The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Peterson Admits He Got This Wrong

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00:00:29.180 So I'm going to leap right into the story tonight, and I'll backfill and expand as we go along.

00:00:37.660 On this tour, I've been walking through a selection of the biblical stories.

00:00:44.360 That's what I do in this book, We Who Wrestle With God.

00:00:48.520 And as I tell this story, I'll explain what I think it means.

00:00:56.080 I think I'll explain what I know it means.

00:00:59.180 And I don't think I think I know what it means.

00:01:03.080 I don't know everything it means, but there's some things I do know.

00:01:07.800 And so, well, I'm going to try to explain them,

00:01:10.500 and then you can decide for yourself if they make sense,

00:01:13.320 and if they make sense in a way that's actually useful and meaningful.

00:01:18.080 It's certainly been the case in my life that when I study the deep stories of our cultures,

00:01:25.760 they're an endless source of revivifying revelation and what i mean by that is that

00:01:33.400 understanding them straightens out your pathway forward and illuminates your relationships and

00:01:40.520 makes you more resilient in the face of trouble and gives you a place to put things in your

00:01:45.900 imagination and under helps you understand how you might be able to draw the best even out of

00:01:52.480 your suffering and you know that's an awful lot of benefit and so that's been my personal

00:01:58.060 experience and really without end you know I started a deep analysis of deep as I'm capable

00:02:05.080 deep analysis of literary stories and religious stories 40 years ago and for me it's been nothing

00:02:14.640 but an endlessly deepening benefit.

00:02:19.680 And I think the effects of that, at least in part,

00:02:24.880 can be seen in the popularity of the discussions

00:02:28.420 that I've had about such stories,

00:02:30.420 first with my classes at Harvard and at the University of Toronto

00:02:36.080 and in my clinical practice and then in the broader public realm.

00:02:39.760 The fact of the attractiveness of these interpretations, the strange attractiveness of these interpretations, indicates to me something like illustration of their eternal utility.

00:02:57.120 I suppose that's also in combination with the fact that they've been remembered for thousands of years.

00:03:02.400 and some of the stories, the really ancient stories,

00:03:06.100 stories of Adam and Eve, for example, or Noah,

00:03:10.760 they're probably tens of thousands of years old.

00:03:13.360 And, you know, unless humanity is rotten to the core

00:03:17.760 in some fundamental sense, which is not a story I buy,

00:03:21.680 then there's a reason that those stories lodge themselves

00:03:25.320 in our collective memory immovably,

00:03:27.900 and they've been transmitted down the generations

00:03:31.540 for as long back into the past as we can peer.

00:03:38.960 In this part of Genesis, this is in the story of Abraham.

00:03:43.320 Abraham is a man who's called forth by God to have the adventure of his life.

00:03:50.060 And that's an interesting idea in and of itself, especially when you understand it.

00:03:57.540 And I kind of like to approach these things biologically to begin with, because I think that's kind of amusing, given that the scientific or the biological approach is often used to justify standing in opposition, let's say, to the religious enterprise.

00:04:16.020 I think that's ill-advised personally, partly because I think that truth is a structure of unity,

00:04:27.580 and that as we approach the truth, we find that pieces of what we understood

00:04:36.820 that appeared to exist in opposition to each other existed in that opposition

00:04:41.400 because we misunderstood we misunderstood the nature of reality at a deep level and that if

00:04:49.460 we understood things properly there would be no intrinsic conflict let's say between the

00:04:54.800 scientific enterprise that enables us to predict and control the world with ever-increasing

00:05:02.140 sophistication and the structures of value that orient us in the pursuit of the meaning of our

00:05:08.860 lives i don't believe that one of those will be finally sacrificed to the other or that that

00:05:15.280 sacrifice is necessary and one of the what would you criteria by which i've determined

00:05:22.760 to pursue the truth is that the interpretations that i regard as plausible have to work

00:05:31.760 in relationship to multiple levels of analysis simultaneously and so if the interpretations

00:05:38.620 contradict the basic laws of science neuropsychology neuropsychopharmacology

00:05:46.700 evolutionary biology they're not correct and if if they contradict the explanations that i'm

00:05:56.140 putting forward aren't in keeping with the deepest moral intuitions laid forth in our

00:06:01.300 traditional societies and in the substructure of our political systems then they're not correct

00:06:09.080 things have to line up like they do in a musical piece where everything finds its proper place

00:06:14.180 and so abraham is the man who's called to the adventure of his life and that's actually the

