Q&A - Decisions, the Divinity of the Torah, the Holidays (Rabbi Dovid Gottleib) (Jewish Philosophy)

your Collective Liv yeah okay yeah does rubby have any idea how a free will decision is made like the mechanism um it's a good question um there's a famous question that goes back almost 2,000 years to the stoics that there can't be any consistent description of how a free will decision is made this is a an attack a critique and roughly the idea is when you come to make a decision you have your already present motivations your desires your hopes your fears your values your commitments and usually they conflict with one another indeed if they don't conflict with one another then it's really not a free will decision so you have let's suppose it's a simple case where there's only two possibilities A and B so some of your motivation would push you to do a and some of motivation would do push you to B and the Free Will decision is deciding which of them shall uh be activated be enacted um and this is my way of putting the the the problem question is how does the decision uh how is it made and in particular is it made according to rules or not does the Free Will mechanism whatever it is the free will power use rules to decide what it should choose or not rules well let's see how many pleasure points does a give me 16 how many pleasure points does B give me 12 and how many how much fear is is stimulated six and 19 just add and then add them up and the one with the biggest score that's the one that you that you that the Free Will um enacts then the question will be where did those rules Come From Where are the rules how free will get those rules to operate on and if the answer is well it's your Society or it's your home experiences or it's your nutrition or it's your DNA then the whole of the decision is dependent upon forces that are outside of you and that you had or came from outside of you and over which you had no control in making them and bringing them into existence and then it's not free you're not doing it it's being pushed by things outside so that doesn't leave the right the right answer then the answer has to be something like this this is the way the problem goes he answer something like this well okay so I have my desires and hopes and fears and Scruples and and values and projects and all the rest and they give various scores to A and B but in spite of that the decision is made not in terms of all of those considerations not in terms of all of those factors well if the decision is made not in terms of all those factors it sounds like it's arbitrary it just happens by accident has no Direction it just trips in and if it just trips in it may be free all right but why is it a decision for which you're responsible it's just something that happens either tips this way or tips that way it it goes the the the argument is no matter what you say you can't explain why you are responsible for what you do the bottom line here is responsibility if you take the first alternative then the the things that make the decision all are fruit of outside influences which means it's being done to you you're not doing it on your own and if you take away all those outside influences then it seems that the that decision is something which happens accidentally arbitrarily randomly in which case it's something just happens and therefore you would be responsible for it that's a very very old and um much discussed problem there are two contemporary philosophers who have ways out of this one is timy Oker uses something called person causation I'm not going to go into that it's a little subtle in in philosophical terms the other is John Sur and John surl has a critique of the whole way of framing the problem um if if you have a we have a recording you can go back and check the vocabulary that I used which was designed to fall into his trap um you ask why did something happen why did it happen so your mind you say why did it happen that means what made it happen what brought it about what caused it to happen now if I ask about a decision why did it happen why was that decision made and why means what caused it what produced it what determined it to happen then the very question begs the argument how could it be free if the explanation for why it happened is what caused it then there must be something that caused it and there's something that caused it then that's what brought about the action and it wasn't you you and therefore it's not free will this way of asking the question means you can't get an answer if it's free you'd have to say there's no explanation for it but sirl says that's just a Prejudice when you ask why you want an explanation who says explanations are only causes in particular suppose I ask you what do you do for a living he say I'm I'm a carpenter I said why are you working at carpenting and he says to earn money is that an explanation do I have a better understanding of him now you could earn work at our carpenting for a hundred different reasons he tells me he's doing it to to earn a living is that a cause is to earn a living causing him to be a carpenter tour in the living is his goal it's his purpose it's his end it's what he's doing it for what he's doing it for isn't obviously the ca it's another kind of explanation instead of looking behind to see what's pushing look ahead to see what he's aiming at when you're talking about a person making a decision one way to explain it is to explain what he would was going after so sirl says this is a way to avoid the stoics problem are does does the uh free will operate according to rules sort of but not rules which are