The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 126. Biblical Series： Jacobs Ladder

00:00:00.960 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

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00:00:51.040 Welcome to Season 3, Episode 13 of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.

00:01:02.020 I'm Michaela Peterson, Jordan's daughter.

00:01:04.420 I hope you enjoy this episode. It's called Jacob's Ladder.

00:01:07.900 Last Tuesday, my dad came on my podcast and talked about what the last year has been like.

00:01:13.880 He hasn't done something for YouTube in almost a year.

00:01:16.700 If you haven't seen it, look up the Michaela Peterson podcast on YouTube, and he's the most recent episode.

00:01:23.400 Or if you want an audio version, look up the Michaela Peterson podcast wherever you listen to your podcast.

00:01:28.940 It was tough. It wasn't an easy conversation.

00:01:32.220 The last year has been hell, but we finally got some help.

00:01:35.940 I hope the podcast stops other people from experiencing the horrors that my dad has had to experience this year.

00:01:42.760 Enjoy the episode.

00:01:46.700 Sleep is one of the most important things we can do for our health.

00:01:50.280 My family and I are in Serbia right now, and the time change has been absolutely brutal.

00:01:54.740 I can't think very well if I don't get enough sleep.

00:01:57.180 Neither can anyone, really.

00:01:58.780 Apparently, a lack of sleep is equivalent in brain toxicity to alcohol.

00:02:02.860 So I've made it a goal to increase my sleep quality while I'm here, and I'm really missing my Helix sleep mattress.

00:02:09.300 Helix is rated the number one mattress by GQ and Wired, and CNN called it the most comfortable mattress they've ever slept on.

00:02:16.700 Just go to helixsleep.com slash Jordan, take their two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life.

00:02:25.940 Right now, Helix is offering up to $200 off.

00:02:29.080 Welcome to Season 3, Episode 13 of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.

00:02:37.040 I'm Michaela Peterson, Jordan's daughter.

00:02:39.400 I hope you enjoy this episode.

00:02:40.720 It's called Jacob's Ladder.

00:02:42.900 Last Tuesday, my dad came on my podcast and talked about what the last year has been like.

00:02:48.860 He hasn't done something for YouTube in almost a year.

00:02:51.700 If you haven't seen it, look up the Michaela Peterson podcast on YouTube, and he's the most recent episode.

00:02:58.400 Or if you want an audio version, look up the Michaela Peterson podcast wherever you listen to your podcast.

00:03:03.940 It was tough.

00:03:05.200 It wasn't an easy conversation.

00:03:07.200 The last year has been hell, but we finally got some help.

00:03:10.940 I hope the podcast stops other people from experiencing the horrors that my dad has had to experience this year.

00:03:17.760 Enjoy the episode.

00:03:21.700 Sleep is one of the most important things we can do for our health.

00:03:25.280 My family and I are in Serbia right now, and the time change has been absolutely brutal.

00:03:29.720 I can't think very well if I don't get enough sleep.

00:03:32.180 Neither can anyone, really.

00:03:33.780 Apparently, a lack of sleep is equivalent in brain toxicity to alcohol.

00:03:37.940 So I've made it a goal to increase my sleep quality while I'm here, and I'm really missing my Helix sleep mattress.

00:03:44.300 Helix is rated the number one mattress by GQ and Wired, and CNN called it the most comfortable mattress they've ever slept on.

00:03:51.700 Just go to helixsleep.com slash Jordan, take their two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life.

00:04:00.580 Right now, Helix is offering up to $200 off all mattress orders at helixsleep.com slash Jordan.

00:04:08.200 Get up to $200 off at helixsleep.com slash Jordan.

00:04:14.060 helixsleep.com slash Jordan.

00:04:21.700 Season 3, Episode 13, Jacob's Ladder, a Jordan B. Peterson Lecture.

00:04:32.320 Thank you very much.

00:04:35.280 Thank you very much for showing up again.

00:04:38.260 That's really good to see everybody here.

00:04:40.900 So, one of the things that I've been realizing as a consequence of going through these stories is that

00:04:53.000 the degree to which they're about individuals is quite remarkable, and I think that's really telling.

00:05:01.100 Now, one of the reasons I prefer Dostoevsky to Tolstoy is because Tolstoy is more of a sociologist.

00:05:08.060 He's more interested in the relationship between groups of people.

00:05:12.120 This is an oversimplification because obviously Tolstoy is a great author, but I like Dostoevsky better

00:05:17.840 because he really delves into the souls of individuals, and I think it's remarkable the degree to which

00:05:23.880 all of the stories that we've covered so far in Genesis are about individuals.

00:05:31.580 And they're quite realistic, which is quite remarkable too.

00:05:34.400 They're not really romanticized to any great degree because all of the people that are regarded,

00:05:39.440 let's say, as patriarchal or matriarchal figures in Genesis have no shortage of ethical flaws

00:05:48.800 and also no shortage of difficulties in their life.

00:05:51.320 And the difficulties are realistic.

00:05:52.900 They're major league problems, you know, like familial catastrophes and famine and war

00:05:58.780 and revenge and hatred and all those things.

00:06:01.560 It's not a pretty book, and that's one of the things that makes it great.

00:06:07.940 I mean, that's one of the things that characterizes great literature, right, is that it doesn't

00:06:11.880 present you with a whitewashed view of humanity or of existence.

00:06:17.800 And that's really a relief, I think, because as you all know, because you're alive, there's

00:06:23.060 no such thing as a whitewashed existence.

00:06:26.060 Like, to be alive is to be in trouble, ethically and existentially.

00:06:34.800 I've been reading this book recently.

00:06:36.740 I'll talk about it a little bit later.

00:06:38.800 It's called Better Never to Have Been.

00:06:42.080 And it was written by a philosopher in South Africa, in Cape Town, named Benatar.

00:06:47.240 That's his last name.

00:06:48.360 And he basically argues...

00:06:50.740 I think it's a specious argument, and I think it's artificially constructed.

00:06:56.220 But he basically argues that because life is so full of suffering, even good lives are very

00:07:04.160 much full of suffering, that it's wrong to bring children into the world because the suffering

00:07:10.760 outweighs the good, even in good lives.

00:07:13.100 And it's actually wrong.

00:07:14.280 It would also be better not to exist, for exactly the same reason.

00:07:19.320 And my sense in reading the book is that he came to that conclusion and then wrote the book to justify it.

00:07:24.620 Which is actually the reverse of the way that you should write a book.

00:07:28.180 What you should do when you're writing a book is you should have a question.

00:07:31.300 And you should...

00:07:32.140 It should be a real question, right?

00:07:33.600 It should be one you don't know the answer to.

00:07:35.240 And then you should be studying and writing like mad and reading everything you can get

00:07:39.760 your hands on to see if you can actually grapple with the problem and come to some solution.

00:07:44.340 And you should walk the reader as well through your process of thinking so that they can come

00:07:49.540 to the...

00:07:50.420 Well, not necessarily to the same conclusion, but at least track what you're doing.

00:07:54.520 And I don't think that's what he did.

00:07:55.900 I think he wrote it backwards.

00:07:57.060 But then...

00:07:58.380 And so I was thinking about it a lot because that's actually a question that I've contended

00:08:04.280 with in my writing.

00:08:06.380 There are Mephistophelian or satanic figures, for example, in Goethe's Faust.

00:08:12.480 And also Ivan in the Brothers Karamazov, who basically make the same case, you know, that

00:08:18.180 existence is so rife with trouble and suffering that it would be better if it didn't exist

00:08:24.460 at all.

00:08:24.900 And the problem I've had with that, there's a variety of them, but one of the problems I've

00:08:30.200 had with that is what happens if you start to think that way?

00:08:32.980 Because what I've observed is that people who begin to think that way, that isn't where

00:08:37.720 they stop.

00:08:38.700 Like, they get angry at existence, which is what happened to Cain, as we saw in the Cain

00:08:42.940 and Abel story.

00:08:43.700 And then the next step is to start taking revenge against existence.

00:08:47.680 And that cascades until it's revenge against...

00:08:50.660 Well, I think the best way of thinking about it is revenge against God for the crime of being.

00:08:54.960 Which is, I think, the deepest sort of hatred that you can entertain.

00:08:59.080 And when you're in the grip of a really deep emotion, like a really profound emotion, right

00:09:04.300 at the bottom of emotions, you're in something that's like a quasi-religious state.

00:09:08.380 And that's more or less independent of your belief, say, in a transcendent deity.

00:09:12.380 I mean, you can be in a profoundly emotional state that's as deep as it can be, and it can

00:09:16.960 have religious significance without that necessarily signifying anything about a transcendent being,

00:09:21.540 you know, but then I was thinking, see, the problem with that argument is you can gerrymander

00:09:27.520 it endlessly, you know, because first of all, how do you measure suffering, and how do you

00:09:31.880 measure happiness?

00:09:32.760 It's like, how do you assign weights to them?

00:09:34.620 And there's just no way of doing that.

00:09:37.020 You have to do it arbitrarily.

00:09:39.300 And so you can make an argument that the suffering outweighs the happiness, you just weight the

00:09:43.760 suffering more heavily than you weight the happiness, and that's the end of that, you

00:09:46.700 know, and so that's a problem.

00:09:48.500 So, but I think there's a deeper problem, and I was reading this other book a while back

00:09:55.960 as well, which was written by the guy who ran the Human Genome Project, and I don't remember

00:10:03.200 exactly what it was called, but it was something like A Scientist's Case for God, or something

00:10:06.840 like that.

00:10:07.980 And one of the things he referred to, which didn't strike me as hard as it should have to begin

00:10:13.080 with, was he thought that one of the phenomena, say, that justified a belief in a transcendent

00:10:21.760 being was something like the moral intuition of human beings, that we have a sense of right

00:10:26.980 and wrong.

00:10:28.180 And, you know, it's certainly what happens in Genesis in the story of Adam and Eve is

00:10:32.420 that that story announces the coming of the sense of right and wrong, right, the knowledge

00:10:38.240 of good and evil.

00:10:38.960 And it isn't something we ascribe to animals, it's something that's unique to human beings.

00:10:43.000 Animals can be predators, and, you know, and they can be gentle, and you can have a relationship

00:10:48.880 with them, but you never think of an evil cat, or, you know, or an evil wolf, even though

00:10:53.440 they're, you know, they're predatory.

00:10:57.180 But human beings, we have this capacity to judge between good and evil, right and wrong,

00:11:03.180 and it's really an integral part of our being.

00:11:06.560 And I think you can make an evolutionary case for that, a biological case for that, as you

00:11:10.540 can make a biological case for most of what is relevant about human beings, because we're

00:11:17.120 biological creatures.

00:11:18.220 But we don't really understand the significance of that.

00:11:21.520 Like, what happens in the story of Adam and Eve is that that's, that realization, that

00:11:25.700 coming to the knowledge of good and evil is actually represented as a shift of cosmic

00:11:29.860 significance, right?

00:11:30.800 It puts a, it puts a permanent fracture in the structure of being.

00:11:34.960 And, you know, if you think of human beings as insignificant ants on a tiny dust moat in

00:11:41.120 the middle of an infinite cosmos, a cosmos that cares less for us, then who cares fundamentally

00:11:48.060 if human beings have the knowledge to distinguish between good and evil.

00:11:51.960 But if you give consciousness a central role in being, and you can make a perfectly reasonable

00:11:56.860 case for that, because without consciousness there's no being, as far as anyone can determine,

00:12:02.580 so it may be much more central than we think.

00:12:04.780 And I really don't think there's a counter-argument to that.

00:12:08.960 Like, not a solid one.

00:12:10.820 You can state that consciousness is epiphenomenal and that the world is fundamentally materialistic

00:12:15.800 and it doesn't matter that there's consciousness.

00:12:17.900 You can state that, but you can make an equally credible case the other way.

00:12:21.440 And certainly our lived experience is that consciousness is crucial, obviously, and we treat each other

00:12:28.560 as if most of the time we're valuable conscious beings, and we wouldn't give up our consciousness

00:12:34.140 even though it's often consciousness of suffering.

00:12:36.800 And so then I think another problem with the book is that it's sort of predicated on the

00:12:42.560 idea that life is for happiness.

00:12:45.060 And I don't think that's right, and I don't think that's how people experience life, and

00:12:49.020 I might be wrong, but it seems to me that people experience life as something like a

00:12:55.580 series of crucial ethical decisions.

00:12:58.500 It's something like that.

00:12:59.680 I mean, I just can't imagine, and maybe I'm being naive about this, but I can't imagine that

00:13:08.000 another being that's like me in most senses that isn't constantly wrestling in some sense

00:13:18.260 with what the next proper thing to do is.

00:13:21.160 It's not like it's obvious, it's not bloody obvious, and it doesn't mean you'll do the

00:13:25.380 right thing, because you don't lots of times.

00:13:28.280 And you know that by your own judgment, right?

00:13:31.160 Because you're making mistakes all the time.

00:13:32.840 Sometimes you don't know what you're doing, and maybe it's a mistake, and maybe it isn't.

00:13:36.060 And who's to say?

00:13:36.960 That isn't what I'm talking about.

00:13:38.160 I'm talking about when you know that what you're doing is wrong, and you go ahead and

00:13:41.400 do it anyways.

00:13:42.160 People do that all the time.

00:13:43.340 And that's also extremely peculiar.

00:13:45.620 You bloody well think that if you knew it was wrong, and you told yourself that it was

00:13:49.300 wrong, that that would be sufficient, that you just wouldn't do it, but that isn't what

00:13:53.120 you're like at all, you know?

00:13:54.380 And you can tell yourself something is wrong 50 times, and you'll do it the 51st time,

00:13:58.920 and then you'll feel, you know, like you deserve to feel, probably.

00:14:03.920 But it doesn't stop you.

00:14:05.580 And so, so then I think the other problem with the viewpoint, the idea that the suffering

00:14:11.460 of life eradicates its utility, is that it's predicated on the idea that happiness, or lack

00:14:18.280 of suffering even, is the right criteria by which to judge life.

00:14:22.640 And I don't think that's how we actually experience life.

00:14:26.600 I think what we do instead is put ourselves through a series of excruciating moral choices.

00:14:32.840 You know, and one of the things that's really significant about the biblical stories, and

00:14:38.860 I think about the entire implicit philosophy, you know, that's embedded in the stories, is

00:14:46.820 that that's how life is presented in the stories, is all of these individuals, first they're

00:14:52.540 individuals, they're not groups, and second, they're agonizing over their moral choices

00:14:57.280 all the time, all the time.

00:14:58.880 And they have a relationship with God, but it's not a directive relationship, exactly.

00:15:06.660 Even the people to whom God speaks directly, which I suspect is not something you'd exactly

00:15:12.600 want to have happen, is, it's, they're still, even the fact that they have a direct relationship

00:15:20.400 with God doesn't stop them from being tormented continually by their moral choices.

00:15:24.780 And so, the world is presented as a moral landscape, not as a, not as a place that justifies itself

00:15:33.100 by happiness.

00:15:34.380 It's presented as a moral landscape, and people are presented as creatures who traverse through

00:15:40.300 the moral landscape, making ethical decisions that determine the course of the world.

00:15:46.420 And that seems to me to be right, and that's not a, that's not the same as happiness by any

00:15:51.100 stretch of the imagination.

00:15:52.100 It's a whole different category of being, and, you know, and then I've thought that through

00:15:58.740 a lot, and I think, well, we do make choices, and what we do is contend with the future, you

00:16:04.220 know, and that the future seems to appear to us as a realm of possibility.

00:16:09.420 That's a more accurate way of thinking about it than, than that the future presents itself

00:16:13.180 to it, to us as a realm of determined things.

00:16:17.640 It's, it presents itself as a realm of possibility, and there's good choices in that realm, and

00:16:21.840 there's poor choices, or even evil choices in that realm.

00:16:25.820 And we're negotiating continually, deciding which of those choices we're going to bring

00:16:30.600 into being.

00:16:31.700 That seems to me to be phenomenologically indisputable, and we certainly treat each other as if that's

00:16:37.700 what we're doing, because we hold each other responsible for our actions, you know, with

00:16:40.980 some exceptions, and that we're deciding, each moment, whether to make things better

00:16:46.780 or worse.

00:16:48.560 And, that seems to me to be correct.

00:16:52.940 And I think that that's what these stories illustrate.

00:16:56.620 They don't say that directly, you know, although I think it gets more and more explicit as the

00:17:01.400 narrative unfolds.

00:17:03.380 But, and then part of the realism of the stories is that the people aren't, the people that

00:17:10.860 are being presented are by no means good.

00:17:14.020 I mean, maybe with the exception of Noah, Noah seemed to be a pretty good guy.

00:17:16.940 He did, he did get drunk and, you know, and, and, and end up naked, exposed to his sons

00:17:22.500 and so forth.

00:17:23.360 And, but, I mean, he, he isn't talked about a lot as a character.

00:17:28.540 It's a pretty compressed story.

00:17:29.700 But Abraham, I mean, Abraham had plenty of problems, not least of which was his inability

00:17:34.080 to leave home.

00:17:35.040 And then, you know, he's lying about his wife.

00:17:37.420 And there, there's all sorts of mistakes.

00:17:39.300 And then Jacob, who we're going to talk about tonight, is an even more morally ambivalent

00:17:46.240 character.

00:17:47.180 He's, especially at the beginning of the story, he's, it's, it's, he isn't the sort of person

00:17:55.580 that you would pick out, especially if you were a hack writer.

00:17:59.460 You wouldn't pick him out as the hero of the story.

00:18:02.820 He does a lot of things that are really pretty reprehensible and takes him an awful long time

00:18:07.060 to learn better.

00:18:08.380 And yet, he's the person who's put forward as the father of the 12 tribes of Israel.

00:18:13.720 It's from this flawed person that the people that, that maybe that, whose story you might

00:18:20.740 say is at the fundamental, constitutes the fundamental underpinning of our culture.

00:18:26.340 Or it's, it's from this deeply flawed individual that, that group emerges.

00:18:32.040 And so you might think of that as a relief, too, because, you know, you're no knight in

00:18:37.100 shining armor, you know, with, with a, with a pure moral past.

00:18:41.280 I mean, people make mistakes of catastrophic proportions non-stop, you know.

00:18:46.540 And that also means that these stories put forward something approximating hope.

00:18:51.460 Because in their realism, in their moral realism, they present heroes, I suppose, the heroes

00:18:59.080 of renown, right, the patriarchs of old, let's say, who are realistic people, who have fits

00:19:06.480 of anger and rage, and who are murderous at times, and who are deeply, deeply embroiled

00:19:13.500 with family dispute, and, and who, who have adulterous affairs, and, and, like, they do

00:19:19.680 all the terrible things that people do.

00:19:22.120 And the weird thing is, is that God is still with them.

00:19:26.380 And, you know, it isn't obvious what that means, or even if it means anything, but it's

00:19:34.380 very, it's not disputable, as far as I can tell, that, A, we're conscious, and that consciousness

00:19:40.740 is a transcendent phenomena, which, which we do not understand, and that the landscape

00:19:45.640 that we traverse through is moral.

00:19:47.560 Like, every story you ever watch, anything that grips your imagination on the screen,

00:19:51.720 or in the theatre, or, like, any story that grabs you, is a story of moral striving.

00:19:56.620 It's, it's, it's just not interesting otherwise, right?

00:19:59.220 The person has to be confronted with complex moral choices, and then you see the outcome,

00:20:03.380 and, you know, the good guy does it right, and the bad guy does it badly, and things don't

00:20:07.220 go so well for the bad guy, generally, and if it's a bit more sophisticated, the good

00:20:11.520 and the bad are in the same individual, and that's, you know, that's a more compelling

00:20:15.720 story, but, so we could say, well, let's, we could make the assumption that it might be

00:20:26.060 worthwhile thinking of the world as a, as it has been thought of classically, as a theatre

00:20:31.380 upon which the forces of good and evil continually strive for dominance, and I, for the life

00:20:39.880 of me, especially after I started reading deeply into 20th century history, and all the terrible

00:20:44.480 things that happened in the 20th century, and all the terrible, unbelievably incomprehensible

00:20:49.620 things that people did to one another, I just couldn't see, seeing things any other way

00:20:56.040 as realistic, you know, because I don't think that you can immerse yourself in 20th century

00:21:02.620 history without coming to the conclusion that evil is a reality, and if it's a reality, it

00:21:09.280 depends on what you mean by reality, but it's fundamental enough reality for me, and if it's

00:21:14.040 a reality, then I don't see how you can escape from the conclusion that the cosmos, as we experience

00:21:19.840 it at least, is a place of moral striving, and, well, that's one of the things that's really

00:21:26.940 illustrated in the story of Jacob, and, and I found that quite striking, so, so the last time, last

00:21:40.360 lecture, I ended with the Abrahamic stories, with the death of Sarah, and that was Abraham's wife, and so

00:21:47.720 we're going to continue from, from there, remember, Abraham had a son, Isaac, and he was asked by God

00:21:54.360 to sacrifice his son, which we talked about in, in some depth, and I was attempting to make the case

00:22:02.500 that, you know, the idea of sacrifice was one of humankind's great discoveries, because it meant

00:22:08.900 the discovery of the future, essentially, but it also meant the discovery that the future was something

00:22:13.640 that you could make a bargain with, and that you could give up something now, something impulsive,

00:22:18.740 some pleasure, even a deep pleasure, in the moment, and you could strive, and hypothetically, you could make

00:22:25.380 a covenant, a bargain with the future, and if your sacrifices were acceptable, and that seemed to mean

00:22:31.160 ethically acceptable, you had to sacrifice the right thing, that that vastly increased the probability

00:22:36.640 that not only you would be successful, let's say, but that your descendants would be too, and

00:22:42.320 I don't think that that's an irrational proposition, I mean, you have to leave in it a bit with the

00:22:48.620 realization that sometimes, you know, you get sliced off at the knees, no matter what, right, because life

00:22:54.400 has an arbitrary element, and, and that can't be tossed out, but building in the arbitrary element,

00:23:01.280 will say, you still want to think, well, what's your best bet, given a certain amount of randomness, and

00:23:06.580 it seems to me that conscious, self-aware sacrifice, and proper ethical striving, is your best bet, and,

00:23:14.660 you know, there's another idea that, well, I've always explained it, when I've explained it to people,

00:23:21.060 I've always used the movie Pinocchio as an example, you know, that when Geppetto was trying to make his

00:23:26.380 puppet, into a self-aware, and autonomous moral agent, which is what he wants above all else, you

00:23:34.940 know, he aims at the highest good that he can conceive, which is the star that he prays to,

00:23:40.280 essentially, and hopes for the transformation, and there's also something in that that's unutterably

00:23:45.520 profound, and maybe that is somewhat independent of the idea that you have to believe in God, I would

00:23:52.500 also say that what it means to believe in God, in the Old Testament, is by no means clear, and that's

00:23:57.980 something I also really want to talk about tonight, it's not obvious what it means, and, well, Geppetto,

00:24:04.500 what he does, at least, is aim at the highest good of which he can conceive, you know, and that's

00:24:11.520 actually been a philosophical definition of God upon occasion, that God is the highest good of which

00:24:16.600 you conceive, and, you know, that's different than the idea of a transcendent being, precisely, but

00:24:25.140 it's in line with, it's in line with certain interesting psychoanalytic speculations, this is

00:24:29.840 one of the things I really liked about Carl Jung, you know, Jung was so radical a thinker, it's just

00:24:34.520 beyond belief, like, I've read a lot of critics of Jung, and I've always, I've always got a kick out of

00:24:39.020 them, because the things they accuse Jung of are so trivial, compared to the things that Jung

00:24:43.580 actually did, that it's like accusing a, a murderer of jaywalking, like, because Jung was

00:24:50.040 unbelievably radical, like, here's one of his ideas, you know, he thought that it was necessary, he

00:24:55.560 believed that psychotherapy could be replaced by a supreme moral effort, and so the moral effort

00:25:01.160 would be something like aiming at the good, and then trying to integrate yourself around

00:25:05.160 that, and that the, the good at which you aimed would be something approximating what you

00:25:12.800 would be like if you manifested your full potential, and that you'd have a glimmering

00:25:17.540 of what that full potential was, so that would be the potential future you, and he thought

00:25:22.280 of that, he thought of people as four-dimensional entities, especially, essentially, that were

00:25:26.680 stretched across time, and that you as a totality across time, including your potential, manifested

00:25:33.120 yourself also in the here and now, and that part of what your potential manifested itself

00:25:39.100 was something like the voice of conscious, conscience or intuition, it's amazing idea,

00:25:44.440 it's an amazing idea, right, because it's like what you could be in the future beckons

00:25:48.240 to you in the present, and helps you determine the difference between good and evil, it's

00:25:52.820 a mind-boggling idea, and, you know, I think that it's an idea you have to contend with,

00:25:59.060 and then he, he went further than that, and this is, this is also a remarkable idea, you know,

00:26:05.460 he was interested in the symbolic representation of Christ, and, I mean, psychologically speaking,

00:26:10.960 and he thought of Christ as the representation of the ideal potential human, it's something

00:26:17.780 like that, so it was a symbolic, at minimum, that's what Christ was, is a symbolic representation

00:26:23.220 of the ideal potential of a human being, and so for Jung, there was no difference between,

00:26:28.520 there was no psychological difference between who you could be in the future beckoning

00:26:33.280 to you and the, in the present, and orienting yourself in relationship to Christ, psychologically

00:26:39.300 those were the same thing, and then, so that's a pretty mind-boggling idea, like, seriously,

00:26:45.860 that's a mind-boggling idea, you know, especially when you add the psychological idea that the,

00:26:51.720 one of the things that characterizes your ideal future self is the ability to make sacrifices,

00:26:56.340 right, and the deeper the sacrifice, the better, and then also to recover from the sacrifice,

00:27:01.280 right, so that's the death and rebirth, so the part of you that's most essential to your full

00:27:06.400 flowering as a, as a being is your ability to let things go and then spring back from that, so to die

00:27:14.200 in some sense and to be reborn in the service of a higher good, and then, well, then the next part of

00:27:20.760 that is that the direction of the world depends on you doing that, so not only your own life but your

00:27:27.040 family's life, and, and because we're networked so intently together, you know, the, the whole

00:27:32.160 panoply of humankind and maybe the structure of the, of the cosmos, and, you know, you might think,

00:27:38.180 well, no, but, you know, it's not so simple, it's not so simple.

