The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Abraham： Father of Nations

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00:01:19.720 Hello everyone. It's been a very strange day. So I'm going to tell you about what happened

00:01:34.060 and then I'll start the lecture. So I got up this morning and started to put my day together

00:01:43.100 and then I tried to sign into my Gmail account and it said that it had been disabled because

00:01:52.200 I violated the terms of service with Gmail. And I thought, well I didn't violate any terms

00:02:01.600 of service that I know of. Now I set up a new YouTube channel yesterday called Jordan B. Peterson

00:02:07.860 clips. And so we made some technical changes and so I thought maybe it had something to do

00:02:12.500 with that. And I had been shut out of Google one other time years ago. So when you get shut out

00:02:20.700 like that, there's a little form you can fill out. And so I filled out the form and I said that I

00:02:28.360 had been shut out and that I didn't know why. And I sent it off. And then I realized one of my staff

00:02:37.620 members called me and said that she was locked out of the YouTube account. And I thought, oh yeah,

00:02:43.680 the YouTube account is hooked to the Gmail account. So that meant that I couldn't get access to any of

00:02:48.560 my YouTube videos. They were still up and online, but I couldn't get access to them. I couldn't post

00:02:52.780 last week's biblical lecture for example. And so that was worrisome and made me suspicious.

00:02:59.520 And then about two hours later or something like that, I got an email from Google. And they said that

00:03:07.720 they had reviewed the, my request to be reinstated and that I had violated Google's terms of

00:03:14.520 agreement or terms of service. And they weren't going to turn my account back on. And I thought,

00:03:21.320 what? And they didn't say why. They didn't say anything I got. There was no warning whatsoever about

00:03:27.240 any of this. They didn't tell me why. And they didn't say why in the email response. And so I wrote

00:03:32.560 them back and I said, because they said I could. I wrote them back and I said, this might not be a good

00:03:40.120 idea, basically. And you might want to think about it. And then I tweeted what had happened, right? I took

00:03:48.520 screenshots and I tweeted and I contacted a whole bunch of journalists because it turns out that I

00:03:53.980 know a whole bunch of journalists. And so, and so then what happened then was that I got a call from

00:04:02.920 the daily caller in the United States. I had done an interview with them last week, which isn't posted

00:04:09.160 yet. And they interviewed me and within 20 minutes posted it online. And so they have a fairly big

00:04:15.880 audience. And so that was good. And then somebody phoned me from Ottawa and I did a live radio show

00:04:20.380 about that. And that was good. And then a number of other journalists contacted me and I sent them

00:04:26.020 the information. But another one of my staff, actually my son, emailed me and he said, look,

00:04:32.020 you should hold off because maybe there's still a mistake here. And I thought, yeah, there might be,

00:04:36.760 it might be just a mistake. But then why in the world did I email Google? And they contacted me and

00:04:42.560 they said they would not reinstate it and they didn't provide me with any information.

00:04:46.760 So I contacted the other journalists and I said, well, you never know, maybe this is just a mistake.

00:04:52.120 So let's hold off. And then while I was about half an hour later, while I was trying to get into my,

00:04:58.840 I used this AdWords account that's linked to Google. I don't run ads on my videos, but I need the AdWords

00:05:04.620 account because it helps me add some little gadgets to the videos that I wouldn't otherwise be able to.

00:05:09.440 And I was, I was playing with that. The system came back online. I thought, well, that's interesting.

00:05:17.040 And lots of people had emailed me and Twittered me and some people within Google and some people

00:05:22.000 elsewhere and they were doing whatever they were going to do to help me get all this material back

00:05:26.200 up and running. And so something worked. My suspicions are that what worked was the publicity.

00:05:32.080 Now, so, but maybe not, you know, and it's very weird being in this situation because there has been a

00:05:38.900 number of recent episodes where these larger companies, Facebook, Google, Patreon, not that it's a

00:05:46.500 massive company, but it's starting to become reasonably significant, have decided on rather

00:05:52.460 arbitrary grounds to shut down their users. And this is very ominous to me, partly because

00:05:57.660 we've, we've turned our communications over to very large systems or very large systems have emerged

00:06:04.700 to mediate our communication, right? I mean, there's lots of benefit to it, so you don't want to get too

00:06:08.540 cynical about it. But we're blind with regards to the policies that regulate the, the, the actions, the regulatory

00:06:16.940 actions of these large organizations. And that's really a bad thing. And something else is even more

00:06:21.460 ominous, really ominous, you know, it's highly probable that we're going to build political

00:06:28.300 algorithms into our artificial intelligence. And this sort of thing will be regulated by machines

00:06:32.660 that no one understands. And that's a really bad idea. And that's a really likely possibility.

00:06:39.340 So anyways, I was all confused about this. I thought, Jesus, maybe I flew off the handle, you know,

00:06:44.680 because I was sort of, it was stressful, man, you know, because I have like 150,000 emails in that

00:06:50.620 account. Like, that's a lot of emails. And it's all my correspondence for the last 10 years, you

00:06:55.660 know, so it's an archive as well as an ongoing email system. I have a commercial email system that

00:07:01.260 I just set up three weeks ago, with like six different email addresses now to try to organize

00:07:05.820 my correspondence. So I wasn't completely unable to communicate, but my calendar was gone. And that's

00:07:10.880 a bloody disaster, because like, I've got things scheduled out forever. And I don't remember what

00:07:15.760 they are. I can't even remember what I'm doing in a day, so much less than a month. But I thought

00:07:22.020 maybe I flew off the handle, and I was worried that I contacted the journalist too soon. And,

00:07:26.420 you know, but anyways, it all worked out. So then what happened? Well, just as I was coming to this

00:07:32.840 lecture, I stepped outside, and there was a little package outside. Luckily, it wasn't a bomb.

00:07:38.900 There was a package outside, nice little package. We looked, my wife and I looked inside it,

00:07:43.680 and there was a couple of bottles of wine in there. So that was nice. And there was a little

00:07:47.280 note. And so I'm going to read you the little note, because it's actually pretty interesting.

00:07:51.940 So,

00:07:52.840 so this person said that they had finally tackled the self-authoring suite, so they seem to be

00:08:01.220 happy about that. But that's not so interesting, except peripherally. A friend on Twitter has

00:08:07.240 contact with Google engineers. She said, quote, I spoke with some friends inside Google who offered

00:08:15.280 to help, and I did get contacted by quite a few people at Google who said that they had been, you

00:08:20.300 know, watching my lectures and so on, and were happy about what I was doing. Anyways, I spoke with some

00:08:26.720 friends inside Google who offered to help, but they suggest he set up a backup plan. The teams are feeling

00:08:33.020 significant pressure from advocacy groups. And, quote, I have at least four Google engineers who

00:08:41.180 offered to speak up on his behalf, but they know the team dynamics. And unfortunately, especially

00:08:47.840 YouTube, is an SJW cesspool. I hope this information is useful to you. It's like, yeah, it's kind of

00:08:57.540 useful. All right. So that was, that was part of what happened today. And so, anyways, I still don't

00:09:07.200 really understand it, right? Because I don't know why it got shut down, and I don't know if anything I

00:09:12.380 did got it turned back on, and I don't know the reasons for it. And that's also rather ominous.

00:09:17.720 It seems to me that when I was thinking it through, and was that, you know, I have a fairly, what would you

00:09:27.380 call it, respectable YouTube following. I don't know if you'd necessarily call it respectable. It's fairly large

00:09:33.420 YouTube following. And it seems to me that it would have been appropriate for Google, if they were going to

00:09:41.380 shut down my account, to tell me why, I would think. And also maybe look me up, maybe, especially

00:09:49.440 after I emailed them. And then maybe not to have emailed me back and said, no, we're not going to

00:09:54.340 reinstate you, but we're not going to tell you any reasons. They didn't say they wouldn't tell me any

00:09:58.820 reasons. They just didn't tell me any reasons. And then it also seems very strange to me that

00:10:04.040 it just all of a sudden went back on after two hours. And so, well, so I don't know what to make

00:10:13.240 of that. Maybe more information will come to light over the next few days. I hope that I didn't jump

00:10:20.220 the gun, but it's very, a very peculiar set of circumstances. I thought it was kind of amusing

00:10:28.180 actually that the video that they stopped me from posting today was the last biblical lecture. You

00:10:33.200 wouldn't necessarily think that that would be the sort of thing that people would want to stop from

00:10:36.860 being posted, but we're in very, very strange times. So that was my adventure for today. And so I

00:10:46.700 didn't, you know, I hate speakers who apologize to the crowd before they talk to them, because, you

00:10:52.820 know, if you're speaking to people and they put all this effort into coming, then you shouldn't tell

00:10:58.520 them what a sorry and useless creature you are before you talk to them, you know, and ask for

00:11:03.760 their forbearance and forgiveness. It's like, it's a little, you're a little late for that, but I'm

00:11:09.000 still going to do that a little bit today because, you know, I wanted to spend all day preparing this

00:11:13.820 lecture. I mean, I prepared it a lot beforehand, but that rattled me up a lot. And so I didn't prepare

00:11:20.120 as much as I could have. Anyways, we'll stumble forward and see how it goes. I, I'm, I'm, I'm

00:11:27.640 reasonably familiar with the stories now. And so, onward and upward. So I'm going to reiterate

00:11:36.580 this. You know, I've learned something. I have this idea that it would be a good idea for

00:11:43.700 young people and older people, citizens of the West, let's say, to learn more about their

00:11:49.340 culture and their civilization, right? Because it's a great civilization and it's, it's, it's

00:11:55.880 taken a lot of work to put together. But I don't think that we really know, I mean, I

00:12:00.600 know a fair bit about it, although I wouldn't consider myself nearly as educated as a person

00:12:04.960 should be. But I'm not too badly educated. And, but I tell you, going through these biblical

00:12:12.780 lectures, verse by verse, just makes me even more aware of how unbelievably ignorant I am.

00:12:18.980 You know, and partly for two, two reasons. Like one is because I've been using this Biblehub.com

00:12:24.940 place. And I think I told you last week, but I wanted to reiterate it because it's important.

00:12:29.080 And it's so interesting the way that they've set it up because you can go through the biblical

00:12:34.640 stories verse by verse. And then for each verse, there's a whole small font page of commentary

00:12:41.800 from multiple sources. And so, you know, not only is the Bible hyper, hyperlinked in the

00:12:46.600 way that I discussed in the first lecture with all the verses referring to not all the other

00:12:50.940 verses, but lots of them. But it's, it's got its tendrils out into literature, you know,

00:12:57.400 direct commentaries on the text, but also all the, all the literature that's been influenced

00:13:02.360 by it. So it's, it's, it's an unbelievably central and core text. And it's so interesting

00:13:07.640 to read a book where every sentence has been commented on, well, really in volumes. And then

00:13:14.300 just to get a sense of that volume of material, you know, how much power, brain power there's

00:13:19.040 been put into this. And, and to also understand how bloody ignorant, like I'm so ignorant about

00:13:25.540 this. There's all this work. And, and it seems that we've left it to decay in the dust. And

00:13:31.300 it's a big mistake, man. It's a big mistake because the people who are writing these commentaries,

00:13:36.120 like, you know, a lot of it's from the 14th and 15th and 16th century. It's kind of archaic.

00:13:40.680 And it's, and it's, some of it's outdated and some of it you wouldn't agree with. But if

00:13:44.580 you read all the commentaries side by side, you know, you get a pretty good blast of wisdom

00:13:49.060 coming at you. And like the thing about wisdom is it stops you from running face first into

00:13:54.200 walls, you know, it's not just there to, to, so that you can talk to people at parties about

00:14:00.080 what university you graduated from, you know, and it's there because the, the information

00:14:04.780 is unbelievably useful. You know, one of the things that I realized that I want to return

00:14:09.620 to tonight, because I've been thinking a lot about this idea of the ark, you know, and I

00:14:13.440 think I mentioned to you last week that I'd figured out that there's this idea that Noah

00:14:18.060 was perfect in his generations. And that meant that he had set his family in order. It wasn't

00:14:21.920 just him, but he had set his family in order. And because of that, when, when the catastrophe

00:14:26.200 came, like it comes to everyone, he was able to withstand it because he had the support of

00:14:32.060 the people who were near and dear to him. And that's really important when things come

00:14:36.120 along to lay you low. Like, if you're alone and the flood comes, it's like, man, goodbye to

00:14:42.200 you. If you've got 10 or 15 people supporting you in a tight network, you know, and, and you're,

00:14:47.200 your interrelationships with them are pristine and you can tell them the truth and they can

00:14:51.460 tell the truth back to you, it's possible that you might be able to find that thin way

00:14:56.020 that will preserve you when, when, when, when, you know, the terrible things come knocking

00:15:02.200 at your door. And so there's this, the idea of the ark is very, very concrete in Noah.

00:15:08.900 It's actually a structure that, that he inhabits. You know, it's a concretized, almost like a

00:15:13.940 child's story. And I'm not being cynical about that because there are some bloody brilliant

00:15:18.440 child's, children's stories, but you know, it's really concretized. But then Abraham comes

00:15:22.920 along and instead of an ark, there's a covenant, right? Now it says in the story of Noah that

00:15:28.160 Noah walked with God. And, and of course, Abraham, it isn't clear exactly that he's walking with

00:15:33.260 God or before God, which we'll get into later. But you see, I see this as part of the increasing

00:15:38.220 psychologization of the sacred ideas that were acted out by archaic people. So, first

00:15:45.860 of all, it's concretized in the form of a ship that actually sustains you when the floods

00:15:51.540 come, right? It's, it's very concrete imagery, the sort of thing you might see in a movie.

00:15:55.920 But then with Abraham, it turns into a psychological covenant in some sense. It's like a contractual

00:16:00.940 agreement. Now it's a, it's a contractual agreement between Abraham and God, but, but that

00:16:06.660 doesn't really matter. That, I mean, obviously it matters, but it's, that it's, it's only,

00:16:11.920 it's only half of what's important about that. The other half is that it's a contract. And,

00:16:17.140 you know, one of the things that you do with your ideal, let's say, is you establish a contract

00:16:22.560 with it. And you also establish like a social contract with other people, right? That, that's

00:16:26.360 what keeps society organized. And so there's this idea that emerges in the Abraham stories

00:16:31.560 of a sacred contract, and that has the same function as the ark. And what it does, because

00:16:37.620 what happens in Abraham, and we'll see more of this today, is that he, you know, God tells

00:16:42.740 him to go forward into the world. And we've, we talked about that last week. And he does

00:16:46.120 that, and he encounters famine, and he encounters tyranny, and he encounters powerful people who

00:16:50.360 want to take from him what is his. I mean, God sends him out in the world, but it's not like

00:16:55.140 he has an easy ride of it. It isn't easy at all. It's as hard as it can be. But there's

00:16:59.480 this consistent emphasis in the text. And I think it's something really worth attending

00:17:04.140 to, that if you maintain your contract, which, and that has, that has to do with honesty,

00:17:09.640 and trust, and truth, and all of those things. If you maintain your contract, then you have

00:17:13.740 a good possibility, the best possible possibility, of making your way through the catastrophe and

00:17:19.440 the chaos. And I don't want to be naive about this, you know, when I read Jung, and I started

00:17:25.520 to understand the idea of the hero archetype, you know, the idea that the human being

00:17:29.400 is a force, a logos force, that can stand up against chaos and catastrophe and tragedy

00:17:35.180 and evil, and prevail. I never did think that that meant that if you did stand up and tell

00:17:40.940 the truth, that you would necessarily prevail, right? It's not, it's not, it's not a magic

00:17:45.340 trick. It's your best bet. That's the thing. You don't have a better option. And so, and

00:17:51.140 that's what's, that's what, that I, see, the idea is emerging in the Abrahamic text. It's

00:17:55.880 like, people are figuring this out. That would be progressive revelation. That's one way

00:17:59.520 of thinking about it. And you can think about that in religious terms, but you can also think

00:18:03.660 about it as humanity consulting itself, right? Each individual talking to themselves, which

00:18:08.700 is what we do when we, when we think. And each individual communicating with every other

00:18:13.000 individual and gathering a body of wisdom that helps people orient themselves in the toughest

00:18:19.940 conditions. And it's an incremental process. And I think that, I really do believe that that's

00:18:25.060 speaking purely secularly. I do believe that that's what manifests itself in the biblical

00:18:31.220 stories, right? It's the dawning enlightenment of mankind, something like that, as we start to

00:18:36.700 understand the principles by which we have to live in order to orient ourselves properly in the

00:18:41.460 world. So, and I also do believe, and this is, this is the thing that's the unspoken question,

00:18:49.220 is like, you don't, you don't have any idea how rich and fulfilling your life could be despite its

00:18:58.460 tragedy and limitation, if you stop doing the things that you know to be wrong. It's a really

00:19:03.920 grand experiment. And, you know, one of the things that God tells Abraham constantly as, as the story

00:19:09.860 progresses, especially every time Abraham makes a sacrifice, is God says, walk with me and be

00:19:15.820 perfect. It's something like that. And, and so the injunction is, well, aim high, establish this

00:19:22.700 relationship with the highest thing that you can conceive of, which you might as well do that, because,

00:19:27.340 well, what are you going to do? Establish a relationship with the most mediocre thing you can

00:19:31.660 conceive of? Or, you're going to establish a relationship with the lowest thing you can conceive of?

00:19:35.740 People do that. And I wouldn't recommend it. It's a really bad thing. And there's a lot of pain

00:19:41.820 associated with that. And maybe, you know, there's, there's pain that can expand into a world-destroying

00:19:48.540 force down that route. And there's absolutely no doubt about that. So, what is there something

00:19:53.100 superstitious and foolish about attempting to establish a contractual relationship with the

00:19:59.020 source of all being? I mean, I, I, I just don't see that as a, as an erroneous conception. And, you know,

00:20:07.020 it's not necessary, perhaps, to get lost in the details. We can argue forever about what God might,

00:20:13.900 or might not be. But we could at least say that the concept of God is an embodiment of humanity's

00:20:20.300 highest ideal. Right? We could at least agree on that. And then you might say, well, is that real?

00:20:25.820 And the first thing I would say about that is, ah, there's a lot of things about the world we don't

00:20:30.700 understand. And the second thing I would say is, it depends bloody well on what you mean by real. That's for

00:20:36.940 sure. And that turns out to be a very complicated question. So, okay, so we left Abraham, remember,

00:20:48.060 at the end, last time, he had just gone off to fight a bunch of kings and get his nephew back,

00:20:53.580 which seemed to be a pretty courageous act. And so that, that brought a story to an end. And it's

00:20:58.300 interesting. I think what happens in the narrative is that there's a story. So Abraham is somewhere,

00:21:03.900 and he goes somewhere else. Right? That's the story. And he has adventures along the way.

