The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Jordan Peterson Live on Tour： The Hidden Key to a Fulfilling Life

00:00:00.000 This is Dr. Jordan B. Peterson.

00:00:02.220 Watch Parenting, available exclusively on Daily Wire+.

00:00:05.780 We're dealing with misbehaviors with our son.

00:00:08.160 Our 13-year-old throws tantrums.

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00:00:12.520 Go to dailywireplus.com today.

00:00:15.340 Since 2018, I've been traveling with my wife around the world

00:00:19.920 in what's essentially been a non-stop lecture tour,

00:00:22.540 and it's quite a privilege.

00:00:24.460 It's a remarkable thing to be able to extend

00:00:27.480 what I was doing as a university professor

00:00:29.460 to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands

00:00:32.120 of people around the world

00:00:33.240 and to have the privilege to lecture

00:00:35.440 and think about whatever grips me at the moment.

00:00:40.440 We've recorded a number of these lectures.

00:00:44.220 We're going to release one that I delivered in Reading, Pennsylvania.

00:00:49.520 I delved into the relationship between the concept of sacrifice

00:00:54.320 and the idea of work.

00:00:57.200 Work is the sacrifice of the present to the future.

00:01:01.800 Work is the sacrifice of your own self-interest

00:01:04.920 to that of your family and your community.

00:01:07.180 That's a good way to think about it.

00:01:09.060 That self-sacrificial work is part of the proper foundation of the world.

00:01:13.980 I elaborated on those theses in my book,

00:01:16.760 We Who Wrestle with God, and I'm writing about it now.

00:01:19.140 I'm going to continue my lecture tour in Europe January through March of 2026.

00:01:27.300 And so if you're in Europe and you're interested in hearing a live elaboration of such ideas,

00:01:34.500 check out my website, JordanBPeterson.com.

00:01:37.300 All the dates are listed there.

00:01:38.860 You have an opportunity to buy the tickets.

00:01:40.520 In any case, here's the lecture from Reading, Pennsylvania.

00:01:44.780 I hope, we hope, the whole team here, that you find it deep, meaningful, and useful.

00:01:50.620 All right, so I'm going to tell you a series of stories tonight.

00:01:57.180 And I'm going to make them center around the theme of sacrifice,

00:02:02.660 which, of course, is everyone's favorite topic.

00:02:05.660 But I'm going to start by telling you why I'm going to tell you stories.

00:02:13.320 You know, we are suffering from the delusion in our culture

00:02:17.160 that stories are mere entertainment.

00:02:21.540 And that's a foolish theory.

00:02:23.700 And part of the reason it's foolish is actually self-evident.

00:02:30.320 Stories are entertaining.

00:02:32.280 So that's why we listen to them.

00:02:35.500 Well, why are they entertaining?

00:02:38.180 They're entertaining to everyone.

00:02:40.840 Your children will be pleased with you

00:02:44.400 if before they go to bed, you tell them a story.

00:02:49.580 You read them a story.

00:02:50.620 They can learn things from stories.

00:02:54.220 And you will do surprising things for stories.

00:02:57.260 You'll watch them after work because it's a form of play.

00:03:03.340 You'll line up and pay to go see a story, to go watch a movie, to watch a play.

00:03:10.880 Most of the things that we do voluntarily have a story structure.

00:03:20.200 And so, if you're an intelligent scientist, let's say, let alone someone interested in literature,

00:03:29.580 you need to understand, you need to ask yourself a very serious question.

00:03:34.840 And the question is, well, why stories?

00:03:40.300 So let's think of what you do when you go watch a movie, okay?

00:03:46.760 And this is also something that will help you understand how you understand other people because these things are very tightly aligned.

00:03:55.740 Obviously, you come to understand a character or a series of characters when you go see a movie because otherwise the movie wouldn't make any sense.

00:04:06.420 So how does the author and the actors, how do the author and the actors guide you through that process of understanding?

00:04:15.880 And how do you manage that yourself?

00:04:18.400 Well, what you see in a movie is a series of characterizations.

00:04:24.760 It's akin to what you see when you meet someone multiple times.

00:04:29.160 You know, you meet someone in different situations and you watch.

00:04:33.920 What do you watch?

00:04:35.540 You watch how they act.

00:04:37.380 What do you specifically watch?

00:04:40.420 You watch their eyes when you're talking to someone, when you're getting to know them.

00:04:44.860 And the reason you do that, where there's actually evolved adaptations that are biological that help you manage this.

00:04:53.800 Your eyes are black pupils set against a colored iris, against a white background.

00:05:01.760 And the reason our eyes are like that is so that we can easily see that they're easily visible to other people.

00:05:09.460 And they need to be easily visible to other people because if you can watch someone's eyes, you can see what they're pointing their eyes at.

00:05:19.160 You can see what they're attending to.

00:05:22.740 You can see what's important to them.

00:05:25.260 That's what they're attending to.

00:05:26.560 And you can infer their aim.

00:05:29.580 That's what you do when you watch someone's eyes.

00:05:31.460 That's what you do when you point out things to children.

00:05:37.200 You specify an aim.

00:05:38.720 Children learn to point around before two.

00:05:42.480 It's quite a magical talent to point to something.

00:05:46.340 Animals can't really understand pointing.

00:05:48.440 Dogs can understand pointing better than wolves because they've adapted to human beings.

00:05:52.860 To point to something is to specify the target of aim.

00:05:55.960 Okay, now, why do you want to specify someone's target of aim?

00:06:04.900 What they're attending to?

00:06:06.400 What they're interested in?

00:06:07.600 Because then you know what they're up to.

00:06:09.580 And more than that.

00:06:10.980 And this is how you come to understand someone.

00:06:12.860 You infer their aim from the manner in which they conduct themselves across multiple situations.

00:06:25.960 So, aim specifies perception.

00:06:28.700 Now, this is a radical thing to understand.

00:06:30.800 A truly radical thing to understand.

00:06:32.340 Because normally the way we think of the world is that we just look at the world and there it is.

00:06:38.060 In a self-evident way, the objects of the world are just there simply.

00:06:43.140 And when we look, they present themselves to us.

00:06:45.600 But that's not how it works.

00:06:47.520 Not actually.

00:06:48.540 Because there's an unlimited number of things you can look at.

00:06:53.420 There's a number of unlimited number of things you can attend to.

00:06:56.520 Even in the surface of any given object.

00:06:59.120 There's variegated patterns in the carpets, in the walls, in the paint.

00:07:03.460 There's shadows and lights.

00:07:04.740 There's changes in illumination.

00:07:06.320 There's a trillion things going on.

00:07:08.780 And how you simplify that to what you actually see is quite a mystery.

00:07:14.200 And the way that you do that, by the way, is with your aim.

00:07:17.460 Right?

00:07:17.560 Your aim specifies the landscape of your perceptions.

00:07:21.560 And what you really see in the world aren't so much objects as pathways forward.

00:07:28.000 Tools that you can use to move towards your aim.

00:07:31.060 Obstacles that will get in the way.

00:07:34.660 Friends.

00:07:36.380 The human equivalent of...

00:07:39.160 What would you say?

00:07:40.760 The age that move you along your way.

00:07:42.640 Enemies.

00:07:43.760 Those are people who block your pathway.

00:07:46.220 And agents of transformation.

00:07:48.760 Those are magical things, in a sense, that transform your aim.

00:07:52.900 You know, sometimes you're moving from point A to point B.

00:07:56.020 And you realize something fundamental or revolutionary.

00:08:00.940 And now, instead of moving towards point A, point B, you're moving towards point C.

00:08:05.740 You're a new person.

00:08:06.660 You're doing something new.

00:08:08.960 You've changed.

00:08:10.080 You have a new personality.

00:08:11.300 Right?

00:08:12.080 The world is shaped differently for you.

00:08:15.240 The way that things make themselves manifest has shifted.

00:08:18.320 Who your friends are and who your foes are is different.

00:08:21.900 And your mode, your essential mode of being, your personality has transformed.

00:08:26.180 This is what you're doing when you go watch a movie.

00:08:28.580 You see, you see someone, the protagonist, the hero, or the anti-hero.

00:08:34.780 Doesn't really matter.

00:08:36.560 They're both exemplars.

00:08:38.760 They're both patterns that you can learn from.

00:08:41.300 You see them in multiple situations.

00:08:44.520 You see them acting in the world and you infer their aim.

00:08:48.420 As soon as you infer their aim, you can inhabit the same world they inhabit.

00:08:52.860 That's actually why movies are meaningful to you.

00:08:54.880 Because as soon as you have the aim of the character, the world appears to you the same

00:09:00.140 way it appears to the character.

00:09:01.220 The objects of the world are the same, and so are the emotions that you experience and

00:09:07.140 the protagonist experiences.

00:09:08.860 And you get to do that for free in a sense, right?

00:09:11.040 You go see a James Bond movie and there's death everywhere.

00:09:14.280 And you can death and adventure everywhere.

00:09:17.160 And you can participate in that without having to die.

00:09:20.500 And it's very useful to be able to explore very complicated ways of looking at the world without

00:09:27.360 having to pay the ultimate price for it.

00:09:31.100 We're continually doing that with each other.

00:09:33.360 We're continually telling each other our stories.

00:09:35.980 We're exchanging our aims.

00:09:38.640 We're exchanging the manner in which we look at the world with one another.

00:09:42.000 We're exchanging our emotional experience.

00:09:44.120 It's really, that's what we have to offer each other.

00:09:46.660 That's what we have to offer each other that's of value.

00:09:49.360 Our alternative modes of being that might be more suitable.

00:09:53.880 Aims that might be more suitable.

00:09:55.740 Pathways forward that might be more efficient.

00:09:58.240 Tools that might be more useful.

00:10:01.160 Obstacles, ways to climb over obstacles we hadn't imagined.

00:10:05.620 This is what stories do for us.

00:10:08.460 A story is a description of the structure through which you look at the world.

00:10:11.800 It's a radical thing to understand.

00:10:15.140 It's quite unlike the typical materialist, reductionist, scientific view of the world,

00:10:20.540 which is that you follow the facts as they reveal themselves.

00:10:24.340 That's not true.

00:10:26.560 There's an infinite number of facts.

00:10:29.080 If someone throws you in the middle of the desert and you're lost,

00:10:32.240 the facts aren't going to guide you forward.

