The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 217. Talking with Russians

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00:00:51.060 Hello to all of you listening to my podcast.

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00:02:38.300 Thank you very much for your attention.

00:02:41.740 Welcome to the JBP Podcast Season 4, Episode 74.

00:02:46.640 I'm Michaela Peterson, the wonderful daughter Dad was just talking about.

00:02:50.480 In this episode, Dad had an instantly translated conversation with Mikhail,

00:02:57.520 who's been translating Dad's content into Russian for the last year or so.

00:03:01.280 The fact that this was done almost instantaneously is quite impressive.

00:03:05.980 I hope you find the conversation interesting.

00:03:20.480 Your Bible lectures and your books have a healing effect on people.

00:03:31.280 People write about it in the comments all the time,

00:03:33.880 because their lives begin to order,

00:03:36.260 and they find new purpose in life, find something to strive for.

00:03:40.180 You encourage them, and it seems to be an enduring effect.

00:03:43.120 It's something that lasts for a long time,

00:03:45.840 and there are a lot of cases like that.

00:03:47.340 So you can't say that's a random effect.

00:03:50.440 It's a pattern.

00:03:51.940 People who read 12 Rules, who watch your lectures,

00:03:55.280 and especially those who have read Maps of Meaning and the books you recommend,

00:03:59.600 experience rapid personal growth.

00:04:02.540 Their emotional states, their health and their relationships change.

00:04:06.200 I'm shocked and surprised.

00:04:09.440 Yes, we try to do it.

00:04:11.420 We're doing our best.

00:04:12.660 And I can tell you that every day on our different channels in different countries,

00:04:18.020 people ask,

00:04:19.020 when will you post the next Bible lecture?

00:04:21.620 When will we hear the Maps of Meaning?

00:04:24.200 And it's not fake.

00:04:25.600 It's not generated by any kind of advertising, you know.

00:04:29.060 It's not something artificially created.

00:04:31.860 We were just trying to do our best,

00:04:33.820 to do the best job we could.

00:04:36.420 Andrew and Matt did a vast amount of work for the channel.

00:04:40.060 Eric helped us a lot.

00:04:41.200 So I'm not that surprised that our channel took off.

00:04:45.080 We didn't use all those traffic-boosting methods.

00:04:47.760 We just took a very careful approach to translation and quality of the content.

00:04:53.220 My team and I spent hours every day talking to publishers from different countries

00:04:58.500 and to your fans from different countries,

00:05:01.160 trying to figure out what kind of translation they wanted.

00:05:05.020 How should we approach the translation?

00:05:07.380 What kind of voice is the best for the voiceover?

00:05:10.000 We found a different tone for each lecture, and it worked.

00:05:14.880 In the beginning, we planned to make a single, centralised hub for video production.

00:05:20.160 But we realised very quickly it will sooner or later turn into a treadmill,

00:05:25.260 and the quality and attention to detail that are important for, say, Korean or Arabic viewers

00:05:31.060 can only be provided by the team that shares the same mindset as those listeners.

00:05:36.380 And so we almost immediately began to hire and form teams within each country.

00:05:42.940 That's how we created the Korean team.

00:05:45.720 That's how we created the Arabic team.

00:05:48.380 The Russian team is now fully formed, and these are people who know their thing very well.

00:05:53.160 They know your works and lectures, and they are aware of all the things that surround it,

00:05:59.680 aware of the whole range of scientific knowledge they need to possess in order to properly communicate your ideas.

00:06:06.820 I want to thank you very much for introducing us to Erich Neumann, for example.

00:06:12.000 It was very interesting for us to get acquainted with his work.

00:06:14.720 I have something to say about that.

00:06:17.820 So I spoke with Professor Camille Paglia a while back, a couple of occasions,

00:06:25.220 and she's one of the West's foremost literary experts and commentators.

00:06:35.680 And Paglia told me, independently of my liking for Erich Neumann,

00:06:42.800 that she thought the whole history of universities in the West would have been different

00:06:49.580 if the English departments in particular had read Erich Neumann

00:06:55.200 and understood him instead of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault.

00:07:01.240 And I believe that to be the case.

00:07:03.220 And I was amazed that she said that.

00:07:06.520 That's something I had thought for a very long time.

00:07:10.580 Neumann is an extremely profound thinker.

00:07:12.680 The Origins and History of Consciousness is a remarkable book, and so is The Great Mother.

00:07:18.200 And he, in some sense, he provides an overview and summary of Jung's thinking,

00:07:25.560 which you couldn't get unless you read like 20 volumes of Jung.

00:07:29.720 It's all packed into those two volumes, Origins and History of Consciousness and The Great Mother.

00:07:35.040 And so I'm amazed, but also extremely happy that his work has been more recognized

00:07:46.620 because he's very underappreciated, in my estimation.

00:07:50.760 I mean, his books have been in print forever,

00:07:52.480 but he hasn't had the impact on literary critics, for example, English departments, etc.,

00:07:58.120 people concerned with literature, that he should have.

00:08:00.860 Second-rate thinkers instead.

00:08:03.280 And he's not a second-rate thinker.

00:08:05.020 He's a very deep thinker.

00:08:06.140 He is a very good psychologist, and the fact that you mentioned him in your works

00:08:11.200 has inspired a particular interest in him in Russia.

00:08:14.780 Viewers of our channel began to buy books by Erich Neumann

00:08:18.060 after hearing about him in your interview with Camille Pahlia.

00:08:23.140 That's really good news.

00:08:24.460 And also the fact that you mentioned him in Maps of Meaning

00:08:30.480 has sparked a lot of interest in Erich Neumann.

00:08:35.140 So the other person we should talk about then probably is Mircea Eliade

00:08:40.280 because he has a three-volume history of religious ideas,

00:08:45.640 and it's also a great work in my estimation.

00:08:48.400 I really learned a lot from everything I read that Mircea Eliade published.

00:08:55.080 And so for people who are interested in Neumann,

00:08:57.080 he's another person to study in depth and the history of religious ideas.

00:09:02.360 It's a three-volume set, and it's very readable.

00:09:05.700 It's easier to read than Jung, and it's easier to read than Neumann.

00:09:09.180 And it provides a great overview of his amazing career

00:09:15.360 as a surveyor of world religions.

00:09:18.600 It's a phenomenal book.

00:09:20.500 And so if people are interested in Maps of Meaning,

00:09:22.620 they're interested in Neumann.

00:09:23.620 And they're interested in that.

00:09:27.200 It's an anthropological and sociological analysis of religion,

00:09:30.720 but it's also deeply psychological, and it focuses on meaning.

00:09:36.240 So it's in the same vein of thinking.

00:09:40.440 And that's another set of books that are very much worth pursuing

00:09:46.060 for anyone that finds this kind of material captivating.

00:09:49.380 We will definitely do an event dedicated to Mircea Eliade.

00:09:58.820 I think it will be met with great interest.

00:10:01.500 And so what do people, how are the Russian viewers responding to the more,

00:10:09.880 to my reliance on Alexander Solzhenitsyn and my use of the events in the Soviet Union in the 20th century?

00:10:20.480 I don't know how Solzhenitsyn is regarded in Russia now.

00:10:24.640 People in Russia have a critical attitude towards him in general.

00:10:31.320 Solzhenitsyn is a unique writer, and this is recognised by everyone.

00:10:36.040 However, what he described in his works is rather his point of view.

00:10:41.860 It's a cry from his heart.

00:10:44.140 It's a work of fiction.

00:10:46.300 And the problem is that this work of fiction began to be perceived as a documentary.

00:10:51.920 And when the Soviet Union began to fall,

00:10:54.620 those who dealt the final blows to it, they did it in the name of Solzhenitsyn.

00:11:00.260 And it was really hard for the ordinary people,

00:11:02.820 because after 1991, more than 100,000 enterprises were closed down.

00:11:08.040 Overnight, the country plunged into chaos.

00:11:13.000 And for 20 years, all the media kept telling us that

00:11:15.920 all the people in our country were to blame for the Soviet Union,

00:11:20.300 and that they had to redeem themselves in the eyes of Alexander Isayevich,

00:11:24.460 in the eyes of the Western world.

00:11:26.740 And it caused people a lot of pain,

00:11:29.220 because they weren't doing anything wrong.

00:11:31.200 They were working in institutes.

00:11:32.800 They were translating books.

00:11:34.440 They were raising children.

00:11:35.900 And then suddenly, all the media started humiliating them.

00:11:39.500 And the sense of guilt they tried to create was so painful

00:11:42.560 that after 1991, in the 90s, there was a huge wave of suicides.

00:11:48.480 People didn't know how to live their lives anymore.

00:11:51.220 This information kept being shoved in their faces.

00:11:53.840 They kept being told that it was their fault

00:11:56.160 that people were being exterminated in the concentration camps,

00:11:59.720 although they had nothing to do with it.

00:12:01.340 And that is why people have mixed feelings towards Alexander Isayevich.

00:12:06.500 And everyone understands that it was a terrible time,

00:12:09.680 and a very difficult one.

00:12:11.480 And this wound has not healed to this day.

00:12:14.440 And even now, as we're talking, as I get back to those events...

00:12:17.940 So, everyone, I mean, we see that...

00:12:21.760 I think we see that everywhere in the world now, that guilt.

00:12:26.500 In the West, in the United States, in Canada,

00:12:30.120 there is a lesser...

00:12:32.840 It's a lesser phenomenon, I would say, than what you're describing,

00:12:36.720 and lesser than what the German people felt after World War II.

00:12:40.700 But there are accusations of colonialism and white supremacy

00:12:46.220 and guilt over the terrors of history

00:12:50.580 that brought all of us to where we are now.

00:12:53.320 And I think that it's something that we all face,

00:12:57.300 in some sense, as an existential problem.

00:13:00.160 I mean, there are permanent existential problems.

00:13:02.960 Death, suffering, deceit, sin,

00:13:06.680 and all of the catastrophes of history

00:13:10.340 that, for better or worse, put us where we are now.

00:13:13.960 And the issue of how each of us

00:13:16.400 bear guilt and responsibility

00:13:19.220 for things that were done by the culture that we're part of, say,

00:13:23.080 or by our immediate ancestors,

00:13:25.240 or even by our distant ancestors,

00:13:27.060 that's a very difficult psychological question,

00:13:29.920 because we're historical creatures.

00:13:32.160 The existential psychologists following Heidegger,

00:13:35.340 I believe, talked about that problem

00:13:38.660 as the issue of thrown-ness.

00:13:40.940 Throne, as in T-H-R-O-W-N.

00:13:44.020 You're thrown into the world, all of us.

00:13:46.780 And you're thrown into your culture arbitrarily.

00:13:50.320 You're thrown into your family arbitrarily.

00:13:52.960 You're thrown into your body arbitrarily.

00:13:55.980 And we all have to deal with that.

00:13:58.020 And figuring out how to do that individually

00:14:00.480 is very difficult.

00:14:02.300 I mean, what I was trying to do in Maps of Meaning

00:14:04.160 was to bring this down to,

00:14:05.760 and in my other books, for that matter,

00:14:07.400 was to bring this problem down to the individual level.

00:14:10.480 Because each of us, in some sense,

00:14:13.420 have the capacity to do all the terrible things

00:14:16.060 that anyone has ever done.

00:14:18.220 And you see that manifest itself en masse very frequently.

00:14:23.160 And that happened in the Soviet Union.

00:14:25.760 It happened in Germany.

00:14:27.860 It happened everywhere, really.

00:14:32.060 If you just have to look hard enough and long enough

00:14:34.420 in some ways.

00:14:35.380 And so I felt that it was necessary.

00:14:42.860 It seemed to me, and this was...

00:14:44.860 So the question is, what do you do about that?

00:14:50.620 That guilt that's part and parcel of being

00:14:53.640 a member of any culture

00:14:57.220 that has done things that are reprehensible in the past.

00:15:01.680 And the answer to that is,

00:15:05.280 try not to do it,

00:15:07.200 to understand it,

00:15:08.760 and try not to do it in the future.

00:15:10.440 And so we all do have that guilt,

00:15:13.860 and we all do have that responsibility.

00:15:17.380 It's very difficult for that not to become overwhelming

00:15:20.480 if you look into it deeply.

00:15:22.080 And you have to look into it deeply,

00:15:23.740 to some degree,

00:15:24.700 to scare yourself badly enough

00:15:26.660 into putting your life together

00:15:28.480 so that maybe the probability of such things

00:15:31.520 will be less in the future.

00:15:33.380 But it's a very tricky thing to manage.

00:15:36.520 So...

00:15:37.440 I think maybe partly what you do

00:15:41.240 is you regard it,

00:15:42.540 and this is what the existential psychologists

00:15:44.460 were pointing to,

00:15:45.380 it's part of the nature of being human

00:15:48.820 to bear that historical guilt.

00:15:51.720 So it's impersonal in some sense.

00:15:53.800 You still have to take it seriously,

00:15:55.240 and you still have to do something about it,

00:15:56.800 but it's not...

00:16:00.180 There's an impersonal and universal element to it,

00:16:02.640 and that makes it somewhat easier to bear

00:16:05.000 to bear...

00:16:07.440 I can say that a careful study of this issue

00:16:10.740 and your writings

00:16:11.740 helped me to cope with the feelings

00:16:13.920 that arise from the fact

00:16:15.300 that some great guilt,

00:16:16.960 a great burden,

00:16:18.320 is crushing me now,

00:16:19.980 when I do not even know

00:16:21.240 if my relatives participated in these events.

00:16:24.240 I know that they were repressed.

00:16:26.360 That's something I know for sure.

00:16:28.380 And I can't understand,

00:16:30.220 and many other people can't understand,

00:16:32.460 what they are guilty of

00:16:33.820 when their grandparents were the victims.

00:16:35.780 You gave some very good advice

00:16:37.960 about how studying existential psychology

00:16:40.780 can help you get a broader perspective

00:16:43.300 on this issue.

00:16:45.460 If I may ask a few questions.

00:16:47.540 Yeah, well, part of the problem...

00:16:51.140 So, for example,

00:16:52.420 there's this trope in...

00:16:55.140 This is particularly the case

00:16:56.460 in the United States

00:16:57.400 that all white people are racist.

00:17:01.380 And that goes along with this claim

00:17:03.220 that American society in particular,

00:17:05.520 but not only America,

00:17:06.960 European society in general,

00:17:08.580 and that would include Russian society,

00:17:10.540 are, in some deep sense,

00:17:13.940 white supremacist.

