Ep. 7 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Aristotle's World View and Erich Fromm

Vervaeke's Ep. 7 explores Aristotle's view of change as growth via form (eidos), wisdom as character cultivation, and knowing as sharing the form of a thing, linking to rationality and meaning.

Key Takeaways

Change is the actualization of potential through form, and growth is central to meaning.
Wisdom is the cultivation of character that regulates self-development.
Rationality is reflective self-correction, not just logic.
True knowledge involves sharing the structural form of what is known.

What the video covers

Recaps Aristotle's concept of change as actualizing potential through information/form (eidos), linked to growth and development.
Connects Aristotle's ideas to Gerardo's dynamical systems and the 'virtual engine' model of self-regulation.
Defines wisdom as cultivating a character that actualizes the rational, uniquely human capacities.
Argues foolishness results from insufficient character cultivation even when one holds correct beliefs.
Poses a Socratic challenge: how much time do you devote to cultivating your character?
Reframes rationality not as mere logicality but as reflective self-correction and awareness of self-deception.
Explains the meta-drive for contact with reality as a core motivation of rationality.
Uses the chair-maker versus chair-describer example to show that true knowledge means possessing the same form as the thing.
Compares the architect's blueprint to the form held in the mind, illustrating an intimate mind-world connection.
Notes that Aristotle's framework is being revived in understanding living and mental things, though not uncritically accepted.

Chapters

What does Aristotle mean by 'form' or 'eidos' in this lecture?

Form is the structural-functional organization that informs potential matter, turning wood into a chair or a table. Change is the actualization of potential through this information. The lecture uses the architect's blueprint as an analogy.

Why does the lecture say the chair-maker knows more than the describer?

Because the chair-maker possesses the form of a chair in mind and can cause one to exist, whereas a describer may use the right words without grasping the essence. Knowing is sharing the same form as the thing.

How does the lecture define rationality?

Rationality is primarily the capacity to reflectively recognize self-deception and self-correct, along with a drive to contact reality reliably. It is not reducible to being logical.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

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[Music] you [Music] welcome back to awakening from the meaning crisis so last time we began our discussion of Aristotle and how he has contributed significantly to our understanding of meaning and wisdom and we talked about how Aristotle was

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centrally concerned with something that he thought Plato didn't give an adequate enough account of change but importantly Aristotle's term for change is properly understood in terms of growth and development and we talked about how much your sense of growth and development is

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constitutive of finding your life to be meaningful we talked about how Aristotle understood that development in terms of making use of Plato's idea of idose form the structural functional organization and then what's happening in change and in development is that something is

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being informed in particular something like wood is the potential to be a table or a chair and when it has the correct structural functional organization then the chair starts to act like table sorry the wood starts to act like a table or

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the wood starts to act like a chair and that is their the idea that when you inform some potential it gets actualized into a particular thing and so change is the actual izing of potential via information' and then in order to

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understand that better we left a head to look at a current account of growth and development that was directly inspired by aristotle we looked at elisha Gerardo's work and we went through the discussion of what a dynamical system is

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and how we can use it understand growth and development in terms of the idea of a virtual engine we then returned and used that language to better understand Aristotle's idea about wisdom as the cultivation of character where wisdom is

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to create a virtual engine and there's a deep connection between being a virtual engine and the cultivation of virtues right that wisdom is the cultivation of a virtual engine a character that regulates yourself development in fact yourself making so that you can

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actualize your potential you can live up to your potential and what does living up to that potential means it means and we talked about it means moving through that hierarchy that we talked about last time the hierarchy of actualization from

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the mere plant to the animate thing to the mental thing to the rational thing so to be wise to live up to your potential is to cultivate a character that most helps you realize your capacity for rational self-reflection

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your capacity to appropriate and take charge of your your ability to engage in self-actualization self-realization and to do so in such a way that fulfills the potential of your humanity that you most realize reveal actualize the characteristics that make us uniquely

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human and that foolishness is to have not properly cultivated your characters so even when you have the correct set of beliefs you believe that you should not do something you will still fall prey to a crazy because you have not cultivated

