Ch 7. Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)

Get While the Getting’s Good

Life is Suffering—So What’s the Solution?

• Suffering is inevitable—a core truth of human existence.
• The simplest reaction? Seek pleasure: live for the moment, follow impulses, lie, cheat, steal—if you can get away with it.
• This view has existed throughout history:
  • Wisdom 2:1-11 expresses a nihilistic, pleasure-seeking worldview: “Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they wither.”
  • Power becomes law: “What is weak proves itself to be useless.”
• But is there a better way?

Our Ancestors’ Answer: Sacrifice and Work

• Early humans didn’t just act; they noticed their actions and encoded them into rituals and myths.
• The Biblical Fall (Adam and Eve) symbolizes the dawn of self-consciousness—humans recognize suffering and death.
• Sacrifice emerges as a way to gain God’s favor and improve life.

The Power of Sacrifice

• Basic idea: Giving up something now can bring future rewards.
• Delay of gratification is uniquely human—animals act on instinct, but humans can plan and sacrifice for a better future.
• Sacrificial thinking leads to work, trade, and eventually civilization.

The Social Contract: From Mammoth to Reputation

• First step: Extra food (e.g., from a large animal) is left for later.
• Next step: Sharing food builds trust and long-term social bonds.
• Final step: Reputation matters more than immediate gain—sacrifice now for future security and success.
• From these practices emerged morality, generosity, and social cooperation.

The Ultimate Sacrifice: What Must Be Given Up?

• Small sacrifices solve small problems.
• Big sacrifices can change lives. Example:
  • A student gives up partying to study medicine—years of hardship lead to a lifetime of stability.
• The biggest sacrifices raise a question: What is the greatest possible sacrifice for the greatest possible good?

Biblical Archetypes of Sacrifice

• Cain and Abel: Both make sacrifices, but only Abel’s pleases God.
  • The lesson: Not all sacrifices are equal—quality and sincerity matter.
• Abraham and Isaac:
  • God asks Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son.
  • Why? To demonstrate the ultimate level of faith and commitment.
• Christ’s Sacrifice:
  • Jesus sacrifices Himself to redeem mankind.
  • God, in turn, sacrifices His son—the ultimate act of giving up what is most loved for the highest possible good.

The Monkey Trap: Letting Go of the Lesser for the Greater

• A monkey reaches into a jar for food but refuses to let go, trapping itself.
• Lesson: Sometimes, what we hold onto most tightly is what prevents us from moving forward.

The Example of Socrates: Choosing Meaning Over Expediency

• Socrates, falsely accused, chooses truth over self-preservation.
• He could have fled but instead accepted his fate, drinking poison with dignity.
• Lesson:
  • If you live truthfully, courageously, and meaningfully, you can overcome even the fear of death.

Death, Toil, and Evil

The Roots of Suffering

• The self-conscious nature of human beings brings inevitable suffering.
• Suffering drives people toward expediency—seeking selfish, immediate gratification.
• However, sacrifice and work provide a more effective, long-term solution.
• But suffering is not just due to natural hardship—it is worsened by human evil.

Cain and Abel: The Birth of Malevolence 惡意

• Adam and Eve’s fall introduced work, suffering, and knowledge of good and evil.
• Once humans understood their own vulnerability, they realized how to exploit others’ vulnerabilities.
• Cain and Abel’s story represents this:
  • Cain sacrifices but is rejected by God.
  • His resentment turns to hatred, leading him to murder Abel.
  • Cain not only kills his brother but also symbolically kills his own ideal—he destroys what he wishes he could be.
• Cain’s lineage worsens, leading to Lamech, who boasts about excessive revenge, and Tubal-Cain, the first maker of weapons.

The Nature of Evil

• Life is already difficult due to disease, death, and natural hardship, but human malevolence amplifies suffering.
• Human evil shatters people in ways natural disasters do not.
• Conscious cruelty—knowing how to hurt others and doing it on purpose—is uniquely human.
• This leads to a downward spiral:
  • Failed sacrifice → resentment → revenge → more failure → ultimately, hell on earth.

Evil, Confronted: Christ vs. Cain

• Cain succumbs 屈服 to resentment and commits murder.
• Christ, in contrast, confronts evil directly.
• Before his crucifixion, Christ faces Satan in the desert, mirroring Cain’s struggle.
• Satan tempts Christ in three ways:
  1. Turn stones into bread → Symbolizes taking shortcuts for personal gain.
     • Christ refuses: “Man does not live by bread alone.”
  2. Jump off a cliff and have God save him → Represents testing divine power for selfish reasons.
     • Christ refuses: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
  3. Rule all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worshipping Satan → Represents the ultimate temptation of power.
     • Christ refuses: True power comes from serving the highest good, not dominating others.

