LIVE TALK: How to be Happy: St Thomas' Secret to a Good Life!

hey you going it's good to be here thank you so much for making it out i don't think i've given a talk for quite a while um i used to give talks all the time last 10 12 years i'd travel about nine days a month and speak at all sorts of places now i just speak in a dark room where i podcast so this is like i think my hand may be sweating a bit which is weird because i don't usually get nervous but really great to be here today i'm going to be talking about saint thomas aquinas what he had to say about happiness a little bit and then i want to share five remedies for sorrow that he talks about um i wrote this book here which will be shilling on you today and if you don't read anything else in this book you're going to read the dedication i'll read it for you to my very good wife cameron who upon learning during one of my rather dramatic melancholic moody spells that i had written a book entitled how to be happy said wow you should read that so this is definitely not a talk or a book on what i think will make you happy but um you know the wisdom of the angelic doctor um aristotle in the nicomachean ethics begins by pointing out that whatever uh pursuit we undergo or activity we're engaged in or inquiry or engaged in the reason we are engaged in these things is to attain a real or perceived good right you've never actively done something um that you thought was or you didn't choose something evil for evil sake whenever you've done anything you've done it because you thought it was a good and a good for you even if that was only a perceived good but most of the things that we choose to do uh aren't ends in and of themselves but sort of steps along the path as it were so if i say to you you know why why are you here at this lecture today you might say any number of things you might say well because i want to learn more about what thomas aquinas has to say about happiness and if i say well why you might say well because you know i'm taking philosophy theology and i'd like to have a more holistic understanding of thomas thought and if i say why you'd start to get annoyed but if you answered me you might say well because i want to do well at the class and if i said well why you'd say well because i want to get a good grade and i want to graduate and if i said why you might say well because i want to get a good job right and if i say why you know so far everything every step is for something else right but eventually you might say well i want to be happy i guess i just wanna i wanna i think it'll make me happy and at that point if i say well why i have to quote sam harris hit metaphysical bedrock with the shovel of a stupid question because we don't want to be happy for any other reason except to be happy all right so happiness uh is man's supreme perfection says thomas aquinas it is the last end of the human life it's that thing that once you have it you don't want anything else if you if i say to you well people say i want to be rich so i can be happy right but nobody says i want to be happy so i can be rich so it's happiness that that we're desiring okay can we in the summer theologia aquinas distinguishes between two types of happiness what he calls um beatitude and felicitous and so beatitude is that perfect happiness that we all long for true happiness and can we have that in this life thomas is like nah no really yeah nah nah no way so that's kind of nice i think you know once you realize that true unending perfect happiness not even possible you're like oh wow i thought i was a i thought i was a weirdo i thought something was desperately wrong with me and there is but not because of this thing you know like um right so you can't actually be fully happy let me let me share with you from the sumo what thomas says about that he gives well two reasons we'll look at the first so like why can't i be fully happy so this is the third article in the first part of the second part um happiness is a perfect and sufficient good it excludes every evil and fulfills every desire but in this life every evil cannot be excluded for this present life is subject to many unavoidable evils to ignorance on the part of the intellect to inordinate affection on the part of the appetite and to many penal ties on the part of the body as augustine sets forth likewise neither can the desire for good be satisfied in this life for man naturally desires the good which he has to which he has he desires the good which he has to be abiding now the goods of the present life pass away since life itself passes away which we naturally desire to have and would wish to hold abidingly for men naturally shrinks from death wherefore it is impossible to have true happiness in this life why well another reason other than what he's just laid out there is that our ultimate end lies in the face-to-face as it were vision of god aquinas says the object of the will that is of man's appetite is the universal good just as the object of the intellect is the universal true hence it is evident that nothing can null man's will save the universal good this is to be found not in any creature but in god alone because every creature has goodness by participation wherefore god alone can satisfy the will according to the words of psalm 102 5 who satisfieth thy desire with good things therefore god alone constitutes man's happiness and since we don't experience the beatific vision in this life it's impossible to be truly happy and we can only be truly happy in heaven and i don't know about you but it's like so many times i don't really believe that you know i i think you know i'll prove god wrong that money can't make me happy i