In this episode, Dr. Jordan Peterson and Stephen Blackwood discuss Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago and the importance of the inflection point as a cultural moment in human history. Dr. Peterson and Dr. Blackwood also discuss the legacy of the Soviet dissident and communist writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn, and the role that his work played in shaping our understanding of the Cold War era and the legacy he left behind. This episode is brought to you by Energize, a new podcast by ZeroZero Media's Blue Circle Studio, and presented by Enbridge. To support this podcast, you can make a donation at Donations.org/Energize or by following the link in the description. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers and use the promo code POWER10 at checkout to receive 10% off your first order of $10 or more. Thanks to our sponsor, Enbridge, for making this podcast possible! The Future of Energy is a partnership between Enbridge and Zero Zero Media. To learn more about their products and services, visit enbridge.media/Our Energy. To find out more about Enbridge's solar farm, visit our solar farm and solar farm products, visit bit.ly/OurEnergiesave. We're making solar farming, check out their website here. We're giving away a $10,000 to a third-party solar farm! and we'll be giving you a chance to win a 5-day Testo solar farm day care package valued at $100,000 or more than $150,000 in total! with the offer of $50,000,00 and a total of $200,00 in total,00,00.00 at Enbridge will get the chance to use the offer, plus a second year of Enbridge gets you access to a complimentary 4-day shipping plan and a 3-day VIP membership offer, and a $5,000 discount when they receive a discount of $4/day, they also get a VIP discount, they'll get a discount, and they'll receive $4,00 will get a mentor discount, plus they'll also get $4 VIP access to the offer that gets you a VIP 4-choice option, they get a second-place promo code, and two-day access to 5-choice pricing offer.
00:03:51.740And that seems especially acute in educational institutions, and that seems to be a consequence of the constant cultural critique
00:04:00.240that's been generated, I would say, mostly on the postmodern edge, edge of the academic, what would you say, academic territory.
00:04:12.120So we're trying to figure out what's next, and what do we have to offer to students, all of that.
00:04:21.740I know that just yesterday was published the 50th anniversary edition of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago
00:04:33.920with a forward that you've, a forward written by you, which I think you've described the writing of as one of the greatest honors of your life.
00:04:46.620Now, I suppose the question I have there is, why is that so important?
00:04:52.980Well, the book was important because it was the first, it was the first work that succeeded in undermining the Marxist project
00:05:03.300from a moral and an intellectual perspective simultaneously.
00:05:08.340I mean, other people had pointed out the terror of the Soviet enterprise.
00:05:14.860Malcolm Muggeridge and George Orwell, among others, often people on the left, interestingly enough.
00:05:19.820But it was always possible, right up until the end of the 1960s, for the people who held on to that collectivist, utopian dream in the West
00:05:31.220to rationalize what had happened in the Soviet Union, partly by sweeping it under the rug,
00:05:37.080but also partly by, while using the old adage that you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,
00:05:44.980it became obvious by the end of the 1960s that the omelet wasn't very well prepared
00:05:51.620and that millions of eggs, so to speak, to belabor a metaphor, had been broken.
00:05:58.500And so when Solzhenitsyn wrote his great book, it became impossible for anyone who was willing to be part of the cultural moment
00:06:09.920to ignore the fact that something had gone dreadfully sideways
00:06:14.500and that it couldn't be attributed merely to a cult of personality or to some abnormality
00:06:19.760that wasn't intrinsically part of the doctrine itself.
00:06:23.600And so that was partly what Solzhenitsyn revealed about the Soviet Union as such,
00:06:28.480but at the same time, the evidence that precisely the same thing had been happening in places like Maoist China,
00:06:35.200perhaps to even a larger degree, well, undoubtedly to a larger degree,
00:06:39.680and then in Cambodia and all the other places where Marxism produced utterly murderous consequences.
00:06:49.760And so that was the book that did that, and it made Marxism morally repugnant.
00:06:57.400It was also one of the events that catalyzed the transformation of Marxism into identity politics,
00:07:05.000as far as I'm concerned, because a lot of the people who held the victim-victimizer narrative as sacrosanct,
00:07:13.040that that was the appropriate way to look at the world,
00:07:15.020to divide people into identity groups of whatever form,
00:07:18.620and then to see history as the battle between them, history, the present and the future,
00:07:25.360that transmuted, especially in France,
00:07:30.180because even though the Marxists had been unmasked,
00:07:34.320the murderousness of the doctrine had been unmasked,
00:07:37.440that didn't, the people who'd held that doctrine were still looking for the easiest lateral move.
00:07:43.060And so that was one of the driving forces for the development of postmodernism.
00:58:22.520death and and rebirth and if there's lots of
00:58:24.860you that has become corrupt then most of
00:58:28.820what passes through the fire will be burnt
00:58:31.640off and that's terribly painful for people it's
00:58:34.160it's that's the desert you know imagine that
00:58:36.920you're that your essential personality
00:58:38.660structure is tyrannical so you're a rigid
00:58:41.300ideologue you're cast in stone and so you
00:58:43.940decide to move from the tyranny you escape from
00:58:46.100the tyranny well where do you end up well you
00:58:48.320don't end up in the promised land you end up in
00:58:50.340the desert for 40 years and maybe you die there I
00:58:53.540mean even Moses did so it's out of the frying pan into
00:58:57.420the fire that's for sure and it's no wonder that
00:58:59.880people are loath to to to let go and then the
00:59:02.520more tyrannical they've become the more they've
00:59:04.560restricted their possibility and all of that and
00:59:07.320sold their soul to the dogma of human beings let's
00:59:10.560say as Solzhenitsyn would describe it the less there is
00:59:13.560of them that will be left after everything is stripped
00:59:16.380bare and that's a terrifying that's a terrifying
00:59:19.980possibility it's much easier to take the other route and it
00:59:22.980becomes easier and easier and then well there are other
00:59:25.380motivations that pile up as well bitterness the hatred
00:59:28.680that bitterness can because you know you've lost your
00:59:31.020chance right you had your chance and you've and you
00:59:35.060squandered it and the feeling of that I think that's why
00:59:38.760Cain tells God after he gets caught after his murderous act
00:59:42.960he says that his punishment is more than he can bear because
00:59:46.500it's the realization of what he's done he's destroyed his
00:59:48.900own ideal and that's what you do if you're a collectivist you
00:59:52.280destroy yourself as an individual and that's all you
00:59:55.320have and so there's there's nothing in that except I would
01:00:00.060say a continually opening pit of hopelessness and despair and
01:00:04.500then that drives bitterness and hatred and desire for revenge and
01:00:07.800all of that it's a terrible cycle and we've seen it play itself out
01:00:11.240over and over and and and and we haven't yet precisely learned from
01:00:15.700that so to me it's part of an eternal struggle you know it's been outlined as a
01:00:21.320as a war in some sense that's going on in the human psyche since the beginning
01:00:26.060of time for for all intents and purposes it seems to me Jordan that your
01:00:29.960position is is fundamentally a positive one it's an affirmation of human
01:00:35.400dignity the freedom that dignity demands and an affirmation of the infinite
01:00:40.980particularity of human life you were if one were to contrast the collectivist
01:00:47.220thinking on the one hand if one might call it a kind of abstract rationality as
01:00:52.720if there's one solution to fit them one size fits all kind of top-down logic
01:00:57.420what's on the other side what's the what's the antidote to that in the
01:01:01.160individual yeah it is particularity I mean one of the things I talk about in
01:01:05.54012 rules for life and this is and in my lectures this has become a meme strangely
01:01:10.480enough something that's widely distributed on the web partly because
01:01:13.520there's a comical element to it it's to clean up your room and everyone laughs