00:27:43.940 First of all, one person can wreak an awful lot of havoc, there's absolutely no doubt about that,

00:27:48.400 and as we get more technologically powerful, that becomes even more relevant and important,

00:27:53.340 and, and, and crucial, you know, one of the things that Jung said was that we had to wake up

00:27:57.660 because we are too technologically powerful to be as morally asleep as we are,

00:28:02.420 and that seems to me just to be self-evident, that's, yeah, for sure, that's true, we're, we're,

00:28:07.800 we're half asleep with nuclear bombs, it's not a good idea, it's seriously not a good idea,

00:28:13.380 and so, well, and then you might ask yourself, too, you know, well, like, what is the ultimate

00:28:22.200 potential of a fully developed human being, and, well, we certainly know that you have admiration

00:28:30.100 for people who are more developed rather than less developed, that's, that just happens automatic,

00:28:35.440 or resentment, that, but that's okay, it's the same thing, it doesn't matter, but it's not like you

00:28:40.320 can't identify them, you can identify them, you know, and, and they're put forward to you in,

00:28:44.480 in, in drama, and fiction, and all of that constantly, so that's another form of moral

00:28:49.180 intuition, you know, you can, you can discern the wheat from the chaff, let's say, and, and so,

00:28:55.680 the other thing that I was thinking about that's worth consideration, too, is that, you know,

00:29:02.200 and maybe this is, maybe this is petty, but I don't think it is, somebody asked me the other day

00:29:08.720 if I believed in miracles, and I hate being asked questions like that, you know, and, you know,

00:29:16.080 it's also people ask me, do I believe in God, and, like, I don't know what they mean when they say

00:29:20.740 that, and so I don't know what to answer, because I don't think we're talk, necessarily going to talk

00:29:24.280 about the same thing, but in any case, I said yes, and I have a variety of reasons for that, but one of

00:29:29.320 them is that, you know, the consensus among physicists is that we can track the origin of

00:29:39.160 the cosmos to something like a hundred millionth of a millionth of a second after the Big Bang,

00:29:44.400 it's like, it's so close to the Big Bang that the difference is literally infinitesimal,

00:29:50.760 people, but the consensus is that before that, whatever that is, the laws of physics themselves

00:29:56.560 break down. Well, what do you call an event that exists outside the laws of physics? By definition,

00:30:06.760 that's a miracle. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that there's a transcendent deity that caused

00:30:12.380 the event, that's a separate issue, but it does imply a barrier of some sort beyond which we can't go,

00:30:20.740 where some other set of rules apply, and so I find that interesting as well. So, all right,

00:30:30.480 so Sarah dies, and Abraham makes a bargain with the Hittites to purchase a burial place for her,

00:30:39.960 and they offer it as a gift, and he insists upon paying for it. It's a little story that basically

00:30:44.940 indicates two things, that Abraham was the kind of guy that you trust pretty much,

00:30:50.720 when you see him, and that even if something is offered to him as a gift, he's going to do

00:30:54.940 everything to be reciprocal about it. And so, it's not a massively important part of the story,

00:31:02.520 but it's in keeping with the same narrative flow. And so, Ephron, who's a Hittite, offers a burial

00:31:09.940 place as a gift, and Abraham says, no, you know, you have to let me pay for it. And Ephron says,

00:31:15.040 yes, he will, and that works out very well. And so, he has a good burial place for his wife.

00:31:21.220 And then, Abraham decides that Isaac needs a wife. And so, he sends his eldest servant

00:31:31.920 to Mesopotamia to find a wife for Isaac. And there's a strange ritual that's performed. So,

00:31:41.160 it says in the story that the servant places his hand under Abraham's thigh to swear. But that

00:31:49.040 isn't really what it means. It means that he places his hand, I don't know exactly how to say this

00:31:54.780 properly. Well, use your imagination. How about that? And the idea is that, as far as I can tell,

00:32:01.620 that he's swearing on the future. He's swearing on future people. It's something like that. So,

00:32:06.980 that's sort of what testify means, right? Think about the root. Well, I'm not kidding. I'm not

00:32:12.640 kidding. That is what it, that is the derivation, right? It is the derivation. So, anyways, this is a

00:32:20.560 serious issue. And so, that servant has to go and find Isaac a good wife. And he wants him to find

00:32:26.560 Isaac a wife who is willing to accept the same fundamental belief system, which is something

00:32:33.240 like the belief in a God that's a unity rather than a plurality. You know, the other thing that Jung was

00:32:38.940 very insistent upon was that there was a relationship between polytheism and psychological confusion

00:32:48.840 and monotheism and psychological unification. And I really like that idea, too. That, you know,

00:32:55.020 that what you're trying to do, because you are a plurality, that's one of the things the psychoanalysts

00:33:00.160 were really good at figuring out, that the cognitive scientists haven't touched yet, as far as I can

00:33:04.820 tell. They're way behind the psychoanalysts in that element of thinking, is that you are composed of

00:33:09.180 sub-personalities, which all have their own desires and their own viewpoint, their own thoughts and

00:33:14.920 their own perceptions. And they're in a war with each other constantly. Maybe even a Darwinian war,

00:33:21.980 it's been portrayed that way by certain neuroscientists. And that one of the goals of

00:33:29.340 life is to integrate all of that plurality into a hierarchical ethical structure that has some

00:33:35.760 canonical ethic at the pinnacle, right? And we've talked a little bit about that. And it's not obvious

00:33:42.380 what should be at the pinnacle, but we can guess at it. It's that which we admire. That's one way of

00:33:48.780 thinking about it. It's that that describes fair play across a sequence of games. That's another good

00:33:54.880 way of thinking about it. It's the heroic ideal. That's another way of thinking about it. But it's

00:34:00.280 combined with generosity. You know, because the hero, the mythological hero, goes out into the unknown and

00:34:05.280 slays the dragon and gets the gold, but then comes back to the community and distributes what's found.

00:34:10.940 And so it's courage plus generosity. And so all of your, all of that interior struggling that you're

00:34:19.180 doing is an attempt to bang yourself against the world with challenge constantly to hit everything

00:34:26.940 together like you're beating on a piece of iron to cure it, let's say, so that you don't, you're not an

00:34:34.880 internal contradiction. You're not a massive competing God, something like that, because it's

00:34:39.560 just too psychologically stressful and hard on everyone else and impossible for them to get

00:34:45.120 along with you if you're one thing one moment and another thing another moment. And so, so anyways,

00:34:52.060 Abraham insists that Isaac find a wife from among people who are likely to carry out forward the

00:34:58.260 monotheistic tradition. And I'm not sure that the monotheistic tradition is actually

00:35:02.280 indistinguishable, is actually distinguishable from the individualistic tradition. I think they

00:35:07.700 might be the same thing at different levels of analysis, you know. So, because individual means

00:35:13.940 undivided in some sense, right? To be an individual means to be one thing. And the other thing

00:35:21.120 that mitigates against the idea of life as happiness is it isn't obvious to me that it's happiness that

00:35:26.640 is what molds you and shapes you. You know, it's something more like optimal challenge, voluntarily

00:35:32.420 undertaken. It's something like that, right? And I think that's echoed in the idea that everyone has a

00:35:37.220 moral obligation to raise their cross, something like that, to accept the fact of their mortality

00:35:43.000 voluntarily. I believe that that's the case. And I do actually think that that's a prerequisite to

00:35:49.200 proper psychological development. Because if you're not willing to take your mortality on voluntarily,

00:35:56.240 like if you're kicking and fighting about it constantly, and you have every reason to, don't

00:36:00.160 get me wrong, then you can't act forthrightly in the world, right? You're going to be afraid. And

00:36:06.360 when you're afraid, then you can't voluntarily take on a challenge. And then if you can't take

00:36:11.360 voluntarily take on a challenge, then you can't develop. And so, again, the life seems to be

00:36:16.100 something like, if it's a proper life, is the voluntary taking on of great challenges.

00:36:23.460 And maybe that's better than happiness. Like, it's certainly more noble, you know? It's not a word

00:36:28.380 we use very much anymore, the idea of nobility, because we're so obsessed with happiness. But I

00:36:33.840 think happiness is a, like if it comes along, man, great, you know, wonderful. Don't take it lightly

00:36:41.280 or for granted, because it's fleeting. But the idea that that's what you should be for, in some sense,

00:36:47.840 just seems to me, if that's what life is for, then maybe it shouldn't be. Maybe that's correct.

00:36:53.220 Because that isn't what life is. But it also doesn't, it isn't obvious to me that that's what

00:36:57.920 life should be. You know, I mean, if you really loved someone, like your son, let's say, would you

00:37:04.780 say, well, I hope he has a happy life? Or would you say, I hope he accomplishes great things? It

00:37:11.200 seems to me that that's better, the accomplishing of great things. And because that's admirable,

00:37:17.720 you know? It's like a happy person is a happy person, but a noble person is an admirable person.

00:37:22.980 And that's better, man. And so, maybe there are better things than happiness. And so, you can't

00:37:29.760 judge being on the basis of the ratio of suffering to pleasure, something like that. It's, and I don't

00:37:36.120 think we do that. I don't believe we do that. I mean, comedians are happy, right? But everyone

00:37:40.820 doesn't aspire to be a comedian. And you don't watch comedy all the time, even though you can laugh

00:37:45.220 non-stop, more or less, if the comedian's funny. You want to get your teeth into something.

00:37:49.780 It also seems to me that, and this is one of the reasons I liked existential philosophy, was that,

00:37:54.900 you know, the existentialists believed, it's sort of an original sin idea. They believed that we came

00:38:00.660 into the world with an ethical burden already laden upon us, something like that. And that we had a felt

00:38:05.980 sense that it was necessary for us to justify our being. And that if we didn't do that, then we weren't

00:38:11.440 authentic to ourselves. We weren't moving towards individuality. We weren't sustaining the community.

00:38:16.540 We weren't living properly. And that, and that, that idea was deeply embedded in people as part of their

00:38:22.440 ordinary experience. And that also seems to me to be accurate. And, you know, I've dealt with lots of

00:38:29.040 people, say, in my clinical practice, and they don't really cut, they are, they will come and say,

00:38:35.160 I wish I wasn't so unhappy. But they don't usually come and say, I wish I was happier. And those things

00:38:41.640 aren't the same. And, and then when, when, when you talk to people who are having trouble, you know,

00:38:46.600 they want to straighten things out and figure out how to do them right. It's something like that.

00:38:51.220 And, and, and that, that's the primary, that's their primary goal. And so anyways,

00:38:58.140 Abraham sends his eldest servant off to his, the place that God has granted him to find a wife. And

00:39:04.640 interestingly, it, the borders of the promised land are quite similar to the current borders of Israel.

00:39:12.900 And these are estimates, right, based on, on the biblical, and I mean, that's not a fluke,

00:39:16.780 obviously. But it's, it's interesting to see the concordance between these ancient stories and

00:39:23.260 the, and the present day world. So I thought that was very interesting. And it shows, once again,

00:39:29.480 that the past, you think the past is the past, but it's not. It's, it's still here. It's embedded in

00:39:35.180 the present, you know, just like the future in somehow, in some ways is folded up inside the

00:39:39.680 present waiting to unfold. The past is all folded up inside the present too. So anyways, the servant

00:39:48.140 goes to the land that he's been charged to go to. And, and he, he's, he's trying to figure out how in

00:39:55.460 the world am I going to find a good wife for Isaac? I mean, I don't know any of these people. And so he

00:40:00.420 has this little dialogue that's presented in the form of a prayer, I suppose. And he thinks, well,

00:40:06.840 I'm going to go to the place where you water, where people get water and water the animals. And

00:40:11.380 because that's a place where everyone gathers. So that's a good place to find someone. And,

00:40:16.600 and it's, it's not a place of fun and lightness and relaxation and impulsivity. It's a place of,

00:40:22.260 of life sustaining work. And, and he thinks something like, well, what would a decent girl do?

00:40:30.420 At a watering place. And he thought, well, maybe she would offer a stranger some water and also offer

00:40:38.180 to water the camels. Because that would be brave to approach the stranger and then generous and then

00:40:46.120 indicative of, of the willingness to make an effort. And when you know that a camel, I think

00:40:52.220 he took 10 camels. There's quite a few camels anyways, not just one. And that a camel can drink

00:40:58.420 20 gallons of water. And Rebecca, who was drawing water from the, it turns out to be Rebecca, was

00:41:04.380 drawing water from the well, which is hard, right? Because water's heavy and you have to lift it up.

00:41:09.560 And it's 10 camels. And so that's like 200 gallons of water. So, you know, she has to put herself

00:41:14.860 out a fair bit in order to make this stranger happy. And so that's what happens. And then

00:41:21.100 the servant has brought along gifts and that sort of thing. And anyways, to make a long story short,

00:41:29.720 Rebecca agrees to come back to, come back with the servant and marry Isaac. And so

00:41:38.440 then she has, she gets pregnant and she has twins. And this is an interesting thing. The twins fight

00:41:46.760 inside her. She can tell that, that they're not getting along. And this is an echo, right? It's an

00:41:52.500 echo of Cain and Abel. And there's a mythological motif that the Jungians have called the hostile

00:41:58.200 brothers, the hostile brothers. And you see them all the time. Batman and the Joker are hostile

00:42:02.700 brothers and Thor and Loki are hostile brothers. And it's an unbelievably common motif.

00:42:08.440 And, you know, the ultimate hostile brothers are Christ and Satan. So that's the, that's the

00:42:13.460 archetypal representation of the hostile brothers, right? The ultimate good and the ultimate

00:42:18.200 evil. And so, and so it's an echo of the Cain and Abel story. Although it's a little more complex,

00:42:25.480 I would say, from a literary point of view, because it isn't obvious which of these brothers

00:42:30.620 is Cain and which of them is Abel. They have parts of both in each of them. So Esau, who turns out

00:42:37.440 to be one of the brothers and Jacob, who turns out to be the other, both have their admirable

00:42:42.260 qualities and their faults. Anyways, Esau comes, is born first. But Jacob has him by the heel.

00:42:50.980 And so there was a fight within the womb to see who would emerge first. Now, that's relevant

00:42:57.440 because the firstborn had a special status. Well, has a special status in many communities,

00:43:02.640 especially agricultural communities. And there's a, the reason, oh, these people were more

00:43:07.460 herds people. But if you divide your property equally among all your children, then in like

00:43:11.660 three generations, everybody has one goat and everybody starves to death. You know, or the same

00:43:16.500 thing happens with land. So one of the ways that, that traditional communities solve that is they

00:43:21.620 just give almost everything to the firstborn. And then the, everyone else knows, well, you go out and do

00:43:26.960 whatever you can. And it's kind of arbitrary and unfair, but, you know, at least it's predictably

00:43:31.700 arbitrary and unfair instead of doom over four generations, you know. So it actually mattered to

00:43:38.040 be the firstborn. And, and God generally favors the firstborn. And, and then you might think, well,

00:43:43.720 what is it about being born first that's so relevant apart from the, the cultural practice of, of a

00:43:50.720 more generous inheritance? And I would say, well, the firstborn is something like the model for the

00:43:55.100 leader of the family, right? Because the firstborn child should be, if there's a number of siblings,

00:44:00.960 A should take care of the siblings, at least to some degree, but also should be a role model for

00:44:05.340 them. So it's like a natural position of leadership. But there's a psych, there's a

00:44:09.680 psych, psychologization of the idea of the firstborn in these stories, because God often passes over the

00:44:15.480 firstborn in favor of a later born child. He seems to do that on the basis of moral character,

00:44:22.560 essentially. And so there's this idea that, well, there's a natural proclivity towards leadership

00:44:28.840 that's just a biological fact that would be associated with being a firstborn. But there's

00:44:33.460 a element of characterological development that transcends that. And so that you, it's more

00:44:38.740 important to be spiritually a firstborn, let's say, than to be biologically a firstborn. And God

00:44:43.800 recognizes that continually in these stories and inverts the natural order and favors a later born

00:44:50.200 who's done more work with regards to characterological development. And that's also

00:44:55.620 interesting too. You know, I've talked to lots of business people about leadership. And there's a

00:45:00.520 literature on leadership, but it's not a good literature. It's pretty shallow. Partly because

00:45:05.560 it's not that easy to define leadership. And partly because there are different, you know, people have

00:45:11.380 different temperaments. And different temperaments can be leaders. They just do it in different ways.

00:45:16.260 Now, there's something in common about being a leader, though. And I would say one is that if

00:45:20.700 you're an actual leader, you actually know where you're going. Right? Because what are you going

00:45:24.860 to do? Lead people in circles? It's like, maybe they'll follow you, but you're not a leader. You're

00:45:28.480 just a charlatan. So you have to know where you're going. And then you have to be able to communicate

00:45:32.440 that. And then people have to trust you. So you actually have to be honest because people aren't

00:45:37.380 that stupid, at least not for a long period of time. And then where you're going has to have some

00:45:42.760 value. Because otherwise, why would anyone want to go along with you? So, and then you might say,

00:45:48.460 well, what are the attributes then that make you a leader? And I would say, well, they're

00:45:51.920 characterological, fundamentally. And this is not naive optimism or casual moralizing. It has nothing

00:46:00.560 to do with that. You know, we know, for example, that conscientiousness, the personality trait,

00:46:06.760 is a good predictor of long-term success in most occupations. Not all, but most. And that one of

00:46:12.740 the things that's associated with conscientiousness is that people keep their word. They're trustworthy.

00:46:17.420 And that's certainly one element of a leader, especially across any reasonable amount of time.

00:46:21.680 You have to be able to trust the person. They can even be harsh, right? It doesn't matter. Because

00:46:25.720 you can see harsh leaders and kind leaders. But as long as they do what they say they will do,

00:46:30.320 then you can follow them. And you know that the future payoff is secure, something like that.

00:46:38.120 So, the idea that characterological development is more important to leadership than primogenitor,

00:46:44.080 I think that's the right word, primogenesis, anyways, being a firstborn, that's a very crucial

00:46:50.840 psychological realization. That it's characterological development that makes you favored of God.

00:46:56.240 You know, and I do think we've forgotten this in many ways, because there isn't a lot of emphasis

00:47:02.200 in our education system on characterological development. And that's very, very surprising

00:47:07.440 to me. I think maybe it's partly because in our fractured society, we can't agree on what constitutes

00:47:13.080 a reasonable characterological goal. So, we just throw up our hands and don't educate our kids

00:47:19.740 to any degree at all, especially in schools, about what an admirable person is like, or even let them

00:47:25.720 know that, well, maybe you should actually try to be one, you know, that that's actually

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00:50:20.420 no matter what stage you're in. That's shopify.com slash jbp.

00:50:26.920 So, and I also think, and I think this is laid out very thoroughly in the biblical stories as well,

00:50:32.320 is that if there are enough people who are admirable, then things work, and if there aren't,

00:50:38.740 then things are terrible. You get wiped out. You remember when Abraham is bargaining with God

00:50:46.380 with regards to Sodom and Gomorrah, he asks God to save the city if there's like 40

00:50:53.000 admirable people, right? Respectable. But let's say admirable, right? I don't want to say good

00:50:59.180 because good is being corrupted in some sense by casual usage. I mean admirable, noble people,

00:51:05.300 right? I think Abraham bargains God down to like 10. If there's 10 of them in the city,

00:51:10.840 the city won't be destroyed. And that's not very many in a city. So there's an interesting idea there,

00:51:15.820 which is that there doesn't have to be that many people in a group who have their act together,

00:51:21.060 but zero is the wrong number. And if it's zero, then we're seriously in trouble.

00:51:28.760 And I think that goes along with the idea of the Pareto principle in economics too,

00:51:33.020 which is that it's a small minority of people who do most of the productive work in any given domain.

00:51:37.920 But so a small number of properly behaving people might have enough of an impact to keep

00:51:44.020 everything moving. And that might also, that might actually be true, but it can't fall below some

00:51:48.580 crucial level. And I do think that we're in some danger of allowing it to fall below some crucial

00:51:53.460 level because our society seems to be at war in some ways against the idea of the individual and

00:51:59.900 individual character per se. And I think that's absolutely, I think that's absolutely catastrophic.