00:17:16.260 And those accusations

00:17:18.660 are variations of...

00:17:21.540 They're variations of political thinking

00:17:26.040 emerging from this sense

00:17:29.720 of universal guilt.

00:17:30.840 The answer to the question,

00:17:35.640 are all white people racist,

00:17:37.000 is yes.

00:17:38.600 But it's also no.

00:17:40.740 And here's why.

00:17:44.460 Are all people racist?

00:17:46.820 Well, yes.

00:17:47.960 All of us.

00:17:49.740 And why would I say that?

00:17:51.120 Well, the anthropological literature

00:17:53.880 is quite clear on this

00:17:55.140 as far as I understand it.

00:17:57.100 that virtually every society

00:18:00.400 that's ever been discovered,

00:18:02.940 especially when they're isolated,

00:18:04.960 tends to refer to

00:18:06.440 their own group members

00:18:08.600 basically as human beings

00:18:10.120 and all those outside of that group

00:18:12.800 as some other category.

00:18:15.500 And so...

00:18:15.940 And I think that's a reflection

00:18:17.160 of our in-group preference

00:18:18.420 and our ability to cooperate

00:18:20.560 and form bonds.

00:18:21.980 So it's not trivial.

00:18:23.480 And it's difficult for all of us

00:18:25.200 to extend,

00:18:26.020 to immediately extend

00:18:28.280 that sense of kin,

00:18:30.120 and that's the root word

00:18:31.060 for kindness,

00:18:31.820 that extent,

00:18:32.580 extend that sense of kin

00:18:34.080 beyond our in-group.

00:18:36.020 And it's also extremely difficult

00:18:37.920 because, well,

00:18:39.060 how many people can you actually

00:18:40.400 attend to and care for?

00:18:42.480 You know,

00:18:42.780 you're limited in your scope.

00:18:45.000 And so the answer to the question,

00:18:46.520 are all white people racist,

00:18:47.620 is yes.

00:18:48.560 But it's still a bad question

00:18:52.000 because the inclusion

00:18:53.640 of the word white

00:18:54.780 implies that it's unique

00:18:56.840 to, say,

00:18:57.540 white people.

00:18:58.380 And that's just not the case.

00:19:00.320 It's true of human beings.

00:19:02.160 It's probably true

00:19:02.980 of our closest biological relatives

00:19:05.140 in a profound

00:19:07.040 and meaningful sense.

00:19:08.540 Chimpanzees go to war.

00:19:10.420 That was discovered

00:19:11.220 by Jane Goodall

00:19:12.080 in the 1970s.

00:19:13.180 It was a great shock.

00:19:14.240 They go on raiding parties

00:19:15.320 and if they outnumber

00:19:16.780 small troops

00:19:17.860 of generally juvenile males

00:19:19.580 go on raiding parties

00:19:20.600 near the border

00:19:21.880 of their territory.

00:19:22.680 And if they find a chimp

00:19:24.340 from another territory

00:19:25.380 and they outnumber them,

00:19:27.440 they'll tear them to pieces.

00:19:29.120 And so this is a deep problem.

00:19:31.660 And it's a problem

00:19:32.900 for all of us

00:19:33.580 because it's tangled up.

00:19:35.180 It's actually tangled up

00:19:36.380 inside our goodness.

00:19:38.200 That's also what makes it

00:19:39.640 so difficult

00:19:40.220 because the fact

00:19:41.680 that I really love

00:19:42.640 my family members,

00:19:43.760 let's say,

00:19:44.200 and then my community

00:19:46.500 around that,

00:19:48.140 that in some sense

00:19:49.960 is also why

00:19:51.040 I'm not so positively

00:19:53.300 predisposed to anything

00:19:54.600 I see outside of that

00:19:56.120 that I think might disrupt it.

00:20:00.160 And so

00:20:00.680 we have to have some sympathy

00:20:04.640 for that proclivity.

00:20:09.360 And we need to understand

00:20:10.960 what we do about it now

00:20:12.280 in the modern world

00:20:13.200 where it's doing

00:20:15.360 more harm than good

00:20:17.340 because maybe we don't need

00:20:19.440 to be parochial

00:20:20.280 in that sense

00:20:21.000 like we were

00:20:22.340 in the past.

00:20:24.240 And perhaps we can't afford to be

00:20:26.460 because we're so

00:20:27.340 technologically powerful now

00:20:28.860 that that tendency

00:20:30.480 to demonize

00:20:31.540 the outgroup member,

00:20:33.360 that'll destroy all of us

00:20:35.600 if we don't figure out

00:20:37.240 how to get it under control.

00:20:38.580 And so

00:20:38.900 I felt that the best

00:20:41.400 because maps of meaning,

00:20:42.620 the reason I wrote

00:20:43.240 maps of meaning

00:20:43.880 essentially

00:20:44.380 was to figure out

00:20:45.180 how you get that

00:20:46.060 under control

00:20:46.600 as an individual.

00:20:48.720 And that took me deep

00:20:50.540 into religious work

00:20:51.680 and religious morality,

00:20:53.420 I would say.

00:20:54.320 And

00:20:54.460 I think the answer

00:20:56.640 to that pro,

00:20:57.680 the answer to the question

00:20:58.760 of that problem

00:20:59.580 is that

00:21:00.020 we have to become

00:21:01.040 better people.

00:21:01.680 We have to become

00:21:02.400 more conscious.

00:21:03.180 we have to become

00:21:04.660 more conscious

00:21:05.240 of our ethical obligations.

00:21:06.960 We have to become

00:21:07.580 more conscious

00:21:08.200 of

00:21:08.520 the nature

00:21:11.780 of good and evil

00:21:12.520 to put it bluntly.

00:21:13.920 And

00:21:13.980 we have to bear

00:21:15.940 the responsibility,

00:21:17.100 the ethical responsibility

00:21:18.120 that our powerful

00:21:19.000 technology demands.

00:21:21.320 That's also something

00:21:22.280 I learned

00:21:22.800 I would say

00:21:23.640 most explicitly

00:21:24.400 from Carl Jung.

00:21:25.520 And his,

00:21:26.320 he made the case,

00:21:27.360 it's a very interesting

00:21:28.280 argument that

00:21:29.020 he believed

00:21:33.480 that the scientific

00:21:34.260 endeavor emerged

00:21:35.180 out of the alchemical

00:21:36.020 endeavor.

00:21:37.640 And

00:21:38.120 he has his reasons

00:21:39.600 for believing that.

00:21:40.380 And I think

00:21:40.760 it's a reasonable

00:21:41.540 proposition historically.

00:21:42.760 There's many roots

00:21:43.360 of the scientific endeavor,

00:21:44.460 but

00:21:44.580 Newton was an alchemist.

00:21:46.620 So,

00:21:47.240 you know,

00:21:47.540 there's one

00:21:48.520 staggeringly

00:21:49.980 important example.

00:21:51.640 And alchemy

00:21:52.080 was a fantasy

00:21:52.880 about the value

00:21:53.980 that might be lurking

00:21:54.820 in the material world.

00:21:55.880 And Jung believed

00:21:56.480 that we needed

00:21:57.600 to fantasize

00:21:58.860 about

00:21:59.180 what value

00:22:00.400 might be held

00:22:01.620 in study

00:22:02.200 of the material world

00:22:03.100 for thousands of years

00:22:04.000 before we could

00:22:04.640 organize ourselves

00:22:05.380 psychologically

00:22:05.940 to do something

00:22:06.780 as technically

00:22:07.360 sophisticated as science.

00:22:09.820 So,

00:22:10.040 but alchemy

00:22:10.460 was still,

00:22:11.180 you know,

00:22:11.860 one-tenth science

00:22:12.740 and 90%

00:22:13.760 imagination

00:22:15.220 and religion

00:22:16.100 in some sense.

00:22:17.600 And then

00:22:18.060 the scientific

00:22:19.020 part of it

00:22:19.920 blew up

00:22:20.700 massively

00:22:21.380 over the last

00:22:22.380 400 years

00:22:23.120 and it's put us

00:22:23.700 where we are

00:22:24.460 technologically.

00:22:25.420 But the ethical part,

00:22:27.040 the religious part

00:22:28.260 didn't blow up

00:22:29.260 and expand

00:22:29.820 in the same way.

00:22:31.500 But it has to.

00:22:32.920 We have to be

00:22:33.740 as ethical

00:22:34.220 as we are powerful

00:22:35.340 or we won't

00:22:37.260 manage

00:22:37.920 and we'll destroy

00:22:40.020 ourselves

00:22:40.520 with

00:22:40.780 and maybe

00:22:42.960 we'll do it

00:22:43.460 because we want to.

00:22:45.400 So,

00:22:46.020 so we have to

00:22:47.080 grow up

00:22:47.500 in some sense

00:22:48.220 and that means

00:22:49.780 we have to become

00:22:50.420 conscious of things

00:22:51.220 that we have not yet

00:22:52.040 become conscious of.

00:22:53.500 and I think

00:22:54.580 that that

00:22:55.020 that means

00:22:56.240 becoming

00:22:56.700 more conscious

00:22:57.880 of what

00:22:59.420 what it means

00:23:02.060 that there are

00:23:02.740 religious values,

00:23:04.300 what that means

00:23:05.760 ontologically,

00:23:06.900 so what that means

00:23:07.780 for the nature

00:23:08.360 of being itself

00:23:09.200 and what it means

00:23:10.520 in terms of

00:23:11.360 how each of us

00:23:12.080 perceive and act

00:23:13.240 and what our

00:23:14.440 obligations are

00:23:15.300 and what the costs

00:23:16.200 are of not doing that.

00:23:17.680 We have to become

00:23:18.360 very serious

00:23:19.020 about such things

00:23:19.940 in a way

00:23:20.480 that we are not

00:23:21.280 serious yet.

00:23:22.480 Most of the discussion

00:23:23.680 I see about

00:23:24.520 the relationship

00:23:25.880 between science

00:23:26.680 and religion

00:23:27.240 is the sort of

00:23:29.960 discussion

00:23:30.560 that takes place

00:23:31.340 between

00:23:31.820 the viewpoint

00:23:36.160 that's put forth

00:23:37.180 most eloquently

00:23:37.960 and powerfully

00:23:38.840 likely by the

00:23:40.260 atheist materialists

00:23:41.720 like Dawkins

00:23:42.420 and Harris

00:23:44.060 and Daniel Dennett

00:23:45.180 and

00:23:46.300 as far as I'm concerned

00:23:48.360 they're just not

00:23:49.200 contending

00:23:49.840 with the problem.

