Hello, everyone, I'm stephen west. This is philosophize this you know, there's a lot of notifications at come up on your phone that just bring up negative feelings. The news app that tells you the world is ending the bank. Tell me your accounts, overdrawn text, messages from your family, tony about God knows what look. I got one ambition in this entire world in that's to make a pod castra release an episode. It comes up on your phone as a notification and it produces nothing but positive feelings like while looking for de listening later, if that's a feeling you ve ever had with this podcast, then it warms the ventricles of my heart. Thanks to the people out there who give back patriotic philosophize us dot org, I hope you'll have the show today. So one of the things people have requested the most over the years on this podcast are more episodes on albert camus. He was a french algerian, absurdest philosopher known for its fiction

nominated for the nobel prize and literature. I think eleven different types, and I thought it might be interesting to think about what he would possibly have to say that this hypothetical protagonist we ve been talking about. In our ongoing creation of meaning series. For anyone who is unaware or for anyone whose listen to the park ass for the first time today The premise of the series goes something like this. Imagine someone who doesn't believe in god, Some believe that there's any sort of intrinsic meaning or moral code written into the universe. How does that and not only start creating a system of values, but how you grounded in something that is on one hand open ended enough the revise your values, with new circumstances that you find yourself in but on the other hand, have it be enduring enough that you feelings in a given moment: dont dictate everything that you do. What mistakes do we gotta look out for, if we're trying to manufacture stability in an unstable universe. That's the premise here and it should be said: chemical is not the guy

That's gonna think that the solution to excess central dread is for some of the just create a system of meaning out of thin air. However, that's not to say you, wouldn't have a lot of good advice to give someone that was embarking out on that sort of quest, in fact, the main character. One of this final books called the fall a book released just a couple years before he died in a car. And when he was clearly about the hidden to a new direction with his work, the main character of the fall in many ways can be seen as a great example of what not to do as someone creating a system, a meaning, because it might be tempting at first to think that the bigger obstacle in your way to finding meaning in life is the fact that you live in a disinterested universe? It doesn't care about you and that's certainly something we have considered this. We talked about beauvoir nature, kircher guard, Becker, tehran and all the rest of em, but something campbell input. Killer is going to warn us about in this book, dare I say better than all the others are the pitfalls of self deception. In other words, you can have the greatest plan in the world right, you can come up with a dynamic, pluralistic

value system that represents exactly who you want to be. You can be religiously committed to carrying it out. But if, at the end of that process, you're just kidding yourself, if you just play some psychological game that allows you to never take responsibility for your values for more than just a couple days, the biggest obstacle to their lasting meaning in your life could actually be you. So what that said, the fall is the book we're gonna, be talking about today, the actual title of the book, the fall. is a reference to the fall of humanity in the garden of Eden. We all know the story adam and eve god tell them not to eat the fruit They have a conversation with the nice snake, gentlemen. In the garden one day, they take a bite from apple, and now we are all implicated in the doctrine of original sin came, of course, doesn't believe in any of this. He doesn't believe in. god or any sort of moral commands handed down that we could be disobedient against in the first place. What he does believe, though, is that this is a powerful metaphor. For the fall of modern humanity

a similar fall in the way we often see ourselves in our lives from a high place of delusional self, perceived innocence to a more self aware, humbled place where we recognise how implicated in responsible. We are for our own actions and all the games. Try to play along the way to avoid that guilt that judgment that responsibility, the book is at its core, a critique of modern people in modern society the main character. The book is the sort of poster child for all. This The hope is that, by listening to such an extreme example of the hypocrisy of modern society that we might be able to see pieces of this hypocrisy in ourselves and come out the other side, this book with a little less self deception about how we fit into things in the world now the lasting ever want to do here is how the sound, like a book report standing up in front of the class. The central theme of chapters two and three is to believe in yourself. No, I want to talk about the Phyllis,

