Why Do We Live? - The Crisis of Meaning

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Shalom Arush’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

[Music] today we're going to talk about meaninglessness and how important it is to have meaning purpose goals that we strive for in life people without values without goals they don't have a sense of why they should live in fact I saw a why they should live in fact I saw a letter recently written by a person who committed suicide and he described his life in the following way he said that he felt like a labourer who was carrying bricks from one side of the road to the next and then taking those same bricks and carrying him back to the first side of the road and that's all he did his whole life was just moving bricks back and forth and he said he was going along ok that way until one day he will he ok that way until one day he will he asked himself why am I doing this what's the point what am i accomplishing and when he reached that recognition he realized he didn't have a reason to continue living we all understand anybody that has any sale anyone has any intelligence recognizes that we need a purpose we need something to believe in need something to believe in we need a reason to go on because this life is very very hard and we need to have guidelines about how to live that life because left to our own devices most people live lives of pain and anguish and anxiety and depression worse right throughout the ages philosophers

Jump to a moment

1. 0:00[Music] today we're going to talk about meaninglessness and how important it is to have meaning…
2. 4:10come Zulu Tova know that it's all for the best and and with a moaner we…
3. 8:54and most people go through life as River Vignan Allah says and they end up suffering…
4. 13:44people don't like to think about is that this life ends that is the grave right…
5. 18:22life that the soul can be really happy with other than knowing that by doing this…
6. 23:10die the human being with his big brain in his cerebral cortex has self-awareness he knows…
7. 27:48his last day and he's lying in bed he has a death anxiety he has a…
8. 32:34outweighs the combined pleasures of 6,000 years of this world we can't understand we can even…
9. 37:23physical world to this world to see it from the perspective of someone else who's in…
10. 42:09get sad because they think they they lost a deal they lost a relationship they get…

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