00:23:50.740 what they do

00:23:51.820 is

00:23:52.060 there's a sleight

00:23:54.060 of hand

00:23:54.440 there's an

00:23:54.760 intellectual sleight

00:23:55.540 of hand

00:23:55.860 that's unnoticed

00:23:56.840 by those

00:23:57.500 that they're

00:23:58.040 arguing against

00:23:58.960 and the sleight

00:23:59.760 of hand is

00:24:00.360 they implicitly

00:24:03.280 and explicitly

00:24:04.120 presume that

00:24:06.860 the enemy

00:24:08.720 they're fighting

00:24:09.300 which would be

00:24:09.840 religious belief

00:24:11.220 as such

00:24:11.860 is fundamentally

00:24:14.020 a set of

00:24:14.600 propositions

00:24:15.360 about the

00:24:16.360 explicit propositions

00:24:19.260 about the

00:24:19.800 structure of

00:24:20.400 the material

00:24:20.940 world

00:24:21.360 in some

00:24:21.800 sense

00:24:22.200 so it's

00:24:23.240 akin to

00:24:23.880 a scientific

00:24:24.560 theory

00:24:25.280 and then

00:24:27.060 having

00:24:27.920 made that

00:24:29.020 presumption

00:24:29.380 and having

00:24:29.920 that presumption

00:24:30.660 not be

00:24:31.280 questioned

00:24:31.720 they can

00:24:33.000 take

00:24:34.100 relatively

00:24:34.820 straightforward

00:24:35.280 steps

00:24:35.820 to demolish

00:24:36.660 it

00:24:36.900 but the

00:24:38.520 problem

00:24:38.920 with that

00:24:39.360 is

00:24:39.580 is that

00:24:40.020 well there's

00:24:40.680 a variety

00:24:41.140 of problems

00:24:41.620 but problem

00:24:42.720 number one

00:24:43.160 is

00:24:43.380 that first

00:24:46.060 move is not

00:24:46.940 kosher

00:24:47.500 because that's

00:24:49.420 wrong

00:24:49.940 what part

00:24:52.400 of what

00:24:52.700 religious

00:24:53.100 is

00:24:53.560 is

00:24:54.080 what

00:24:54.640 happens

00:24:55.040 to you

00:24:55.320 when you

00:24:55.580 look at

00:24:55.860 the night

00:24:56.160 sky

00:24:56.600 in the

00:24:57.480 pitch black

00:24:58.160 and you

00:24:58.620 confront

00:24:59.420 infinity

00:25:00.120 and there's

00:25:01.240 an embodied

00:25:02.000 set of

00:25:02.420 experiences

00:25:03.000 that

00:25:03.440 manifest

00:25:05.300 themselves

00:25:06.120 independent

00:25:06.620 of your

00:25:07.280 will

00:25:07.680 and part

00:25:08.720 of that

00:25:09.060 is fear

00:25:09.560 and trembling

00:25:10.120 in the

00:25:10.480 presence

00:25:10.780 of the

00:25:11.240 infinite

00:25:11.700 that's

00:25:12.800 the awe

00:25:13.240 but there's

00:25:13.700 also a

00:25:14.200 call

00:25:14.700 in that

00:25:15.280 there's

00:25:15.800 an intrinsic

00:25:16.420 call

00:25:16.980 in that

00:25:17.420 to greater

00:25:18.980 being on

00:25:19.740 your part

00:25:20.420 to be

00:25:21.400 better than

00:25:22.100 you are

00:25:22.620 that's part

00:25:23.620 of that

00:25:23.980 experience

00:25:24.500 there's an

00:25:25.140 ennobling

00:25:25.800 aspect to

00:25:26.600 it

00:25:26.820 and none

00:25:27.740 of that

00:25:28.280 is rational

00:25:29.840 and propositional

00:25:30.900 it's deep

00:25:32.660 it's instinctive

00:25:34.240 it's part of

00:25:35.500 the instinct

00:25:36.820 to imitate

00:25:37.480 and

00:25:39.200 serious

00:25:41.180 scientists

00:25:41.780 would contend

00:25:43.000 with that

00:25:43.720 and serious

00:25:46.500 people would

00:25:47.200 as well

00:25:47.760 there's a

00:25:49.500 set of

00:25:49.820 experiences

00:25:50.400 that

00:25:50.860 ensnare

00:25:52.040 all of

00:25:52.480 us

00:25:52.820 dancing

00:25:53.800 to music

00:25:54.440 is another

00:25:55.080 what are

00:25:56.100 we doing

00:25:56.640 when we're

00:25:57.540 dancing

00:25:57.960 to music

00:25:58.740 well we

00:26:01.000 don't know

00:26:01.580 but it's

00:26:02.060 and it's

00:26:02.740 easy to

00:26:03.160 think of

00:26:03.460 it as

00:26:03.740 mere

00:26:04.040 entertainment

00:26:04.580 or something

00:26:05.180 trivial

00:26:05.580 but it's

00:26:06.060 not

00:26:06.460 I had

00:26:07.360 one of

00:26:08.280 Canada's

00:26:08.880 national

00:26:10.600 treasures

00:26:11.180 here yesterday

00:26:12.700 Rex Murphy

00:26:13.420 very very

00:26:14.300 astute

00:26:15.400 and profound

00:26:16.060 person

00:26:16.540 and he

00:26:17.180 said

00:26:17.500 this wasn't

00:26:19.180 his

00:26:19.540 words

00:26:20.880 but he

00:26:22.700 read them

00:26:23.160 and remembered

00:26:23.700 them

00:26:24.020 all art

00:26:25.420 aspires to

00:26:26.260 the condition

00:26:26.840 of music

00:26:27.500 yes

00:26:28.820 well what

00:26:30.020 does that

00:26:30.380 mean

00:26:30.680 well it's

00:26:31.060 something

00:26:31.300 outside

00:26:31.800 rationality

00:26:32.640 greater than

00:26:33.920 rationality

00:26:34.740 and

00:26:36.320 virtually

00:26:37.320 everyone

00:26:37.820 loves

00:26:38.260 music

00:26:38.820 well what

00:26:39.320 does it

00:26:39.600 mean

00:26:39.780 that they

00:26:40.100 love

00:26:40.320 music

00:26:40.720 why does

00:26:41.220 that feed

00:26:43.300 the soul

00:26:44.020 music

00:26:44.960 what exactly

00:26:46.580 is going

00:26:47.060 on there

00:26:47.660 well something

00:26:50.460 profound is

00:26:51.180 going on

00:26:51.660 there

00:26:51.900 it's something

00:26:53.920 that's calling

00:26:54.480 us to align

00:26:55.200 ourselves

00:26:55.680 harmoniously

00:26:56.480 with the

00:26:57.020 patterns of

00:26:57.620 being

00:26:58.040 and this

00:27:01.860 isn't

00:27:02.260 none of

00:27:03.040 this is

00:27:03.380 optional

00:27:03.860 and the

00:27:04.500 other issue

00:27:05.400 is well

00:27:05.960 if the

00:27:07.780 religious

00:27:08.060 enterprise

00:27:08.680 is failed

00:27:09.880 and

00:27:11.180 anyone

00:27:11.880 with any

00:27:12.340 reasonable

00:27:12.840 intellect

00:27:13.440 can see

00:27:13.980 that

00:27:14.360 then

00:27:15.300 from

00:27:15.920 whence

00:27:16.440 do we

00:27:16.800 derive

00:27:17.220 our

00:27:17.500 values

00:27:18.080 exactly

00:27:20.280 because

00:27:21.400 the

00:27:22.220 science

00:27:22.700 I know

00:27:23.360 has

00:27:24.080 convinced

00:27:24.620 me

00:27:25.040 and these

00:27:26.000 are the

00:27:26.220 most serious

00:27:26.740 psychologists

00:27:27.360 that I've

00:27:28.000 read

00:27:28.340 people

00:27:29.600 like

00:27:30.480 an

00:27:34.280 ecological

00:27:34.840 approach

00:27:35.640 to

00:27:35.860 perception

00:27:36.380 is that

00:27:36.860 the book

00:27:37.200 I can't

00:27:37.580 quite

00:27:37.780 remember

00:27:38.200 the title

00:27:39.280 always

00:27:39.560 escapes

00:27:40.000 me

00:27:40.320 Gibson

00:27:41.000 no

00:27:42.440 Gibson

00:27:42.900 no

00:27:43.420 Gibson

00:27:44.000 Gibson

00:27:44.700 Gibson

00:27:45.400 a visual

00:27:46.280 approach

00:27:46.800 I can't

00:27:48.420 remember

00:27:48.720 the book

00:27:49.160 Eric

00:27:50.100 maybe you

00:27:50.520 can just

00:27:50.800 look that

00:27:51.120 up

00:27:51.280 briefly

00:27:51.600 it's

00:27:51.900 it's

00:27:52.240 Gibson

00:27:53.280 perception

00:27:54.300 anyways

00:27:55.680 Gibson

00:27:56.400 was quite

00:27:56.940 convinced

00:27:57.380 that we

00:27:57.840 perceive

00:27:58.380 meaning

00:27:59.060 not

00:27:59.640 objective

00:28:00.300 reality

00:28:00.780 and he

00:28:01.300 didn't

00:28:01.540 mean that

00:28:01.960 he wasn't

00:28:02.380 a religious

00:28:02.780 thinker

00:28:03.440 that was

00:28:04.940 his

00:28:05.100 conclusion

00:28:05.540 from studying

00:28:06.180 the visual

00:28:06.880 system

00:28:07.340 in depth

00:28:07.900 and it

00:28:09.040 is the

00:28:09.660 case

00:28:10.040 we see

00:28:10.760 the world

00:28:11.220 through

00:28:11.600 the lens

00:28:12.280 of value

00:28:12.800 from where

00:28:15.080 do we

00:28:15.360 derive our

00:28:15.780 values

00:28:16.080 and maybe

00:28:16.920 even more

00:28:17.280 importantly

00:28:17.620 from where

00:28:18.160 should we

00:28:18.760 derive our

00:28:19.280 values

00:28:19.680 and you

00:28:20.740 can say

00:28:21.180 science

00:28:21.740 yeah but

00:28:22.580 that's a

00:28:23.040 facile answer

00:28:24.040 and it's a

00:28:25.100 dangerous answer

00:28:25.840 too because

00:28:26.400 it risks

00:28:28.020 the politicization

00:28:29.220 of science

00:28:30.020 and science

00:28:30.900 strives at least

00:28:31.660 in some sense

00:28:32.340 to be value

00:28:32.920 free

00:28:33.280 and perhaps

00:28:35.820 for the

00:28:36.240 better

00:28:36.460 and perhaps

00:28:37.000 that's a

00:28:37.360 necessary part

00:28:38.080 of the

00:28:38.280 scientific

00:28:39.020 enterprise

00:28:39.620 but we

00:28:41.040 need values

00:28:41.960 they're not

00:28:42.780 optional

00:28:43.280 the necessity

00:28:45.120 for value

00:28:45.760 is built

00:28:46.360 into us

00:28:46.840 at an

00:28:47.140 unbelievably

00:28:47.680 deep

00:28:48.320 level

00:28:49.460 biologically

00:28:51.100 not conceptually

00:28:53.220 not as a

00:28:54.180 secondary consequence

00:28:55.060 of our

00:28:55.480 rationality

00:28:56.140 none of

00:28:56.780 that

00:28:57.000 it's a

00:28:57.500 precondition

00:28:58.380 for perception

00:28:59.220 itself

00:28:59.860 and we

00:29:02.020 haven't

00:29:02.440 wrestled

00:29:02.840 with the

00:29:03.200 significance

00:29:03.720 of that

00:29:04.340 discovery

00:29:04.940 now you

00:29:05.440 see

00:29:05.780 the earth

00:29:07.820 shattering

00:29:08.380 significance

00:29:10.080 of that

00:29:10.820 discovery

00:29:11.400 manifested

00:29:12.100 itself

00:29:12.680 in part

00:29:13.400 in the

00:29:14.180 realization

00:29:14.720 of AI

00:29:15.720 artificial

00:29:16.200 intelligence

00:29:17.160 engineers

00:29:18.160 that it

00:29:19.180 was virtually

00:29:19.840 impossible

00:29:20.360 to build

00:29:20.980 an intelligent

00:29:21.580 machine

00:29:22.080 that could

00:29:22.520 perceive

00:29:22.860 the world

00:29:23.260 unless it

00:29:23.960 was embodied

00:29:24.700 and the

00:29:25.600 reason for

00:29:26.040 that was

00:29:26.460 that the

00:29:27.020 problem

00:29:27.500 of perceiving

00:29:28.340 the world

00:29:28.960 was way

00:29:30.280 more difficult

00:29:30.940 than we

00:29:31.420 thought

00:29:31.760 because we

00:29:32.340 thought we

00:29:32.940 just saw

00:29:33.760 the objects

00:29:34.540 that were

00:29:35.000 there

00:29:35.360 the material

00:29:36.120 objects

00:29:36.460 that were

00:29:36.740 there

00:29:37.080 but that

00:29:38.160 isn't

00:29:38.520 how it

00:29:38.920 that isn't

00:29:39.500 the case

00:29:40.060 it's really

00:29:41.160 not the

00:29:41.620 case

00:29:41.840 it's so

00:29:42.220 much the

00:29:42.600 case

00:29:42.840 that if

00:29:43.160 you try

00:29:43.500 to build

00:29:43.920 a machine

00:29:45.960 that perceives

00:29:46.900 the world

00:29:47.380 that's just

00:29:48.800 looking at

00:29:49.340 the objects

00:29:49.920 that are

00:29:50.300 there

00:29:50.760 so to

00:29:51.440 speak

00:29:51.780 you

00:29:52.620 can't

00:29:53.440 it doesn't

00:29:55.800 work

00:29:56.200 and so

00:29:56.960 people like

00:29:57.540 Rodney

00:29:57.900 Brooks

00:29:58.360 MIT

00:29:59.080 robotics

00:30:00.080 engineer

00:30:00.520 and a

00:30:00.860 genius

00:30:01.280 he

00:30:01.980 started

00:30:02.360 figuring

00:30:03.240 this

00:30:03.500 out

00:30:03.660 in

00:30:03.760 like

00:30:03.920 1992

00:30:04.560 that

00:30:05.220 in all

00:30:06.060 probability

00:30:06.660 a machine

00:30:08.020 would have

00:30:08.400 to be

00:30:08.640 embodied

00:30:09.020 to perceive

00:30:09.820 because

00:30:10.840 perception

00:30:11.380 is so

00:30:11.780 tightly

00:30:12.080 associated

00:30:13.220 with

00:30:13.640 action

00:30:14.080 and

00:30:15.200 action

00:30:15.700 and

00:30:15.940 perception

00:30:16.340 are also

00:30:18.020 so tightly

00:30:18.580 associated

00:30:19.220 with

00:30:19.480 value

00:30:20.000 so you

00:30:21.460 can't

00:30:21.700 perceive

00:30:22.080 without a

00:30:22.520 framework

00:30:22.780 of values

00:30:23.420 where

00:30:24.280 from where

00:30:24.880 do we

00:30:25.140 derive

00:30:25.460 our values

00:30:25.980 from

00:30:26.220 nowhere

00:30:26.540 and are

00:30:27.100 they real

00:30:27.680 or not

00:30:28.180 well what

00:30:28.760 do you

00:30:28.920 mean by

00:30:29.220 real

00:30:29.500 exactly

00:30:30.040 you can't

00:30:30.740 see

00:30:31.060 without

00:30:31.480 them

00:30:31.880 so they're

00:30:33.160 a precondition

00:30:33.920 for the

00:30:34.240 perception

00:30:34.680 of material

00:30:35.420 reality

00:30:35.940 itself

00:30:36.560 and then

00:30:38.220 we also

00:30:38.960 know

00:30:39.400 we all

00:30:39.840 know

00:30:40.120 we all

00:30:40.560 know

00:30:40.760 this

00:30:41.040 some

00:30:42.700 values

00:30:43.200 are more

00:30:43.760 important

00:30:44.140 than

00:30:44.280 others

00:30:44.540 some

00:30:45.380 things

00:30:45.820 are

00:30:46.060 deeper

00:30:46.540 than

00:30:46.820 other

00:30:47.060 things

00:30:47.520 we all

00:30:48.520 have

00:30:48.720 that

00:30:48.920 sense

00:30:49.200 we know

00:30:49.500 the

00:30:49.660 difference

00:30:49.940 between

00:30:50.280 a shallow

00:30:51.140 story

00:30:51.640 and a

00:30:52.280 deep

00:30:52.520 story

00:30:52.960 and but

00:30:53.860 we don't

00:30:54.240 know what

00:30:54.580 we mean

00:30:54.960 by deep

00:30:55.540 and we

00:30:55.860 don't

00:30:56.080 know what

00:30:56.380 we mean

00:30:56.720 by shallow

00:30:57.180 but we

00:30:57.560 mean

00:30:57.820 something

00:30:58.340 and so

00:31:00.140 then I

00:31:00.480 would say

00:31:00.880 well the

00:31:01.220 deepest

00:31:01.860 values

00:31:02.780 are

00:31:03.540 religious

00:31:04.520 that's a

00:31:06.320 definition

00:31:07.000 it's an

00:31:08.260 observation

00:31:09.020 and so

00:31:10.160 when I

00:31:10.620 could say

00:31:11.160 we should

00:31:11.960 scrap the

00:31:12.460 entire

00:31:12.740 religious

00:31:13.060 enterprise

00:31:13.520 as

00:31:14.020 intelligent

00:31:15.780 21st

00:31:16.560 century

00:31:17.060 rational

00:31:18.680 intellectuals

00:31:19.900 but

00:31:20.980 well what

00:31:22.860 about all

