The Joys And Pitfalls Of Personal Values Wes Cecil

TITLE: The Joys and Pitfalls of Personal Values CHANNEL: Wes Cecil DATE: 2026-05-25 ---TRANSCRIPT--- Thanks to our Patreon members for helping to make this episode possible and we’re now available on all the major podcasting platforms. You can find more information at the links below. Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to a conclusion of the value series. And for this conclusion, what I want to do is explore how we take whatever values you’ve decided you might be interested in. Um what does it mean to actually uh work towards them? I guess I if we want to think of it that way. I’m not sure how to articulate it exactly. How do you begin incorporating new values or different values or experimental values into your life to see if they work for you or to experience how it just it just to see how it feels if nothing else. [clears throat] And so I want to explore this and it comes from you know the history of of philosophy as well as just observation in day-to-day life and having run many of these experiments onelves and as I’ve mentioned before on my long-suffering students for over two decades at the university where I just was continuously forcing them to be white rats in my experiments which was a a great joy uh at least for me hopefully for them but at least for me which is what really matters right and the joy we’ll put that under the joy uh marker of uh values that you can pursue. So first um warning warning this is the warning label that should come with all of this. In fact I think it should come with philosophy in general. Um the difficulty [clears throat] that one will encounter if one tries to pursue uh new values is that by definition you are breaking yourself from your existing pattern. And and our society is so constructed and people are so constructed that when we tend to look at changing or exploring change often I would say invariably but the at least very very often what you will find is um either moderately strong or incredibly powerful push back and this comes from a couple of sources and I would like to distinguish between society in general and the people we actually know. So let’s start with the most important part which I would say is the people that we actually know. And what happens is people form expectations of us. And if we fail to meet those expectations, it’s not that we’re necessarily doing anything wrong, but we are surprising them. And people don’t like that in general. And so this just will inevitably for most people will create friction with the people in their immediate environment. And this is quite disturbing. So just as an example I would give in my classes um and we do mediaree week where there be you know watch no TV watch no radio it was basically your Amish for a week. I’ve mentioned this before I believe and the what they reported back and what they found so powerful and interesting is how strongly people responded how negatively and strongly people responded. It wasn’t like, oh yeah, hey, you know, I’ve got this crazy class and we’re doing this stupid experiment and the professor is obviously in insane and so, but you know, I’m trying to get a good grade and so I want to give it a go because it’ll be a lark. And so you would think everybody just laugh and go, “Oh, yeah, okay, that’s hilarious. Let’s give this a try.” And now some people did, but generally speaking, they they received and this is what they would report back is like their their friends, quote unquote air quote friends, family, people. They just very powerfully resisted this. Like they would say, “Hey, you know, they were carpooling to the college with somebody and they say, “Hey, can we turn the radio off because I’m not supposed to listen to the radio.” And people would be like, “What do you no?” And they’re like, “What do you mean no?” Like they said, “Why is this even a big deal?” Right? what not that it’s it just I’m just asking nicely that for you to turn the radio off and they and they said you know people would then you would say hey I’m running this experiment and and they would fight back and that’s just you know an easy surface one but what happens is our values as I mentioned are deeply imshed in culture in fact some way the thing one way to think of culture is as simply a web of interlocking values that become life uh forming and so what you’re pushing it against is the very structure of your culture and of course all individuals are imshed in their culture and so unsurprisingly if if the uh push back is or if the change is too dramatic or too sudden they you get this very positive or very negative response similarly however sometimes you get the very positive response where people go oh my god this is great or um as I got from my both my brother and my sister when I said hey but I I think we’re going to be moving to France. They were so happy for me that it just took me back and they’re like, it’s a you finally realized that you don’t belong here. And I was like, wow, like I’m making this big change, a huge shift. I thought they would get some push back or something different, but they were incredibly supportive and it made me think that I hadn’t been aware of myself. So sometimes you’ll get that as well. But as a general rule, be prepared for this and and be prepared, I think, to be constructive about it. I mean, it’s easy to just go, “Oh, people are fools or they aren’t paying attention or they don’t really care about me or whatever.” But it is any fundamental change like this does come as something of a surprise and it means that you’re a different person than they want you to be or that they thought you were and they’re used to the way they think you are. And so then when you try to change that, it’s a big in challenge to their own internal