How to Become a Dangerous and Articulate Individual
You want to take your rightful place in the Kingdom? It's like get your tongue straight, man. Get it under control in the highest possible sense. There's nothing that makes you more formidable than verbal competence and being able to articulate, be able to think, to marshal your arguments right. It's a battlefield metaphor to get everything in order, all your information straight, you know, to marshal your forces.
Is it possible to have too much responsibility? To take too much responsibility for yourself? You can, for sure. Yeah, definitely. No, Dostoevsky said that every man was responsible for everything he did and for everything that everyone else does, which is kind of an insane statement but also somewhat... it's true in a certain sense. You do have an indefinite responsibility, and you do have an indefinite capacity to bear that responsibility. But that doesn't mean it can't be crushing. And then I would say the antidote to that is that you're not in this alone.
As your responsibilities mount and your opportunities increase, you have to delegate more and more. It's important that you do everything you can, but there's enough for everyone to do. And so you might say, well, the heroic path is one that leads to universal redemption, and that's true. And you might say, well, that's all on you. It's like, it is in a sense, but then the problem that you just described, it can be unsustainable, right? You can torture yourself for not doing it well enough. And it is up to you, but it's not up to you alone. It's not up to you alone. So you delegate, you help build people around you so that they're all working in the same direction. It's an effort multiplier in any case, and you make sure that they get credit, credit isn't exact, credit's good enough. It's not exactly right, the rewards are in accordance with their efforts, and you can distribute that. If you can routinize something and pass it off to someone else, say here's a little kingdom for you, and it doesn't have to be little, and it's something that can grow, but here's a kingdom for you, well then you can go off and do the next thing you need to do, which is extremely important.
You know, and you might think there's a kingdom and then it's broken into little kingdoms, and so the farther you are down the hierarchy, the smaller the kingdom you get. But that's only true if you think the world's a zero-sum game, because you could also think of it as a place of indefinite number of the largest kingdoms possible. And I think what... why do we think this is exhaustible in some sense? What we're doing doesn't look exhaustible, you know, that's the limits to growth mentality. It's like economists don't believe in that, because they think, well no, we can just get more efficient, which we certainly are. We're way more efficient than we once were. And those gains in efficiency, when they're not being interfered with, are increasing at more than an arithmetic rate.
Why do you think people have a tendency toward that zero-sum mentality? Well, I mean, there are elements of life that have a zero-sum element. I mean, if you're competing with another man, for example, to marry a particular woman, that's a zero-sum game if you only think of the game as including you two and that woman. So you can set up circumstances that are zero-sum. But to take that metaphor of zero-sum game where there has to be winners and losers because there's a finite number of resources is to assume that the rules of that game are the rules that govern all games, the set of all games. And that's just not true.
There's games that are infinitely multipliable. I mean, you can invent a new game, people do that all the time. The man who invented Katan, which is a game I really like to play, it's a very popular board game, that didn't exist until he invented it. Now, you know, thousands and thousands of people play it, and he made a fortune from it. It's like that game never existed. So, there doesn't seem to be any limit to the number of games we can invent. And it's a complicated problem because we are on a single planet and some resources are more zero-sum than others. But we haven't really run into any actual zero-sum limits in terms of our, you know, the probability of us living an abundant life on the planet. We've stewarded some resources very stupidly, we've done a very bad job of managing oceanic production, for example. We have to be smart about our resources, but that doesn't mean there's zero-sum. And certainly doesn't mean the world is a zero-sum game, and that's a Malthusian idea, you know, that population will grow until it consumes all available resources and precipitously collapse.
And then why do we think apocalyptically? Well, because things do come to sudden ends. People die, people get fatal illnesses. Like, the world you saw carefully constructed can be blown apart at any moment by a random occurrence, genetic mutation that causes the cancer that kills you. Like, life has a fundamentally apocalyptic aspect, and we do understand that because we're self-conscious. And then it's very difficult not to apply that kind of apocalyptic reasoning to things as such. The world's going to burn up, the climate's too hot. What about runaway positive feedback loops? Because that's what the climate types are afraid of. Hey, they happen. How do we bind our apocalyptic thinking? That's a good question, man. That's a good question. We do that with the truth. That's how we do it, through dialogue, through investigation, through exploration, through discipline. All of that, the logos, is the antidote to the apocalypse.