programmed from the outside they're and therefore they're caused by I things on the outside it's the goals that the go that the that the Free Will that the will is is is is up is going for so that that way you get an explanation but you don't end up and yet therefore it's not it's not arbitrary it's not random it definitely has a meaning it has a Direction but it hasn't doesn't have to be caused if you go on and ask where did the goals come from that's an interesting question and you could continue to investigate that there are lots of things that are interesting there are lots of follow-up questions that you could ask but the critic here had an argument to prove you can't get out you must say either it's caused or it's random and the answer is no I don't have to say it's either caused or random I could explain it in terms of the goal for which the AC was was is that a complete picture of everything in the world does it tell you who's going to win the baseball game no but that doesn't mean there's an answer to his question he no longer has a proof that we're trapped into saying either it's caused or it's random so that's a beginning more to say about it I I could say one more thing uh this happen Shapiro but of course uh he bases himself on basically on capitalistic sources and philosophical sources um the n in the simplest articulation has five parts and the lower three which which people are familiar is the nees part of the soul is that which is closely associated with the body indeed if you look in the way of God he has two neish one in the body as the life force of the body which animals have also and then the lowest part of the soul that interacts with that neish and and and directs its functioning that's one of the three the highest of the three which is called the sh with a little n so to speak that is what is the where the intellect is and where the understanding of values is and where the attraction to holiness and Purity is and in between there something called Ru and both the neish from below and then n from above feed into the ru and of course what the neish below representing the body wants is one thing and with the Nish above representing the intellect and the understanding of of the ultimate values wants is another thing that's the conflict the conflict feeds into the ru and it's in the ru that the decision is made so that at least localizes it but to say more about it to say more about the actual mechanism by which it's made I don't know anything more to say that's that's all I have to say yeah um prior so prior to the National relation so in in Abraham's time how would anyone have known what Abraham was saying and doing was true as opposed to any other religious leader who just develops their philosophy in a cave somewhere without other people okay that's a very good question first of all he didn't go around teaching people to put on Fillin or to keep kosher or to keep chabas that isn't what that isn't what he typically did what he typically did was to make them understand that worshiping anything other than the creator of the universe is a is a is a tragic mistake and there are certain laws which God decreed For All Mankind which were known to Adam which were known to Noah and he preached to them that this is the way you need to live because that's the way the Creator wants you to live and he could take their thought systems where they worshiped the Sun or the moon or the or Fire or the SE and point out the weaknesses in their systems both the fact that they were internally inconsistent and and also that there was a lot that they left unexplained and um he could he could point out that the way in which he understood the world explains things in a much better way much more satisfactory way which gives it the The credibility of Truth to go beyond that and to voluntarily keep the laws of the Torah that he knew about and he wasn't commanded to do but he volunteered to do I don't know how how far uh he he um he he preached that I I imagine among the thousands of people whom he spoke he interacted with there may have been some who said look we want more than this we want also to do the rest of what you're doing and and if he had closer Disciples of that kind Al he is a probably was a a close disciple of that kind but in typical typically what he wanted to do was wean them from idol worship and to introduce them to the worship of the creator of the universe that he could do by just arguing with their positions yeah in the back so just this might be a question that stems out of ignorance but is um the torist supposed to be something that's infinitely complex where we can theoretically derive the known universe from the to even though we don't have that knowledge right now you can every word every truck and when but in terms of the Tor we have access to when one is learning it within the right environment with the right mindset at some point especially if someone's very learned the ideas of the Torah can start to seem relatively easy to understand and if the torist seems to be relatively easy to understand you could sit and share you can and the dialogue that's happening between rebi and student you could start to think you know is this something that could theoretically be man-made I know they're telling me that there's this complexity that exists but no one seems to know what that complexity is so not that the proof for God I mean one might think that a proof for God shouldn't exist in the Torah that it shouldn't exist in the complexity yet we say that that complexity is there so just kind of trying to Grapple with that okay there are a few things to say here