workings. So I would say be ready for and be sensitive to sometimes the push back you’ll get regardless of what value you decide to pursue. And again, sometimes it can be very positive, but generally you’ll find it either medium quiet resistance to outright hostility. [clears throat] More generally in society now you’re just going to get outright hostility this much. I can just let me tell you I have lived this life for a long long time. And what you get is a whole lot of shockingly I would actually say e even as long as I’ve been doing this I was still surprised at how blatantly aggressive people could be. And these are not people, you know. These are just in whatever environment you find yourself where you say something like uh or like you know, I don’t watch TV. And all of a sudden, people just I’ve been aggressed on so many times for having said that. And and I was on the phone one time uh with a what was it for my Oh, it was for Wi-Fi. I had Wi-Fi in my house. Of course, some technical problem. So, I’m calling the people and apparently those people also s sold cable TV packages. And so the nice lady, you know, she has to do her job, which was to make the sales pitch to me. And so she starts on the sales pattern. And I said, “Oh, okay. Just a second, ma’am.” Um, I said, “Just, you know, I don’t have a TV, so there’s no use like I can’t buy the cable package.” And she just started not yelling at me, but was like, “What?” She said, “What? You don’t have a like you what are you doing? Like there’s a lot of great things on TV.” [laughter] I’m like, “Wow, I’m I’m just like on hold to try and get some technical assistance with my wifi router.” And all [laughter] of a sudden, this lady is kind of giving me a really hard time because there’s a lot of good things on TV. I’ve been yelled at in coffee shops several times because I do waste a incredible amount of my life sitting in coffee shops and staring in the middle distance where people who are regular in those coffee shops will they’ll become they they just becomes irritating and and I’ve several times had people just say like you know how long are you going to sit here like then there’s plenty of other tables so it’s not like they you you know there’s like well how long are you going to sit here and it’s like what I’m probably for the rest of the day I think [laughter] unless something tragic happens like what’s going on here, you know? Um and and it’s just this like whoa like you the hostility is like hey I’m not I’m just sitting I’m not bothering anybody. Uh but you are and that becomes particularly acute even if you’re in an environment where you’re playing along in theory once people sense and let me tell you the institutions are very good at sensing this. if you’re in an institution of any kind. So when I was at the university for graduate school, they I don’t know what I did or how, but I just they understood that I was not playing their game. And then so they just aggressed on me every chance they had. I was only able to graduate because they messed up so badly there would have been a they would have lost a lawsuit and there was an intervention from on high to prevent the department from kicking me out for no good reason. I will say uh but it was you’re just like wow they’re just waiting for me and my dissertation director said yeah they’re just waiting for you. I’m like why? And they’re like they just don’t like you that [clears throat] is there’s no particular reason except for you’re you’re who you are and you don’t have their values and they know it. And that’s the thing somehow someway people can sense this. Sometimes people are attracted to it and they’re like oh I think this person is they’ve got something different going on. Uh and but often and particularly institutions they just know and they will find a way to like hey like we don’t you’re not playing the game the way we want you to like you’re doing your work you’re showing up on time whatever but you don’t seem to you’re not doing it right you’re not suffering or you’re not whatever what however it is so those warnings uh I will give you upfront and just you know be prepared for the people who are in interacting with you on a personal level, you know, be sensitive to them. I would say be fair to them because it’s easy to just go, “Oh gosh.” But, you know, it if you really try this, it is a it is can be shocking. It doesn’t necessarily have to be, but it can be. But for the general world, yeah, be prepared. And I’ll give examples of this as we look at more of the specific ones. So, that’s step one. It’s just kind of the warning label. Danger, [clears throat] danger. Don’t be surprised at this. And then what happens when you do this, of course, as you get some of this negative response, one, it makes it a little more difficult, but it also opens up a gap, right? You can it can make you feel quite lonely when you’re the only person who [laughter] who’s who’s there uh who thinks the library is the greatest thing that’s ever been invented in the history of mankind. And you’re like, well, nobody else seems to care. How does that work? Right? And and then you and it’s perfectly normal to say, well, is it just me? Like, have I lost my mind? am I pursuing something or is am I in a society that just doesn’t value the things that I value and then when you find out that yeah you’re in a society that doesn’t value the things you value you’re like it’s you know sigh right I hate to say it but sure it’s fair it’s a perfectly reasonable response to go ah right so this is just going to make it slightly more difficult which I think it will but probably worthwhile you’re you your mileage may vary you try for yourself and see what happens So thinking about some of these values. So if you pick a value something like beauty and you go