Hey everybody, it's James Lindsay, and you're listening to the New Discourses podcast

and it's time, I think, for me to say a few things about my friend Charlie Kirk.

On the night that Charlie was murdered, September 10th, I, sitting in shock, got on my ex account and I wrote something.

I recently had some family coming to town and my aunt was talking with me

and she had somehow stumbled across this that I had written, and she's just taken by it.

She's a boomer, so she printed it out and handed it out to her friends who don't somewhat

use the internet.

She sent it around, and she says it's, in her opinion, a message everybody in America

should hear.

And so I'll start talking about Charlie here by reading it, actually, kind of to

respect the wishes of my aunt who is so taken by this. It started this way. I've been trying to

share a particular message for a couple of years now, and I can never quite find the words. I doubt I will tonight.

But I have to try again because I watched my great friend get murdered over it today.

We have a choice.

Catharsis or civilization. There is no other choice for us. We can have a civilization where people are civilized enough to live, work, and trade with one another in a productive way, a safe way, a trustworthy enough way, where we can abandon it for the pursuit of letting the negative emotions of the past years, decades, or even, I said it wrong, of course.

Let me try that again.

Or we can abandon it for the pursuit of letting the negative emotions of the past years

decade or decades consume us.

There is no other choice.

If we choose catharsis, we let our emotions, our pathos, get the better of us.

We turn to our anger and look to give it more justifications. We turn to our frustration and seek

an orgiastic release through whatever deeds vent it. We turn to our oppression, our rage, our despair,

...