Susan takes your hand and she leads you to the ribbon she is wearing rags and
feathers from Salvation Army counter and the Sun falls down like money on our
leave the heart and she shows you where to look
Thank you very much!
As I think Susanne mentioned
this is unfortunately going to be a very bad lecture.
I brought you all under the false pretense as you will learn almost nothing
You will come away from this talk disappointed thinking that
I’ve let you down. That you learned almost nothing,
that your life is not being enhanced.
Things will then start getting worse
and you will come to the realization that life is essentially meaningless; that your efforts are headed nowhere.
And then at some point you will be struck down by death
and your loved ones and all your achievements will wither and be returned to dust.
These are the basic facts of human life though they are often denied.
But here, we have come together today to put darkness on the table
and to look at it fairly and squarely.
So, I want to sing a hymn in praise of looking at the glass half-empty
and do want to emphasize
to you the wisdom, and indeed the beauty
of thinking of life as an essentially deeply troubled and compromised affair.
We are currently living in troubled times
and many of us respond to these troubled times
with a feeling of injured self-pity,
as though something that is supposed to have gone right, has gone wrong.
I would like to reverse the equation.
Nothing was entirely supposed to go right
and so nothing has particularly gone wrong. We have simply
returned to a state of crisis which is the norm in human history.
It’s sometimes the principle of newspapers
that murder, disease, crisis is the exception.
It makes the news.
But in fact, this is the news. This is all that ever happens.
So, as I say,
this feeling of being in a historically abnormal postition
is really a misreading of the true facts
of existence which is an almost continuous series of crises.
Let’s try and remember. None of us were particularly happy in 2004
when things were going supposedly so well.
We had all sorts of troubles on our mind, certainly, I did.
I don’t remember these boom times being so great. Nothing boomed for me.
So, it’s really a return, as I say, to the same.
We do have in our world-culture, two very important strands of thought:
Buddhism and Christianity that have emphasized
that life is essentially an imperfect business from an entirely secular point of view.
And we are a secular organization talking in this secular hall.
I’d like to recover some of that wisdom.
Some of the wisdom of thinking that, essentially, life is suffering,
and the human-being is a fallen creature.
I love the idea of fallenness.
It’s a wonderful starting point; very good in a marriage or a relationship
– “Don’t expect… I never said I was perfect. I am a fallen creature.”
It’s very hard for people to comeback at us on that one.
So,
really, I am just trying to emphasize the ever present nature of suffering and unhappiness.
But really, I want to talk about impotence first.
Who here has been impotent recently? The devil…
Anyone else suffered from impotence?
You are just not being honest!
Please, someone put up their hand, apart from me.
Ok, thank you, thank you!
Lady,
Ok, right, so impotence
it’s a fact of life now, very interesting thing about impotence
impotence is all to do with pessimism and optimism
its when there is a huge expectation on you for things to go really well
thats when people get impotent, and really this goes to the heart of what I wanted to be talking about today
there’s a lovely for those of you who knows Monte know montagnes essays
Montaigne 16th century French philosopher wrote a wonderful essay what
about impotence in which his essential drift is if you if you arrive in the
bedroom or bedchamber as he put it with high expectations there’s a very serious
risk that things will go wrong so he counsels there was a man there’s a true
story there was a man near his his village who
had failed with a woman as he put it and had cut off his member and had sent it
to the woman in atonement for his error and this had so disturbed the local
community and so disturbed Montaigne that he picked up a pen to try and write
about listen and and his essential conclusion was when entering the bedroom
always say that you are a bad lover this is the only way really in which you can
ever stand the chance of making it a good impression must always lower the
expectations of performance that’s the way in which you can be a good lover but
I think there’s a deeper point a this is not just about sexual performance this
is about life performance that somehow raising expectations and and and
suggesting that all will go well is the surest way to get very nervous and with
nervousness comes failure so there’s a curious debt of success on a complete
familiarity with failure if you expect to succeed you will almost certainly
fail so pessimism doesn’t necessarily have to lead to a lack of achievement or
a complete resignation but very strangely we have to start I think I
want to argue from a feeling that that things are not going to go well nowadays
our philosophers and thinkers and and public figures are often in the business
of trying to tell us how to cope with how to make life better somehow the
improvement of life is the way in which most problems are viewed how can we make
things go better I want to direct your thoughts to a school of philosophy that
flourished in ancient Rome and that took a completely different approach I’m
talking about stoicism and the stoic school of philosophy when we speak of
someone being stoic in the face of it of a disaster we are very much plugged in
to an ancestral memory of how the Stoics of ancient Rome went about things one of
my favorite stoic philosophers is the philosopher Seneca who lived in the time
of Nero a very troubled time for the Roman Empire if we think we haven’t got
it bad look at Nero’s reign for what was going on then and he very much believed
that philosophy was a discipline to keep you sane in troubled times and that one
of the best ways to be sane was precisely to master pessimism to make
yourself at home in pessimism to become a master of this strange and perhaps
depressing seeming but not actually depressing philosophy Seneca wrote a
book on anger very interesting thing about anger now many of us nowadays
think that anger is an almost physiological problem it’s to do with
sort of being hot-blooded or something Seneca thought that was nonsense he
believed that anger we get angry for a very simple reason optimism optimism
makes us angry and he compared a very interesting thing he asked why people
don’t get angry when it rains particularly in Northern Europe the
reason why people don’t get angry when it rains is that we expect it to rain
ticking in England it’s amazing if it doesn’t rain so it would not occur to
anybody to get angry at the fact it is raining now the interesting thing is we
don’t adopt this very wise approach in all areas of life and think about our
keys you know we start shouting when we lose the house keys or how we behave
when they were stuck in traffic we you know we insult people we think how come
we’re in traffic now essentially that is because we believe implicitly in a world
in which keys never go astray and the roads are always mysteriously traffic
free a very very odd starting for life so it’s our it’s our
expectations that defines what will anger us that’s not to say we won’t ever
feel sad but there’s a difference between sad sadness and anger and I
think Senecas point was will be a lot wiser if we manage to expect a lot more
that our sense of what is normal to expect is hugely reduced so we get very
surprised when people suddenly die or when things suddenly go wrong he urges
to think Seneca that our fate is really in the hands of the goddess of fortune
now the goddess of fortune was held to be a woman who commanded all of our
destinies and the thing about her is that he’s entirely fickle she’s cruel
vain and made any point decide that we will die and somebody else will succeed
essentially she’s uncontrollable entity in our lives and in ancient Rome the
goddess of fortune was everywhere there was her Statue everywhere she was on the
back of coins etc and her message was most of our life is in the hands of
somebody else and however much we try and achieve rational control we will you
know we will she’ll probably at some point get us in order to try and cope
with the vagaries of fortune Seneca counseled us to undertake what he called
a in Latin a prime edit RTO a curious exercise called a premeditation he
advised that every morning in bed before getting up you should essentially run
through in your mind the whole day ahead of you and imagine every single disaster
that could occur to you not because it would necessarily occur but in order to
protect you if it might and I just want us to go through what Seneca says in his
premeditation he says some the wise will start each day with the thought that
fortune gives us nothing which we can really own nothing whether public or
private is stable the destinies of men no less than those of cities are in a
whirl how often of cities in Asia been laid load by a single shock of an
