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Jan. 1, 2023 - The Charlie Kirk Show
32:25
The Search for Meaning in 2022 + Charlie's Top Books of 2022

2022 was a thrilling year, but it didn't end the way most of us were hoping or expecting. Charlie explains how we can motivate ourselves to keep fighting and moving forward no matter what setbacks we endure or what obstacles stand in our path. Then, he opens the New Year by looking back at his three favorite books of 2022.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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A Happier Country in 2023 00:14:35
Hey everybody, happy new year.
We go through a recap of 2022 and I talk about New Year's resolutions, man's search for meaning, the great new depression we are living through, and so much more.
Email me your thoughts as always freedom at charliekirk.com.
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Commit to being better, deeper, happier, more joyful, despite what is going on around you.
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Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
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We are doing a 2022 year in review and looking ahead to 2023.
Let me just say a couple things that I wanted to express to you.
First, I want to talk about New Year's resolutions.
I'm a big fan of New Year's resolutions, regardless of whether or not you keep them.
I think that every person listening should try to make a commitment of things that you think you can do better.
Let me tell you why I believe New Year's resolutions are terrific and also why I get so angry when the cynics and the pessimists start making these social media posts against New Year's resolutions and making fun of them.
Number one, I'm a big believer.
One of the most exciting parts of our existence is the ability to improve.
I think it's terrific.
I think that in totalitarian countries that are largely secular, human improvement is devalued.
Now, in order for one to improve, to truly improve, you could improve accidentally.
That's possible.
But it rarely ever happens.
The greatest improvements I've ever had in my life, and I think you would agree in your life, happen.
You have to be honest with yourself, know yourself, know what you're good at and what you're not good at, know what you're succeeding at and what you're failing at, and then making an honest commitment to improve.
So when someone says, look, I'm 35 pounds overweight and I want to lose some weight, I think that takes a lot of courage to admit that you're not where you want to be.
I think that's a beautiful thing.
Now, regardless of whether or not you actually are able to lose the weight or keep going to the gym, the first step of acknowledging that you're not exactly where you want to be is very healthy.
We talk about 2022 and how I believe we're living through a new Great Depression.
Not a great economic depression, but a great spiritual depression, the likes of which I have never lived through.
And just talking to some people I really trust, they're experiencing and seeing the same thing.
From priests to rabbis to pastors to just other spiritual people I know, they're seeing a widespread, massively suppressive spiritual depression.
But for New Year's resolutions, what I really love about it is the admission that I have not reached my full potential.
And isn't that what's one of the most beautiful parts of life is saying, I'm not exactly where I want to be yet.
And it doesn't have to be material.
I find the most fulfilling New Year's resolutions not necessarily to be material New Year's resolutions saying, oh, I want to be able to get another house or all this.
The New Year's resolutions that I think are the most fulfilling are the ones where you say, I want to wake up earlier.
I want to work out more.
I want to read more.
I want to go the month of January without alcohol.
I want to stop watching internet or online pornography.
I'm tired of watching Netflix ad nauseum.
I don't feel fulfilled enough in my life.
People that refuse to do that first step and just live in a state of delirium never will improve.
And I think they actually are deeply unhappy when that happens.
Now, it's important not to stay there, obviously, which is why the resolution is: I am resolving to go about fixing it.
And I don't think we give enough credit to the process that goes into turning off your phone, turning off your computer, turning off your television, taking out a piece of paper, and writing down things that you think you have not yet reached your highest potential that you think you can go about fixing in the new year.
And so my recommendation, especially for young people, but people of all ages, is to make a few New Year's resolutions.
And I just get so angry is a good word for it because there's a growing cynic movement out there.
And it's a lot of Gen Z because they're not religious and they're hyper-secular.
And when you're secular, irony is one of the few things that actually makes sense to you because what is irony?
It's two things that don't fit.
That's irony.
It's someone who is, you know, overweight giving you advice on how to lose weight.
Okay, that would be ironic.
