This is Viktor Frankl He was a neurologist and a psychiatrist he lived through the concentration camps of the Second World War He survived starvation slave labor watched countless people die You know what the concentration camps were we went all on it. Anyway, during that time he had a revelation which was, this: Humans are an animal driven by purpose, above all we strive for a sense of meaning in our lives And if we don't get it we get extremely extremely sad and by the time I finished ranting at you today I hope you will agree with this, too For the longest time a good day for a human consisted of finding food, finding water, and not getting fucking eaten and even though Hunter-gatherers probably have more free time than we do chances are the focus of their lives was to stay alive Next, we developed a civilization and along came organized religion I'm not shitting on religion here believe whatever you like, but whether the notorious G. O.
D does exist or not it arguably gave humans a purpose in the universe; we were special, we were loved (sometimes) and we actually meant something in the grand scheme of things Lately though things are getting a bit complicated If you're listening to this there's a very strong chance you will never live through a war directly, you will never experience prolonged starvation or have to worry about getting access to clean drinking water I say this not to guilt you But just to point out how much has changed for lots of us however, whereas before the purpose of one's life was focused around not getting dead or Remembering to worship the God of your choice today lots of us have more time to think about life And we still don't have an agreed sense of what we're doing here There is a shadow in the background of modern life. It is best described as having enough food, Hopefully having enough money to live on, Not needing to worry about lions, And still being sure that some vital thing is missing And that missing thing Viktor Frankl argued is meaning. Frankl noticed that lots of his patients had the sensation of total meaninglessness in their lives He called this the existential vacuum When I got my cap I asked the vet: "What do cats need please?
" And she said: "food, water and fuzz. " I give her these things and she seems as far as I can tell pretty cool with the whole arrangement At no point has she demanded to know the purpose of her existence or the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics It doesn't seem that easy to satisfy humans though, because we are very very clever animals (with some exceptions) And oh look! It's half-past-pop-psychology o'clock Maybe you know about Maslow's hierarchy of needs it's not accepted by everyone, but it's a pretty good rough guide So we're fairly sure humans need basic stuff first; food, water, sleep Then security and safety and no getting numbed by lions, yes Then belonging and love as in family intimate relations, Then self-esteem to be respected to be appreciated and then finally Self-actualization or becoming that thing one actually wants to be.
Lots of humans it seems, are somewhere between here and here Hopefully lots of us are living in relative safety, and that's grand But the general message of 21st century life for being self actualized at least in some parts of the world is Make-de-moneyz or buy lots of property or something and then you'll miraculously be happy and fulfilled Well, nothing wrong with money or houses, But it seems pretty evidential that is not enough for purpose and happiness in itself A few recent studies hinted that having money does actually make you happier Unless you win the lottery, interestingly Then you're probably fucked, link below. But there does seem to be a limit A Princeton study a while ago suggested that above about $75,000 dollars happiness and well-being doesn't increase that much above a certain threshold of being able to support yourself and your family Most humans don't get too much happier above that with money alone, So something else is required for happiness. .
Happiness is one of the few things humans try to achieve for its own sake But there's a problem with happiness Which is the most of us seem to behave thinking well when I bought, finished, driven, built, completed X I'll just be happy forever and nothing will ever hurt again If you've ever tried being human you may have noticed that this is not how happiness works, ever Usually over a long enough period of time humans revert back to their baseline hedonic setpoint their default happiness position This is called the hedonic treadmill, and it's a fundamental shit part of the human condition But what's interesting is that there doesn't seem to be a meaning treadmill in the same way For example: one of the most significant life events for lots of humans will be having more humans, eventually And parenting itself seems to start off feeling pretty cool But gets a bit fucking stressful for about 20 years and in those 20 years even though the euphoria dies off And many parents at times wish to eat their young the feeling of purpose does not die off This also appears to apply to long-term relationships that work, and professions people genuinely, actually, enjoy there may be difficult weeks or months But overall if it's in line with what an individual actually wants, inherently Then the thing continues to be meaningful for a long time Possibly even for life. Meaning seems like a far more sustainable goal than happiness And according to what we know so far, if you have the first, the second often follows Even in hard times Years ago I had a shit temp job in an office And I spent the entire time being incompetent and fantasizing about getting out and my boss who was a nice lady Seemed genuinely happy filling in spreadsheets and playing solitaire when the big boss wasn't looking and she was very clever So one day I asked her why she liked working there, And she said that when she was little she used the dream about working in an office and having a desk and going to the Coffee machine blah blah and now she was living the dream And I realized at that moment just how different humans' motivations can be. If working there was in line with what she wanted to do, and she was happy doing it, Which she was, then who the hell was I to tell her otherwise?