promise just just give it to me i am pretty sure you know one comedian said okay money can't buy you happiness but it can buy you a jet ski and i've never seen anybody on a jet ski who was sad you know [Applause] and in the summer aquinas actually goes over those things that we often look to to make us happy whether that be riches or powers or pleasures of the soul or pleasures of the body or power honor fame and he goes through all of them and just argues as to why they can't make you happy you know like if my mom says money can't make you happy i'm like shut up it will but when thomas says money can't buy you happy like he actually offers an argument for it as he does with with everything else so he'll say okay happiness is man's last end right uh once you have it you won't want anything else okay but money by its very nature artificial money is for something else and therefore can't actually be your last hand so maybe chocolate can be but money can't so let's look at chocolate you know or whatever and like margaritas on the beach is the closest i've come but even that hasn't worked and it seems to me that the happier i i am the the more intense and acute the feeling of happiness i experience the more convinced i am in that moment that i'm not happy i'm not sure if you understand what i mean by that you probably do if you're mildly interesting i remember living in you might not be i remember living in san diego my wife and i were a little farmers market where they sold horrible things like kale juice when that was a thing and that kind of stuff you know and we were pottering about the place really enjoying ourselves lovely weather the sun was beginning to to set and we got a iced coffee or something and we trotted down the beach and we were just sitting there on this beach looking at the sun and the waves there's very few people around and then at some point me and my wife decided to go swimming and we didn't bring any bathing suits so we ran in with our clothes on it was fantastic and we were like body surfing and it was beautiful you know the sky was this brilliant sort of mango orange color and it was at that moment that i realized i'm not bloody happy like there's got to be more than this i think peter craft said something to that effect he said all the pleasures and the joy you can experience in this life ultimately seem like a finger pointing towards something else and there's a reason for that and that's that something else is meant to satisfy us namely god now the greatest book ever written we all agree is the brothers karamazov and in this lovely book um uh dimitri who's a rather kind of vicious sensual bloke has this desire for happiness the way you and i might desire something that's going to come eventually and finally satisfy my deepest longings and it's a quote that you probably wouldn't find online if you were like brothers karamazov quotes but it just pierced me the first time i read it um so there's this sheila called drushenka who he's got the hots for i'm not an author right well at least not a fiction you know um and and he really really wants krushenka to love him you know there's rumors of her being with somebody else and and and he listened to this he says um with a sinking soul he waited every moment for grushanka's decision and kept thinking that it would occur as if unexpectedly by inspiration suddenly she would tell him take me i'm yours forever and it would all be over he would snatch her up and take her to the end of the world at once oh at once take her far away as far as possible if not to the end of the world then somewhere to the end of russia marry her there and settle down with her incognito so that no one would know anything about them not here not there not anywhere then oh then a totally new life would begin at once he dreamed of this other this renewed and now virtuous life it must it must be virtuous ceaselessly and feverishly he thirsted for this resurrection and renewal this vile bog he had gotten stuck in of his own will burdened him too much and like a great many men in such cases he believed most of all in a change of place like i did when i moved to steubenville [Music] if only it weren't for these people if only it weren't i won't say that um stop wearing pajamas at kroger okay if only it weren't for these people um if only it weren't for these circumstances if only one could fly away from this cursed place then everything would be reborn that was what he believed in and what he longed for let's just read the whole thing um now it's just so powerful that longing for i know not what as saint john of the cross calls it you know won't be had in this life if he was to get all that he wanted which in a way he did at the end of course he wasn't happy it reminds me of ralph martin's excellent book the fulfillment of all desire you know so when i was rooting around in the cupboard two nights ago looking for something to eat my wife said what are you looking for and i said happiness like i wasn't joking and i'm like i tried the pistachios the pistachios they weren't there i'll see if i can find it in the whiskey bugger it's not there either you know only god alone can satisfy us so i would recommend um if you do get my book and by the way a hundred percent of all the royalties from that book go to help needy children mine so if you get the book um you um you could read it and we'll we'll go into greater detail about what aquinas has to say but it is quite cool how he goes through all of these different things you know like money can't make you happy honor like honor like why would honor make you happy honor resides not in me but it resides in you so how can something residing in you