typical themes here, some of which can get a little dark and unstructured, given the absurdist philosophy of cam mood not restricted to chapters, but in order to do that, I'm going to have to explain the main character of the book so bare with me during the couple months. I gotta do that on this podcast like right now, for instance, the story begins in a bar in amsterdam of all places, the main care, there is a guy named jean baptiste clots, obvious biblical reference to john the baptist. We find claremont sitting at a bar talking to the person that sitting next to him ordering a drink. Now the person he's talking to you quickly realize that it doesn't really matter who they are. This person barely speaks over the course of the entire book. There could be any one they could even be you and that's kind of the effect camels going for here. Ninety nine percent of the book is just clemence more or less talking at this person about himself anecdotes from his life. His thoughts about other people. His thoughts about

his thoughts like if you ve ever known, anyone in your personal life, that's prone to going on long, narcissistic, dramatic the logs about themselves, they probably big fan of jean baptiste clementine. His work, I mean it truly- is a glorious display, a narcissism and without question some of the first, inspired by came who, at a type of person that is rampant within modern society. Now what becomes obvious as common starts talking about himself? Is that he's not a very happy person I mean not only is sitting in the middle of a bar in amsterdam, not only as a drink it, but then you find out that he's drinking gin. I mean that's just nest: They did this man clearly doesn't love himself anymore and, as a rule, You can't help it start to wonder what happened to this man that got him down to such a lowly lonely place and ass. He goes on. What you discovers that what happened to him is that he had a bit of what you could call a fall in his life, that he used to be one version of himself. Some events play In this light that led to his fall, and now we find them

in a bar in amsterdam talking to strangers, he starts out the book telling the person next to him about the man that he used to be. He tells us person that, before the fall not too long ago comments used to live in the city of paris. He was a successful trial lawyer here, so successful of being a lawyer that he chose all the cases that he took on because it with some, of charitable angle to them he would defend widows, he would defend orphans, he would defend people accused of crimes that couldn't otherwise afford a good criminal defence seems like a nice enough. Guy then outside of his job, he was seemingly and even better person. He lived a high rise laughed above the city he dressed well, he was charming. He was successful in his love life, given its own interpretation of that here, the kind of guy that would offer up his seat on the bus if someone was standing here, is the kind of guy that would stop and give people directions if they were lost, he helped blind people in old ladys cross the street. This is the kind of stuff he would do with his free time. Throughout the day, he didn't believe in god

whatsoever, but nonetheless he says when he takes a second me stops and just thinks about how great a guy he is. He can't help but think that he was chow. susan in some way by the universe, and he has him believe in stuff like that, but it just it feels that way to him. Sometimes like he's special or something yes, yes, clements was a pretty great guy. People couldn't seem to get enough of him or was all of this some sort of elaborate multi level deception that was going on something came. It would want us to consider at this point is that from the outside knowing anything else about four months and the kind of stuff that's going on inside of his head. This charitable successful lawyer is the kind of person that other people might look up to, This seems like someone who may have done something similar to this creation of meaning series doesn't believe in god and yet still further finds a way to bring what seems like a solid moral foundation to his work and to his small role in society at large but is so much more to being

strong person with a moral foundation than just keeping up outward appearances, because, as claremont says later on in the book, looking back on the way he acted every day. As a lawyer in paris, in retrospect he was a total fraud he says one way. He knows he was a fraud, because this one time he was helping to blind dude cross the street, and then to the blind, I was safe on the other side, as clemency walking away from him. He tips his hat to the man as a token of respect, but I mean the guy's blind. Why? I do that. He says why would I take my hat if it wasn't some sort of performance, putting on for all the other people watching, and this goes with giving up his seat on the bus. This goes with the case is he chooses as a lawyer? All of this has nothing to do with some moral code that he's living by and everything to do with feeling superior to others around him this is the kind of guy in modern society that has a conversation with someone who clearly no less than he does about whatever it is, and he feels the need