00:06:21.560 definition of god in the story of abraham and that's something very much worth knowing

00:06:25.440 it's very difficult for modern people to understand what it means for something divine

00:06:31.760 to make itself known to them in the confines of their life you know people often believe that

00:06:37.760 if they're wavering in their religious conviction that if only god showed himself to them they would

00:06:42.860 immediately be believers and that's not as true as you think it is because even if something

00:06:47.920 miraculous occurred for you once you'd you'd forget about it quite quickly and return to your

00:06:52.840 old ways but you can find the guiding voice of the divine in your life on a regular basis in some

00:07:00.820 ways if you know where to look and if you understand what it means to find that and

00:07:04.380 the story of abraham is one in one representation of how that might occur and so when we

00:07:11.880 first meet abraham who's the father of the abrahamic religions

00:07:17.200 he's a he's a he's a man who's certainly passed his prime and so he's lived much of his life

00:07:28.180 in infantile security that's really how the story puts it forward

00:07:35.320 he's the son of he's the spoiled son of a rich father he has privilege

00:07:42.060 and because of that he spent literally 75 years

00:07:47.640 living in in the basement of his father's tent you know right because because he has everything

00:07:56.700 he hypothetically needs and that begs the question immediately what is it that you really need

00:08:05.840 and if everything that you need is provided for you so that you're satiated let's say you have

00:08:11.840 enough to eat you have enough to drink you have shelter perhaps you need nothing else and the

00:08:22.500 political utopians who offer people an easy solution to the problems of scrabbling for

00:08:30.660 existence seem to predicate their offering on the belief that really what we want is for our hunger

00:08:38.880 to be satisfied and a roof over our heads and you know much as it's unpleasant to be deprived and

00:08:46.920 even viciously unpleasant to be to be arbitrarily deprived there's no reason whatsoever to assume

00:08:55.560 that we would be or should be satisfied by being satisfied infants and that's really what Abraham

00:09:04.100 concludes and to some degree to the degree that you advance forward continually out of your zone

00:09:12.560 of comfort you make exactly the same you draw exactly the same conclusion

00:09:19.060 if you're a good parent if you're a good father if you're a good mother

00:09:27.860 you don't strive merely to provide for your children everything they could conceivably want

00:09:38.220 forever what you strive to do is to encourage within them the development of the impetus for

00:09:46.300 independence and and and the productive adventurousness that goes along with that

00:09:54.160 and you do that knowing that you don't want children who only want from you everything that

00:10:01.620 they need you want children who can provide for themselves and more than that you want children

00:10:07.780 who can not only provide for themselves but who have enough strength of character and enough

00:10:13.860 ability and enough sense to organize themselves so that not only can they provide for themselves

00:10:20.520 but that they might have something to offer some friends and a potential romantic partner,

00:10:25.980 a wife and a husband, and eventually children,

00:10:29.500 and something maybe outside of that even for their community and their state and their nation,

00:10:36.620 and maybe for God himself.

00:10:38.140 And in consequence of that, you are on the side of the spirit that calls your children to the adventure of their lives.

00:10:49.300 and that's how God is presented in the story of Abraham

00:10:52.560 so Abraham is in comfort in his father's tent

00:10:57.460 at the beginning of the story

00:10:58.640 and God comes to him and says

00:11:00.440 you've got to stop this

00:11:04.280 you've got to get up

00:11:06.440 and you've got to get away from

00:11:07.820 everything that you know

00:11:10.100 and that you are familiar with

00:11:12.680 and you have to go out into the world

00:11:14.320 and you did that to the degree that you matured and left your family and found a partner and

00:11:24.200 established your own family or your own enterprise and and more than that and this is also how these

00:11:31.420 stories work you do that every moment of your life when you decide that instead of residing in

00:11:39.400 mere comfort you'll stand on the edge and work to make of yourself more than you are and you don't

00:11:46.860 do that where it's comfortable you do that where it's interestingly uncomfortable right and and we

00:11:53.640 want that more than anything else that that's that's so interestingly because that call to

00:11:58.200 adventure also simultaneously is a call to what we would want to call to us if we were acting with

00:12:07.100 our best interest in mind you don't want to be comfortable you don't want to have everything that

00:12:12.700 you need at hand you want to be challenged so that more of you is commanded to make itself manifest

00:12:19.200 and the reason that you want that is so that you can be prepared for anything that comes your way

00:12:24.440 but so that also so that you can set more and more possibility in order and expand your horizons as