01:01:17.820about that because I'm taking that seriously it's like well clean up your
01:01:21.480room everyone's mother has told them that a thousand times right but I try to
01:01:26.200explain why it's like well you have a bit of chaotic potential right in front of
01:01:31.500you it's in some sense infinite in its potential and the the domain in which you
01:01:37.640can manipulate that might be rather restricted because of the restrictions
01:01:41.960that that are part and parcel of your existence but maybe you have your room
01:01:46.300and you might think you might have contempt for that and so it's a complete
01:01:49.900bloody catastrophe but you don't have to you can think well I've got a little it
01:01:55.600isn't a room it's a place of potential and as soon as you know that then it's it's
01:02:00.320not your room anymore it isn't a room the room that you see is your
01:02:05.280preconception of the space that you inhabit what's there is is a fragment of
01:02:11.200infinity that's what's there and what you see is the is the is the low resolution
01:02:18.640consequence of your assumption and lazy habit and blindness that's your initial
01:02:24.460room and you think well no that's not the room see part of what artists do for
01:02:28.060example when van gogh paints a room and you look at it glowing he's trying to show
01:02:32.920you what's beyond your perception of the room and I mean this technically like the
01:02:38.140way that your visual system is set up is that whenever memory and presumption can
01:02:43.240can can replace direct perception it will because it's simpler so you literally see what
01:02:51.120you expect to see and if what you see is dull and drab and boring and pointless and and and
01:02:58.660and uninspiring then that's you it's not what's there and what the artist does when he or she
01:03:05.300re-represents that mundane reality is to remind you of what's behind it the potential that's there
01:03:11.420and so what I'm suggesting to people is that they take the potential that's right in front of them
01:03:16.340it's like okay and here's the rule you're aiming up there's something that you could change
01:03:24.260that you would change that might be a very small thing could well that's within the grasp of your
01:03:30.640power would is within the grasp of your will to combine those two things might be very small shift
01:03:36.200you might only be willing to make a very tiny step forward it's like fine good enough make a tiny step
01:03:43.000forward and that makes you a slight bit stronger than you were before and then the next step can
01:03:48.720be slightly larger and it's it's the path of humility it's what people it's what people act out
01:03:56.420when so there's this cathedral it's actually it's not a cathedral it's an oratorial in montreal
01:04:02.320i think it's the second largest one in the world it's set on a hill at the top of a hill
01:04:06.280and there's a huge staircase leading up to it from the bottom of the hill and people often who are
01:04:13.460crippled and who are on crutches and so forth or in wheelchairs go there and make their way painfully
01:04:19.260up the hill or maybe they do that on their knees and the idea is that they're struggling incrementally
01:04:26.180uphill step by step despite their burdens to reach the city of god on the hill and they're acting out
01:04:33.540that's life it's like the the proper aim is the city of god on the hill and what is that well that's
01:04:40.200that place that we talked about already where these levels of responsibility are stacked together
01:04:45.660harmoniously so that you're acting in your best interest and in your family's best interest and
01:04:51.140in and in the world's best interest and i would say in the best interests of reality itself right
01:04:57.680assuming that we have some integral role to play in reality which is certainly at least true at the
01:05:03.300human level that's the city of god on the hill that beckons to everyone and you you move up that
01:05:10.260you move towards that humbly so that's one step at a time and you do it despite your burden and your
01:05:17.620suffering all of that that's all dramatized in that and it's it's a perfect drama of that and would
01:05:23.280you even say it's not simply despite your suffering it's in and through your particular suffering i mean
01:05:27.980one thing that strikes me about you know clean up your room clean up your room yes the affirmation
01:05:33.260of the particularity of your life i mean one thing that strikes me but deepest in our human experience
01:05:37.480is that it is infinitely particular i mean that you mentioned your your granddaughter i mean the the
01:05:42.940the loves the people the experiences the places that were shaped by they're not places in the abstract
01:05:48.900this this top-down sense as if there could be the you know the same kinds of clothes and the same
01:05:54.640kinds of experience for all human beings it that that that's the enemy of the very deepest truth
01:06:01.740of our human experience which it seems to me is infinitely particular but not infinitely particular in
01:06:08.080the sense in which those particularities just go all off into nothingness those particulars are
01:06:12.080precisely our points of access to the transcendent to the infinite to the to the to to to that which
01:06:19.080that's where the reality is yes yeah well so that's why jung said that modern men can't see god because
01:06:24.480they don't look low enough yes they're not they're not paying attention to the importance of the
01:06:28.620particularities because the particularity is where the pen meets the paper right yes and it's just a
01:06:33.880tiny dot every every like when you're when you're writing it's it's a dot and then it extends into a line
01:06:39.340and those transform into words and sentences and paragraphs but the particular act is where the pen
01:06:44.280meets yes yes yes that's that focal point right that's the center of the cross by the way yes same
01:06:50.000yes yes well you mentioned the cross i mean certainly in the in in in in the in the history of of the
01:06:56.720west one of the ways this comes through is uh and in the east too is in christian theology is the
01:07:01.520very notion of the incarnation you know what is that to say but that the the infinite is in the
01:07:07.300particular and that they that that they are that they are co-inherent that the infinite in fact has
01:07:13.060no life except in the particular and the particular itself has a relation to or is comprehended by that
01:07:22.580very infinite and so it seems to me that that what is going on there is an affirmation that every
01:07:30.020particularity no matter how tiny itself is revelatory of of a transcendent and yes well that i think it
01:07:39.940was from the gospel of thomas but i might have this wrong the kingdom of god is spread upon the earth but
01:07:44.400men do not see it and that's that that's that infinite that's that infinite possibility in each
01:07:49.960moment of particularity and that is what artists that is what great artists are reminding yourself
01:07:54.900they'll take a a a slice of space in time was it monet who painted the haystacks he went out into
01:08:03.900the fields in france and he painted the same haystack like many many times under different
01:08:08.820conditions of lighting just to show how different yes if it's if it's a haystack it's the same thing
01:08:14.800but it wasn't he paid attention to the particularities and so what great artists are trying to do is well
01:08:20.740first of all so imagine a painting so it's a painting of of a landscape and so the first thing
01:08:26.440is that it's it's layers of time because the painter has gone out there and seen the landscape and then
01:08:32.300seen it again and then seen it again and then seen it again and then seen it again and then seen it
01:08:35.120again and has to pay attention to the particularities of the light and the color and all of that to
01:08:39.900represent it properly so it's and and and the mere fact that he's done that is it's it's the acting out
01:08:47.720of the idea that in this tiny slice of time and space there's something worth attending to for an
01:08:55.860infinite amount of time but you can't because you just can't do it but you need to know that you could
01:09:02.100do it and that it would be worthwhile and so the painter encapsulates the landscape and then frames it
01:09:07.840and says like look look through this window at the transcendent that's behind the low resolution
01:09:15.980representation of your assumption the blindness that you the the expedient blindness that you by
01:09:21.740necessity bring to bear to every situation remember what's behind this always remember what's behind
01:09:27.660this and that's what art calls us to do that's what beauty calls us to do is to make a contact with
