The Eric Metaxas Show - Os Guinness (Encore)

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

Os Guinness, in this enlightening interview from across the pond, offers the "sure path to meaning" with his newest book, "The Great Quest." (Encore Presentation)

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Taxis show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Folks, welcome. I am really thrilled right now because I have as my guest for this hour, my dear friend, privileged to say so, Oz Guinness. Oz, welcome to the program. Well, thanks for having me back, Eric.

A real pleasure for me. Well, you have meant so much to me over the years, not just as a thinker and writer, but as a friend. And I'm thrilled to know that you have a book out, a new book just now called The Great Quest. I want to talk to you about it. The subtitle is Invitation to an Examined Life and a Sure Path to Meaning. Many people don't know that you were singularly instrumental in the creation of what we call Socrates in the city. Socrates, of course, said the unexamined life is not worth living, which is the very heart of this new book, the great quest that you've written. But many people don't know that in 2000, which suddenly is 22 years ago, it used to be way in the future, remember that?

suddenly it's 22 years ago, but you were the one who encouraged me to do what we ended up doing with Socrates in the city. And the quote, of course, that I think I quote every time I do an introduction to Socrates and said he is, the unexamined life is not worth living. And so why don't we start there? Because you have written about Victor Frankel

and you write about him in this book, but this has been an issue for you. The question of meaning has been important to you for many, many decades. You've written many books that touch on it. So what should we, where should we start? Well, Eric, this book is for individuals who are searching, who are seeking. But for me, the big picture of the Western world is the background. Because if you take the civilizational moment we're in, obviously the West has as its central dynamic, the Jewish and Christian faiths. And yet, the West has rejected the faiths that made it.

So it's a cut flower civilization. And the question is, can the West be renewed? So people need to grapple with what it is that actually made the West. Now, the same thing in many ways is true for America. And we see this rising tide of religious nuns, people with receding faith. But obviously, many of them have no idea that the faith they've left was considered true. Now, if it was true, people should believe it even if there's no one but themselves left. If it was false, they should never have believed it, even if everyone else believed it, and so on.

So there's an extraordinary cultural dimension to all this, but my purpose is individuals, individuals who are seeking. So when you talk about the West, you're talking about Christendom, there's, of course, great irony and tragedy. And the idea, that the West, unlike any civilization since the beginning of the world, gave us all of the things that we praise, the sanctity of the individual, the idea that racism is a bad thing. There's so many things that Christendom gave us in the context of the West and Europe. And maybe I can ask you, we can begin.

is it within the West, within Western Christendom that would lead to people hating the very things that gave them their values? There's something bizarre about it. It's like a snake swallowing its own tail. It doesn't, it doesn't quite make sense. So what is it that the seeds of our destruction are sort of, they're there in the best of Western Christendom? Well, I think the first great rival to the Christian faith was the Enlightenment. And if you look at the aggressive secularism that's grown up since then, there are really three impulses. One, we don't want God. And you can see that, particularly in the French Revolution, and all the radical movements that have come out of that. In other words, throne and altar, church and state were united,

both corrupt, both oppressive, and the revolution throughout both. We don't. We don't. We don't want God. The second impulse is we don't need God. Modern prosperity through technology and capitalism and so on. We've got so much to live with. Why on earth do we bother to think of why we're living for? And then the third impulse is the more recent one, through DNA and stuff like that, we can replace God. You take Yuval Harari, Homo Deus. Now put those together. You've got a powerful aggressive secularism, which is out to replace the Jewish and Christian faiths as the dynamic of the West. Now, they won't do it because without God, those things collapse in the long run, but they're trying to. Beyond them, I mentioned that, you've got various radical

movements. No, please continue. When you say various radical movements, to what are you referring? Well, when I say secularism, it's not against the West, it's against the Christian faith, but trying to replace the Christian faith in the West. But if you look beyond that, I call them the color waves. You've got a red wave, a rainbow wave, a black wave, and a gold wave. And each of them in many ways is not only anti-Christian, but anti-Western. So the red wave is clearly classical Marxism. Then cultural Marxism.

