Name: Dark Arts Are Tempting
Uploaded: 2021-02-03T12:34:21.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dark Arts Are Tempting' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-02-03. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dark Arts Are Tempting' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-02-03. Transcript available.

I actually have a friend or an old friend who killed someone and he said
honestly and this is a little bit dark, but he said it was
awesome
Huh
Right, I mean he said it was and this was a bad person. They've been in a fight.
I mean, you know like
But yeah, he said it was there was something and I mean this guy's obviously
pretty affected
You know, he's probably he's kind of caught up in the dark arts. Yeah, you will,
you know, he's more
You know, if you were watching Harry Potter, he's more like slither and then he
is like Gryffindor
You know, right
But he um, yeah, he said there was something
Well, it's not like there's no pleasure in mayhem and destruction, right, right
It's just perhaps something that should be replaced by a better pleasure a
better pleasure, and I think that that's all
You gotta watch it. If there's no if there is no meat to the temptation, it
would be irrelevant
The darks the dark places that people go are very tempting. Yeah, and it's even
more complicated than that because
Naive people aren't better than people who are looking at the darkness
Hmm
Right and so, you know, the naive people think oh
Well, everyone should be naive in these little boxes and all protected and you
know, the people who pop outside of that and
Engage a bit with the darker things. They think well, you naive people you're
just naive. It's like yeah
Naive first cynical second wise third
You want to get through cynicism and darkness to wisdom as fast as you possibly
can and you should know that that's a place to go
Right, just like you were saying a minute ago. It's like you need to have you
need to know that there are places to go from where you are
Yeah, always are
And they have to be real and not naive, you know thing. Well, why should I be
good?
It's like well, maybe you shouldn't if good is just naive
But you know people the really good people aren't naive. They're tough as they're
tough as they can possibly be and they've seen things
And then they decide to become good. It's steadfast. I mean, you have to you
have to I'm realizing that I have to daily show up for myself
If I want my life to be what I want it to be. Right. It is a battle
Mm-hmm and not only that but it's like you have to
You have to have some sort of a plan when I used to be a little bit more aimless
I was just like, oh, I want things to be good. It wasn't enough. No, no because
things don't know how to just be good
This is true. All by left to themselves things go from bad to worse things.
Yeah
Things will go out of town things. Yeah, yes as entropy like leave your house
alone for a year
Yeah, see what happens. Oh, it's way better. It's like no, it's not it has
black mold everywhere, right?
And a vandalist moved in this graffiti everywhere and yeah, the squirrels run a
pentagram like things have gotten out of hand
I think good is more powerful than evil and I say that lightly man. I studied
evil for like 30 years
Yeah, man, you're like a sorry. Yeah, you've been in the dark arts
Yeah, well that in the clinical practice, you know, so I've looked at the
darkest things I could find and some of them
I barely recovered from
And you still believe that it then you still believe that good is more
I believe more than more than I did before I believe that our capacity to
transcend evil is far more powerful than evil
Even though evil is no bloody joke
Well, that gave us the world war 2 it gave us the gulag archipelago and the horrors
of the soviet union and communist china and and cambodia and it's like the
horrible
tortures that went along with that the mass slaughter the malevolence and the
lies all of that
It's like yeah, man, that's dark the light is brighter than the dark is dark
Wow
And that's something man because the dark is plenty dark
The darkness issue it did surprise me because like when when I wrote maps of
meaning which as I said was my first book
I started writing that in 1985 and I picked the worst problem I could think of
to solve the worst thing and it had to do with what happened in Auschwitz
There was something that happened in Auschwitz. It was a variety of this
problem. So people were
Packed into cattle cars and shipped to Auschwitz and that was rough man, like
they were packed into the cattle cars
So if it was winter the people around the edges froze to death, right? They
froze
And if it was summer the people in the middle died because they got too hot,
right? It was horrible, right?
It was horrible and then they were taken to these concentration camps, right?