00:31:23.260 these other

00:31:23.660 problems

00:31:24.140 they're not

00:31:24.560 going away

00:31:25.560 and they're

00:31:26.920 not

00:31:27.180 problems

00:31:29.040 that are

00:31:29.480 imagined

00:31:30.020 by some

00:31:30.660 coterie

00:31:31.180 of superstitious

00:31:32.360 religious

00:31:33.120 scholars

00:31:33.680 these are

00:31:35.400 profoundly

00:31:36.140 difficult

00:31:36.720 scientific

00:31:37.360 questions

00:31:38.000 at least

00:31:38.520 in part

00:31:39.080 the problem

00:31:39.740 of perception

00:31:40.360 and then

00:31:41.640 the problem

00:31:42.140 of depth

00:31:42.900 well are

00:31:43.680 some values

00:31:44.260 deeper than

00:31:44.800 others

00:31:45.060 are some

00:31:45.500 values

00:31:45.920 more basic

00:31:46.860 than others

00:31:47.500 that means

00:31:49.440 there's a

00:31:49.800 hierarchy

00:31:50.280 of values

00:31:50.920 and that

00:31:52.220 means there's

00:31:52.660 something at

00:31:53.140 the top

00:31:53.720 that unites

00:31:56.140 it all

00:31:57.080 or everything

00:31:57.940 is fragmented

00:31:58.660 those are the

00:31:59.200 alternatives

00:31:59.820 and then so

00:32:01.020 one of my

00:32:01.460 propositions is

00:32:02.300 that well

00:32:02.660 what christianity

00:32:03.580 is psychologically

00:32:04.620 speaking at

00:32:05.720 least in part

00:32:06.480 is the attempt

00:32:07.880 to specify

00:32:09.000 the nature

00:32:10.260 of the highest

00:32:11.020 value

00:32:11.580 and part of

00:32:13.260 that's an

00:32:13.620 abstraction

00:32:14.240 and so that's

00:32:15.700 what god is

00:32:16.380 in the old

00:32:16.820 testament

00:32:17.220 is an

00:32:18.420 abstract

00:32:18.860 representation

00:32:19.620 of the

00:32:20.180 highest

00:32:20.500 value

00:32:20.980 and then

00:32:23.160 there's another

00:32:24.000 problem

00:32:24.420 is once you

00:32:25.040 abstractly

00:32:25.660 represent the

00:32:26.340 highest value

00:32:26.900 how do you

00:32:27.380 bring it down

00:32:27.880 to earth

00:32:28.340 so that it

00:32:28.860 can guide

00:32:29.480 your actions

00:32:30.180 and the

00:32:31.200 notion of

00:32:32.120 the incarnation

00:32:32.640 is the

00:32:33.540 answer

00:32:35.000 it's at

00:32:35.900 minimum

00:32:36.500 it's the

00:32:37.280 answer provided

00:32:38.340 by the

00:32:39.060 collective

00:32:39.480 imagination

00:32:40.280 of western

00:32:40.920 civilization

00:32:41.580 to the

00:32:42.500 problem of

00:32:43.160 the embodiment

00:32:43.860 of the

00:32:44.200 highest value

00:32:44.960 and are we

00:32:47.160 going to

00:32:47.440 what are we

00:32:47.840 going to do

00:32:48.200 are we

00:32:49.200 going to be

00:32:49.520 children

00:32:49.940 in the face

00:32:51.360 of that

00:32:51.840 or are we

00:32:53.040 going to

00:32:53.280 think about

00:32:53.920 it

00:32:54.280 because it's

00:32:55.940 a problem

00:32:56.620 one of the

00:32:57.660 things

00:32:57.880 Mercia

00:32:58.220 Eliad

00:32:58.700 pointed out

00:32:59.320 was he

00:33:00.340 was commenting

00:33:01.460 at least in

00:33:02.360 part on

00:33:02.760 Nietzsche's

00:33:03.320 observation of

00:33:04.200 the death

00:33:04.620 of god

00:33:05.180 and

00:33:06.940 Eliad

00:33:07.600 said well

00:33:08.100 god

00:33:08.400 god has

00:33:09.100 died

00:33:09.440 time and

00:33:10.060 time again

00:33:10.660 because

00:33:11.620 one

00:33:13.280 psychological

00:33:14.020 problem

00:33:14.720 with

00:33:15.600 abstract

00:33:16.960 ethical

00:33:18.040 religious

00:33:18.960 thinking

00:33:19.720 is that

00:33:20.620 the highest

00:33:21.160 value can

00:33:21.800 become so

00:33:22.480 abstract

00:33:23.100 that no

00:33:24.320 one can

00:33:24.680 have any

00:33:25.060 relationship

00:33:25.620 with it

00:33:26.100 anymore

00:33:26.480 you don't

00:33:27.780 know how

00:33:28.180 you don't

00:33:28.560 know what

00:33:28.900 it means

00:33:29.480 for you

00:33:29.920 you don't

00:33:30.260 know how

00:33:30.500 to act

00:33:30.900 it out

00:33:31.340 you don't

00:33:32.080 know how

00:33:32.280 to embody

00:33:32.760 it and

00:33:33.040 so it's

00:33:33.340 meaningless

00:33:33.760 it disappears

00:33:34.600 it floats

00:33:35.100 away but

00:33:35.520 then when

00:33:36.580 that happens

00:33:37.080 to a

00:33:37.380 culture

00:33:37.620 there's no

00:33:38.180 central

00:33:38.780 unifying

00:33:39.500 value

00:33:40.140 and then

00:33:40.960 the culture

00:33:41.360 fragments

00:33:41.840 that's

00:33:42.180 in a

00:33:44.720 manner that's

00:33:46.400 analogous to

00:33:47.040 the tower

00:33:47.420 of babel

00:33:48.000 in some

00:33:48.420 sense

00:33:48.880 so

00:33:50.680 something

00:33:51.500 has to

00:33:52.080 serve as

00:33:52.540 a uniting

00:33:53.060 value

00:33:53.520 and it

00:33:54.160 is the

00:33:54.460 highest

00:33:54.740 value

00:33:55.200 and I

00:33:56.220 do not

00:33:56.840 believe that

00:33:57.460 the rationalist

00:33:58.220 types

00:33:58.580 the rationalist

00:33:59.340 atheists

00:33:59.780 I don't

00:34:00.080 believe they

00:34:00.480 contend with

00:34:00.980 these problems

00:34:01.460 at all

00:34:01.940 and it's

00:34:03.340 not because

00:34:03.920 it's because

00:34:04.840 they don't

00:34:05.220 understand them

00:34:05.920 they don't

00:34:07.360 know these

00:34:07.820 problems

00:34:08.180 exist

00:34:08.560 they exist

00:34:09.500 these are

00:34:10.680 fundamental

00:34:12.140 problems

00:34:12.820 and when I

00:34:13.980 say that

00:34:14.520 Christianity

00:34:15.100 is the

00:34:15.700 attempt to

00:34:16.500 answer the

00:34:17.720 question of

00:34:18.780 how the

00:34:19.200 highest abstract

00:34:19.840 value should

00:34:20.640 be embodied

00:34:21.220 I mean that

00:34:22.420 most seriously

00:34:23.280 and then you

00:34:24.560 ask yourself

00:34:25.140 as well

00:34:25.540 you know you

00:34:25.980 said to me

00:34:26.520 earlier that

00:34:27.600 the people

00:34:28.960 who've been

00:34:29.320 translating the

00:34:30.020 biblical lectures

00:34:30.740 have experienced

00:34:32.360 some transformation

00:34:33.180 in their own

00:34:33.880 life

00:34:34.300 that's because

00:34:35.440 they started to

00:34:36.120 embody the

00:34:36.840 ethic

00:34:38.040 I can tell

00:34:39.940 you

00:34:40.200 are you

00:34:41.480 going to

00:34:41.900 strive to

00:34:42.380 embody the

00:34:43.000 ultimate

00:34:43.280 ideal

00:34:43.760 or not

00:34:45.620 because I

00:34:46.440 could ask

00:34:46.880 you do you

00:34:47.180 have anything

00:34:47.580 better to

00:34:48.100 do

00:34:48.340 how could

00:34:49.940 you possibly

00:34:50.580 have anything

00:34:51.120 better to

00:34:51.600 do

00:34:51.800 and if you

00:34:52.460 don't want

00:34:52.840 to do

00:34:53.040 that why

00:34:53.600 don't you

00:34:54.100 want to

00:34:54.440 do it

00:34:54.780 well I

00:34:55.280 don't believe

00:34:55.980 in that

00:34:56.600 it's like

00:34:57.320 what do you

00:34:58.700 mean by

00:34:59.720 that

00:35:00.100 exactly

00:35:01.100 do you

00:35:01.600 not believe

00:35:02.100 there are

00:35:02.400 any values

00:35:03.120 do you

00:35:04.180 believe you

00:35:04.680 can just

00:35:05.020 pick and

00:35:05.400 choose

00:35:05.780 do you

00:35:07.880 believe that

00:35:08.320 there's no

00:35:08.720 uniting values

00:35:09.720 and if there

00:35:10.640 are uniting

00:35:11.180 values do

00:35:11.840 you believe

00:35:12.260 that you

00:35:12.580 have an

00:35:12.900 ethical

00:35:13.160 obligation

00:35:13.700 to act

00:35:15.040 in accordance

00:35:15.520 with them

00:35:16.020 or not

00:35:16.900 and then what

00:35:17.400 do you

00:35:17.640 think will

00:35:18.000 happen if

00:35:18.460 you don't

00:35:19.000 because I

00:35:19.780 know what

00:35:20.120 will happen

00:35:20.460 if you

00:35:20.760 don't

00:35:21.500 you'll fall

00:35:22.920 into a pit

00:35:23.600 and you'll

00:35:24.960 drag the

00:35:25.460 people around

00:35:26.140 you into

00:35:27.240 the pit

00:35:27.760 with you

00:35:28.360 and as you

00:35:30.560 suffer because

00:35:31.260 you're in

00:35:31.920 the pit

00:35:32.360 you'll delight

00:35:34.200 in the fact

00:35:34.820 that you're

00:35:35.240 there and

00:35:35.760 that you've

00:35:36.740 dragged all

00:35:37.320 those other

00:35:37.780 people in

00:35:38.420 there with

00:35:38.900 you

00:35:39.200 yes you

00:35:40.900 you reminded

00:35:41.820 me now

00:35:42.380 it's the

00:35:43.020 ecological

00:35:43.620 approach to

00:35:44.380 visual perception

00:35:45.480 and Gibson

00:35:46.760 none of that

00:35:48.380 book is

00:35:48.820 religious in

00:35:49.460 nature in

00:35:50.680 fact quite the

00:35:51.320 contrary but

00:35:52.580 it doesn't

00:35:53.020 matter because

00:35:53.600 what it shows

00:35:54.400 is that a

00:35:56.480 value structure

00:35:57.100 is a precondition

00:35:57.860 for perception

00:35:58.500 itself and I

00:36:00.560 should say that

00:36:01.100 over and over

00:36:01.780 and over a

00:36:02.640 value system

00:36:03.620 is the

00:36:04.480 precondition

00:36:05.360 for perception

00:36:06.460 itself

00:36:07.420 you were

00:36:10.400 talking about

00:36:11.200 people dragging

00:36:12.040 each other

00:36:12.500 into a pit

00:36:13.300 and it

00:36:13.960 reminded me of

00:36:14.820 Peter Bruegel's

00:36:15.960 painting

00:36:16.500 the blind

00:36:17.500 leading the

00:36:18.060 blind

00:36:18.500 where they all

00:36:19.520 fall into a

00:36:20.260 pit

00:36:20.540 it really

00:36:21.600 resembles people

00:36:22.420 who don't want

00:36:23.240 to see these

00:36:23.840 values and don't

00:36:24.960 want to aim

00:36:25.580 for them

00:36:26.100 well what look

00:36:28.320 what happens

00:36:28.960 how how could

00:36:30.520 failure to

00:36:31.700 bring values

00:36:33.240 under a

00:36:34.000 unifying principle

00:36:34.920 lead to anything

00:36:35.860 other than

00:36:36.420 fragmentation and

00:36:37.400 confusion and

00:36:38.560 I studied

00:36:39.520 Jeffrey Gray's

00:36:40.340 book the

00:36:40.760 neuropsychology of

00:36:41.580 anxiety which is

00:36:42.340 the best book

00:36:43.160 ever written about

00:36:44.280 the biology of

00:36:45.120 anxiety hands

00:36:46.220 down and it's a

00:36:47.500 hard book it

00:36:48.380 took psychologists

00:36:49.360 I read that book

00:36:50.780 in 1985 which

00:36:52.280 wasn't very long

00:36:53.000 after it was

00:36:53.480 published and I

00:36:54.500 really read it it

00:36:55.400 took me six

00:36:56.040 months to read

00:36:56.800 that book it

00:36:57.540 was hard and

00:36:59.040 it took the

00:36:59.920 general run of

00:37:01.400 psychologists 30

00:37:03.060 years to really

00:37:04.720 notice Jeffrey Gray's

00:37:06.140 book there wasn't

00:37:07.600 a lot of serious

00:37:08.380 discussion about it

00:37:09.460 among personality

00:37:10.960 psychologists and

00:37:11.940 social psychologists

00:37:12.700 people who are far

00:37:13.540 removed from

00:37:14.160 biology and animal

00:37:15.280 experimentation it

00:37:17.460 took 30 years for

00:37:18.420 them to start to

00:37:19.540 digest that book and

00:37:20.680 that process

00:37:21.520 certainly hasn't

00:37:22.800 finished yet

00:37:24.120 and so when I

00:37:26.180 say that

00:37:26.780 fragmentation of

00:37:28.200 the value

00:37:28.600 structure necessarily

00:37:30.380 leads to a

00:37:31.540 predominance of

00:37:32.360 negative emotion

00:37:33.240 pain anxiety

00:37:34.400 suffering in

00:37:35.240 general I

00:37:36.360 believe that to

00:37:36.980 be true

00:37:37.440 biologically and

00:37:39.280 I think I

00:37:39.920 understand obviously

00:37:41.820 not completely but

00:37:42.920 I understand the

00:37:43.820 outlines of the

00:37:44.780 neurobiological

00:37:45.720 reasons why that's

00:37:46.780 the case I wrote

00:37:47.700 a paper with my

00:37:48.500 students a while

00:37:49.280 back trying to

00:37:50.520 tie the

00:37:52.780 phenomenon of

00:37:54.420 anxiety to the

00:37:56.220 thermodynamic

00:37:57.580 principle of

00:37:58.380 entropy and I

00:37:59.480 think we were

00:37:59.940 quite successful to

00:38:01.040 put physics

00:38:01.740 underneath the

00:38:02.880 science of

00:38:03.780 anxiety and I

00:38:05.420 think we were

00:38:05.920 successful in that

00:38:06.920 I mean the paper

00:38:07.540 was published in a

00:38:08.300 very good journal

00:38:09.000 psychological review

00:38:10.020 and as far as I

00:38:11.180 know no one's

00:38:12.220 you know come up

00:38:12.800 with a thorough

00:38:14.440 going and serious

00:38:15.460 refutation of the

00:38:16.560 proposition if you

00:38:18.340 fragment your value

00:38:19.340 structure then you're

00:38:20.900 overwhelmed you become

00:38:21.860 overwhelmed by

00:38:22.500 anxiety and that's

00:38:23.260 the price you pay

00:38:24.040 for not being

00:38:24.640 integrated so fine

00:38:26.400 you don't have to

00:38:27.160 pursue value

00:38:28.840 intensely and

00:38:31.000 seriously you don't

00:38:31.860 have to devote

00:38:32.500 yourself to it you

00:38:33.480 don't have to

00:38:33.900 worship the highest

00:38:34.800 ideal but the price

00:38:35.760 you'll pay for that

00:38:36.440 is fragmentation

00:38:37.280 nihilism enemy

00:38:38.560 existential angst

00:38:40.260 doubt terror

00:38:41.840 stress more rapid

00:38:44.580 aging all of that

00:38:46.120 so fine that's the

00:38:47.720 alternative and

00:38:48.560 that's only on the

00:38:49.280 personal level it

00:38:50.420 says nothing of the

00:38:51.320 sociological level

00:38:52.440 your books help

00:38:57.660 readers become more

00:38:58.740 integrated with

00:38:59.560 themselves in the

00:39:01.880 great mother neumann

00:39:03.540 says that only the

00:39:04.720 individual with

00:39:05.620 integrated consciousness

00:39:06.860 can help the society

00:39:08.260 become healthy

00:39:09.100 only through

00:39:12.480 individuals with

00:39:13.660 integrated consciousness

00:39:14.880 can society properly

00:39:16.880 form and become

00:39:17.900 healthy what

00:39:19.340 tendencies in modern