be my last end you know so he goes through all of these and and shows why the the the many things that we turn to to be ultimately satisfied don't work and even have the adverse effect all right so what i want to do as this sort of second half of the talk is share what aquinas has to say in regards to remedies for sorrow because certainly if someone's struggling with clinical depression or something more may be required than this but this certainly won't hurt but the advice is beautiful and helpful and good and i think some people are shocked by it because when they think of aquinas they might think of his work on metaphysics or proofs for god's existence and they don't actually realize that aquinas was incredibly uh down to earth yeah like he dealt with every question imaginable you know like like our sexual dream sins and he's like nah they're not because there's no will involved right um all sorts of things like that you're like whoa aquinas i didn't expect this from you i love aquinas so much it's been said that you know august it's hard to read aquinas sometimes right he writes in syllogism so it's it's it's kind of different it's been said that augustine is beautiful like a garden is beautiful and i would say that aquinas is beautiful like a uh like a game like a board game instruction manual it's beautiful there's a beauty to that not a word is wasted right there's there's no ambiguity there's no room for it if you had a instruction manual for a game and there was like ambiguous language and it wasn't terribly clear and it used used more words than it needed you're like this is crap just watch the youtube video you know um but so aquinas says more in one page i imagine than modern theologians say in books now let's go through each of these so if you're experiencing sadness here are five things you can do i'll say what they are and then we'll read them together the first is you should you could do something that's pleasurable this kind of sounds obvious we'll say what he means by that second thing you can do is tears and groaning not just tears but ugly crying is what he's saying right third uh seek the sympathy of friends fourth contemplate the truth and fifth and many people's favorites sleep and baths all right so let's have a look here so if you're experiencing sadness and cannot experience perfect happiness in this life which of course you can't you might want to of course remedy sorrow how might you do that well one way is through engaging in something pleasurable and here's a great line from me he says pleasure is a kind of repose of the appetite in a suitable good while sorrow arises from something unsuited to the appetite consequently in movements of the appetite pleasure is to sorrow what embodies repose is to weariness so if i'm tired which i was today except a bad night's sleep i had a nap it was the best i felt great likewise the analogy he's making is if i experience sorrow then i engage in a suitable good i experience something pleasurable and that does to my sorrow what that nap did to my weariness therefore just as all repose of the body brings relief to any kind of weariness in suing from any non-natural cause so every pleasure brings relief by assuaging relieving any kind of sorrow due to any cause whatever right so aquinas of course understands that man is a body soul composite not a ghost in a machine or something like that our body is equally a part of who we are and so what you do with it matters you know think of the absurdities that would result if you weren't your body be really weird like when i kissed my daughter good night i wouldn't actually be doing that i'd be manipulating the husk which was not me and pressing it against the husk that was not her hugging each other would be like getting into a car and just driving slowly and tapping the fronts of you like that's insane you know you are your body of course right all right so that's that's something you can do is do something pleasurable and here i think it's kind of important maybe to make that distinction between that which is truly restorative leisure and then maybe like dissociating distraction um have you had you probably haven't well no one will admit it so i've had the experience of sitting in bed laptop lid open watching something stupid like the office but i'm not actually watching it i'm on a different page scrolling through twitter getting angry and while i'm doing that and listening to the office i'm texting somebody and like this is not a way humans should live and once you're done with the activity you don't actually feel restored you feel far more agitated yeah so when i talk about kind of like dissociative behavior i guess i don't know if i'm using that term correctly what i mean is it's that thing you engage in in order to sort of distract yourself from yourself you know which is a good thing to do if you don't like yourself it seems like that would be the obvious sort of solution like if we're at a party and i don't like you and you're coming to talk to me by the chips and drinks um well i if i if i don't think you've seen me yet but i know you're coming this way i'll what will i do i'll leave right because i'm not a great person you know but but if i don't like me it's a little harder to leave me but i might just be able to do that if i plunge myself headlong into a myriad of distractions fragmenting my interior life as it were and i'm convinced that this is why most of us are sort of addicted maybe i'm using the term loosely i don't know to technology i know i've talked about this at infinity so forgive me but i just gave up the internet for the entire month of august so on the end of july i gave my phone away why not