https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=CMi5TU6d93w
Was it a comedy show I went to here and a lot of the comedians knew us. Dave Rubin and I went in there and so a lot of them knew us which was quite interesting. One of them said, God you know I was in a rough shape two years ago. I was just getting married. I just got married and I was nihilistic as hell and depressed and bitter and things weren’t going well for me at all. And I was unemployed and one of my friends got me a job and he said I really liked the bloody job. I didn’t want to have the job and I was kind of dragging my ass to the work and not doing it well. I listened to one of your lectures and it said look if you haven’t got anything going for you but you have a job don’t quit your job. Whether you hate it or not it’s like man that’s what you’re hanging on to the edge of the world with your fingertips you know. Don’t let go. If you can find a better job okay fine but you don’t just quit because then what you’re done. And he said another thing that I had mentioned was why don’t you just try to work as hard as you can at your damn job for like six weeks. Right all flat out you know if you work 10% longer hours you make 40% more money. That’s something worth thinking about you know you’ve got a job maybe you show up 15 minutes early and you leave 15 minutes late. You know and you actually work and your boss notices because he would probably notice and then maybe someone’s going to get promoted and maybe it’ll be you because something’s going to tilt the scales. And that little extra bit of work done without cynicism and resentment might be enough. Well he said he started at 21 bucks an hour and in six weeks he was making 37 dollars an hour and it’s not a king’s ransom man. But it’s a hell of a lot more than zero and it’s quite a lot more than 21. He said his life had turned around substantially because he learned if he put some damn effort into it and I’m not trying to be Joe optimist here. Like I know that people hit runs of bad luck and that things can take you out of life right. Unfortunate illnesses and betrayal and like there’s no shortage of randomness and horror that can wipe you out even if you’re doing your best. But you don’t have a better bloody plan than to do your best and it tends to work a lot better than you think. And what’s so interesting about the hierarchies that people set up is that that’s how they’re set up. They’re not set up on power. They’re set up on reciprocity and skill and trust. Not always. You know and if you’re in a job where you work hard and you’re a good guy and you’re doing your best and your boss is a bloody tyrant and you never get a break. It’s like okay fine. You’re in a Foucault world. Get the hell out of it. You know you get your resume set up write your CV fill in the educational gaps that you can have that you have send out your 25 resumes a day and prepare to make a lateral move because you’re in a bad place. But almost everywhere and this certainly being the case virtually everywhere I’ve worked and I’ve had like 50 jobs you know if you. Go above and beyond the call of duty in a and wake an intelligent way interpersonal. Socially with regards to the diligence of your work with regards to the truth of your attitude and your courage and all of that that will work. And you know if you try it for you and it doesn’t work then go somewhere else because you can write your free I mean it’s not easy. You can’t just walk out the door and instantly find another job but you’re not enslaved you could make a move you could even decide that you’re going to make a move and double your salary you know it’s not a bad goal and certainly a possibility. It’s like it isn’t hierarchy it’s ethics that determines success in a functional society it’s ethics that determines success not power the rest of it’s a bloody lie and that doesn’t mean that all our systems are perfectly ethical. You know you got to be awake if you’re in a system there’s going to be some corruption in it part of what you’re supposed to do is keep your damn eyes open for the corruption and your mouth speaking truth so when the corruption starts to take root you object to it so the whole system. Doesn’t turn into a pathological power play and that’s part of your ethical responsibility as a conscious being an ethical being a religious being for that matter and a citizen you know. And then you’re charged with that that’s why you’re that’s why you vote that’s why you’re the cornerstone of your state man you’re you’re the you’re the you’re the what would you call you’re the you’re the wellspring of the ethical actions that replenish the dying world. That’s what you are and if you if you act that’s really that’s what you are. And if you act that out properly then things work and that’s why that’s always been described as ethical behavior it’s not because you’re supposed to be good you know and being good isn’t that easy anyways and it certainly doesn’t mean being nice and harmless. It’s not an easy thing to be good you have to be tough as a damn boat to be good because you have to stand your ground when you need to stand your ground and you have to be able to say no when it’s time to say no and you have to mean it and so then you have to think and plan strategically so that when you’re going to say no you can mean it and it will stick. You know and that takes a certain amount of that takes a certain amount of integrated malevolence I would say and once it’s integrated it’s not malevolence it’s strength it’s strength of character it’s the ability to stand your ground and you have to cultivate that and you cultivate that at least in part by telling the truth. And so you take your place in the world as a decent person and as a decent citizen and then and you play the hierarchical game properly and that is to stand up straight with your shoulders back it’s like the world’s an onslaught you’ve got the tyranny of culture to deal with you’ve got the catastrophe of nature you’ve got your own damn malevolence and ignorance right all coming at you plus the incredible complicated indeterminate potential of the future that’s all coming at you and it’s all your responsibility and it’s all your responsibility to do that. And so you can cringe away from it and be afraid of it and be victimized by it and be bitter and cynical about it and no wonder because it can be painful or you can turn around and you can say man bring it on because there’s more to me than there is to the catastrophe and this is what I discovered from looking at what I looked at I looked at the darkest things I could look at really for 30 years I was really a lot of fun to be around I can tell you. I looked at the darkest things that I could think of right not only what happened in Auschwitz and what happened in the Gulag but but personal issues you know it’s like I wasn’t so much interested in the totalitarians as a group I was interested in the people who undertook the terrible acts that the totalitarians required you know the people who I was just rereading ordinary men and it was a story about a police battalion in Poland that trained ordinary policemen to take naked pregnant women out into the fields and and and shoot them in the back of the head it takes a lot of training by the way before you can bring yourself to do that and you aren’t the same person by the end of it it’s pretty goddamn horrific you know and I was trying to figure out what would it be like to be that person because we are that person and then what would it be like to not be that person right to refuse to do that to not participate in that you know and what I discovered by making that totalitarian proclivity personal was that there was there’s more to us than there is to the horror nature is bent on our destruction bad as culture is tyrannical and bloody back as far as you can look as malevolent as you are in the darkest part of your heart and that’s plenty malevolent the possibility that’s within you that can well up the courage and the truth and the ability and the skill and the willingness to set things right if you are malevolent. You are willing to set them right is more powerful than all of that.