00:39:20.360 society do you think

00:39:21.520 contribute to the

00:39:22.780 and that's no

00:39:23.600 different by the way

00:39:24.540 that is that is no

00:39:26.080 different than the

00:39:28.580 statement that the

00:39:29.640 imitation of christ is

00:39:31.040 the highest ethical

00:39:32.840 demand placed on every

00:39:34.440 individual in western

00:39:35.620 society it's the same

00:39:37.380 idea it's exactly the

00:39:39.740 same idea the first

00:39:43.080 idea the christian idea

00:39:44.500 is the dream that

00:39:45.820 preceded the psychology

00:39:47.140 and that's i'm and

00:39:49.360 that's what it is

00:39:50.000 minimally that's what it

00:39:52.000 is minimally that's what

00:39:52.880 it is psychologically i'm

00:39:54.040 not speaking as a

00:39:55.660 religious thinker when i

00:39:57.880 make that claim i'm not

00:40:00.220 trying in some sense to

00:40:01.360 tread into religious

00:40:02.420 territory not not not not

00:40:03.960 not as a theologian i'm

00:40:06.080 trying to explain

00:40:07.160 something and and to

00:40:09.460 make it real and you

00:40:10.600 know and to make it real

00:40:13.580 what tendencies in

00:40:17.460 modern society do you

00:40:18.720 think contributes to

00:40:19.900 the integrity of

00:40:20.900 consciousness and what

00:40:22.260 tendencies interfere with

00:40:23.780 it there was some of

00:40:25.680 that guilt that you were

00:40:26.760 talking about that that

00:40:28.000 can be extremely

00:40:28.840 corrosive you know one

00:40:31.160 of the things that i was

00:40:32.140 extremely affected by when

00:40:33.940 i went on my tour i i

00:40:35.980 think this is part of

00:40:36.800 what made me ill although

00:40:38.000 it wasn't all of it but

00:40:39.420 it was it was definitely

00:40:40.480 part of it was i saw

00:40:43.560 i was offering people

00:40:45.320 words of encouragement

00:40:46.600 and it seemed that the

00:40:49.620 people who are benefiting

00:40:50.540 most from that in some

00:40:52.160 sense were young men and

00:40:54.740 i think maybe that's

00:40:55.660 because they have been

00:40:57.200 formally criticized so

00:40:59.440 much in the last 30 or

00:41:01.020 40 years so they had the

00:41:03.240 bit the deepest hunger and

00:41:05.680 and and i saw how much

00:41:08.140 hunger how much thirst there

00:41:10.240 was for words of

00:41:11.260 encouragement in the face

00:41:12.900 of that accusation and

00:41:15.860 guilt like we all stagger

00:41:18.600 forward under our burden

00:41:19.860 of sin that's the archaic

00:41:21.760 language and modern people

00:41:23.580 while they don't really

00:41:24.680 understand what that means

00:41:25.920 and yet they're discouraged

00:41:27.980 and guilty about the

00:41:30.280 conditions of their own

00:41:31.200 existence and that's the

00:41:33.680 same thing and so then

00:41:37.000 because i was offering words

00:41:38.600 of encouragement because i

00:41:40.400 would rather that people

00:41:41.440 did well than than do

00:41:44.000 badly and and i mean that

00:41:45.800 most sincerely

00:41:46.680 it was stunning how much

00:41:51.620 impact that had on people and

00:41:53.220 how grateful they were for it

00:41:54.620 and that was very painful to

00:41:56.940 me to observe because i had no

00:41:59.400 idea that

00:42:00.140 the hunger was so deep and that

00:42:04.200 people were so hopeless because

00:42:06.680 they had been crucified by their

00:42:10.020 own guilt and by their

00:42:11.380 accusations of their

00:42:12.900 insufficiency and and the the

00:42:17.740 malevolence of their ambition

00:42:19.300 let's say i mean i experienced

00:42:20.640 that very very personally a friend

00:42:23.460 of mine who was a very

00:42:25.480 intelligent man someone i knew

00:42:28.840 from the time i was about 13 he

00:42:31.660 killed himself and he did that at

00:42:34.420 least in part because he believed

00:42:36.880 that masculine ambition was

00:42:40.520 fundamentally malevolent and so he

00:42:44.200 didn't trust his own forward

00:42:46.440 striving and he couldn't

00:42:47.780 distinguish let's say greed from

00:42:49.740 valid ambition and i mean he wrote

00:42:53.560 a story that that really affected me

00:42:55.800 he was quite a good short story

00:42:57.300 writer as it turned out he only had

00:42:58.900 one story published but i have his

00:43:01.800 unfinished novel he wrote a story

00:43:04.820 about a memory he had when he was

00:43:06.940 about 10 years old 11 years old

00:43:08.640 something like that he lived in this

00:43:09.980 northern town high prairie there was a

00:43:12.920 large indigenous population there

00:43:14.920 it's a town very much like the one i

00:43:16.940 grew up in and he was he got beat up

00:43:19.980 by a group of indigenous kids or one or

00:43:23.500 two or one i don't remember exactly the

00:43:25.760 details of the story but he didn't fight

00:43:28.160 back he wouldn't fight back because

00:43:29.640 even at that age he regarded himself as

00:43:31.760 his very presence there as a as morally

00:43:35.400 untenable and you know fair enough

00:43:38.280 there's a real ethical conflict there

00:43:40.080 europeans did come to north america and

00:43:42.480 south america and 95 percent of the

00:43:44.780 indigenous people died from plague you

00:43:47.480 know measles mumps smallpox and so that

00:43:51.780 was an absolute catastrophe and then well

00:43:54.620 the relationships between the europeans

00:43:56.760 who have come to the western hemisphere

00:43:59.420 and the indigenous people have been

00:44:01.140 fraught with conflict to say the least

00:44:03.740 and no one's exactly sure how to rectify

00:44:09.800 that but he viewed any sign of masculine

00:44:14.340 ambition let's say as fundamentally immoral

00:44:17.900 because of its association with colonial

00:44:19.980 domination and technological nightmare and

00:44:23.760 the despoiling of the planet and all of

00:44:26.440 that struck him to the heart you know

00:44:28.480 it literally killed him i mean there was

00:44:31.020 more going on but that was a big part of

00:44:32.860 it and so we bear this terrible guilt all

00:44:36.780 of us and it interferes with our rise with

00:44:40.340 our ability to rise up and all of that has

00:44:43.940 to be sorted out you know we have to

00:44:48.340 distinguished between valid ethical striving to

00:44:52.180 make the world a better place and

00:44:53.720 immoral ambition and we have to be very

00:44:56.700 careful that we don't look at those who

00:45:00.660 have put themselves together perhaps

00:45:03.180 better than we have and have been

00:45:05.780 successful because of it and warp our

00:45:08.600 morality because we want to tear them down

00:45:12.280 because as examples they're examples that

00:45:16.120 we fall short of it's very easy for this sort

00:45:18.620 of thing to become warped by resentment and

00:45:20.840 hatred you know you see this i think i saw an

00:45:25.080 example of that in in the united states

00:45:26.940 alexandria ocasio cortez i i'm probably

00:45:30.460 pronouncing her aoc i'm pronouncing her name

00:45:32.900 wrong she wore a dress to a met gala big

00:45:36.700 fancy artistic affair white dress like a

00:45:40.580 bride's dress in some sense and on it painted

00:45:44.200 in red was tax the rich and i like that's an

00:45:49.660 example of that political twisting

00:45:53.080 it it it puts itself forward as an ethical

00:45:58.940 statement that's aimed at the betterment of

00:46:01.760 the lives of the poor but lurking underneath

00:46:03.820 that is a hatred for those who have been

00:46:06.260 successful and an insistence that anyone

00:46:09.060 successful has only become successful because

00:46:12.100 they've exploited and hurt others and

00:46:14.840 sometimes that's the case in some

00:46:18.060 situations probably for all of us but

00:46:22.720 sometimes and always are very different and

00:46:25.280 i've i've studied deeply the political

00:46:28.300 consequences the consequences of that

00:46:31.920 attitude going too far that what happened to

00:46:35.620 the kulaks in the soviet union is a perfect

00:46:38.060 perfect perfect example of that kill all the

00:46:42.380 successful farmers because all they did was

00:46:46.440 exploit despite the fact that all those

00:46:49.440 people were serfs like 50 years previously

00:46:52.320 kill them all take what they earned what

00:46:58.240 happens six million people die

00:47:01.820 it is a very difficult thing with the kulaks

00:47:08.060 this is still a very painful subject for

00:47:10.640 millions of people in our country

00:47:12.280 i can tell you that my family suffered from

00:47:15.580 it my relatives were dispossessed like that

00:47:18.200 everything they had was taken away from them

00:47:21.800 they worked hard for decades and that being

00:47:25.520 said the story is actually more complicated than

00:47:27.980 that there really were such people in the

00:47:32.580 villages who were actually called kulaks

00:47:34.760 who lent to other peasants and then forced

00:47:37.820 them to give back much more than they gave in

00:47:40.160 the beginning i mean they demanded from

00:47:42.620 debtors so much that people could not pay

00:47:45.060 back the debt that's why kulaks were hated

00:47:49.460 in the villages because they were basically

00:47:51.560 usurers and they could hurt or kill those

00:47:54.560 who delayed or didn't pay their debts

00:47:57.140 the authorities turned a blind eye to this

00:48:00.240 and sided with the kulaks they could do

00:48:02.760 anything they wanted to the poor so when

00:48:05.280 it started there's no doubt there's no

00:48:07.820 doubt that economic exploitation occurs and

00:48:12.240 and there's no doubt that economic

00:48:15.000 exploitation occurs there's no doubt that

00:48:17.120 not all material wealth is is is gained in

00:48:24.320 an ethical manner all of that that's why

00:48:27.120 why those those discussions about oppression

00:48:30.220 and exploitation always continue there's always

00:48:33.940 some truth in it

00:48:34.860 the thing is now it is perceived as a sort of

00:48:41.100 collective pain and drama i think someday the

00:48:44.360 pain will pass unfortunately this whole phenomenon

00:48:47.940 the dispossession of kulaks is now perceived and

00:48:51.600 interpreted rather superficially i would say

00:48:54.500 it was much more complicated than that and the fact that there was a fratricidal war the civil war that occurred before it makes it even more complicated there was no right and wrong there were victims everyone suffered you know this episode is brought to you by net suite this is it the putt to win the tournament if you sink it the championship is yours but on your backswing your hat falls over your eyes is this how you're running your business

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00:53:26.640 I wanted to ask you about Beyond Order. We have already translated it into Russian,

00:53:33.300 and I think there's a very important point in the eighth chapter. The translators and the editors

00:53:40.220 especially liked it. It's about beauty. Dostoevsky said through one of his characters that beauty

00:53:49.280 will save the world. Why do you think beauty is so important?

00:53:55.860 I think I think I'm so glad that that that that's the case. I think that was the chapter that I liked

00:54:02.040 the best of both books. So I'm very pleased to hear that that's been the response. And part of that

00:54:11.220 was motivated by my contemplation regarding Dostoevsky's statement and Solzhenitsyn's comments

00:54:19.820 about it. What does that mean? Well, it means it's a variant of the idea we discussed earlier that all

00:54:26.920 art ascribe all art aspires to the condition of music. It's it's akin to our discussion about the

00:54:34.900 night sky. Beauty is something that it calls you to that higher unifying ideal. It calls you and it

00:54:42.880 pulls you. And part of that is is a manifestation, technically speaking, of the of the imitation of

00:54:50.460 the instinct to imitate. Human beings are unbelievably imitative. Unbelievably imitative. It's it's our

00:54:57.340 it's our main cognitive transformation, I would say. I mean, every word we speak is the word that

00:55:02.960 everybody else uses. That's an example of the depth of this imitative spirit. We were so good at

00:55:09.800 imitation. And I'll give you a quick example of that. So if you watch a child who's three or four

00:55:17.660 years old, playing house, male or female, the females will usually act out mother and the males

00:55:24.200 will act out father. And if you casually observe that, you'll say, well, they're imitating. But that

00:55:29.420 isn't imitation. If I imitated you, I would sit like this. That's imitation. Because I'm precisely

00:55:36.920 mimicking you. But if I'm what if I'm four years old, and I'm watching my father for four years, and I'm

00:55:44.620 watching Disney movies that feature kings and so forth. So I'm getting an image of the father as

00:55:51.020 such. I'm abstracting from each particular example of the father, the commonality of behavior and

00:55:59.000 perception that characterizes the father across all those instances. And I when I'm pretending to be

00:56:05.960 the father, I'm attempting to take that abstraction and embody it. And that's someone, a four year old is

00:56:14.140 doing that. It's unbelievably sophisticated. And so the four year old is called to manifest the spirit of the

00:56:20.620 father. And it doesn't take much imagination to see that transformed into a religious statement, to be called

00:56:27.680 to manifest the spirit of the father. It sounds like a religious statement. But that's what four year olds are

00:56:34.060 doing when they play house. They're very sophisticated. Now that imitative instinct, imitation, that

00:56:42.100 instinct to imitate is so deep in us that we'll, we're called to imitate things that aren't even

00:56:48.160 animate. So when you walk into it, when you see a cathedral, and then you walk into the cathedral, the

00:56:53.540 cathedral is calling you to imitate it. And the beauty, beauty is part of that call. And it grips you.

