In this episode, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson delivers a 12 Rules for Life lecture recorded in Perth, Australia on February 8, 2019, named Defense Against Ideological Possession. Dr. Peterson uses the lecture to lay out a conceptual framework that he s been working on for a long time to help people understand their own cognitive biases, and how they affect their ability to understand the world around them. He also explains why it s important to understand your own biases and how to deal with them, and why they can be so debilitating. This episode is brought to you by Daily Wire Plus, where you can get 20% off your first month with discount code: DEPRESSIONANDANxiety at checkout. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/sponsorships/Dailywireplus and enter promo code: PODCAST at checkout to receive $5 off the first month of Dailywireplus. Let s take this the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Thank you so much for listening, and Happy New Year, everyone! XOXO, Mikayla Peterson and co-creator of the Jordan Peterson Podcast, and thank you for listening to this episode of The Jordan B Peterson Podcast. If you re struggling with depression and anxiety, please know that you re not alone. You are not alone, and there s not alone in this journey. -Let s find a lifeline that can help you find a way to feel better, no matter where you re at home, and find a place to help you feel better and get some support and support in the next episode of Daily Wireplus now. I hope you re feeling better, and that you ll feel better than you can do what you need to do it. . Thanks for listening and keep moving forward, and keep listening, thank you, and let s stay tuned for more episodes like this, and I love you're not alone! -Jonah B Peterson -JORDAN B. PETERSONALITY, Jonah B. P. Peterson, MD, PhD, and so much more! . . - - Jonah Peterson, PhD - Discovering Personality with Dr. JORDAN PETERSON - J. B.Peterson, MD - , J.B. Peterson - DREAMER, , and more
00:00:00.000Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
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00:00:57.000Welcome to Season 2, Episode 41 of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.
00:01:04.000I'm Mikayla Peterson, Dad's daughter and collaborator.
00:01:07.000Happy New Year. We took a much-needed two-week break, but we're vaguely back at it.
00:01:14.000Andre and I are back together. That makes me incredibly happy, and life could certainly be worse.
00:01:20.000I'm recording this from Moscow, Russia. We're here for the next month or so with Dad.
00:01:25.000It's beautiful and completely unlike what I was expecting.
00:01:28.000It's much fancier than anywhere I've seen in North America, and the food and culture is amazing.
00:01:32.000Today's episode is a 12 Rules for Life lecture recorded in Perth, Australia on February 8th, 2019, named Defense Against Ideological Possession.
00:01:42.000If you guys haven't checked out Dad's eCourse, Discovering Personality with Dr. Jordan B. Peterson,
00:01:49.000it's available at jordanbpeterson.com slash personality and has over five hours of university-level video lecture material.
00:01:57.000Check it out at jordanbpeterson.com slash personality.
00:03:05.000So, I've got lots of things I'm really interested in talking to you about tonight.
00:03:09.000I thought what I would do to sort of warm up is, because it's been a little while since I've spoken to a large audience,
00:03:16.000and I thought I'd just walk through the rules, and then I want to go underneath them and lay out a conceptual structure that I've been working on for a very long time.
00:03:27.000It's a psychological structure, and I think it's unbelievably useful.
00:03:32.000I've often thought about it with my classes, what I've thought, the way I've conceptualized what I've been doing for 30 years,
00:03:41.000is to provide people with a defense against ideological possession.
00:03:47.000It's something like that, because the possibility of being possessed by an ideology is extraordinarily high.
00:03:55.000I mean, first of all, we tend to be trapped by our own biases.
00:03:59.000Some of that's just temperamental, right? Because you have a particular way of looking at the world, and you're going to be trapped by that.
00:04:05.000Now, there's advantages to that, too, because there's advantages to looking at the world the way you look at the world.
00:04:11.000But it also lays you open for blind spots.
00:04:14.000And then there's the fact that you just bloody well don't know anything, right?
00:04:18.000I mean, there's so much of the world you don't understand.
00:04:21.000It's amazing that you can even walk across the street, you know, because it's so complicated.
00:04:25.000And it's worse than that, because you don't even know how much you don't know.
00:04:30.000Because the expanse is so vast, and so you're trapped by your own ignorance as well.
00:04:37.000And then you're trapped by your willful blindness, because, well, maybe you know you need to learn things.
00:04:44.000But it's really hard to learn things, and it's really easy not to learn them, right?
