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1. 00:01 i'm in a philosophical mood today We have these words you know love consciousness happiness but we have no idea what they are They are not agreed upon definitions There's no way to capture the elusive nature of love or happiness or for that matter consciousness Yet
2. 00:25 everyone everyone wants to be conscious wants to be in love and above all wants to be happy These are the limitations of language We experience all these things but we cannot capture them in words Today I'm going to discuss the two main conditions for happiness meaning and
3. 00:50 connectivity Stay with me My name is Saknin the author of malignant self- loveve narcissism revisited I'm also a professor of psychology and we start as is my habit on Sundays with a service announcement If you want to organize a lecture or a seminar in your city write
4. 01:12 to me at samvaknin atgmail.com One word sambakin@gmail.com or contact at [Music] vrfoundation.net Again one word vrfoundation.net I uh you can scroll down to the description and I will place the two email addresses there So just for your edification my
5. 01:39 lectures and seminars are free of charge You do not have to pay me a speaker's fee So just write to me and we will work together together to organize a seminar or a lecture in your city Um if I have to travel if your city is far away then as a minimum I would require two or
6. 02:01 three lectures or a three-day seminar Okay having crossed these turbulent waters let us proceed to the topic of today's videos What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for happiness we know that meaning is very important Victor Franco the Holocaust survivor has
7. 02:29 written a series of books about the crucial role that meaning plays in survival and in a life well-lived But another condition may be connectivity a social life having friends being married having a family having a meaningful committed relationship meaning and connectivity
8. 02:58 And many people find meaning only via connectivity When they are not with other people when they do not have interpersonal relationships when they don't interact in social settings they feel that their lives are empty and meaningless The vast majority of people
9. 03:16 however can make a distinction between a meaningful life and a connected life and they don't necessarily go together Still we know that a meaningless life triggers all kinds of mental health pathologies all manner of defenses and distortions Meaning a meaningless life
10. 03:40 when your life is has no goal no purpose no plan no direction no reason to get up in the morning A meaningless life is almost indistinguishable from clinical depression So it triggers narcissistic defenses and cognitive distortions One of the most famous of which is
11. 04:03 grandiosity When your life is meaningless and you feel diminished You feel as if you were a speck of dust in a swirling galaxy As if you were to disappear the next minute no one would notice The least of which you So if you lead this kind of life
12. 04:24 rough and tumble from one minute to the next hand-to-mouth all revolving around self soothing and entertainment and distraction and distraction and distraction with a and with you If this is the kind of life you're leading you're very likely to develop defenses
13. 04:42 because this kind of life is unsustainable It leads to suicidal ideiation It leads to depression It results in anxiety dissolence These are unbearable mental states And so we defend against them And as I mentioned one of the main defenses is the cognitive distortion known as
14. 05:06 grandiosity It's a form of narcissistic defense It's conjuring up a fantasy and substituting the fantasy for reality Whereas reality is intolerable and burdensome and unbearable Whereas within reality your life is meaningless in the fantasy your life acquires suddenly a sense of
15. 05:31 purpose Your life is suddenly uh not ratherless but it has a direction Fantasy can endow life with meaning Delusions can endow life with meaning cognitive distortions such as grandiosity you know I'm godlike I'm omnicient I'm omnipotent my life has a
16. 05:51 cosmic significance they can endow life with meaning And this is the reason religion flourishes being the greatest mass delusion ever Religion endows one life with meaning by divorcing you from reality When you're a believer when you adhere to a certain faith you're giving
17. 06:17 up on reality You're entering a fantastic space within which all manner of supreme beings um kind of guide your life micromanage your life um provide you with codes and rules of conduct and misconduct and and suddenly you find yourself immersed in a
18. 06:43 meaningful space The space is delusional but it still can can give rise to meaning Similarly in political movements and other forms of mob dynamics we have the same situation where for example a charismatic leader comes up with a fantasy It's a shared
19. 07:05 fantasy and all the followers and admirers and agilators of the leader the leader's fans acolytes and psychopans all of them suddenly find meaning in their dreary and empty lives It is the fantasy that transforms life into a meaningful pursuit And yet fantasy and
20. 07:27 delusions they extract a heavy cost Because by getting divorced from reality your self-efficacy declines your ability to extract favorable outcomes as you operate within reality This ability declines and you become more and more dependent more and more
21. 07:49 addicted Sometimes when your life is meaningless you become a you become a drama queen or a drama king Drama enchantment mystery addictions compulsions they are all meaning substitutes They all provide meaning When you are in the throws of dramatic
22. 08:15 events suddenly your life is like this unfolding movie or a narrative And every narrative and movie has a script and it is a script that gives rise to meaning Drama is a desperate attempt to find meaning in a dysfunctional manner Addictions are the same Addictions
23. 08:37 structure your life You need to get the next push You need to drink the next glass You there's some rhythm and tempo and structure and order The addiction is an exoskeleton It holds you together And both drama and addiction create a form of mystery or enchantment They
24. 08:58 re-enchant the world and they are all compulsive because the alternative is meaninglessness And no one can survive meaninglessness You can survive hunger you can survive torture you can survive an abusive relationship you can survive pain you can survive chronic illness you