00:10:35.260 Right?

00:10:35.780 You need a map.

00:10:36.840 You need an aim.

00:10:37.540 You need a mode of perception that structures the world so that you can navigate through it.

00:10:43.440 That's what a story is.

00:10:45.520 That's what a story is.

00:10:47.120 And this is a very fundamental discovery.

00:10:49.140 This discovery was really only made starting in the 1960s.

00:10:53.780 And a variety of different disciplines, humanistic and scientific,

00:11:00.920 converged on this realization more or less simultaneously.

00:11:04.880 Obviously, the French literary critics, the postmodern types, for example,

00:11:10.820 they got there quite early.

00:11:12.140 The postmodernists realized that we saw the world through a story.

00:11:15.340 Now, they fouled up soon afterwards with their presumption that the story through which we see the world

00:11:21.740 is one of power that tilted them towards a demented and pathological Marxism.

00:11:27.420 But at the same time, robotics engineers and people who are studying AI and computation

00:11:34.780 and cognitive psychologists and people who are investigating perception and emotion,

00:11:39.580 they all came to very similar conclusions.

00:11:42.420 The structure through which we see the world is a story.

00:11:45.760 Right?

00:11:45.980 We see the world through a story.

00:11:47.520 Once you know that, why?

00:11:50.600 Use the story to simplify the world and to specify it.

00:11:54.240 So here, I'll give you a very simple example.

00:11:56.060 So if I'm standing on this side of the stage and I decide that I want to walk to that side of the stage,

00:12:01.980 so now I've specified my aim, well, obviously, I look towards my destination.

00:12:07.020 Right?

00:12:07.100 Now, so what happens?

00:12:08.380 Well, first of all, you people instantly become irrelevant.

00:12:11.520 Right?

00:12:12.420 Why?

00:12:13.020 Well, you're still here.

00:12:14.060 I could be attending to you.

00:12:15.460 But why don't I?

00:12:16.760 Well, you're not relevant to my goal.

00:12:19.060 Right?

00:12:19.340 You're not in the pathway.

00:12:20.840 You're neither a facilitator nor an impediment.

00:12:24.400 You're simply not relevant.

00:12:26.460 And everything that's not relevant to your aim, that's going to disappear.

00:12:30.960 Right?

00:12:31.480 And so that's how you make a decision about how to simplify the world.

00:12:35.300 You simplify and specify the world with your aim.

00:12:39.860 Things that get in your way, they're negative.

00:12:41.840 Things that move you forward, those are positive.

00:12:45.460 Right?

00:12:45.680 And so there's one, here's an early moral lesson from that realization.

00:12:52.040 If the world is manifesting itself to you as nothing but thorns and impediments,

00:12:57.200 with no positive impulse, let's say, or calling to move forward,

00:13:03.280 there is something wrong with your aim.

00:13:05.600 The word sin, by the way, it's an archery term, at least from the Greek,

00:13:12.100 although three languages converged on the same derivation.

00:13:16.780 The Greek word for sin is hamartia, and it's an archery term.

00:13:20.680 It means to miss the target.

00:13:22.480 And so that's a good thing to know, right?

00:13:24.120 I mean, if we're going to investigate the structure of the stories that guide us,

00:13:29.160 it's useful to understand the most fundamental stories we have.

00:13:33.700 It's clearly the case that the most fundamental stories we have,

00:13:37.620 the stories out of which our culture emerged,

00:13:40.000 are the stories of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

00:13:43.560 And those are encapsulated most fundamentally in the biblical stories.

00:13:47.660 And one of the, there's an emphasis in the biblical stories on sin,

00:13:52.080 let's say, as a negative mode of being.

00:13:55.060 And sin is characterized as failure to hit the target.

00:14:00.460 It's an archery term.

00:14:04.520 How can you fail to hit the target?

00:14:06.620 Well, there's lots of ways you can fail to specify the target.

00:14:11.140 That's what happens when people have a fragmented story.

00:14:14.680 They don't have their act together.

00:14:16.540 Things have fallen apart.

00:14:17.980 They've wandered off the pathway.

00:14:19.520 They're no longer on the straight and narrow path.

00:14:21.620 They've wandered into perdition.

00:14:23.100 They're in the outer darkness where there's gnashing of teeth.

00:14:26.080 That's all.

00:14:26.840 They're in the desert that the Israelites encounter after they leave the tyranny.

00:14:31.420 They're in the wasteland.

00:14:33.000 They're consumed by chaos.

00:14:34.360 The flood has come.

00:14:35.700 That's all a consequence of failure of vision, failure of aim.

00:14:39.460 A landscape that's bereft of structure.

00:14:41.920 A place of anxiety and hopelessness because that's actually what happens to you neurologically, neuropsychologically.

00:14:49.000 When you're aimless, you are overwhelmed with anxiety because there's too bloody many choices.

00:14:54.740 And you have no hope because hope is experienced in relationship to a goal.

00:14:59.840 So you need a goal.

00:15:00.820 You need to structure your aim.

00:15:01.820 This is not optional.

00:15:03.460 You know, John, when he introduced me, made reference to a study in the UK that said that 85% thereabouts of inhabitants of the UK felt their life was meaningless.

00:15:13.600 Well, what's the proper diagnosis of that?

00:15:17.520 The people perish without a vision.

00:15:20.720 Right?

00:15:21.240 You need an aim.

00:15:22.220 Okay.

00:15:22.740 So now we know a couple of things.

00:15:24.020 You see the world through a story and you're lost and hopeless without a name.

00:15:28.820 Okay.

00:15:29.080 So another question immediately emerges once you know that.

00:15:32.420 And that is, well, if you structure your perception of the world, your emotional experience of the world, your motivation, your understanding of others as a consequence of a story, what should the story be?

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00:17:03.740 Okay, that's the question that the biblical library, because it's a library, right?

00:17:11.240 The Bible is a library of books, of separate books that were written by separate authors, separate human authors.

00:17:18.500 And aggregated together, for reasons we don't fully understand, into what actually constitutes a coherent narrative.

00:17:26.280 Which is really quite a remarkable thing.

00:17:28.220 It's not obvious at all how that narrative came about.

00:17:31.560 And it's a remarkable fact that it has a very deep coherence.

00:17:35.260 You could attribute it to the collective workings of the human imagination.

00:17:40.720 That's sort of a psychoanalytic take.

00:17:42.420 That would be akin to the interpretations that someone like the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung might have proposed.

00:17:50.040 Or say, Joseph Campbell, study of a great investigator into the structure of mythology.

00:17:55.860 Or you can take the religious tack and say that it's the cumulative record of the revelations of the divine.

00:18:05.340 Or you can take the cynical tack and say that it's nothing but stories told by fallible human beings.

00:18:12.720 Well, there's no such thing as nothing but stories.

00:18:16.940 Right?

00:18:17.200 Not if stories are more than mere entertainment.

00:18:19.460 Not if stories are actually a representation of the structure through which you see the world.

00:18:24.040 There's nothing mere about stories.

00:18:26.100 Not in the least.

00:18:27.840 You know, and if we need stories to organize our action and our perceptions in the world.

00:18:34.480 If we need stories to organize our life.

00:18:36.720 That means our life depends on stories.

00:18:39.380 And you might ask yourself.

00:18:41.020 Well, isn't what your life depends on real?

00:18:44.800 Like, what's your definition of real?

00:18:46.960 How about pain?

00:18:48.940 Is that real?

00:18:49.860 Well, a story that provides your life with meaning can be a medication against existential catastrophe.

00:18:58.260 And people die without meaning.

00:19:00.680 Right?

00:19:00.900 You can die of your...

00:19:02.300 You can die of everyday suffering without meaning.

00:19:05.800 What does that mean?

00:19:06.580 Well, the story leaves you.

00:19:08.520 Or the story that you're living is false or hollow.

00:19:10.980 Or the story that you're living is fragmented and incoherent.

00:19:15.540 The consequences of that can be fatal.

00:19:17.820 Right?

00:19:19.860 What's real?

00:19:21.200 Well, the story's real.

00:19:22.400 Well, what's the story?

00:19:24.120 What's the proper story of mankind?

00:19:28.180 What's the proper story that makes you a formidable, practical, generous, hospitable contributor to the social order?

00:19:41.640 What's the story that makes you a good husband or wife?

00:19:44.120 What's the story that makes you a good mother or father?

00:19:47.200 What's the story that brings your family together?

00:19:50.660 Maybe in harmony with your town and all of that in harmony with the state and all of that in harmony with the nation under some higher order aim.

00:20:01.460 Right?

00:20:03.460 That's a name that unites.

00:20:05.080 That's the monotheistic aim.

00:20:06.880 That's the unity of story that underlies everything.

00:20:09.420 That's a way of thinking about it.

00:20:11.200 Right?

00:20:11.700 That everything stacks together in this kind of harmonious manner.

00:20:14.640 And that harmonious hierarchical arrangement all the way from the individual to the highest level of social order.

00:20:23.240 It has a nature.

00:20:26.760 Well, what stories might be typical of human beings?

00:20:33.840 Well, the leftist types, the Marxists, the postmodernists for that matter, most of them,

00:20:40.080 they believe that the fundamental human story is one of power.

00:20:44.160 You know, and we're in a culture war about this.

00:20:46.020 Make no mistake about it.

00:20:47.180 This is, you know that.

00:20:48.880 You wouldn't be here otherwise.

00:20:50.040 This is not a trivial matter.

00:20:51.380 The insistence from the materialist types for the last hundred years,

00:20:57.420 one of the profound insistences was that the only reality on the narrative side is one of power.

00:21:03.960 This is what people are taught in universities constantly.

00:21:07.280 How do you understand marriage?

00:21:10.940 Well, it's the story of the power of the patriarchy insofar as that regulates man and woman in the cultural sphere.

00:21:20.820 Marriage is a patriarchal institution.

00:21:23.480 It's the fundamental subjugation of woman to man.

00:21:27.120 Well, how do you understand economic relationships?

00:21:31.280 Oh, it's power.

00:21:32.420 It's the exploitation of the worker to take a Marxist trope by the capitalist class, by the owner.

00:21:40.180 It's a victim-victimizer story.

00:21:42.360 It's the same thing.

00:21:43.100 It's power.

00:21:44.840 There's a distribution of privilege.