00:12:32.660 you move forward and that's much more interesting than mere infantile satiation and so that's what

00:12:40.540 god is offering to abraham and what you have to understand is this is a definition of god

00:12:46.040 it's not a description precisely it's a definition and so here's something to contemplate there's no

00:12:54.100 difference between the voice of adventure that properly calls to you and the voice of the divine

00:12:59.260 itself imagine your favorite lecture dial that up on max put that on steroids and then add some

00:13:06.700 cinematic elements to it that's the best way i could describe a peterson academy lecture

00:13:11.100 i went to college because i had to i go to peterson academy because i want to i'm still

00:13:17.840 paying off college from 10 years ago and i'm also still questioning the value that i got out of

00:13:22.420 college in traditional universities a lot of times it's just pretty dry they don't bring the

00:13:27.220 same energy as the professors at peterson academy it is a completely different experience to learn

00:13:32.440 from somebody who actually wants to teach you if you've been on the fence about this this is the

00:13:37.840 time that thing that's calling to you you won't have an answer for it unless you enroll and see

00:13:42.080 for yourself you have the opportunity to investigate that calling okay so god's offer to abraham comes

00:13:49.960 with a a set of associated offerings the contract that god establishes with abraham this is what a

00:13:59.160 covenant is it's a contract and i'll explain that it's a contract it's it's a relational contract

00:14:06.080 and so what what god tells abraham is that if he has enough courage to leave where he's comfortable

00:14:12.880 there will be a set of consequences and the consequences are actually rather magnificent

00:14:18.980 And this is what justifies the risk.

00:14:22.160 And so what God tells Abraham is that if he ventures forward in good faith

00:14:27.320 and makes the proper sacrifices, then he'll become the father of nations, right?

00:14:34.260 Okay, so that's quite the offer.

00:14:35.900 And so you could take that apart.

00:14:37.740 It means that not only will he have children and they'll thrive,

00:14:41.720 but his children will have children and they'll have children and they'll all thrive

00:14:46.660 and they'll thrive in a way that's expanding

00:14:48.800 and they'll thrive in a way that makes them

00:14:51.540 the masters of their circumstance

00:14:54.600 because God tells Abraham, for example,

00:14:57.060 that the land of Canaan,

00:15:00.280 which is the land of the,

00:15:02.440 what would you say? 0.63

00:15:03.500 The land of Canaan is the land of those 0.89

00:15:05.600 who have abandoned their relationship with the divine. 0.98

00:15:09.460 God tells Abraham that the inhabitants

00:15:11.460 of the land of Canaan will flee before his descendants. 1.00

00:15:15.120 And so the offer there is that

00:15:16.560 If Abraham is courageous in his conviction, he'll deliver to his children a pattern of being that will enable them to be victorious wherever they make themselves present.

00:15:30.700 And that's what you want for your children, too, is you want them to embody a pattern of attention and action that is highly likely to make themselves successful wherever they go.

00:15:45.040 Now, you can imagine a predatory kind of success where I get what I need or want at your expense, right?

00:15:52.100 That's a zero-sum game sort of accomplishment on my part.

00:15:57.900 I have much, but you have nothing.

00:16:00.360 And the reason I have anything is because I've taken it from you. 0.92

00:16:03.420 But that isn't what God offers to Abraham either.

00:16:06.940 He says to Abraham, if you follow the voice of adventure when it calls to you,

00:16:12.180 then you'll be a blessing to yourself well so that's a good thing to know because you could

00:16:17.880 imagine that you move forward viciously and accrue your wealth and opportunity at the expense of

00:16:26.980 other people but the price you pay for that let's say is that at least some of the time insofar as

00:16:32.600 you're still human you're at the mercy of the conscience that calls you out for your misbehavior

00:16:37.560 Or you could imagine that you move forward in a way that provides you what you need and want.

00:16:43.320 But you do it, it happens in a manner that simultaneously makes what you do extremely useful to the people around you.