00:57:01.720 It's pointing to this higher unifying ideal. And that's why, and the fact that that higher

00:57:09.760 unifying ideal is so vital, is what accounts for the fact that beauty compels. And it's pre-rational,

00:57:18.160 just like music, you can't argue with it. I mean, you can say, you could say, I suppose that, well, all,

00:57:25.700 all opinions about beauty are arbitrary. It's just subjective, something like that. You could,

00:57:33.160 you could brush it off intellectually, but it just means you're shallow, and you're not paying

00:57:37.600 attention. Beauty is mysterious. And it's not completely subjective, because there's wide

00:57:44.360 agreement, at least in some instances, on what is spectacularly beautiful. I mean, you can see that

00:57:52.460 with the pilgrims that flood into Europe. And you think, well, they're not pilgrims. Well, what do you

00:57:57.320 think the tourists are that go to Europe, if they're not pilgrims? What do they go look at? They go

00:58:02.260 look at beautiful things. And they've fallen out of the religious landscape to such a degree that they

00:58:07.880 don't even know that they're on a pilgrimage. And they don't even know that they're called to worship

00:58:11.580 beauty. And they don't have any idea that that's a call to a higher form of being. Because we've

00:58:18.500 shallowly criticized our religious propositions, we don't even understand when they start to

00:58:25.660 manifest themselves in an embodied manner and pull us here and there. It's happening politically all

00:58:32.060 the time. So beauty, the reason that Dostoevsky, you see, it's interesting to consider the difference

00:58:41.920 between Dostoevsky and Nietzsche in this regard, because their ideas are very similar in many,

00:58:48.880 many ways. They're like, one's more rational and explicit and one's more narrative and literary,

00:58:54.480 but they're like the same spirit. And, but Dostoevsky is in some sense deeper. And I think

00:59:00.860 Nietzsche would have agreed with this. And I know that Nietzsche knew more about Dostoevsky than people

00:59:05.700 thought. There's been recently scholarly work on that account. Dostoevsky in some ways was closer

00:59:14.000 to beauty. His work was closer to beauty than Nietzsche's because Dostoevsky's work was literary

00:59:18.440 and artistic. And so he dealt in that aesthetic realm. And The Idiot, for example, The Idiot's a very

00:59:29.720 interesting book, because, and you see this in other, in other bits of Dostoevsky's work as well,

00:59:36.360 is that his, his most ethical characters can lose every argument with rationalists and still be better

00:59:43.860 men. And you see that in the book, because the book allows them to be embodied rather than mere

00:59:49.620 carriers of propositional arguments. And beauty is non-propositional. And so it, it goes under our,

00:59:56.660 our, our, our narcissistic and blind rational intellect that overvalues its ability. That's

01:00:05.500 the spirit of Lucifer that Milton warned everyone about. It goes under that and grabs you. And if you

01:00:13.160 pay attention to that, then it's a, it's a pointer to what is beyond your understanding.

01:00:19.220 And so it's vital, it's vital. And Dostoevsky knew that. And Solzhenitsyn read that, and he thought,

01:00:27.860 I see, I see what he means. I understand what he means. And you know, one of the characteristics of our

01:00:33.780 modern culture, especially in the architectural realm, is that it's replete with ugliness. I mean,

01:00:38.480 I've gone to medieval villages in Europe, especially in East, what used to be East Germany, that were so

01:00:43.720 beautiful. They just made me cry when I was, it was, when I was in the downtown, I thought, my God,

01:00:48.680 this is so unbelievably beautiful. How did people manage this? And, and to think about all the effort

01:00:55.080 that was poured into those cathedrals, monuments to divine beauty, what imagination those people had

01:01:02.200 and what commitment. And we can, we can't do that. Modern people can't do that. And so it's a terrible

01:01:09.880 loss. And it's partly because we just don't take such things seriously. And that's a, that's a,

01:01:14.360 that's a big mistake because they are more serious than anything else. Beauty, that's more serious than

01:01:20.460 anything, except perhaps truth. But it's a pointer, you know, and these religious thinkers,

01:01:28.560 philosophically speaking, Christian thinkers, they thought of God as the sum, sumum bonum,

01:01:33.480 the sum of all good things. Well, truth is something. And, and beauty is something. And courage is

01:01:41.380 something. These virtues that we all recognize as virtues or are tormented by our conscience,

01:01:47.900 if we don't. You sum those all together, that's the ideal that binds us all. And that's God for all

01:01:56.580 intents and purposes. You might say, well, is that real? It's like, well, it depends on what you mean by real.

01:02:02.280 And people laugh at me because I say that sort of thing fairly frequently. You know,

01:02:07.360 it depends on what you mean by real. But when you ask the question, is something real? It's like an

01:02:12.020 equation. And the right response to that is, well, what do you mean by real? And you think, well,

01:02:19.340 that's an evasion. It's like, no, I'm just not accepting your presuppositions as a precondition

01:02:24.440 for this discussion. You can't use that sleight of hand. So beauty, it's like, beauty tells you to

01:02:34.700 be more than you are. Beauty tells you to aspire to that which is beyond you. Beauty says there is

01:02:40.420 something beyond you. All of that. And it does that in an enticing manner, right? It invites you

01:02:47.080 to come along. It's the opposite of authoritarianism. It's an invitation. It's like

01:02:53.500 the most beautiful woman you can possibly imagine waiting there for you on the dance floor, inviting

01:03:00.740 you. That's beauty. And that's an invitation to be the sort of man who could dance with that

01:03:09.060 person. You think you don't take that seriously? Like you get rejected by some woman you, you

01:03:18.020 admire that her beauty has captivated you and you're rejected because you're less than you

01:03:22.080 could be. You think you don't take that seriously? It's a miracle. You don't cut your throat, throat.

01:03:27.820 You take it seriously. You just don't know it. You don't know what you're, what she's angry

01:03:33.220 about. Why is she react, rejecting you? It's because you're not all you could be.

01:03:39.940 And some of that's laid at your feet. And men are angry with women all the time because that's

01:03:45.060 what women do. That's what they tell them all the time. And it's a terrible thing.

01:03:54.720 But can you blame them? What else would they do? And what else would you want them to do?

01:04:00.600 You know, in your shallow thoughts, you'd think, well, I wish that I was always accepted. Every

01:04:05.100 advance was accepted. Uncritically, well, that world would be hell very rapidly if it was

01:04:11.980 actually the case.

01:04:12.820 I wanted to ask you about your work on Beyond Order. Our translators and editors have pointed

01:04:23.320 out that it has a very distinctive language and many levels of complexity to explore and comprehend.

01:04:30.140 The peculiarity of this language is that it somehow helps the reader set his perception,

01:04:35.760 set his mind on the book's narrative. It flows very easily and deeply into the reader's mind.

01:04:41.480 Is there a special technique you use when you build up a sentence? Because we were comparing

01:04:47.520 this book with your other works, and we noticed that your wording has changed a bit. It became

01:04:52.840 even more accurate, even though it seemed like it couldn't be any more accurate. But it became

01:04:58.620 even more vivid. And we all enjoyed working on the book.

01:05:01.840 Well, that's remarkable that you said deep in a light way. When I was teaching at Harvard,

01:05:08.200 I was really concentrating on my Maps of Meaning course, although I paid plenty of attention to the

01:05:13.640 personality course as well, and they fed into each other quite nicely. I was struck by this idea one

01:05:20.140 day, and Maps of Meaning was such a serious course because it dealt with atrocity. It dealt with the

01:05:24.920 worst evils that I could extract out from the last hundred years of history, and that's pretty dark.

01:05:31.920 And so it was very serious, heavy, and Maps of Meaning is a heavy book. There's not much humor

01:05:37.180 in Maps of Meaning. And I kept having this idea that I should, if I had really mastered this material,

01:05:43.240 I could present it in a manner that was light. And I thought, well, how in the world could you

01:05:46.740 possibly present such things in a manner that was light? It's not like I don't appreciate the

01:05:52.380 necessity for humor. I love talking to comedians. The most enjoyable interviews I've had, and I think

01:05:58.540 probably the most successful ones in some ways, have been with comedians. And the people I grew up

01:06:04.180 with, I had a group of close friends from, say, grade eight to, so I was about 13 till I was about 20.

01:06:12.740 There was five or six of them. And all we ever did was try to make each other laugh. All of our

01:06:18.600 interactions were wit competitions, essentially. And some of them were way much funnier than me.

01:06:24.420 One friend of mine in particular, Randy Carlstad, was, he was so insanely funny. I saw him again

01:06:31.520 on my 50th birthday, and he made me laugh so hard. I could literally, I could hardly breathe. He was so

01:06:37.860 funny. And so I love humor. And most of what I watch on television is stand-up comedy or idiot humor,

01:06:45.060 like the Trailer Park Boys or something, some lowbrow, horrible lowbrow show like that, which I

01:06:51.360 really enjoy. So there's something to this lightness that's crucially important. And I don't, I haven't

01:06:59.600 quite puzzled it all out. I know when I'm on top of things that I can maintain my sense of humor. And

01:07:04.880 I haven't always been able to do that, especially in interviews, you know, over the last five years,

01:07:09.900 because they, well, for a variety of reasons, for a variety of reasons, sometimes it was the

01:07:16.440 vitriolic nature of the interactions and so forth. But I know when I'm at my best that, you know, I

01:07:21.540 have a sense of humor, and I can keep things light, even if they're deadly serious. And I'm very happy

01:07:26.540 to hear that the translators have seen that combination of lightness, but depth improve as I

01:07:36.840 continued to write. I wasn't sure about that. I wrote Beyond Order under very trying conditions. I

01:07:44.180 was unbelievably ill while I wrote that book. It was terrible. So I'm glad that that worked,

01:07:53.480 because I didn't, I had no idea if it would. But I'm very happy to hear that that's been the

01:07:58.260 experience of the translator, because they're obviously interacting with this text in a very

01:08:02.820 serious way. And I'm thrilled that that it was chapter eight, in particular, that was most

01:08:07.700 affecting, because that was a particular favorite of mine, that that issue of beauty is so unbelievably,

01:08:15.260 crucially important to, to what's happening in the world today, because of what it, what it implies.

01:08:22.240 So, you know, that people wonder what the purpose of such things as classical music, what's the purpose

01:08:29.080 of classical music, let's say, say this about any musical form, and I like a very wide variety of

01:08:34.960 music. Well, you know, and you see this with psychologists, even psychologists I admire, they

01:08:42.220 tend to just wave their hands about the entire cultural capability of human beings, as if all of

01:08:52.140 this entertainment, music, drama, art, literature, that's some, it's just entertainment, you know,

01:08:58.200 that's all it is. It's not an, the central part of our, of our function as human beings, or the central

01:09:04.600 part of our culture, that's completely backwards, it's absolutely backwards, it's, it's crucial and

01:09:11.160 vital. So, the lightness, well, that's good, you know, and I've become more healthy recently,

01:09:18.080 and the last month I've recovered a lot, thank God. I can think again a bit, and my sense of humour,

01:09:25.420 I'm hoping will come back, and, and I hope I can maintain it. I'm going on tour again, I think, next year,

01:09:32.920 perhaps for the whole year, and it would be nice to have a sense of humour while that's happening.

01:09:39.600 That would be wonderful. I would love to see you in Russia. If you are willing to do it,

01:09:50.440 that would be wonderful. People here like you very much. They like you, and they would love to meet you.

01:09:56.720 I would love to do a lecture in St. Petersburg, and so when we plan the European, and that's not the

01:10:02.660 only place, but I would particularly love to do a lecture in St. Petersburg, and when we plan the

01:10:08.340 European tour, we will definitely do everything to make that happen, definitely. It would be such a

01:10:13.980 striking honour and privilege to be able to do that. I can't believe that that's a possibility.

01:10:19.760 I would love to do it, and the fact that I can speak with Russian people, and speak with people

01:10:24.300 all over the world, this is a miracle, really. It's amazing that, and that you all are doing so much

01:10:29.200 work to make this happen, and that you're trying to be so careful with your words. I'm so happy about

01:10:34.960 that. It's so great. You know, and that part of that transformation that you were talking about,

01:10:41.600 perhaps part of that is a consequence of everybody trying to be very careful with their words.

01:10:47.860 It's not for nothing that our entire culture decided that the essential hallmark of the highest

01:10:54.200 uniting ideal was the Word. We should take that seriously. The Word is divine. Your Word is divine

01:11:02.580 if it's true. Think about that. What if that was true? What if that was actually how reality was

01:11:10.080 constituted? You think you have no relationship with reality, with the infinite? Where are you going to

01:11:16.200 find that other than in truth? And where are you going to approach truth more particularly than with

01:11:23.020 your words? Or evade, or evade the truth with your words? And so, insofar as you have a relationship

01:11:32.220 with reality, and with the infinite, and with truth, how could that not manifest itself in the Word?

01:11:40.840 So, it's crucially important to pay attention to what you say. And that's part of what we've all been

01:11:50.360 trying to figure out for thousands and thousands of years. Trying to understand what that meant. Trying

01:11:56.760 to make what's most important. The Word. The truthful word. That's the most important thing.

01:12:03.240 Really? Well, that's what we've concluded. This immense religious exercise. And I'm speaking as a psychologist.

01:12:11.160 And it's amazing, because the approach we took, it worked the same way in different languages.

01:12:20.920 Lectures in Chinese were received just as well by the viewers as they were in other languages.