Things that don't fit.
And so young people find that irony is the only way they can make sense of the world because they don't believe the world has meaning.
The universe has a cosmological or teleological or epistemological purpose for existence.
And so they find irony as a way to try to explain it away in kind of a smug and arrogant, condescending way.
So the point is some of these prognosticators from the cheap seats from the audience say, oh, what's the point?
You're going to break that New Year's resolution.
I think that's a very, if you are one of those people, stop it.
You are making the world a worse place.
If you are a cynic towards other people that want to self-improve, that have been honest enough with theirselves to say, you know what, I'm not all that I could be.
And you are one of the people on the sidelines saying, oh, what's the point?
You're going to break that resolution.
Why put in the effort?
You should have a New Year's resolution to stop doing that.
And I think one of the reasons why so many people break their New Year's resolutions is that kind of cynic chattering class that has only grown in number and volume over the last couple of years, where the community of people that want to improve is dramatic.
I mean, I see the emails.
By the way, my wife Erica runs a fabulous Bible ministry that allows you to read the entire Bible in the course of the year.
You guys can check it out at biblein365.com.
That's biblein365.com.
And one of the features she has as part of her ministry to try to have people grow spiritually and to achieve spiritual depth, which is, I think, the most important thing a human being can achieve is spiritual depth, is she has a prayer request portal where she is able to hear the prayer requests of what is going on in the world.
Over 30,000 people have sent them in.
And in some ways, it's more accurate than a poll because it's real and it's not filtered through some sort of firm that might want a specific outcome and some algorithm that we're kind of out of the loop on.
And it is so fascinating to see where the country is at.
And it is by far the most depressed I've ever seen a country.
And I'm not trying to make you depressed.
In fact, I actually think you could take this in one of two ways.
You can also then be even more depressed than you are and then go in a cycle of negativity and pessimism and despair.
Or you could say, wow, that's a problem.
Let's go about fixing it.
And I'm going to choose to at least pursue love, joy, and peace or happiness.
And so some of the common themes that Erica is seeing is hundreds of people experiencing suicidal ideation, thousands of people struggling with anxiety and depression, tens of thousands of people that are lacking significant meaning in their life.
It'll bring you down for sure if you allow it to bring you down.
That's a very important theme of Viktor Frankl, which I'm going to talk about later this hour.
Probably one of the most powerful pieces of literature written in the last 100 years, man's search for meaning.
But you got to really read it carefully and slowly.
It's not a breeze.
It's very deep and it's very tough.
It's a tough book because he goes into great detail about his experience at a concentration camp and how he actually found meaning at a concentration camp.
I mean, you think about it, it is the example of how to find meaning while going through the earthly equivalent of hell.
We're going to talk more about this, but I think that in 2023, it would be helpful if the nation said we want to live in a happier country than we did in 2022.
Because if we're honest with ourselves, we're living in a deeply unhappy time.
I got a great email here.
Charlie, thank you for this.
I intend on losing 40 pounds this year.
Praise God.
I did it 20 years ago as a young man.
I will do it again.
Thanks for that motivation.
I hope to bump into you sometime around town and not be a disgusting fat body when I shake your hand.
Okay, well, you're being hard on yourself, but you know what?
Sometimes there's a time to be hard on yourself.
Sometimes you're too hard on yourself.
It's about finding the golden mean, as Aristotle would find.
Sometimes you're too easy on yourself, generally.
So, yeah, just to kind of close the thought, you know, I have a piece coming out soon called The New Great Depression.
And, you know, Erica and I spent a good amount of time without our phones and kind of just going to local coffee shops.
And it was very interesting.
Erica commented, it was like Christmas Eve or the eve of Christmas Eve.
I can't remember.
I think it was Christmas Eve.
And she said, people look really unhappy.
It didn't feel like Christmas.
I mean, there were the lights and there were the kids running around and there was the Christmas music.
And it wasn't like people were necessarily miserable, but it did not feel with that kind of kinetic joy that usually would spread during the Christmas season.