00:16:51.500 You know, one of the things that's really remarkable about your country,

00:16:54.620 and probably foremost among all the countries, not only in the world now,

00:16:58.740 but all the countries that have ever been,

00:17:00.360 is that you americans have done a very good job of acting out the proposition that that's possible

00:17:07.960 the notion that you could make your fortune let's say but if you did it in the proper manner if you

00:17:13.560 pursued the interest that would enable you to be for example a productive and generous entrepreneur

00:17:18.100 that your wealth would not only not come at the expense of other people but would simultaneously

00:17:23.840 make other people wealthy as you advanced and you know that's the case because your country

00:17:30.440 is the richest country that there's ever been even though a relatively small proportion of

00:17:35.780 people in your country are also hyper affluent right so you got you got to have your cake and

00:17:41.140 eat it too and i would say there's no reason to assume that your success has to come at the

00:17:47.860 expense of the success of your family in fact if you construed your success properly you'd be

00:17:54.240 successful in a way that would help your wife be successful and then you'd both be successful in a

00:17:58.940 way that would help your children be successful and hopefully they would be successful in a way

00:18:03.360 that would help their friends flourish and that could just stack up and you're all the way up the

00:18:08.600 hierarchy of social order and we know that's possible because it happened in it happens in

00:18:14.500 the western democracies and it particularly happens and continues to happen in your country

00:18:18.860 so it's not a pipe dream and it's also the proper added had an answer to the skeptics who say well

00:18:26.340 all wealth let's say is generated at the cost of the exploitation of others it's like no true wealth

00:18:33.240 is generated at the cost of the exploitation of others that's not wealth that's manipulation

00:18:39.960 and it's a form of criminality

00:18:41.520 and it doesn't sustain itself well across time

00:18:43.780 and the wealth that your country is actually founded on

00:18:47.140 in its most fundamental sense

00:18:48.580 is not the wealth of the thieves

00:18:51.420 and you can tell that

00:18:53.360 all you have to do is move around your country

00:18:55.640 and see how it's laid out

00:18:57.960 it's productive and thriving

00:19:00.480 in the main there's corruption of course

00:19:02.520 there is in every system in every situation

00:19:05.460 but it's possible for people to pursue

00:19:09.840 the adventure of their life without doing that at the not only without doing that at the expense of

00:19:16.000 other people but doing it in a manner that's of aid to other people look imagine your child's on

00:19:21.660 a team and a sports team and you know maybe they're the best player but let's imagine that

00:19:26.300 they're better than the best player in some ways so they have this skill that enables them to be

00:19:31.660 the best player but they also have the social graces that enable them to be a good sport right

00:19:37.220 a truly admirable athlete and so what does that mean well maybe they're the captain of their team

00:19:41.920 and and they're voted captain as a consequence of popular acclaim and the reason for that is that

00:19:47.780 they help all their teammates and they pass to them when it's necessary this so that someone

00:19:52.480 else can share the glory and they help the younger people on the team develop and they even do that

00:19:57.340 in a way so that when they're on the playing field they're gracious to their opponents who

00:20:01.460 they obviously need in order to play the game at all and so not only are they skillful in what they

00:20:06.460 do but they're a credit to their team and then when you watch them as a parent you can be doubly

00:20:11.220 proud not only because they have the skill necessary to get the job done but because they

00:20:16.760 do that in a way that multiplies the skill of everyone around them and then you can say that

00:20:21.360 you've succeeded as a parent and you can be properly celebratory when your child wins the

00:20:27.660 championship because they've won two championships and one is the one that constitutes the victory in

00:20:32.960 the game and the other is that one that constitutes the victory of their establishment of a pattern of

00:20:39.200 play that will aid them in their entire life we know this is the case we know that this is possible

00:20:45.140 and that's what god tells abraham is that if you follow the voice of adventure without fail and

00:20:51.000 make the proper sacrifices that you can establish a mode of being that's maximally beneficial to you

00:20:58.520 if you are treating yourself properly

00:21:00.580 while simultaneously being the benefit

00:21:02.700 that will benefit everyone else

00:21:05.060 and that will transmit itself

00:21:10.000 in an expanding form down the generations.

00:21:13.200 That's what you hope if you're a mother,

00:21:15.060 you know, if you're a stay-at-home mother,

00:21:16.600 let's say, and you've sacrificed your own career

00:21:19.280 to some degree

00:21:20.160 to ensure that your children are well-situated.

00:21:23.700 You're playing the long game, right?