keep it because i have no self-control i would have went to it gave it away to a friend i said don't give it back to the 1st of august gave my computer away i had the passwords changed on my computers and for an entire month people were texting me thinking i was ignoring them and i was but not on purpose and immediately upon giving up my phone and computer there was both this sense of anxiety and this sense of tremendous relief you know um and i just hung out i read the lord of the rings with professor mike welker it was the bomb um i like smoked way too much tobacco drank whiskey with friends played volleyball and looked like an idiot some mornings it was just delightful what happened to my brain might be best described with an image you know those rotating fans you put it on three it's going a bullet a gate we say in australia bullet a gate do you say that like a ball running towards a gate okay so it's rotating back and forth very fast you yank the plug out of the wall and it just gradually stops that's kind of what happened to my brain it was fantastic it was so fantastic that when i arrived back on september 1st i made the decision to get rid of my smartphone and now i just have a dumb phone so fantastic so aquinas doesn't say this specifically but i think he would he wouldn't be on twitter because he's not an idiot like you right yeah it's not doing anything for evangelization shut up don't make that excuse quit immediately it's just destroying your soul right um so we want to be engaged in activities and behaviors that are restorative and we know that we know the difference i think part of the problem is we accept we expect from a leisurely activity the same immediate gratification that the phone has taught us to have with everything else you know so i say give up your phone and you'll feel better and you'll go click no it's not working right well just that give it a minute you know so there we go we need to engage in beautiful human activities and i think that will require us to make some manful or i don't know what's wonder woman full equip you know decisions right to live a more peaceful beautiful life again you might have self-control you probably don't don't underestimate how sucky you actually are like you are way worse than you think you are you're also way better than you think you are but let's don't worry about that you're way worse than you think you are so this idea that i'll just put my phone like in a place when i get home from work or school and that'll stay there it won't because you suck right that is not that funny actually but um whatever second thing that we can do if we're feeling sad is to cry i love what aquinas says here because he said something that i'm sure my mum said to me when i was four uh he listen to this he says tears and groans naturally relieve sorrow and this for two reasons first and here's the mum quote because a hurtful thing hurts yet more if we keep it shut up it's so good so good right it's beautiful because the soul is more intent on it whereas if it be allowed to escape the soul's intention is dispersed as it were on outward things so that the inward sorrow is lessened this is why when men burdened with sorrow make outward show of their sorrow by tears and groans or even by words their sorrow is assuaged now one thing i think if you haven't cried in a while and maybe you've been told or led to believe that this is somehow not appropriate you might detach from technology and like listen to something beautiful or read something beautiful i mean people tell me that music was originally made in order for you to sit and listen to it unless you were using it as a hymn or something but we don't sit to listen to a song i had to do that all of august because i had a stupid record player you know and to sit and like play it you know and and what a beautiful thing that was the other thing is to read something beautiful i if any of you have read the lord of the rings um and have gotten to the end of return of the king and haven't cried you don't have a soul and shouldn't vote you shouldn't be allowed uh i was reading the last chapter to my family and i was just and then um it sank deep into his heart oh it's such a beautiful ending it's like the most beautiful ending of any book i've ever read read something beautiful and and cry and have an ugly cry here's the second thing he says because an action that befits a man according to his actual disposition is always pleasant to him that is so bloody true isn't it if someone forces you to go to a party and you really don't want to go or you might be rather introverted like here's my thing okay i can do like three people a chat with three people i can do that anymore i get very uncomfortable and want to go i can do this because you're over there and i'm over here this is a bit weird but the mic you know i can do this but like in a group i just i get massively introverted and want to leave to a bathroom at the party you're hosting and hope that you have one of those locks with the satisfying click so that i know that it's locked because if there's not a satisfying click anyone could walk in and there's no point being here i don't feel at all secure so i'm rather introverted at things like that and so being forced like hey how i i just can't do it it's exhausting and i i'm at the age now where i don't do it hi what do you want you know so i apologize if i've come off that way i like you i just don't know how to do that my wife on the other hand is textbook extrovert like cleric extrovert if i say to my wife can we can we go she's worried that if she leaves they won't have fun uh you know so anyway um so having to act in a way that's different