what’s the next thing to next step and again I’m I always try to invoke dowoism because I’m so bad at it. I just have a mental post-it note in the middle of my forehead that says remember Dowoism. And when I think about Dowoism I always think of the what can I not do? That is the magic question of Dowoism. If nothing else you take from this, that’s the question that Dowoism asks that our society so rarely asks. And so instead of starting with do by uh you know whatever that is, ask yourself what can I stop doing? What can I get rid of? What can I uh avoid? And this is it. It’s just amazing that when you ask that question, you go, “Oh.” So often what interferes with us or or blocks us from pursuing or experiencing the things that we we we the values that we think we might want to pursue is not um is is something we’re doing like or something we think we should be doing. Right? It’s like, oh, so the process of elimination, the process of of stopping, of not doing things opens up a space and a possibility and and time maybe and mental space and all of these other knock-on effects. But again if you can begin with this simple question of eliminate not stop as opposed to do by acquire or whatever that I think this is an important first step again and maybe I’m only speaking mostly for me but I do observe this in society that we heir at least in western society incredibly heavily on that side and so when you think about beauty if we think about beauty it’s like Oh, what things do I have around me that are not beautiful? And so I don’t need to buy things necessarily, but I can or or acquire things, but maybe that’s fine, too. But as a first step is to say, what can I get rid of that’s not attractive? And this can be a brutal question, by the way. Like it’s it once when you meet aesthetic people who really care about this stuff like care personally they they just can’t help themselves kind of caring you see that it it’s just painful for them to be in ugly environments of which our world is full for some inexplicable reason. And [clears throat] so they create they craft their own personal environments and so often as different as the ones I’ve been in been fortunate enough to inhabit the wildly different sense of aesthetics but what they share in common is they just you know even if they’re they have no money very poor very rundown whatever they just don’t have anything that’s not appealing to them like zero like can I get rid of anything that I don’t find at least moderately pleasing and when you run that experiment it’s like wow where did all this ugly stuff come from? Like why why or are all these ugly things? And for for me personally, one of the big ones was, you know, for years I just used bad note paper and, you know, plastic pens and pencils. I can’t I’m not really good with pencils. I I’ve almost always written with pens even though my handwriting is illeible and I should erase things should erase everything basically. But at some point I’m like why why am I doing this? And I bought a nice pen. And then I bought a couple more nice pens. But by nice, I mean just a few, you know, like $30. Nice. Not like, you know, there’s these super fabulous ones, but just just very they feel good in the hand. They write beautifully and a few nice notebooks. And I’m like, oh. So I got rid of a drawer full of evil big plastic things. And you know, that’s it. And so now I have less things and they’re very every every morning when I go to the coffee shop and I pick my pen out of my nice notebook to write I it’s like it’s a pleasure and it’s two things and I got rid of a bunch of things and now I have two things and it’s like ah every day it’s a joy and and that sense of elimination is is such an opening because again if you think of aesthetics or or beauty then you go oh eliminating that which is not attractive. And then it creates space. And in sometimes just the space is attractive. Just the emptiness, the the lack. This is one of my largest intellectual breakthroughs. I was at a Chinese garden, traditional Chinese garden in Portland. Very rare in the United States. Um, and I just could not figure out the aesthetics. I just it just seemed very sedate. There weren’t a lot of colors. It wasn’t very plant intensive, but it was calm. and just it was calm and there was a bridge across a a water feature in the middle of this and they had a lovely tea house. The tea house was just lovely, but even that was very understated and calm. And these two women walked across the bridge and all of a sudden it dawned on me like, “Oh,” and I’ve hence verified this, so this is in fact true. It’s designed as a backdrop for people. The garden is not the thing. [clears throat] The space is is functionally a stage set. a traditional Chinese garden in in many ways is a stage set for the people to inhabit and to move around in. And once that kind of I’m like, “Oh,” and they used to wear these incredible colors. And so if you have all these people in incredible colors, you don’t want a bunch of super bright flowers um in a tradition, right? because that would it would clash and it you know plus it put the focus on the people and he all of a sudden it’s like oh so this empty not empty this restrained open uncluttered sensibility creates space for beauty to come to the four in this case the beauty of humans and that sense I was like ah there it is right what a beautiful beautiful aesthetic sensibility and you Right. But it’s only achievable through not I mean there is of course stuff there but it’s mostly through restraint and elimination and careful careful curation of anything that’s left about. Similarly with health it it’s clear that oddly it we may we probably do more to damage our health than we do to help us. And this is the exercise crazes that come and go. I mean, you