And then you pair that with the emails that Erica is getting.
And then tragically, one of our family members committed suicide and killed herself in the last couple of days.
And so there's a lot in this kind of genre of the spiritual frequency of the nation.
And I mean that you could say, you could take it literally or metaphorically, but I think that there is kind of a spiritual health of the nation is very low right now.
And I think it's low for a lot of reasons.
Secularism kills people.
It does.
Secularism creates a massive vacuum of existential despair.
If you remove the idea that there is a God who created you and there is a harmony and meaning to the universe, you're not going to fill that void with macchiatos and TikTok.
You're not going to fill the void just by going out to eat every night and getting yourself incredibly drunk.
Eventually, you're going to look up to the heavens and say, What is the purpose of all that?
Now, as a Christian, we have an answer to that.
Praise God, we do.
But the journey of trying to find your place in the cosmos is nothing new.
Some of the greatest writers and thinkers have struggled with this and have, I think, been rather successful and persuasive in being able to make the argument that we are first and foremost spiritual beings.
But I really believe that we have not yet left the era of low spiritual frequency, or said differently, an unhealthy spiritual kind of prognosis or reality from COVID.
I think it has left people in a constant state of this secular frenzy.
What does secularism have to offer?
Somebody who says, What is the purpose of life?
You know what they say their purpose of life is?
They say the purpose of life is to serve the state.
That does give some people meaning.
It does.
It gives people in BLM meaning.
It gives people in the environmentalist groups meaning.
In fact, I'm actually reading a really interesting biography on Xi Ji Ping, whose biography is really mysterious.
But the one thing we do know about Xi Ji Ping, he was sent off to a work camp when he was young, and his father was one of the founding fathers of the modern CCP.
And at age 18, Xi Ji Peng famously told all of his friends, I have found my meaning.
It is to serve the Chinese Communist Party.
And he said he felt a sense of peace.
Now, I believe that's really demonic and spiritually dark, that your sense of purpose is to serve the state.
What?
Well, it makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?
It can give you temporary meaning.
It's why they want more lands and they want to conquer Taiwan and they want the Belt and Road Initiative.
It's never enough.
The appetite is never satisfied.
And so we know how that's going to end for Xi Ji Ping.
It will end in torment and despair, just as it did for every attempted conqueror of the last couple thousand years.
But outside of serving the state, then they try to say, well, just please yourself.
Just have an unlimited amount of food and pleasure, drugs, and drink.
And the existential despair, the vacuum that is being created, shows that we have the most suicidal, alcohol-addicted, drug-addicted generation in history.
And why is it that so many young people are killing themselves?
I mean, I just told my friend, I was just telling somebody, yeah, I mean, I know four or five people that, unfortunately, in the last couple of years decided to kill themselves.
Shattered Expectations and Ambush 00:06:39
And it's really sad and tragic.
And it's a reality.
It's a very selfish thing to do.
I know that might sound very harsh, and I'm not saying I don't have sympathy and compassion.
But if you believe that it's all about you, not about service, not about connection to the divine, then all of a sudden that kind of unthinkable becomes entertainable.
It's just about you.
And then you're like, oh, I mean, I'm just, I'm not happy anymore.
That's completely irrelevant whether or not you're happy.
Why are you here?
You're here just to serve yourself?
Then okay.
It's been quite a year, and I want to summarize just some of the highlights: Russia invading Ukraine.
There were the Beijing Olympics, Novak Zhoikovic, Katanji Brown Jackson, the Canadian Freedom Trucker, truckers, the rise of the Parents Party, overturning the mask mandate, Roe versus Wade being repealed.
There was a lot of newsworthy items all throughout the year, but let's be honest.
If you go back to some of the programs that we did earlier in the year, there was a kind of constant bend, a constant pivot towards the midterm elections.
There was a lot of hope that was being put into the November midterm elections, 11-8.
