Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 420 - Existentialism and Weed: I'm High and We're All Gonna Die!

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

In honor of the 420 episode, I decided to smoke a nice strong joint for this one while recording. And the topic pairs perfectly with weed: a philosophical discussion on the nature of life. Why are we here and what is the point of life? We'll summarize Friedrich Nietzsche's thoughts on nihilism, Albert Camus's musings on absurdism, and Jean-Paul Sartre's views on existentialism. Is there any real point to our lives? Does that matter? If there's no higher power watching over us or judging us, why even bother to try and be decent people? Why care at all about our fates? Getting deep today! And very, very high. Hail Nimrod! Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. And you get the download link for my secret standup album, Feel the Heat.

You wake up at 7am to the horrifying sound of your phone's alarm. You hit snooze, then you take 10-15 minutes to drag yourself out of bed, head towards the shower. You sit on the toilet, look at your phone before you hop in. You tell yourself you're only going to do that for like 5 minutes, and then you're going to start your day. But you doom scroll for about 15 minutes instead. You now take a hurried, panicked shower instead of a relaxing one.

You hop out, you quickly dry your hair, brush your teeth, check Instagram or TikTok or Facebook again even though you promised yourself you wouldn't waste more time. Then you eat some breakfast quickly. Then you doom scroll, tiny bit more, put on your shoes, look for your car keys, sit back on the toilet, actually take a shit this time, and then head out the door. You get in your car, realize you need gas, stop at the gas station, pay a surreal amount of money to fill up your tank halfway, then drive to work at a job you hate. You catch a glimpse of your tired eyes in the rear-view mirror, you look at the crumpled receipts and discarded coupons and empty Gatorade and Pepsi bottles on the floor, you look at the overpriced Starbucks coffee in the cup holder and the book you've still never

opened but tell everyone you've started reading in the passenger seat. You look at the person in the car next to you. They look equally as tired and empty as you and you think to yourself Why the fuck am I doing any of this? What is the point? Is this all life is? Just getting ready for work? Going to work? Seeing the same co-workers? Half of whom I would never hang out With for any other reason than I have to. Following people on socials I don't even care about. Drinking the same coffee, eating the same snacks, barely paying my bills, just a fucking hamster on a wheel, a rat in a cage, getting a little older each day, and then eventually dying as the world replaces me

with some other asshole living the exact same kind of life that no one will remember either. What is the fucking point of living? Is there nothing more than this? If any of this feels at least a little familiar, you my friend are having an existential crisis. Almost all of us have had one and if you haven't yet you probably will. I think it's inevitable. We are conscious beings cursed with a unique awareness of our own mortality. So we can't help but to question the purpose of our lives. And at one point or another, we all ask ourselves,

we're all going to die anyway. So what's the fucking point? Today, we're going to look at the three philosophies, philosophies that attempt to answer this question. Nihilism, existentialism, and absurdism. We'll examine Friedrich Nietzsche's work on nihilism and find out exactly what the fuck he meant when he said God is dead and we killed him. We'll get to know the world's first self-proclaimed existentialist and go

over some of his bizarre but pretty convincing theories about why things like trees and rocks and grass serve bigger purposes in life in some ways than humans do. And of course we'll get into the amusing and convoluted world of absurdism and explore why these ideologies, this ideology's creator once wrote, there is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. All that and more than another god-killing, suicide-pondering, philosophical, abstract-as-fuck, if I'm Sisyphus, where's my rock that I mentioned? This is the 420th episode and I'll be smoking weed throughout my Philosophical musings in honor of 420 and it just feels right to be high while I talk about all this heavy existential shit edition

Of time suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to time suck Well, happy Monday and welcome to the Cult of the Curious and I am so excited for this topic. For whatever reason, I needed this topic this week. I was slipping into some sort of existential crisis of my own this year a little bit without even realizing it. Now feeling much more calm and at peace with my place in the universe. I'm Dave Cummins, a master sucker, professional weirdo, mush-mouthed, madman, meat sack, pretty worried about what's going on over at Joey Botafouca's Long Island Lolita Group home

for troubled and horny teen girls. Pothead. And you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, hail Lucifina, praise be to good boy Bojangles and glory be to Triple M. Been too long since we heard our songbird. Just came across a video from a 1993 Kenny Loggins live album, Outside from the Redwoods.

Recorded that summer on a makeshift stage with a big stand, or I guess within a big stand of giant redwood trees on a sunny June day. And Michael McDonald, Triple M, joined Kenny for what a fool believes. Try and watch the whole video online and at least not smile once. I don't think you can do it. Uh, here's just a little taste. Oh yeah.

One of the Doobie brothers. Perfect for a Doobie episode. Two soulful dudes. Sweet facial hair singing in the woods with a great band behind them. Gonna get real heavy on the saxophone in a second. There you go. From the mindless as a Joey Budafuco last week to a discussion of the very meaning of life this week.

Nimrod is so pleased. There's nothing too dumb or too smart. Can't talk about here. Real quick, one thing before I get into all this and start smoking. I hope everybody got their Bad Magic Street Team 2024 stickers who wanted them. Can't talk about here. Real quick, one thing before I get into all this and start smoking. I hope everybody got their Bad Magic Street Team 2024 stickers who wanted them. Just going to talk about this for seconds. We'll move on.

Stickers became available as this episode released. Like previous years, the coolest winning picture of your sticker slap will win one lucky person a $200 merch credit. You've got to slap some stickers around your neck of the woods. We'll pick the winner November 4th. As usual there was 500 free sticker packs of 10 available. You just got to pay shipping. First come first serve. Hopefully they're not gone by the time you're listening. Once you receive your stickers all you have to do again slap them all over the place. Snap a pic of where you put them. Post that pic on Instagram or Facebook or both. Use the hashtag

BadMagicStreetTeam and that's that's it goal again is just to have fun Don't do anything too stupid. Let's grow this amazing bad magic community one sticker at a time Also again, the limited edition time suck collectible cards are back to new sets You can purchase volumes one through four in the store now bad magic productions comm episodes one through 200 and those collectible cards Now it's 420 time. Number of fans wrote in asking if in honor of 420 I'd be smoking weed for this episode. Uh, yeah. And it, uh, this weed is so much stronger than the weed I smoked in high school and college.

Uh, I just read, some article popped up in my news feed. About how weed back then was usually comprised of between 1.5 and 4% THC. Those hippies back at Woodstock, smoking weed that was around 1.5% THC mark. The shit today is usually closer to 20 to 30%. 28% is in the pre-rolls I'm doing. I got two Redbird half gram pre-rolls ready to to rock One is usually more than enough for me to get stuck on the ceiling I'm planning on smoking between one and two over the course this episode. See how I can function and Again, it is the perfect episode for this right? Let's get deep Let's pontificate question the meaning of life just like I've done so many times with weed before just wasn't doing a presentation

while doing it. So I think it's about time to light up and take a few puffs. Oh and we're attempting to put this episode on video like we used to. Just this one. Because you know I might look a lot crazier than normal. Hopefully it'll work out. I'm not used to setting it all up by myself but I think I got it. Here's the lighter.

Oh there we go. There we go. Okay, about ready to hit this button. Mm hmm. Get it in the lungs. Let's go. Yeah, gonna kick off things today by defining a few different philosophies that deal with the meaning or meaningless of life. After that, we'll head down today's very broad Time Suck Timeline, during which we'll get to know where, when, why, and from whom each of these philosophies originated in the first place. Excuse me for a second.

Specifically, I would hold on my lungs longer, but I'll be sweating a lot. I don't want you to have to wait too long for me to talk. Specifically, we'll be going in chronological order. The major works produced by Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, Camus, I think is how they say his very French name. Jean-Paul Sartre. And talking about how all of their theories are actually connected. The reason we're only focusing on these three guys is because each of them has gone down in history

as the father of their individual philosophies. I'm gonna put this guy out and have a little more in a bit. You just wait there, friend. Friedrich Nietzsche was the most prominent philosopher to ever study nihilism. Albert Camus, his name fucks me up, because it's spelled C-A-M-U-S. Camus. This is how I read it. No, it's got to be Camus. He literally invented the concept of absurdism and Jean-Paul Sartre

single-handedly wrote what is known as the Bible of existentialism. Of course there were hundreds of other philosophers that studied the same topics as Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, but none had as significant an impact or nearly as cool of a mustache as Nietzsche's sweet sweet stash. Or they didn't look as cool puffing on a cigarette as Camus. Or they didn't have an eye that looked quite as far to the right as consistently as Sartre. And I'm being silly, but Nietzsche did have a dope stash. Camille did look pretty cool brooding with a cigarette dangling out of his sultry lips and Sartre's right eyeball had a mind of its own. But don't focus on that.

The bottom line for only focusing on these three dudes is really because we simply don't have enough time to talk about every single person that has ever contributed to the development of nihilism, absurdism, and existentialism. That would probably take years. Then I'm guessing two, maybe three of you tops would want to spend as much time with me about going over all of that. Today I'm gonna try and give you a basic rundown of where these philosophies come from, how they're different from one another. I hope you like going all over this as much as I do. As I did prepping for it. Fair warning about today's episode. Yeah again it is probably gonna get a little

messy. Gonna get a little weird. Might even be depressing in moments and this has nothing to do with me being high. Also hopefully very empowering, uplifting in other moments. Maybe it'll be the most exciting thing you've ever heard. Maybe you'll feel less alone in such an amazing way. That'd be cool. You know that you're not the only meaning or truth seeker. Not the only curious, very curious soul burdened with such heavy nature of existence questions. It should at least be entertaining. But that's what this is about. That's what philosophy has always been about. Meaning. What is the meaning

of life? What is the nature of existence? What is our purpose? It's impossible to speculate about the purpose and or purposelessness of existence as an itty-bitty human being on a big fat rock that's floating through the infinite cosmos without feeling at least some confusion or doubt or amusement. So bear with me today while we try to answer the age-old question, we're all gonna die anyway, so what's the point? And the timing of this episode, very interesting to me. One of our awesome researchers, Molly Bach, suggested this topic a few months ago, and then she got busy with life, going back to school to get her doctorate in philosophy.

And then she got busy with life going back to school to get her doctorate in philosophy I've been having her focus more on scared to death and this topic ended up on the back burner Then Molly finished a preliminary research on all of this. She did an amazing job by the way, but forgot to send it in I forgot to ask for it Cued to a few days before I recorded this and I was really scrambling trying to think of what topic would pair nicely for a 420 episode didn't want to do a true crime episode. I didn't want to worry about laughing too hard at shit that maybe I shouldn't be laughing at. Y'all paranoid. Oh man, but what are people thinking? I don't want to tackle a cult or historical subject either and maybe fall

into the the same old thought patterns because I've done so many similar subjects for so long now. I wanted to do something entirely different. And as I'm thinking all these thoughts, I go to get a haircut and have one of the most existential conversations I've ever had in my life. With someone I've been an acquaintance of for a while, but not necessarily like a close friend, you just kind of came out of nowhere in this conversation.

We've never had a conversation like this before. This guy's cutting my hair, my barber, and we just got into it. My appointment ended up going way over time and I didn't even bring it up. Andrew, you said I might talk about you and now I am. Andrew is talking about his return to the Catholic Church, the renewed importance of his faith, you know, when it comes to meaning and morality. He's talking a lot about what objective truths are out there. How do we know what is true?

What is real? What is, you know, the point? All those things. You got deep real quick. And I talked about from a non-religious but spiritual perspective what I base my morality in, right? What truth anchors me. We both came with the same topic. What is the point of life? What is the meaning of life from very different perspectives? His morality anchor is Jesus. Mine is harder to put a name on. Maybe an evolutionary compulsion towards ethical behavior. A little wordy, we'll have to do. Basically, we both based our morality, and I'm grossly oversimplifying here for the sake of time,

in some version of the golden rule, doing to others, you know, as you would have them doing to you. You know, treat others like you want to be treated, but with an important difference. He believed that you should be good to others because that's what God has asked of us. You should be obedient to God's commands because he has given you this life and suffered for your sins to give you eternal life. Not just that, but that's like the prime should be the primary motivation. I believe that you should be good to others not because any God has laid out any rules or is watching you or may reward you or might punish you, but simply because again for lack of a better word or

phrase it's just the right thing to do which I know is a bit vague but I feel like sometimes vague can also be correct. I'm not sure where our conscience comes from I think most of our impulses are evolutionarily based. It makes sense to me that ancestors who live by a strict or moral code were maybe trusted by other ancestors, more stable, therefore more likely to accumulate wealth, maintain a consistent social circle, be held in the esteem of others around us, therefore in general, easier to find a mate, replicate your genetic code. And like the people who just don't want to have any kind of moral compass, you know, if society was primarily composed of them, we wouldn't

even have society, because they would just fucking destroy everything. Okay, so back and forth we go like about things like this. We kept circling back to the same age-old question. If one doesn't find answers to the most puzzling and perhaps important questions in life then where does one look to find answers such as why are we here? Like what is the meaning, the purpose of life? You know and where does one look to find the purpose the meaning? Even if even if one is religious is there anywhere they can look in addition to religion to help themselves understand purpose and meaning So we had this big conversation as I'm walking out of the barbershop I checked my text messages Molly has just sent me this topic and I just had this like ah This little epiphany its faith destiny kismet probably fucking coincidence, that I should talk about all of this today. So whatever the reason I knew when this topic came

in, I really wanted it to be the 420 episode and here we are. I don't expect to answer the big questions today, but only maybe give you some food for thought, may help you arrive at your own answers, or perhaps make you question the answers you thought you'd already arrived at in some important ways. Also hope to make all this funny.. Also going to have to take a little sips of water, which I never do on this show. But you trust me, you're going to want these lips are going to sound worse and worse. I just looked over my screen, Kenny Loggins stuck there from the video being paused. And it was like as the camera's transitioning and it looks like he has two heads. So that's super cool.