And then the concentration camps of course had had the had the gas chambers and
the incineration chambers
I've seen them I've been a visit and one of oh, yes, but yeah, I've seen them
Right and so one of the things the guards used to do is they take the prisoners
off the cars and it's not like they hadn't already been tortured quite nicely
And we're already headed for death and so it's already pretty much as bad as it
could get but oh, no, that wasn't bad enough
So one of the tricks the guards used to play was they'd get the prisoners who
could still more or less move to
Carry a sack of wet salt from one side of the compound to the other. It's like
when you think well, that's not so bad
It's like yeah, it's bad. Those were the size of cities
This was a major journey and it was a hundred pound sack of wet salt
And especially when your pores are open, you're hurt
Yeah, yeah, but then they would have them carry it back
You see and that's the little twist there. It's like
Well, it's one thing if you're a guard in this and the damn salt needs to be
moved and you're just the the slave owner
Whip in the whip, but at least the salt has to be moved
The wall has to be built. There's something in it
There's something in it
Carry that there and now carry it back
It's like, okay, so that wasn't the question I was trying to solve
The question is what would I have to be like to do that and enjoy it?
Right, because the people there were people who did that and they were people
and they enjoyed it
And there were a lot of them
Right, and there were a lot of them. Yes, and they weren't so different from
you than you think
Wow
So that's the thing that I was trying to figure out
I was like what the hell's at the bottom of that?
Well, that's that was the darkest places I could find to look
There's this story
This is a story of king arthur and the knights of the round table
So they're off to look for the holy grail, which is the
The container of the redeeming substance, so it's it's value itself. It's the
ultimate value
Well, they don't know where to go look for the holy
It's the it's the cup that held christ's blood from the cross or maybe the cup
that he drank it at the last summer
Yeah, it was an indiana jones
Yeah, that's right, of course, and then the holy grail is a very very old idea
and it stands for the ultimate value
Where do you go to look for the ultimate value?
Well, the answer in in the story of king arthur and the holy grail is all the
knights are around a round table because they're all equal
They all decide to go off and look for the round table
So they all go look at the forest and each knight looks and sees where the
forest looks darkest to him and that's where he starts
It's like, yes, that's wisdom
And I learned that also from carl jung, he derived a dictum from alchemy
Inster quillinus infinitur which means that which you most need to find will be
found where you least want to look
Right, but what's so interesting in this I didn't expect this is that
If you peer into the darkest dark you find the brightest light and I never
expected that but that's what happened
I thought oh
This is horrible horrible even beyond what I could comprehend
And but but the light that can overcome that that exists the light that can
overcome that exists
It's actually real and I think the instinct that we have that manifests itself
within us as meaning
Which is what you feel for example when you listen to music that you really
love you feel that sense of intrinsic meaning
That meaning is a guide to the light and try to I don't mean I mean metaphorically
Right
I mean religiously, but I also mean biologically
Right
I mean in reality that sense of meaning is the guide to the light that overcomes
the darkness
And the darkness is dark it's really dark, but that means the light is
That means the light has to be that much brighter and it is I really believe
that I love that
And yeah, and you and just since you've gone there. It's like it's so
um real man, it just seems so real when you say it for some reason
Because you've done the work you've seen you know, you've tried to start at
that darkest spot and then to still say that
That's the thing because and if and if that's not the story though, then there
is no story
It's like that has to be the story that we go
That it ends in positive that it ends that it goes upward that otherwise there's
no
There's nothing if that's not the story. Yeah, well, that's a very good way of
looking at it. That's I think that's so who would ever choose nothing
It says it's just such a pointless. There's no it's mephistopheles. It's it's
it's satans
It's satan's dictum that things are so terrible that it would be better if
there was nothing at all
Yeah, that's where there's that there's a whole line of german literature
Speculative literature that was that was that was laid out by a man named goethe
who wrote a play called faust about a man
He sold his soul to the devil for knowledge and mephistopheles
Features in faust. He's the tempter. He's the he's satan himself and his credo
is life is so terrible
It would be better if it was replaced by nothing
It's an apocalyptic desire. You're like neil armstrong of the dark moon, you
know
Hope you enjoyed that video and you can watch another and you can watch this
one
You can watch this one different options different choices some guy just brings
you one option not this guy two options
Watch one this one or this one