00:21:48.280 Those who are at the pinnacle of the, who are at the successful end of the distribution,

00:21:55.800 they're the oppressors.

00:21:57.400 They use power to exploit those who are weak.

00:22:00.440 That explains all economic relationships.

00:22:03.100 You can apply the same lens to history.

00:22:04.920 History is nothing but the power struggle between different claims to power.

00:22:10.640 That is absolutely what people are being taught in our institutes of higher education.

00:22:15.220 And there's, it's unlikely that there's a doctrine that's more corrosive in relationship

00:22:20.960 to the actual spirit upon which your country and the free West in general was founded.

00:22:29.500 Those are antithetical stories.

00:22:31.520 What's the, what's the alternative story?

00:22:33.780 Well, let's, let's lay some out.

00:22:35.800 Here's another story.

00:22:38.340 Do what you want will be the totality of the law.

00:22:44.200 That's a somewhat mangled quotation from Allister Crowley, who was a Satanist in the late part

00:22:49.860 of the 1800s.

00:22:53.080 He was a, he was like a disciple of the Marquis de Sade.

00:22:56.820 He was one of these people who believed, as you can believe rationally, that why the hell

00:23:04.720 shouldn't I do just exactly what I want whenever I want to whoever I want, regardless of, well,

00:23:12.140 let's say the cost to them.

00:23:14.040 What's the rational argument against that?

00:23:16.100 What if I have power and I won't get caught, for example, if I just get away with what my, the

00:23:25.860 untrammeled expression of my most primordial desires?

00:23:30.240 Why not let that be the story?

00:23:32.360 One whim after another.

00:23:34.000 That's the hedonistic story.

00:23:35.680 It's, it's a cacophony, that story, because as you know, from your own experience, if you

00:23:42.740 give yourself over to your immediate wants, you're just one appetite after another, right?

00:23:48.020 There's no real coherence there.

00:23:49.300 You're basically, you basically have the same psychological status as a very badly behaved

00:23:55.220 two-year-old.

00:23:57.140 Well, two-year-olds are like that.

00:23:58.680 They don't have a integrated, their self, their fundamental pattern of being and personality

00:24:05.620 isn't integrated yet.

00:24:06.880 And so they're more or less at the mercy of their whims.

00:24:10.220 And a hedonist, a hedonist is a worshiper of his own whims, right?

00:24:15.480 And he's a pagan in that sense, because it's just one damn desire after another.

00:24:19.860 And he might say to himself, well, those are my desires.

00:24:23.220 He might identify with those desires.

00:24:25.140 And that's really, what would you say, the cardinal form of identification in the modern

00:24:29.600 world.

00:24:30.860 I identify with what my wants are, particularly sexual wants.

00:24:35.980 That constitutes my identity.

00:24:38.360 And anyone who gets in the way can go directly to hell.

00:24:42.080 And that's a very pathological mode of being.

00:24:44.620 And there's a variety of reasons for it, not least that it's exactly reflective of the

00:24:49.820 same kind of immaturity that makes two-year-olds entirely self-centered and driven by instinct.

00:24:55.860 Now, you might say, well, what's wrong with that?

00:24:58.160 You know, when two-year-olds have their delightful element, they're very enthusiastic, they're

00:25:02.180 very spontaneous, they're kind of alive in a fiery way, but they're completely incapable

00:25:09.340 of taking care of themselves, right?

00:25:13.420 And this isn't a hypothesis.

00:25:16.080 You don't see roving bands of thriving two-year-olds running through the forest, organizing themselves.

00:25:22.400 Well, why not?

00:25:23.340 Well, it's because that short-term self-centered, whim-dominated possession doesn't allow you to

00:25:30.000 exist in the world.

00:25:31.500 You have to mature.

00:25:32.400 And of course, that's what you're trying to do with your kids as a parent, is you're

00:25:36.000 trying to shepherd them through the process of maturation.

00:25:38.840 Well, why?

00:25:40.460 Well, so that, how about so they have some friends?

00:25:43.660 Because if it's all about them, well, then they don't have any friends.

00:25:47.580 And that goes for all of you, too.

00:25:49.000 If it's all about you, good luck with your marriage.

00:25:52.540 If it's all about you, you don't have friends.

00:25:54.600 You might have, if you're a bully in particular, you might have, you know, toadies and thugs

00:26:03.020 who benefit from your use of power, but you don't have friends.

00:26:06.820 If you exploit your customers as a business person repeatedly to redound to your own immediate

00:26:15.860 advantage, you're not going to have customers for very long.

00:26:19.380 Your reputation is going to precede you.

00:26:21.460 You're not going to do well in the world.

00:26:22.860 So what do you do instead?

00:26:26.900 Power is a bad story.

00:26:29.220 It's a corrupt way of looking at the world.

00:26:32.180 It leads to violence.

00:26:34.420 It's generally manifested in service to a narrow kind of hedonism, because why have power unless

00:26:40.680 it's to get exactly what the hell the worst of you wants from moment to moment?

00:26:45.280 If you're not under the sway of some self-centered and relatively malevolent whim, you don't need

00:26:51.700 to use power on other people because you could just ask them to go along for the journey.

00:26:56.860 And maybe they would.

00:26:57.980 That's what you do when you play instead of when you use force.

00:27:00.760 That's what you do when you invite instead of using force.

00:27:04.840 That's what you do when you establish a vision that other people share instead of being a tyrant.

00:27:10.060 Well, that's what you do if you're mature.

00:27:13.640 That's even what two-year-olds understand by the time they're three, when they start engaging

00:27:19.280 in pretend play with a would-be friend.

00:27:23.000 Who's a friend to a two-year-old?

00:27:24.480 Well, the first thing, or three-year-old, because three-year-olds start to become social.

00:27:28.480 Well, the first thing you want to do if you're a three-year-old is play a game with someone.

00:27:31.940 That's not the same as having your own game, right?

00:27:34.500 If you play a game with someone else, there are some intrinsic rules.

00:27:37.880 Well, what are the rules?

00:27:39.300 Well, how about they get a turn, right?

00:27:42.540 And maybe a generous turn, right?

00:27:44.300 Because if you're going to have a friend and you want the friend to like you, which is kind

00:27:50.000 of like the definition of a friend, and someone who likes you would like to see you again,

00:27:55.400 and that continuity of the desire to see you again and to play together, that's the definition

00:28:01.260 of friendship, it's a sequence of games played with the same person.

00:28:05.140 The game has to be voluntary, it has to be invitational, it has to be reciprocal, right?

00:28:10.740 And so what you're trying to do with your two-year-old is you're getting them to sacrifice

00:28:16.020 the immediate gratification of their instincts to reciprocity, right?

00:28:22.040 Now, you do something that's a bit more sophisticated than that, too, because the other thing you do

00:28:26.680 with children and yourself and with people you love, if you're the least bit sensible,

00:28:32.140 is you let them know that they shouldn't conduct themselves in a manner in the immediate present

00:28:38.060 that compromises their future, right?

00:28:40.700 That's what you mean when you tell your child, don't do stupid things.

00:28:45.560 Well, what's a stupid thing, generally speaking?

00:28:48.360 Something interesting and entertaining in the moment that you pay for, right?

00:28:53.700 And that's the same as an impulsive bad habit in adulthood.

00:28:57.480 It's like the definition of a bad habit.

00:28:59.320 A bad habit is something that works now and not so good tomorrow or next week or next month

00:29:06.100 or next year or five years from now or 10 years from now.

00:29:09.560 That implies as well that just as the child establishes a relationship of reciprocity with

00:29:20.180 the friend, by starting to understand the future,

00:29:24.020 they establish a reciprocal relationship with their future self.

00:29:28.180 And that's the same thing.

00:29:29.560 So what maturation is, we all know this,

00:29:32.100 maturation is the ability, let's say, to share and to forego gratification,

00:29:36.140 to delay gratification.

00:29:37.660 What does it mean to delay gratification?

00:29:39.460 It means you don't get what the hell you want right now all the time.

00:29:42.320 You have to conduct yourself in a manner that assures communal stability, let's say,

00:29:49.140 and reciprocity.

00:29:50.320 And in the enjoyable sense, you want to be surrounded by friends and compatriots

00:29:53.620 and people who move you forward and people who wish you well,

00:29:56.300 because that's going to be a lot better for you than the alternative.

00:30:00.060 And you want to do that in a manner that assures the future.

00:30:02.400 The whole higher cortical apparatus that human beings are blessed and cursed with

00:30:11.980 is there to integrate the possessing spirits that might otherwise be impulsive and fractionating,

00:30:24.120 to integrate them into a personality that can act reciprocally in relationship to others

00:30:33.600 and guide itself as a consequence of apprehension of the future.

00:30:38.420 It's a definition of maturity.

00:30:39.820 Now, you kind of know this because as your children mature, as you've matured,

00:30:43.700 the amount of time you can consider expands, right?

00:30:47.700 For the 13-year-old, for a four-year-old sitting down to take piano lessons,

00:30:56.080 half an hour is an eternity, right?

00:30:58.700 For a 13-year-old, six months into the future is forever.

00:31:05.320 By the time you're 50, a year is like a week, right?

00:31:10.860 Well, and there's a loss in that to some degree, but there's a huge gain

00:31:14.300 because as you develop, your capacity to apprehend the consequences of your actions

00:31:20.340 across broader spans of time is much improved.

00:31:23.440 And that reflects cortical maturation.

00:31:25.540 And the same thing happens with regards to your ability to manage yourself socially.

00:31:34.200 What does it mean to manage yourself socially?

00:31:36.360 Well, it means, as I said, that it's not all about you.

00:31:39.300 Your aim can't be the immediate gratification of the whims that possess you.

00:31:43.720 Now, if you're married, if you're married, if you have a wife or a husband,

00:31:48.160 is your wife or husband, how do they stand in relationship to their importance

00:31:53.780 in relationship to you?

00:31:57.020 Well, we could just think about it in a sort of clear-headed manner.

00:32:01.980 Let's say you have a scrap with your wife, you have a fight with your wife,

00:32:04.560 a disagreement, and you win.

00:32:06.620 You win.

00:32:07.300 She's wrong.

00:32:09.020 She's punished for it in whatever way you can manage.

00:32:12.220 What's the problem with that?

00:32:14.360 You're right.

00:32:15.140 She's wrong.