If you search for the definition of nihilism, Google will tell you that it is the rejection of all religious and moral principles and the belief that life is meaningless. It will also tell you that some synonyms for nihilism include negativity, cynicism, pessimism, skepticism, and atheism. Although some of that is technically true, most of it is very much not true. So what the fuck, Google? You're AI, clearly struggling to understand philosophy, just like we lowly meat sacks do. Yes, nihilism is the belief that life is meaningless, but that belief is also wildly different than

pessimism, as counterintuitive as that might sound. In fact, some argue that nihilism is actually closer to optimism. And yes, the father of nihilism, Friedrich Nietzsche, once said God is dead and therefore religion is meaningless, but he also saw the death of God as an opportunity for people to create their own meaning without him. And yes, nihilists believe that life is devoid of value or worth, as do many skeptics. But while the skeptic doesn't believe that life has meaning because he has yet to see and evidence that it does, the nihilist wouldn't trust

evidence if he did see it. This is because at their very core the nihilist understands that nothing can be known or communicated because nothing has any objective meaning whatsoever. The word nihilism comes from the Greek word nihil which translates to nothing or I don't speak Greek. Nihil? Nihil? Nihil? Uh, that was also the root word for annihilate. I think it's now. Which in English means to destroy something completely or to bring it to nothingness. The exact origins of the word nihilism as a philosophical term are pretty up for debate.

But everyone can agree on who made it popular. Mr. Friedrich Nietzsche. A German classical scholar, playwright, critic, and obviously philosopher. In the simplest of terms, Nietzsche defined nihilism as the consequence of the downfall of Christian morality in the modern Western world. Hey, that sounds pretty fucking weird, so let me explain. For thousands and thousands of years, the church was the nucleus around which the entire Western world revolved. But then starting in approximately 1650 CE, humanity suddenly entered a state of profound transformation. This period of change lasted

until the middle of the 20th century. It is known as the modern age. And if you're confused and thinking, whoa, don't we live in the modern age? If we're not modern, where are we? Are we alive? Did the world end last century? Oh, fuck. Has everything ever just been a simulation? God damn you reptiles! Release me from the Matrix! Why need you snap out of it? You're freaking out. You're too high for this episode. No, we're fine. We're living in the postmodern world. But really man, we're just living. It's just a world, and these are all just descriptors and semantics, just words with assigned arbitrary meaning to. Don't overthink it. Anyway, the modern age people started inventing more and

more things making our lives easier in society more efficient things like telephones, light bulbs, toilets, submarines, internal combustion engines, automobiles, batteries, typewriters, silicone dildos, photography, cinema, x-ray machines, adult cinema, rifles, airplanes, garden hoses, radios, keychains, bottle openers attached to them and a lot of other stuff. I feel like I could use a better example of photography. Because I feel like definitely... well, no, that wasn't invented during the modern age. Never mind. I second-guess myself. I'm a little bit high already. During this period, we also started studying ourselves more effectively than ever before.

We began to gain a profound understanding of the intricacies of the human body and mind. began to gain a profound understanding of the intricacies of the human body and mind. We learned how to cure diseases and prevent plagues, how to observe the other planets from Earth and calculate the resistance from us, and we learned about Earth itself and the organisms that live on it, where they came from and how they evolved over time. Because of this constant stampede of advancement and innovation, over the course of the modern age, society began to value scientific authority more than they valued the authority of the church Which was revolutionary that had literally never happened in the world before I mean sure there's always been skeptics and doubters But science is a much newer concept than religion born much later and since the beginning of the scientific method

Science took a backseat to religion for almost everybody until very very recently in the grand scheme of things and that led in all likelihood to more people falling into various states of existential crisis than ever before. More and more people no longer being told this is why you are here and this is the purpose of your life. Hard stop. Don't even worry about it. Don't even think about it again. Put it on the shelf. And when you remove that meaning, you leave a vacuum. And it's only natural that people then scramble to replace it. Which can be pretty disastrous actually. Just look at any one of our cult episodes for that.

What do literally all cults, no matter what ideology or religion they're based in, have in common? They're made up of people who have lost a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives. And they're looking elsewhere to find it desperately. And they end up falling for the empty promises and lies of a cult leader. By the time Friedrich Nietzsche was born in the kingdom of Prussia in 1844, now Germany, Christian morality was in a state of freefall and scientific rationale was at the most powerful state it had ever been. As a result of this cultural shift, many people began suffering from the psychological condition, as the philosopher called it, of nihilism. In his 1914 book, The Will to Power, Nietzsche wrote, what does nihilism mean?

It means that the highest values are losing their value. There is no destination. There is no answer to the question, to what purpose? Through nihilism, thorough nihilism, third try's a charm on that word. Thorough nihilism is the conviction that life is absurd and it also includes the view that we have not the smallest right to assume the existence of transcendental objects or things in themselves which would be either divine or morality incarnate.

Before its decline in Prussia and elsewhere, Christian morality had long provided mankind with four major advantages. The first, according to Nietzsche, is that it made life feel valuable, because how you live it will determine whether you spend the rest of eternity chilling in heaven or rotting in hell. Thank you, Striper, for the water break. Yeah, we're all the hero of our own stories, the protagonist, and storytelling, especially in drama. Stakes are important.

If you want people to feel invested in your story, you've got to give them serious stakes, give the story stakes. What are the consequences for the central character or characters not accomplishing what they're trying to accomplish? If they don't find whoever killed their spouse You know they will go to prison if they don't raise a hundred thousand dollars They will lose their business if they don't stop Thanos all life in the universe will end if they don't claim the Iron Throne Their head will be chopped off What are the ultimate stakes?

Losing your soul not as your life your soul and the fight to keep it to not let the devil take it right the highest Stakes you could come up with and those stakes give the dramas of our lives so much meaning. In other words, no matter how insignificant we feel sometimes, Christian morality assures us that we are actually super important, very important. Everything we do has cosmic supernatural consequences. The second advantage to Christian morality, according to Nietzsche, was that it grants the world a certain perfection. Despite its sorrow and evil, it makes evil seem full of meaning.

Essentially, Christian dogma tells us that there is a reason for all the suffering and wretchedness in the world. It's not pointless. It's not just happening arbitrarily. It's part of a divine plan, as mysterious as it might seem. And those who suffer will find redemption in the life after this one the only life that matters This idea brings a tremendous amount of solace to a tremendous amount of people When someone close to you dies a Christian may come for you by saying that it's all part of God's plan

And there's a greater force at work and that they're in heaven You know, I've always honestly been jealous of those who seem to have unwavering faith in the universal truth of all this What a beautiful way to deal with the world full of so much suffering, you know, it seems so random. The third advantage of Christian morality was that it provided mankind with the knowledge of absolute values, thus making it possible for us to perceive the world around us accurately and to understand our place in it. And this means within Christian morality truth is not subjective. There is no this is my truth versus this is your truth.

There is only truth. There's only God's truth. Good and evil clearly defined in hundreds of verses explicitly telling believers what to do, how to worship, how to treat your husband, how to treat your wife, your children, your neighbors, etc. Right? What not to do. Ten commandments tell you what not to do. Jesus tells you what's not to do. There's a lot of comfort in all of that structure. Kids study after study have shown, prefer structure to no structure when it comes to parenting styles. As weird as it might sound, kids like knowing that there will be consequences. They will be punished if they exhibit certain behavior and that they will be rewarded if they exhibit other behavior.

And we adults, we're really not that much different. I would compare it to playing a game, a card game, a board game, video game, whatever. You know, we play those games to win, to avoid mistakes, to make the best moves, to get the most points or the equivalent. Like what would be the point in playing poker for example if everyone won every hand Always a tie no one ever made the money, but no one ever lost the money Would it just feel completely pointless? I mean of course it would because it would be pointless It wouldn't be fun life is the same knowing that you can fuck it up and lose everything

Gives not fucking it up and gaining something some serious meaning some serious purpose It was the game of life meaning. The fourth and final advantage of Christian morality according to Nietzsche is that it makes it really tricky to get your dick sucked in your pussy licked and to do what Nietzsche called butt stuff but thanks to Christianity not being really sex positive when you do get say your dick sucked outside of marriage no less you come harder because that feeling of shame and naughtiness gives it a bit more spice. Feel like you're getting away with some real taboo shit. When you when you say according to Nietzsche, come on them titties. Knowing that your sperm

will never ever make a baby, being wrong, feels so right. Hello, Sophia. So stupid. Sorry. I might have said that as opposed to Nietzsche. You knew that. What Nietzsche said was that Christian morality prevents man from despising himself as man, from turning against life, and from being driven to despair by knowledge. It is a self-preservative measure. In short, Nietzsche wrote, Christian morality was the great antidote against practical and theoretical nihilism. Ah, yes. What he's saying here is that walking away from religion and all the structure provides,

walking out into the proverbial wilderness cannot just be utterly terrifying, it can destroy you. I saw this a lot growing up. There was a crowd of people in my little town, a lot of my friends' parents who would, you know, really seem to have their shit together when they were going to church. They would go listen to a sermon on Sunday, go to a Bible study on Wednesday, volunteer to help out with some church functions or some other day, on some other days. They'd be sober, they'd be faithful to their partners, holding on to, you know, steady job, etc., etc.

And then at some point, for whatever reason, they'd stop going to church, they would just walk away from it and they'd really go off the wagon. They'd party hard, cheat on their spouse, lose their job, you know, etc etc. They go off the fucking rails. Hit some version of rock bottom and then go back to the church and begin to thrive again. They seem to truly need the type of structure the church provided for them. Walking around out in the darkness, no longer having a list of rules based in declarations of prophets of a supposed omnipotent and parental deity, right? They were lost.

Where do I go? No one's telling me where to go. They seem to need meaning and purpose to come from an external source rather than from an internal one. As a perpetual wanderer out in this type of darkness, yeah, you get a bit scary, right? Without that moral and purpose assigning structure, I definitely felt lost on many occasions, Had my fair amount of existential crises. Okay, we're gonna break all this stuff down more in the timeline. But basically, all of that was to say without Christian morality, there to imbue life with objective importance to give us a reason for all of our suffering to make

the world understandable and to prevent us from falling into some pit of despair and getting lost down there where there's nothing standing between us and the possible cold hard truth that life is completely and utterly meaningless in any cosmic sense. Now, aside from actually being an nihilist, there are two ways that we can deal with this horrifying realization and escape the nihilistic state, existentialism or absurdism. To be an existentialist is to believe that even though there is no objective meaning of life we can still create our own subjective meaning through a combination of free will and personal responsibility. But absurdists think all that's a bunch of bullshit. They believe that pursuing any form of meaning is pointless because even if we are somehow able to create a sense of subjective purpose regarding our individual lives, it will eventually be nullified by

our own inevitable deaths. According to the absurdist, the only thing we can do is embrace the absurd by confronting it head on. So what path would you choose? Are you a nihilist, an existentialist, an absurdist? To help you answer that question, let's dive into the timeline to learn more about what all this means. And I should probably smoke a bit more. But I'm sure that's a really good idea. I'm going to do that when I push the timeline button.

I'm very thankful I'm here. Very happy to be alive and be able to get as stoned as I want. Oh, smoke weed helps me really understand the meaning, the meaning of life. Before I light up, how about we take our first of two mid-show sponsor breaks? Thanks for listening to those ads. If you don't want to hear any more, get the entire catalog ad free and more by signing up to be a Spacer on Patreon for $5 a month. And now, for real, I I'm gonna jump into this timeline. Shrap on those boots soldier we're marching down a time suck timeline.

Okay smoking a little bit more here and then we're going to talk about some stuff that happened in the 1840s. The fundamentals of nihilism, existentialism, absurdism. First established by Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard. That's a fun name to say. Soren, who are you? Soren Kierkegaard! In the 1840s, during the final years of the Romantic era in Europe. I'm going to have one more little puff and then I'm talking about the Romantic era. And I'll put this out again. Yeah, the Romantic era, also known as Romanticism, was an intellectual and artistic movement that emphasized the importance of chaos over harmony, emotion over reason, the subjective over the objective. A lot of dudes in long trousers and hats

and single-breasted jackets and frilly shirts underneath with thick mustaches and big bushy sideburns and women in floor-length dresses with dropped shoulders, arm-hugging sleeves, fitted bodices and corsets with long hair intricately braided in the back and then isolated long curls dangling down the front talking passionately about life while sipping gin cocktails in new and exciting ways in ornate ballrooms.

Sounds pretty cool actually. Most of the 1840s doesn't sound cool at all to me, but that sounds pretty cool as far as to go back to. One of the most crucial aspects of romanticism was an elevated appreciation for the natural world and how we as humans are all connected to it. Soren Kierkegaard disagreed. He argued that we as meat sacks are fundamentally singular and solitary beings with no real connections to anything in this world, including each other. He believed we only have one real purpose in life and that it is to achieve true selfhood. And true selfhood can only be achieved through a relationship with God not through a relationship with the world He believed that we meet sacks are the product of a relationship between the infinite our souls and the finite our bodies

So unless we cultivate an understanding of both aspects of existence Spiritual and the physical will never realize absolute selfhood. The first great existentialists also believe that the only way to get people to come to God was by essentially making them so fucking depressed about the utter meaningless of their lives here on earth, that they then take a leap of faith into the eternal and embrace the in the embracing arms of Sky Daddy who promises that all of our precious egos will never die. While the romantics encouraged unity with the natural world, Kierkegaard wanted to make people feel alienated from it. He wanted them to despair over their inherent nothingness and complete and utter isolation

from everything and everyone so they could then focus on the divine. In his first book, Either Or, which would many many many years later, be the title of a fantastic Elliott Smith album, Rest in Peace, Elliott a beautiful troubled soul who seemed perpetually in a state of existential crisis actually, there's a list in there getting ready for this, Kierkegaard explains that although life is meaningless unless we achieve true selfhood, it's still very possible to live life without it. For example, you could live your life pursuing only immediate satisfaction and instant reward, letting material distractions and your desire for pleasure guide your every move, be very

surfacey. You can live without conviction or purpose or direction and I think so many people do live that life. I think so many of us keep ourselves perpetually very busy jumping from whatever gives us pleasure to the next thing that gives us pleasure no matter how fleeting and vapid, just continually distracting ourselves from taking a moment to look deeper, to look inward, to be still, stare into the abyss, find out what might be staring back. Kierkegaard describes such a life without selfhood like this. Let me add some brooding, thinking man's background music to this longer passage really gets in a philosophical mood. You are a hater of all activity in life very reasonably for

before there can be any meaning and activity there must be continuity that is what your life lacks that's okay nope that is the wrong musical choice for this serious discussion it's not doing it for me. Let's switch it up. Put on something a little more serious, a little more philosophical. He continues, you occupy yourself with your studies. It is true, but it is only for your own sake, and it is done with as little ambition as possible. For the rest, you are idle like the laborers in the gospel. You stand in the marketplace, you thrust your hands into your pockets. You look out of life. Okay, that's bad choice as well. That was worse. I don't know why I thought circus music or Yoko Ono would mesh well with this.