earthquake how many towns in Syria we live in the middle of things which have
all been destined to die mortal have you been born and to mortals have you given
birth so reckon on everything expect everything a year later the town of
Pompeii was destroyed in other words we of on unstable ground and we must accept
this in a very fundamental starting point we must not react with injured
surprise to bad things these bad things are written into the contract of life no
one should have a child wrote Seneca without the ability to tolerate the
thought that that child may be may be dead by evening here I have two children
he gives some lovely quotes which are oddly cheering he says what need is
there to weep over parts of life he says the whole of it calls for tears there’s
also a lovely quote from him he where he says a man must swallow a toad every
morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more disgusting and the whole
day ahead we try to have toad cereal here for you today but it didn’t it
didn’t come about but essentially the starting point has to be much more
pessimistic the interesting thing is I always cheer up when I read this sort of
stuff and I think the reason is that some of the darkest thinkers are
consoling the reason I wanted Leonard Cohen is that listening to Leonard Cohen
particularly when you listen it on CD cheers you up it it makes you feel that
somehow you’re not alone in your sadness that sadness which can seem like an
aberration a departure from the norm is in fact the basic default mode of human
beings and so the works of art have a huge role to play I think in confirming
those dark hunches it’s very unfortunate as I said a minute ago that we live in a
world full of hope we live in a world surrounded by self-help books and one of
the things about self-help books is they’re constantly telling us to get out
get out of bed and achieve things and do wonderful things and I undertook a few
years ago a bit of a study of the self-help of genre and I found I came
across a self-help book which was perhaps one of the most depressing books
I think I’ve ever read unintentionally it’s by a man called Anthony Robbins and
if any of you know him please don’t read him if you don’t a few years ago he read
he wrote a book called awaken the giant within and the the essential point is
that all of us are small he said but all of us have a potential giant and by
reading his book $16 on Amazon he we can start to grow and do
do amazing things and he described how he had once been poor and small and
depressed but he and fat as well but he went on a diet etc I’ve got a little
quote for you here he goes um I discovered a magical power in me to take
back control of my physical well-being I permanently rid myself a 38 pounds of
fat through this dramatic weight loss I attracted the woman of my dreams I
married her and I created the family I’d always desired I used my power to change
my income from subsistence level to over ten million dollars a year this moved me
from a tiny apartment where I was wish washing my dishes in the bathtub because
there was no kitchen – my family’s current home the spanish-style Del Mar
castle a picture of which he helpfully includes in his in his book okay we all
know the type of book they’re out there in water stones and everywhere else and
they’re a very very depressing but they’re part of a wider movement and
that is the feeling that everybody can succeed that opportunity is not just for
the few it’s for the many this is the message we hear from every single
politician who ever stands up on a pulpit everyone can do it no one should
hold you back you can do it it’s a beautiful idea except it’s got some
serious drawbacks one of the most serious drawbacks is it constantly feels
leaves us feeling envious let me talk to you about Envy the interesting thing
about Envy is you don’t envy everybody it’s I think very unusual for anyone in
this room to Envy the Queen anybody envy the Queen I don’t envy the Queen the
reason the reason we don’t envy the Queen is she’s too weird she’s just
someone she’s just so remote from us we can’t
really relate to her she lives in this odd Palace et cetera however who in this
room has not envied someone at a school reunion or at a university riu nor by
reading something in the paper about someone they were once at school with or
interested with anyone not felt that emotion no few but not very many about
the same level as impotence so basically the reason for this is a sense of
opportunity we don’t feel that we will envy the Queen because she feels too
strange she feels distant from us we don’t feel equal
to her as soon as you feel equal to somebody soon as you feel I’m basically
more or less like this person and I could do this too but you haven’t you
will start to get envious and depressed so a feeling of opportunity and equality
and the fact that everybody can make it this is strangely a really really
depressing a starting point which constantly leaves us a feeling that we
haven’t achieved enough there’s an interesting thing when I was doing my
little study of American self-help books it struck me that if you look at
self-help shelves in in America but I think probably all over there are really
two kinds of books the first kind of book is like the Anthony Robbins type of
book you can do it you can make it it’s out there the other kind of book is a
books telling you how to cope with what’s euphemistically termed low
self-esteem and I think there’s a real relationship a society that tells people
that they can achieve anything we’ll also be a society that very
swiftly develops a problem of self-esteem because simply if everybody
expects to achieve everything you’re going to get an awful lot of people who
are feeling that something’s gone dramatically wrong with their lives it
probably is unlikely today that you could become successful as Bill Gates as
it was unlikely in the 17th century that you could join the ranks of the French
aristocracy but it doesn’t feel like that it feels from opening most
magazines etc that you know if you had a garage and knew that what about software
and had a few bright ideas few contacts you could get there simple really
it’s not statistically it is unbelievably small I was talking to
somebody in venture capital the other day who said to me that something like
98% of all business ideas ever submitted will fail we don’t hear that we don’t
hear those stories we are focused on a very very small minority another thing
that you always hear another very optimistic but very depressing idea that
is proposed in our optimistic Society is the idea of meritocracy now what is
meritocracy meritocracy is the idea that if we all work hard enough at making
society fair we will be able to build a world where anybody can make it and you
know you hear politicians on all sides of the political spectrum praising
meritocracy how can we get the school system working
well enough that it can make a meritocratic world come true now the
interesting thing about a meritocracy is that it’s got some very nasty cruel side
effects if you really believe that we can build a world where everybody is
going to end up where they merit to be where they deserve to be you’ll also end
up with a society in which anybody who doesn’t as it were make it deserves not
to make it if you believe in a world where those people who get to the top
merit their success you’re implicitly also standing up a society where people
deserve to fail and merits to fail and the more people believe that we do live
in a meritocracy the more people will be very hard on themselves if they fail and
very tough on others I remember a little while ago I was them I was in America
which is after all the land the center of meritocracy in many ways of belief in
meritocracy and and and there was some at a dinner with some friends and
everyone had a bit too much to drink and there were lot of jokes being made about
white trash and trailer trash and there was lots of hilarity about trailer trash
and how funny was that people were living on the edge of cities in caravans
and having children with their children and all this sort of thing and I said oh
hang on a minute this doesn’t sound particularly funny here I mean what’s
going on in this friend of mine piped up she said you know this really makes me
feel my blood boil you know because you know you come from Europe and you know
you’re all socialist and essentially you believe you know that that there’s
something wrong with this kind of attitude whereas really I only got to
where I got and she was quite a high-powered person I only got to where
I got because I worked hard you know she’s my father’s an alcoholic
but I made it and I made it because of me and so I deserve to be at the top and
if someone’s in a trailer home well they’re in a trailer home and that’s
their problem and don’t expect me to pay for them now that’s an attitude you
sometimes hear and it’s the attitude that’s precisely the result of
meritocracy now I think it’s absolutely impossible to have a meritocracy it’s
completely crazy to imagine that we will ever reach a society where people will
really deserve their success and totally deserve their failure there is simply
too many factors in anybody’s life and to expect that you can simply take a
