The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 491. Symbolic Patterns： Memes, Archetypes, Dragons, Genes ｜ Dr. Richard Dawkins & Alex O’Connor

00:00:00.580 I had the opportunity today to engage in a long-awaited discussion, Dr. Richard Dawkins and Alex O'Connor,

00:00:08.320 and we took the opportunity to explore things we agree about and things we disagree about in a manner that I think was very productive.

00:00:17.480 Join us for that.

00:00:20.840 You said that you were a cultural Christian, but what did you mean by that?

00:00:24.840 Virtually nothing. Dr. Peterson, you're drunk on symbols.

00:00:27.800 What I care about is the truth value. I see no truth value in the claims of Christianity, the virgin birth, the resurrection. 0.59

00:00:35.040 Do you believe in any of those?

00:00:36.380 From a metaphorical perspective, any culture that doesn't hold the image of the woman and infant sacred dies.

00:00:44.560 Well, let's go back to what you said earlier, which I was very interested in.

00:00:47.560 You implied there's no difference between whether the text is divinely inspired or whether it evolved.

00:00:52.980 Well, it's the same thing if it's fundamentally reflective of the logos or order. And I think it is.

00:00:59.860 I think that Jordan prioritizes myth and I prioritize fact. I'm not interested in dragons. I'm interested in reality.

00:01:07.620 But my sense is that those two pathways have to unify. Now, it's not like I know how to rectify that.

00:01:13.940 Do you think that that is something that is worth exploring further?

00:01:16.960 That's very interesting.

00:01:18.520 Yes.

00:01:18.900 A meme is a virus of the mind.

00:01:39.700 So it's something that spreads because it spreads because it spreads. It's something that spreads by imitation.

00:01:46.400 As I understand it, an archetype is quite different from that because an archetype is something which all humans have as a virtue of being human, something that's built in.

00:01:55.280 So it's not something that spreads as an epidemic. It's something that we all have anyway.

00:02:00.220 And I suppose that it could turn into a meme, but I would think it would be mudding the waters to even say that there's something very much in common between an archetype and a meme.

00:02:11.720 Memes are not embedded into the psychology of people.

00:02:14.820 No, they arise.

00:02:16.320 They're things like the backwards baseball hat, which is not an archetype.

00:02:20.580 I mean, it's something that becomes fashionable and spreads as an epidemic around the population, which is very different from an archetype, which is sort of built in.

00:02:31.560 Yes.

00:02:31.860 I've heard you in the past, Dr. Peterson, say that a meme is very similar, if not almost identical to an archetype, almost as if you kept pushing the idea of what a meme is.

00:02:40.220 You might end up with an archetype.

00:02:41.580 Well, I think maybe the appropriate way of tying the two ideas together, given what Dr. Dawkins just said, is to notice the fact that something spreads because it catches, right?

00:02:56.720 And so things catch because they have an emotional resonance, and so they attract people's interest.

00:03:03.940 And so they attract them in an exploratory manner.

00:03:06.820 That would be one way of thinking about it.

00:03:08.120 That would be attraction on the positive emotion side, or they attract them on the negative emotion side.

00:03:13.900 And so that would loop the idea of the catchiness of an idea, a meme, let's say, with the more underlying motivational structures.

00:03:22.380 And as the idea is more related to the action of underlying biological motivational structures, it becomes more and more expression of something that's instinctual and archetypal.

00:03:33.020 Like Jung defined an archetype essentially as something like the manifestation of an instinct in image and then also in behavior.

00:03:42.880 So the deepest level is something like the instinct, and that would be motivational or emotional drive.

00:03:48.340 And then there's a manifestation of that in imagination and behavior, and it's more culturally constructed there.

00:03:54.340 And you could also imagine that there are depths of these ideas.

00:03:58.680 The baseball hat idea, for example, that would be something that's manifesting itself at a fairly shallow level.

00:04:04.760 But there's a reason that the backwards baseball hat caught on.

00:04:09.000 You know, it speaks of the moment for whatever reason.

00:04:12.120 And it's linked to the biology through the fact that it captures interest for some reason.

00:04:18.620 So perhaps something like the archetype being a more fundamental psychological concept that memes can then play upon.

00:04:26.600 The backwards cat catches on.

00:04:28.540 Well, that seems implausible to me.

00:04:30.460 But the idea that the archetype could be a reason why some memes spread, that seems to me to be plausible, if you will, even archetypes at all.

00:04:38.680 But you prefer to think of memes, or you do think of memes as, you refer to them as a virus.

00:04:43.520 Yes, it's the spreadability, which is a salient point.

00:04:47.820 And if chiming in with an archetype is a reason why they might spread, then I could go with that.

00:04:55.480 Yeah, and presumably archetypes don't act in the same way.

00:04:58.260 They don't spread through cultures.

00:05:00.300 They don't sort of grow up and die in individual generations.

00:05:03.820 They're much more foundational than that.

00:05:06.460 I think you have to think about it hierarchically.

00:05:10.360 You know, there's something in the structure that would make itself manifest as an archetype.

00:05:17.320 There's something that's foundational and deep that wouldn't change any faster in a sense than the species itself changes.

00:05:25.480 But then there would be efflorescences of that idea that would be less permanent as they were more attuned to the specifics of the time.

00:05:35.980 So, and that's not saying anything different, really, than saying that there are ideas that make themselves manifest at different levels of depth, which is also a complex thing.

00:05:46.920 Like, it's not that easy to specify what makes an idea deep, which makes it more archetypal, and what makes it transient and trivial.

00:05:55.260 There's a relationship between such ideas.

00:05:57.760 There's no idea so trivial that it doesn't touch the depths because no one would care about it.

00:06:02.480 Right?

00:06:02.600 So, but archetypal ideas do have that capacity to spread virally and to rise and fall.

00:06:10.980 You see that, I think you see that in the history of religious ideas.

00:06:15.160 You know, that religious ideas are very, can be very catching because otherwise they wouldn't spread.

00:06:20.940 Now, they do, there's variation in them like there is in languages, but they also, there's also something that's core that makes them identifiable, let's say, as religious ideas rather than as any other sort of idea.

00:06:33.820 I mean, one of the things I was really interested about, I sent you an email at one time asking you if you had read Richa Eliade, especially The Sacred and the Profane.

00:06:42.840 But he also has a three-book series called A History of Religious Ideas, and I really like A History of Religious Ideas.

00:06:48.680 It's a great book, and one of the things it does is analyze a particular widespread religious motif, which is the battle between the gods in heaven.

00:06:59.840 You see this idea in many, many cultures, and each god is the expression of a mode of perception or a mode of being.

00:07:07.500 And what you see happening in multitude of cultures is that there are many, many ways of seeing the world and acting in it that are metamorphosed into something divine.

00:07:20.400 And as cultures mingle and mix, their gods compete in the space of the imagination, and something like a hierarchy forms.

00:07:30.160 That's the emergence of something like monotheism.

00:07:32.380 So, we've been talking a little bit about the concept of a meme.

00:07:37.140 I think it would be strange to be suspicious of the idea that memes are a thing that do exist and transmit, but there might be more room for suspicion about this concept of the archetype.

00:07:45.680 I was wondering, Professor Dawkins, what you think about the concept of archetypes in general.

00:07:48.780 Well, for example, if we take the idea of the gods competing with each other, that, I take it, is a proper archetype because it's present in all cultures.

00:07:59.760 I presume you mean something that's built in genetically, ultimately, I suppose, that something about our brains makes different cultures invent the same kinds of religious symbols.

00:08:13.720 Things like a battle between gods is one.

00:08:17.240 That's one.

00:08:18.560 And there might be others.

00:08:20.820 It's not that convincing.

00:08:21.900 I mean, it's such an obvious thing because we have human battles, and therefore, an idea of battles between gods would not be that implausible.

00:08:27.460 So, it doesn't strike me as a very penetrating observation.

00:08:32.060 Well, I think the thing that's interesting about it, the thing that's been interesting to me about it, is to start to understand the nature of the universal themes and how they're expressed in stories.

00:08:42.600 I mean, one of the things I wanted to explore with you, because I think this is an idea that's at the core of the cultural conflict, is the postmodern types seem to have stumbled onto something which I actually think is true.

00:08:54.280 And they're not the only discipline that's come to this realization because you can see it emerging in neuroscience and in AI and in robotics as well.

00:09:05.040 That we see the world of facts through something that when described as a story, because we have to prioritize our perceptions and we have to prioritize facts.

00:09:15.480 And as far as I can tell, a story is a verbal account of how our perceptions and the facts that we encounter are prioritized.

00:09:23.040 So, for example, when you go see a movie, the movie has a hero, and what the writers do is they show you how the hero prioritizes his perceptions, what he attends to and how he acts, and you derive from that the story of his life and his ethic.

00:09:38.240 And the idea that we have to organize our perceptions in priority, and that the description of that organization is a story, that's a very revolutionary idea.

00:09:52.580 And I think the postmodernists got that right.

00:09:54.940 And I think that's why we have a culture war going on, at least in part, is because the idea that we see the world through a story,

00:10:02.160 or that a story is a description of the structure through which we see the world, I think that's accurate.

00:10:07.060 Because we have to prioritize our perceptions.

00:10:09.580 So, preventative organs.

00:10:10.300 And that's a tricky problem.

00:10:11.520 Well, I would prioritize my perceptions like this.

00:10:15.100 The facts that I care about are the facts that are true and have evidence going for them.

00:10:21.080 And I'm not that interested in symbols.

00:10:23.440 I think, Dr. Peterson, you're drunk on symbols.

00:10:26.760 Yes, you mentioned.

00:10:27.820 I've heard that comment, yeah.

00:10:30.060 Yes.

00:10:30.520 I mean, for example, I counted up in your book, We Who Wrestle With God, the number of references to Cain.

00:10:42.020 There are 356 references to Cain in the book and 20 references to the descendants of Cain.

00:10:49.980 You're obsessed with Cain because Cain is symbolic of evil.

00:10:55.500 All the evil in the world, you more or less blame Cain for.

00:11:01.500 And this is, Cain, I mean, you don't believe Cain actually existed, I presume.

00:11:09.920 Well, I think of Cain as, well.

00:11:12.800 Do you believe Cain existed?

00:11:15.000 I think the pattern that Cain represents is an eternal pattern.

00:11:20.020 And so it's a higher level of existence.

00:11:22.280 That's different.

00:11:22.980 I realize that.

00:11:24.360 But there are Cain types who exist.

00:11:26.100 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:11:26.920 There are Cain types.

00:11:27.760 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:28.260 But Cain himself, I mean, you give the game away where you say in your book, Cain and Abel were the first humans to be born in the natural way.

00:11:36.560 Now, that betrays you as it were pretending you think they really existed.

00:11:42.520 Because you wouldn't have said they were born in a natural way unless you were muddling up facts with symbols there.

00:11:49.960 Because you don't think that Cain and Abel existed.

00:11:52.720 Well, I don't.

00:11:53.600 What do I think about Cain and Abel?

00:11:55.200 I said, I think the pattern that they represent always exists.

00:12:00.780 Always exists.

00:12:01.360 You understand that that's a different thing.

00:12:02.860 It's quite a different matter, a pattern that they represent, the conflict between brothers, the rivalry between brothers.

00:12:09.300 This is a fundamental pattern, which, yes, it's something that's there.

00:12:13.780 But I care about facts.

00:12:16.140 I mean, did they exist or did they not exist?

00:12:18.680 Well, I can imagine a situation where when the story was originated that it referred to two actual brothers.

00:12:25.880 But as the stories propagate across time, as they mutate, as they adapt, let's say, to the structure of human memory, they deepen and they become broader.

00:12:37.120 And so then they become emblematic not only of the pattern of conflict that might characterize the original two brothers that the story was about, but about the conflict between brothers as such and then the more fundamental levels of conflict that exist within human beings, which is what you see in more sophisticated literature.

00:12:55.440 It's like the biblical accounts speak of fact in a factual manner upon occasion, but the biblical accounts also speak poetically and metaphorically and allegorically.

00:13:05.880 And people who are sophisticated in biblical analysis have known this for centuries.

00:13:10.320 The biblical literists generally suffer from the problem that they don't even know what it means to be literalist.

00:13:16.640 There's lots of unsophisticated ways of approaching a text.

00:13:19.800 Okay, let's see what Professor Dawkins thinks about that.

00:13:21.400 Well, I suppose I'm a literalist.

00:13:24.100 I mean, and you give the game away when you say Cain and Abel were the first humans to be born in a natural way.

00:13:30.740 Well, I'm speaking allegorically there within the confines of the text.

00:13:34.120 I mean, what I meant by that was that the way the story lays itself out is that Adam and Eve are created by God.

00:13:40.900 And so they're not emblematic of the pattern of human beings that exist in fallen history within the confines of the text.

00:13:51.400 The first two people who are genuine, who aren't creations of the divine, are Cain and Abel.

00:13:56.740 And so for me, they're emblematic of the patterns of conflict that rip people apart in the world of history, in the world of normal history.

00:14:06.260 Professor Dawkins, I know you take particular umbrage with that statement that Cain and Abel were the first normally born human beings.

00:14:14.840 But I think if I understand Dr. Peterson correctly, there are things that can be sort of true within a story.

00:14:20.100 It's true that Sherlock Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street.

00:14:23.500 And as far as I understand, that's maybe what you mean by the truth in the matter of Cain and Abel being the first naturally born human.

00:14:31.600 It's internal to the story.

00:14:33.080 Well, in the context of this story, they're the first two spirits or patterns you could think of, patterns of perception and action.

00:14:39.500 Yes.

00:14:39.980 That characterize human existence in the fallen world, right?

00:14:44.980 So they're emblematic of what happens in history outside of the whatever is meant by the pre-existent paradise.

00:14:51.180 At the same time, you must know, I know this comes up all of the time when somebody says, but did Cain and Abel really exist?

00:14:57.660 And I know that you want to say that the story which they...

00:15:01.460 I think it's a silly question.

