https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=k31JRRfXOyM
Do you ever consider when filling large theaters that through Unobvious ways you could be misguiding them. Oh Yes Yeah, yeah, I consider that all the time mean I’ll give you an example so Carl Jung spent a lot of time analyzing Hitler Who by the way, I’ve been compared to So far unsuccessfully, thank God He said that Hitler embodied the collective unconscious of the German people and I tried to take that apart now Jung took that apart a lot. He he laid out the following scenario. So of course World War one 1914 to 1918 was a absolutely dismal bloody horrific catastrophe and Germany came out of that much bruised and battered with a generation of men who’d been brutalized by trench warfare and so that’s pretty damn rough and then the Versailles Treaty was foisted upon the Germans unwisely and subjected them to unbearable reparation costs and So the Germans felt that not only had they lost the war which was a catastrophe but that they had been betrayed By their leaders and the world in its aftermath and that’s the sort of thing that tends to make you a trifle resentful then Because that wasn’t enough in the 1920s Partly because of the reparation demands the German currency hyper inflated To the point where it literally cost millions of marks to buy a loaf of bread and what that meant was that anybody Who was conscientious and diligent who had saved anything? whatsoever through the catastrophe of the First World War and in the aftermath then lost absolutely everything they had and then the 30s came With the depression and while all that was going on the Germans were Terrified and for good reason that the Communist Revolution that tore apart Russia was going to be visited upon them So that’s a lot of nasty things going on underneath the surface and you can imagine that there was a fair bit of stored-up resentment in the populace Okay now enter Adolf Hitler a man obsessed with the notion of will and with a certain degree of charisma and capacity for emotional communication, but also with a certain degree of capacity for dancing with and enticing the audience and So he spoke off the cuff Now What was Hitler aiming at well certainly he was aiming at power Certainly it appears that he was aiming at revenge because he certainly took that Not only on the Jews and everyone else he persecuted but on Europe itself on his own people and the world and He had his reasons for being resentful and I’m certainly not justifying that I’m just saying that they were there and Then he spoke to the audience and he paid attention to what produced a reaction and so he could speak and listen and now and then he said things that got a roar of approval from the mob and He collected those in his imagination because he was rewarded for doing so and willing to go where that mob spirit of Collective resentment took him and The consequence of that was all the catastrophes of the Nazi era and So yes when I’m speaking to large audiences, I think about such things because I’ve thought about them deeply and so What’s the danger? Well, the danger is that? I’ll be able to I’m in a position where in principle I could satiate my basest motivations with the approval of the crowd and so What is to be done about that? And that’s a very complicated question when I was assessing what happened in Nazi Germany what happened in Stalinist Soviet Union, let’s say it in totalitarian states Everywhere I was convinced by the arguments of people like Viktor Frankl and Alexander Solzhenitsyn that the fundamental Sin of the totalitarian state was reliance on the lie and So I decided I believe that I believe that it’s the spirit of deceit That is identical to the spirit of tyranny. I Actually believe that and so I also believed that the idea that emerged after World War two Which was never again was a good idea, but that we would repeat the same we Would produce the same hells unless we understood how we produced them to begin with and stop doing it and my sense was Those hells were produced Through deceit and so the way to stop that from happening is to not Say things you think are untrue and So 40 years ago I decided that I was going to do my best Not to say things I knew were lies and that’s slightly different than telling the truth or Maybe even substantially different because who after all knows the truth But we all know when we’re not we all know when we’re telling a lie and We could stop and So I tried to stop and the reason I tried to stop is because I became convinced That the pathway to hell was paved with lies and I felt that it would be better not to go there and Not to take other people along with me if I chose to go there and So I’m hoping by being very careful with what I say that I’m not doing that And then you might say well, what’s the evidence because that’s a good question and I would say the evidence is I’ve been at 400 of these events You think quite a few yeah somewhere between three and four hundred They’re all positive Nothing negative has happened at any of them Everybody who comes seems to be coming because they would like things to be positive Seems to be coming because they would like things to be better And that’s what people say people say when they talk to me they don’t come up to me and say I’ve been following your advice and Things were really bad four years ago, and now they’re way worse They say the opposite they say I’ve been trying to take responsibility for my life I’ve been trying to establish a permanent relationship. I’ve been trying to grow up. I’ve been trying to tell the truth I’ve been trying to do a better job at work. I’ve been trying to make the proper sacrifices I’ve been trying to set things straight with my family. I’ve been trying to clean up my room And you know what things are way better than they were and so The reason Tammy and I continue to do these lectures to stay on the road so much is because our experience has been that the Events are extremely positive in every way. They’re engaging and they’re playful and People are are attentive and pleased to be there and generally quite well dressed and they’re looking pretty good and It’s a very positive and Hopeful thing to do and so I would say that not only do I worry about What might happen if I speak to a crowd I would say I’ve done very little else in the last 30 years 37 years then worry about precisely that