00:32:16.440 Well, let's say you do that 50 times.

00:32:19.520 Well, now you're living with someone who you always defeat.

00:32:24.620 And so now you're living with someone who's defeated.

00:32:27.500 And what's the problem with that?

00:32:29.140 Well, they're around.

00:32:30.360 Right, and so maybe that's the problem with attaining a manipulated victory

00:32:37.380 over your marital partner.

00:32:40.080 Fine if it's a one-off, but, you know, they're there when you wake up in the morning.

00:32:44.360 And so is the consequence of your, what, self-centered, power-based maneuvering?

00:32:51.660 Right?

00:32:52.180 And maybe you're a victorious tyrant and she's a defeated slave.

00:32:57.540 Well, that's not much of a victory there, buddy.

00:33:00.880 Right?

00:33:01.200 And that same applies to any reciprocal social relationship.

00:33:05.960 You know, if you have any sense, if you think it through, you want to build up the people

00:33:11.760 that are around you.

00:33:13.500 Well, why?

00:33:15.120 Well, because they're around you.

00:33:16.800 And so if you were a generous, if you made generous offerings to the social world and

00:33:25.080 you improved the nexus of relationships that you were involved in, why wouldn't that be

00:33:30.940 good for you?

00:33:31.860 Now, you might think, well, there's only so much to go around.

00:33:34.500 And if everyone else wins, I lose.

00:33:36.980 But that's another story.

00:33:39.020 And it's the story of power.

00:33:41.020 And it's a very bad story.

00:33:42.860 And it's not true.

00:33:44.020 Because the truth of the matter is, is that there's more than enough for everyone to do.

00:33:48.820 And your victory doesn't have to ever come at the cost of someone else's defeat.

00:33:52.640 I shouldn't say ever.

00:33:53.700 I mean, there are times when, you know, people are head to head.

00:33:58.080 And the game that's being played isn't fair.

00:34:00.700 And it's your victory or your defeat.

00:34:03.860 But those are very pathological and unnecessary circumstances.

00:34:11.200 And it would be better to do everything you can to ever avoid being in a situation like

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00:35:14.700 Situations like that arise when your relationships have deteriorated radically.

00:35:20.300 And I would say as well, the same thing applies to the story of power.

00:35:23.420 Power is the manner in which social relationships or even your relationship with yourself,

00:35:30.800 it's the story that makes itself manifest when the proper story collapses, right?

00:35:36.080 It's the degeneration of a state that turns it into a tyranny.

00:35:39.520 It's not the victory of a state.

00:35:41.260 It's the same at every level of social relationship.

00:35:43.420 If you're tyrannizing yourself, that's a failure.

00:35:46.500 If you're tyrannizing your wife, that's a failure.

00:35:48.520 The same with your children.

00:35:49.600 The same with your friends.

00:35:50.540 It's not an optimized pattern of being.

00:35:53.900 It's not about you.

00:35:56.520 It's not about the whims that narrowly possess you.

00:36:00.400 That's a more accurate formulation.

00:36:03.560 So what does that imply?

00:36:05.920 If it's not about you, it means you have to give up something to be social and to mature, right?

00:36:12.840 What do you have to give up?

00:36:14.600 You have to give up what the two-year-old gives up.

00:36:16.380 You have to give up getting what the hell you want the second you want it.

00:36:20.540 All the time, no matter what.

00:36:23.000 So what are you giving up?

00:36:24.400 You're giving up the momentary whims that possess you that you could identify with.

00:36:32.680 You're giving up your wants.

00:36:34.420 Maybe you're giving up your needs.

00:36:36.240 What does it mean to give them up?

00:36:39.180 I said it means the other person gets a turn.

00:36:42.440 It means that the future is taken into account.

00:36:48.360 What does that imply?

00:36:50.280 It implies that you made a sacrifice.

00:36:53.860 Okay, so here's something to think about.

00:36:55.760 It'll guide us through the rest of the talk.

00:36:57.540 The basis of maturity and community is sacrifice.

00:37:02.160 Okay, now it has to be that way.

00:37:04.420 You understand?

00:37:05.460 Like, this isn't an arbitrary proposition.

00:37:08.760 We're communal beings and we're future-oriented.

00:37:11.460 So because we're future-oriented, we have to give up the present, right?

00:37:16.000 Because we have to bring up the present.

00:37:17.660 We cannot sacrifice the future to the present.

00:37:21.640 That's why you can't do impulsive, stupid, terribly interesting and entertaining things.

00:37:27.380 People drink so that they can fool themselves into thinking that's okay.

00:37:31.840 And it is.

00:37:32.400 It's a blast while it's happening.

00:37:33.920 But the next day tends to be a rather dismal affair,

00:37:37.960 especially if you've seriously gone overboard, let's say.

00:37:41.380 And the reason for that is that it's too easy to sacrifice the future

00:37:45.120 to the impulsive pleasures of the moment.

00:37:47.500 And you know as a self-conscious being that you're going to have to bear the consequences

00:37:54.780 of your actions as they propagate across time.

00:37:57.480 And then it's the same with the others that you come into contact with.

00:38:02.200 Because you're communal, because you're social, that's the human mode of being,

00:38:06.440 you have to give up the fact that it's all about the local and narrow present-centered you.

00:38:13.740 That's the sacrifice.

00:38:15.060 So what does that mean?

00:38:15.740 Community is predicated on sacrifice.

00:38:19.540 All right.

00:38:19.920 So that implies that the central story of mankind is one of sacrifice.

00:38:26.280 Okay.

00:38:26.520 So now if you know that, you've got a fundamental key to understanding

00:38:31.260 the fundamental stories of our culture, the biblical stories,

00:38:35.800 because the biblical library is an examination of sacrifice.

00:38:40.100 Okay.

00:38:40.620 So now we're going to expand on that.

00:38:42.140 I want to make it very clear so that it's perfectly understandable.

00:38:45.760 We'll start with the story of Adam and Eve.

00:38:49.020 So Adam and Eve are the archetypal father and mother of us all.

00:38:52.920 They're, you could think about them as the pattern of masculinity and femininity as such.

00:38:58.240 It's something like that, speaking metaphorically.

00:39:01.560 So how is that to be understood?

00:39:05.360 Okay.

00:39:06.320 Imagine a movie again.

00:39:07.580 You know perfectly well that when you go see a movie, you don't just see a video camera

00:39:15.200 following someone around for two hours of their life, right?

00:39:20.400 You don't see them wake up and you don't watch them blink and you don't watch them make their bed.

00:39:26.020 You don't watch them go through the mundane things that make up day-to-day life.

00:39:30.900 You're not interested in that.

00:39:32.200 You're interested in an abstraction of their, of their mode of being.

00:39:38.600 You want the author, the writer, to present you with the drama of their life.

00:39:47.720 You want the character that's being portrayed to be a, an abstraction of those elements of

00:39:57.660 human aim and motivation that capture your interest, right?

00:40:02.380 So a fictional account is a distillation, right?

00:40:06.660 Which means that fiction, modern people, because we think that stories are entertainment,

00:40:12.340 we think that fiction is the opposite of fact.

00:40:14.860 And that's a foolish thing to think.

00:40:17.140 We know it's foolish because we know that works of great literature are true, right?

00:40:22.600 We know that crime and punishment is true.

00:40:24.500 We know that the Brothers Karamazov or war and peace is true.

00:40:28.820 Well, it's fictional.

00:40:29.900 It never happened.

00:40:30.720 So how can it be true?

00:40:31.740 And the answer is, well, it's a distillation of what's true, right?

00:40:36.480 A character like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, a character like the Joker in The Dark Knight

00:40:42.200 is a distillation of everything that's pathological, right?

00:40:45.780 Into one character.

00:40:47.060 Now, is that real?

00:40:48.420 Well, it's not real in that it is a videotaped representation of an actual sequence of events.

00:40:56.320 It's real in that it's a profound abstraction.

00:40:59.620 And you might say, well, abstractions aren't real.

00:41:01.540 It's like, really?

00:41:03.100 Words are abstractions?

00:41:04.820 Are they real?

00:41:05.880 How about numbers?

00:41:08.420 Numbers are abstractions?

00:41:10.760 There's lots of mathematicians who think that numbers are the most real thing.

00:41:16.200 Well, what does that mean?

00:41:17.360 Well, if you're a master of numbers, you master the world.

00:41:21.300 So how is that not real?

00:41:23.700 How is an abstraction and a distillation not real?

00:41:28.080 Fiction isn't the opposite of fact.

00:41:30.800 Fiction is hyper-real.

00:41:33.480 And the deeper the fiction, so to speak, the deeper the distillation, the more real it is.

00:41:39.100 And literature, great literature in particular, is very deep.

00:41:43.700 But mythology, religious accounts, religious stories are the deepest form of abstraction.

00:41:50.740 So they're the most true.

00:41:52.580 Now, they're the most true.

00:41:54.980 How does it mean that they help you specify your aim better than anything else?

00:41:58.880 There's a definition of true, like an arrow flying true, right?

00:42:02.500 Something that strikes right to the heart.

00:42:04.620 You get your story straight, you see the world in a true manner, right?

00:42:10.560 Adam and Eve are the distillation of what it means to be human.

00:42:14.340 That's a good way of thinking about it.

00:42:16.160 Adam, for example, is charged by God with the task of naming and subduing the world.

00:42:21.640 What is that a reference to?

00:42:23.360 The masculine proclivity to set things in a determinate order.

00:42:29.060 That's the what?

00:42:29.720 Would you say impetus towards the patriarchal hierarchy, right?

00:42:35.080 Even the feminists admit that the social order is a masculine construct.

00:42:41.780 Well, that's Adam's task.

00:42:43.380 He's to, God charges him with that after his creation.

00:42:47.660 To subdue and name the world.

00:42:51.320 What does it mean to subdue?

00:42:53.180 It means to give everything its proper due.

00:42:56.960 To put everything in its proper place, in the appropriate story.

00:43:02.320 That's the right way to think about it.

00:43:04.000 To give everything its name.

00:43:05.380 To specify the things of the world in a manner that allows, in Genesis 1,

00:43:11.060 the garden to be shepherded and stewarded properly.

00:43:15.100 That's Adam's job.

00:43:18.020 What's Eve's job?

00:43:20.000 Well, it's an equal job.

00:43:21.280 That's why she's taken from Adam's rib.

