The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 536. Ancient Stories That Bridge The Heavens & The Earth ｜ Jacob Howland

00:00:00.000 One of the things I figured out recently, the significance of the fact that the root word of question is quest.

00:00:06.520 You have a question, which is your plea to the gods, let's say.

00:00:10.260 You await a revelation, and then the critical process is something like internalized dialogue.

00:00:16.200 I got interested in the Talmud. It's a lot like the Platonic dialogues.

00:00:19.940 And you have this fictional colloquy. That's the only way to describe it.

00:00:24.020 Rabbis who maybe lived centuries apart are brought into debate and discussion.

00:00:28.240 If we lose touch with those ancient stories, we lose our ability to actually understand what's going on.

00:00:34.920 Elijah, you mentioned Elijah.

00:00:37.000 Elijah's foes are the nature worshipers.

00:00:39.600 That's kind of relevant in today's society, given the rise of nature worship.

00:00:43.720 Something will attain the pinnacle point.

00:00:45.820 What happens in a universe where finite beings try to find some meaning and encounter or are afflicted by infinity in some way?

00:00:59.260 This is a terrifying thought, I think.

00:01:01.000 You said you saw a similarity with the dialogues.

00:01:03.600 Yes, yes.

00:01:03.840 So what else caught your attention?

00:01:06.260 There is a question that I know to be absolutely fundamental, because it shows up both in the Hebrew Bible and in Plato.

00:01:13.540 Okay.

00:01:14.400 And the question is...

00:01:17.000 So I had the opportunity today to speak with Dr. Jacob Howland, and I wanted to speak with him for a variety of reasons.

00:01:37.600 He's a philosopher, long-time academic, integrally involved with the new University of Austin, which is one of a handful of institutions that are attempting to reorient, traditionally reorient, modern higher education.

00:01:54.160 He's also interested in the interface between modern technology, AI, for example, and philosophy, partly in an attempt to solve what's started to become known as the alignment problem.

00:02:08.180 How do we ensure that these autonomous intelligences, because that's what they're developing into, will have the well-being of human beings, for example, as one of their priorities, or maybe their top priority, you might hope.

00:02:21.620 But what we really ended up talking about was the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem, philosophically, and at a deeper level, less geographically centered, the relationship between rationality as such, the Enlightenment project in science, and the underlying metaphysical substrate.

00:02:44.400 And it turned out that the conclusions that Dr. Howland had drawn seemed to be very similar to the conclusions that I've been drawing, along with people like John Verveke and Jonathan Paggio, for example, a variety of the lectures that we have on Peterson Academy.

00:03:01.680 It does appear that something really quite revolutionary on the intellectual side is beginning to emerge, because the flaws in the Enlightenment have become so structural that it's clear that a new pathway forward not only has to be found, but is likely already upon us.

00:03:26.040 And the appearance of new institutions, and the appearance of new institutions like the University of Austin, like Peterson Academy, like Ralston, are an indication of that.

00:03:35.660 And so we delve deep into the philosophical relationship between Enlightenment rationality and the underlying narrative substructure.

00:03:45.920 That's a good way of thinking about it.

00:03:47.480 And we discussed that in terms of the relationship between Athens and Plato and the ancient religious texts of the Western world.

00:04:00.120 So join us for that.

00:04:03.940 So, Dr. Howland, I wanted to talk to you today primarily, there's a bunch of reasons.

00:04:09.560 I think the main reason was that we have overlapping interests in new approaches to higher education and maybe education in general.

00:04:20.480 And you're involved with the University of Austin, and I've been involved in Peterson Academy and also Ralston College.

00:04:30.820 And so I thought we could talk about that more narrowly, but we share philosophical interests, and I'm also curious about your take on new developments in AI, especially with regards to the large language models.

00:04:48.220 That'll be an interesting discussion, because I've used them quite a bit now, and I have a colleague who's helped me program a number of them, custom LLMs.

00:04:56.680 And they're uncanny machines, and I have no idea where they're headed.

00:05:04.580 Well, that doesn't make me special. No one knows where they're headed.

00:05:07.940 And so that's the broad landscape that I hope to traverse with you today.

00:05:13.840 But I think we should start with, let's start with a little background about you so that people can situate you.

00:05:19.660 You're a philosophy professor. You're an acclaimed educator.

00:05:23.260 So fill us in on who you are.

00:05:26.600 First, let me say, I appreciate you having me on your podcast.

00:05:30.080 This is a great opportunity.

00:05:32.860 So I, how far back do you want me to start?

00:05:37.780 Oh, back away. 0.92

00:05:38.420 Okay.

00:05:38.600 We can start with undergraduate if you want.

00:05:40.280 Right, sure.

00:05:41.460 So, well, I'll start with my parents.

00:05:44.880 My father was a biology professor at Cornell University.

00:05:48.680 My mother was a writer.

00:05:51.200 First nine, ten years of my life, I lived with my mother.

00:05:54.760 I have an older brother.

00:05:56.660 My parents were divorced before I have any recollection of them being together.

00:06:00.900 So I was just maybe a year old.

00:06:02.480 During that period, my mother was a struggling writer and lived in poverty.

00:06:08.260 And we lived in Chicago.

00:06:09.860 And I had the unfortunate experience of being in Chicago public schools in 1968, 69, and a lot of tension.

00:06:20.700 Things became very difficult because my mother was quite poor and couldn't sort of make ends meet.

00:06:27.480 When were you born?

00:06:28.220 I was born in 1959, end of 1959, yeah.

00:06:33.580 So let's see.

00:06:34.600 My mother comes from a Jewish background.

00:06:37.020 Her whole family was from Chicago, blue collar.

00:06:40.020 My grandfather graduated from the 10th grade and worked with his hands making nuts and bolts in a big factory.

00:06:46.520 And my father, who's not Jewish, actually, we're descended from a John Howland who came over on the Mayflower.

00:06:58.240 And his side of the family were all scientists.

00:07:00.520 His father was an engineer at Purdue University who designed the sewer system of Lafayette, Indiana.

00:07:05.860 His older brother was a genius who graduated from Purdue at the age of 17 and was an engineer, optical engineer, just had 20 patents.

00:07:17.660 And actually, both of those guys are still alive.

00:07:20.180 But in any case, so as a child, I had strong influences on my mother's side.

00:07:25.860 I had, let's say, literary and cultural influences.

00:07:28.960 One of my earliest memories was being in Iowa City when I was a kid.

00:07:32.540 My mother was reading me a story by Tolstoy called How Much Land Does a Man Need?

00:07:37.580 And my older brother got me up early in the morning.

00:07:40.260 And I don't know, I was probably four or five.

00:07:42.600 He was a couple of years older.

00:07:43.560 And he finished reading the story to me.

00:07:45.180 So we always had, she always took us to, you know, see ballet and museums and things like this.

00:07:52.660 Anyway, fast forward, we moved in with my father.

00:07:55.880 I graduated from Mythica High School at the age of 16 because my dad said,

00:07:59.980 well, I'm going to go on a sabbatic leave and I don't want to take you with me.

00:08:03.360 And so you can graduate early, which I did.

00:08:06.060 Went to Swarthmore College, took a philosophy course.

00:08:09.980 I initially thought I was going to be a physics major.

00:08:12.360 I see.

00:08:12.980 So you really are split between the aesthetic and the more scientific engineering.

00:08:16.720 Exactly, exactly.

00:08:17.460 Okay, because that's useful to know.

00:08:18.800 Yeah, and I was very, I'm not a mathematician, but I did very well in mathematics.

00:08:26.620 So, but I found that the physics was frankly too challenging.

00:08:33.060 And I took an English course and some other things.

00:08:35.600 And I finally took a philosophy course with a very brilliant man named David Lockerman.

00:08:40.520 And he's one of these people that, you know, anyone who knew the guy said,

00:08:45.080 this is the most brilliant person they'd ever met.

00:08:46.900 I was very fortunate too.

00:08:48.260 And that was at Cornell?

00:08:49.260 No, that was at Swarthmore College when I was undergraduate.

00:08:52.320 Yeah.

00:08:52.480 And so I studied philosophy, history, and English.

00:08:59.020 Those were my sort of three big influences.

00:09:01.160 I got to read a lot of great literature, Russian lit, Latin American literature, American literature,

00:09:07.160 studied history, in particular African history, I think, which was quite interesting.

00:09:11.040 But I fell in love with Plato, went to graduate school at Penn State University.

00:09:15.980 And David Lockerman came to Penn State then, and that was great because he was on my dissertation committee.

00:09:21.420 My main professor there, I suppose, besides Lockerman, was a man named Stanley Rosen, who was a student of Leo Strauss.

00:09:26.760 And I studied Greek and wrote a dissertation on Plato's political philosophy.

00:09:36.260 Got a job at the University of Tulsa, which was great, for about three decades.

00:09:41.480 I was the first chairman of the Department of Philosophy and Religion.

00:09:47.040 They put these two departments together.

00:09:48.420 And I had written a book on Plato's Republic, and then I had published my dissertation,

00:09:53.980 and then decided I really wanted to get to know my religion colleagues.

00:09:57.000 So I started studying Kierkegaard and wrote a book on Kierkegaard and Socrates.

00:10:03.300 Then I also, when we got to Tulsa Sea, I had Jewish experiences as a child.

00:10:10.580 For example, I remember Passover at my grandfather's house, where he'd grab my hand and take me to a shoal

00:10:15.760 when he was saying Yahrzeit for a relative, which is on the anniversary of their death, you say prayers.

00:10:21.120 But other than that, I didn't really have any Jewish identity.

00:10:24.640 Got to Tulsa, first thing that happens, and this truly is the buckle of the Bible belt.

00:10:29.900 Lady comes from across the street and says, won't you join our church?

00:10:32.540 So my wife, who's not Jewish, said, well, and she was unemployed at the time,

00:10:36.360 and she started going to some classes and went to listen to a couple of rabbis and said,

00:10:40.160 I think you'll like this rabbi.

00:10:41.600 Join the synagogue. 0.69

00:10:42.340 And I've never been particularly observant, but started attending.

00:10:47.020 And I got interested in the Talmud.

00:10:49.400 And so I started studying Talmud.

00:10:51.340 And we were lucky to have several very high-ranking Jewish theologians come through Tulsa.

00:10:59.000 And I told them, wow, you know, that Talmud is really interesting.

00:11:03.160 It's a lot like the Platonic Dialogues.

00:11:05.560 And I don't know how much you know about Talmud, but the thing is,

00:11:08.220 so it's this massive corpus.

00:11:10.400 Yes, there are two Talmuds. 1.00

00:11:12.140 The main one is the Babylonian Talmud, two and a half million words.

00:11:16.080 The Jerusalem Talmud is about a million words, but the Babylonian one's the main one.

00:11:20.880 And you have this fictional colloquy.

00:11:23.580 That's the only way to describe it.

00:11:25.700 Rabbis who maybe lived centuries apart are brought into debate and discussion.

00:11:30.940 Talmud privilege is questions.

00:11:33.380 Privilege is questions.

00:11:34.320 Questions.

00:11:35.020 Most of the time, there are no answers.

00:11:37.320 Or at least, yeah, I think that's probably fair.

00:11:40.020 So you have debates and you have discussions.

00:11:42.440 And much like the Platonic Dialogues, the Talmud will start with a practical question.

00:11:47.840 For example, you have two plots of land.

00:11:51.560 One is your vegetable plot.

00:11:52.960 The other is your neighbor's vegetable plot.

00:11:54.720 His tomato plant leans over into your plot.

00:11:58.320 Who gets the tomato? 1.00

00:11:59.360 Then, just like Plato starts, you know, in a dialogue called the Lockies, Socrates runs into a couple of guys.

00:12:06.080 They're saying, should we have our kids study with this guy with a newfangled weapon?

00:12:10.180 And in three pages, they're talking about what is courage.

00:12:12.780 In the Talmud, it can be three pages.

00:12:14.620 They're talking about why did God create the universe?

00:12:17.140 So they privilege questions.

00:12:19.400 They have multiple intellectual perspectives.

00:12:23.000 The rabbis are never on the scene. 0.95

00:12:24.480 Like, they're constantly debating and sometimes, as in the Academy, the American Academy, you know, it gets a little heated and contentious.

00:12:34.040 So you have these debates and then...

00:12:36.800 Except it's not obvious that the American Academy privilege is questioned.

00:12:40.240 Well, that is true now.

00:12:41.780 Right, right.

00:12:42.520 I was really referring to the old joke about, you know, why is there so much conflict, you know, and why is it so heated?

00:12:50.140 Because the stakes are so small.

00:12:51.140 But in any case, and very often at the end of a sort of section of debate, they've got a little acronym, which basically means the answer will be revealed in the days of Elijah.

00:13:02.380 Now, the reason I mentioned that is the belief is...

00:13:05.180 The days of Elijah, specifically.

00:13:06.580 Right, right.

00:13:07.180 So the idea is that there is an answer, okay?

00:13:10.920 We may not be able to understand it or we haven't achieved it yet.

00:13:14.140 And I say that because in the Socratic perspective, I think there's also an answer.

00:13:19.880 That becomes very clear in the Apology, where Socrates, you know, has his friend, his friend Chirophon goes to the Delphic Oracle, says, is there anyone wiser than Socrates?

00:13:32.180 And the Oracle says, no.

00:13:33.640 Right.

00:13:34.040 And what's great here is that Socrates, by the way, he makes no argument for this.