suddenly make them aware of just how inferior they are to him in that area. Meeting that allegations from everyone. On top of that he's a smart guy, so he understands perfectly well, which values of society around him appreciates and expects a people, and, if ass, for the vote, use that mean the most one he could easily come up at the listed the values that he's emulating, but the truth is, if anything were too come along and his life and test any one of these values, he would absolutely crumble. None of these values, people see him from the outside would hold up because he doesn't I care about any one of them is putting on a perform. and so that he looks superior to others, and it is this moral bankruptcy that would lead to his eventual How can we use a symbolism in the book to access this fall? It's a fall from away a pie, high rise lots of paris, but this overinflated idea how great he is falling tumbling all the way down to amsterdam below sea level. Workloads compares

various canals and the city to the seven circles of Helen Dantes. Inferno Claremont sits in a bar in the deepest circle of Hell strangers? The story of his fall, and here is that story. Three events in his life took him from thing and he's god's gift, humanity to just some random dude in a bar drinking on a juniper bush confessing his sins to all the people around them. The fur steve into something similar to erode rage incident in today's world one day as comments is walking around, and there's a guy who's. Motorcycle stalls in the middle of the road clement starts talking to him. It escalate somehow now they're screaming at each other. There's a crowded forming on the side of the street, watching all this go down and someone from the crowd sneaks up behind clemence sucker, punches em and knocks him to the ground. Now this man, It was a traumatized moment for comments and his ego keep in mind by the way the kind of modern person we're talking about here. This is the kind of guy who's that

use have never really been tested in his life. This is a guy that those the round his daily life and true. We believe that nobody talks about about behind his back. That he's always on the right side of the argument that nobody sees through his charm there's the kind of guy that probably sit around and fantasize about road rage. Situations like this and all the cool stuff he would do. Imagine and all the things the dude on the bike. What I said to him, oh and then he'd be like socrates. dressing them down in front of the crowd everyone's laughin imaginative do trying to sneak up behind that whole classic. What I, would have done. If I was their mentality, I would have seen the guy comment now. I got great peripheral vision on my grandfather's side of the family. I would have seen them come up behind me. I would have slipped that punch was tiger pod. The knee cap put that man the ground. That's it I would have done and a reality. It's like no no, you wouldn't have what what happen as you would get sucker punch just like anybody else. What one of the things

and moves alluding to here is the fact that its very easy to live in a safe bubble. You ve created for yourself in modern society to come with all the values that matter, the most eu practically never those values, tested and then light comments have an extremely over inflated idea of what you would do in some hypothetical scenario, all the way. Judging other people for how they mishandled things. In your eyes, you hear people say stuff like this. Sometimes, though, If I lived in nineteen thirty germany, what I would have done, I would have been one of the brave one. Standing up to hitler or if I lived in the mid eighteen hundreds, I would have been one: the people on the underground rail road trying to liberate people, but the fact there is no shortage in today's world of horrible thing, going on to innocent people within your reach, and you have to ask yourself how often emma currently putting my own safety and my family safety in danger for the sake of correcting what I see as a grave and justice in the world The reality is you'd probably be put in a similar amount of effort. If you live during those times as well, it's just from this privilege

edition within modern society. We always have the ability to talk about how great we would be if only we were given the chance to be. This is the kind of fantasy the clementines indulging in about himself that leads to his eventual fall for a lot of people getting sucker punched in the street. Having people laugh at you down. It would be embarrassing, but it's not something that would typically ruin someone's life, but for clemence it's different for comments. This is a tragedy when something embarrassing happens to someone who is this morley baseless and untested, it should waters the illusion that he builds its entire identity around the affected has on him can best be described as a sort of reverse back. tourism see in a normal baptism, the ritual of all this post, a cleansing exposed to forgive you for the sins of the evil that you ve already committed to actually any trick. I mean you can truly be one of the most detestable people. That's ever lived in the history of the world and then someone dunk, c and d, six inches of water in an above