read of somebody’s life and and determine
from that whether they deserve to be there or not is is simply unbelievable
again if we go back to our Romans and our Stoics you know think of the goddess
of fortune an ancient Roman who did well did not think that he or she was
entirely responsible for success they knew that it was the goddess of fortune
the goddess of fortune had done it and so instantly if something went right you
went to give an offering to the goddess of fortune to basically say thank you
you know I didn’t sell my company for millions of pounds I didn’t you know win
public office the goddess of fortune gave this to me it’s a gift and that
gift may be taken away I don’t own it that gift says nothing about me that
gift is really as it were in the hands of somebody else
again we’ve lost sight of this we’ve become much more optimistic we believe
that we are in control of our destinies and with that belief in control comes
serious self-esteem people commit suicide weirdly a lot more nowadays and
a lot more in societies which are felt to be individualistic where the
individual is felt to be entirely in control of his destiny the rates of
suicide goes up and the reason for that is that all failure is assumed to be a
personal point of blame so people assume their success and they assume personally
they’re their failure and that’s why rates of suicide are higher the
interesting thing about a recession is that racine recessions certain kinds of
suicide go down in number why is that because suddenly there is a public
explanation for failure and that public explanation is a huge burden that’s
lifted off our backs in fact people continue to fail at all
times of the economic cycle but suddenly there’s a story a publicly available
story for why there is a failure and that and that publicly available story
is very important and what I want to suggest is really that these stories of
public failure have disappeared in the narrative that we tell ourselves about
what life is like I mean if we look at the history of work and how people view
work you know for nowadays people expect that their work will be an arena of
fulfillment and happiness that is the sort of basic assumption that we have
and that constantly is held before us a completely insane idea historically
where work was assumed to be I mean if you listen to the ancient Greeks work is
slavery and if you want have a good life you you simply have to take yourself out
of the financial system you cannot you know the pleasurable sides of existence
are not those certain circumscribed within the boundaries of work and in
early Christianity a similar kind of belief that that work is essentially a
punishment for the sins of Adam that’s why we toil that idea starts to
disappear by the time you get to the 18th century various bourgeois
philosophers are singing the praises of work work as a place to realize yourself
to become yourself to to become you know someone who’s someone who can take out
of yourself something that’s precious and put it out there and get paid for it
a beautiful idea but again an idea with all sorts of
casualties because it incidentally the optimistic idea of work kicks in at
roughly the same time that the optimistic idea of love comes about the
18th century is a curious time mid 18th century a lot of bourgeois philosophers
come up with a new idea of love the idea is that suddenly you should marry
someone that you love pletely mad idea historically previously you don’t marry
someone you love you marry somebody’s got a farm next door you hand over the
family property that’s how you do it but suddenly a new idea note you should
marry someone that you love and that’s how marriage should work and and
similarly you should get a job and that you love as well you should realize
yourself so suddenly these two vital safety valves the hobby and the mistress
go out of the window for hundreds of years hundreds of years
you know your real working life happens happens on your you realize your real
life not real your real life happens on the weekend and evenings in your spare
time that’s that’s the time of enjoyment and similarly your real love life goes
on in extra curricular activity but suddenly this new better idea I know
some people who are very happily married and I know some people who really enjoy
their jobs but they’re a real minority I would estimate around 5% of people I’ve
ever come across or in that lucky band so it’s very odd
that the other 95% of us have before us as idea of normality an ideal which has
failed 95 percent of us it’s a very very bizarre philosophy of life that we
should be holding up as normal something which is clearly almost a you know
beautifully rare so we have holding up before us as an idea of normality
something which is anything other than normal I want to talk more about the the
cheerful sides of pessimism and how to be happily sad one of the things that I
think we should all do a lot more is some put skulls on our desks in the in
the Middle Ages and the early modern period a vital piece of interior design
was a skull if you’d finished a beautiful desk mahogany desk whatever
one of the way you know put your quill pen but also skull a skull was something
you’d always put on your desk and the reason for that is that as you’re doing
your work you’ll always look at the skull and
think I’m going to be like him in a little while and the point was not to
despair but precisely to focus on what’s important because I think one of the
things about the thought of death is it doesn’t make you think that life is
meaningless far from it it simply readjusts your priorities any of us
who’ve been in a near-death experience or let’s face it all of us are in
near-death experiences we’re in a near-death experience right now because
you know you could fall on your head and you would be dead so life is a
near-death experience but any of us who’ve come really close to a near-death
experience will report the following thing that
some things started to matter a lot and other things started to matter a bit
less and the things that tend to matter a lot less are what other people think
about you and certain aspects of your career so and the things that’s not to
matter lotmore are what people you really like
think of you very unusual idea but something that
only tends to occur to us on our deathbed you know and so the
contemplation of death a very very important part of a healthy life and I
didn’t don’t have a skull but as I said I would like all of us to reflect on
death more regularly and hopefully there’ll be time at the end for us to do
that other things to do if you’re if you’re if you’re a tourist ruins I don’t
know if and if you like ruins I love ruins but head out to see some
ruins there’s some wonderful ruins obviously in ancient Egypt in Greece
they’re quite good too but also there’s some modern industrial ruins you know
head up north to parts of northern England head to the Mojave Desert
weathers a plain famous plain graveyard where most of the world’s airlines are
currently parking their airliners it’s good to see modern civilization in
crumbling to bits it’s good to see what will happen to us in time to make
ourselves properly at home I think we you know we live in a world where human
achievement is right at the center of what we do and we constantly have held
before us great human achievements it’s very important to balance that by
getting out into nature getting out into bits of history where we see the marks
of time written into the landscape anything which as it were puts us into
perspective in some way there’s a nice we’re feeling small I suppose I want to
say very often we made you feel small by people you know at work or in social
life who patronize us etc I want to invite us to feel small in relation to
the really big things eternity time death these are good things to feel
small in front of and it’s I think that’s why many of us enjoy going off to
see a glacier say or looking down at the Earth from an aeroplane or going
thinking about the polar icecaps these vast empty spaces make us feel small in
a way which alleviates us from that agonizing sense of self-importance and
egoism which is otherwise clinging to us like a bad smell so head out to glaciers
head out to anywhere which makes you feel properly small and as I say put a
skull on on your table the other thing of course
that that you can do with sadness is to discover works of art that are sad and
if you are feeling a little bit sad my advice to you is to find an artist who
somehow says not you know life is cheerful that’s a devil’s talk that life
is cheer the an artist who somehow makes it even grimmer so read someone like the
philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer read Pascal listen to Leonard Cohen or indeed
listen to Elton John there’s a I want to there’s a lovely song by Elton John
called called sad songs and listen to the first verse guess there are times
when we all need to share a little pain and ironing out the rough spots is the
hardest part when memories remain and it’s times like these when we all need
to hear the radio because from the lips of some old singer we can share the
troubles that we already know so in other words a sense of confirmation it’s