Listening to too much Yoko, I will say great way to help bring about an existential crisis. A question like why is Yoko fabulously wealthy while I'm poor, can truly bring about a heavy, heavy state of existential despair? Not even joking. Okay, here's the real music. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Oh yes, this is perfect. Kierkegaard continues with, Then you take repose and despair. Nothing concerns you. You will not get out of the way of anything. You

say, if one were to throw a tile at me from the roof, I wouldn't get out of the way. You're like a dying man. You die daily. Not in the serious significance, usually attached to this word, but life has lost its reality. You let everything pass you by. It makes no impression. But now suddenly there comes something that grips you, an idea, a situation, a smile from a young girl, and then you are alert. You behave in life as say you were accustomed to do in a crowd, working your way into the thickest group, contriving, if possible, to be pressed up above the others. And when you are up, you make yourself as comfortable as possible, and so also you let

yourself be carried through life. Although existentialism would later question, doubt, even outright reject the existence of a watchful structure providing parental deity, Kierkegaard's work on the anxiety humans feel about our lives, fundamental lack of meaning, became the foundation from which the philosophy would develop. In 1882, one of the western world's most famous philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche, wrote his most famous line, God is dead and we have killed him. The quote comes from his poem, The Parable of a Madman,

in which a lunatic runs into a crowded market screaming that he's looking for God. The people in the market make fun of him, crying out that maybe God got lost or is hiding or is on vacation. The madman then tells them, Where has God gone? I shall tell you. We have killed him, you and I.

We are his murderers. But how have we done this? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither it is moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling, backward, sideward, forward in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not strained as though an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning?

Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? God's too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead and we have killed him. How shall we murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all

that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed and whosoever shall be born after us. For the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."

Now Nietzsche didn't actually think that somebody snuck up to heaven and pistol-whipped Sky Daddy John Wickstown. Now Nietzsche didn't actually think that somebody snuck up to heaven and pistol-whipped Sky Daddy John Wickstile. But he did think that through the process of modernization, we did kill for many the notion of God. The more scientifically advanced we became as a species, he reasoned the more we realized that all the stuff we once attributed to God could actually be attributed to something else. Something more rational. Divinity was no longer needed to explain our surroundings, no longer needed for us to exist. For example, up until the 19th century the western world largely believed, as many still do, in creationism, which is the idea that the world and everything in it was created exactly how they

exist today through the divine actions of God. Although aspects of creationism can be found in multiple religions like Judaism, Islam, even Hinduism. It's mostly associated here with Christianity. Adherents of Christian creationism believe that the story told in the Genesis, Book of Genesis, Chapter 1, where God makes everything on heaven and earth in just seven days, is the literal unimpeachable truth. In addition to providing a very concrete definitive explanation of how we came to be, creationism also provides an explanation of why we came to be. It tells us that our human lives matter because God intentionally gave us life. And because of that, we're special and important.

We are God's most special creation, right? What a great ego stroke. Sure, that tree is important. That whale is important. Those dogs are important, but they're not nowhere near as important as me, right? They're not as important as I am. I'm the designated shepherd and shall hold dominion over my finest, you know, creation or God's finest creations. In 1859 Charles Darwin really tried to fuck up this worldview when he published On the Origin of Species and it wouldn't mean exaggeration to say his book was pretty earth-shattering. In it he explained how all living organisms are descendants of a common ancestor, a single cell

organism, and that different species have adapted and evolved over time through a process called natural selection. When Darwin published this he didn't just provide scientific proof that evolution was real, he provided proof that God was probably not real. Or at least not in how so many have been taught to believe. He showed humanity that we aren't alive because God purposefully created in places here, fully formed in some literal Garden of Eden looking like we look now, but rather because of a essentially a fluke of nature that we're here by some cosmic accident. Which means we're also here without a purpose or at least some

divinely bestowed purpose. And that's a bitter pill to swallow. And if that's true, God can't be real because how could a God allow us to endure such a painful and horrifying existence as one without meaning? Therefore, God is dead. And Darwin wasn't the only person fueling this line of reasoning in the 19th century. The same thing kept happening over and over again during this period. It keeps happening again and again today. A new scientific advancement comes along, provides veritable evidence of something that used to be shakily attributed

without evidence but rather unquestioning faith to the divine. Another broader example is the sun. Many of the ancient Greeks thought the sun was literally a giant glowing chariot driven through the sky by the god Helios. The Norse Vikings believed in something very similar, except in their story. The chariot was driven by the goddess Sol. She was being chased through the sky by a giant wolf named Skol. In ancient Egypt, like Sol and Helios, the sun was thought to be raw. A powerful deity, considered to be the most important of all the gods. Eventually around 400 BCE, Greek philosopher, Anak- oh this guy's name.

I'm gonna take a little water for the tenses. Anaxagoras, oh fuck, fucking nailed it I think, who knows, claimed that the sun was not a flaming chariot but instead a big old ball of fire. He was quoted as saying, everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god but a great great rock, and the sun is a hot rock. Over time as both humanity and our technology evolved, we discovered that the sun is not a rock on fire, but a yellow dwarf star comprised of around 73% hydrogen, 25% helium, 2% heavier elements. Oxygen, carbon, neon, iron, spectral class is GV2, with GV2

indicating the surface temperature roughly 5,505 degrees Celsius, 5,778 Kelvins. Totally. I understood everything I just said. In the process of discovering the truth about the Sun, the old gods it was once thought to be like Sol, Helios, and Ra were proven false. In other words, they were killed. They died. We killed them just like for many, but not all. We killed the Christian God. Nietzsche argued that following the decline of the Church's influence in the West when secularism was on the rise, that's when nihilism first reared its ugly head. Nihilism now appears, he said, not because the sorrows of existence are greater than they were before,

but because people have grown suspicious of the meaning of the suffering in existence. It seems as though there were no meaning in existence at all, as though everything were in vain. That's nihilism. State of knowing that God is not real, therefore life is meaningless, and everything we have ever done has essentially been for nothing. Not a fun club to be a member of. Not going to inspire the the same fun sing-alongs, you know, and hymns. They're going to sound way different. matters nothing at all we're alone adrift at sea to the fucking point I once thought that I found God, he was dead, dead and pointless like me.

Oh, this sucks, fuck my face. What am I doing? I should bash my head with a rock. Yeah, you get it. OK. Although Nietzsche is known as the father of nihilism, most of his early work on the philosophy is actually about how corrosive and dangerous it is. He wasn't like, oh,

we all gotta do this. This is awesome. Get in here, guys. He believed that nihilism was, due to the death of God in the modern times, an inevitable state of being for everyone in Europe during the period. However, he also strongly believed, at least at first, that it was a dangerously depressing state of being, right? We needed to overcome, to replace, that's why he was studying it. He wanted to find a solution to the pervasive problem of nihilism. Because if we didn't, he worried it would eventually destroy all moral, religious, metaphysical belief and value systems in the world. Literally would lead to the destruction of mankind as we know it. He could be like a lot of deep, intense thinkers. Little little melodramatic.

Nihilism according to Nietzsche had a snowball effect. Every purely moral valuation, as for instance the Buddhistic terminates in nihilism. It is supposed that one can get along with the morality bereft of a religious background, but in this direction the road to nihilism is opened. There is nothing in religion which compels us to regard ourselves as valuing creatures. Nietzsche spent the majority of his adult life contemplating the inevitability of nihilism, searching for a cure for it. That was until he lost his mind. The void stared back in its gaze bequeathed madness. January 3rd 1889 Friedrich Nietzsche went insane

or at least that's how the history books describe it. He did seem to go insane though for sure. The philosopher had been wandering the Piazza Carlo, Piazza Carlo Berettara Antonio Vendetta in a tour in Italy when he saw a horse getting flogged by its owner horrified by this display brutality unable to bear a second more. He ran over to the horse, threw his arms around its neck to protect it, and then after a brief commotion, Nietzsche, just 46, collapsed to the ground. Maybe took a shock to the head with that whip or something. Some sources say it was his landlord who later found him lying in the square, brought him

home. Others say the police escorted him out of the piazza for causing a public disturbance, so maybe he kind of snapped before it. Either way, almost everyone refers to that day as the day Friedrich Nietzsche lost his fucking marbles. For the next 11 years, until he died in 1900, Nietzsche was virtually incomprehensible, delusional, entirely in the grips of serious mental illness. So what drove him mad?

Marijuana, the devil's lettuce destroyer of psyches. So what drove him mad for real though? Too much thinking about nihilism? Or some chemicals in his brain shifting about? Originally doctors decreed that Nietzsche's mental breakdown was caused by tertiary syphilis, which was a popular and often wrong diagnosis today for a variety of different ailments.

And maybe he had a super fucking dirty ding dong. Syphilis is a bacterial sexually transmitted infection that have gone untreated can cause severe health problems. I sound like I'm reading an ad there. It can cause severe health problems. Nowadays it can be cured with the fucking syphilis dick weasel cure. I don't know. Going off script. Going off my notes. But it can be cured nowadays by antibiotics, mainly penicillin. But back then the infection was, uh, treated with mercury. And that's not a good medicine because ingesting a lot of mercury can really, uh, kind of warp your thinking noodle.

Too much mercury, mercury can lead to tremors, insomnia, memory loss, neuromuscular efforts, efforts, effects, Jesus Christ, headaches, all sorts of cognitive and motor dysfunction and more. Tertiary syphilis is the most advanced, I wish this was a commercial now, like this is, you're like, God, why did they hire this guy to talk about the cure for tertiary syphilis? It's a terrible commercial, it's been going on for like 10 minutes. Tertiary syphilis is the most advanced stage of the infection and can also negatively affect function of the brain along with multiple other areas of the body including the heart, blood vessels, and nervous system.

Recently, Nietzsche's syphilis diagnosis has come into question due to a lack of evidence. No one's seen his fucking wiener in over a hundred and, I don't know, 20 years. 1996, one scholar proposed that the philosopher actually suffered from manic depressive illness with periodic psychosis, followed by vascular dementia. In 2003, others argued that the real cause of Nietzsche's mental decline was a slow-growing tumor on the right side of his brain. Other ailment possibilities have been theorized, while still others argue there's no medical explanation for Nietzsche's mental breakdown. That it wasn't an underlying disease or latent infection or slow-growing cancer that drove the philosopher insane, but it was his philosophy itself! Dun dun duuun! Nihilism destroyed his brain. Interestingly Nietzsche often wrote about madness, both in his official work and in his personal writings.

In his 1881 book, The Dawn of Day, Nietzsche wrote extensively about the relationship between madness and genius, how humanity is long would inclined to believe that within insanity there is a little bit of the divine. Too bad he never got the chance to be introduced to psychedelics. I wonder if he thought LSD, DMT, etc. gave you temporary access to a bit of the divine. I bet he would have. Too bad he never got a hit of Joy. Joy is as strong as this one too. In the Dawn of Day, Nietzsche references those people throughout history who long to see

past the veil of what they've been told and explains how the only way for them to do that if they are not already insane themselves is to quote, feign madness or actually to become insane. Uh oh. I've longed to see past the veil since I was in junior high, if not earlier. Does that make me insane? earlier does that make me insane what does this make me insane that's terrible oh boy okay let's see here Nietzsche believed that in hundreds of different cultures insanity has been the

vessel to which holy men or spiritual advisors gain their superior knowledge. He wrote, The means of becoming a medicine man among the Indians, a saint among Christians of the Middle Ages, a shaman among Greenlanders, a witch doctor among Brazilians, are the same in essence. Senseless fasting,

continual abstention from sexual intercourse, isolation in a wilderness, ascending a mountain or a pillar, sitting on an aged willow that looks out upon a lake, thinking of absolutely nothing but what may give rise to ecstasy or mental derangements. Fascinating. So true, right? Take a walk out of the wilderness alone until you lose touch with reality, start having some visions, and you come back and share those with the group.

Or just sit on your couch for about six hours after eating six or so grams of penis envy psilocybin magic mushrooms. The wilderness will come to you. Nietzsche again wrote this long before the Western world, really knew about psychedelics, but what he's talking about here is basically the same thing. Ayahuasca is thought to have been used by indigenous people in what is now Peru, Colombia, Brazil, and Ecuador for spiritual insight into the natural world for at least the last millennium. Similarly, the Native American Church has used peyote as a sacramental and means of conveying with

departed loved ones and higher powers for years. Various tribes have probably been using peyote for centuries. Nowadays, like I mentioned, lots of people use shrooms to step outside of their normal lives. Excuse me, normal thought constructs, gain new perspectives on the beauty, the joy, the mysticalness, the etherealness of the world and the universe around them. You could argue that the primary effect of psychedelics is to essentially make you temporarily insane. You could also argue that the goal of psychedelics for many is that through that insanity, they are able to acquire some kind of knowledge they could otherwise never get. Maybe some spiritual knowledge.

Maybe some knowledge related to the ultimate purpose and higher meaning of their lives and of Earth. Same thing that Nietzsche is talking about. Through self-inflicted insanity, we hope to achieve some sort of genius to somehow transcend this reality a little bit. I should make something clear. Nietzsche was not necessarily promoting insanity. Nor was he saying that he sort of flatly believed the genius was derived from insanity. He was simply speculating on it, learning about it, studying its place in history and humanity's perception of it, figuring out why people seek it out while others fall prey to it, as he did constantly throughout his life.