00:04:48.000Because to not learn something, all you have to do is just sit there and not learn things.
00:04:53.000And that's really, man, some of you did that for like 12 years in school, right?
00:04:58.000And so it's really easy not to do that.
00:05:02.000And then there are more subtle reasons that you might get hijacked as well, too.
00:05:08.000I mean, one of the things that struck me is that one of the ways you can distinguish between a genuine, I think, religious view of the world.
00:05:19.000And I don't mean one that's necessarily predicated on a belief in God.
00:05:23.000I mean, I'm thinking about a religious viewpoint from a psychological perspective.
00:05:28.000And that's a reasonable thing to do, because we know that religious experience is part and parcel of the universal human experience.
00:05:36.000And we don't know what that says about the metaphysics of reality.
00:05:41.000You know, there's no way of determining it, but we certainly do know that people are prone to religious beliefs,
00:05:47.000and that they are definitely biologically capable of a wide range of religious experiences.
00:05:54.000And a religious viewpoint presents a certain view of the world.
00:05:59.000It's a comprehensive view of the world.
00:06:02.000And what happens in the case of ideologies is that ideologies hijack parts of that.
00:06:10.000So they take a complete story that's very compelling in its fundamental essence,
00:06:15.000which is, of course, why religious stories have potency and why they last for a very long time,
00:06:20.000and they take a piece of it and make it the whole thing.
00:06:24.000And so that's a lot of reasons to be possessed by ideology.
00:06:28.000Now, the problem with that is that, as far as I can tell, is that you really have to deal with the whole world.
00:06:36.000You know, because there it is, it's right in front of you, the whole world with all its complexity.
00:06:41.000And if you've simplified it in a biased manner, which means that you've inappropriately ignored some arbitrary proportion of it,
00:06:55.000you're going to get flattened because of that, because you're going to have blind spots.
00:07:00.000Like, this is a stupid example, but it's the best one I've been able to think up in like 25 years.
00:07:06.000I mean, imagine just for the sake of argument that you didn't believe in white vans that approached you from the left.
00:07:14.000You believed in everything else, but not that.
00:07:16.000You know, I mean, that means that you've comprehended a lot of the world.
00:07:21.000But now and then, you know, you're going to step off the curb, and you're just going to get flattened.
00:07:27.000And you're going to wake up wondering, like, what the hell's going on?
00:08:25.000And this is something that's really, like I said, it's a foolish example in some sense.
00:08:31.000But it's a concept that's really worth thinking about, because you never know how much the reason that you're getting taken out by reality is because you have a blind spot.
00:08:45.000And it's sad to think that way, because you think, oh my god, I've got a blind spot.
00:08:50.000And, you know, there's real serious repercussions that are associated with that, and isn't that unfair?
00:08:55.000But on the other hand, it's actually a really optimistic idea, because it could be that the reason you keep getting taken out is because you have a blind spot.
00:09:06.000And that's actually unbelievably optimistic, because what it means is that if you could just figure out what the blind spot was,
00:09:13.000and then, you know, go through the work of fixing it, because it's not just that you recognize it, and then it's fixed.
00:09:19.000You know, it's more complicated than that, but maybe, maybe, and this is like the only optimistic thought I know.
00:09:26.000You know, maybe the reason that you keep getting taken out is because there's some important things that you either don't know or refuse to know.
00:09:36.000And you think, oh my god, that could be the case, if I, if I just knew more, or if I was just willing to know more,
00:09:43.000and maybe even in a radical way, that a lot of the terrible things that are happening to me,
00:09:48.000that are undermining my faith, let's say, in myself, and in other people, and in the world, maybe even in existence itself,
00:09:55.000maybe that would, well, maybe not vanish, but maybe it would be ameliorated.
00:10:00.000And that's something, right? It's like, there's always the possibility that there's something about your own ignorance
00:10:08.000that's actually causing a substantial proportion of your misery.
00:10:13.000And God, that would be so wonderful if that was the case, because there's this story in a book called The Cocktail Party,
00:10:24.000which is by T.S. Eliot. It's a play, and in the play, there's a woman who talks to a psychiatrist at the party,
00:10:33.000asking for free medical advice to some degree.
00:10:37.000And she tells him, like you might tell a psychiatrist, that she's having a pretty damn miserable time of it.
00:10:43.000You know, and there's real reason to have a miserable time of it.