I'm pool in the attic of a baptist church somewhere and you're good now, buddy you're in You found a loophole in the system. I guess, but in the case of comments once again, he's living in a delusional place of innocence. He thinks he's the greatest person ever so when you get sucked her punched in, quite literally a smacked across the face with the reality of who we truly is illuminates weakness, it illuminates evil sin: a lack of integrity. This event in his life acts as a reverse baptism for someone like this, and you can see this just as clearly in this second event that leads to a fall because after the motorcycle incident commands tries to go on with this life and one evening when he's walking across a bridge alone, he sees a woman, leaning over the side of the bridge, looking down at the water and then a few steps later he has a scream a splash in the water below and the woman said, mean getting further and further away she's carried downstream comments is left with a choice at this point. He can risk his own

life and jump in and try to save the woman or you can just keep on walkin. Try to forget about it, not read the paper. will they. So we never really knows what the outcome is. The second option is actually what he decides to do and again it messes with him and his ego. This is the kind of that, before these things happen to him, would probably wax POE We about how you are with us were there when I would have done, I would hear the screen in the splash and without question, I would dive into the water and save the day for everyone, but presented with the actual moment in his life. He realizes who he truly. Is this moment again illuminates weakness in him rather than absolve some of it. The last event that really sends them over the edge into his downward spiral also happens on a bridge he's walkin, just like the second event, but this time he hears behind him coming from the darkness, someone just laughin, just hack, linen pack, lend themselves like all which flying away on a broom and to someone is insecure. Its comments

The assumption here is that this laughter is directed at him. Now. This laughter on the bridge that came, who uses in the story is symbolic. It represents the fact that we are all always on trial. We are always being judged by other people around us comments for the first time in his life. After the events after the illusion of who he is, has been shattered. Clemency for the first time feeling the weight of this omnipresent judgment coming from everyone around him all the time and it doesn't feel good to him, he's once again smacked across the face with the cold backhand of reality. This is just what people do they. I other people and nobody's doing this, because our amene person or something this is our people keep their family safe. people decide who they do or don't want to associate with. This is part of what keeps society together, but for climates

This is something he's. Never really had to consider in these safe bubble that he formerly lived it remember as a lawyer in paris. He was never the judge or the one accused of a crime. He was always able to play the middle east there and in the everyday world he figured everyone just a greed, that he was this remarkable exceptional person just like he thought he was once? He realizes, though, that he is not in fact god's gift to humanity, and how vulnerable he is to the constant judgment of others. This leads to a parent shifting moment. Inclemencies life, the biggest priority for him from here on out was gonna, be to find a way to avoid in judged at all costs and thus to avoid the feeling of responsibility or guilt for his actions for clamour since there is nothing more important for your survival in this modern world than to find a way to do that, in fact, you think so downright stupid. If you don't try to find a way to avoid the judgment of other people, I mean why wouldn't you he says if someone living in modern society and

We have no strategy at all to avoid the judgment of others, that's kind of like being an animal tamer that cut. Himself shaving that morning you got blood oh, really got blood all over your clothes and then you shall have to work get into the lions den taming, some lions thereon. can achieve like you're, a pizza role that just came out of the oven, It's how you look to society when you go out into public with no defence mechanism at all against what everyone thinks about you now. Can you might want to ask us at this point? Does any of this resonate with Do you, as a modern person, have any tactics you used to be able to soften the judgements of the people around you and, before you say no before you say on the most open minded person in the world. I just start convulsing with joy every time. Somebody prove me wrong about something. the comments talking do in a bar might want you to consider the ways you avoid judgment that are disguised to you with something you're doing that's entirely different friends, for example. Why do we choose the friends that we have he ass? I mean you think it,