00:15:03.600 I think it's like asking whether Raskolnikov existed in Crime and Punishment.

00:15:07.740 Like it's not a trivial question because you can answer yes and you can answer no.

00:15:13.160 You can say, well, there was no such specific person as Raskolnikov.

00:15:16.740 But you, it's not a helpful question because the reason that Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is a masterpiece is because Raskolnikov was everywhere in Russia when Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment.

00:15:30.780 And so Raskolnikov is hyper real, not real.

00:15:34.080 But to be clear, is that how you feel about Cain and Abel?

00:15:37.060 That is to say, an identifiable...

00:15:39.380 I think they're hyper real.

00:15:40.600 ...homo sapiens called Cain who murders his brother.

00:15:44.060 In a sense, it's irrelevant to me because even if they were real, like we don't know anything about them as historical figures.

00:15:51.320 Well, of course they weren't real.

00:15:52.040 Even if they weren't real.

00:15:53.200 Of course they weren't real.

00:15:53.980 Well, like I said, it could have been the case that when the story originated, way back when it originated,

00:16:00.460 that the first people that were described by the first person who generated the seeds of the Cain and Abel story were referring to actual people.

00:16:08.660 But it doesn't matter because the text is being compressed and modified over a vast span of time.

00:16:15.220 And it's accreted all sorts of meanings that certainly weren't part and parcel of whatever the original story was.

00:16:20.100 Let's take the point Alex was certainly making.

00:16:23.160 Within the confines of the story, Dostoevsky was a great writer.

00:16:27.620 What makes you think the writers of Genesis were a great writer?

00:16:30.500 I mean, who were they?

00:16:31.440 We know nothing about them.

00:16:32.680 Well, I think they were great writers because I think I understand the patterning of the stories and what it points to.

00:16:41.360 I think the idea, for example, that Cain and Abel are emblematic of two opposed patterns of adaptation to the world is brilliant.

00:16:52.980 It's almost brilliant beyond imagining, especially because the story is so insanely compressed.

00:16:58.560 And it's certainly evident to me as a clinician that the patterns that are portrayed in the story of Cain and Abel play themselves out in the real world continually and terribly, terribly.

00:17:10.220 You think the author of that story in Genesis was a literary genius?

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00:18:22.840 I think that there's a spirit of literary genius at work across millennia crafting that story so that it has almost an infinite depth.

00:18:37.820 How that relates to the original author or sequential authors, I don't know, because it's lost in the seeds of time.

00:18:44.680 It's lost in history.

00:18:46.860 So the story evolved, you're saying the story...

00:18:49.840 Like a meme.

00:18:50.680 Yes, well that's interesting.

00:18:52.160 It evolved to match the contours of the human memory.

00:18:56.200 That's exactly it, is that these stories, that's part of their archetypal nature.

00:18:59.740 So they have an emotional and motivational expression, but as they propagate across time, they also evolve so they're maximally memorable.

00:19:08.200 And they're maximally memorable for a biological reason.

00:19:11.020 Well, that's very interesting.

00:19:12.380 If they really did evolve over time, if you could actually trace successive manuscripts, you can't do that.

00:19:18.700 I mean, there's presumably a couple of Hebrew manuscripts and a Greek one.

00:19:24.980 And what do you mean when you say it evolved?

00:19:26.940 Well, I would say you can see that in the compilation of the biblical texts, because one of the things that you see evolve...

00:19:34.240 You know, and you criticized the biblical texts at one point.

00:19:37.520 Correct me if I've got this wrong, because I don't want to get this wrong.

00:19:39.960 You said that there isn't anything in the biblical text that constitutes, let's say, a significant original discovery, which is something that you'd expect if it was of divine providence, let's say.

00:19:51.420 Divine providence.

00:19:52.860 And so, and I think, you know, I was thinking about that objection, and I think that one of the discoveries that the text lays bare in an insanely brilliant manner is that the foundation of the community is sacrifice.

00:20:06.580 That that's an appropriate conceptualization.

00:20:08.580 And you can see the concept of sacrifice evolve across the biblical texts as they're sequenced chronologically in the overall story that makes up the biblical text.

00:20:21.720 The idea of sacrifice becomes more and more sophisticated, it's more and more elaborated, it's more and more specified, it's more and more embodied.

00:20:30.000 There's an obvious progression in ideas.

00:20:32.440 The progression, where do you see that progression? In successive manuscripts?

00:20:37.300 In the successive stories as the story, as the text progresses. The way a novel progresses.

00:20:43.600 So something like sacrifice in the Old Testament?

00:20:45.640 Sacrifice in the Old Testament?

00:20:46.460 No, through the entire, through, well, the New Testament text is a sacrificial, it's a sacrificial story as well. The passion story is a story of sacrifice.

00:20:53.700 It is indeed.

00:20:54.080 And the sacrificial motif recurs continually through the biblical text, and it's elaborated constantly.

00:20:59.920 Okay, so the criticism is, the Bible as a text gives us nothing to indicate that it has divine origin.

00:21:07.940 There's nothing that we can read in it where we think there's no way this idea could have evolved were it not divinely put into this text.

00:21:15.300 That's a criticism that perhaps Professor Dawkins made in the past.

00:21:17.920 Well, I think it's reflective of some order that's so profound and implicit that there isn't a better way of describing it than divine.

00:21:28.580 But I don't really care if we look at that from the bottom up, like, as a biological phenomenon, or as from the top down.

00:21:35.880 I don't think it makes any difference.

00:21:37.480 It doesn't make a difference whether it was divinely inspired or whether it evolved within human...

00:21:42.000 I don't think fundamentally...

00:21:43.160 Look, if...

00:21:43.860 Okay, so let me ask you this.

00:21:45.700 Like, I think that at bottom, truth is unified.

00:21:49.440 And what that's going to mean eventually is that the world of value and the world of fact coincide in some manner that we don't yet understand.

00:21:57.220 And I think that that union, the fact of that union, and the fact of that union is equivalent to what's being described as divine order across millennia.

00:22:08.480 There's no difference.

00:22:09.280 Now, and here's...

00:22:10.700 This is a tricky business because you either believe that the world of truth is unified in the final analysis, or you don't.

00:22:17.860 Those are the options.

00:22:18.840 And if it's not unified, then it's...

00:22:21.280 There's a disunity.

00:22:22.720 There's a contradiction between value and fact.

00:22:25.180 Or there's a contradiction...

00:22:26.820 Well, there's a contradiction between different sets of values, and they can't be brought into unity.

00:22:31.080 I don't believe that.

00:22:32.140 Well, let's go back to what you said earlier, which I was very interested in.

00:22:35.100 And you implied there's no difference between whether the text is divinely inspired or whether it evolved in progression during a series of manuscripts, presumably.

00:22:48.480 Now, I think that's genuinely interesting, but it's a huge difference.

00:22:51.660 It's not the same thing.

00:22:52.840 I mean, either it was divinely inspired or it wasn't.

00:22:55.300 Well, it's the same thing if it's fundamentally reflective of the...

00:22:59.220 An accurately reflective of the implicit logos or order.

00:23:03.760 And I think it is.

00:23:05.100 Like, let me explain that a moment.

00:23:07.680 Like, it took me a long time to understand the concept of sacrifice in the biblical text.

00:23:12.560 Because it seems so anachronistic and so primitive, you know, and primitive and not understandable.

00:23:18.860 What are these people doing offering, you know, choice cuts of meat to a god that lives in the sky?

00:23:25.660 Something disgusting about it.

00:23:26.960 Well, it's very easy to satirize.

00:23:29.160 But when you start to understand that perception itself is sacrificial in its nature, and you start to understand that there's no difference between work and sacrifice, that they're the same thing, and you understand that community is predicated on sacrifice, then the emphasis in the text on sacrifice starts to become something quite marked and remarkable.

00:23:50.940 Especially because it's implicit, it isn't obvious at all that the authors of the texts and the editors who sequenced them actually understood what it was that they were highlighting.

00:24:01.240 So, with regards to the community, why is the community predicated on sacrifice?

00:24:06.340 Because it's not about you, the community.

00:24:09.900 Every step you take towards the communitarian means that you sacrifice something that's local to what you want here and now, right now.

00:24:18.020 You have to give something up.

00:24:19.380 You're wandering on to something else now, which is something quite different.

00:24:24.860 The notion of sacrifice, as you say, it goes right through the Old Testament and the New Testament.

00:24:29.580 The sacrifice of Isaac, Ishmael, by Abraham, and the sacrifice of Jesus is the same idea.

00:24:38.740 I think it's a very unpleasant idea, by the way.

00:24:42.340 But what are you actually saying?

00:24:44.740 Are you saying that Abraham did or did not sacrifice Isaac? 0.68

00:24:49.740 Are you saying that Jesus really was, Jesus really did die for our sins?

00:24:54.760 I mean, do you believe that?

00:24:56.640 There are.

00:24:57.300 Do you believe that as a fact, that Jesus died for our sins?

00:25:00.720 There are elements of the texts that I don't claim to understand.

00:25:07.500 What my experience has been that the more deeply I look into these texts, the more I learned.

00:25:13.740 That doesn't mean that I can proclaim full knowledge of what the texts proclaim.

00:25:20.100 But I don't think, and I'm not trying to play a trick here, you know, I watched an interview that you did recently where you were talking, I think it was with Pierce Morgan, yeah, about the complexities of trying to understand this strange realm of quantum phenomena, right?

00:25:36.800 And we have a trouble with quantum phenomena because at the micro level, things don't act like things act at the macro level.

00:25:43.900 So they escape our intuitions.

00:25:45.880 And one of the things you said was that, although it's perhaps even impossible for creatures embodied like us to get a grip on quantum phenomena, the strange wave-particle duality, for example, we have ample evidence that it works and stellarly.

00:26:02.880 And I would say exactly the same thing about the biblical texts.

00:26:05.500 Because they run into a mystery, like there's a horizon of mystery, which I do not claim to penetrate.

00:26:11.800 But insofar as I've been able to understand the texts, every time I make an improvement in understanding, it reveals something to me that's just, like, shattering.

00:26:21.380 Quantum physics is deeply mysterious, and you're saying that biblical texts are deeply mysterious.

00:26:27.000 The difference is quantum physics, the predictions you derive from quantum physics, are fulfilled to the umpteenth decimal place.

00:26:36.400 The umpteenth decimal place, I mean, I think it was Richard Feynman says, equivalent to predicting the width of North America to the nearest hair's breadth.

00:26:44.180 And that's impressive.

00:26:46.040 No doubt.

00:26:46.900 The mystery there, as it were, gains its credentials by its predictions.

00:26:51.880 The mysteries of the Bible don't have any credentials at all, as far as I can make out.

00:26:55.480 Well, I guess the credentials that I would put...

00:26:58.940 You made a statement a couple of months ago that I found very interesting.

00:27:04.560 And I don't claim to understand it, and I'm not trying to put you on the spot with it.

00:27:10.900 You said that you were a cultural Christian.

00:27:13.520 Okay, and so that raised a number of questions in my mind.

00:27:16.440 You know, and the first question was...

00:27:18.600 You are changing the subject.

00:27:20.000 No, I'm not.

00:27:21.260 No, I don't think so.

00:27:22.340 I may be leaping outside of the topic a bit to get back to it.

00:27:25.680 We can do cultural Christianity, but I think, because I have a list of questions that you wanted to ask, and that is one of them.

00:27:30.280 But I think Professor Dawkins did ask you...

00:27:31.500 You're referring to the predictive power and to the utility of the stories.

00:27:35.260 Okay, so that's actually what I was trying to say.

00:27:36.880 Okay, fine.

00:27:37.420 Go ahead.

00:27:37.560 Okay, so that was the point.

00:27:38.920 Well, it seemed to me that your proclamation that you were a cultural Christian was a recognition and a statement that you had found something in the culture that had been derived from Christianity that you had an affinity with.

00:27:55.440 And that there's some reason for that.

00:27:57.240 And one of the things I wanted to ask you is, well, what do you think that Christianity got right that allows you to make a statement like that? 0.54

00:28:05.800 I mean, I know that there's differences, perhaps, in what we both think about the ultimate veracity of the biblical stories.

00:28:13.500 Maybe there isn't differences.

00:28:14.800 Like, it would take a lot of conversations to figure this out, but what did you mean by that?

00:28:19.280 Like, what do you think that Christianity got right that would enable you to make a statement like that? 0.90

00:28:23.500 Virtually nothing.

00:28:24.880 I meant by that no more than that I'm brought up in a Christian culture.

00:28:31.800 I went to Christian schools.

00:28:33.480 I, therefore, know my way around the Bible.

00:28:35.400 I know my way around the Book of Common Prayer.

00:28:38.300 I know the hymns.

00:28:40.520 That's all.

00:28:41.500 I don't value Christianity as a truth system at all. 0.99

00:28:46.080 Okay, so let me ask you about that, because maybe that's true, and perhaps it's not.

00:28:51.820 But, so, the first question is, like, do you think that there are any marked differences between cultural traditions that would enable you to rank order them in terms of their ethical validity?

00:29:03.440 Yes, I do.

00:29:04.080 Okay, so, for example, we could contrast mainstream UK Christianity with Islamic fundamentals.

00:29:10.700 Okay, so there's a hierarchy.

00:29:12.120 There is a hierarchy.

00:29:13.200 A hierarchy that points to what? 0.99

00:29:14.800 Well, in the case of Islam, I dislike any religion which punishes apostasy with death, that throws gay people off high buildings, that practices clitoridectomy. 1.00

00:29:29.240 That seems to me to place Islam on a lower level than Christianity, but that's not to say anything very positive about Christianity. 0.97

00:29:37.060 Well, it might be to say something positive about Christianity. 0.51

00:29:40.540 Like, I think that question is open, because you might ask yourself, what did Christianity get right that led it away from those particular presumptions and towards something that you regard as more ethically appropriate?

00:29:52.920 Like, this isn't a trivial question.

00:29:54.060 It's a very modest claim, and there's not very much, I mean, to be better than a religion that throws gay people off high buildings is not really a very virtuous achievement. 1.00

00:30:06.820 I don't know.