00:10:46.000And some people have some real reasons to have a miserable time of it, man.
00:10:52.000And she said, I'm having a bad time of it.
00:10:56.000And she says, I want to talk to you, because I hope there's something wrong with me.
00:11:01.000And the psychiatrist is kind of taking it back.
00:11:04.000And he says, well, why are you hoping that there's something wrong with you?
00:11:11.000And she says, well, this is the way I look at it.
00:11:16.000I'm having a pretty damn brutal time of it.
00:11:19.000And so, on the one hand, it's because the world is the way it is.
00:11:23.000And that's just how it is, man. I'm stuck with it.
00:11:26.000And that's just not good, because what am I going to do?
00:11:29.000I'm not going to change the structure of reality.
00:11:32.000Or maybe you change it a little bit, but you probably just make it worse, you know.
00:11:37.000But if it's me, if I'm doing something wrong, and it's sort of systematic, and I find out what it is that I'm doing wrong, and I fix it, then maybe things would get better.
00:11:50.000And, like, that's a hell of a thing to think.
00:11:55.000Because, you know, and here's what makes it so believable, I think, is that you bloody well know that there's a bunch of things that you're not doing as well as you could be doing.
00:12:05.000I don't just mean not putting in as much effort as you could.
00:12:51.000Not bloody well very often, and I wouldn't assume it as a rule of thumb, but sometimes it's true.
00:12:58.000But I'm talking more about those errors of conscience, let's say, that you are judge, jury, and executioner with regards to yourself for.
00:13:13.000So that if no one said anything, and no one asked you, you would still know in your heart of hearts that there were things that you were doing that were wrong.
00:26:02.000You know, the Knights, Monty Python notwithstanding, you know, the Knights of the Round Table are off to look for the Holy Grail.
00:26:12.000And they don't know what the hell the Holy Grail is.
00:26:16.000There's different variants of the story.
00:26:19.000One idea is the Holy Grail is the cup that Christ used at the Last Supper to drink wine when he announced that his blood was wine and his, and his body was bread.
00:51:55.000And it says, what it says is that even if it's poisonous snakes, even if you're in a desert for 40 years and it's poisonous snakes sent by God, which is pretty bad, that your ability to represent and confront is more powerful than that.
00:52:25.000So, you know, and it also kind of ameliorates the idea that it's God being cruel because another explanation of that story is that it's just people being weak and ungrateful.
00:52:37.000And, you know, the distinction between God's cruelty and people's weakness and ingratitude is a very, very, very, very difficult paradox to untangle.
00:55:58.000Well, that would make you some sort of person, right?
00:56:01.000It would make you a singular sort of person.
00:56:04.000And the point of the rules would be to make you that person.
00:56:08.000Well, one of the things I can tell you about the reason in the New Testament that Christ goes up on the mountain to talk to Moses is to fulfill a strange prophecy.
00:56:19.000There's a prophecy that runs through the Old Testament that something will emerge out of the concatenation of rules that will be a personality that's redemptive in its quality.
00:56:34.000And so, again, I'm not speaking religiously here.
00:56:38.000I'm speaking as if this is a set of psychological ideas.
00:56:42.000We all have a sense of right and wrong.
00:56:45.000Out of that, we can abstract a set of principles.
00:56:49.000If we follow the set of principles, that produces a kind of character.
01:03:48.000There are things that are way worse than death.
01:03:51.000And I would say John Wayne Gacy's life was way worse than death.
01:03:56.000And if you don't believe it, you just go read about it and draw your own bloody conclusions.
01:04:01.000It was enough for him to beg for death.
01:04:04.000Um, I don't remember if he got the death penalty or not.
01:04:08.000I don't believe so, but it's, it's beside the point to some degree.
01:04:13.000The point is that, well, you know, there are worse places that, there are worse places that you can end up.
01:04:21.000Solzhenitsyn thought, alright, well, wait a minute.
01:04:26.000Here's these people that are acting nobly and honestly, truthfully, not taking the easy way out, not being trustees, not cooperating with the administration.
01:04:40.000You know, I was just reading this other book called Ordinary Men.
01:04:57.000But if you do want to know, you could read Ordinary Men because it will tell you how things go bad for, from bad for, from bad to worse.
01:05:04.000And maybe you do want to know that because maybe you don't want things to go from bad to worse in your own life.