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adequate enough character then I challenged you in two ways I challenged you to try and reanimate and deepen these terms that we use everyday to talk about how meaningful our lives are terms of growth and development and actualize

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in ourselves and living up to our potential to deepen those terms by returning and reflecting upon them using Aristotle but also a Socratic challenge via Aristotle what are you doing to cultivate your character how much time are you dedicating to it since it is now

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reasonable given this argument that it plays a significant role in how meaningful your life is how much time have you devoted how much time do you regularly devote to it now as promised last time I want to turn to the other

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side of Aristotle's work and so in a further sense how he contributed to the axial development of these ideas of meaning wisdom self transcendence and of course Aristotle is understanding self transcendence as this living up to your potential

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self-realization ascending through the hierarchy until you are a fully realized fully rational human being now Aristotle was interested in rationality for exactly this reason he thought it was the way of defining human beings now his understanding is axial your rationality

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is what we've been talking about since the beginning of this series right the actual revolution idea of second order thinking you can step back and reflect on the ways in which your self-deceptive and you you have a capacity for self

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correction and self transcendence that's the hallmark of rationality please remember that right because we have tended and we'll see much later why we've tended to reduce rationality to the idea of being logical but that's not that's not the core idea of Rash noted

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the core idea of rationality is your capacity for reflectively realizing your capacities for self-deception and illusion and for self correction and for Aristotle that self correction is a process of also realizing your potential through the cultivation of character but

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what is at the heart of rationality because if we go back to the Platonic model Aristotle has told us a bit about one side right character this is remember Plato talks about how you are aligning the psyche but Plato also

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talked about right being in contact with reality how did Aristotle develop this side of the Platonic equation this is his way of trying to give a deeper analysis of structuring the psyche to reduce self-deception what did he do to try and

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develop Plato's idea of being in contact with reality because if you remember we also have this meta drive we need to be in contact with reality I put it to you that that is in fact the core feature or

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at least the core motivation of rationality the core motivation of rationality is the desire to come into as deep a contact with reality as possible by those means that are as reliable as possible so for Aristotle this brought him into a discussion about

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what it is to truly know something to truly know something and again he's going to be deeply influenced by Plato well of course making his own unique changes and challenges to Plato so we have got a view in which we think we

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largely conceive of knowing as being able to give a very accurate description of something I know what a chair is if I can really describe it very well to you now the there there is a challenge to that if I were to ask you the following

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who knows better what a chair is somebody who could describe a chair very well to you or somebody who could actually make a chair and many people would say well you know the person who can describe it doesn't really

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understand and and they'll probably struggle for words he'll and they'll use words taken from Aristotle without realizing they don't get the essence of a chair right because if you can make a chair then you've grasped something more and this is again related to this notion

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if you can cause a chair to be if you can cause it to be then you deeply understand what a chair is so Aristotle then asked well what is it that the chair maker has that the accurate descriptor does not

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have and again it goes back to what we saw before when I gave you my description of the bird you know it has wings and beaks and all this stuff and I was lacking the idol I was lacking the

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form the structural functional organization so Aristotle says what the chair maker has that the good descriptive the good describe or doesn't have is the chair maker actually has in their mind the I das think of it like an

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architect right that has a blueprint the architect has in their mind the structural functional organization that is actually going to be shared in the building the architect has the I does the chair maker has the I das in their

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mind and they can actualize they can use that I das to actualize the potential in the wood to make the chair so to know something is to possess the same I Doss as it now the architect right when he

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has the IDIS for the the building he doesn't have a he doesn't have a material building in his mind you couldn't go in house a family of five inside his mind right when we when we say that they has the same pattern we

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don't mean it's actualizing the same matter as wood and metal in a building but the same form is there so for Aristotle when I know something and this is the original meaning of this world right there's conformity I share the

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same form with it so when I know some object or know some thing my mind takes on the same structural functional organization as the thing such that if I could take that I toss from my mind and actualize it in some potential I

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could make an instance of the thing I could cause it to be so if you'll remember shape is not the same thing as form but we can use shape as Aristotle does as an analogy for form so when I