00:30:07.680 I don't know if that's true, because if you look at the barbarism that characterizes the human past, you might think that any progression whatsoever towards something approximating mercy and tolerance is nothing short of a bloody miracle.

00:30:20.900 Like, people are pretty, pretty ruthless, and so are our chimpanzee cousins.

00:30:26.120 Yes, they are.

00:30:26.700 Right, so we move forward into the light with great difficulty, and the fact that we can take that for granted now, and that it seems self-evident and deserving of faint praise, it's not so clear to me that that's a reasonable proposition.

00:30:41.060 Okay, let's grant the faint praise, but that has nothing to do with the truth value, and what I care about is the truth value.

00:30:48.120 Do I see no truth value in the claims of Christianity, the virgin birth, the resurrection, the miracles?

00:30:54.920 Do you believe in any of those?

00:30:57.880 Do you believe Jesus was born a virgin?

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00:31:29.520 As I said before, there are elements of the text that I don't feel qualified to comment on.

00:31:38.480 My experience has been that the more I—like, I know from a metaphorical perspective and from a mythic perspective what the story of the virgin birth means, and I accept that.

00:31:47.980 But I know, for example, that any culture that doesn't hold the image of the woman and infant sacred dies.

00:31:56.580 Do you mean—

00:31:56.940 And I don't know how that needs to be expressed in a form that—

00:31:59.580 Is it true, though?

00:32:00.100 Do you mean that you don't know?

00:32:00.840 Well, let me ask you about that, because truth—this is something I talked with Sam Harris about, too.

00:32:06.960 Truth, as we know, is a tricky business.

00:32:08.760 Do you think there are differences in the truth claims between different writers of fiction?

00:32:15.100 Like, is Dostoevsky more profound than—

00:32:17.520 Well, I wouldn't call fiction truth claims anyway.

00:32:20.800 I mean, he's a—

00:32:21.680 Then on what grounds do we rank order the fiction in terms of quality?

00:32:26.360 Like, Dostoevsky is a profound purveyor of fiction on the philosophical front.

00:32:31.560 Unbelievably deep and profound.

00:32:33.620 There's something true about what he's writing about.

00:32:36.120 It's nothing to do with the truth that science is concerned with.

00:32:40.920 The truth of science is the truth that gets us to the moon.

00:32:43.720 I mean, this has nothing to do with whether one writer of fiction has a sort of insight into human nature.

00:32:51.420 That goes without saying.

00:32:52.780 I accept that.

00:32:53.580 Okay, so how do we deal with the notion that on the purely factual side,

00:32:57.980 how do we deal with the idea—let's take the—you talked about clitoridectomy.

00:33:02.880 Let's talk about the oppression of women. 1.00

00:33:04.720 Yes.

00:33:05.100 We make a scientific case that that's inappropriate?

00:33:08.040 Or is it a case that we're making on some other grounds?

00:33:10.700 Like, I see in the Judeo-Christian tradition, one of the earliest pronouncements is that

00:33:14.800 both men and women carry the image of God.

00:33:18.040 Both.

00:33:19.020 And that sets a certain tone to everything that follows.

00:33:23.220 And it is a remarkable proclamation, given its radical age,

00:33:28.160 that both men and women carry the image of God

00:33:31.800 and are to be treated as something with intrinsic value outside of the domain of power and politics.

00:33:37.320 And it isn't obvious to me, having thought about this a lot,

00:33:41.780 how we deal with that in the pure realm of fact.

00:33:44.500 Because one of the facts is, if I can oppress you, why the hell shouldn't I?

00:33:49.020 Yeah, my job is to keep things on track here.

00:33:50.500 I think there are a number of questions which Professor Dawkins has asked quite directly

00:33:54.040 that we still haven't really heard an answer.

00:33:55.820 Okay, okay.

00:33:57.140 When Professor Dawkins is asking about the virgin birth,

00:33:59.200 you started talking about metaphor, you started talking about myth.

00:34:01.880 I think anybody listening to this conversation will understand

00:34:04.200 that maybe a society that doesn't believe in the virgin birth won't work.

00:34:08.900 Maybe that's the predictive power that you're talking about.

00:34:11.220 But I think you must understand that when Professor Dawkins is asking you,

00:34:15.820 do you believe that Jesus was born of a virgin?

00:34:17.860 He means something like a biological fact.

00:34:19.720 And by the way, saying I don't know, or saying I'm not qualified to comment,

00:34:24.700 is an answer to that question.

00:34:26.160 But is that your answer, that you don't know?

00:34:28.160 I said earlier, and I would hold to this,

00:34:30.820 is that there are elements of the text that I don't know how to,

00:34:35.880 that I'm incapable of fully accounting for.

00:34:39.000 I can't account for what the fundamental reality and significance

00:34:44.640 of the notion of the resurrection is.

00:34:46.420 My knowledge just ends.

00:34:47.860 I know that whatever happened, whatever happened as a consequence of the origination

00:34:54.060 and the promotion of the Christian story was powerful enough to bring Rome to its knees

00:34:57.940 and demolish the pagan enterprise.

00:35:00.320 So there's some power in that story that's remarkable.

00:35:03.620 Let's stick to the virgin birth.

00:35:05.160 Well, the virgin birth results from a mistranslation of Isaiah.

00:35:09.800 You know that.

00:35:11.760 Like these sorts of questions, what would you say?

00:35:17.340 They don't strike me as, they're not getting to the point.

00:35:22.480 I know that.

00:35:23.140 The story has a purpose.

00:35:23.860 Well, look, I understand that there's perfect reasons to debate this.

00:35:28.580 I know that.

00:35:29.440 And I know that your question is more than valid.

00:35:32.140 But it's beside the issue as far as I'm concerned.

00:35:35.000 And it's partly because, well, when we started this conversation,

00:35:39.820 I said, for example, that it appears to be the case that a description of the structure

00:35:45.380 through which we see the world is a story.

00:35:47.220 We see the world through a story.

00:35:50.960 And so that's a remarkable thing.

00:35:53.160 That's a remarkable discovery.

00:35:54.460 And it's emerged probably in the last 60 years in multiple disciplines

00:35:58.500 because we have to prioritize our facts.

00:36:01.360 And so we prioritize them according to a particular pattern.

00:36:04.340 And there are patterns that seem to work and to propagate themselves properly

00:36:08.060 and to orient cultures towards life abundant.

00:36:10.700 And there are other patterns, the pattern of Cain, for example,

00:36:13.540 that lead to absolute bloody devastation.

00:36:16.380 And I don't know exactly how to construe that sort of truth.

00:36:19.540 But we talked about the oppression of women, for example.

00:36:22.200 It's like, how do you make a case on purely factual grounds

00:36:25.100 that women should be treated as equals? 1.00

00:36:28.340 It's a moral question.

00:36:30.100 I know, that's exactly.

00:36:31.660 I was dealing with a factual question, which is, did Jesus have a father?

00:36:36.000 And you won't answer it.

00:36:37.480 It's a different kind of question.

00:36:38.940 Well, Jesus had a earthly father and a heavenly father,

00:36:40.280 like almost all mythological heroes.

00:36:42.940 So he wasn't born of a virgin then.

00:36:44.640 So you're saying that Jesus was not born of a virgin?

00:36:47.640 I said, first of all, that I don't know how to mediate the fact-value dichotomy in that case.

00:36:55.600 I said the same thing about the resurrection.

00:36:56.880 It's not a value.

00:36:57.900 It's a simple fact.

00:36:59.180 I mean, did a man have intercourse with Mary and produce Jesus?

00:37:04.420 That's a factual question.

00:37:09.700 It's not a value question.

00:37:12.120 You must understand what you're being asked here.

00:37:14.380 That even if you think that, say, the author of the biblical texts

00:37:18.600 intended much more significance than a simple scientific analysis of events,

00:37:23.620 Professor Dawkins is interested in scientific truth.

00:37:25.940 That's the kind of truth that he's interested in.

00:37:27.680 And even if you think it's irrelevant to the point of what the gospel authors were getting at,

00:37:31.940 that first needs to be clarified before you can then begin actually uncovering what the stories are about.

00:37:36.960 So I think Professor Dawkins is asking from a scientific perspective.

00:37:39.840 And maybe you think that that scientific approach is wrong.

00:37:42.640 But if you just take it for a moment, maybe this is how we find out that it is wrong.

00:37:46.820 Let's take a scientific approach.

00:37:48.640 Ask the question, did this occur?

00:37:50.680 I think that it's inappropriate to use a question like that to attempt to undermine the validity of the entire,

00:37:58.580 what would you say, deep mythological enterprise.

00:38:00.880 Suppose we weren't doing that.

00:38:02.020 Suppose we were asking out of interest.

00:38:03.060 Suppose that we were all here devout Christians, maybe even Jungian Christians,

00:38:06.420 and we thought, this is interesting, over dinner.

00:38:09.380 Do you think it really happened, like scientifically?

00:38:11.660 Would your answer just be, I don't know?

00:38:13.860 Yes.

00:38:14.720 And you wouldn't consider it, I mean, it's not an inappropriate question to ask just on a point of interest.

00:38:19.820 Right.

00:38:20.140 Did this really occur?

00:38:21.500 And I think so often people are asking you that.

00:38:23.340 And especially given the context of this conversation,

00:38:26.520 we've heard everything that you're saying about metaphor and myth.

00:38:30.480 But because the question is still then being asked, did it really happen?

00:38:34.500 You know that that's what you're being asked.

00:38:36.000 And the way you just so easily said yes,

00:38:37.780 I wonder why you struggle to do that in so many other circumstances.

00:38:41.400 I think because I don't look at the situation the same.

00:38:44.940 The way that Dr. Dawkins and I look at the situation are really quite different.

00:38:48.540 And at many, many, many levels.

00:38:51.580 You know, so even on the meme question, for example, you know, like,

00:38:54.560 I know the literature on the history of religious ideas.

00:38:58.960 I see how these ideas have battled across millennia in a manner that is very reminiscent to me of the same sort of claim that Dr. Dawkins is putting forward with regards to meme.

00:39:09.560 I know that literature.

00:39:11.160 Dr. Dawkins doesn't know that literature.

00:39:13.760 And it's very difficult for me to communicate from within the confines of that literature because it's extensive and deep.

00:39:20.320 And we're dealing with things that we don't understand the relationship between metaphoric truth and value-predicated truth and factual truth.

00:39:30.120 We don't understand that.

00:39:31.300 It's a big problem.

00:39:32.280 We cannot, there's no evidence whatsoever from the scientific perspective that we can orient ourself in the world merely in consequence of the facts.

00:39:40.840 Sure.

00:39:41.040 And that's a fact.

00:39:42.300 And it's a fact that's been detailed out in great detail in the last 60 years by people from a variety of different disciplines.

00:39:48.120 We have to prioritize the facts.

00:39:50.400 That's a value hierarchy.

00:39:51.600 There may be true and false ways of prioritizing facts, but you can't determine the truth or falsehood of the way that you prioritize facts by making reference to the facts.

00:40:02.660 That's a big problem.

00:40:04.120 Okay, let's talk about that as perhaps a slight detour here because I think we do need to come back to this Christ resurrection thing.

00:40:11.000 But Professor Dawkins, would you say that underlying the scientific enterprise is a fundamentally unscientific assumption?

00:40:19.660 You can make scientific investigations in the world, but in order to do so, you need to choose what to prioritize.

00:40:26.100 You need to choose what to investigate.

00:40:27.820 You also need to value the truth.

00:40:30.940 You need to have a value and a motivation for doing it in the first place.

00:40:34.380 Those kinds of things cannot themselves be scientifically justified.

00:40:38.300 And so does the scientific enterprise have an unscientific assumption of the space?

00:40:42.500 I suppose it does.

00:40:43.860 I mean, I think that maybe just be Jordan and Richard, by the way.

00:40:49.140 I think that Jordan prioritizes myth and I prioritize fact.

00:40:55.840 And I think myth is kind of vaguely interesting, but it's not the be-or and end-all of my life.

00:41:03.680 I think it's somewhat secondary to scientific facts, the sort of facts that tell us how old the universe is, how old the world is, the history of life, the engineering achievements of landing a spacecraft on a comet.

00:41:24.240 These are the things that science can do, and as I said, the predictions of quantum theory, to come back to that, the predictions of quantum theory, which are verified to a sufficient number of decimal places that it's equivalent to predicting the width of North America to one hair's breadth.

00:41:41.980 Now, that is, however difficult quantum theory is to understand, that is what you can get from quantum theory.

00:41:49.720 Now, the mysteries of the Bible, if they are mysteries, aren't in the same league.

00:41:54.940 I mean, they just don't cut it.

00:41:58.540 See that, well, okay, so let me respond to that.

00:42:02.440 So, one of the things that I've tried to study is the preconditions for the scientific enterprise itself.

00:42:10.780 You appeared to agree with Alex that there might be presumptions, axioms that need to be accepted.

00:42:20.320 I don't want to put words in your mouth because I want to get this right before the scientific enterprise can begin.

00:42:25.040 So, I've tried to think those truths.

00:42:27.100 Let me lay out a couple of them.

00:42:28.220 And this is partly what I've done while trying to make the case, for example, that you're more of a Christian than you think you are.

00:42:33.880 So, for example, I think that the scientific enterprise is motivated by the axiomatic presumption that truth tends towards a unity.

00:42:43.440 I think that it's predicated on the notion that there is a logical order that's intrinsic to the cosmos, that that fundamental order is good, that it's intelligible to human beings,

00:42:55.440 and that discovering that order and aligning ourselves with it makes for life more abundant.

00:43:02.740 I think that the scientific enterprise is also predicated on the idea that the truth will set you free.

00:43:08.200 And I think all of those axioms are religious and derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition.

00:43:12.840 And if you don't believe that, you have to account for why science emerged in Europe and nowhere else in the entire history of humanity, for example,

00:43:21.200 and also why it's under assault from, like, all quarters now as that underlying metaphysic disappears.