00:13:39.320 He says, it is not permissible for the God to utter a falsehood.

00:13:43.660 That's his faith, right?

00:13:45.560 So I have to take this statement seriously.

00:13:48.100 But I'm not aware that I'm wise.

00:13:50.400 It's like dreams, eh?

00:13:51.300 Yes.

00:13:51.680 Dreams don't utter falsehoods.

00:13:53.640 They're incomprehensible often, but they never lie.

00:13:56.420 Well, I like that.

00:13:57.420 That's a lot.

00:13:57.960 But what I want to say is-

00:13:59.300 It's their voice of nature, you could say.

00:14:01.460 Yes.

00:14:02.460 Very much so.

00:14:03.220 And of course, I mean, that's a whole interesting subject because also even in Plato, this question of how do we explain dreams?

00:14:10.040 Is it a communication from the divine or something?

00:14:12.800 But in any case, Socrates says-

00:14:14.420 Depends what you mean by the divine as it turns out.

00:14:16.280 Yes, indeed.

00:14:18.420 Socrates says that it's impermissible for a God to utter a falsehood.

00:14:22.400 So he now dedicates his entire life to answering two questions.

00:14:25.600 What is wisdom and who is Socrates?

00:14:26.840 So his entire philosophical quest comes out of this moment, the shortest revelation in history, which is no, right?

00:14:34.640 No, there's no one wiser than Socrates.

00:14:37.440 Yeah, and isn't that not because he knows what he doesn't know?

00:14:42.440 Well, he knows what he doesn't know, but he-

00:14:45.980 I thought he made a statement to that end.

00:14:48.340 Absolutely.

00:14:48.700 Okay, so the reason I asked that, very specific, well, because you said that the Talmud, like Plato's, or the Talmud specifically, which are like Plato's dialogues, privilege questions.

00:15:00.620 Now, the thing about questions is that questions require, they require the recognition of ignorance, and that's a form of humility.

00:15:08.040 That's exactly right.

00:15:08.600 Of course, humility is the opposite of pride.

00:15:11.420 And one of the things I figured out recently, we could talk about, maybe this is what we'll talk about, in fact, mostly.

00:15:17.860 It had never struck me, before this year, weirdly enough, that the significance of the fact that the root word of question is quest, because quest is adventure.

00:15:33.980 And so I've been trying to figure out what I do in my lectures, because they are popular.

00:15:38.860 And it's strange, because I discuss the sorts of things we're discussing right now, and yet many people come and watch.

00:15:47.360 And so I've been very curious about why that happens.

00:15:50.320 And so I've taken the process that I use apart, and what I do essentially is figure out what the question is.

00:16:00.260 And it's an actual question, like before I go on stage to talk for 90 minutes, I have a question, which is part of a set of questions that I'm pursuing.

00:16:11.040 So it's a real question, I actually want the answer.

00:16:14.460 Yes.

00:16:14.940 I use the time on stage to, well, to further the quest, and the quest is the answer, and that's the treasure at the end of the pathway.

00:16:22.420 Yes.

00:16:22.720 And then the lecture itself, which isn't exactly a lecture, because it's a quest, is an attempt to answer.

00:16:29.040 Now, the reason I think it's so relevant to privilege the question is because your thoughts are structured the same way your perceptual systems are structured.

00:16:39.060 And what that means is that when you set the quest, you set the question, you set the aim.

00:16:45.660 And here's the thought, you tell me what you think about this, because this is a terrifying thought, I think.

00:16:51.580 The spirit of your aim answers your prayers.

00:16:55.720 So if you have a question, the answer to the question will make itself manifest in your consciousness.

00:17:08.880 People usually say, I thought up the answer, which I think is a terrible answer.

00:17:13.240 That isn't what happens.

00:17:14.320 What happens is that when you set the aim, which is the question, I would like to know this.

00:17:19.480 This is the direction I'm seeking, then the thoughts that make themselves manifest to you will be in keeping with that aim.

00:17:28.400 And then you search for the words, and are you a vehicle for them?

00:17:34.020 Likely.

00:17:34.700 You're a vehicle for the spirit of your aim.

00:17:36.900 Right.

00:17:37.260 Well, and that's what's happening when I'm talking on stage.

00:17:40.020 It's like, I have a question, it's a real question.

00:17:42.980 I'm thinking, okay.

00:17:43.880 And there's a little more to it, because I use stories that I know as investigative tools, right?

00:17:50.620 So they're like, they're tools of inquiry, but the fundamental thing is the inquiry, the question.

00:17:56.160 And it's very interesting to me that, so one of the things I've thought about too is that, well, thought, essentially, it's got a question element.

00:18:05.860 You set the aim, then it has a revelation element, the ideas come to you, then it has a critical thought element, which is like a dialogue, essentially.

00:18:16.460 It's like, okay, well, here's the question, here's an answer, but here's another answer.

00:18:21.880 Okay, so how do we, or, and maybe here's another answer.

00:18:24.420 So how do we sort that out?

00:18:25.640 Well, we have an internal dialogue, which is an analogy, analog of an actual dialogue you'd have socially.

00:18:31.920 And the consequence of the dialogue is the, that's the separation of the wheat from the chaff, you might say.

00:18:40.360 Yes.

00:18:40.900 Yeah, yeah.

00:18:41.620 So I've often, now I've started to think about thought itself as secularized prayer.

00:18:48.200 And that makes sense historically, if you think about how thought might have developed.

00:18:52.420 You, you have a question, which is your plea to the gods, let's say, you await a revelation, well, then you have to determine whence comes the revelation, and is it reliable, especially if there's many of them, or if you're unclear about your aim.

00:19:08.960 And then the critical process is something like internalized dialogue.

00:19:13.500 And so it seems to me that, like I've thought, and I'd like your opinion on this.

00:19:18.140 Well, was, is it Socrates who taught the Greeks to think, at least to think critically?

00:19:23.280 Like literally, is he the first man who determined how to internalize dialogue?

00:19:29.820 So, okay, so that's a bunch of questions.

00:19:32.240 Yeah, very possibly.

00:19:33.160 To tell them that, well, that's right, because we don't know when thought itself emerged, especially critical thought.

00:19:39.480 Critical thought's hard.

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00:20:40.400 You've said a lot.

00:20:41.540 Yeah, yeah.

00:20:42.220 Let me reply to a couple of things here.

00:20:45.280 It seems to me that you're on a very fruitful path in talking about this.

00:20:51.360 While you were speaking, I was thinking how this shows up in a lot of fields.

00:20:57.540 So even, for example, in great literature.

00:21:00.260 And the example that came to my mind is Jorge Luis Borges.

00:21:03.060 Have you read any of Jorge Luis Borges' short stories?

00:21:05.480 Mm-hmm.

00:21:05.760 Okay.

00:21:06.000 So it seems to me that this man's writing is itself guided by a fundamental question.

00:21:14.980 And maybe this is true of other great authors.

00:21:18.180 In fact, I would be willing to give you some other examples.

00:21:21.080 Borges' question is this.

00:21:23.160 What are the effects of infinity on human beings?

00:21:26.600 Right?

00:21:27.020 Because we have stories like Funes the Memorius.

00:21:29.400 The guy falls, hits his head, and not only cannot forget anything, and not just from that point.

00:21:37.940 I mean, he actually remembers everything, but his experience is as vivid.

00:21:43.460 His memories are as vivid as the moment of experience itself.

00:21:47.800 And so he's completely overwhelmed, and he just lies in the bed.

00:21:51.200 He can't even, he lies in the dark.

00:21:54.500 And then we have, for example, The Immortal.

00:21:59.400 And it's about a guy who is in North Africa in fighting, this is his earliest memory anyway,

00:22:05.520 and fighting in North Africa in a Roman legion and accidentally drinks the water of life,

00:22:10.980 the water of immortality.

00:22:12.500 And then after centuries and centuries, he seeks death.

00:22:17.360 And he reasons that there must be an antidote, right?

00:22:20.080 If there's a place where you can drink water, it makes you immortal.

00:22:22.620 There's got to be some other spring or something that you can drink and allow you to die.

00:22:25.760 But the problem is that his life just blends together.

00:22:28.900 He can't separate anything out because he...

00:22:33.100 So is he looking, is Berger's looking for the advantages to finitude, let's say?

00:22:37.020 Yes, exactly.

00:22:37.680 Well, let me put it a different way.

00:22:39.520 He is, what he is suggesting is that we are creatures of finitude.

00:22:42.520 We are creatures of finitude in terms of our lifespan.

00:22:45.320 We are creatures of finitude in terms of our intelligence, our memory.

00:22:50.300 We are creatures of finitude in terms of our capacity to understand.

00:22:54.380 So, for example, there's another wonderful story.

00:23:00.740 It's about a Mayan priest during the time of the conquistadors.

00:23:06.200 And he's, they destroy the civilization.

00:23:08.080 They throw him in a underground prison.

00:23:11.760 And there are some bars.

00:23:12.900 And on the other side is a jaguar.

00:23:14.220 And he begins to recall that there's an ancient myth that the gods have inscribed in the world somehow a phrase that gives you complete omnipotence, if you could utter the phrase.

00:23:29.360 Anyway, and one day he's watching the jaguar and he realizes that its spots spell out somehow this phrase, which he then utters.

00:23:41.280 And then he's looking for a way to destroy the conquistadors and restore Mayan civilization. 0.99

00:23:47.400 But now he sees everything, this great wheel, the entire universe.

00:23:51.000 He understands everything.

00:23:51.880 And he has no longer any interest in doing anything because that knowledge simply, like, it's complete and it's totally irrelevant what's happening here on earth or anything like that.

00:24:03.840 My favorite is the Library of Babel, which is about this, the universe is a library.

00:24:08.260 And the library has, you know, hexagonal cells.

00:24:12.500 And every cell has X number of shelves.

00:24:14.540 And every shelf has X number of books of exactly the same length, written in 23 characters or 24, whatever it is, a certain number of letters, comma, period, space.

00:24:25.200 And it's inhabited by librarians.

00:24:28.760 And they're looking through these books and they're trying to find some meaning.

00:24:34.040 But there's...

00:24:34.740 It's an infinite library.

00:24:35.940 It's an infinite library.

00:24:36.820 And by the way, the mathematicians have done the calculations on this.

00:24:39.220 Yeah, yeah.

00:24:39.800 So anyway, and, like, the most coherent phrase in any book that any librarian that this librarian who's narrating it knows, and he's gone all as far as he can, is something like, oh, time thy pyramids, right?

00:24:56.460 So everyone starts looking for books because they realize, like, there's, you know, I want to find something that will explain the meaning of my life or my purpose or something.

00:25:04.240 And then the fundamental proposition of the library is formulated, which is that any book that is possible is actual in the library.

00:25:12.660 Right, right.

00:25:12.920 In other words, any...

00:25:14.060 And, you know, they can...

00:25:14.820 It's like a million characters or something.

00:25:16.320 So any combination of characters exists.

00:25:18.220 That means that there is a book in this library that describes exactly this event.

00:25:23.200 We're sitting here having this podcast.

00:25:24.880 This is a possible book.

00:25:26.100 It must exist in this library.

00:25:27.520 Mm-hmm.

00:25:57.520 So, just to go back here.

00:26:02.480 Okay.

00:26:02.700 That's Borges' idea.

00:26:05.280 That is...

00:26:05.520 Well, it's a fundamental problem, right?

00:26:07.180 Right.

00:26:07.320 Because obviously we have some relationship with the infinite.

00:26:10.540 Yes.

00:26:11.060 Right.

00:26:11.820 It might be a relationship of negation.

00:26:13.580 Right, right.

00:26:14.120 But there's no escape from the conundrum that we're finite...

00:26:17.520 Right, right.

00:26:18.240 ...and faced with...

00:26:19.660 Right.

00:26:20.140 ...well, and faced with the infinite.

00:26:22.500 Indeed.

00:26:22.800 But the point I really wanted to emphasize in what you were saying is this question becomes

00:26:30.800 a fertile soil for these literary growths.

00:26:35.980 Right, right, right.

00:26:37.060 In other words, this is the question that animates his being as a writer.

00:26:40.460 And it's highly, highly productive.

00:26:43.260 So, we all know that questions are highly productive.

00:26:46.300 And limitations.

00:26:47.220 You see that in the creativity literature.

00:26:49.080 Exactly.

00:26:49.260 So, there's a great, extremely comical example of that online.

00:26:53.420 So, haiku is a poetic form that has ridiculous limitations.

00:26:58.200 Yes, right.

00:26:58.800 And you might say, well, why bother with it?

00:27:00.380 And the answer is, well, you can't play a game without rules.

00:27:05.160 Yes.

00:27:05.300 That's the answer.

00:27:05.960 Yes.

00:27:06.260 Okay.

00:27:06.780 Now, but there's a spam haiku archive online.

00:27:10.060 So, it's only haiku that's only devoted to the luncheon meat.

00:27:13.940 Like, the last time I looked at it, it's very funny.

00:27:16.900 They're very funny.

00:27:17.620 That's pretty good. 0.98

00:27:18.040 And it's ridiculous.

00:27:19.380 The MIT engineers made the archive, of course.

00:27:23.200 And so, there's 50,000 haikus there about spam. 0.62

00:27:27.820 And it's ridiculous. 0.71

00:27:29.360 And it's supposed to be. 0.97

00:27:30.220 It's comical.