01:12:26.360 And it's amazing, all the kind words people write to us. They say that it's an amazing translation,

01:12:31.960 and that they've discovered a whole new world, and new meanings in life. We were all very impressed by

01:12:37.880 that. And all we did was, we were just trying to be accurate. Trying to avoid adding something

01:12:43.320 unnecessary. Something of our own invention during the translation process. We strive to convey the

01:12:49.720 author's vision and ideas, and it works. I can tell you that every time the translation deviated from

01:12:56.920 your precise sequence of phrases, the book made a completely different impression. And it somehow

01:13:02.680 became harder to relate it to the next piece of your work. That's how neatly it is structured.

01:13:08.920 We noticed it when we were working on the Bible series, and on Beyond Order. We realized we cannot

01:13:15.240 change your wordings and your choice of words, otherwise the book loses its depth and energy. It's like we

01:13:21.400 had to follow some kind of star. Everyone felt that. It was something elusive.

01:13:26.120 It's hard to put into words. It's like music, like some sort of magic. And when we did it right,

01:13:32.600 the text began to flow. And it is so pleasant. It is as if everything connects with each other,

01:13:39.160 and it is impossible to turn away from it. Some lectures that we have translated and dubbed,

01:13:44.440 we listen to again and again. You want to get back to them, to take a deeper look into them, you know.

01:13:50.520 And that's the way we translated Beyond Order. It's a book that you want to read all over again.

01:13:55.960 to get back to it. I think we'll make sure that every library in Russia has this book,

01:14:01.400 that people have the opportunity to read it. Because by maintaining the sequence

01:14:05.640 that you have laid out, it's like we're giving people the opportunity to enter another world,

01:14:10.520 to get a deep insight into it. So my son and I and a team have been developing software to help people

01:14:18.760 write. So it's a, it's a word processing program, but it's, it's, it's a tool to write

01:14:25.240 more effectively. And it has technology that enables dragging and dropping of sentences and

01:14:32.760 dragging and dropping of paragraphs and modules that help you reshuffle. And so, and it's based on,

01:14:38.920 I, I spent a lot of time developing an explicit theory of writing and, and also of, say, text

01:14:47.160 criticism, because I had to grade so many essays. I wanted to decompose the grading process and

01:14:53.880 understand what I was doing and formalize it. And so then I started to understand that a text,

01:14:59.720 text, it's a, it's a multi-level phenomenon, a book, word, phrase, sentence, paragraph,

01:15:07.280 sequence of paragraphs, chapters, sequence of chapters, totality. It exists at all those levels

01:15:13.200 simultaneously. And although you walk through it, like you walk through life from beginning to end,

01:15:17.880 as the author, you have a God's eye view, and you can see all of those structures simultaneously.

01:15:22.040 You can see the end, even though, once you've written the book, even though it has a beginning.

01:15:27.080 And what that means is that you can make the beginning refer to the end. You can make the

01:15:32.600 end refer to the beginning. You can make all the parts of the text refer to each other. And

01:15:36.920 one of the things that's absolutely remarkable about the Bible is that it's hyperlinked like that.

01:15:42.920 There's a, there's a map that an image online that shows it's beautiful images, looks like a rainbow

01:15:49.140 in some sense, it shows how many references to each verse are made throughout the text.

01:15:58.500 And so the Bible is the world's first hyperlinked text, thoroughly hyperlinked text. All of it refers

01:16:04.100 to all of it explicitly and implicitly. And the reason for that is because it's been reworked and

01:16:10.420 reworked and reworked and reworked to be made somewhat coherent, to be made into an actual narrative by,

01:16:17.620 you know, an untold number of people working over an untold amount of time. The old stories

01:16:24.020 in the Bible, like the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Noah, God only knows how those,

01:16:28.580 how old those are. I know that historians, literary historians, perhaps that's the discipline,

01:16:34.580 have traced back some fairy tales 10,000 years, more than that. And so, and one, if a story is 10,000

01:16:42.820 years old, it's probably a hundred thousand years old because things didn't change much 10,000 years

01:16:48.820 ago, right? Not changing was how things were not changing. And so God only knows how old those

01:16:56.820 stories are and how long they were told for. And so when you write, if you think about what you're

01:17:03.780 writing deeply, you start to make everything refer to everything else. And that's part of

01:17:08.740 what makes you experience a text as deep, because it's refers, there's, there's all these references

01:17:19.780 within the text, if the writer has done his or her job properly and edited at every one of those

01:17:25.940 levels of analysis, which is, which you have to do. Is the word precise? Is the phrase right? Are the

01:17:34.100 phrases sequenced properly in the sentence? Is the paragraph made of properly sequenced sentences,

01:17:41.380 et cetera. And I edited at all those levels explicitly over and over, over and over. And with,

01:17:47.940 with maps of meaning, I think I probably wrote every sentence 50 times. Like I literally, I mean that

01:17:53.380 literally, I'd write a sentence out and then I'd write another version of it. Then I'd write another

01:17:57.700 version of it continually until I couldn't, until I started generating variants and I couldn't make

01:18:04.420 any qualitative distinction between them. So I'd write down three and I could say, I can't tell

01:18:08.980 which of those is better. So I guess I'm done because I can't make a finer value distinction.

01:18:14.660 Now I think I probably overworked maps of meaning to some degree because, because I did that so

01:18:20.580 continually, some of the sentences are very long. They work, but because they're so long,

01:18:26.420 they're hard to, it's hard on the reader. And I, you know, with that book, I was trying to figure

01:18:31.140 something out. I mean, I wanted to write a book obviously, and I want to communicate with people,

01:18:34.420 but fundamentally I was trying to figure something out with 12 rules and beyond order. I was taking

01:18:41.380 what I had figured out and trying to investigate it further, but I was also trying to make it much more

01:18:46.580 accessible. It was much more a communicative attempt rather than a investigative attempt.

01:18:51.540 So, and I'm so happy. I think part of the reason your translations have worked is because of this

01:18:58.820 emphasis on precision. You said you're not playing any tricks. You're not trying to get false

01:19:03.220 attention. And thank God for that. You definitely don't want, you do not want unearned attention.

01:19:10.260 Believe me, that is not something anyone with any sense would ever wish for, because if it's unearned,

01:19:17.220 all the people who are devoting that attention, they will figure that out and they will not be

01:19:22.340 happy with you. And so the catastrophe will be exactly proportional to the degree of attention

01:19:29.300 and the degree that it's unearned. That's not a good idea. And, but you also, from what you told me,

01:19:36.020 you also realized that you had to really meet your audience halfway. You had to, you had to understand

01:19:41.220 locally the, the vernacular of the community and you, and you had enough humility to notice that

01:19:49.940 that was necessary. You know, I was just talking to somebody, a couple economists the other day

01:19:53.700 about the failure of foreign aid, the constant failure of foreign aid. And part of the reason it

01:19:58.740 fails is because it's like, well, here's what we know. And you, you ignorant people can just do it.

01:20:04.420 Whereas for it to work, there has to be a real deep study of the local environment and, and, and,

01:20:11.300 and some attention paid to how these things could be integrated with that environment in an inviting

01:20:17.940 way. And so the fact that you paid attention to those local particularities and that you,

01:20:24.340 you know, you said you only tried to be precise here and now. Well, that was how the translation came

01:20:29.940 through. Well, that's not only that's man. If you can do that all the time, you're attending to the

01:20:36.340 moment, you know, accurately, you're trying to establish a relationship with truth accurately

01:20:41.780 every moment. So that's not only that's, that's a, that's an act of worship that only trying to be

01:20:47.940 precise here and now. And we could talk a little bit about that too, because what worship means is

01:20:53.780 imitate. And you think, well, you don't worship. I don't worship anything because I don't believe in

01:20:58.580 anything. It's like, oh yeah, you think that's true. You don't think you're imitating. Who are

01:21:03.460 you imitating? No one. Oh, you're a completely singular person. Are you? You're no, there's

01:21:09.060 nothing you're imitating. It's like, think again, sunshine. You're imitating. You just don't know

01:21:15.460 who you're imitating. And maybe you should figure it out because you might be imitating something you

01:21:20.260 do not want to imitate.

01:21:21.700 I also want to ask you about the period you were working on the book. Your daughter Michaela was a

01:21:32.420 great help to you. She always is. She hosts a very interesting podcast. She always chooses relevant

01:21:39.220 topics. We watch her podcasts and see that she is constantly growing. What helps us stay so strong

01:21:46.900 and keep people interested and engaged in your opinion. First, yes, she's been unbelievably helpful

01:21:55.460 to me and she's saved my life. But I could say that of many people, I'm not trying to devalue what

01:22:02.020 she did at all. In fact, I thanked her profoundly last night for saving my life, literally. And her

01:22:07.460 husband as well, Andre, who went far beyond the call of duty, caring for me amazingly, remarkably,

01:22:14.740 inexplicably even. But I've had many, many, many people have been of great aid to me. My wife,

01:22:24.020 a variety of close friends, all sorts of people have really gone out of their way. And so Michaela had to

01:22:32.260 overcome a tremendous amount of obstacle in her short, relatively short life so far. I mean,

01:22:40.260 she was unbelievably ill as a child and she had 38 affected joints by rheumatoid arthritis and

01:22:45.860 she was in pain all the time. And like, she basically walked around on two broken legs for

01:22:51.540 like a year when she was a teenager for a variety of reasons. Joints had deteriorated both in her hip

01:22:58.180 and her ankle to the point where they were almost non-functional and the waiting times for surgery

01:23:03.940 were very, very long. And it wasn't even clear that they could be fixed. And her prognosis, when we

01:23:08.660 found out what she had, I think we discovered that when she was about six or seven, was multiple early

01:23:17.060 joint replacements. And she was put on an anti-arthritis medication, a new biologic. She was the first

01:23:22.580 kid in Canada who got that medication, as it turned out, and it really worked. So she had a reprieve for

01:23:29.060 about five years, but then her hip disintegrated and then her ankle disintegrated. And she also

01:23:40.180 has suffered from very serious depression, which runs in my family on my paternal side, particularly

01:23:45.220 extremely serious, severe depression. And it affected my father and his father and a variety of

01:23:51.300 of my relatives and the, and, and me and, and my daughter, not my son, thank God. So she's had to

01:23:59.140 overcome a lot and she has overcome a lot and she's trying hard. And so more power to her as far as I'm

01:24:09.780 concerned. And I'm thrilled to see what's happening with her podcast. She seems to be,

01:24:15.380 have enough humility, despite her confidence to not presume most of the time that she knows more

01:24:21.540 than she does and to ask, you know, genuine questions and not to play tricks. And, and I hope

01:24:26.740 that, that, that that's working well for her. And yeah, she's, she's, she's been extremely helpful to me

01:24:35.780 and made some, made some very wise decisions over the last few years under very, very difficult

01:24:40.660 circumstances. For example, I was written into a comic book in April, Captain America,

01:24:46.420 just part of the underlying mythology in our, in the West. Now the Marvel movies have become so popular

01:24:53.300 and they are presenting mythology essentially to a whole new generation. I was written into Captain

01:24:58.580 America as a red skull, you know, king of the evil super Nazis. It was quite the shock to me,

01:25:05.620 and she helped me weave my way through that quite successfully. You know, we, we put out a,

01:25:13.860 we put out a line of red skull merchandise and devoted all the profits, all the, we made,

01:25:20.420 all that we made to charity. And that was a good, that, that was good. It was a nice

01:25:25.860 kind of a judo move in some sense, you know, we didn't go on the attack because why that's not

01:25:31.620 helpful. It's not like I don't wish Tan Nahisi Coates the best because I do. He's the person who

01:25:36.580 wrote the, the comic. It's like, I don't want bad things to happen to him. I hope that he

01:25:42.020 straightens up and flies right, you know, because that would be better for everyone.

01:25:47.620 And so it was a tricky thing to manage and she was very helpful in doing that. And so

01:25:52.020 she's written, she's written a book about her experiences and she's going to hopefully,

01:25:58.500 I haven't read it yet. I don't know if I can read it. I don't know if I'm healthy enough to read it

01:26:02.980 yet, but she's investigating all the possibilities that lie ahead of us in this video frontier too.

01:26:11.300 And this is so exciting because look at what we can do. It's crazy what we can do. You know,

01:26:16.020 one of the things we're talking about right now, I talked to her about this last night is I was,

01:26:19.780 and I talked to a couple of educators about this, you know, right now we could put our collective

01:26:26.260 resources together for, for a relatively small capital outlay and we could produce a curriculum

01:26:32.340 from kindergarten through grade 12 of the highest quality educational material possible,

01:26:39.620 right? Because who's, who cares if we spent a million dollars per hour? I think that maybe,

01:26:44.420 you know, tens of millions of kids could use it for God only knows how long it would be.

01:26:49.380 It wouldn't cost anything and it would be basically free. And there's absolutely nothing

01:26:54.180 stopping us from doing that. And so we're starting to think through how we could maybe

01:26:59.860 initiate that program, you know, and that's what faculties of education, if they had any sense at

01:27:04.740 all, which they don't generally speaking, and I don't say that lightly, they'd be all over themselves

01:27:10.500 right now thinking, look at what we can do. We've got this free video technology

01:27:15.060 technology that enables us to produce material that everyone can access for nothing. And we could,

01:27:21.860 we could, we could scientifically determine how to propel students through learning at the fastest

01:27:28.180 possible rate to cover the deepest possible material over the course of their educational

01:27:33.140 career and to be completely engrossed while they're doing it. We could do that. And that technology,

01:27:39.780 that's only been technologically possible for the last five years, let's say.

01:27:43.700 There's nothing stopping people from doing that. So,

01:27:47.220 you know, hopefully, I'm hoping I'll be healthy enough to engage in some of these projects.

01:27:57.140 This is a very important issue. And I wonder how we can teach our children to learn and help them

01:28:03.460 develop passion to learn new things. It's not something done in a snap. Do you have any idea how

01:28:09.060 to achieve this? I don't think I can tell you how, how it's possible to do that. You know, I can only speak

01:28:16.980 at the level of the family in some sense. Well, and I guess it's slightly broader. I mean,

01:28:22.420 the maternal role, that's, there's a, that's a, in some sense, that's fundamentally protective.

01:28:30.180 It's security and, and physical well-being. It's more than that. But, but that's part of its core.