01:09:33.220that and then you say well the problem with the particularly the problem with the particularity
01:09:38.260is that it brings suffering and the bringing of suffering with particularity can also allow evil to
01:09:44.440enter the world because that particular suffering can engender bitterness and resentment and hatred
01:09:49.760and all of those things and the desire to destroy so the particularity carries with it a tremendous risk
01:09:54.820and a tremendous burden and so the answer the question is well how do you tolerate the particularity
01:10:00.500and take advantage of the potential and the answer is to make a relationship with the infinite
01:10:05.680that's behind the particularity and that's the fundamental religious idea is to if you can maintain
01:10:12.080the particularity but also stay in contact with what's transcendent and infinite beyond that
01:10:19.080then you can then you have the potential strength to tolerate the catastrophe of what's limited
01:10:25.800yes and then you get to have your cake and eat it too in principle yes yes I want to return to education
01:10:31.400in a moment but but on the way there as it were Jordan I want to ask you you you've talked about this this the inflection point
01:10:41.080what is the inflection point and how might it be understood relative to what I would I take to be a very decadent worldview in its last gasps
01:10:53.080it seems to me even that many of the frankly simply slanderous attacks on you personal personally blatant misrepresentations of the the very plain fact of what you're saying
01:11:10.080it seems to me that there's an animus there that is precisely definitely an animus there's an animus there but the question is where is that coming from
01:11:17.080well if you look at Derrida for example and his critique of the idea of logocentrism you know as as the as the central motif of the West let's say and he and he knew at multiple levels what that critique meant because he knew what logos meant logos means embodied truth and there is of course a religious dimension to that but it's a
01:11:40.080and so he was criticizing the notion of phallogocentrism and and so he was going right at the core of the
01:11:47.080doctrine of the individual now the question is why might someone do that now I think the reason for that fundamentally is that there's a terrible responsibility that goes along with it
01:11:58.080so imagine that you offered people here here's the offer offer one
01:12:05.080you you don't matter you it's it's a really say the narrowest of materialist viewpoints is you weren't here then you were for a brief period of time and then you're gone and that all washes out in the endless sands of time
01:12:19.080nothing in your life is significant nothing about humanity is significant nothing about the world itself is significant it's all a matter of blind random chance and it's all the same in the end
01:12:30.080who cares in a million years right and and the price you pay for that is insignificance but the advantage that you gain from that is that fundamentally you have no responsibility
01:12:42.080because nothing you do matters and so then there's no moral burden there's no obligation and of course if you can gather expedient pleasure while you're deteriorating pointlessly then that's all to the good
01:12:54.080that's all to the good so it's it's a libertinism as well and that's inviting obviously because short term pleasure is by definition inviting and so you can abandon any pretension to a relationship with the infinite and consider that only a sign of delusion and weakness assume that your life is material and irrelevant it doesn't matter and then you can shrug off all responsibility and pursue short term pleasure while there's some real advantages in that it's very it's a very easy pathway
01:13:23.080the alternative is as far as i'm concerned is no you don't understand you are the you are the center of the world past center of the world it has many centers and you do partake in this process of casting the potential of the future into the reality of the present and the past that's what your consciousness does and the quality of what you produce is dependent on your
01:13:53.060on the ethics of your choice your choice your choice between good and evil in every moment is what determines the course of the world and that's on you it's like well that's deeply meaningful but it's unbelievable it's in its ultimate responsibility in in the literal sense and i think that in order for us to set things right we have to understand that we we have to take on that burden of ultimate responsibility as if it's not only as if it's ours which it is but as if there isn't anything better that we could do
01:14:23.040and i and one of the things that i found so gratifying about the lecture tour that i've been doing is that and why i keep doing it the live events in particular because we've done about a hundred of them now so far is that when i explain to the audiences and this is especially true it's been seems to be especially true of of men but of young men but not so young even to say look you you have you you have an ethical obligation
01:14:53.040what you can possibly conceive of and that's the primary call to adventure in life and that call to adventure is so worthwhile that it justifies the particularity everybody it's like lights go on they think oh i see so you need a meaning
01:15:11.100meaning to set against the suffering and to protect you against that temptation towards malevolence you need that well where's the meaning to be found well it's not happiness it's not short-term pleasure it's not it's not self-development it's not self-esteem it's none of those things that are so focused on on on the individual psyche even it's it's literally the stumbling uphill towards the city of god yes with your burden
01:15:41.100no they admire responsible people they already got that say well that's what you should become and they think and not only that that that's what you could become because that's what you are in the deepest sense yes yes yes would you would you say that that that that that the antidote to nihilism is meaning
01:15:57.520and if so uh you know i think you've described yourself jordan as uh you've said i think you're the surfer not the wave and i suppose i want to ask you what is the wave because it seems to me we're at a moment of very
01:16:11.000very great uh cultural potential and it could go any number of ways but that the very fact of what one might call the jordan peterson phenomenon uh worldwide your book translated into dozens of languages your lecture halls packed uh is a sign of a longing uh a self-conscious longing for for for for meaning how would how would how would you how would you describe what that wave is that that you didn't create but that you well some of it
01:16:40.980some of it's technological so so i would say that wave is it's got multiple levels so so we could start from
01:16:47.800uh we'll start from i i would say what's most obvious and that would be the medium rather than the message so
01:16:53.660i um and these people that i've been associated with this intellectual dark web group we're we're in the fortunate position of being early adopters of extraordinarily powerful technologies
01:17:04.280so and and the technologies are twofold there's there's online video and then there's podcasts and and so
01:17:11.560they're technologically revolutionary in a variety of ways so online video is revolutionary because it brings
01:17:18.460something closely akin to a live performance to an infinitely large number of people on demand permanently
01:17:27.660so then you think well what's the advantage of a book well it's permanent it's relatively low cost it's easily
01:17:34.740distributable right so well what's the advantage to online video well it's it's inexpensive it's not
01:17:40.800inexpensive it's free it's far easier to produce than a book like the lag time from video to publication is
01:17:48.180the day like we could put this online today instead of the three-year lag that a book would require and then
01:17:55.180far more people can watch and listen than can read
01:17:58.840because reading is a minority ability in in some sense really fat real real expert level reading
01:18:05.020you know that because such a tiny minority of people buy books and people are made uncomfortable by books
01:18:10.120they're intimidated by them even if they have the intelligence in principle to do the reading it's not part of their
01:18:15.640cultural milieu that's a small minority of people and so all of a sudden online video allows
01:18:21.440allows the spoken word to have the same impact as the written word and that's deadly that's a gutenberg
01:18:28.300revolution and then with podcasts that's even magnified because you don't have to sit and watch a podcast
01:18:35.540you can walk around you can exercise you can do the dishes you can you can drive many people who come to