00:27:30.980 But the point is that without that absolutely preposterous set of limitations, that whole

00:27:36.340 universe of poetic beauty, you might say, and comic endeavor wouldn't have come into being.

00:27:42.820 And so, it's a very strange thing that there is a genuine relationship between finitude and

00:27:50.260 abundance.

00:27:51.060 Yes.

00:27:51.500 Like, right?

00:27:51.980 So, there's a right balance between constraint and possibility that produces abundance.

00:27:58.000 Too much possibility, there's nothing.

00:28:00.300 That's Borg's point.

00:28:01.820 And then, too much limitation, there's nothing.

00:28:05.460 But there's some optimal balance.

00:28:07.140 And maybe, I mean, you could, it seems reasonable to propose that the issue, fundamental issue

00:28:13.680 in human life is how to get that balance exactly right.

00:28:16.320 That's really what the Jews, the ancient Jews, were wrestling with when they were trying 1.00

00:28:20.180 to figure out how you have a relationship with God.

00:28:23.840 You know, modern people say, well, there's no such thing as God.

00:28:26.460 Well, do you have a relationship with the infinite or not?

00:28:30.520 You have some relationship.

00:28:32.520 Maybe it could be a productive one if you could formulate it properly.

00:28:38.500 Yes.

00:28:39.280 Well, look.

00:28:40.040 So, as you know, in the Hebrew Scriptures, God creates human beings.

00:28:44.660 He's almost immediately disappointed with Adam and Eve.

00:28:47.060 Now, they're on their own.

00:28:49.360 You know, they get their wish, right?

00:28:50.640 I mean, the serpent says to them, oh, no, God knows you will become as gods.

00:28:54.440 The best interpretation here, I think, is Maimonides, who cites another rabbi.

00:29:00.300 And he says, well, the word for gods is Elohim, but it can also mean rulers.

00:29:03.720 So, they actually get what they wish for because there's no need for rule in the sense that we

00:29:11.160 understand it, that is, limitation, law, and so forth, to order chaos in the garden because

00:29:17.260 you're sort of, you're in the presence of God.

00:29:19.540 Now, once you're kicked out, now you've got a problem.

00:29:22.480 And the problem of chaos that's internal to the human soul immediately asserts itself

00:29:26.140 because Cain kills Abel.

00:29:28.640 And, of course, they screw up so badly.

00:29:30.440 The problem of misaligned aim, like Adam and Eve turn away from the proper aim,

00:29:35.500 like the builders of the Tower of Babel. 0.84

00:29:37.320 And so, because they no longer, this is exactly what happens with the Israelites when they 0.98

00:29:41.720 demand a king.

00:29:43.300 God basically says to them, well, if you conducted yourselves properly and maintained the covenant

00:29:48.560 with the divine, you wouldn't need a king.

00:29:51.040 It's like, we want a king.

00:29:52.320 And see, so, after all these failures, and yes, you know, the flood and the Tower of Babel 0.94

00:29:56.740 and everything.

00:29:57.000 So, finally, we speed up.

00:29:57.900 But in this part of Exodus where the Ten Commandments and then the so-called Book of the Covenant

00:30:03.860 and, you know, the rest of the laws are laid out, this seems to me to fit exactly what you're

00:30:08.620 saying.

00:30:08.980 God is limiting these human beings, right?

00:30:12.200 Like, here you are, these freed slaves.

00:30:14.480 We got to give you, you know, some sorts of channels in which to move your desires and stop signs and

00:30:26.160 restrictions and so forth.

00:30:27.620 And only within those 613 laws can you have a flourishing life.

00:30:34.020 Well, and it's even, it's even stranger than that in some sense, because you have, first of all, you have

00:30:39.260 the idea in the Garden of Eden that if your aim is proper, then you don't need, well, to set your

00:30:47.080 own course, right?

00:30:48.000 Right, right.

00:30:48.500 Which Eve decides she's going to do regardless.

00:30:50.800 Once you set your own course and you're steeped in sin because your aim is misaligned, you need rules.

00:30:56.800 Now, remember in the Exodus story, God provides the rules, first of all, directly from God, and then

00:31:03.460 the Israelites go astray instantly, and then they get kind of a second rate, and you could argue in a 0.54

00:31:08.360 way inferior and more tyrannical set of rules, and that's because you could imagine tiers of proper

00:31:16.060 aim, and God's hoping that the Israelites will aim at the highest conceivable, and they fail at that.

00:31:25.000 And he says, well, here's something that's still high, and they fail at that.

00:31:28.140 And he says, well, it looks like you guys are going to have to settle for this with me hanging

00:31:31.880 around the fringes around, because that's all you seem to be able to manage.

00:31:36.460 So, and I'm very interested in this idea of misaligned aim, because, well, because I think

00:31:42.740 the spirit of your aim answers your prayers.

00:31:44.980 And so, okay, so now you talked about Borghese, and you talked about the question, and that was

00:31:49.660 part of a conversation we were having about questions in general.

00:31:52.860 Yeah, so let's go back to the-

00:31:54.180 Yeah, so like the fruitfulness of the question.

00:31:56.060 Yeah, exactly.

00:31:56.680 I mean, you know, I think this is absolutely crucial.

00:31:59.820 And let me say that there is a question that I know to be absolutely fundamental.

00:32:06.660 And I know it to be fundamental, because it shows up both in the Hebrew Bible and in Plato.

00:32:11.840 Okay.

00:32:12.900 In Plato, it shows up in the very first sentence of Plato's Phaedrus, and in the Hebrew Bible,

00:32:16.880 it shows up when Hagar runs away from Sarah for the first time, and the angel comes to her

00:32:21.180 in the wilderness, and the question is, where have you been, and where are you going?

00:32:26.480 Yeah, right.

00:32:27.240 There's a question.

00:32:27.980 Now, for me, this is absolutely fundamental for individuals, for families, for tribes,

00:32:35.120 for nations, for societies.

00:32:39.220 And I view it as an urgent question today.

00:32:46.160 Well, it's probably the question, it's at least one variant of the question of identity.

00:32:50.880 Yes.

00:32:51.120 We're in an identity crisis, obviously.

00:32:53.520 We've cascaded into identity politics.

00:32:56.740 Right.

00:32:57.060 And given your frame here, you could say, well, the reason for that is because we don't know

00:33:01.800 where we've been.

00:33:03.180 Yes.

00:33:03.860 And certainly, there's no unified sense of that, which is a big problem.

00:33:07.640 And we don't know where we're going.

00:33:08.920 You could add maybe one other foundation stone to that, which would be, where have you been,

00:33:16.260 where are you now, and where you're going?

00:33:19.320 Yes.

00:33:19.520 That's a full narrative, really, right?

00:33:21.440 So, okay, so, okay, so let's just focus on these.

00:33:24.260 Yeah, so.

00:33:24.720 Why did that capture your interests, specifically?

00:33:27.280 Well, I mean, first of all, it seems to me that each part of that, and let's say, where

00:33:32.200 are you now?

00:33:32.800 Yeah.

00:33:33.080 Okay, this is crucial.

00:33:34.380 No part of it can be answered without the answers to the other two, okay?

00:33:38.400 Right, yeah.

00:33:39.260 Because, look, the future is trackless.

00:33:42.840 Where are we going?

00:33:44.360 Well, our only resource, really, is where are we now, and where have we been?

00:33:49.520 More fully, I would say that, and this is just my hypothesis, but I think there's a lot

00:33:55.380 to it, that there are no really fruitful growths in the future that don't come out of the soil

00:34:04.600 of the past.

00:34:05.500 That is to say, a rich understanding of the past.

00:34:08.300 And we could do this.

00:34:08.940 Spoken like a true conservative.

00:34:10.540 Well, I mean, listen.

00:34:12.200 But that's the sort of thing that makes you think in a conservative direction, once you

00:34:15.620 realize that kind of thing.

00:34:16.360 Well, and that's a whole other interesting thing, because the fact is that, and I've

00:34:22.320 shared this with a lot of colleagues and friends, I actually think that part of the hostility

00:34:27.860 to studying the Western tradition on the part of those who are, you know, antagonistic to

00:34:35.440 the West, comes from the fact that studying the great books actually makes you not only

00:34:43.540 intellectually conservative, but in some ways politically conservative.

00:34:46.880 Conservative enough, for example, to say that we need to study the Western tradition.

00:34:49.720 Well, right, well, the other issue, tell me what you think about this.

00:34:54.780 I also think that, you know, if you think about the Maoists, for example, and the fact

00:34:59.520 that, for example, the Red Guards destroyed all the Chinese statues as far up as you could

00:35:04.200 reach with a hammer.

00:35:05.780 We're going to obliterate the past, and we're going to build the new man in keeping with

00:35:10.700 our, well, there's the question, right?

00:35:12.880 In keeping with our, what, revolutionary presuppositions.

00:35:15.740 Okay, but then you might, you have to say, well, where did those revolutionary presuppositions

00:35:21.940 come from?

00:35:22.540 Yes.

00:35:22.640 Did they just spring like Athena out of the head of Zeus?

00:35:25.280 There's, you know, they have a history too, or worse, they have a spirit, they have a

00:35:29.560 personality.

00:35:30.320 Yes.

00:35:30.680 And this resistance to studying the Western canon, let's say, which is not even exactly

00:35:37.040 Western, get right down to it, right?

00:35:39.420 It's much broader than that.

00:35:40.800 Talk about that, yes.

00:35:41.320 I think it's not only terror, let's say, that you'll become more conservative, but also

00:35:48.500 it's a rebuke to your intellectual hubris, because you can no longer presume that your

00:35:57.280 selfish, power-mad whims, say, are of sufficient significance to be the determinants of the future.

00:36:07.040 You have to subordinate yourself to the tradition.

00:36:10.020 Yes, right, right.

00:36:11.580 And I think Luciferian intellects dislike that.

00:36:15.700 Yes.

00:36:16.040 And you could be even more cynical than that.

00:36:18.560 You could say that people who are underpaid in relationship to their IQ, that would be

00:36:23.800 professors, are angry enough with their lack of status to elevate their Luciferian presumption

00:36:30.880 to the highest point.

00:36:32.200 Yes.

00:36:32.600 And that means they're very interested in dissociating themselves from the canon and

00:36:37.640 making themselves, well, they do the same thing Adam and Eve do.

00:36:40.580 It's like, we're going to make our own values.

00:36:43.780 Yeah.

00:36:44.200 Look, I mean, here's another thing that, I mean, you mentioned Mao.

00:36:49.960 Now, as you know, under Mao, the little Shinto shrines and things that people had in their

00:36:56.280 homes were replaced by pictures of Mao.

00:36:58.780 They worshipped Mao.

00:36:59.720 Yeah.

00:37:02.360 And at the same time, Mao, Stalin, whoever, you know, these guys had this notion of a

00:37:11.100 new man.

00:37:11.800 We're going to have a new man.

00:37:12.920 Yeah.

00:37:13.920 But.

00:37:14.600 Yeah.

00:37:15.140 New.

00:37:15.840 New.

00:37:16.240 But here's the thing.

00:37:18.500 Actually, it's all very, very old.

00:37:21.220 So we were talking about Exodus.

00:37:22.740 And so let me just throw this out.

00:37:24.340 Yeah.

00:37:24.540 I happen to have just taught a couple of classes on Exodus.

00:37:27.380 I filled in for one of our professors.

00:37:30.060 The way I look at that book, one main thing that's happening there is that book of the Bible

00:37:35.880 is presenting you with the following alternative.

00:37:40.600 Either you enslave yourself to Pharaoh or you enslave yourself to God. 0.96

00:37:45.780 But now, no, you can also be lost in the desert.

00:37:49.080 Well, okay.

00:37:49.800 That's an alternative.

00:37:51.000 Okay.

00:37:51.300 Right.

00:37:51.540 But that's important.

00:37:52.500 Those are the three.

00:37:53.600 No, no.

00:37:54.200 I mean, you're absolutely right.

00:37:56.100 Let's just imagine that Moses had never returned and, you know, they got the calf, whatever.

00:38:00.120 Now, that's not going to be a very long lasting alternative.

00:38:04.740 But, but, but.

00:38:05.500 Yes.

00:38:06.160 But what I want to say here is then the question is, well, what is Pharaoh?

00:38:09.700 What does Pharaoh mean?

00:38:11.260 What's Pharaoh?

00:38:11.840 Pharaoh is a man God. 0.98

00:38:12.900 By the way, aside from the, from the Jews who are trying to start a Hebrew Republic and 0.93

00:38:19.620 the Greeks, which are these little islands of liberty in a sea of despotism, everyone

00:38:23.740 else is man gods.

00:38:25.000 I mean, the Persian, the emperor, the, you know, Egyptians, et cetera.

00:38:28.440 Right.

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00:39:44.540 So that means that those societies apprehended a principle of sovereignty abstracted beyond

00:39:51.520 the most powerful man.

00:39:54.660 Yeah, right, right.

00:39:55.660 That's a very sophisticated view of it.

00:39:57.540 And, you know, I mean, in, for example, Aeschylus' Persians, which is about the defeat

00:40:04.140 of Xerxes' army in the Second Persian War, Xerxes can't be held to account because he's

00:40:10.320 divine.

00:40:10.760 Yeah, right.

00:40:11.160 Right.

00:40:11.420 Okay, so.

00:40:12.240 The buck stops there.