00:21:25.500 You're hoping that the investment

00:21:26.720 that you make in your children

00:21:28.020 pays off in their thriving and then in the thriving of their children and so forth down the

00:21:33.780 generations and you have no idea how much you affect in eternity by acting properly locally

00:21:40.820 and the offer that god makes to abraham is that if you follow the voice of adventure the pull of

00:21:46.360 adventure forward then that pull manifested fully will produce those consequences and that's a good

00:21:57.340 deal you know because abraham has to ask himself well why would i leave the comfort why would i

00:22:03.000 leave comfort behind and the answer to that is there's must there's something much better than

00:22:09.780 comfort right there's challenge voluntarily met no and you you can think about that in the most

00:22:18.860 fundamental sense if you want it by placing the story of abraham in the full context of

00:22:24.280 christianity i mean the christian injunction the demand of christianity is that people shoulder

00:22:30.640 the burden of the entire the burden of the pain of the world on their own shoulders right that's

00:22:38.180 the that's the ask that's what it means to to to voluntarily shoulder the cross it means to

00:22:45.340 face the challenge even of death and worse than that the challenge of the confrontation with evil

00:22:51.440 and the eternal promise is that if you do that voluntarily if you confront all that horror that

00:22:58.160 you see through the darkness to the light and that the consequence of that is not only your

00:23:03.840 redemption but the redemption of mankind and i think that's right and i can't see how it can be

00:23:09.840 other any other way because the alternative hypothesis is that you could avoid the challenging

00:23:14.980 realities of life and thereby protect yourself and i see no evidence whatsoever that that's ever true

00:23:22.320 it's certainly not true locally day to day you pay for everything you avoid we know perfectly

00:23:28.580 well on the clinical side of things that if you're terrified of your life the way to lead you forward

00:23:33.860 is to teach you how to confront the things that you're avoiding you get braver and better if you

00:23:39.180 do that and the and the limits to that aren't well defined you know the great men of history

00:23:44.840 the great individuals of history are people who faced the worst terror that

00:23:50.620 threatened them immediately and in the long term and maintained their upward orientation and told

00:23:58.460 the truth and and led people out of tyranny and away from slavery toward the promised land

00:24:04.840 it's the eternal story of mankind and it's the religious it's the it's the religious pathway

00:24:11.600 forward towards the highest good and that's what abraham is asked to do and along the way

00:24:18.040 he's asked to sacrifice and he starts his adventure with the sacrifice and the reason

00:24:24.620 for that and this is a very difficult thing to realize but a very simple thing to grasp

00:24:31.460 once you've understood it the reason for that is every time you step out of your zone of comfort

00:24:36.920 and move forward into a new adventure you'll have to sacrifice something that's why you're afraid to

00:24:42.180 do it you know imagine you have a job and you don't really like it you know you're bored by it

00:24:49.100 and you feel why are you bored because it suited you yesterday but it doesn't suit you tomorrow

00:24:55.760 it doesn't call you forward to be more than you are and so it pays the bills let's say and it

00:25:02.420 it provides for your family but it's killing your soul and you have a dream to establish

00:25:08.100 your own business let's say who knows what your dream is and you're afraid to do it because you'll

00:25:13.520 have to sacrifice your security and every time you step forward on something that's new and

00:25:22.340 adventurous you have to sacrifice your security by definition and you might say why do that and

00:25:31.400 that's a very good question and the answer is there's more to life than security by a large

00:25:38.020 margin or you could say something slightly different you could say the true security is

00:25:42.900 not to be found in safety and you know that if you have children because you don't do everything

00:25:48.260 you can to make your children safe not if you're sensible you do what's reasonable to make them

00:25:54.200 safe and then you do everything you can to make them brave and confident and there's no reason

00:26:00.240 to assume that you wouldn't do the same thing to yourself if you took care of yourself properly

00:26:04.380 because it's better to be brave and competent than to be secure partly because there is no security

00:26:10.060 there's no security apart from bravery and competence and maybe enough bravery and competence

00:26:17.480 is the security that brings security and opportunity to everyone and i think that that's

00:26:23.840 the case and that's what god tells abraham if you move forward and you make the proper sacrifices

00:26:30.980 then the world will lay itself at your feet and that's the american dream that's for sure we

00:26:37.320 believe that that's a possibility for everyone we certainly hope that that's a possibility for our

00:26:42.380 children you know and the wonderful thing about your country is that you believe that and you

00:26:47.600 actually celebrate people in the main who have enough courage to do it and look at what the

00:26:52.060 consequence has been no for all the faults of of the west what are you going to trade it for

00:26:59.140 you know anything that's ever made itself manifest no why do people want to move here

00:27:05.040 for all its faults because for all its faults it's a hell of a lot better than wherever they are now

00:27:10.780 that's an indication you know

00:27:14.620 well not only is it 250 years of proof practical proof but your country emerged out of a matrix

00:27:26.600 that produced a lot of other pretty good countries roughly the countries of the western world and