00:21:07.820 And those adventures are usually the typical kind of adventure, which is a rift in the structure of

00:21:13.100 the story, an exposure to a kind of chaos and novelty, and then a reconstitution of the, of the

00:21:19.820 mode of being. So that's, that's a classic story. Right? You are somewhere, you're a certain way,

00:21:24.620 you're moving forward. Something happens that you don't expect. It blows you into pieces. It

00:21:28.620 introduces chaos. Right? You, you face the dragon, you get the gold, or maybe the bloody thing eats

00:21:33.660 you, and the story is over. And then, and then you get to where you're going. But then the question is,

00:21:38.300 well, what happens when you get to where you're going? And that's a really important issue, because

00:21:44.060 one of the things that happens to people all the time in their life is that they get to where they're

00:21:47.740 going. And then they don't know what to do. Right? So, for example, you graduate from university. It's like,

00:21:53.580 okay, story over. Who are you now? Who are you the next day? And so, so what happens is when you

00:22:02.620 succeed, then there's a success crisis. And the success crisis is, well, I've run this story to its

00:22:08.780 end. Now what? And that's exactly what happens in the Abrahamic stories. And they're punctuated by

00:22:15.500 a period of contemplation and sacrifice. So every time an Abrahamic story comes to its end, then

00:22:21.900 Abraham makes another sacrifice and communes with God, and then he figures out what to do next. And

00:22:28.060 that seems, that seems right. It seems psychologically right. Because what you should do when your story

00:22:34.380 comes to an end, when you've achieved what it is that you want to achieve, or perhaps when you're in

00:22:38.460 terribly dire straits, but we won't talk about that at the moment. When you've achieved what you need to

00:22:42.940 achieve, then the next question is, okay, well, now I'm that person, or I have that character. What,

00:22:48.780 what do I need to do next? And some of that is always, well, what do I need to give up now? What

00:22:53.820 do I need to let go of so I can move to the next plateau, right? Assuming that your life is a,

00:22:58.300 hopefully a, a sequence of upward moving, what would you call them? It's like Sisyphus, except you're

00:23:04.780 actually, each time you climb up the mountain, you get a little higher on the mountain. It's something

00:23:09.020 like that. So it's Sisyphus with an optimistic bent. And, and, and maybe if you push the rock up the mountain

00:23:15.500 properly, and let it roll down, then, and if you do that right, then it's okay. Every time you roll

00:23:19.980 it back up, it's, it's better in some sense. I don't think that's unrealistic either. And so,

00:23:27.340 Abraham goes and rescues his nephew from this, these tyrannical kings. That's very brave,

00:23:33.180 and he doesn't take any reward for it, because as far as he's concerned, it's just a manifestation

00:23:37.180 of the right thing. And then, he has another vision. After these things, that's the battle,

00:23:43.500 the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram, I am thy shield, and thy

00:23:48.300 exceeding great reward. And Abram said, Lord God, what will thou give me, seeing I go childless,

00:23:53.660 and the steward of my house is this Elysia of Damascus? And Abram said, Behold to me, thou hast given no

00:23:59.660 seed, and lo, no one born, one born in my house is mine heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him,

00:24:05.820 saying, This shall not be thine heir, but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine

00:24:11.580 heir. And he brought him forth abroad, and he said, Now look to heaven, and tell the stars,

00:24:17.500 if you're able to number them. And he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And Abram believed in the

00:24:23.900 Lord, and he counted it to him for righteousness. And he said unto him, I am the Lord that brought thee out

00:24:28.940 of Ur, the Chaldees, to give this land to you to inherit it. And he said, Lord God, whereby shall I know that

00:24:35.260 I shall inherit it. And then he does this sacrifice. Take me a heifer of three years old,

00:24:41.020 and a she-goat, and a ram, and a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. And then God comes down and, well,

00:24:46.940 Abraham goes into a trance. That's what it appears to be in the story. And has a great terror. And then

00:24:53.500 God appears to him. And I'll just review this commentary again. This is from Joseph Benson.

00:25:01.500 And when the sun was going down, that's about the time when you wash up for the evening. And he's

00:25:07.100 praying and waiting towards evening. A deep sleep fell upon Abraham. Not a common sleep through

00:25:11.740 weariness or carelessness, but a divine ecstasy. That being wholly taken off from things sensible,

00:25:16.540 he might be wholly taken up with the contemplation of things spiritual. Very strange. Very, very strange.

00:25:22.140 A series of interpretations. Because it does seem that what happens to Abraham, that he falls into

00:25:27.260 some sort of revelatory trance. And so, when, as I've taken some pains to explain, we don't really

00:25:35.260 understand such things. And we can't rule out their existence, because there's too much evidence

00:25:41.820 that they do in fact occur. Perhaps it's a technology that we no longer possess. That's one possibility.

00:25:47.660 Perhaps we no longer know how to access these sorts of states of consciousness. It's certainly

00:25:52.140 possible. And lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him. This was designed to strike awe upon the

00:25:59.340 spirit of Abraham, and to possess him with holy reverence. Holy fear prepares the soul for holy joy.

00:26:05.020 God humbles first, and then lifts up. Yeah, well, I think that's right too. Like, you know,

00:26:10.860 one of the experiences I've had in my life, fairly commonly, in a variety of different ways. This is

00:26:16.860 especially true when I was paying a lot of attention to my dreams, which I did for about 15 years, I guess,

00:26:22.140 something like that. Now and then, I would feel like I'd learned some things, and had sort of

00:26:26.540 consolidated them. And then, before I went to sleep, I'd think, okay, I'm ready to learn something else.

00:26:33.420 It's like, and I didn't say that without trepidation. And usually, because usually when

00:26:38.060 you learn something, you know, it's not that pleasant. Because you usually learn something

00:26:42.860 about why you're wrong. And the deeper the thing that you learn, the more you learn about why you're

00:26:47.500 wrong. And there's a death that's associated with that, because then you have to let that part of you

00:26:51.900 that's wrong, die. And that's, that's the sacrifice, right? And so, you have to make a sacrifice,

00:26:58.220 you have to be willing to make a sacrifice before you're going to learn something. And the, and perhaps

00:27:04.300 your, what you'll learn is in proportion to your willingness to make a sacrifice. And I really do

00:27:11.180 believe that. I do believe that as well, because I also think that if you commit to something,

00:27:19.820 that means that you don't do a bunch of other things, right? So that's the sacrifice of all those

00:27:24.140 other things. You commit to it, and you set your sights on it. If you really commit to it,

00:27:28.780 and you get the sacrifice right, so to speak, then the probability that that thing will be successful

00:27:33.740 vastly increases. And I think that that's also not a naive or, or a naive way of thinking, or a foolish

00:27:41.100 way of thinking. I, my experience has been that that's the case. And so, back to the dream. I mean,

00:27:47.420 I do think that we learn in trepidation, and that most of the time, if, if you have to be laid low,

00:27:53.740 before the new revelation can make itself manifest. And I think that's also what happens to people often,

00:27:59.580 in psychedelic experiences, when they have a bad trip, is they don't get through the bad part of it.

00:28:05.100 And maybe that's because there's so much mess in their lives. Now, I'm speculating, but it's informed

00:28:09.660 speculation. There's so much mess in their lives, that the altered state of consciousness makes manifest,

00:28:15.340 that it's like a little trip through hell. And, but the mess is so complete, and comprehensive,

00:28:20.620 and all-pervading, that there's no way they can get through it. Now, if they could get through it,

00:28:25.900 and started to sort those things out, then, you know, there would be, perhaps, uh, what would you

00:28:30.620 call it? A compensatory positive revelation at the end. But, the first thing is, if you want to

00:28:37.100 learn something, is that you're going to encounter, well, you have to figure out what's wrong,

00:28:43.580 before you, you can figure out what wisdom you need next to guide yourself. And that's no laughing

00:28:49.260 matter, right? And, um, so I think that that's what, that's what this refers to. I think that's the

00:28:55.820 sort of psychological experience that, that refers to. I also think, we built this a little bit into this,

00:29:02.300 into the future authoring program. You know, I read this really cool paper once, reviewed by this guy

00:29:08.140 named Jeffrey Gray. Jeffrey Gray wrote a book called, The Neuropsychology of Anxiety Man,

00:29:12.700 and that is a great book. It is impossible to read. It took me really, it took me like six months to

00:29:18.380 read it. And the reason for that is that he reviewed about 3,000 papers, and they're all neurological

00:29:25.900 papers, and, and, and heavy psychological, slash, biological papers. He actually read them all, and he

00:29:33.100 understood them, and he synthesized them. And then he wrote this book about the synthesis. And so,

00:29:38.700 and he's very, very careful with this terminology. And so, to read the book, you have to understand

00:29:43.180 brain anatomy, and you have to understand neuro, neuro pharmacology, and you have to

00:29:47.580 understand animal behavior, uh, the whole literature on animal behavior, and that whole whopping, uh, uh,

00:29:54.300 dose of human psychology and cybernetics. It's like, it's a vicious book, but you really learn something

00:30:00.620 when you read it, if you go through it bit by bit, like, and it's, it's, it's had an overwhelming

00:30:05.180 influence on psychology, even among people who haven't read it, which is most of the people who

00:30:09.580 cite it, by the way. And so, but he said, he, he outlined this real cool study, maybe it was a

00:30:15.900 sequence of studies, about how to motivate rats, you know, and rats are a lot like us, uh, you know,

00:30:21.420 in, in positive and negative ways. And, uh, you know, biochemically, and, and, uh,

00:30:27.340 uh, psychopharmacologically, they're very, very similar, and they have very complex social

00:30:32.620 environments, and, you know, they have hierarchies, and they play, and they laugh. Jack Panksepp,

00:30:37.020 Jack Panksepp found out that rats laugh. If you tickle them, you can tickle them with, like,

00:30:40.540 the end of a pencil eraser, but you can't hear them laughing, because they laugh ultrasonically,

00:30:45.020 like bats. So you have to record it, and then slow it down, then you can hear them giggling away

00:30:48.860 when you tickle them. So, so, which is, you know, you think, oh, you're gonna spend fifty thousand

00:30:54.140 dollars on a study demonstrating that rats laugh, and you think, well, wait a second,

00:30:58.300 wait a second, that's a major league study, you know, because he's outlined a, a ludic circuit,

00:31:02.940 that's a play circuit, and Jack Panksepp discovered the play circuit in mammals. That's a bloody big

00:31:08.380 deal, you know, if you get that by, like, rubbing rats with a pencil eraser, well, good for you.

00:31:13.660 So, anyways, so, Gray talked a lot about how to motivate a, a rat, and you, you might have heard

00:31:21.180 about BF Skinner, you know, he used food pellets to motivate his rats, but what you don't know

00:31:25.100 about Skinner is that those rats were starved to three quarters of their normal body weight.

00:31:29.660 So, they would, they would work for food, man. So, Skinner's rats were kind of oversimplified,

00:31:35.900 but you can get rats to work for food, they don't have to be that hungry, you can get them to work

00:31:40.060 for food, and they'll do all sorts of things, they'll press levers, and, and they'll open bar,

00:31:44.460 or open doors, and they'll solve problems, and, you know, they'll do all sorts of things.

00:31:48.860 And one of the things you can do to kind of measure how much the rat is motivated is,

00:31:53.820 let's say you've run him through a maze, and he knows there's some food at the end of the maze,

00:31:58.300 you can tie a little spring to his tail and see how hard he pulls when you open the door to the maze,

00:32:03.260 so that's, because that's how much rat work the rat is willing to do, so you can measure that,

00:32:07.500 or you can see how fast he skitters down the maze, and you can get an estimate about the rat's

00:32:11.980 motivation. And so, then you might say, well, how motivated is a hungry rat? And the answer would be,

00:32:18.300 it depends on how hungry he is, but there's another answer. It also depends on what's

00:32:23.260 chasing him when he's going after the food. So, if you have a rat, and you have food over here,

00:32:29.500 and you waft in some cat odor, rats hate cat odor, and it's innate. They never have to see or smell a

00:32:35.980 cat to be absolutely petrified by cat odor. And so, if you waft in some cat odor, and then open the door,

00:32:42.620 that rat will zoom to that food a lot faster than it will if it's just hungry. So, a rat

00:32:47.180 running away from something that it doesn't want towards something that it does want is a very

00:32:51.900 motivated rat. And so, one of the things we did with the Future Authoring Program that's germane to

00:32:57.420 this idea of terror, because there's this idea in the Old Testament, the fear of God is the beginning

00:33:02.060 of wisdom. It's a pretty harsh idea. But there's something really useful about it, because one of

00:33:08.220 the things you see with people all the time is that maybe they're trying to stumble forward towards

00:33:13.580 their ideal, as poorly defined as it might be. But then they're afraid, right? They're afraid about

00:33:19.500 what they might encounter. And that stops them, because fear does stop people. It freezes you like

00:33:24.140 a prey animal. And so, people move ahead, but then they get afraid, and then they stop moving ahead.

00:33:28.540 And so, and that's not so good, because negative emotion is a really powerful motivator. So we're

00:33:34.300 more motivated by negative emotion than positive emotion, quantitatively speaking. Quantitatively

00:33:40.220 speaking, you can measure that. And that's, I think, because we can only be so happy, but we can really

00:33:44.700 be suffering and dead, you know? So we have to pay more attention to the negative. And that's bad,

00:33:49.900 because the negative can stop you. And then, in my clinical practice, you know, I often talk to people

00:33:55.740 who are trying to make a difficult life decision, and they're weighing out the costs and the benefits

00:34:01.100 of making the life decision, you know? And one of the things I always talk to them about is,

00:34:05.180 wait a second, that's an incomplete analysis. You have to weigh out the benefits and the costs of

00:34:10.060 doing this. And you have to weigh out the costs and benefits of not doing that, not doing it. And

00:34:15.660 that's not the same as the zero that you assume that you're starting with, right? Because to not make a

00:34:21.260 decision, it also has a cost. And sometimes the cost of not making a decision is far worse than the

00:34:27.260 cost of making a decision, even if the decision is risky. And so one of the things you can derive

00:34:32.140 from that, and this is very useful, I think, is that this is also, I think, why it's so useful to

00:34:38.380 contemplate your mortality, so to speak, is you're screwed no matter what you do, you know? And that

00:34:44.300 actually frees you, is that you have path A that has catastrophes, and you have path B that has

00:34:49.820 catastrophes, and you don't get to have the no-catastrophe path, but you get to pick which

00:34:54.460 one. And that's really something, because if you know that there's terrible risk associated with

00:35:00.300 everything that you do and don't do, then you can afford to take some risks, because you're not,

00:35:04.300 you know, and this is all within the arc metaphor. I'm still making the case that despite the fact that

00:35:10.460 your life is essentially catastrophic, you can make a covenant with the highest ideal, and that will

00:35:16.300 take you through it the best way possible. I'm still making that case. So, so then you think,

00:35:24.620 okay, well, I'm trying to make this decision, I'm going to go try to do something difficult, and isn't

00:35:28.300 that terrifying? And then you think, yeah, but wait a minute, what's really terrifying is not doing it.

00:35:34.460 And then you think about the cost of not doing it. So in the future authoring program, we have people

00:35:39.580 do this little meditative exercise, which is, okay, just think about your insufficiencies by your

00:35:44.940 own definition, right? The way that you don't do what you know you should do. About the things that

00:35:50.780 you do that you shouldn't do, that you know you shouldn't do, beyond a shadow of a doubt, right?

00:35:55.020 There's some things like that. And that's bad habits, and poor aim, and all of the resentment,

00:36:00.460 and hatred, and aggression, and unresolved conflicts, and all those things that are dementing you,

00:36:05.980 and warping you, and then think, okay, those things get the upper hand, man. They get the upper hand,

00:36:10.380 and they take you the worst possible place you could go in the next three to five years. What

00:36:14.620 exactly does that look like? And so you sketch all that out, and you think, hey, I don't want to go

00:36:19.420 there. And so the next time that a temptation comes up, you think, well, it'd be a lot better for me if I

00:36:24.300 didn't succumb to this temptation. It's like, that's kind of weak, eh? You'd look a little better if you

00:36:28.940 didn't eat, like, a cheesecake a day, or something like that. You know, that's something. But it's not the same as,

00:36:34.620 I'm going to have diabetes, and I'm going to lose my damn leg in five years if I don't get my eating

00:36:41.020 under control. That's motivating. And so then the temptation comes along, and you think, oh,

00:36:45.740 how about no? Seriously, how about no? Not just because a higher good would be obtained if I avoided

00:36:54.380 it, but because a terrible catastrophe would be averted if I didn't. And so, well, so you want to get

00:37:01.420 your fear behind you, right? You want to get it behind you where it's pushing you forward instead

00:37:06.060 of in front of you where it's stopping you. And you get your fear behind you pushing you forward

00:37:10.700 by actually thinking through the consequences of not putting your life together. And the least of

00:37:16.140 those is that you waste it and suffer, right? Because you're going to suffer anyways, man.

00:37:20.300 So you waste it and suffer. That's a bad deal. Because maybe if you're going to suffer,

00:37:25.500 you could at least do something noble and glorious and upright and powerful and honorable and admirable

00:37:31.500 and helpful and difficult. You know, that's just so much better. And maybe that's good enough so that

00:37:37.580 you think, hey, you know, little suffering, it's basically worth it. At least it's a way forward,

00:37:43.340 you know. At least it's a way forward. And he said unto Abram, know of a surety that thy seed shall

00:37:52.140 be a stranger in a land that is not theirs and shall serve those people. And they'll afflict them

00:37:57.020 for 400 years. God, he's hedging his bets here a lot, right? He says to Abram, well, go out, you know,

00:38:02.540 into the world. And then he confronts him with a famine and he confronts him with a tyranny and with

00:38:06.220 powerful people he wants to take his wife. And then he loses his nephew and who he has a fight with.

