2025-08-22
19 分钟You got me thinking about this concept of happiness
as you're speaking and whether it's a natural thing for our species to be aiming at or whether it's a new more modern thing that we've decided to focus upon and are we causing ourselves immense distress in this pursuit of this thing that maybe our ancestors didn't didn't ever think about this whole you know we think about self-actualization and they were probably thinking about survival and reproduction more.
Look, these all belong to the sort of paradoxes of modern times.
Modern times have obviously brought us enormous advantages,
but they've also brought us particular complexities that I think would be wise to realise.
And one of them is the disappearance of religion.
I mean,
we are still among the first generations in many parts of the world to be trying to live good lives without the support of religion.
Think of how religions structure time and human experience in time.
As a religious person, you...
immediately feel the present moment is not as important as 100 200 2000 million year history that has come before and that will continue after the present moment is a speck in time and and there's a whole narrative of which you're part of that immediately diminishes you in scale now nowadays all of us want to be rather large don't we want to be big big people we want to make a big impression but um Arguably,
this is a fast route to mental illness
because the graceful acceptance of your minuscule position in the cosmos is the gateway to calm and harmony.
And when people say, I went into this hotel, the person made me feel small.
That's the bad way of being made to feel small.
But there's a good way of being made to feel small.
Pick up an ancient text.
Read words that were written by someone in a foreign tongue 3,000 years ago.
That'll make you feel small.
Go into the desert.