00:43:29.440 Like, you haven't had to be concerned with the mythological substrate in your lifetime in some sense because it was intact.

00:43:37.000 And so the universities could flourish and you had your freedom, remarkable freedom, to pursue your scientific enterprise wherever you wanted.

00:43:44.780 And people lauded you for it.

00:43:47.200 Like, that time is threatened and seriously so.

00:43:51.560 And I think it's partly because these metaphysical assumptions have now become questionable.

00:43:56.720 And that's part of the reason that I'm attending to them.

00:43:59.020 It's not because I don't admire the accuracy of quantum prediction, for example, or celebrate what Musk is doing with his capability of sending rockets to Mars.

00:44:09.440 It's like more power to the technological enterprise.

00:44:12.340 But you know what's happening in the universities?

00:44:15.160 It's awful.

00:44:16.420 And that's not a scientific problem.

00:44:18.880 It's under...

00:44:19.620 Okay.

00:44:20.220 I agree about that.

00:44:20.980 Okay, okay.

00:44:21.540 I think it's an interesting question why science emerged in Europe.

00:44:26.500 I mean, and I'm not enough of a historian to know.

00:44:29.940 It is even possible that Christianity did have something to do with that.

00:44:33.460 And I wouldn't categorically deny that.

00:44:36.160 But that doesn't in any way increase my trust in the validity of Christian propositions like the resurrection, the virgin birth, the miracles, and Jesus is the son of God.

00:44:48.920 But Christianity may have had some kind of historical facilitating effect that led to the Renaissance, that led to the scientific revolution.

00:45:02.700 And that would be a very interesting historical analysis.

00:45:06.420 But it doesn't bear upon the truth of the propositions of the Christian religion.

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00:46:03.920 Okay, let's concentrate on the resurrection for a moment.

00:46:09.740 Now, unfortunately, you see, this is part of the problem.

00:46:12.740 Part of the problem with discussions like this is that the mode of approach that's taken by the mythological tends to circle and wander.

00:46:21.080 Like, it doesn't, because you have to shine light on the problem from multiple perspectives.

00:46:26.740 That's why it's often encoded in image, for example, or in drama.

00:46:30.140 It's not the same hack as a purely propositional and logical argument, so it's more difficult to make.

00:46:36.640 But let me tell you a story that I believe bears on the resurrection.

00:46:40.860 You tell me what you think about it, because I don't, this is a very difficult story to account for.

00:46:45.220 It's going to take me about five minutes, because it's complicated, but there's no way around it, I don't think.

00:46:50.300 So, there's a strange scene in the Gospels where Christ tells his followers that unless he's lifted up like the bronze serpent in the desert,

00:46:58.480 there can be no hope for the redemption of mankind unless he's lifted up like the bronze serpent in the desert.

00:47:04.480 Okay, this is a very strange thing for someone to say.

00:47:07.700 So, you need to know what the story of the bronze serpent in the desert was and what it signifies.

00:47:13.320 And I think we can understand it psychologically.

00:47:15.480 I really do believe this.

00:47:17.120 And the concordance of that story, which was generated millennia before with Christ's utterance, is something I just cannot imagine how anyone put those two things together,

00:47:28.560 especially given the lack of explicit understanding about the relationship.

00:47:32.540 So, let me detail it.

00:47:33.620 So, there's a scene in Exodus, in the Exodus story, where the Israelites are doing their usual fractious foolishness and whining about the fact that they're lost 0.93

00:47:42.520 and bemoaning the loss of their privileges under the Pharaoh and complaining about the power dynamics of their leadership

00:47:47.900 and just generally being followers of Cain, let's say.

00:47:53.160 And God, the cruel God that you refer to, decides to send among his suffering subjects poisonous snakes to bite them,

00:48:02.060 which seems a little over the top, you might say. 1.00

00:48:04.560 But in response to that, I would say there's no situation so terrible that some damn fool can't make it infinitely worse. 0.99

00:48:12.080 And so, that's what happens to the Israelites. 0.99

00:48:13.880 So, they're being bitten by these poisonous snakes and the leaders of the people who've wandered from God go to Moses and they say,

00:48:21.520 look, we know you've got a pipeline to God.

00:48:23.520 And, you know, there's a lot of snakes and they're doing a lot of biting and maybe you could just ask him to, you know, call off the serpents.

00:48:31.680 And so, Moses, who's not very happy with the Israelites either, decides that he'll go talk to God.

00:48:36.640 And God says something very strange.

00:48:39.200 He doesn't say, to hell with the Israelites, more snakes is what they need.

00:48:43.560 And he doesn't say, well, I produced a snake, so I'll get rid of them. 0.92

00:48:46.520 He says something very, very peculiar.

00:48:50.000 He says, have the Israelites gather together all their bronze and make a giant snake and put a serpent on it, a bronze serpent, 0.93

00:48:57.420 which is the symbol of healing, by the way, that even the Greeks use, that symbol of Asclepius.

00:49:02.420 It's a very old symbol, very widespread.

00:49:05.060 It's still used by physicians today.

00:49:06.640 And then he says, put it up where the Israelites can see it. 0.80

00:49:10.060 And if they go look at it, then the serpent's poison won't harm them.

00:49:16.340 And I read that and I thought, that's exactly what psychotherapists discovered as they all converged in the 20th century on the utility of exposure therapy as curative.

00:49:26.240 And that's the pharmacon.

00:49:28.160 A little of the poison that hurts you cures you.

00:49:31.600 It's the same principle that's used for vaccines, by the way.

00:49:34.880 So what we saw in psychotherapy is that if you get people to voluntarily confront the things that are poisoning them, so to speak,

00:49:42.580 that hurt their life, that frighten them and disgust them, they become braver and more well adapted.

00:49:49.400 It isn't that they become less afraid, because that's been very carefully tested.

00:49:53.940 It's that they learn by watching themselves expose themselves to the things that they once fleed from,

00:49:59.900 that there's more to them than they think, and that that generalizes across situations.

00:50:04.940 And it's the same mechanism that underlies learning as such,

00:50:08.260 because children, when they learn, put themselves on the edge of ragged disaster, and that's where they advance.

00:50:14.420 And so what God tells the Israelites, essentially, in this dramatic endeavor is that it's better for them to face the terrors that confront them

00:50:24.700 than to be shielded from the terrors or for them to hide from them.

00:50:28.980 That there'll be better people if they face what's right in front of them, even if it's poisonous.

00:50:33.880 And so it's like, okay, that's pretty damn interesting and quite remarkable.

00:50:37.820 And then that symbol is used, for example, by the Greeks to symbolize medicine as such.

00:50:42.300 But then there's this additional weird twist, which is Christ identifies with that bronze serpent.

00:50:48.960 You think, okay, that's a very peculiar thing for anyone to do.

00:50:51.900 What exactly does that mean?

00:50:54.740 Well, so then you might say, well, what's the most poisonous thing that you could possibly face

00:51:00.640 if you dramatized the idea of poison itself?

00:51:06.660 If you wanted people to face what was worst so that they could become strongest?

00:51:11.020 And the answer to that is the most unjust possible painful death and the ultimate confrontation with malevolence.

00:51:19.180 And that's what's dramatized in the passion story.

00:51:21.820 Now, does that redeem everyone?

00:51:24.020 Maybe.

00:51:25.340 Maybe.

00:51:26.240 Maybe the idea is that if we were courageous enough to look death in the face unflinchingly,

00:51:32.220 and if we spent our time putting our finger on the source of evil itself,

00:51:37.380 it would revitalize ourselves to a degree that would be unimaginable.

00:51:42.460 Now, as a biologist, you know, you could think about this too,

00:51:45.200 because I don't remember the philosopher who said it.

00:51:47.940 I think it was Whitehead, but that might be wrong.

00:51:50.160 We let our ideas die instead of us, right?

00:51:52.940 So human beings have evolved so that we can undergo these deaths of our own ideas

00:51:57.680 and the rejuvenation that emerges in consequence of that.

00:52:01.640 That seems to be something like evolution towards what?

00:52:06.860 Towards the process of sacrificial logos as the thing that redeems human beings.

00:52:13.520 And that makes us biologically unique too,

00:52:16.340 because we can die in ideation and imagination instead of dying in actuality.

00:52:20.980 Does that fundamentally redeem us?

00:52:23.760 Does that deliver us from death and evil?

00:52:26.580 Maybe.

00:52:28.160 Like the job isn't done, obviously.

00:52:30.600 Richard, the story that we've just heard, the Old Testament bronze serpent,

00:52:34.820 it's rhyming with the New Testament.

00:52:38.840 Christ depicting himself as that bronze serpent.

00:52:40.900 I think from Jordan, if I may, as Richard suggests,

00:52:44.500 from what I've heard you say before on this same story,

00:52:47.960 there's something about that harmony between that New Testament Jesus

00:52:53.880 and that Old Testament story, which is so profound and so impressive

00:52:57.640 that it's difficult to imagine it having sort of naive human authorship.

00:53:02.500 What do you make of that story and of that assertion?

00:53:05.140 Well, it doesn't impress me.

00:53:07.000 I mean, I don't understand why you would say that has...

00:53:10.960 I don't think Jordan actually said it had divine inspiration.

00:53:15.800 Maybe he did.

00:53:17.240 Not divine inspiration necessarily, but more than just, as I say,

00:53:20.240 naive human authorship, not like someone just sat down and wrote a story.

00:53:23.120 At minimum, it's a staggeringly brilliant literary move,

00:53:27.000 especially given the fact that that relationship hasn't been explicated before.

00:53:33.260 Do you think, for example, if you were looking in Scripture for something

00:53:37.060 which would identify this as a God-given text,

00:53:40.260 maybe you as a scientist would look for some scientific information.

00:53:43.360 It might have told you the shape of DNA or something like that.

00:53:46.400 But do you think...

00:53:46.900 Which Jordan actually thinks...

00:53:47.920 Yeah, we can perhaps get onto that.

00:53:49.620 But do you think that a literary brilliance of a similar kind

00:53:53.800 or a similar intensity that if the Bible is not a scientific text,

00:53:57.400 you might be looking for something which...

00:53:59.200 Some scientific fact which you couldn't have otherwise known.

00:54:01.180 Is it possible that some kind of genius moral move or literary move

00:54:05.460 could also indicate that this is something more impressive?

00:54:08.600 You more or less asked me what would impress me.

00:54:11.460 And I'm a naive literalist.

00:54:13.380 And so I would say if any prophet had said something like

00:54:19.040 the world is just one object rotating around the sun, something like that,

00:54:27.560 they never do.

00:54:28.200 I mean, it's always some kind of moral lesson which leaves me cold.

00:54:32.620 Well, why is it that there is no...

00:54:35.220 I mean, they say that God meets you where you're at, right?

00:54:37.540 And there are some people who just care about scientific truth.

00:54:42.140 That's what they know.

00:54:43.200 That's their profession.

00:54:44.480 Why is there not anything in the Bible for them?

00:54:46.580 Oh, I think the idea that sacrifice is the basis of the community

00:54:50.120 is a remarkable and scientifically valid hypothesis.

00:54:54.300 I think that it's precisely akin to the, what would you say,

00:54:59.940 to the process of cortical maturation.

00:55:02.180 I think they're the same thing.

00:55:03.740 Because as we mature, we move farther away from the immediate gratification

00:55:09.160 of our self-centered emotional and motivational needs

00:55:14.420 to an ethos of care that brings our future self into the picture

00:55:20.980 and a wider and wider array of other people.

00:55:24.800 And I think that's associated with cortical maturation.

00:55:27.780 In fact, I think the purpose of the cortex,

00:55:30.820 the purpose, a purpose of the cortex,

00:55:33.400 is to bring the dynamics of the short-sighted underlying motivational

00:55:40.280 and emotional systems into the kind of harmony

00:55:43.180 that allows for communal existence

00:55:45.040 and the protection of the future at the same time

00:55:48.920 that the present is, what would you say,

00:55:51.700 cared for and attended to.

00:55:54.240 That there's a kind of harmony there.

00:55:55.600 There's also a pattern there.

00:55:56.760 It's not arbitrary at all.

00:55:57.920 And I think we know this biologically,

00:55:59.900 is that the number of ways,

00:56:02.240 and I think we already alluded to this,

00:56:04.620 the number of ways that a society can organize itself

00:56:07.600 so that each individual can harmonize their own future with the present

00:56:12.260 and do that simultaneously with many other people,

00:56:15.540 there's a very limited universe of possibilities there.

00:56:18.800 Very limited universe.

00:56:20.100 Richard asked you before about the difference

00:56:22.320 between a story or an idea

00:56:23.960 naturally evolving over the course of numerous manuscripts

00:56:28.200 and throughout human history

00:56:29.360 and the idea of it being divinely inspired.

00:56:31.660 And you were seeming to imply

00:56:32.880 that these are almost interchangeable concepts.

00:56:35.840 Now, if that's the case,

00:56:37.600 when you say that this divine spirit behind the Bible

00:56:43.240 is actually just the way that it has evolved

00:56:45.400 throughout the human history,

00:56:47.600 throughout the different manuscripts that we've had,

00:56:49.740 then saying that that is what divinity is,

00:56:52.340 I think for you may drag the mundane up into the realm of divinity.

00:56:56.940 But I think for people like Richard

00:56:58.360 and for many people listening,

00:56:59.580 what it doesn't say is drags the divine

00:57:01.420 down to the realm of the mundane.

00:57:03.300 Very well put, yes.

00:57:05.860 Well, I don't know why it would drag the divine

00:57:09.540 down into the realm of the mundane

00:57:11.160 if we're speaking of something like

00:57:13.540 the straight and narrow path of harmony

00:57:16.600 between multiple modes of being.

00:57:22.880 I don't think it doesn't make any difference to me

00:57:24.880 whether it's the material reaching upward

00:57:26.680 or the divine descending downward.

00:57:28.200 I don't think there's any difference

00:57:29.340 between those two things.

00:57:30.120 You don't.

00:57:30.680 That's exactly right.