00:38:11.180 And then he has to go fight a war. And now, you know, he's reconstituting this covenant and God

00:38:16.540 says, yeah, you're going to have a nation is going to come from you. But they're going to be slaves

00:38:23.100 to tyrants for like 400 years. It's like, he's not a great salesman exactly. But the thing about it is

00:38:31.740 that, the thing that I like about it is that it's realistic, you know. And you got to think too,

00:38:36.140 because who knows why it is that the Bible exists or why people wrote it. But, you know,

00:38:43.180 if they're going to sell you something, I don't know if this is the way to do it.

00:38:47.980 You know, because unless you're a salesman who's sophisticated beyond belief, because you'd think

00:38:52.620 that if it was just a matter of controlling the masses, let's say, which is one, say,

00:38:56.380 Marxist interpretation of religion, or providing people with a primitive defense against death

00:39:02.300 anxiety, which is essentially the Freudian interpretation, that you'd kind of make the

00:39:06.140 deals that God cut with Abraham a little more on the positive and polished side, instead of

00:39:11.020 making them a realistic offer constantly like they are. And that's also, that's part of the reason

00:39:17.500 I think it is reasonable to treat the Bible as literature. It's more than literature. It's something

00:39:22.140 other than literature. But you can treat it as literature. And I think the reason that you can

00:39:25.900 treat it as literature is because the characters are all complex, including the character of God

00:39:31.020 himself. It's complex and sophisticated. It's not one-sided. And it's paradoxical and

00:39:37.580 incomprehensible at times. But I think good literature is like that. Because, you know,

00:39:41.820 true art, here's something about true art. This is something I learned from Jung. It's so smart.

00:39:46.460 He was so smart. So imagine that you inhabit the land that you know, conceptually and practically.

00:39:53.740 And then imagine outside of that, there's that massive space of things that you don't know. And even

00:39:58.620 outside of that, there's the space of things that no one knows, right? So it's the known territory

00:40:03.500 surrounded by the unknown. That's the canonical archetypal landscape. And the unknown manifests itself to

00:40:09.580 you. And that's where new knowledge comes from. But the question is, how is that knowledge generated? And

00:40:14.140 it doesn't just leap from completely unknown to completely articulated in one move. That isn't how it

00:40:20.620 happens. It has to pass through stages of analysis before it becomes articulable. And the first stage

00:40:27.420 of analysis, as far as I can tell, is that you act it out. So if something really surprises you, the first

00:40:32.300 way that you react to it, your category is actually embodied. Like this. That's your first category.

00:40:38.140 It's not conceptual at all. It's embodied. And then maybe you start to, like, you're at home at night and,

00:40:44.460 you know, something startles you and you freeze. And then it's dark. And then your imagination populates

00:40:49.900 the darkness with whatever might be making the noise. And that's the sequence. It's like embodied response,

00:40:55.260 imaginative representation, exploration, articulation. That's how information moves from the unknown to

00:41:01.660 the known. And artists are the people who stand on that imagistic frontier. And they put themselves out

00:41:07.900 into the unknown. And they take a piece of it. And they transform it into some mythological image. And

00:41:15.340 they don't know what they're doing exactly. Because they're guided by their intuition. If they're real

00:41:18.780 artists. Otherwise, they're just propagandists. They have to be contending with something that they

00:41:23.260 don't understand. And what they do is they make it more understandable. You know? And then people gaze

00:41:29.020 at those artworks. Or they listen to the stories. And then they start to become informed by them. But they

00:41:33.580 don't know how or why. I was at the Modern Art Museum. Museum of Art in New York. I'm afraid I don't

00:41:40.620 remember which one, unfortunately. But I was in this amazing room. You know, it had all these

00:41:48.460 priceless paintings from the late Renaissance hanging in it. You know, each painting worth,

00:41:53.980 who knows, a billion dollars maybe. They're priceless paintings. So the room was, it's a shrine. And it was

00:42:00.140 full of people from all over the world who were looking at these paintings. You think, well, what

00:42:03.660 the hell are these people doing coming to this room looking at these paintings? Like, what are they

00:42:07.180 up to? One of them was a painting of the Assumption of Mary, right? Brilliantly composed. And there was

00:42:13.260 all these people looking at it. And I thought, what are they doing? They don't know what that means. Like,

00:42:17.660 why are they looking at that painting? Why is it in this room? Why does it cost a billion dollars? Why is

00:42:21.820 that painting worth so much? And the answer to that is, well, we don't really know. Like, it happened.

00:42:27.020 They're sacred objects, in some sense. And we gaze at them in ignorance and wonder. And the reason

00:42:32.700 for that is that the unknown shines through them at us in partially articulated form. And so...

00:42:46.380 Well, that's the role of art. And that's the role of artists.

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00:45:39.100 You know, and

00:45:43.420 real artists, real artists are contending with the unknown, right? And they're possessed by it.

00:45:48.140 They have a personality trait, openness that makes them do that. They can't even help it.

00:45:52.300 And I've had lots of creative people in my clinical practice, and I can tell you

00:45:56.300 the worst thing for creative people is to not be creative because they just die. And it, because

00:46:01.500 it's, it's, it's, it's like maybe you're a tree with a few major branches, you know? That's your

00:46:08.940 personality. So if you're extroverted, man, you can't be cut off from people because you just wither.

00:46:13.420 And if you're agreeable, you have to be in an intimate relationship or you die, you know?

00:46:17.900 And if you're conscientious, man, and you're unemployed, you're just going to eat yourself up because you

00:46:22.540 have to have a duty and you have to carry a load because you just can't stand it otherwise. And

00:46:26.860 open people have to be creative. They have to be because otherwise they die. They don't have any

00:46:31.580 vitality. And so they're cursed with the necessity of putting a foot out into the unknown and making

00:46:38.300 sense of it. And then they're also cursed with the necessity of trying to make a living while

00:46:42.140 they're doing that, which they can't because you can't. It's almost impossible to monetize creative,

00:46:47.020 creative action, as many of you who are creative will no doubt find out. It's very,

00:46:51.260 very frustrating. It's not that creative action is without value, right? Because the creative people

00:46:56.620 are entrepreneurs and the creative people revitalize cities and the creative people make

00:47:00.620 things magnificent and beautiful. You think about what's happened in Europe over the last thousand

00:47:05.100 years, say 2000 years, this amazing, unbelievable collaboration to make things so beautiful that

00:47:12.940 they're jaw-dropping when you walk into them. And you think about the economic value of that,

00:47:17.740 right? I mean, I think it's either France or Spain that's the most visited country in the world.

00:47:22.300 It's one of those two. I think there's more tourists in France than there are people most

00:47:25.580 of the time. And part of the reason for that is it's just so damn beautiful. You just can't stand it.

00:47:30.220 And you think, what's the economic value of that? It's absolutely incalculable. And what's interesting

00:47:36.700 too is that you build that beauty in, and then the farther away you get from it in time, the more

00:47:42.940 valuable it becomes, right? Instead of decaying, it has exactly the opposite effect. Its value magnifies.

00:47:48.700 And one of the things that I'm deeply ashamed of as a Canadian is that our sense of beauty is so

00:47:54.220 underdeveloped. We're so primitive. It's not even primitive. That's the wrong word. Because, you know,

00:48:01.660 I don't know what it is. It's second rate. It's second rate, at least. It's terror too,

00:48:08.060 because people are afraid of beauty. But the idea that art is, that conservatives really have a problem

00:48:13.820 with this in particular. Because conservative people tend not to be that creative. And it's a

00:48:18.140 mystery, by temperament, it's a mystery to me. Because they should be concerned with economic

00:48:23.740 development. And beauty is so unbelievably crucial to economic development. It just yells out at you,

00:48:28.940 you know? So, anyway, so that's what artists are doing. And so one of the things I would say is,

00:48:33.820 buy a damn piece of art, you know? Find one that really speaks to you. And buy a piece of art,

00:48:38.860 because you invite that into your life. And it's a lookout if you do it. If it's a real piece of art,

00:48:44.620 because you'll also get, you know, a little introduction to the artist. And then that'll seep

00:48:48.300 into your life. And that'll change things like mad. But it's really, it's unbelievably worth it.

00:48:53.580 Because it opens your eyes to the domain of the transcendent. That's the right way of thinking about

00:48:59.100 it. A real piece of art is a window into the transcendent. That's what it is. And you need that in

00:49:04.380 your life, because you're finite and limited and bounded, right? By your ignorance and your

00:49:09.580 lack of knowing. And unless you can make a connection to the transcendent, then you don't

00:49:13.820 have the strength to prevail. And that's part of the covenant, that's part of the covenant with God.

00:49:18.700 And you can see that, because you look at these magnificent cathedrals that our civilization built

00:49:24.540 over the centuries. You know, some of those, they're still building this Sangrida Familia in

00:49:29.820 in Barcelona, right? And it's an amazing building. I think it's going to take them like

00:49:35.020 300 years to build that. You know, people in the Middle Ages, they'd start building a cathedral,

00:49:39.820 and they think, ah, we'll be done this in 300 years. You know, imagine the vision that it took to

00:49:44.860 invest in something like that. We look at quarterly reports. We can't think 300 years into the future

00:49:50.940 to build something of that kind of remarkable, remarkable, what? Those cathedrals are so, they're,

00:49:57.580 they're perfect, they're trees first, right? They're a forest, right? The gothic cathedrals,

00:50:01.660 they're, they're a forest. And the sun is shining through the branches. That's the stained glass.

00:50:05.900 And they're the perfect balance of light and structure, because they're representing something

00:50:10.780 about the proper structure of being, which is something like the proper balance between light

00:50:15.500 and structure. And, and they represent like the sacred tragedy of mankind. That's why they're in the

00:50:21.820 shape of a cross. And they're open to the sky. That's why they have a dome. And they're full of gold,

00:50:27.100 so that it glitters, because that's like the city of God, you know? And, and, and you, you can see

00:50:34.140 that, that integral to, to our culture is the idea that beauty is one pathway towards God. And it's,

00:50:42.060 and it's saying, if you can't find another pathway, then why don't you use beauty? I'm sure most of you

00:50:46.540 do that with music. Because music is the one thing that modern people can't be cynical about. Thank God for

00:50:51.820 that. And being fascinated by music because of that. It, it speaks meaning to people,

00:50:56.860 right? Even nihilistic punk rockers are so damn engaged with their music that they can hardly

00:51:01.900 stand it. And you can knock on them and say, look, you know, you're having a transcendent

00:51:06.060 religious experience. And they'll just tell you to fuck off, because that's what...

00:51:18.540 Because that's, that's what punk rockers have to do. But, but that's still what's happening,

00:51:24.220 you know? I mean, it's still what's happening. So, okay. So, okay. So I, I got into all that,

00:51:32.460 because I was talking about, about the Bible as literature, you know? And, and, and trying to,

00:51:36.860 and trying to lay out, because we, we need in our culture to justify the arts. And you have to,

00:51:44.460 I don't want to do that by talking about high culture, talking about something abstract and

00:51:49.420 evanescent. That's the wrong way to go about it. This is vital. You know? Like, one of the things

00:51:54.540 that's really interesting about the University of Toronto is that the, the one side of the campus,

00:51:59.340 where we are is beautiful, medieval cathedral. And the other side is god-awful factory. And,

00:52:07.100 you know, and, and that, and the thing is, the attitude towards knowledge has paralleled that

00:52:13.660 architectural transformation. You know, at one point, the humanities, let's say, were a sacred

00:52:19.020 endeavor. And, and so was the art of being educated in the university. And that's turned into, like,

00:52:24.540 mass factory. And that's reflected in the architecture. This isn't accidental. None of this

00:52:28.940 happens, none of this happens by random chance. You know? It's not like there's a conspiracy or

00:52:34.140 anything. Because there isn't. But that doesn't mean that these things aren't tangled together. And

00:52:38.380 the loss of beauty in the universities is a catastrophe. Because without that beauty,

00:52:44.300 there's no call to higher being. You know? You, this is also why, you know, I've, I've mentioned to

00:52:49.900 people that they should clean up their rooms. That's become quite the internet meme. But I'm really

00:52:54.380 serious about it. Because it's really hard to do that. And I've been cleaning up my room, by the way,

00:52:58.060 for about four months now. Because my life was thrown into such a catastrophe. And, and also we

00:53:03.420 were renovating. And so, but it isn't just that you clean it up. You also make it beautiful. And beauty,

00:53:09.340 it's really hard to make something beautiful. And it's really worthwhile. And what's really cool is if

00:53:13.740 you learn to make something beautiful, even one thing, if you can just make one thing in your life

00:53:18.300 beautiful, then you've established a relationship with beauty. And then you can start to expand that

00:53:23.740 relationship with beauty out into, into the world. Like into other elements of your life. And that is so

00:53:29.100 worthwhile. It's just incredibly, crazily worthwhile. And that's an invitation to the divine. You know? You

00:53:35.420 have to be daring to do that. And people are terrified of it. People are terrified of color. They paint their

00:53:40.380 walls beige. They're terrified of art. They buy some mass-produced thing because they don't want anybody laughing

00:53:46.060 at them for their lack of taste. And they would get laughed at because they have no taste. But you have to,

00:53:50.940 well, it's right. Because what do you know, right? You have to develop it. And so you're going to stumble

00:53:55.260 along and make mistakes to begin with. And you're going to show yourself. Because if you buy, oh, I think this is

00:54:00.300 pretty. And you know, somebody comes over and goes, eh, what's up with you? It's kind of hard on your self-esteem.

00:54:05.260 But, but it's a, you're stumbling towards the right, you're stumbling towards the kingdom of God. That's what

00:54:13.260 you're stumbling towards when you try to make an aesthetic decision and to put something in your

00:54:17.020 life that's beautiful. And it's unbelievably worthwhile to do that. And you have to steer

00:54:21.740 clear of the frauds and the con artists and all of that. And art is full of that, of course, because

00:54:26.620 it's difficult to distinguish between the real thing and the fraud. But, but it's unbelievably

00:54:31.420 worthwhile. And so back to literature. I'm telling you this partly because I've been thinking a lot

00:54:36.780 about the humanities and the arts. And practically speaking, because I know that artistic types are

00:54:45.260 also entrepreneurial types. They're the same personality types. And so it's very much worthwhile

00:54:49.740 to make an economic and practical case for this sort of thing. You study literature in the humanities

00:54:55.420 so that you can familiarize yourself with the wisdom of our civilization. Man, you should do that,

00:55:00.780 because people have been working on this thing for a long time. And it's rich beyond comparison.

00:55:05.340 So why wouldn't you do that? And you teach yourself to read. And you teach yourself to speak. And you

00:55:11.500 teach yourself to think. And you teach yourself to communicate. And I can tell you, if you can read

00:55:16.460 and think and communicate, you are absolutely 100% unstoppable. And that's another thing that's so

00:55:24.940 interesting about humanities education that's at the core of the university. It's like there's nothing

00:55:29.020 more economically valuable than teaching people how to articulate themselves and communicate.

00:55:33.260 Because they can identify problems. They can formulate solutions. They can negotiate to consensus.

00:55:37.740 They can negotiate on their own behalf or on the behalf of others. It's like there's absolutely no

00:55:43.260 downside to it. Except that there's responsibility that goes along with it. But it doesn't matter because

00:55:50.060 there's no escape from responsibility. You can either take it voluntarily or you can take it

00:55:54.540 involuntarily. Those are your options. But there aren't any other options. And so we need to understand the

00:55:59.660 role of art and literature. And stop thinking about it as an option. It's not an option. It's not an

00:56:04.700 option. What is it said? Man does not live by bread alone. That's exactly right. We live by beauty.

00:56:10.780 We live by literature. We live by art. And literally, not metaphorically, we cannot live without it.

00:56:16.620 Because life is too dismal and tragic in the absence of the sublime. So, and ourselves, we have to be

00:56:24.700 sharp so that we can survive properly and orient the world properly and not destroy things, including

00:56:30.220 ourselves. And so, and so back to the Bible, which I do think is a reasonable, it's reasonably construed as a

00:56:38.300 piece of literature because it's deep. And because the people who wrote it had at least one foot in the

00:56:43.020 unknowable. And they're trying to communicate what they experienced in the unknowable to make it

00:56:48.780 known. And that's partly what we're trying to do in this series. And what you're trying to do while

00:56:53.420 you're listening and all of that. And so, good for that. And also, that nation whom they shall serve,

00:56:59.580 I will judge. And afterward, they'll come out with great substance. There'll be a period of tyranny.

00:57:04.780 You know, and there's a psychological truth to that too. One of the things I learned from reading

00:57:08.860 Nietzsche, because you can learn a lot from reading Nietzsche, that's for sure. He talked about

00:57:14.140 the Catholic Church. You know, Nietzsche is often construed as a great critic of Christianity,

00:57:17.900 and he certainly was. But he was no casual critic. In fact, I think he was the sort of critic that

00:57:24.140 you'd like to have as a friend, because he was the sort of critic that said, well, here's the great

00:57:29.020 things you've done and that you could keep doing, but here's a bunch of really neat things that you did

00:57:33.660 that you really should stop doing. And he talked about the Catholic Church. And he said,

00:57:38.540 what the Catholic Church had done to the European mind, in particular, was discipline it. So that over

00:57:46.060 a period of 1,000 years, 1,300 years, 1,400 years, there was this rule that there was a conceptual

00:57:52.780 structure within which you had to interpret everything. And what that did was turn the European

00:57:58.140 educated European mind into a systematizing cognitive entity. And that once that systematizing

00:58:04.620 cognitive entity had been established, then it could free itself from those underlying disciplinary

00:58:09.660 structures and go off and do such things as produce the scientific revolution, for example,

00:58:15.260 which required incredible systematic thinking. And so, Nietzsche had this really interesting idea

00:58:19.900 about freedom. And he believed that slavery was an intermediary between the undeveloped individual

00:58:26.460 and the free individual, that you had to submit yourself to some intense disciplinary process

00:58:33.020 for some period of time in your life, before you could develop any true freedom. And so you think,

00:58:37.900 maybe you want to learn to play the piano. It's like, that's not going to be any fun

00:58:40.780 for a really long period of time, right? Because you're really bad at it. And there's a million things

00:58:44.860 you have to memorize and you have to stumble around like an amateur. And the same thing happens when

00:58:50.860 kids learn how to read. And some of them never get past that point, and they never get to the point

00:58:54.380 where they can enjoy reading. But in order to put yourself together, you have to put yourself in a

00:58:58.380 vice and allow yourself to be constricted and mangled even by the thing that enslaves you. But the goal

00:59:05.340 should be that, as a consequence of submitting to the discipline, that you become disciplined.