The rainbow wave, quite obviously, the LGBT sexual revolution. And the black wave, the term that is used of everything that grew up of a radical Islamism since the Iranian revolution in 1979. And then the gold wave, the way that so many of our elites are buying actually into ideas that come from the Chinese Communist Party in their attempts to do business with them. and so on. So there are very radical movements around all of them against the Jewish and the Christian phase. And they can't succeed ultimately. In other words, they ultimately don't make sense, but they do capture people. They capture minds that people don't, they don't see through to the

end of these things. They seem to be inside it thinking it will go on forever. Do you deal in this new book The Great Quest with how we can help people see through to the logical extension of what they say they believe? Well, what we've just discussed is actually not in the book, because the book is written for individuals. If you look even at, say, modern philosophy, it pooh-pues the idea of the meaning of life. One book says, the meaning of life is a fit topic only for madmen and comedians. Well, that's absolutely a thing. absurd. And fortunately, there are people seriously searching to make sense of life and to discover a life worthy of life. And that's the people for whom I've written. Trying to set out how a thinking

person moves through the journey towards the quest for meaning. I think the reason, you know, to be fair to people who mock the search for the meaning of life, I think that they are convinced that there is no such thing. And they, you know, to be fair to people who mock the search for the meaning of life. I think that they are convinced, and that it's a, you know, it's a mirage that we need to be wise and understand that that's not there, and let's put that aside to begin with. But you know and I know that that's not true, and we want to encourage them.

We want to say no. Actually, there is hope, there is meaning. There is a reason you're here. But I do think that there are many people that they simply can't deal with that. It's too much for them. So they have to poo-poo it. They have to mock it, whatever it is. But normal people struggling through life, they are wondering. They are asking that question perhaps to themselves. So obviously you've written the book for those people. Absolutely. But it's certainly true that many of the things that people looked for, say, a hundred years ago, have collapsed as points of reliance. So people used to look for the, to art. And art has clearly failed. or they used to look for science, but science gives us an answer to the big how questions, but not the why questions.

Or they used to look to philosophy. And philosophers now admit that after 3,000 years of Western philosophy, there's no agreed answer to most of the big questions. I want to get into each of the three you've just mentioned. We're going to go to a break, but each of these is tantalizing. So when we come back, folks, we'll talk to Oz. Ginnis continue talking to him about his new book, The Great Quest. Tell me, Eric, why is Relief Factor so successful at lowering or eliminating pain? I'm often asked that question.

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That's inspireinsight.com. Go there. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to my friend Oz Guinness about his brand new book, The Great Quest, Invitation to an Examined Life and a Sure Path to Meaning. Oz, you just tantalized me in the audience. You said that art and science and philosophy, each of those three things, maybe a century ago, presented hope for people as a path to meaning, but each of these three things within the last century

has really failed. So let's talk about that. How was it that people in the past would have looked to art for the meaning of life? Well, you think of a painting, say, by Kogan, with his words, whence with a why and so on, you know, actually in the painting. Or you think of a painting. Or you think of the nihilism, say, of Marcel Duchamp, with his famous fountain, which was a urinal. And there's an extraordinary nihilism in much of modern art, or someone like Francis Bacon, the English painter, we come from a howling void and we're going to a howling void, and art has no answers at all. And I think there's a general sense that while art is extraordinary and wonderful and necessary, certainly in the search for beauty,

it doesn't give us the answer to the meaning of life. Well, it is interesting because art really kind of about a century ago bumped into this brick wall finally, where everything's absurd, there's nothing, and was kind of honest about that. And in previous times, art would have been a reflection of people's understanding of the meaning of life. But you're quite right. We're far past that with regard to art. You then mentioned science.

Talk a moment about that. Well, science is obviously incredibly powerful and central in modern society. But anyone who thinks realizes that while we value science, the scientific method is incredible. The advances it makes, I'm not attacking it for a minute. But it only answers the how. It doesn't attempt to answer the why. It can't by its very nature. I mean, I would go even further and say that sometimes it cannot answer the how.

You know, when we say that, okay, we know that four billion years ago, I write about this in my most recent book, which is why it's in my mind so much. But it's fascinating to me that the more we learn from science, the more we see that sometimes science can't come up with the how. How did life emerge from non-life four billion years ago? we now know, via science, that we don't know. And it's kind of funny to me because... That's not mean about why questions, Eric. Why is there something rather than nothing? Exactly.

That's exactly right. And it's sort of... Well, so there's much to be said on that, but let's keep going. So science and then finally philosophy. And, you know, philosophy is incredible. It's basically thinking about thinking. And good philosophy is good thinking about thinking. But philosophy up to 3,000 years doesn't come up with the great answers.