restitution that it comes down to the mutual inspiration the two people give to each other, but reality says we choose the friends. We do because we want sympathy, not inspiration. That's why we hang out with people who agree with us on stuff. We don't actually want to be told that were wrong and inspired to be better. We may put up with disagreements about significant things from our friends, but really what we want is for them to reinforce the foundational bias that we already have almost like our own personal, cable news network say you're out grow. three shop in one day and some stranger comes up to and says: hey you're being inconsiderate right now, you're, cart! is blocking the entire I'll for everyone, and no one can get through here. What are you doing? and you call them rude and you're boiling your own soup and you go home and you tell your friend later about it and they say. Look don't worry about that person they're a loser, let's be honest. They're, probably criminally

insane as well. They're are going to go home to their miserable life and complain all day to their mother, who they still live with. Don't worry about it. This is the service that friends provide in the eyes of clements, regardless of the fact that your friend wasn't. There has only heard your side of the story and isn't exam, We an impartial jerry, rendering a verdict here. Despite all this, you still for some reason. I want them to tell you that you were right. This other person is wrong and that, even if this random strangers judge do the jury of your peers finds you innocent, and if you expand this example to everything you tell your friends about relationships. we are choices, fears dreams. You can see how, if you indulge in the sympathy service that friends provide for you too much. Your friends will allow you to keep yourself the same person, making the same mistakes over and over and over again cannot says despite what they say. This service is actually what your friends want from you can move says. This is sick

somatic of what he calls a sort of modern amnesia were able to conveniently forget about all the states we make in our lives and just move on Nothing has really happened. We ve all met somebody like this before in person who has no problem at all, judging everybody else for what they are doing wrong. They'll define a person's entire character based on a single moment. They hold a grudge against people for years. Could someone mistreated them but when something goes wrong in their life, they'll go to their friends, their friends will tell them. It was all the other peoples fault and they'll just continue being the exact same person. Thinking no rational person ever has a problem with me. If anybody thinks I should be judged well persons just irrationally holding onto the past. They need to get over it. Make no mistake

This modern amnesia is a defence mechanism against that feeling of guilt and responsibility that comes with always being judged by others and clemence always found a way to conveniently forget about all the mistakes he made in the past. That is until after the motorcycle incident, after the woman on the bridge after hearing the laughter of others. At that point he says there came a time in his life where just couldn't forget about the person. He was anymore for the first time he was forced to look at himself in the mere honestly and what he sees in the mere sins him into a total panic. Remember, finding a way to have the judgment of other people was the main goal of his life. Now. Once these events make his old strategies ineffective, he tries out, like five other ones, that all fail miserably for

and this is obviously came who, as an author, laying out several examples of ways, people in modern society try to avoid judgment as well, but for comments in the story. He tries all them out back to back and they fail. He tries drinkin himself to sleep every day till he runs and deliver problems that doesnt work. He tried to well in a very p e g, muppet treasure island way of putting it, he be at random, encounters with people and tried to fall in love with them that didn't work out either. Then he tries to sabotage his own character. This is an interesting one. The thinking is, if I just become a caricature of a person rather than a real person. If I just say a bunch of info majority things and troll everyone all the time and I've never really myself. Then, when other people judge me there, Really? Judging me, they're, judging this character, I came up with and you're supposed to hate this character, now

never have to find out if they dont, like my real personality, it's a way of avoiding judgment. But when comments does this that laughter that he heard on the bridge which, at this point in the story, started to haunt him The laughter just gets louder and louder the more he trolls people, because, at the end of the day, the people whose judge he's trying to avoid are not morons. They know he's just trolling, no serious person would ever say the kind of stuff that he was saying. So, instead of avoiding the laughter, he ends up becoming even more of a joke to them. So, after all, these strategies end up not working out for him. Eventually, commands comes up with the news. strategy, the reason he sitting in a bar confessing, his sins to strangers, is because his role in the world, as he sees it, is to be what he calls a judge penitent, and this judge penitent was one of the most important things. Can we wanted to introduce in this book? So, let's take it a part of it. The term judge penitent. If you just look at the words that is made up by, is in itself a contract