Now, it wouldn't be fair to say that it was all terrible and that it was catastrophic across the board, but it was certainly a letdown.
And I think a lot of you in this audience feel that and you see that.
You thought that this would be a chance for us to reclaim the country, that regular everyday citizens would be able to send a triumphant message, and it just fell short.
And it fell short in a very serious way.
Yes, we won the House of Representatives.
The Senate, we lost a seat in.
And so, I mean, I look, I had this wonderful year in review that our team put together here.
Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.
Ron DeSantis was one of the winners of this year, signing the Florida Parental Rights and Education Act.
Roe versus Wade was repealed, praise God, even though Republicans didn't know how to deal with it politically.
August, of course, remember Biden raided Mar-a-Lago.
I thought it was one of the biggest political mistakes.
We did not talk more about that raid during the midterm elections.
Elon Musk bought Twitter this year, which was a big deal, probably a bigger deal than the midterm elections that allow us to talk openly about the vaccines and lockdowns, hydroxychloroquine, and ivermectin.
That was a huge victory for Liberty.
I'll be very honest personally, the sabotage and the ambush of Kerry Lake was a very, and still is a very difficult thing for me to move on.
I think it's important to be honest with you, the audience, about things that I'm good at and things that I struggle with.
I struggle with forgiveness, especially when it comes to the ambush of someone as spectacular and as special as Kerry Lake.
I have not forgiven the people that have done this.
I'll be very honest.
The people that automatically forgive after a tragedy, let's just say you're either being fake or you're far more spiritually developed than I am.
It's just not, it doesn't come easy to me.
Certain things, you cut me off in traffic, whatever.
Even if you steal something from me, okay, whatever.
But if you ambush and sabotage a gubernatorial candidate who had a very clear vision, let me be very clear, it's not over.
I hope it goes up to the Supreme Court, but let's pretend that it's going to end the way that it currently stands.
I think that's a fair and rational way to look at it.
It's very hard for me to all of a sudden say, you know, I forgive you.
And it's also difficult because they haven't asked for forgiveness either.
So I know we're called to forgive.
I know that, but it doesn't come automatic for me.
No, I am harboring a fair and plentiful amount of resentment towards these people.
You can call me whatever you want in regards to that, but that's how I feel.
I hope that I'm able to get over that.
So the midterms were a mess.
Kerry Lake is in suspension.
Doesn't look good, but we'll see what happens.
December, highlight of my December was America Fest.
We had 11,000 students from all across the country, the largest conservative event of any kind.
It was a highlight.
Turning Point USA was definitely a shining star in this dark Spiritually despondent chapter that we're living through.
Praise God for Turning Point USA and the chapters that we're starting and the students that we're training and the leaders that we are lifting up.
Praise God for the millions of people that we are reaching every day, for the pastors that we're working with, for the churches that we're working with, for Turning Point Academy.
If it wasn't for Turning Point USA, we would be in a far, far darker spot than we are right now.
So, what is the takeaway from this last year?
I think that this last year could have been worse, and it's always important to say that, but it was the year of the shattering of high expectations.
It's a year where millions of people, myself included, had understandably and reasonably high expectations that we were going to advance in the Senate and take back the House triumphantly.
And it's a year when all of that was kind of shattered in front of us for a variety of reasons.
We've gone through the reasons of it, but that's a very honest thing.
And that creates a people that then kind of go into political, civic, personal, spiritual hiding.
It creates a demoralized chapter that we're living through.
And that's okay.
That's a healthy process.
I'm basically over it in a lot of different ways, except the fact that I have a lot of resentment for people that do things unjust and unethical, especially when it comes to elections.
And so this last year, a lot of people, I think, baked in the hope of what they wanted to see happen in the midterm elections.
What You Can Control 00:11:10
And that fall shorts.
Then what do you do?
Giving up is one option.
Plenty of people are doing that.
And I see your emails.
You guys say you're done and you're giving up and you're walking away.
We aren't doing that.
We don't have the luxury to do that.