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know the cup I could know it by standing away from it and describing it right trying to describe its shape and I'm using shape as an analogy for form or I can actually conform to the cup I'm actually taking the shape same shape and

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notice how this enables me to causally interact with a cup in a much more intimate and complex and sophisticated fashion so when you know something for Aristotle your mind is in conformity with it now that's really important because that means when Aristotle's

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theory of knowing there's no distinction there as we typically have between knowing and being what do I mean by that again using the analogy here's the modern view I'm over here describing it it's over there independent I'm over

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here describing it here's Aristotle's view I'm actually changing my structure this isn't just I'm not just knowing and having beliefs I'm being changed this is a change in my being not just a change in my knowing the conformity Theory doesn't just

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change your beliefs it changes the very structure and functioning of your being so the conformity theory is a very different way of thinking about how we know things so Charles Taylor who I've mentioned before Herbert Dreyfus and others they talk about the conformity

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theory as a contact epistemology so to know something is to be in contact with it is to actually participate in the same form as the thing we're going to come back to this sense of participatory no participatory knowing is when I shape

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myself in order to know the thing and I know it by conforming to it this is different from descriptive knowing where I stand apart and I generate propositions about the thing so the conformity theory has this very powerful

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idea of an intimate connection between the mind and reality and it's based on a very powerful idea and as I mentioned Aristotle is going through a significant revival in our understanding of living things understanding of mental things we

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are increasingly coming to see that this kind of contact knowing this participatory knowing is much more central to how cognition works than we previously thought we're going to come back to that a lot in this series I just want you to take note of

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it now notice how this what we need to notice right now is how this theory of knowing which is also a theory of being satisfies that desire of being in contact with reality as opposed to being like separate from it and merely

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pointing at it with my words or my propositions alright so if I'm in conformity with the world that tells you something very interesting the structural functional organization my patterns of intelligibility member for Plato intelligibility and Aristotle completely inherits this like I say

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again read Erich pearls book on this right how I make sense of things the pattern of intelligibility is the same pattern by which the thing is organized so when I'm making sense of things there's a structural functional organization in my mind that is shared

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with the structural functional organization of what I'm making sense of things but does that mean that you know everything I think is just true no Aristotle is like a genius right he he he's probably you know a clear instance of what's been

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called a universal genius we shouldn't dismiss it what Aristotle says so easily I mean Aristotle literally writes the book on everything you you you you come to say you're at a party with Aristotle you say all I'm interested in physics

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and then he'll here I wrote the book on this this is called physics this is the book that started physics oh well I'm also interested in philosophy I'm interested in metaphysics here's the boat book I wrote on metaphysics well

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I'm interested in how animals move here's my book I wrote on how animals move I'm interested in psychology here's my book dreams here's my book how to write books here's my book Aristotle is right just an astonishing intellect so

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what does he mean then well what he means is right that after we've done all that axial age second order thinking oh we've done all this Socratic and platonic argument and discussion well we've done this rational reflection once

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we then get to that I toss that structural functional organization we can be confident that what structural functional organization we're finding and how we make sense of things is the same or to put it in a slogan when we've

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made sense of things the pattern in our mind is the same as the pattern in the world so what are those processes Aristotle like everything he does he tries to explicate a little bit more so think about this think about how you try

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and determine if something was real if it really is the case so let's say you're interested in Susan and you're talking to your friend Tom and Tom and Susan and yourself you're at a party the previous night and Tom tells you Oh

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Susan I think Susan really likes you now this is important to you because you really like Susan you'd really like it if Susan liked you this would be a good thing and but you don't want to leap into this

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because your heart has been broken before and you've acted foolishly and impulsively so you want to make sure so you say wait wait come on Tom I saw you last night you were really hammered like you were drunk then I

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don't believe you and this is Tom says no no no no I heard this way before I was drunk I heard this at the beginning I heard Susan say this at the beginning when you say come on Tom there was so

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many people was so noisy how can you be sure and Tom says no no this was in the kitchen Susan was in the kitchen when I heard her say it wasn't that noisy there and then you say I don't know and then

