 G'day, May 40 here. So the world is becoming increasingly secular. One, many of our explanations for how things happen are no longer rooted in faith and religion and tradition, but in science and secular explanations. Two, our lives are ever increasingly operated according to the efficiency maxims of, say, neoliberalism. So tradition has less and less control over our lives. And three, many of the services that religion used to provide, such as comfort and community, are now increasingly being better, more efficiently, more effectively provided by other mechanisms. So people instead of turning to church for a sense of comfort, they turn to music, to movies, to TV, to psychotherapy, to psychotherapeutic drugs, etc. Okay, so how does religion compete in this increasingly secular age? And so I'm just thinking about how whenever you see religion depicted in the news, it's almost always depicted in a negative sense, like religion, when it hits the news, it's almost always for a bad thing. So in an increasingly secular age, how does religion compete? And so I think it competes by giving explanations that are more and more effectively fitting a secular age. So instead of talking about God all the time, and I believe in God, but they're also all sorts of substitution words that you can use, such as reality, right? So instead of talking about humble yourself before God, you can talk about humble yourself before reality. In addition to talking about developing a personal relationship with God, you can talk about developing a positive relationship with reality. So using language that is perhaps more effective in the secular world or just providing alternatives to the worn out language of religion or supplementary uses of language beyond the traditional religious uses of language. So you can also talk about how everybody needs a hero system, like everybody needs something to believe in, everybody needs some sort of transcendent cause, that they feel themselves a part of. Because just looking at the world completely rashly and empirically, we will tend to be completely crushed by our own insignificance. So, you know, knowing that we will die one day and in all likelihood, we will have not left much of a mark on the world. How does the individual attach himself to something that lives on beyond him? And the most common way to do that is through your community, your people, your extended family, your nation. So Argentina just won the World Cup. For generations to come, they will be celebrating this. This will give them a sense of meaning and a sense that Argentina is the greatest country in the world. Why is Argentina the greatest country in the world? Because they just won the greatest World Cup ever played. So Argentina has a national day off right now. It's a national holiday to celebrate, which builds a sense of community, a sense of connection and a sense of passion and transcendent meaning. But, you know, Argentina is the greatest place in the world, which you would want Argentinians to believe. Like, why would anyone want to live in a community, a tribe or a nation that one does not believe is the greatest in the world? Like, everybody needs to believe that their people is especially chosen by the universe to play some sort of transcendent role. So I'm heavily influenced by the teachings of Ernest Backer, who wrote an incredibly profound book, The Denial of Death. He says, This is the terror to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, a consciousness of the self, to have deep inner feelings. I don't know about you, but my feelings are so deep, so exquisite and excruciating inner yearning for life and self expression. And with all this, you know, yet to die, we're all going to die. It seems like a hoax. What kind of deity would create such a complex and fancy worm food? So we're all going to end up as worm food one day. So Ernest Backer says the fear of death is the primary motivating factor behind much of human behavior. It's the idea of death. It's the fear of death. That's what haunts us. And this is where religion may be able to provide, you know, more effective suggestions, community answers, philosophies, rituals, right? So we have all these activities designed to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for all men. So I was listening to Richard Spencer talking about how Elon Musk is inevitably on this trajectory of defeat. Well, we're all on trajectory of defeat. God forbid, God forbid that I should have a menorah less Hanukkah. So I may be the only person within 200 miles lighting candles observing Hanukkah. 300 miles, 400 miles. What an opportunity to give witness to the Almighty. What a joy divine. What a joy divine. Great place to practice my singing. Okay, we're the only animal who's aware of our own mortality. So the Mount Lion P 22, that was just captured in Los Angeles. He was euthanized. I don't think he had an awareness of his own mortality. Right. So this awareness of our mortality tends to elicit anxiety and fear. Right. And these things can be so debilitating that to properly function, we must repress or deny our own mortality. So this is an example of non-rational, even irrational beliefs that service. Right. We walked around meditating on or just keeping present in our mind that we're going to die. I don't think that would be conducive to our human flourishing to use some, you know, wellness terminology. How's your human flourishing these days? Welcome to the 40 Institute for the International Study of Human Flourishing. Okay. So that poor cat was an incel. It was boxed in by Western civilization. He couldn't reproduce, but he lived a magnificent life. He raged against the dying of the light. He made it to age 12 in Los Angeles. That's like 100 human years. So how do we go about denying death? What outlet had he for joy? I'll tell you the outlet he had for joy. He killed a koala. Do you know how much joy that brings a lion to kill a koala? He killed a koala in the Los Angeles Zoo. He also killed a few Chihuahuas. It's a guarantee he'd pick me up. You get your paws on a koala. You know, you have a good feed. You immediately feel better. He composed this magnificent ode to joy after eating that koala. Okay. So