In fact, you have to look at it as a possible seed of equivalent benefit.
What can we possibly learn from this?
Victor Frankl talks a lot in his book, again, Man's Search for Meaning, which is a beautiful book.
That we need to take suffering that might be in the pit of our stomach and turn the pit into a seed of equivalent benefit.
We got a question here.
Charlie, tell me, what was your favorite book that you read this year?
It's interesting now that we have the sweepstakes of that.
But let me elaborate a little bit more on the seed of equivalent benefit before I get into my favorite book of the year.
It's this: look, I'm a big believer in choice and agency.
That's what I love about Frankl's book.
And he's not alone in this, but there's things you can control and there's things you cannot control.
And in Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, he's in a concentration camp where he literally is about to die from typhus and he has no shoes and it's negative 10 degrees and he has to go dig ditches.
And he said at certain moments, he had these waves of bliss where he was never happier because he made a conscious decision to have an attitude of love, joy, and peace.
I mean, you look at it and you think the first reaction is like, this guy's delusional.
I mean, what kind of drugs is this guy on?
And then you read deeper, and he explains it from a psychological perspective: he knew there were things he could not control.
He could not control the Capos or the SS or the Nazis or what kind of soup he was going to get served or what kind of bread rations he was going to get.
He could not control whether or not his best friend was going to be taken away.
He couldn't control when the camp was going to be liberated, but he could control his attitude.
And when he could control his attitude, he realized that if they can't take that away, then they can't take your being itself away.
That's a very difficult thing for a lot of people in the Western world to embrace because that means that he could find meaning in suffering.
And I know a lot of you are suffering right now.
We have a rather generous audience, praise God.
There's people, I guarantee you, that are dealing with anxiety and depression and suicidal ideation and sticky thoughts and anxious thinking and all of that.
And I encourage you to go find help.
People actually know what they're doing and to talk to those people.
But at the root of almost all of it is a lack of meaning.
And the argument that Viktor Frankl makes, which is profound, is he disagrees with Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote the book Beyond Good and Evil, who said that everything in life is about a will to power, that you have free will, but it's really about getting power.
He disagreed with Sigmund Freud, who was basically a contemporary, who said, no, no, no, everything's about a will to sex and pleasure.
Everything is about foul logocentrism, about the phallic pursuit of the man.
And he said, no, that's not really what it's about.
And there's a really powerful part of the book where Viktor Frankl, who literally was in an equivalent of hell on earth, says in the concentration camp that the sex drive of the man kind of went away.
But the meaning drive never went away.
And that's really something, isn't it?
That people could go 20 days without eating, two years without any sort of sexual contact.
But it was the people that survived if they had some meaning.
So he calls this logotherapy.
And he basically paraphrased this.
I think it was this quote.
There's somebody else who said it, I think.
Anyone who has a why can overcome anyhow.
And if you have the why, which I believe structural Western religion, specifically Christianity and/or Judaism, or a combination of both, well, if it's a combination of both, it'd be Christianity, but something that recognizes a divine creator and you being a creation helps you get to that.
The idea that you have the free will to choose your attitude, that you have will to meaning, not will to power, not will to pleasure.
You have those things, but you're going to end up falling short.
And what Frankl writes, which is super powerful, is that he was in the most barren, desolate state of nature that he turned into a psychological experiment.
He turned the unspeakable horrors of Auschwitz into an opportunity to learn who man actually was.
So he says that man has to find meaning, and that's the name of his book, Man's Search for Meaning.
And yes, when you have secularism in every one of your institutions, people are going to be searching for meaning in bizarre places and they're going to come up empty.
Okay, my favorite books of the year.
I read 32 books this year.
I've got the final tally, just in case you guys are wondering.
Of which one of our team members, when I told them this, they said, that's it.
Okay, fine.
So that's it.
32.
Now I listen to a lot of them, and that doesn't count all the podcasts or the Hillsdale online courses or all of that.
I love learning.
