https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Z11ygYzcDQw
What happens to you as you stroll merrily on your way through life? Well, what happens is that as you’re moving from point A to point B, you encounter things. And people think that what they encounter are objects, but that’s not the case. First of all, most of the things that you encounter, many of the things are actually other people, and they’re not objects. They’re too damn complex. And even apart from the social world, the things that you encounter aren’t objects. They seem to be something more like tools or obstacles. And I don’t mean that we see objects and turn them into tools or obstacles. I mean that we see tools and obstacles. Because what happens is that when you array yourself towards a goal, then the world transforms itself into things that get in the way of that goal and things that… Three things. Things that get in the way of the goal. Those are things you don’t like. Things that facilitate your movement towards the goal. Those are things that you like. And irrelevant things. And mostly you want irrelevant things, because there’s just too damn many things. So the category of irrelevant is one you really like. So most of everything is irrelevant if you have a good plan. A few things are good, because they move you forward, and some other things are not so good. You want to go around the not so good things if you can manage them, unless you like to run head forth into like brick walls, which is not particularly… It’s a learning experience, but I wouldn’t repeat it too many times. You want the world to array itself as a set of… We could say tools. Now, what happens is that you have this perceptual system that’s mediated by dopamine. It’s the same system that cocaine activates, or methamphetamine, or the drugs that people really like to take. And it’s the dopaminergic system that responds with positive emotion to indications that you’ve encountered something that will facilitate your movement towards a goal. And that’s really important to know. Because people tend to think that they’re happy because they achieve goals, and that’s not true. What’s true is because as soon as you achieve a goal, then you have a problem, which is what’s the next goal. And that’s actually a big problem. You encounter that as soon as you graduate from university, for example. That’s right. I made this joke before. Day… graduation day here is like king of the university hierarchy. Undergraduate hierarchy. Day after, you’re unemployed potential Starbucks employee. Right? So it’s like… So obviously, the accomplishment per se, as a source of reward, is problematic. Because when you accomplish, you run the frame to its end, and then you have the problem of needing a new frame. So that’s a problem. But if what you’re encountering instead are things that will move you along your way, it’s like, hey, that’s great. And that’s where you get your positive motivation. And so that’s really thinking… that’s so much worth thinking about. You can think about that for a year, and that wouldn’t even be enough to think about it. Because here’s what it means. It means, in some sense, that the Buddhists are right with their claim about Maya. M-A-Y-A, which means that people live in an illusion. And what they mean by that is, well, you have goal… whatever your goal is. And that goal gives relevance to the world. And you can change the relevance of the world in a snap, just by changing your goal. You can do that. And so, then you think, well, it’s sort of an illusion, because you can just change it. Now, you don’t want to push that line of argumentation too far, because… Even if the specific point can be changed, the fact that you’re in one of these frames cannot be changed. And so you have to be in a frame, although you get to pick the frame. So there’s still an absolute there, which is that you have to be in a frame. And that is not a trivial absolute. It’s a very major absolute. So then you think, okay, all of your positive emotion is going to be experienced in relationship to the goal. Well, then we think, well, you could use some positive emotion. It’s a good thing. Positive emotion inhibits anxiety, and disappointment, and frustration, and pain. It does all that. Technically, it does that. That’s why a football player with a broken thumb, who wants to score a touchdown, can go out there and, you know, play the football game, even though it’s kind of an arbitrary goal, right? It’s like, really? You’re going to go out there and, like, risk your hand to fire a pigskin through some poles? It’s like, well, you can say the same sort of cynical thing about most of the things that people do, but you can’t say the cynical thing about the fact that they have to do things. So you have a point, you have your aim, you have your ambition, and then that’s what turns the world into a potentially positive place. And here’s the kicker. This is so cool. The higher the aim, the more the positive emotion. So that’s, that’s, you think, well, why should I bother? You know, why should I bother doing something lofty and difficult? It’s like, because it’s worth it. That’s why. Because the alternative is stupid suffering. Because, really, really, because what happens is, like, you don’t need a framework in order to suffer. You can just lay there, day after day, and suffer, right? That’s easy. So that’s the default condition. If you don’t have a lofty ambition, then you suffer miserably. And the reason for that is life is really complex, short, finite, full of suffering, and beyond you. And so you can just lay there and think about that, and it’s horrible. And so that’s not helpful, it’s just not useful. And so, you know, people often say, life is meaningless. It’s like, no, it’s not. That’s wrong. Because if it was meaningless, that’d be easy. You could just sit there and do nothing, and it wouldn’t matter, right? It’d be like you were like a lobotomized sheep. It’s just irrelevant. But that isn’t what happens. When people say that life has no meaning, that isn’t what they mean. What they mean is, I’m suffering stupidly and intensely, and I don’t know what to do about it. Well, the suffering is meaningful, it’s just not the kind of meaning you want. So how do you get out of that? You note the baseline of suffering. Which is very, very, very, very high. And then you say to yourself, okay, I need to do something that justifies that. And that’s not so easy, because the baseline for suffering is high. If you’re going to make something of yourself, let’s say, so that it’s worthwhile to exist in the world, then you have to aim at something that’s so well structured, that you can say, Yeah, earthquakes, cancer, death of my family, dissolution of my goals, ultimate futility of life, and the heat death of the universe. Hey, it doesn’t matter, it’s worth it.