00:52:08.120 And that's part of the reason that I'm doing these biblical lectures, you know, because I think

00:52:12.360 that I've known for a long time that the moral presuppositions of a culture are instantiated in

00:52:20.100 its stories. They're not instantiated in its explicit philosophy. There might be a layer of explicit

00:52:25.760 philosophy, and of course there is in the West, and a layer of explicit law, but underneath that there

00:52:30.120 are stories. And there isn't anything under the stories except maybe behavior, you know, and that's so

00:52:36.080 implicit. It doesn't even actually count. It's not a cognitive operation. And so this is the story.

00:52:42.280 These are the stories that are underneath our culture. And so there better be something to them.

00:52:48.540 That's what we hope. But more importantly, maybe we shouldn't toss them away without knowing

00:52:53.540 what they mean. Because if we toss them away, then we're throwing everything that we depend on away,

00:52:59.620 as far as I can tell. And we will pay for it. We'll pay for it individually because we'll be weak.

00:53:04.680 You know, because if you're not firm in your convictions, then someone else who's firm in

00:53:09.780 their convictions, you're their puppet, like instantly. And then you're also the puppet of

00:53:14.020 your own doubts, right? Because unless you have convictions, you're going to generate doubts like

00:53:19.140 mad, because everyone does. And then the doubts win, and you'll be paralyzed, because there'll be,

00:53:24.460 you know, 50% of you moving forward, and 50% of you frozen stiff, and that'll be enough just to

00:53:29.980 lodge you in place. And so, okay, so there's a psychologization of the idea of leadership, which

00:53:39.060 is very important. And then it's associated with the idea of characterological development. And it's

00:53:43.100 associated with the idea of struggle, not happiness. And it's also associated with this

00:53:48.200 Abrahamic idea, which I really liked, and which was something that's been very useful to me as a

00:53:53.220 consequence of doing these lectures. Because remember, at the beginning of the Abrahamic

00:53:57.380 stories, Abraham's like a stay-at-home guy, right? He's like the guy who's 40 years old living in his

00:54:02.420 mother's basement. And God says, like, get the hell out of there, you know? Get out in the world

00:54:06.860 where you belong. Go do something difficult, because what you're doing isn't acceptable. And,

00:54:13.040 you know, the first thing he does is go somewhere there's a terrible famine, and then he goes somewhere

00:54:16.440 there's a tyranny. So, you know, it's pretty funny. He follows God's call, and it's not like

00:54:21.340 sweetness and light and paradise immediately. It's nothing like that. It's instantaneous combat,

00:54:28.540 you know, of the most difficult kind. So, but Abraham does, in fact, follow that impulse. And,

00:54:36.800 you know, it's interesting, too. I mean, I don't know. Here's another thing that made me a really

00:54:41.620 an advocate of psychoanalytic thinking. It was the sort of thing that started to terrify me about

00:54:47.880 what the human psyche was actually like. I started to understand that not only were we

00:54:51.920 like an amalgam of relatively autonomous sub-personalities, each of which had the

00:54:57.880 possibility of gaining control, but that we were also victim, you might say, or beneficiary

00:55:06.040 of impulses that were beyond our conscious formulation or understanding or capacity to resist.

00:55:14.380 So, here's a funny story. So, I was talking to one of my Patreon people online this week, and he said

00:55:21.940 he was a committed atheist, and that's fine, you know, lots of atheists are very honest people,

00:55:27.140 and they're atheists because they don't know how to reconcile what they know with traditional claims,

00:55:33.960 let's say, and they're not willing to just mangle them together, you know. And there might be cynicism,

00:55:38.620 all that associated with it as well. But he said, he was, he said he was entranced by these biblical

00:55:43.860 lectures, you know, which is pretty weird. And he said, if someone would have told him a year ago that

00:55:48.300 he was going to, like, be obsessed with the sequence of biblical lectures, he would have told

00:55:52.340 them that they were mad. And so, we had a bit of a discussion about that, because this is an

00:55:57.300 interesting thing, you know. And he mentioned this, he said, it was something like, you don't choose your

00:56:03.120 interests, they choose you. And that's really worth thinking about, too, man, because, you know, it's

00:56:08.760 really hard to get interested in something you're not interested in, even if you know there's a good

00:56:12.240 reason for it. You know, you're studying for an exam, you find the material boring, you know, anything

00:56:17.960 will be more interesting than the studying. Even though you know that that's what you need to do,

00:56:22.760 you can't voluntarily grab yourself by the scruff of the neck, let's say, and shake yourself and say,

00:56:28.100 sit down and concentrate. Your mind will just go everywhere. But then, if you're interested in something,

00:56:33.480 and even if it's something you shouldn't be interested in, because that happens all the time,

00:56:37.300 then it's like, you're a laser focus, man. You can pay attention forever, you can work until you're

00:56:41.940 exhausted, you won't even notice it, and you remember everything. It's like, okay, if you can't control

00:56:47.280 your interest, what does? And man, I tell you, you can think about that for a very long time. So, Jung talked

00:56:55.000 about the spirit Mercurius, you know, Mercury is the winged messenger of the gods, and here's how he

00:57:00.840 conceptualized it psychologically. He thought this is what the ancient people who thought about Mercury

00:57:06.800 as the winged messenger of the gods were trying to state psychologically. You know, your interest

00:57:11.120 flits around. It's like there's something that captures it, and that moves your interest from

00:57:15.860 place to place. You know, like if you walk into a bookstore, you'll get interested in a particular

00:57:19.340 book. And it's as if the book grips you. Because you don't know why you're interested in that. You

00:57:24.040 might, but often you don't know why you're interested in that book. And, you know, your interest is

00:57:27.700 flitting around. And so, that's Mercury. The thing that makes your interest flicker around is

00:57:32.520 Mercury, the winged messenger of the gods. And Mercury is the messenger of the gods because it's

00:57:38.020 the things behind the scenes psychologically that are manipulating your attention. And for Jung, those

00:57:43.220 were equivalent in some sense to the lost gods. And so, for Jung, your interest was being manipulated

00:57:50.340 behind the scenes by unseen forces that were associated with your characterological development

00:57:55.020 across time. That was the manifestation of the self. So, the self is this, the potential

00:58:01.180 you, let's say. And the way it operates in the present is by gripping your interest and

00:58:05.900 directing it somewhere. And that's part of the instinct of self-realization. It's a mind-boggling

00:58:11.460 idea, man. Really, it's, I think it's correct. I can't see how it can't be correct. It doesn't

00:58:16.340 mean I understand it completely, but it certainly seems phenomenologically correct. And, I mean,

00:58:21.920 the potential that you are has to manifest itself somehow in the here and now. It has

00:58:27.520 to. And what better way than by directing your attention? You know, it's like, it seems like

00:58:32.020 this might be useful for you. Or maybe you get attracted to this person. Maybe you admire

00:58:36.040 this person. That happens with kids a lot. They'll admire someone and then copy them. And

00:58:40.200 you can see that that's obviously part of their developmental progression, right? It's a form

00:58:44.740 of hero worship. But kids are very imitative and they hero worship at the drop of a hat.

00:58:48.700 And so, they're entranced by the next stage of development. And if they see someone who

00:58:55.800 embodies that, especially if it's in the zone of proximal development, it's something they

00:59:00.560 could achieve, stretching a bit. They find someone who embodies that next stage of development

00:59:05.680 and then they start to imitate them and act like them. Well, adults are no different. We're

00:59:10.920 no different. We're just, we do it at a perhaps more abstract and sophisticated level.

00:59:15.380 So, okay. So, Jacob and Esau are hostile brothers. They're like Cain and Abel, except

00:59:23.980 the mixture of Cain and Abel. And they're very different. Esau was red and covered with

00:59:28.660 hair. He was a hunter and a man of the field. So, he's like your basic jock, right? He's

00:59:32.460 extroverted. He's outgoing. He's really tough. He's like extraordinarily masculine. He hunts

00:59:37.780 and he's a real favorite of his father. And so, and Jacob isn't. He's a dweller in tents.

00:59:44.980 And yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Right. And it says Isaac loved Esau, but Rebecca

00:59:52.460 loved Jacob. Now, that's a problem, right? That's a big problem. And there's a Freudian

00:59:56.580 element to this. It's like this family is now divided because one child is the favorite

01:00:01.180 of the mother. And that's Jacob. And one child is the favorite of the father. And

01:00:05.400 so, Jacob is kind of a mother's boy, I guess, to use a rather archaic phrase. And certainly

01:00:12.400 not as admirable from his father's perspective as Esau, who's a tough guy who goes out with

01:00:17.840 a bow and arrow and like, you know, wanders around in the plains and brings animals home.

01:00:21.780 And he's tough. He's a tough guy. So, and, but, but there's this discord in the family because

01:00:29.960 one parent prefers one child and the other parent prefers the other. And it's obvious from the story

01:00:35.060 that the parents do not communicate about this because they really take sides. And so there's

01:00:39.340 a split in the family. And that's, I think, very realistic because one of the things that you do

01:00:44.780 learn if you have a family, and of course, most of you do, but if you also think about families is

01:00:48.920 that there's, there's deep divisions within families very, very frequently that no one will

01:00:54.460 ever talk about. And, or even think about often because it's too painful to think about, you know.

01:01:00.300 And Freud himself said, Freud was clearly his mother's favorite. And the family sacrificed a lot,

01:01:05.880 including some of the potential ambitions of the other children in order to kind of put Sigmund Freud

01:01:10.900 up on a pedestal and, and advance his education. And it worked. I mean, you know, he, he turned into a

01:01:16.220 great man, but there was a cost to his siblings. And Freud himself said that there was something

01:01:20.700 about being the favorite of the mother that gave a person additional confidence throughout their

01:01:27.680 life. And, you know, there's, there's something to be said about that. Even someone like Eric Erickson,

01:01:32.940 you know, he noted that very interested in child development, that that first bonding with the

01:01:37.380 mother was the, was the place where trust was established. Maybe trust even in the goodness of

01:01:42.640 existence was established. And so anyways, Jacob is Rachel's favorite. And Esau is Isaac's favorite.

01:01:52.900 Now Esau, being extroverted, let's say, is also a bit impulsive. And maybe he's not, he's a man of

01:01:59.620 action. He's not a forward thinker. And, but he's also doing hard work. And so, you know, he goes out

01:02:04.960 and he's hunting and he's worn out. And he comes home and he's faint with hunger. And Jacob is at

01:02:12.160 home cooking. He's boiling up lentils, red lentils. And, you know, Esau comes in from the hunt and he's

01:02:18.440 like half starved to death. And he's sitting there and the aroma of these red lentils reaches him. And

01:02:24.420 he's exhausted. And, and, and he tells Jacob that he wants some of this stew. And Jacob,

01:02:35.180 who's being a pain in the neck fundamentally, basically says, no, there's a, there's a teasing

01:02:40.880 thing going on here. And, and, and won't give him any. And, and, and there's, you have to imagine this

01:02:47.180 because it's not laid out explicitly in the story. But there's some dispute about whether Esau gets to

01:02:53.720 have lunch. And Jacob finally says, well, I'll give you some, but you have to, you have to give me your

01:02:58.700 birthright. And Esau, you think he must say something like, you know, well, to hell with it. Take it, you know,

01:03:06.820 you son of a bitch. Take it. Just give me some damn stew. It's something like that. So that's what

01:03:13.120 happens. But, you know, with these archaic people, once he made a statement like that, that was, you

01:03:17.180 were done. That was it. And so, Esau sells his birthright. And this turns out to be incredibly

01:03:24.760 significant. Benson, who wrote biblical commentary, said, oh, there's a bit of a twist to it. So Esau

01:03:33.080 eats the, the red lentils. And then, from then on, his name is Red. And you've got to use your

01:03:39.160 imagination a bit. I mean, people are making fun of him, right? That's why they're calling him Red.

01:03:44.040 I mean, he's already Red, because we, we, we established that. But no one was calling him Red

01:03:47.840 before this. And so, for the rest of his life, you know, every time he goes out amongst his friends

01:03:53.160 and family, they call him Red and sort of snicker because he's the, you know, half famished idiot who

01:03:58.100 sold his birthright for a bowl of lentils. And so, it's, it's not, it's not that funny, actually.

01:04:04.460 And so, Esau is not happy about this. And, and it actually turns out that this, so what does it mean?

01:04:09.280 It means, don't sell the future for the desires of the present. And don't be casual about what you

01:04:14.080 have. And then there's an archetypal element to this, too. And Benson says, various have been the

01:04:19.080 opinions what this birthright was which Esau sold. But the most probable is that together with the right

01:04:25.140 of sacrificing, so determining what should be sacrificed and when, and being the priest of the

01:04:30.240 family, it included the peculiar blessing promised to the seed of Abraham, that of being the progenitor

01:04:36.680 of the Messiah, and the heir of the special promises of God respecting Christ's kingdom. It was at least

01:04:43.080 typical of spiritual privileges, those of the firstborn that are written in heaven. Well, that's a lot

01:04:52.920 harsher than meets the eye to begin with. And so, there's a very interesting, deep moral story there,

01:05:01.420 which is, it's sort of, Esau does the opposite of a sacrifice. It's the reverse, right? He sacrifices the

01:05:09.000 future for the present. And so, the story basically says, the way it's laid out across stories, is that if

01:05:15.600 you're the sort of person that sacrifices the future to the present, then that eradicates the possibility

01:05:23.140 that you will bring the most noble being into existence. That's what it means. And you can, again, this is the

01:05:31.680 psychological significance of the biblical story. So, that's a bad thing to do, if you want to realize your potential,

01:05:38.660 let's say. You don't do reverse sacrifices. That's a very bad idea. And so, Esau really did himself in by

01:05:45.640 being too attached to the present without a vision of the future. So, he's too in the moment, you know?

01:05:53.120 And he pays a heavy price for it. I mean, he's the, first of all, he loses his birthright and his

01:05:59.520 double inheritance. So, there's a practical consequence. And then there's a spiritual consequence. And then

01:06:03.640 he's, well, he's been made a fool of by his brother. Jacob means supplanter, by the way. That's what

01:06:11.220 the name means. And Jacob is always trying to usurp Esau, as we've seen. And so, Jacob gets one over on

01:06:17.800 him. And, you know, that's not, doesn't make an older brother happy when a younger brother gets

01:06:21.480 something over on him. That's for sure. And then he loses the opportunity to be the progenitor of the

01:06:26.160 Messiah, which is like, he probably didn't realize that precisely. But it seems to be, you know, it's kind of

01:06:31.040 rough, that. So, and then there's, there's a statement in Matthew 16, 26, for what is a man

01:06:37.700 profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange

01:06:42.940 for his soul? It's an echo of the same idea. You know, when you think, well, what does this idea of

01:06:47.140 soul mean? And it's not intellect. And it's said, it's something like, it's something like consciousness

01:06:53.580 allied with character, I think. And I think the reason that it's valued so much is that, because you've

01:06:59.040 got to ask yourself, well, what do you really have when it comes down to it? So life is suffering,

01:07:02.920 let's say. And, you know, you can, you can pile up worldly goods. And the God in the Old Testament

01:07:08.560 doesn't seem to have anything against that, really, right? The people who he favors seem to prosper

01:07:13.240 quite nicely in the world. But they also have to make a choice between whether they're going to

01:07:18.360 fundamentally sustain their character, or whether they're going to prosper in the world when push

01:07:23.080 comes to shove. And the idea constantly is that really what you have in the world that allows you

01:07:29.640 the best possible defense against the suffering that's intrinsic to being is your character.

01:07:34.600 That's what you have, period. And I don't think there is anything that's more psychologically true

01:07:40.140 than that. You know, because everything else, well, first of all, your relationships with others

01:07:45.080 depend on your character. And certainly, this is part of the story of Noah's Ark, you know, because

01:07:49.500 his generations were perfect. So he had a very tight familial arrangement. Everyone trusted each

01:07:56.480 other. That's a big deal if you hit a rocky patch in your life, right? And it's character that,

01:08:01.120 it's character that determines that. You know, if you're generous and honest and all of those things

01:08:05.640 and people know they can rely on you, assuming they're not resentful, that's a whole different

01:08:09.760 story. Then they're going to come to your aid when, when it's necessary. They're going to pull together

01:08:14.560 with you. And, you know, when people are really after you for one reason or another, and they're

01:08:19.020 accusing you of all sorts of things, and you're guilty because you have a past that's laden with

01:08:24.520 characterological errors, then it's very easy for people to take you down because they'll poke until

01:08:29.880 they hit a place where you're guilty. And then you're done because you'll do yourself in with

01:08:34.340 your own judgment. And so, well, so Esau makes a very big mistake. And there's a sacrificial idea here

01:08:42.620 too, which is, you know, now and then you're going to be faced with a situation where it's something you

01:08:47.280 really want or your character. Maybe you'll have to lie about something, you know. And you'll think,

01:08:52.460 ah, what difference does it make? You know, I'll lie about it. Jacob does this. But the problem, there's a

01:08:58.180 bunch of problems with that. One is that, well, now you know that you're the sort of person that will,

01:09:02.480 in fact, deceive yourself about the nature of reality if something shiny is dangled in front of you.

01:09:08.120 And that's not good because it undermines your faith in yourself. And when you're really in trouble,

01:09:12.500 they call that the dark night of the soul. When you're really in trouble, that's what you've got.

01:09:17.500 You've got whether or not you can trust yourself and that's it. You know, when things are really harsh.

01:09:23.460 And so if you've betrayed yourself in that manner, then you weaken yourself under the worst possible

01:09:28.880 circumstances. And that's just, that's really not a good thing. So this is very practical advice.

01:09:35.580 It's not casual moralizing. There's very little casual moralizing in these stories.

01:09:43.020 In the next part of the story, there's some parallels with Abraham. And that's built into

01:09:46.900 the narrative, I think, because Isaac is Abraham's descendant. And so we have to keep the narrative

01:09:54.540 echoing forward. Otherwise, it loses its continuity. And there's a famine in the land that Isaac's in.

01:10:02.040 And God tells him to stay the course. Anyways, repeating the promise he gave to Abraham. Although

01:10:09.620 Isaac goes to Abimelech, also telling the king and people that Rebekah was his sister. Which is exactly

01:10:15.460 what Abraham did when he went to Egypt. And so there's another echo there of the same, of the same.

01:10:22.040 It's as if the story is being told for a second time, essentially. And that's supposed to remind you

01:10:26.760 of the previous story. But they're careless. The king sees that Rebekah and Isaac are intimate

01:10:33.900 together. And luckily, he doesn't have them put to death. He just tells everybody in the kingdom

01:10:39.600 that they're to be left hell alone. And then Isaac prospers in that land, just like Abraham did in

01:10:46.600 Egypt until the Philistines ask him to leave. He's just getting too rich and powerful. Things are going

01:10:51.060 too well for him. So he's asked to leave. Now, in the meantime, Esau gets married. And this is a funny

01:10:59.100 little story. He says, he marries two women who give grief to Isaac and Rebekah. So whoever Esau

01:11:06.060 marries, they're not popular with their in-laws. Not in the least. That actually becomes relevant a

01:11:12.120 little later. Because they drive Rebekah quite mad. So I get a kick out of that. Because that's very

01:11:17.080 common. You know, it's not easy to integrate new people into your family and hope that that will

01:11:23.560 go smoothly. It's actually one of the real catastrophes in life, right? You have a kid,

01:11:27.520 maybe you get along with them, and maybe you don't. But let's assume you do. But then they marry someone

01:11:33.080 that you just don't like. Or maybe you think is wrong for them. I mean, that's really rough.

01:11:38.860 What are you going to do about that? You know, because you're basically screwed both ways. If you have

01:11:44.740 the person you love around, then you have to put up with this horrendous creature that they allied

01:11:48.460 themselves with. And if you get rid of them completely, well, then, you know, you don't

01:11:52.880 have your child anymore. So it's a very, very difficult position. And so that's another example

01:11:57.960 of the realism, I think, of the stories. Now, Isaac, who's hypothetically on his deathbed,

01:12:03.340 asks Esau to hunt for venison. Because he likes venison, and he's happy that his son is a hunter.

01:12:08.180 And Rebekah overhears this. And so she conspires with Jacob to slaughter two small goats and make

01:12:18.620 his father some stew. Because he wants Esau to make him stew out of venison. But Rebekah,

01:12:24.700 who's being, I would say, let's say, slightly deceitful or horribly lying, that would be more

01:12:30.520 accurate. She conspires with Jacob. So Jacob kills two little goats, kids, and boils up a stew. And then

01:12:37.520 he puts on some goat skins, because Esau is a hairy character. And Rebekah dresses Isaac

01:12:44.980 in Esau's clothing, because Isaac can't see very well at this point. And so then Jacob goes

01:12:51.620 into his father with the stew. And he's trying to disguise his voice, but it doesn't work very

01:12:57.000 well. And so Isaac asks him to come close. And Jacob puts out his arm with the goat skin

01:13:03.120 on it. And Isaac smells him, too. And he smells like Esau, which maybe wasn't the best thing.

01:13:10.580 And feels like him. And so, because Isaac thinks he's on his deathbed, he decides to deliver

01:13:18.860 a blessing, hypothetically, to Esau. But it's Jacob. And so that's a big deal, too. Because

01:13:27.120 the blessing is actually, as I said before, with these ancient people, it appeared as though

01:13:31.640 once you said something, you didn't get to take it back. You couldn't say, well, look,

01:13:35.980 you've deceived me. So it doesn't count. It was like, they weren't maybe as, well, weak

01:13:46.980 might be one way of thinking about it. But another way is they weren't quite as attentive

01:13:50.060 to context. Because if I make you a deal, and then it turns out that you've betrayed me,

01:13:54.500 I may feel that the deal is no longer valid. Because the assumption was you were being

01:13:59.400 honest to be given with. And that, you know, violates the whole spirit. But that isn't

01:14:03.040 how these people thought. They said, once you promised, man, you promised. And that was

01:14:06.420 that. So, Isaac blesses Jacob. He says, let God give you the dew of heaven and the fatness

01:14:13.900 of the earth and plenty of corn and wine. Let people serve you and nations bow down to

01:14:17.880 you. Be Lord over thy brethren. That's going to be rough on Esau. Let thy mother's sons bow

01:14:23.060 down to thee. Cursed be everyone that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.

01:14:28.740 And so there's quite a remarkable painting of that. So there's Rebecca. She's looking

01:14:33.460 pretty old. And Isaac's looking pretty blind. And Jacob's taking directions from his mother.

01:14:40.260 And we might say he's perhaps a little old to be taking moral lessons from his mother,

01:14:44.180 especially given how she's acting. And so it's a pretty ugly scene altogether, especially

01:14:48.500 that we also know that Jacob already tricked Esau out of his birthright. And so now he's

01:14:54.600 like taken the birthright, and he's taken the blessing. And so, as I said, that Jacob,

01:15:01.840 he turns out to be the father of Israel. It's like, he's a reprehensible character. These

01:15:06.260 are major league betrayals that he's engaging in. It's not trivial. He really, really pulls

01:15:12.700 the rug out from under his brother. And you know, you could say, well, Esau is not as awake

01:15:16.880 as he might be. You know, he's kind of a wild man. And fair enough. But it certainly seems

01:15:21.880 to me that the predominant moral error falls on Jacob's shoulders. It's very treacherous

01:15:27.940 behavior, what he's doing. So then Esau shows up, and he's got a nice stag for his dad.