through the sad song that our own sadness is alleviated and on that note I
like to play and all of you to sing if you can a little bit of sad songs take
it away sad songs by Elton John is it coming should here we are and like
you’re just sing and I’ll sing too give it a bit louder
one two three
guess there are times when be you need to share
and for us what is the hardest part when memories remain a times like these when
we want me to give her
we already know come on louder on Ted on those sides when hope is gone
love you too
your loo just do you feel
gosh
of this goal
okay we’re gonna cover there thank you thank you Scott thank you
all right thank you can I get for it no now now thank you now the other thing
that the other thing that sadness and sad songs and pessimism generally can do
is to improve your sex appeal it’s a little known fact
very rarely spoken off in the pages of fashion magazines and other such things
that sadness as I say can bring you dates and it’s very often thought that
if you’re not getting out enough if you’re not feeling attractive if if
you’re not pulling people in that maybe you should feel happy as more cheerful
and suggests an image that your life is going well I’d like to draw your
attention to the leaflet that came the parish newsletter where on the back of
it you should find a picture by Edward Hopper called automat painted in 1929
here’s a woman in a cafe and I think she’s rather cute
and I think one of the reasons why she’s cute is because she’s sad now I think
that contra imagined this woman with a group of her girlfriends giggling away
things have gone really happy she’s got a promotion she’s so happy she’s waving
her arms about instantly I find a rather less attractive I think the reason is
that when we think about love and falling in love one of the things I
think we want to do is to touch other people’s sadness could sound rather
creepy but really what we want in a relationship is to share the sad things
I mean what’s the point of having a relationship in which you’re cheerful
all the time you want to have a relationship where you can somehow unite
your sadness with somebody else’s sadness relationships are built around
shared griefs and letting a little bit of that shared grief show even on a
first date is a good thing but confessing how lonely you’ve recently
been is a good thing cheekily I think there’s a
gender divide I have to be honest I think that I think most men speak
personally most men do very much like someone who’s been in a lot we feel
relaxed and coming back to impotence very cheered up by the sense that a
woman has not got too many dates and that she’s a little bit alone so we need
to admit to that Oh time is ticking on so I’m gonna I’m gonna bring things to a
close but I think one of the things that I want you to take away from today is
the advantages of living your dark moments fully living your sadness to the
full not seeing it as some aberration but seeing it as something that is an
intrinsic part of life and something that you shouldn’t run away from you
should embrace and standing in your room with Elton John at full blast you should
as I say embrace the sounds also read some Nietzsche let me let me equation a
bit from Nietzsche he says to those human beings who are of any concern to
me I wish suffering desolation sickness ill
treatment indignities and illness I wish that these friends of mine should not
remain unfamiliar with profound self contempt the torture of self mistrust
the wretchedness of the vanquished in other words Nietzsche one of the
greatest philosophers of the 19th century possibly of all time is advising
us that anyone he cares about he wants to suffer now what on earth is going on
there the reason is simple Nietzsche believed like many of those many those
have studied the question that somehow there is a real relationship between the
ability to suffer the ability to endure suffering and live suffering and look
suffering in the face and the capacity to do anything important or good let me
read you another bit from Nietzsche if you refuse to let your suffering lie
upon you for even an hour and if you constantly try and prevent and forestall
all possible distress way ahead of time if you experience suffering and
displeasure as evil hateful worthy of annihilation and as a defect of
existence then it is clear that you Harbor in your heart
the religion of comfortableness how little you know of human happiness you
can little people for happiness and
unhappiness our sisters and even twins that either grow up together or as in
your case child remains small together in other words there’s a real
relationship between the capacity to endure suffering and the capacity to do
to do great things it’s not a coincidence that Nietzsche was a
teetotaler his favorite drink was milk and he advised us never to drink please
know none of you if you want to be Nietzsche and don’t go to the pub now
the reason for this is let’s think about what alcohol does alcohol is one of
those things if you if you feel a little bit sad got some problems what do you do
drink and then what happens after you’ve had a few drinks you feel a bit more
cheerful now this is absolutely disastrous advice for Nietzsche because
Nietzsche believed that it’s in moments of darkness that we have our best
insights into what we need in life if we try and stop feeling envious immediately
if we try and stop feeling bad if when we’re writing a book we feel happy with
it immediately we will never do anything good the capacity to tolerate suffering
the capacity to be pessimistic comfortably to endure passages of
pessimism is absolutely essential and that’s why
Nietzsche thought that alcohol was a very very bad idea now and it’s
something else that Nietzsche thought was a very bad idea and I’m speaking in
an appropriate place and that’s Christianity famously and he called
Christianity and alcohol the two great narcotics of European civilization and
he believed that Christianity was bad for the very same reason that alcohol is
bad the reason that Christianity is bad do you excuse anybody here who’s a
believer the reason he believed that Christianity was bad is because it makes
us feel good too quickly if you’re worried about timidity the New Testament
tells you blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth if you’re
worried about having no friends the New Testament says blessed are ye when men
shall hate you and when they shall separate you from their company if
you’re worried about an exploitative job the New Testament advises servants obey
in all things your masters according to the flesh so in other words you quickly
feel better about a lot of things now Nietzsche famously argued that all of us
actually want many good things like we want an active sex life we don’t want to
be meek we quite want to be clever we want to have good jobs but
some of us give up too quickly and we give up too quickly because we are
addicted to comfortableness we want to be comfortable so quickly and
Christianity for Nietzsche was a religion that turned all these things on
its head it was a hypocritical creed which denounces what people actually
want but a too often too weak to fight for and it praises what many of us don’t
want but happen to have so in the Christian view powerlessness becomes
goodness baseness becomes humility submission to people one hates becomes
obedience and in each us phrase not being able to take revenge turns into
forgiveness now Nietzsche thought that was all a very very bad idea and he very
much believed now incidentally he was poor totally forgotten and in many ways
wretched but the very different the difference he thought was that he
embraced the darkness he didn’t say he didn’t say I’m sad but he didn’t say
there are things wrong with my life but they’re not really wrong he said there
are things wrong with my life and I’m sad about it he embraced the pessimism
he admitted to the pessimism and this is really the essence of what I’m trying to
say now that pessimism is a feature of life it’s a feature of life that we
often try to run away from by running away from it too quickly we cut
ourselves off from the opportunity to embrace this darkness and to embrace the
lessons that it often brings and we often also cut ourselves off from the
deepest kind of relationships which we can have with other human beings which
are relationships based around a confession of suffering and I think that
essentially all good friendships are about confession one sort or another
they’re a confession of things that the rest of the world thinks of as
unacceptable but are in fact part of human life so all of us now we can have
a little bit of time to have some tea and cakes and also there’s get a
confessional box but really what I want to what I hope that will take away from
the next few minutes is going to be a sense of shared communion around the
dark things and a capacity to admit among ourselves just how hard we find
everybody a life so join me in joining me in being sad
and in eating some misfortune cookies which will also be at the back but thank
you all very much and and I hope that today goes quite badly thank you
feathers from Salvation Army counter and the Sun falls down like money on our
leave the heart and she shows you where to look
Thank you very much!