00:27:31.640 they've all been successful with the same set of propositions so it's not like the evidence isn't

00:27:36.400 in free people who take responsibility for their lives can produce the states that all think the

00:27:43.380 states and the psyches that all things considered make life worth living and that's the pattern that

00:27:50.460 you are called upon to embody and here's the thing that's so remarkable about abraham's offer or about

00:27:58.800 god's offer he basically says to abraham if you pay attention to the call to adventure that will

00:28:06.380 redeem you i mean there isn't anything you could possibly want more than that and i said i would

00:28:12.020 speak about that biologically well we know that children have an impetus to maturity right they

00:28:17.300 want to grow up you know how happy children are when they do something difficult that indicates

00:28:22.720 that they're now moving from being two to being three,

00:28:27.660 moving from toddlerhood to early childhood,

00:28:30.340 mastering something they haven't mastered before,

00:28:32.580 how pleased with themselves they are when they do that,

00:28:35.120 and how happy you are to see it.

00:28:36.660 It's a manifestation of the instinct that drives them to further development.

00:28:41.620 And why wouldn't we have that instinct,

00:28:43.380 since we have the instinct to live?

00:28:46.240 And why wouldn't that instinct make itself manifest to us

00:28:49.180 in the confines of our day-to-day experience?

00:28:50.980 How could it be any other way?

00:28:52.720 And maybe what it does is make itself manifest to us by gripping our interest in something

00:28:58.000 and compelling us forward.

00:28:59.700 You know, we have a dream.

00:29:00.980 We have a vision of what could be.

00:29:02.820 We have some sense of who we could be if we developed ourselves fully.

00:29:07.080 We have a glimmer of that.

00:29:09.100 And it attracts our attention.

00:29:10.700 And we dwell on it.

00:29:11.780 And maybe we don't have the faith to pursue it.

00:29:13.620 But we're pretty damn happy with ourselves when we manage it.

00:29:16.160 And we're thrilled when we see someone we love do it.

00:29:19.760 And maybe we're jealous when we see it in our friends.

00:29:22.120 if they make it real and we don't and maybe that leads us into like an abyss of bitterness and

00:29:27.440 resentment and that and wasted life and foregone opportunity and that's a kind of hell and that's

00:29:35.000 the consequence of what would we say excess faithless security seeking and that's not a

00:29:41.000 good thing and so not only do we have what we would want if we really wanted what we should

00:29:46.480 want at our fingertips but we have a hell that could open up underneath us if we forego that

00:29:51.940 opportunity that's what cain does right cain makes second-rate sacrifices he's not all in on his

00:30:00.900 adventure and the consequence of that is that he fails and he becomes bitter in consequence of that

00:30:07.140 and then resentful and then murderous and then his offspring become genocidal and then the flood

00:30:14.100 comes

00:30:14.720 well God 0.99

00:30:18.100 makes Abraham a very good deal 0.84

00:30:19.840 and if you imagine that 0.88

00:30:22.080 you would dare to presume

00:30:23.980 that that which calls you forward

00:30:25.940 to adventure was identical

00:30:27.640 with divinity itself

00:30:30.440 and that if you put yourself

00:30:32.000 into that pursuit that you would

00:30:34.020 set yourself right with the world

00:30:35.960 and be a blessing to everyone around you

00:30:38.420 that seems a risk

00:30:40.100 worth taking especially

00:30:41.880 if you consider the consequences of the

00:30:43.980 alternative you couldn't ask for anything more if you could ask for what you wanted if you were

00:30:50.060 sensible and cared for yourself and that's the offer that god makes abraham to follow the dream

00:30:57.160 of your life and to make the sacrifices along the way well why sacrifices well you always have to

00:31:03.900 let something go when you change that's the definition of change right you know perfectly

00:31:09.400 well that as you've matured to the degree that you've matured you mature because you let what's

00:31:15.160 immature go when you move forward and you transform your personality as a consequence and

00:31:20.800 every time you step forward into a domain of expanded opportunity you're called upon to make

00:31:27.160 the requisite sacrifice and they expand in scope as you move forward now abraham starts out as abram

00:31:34.480 and he's renamed as the sacrifice's mount.

00:31:38.120 And the reason for that in part is that

00:31:39.840 as you transform, when you move forward,

00:31:43.340 you'll be called upon to transform enough

00:31:45.960 so that it will be as if you're a new person, right?

00:31:49.020 You've left so much of what trammeled you

00:31:52.160 in the past behind

00:31:53.620 that you're no longer even the same human being, right?