00:43:23.180 It's an equal job.

00:43:24.540 The word Eve means, in Hebrew, is ezer k'negdo.

00:43:28.380 What does that mean?

00:43:29.660 It means something like, I have to hit it from multiple perspectives to get it right.

00:43:34.440 It means something like, marshal partner in challenging play.

00:43:39.560 Marshal in the military sense.

00:43:43.540 Ezer means military ally.

00:43:45.580 That's one of its connotations.

00:43:48.420 Right?

00:43:48.600 So it's a relationship of strength.

00:43:51.200 It's a relationship of challenge.

00:43:53.780 What's optimized challenge?

00:43:56.440 How would you define optimized challenge?

00:43:58.780 Think about it this way.

00:43:59.920 Imagine you want to play one-on-one basketball.

00:44:02.200 And you want to win.

00:44:04.100 Okay, so you're six foot five and you have a nephew and he's like six.

00:44:08.580 And he's, you know, four feet tall.

00:44:11.140 And you think, he'll be a good partner because why?

00:44:14.720 Well, if I play one-on-one basketball with him, I'm going to win.

00:44:19.560 And of course, you want to be a winner.

00:44:20.780 So why not be six foot five and stomp the hell out of your nephew when you're playing

00:44:28.040 one-on-one basketball?

00:44:29.480 And you might say, well, that's not any fun.

00:44:32.720 And then I might say, well, you're trying to win and it's pretty much assured.

00:44:36.740 And you say, well, maybe I don't want an assured victory.

00:44:39.700 And that's why you get married.

00:44:47.080 I'm dead serious about that.

00:44:48.980 I'm dead serious about that.

00:44:50.780 You could imagine this.

00:44:53.040 Imagine that's love.

00:44:54.480 Imagine love as an instinct.

00:44:56.700 Okay, now you could imagine love as a divine,

00:45:00.040 a divine gift of grace.

00:45:05.200 It doesn't matter to me which of those two perspectives you adopt.

00:45:09.400 Imagine love as an instinct.

00:45:10.920 Well, what's the instinct?

00:45:13.040 It's the instinct to set yourself up with optimized challenge.

00:45:17.240 Why?

00:45:18.820 So you grow.

00:45:20.780 So your eye falls on someone and love emerges, right?

00:45:25.540 It's a calling to you.

00:45:27.480 It's not something you create.

00:45:28.580 It's something that appears to you.

00:45:31.080 What's the estimate that your instinct to love is attempting?

00:45:35.860 I can spar with this person in a manner that will make both of us grow.

00:45:43.080 That's what the love signifies, right?

00:45:45.820 And it's, as I said, you can think about it as an instinct.

00:45:48.620 You can think about it as a divine act of grace.

00:45:50.980 Because the two things converge.

00:45:53.120 It makes no difference to me whether it's a bottom-up phenomenon or a top-down phenomenon.

00:45:57.620 What does it mean to enjoy being with someone in the deepest sense?

00:46:05.860 You want a partner in play who's matched with you, right?

00:46:09.660 You don't want to be the six-foot-five bully who's winning every game because his opponent is not capable of pushing him or her to the limits of their ability.

00:46:22.820 Well, why do you want to be pushed to the limit of your ability?

00:46:25.540 So you improve.

00:46:27.920 Well, why improve?

00:46:30.080 Well, what's the alternative?

00:46:32.320 A dull stasis?

00:46:33.760 A dull, meaningless stasis?

00:46:36.000 Or a degeneration?

00:46:38.660 Insofar as pain and anxiety are real and hopelessness as well, those seem like unacceptable alternatives.

00:46:45.060 It's certainly not what you want for your children or for anyone you love.

00:46:48.140 What you'd hope for them is that they find an occupation.

00:46:54.140 They find an educational pathway.

00:46:55.760 They find a partner that puts them on the edge of their development so they can dance on the edge, so that they can continue to unfold, so that they can be better for themselves, so they can be better for the future, and so they can be better for everyone else.

00:47:12.220 And maybe that optimized challenge that love indexes is the voice of the spirit that calls you to that continued pattern of adaptation.

00:47:27.560 That's Eve partnered with Adam.

00:47:30.160 What's Eve's role?

00:47:33.340 Well, we kind of know what the female role is.

00:47:36.160 We could speak biologically again, the feminine role.

00:47:39.660 Women are more sensitive to negative emotion on average than men.

00:47:44.860 That's a cross-culturally validated finding.

00:47:46.960 It's very well established.

00:47:48.520 It goes along with the female, increased female propensity for depression and anxiety.

00:47:54.120 Men have their problems, don't get me wrong.

00:47:56.200 They're much more likely to be antisocial.

00:47:57.960 Well, there's all sorts of sex-type pathologies.

00:48:01.780 I'm not trying to single women out, not in the least.

00:48:05.260 There's no reason to assume that ability and proclivity for catastrophe are anything but equally distributed between the two sexes, right?

00:48:16.080 We, speaking biologically, we co-evolved.

00:48:20.420 There's no reason to assume that the relationship isn't one of radical equality, for better or worse.

00:48:26.220 Women are also more agreeable.

00:48:29.520 What does that mean?

00:48:31.020 They're more instinctively empathic.

00:48:35.040 Well, why would women be more sensitive to negative emotion and more instinctively empathic?

00:48:41.180 Well, let's start with negative emotion.

00:48:43.600 Boys and girls don't differ much in their general patterns of negative emotion.

00:48:48.400 The differences emerge at puberty.

00:48:50.000 Well, why would women become more sensitive to negative emotion at puberty?

00:48:55.560 Well, see if you can figure it out.

00:48:57.880 Well, here's a couple of reasons.

00:49:01.100 Sexual dimorphism in strength emerges more profoundly at puberty.

00:49:05.260 So men have much more upper body strength.

00:49:09.620 They're more physically, they're more capable of physical domination in dispute.

00:49:16.480 Women are very, they're very good at long distance endurance sports.

00:49:22.460 They're very resilient.

00:49:23.960 But as fighters, they lose.

00:49:29.580 So what does that imply in terms of sensitivity to threat?

00:49:35.280 Well, the world's a more dangerous place for women.

00:49:39.320 Why else?

00:49:40.180 Well, they're sexually vulnerable in a way that men aren't.

00:49:42.600 And that makes itself present, obviously, at puberty.

00:49:46.720 Why are they more sexually vulnerable?

00:49:48.780 Here's the definition of a woman.

00:49:50.720 I don't know if that's what you came here for tonight.

00:49:52.800 You know the Matt Walsh movie, What is a Woman?

00:49:56.460 Well, I'll tell you.

00:49:57.600 We know the answer to that.

00:50:03.140 It isn't chromosomal, even biologically.

00:50:06.120 Now, chromosome differentiation is a very powerful marker of sex.

00:50:11.540 But it's not the fundamental distinction.

00:50:13.660 The fundamental biological distinction between male and female is quite clear.

00:50:17.380 Females are the sex that contribute more to reproduction.

00:50:21.120 So, for example, the egg is 10 million times the volume of the sperm.

00:50:25.580 And so, right at that level, the initial level of conception, the female is already doing, the female is already making the larger sacrifice.

00:50:35.740 So there's the definition of a woman.

00:50:37.620 A woman is the sex who makes the larger sacrifice for reproduction.

00:50:42.620 Now, you have to be a fool to dispute that, obviously.

00:50:48.120 Women carry babies.

00:50:50.040 They're pregnant.

00:50:50.760 And they take primary responsibility for infants when they're in their most dependent state.

00:50:56.180 That puts them at a disadvantage.

00:51:00.460 Socioeconomically, it's very much, it's difficult.

00:51:03.420 Differentially difficult for women to maneuver in the world when they're pregnant or when they have dependent infants.

00:51:10.340 So what does that mean with regards to mate choice?

00:51:13.160 It means that they look for men who are capable of keeping the predators who might prey on infants and them at bay productive and generous.

00:51:23.780 And so, women look for markers of social status to index attractiveness.

00:51:30.580 Why?

00:51:31.380 Because they outsource the problem of who's the better man to the men.

00:51:35.780 And they let them compete and they peel from the top.

00:51:39.260 And it's a brilliant strategy.

00:51:42.120 So, why do women reject men?

00:51:45.860 Well, I just told you why.

00:51:49.540 And so, that might be very irritating.

00:51:52.660 If you're rejected, it is very irritating.

00:51:56.640 There's probably nothing worse, in a sense.

00:51:58.940 But, like, how in the world could it be any different?

00:52:01.780 Because the stakes are high.

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00:52:45.900 So, women are more sensitive to negative emotion and they're more empathic and agreeable.

00:52:53.860 What does that mean?

00:52:55.760 Why is that?

00:52:56.780 Well, we talked about some of the reasons.

00:52:58.920 Why else?

00:52:59.700 Because they have to care for dependent infants.

00:53:02.400 So, here's the rule for caring for an infant up to about 7 months old.

00:53:05.980 Whatever the infant wants, goes.

00:53:09.160 Right?

00:53:10.160 An infant in distress is never wrong.

00:53:13.660 Now, you can't say that about a creature of any other age.

00:53:16.820 Right?

00:53:17.020 Once children are capable of moving, crawling even, they're not entirely dependent.

00:53:23.560 And every single demand for gratification they make manifest does not have to be met with immediate, what would you say?

00:53:36.700 Does not have to be addressed immediately at the cost of everything.

00:53:40.280 It's not the case with infants 6 months and lower.

00:53:44.020 Whatever they need and want now, that's what's to be provided.

00:53:47.620 Right?

00:53:48.460 And so, women are tilted towards that kind of care.

00:53:54.120 Okay.

00:53:55.000 What does that mean in the biblical context?

00:53:58.540 Adam's role is to name and subdue.

00:54:02.380 To establish order.

00:54:06.120 What's the problem with establishing order?

00:54:09.000 You might leave something out.

00:54:10.620 Women are the voice of that which is being left out.

00:54:18.360 What does that mean?

00:54:19.700 Well, you know what it means.

00:54:21.320 If you've had a family, if you're in a marriage,

00:54:25.300 women bring the attention of men to the concerns of the vulnerable.

00:54:31.320 And, you know, if you have a family and you have two kids and then you have a third baby,

00:54:37.900 the family's already settled into a kind of stable order, let's say.