you watch people and you go, “Okay, I’m gonna go to my office and sit for 10 hours at my computer screen and then I’m gonna get in my car and drive to a gym and I’m going to work out for 45 minutes and then I’m healthy.” It’s like, no, you know what you need to do is not sit in front of that computer screen for 10 hours. That’s what’s killing you. Going to the gym is reducing the rate at which you’re dying, [laughter] if that makes sense. It’s not really you can cut out the gym if you cut out the computer screen. Like if you could somehow work that deal out. I mean, I understand why we have to have jobs and all that, but you know, you’re like, “Oh, this is not really health. This is doing something that’s bad for you.” And then now you have to do something to try to undo the thing that you did that was bad for you. So now you have two doings, neither of which actually drives you towards health. And it’s and so if you can look at things that you can stop doing that seem to interrupt or or damage or undermine or limit your health, this is probably as important or more important uh than than pretty much anything else. I mean, this is the, you know, don’t eat the the crazy what they call ultrarocessed foods, right? Like don’t stop those. Don’t don’t do that. One, they’re expensive. Two, they’re just bad for your health. And so if you don’t do that, you know, here you go, right? The next thing you know is like, oh, look, you’re you’re you’re you’re achieving health through not right as opposed more. And I think part of one of the barriers that people experience when they do try to like, okay, I want to decide what health is and then, you know, I want to pursue that is it’s almost always sold as some sort of collective packages of you have to do. And it’s like well yeah that becomes overwhelming and difficult and expensive and challenging. Can we focus first as a first step on saying okay what can I stop doing? Let me just not because again you have an infinite capacity to not do things but it’s really very very limited our capacity to do things. And so you can just stop and say, “Right, let’s see. This this makes me feel bad. That makes me feel stressed out. That interferes with my sleep.” You know, check that list off and then go, “Great. If I stop those four things, I’ll feel better. I won’t be as stressed out. I’ll sleep better.” And wow, look at there. If I I don’t like to walk and sit in traffic, so I can walk. And so look, oh, I’ve just I’ve stopped doing four things and I’ve did this major improvement in my health. sort of extraordinary, right? Like this is what what an interesting trick that is. And so, but I I mention this in part because so much of again this is sort of a underwriting cultural process. We emphasize action. We emphasize doing we really press this and it it’s associated with one another problem that I think that interferes with our capacity to experiment with new values, which is haste. And if we’re trying to do things quickly and trying to do them conveniently and trying to make things easy, what we’re really saying is, I’m trying to force myself to line up with the pre-established patterns of the world in which I live because that’s what convenience and ease and haste and speed mean by definition, right? The easy, simple, straightforward, direct, fast is that route which has been greased by our society to make it really, really easy. And so if you do the very very easy [clears throat] that has limited friction and low barrier of entry and doesn’t cause a lot of problems and you can get it done fast and get it over with and get it out of the way, [clears throat] right? What you’re what you’re actually saying is yes, I’m doing exactly what I’m being uh asked to do by my society. When you stop that, what you should expect, I would say pretty much as a rule almost as a corollary if you will, is you need to slow down. You need to not do the easy thing, not do the quote unquote natural thing because doing that is sort of in a way just going along. And if you’re trying to change the values, you’re not trying to go along. And so it becomes this weird um you know tension that that you will almost again inevitably create as I mentioned at the beginning. But haste, if you can fight haste, if you can accept slowing down, for instance, for health, people go, “Oh, you know, [clears throat] you know, I want to eat healthier.” It’s like, okay, first, you know, one step, as I mentioned, remove a bunch of the crap that you’re eating. And like, oh, well, I have to eat something. Okay, but step one, notice you can stop eating virtually all this stuff. And then you go, okay, well, what do you want to eat? What what what is healthy? what do you think is healthy and that you want to consume and then let’s focus on that. But it’s interesting because most people have given very little thought to this and I I don’t mean this as a criticism because one purpose of society is to solve the question of what you should eat for you because in a way having to get up every morning and think okay I have to rethink my entire diet. No, we don’t want to do that. And so you get the pre-d delivered diet. And so it in in in France, it’s not that they don’t eat any cold cereal. It’s just clearly a nominal side thing that somebody somewhere must eat at some point. But the cold cereal aisle in a French grocery store is ridiculously small. In the United States, the cold cereal aisle is like a third of the store. I mean, [laughter] there will be Americans out there. You could mention in the comments how many different cold cereals and how a large part of the grocery store is taken up with cold cereal. And this is just 97% of it is just wildly wildly overpriced sugar products. It just this is what it is. Sugar and all its many manifold forms. Corn syrup in