Two speakers explore the idea of life as two mountains: the first is building career and security, the second is finding fulfillment through family, community, and service. They discuss what makes people abandon the first summit, from illness to bankruptcy to simply feeling empty at the top.
I recently read a book, I believe it was called the Second Mountain or something like that. But it's about how we spend much of our lives climbing this first mountain. Career, success, finances, like, making it almost from. From like a business standpoint. And we reach the top of that first mountain in a very independent way. And when we get to the top of that first mountain.
Sometimes cancer or sickness or conflict or bankruptcy or something can throw us down from the top of that first mountain down into a valley that sometimes what happens is we're down there in the valley, sometimes we're just still at the top of the first mountain and we get that realization that there's not as much fulfillment and happiness that we've gotten by climbing to the top of that first mountain as we anticipated or expected when we were climbing it. And at that point we realized there's a second mountain. And that second mountain is a mountain where the top of it is.
Where true fulfillment lies. It is a mountain that we climb with others. It's a mountain where we discover interdependence and community and family. And some of those things we were talking about earlier, that deep human, primal urge for connection and relationships. And that second mountain might be something completely different, you know, like founding a charitable organization or taking your time that you spent on the business and focusing instead on music or art that touches other people's hearts, or building a community or, you know, getting to know your neighbors better or whatever the case may be. But it's that second mountain that's the most important mountain. And I, I feel like, you know, for me, I'm kind of like, you know, one twentieth of the way up that second mountain. After climbing that first mountain and realizing that there's a lot frickin more to life than, you know, what you experience at the top of that first mountain.
Yeah, I feel like one of my biggest fears would be that I would.
Die, leave this body before reaching the false summit of the first mountain. And at that point you essentially missed out on life.
Yeah, yeah, you did. And I guess, you know, the thing is.
It'S not like the first mountain is bad. The first mountain is the lesson. It's Maslow's hierarchy.
Yeah, it's a lesson.
Right. You have to get shelter and food and currency and to a certain extent, the ability to be able to get by and survive before you're almost like fully equipped to climb that second mountain. I think that some people kind of climb the first and second mountain at the same time, you know, develop a business that's just Extremely others face and is doing a great deal of good in the world.
I think that that's a very fortunate place to be in. But I don't think people should beat themselves up for trying to make a career and get some money in their bank account and figure out a way to become somewhat financially independent before turning around and saying, okay, what's next? What's greater than this? Now that I'm set, now that I've put on my own oxygen mask, how can I then go forth and help others? So I don't think there's shame in that first mountain. I just, you know, think that you definitely shouldn't fool yourself into thinking that that's, that's the end all.
Yeah. Do you think perhaps isolating those two mountains and I'm sure there's lots more mountains beyond that into their own separate buckets. Do you think that is a western culture again, post agricultural age, technological age, like going into that, like, okay, in a more natural, in quotations, whatever the heck that means, hunter, gatherer, tribal, whatever society. Do you think that those buckets would naturally more converge?
It's possible that mountains might not be the best analogy. You know, perhaps a better analogy would be chapters in a book. Right. You chap, chapter one, you're, you're getting to know some of the characters and laying down the background scene and you know, in the, the ordinary world and in chapters, you know, 3 and 4 and 5, maybe there's a realization that there's more to life than this and there's that resistance to the call. If we're looking at the book as the classic hero's journey and then eventually a crossing of the threshold towards something greater and you're progressing and progressing and progressing, and you're never reading a book like that, whether any classic hero's journey, the wizard of Oz or the Disney movie Frozen, or.
The story of, you know, Rocky Balboa or, you know, any of these heroes journeys, you're never following a book or a storyline like that and thinking that what you've just read the chapter that you're in, the chapters that came before sucked, Right. They were just all part of the hero's journey. They were all crucial in leading up to the ultimate climax. The, you know, the battle, the fight for the elixir, the return with the elixir and the eventual, you know, happy ever after story, you know, at the very end of the book. But, you know, if you look at it as kind of a chapter by chapter type of deal, you know, there's, there's no regrets about the chapters that came before. There's just the realization that, you know, if. If you truly want to live out the full hero's journey, you need to have your eyes set on continuing chapter by chapter towards the resolution of the book.
Yeah, yeah. And Joe Campbell's stuff. The same. One of the steps is that is the process of detribalization, which is the exact same thing that Tar was saying. And lots of other people say, like, that's a crucial part.
The Solution to Aging Might Be Closer Than Anyone Realizes - With Ben Goertzel