00:54:42.500 But now you have this new infant and it's a completely new creature and it's got a new temperament.

00:54:46.940 God only knows what it's up to.

00:54:48.700 It's an extremely complicated creature.

00:54:51.460 And there has to be adjustments made to the structure of order so that that child can find its place.

00:54:58.720 And the women are in contact with that and their emotional makeup and perceptual structure,

00:55:07.180 they're better at decoding nonverbal behavior, for example, than men are.

00:55:11.380 That enables them to speak for the marginalized.

00:55:17.660 Right.

00:55:19.100 That accounts in large part for the political divide between men and women that you can see growing.

00:55:26.900 What's the sin of women?

00:55:28.720 Amongst the marginalized are the serpentine.

00:55:36.340 Right.

00:55:37.760 Not everybody who cries victim is an infant.

00:55:42.780 Some of the creatures that cry victim are monsters.

00:55:46.660 And you shouldn't clutch them to your breast.

00:55:50.400 That's what Eve does with the snake.

00:55:53.400 She clutches the serpentine to her breast.

00:55:56.400 Why?

00:55:56.760 To announce to herself the supreme power of her compassion.

00:56:05.380 Right.

00:56:06.380 That's the pattern.

00:56:07.620 That's the eternal pattern of female sin as laid out in the second story in the biblical corpus.

00:56:15.100 What's the sin of man?

00:56:16.620 What's the sin of man, Adam?

00:56:18.400 Because he falls immediately after Eve.

00:56:20.940 Eve hearkens to the voice of the serpent, who is the immediate manifestation of the Luciferian spirit of the usurper and the deceiver.

00:56:32.240 That's the mythological structure.

00:56:34.240 That's the mythological structure.

00:56:35.520 What does that mean?

00:56:37.860 Psychopaths use victim status to gain what they want.

00:56:42.480 Right.

00:56:43.340 And prideful, compassionate fools fall for it.

00:56:47.220 Why?

00:56:47.940 To elevate their compassion to the highest place.

00:56:51.620 Not a wise move.

00:56:54.180 What's Adam's sin?

00:56:57.480 What do men want?

00:57:00.120 They want to impress women.

00:57:03.260 I worked with lawyers for years.

00:57:05.480 You know, high-end lawyers.

00:57:06.940 People who ran law firms or who are partners of senior law firms.

00:57:10.180 And they made a lot of money.

00:57:11.900 A thousand dollars an hour.

00:57:13.180 A lot of money.

00:57:13.760 Why were they interested in the money?

00:57:18.500 Well, there are materialistic reasons for being interested in money.

00:57:21.660 We don't have to cover them.

00:57:23.120 But most of them regarded the money, especially their bonuses, as, what did they say?

00:57:28.380 That's how we keep score.

00:57:30.420 What did that mean?

00:57:31.440 Well, that was how the men rank-ordered themselves in the status hierarchy within the firms.

00:57:35.800 And that's very common among men.

00:57:37.420 They're rank-ordering status all the time.

00:57:39.980 Why?

00:57:40.700 Because women peel from the top.

00:57:42.560 The biggest predictor of a woman's attractiveness to a man's attractiveness to a woman cross-culturally

00:57:50.200 is his comparative status among other men.

00:57:53.200 It's a walloping predictor.

00:57:56.060 It's by far the biggest contributor.

00:57:58.960 And we said, why?

00:58:00.200 Well, why?

00:58:01.000 Well, because a woman doesn't need another infant.

00:58:04.060 Right?

00:58:04.660 She needs someone who can help.

00:58:06.280 And how does she find out?

00:58:07.620 Well, she sees who wins the contest among men.

00:58:10.740 And she assumes that the winner is the winner.

00:58:15.520 And so why not have him?

00:58:17.180 And it's a perfectly reasonable way of conducting an analysis.

00:58:21.540 It can be gamed.

00:58:22.540 But that's a different story.

00:58:26.740 So what's Adam's sin?

00:58:29.700 He tries to impress Eve.

00:58:32.820 So when she comes to him announcing her new relationship with the serpentine, he says,

00:58:41.320 no problem, dear, whatever you want.

00:58:43.160 And fails to establish the proper borders of order.

00:58:49.120 What happens?

00:58:50.200 That's the fall of mankind.

00:58:51.980 Okay, so what does that mean?

00:58:53.100 It's a very complicated idea.

00:58:54.980 There's a Christian idea, deep Christian idea, that suffering is the consequence of sin.

00:59:01.140 And that the worst sin, let's say, is the sin of pride.

00:59:04.300 Adam and Eve both fall prey to the sin of pride.

00:59:06.680 In the feminine way and the masculine way.

00:59:09.880 Adam says, I got this, baby.

00:59:12.500 And Eve says, we can even clutch the serpent to our breasts.

00:59:16.660 Right, right.

00:59:17.780 That's their typical forms of pathology.

00:59:21.780 What happens to people who bite off more than they can chew?

00:59:25.740 What happens to people who attempt to incorporate and digest the inedible?

00:59:30.620 They fall.

00:59:32.240 That's what happens to Adam and Eve.

00:59:34.020 Pride comes before a fall.

00:59:36.700 Okay, so what does that have to do with suffering?

00:59:39.820 That's a complicated question, right?

00:59:41.520 Because you might think, and rightly so, you know, that suffering itself seems to be built

00:59:46.280 into the structure of the world, right?

00:59:47.800 I mean, we're fragile.

00:59:49.900 We can be hurt.

00:59:50.780 Our children are hurt.

00:59:51.700 They stumble.

00:59:52.420 They scrape their knees.

00:59:53.560 They break their arms and legs.

00:59:56.340 They develop terrible diseases like we all do.

00:59:59.000 There seems to be an element of suffering and vulnerability built into the world.

01:00:04.560 What else causes suffering?

01:00:06.280 Biting off more than you can chew, right?

01:00:09.840 So you imagine how many times you're struggling forward in disenchanted misery because you've fallen away from what you should pursue,

01:00:23.540 because you've falsely aggrandized yourself or taken on a task, claimed to be able to take on a task or to have a skill that you don't possess.

01:00:37.180 Setting yourself up for a fall, what's the consequence of that misery?

01:00:44.520 How much of the misery of the world is that?

01:00:47.440 That's a real interesting question, you know?

01:00:49.720 We actually don't know, right?

01:00:52.640 We've established, let's say, in the course of this dialogue, that there's a certain amount of suffering that's a mere consequence of the structure of the world, the arbitrary nature of reality.

01:01:02.900 Now, the sort of random distribution of vulnerability and illness.

01:01:06.700 But by the same token, man, you can do a lot of stupid things to make your life worse.

01:01:11.900 And so you've got to ask yourself, if you stop doing those stupid things and you aimed in the proper direction, how much of the suffering that's attendant on life would vanish?

01:01:21.380 And the answer is, well, quite a lot, because you know that when you're doing your best, when you have your act together, when you're not pridefully overreaching,

01:01:29.920 when you're not overextending yourself, when you're not acting falsely, when you're not trying to usurp and claim what's not yours,

01:01:36.860 when you're not trying to be the pinnacle of the moral order, let's say, life's a lot better.

01:01:43.380 And then it's an open question.

01:01:45.020 Well, how much better would it be if you were really good at that?

01:01:47.840 And then there's another question, which would be, how much better would life be in total if everyone was doing that?

01:01:53.960 Right?

01:01:54.200 If everyone was walking with God in the garden instead of taking to themselves the right to define the moral order,

01:02:01.360 how much suffering would vanish?

01:02:04.360 All of it?

01:02:07.880 It's hard for me to see how all suffering could vanish given our mortal constraints.

01:02:12.960 But you can sure take a bad situation and make it worse with stupidity.

01:02:20.860 So, the Christian insistence that suffering enters the world with sin,

01:02:28.680 maybe it's more the suffering that makes the world unbearable enters the world with sin.

01:02:36.840 Right?

01:02:37.740 Because there's nothing more effortful than the work you have to do to dig yourself out of the hole that you dug and fell in.

01:02:48.220 And you see, this is sort of what happens to Adam and Eve in the immediate aftermath of the fall.

01:02:53.340 Because God tells Eve that she's going to suffer in life.

01:02:58.740 She's going to suffer in consequence of her children's dependence on her and her role as the primary contributor to reproduction.

01:03:09.200 And she's going to suffer under the dominion of her husband.

01:03:13.980 Why?

01:03:14.980 Well, they're both fallen creatures.

01:03:16.900 Why would women suffer under the dominion of their husbands?

01:03:20.080 This isn't something God says should happen.

01:03:23.580 Right?

01:03:24.260 It's not a definition of the moral order.

01:03:26.400 It's a definition of the fallen moral order.

01:03:30.540 Women are attracted to high status men.

01:03:33.720 The degree to which a woman is attracted to a man is proportionate to his comparative status.

01:03:39.420 Women are attracted to men whose status exceeds their own.

01:03:43.980 What's the implication of that?

01:03:46.020 They're going to be under the dominion of their husband.

01:03:49.980 If the husband is fallen, then they're going to be under the dominion of his tyranny.

01:03:54.940 Right?

01:03:55.260 So that's the definition of the fallen world for women.

01:03:58.080 What's the definition of the fallen world for men?

01:04:00.800 Well, God says, you're going to have to toil in the fields and it will bring forth thorns and thistles.

01:04:08.720 You'll make your way forward effortfully.

01:04:12.260 And you'll return to the dust from which you emerged.

01:04:16.720 When is work toilsome and effortful?

01:04:19.500 It's particularly toilsome and effortful when you're digging yourself out of the hole that you dug and fell in.

01:04:30.300 Well, you can understand this.

01:04:32.120 You know, there are times in your life where you're putting a lot of effort into something.

01:04:35.980 It's not exactly work.

01:04:38.100 Right?

01:04:38.400 You're highly motivated to do it.

01:04:40.180 Well, why?

01:04:40.640 Because it called to you because you're certain that you're engaging in a, that you're aiming at something that is morally valid, let's say.

01:04:52.360 That your conscience isn't going to upbraid you for.

01:04:54.640 That's intrinsically interesting.

01:04:56.000 If you're engaged in work that isn't the result of sin, so to speak, then is it toil or is it play?