01:05:09.000But it's a story about these policemen in Germany who were military policemen.
01:05:17.000They were too old to be drafted and so they were put in this police unit and then they were put in Poland after the Germans had marched through.
01:05:24.000And they were sort of charged with mopping up the, with mopping up the Jews, essentially.
01:05:30.000They were at war and I suppose they thought of the Jews as an enemy fifth column, although that was primarily a rationalization.
01:05:38.000These are just ordinary guys, you know.
01:05:40.000They were you people, for all intents and purposes.
01:05:44.000And, you know, if you don't think that, well then you don't understand.
01:05:49.000And, you know, their commander, who was actually, seemed to be a pretty good guy, you know, by normative standards.
01:05:57.000So, as good as anyone you know, unless you happen to know a saint.
01:06:00.000And you wouldn't be able to stand knowing a saint anyway, so he wouldn't be your friend, you know.
01:24:24.000Every time you connect to an unsecured network in a cafe, hotel, or airport,
01:24:28.000you're essentially broadcasting your personal information to anyone with the technical know-how to intercept it.
01:24:34.000And let's be clear, it doesn't take a genius hacker to do this.
01:24:37.000With some off-the-shelf hardware, even a tech-savvy teenager could potentially access your passwords, bank logins, and credit card details.
01:24:44.000Now, you might think, what's the big deal? Who'd want my data anyway?
01:24:48.000Well, on the dark web, your personal information could fetch up to $1,000.
01:24:52.000That's right, there's a whole underground economy built on stolen identities.
01:29:04.000So I've got lots of things I'm really interested in talking to you about tonight.
01:29:08.000I thought what I would do to sort of warm up is, because it's been a little while since I've spoken to a large audience,
01:29:15.000and I thought I'd just walk through the rules, and then I want to go underneath them and lay out a conceptual structure that I've been working on for a very long time.
01:29:26.000It's a psychological structure, and I think it's unbelievably useful.
01:29:31.000I've often thought about it with my classes, what I've thought, the way I've conceptualized what I've been doing for 30 years is to provide people with a defense against ideological possession.
01:29:46.000It's something like that, because the possibility of being possessed by an ideology is extraordinarily high.
01:29:54.000I mean, first of all, we tend to be trapped by our own biases.
01:29:58.000Some of that's just temperamental, right, because you have a particular way of looking at the world, and you're going to be trapped by that.
01:30:04.000Now, there's advantages to that, too, because there's advantages to looking at the world the way you look at the world.
01:30:10.000But it also lays you open for blind spots, and then there's the fact that you just bloody well don't know anything, right?
01:30:17.000I mean, there's so much of the world you don't understand.
01:30:19.000It's amazing that you can even walk across the street, you know, because it's so complicated.
01:30:24.000And it's worse than that, because you don't even know how much you don't know.
01:30:29.000Because the expanse is so vast, and so you're trapped by your own ignorance as well.
01:30:36.000And then you're trapped by your willful blindness, because, well, maybe you know you need to learn things.
01:30:43.000But it's really hard to learn things, and it's really easy not to learn them, right?
01:30:47.000Because to not learn something, all you have to do is just sit there and not learn things.
01:30:52.000And that's really, man, some of you did that for like 12 years in school, right?
01:30:57.000And so it's really easy not to do that.
01:31:01.000And then there are more subtle reasons that you might get hijacked as well, too.
01:31:07.000I mean, one of the things that struck me is that one of the ways you can distinguish between a genuine, I think, religious view of the world.
01:31:18.000And I don't mean one that's necessarily predicated on a belief in God.
01:31:22.000I mean, I'm thinking about a religious viewpoint from a psychological perspective.
01:31:27.000And that's a reasonable thing to do, because we know that religious experience is part and parcel of the universal human experience.
01:31:35.000And we don't know what that says about the metaphysics of reality.
01:31:40.000You know, there's no way of determining it, but we certainly do know that people are prone to religious beliefs,
01:31:46.000and that they are definitely biologically capable of a wide range of religious experiences.
01:31:53.000And a religious viewpoint presents a certain view of the world.
01:31:58.000It's a comprehensive view of the world.
01:32:01.000And what happens in the case of ideologies is that ideologies hijack parts of that.