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Tom says yeah but Andrew and you know Jane also heard Susan say that and you go oh wow I think Susan likes me so you do these three tests you make sure that you're the relevant organ of cognition

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right your your attention right your memory your brain was functioning normally yes it is it's functioning normally okay so I was sober you make sure that the environment isn't creating distorting conditions too much noise right no no it's an optimal environment

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so let's do this or again operating optimally environment optimal or really good and then I look for did other people experience it inter subjective agreement so this is what you do right you write you very carefully try to get

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your mind into an optimal state you make sure the medium is the best right and you do a lot of intersubjective discussion to make sure that you're in agreement with other people so you do really deep philosophy you argue and

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discuss you to you in act like the Socratic thing you really train your mind you get the appropriate conditions you do all this you get you come to some agreement and then once you get there you can have significant confidence that

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you're in conformity with reality that the pattern that's in your mind is the pattern that's in the world now I point this out to you not because I want to say that Aristotle's ultimately right because we're gonna see how that way of

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doing things was challenged but I want to point out to you how you still do it now there's something deeply plausible and practical in what Aristotle saying this is how you on a day-to-day basis try to make sure that you're in touch

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with things so how are things what is the structural functional pattern of the world when I'm making sense of things so Aristotle is also as I said considered you know a foundational figure in science in fact for the for

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literally millennia right a millennia he he is basically identical to science knowing Aristotle's to know science he's building upon all the pre-socratic philosophers before him but basically he what he says is okay how is the world organized what is the structure of

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reality well how does it look to us what can we all agree on okay so we're all stone-cold sober clear day we can all talk we can agree and this is when that no try to get back to Aristotle's time

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this is how things seem to all of us we're at the center okay and that's been this is something we're going to come back to because that's how your perceptual cognitive system seems to operate you're at the center things are

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moving around us so he has a geocentric worldview the earth is at the center well why do things move like why are things moving so he has the idea again that things move for the same reason you do remember

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if they'll ease talked about that the magnet is moving you're moving look look when I lift on this and it's pushing against me that feels no different to me then when some a person is pushing on me it feels like the table is moving itself

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against me again don't concentrate on whether or not this is true concentrate on how much sense it makes so when I move the pan away from the earth it looks like it moves itself to get back there which looks exactly like I want to

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be over there and I move myself there because I'm separated from where I want to be so Aristotle's idea is that everything right is made up of elements basic elements like earth water air and fire things that have a lot of earth in

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them like this marker want to be where earth naturally is earth is at the center so if you as you move things away from the earth things fall back towards it water is going to be on the surface

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fire moves up and air is above so notice when I when I burn some wood how much sense this makes of it because when I burn the wood the fire comes up the water that's evaporated spreads out is

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condensation right and then the ash the earthen part falls down so for Aristotle the earth is at the center and this is the thing everything is moving by a process of natural motion everything has an internal drive just like you

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everything is trying to get where it belongs everything has a natural place so and this is very important everything is moving on purpose everything is trying to get where it belongs so notice how meaningful this view of things is everything is moving just like

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you you're doing things to get where you belong and where you are where you belong then that's right the fulfillment of your goals that's what makes your life meaningful so all of these things the whole everything in this cosmos we

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remember we talked about that we talked about Pythagoras a beautiful order everything in this cosmos is moving purposefully meaningfully now you I mean it's important to you that you resist the temptation here to be smug and say wow what is silly idea I mean thinking

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the Earth's at the center isn't he a Luddite right no because the idea that the earth is not at the center that the idea that the earth is rotating was no one in the ancient world it's known by Aristarchus

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for example the problem with this view is that there are there were great counter arguments about it look if the earth is rotating all right and you write you think the earth is rotating that means if I'm on the earth and it's

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rotating and I drop an object right as the object is dropping I'm moving forward with rotation I end up here and the object drop should then end up behind me because as I let go of it I'm moving on the earth that's rotating and

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it should fall behind me so let's do it let's run the experiment oh it doesn't fall behind me see what you need to realize is that until you also have an idea of something like universal gravitation and other ideas like