the most effective way for denying death, according to Ernest Becker, is to strive for the heroic. So Argentinians are vicariously participated in their World Cup victory, the greatest World Cup of all time. They have this vicarious sense of the heroic. That's the most normal natural and probably healthy way for people to attach themselves to the heroic is to attach to their community, their tribe, their nation. So to vicariously take part in activities which lead you to believe you're part of something that is more than just your physical self, right? We need to attach most of us to something we'll live on past, our physical death. And so this will grant us a form of immortality. So to participate in something heroic, we usually attach ourselves to our people, perform the rituals of our people, such as Australia Day is coming up. I know it's a major event in your calendar. But now for the first time, employers are going to make taking a day off on Australia Day is now voluntary because for Indigenous people and those who sympathize with Indigenous Australians, Australia Day is actually a very sad time. Once everyone finds out it's all controlled by a hidden hand, it's going to make them feel like a dummy, says the chat. Okay. So we participate in rituals such as Australia Day or 4th of July, or we watch the Super Bowl and feel very American, whatever you need to do to feel part of your nation. That's going to give you a sense that you're part of something that transcends your earthly existence, you're part of something transcendent, eternal and heroic. Now, the great YouTube live streamer, he can have a sense of transcendence, knowing that his videos and his words may well live on beyond him, to speak to countless masses down through time or the great writer, to have a sense that his writings will live on beyond him, the great painter. But what about the great masses of mediocre people? Now, what about the people who are incapable of personally achieving the heroic, unlike the fantastic live streamer, the artist. How do they fulfill their need for heroism? So society usually will act as the vehicle by which the vast majority of people act out their urge for heroism. But also religion. If you are part of an organized religion, that's a way of vicariously acting out your need for heroism. So if you're a Christian, you believe that Christianity provides the vehicle for eternal salvation. If you're Jewish, you believe that Jews and Jewish people elevate humanity. The Jews are a pilot project for humanity, that we have laws and rituals and perspectives on life that make life better. So every religion offers a vehicle for the heroic. So for most people acting in heroic fashion, it seems like too big of a task. Or we may feel too small to be a hero. But usually everybody is a hero to someone. Even a 56-year-old in-cell, there are going to be some people who find some part of his life streaming or his life heroic. Even the in-cell can be a hero to someone. So we want to be heroic. We may feel too small for the task. So we try to disguise our struggle by saving a lot of money, by trying to do something distinctly of getting tattoos, dressing in a special way, using special language, living in a better home, in a better neighborhood, with a better car, with children that are ex-cell. But underneath all this, we ache to feel cosmically special. And we try to distract ourselves. We try to mask this need to feel transcendently, cosmically special. So we deny death by becoming fully absorbed in whatever role society has for us. And we strive for whatever our particular community, our particular nation, sees as most heroic. Some people will be the pursuit of science, for other people the pursuit of beauty, for other people the pursuit of seduction, for other people the pursuit of athletic greatness, Hollywood greatness, whatever society prizes the most, we strive for that. So society is a codified hero system. Society lets us know what is most important and then we strive for that and that's how we choose the heroic. Society is the living myth of the significance of human life. It is a defiant creation of meaning. So, Ernest Becker argues that it's essentially a biological necessity that we develop the hero system or subscribe to the hero system of the society around us. Because if we fail to deny death through our hero system, we will be debilitated by outrageous levels of stress, anxiety and depression which can absolutely drive you mad. So there was a great psychologist, Alfred Adler, in the 19th century saw low self-esteem as a central problem of mental illness. So what type of person has the most trouble with self-esteem? Someone who lacks connection to heroic transcendence of his fate. Someone who doubts his own immortality. Someone who doubts the abiding value of his decisions, his actions, his own life, his loves. Someone who's not convinced that his having lived makes any difference. So mental illness is just another style of being bogged down by the fear of death. So this leads to thinking such as terror management theory. So we try to deny death. We try to deny terror. We try to navigate the difficult, challenging environment. And we develop ways of managing our terror. And so the religious can point out that secular people have heroic systems just as much as religious people. And that they are non-rational. So for everyone who says our religion's irrational or non-rational, the thought for religious person or the person making that argument is also subscribing to some kind of non-rational, even irrational hero system. So religion at least has the advantage of, you know, millennia of experience, of time-tested ways of organizing community and family in individual life. It gives you rituals for human connection. It provides art and music and regular gathering and other ways of providing comfort in a challenging and difficult world. And you feel attached to something that's immoral, transcendent, that is cosmically special. Because, you know, without this biological necessity of attaching to something greater than ourselves will be crushed by our own insignificance and debilitated by fear, anxiety, even terror. I gotta get to work. Bye-bye.