00:59:10.620 And then once you become disciplined, you can emerge from the disciplinary structure

00:59:14.060 as someone who's free. And that's something that's very much worth thinking about as well.

00:59:18.220 So, that's illustrated conceptually in this piece of literature, let's say. Because what

00:59:29.180 the psychological meaning of what God tells Abraham is that all people are subject,

00:59:36.140 and I mean, not equally, obviously, all people are subject to the tyranny that precedes freedom. And

00:59:41.660 that idea is repeated over and over in the Old Testament. It comes out most particularly in the

00:59:47.260 story of Moses, right? Because, of course, that's the story of movement from tyranny.

00:59:51.180 Where do you go from a tyranny? It's an absolute catastrophe. You go from a tyranny into the desert.

00:59:56.620 You know, where you starve. That's harsh. That's what happens in the story of Exodus.

01:00:01.980 And so, that's so interesting too, because what it means is that sometimes if you're going to move

01:00:07.100 uphill, the first thing that happens is you move downhill a lot. And so, if you want to escape from

01:00:12.460 the straits that bind you now, you're not going to move forward and go up. You're going to move forward

01:00:17.420 and go down. And that's another reason, this is also something that Jung talked about a lot, is that

01:00:22.380 you know, on the road to enlightenment, you encounter all the things that you don't want to encounter

01:00:26.700 first, like all the weaknesses of yourself, all the realizations of the tyranny of the world,

01:00:31.340 and the catastrophe of nature, and all of that. And so, you step out of your encapsulation,

01:00:36.220 your ignorant encapsulation, and its immediate plummet into something that's a desert, let's say,

01:00:41.180 where everything is chaotic, and where you're wandering around without direction. A real catastrophe,

01:00:46.460 so it's, you know, because one of the things you might ask yourself is that if enlightenment is possible,

01:00:52.060 then why aren't people enlightened? Because if it was just a matter of going from a good place to a

01:00:56.460 better place, it's like, well, man, let's just get at it. It's no problem, right? Why would we ever stop doing that?

01:01:03.260 But it seems not to be that. It's that you're here, and that's not good, and it's unstable,

01:01:07.340 and you step out of it, and it's like, down. Down to where you don't want to be. And you have

01:01:12.460 to contend with that, and then maybe you can start your struggle upward. And so Abraham, God is telling

01:01:17.340 Abraham this, and he's also telling him that it's okay. It's rough, though. And thou shalt go to thy

01:01:24.060 fathers in peace. Thou shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation, they shall come

01:01:29.340 hither again. That's the Israelites, the descendants of Abraham. For the iniquity of the Amorites is not

01:01:34.780 yet full. God is going to leave the tyrants alone until they've manifested their full tyranny for reasons

01:01:41.340 that we don't fully understand.

01:01:46.220 And it came to pass that when the sun went down, it was dark. Behold, a smoking furnace and a burning

01:01:52.380 lamp that passed between the pieces. Albert Barnes said, the oven of smoke and lamp of flame symbolize

01:01:58.380 the smoke of destruction, which we've already talked about, this catastrophe of the initial

01:02:03.660 stages, and the light of salvation. Their passing through the pieces of the victims, and probably

01:02:08.060 consuming them as an accepted sacrifice, are the ratification of the covenant on the part of God,

01:02:13.260 as the dividing and presenting of them were on the part of Abram.

01:02:17.260 In the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, unto thy seed, I have given this

01:02:21.820 land from the river of Egypt, unto the great river Euphrates. Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bare him no

01:02:29.020 children. And she had a handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. So this is a big catastrophe for

01:02:35.580 Abraham, especially in those times. And perhaps now, as much, although perhaps people aren't as conscious

01:02:42.460 of it as they once were. I mean, for Abraham, without a biological son, there was no vision

01:02:51.820 forward into the future. I mean, we don't really know what sort of time span over which these

01:02:57.500 archaic people fought. But the medieval people, we already said, could think 300 years into the

01:03:02.060 future without batting an eye. And these people who were concerned about their descendants were

01:03:07.820 obviously thinking about existence in a way that wasn't just focused on their immediate existence,

01:03:12.380 right? They were thinking about, well, their children and their grandchildren, maybe their

01:03:15.740 great-grandchildren, maybe the whole society that stemmed out from them. And that's smart.

01:03:21.100 You know, one of the things I learned from Piaget, at least in part, was that his idea of the

01:03:26.140 equilibrated state, which he thought about as partly part of the biological basis of the idea of moral

01:03:32.220 progress. It's something like that. He was a very, very smart, Piaget. And he said that the proper

01:03:37.660 equilibrated state is one where, imagine you have a family, you've got five people in it, and you're

01:03:42.140 doing what you want in your family, what's good for you. But you're doing it in such a way so that

01:03:46.380 the other four members of your family agree with what you do, and that it also facilitates them doing

01:03:51.820 what they want and what they should be doing. And so it's a really tricky arrangement, because it isn't

01:03:56.300 just for you, it's for you in a way that's for them. And you could also see that that would be

01:04:01.100 something that would be a multiplier, right? Because if you have everyone working voluntarily

01:04:06.940 towards the same common goal, then you get a multiplying effect of that. And then you might

01:04:11.980 think, well, it's not just you and your family, it's you and your family today, and next week,

01:04:18.540 and next month, and next year, and ten years from now. So you have to take the time span into account,

01:04:22.780 and then it should be you and your family in a way that works well in society, and then it should work

01:04:27.420 well now, and next week, and next year, and into the future. It should be iteratable, right?

01:04:31.580 That's like sustainability. It's something like the idea of sustainability. And that's, that's,

01:04:36.540 I would say that's a reasonable way of conceptualizing the holy city. It's something like that.

01:04:41.740 You know, if you're trying to make it concrete, it's like, how should you live your life? Well,

01:04:45.740 let's say you live your life in a manner that justifies its limitation and tragedy. That's a good start.

01:04:51.180 But then let's say that it does that in a way that also reduces the limitations and suffering of the

01:04:56.140 people that you interact with, and now and into the future. Well, maybe there's a way to do that. I mean,

01:05:02.220 a good negotiation does that, right? Because if you're negotiating with someone like your wife,

01:05:06.060 for example, what you want is for her to agree with the negotiation. And one of the things that Piaget

01:05:11.980 said, which I think was brilliant, brilliant. He said, if you take an equilibrated system,

01:05:17.980 a family, let's say, and a disequilibrated system, so that would be one where, let's say,

01:05:22.140 the father is a tyrant and everyone is operating under his whip, and you put them in a head-to-head competition,

01:05:28.940 the equilibrated system will out-compete the disequilibrated system because the enforcement

01:05:34.060 cost is such that it will slow the system down. You know, because you'll get resistances from the

01:05:38.460 people inside the system. They'll work, the system will be working at counter purposes to itself,

01:05:43.420 plus there's enforcement costs. And so, a tyranny cannot beat an ill-equilibrated system.

01:05:48.620 And I was really excited to encounter that idea, because when I encountered it,

01:05:52.940 I was also trying to figure out if there was some quantitative

01:05:56.940 difference between the systems, say, of the Soviet Union and Maoist China,

01:06:01.260 and the systems of the West, apart from just, you know, arbitrary world interpretation,

01:06:06.140 as the post-modern nihilists might have it, if there was something fundamental at stake in the

01:06:10.860 terrible Cold War that we fought, or if it was just a matter of opinion. You know, when the Piagetian

01:06:16.060 take was that, well, roughly speaking, is that the West was an equilibrated system, not perfectly

01:06:21.820 equilibrated, but reasonably equilibrated, in that people were essentially, even if they were slaves,

01:06:27.020 to some degree, they were at least voluntary slaves instead of involuntary slaves, and that that was

01:06:31.660 better. The system was actually technically better, and not just as a matter of interpretation.

01:06:37.740 So that's a lovely thing to know, and I think it's a really, really solid, really, really solid idea.

01:06:42.940 I haven't been able to, you know, put crowbars under that idea and lift it up. I think it's a good one.

01:06:48.300 So, now, Sarai, Abram's wife, Baram, no children. So, okay, back to children. Well, so, one of the

01:06:55.900 things that's worth thinking about, with regards to reading these old stories, because we're very arrogant

01:07:00.380 modern people, eh? We look at these old stories, and we think, ah, we've transcended all that

01:07:04.940 superstition. It's like, don't be so bloody sure about that. These people weren't stupid.

01:07:09.580 And so, there are ways that they viewed the world that we don't have anymore. And one of them seems

01:07:15.980 to be this concern for descendants, because that just isn't part of our way of thinking. We have a very

01:07:22.540 short-term way of thinking. Maybe it's not even one lifetime long. It's certainly not multiple

01:07:27.180 lifetimes long. And it isn't clear to me at all that that's for the best. And, you know, the

01:07:31.740 constant complaint that the environmentalists generate, some of which is justified, and some

01:07:36.860 of which is just anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal nonsense that should be cleared out of that

01:07:41.420 entire conversation, is that we need to take a longer view and consider more things in our purview

01:07:47.820 when we act. And, like, that's fair enough. Like, do we really want an ocean that has nothing in it

01:07:52.060 but jellyfish? Because that's really what we're doing. And we're doing it very, very rapidly. And

01:07:56.540 the data on that are very clear. And so, you know, when you lift up your eyes and you make a connection

01:08:02.220 with something that's transcendent, then that should bring more of the world within your purview. And

01:08:06.860 maybe that's concern for the endless number of descendants that you might have. You might think,

01:08:11.500 too, well, you know, if you're a successful person, if you have a successful family,

01:08:16.060 God only knows how many people you will be the father of. Right? It's completely, because you're

01:08:21.580 a nexus, right? All sorts of things have come together in the cosmos to produce you. And then

01:08:26.940 all sorts of things manifest themselves from you. You have no idea what your potential,

01:08:31.820 the potential consequences of your actions might be as they cascade across time. Right? You have no idea.

01:08:39.180 And so Abraham, at least, is concerned with these sorts of things. And God seems to be concerned,

01:08:43.420 too, because he promises Abraham that if he maintains the covenant, that the most important

01:08:48.220 things that he needs will come to him. And they're pretty serious about this. So,

01:08:54.380 Sarai talks to Abram. She's not very happy about the fact that she can't have children.

01:08:59.420 She says, Behold, now the Lord hath restrained me from bearing. I pray thee, go in unto my maid.

01:09:05.580 It may be that I obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai. Well,

01:09:10.780 that's not a very trivial thing, I wouldn't think. I don't imagine that Sarai was very happy about

01:09:16.300 turning her maid over to her husband and potentially being usurped in the whole childbearing

01:09:22.780 in the whole childbearing process. Not in the least. But, you know, so it's also a major sacrifice

01:09:27.900 on Sarai's part. There's no doubt about that. And, of course, it's very difficult for us to talk about

01:09:32.860 the ethics of the fact that Hager was a more or less involuntary participant in this. But that was

01:09:37.820 the times. Absolutely the case. And, of course, slavery and indentured servitude is the way of mankind,

01:09:44.220 except in very, very, very limited circumstances. Carl Jung had something to say about that too,

01:09:49.660 which I really liked. He said that part of the reason that modern people have, it's not the only reason,

01:09:55.740 there's the industrial revolution, obviously. But part of the reason that modern people have been

01:10:00.780 able to escape from the catastrophe of tyranny and slavery is because we've agreed to make ourselves

01:10:06.540 our own slaves. Right? So instead of owning a slave, you own yourself, in a sense. And so you trot

01:10:12.620 yourself off to work and exploit yourself so that you can stay alive. And maybe it's not something that

01:10:16.780 you want to do. But you've taken on the role of slave, in some sense, in relationship to your own

01:10:21.900 survival, instead of forcing someone else to do it. Which is also something, I think, that's very

01:10:25.740 noble about the West. Is that we're willing to enslave ourselves as individuals. And we're not,

01:10:31.180 we're not doing that to other people. No. We're doing it to some degree, obviously,

01:10:34.460 because the society is imperfect. But that's something that's very much worth thinking about.

01:10:38.700 So. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai. And Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hager, her maid,

01:10:46.060 the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband,

01:10:51.420 Abram to be his wife. That's the other thing that's been so interesting about doing this,

01:10:57.260 one of the other things about doing this Biblical series. And it's one of the things that's so cool

01:11:00.860 about Google. Despite the fact that they cut off my account. You can find any piece of art that ever

01:11:10.780 existed on Google. And so that's great. So, you know, when I'm trying to illustrate these,

01:11:15.820 these lectures, I type in, Abraham, Renaissance. And then, like, I get 200 Renaissance paintings.

01:11:22.300 It's so great. And then I can look at them. And one of the other things that's so remarkable is that all

01:11:26.620 of these, the major themes of these stories have been illustrated by people of spectacular,

01:11:32.460 mind-expanding talent. You know, there's just this endless array of, well, look at that. I mean,

01:11:41.900 that's an amazing painting. And so, and there's, and of this, there's dozens of paintings on this

01:11:50.300 theme. And it's just another indication of how obsessed people, you know, this was the only book

01:11:54.700 that existed for years. And people were absolutely obsessed by it. And produced all these amazing

01:12:00.540 things from it. And we're in danger of losing that. And that's a big mistake. Because it's magnificent.

01:12:06.540 A little humility would go a long way towards restoring it.

01:12:09.660 And he went into Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was

01:12:17.660 despised in her eyes. So, Hagar was successful. And that was a hallmark of feminine success

01:12:26.300 now, and certainly then. And so she started to lord it over Sarai. Which seemed a little bit on the

01:12:32.940 ungrateful side, I would say. Because Sarai made a big sacrifice to allow Hagar to become

01:12:39.100 Abram's wife. And so, a little bit of gratitude would have been in order, I suppose. At least,

01:12:44.460 that's how the story goes. And Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee. I have given my maid

01:12:51.260 into thy bosom. And when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes. The Lord

01:12:57.420 judged between you and I. And Abraham said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thine hand. Do to her as it

01:13:04.780 pleases you. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, Hagar fled from her face. And the angel of the

01:13:10.540 Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur.

01:13:14.220 And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, whence camest thou? And whither wilt thou go? And she said,

01:13:19.980 I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai. And the angel of the Lord said, Return to thy mistress,

01:13:25.100 and submit under her hands. And the angel said, I will multiply your seed exceedingly,

01:13:30.620 that it shall not be numbered for multitude. And the angel said, Behold, thou art with child,

01:13:35.340 and thou shalt bear a son, and shall call his name Ishmael. And Ishmael means God hears,

01:13:41.500 by the way. Because the Lord hath heard thy affliction. And he'll be a wild man. His hand

01:13:45.740 will be against every man, and every man's hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence

01:13:50.540 of all his brothers. And she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me. For she

01:13:57.980 said, Have I also here looked after him that seeth me? Wherefore the well was called Bir Laharoi.

01:14:05.180 And that means the well of who sees me and lives. It's an interesting interlude because,

01:14:10.380 you know, Abraham, God has established this covenant with Abraham. And obviously things are

01:14:15.340 going wrong in the household in a really serious way. Like a really serious way. Because, well,

01:14:21.020 he's now had a child by another woman. And the two women are not getting along. And one is beating the

01:14:26.140 other because of her insubordination and contempt. And so, she's so desperate she runs out into the

01:14:32.860 desert where she's probably going to die. And God comes along and says anyways to Hagar that

01:14:42.700 her son shall as well be the father of nations. And so that's partly a reflection back on the power of

01:14:48.060 Abraham's covenant, right? Even though things are going terribly wrong locally, let's say. The fact that

01:14:53.660 Abraham has made this overarching agreement with God means that all of these catastrophes are taking

01:14:59.020 place within a bounded space. Within the ark, we could say. That's one way of looking at it. And I do

01:15:04.700 think, I do think that that's right. Because it seems to me that, you know, if everything falls apart

01:15:11.100 around you, there's a couple of things you're going to want. You're going to want someone standing

01:15:15.580 beside you. That's for sure. That you can trust. You're going to want your family around you. And you're going to

01:15:21.500 want them to have your back. And you're going to want to know that you didn't do some goddamn

01:15:25.420 stupid thing to bring all hell down on yourself. And if you're lacking any of those, when that crisis

01:15:31.660 comes, there's a high probability it will flatten you and you won't be able to get up. You know,

01:15:35.740 it does seem to me, you can ask yourself this question. When things collapse around you, how much

01:15:42.460 utility is knowledge of your own moral virtue? It's bad enough to be laid, it's bad to be laid low,

01:15:48.460 but to be laid low and to know that you were the fault, you were at fault for it. And worse,

01:15:54.700 the things that you did that you knew you did that were wrong brought you there. Then I think you have

01:15:59.660 nothing to stand on in that situation. And that's also the circumstances under which I think you're

01:16:04.140 more likely, at least, to be abandoned by people around you. So, given that you know that the catastrophe

01:16:11.340 is coming, right? That the tragedy of life will strike you. The question is, well, how do you fortify

01:16:15.660 yourself against that? And obviously, to some degree, you do that by being materially sensible.

01:16:21.900 And these old people in the Old Testament, these ancient people, they weren't blind to the utility

01:16:27.660 of having a good crop and some animals, you know? That's an integral part of their life,

01:16:33.180 to take care of themselves physically. But they're also wise enough to know that there's an element of

01:16:39.260 moral... what would you call it? There's a necessity for moral integration

01:16:45.500 that defends you against the catastrophe of existence even more effectively than anything

01:16:50.700 material. And even more, that the stability of the material things is more dependent on the

01:16:56.780 integrity of your spirit than the integrity of your spirit is dependent on the material things.

01:17:01.740 And I think the evidence for that is actually quite clear. I read a very interesting book a while

01:17:06.620 back called, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, that was written by a Harvard Emeritus Professor

01:17:10.780 of History. And one of the things that he claimed, I liked it, I thought it was very smart, was that

01:17:16.540 the only true natural resource is interpersonal trust. If you can set up a society where people trust

01:17:22.060 each other, then it will instantly become rich. And he used the example of Japan, which is a very

01:17:26.860 conscientious society and very rich society. But the Japanese have no natural resources, right?

01:17:32.700 None to speak of. And yet they're rich. And then you have countries like the Soviet Russia and much of

01:17:38.220 South America, where there's just natural resources that, you know, they're just like Venezuela. It's just

01:17:43.580 more natural resources than you know what to do with. And the places are absolute catastrophes,

01:17:49.580 absolute catastrophes of cynicism and corruption. And so he attempted to document the relationship

01:17:56.060 between default interpersonal trust among citizens within countries, and their productivity,

01:18:03.100 and their GDP, and their standard of living, and found a very, very tight relationship. And

01:18:07.660 I like that a lot. And I've got a story about that quickly, that I think is very interesting.

