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so the question is who should you defeat in the final analysis and the answer is you should defeat your former self you should be constantly trying to do that and you're the right control for yourself too because you're the one who's had all your advantages and disadvantages and so if you want to compete fairly with someone then you should be competing with you and it is the case and this is what we were talking about too with regards to the self-improvement of the fighter if you're improving yourself then what you are doing is competing with

your lesser self and then you might also ask well what is that lesser self self and that lesser self would be resentful and bitter and aggressive and Vengeance seeking and all of those things that go along with having a negative moral character and those are things that interfere with your ability to progress as you move forward through life now this is on you you you don't you you got to understand this this problem it's you you don't get it right it isn't going to work and so how do you do that well you start with

what you have under control in your own life cuz where else are you going to start you look to yourself put your house in order don't be worried about some other person walking the satanic path and that's what activists do all the time that it's you it's the corporations like it's someone else no no it's you and I think that's also fundamental to the judeo Christian doctrine is that it's you it's on you Redemption is an individual matter and so my hope is that if enough people take themselves with enough seriousness then we won't end

up in hell because we certainly could it's it's a high probability so it's very necessary to understand that this is why you know I've been stressing this idea of personal responsibility it's like well personal responsibility is to compete with yourself is to be slightly better than yourself the next day and better in some way that you can actually manage and that's humility it's right like well I'm a flawed person I've got all my problems could I be as good as person X it's like not the right question the right question is could you be slightly

better tomorrow than your currently flawed self and the answer to that is if you have enough humility to set the bar properly low then you could be better tomorrow than you are today because what you also have to do is you have to say well here's all my flaws and my insufficiencies and the best that someone that flawed and insufficient could do to improve and actually do it is this and that's not worth going out in the street and celebrating with placards you know it's like well this is why I tell people to clean the

room it's not going to brag to someone that you did that but someone as insufficient as you might be able to manage it and that means you actually are on the pathway to self-improvement and you're transcending your former self you might say well what's the right way of being in the world if there is such a thing and it's not acting according to a set of rules it's attempting continually to transcend the flawed thing that you currently are and what's so interesting about that is that the mean meaning in the meaning in life is to

be found in that Pursuit right I mean there's always parts of yourself self that you can overcome and so that's William James moral equivalent to war essentially know if you need something to Grapple with you probably do you can find that and just look inside you'll find something to Grapple with you know inadequacy weakness susceptibility Temptation narcissism Pride Envy Revenge resentment frustration lack of faith all of that that that'll keep you occupied if you really grapple with it and yeah I mean that's an ancient theological question what's up with the devil why why is why

does the possibility of evil exist why is there a Eternal adversary see that reflected in Cain and Abel right at the beginning of the Genesis stories essentially the first two human beings are good set against an adversary and that's that's what opens history that story you think well why would God construct such a why would go God construct a reality where an adversary exists and maybe it's because all things considered a World with an adversary is a better world just like a g with a snake and it is a better Garden these things aren't easy

to understand no no snake no necessity to contend with snakes so why be awake at all no adversary no challenge why be challenged because maybe you're better for the challenge and maybe that's the challenge to see if you can be better for the challenge you you battle with someone external who's malevolent let's say or you think they are and usually you've got that mostly wrong but not always but if the battle is inside which is where it's supposed to be most fundamentally then well then it's the ultimate it is the ultimate challenge battle between good

and evil on a playing field of Chaos and Order it's the Eternal game and you know you can play that out in the external world but part of what the religious Enterprise is about and the Christians have really contributed to this is the notion that that sacred battle is fundamentally spiritual which is to say in some sense fundamentally psychological it's to be it's to be fought on the battleground of the Soul internally it's a subjective issue how do you defeat evil you defeat the evil in your own heart that's that is how you do it

and so if that's all being acted out for you in the world well you you've misplaced Satan that's a good way of thinking about it this is another weakness I think of the atheistic position because you can it's pretty hard it's an easy in some sense to dispense with belief in the highest good but it's not so easy to dispense with belief in evil so that's a big problem then where do you localize it and you can find evidence of it everywhere certainly in institutions I mean that's the whole systemic racism corrupt patriarchy narrative is

that Satan is to be found at the core of our institutions and to some degree that's true because everything we do is corrupt to some degree and so then do you fight it sociologically you're the good person and the the institution is Satan so you're so good are you you're so sure of that are you you've got everything in order do you and you might say well you have to have everything in order before you fight evil on the sociological front and the answer is well no because you're never going to have everything in order

but you still shouldn't put the cart before the horse it's really it's a spiritual battle and it's taken people thousands and thousands of years to figure this out now first of all it was the snake what's what's evil what's malevolent the predatory reptile fair enough man I mean we've been fighting with predatory reptiles for 60 million years as mammals 60 million years so it's a good first pass approximation it's the snake the poisonous snake the external enemy The Predator but what about the predator and other people oh yeah that's even worse man it's like how

pred predators are one thing but predatory people other tribes man they're brutal they're brutal well what about your predatory friend oh that's pretty bad too the friend who stabs you in the back the person who betrays you Judas God maybe that's the ultimate snake like well how about when you betray yourself oh yeah see there's this Association that's very strange that occurred in the development of Christian thought between the snake and the Garden of Eden and Satan there's no indication in the original story that the snake has anything to do with the Lord of all

evil it's a very weird conclusion that's been drawn it's almost extra biblical because there's almost no mention of Satan in the Bible at all much less any direct connection between the serpent and Satan it's a very very strange idea but it's part of this psychologization of evil like what's the ultimate Predator what's the ultimate Predator what's the enemy you Harbor in your own heart who hates you that's the ultimate Predator it's like well what what's the ultimate Lowel of genuine evil well the highest religious answer is that's in you that's the proper place to battle

it out and I think that's true I think that's lit it's literally and metaphorically true but what's the best thing you can do transcend your current wretched and miserable self there's meaning to be found in that and real resp and that's that's a meaning that's associated with responsibility one of the things that I've been trying to lay out clearly is that life is hard it's tainted by malevolence and betrayal that can make you bitter you need a meaning to offset that where's the meaning to be found not in rights not in impulsive pleasure but in

responsibility you take responsibility for yourself so you take care of yourself if you're good at it you can you have some excess left over to take care of your damn family if you're good at both of those then you have some excess left over to take care of your community those are heavy burdens you pick up the burdens you find that's meaningful the best way to pick up the burden is to continually improve yourself and that's where the meaning is to be found and so that meaning is in the continual self Transcendence that's letting your

old self die and the new self be reor there's not only more to you than you know there's more to you than you can imagine you have an ethical responsibility to act in that light