All Episodes
Previous Next
June 15, 2018 - The Matt Walsh Show
27:42
Ep. 51 - We Have Ceased To See The Purpose

The crisis in American culture is twofold: we do not know WHO we are, and we do not know WHY we are. We are confused about our identity and our purpose. But a person cannot live, and he certainly cannot be happy, unless he knows who he is and where he is going. We need to restore our sense of identity and purpose. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
So I wrote last week about the emptiness in our culture and in the hearts of many people in our culture, which I think is at the root of our current suicide epidemic.
And also it's at the root of pretty much all of our problems.
We have fled from God, we've fled from meaning, we've fled from purpose, and we've embraced this kind of nihilism.
Although we don't call it nihilism, nobody would actually call it that anymore.
We use other words and phrases to kind of soften it up a little bit.
So we'll say things like, you only live once, and live your truth, and those sorts of things.
But they all mean to communicate and A nihilistic perspective on life.
People are told that there's only one life, only one reality.
It has no meaning aside from what you assign to it.
And then the question is, well, what happens when you stop assigning meaning to it?
What happens when you stop finding meaning in it?
Well, our culture says, if you don't assign it, if you don't find it, then it's not there.
Because there is no objective meaning.
It's only what you find.
Now, after writing that piece, I was on the plane home from Denver, where I was speaking at the Western Conservative Summit, which is a great event, by the way.
And I was reading a collection of Solzhenistin writings, this book right here, which is a great book, by the way.
I definitely picked this up. And I flipped to a speech.
That he gave in 1993.
This is after I just so happened to write on this subject, and I was reading through this book, and I flipped through a speech that he wrote in 1993.
I wanted to just pull this up.
Because it speaks exactly to what we were, what I was writing about, what we've been talking about.
Now, it's not a coincidence that I happened to find that theme written about in a Solzhenitsyn book, because this is a theme that he talked about throughout his whole life that he kept going back to.
But the speech that he gave in 1993, who did he give this speech to?
He gave this to the International Academy of Philosophy.
And the speech is called, We Have Ceased to See the Purpose.
We Have Ceased to See the Purpose.
I just want to read a little bit from it because I think it's really powerful.
He says, We have allowed our wants to grow unchecked and are now at a loss where to direct them.
And with the obliging assistance of commercial enterprises, newer and yet newer wants are concocted, some wholly artificial, and we chase after them en masse but find no fulfillment and we never shall.
The endless accumulation of possessions, that will not bring fulfillment either.
Modern transportation has flung the world wide open to people in the West.
Even without it, modern man can all but leap out beyond the confines of his being.
Through the eyes of television, he is present throughout the whole planet, all at the same time.
Yet it turns out that from this spasmodic pace of technocentric progress, from the oceans of superficial information and cheap spectacles, the human soul does not grow, but instead grows more shallow, and spiritual life is only reduced Our culture, accordingly, grows poorer and dimmer, no matter how it tries to drown out its decline with the din of empty novelties.
As creature comforts continue to improve for the average person, so spiritual development grows stagnant.
Comfort brings with it a nagging sadness of the heart as we sense that the whirlpool of pleasures does not bring satisfaction, and that, before long, it may suffocate us.
No, all hope cannot be pinned on science, technology, or economic growth.
The victory of technological civilization has also instilled in us a spiritual insecurity.
Its gifts enrich but enslave us as well.
All is interest. We must not neglect our interests.
All is a struggle for material things.
But an inner voice tells us that we have lost something pure, elevated, and fragile.
We have ceased to see the purpose.
Let us admit, even if in a whisper, and only to ourselves, in the hustle of life at breakneck speed, what are we living for?
So, I guess I should just end it right there, because Solzhenitsyn's already spoken, so I can't really add to that and say anything more profound than what he already said, but this is really the problem.
The problem is, well, it's twofold, I think.
First, we don't know ourselves.
We don't know who we are.
And second, we don't know our purpose.
And I think a person has to know both of those things, or he will be in despair.
And if we have a culture, a country, a nation, a civilization of people who are confused on both of those points, then you will have a civilization of despair.
And I think that we're living in a civilization of despair.
Because we have a crisis of identity and a crisis of meaning.
I don't mean to keep throwing books at you, but as I was thinking about this, I wanted to do a video on it.
And then I remembered another book, Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, which is a very difficult one.
It's not exactly a cover-to-cover, beach-read type of book.
It's pretty heavy stuff.
Sickness unto death, and Kierkegaard already talks about it, he explains in the introduction that from the Christian perspective, from the Christian understanding, even a sickness that kills you does not really lead to death.