He was a true cult of the curious member, a seeker. Nietzsche wrote about insanity all the time because he was terrified of going insane himself, long before he sadly did. He once wrote to a friend, at times a premonition runs through my head that I am actually living a very dangerous life, since I am one of those machines that may explode. Think it too hard. Nietzsche ended his passage on madness in the dawn of day by saying that even the most productive minds it seems pine for madness, those lonely and troubled souls screaming out into the void. Make me insane, I beg you, O divine power! Insane so that I might finally believe in myself! Give me delirium and convulsions, moments of lucidity in the darkness that come suddenly.

Make me shudder with terror and give me ardors that no mortal man ever experiences. Surround me with thunderbolts and phantoms. Make me howl, moan, and crawl like a beast. In exchange for faith in myself, self-doubt devours me. I have killed the law and I feel for the law the horror of the living for a corpse. Unless I am above the law, I am the most reprobate amongst the reprobate. A new spirit possesses me. Where does it come from if it does not come from you? Prove to me that I belong to you, O divine power. Insanity alone can provide the proof." Eventually, of course, Nietzsche's worst

fear, perhaps his deepest desire, came true and he lost his mind. Following his initial breakdown on January 3rd, 1889, Nietzsche spent the next few days writing a series of bizarre notes to friends which are now referred to as the Madness Letters. And while these letters don't really help us understand his thoughts on nihilism, they're interesting. So let's go over them a bit before moving on. Right after today's second of two mid-show sponsor breaks.

Thank you for listening to those sponsors. Now let's return to 1899, go over the 1890s. Go over some of Nietzsche's madness letters. In general in the madness letters Nietzsche wrote about the hedonism of humanity. He claimed to be the creator of the universe. He called for the death of various political and religious leaders. So nothing alarming at all. Are we sure he lost his mind? Each of these letters he signed either from Dionysus, the Greek god of wine making, festivity, religious ecstasy, ritual madness, or from the crucified, aka Jesus Christ.

Again, what's odd about this? I mean, he seems, his mind seems to be like in tip-top shape, you know? It seems like he's thinking very clearly here. On the evening of January 3rd, the first Nietzsche pen, a letter that Nietzsche penned was to his friend Barbara, Barbara Margaretha von Salas. It looked like her name was Barbara Marbera. That's good close friend Barbara Marbera. That's who Nietzsche hung out with. Anyway, she was the first woman to in history to receive a doctorate from the University of Zurich. So I should just call her Barbara Marbera. No, she's Barbara Margaretha von Salas. And to Miss von Salas, Nietzsche wrote,

God is on the earth. Don't you see how all the heavens are rejoicing? I have just seized possession of my kingdom. I've thrown the pope in prison. And I'm having Wilhelm Bismarck and Stoker shot from the Crucified. That's a real letter he wrote. This letter the pope he's referring to is Pope Leo XIII, and as for the other people he planned on assassinating, Wilhelm II, the anti-Semitic emperor of Germany, Otto von Bismarck, the chancellor of Germany, Adolf Stöcker. Stöcker, not Stöcker, I think is what I said earlier, was a German anti-Semitic preacher and conservative politician.

That same night Nietzsche also wrote four letters to Cosima Wagner, wife of his former friend Richard Wagner. Rickard spelled Richard was a German composer and conductor and when he and Nietzsche first met in 1868, he instantly became a kind of a father figure to the philosopher. Nietzsche and Richard, I'm kind of tired of calling Richard's dicks. Let's just stop being silly and childish. Let's call him Cock. Cock Wagner. Nietzsche and Cock Wagner had a lot in common. They both loved music. They both thought life was meaningless. They both thought that the purpose of the arts was to help

humanity cope with the tragedy of their existence. And they both were in love with Cock's wife, Cosima. But they would have a falling out. That's what happens when two Cox's love the same wife. What ended their friendship, actually, was Nietzsche's disappointment in Cox's life choices. Mainly that the composer decided to convert to Christianity, which to Nietzsche was an embarrassing display of mental weakness, and that he was becoming increasingly anti-Semitic. In fact, Cox Wagner's, that name does have a certain ring to it, doesn't it?

Koch's biggest fan was Adolf Hitler. Granted, Hitler did come to power 50 years after Koch died, but still. The Nazi dictator, a great admirer of Koch's. Anyway, when it happened, the breakup between Koch and Nietzsche was pretty complicated, somewhat of a public affair, but there's really only one major thing you need to know about it at one point cock Fogger called Nisha's doctor and told him that the reason Nietzsche had so many health problems was because drum roll Prif drum roll pre's Drum roll that's a word with R in it, please

He was a chronic masturbator Seriously, that's not my nonsense. So great Hey, you know what if life is devoid of any meaning, might as well pass your time down here just coming as much as possible, I guess. I mean, if God's dead, and he's not watching us, might as well beat that nihilistic meat. You don't need your mind's eye to stare into the void. You got your hands free, your dicks free.

No law against putting hand to dick while contemplating the infinite. Well, the night he went insane from jerking off too fast and too hard for too long Now the night he lost it was almost a decade after he and cock Fogner fell out Nietzsche wrote four letters to Cox wife Casimo in the first not even crazy little bit letter to Casimo Nietzsche wrote they tell me that in the past few days a certain divine buffoon has finished the Dionysus They tell me that in the past few days a certain divine buffoon has finished the Dionysus, Dithyrams. The Dionysus Dithyrams were a collection of poems that Nietzsche started writing in 1881. Finished shortly before his mental breakdown in 1889. The divine buffoon he's referring to in this

poem was himself. In his second letter to Cosima he gets a little less platonic. It begins with to Princess Ariadne, my beloved. In Greek mythology, Ariadne was a mortal princess, princess who was abandoned on an island by an Athenian hero. Fucking typical Athenian heroes. Then in some version of the story, at least at least some, rescued by the god Dionysus. Another version to the story, she kills herself after being abandoned. So that's a dark twist. But because Nietzsche thought that he was Dionysus, we can assume he was Another version to the story she kills herself after being abandoned. So that's a dark twist But because Nietzsche thought that he was Dionysus We can assume he was referencing the first version where Ariadne and Dionysus get married and have lots of babies

In the second letter to his former best friend's wife Nietzsche wrote it is a mere prejudice that I am a human being Oh, yeah, that's where it gets really good Yet I have often enough dwelled among human beings and I know the things that human beings experience from the lowest to the highest. Amongst the Hindus, I was Buddha. In Greece, Dionysus. Alexander and Caesar were incarnations of me, as well as the poet Shakespeare and Lord Bacon. Most recently, I was Voltaire and Napoleon. Perhaps I was also, uh, Cock Wagner. He did say Richard Wagner. However, I come now as Dionysus, victorious, who prepare a great festival on earth. Not as though

I had much time, the heavens rejoice to see me here. I also hung on the cross. I can only imagine her reaction to reading all that. Oh dear. Oh my my, It appears someone may need to go on a little asylum vacation. It's a good thing at this point in time, Cock Wagner was already dead. He died of a heart attack six years earlier in 1883. Cock, he stroked out. So dumb. I was trying to sneak a really lame dad joke in there and admit it.. I don't know what happened. Anyway, he died six years earlier. So otherwise he probably would have been inclined to beat the shit out of Nietzsche. For hitting on his wife, you know. Give him a different kind of meaning. In his third letter to Cosima, Nietzsche told her to go spread the good news of the kingdom of God to all the people on earth. And in his final letter, he wrote,

Ariadne, I love you from Dionysus. And she did not write back a letter affirming that she loved Dionysus for some strange reason. Next day, January 4th, 1889, Nietzsche writes some ramen letters to some other people. The first one he wrote to was to Georg Brandis, a Scandinavian critic and acquaintance of Nietzsche's, whose thoughts about existence were very similar to his own. In his letter to Brandis, Nietzsche wrote, To my dear friend Georg, after you discovered me, it was no great feat to his own. In his letter to Brandis, Nietzsche wrote, To my dear friend Jörg, after you discovered me, it was no great feat to find me. The problem now is how to lose me from the Crucified.

Okay? Same day, Nietzsche wrote a letter to Cosima's first husband, Hans von Bülow, another composer. Cosima had left Hans immediately after she met Kock Wagner, and Nietzsche was essentially wanting to was essentially writing to Hans to let him know that he was now next in line. Not Hans. She's mine, Hans, it's my turn. Ariadne belongs to Dionysus.

Additionally on January 4th, Nietzsche wrote a letter to the King of Italy, Umberto I, who he did not know, who he had never met. He's going through some shit right here. He wrote, to my beloved son wrote a letter to the king of Italy, Umberto I, who he did not know, who he had never met. He's going through some shit right here. He wrote, To my beloved son Umberto, my peace be with you. Tuesday I shall be in Rome. I should like to see you. Along with his holiness, the pope. From the crucified. Fairly certain that Umberto and the pope did not go hang with the crucified here. Same day, he also wrote a letter to his good friend and former classmate Paul Jacob Dusen, now a professor of philosophy. In this

letter Nietzsche claimed that he was literally the creator of the universe. By the power of Grayskull! I have the power! Sorry, let that run a little longer. I was trying to sneak in a little bit more weed. I feel like a lot of you listening right now are like, No, no, no, no, no, no, that's not a good call. You don't need to do that.

You don't need more weed. Nietzsche also claims that Paul and his letter, as well as the French poet Cateul Mendes, has a very special role to play in his plan for the world. I want to put this out again. I don't know what the hell I was thinking that I could get through two of these no way. I might not get through one. It's too much. After you have irrevocably risen to the position that I have really created the world,

it appears that friend Paul will also be provided for in the world plan. He shall be, together with Monjour Katul Mondes, one of my greatest satyr and festival animals from Dionysus. That's fucking wild. Imagine one of your school friends texting you out of the blue to tell you that he's become God, and that with all his godly powers, he's planning on making you a half human, half goat kind of mythical party animal. After his breakdown, obvious breakdown, on January 3rd, Nechka continued writing letters, lots of letters to loved ones and world leaders and vague acquaintances until January 5th. So he just really goes on like a three, two and a half, three day, just letter writing binge.

Each letter he wrote more equally baffling and oddly insightful. I just want to share one more before moving forward. His final madness letter Nietzsche wrote to Jacob Burkhart, his former colleague and professor of history at the University of Basel. The letter is three pages long, not gonna share it all, just a few little snippets. Dear a professor, when it comes right down to it, I'd much rather have been a professor than God, but I didn't dare be selfish enough to forget the creation of the world. You see, one must make sacrifices, no matter how and where one lives. I know, I don't know what even an accent this is, but I can talk easier than if I try to do something else. It says, I am doomed to entertain the next eternity with bad jokes.

I am busy writing, which leaves nothing to be desired. It is very nice and not at all taxing. The post office is five steps away. I take the letters in myself. What is unpleasant and a strain on my modesty is that, in fact, I am every historical figure. And as for the children I have brought to this world, I ponder with some misgivings the possibility that not everyone who enters the kingdom of God also comes from God. This fall, blinded

as little as possible, I twice witnessed my own funeral with heartfelt love, your Nietzsche." Burkhardt wrote back writing in essence, Dear Nietzsche, God in every historical figure, stop thinking about the meaning of life. Stop beating off all the time. Holy shit, you're going fucking crazy, bro. Just like join a bowling league. Try figuring out how to make the best possible carnitas tacos or something I don't know learn Spanish or not play the mandolin Figure out how to juggle while whistling some kind of show tune do a little jig in your skivvies on the street corner in front You're just do fucking anything other than just taking life so seriously. He's totally twat hugs and kisses rubs and tugs

professor Burkhardt Of course, I wasn't what he wrote back. August 25th, 1911, 11 years after his initial mental breakdown. Nietzsche died at the age of only 55. Following his death, his sister Elizabeth accumulated all of his remaining notes, unfinished manuscripts, into one cohesive book published under the title, The Will to Power. The Will to Power, as you probably already guessed, is all about nihilism. In it, Nietzsche explored a lot of the same themes he had before, like nihilism being the consequence of Christianity's demise, how destructive nihilism can be if gone unaddressed. Seems like he may have

personified how destructive it can be. In this posthumous work, Nietzsche also solidified some newer ideas like the dichotomy between weakness and strength, the concept of the will to power. newer ideas like the dichotomy between weakness and strength, the concept of the will to power, the most basic definition of his will to power concept is that it is a form of self-determination or the strength to overcome the obstacles that prevent us from complete self-actualization. As one source put it, Nietzsche's will to power aimed to valorize strength and competition while de-emphasizing compassion. That sounds a little sociopathic.

I mean, if you have little to no compassion and just focus on being strong and competitive, you're probably gonna be pretty successful financially, but what cost to your humanity? Power was of the utmost importance in Nietzsche's, specifically as it pertains to nihilism. It was of the utmost importance to Nietzsche. As we went over earlier, nihilism is the belief that life is inherently meaningless and therefore all moral and vague systems are arbitrary because nothing can be known or communicated. In The Will to Power, Nietzsche explained that there are two types of nihilists, passive and active, and what separates them is their individual will to power.

The passive nihilist is the person suffering a collapse and decline of spiritual strength and the active nihilist is the person with an enhanced spiritual strength. Interesting. According to Nietzsche, the passive nihilist is someone of weak will, who when faced with the meaningless of life becomes depressed, hopeless, and forlorn. Someone who lives in constant fear of self-destruction. The passive nihilist seeks to reduce their suffering through self-deception. For example, even though they don't-destruction. The passive nihilist seeks to reduce their suffering through self-deception. For example, even though they don't believe in it, the passive nihilist might continue to obey the demands of their religion simply so they can obey something. Simply because they choose to be able to be too weak or choose to be too weak,

to walk away and truly forge a new ideological identity for themselves. They know that it is futile to live by the moral standards put forth by a God that doesn't exist, yet they would rather live life in accordance to these fictional moral guidelines than rather than to nothing at all. Although the path of self-deception might be comforting to the passive nihilist, it is done out of weakness, and in the will to power, Nietzsche vehemently proclaims that all that is done in weakness ends in failure. The active nihilist, on the other hand, is someone with exceptional mental fortitude

who uses nihilism to make themselves stronger. Someone not afraid to stare into the void, butt naked, with a rock hard cock, beating off, refusing to blink, or even exhale until they've finished. I may have extrapolated on Nietzsche's original ideas for that last part. But anyway, the active nihilist understands that because the world's value systems are meaningless, he's no longer obligated to conform to what they say is right and wrong, because after all right and wrong don't exist. Therefore, the active nihilist has one impulse, destruction, according to Nietzsche.