25. 09:18 can survive accidents you can survive natural disasters Human beings are resilient The organism both mind and body is built by millions of years of evolution to withstand all these external shocks But one thing you cannot survive meaninglessness When you find yourself
26. 09:41 immed and embedded in a meaningless life and a meaningless environment with meaningless people around you you become self-defeating and gradually self-destructive selfharming self-trashing You seek you flail about desperately for something to distract
27. 10:03 your mind some entertainment some stimulus but they only add to your misery as you descend deeper and deeper into the abyss of meaninglessness And so very often we feel that we are caught in the machinery of life that it's all inexurable overpowering that there's
28. 10:27 very little we can do that we are minimized and diminished by our environment and then there is the conf the contrast between deos and machina Deosex Machina was a device in ancient Greek theater But in modern life you have to choose between God Deus and the
29. 10:48 machinery Machina because God and when I say God I don't mean specifically institutional religions I mean mystical experiences I mean transcendence When you choose the God aspect of existence the mystery the transcendence as I mentioned it gives you meaning When you
30. 11:09 choose the machinery you're just a cog You are insignificant You are driven forward And your motivations and attitudes your hopes and dreams your beliefs and wishes are meaning are meaningless They have no impact You feel helpless You feel hopeless
31. 11:31 And that is why so many people choose the deus side of reality not the machina side of reality But of course the de side as I said comes at a price because the de side of reality means that you abrogate your reality testing You give up on your capacity to properly evaluate
32. 11:53 and gauge reality to seek the truth uncompromisingly and unflinchingly Instead you adopt a narrative a fantasy a delusion It's escapism in all but in all but any other name So um many people choose this path Actually the most people choose this path Very
33. 12:18 few people adhere to reality because reality is perceived as harsh Reality is perceived as abrasive as unpleasant And so people withdraw and retreat and avoid become schizoid atomize self-sufficient in a bad way and they lose their connectivity in modern life
34. 12:43 Therefore if you choose connectivity and when I say connectivity I don't mean only social contacts I mean connection to the world an indirect approach to reality a direct approach to reality I'm sorry No interfacing no faking no pretending seeking the truth how never
35. 13:04 mind how painful it is If you choose this and this is connectivity you lose meaning Modern life is constructed in a way that if you choose connectivity you lose your meaning and if you choose meaning you lose your connectivity and your touch with reality And that is the
36. 13:23 sad fact about modern life This did not used to be the case until about 150 200 years ago It started with the enlightenment in the 17th century As we objectified the world around us we ended ended up objectifying ourselves and every everything became just facts just cold
37. 13:49 calculated frameworks just inhumane and impersonal universe that couldn't care less about us I mentioned that today I'm going to discuss the necessary and sufficient conditions for happiness But in order to do so I need to edify you I need to
38. 14:12 educate you and to teach you what's the difference between necessary condition and sufficient condition Let's assume that there are two statements statement A and statement B A is necessary for statement B if B cannot be true unless A is also true So
39. 14:36 for example you cannot have COVID 19 unless you have COVID 19 viruses in your body So A the virus is a necessary condition for B the COVID 19 disease Similarly there's no happiness without meaning B requires A Happiness requires
40. 15:03 meaning It is possible for A to be true even if B is not true In other words it is possible to have meaning in life without producing happiness Happiness is impossible without meaning Meaning is possible without happiness You can make sense of the world You can explain everything
41. 15:26 that's happening around you You can have a hermeneutic framework a framework that that endows everything with meaning You can have direction and purpose You can have all these things and not be a happy person And but you cannot be a happy person if your life has no meaning
42. 15:46 whatsoever So this is what we call a necessary condition What is a sufficient condition a is a sufficient condition for B when we know that A is true and this guarantees that B is also true So when we know that A is true we
43. 16:11 know for sure that B is true If we apply this condition the sufficiency condition if we apply a sufficient condition we see that there are no such conditions for happiness In other words nothing guarantees happiness not connectivity and not meaning Again let me reiterate because
44. 16:34 it's a bit complicated It's a branch in philosophy which is a bit complicated Actually a branch in logic So we cannot be happy unless we have a meaningful life But we can have a meaningful life without being happy There are no conditions that guarantee happiness Meaning does not
45. 16:59 guarantee happiness Connectivity does not guarantee happiness Knowing that B is true does not guarantee that A is true Knowing that someone is happy does not guarantee that they they are they are connected that there is connectivity there B is
46. 17:18 need not be a sufficient condition for A Let me summarize it for you There is one necessary condition for happiness and that is meaning a meaningful life There are no sufficient conditions for happiness Nothing in life guarantees that we're going to be happy Nothing in
47. 17:40 life inexurably and inevitably and ineluctibly engenders happiness We say that a statement A is both necessary and a sufficient condition for statement B when B is true if and only if A is
48. 17:59 also true So when we combine the two and we say A is a necessary and sufficient condition for B and that means that B is true only if A is true Neither A or B can be true and false In other words there's no situation where A is false and B is true or B is false and A is
49. 18:24 true Either A and B are both true or they're both false If A is necessary and sufficient for B then B is necessary and sufficient for A Again there is no such situation with happiness It it is possible to be happy without any connectivity But it is not