00:40:13.840 But what's interesting about Pharaoh is that, first of all, it is the most, and I, not only

00:40:21.080 the most technically advanced, I would even call it a technological civilization.

00:40:24.640 If you've been to Egypt, as I have, you, you, you, you, you know, you, you see the pyramids,

00:40:30.780 right?

00:40:31.440 And nobody even knows how these things were made.

00:40:33.920 There are blocks that are much larger than this fairly large room we're sitting in.

00:40:38.540 You know, they made the most amazing jewelry ever produced.

00:40:42.340 And we have a bunch of it just because a bunch of it was shoved in a tiny little room.

00:40:47.320 The sarcasm, you know, the burial site of King Tutankhamen, who knows what the tomb of

00:40:53.320 Ramses had in it. 0.96

00:40:55.140 They had these massive granite obelisks and all this stuff.

00:40:58.000 The entire society was dedicated to the elevation and the monumentalization and the

00:41:04.160 memorialization of the Pharaoh.

00:41:07.520 Okay.

00:41:07.760 So, it's the exaltation of the man God.

00:41:11.300 Well, and so, what Pharaoh means today is the elevation of man to a God.

00:41:20.020 Now, we do this, by the way, I mean, Freud has this phrase in civilization and its discontents

00:41:25.460 about how modern man is a prosthetic God, right?

00:41:28.600 Like, we equip ourselves with all these tools and things like this.

00:41:32.600 So, that's a huge temptation.

00:41:35.240 But the suggestion of the Bible is if you go in that direction, you're going to have

00:41:40.260 a kind of totalitarian society.

00:41:44.120 And to be a slave...

00:41:45.020 Yeah, you get this dynamic between potentate and slave.

00:41:48.180 Yes, exactly.

00:41:49.260 But there can be lots of slaves, right?

00:41:51.140 So, for example, in Persia, the emperor, whether it was Xerxes or Darius or Cyrus, everyone else

00:41:58.480 was known as the king's slave, including the members of his family.

00:42:01.520 So, you have that.

00:42:02.180 Now, you can do that, but the alternative then is bowing down to God and being a slave,

00:42:08.720 or if you want to put it in a softer way, a servant to God.

00:42:11.480 And the suggestion...

00:42:11.620 Well, that's what Moses tells the Pharaoh, right?

00:42:13.580 He says, let my people go so they may worship me in the wilderness, right? 0.75

00:42:18.420 It's not anarchy.

00:42:20.040 It's not hedonistic freedom of the sort that the golden calf worshipers turn to, right?

00:42:26.340 It is, it's what we call it, ordered freedom is the general phrase.

00:42:32.180 So, if we fast forward again to middle of the 20th century ideological tyrannies, and

00:42:38.640 this includes fascism, obviously, you...

00:42:43.100 This is like, there's nothing new under the sun, in a sense.

00:42:46.100 Yeah, it's a retelling of the pharaonic tyranny, essentially. 0.99

00:42:48.900 Yeah, right.

00:42:49.660 Right, but so the notion that, like, that might also be part of this resistance, like, you know...

00:42:55.100 It is.

00:42:55.700 Well, I think that's part of...

00:42:57.020 You're saying the illusion that you're...

00:42:57.920 Well, I think that's part of the spirit of Luciferian usurpation.

00:43:02.300 It's like, the radical types who were trying to produce the new man, they assumed that if

00:43:08.480 they had been Stalin or Mao, the promised utopia would have come.

00:43:13.160 And that is an elevation of the intellect, because one of the...

00:43:16.980 So, I interviewed a guy recently, unfortunately, I can't remember his name, who wrote a book

00:43:22.280 about Marx and Satanism.

00:43:24.020 And he looked at Marx's early writings before he became political.

00:43:28.720 And Marx was a seriously warped individual in virtually every way you could possibly imagine.

00:43:35.020 And he was definitely a Luciferian intellect.

00:43:37.160 And, see, one of the things I think we've done wrong in our analysis of, let's say, communism,

00:43:43.080 and perhaps also Nazism, but we'll stick with communism, is that we assume that the best 0.98

00:43:48.620 way to understand it, to understand what happened, is to do an analysis of communism.

00:43:55.220 But we don't think what you're proposing, which is, well, communism, that emerged in, like,

00:44:02.540 1850, let's say, something like that.

00:44:04.780 Was it actually something new?

00:44:08.520 Well, your point is, no, it's not something new at all.

00:44:11.520 It's really old.

00:44:13.060 It's very old.

00:44:13.620 It's the tyrant-slave dichotomy.

00:44:15.720 And I do believe that communism is the most recent garb that something very ancient cloaks

00:44:22.380 itself in.

00:44:22.800 Oh, yes.

00:44:23.580 Yeah.

00:44:23.960 And, in fact, as you were speaking, it occurred to me, I mean, so here are a couple of examples

00:44:27.940 of communism.

00:44:28.560 First of all, we have book five of Plato's Republic, where the women and men, you know, are shared

00:44:33.520 in common, et cetera.

00:44:34.200 It turns out to be a highly stratified society, where everyone is miserable, essentially,

00:44:39.620 unless you're sort of the top dog.

00:44:41.340 But more important is Aristophanes play Assemblywomen, in which the women take over and establish 0.60

00:44:47.820 a communist society.

00:44:48.800 Now, this is very interesting for reasons that you may already have gleaned.

00:44:53.480 That is, the evidence shows that women, far more than men in the United States and in 0.91

00:44:58.940 Europe, are left.

00:45:01.120 Especially if they're young.

00:45:02.520 Far left, right. 0.56

00:45:03.200 Yeah, and it's true in South Korea, it's true in Japan, it's true in Australia.

00:45:06.560 So, I would suggest that anyone listening to our discussion who's interested in this might

00:45:09.780 go back and look at Aristophanes' Assemblywomen, where the men are essentially infantilized. 0.92

00:45:14.280 Yeah.

00:45:14.800 The women run everything, the men are infantilized, and it's a communist society. 0.86

00:45:20.060 So, you have all these, you know, these earlier things.

00:45:22.440 But one thing I wanted to say here, and I want to mention before I forget it, is that...

00:45:27.680 So, why...

00:45:28.600 Oh, sorry, go ahead with that.

00:45:29.760 No, no, no, please.

00:45:30.100 Well, I'm curious, because you said, you know, you said some, you made some statements that

00:45:36.740 elicit questions.

00:45:38.520 So, for example, you studied Plato, and then you said, sort of casually, you joined the

00:45:43.060 synagogue and you got interested in the Talmud.

00:45:44.680 It's like, oh, well, that's not necessarily expected.

00:45:48.580 And then you showed your deepening understanding of the relationship between today's political

00:45:55.400 scene and these very, very old stories, and I'm making a case that the political situation

00:46:01.040 is better understood in terms of those old stories, what, arguably, than any other way.

00:46:06.200 I mean, that's kind of what it looks like to me.

00:46:08.220 Yes, yes.

00:46:08.500 There is nothing new under the sun.

00:46:10.720 Yes.

00:46:11.020 And if we lose touch with those ancient stories, we lose our ability to actually understand

00:46:16.520 what's going on.

00:46:18.200 Elijah, you mentioned Elijah.

00:46:19.520 Yes, yes.

00:46:20.480 Elijah's foes are the nature worshipers.

00:46:22.920 Mm-hmm.

00:46:23.460 Right.

00:46:23.860 Well, that's kind of relevant in today's society, given the rise of nature worship is something

00:46:29.220 will attain the pinnacle point.

00:46:31.000 We talked about the man-god.

00:46:32.780 Well, that doesn't look like it works out very well, unless you want to be a slave, and

00:46:36.660 maybe you do.

00:46:37.460 Mm-hmm.

00:46:37.800 And it's also, we're also facing the consequences of the rise of Gaia worship, let's say.

00:46:44.320 Yes.

00:46:44.480 The rise of nature to the highest place.

00:46:46.520 And that's, you know, Elijah's fundamental realization, which makes him a star of the

00:46:55.100 Old Testament.

00:46:55.760 He's one of the two prophets that appear when Christ is transfigured on the mount, right?

00:47:00.320 It's Moses and Elijah.

00:47:01.680 Mm-hmm.

00:47:01.960 Well, why?

00:47:03.140 Because Elijah realizes that God is not to be found in nature.

00:47:07.260 Yes.

00:47:07.360 But we have no idea how cataclysmic a discovery that was.

00:47:10.460 Huge.

00:47:10.860 Right?

00:47:11.300 So, God isn't a man-god, and God isn't in nature.

00:47:15.340 Yes.

00:47:15.660 Okay, well, now, one response to that is there's no God, but we kind of end up with nature or

00:47:21.140 man-gods when we take that route, or some nihilistic catastrophe.

00:47:25.200 Yes.

00:47:25.860 And so, then the question, now, you talked about Greece and the ancient Israelites as

00:47:31.540 constructing up a principle of divinity or sovereignty that was separate from a specific

00:47:37.960 embodiment, like a pharaoh or an emperor, but also not to be found in nature, right?

00:47:43.020 Yes, indeed.

00:47:43.780 Yeah, okay, okay.

00:47:44.740 Yeah, so, let me make another suggestion here.

00:47:48.000 So, you mentioned Marx, and what we see in Marx is an overestimation, a serious overestimation

00:47:59.520 of the power of reason.

00:48:01.820 Yeah, yeah.

00:48:02.400 And now, reason understood as a productive and political principle.

00:48:07.740 And, I mean, obviously, there's a religious background because it's a secularization of

00:48:11.640 the Christian story.

00:48:12.760 Yeah.

00:48:12.840 But, I think there are several elements here, and by the way, this goes back to Plato's

00:48:18.920 Republic as well.

00:48:19.740 We can talk about that, but the idea is that, okay, we're going to have a heaven on earth.

00:48:24.980 We're going to have a paradisical society where all men are brothers and so on.

00:48:29.660 And everyone's needs are met.

00:48:31.980 Right.

00:48:32.360 Whatever the hell that means.

00:48:33.700 But here's the problem.

00:48:35.200 It is going to be realized by human, political, productive action.

00:48:41.300 And the difficulty there is, so, first of all, it's not emerging organically, okay?

00:48:47.960 It's a political constructivism.

00:48:51.400 So, the best society will not emerge organically, but it's to be brought into being by man.

00:48:58.840 Now, it's to be brought into being by man in a particular time and in a particular place.

00:49:04.480 By particular men.

00:49:05.880 Right, by particular men.

00:49:06.800 And when you put those constraints on it, you drastically limit the possibilities within

00:49:13.020 that society because it's got to be producible.

00:49:16.020 It's got to be sustainable.

00:49:17.680 It's got to fit the particular parameters, all these kinds of things.

00:49:20.980 Add on to that the delusion that human beings are not, in fact, let's say, radically local

00:49:30.220 beings who form the most meaningful bonds in particular ways.

00:49:34.980 Marriage, family, town.

00:49:36.040 Et cetera, right.

00:49:37.000 But we're universal, right?

00:49:38.240 Yeah, right.

00:49:38.700 And finally, you have this kind of divinization of man because, after all, you know, well,

00:49:44.220 if we, I mean, we're going to realize heaven on earth.

00:49:46.360 So, well, and as you said, we can produce a centralized authority, which falls out of the

00:49:52.400 presumption that's described, that's going to have the computational power necessary to

00:49:57.340 pull off the task.

00:49:58.600 Exactly.

00:49:58.960 Which is, well, that just, just that claim is preposterous, right?

00:50:02.980 Right.

00:50:03.100 But, but I like, I like the way you formulate that because what, what you're pointing out

00:50:08.220 is that for the system that's proposed to make itself manifest, it has to meet a series

00:50:15.580 of increasingly likely constraints.

00:50:18.380 Yes, exactly.

00:50:19.120 Increasingly, sorry, increasingly unlikely constraints.

00:50:21.720 Right.

00:50:21.940 Right.

00:50:22.280 It has to do this.

00:50:23.480 That's already hard.

00:50:24.640 Well, you add four more impossibilities to that.

00:50:27.020 Right.

00:50:27.160 Well, right.

00:50:28.000 And where I want to go with this is that that kind of hubris about reason is, I think,

00:50:39.500 well, first of all, it's a characteristic of the modern era because, you know, you have

00:50:43.580 Descartes saying we're going to be masters and possessors of nature.

00:50:46.540 And if you read the discourse on the method, he's-

00:50:48.320 Nature.

00:50:48.580 We're going to-

00:50:49.040 Right.

00:50:49.380 We're going to do these things.

00:50:50.200 We're going to form our own values.

00:50:51.360 Right.

00:50:51.760 Right.

00:50:51.960 Right.

00:50:52.400 But that's sort of the end of the whole kind of decay.

00:50:54.520 But if we go back to the early moderns, he even suggests in the discourse on method

00:51:00.460 that maybe medicine will make all the infirmities of old age sort of disappear, which means

00:51:06.220 we're not going to die.

00:51:07.180 In which case, by the way, the religious question is gone.

00:51:11.300 Like from the, I mean, Descartes writing, he doesn't want his books to be placed on the

00:51:14.820 index, which they were nonetheless, you know.

00:51:18.280 And so they're read and they have to be, you know, the Roman Catholic Church has to look

00:51:22.960 at them.

00:51:24.520 But the fact is that Roman Catholicism is irrelevant if you've got, if we're not going to die, 0.99

00:51:29.440 right?

00:51:29.700 I mean, it's on fundamental sense, but okay.

