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Oct. 26, 2015 - Davis Aurini
18:02
How to Stare Into the Abyss...

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How to stare into the abyss and have it be the one who blinks.
Or existentialism.
Now what?
Now this requested video is a deep question.
It's kind of hard to put into words, actually.
Although the requester put it well, what is man good for?
Of what use is man?
And simple platitudes are not going to answer this adequately.
My answer is going to be both very abstract and very personal.
And I hope it gets to the core of what you're asking about.
But like I said, this is a question that doesn't really fit into words.
We're talking about the depths, the fringes of philosophy of our understanding of the world.
We need to start with faith.
And by faith, I don't mean simple belief.
You know, you can believe in horses or you can believe in unicorns.
You can believe it's going to rain tomorrow.
You can believe in evolution.
You can believe in Christianity.
Belief is simple.
Belief is just how you perceive the world.
And I mean, it's bloody hilarious that people walk around wearing their beliefs on a t-shirt, proud of themselves for that.
As if believing that grass is green or that evolution is true or that, you know, red is the best color.
As if believing any of those things, making these objective statements about reality or your relationship to it, as if that's any sort of accomplishment.
No, faith is a little bit more than just belief.
Because faith comes with commitments.
Now, beliefs don't.
Beliefs will influence your behavior, right?
They'll direct what you do day to day.
You know, do I invest in the stock market?
Should I go to work on time?
You know, your beliefs about how reality works will affect all of that.
But faith is more than that.
It's a bold statement.
It's a moral statement about the nature of the universe and the nature of yourself that requires certain behaviors on your part.
And ultimately, there's no justification for these behaviors.
And faith is all about the fact that reality needs affirmament.
There needs to be more to this world for it to hold together, for it to stay in one place.
And of course, the simple materialist will say that I'm speaking fairy tale nonsense, God of the gaps, and they're completely missing the point.
I'm not simply making a moral statement or a metaphysical statement, although I am making those things.
I'm pointing out that the very base nature of reality, the base nature of comprehension, of logic, of mathematics, that this breaks down when left to its own devices.
Gertel's incompleteness theorem.
Math is not sufficient to prove math.
And math is the deepest derivative of everything we do.
On the high level, you've got emotions, strategy, love, art, all that great stuff.
You know, and that comes from logic and grammar and all of that boils down to math.
And if you can't rely upon math, then you can't rely upon any of it.
So the very, the inadequacy of reality, the fact that reality, it's in a container.
And yet the container is not part of reality.
We can't measure that container.
That's where the faith comes in, the leap of faith, the act of faith, the moral choice of faith.
And either you believe that there is a container that contains the universe, that justifies math, that makes all these other things true, or you don't.
And this is one of those deep mysteries of the human soul.
You can't really see it or measure it or explain it because it is otherworldly, it is supernatural, the act of faith.
And, you know, there are some atheists who have a great deal of faith, and there are some churchgoers that have none.
They have plenty of belief, but they have no faith.
So it's a very hard thing to pin down.
But, you know, you need that faith before you can even start on the path, before you can even start exploring and understanding reality.
Understanding yourself, understanding man, understanding your purpose and what it should be.
Let's talk a little bit more about the abyss.
Let's talk about demons.
See, the thing about demonkind is that they can rip you to shreds.
They can tear at you and rape you and eviscerate you, shred you into a million pieces, but they can't destroy you.
You can look demons in the eye the same way you can look the abyss in the eye.
And it hurts.
It hurts a lot.
But it can't destroy you.
You know, there's some psychonauts that have actually reported confronting God.
Not me, thankfully.
But confronting God, confronting the absolute truth, and actually forcefully witnessing the absolute truth, that container that's big enough to contain everything, is far more terrifying than demonkind.
Confronting a truth that big, that infinite with its moving parts, and yet that unified and whole and constant and unchanging, while always changing, almost makes you want to be destroyed because of how small you are next to it.
And yet, it's that very thing that won't let you be destroyed.
Upon confronting the absolute truth, you don't say anything.
There's nothing to be said.
It's said it all.
Demons and the abyss and nihilism, these are terrible, painful things.
Evil in general is just ugly and blasphemous and pathetic.
But it can't destroy you.
It can only wound you and hurt you and tear you apart.
Truth greater than yourself.
Now, that's truly terrifying.
And so like I said, there have been many, men of faith have been around since the beginning of free will.
And if you have faith, you can be an okay version of yourself.
You know, you can be Beowulf.
