This is the Jocko Underground podcast, number 216, sitting here with Echo Charles. We have some questions from the front lines from where the rubber meets the road. And we are going to offer some suggestions, possibly some answers, and at a minimum, some courses of action you can follow to navigate the maze of life as Echo Charles puts it. It's true, that is correct and very helpful too, by the way, so thank you. All right, first question. I believe in science. I work in the medical field, yet all my life I felt that science alone will not suffice. There's a spirit within us. There's some divine beyond. Call it what you make, God or otherwise. I live in a war torn part of the world. Events of the last few years made me resent, even hate, whatever God there may be. Not because what happens to me, but because what happens to others and to others' children on both sides of the conflict. My faith in the basic good nature of this life and world is completely shattered. What God can allow such things. If this is the price of paradise, then paradise is lost to begin with. Never saw myself as a man of faith until I had it all shattered. My spirit is now broken. I'm open to ideas. Thank you for your service. Yeah, there is evil in the world. There's no doubt about it. And depending on where you are in the world and what is happening, where you are in the world, sometimes evil gets the upper hand. That absolutely happens. Evil gets the upper hand. And there's countless examples of that throughout history. You know what you're talking about, the Holocaust or the Hall of Demor or the rape of Nanking or the genocide by the Khmer Rouge or even stuff like the Jim Jones mass suicide. Like no doubt there are heinous things that occur and evil does sometimes get the upper hand. And I think the reason that these things occur is because it's the path of least resistance. It's the easiest path, right? It's simple. It doesn't take work. All you have to do is be able to just set aside your humanity and these things can just, evil can flourish. That's all it takes. And oftentimes once somebody crosses that line, they don't come back from it. So when we are surrounded by that type of environment, it's very easy to lose sight of the good and it's very easy to become surrounded by darkness and think that there isn't going to be no light. And perhaps even think that there is no light. And yeah, I think I and I think everyone at some juncture in our lives asks the question, why? Why is this happening? Or why is God allowing this to happen? And there's, I mean, there's theological explanations for this, right? There's theological explanations where people have answered this question. People that study theology. Things like free will, right? That's a whole argument. Or the idea that spiritual growth can only occur when people are facing suffering and injustice in the world. Or the idea that, yeah, the world is fallen, which is a result of the original sin and spiritual rebellion and the horrific symptoms that we see are not active choices by God, but the horrific things that we see are the results of our misdeeds. We own those misdeeds. And those misdeeds will flourish until we get to the afterlife. So there are theological explanations, which I've not equipped, and I don't study that kind of thing. It's a lot to digest, especially when you're, when you are facing, which you are in a war-torn area, you are literally facing the horrific dark side of human nature. And it can be hard to intellectualize all that with theological answers when you're in that horrific space. So there's, I wanna offer a little bit of a, little bit of a simpler idea that I have fallen back on when I start to get this type of feeling. And it's a quote, I'm gonna give you a quote, Echo Charles. Sure. So shines a good deed in a weary world. You recognize that quote? Well, speaking of theology, it's a quote from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. So what happens is the boy is, the boy is, he's broken the rules and he's got that speech from Willy Wonka, you'll get nothing, you'll get nothing. And so he knows he lost, he knows he messed up, but he decides in that moment to take the everlasting gobstopper that he had stolen and give it back to Willy Wonka. And that was actually the final test. So he puts the little everlasting gobstopper on Willy Wonka's desk or half desk because everything in the room is cut in half and he starts to walk out. And Willy Wonka says, so shines a good deed in a weary world. And then he says, you know, boy, you won, you did it. That was the last test. It's a powerful statement, you know, in a movie that's surprisingly very deep, but just to give credit where credit is due, that line is actually a version of a line from Shakespeare. Play called The Merchant of Venice and Portia who's returning home and she sees this little candle burning in her window as she's returned home and she reflects on how a very small seemingly insignificant thing can actually have a massive impact and spread light. And so she says, how far that little candle throws his beams? So shines a good deed in