Unfortunately, humans are not cats and food and water and fuss just ain't gonna Cut it most of us seem to want to be trying at something we enjoy But the spectrum of human enjoyment is so vast It's ridiculous, so there's not going to be some magical human science that says "Alright you fucks, everyone eat five creme eggs a day, learn the accordion, get a job as a telephone sanitizer and then you'll find purpose in life" It's something a lot more complicated than that And Victor Frankl's position was that finding an individual sense of meaning is a journey the individual has to undertake alone Sometimes you come across people who are much older than you, but a still self-centered or compulsive liars or whatever? And it's worrying because you assumed if you just live long enough your work shed out and stuff will be fine And here's someone who lived a long time and somehow is still an awful person One day I was talking to a Buddhist nun about this, And she said "well obviously, you have to try it, being wise, or you'll spend your whole life never growing, Meaning is a jumper that you have to knit, yourself. " that seemed quite clever and quite true.
Oh ey uh. . Jumper is a sweater to those of you living in certain breakaway British territories.
What what? Where we are now might be part of a huge experiment in human history Which is give some people miraculous technology give them education And mars bars and VR and see if that provides them with a purpose in life for some of them, lots of them, It doesn't seem to The question then is "Yeah yeah, thanks for the technology and the education and everything, But life still feels empty on some level for some of us, and what the hell do we do now, please? " Every age has its trials; the existential vacuum might be ours, If you take away the constant threat of death, Purpose is given back to the individual and that's bad and that's good.
if one actually pursues some individual sense of meaning whether it be in love or work or whatever That's grant if not an entire lifetime can be spent and many have been spent doing nothing about it The game of life begins with you appearing on the outskirts of this huge dark forest You ask a few people what we're all doing here, but no one, including your parents or teachers really has a clue Now you're told that inside the forest is real life And if you go in you'll have to do battle with all sorts of monsters like: loneliness, Everything feeling futile, shit jobs, people being vindictive, your own limitations, Not knowing what you inherently want, worrying about income, Worrying about disease, The death of people close to you, Universal human stuff, right? But facing up to it actually saying fuck you I'm gonna learn or make or become whatever it is We'll just refuse to die on the inside despite living in a universe that is clearly not kind and where suffering is inevitable That might be the only way of achieving some sense of individual meaning What's that Ray Bradbury line? Ask no guarantees, ask for no security that never was such an animal and if there were, it would be related to the great sloth Which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day sleeping its life away Just being alive in the first place is fucking ridiculous, And it's amazing that most of us are even keeping it together, at all It's one thing to get called into creation without being asked first, It's an insult to injury to then be expected on top of that to work out what the hell you're doing here in the first (second) place And I think there's a pretty good chance that Viktor Frankl and a bunch of others have already shown us how to beat that problem Purpose seems to be personal, it comes from the inside from a sense of enjoying one's work from living around people one actually loves from Striving to know even if only in a small human way for a short human time what we're even doing here in the first place Individually, if not that then what the hell was the point in being here?
And if that feels like a challenge, well that's to be expected because everyone else is playing the same game Whether they admit it or not however much older however much more powerful they might be. What is it with these pricks one meets at parties sometimes who claims they've got it all worked out, Are you serious ! ?
Have you even noticed where you are! ? You're finally just being called into creation are you?
You're all right with just popping down the shop for an ice-cream and pretending anything makes sense. Are you fucking kidding me! ?
Oh, yeah, welcome to existence; everything is confusing, the universe is actively hostile, And you don't even know what the conditions for your own happiness are, Oh, by the way, you're sentient meat standing on a living spaceship (! ) Best of luck coming to terms with that one, Yeah Like getting very confused about all this isn't entirely natural for literally everyone Like we have anything more here than just each other, No one knows what they're doing Everybody shits and really, No one knows what they're doing And that's alright. That's to be expected Knit your own meaning jumper if you can, lots of other humans did And it seemed to work out for them Cool, Rant over.
. . Good luck with your fucking lives then oh What's that?
