Most Replayed Moment: Alain de Botton - Individualism Is Making Us Miserable!

You got me thinking about this concept of happiness as you're speaking and whether it's a natural thing for our species to be aiming at or whether it's a new more modern thing that we've decided to focus upon? And are we causing ourself immense distress in this pursuit of this thing that maybe our ancestors didn't didn't ever think about? This whole you know, we think about self actualization and they were probably thinking about survival and reproduction more. Look these all belong to the sort of paradoxes of modern times. Modern times have obviously brought us enormous advantages but they've also brought us particular complexities that I think we'd be wise to to realize. And one of them is the disappearance of religion. I mean we are still among the first generations in many parts of the world to be trying to live good lives without the support of religion. Think of our religion structure time and human experience in time. As a religious person, you immediately feel the present moment is not as important as a hundred, two hundred, two thousand million year history that has come before and that will continue after. The present moment is a speck in time and and there's a whole narrative of which you're part of. That immediately diminishes you in scale. Now nowadays all of us want to be rather large, don't we? We want to be big big people. We wanna make a big impression. But arguably this is a fast route to mental illness because the graceful acceptance of your minuscule position in the cosmos is the gateway to calm and harmony. And when people say, you know, I went into this hotel, you know, the person made me feel small. That's a bad way of being made to feel small but there's a good way of being made to feel small. Pick up an ancient text, read words that were written by someone in a foreign tongue three thousand years ago. That'll make you feel small. Go into the desert. Notice the the age of the rocks inscribed in you know, time inscribed in sand. That'll put you in your place. Spend time with an animal that has no concern for your status, your sense of importance, your foiled narrative of your own success, all these things that drive modern humans mad. These are not present in an older kind of religious sphere. And as I say what religions do is they tell us you're part of a bigger story. They also tell us, many faiths tell us that life and you particular are imperfect. You know, think of Catholicism and its notion of original sin. Now lots of lots of bad stuff associated with original sin. I'm not, you know, a huge fan of many aspects, but let's look at the good side. Right? What it what Catholicism tells us is that everybody's broken. Everybody is flawed. It's quite a helpful starting point. Right? Because, if …