It is not a sickness unto death, because death is only the sort of gateway into eternal life.
But if we reject this, and if we see ourselves as only temporal, Then that is the sickness that leads to death, to despair, to destruction.
On the first page of the first chapter of his book, Kierkegaard says, a human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity.
And he goes on, I won't read more than that, but He goes on to say that, basically argue, that a man is in despair when he denies or rejects or gives up on one aspect of that synthesis.
So when we give up on the eternal and infinite and truly free aspects of our being, And we don't see ourselves as spirit anymore.
We don't recognize that part of the synthesis of our being, then that's when we fall into despair.
Because a man like that doesn't know himself, and thus doesn't know his purpose, and so he's in despair.
Know yourself and know your purpose.
That's the point here. And I think as a culture, we tend to fail on both counts.
So let's just look at this one at a time.
So first, know yourself.
Know your identity.
It's no coincidence that the discussion of things like gender identity have gripped a hold of the nation at the same time that the suicide rate climbs through the roof.
It's no coincidence that quote-unquote transgender people have such an astronomically high rate of suicide.
I believe that transgender people attempt suicide at a rate of about 40%.
Now, the rate for the entire nation is climbing, but The general rate for everybody is like 4% or 5%, which is still high.
40% is just a shocking figure.
Why? Why would you have 40% of people in a particular demographic who attempt suicide?
It's not enough to say, well, I know the claim that what leftists will say is, well, it's because they're bullied.
Now, I'm sorry, that doesn't explain it.
There have been many groups of people who have fared much, much, much worse in society than modern-day, quote, transgenders do, and yet they never attempted suicide anywhere near that rate.
I mean, think about Black people up until civil rights.
Think about Black people during slavery.
Well, they certainly had it worse in terms of their liberties and their treatment in society than, quote-unquote, transgender people do.
Yet actually what you find usually among persecuted groups in any country throughout history is you find actually the reverse effect.
You find that the suicide rate will actually go down most of the time in the face of real, harsh persecution.
Because there's this kind of resilience that is sparked.
But that's, with transgenders, 40%.
Why?
Well, because I think Kierkegaard was on to something.
There's a profound despair that comes with not knowing who you are, with not knowing your identity.
When you don't recognize the synthesis, there's a despair that comes.
And it seems like a lot of us are very confused on this point.
A lot of us don't know who we are.
Even if we don't identify as a sex opposite from our physical one, it seems like a lot of us still struggle with this.
Or we don't know who we are.
And from there, you get everything from gender identity to plastic surgery and beyond.
I mean, think even of the people who are...
I mean, this manifests itself in so many ways.
Think about the people who are obsessed with fashion trends.
And they have no identity of their own.
They have no sense of themselves.
They just wear what everybody else wears.
They say what everyone else says.
They develop the same interests as everybody else.
They kind of fade into the collective and the trends and the fashions and everything.
It's more like camouflage for them because it's meant to blend them into their surroundings.
Or think of all the people who call themselves super fans of sports teams or superheroes or sci-fi franchises or what have you.
I'm not talking about regular fans.
I mean people who are utterly obsessed with some form of entertainment.
It's their whole life.
It's the primary thing they care about.
And if you say anything critical of it around them, they will lose their minds.
I remember there was a National Review writer a year or two ago who wrote a critical column about Star Wars, and she got death threats for insulting Star Wars.
Now think about the kind of people that would send death threats because you don't like the fantasy make-believe movie that they like.
These are people who have no identity, so they have just found one in this make-believe story.
Think of the proliferation of communities.
Everything is a community these days.
Whether it's your sexual fetish, there's a community for every sexual fetish, there's a community for every obsession, for every enthusiasm, for every interest, for every hobby.
No matter what it is, you're part of a community of people who share that with you.
People look for their identity in their shared love for things and experiences and entertainments.
And then there's probably the worst symptom of our identity crisis as a culture.
Maybe not the worst, but still a pretty bad one.
Those who identify themselves primarily and mostly, mainly, first and foremost, as Republican or Democrat.
Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with having a party affiliation, although I mean, increasingly, I do think there's something wrong with it, actually.
But I'm not really talking about that.
I'm talking about people who have tailored their whole identity, everything they think and believe, according to what the party says or to what a politician says.
There's a very common phenomenon these days on both sides of the spectrum of people who, you know, they'll say one thing one day, they'll say the next, a totally opposite thing the next.
Their principles change by the minute, it seems, according to what their party says, to what their politicians say, to what their talking heads say.