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inertial motion the idea that the earth is rotating actually doesn't make good sense of the phenomena if it's rotating why am I not feeling a breeze on my face constantly when I face one way rather than the other so there

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was all kinds of arguments so Aristotle has a sense that we can still appreciate he has a sense of well this is how we get in contact with reality and this is how this is the pattern that is making

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sense to me and what I mean by that is even though you and I are post Descartes post Newton right and we know and we're post right Copernicus we still move around the earth as if it's at the center and that

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right the earth isn't moving and that objects fall directly down etc etc so given that given the tremendous plausibility of Aristotle's proposal you can now put these two sides together you've got the geocentric right world and by world I don't just mean the earth

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I mean the cosmos right with the earth at the center and everything moved by natural motion and then what we have over here is we have the conformity Theory from knowing and I'm going to hyphenate these words because these are

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not separate for this theory the way they are for us knowing being it's a way of being and a way of knowing and what I want you to see is how much they mutually support each other this is very

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plausible that's why I told you that whole story about the person who knows how to make the chair and once you admit that this is plausible and you use Aristotle's test it supports this view of things because if we're in if the

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conformity theory is right and I do all of this rational reflection this is the intelligible pattern that I see now I can look at this and say this is the intelligible pattern and it's plausible that makes sense of so many things and

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that view that view of the world then lends evidence that I am in fact in conformity with reality it provides evidence for the conformity theory and notice these two things are now mutually supporting each other that's how you get

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a worldview right you have an account of the world and you have an account of how you know the world that mutually support each other in very strong bonds of plausibility now that that sets something out for us

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notice that there is now a deep connection that a deep bonding as I say between your understanding of your understanding and your understanding of the world so let's try and put this together this is a view of the world

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that totally makes sense of your actions this is a world organized according to like purpose things are moving on purpose things are trying to get where they belong the structure of the world is very very similar to the structure of

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your right did the meaningful structure of your experience so this view basically if you'll allow me a term that I've crafted with Christopher master Pietro and Phillip miss Vicky in our book this Mike basically makes the external world an arena an arena is a

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place that's organized such that you know how you can act in it it makes sense to you you know where things belong what actions are appropriate how to measure and calibrate your performance and I don't mean just your

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physical performance also your intellectual performance if you are a football right player and you go into a football arena things are organized in such a way that you know intimately how to be involved and how to interact you

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can conform listen to my language you can conform to that situation very powerfully right this right is how you become an agent to be an agent is right to be capable of pursuing your goals it's to be able to organize your

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cognition and your behavior so that your actions fit the situation they fit the environment so what you have when you have a worldview is you've got this agent and arena coupling Aristotle is explaining to you how you become an

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agent how you know and structure yourself to act accordingly and then he's telling you how the world is right organized cosmos so that you can meaningfully interact within it and these two right there's a process here of Co identification the

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identity of this is determined by and determines the identity of this and the identity of this is determined by and determines this so the professional football player is a particular kind of agent they're a football player and they

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go into an arena the arena allows them to be a football player it affords them then being a football player makes sense of why this part of the world is structured the way it is they Co identify the identity as an arena and

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the identity is the agent Co identified now this is important we need to stop here and be a little bit bit more take a little bit more care because I want to introduce an idea to you this Co

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identification because this is something you're doing all the time right you're always assuming an identity I'm doing it now I'm assuming the identity of someone giving a talk and I'm assigning an identity to everything around me everything is right has the meaning of

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how its facilitating and affording my talk and even you as the audience have been assigned a particular identity I'm always assigning an arena and assuming agency and they are Co defining together that that is an existential mode to use a term this process by which

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you are Co identifying agency and arena so that they fit together and make sense of each other and you get a coherent and functioning worldview that's your existential mode and of course it matters really greatly to you we're

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going to come back to this later this is an idea from clifford geertz it was an idea that he used to talk about religion in general and we'll see about that later but what I want to point out because a similar idea was