01:15:33.360 And it's like, a little late for that. And he states that his brother was rightly named Jacob,

01:15:40.720 which means supplanter, because he's been deceived twice. And Isaac says, Isaac answered,

01:15:47.080 he's asking, Esau's asking fundamentally if there's anything at all left over for him. And

01:15:52.420 Isaac can't give him the same blessing, because that's already been given. So he has to think

01:15:56.840 of something else. And Isaac says, behold, I've made him thy lord, and all his brothers I've given

01:16:03.760 to him for servants, which includes you. And with corn and wine have I sustained him. And what shall I

01:16:09.100 now do unto thee, my son? And Esau said unto his father, have you even one blessing for me, my

01:16:14.400 father? And bless me also. And Esau lifted up his voice and wept. And, you know, we already know that

01:16:20.120 Esau is a pretty tough guy, by all appearances. And, you know, he's out there hunting on his own,

01:16:25.000 and camping. And it's like, he's no pushover. And the fact that this reduces him to tears is

01:16:29.020 an indication of the magnitude of the betrayal. And Isaac says, behold, thy dwelling shall be the

01:16:35.280 fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above. And by thy sword thou shalt live, and thou

01:16:40.160 shalt serve your brother. And it shall come to pass when you will have the dominion, and you'll break

01:16:45.000 his yoke off from thy neck. And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed

01:16:50.760 him. And Esau said in his heart, the days of mourning for my father are at hand. Then I will slay my brother

01:16:56.920 Jacob. So, fundamentally, you know, if Isaac dies, or when he dies, then we'll mourn for him. And then

01:17:04.280 Jacob better look the hell out. Because it's like, it's serious death coming his way. And, you know,

01:17:12.120 he's got a point. He's, in Dante's Inferno, I think I mentioned this at one point. So, Dante's Inferno,

01:17:19.640 it's a very interesting story. It's a descent into hell. And it's actually one of the places that we sort of

01:17:25.800 derive the popular conception of hell was partly based on Dante's imagination, on his work.

01:17:32.560 And what Dante was trying to do was to discover the hierarchical structure of evil. And, you know,

01:17:37.600 you might think there's a hierarchical structure of good. Some things are better than other things.

01:17:41.440 But there's also a hierarchical structure of evil. Some evils are greater than other evils. And

01:17:45.720 he put betrayal in the lowest part of hell. Right? So, if you were betraying people, you were right

01:17:51.940 besides Satan himself. And so, and I think that's good. That's very smart. Well, Dante was a genius

01:17:57.860 after all. And I think the reason for that is that, you see, if someone trusts you, they're laying their

01:18:05.580 vulnerability open to you. Now, they might just be naive, let's say. And that's, we won't think about

01:18:10.740 that. Because you're just a child if you're naive. You can still be betrayed. But if you're an adult and

01:18:15.920 you trust, it's often because you, if you're an actual adult, it's you willingly open yourself up.

01:18:21.680 Knowing that you could be hurt. Right? Because you're not naive anymore. So, you decide to trust

01:18:26.160 and you say, I'll open myself up. And I know that I'm laying myself open to you if you choose to use

01:18:33.200 that power. And then that's a good thing to know. You know, if you've been hurt as a child or hurt as

01:18:37.760 a naive person, you might say, well, why should I ever trust again? Which is a really good question.

01:18:41.780 And the answer is, the reason you trust again once you're an adult is because you're courageous.

01:18:47.440 You're courageous. It's an act of courage to trust. And the reason it's useful is because

01:18:52.700 if you trust someone, you open the door to reciprocity and negotiation and cooperation.

01:18:59.480 And you entice the best part of the person forward. And so, it's a courageous act. But then if you

01:19:06.660 betray someone, then what you've done is, you've taken the best part of them, which is the part

01:19:11.580 that we'll courageously trust. You know, with open eyes. Right? And you've stuck a dagger in that.

01:19:17.560 And so, you've purposefully damaged the best part of them. And so, that's why it's such an egregious

01:19:23.740 fault. And it's often people don't recover from that sort of thing. If you betray someone badly

01:19:30.360 enough, you can damage them. Like, you can give them post-traumatic stress disorder if you really

01:19:35.940 put your mind to it. And, you know, that's not just a psychological disorder. If you have post-traumatic

01:19:41.060 stress disorder, it produces permanent neurological alterations that make you more neurotic, more

01:19:46.840 sensitive to negative emotion, really for the rest of your life. Like, you can recover from

01:19:52.200 it to some degree. But stress will tend to re-instantiate the PTSD. So, you hurt someone.

01:20:00.500 And it's not merely, not that psychological is merely, but it's not merely psychological.

01:20:05.400 Right? It's, it's fundamental physiological damage. So, anyways, Jacob's smart enough to get out of

01:20:12.960 there. And, which is also not really a testament to his integrity. Right? I mean, he's done these

01:20:20.320 terrible things at the behest of his mother because he wants power. And, and he wants to get it without

01:20:26.460 deserving it. And then, you know, he finally goes too far and he hightails it out of there to his,

01:20:32.280 to another family member, to his mother's brother. And so, it's not exactly the world's most heroic

01:20:40.240 story. That's for sure. And so, now there's an interlude here. And this is a really interesting

01:20:45.800 interlude. It's, it's the story of Jacob's ladder. So, he's off to visit Laban, or Laban, who's, uh,

01:20:52.660 his, his mother's brother. And on the way, he, he, he has a sleep. And he lighted upon a certain place

01:21:00.520 and tarried there all night because the sun was set. And he took of the stones of that place and

01:21:04.940 put them for his pillows, which seems to indicate very bad planning on, on his part. And, and lay down

01:21:11.140 in that place to sleep. And he dreamed and beheld a ladder set up on the earth. And the top of it

01:21:16.020 reached to heaven and beheld the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord

01:21:21.140 stood above it and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham, thy father, and the God of Isaac. The

01:21:26.160 land whereon thou liest, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed. And so, this story of Jacob's ladder

01:21:33.680 has really possessed the imagination of the West. And then there's a reason for that. It's because

01:21:38.960 it's an archetypal story. Because the idea of a ladder that reaches to heaven is one of the oldest

01:21:43.600 ideas of mankind. So, you find it widely distributed among the shamanic cultures, for example. And it's a

01:21:49.520 hallmark of psychedelic experience. That's another way of thinking about it, which is a very peculiar

01:21:54.000 thing. So, there's one representation of, of the ladder. You see God up at the top there,

01:21:59.640 peeking out from the clouds. Now, you know, that's sort of where we get the idea that God is in,

01:22:06.700 in heaven, and then heaven's up in the sky. And, and that's an easy story to make fun of, because,

01:22:12.600 you know, we've gone up to the moon, and there's no God there. And, and, but, but this, this is not

01:22:18.540 a reasonable way of conceptualizing what these experiences are about. These experiences, what

01:22:25.780 this is, the opening up there, that's more like an opening into an, an alternate dimension. That's a

01:22:31.520 better way of thinking about it. It's beyond, like, from, from the Judeo-Christian perspective, one of the

01:22:35.780 things you have to understand is that God is beyond space and time. He's not in the universe. He's outside the

01:22:41.480 universe in some manner. And so, the idea that, that you have an experience of God, and it's up, isn't,

01:22:47.740 the up is the best that the human imagination can do with what's essentially a form of extradimensional

01:22:53.980 experience. Or, or that's the best way to conceptualize it. And these experiences aren't rare. You know,

01:23:00.060 they, they make the, they make up the core of, of the shamanic tradition. And so, there's an intrusion of

01:23:05.480 the ancient shamanic tradition, which is tens of thousands of years old, into the biblical stories at

01:23:10.980 this point. Now, why Jacob had a, essentially, shamanic experience is very difficult to tell,

01:23:17.320 because we don't know what these old people were up to, right? And we don't know how much of the

01:23:21.320 archaic tradition, archaic religious tradition, was still extant at that, at that point in time. But,

01:23:28.500 we certainly do know that our ancient forebears, um, were using psychedelic substances constantly,

01:23:35.080 like Amanita muscaria mushrooms, for example, which were widely used in India, before they became extinct.

01:23:40.240 That's the theory, anyways. That seemed to be the basis of the chemical soma, which, uh, much has been

01:23:46.280 written about. And so, we hear of this as a dream, or as a vision, and perhaps that's what it was, but

01:23:53.100 perhaps that wasn't what it was, either. And perhaps it was, um, an experience that was induced by, by,

01:23:59.720 by the same processes that shamanic people have always induced these experiences. And so, we're going to go

01:24:06.840 through this a little bit. So, anyways, there's a, there's a connection between heaven and earth that

01:24:11.600 opens up. That's, that's, that's the, that's the, uh, vision. And there's messengers moving up and down.

01:24:17.580 Now, one way you can conceptualize that is psychologically, as we already discussed, that,

01:24:22.600 you know, there, there are forces within you that are active and alive. And you can think of them,

01:24:28.660 in some sense, as messengers of the higher self. And so, you could think about this as an image of a

01:24:34.080 psychological reality. But, and so, we can stick with that. But, but, here's some of the

01:24:42.340 representations that have been made. I really like the one on the right. Uh, that's William Blake. I like

01:24:47.880 the, uh, the helix idea. And I don't think that that's, that's fluke. There are helixes and double helixes

01:24:54.680 in all sorts of imagery, imagery, very ancient and very modern, that are associated with both

01:25:00.100 healing and with this kind of vision. So, and you see in, in the Blake representation, God is

01:25:06.200 associated with, well, really with the sun and with light. And, and you see that on the left as well,

01:25:12.200 that wherever God is, is where light is. And so, that's a very interesting idea as far as I'm concerned

01:25:17.180 as well. There's some other representations. One by Chagall. So, now there's this idea that there's a,

01:25:27.400 there's the possibility of opening up a line of communication between the human psyche and the

01:25:31.740 transcendent divine. And there's a, there's a great image of Christ as Pantocrator, so creator of the

01:25:38.340 world. It is one of the first mosaics, if I remember correctly, and I wish I knew, remember where it was,

01:25:44.040 but I don't. But it's, it's a very interesting image. I'm having a carving of it made at the moment

01:25:48.780 by a friend of mine, but you see Christ's face in, in, in, portrayed in a medieval manner, and he's

01:25:56.140 holding a book. So, it symbolizes the importance of, of the book, you know, as a means of transmitting

01:26:02.400 wisdom. And his face is very asymmetrical. And the, the eyes are different, one side and the other. And

01:26:08.620 one half of the face represents the human part, and the other side of the face represents the divine

01:26:14.220 part. And, you know, I also think about that psychologically, because I do think that that's

01:26:20.340 the right way to conceptualize human beings, is that there's an aspect of us that's mortal and human

01:26:26.280 and limited, but there's an aspect of us that's transcendent and divine as well. And it's latent in

01:26:31.320 some sense, but there are times when it manifests itself. And this is not speculation, right? This is

01:26:38.340 like the oldest experience of human beings. Now, it's not necessarily an easy experience to have,

01:26:43.960 but it's reported everywhere. And it can be reliably induced, as we've discussed before, by chemical

01:26:49.380 means, which, and I don't know what that means exactly. We've talked a little bit about psilocybin

01:26:53.900 mushrooms, for example. And you could say that the mystical experiences that have been invoked in the

01:26:58.800 newest experiments down at Johns Hopkins are derangements or forms of psychosis, you know,

01:27:05.680 because they have some similarity to psychotic experiences. Although, psychotic people were

01:27:11.880 given LSD in the 60s, and they always said that that was something different than what they were

01:27:16.460 having. And if you give psychotic people amphetamines, you can make them worse. So they're

01:27:21.100 biochemically separate, and we know that. But also, the thing that's so interesting about the

01:27:25.980 psilocybin experiences is that they reliably produce mystical experiences that the people

01:27:31.020 rate as among the most important experiences of their life. And among those who have the

01:27:36.600 psychedelic experience, positive things happen to them. And so that kind of messes with the whole

01:27:42.140 psychosis theory, right? Because what are you going to do? You're going to claim that you give someone

01:27:46.300 a pill, and they have a psychotic break, and then they're healthier. It's like, no, that isn't how

01:27:50.500 psychotic breaks work. You're not healthier after having one. You're like, you're a broken egg, and

01:27:55.980 it's not easy to put you back together. So, and we know that people all over the world have discovered

01:28:01.720 every manner of psychedelic substance that you could possibly, well, you imagine there's lots of hungry

01:28:06.820 people wandering the earth for a long time, and they ate every damn thing they could get their hands

01:28:10.620 on. And now and then, something very peculiar happened as a consequence. So, I'm going to tell you a little

01:28:20.420 bit about the shamanic tradition, because it's associated with Jacob's Ladder. So, according to Iliade,

01:28:28.040 Mercia Iliade, who was a great historian of religion, a compatriot of Jung's, and they influenced each other

01:28:33.900 quite substantially. Iliade believed that shamanism that used psychedelics was a degeneration from the

01:28:40.320 original, more pure shamanism, but I think later scholarship has demonstrated that that's incorrect, that

01:28:46.260 the shamanic ritual, per se, was a direct consequence of the use, discovery of, and ritualistic use of

01:28:54.140 psychedelic substances. But anyways, Iliade identified three pathways to shamanism, and the shaman in a tribe

01:29:02.640 was more educated than the typical person, with a larger vocabulary, and was the repository of the oral

01:29:11.560 tradition. And so, learned all the stories that had been passed down word to mouth, and people, by the

01:29:18.380 way, are very, very, can very, very accurately tell the same story across generations. That's been quite

01:29:24.180 well documented. So, and, and people who can't read really can remember, because what else are they going

01:29:30.620 to do? Their memories are far greater than modern people's memories, because we can forget everything,

01:29:35.840 because we can just look it up. But they remembered things, because they had no choice. My father knew

01:29:41.200 someone who was illiterate, and, and, and, and couldn't use numbers either, when, when he grew up in

01:29:47.760 Saskatchewan, you know, 60 years ago. And he was a, he had sheep, if I remember correctly, and although he

01:29:55.380 couldn't count, he knew if one of his sheep was missing, because he knew all the sheep, and so he

01:30:00.120 could tell just by looking if one of the sheep was missing, but he couldn't count. And so, well, so people

01:30:06.020 who don't have our particular set of skills, first of all, they're not stupid, and second, they have

01:30:10.280 other skills that we don't understand to, to fill in the gaps. So, Iliade identified spontaneous vocation,

01:30:17.100 so you were just, you had this spirit of a shaman, let's say, so you're probably extremely high in

01:30:21.360 openness, let's say, from a modern perspective. Hereditary transmission, so, you know, your father

01:30:26.580 was a shaman, and your grandfather was a shaman, and so forth, and you got initiated into that

01:30:30.560 process, or a personal quest. In Siberia, this is from Iliade, in Siberia, the youth who is called

01:30:38.620 to be a shaman, attracts attention by his strange behavior. For example, he seeks solitude, becomes

01:30:44.560 absent-minded, loves to roam in the woods, or unfrequented places, has visions, and sings in his sleep.

01:30:49.320 You know, if you put someone in a place that's deprived, that's, where you're deprived from a

01:30:55.700 sensory perspective, normal people will hallucinate quite quickly. So, it seems what happens is that

01:31:01.440 if you dampen down the sensory input, then you start to become aware of the background processes

01:31:06.240 of your mind. It's something like that. It's like the signal-to-noise ratio. I gotta get this right.

01:31:11.980 As the noise decreases, some of the noise becomes signal, the background noise becomes signal,

01:31:18.400 and you start to become aware of your own internal psychological processes. It's something like

01:31:22.320 that. He has visions, and sings in his sleep. In some instances, this period of incubation is marked

01:31:27.940 by quite serious symptoms. Among the Yakut, the young man sometimes has fits of fury, and easily loses

01:31:32.980 consciousness, hides in the forest, feeds on the bark of trees, throws himself into water and fire, and

01:31:38.360 cuts themselves with knives.

01:31:42.360 We went to a potlatch in northern, on northern Vancouver Island about a year ago, and they had

01:31:47.900 this one dance. It was the Kwakwakawaka natives, and they had this interesting dance that was the

01:31:53.340 dance of the wild man. And so, the person who invited us was the wild man, and he was dressed up in, in tree

01:31:59.780 branches and so forth. And so, he was the person who'd been in the bush too long. And he came in as a cannibal, and there, there was

01:32:06.760 genuine cannibalistic rites among these people, not so long ago. And he came in as a cannibal, and everybody had to wear this like

01:32:13.760 cedar headdress, because if you had a cedar headdress on, then the cannibal wouldn't take a bite out of you. And they actually took this

01:32:19.760 rather seriously. So, you should have your cedar headdress on. And so, he's looking around the crowd, and there's like 400

01:32:25.760 people in this place, and he could really act too. And so, he's doing this wild man dance. And then all the women stood up, and started to

01:32:32.760 kind of dance in place and sing. And they were taming him. So, that was really cool. You know, it was really

01:32:39.760 interesting to see that, because those people are about, they've had an unbroken culture for about 13,000 years, eh?

01:32:45.760 That's how long they've been out on the island there. And it was very interesting to see that dramatization of the

01:32:50.760 domestication of man by women laid out in that dance, in that way. But, it was also interesting in relationship to the

01:32:58.760 shamanic tradition, because he came in as a wild man, right? And he had to be re-civilized, in some sense, and brought back

01:33:05.760 down to earth. So, but by whatever method he may have been designated, a shaman is recognized as such, only after having

01:33:13.760 received two methods of instruction. The first is ecstatic, dreams, trances, visions. The other thing that this guy told me, and I have no

01:33:22.760 reason to doubt him. He's also not a literate person, and so has a great memory. He does carving, traditional carving.

01:33:31.760 And he's very good at it. He carved a 53-foot totem pole that's now in front of the Museum of Art in downtown Montreal.

01:33:38.760 So, if you ever go there, you can go see it. It won't be there forever, but it's there right now.

01:33:43.760 And he was taught to carve by his grandparents, and he said that he dreamed in, you know, you know what the Haida images look like.

01:33:52.760 So, the Kwakwaka'waks are kind of like the Haida, same sort of imagery. He told me that he dreamed in those images.

01:33:58.760 So, when he dreams, that's the form that the things he dreams about takes. And he also said that he would talk to his

01:34:05.760 grandparents in his dreams. So, if he was working on a piece of wood, and trying to figure out how to carve it, and he ran into a

01:34:10.760 particularly difficult problem, he'd dream, and he'd have a conversation with his grandparents, and they'd help him figure out

01:34:15.760 how to solve the problem, and then he'd wake up, and he could go carve the... And the thing is, he told me these things

01:34:20.760 sort of matter-of-factly, right? Like, you know what I mean? It wasn't like he was telling me these weird things

01:34:27.760 that happened to him, although he was doing that to some degree. I asked him a lot of questions about what he carved,

01:34:34.760 and what it all meant. And, you know, that was just part of his explanation of how he did it.

01:34:39.760 And he carved me a couple of doors that I have in my house, and one of them is quite interesting.

01:34:45.760 Well, the two make a panel, and they're an underwater scene, and under the water there's a bunch of,

01:34:52.760 you know, mythical monsters. Some of them are killer whales, and I think there's an octopus down there,

01:34:57.760 and carved in this particular style. And he said that the other thing that happens to him when he dreams is

01:35:02.760 he goes down to the bottom of the water, where these mythical creatures are, and he gets inspiration from them.

01:35:07.760 And so, I thought that was extremely interesting, too. You know, we don't know what a mind that isn't hyper-civilized,

01:35:15.760 let's say, hyper-literate, like our minds are, because we're so bombarded by external stimuli,

01:35:21.760 we have no idea what the natural mind is like, really. And so, it was quite interesting to listen to that,

01:35:29.760 and also to see the consequences, because he's quite a great carver.

01:35:33.760 So, the first is ecstatic, dreams, trances, visions, the second is traditional.

01:35:38.760 Shamanic techniques, names and functions of the spirits,

01:35:41.760 mythology and genealogy of the clan, a secret language.

01:35:44.760 This two-fold teaching imparted by the spirits and the old master shamans constitutes initiation.

01:35:49.760 Well, so, you know, modern people have a problem with that, because we don't really get initiated,

01:35:54.760 but I would say that, you know, let's say that we're each on a quest of some sort.

01:36:04.760 You wouldn't be here, I don't think, if you weren't, because why else would you be here?

01:36:08.760 And so, you're on a quest of some sort to figure out, to struggle with the meaning of life, let's say.

01:36:15.760 And, you don't want to do that alone, because you only last like 70 years,

01:36:20.760 and good luck figuring it out on your own, it's just not going to happen, it's too complicated.

01:36:24.760 And you'll be too isolated, right? If it's just you, that's insanity, no one can stand that.

01:36:30.760 And so, you hope that other people have things to tell you, and that your culture has something to tell you,

01:36:35.760 you know, so you're on a quest, maybe not with the same intensity as a shamanic initiate,

01:36:40.760 but, you know, let's give you some credit. And then, you're also trying to understand the wisdom of the past.

01:36:47.760 And that's the second part of this, it's like, okay, well you're a human being,

01:36:50.760 and human beings have been telling stories for a long period of time, trying to figure out what's going on,

01:36:54.760 trying to figure out how to orient themselves in the world.

01:36:56.760 And so, you know, partly what you're doing here is exactly what the shamanic initiate does in the second part of the process,

01:37:02.760 which is to expose yourself to the degree that you can to names and functions of the spirits,

01:37:09.760 mythology and genealogy of the clan, and the secret language.

01:37:13.760 This two-fold teaching imparted by the spirits and the old master shamans constitutes initiation.

01:37:19.760 So, that's the rebirth, right? That's what initiation is, it's being born again.

01:37:25.760 And that's a birth of the spirit rather than of the body, it's something like that.

01:37:30.760 And so, it's the rebirth of an integrated psyche, that's one way of thinking about it.

01:37:34.760 And a psyche that's individual, but also grounded in common humanity, in the wisdom of common humanity.

01:37:42.760 And that makes you strong, or at least it makes you stronger.

01:37:45.760 Because there's a limit to your strength, but God only knows to some degree what that limit is, you know.

01:37:50.760 People can be unbelievably tough, unbelievably tough.

01:37:54.760 And I think it's even the more admirable for human beings to be tough, because we're so conscious of how we can be hurt.

01:38:01.760 And we're so conscious of what that hurt can lead to, you know.

01:38:05.760 You can have your family taken away from you, and you can be destroyed.

01:38:08.760 And the fact that you can be courageous in the face of that at all is something that is absolutely unbelievable.

01:38:14.760 Right, and people deserve a lot more credit, I think, than people give themselves.

01:38:19.760 Because the fact that we can be honourable under conditions of life and death.

01:38:25.760 Right, of suffering, that's a testament to the human spirit.

01:38:29.760 And there's a profound anti-human ethos, I think, that pervades our culture.

01:38:35.760 You know, that considers human beings cancers on the planet, something like that, you know.

01:38:40.760 And that there should be less of us, it's the same spirit that motivated the guy who wrote the book about it better to have never been.

01:38:47.760 And it's like, I don't see it that way, you know.