to how you actually feel is not a pleasant thing so if you're sad acting in accord with how you feel does bring relief okay the third thing you can do if you're in pain or sorrow right now to any degree is seek the sympathy of friends aquinas says when one is in pain it is natural that the sympathy of a friend should afford consolation wherefore aristotle indicates a two-fold reason the first is because since sorrow has a depressing effect it's like a weight whereof we strive to unburden ourselves so that when a man sees others saddened by his own sorrow it seems as though others were bearing the burden with him that's just delightful and it's not something i think that zoom can facilitate very well you know so finding someone i pray that you'll do that especially if you're a freshman you are so blessed to have this experience i'm slightly envious of it i wish i had this experience of such a fantastic school with great professors and it's such a beautiful campus and you're surrounded with by really good people who you know probably come from good families and you have such an opportunity to make friends that you will have for the rest of your life and i think friendship often doesn't come about through one intense experience it's usually um like a lot of monotonous experiences isn't that like bumping into each other oh hi and saying whatever and then eventually you feel more free to be who you are who you know and so i really do pray that you'll invest in each other especially if you're a freshman here or not you know making friends and if you are sad having that person you can go to and unburden yourself to because seeing their sadness for your sadness uh shows that you're loved and we all want that so that's nice um okay wherefore the load of sorrow becomes lighter for him something like what occurs in the carrying of bodily burdens and it's like that like if you're sad or depressed or anxious it just feels like there's this weight in the middle of your gut pulling you down here's the second reason aristotle gives second the second and better reason is because when a man's friends condole him he sees that he is loved by them oh whoops already gave that away and this affords him pleasure all right the fourth thing we can do if we are sorrowful is to contemplate the truth because we were after all not made ultimately for things of this earth we've been made for god somebody said and i don't know who said it so i'll attribute it to chesterton like all the other quotes that don't have an owner but if you know who said it tell me so i can attribute it correctly and it's a great quote somebody said uh cows chew contentedly in the meadows while men smoke discontentedly in the bars you know cows seem happy we're just pissed off why are you pissed off i don't bloody know um but we weren't made you know for like merely ultimately right like to there's this great line in another one of dostoevsky's books notes from underground where he talks about like if man would be given everything right like hit gingerbread and like just blazing about doing nothing and just busying yourself about the procreation of the species men were just like he'd just he'd choose to destroy it just so he would have something interesting happen right and i think that's might be another way of just saying like we cannot actually find full satisfaction here you know so we want to be contemplating true good and beautiful things contemplating god and i think this is absolutely true like sometimes you say things to sound holy and pious sometimes things make you sound holy and pious but you mean them i think this is one of those things okay my spiritual experiences with our lord have been have far surpassed my sort of marital intimacy experiences my surfing experiences you know my margaritas on the beach like that stuff was great but like sitting before our lord and contemplating his face knowing his deep concern and love for me casting my anxieties upon him because he cares for me yeah first peter 5 7. it's a beautiful little verse there that is where it's at so cultivating that thing okay the final thing he says is sleep and baths now there's usually this quote flying around on the internet out there that says you know aquinas says like a large glass of red wine a good night's sleep he doesn't say the wine i wish he did i do think it does sort of fit into what he's saying so this is like a cool program for you this is what you could do tonight okay come down to first fridays right i'll be there i'll have a beer you'll have a beer be fantastic that'll be our glass of wine right chat with people and if you're feeling sad open up to somebody while you're down on first fridays in a corner somewhere maybe it depends if it's appropriate right um you know after that i don't know go back to your room contemplate the truth have a good cry glass of wine a couple of pm pills good night sleep wake up bob's your uncle you know you could you could give that a shot of course more might be needed but that's not a bad start is it turn your bloody phone off or if you you'll smash it um and then when your parents yell at you through some means other than your phone you can say that i said and then they can sue me okay so the yes sleep and baths all right let's see what does aquinas say um i answer that let's see what should we read here i answer that as stated above sorrow by reason of its specific nature is repugnant to the vital movement of the body and consequently whatever restores the bodily nature to its due state of vital movement is opposed to sorrow and relieves it moreover such remedies from the very fact that they bring nature back to its normal state and cause our causes