all its many manifold forms to be more specific. And it’s [clears throat] like wow. And that is there because this is what we’ve been told you do. Um, as far as I can tell, French people just I mean there’s no French word for breakfast. So they, you know, they call petite deer, which is small lunch. Um, which, you know, there you go, right? They just they don’t really they’re like breakfast. What the hell is breakfast? I mean, they’re just not having it. They’re [laughter] just they’re just not you can’t you can’t trick them into breakfast as far as I can tell. And so it’s just a different cultural pattern here. But what happens is because everybody ate breakfast cereal when I was a kid. I thought you well you eat breakfast cereal. There you go. Like that’s that’s it. And when you ask, well, should I be eating breakfast cereal? Is do I need to eat breakfast cereal? Is this a good thing to eat? Okay, we don’t want to do that all the time. That’s a hassle. But at some point, if you want to actually think about it, you have to stop and go, “Oh, wait a second.” And then if you start a new process, this will take time. Go, [clears throat] oh, okay. I’m not going to eat all this other stuff. Well, what am I going to eat? And then initially this will be problematic because of course now you have to think about everything. And the whole point of patterns and values and all this is it’s all the stuff that we’ve trained ourselves not to think about. We know money is the answer to everything. Don’t don’t ask me to think about that. I it’s I don’t I don’t want to. I know it’s the answer. Most people don’t want to have theological discussions every day in history. This is perfectly clear. You tell me who God is. That’s great. I’m good with it. You just let me know the rules. I’ll go along. Don’t bother me. Right? This is this is the pattern in in history and cultures and values work this way generally. [clears throat] So if you can prepare yourself to let go of haste or at least resist it and acknowledge that one of the things that’s going to happen is it will take some time because one you’re going to have to think. You’re going to have to reflect. You’re going to encounter barriers because this is you’re in a way you’re pursuing barriers. In a way, you’re looking for fences that you’re going to have to climb over because on the other side of that fence may be joy, maybe beauty, maybe health, maybe wisdom, right? Is maybe heroism, but it’s not this. It’s it’s on the other side of a fence, unfortunately. But there it is. [clears throat] So those elements definitely have to be, I’d say, conceptualized. How do you deal with this? How do you address this? So this is where I turn to inspiration and I would say when I’ve given you a list of all the books which I won’t repeat here but look back at the books or listen back to the books that were accompanied in each of the lecture or in the lecture that you’re most interested in but don’t stick with my list look for other ones. It’s easy to research the different you know books or novels or philosophers who have emphasized whatever aspect of the values that you find interesting. And I think for for me at least and other people I’ve chatted with, it’s very powerful when you go, “Oh, here’s someone who really committed themselves to, you know, joy. And when you see what they did and the challenges they faced, it makes you feel one, less lonely. Uh two, it feels kind of more doable, right? You’re like, “Oh, well, they could do it. maybe I can do at least part of that or this part doesn’t appeal to me at all but I see what they were doing here and that inspiration can give you one kind of guidance but two I think more important than guidance is the notion of possibility like ah yeah they really did achieve this level of joy or beauty or health or wisdom or heroism or whichever you know which whichever you think is is interesting to you and that is makes the [clears throat] possibility of it quite quite hopeful and then when you feel like you’re alone you can think of them and go oh no I don’t necessarily have to be alone there there there probably will be other people out there which is going to come up at the end of the lecture by the way and so looking through the text looking through the examples uh if if you know if it’s beauty this is one of the great things about museums I mean that you can go and you just stand there and go, “Wow, human beings are pretty damn amazing that they can do works of such power and such interest. All right, I can I can I should be able to bur myself to get 1% of that, right?” You know, you’re not going to be Michelangelo tomorrow, but you know, you can get a little little little corner, right? A little something and go, “Yeah, I can take that with me and incorporate into my life and that would be great.” and that sort of sensibility in looking for those places and those people and those works that kind of feed you and reinforce you when you’re in a world that is going to create problems and questions and and and feedback for you on this I think can be incredibly helpful. But [clears throat] one of the secrets here and this is I mean this okay now this is completely it’s going to sound totally I don’t know hippie guru nonsense here but I’m going to go with it because I think it’s true small t true true but there’s this weird phenomenon that I’ve seen over and over again and again talking to other people they’ve said the same thing and once you start on any of these paths again I don’t know which one it is or what mix I want to talk about mixing as It’s it’s all of a sudden you see it everywhere or you see it more consistently and it’s it’s there’s a passage in in a work by Herman Hessa the the Stephen Wolf in which he’s walking down the street and all of a sudden there’s this