And the simple fact is, you have to go to the great worldviews, the great philosophies of life, the great religions. And when you do that, there are broadly three great families of faiths, the Eastern, Hinduism, Buddhism, the New Age movements, secularism, atheism, agnosticism, materialism, and so on. and then, of course, the Abrahamic supremely in the West, Judaism, and the Christian faith with their notion of an infinite personal God. And depending which of the families of faiths you choose, you get decisively different answers. And one of my constant arguments is contrast is the mother of clarity. So do some contrasting with us then. In other words, if somebody says to me, well. I reject the Bible and that kind of thing for various reasons. So I'm sort of into the Eastern way of thinking. What does the Eastern world or family of faith say about the meaning of life?

Well, take reality itself. As many philosophers point out, Hinduism could never have produced modern science. Why? Because the world is Maya, illusion. Or take human rights. When we take ourselves seriously, we're caught in the world of illusion. And the goal of Hinduism, just as the salt merges with the water and the river with the ocean, so we should lose our individuality and merge with the ground of being, an impersonal God. So freedom for the individual in Hinduism is freedom from individuality, not freedom to be an individual. and you just think how that affects human rights

or the fulfillment and purpose of life on this earth. You get a very different view. Say the biblical view. Every single human being has dignity and worth because made in the very image and likeness of God. The very highest view of dignity there is. Now, in other words, in the biblical view, we're defined upwards in relation to God,

not downwards. You know, I lived in Oxford very close to Richard Dawkins and in a house very close to Desmond Morris, the author of The Naked Ape. But you take things like the naked ape or the selfish gene and the way if we define ourselves downwards as animals or machines or whatever, we frustrate ourselves.

The only way to be really deeply fulfilled is to see that we're defined upwards in terms of our creative. and we're made in his image. So the answers come out incredibly differently. You've mentioned a couple of times that the new book, The Great Quest, is for individuals looking for the meaning of life. And at some point you say it's an adventure.

At least you begin there. So what do you mean by that? Well, it's not an argument that sets out proofs for the Christian faith. And I personally believe the theistic proofs and so on. don't work. And to the degree that some people think they work, they don't take you to the Lord God, whom we really know as the God of Abraham

and the Father of Jesus Christ. Not setting out proofs, but describing the journey. And particularly for thinking people, the four phases of the journey. So a lot of people haven't even started. They haven't got to phase one, which is a time for questions.

phase two a time for answers phase three a time for evidences and phase four a time for commitments but each of those has to be thought through in its own pace and its own time so that people can move along but there's no guarantee in those words I've set out the path

but each person has to follow it for themselves so it's not a book you sit in an armchair come to the last page and you're convinced of an argument No, it's a prospector, so setting out a journey. It may take five minutes. It may take five years or 50 years, but a journey which thinking people must take for themselves to think through the meaning of life.

I have the idea that we're living in a society that because of prosperity and technology, we can be endlessly distracted from thinking about the very things that you say, are central. Usually, I would guess that it's only calamity or pain that causes people to stop and to think about these things. Why, in your experience, what would lead someone to want to be a little bit deliberate about asking these questions? Well, I discussed that in the first phase of the book. And obviously, first, there are seasons of life. It used to be said the big seven,

18 to 25 was when a lot of people chose their careers, their husbands or wives, and of course the faith by which they were going to live. So seasons of life is one thing. And then, as you said, there are crises. But then thirdly, you have what Alexander solves on itsing called the crowbar of events. You take, say, the collapse of Marxism in 1989 and how all over the world people gave up believing in classical Marxism. But my interest is mostly in the last one, which my mentor, you know him to, Peter Berger,

calls signals of transcendence. People have experiences which puncture what they used to believe and point them to something which would have to be true if that experience is meaningful. And so to follow it, they set out as seekers. Signals of transcendence. The most famous, of course, in the last century was Sears. Lewis. The atheist, too, was surprised by joy. But he couldn't explain joy as an atheist, not happiness, not pleasure, joy. And to find out what it was, he became a seeker, as you know, for more than 10

years. Folks, the book is The Great Quest. We'll continue our conversation with Oz Guinness in a moment. The subtitle of The Great Quest is Invitation to an Examined Life and a Sure Path to Meaning. We'll be right back. Folks, welcome back. We're talking to my friend Oz Guinness, whose new book is called The Great Quest, Invitation to an Examined Life and a Sure Path to Meaning. The former editor of the LA Times called the book a masterpiece. He says Guinness brings a breathtaking range of thought to aim at the key question of life. What is the meaning of life? And how do we individually determine it? This is a suma and a gift to questing souls of all persuasions. As on behalf of those questing souls, thank you for writing the book.