00:51:31.840 Well, whatever a human being is, is something completely different than whatever it is now.

00:51:36.460 But now I want to go back to Leo Strauss, who talks about the permanent questions.

00:51:41.200 And what I've come to understand is the following, that the permanence of the questions arises from

00:51:48.060 the necessity that Athens, so to speak, and now let's just take that to mean reason, like

00:51:55.840 unaided reason, okay, can't be separated from the biblical alternative, which is the fear

00:52:04.740 of God is the beginning of wisdom.

00:52:06.260 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

00:52:07.500 How did you figure that out?

00:52:08.700 Well, Strauss writes about this stuff.

00:52:10.560 He writes about, this is not my ideas, he writes about Athens and Jerusalem.

00:52:13.060 But what I'm claiming is this, in order for reason to function in a healthy way, it must

00:52:19.860 conduct itself in the light of the alternative of religion, which is, like, you can't understand

00:52:28.300 everything on your own.

00:52:29.340 There are massive mysteries, right?

00:52:32.840 And there's this entire alternative way of thinking about things.

00:52:36.540 So if you simply separate reason from that, you're going to get totalitarianism and kind

00:52:41.680 of, you know, the lunacy that we see.

00:52:43.200 Yeah, Luciferian hubris.

00:52:44.940 But if you separate religion from the alternative that, well, man has reason, and man is able 0.99

00:52:50.500 to figure things out, and there are things that we can understand about nature and the

00:52:55.840 world and science that aren't in the religious tradition, then you're going to end up with,

00:53:00.140 say, Islamic extremism or something.

00:53:02.120 You see what I'm saying?

00:53:02.720 In other words, a healthy human existence is to dwell in the space of the permanent questions,

00:53:09.060 which must be informed by these alternatives.

00:53:11.520 And Strauss is very good on this.

00:53:12.620 He says, there's no philosophical proof that the Bible is wrong, right?

00:53:17.680 Like, you know, you could, like, you're always making assumptions that they're simply

00:53:24.180 going to sort of, you know, prejudice the conclusions that you're going to.

00:53:28.260 So we have to live in this space.

00:53:31.080 And Strauss' claim, which I really think is great, is that the tension between Athens

00:53:36.380 and Jerusalem is the coiled spring of the greatness of the West, that we have to understand

00:53:41.440 that.

00:53:41.560 Right, right.

00:53:41.740 But now what I've come to understand, this is a kind of moderation, right?

00:53:44.600 Like, don't, because if you say, no, reason's it.

00:53:48.000 Anything that's not rational, you've got some kind of positivism or whatever, you're going

00:53:52.300 to go straight to that man-god thing, right?

00:53:54.320 You're going to go straight to that totalitarian.

00:53:56.760 You know, the train's going to stop at the, you know, at the death camp, basically.

00:54:01.140 But if you also say, well, there's no reason, which is one more thing I just want to say

00:54:05.380 about my book on Plato and the Talmud.

00:54:07.460 I've already suggested that Socratic philosophizing begins with this revelation of Delphi, which

00:54:12.480 talked Socrates' stakes seriously.

00:54:13.700 Yeah, yeah.

00:54:14.300 Who is Socrates?

00:54:15.000 What is wisdom?

00:54:15.920 But he's convinced that there must be an answer because the god can't speak falsely.

00:54:20.420 The rabbis, there's a great book called Rational Rabbis by a guy named Menachem Fish.

00:54:24.600 And believe it or not, he talks about the rabbis of the Talmud.

00:54:26.920 The first 40 pages is about Karl Popper's theory of falsification in science, which is

00:54:32.340 a great, humble theory, right?

00:54:34.180 It's that we can't prove laws like the law of gravity.

00:54:37.820 We can only falsify them.

00:54:39.120 We can conduct experiments that, if they turn out a certain way, will falsify the, you

00:54:44.220 know, formulation of the law of gravity.

00:54:45.820 Look for new forms of our ignorance.

00:54:47.880 Right.

00:54:48.060 So then this guy argues that the rabbis are rational. 0.99

00:54:52.320 And they are, in a sense, they're playing the Socratic game of rationality within the

00:54:56.240 horizon of revelation.

00:54:58.440 So they start with the Torah.

00:55:00.120 Okay.

00:55:00.240 I believe, I think we know enough about both psychology and neuroscience now.

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00:56:09.600 To move that from the domain of philosophical theory to the domain of established fact,

00:56:16.000 because one of the things that people who've studied perception and emotion have come to

00:56:20.760 conclude is that, well, I asked Carl Friston, who's the world's most cited neuroscientist,

00:56:26.300 by the way, I asked him, is every object perception a micro-narrative?

00:56:32.180 Oh, that's very interesting.

00:56:33.040 He said, yes, for sure.

00:56:35.160 He said, necessarily.

00:56:36.880 Right, necessarily.

00:56:38.100 That's quite the claim.

00:56:39.160 Because what we've come to understand is that there's no object perception independent of

00:56:45.860 motivational frame.

00:56:47.240 And the description of a motivational frame is a narrative.

00:56:51.500 Okay, now you made a comment earlier that, well, you need to know where you've come from

00:56:56.700 and where you're going.

00:56:57.560 Okay, so let's, what is a narrative?

00:57:00.200 Well, there's an aim, there's a starting place, there's a voyage.

00:57:04.540 And then you might say, well, their world's made out of objects, and you overlay a value-laden

00:57:10.880 narrative on top of it.

00:57:12.340 But then you might say, well, where's the interface?

00:57:14.540 And so you might say, well, let's look at how perception works.

00:57:17.380 What do we see as objects?

00:57:18.920 Well, we do not see, we do not see what the enlightenment mind conceptualized as the object when we see an object.

00:57:28.800 That's not right.

00:57:30.040 What we see, so what it seems to be the case, it's very cool.

00:57:33.260 So once you establish an aim, and this is in the most trivial of circumstances, the world reveals itself to your perception

00:57:42.620 as a pathway to the aim, okay, as a set of obstacles, that produces negative emotion.

00:57:50.460 A set of facilitators or tools, that produces positive emotion.

00:57:55.980 And so, and that's what every glance you take, because every glance specifies an aim for action, right?

00:58:01.700 Because otherwise, why look?

00:58:03.740 Okay, so aim, pathway, right?

00:58:07.580 So that might be the straight, narrow pathway.

00:58:09.340 Yes.

00:58:09.660 Uphill, for example.

00:58:10.720 Right.

00:58:11.120 Tools and obstacles.

00:58:12.200 Yes, gotcha.

00:58:13.140 Okay, positive emotion, negative emotion.

00:58:14.640 On the social front, friends and foes, same thing.

00:58:19.660 Almost everything is, defaults to the realm of the irrelevant, right?

00:58:24.940 Because if I specify an aim, most things are now irrelevant.

00:58:28.060 So your aim makes most of the world irrelevant.

00:58:31.300 Some things stand out as phenomena.

00:58:33.940 The phenomena that stand out are tools and obstacles, or friends and foes.

00:58:37.860 There's also, and I just figured this out this year, there's also agents of magical transformation in narratives.

00:58:44.220 They change your aim.

00:58:46.000 So imagine that every aim brings a set of constraints and rules.

00:58:50.220 So that's like the metaphysics of the aim, the rules.

00:58:54.080 But if you switch the aim, the metaphysics change, and that's a magical shift.

00:58:57.580 And if someone comes along whose aim is four stages higher than yours, we'll say, then they appear truly magical.

00:59:07.200 But the reason I'm making this case is like, and there is, I think we're at the end of the enlightenment.

00:59:14.720 And I think it died like Nietzsche claimed Christianity died at its own hand.

00:59:18.880 Because it turns out that there is no level at which what we see are dead objects.

00:59:26.700 Yes.

00:59:27.080 Not at any level of perception whatsoever.

00:59:28.740 Yes, yes.

00:59:29.140 Every object is actually, you cannot dissociate value from object in perception.

00:59:35.020 Yes.

00:59:35.240 It's not possible.

00:59:36.400 Yeah.

00:59:36.840 In fact, if anything, it's tilted towards value and not object.

00:59:40.760 And there's another terrible plague for the enlightenment types as well who think the world is a place of objects. 0.93

00:59:49.820 Is that, well, there's an infinite number of objects because, well, so then which objects?

00:59:55.760 Right, right.

00:59:56.620 Which objects?

00:59:57.500 That's a terrible question because as soon as you say that, you have to prioritize.

01:00:01.820 Well, there's no difference between priority and value.

01:00:04.160 Yes.

01:00:04.720 So another way of thinking about a narrative, when you go to a movie, you watch the protagonist.

01:00:09.680 What you are embodying is your observation of the protagonist's structure of value.

01:00:17.660 You're incorporating that.

01:00:19.380 You match his emotions because you match his aims.

01:00:22.420 And so when we're storytelling, what we're doing is we're exchanging information about the substrata within which rationality has no choice but to operate.

01:00:32.740 See, so the metaphysics of the enlightenment were wrong.

01:00:37.040 Rationality is at the base because the world's made out of objects and you can calculate your way forward with value-free objective knowledge.

01:00:46.300 Like, none of that's right.

01:00:47.660 Yeah, yeah.

01:00:48.140 So the story's the thing.

01:00:50.500 Now, you said, well, we need a story.

01:00:52.100 We need to know where we've been.

01:00:53.520 Yes, right.

01:00:53.960 Now, that has to have something to do with why you got interested in the Talmud, I would presume.

01:00:59.740 Yeah.

01:00:59.820 So you said you saw a similarity with the dialogues.

01:01:02.840 Yes, yes.

01:01:03.040 So what else caught your attention?

01:01:05.560 You've obviously developed extreme familiarity, for example, with the story of Exodus.

01:01:10.060 Why do you think, as a philosopher, you started to presume or understand that these ancient stories shed light on the world in a way that philosophical theories abstracted away from narrative don't?

01:01:26.460 Well, look, what you just said is very rich and I think very attractive and interesting.

01:01:36.680 So let me start with a question, I guess.

01:01:39.040 Doesn't this all mean, then, that we have to find the proper aim?

01:01:47.740 And if we find the proper aim, then our questions are going to be helpful and productive to us as human beings.

01:01:54.460 So let's go back to the very first commandment.

01:01:56.740 This is why Christ, in the Sermon on the Mount, for example, which is a guidebook for revelation, says, okay, how do you pray?

01:02:04.340 How do you orient yourself in the world?

01:02:05.820 Same question.

01:02:06.360 Aim at the highest thing you can conceptualize.

01:02:09.400 That's number one.

01:02:10.640 Presume that other people are made in the image of that highest thing.

01:02:13.760 Yes.

01:02:14.020 Okay.

01:02:14.380 So now you've set the frame.

01:02:15.920 Now you've got it.

01:02:16.340 Exactly.

01:02:17.040 Now, pay attention.

01:02:19.380 Right.

01:02:19.760 Having done that, pay attention to the moment.

01:02:21.780 Because what will happen is if you specify your aim properly, the proper pathway will appear.

01:02:28.280 The proper tools will make themselves manifest to you.

01:02:31.120 The proper revelations will come to you.

01:02:34.040 Yes.

01:02:34.160 Well, that is how perception and thought work.

01:02:36.760 So in the Tower of Babel is a story of misaligned aim, you know, and it's the engineers who build the tower.

01:02:42.920 Yeah, right.

01:02:44.300 It's, I mean, well, that's a great story too, because if you read it carefully, they say, let's bake bricks.

01:02:49.740 So they bake the bricks, and that's fascinating because they break it out of Adama, which is the soil that man is made out of Adam, et cetera.

01:02:56.560 Right, right, right.

01:02:57.280 And then they say, let's make a tower.

01:02:59.340 Now, if you, this may be overinterpreting, but first we'll develop the bricks, and then we'll figure out what to do with them.

01:03:06.040 Like the technological thing comes before.

01:03:08.300 It actually reminds me of, like, the CIA discovers LSD.

01:03:11.700 I mean, they don't discover it, but they're like, we got LSD.

01:03:14.500 So now their question is, what can we do with it?

01:03:17.220 There's a book about this.

01:03:18.340 And so they say, well, is it a truth serum?

01:03:21.000 So they give LSD to this CIA guy.

01:03:23.040 No, it's not, you know.

01:03:24.960 Well, maybe it's an anti-truth serum.

01:03:26.920 We give it to our agents if they're caught and stuff like that.

01:03:29.020 No, it's not.

01:03:29.780 But this kind of reasoning, right?

01:03:31.280 Like, this is potent stuff.

01:03:33.380 This is super potent stuff.

01:03:35.280 What can we do with it, right?

01:03:36.760 But anyway, you're absolutely right about the misaligned aim.

01:03:39.780 Yeah.

01:03:40.180 Well, you know, people end up unable to communicate because the aim gets so misaligned.

01:03:45.280 Words themselves lose their meaning.

01:03:47.120 And that's a reference to exactly what we're describing, is that if you mess up the underlying

01:03:52.520 narrative substrate enough, rationality becomes impossible, partly because words don't mean

01:03:58.720 the same thing to different people.

01:04:00.540 Well, that's true.

01:04:01.200 Right?

01:04:01.460 Well, we can see that now.

01:04:02.960 Yeah.

01:04:03.180 I mean, and so what you said about the Sermon on the Mount is anticipated by God in the very

01:04:08.560 first commandment, I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods beside me.

01:04:11.840 Right, exactly.