01:05:07.340 And you could ask yourself, you know, when your life is optimized and you're doing something that is in the nature of your true calling,

01:05:14.620 when you're walking with God in the garden, when you've reestablished that relationship,

01:05:19.440 then the sacrifices that you have to make to move forward aren't painful.

01:05:28.320 And you understand that because you can see that at the best moments of your life,

01:05:35.640 you work, but in harmony with things and not in contradiction to them.

01:05:42.660 And that working in harmony, there's a tremendous pleasure in that.

01:05:47.600 Children's play is effortful.

01:05:49.180 If they're really playing hard, they're on the edge of their developmental ability, right?

01:05:53.180 They're stretching themselves.

01:05:54.320 But there's nothing about that that isn't joyful.

01:05:58.760 And so there's an insistence, an implicit insistence in the story of Adam and Eve that

01:06:04.500 work aimed properly would be play and play in the eternal garden.

01:06:10.480 And so one of the things you might want to ask yourself is that if your toil is not play,

01:06:16.500 how wrong is your aim?

01:06:19.140 And then the next question is, well, what should you aim for?

01:06:23.100 All right.

01:06:24.320 The biblical library does what it can to answer that question too.

01:06:31.120 What should you aim for?

01:06:32.920 God is characterized in the biblical stories as the source of the ultimate aim.

01:06:38.920 That's a good way of thinking about it.

01:06:40.500 So imagine that there are things in your life that interest you and compel you and pull you forward.

01:06:45.480 They call to you.

01:06:47.140 Now imagine that as you mature, what interests and calls to you and pulls you forward changes,

01:06:52.600 right?

01:06:53.080 But the fact that something interests you and calls to you and motivates your transformation,

01:06:59.440 that doesn't change.

01:07:01.200 God is defined in the Old Testament corpus as the spirit behind all transformational aims.

01:07:09.560 So you can imagine that the thing that beckons to you and calls you to develop and mature further

01:07:17.860 varies in its specific manifestations, depending on your time and your place and your temperament,

01:07:24.080 but that there's something behind that that shines through all of those things that beckon and call and fill you with enthusiasm.

01:07:32.880 And that's the deity at the pinnacle of Jacob's ladder, which is the never-ending spiral of upward aim.

01:07:43.340 That's a definition.

01:07:44.980 And that people are called upon to exist in relationship to that spirit.

01:07:50.480 That's the covenant between man and God.

01:07:54.000 How is that spirit characterized?

01:07:55.840 In Genesis, God, the source of ultimate aim, or the target of ultimate aim, is characterized as the spirit that broods upon the primeval water.

01:08:15.620 That's the opening part of Genesis.

01:08:17.580 What does that mean?

01:08:18.580 Well, there's no water yet in creation.

01:08:21.260 That comes later.

01:08:22.400 What's the water?

01:08:23.200 The Hebrew is tohu vabohu, and it doesn't exactly mean water.

01:08:29.580 It means something like potential or possibility or chaos.

01:08:37.780 God is the spirit that extracts the habitable order that is good out of a preexistent potential or chaos.

01:08:49.820 And human beings are made in that image.

01:08:51.680 What does that mean?

01:08:53.680 This is what you do in your life.

01:08:58.260 What do you perceive when you wake up in the morning?

01:09:01.480 Well, you think, well, I perceive my bed.

01:09:03.420 I perceive my carpet.

01:09:04.580 I perceive my curtains.

01:09:07.740 That just shows how materialistic you are in your conceptualizations.

01:09:12.580 Because that's not what you perceive.

01:09:14.260 What you perceive is the possibility that's making itself available to you for the day, right?

01:09:22.940 Think about how you wake up.

01:09:24.580 Well, first of all, you're asleep.

01:09:25.800 You're unconscious.

01:09:26.480 There's nothing happening then.

01:09:27.940 Poof!

01:09:28.960 Daylight.

01:09:29.720 You're awake.

01:09:31.200 You're awake.

01:09:32.060 And what are you contending with?

01:09:33.040 Maybe you're terrified.

01:09:34.580 Why?

01:09:34.980 You're terrified by all the potential left over that you haven't realized because you've been offering inappropriate sacrifices at your job.

01:09:44.780 That's what that means.

01:09:46.460 Or maybe you wake up enthusiastic and optimistic and you can see that there's many things that exist in possibility for you that you could wrestle into the order that's good, right?

01:10:00.140 And so then you can leap out of bed enthusiastically and begin to, to what?

01:10:05.940 Subdue and order the world, right?

01:10:09.220 And that's the nature of consciousness itself.

01:10:12.500 Like consciousness itself, which is being as far as human beings are concerned, because what is non-conscious being?

01:10:20.480 It's the spirit that grapples with the possibility of the world.

01:10:27.140 Is the possibility real?

01:10:28.420 Well, can you do one thing or another?

01:10:32.020 Can you do one thing or five other things?

01:10:34.640 Do you have choice?

01:10:37.020 Well, you treat everybody like they have choice.

01:10:39.080 You treat people like they have responsible choice.

01:10:41.040 You assume that on your own account.

01:10:42.800 It appears to you that you have that ability to go this way or that way.

01:10:48.160 In what?

01:10:49.460 In the realm of potential.

01:10:50.880 Well, that's what, that's why human beings are made in the image of God.

01:10:54.380 Well, that's why that's an accurate representation is we're doing the same thing at the local level that the spirit that gives rise to everything is deemed to have done at the beginning of time and to be continually doing.

01:11:07.320 Right.

01:11:07.800 We have something to do.

01:11:08.920 What?

01:11:11.620 Transform possibility into actuality.

01:11:14.140 In what manner?

01:11:15.540 How about in the manner that aims up?

01:11:18.540 We're transforming chaotic potential with our aim to what?

01:11:24.800 To establish the kingdom of heaven.

01:11:26.520 Or what?

01:11:27.360 It's alternative?

01:11:28.340 Hell?

01:11:28.940 We've done that plenty, especially in the 20th century, by aiming down, by lying, by being prideful, by being usurpers of the moral order.

01:11:39.760 That's a communist ideologue in a nutshell.

01:11:42.920 And what did they produce with their downward aiming, wrestling with potential?

01:11:48.120 Hell.

01:11:49.260 Is it real?

01:11:50.160 Well, wait till you get there and you'll find out.

01:11:55.800 And maybe you've had a few side trips already.

01:11:59.320 Right.

01:11:59.780 It's as real as pain and suffering.

01:12:02.320 It's as real as pointless pain and suffering.

01:12:05.780 Right.

01:12:06.220 It's as real as self-inflicted pointless pain and suffering.

01:12:09.880 Or maybe it's as real as the pointless pain and suffering that you inflict with your carelessness and your deception and your pride, even on the people you love.

01:12:18.920 That's a good definition of hell.

01:12:21.340 Is that real?

01:12:23.020 You can just ask yourself that question.

01:12:25.320 Everybody knows the answer to that question.

01:12:27.740 Is the alternative real, the upward aim?

01:12:31.340 All of the great heroes of the Old Testament, they sacrifice themselves to the good.

01:12:38.540 That's what they're doing when they're building altars.

01:12:40.760 So I want to tell you that story because this is very useful to know.

01:12:44.120 I said the entire biblical library is an investigation into sacrifice.

01:12:48.920 This really becomes clear in the story of Cain and Abel.

01:12:52.540 Now, Adam and Eve are fated to work.

01:12:56.820 Okay, so let's make an equation here so that everybody understands what's going on.

01:13:00.880 There's no difference between work and sacrifice.

01:13:06.340 So that's a key to understanding the biblical text.

01:13:09.960 Why?

01:13:10.760 Well, what the hell do you think you're doing when you're working?

01:13:12.920 You're sacrificing the present to the future.

01:13:15.140 Or you're sacrificing your immediate wants to the community.

01:13:19.380 It's a sacrificial gesture, right?

01:13:21.320 Work.

01:13:22.180 It's the definition of work.

01:13:23.900 You're giving up something now.

01:13:25.680 You're offering something now to what?

01:13:30.400 To stabilize the community in the future, including your future self.

01:13:36.120 It's a sacrificial gesture.

01:13:37.900 Work is sacrifice.

01:13:39.660 Okay, so once you know that, you can understand, let's say, the story of Cain and Abel,

01:13:44.400 which is the story that I'll close with.

01:13:45.960 Cain and Abel are the first two human beings in the fallen world.

01:13:53.660 So in the actual world, in the world of history, in the world we occupy.

01:13:57.100 They're born and not made by God.

01:13:59.500 And they represent two patterns of sacrifice.

01:14:02.620 The two patterns of sacrifice that characterize culture and psyche, individual and community.

01:14:09.680 The fundamental patterns, just like Adam and Eve are the fundamental patterns of masculinity

01:14:13.240 and femininity, Cain and Abel, the hostile brothers, are the twin patterns of sacrifice

01:14:18.720 or work that characterize the human approach to reality.

01:14:22.780 Abel, who's Abel?

01:14:24.300 Abel aims up.

01:14:25.960 He makes the sacrifices that are of the highest quality.

01:14:29.780 Abel is a herder, and he takes the best animals, and he butchers them, and he takes the best cut,

01:14:38.320 and he takes the best pieces of that, and he immolates it on an altar.

01:14:43.240 Because he wants to dramatize, because that's what he's doing, playing out the idea that

01:14:49.160 the best is what will satisfy the spirit of the cosmic order.

01:14:55.700 Do you believe that?

01:14:56.800 Well, you either believe that or the opposite.

01:14:58.820 Those are your options.

01:14:59.860 There's a no non-belief option here.

01:15:03.180 You believe one thing or another.

01:15:05.600 If you offer your best, will you be accepted?

01:15:09.140 Because that's God's pronouncement to Cain.

01:15:11.920 Cain takes the opposite stance.

01:15:14.600 He offers what's second best, and it doesn't work.

01:15:21.020 Well, is that true?

01:15:22.780 Well, how often have you offered anything but your best and had it work?

01:15:28.760 And then you might think, well, why would you even think it could work?

01:15:31.120 Because life is very difficult.

01:15:32.580 It's very difficult.

01:15:33.500 And if you're going to make a success out of it, or something that isn't an absolute hell,

01:15:37.500 it's fairly probable that you're going to have to bring your best to the table.

01:15:41.180 Because, like, you think, who do you think you are?

01:15:43.700 You think you're the sort of person who can defy the structure of reality itself?