As I think Susanne mentioned
this is unfortunately going to be a very bad lecture.
I brought you all under the false pretense as you will learn almost nothing
You will come away from this talk disappointed thinking that
I’ve let you down. That you learned almost nothing,
that your life is not being enhanced.
Things will then start getting worse
and you will come to the realization that life is essentially meaningless; that your efforts are headed nowhere.
And then at some point you will be struck down by death
and your loved ones and all your achievements will wither and be returned to dust.
These are the basic facts of human life though they are often denied.
But here, we have come together today to put darkness on the table
and to look at it fairly and squarely.
So, I want to sing a hymn in praise of looking at the glass half-empty
and do want to emphasize
to you the wisdom, and indeed the beauty
of thinking of life as an essentially deeply troubled and compromised affair.
We are currently living in troubled times
and many of us respond to these troubled times
with a feeling of injured self-pity,
as though something that is supposed to have gone right, has gone wrong.
I would like to reverse the equation.
Nothing was entirely supposed to go right
and so nothing has particularly gone wrong. We have simply
returned to a state of crisis which is the norm in human history.
It’s sometimes the principle of newspapers
that murder, disease, crisis is the exception.
It makes the news.
But in fact, this is the news. This is all that ever happens.
So, as I say,
this feeling of being in a historically abnormal postition
is really a misreading of the true facts
of existence which is an almost continuous series of crises.
Let’s try and remember. None of us were particularly happy in 2004
when things were going supposedly so well.
We had all sorts of troubles on our mind, certainly, I did.
I don’t remember these boom times being so great. Nothing boomed for me.
So, it’s really a return, as I say, to the same.
We do have in our world-culture, two very important strands of thought:
Buddhism and Christianity that have emphasized
that life is essentially an imperfect business from an entirely secular point of view.
And we are a secular organization talking in this secular hall.
I’d like to recover some of that wisdom.
Some of the wisdom of thinking that, essentially, life is suffering,
and the human-being is a fallen creature.
I love the idea of fallenness.
It’s a wonderful starting point; very good in a marriage or a relationship
– “Don’t expect… I never said I was perfect. I am a fallen creature.”
It’s very hard for people to comeback at us on that one.
So,
really, I am just trying to emphasize the ever present nature of suffering and unhappiness.
But really, I want to talk about impotence first.
Who here has been impotent recently? The devil…
Anyone else suffered from impotence?
You are just not being honest!
Please, someone put up their hand, apart from me.
Ok, thank you, thank you!
Lady,
Ok, right, so impotence
it’s a fact of life now, very interesting thing about impotence
impotence is all to do with pessimism and optimism
its when there is a huge expectation on you for things to go really well
thats when people get impotent, and really this goes to the heart of what I wanted to be talking about today
there’s a lovely for those of you who knows Monte know montagnes essays
Montaigne 16th century French philosopher wrote a wonderful essay what
about impotence in which his essential drift is if you if you arrive in the
bedroom or bedchamber as he put it with high expectations there’s a very serious
risk that things will go wrong so he counsels there was a man there’s a true
story there was a man near his his village who
had failed with a woman as he put it and had cut off his member and had sent it
to the woman in atonement for his error and this had so disturbed the local
community and so disturbed Montaigne that he picked up a pen to try and write
about listen and and his essential conclusion was when entering the bedroom
always say that you are a bad lover this is the only way really in which you can
ever stand the chance of making it a good impression must always lower the
expectations of performance that’s the way in which you can be a good lover but
I think there’s a deeper point a this is not just about sexual performance this
is about life performance that somehow raising expectations and and and
suggesting that all will go well is the surest way to get very nervous and with
nervousness comes failure so there’s a curious debt of success on a complete
familiarity with failure if you expect to succeed you will almost certainly
fail so pessimism doesn’t necessarily have to lead to a lack of achievement or
a complete resignation but very strangely we have to start I think I
want to argue from a feeling that that things are not going to go well nowadays
our philosophers and thinkers and and public figures are often in the business
of trying to tell us how to cope with how to make life better somehow the
improvement of life is the way in which most problems are viewed how can we make
things go better I want to direct your thoughts to a school of philosophy that
flourished in ancient Rome and that took a completely different approach I’m
talking about stoicism and the stoic school of philosophy when we speak of
someone being stoic in the face of it of a disaster we are very much plugged in
to an ancestral memory of how the Stoics of ancient Rome went about things one of
my favorite stoic philosophers is the philosopher Seneca who lived in the time
of Nero a very troubled time for the Roman Empire if we think we haven’t got
it bad look at Nero’s reign for what was going on then and he very much believed
that philosophy was a discipline to keep you sane in troubled times and that one
of the best ways to be sane was precisely to master pessimism to make
yourself at home in pessimism to become a master of this strange and perhaps
depressing seeming but not actually depressing philosophy Seneca wrote a
book on anger very interesting thing about anger now many of us nowadays
think that anger is an almost physiological problem it’s to do with
sort of being hot-blooded or something Seneca thought that was nonsense he
believed that anger we get angry for a very simple reason optimism optimism
makes us angry and he compared a very interesting thing he asked why people
don’t get angry when it rains particularly in Northern Europe the
reason why people don’t get angry when it rains is that we expect it to rain
ticking in England it’s amazing if it doesn’t rain so it would not occur to
anybody to get angry at the fact it is raining now the interesting thing is we
don’t adopt this very wise approach in all areas of life and think about our
keys you know we start shouting when we lose the house keys or how we behave
when they were stuck in traffic we you know we insult people we think how come
we’re in traffic now essentially that is because we believe implicitly in a world
in which keys never go astray and the roads are always mysteriously traffic
free a very very odd starting for life so it’s our it’s our
expectations that defines what will anger us that’s not to say we won’t ever
feel sad but there’s a difference between sad sadness and anger and I
think Senecas point was will be a lot wiser if we manage to expect a lot more
that our sense of what is normal to expect is hugely reduced so we get very
surprised when people suddenly die or when things suddenly go wrong he urges
to think Seneca that our fate is really in the hands of the goddess of fortune
now the goddess of fortune was held to be a woman who commanded all of our
destinies and the thing about her is that he’s entirely fickle she’s cruel
vain and made any point decide that we will die and somebody else will succeed
essentially she’s uncontrollable entity in our lives and in ancient Rome the
goddess of fortune was everywhere there was her Statue everywhere she was on the
back of coins etc and her message was most of our life is in the hands of
somebody else and however much we try and achieve rational control we will you
know we will she’ll probably at some point get us in order to try and cope
with the vagaries of fortune Seneca counseled us to undertake what he called
a in Latin a prime edit RTO a curious exercise called a premeditation he
advised that every morning in bed before getting up you should essentially run
through in your mind the whole day ahead of you and imagine every single disaster
that could occur to you not because it would necessarily occur but in order to
protect you if it might and I just want us to go through what Seneca says in his
premeditation he says some the wise will start each day with the thought that
fortune gives us nothing which we can really own nothing whether public or
private is stable the destinies of men no less than those of cities are in a
whirl how often of cities in Asia been laid load by a single shock of an
earthquake how many towns in Syria we live in the middle of things which have
all been destined to die mortal have you been born and to mortals have you given