a wicked world. And actually I modified that myself because the original Shakespeare version doesn't use the term wicked, it uses the term naughty, but at that time in 16, oh, whatever, naughty didn't mean what it means now. Like, oh, little kid is being naughty, like Mr. Vesley didn't mean that. It actually came from the word not, which is zero. So it means like morally bankrupt and worthless and corrupt. That's what it meant. So I substituted it for wicked. But the reason I'm saying all this is that I think and I believe that in the darkest of times, we have to remember that the smallest deed, the smallest good deed brings light into the world and that light is going to impact someone, somewhere, somehow, that little bit of humanity that we can hold onto and that we can share that emanates and it propagates. And to me, that's the human spirit, that's the humane spirit. And we have to make sure that we do not allow that to be extinguished. And it's up against some, again, the easiest thing is to let that flame go out and go to the dark side, right? Star Wars. You like Star Wars, don't you? Yeah, I like Star Wars. Are you Star Wars maniac? I would not say maniac, no. Your brother is? Probably the same, whatever. I'm down for some Star Wars for sure. Well, look at the whole story, you know? It's the dark, it's the dark side. Turning to the dark side, Anakin, he starts off as all good to go, then he goes to the dark side. He doesn't listen to what I'm saying. I mean, I didn't have my podcast in that level of the empire or whatever. But he didn't have a mentor, he didn't have someone to tell him, he didn't keep that humanity. He went to the dark side. So we, it's on us, right? It's not God's responsibility, it's our responsibility. That we make sure that that little bit of light that we can bring to the world does not get extinguished. And I'll tell you, it hasn't been extinguished. Despite the absolute horrors that humanity inflicts on itself, there's not been a surrender, right? Evil has not triumphed, it hasn't. The world would be a completely different place if it wasn't for this, this, this core goodness that we have. And by the way, by every metric it should, right? It should, because it's way easier to take the dark demonic path. It's real, it's just the easier way to go. That's why people talk about doing the right thing is usually the hard thing. Hard thing, yeah. It's a lot easier just to do the easy thing. That's the wrong thing. And some people do, clearly. And sometimes whole cultures get wrapped up in that. But we don't have to. So my recommendation is that you be one of the people that hangs on to that little bit of good. And you do everything that you can to be the light where there is darkness, and as much as you possibly can, do good deeds in a weary world. And that's what I got. Next question. Willie Wonka. Yeah, Willie Wonka. There was the OG one. I haven't even watched the new one. My kids say it's good. The Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Johnny Depp one? Yeah, I haven't watched the Johnny Depp one. Bro, the old one is so good. And Gene Wilder is so classic. Yeah, Gene Wilder is. This is an amazing movie. It's an amazing movie with an amazing message. But that message right there, man, for real. Yeah, you talk about the easy path or easy decisions versus hard decisions, whatever, which kind of like it dawned upon me and as I indicated to you off and online, that a lot of these things, and this is one of them, come down to short term, long term. So even when it's like, oh yeah, what's the right decision? It's gonna have to do with the best thing for the most people for the most amount of time. That's really what the right decision is, you know? So at first, the right decision is hard because the short term benefits for the one person, usually, or one or two, or whatever people, is gonna be not a benefit. But the benefit is gonna go to more people for a longer amount of time. Somewhere in the future, it's like a big, you know, big picture, small picture, long term, short term. It's usually, like you can usually narrow it down to that. You know what I'm saying? Even like evil. And this is why I think, when you say evil doesn't triumph, this is why I think at the end of the day, because it doesn't have sustainability, you know? Well, yeah, you're right. It, evil, eventually turns on itself. On itself, exactly right. That's the problem with it, yeah, you're right. Exactly right, and that's not to mention there's good people doesn't. So even if there's little pockets of good people, it, I mean, even if the good, like the evil overwhelms the good, the evil, like how you said, kills itself. So it's like, that's not like a good sustainable model, you see what I'm saying? It's, have you ever seen the movie, The Exorcist? Yeah. Like the opening, I remember, I saw that movie when I was a little kid, freaked me the hell out, bro. We all freaked out. That's real, that's legit. But I was young, but I remember there's like, so that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. 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