of pleasure for this is precisely in what pleasure consists therefore since every legitimate pleasure relieves sorrow sorrow is relieved by such like bodily remedies it seems like to me that whenever um i think it was falten sheen who said something like when the church drops something the culture picks it up you know so like there was a time where catholics kind of got rid of the rosary and then like madonna was wearing it and stuff like that you know and it seems to me too that like sometimes when the culture is making a big deal about something we can kind of react to it in a kind of unnecessarily inordinate way so like when the culture talks about like wellness and um self-care like a lot of that time you're like ah shut up and do something better than looking at yourself but it doesn't mean there's not truth to it and it sounds like that is what aquinas is talking about right this legitimate self-care so anyway so those are the five remedies for sorrow i think they're lovely i hope you've enjoyed this talk if you haven't i'm sorry um but remember nothing even my talks can make you fully happy in this life so uh what we'll do now is take some time for q a i think if you want to chat and then uh i'm gonna sit up here they've put a table up here for me and if you want to buy one of my books i'm happy to sign it it'll be worth more in the garage sale one day maybe thank you very much [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay all right so clem has a mic uh i guess we're gonna do this for the video camera so feel free to bring it around uh raise up your hand i mean that's how he'll know i guess yeah [Music] so on uh points with aquinas are you uh planning on interviewing bishop baron at any time yeah well i'd be open to it i had bishop baron on pints with aquinas but it was just before it was a video show if you go to pints with aquinas.com and in the search bar type in baron we did an episode on the eucharist together yeah all right good well this has been great we can stop i don't want to you can also leave if you don't want to be stuck here um all right i'm a huge tolkien fan so this is kind of a nerdy question what was your favorite part of the lord of the rings oh oh maybe i know it's harder to make by the way if you're not reading the lord of the rings right now take what other book you're reading set it on fire flush it down the toilet buy this book and read it unless the starsevsky i'm sure there's other books you could read of course that are great but yes so many things struck me this time around here's one of the things that struck me and if you listen to my show the other day yesterday or two days ago you'll you've heard of this but there was that section i think it was where pippin was asking gandalf why the ants weren't interested in the affairs of middle earth i think i've got those characters right but i think gandalf says like they just have a much bigger story like they've been here for a long time they're going to be here long after like all of our important affairs are something like a dream to them and it seemed to me during my month off the august when i wasn't being kind of you know inundated with here's what pope francis said here's what joe biden did it it occurred to me that like the lord of the rings is actually more factual than whatever biden's doing and so i want to be able to sort of like i don't you know or whoever pope francis or me if whoever you know um like the events of the world need to be seen through the larger lens so that was a big thing this is oh gosh there's this beautiful line where um where uh tom bombadil who i loved this time around uh says of farmer maggot who the hobbits had always assumed was just some boring salt of the earth but boring figure hobbit uh he speaks of farmer maggot with a reverence that surprised him as if he had a bigger part of the story than they were aware and that just struck me because we so often pass each other look past each other are not interested in each other and we fail to see what god sees in us and then the final thing is very often in the lord of the rings multiple times usually gandalf says something like not even the wisest can see how things will end and that really struck me because i tend to be somewhat pessimistic about the state of things i don't think without reason but it can lead to a sort of hopelessness about america or the church or these sorts of things and i thought that that was really good advice not even the wisest see how all things end you know it's for us to do our part and the time that's allotted to us but my favorite part is the ending last couple of paragraphs yeah i want that read at my funeral hi so you are talking about like detaching from technology and trying to like find happiness outside of it what about um if you're going into a career like with education where you're expected to like be constantly using technology to help make connections with your students and curriculum and all sorts of things so first thing i would say is don't let yourself off the hook too quickly because my whole job now is on youtube so it's not like i don't understand that problem you know but there were ways around it um but i think at least by kind of violently limiting technology if you want to don't do it if you don't want to maybe you're fine maybe i'm just the crazy one and i know that's not true you guys are nuts too but i'm saying that just to kind of you know not be as abrasive as i want to be but like but honestly like y'all might have way more self-control than me like actually and maybe this doesn't affect you the way it affects me maybe i'm just pushing that stuff on everybody so if that's the case don't