birth so reckon on everything expect everything a year later the town of
Pompeii was destroyed in other words we of on unstable ground and we must accept
this in a very fundamental starting point we must not react with injured
surprise to bad things these bad things are written into the contract of life no
one should have a child wrote Seneca without the ability to tolerate the
thought that that child may be may be dead by evening here I have two children
he gives some lovely quotes which are oddly cheering he says what need is
there to weep over parts of life he says the whole of it calls for tears there’s
also a lovely quote from him he where he says a man must swallow a toad every
morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more disgusting and the whole
day ahead we try to have toad cereal here for you today but it didn’t it
didn’t come about but essentially the starting point has to be much more
pessimistic the interesting thing is I always cheer up when I read this sort of
stuff and I think the reason is that some of the darkest thinkers are
consoling the reason I wanted Leonard Cohen is that listening to Leonard Cohen
particularly when you listen it on CD cheers you up it it makes you feel that
somehow you’re not alone in your sadness that sadness which can seem like an
aberration a departure from the norm is in fact the basic default mode of human
beings and so the works of art have a huge role to play I think in confirming
those dark hunches it’s very unfortunate as I said a minute ago that we live in a
world full of hope we live in a world surrounded by self-help books and one of
the things about self-help books is they’re constantly telling us to get out
get out of bed and achieve things and do wonderful things and I undertook a few
years ago a bit of a study of the self-help of genre and I found I came
across a self-help book which was perhaps one of the most depressing books
I think I’ve ever read unintentionally it’s by a man called Anthony Robbins and
if any of you know him please don’t read him if you don’t a few years ago he read
he wrote a book called awaken the giant within and the the essential point is
that all of us are small he said but all of us have a potential giant and by
reading his book $16 on Amazon he we can start to grow and do
do amazing things and he described how he had once been poor and small and
depressed but he and fat as well but he went on a diet etc I’ve got a little
quote for you here he goes um I discovered a magical power in me to take
back control of my physical well-being I permanently rid myself a 38 pounds of
fat through this dramatic weight loss I attracted the woman of my dreams I
married her and I created the family I’d always desired I used my power to change
my income from subsistence level to over ten million dollars a year this moved me
from a tiny apartment where I was wish washing my dishes in the bathtub because
there was no kitchen – my family’s current home the spanish-style Del Mar
castle a picture of which he helpfully includes in his in his book okay we all
know the type of book they’re out there in water stones and everywhere else and
they’re a very very depressing but they’re part of a wider movement and
that is the feeling that everybody can succeed that opportunity is not just for
the few it’s for the many this is the message we hear from every single
politician who ever stands up on a pulpit everyone can do it no one should
hold you back you can do it it’s a beautiful idea except it’s got some
serious drawbacks one of the most serious drawbacks is it constantly feels
leaves us feeling envious let me talk to you about Envy the interesting thing
about Envy is you don’t envy everybody it’s I think very unusual for anyone in
this room to Envy the Queen anybody envy the Queen I don’t envy the Queen the
reason the reason we don’t envy the Queen is she’s too weird she’s just
someone she’s just so remote from us we can’t
really relate to her she lives in this odd Palace et cetera however who in this
room has not envied someone at a school reunion or at a university riu nor by
reading something in the paper about someone they were once at school with or
interested with anyone not felt that emotion no few but not very many about
the same level as impotence so basically the reason for this is a sense of
opportunity we don’t feel that we will envy the Queen because she feels too
strange she feels distant from us we don’t feel equal
to her as soon as you feel equal to somebody soon as you feel I’m basically
more or less like this person and I could do this too but you haven’t you
will start to get envious and depressed so a feeling of opportunity and equality
and the fact that everybody can make it this is strangely a really really
depressing a starting point which constantly leaves us a feeling that we
haven’t achieved enough there’s an interesting thing when I was doing my
little study of American self-help books it struck me that if you look at
self-help shelves in in America but I think probably all over there are really
two kinds of books the first kind of book is like the Anthony Robbins type of
book you can do it you can make it it’s out there the other kind of book is a
books telling you how to cope with what’s euphemistically termed low
self-esteem and I think there’s a real relationship a society that tells people
that they can achieve anything we’ll also be a society that very
swiftly develops a problem of self-esteem because simply if everybody
expects to achieve everything you’re going to get an awful lot of people who
are feeling that something’s gone dramatically wrong with their lives it
probably is unlikely today that you could become successful as Bill Gates as
it was unlikely in the 17th century that you could join the ranks of the French
aristocracy but it doesn’t feel like that it feels from opening most
magazines etc that you know if you had a garage and knew that what about software
and had a few bright ideas few contacts you could get there simple really
it’s not statistically it is unbelievably small I was talking to
somebody in venture capital the other day who said to me that something like
98% of all business ideas ever submitted will fail we don’t hear that we don’t
hear those stories we are focused on a very very small minority another thing
that you always hear another very optimistic but very depressing idea that
is proposed in our optimistic Society is the idea of meritocracy now what is
meritocracy meritocracy is the idea that if we all work hard enough at making
society fair we will be able to build a world where anybody can make it and you
know you hear politicians on all sides of the political spectrum praising
meritocracy how can we get the school system working
well enough that it can make a meritocratic world come true now the
interesting thing about a meritocracy is that it’s got some very nasty cruel side
effects if you really believe that we can build a world where everybody is
going to end up where they merit to be where they deserve to be you’ll also end
up with a society in which anybody who doesn’t as it were make it deserves not
to make it if you believe in a world where those people who get to the top
merit their success you’re implicitly also standing up a society where people
deserve to fail and merits to fail and the more people believe that we do live
in a meritocracy the more people will be very hard on themselves if they fail and
very tough on others I remember a little while ago I was them I was in America
which is after all the land the center of meritocracy in many ways of belief in
meritocracy and and and there was some at a dinner with some friends and
everyone had a bit too much to drink and there were lot of jokes being made about
white trash and trailer trash and there was lots of hilarity about trailer trash
and how funny was that people were living on the edge of cities in caravans
and having children with their children and all this sort of thing and I said oh
hang on a minute this doesn’t sound particularly funny here I mean what’s
going on in this friend of mine piped up she said you know this really makes me
feel my blood boil you know because you know you come from Europe and you know
you’re all socialist and essentially you believe you know that that there’s
something wrong with this kind of attitude whereas really I only got to
where I got and she was quite a high-powered person I only got to where
I got because I worked hard you know she’s my father’s an alcoholic
but I made it and I made it because of me and so I deserve to be at the top and
if someone’s in a trailer home well they’re in a trailer home and that’s
their problem and don’t expect me to pay for them now that’s an attitude you
sometimes hear and it’s the attitude that’s precisely the result of
meritocracy now I think it’s absolutely impossible to have a meritocracy it’s
completely crazy to imagine that we will ever reach a society where people will
really deserve their success and totally deserve their failure there is simply
too many factors in anybody’s life and to expect that you can simply take a
read of somebody’s life and and determine