00:57:31.600 That's the problem.

00:57:32.700 You don't see the difference.

00:57:34.500 Well, look at it this way.

00:57:36.120 So, for example, in this conversation,

00:57:38.080 you know this to be the case.

00:57:39.920 Like, there's various ways

00:57:41.500 that this conversation could go sideways, right?

00:57:43.860 Seriously.

00:57:44.620 Like, we could,

00:57:46.400 either of us could try to win.

00:57:48.560 Either of us could try to demonstrate

00:57:50.240 our intellectual superiority, right?

00:57:52.340 Each of us could misrepresent the other.

00:57:56.260 Or we could both try,

00:57:57.760 and I do think we are in fact trying that,

00:57:59.560 and I think Alex is helping along with that just fine.

00:58:02.940 We could try to follow the thread

00:58:05.340 of the exploratory truth

00:58:06.980 and see if we could get somewhere.

00:58:08.740 Now, I don't think there is any difference

00:58:10.220 between that, by the way,

00:58:11.500 and what's expressed in the biblical text

00:58:13.780 as the spirit of the logos.

00:58:15.520 That's why we have dialogue.

00:58:17.000 I'm very interested in the possibility

00:58:19.360 that truths emerge through evolving manuscripts.

00:58:24.580 Now, that's a very interesting idea,

00:58:26.580 and it's totally different from divine inspiration.

00:58:29.540 And I want to pursue it

00:58:31.700 because I don't believe in divine inspiration,

00:58:34.020 but I would be prepared to believe

00:58:35.580 in evolving manuscripts.

00:58:37.260 Well, I would say,

00:58:39.440 this is why I had set forward

00:58:43.120 the possibility of taking a look,

00:58:45.660 particularly at Mircea Eliade,

00:58:47.360 because that's where you'd find the best work.

00:58:49.720 He's brilliant.

00:58:51.560 The history of,

00:58:52.380 I believe that if you study

00:58:55.100 the history of religious ideas,

00:58:56.520 it's a three-volume manuscript,

00:58:57.880 or the sacred and the profane,

00:58:59.160 which is probably his single best work,

00:59:01.120 that you'd see profound analogies

00:59:04.360 between the manner in which

00:59:05.500 you've been construing the world biologically,

00:59:07.860 including the trains of thought

00:59:10.560 that led you to the development

00:59:11.740 of the idea of the meme.

00:59:13.180 I really believe that.

00:59:14.100 Well, analogies is one thing,

00:59:15.620 but is it the same thing?

00:59:17.220 I think it's the same.

00:59:18.240 I do.

00:59:18.700 I think, look, I don't know.

00:59:20.500 That's why I'd like your opinion on it.

00:59:22.960 You know, well, seriously,

00:59:24.120 like, it's a complicated question.

00:59:26.140 I've talked to,

00:59:27.660 it's a complicated question.

00:59:29.720 Most people don't know both literatures.

00:59:32.080 There's not a lot of people

00:59:33.000 to discuss this sort of thing with.

00:59:34.400 Camille Pelley,

00:59:35.080 I talked to Camille Pelley about this.

00:59:36.980 She studied the work of a man named Eric Neumann.

00:59:40.280 Neumann wrote a book called

00:59:41.300 The Origins and History of Consciousness,

00:59:43.540 which is a work of genius,

00:59:44.700 and also another book called The Great Mother,

00:59:46.700 which is a study of the symbolism of the feminine.

00:59:48.980 It's a great book.

00:59:50.180 Pelley told me that she believed

00:59:52.100 that if the academy would have turned to Eric Neumann,

00:59:56.440 who's a student of Jung,

00:59:58.060 although the greatest student of Jung,

00:59:59.900 and maybe one who surpassed him,

01:00:01.800 that the entire culture war

01:00:03.740 that's torn the universities apart

01:00:05.180 wouldn't have happened.

01:00:06.720 People don't know this literature.

01:00:08.940 And it's, let me give you an example of this.

01:00:12.260 You tell me what you think about this.

01:00:13.740 Okay, so I spent a fair bit of time

01:00:17.400 studying the psychophysiology of the hypothalamus.

01:00:19.860 Okay, so the hypothalamus is set up,

01:00:22.260 it's got two halves, basically.

01:00:25.240 One half deals with fundamental motivated states,

01:00:28.320 hunger, thirst, defensive aggression,

01:00:30.320 sexuality, and so forth.

01:00:31.660 And when those areas are dominated,

01:00:35.960 the biologically relevant goal is activated,

01:00:38.820 and perceptions are oriented towards that goal.

01:00:41.540 Okay, so now then you might ask yourself,

01:00:43.320 well, what happens if all those

01:00:44.720 biologically motivated states are satiated?

01:00:48.860 And the answer seems to be is that

01:00:51.200 the other half of the hypothalamus kicks in,

01:00:53.920 and it mediates exploratory behavior.

01:00:57.140 And so the default structure

01:00:59.860 of the mammalian nervous system is,

01:01:03.200 if satiated or in doubt, explore,

01:01:06.480 and gather new information.

01:01:08.040 There's no difference between that

01:01:09.700 and hero mythology.

01:01:10.980 They are the same thing.

01:01:12.620 They're the same thing.

01:01:13.840 The dragon fight, for example,

01:01:15.540 it's the oldest story we have.

01:01:17.700 It's coded in the Mesopotamian mythology.

01:01:20.500 The dragon fight story is,

01:01:22.600 explore the dangerous unknown,

01:01:24.880 discover the treasure that revitalizes the community.

01:01:27.520 There's no difference between that

01:01:29.200 and the science that you practice.

01:01:31.400 They're the same thing.

01:01:32.440 What do you think of that, Richard?

01:01:33.020 It's the same story.

01:01:34.500 I don't know what to make of that.

01:01:35.700 I mean, you say they're the same story.

01:01:39.660 You've analogized the dragon fight to fighting Satan.

01:01:43.540 Well, how many dragons have you overcome in your life?

01:01:46.280 I'm not interested in dragons.

01:01:47.920 I'm interested in reality.

01:01:50.120 Okay, so let's...

01:01:51.360 Okay, so I read a book a while back

01:01:54.040 that described the biological reality of the dragon.

01:02:01.940 Say, well, there's no such thing as a dragon.

01:02:03.560 It's like, okay, is there such a thing as a predator?

01:02:06.340 Of course.

01:02:07.600 Well, that's a meta category.

01:02:10.420 What's the category of predator?

01:02:12.360 Bear, eagle, if you're a primate.

01:02:15.960 Fire? Is fire a predator?

01:02:17.620 No.

01:02:17.960 Well, it's complicated because a fire kills you.

01:02:21.680 Okay, so is there a worse predator

01:02:23.440 than serpentine, flying, fire-breathing reptile?

01:02:28.740 Is that not the imagistic equivalent of predator?

01:02:32.960 So in what way, if predator is real,

01:02:35.540 in what way isn't dragon real?

01:02:37.380 It doesn't take that much imagination

01:02:38.700 to see the identity.

01:02:41.660 And then wouldn't the fundamental task

01:02:43.600 of edible primates be

01:02:45.740 to figure out how to overcome the dragon forever?

01:02:48.880 I don't know why you say dragon.

01:02:50.060 I mean, we have lions, we have tigers,

01:02:52.000 we have saber-toothed,

01:02:52.900 we have tyrannosaurs out there.

01:02:55.100 Right, but why not abstract?

01:02:56.600 Because it's for the same reason

01:02:58.240 that we have the term predator.

01:03:00.100 We have the term bear, lion, komodo, dragon.

01:03:04.540 Well, you make an amalgamation,

01:03:05.860 you say, well, the relevant set of features

01:03:08.280 is an image.

01:03:10.280 Well, what's the image?

01:03:11.580 Predator as such.

01:03:13.300 What's the image of that?

01:03:15.020 The dragon that never disappears.

01:03:16.600 And then there's a twist on that,

01:03:18.160 which is so cool.

01:03:19.260 It's so interesting,

01:03:20.300 because you can imagine rabbit mythology,

01:03:22.840 which would be something like

01:03:23.900 predator appears, freeze.

01:03:26.900 But that's not the human story.

01:03:28.500 The human story is predator appears,

01:03:31.060 there's a treasure somewhere.

01:03:33.620 Right, that's a completely,

01:03:34.820 that's a completely different pathway

01:03:37.580 of evolutionary significance.

01:03:39.680 Like the way that we construe the world

01:03:41.380 isn't freeze like predator.

01:03:42.880 It's like, oh, there's a predator.

01:03:44.740 Maybe there's something valuable

01:03:46.300 lurking in our conflict with it.

01:03:49.260 You know, our sticks and our spears

01:03:51.280 that enable our fragile bodies

01:03:53.400 to stand up against the dragons of the world.

01:03:56.000 So a dragon is a pictorial representation

01:03:57.900 of the abstracted concept of a predator.

01:04:00.840 Yes.

01:04:01.300 As you say, we already have the term predator.

01:04:03.620 And so it might be useful in art,

01:04:05.560 in narrative to,

01:04:07.200 I mean, you can't paint an abstraction.

01:04:08.680 We had the image way before we had the word.

01:04:10.840 Sure, okay.

01:04:11.700 No, but that's a seriously important thing

01:04:14.080 to understand.

01:04:15.000 But now we have the word.

01:04:16.300 We have the word predator.

01:04:17.680 And maybe if we were doing art,

01:04:18.960 maybe if we were all going to sort of draw a picture

01:04:20.200 or tell a story,

01:04:21.380 and we wanted to invent a story

01:04:22.480 to give our children a good moral message,

01:04:24.120 we might invent this dragon

01:04:26.180 or use this dragon as...

01:04:28.160 Well, we do, always.

01:04:29.260 Sure.

01:04:29.360 We do it continually.

01:04:30.000 Exactly, we do.

01:04:30.540 We do it with Harry Potter.

01:04:31.600 We do it with the Lord of the Rings.

01:04:33.060 We do it with the Avengers.

01:04:34.260 There's no escaping from it.

01:04:36.180 But when you say the biology of a dragon,

01:04:40.620 you must understand how that can be misleading

01:04:42.340 as to the enterprise that you're engaging in.

01:04:45.160 Because we're talking here about narrative.

01:04:46.260 We're talking here about art.

01:04:48.020 We're talking here about representations in literature.

01:04:50.880 I don't think the category of dragon

01:04:52.500 is any less valid than the category of lion.

01:04:55.620 Any less biological?

01:04:57.200 Well, it depends on your level of analysis.

01:04:59.700 We have the term predator,

01:05:01.040 which implies that all predators

01:05:02.380 have something in common,

01:05:03.660 because otherwise we wouldn't have the term.

01:05:05.400 It's like there's no reason to assume

01:05:07.180 ontological priority for the category of lion

01:05:10.100 over the category of predator.

01:05:11.580 It depends on all that would determine

01:05:15.400 which of those terms should be used

01:05:16.980 is the purpose towards which

01:05:18.220 the conceptualization is being directed.

01:05:20.920 If you want to identify a particular class of predator,

01:05:23.980 well, then lion is a good term.

01:05:25.700 You would say that lions are an instantiation

01:05:28.360 of this bracket term of predator.

01:05:31.360 Well, I would also say...

01:05:32.860 Would you therefore say that a lion

01:05:34.080 is an instantiation of the bracket term of dragon?

01:05:37.500 Yes.

01:05:37.940 Yes, because...

01:05:41.000 See, because we're not only fact-oriented creatures, right?

01:05:45.280 It actually matters to us whether we get eaten.

01:05:48.040 Like, it's one thing to lay out

01:05:50.220 the nomenclature of the animal kingdom,

01:05:52.740 but it's another thing to remember

01:05:53.840 that predators can eat you.

01:05:55.280 And then it's another thing,

01:05:56.340 and this is very interesting,

01:05:57.820 and it's relevant to that story of the bronze serpent.

01:06:00.760 It's like, what do we want to teach our children?

01:06:03.320 Well, to identify predators, obviously.

01:06:05.280 Well, what do we want to teach them more profoundly?

01:06:09.180 What attitudes they should take

01:06:11.160 towards the eternal fact of the predator?

01:06:13.880 And the attitude they should take

01:06:15.200 is something like the courage to voluntarily confront,

01:06:18.140 and not to run away, and not to hide,

01:06:19.920 and not to freeze,

01:06:21.540 and not to casually demonize,

01:06:23.680 but to assume that in the combat

01:06:25.500 with the eternal predator,

01:06:27.540 an eternal treasure might be found.

01:06:29.640 And that's exactly what you do,

01:06:31.020 whether you know it or not,

01:06:31.840 when you teach a child to be courageous.

01:06:33.760 And we know from the psychological literature

01:06:36.960 that generalizes,

01:06:38.200 and I do think it's identical

01:06:39.820 with the mechanism of learning in human beings,

01:06:42.320 because kids, us,

01:06:44.740 we always learn on the edge.

01:06:47.120 You know, in your own life,

01:06:48.720 you know,

01:06:49.620 and I don't want to be presumptuous,

01:06:51.640 but

01:06:51.740 no doubt there have been situations

01:06:55.280 where you've been battling

01:06:57.540 to have your ideas distributed,

01:07:00.300 even to modify your own conceptions

01:07:02.500 when you had something new to learn.

01:07:04.200 That's a sacrifice. 1.00

01:07:06.040 You have to kill your stupidity 1.00

01:07:07.920 so that you can move forward. 1.00

01:07:09.480 That's what happens in the story of Abraham,

01:07:10.940 by the way,

01:07:11.720 when he makes sequential sacrifices.

01:07:14.260 So in the story of Abraham,

01:07:16.460 you tell me what you think about this,

01:07:17.780 because it staggered me when I understood it.

01:07:21.160 Abraham is a protected person.

01:07:23.240 He doesn't have to lift a finger.

01:07:24.460 He lives in the socialist utopia.

01:07:26.140 He's got everything delivered hand to mouth.