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also proposed by other people like Boober and by Fromm and although they also have said there were important connections to religion they didn't they didn't identify just with religion these existential modes they are meta meaning relations what does that mean if you do

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not have the agent arena relationship then none of your particular actions have meaning if I put the tennis player into the football arena it's absurd it doesn't make any sense things aren't right the tennis player can do well all

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they want and it doesn't make any sense the environment is what what's going on that's absurd notice that word we're gonna come back to it unless the coupling works your individual odd actions and projects of meaning don't work

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it's a meta meaning system because this mode makes possible an entire system of meanings it means right that the throwing the ball has a meaning for the football player right the catching the ball the running here all of these

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different things take on their meaning because an agent arena relationship has been set up you're doing it right now you have right you have assumed a particular identity you've assigned an identity to me and within that X attentional mode everything you're doing

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and I'm doing take on whatever meaning they have this is very very important this idea of your existential mode being a meta meeting relationship and that what it does is it's an instance a particular way of enacting this

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worldview relationship Gertz garrets calls this this thing we're seeing in Aristotle the way you get this mutual support mutual intelligibility not as a static relation but it's an unfolding process he calls this worldview attunement so one of the things that's really

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important to you right is that your existential mode the way in which you are creating Co identifications of agent agent and arena actually fit into a process of worldview attunement if you don't have a worldview with worldview attunement then

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ultimately you can't get this going you will be like the tennis player trying to play tennis in the football arena you will start to experience your existence as absurd it won't make any sense to you and that matters right because one of

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the ways in which the meaning crisis expresses itself is when people saying that they feel existence is absurd people often express the opposite of absurdity when they articulate that they have a meta meaning existential mode that affords a functioning worldview

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attunement which gives them ways in which they are co-creating with the world the agent arena relationship so notice what this is done what Aristotle's done here that's so powerful he's given us a way a language of articulating a connection between what

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we often don't see a deep connection between our projects of trying to intellectually understand the world and our existential projects of trying to feel like we fit in and belong in a meaningful fashion that's what's so beautiful about Aristotle he's given an

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integrated account of both of these and for many of us today we don't find that clear consonant connection we have a scientific worldview a view of how things are how we understand things given our science but one of the most

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common complaints of that worldview is it gives us no existential guidance it doesn't tell us how to make our lives meaningful I wanted to propose to you a term for talking about this set of things where you have a worldview that is

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demonstrating on an ongoing reliable fashion worldview attunement and so that it is constantly affording existential modes in which agent arena relationships are unfolding and blossoming naturally so that the person is not experiencing absurdity and so the person is

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constantly experiencing a deep connectedness between their intellectual projects of making sense of the world and their existential projects of finding meaning and belonging and fitness within it I'm going to call that a neurological order Noma logical order comes from No Mas

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right law this is what makes the universe law like not in the not just in our current sense of scientific law but in the sense that it's a cosmos for us it's a cosmos in which there's deep convergence and consonant between our

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best attempts to scientifically explain the world and our deepest endeavors to existentially dwell within it when we have that when we have those two together we have a normal logical order as the Noma logical order breaks down of

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course then we start to confront absurdity and we start to lose a sense of how we fit in and how we belong so part of what we can take from part of how we can understand the actual age

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heritage part of the way we can understand what it's telling us about meaning it's this idea of a Noma logical order to have a meaningful life is to have a life that is situated within a Noma logical order and attuned worldview

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that is reliably generating existential modes that are consonant with our best scientific understanding so I want to pause now in the discussion of the actual age in Greece and in ancient Israel we will return to ancient Israel after we complete our survey of the

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axial age but I'd now like to move to another place that is an important locus of the axial revolution that is having a significant impact on us today this is something that I mentioned earlier on in this series we're in the midst of what's

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been called the mindfulness revolution one of the ways in which people are responding to the meaning crisis is by in an intense interest both existentially and personally and scientifically in the phenomena of mindfulness that somehow mindfulness in the cultivate

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so mindfulness is a way of retrieving the project of cultivating wisdom and self transcendence and somehow deepening the meaning that we are finding in our lives and of course when I talk about mindfulness and mentioned things like meditation and contemplation our