01:38:49.760 I mean, I think people do pretty well for, you know, for having their leg caught in a bear trap and their head caught in a vise.

01:38:56.760 They're actually doing pretty well, because life is really hard.

01:38:59.760 And the fact that we're not absolutely brutal and murderous all the time is really something remarkable.

01:39:05.760 Given what we actually have to contend with, that we can go out of our way to be honest and generous and altruistic.

01:39:12.760 And to care for each other, under unbelievably dire circumstances.

01:39:15.760 And to act nobly, sometimes, under the most trying conditions.

01:39:19.760 You know, in Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, he tells story after story of people who acted abysmally.

01:39:25.760 But also people who, under the worst threats imaginable, never sacrificed their character.

01:39:31.760 You know, and reading about that is really...

01:39:35.760 Well, it really makes you wonder.

01:39:37.760 That's what it does.

01:39:39.760 The future shamans among the Tungus, as they approach maturity, go through a hysterical or a historoid crisis.

01:39:45.760 But sometimes their vocation manifests itself at an earlier age.

01:39:48.760 The boy runs away into the mountains and remains there for a week or more.

01:39:51.760 Feeding on animals, which he tears to pieces with his teeth.

01:39:55.760 He returns to the village, filthy, blood-stained.

01:39:58.760 And it's only after ten or more days that have passed that he begins to babble incoherent words.

01:40:03.760 The strange behaviour of future shamans has not failed to attract the attention of scholars.

01:40:07.760 And from the middle of the past century, several attempts have been made to explain the phenomena as a mental disorder.

01:40:12.760 But the problem was wrongly put.

01:40:14.760 For on the one hand, it is not true that shamans always are or always have to be neuropathic, mentally deranged.

01:40:22.760 On the other hand, and this is the critical issue.

01:40:24.760 Those among them who had been ill become shamans precisely because they had succeeded in becoming cured.

01:40:29.760 So it was...

01:40:31.760 It's not the descent into this strange subterranean psychological state that constitutes the transformation that makes the shaman.

01:40:39.760 But it's the emergence back out of that.

01:40:41.760 And that's a journey to the underworld and a rebirth, right?

01:40:44.760 And so...

01:40:45.760 And there's this great book.

01:40:46.760 This is a great book.

01:40:48.760 By a guy named Henry Ellenbergé.

01:40:50.760 And he was an existential psychoanalyst and philosopher.

01:40:53.760 And he wrote a book called The Discovery of the Unconscious, which I would highly recommend.

01:40:57.760 It's on my list of recommended readings.

01:40:59.760 It is a great book.

01:41:00.760 If you want to know about the psychoanalytic tradition.

01:41:04.760 It's the best introduction there is.

01:41:07.760 And he discusses Adler and Jung and Freud.

01:41:10.760 And does a very credible job of all three.

01:41:12.760 But also takes the history of psychoanalytic thought back three or four hundred years before Freud.

01:41:17.760 And so it's very engaging reading.

01:41:20.760 And very interesting.

01:41:22.760 And one of the things Ellenbergé points out quite clearly is...

01:41:26.760 And he associates this to some degree with the shamanic tradition.

01:41:30.760 That both Freud and Jung, Jung in particular, underwent very intense periods of psychological disturbance, let's say.

01:41:37.760 And I would say what was happening is that because they were questioning their axioms at the most fundamental level.

01:41:44.760 They were deranging their cognitive and perceptual structures, right?

01:41:47.760 And Jung was also experimenting with imaginative techniques, with visionary techniques, which he did a lot.

01:41:53.760 And there was a period of his life where he was having a constant stream of visions, which he wrote down in a book called The Red Book.

01:42:01.760 But at the same time, he was still functioning as a psychiatrist and operating normally in the world.

01:42:07.760 And so, you know, people have suggested that what he had was a psychotic break.

01:42:11.760 But that's ridiculous because you don't...

01:42:13.760 That's not how it works, man.

01:42:15.760 If you're having a psychotic break, you're not being an effective psychiatrist.

01:42:18.760 Those things do not go together, especially not for a long period of time.

01:42:22.760 And so there's the possibility of extreme experience without psychopathology.

01:42:30.760 And so, and Elenbergier, he says much the same thing about Freud and about Charles Darwin as well,

01:42:36.760 who underwent a terrible period of mental confusion, I would say, as a consequence of formulating his theory of evolution,

01:42:46.760 which was really hard on him because he was a die-hard Christian and he knew what the implications of his theory were.

01:42:53.760 He didn't know what to do about that, you know, so it was very, very hard on him.

01:42:57.760 So, it's quite common for people of genius to go through an intense crisis, psychological crisis, but then resolve it.

01:43:05.760 And the genius is in the resolution, right?

01:43:07.760 The precondition for the genius is the dissolution in some sense.

01:43:10.760 Because you have to be obsessed with the problem.

01:43:12.760 It has to grip you completely before you're going to concentrate on it so obsessively that you might come up with a solution.

01:43:18.760 But it's the people who come up with a solution that are the prophets and the shaman and so forth and so on.

01:43:25.760 And so that's not, this isn't something that only characterizes archaic cultures, we just don't recognize it in our own culture properly.

01:43:32.760 And that's a problem.

01:43:35.760 Well, sometimes we do.

01:43:38.760 Right, you remember that in The Lion King, right?

01:43:41.760 That Rafiki shows up, he's the shaman, he brings Simba down that tunnel, dark tunnel, that's the dark night of the soul.

01:43:50.760 He has him reflect upon himself in a pool.

01:43:52.760 When he reflects upon himself deeply, he sees the reflection of his father, then that becomes a thing of cosmic significance.

01:43:59.760 And his father appears in the sky, just like God appears to Jacob, and basically tells him that it's time for him to grow the hell up.

01:44:07.760 And to return to the devastated kingdom, and to set it right.

01:44:11.760 You know, and so, and that's right, that's exactly right.

01:44:15.760 I mean, we live in the devastated kingdom, that's an eternal truth.

01:44:18.760 And it's the responsibility of the individual to grow the hell up, and to set it right.

01:44:23.760 Because when it's devastated, and when things are not in place, then everyone suffers too much.

01:44:28.760 And that's not good.

01:44:30.760 And there's no excuse for not doing something about it, because you don't have anything better to do.

01:44:34.760 So, and even like children's movies tell you this.

01:44:40.760 So, this is a fun one.

01:44:45.760 This is from the Eid wine Psalter, 9th to 12th century.

01:44:49.760 And that's Adam and Eve, but the, there is speculation that the fruit that they're eating there, you see, is psilocybin mushrooms.

01:44:58.760 Right, because they're the only kind of mushroom that grow like that.

01:45:02.760 So that's pretty wild, you might say.

01:45:06.760 And then, this is the, I think it's called Banisteria vine, if I remember correctly.

01:45:11.760 And it's what ayahuasca is made out of.

01:45:13.760 And it has this double helix form, which is very, very interesting.

01:45:17.760 And they, the people, the natives, nobody could figure out how the hell they made this ayahuasca.

01:45:21.760 Which, which transports people, spiritually, in a very intense manner.

01:45:25.760 And there's a whole religion based on it.

01:45:27.760 Like a modern religion, as well as the archaic religion.

01:45:30.760 To, to, to make this stuff, they had to take two plants that don't grow anywhere near each other.

01:45:35.760 And like, there's like a million plants in the Amazon.

01:45:38.760 So like, how do you figure that out? Nobody knows.

01:45:40.760 And then you have to cook them in this very particular way for a particular amount of time.

01:45:45.760 Before you produce this stuff.

01:45:46.760 So one of the plants has DMT in it, which is a very intense psychedelic.

01:45:50.760 But it's very short acting.

01:45:51.760 And the other has a MAO inhibitor.

01:45:54.760 So if you take the DMT and you take the MAO inhibitor.

01:45:57.760 Then the DMT trip lasts for much longer.

01:46:00.760 And so that's what these Amazonian natives figured out.

01:46:02.760 And no one has any idea how they managed it.

01:46:04.760 And if you ask them, they tell you that the plants told them how to do it.

01:46:07.760 Which isn't much of an explanation as far as modern people are concerned.

01:46:11.760 But then when modern people take the ayahuasca.

01:46:14.760 And the plant, so to speak, starts to talk to them.

01:46:17.760 They're a little less leery of the whole theory that the plants had something to do with this.

01:46:22.760 So, you know, and these things.

01:46:24.760 I'm loath to talk about this because I'm not an advocate for drug use.

01:46:29.760 But by the same token, you can't ignore empirical data.

01:46:32.760 It's not reasonable.

01:46:34.760 And the empirical data that psychedelic substances can produce mystical experiences.

01:46:38.760 And that those often have a transformative effect.

01:46:41.760 I mean, one of the latest studies showed that if you took people who were dying of cancer.

01:46:45.760 And you gave them psilocybin in a sufficient dose to produce a mystical experience.

01:46:50.760 That you radically decreased their fear of death.

01:46:53.760 It's like...

01:46:55.760 You've got to think about that, man.

01:46:57.760 That's...

01:46:58.760 That's tough.

01:46:59.760 That's a tough experiment.

01:47:00.760 You just wouldn't expect that.

01:47:02.760 That you think...

01:47:03.760 You take someone, you derange them intensely.

01:47:06.760 And then when they come back, they're not...

01:47:08.760 Even though they're dying, they're not nearly as afraid of dying.

01:47:11.760 You know, you've got to kind of wake up and smell the roses when you see something like that.

01:47:15.760 And the people who are doing this research are very reliable people.

01:47:18.760 So...

01:47:20.760 There's the Amanita muscaria.

01:47:22.760 You know, there's this old idea.

01:47:24.760 It's quite a funny idea.

01:47:25.760 Toadstools.

01:47:26.760 So...

01:47:27.760 Flies like Amanita muscaria.

01:47:29.760 And there's some...

01:47:30.760 This is ridiculous.

01:47:32.760 There's some evidence that they actually like getting stoned.

01:47:35.760 So...

01:47:36.760 Because animals will eat these, like reindeer will eat these things too.

01:47:39.760 And they get pretty tripped out by them.

01:47:41.760 And so I have this book on psychedelic use among animals.

01:47:44.760 Which is a small book, but...

01:47:46.760 And so...

01:47:48.760 So there's...

01:47:49.760 There's this idea that toads used to sit around the...

01:47:52.760 The Amanita muscaria and wait for the stone flies to...

01:47:55.760 Like...

01:47:56.760 Buzz badly around them and then snap them up.

01:47:58.760 So...

01:47:59.760 That's pretty funny.

01:48:00.760 I think.

01:48:01.760 So...

01:48:02.760 And...

01:48:03.760 You know, there are mushrooms in the U.S.

01:48:05.760 That are the oldest...

01:48:06.760 The oldest organisms on the planet.

01:48:09.760 There's one mushroom.

01:48:10.760 I can't remember where it is.

01:48:11.760 But it covers something like...

01:48:12.760 Oh God.

01:48:13.760 I don't know.

01:48:14.760 Like square...

01:48:15.760 Hundreds of square miles.

01:48:16.760 It's like this huge thing.

01:48:17.760 Because it's all underground.

01:48:18.760 Right?

01:48:19.760 And they have these very complex networks of...

01:48:21.760 Of...

01:48:22.760 Mycelia, they're called.

01:48:23.760 And they think the thing is like 150,000 years old.

01:48:26.760 Something like that.

01:48:27.760 So...

01:48:28.760 There's plenty of things about the world that we don't know.

01:48:30.760 That's for sure.

01:48:33.760 There's the...

01:48:34.760 The chemical makeup of the classic psychedelics.

01:48:36.760 You see, they all have the same fundamental structure.

01:48:38.760 This is serotonin.

01:48:39.760 That's the...

01:48:40.760 One of the major brain neurotransmitters.

01:48:42.760 And so what happens with the psychedelics is that they...

01:48:45.760 They alter the...

01:48:47.760 They alter the brain function by altering the...

01:48:50.760 The neurochemical utilization of serotonin.

01:48:54.760 They change the manner in which the serotonergic systems work.

01:48:57.760 And that is a...

01:48:58.760 The serotonin system is a very basic system, eh?

01:49:00.760 Because when you're an embryo and your brain is developing,

01:49:03.760 It's the serotonin projections that basically orchestrate the development of your brain.

01:49:07.760 So they're...

01:49:08.760 And they're very archaic circuits.

01:49:10.760 Very, very archaic circuits.

01:49:12.760 So...

01:49:15.760 And this is the paper.

01:49:16.760 I think I stole this from.

01:49:17.760 Psilocybin Griffiths, who's been doing a lot of this research.

01:49:20.760 Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance.

01:49:26.760 So...

01:49:28.760 Why?

01:49:30.760 That's a good question, right?

01:49:32.760 Like, so...

01:49:33.760 So here's a question for you.

01:49:34.760 It is beyond dispute that human beings are capable of religious experience.

01:49:39.760 Why?

01:49:40.760 Why is that, exactly?

01:49:42.760 And like, you can associate it with psychosis.

01:49:45.760 But that doesn't work.

01:49:46.760 Because the theory doesn't hold...

01:49:48.760 The theory doesn't hold water.

01:49:49.760 It's not the same thing.

01:49:50.760 So why is it there, exactly?

01:49:53.760 And it's not an easy thing to figure out.

01:49:56.760 Like, I've been trying to figure...

01:49:57.760 I'm always trying to figure out a biological explanation for everything, right?

01:50:00.760 Because if you want to find something to stand on, you want to make sure that it can resist a challenge.

01:50:05.760 And so if I can find an explanation for something that's reductionistic and materialistic and biological, then I'm going for that.

01:50:11.760 That's a tough one.

01:50:12.760 Consciousness is a tough one.

01:50:14.760 The moral sense is a tough one.

01:50:16.760 They're not easy things to crack.

01:50:18.760 The Big Bang is a tough one.

01:50:20.760 So...

01:50:21.760 You know, I mean, a cynic might say that maybe...

01:50:26.760 Sometimes when people are close to suicide, they'll have a mystical experience, you know?

01:50:34.760 And maybe you say, well, it's a last ditch attempt of your brain to delude you into thinking that your life has some significance, you know?

01:50:42.760 And that's a plausible theory, but I don't think it accounts for the generality of the phenomena.

01:50:49.760 So...

01:50:51.760 So I don't buy it.

01:50:53.760 What happens in the shamanic experience is that the shaman has the experience of being reduced to a skeleton first.

01:51:07.760 So...

01:51:08.760 Death. A death experience. A very realistic death experience.

01:51:11.760 And then, the next thing that happens is that he finds himself in a place where he's communing with his ancestor, the ancestral spirits.

01:51:20.760 And then, after that, there's the climbing of something like the ladder.

01:51:25.760 Jacob's Ladder, say.

01:51:27.760 And an encounter with God for all intents and purposes.

01:51:31.760 And...

01:51:33.760 It's very widespread...

01:51:36.760 Phenomena.

01:51:38.760 It's the world tree.

01:51:39.760 And I thought about this a lot, trying to figure out what this...

01:51:43.760 What this represents.

01:51:44.760 According to a Yakut informant, that's in Siberia.

01:51:47.760 The spirits carry the future shaman to hell, and shut him in a house for three years.

01:51:51.760 Here he undergoes his initiation.

01:51:53.760 The spirits cut off his head, which they set off to one side.

01:51:56.760 For the novice must watch his own dismemberment with his own eyes.

01:52:00.760 Dissolution to the primary elements, in some sense.

01:52:03.760 And hack his body to bits, which are later distributed among the spirits of various sicknesses.

01:52:07.760 It's only on this condition that the future shaman will obtain the power of healing.

01:52:11.760 His bones are then covered with new flesh.

01:52:13.760 And in some case, he is also given new blood.

01:52:16.760 So there's a death and resurrection experience that's associated with the shamanic ritual.

01:52:20.760 We're here in the presence of a very ancient religious idea, which belongs to the hunter culture.

01:52:29.760 Bone symbolizes the final root of animal life.

01:52:32.760 The mold from which the flesh continually rises.

01:52:35.760 It is from the bone that men and animals are reborn for a time.

01:52:38.760 They maintain themselves in an existence of the flesh.

01:52:40.760 Then they die.

01:52:41.760 And their life is reduced to the essence concentrated in the skeleton.

01:52:44.760 From which they will be born again.

01:52:50.760 That's a good graphic representation of the experience.

01:52:56.760 That's an old painting by, I think it's Hieronymus Bosch if I remember correctly.

01:53:00.760 I really like that because it's reminiscent of the near-death experiences that you hear people describe.

01:53:05.760 And they're quite common as well.

01:53:07.760 And I had a very weird experience once.

01:53:11.760 I don't think I've told you this story.

01:53:13.760 I was assessing someone who had gone through a car windshield.

01:53:17.760 And he was very depressed.

01:53:18.760 It had happened a long time before.

01:53:20.760 But he was very depressed.

01:53:21.760 And the insurance company was basically accusing him of malingering.

01:53:25.760 Because he'd been depressed for so long.

01:53:27.760 And you know, he'd sort of healed up and everything.

01:53:29.760 But if your left hemisphere is damaged.

01:53:31.760 Especially the frontal part of your left hemisphere.

01:53:33.760 Then you can be in a chronic state of depression.

01:53:35.760 Because the left hemisphere, generally speaking, is responsible for positive emotion.

01:53:40.760 And so if it isn't there, then it's like negative emotion for you.

01:53:43.760 And so I went and assessed him.

01:53:45.760 And I was giving him this, I think it was called the MMPI.

01:53:49.760 The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.

01:53:51.760 Which is kind of a standard half personality test, half psychopathology test.

01:53:58.760 And he was filling it out.

01:54:00.760 He was a very serious guy, middle-aged guy.

01:54:02.760 Nothing about him was new agey in the least.

01:54:05.760 He was like an accountant.

01:54:07.760 I think in fact he was an accountant if I remember correctly.

01:54:10.760 And there was one question.

01:54:13.760 And it said, my spirit has left my body.

01:54:17.760 I think that's right, it's very close.

01:54:19.760 And he stopped and he asked me, well, he said, I'm not sure how to answer this.

01:54:25.760 And so I said, well why?

01:54:27.760 And he said, well, after I went through the car windshield.

01:54:30.760 I was in a coma for three weeks.

01:54:32.760 Something like that.

01:54:33.760 And I died, I think he said he died three times.

01:54:36.760 And he said that he could remember.

01:54:39.760 He couldn't remember anything during that period of time.

01:54:41.760 And he couldn't remember the car accident.

01:54:43.760 That's retrograde amnesia.

01:54:44.760 It's quite common with head injuries.

01:54:46.760 And he said that during one of those experiences.

01:54:49.760 And this is all he remembered from the hospital.

01:54:51.760 Was that he came out of his body.

01:54:54.760 And went down the long tunnel of light.

01:54:57.760 You've heard these near-death experiences.

01:54:58.760 And then saw his family members there.

01:55:00.760 And saw the heavenly light.

01:55:02.760 And then realized that it wasn't his time.

01:55:05.760 And came back to his body.

01:55:07.760 Now what was interesting about this guy was that.

01:55:10.760 Well, first of all, I didn't ask him about this, right?

01:55:13.760 He basically volunteered this story.

01:55:14.760 And it was instigated by this question.

01:55:18.760 And he didn't know that anybody else had ever had an experience like that.

01:55:24.760 Because I asked him if he'd ever heard anything like that.

01:55:27.760 And he said no.

01:55:28.760 So that was interesting.

01:55:29.760 But what really was interesting is.

01:55:31.760 How the hell did he remember that?

01:55:33.760 Right?

01:55:34.760 Because he had amnesia during that entire period of time.

01:55:37.760 He was in a bloody coma.

01:55:38.760 It's like he didn't remember anything.

01:55:40.760 But he remembered that.

01:55:41.760 And so, well, those experiences are more common than you think.

01:55:47.760 And then there's a, you know, there's a painting of one.

01:55:50.760 Which is quite interesting.

01:55:51.760 And that's like a tunnel to heaven.

01:55:53.760 It's the same basic idea.

01:55:54.760 It's a little bit more suffering going on in this one, I think.

01:55:57.760 But that's pretty much typical of Hieronymus Bosch.

01:55:59.760 I mean, I don't know what was up with that guy.

01:56:01.760 But he was one strange character.

01:56:04.760 Now, the Scandinavians have this idea that the world is a tree.

01:56:10.760 And I've been thinking about that a lot.

01:56:13.760 I think that the tree idea.

01:56:15.760 A tree is something that is grounded in matter, let's say.

01:56:20.760 And that reaches up to heaven.

01:56:22.760 In the Scandinavian tree at the bottom, there's quite a cool idea at the bottom of that.

01:56:25.760 See, this tree is constantly being gnawed by snakes.

01:56:28.760 You can sort of see the snakes at the bottom.

01:56:30.760 And at the same time, it's being watered.

01:56:32.760 And the water makes the tree grow at the same rate that the snakes gnaw on its roots.

01:56:36.760 So it's like a yin-yang idea.

01:56:38.760 You know, that there's continual chaotic destruction and replacement.

01:56:42.760 At the basis of whatever this process is.

01:56:44.760 But the tree seems to me to be a representation.

01:56:46.760 Not so much of...

01:56:48.760 It's like a different dimensional space.

01:56:51.760 That's what's trying to be represented.

01:56:53.760 So imagine that, you know, you're structured.

01:56:56.760 If you take powers of 10 magnification.

01:56:59.760 Say, human beings are about in the middle of the tiniest thing and the largest thing.

01:57:04.760 If you do it by powers of 10.

01:57:06.760 And so, you know, you have a sub-atomic level and an atomic level and a molecular level.

01:57:11.760 And, you know, then maybe a level of organs.

01:57:15.760 And then there's you.

01:57:16.760 And then there's your family.

01:57:17.760 And so on.

01:57:18.760 All the way up the tree.

01:57:21.760 Fundamentally.

01:57:22.760 And so I think that what this tree represents.

01:57:24.760 And this is the thing that the shaman moves up and down.

01:57:27.760 I think that's what it represents.

01:57:29.760 It's this different view of...

01:57:32.760 It's dimensionality.

01:57:33.760 It's something like that.

01:57:34.760 And I think that what happens in the psychedelic experience is that consciousness can travel up and down that structure.

01:57:39.760 It's something like that.

01:57:40.760 And maybe not only up and down it.

01:57:42.760 But maybe right through it.

01:57:44.760 And I know that's a radical claim.

01:57:46.760 It's a really radical claim.

01:57:47.760 And it might be wrong.

01:57:49.760 But it's probably wrong even.

01:57:51.760 Because most radical claims are wrong.

01:57:53.760 But.

01:57:54.760 But.

01:58:01.760 But I'm not so sure it's wrong.

01:58:05.760 And here's something cool.

01:58:07.760 So that's the Scandinavian World Tree.

01:58:10.760 And that was drawn by an anthropologist who visited the tribes in the Amazon who use ayahuasca.

01:58:17.760 Now, you see, it's a snake.

01:58:24.760 It's a tree with snakes.

01:58:26.760 Well, you know, that's reminiscent of the story in Adam and Eve, obviously.

01:58:30.760 But it's also reminiscent of our primate dwelling place, right?

01:58:33.760 Because that was basically our ancestral home.

01:58:36.760 A tree surrounded by snakes.

