https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=5MiLQ1Kb3sM
Is there an ultimate purpose of life? Yeah. Sure. What is it? What we’re doing here. Which is what? Hopefully trying to make peace. Is that enough? We’ll see. Yeah. Because… It’s better than the alternative. What’s the alternative? Hell. Okay. Which we’re toying with. I don’t mean us. Well, us too. That’s for sure. You know, things are shaky at the moment on many fronts. And we have this opportunity in front of us, all of us, to have a very abundant world, right? Where everyone has enough. And maybe more than enough. And we’re shaky about that. We’re not sure that that’s acceptable. And we’re not sure everybody should have it. We’re not sure everybody deserves it. And even ourselves. And… And we’re retreating into our corners in some real sense. And we’re not addressing the elephants under the carpet. And you can’t do that. Like, the things we’re discussing contentiously now, you know, they make for rough conversations, but they make for a lot rougher streets if you don’t talk them out. And you have to do that in the spirit of ignorance. You know, like I was hoping to come here today and… Well, listen, I talk a lot. There’s my flaw. You know? But… I don’t know how to feel the right way forward. I think part of it is, well, first of all, to find commonalities. We believe in the fundamental necessity of a uniting book across the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths. That’s not nothing. That’s a strange thing to insist upon, and yet we all seem to agree. We believe in a higher and purposeful unity, the necessity of that. And then also in the necessity of putting that above all else. And we also agree that we’re not very good at that. But that’s the hardest one to get, is that even if you do claim, in some sense, to worship the highest in this monotheistic sense, that doesn’t mean you’re very good at it. And that’s a hard pill to swallow, especially when you’re trying to also be a courageous knight of your faith, let’s say. It’s hard to be properly humble in the face of the divine, but that might be, in some sense, the proper command. The fact that Islam means submission is a reflection of that, in some sense. Just remember who’s God here and who isn’t. And that’s a very hard thing to keep in mind. So when I listen to you, you disagreeable character, I’m trying to separate out the wheat from the chaff, because there’s no doubt I have many things to learn, as I learned to some degree. And honestly, I appreciate this part. I learned from your humility, honestly, the way that you come across. Once again, I do appreciate both of you coming here. And I appreciate your disagreeability as well. What you’ve said there is good. I deserve the accountability, just like he does. I don’t want to be a person who can’t dish it out, who dishes it out but can’t get it himself. I deserve it. What I wanted to say is this to both of you. I want to do a thought experiment. And so imagine you’re going to sleep. I don’t know where you guys are staying now, what hotel you’re staying. You’re watching my videos, you know, me with the masks and stuff like that, before you go to sleep, subscribe on the channel, whatever you do. And now you’re… After you’ve put the dislike and done your negative comments, which I deleted already and put it in the trash, which is what you do, is all the tweets. You know, we can talk about that later. But after that’s all happened and you’ve gone to sleep, you both have gone to sleep now, right? You wake up and you find yourselves on a ship. On a ship, yeah? And people are eating food, people are drinking, people are this and that, so things are happening. Now, what would be the first questions that you would ask to people around you? Would you ask things like, how did I get here, where are we going? Are these… Those seem like the first two good… Those are good questions to ask in general. Where are we, how did we get here, and where are we going? Beautiful. That’s what I wanted to actually get to, because this is what Heidegger, you know, Martin Heidegger, he’s a controversial figure and he’s old, right? But he described this as the thrownness of life. Because we’re chucked into life, we’re thrown into life, right? So the fact now that we’re in this world, these questions that we would be asking if we were on a ship and we were just chucked on a ship, are the same very questions, like you said, that we would be asking in this world. Where did we come from, where are we going? I think if we can’t get these two questions right, nihilism will persist. You’re a nihilistic expert, you’ve spoken a lot about nihilism. I think if we can’t get those… He’s a counter nihilistic expert. I’m not a nihilist. If you want to ask what I think my purpose is, is to be united with God. That would be my answer. Yeah, beautiful. Okay, so from the Islamic perspective, it’s this, right? First of all, ask these three questions. Where did I come from? Where am I going? What am I doing here? What is the purpose of life? What is it? And the answer is we came from a creator, okay? So we can approach this in whatever argument you like. I’m doing a PhD in contingency argument. You can do anything you want. You can do it, for example, through the fact that the universe is regular and stable and uniform and possesses life. What’s the best explanation for that? Is it knowledge or not knowledge? So we say it’s knowledge, right? Or we say it’s a creative capacity of some sort. We came from this creative capacity. We came from this knowledge force, right? So that’s the first thing we say. We came from this force, this higher power. Where are we going? We’re going back to the higher power, right? And we’re going back to the higher power with our deeds, which we have to be responsible for, which is exactly, it’s a hallmark of what you stand for. And that’s, I believe genuinely, that’s why you’re asking why so many people are listening to you. Because we reject original sin. What would you respect? Original sin says that one man gave us a sin, the other man took it away. Basically, I mean, we’re fallen creatures, and then Jesus, you’ve got to believe in the solar fide. You believe in whatever you know about… I’m Orthodox, so I don’t believe that. Oh, fair enough. Okay, fine. I don’t believe in original sin the way you described it. But that’s fine. Fine. No worries. Eastern Orthodox, yeah? Yeah. Okay, fine. But the issue is that this… I didn’t say I believed in it either. I just said that the concept of original sin is an expression of this problem that we’re describing, which is that we’re all burdened with something approximating, while the thrownness and this ambivalent relationship we have with the atrocity of history. And that’s worse, because if you study the atrocity of history with any degree of seriousness, you have to take account of the fact that people like you did it. And you might think, well, I wouldn’t do it. It’s like, yeah. I get you. I wouldn’t be so sure about that. For sure. I mean, you were talking about the kind of… You were talking about the suffering. And obviously one of the major sufferings is the Holocaust. I was reading the book, The Meaningful Life, Victor Frank, I’m sure you’re aware of it, where he then produced logotherapy and all these kind of things. And it goes back to what Nietzsche said. You know, if you have a why, almost any how is possible. You know? Bearable. Yeah, if you have a why, almost any how is possible. So it goes back to… Everything goes back to purpose. Logotherapy. If you have a purpose, then everything is possible. That’s why I think that you can do the best as a human species, in the human condition, if your purpose is transcendental.