It is the central question of life. What is the meaning of life? Is there meaning to life? I do think we touched on it earlier that many people are not asking that question until something happens. And then suddenly they wonder, what's it all about? And is it possible that it's all about nothing? I remember in my early 20s wondering whether there is meaning to life. Maybe there is no, that's the horror.

Maybe there is no meaning to life. So I assume you deal with that question as well. Well, I also deal with the way you began this section and why people don't think. In other words, if Socrates is right, the unexamined life is not worth living. Many, many, you can almost say most people in America, are leading lives not worth living. They haven't thought enough and cared enough to start thinking, and that's the tragedy.

And I've got a discussion of the two main reasons why. One is one you referred to, distraction. Pascal, the great French mathematician, he called it diversion. In other words, we don't want to face reality. We're going to die. Mortality. So we surround ourselves with busy, entertaining distractions. and the other reason people don't think is what's called bargaining.

I'll do it later. You know, when I graduated, when the kids are a little older, when the mortgage is paid off, when I'm retired and have time to think, and of course, eventually no more laters. And you have the Faust figure, Christopher Marlowe or Gertor, who wants to bargain his soul with the devil, to get a little more time, a little more knowledge, a little more power,

whatever it is. But of course, the devil has read the small print, and Faust hasn't. And eventually all the laters run out. And you have something like Jesus' famous line, you fool. Tonight, your soul is required of you. In other words, no amount of distractions and no amount of bargaining will eventually put people off and better far to think it through while we have time in order to make the most of life. Well, it's interesting because the the impetus to think it through when everything's fine is usually not there. And it usually is during some difficulty that we're forced to take the time to think about these things.

Obviously, you're saying we shouldn't wait. Yeah. But crises are the negative. And you have examples like, say, Tolstoy, who suddenly was confronted by, mortality. What if my whole life has been wrong, one of his characters say? But I mentioned C.S. Lewis. He was surprised by joy. It wasn't a crisis of death or ill health or something. Joy. Orr. As you may know, his story. He was a relativist. And he was in a cinema and up in Upper East Side in Manhattan in late 1930s.

after the outbreak of World War II, watching a film of the invasion of Poland. And Nazi stormtroopers were bayoneting women and children. And most of the audience in Yorkville then was German. And of course, America wasn't on either side in the war at that stage. And the German audience cried out, kill them, kill them. Now, Auden's sitting in the darkness, he said, nothing was absolute. And yet I realized I needed an absolute to say that Hitler,

was absolutely wrong. So he left the cinema, a seeker after an unconditional absolute, and met Jesus. So again, it wasn't a crisis of health or death, something very, very positive and very relevant today, the need for an absolute, in terms, say, of justice. Well, that's the thing. If you say something's wrong, it follows logically, why is it wrong? Who says it's wrong compared to what is it wrong? do you deal with that in the book as you go through it?

Not in this book, I have in others. So what is the path then that you lay out? Well, if someone reaches stage one at time for questions, life is called into question for them. That's what constitutes the seeker. Stage two, logically, a time for answers. And that's when they look for the big answers that I described earlier, the big families of faith. And that stage is very comparative. If you choose this one or that one, would it answer my questions?

Would it make a difference that I'm looking for? It's very comparative. And the quest is for something that's illuminating and adequate. But the third stage, all right, I'm attracted to an answer. It truly looks adequate and highly illuminating to my question. Stage three, a time for evidences. The big question, this one, as you know, is controversial today, is it true? And despite all the nonsense of postmodernism, that's still a

fundamental and absolutely necessary question. The question is, is it true? Well, that is the question. And when people are pretending that that doesn't matter or that can't be asked, they're playing games. They're simply not being consistent. So I want to talk about evidences, a time for Evidences, which you write about in the new book of The Great Quest, folks. We'll be right back with Oz Guinness. Don't go away. It's time to come blow your horn. Make like a Mr. Mumbles and you're a zero.

