Hello, everyone. I'm Stephen West. This is philosophize this. Thank you so much to the people that support the show on Patreon and make this possible for all the rest of us out there.

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So last episode, Chöpenhauer presented us with a picture. So a picture of what he thinks is the metaphysical reality that we all navigate. Turns out it's a pretty grim picture, scary picture.

Not exactly the kind of picture you're going to be posting up to all your friends on Instagram.

Look, if you've got a bad picture on Instagram, it's easy, right? You just put 18 filters on it until it looks halfway decent.

But there's no filter out there for this picture. You know, the world's greatest filter. You can have that one where, you know, it's superimposes bunny ears on everyone.

You're not posting this picture. If you post this picture, you're getting three likes one from your mom, one from your dad, and one from some 80 year old dude that liked it by accident.

I mean, think of what Chöpenhauer saying with this picture. Although things appear to be separate in our human experience of the world, the reality is we're all manifestations of a single thing, a force that he calls the will to life.

We exist in this realm where they subconscious motor constantly driving us forward where the only way to move forward is to interfere with or destroy the other manifestations of this force that surround us.

You know, as I said last episode, we're condemned to a life of neurotically restlessly striving for things and we're forced to self mutilate just for the luxury of being able to continue restlessly striving for things.

This is the picture of your life. And Chöpenhauer thought many of us may tell ourselves a story. We may put our own Instagram filter or 10 filters on this life to try to make the picture look better for us.

But look, the reality is figuratively speaking. Yes, you do have dark circles under your eyes. Yes, your skin does look disgusting in that picture. And the whites of your eyes do look like you have jaundice. It's a bad picture. Just delete it.

Speaking from years and years of personal experience here. So Chöpenhauer paints this picture for us of our lives. But we haven't really heard much about what he thinks this means in terms of how we should be behaving.

I think a good place to start is to take a look at how most of us typically behave. Talk about why Chöpenhauer thinks we behave this way. And then after we do that, we'll talk about what he thinks the greatest way to live our lives is. What do you say? Let's do it.

Chöpenhauer thinks that because we're all manifestations of this will to life, from the moment we come out of the womb, we're in this constant state of restlessly striving for things. Now, it's one thing to speak about this in terms of generalities. But in practice, what does this restless striving for things actually look like in our everyday experience of the world? Well, the good news is everybody listening to this can relate because everybody listening to this is currently restlessly striving for something.

And look, if you're that guy, if you're out there saying, no, no, no, I'm not restlessly striving for anything.

I'll say it this way. Look, even if you are some monk listen to this on top of a mountain somewhere, well, you dust off the giant Buddha statue, please extend your friend's even in all of branch. Right? You can at least look around you and relate to the fact that people don't spend their lives in some perpetual state of contentment. Right? Human beings live their lives moving from one state of discontent to the next. This is nothing new.

We've talked about it several times on the show before everybody listening to this currently wants something that they don't have. And most people listen to this, tell themselves a story, maybe not consciously. It's not like some mantra you're repeating to yourself every day.

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