01:58:38.760 And the snakes like to eat us.

01:58:40.760 And this is a long time ago.

01:58:41.760 This is like 50 billion years ago.

01:58:44.760 It's really a long time ago.

01:58:46.760 And so, we don't know where these images come from precisely.

01:58:51.760 But I do have the suspicion that we use the circuitry that we developed to detect snakes to represent the unknown as such.

01:59:02.760 Because, like, a snake is something that comes out of the unknown.

01:59:05.760 And, like, we evolved, right?

01:59:07.760 We evolved out of an animal substructure.

01:59:09.760 And so, we had to get our biological cognitive structure from somewhere.

01:59:15.760 And we have this capacity of thinking about the absolute unknown and the terrors that are involved in that.

01:59:20.760 The horrors that can emerge from what we don't understand.

01:59:23.760 And it stands perfectly to reason that we would use circuits that were already pre-developed for that.

01:59:29.760 And that this is a reasonable representation of the existential structure of the world.

01:59:34.760 So, and I think I might have showed you this before.

01:59:39.760 But it never ceases to amaze me, this picture.

01:59:44.760 So, my son drew this when he was nine, eight.

01:59:47.760 And so, on the right, you see mushroom houses.

01:59:50.760 And they have the names of all his friends on them.

01:59:54.760 And so, that's order, right?

01:59:56.760 And then, on the left side, you see chaos there.

01:59:59.760 And that little orange thing is a bug.

02:00:01.760 And then, there's a river that runs right down the middle.

02:00:03.760 And so, that's like the, you know, the yin-yang symbol with the divide in the middle.

02:00:08.760 So, that's quite cool.

02:00:09.760 And then, there it is. There's Jacob's Ladder.

02:00:12.760 It's like Jack and the Beanstalk, which is, by the way, another variant of the same shamanic story.

02:00:17.760 And there are bugs going up and down it.

02:00:20.760 And then, they're taking messages from heaven.

02:00:22.760 And then, up there in heaven, it's got the sun.

02:00:25.760 And there's St. Peter.

02:00:27.760 And I don't know where in the world he got this.

02:00:29.760 It's not like he had a lot of religious education.

02:00:31.760 I mean, despite me.

02:00:34.760 And, you know, there's the pearly gates up there.

02:00:37.760 And that was the world, as far as his...

02:00:39.760 He had a very well-ordered psyche, I would say.

02:00:41.760 And still does.

02:00:42.760 But, when he drew that, it just absolutely blew me away.

02:00:46.760 And so, I had it laminated and it's in my office.

02:00:49.760 Because, well, I don't know.

02:00:51.760 Because, like, what the hell do you make of that?

02:00:53.760 You know, that's why.

02:00:55.760 So, well, you sort of get the picture there.

02:00:59.760 You know, the cathedrals, the great cathedrals of Europe are...

02:01:03.760 They're like the forest in stone, right?

02:01:06.760 And they try to represent the light coming through the leaves.

02:01:09.760 And so, it's sort of our ancestral forest home.

02:01:12.760 But it's transformed into these great sculptures of stone.

02:01:16.760 And, you know, they produce awe because of the combination of light and darkness and color.

02:01:21.760 But also, I think for the same reason that huge trees produce awe in people.

02:01:25.760 You know, and we don't want them cut down.

02:01:27.760 They seem sacred in some sense.

02:01:28.760 And perhaps they are.

02:01:30.760 But, you know, it also seemed to me, this is an intuition.

02:01:36.760 That the architects of these great cathedrals were trying to get...

02:01:41.760 They're trying to express something that's deep and structural.

02:01:44.760 They're trying to express the idea that if being was constituted properly.

02:01:49.760 Then, it would be organized from the subatomic level all the way up to the highest cosmic level perfectly.

02:01:56.760 So, every layer stacked on top of each other without any contradictions.

02:02:00.760 And that would be an ideal mode of being.

02:02:03.760 And everything would come together under those circumstances.

02:02:06.760 And that's what's being expressed in these cathedrals.

02:02:08.760 It's not all that's being expressed because they're also shaped like a cross.

02:02:12.760 You know, the idea is that the center of the cross.

02:02:15.760 Which is the center of suffering.

02:02:16.760 Is also the place of the individual.

02:02:18.760 The place where the transformation takes place.

02:02:20.760 That's all built into the architecture as well.

02:02:22.760 So, then there's the tree-like structures that make us up.

02:02:33.760 It's stretched down to the tiniest realities.

02:02:40.760 The microcosm.

02:02:48.760 And there's this idea.

02:02:50.760 It's all represented in the same way.

02:02:52.760 Again, it's this idea.

02:02:53.760 Especially the mandala up in the top right.

02:02:55.760 It's the idea of this perfection of crystalline structure.

02:02:59.760 And that's what the yogis are trying to attain when they organize their bodies.

02:03:03.760 They're trying to get every single layer of their being aligned properly.

02:03:07.760 And it's something like...

02:03:09.760 And you can kind of see an echo of that in the...

02:03:11.760 I think that's a Tibetan sand painting, if I remember correctly.

02:03:15.760 On the bottom left.

02:03:17.760 The idea is that if you get yourself aligned properly.

02:03:19.760 Then information can flow along that tree that's you.

02:03:23.760 Without...

02:03:25.760 Without impediment.

02:03:27.760 Something like that.

02:03:28.760 And that would be like a state of optimal health.

02:03:30.760 And that...

02:03:32.760 Both physical and spiritual exercises can put you in that state.

02:03:35.760 And that's...

02:03:37.760 Well, those are all clouds of ideas that surround this idea of a ladder to heaven.

02:03:43.760 So Jacob is talking to God.

02:03:46.760 And God says,

02:03:47.760 Behold, I am with thee.

02:03:48.760 And I will keep thee in all places where you go.

02:03:51.760 And bring you again into this land.

02:03:52.760 For I won't leave you until I have done that which I have spoken to you of.

02:03:56.760 And Jacob awakened out of his sleep.

02:04:00.760 And he said,

02:04:01.760 Surely the Lord is in this place.

02:04:02.760 And I knew it not.

02:04:03.760 And he was afraid and said,

02:04:04.760 How dreadful is this place!

02:04:06.760 This is none other but the house of God.

02:04:08.760 And this is the gate of heaven.

02:04:10.760 And Jacob rose up early in the morning.

02:04:12.760 And took the stone that he had put for his pillows.

02:04:14.760 And set it up for a pillar.

02:04:15.760 And poured oil on top of it.

02:04:17.760 That's a sacrifice.

02:04:19.760 And he called the name of that place Bethel.

02:04:21.760 But the name of the city was called Luz at the first.

02:04:23.760 And Jacob vowed a vow.

02:04:25.760 Saying,

02:04:26.760 If God will be with me.

02:04:27.760 And will keep me in this way that I go.

02:04:29.760 And will give me bread to eat.

02:04:30.760 And raiment to put on.

02:04:32.760 So that I come again to my father's house in peace.

02:04:34.760 Then shall the Lord be my God.

02:04:36.760 And this stone which I have set for a pillar.

02:04:38.760 Shall be God's house.

02:04:39.760 And of all of that that is given to me.

02:04:42.760 I will surely give the tenth unto thee.

02:04:46.760 And that's a pretty good place to stop.

02:04:49.760 So now I'll just...

02:04:51.760 Conclude.

02:04:54.760 So...

02:04:55.760 You have this very morally ambivalent character.

02:04:58.760 Right?

02:04:59.760 Who's...

02:05:00.760 So far...

02:05:01.760 Pretty much everything he's done.

02:05:02.760 That we're familiar with is not good.

02:05:04.760 So he's...

02:05:05.760 He's betrayed his brother horribly twice.

02:05:07.760 Badly enough so that he...

02:05:08.760 His brother wants to kill him.

02:05:10.760 And everyone can kind of sympathize with his brother.

02:05:13.760 So...

02:05:14.760 And then he runs away essentially.

02:05:16.760 Because his mother tells him to.

02:05:18.760 Which is not exactly a testament to his character.

02:05:20.760 And despite that...

02:05:23.760 Strangely enough.

02:05:24.760 He has this experience.

02:05:26.760 You know?

02:05:27.760 And that's...

02:05:28.760 Heartening.

02:05:29.760 I guess.

02:05:30.760 And that's the point.

02:05:31.760 Is that...

02:05:33.760 People are predisposed to terrible error.

02:05:36.760 There's no doubt about that.

02:05:38.760 And yet...

02:05:40.760 When I was writing my latest book.

02:05:42.760 I had a friend of mine.

02:05:44.760 Norman Doidge wrote the foreword.

02:05:47.760 And Norman's written a couple of great books.

02:05:49.760 And he's Jewish.

02:05:50.760 And...

02:05:51.760 He read some of what I'd written.

02:05:53.760 And he took me to task for making...

02:05:55.760 The God of the Old Testament.

02:05:57.760 You know?

02:05:58.760 From a Christian perspective.

02:05:59.760 Too harsh and unforgiving.

02:06:01.760 And...

02:06:02.760 I rewrote a fair bit of it.

02:06:04.760 Because of his criticism.

02:06:05.760 And because of what I've learned.

02:06:06.760 Doing these lectures.

02:06:07.760 It's like...

02:06:08.760 It's not exactly right.

02:06:09.760 You know?

02:06:10.760 I mean...

02:06:11.760 What happens in the Old Testament.

02:06:12.760 Is if you screw up.

02:06:13.760 Especially if you know you do.

02:06:14.760 And you decide that you're not going to do anything about it.

02:06:17.760 So it's conscious and deliberate.

02:06:19.760 Then like...

02:06:20.760 Look the hell out.

02:06:21.760 You are in serious trouble.

02:06:22.760 And I actually think that's...

02:06:23.760 Also psychologically accurate.

02:06:25.760 One of the things Jung pointed out.

02:06:27.760 And this always struck me.

02:06:28.760 Was that...

02:06:29.760 If you don't know what you're doing.

02:06:31.760 This is actually in the Gospel of Thomas as well.

02:06:33.760 Interestingly enough.

02:06:34.760 It's one of the Gnostic Gospels.

02:06:36.760 Christ tells his followers.

02:06:37.760 Something like...

02:06:38.760 If you make a mistake.

02:06:39.760 And you don't know what you're doing.

02:06:40.760 Then you'll be forgiven for it.

02:06:42.760 But if you make a mistake knowing what you're doing.

02:06:44.760 And you do it anyways.

02:06:46.760 Then like...

02:06:47.760 Good luck to you.

02:06:48.760 And...

02:06:49.760 And I think that's...

02:06:51.760 I think that's...

02:06:52.760 That's psychologically accurate.

02:06:54.760 I mean...

02:06:59.760 One of the things that's very interesting about the Judgmental God in the Old Testament however.

02:07:05.760 Is that...

02:07:06.760 He can be bargained with.

02:07:07.760 And even if you make mistakes.

02:07:10.760 Especially if you're unconscious of them.

02:07:12.760 If you haven't learned yet.

02:07:13.760 Let's say.

02:07:14.760 Then...

02:07:15.760 You always have the opportunity to return to the proper path.

02:07:19.760 And that's...

02:07:20.760 People get cynical about that.

02:07:21.760 Because there's, you know...

02:07:22.760 This...

02:07:23.760 Mostly Christian idea that...

02:07:24.760 You could live a terribly sinful life.

02:07:26.760 But if you repented on your deathbed.

02:07:27.760 It's like heaven for you.

02:07:28.760 And it's like...

02:07:29.760 Well that's...

02:07:30.760 That sounds like a great deal.

02:07:31.760 Right?

02:07:32.760 It's like...

02:07:33.760 You can do whatever the hell you want.

02:07:34.760 Until just before you die.

02:07:35.760 Of course you might not know when that is.

02:07:37.760 So that's a problem.

02:07:38.760 You...

02:07:39.760 Then you can just say...

02:07:40.760 You know...

02:07:41.760 Everything's forgiven.

02:07:42.760 But...

02:07:43.760 The problem with being cynical about that sort of thing.

02:07:44.760 Is that it's no trivial matter to repent.

02:07:46.760 You know...

02:07:47.760 Because to repent means...

02:07:48.760 A...

02:07:49.760 Figure out what you actually did.

02:07:51.760 And the worse things that you did.

02:07:53.760 The more horrible it is to figure it out.

02:07:56.760 It's no joke.

02:07:57.760 Right?

02:07:58.760 And...

02:07:59.760 There's no genuine repentance without understanding of the depth of your depravity.

02:08:02.760 And so...

02:08:03.760 If you've lived a particularly reprehensible life.

02:08:07.760 And you come to understand it.

02:08:09.760 I think that in and of itself could kill you.

02:08:11.760 You know...

02:08:12.760 It's a terrible thing to...

02:08:14.760 Wake up and see what you've done.

02:08:16.760 If what you've done is truly terrible.

02:08:20.760 So there's no easy out.

02:08:22.760 It's not an easy out.

02:08:23.760 It's just pure cynicism to associate that idea with an easy out.

02:08:27.760 It's not.

02:08:28.760 But there is that positive idea that...

02:08:30.760 It's continually represented.

02:08:33.760 Is that the individual is the source of moral choice.

02:08:37.760 And the individual is prone to genuine error and temptation.

02:08:43.760 In a believable and realistic way.

02:08:45.760 But that that doesn't sever the relationship between the individual.

02:08:49.760 And the divine.

02:08:50.760 And the possibility of further growth.

02:08:52.760 And then I would say well thank God for that.

02:08:54.760 Because without that like who would have a chance.

02:08:57.760 Right?

02:08:58.760 Who would have a chance.

02:08:59.760 And so...

02:09:01.760 The idea that...

02:09:02.760 The deity as presented the infinite.

02:09:04.760 Let's say as presented in the Old Testament.

02:09:06.760 Is merely judgmental.

02:09:07.760 Is definitely wrong.

02:09:08.760 And is in fact something that you can contend with.

02:09:12.760 And bargain with.

02:09:13.760 I'll close with one thing.

02:09:15.760 One of the things that I learned.

02:09:17.760 While I was going through this.

02:09:18.760 Was the meaning of the name Israel.

02:09:20.760 Because Jacob eventually gets named Israel.

02:09:22.760 And I'm jumping ahead a little bit to the next lecture.

02:09:26.760 But Israel.

02:09:27.760 And so he's also the father of Israel.

02:09:29.760 And the father of the 12 sons.

02:09:31.760 Who make up the 12 tribes of Israel.

02:09:33.760 But what Israel means is he who struggles with God.

02:09:37.760 And that's such an interesting idea.

02:09:39.760 Because it's again a psychological idea.

02:09:41.760 And that's why I said earlier that it isn't obvious in the Old Testament.

02:09:45.760 What it means to believe in God.

02:09:47.760 Because what Jacob does is struggle with God.

02:09:49.760 And I think that that's a really good characterization of an ethical life.

02:09:54.760 Because if you're trying to lead an ethical life.

02:09:56.760 That's what you're doing.

02:09:57.760 Is you're struggling.

02:09:59.760 Like blind belief isn't helpful.

02:10:01.760 Because you don't know what you're believing in.

02:10:03.760 Like it's just not that helpful.

02:10:04.760 But if you're possessed by the desire to orient yourself properly.

02:10:09.760 But also confused by the existential structure of the world.

02:10:13.760 Which we all are.

02:10:14.760 Then what you're doing when you're trying to orient yourself properly in life.

02:10:18.760 Is struggling ethically.

02:10:20.760 And Jacob actually gets quite hurt.

02:10:22.760 He wrestles with God literally.

02:10:24.760 And God dislocates his thigh.

02:10:27.760 And so you know the idea there is.

02:10:29.760 Watch the hell out right.

02:10:31.760 The thing that you're contending with is powerful.

02:10:34.760 Although you can contend with it.

02:10:36.760 That's the thing that's so interesting.

02:10:37.760 But you know you do it at some genuine peril.

02:10:39.760 Which I think is exactly right.

02:10:41.760 But the idea that Israel.

02:10:43.760 So there's Israel the state let's say.

02:10:46.760 And Israel the promised land and all of that.

02:10:47.760 But there's this more important idea.

02:10:49.760 Which is again a psychological idea.

02:10:51.760 Which is the state of Israel.

02:10:53.760 Which is the promised land.

02:10:54.760 Is the state that everyone who wrestles with God exists in.

02:10:59.760 And that's not happy naive belief.

02:11:04.760 Belief in you know.

02:11:06.760 An eternally blessed afterlife.

02:11:08.760 It's not that.

02:11:09.760 It's not a wish fulfillment.

02:11:10.760 It's to be actively engaged in life.

02:11:14.760 In the difficulties of life right.

02:11:16.760 And trying to find the path.

02:11:18.760 Because that's what wrestling with God is.

02:11:21.760 It's trying to find the path.

02:11:23.760 And that seems to me.

02:11:24.760 What belief means fundamentally in the Old Testament.

02:11:27.760 And perhaps in the New Testament as well.

02:11:29.760 Is that belief is expressed in trying to find the path.

02:11:33.760 And that's an ethical struggle.

02:11:35.760 And it's a real struggle.

02:11:36.760 It's the struggle of life.

02:11:37.760 So as long as you're willing to engage in that struggle.

02:11:40.760 Then hypothetically you have the divine behind you.

02:11:44.760 And so I believe that.

02:11:48.760 I think that's true.

02:11:50.760 Because the other thing I see is that the people who set things right.

02:11:55.760 So that the horrible forces of cosmic destruction don't do us in.

02:12:02.760 The people who are trying to set things right.

02:12:04.760 Are the ones that are struggling ethically.

02:12:06.760 And so and that there is a redemptive element to that.

02:12:10.760 And I don't think there's any way of being cynical about that.

02:12:13.760 So well so thank you Will.

02:12:18.760 So remember to speak right into the mic.

02:12:19.760 Because there are all these other people watching that will hear.

02:12:46.760 That will hear us.

02:12:48.760 So okay.

02:12:50.760 Hi Dr. Peterson.

02:12:52.760 So with the story of Jacob today.

02:12:54.760 There was a theme of betrayal.

02:12:55.760 And you can see that from the beginning.

02:12:56.760 Because he was very angry and jealous at his brother.

02:12:59.760 And I was thinking are there any stories.

02:13:01.760 Or what you can say about betrayal that does come from a loved one.

02:13:04.760 Right?

02:13:05.760 Where it's not from a place of so black and white.

02:13:07.760 Of anger, resentment, and bitter.

02:13:09.760 And how did the parties kind of recover from that.

02:13:13.760 Or is there any way to redeem that.

02:13:15.760 Or is it as black and white as if you betray someone.

02:13:17.760 Then it's like Jacob where he was bitter.

02:13:20.760 He was hatred.

02:13:21.760 No.

02:13:22.760 And in fact in this story it's not black and white.

02:13:24.760 Right?

02:13:25.760 Because you know we're only half way through it.

02:13:27.760 And one of the things I've noticed as a clinician.

02:13:31.760 Let's say.

02:13:32.760 Is that and as an observer of people in general.

02:13:34.760 Is that I've never ever seen anyone get away with anything.

02:13:38.760 And Jacob doesn't get away with any of this.

02:13:41.760 And so you know he's humbled by his eventual experiences.

02:13:47.760 And he learns that he did it wrong.

02:13:50.760 And there's reconciliation that happens throughout the story of Jacob.

02:13:54.760 So and there's minor betrayals and major betrayals.

02:13:57.760 You know that some of them have tremendously serious consequences.

02:14:00.760 And some of them have lesser consequences.

02:14:02.760 But there is an underlying idea that things can still be set right.

02:14:06.760 Even though it's well I think it takes Jacob some 20 years.

02:14:12.760 Something like that to set things right.

02:14:14.760 And even then it's like touch and go.

02:14:16.760 So.

02:14:17.760 So.

02:14:18.760 Did I answer your question?

02:14:20.760 Okay.

02:14:21.760 Yeah.

02:14:22.760 Hey.

02:14:23.760 You speak frequently in your lectures about I guess the war between good and evil.

02:14:30.760 Or the struggle of life really is a struggle between good and evil.

02:14:34.760 Being at the core of a conscious lived existence.

02:14:37.760 And I guess on that note.

02:14:40.760 If you were 100% certain that there was no afterlife.

02:14:48.760 Would you still be able to preach that there's a positive meaning in life?

02:14:52.760 If you were 100% certain.

02:14:54.760 Some atheists seem to be 100% certain.

02:14:57.760 And yet they still preach that there's some positive meaning to life.

02:15:00.760 Would you be one of those?

02:15:02.760 Or would you turn into Cain?

02:15:04.760 You know so cynical.

02:15:05.760 I think that well as far as I'm concerned.

02:15:09.760 One of the things I learned from studying 20th century history.

02:15:12.760 Is that.

02:15:13.760 Like even if the idea that.

02:15:15.760 Even if you take the most cynical of ideas.

02:15:17.760 Let's say that.

02:15:18.760 Life is.

02:15:19.760 This irredeemable suffering.

02:15:21.760 And perhaps isn't even justified.

02:15:23.760 Because of that.

02:15:25.760 It still seems to me that.

02:15:27.760 You have an ethical duty.

02:15:29.760 Let's say.

02:15:31.760 To live in a manner that reduces that to the degree.

02:15:34.760 That that's possible.

02:15:36.760 And so.

02:15:37.760 And I think that.

02:15:38.760 That can be experienced as meaningful.

02:15:40.760 In some sense independently of the transcendent context.

02:15:43.760 Now I don't exactly know how to strip off the transcendent context.

02:15:47.760 Because.

02:15:48.760 One of the things I would say.

02:15:49.760 That's happened to me.

02:15:50.760 Is because I've spent so much time looking at.

02:15:52.760 The horrible things that people have done.

02:15:54.760 Is that it's.

02:15:55.760 Like Jung said that.

02:15:56.760 He.

02:15:57.760 This is one of his famous quotes.

02:15:58.760 He said.

02:15:59.760 No tree.

02:16:00.760 Can reach up to heaven.

02:16:01.760 Unless its roots reach down to hell.

02:16:03.760 And so.

02:16:04.760 As I've dug deeper into the.

02:16:06.760 Depravity of human beings.

02:16:08.760 My sense of the possibility of human beings.

02:16:11.760 Has also grown.

02:16:13.760 What would you say.

02:16:15.760 In proportion.

02:16:17.760 And until I've become convinced actually.

02:16:19.760 That good is a more powerful force than evil.

02:16:21.760 Even though evil is an unbelievably powerful force.

02:16:24.760 And so I can't really strip the transcendent away.

02:16:27.760 Now.

02:16:28.760 Whether.

02:16:29.760 It has on eternity.

02:16:30.760 Say on an afterlife.

02:16:31.760 I mean.

02:16:32.760 I.

02:16:33.760 I.

02:16:34.760 I can't say anything about that.

02:16:36.760 The only thing I guess I can say is that.

02:16:38.760 There are many things about.

02:16:39.760 Being that we don't understand in the least.

02:16:42.760 And.

02:16:43.760 We don't understand the nature of consciousness.

02:16:45.760 Or the nature of time.

02:16:46.760 So.

02:16:47.760 I.

02:16:48.760 I'm not.

02:16:49.760 I wouldn't despair about that.

02:16:50.760 But yes.

02:16:51.760 I think that.

02:16:52.760 Life can still be meaningful.