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thoughts should turn of course to India and the axial revolution that was taking there and the particular form that revolution took that is impacting the West and the meaning crisis as I mentioned at the beginning of this series was in the generation of Buddhism

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and the set of practices around it now this is a very complex topic when I'm not gonna we're not gonna do it all at once right now it's gonna unfold as we move through this series but I want to

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talk about the axial revolution in India I want to talk about mindfulness and I want to talk about what what it is as a psycho technology house associated with wisdom and self transcendence and I want to begin the discussion of the nature of

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enlightenment and why enlightenment is largely a project of trying to deal with threats of meaning in one's life so just the way I mean it's only analogous in this way so don't draw too much but in the way Socrates was the embodiment of

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the axial revolution in ancient Greece I think you can see Siddhartha Gautama as the embodiment of the axial revolution in India as I mentioned of course the axial revolution is being driven there by similar kinds of processes there's

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there's coin edge and there's alphabetic literacy and other things like this developing but there's specific psycho technologies that seem to have come to the fore and the reasons for that are very complex I would recommend taking look at Karen Armstrong's book the great

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transformation of because she tries to tease out why did psycho technologies a mindfulness become so prominent in ancient India and and I'm not going to go into that history but she gives a fairly coherent explanation about sort of historical cultural factors that

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generated it what I wanted to is start talking about siddhartha as a way of again giving us a doorway into the axial revolution in India so Siddhartha right it's in it's all of these figures right Socrates and Siddharth later when we talk about Jesus

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but I'm I mean trying to talk about well who what's the historical this is there's a quixotic endeavor trying to somehow peel away and separate them from their legacy is largely a project that you can only pursue to a certain degree so I cannot

Speaker A

and I I don't think anybody can say with certainty this is what the historical said hearted was doing and I'm not going to endeavor to try and separate the myth and I told you how I use the word myth

Speaker A

from the his the history I'm gonna let them still remain seamlessly together because that's precisely how they are making an impact on the West so the story goes like this state hearta what when Siddhartha was born his father had all of the sages and

Speaker A

wise men come to his birth and it was prophesized foretold in sort of an oracle fashion that the boy had one of two possible futures one is he would be a great king or the other was he would

Speaker A

enter religious life and be a really important religious figure the king being what all Kings are chose the former he wanted his son of course to be a great king and he decided in order to do this he would try and remove all of

Speaker A

the things that might trigger sit harder from pursuing a religious life a life devoted to the ideals of the actual revolution so what do you do if you do not want someone to go through the actual revolution while you try and give

Speaker A

them all the benefits of the pre axial world you try and give them all the benefits of power and prosperity so the story goes that the King rigged things so that said harden never saw anything distressing he was always surrounded by

Speaker A

beautiful women correct amount of food everything that he wanted and we can sort of just take that as it is or we can step back and do something that you should always do with things that have a methodological

Speaker A

component remember myths are not irrelevant stories about the past they're attempts to get you to engage right now with perennial ongoing patterns so I want to I want to talk about what the palace represents now a good way of getting at this right is

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Marcus Aurelius his famous quote that and this is how it goes it is possible to be happy even in a palace that tells you how much the axial revolution right is right antithetical to Palace life now a way of

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getting that is to get a notion which we're going to come back to later when we talk about stomachs like Marcus Aurelius drawn from Fromm and this goes to this idea that I just explained to you existential mode that the palace

Speaker A

represents a particular existential mode it's a mythological way of trying to get you to right experience not just to think about but activate in your memory a particular existential mode all right so we're talking about the palace because we're talking about Siddhartha

Speaker A

living in the palace what does this represent Fromm talks about two different existential modes that we all face again perennial patterns they're organized around two different kinds of needs they're having needs and being needs so of course this mode is called

Speaker A

the having mode it's an existential mode it's a way in which you make sense of the world and make sense of yourself in this process of Co identification this is the being mode okay so having needs are needs that are met by having

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something these are needs that are met by categorizing things efficiently controlling them effectively so my understanding of thing is categorical I put it in the correct category here's a cop like an idea it's like all the other cops it functions