01:32:09.000So they take a complete story that's very compelling in its fundamental essence,
01:32:14.000which is, of course, why religious stories have potency and why they last for a very long time,
01:32:19.000and they take a piece of it and make it the whole thing.
01:32:23.000And so, that's a lot of reasons to be possessed by ideology.
01:32:26.000Now, the problem with that is that, as far as I can tell, is that you really have to deal with the whole world.
01:32:34.000You know, because there it is, it's right in front of you, the whole world with all its complexity.
01:32:39.000And if you've simplified it in a biased manner, which means that you've inappropriately ignored some arbitrary proportion of it,
01:32:54.000you're going to get flattened because of that.
01:32:57.000Because you're going to have blind spots.
01:32:59.000Like, this is a stupid example, but it's the best one I've been able to think up in like 25 years.
01:33:04.000I mean, imagine just for the sake of argument that you didn't believe in white vans that approached you from the left.
01:33:12.000You believed in everything else, but not that.
01:33:15.000You know, I mean, that means that you've comprehended a lot of the world.
01:33:20.000But now and then, you know, you're going to step off the curb, and you're just going to get flattened.
01:33:25.000And you're going to wake up wondering, like, what the hell's going on?
01:34:24.000And this is something that's really, like I said, it's a foolish example in some sense.
01:34:30.000But it's a concept that's really worth thinking about, because you never know how much the reason that you're getting taken out by reality is because you have a blind spot.
01:34:44.000And it's sad to think that way, because you think, oh my god, I've got a blind spot.
01:34:49.000And, you know, there's real serious repercussions that are associated with that, and isn't that unfair?
01:34:54.000But on the other hand, it's actually a really optimistic idea, because it could be that the reason you keep getting taken out is because you have a blind spot.
01:35:05.000And that's actually unbelievably optimistic, because what it means is that if you could just figure out what the blind spot was,
01:35:12.000and then, you know, go through the work of fixing it, because it's not just that you recognize it and then it's fixed.
01:35:18.000You know, it's more complicated than that, but maybe, maybe, and this is like the only optimistic thought I know.
01:35:25.000You know, maybe the reason that you keep getting taken out is because there's some important things that you either don't know or refuse to know.
01:35:35.000And you think, oh my god, that could be the case if I just knew more, or if I was just willing to know more, and maybe even in a radical way,
01:35:43.000that a lot of the terrible things that are happening to me, that are undermining my faith, let's say in myself, and in other people, and in the world, maybe even in existence itself,
01:35:54.000maybe that would, well, maybe not vanish, but maybe it would be ameliorated.
01:35:59.000And that's something, right? It's like, there's always the possibility that there's something about your own ignorance that's actually causing a substantial proportion of your misery.
01:36:12.000And God, that would be so wonderful if that was the case, because there's this story in a book called The Cocktail Party, which is by T.S. Eliot.
01:36:25.000It's a play. And in the play, there's a woman who talks to a psychiatrist at the party, asking for free medical advice to some degree.
01:36:36.000And she tells him, like you might tell a psychiatrist, that she's having a pretty damn miserable time of it.
01:36:42.000You know, and there's real reason to have a miserable time of it.
01:36:45.000And some people have some real reasons to have a miserable time of it, man.
01:36:51.000And she said, I'm having a bad time of it.
01:36:55.000And she says, I want to talk to you because I hope there's something wrong with me.
01:36:59.000And the psychiatrist is kind of taking it back.
01:37:02.000And he says, well, why, why are you hoping that there's something wrong with you?
01:37:09.000And she says, well, this is the way I look at it.
01:45:56.000And problem number two is that it's vague.
01:45:58.000Problem number three is you don't have a bow.
01:46:00.000Problem number four is you don't draw it back.
01:46:03.000Problem five is you close your eyes when you shoot, you know.
01:46:07.000Or maybe you're afraid of hitting the target because then people would expect you to hit the target, you know, another time, right?
01:46:13.000Because you build up expectations that way.
01:46:16.000God only knows there's all sorts of reasons to fail to do it.
01:46:20.000Anyways, I've been looking for ideas that constitute solid ground with regards to moving forward in the world.
01:46:32.000Things that I can't undermine, you know, no matter how hard I question, I can't get underneath them.
01:46:39.000And I'll tell you, it's very difficult to find a set of ideas that's more believable than that you are more ignorant and malevolent than you could be if you were operating optimally in the world.