door that he never saw before. He’s like you know where did that door come from? And then he goes in and you know it’s the magic theater and all kinds of things happen of course and I and his analogy there or his metaphor I guess would be a better uh term is I think quite literal. I think it I think it is quite a it’s a literal example of what happens is you start embracing one of these concepts you start thinking about it. you start actually incorporating it and strange things will happen things you know wherever you are wherever you live whatever you’ve been doing you will the all of a sudden like another dimension gets added a new like you meet people and then you meet other people and then you see something and then you’re aware of something and it’s just it’s [clears throat] it’s crazy it’s absolutely and it’s happened to me many times to the point where now I just believe in it I’m like nope this is what happens and I I think it’s akin to the phenomenon uh people talk about it when you if you buy a new car or get an old used car doesn’t have to be new. All of a sudden you’ll notice that model of car everywhere. And of course, what’s happened is not that all of a sudden the car that you bought has become hugely popular and has populated the planet, but rather that once you’ve attuned your eye and your mind to be aware of that car, now you see every instance of it that occurs in your environment. And before you were not seeing every instance of it that was occurring in your environment. And that is a very powerful lesson. And when my niece came to visit me here in France, I said, you know, what do you want to do? She said, I just want to look. I want to see. I want to notice. I’m like, “Wow, that’s a good list.” And she was serious. She’s a noticer. She’s an artist, you know. And so she she would just see things. She’d point things out to me. I’d be like, “Wow.” You know, when when she showed it to me, then I could see it on my own. I couldn’t see it, right? It’s like, “Oh, she was like a guide. She was like helping me see things that now since she’s pointed them out, I’ve seen them again, but I would not have seen them without her assistance. And this and when and when you start on this path and when you start emphasizing this, one thing is you’ll start to see whatever it is you’re trying to do manifest itself all around you. And two, you will start to sort of meet people who have similar sensibilities. I I’m not somehow it happens. I’m not sure how. And I’m not sure why. Like I said, this sounds like the biggest hippie guru nonsense, but I’m telling you, run the experiment. Don’t trust me. I would say that’s that’s part of it. And then finally is when you think about the mix and and as I mentioned at the very first lecture, I want to return to this is I I think coming from a monotheistic influence society where we’ve replaced God with money, right? one one one monotheism to another monotheism. Our tendency is to want to have the answer, the purity, the the the perfect, the untainted, the unmixed. And uh fundamentally, I think for most people in most environments, this is is a um trap. It’s it’s misleading. And then what happens is, and and I believe our society tells us this as well, by the way. It says, “Oh, you know, if you’re going to be healthy, you need to look like one of these perfect fitness models or one of these professional athletes.” And then what happens, of course, is because we’re not going to be able to achieve that. Then people go, “Well, then I can’t be fit.” Like, well, no, look, look, health is not right. It’s not a zero sum game. It’s not like you get all the health. You either get a 100 health or you get zero health, right? Beauty is not a it’s not a yes or no answer. It’s like, oh, I might be in an environment where a lot of it’s unattractive, but I but there might be very attractive aspects to it. Or I might like most of it, but there might be some that’s like eh not so great. And so if you think of it rather as one a mix that we’re going to have a mix of things most people not everyone you know we have the the perfect you know the dowist master who lives up in the hills and is in the perfect world although even that is controversial even in dowoism because it is does the master live up in the mountains away from everything or does the master live in the red dust as it’s called down in the world of men in a city because if you’re really detached from the world then you can be in the world without being bothered by it. Right? So there even even in in in in the conception of Dowoism and and related Buddhist concepts is this notion of do you really need to withdraw or is that itself a kind of trap and [clears throat] I think for most of us most of the time that that that seeking for perfection is one I think it’s a theological western metaphysical nonsensical trap. you know, Plato’s perfect forms, uh, perfect God, ideal man, all this, all this nonsense. And, you know, so, hey, just wash a few thousand years of culture out of your mind. There you go. Done. Done and dusted. Easier said than done, of course. However, um, if you can get that out of your mind and go, “No, what I’m really trying to do is a process of exploration and discovery that’s going to include all kinds of things. It’s going to include mistakes. It’s going to include experiments. is going to include happy accidents and a little more beautiful tomorrow than today is a great achievement. This is this is nothing to be to be scoffed at. The fact that my house isn’t perfectly beautiful or my room or my clothes or my garden or my environment. That’s you know this is this is nothing to be scoffed at. I mean this is what h this is where the like gated communities in the United States come from. Oh, we’re going to have all the houses the same so