first of all you're you're describing a vast area and you've picked out two small positions in that vast area uh there's the kind of understanding that you could have with uh let's say familiarity and there is some genuine understanding there and then there's the ultimate infinite depth but in between there's a lot of grounds where it's much more complicated than you're getting with a with a beginning familiarity and uh and and much more wisdom would be available in that someone said um Aristotle was a very great thinker maybe the greatest thinker that ever lived outside of the Jewish tradition it's possible but he had two tremendous uh shortcomings he had no telescope and no microscope now just imagine examining the world world with no telescope and no microscope well you can get a lot of things right you can get agriculture right you can get a lot of strategies in Warfare right you can get considerable amount of human psychology right right but my gosh you know if you don't know what the things are in the heavens if you think of little points of light or little points of light and then you de that there are galaxies with a 100 Million Suns you got that really wrong and if you have no clue of the of the microscopic um is a very famous gamor R said if you would know what's surrounding you you would drop dead from Fright so one explanation is certain things that we know from from the tradition but before let's say 200 years ago take a glass of water and look at it under a microscope it's full of living things you can see living things in the water which looks to you just like plain water so if you don't a telescope a microscope and this is before getting to the Big Bang or doing theoretical physics it's just as a lot more in the world than you're you're able to be in contact with so if you're talking about measuring the wisdom and things um I think that middle ground is a ground which uh which could be extremely impressive um now an argument that it's divine because it's very complex I'm not familiar with an argument like that I think it's much too vague to um to uh determine what a human being could think of and what a human being could could could discover U so to say well this is too complex for a human being to to ever discover yeah if if you found a person who could multiply two 20 digits numbers in his head in 30 seconds you'd say he's getting from somewhere that's not him that's not human human can't do that but when you're talk about the complexity of a system I mean the of Mozart was composing SW string Tes four year olds four year olds Mozart died when he was 31 the over 50 Symphonies and and operas and and and and string quartets and piano ceros and can you being do that would you imagine you no I wouldn't imagine it and and he did it so um it's to say that because it's very complex that um that that therefore uh there an argument that it must have been composed by supern natur power I wouldn't be convinced about an argument like that but I would say two things the fact that we got the idea of the universe has a beginning right until 1965 all educated scientific and philosophical opinion thought that the universe is infinitely old that's a pretty big win and if you're talking about this group as primitive and superstitious and uneducated and and simplistic you know and and uh it's very be very surprising they got something like that right that's one and the other is that the 20th century into the 21st century is a a tragic story of dismal failure in the uh Sciences especially the hard Sciences because the dream was everything's made out of a few little things and those few little things are really simple in what they do and we can understand what do and then everything is just combinations of them and you can see how when you put them together like this you get this kind of thing when you put them together that you get that kind of thing we have a simple explanation for everything that happens and that's wrong in every respect everything that has been analyzed and has been investigated always turns out to be much more complicated than than you thought much more complicated than you thought the cell was supposed to be just a little a little vessel of of liquid uh you know the whole liquid for the body the cell has thousands of miniature machines operating in it all the time many of the things we that that cell does we we don't even understand okay you have Pro particles right this is very interesting molecules were supposed to be the building blocks of the world oh molecules have Parts okay okay no it's atoms atom in Greek means indivisible what a big mistake because they discovered that atoms have Parts also right neutrons protons electrons plus pons and muons and all the rest of the extra junk that they found okay fine so now what about a proton oh a proton has Parts they're called quarks proton has three quarks okay fine what do they do with the quirks how do they behave what's going on inside the proton I saw an article two about two years ago the title was the infinite complexity of the proton just to describe what's going on in one particle borders on the infinity infinity of complexity it didn't get simple at the bottom it got more and more complicated more and more more mysterious when we take quantum mechanics into account everything's mysterious it's not there till you look and when you look you make it have the properties that it has and it can be behave like a particle and a and a wave at the same time in the same experiment nobody understands how that happen happens why that happens so the world it was a gigantic disappointment in the project