01:28:36.740 And the core of paternal care, I think, is encouragement, as far as I can tell. It's more than

01:28:42.580 that. And of course, the paternal and the maternal overlap. I'm not trying to segregate them

01:28:46.420 completely. And so, you love and protect your children, and you encourage them to go out into

01:28:52.420 the world. And that's, that ethos should permeate our educational material. Although it isn't obvious

01:29:00.100 to me that it should be taught explicitly. If it isn't, if the material isn't saturated with those

01:29:06.820 intents, then that message won't be transmittable anyways. You know, you already said when you're doing

01:29:13.620 these translations, you're trying for precision. Well, there's an ethos then that permeates the

01:29:17.620 translations insofar as you're able to embody that. And we want to do that with the educational

01:29:22.180 material that we produce. And I think probably the way to do that is to make it beautiful, compelling,

01:29:27.700 engaging, deep, rich, accurate. And to have the notion of what's being served firmly in the background,

01:29:39.380 surrounding all the attempts to make the material. And love, encouragement, and truth, let's say,

01:29:44.900 that's not a bad triumvirate to meditate upon when contemplating educating children. You know,

01:29:51.860 what would you teach them if you truly loved them, and you wanted to encourage them, and you wanted to

01:29:56.100 tell them the truth? And so, what would you, how would you teach someone in grade one? What would you

01:30:01.220 teach them? Obviously, it would rely to some degree on stories. I think the first thing we're going to

01:30:05.860 try to do is to produce video material to teach four-year-olds how to read. Because if you can

01:30:14.820 really teach kids how to read, they're going to educate themselves a lot. So, and I've seen material

01:30:21.460 produced by behavioral cognitive psychologists who are effective that enables a four-year-old who's ready

01:30:29.140 to be taught how to read and write in three months with 10-minute lessons per day. And it works. It's a

01:30:35.300 really, I know the program. It's a really good program. It's brilliantly designed. It's a phonics

01:30:39.620 program. And it's completely scripted. And I think it would work, it might work on video, and then

01:30:44.660 everyone could have it. And so that would be a good place to start. You know, because everyone should

01:30:50.420 be able to read. I don't think we're going to get a lot of disagreement about that. You brought up the

01:30:55.540 topic of higher education and establishing proper higher education programs. Do you think modern academic

01:31:02.580 education continues to yield the same great results that it used to? Or does it require some changes?

01:31:09.220 When I went to university, I had good professors and bad professors. And I had, the best professors

01:31:14.500 I had were at a little college I went to to begin with. It was called Grand Prairie Regional College,

01:31:18.980 and it was in a town of 25,000 in Northern Alberta, and only had about 500 students. The professors

01:31:25.060 really loved to teach. And I had great professors. The two years of education I got there were

01:31:31.860 the best two years of education I got in my life, I think. Although I learned a lot in graduate school,

01:31:36.420 but that's a whole different story. That's a different kind of education.

01:31:42.980 So when students go to university now, when I went to a larger university, I had good professors and

01:31:49.220 terrible professors. And it was sort of incumbent on me to shop and find the professors who could really

01:31:54.260 teach as far as I was concerned, or who were teaching what I wanted to learn, and to differentiate

01:31:59.060 between them. And I think that that hasn't changed in any profound sense. What I've seen happen over

01:32:07.300 the last 30 years in higher education, in North America at least, is that it's got much more expensive,

01:32:13.460 especially at the high end, and much more politicized and much more laden with bureaucracy.

01:32:20.180 But I still believe that a discriminating and serious student can go to a good university and

01:32:30.260 get educated, if that's what they're aiming at. A lot of that's up to the student themselves.

01:32:36.660 Having said that, I would say, however, the technology that we're using right now is absolutely

01:32:44.900 revolutionary. Because what it means is that the best lecturers teaching the deepest material

01:32:54.020 can now go direct to everyone. And so that will have a revolutionary effect. It can't not.

01:33:02.580 And the response to my channel, to my video efforts, is a reflection of that, because I was an early

01:33:10.420 adopter in the educational realm of this technology. And I did it partly as just an exploratory foray. I

01:33:17.540 had these 13 programs that had been made by a small Ontario television station, TV Ontario, about maps

01:33:25.940 of meaning. And they were professionally edited and came out quite nicely as reasonably digestible

01:33:32.980 summaries of the maps of meaning lectures. And I thought, well, I'll put them on YouTube and see what

01:33:37.060 happens. And, you know, back then, that was like 2013, I think. YouTube, no one knew what YouTube

01:33:42.660 was. It was a place for cat videos. No one took it seriously. But, you know, I kept an eye on it. I

01:33:48.900 thought, well, this is interesting. This is permanent. This is everywhere. This is new. This is not just

01:33:57.220 cute cat videos. Not that there's anything wrong with those. But, and then I watched my, you know,

01:34:03.780 the viewership rise and rise and rise. And I thought, well, there's something to this. And then

01:34:08.580 I started having my courses filmed for that reason. It's like, I thought, well, I might as well teach

01:34:13.380 everybody if they're interested. And that's another thing that's lovely about YouTube is the only people

01:34:18.500 that watch are people who are interested. It's like, perfect students. You don't want to watch?

01:34:23.060 Don't watch if you want to. Great. You know, and, and that's available for everyone. And

01:34:28.900 again, to hope this is dependent on my health, but we're hoping to

01:34:35.300 talk to great lectures everywhere and to invite them and say, look, you know,

01:34:41.780 what would you really like to teach? If you could teach anything you wanted,

01:34:46.340 what would you really love to teach? Because you should teach what you love.

01:34:51.940 The fact that you love it is an indication that you should teach it. And maybe even that you,

01:34:56.020 that you could teach it because you can invite people say, look, I love this. And this is why

01:34:59.860 it's like, maybe you'll love it too. Maybe you won't because not everyone doesn't love everything.

01:35:04.420 That's for sure. But so what I see the future of education, it's like the best lectures possible

01:35:11.620 about every topic conceivable, produced in the best manner possible for everyone, for nothing.

01:35:22.500 Because we can do that too. And it's going to happen. It's going to happen.

01:35:28.580 Assuming we have any sense, like, why wouldn't it happen? Why wouldn't we do that?

01:35:34.340 What a deal that is. And then, you know, there's a, there's the problem of accreditation, but

01:35:38.580 that's a solvable problem. You know, one way of solving that is to get a panel of experts,

01:35:45.780 like real experts in any domain and say, well, look, produce 5,000 multiple choice questions that

01:35:51.780 you think cover the entire territory, or sample it at least, you know, because you don't have to ask

01:35:57.300 every expert about everything. You just have to randomly sample their knowledge. Well, then you

01:36:04.500 build a system that randomly takes those questions and aggregates them into exams. And if someone wants

01:36:09.860 to be accredited, they take the exam, or maybe they take three of them. And then their score is

01:36:15.460 number correct. It's absolutely accurate. It's absolutely reliable. You know, you have a sample

01:36:22.500 of their knowledge and maybe then 20 tests like that or 50 tests like that gives you the equivalent of

01:36:29.460 a bachelor's degree, something like that. The accreditation problem is solvable and without

01:36:35.300 that much expense. Now you might say, well, multiple choice tests don't test everything. It's like,

01:36:40.820 that's true, but they can sample pretty well. And there are other, the problem of how to teach people

01:36:47.940 to write is a more complex one because it's really hard to grade an essay because you don't just write

01:36:56.100 B minus on it. You don't just write a percentage. You have to tell the person what they did wrong.

01:37:00.980 And if someone can't write, they did everything wrong. The words wrong, the phrases wrong, the

01:37:04.740 sentences wrong, the sentences aren't aggregated properly. The paragraphs don't make sense. They're

01:37:08.820 not sequenced properly. The whole essay is a mess. And you know, to, to explain why that's all wrong to

01:37:15.220 someone, it's easier just to rewrite the whole essay. It's far easier. So, but this is partly why we built this

01:37:22.820 writing program because we thought, well, maybe one of the ways to teach people how to write is to build

01:37:27.380 how to write into the tool they use to write. And so we're hoping that we'll launch that in the next three

01:37:34.100 months, something like that. The program is done for all intents and purposes. We, we, we're still figuring

01:37:41.700 out how to communicate about it. And we're not sure it will work because it's, it's a very complicated thing to

01:37:47.460 produce a writing technology. And we might've got it wrong. I mean, we tried to pay attention

01:37:52.420 to the user experience and all of that, but my sense was the best way to teach people to write

01:37:56.900 was to give them a tool that would help them write better because that can be scaled, right?

01:38:01.780 And it's, it's dirt cheap. It doesn't require someone to do the grading, which is, we can't automate

01:38:07.540 yet. You know, you talked about more mechanical translation. It doesn't work. It's not subtle

01:38:12.980 enough. It's not nuanced enough. And we can't use automated systems to grade essays. We don't

01:38:19.380 have the technology for that. And I don't know if we ever will. We might. It's possible. I doubt it

01:38:24.740 because I don't know how you could grade an essay without being human. It's so maybe if we build a

01:38:32.500 machine that perfectly mimicked being human, it could do it. But, and maybe it's a solvable technical

01:38:37.140 problem, but I doubt it. We'll see. Machines are getting smart quick.

01:38:46.020 So I hope the future of education, the higher education, it's like experts who love their material

01:38:52.260 share their love with everyone for nothing. And I would make a business out of it for nothing means

01:38:57.300 it would still run on a profit basis because I think that's the most efficient way of doing this.

01:39:01.540 But fundamentally, the cost would be like one 100th of a standard university education.

01:39:08.820 So now that doesn't solve the problem of the

01:39:12.980 collegial experience of university and the maturation that occurs when you leave your group

01:39:21.220 of friends and make new friends and the transformation of personality that moving

01:39:25.460 enables and finding a new group of people to associate with and the introduction to the world

01:39:31.540 of culture, you know. But I don't know how to port that online. And that might be the most important

01:39:39.540 part of the university experience. But on the merely educational front, well, all this technology beckons.

01:39:47.380 I wanted to ask if you're going to write your next book, and if you are, could you tell us what it will be about?

01:39:58.980 Yes, and then I should stop because I'm starting to get tired and I'm not going to be able to provide

01:40:03.220 any intelligent answers soon. But I'll answer that question and then we should stop. I am working on a new book.

01:40:09.540 It's tentatively titled, We Who Wrestle with God. And I took that title from the biblical lectures,

01:40:16.980 because I discovered, it's not that other people didn't know this, that the word Israel

01:40:25.220 meant we who wrestle with God. And that's embedded in the narrative of Jacob wrestling with God or

01:40:32.180 wrestling with an angel. It's a very strange story for a rational person. It's like, what the hell is going

01:40:37.860 on here? This Jacob is wrestling with God? Or an angel? It's not exactly clear in the story.

01:40:44.100 What does that mean? And then his leg basically gets broken or dislocated at least. It's like,

01:40:50.580 well, why would God do that? It's like, well,

01:40:55.380 all the atheists that are watching my biblical lectures, they're wrestling with God, more than

01:41:00.740 religious people usually. They're more obsessed with the problem. We all wrestle with God. It doesn't

01:41:07.300 matter if you're a believer or an unbeliever. It doesn't matter at all. And you think that,

01:41:14.180 you know, wrestling with God won't break your leg. It's like, you're bloody lucky if that's all it does.

01:41:22.100 So that's us, man, we who wrestle with God. So this book is about what that means. And it's also about

01:41:27.940 what it means if we don't know that that's what we're doing. And one thing I'm very concerned with

01:41:34.020 is the sacralization of politics. So there's this comment by Christ that we should render unto God,

01:41:44.340 what is God, and unto Caesar, what is Caesar's. And I believe that's true psychologically as well as

01:41:49.220 politically. And the consequence of not doing that isn't that God disappears and we all become

01:41:56.340 proper thinking rationalists. The consequence is that all sorts of things that should be secular

01:42:01.780 and profane get inflated with religious significance. And then we can't even talk.

01:42:09.540 You know, because someone who has a different political opinion than you isn't merely on the

01:42:14.500 other side of a rational argument about how to progress towards some agreed upon future. They're,

01:42:20.660 they're like possessed by the spirit of malevolence itself, as far as you're concerned, because you

01:42:25.460 haven't got your categories straight. And so it's about that too. It's like there's a religious domain.

01:42:36.020 I don't care if you're a believer or an unbeliever, that statement is true. And if you don't think it's

01:42:41.940 true, then you describe, define, decide how you would describe the experience of awe.

01:42:48.100 Well, that's not religious. It's all right. Use whatever word you want, but it's going to come

01:42:53.060 to mean religious. So it doesn't matter, because the central characteristic of the phenomenon of awe

01:43:02.580 is what we call religious. It's part of what beauty points us to, let's say. So you can change the

01:43:09.540 surface terminology, but it's not going to affect the underlying reality. Well, it's going to affect

01:43:15.300 reality and that we'll get confused, but the issues aren't going to go away. And part of what's

01:43:21.860 happening in the West right now, and it's not good, it's really dangerous, is that we're having religious

01:43:27.460 discussions disguised as political discussions. That's not good. It's really not good. It's really

01:43:37.220 dangerous. And we have to be very careful. And it's going to get worse, I think, before it's going to get worse for a while.

01:43:46.180 So brace yourselves. Thank you very much for this conversation. I really appreciate it.

01:43:52.340 It was a profound conversation. Well, thank you for enlightening me as to the extent of this

01:43:59.460 translation enterprise. I really appreciate that. I really appreciate the fact that you brought up

01:44:05.460 and are attending to precision and and your description of the care that's being taken. I

01:44:11.540 really appreciate hearing about the effects that you've observed and the discussion we had about

01:44:16.980 that. I'm thrilled beyond belief that this is happening. I can't believe it. It's unbelievably

01:44:24.260 remarkable. And hopefully we're treading a good path. And if we're careful, all sorts of good things will

01:44:30.100 happen. And I'm thrilled that I can, you know, that I'm be able to communicate with people in Russia

01:44:36.020 and all these other countries. It's such a privilege. It's such a privilege. It's so remarkable. So

01:44:42.980 thank you for the intelligent questions.

01:44:49.700 Thank you very much. Goodbye. I think we will continue our conversation if you have time.

01:44:56.020 We have a lot of questions, a lot of questions from different channels.

01:45:01.300 People really want to talk to you, want us to ask you these questions. And I'm sure it will be just

01:45:06.420 as fascinating as this conversation. Let's definitely, definitely, let's do that. Collect the questions,

01:45:19.220 figure out which ones you think are most relevant. Absolutely, let's do that.

01:45:25.220 Thank you very much, Jordan. Goodbye.

01:45:30.740 Bye bye.

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - January 13, 2022

217. Talking with Russians ｜ Mikhail Avdeev

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