that we know how they’re going to look and we’ll have all the grounds going to be taken care of so they’ll be perfect and the roads will all be wellmaintained so that’ll be perfect. So, as long as I’m in this environment, everything will be perfect. And we won’t let any of the imperfect people in. Hence the gates and the guards, so that’ll be perfect. And then, of course, these places are just awful. Oh my god. [laughter] Right. They’re just they’re just prisons. They’re just, you know, they’re voluntary prisons. I can’t figure out how people fall for this, but they do. But I I mean I I can figure it out. It’s part of it. A large part of this besides the racism is is the a desire for perfection and that that the thinking that oh if I can just get everything right, everything in my house, everything near my house, everything around my house right, then my life will be right and then I’ll be, you know, transcendent in some way. I’m not sure exactly what the end goal there is, but that dis striving for that belief and that desire for perfection is I would say I would argue a very dangerous poison and prevents us from doing all kinds of wonderful amazing but milange and mixed kinds of things. So I would say you know be be leerary of that and embrace not one value but the possibility of exploring many the mixing and matching as I said the buffet effect like after you’ve done this for a while you might say you know what I’m just going to only eat mashed potatoes [laughter] I love those mashed potatoes I’m getting the biggest bowl I can and I’m filling it all up and it’s like okay good on you but for most people yeah try different things you like a little mix you like a little salad you like a little potatoes like whatever whatever however it works right that And that is okay. And that the process is not an end. Like we’re not trying to achieve a steady state of absolute perfect health. And again, this is the, you know, really high-end athletes are injured a lot of the time. And that’s part of being healthy, right? [laughter] It’s a weird part of being healthy, but it really is because they’re super healthy, but they’re also challenging themselves and they’re striving. They’re doing these other things. And so being injured is part of the process and you’re like, “Oh, yeah.” Like maybe you maybe decide to re redesign your room and you go, “Oh, I’m going to just completely repaint it.” And then you repaint it and you go, “No, that’s part right. That that how do you how do you discover the no? How do you discover the if if you haven’t embraced that possibility? It’s not a mistake. It’s a it’s it’s a part it’s a process in the beauty. So all all the pursuit of beauty is not beautiful. In fact, it would be crazy to expect it to be the all the pursuit of wisdom doesn’t lead you to good ideas. Oh, I can 100% guarantee you that sometimes you think really stupid things. This is what I do at the coffee shop. I write things down and I go, “Well, that doesn’t sound good at all and [laughter] then I cross them out and then I write something else down.” And I just do that for a while until I get tired and then I don’t have anything written in my notebook and I think, well, I better go to the grocery store or something, right? like like I better move along with my day here. Um you know that but that that’s that’s part of the process. This this um desire again for perfection and unmixedness and also the the not novelty power but I think most people do like diversity. We generally enjoy diff different things at different times. So, we might say, “Oh, I’m really want to emphasize health and joy and, you know, uh, physical activity and, you know, I just want to get out in the world and just be in nature.” I don’t know what whatever the mix is you choose. And then you might hike around for a while and do all this and be nothing is wrong. And then at some point, you go, you know what? I’m I’m ready to settle in. I want to I played the piano when I was a kid. I think I just want to be indoors and sit with a piano and explore music and do some music and stuff as part of my health regime. It’s like great. Like this is it’s and and I think one of the weird things is society tells us that that’s wrong, right? That if oh, you should know what you want to do. We’re never given time to think about this by the way or asked to reflect on it or given an opportunity to express these kinds of opinions. But that’s beside the point. we’re still expected to know. And if you played piano as a kid and then stopped, well, you’re done. You can’t start later because if you start later, you’re just wasting time because now you don’t have time to be a professional pianist. As if the function of playing music is not playing music, right? This is the one of these weird again ideas is, oh, if you’re going to, you know, make music, it should be for No, making music is for making music. Honestly, making art is for bringing beauty into the world. Honestly, being joyful is about being joyful. I just had this conversation uh in MRI and I said, you know, do you want less joy or more joy in the world? And they’re all, of course, I want more joy in the world. Like, great. So, don’t do things that make your life less joyful because then you’re not helping. You’re actively making less joy in the world. So, embrace joy and then you’re helping. And if you don’t embrace joy and you’re trying to achieve joy for other people, then you’re not helping, right? It’s just a sort of an equation in that sense. But I think [clears throat] so often we’re told, no, no, it’s it’s got to be for something else. It’s got to be for an ends. It’s got to be for some application. And therefore, if you change, that’s sort of the sunk cost fallacy. If you change what you want to do, well, you’ve lost all the time that