To rethink on one hand, you are a judge which is obviously someone judging others for what they do wrong, but on the other hand, for chemical, you are a penitent, which is the root of the word penitentiary or some other feels x, namely remorseful for all the things that they have done wrong. Now, couple questions immediately come up. Why would clemence be using contradiction as a psychological, strategy and how, in any way does this help him avoid the judgment of others. The simple to describe it is that, if I can judge myself before others can judge me, then I never have too few the guilt, the comes along when somebody points out something that I'm doing wrong and puts me in a great position to criticise others, because I'm always swinging upward with every criticism. Let's talk about an exam Well, this based on letters camel wrote, was friends. He definite saw this exact, cried you being used in the political realm of his time. Any thought it may be

used more and more going into the future. Think of any privilege group you want out there, anyone you want and of how capable any one? Member of that privilege group is of engaging in a sort of self hatred that makes attacking them almost feel pointless. Here's a kind of things, a judgment some will say I am a member of whatever group. I'm here to say on behalf of the group that we are horrible. Shame on us for how horrible we have been four so so long, and there are, of course members of my that are still doing these horrible things. But at least when it comes to me I am one of the ones that recognises how horrible I am out even deserve to be talking you're right now. I am scum between the toes of humanity. That's the penitent! forceful sight of this, and then look at smuggled in inevitably is the judging side of it. Because now that I position myself has the lowest wrong on the ladder society. Once I confessed all of my sense now, I can launch attacks at any good,

about their that I want because, what's the point of view, coming back can reiterating what I just said about myself, and even if you do come back at me, wobble wow look I'm the first one to admit that I'm a piece a trash and the worst. We agree on this but as a piece of human garbage, can I not point out how other people out there are pieces, a garbage as well? Can we now make the world a better place that seems counterproductive, camel saw this strategy being used in the french intellectual elite of his time. No doubt specifically in the work of John Paul sort sorry, I was a member of the rich bourgeois class who centred his critiques around attacking the bourgeois class point is revealing everything bad about yourself makes it impossible for anyone to criticize you in a way that fully stings like it should. This is a defense mechanism and it's a psychological game. You can play in your personal life as well. Clements reveals on his deathbed to the person he's been talking to that. This has been his strategy all along

after the fall as he sits in this bar in amsterdam confessing. It sends to the people around him telling them about the horrible things he's done in his life. He's only telling people this stuff, because it allows him to judge to take away their resolution that they are moral people, just as his was and leave them feeling just a little less good about themselves than at the start of the conversation, and if, over the course of this podcast, you felt a little bummed out by some of the negative takes the comments as rambling about in a bar. Well, then, I've done my job as a pod, castor here today conveying the character the camera was going for. This is comments and his entire twisted stuff, How he wants to transfer his miserable discontent about his own personal struggles onto every everyone he meets. He wants to do this because if he can judge people, wellbeing impervious to a counter attack if you can make people in his immediate proximity leave the conversation just a little more depressed about their place in the world, then he can leave the conversation still feeling that since

superiority over others. Clemence is not the voice of wisdom in this there may be little nuggets of wisdom sprinkled in here and there because too can move. People are complex things, but at the end of his life comments as a tortured man so consumed by needing to be better than the people around him that he doesn't actually do the work of being a better person. He displays a aim that allows him to feel one step ahead, showing people how messed up they are now again, despite the fact that clear is a cartoon of a person can we would want us to ask ourselves. Do I see any piece of comments in this modern hypocrisy, prison?

in my own approach to life seems obvious, who saw it in himself towards the end of his, but in keeping with the creation of meaning series, I think camera would have some words of caution that he'd want to give that if you think you're going to arrive at some ultimate system of values and then you're just going to live by those values day after day, regardless of the circumstances that you find yourself in maybe it'll work out that way, but his prediction is that it's going to be a lot more complicated than that we live in a completely tragically absurd universe. Nothing out there in the world really make sense until we decide that it does, and that contrast between the true uncertainty of it all and are propensity to steer our thinking into certainty as much as we can that's a dangerous place