As one source explains, the active nihilist destroys in order to find or create something worth believing in, only that which can survive destruction can make us stronger. Where the passive nihilist seeks comfort in traditional values, the active nihilist seeks to annihilate them and build something more powerful in their place. There's this idea that nihilists reject religion and the government. Active nihilism is often mistaken for being synonymous with anarchism, but they're very, very different things. Anarchism as a political philosophy is vehemently against all forms of government.

Anarchists believe the authorities and institutions that maintain civil order are harmful and unnecessary. Therefore, they need to be completely abolished. Anarchists value the power of self-governance and believe that all efforts must be made to protect individual liberties. Now, at first glance, that does sound kind of similar to nihilism. Both philosophies do reject the government, but that's where their similarities end. At its very core, anarchy is about a, excuse me, anarchy is all about revolutionary social

change and creating a better future for all. Nihilism, on the other hand, is all about how change is impossible and the future is not even worth thinking about. Despite its association with deviant lawlessness and unbridled chaos, anarchy is a philosophy actually based in hope. Nihilism is a philosophy based on hopelessness. When an nihilist says we should destroy the old value systems, it is not out of hope for a better future. It is out of what Nietzsche describes as the impulse for destruction which recognizes no goal or limit. So political anarchy is not at all similar to active nihilism.

What is very similar to active nihilism is existentialism, but a 1900 existentialism still decades away from its full philosophic formation. Let's time travel. Jump ahead a few decades. Take a little sip of water. Time travel makes you really thirsty. In 1942, French-Algerian journalist, novelist, activist, and although he vehemently denied being one, philosopher Albert Camus published the Myth of Sisyphus. In the essay, Like Nietzsche in Kierkegaard before him, Camus declared that life had absolutely no meaning.

However, unlike Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, Camus didn't say that that was necessarily the problem. The problem is that even though life has absolutely no meaning, we still ask what is the meaning of life? The paradox between the fact that the universe is irrational, therefore existence has no purpose. And the human impulse to still find the purpose of life is what Camus was interested in. It is because of this paradox he explained that our lives are completely absurd. Now that might sound kind of confusing because it kind of yes at first for sure but the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy sums it up really well. Since existence itself has no meaning, we must learn to bear an irresolvable emptiness. This paradoxical

situation then between our impulse to ask ultimate questions and the impossibility of achieving any adequate answer is what Camus calls the absurd. Man, okay. Alright, I think I get it. I had a note written to myself at this point to smoke weed, but I smoked twice before I even get into this note. I'm gonna, I think I get it. I had a note written to myself at this point to smoke weed, but I smoked twice before I even get into this note. I'm going to hang on to where I'm at for a second. Commute uses the story of Sisyphus in Greek mythology as a metaphor for the meaningless of our own lives and to demonstrate how we can deal with the absurd.

If you haven't heard the story, Sisyphus was a mortal man who ruled over a city-state in Greece called Iphira, now known as Corinth. As the king of Iphira, Sisyphus was deceitful, power-hungry, wickedly clever. He helped the city-state become a prosperous hub of commerce. But he also, you know, murdered a bunch of travelers from foreign places, visiting his domain as well as murdering some guests in his own palace. And he seduced his niece, which is pretty gross. He did this in order to maintain his reputation amongst his subjects as a ruthless sovereign should be feared far and wide. Unfortunately for him, I don't think he did the knees part for that. He did the killing people part for that. Unfortunately for him, being a tricksy, murdery ding-dong also gained him quite a

reputation amongst the gods. By killing guests and travelers, Sisyphus violated the zinniya, a sacred law instituted by the gods that demands all persons have a moral obligation to be kind to strangers and offer them hospitality and protection if they ask for it. The Xenia was considered foundational to maintaining human civilization and the god Zeus was his patron saint charged with ensuring that mortals lived up to it. This is why Zeus is sometimes called Zeus Xenios, Zeus the god who protects strangers. So Sisyphus pissed off Zeus by going on a killing spree, slash being a bad host.

Then he pissed the father of gods off some more by snitching on him. Zeus had previously kidnapped the nymph Agena, the daughter of a river god named Esipus. Zeus loved fucking kidnapped ladies back in the day. And then in exchange for the creation of a fresh water spring that would flow directly into a phyra, Sisyphus told Esopus where his daughter was being held captive and rapey old Zeus. He didn't like having his rapey old ways meddled with. To punish the mortal king, Zeus sent Hades to chain him up in the bowels of hell. But conniving as he was, Sisyphus was able to trick him, chain Hades up and said, aha! I got you, sucker!

Escaped back to the realm of the living. Double-crossed the devil! I gotcha sucker! I skate back to the realm of the living. Double cross the devil! Noice! Now with Hades locked up. No mortals on earth could die. No sacrifices could be made to the gods. And this really pissed off Ares, god of war.

Because with no one dying, battles had lost their fun? I guess? I mean, kind of like what I talked about a while back. What's the point of playing the game if no one ever loses? What is the game's purpose? Where is its meaning? Irritated, he goes to the underworld to rescue Hades himself. And meanwhile, Sisyphus just keeps on winning his battle with Zeus and Hades.

Keeps on living and being king. But then Ares is able to free Hades finally. Now people can start to die again, including ol' Sisyphus. By the time ol' Sisyphus Stingy Nuts was dying from natural causes on Earth, he came up with a tricksy way to stay alive. New trick. He decided to test his wife, Merope's loyalty and love. Tells her that after he dies, he wants to throw his naked corpse into the town square.

Wants her to throw his naked corpse into the town square. Instead of giving him a proper burial. And she did as he requested, which after he died, resulted in Sisyphus waking up on the banks of the River Styx. In Greek mythology, the souls of those who have received the proper rights of burial, they're ferried across the River Styx and into Hades

by a minor god named Charon, who bitched the entire trip about how she needed to talk to a manager and no one was listening to her. Or she didn't do that, wasn't he, or wasn't he wasn't she Karen this sense is he anyway those whose bodies were not buried properly would be denied entrance to Hades and thus never able to rest and that's all Sisyphus wanted well after washing a sword ashore denied entrance to Hades Sisyphus finds Persephone Queen of the underworld tells her how he's been betrayed by his wife she neglected to respect him with the sacred rite of burial like she was supposed to, and

he just asked for her permission, just temporarily, can I please go back up to the world of living, just so I can punish Merope. I'll come right back. And Persephone is dumb. She agrees. It's his face is released. But after fakes scolding his wife, he refuses to go back to the underworld, like he promised. Done it again.

He's a crafty son of a bitch. Cheated death the second time. But eventually Olympian deity and herald of the gods, Hermes, finds, drags his little tricky ass back to the realm of the dead, and now has punishment for cheating death not once but twice. And for his profound hubris, thinking that cocky motherfucker was smarter than the gods, Sisyphus was sentenced to an eternity of pushing a massive boulder up a steep hill in Tartarus, the special place in Hades for like the worst of the worst, like the worst fucking segment of

Prism. And every time the boulder reached the top it would roll right back down to the base of the hill. Old Sisyphus, old stinky nuts, would have to do it all over again. Walk back down, god damn it, and fucking push that rock. Ah shit, ah god damn it, push that rock, you know, over and over. That son of a bitch still pushing that rock. Ah shit. I got him push that rock, you know over and over That's son of a bitch still pushing that rock today The Greek legends unspeakable penalty as the philosopher wrote was that his whole being is exerted towards accomplishing nothing Come you believe that we lowly meat sacks each and every one of us. We endure the same tormented Sisyphus. That's our fate You believe that we're just equal right Sisyphus is punishment is absurd fate. He believed that we're equal, right? Sisyphus's punishment is absurd because no matter how many times he pushes the

rock to the top of the hill, it's always gonna roll back down again. And we too are absurd. He argued because no matter how hard we look for life's true purpose, we will never ever find it. Because no matter how much we long for it, it does not exist. But just like Sisyphus is unable to stop himself from pushing the rock back up the hill, we are unable to stop ourselves from seeking the meaning of life. The only way to deal with the absurdity of our situation is by becoming conscious of it and embracing it head-on. What exactly would that look like? Well, take Sisyphus, for example. Think about the moment right after

Sisyphus reaches the summit. No sooner does he get the rock where he needs to go, ah, does it slip back down, start rolling down again. Imagine as Camus asks us too, what that moment is like for Sisyphus. Probably pretty frustrating. What it's like to watch the stone rush back down the slope, knowing all the hard work he just put in barreling towards the exact same place he began is for nothing. Now imagine Sisyphus has walked back down the mountain. Think about what it's like, you know, trek that path, quote, toward the torment of which he will never know the end. Camus says it's during Sisyphus' descent down the hill that he becomes conscious of his tasks, absurdity, and is forced to acknowledge the purposeless of

his own existence. It is this discovery of the absurd in this moment of consciousness that Sisyphus' story either becomes tragic or triumphant actually. It's tragic because it comes to the absurdity, which is what the gods want him to do. They want him to realize how useless pushing that rock up the hill is because there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. However, if Sisyphus never realizes how pointless the task is, then his torture won't really be that bad because he can always hold on to hope that one day the rock will stay on top of the hill. All his hard work will be paid off. But isn't it impossible for him to stay ignorant of his futile existence literally forever? Eventually won't a moment of clarity come for Sisyphus regarding this task?

The moment that God's punishing him long for knowing that the realization that his life is absurd will cause him unbearable suffering because how could it not? Camus believes this moment of consciousness is inevitable. And not just for Sisyphus, but for us as well. As Camus wrote, the workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is not less absurd, but it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Does that resonate with you? Have you ever experienced a moment of consciousness like Sisyphus does

during his descent down the mountain? A moment where you realize how completely fucking absurd what you're doing is? When you realize that all your hard work in the end is pointless, they're just building another castle made out of sand that the tides of time will inevitably certainly wash away into nothingness. When you realize that no matter what you do in life one day you will die nothing all you ever did will have meant anything at all not for any real length of time and upon experiencing this moment of consciousness have you ever fallen into a deep deep depression well came you says

that this moment of consciousness where we discover the absurdity of our own lives is a fundamentally human problem and that almost everyone suffers. One second. However, he also says that the discovery of the absurd doesn't necessarily have to lead to agony, sorrow, and despair, that it can lead instead to joy and happiness. How could that be? Let's go back to Sisyphus. During his descent down the mountain, Sisyphus becomes conscious of the absurdity of his life and the pointlessness of his task. He knows that once he reaches the bottom of the mountain, he will once again have to push the rock back up to the top. Also knows that as soon as he gets the boulder back to the top, he's going to roll right

back down to the bottom. And he knows above all else that no matter how many times he does this, he'll never accomplish anything. He knows it will all be for nothing. Sisyphus is aware of the truth about his existence. He doesn't shy away from it, doesn't pretend it's not real. He instead accepts his own absurdity, makes his peace with it, embraces it completely. Commie writes, Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition. It is what he thinks of during his descent.

The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn. Sisyphus's story can be one of triumph because instead of letting the absurdity of his existence ruin him, he confronts it head on. In doing so, he becomes superior to his fate, stronger than the rock he pushes. He concludes in his moment of consciousness that despite the absurdity that all is well. Kamiu ends his essay about Sisyphus by writing, His fate belongs to him. His rock is a thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes, and his efforts will henceforth

be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest he knows himself to the master of his days. At a subtle moment, when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning towards his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates the series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye, and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human a blind man, eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go, the rock is still rolling. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one burden again. But Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one

burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe, henceforth without a master, seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. That's how Camus tells us we must deal with the absurd. We must spite it, scorn it, rob it of its power by refusing to seek the thing which

we will never find, which is meaning. We must remain at all times fully conscious of the absurd. The realization that our lives are meaningless might seem bleak initially, but ultimately, how freeing. Do what you fucking want. Do without wilt. Pursue your passions. Save up some money. Quit that job you hate. Move to Thailand where you can live like a king or queen for next to nothing. Take jujitsu in your 60s. Learn to salsa dance in your 80s. Leave that abusive partner and get out of that terrible marriage. Who cares what your judgy uptight parents might think?

They're going to fucking die. So will you. And to quote Freddie Mercury, nothing really matters to me. But seriously, the belief grants us the freedom to pursue passions, experience, and pleasure. In other words, through awareness of the absurd, we have absolute freedom. Embracing the absurd is an act of rebellion and the only way to find joy and happiness

in the face of total annihilation. However, that is not the path everyone takes. Camus explains that embracing the meaningless of existence is just one of three options on how we can choose to deal with the absurd. Option A, pretty dark, is suicide. In the myth of Sisyphus, Camus wrote, There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest, whether or not the world has three dimensions,

whether the mind has nine or twelve categories, comes afterwards. These are games. One must first answer the question of suicide. If I ask myself how to judge that this question is more urgent than any others, I reply that one judges by the actions it entails. I have never seen anyone die for the ontological argument. Galileo, who held a scientific truth of great importance,

renounced it with the greatest ease as soon as it endangered his life. In a certain sense, he did right. The truth, that truth, was not worth the stake. Whether the Earth or the Sun revolves around the other is a matter of profound indifference. To tell the truth, it is a futile question. On the other is a matter of profound indifference. To tell the truth, it is a futile question. On the other hand, I see many people die because they judge that life

is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living. What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying. I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions. Camus says that although the precise individual causes of suicide will forever remain vague and that it's impossible to identify the exact moment, quote, the mind opted for death, the act of suicide itself is a confession. By ending your own life you confess that life is simply not worth the trouble. From the moment we're born we do the things that existence and society and instinct demand of us, we make a habit out of it, we oftentimes fail to question it.

