Pop, the Question (S5: E35)
The Meaning of Life
Featured Guest Josh Peskin, PhD (Adjunct Professor, Pennoni Honors College, Drexel University)
Host and Producer Melinda Lewis, PhD (Associate Director, Marketing & Media)
Dean Paula Marantz Cohen, PhD (Dean, Pennoni Honors College)
Executive Producer Erica Levi Zelinger (Director, Marketing & Media)
Producer Brian Kantorek (Assistant Director, Marketing & Media)
Research and Script Melinda Lewis, PhD
Audio Engineering and Editing Brian Kantorek
Original Theme Music Brian Kantorek
Production Assistance Noah Levine
Graphic Design Camille Velasquez
Logo Design Michal Anderson
Additional Voiceover Malia Lewis
Recorded June 29, 2021 through virtual conferencing. Pop, the Question is a production of Marketing & Media in Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University.
Copyright © 2021 Drexel University
Episode Summary
What is the meaning of life? It’s a question that many (including Monty Python) have asked themselves through the annals of history and, most recently, during a global pandemic. Host Dr. Melinda Lewis evokes a discussion on the topic with Drexel University adjunct professor of philosophy Dr. Josh Peskin, exploring representations in popular film, the power of mindfulness, and the allure of woodworking that has helped Peskin design his life and make sense of the world around us.
Transcript:
Speaker 1:
(Singing)
Melinda Lewis:
Welcome to Pop, the Question, a podcast that it exists at the intersection of pop culture and academia. We sit down and talk about our favorite stuff through the lenses of what we do and who we are from Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University. Dr. Melinda Lewis here. I'm your host. Hi, Josh.
Josh Peskin:
Hi, Melinda.
Melinda Lewis:
You ready to party?
Josh Peskin:
Yeah, I'm ready.
Melinda Lewis:
I know that you teach courses regarding life and meaning and value, just some really light topics. So when did you realize that life is, for you, the meaning and value of life itself?
Josh Peskin:
I guess somewhere in high school. Although the funny thing was I started in college and I was pretty sure I was going to major in business. And I started down that track and then sort of stumbled on both a philosophy and religion course. And so I think in a lot of ways, college really sort of reoriented me. I have come to embrace sitting with some of the questions.
Melinda Lewis:
Well, how do you do that without completely being overwhelmed? I always love the idea of philosophy, but then when I dive into the literature, at some point I have to throw it across the room because, it's like, I can't even conceptualize living in a simulacra. This is too much for me to contemplate right now.
Josh Peskin:
One thing I would caution at the outset is that if you really find yourself sensitive to the act of living life or wanting to get a better sense of what actually is going on, why do we all get up in the morning? Who knows? I don't know that philosophy is the most direct path. It seems like a natural. So you sort of take a few steps down that path. And then all of a sudden it wants to throw you a hard left down a mathematical path or a hard right down a pure logic. And then you just sort of end up fighting with people. And I teach a class called Meaning of Life and it's a meaning of life and designing a purposeful life. So it's the issue of infinite versus finite, the issue of God versus not God.
Josh Peskin:
There are lot of sort of hinging points that, historically, if you get into this conversation from a philosophical vantage point, you end up debating these. So I don't know that those points actually deepen any of the students' appreciation of the question, which is why we also fill in with films. And I like to use pop culture films, like the Matrix stuff like that. Because honestly, I think that stuff actually pierces a lot more in terms of how much choice do I actually have and what are the important values?
Speaker 4:
Can you feel it, Mr. Anderson closing in on you? Oh, I can. I really should. Thank you for it. After all, it was your life that taught me the purpose in all life, the purpose of life is to end.
Melinda Lewis:
I think it also creates something that's more concrete when thinking about the abstract, but the Matrix I think is a really good example. And I think another film that comes up for people within college is Fight Club and think about value and meaning and capitalism. And what does it mean to exist? What does it mean to have identity and then all the other fun stuff about masculinity.
Speaker 4:
Do you know what a duvet is? A comfort. It's a blanket, just a blanket. Why do guys like you and I know what a duvet is? Is this essential to our survival and the hunter gather sense of the word. No, what are we then?
Speaker 5:
Consumers?
Speaker 4:
Right, we're consumers. We are byproducts of a lifestyle obsession. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guys name on my underwear. I say, never be complete. I say, stop being perfect. I say, look, let's evolve. Let the chips fall where they may.
Josh Peskin:
And it's interesting how most of the students on day one assume that happiness is the centerpiece of everything and the interesting thing is very, very, very few films actually demonstrate that in any meaningful way. There's always this they lived happily ever after, but that's when the movie stops. Right? Because it's no longer that interesting and probably no longer that meaningful on some level, but they definitely create some more room for uncomfortable growth or character building. And a lot of stuff, a lot of films that end up on these lists are not happy films. They're Slum Dog, Millionaire or something, where you see what looks like a hell scape for I don't know what percentage of the world and trying to sort of just barely jump from one burning flat platform to the next burning platform and just try to make it through and then try to, at some point, take some stock of what's going on here.