Evil and Responsibility: A Personal Battle

• Evil is not just out there—it exists within every person.
• Carl Jung: “No tree can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”
• Facing one’s own potential for evil is essential for growth.
• Soldiers with PTSD often suffer not from what they saw, but from what they did—when they became what they feared.
• True moral strength comes from acknowledging, confronting, and rejecting the darkness within.

Christianity and its Problems

Christianity’s Achievements

• Elevated the individual soul—declared all people equal before God.
• Rejected slavery—insisting even the lowliest had intrinsic worth.
• Separated church from state, preventing rulers from claiming divine status.
• Condemned cruel practices—ending spectacles like gladiator fights.
• Placed moral duty above power, demanding justice for the weak.

The Challenge of Nietzsche

• Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity:
  • Christianity, in its emphasis on faith and the afterlife, neglected real suffering in the present.
  • The Church diluted Christ’s message, shifting responsibility away from individuals.
  • Dogma replaced action, allowing people to believe without truly living out Christ’s teachings.
• The Grand Inquisitor 審判官 (Dostoevsky’s critique of the Church):
  • The Inquisitor tells Christ that people cannot handle true freedom—the Church provides easy faith instead of real responsibility.
  • Christ responds only with a silent kiss, showing love even for the corrupt institution that betrayed him.
  • The Church, despite its failings, still preserved the core of Christ’s teachings.

The Death of God and its Aftermath

• Nietzsche declared “God is dead”, meaning the old religious structures had lost credibility.
• With God gone, people sought meaning in ideology—leading to the horrors of Communism and Fascism.
• Carl Jung’s insight:
  • People cannot simply invent new values.
  • True morality comes from understanding human nature, not imposing ideology.
• The modern world faces a crisis of meaning—we must rediscover the path forward by confronting both suffering and malevolence.

Doubt, Past Mere Nihilism

Descartes 笛卡兒 and the Search for Certainty

• René Descartes sought an indubitable truth, stripping away assumptions to find a foundation for knowledge.
• He concluded “I think, therefore I am” (cogito, ergo sum)—the awareness of thought proves existence.
• This idea of the thinking, observing self has ancient roots:
  • Horus (Egyptian mythology): The all-seeing eye that restores order.
  • Marduk (Mesopotamian mythology): The god of vision and speech.
  • Logos (Christianity): The divine word that brings order to Being.

The Rational Intellect: A Double-Edged Sword

• The intellect is responsible for both progress and destruction:
  • It created modern civilization.
  • It also engineered Auschwitz, the gulags, and mass genocide 大規模種族滅絕.
• Karl Popper saw thinking as an extension of evolution—humans can let ideas “die” in their place.
• Ideas are not just facts—they seek to live and act through people.
• People often become avatars of ideas, sometimes to the point of dying for them.
• The most fundamental beliefs must be questioned, especially when reality suggests they are flawed.

The Reality of Evil: A Rock to Stand On

• Totalitarianism 極權主義, genocide, and torture prove that some actions are objectively evil.
• Auschwitz and the gulags demonstrated malevolent creativity—suffering inflicted purely for the sake of suffering.
• Solzhenitsyn’s Nuremberg conclusion: Some acts are universally and eternally wrong, beyond cultural relativism.
• If evil exists, then its opposite—good—must exist too.
• The ultimate evil: The deliberate infliction 造成 of suffering for suffering’s sake.
• The ultimate good: Whatever prevents, reduces, or opposes that suffering.

Meaning as the Highest Good

• Moral foundation: “To the best of my ability, I will act to alleviate unnecessary pain and suffering.”
• Why? Because the alternative was the 20th century—totalitarianism, genocide, and Hell on Earth.
• The highest good is the opposite of Hell.
• Carl Jung: Whatever is at the top of a person’s value hierarchy is their God.
• Moral choices are always between two opposing forces:
  • Christ vs. Satan
  • Abel vs. Cain
  • Order vs. Chaos

Expedience 便利 vs. Meaning

• Expedience:
  • Impulse-driven, short-term, selfish.
  • Lies, manipulates, and evades responsibility.
  • Leads to regret, weakness, and ultimately, Hell.
• Meaning:
  • Requires self-discipline and sacrifice.
  • Organizes chaos into something greater and lasting.
  • Provides psychological integration, purpose, and fulfillment.

Following Meaning: The True Path

• Align your actions with a higher purpose.
• Ask: “What can I do today to make things better, not worse?”
• Meaning is not happiness—it is atonement 贖罪 for existence itself.
• Meaning is:
  • Admitting personal responsibility.
  • Facing the truth without deceit.
  • Choosing to serve good over evil.
• Expedience covers up problems; meaning transforms suffering into growth.

Conclusion: Do What is Meaningful, Not What is Expedient

• Meaning is found in the balance between order and chaos.
• Meaning redeems the past, strengthens the present, and improves the future.
• To live meaningfully is to walk the path of truth, responsibility, and love.