from that whether they deserve to be there or not is is simply unbelievable
again if we go back to our Romans and our Stoics you know think of the goddess
of fortune an ancient Roman who did well did not think that he or she was
entirely responsible for success they knew that it was the goddess of fortune
the goddess of fortune had done it and so instantly if something went right you
went to give an offering to the goddess of fortune to basically say thank you
you know I didn’t sell my company for millions of pounds I didn’t you know win
public office the goddess of fortune gave this to me it’s a gift and that
gift may be taken away I don’t own it that gift says nothing about me that
gift is really as it were in the hands of somebody else
again we’ve lost sight of this we’ve become much more optimistic we believe
that we are in control of our destinies and with that belief in control comes
serious self-esteem people commit suicide weirdly a lot more nowadays and
a lot more in societies which are felt to be individualistic where the
individual is felt to be entirely in control of his destiny the rates of
suicide goes up and the reason for that is that all failure is assumed to be a
personal point of blame so people assume their success and they assume personally
they’re their failure and that’s why rates of suicide are higher the
interesting thing about a recession is that racine recessions certain kinds of
suicide go down in number why is that because suddenly there is a public
explanation for failure and that public explanation is a huge burden that’s
lifted off our backs in fact people continue to fail at all
times of the economic cycle but suddenly there’s a story a publicly available
story for why there is a failure and that and that publicly available story
is very important and what I want to suggest is really that these stories of
public failure have disappeared in the narrative that we tell ourselves about
what life is like I mean if we look at the history of work and how people view
work you know for nowadays people expect that their work will be an arena of
fulfillment and happiness that is the sort of basic assumption that we have
and that constantly is held before us a completely insane idea historically
where work was assumed to be I mean if you listen to the ancient Greeks work is
slavery and if you want have a good life you you simply have to take yourself out
of the financial system you cannot you know the pleasurable sides of existence
are not those certain circumscribed within the boundaries of work and in
early Christianity a similar kind of belief that that work is essentially a
punishment for the sins of Adam that’s why we toil that idea starts to
disappear by the time you get to the 18th century various bourgeois
philosophers are singing the praises of work work as a place to realize yourself
to become yourself to to become you know someone who’s someone who can take out
of yourself something that’s precious and put it out there and get paid for it
a beautiful idea but again an idea with all sorts of
casualties because it incidentally the optimistic idea of work kicks in at
roughly the same time that the optimistic idea of love comes about the
18th century is a curious time mid 18th century a lot of bourgeois philosophers
come up with a new idea of love the idea is that suddenly you should marry
someone that you love pletely mad idea historically previously you don’t marry
someone you love you marry somebody’s got a farm next door you hand over the
family property that’s how you do it but suddenly a new idea note you should
marry someone that you love and that’s how marriage should work and and
similarly you should get a job and that you love as well you should realize
yourself so suddenly these two vital safety valves the hobby and the mistress
go out of the window for hundreds of years hundreds of years
you know your real working life happens happens on your you realize your real
life not real your real life happens on the weekend and evenings in your spare
time that’s that’s the time of enjoyment and similarly your real love life goes
on in extra curricular activity but suddenly this new better idea I know
some people who are very happily married and I know some people who really enjoy
their jobs but they’re a real minority I would estimate around 5% of people I’ve
ever come across or in that lucky band so it’s very odd
that the other 95% of us have before us as idea of normality an ideal which has
failed 95 percent of us it’s a very very bizarre philosophy of life that we
should be holding up as normal something which is clearly almost a you know
beautifully rare so we have holding up before us as an idea of normality
something which is anything other than normal I want to talk more about the the
cheerful sides of pessimism and how to be happily sad one of the things that I
think we should all do a lot more is some put skulls on our desks in the in
the Middle Ages and the early modern period a vital piece of interior design
was a skull if you’d finished a beautiful desk mahogany desk whatever
one of the way you know put your quill pen but also skull a skull was something
you’d always put on your desk and the reason for that is that as you’re doing
your work you’ll always look at the skull and
think I’m going to be like him in a little while and the point was not to
despair but precisely to focus on what’s important because I think one of the
things about the thought of death is it doesn’t make you think that life is
meaningless far from it it simply readjusts your priorities any of us
who’ve been in a near-death experience or let’s face it all of us are in
near-death experiences we’re in a near-death experience right now because
you know you could fall on your head and you would be dead so life is a
near-death experience but any of us who’ve come really close to a near-death
experience will report the following thing that
some things started to matter a lot and other things started to matter a bit
less and the things that tend to matter a lot less are what other people think
about you and certain aspects of your career so and the things that’s not to
matter lotmore are what people you really like
think of you very unusual idea but something that
only tends to occur to us on our deathbed you know and so the
contemplation of death a very very important part of a healthy life and I
didn’t don’t have a skull but as I said I would like all of us to reflect on
death more regularly and hopefully there’ll be time at the end for us to do
that other things to do if you’re if you’re if you’re a tourist ruins I don’t
know if and if you like ruins I love ruins but head out to see some
ruins there’s some wonderful ruins obviously in ancient Egypt in Greece
they’re quite good too but also there’s some modern industrial ruins you know
head up north to parts of northern England head to the Mojave Desert
weathers a plain famous plain graveyard where most of the world’s airlines are
currently parking their airliners it’s good to see modern civilization in
crumbling to bits it’s good to see what will happen to us in time to make
ourselves properly at home I think we you know we live in a world where human
achievement is right at the center of what we do and we constantly have held
before us great human achievements it’s very important to balance that by
getting out into nature getting out into bits of history where we see the marks
of time written into the landscape anything which as it were puts us into
perspective in some way there’s a nice we’re feeling small I suppose I want to
say very often we made you feel small by people you know at work or in social
life who patronize us etc I want to invite us to feel small in relation to
the really big things eternity time death these are good things to feel
small in front of and it’s I think that’s why many of us enjoy going off to
see a glacier say or looking down at the Earth from an aeroplane or going
thinking about the polar icecaps these vast empty spaces make us feel small in
a way which alleviates us from that agonizing sense of self-importance and
egoism which is otherwise clinging to us like a bad smell so head out to glaciers
head out to anywhere which makes you feel properly small and as I say put a
skull on on your table the other thing of course
that that you can do with sadness is to discover works of art that are sad and
if you are feeling a little bit sad my advice to you is to find an artist who
somehow says not you know life is cheerful that’s a devil’s talk that life
is cheer the an artist who somehow makes it even grimmer so read someone like the
philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer read Pascal listen to Leonard Cohen or indeed
listen to Elton John there’s a I want to there’s a lovely song by Elton John
called called sad songs and listen to the first verse guess there are times
when we all need to share a little pain and ironing out the rough spots is the
hardest part when memories remain and it’s times like these when we all need
to hear the radio because from the lips of some old singer we can share the
troubles that we already know so in other words a sense of confirmation it’s
