming up? With all we got Or are we aiming down? So and I hope that whatever we’re doing tonight is a contribution to the consensus that We should each do what we can in the confines of our own life in the unlimited expanse of The opportunity of our own lives to aim up and if we all do that carefully enough Then up we’ll go and if we don’t Well, then we can have the alternative And so on that happy note We’ll say good night Pleasure to see you all