00:31:57.360 It's like a baptism by fire

00:31:59.720 with your spirit purified 1.00

00:32:01.980 by the consequential sacrifice of all your foolishness and immaturity and stupidity and 1.00

00:32:08.660 bitterness and resentment all that you have to shed as you move forward and what's the consequence 0.99

00:32:14.400 of that is that you exist in a never-ending expanse of increasing opportunity right and

00:32:22.480 that's a good vision of jacob's ladder that spirals you upward and away from the abyss and

00:32:27.720 it's a vision of paradise itself because paradise is a place that's good but still getting better

00:32:34.360 and that's what a life properly conducted is and that's and that's a life that is a consequence of

00:32:41.500 upward striving voluntary sacrifice uh in the name of the good right and there's no difference

00:32:49.540 between that and a covenantal relationship with the divide those are the same thing

00:32:53.840 how Abraham is called upon

00:32:56.580 to make sacrifices

00:32:58.580 and each time he has a transforming

00:33:01.020 adventure the nature of the

00:33:03.060 sacrifice mounts

00:33:04.200 and the eternal story

00:33:06.920 is that God will call

00:33:08.780 upon you to sacrifice everything

00:33:10.740 in the name of your allegiance

00:33:13.040 to what's highest and so Christ

00:33:14.940 says in the gospels for example

00:33:16.840 that anyone who

00:33:18.800 prefers his family

00:33:21.200 prefers his mother and father

00:33:22.760 and his brother to him will be rejected it's a very harsh and strange thing to say but what it

00:33:31.580 means fundamentally is that and this is a this is a matter of definition as well is that as you move

00:33:37.680 forward into the great beyond let's say pursuing what's good is that everything has to be sacrificed

00:33:45.080 to what is yet better and that there's no limit to the demand for that sacrifice and so when we

00:33:52.380 meet abraham in the story that i'm going to relate to you now he's called upon to make a sacrifice

00:33:58.600 that approximates the ultimate sacrifice abraham has been promised that not only will he become a

00:34:05.900 credit to himself that his name will be remembered and that he will be a credit to other people but

00:34:10.800 that he will be the father of nations and he's an old man and childless when this

00:34:15.080 promises delivered to him and after much travail and effort his wife sarah sarai first and then

00:34:23.440 sarah because she's renamed as well finally have a son isaac and they're very old when this happens

00:34:29.320 far too old for this to actually happen and yet it does and they've strived for for decades to

00:34:36.380 have this child in the face of the catastrophe of their life and he's finally delivered

00:34:41.420 to them and they're thrilled beyond comprehension about this opportunity and regarded as a

00:34:47.580 fulfillment of the promise of god and the end consequence of their sacrifices and and this is

00:34:55.620 what happens and it came to pass after these things the adventures of abraham's life that god

00:35:02.360 did tempt abraham and said abraham and abraham said behold here i am and he said take now thy son

00:35:12.480 thine only son isaac whom thou lovest and get thee into the land of moriah and offer him there

00:35:19.140 for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which i will tell thee of well this is a passage

00:35:25.420 that the atheistic rationalists who hate the god of the old testament point to when they

00:35:31.040 describe the cruelty of the deity upon which the judeo-christian culture is predicated what sort

00:35:37.940 of monstrous figure would call upon a great prophet an acolyte to sacrifice the son that he loves

00:35:44.340 is a very complicated problem to understand it we first of all have to turn our understanding to

00:35:53.660 an analysis of sacrifice itself so

00:35:57.000 what does it mean to sacrifice it means to give up something in the hopes of

00:36:06.060 investment in something to come a bank account is a sacrifice why well because you put your

00:36:14.020 money in the bank instead of spending it on hookers and cocaine now right right but i really

00:36:21.160 mean this most i mean this in the deepest possible sense is that to to sacrifice is to forego the

00:36:28.760 pleasures of the moment for the stabilization of the future and the increase in opportunity in the

00:36:35.880 future and the sake of the social community so as you develop you move away from the desire for

00:36:42.980 immediate gratification for your whims to the ability to forego gratification so you can stable

00:36:49.720 you stabilize yourself across time you save for your future let's say but at the same time you do

00:36:56.160 that also in service to the people around you right so you're concerned about you and yourself

00:37:01.580 as you iterate in the future but concerned as well with you and your wife and your family and

00:37:06.500 then your community and and so you start to conduct yourself not so much so that you get exactly

00:37:12.740 what you want right now no matter what it is and no matter at whose expense you get it