They can lead to crusades and nuclear wars and all the rest of it. This urge that someone might have to come up with a perfectly crafted system of values and then try their hardest everyday and never deviate from it. That's an expectation yourself that may be impossible to ever live up to four camo, because he'd say understand your tendencies of the type of creature that you are under. stand that as people, especially given the structures of modern society as modern people, we have gotten really good at playing both sides of the fence when it comes to morality. Much like the judge, penitent strategy, commands we ve gotten really good at holding two seemingly contradictory beliefs having the manifest. The exact same moment. And then somehow not feeling redeem

kill us at all, as we do that to chemical there's, a fundamental duplicity, that's written into the way modern people often approach how to behave in their life example. In the book comments talks about a nazi soldier who approaches a mother who s two sons- and he says in the most polite way that it can possibly think of in the moment ma am ma- am sorry to bother. You dont want to be disrespectful of your time here, but when your sons hasta die right now, please graciously tell me which one of them it should be. I really think you should be able to decide simultaneously holding the belief that its very employ and for us to be polite to people. We want to give people the respect they deserve, but then also holding the belief that is important for you to kill their family because there on the wrong side of the political line in the sand. Thousands of examples of this sort of duplicity, all around us in modern society,

some. We ve already seen in commitments as a character in the book. He doesn't believe in god and yet still feel special and chosen in some way. He talks in the book the entire time lackeys part of some elaborate. marketing campaign to convince you that he's a humble guy, all the while constantly low key telling you how amazing he thinks he is. There are the people we talked about before that, no problem, judging others from at stake they made, but when it comes to their mistakes, well, anyone the king. Over? It is just being unreasonable. Another example at an epidemiological level, people in modern society, People often simultaneously believe that you know I feel and better than most people at figuring out what is really going on out there in the world yet seen the facts, reasoning about it, I'm pretty good at separate the wheat from the chaff, I'm better than most people. I know at being right about things, but then again, I'm extremely humble as well. I am one of the best people I know what admitting when I was wrong about something in fact, I'm wrong about stuff all the time and the first to admit that

Don't feel ridiculous at all saying that I not only have the best strategy for being right all the time, but also the best strategy for being wrong. All the time, in fact that take pride in that contradiction, I should think it makes me a balanced person. Something I want to make super clear here about. Kamal was saying he is not saying that you are a week person if you some times embody contradictory values, a different moments to camo. This is part of living in an absurd universe, as part of being a human being. The weak person is the person who can't see or won't see the built in duplicity and contradiction in there. Own thinking the personal playing some variation of a psychological game that allows them to believe that they're just live in you firstly, by a set of values every day of their life like if you never find yourselves speaking passionately about something you believe in and then catching yourself and say: oh, but then again and there's that other area of my life that I do almost the opposite of what I'm preaching about now, if you never do that, then You'Re- probably not looking it yourself.

Thoroughly or as honestly as you could be, and maybe it's impossible for us to ever totally escape contradictions and our values, but one thing we can do come, who thinks is to be more self aware of them? What clement wants more than anything in this book? Is the dream of innocence, many others in modern society what he wants to be innocent of any more wrong doing what he realizes, though, Let nobody out there is innocent, if you believe in free will, which, for the record, can was probably just taken a shot at start here and how similar his ethics is too. christianity, but if you believe in free will, then nobody has been perfect their entire life. Everybody is guilty for something at the very least for can move even under deterministic view. Everybody is at least responsible for something, that's just part of being a person. Living a life out with all the variables on this planet. Take the woman on the bridge, for instance, was clement

doing anything wrong that led to him being faced with that choice, that night to save the woman, no sometimes life throws you situations that are going to test your values. You didn't ask for these moments. You didn't these moments and you can go for years with everything going great, never having your values tested, but eventually, inevitably you're gonna, shown. Exactly who you are comments was not guilty for what under the woman on the bridge that night, but he was a part of it. Was in some way partially responsible There is no one out there that lives in a state of total innocence lie adam and eve under the grace of god, before taking a bite from the apple, that's a fantasy, we are all fallen. and implicated in modern society- and this is cameras point, The only way you could ever even for a month