01:07:28.520 He's at home till he's 70,

01:07:30.300 and God comes to him as the voice of adventure,

01:07:33.380 which is something remarkable to see,

01:07:35.680 and says,

01:07:36.420 you leave your zone of comfort

01:07:37.640 and go out into the world.

01:07:39.120 Have your terrible adventure.

01:07:40.920 And Abraham says, yes.

01:07:42.400 And then a series of cataclysms

01:07:44.320 occurs around him,

01:07:46.700 just like it does in every adventurous life.

01:07:48.980 And every time an episode concludes,

01:07:52.380 he makes a sacrifice.

01:07:53.960 Why? 1.00

01:07:54.380 To get rid of what's stupid and old about him 1.00

01:07:57.120 so that he can progress and transform. 1.00

01:08:00.300 And that happens to such a degree

01:08:01.560 that he gets a new name,

01:08:02.980 which means he's changed so dramatically

01:08:04.820 he's not even the person he used to be.

01:08:07.220 And that's a consequence

01:08:08.120 of following that adventurous pathway.

01:08:10.760 And that's all coded in the story.

01:08:13.300 I think we just have to agree

01:08:15.060 that we have different kinds of minds,

01:08:17.240 and you're interested in symbols,

01:08:18.760 and I'm interested in facts.

01:08:20.220 I mean, let's take predators.

01:08:21.620 Predators, I'm fascinated by predators.

01:08:24.700 Predators are the relationship

01:08:26.460 between predators and prey

01:08:27.860 is an arms race,

01:08:29.580 an evolutionary arms race.

01:08:31.620 And whenever you see

01:08:32.680 a really complicated,

01:08:35.660 beautifully designed piece of biology,

01:08:38.680 what Hume, I think,

01:08:41.620 one of Hume's characters called

01:08:43.840 things that ravish into admiration,

01:08:46.180 all who contemplate them.

01:08:47.980 This is almost certainly

01:08:48.960 the result of an arms race, 0.84

01:08:51.060 probably between predators and prey.

01:08:52.740 It could be between parasites and hosts.

01:08:55.460 And so,

01:08:56.320 if we are talking about adaptations

01:08:59.100 to just the climate,

01:09:03.180 woolly rhinoceroses grow hair

01:09:05.280 because it's getting cold,

01:09:06.580 that's relatively boring.

01:09:08.140 But when it's an adaptation

01:09:09.660 to a predator,

01:09:11.340 then you get an escalation

01:09:13.080 of adaptations by prey,

01:09:16.360 which are countered by predators,

01:09:17.840 which are countered by prey,

01:09:18.840 countered by prey.

01:09:19.260 So you get a gradual escalation.

01:09:21.880 Now, that's interesting.

01:09:23.220 That explains why you have animals

01:09:27.220 that run fast,

01:09:28.260 why they have keen sense organs,

01:09:29.780 why they have teeth,

01:09:31.060 why they have sharp teeth,

01:09:32.160 why they have behavior patterns

01:09:35.580 that either protect them

01:09:37.200 from predators

01:09:37.780 or, if they're predators,

01:09:40.040 help them to catch prey.

01:09:41.740 The idea of the arms race 0.98

01:09:43.660 is the thing that grabs me,

01:09:46.680 the arms race between,

01:09:47.960 nothing to do with dragons.

01:09:49.220 Okay, well, so, okay,

01:09:50.400 so, fair enough, right?

01:09:52.900 And I share your appreciation

01:09:55.120 for that remarkable,

01:09:57.260 what, what,

01:09:58.960 the remarkable phenomena

01:10:00.060 that emerge in consequence of that.

01:10:02.060 Okay, so let's take

01:10:02.980 the idea of arms race.

01:10:04.800 All right, so,

01:10:06.400 we, here's how I would construe

01:10:08.680 what I said

01:10:09.280 in what I think might be your terms.

01:10:11.260 Okay.

01:10:11.600 All right, we transformed the battle

01:10:13.760 with the predator

01:10:15.020 into a meme battle.

01:10:17.860 We abstracted it

01:10:19.220 so that we could figure out

01:10:21.000 how to deal not with a predator,

01:10:23.020 but with the class

01:10:24.040 of all possible predators.

01:10:26.120 Right, exactly.

01:10:27.240 And the appropriate way

01:10:28.760 to deal with the class

01:10:29.680 of all possible predators

01:10:30.800 is something like a meta-ethic.

01:10:32.700 It's a stance that,

01:10:34.020 let me give you an example of this.

01:10:35.580 We actually know something

01:10:36.540 about this psychophysiologically.

01:10:38.380 And you can look at it

01:10:39.840 spiritually or physically,

01:10:41.340 and it doesn't matter.

01:10:42.580 So, for example,

01:10:43.820 if you take people

01:10:45.580 in psychotherapy

01:10:46.400 and they're accidentally exposed

01:10:48.340 to something

01:10:48.820 they're afraid of,

01:10:50.320 they have a stress response

01:10:52.500 that's damaging

01:10:53.540 if it's sustained,

01:10:54.580 and they become more frightened.

01:10:57.040 But if you expose them

01:10:58.200 to exactly the same stressor

01:11:00.560 and they do it voluntarily,

01:11:02.580 they manifest

01:11:03.500 an entirely different pattern

01:11:04.920 of psychophysiological activation.

01:11:07.240 Okay, and it's a stance

01:11:10.220 of challenge, right,

01:11:11.660 and not of fear.

01:11:13.200 All right.

01:11:13.540 And so,

01:11:14.840 one of the things

01:11:15.620 that you're doing

01:11:16.200 in psychotherapy

01:11:16.940 when you get people

01:11:17.780 to expose themselves to,

01:11:19.240 you could say predators,

01:11:20.520 because that's an accurate way

01:11:21.780 of dealing with it,

01:11:22.540 is that you get them

01:11:23.840 to shift into a mode

01:11:24.940 of voluntary confrontation

01:11:26.060 instead of prey-like apprehension

01:11:28.740 and retreat.

01:11:29.820 And what they learn from that

01:11:30.940 is that they can embody

01:11:32.040 that pattern,

01:11:33.180 which I would call

01:11:33.840 a spirit metaphysically.

01:11:35.160 They can embody that.

01:11:36.380 They can practice it.

01:11:37.580 It's also the case,

01:11:38.580 there's some evidence,

01:11:39.440 that there's epigenetic consequences

01:11:40.920 of that.

01:11:41.820 If you practice that process

01:11:44.520 of voluntary confrontation

01:11:45.960 with the terrible unknown,

01:11:47.860 it can catalyze transformations

01:11:49.840 that reach all the way down

01:11:51.320 into the cellular.

01:11:53.340 And so,

01:11:54.280 we abstracted the fight

01:11:56.940 with the predator

01:11:57.700 into the imaginal space.

01:12:00.200 We play out various tactics.

01:12:02.700 Some of them are conserved

01:12:04.260 and transmitted.

01:12:05.480 They adapt themselves

01:12:06.540 to the structure

01:12:07.300 of human memory

01:12:08.100 and they make the foundation

01:12:10.260 for our most fundamental narratives.

01:12:12.660 Look,

01:12:13.460 you know,

01:12:13.860 the reference I made

01:12:15.440 to Harry Potter,

01:12:16.280 the reference I made

01:12:17.060 to the Lord of the Rings

01:12:18.820 and to the Avengers,

01:12:19.780 these aren't casual references.

01:12:22.500 You know,

01:12:22.740 we spend most of our computational,

01:12:25.480 high-end computational power

01:12:27.120 generating fictional worlds

01:12:29.480 where we can portray

01:12:31.120 meme battles

01:12:32.240 so that everyone

01:12:33.260 can observe them.

01:12:34.560 Yes.

01:12:34.980 So,

01:12:35.500 lion as genetic,

01:12:37.800 dragon as memetic.

01:12:39.840 Richard,

01:12:40.380 this concept of the dragon

01:12:42.160 as the abstracted predator

01:12:44.840 as a whole,

01:12:45.700 can we talk meaningfully

01:12:47.800 about the truth

01:12:49.660 in these stories

01:12:51.040 where instead of talking

01:12:52.520 about a predator

01:12:53.280 or this predator

01:12:54.300 or that predator,

01:12:54.900 we're talking about

01:12:55.540 the concept of predators

01:12:56.500 as a whole.

01:12:57.180 The dragon's a meme.

01:12:57.780 Yes.

01:12:58.260 The dragon's a meme.

01:12:59.860 Yeah.

01:13:00.180 It's a deep meme.

01:13:02.300 Well,

01:13:02.740 it doesn't get me,

01:13:04.360 it doesn't impress me.

01:13:05.360 I mean,

01:13:05.560 I like reality

01:13:06.580 and

01:13:07.340 it obviously impresses Jordan

01:13:11.080 and that's fine.

01:13:12.040 It just,

01:13:12.660 we have a different kind of mind,

01:13:13.720 I think.

01:13:14.140 Well,

01:13:14.660 I had a comment about that too,

01:13:16.360 you know,

01:13:16.540 because I actually think

01:13:17.220 that's true.

01:13:18.400 So,

01:13:18.820 there's a psychological trait,

01:13:21.160 openness,

01:13:22.480 and openness fractionates

01:13:24.020 into two types.

01:13:25.840 One type of mind

01:13:26.860 is associated

01:13:27.580 with deep interest

01:13:28.540 in ideas

01:13:29.160 that people like that

01:13:30.160 tend to prefer non-fiction.

01:13:32.020 A variant of that

01:13:33.080 is openness proper

01:13:34.660 and it's associated

01:13:35.840 with a much deeper orientation

01:13:37.360 towards the fictional

01:13:38.580 and metaphorical.

01:13:39.680 I do think

01:13:40.400 we have different kinds of minds,

01:13:42.500 but,

01:13:42.640 but if we accept

01:13:44.960 the presumption

01:13:45.680 that there is

01:13:46.300 a unity of knowledge

01:13:47.300 and I don't know

01:13:48.320 if that's a presumption

01:13:49.160 that you entertain

01:13:50.540 or presume

01:13:51.820 or share

01:13:52.460 because we could discuss

01:13:54.300 the alternative,

01:13:55.580 my sense is that

01:13:56.640 those two pathways

01:13:58.100 have to unify.

01:13:59.280 Now,

01:13:59.580 I don't think

01:14:00.220 we know how to unify them

01:14:01.280 in the West.

01:14:01.860 That's why there is

01:14:02.580 this conflict

01:14:03.160 between the scientific

01:14:04.060 and the religious.

01:14:05.140 It's not like

01:14:05.580 I know how to rectify that.

01:14:07.320 The best I can say

01:14:08.280 is this is what I've learned

01:14:09.320 from studying those stories,

01:14:10.500 but I would also say

01:14:11.700 because I've studied your work.

01:14:13.620 I do believe

01:14:14.740 that that idea

01:14:15.520 that you formulated

01:14:16.480 of Meme

01:14:16.980 is exactly the same thing

01:14:18.440 that Mircea Eliade

01:14:19.360 is detailing out

01:14:20.160 in his work.

01:14:20.840 And I think the reason

01:14:21.860 that he's not attended to

01:14:23.340 by the universities

01:14:24.600 because he's passé

01:14:25.740 in the history

01:14:26.560 of religious ideas

01:14:27.420 is because

01:14:27.880 everything he says

01:14:29.000 demolishes

01:14:30.020 the postmodern Marxists,

01:14:32.200 demolishes them, 0.96

01:14:33.100 which is something

01:14:33.760 that seriously

01:14:34.540 needs to be done.

01:14:35.420 And so I keep thinking,

01:14:36.720 I keep hoping,

01:14:37.440 I think,

01:14:38.040 God,

01:14:38.400 it would be such

01:14:38.960 a remarkable thing

01:14:39.960 for Dr. Dawkins

01:14:41.220 to know,

01:14:42.120 especially Iliad's work,

01:14:43.700 although Eric Neumann

01:14:44.700 would be a close second

01:14:45.740 because it takes

01:14:47.600 the notion of Meme,

01:14:48.920 which is,

01:14:50.300 what was,

01:14:52.180 the recreation

01:14:52.760 of the world

01:14:53.340 in imaginal space

01:14:54.680 and the transmission

01:14:56.200 of those recreations

01:14:58.100 and their potential battles,

01:14:59.500 that's what you specified,

01:15:01.040 and it expands it out

01:15:02.480 into something

01:15:03.020 that extends

01:15:03.660 across millennia.

01:15:04.660 It's the logical extension

01:15:06.440 of your idea.

01:15:08.120 And it's not like

01:15:08.960 people know this

01:15:09.700 because there aren't people

01:15:11.240 who know both literatures.

01:15:14.080 So,

01:15:15.020 this idea of

01:15:16.760 lion as gene,

01:15:20.520 dragon as meme,

01:15:22.680 I think,

01:15:23.940 in so many words,

01:15:25.740 it sounds like

01:15:26.480 that's sort of a summary

01:15:27.400 of what you're getting at.

01:15:28.260 And I get the impression,

01:15:29.360 Richard,

01:15:29.600 that you might agree

01:15:30.960 with the idea

01:15:31.740 that the dragon

01:15:32.520 is an effective

01:15:33.300 mimetic abstraction

01:15:35.760 of the concept

01:15:36.580 of individual predators,

01:15:37.580 but it's just not

01:15:38.360 that impressive.

01:15:39.640 Yes.

01:15:40.240 It's just not that,

01:15:40.880 it's true,

01:15:41.760 but it's not an impressive truth.

01:15:42.720 I can't see how it cannot be

01:15:42.760 impressive

01:15:43.300 at the same time

01:15:45.060 that you

01:15:45.720 are compelled

01:15:48.440 and interested

01:15:49.020 by the idea

01:15:49.760 of Meme.

01:15:50.560 I mean,

01:15:50.860 let me ask you

01:15:51.620 a psychological question

01:15:52.580 if you don't mind.

01:15:54.300 You're obviously

01:15:55.060 welcome not to answer it,

01:15:56.220 but there's a reason

01:15:57.640 that the idea

01:15:58.360 of Meme gripped you,

01:15:59.520 and there's a reason

01:16:00.280 it's spread.