I'm not saying it to show off.
Evidently, it's not that much because one of our team members, who I will not name, which rhymes with Lake, said, like, that's not a lot.
And I said, okay, fine.
If only I went to Dartmouth.
And so, anyway, look, having, I'll tell you my top three books of the year.
Number three, in third place, the one that had a very serious impact on me, and it's going to kind of seem out of order here, but bear with me.
Number three is Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis.
It's a terrific book, and it's very short.
You could read it in an afternoon.
C.S. Lewis, I believe, is the greatest apologist of the 1900s of the 20th century.
And basically, C.S. Lewis starts on a rather abstract concept of children's literature.
talking about how this particular author was saying that a waterfall might not be sublime.
It's up to your own opinion whether or not it's sublime.
And C.S. Lewis saw this as a major issue.
He said, hold on a second.
He said, you're now allowing children to have a subjective view of beauty, truth, and goodness.
And he goes on to talk about men without chests and basically predicts postmodernism before it really became a school of garbage thought.
So abolition of man, second favorite book that I read this year.
It's a rather dark book.
So I want to give you a warning before you've heard me talk about it throughout the year, but it's by Arthur Kusler called Darkness at Noon.
Darkness at Noon is a terrific book all about the Soviet Union and about how dark things can really get.
So if you're like, wow, Charlie, this episode has been really depressing and people are killing themselves and all of this.
Oh, yes, but you have, well, maybe you do have an idea, but if you want a preview into the psychological, the political, the spiritual darkness and lack of meaning, read Darkness at Noon.
It's all about the Soviet show trials.
It's about the power of the state.
It's about what people live for.
It's about a guy by the name of Rubachov who was basically on trial for being disloyal to the party.
Very powerful.
My favorite book of this last year, and we had him on the show back in August for a rather informative conversation.
And I would love to actually have this conversation in person is Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter.
He wins the 2022 book of the year.
It is powerful, I got to tell you.
And it's not religious and it's not anti-religious.
He does acknowledge that a belief in the divine can be very helpful.
But his entire premise, I believe, is biblical.
He believes that living in a state of overindulgent comfort, air conditioning, three meals a day, staring at screens for eight hours a day, is making us miserable.
The argument he makes is that we're meant to be in nature, a monks challenge to grow deeper and better, to go a long time without eating, to even go 36 hours at times without eating.
Talking about how being in a state of nature can make you full of joy and peace.
He talks about the psychological data.
He talks about this idea called a masogi.
I read it multiple times that a very profound impact on me.
And it's very well researched.
It's told from a first-person perspective of a hunt that he did in northern Alaska.
Very entertaining.
And I think it's applicable to anybody.
A question, some of you might say, look, Charlie, I have no New Year's resolutions.
Or someone might say, Charlie, what should my New Year's resolution be?
A very simple New Year's resolution that should, in my personal opinion, based on the book of Michael Easter, which has made a big impact on a lot of people's lives, is to stop being so comfortable.
It is paradoxical, isn't it?
Because we think of happiness of being comfortable, but actually typically it's the opposite.
Making yourself intentionally uncomfortable, exposing yourself to cold water, going a long time without eating, changing your diet, hiking for days on end, challenging yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, actually can help develop that path towards meaning that Viktor Frankl talked about.
That's what existence is all about.
And as Christians, we believe that meaning comes through Jesus.
That meaning was given to us, and we just have to accept that.
So, Comfort Crisis, the 2022 book of the year.
So, in closing, this year was not what we thought it would be.
It had its blessings.
We welcomed a daughter into the world.
Praise God.
That was definitely the highlight of the year.
Lost a lot of friends, and that just tends to happen.
But the question is, then, what do we do about it?
How do we act?
And what is the attitude?
And I'm going to choose an attitude of 2023, and that is the operative word choose to be happy, joyful, better, and deeper.
I hope you'll do the same.
See you next year, everybody.
God bless you.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thank you so much for listening, and God bless.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.
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