I believe that you are innocent. Absolved of your guilt. Absolved of your responsibility is, if you was centrally do what a christian does, repent for your sins, become saved by gods, grace and then, except a moral doc, and given to you from above our modern version of that would be to surrender to any one of these strategies are elements is used throughout the episode to escape the omnipresent judgment of other people. One way to think about this as the months would confessed to the reader and a very late stages of the book cannot says that there is innocence in slavery. What does he mean by that I quote: for anyone who is alone, without god and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence one must choose a master god being out of style. End quote What does he mean by that sea comments as a morally weak person being responsible for his actions being judged by other people the weight of days as he calls it is too much for him for someone, that's

week as him. They can't find any way to live with the feelings of being judged. Sometimes there really, is no other option in his eyes and to find some bastard serve. That turns him into a foot soldier. He says one point that he longed for the day that an authoritarian leaders gonna, write into town take things over Tell him how to act. The thinking is, if all I'm doing is carrying out someone else's moral vision, then I'm not making any moral decisions that can be judged. You, sir, have a problem with my master, not with me I am but her humble slave here once again to come. Oh, there is innocence in sleep. We just as there is innocence for adam and eve as long as they're blindly accepting that they shouldn't eat the apple. So in many ways, the protagonist of creation of meaning series. The people listening to this right now are the fallen people of modernity they are the ones who took a bite from the apple

they are the ones who are trying to find a way to live with the responsibility and judgment for their own decisions. Comments, as at one point in the book quote, irresponsibility is grace, end quote so to fall out. Grace would be to fall into a life of responsibility. For ourselves. Responsibility is the following: Date of modern humanity and the only way to be restored to innocence is to commit became, who calls philosophical suicide. I can help it think of earlier this year when we are talking about karl popper and his book. The open society and its enemies and paper talks about the responses billowy that citizens have in a democracy to do the work every day to stay educated and stay active for the good of this. Eighty overall and one of the criticisms to that idea has been that people love the idea of having freedom on paper, but that staying politically I've been informed, is hard. Work takes up a lot of time in your day and that whenever it comes down to it, people

much more willing to not necessarily have much control over the political process as long as they have cheap food to eat and teams of people on apps curetting the next video for them to watch, enabling their distraction to create a system of values and then try to maintain it. I think on paper people love the idea of morals Alek heart where they get to choose the direction of how they live their lives, but to live with the weight of the responsibility of your choices that you came up with to live with the guilt and the judgment of others. I think camera thought when writing this book, that if we can see the character of comments in our cells, even just a little bit, then maybe by being self aware, That fact it can help make us a little less susceptible to falling into the delusional innocence of feeling. Certain about things. Maybe camel also wanted us to consider that it's possible to accept the fact that you're gonna be judged by others, sometimes unfairly, but that maybe that's not too much to bear for you. Maybe that was

too much for clemency to bear, and maybe his cynical worldview is just yet another defence mechanism, so he can deny the reality of the world around him. Don't trade, your integrity as a person for a few sweet moments of denial, but may become who says it best chemists as you got two choices in this life in terms of how we are going to deal with the judgments of other people, you can be quote happy and judged or absolved in wretched. End quote. Take your pick. I guess.

If you loved the episode today, try to never ask for anything, try to just give, but if you enjoy the show and haven't left a review on the respective app that you'll listen to it. On thank you in advance just trying to keep doing this for as long as I can going to try to do more episode updates on twitter at I am stephen west. Have you seen any of this art that's been generated by ai recently, it's it's insane. I typed in albert qemu eating a pizza one of the one of the. I don't know if it's funny or disrespectful, but it's mind blowing anyway. Thank you for listening. Talk to you next time,