01:16:01.300 It's because you put

01:16:01.980 your finger on something.

01:16:03.060 So can I ask you

01:16:04.480 how that idea emerged

01:16:05.620 and why it attracted you?

01:16:07.940 As a Darwinian,

01:16:08.940 I'm interested

01:16:09.500 in the process

01:16:10.800 of natural selection.

01:16:12.560 Natural selection

01:16:13.160 is the differential survival

01:16:14.740 of replicating entities.

01:16:17.600 DNA is a very excellent

01:16:20.780 replicating entity

01:16:21.940 whose replication

01:16:23.420 and selection

01:16:24.400 has given rise

01:16:25.140 to the whole of life

01:16:25.880 on Earth.

01:16:26.300 I wanted to make the point

01:16:29.440 that DNA is not

01:16:31.660 the only possible replicator

01:16:33.460 you could imagine.

01:16:35.380 Right.

01:16:35.800 There might be on other,

01:16:37.160 and there probably

01:16:37.840 is on other planets,

01:16:39.520 a different kind

01:16:40.620 of replicator,

01:16:41.680 not DNA.

01:16:43.160 And then I thought,

01:16:44.500 maybe we don't have

01:16:45.360 to go to other planets.

01:16:46.560 Maybe there's another replicator

01:16:48.500 staring us in the face.

01:16:50.480 The virus of the mind,

01:16:52.540 something that spreads

01:16:53.840 not by DNA replication,

01:16:55.540 but by imitation

01:16:58.160 from mind to mind.

01:17:00.160 So it could be

01:17:00.680 a fashion in clothes,

01:17:01.900 it could be a musical style,

01:17:03.540 it could be an accent,

01:17:05.180 a speech accent,

01:17:06.300 it could be

01:17:07.400 a children's game

01:17:10.780 that spreads through school.

01:17:12.820 All these things

01:17:13.880 are replicators

01:17:15.160 which spread

01:17:16.220 by a non-genetic means

01:17:17.880 and might therefore

01:17:20.060 potentially be

01:17:21.140 the basis for a form

01:17:22.680 of Darwinian selection.

01:17:24.640 Yep.

01:17:24.960 Darwinian selection

01:17:26.060 would be popularity,

01:17:28.540 the spreadability

01:17:30.020 of an idea.

01:17:31.160 The longevity

01:17:31.740 of an idea?

01:17:32.580 Yes,

01:17:33.140 longevity of an idea,

01:17:34.800 the spreadability,

01:17:36.260 the fidelity

01:17:36.800 of it,

01:17:37.280 of the idea.

01:17:38.980 How about the grip

01:17:39.860 of motivation

01:17:40.680 by the idea?

01:17:41.980 Like, would you expect,

01:17:42.780 yes, that's a possibility.

01:17:46.400 And I would even concede

01:17:49.260 that an archetype

01:17:51.260 might be one way

01:17:52.400 in which certain memes

01:17:53.360 might spread more than others.

01:17:54.720 It might be compatible

01:17:55.680 with a Jungian archetype.

01:18:00.140 So that's my answer

01:18:01.640 to the question.

01:18:02.920 It was coming at it

01:18:04.100 as a Darwinian

01:18:04.980 and wanting to make

01:18:06.100 the point that

01:18:07.040 DNA probably,

01:18:08.620 having spent the whole

01:18:09.380 rest of the book

01:18:10.280 stressing the gene

01:18:12.240 as a unit of selection,

01:18:13.340 I wanted to make the point

01:18:14.180 that it may not be

01:18:14.920 the only one.

01:18:15.800 Okay, okay.

01:18:16.480 So that's what I understood

01:18:18.340 from your work.

01:18:19.260 So it is on that grounds

01:18:20.760 that I saw the concordance

01:18:23.360 between what you were doing

01:18:24.440 and what Eliade was doing

01:18:25.560 in his investigation

01:18:26.780 into the spread

01:18:27.620 of religious ideas.

01:18:28.740 Like, what you described

01:18:30.860 is what I understood.

01:18:31.780 Okay, so let me ask you

01:18:33.480 another question about that.

01:18:36.580 Okay, so could you imagine

01:18:38.320 a scenario where a meme

01:18:41.060 had sufficient

01:18:44.260 functional adaptive significance

01:18:46.360 so that the individuals

01:18:48.840 who acted it out

01:18:49.960 gained a reproductive edge? 0.98

01:18:52.800 Yes.

01:18:53.180 Okay, so then you could

01:18:54.580 imagine a situation

01:18:55.720 where there was,

01:18:56.800 I think I've got this right,

01:18:58.000 a Baldwin effect

01:18:58.840 between the meme

01:18:59.740 and the genome.

01:19:00.920 Yes.

01:19:01.160 Okay, so then could you

01:19:02.300 imagine an effect

01:19:03.620 where the heroic hunters

01:19:06.880 of the past

01:19:07.900 who decided to cease

01:19:09.580 acting like prey animals,

01:19:11.360 maybe when they got rocks

01:19:13.200 or sticks,

01:19:15.020 were acting under

01:19:16.100 the impulse

01:19:16.740 that facing down

01:19:17.840 the predator

01:19:18.380 was the appropriate strategy?

01:19:20.360 Because I was thinking

01:19:21.080 about this reproductively.

01:19:22.320 Like, you know that

01:19:23.140 women are hypergamous. 1.00

01:19:25.880 They like men 0.97

01:19:26.720 cross-culturally

01:19:27.760 about four years

01:19:28.660 older than they are.

01:19:30.580 The most fundamental 0.70

01:19:32.480 female pornographic fantasy

01:19:34.500 involves vampires, 0.98

01:19:36.980 werewolves,

01:19:37.760 pirates,

01:19:38.380 surgeons,

01:19:38.740 and billionaires.

01:19:40.080 Dominant men 1.00

01:19:40.920 who are capable

01:19:42.540 of standing up

01:19:43.260 to predators

01:19:43.740 who can be brought

01:19:45.000 into an individual

01:19:45.920 relationship.

01:19:47.380 Okay, so that's

01:19:48.140 the fundamental

01:19:49.420 reproductive story meme

01:19:51.020 that seems to drive women. 1.00

01:19:52.340 It's allied

01:19:52.820 with the hero myth.

01:19:54.960 They're the different

01:19:56.560 variants of the same story,

01:19:59.340 the different sexual variants

01:20:00.860 of the same story.

01:20:02.080 And it seems to me

01:20:03.100 it's not unreasonable

01:20:04.300 to note that that's

01:20:06.060 the fundamental story

01:20:07.340 of humanity.

01:20:08.300 And so I don't understand

01:20:09.420 why you're not impressed

01:20:10.360 by that.

01:20:10.840 You started talking

01:20:11.140 about the Baldwin effect

01:20:12.200 and suddenly we got

01:20:13.440 into women,

01:20:15.220 what women like. 0.99

01:20:16.660 Well, the men

01:20:17.240 who act out

01:20:17.880 the heroic meme

01:20:18.700 are much more likely

01:20:19.620 to reproduce.

01:20:20.480 It's an example,

01:20:21.540 but perhaps we need

01:20:22.820 to explain what the Baldwin effect is.

01:20:23.700 I was going to say

01:20:24.540 that would probably help.

01:20:25.240 Yes, that would be useful.

01:20:26.680 Okay.

01:20:28.440 It was suggested

01:20:29.680 by Baldwin,

01:20:31.020 I think in the late

01:20:32.300 19th century,

01:20:33.640 it's a kind of

01:20:34.960 genetic assimilation

01:20:36.040 of a cultural

01:20:38.140 or a learned idea.

01:20:40.560 So the idea is that

01:20:42.820 certain animals

01:20:45.140 learn things,

01:20:46.320 learn a clever trick.

01:20:47.660 It might be

01:20:48.380 nutcracking

01:20:49.260 by chimpanzees,

01:20:50.340 for example,

01:20:51.040 or potato washing

01:20:52.100 by Japanese macaques,

01:20:54.380 or opening milk bottles 0.99

01:20:55.900 by English tits. 0.99

01:20:58.920 And they perhaps, 0.98

01:21:00.540 it perhaps spread

01:21:01.360 as mimetically

01:21:02.300 as an epidemic

01:21:03.420 of copying,

01:21:05.440 and that's known

01:21:06.260 to have happened 0.95

01:21:06.800 with the blue tits 0.98

01:21:08.260 and great tits 1.00

01:21:08.940 in Britain. 0.98

01:21:10.200 Now,

01:21:11.460 certain individuals

01:21:12.860 are likely to learn it

01:21:14.060 faster than others,

01:21:15.380 and there may be

01:21:15.920 genetic variation

01:21:17.060 in the speed

01:21:18.660 with which they learn it.

01:21:20.040 And as the generations

01:21:21.200 go by,

01:21:21.940 natural selection

01:21:22.640 would have favored

01:21:23.460 speed of learning

01:21:24.960 the new trick.

01:21:25.880 and eventually

01:21:27.860 they would have learned

01:21:28.540 the new trick

01:21:29.080 so fast,

01:21:29.820 they didn't need

01:21:30.320 to learn it at all.

01:21:31.300 It becomes genetically

01:21:32.460 assimilated

01:21:33.320 into the genome.

01:21:34.980 That's the Baldwin 0.99

01:21:36.020 effect.

01:21:36.380 I would say

01:21:37.520 that that's

01:21:38.220 essentially

01:21:38.820 the same pattern

01:21:39.980 of archetype evolution

01:21:42.100 that's implicit

01:21:42.960 in the Jungian

01:21:44.060 theoretical model.

01:21:44.760 Well,

01:21:44.840 that's very interesting

01:21:45.700 because that suggests

01:21:47.200 that Jungian archetypes

01:21:48.780 might be

01:21:49.680 genetically assimilated

01:21:51.020 via the Baldwin effect.

01:21:52.480 Yes,

01:21:52.760 yes.

01:21:52.820 And that's a fascinating idea.

01:21:54.360 Yes,

01:21:54.660 yes,

01:21:54.800 yes,

01:21:55.140 yes.

01:21:55.780 Yes,

01:21:56.140 okay,

01:21:56.540 so now...

01:21:57.220 I know we're coming

01:21:57.740 to the end of our time

01:21:58.660 soon anyway.

01:22:00.700 It's nice to end

01:22:01.860 on a shared

01:22:03.320 point of interest

01:22:04.160 which is the Baldwin effect

01:22:05.320 and the archetype's

01:22:06.820 potential origin

01:22:07.360 and the Baldwin effect.

01:22:09.460 Do you think

01:22:10.020 that that is something

01:22:10.600 that is worth

01:22:11.480 exploring further?

01:22:12.420 Is that something

01:22:13.080 that we can...

01:22:13.900 Well,

01:22:14.020 it's crucial to this

01:22:15.140 because it speaks

01:22:17.420 of the potential

01:22:18.240 relationship

01:22:18.920 between the spread

01:22:20.440 of memes

01:22:21.000 and the alteration

01:22:23.100 of the genetic process.

01:22:25.780 I would say

01:22:26.800 it probably happens

01:22:27.560 fastest by sexual selection.

01:22:30.160 Yes.

01:22:30.760 Right,

01:22:31.020 so imagine that

01:22:31.780 imagine that a meme...

01:22:33.240 Okay,

01:22:33.720 so imagine a meme

01:22:34.540 that a meme develops,

01:22:36.480 a representation,

01:22:38.940 imaginal,

01:22:39.920 and the people

01:22:40.520 who embodied

01:22:41.060 are more effective

01:22:41.880 in dealing with predators

01:22:43.100 and then imagine

01:22:44.600 that there's a concordance

01:22:46.660 between that

01:22:47.260 and the attractiveness

01:22:48.200 of those males to women.

01:22:49.440 It seems highly probable.

01:22:51.000 Well,

01:22:51.160 then you can see

01:22:51.920 that because sexual selection

01:22:53.920 is a pretty rapid mechanism

01:22:55.040 that that Baldwin effect

01:22:56.540 gets spinning

01:22:57.100 very rapidly.

01:22:57.140 I totally agree with that.

01:22:58.480 I've even suggested,

01:22:59.720 actually,

01:23:00.200 a slightly way-out suggestion,

01:23:01.540 that the human habit

01:23:03.360 of standing

01:23:03.840 on our hind legs

01:23:04.960 might have been

01:23:06.340 sexually selected 0.64

01:23:07.300 and then genetically

01:23:08.220 assimilated

01:23:08.840 via the Baldwin effect.

01:23:10.680 Chimpanzees do sometimes 0.97

01:23:11.880 walk on their hind legs.

01:23:13.720 Now,

01:23:13.940 if,

01:23:14.700 for memetic reasons,

01:23:15.800 that was sexually attractive

01:23:17.160 in our ancestors,

01:23:19.280 so that it spread

01:23:21.360 as an epidemic

01:23:22.720 of sexual display,

01:23:25.100 then natural selection

01:23:27.400 could have favoured

01:23:28.220 those individuals

01:23:28.980 who were best

01:23:29.900 at standing

01:23:30.580 on their hind legs,

01:23:31.700 genetically speaking,

01:23:32.660 and then it would become

01:23:33.360 genetically assimilated.

01:23:35.580 This sexually selected

01:23:37.240 mimetic effect

01:23:38.380 could have been

01:23:38.980 genetically assimilated

01:23:39.920 and given rise

01:23:40.680 to the genetic tendency

01:23:42.740 to walk on our hind legs.

01:23:45.120 So,

01:23:45.540 I remember what I was,

01:23:46.940 I was going to ask you

01:23:47.940 about this.

01:23:48.360 So,

01:23:48.840 imagine

01:23:49.300 you have a situation

01:23:51.060 in the biblical narratives

01:23:52.140 where the idea

01:23:53.200 of sacrifice

01:23:54.060 is dramatized

01:23:55.260 and ritualized.

01:23:56.100 So,

01:23:56.260 it's acted out.

01:23:57.280 It's not exactly understood.

01:23:59.940 It's dramatized

01:24:00.920 and acted out.