you were doing before. And oh my gosh, isn’t that sad? And oh, and you were wrong. I always like this one. Oh, well, you were wrong about something. It’s like, well, can you be wrong? I mean, were you wrong about your life? Like, isn’t it just your life? Like, is it is right and wrong the correct analysis to apply? Or like, oh, I changed, I grew, I gained insight, I made decisions, I decided to do something different. Does that mean that my earlier self was wrong or that my earlier self was somewhat different than me? or that my earlier self just knew less than the current self does. I mean, which shows that you’ve been learning, which is great. So, all of these sorts of uh patterns that our our society has mitigate and against um joyfully or effectively or or um happily embracing and exploring the possibilities of new values. And so I just wanted to do this concluding lecture to kind of you know uh one encourage you if if any of these sound attractive or other values that we didn’t explore. One one person recommended doing freedom and I think that’s an interesting one to ponder. Uh there’s many other ones. You can look up lists of values from other cultures and societies but I think covered some of the big ones I think. And [clears throat] oh family by the way is one I I really thought but that’s that’s another super valuable one to to think about as a possible value. But the the the value itself is not as important as the ideas of exploring it and of deciding that you want to do this. But just want to exit here with making you aware that one, you’re going to have friction interpersonally. um friction, guaranteed friction with your society to the extent that you actually try to pursue these other values because you’ll feel this both because you’re changing and because you’re recognizing things around your society that the the general way that this is pursued is that oh you need to buy do um something like and and so again not that there isn’t some active part about these things but I would really strongly encourage you to resist that first impulse and start with the doing that is not doing if you will which is always the you know the paradox of the Buddhist concept is is to you know just not do for a bit and that make that your doing and see what can be achieved in the initial stages by by stopping the other things [clears throat] and then being aware that the the push towards uh the one and the unitary and the monotheistic and the resistance to the mlange and the experimental and the uh changing that our our culture deeply embeds in us and you [clears throat] we do it in school if if you’ve going to college or university now I mean I felt it when I was young and going to college university and really now they’ve gone over the just they’ve gone hog wild on this they’re like a freshman you know what do you want to do it’s like I don’t know how would I know how are you supposed to know right cuz you haven’t done anything yet like what’s interesting, what’s fun, what’s fascinating, give me a chance to explore a little bit and discover the world and then think about possibilities. No, no, they want them to to sign up on the first day to know. And it’s like, hey, you know, if you pick two or three values that you want to start emphasizing and exploring and discovering, that doesn’t mean you might not add another one or subtract one or that you might change the relative importance that you find as you go down this road or you may not like any of them that we’ve been exploring and do totally different ones. Right? All of those are are are possibilities. And don’t think that, you know, you you make a mistake or you do something wrong or there’s an error or that you you know, you’ve got sunk cost. Yeah. That all of those are are these crazy traps that they set for us um culturally. And part of the reason I you know, I don’t think culture does this consciously, but it is the how you reinforce the existing patterns. You add the friction and then you add you build in. It’s criticism that’s already built into us. They don’t. No one has to criticize you for this. They will, by the way, but the criticism exists in us already. It’s just waiting to pounce on us in our weak moments, right? I’m sure we’ve all had this experience. And you’re like, where did that voice come from? It’s like, oh, that’s the voice of my society. Nice to meet you. Thanks for dropping by. I think I’m going to continue on my path anyway. So a few moments of reflection on the values and the possibility of exploring new ones. I think it’s almost a necessary component of thinking philosophically and it is uh underpins much philosophical thinking and as I mentioned at the beginning and as other philosophers Nietze, Plato, Schopenhauer, Confucious I mean it just pretty much almost every major philosopher will have passages where they will tell you look if you change values you change everything right this is the core This is what really drives people, motivates them, changes how they view the world. And it’s it’s very difficult but also very powerful. And so when you embark on this journey, recognize that this is, you know, if you want to know how to access philosophy and what makes philosophy available, interesting, and comprehensible, I would say it’s running an experiment like this because all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh, now I know what these philosophers are talking about.” Because once you start feeling all these values and thoughts and structures that are around you because you’re working against them, then you then it’s I think then philosophy becomes obviously necessary if you if you will. So [clears throat] good luck with your own experiments. I would love to hear the outcome of them or early results if if you have any and thanks for listening.