01:18:12.860 I'll tell you two stories. One sort of generic. Well, I'll tell you one personal first. So one day,

01:18:19.980 I lent my car to one of my graduate students, and he took it to Montreal. It was this old Cadillac.

01:18:24.460 And he got, it was a really bad rainstorm in Montreal, and he was in one of the highways that are like,

01:18:31.740 set into the ground, and there was like six inches of water. And he was turning a corner,

01:18:35.980 hit the brakes, and skidded on the water, and smacked it into the wall, and on the corner of the bumper,

01:18:41.340 you know. And so then he brought it back, and he was very apologetic about it. And his name was Matt

01:18:46.700 Shane. I'll tell you that, because Matt might hear this, and I can shame him a bit for doing this,

01:18:50.700 this was 20 years ago, you know. And he's a professor at the Ontario Institute of Technology,

01:18:57.740 I think now, and quite a successful one. But anyways, he brought the car back, and I went and got it

01:19:03.580 evaluated for damages. It was like $1,700 or something to repair it, or maybe more. But it was

01:19:10.060 almost as much as the car was worth. And I thought, well, I'm not gonna do that. So I went online,

01:19:16.460 and I typed in the part. And if you do that, you can get people to bid on sending you a used part

01:19:22.460 from all over North America. So that's kind of cool. So there's all these junk dealers have got

01:19:26.140 together, and they have this, you know, network of communication. So you put in the car part,

01:19:29.820 and then they send you a bid. And so this guy said, well, I'll send you the bumper assembly,

01:19:34.540 which is the whole bumper, and the lights, for like $250. And I thought, yeah, okay, you could do that,

01:19:40.220 that'd be good. So then I said, yes. And then he called me up. About half an hour later, this guy

01:19:46.860 from way down south, he had a really deep sort of Mississippi accent. And he said, wait a sec,

01:19:51.500 was that for the bumper, or the bumper assembly? And I said, well, it was for the bumper assembly.

01:19:56.540 He said, oh, I thought it was for the bumper. And then he said, but that's okay, I'll send it to you

01:20:00.060 anyways. I thought, well, that's pretty good. So I said, well, thank you. And then I hung up, and then

01:20:05.020 half an hour later, he called me up again. And he said, look, I just went out and looked at that bumper

01:20:09.340 assembly. And there's a plastic trim piece on the side, and it has a scratch in it. And I thought,

01:20:13.820 I better tell you that, just in case you didn't want it. And I thought, wow, that's so amazing.

01:20:18.780 It's like, there's a miracle, man. It's like this guy, he's somewhere in Mississippi. I'm never going

01:20:23.980 to see him again, ever. I'm never going to have any contact with him. Like, he made a bad deal,

01:20:29.100 right? Because the part was worth more than he decided to sell it to me for. But he stuck with this deal.

01:20:33.660 And then he went over and above the call of duty. He said, well, this part that I'm selling you,

01:20:38.300 to you for way less than it's worth, is damaged. So I thought I better tell you. It's like,

01:20:43.420 man, you got to recognize a miracle when you see one. That was a miracle. So I said, hey, look,

01:20:49.100 thanks for calling, man. It's okay. I can handle the scratch and the part. And he did. And I got the

01:20:54.780 car fixed and forgave Matt. And, you know, it had a happy ending. So that's trust, right? Because I didn't

01:21:02.700 know him from Adam. And he's a primate full of snakes, just like the rest of us. And yet,

01:21:07.420 he was willing to simplify himself to the point where I could just take him absolutely at his word.

01:21:11.980 And that meant we could trade even though we were strangers. It's like, man, do not underestimate

01:21:16.860 the utility of that. And then there's eBay. So when eBay first started, you know,

01:21:20.860 the idea was, it's not going to work. Because you'll send me junk and I'll send you a check that bounces.

01:21:25.820 And that'll be the end of eBay, right? And so these escrow agents popped up so you could ensure

01:21:31.260 your transaction with them. It was for like 10% of the transaction. They would get the check and the

01:21:36.220 goods and make sure that they were okay. And then send them on or ensure the transaction. But what

01:21:41.980 happened was the escrow agents didn't make any money. And the reason for that was no one cheated.

01:21:47.740 Now you think about how amazing that is, right? You bring these people together across a whole

01:21:52.060 continent. They've never seen each other before. They're never going to interact with each

01:21:55.580 other again. And this was before there were any reputation ratings on eBay. And yet the default

01:22:00.140 transaction was, you describe your goods honestly, including their flaws. You set a reasonable price.

01:22:06.540 I decide to pay you. You ship the goods. And I pay you. And it works. And what happened was that

01:22:12.860 eBay produced a tremendous amount of capital that was previously frozen. So frozen capital is when

01:22:19.500 you've invested money in something. But the thing is no longer useful to you. So the money is just

01:22:25.020 sitting there frozen, right? So to speak. And you can't get it loose because, well, you've got an

01:22:30.940 attic full of junk. How are you going to get rid of that? Oh, eBay. And so all of a sudden all these

01:22:35.660 things that were just junk became valuable. And everybody got richer. And none of that would have

01:22:40.620 happened without the covenant that we established between each other that's predicated on trust.

01:22:45.260 And so you might say that trust is the currency. And currency is trust. Because it's a promissory

01:22:51.180 note, right? And if people lie, then the currency gets debased very, very rapidly. And so the economy

01:22:56.220 runs on trust. And so that's part of the overarching covenant.

01:23:03.420 And so Abraham makes this covenant with God. And he decides that he's going to

01:23:11.500 aim high and live a good life and tell the truth. And that puts this boundary around him.

01:23:17.340 It's like a walled garden. It's like a walled garden. And inside there, there's all sorts of

01:23:22.300 things that are happening that are complex and difficult. But outside, there's a boundary.

01:23:26.860 And the boundary is, well, maybe things won't. It's like God says after the flood. He says,

01:23:33.820 I'll never send a flood again. That's part of the story. And so there's an intimation there that

01:23:38.060 no matter how bad things get, they won't get so bad that they'll be catastrophic. But there's a

01:23:42.620 but there's a coda to that, which is that you have to maintain the covenant. And

01:23:50.220 we don't know what that means, you know? Because, you know, you think it's pretty obvious that if you

01:23:55.980 treat people well, if you really think about it, and you're not being naively optimistic and like,

01:24:02.380 you know, a nice, good person, with all the weakness that that intimates, if you're being

01:24:12.220 hard-nosed and sensible, you understand that if you treat people, if you trust people, that's an act

01:24:19.100 of courage. If you're not naive, right? If you're naive, it's an act of stupidity. Because you might get bit.

01:24:25.180 And you probably will. And if you're naive and you get bit, you will suffer for it. It'll traumatize

01:24:29.340 you. But if you're not naive, and you know you can get bit, then you might ask, well, what should

01:24:33.100 you do with people? And the answer is, you should trust them. Not because you're naive, and not because

01:24:38.620 they couldn't betray you, and not because you don't know that they could betray you, but because if you

01:24:43.740 hold out your hand in trust, then you're inviting the best part of that person to step forward. And that

01:24:48.060 won't happen unless you take that initial step. And that's courage, not naivety. And so to trust

01:24:52.780 someone, once your eyes are open, that's an act of courage. And that opens up the world.

01:24:57.180 And so there's this idea in this story that you can withstand it, a fair bit of the catastrophe of life,

01:25:13.660 by establishing the proper covenant, and by acting in a trustworthy manner, and extending

01:25:18.620 your hand to people properly. And you might say, well, okay, that's sensible. I can understand

01:25:23.820 how that would work. And I can certainly see how the opposite wouldn't work. Because, you know,

01:25:27.740 if I have to be absolutely terrified that you're going to betray me at every possible moment,

01:25:32.700 and we're in a negotiation, we're not going to get any work done, man. Because I'm going to be

01:25:36.780 figuring out what you're up to all the time, and you're going to be figuring out what I'm up to

01:25:40.780 all the time, and we're just not going to get anywhere. You'll come and say you're going to do

01:25:44.060 something, and I can just simplify you. I can say, you're going to do what you said you do. I don't

01:25:47.740 have to worry about you. And then the same applies to me. And then we can go do something,

01:25:51.900 and that's how we generate wealth. So then you might say, well, what's the ultimate limit of

01:25:57.100 that? You know, like, we know that there's corruption in our society, and that people betray

01:26:00.540 each other, and there's deceit and all of that. And it causes things like the periodic collapse in

01:26:05.500 2008, which was complicated, but was partly engendered by corruption. Like, what would be the upside

01:26:11.980 if we acted, if we really determined to act honestly? What do you think it is that people would

01:26:17.180 be able to do with the world if we stopped acting in a corrupt manner? I mean, what's the,

01:26:23.580 like, what is the upside? Do you think we could, how far back could we push aging, do you think,

01:26:29.660 if we hit it hard for 50 years? Could we triple our lifespan? It wouldn't surprise me. You know,

01:26:35.340 all these terrible diseases that beset the planet, we could get rid of them. There's no reason for

01:26:40.060 hunger and starvation. We make enough food. It's like, what would happen if we stopped

01:26:45.340 acting badly? How much better could things get? Well, you start locally, I think. You start with

01:26:52.300 yourself, and you start with your family. But, you know, there's intimations of the divine. There's

01:26:56.940 intimations of the kingdom of God, and the covenant with God in the Old Testament. It's like, you think,

01:27:02.300 well, we speak secularly. You think, well, that's an unprovable assumption. It's like, well,

01:27:08.300 we'll just hold on a sec. What's the assumption here, exactly? What is the upper end for humanity?

01:27:13.980 I mean, who's going to say, right? Who's going to say, especially in this day and age, man? There's so

01:27:19.500 many things happening that you can't even comprehend them. What could we do if we put all of our effort

01:27:23.660 into it? Well, you can experiment with that, because you can start in your own household. You can start in

01:27:28.140 your own room. And you can make miracles happen in the confines of your own space. There's no doubt

01:27:33.820 about that. All you have to do is try. You'll see that that happens. And people are writing to me,

01:27:38.940 and telling me that they're trying this, and that that's exactly what's happening. And so we don't

01:27:46.060 want to be too cynical about where we might be headed. And Hagar bore Abram a son. Abram called

01:27:52.700 his son's name, which Hagar bare Ishmael, who is by tradition the forefather of several Arab nations,

01:27:58.140 and of Muhammad himself. And Abram was four score and six years old, when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram.

01:28:06.860 So that's the end of another story. And then, so that section ends. And then again,

01:28:11.900 we have an encounter between Abraham and God. When Abram was 90 years old and 99 years old,

01:28:18.300 the Lord appeared to him and said, I'm the almighty God. Walk before me, and be thou perfect.

01:28:32.700 Alexander McLaren, who was a biblical commentator who lived in the early 19th century said,

01:28:39.740 this phrase, walking before God, is not precisely walking with God, because that's what Noah did,

01:28:46.780 right? He says, it's rather that of an act of life, spent in continual consciousness of being naked,

01:28:53.020 and opened before the eyes of him to whom we have to give account. I was pretty happy to stumble

01:28:57.980 across that, because, I mean, I might have picked and chosen, of course, you never know whether you do

01:29:03.260 that. But it does seem in keeping with the narrative strain of the chapter, right? Because what we've

01:29:08.220 hypothesized so far is that God has called Abraham and said, you know, get out there in the world. Go

01:29:13.740 to where it's unknown. Go to where you're a stranger. And get away from the familiar. Go out to the

01:29:19.340 unknown. Establish yourself. And great things will come of it. Regardless of the proximal evidence,

01:29:24.860 great things will come of it. And so, I think that's what the walking before God refers to.

01:29:29.020 It's not like Abraham is acting in certainty. There's no certainty here. That's the leap of faith,

01:29:34.220 even. Because it does require a leap of faith for you to move into the world. Because the

01:29:37.980 world is a catastrophe. Self-evidently, the world is a catastrophe. And so, there's every reason for

01:29:45.020 you to assume that you should just sit in your basement and hide from it. But that's not. It

01:29:51.260 doesn't help. It doesn't make things better. And the thing is, perhaps, you're not built for that.

01:29:54.860 You're not built to hide. I don't think that people are built to hide. I think it destroys them.

01:30:01.260 And so, walking before God, in some sense, means that Abraham, we could say, is taking the lead. He's the

01:30:06.460 person that's going out there into the unknown. God says, well, great things are going to happen.

01:30:11.020 But he's a little short on details. That's for sure. So, the weight is still on Abraham. And that's

01:30:15.260 a good thing. Because it also, that ennobles Abraham, right? That's the other thing that's

01:30:18.860 so cool. Is that, if God had just laid out the whole story, and, you know, brushed the branches

01:30:25.500 from Abraham's path while he was walking forward, well, then there'd be nothing for Abraham to do.

01:30:29.500 There'd be no nobility in his own pursuit. And this is another thing that we don't understand very well.

01:30:34.380 It's a really tough thing to understand. It's like, how much trouble would you want there not to be?

01:30:41.100 It's a weird question, right? Because you want to have something to contend with. You want to have

01:30:45.660 something that forces from you the best that you have. And so, you have to have real problems.

01:30:50.620 It's something like that. Would you dispense with all your real problems? You could just

01:30:54.060 lay down on a bed and have pablum infused into your mouth, you know, if all your problems were solved.

01:31:00.140 And so, maybe you want difficult problems that you can solve. Something like that. Because there's some,

01:31:05.900 I don't know what it is about it. There's the overcoming and the growth that comes along with that.

01:31:10.860 There's something about the nobility of the enterprise. You certainly see that when you go

01:31:13.980 about having children, for example. Which is, you know, the psychological literature is quite clear.

01:31:19.020 If you do moment to moment comparisons of people who have kids and people who don't have kids,

01:31:23.660 the people who don't have kids are happier. And so, psychologists who tend to get things wrong,

01:31:29.020 even when they make intelligent discoveries like that one, immediately, some of them, jump to the

01:31:33.980 conclusion that, because happiness is the goal, that, well, there's something about children that,

01:31:39.900 you know, make you unhappy, and that's not good. It's like, well, wait a second. Maybe that's the wrong

01:31:44.460 metric. It's like, of course you're less happy once you have children, because you have to worry about them.

01:31:49.820 You know, my neighbor down the street, who's a very smart woman, said to me once,

01:31:53.740 you can only be as happy as your unhappiest child. Which I thought was really good, you know,

01:31:58.780 that's really smart. But then, it isn't, well, if having children doesn't make you happy,

01:32:03.100 the answer isn't, don't have children. It's like, don't be so stupid about being happy.

01:32:06.940 That's the answer. It's because there's a nobility in the pursuit, right? And of course,

01:32:11.180 now you're responsible. You know, you have a new baby, you think, especially if you're a new parent,

01:32:15.420 you think, what the hell is this? And what am I going to do with it? You know, it's like,

01:32:21.740 and then you're done for the rest of your life. You never sleep properly again, because you're going

01:32:26.940 to be worried about this creature that you have to take care of. But like, what the hell good are

01:32:31.660 you if you're not doing that? Or something else equally difficult? Because you just haven't been

01:32:37.500 called out yet, unless you take on a responsibility like that. The idea that life is, you know, that

01:32:43.580 happiness is the purpose of life. It's like, great for happiness. Man, if it comes along,

01:32:47.820 you should be thrilled that it's visiting you. But the notion that that's what you should pursue,

01:32:53.820 that's the weakest possible notion. First of all, as soon as something terrible happens to you,

01:32:59.420 you're done. It's like, life is to be happy. It's like, well, now you have cancer. So how's that?

01:33:04.860 How's the happiness thing working out for you now? Or maybe it's not you, you know? Maybe it's your

01:33:11.420 father that has Alzheimer's disease or some damn thing. And, you know, it's like, it's a rare

01:33:15.660 person that doesn't have some catastrophe one person away from them. It's like, life is to be

01:33:22.220 happy. That's not right. And we can at least derive that from these stories. That isn't what they say

01:33:27.500 at all. God's perfectly happy in the stories to grant the people with whom he forms a covenant

01:33:33.180 happiness and prosperity. But there's never a word that that's the purpose. The rule is aim high and get

01:33:39.420 your bloody act together. That's the rule. And establish this contractual covenant with the

01:33:43.660 ultimate ideal. And that will see you through the catastrophes. And that's a much more mature

01:33:48.540 way of looking at life, as far as I'm concerned. Because all you have to do is have your eyes half

01:33:53.020 open and you see that the fundamental reality of life is tragedy and suffering. That's inescapable.

01:34:00.540 That doesn't mean that it makes life unbearable or that it makes being something that shouldn't have

01:34:06.300 existed. Right? That isn't what it means. But it means that you have to contend with it and you

01:34:11.500 have to get ready. And the willingness to adopt responsibility for yourself and for others is

01:34:16.940 is the precondition for that. And then maybe if you do that properly, then now and then you get

01:34:21.580 some happiness. You know, you can sit at the end of the day and you have half an hour where

01:34:25.260 your conscience is clear and there's nothing that you need to be doing. And you can relax and think,

01:34:29.740 you know, that's all right. Things are okay. And thank God for that. And that's maybe where you

01:34:35.340 get your happiness. So, yeah, that's something. That's growing up, man. Obviously. And to not know

01:34:43.100 that. And to not be taught that. Like, everyone should be taught that. It's so obvious. We should

01:34:48.700 be taught that. Well, and that's partly what these biblical stories do. And I'll make my covenant

01:34:54.540 between me and thee and will multiply thee exceedingly. And Abram fell on his face. Yeah.

01:35:00.940 And God talked with him saying, as for me, behold, my covenant is with thee and thou shalt be a father

01:35:06.860 of many nations. God says this a lot to Abram, right? It's almost like he has to remind him now

01:35:11.420 and then. And it's not surprising because he keeps going through these unbelievable adventures, you know,

01:35:15.980 that are really psychologically and socially shattering. So, it's a good thing that this reminder

01:35:22.220 pops up fairly frequently. But, of course, Abraham is also open to it. And I think, what does it mean?

01:35:29.260 You know, I'll talk personally for a moment, I guess. So, I've asked myself a lot of questions

01:35:35.900 in the last eight months, man. I can tell you that. And I'm still asking myself a lot of questions.