01:18:41.480my lectures are like long-haul truckers and guys who run forklifts and you know they're in their machinery
01:18:47.900all day and all they do is listen to podcasts and so all of us and they can listen to the podcast
01:18:54.660because more people can listen than can read and maybe way more people can listen than can read we
01:18:59.860have no idea maybe the potential market is 10 times as big and so they can do it when they want to
01:19:05.620they can also do it in private if you read and you're on the subway people can tell you're reading
01:19:10.520if you're sitting at home and reading well then you're with a book and if you're uncomfortable with a
01:19:14.280book you think that's pretentious or presumptuous or part of a class that you don't belong to or
01:19:18.760anything that makes you feel inferior well you can just circumvent that you listen in private
01:19:23.860and so people and people are taking that opportunity like mad and so that's part of the wave let's say
01:19:30.600that technological revolution in communication that's illustrated that people have far more depth
01:19:36.460and capacity to concentrate than anyone would have imagined you even see this with netflix and hbo
01:19:41.680it used to be on tv there was an idea that while movie was about as long as you could attract
01:19:47.000people's attention for 90 minutes that's the most the typical person could concentrate for it's like
01:19:52.200that turned out to be complete rubbish people will follow these incredibly complex like literary level
01:19:58.120net narratives breaking bad for example that has multiple characters following multiple streams of
01:20:03.820development for for endless hours and they'll binge watch it so we have way more capacity for sustained
01:20:10.340concentration than we thought and these new bandwidth unlimited technologies are revealing that to us
01:20:16.820and i happen to be an early adopter of this and so that's that's part one of the wave and then
01:20:23.320then there's the message part and it has something to do with see our culture for a very long time
01:20:29.380has articulated out a a right of rights you have rights you need to demand them you need to claim them
01:20:35.960it's like but but that's that's that's half the story and it's not the most salutary half because
01:20:42.400it turns out that the meaning in your life isn't the consequence of the claiming of rights the rights
01:20:48.820are in some sense what other people owe you i know there's more to it than that but but it's that in large
01:20:53.920part well you can just get what you're owed it's like no that's not where you're going to find your
01:20:58.840meaning what you're going to find where you're going to find your meaning is responsibility which is the
01:21:03.580other half of the rights responsibility equation and people don't know that this is the the the the
01:21:10.300the what would you call this is where this is where this is the point where things come together
01:21:15.780properly you need a meaning in your life to forestall the suffering and to make you strong enough to
01:21:20.920resist malevolence where's the meaning to be found rights impulsive pleasure and happiness no
01:21:26.740responsibility oh who would have guessed that it's not part of the narrative because the
01:21:34.400responsibility narrative even is usually about duty or patriotism or something like that which
01:21:38.580which is okay but it's it's it's an ideological narrative too in its own right this is different
01:21:44.500it's like no you don't understand is that what makes life worth living is to pick up the
01:21:50.620to to to take its catastrophe and embrace it and carry it and to realize through that process
01:22:00.300who you are so one of the things i figured out in this lecture tour there's this old idea
01:22:04.960that you go into the abyss it's a nietzschean idea that you can gaze into the abyss you gaze long
01:22:10.860and what you find in the abyss is a monster tolstoy wrote about that that's the dragon at the bottom
01:22:16.100of the abyss let's say that's satan himself for that matter and but if you go into that into that
01:22:21.980as deeply as you can what you find is your you you find you find you find your your your fragmented
01:22:28.780father in a in a comatose condition in a in a in a desiccated and and and separated condition
01:22:38.140and then you revivify that well what does that mean it means something it means that if you look in
01:22:44.880the darkness you find the light that's one thing it means and that the light really stands out
01:22:49.060against the darkness but that the light is to be found in the darkness so that's a very interesting
01:22:53.320thing that's a quest narrative but it means more than that it means something fundamental so we know
01:22:58.640for example that if you take yourself out of your current state of of predictability and safety you
01:23:07.620put yourself in a new situation you'll learn right you'll absorb you'll incorporate new information
01:23:12.780so that's a cognitive issue but that isn't all that happens what happens is that new genes turn on
01:23:18.900within you and code for the production of new proteins and that happens neurologically new parts of you
01:23:24.940turn on and so the idea is that if you can move yourself out into the world and push yourself out
01:23:31.040against a maximum array of challenges more and more of you turn on turns on and then the question
01:23:37.680would be well what would you be if all of you that could be turned on was turned on and the answer
01:23:43.460would be you would be the resurrection of the ancestral father that's what you would be and so
01:23:48.940that's why christ says i am the way and the truth and the life and no one comes to the father except through
01:23:54.680me what that means is that if you take on the unbearable burden of being voluntarily then that transforms
01:24:02.880you into the ancestral father and that's true and so that's unbelievably optimistic because what it
01:24:09.540it's so interesting because it's it's dark beyond belief right say well the world is characterized by
01:24:15.400suffering and by malevolence of a depth that's virtually beyond comprehension but if you choose
01:24:20.560to comprehend that what you discover in that is the light that destroys the darkness and that's
01:24:27.420well that's and that's really something to discover it's it's the it's it's the discovery
01:24:34.240that there isn't a discovery that's more profound than that that's the search for the holy grail or
01:24:39.060the philosopher's stone all of that it isn't that that isn't that the search and indeed the finding
01:24:44.360that every human being is is made for um what i want to ask you jordan is about the role of education
01:24:50.880here so it seems to me that that what the meaning that people are finding in your work that you can
01:24:57.240listen to in a podcast you can you can you can while you're doing a long run uh uh drive across the
01:25:04.140prairies or wherever it may be um but it seems to me that that the the deconstruction of our culture
01:25:11.520by a worldview that has denied the integrity of the individual that has denied the individual's
01:25:18.060relation to the transcendent to any stable knowing denied the dignity of the individual that that
01:25:26.300deconstruction it's not for no reason that the the postmodern view calls itself deconstruction that
01:25:32.480has very deconstructive effects in my view in the world it seems to me that the rebirth of a or the
01:25:38.960the renaissance of a more adequate to more fully human culture depends on more than it depends on
01:25:46.240institutional life we need cultural forms we architecture there's all kinds of a fully a full
01:25:51.960culture as a complex uh uh an infinitely complex structure uh but i think we've we've as it were
01:26:00.300deleted out the memory banks in so many profound ways and so what i'm what i'd like to ask you about
01:26:06.820is the we still have the libraries we still have the libraries well thank god for that well thank god
01:26:10.880for that and that's where i want to turn to education because you say in uh at one point you say
01:26:14.860that that we need to rescue the treasure trove of the past the treasury rescue the values of the
01:26:20.840treasure trove of the past and to integrate them and i suppose i'd like to ask you about the role
01:26:25.720that's what the universities are for is to remind people to to to lead people to doing that i mean
01:26:31.380we wandered around cambridge today and you showed me king's chapel for example which is so beautiful
01:26:35.660that it's just beyond belief and like that's a call right that it's a call to a mode of being
01:26:40.700and it's a socrates believed that all learning was remembering and and it's true in the sense that
01:26:47.240we just discussed is that through encounter with the tragedy of life and the malevolence of life