But when someone commits suicide, it implies that they have come to recognize the, quote, ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering. It's that moment of consciousness we talked about early with Sisyphus. That moment when you realize how pointless everything is and are forced to ask the question whether a pointless life is one worth living. According to Camus, suicide is something that everybody at some point in their lives contemplates. This is because suicide seems like the most natural solution to the absurd, the most immediate way to escape it.

However, although it seems like a viable and logical option sometimes, suicide is not the solution to the absurd. For starters, by committing suicide, you've taken away your one weapon against the absurd, your consciousness. Like I said earlier, the only way to revolt against the absurd is to be conscious of it. But if you're dead, you can't do that. Thus, the absurd wins. Moreover, suicide is not the answer because according to Camus, it. But if you're dead, you can't do that. Thus the absurd wins. Moreover, suicide is not the answer because according to Camus, it is the ultimate act of evasion.

By taking yourself out of the universe, you're hoping to circumvent the absurd, to elude it. But eluding the absurd is impossible, and the only thing that killing yourself does is make your already absurd and arbitrary life even more absurd and arbitrary. In other words, you've done nothing but enhance absurdity. So suicide is not the solution. So what is the solution? Mary Jane! Oh, sweet, sweet devil's lettuce! Probably time to try and just smoke a little bit more since that's is the 420 I was told. Nobody's burned my face while I was recording this. Don't be listening, probably

nobody really, I would like that. Commus says the other choice we have is option B, the leap of faith. The leap of faith is exactly what you think it is. It's the act of believing in a higher power without any evidence of it, the act of decision to totally suspend reason and rationality then choose instead to pretend there's a God whose existence you feign understanding of in order to make your own existence meaningful. Camus also refers to the leap of faith as philosophical suicide. That it's the ultimate denial of truth and just like option A, it's a way for us to elude the absurd. Just like with the physical suicide, the belief in a higher meaning does nothing but make the absurd paradox. That tension between our search for purpose and the purposelessness

of the universe. Even more absurd. Additionally, although taking a leap of faith can be comforting, it is ultimately limiting. This is because by believing in God, you are now forced to adhere to quote unquote God's moral code of conduct conduct which is not only arbitrary and baseless according to Commu, but probably contrary to how you actually want to live your life. For example, if I truly believe that God will be furious with me for getting well high as fuck from time to time, I gotta be mad right now, man. But no, what a bummer, right? Fucking bummer. Get fucked, Nancy Reagan, by the way. I'm having a great time. Kamu believed that the only way to properly, bravely, rationally deal with the absurd is option C. You gotta get your dick and or your pussy sucked.

Or maybe he wrote that option C was to embrace it. Keep your eyes open. Tell the void to get fucked. Be fully aware of it at all times. Don't flinch. Don't fear it. Recognize that because the universe is absurd and life is pointless, you are free to do with your life whatever you want. Because in the end anything you do will be nullified by your death anyway. You'll get any cosmic bonus points for not going to the dance, not hitting that joint, not trying that new move in bed, not listening to music with curse words, etc. etc. So you know, carpe diem, buddy. According to Albert Camus, that is the only way to find substantial untainted joy in this life.

It's the only way to revolt against the absurd. And now that we've covered the basic beliefs of absurdism and nihilism before it, let us get existential. Around the same time that Albert Camus was taking huge shits on Nietzsche and promoting absurdism, a Frenchman named Jean Paul Sartre was elaborating on Nietzsche's novel ideas and defining existentialism as we know it today. Jean Paul Sartre was the first philosopher to self-identify as an existentialist and the driving force behind bringing the philosophy into the 20th century. Since he was a teenager, Jean Paul was interested in concepts of free will and purpose. He earned his doctorate in philosophy at ENS in Paris, where he met fellow student Simone

du Beauvoir, who at the age of 21 actually became the youngest person to ever take their philosophy exams at France's most prestigious university. Jean Paul was anti the institution of what he called bour bourgeois marriage but in 1929, the same year he graduated, he formed a civil union with Simone. He and Simone would stay together until he died in 1980 but were never monogamous. Simone, like her partner, also an existentialist philosopher, social theorist, a feminist. Before he started working almost exclusively on existentialism, Jean Paul was interested in phenomenology which literally translates to study of phenomena. That sounds super fun. What do you do? I study phenomena.

Oh, fuck yeah, bro. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, phenomenology is a study of conscious experience as it is experienced from this objective or first-person point of view. This field of philosophy is then to be distinguished from the other main fields of philosophy, ontology, the study of being or what is, epistemology, the study of knowledge, logic, the study of valid reasoning, ethics, the study of right and wrong action. Between 1938 and 1940 while teaching at French secondary schools that prepare students aged 15 to 18 for university, Jean-Paul wrote a couple of different books exploring the phenomena of conscious experience. In these early writings, Jean Paul touched on

themes of existentialism, but it wasn't until after he saw the horrors of World War II firsthand that he really started to develop the theory fully. I bet watching Nazi aggression up close and personal, oh man all that surrounded that level of fascism, the overall horrors of World War II, I mean a preposterous, unprecedented amount of death and suffering, literally the deadliest war in human history would make one really question what the point of life is. Jean Paul was drafted into the French Army in 1939 where he served as a meteorologist, military weather forecaster in 1939.

I didn't know that was a thing. I mean, weathermen still have trouble today accurately predicting what a storm is going to do. How useful were they in 1939? I just picture military brass being constantly frustrated consulting them. Jean-Paul, we need these bombing runs to work, to hit their targets. The pilots need to clear skies. Are there storms moving in this area tomorrow night I don't think so but you never know Jean Paul that's not helpful should we strike tonight instead I do not know probably but I mean it looks good just licks his finger holds the detect it's not too windy but some it's mother nature. It's unpredictable.

Why are you here, Jean Paul? Why are any of us here, sir? It's a question I ask myself daily, sir. Get the fuck out of here, Jean Paul! Less than a year after joining the war, Jean Paul was captured by German troops, spent nine months in the prisoner of war. He was released by the Germans in April of 1941,

but exactly why or how that happened seems to be up for a bit of debate. Some say that he was willing to let go due to his poor health. The philosopher suffered from exotropia, a visual disorder where one eye or both eyes point outward. When someone has exotopia, depending on how severe it is, it can profoundly impact their depth perception. It's because in normal cases, when the eyes are equally aligned looking the same thing our brains fuse what each eye is seeing into one single image thus giving us the ability to perceive three dimensional objects. But if the eyes look in different directions the brain can't

properly merge what each of them is missing or seeing. Anyway that's what Jean Paul had and you can tell immediately that he did have it by looking at any picture of him. He's had a pretty severe case. So he was a weatherman, had a hard time seeing things. That's cool. That's smart. According to some sources, because of his optic condition, the Germans decided to free Jean Paul. Yeah, doesn't sound like he'd probably be too valuable militarily. However, other sources claim that Jean Paul escaped his incarceration as a prisoner of war after he was brought up to brought to an ophthalmology appointment.

As you can see the eye doctor, at least one source claims that he accidentally escaped when he thought he was walking into the eye doctor's office. But he went to the wrong door because he couldn't see where he was going. Then he just kept wandering around, you know, just trying to find his doctor for hours and then days and then that's when he finally realized that he was no longer a prisoner. That source is just me. Thinking that would just be pretty funny. I fucked up. for hours and then days. And then that's when he finally realized that he was no longer a prisoner. And that source is just me. Thinking that would just be pretty funny. I fucked up.

Kind of funny, but you shouldn't trust it as legit information. Whatever happened. John Paul returned to Paris in 1941. In 1943, he wrote the book that solidified his reputation as an existentialist, Bean and Nothingness, an essay on phenomenological ontology. That's a lot of syllables. Being and Nothingness, undoubtedly a bitch to read. Even Sartre's biographer called it an enormous bastard. But it also had one of the most important philosophical texts written in the last century. The book has three major themes. Consciousness, social perception, freedom, and also the concept of bad faith. According to Jean Paul consciousness

is being such that in its being its being is in question. The fuck what? Let me repeat that. According to Jean Paul consciousness is a being such that in its being its being is in question. That's so confusing. At first glance, it seems like intelligible ramblings of a psychopath. Some bullshit that somebody has no idea whatsoever that they're talking about. Just says when they want to sound deep and intellectual to a party. However, if we wade our way through all the heavy verbiage and repetition, what Jean-Paul is saying actually does make a lot of sense. Translated to regular person speech, Jean-Paul is saying that

to be conscious is to be aware of your own consciousness. And because of you being aware of your own consciousness, you have no choice but to question it. Jean Paul further defines the difference between the conscious and unconscious by describing the two types of beings in the world. The en soi, the being in itself, and the pour soi, the being for itself. The being in itself, the en soi, is that which is unconscious and is unaware of its own existence. So a being in itself can be something like a tree or rock, something in nature that's unconscious, rigid, lacks the ability to change. The being in itself has no subjective experience or identity as it already has a complete existence in itself, hence the term being in itself. On the other hand, a human is the pour soi, being for itself, we are conscious, changeable,

have the ability to transcend. But most importantly, because human life has no objective or innate purpose, we have to create meaning for ourselves, hence the term being for itself. Because we are conscious of our own existence, humans must actuate our own being rather than simply just being. It's the same sort of thing that Camus was talking about as humans. We have no choice but to question our own purpose because we don't have an objective one. Although the fact that our lives don't have any sort of inherent meaning can be depressing. Jean-Paul says it can also be very freeing. unlike the tree which is bound to its objective purpose, unable to change. Human beings have the freedom to create purpose for ourselves.

We have autonomy. Agency can create for ourselves. Subjective meaning in this world. And the perks of being a human are pretty good. Now we are in this view in a sense our own gods. And we can hand down our own rules from our own innate divinity. However, there are still some major problems with being a being for itself. Like I mentioned earlier, being conscious of our own consciousness means we are aware of other people's consciousnesses as well. That means that we have the ability to perceive ourselves being perceived. That could be a big fucking bummer. Here's why.

Say you're driving downtown. You're in some pretty gnarly traffic. When you glance at the drivers and the cars next to you, you don't perceive them as fellow conscious human beings that happen to be driving cars. You perceive them as car drivers. You objectify them. You turn them into two-dimensional beings, right? When they make a mistake, you don't think everyone makes mistakes. I make mistakes. Making mistakes doesn't make you a bad person or stupid. It's just part of life. No, you identify them as some sort of mistake. They're stupid. They're bad. You let one observation define them because they're not

a nuanced human being like you. No, they're car driver or fuckhead. Hey, that's fuckhead. Hey, that's stupid piece of shit. Don't feel guilty about doing this, right? It's just human nature. The problem here for us is that because we as conscious beings perceive other conscious beings as objects, we know that means the same is being done in reverse. We know that to them we are car driver. We are fuckhead. We are stupid piece of shit. Because we objectify other people, we know that other people objectify us as well. And that can lead us to objectify ourselves. In other words, instead of perceiving yourself as a being for itself, you might start to falsely self-identify as a being in itself.

It's a huge issue for Jean Paul because, like we just went over, the being in itself is limited. It's unconscious, lacks the ability to change. Whereas the being for itself is radically free because it's conscious and is able to change. By objectifying ourselves as others objectify us, we rob ourselves of that freedom. That freedom according to Jean Paul is the only defining characteristic of human

existence. So if we lose it, we're fucked. Let me explain this a little bit more. Humans have no pre-existing nature within existentialism. There's no purpose for our lives, no higher power that molded us to look and talk and behave just so. We are conscious of our own subjective experience and aware of our own lives complete lack of objective meaning. Therefore, we also know that that means life is essentially a blank slate for us to experience it however we'd like. And then we have the power to cultivate our own individual sense of meaning and purpose. That's a plus side, the good part part even if it might sound scary instead of good Then there's a downside remember what uncle Ben told Peter Parker aka spider-man that with great power comes great responsibility

Excuse me. Well Jean Paul Tells us that with great freedom comes great responsibility because we are the only ones responsible for giving our lives purpose That also means we're the only ones to blame when shit hits the fan what you do is entirely and completely up to you God didn't tell you to do it because God doesn't exist Satan didn't didn't tempt you Satan doesn't exist if you something terrible you can't blame it on evil beings the only person person you can blame is the person you see every time you look in the mirror all the good you've accomplished all you you know, all you've done

terrible as well. Same person to blame. Right? Just that person you're looking at. There's no plan for your life. Your life is in fact entirely arbitrary and inconsequential. Your decisions are not predetermined, not part of some God's plan. There's no great force at work. There's not a reason for everything. There's not even a reason you're here. You're not special. And neither is literally anyone else. There is just you and your consciousness. That's it. And you have the unconditional freedom to do whatever you want with your life. The freedom to actualize your own existence according to how you would like to experience the world.

And because you have absolute autonomy over your own existence, you and you alone have to carry that burden. And you and you alone have to carry that burden and you and you alone have to reap the consequences. This is where nihilism, absurdism, and existentialism really differ. To the nihilist, life is meaningless so there's no point in doing anything at all except maybe destroying everything in your path. To the absurdist, life is also meaningless and the only way to live it is by embracing the meaningless and confronting the absurdity of your own existence head on. And to the existentialist, while life is still meaningless, we are free to create subjective meaning, and we are burdened by the responsibility of choice.

For a multitude of reasons, 1943. With Jean's masterwork on existentialism was published, a lot of people thought Jean Paul Sartre's existentialism was both dangerous and depressing. So in response to these critics in 1946, Jean Paul wrote an essay titled Existentialism is a Humanism, which was actually just a transcript of a lecture he'd given the previous year. Much smaller, easier to absorb publication. In Existentialism is a Humanism, Jean Paul justified the value and purpose of existentialism as well as further explained some of its most fundamental tenets. The essay begins with Jean Paul calling out existentialism's naysayers by name.