of science to be able to explain the world um I see a parallel in the structure of the Jewish tradition because on the surface you have laws and you have descriptions of stories and then when you start to take them seriously and you compare one passage with another passage and the way the words are used um you find that there are themes or there are seeming contradictions and it requires a lot of thought to be able to avoid the contradictions or explain away the contradictions and then if you get a glimpse at the cabala the underpinning is U extremely complex and mysterious it's ultimately mysterious it turns out that the world has an underpinning which is very complex and mysterious and the Jewish tradition which is thousands of years old at the very bottom is very complex and mysterious I don't know that just be an accident I mean yeah all science could be an accident also if you're looking for ways in which the Torah reflects something which you wouldn't have expected and something which which has external reference I think you can find them but uh not just in the fact that it's that it's complex I wouldn't go that way yes how can I'm sorry I'm not getting the words let's try again how did how can we view struggles and hardships as opportunities for growth instead of just obstacles how can you view it um well first of all think about what PE things that people do voluntarily football you don't have to be a professional player but if you're playing and you're playing seriously you're going to get hurt you always get bruises that's for sure you might even break a bone are you a masochist are you trying to torture yourself by playing football so why are you causing yourself pain why I just sit in a hammock you know and drink beer and watch television yeah because football's exciting and and you know and and I enjoy the challenge I enjoy the challenge I enjoy the challenge even if the challenge is only beating the other team but I enjoy that challenge so that means that sometimes you choose to do things which can cause yourself pain and and the idea is number one it's worth it and number two part of it is to see that I can operate even under pain so the fact that something's painful doesn't automatically make it negative doesn't automatically make it negative um we have Einstein's notebooks when he was moving from special relativity to general relativity and he was trying to get gravity in uh and for two years he was struggling um and he cross whole pages and and then somebody said to him oh reman did that in 1850s just take over his math and you can have you can have it for free and he did it I never heard him say I regretted those two years he struggled with understanding the universe he got right what Newton got wrong that's a pretty big accomplishment that's a pretty big achievement you know he had found it in his in a book buried in the sand and just read it and he wouldn't have felt anything like the accomplishment of struggling with it to be able to come up on it so to speak on his own so I don't think that um pain and and suffering and even sadness is something which has to be looked at as negative it all depends upon how you frame it what what position you put it it now I just make one more remark about this and I'll go to the next question let's take death so death causes people pain and rightfully so and some of the commentators say you know every normal P person will feel feel pain when when a close relative dies will definitely feel pain but then how do you frame it well from our point of view the first person vers people were created Immortal not to die and death came into the world only because they failed to keep the Commandment that gave them and death is a way that the body can undergo Rehabilitation to be able to contribute to that ultimate end that they were supposed to have done at the beginning of the world so it's really a step in the ultimate Rehabilitation and the ultimate success of the project that the world was created for so it's not the end and it's not the meaning that everything's over and the contrary it's a step in a process so death in that respect is something like surgery I don't volunteer for surgery but boy am I happy there are surgeons because oh the alternative would be much worse even if it's going to cause me pain and even if it's going to go to have general anesthesia and all the rest it's definitely a process that I want I want there to be so then although you do feel the pain of the loss you don't feel that the world is out of control or the world is broken somehow on the contrary death was put into the world in order to fix things and you know you're going through that process of fixing things these things can help yeah you'd asked before you'd said you have thoughts on early humans to to bring up in Q&A humans oh did I did I I forgot all about that yeah a little bit a little bit um so they'll tell you mankind is anywhere between 100,000 and a half a million years old you know that's science is sort of approximate depending how you count but how you define and so for and so on there's a crucial Factor here and that is that their definition of human being and our definition human being aren't the same definition so if someone asks you know what about anthropology and paleontology history of humanity the first thing to make get straight is if you're asking me how it relates to my thought system have to understand that I have a different definition the definition that's accepted one of the many definitions that's accepted in science is either DNA that's we counts as being human or having a lineage an evolutionary lineage