01:26:52.540that that more of you will come to manifest itself but that can be that can be facilitated by your
01:27:00.040incorporation of the greatness of the past so you say well each great philosopher each great thinker
01:27:05.740is a fragment of the ultimate ancestral being is a fragment of of god the father let's say
01:27:12.180and you get a fragment from nietzsche and you get a fragment from plato and you get a fragment from
01:27:17.280wittgenstein and you get a fragment from shakespeare and and and there's something imagine this there's
01:27:23.320something that makes all those people great it's whatever greatness is and it's broken up apart
01:27:30.060it's broken up across all of them but if you if you experience if you're exposed to each of them
01:27:35.940then you you absorb what's you're you're exposed to and have the possibility to imitate and absorb
01:27:42.560that greatness across its its fragmentation across many people and then you can that can come to awaken
01:27:50.180that within you and that is the purpose of the universities and the reason for that it isn't it isn't
01:27:55.460something casual it's like well it's it's it's good to be more if you go to university and you
01:28:00.980take a humanities degree you'll come out more well-rounded you know that's that's not the that's
01:28:05.640not it's such it's such a weak way of putting it it's that no you wake up and realize who you are and
01:28:11.640then you're ready to take the world on your shoulders yes and that's what the universities are here and
01:28:16.020that's what students students are dying for that yes that's why men are abandoning the universities is
01:28:21.060because that call isn't there yes well there's no answer to the call you might say i the the seems
01:28:26.520to me that the the wave is the longing the longing for that call to be answered and it seems to me
01:28:31.440that our universities have failed us and not only failed us well exactly they're antithetical to you
01:28:36.620might call them the the water main that is distributing a worldview that is corrosive of of of of
01:28:42.740of what is best in the human being well the the the doctrine so one of the fundamental doctrines of the
01:28:49.300of the collectivist leftists especially on the feminist end of things is the idea that western
01:28:56.140culture is a patriarchal tyranny and so first of all we could say well that's inappropriate
01:29:01.600psychologically because the way that you represent culture archetypally is with the tyrant and the
01:29:07.640wise king and so you can say that there's the tyrant and that's always true but you also have to say
01:29:13.000that there's the wise king but there's no wise king there's only a tyrant okay and that tyrant is
01:29:18.280that's all men it's all male and so and so then and so that's a view of history right is that the view
01:29:25.080of history is that well women have been the primary force of oppression in relationship to women
01:29:31.120throughout history has been men no idea about the cooperative endeavor of men and women or their
01:29:37.100mutual desire to lift each other out of misery which is a much more accurate way of representing
01:29:42.000history in a much more grateful and appropriate way none of that no it's a patriarchal tyranny
01:29:47.360and men are responsible okay well so where does that leave young men well let's say young men are
01:29:52.920attempting to manifest competence in the world and to become good people well there's no good and
01:29:59.240there's no competence there's only power and it's related to the patriarchal tyranny and so
01:30:03.460that conflation of competence with power which is an absolutely pathological move in my estimation
01:30:09.900is also the desire to discourage and to devalue and to destroy and partly it's based on fear because
01:30:18.400the idea would be well a fully fledged man is nothing but a powerful tyrant and therefore dangerous
01:30:24.380better to emasculate him completely so he's nothing but harmless even though he's useless he can't do
01:30:30.020anything that's bad which is unbelievably horrifying that's the castrating mother the freudian castrating
01:30:36.280mother that's the terrible element of of the of the female body politic that's the evil queen that's
01:30:42.540the counterpart to the evil king something we never talk about so and that's what's facing young men is
01:30:48.620that at least they're discouraged from from becoming what they could be at least they're not encouraged
01:30:56.060but it's worse than that they're actively discouraged and so the universities have become
01:31:01.320they've become institutions of active discouragement and especially for men and so what's the consequence
01:31:08.180of that well especially in the humanities and social sciences well it's obvious all you have to do is
01:31:13.320look at the statistics all the men are leaving there won't be a man left in the humanities and social
01:31:18.380sciences in 15 years at the current rate of of gender transformation of the disciplines and then you see
01:31:24.420this equally appalling phenomena occurring phenomenon occurring which is that virtually all of the
01:31:31.040female dominated disciplines are politically correct and i think that the reason for that is that the
01:31:36.940reasonable women don't know how to regulate the behavior of the unreasonable women the the benevolent
01:31:42.740queen can't regulate the evil queen and that and that hatred for the patriarchy that's the feminist part of
01:31:51.420the post-modern neo-marxist monster is is has decided that emasculated and weak men are preferable to
01:31:59.180tyrants and but and those are the only options because there's no such thing as genuine competence
01:32:03.600what you want to call young men forward to do is to take their place and say look you have you have to
01:32:08.960understand it's not just about you is the world will be a lesser place without without that which you
01:32:16.040could reveal to it because of your particularity and that hole that you leave by the absence of your
01:32:23.680presence is going to be filled with something terrible not just something neutral but something
01:32:28.420terrible and that's on you and so you you you have a calling that's that's vital and and people people
01:32:35.840need that they're dying they die yes yes it seems to me that the ideology that's dominant and very much
01:32:42.060of the university is not only destructive in all these ways but just boring and that it's patent
01:32:50.320inadequacy to our deepest human longings male female of of all of all races and kinds that the deep
01:32:58.580transcendent longings that we all have the the need for self longing for self knowledge that that
01:33:05.180ideology is it's is is patently inadequate to its satisfaction what i see in young people today many many
01:33:11.880young people i know you see this in the thousands that you encounter is is they're not interested in
01:33:18.200fighting some cultural war they simply want to discover the deepest truth of themselves and um so
01:33:25.660i want to ask you a little bit about about the role of education we talked about the lighting up and the
01:33:30.060awakening the encounter with depth and truth um you know there's a certain kind of abstract view of
01:33:36.640education as though it's a kind of inert process you're just sort of downloading into the into the
01:33:42.900into the mind but in fact the nature of our of our of our of our the nature of our souls is such that
01:33:52.120it's an it's a dynamic reality you know the room is not just the room it's the place in which you
01:33:58.200you encounter yourself in the in the in the rule of clean up your room but it seems to me that that's
01:34:02.520what's going on in in in all education at its best and that it's not enough simply for the library to
01:34:08.480be there there needs a certain mediation of the institution so for example we could have a there's
01:34:13.320a piano on the other side of this room you know we could say well there's a piano you're you're free
01:34:17.220to play the piano but i i can't play the piano i don't know the chords and the scales i haven't
01:34:21.680and yet if i if i if i did all that then what i can make happen on the piano is infinitely richer than
01:34:32.440if i've never learned to play the piano and i suppose i suppose when we talk about rescuing
01:34:36.760the values of the treasure trove that's discipline as the precondition for freedom yes right which is
01:34:41.760which is a which is actually a nietzschean idea at least in part i mean it's older than that it's
01:34:45.760the apprenticeship idea it's that it's that before before you can be a painter who can paint what's
01:34:52.340beyond mere memory you you have to inculcate that discipline skill and a lot of that is painful