Speaker 6:
Guy from the slums becomes a millionaire overnight.
Speaker 7:
I'm not going to become a millionaire. I don't know the answer.
Speaker 6:
You've said that before. Yeah.
Speaker 7:
No, really this time I don't.
Speaker 6:
Come on, you can't take the money around now. You're on the edge of history kid.
Speaker 7:
I don't see what else I can do.
Speaker 6:
Maybe it's written my friend. You're going to win.
Melinda Lewis:
I think it's valuable to talk about whether or not there is meaning or whether we're just on this rock floating, but at the same time, it's hard to want to end a class on that note and be like, "All right, well, we're done here. Good luck with the rest of your life. This class is over. The final is done."
Speaker 8:
Is it really so hard to believe? Your appearance now is what we call residual self image. It is the mental projection of your digital self.
Speaker 4:
This isn't real.
Speaker 8:
What is real? How do you define real?
Melinda Lewis:
Do you have any others that you use in your class beyond Slum Dog and the Matrix?
Speaker 8:
Yeah. There's one about this woman who walked the Pacific Trail.
Melinda Lewis:
Is it Wild?
Josh Peskin:
Wild, yeah, that was actually a sleeper pick that there's an ending, I don't know, soliloquy or something, where she sort of distills her experience. And that film I think was really moving and it touched a lot of people in the class.
Speaker 9:
After I lost myself in the wilderness of my grief, I found my own way out of the woods. And I didn't even know where I was going until I got there on the last day of my hike. "Thank you," I thought over and over again for everything the trail had taught me and everything. I couldn't know. How wild it was to let it be.
Josh Peskin:
Precious was much more complicated. It's incredibly insightful on several different levels of just human coping power and finding meaning and finding normalcy and just losing it.
Speaker 10:
Nobody loves me.
Ms Rain:
People do love you precious, please.
Speaker 10:
Don't love me, Ms. Rain. That aint done nothing for me.
Ms Rain:
That wasn't love precious.
Josh Peskin:
Meaning of life stuff is not always positive. And I think it's probably important to be tracking the hell scape that a lot of people live in and how they're still coping and trying to win their way through it and find meaning and grab onto important things. These sort of middle class triumphant go out and be somebody films sort of miss the boat on the world a lot of people live in.
Josh Peskin:
Another one that the students really love was Amelie.
Melinda Lewis:
Oh, yeah. I love Amelie.
Josh Peskin:
Yeah. And it was really interesting because a lot of the books or a lot of the films that get touted as the great meaning of life films and books are really dramatic. And I think the way she makes mundane daily life interesting and just it's really about her approach to life and just zest for life. A lot of the students really identified with that.
Speaker 12:
[French 00:09:03].
Speaker 13:
Hey, it's your mom. I have a question about that podcast you do. Are you on the Instagram or the Twitter or the Facebook? If I have an idea for a podcast, how do I get in touch with you? Love you. Bye.
Melinda Lewis:
What's up, mom. Yeah. So you can find us on all those things, actually, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, just go to Pop Quest Pod on any one of those and follow. If you want to send us ideas, you can either go over to our website and leave us a message at Pop Q Podcast. Or you can get us directly@popqatdrexel.edu. You can actually find us on iTunes, Spotify. Stitcher. I can help set it up when I get home, but then you have to promise me to rate and review. All right, love you. Bye.
Melinda Lewis:
Another part of what I was thinking about, as you were saying, is that that double edge sword of using the film and media to create a fantasy, even if that fantasy is dark, especially if you're watching Hollywood films. So even if you're watching a sad drama, usually there's some sort of gloss. It's never going to be as hopeless as Schopenhauer. It'll always have some gleam that requires detangling to really talk about life. How do you start detangling yourself from these representations that are saying, "This is what life should be?"
Josh Peskin:
With that class, the focus on design your life, the way we sort of ease into making this personal and making it relevant to your own decision making. To me, that's probably one of the most useful ways you can marshal this question as opposed to just sort of sitting back and thinking, "What's the meaning of life," for its own sake. Let's talk about it and think about it for a while. And then, now, you have to use some of this thought to talk about how you're choosing A over B in your own life. How does this actually get put to work in your own decision making as opposed to just sitting on a rock philosophizing. So that's something that's interesting in the class to just point out the fact that you can't always have your cake and eat it too. You have to figure out which one of these types of approaches to the question of the meaning of life are you going to privilege more than others?
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah, yeah.
Josh Peskin:
I guess I have my own natural bias that, the same as you, that's it would be a bummer if people took the class and left it thinking, "Oh, there's no meaning, all right, I'll get back to my day job." But I think it could be, in some ways, the way the class is structured. It could also be that the designing your life book we go to after the meaning of life reader is very upbeat, Silicon Valley, "Hey, I can do anything. You can do anything. You're smart, I'm smart. Let's go do great things together. And you have every possibility in the world." And so designing your life really boils itself down to talk to people and try stuff. And I think in terms of trying to find your way in the world, one of the smartest things it has that it can say that I haven't seen in a lot of other places is don't spend too much time in your head.