through the sad song that our own sadness is alleviated and on that note I
like to play and all of you to sing if you can a little bit of sad songs take
it away sad songs by Elton John is it coming should here we are and like
you’re just sing and I’ll sing too give it a bit louder
one two three
guess there are times when be you need to share
and for us what is the hardest part when memories remain a times like these when
we want me to give her
we already know come on louder on Ted on those sides when hope is gone
love you too
your loo just do you feel
gosh
of this goal
okay we’re gonna cover there thank you thank you Scott thank you
all right thank you can I get for it no now now thank you now the other thing
that the other thing that sadness and sad songs and pessimism generally can do
is to improve your sex appeal it’s a little known fact
very rarely spoken off in the pages of fashion magazines and other such things
that sadness as I say can bring you dates and it’s very often thought that
if you’re not getting out enough if you’re not feeling attractive if if
you’re not pulling people in that maybe you should feel happy as more cheerful
and suggests an image that your life is going well I’d like to draw your
attention to the leaflet that came the parish newsletter where on the back of
it you should find a picture by Edward Hopper called automat painted in 1929
here’s a woman in a cafe and I think she’s rather cute
and I think one of the reasons why she’s cute is because she’s sad now I think
that contra imagined this woman with a group of her girlfriends giggling away
things have gone really happy she’s got a promotion she’s so happy she’s waving
her arms about instantly I find a rather less attractive I think the reason is
that when we think about love and falling in love one of the things I
think we want to do is to touch other people’s sadness could sound rather
creepy but really what we want in a relationship is to share the sad things
I mean what’s the point of having a relationship in which you’re cheerful
all the time you want to have a relationship where you can somehow unite
your sadness with somebody else’s sadness relationships are built around
shared griefs and letting a little bit of that shared grief show even on a
first date is a good thing but confessing how lonely you’ve recently
been is a good thing cheekily I think there’s a
gender divide I have to be honest I think that I think most men speak
personally most men do very much like someone who’s been in a lot we feel
relaxed and coming back to impotence very cheered up by the sense that a
woman has not got too many dates and that she’s a little bit alone so we need
to admit to that Oh time is ticking on so I’m gonna I’m gonna bring things to a
close but I think one of the things that I want you to take away from today is
the advantages of living your dark moments fully living your sadness to the
full not seeing it as some aberration but seeing it as something that is an
intrinsic part of life and something that you shouldn’t run away from you
should embrace and standing in your room with Elton John at full blast you should
as I say embrace the sounds also read some Nietzsche let me let me equation a
bit from Nietzsche he says to those human beings who are of any concern to
me I wish suffering desolation sickness ill
treatment indignities and illness I wish that these friends of mine should not
remain unfamiliar with profound self contempt the torture of self mistrust
the wretchedness of the vanquished in other words Nietzsche one of the
greatest philosophers of the 19th century possibly of all time is advising
us that anyone he cares about he wants to suffer now what on earth is going on
there the reason is simple Nietzsche believed like many of those many those
have studied the question that somehow there is a real relationship between the
ability to suffer the ability to endure suffering and live suffering and look
suffering in the face and the capacity to do anything important or good let me
read you another bit from Nietzsche if you refuse to let your suffering lie
upon you for even an hour and if you constantly try and prevent and forestall
all possible distress way ahead of time if you experience suffering and
displeasure as evil hateful worthy of annihilation and as a defect of
existence then it is clear that you Harbor in your heart
the religion of comfortableness how little you know of human happiness you
can little people for happiness and
unhappiness our sisters and even twins that either grow up together or as in
your case child remains small together in other words there’s a real
relationship between the capacity to endure suffering and the capacity to do
to do great things it’s not a coincidence that Nietzsche was a
teetotaler his favorite drink was milk and he advised us never to drink please
know none of you if you want to be Nietzsche and don’t go to the pub now
the reason for this is let’s think about what alcohol does alcohol is one of
those things if you if you feel a little bit sad got some problems what do you do
drink and then what happens after you’ve had a few drinks you feel a bit more
cheerful now this is absolutely disastrous advice for Nietzsche because
Nietzsche believed that it’s in moments of darkness that we have our best
insights into what we need in life if we try and stop feeling envious immediately
if we try and stop feeling bad if when we’re writing a book we feel happy with
it immediately we will never do anything good the capacity to tolerate suffering
the capacity to be pessimistic comfortably to endure passages of
pessimism is absolutely essential and that’s why
Nietzsche thought that alcohol was a very very bad idea now and it’s
something else that Nietzsche thought was a very bad idea and I’m speaking in
an appropriate place and that’s Christianity famously and he called
Christianity and alcohol the two great narcotics of European civilization and
he believed that Christianity was bad for the very same reason that alcohol is
bad the reason that Christianity is bad do you excuse anybody here who’s a
believer the reason he believed that Christianity was bad is because it makes
us feel good too quickly if you’re worried about timidity the New Testament
tells you blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth if you’re
worried about having no friends the New Testament says blessed are ye when men
shall hate you and when they shall separate you from their company if
you’re worried about an exploitative job the New Testament advises servants obey
in all things your masters according to the flesh so in other words you quickly
feel better about a lot of things now Nietzsche famously argued that all of us
actually want many good things like we want an active sex life we don’t want to
be meek we quite want to be clever we want to have good jobs but
some of us give up too quickly and we give up too quickly because we are
addicted to comfortableness we want to be comfortable so quickly and
Christianity for Nietzsche was a religion that turned all these things on
its head it was a hypocritical creed which denounces what people actually
want but a too often too weak to fight for and it praises what many of us don’t
want but happen to have so in the Christian view powerlessness becomes
goodness baseness becomes humility submission to people one hates becomes
obedience and in each us phrase not being able to take revenge turns into
forgiveness now Nietzsche thought that was all a very very bad idea and he very
much believed now incidentally he was poor totally forgotten and in many ways
wretched but the very different the difference he thought was that he
embraced the darkness he didn’t say he didn’t say I’m sad but he didn’t say
there are things wrong with my life but they’re not really wrong he said there
are things wrong with my life and I’m sad about it he embraced the pessimism
he admitted to the pessimism and this is really the essence of what I’m trying to
say now that pessimism is a feature of life it’s a feature of life that we
often try to run away from by running away from it too quickly we cut
ourselves off from the opportunity to embrace this darkness and to embrace the
lessons that it often brings and we often also cut ourselves off from the
deepest kind of relationships which we can have with other human beings which
are relationships based around a confession of suffering and I think that
essentially all good friendships are about confession one sort or another
they’re a confession of things that the rest of the world thinks of as
unacceptable but are in fact part of human life so all of us now we can have
a little bit of time to have some tea and cakes and also there’s get a
confessional box but really what I want to what I hope that will take away from
the next few minutes is going to be a sense of shared communion around the
dark things and a capacity to admit among ourselves just how hard we find
everybody a life so join me in joining me in being sad
and in eating some misfortune cookies which will also be at the back but thank
you all very much and and I hope that today goes quite badly thank you
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