01:35:41.100 And I've been conferring with a lot of people because I had lots of people who were helping me

01:35:45.420 negotiate whatever the hell this is that's happening. And, you know, I could ask them how it was doing

01:35:50.780 and they would tell me a bunch of things I was doing wrong and some things I was doing right,

01:35:53.820 and I could listen to them. And I was asking questions all the time about how the hell I

01:35:57.660 should manage this properly. And, you know, what I was trying to do and what seemed to serve me

01:36:05.660 properly was to figure out how to do it correctly. That was the issue. It's like, I didn't really care

01:36:11.580 what happened. And I guess I really don't care what happens. But I do care if I do it correctly,

01:36:15.660 because I don't want to screw it up. I don't want to screw things up. And that seems to be

01:36:21.020 a reasonable goal for people. I mean, wouldn't you like that as a goal that you don't screw things up?

01:36:25.900 Because you can't control too... You know, your life isn't fully under your control by any stretch

01:36:30.460 of the imagination. But it might be nice to not have your conscience eating at you saying,

01:36:35.660 look, you know, you had a big opportunity there. And you mucked it up. Because you're weak and blind.

01:36:41.100 And you didn't listen. That's no good. The catastrophe is bad enough, as I said,

01:36:46.860 without you being the bloody source of it. And so...

01:36:54.860 Well, that's Abram falling on his face, I guess, and also communing with God. It's like,

01:36:59.180 you don't... He wants to get it right. He wants to get it right. And there's these things that beckon

01:37:05.580 and promise, but... But it's bloody easy to make a catastrophic mistake. And you'll do that in your

01:37:12.460 life, you know? And... And maybe humility is one of the things that can prevent that. Because you can

01:37:19.900 look and you can think, okay, what am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong? What can I do better?

01:37:24.220 How can I do this properly? And then maybe, you know, you get... You get... You get the intimation of the

01:37:30.540 proper way to move forward. And maybe that's what protects you, when things are chaotic and in

01:37:35.420 strife. And who knows what that's worth? Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, which means

01:37:43.020 high king, if I remember correctly. But thy name shall be Abraham, for a father of many nations, have I

01:37:48.300 made thee. Oh yes, Abram, high father. Look at that. Abraham means father of a multitude. And I will

01:37:54.540 make thee exceedingly fruitful. And I will make nations of thee. Productive, right? Productive. And that seems to

01:38:00.380 be something that's good to be. I mean, like one of the things that I've thought about deeply...

01:38:06.940 I thought deeply about death, and the death of my family members, and about funerals. And I thought

01:38:11.100 about it partly because I had this weird experience once that I think I told you about where I took one

01:38:14.940 of my clients to see an embalming. Which was a very strange experience. And I had a chance to talk to

01:38:20.540 the funeral directors, you know? Because they have weird jobs, you know? And there's this idea... Well, the

01:38:26.140 Freudian idea that people suffer from this terrible death anxiety. And there's a whole line of social

01:38:31.180 psychological theory, theorizing, called terror management theory, that's predicated on the idea

01:38:35.580 that we defend ourselves against death anxiety with our belief systems. And like, it's Ernest

01:38:41.100 Becker's idea. He wrote The Denial of Death, which is a great book. But there's a weakness in it,

01:38:45.260 because you see some people who aren't like that. You know, like emergency room nurses aren't like that.

01:38:49.820 And palliative care nurses aren't like that. My sister-in-law is a palliative care nurse.

01:38:54.140 That's a hard job. Right? Because you go in there, you're caring for people, you have... And they're

01:38:58.860 in pain. They're on their last legs, you're trying to make them comfortable. And you have a relationship

01:39:03.180 with them, because how the hell are you going to make them comfortable if you don't? And then they

01:39:05.900 go and die on you, and that just happens... That's what happens every day. Right? And what's weird is

01:39:10.860 that people can be palliative care nurses. It's like, how do you figure that out? Because people can actually

01:39:16.220 thrive in the face of death, strangely enough. And like these funeral parlor directors, they were

01:39:21.100 interesting to talk to, because that's all they do. Right? They just deal with... They deal with death

01:39:25.820 and grief all the time. And it was very interesting talking to them, because I talked to two of them.

01:39:31.500 They found their job extremely meaningful. And I asked them, well, you know, does that... What does that do

01:39:36.300 to your life? You know, you're saturated with death and suffering. And they're... And this is the same answer

01:39:42.460 that I got from the palliative care nurses, that it doesn't undermine your life. It enriches it.

01:39:49.420 Now, who would guess that? Right? I mean, what the hell? That just doesn't make any sense at all. But

01:39:53.740 what it does is speak to human possibility, because God only knows how tough you are. You know, I mean,

01:39:59.500 if you read history, and you read about what people have done, you think, wow, we're pretty tough. People are...

01:40:04.780 I read, uh, there was a shipwreck in the Antarctica, a hundred years ago or so. And I read the

01:40:16.060 story. It's not a biography, if I remember correctly, of the captain. I might be wrong about that. But

01:40:21.980 I've got the basic story right. Well, they had a shipwreck in the Antarctica. And then they were there

01:40:27.260 for a whole year, in the Antarctica. You know? And none of them died. Not one. He didn't lose a single man.

01:40:33.180 Not one. He kept the morale high. And then they took this boat that was on the ship. And they crossed,

01:40:38.380 like, 400 miles of the roughest ocean. The roughest frigid ocean in the world. Right? You don't go in

01:40:44.700 that ocean. And then they went to an island. And they walked across the island. Across these mountains

01:40:50.140 that no one else has ever climbed since. And they went to the city on the other side of the island. And

01:40:56.220 they got a boat. And they went and rescued their compatriots. And everyone survived. It's like,

01:41:01.260 Endurance is the name of the book. You read that book, man. You think,

01:41:05.020 Wow! People are really tough. You know? And it's ridiculous. So who knows how tough you are?

01:41:11.580 And maybe you find out by going out to find out how tough you are. Right? So you take on a challenge.

01:41:17.980 One that you think you can master. Just that's just a bit beyond your grasp. And you master it. And then

01:41:23.100 you're a little tougher. And you think, hey, that worked out pretty well. And so then you're more of a

01:41:26.940 monster. And then you go out and you find another challenge that's even bigger. And you think,

01:41:30.860 Well, maybe I can do that too. And then all of a sudden you can. And you get a little bit bigger. And

01:41:35.180 God only knows what the limit is of you. And you find out by pushing yourself against the world. And

01:41:41.500 Of course, that's what Abraham is doing. And so... See, we're very pessimistic, us modern people. You know?

01:41:49.500 We're pessimistic about humanity. That's for sure. Dismal, wretched, planet-destroying,

01:41:55.420 cancer on the planet. Right? As the Club of Rome described us so pleasantly back in the 1960s.

01:42:01.500 You know? And I don't know. Maybe we're ashamed of the Cold War. Maybe we're ashamed of all the

01:42:06.860 destruction in the 20th century. And the hydrogen bomb. And the, you know, the continuing catastrophes

01:42:12.700 of our societies. And we're deeply ashamed of that. And ashamed of ourselves personally. But it's a

01:42:16.940 hell of a thing to, you know, call us a cancer on the planet. There's just no excuse for that.

01:42:21.900 Because what you do with cancer is eradicate it. And I don't think that that's a very noble motive,

01:42:28.540 personally. And I think it says a lot about the people who would use such phraseology that they

01:42:33.340 would dare to conceptualize humanity in that manner. But, you know, it would be nice if we

01:42:38.460 could be optimistic. And I think, again, the problem with being optimistic is that it's naïve.

01:42:43.740 So then the question is, is there an optimism that's not naïve? And I think there is.

01:42:48.300 And the optimism that's not naïve is in just a visualization of how strong people can be.

01:42:55.180 So one of the things that I tell people, I told my students in my class in Maps of Meaning.

01:43:01.180 Here's a goal. You want to be the person at the funeral of your father that everyone can rely on.

01:43:09.420 How would that be? You want to be the person who's broken and useless and adding to the misery in

01:43:15.980 the corner. And look, I'm not making light of people's grief. You know, I understand grief.

01:43:22.540 But who do you want to be when there's a crisis? Right? Do you want to be the person that everyone

01:43:27.980 can turn to for strength? It's like, why the hell not? Why not that as a goal? That'd be a good goal.

01:43:33.660 Because then if there's a crisis, and there will be, it won't be such a bloody crisis. Because there'll

01:43:37.660 be someone there that can deal with it. You know, so when I went and talked to these people at the

01:43:43.820 funeral home, I envisioned that. I thought, okay, well this is something you have to contend with if

01:43:47.660 you're going to be alive and adult. You have to contend with death and suffering. And you have to be

01:43:53.900 ready for it. And you have to be there for the person. Because that's all they're going to have.

01:44:00.380 And so, there's a goal, man. And in this time of nihilism, you know, it's, what's the point of life?

01:44:07.020 People ask. And they're taught that at universities. What's the point of life? Everything's

01:44:11.820 interpretation. Humanity's a cancer on the planet. You know? Well, how about no? How about not that?

01:44:19.500 How about that there's something to us?

01:44:40.300 And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed, after thee and their generations,

01:44:44.460 for an everlasting covenant, to be a god unto thee and to thy seed, after thee. And I'll give unto thee

01:44:50.380 and to thy seed, after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger. All of the land of Canaan. Because,

01:44:55.340 of course, Abraham went out into the land of strangers, right? But it says that he'll master,

01:45:02.540 if he keeps his covenant, he'll master the land of strangers. That's a wonderful thing to know.

01:45:08.860 And I think a true thing. You know, because if you're dealing with strangers, I've dealt with lots of

01:45:13.740 strange people in my life. Well, I'm a clinical psychologist. And that isn't to say that everyone

01:45:18.220 that I've dealt with was strange. Because that's not the case. But, I have encountered some very

01:45:23.900 strange people. And, you know, the way to deal with strange people is to, you never lie to a strange

01:45:31.660 person. That's the thing. Especially if they're paranoid. You never lie to someone who's paranoid.

01:45:37.820 It will come back to bite you. And if you're in an extreme situation with someone who's very

01:45:42.780 unpredictable, the only thing you have that works is the truth. That works.

01:45:51.980 I'll tell you a little story. This is in my book.

01:45:54.780 So, I had this landlord in Montreal. He lived next door to me. He was an ex Hells Angels biker.

01:45:59.740 He'd spent a lot of time in prison. And his wife had borderline personality disorder. And she

01:46:04.540 committed suicide when I lived there. And he was a rough guy. And he was a Quebecois.

01:46:09.740 And he spoke João, which I could hardly understand. And he didn't really know what to make of me.

01:46:15.740 And I didn't really know what to make of him. But we got along. You know, and I was very careful

01:46:22.140 talking to him. As you might imagine. But I was. It was very. And we went over. My wife and I went

01:46:28.540 over there. And we had spaghetti dinner one night. And we sort of communicated. And I bought a poster

01:46:32.860 from him. Because he made these wooden posters that had neon on them. And that's how he made a living.

01:46:37.020 He'd kind of trained himself to be a bit of an electronics guy. And so he made these things.

01:46:41.020 And he was trying to quit drinking. And we talked about that. He was a lot older than me.

01:46:43.900 He was like 20 years older than me. I was about 25 at this point. And we got along pretty well.

01:46:50.220 But every now and then he'd go out and get and drink. And he could really drink. You know,

01:46:56.060 like he was one of these guys who could drink like 60 beer. And you think, well, no one can drink

01:46:59.900 that much. And you're wrong. I studied alcohol for like 10 years. Some of my subjects, fathers,

01:47:05.980 drank 40 ounces of vodka a day. And had been doing it for 20 years. So you can drink a lot. And he could

01:47:10.860 drink a lot. And what would happen? He was trying to not drink. But he'd go out and go on a binge. And then

01:47:15.340 he'd be gone for like three days. And he'd drink up all his money. And then

01:47:19.900 we'd hear him out in the backyard howling at the moon with this little ugly dog he had,

01:47:25.740 you know. And he'd howl and the dog would howl. And he'd howl and the dog would howl. And it was

01:47:31.420 rather unsettling. And it made my wife nervous. But worse, you know, now and then, he'd come to the

01:47:41.180 door at like 3 in the morning, eh? And he'd knock on the door and he'd be standing there. And I don't know how

01:47:48.460 much experience you've had with rough guys who are alcoholic and who are drunk. But it's,

01:47:54.300 they can be upright and unconscious at the same time. And so that was the state that he was in,

01:48:01.660 you know. He'd be just swaying. And he'd ask me if I would like to buy his toaster or his microwave.

01:48:07.900 Because he needed some money to keep drinking. And you know, I didn't really want to buy his toaster

01:48:12.300 or his microwave. But when the ex-Helz Angel, Joual speaking, 60 beer drunk Quebecois biker

01:48:20.300 shows up at your door at 3 in the morning and offers you to sell, offers to sell you his microwave,

01:48:26.380 the easiest thing is to say, I really need a microwave.

01:48:33.820 So, so you know, I bought the microwave and the toaster and some other things. But then,

01:48:44.140 but then my wife talked to me. And she liked my landlord, you know. Even though she was afraid of

01:48:50.460 him, she liked him. And, and she said, you can't buy any more, any more appliances because it's not

01:48:56.860 good for him. And I thought, huh, that's an interesting problem, you know. So what the hell

01:49:04.140 am I going to do about this? Because, no, I don't want to buy your microwave, just doesn't seem to be

01:49:09.420 the right answer at 3 in the morning. So, so one time he took me out on his 750 Honda and he put me on

01:49:18.540 the back of it. He wanted to show me his lair, I guess, his hangouts. And I got his wife's helmet

01:49:23.180 on, but it didn't fit. It just sit on the top of my head. And he said, I got on the bike and he said,

01:49:29.340 if the cops chase us, we're not stopping. And then, and then away we went. And we went to these,

01:49:36.860 like, these bars downtown on Saint Laurent. They were very rough places. And he got into, like,

01:49:41.260 four fights that night because he was a rough guy, you know. And these kind of punk guys would come up

01:49:47.180 to him and sort of challenge him and act stupidly around him. And he was very skeptical. And if you

01:49:51.420 were acting stupidly around him for any length of time, he'd just hit you because he felt that

01:49:55.820 that's what you deserved. And perhaps he was right, you know. So, so I had a first-hand opportunity to

01:50:01.740 observe him. So anyways, he, sure enough, about a week or two after we had this conversation, he showed

01:50:08.700 up at the door. Knock, knock, knock, you know. Opened the door and he was standing there, you know,

01:50:13.100 with his eyes kind of half closed. And he was swaying. And he had, I don't remember what the

01:50:18.380 appliance was this time. But he wanted to sell it to me. And I said, I'm not, Paul, I can't buy this.

01:50:27.340 I'm not going to buy this. Because I know you're trying to quit drinking. And if I give you this

01:50:31.980 money, then you're going to go and drink it up. And it's not going to be good for you. And

01:50:36.220 what else did I tell him? I think I told him as well that this whole thing of him coming to my

01:50:44.060 house at like two in the morning was scaring my wife, who he liked, and that it had to stop.

01:50:48.780 And believe me, man, I was thinking about what I was saying. Because he was watching me like a

01:50:54.700 rough guy watches you. And a rough guy watches you like this. He thinks, if you say one thing that

01:51:02.140 indicates contempt, you're going to bloody well pay for it. And so I was finding my words like,

01:51:09.260 you know, I was crossing a swamp and trying to look for the rocks underneath the surface.

01:51:14.780 And I said what I had to say very, very carefully. And he looked at me for about 15 seconds.

01:51:20.780 And that's a long time to be looked at. At three in the morning. And he left.

01:51:27.020 And he never came back to sell me anything again. And we got along fine. But that's a good

01:51:34.300 illustration of this issue with regards to truth and success in the strange land. Because I was in

01:51:43.980 the strange land when I was talking to my neighbor, my landlord then. And I managed to say what was true,

01:51:53.660 carefully enough. So despite the fact that he was a very violent person. And that he was a very

01:52:00.060 intoxicated person. And that he had every reason to be suspicious of me. And we couldn't communicate

01:52:05.580 very well. And I didn't do what he wanted. That he took it. And he left. And there was no problem.

01:52:14.300 And life went on just fine after that. And so we don't want to underestimate the utility of

01:52:23.740 establishing this bounded relationship with the ideal. And attempting to live with some nobility

01:52:30.940 in truth while aiming at the highest ideal. There's nothing about that that's anything but

01:52:36.860 strengthening and positive. And it's exactly what you need to set against the catastrophe and uncertainty

01:52:48.060 of life. And as far as I can tell, that's what these Abrahamic stories are attempting to

01:52:54.460 communicate. So we'll stop there. Thank you.

01:53:13.900 I have to make an announcement. I'm going to do a talk, August 22nd, I think. I'm not sure of the date,

01:53:34.700 but I'll find out. With Gad Saad from Concordia. And so I'm with an ex-social worker named Serena Singh.

01:53:48.380 And with Faith Goldie. I think Faith is going to be there as well. So the tickets for that will go on

01:53:54.220 sale. I'm not hosting this. Someone else is dealing with it. But the tickets for that will go on sale

01:53:59.820 within approximately a week. And I'll post that on my... I'll probably make an announcement on YouTube,

01:54:05.500 but I'll Twitter it and all of that. So, and I think I mentioned to you guys last week that

01:54:13.660 I would like to continue this series, but I think I'll do it once a month. And I'll try to do it in

01:54:18.620 this theatre, but I haven't got word from the people who run the theatre, that's the university,

01:54:23.500 whether or not it'll be accessible. But I'll figure something out. And so... Oh, hi Serena! Serena is the

01:54:29.420 person who's going to be hosting this. It's August 22nd. 7 to 10pm at Ryerson. Okay. Tickets go on sale

01:54:39.660 Monday. All right. And then... And then... Oh, there's a special Freedom of Speech edition of the

01:54:48.300 Hemingway's Restaurant Jordan Peterson Discussion Group tonight. So that's at 10pm. So you're all

01:54:55.420 welcome to attend that. So that's 142 Cumberland Street. Okay. So that's it for announcements,

01:55:01.260 I guess. And then let's save for questions. Yes, I was going to let you ask the first question last

01:55:05.900 time, wasn't I? Okay. So I will do that. And so let's make sure again, everybody, to speak into the

01:55:11.660 mic clearly so that the YouTube people can hear. And, you know, the ghostly YouTube people.