01:15:48.400 That you can fool yourself and other people and the natural order and God by offering what's

01:15:54.880 second rate and succeeding?

01:15:57.120 That's your theory.

01:15:58.340 That's not a wise theory.

01:15:59.880 Not in the face of the difficulties of life.

01:16:02.740 That's Cain's theory.

01:16:04.000 That's what he tries to do.

01:16:05.360 And what happens to him?

01:16:06.540 It says in the text, his countenance falls.

01:16:09.400 What does that mean?

01:16:10.740 He's bitter, resentful, miserable, unhappy, and vengeful.

01:16:15.940 Well, why?

01:16:16.880 Well, because he's being rejected.

01:16:19.220 Well, why is he being rejected?

01:16:21.240 Because he's not bringing his best to the table.

01:16:23.920 And so, what does Cain do?

01:16:25.840 Well, he doesn't do what Abel does.

01:16:27.360 Because Abel always aims up, right?

01:16:31.000 He makes the sacrifices that are acceptable to God.

01:16:34.800 That's his story.

01:16:36.040 Because he brings what's of the highest quality to the table.

01:16:40.040 Cain doesn't.

01:16:41.100 Cain fails, is bitter, miserable, and resentful.

01:16:46.700 And what does he do?

01:16:49.480 Well, he doesn't admit it.

01:16:51.040 Because he's not Abel.

01:16:53.360 He calls out God.

01:16:55.180 And so, he has a little chat with God, just like we all do when we're bitter and failing.

01:17:00.620 How did you make this world where I'm breaking myself in half?

01:17:05.720 And all that's happening is I'm failing.

01:17:08.320 And my brother, Abel, the sun shines on him.

01:17:11.280 Everything he does touches to gold.

01:17:14.000 What the hell's wrong with the moral order?

01:17:16.320 What's wrong with the spirit who created existence itself?

01:17:19.820 That's Cain's challenge to God.

01:17:21.620 God, it's a hell of a thing to think about failure as a consequence of second-rate effort.

01:17:28.840 It's like, well, I'm failing because God made the world wrong.

01:17:33.660 There isn't a more prideful presumption than that.

01:17:37.060 And it doesn't really work on God.

01:17:38.840 And God says to Cain,

01:17:40.160 If you did well, you'd be accepted.

01:17:43.780 And what does that mean?

01:17:44.780 It means if you brought absolutely everything you had to bear on the circumstances at hand,

01:17:50.260 and you left nothing behind,

01:17:52.600 if you were willing to sacrifice everything necessary,

01:17:56.680 you could have what you needed and wanted.

01:17:58.880 But nothing short of that will suffice.

01:18:02.900 Right?

01:18:03.040 This is why Christ in the Gospels calls upon his followers

01:18:06.920 to abandon even their brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers

01:18:10.880 if they're going to walk uphill.

01:18:13.520 This is why Abraham is called upon to sacrifice Isaac to God.

01:18:17.700 It's like everything is to be sacrificed to the upward aim.

01:18:21.860 And that's what God insists upon.

01:18:23.600 And he's characterized as the spirit that makes that insistence.

01:18:27.420 And we're characterized in relationship to that spirit.

01:18:34.740 And God says something else,

01:18:36.760 which doesn't make Cain the least bit happy.

01:18:39.840 Cain believes that the reason he's bitter and resentful,

01:18:43.140 miserable and vengeful,

01:18:44.880 and cursing God and shaking his fist at the sky in this prideful manner

01:18:48.600 is because he's failing.

01:18:52.000 And God says,

01:18:53.120 That's not why you're miserable, buddy.

01:18:55.660 There's an intervening variable.

01:18:57.120 He doesn't say that because God's not a scientist.

01:18:59.840 There's an intervening variable you're not taking into account.

01:19:02.660 What does he say to Cain?

01:19:03.860 He said,

01:19:06.020 Sin crouches at your door like a sexually aroused predatory animal

01:19:10.120 and you invited it in to have its way with you.

01:19:13.440 And so what does that mean?

01:19:15.080 It's brilliant.

01:19:15.920 It's so condensed.

01:19:17.020 It's so brilliant.

01:19:18.000 It's the most accurate bit of psychology of resentment I've ever seen.

01:19:23.000 What does it mean?

01:19:24.580 You fail.

01:19:25.780 Okay.

01:19:27.120 The causal consequence.

01:19:29.200 You're bitter.

01:19:29.840 Well, no.

01:19:30.760 One of the causal consequences could be you could wake the hell up

01:19:33.680 and start doing better and repent and confess

01:19:37.100 and get your act together and atone and move on, right?

01:19:40.220 And learn.

01:19:40.940 That's causal too.

01:19:42.840 You can't blame your resentment, misery on your suffering.

01:19:46.900 There's an intervening spirit.

01:19:49.440 What's that?

01:19:49.980 The spirit of sin that crouches at your door.

01:19:53.420 A predator.

01:19:55.280 A sexually aroused predator.

01:19:57.520 Why that?

01:19:58.820 Well, because it wants to f*** you.

01:20:01.580 I'm dead serious about that.

01:20:03.500 It's a very ancient metaphor.

01:20:05.100 That metaphor of, what would you say?

01:20:09.100 The seminal quality of evil.

01:20:11.580 What's evil?

01:20:12.460 It's something you invite in, right?

01:20:14.600 It's something that you creatively engage with.

01:20:20.800 That's the sexual metaphor.

01:20:22.320 It's something you brood on.

01:20:24.120 It's something you allow to inhabit you.

01:20:25.960 It's something that possesses you.

01:20:28.040 The terrible people who do terrible things,

01:20:30.320 the people who shoot up high schools,

01:20:32.300 it's like 2,000 hours of fantasizing before they pull the trigger.

01:20:35.960 And what's that a result of?

01:20:39.360 Bitterness and resentment.

01:20:41.380 But that's not all.

01:20:42.740 It's the invitation of something in to take possession of them.

01:20:46.720 And so that's what God accuses Cain of.

01:20:50.640 And that makes him extremely unhappy, as you might imagine.

01:20:57.000 You're miserable because you're not making the right sacrifices.

01:21:00.900 You're resentful because you are invited in the spirit of sin itself.

01:21:05.200 It's all to be laid at your feet.

01:21:07.740 The last thing Cain wants to hear,

01:21:10.620 the most corrective possible piece of advice,

01:21:13.740 which he instantly rejects, what does he do?

01:21:16.680 He kills Abel.

01:21:18.520 What does it mean?

01:21:19.860 If you're resentful enough and you're vengeful enough,

01:21:23.060 you'll destroy your own ideal, right?

01:21:25.900 You'll destroy everything.

01:21:27.180 Why?

01:21:29.480 To attain revenge on the source of your suffering, right?

01:21:33.860 To foment bloody rebellion against God.

01:21:37.460 That's what Cain does.

01:21:38.820 That's what the spirit of bitterness forever does.

01:21:42.840 Cain makes the wrong sacrifices.

01:21:45.380 He sacrifices the ideal itself to his own pride.

01:21:49.540 And then he tells God,

01:21:51.000 my sin is greater than I can bear.

01:21:53.300 Well, why?

01:21:54.600 Destroy your ideal?

01:21:55.580 Well, as a consequence of bitterness,

01:21:57.840 you've got nowhere to go.

01:22:00.720 Cain is destined to wander the land of Nod.

01:22:05.260 Where's that?

01:22:06.220 That's where children go when they're asleep.

01:22:09.460 Sin badly enough,

01:22:10.820 you'll take escape in unconsciousness.

01:22:12.860 Why does Cain wander?

01:22:17.120 Because he's a bitter psychopath

01:22:19.080 and no one wants to be near him.

01:22:22.200 And so he takes the pathway of the itinerant vagrant

01:22:25.520 who's so pathological in his orientation

01:22:29.560 that anyone decent will step away from him.

01:22:34.400 What's the consequence of Cain's failure to sacrifice?

01:22:37.600 His descendants are worse.

01:22:44.420 His descendants are the first worshippers of technology.

01:22:50.260 They're the first vengeful, tit-for-tat, genocidal agents.

01:22:57.540 Lamech, one of Cain's descendants,

01:23:02.540 says, you kill Cain and you offend Cain and you die.

01:23:07.340 You offend me, seven or 70 die.

01:23:10.840 What does it mean?

01:23:12.220 The pattern of resentful bitterness that characterizes Cain

01:23:16.900 can make itself manifest in the broader community

01:23:20.460 and turn everything into a genocidal nightmare.

01:23:24.740 Right?

01:23:25.280 What follows?

01:23:28.220 The flood.

01:23:30.280 Right?

01:23:31.080 The flood that washes away Cain's descendants.

01:23:36.120 Right?

01:23:37.360 Sacrifice.

01:23:38.060 That's the essence of adaptation.

01:23:40.500 That's the essence of maturation.

01:23:42.940 It's the fundament upon which the community is predicated.

01:23:46.620 I'll end with this.

01:23:48.980 For 2,000 years,

01:23:50.960 we've put a symbol at the center of our culture.

01:23:54.860 Right?

01:23:55.760 Insofar as our culture is a Christian.

01:23:57.400 And by the center, I mean literally the center.

01:24:01.560 The cathedral at the center of the town or city.

01:24:04.620 The altar at the center of the cathedral.

01:24:07.340 The crucifix at the center of the altar.

01:24:10.420 Why?

01:24:10.680 Because it's a symbol of the ultimate sacrifice.

01:24:15.020 Right?

01:24:15.860 The full sacrifice of self in service of future, others, community, and God.

01:24:26.660 Is that the principle upon which the community is founded?

01:24:30.160 The principle upon which the community is founded is sacrifice.

01:24:35.080 What's the ultimate sacrifice?

01:24:37.720 What's the sacrifice of everything to what's good?

01:24:41.120 Right?

01:24:41.620 That's the fundamental story of Judeo-Christian culture.

01:24:49.120 Is it true?

01:24:52.160 Try making your life.

01:24:54.700 Try walking through your life successfully.

01:24:58.920 Without making the proper sacrifices upward.

01:25:02.180 And find out whether or not it's true.

01:25:07.220 All right, everyone.

01:25:08.560 Thank you very much.

01:25:11.620 Thank you very much.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - June 16, 2025

Jordan Peterson Live on Tour： The Hidden Key to a Fulfilling Life

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