So, what does that mean? Love and truth is the antidote to the apocalypse. Not the planet has too many people on it. Truth in the service of love. What do you mean by that? Well, it's a hierarchy of virtue, I would say. There's an old idea that God is the sum of all that's good. I don't think sum is exactly the right metaphor. It's more like imagine there are Eternal verities, truth, beauty, justice, love, courage, fortitude, compassion. Think of all those things as virtues. So virtue is what all virtues have in common. That's the relationship of God to the good. Or you may think, how would that manifest itself in your life? Well, that might be the pursuit of the good. And that's the pursuit of the good that unites all proximal goods.
What is that exactly? Well, it's something like belief that it would be for the best that all things flourish to the degree that that's possible. When I was a clinician, I thought of that as the good in me serving the best in my clients. And I think the desire for that to happen, that's love. So that's the desire for... you say, well, you take a human bent, broken, miserable, malevolent, hurt, corrupt, weak, frustrating, disappointing, all of those things that we can lay on ourselves because of our inadequacies. Like, what's easy to dismiss that? And part of that dismissal is what drives the notion that the planet has too many people on it and that we're cancer on the face of the Earth. It's like, it's not easy to love that. But what do you want? You want the broken people to rise up out of their brokenness rather than despise them for it. And then you orient yourself towards that and try to pull that out of people and yourself. Keep facing challenges voluntarily, pay attention at a rate that works for you, develop your competence that actually stabilizes the environment around you. So it's actually less predictable and less threatening. Plus, you accrue that evidence and you get the social support for doing so. That's your best pathway forward.
How to Become a Dangerous and Articulate Individual
Foreign has said that a harmless man is not a good man. A Good Man is a very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control. How should people become more dangerous? Becoming more articulate is definitely the primary array of weapons. Physical prowess is something and it's not nothing, that physical confidence that comes along with that as well. But the same thing replicated at the level of the ability to communicate and think, that's a way broader field of battle and opportunity.
You want to take your rightful place in the Kingdom? It's like get your tongue straight, man. Get it under control in the highest possible sense. There's nothing that makes you more formidable than verbal competence and being able to articulate, be able to think, to marshal your arguments right. It's a battlefield metaphor to get everything in order, all your information straight, you know, to marshal your forces.
Is it possible to have too much responsibility? To take too much responsibility for yourself? You can, for sure. Yeah, definitely. No, Dostoevsky said that every man was responsible for everything he did and for everything that everyone else does, which is kind of an insane statement but also somewhat... it's true in a certain sense. You do have an indefinite responsibility, and you do have an indefinite capacity to bear that responsibility. But that doesn't mean it can't be crushing. And then I would say the antidote to that is that you're not in this alone.
As your responsibilities mount and your opportunities increase, you have to delegate more and more. It's important that you do everything you can, but there's enough for everyone to do. And so you might say, well, the heroic path is one that leads to universal redemption, and that's true. And you might say, well, that's all on you. It's like, it is in a sense, but then the problem that you just described, it can be unsustainable, right? You can torture yourself for not doing it well enough. And it is up to you, but it's not up to you alone. It's not up to you alone. So you delegate, you help build people around you so that they're all working in the same direction. It's an effort multiplier in any case, and you make sure that they get credit, credit isn't exact, credit's good enough. It's not exactly right, the rewards are in accordance with their efforts, and you can distribute that. If you can routinize something and pass it off to someone else, say here's a little kingdom for you, and it doesn't have to be little, and it's something that can grow, but here's a kingdom for you, well then you can go off and do the next thing you need to do, which is extremely important.