02:16:53.760 Without.

02:16:54.760 Without.

02:16:55.760 There being a necessity.

02:16:56.760 Of an afterlife.

02:16:57.760 So.

02:16:58.760 Did you get into one lecture.

02:16:59.760 Without you.

02:17:00.760 The word transcendent.

02:17:01.760 No.

02:17:02.760 No.

02:17:03.760 No.

02:17:04.760 No.

02:17:07.760 Hi.

02:17:08.760 Dr. Peterson.

02:17:09.760 So.

02:17:10.760 Since.

02:17:11.760 Studying your work.

02:17:12.760 One of the things that I found.

02:17:13.760 Most fascinating.

02:17:14.760 Is your analysis of.

02:17:15.760 The story of Cain and Abel.

02:17:17.760 And.

02:17:18.760 My question is.

02:17:21.760 If.

02:17:22.760 If Cain.

02:17:23.760 Got to.

02:17:24.760 The point that he did.

02:17:25.760 Right before.

02:17:28.760 Killing his brother.

02:17:29.760 Murdering his ideal.

02:17:30.760 And decided that that.

02:17:32.760 Was something he didn't want to do.

02:17:34.760 What.

02:17:35.760 Advice or guidance.

02:17:36.760 Would you.

02:17:37.760 Would you give a person that.

02:17:38.760 Got to that point.

02:17:43.760 Well.

02:17:44.760 Well.

02:17:46.760 But.

02:17:47.760 There's a story.

02:17:48.760 I read.

02:17:49.160 Called the.

02:17:49.760 Cocktail party.

02:17:51.760 I mentioned this before.

02:17:52.760 By.

02:17:53.760 TS Eliot.

02:17:54.760 And in the cocktail party.

02:17:55.760 There's a scene.

02:17:56.760 To play.

02:17:57.760 Where this woman.

02:17:58.760 Approaches a psychiatrist.

02:17:59.760 And.

02:18:00.760 Starts talking to him about her.

02:18:01.760 Problems.

02:18:02.760 And she says something that surprises him.

02:18:04.760 She says.

02:18:05.760 that I'm the problem.

02:18:07.940 And he says, well, why would you hope that?

02:18:09.880 And she says, well, I thought about it a lot,

02:18:11.620 and if the world's the problem, then I'm done,

02:18:14.440 because I can't change the world.

02:18:16.140 But if I'm the problem, then maybe there's something about myself I can change,

02:18:20.380 and I can undo this terrible situation that I'm in.

02:18:24.180 And so I would say, that's repentance, fundamentally.

02:18:27.540 It's like, if, and I say this carefully,

02:18:31.180 because I understand that people are susceptible to bad fortune.

02:18:39.360 Sin and ignorance can make that worse,

02:18:41.860 but independently of that, like, good people suffer.

02:18:45.340 Make no mistake about it.

02:18:48.780 But if things aren't right for you,

02:18:51.740 if you're resentful about being,

02:18:55.540 because that's the right way of,

02:18:57.260 because that's the deepest way of thinking about it.

02:18:59.120 If you read the writings of the people who do the mass killings, for example,

02:19:02.800 that's what you see over and over.

02:19:04.260 It's Cain.

02:19:04.820 It's like, they're angry beyond comprehension

02:19:08.280 at the intolerability of being,

02:19:11.340 and they're angry at God.

02:19:13.120 Even if they don't say it exactly like that,

02:19:14.680 they come so close to saying it like that,

02:19:17.100 that it's, there's no difference.

02:19:20.600 You know, what God says to Cain is,

02:19:22.580 look to yourself first,

02:19:23.980 before you criticize being.

02:19:25.300 And that strikes me as right.

02:19:30.400 It's, because to not do that is arrogant beyond belief.

02:19:33.560 That's satanic arrogance,

02:19:35.220 literally, if something like that can be literal.

02:19:38.100 It's like, don't make yourself the judge of being

02:19:40.600 before you clean up your,

02:19:42.920 well, your room,

02:19:44.060 let's say.

02:19:46.180 And it,

02:19:47.060 because the other thing too,

02:19:48.760 this is something I learned in some part from Solzhenitsyn,

02:19:51.300 when he was in the prison camps

02:19:52.820 and trying to understand

02:19:53.660 how these heroic people he saw

02:19:55.260 could possibly manage it,

02:19:56.820 one of the exercises he undertook,

02:19:58.580 and he really viewed this

02:19:59.680 within a Christian Orthodox context

02:20:01.800 of repentance and redemption,

02:20:04.000 is he said he went over his life

02:20:05.500 with a fine-tooth comb

02:20:06.520 and tried to imagine

02:20:09.620 all of the ethical mistakes he made

02:20:12.280 in his entire life

02:20:13.380 that he knew were mistakes, right?

02:20:15.940 It was a soul search,

02:20:18.480 not,

02:20:18.640 wasn't relying on external standards of morality,

02:20:21.620 except insofar as

02:20:22.720 we're inevitably influenced by those.

02:20:24.920 And then his idea was,

02:20:26.420 is there something I could do right now

02:20:28.100 to put that right?

02:20:30.700 And that's the right question.

02:20:32.280 Like, if things aren't going your way,

02:20:34.740 and I think that means

02:20:35.780 that you're resentful and arrogant

02:20:37.340 and deceitful.

02:20:38.680 Those are the three things

02:20:39.660 that clump together, I think,

02:20:41.140 that constitute the core of evil.

02:20:43.300 It's something like that.

02:20:44.360 And so if you're possessed by that,

02:20:46.560 which is hell,

02:20:48.640 then it's repentance

02:20:50.200 that's the right answer.

02:20:51.640 And what that means is,

02:20:53.000 you have to figure out

02:20:53.720 what you did wrong.

02:20:55.020 And you have to pay for it.

02:20:56.920 And then at least you could think,

02:20:58.360 well, look, I can try that

02:20:59.760 with all of my soul,

02:21:01.420 let's say,

02:21:02.080 and see what happens.

02:21:03.960 Right?

02:21:04.420 It can at least be an experiment.

02:21:05.860 And then I would also say

02:21:06.760 that that's an act of faith.

02:21:08.060 It's an act of faith

02:21:09.040 to conduct that experiment.

02:21:10.980 Because you put yourself on the line, right?

02:21:12.680 And that's what an act of faith is.

02:21:14.040 You don't know the outcome.

02:21:15.360 But you don't know the outcome of your life.

02:21:17.380 So to live, in some sense,

02:21:18.600 is an act of faith.

02:21:19.700 You're putting faith in something.

02:21:21.620 That's why you're moving forward.

02:21:23.120 You couldn't move forward

02:21:24.040 without an act of faith.

02:21:26.300 You know, and people say,

02:21:27.200 well, I only move forward

02:21:28.140 on the basis of the facts.

02:21:29.580 It's like, yeah,

02:21:30.160 but you select the facts.

02:21:31.520 And there's an infinity of facts.

02:21:33.020 And they don't just tell you what to do.

02:21:34.680 So it's not a credible answer.

02:21:37.120 So if you're in that situation,

02:21:39.080 it's like,

02:21:40.360 look to yourself.

02:21:43.500 You know, and one of the things

02:21:44.580 about Solzhenitsyn

02:21:45.380 that's so bloody amazing

02:21:46.420 is that's what he did.

02:21:47.720 And then he wrote

02:21:48.180 The Gulag Archipelago.

02:21:49.280 And, you know,

02:21:49.940 he took an axe

02:21:50.740 to the intellectual

02:21:51.720 and moral substructure

02:21:52.840 of the totalitarian communist states.

02:21:57.160 So while he was redeeming himself,

02:21:59.260 let's say,

02:22:00.160 he was simultaneously

02:22:01.220 redeeming the world.

02:22:03.320 And, you know,

02:22:03.860 you see something like that.

02:22:04.940 Like, you got to wake up, man.

02:22:06.940 That's,

02:22:08.380 that was really something.

02:22:10.520 So, yeah.

02:22:18.980 So, Dr. Peterson,

02:22:20.260 I have a lot of questions

02:22:21.160 that arise from your comments

02:22:22.640 at the Balfour 100 event,

02:22:24.240 your M103 video,

02:22:25.520 your recent discussion

02:22:26.240 with Ayaan Hirshayali,

02:22:27.440 and your comments on Islam

02:22:28.600 and the West in general.

02:22:30.080 And in your comments,

02:22:31.320 there's this common theme

02:22:32.220 that one of these things

02:22:33.200 is not like the other.

02:22:34.120 You put the Judeo-Christian tradition

02:22:36.360 on the one side

02:22:37.120 and Islam on the other,

02:22:38.640 specifically the, quote,

02:22:39.660 complex problem of Islam

02:22:41.100 and the, quote,

02:22:41.880 as a, quote,

02:22:42.560 totalizing system.

02:22:44.040 And before I go further,

02:22:45.020 let me state that

02:22:45.660 if hypothetically

02:22:46.620 a final analysis of Islam

02:22:48.400 resulted in as total a denunciation

02:22:49.940 as your analysis

02:22:51.100 of postmodernism

02:22:52.060 or neo-Marxism,

02:22:53.100 I wouldn't be personally offended at all.

02:22:54.620 This isn't a personal question.

02:22:57.260 In your recent interview

02:22:58.380 with Ayaan Hirshayali,

02:22:59.320 she said,

02:23:00.300 Western values are superior

02:23:01.480 to Islamic law

02:23:02.240 and Islamic values.

02:23:03.520 I agree with that,

02:23:04.960 basically,

02:23:05.580 certainly in the context of,

02:23:06.600 let's say,

02:23:06.880 current global affairs.

02:23:08.300 I'll skip the quotes

02:23:08.940 from a Reason magazine interview,

02:23:10.260 but you should read them

02:23:10.960 because hers is a worldview

02:23:12.460 which is very much

02:23:13.660 the West versus Islam,

02:23:15.400 not radical Islam,

02:23:16.400 but Islam,

02:23:17.260 including necessarily

02:23:18.060 the military option.

02:23:19.660 So my question is,

02:23:20.520 at the level of psychological

02:23:21.420 significance of these stories,

02:23:22.820 at the level of mythology

02:23:23.760 and archetype,

02:23:24.460 how is Islam so different

02:23:25.860 from the Judeo-Christian tradition?

02:23:27.300 You know,

02:23:28.040 because Adam,

02:23:29.000 Adam,

02:23:29.560 Eve,

02:23:29.840 Havva,

02:23:30.200 Satan,

02:23:30.580 Shaitan,

02:23:31.100 so on and so forth,

02:23:31.820 everything from the fall

02:23:32.600 to the flood,

02:23:33.740 a lot of what you've discussed

02:23:35.480 in this lecture series

02:23:36.240 is necessarily part of Islam

02:23:37.440 as well.

02:23:38.500 And, in fact,

02:23:39.120 I think one of the strongest

02:23:39.800 criticisms of Islam

02:23:40.600 is that it's perhaps

02:23:41.380 pretty unoriginal.

02:23:43.300 You know,

02:23:44.120 tonight you said that

02:23:45.180 the moral presuppositions

02:23:46.380 of a culture

02:23:46.900 are instantiated

02:23:47.920 in its stories.

02:23:48.880 I see a lot of the same stories.

02:23:50.820 So current global affairs aside,

02:23:52.020 I'm asking,

02:23:52.500 at the deepest levels,

02:23:53.720 how different are these stories

02:23:54.920 and the moral presuppositions?

02:23:57.540 Okay,

02:23:57.840 well,

02:23:58.000 that's a killer question.

02:24:01.840 Well,

02:24:03.240 okay,

02:24:03.680 so the first thing

02:24:04.340 I would say is,

02:24:05.760 fundamentally,

02:24:06.680 I don't know.

02:24:08.700 And so part of the reason

02:24:09.640 that I'm,

02:24:10.640 one of the things

02:24:11.240 I'm planning to do

02:24:11.980 is to have a series

02:24:12.840 of discussions

02:24:13.560 and plenty of people

02:24:14.900 have contacted me

02:24:15.900 about discussing

02:24:16.800 with Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

02:24:19.020 As you know,

02:24:19.720 she has powerful

02:24:21.440 and serious foes

02:24:23.860 and they're not happy

02:24:26.620 with her

02:24:27.220 black and white

02:24:28.280 distinction.

02:24:30.560 And so,

02:24:31.340 now I read Infidel

02:24:32.360 and I really liked that book.

02:24:34.580 Like,

02:24:34.760 my sense was

02:24:36.220 that she was a heroine.

02:24:38.840 Now,

02:24:39.200 what that means

02:24:40.200 in relationship to Islam,

02:24:41.500 that's a different story

02:24:42.460 because she came out

02:24:43.580 of a totalitarian,

02:24:47.760 let's say,

02:24:48.340 family structure

02:24:49.360 in a relatively

02:24:50.880 totalitarian society.

02:24:53.000 And you could

02:24:53.600 make the case

02:24:54.920 that there's a correspondence

02:24:56.080 between that and Islam

02:24:57.080 and you could make the case

02:24:58.020 that there isn't.

02:24:58.880 And of course,

02:24:59.580 that's the critical issue.

02:25:01.720 And so,

02:25:02.820 there's a couple of things

02:25:05.040 that I can't wrap my head around with,

02:25:07.860 wrap my head around easily

02:25:09.520 in relationship to Islam.

02:25:11.840 And so,

02:25:12.320 one is

02:25:12.840 what I see

02:25:14.260 as the failure

02:25:15.080 to separate church

02:25:16.180 from state.

02:25:17.540 And that's

02:25:18.240 a problem.

02:25:21.240 Now,

02:25:21.860 it may not be a problem

02:25:22.880 as such,

02:25:23.960 but it's certainly

02:25:24.620 a problem

02:25:25.080 in relationship

02:25:25.800 to the relation

02:25:26.700 between Islam

02:25:27.440 and the West

02:25:28.020 because we separate

02:25:29.060 church from state.

02:25:30.560 Now,

02:25:30.880 there's fundamentalists

02:25:32.300 in the United States,

02:25:33.440 Christian fundamentalists,

02:25:34.380 who think that

02:25:34.940 that separation

02:25:35.700 is a mistake.

02:25:37.260 So,

02:25:37.840 it's not only,

02:25:39.080 it's not only an idea

02:25:41.520 that's rooted in Islam

02:25:42.580 that those should be united.

02:25:44.540 But it's definitely

02:25:45.380 a problem

02:25:45.900 with regards

02:25:46.600 to our coexistence

02:25:47.700 because that's

02:25:48.280 a fundamentally

02:25:48.860 different presumption.

02:25:50.720 Okay,

02:25:50.980 so that's

02:25:51.480 problem number one.

02:25:53.440 Problem number two

02:25:54.580 for me,

02:25:55.500 and again,

02:25:56.080 this may be

02:25:56.560 a consequence

02:25:57.100 of my ignorance

02:25:57.900 which I'm trying

02:25:58.640 to rectify,

02:26:00.640 Muhammad was a warlord.

02:26:01.800 and I don't know

02:26:05.120 what to do

02:26:05.580 about that fact.

02:26:07.580 Like,

02:26:08.080 one thing you can say

02:26:08.960 about Christ,

02:26:11.320 hypothetically,

02:26:12.500 let's say,

02:26:13.080 I'm not talking

02:26:13.880 about a historical reality

02:26:15.480 necessarily,

02:26:16.740 although I'm not denying

02:26:17.900 it either,

02:26:18.780 is that

02:26:19.240 of all the things

02:26:20.780 he was,

02:26:21.420 warlord was definitely

02:26:22.820 not one of them.

02:26:25.080 And I don't know

02:26:26.100 what to do

02:26:26.600 about that.

02:26:28.700 And so,

02:26:30.080 I don't know

02:26:30.700 how to reconcile

02:26:31.560 that.

02:26:32.640 And I don't know

02:26:33.340 how to reconcile,

02:26:35.220 like,

02:26:35.740 not only was

02:26:36.660 Muhammad a warlord,

02:26:38.560 which I don't think

02:26:39.540 is an unreasonable

02:26:40.280 thing to

02:26:40.920 proclaim,

02:26:43.220 the

02:26:44.940 expansion

02:26:46.180 that he

02:26:46.860 initiated

02:26:47.940 was

02:26:48.620 unbelievably

02:26:49.800 successful.

02:26:52.040 I mean,

02:26:52.320 within 600 years,

02:26:53.480 it was the biggest

02:26:54.040 empire the world

02:26:54.780 had ever seen.

02:26:56.040 And it demolished

02:26:57.020 Byzantine Christianity,

02:26:58.660 which is something

02:26:59.280 that Western people

02:27:00.220 don't even know.

02:27:01.560 you know,

02:27:02.280 I've read thinkers

02:27:02.960 who said that

02:27:03.660 the West was so

02:27:04.620 traumatized

02:27:05.680 culturally,

02:27:06.820 let's say,

02:27:07.240 by the demolition

02:27:08.160 of Byzantine

02:27:08.800 Christianity

02:27:09.420 that we can't

02:27:10.680 even study it

02:27:11.600 now.

02:27:13.220 And so,

02:27:13.880 I don't know

02:27:14.420 if that's true,

02:27:15.260 but I don't know

02:27:16.120 that it's not

02:27:17.040 true either.

02:27:17.740 and the Buddhists

02:27:20.040 were wiped out

02:27:20.740 of Afghanistan

02:27:21.460 and we saw

02:27:23.620 that echoed

02:27:24.280 in the Taliban's

02:27:25.340 destruction of

02:27:26.040 those great

02:27:26.520 Buddhist monuments.

02:27:28.560 And so,

02:27:29.960 so what I'm

02:27:32.120 hoping

02:27:32.500 is that

02:27:34.240 there's a

02:27:34.920 bridge.

02:27:36.980 There better

02:27:37.820 be a bridge.

02:27:39.420 And that's why

02:27:40.360 I want to have

02:27:40.840 these discussions,

02:27:41.520 because I'd like to

02:27:42.460 understand if

02:27:43.620 there's a bridge.

02:27:44.260 And so,

02:27:44.980 lots of people

02:27:45.600 have sent me

02:27:46.840 people who I

02:27:47.500 should talk to,

02:27:48.240 who they think

02:27:49.240 represent Islam

02:27:50.440 far better than

02:27:51.400 Ayaan Hirzi Ali.

02:27:52.860 And perhaps

02:27:53.500 they're correct,

02:27:54.300 and hopefully

02:27:55.040 I'll get an

02:27:55.560 opportunity to

02:27:56.400 talk to them,

02:27:57.320 because I would

02:27:57.840 like to know

02:27:58.400 if what I

02:28:00.420 think is wrong.

02:28:02.300 Because if it's

02:28:03.060 wrong,

02:28:03.380 it's important

02:28:03.960 that I know

02:28:04.720 it's wrong.

02:28:06.260 But,

02:28:06.920 at the moment,

02:28:08.440 I don't,

02:28:09.280 A, I don't know

02:28:09.980 it's wrong,

02:28:10.500 and B,

02:28:11.060 I don't see,

02:28:17.720 I'm not sure

02:28:18.660 what it signifies.

02:28:21.200 So,

02:28:21.920 and I don't think

02:28:22.620 anyone is sure.

02:28:23.840 Right?

02:28:24.160 Because we have

02:28:24.880 this

02:28:25.300 entangling

02:28:27.380 of the

02:28:28.680 civilizations.

02:28:30.320 You know,

02:28:30.520 and there's other

02:28:30.980 things too,

02:28:31.540 like,

02:28:32.080 I'm not very

02:28:32.780 happy with the

02:28:33.620 Saudi Arabs

02:28:34.380 and the Wahhabis.

02:28:36.700 I don't think

02:28:37.580 they're our

02:28:38.000 allies.

02:28:39.760 I don't see

02:28:40.600 how any

02:28:40.960 Western woman

02:28:41.600 can possibly

02:28:42.340 think that

02:28:42.840 they're our

02:28:43.220 allies.

02:28:44.260 And I'm not

02:28:45.100 happy with the

02:28:45.820 fact that the

02:28:46.420 petrodollars

02:28:47.020 that we send

02:28:47.580 them are

02:28:47.920 transformed

02:28:48.780 in substantial

02:28:50.660 part into

02:28:51.480 the kind of

02:28:53.500 propaganda that's

02:28:54.420 definitely a

02:28:55.540 threat to the

02:28:56.080 West.

02:28:56.880 And I'm not

02:28:57.660 very happy with

02:28:58.360 the fact that

02:28:58.860 our politicians

02:28:59.520 appear

02:29:00.940 stupidly blind

02:29:03.060 to that.

02:29:03.540 Now,

02:29:04.320 that may

02:29:04.720 again be a

02:29:05.340 consequence of

02:29:05.960 my ignorance.

02:29:07.080 It's certainly

02:29:07.780 possible.

02:29:09.120 But those are

02:29:09.780 the sorts of

02:29:10.280 things that

02:29:10.840 I can't

02:29:13.960 reconcile.

02:29:15.120 And so,

02:29:17.420 you know,

02:29:20.560 I've seen,

02:29:21.060 I've also seen

02:29:21.720 parallels between

02:29:22.660 the ideas that

02:29:23.620 I'm presenting

02:29:24.180 here and other

02:29:25.820 religious traditions,

02:29:26.880 Taoism,

02:29:28.380 Buddhism,

02:29:29.380 Hinduism.

02:29:29.920 it's harder

02:29:31.100 for me to

02:29:31.600 bridge the

02:29:31.960 gap with

02:29:32.360 Islam,

02:29:32.760 and I'm

02:29:32.960 not sure

02:29:33.340 why that

02:29:33.740 is.

02:29:34.580 I think

02:29:35.100 it has

02:29:35.360 something to

02:29:35.840 do with

02:29:36.100 the things

02:29:36.420 that I

02:29:36.680 just laid

02:29:37.100 out.

02:29:38.020 Now,

02:29:38.900 what I don't

02:29:39.520 know about

02:29:39.860 Islam would

02:29:40.400 fill very

02:29:40.960 many volumes,

02:29:41.880 many of which

02:29:42.540 I have sitting

02:29:43.120 on my shelves

02:29:43.720 at home right

02:29:44.380 now,

02:29:44.640 because I want

02:29:45.180 to do the

02:29:45.560 reading,

02:29:45.980 you know,

02:29:46.900 as I progress

02:29:47.780 through this,

02:29:48.340 but,

02:29:49.820 yeah.

02:29:51.480 Thank you.

02:29:58.820 Good evening,

02:29:59.980 Dr. Pearson.

02:30:00.700 Thanks for

02:30:01.080 continuing this

02:30:01.880 series.

02:30:03.120 Even us

02:30:03.580 atheists

02:30:04.080 appreciate the

02:30:04.900 interaction

02:30:06.160 and the

02:30:06.920 conversation.

02:30:10.400 I wanted to

02:30:11.100 ask you

02:30:11.400 something that

02:30:12.300 is both

02:30:13.120 emotional and

02:30:14.760 analytical,

02:30:15.760 because oftentimes

02:30:16.740 you're basically

02:30:18.620 pegged as

02:30:21.320 seeing things

02:30:21.860 very analytically.