01:46:55.000I just can't believe, I don't think I've ever found anyone in my life who doesn't believe that.
01:47:01.000You know, like, maybe in casual conversation you'd deny it, but if you have a serious conversation with someone for like a week or a month about the way their lives are going, you know, it's pretty clear.
01:47:12.000Here's a bunch of things I'm not doing as well as I could be doing, and here's a bunch of really stupid things I did in the past and maybe that I'm still doing and that I'm planning to do in the future that I know perfectly well are going to screw me up in 50 different ways and I'm still going to do them.
01:47:30.000And that's the human condition. So, and so the optimal, the optimistic derivation from that is, well, what if you got a little better at not doing those things?
01:47:45.000How much better would things be around you? And I think that's a fundamental question.
01:47:52.000And the reason I think that, apart from the fact, so, you know, on the negative side, which I've kind of laid out here is like, you know, there's all sorts of reasons to be sort of unhappy or perhaps contemptuous about people because we're not everything we could be and we're a bunch of things we shouldn't be.
01:48:15.000And that's undeniable, I believe. But then, on the upside is, we're really quite remarkable creatures. You know, there's as much on the positive end as there is on the negative end.
01:48:30.000And that's saying a lot, man, because there's plenty on the negative end. Like, it's, it's heaped up high.
01:48:36.000You know, if you know anything about history, which you probably, and you probably don't want to know anything about history, which is why most people don't know much about history.
01:48:44.000It's pretty much a bloody nightmare. It's, it's a deep, dark abyss of catastrophe. And so that's, that's what, it's almost intolerable, the deeper you look into it.
01:48:59.000But as deep and dark as that intolerability is, there's something that shines out of that, which is, well, the potential for people to overcome all that, which, which, in the main, we have.
01:49:14.000And so for all that darkness, there's light. And, and it's a really nice thing to know, too, because it can make you somewhat less afraid of the darkness.
01:49:22.000You know, and there's plenty of bloody reason to be afraid of the darkness.
01:49:26.000If, if you have some sense that, no matter how deep you delve, let's say, into your own shortcomings, but even worse than that, into the shortcomings of humanity itself,
01:49:37.000that out of that will emerge something optimistic, which is a clear-headed recognition that despite what we are, we can, we have the ability to transcend it.
01:49:52.440And then all of that pessimism transforms into something optimistic, and not stupidly optimistic, like, we're all good.
01:50:01.060It's like, no, we're not. Children are born good. No, they're not. The world's, what would you say?
01:50:09.380The world's a benevolent place, and people are basically nice. No. Wrong.
01:50:17.000That's a, that's an ideology, right? And it's one that's born of fear. It's born of the, of the unwillingness to face things the way they bloody well are.
01:50:28.100And that's not good, because if you don't face the way, things the way they are, then you don't draw out of yourself the capability to deal with the world as it is.
01:50:38.400And then to improve it, perhaps, to, to, to move it beyond its current intolerable state.
01:50:44.340And so you have this moral obligation, I think, to look at things, in the, to look at the darkest part of things.
01:50:54.760And then in the, in the faith, that the darker the place you look, the more likely it is that you'll find something that's a true light.
01:51:06.920Because it would, could only be a true light that would shine in that sort of darkness.
01:51:10.960And that's the sort of light you want, right? You will, you don't want one that flickers when, when things are, you know, a little rough.
01:51:19.600And you certainly want, don't want something that goes out when things get really rough.
01:51:24.540You want something that stays bright when things are as bad as they can be.
01:51:31.380And so if there is a light that can stay on when things are really bad, well then, then you have some grounds for, I would say, an intelligent and wise hope.
01:51:43.420And Jesus, it would be lovely to be able to have an intelligent and wise hope as the fundamental grounding of your existence.
01:52:01.400You know, the knights, Monty Python notwithstanding, you know, the knights of the round table are off to look for the Holy Grail.
01:52:10.360And they don't know what the hell the Holy Grail is.
01:52:14.500There's different variants of the story.
01:52:17.960One idea is the Holy Grail is the cup that Christ used at the Last Supper to drink wine when he announced that his blood was wine and his, and his body was bread.
02:09:58.660figures out what the Israelites are up to,
02:10:00.540because he listens to them bitch and whine and complain and squawk and fight and generate new gods and wish that they were back in Egypt like the bloody Russians wish they were back under the Stalinists.