You know, and you might think there's a kingdom and then it's broken into little kingdoms, and so the farther you are down the hierarchy, the smaller the kingdom you get. But that's only true if you think the world's a zero-sum game, because you could also think of it as a place of indefinite number of the largest kingdoms possible. And I think what... why do we think this is exhaustible in some sense? What we're doing doesn't look exhaustible, you know, that's the limits to growth mentality. It's like economists don't believe in that, because they think, well no, we can just get more efficient, which we certainly are. We're way more efficient than we once were. And those gains in efficiency, when they're not being interfered with, are increasing at more than an arithmetic rate.
Why do you think people have a tendency toward that zero-sum mentality? Well, I mean, there are elements of life that have a zero-sum element. I mean, if you're competing with another man, for example, to marry a particular woman, that's a zero-sum game if you only think of the game as including you two and that woman. So you can set up circumstances that are zero-sum. But to take that metaphor of zero-sum game where there has to be winners and losers because there's a finite number of resources is to assume that the rules of that game are the rules that govern all games, the set of all games. And that's just not true.
There's games that are infinitely multipliable. I mean, you can invent a new game, people do that all the time. The man who invented Katan, which is a game I really like to play, it's a very popular board game, that didn't exist until he invented it. Now, you know, thousands and thousands of people play it, and he made a fortune from it. It's like that game never existed. So, there doesn't seem to be any limit to the number of games we can invent. And it's a complicated problem because we are on a single planet and some resources are more zero-sum than others. But we haven't really run into any actual zero-sum limits in terms of our, you know, the probability of us living an abundant life on the planet. We've stewarded some resources very stupidly, we've done a very bad job of managing oceanic production, for example. We have to be smart about our resources, but that doesn't mean there's zero-sum. And certainly doesn't mean the world is a zero-sum game, and that's a Malthusian idea, you know, that population will grow until it consumes all available resources and precipitously collapse.
And then why do we think apocalyptically? Well, because things do come to sudden ends. People die, people get fatal illnesses. Like, the world you saw carefully constructed can be blown apart at any moment by a random occurrence, genetic mutation that causes the cancer that kills you. Like, life has a fundamentally apocalyptic aspect, and we do understand that because we're self-conscious. And then it's very difficult not to apply that kind of apocalyptic reasoning to things as such. The world's going to burn up, the climate's too hot. What about runaway positive feedback loops? Because that's what the climate types are afraid of. Hey, they happen. How do we bind our apocalyptic thinking? That's a good question, man. That's a good question. We do that with the truth. That's how we do it, through dialogue, through investigation, through exploration, through discipline. All of that, the logos, is the antidote to the apocalypse.
So, what does that mean? Love and truth is the antidote to the apocalypse. Not the planet has too many people on it. Truth in the service of love. What do you mean by that? Well, it's a hierarchy of virtue, I would say. There's an old idea that God is the sum of all that's good. I don't think sum is exactly the right metaphor. It's more like imagine there are Eternal verities, truth, beauty, justice, love, courage, fortitude, compassion. Think of all those things as virtues. So virtue is what all virtues have in common. That's the relationship of God to the good. Or you may think, how would that manifest itself in your life? Well, that might be the pursuit of the good. And that's the pursuit of the good that unites all proximal goods.
What is that exactly? Well, it's something like belief that it would be for the best that all things flourish to the degree that that's possible. When I was a clinician, I thought of that as the good in me serving the best in my clients. And I think the desire for that to happen, that's love. So that's the desire for... you say, well, you take a human bent, broken, miserable, malevolent, hurt, corrupt, weak, frustrating, disappointing, all of those things that we can lay on ourselves because of our inadequacies. Like, what's easy to dismiss that? And part of that dismissal is what drives the notion that the planet has too many people on it and that we're cancer on the face of the Earth. It's like, it's not easy to love that. But what do you want? You want the broken people to rise up out of their brokenness rather than despise them for it. And then you orient yourself towards that and try to pull that out of people and yourself. Keep facing challenges voluntarily, pay attention at a rate that works for you, develop your competence that actually stabilizes the environment around you. So it's actually less predictable and less threatening. Plus, you accrue that evidence and you get the social support for doing so. That's your best pathway forward.