02:30:23.380 So,

02:30:23.600 you were

02:30:23.760 talking earlier

02:30:24.580 about,

02:30:25.460 you were

02:30:27.960 talking about

02:30:28.400 the juxtaposition

02:30:30.980 between

02:30:31.500 happiness

02:30:32.040 and

02:30:33.580 honor,

02:30:36.660 even though I

02:30:37.220 don't think

02:30:37.560 they're mutually

02:30:38.040 exclusive personally,

02:30:39.040 but if there's

02:30:41.120 a situation,

02:30:41.900 let's say,

02:30:42.320 where someone

02:30:43.100 is truly in

02:30:44.940 love with

02:30:45.200 someone else,

02:30:45.900 and they love

02:30:46.420 them for

02:30:46.760 many years

02:30:47.340 and decades,

02:30:48.340 they have a

02:30:48.800 whole history

02:30:49.280 together,

02:30:50.480 and then

02:30:51.220 someone,

02:30:52.040 and then one

02:30:52.480 of the people

02:30:53.060 in this

02:30:53.960 grouping,

02:30:55.520 start falling

02:30:57.480 in love with

02:30:57.900 someone else.

02:30:59.580 So,

02:31:00.400 it's not that

02:31:01.280 there's less

02:31:01.760 love for the

02:31:03.580 original partner,

02:31:05.460 how analytically

02:31:06.880 and emotionally

02:31:07.560 do you

02:31:08.520 take care of

02:31:10.360 a situation

02:31:10.900 like that

02:31:11.460 when you

02:31:12.820 feel that

02:31:13.380 you want to

02:31:13.880 stay honorable

02:31:14.800 and be

02:31:16.060 happy.

02:31:17.640 Okay,

02:31:18.020 so the

02:31:18.340 first thing

02:31:18.740 I would

02:31:19.020 say is

02:31:19.400 the devil's

02:31:19.960 always in

02:31:20.400 the details.

02:31:21.960 Right,

02:31:22.180 so one

02:31:23.400 of the

02:31:23.620 things that

02:31:24.080 I'm not

02:31:25.380 happy about

02:31:26.060 with much

02:31:26.880 modern moral

02:31:28.240 theorizing

02:31:29.040 is that

02:31:29.560 it takes

02:31:30.860 a story like

02:31:31.840 that,

02:31:32.480 you know,

02:31:32.860 and then

02:31:33.280 tries to

02:31:33.760 extract out

02:31:34.440 a general

02:31:34.840 moral principle,

02:31:35.580 and often

02:31:36.620 that's

02:31:37.260 impossible

02:31:37.720 because

02:31:38.160 the particulars

02:31:39.840 of the

02:31:40.140 situation

02:31:40.620 are very

02:31:41.060 important.

02:31:42.540 But having

02:31:42.980 said that,

02:31:44.740 alright,

02:31:45.140 so let me

02:31:45.500 think about

02:31:45.900 that for a

02:31:46.380 minute.

02:31:47.600 I'm not

02:31:48.300 sure that

02:31:48.720 it's possible

02:31:49.360 to be honorable

02:31:50.100 in a situation

02:31:50.920 like that

02:31:51.500 because I

02:31:51.980 think that

02:31:52.380 you've acted

02:31:53.080 out the

02:31:53.840 violation

02:31:54.500 already.

02:31:56.140 And having

02:31:56.640 acted out

02:31:57.180 the violation

02:31:57.800 to confess

02:31:58.520 it might

02:31:59.720 be the right

02:32:00.340 thing to do,

02:32:00.940 although perhaps

02:32:01.700 not.

02:32:03.220 You know,

02:32:03.440 because if you,

02:32:04.500 it isn't obvious

02:32:05.440 to me that if you

02:32:06.180 betray someone,

02:32:07.020 then you get to

02:32:07.620 have the right

02:32:08.120 to tell them

02:32:08.660 about it.

02:32:09.420 My observation

02:32:10.180 has been that

02:32:11.200 if there's a

02:32:12.980 tight relationship

02:32:13.800 and if one

02:32:14.580 party is betrayed

02:32:15.340 by the other

02:32:15.880 in that manner,

02:32:17.000 that it's almost

02:32:17.960 always irreconcilable.

02:32:19.980 It breaks it.

02:32:22.060 And,

02:32:23.180 you know,

02:32:23.720 I've helped

02:32:24.380 people try to

02:32:25.140 struggle through

02:32:25.680 that,

02:32:26.160 but on both

02:32:26.680 sides of it,

02:32:27.200 the person who

02:32:27.720 was betrayed

02:32:28.240 and the person

02:32:28.940 who did the

02:32:29.820 betrayal.

02:32:31.360 I've seen

02:32:32.080 people grow up

02:32:33.000 and not do it

02:32:33.900 again,

02:32:34.320 and this was in

02:32:34.940 situations where

02:32:35.660 their partner

02:32:36.100 didn't know.

02:32:37.440 And in a

02:32:38.140 couple of those

02:32:38.720 situations,

02:32:39.420 it seemed to

02:32:39.940 me that it

02:32:40.880 might have

02:32:41.300 even been a

02:32:42.020 necessary learning

02:32:43.080 experience for

02:32:43.980 the person who

02:32:44.620 did it.

02:32:45.500 You know,

02:32:45.780 it helped them

02:32:47.380 develop.

02:32:48.040 That doesn't

02:32:48.580 mean I'm

02:32:49.780 justifying it,

02:32:51.300 but life is

02:32:52.140 complicated.

02:32:52.700 but I think

02:32:57.360 that society

02:32:58.360 works better

02:32:59.220 all things

02:32:59.820 considered

02:33:00.360 when you

02:33:02.080 make a promise

02:33:02.780 and you

02:33:03.220 stick to it.

02:33:04.700 And one

02:33:05.380 of the things

02:33:05.820 I learned

02:33:06.240 from reading

02:33:06.720 Jung,

02:33:07.220 which I

02:33:07.820 really liked,

02:33:08.580 was,

02:33:10.520 you know,

02:33:11.060 he believed

02:33:11.700 that,

02:33:12.680 and he had

02:33:13.580 his affairs

02:33:14.080 too,

02:33:14.480 so you might

02:33:14.960 think about

02:33:15.420 it as

02:33:15.780 somewhat

02:33:16.160 hypocritical,

02:33:17.040 but I think

02:33:19.240 that people

02:33:19.600 can make

02:33:19.980 mistakes

02:33:20.360 without having

02:33:21.640 what they

02:33:22.000 think necessarily

02:33:22.840 be wrong.

02:33:24.480 You know,

02:33:24.780 he said that

02:33:25.280 there were

02:33:25.520 things in a

02:33:26.840 marriage that

02:33:27.280 you can't

02:33:27.680 have unless

02:33:28.220 you're all

02:33:28.660 in.

02:33:30.000 And I

02:33:30.400 believe that.

02:33:31.300 I believe

02:33:31.660 that.

02:33:32.460 And so if

02:33:32.880 there's a

02:33:33.160 back door

02:33:33.640 open,

02:33:34.640 or,

02:33:34.880 like,

02:33:35.780 to begin

02:33:36.120 with,

02:33:36.420 or a

02:33:36.860 back door

02:33:37.280 opens,

02:33:37.760 then I

02:33:38.040 think that

02:33:38.380 there's

02:33:38.580 something about

02:33:39.140 the relationship

02:33:39.720 that is

02:33:41.020 lacking at

02:33:41.840 least,

02:33:42.240 and I

02:33:42.860 think you

02:33:43.200 pay a big

02:33:43.600 price for

02:33:44.060 that.

02:33:45.260 So,

02:33:45.660 I mean,

02:33:45.860 it depends

02:33:46.280 on whether

02:33:46.640 you regard

02:33:47.200 a marriage

02:33:47.640 as a

02:33:49.440 practical

02:33:49.880 arrangement,

02:33:50.880 or a

02:33:51.220 spiritual

02:33:51.560 arrangement.

02:33:52.320 Now,

02:33:52.640 really,

02:33:53.000 it's both,

02:33:53.640 you know,

02:33:53.960 and both

02:33:54.620 are important.

02:33:56.380 But if

02:33:56.780 it's a

02:33:57.120 spiritual

02:33:57.480 arrangement,

02:33:58.020 or a

02:33:58.260 psychological

02:33:58.720 arrangement,

02:33:59.340 above all,

02:34:00.820 then I

02:34:01.160 do think

02:34:01.640 that you

02:34:03.560 don't get

02:34:04.480 the transformation

02:34:05.220 without being

02:34:06.080 all in.

02:34:06.780 And if you

02:34:07.120 violate it,

02:34:07.800 then even

02:34:08.980 if you can

02:34:09.440 work it out

02:34:09.860 with your

02:34:10.140 partner,

02:34:10.560 there's

02:34:10.740 something that

02:34:11.220 you will

02:34:11.520 never get

02:34:12.640 as a

02:34:13.820 consequence.

02:34:15.220 So,

02:34:16.000 yeah.

02:34:17.000 last

02:34:24.080 question.

02:34:25.580 Okay,

02:34:25.940 I hope

02:34:26.160 I'll make

02:34:26.380 this good.

02:34:27.800 Thanks also

02:34:28.580 for continuing

02:34:29.160 the lecture

02:34:29.480 series.

02:34:30.140 I haven't

02:34:30.820 listened to

02:34:31.340 all of the

02:34:31.920 lectures,

02:34:32.540 but it

02:34:32.940 seems like

02:34:33.260 you focus

02:34:33.660 very much

02:34:34.160 on the

02:34:34.980 appeal of

02:34:36.380 the biblical

02:34:36.720 stories to

02:34:37.520 the individual

02:34:38.300 psychology.

02:34:39.780 Do you have

02:34:39.980 any thoughts

02:34:40.380 on the

02:34:40.700 relative

02:34:40.920 importance of

02:34:41.740 crowd

02:34:42.140 psychology

02:34:42.700 to the

02:34:43.800 appeal and

02:34:44.600 staying power

02:34:45.000 of the

02:34:45.240 Bible,

02:34:45.620 and also

02:34:46.080 the reason

02:34:47.380 why the

02:34:47.660 Bible or

02:34:48.560 the biblical

02:34:48.840 stories took

02:34:49.540 precedence over

02:34:50.340 other ideologies

02:34:52.760 which could

02:34:53.200 have taken

02:34:53.560 its place.

02:34:55.200 Okay,

02:34:55.840 well let's

02:34:56.200 go to the

02:34:56.700 second one

02:34:57.260 first.

02:34:58.580 I think

02:34:59.380 it's the

02:34:59.800 same thing

02:35:00.500 that happens

02:35:01.380 when someone

02:35:02.140 both creates

02:35:04.480 and edits

02:35:05.080 a great

02:35:05.820 movie.

02:35:07.500 It's,

02:35:07.940 no one

02:35:08.480 knows,

02:35:09.160 like imagine

02:35:09.660 how many

02:35:10.120 choices are

02:35:10.720 there in

02:35:10.940 a great

02:35:11.240 movie.

02:35:11.580 Let's say

02:35:11.840 it's an

02:35:12.080 animated movie

02:35:12.740 because

02:35:13.000 absolutely

02:35:13.580 everything in

02:35:14.280 an animated

02:35:14.720 movie is

02:35:15.180 constructed.

02:35:15.720 everything.

02:35:17.280 There's,

02:35:17.760 God only

02:35:18.160 knows how

02:35:18.620 many choices,

02:35:19.440 like maybe

02:35:20.160 there's millions

02:35:20.900 of choices,

02:35:22.400 you know,

02:35:22.680 and each

02:35:23.780 choice is

02:35:24.460 guided by

02:35:25.160 some intuition

02:35:26.200 of narrative

02:35:27.940 suitability or

02:35:29.000 beauty or

02:35:29.760 there's some

02:35:30.320 higher ideal

02:35:31.140 motivating it,

02:35:32.720 right?

02:35:33.240 The desire to

02:35:33.920 produce a

02:35:34.300 masterpiece,

02:35:34.980 maybe that's

02:35:35.540 it.

02:35:35.840 That was

02:35:36.180 certainly the

02:35:36.560 case with

02:35:36.920 the Disney

02:35:37.300 movies,

02:35:37.760 for example.

02:35:38.720 And so

02:35:38.960 that aspiration

02:35:40.400 then makes

02:35:43.720 the decisions.

02:35:44.920 And so

02:35:45.180 I would

02:35:45.500 say,

02:35:45.840 well,

02:35:47.020 something like

02:35:47.800 that guided

02:35:48.420 the writing

02:35:49.260 and the

02:35:49.780 selection of

02:35:50.440 the stories

02:35:51.020 in the

02:35:51.880 biblical

02:35:52.200 canon.

02:35:53.200 Now,

02:35:54.440 could have

02:35:55.660 there been

02:35:55.960 other stories

02:35:56.600 included?

02:35:57.220 Well,

02:35:57.360 the Catholics

02:35:57.900 and the

02:35:58.260 Protestants

02:35:58.740 don't have

02:35:59.180 the same

02:35:59.580 biblical

02:35:59.920 tradition,

02:36:00.500 and neither

02:36:00.780 do the

02:36:01.160 Jews and

02:36:01.520 the Christians.

02:36:02.000 And so

02:36:02.500 it isn't

02:36:03.320 exactly clear

02:36:04.080 what to

02:36:05.240 make of

02:36:05.640 that,

02:36:06.000 you know.

02:36:06.240 I mean,

02:36:06.900 that's akin

02:36:07.740 in some

02:36:08.160 sense to

02:36:08.640 the discussion

02:36:09.660 we just

02:36:10.040 had about

02:36:10.420 Islam and

02:36:10.900 Christianity.

02:36:14.780 In some

02:36:15.540 sense,

02:36:15.940 I've left

02:36:16.400 that aside,

02:36:18.280 that specific

02:36:19.080 question,

02:36:19.760 except in

02:36:20.380 so far as

02:36:20.900 I've just

02:36:21.280 answered,

02:36:21.760 because I'm

02:36:22.760 trying to

02:36:23.080 take what

02:36:23.560 we have,

02:36:24.560 which I

02:36:25.000 know is

02:36:25.460 at the

02:36:25.780 root of

02:36:26.100 our culture,

02:36:26.620 and to

02:36:26.840 figure out

02:36:27.260 what it

02:36:27.840 is that

02:36:28.240 we have.

02:36:29.580 Why it

02:36:30.220 is that

02:36:30.520 we have

02:36:30.960 it,

02:36:33.060 well,

02:36:33.400 I've made

02:36:33.720 some attempt

02:36:34.420 to explain

02:36:35.040 that in

02:36:36.220 the manner

02:36:36.500 that I

02:36:36.800 just

02:36:36.960 described,

02:36:37.540 but I

02:36:38.240 don't have

02:36:38.580 a final

02:36:38.960 answer.

02:36:39.800 Like,

02:36:39.960 could it

02:36:40.240 have been

02:36:40.580 different?

02:36:44.120 It could

02:36:44.720 have been

02:36:44.940 different at

02:36:45.380 some levels,

02:36:46.060 but the

02:36:46.340 same at

02:36:46.680 others.

02:36:47.840 You know,

02:36:48.040 I mean,

02:36:48.260 one of the

02:36:48.600 things that

02:36:49.240 scholars of

02:36:50.700 comparative

02:36:51.160 religion,

02:36:51.900 who haven't

02:36:52.400 been infected

02:36:53.100 fatally with

02:36:54.080 postmodernism,

02:36:55.240 have definitely

02:36:55.880 realized,

02:36:56.580 so Jung,

02:36:57.120 for example,

02:36:57.800 and Eliade,

02:36:58.480 and people

02:36:59.060 who are

02:36:59.320 interested in

02:36:59.920 grand narratives,

02:37:01.780 one of the

02:37:02.360 things they

02:37:02.720 pointed out

02:37:03.160 quite clearly

02:37:03.720 is that

02:37:04.100 there's a

02:37:05.340 set of

02:37:05.900 common

02:37:06.360 mythological

02:37:07.220 themes

02:37:07.760 across many

02:37:08.740 cultures,

02:37:09.240 and I

02:37:09.420 tried to

02:37:09.740 outline that

02:37:10.220 in Maps

02:37:10.600 of Meaning,

02:37:11.140 and that

02:37:11.740 worked out

02:37:12.400 quite nicely

02:37:12.960 for me,

02:37:13.740 at least,

02:37:14.100 as far as I

02:37:14.580 was concerned,

02:37:15.120 because once I

02:37:15.740 had the

02:37:16.060 basic archetypal

02:37:16.920 structure mapped

02:37:17.620 out,

02:37:17.900 it opened up

02:37:18.440 all sorts of

02:37:18.960 stories to me

02:37:19.540 from all sorts

02:37:20.180 of different

02:37:20.580 cultures,

02:37:21.520 and that's

02:37:22.320 been unbelievably

02:37:23.100 useful,

02:37:23.760 like the

02:37:24.440 Mesopotamian

02:37:25.140 story of the

02:37:26.000 Enuma Elish,

02:37:26.820 when I figured

02:37:27.640 out what that

02:37:28.100 meant,

02:37:28.460 as far as I

02:37:29.000 was concerned,

02:37:29.900 like I've

02:37:30.240 never forgotten

02:37:31.080 that,

02:37:31.380 it just seared

02:37:32.620 itself into

02:37:33.320 my memory,

02:37:33.980 and the same

02:37:34.380 with the

02:37:34.700 Egyptian stories,

02:37:35.720 and you know,

02:37:36.780 some Buddhist

02:37:37.460 writings that I've

02:37:38.240 read,

02:37:38.600 and some,

02:37:39.140 the Tao Te Ching

02:37:39.760 is also very

02:37:40.840 powerful,

02:37:41.680 so I think that

02:37:42.520 things can be

02:37:43.860 different on one

02:37:44.640 level and the

02:37:45.260 same at another,

02:37:46.020 but that humanity

02:37:47.240 kind of coalesces

02:37:48.360 on what's the

02:37:49.080 same over a

02:37:50.580 reasonable period

02:37:51.460 of time,

02:37:51.960 because there

02:37:52.420 isn't that many

02:37:53.080 ways that human

02:37:53.760 beings can live

02:37:54.620 properly as

02:37:55.780 individuals and

02:37:57.320 as groups

02:37:58.040 together,

02:37:58.560 and so there's

02:37:59.840 this constant

02:38:00.480 force that makes

02:38:01.700 our ethical

02:38:02.700 presuppositions

02:38:03.620 converge,

02:38:04.560 and then that's

02:38:05.280 automatically expressed

02:38:06.340 in the stories,

02:38:07.820 it's something like

02:38:08.580 that,

02:38:09.020 now it's an

02:38:09.480 imperfect process,

02:38:10.660 and it's full of

02:38:11.260 error,

02:38:12.320 so,

02:38:13.200 yep.

02:38:19.440 So,

02:38:20.360 just one

02:38:22.040 announcement,

02:38:23.160 well,

02:38:23.840 two announcements,

02:38:24.780 the next lecture I

02:38:25.660 believe is November

02:38:26.380 14th,

02:38:27.100 so I'll hopefully

02:38:27.720 finish off the

02:38:28.520 story of Jacob,

02:38:29.460 looks like it,

02:38:30.740 and then I'm

02:38:31.880 also appearing on

02:38:33.160 a panel with

02:38:33.900 Gad Saad and

02:38:35.000 Orin Amitay on

02:38:36.500 November 11th,

02:38:37.680 and there's still

02:38:38.540 quite a few tickets

02:38:39.520 available for that,

02:38:40.540 so if you're

02:38:41.040 interested,

02:38:41.560 you could go to

02:38:42.000 my website and

02:38:42.780 pick up those

02:38:43.340 tickets,

02:38:43.860 it should be,

02:38:45.760 well,

02:38:46.040 hopefully it'll be

02:38:46.640 interesting,

02:38:47.260 I think it will

02:38:47.820 be,

02:38:48.160 and it might be

02:38:49.080 too interesting,

02:38:50.120 that's one

02:38:51.120 possibility,

02:38:52.380 so we'll see,

02:38:54.100 but I'm going to

02:38:55.060 do two more of

02:38:55.760 these this year,

02:38:56.860 and I hope I get

02:38:57.980 through the story

02:38:58.800 of Joseph,

02:38:59.300 and then I can

02:39:00.000 start in the new

02:39:00.680 year with Exodus,

02:39:02.240 and that's a story

02:39:02.980 that I know quite

02:39:03.900 well,

02:39:04.880 and Exodus and

02:39:05.880 Leviticus,

02:39:06.540 and what's the one

02:39:07.240 after that,

02:39:08.860 yes,

02:39:09.480 thank you,

02:39:10.140 so I'm very much

02:39:11.680 looking forward to

02:39:12.360 that,

02:39:12.620 because that is one

02:39:13.260 killer story,

02:39:14.140 man,

02:39:14.440 so,

02:39:15.060 and I've got some

02:39:16.360 surprises for that

02:39:17.380 as well,

02:39:17.920 so,

02:39:18.640 anyways,

02:39:19.160 thank you very much

02:39:20.080 for coming,

02:39:20.720 and hopefully we'll

02:39:21.780 see you November

02:39:22.680 14th.

02:39:24.500 If you found this

02:39:25.300 conversation meaningful,

02:39:26.680 you might think

02:39:27.200 about picking up

02:39:27.860 Dad's books,

02:39:28.460 Maps of Meaning,

02:39:29.120 The Architecture

02:39:29.640 of Belief,

02:39:30.520 or his newer

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02:39:31.780 12 Rules for Life,

02:39:32.660 An Antidote to Chaos.

02:39:34.440 Both of these works

02:39:35.220 delve much deeper

02:39:35.980 into the topics

02:39:36.600 covered in the

02:39:37.220 Jordan B. Peterson

02:39:37.840 podcast.

02:39:39.200 See jordanbpeterson.com

02:39:40.800 for audio,

02:39:41.580 e-book,

02:39:41.880 and text links,

02:39:42.920 or pick up the books

02:39:43.660 at your favorite

02:39:44.080 bookseller.

02:39:45.360 Remember to check out

02:39:46.200 jordanbpeterson.com

02:39:47.480 slash personality

02:39:48.200 for information on

02:39:49.200 his new course,

02:39:50.220 which is now

02:39:50.700 50% off.

02:39:51.580 I hope you enjoyed

02:39:53.180 this podcast.

02:39:54.300 If you did,

02:39:54.920 please let a friend

02:39:55.480 know or leave a review.

02:39:57.220 Next week's episode

02:39:58.160 is a continuation

02:39:59.100 of the Biblical series

02:40:00.100 and is titled

02:40:00.900 A Wrestling With God.

02:40:02.780 Talk to you soon.

02:40:04.320 Follow me on my

02:40:05.400 YouTube channel,

02:40:06.520 jordanbpeterson,

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02:40:08.880 at jordanbpeterson,

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02:40:13.760 and at Instagram,

02:40:14.760 at jordan.b.peterson.

02:40:17.140 Details on this show,

02:40:19.060 access to my blog,

02:40:20.780 information about

02:40:21.560 my tour dates

02:40:22.440 and other events,

02:40:23.580 and my list of

02:40:24.280 recommended books

02:40:25.300 can be found

02:40:26.160 on my website,

02:40:27.440 jordanbpeterson.com.

02:40:29.420 My online writing

02:40:30.520 programs,

02:40:31.440 designed to help

02:40:32.140 people straighten out

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - July 05, 2020

126. Biblical Series： Jacobs Ladder

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