01:24:01.980 Well,

01:24:02.420 there's a,

01:24:02.860 I believe there's

01:24:03.820 a concordance

01:24:04.900 between

01:24:05.400 the probability

01:24:06.780 that that sacrifice

01:24:08.400 would be offered

01:24:09.440 and the ability

01:24:10.560 of someone

01:24:11.080 to forego gratification

01:24:12.660 or to work

01:24:13.580 towards a future end.

01:24:15.020 They're the same thing.

01:24:16.500 And,

01:24:16.740 the ability

01:24:17.900 to forego gratification

01:24:19.300 which is associated

01:24:20.380 with cortical development

01:24:22.360 is a great predictor

01:24:23.860 of future success.

01:24:25.880 Let's say future,

01:24:26.560 because we know,

01:24:27.120 for example,

01:24:27.640 that trait conscientiousness,

01:24:29.140 which is something

01:24:29.800 like the ability

01:24:30.460 to delay gratification,

01:24:31.800 is the best predictor

01:24:33.180 that isn't cognitive

01:24:33.960 of long-term future success.

01:24:35.700 The ability

01:24:36.520 to sacrifice

01:24:37.380 the present

01:24:38.120 for the future

01:24:38.900 is a hallmark

01:24:40.100 of a strategy

01:24:41.500 of adaptation

01:24:42.560 that's going

01:24:43.240 to propagate

01:24:43.800 down the generations.

01:24:44.720 That's interesting.

01:24:45.820 As a Canadian,

01:24:46.600 you probably know

01:24:47.160 about the potlatch

01:24:48.120 phenomenon.

01:24:49.320 Yes.

01:24:49.840 Where

01:24:50.120 a great sacrifice

01:24:52.380 is a social display.

01:24:56.180 Destruction

01:24:56.740 of one's own property

01:24:58.100 as a,

01:24:58.800 which is a form

01:24:59.480 of sacrifice.

01:25:00.580 Destruction

01:25:01.100 of one's own property

01:25:01.960 is a mark

01:25:03.860 of prestige.

01:25:04.860 Well,

01:25:05.760 it indicates

01:25:06.300 that they know

01:25:08.100 those communities.

01:25:09.100 It indicates

01:25:09.660 two things.

01:25:10.840 Your willingness

01:25:11.500 to distribute

01:25:12.420 generously

01:25:13.080 to the community

01:25:13.760 because you're

01:25:14.300 a big man

01:25:14.800 if you can do that,

01:25:15.500 but also

01:25:15.900 your faith

01:25:18.060 in the process

01:25:18.980 by which that wealth

01:25:19.980 was generated.

01:25:21.160 I'm so good at it.

01:25:22.380 See,

01:25:22.580 I think women 1.00

01:25:23.440 use wealth

01:25:24.580 as a marker

01:25:25.420 of sexual attractiveness,

01:25:27.580 not because they're

01:25:28.480 interested in wealth,

01:25:29.340 but because wealth

01:25:30.240 is the best single predictor

01:25:31.800 of the ability

01:25:32.360 to generate wealth.

01:25:33.860 And the potlatch

01:25:34.660 is that kind

01:25:35.180 of manifestation.

01:25:36.060 It's like,

01:25:36.740 yes,

01:25:37.040 I have all this stuff.

01:25:38.420 I can give it away 0.92

01:25:39.300 and burn it 0.75

01:25:39.840 and I can make it again 0.83

01:25:41.080 because it isn't the wealth.

01:25:43.120 It's the capacity

01:25:44.100 to generate the wealth,

01:25:45.200 right?

01:25:45.400 It's a process

01:25:46.220 or a spirit,

01:25:47.160 you could say,

01:25:47.800 if you wanted

01:25:48.600 to get metaphorical

01:25:49.620 about it.

01:25:50.660 So there's this

01:25:51.220 remarkable concordance

01:25:52.700 between your work

01:25:53.640 and these works

01:25:55.500 that I've been investigating.

01:25:56.840 Like I said,

01:25:57.400 no one knows

01:25:58.020 the two literatures.

01:25:59.760 And so it's very

01:26:00.680 frustrating in a sense

01:26:02.360 because I understood

01:26:04.100 your concept of meme,

01:26:05.420 I would say,

01:26:06.020 in exactly the way

01:26:06.720 that you just laid it out.

01:26:08.280 And I thought,

01:26:08.960 this is exactly

01:26:10.100 what I've been studying.

01:26:11.420 There's these fundamental narratives

01:26:13.460 and the people

01:26:14.540 who embody them,

01:26:15.620 look,

01:26:16.400 the heroes

01:26:16.980 in the theater,

01:26:19.660 they're actors

01:26:20.840 of a narrative meme.

01:26:22.920 They're obviously attractive.

01:26:24.440 People flock to watch them.

01:26:25.940 You know that

01:26:26.980 among,

01:26:27.820 if you take

01:26:28.640 vervets

01:26:29.280 and you show them

01:26:30.780 pictures of

01:26:31.620 the other vervets

01:26:32.580 in their troops,

01:26:33.580 they spontaneously gaze

01:26:35.100 longer at the higher

01:26:35.940 status vervets.

01:26:37.180 Right,

01:26:37.480 it's exact.

01:26:38.140 So imagine this,

01:26:38.960 in the human society

01:26:39.880 is that you have people

01:26:40.720 who act out

01:26:41.460 the appropriate meme,

01:26:43.080 let's say,

01:26:43.580 which is something like

01:26:44.480 a meta strategy

01:26:45.940 for dealing with predation.

01:26:47.460 It's something like that.

01:26:48.820 You can approximate that

01:26:50.140 to a greater or lesser degree.

01:26:51.860 The more you approximate that,

01:26:53.320 the higher you are

01:26:54.120 on the sexual selection

01:26:55.140 in the sexual selection hierarchy.

01:26:58.380 And I think that's clear.

01:26:59.800 Like,

01:26:59.940 it's a bit more complicated

01:27:00.920 than that

01:27:01.400 because women seem to be, 1.00

01:27:03.940 the pornographic literature 0.56

01:27:05.880 that women prefer

01:27:06.880 is both

01:27:07.620 the capacity

01:27:09.080 to stand up

01:27:09.740 against predation

01:27:10.580 and maybe even

01:27:11.180 to be a predator,

01:27:11.920 but that has to be brought

01:27:12.980 into alliance

01:27:13.580 with the ability

01:27:14.220 to make an intimate

01:27:15.460 relationship and share.

01:27:17.040 So it's like

01:27:17.660 half monster,

01:27:18.960 half

01:27:19.300 cooperative distributor,

01:27:22.360 cooperative generous distributor,

01:27:24.320 it's something like that.

01:27:25.100 You can see that's

01:27:25.800 a real knife's edge

01:27:26.720 evolutionarily

01:27:28.700 because you want someone

01:27:29.980 who can keep

01:27:30.580 the real monsters at bay,

01:27:32.380 but if they're such a monster

01:27:33.420 that they don't share

01:27:34.400 and aren't generous

01:27:35.080 and can't take care

01:27:36.040 of their children,

01:27:36.720 they're just another 1.00

01:27:37.320 bloody predator. 1.00

01:27:38.820 So Richard,

01:27:39.240 the Baldwin effect

01:27:40.260 applied not so much

01:27:41.980 just to

01:27:42.980 the memetic preference

01:27:44.660 for people who stand up,

01:27:45.880 for example,

01:27:46.900 but something like a dragon,

01:27:48.900 the abstracted predator.

01:27:50.120 Is there any kind of

01:27:50.760 Baldwin effect

01:27:51.500 implication

01:27:52.340 of this kind of thing?

01:27:53.460 I think there could be.

01:27:54.260 I mean,

01:27:54.440 I think it's an interesting idea

01:27:56.500 that Jungian archetypes

01:27:58.300 could be

01:27:59.500 Baldwinized 0.97

01:28:00.540 memes.

01:28:03.060 And perhaps

01:28:03.460 the dragon

01:28:04.820 could be one of those

01:28:05.640 somehow.

01:28:05.700 Well,

01:28:05.940 Jung didn't have

01:28:06.820 that terminology,

01:28:08.060 even the Baldwin effect

01:28:09.180 terminology,

01:28:09.940 but that notion

01:28:11.280 is implicit

01:28:12.120 in his writings.

01:28:13.180 Like he was struggling.

01:28:14.880 He also didn't

01:28:16.360 precisely understand

01:28:17.560 sexual selection,

01:28:18.900 let's say.

01:28:19.320 So the idea

01:28:20.880 lurks implicitly

01:28:22.360 in his work.

01:28:23.080 There's never

01:28:23.440 a statement like that,

01:28:24.880 but you can see

01:28:25.980 clear indications

01:28:27.020 of his struggling

01:28:28.680 towards something

01:28:29.560 like a Baldwin effect

01:28:30.840 explanation.

01:28:32.600 Now,

01:28:32.720 chaps,

01:28:32.900 I'm afraid

01:28:33.280 that we are

01:28:33.680 just about out of time,

01:28:34.920 but we will be

01:28:35.840 having a secondary

01:28:36.800 conversation

01:28:37.360 on Daily Wire Plus,

01:28:38.980 which we'll be

01:28:39.500 doing in just a moment,

01:28:41.000 so people listening,

01:28:41.760 if they're interested

01:28:42.620 in more,

01:28:42.940 can go and find

01:28:43.420 more there.

01:28:44.280 But for at least

01:28:44.800 this part of the

01:28:45.380 conversation,

01:28:46.040 hopefully we've landed

01:28:46.880 on a point of

01:28:47.940 somewhat agreement

01:28:49.780 between Richard Dawkins

01:28:50.980 and Jordan Peterson,

01:28:51.760 which I think

01:28:52.220 is a pretty

01:28:54.380 significant success,

01:28:56.480 I would say,

01:28:57.120 in many ways.

01:28:58.300 Well,

01:28:58.520 I think we also

01:28:59.280 established part of

01:29:01.100 the reason that

01:29:01.720 there's a difference.

01:29:03.060 Like,

01:29:03.280 I do think that

01:29:04.180 your temperamental

01:29:05.200 tack and my

01:29:06.660 temperamental tack

01:29:07.640 are different.

01:29:09.200 They're generally

01:29:09.620 different.

01:29:10.720 You know,

01:29:11.040 are you more

01:29:11.980 interested in things

01:29:13.100 or people,

01:29:14.000 would you say?

01:29:14.620 Because that's

01:29:16.540 a fundamental

01:29:16.980 dimension of

01:29:17.760 difference,

01:29:18.180 say,

01:29:18.660 in terms of

01:29:19.860 interest.

01:29:20.860 I don't think

01:29:21.840 I admit the

01:29:22.560 question,

01:29:23.140 really.

01:29:23.980 Okay,

01:29:24.420 okay.

01:29:24.780 Well,

01:29:25.180 the reason I

01:29:26.100 asked is because

01:29:26.940 the proclivity

01:29:28.280 to prefer

01:29:28.840 non-fiction,

01:29:30.280 which is more

01:29:30.920 of a masculine

01:29:31.560 proclivity,

01:29:32.300 is associated

01:29:33.120 with a tilt

01:29:34.340 of interest

01:29:34.820 towards the

01:29:35.380 domain of

01:29:35.820 things rather

01:29:36.380 than the

01:29:36.820 domain of

01:29:37.260 people.

01:29:38.220 So I was

01:29:39.320 curious about that.

01:29:40.140 I'm interested in

01:29:40.600 eternal things.

01:29:42.560 I'm interested in

01:29:43.000 things that were

01:29:43.620 true before there

01:29:44.320 were any

01:29:44.660 humans and

01:29:45.160 will be true

01:29:45.640 long after

01:29:46.120 humans are

01:29:46.620 extinct,

01:29:48.080 which lets out

01:29:49.540 all symbolism

01:29:50.300 and metaphor

01:29:50.820 and stuff like

01:29:52.000 that.

01:29:52.740 Maybe.

01:29:53.500 Depends on the

01:29:54.220 Baldwin effect.

01:29:55.140 Yes,

01:29:55.480 okay.

01:29:55.800 Thank you,

01:29:56.260 sir.

01:29:56.500 I'm very happy

01:29:57.320 that I had

01:29:57.740 the opportunity

01:29:58.180 to talk to you

01:29:58.720 today.

01:29:58.980 Thank you very

01:29:59.440 much,

01:29:59.740 Alex,

01:30:00.000 for hosting this.

01:30:01.700 And for

01:30:02.140 everybody who

01:30:02.660 is watching

01:30:03.160 and listening,

01:30:03.720 as Alex

01:30:04.100 pointed out,

01:30:04.980 we're going to

01:30:05.540 turn to the

01:30:06.200 Daily Wire

01:30:07.300 side right away.

01:30:08.440 And if you

01:30:08.760 want to join us

01:30:09.360 for another 30

01:30:10.100 minutes of this

01:30:10.760 conversation,

01:30:11.920 then you'd be

01:30:13.120 more than welcome

01:30:13.680 to do that.

01:30:15.400 And so thank

01:30:15.960 you one way or

01:30:17.520 another for your

01:30:18.080 time and attention

01:30:18.700 today.

01:30:19.120 Thank you to the

01:30:19.600 film crew here

01:30:20.280 in Scottsdale

01:30:21.600 for spending the

01:30:23.220 time and energy

01:30:23.820 necessary to make

01:30:24.740 this, I hope,

01:30:25.840 a raving success.

01:30:26.800 I certainly was

01:30:27.460 interested in the

01:30:28.340 conversation.

01:30:29.140 And so thanks to

01:30:30.620 you guys as well.

01:30:38.480 Thank you.

01:30:38.540 If you do

01:30:41.840 see you guys as well.

01:30:42.120 Thank you.

01:30:42.580 Thank you.

01:30:43.060 Bye.

01:30:43.080 Bye.

01:30:43.420 Bye.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - October 21, 2024

491. Symbolic Patterns： Memes, Archetypes, Dragons, Genes ｜ Dr. Richard Dawkins & Alex O’Connor

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