listen to me but if you do think that you are kind of being you know negatively sort of impacted by gosh receiving a billion emails and instagram messages and bloody twitter posts and whatever else a day like when i was a kid the internet didn't exist there were three and only three ways to get a hold of me you could call the phone that was bolted to my wall you could post me a letter or you could come find me physically it just seemed a lot simpler and having spent the last month without that stuff i i can confidently say that this is not merely a matter of nostalgia and and pining for a better time like my life was better so i would say do what you can do like one thing you could do on your phone is on itunes on apple you can make a white list and only allow certain websites so you might allow none right and then you can this in settings you can block the app store and set a code in that part right have your friend do that delete the app store delete all the apps that you don't want that can be a way to make your uh smartphone a dumb phone it's like a pretty dumb phone i guess you know just so you could do that as well so there's ways around it without having to go full amish which is my goal i i can reiterate the question for you if you like yeah what would i consider to be my most important okay so i'm really proud of my book the porn myth it's a non-religious response to pro-porn arguments it's published by ignatius they sell it in the shop and this is actually true 100 of the royalty is going to help sex traffic victims in san diego there's not a funny bit after that that's just that's what happens so i don't make a cent from the audiobook the ebook that that all goes to them and it's non-religious so i just i just i did a lot of research there's a lot of data from neuroscience sociology and psychology in that book so i'd say that's the book i'm i'm really proud that i've been able to put out yep what would you say is your biggest takeaway from detaching from the internet for a month uh oh gosh i don't know it's a good question what's my biggest takeaway from yeah the the biggest takeaway is i make my life more complicated than it needs to be and i don't need to do that and the people who have who i need i shouldn't allow you to have the same demand on my time not that you're doing that you know but i mean you then my family does and one of the things i hated about technology was like i'll post a video right and then i'm playing with my kids and half of my brain is with them and the other half is wondering how many views it's getting and some you know so like coming home on the weekend with the dumb phone and no computers like that's not an option for me and so i don't need to make my life as complicated as i'm making it you know so that was one thing i think i liked about it within the context of the book do you think it's appropriate to always be sad here on earth since we aren't with god yet uh no because we can experience a good degree of happiness in this life through being virtuous to quote that other bloody australian you know the best version of yourself right like there's a sense in which like as as we grow in virtue and our potentiality is actualized we we can experience happiness in this life and i probably should have focused on that a little bit more again there's that distinction aquinas makes between true happiness and partial happiness which he calls felicitous so we can experience that you know and do like i i am happy i i really i don't seem it but i am like i'm grateful to almighty god for his love for me for how how he's so kind to me i'm so grateful for my wife you know who married up but she's still great and my kids who i love and i'm grateful for my job i'm grateful to live in steubenville i'm really grateful and i'm just i am happy but to look at any of those things as my ultimate fulfillment i think would only be to you know to ruin the little happiness i do have but i do think you know the hail holy queen gets that gets it right um and so why don't we pray that together as we close here today and maybe you can see the part that i'm talking about in the name of the father and the son of the holy spirit i mean hail holy queen mother of mercy our life our sweetness our hope to thee do we cry it will banish children of eve to thee do we send up our size mourning and weeping in this valley of tears turn then most gracious advocate thine eyes of mercy towards us and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb jesus o clement o loving oh sweet virgin mary pray for us most holy mother of god that we may be made worthy of the promises of christ amen saint thomas aquinas pray for us amen in the name of the father son holy spirit i mean i got one more anecdote and then i'll shut up so like bonaventure right and aquinas were contemporaries both doctors of the church aquinas is a dominican right um bonaventura franciscan and i know i've heard that there's like some kind of competing views on the franciscan view and the dominican view here uh and so i just thought i'd share this with you uh if you you can look it up yourself if you don't believe me they both died the same year both bonaventure and aquinas aquinas is the painter and saint of like teachers and universities bonaventure is the patron saint of bowel issues all right thank you so much [Applause]

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 10,913

Rating: 4.9627328 out of 5

Keywords: aquinas, catholicism, catholic, pints with aquinas, matt fradd, theology, debate, religion, st. thomas aquinas, thomas aquinas, philosophy

Id: DUBTN3Nk5RU

Length: 44min 27sec (2667 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 09 2021