to the present human population and having enough features of what they call Humanity to be counted as not a precursor of humanity but being human themselves and and the features that they that they um that they identify are bodily structure and um a certain amount of intelligence uh both both practical intelligence making tools and and maybe hunting together and so on and so on and that's their definition of humanity our definition Humanity would would contain bodily structure don't know the extent to which we would use DNA as a as a factor but our definition contains both morality and spirituality the first humans were were were uh uh given commands by the Creator and they were held responsible and punished for failure so they understood morality and spirituality I mean God spoke to Adam and uh they understood the world in terms of a Creator a creation so in order to qualify a human being for us the creature whose bones you're studying we have to have evidence that he possessed what we would call morality and spirituality so my question to them is where is your evidence that this creature with those bones and with some intelligence and some intelligence possessed morality and spirituality and the short answer is if you don't have language that say we don't have any linguistic remains I don't know whether they spoke or not but we don't have their linguistic remains so we don't have anything that they spoke to judge them by it's impossible to know whether they had any morality or spirituality it's impossible to know we have their artifacts and we have something about what they did but just as think of yourself watching another person do something and ask yourself how well do I know why he's doing it like I said before about the guy who's working at carpenting there could be a dozen different reasons if all you see him is working with wood you would know what they are maybe it's a family tradition maybe it's how he expressed himself artistically maybe he tried everything else and failed it's the only way he can earn a living who knows uh some of those those creatures that they studied buried their dead I actually read one academic fool who said obviously they believed in the soul that's why they buried their dead hello what about the fact that after a while the corpses smell how about just getting them out of the way how about making the Earth more fertile or who knows what without linguistic remains we have no clue as to what the what their values were their worldview was and the oldest linguistic remains that we have are less than 6,000 years old so so far anyway we're not going to find out 10,000 years ago what they thought and what they so the the the the scientistic world will say but there's a continuity leading up from one to the other so you say so you say but you don't know that you may see a continuity in the shape of the ball yeah you could see that and you can see the continuity in the kinds of tools that are made yeah you could see that but you don't know there's a continuity of morality and spirituality you just don't know that you think so because you're a materialist and you look at the material and generate everything from there we don't agree with that so I think it's very very important to to to understand when you talk about what they find or what they say that we have a a very different definition of what count is a human being yeah um the holidays that we have throughout the year are they like a way of has remembering us from we were going through those holidays I mean doesn't need reminders I mean like um in a sense like that's a time where he's like thinking like okay this is what they did for you know they did you know bring I guess for PES off for instance right there's a time where they and got up I I don't I don't know I I never heard any idea like that it's it's really a a time for us to remember and to be to be connected with uh with those events that took place let me tell you AIC story I haven't told the story in many many years it illustrates this in a very deep way when we were here in 1977 and my oldest son went to he was 8 years old if I remember correctly and he came home one day with this story um bov came to a city and he stayed overnight in the morning he went to the sh to Davin and while he was there he saw one of the locals with a sitter doing something very peculiar he was going to the sitter Page by Page 66 67 141 142 364 365 790 well if you know the Jewish sitter it's it's an allpurpose tool for the whole year it has daily prayers and shabas prayers and then various holiday prayers and he's keeping you know 1056 1057 he's just going through Page by page so the B calls him over and says what are you doing I'm praying RAB I'm saying the sitter but but you don't say all of the sitter every day you know it's meant for different occasion really Rabbi yeah listen I'll help you out I'll put markers in for you Tak a pieces of paper and put labels them but Markus oh thank you imagine soad spending 36 hours a day ding now he some time for other thingss by the re gives it to him and leaves the city goes on his journey few hours later the guy picks up the sitter and his Fells falls out of his hands and all the markers fall out what to do now which way did he go he grabs the cter grabs the markers going after the B he goes faster so comes to the top of a hill he sees down in the valley that there's a river and the B is walking towards the river and there's no bridge and there are no boats so he thinks ahem he's going to stop at the river and I'll catch up with him he's coming down the hill gets to the river takes the handkerchief