Make like a Mr. Big, they dig a hero. You've got to sound your a... Hey, folks, if you listen to this program, of course, you've heard me talk at infinitum about my pillow and my friend Mike Lindell. Well, Mike has just announced that you will receive one of his books and the book is next level insane. It is called What Are the Odds from Crack Addict to CEO? It's his story. You will receive it absolutely free with any purchase using the promo code Eric. Did you hear that? It would be a great time, by the way, to buy his warm and wonderful my slippers for a limited time. He's offering 50% off my slippers. We all wear them in my extended family.

My slippers. Check it out. 50% off. Go to MyPillowler.com. Click on the radio listeners square and use promo code Eric. You'll also get deep discounts on all My Pillar products, including some overstock products, such as individual towels, blankets, comforters, and much more. Or call 800-978. 3057. That's 800-9757. To use the promo code, Eric. Welcome back. We're talking to Oz Guinness, the new book, The Great Quest, Invitation to an An Examined Life and a Sure Path to Meaning. Oz, I love the idea of the title, The Great Quest. This is a great quest. It is, what a glorious thing that we exist, that we're made in the image of God, that we long for meaning. There is something beautiful about longing for meaning. He created us to

long for meaning and then of course to find meaning in him. It's an amazing, it's an amazing thing. It's a beautiful thing. You were just touching on a time for evidence. In other words, people ask questions. They examine various options. So now the question is, what do they find? Well, at first sight, that sounds very controversial today. You know, post Nietzsche. God is dead. Nietzsche said, truth is dead. Everything is relative.

But, of course, so much of life assumes and requires truth. And we'll never get away from it. Journalism does. Science does. Business does. Family relationships do. If you don't have truth, you don't have trustworthiness and all sorts of things. So truth is absolutely essential. And for faith, it's incredibly important because it's the

ultimate reason to believe. In other words, we don't believe because it feels good. Or I hope it'll work for me or whatever. No, we ultimately believe because we are convinced that it is true. As I said earlier. And if it's true, it'd be true if nobody believed it. If it's false, it would be false if everybody relieved it because it's true. Now, there are two main ways that people look into that. G.K. Chesterton is an example of one way, looking at it the big picture way. And if you read Chesterton's description of his coming to faith in his book, Orthodoxy, it's almost like Archimedes' Eureka.

Suddenly he sees how this huge spike fits into a huge hole in the universe, and all the nuts and bolts fit into place. And they click, click, click, and his prose gets incredibly animated and exciting. It's a big picture coming together, and many people are like that. The alternative is C.S. Lewis, again, as you know, when one of his friends, a hard-boiled atheist, challenged him to read the Gospels. He read them, and he'd never discussed them and read them as a literary critic that he was. and when he did that close-up examination, of course Jesus was an incredible teacher ethically,

but he also said theological things, which are obscene if they weren't true. Was Jesus a liar? Was he a lunatic? Lewis looks at the evidence of all this and is convinced it is, in fact, that Jesus was who he said he was. And it was the close-knit, close-up evidence that convinced him and made him, as he said, the most reluctant convert in England. He didn't want it to be true. He wanted his independence. But he was convinced by the truth.

Do you remember specifically who challenged him to read the Gospels? I don't remember that detail that a friend of his did that. Oh, yes. It was, I've forgotten the man's name. I think it's in the book. but he was the hardest boiled atheist at Maudlin. And they were discussing all sorts of things, and he said, Jack, have you ever looked to the Gospels?

And Lewis said, no. But he was rather shaken because it was a hard-bitten atheist who told him to do that. And he, as a professional literary critic, literary historian, hadn't looked at the Gospels the way he looked at other literature. I've forgotten the man's name, but it was probably, by a hard-boiled atheist. I'm amazed I forgot that. So it's probably in surprise by joy.

I need to look it up. Similarly, I forgot about Chesterton's. I need to reread Orthodoxy. What one of the greatest books ever written by Chesterton, where he describes that. How old was Chesterton roughly when he found faith? Again, I'm not actually certain,

but I'm guessing in his 20s. Yeah. Because he said he went to art college, we're talking now, the signals of transcendence, he was flirt, this is 1890, the Slade School of Art in London. It was like postmodernism today. He was flirting with nihilism and the occult, but he said, I was stopped in my tracks by a dandelion. In other words, in all the darkness and ruin of a broken world, there was beauty. And we're not talking about a rose or the birth of a baby or a sunset in a Californian beach with a margarita in your hand or something like that.