01:55:17.820 And so go ahead. I was quite impressed with your presentation last week. And I wasn't quite sure

01:55:25.260 where it was going at one point. And what it did... Neither was I. And that's okay, because at one

01:55:31.100 point I listened and I thought, what you basically were talking about, this is what I saw. You were

01:55:35.900 embodying mind, body and spirit and bringing it all together as one. And you touch on it a bit tonight

01:55:41.180 when you talk about truth. This is where we need to go, right? And I know you say be positive and all

01:55:45.660 that. And yeah, that's right. I agree. It's scary what's going on right now. However, we have the

01:55:50.220 power to stay in the positive. What you talked about last week, you talked about using our intuition,

01:55:55.340 which I consider our higher self, using consciousness. And you made reference, I can't

01:56:00.460 remember exactly what you said, but you held your hand and you talked about emotions and bringing

01:56:07.660 intellect on top. And when you said emotions, everything just lit up for me because I'm thinking

01:56:13.180 that's our heart chakra. That's what combines our lower self, our physical being, the material

01:56:17.740 stuff, all the stuff that doesn't really motivate us with our higher self. And when you talked about

01:56:23.820 emotion, I wanted to talk about the emotion of love. And I find so many people are terrified.

01:56:28.460 It's a four-letter word, I know, but it doesn't have to be bad.

01:56:31.500 Okay, so I remember why, when I talked to you last week, why I wanted you to ask this question.

01:56:36.540 Okay, so I've talked a lot in this lecture series about truth. And no, I think there's a battle in

01:56:44.940 the biblical stories all the way through between love and truth in terms of their primacy. And so,

01:56:50.220 and I've concentrated a lot on truth in my own thinking. But I, and it's hard to talk about love

01:56:55.980 because it's a word that people have mouth to death. You know, as soon as you start talking about

01:56:59.740 love, then people should just go into a different room and not listen to you. You know, because it gets,

01:57:04.940 it can get sappy and new agey, just like that. And, and I don't like that at all. But,

01:57:10.700 but it still has something that has to be contended with. And I think, so I've been trying to

01:57:16.220 conceptualize, let's say, what this covenant might, might constitute. And I think the love part,

01:57:22.220 so here's this. So, you know, there's this book by Goethe called Faust. And it's in two volumes,

01:57:28.700 Faust 1 and Faust 2, logically enough. One was written much later than the other. And Faust,

01:57:34.460 basically sells the soul to the devil for, for knowledge. And the devil in Faust is

01:57:39.820 Mephistopheles. And Mephistopheles is quite a well-developed character. And Goethe has

01:57:44.460 Mephistopheles say what he's about, which is really quite cool. So it's like,

01:57:49.500 the adversary of the world, evil itself, gets a chance to speak and make its case. And Goethe thought

01:57:56.220 this was so important that he actually had Mephistopheles announce himself once in Faust 1. And then,

01:58:01.500 using the same words, you know, phrased differently, again in part 2,

01:58:06.860 it really struck me, it really struck me. And so what Mephistopheles says is that,

01:58:13.180 the world is such a charterhouse of suffering and destruction that it would be better if it never

01:58:19.980 existed. And so that what he's working to is to bring existence to an end, because it is not justified by

01:58:27.500 its suffering. It's like, that's, it's an argument very similar to the argument that's made by Ivan

01:58:37.420 Kameratsov. Thank you. Russians, eh? You can't pronounce them, or live with them. You can't.

01:58:45.260 But he basically, he's an atheist and does a very good job of detailing out the atheist argument, or maybe an

01:58:51.260 anti-theist argument. And he's arguing with his, his brother Alyosha, who's a monastic novitiate,

01:58:57.980 who's a very good guy, but not an intellect. Ivan's an intellect, and a very powerful one. And he

01:59:02.460 basically tells Alyosha that the, all of the cosmos isn't worth the suffering of one child. He tells this

01:59:09.500 story about this, and this, Dostoevsky took this from a newspaper, about this parents that locked their

01:59:15.340 four-year-old daughter in an outhouse overnight, and she screamed about it until she froze to death. And

01:59:21.180 so Dostoevsky used that argument. He tied that into Ivan's anti-theist argument against Alyosha. It's a very,

01:59:27.580 very powerful argument. The Brothers Karamazov is an absolutely mind-boggling, amazing book. I would

01:59:33.980 highly recommend it. And so that's the Mephistophelian perspective. Mephistophelian

01:59:39.740 perspective is that being itself is so corrupt that it shouldn't exist. So then you think, okay,

01:59:46.220 well that, fair enough. That's a decent argument. It's understandable. But the problem comes when

01:59:51.820 you try to implement that. And what happens when you implement it, as far as I can tell,

01:59:55.980 you adopt that Mephistophelian attitude of bitterness and resentment and destruction, is that

02:00:00.860 you make all the suffering that you're complaining about far worse. And I think that's what happened

02:00:05.900 at the base of things in the 20th century, is that there was a powerful movement among humanity to bring

02:00:12.620 being itself to a halt. You know, what culminated in the development of the hydrogen bomb. And the high

02:00:18.620 probability for many, at many periods of time, that we were going to do something permanent and fatal.

02:00:25.500 Which seems like a bad idea. It seems like a bad idea. Well, so what's the opposite of the

02:00:29.260 Mephistophelian attitude. And I think the opposite of that is what's presented in the Biblical stories,

02:00:35.340 in the guise of love. And that is the wish that things would be good. It's something like that.

02:00:43.580 That's what love is, I think. It's the attempt to orient yourself towards making things better.

02:00:49.020 And it's predicated on something like a deep appreciation for being despite its suffering

02:00:55.180 and deficiencies. And maybe a decision that you're going to act to bring about things,

02:01:00.780 to move things towards the good. And I think that's the thing that sets the parameters of the aim.

02:01:06.620 It's the opposite of the Mephistophelian attitude. It's like, to work towards the betterment of being,

02:01:12.780 because you've decided that you're going to open your heart to existence, something like that. And

02:01:17.020 it's within that framework that truth takes place. I think, because truth has to serve something.

02:01:22.700 It can serve truth, but it has to be bounded inside something. And I think that's what it's bounded inside.

02:01:29.100 So. What I was going to refer to with that was David Hawkins wrote Power Versus Force.

02:01:34.540 And he put it on a quantifiable scale, all different emotions. He called it consciousness.

02:01:38.620 And he put love at 528 hertz. He put shame at 20. I'm not sure if I've got these 100% right.

02:01:45.420 Guilt, I think, at 30. Fear at 50. And it shows you how far the people who are really knocked down

02:01:50.780 have to get to love. And I'm thinking if we could quantify love on a term, it means different things

02:01:55.740 to everybody, and rightly so. But can we get to that frequency? And if you look at the

02:02:00.220 sylphagia notes, you know the musical notes? Have you heard of them?

02:02:03.420 I'm afraid I'm going to ask you to stop, if you would, because I should go to another question.

02:02:09.020 Thank you very much. Okay, let's.

02:02:11.260 So you've been an educator through the rise of the smartphone. And my question basically

02:02:24.540 relates to procrastination and task delay, needless task delay specifically. And given the unprecedented

02:02:32.460 level of distraction that we have in today's world, I just wanted to get your perspective

02:02:37.420 from a psychological standpoint on other than cleaning your damn room, what would you suggest

02:02:42.940 to a student who's looking to overcome these things?

02:02:48.860 Well, I think with any, let's call it addictive process. I mean, email is powerfully addictive,

02:02:55.660 right? Partly, it's a slot machine. And I mean that technically. So when you pull,

02:03:00.700 that's a variable ratio reinforcement schedule, if I remember correctly. And it's very addictive because

02:03:07.420 if you pull on the slot machine arm enough, you will win. And you never know which pull will

02:03:15.180 reward you. And so not only is that addictive, it's very hard to extinguish that. And so,

02:03:22.460 emails like that because there's always something beckoning and now and then it's a jackpot.

02:03:27.100 And social media is like that because, you know, people are posting interesting things. And so,

02:03:32.700 well, how do you overcome an addictive process? And partly, you do it by replacing it with something

02:03:38.540 better. Right? So, when people study drug and alcohol use, they often make an elementary mistake,

02:03:46.220 which is to try to figure out why people use drugs and alcohol. That's not a smart thing to wonder.

02:03:54.060 We know why people use cocaine. Cocaine directly stimulates the systems that produce positive

02:04:01.500 emotion. It's like, so there's no mystery there. The mystery with cocaine is very, very simple.

02:04:07.100 Why don't people take cocaine all the time until they die? That's the mystery, really. Because

02:04:11.660 you can get isolated rats to do that. So, and for some people, alcohol has the same kind of effect,

02:04:17.900 except it's mediated by opiates. But often, what people have to do to get themselves out of an

02:04:22.860 addictive process is to find something better to do to replace it. And so, I would say, the problem

02:04:28.940 with the gadgets, and I mean, they're amazing things, is that they interfere with, they approximately

02:04:36.300 interfere with medium to long-term goals, I would say. And so, I think the first thing you have to do to

02:04:41.820 bring them under control is figure out what it is that their use is interfering with. It has to be

02:04:46.460 something important. So, you think, well, I want to do something important. Well, what is that?

02:04:51.820 Well, it could be personal. Maybe you want to have a relationship. You want to get married. You want to

02:04:55.900 have kids. You want to have a career that's meaningful. You know, you want to have a life. You want to

02:05:00.780 have an Abrahamic adventure and be the father of nations, let's say. Well, you can't be ratting away

02:05:05.660 on your cell phone and doing that. And so, I think part of it is to set your sights high and make a

02:05:13.900 plan and figure out who you could be, and see if obsessive utilization of smartphone fits into

02:05:21.340 that vision of nobility. And it will partly, because they're unbelievably powerful communication

02:05:26.860 devices. But, so often, it's for lack of something better to do. And it also interferes.

02:05:34.300 So, that's about the best I can do with that.

02:05:44.780 Hello, Dr. Peterson. So, you've been talking with some of the conservative candidates for leadership

02:05:52.220 this year. I know you talked with most, all of them, right? Not all of them, but a number of them,

02:05:57.180 yes. You talked with Andrew though, right? Yes, I did. Yeah. So, something very interesting

02:06:03.340 popped up in my Facebook feed. So, it was an ad for the conservative party. And it was suggesting

02:06:10.140 that we cut funding to public universities that don't support free speech. Yeah, that was probably

02:06:17.580 my fault. Yeah. See, precisely, because this is something you say in some of your wilder moments,

02:06:24.380 you suggest that we should cut the university's funding by 25% and let them battle it out for

02:06:30.220 the remains. And he's taken that to, you know, his platform. But now what you're doing

02:06:36.220 is, well, one of the things you're doing is you've created this website that identifies

02:06:42.620 the postmodern lexicon and helps people distinguish between postmodern courses and not. And so,

02:06:49.660 people don't take them. Or take them if they want.

02:06:52.380 Yeah. Yeah. So, that's, it'd be interesting to know, like, what sort of malevolent postmodernists

02:06:59.260 just study you meticulously and try to use all your knowledge of it. Anyway. So, but what you've

02:07:07.820 said though, you said that what we need to do is starve it out from the source.

02:07:11.500 Yeah. Okay. So, I, yeah, that, look. So, when, yeah, I do. I know where you're going. So,

02:07:17.100 about two weeks ago, three weeks ago, I went up to northern Saskatchewan. My parents have a cottage

02:07:21.660 up there. It's way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. And, uh, there's no cell phone. Although,

02:07:26.220 we do have internet now, which is, you know, probably bad and good. But anyways, I got to take a bit of a

02:07:31.740 break. Which was good. Because I haven't really been able to think. Because, you know, more broadly,

02:07:37.020 about, say, what I'm doing. Because who the hell, I don't know what the hell I'm doing exactly. This is a,

02:07:42.620 this is all very strange. And, but, but one thing I thought about. I was out on the lake. I was canoeing

02:07:48.380 around. And I thought, I'd thought about war. You know, because I was very irritated. I'm very irritated

02:07:56.380 about what's happened to the universities. And there's a hint of malevolence about it. And I,

02:08:02.460 I'm not a fan of ideological possession. And I've been set back up on my heels a lot over the last

02:08:10.380 eight months by the, the onslaught of what emerged when I said that there was words I wouldn't say.

02:08:19.500 And so, it's put me into a defensive posture, let's say. And I had been thinking,

02:08:25.980 in terms of war metaphors, you know. Like, this is a battleground. And that there's a war going on,

02:08:33.660 an ideological war. And I do believe that that's true. But then, I was reading, and I, I did this

02:08:42.620 partly for this course. I was reading the Sermon on the Mount. And one of the things it says is,

02:08:46.300 resist not evil. And I don't know what to make of that line. And so, I was talking to a bunch of

02:08:53.100 people about it, and reading about it a lot, and trying to figure out what it meant. And partly,

02:08:57.500 what it means is, don't waste time. Right? Because when you're fighting against something,

02:09:02.380 then there's something else you're not doing. And then I thought, also, when I was out there on

02:09:06.700 the lake, I thought, well, do I really want to be in a war? Because war, that's not, that's not,

02:09:10.380 that's not, that's not heaven. That's for sure. It's really stressful. And people get hurt. And so,

02:09:19.660 I thought, well, maybe that's just the wrong way of thinking about it, even though there's a

02:09:23.100 battleground issue here. And I thought, well, wait a second. Maybe, maybe the right thing to do in a

02:09:30.220 situation like this, and this is maybe something that those on the alt-right might consider, is that,

02:09:35.980 the right thing to do, maybe, is to outline a better way, rather than go directly on the attack.

02:09:44.940 Now, that might be, seem somewhat at odds with my idea of the website. And perhaps it is somewhat

02:09:50.620 at odds with that. I'm not sure about that. But what I'm trying to do, instead of conducting this like

02:09:57.180 a war, let's say, is to conduct it like a movement towards something better. And that would be better.

02:10:04.860 Now, with regards to cutting the university's funding, I thought about that too. And I thought,

02:10:09.020 wait a second, that's not going to work out. Because it's inviting political interference

02:10:13.340 into higher education. Now, the political interference might be of the counterbalancing kind,

02:10:18.860 because the evidence that the humanities, in particular, have tilted almost a hundred percent

02:10:23.340 to the left is overwhelming. And so, maybe some counterbalance from the right would set things

02:10:29.100 more towards the middle. But the problem is, is when you open up the door to political interference,

02:10:34.060 with higher education content, you can't close the door again.

02:10:38.540 And so, on reflection, I thought that it probably was a sub-optimal idea. And that would be better,

02:10:44.860 instead, was to, and what, this is what I want to do when I launch the website. I want to ask

02:10:49.340 students, the students who will be using it, it's like, what do you want from university? Because here's,

02:10:53.260 here's your options. You can, you can come out ideologically possessed.

02:10:57.980 Right? You can buy this doctrine, this pathological doctrine. And you can become bitter and resentful.

02:11:04.700 And you won't learn to communicate properly. And you won't read the great works of civilization.

02:11:09.500 And you won't learn to think and write. You won't become noble in body and spirit.

02:11:14.700 Is that what you want? Or do you want the opposite? Do you want a real education?

02:11:20.540 And, and then I want to explain what that means, like I did tonight, to some degree. You know,

02:11:24.460 that there's absolute value in learning how to put yourself together and to communicate and to

02:11:29.020 familiarize yourself with, with, with the classic works of civilization. And I want to offer that,

02:11:34.940 I want to do what I can to offer that as the proper alternative, instead of staying ensconced in this

02:11:40.780 notion of a battle, which is just, I just don't think it's the right metaphor. So.

02:11:45.980 I don't either. And Dr. Peterson, I just want to say that I think what you're doing is absolutely

02:11:49.980 miraculous. It's helped change my life. And I'm sure at least, raise your hand if Dr. Peterson has

02:11:55.020 helped change your life.

02:11:57.820 So, for the better or for the worse?

02:12:01.500 Ask him to. Look at it. Thank you.

02:12:02.620 Well, it's about, it's about 40 people, maybe. And that's miraculous, you know. And I think,

02:12:07.340 and, and your thinking is going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be all over

02:12:11.740 the place in the Canadian election in two years. And I think that,

02:12:15.020 God, that's a horrible thing to contemplate.

02:12:17.580 You, you, you better watch out for it, buddy. And you need, and, and, and there's,

02:12:22.620 there's going to be a lot of talk about how, um, how, how, uh, Andrew Scheer's, uh,

02:12:29.580 political message is going to stem from yours. And I think it's really important that he,

02:12:35.100 he doesn't censor himself like other conservative politicians are doing.

02:12:38.620 Yes.

02:12:39.100 And, and because, I don't know, we, we, we need to unite under, uh, a valid, thoughtful,

02:12:46.540 articulate, conservative voice. And what do we have now? We have, we have Trump. That's what's,

02:12:52.140 you know, we, we, we don't have any, we don't have any strong, articulate male voices in our,

02:12:58.140 in our, um, in our political discourse right now. That's what it feels like.

02:13:01.580 Well, it's definitely time for you to develop one. So, it looks like you're on the right path.

02:13:12.140 Hello.

02:13:12.540 Hello, Dr. Peterson. Uh, thank you for everything you've done this past year.

02:13:16.060 And I do mean everything, the political stuff, uh, the, this lecture series.

02:13:20.140 I'm going to get you to move just to, yes. Great. Belt it out, man.

02:13:23.820 Okay. So, uh, I'll try to be succinct. I have two comments and one question.

02:13:27.740 Okay. My first comment is you mentioned how you were prevented from uploading your, uh,

02:13:31.180 YouTube video, uh, from last week. Yeah. Um, I actually attended that lecture and I make

02:13:35.340 pretty detailed notes. Yeah. So, if you want, maybe I can email you. That's okay. I've got it.

02:13:39.100 It's, my account's reinstalled, reinstored, reinstored? Ha ha ha. Restored. Yeah. And so,

02:13:46.380 it's okay. It's okay. It's, it's straightened out. And I'm going to upload all the videos to a bunch

02:13:51.260 of other sites. And so, this isn't going to happen again. So, but I appreciate that.

02:13:55.260 I'll actually miss some lectures and I do want to look at them online. Okay. Yeah.