01:04:12.480 Now, what's interesting is that, you know, it doesn't mean that we don't have subsidiary

01:04:18.600 aims, but what it means is that's the highest, that's the highest.

01:04:23.200 For Socrates, what is the highest?

01:04:25.420 Well, he calls these things ideas, you know, justice, for example.

01:04:29.060 And the Socratic, what Socrates is trying to do is a sort of shuttling movement, okay?

01:04:38.760 First of all, to come to it, the best possible understanding he can of, for example, the idea

01:04:44.160 of justice, which plays a huge role in his life.

01:04:47.280 But, you know, the cave image, there aren't any signs that say you are now leaving the cave

01:04:52.220 and entering into the full light of truth, right?

01:04:54.080 So, there's always a question, have I truly understood this thing?

01:04:57.240 Then the other thing he has to do is to try to live up to the ideas, or if you want to

01:05:02.380 put it the other way, to take the idea into his life as a matter of his existence.

01:05:06.260 Jacob's ladder image.

01:05:07.760 Exactly, exactly.

01:05:09.480 So, he's trying to do these things.

01:05:11.180 But for him, the highest is, frankly, I mean, you can call it the beautiful as per the symposium,

01:05:16.260 you can call it the good as per the republic.

01:05:19.520 But, of course, the good is analogized to the sun, and the sun, in a way, has no form or

01:05:24.440 no, like, if the soul, if the mind is compared to the eye, then the mind is destroyed by looking

01:05:30.820 directly at the sun, or at the good, right?

01:05:33.740 So, that's the connection between Plato and the Talmud, because...

01:05:39.860 It's that upward aim.

01:05:40.720 It's this upward aim.

01:05:41.900 Now, so, if you have that...

01:05:42.700 So, would it be fair to say that Plato, would Plato consider the highest good as the, whatever

01:05:48.380 the commonality is between the true, the good, and the beautiful, let's say?

01:05:52.220 Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, he moves back and, like, yes, he gives different perspectives

01:05:58.160 on that, right?

01:05:59.560 So, we have the beautiful in the symposium, we have the good.

01:06:02.800 Obviously, the true is absolutely fundamental.

01:06:04.900 But, one thing I want to say is, you know, you mentioned earlier attention, and I am convinced,

01:06:14.540 I've heard several people say this or read it, that attention, proper attention, is an

01:06:19.440 act of worship.

01:06:20.660 Yeah, right.

01:06:21.380 And so...

01:06:22.500 That's the definition of worship, actually.

01:06:25.200 Mm-hmm.

01:06:25.620 Because you pay attention.

01:06:28.080 Worship, the act of worship is, it's indistinguishable from paying attention.

01:06:34.320 Yes.

01:06:34.580 Because what you're doing when you attend is you're prioritizing the objects of attention.

01:06:39.160 Right, exactly.

01:06:40.000 Well, to worship is to prioritize.

01:06:41.840 Yes, right.

01:06:42.340 Right, and so, this is what's so stunning about these sequence, let's say, of discoveries in

01:06:47.820 neuroscience.

01:06:48.560 It's like, oh, I see, every glance, whether you know it or not, is an act of worship.

01:06:55.260 Now the question comes up.

01:06:56.540 That's very interesting.

01:06:57.520 Yeah, that's for sure.

01:06:58.620 That's very interesting.

01:06:59.560 It's like, oh, what are you worshiping?

01:07:01.720 Yes.

01:07:02.100 Well, nothing.

01:07:02.580 It's like, well, then your eyes are closed and you're asleep.

01:07:05.940 Right.

01:07:06.020 It's like, no, there's no escape from this.

01:07:08.380 There is no escape.

01:07:09.460 Yeah.

01:07:09.780 I just ran a class for some applicants to my university, and we were discussing David Foster

01:07:18.360 Wallace's This Is Water, Kenyan graduation speech.

01:07:22.000 I don't know if you know this, but anyway, it's great.

01:07:24.220 And at some point there, he says, you know, that everybody worships something, right?

01:07:32.560 And that in fact, and he makes this case, he says, you know, whether it's Jesus Christ,

01:07:37.660 whether it's Yahweh, whether it's some extreme, you know, the good, something like this.

01:07:42.500 Because if you don't bow down to those highest things, then your life is going to be miserable.

01:07:50.880 Well, you could be a pagan and a polytheist, and you could be a worshiper of your own whims.

01:07:56.400 This is another thing I've been trying to take apart, particularly in the last couple

01:07:59.760 of years.

01:08:00.240 It's like, especially because I started to understand more deeply the golden calf story.

01:08:05.200 It's like, well, I don't worship anything.

01:08:08.400 Okay, well, let's take that apart, okay, because it's about me.

01:08:12.720 Well, or it could be about nothing, because you could be nihilistic, but then you're like

01:08:16.800 suicidal and dead if you take that, or worse, if you take that pathway.

01:08:21.160 Okay, so let's say there's nothing superordinate to you.

01:08:25.240 Okay, but then when an ugly question comes up, it's like, well, what do you mean by you?

01:08:31.540 Do you mean the higher you that's in service to your wife and your family for the long run,

01:08:37.300 or do you mean the you that's at the strip club with like a Jack Daniels craft in your

01:08:42.700 hand?

01:08:42.920 Golden calf.

01:08:43.860 Right, exactly that.

01:08:44.700 And then if the you that you are prioritizing is what you want, what you're actually saying

01:08:53.120 is that the momentary whims that sees you are your God.

01:08:58.660 Exactly.

01:08:59.120 Well, and then you might, you could easily ask and should, it's like, what makes you think

01:09:02.840 that those whims, why is it self-evident to you that you're identical with your whims?

01:09:09.000 That just means you're possessed by something low.

01:09:12.860 Yes.

01:09:13.520 So completely that you don't even know that you're possessed.

01:09:17.240 Like, once you start to open up the question of what is the you that you're serving if you're

01:09:24.580 selfish, let's say, it's because it's not, it's not self-evident that you are your selfish

01:09:30.820 aims.

01:09:31.600 Indeed.

01:09:32.080 Especially because they change.

01:09:34.140 So there's no escape.

01:09:36.040 Right.

01:09:36.300 From the problem, the problem of prioritization.

01:09:38.760 Right.

01:09:39.100 Right.

01:09:39.480 So, so, so, so, so if you have the proper goal and let's just, I mean, let's not try to

01:09:44.800 define that, but let's say it's, it's transcendent.

01:09:47.600 It's, it's, it's, it's.

01:09:49.180 Whatever's at the top of Jacob's ladder.

01:09:51.280 Right.

01:09:51.960 That's a great way to put it.

01:09:53.020 It's a lovely way of putting it.

01:09:54.720 Yes, yes, yes.

01:09:55.200 Because you climb up and it keeps receding.

01:09:57.300 Yes, that's good.

01:09:58.180 C'est la vie.

01:09:59.140 So then, then you, you can, you can, your attention can be rightly focused.

01:10:05.540 And the questions are the right ones.

01:10:09.420 That's the important thing.

01:10:11.180 Yeah.

01:10:11.480 And we go back to your earlier statement about quest.

01:10:14.460 The questions are the right ones.

01:10:17.380 And, and that becomes very exciting because.

01:10:20.160 Okay.

01:10:20.520 Why?

01:10:20.780 Why does it become, that's, that's a very trenchant observation because I mentioned earlier

01:10:25.520 that there's, people think that the purpose of their life is happiness, but it's not.

01:10:32.040 That's shallow.

01:10:32.840 It is indeed not.

01:10:34.080 So then I think, well, maybe the purpose of your life is adventure and that's different

01:10:38.760 than happiness by a lot.

01:10:40.220 Well, and where's that to be found?

01:10:41.900 Well, an adventure is a quest and the quest is to be found in the questions.

01:10:46.280 Now you just said, you get the questions right and that's very exciting.

01:10:50.660 Yes.

01:10:50.880 Okay.

01:10:51.480 So, well, the first question would be, why is it exciting?

01:10:56.120 Why is it exciting to get the questions right?

01:10:58.240 And what does the fact that it's exciting signify?

01:11:00.520 Even neurologically, let's say, because that excitement signifies the discovery of something

01:11:05.500 of import.

01:11:06.760 Yes.

01:11:07.020 Okay.

01:11:07.300 So why is a question, why is the right question exciting?

01:11:10.620 Well, I can speak to that from the perspective of a scholar or a reader, a thinker.

01:11:16.940 If you have a book in front of you and you're trying to make sense of it, we all know this.

01:11:26.240 A question, a good question can reveal depths of meaning and understanding in everyday life.

01:11:37.280 To come to understand what the question really is can reorient you and can again reveal, I'll

01:11:47.420 just use the same phrase, depths of meaning in your own existence that you simply weren't

01:11:51.880 attending to, right?

01:11:53.680 So the question-

01:11:54.620 Moses is on a quest when he encounters the burning bush.

01:11:57.100 Yes.

01:11:57.460 Right.

01:11:57.700 And depths of meaning are revealed to him as a consequence of his pursuit.

01:12:02.460 Exactly.

01:12:02.760 Right.

01:12:02.940 That's what transforms him into a leader, right?

01:12:05.400 It's a question that takes him off the beaten path.

01:12:08.960 It might be, what is beyond well-adapted shepherd, let's say.

01:12:13.100 Yes, right.

01:12:13.400 Right, right.

01:12:14.480 Way out beyond the wilderness, right?

01:12:16.660 Yeah, exactly.

01:12:17.640 And this, well, and so this relates to Socrates saying, you know, wonder is the beginning of

01:12:22.660 philosophy.

01:12:23.900 There's a, there's a, so let's go back.

01:12:28.940 I agree.

01:12:29.420 Happiness, not only is not the proper aim, uh, in Vasily Grossman's wonderful book, Life

01:12:36.440 and Fate, there's a little chapter where this guy has written a little letter in, in, in

01:12:41.120 the gulag.

01:12:41.780 And he says something like, happiness, with a capital H, has been the cause of the greatest

01:12:48.900 evil in the world.

01:12:50.740 And I think this is right.

01:12:51.920 And you read it elsewhere.

01:12:53.000 You read it in the Desjardins Mambelstam's book, Hope Against Hope.

01:12:55.920 In the name of happiness, the greatest evil was committed.

01:13:00.140 Well, and Solzhenitsyn points out that happiness disappears with the first blow of the jailer's

01:13:05.920 truncheon on your apartment door at two in the morning.

01:13:08.360 Indeed.

01:13:08.840 It's like, if happiness is the purpose, as soon as you're not happy, which is going

01:13:12.940 to happen, you're lost.

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01:14:15.600 Right.

01:14:18.400 Right.

01:14:18.740 Right.

01:14:18.960 Right.

01:14:19.200 So, I imagine you would agree with this, but I propose that what is far more important

01:14:24.480 is meaning.

01:14:25.520 And meaning is the deepest and richest things are the most meaningful and the highest things.

01:14:35.260 And...

01:14:35.400 That's a definition again.

01:14:36.920 Yeah, I think...

01:14:37.460 That's right.

01:14:38.700 You can find what's inexhaustible.

01:14:40.460 That's like the well that will never run dry.

01:14:42.460 Inexhaustible.

01:14:43.360 And so, in human life...

01:14:45.260 That's why Christ is the miraculous provider of fish and water, right?

01:14:49.900 Because there's an orientation that makes, that has, that provides limitless abundance.

01:14:57.640 That's the reason.

01:14:58.020 Yeah, and so...

01:14:59.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:14:59.400 And the quest for meaning can take many forms.

01:15:03.000 So, for example, we're having our students read Marco Polo.

01:15:06.600 So, very interesting.

01:15:08.540 So, Marco Polo, his uncle and his father actually journeyed to see Kublai Khan before Marco Polo

01:15:17.200 ever did.

01:15:19.080 Incredibly arduous and dangerous journey from Italy to Mongolia.

01:15:25.020 And they go all the way out there and they get to the Khan, who's not going anywhere, by 0.93

01:15:31.640 the way.

01:15:31.920 But the Khan turns out to be a brilliant guy, and he also wants to learn about the world.

01:15:37.520 So, this is the spirit of adventure you were talking about.

01:15:40.060 They go there.

01:15:40.620 By the way, the Khan says to them, oh, this Catholicism you talk about is very interesting.

01:15:44.900 Go back, talk to the Pope, get some bishops, bring him back to see me, and if I like what

01:15:49.920 they say, we'll all convert to Catholicism.

01:15:52.040 It's very interesting.

01:15:53.460 So, we have these two people who are explorers, right?

01:15:56.200 And they're finding meaning.

01:15:56.980 And in the story of Marco Polo, you know, he's just utterly fascinated by this completely

01:16:04.880 different world.

01:16:06.860 It's just this, it's so fulfilling for him to see these things.

01:16:11.000 Okay.

01:16:11.540 So, we have that kind of example.

01:16:14.200 That's one version.

01:16:15.540 Now, intellectually, you know, think of the great books.

01:16:19.180 Think of the Bible.

01:16:19.920 Think of Shakespeare.

01:16:21.860 Depths beyond depths.

01:16:23.060 You ask the right question, you find these things.

01:16:24.620 But then also, just in everyday life.

01:16:27.960 I mean, one of the good things about getting older is realizing the futility of so much that

01:16:35.040 is esteemed.

01:16:36.180 And so many things that I myself chased.