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like another cop I can replace it with a cop if this coin gets damaged it really improves my ability to control things I have this categorical way of representing it and it's oriented towards me getting very effective efficient control over things because I

Speaker A

need to have water I need to actually consume it if I don't I die so having being able to category categorize my world manipulate it and control it so I get water is very important that means I relate to things at in what Buber who I

Speaker A

also mentioned called an i8 fashion and it is an identity something has when it belongs to a category and so what I'm mostly relying on here is my intelligence which is my ability to control and manipulate things right to

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achieve solving my problems now there's nothing wrong with the having mode you need to have water you need to have food you need to have oxygen the being mode is different the being needs are not met by having something they're met by

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becoming something so for example you need to become mature or Aristotle might say you need to become virtuous it's not meant by having something it's met by becoming developing these are developmental needs according to Fromm because of that these are needs that

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have to do with write a particular kind of meaning that you're creating for your existence and so you're not relating to things Coralie but as Collingwood for example say relating to them expressively let me show you what I mean with a concrete

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example and we're going to come back to these kinds of examples when we talk again about the connections between love and Anna gaga okay when you're in love with somebody right you are engaged right in a being need you're trying to if it's if it's

Speaker A

love as opposed to just desire or sex you're trying to become something and you're trying to afford them becoming something you're trying to meet your needs of meaning and right maturity growth and development that's why we pursue love right as a pope you know and

Speaker A

I'm not sick I'm not approved sometimes you just want to have sex with people that's not what I'm talking about I'm talking about when you have said no what I want here is love okay now notice that so I'm in love with this amazing woman

Speaker A

Sarah okay and I'm in this relationship with her this relationship of mutual development mutual realization fact that that's a that's a great way of thinking about love love is this process like an agog a of reciprocal realization I don't

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think of Canada of Sarek categorically remember how I thought of the cup this is a good cup because it reminds me of all the other cups that I've ever seen and I know how to replace this if this

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one's damaged and I can control and manipulate it if I was to say to Sarah you know why I'm with you because you remind me of every other woman I've been with been with and I could easily replace you if I lose you and I know how

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to control and manipulate you I have not made this relationship better I pretty much just destroyed it okay because I don't interact with Sarah from the having mode I don't understand her expressively I'm not trying to control and manipulate I'm trying to engage in a

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process of reciprocal realization we're going to talk a lot about this when we talk about gnosis so my relationship I don't assume right controller manipulator of an it thing I have an eye though relationship with Sarah right and here I'm not trying to solve

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problems and using my reason because I'm not about trying to get rid of my problems I'm trying to make meaning to live in the palace is to try and live everything from the having mode see froms it's not that this is good and

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this is bad froms point is we get mixed up we try to satisfy our being needs within the having mode we suffer from modal confusion think about how much our culture is organized around this because it serves a lot of market interests if I

Speaker A

can confuse you if I can get you to try and pursue your being needs within the having mode you need to be mature here's a car you can have you need to be in love there's lots of sex you can have

Speaker A

notice how we talk about making love but having sex modal confusion deep existential confusion and what happens when you're morally confused right is but your need for maturity isn't being met by having the car you need for love is not being

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met by having sex so you pursue it more by more cars purchase more sex the more right the more the corporate world the market world can get you to try to pursue your being needs from the having mode the more they can induce modal

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confusion in you the more they can sell to you being in the palace is a myth in the sense that I'm trying to teach you for modal confusion it's a myth of trying to lead your entire life within

Speaker A

the having mode but here's the thing because the story continues siddharta leaves the palace and he leaves the palace in a way that teaches us something about overcoming modal confusion and in our next time together we're gonna look at how

Speaker A

Siddhartha left the palace and we're gonna look about we're gonna look at what does mindfulness have to do with that and what does all of this have to do with wisdom and enlightenment thank you very much for your time

Speaker A

[Music] you [Music]

Topics:Aristotlemeaning crisiseidoswisdomrationalitycharacter cultivationVervaekeErich Frommdynamical systemsaxial age

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