out of his pocket puts it on the ground steps on the handkerchief and the handkerchief carries him across the river oh no hey wait he runs up to the river B hello hello doesn't hear him no boat no bridge in desperation he takes out his handkerchief puts it on the ground steps on it and his Grand carries carries him over the river puts his handkerchief back in his pocket he may need that he goes racing after the catches up to him and says Reby Reby Reby it's terrible the cter fell all the markers fell out oh says b really the Markus fell out um but tell me something how did you get across the river and he says you know I saw you go across with your handkerchief and I tried it and I went across my handkerchief also said really you got across the river with your handkerchief I'm not putting the markers back in the sitter and of story so when our son told that to us we looked at each other and said what what's that about okay there are Miracles that's nothing for us that's not no no wory we believe that Natural Sciences and everything you know and there's a God son what's it supposed to teach you I think I figured out one way to get a message from the story let's take for example the holidays pesak pesak Liberation um is pesak important to a Jew in July or in December everything he does is because he's free he's free from Egypt and he has his ability to be his own to to to live according to his own Direction it's not as if the theme of PES is only relevant in the spring sh received the Torah is that relevant in January sure because everything he's doing is coming from the Torah so why is it that we celebrate these things once a year why is that it's because although there the events are relevant 365 but we can't experience them all simultaneously the freedom of pesak and the awe of receiving the Torah and the comfort of knowing that Providence surrounds us all the time of sukus those are contradictory experiences so the different times of the year are set aside to experience those and then the prayers Express those experiences that's why the sudden prayers for certain times of the year and other prayers other times of the year but imagine a person who could could really experience it all simultaneously maybe he should say the whole sitter every day and maybe if this guy can get across the river with his handkerchief maybe that's the kind of person that he is now I'm not talking practically now not encouraging you to say the PES prayers on rash not encouraging that but but there's a deep idea here that you really are reexperiencing and reliving those times in metaphysical terms um the events that took place and the effect that they had on a person are available throughout time the the 15th of Nissan is a Liberation day even for us now we all have walls that enclose us U challenges that we think we were're incapable of of of rising to um this obligations that we have difficulty in fulfilling and it can be a time also of personal Liberation that's available each of those times but again I can't relate to all of those Powers simultaneously in the way in which I have to take them and focus on them and and embody them so it's really more for me to remember me to relive me to uh reactivate the powers of that time but the idea that it's for Kos BR to remember or focus on not as far as I know yeah back so um the concept of ab and talks about obviously you shouldn't try to take everything on at once but when you have if there's something you feel you can start abstaining from maybe that's a certain TV show um you could take it to find yourself and you know like obviously be wared but when someone especially as Isa you know you're really focusing on Torah you know and it's pretty obvious that certain things are distractions certain things are detracting from your growth you could start to run into certain issues so one for example that I'm running into is poisha that you have like just on your typical playlist and so you start thinking okay do I now to do I need to make an effort not to listen to this you know after asking my rabbis and they verifi yeah really there LCI yet if you start taking on everything that appears in your mind that oh yeah I shouldn't do this then you're violating the very guidelines of them don't take everything on at once so how how should a person person approach that if it comes to mind maybe it's something you should focus on or like how how do you not there's no general rule it's going to vary from person to person you you put the qu the situation very well um and um I don't know if TV shows is a good example because those things are probably just us and he wasn't talking about that he was talking about abstinence from things which are permissible but are distractions and it's not not the same kind of thing um it'll vary and it depends upon what the consequences are of trying versus not trying um 43 years ago when I first came to AR there was a fellow here who um I was able to push him into a certain type of Liu certain type of learning and he came to me one time and said listen rabbi I get once a week I get Sports Illustrated and if you don't know what that is you don't know what sport is that is the magazine in the world nothing else comes close that's what they tell me um and he says I know that I'm learning talwood and everything else and that's really not worthy on the other hand if I don't have it I'll miss it so I said to him tell me something how long does it take you to read the Sports Illustration it's about two hours how many hours a day are you going to be disturbed by the fact that you don't have it so he thought and he said probably