We're talking about something very small like a dandelion. And he said, I've got to find why the world is wonderful. And yet broken two. What explains both? Well, it's funny because only Chesterton would say I was stopped by a dandelion. But then you realize that many of us are stopped by a Chesterton. that if God hadn't created Chesterton to be the kind of a figure who is stopped by the dandelion, he points us because he's Chesterton, because, you know, many of us just aren't that kind of a person.

But Chesterton was that kind of a person, and Lewis was that kind of a person. So it's fascinating to me how God doesn't just create the dandelion, but creates these characters in history who help us find faith. you mentioned the poet W.H. Auden and others. But it really is interesting when you think of the outsized role, somebody like a Chesterton or a Lewis have played in leading so many to faith. I've got a book coming out next year, Eric, on signals of transcendence with 10 different stories of people who all became seekers through a signal like that breaking into their lives and setting them off on the search. Well, I love it. And you've been that for many people, too. I don't want to embarrass you. But it's just a fact that you've written so many books dealing with these things, helping people. Because I do think, to be honest, most of us need help. And we are trying to find a path. We don't know who's safe to follow, who's safe to listen to. For me, it was, I don't know, a little Tolstoy, a little M. Scott Peck. It's interesting who we think. think we might trust to follow along this path. We're going to go to another break, but so many

have followed you and you've helped so many people over the years. There is nothing more important than this question, folks. What is the meaning of life? I'm talking to Oz Guinness. His book, The New Book, Brand New is called The Great Quest. We'll be right back. Hey, folks, I'm talking to Oz Guinness. The new book is The Great Quest. Invitation to an examined life in a sure path to meaning. So Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. He spent his life examining life. Obviously, he did not become a Christian or a believer in the God of the Jews. But at the end of your book, you talk about a time for commitments. In other words, we're to look at the evidence, but then allow ourselves to take what we see.

Well, obviously, the Christian faith is more than mere assent, something that's purely intellectual. It's the commitment of a whole person. And I tell the story which I love of a European in Kenya, writing about faith, and the Kukuyu warrior who is trying to translate for him, said, you've got entirely the wrong word. Your word, rather close to assent, is rather like a European with a good rifle, shooting a wild animal at hundreds of yards away. He said, Our word for faith is the same word we use of a lion pouncing, a great leap and all four legs enclosing the quarry. He said, that is faith, a whole person. Mind, yes, but will, yes, emotions, yes, everything, making that step of faith, not a leap, certainly not a leap in the dark,

but definitely a step of faith of the whole person. And of course, that's the stage you can see this and Sears Lewis and many others. When after we think that the search is all about us, we're looking for this, that, the other, sifting, weighing the evidence. Suddenly when we make the step of faith, we realize we've come to know the Lord, and he's been looking for us all along. And Sears Lewis writes about that very vividly. We've only got a minute or two left,

but it's interesting to me that we do have this enlightenment, rationalist view. Even when we're talking about faith, we often mean some kind of intellectual assent. So we say, well, the creed, you know, that's what I believe, the Nicene Creed. And, you know, what I often say is God doesn't care what you say you believe. He sees what you believe by how you live. But we often act as though it is just intellectual assent. No, that's right. I would add, though, Eric, where we began, you think of where humanity is today. Maybe the West in decline, singularity in the Chinese totalitarianism, all sorts of things. Many of the modern answers are literally bankrupt.

But when you look for high views of humanity, truth, freedom, justice, and so on, you see that the good news of Jesus is truly the best news ever. And so rather than thinking the meaning of life is for madmen and comedians, as we look around modern world on its answers, there's an incredible bankrupt of the alternatives. And you see that the Jewish and Christian faiths are truly the best news ever. And this is an extraordinary time for people to think through the meaning of life for themselves in order to lead a life worthy of life. Well, it's a beautiful invitation. And I do want to underscore what you've been saying.

many people don't know and we want to encourage them there are answers there is an answer and it's a beautiful answer there's nothing to be frightened about it's beautiful more beautiful than you can probably imagine and you have to have a little bit of courage to trust that that might be possible it is possible and it is true but I think that many people are they're a little bit afraid of what they'll find and I want to say it's beautiful it's It's not just true, but it's beautiful and it's good. It's a level of goodness we almost can't imagine. Asganis, my friend, thank you so much.

The book is The Great Quest, Invitation to an Examined Life and a sure path to meaning. Always a pleasure to be with you. Thanks, Eric.