https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=q0GtPGN1yH8
There’s this play written by a German named Goethe. I can never say that properly. It’s Johann van Goethe, and I can’t say it, but He wrote this play called Faust, and he wrote one part of it when he was quite young and then Faust too when he was quite old And he has a character in there, Mephistopheles, and Mephistopheles is the devil, and he actually has the devil explain himself twice Basically using the same words which which I really like it was very profound and basically Goethe’s Mephistopheles Says you know he’s the adversary of the word that’s a good way of putting it Because that’s how it works out mythologically He’s the figure behind the snake in the Garden of Eden which is something we’ll talk about more But he has a he has a sophisticated philosophy. He’s not just some random Troublemaker he’s got a he’s got a deep philosophy and his philosophy is quite straightforward, and it’s compelling It’s compelling and and people are gripped by it quite often far more often than they think His philosophy is well look around at the world. It’s like Ivan Karamazov in the Brothers Karamazov When he’s trying to disabuse his younger brother of being a Christian monk Mephistopheles says well look at the world. I mean all you look around the world. It’s nothing, but a bloodbath It’s just suffering everywhere everything eats everything and people die terribly and and they’re cruel to one another and the whole Mass is nothing but a constant haul of terrible carnage and and ruin and and and and and and wreck He says it should be better if it was never Existed at all and that’s a very interesting That’s a very very interesting idea, and I do believe and I’ve seen this in people many times that in the depths of despair Especially when you’ve been betrayed for example, and you wander into the wrong subdivision of the underworld That’s something that comes to mind if you know you have a very sick child for example Or maybe your whole family is suffering as whole families do sometimes an idea is going to come to you It’s like good God who put this mess together, and is it really worth it is it really worth the suffering? Suicidal people you know they say no they say no enough of this you know and you have to be pushed a long way generally Speaking before you’ll actually commit suicide you have to be in very very desperate straits But your answer under those conditions is that being is such that it would be better if it had never been and That’s a very it’s I think I think it’s a very it’s a terrible philosophy I believe because I think what happens if you act it out is that you make the very things that led you to despair Far worse, and I can’t see that if it’s reasonable to draw a logical conclusion that suffering should Justifies your desire to make being in that the answer to that can’t be to produce more suffering That just doesn’t make sense and my observation has been that people who act out the Mephistophelian philosophy inevitably make suffering far worse and so and then that raises the other specter of well Do they want being just to cease or they just out for bloody revenge at every at any cost and my conclusion has always been That is that the mask is well being shouldn’t exist because it’s too terrible But the true motivation is I’m going to make everyone suffer as much as I possibly can before I say goodbye to this place If you read the writings of people like the kids who showed up the Columbine high school They’ll tell you exactly that that’s precisely and exactly what they concluded and then acted out So anyways, but in this God says that it was good And I thought about that a lot is like because the question is something like well is is something better than nothing Because that’s a really good question you know and I thought about two things in relationship to that and one is One is well, maybe it depends on how it is that you are right because it could be that there are ways of being in the world that justify the world and There are ways of being in the world that make the world unbearable And I believe that the narrative that runs through the biblical stories is precisely a dialogue between those two types of being and the Optimistic part of the story is that being requires limitation and suffering There’s no escape from that, but there are modes of being that allow that to be Perhaps even more than tolerable perhaps there are modes of being that allow that to be good and it’s a straight and narrow road It’s a very difficult road to tread so so I think well that that’s possible You know I’m not an optimist by nature and but that’s that’s one of the things that I’ve conceptualized And read about that I actually find plausible because it’s certainly the case everyone knows this that there are ways that you can act and make things worse Everyone knows that and so if that’s the case there has to be the opposite right there has to be ways that you could act that make things better and Obviously you can act in ways that make things really way worse And so the question is well are there ways that you can act and make things really much better? And I think that’s the question is can we have our cake and cake? Can we have the being that requires limitation and suffering and also simultaneously? transcend that by our mode of being and I believe that the biblical stories and Perhaps not only the biblical stories, but the biblical stories are the human imagined one of the human imaginations Best attempts to address and answer that question. That’s what the entire story is about So the first of it is the catastrophe of the collapse of self-consciousness and the end of the world And the rest of it is okay now we’re in history now. We know that we’re going to die We know about our mortality. We’re conscious of our own being is there a mode of acting in the world that allows that to be? Justifiable or maybe even more that allows that to be triumphant and then I would also say maybe It’s worth finding out. You know that that’s the other thing that’s so interesting because you’ve got this short time on earth And there’s lots of things that are very very difficult to do There’s lots of things that are very very difficult to contend with and and you have the problem of Tolerating yourself even in all your insufficiency and one of the things that seems to me to be the case is that if you adopt a sufficiently profound mode of being if you attempt to do that then the mere act of lifting up that weight is enough to justify the fact that you’re insufficient and mortal and and And bound by tragedy and I believe that and I believe people believe that because if you watch how people act they look for People they admire and they do admire people right it’s it’s a natural It’s a natural phenomena you see it starting with children Children admire and then they imitate and we look to people who seem to be able to bear the burden of being in a heroic manner And there’s something inside of us that calls to that and that makes us want to to mimic that and to follow it And I think that that’s a I think that that’s the deepest and most profound of instincts And I think it’s right and even if you’re not so convinced on the positive end You know because it’s more difficult to be convinced of the positive You can certainly be convinced on the negative end because there are ways of being that are so brutal and so reprehensible that merely to read about them is enough to traumatize you and I think that if you’re a person who hasn’t lost their soul completely you can’t help but encounter stories like that and shudder away from them and you know Alexander Solzhenitsyn who who was the person who did most to unmask the absolute horrors of communist totalitarianism Said that he believed that the Nuremberg judgments were the most important event of the 20th century and that was the judgment At the end of World War two that there were certain actions that no one was to undertake no matter What their cultural background was because they were let’s say crimes against humanity that there was such a thing as universal evil and You can debate that you know I mean And people certainly have but the problem is is if you debate that then you have to say that There are conditions under which the sorts of things that happen say in the concentration camps Which would be the gassing of children after their torture and and their their Forcible removal from their parents and all the terrible things that went along with that that that’s just okay It’s just an opinion. It’s just something that happened and there are circumstances under which that’s justifiable if you if there’s no Transcendent good and evil underneath that argument. It’s only a matter of practicality and And and it seems to me that that’s that’s not the right conclusion to draw That’s how it seems to me, and that’s what Solzhenitsyn concluded when he looked at the Nuremberg trials, so the notion that The notion that it was good Well even if you don’t believe that and you know because maybe it’s not as good as it could be I would say it’s incumbent on you as someone who participates in the process of a Furthering creation to act as if it could be good at least and to further that with with all of your efforts Partly because what the hell else do you have to do that could possibly be better than that that could possibly justify your existence More than that and you know perfectly well if you if you if you have any sense at all if you think clearly about it At all is that that’s what you want to see in everyone else You know it’s you’re desperate and maybe you’re cynical and now and then Someone appears that acts at least momentarily like a light in the darkness and that Lifts your spirit up and gives you a little bit of hope and maybe helps you continue on it Well, that’s obviously a call to being it’s a it’s a statement from your own soul that says well There’s something about that. That’s how you should be and maybe then well we get a chance to To participate in what is good?