They've lost all identity.
They are now nothing but a letter, R or D. They have no capacity to think or reason beyond that.
Now, this is all wrong, I think.
I think if I'm going to have any chance at being a well-rounded, happy person, I need to have a clear understanding of myself, of who I am.
I need to have an identity that's rooted in something solid and unchanging.
So I have to know first that I'm a human being and that I'm a man.
This is the most basic physical form of identity.
That's my most basic physical identity, and I've got to know that.
That's the starting point. If I can't even get past that, then there's no hope of me forming any kind of identity whatsoever.
So I've got to know that.
And then I have to know my identity at sort of a...
A deeper kind of level.
I have to know that I'm a child of God.
And then I'm a husband.
I'm a father. All of these things.
This is really my identity.
That's my true identity.
That's really who I am.
So if you were to ask me, who are you?
What's your identity?
That's what I should say.
Before I say anything else, that.
And that's kind of the trunk of And those are the roots of my identity.
That's the roots in the trunk.
And then from there, all the little branches and twigs and leaves and everything, those are all the kind of superficial things that are also part of who I am, but they don't matter that much.
So I'm a Ravens fan.
I like to read books written by dead Russian guys.
I make a mean pot of chili.
I like Five Guys.
It's the best fast food restaurant.
That's not going to be debated, by the way.
I'll do a separate video on that some other time.
So those are all things, right?
Those are all, in a sense, part of who I am.
But they don't matter that much.
And those are the branches, the leaves, the twigs.
You could come and chop those off.
Those could fall off. They could change.
And it doesn't matter.
It won't change who I am.
I'll continue along being the same sort of person because my identity is rooted in something more solid, more real, more eternal than just my interests and my affiliations and my proclivities.
I think a lot of people today, they don't have roots and they don't have a trunk.
They're just a bunch of branches and twigs and leaves.
I think there are a lot of leaves being blown around, detached and weightless and helpless because they have no identity.
A person who identifies themselves first and foremost by some interest of theirs or some proclivity, that's just a leaf.
That person is nothing. They've reduced themselves to just a leaf laying on the ground, and they can easily be blown away.
Second thing. So we need to know who we are.
And then we need to know our purpose.
You know, we need purpose.
We need some idea as to why we are here.
Even if I know who I am, now I need to know why I am and where I'm going.
And this deep desire for purpose and for meaning, that's what separates us from animals.
Your cat doesn't consider these questions.
Your cat never sits around thinking, what am I? Why am I? Where's all this headed?
Your cat doesn't think that.
Your cat doesn't think anything.
Your cat just wants to eat, use the litter box, whatever, knock your drinks over.
That's all your cat wants to do.
It doesn't think about anything else. That's what separates us from animals.
It's also what separates us from machines.
I know atheists will talk about people as if we're just a bunch of biological machines.
They'll talk about us as if we are computers covered in skin, basically.
But even the most advanced computer in the world doesn't desire meaning.
Even the most advanced computer in the world could never want to be anything more than a computer.
It can't conceive of anything else.
A computer has no desires whatsoever and can never develop them.
I know science fiction, we like to think about, well, what if a computer ever becomes self-aware?
It will never happen. It's impossible.
It cannot happen. Now, we want to be something more than flesh and bone.
And I think even some of the struggles with identity, people wanting to change their gender and so forth, some of that, I think, is rooted in a real, true, and healthy desire.
That we all have to be more than what we physically are.
It's just that they have wildly misdirected those desires.
But there is a fundamental desire there.
C.S. Lewis points to this as proof of God.
He points out that nature would never, on its own, create in itself a desire for something beyond itself.
If we are nothing but the result of natural processes, we never would have developed the ability to think about those processes or analyze them or be skeptical of them or question them or pine for something beyond them.
C.S. Lewis says that the fact that I desire something beyond this world means that I was made for something beyond this world.
If there really is no God in the universe, I never would have found out that there is no God, because I wouldn't have the consciousness to know that there is no God.
So, there's clearly some other component to the human person.
There's something else in us, something immaterial, something that can't be grasped, something that can't be seen, and thus could never be transferred or programmed into a computer.
And that thing is consciousness, self-awareness, the capacity to make moral choices, the ability to recognize and appreciate beauty, the ability to love.
Our souls, in other words, that's the thing.
That's the extra component that we have.
We have eternal souls.
And it's our souls that crave for truth and meaning and purpose beyond just this physical life.
Our culture...
May tell us, well, live in the moment.
You gotta just live in the moment, enjoy the moment.
But nobody lives in the moment.