01:16:38.960 And then to begin to realize that, you know, the love of one's spouse, of one's children,

01:16:46.960 the opportunity to help them, the, you know, let's say, sure, people want esteem.

01:16:55.980 But to be esteemed by people that, in your estimation, are truly worthy.

01:17:03.080 You get the fans you deserve.

01:17:05.380 Yeah.

01:17:06.040 Right.

01:17:06.160 I mean, just like, you know, when God offers Abraham, so God offers Abraham an adventure

01:17:12.740 as the covenant, right?

01:17:14.840 And he says, he says that one of the consequences, he says, if you accept this mission, this mission

01:17:22.320 impossible, you'll be a blessing to yourself.

01:17:25.160 Well, that's a good deal.

01:17:26.620 Yeah.

01:17:26.980 Right.

01:17:27.840 You'll be esteemed for valid reasons.

01:17:31.060 Right.

01:17:31.500 So, so the esteem, like, there's almost nothing that people will chase more than attention

01:17:37.720 from others.

01:17:38.360 And there's a very positive aspect of that.

01:17:40.340 Yes, yes.

01:17:40.800 But, so that's not going anywhere.

01:17:43.500 Right.

01:17:43.640 But then you might say, well, are you esteemed because you're an actor, because you're a 0.95

01:17:47.840 phony? 0.95

01:17:48.580 Yes.

01:17:48.720 Or are you esteemed because the pattern of your life brings abundance to everyone, which

01:17:54.260 is also another offering to Abraham, right?

01:17:56.700 Yes.

01:17:56.920 You'll esteem for, you'll be a blessing to yourself.

01:17:59.800 If you have an adventurous life, you'll be esteemed for valid reasons.

01:18:05.040 You'll establish something of incalculable permanence.

01:18:09.200 And you'll do this in a way that will bring abundance to everyone.

01:18:12.560 That's a hell of an offer, man.

01:18:14.540 Now, you know, what's so interesting about this, to pick up a couple of themes that we

01:18:19.080 mentioned earlier, you talked about humility.

01:18:22.800 Somebody like Abraham, and this is the trick, and we see it in Socrates, we see it in Abraham,

01:18:27.580 and we see it in all the greats, is confidence.

01:18:30.840 How do these two things go together?

01:18:32.780 That is to say, what do I mean by Socrates' confidence?

01:18:36.820 Okay.

01:18:37.840 I don't have knowledge.

01:18:39.760 I have some, to the best of my ability, justified beliefs that I take to heart.

01:18:46.740 You know, for example, the soul is more important than the body.

01:18:50.960 Justice is more important than everything else, you know.

01:18:55.920 But at the same time, humility.

01:18:58.120 Now, the humility... 0.96

01:18:59.940 That's an easy thing to have faith in, if you're honest, because your ignorance is boundless. 0.99

01:19:05.260 Your ignorance is boundless. 0.98

01:19:06.300 And that's sort of, that's truly something self-evident. 0.99

01:19:09.740 I don't know enough.

01:19:11.480 It's like, yeah, yep, you can go to the bank on that.

01:19:14.300 Right.

01:19:14.600 Yeah, and that's Socrates, and that drives the question.

01:19:17.540 And the beautiful thing about humility, it's connected with wonder, because the unhumble

01:19:22.920 don't wonder.

01:19:24.340 They already know.

01:19:25.660 They know.

01:19:26.280 Right?

01:19:26.580 Yeah.

01:19:27.520 They're also afraid of wonder.

01:19:29.220 Like, they're afraid that, they're afraid that wonder will be that sword that bars the

01:19:34.080 path to paradise, that cuts every which way and burns.

01:19:37.840 Yes.

01:19:38.120 Because you have to substitute wonder for certainty.

01:19:43.040 And if you've staked your soul on your certainty, then wonder is your enemy.

01:19:48.980 Yes, exactly.

01:19:49.220 And you will pursue it.

01:19:50.420 Yeah, exactly.

01:19:51.020 Yeah, and now...

01:19:51.740 Oh, yeah.

01:19:52.360 And look out.

01:19:53.220 Now we're getting down to a deeper thing, because wonder, you know, when you wonder,

01:19:59.560 you enter into what Socrates calls aporia, and the Greek word literally means no way out.

01:20:03.580 It's like you're stuck.

01:20:06.440 Maybe that's not the right way to put it.

01:20:08.200 Let's say this.

01:20:09.560 You know that the more you think, and the more you ponder possibilities, and the more you

01:20:13.920 know you don't know, you feel like you're on this sea.

01:20:17.160 I mean, it can really be overwhelming, okay?

01:20:20.720 Mm-hmm.

01:20:21.680 There's got to be a prior assumption that makes wonder worthwhile, that allows you to

01:20:30.460 feel that you're going to remain afloat on this sea.

01:20:32.620 That's Job's conclusion, I think.

01:20:34.500 Yes.

01:20:35.000 Because Job ends up adrift and barren in the most dismal way possible.

01:20:40.300 Yes, yes.

01:20:40.480 And he makes, he proclaims two axioms that he won't abandon.

01:20:45.000 One is that despite the evidence, he's fundamentally valuable.

01:20:49.800 Yes.

01:20:50.000 Despite the evidence, okay, so he's not going to lose faith in the essential goodness of

01:20:54.120 being a man.

01:20:55.120 Yes.

01:20:55.520 Especially if you're one that's trying to aim up.

01:20:57.800 Yes, right.

01:20:58.340 So he's not going to abandon that.

01:20:59.520 Right, right.

01:20:59.980 And he's going to make the presumption that the spirit that gave rise to all things is

01:21:05.040 good, even if he can't see how.

01:21:07.120 So those are the two, you've anticipated me exactly.

01:21:10.040 Let's go with that good thing especially, that the world is good.

01:21:14.980 Yeah.

01:21:15.180 That reality is good.

01:21:17.800 And what do we, now we can even say, well, what do we mean by good?

01:21:20.340 Well, there is some kind of sustaining structure, let's say.

01:21:25.340 And the reason I put it that way, like in other words.

01:21:28.980 Intelligibility?

01:21:29.840 Yeah.

01:21:30.120 But more than that.

01:21:31.220 Yeah, probably more than that.

01:21:32.440 But let's take intelligibility just for a second here.

01:21:36.700 One of my favorite books, which I'm now listening to, I read it 30 years ago, is The Making of

01:21:40.760 the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes.

01:21:42.240 And what's so great about this book is, I mean, it has many wonderful features.

01:21:47.120 It's a great work of history.

01:21:48.560 It's a great work of sort of explaining physics to educated amateurs.

01:21:53.300 But what it focuses on is theoretical physics in the first half of the 20th century, which

01:21:58.780 was an almost an academic paradise.

01:22:01.380 You had all these great physicists, and they're working together, and they're discovering

01:22:05.720 things.

01:22:06.280 Like, so they have the atomic theory.

01:22:07.860 At the beginning of the 20th century, an atom, this uncuttable thing from the Greek, it can't 1.00

01:22:12.760 be cut.

01:22:13.680 And they don't even know, they don't know anything about it, right?

01:22:15.780 And so now they're discovering the nucleus, and electrons, and protons, and neutrons, and

01:22:19.500 all this kind of thing.

01:22:20.940 And they're just going around, you know, I mean, the reason I say it's an academic paradise

01:22:25.220 is you go to Cambridge, and they say, oh, go to see Rutherford at, you know, this other

01:22:30.340 place that you go there.

01:22:31.240 Niels Bohr has the, and so they're all collaborating.

01:22:33.920 But they're convinced that there's a there there, right?

01:22:38.160 And they're convinced that-

01:22:39.640 And that their quest is worthwhile.

01:22:41.100 And that their quest is worthwhile.

01:22:42.340 And then, of course, all of a sudden, it's driven into overdrive, because now we're in

01:22:46.160 the war, and now there's possible application.

01:22:50.340 But, you know, so there's this kind of faith.

01:22:53.540 There is a faith.

01:22:54.420 Yeah, well, you know, I talked to Richard Dawkins about that.

01:22:56.520 Yeah.

01:22:56.920 I said, what, because he's an enlightenment mind, let's say, I said, well, you bring to

01:23:02.420 the scientific endeavor a set of axiomatic presumptions.

01:23:05.660 Yes, yes.

01:23:05.820 One is the world could be understood.

01:23:07.580 Yes.

01:23:07.900 The second is that trying to understand it is good and will bring good.

01:23:12.620 Yes.

01:23:12.900 Like, those aren't scientific theories.

01:23:15.560 Yes.

01:23:15.880 Those are starting points for being a scientist.

01:23:18.140 And so then the question is, well, what's the validity?

01:23:22.160 Yes.

01:23:22.380 How do you ground that metaphysics that gets science itself off to a start?

01:23:26.600 Well, I mean, look, in the case of the harnessing of nuclear energy, you have, let us say, a proof

01:23:37.200 of concept, right?

01:23:38.380 That is to say, this is, to me, probably the most dramatic and persuasive indication that

01:23:47.680 science has the capacity to know something fundamental about reality, okay?

01:23:55.020 So, yeah, you know, I mean, their faith paid off in this instance.

01:24:02.960 And, but I think this is really, really important because if you don't start with the notion that,

01:24:09.680 you know, there is a reality and the reality is good, that it has some kind of intelligibility,

01:24:17.620 et cetera.

01:24:18.220 Oh, but actually, now I'm interrupting myself.

01:24:20.720 Let me just say this.

01:24:21.400 Niels Bohr, here's the humility.

01:24:22.960 Niels Bohr was like the man, incredible physicist.

01:24:26.780 He never spoke of the laws of nature, never spoke of them because he was humble.

01:24:32.260 And people use the word laws of nature.

01:24:34.920 But the fact is, there's no proof that these are laws.

01:24:38.240 I mean, first of all, our horizon is tiny.

01:24:40.440 Are the same laws 10 billion light years away?

01:24:42.720 You know, whatever.

01:24:43.460 Okay.

01:24:44.060 But second, he spoke about regularities of phenomena, right?

01:24:48.940 So, here we have someone who's genuinely understanding, you know, nuclear physics, which, I mean, we're

01:24:56.460 talking about, you know, 10 to the minus 23rd or something, just like stuff that you, I mean,

01:25:02.480 you can't see these things.

01:25:03.520 You can see the effects of them and so forth.

01:25:07.260 And so, he's making advances, but he has this humility.

01:25:11.240 So, but anyway.

01:25:13.000 And that also, that humility, you know, because there's another metaphysical aspect to this

01:25:17.360 too, which is extraordinarily, I learned this from Carl Jung mostly, I think, at least

01:25:23.880 initially, which was, well, what spirit seizes the scientist's curiosity?

01:25:30.180 It's like, so let's say the world's intelligible.

01:25:33.960 The pursuit of that intelligibility is possible and good and could bring benefit.

01:25:39.920 But then that begs the question.

01:25:41.660 The question is, well, does that depend on the orientation of the scientist?

01:25:46.360 So, like I read a book at one point that was written by an ex-KGB officer and he made the

01:25:53.580 claim that there were labs in the Soviet Union in the 80s, I think, in the 80s, where they

01:26:00.720 were trying to hybridize Ebola and smallpox and aerosolize it.

01:26:06.780 Oh, how lovely.

01:26:08.080 Well, that's a perfectly reasonable scientific question, right?

01:26:12.320 Can that be done?

01:26:13.520 If you live in a world of valueless objects, that's just as good a question as any other.

01:26:19.900 And you can even imagine spinoff benefits from it.

01:26:22.360 But you might say, well, isn't there a better question you could ask?

01:26:26.000 So, then you might say that this is a weird thing, too, that the goodness of the world

01:26:32.940 is predicated on the aim of the investigator.

01:26:37.620 The alchemists kind of knew that.

01:26:39.800 I got very interested in Jung's analysis of alchemy because the alchemists, the pre-chemists,

01:26:46.340 insisted that the aim of the investigator had to be pure.

01:26:50.860 Yeah.

01:26:51.060 Right, and so they were beginning to understand that the secrets that matter revealed were

01:26:57.940 dependent on the investigative tools that were put to play in the investigation, and

01:27:03.480 that was actually a moral endeavor.

01:27:05.560 You know, so are you actually trying to aim up?

01:27:08.120 Yes, yes.

01:27:08.460 Right, right.

01:27:09.340 Yeah.

01:27:09.500 So, we're looking at the substrate of science, right?

01:27:12.740 Saying, well, there are values that have to be held for the scientific enterprise itself

01:27:18.380 to emerge, to proceed, and to be beneficial.

01:27:21.600 And now we're getting down to some really fundamental questions.

01:27:25.700 And so, I'm going to take a little shift here.

01:27:27.780 Douglas Murray's book, The War on the West, he's got this wonderful passage where he says,

01:27:32.220 you can stand in front of a painting, and you can look at it, and you can say, hmm, this

01:27:38.520 peculiar blue pigment, was that sourced from some country that was in poverty?

01:27:45.380 Was the apprentice who stretched the canvas paid?

01:27:49.940 Are the fibers, did they get?

01:27:51.740 So, in other words, you can, to use a, this isn't quite the right word, like deconstruct.

01:27:57.700 In other words.

01:27:58.040 Close enough.

01:27:58.880 Yeah, you can, and what I realized in reading that passage is, there's no end to it.

01:28:04.740 I mean, I can look and say, no, you know, you're wearing this suit, Dr. Peterson.

01:28:09.040 It doesn't mean anything can be taken apart this way.