50. 18:46 possible to be happy without meaning And that means that meaning is a necessary condition It is possible however to be unhappy without meaning with meaning It is possible to have meaning and be unhappy So meaning is not a necessary condition And meaning is not a
51. 19:07 sufficient condition It's a necessary condition Okay I hope you got it got it straight Based on this realizations based on this strange counterintuitive perceptions of happiness I constructed a tool The tool is the map of happiness The map of happiness asks the following
52. 19:30 question What is it without which you can never be happy now don't don't jump don't jump to conclusions and don't come up with answers yet Pay attention to what I've just said I'm going to reiterate it Repeat it for your for your sake Which conditions which things which people
53. 19:55 what is something or someone without which or without whom you cannot be happy i'm not asking you what makes you happy I'm asking you what you cannot be happy without So let me give you an example Um wine as you may have noticed makes me happy but I can definitely be happy
54. 20:26 without without drinking wine Books make me happy as well And I can never be happy without books So that's the distinction That's the difference Books are a necessary condition for my happiness wine is at best a sufficient condition and and not even that And I'm talking
55. 20:51 I'm asking you what are the necessary conditions for your happiness Can you be happy without your family can you be happy without traveling can you be happy without shopping can you be h be happy uh in isolation without without having any connection to other people can you
56. 21:08 be happy in social happy without um without food can you be what are the conditions what are the things the objects the people without which of whom you can never be happy and then I ask you to write these down And I ask you to find the common denominators between
57. 21:27 them Let me give an example Imagine that you say that you answer I cannot be happy if I don't travel When I don't travel I'm I'm never happy And I cannot be happy without shopping I need to do shopping to be happy If I'm deprived of shopping if I'm not allowed to go
58. 21:47 shopping I am never happy Then of course travel traveling and shopping have a common denominator And the common denominator is money You cannot travel without money and you cannot do shopping You cannot go shopping without money Money is the precondition for traveling and shopping
59. 22:08 So I ask you to strike both these off the list and substitute money for them The precondition for your happiness is money You can never be happy without money because if you don't have money you are unable to shop or to travel And so gradually diving deeper and delving
60. 22:29 deeper you find the common denominators among everything and everyone that makes you happy everything and everyone without which you cannot be happy Having found these common denominators these are the necessary conditions for your happiness Without these conditions you can never
61. 22:51 be happy Again in this simplified example if you don't have money you cannot travel and you cannot do you cannot go shopping and then you cannot be happy Money therefore is the cynic one on the necessary condition for your happiness The map of happiness reduces
62. 23:10 the conditions for your happiness to two or three common denominators and then you know exactly how to make yourself happy I want to go back to the issue of meaning Victor Franco the aforementioned Holocaust survivor has written a book Men's Search for Meaning and so on so
63. 23:30 forth He was the first to propose that meaning is a necessary condition for happiness and well-being He even established a kind of therapy a branch of psychotherapy a treatment modality title called dubbed logootherapy Log theapy is based on the premise that
64. 23:48 human beings are motivated by a will to meaning An inner pool to find meaning in life Frankl said power is not as important Money is not as important One can be happy without power One can be happy without money One can be happy without literally everything without sex
65. 24:10 without but one can never ever be happy if one's life is utterly and completely devoid of significance and meaning And he he wrote down he made a list of three tenets that represent the basic principles of logootherapy Number one life has meaning
66. 24:30 under all circumstances even the most miserable ones Actually Frankl survived I think for three and a half years in Awitz an unprecedented feat and he attributed his survival to his ability to find meaning even in this hideous uh concentration and extermination
67. 24:49 camp So life has meaning under all circumstances even the most miserable ones Never assume that your life is meaningless There are there's no set of circumstances There's no environment in which or within which your life is meaningless You can always
68. 25:08 find meaning You can always construct meaning You can always unearth meaning Number two our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life We are alive in order to find meaning not the other way And number three we have the freedom to find
69. 25:26 meaning in what we do and in what we experience or at least in the stand that we take when faced with a situation of unchangeable suffering Frankle said "If you c cannot construct active meaning you can definitely find passive meaning." When you are totally devoid of agency when
70. 25:50 you're deprived of your personal autonomy and independence in a prison in a in the gulag in a concentration and extermination camp in situations are extreme in a torture chamber even there you can find meaning And the meaning there is your in your capacity to maintain
71. 26:12 dignity They can torture your body They can tear you apart limb from limb They can render you completely help helpless and hopeless But they can never ever take away your thinking process your brain your mind your self-respect and your dignity And this is perhaps the
72. 26:35 ultimate form of meaning We are happy when we can respect ourselves When we find that we are
73. 26:47 dignified when we take a stand against arbitrary capricious universe that couldn't care less about us We are the source and f of meaning We
74. 27:04 are the great constructors of the pyramid of meaning We by taking a stand and insisting on our humanity imbue our lives with meaning and guarantee ultimately the potential for happiness Not always realized not always actualized but always there