Nobody just enjoys the moment.
Nobody can. In fact, the only people who really live in the moment are the people who are in absolute despair and are on the edge of suicide.
A person right before committing suicide, that is a person living in the moment.
That's what living in the moment looks like.
It looks like dying.
Because that's what it is.
To really live in the moment is to despair of anything else but this moment.
But those of us who are not at that point, we know that there's more to life than that.
We have always this sensation of movement.
We know that we're rushing towards something, towards tomorrow.
You know, there's always another night, always another morning just around the corner.
And then a year, and then 10 years, and we know that we're just barreling, we're barreling at breakneck speed towards something, towards death, and then something.
So yeah, we should enjoy the journey, but Our enjoyment of the journey really hinges quite significantly on what we are journeying towards, doesn't it?
I remember when our twins were born, and they were our first kids, and they were born premature, and there were health complications, and they had some breathing troubles.
They had to immediately be whisked away up to the NICU. And I remember when the nurses came down to get me and bring me up to the NICU to meet our children.
And I remember everything about that moment.
I remember walking through the hallway.
I remember the hallway.
I remember the elevator.
I remember the sights and sounds and smells.
I remember everything. I remember even what it felt like, the temperature in the building.
And at that time, there was joy mixed with a lot of fear and anxiety and everything else.
But looking back on it now, it's all joy to me now.
I remember it as joy.
Even that walk down the hallway.
I remember that walk down the hallway as a moment of joy.
It was a kind of very short journey to my new life as a parent.
And my point is that the journey was joyful.
Was joy.
Because the end was joy.
Because I was going towards something joyful.
I was heading towards a new life.
But what if I'd been walking down a hospital hallway What if instead of walking down a hospital hallway to greet my newborn children, what if I was walking down that hallway to say goodbye to a dying child?
Could you tell me to enjoy that journey?
Could you tell me to live in that moment?
No, I don't want to live in that moment.
I'd rather die in that moment.
But you can't say that because I know where the journey ends.
In that case, I know where it's leading, and it's leading to despair and death and just emotional ruin.
So there's no way to enjoy that journey.
There's no way to live in that moment without dying in it.
The point is that our ability to enjoy the moment and to enjoy the journey depends very much on the end, on the destination.
If we believe or we've told ourselves That the destination is eternal nothingness.
If we believe that we're hurtling towards obliteration and the cessation of our being, then what joy can there really be in life?
How could you possibly enjoy life?
Especially a life that, unavoidably, is going to involve so much suffering and sadness.
And suddenly, in that case, it all becomes a cruel joke.
Our consciousness, our ability to understand the joke is itself the worst joke of all.
Nature, in that case, has put all the creatures on the earth on a path to decay and final death and the obliteration of their beings and their essence.
But then it gave human beings the knowledge of this fact.
And if that's the case, then we got the raw deal, didn't we?
We should look with envy on beasts and bugs, because at least they could just live their lives and not think about it.
But this idea that nature created consciousness in a human being Just so that we could spend our lives dwelling on the nothingness and pointlessness of the very existence that it granted us.
I mean, that view of life is just...
It is pure, unadulterated, black despair.
That's what that is. That's what that view of life is.
And if you look at life that way, you look at bugs and dogs and cats, and you might think, I'd like to be one of them, but you can never be them.
But it's very hard for us to live with the knowledge of the futility of our existence and the pointlessness of it.
And so then we begin to think that maybe the second best alternative is just to get it over with already.
That's the result of a life lived without a sense of purpose or destination.
But if we embrace our true purpose, if we come to believe in That destination and the God who created us for it, if we know our meaning and our purpose and our identity and our substance,
then we've opened ourselves up to the potential for joy and hope.
I think that's the only way.
That's the only way to live as a person.
It's also the only way to function as a society and as a culture, is with that sense of meaning and purpose.
And the great thing is that to have this sense of identity and purpose, it not only is the best path to joy, it's also the only path to truth.
It's also true. It's even, I would say, self-evidently true that there is more to life than just, there's more to me than just this.
The very fact that I can contemplate this and wonder about it and thirst for something more is proof that there is more.
Because nature would not create a desire which is doomed to just be eternally frustrated.
That doesn't make any sense.
That's not in keeping with the Darwinian theory of things.
So it's best we become more functional and more joyful when we have identity and purpose.
And it's also true that we have identity and purpose.
So that's, I think, the really good news here.
That is the good news, right, in the entire universe.
That's the good news, is that there's more than this.
All right. Thanks for watching, everybody.
▲
Export Selection