You can be the great king that dies fighting the dragon of nihilism.
But see, Beowulf's issue in this.
Beowulf's problem is that with faith, moving forward with faith, you know, pursuing your own better nature, you know, being the best version of yourself that you can be, you can go and you can confront that dragon.
You can die in the process, but the whole time, even though you can be great, you're still not perfect, are you?
Beowulf's still that greedy king that needed a pile of gold to assuage his ego.
You know, he was a young warrior that went out to prove himself to the world, desperate for the need of that approval.
And although he did all these great things, inevitably he's still this pagan king, noble though he is, this pagan king who is fully aware of his own shortcomings.
And you know, this is what you see.
This is what you see whenever men, men of good character, men who are lucky enough to be born intelligent and naturally selfless and etc. courageous.
This is what you see anytime these men try and form an institution of their own.
You know, you see it in the universities, you certainly see it amongst the atheists.
And let's be frank, atheists, the sort of people that make up the bulk of atheism, are just innately, they're not easily tempted.
They are fairly virtuous people.
I should know, I was an atheist for most of my life.
And yet, as an atheist, I would always find myself falling backwards, falling short, you know, going back into old habits, you know, never quite reaching that level of that asymptote, if you will, of perfection.
And so, any of these organizations, you know, and like I said, there are a lot of atheists with faith, and yet, you know, atheism, the recent neo-atheist movement, has fallen into atheist plus and atheist cult.
Once again, people parading around with their beliefs on their sleeves as if that says something tremendous about who they are, whereas faith really calls higher than that.
You know, it calls to a deeper belief in how important reason is, how important facts are.
And yet, when we're just there, you know, it's like driving around an old beat-up car.
You know, you can fix it.
You can try and tap out the dings here and there.
And yet, you always have that sense that this isn't what the car is supposed to be, that it is an old beater.
Now, those that completely reject faith, those that answer zero, where we answer one.
Now, these people, they argue, who's to say that a brand new Ferrari is any better than a rust bucket sitting in the junkyard?
Who's to say they both exist?
You know, what's your standard that says the one is better than the other?
And you can see this in the art that they produce, the ugliness that they call art.
Because if what is the Mona Lisa except a bunch of paint on a canvas?
So, why can't, you know, this Jackson Pollock painting of random sprays of paint, why can't that be art too?
You know, it's all art because there is no container.
There is no absolute truth.
Now, those of us that are struggling against that are eternally in this hypocritical position.
Because we're talking about the Ferrari, but we've never seen one.
And we're all driving older cars that are a little bit beat up and they aren't what we want them to be.
And so the people who just have a rusting bucket sitting on concrete blocks on their front lawn say, why should I get rid of that?
How is that any worse than the car you have in your driveway?
By what standard?
Because your car isn't perfect either.
You know, what are you, a hypocrite?
This is where...
This is where God comes into play.
You know, again, imagine that beat-up car.
You know, and you can try and ding the dents out.
You know, you can even get a blowtorch and try and mold it, but that's going to affect the structural integrity of it.
It's never going to be the car it was supposed to be.
And you've got this idea in your head.
You've got this idea of who you're supposed to be.
You know, and you keep seeing yourself fall short.
And you're never quite there.
Because in addition to faith, faith that there is a true self, that there is this better version of ourself, that there is this absolute truth of the universe.
In addition to faith, we require grace.
You know, one thing I think a lot of people misunderstand, when it comes to the whole topic of obeying God, obeying God is not turning us all into peons, into interchangeable cogs, because we are all unique.
It's being the truly unique part of yourself.
Whereas the Jackson Pollock paintings, you know, ugliness.
Ugliness is entirely unique in the exact same way.
You know, ugliness is teenagers shopping at hot topic to be different and then all looking the same.
Whereas true individuality, like if you see truly joyous people, they all look so similar with that look on their face of happiness.
And yet they're all so unique.
And so grace.
Grace is that which you are trying to get rid of that dent with your blowtorch.
Grace completely melts that lump of jagged steel that you've got in place of a heart.
completely melts it and reforms it back into what a heart is supposed to look like.
So faith and grace.
With both of those, that's how you stare into the abyss.
That's how you become a truth that is unassailable by lies.
With faith alone, you can defeat the abyss.
You don't have to fall into it.
You can kill the dragon, but it's going to rip you apart in the process.
But when you have faith and grace, that's where the only things the abyss rips away from you are the things you didn't even want in the first place.
Thanks for the question, and I hope that answered it.
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