01:28:12.600 Or, Douglas Murray.

01:28:13.560 And blood soaks everything.

01:28:14.840 Yes.

01:28:15.520 Right.

01:28:15.980 So, if you look enough, you'll find a problem.

01:28:18.340 You'll find a problem.

01:28:19.580 Or, Douglas Murray says, you can rejoice in the picture that Raphael has painted of the

01:28:24.600 Virgin ascending to heaven.

01:28:25.960 And what I realized in thinking about that is, here's the really fundamental premise,

01:28:32.300 or the, like, what distinguishes these two approaches?

01:28:35.360 And I think it is the view that the world is good or not.

01:28:42.700 In other words, if you start from that and say, there's goodness here, then you're going

01:28:50.800 to look for the goodness.

01:28:51.780 And there's beauty and there's truth.

01:28:53.520 You're going to look for that.

01:28:54.540 And you may also find it.

01:28:57.060 And you may find it.

01:28:58.420 And if you don't, then everything follows from that.

01:29:02.580 And I've been thinking about this a lot.

01:29:04.060 Yeah, it would be pretty weird if it turned out that the world was constituted so that

01:29:07.940 you find what you're looking for.

01:29:10.740 Seriously.

01:29:11.280 Yeah.

01:29:11.480 And I kind of think there's some truth in that.

01:29:14.440 Well, yes, indeed.

01:29:16.160 And if you're not looking for it, you're not going to find it.

01:29:18.360 But to me, then this becomes, maybe it's a psychological question.

01:29:22.460 Because if that's the fundamental question, right?

01:29:24.820 You've got these folks over here who want to burn down and destroy and wreck and repudiate.

01:29:30.680 And these folks over here who want to build and want to solve and want to progress and

01:29:36.500 want to repair, and if the difference between them is that fundamental premise, the world

01:29:43.560 is good, the world is bad.

01:29:45.240 You know what Marx's favorite quote was?

01:29:46.140 What?

01:29:47.360 It was from Goethe.

01:29:48.460 And it's a very specific quote.

01:29:50.180 I knew this quote before I found this out, because I read Faust 1 and 2.

01:29:54.780 And there's a line in there, Mephistopheles.

01:29:57.200 Goethe is trying to characterize Mephistopheles, who's the spirit of rationality, or the spirit,

01:30:02.400 the Luciferian spirit of the usurper.

01:30:04.560 Yes.

01:30:05.720 Mephistopheles' credo was repeated twice, once in Faust 1 and once in the second part.

01:30:12.440 Everything that lives should be eradicated because of its insufficiency.

01:30:18.300 Now, I'm paraphrasing, and I'm paraphrasing badly.

01:30:21.120 But the basic idea is that the suffering that's attended on consciousness is indicative of a

01:30:27.240 flaw in the world so profound that the best possible solution is the eradication of everything.

01:30:32.660 Wow.

01:30:33.040 Right?

01:30:33.260 That's Marx's favorite quote.

01:30:36.440 Wow.

01:30:36.960 Right.

01:30:37.660 That's very interesting.

01:30:38.880 I did not know that.

01:30:39.660 Yes.

01:30:40.040 It's extremely interesting because that's only one sentence in each of those plays.

01:30:45.620 But it's Mephistopheles' revelation of his motivation.

01:30:49.760 It's like, all that suffers should die so that suffering itself will cease.

01:30:54.080 And the antinatalist types, for example, they believe exactly that.

01:30:57.840 Yes, yes.

01:30:58.320 Right?

01:30:58.860 So, this is something, it's very interesting here because we're also verging on a definition

01:31:04.960 of faith.

01:31:05.640 So, in Job, Job makes a decision.

01:31:08.100 And the decision is the act of faith. 1.00

01:31:11.780 It's not belief in some idiot superstition. 1.00

01:31:14.560 Yes. 1.00

01:31:14.880 Job says, okay, I got two pathways here.

01:31:17.880 I can act as if the world in its essence is good.

01:31:21.940 I am, and so is the spirit of being. 1.00

01:31:24.220 Or I can forego that and do what my wife suggests, which is curse God and die. 0.99

01:31:29.860 Yes, right. 1.00

01:31:30.160 Right?

01:31:30.480 And all the evidence at hand suggests that cursing God and dying is the right, is the 1.00

01:31:36.800 rational conclusion.

01:31:38.300 Yes, yes.

01:31:38.420 And Job says, I refuse to forswear my faith.

01:31:41.260 Yeah.

01:31:41.740 Right?

01:31:42.320 And so, and I see that partly as a prodroma to the passion story, which is an extension of

01:31:47.540 what Job suffers and concludes.

01:31:49.780 But the axiomatic presumption, well, maybe there's three, right?

01:31:54.020 The spirit that underlies being is to be regarded as good.

01:31:57.240 The essence of man, despite his flaws, if he's aiming up, is to be regarded as good.

01:32:03.140 And the answer that you seek is dependent on the aim, right?

01:32:08.140 Because that brings the morality of the investigator into the picture.

01:32:11.740 And so, this is part of the reason, for example, why scientists need, and engineers maybe even

01:32:17.260 more, to solve the problem of alignment, let's say.

01:32:20.880 Yes.

01:32:21.140 They need a classical education that's grounded in a deep, okay, so, okay, so you've already

01:32:26.700 come to that conclusion.

01:32:27.960 I agree completely.

01:32:28.520 Well, and so is that part of, I guess, probably what we're going to talk about on the Daily

01:32:32.520 Wire site, because we're unfortunately approaching the end of this, is more practical consequences

01:32:39.120 of this.

01:32:39.700 I want to talk to you more about the University of Austin.

01:32:41.980 Of course.

01:32:42.380 And what you're aiming at.

01:32:43.660 But now I've kind of fleshed out the metaphysical territory.

01:32:47.220 Yep.

01:32:47.380 And so, yeah, we're grounding people in their aim, right?

01:32:51.180 And scientists and engineers might think, well, that's unnecessary, given the importance

01:32:56.600 of our pursuit.

01:32:57.800 But you can also see how absolutely susceptible they have been to the ideological mob in the

01:33:03.820 universities, right?

01:33:04.640 Yes.

01:33:04.800 The scientists have been, they're just like babes in the woods when it comes to the political

01:33:09.920 activists.

01:33:10.920 Absolutely.

01:33:11.320 And it shows that their metaphysics is so underdeveloped that they have no understanding

01:33:15.960 or defense against the deconstructionist mob.

01:33:19.360 Well, and look, I mean, you know, now we're in the age of AI, and this is an incredibly powerful

01:33:25.840 technological force.

01:33:27.820 And imagine, you don't have to imagine, unfortunately, what would it mean for experts and technicians

01:33:36.680 with, you know, comprehensive capabilities to use AI and implement it and make it stronger,

01:33:44.900 had no philosophical anthropology, had no understanding of the human body.

01:33:49.180 We know what happens.

01:33:50.480 We see it.

01:33:51.460 We see, what was it?

01:33:53.000 They invent devices that cause serious depression and mental illness in teenage girls.

01:34:00.340 And everyone loses the ability to communicate because the aim is wrong, right?

01:34:04.540 And they devolve in their ignorance to their science fiction metaphysics that they adopted

01:34:10.780 when they were 13 without even understanding that that constitutes a religion and are unwilling 0.91

01:34:16.780 completely to look beyond that.

01:34:18.580 Exactly.

01:34:18.980 And you know, my image for this, I started thinking about the Inferno as a kind of political

01:34:27.080 text.

01:34:28.080 Oh, yeah.

01:34:28.620 And the fact is that, you know, you get to the Ninth Circle and Dante's beautiful creation,

01:34:37.660 invention is that it's ice.

01:34:39.540 Everyone's frozen in the ice.

01:34:40.860 Yeah.

01:34:41.300 Rigid.

01:34:41.780 Isn't this like today where, or at least, I mean, now the ice is melting and maybe we've

01:34:48.900 gone through that center of the earth and come out the other side.

01:34:51.300 But you have Lucifer who towers up like a thousand feet because he's come from the other side of the world and jammed into the middle.

01:35:00.080 And he's compared to like this mechanical, like a windmill and he's chewing on Brutus and Gaius and Cassius, these traders.

01:35:07.240 And all these people are frozen in the ice and all these people are frozen in the ice and they're completely isolated.

01:35:11.900 No one can speak.

01:35:13.280 Not even Lucifer's mouth is full.

01:35:14.560 No speech, no connection with each other, an eternity of atomization.

01:35:19.980 This is the effect of, you know, the social media and the, and by the way, Lucifer has three faces, right?

01:35:27.560 And he's way up high.

01:35:29.020 He can look down, he can spy, he can survey the kingdom.

01:35:31.860 It's just this incredible political image.

01:35:33.540 It's like the all-seeing eye of Sauron.

01:35:35.600 Yeah.

01:35:35.880 Right?

01:35:36.280 Well, you get the all-seeing eye of Sauron as a substitute for the divine if the state has to intervene in every decision.

01:35:43.140 That's exactly right.

01:35:43.920 You bet.

01:35:44.320 So he's an image of this state that's just chewing.

01:35:46.900 Yeah.

01:35:47.540 Now I feel like, and I'm talking about, frankly, after Trump's election, there's a lot of chaos, but it's as if, it's as if, well, before the election, I was, just had a sense of dread because I saw the way things were going.

01:36:03.820 And now I have a hope that we've sort of gone through and realized everything was upside down.

01:36:11.720 Because remember when they go through, now they're going up and above them is purgatory and above that is heaven.

01:36:17.100 Now they're rightly oriented.

01:36:18.940 But so the misorientation of, well, Lucifer, whose head is pointed the wrong way, but pointed to the world above, right?

01:36:27.700 So, I mean, and Hades, you know, or hell, I should say, rather, it's the sort of sewer in which all the polluted streams of the earth flow and, you know, you've got to be punished.

01:36:37.840 But that reorientation is absolutely essential.

01:36:42.640 We've got, we have to break the ice, we have to learn how to speak, we have to connect with each other, and we've got to reorient ourselves and figure out what is above us and what is below.

01:36:54.780 Figure out what is north and what is south.

01:36:57.000 And that's the most important task at this point.

01:36:59.320 Right, right.

01:36:59.940 Well, that's a really good place to end.

01:37:01.540 And so we can, we'll continue this discussion on the Daily Wire side.

01:37:06.880 Well, I think we can do two things.

01:37:08.740 We can flesh out what it might mean to aim up because part of what you see in the biblical corpus is an attempt to characterize up.

01:37:16.580 And of course, Socrates, Plato are doing exactly the same thing, right?

01:37:20.400 They're doing it, it's like Dostoevsky and Nietzsche in a sense, right?

01:37:24.260 The ancient Hebrews use narrative as an investigative tool, and the philosophers use philosophy.

01:37:32.680 You can see that dynamic with Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, too, which is quite interesting.

01:37:36.980 But both of them have their role, but the narrative role is more fundamental.

01:37:41.320 It's more fundamental, and I think that's been established.

01:37:44.280 All right, so we'll talk about that, and I think we'll talk about attempts that are being made now to reorient the academy.

01:37:51.400 Sure.

01:37:52.140 God, that problem.

01:37:54.260 And so if you want to continue with the discussion, join us on the Daily Wire side.

01:37:58.440 And so, well, there were many more things that we could have talked about today, but I liked that vein.

01:38:02.860 That was good, and it's interesting to see how you were drawn to the conclusion that there was something in these ancient narrative texts

01:38:15.100 that was, well, of incalculable and necessary value, right?

01:38:20.060 And that it's particularly relevant given the technological transformations of the age.

01:38:25.180 That's a very strange thing, right?

01:38:26.780 Yes.

01:38:26.980 Because you'd expect that as technology advances, the more ancient the text, the less relevant it would be.

01:38:32.900 It turns out to be exactly the opposite.

01:38:35.320 Yeah.

01:38:35.660 And it's already there with Babel. 0.98

01:38:37.240 Yeah.

01:38:37.500 And it's already there.

01:38:38.640 Yeah, right.

01:38:39.160 And Pharaoh.

01:38:40.620 Exactly.

01:38:41.220 Yes, definitely.

01:38:42.780 That's right.

01:38:43.540 There's nothing new under the sun, that's for sure.

01:38:45.880 Even in this time when so strangely there is so much new, right?

01:38:53.800 The old patterns are even more obvious, and people can see that at the bottom of the identity crisis,

01:38:59.440 there is a spiritual crisis and a spiritual war, and the contours are becoming obvious.

01:39:04.840 So as the technology mounts and the rate of transformation increases, the archetypal contours actually become more clear.

01:39:13.100 Yeah, very weird.

01:39:14.080 All right, everybody, so join us on the Daily Wire side, and thank you for your attention today,

01:39:20.060 and thank you very much for coming to talk to me.

01:39:22.400 Thank you.

01:39:22.640 And we appreciate you people who are watching, and if you are inclined to talk to us and support the Daily Wire way,

01:39:30.460 come and see the rest of the conversation there.

01:39:33.460 Good to talk to you.

01:39:34.500 Great to talk to you.

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01:39:44.840 Good to talk to you.

01:39:45.500 Good to talk to you.

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01:39:50.400 Good to talk to you.

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01:39:52.020 Good to talk to you.

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01:40:09.940 Ed on my connect to you.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - April 07, 2025

536. Ancient Stories That Bridge The Heavens & The Earth ｜ Jacob Howland

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