The communists blame existentialism for encouraging people to remain in a state of quietism and despair. Others have condemned us for emphasizing what is despicable about humanity, for exposing all that is sordid, suspicious, or base while ignoring beauty in the brighter side of human nature. For example, according to one Catholic critic, we have forgotten the innocence of a child's smile. One group after another censures us for overlooking humanity's solidarity and for considering man as an isolated being. This is primarily because we base our doctrine on pure subjectivity, on the very moment in

which man fully comprehends his isolation, rendering us incapable of re-establishing solidarity with those who exist outside of the self. Christians on the other hand reproach us for denying the reality and validity of human enterprise, for inasmuch as we choose to ignore God's commandments and all values thought to be eternal, all that remains is the strictly gratuitous, anyone can do whatever he pleases and is incapable from his own small vantage point of finding fault with the points of view or actions of others. In short, the ideologists and theologians of Jean Paul's day who had committed their guiding more principles to the worship of a higher power who created all life on

earth and gave all life the same rules or to the worship of the state, essentially a state that exists in theory thanks to the diligent efforts and solidarity of everyone working selflessly towards the same group goal, didn't like some dude showing up and saying, nah, fuck all that. That's all group delusion, subjective choices and fiction that many have agreed to treat as fact. Jean-Paul goes on to address each of the charges levied against existentialism, starting with the beef that Christianity has with the philosophy. Christianity and existentialism are obviously vastly different in thousands and thousands of ways. However, one of their most important differences, besides, you know, their view on whether or not God exists, is where

each of them stand on the idea of essence. Essence, it's an ancient philosophical term that refers to the metaphysical properties of something that make it what it is. You can also think of it as something something fundamental nature or its definitive function. So the essence of a cup is to hold liquid. The essence of a knife is to cut things. The essence of a hammer is to hammer some nails or murder people. The essence of Pat Sajak is to be one of the biggest, sneakiest monsters in the history of humanity and an evil in the flesh on par with people like Hitler and Roy Disney. And you get it. Hopefully.

Christians believe, though, that as humans our essence exists even before we do. They think of God as a superlative artisan who knew exactly what he was doing when creating mankind. Jean-Paul explains it like this. God as a superlative artisan who knew exactly what he was doing when creating mankind. Jean Paul explains it like this, the concept of man in the mind of God is comparable to the concept of the knife in the mind of the manufacturer. God produces man following certain techniques and a conception just as the craftsman following the definition and technique produces a knife. Thus each individual man is the realization of a certain concept within the divine intelligence. So much like the knife's purpose is already set in stone, even

before the craftsman is done making it, Christians believe our purpose was established by God long before we were ever born. On the other hand, existentialists believe that existence precedes essence. They believe that we were born into this world devoid of any predetermined function or purpose. Our fate? Big blank canvas in so many ways. How we paint or are gonna paint is entirely up to us. Unlike the Christian to the existentialist, essence is something we create ourselves, not something that was ever given to us by something else. The moment he comes into existence, man is nothing and he will continue to be nothing until he makes something of himself within his own subjective reality. Jean Paul wrote, man first exists

he materializes in the world encounters himself and only afterward defines himself thus there is no human nature since there is no God to conceive of it man is not only that which he conceives himself to be but that which he wills himself to be and since he conceives of himself only after he exists, just as he wills himself to be after being thrown into existence, man is nothing other than what he makes of himself." This is the first principle of existentialism. According to Jean-Paul, many Christians mistakenly think that because existentialists believe existence precedes essence, that it also means that they believe that life is just free for all with no moral guidelines and no one

is responsible for anything. So we might as well just start putting kids in cages, drinking their adrenochrome, raping people out in the street, cutting the heads off any motherfucker who stands in between us and just whatever the hell we want to do in that moment. On the contrary, Jean Paul explains, existentialists believe that because God is not real, each of us are burdened with the immeasurable responsibility to do good by our fellow man and also do good for ourselves. And why do good instead of bad?

Because God, excuse me, good, because good serves not just society at large, but also ourselves as members of said society. Right? We start killing, stealing, raping each other willy-nilly. What happens when we need to go to the store and grab some milk? I can't someone already raped and killed everyone is everybody the store. What happens when you go find a doctor? No, the doctor's dead. She's dead. Her head's on a fucking stick in front of used to be the clinic I want to go to school learn something new No can't someone's already killed all the teachers stole the computers the computers, burned all the buildings to the ground, and on and on and on. While nations have certainly devolved into lawlessness and warlords have done exactly what I've just laid out in many ways, those warlords,

as far as I know, probably not big existentialists. Pretty sure most bloodthirsty, tyrannical warlords aren't huge philosophers. I've also thought that the argument that without devotion to some god, without worrying that God will punish us if we're naughty, society will just crumble, that that's a pretty absurd notion. I'm not saying God does not exist. I can't know that, neither can anyone else with any certainty. But I am saying that belief in God is certainly not necessary for a moral society. There have been plenty of cultures that have flourished despite not being largely composed of the devoted. Plenty of cultures that have flourished that have been composed of the devoted. While a religious

society can certainly have plenty of morally upstanding people, so can a non-religious, potentially existentialist society. Existentialists don't revel in the absence of God like so many people seem to think they do. They mourn it. They find his death extremely unsettling and disturbing because without him our social value system has been gutted now must be rebuilt. A goal of existentialism is to remedy this moral void left by the absence of God and the only way to do that is by showing people that morality must come from within. Thus Jean Paul writes, man conscious of what he is to make him solely responsible for his own existence. And when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is

responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men. That's beautiful. Like we went over earlier, there is no justification or excuse for your actions. There is no external power compelling you to act in a certain way or a supernatural code of conduct that legitimizes what you do. There is only you and your freedom to choose. To the existentialist, God's death is not a hall pass for being a piece of shit. It's the reason we need to be good. As Jean Paul put it, That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself yet nonetheless free because cast into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

That also means that although existentialism is a philosophy based on the solitary individual and subjective reality, it is also a philosophy that promotes solidarity because we all are in this together. We all share the burden of absolute freedom. Jean-Paul refutes the rest of the misconceptions about existentialism by saying, existentialism cannot be considered a philosophy of passivity and apathy, since it defines man by his actions, nor can it be called a pessimistic description of man, for no doctrine is more optimistic, since it declares that man's destiny lies within himself. Nor is existentialism an attempt to discourage man from taking action, Since it tells him that the only hope resides in his actions and that the only thing that allows him to live is action, consequently we are dealing with the morality of action and commitment.

I love that. Yeah. Our last op in today's time is existential timeline. This quick one, 1949. The year that Simone Dubovoy, Jean Paul Sartre's non-monogamous life partner published The Second Sex. While her fuck buddy, Jean Paul, may have written the Bible of existentialism, Simone's The Second Sex is undeniably the Bible of modern Western feminism. And in it, Simone takes the existential idea

that existence, existentialist idea, that existence precedes essence, and uses it to argue for women's rights and freedoms. During that period, still quite a bit now, Woz is widely believed that women are fundamentally and innately subordinate to men. However, according to existentialism, this cannot be true. Women's subordination under the patriarchal systems of various religions was never deemed by a god or gods. It was subjectively decided by men, men who wrote all the ancient religious texts, without

exception, men who wrote themselves into a position of authority and superiority. And Lucifina ain't buying that bullshit! Hell, Lucifina! In the second sex, Simone explains that human nature, or essence, is not something that's fixed the moment we're born. Instead, essence is something we cultivate for ourselves as we live our lives. Similarly, femininity, or feminine essence, isn't something that's fixed the moment women are born.

Instead, they learn what femininity is according to what society tells them it is, which means traditionally what men say it is. Simone describes this imbalance like this. One is not born but rather becomes a woman. No biological, psychic, or economic destiny defines the figure that the human female takes on in society. It is civilization as a whole that elaborates this intermediary product between the male and the eunuch that is called feminine.

Because society tells women femininity is synonymous with weakness, lack of intelligence, inherent inferiority, that is what many women end up believing about themselves. How could they not? But that's not true, obviously. Hopefully, obviously. If you truly believe it's true, I pity you. As we've gone over, a foundational belief of existentialism

is that because your life is meaningless and you are born without essence, you have the freedom to create meaning and essence for yourself. Consequently, women have the freedom to define femininity for themselves. As Simone wrote, change your life today. Don't gamble on the future. Act now without delay. Hail Lusifena, hail Nimrod, and man hail this strong ass weed.

Good job soldier, you've made it back. Barely. Now before I move on with a little bit of a recap, a very fun sponsor that we haven't heard from in far too long. Today's Time Suck is brought to you by Whipple Chill Existential Devil's Lettuce Edition. Hey brothers and sisters, I'd like to join up one more time. Hello existentialists. Sometimes life, it comes at you too fast Sometimes it's it's too intense. He's wanted to slow down

In order to really see it to understand what's even happening while you're even here at all you gotta slow down Yeah, hi You load you get deep You gotta get high so you can get low. You get low and you get deep. The next time you get high and deep, I want you to do so with the newest flavors. Whipple or chill. Whipple or chill. Existential Devil's Lettuce Edition comes in three smooth new delicious variations. Indica Indian, Cherry Delight.

What you talking about? Strawberry Filled Sativa. Mary Jane's last Dutch Apple Dance. All are made with a patent pending FD approved-ish formula of about 60% THC. 30% CBD, 40% CBN, 80% CBG, 33% CBC, 42% the BBC, 25% ATM, 45% BDSM, 50% water, 20% sugar, 8% brownies, 35% berries, shit, about 35% Cheetos for some crunch, relax, you need to slow down, just take a second a second let yourself be nothing ultimately matters you gotta take it easy on yourself come here come join me up on the ceiling come come on get up here some old scrape us off eventually chat about life let's be like unicorns getting hugged by rainbows.

Let's drink Whipple. A chill. Extential Devil's Lettuce edition. Guys, beautiful song. It's a beautiful sponsor. What a ride today. I really enjoyed changing things up this week. Waxing, philosophical.

Loved having a chance to truly get get deep deepest. Why are we here? What are we supposed to do? You know if anything with our lives, what is the fucking point of the world this universe? Does even need a point right? Maybe just just is So thankful for intensely curious souls like Friedrich Nietzsche Albert Camus Jean Paul Sartre I love being pushed or reminded or challenged to think about life in the world in new ways. Oh god I finally finished this. Reminds me of having late night philosophical discussions with buddies back in college or outside of class theological discussions with the priests back in Gonzaga. Discussions like these

you know they can just lead to the most exciting epiphanies. They can reinforce existing leanings. Maybe you're afraid to commit to some new direction in life. And you hear this and you think, yeah, that's it. That makes sense. Yes. I'm going to embrace this change. For me, the possibility of nothing ultimately mattering in some internal sense. Excuse me.

Oh my God. Actually not depressing. It's liberating. Not as the philosophers have said, freeing. I would consider myself a spiritualist. Oh my god. I would consider myself a spiritual existentialist. I believe in some notion of a soul, but not in a watchful deity who interferes, intervenes in our world. I believe that when it comes to eternal rewards or punishments,

it actually does not matter what we do in this life. But I also believe very much in wanting to spread far more joy than misery in this life. Nonetheless, to let those I love know I love them. Treat them with as much grace and kindness as I can to protect them, to speak up for what I believe in. Hope that my thoughts embolden others to the same, help improve the world. Also get better at loving myself, get as much as I can on my trips around the sun. I believe that at the end of the day, we are ultimately responsible for our own actions, good and bad.

I enjoy the responsibility of carrying a moral burden. Most days, so much of what life really is, is what you make of it. You can quote, have it all, yet be miserable due to your own attitude and perspective. You can quote, have nothing, but still have a heart filled with joy and hope. So really, you can have nothing but actually have it all. Isn't a heart full of joy and hope the ultimate goal, right? And you can choose to have that. How cool is that? So much of the purpose and meaning of our lives ultimately assigned to us by no one other than ourselves. We decide how much to care about, you know, what others

think, how much the values and attitudes of the culture that surrounds us we choose to adopt. Free fucking will. What a beautiful thing, truly. Gods? A God? No God or gods at all? We're definitely here now. That's certain. We're alive. Thus, we fucking matter. For at least as long as we suck breath, and we continue to matter after we stop sucking breath, at the very least, the memories of those who loved or at least knew us, and the hearts and minds of those who hear our words or songs after death or see what we built or painted or created in some other way whatever you choose to believe about life and the afterlife or lack thereof I believe that you matter meet sacks I believe we all matter thanks for joining me on this weird train today part of me feels like I've been talking for 20 minutes and part of me feels I

would talk for five hours if you let me sit in the proverbial backseat for another small part of your life's ride hail Nimrods time for today's takeaways Number one nihilism nihilism is the belief that life is completely and utterly meaningless And all moral and value systems are arbitrary because nothing can be known or communicated Also, did oh did anyone else? Keep thinking about the big Lebowski The about flea that movie about flea playing one of those those nihilists Fuckin love that movie so much. Let me just please time it here. Nothing changes

fucking Nazis I fucking love that movie so much. Let me just play this time bit here. Nothing changes. Fucking Nazis. They were Nazis, dude? Oh, come on, Donnie. They were threatening castration. Are we gonna split hairs here? No. Am I wrong? Man, they were nihilists, man. Huh?

They kept saying they believed in nothing. Nihilists. Fuck me. I love them so much. Number two, the man that made the philosophy famous. Friedrich Nietzsche believed that nihilism was a consequence of Christianity's downfall, and if nothing was done to mitigate it, nihilism's corrosive effects would eventually become the greatest crisis in all of human history. And take it easy, drama queen. Number three, in the 1940s the

philosophy of absurdism was invented by a man named Albert Camus. Camus believed that the paradox between life's innate meaninglessness and our ceaseless desire to find meaning in life is what made existence so absurd and the only way to cope with that is by facing the absurdity head-on and being aware of it at all times. Number four around that same time Jean-Paul Chartre became the first philosopher in history to self-identify as an existentialist. He wrote what is known as the Bible of existentialism in which he outlined the main tenets of the philosophy. Life is meaningless, which means we have the freedom to create meaning for ourselves,

which in turn also means we are burdened with profound responsibility. 5. New info Recently existentialism has re-entered mainstream news specifically as it pertains to increasingly advanced artificial intelligence. Whether or not AI poses an existential crisis to humanity is something everyone seems to be talking about. The question what's the point in doing anything becomes more complicated when it seems like everything you can do AI can do better or will be able to do better soon. Time. Shuck.