01:34:59.360repetition and hard grinding work it's the sacrifice of the present for the future but once you manage
01:35:06.960that then things open up and and virtually everything you learn of value is like that's very
01:35:11.880very very very difficult to learn to write and there's arbitrary arbitrary rules that you have
01:35:17.360to follow and bind yourself to and while you're learning those rules the probability that you have
01:35:22.380any creative freedom to speak of or any facility with the rules is very low you're a you're a rank
01:35:28.120beginner and and even to some degree whatever creativity you have is going to have to be stifled
01:35:34.040while you're passing through that that keyhole but if you pass through it then something massive
01:35:40.660opens up on the other side and it is definitely the case that disciplinary institutions universities
01:35:46.720are exactly that is their places of guidance and and their places to encourage people to develop the
01:35:53.240discipline that's necessary to see beyond the discipline i mean that's why we have disciplines
01:35:57.580right i mean the words aren't there by accident you have to narrow yourself first and then you can
01:36:03.660broaden outward and so that's and that's part of the process of maturation that part of the that's part of
01:36:09.160the sacrifice of childhood say in childhood you're nothing but potential but it's not realized and
01:36:15.400you don't know how to realize it and so then the question is well how do you get to a point where
01:36:19.320you realize the potential and the answer is you sacrifice almost all of it to a single direction
01:36:24.540this is nietzsche's commentary on the catholic church he's a great admirer of the catholic church
01:36:29.340despite the fact that he was also a radical critic critic of christianity said the cat see the thing
01:36:36.080about the catholic church is that it forced everything to be interpreted within a single
01:36:41.840explanatory framework and that was a discipline and once that discipline was established then
01:36:47.940the disciplined mind could explode in every direction which is precisely what happened
01:36:52.400and so and and and that's the thing about growing up is that when you're a teenager and a young adult
01:36:58.380you have to sacrifice everything you could have been as a child to be the one thing that you're aiming
01:37:04.120at but then that opens up and and the universities are part and parcel of that process and you need
01:37:09.580the guidance because the the the library is too large to wander through it unaided yes and that and
01:37:17.600and i think that comes down to to the to the question of of what you need to what what are the books that
01:37:23.360can be read to be transformative i mean we you know it's you know the the the otherness that realizes
01:37:29.400and that awakens and opens up the self that light that turns those lights on is not just a random
01:37:34.000otherness i mean you can look at a at a brick wall all day and never get anything like what
01:37:38.960we get by looking at the king's chapel that we just came from a few minutes ago
01:37:43.280that that that the the levels of pattern and depth and beauty that are present in that building
01:37:49.240that's a kind of metaphor for what the most wonderful most fecund texts of our own of our own past offer to
01:38:02.840us you know there they are lying on the shelf but when opened up uh and explored fully they open up in
01:38:10.560us yeah they are portals so it's a book isn't a book a book isn't paper yes that that's you that's your
01:38:16.460memory that's your perception of the book it's a portal yes and and and you know one of the ideas
01:38:22.260the postmodern idea is that well there's no canon and if there is a canon it's only there to support
01:38:27.880the tyrannical patriarchy because of course the tyrannical patriarchy is the explanation for
01:38:32.000everything but i've been trying to solve that problem technically with i have a small staff that's
01:38:36.580trying to produce an educational system online and we've been trying to understand well what is it
01:38:41.620makes a book canonical there's actually a technical answer to that so you imagine that books exist in
01:38:48.140relationship to one another that's a perfectly reasonable postmodernist claim by the way books
01:38:52.720exist in relationship to one another okay well some books have hardly any relationship to other books
01:38:58.040those are trivial books now they might be undiscovered works of genius that's another possibility if
01:39:03.840they're recently written but it doesn't matter because you can't separate the wheat from the chaff
01:39:08.100at present it's too difficult there's too much chaff but if you go back into the past you can rank
01:39:13.960order books by the degree to which they've influenced other books so it's like citations in some sense
01:39:20.160and the books that have influenced the largest number of other books are the canonical books
01:39:25.060and the ultimate canonical book in the west is clearly the biblical corpus because it's influenced
01:39:29.800virtually everything and so you have to know it because it's implicit in everything else and so you start
01:39:36.380there and so you have that you have that knowledge at least to some degree and it gives you the
01:39:41.600foundation the metaphorical foundation the conceptual foundation the mythical foundation that you can
01:39:47.860use to then well then maybe you can now that now shakespeare opens up to some degree and now milton
01:39:53.080opens up to some degree and dante opens up to some degree and you think well why should those open up
01:39:57.820and answer is well as the social constructionist claim you're at least in part a historical creature
01:40:06.060well then those books are about you they're the the patterns in those books are the patterns of your
01:40:12.820perceptions and your actions and without understanding them then you don't know who you are and you can't
01:40:18.000guide yourself properly through life and so you you you come into university and you encounter experts and
01:40:24.540they say look this is canonical why because it's had a disproportionate influence on everything else
01:40:31.140so you need there's something here that you need to know about because it's about you and and it isn't
01:40:36.340about the you that's here now in some sense it's about the you that can unfold across time in the in the
01:40:42.160best possible way so each of those works is a call to adventure every painting that's a great painting or
01:40:48.220a building like the king's chapel if that's not a call to adventure i mean what else could it be
01:40:54.000we were talking about that so these ancient buildings these great ancient buildings that
01:40:58.760europe is littered with these were people would were aiming at something beyond themselves beyond the
01:41:05.480span of their lifetime they they engaged in the collective manifestation of these great works to
01:41:10.980aim to to to participate in aiming something that at something that was beyond them it was a divine aim
01:41:17.660they had that that will to produce this beauty that transcended centuries you know and maybe the will
01:41:24.440that produces beauty is always aligned with that which transcends centuries maybe those are the same
01:41:29.340things and even paintings oil paintings you know they they take a moment in time and they cast it into a
01:41:36.360permanent form that can be that can be preserved across centuries and so there's something about
01:41:41.360there's something about the establishing a relationship with eternity that's key to the construction of
01:41:47.800something that's beautiful and then that in itself becomes a call to a relationship within with eternity
01:41:52.700so and you need that people hunger for it i'm at the university of toronto there's the the there's
01:41:59.400the european cathedral side of the campus the older part and then there's the modern factory side of the
01:42:06.060campus and it's soul deadening my building is made out of cinder blocks you know and my my brother-in-law
01:42:12.800who's his own sort of genius calls that hosable architecture anything could happen there and you
01:42:18.340could wash it away it's like and it's just it's it's it's i have my students now and then sit in the
01:42:24.380classroom like that and look at it and tell me how it makes them feel random wires hanging from the
01:42:30.120ceiling you know nothing but cinder block the cheapest form of construction nothing that's beautiful
01:42:35.300pure boring dull utilitarianism with these bare shiny desks and terrible fluorescent lighting it's like
01:42:42.940it's ugly right to the core and it and it's it's corrosive it eats away at the heart of the
01:42:47.940university which is about the beauty that's eternal and and that isn't optional it's not impractical
01:42:55.200it's it's the most practical it's it's it's that upon which the idea of practicality itself is