about an hour a day so I said get it you're five hours a week ahead if you get it about three months later he canceled subscription he wasn't ready yet to make that break it would be too costly for him to make that break what you have to do is take account of all the consequences of making the break and the break the success is not just in I succeeded in stopping X because I found I thought that X was was inappropriate but in stopping x what else was under tension what else became irritating what else got lost and then make a bottom line evaluation as to whether you really took a step forward or you really took a step backward that's going to very from person to person from subject to subject and from time to time the only thing you can do by analogy for this is sports I do exercise and I have a trainer who helps me and doing this for a long time and you get counterintuitive advice of both types sometimes I want to do something extra and he'll say not for you I feel was too dangerous you could injure yourself and then you won't be able to exercise at all and other times and doing something and he says do twice as much twice as much you know I'm pushing myself I think you could do twice as much and then I turn out there only mental I I feel exhausted because I know that's the last one I think 10 I got over 20 someh I just do it it's my own surprise you need a coach someone who's seen this before and couched other people before can help make an educated decision as to what is an appropriate step in your circumstances it's a it's a golden question that's a question that everybody has to ask what step should I take what what pace should I takeen and it will vary throughout your life that's why it's good to have I just tell you one story that a good friend of mine had this happened to him H he had a problem he didn't tell me what it was but it was a terrible problem struggling with it and was sometimes exceeding sometimes failing and then he had a breakthrough and he licked it he licked it months went by and he was was able to be consistent he felt very good about it and he went to his rebi and just uh just he didn't brag about it but he just told him about it you know Reby looked him in the eye and said it'll come back he was devastated like you know yeah it came back he told me he struggled with it for many more years until he until he but his reie knew better than he what was going on in his life that's very valuable if somebody can tell you that and can deal deal with that for you that's a very valuable thing to have this kind of question really needs that kind of that kind of that kind of help yeah last question a couple weeks back um someone asked like um about different different pain in the Life say my life sucked and then after you die hash's going to give you all this said that's not a good argument because you could have gave me both me a good life here and a good life in the world REM that exp on I don't remember it but I'm a little surprised um so it's never worth making an effort and depriving yourself now so as to get a bigger payoff later because you could have had both I mean why why would you think that no I should actually gave I'm not I'm not one second one second the the idea that I'm sacrificing into this world so as to have a reward in the world to come and he says that's not a good argument because God could have given me both so what if he could have given me both question is whether it's worth it question is whether on balance I think that I have a good deal if I think I have a good deal then the question of life sucks is not the question question is maybe it could have been better why and God do more but that's not the same as life is worthless is worthless that's just that's just childish that's I know and I don't mean a 12-y old child it's a foolish thing everybody knows you know when you do training I played a musical instrument half of the time that you're practicing you're practicing on scales and arpeggios and thirds minor thirds and major thirds and so and so on that's boring I want to play music but you won't play music unless you play that so you do that in order to be able to play music I think it's a good deal yes it's boring but it's worth it because in the end I get something very valuable so it's not as if to say the whole project is worthless because I have to spend some time investing in it but secondly the kind of thing that we're going to get at is only something which we can appreciate if we are qualified for it by preparing ourselves in certain ways and this kind of preparation can only be done by ourselves it can't be done to us or for us read the second chapter of the way of God by the sat and read it 10 times and you'll see there very clearly where he says that the ultimate reward the world to come is a kind of relationship with with God and that relationship has to be a relationship of equals in certain respects and the only way you can be an equal with in certain respects is by providing for yourself what you have because he is what he is only because of himself nothing outside of him makes him what he is and we have to share that self-made quality with him so as to have a relationship of something like equals with him and therefore he can't do it for us we have to do it for ourselves that's the basic theme of that chapter so um that means that this is the best of all possible because that's the best of all things that you and me could possibly have okay so now the next three days M will go back to the now I I have a commitment to Thea to teach the first week of Nissan so yes hasem I'll be here next week as well [Music]