02:13:58.140 Um, my second comment is about, um, um, sort of kind of going into the commentaries of Christian

02:14:04.140 theologists over, over the centuries, uh, like you've done yourself. Um, I just would like

02:14:09.660 to encourage everybody to also look at not just Western Christianity, but also Eastern Christianity,

02:14:14.780 like the Orthodox writings. Uh, there's a big difference between the two and that the Western

02:14:19.900 sort of theology comes out of the Roman, uh, uh, Roman law, Roman justice. So, there's a lot more

02:14:26.220 of an emphasis on kind of justice and Christ came, he died on the cross for our sins. So,

02:14:30.780 there's that kind of like legal, uh, payback, if you know what I mean. Right. Whereas the Eastern,

02:14:35.580 the Eastern theology is a lot more, um, like it, it focuses a lot more on love and on sort of the, uh,

02:14:43.980 the positive aspects. And if you do read like the first four centuries of Christianity where there

02:14:48.780 was no schism, uh, there's very little mention of like a sort of, uh, legalistic framework. It's a lot

02:14:54.380 more, I don't know, a prosaic or more, um, heartfelt, I guess. So, I think it's important that we also

02:15:00.780 in the West look at the Eastern counterpart. Um, especially more so now because I, I do perceive a lot of

02:15:08.940 fake love as being at the center of this malevolence that you mentioned. So, like, you know,

02:15:12.860 this whole thing about, um, demonizing the opposition, saying that they're, they're

02:15:17.900 heartless, they have no love, this and that. I perceive that as a lot of fake love. Um,

02:15:22.220 and I think that we have to keep in mind what true love is. Sometimes it looks ugly,

02:15:26.620 like in dealing with psychiatric patients, maybe like other countries are not as liberal

02:15:31.100 as Canada, but they get results a lot more often. You know, there's as many psychiatric patients on,

02:15:35.740 on the road, for example, in Greece, where I'm from. So, but yeah, that was kind of my comment,

02:15:41.420 that we need to focus a lot more on what real love is, I think, and not just the, uh,

02:15:45.740 the kind of love that you can put on a scale. Because I don't think that you can put love on a scale.

02:15:49.420 So, I've been talking, as some of you know, to this guy, Jonathan Paggio, who's a,

02:15:53.980 an Orthodox carver, and he started a YouTube channel, and he's talking a lot about Orthodox issues,

02:15:59.420 and I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to Orthodox Christianity, um, but from what I understand

02:16:05.500 of it so far, there's plenty to be learned. So, yeah.

02:16:09.500 I, I'm Orthodox myself. Uh, I just recently came back to my faith two years ago. Um, basically,

02:16:15.020 that was the original Christianity. Then there was the schism of 1054 between East and West,

02:16:19.900 because of the, uh, uh, the conflicts that the Eastern Christians have with the Pope. And then,

02:16:26.220 after that, you also had the schism internally within the West, between Catholicism and,

02:16:30.140 and the Protestants. So, that's kind of, like, the big difference. That, uh, Christianity actually,

02:16:34.540 actually came from the East. So, I think that's why it's important that we look at the most ancient

02:16:38.700 texts, because those were the ones that were closest to the original message. Um, so, now that's my

02:16:43.340 question. Um, it's about atheism. Like, um, you might hear a lot of times people criticizing, uh,

02:16:51.820 anybody that has any sort of belief in a deity or a god, um, that, uh, you're just somebody that has

02:16:57.020 an imaginary friend. Yeah. Um, you know, like, the, the heavenly father that you have to, uh,

02:17:03.020 adhere to, that you have no will of your own. Yeah. So, then, I, there's also, like,

02:17:08.220 wouldn't the contrary argument be that, okay, so, if I have a good relationship with my father,

02:17:13.180 and that's why I'm more likely to accept a higher deity, then could it be that you, as an atheist,

02:17:18.940 um, maybe you have conflict with your father, and that's why you're

02:17:23.020 adverse to kind of submitting to a higher being that, um, that kind of dictates your life?

02:17:29.180 Well, you're, you're, you're attempting a psychoanalysis of atheism, you know, and, and

02:17:34.860 there's many factors that go into atheism. Um, I would say that you could make that case in

02:17:42.700 some situations, but not in all. Um, I do think, though, and I think this is perhaps where your

02:17:49.260 question is stemming from, is that it's no fluke that, at the same time, that

02:17:59.180 one of the consequences of the death of God that Nietzsche announced back in the late 1800s

02:18:04.620 is the all-out assault on masculinity that's occurring in our culture now.

02:18:09.820 And those things are associated. And I do think that does have to do with a lack of

02:18:15.180 faith in the masculine spirit. And that's a very bad thing, because, well, it's a bad thing for

02:18:21.260 everyone, obviously, because women have a partially masculine spirit, and they have to put up with

02:18:27.980 men. And so, to demolish that, or to fail to nurture it, which is certainly what's occurring, is just a

02:18:36.060 pathway to absolute disaster. So, yeah.

02:18:46.940 Peterson, so this is the type of question that you hate, because it's in the category of

02:18:51.260 why, why you believe what you believe. And, uh, it's a type of question that, uh, makes you say,

02:18:56.220 if I have it right from the last time, quote, what the hell makes you think it's any of your

02:18:59.340 business? So I'm going to try to, try to frame it properly. Okay. And I'm asking this at lecture

02:19:04.460 10 of 12, and after having listened to quite a few hours of you here and elsewhere. Okay.

02:19:08.700 And in, so, in your second interview with Transliminal Media, you lay out a few things.

02:19:12.460 I have some quotes here, I'll skip them for brevity. You get to the point where you're discussing

02:19:17.020 the embodiment of the logos by Christ as a historical figure. And then you say, quote,

02:19:22.620 is his resurrection real? Did his body resurrect? I don't know. In today's lecture, you've, you,

02:19:29.580 you alluded to the fact that there are states of consciousness that perhaps we don't know how to

02:19:33.100 access anymore. And let's say that I'm with you there. Let's say I'm with the idea that there are

02:19:37.660 unknown, there are unknown ways to get intimations of the divine, that the embodiment of the logos is

02:19:42.140 associated with physiological transformations, the upper limits of which are unknown and that we might

02:19:46.780 currently classify as paranormal. But to dumb it right back down to my level, I'm asking about the

02:19:52.700 guy commonly depicted with long hair nailed to a cross until dead as a doorknob. And all of this

02:19:57.660 goes to the heart of the question of literalism and religious interpretation. It goes to the heart

02:20:02.140 of kind of, you know, what we're doing here at this lecture series. Are we examining the psychological

02:20:06.060 significance of these stories? Or are we entertaining the possibility of these fantastical events? I might

02:20:10.540 be struggling with the concept, but I haven't been able to square away and reconcile those statements by you.

02:20:15.820 So the question is, on the question of the resurrection of Christ,

02:20:19.660 why is your answer to your own question, I don't know, instead of at the very least, probably not?

02:20:30.700 Well, you're definitely right about me hating that question.

02:20:33.340 Well, I called this series, The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories, for a reason.

02:20:46.780 You know, and the reason was that I'm partially qualified to talk about such things.

02:20:54.300 things. When I step outside of that,

02:21:00.540 then I'm not where I should be.

02:21:04.620 I don't think that...

02:21:11.340 See, I don't think that this is... I'm not going to get this right, I can't get the words exactly right.

02:21:16.780 This isn't about what I believe personally.

02:21:19.980 It's partly because I don't know what I believe.

02:21:22.860 I don't know what I believe.

02:21:24.380 The world's a very strange place. I've had some very strange experiences in it.

02:21:28.220 I don't think it's helpful for me to step outside my jurisdiction and speculate precisely.

02:21:37.820 The easiest thing would be to say...

02:21:40.220 I think I said what I had to say today. I don't think that we know what the upper limits of human possibility are.

02:21:51.260 I don't know what that means metaphysically. What I do understand from the Gospels is that

02:21:55.900 even the accounts of Christ's resurrection are complex and difficult to understand.

02:22:03.020 I think, from reading Jung, in large part,

02:22:06.460 that you can make a very strong case for the symbolic meaning of the death and resurrection.

02:22:11.020 I think it does stand for the capacity of the human Logos to die and resurrect continually as it strives upward.

02:22:19.900 I'm not willing to say that that's all it means, because I don't know what everything means.

02:22:26.460 And I don't know about the fundamental metaphysics of being.

02:22:30.540 Like, I do believe that it's accurate to construe being as a battleground between good and evil.

02:22:36.460 I believe that.

02:22:37.500 I believe that is the most accurate way of representing being.

02:22:41.500 It's not that most accurate way of representing the objective world.

02:22:44.700 That's not the same thing.

02:22:46.620 Being is that set of experiences which we inhabit.

02:22:51.020 And that's only partly objective.

02:22:53.100 And it's not obviously reducible to the material. Not in any straightforward way.

02:22:57.420 Because we don't understand the material substrate of being at all.

02:23:00.300 And when we do attempt to understand it, say at the quantum level,

02:23:05.580 we run into mysteries that baffle the most intelligent of us and aware.

02:23:12.780 So, I'm going to have to leave the question hanging.

02:23:15.340 But partly because I don't know what I think.

02:23:19.180 But partly because there has to be a line between what I believe and what I can communicate.

02:23:28.780 You know, what you believe is beyond your capacity to articulate at the deepest levels of belief.

02:23:35.900 And I can only share with you what I have actually come to understand.

02:23:39.900 And there's things that I don't understand.

02:23:41.900 And that's definitely one of them.

02:23:44.140 I don't know how to draw a line between the symbolic significance of the biblical events, say.

02:23:50.540 The symbolic and psychological significance of the biblical events.

02:23:53.660 And the metaphysics that's underneath them.

02:23:56.620 And I think you see the same thing in Jung.

02:23:58.620 Because when Jung writes technically and formally, he never talks about God.

02:24:02.540 He always talks about the image of God.

02:24:04.540 Which is not the same thing.

02:24:05.980 The image of God would be your subjective experience of God.

02:24:09.500 It says nothing about the objective reality of God.

02:24:12.300 Because your subjective experience can't say much about objective reality.

02:24:15.580 But even in Jung you get this mix, you know.

02:24:18.380 Sometimes it's psychological.

02:24:19.740 But then he makes a metaphysical move.

02:24:22.380 And I think that reflected also his, the limits of his knowledge.

02:24:26.620 Because Jung had profound revelatory experiences.

02:24:29.100 He was a very strange person.

02:24:31.260 You know, and I think.

02:24:36.300 So I think what's best for me is to stay on the ground that I'm competent on.

02:24:41.260 And to say what I can say about the psychology.

02:24:44.700 And to reach beyond that briefly when it's necessary.

02:24:48.620 But other than that, to leave it the hell alone until I understand it better.

02:24:52.460 Assuming that I ever do.

02:24:53.580 So.

02:24:54.780 Thank you.

02:25:05.820 Because of these lectures, I've been reading the Bible.

02:25:07.580 And, well, I'm obviously not finished.

02:25:09.500 But I'm fairly familiar with how it goes.

02:25:12.540 And I've been thinking about two parts of it in specific.

02:25:15.340 Which is the story of Isaac and the crucifixion of Christ.

02:25:19.420 And particularly one of the things that Christ says on the cross.

02:25:23.260 Which is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

02:25:26.780 And I've been trying to understand that.

02:25:28.300 Because that's one hell of a thing for the Son of God to say.

02:25:30.620 And you think that would have been edited out.

02:25:34.060 Yeah.

02:25:34.300 No, seriously.

02:25:35.180 It's like, why isn't that gone?

02:25:36.860 You know, it's very inconvenient.

02:25:39.660 Yeah.

02:25:40.220 And in, well, you haven't touched on the story of Isaac yet.

02:25:44.860 But there's this thing called typology, which I'm sure you're aware of.

02:25:49.180 But basically the idea that what's going on in the Old Testament is sort of the laying out of types for Christ.

02:25:54.380 And that Isaac is essentially a type of Christ because they have all these similarities.

02:25:59.420 And so I've been thinking about it in that context.

02:26:01.820 And thinking about the parallels between them, between Isaac and Christ.

02:26:06.860 And one of the things that also struck me was mostly the differences between Isaac and Christ.

02:26:11.180 And the main difference, it seems to me, is sort of a difference in direction of sacrifice.

02:26:15.580 So the sacrifice of Abraham is Abraham sacrificing his son to God.

02:26:20.140 And then the sacrifice of Jesus is God sacrificing his son to mankind.

02:26:25.820 And I've been trying to understand basically how that works.

02:26:29.580 And in relation to the...

02:26:31.580 You and Western civilization for 2,000 years.

02:26:34.860 Yeah.

02:26:35.660 Well, there is these transformations of sacrifice, right?

02:26:38.380 So the next thing that happens in these stories is that the circumcision starts to come in as a sacrifice.

02:26:47.180 And it seems to be something like the beginnings of replacement for sacrifice of animals.

02:26:52.620 It's, you know, there's this psychologization of sacrifice.

02:26:56.620 So first it's pure external and acted out.

02:26:58.780 And then it becomes something that's more conceptual.

02:27:01.340 Like it becomes embodied in the form of the circumcision.

02:27:03.900 And then it becomes more conceptual.

02:27:05.740 And that conceptual transformation keeps occurring.

02:27:08.540 And it seems to, well, it culminates to some degree in this idea of the sacrifice of Christ.

02:27:14.860 Who's God sacrificing his son to mankind.

02:27:18.060 But the sacrifice is much more complex than that, right?

02:27:20.460 It's also Christ sacrificing himself to God.

02:27:24.540 And I think that the issue there is something like, well, let's say you're supposed to offer up the best that you have to God.

02:27:33.660 That's the sacrifice.

02:27:34.620 That's what happens with the high quality animals that able sacrifices.

02:27:38.940 Okay, but there's something better than the best that you own.

02:27:43.260 Well, what's that?

02:27:44.140 Well, part of it might be, well, the relationships you have with people.

02:27:49.260 Are you willing to sacrifice them to pursue the highest good?

02:27:52.780 Well, then are you willing to sacrifice yourself or your son?

02:27:56.940 Like your son might be.

02:28:00.300 That's a tough one.

02:28:01.100 I can understand the idea of sacrificing yourself better.

02:28:05.100 I'm still wrestling with this story of Isaac, obviously, because that's such a complicated story.

02:28:08.940 And I do think it's reasonable to think about it as a form of foreshadowing, at least the way the Bible is set up.

02:28:13.740 Of course, people who aren't Christian wouldn't agree with that, but that's fine.

02:28:18.700 The idea that you would offer yourself as a sacrifice to God, that seems to me to follow quite logically.

02:28:23.740 Because, well, obviously you have nothing greater to give than the best of yourself, right?

02:28:29.420 So you sacrifice yourself to the highest good, and that's part of the way in which humanity is redeemed.

02:28:36.300 That makes sense to me.

02:28:37.340 That just seems like, for me, that's a pretty straightforward psychological truth.

02:28:42.300 The son issue, that's a lot tougher thing to wrestle with, because...

02:28:47.340 One of the things I was thinking with what Jesus says on the cross,

02:28:52.940 is that one of the interpretations of that is basically that Jesus in that moment is human, basically.

02:28:58.540 It's not right, it's just Jesus the human.

02:29:03.500 But that always kind of felt a little bit like avoiding the question to me,

02:29:08.060 because you can't just posit something like the Trinity and then say,

02:29:11.100 oh, but in this moment that doesn't go, right? That doesn't count.

02:29:15.500 So, but if we think about it in that way of like,

02:29:18.940 the difference in the direction of sacrifice,

02:29:22.380 and it seems to me that in the sacrifice, whoever is making the sacrifice sort of aims toward something.

02:29:28.540 So Abraham is sort of reaching for the divine when he sacrifices, when he's going to sacrifice his son.

02:29:34.700 And so that would mean maybe God is reaching toward the human.

02:29:39.900 And so that would make some sense of that interpretation that Christ is only human in that moment, right?

02:29:44.780 That it's the sacrifice is accomplished, and the reaching down is accomplished.

02:29:49.820 But I'm still left to the question, what do I make of that? Because that's one interesting...

02:29:55.820 Well, I mean, it's useful to have a problem like that, because it gives you something to think about,

02:30:00.940 right? And something to study further, and it's a major problem.

02:30:06.060 I mean, the whole issue of, well, we could say, well, what's the relationship between the divine and the human?

02:30:11.340 Which is obviously brought to the forefront in the idea of Christ, right?

02:30:14.540 But it's a personal issue, because part of the issue is, what's the relationship between you as a finite entity,

02:30:21.100 and the transcendent infinity that surrounds you?

02:30:24.620 Well, there's some relationship, because here you are, and the transcendent infinity around you exists.

02:30:30.940 So there's a relationship. The question is, what is the relationship?

02:30:34.700 And we don't know that, and it's dramatized in that story.

02:30:40.220 So, I mean, partly, the reason that there's so much conflict and confusion in that story,

02:30:48.060 is because it's trying to bring opposing things together, right?

02:30:50.460 How can something be God and man at the same time?

02:30:53.260 It's just like the genie, which is the root word of genius, by the way.

02:30:57.660 The genie is this incredibly powerful force that can grant wishes, right?

02:31:03.180 But it's constrained in this tiny little space.

02:31:05.500 There's an intimation there that, for something to be real, it has to straddle the divide between the finite and the infinite.

02:31:13.180 And that's what human beings do, I think, to some degree.

02:31:16.060 And that's dramatized in that story, but it doesn't mean that we understand it.

02:31:19.980 I mean, you know that sometimes you're going to feel that way when you're called upon to make a sacrifice.

02:31:25.500 You're going to feel that you've been betrayed by everything.

02:31:29.500 I mean, the story's set up that way, right?

02:31:31.020 Christ is betrayed by tyranny, he's betrayed by his best friends, he's betrayed by his mortality.

02:31:37.180 That's why it's an archetypal story, and he's innocent, so the story can't be any worse.

02:31:42.700 That's why it's archetypal.

02:31:44.380 And, I mean, the story says, to some degree, that under such conditions, even God himself would have doubts.

02:31:51.420 It's something like that.

02:31:53.020 And that's a real, that's a powerful idea.

02:31:56.380 It's a very powerful idea.

02:31:58.700 So, that's the best I can make out of that, for now.

02:32:07.180 We have to stop.

02:32:11.260 So, we'll so, convene again in a week.

02:32:15.100 Thank you very much.

02:32:37.180 Thank you.

02:32:51.100 Thank you.

02:32:53.100 Thank you.

02:32:55.100 Bye.

02:32:57.100 Bye.

02:33:03.100 Bye.

02:33:05.100 Bye.

02:33:06.100 Bye.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - August 31, 2017

Abraham： Father of Nations

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