01:43:02.040predicated and that's the university and people should be flocking to the universities dying to
01:43:08.280be educated because they are dying to be educated i have dozens of young men who come to me all the time
01:43:14.800after my talks and say look they give me a note one did last night here's the note six weeks six
01:43:22.800months ago i was deeply suicidal i had no reason to live i was completely nihilistic so i started watching
01:43:27.780your lectures i started to adopt a more responsible outlook i realized that that was important i started
01:43:34.260to try to tell the truth and to put myself together and without that i wouldn't be here and that's a
01:43:39.860little note and that happens over and over you know and then i go talk to journalists and this happened
01:43:46.140in scandinavia it happened with this gq interview i just did well your message is primarily directed
01:43:51.360towards young men it's like and there's this judgment about that it's like oh there's a problem with
01:43:56.680that is there i mean that wasn't the point but that is the audience is what there's something
01:44:01.880there's something wrong with talking to young men and encouraging them it's like that makes me somehow
01:44:07.420somehow suspicious the hatred of humanity that is present in that critique is mind-blowing it is it's
01:44:14.920it's absolutely beyond belief and you think well it's only misogyny it's like no it's not it's like
01:44:19.980what who are you leaving for the women to have as partners these demolished and weak well it's a zero-sum
01:44:26.520quality of it i mean as if as if as if lifting up any human being is not a good for all of us i mean
01:44:32.520that's the whole point about the the necessity of our care for the oppressed is because they are part
01:44:38.280of us no you only care about them in groups the individual oppressed person is irrelevant it's the
01:44:44.200group of oppressed people that's relevant and so if you just help one person oh well you see then
01:44:49.000then that's in that's that that that that flies at the heart of the collectivist doctrine you said
01:44:54.500very very powerful when you talked about people should be flocking to the universities you're an
01:44:59.220image that comes to my mind is the image of a fountain and your people come to the fountain to
01:45:03.540drink to slake their thirst and and and and it seems to me that we need we need new institutions of
01:45:10.100higher education that's the fountain of living water yes yes that's why moses that's why moses is a
01:45:15.460master of water in the desert yes so he's not a master of stone yes yes yes yes and one thing that really
01:45:20.900excites me jordan is that is that what we see right now in is is this longing so many thirsty people
01:45:26.820it seems to me we simply need to to build new fountains because you know as you say the books
01:45:32.180are in the library we can we can we can give a rebirth to the past in the form of the hunger and
01:45:38.900thirst that are in young people simply by feeding it and that it seems to me that that there's a kind of
01:45:44.660cultural passivity particularly when it comes to the university people say oh well you know you could
01:45:49.460never do anything about that well you know the universe they're just well you just have to kind
01:45:53.700of write them off well why do we have to do that why can't we start new ones people there have been
01:45:58.420thousands of universities started over over the years come into the university and they've got this
01:46:03.060facade of cynicism you know that partly because they haven't had great experiences with the educational
01:46:08.420system and it's no wonder and partly because all the way back to the to the beginning yes i mean you've
01:46:13.140talked about this in your book the university that's to interrupt that the the what what moves in in
01:46:19.140the whole k-12 educational system in a certain sense was founded in large part to bring about
01:46:25.620that collectivist control and to to stultify and to annihilate the the the freedom of the individual
01:46:32.980and so that's that's pretty well ingrained by the time someone comes to university and no wonder they
01:46:38.180don't like they don't think they like educational institutions yes well but but they're still desperate
01:46:42.260enough to come and they might say well i'm doing this practically because i need a degree to get a job which
01:46:46.740is you know as perfectly reasonable it's perfectly reasonable as a as a fragmentary ambition it's
01:46:52.180it's a good fragmentary ambition but their their their their core is dying for something deeper than
01:47:00.100that and they're coming they're coming to university the way that you enter a cathedral properly if you
01:47:07.060enter it properly they come prayerfully they're hoping but they won't talk to anyone about it they're hoping
01:47:12.740god i hope that what i need is here and if you provide that then they're just overwhelmed by it
01:47:21.460and and then they're motivated to to work and to move and to put themselves together because it doesn't
01:47:26.820take much water on to really transform a parched surface and these young people they have their cynical
01:47:33.700facade and it's easy to be intimidated by that because they're they're judgmental in their lectures and in
01:47:38.900your lectures and maybe they're not paying attention and they're snapping gum and they're playing with
01:47:42.500their computers but there there is part of them that's at the back listening and hoping that something
01:47:48.500will emerge that will captivate them and when that happens then well then well then that's when it
01:47:53.780becomes something absolutely remarkable to be an educator because then you're providing guidance and
01:48:00.260you're providing the guidance that that's that's well that's that's that's the bread that's more than mere
01:48:06.100material bread and then the students are extremely extraordinarily rewarding to work with because
01:48:10.900they're so it's not pleased it's way more than pleased they're so engaged by what's happening that
01:48:16.820the whole thing comes alive that's that's when it's a great thing to be an educator and what it's been
01:48:23.060great for me to go on this lecture tour because which is why i keep doing it is because every evening
01:48:29.060it's like that i get 2500 people in an auditorium and i start talking about the things we've been talking
01:48:34.660about everybody's dead silent and they're locked onto it and it's it's an unbelievably gratifying
01:48:40.740process and then people come up and say you know oh this has been so useful to me things were so
01:48:46.580terrible and falling apart in so many ways and like all of a sudden i'm just stacking these things up
01:48:51.380and putting them together it's so interesting watching the young men who come and talk to me and
01:48:56.740it's it's young women as well well not always just so young uh many of the women come and say thank you
01:49:02.420very much for what you've done for my sons for example but the men come up and they say it's
01:49:06.980like they're telling me a secret you know and it's the sort of secret that you'd only tell an intimate
01:49:11.380friend that you trusted it's like you know man i i wasn't doing so well and these are often rough
01:49:16.100looking guys you know um they say look i've been really trying to get my act together you know i've been
01:49:22.100working it out with my wife and i've been i've been trying to get my relationship with my son
01:49:26.500straightened out and and here's my father by the way he came along with me and we're getting along just
01:49:30.420fine and it's really working and they say it in a hushed voice you know and and they say thank you
01:49:35.700very much and i say great that's so great i'm so thrilled to hear that and they they're telling me
01:49:41.220that because they're hoping that i would in fact be thrilled to hear that because they want to tell
01:49:46.100it to someone who would be thrilled to hear it and i am thrilled to hear it because i do believe that
01:49:52.420the that redemption is something that is accomplished at the level of the individual and
01:49:57.860every time you hear someone say um that they've that they're they've oriented themselves properly
01:50:05.220it's like a bell rings in heaven it's exactly that and so well so well so that's absolutely and
01:50:14.100chronically overwhelming but it's it's absolutely remarkable to see this to see how much desperation
01:50:20.820there is for this when i talk to audiences about the relationship between responsibility and meaning
01:50:26.100they inevitably go dead silent there's not a there's not a rustle there's not a cough it's like
01:50:32.180is that the secret is that the secret is that it's the voluntary adoption of responsibility it's like well
