Blaise Pascal

I would say that I think the question of worldview has been going on for a long time.

Like, I think the question of, like, history and, like, like, kind of like relativism, like Montaigne and Pascal, I think there's this idea of, like, what is true? What is justice? Like, what, you know, what, like...

I guess, like, the world market forming, all these different experiences.

I think, you know, in the colonial period as well, there was, like, a similar kind of, like, the beginnings of, like, anthropology or something, where you have, like, "Wow, there's all of these different societies." Like, what is, what is true? You know, what is...

... just, uh, one of Lukács's students, um, this very interesting figure by the name of Lucian Goldmann, he argues in a beautiful way, and this is something we can also introduce later as well, not only is every Weltanschauung kind of tied together by aesthetics and aesthetic production and aesthetic objects, but oftentimes Weltanschauungs become the expression of a philosophical perspective.

Hm.

And he argues that the philosophical perspective of Pas- Blaise Pascal, which is characterized by, um, a c- a type of unique, um, fatalist resignation from the world, and is characterized by a certain pessimism regarding the human condition and original sin, um, through Pascal's allegiance of course to the conservative Catholic philosophy of Jansenism.

Um, Goldmann wrote a book called The Hidden God, and his argument there is that Pascalianism becomes the Weltanschauung of what would become bourgeoisie.

You can't be genuinely fulfilled.

So how do I know who I really am? Well, you know, the famous 17th century French physicist and philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote this.

Not only do we not only know God through Jesus Christ, but we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ.

We only know life and death through Jesus Christ.

And you realize just statistically the probability of all these prophecies coming into being in the nation of Israel, coming back to the land.

There's a story about the French mathematician Blaise Pascal who believed this.

And he said to present it to the king as evidence for God.

Do you have evidence for God? And he says, the Jews, they're very existence.

this local government said they were having problems with people cutting down too many trees so they built a department of trees and then they suddenly realized that when people were cutting down trees that was related to streams so they expanded the scope of the department of trees to cover stream and by the end of the little video this one department was like the department of trees and streams and you know chickens log cabins and like everything and this is what this is how organizations expand to fill the time and the reuse the resources they've been given is by doing exactly what it says here they become upper applications masquerading as infrastructure right

i love it There's that great quote by Blaise Pascal, where he says, if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter, right? That idea that, and there's another concept that you're not done writing when you have no more to add, you're done writing when you have no more to take away, right? This idea that making things complicated is actually quite easy.

It's when you can express a thing simply that meets the requirements, but no more.

That's what requires real mastery.

Well, you're basically, this argument was made a while ago.

Pascal's wager is a very famous, I'm sure you're, Michael, you're very familiar with that.

It's literally what you said.

It's like either there is or is not a God.

So it's always right to be good.

Right.

Yeah, Blaise Pascal was my, of the philosophers, he was my favorite, that's for sure.

And he said that so well.