Top five takeaways. The 420 episode existentialism and weed. We're all going to die and I'm high as fuck. Has been sucked. Uh, thank you to the bad magic productions team for all their help in making Time Suck. Starting with Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsey Cummins. Isn't feeling good and I hope she doesn't have to really babysit me too much after recording. Hopefully she can get a little high too. I don't know, it's Friday. It's Friday night. Thanks also to Logan Keith, helping to publish the episode and designing merch for the store at BadMagicProductions.com.

Thanks to Molly Box, doing such good research on this one. It's gonna be her last episode on Time Suck for a while. She's gonna focus on scared to death stuff as she works on her PhD in philosophy. Based on how much she helped me understand all this much better than I did when I studied back in college. I think she's gonna knock her doctor out of the park. Also thanks to the all-seeing eyes moderating the Cult and Curious private Facebook page group. The mod squad making sure discord keeps running smooth. Everyone over on the time suck subreddit of bad medic subreddit. And now the update button. Get your Time Sucker updates! Our first update is from a concerned, caring, nurturing sucker, Katie, who wrote it with the subject line of, Thank you for the short suck number 10.

Hi Time Suck crew, you guys are phenomenal. I adore how carefully researched each episode is. I'll get straight to the point saying thank you Dan Cummins and staff at TimeSuck for doing short suck 10 Andrea Yates. I'm a registered nurse working in behavioral health with well-controlled bipolar disorder and I'm coming up on my first anniversary with my husband and we both want children. My deepest fear is suffering from postpartum psychosis as women with bipolar disorder are at a significantly higher risk for developing PPP than the general population. I've always been so terrified of becoming someone like Andrea Yates that I'd never properly researched her.

And you did a fabulous job. You all did a fabulous job. For the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank you for soothing my layers upon layers of disgust and terror regarding a possible future diagnosis of mine. Dan, you were a stellar narrator and compassionate in the ways that matter to people with mental illness. Thank you.

Every time I had to nearly shut off the podcast from panicky, oh my God, what if that happens to me thoughts, you were there with a vocal criticism of Mrs. Yates failed support network or expressing sympathy towards her. Maintaining the podcast, it felt safe even though it was centered around one of the most highly stigmatized and destructive mental illnesses we've defined so far. You were reassuring when explaining the risk factors of PPP and I felt a lot of my build and destructive mental illnesses we've defined so far. You were reassuring when explaining the risk factors of PPP, and I felt a lot of my built up panic dissolve as you explained that Andrea was failed both

by the life she was stuck in and too little too late from the few people who could have helped her. That meant the world to me. I listened a few weeks ago. I'm still reminded daily of how relieved I felt after finishing that episode. Keep doing what you're all doing. And from a mentally ill person who may in the future become more mentally ill,

thank you all at Time Suck for being so professional with the most difficult chapters in humanity's story. Best, Katie. And then BSNRN. Katie, thank you for a wonderful message, you wonderful woman. Yeah, there's so much help available for so many mental illnesses right now. You know, illnesses that exist on a huge spectrum. I bet most of us have one or more to some degree. I continually struggle with some form of low-grade depression myself, like mood stability. Been a while since I've talked about here, but it's, you know, just like a storm that moves in my head and I can't predict when it's gonna show up or leave.

Much better than a meteorologist can predict the weather most days. So I just say this to say like you're far from being alone. You're an intelligent, compassionate, thoughtful person. All most important qualities for an amazing mother. And if you and your husband do ever have children, then that is exactly what you will continue to, or what you will be.

And if you get PPP, you'll unlike poor Andrea have a much better support system. You'll get treatment. You'll be okay because you're aware of what can happen and you know how to plan for it. So hail Nimrod, hail Zephina. Keep feeling good. I hope my emotions are, I think they are on my head. I'm super, super stoned right now. I have a message from Daniel Hayes, a fantastic, loving father, who wrote in with the subject line of shout out to my son.

Greetings suck master, praise triple M, long live good boy Bojangles, and hail Nimrod. I'd like to send a birthday greeting to my son Big Griff. He got me hooked on the Time Suck podcast during a trip cross-country when we were bringing him back from his first year of college. The first one he had me listen to was the Chicaillo Suck. What's his big deal? What a great way to start. During that 3000 mile trip, oh cool.

We must listen to eight or nine year older sucks. I've been a fan ever since. He even got me to buy tickets to one of your shows in Tempe a few years ago and I laughed my ass off. Oh, thank you. Thanks to Big Griff. I now look forward to each week's new podcast and find time in my week to listen to them.

My boy has made an epic comeback and I am so very proud of him. I thought I would write to you and see if you can wish him a happy birthday. Long story short, he went to Pennsylvania after high school to play college baseball at a small school in the Philadelphia area. He had a great freshman year of school, both academically and athletically, but then things kind of changed. He had a rough breakup to a relationship he was in, then had some mental health issues causing him to take a break from school. When he came back the next year, he tore a ligament in his elbow, had to have owner, owner collateral ligament replacement surgery, also known as Tommy John surgery.

Uh, Griff had a low point, hung up to cleats on his baseball career, transferred back here to attend a state university in Arizona because he also changed his major. He ended up losing about two years of credits academically. He then really struggled in school his first year back, ended up on academic probation. However, this story has a great ending. After a lot of long talks and Griff making some good decisions, he got himself back together. He is now starting his senior year. He has gotten his grade point average to a point where he now qualifies for grants and scholarships.

He will graduate this coming May with an education degree focusing on math. Griff is going to make a great teacher and coach for that matter because he has been through the struggles and has fought his way back up. I am so very proud of him. He could have quit,

hell at one point I even encouraged him to, but he didn't. He's done an amazing job. He's become a fantastic man. His birthday is the first week of October. Can you please wish him a happy birthday for me? Thank you Dan Hays. Well Dan, first off thank you for being such a great caring, concerned, and proud dad for your son. The love you've shown him has undoubtedly helped him in immeasurable amounts along his journey. And Griff, man, good on you dude. Perseverance, one of the most important qualities you can have in life and you have shown you

definitely have that what a cool thing to know about yourself you know the road of life is long it's full you know a lot of unexpected turns when I first went to college I was convinced I was gonna be a some kind of video game designer then I thought I was gonna be like a writer of some kind then a child psychologist then a social worker and maybe a musician I worked in mental health but less than a year full of time. Then I was a personal trainer at a gym and I didn't want to do that. I almost went back to school for graphic design so I could build websites. Ended up in stand-up comedy. Now I'm not touring. Don't know when I'll start again because I'm having

so much fun podcasting but also want to write a novel, publish a collection of short stories. It's on and on and on. Plans change, right? The strong, the resilient, they adapt. And these changes you've undergone successfully, oh man, they've made you stronger, more adaptable, more resilient. More change is gonna come, like it's gonna come for everybody, and you're gonna be ready. So happy birthday, you badass. Go have a drink with your dad, give him a hug, tell him you love him. The next message, now from a funny formerly traumatized sucker Rhiannon Parker. Excuse me, holy shit is this intense. My god, she wrote it with the subject line of seer school humor. What's up suck

nasty? Long time listener in space lizard. Thank you, first time caller. This story is a bit gory. I would say sorry but I promised my parole officer I would stop lying. I just finished watching your history of torture episode and in it you started talking about survival programs taught by the military and this long buried story came smacking me in the big brain. Or smacking me in the brain. My uncle taught in the SERE program for almost 10 years in Warner Springs, California. Every year they would invite boys slash girl scouts to the forest for a basic survival course. Now obviously this wasn't anywhere near as involved if you were actually in the military but survival nonetheless. So we thought it would be a good idea on one

of these weekends to bring my cousin and I with him. She was 10 and I was 11. The day started out fun building shelters, learning how to start fires, but then we had to learn how to catch dinner. You would think that this would be just how to set traps or like to hunt, etc. Nope. My cousin and I being two little girls thinking we were just having fun camping, when we watch her dad kill a sweet innocent fluffy bunny. This is insane.

Skin it. And then suck the eyeballs out of its skull. Because, I quote, that's a lot of protein. You don't want to miss out on. You'd think this would be the horror part, but no. After we dried our tears and enjoyed some rabbit stew, we watched some of the actual recruits doing drills. They were doing suicides with heavy gear packs on. Almost in slow motion, a group of kids from 10 to 17 years old watch as one of the recruits loses his footing, falls balls first into a very pointy or onto a very pointy possibly malicious stick. With his heavy gear assisting his

fall, the stick impales him through his front and out his back." I remember my uncle packing this up very quickly as he was life flighted out of there. So this was 20 plus years ago, I kind of forgot about it. So thanks for that. Where can I send you my therapy bill? Also called my uncle, because I realized that everybody would happen to that guy. Apparently he got very lucky. The stick missed the majority of his internal organs

and important blood vessels. However, he did lose one of his testicles. Your loyal bunny loving spaces are Rhiannon. Oh yeah, spelled like the Fleetwood Mac song. Oh, holy shit, Rhiannon. That was very intense. You saw two things in one day when you were a kid that I've seen in my entire life. A rabbit getting his fucking eyeballs sucked out and a dude being impaled.

It wasn't the same person. Did your uncle get sick from doing that? I'm pretty sure eating raw eyeballs of any species is a health code no-no. Like that would never be allowed at a restaurant. I'm glad you're okay. And I'm kind of shocked that your uncle is still alive. Now one more. We need a palate cleanser.

A funny one. No rabbits getting any eyeballs sucked out. Rambling gambling sack. Hot hard father daddy. Matthew Clark. Sent in a subject line of hot father daddies really? He wrote hello Times Look team I've been a fan of the show for a while and never thought I would be one of those sons of bitches that writes in for the first time with the Cummins law story but boy do I feel their pain after this one. So I live out here in dick bird

territory and listen to the podcast a lot while playing poker. One night a couple months ago I was making a run in a tournament at the Orleans, at the Orleans, and there were four tables left out of around 150 people who bought in and were right around the money bubble. Yeah, so things are pretty poker serious at this point. I usually like the history related podcasts the best, although I do love a good grifter story, and was listening to the Julius Caesar one at this time. I ended up in a big hand where I flop love a good grifter story, and was listening to the Julius Caesar one at this time. I ended up in a big hand where I flopped a set. Nice, but the river gave the board three clubs. This guy went all in so he could have had the flush. I typically turn off my sound would make a big decision,

so I did this and then sat there thinking about what to do for a good three four minutes. Of course, the other guy in the hand is tearing me pretty intensely, but I began to feel all the other people at the table look at me intensely as well. I was thinking of the time just because there was this huge decision in front of me. After a while I believe the guy end up folding at which point I pull one ear and hear you hear your fucking voice at full blast coming out of my phone. My first thought was Jesus. At least I wasn't playing during

the hot father daddies bullshit from earlier. That would be awkward. But as I'm sure you know, you did the same fucking bit multiple times throughout the episode. And after a couple minutes, one of the guys who talks too much makes some clip about father daddies and oh my fucking God, the awkward moment there just about killed me. So fun crowd to have to explain what the fuck I'm listening to, how I don't have some kind of fetish for hot hard father daddies, was just about the most awkward thing I've ever had to do. So thanks for that. I did end up making third though, got a couple grand, but everyone at the table called me father daddy the rest of the tournament, and it is a memory burn in my comedic mind forever. Sorry about the excessively long paragraph, but I had to share that. I thought you would find it

hilarious. Love the podcast, the comedic way you approach topics always look forward to hearing the new episodes except the penis enlargement one really does give me nightmares can't believe guys voluntarily would get that done wouldn't change a thing three to five stars for sure if you could do a podcast on the history of poker sometime I'd find it interesting to listen to while I play Matthew Clark and then writes ps being a Vegas local I keep the dick bird story going and when I find a hilarious manner I still treat it as fact and whenever I take an uber I make sure to point out areas that were crime scenes of dick birds and add parts of the story you forgot to add to the podcast my secret hope is that this

army of uber drivers I tell these stories to will keep repeating these stories as fact all the people that visit Vegas I hope so too thanks for all the entertainment and keep on sucking. Matt. Oh Matt you hot hard gambling daddy. Thank you for sending that in. That was a very funny story and my favorite part was the unexpected Dick Bird info. Making up new lore with uber drivers. Please keep doing that and good luck hope you keep winning at future tournaments. By the, I had not thought about Bird in a month or two, but after reading your email,

I Googled what serial killer is known as the Las Vegas Strip Strangler. And the AI answer that came back made me so happy. Said, according to available information, the serial killer referred to as the Las Vegas Strip Strangler is Richard Bird. Explanation, this moniker is most commonly associated with Richard Bird in various true crime media,

particularly with Time's Up with Dan Cummins, the podcast episode discussing his case. So Dick Bird lives. Hail Nimrod, everybody. Thanks, Time Suckers. I needed that. We all did. Thank you for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast. Scared to death, time suck each week. Short sucks, nightmare fuel.

On the time sucks, scared to death podcast feeds some weeks. Please take some moments to get existential this week. Religious, not religious, doesn't matter. What for you is the meaning and purpose of life? It's an important question to ask yourself. Maybe the most important question you could ask. Find your answer. Live your truth. Life is short but filled with meaning. Keep on sucking. I can't believe I thought for a second that I could have two joints in that time span. These joints. If I smoked, because every time I've smoked that much, I can't do anything.

I can't ask a basic question, let alone try and present this philosophical work. I feel like, that was fun though. I hope that was fun. I hope that was fun. I hope it was funnier than the Molly episode. Because I guess on that one one I just was so hyper focused that like that I just there was nothing like there was nothing weird about it I was just a guy who like locked in I just just talked talked even faster and this one felt I that felt like a journey I felt like I Looked over this stuff earlier today. I want to play some music. I looked over stuff earlier today and

But then I was looking at obviously when I'm talking to you and I could remember if I had said it before I was listening to a lot of Elliott Smith Oh yeah, this is such a good song. Yeah, if I didn't have strong notes, oh my god, I would not have been able to make any sense the last hour, I don't know, 20 minutes, what is time? That's what I wanted to make it to. This song feels so existential. Everything doesn't mean nothing. Hope you have your meaning.