01:50:37.780that's the that's the central message of the west it's like to pick up your cross and bear it
01:50:43.540you know and everyone's been told that but they don't know what it means
01:50:47.060because it's not been articulated enough so that it becomes something that's practical it's like
01:50:51.220yes look at the terrible responsibilities you have right in front of you your family is hurting
01:50:57.300you're in trouble there's problems in the world it's like all of that's right there and all you have
01:51:02.740to do is all you have to do is take responsibility for it and then you've got what you need all of a
01:51:09.460sudden you think oh that's what i needed i didn't know that i thought that was something to avoid
01:51:13.860it's an impediment to short-term hedonistic pleasure you know and to happiness there's nothing
01:51:18.980happiness about happy about lifting the suffering of the world onto your shoulders it's like this is
01:51:24.100way way better than happiness isn't what you feel in the king's chapel it's something so magnificent that
01:51:32.500happiness pales in comparison and so it's it's it's thin gruel happiness and young people know that
01:51:40.260they're pursuing hedonistic pleasure and you know no wonder but there's nothing in it that's
01:51:45.220sustaining and all it does is make you cynical it's like is that's all there is another one night stand
01:51:51.140another another binge party you know and it's not like i have anything against in principle against
01:51:57.620some of that exuberant youthful hedonism that but but it's it's not if look the universities have
01:52:07.620turned into places of parties why well because that's what the students find best to do there
01:52:14.100well that's not good what you want to offer them is a reason to not party it's like no you gotta
01:52:20.180understand you come to this class hungover you're not going to be able to get it you're not going to
01:52:25.060be able to write properly you're going to pay a price for that hedonism it's like and the price will
01:52:29.940be too high for you to bear it's like oh well enough hedonism for me then like i've got something
01:52:34.500important to do that's the way out of that but that that thing that's more important has to be
01:52:39.780offered and it can be offered so when i've seen it happen over and over to people and it's it's
01:52:44.660it's extraordinarily good for them if you're an addict and i've talked to many people who are
01:52:49.140addicted you need a reason to stop being addicted which means you need something better than the drug
01:52:57.140well that's what you offer at universities it's something better it's something better than everything
01:53:01.700else and if you're not offering that then it's it's all a facade it's all a factory a knowledge
01:53:07.460factory which is the modern university factory knowledge factory products seems to me and we'll
01:53:15.300conclude here i think momentarily it seems to me that that the time is ripe for a radical and beautiful
01:53:22.660rebirth of a more fully human culture and when i hear you speak jordan about your lectures and
01:53:28.820you know what what what moves me deeply is is the the love that you have for the people who come to
01:53:38.420you and i suppose i want to just conclude on a question uh about i want to conclude on an optimistic note by
01:53:50.500by drawing out what's in that love it's that the potential that is that lies in those in each and every
01:53:58.100individual for deep transformation for connection to the transcendent and and and and and and and
01:54:05.460and just to talk about that that longing that seems to me that that that longing is overwhelming
01:54:12.260and if only we can start to can refill the fountains with water or build new fountains that
01:54:19.140the possibilities are beyond our our imagining right for the point yes the point we're at at the moment
01:54:28.180that's what partly why this is an inflection point too because so many things are transforming
01:54:33.220the landscape of possibility is opening up to us in a way that it it never has partly because of our
01:54:39.060technological transformations and so the importance of the particularities of our ethical choices are becoming
01:54:45.940more and more exaggerated because while we're going to build artificial intelligence and it's going
01:54:52.660to be a reflection of us and so we better make sure that it reflects the part of us that we want
01:54:57.300reflected and you talked about that care for people as the care for me is predicated on my realization
01:55:03.700that i prefer heaven to hell having done what i could to explore hell let's say in my academic career
01:55:09.700and in my private life and in my and in my clinical practice and to see what's there that unnecessary
01:55:15.540suffering and that malevolence is like well it would be best to move away from that towards something
01:55:21.300better that's something i genuinely believe that it's it's it's for the best for everything that we
01:55:27.460aim up and then when i see someone decide to aim up i think well that's that's something that's one more
01:55:33.060step away from hell it's not just the it's not just the climbing up the hill painfully towards the city
01:55:39.780of god it's move away from the abyss and i think it's easier for people to believe in the abyss it was
01:55:45.060for me to believe in the existence of malevolence and apocalypse and catastrophe i mean all you have
01:55:50.020to do is study history to believe that think well not that anything but that away from that well away
01:55:57.060from that is amorphous right it's again it's like moses leading his people from from the tyranny in egypt
01:56:02.420it's like well where are we going well away from that well that's into the desert and that's where
01:56:10.420we are now well that's not so good but at least it's away from that well that's something but
01:56:15.620then there's something beyond that it's like well what is it that we're striving towards and
01:56:19.540and well we we can each imagine that in our own way in some sense but i would say well you start locally
01:56:24.980it's like fix up what you can fix up when you see a problem that announces itself to you a small
01:56:30.420problem that's your problem that you could fix that's your one step forward take it yes it seems
01:56:37.060to me in addition to that that life of the individual we we need to think very broadly about
01:56:42.180the institutional life that supports all of that individual uh realization and freedom we need to
01:56:49.940think about universities when you think about our architecture we need to think about that is to say
01:56:54.580that that that the the whole horizon that lies before us needs to be considered for the fullness of
01:57:03.220possibility that that it holds and that those possibilities are not realizable simply by you know
01:57:12.020this individual doing this and that individual doing that but that they also require a kind of um
01:57:17.780um it requires that we think about the whole and that we allow to give birth we allow to come into
01:57:25.860being the kinds of institutional lives institutional life that um upon which our realization depends upon
01:57:36.100which that awakening depends and so it simply can't be a simply a matter of of our living our lives in a
01:57:41.700kind of solitary way no i was thinking about you know what we we what you know to think about what
01:57:47.460are the fountains on which you know if we're in the desert it seems to me that that okay so we're in
01:57:53.620the desert it's a it's a it's a lonely and dry place but there we're the narrative fragments we're
01:58:00.420the narrative sure that's all the deities that the the israelites come to worship the false idols
01:58:05.140because the narrative fragments and that is the precisely the moment paradoxically at which
01:58:11.140we can rediscover ourselves what our what our nature what our longing is for and so it seems
01:58:16.260to me that we're at a time of astonishing possibility but that we must take it up well
01:58:23.540hopefully you know when you train graduate students and you train undergraduates you know
01:58:27.140you orient them towards the truth and then they learn to teach in accordance with that and that
01:58:32.900and that facilitates the process that we're describing and that they regard the relationship
01:58:37.540with individual students as of paramount importance and see the teaching as something that's noble
01:58:42.260and the research as well yes yes the awakening of each particular individual say in an educational
01:58:46.900institution is precisely what allows them to go on in in ten thousand ways in ten hundred thousand
01:58:53.220ways throughout their lives to to to transmit and open up those transcendent possibilities
01:59:00.340communities thank you jordan very much my pleasure