Speaker 14:
(Singing)
Josh Peskin:
You are here. You are wherever you are. And you're trying to figure out stimulus in the world and whether you like it or don't like it, or whether it's meaningful or not meaningful. So the best thing you can do is start getting data points, just take a step one way or another. And the way to take a step is to talk to people and try stuff. If you want to aim off in a certain direct, like woodworking sounds interesting, then just start brainstorming. What would be ways to try that? And there's a million. There's a million ways to try that. Take the class. Talk to someone who does it. Ask any of your friends if they know anyone who does it. Watch YouTube videos. There's a million things you can do to start down some path to try something or to figure out whether you like it or not.
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah. And I think that idea of putting together theory and practice is so important of like, "Yeah, we can sit and muse and ponder, but what are we doing if not moving beyond that and putting it into practice?" And I'd like to continue that thread with woodworking. How do you enter into that woodworking world? That's not like collecting baseball cards. That's some serious work work.
Josh Peskin:
That's a great question. So I guess I got lucky, in the sense that I had a friend, that the friend's father is a woodworker, he makes great stuff. And then his son has taken woodworking probably about as far as it goes. He's a luthier and makes violins and he's a close friend of ours. So I guess we've been around it a little bit. And I think I also have a piece of me that likes to sort of keep some foot in the physical world. I remember actually a philosophy teacher of mine told me about a philosophy teacher of his, he got this recommendation of always be doing something physical. And I think it's really good advice, particularly in things like philosophy and philosophy of religion. You can really get lost in the texts and in the books and just hang out in that theoretical space and lose touch with the physical world and other people and things like that.
Josh Peskin:
Yeah. And I lived on a boat during grad school too. I think that had broken the seal a little bit to learn how to fix it. I didn't grow up knowing how to do anything. I mean, make anything or fix anything. So I guess I felt a little competent, but not really. I'm not inherently a patient person. And I think one of the reasons I wanted to do it is to build patience, because I sort of recognized that it's not a natural thing that comes to me. And it's funny because the guy I'm working with, I think he is fairly naturally patient. And I think he sees it in me and he is always telling me to slow down. But I think one of the interesting things I noticed is, as I was hand sawing, and he was showing me how to do dovetail joints and it was like I wasn't getting it. I was sawing too fast. I was too interested in being done with sawing. I could see him getting frustrated. And he sort of stops. He's like, "Look, this is all you have to do right now. This is it."
Speaker 15:
Stanley sees this. This is this, this ain't something else. This is this. From now on you're on your own.
Josh Peskin:
That to me was an eyeopening moment of, "I'm doing this precisely because this is all I have to do right now. All I have to do is make this cut or all I have to do is sand this, so that it's all feels this way." So there's something to that that I think started to become more and more obvious to me in this other class that I was teaching in the last term, which was about digital wellness and mindfulness. But a lot of the mindfulness literature is really just trying to dial in on that, like just do this, right? You're doing dishes, just do the dishes. We read this text by Thich Nhat Hanh that changed how I do dishes. It's not that complicated to be mindful. Just don't do two things at once. Don't do the dishes while you're thinking about what else has to happen that day.
Speaker 16:
I'll do the dishes [crosstalk 00:16:51]. The dishes are done, man, [inaudible 00:17:05] shot.
Josh Peskin:
So I think for me, that's the draw. I think the draw is the mindfulness aspect. The creating, making something with your hands and also wood itself, to me, is really beautiful and feels really nice and smells nice. And for me, there's a lot of aspects of it that have been really rewarding. And then also once you make something, it just, for right now, it goes in our hat. We have so much Ikea junk to replace that. I get to see it all the time and I get to touch it and I get to walk past it. And there's something that sort of lingers too. That's that's really feels rewarding.
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah. It really does feel like an embodiment of all the things that we've talked about thus far of just stepping back of evaluating of doing, of enacting. But if you had to offer one solid final word, one bit of advice, what would it be?
Josh Peskin:
So talk to people and try stuff I think is one piece of it. And then I think the other piece of it is the mindfulness piece of check in with yourself along the way. If you can experiment with a meditation practice or journaling practice where you have some sense of whether, on a deeper level, things are working or not working so that you would be able to marry that up on a deeper level with the talking to people and trying stuff. And I should add a caveat that I'd give myself a five I out of 10 on both of those.
Melinda Lewis:
Well, I've taken a lot of notes. So thanks a lot for providing me my own framework. I feel like I've cheated my way into taking this class without auditing this class. And I'm really excited to have these points to explore. So yeah. Thanks so much, Josh. This is really great.
Josh Peskin:
Thanks for having me, Melinda. This is a lot of fun.
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah. Take care. See you. Pop, the Question was researched and hosted by Dr. Melinda Lewis. Our theme music and episodes are produced by Brian Kantorek with additional audio production by Noah Levine. All of this was done under the directorship of Erica Levi Zelinger, the deanship of Dr. Paula Marantz Cohen, and the Pinnoni Honors College at Drexel University.
Speaker 1:
(Singing)