00:37:18.900 to a pattern of activity that constitutes foregoing immediate gratification in service

00:37:25.520 of the community and the future that's a sacrificial gesture and it's the sacrificial

00:37:31.280 gesture upon which community itself is founded community by definition requires the sacrifice

00:37:38.120 of the individual to the community it's the definition of what constitutes communal if you're

00:37:43.820 a child who doesn't play well with others you can't let other people take their turn you only

00:37:50.260 want to play the games that are your games in order to take your place in the social community

00:37:55.220 you have to offer up your immediate desires to a long-term and harmonious game and so

00:38:01.760 the community itself is predicated on sacrifice just as your long-term psychological stability

00:38:09.280 and opportunity is predicated upon sacrifice now we dramatized this for for thousands of years

00:38:16.360 without understanding it explicitly in the least and so i went to jerusalem last year

00:38:23.220 with a friend of mine and we walked the via dolorosa right the the pathway of the of the

00:38:30.160 cross and we ended up in the church of the holy sepulcher which was the first christian church

00:38:35.440 founded on the site of christ's crucifixion and so at the center of the church is the place of

00:38:42.220 sacrifice and this church surrounds that and surrounding the church is the community and

00:38:47.220 that's the foundation of the town and the reason for that is that we dramatized even in our

00:38:52.620 architecture the notion that the community is founded on sacrifice and i told i mentioned to

00:38:59.800 you already what the sacrifice means it's no different than work because work is a form of

00:39:05.160 sacrifice and we know that the stability of life and the community is dependent upon work

00:39:10.540 and the question we must ask ourselves is what work suffices and in the story of cain and abel

00:39:17.040 cain makes offerings or sacrifices that are second rate and abel makes the offerings that are

00:39:23.980 of the highest quality and he offers he dramatizes this he acts it out because it's not explicitly

00:39:30.280 understood it's still enacted in ritual and he takes the best that he owns the best that he has

00:39:37.360 and in the case of abel who's a herdsman he takes the unblemished firstborn of his flock and he

00:39:46.620 takes the best cuts and the best parts of the best cuts and he burns them and offers that to god and

00:39:52.400 it's an archaic dramatization of sacrifice and it's predicated on the idea that the god who is

00:39:59.680 above in the infinite expanse of heaven is pleased by receipt of the message that the best has been

00:40:07.560 offered and so that's a very anachronistic or archaic way of viewing the relationship with god

00:40:15.020 in the communication thereby but it it has within it in a dramatic manner the seeds of the very

00:40:21.420 profound truth which is that you make your peace with the order of the world by offering continually

00:40:27.560 what's best about you what's most valuable that you have and then you might say well what's the

00:40:33.940 ultimate possible offering of value and you can you can contemplate that quite rapidly

00:40:40.800 to offer the best is to offer yourself that's one answer that question that everything that's

00:40:46.420 best about you to offer that wholeheartedly and without reservation and with courage

00:40:52.020 but an equally profound offering is that of your child and you might say well what does it mean

00:40:57.220 to offer your child to god and i would say well that's what you do if you're a parent and you

00:41:02.340 have any sense this is particularly true of mothers and so i went to saint peter's in rome

00:41:08.540 And in St. Peter's, there's a great statue, the paella that Michelangelo carved out of a single block of marble when he was 24.

00:41:15.440 Absolute genius at 24.

00:41:17.780 And Mary is larger than life.

00:41:19.220 And a beautiful woman, a mother who's portrayed in this beautiful sculptural position, seated with the broken body of her son in her arms, looking serene and outward.

00:41:33.000 And I've often regarded the paella as the female equivalent of the crucifixion.

00:41:37.220 crucifixion and the reason for that is there's nothing more painful than the offering of your

00:41:41.920 child to the world and i mean literally nothing more painful given that most parents would die

00:41:47.720 if it meant they could prevent the death of their children and so it's an open question whether the

00:41:53.440 full offering of yourself is the highest sacrifice of the full offering of your child and one of the

00:41:59.240 fascinating things about the story of the crucifixion is that it's both sacrifices at once

00:42:05.080 and perhaps god makes the most painful sacrifice which is the sacrifice of the child

00:42:10.360 no and the combination of the sacrifice of child and and the self is you could say the ultimate

00:42:17.060 sacrifice and it's the ultimate sacrifice that's most pleasing to the divine and what does it mean

00:42:23.000 to offer your child to god or to sacrifice your child to god and it means to let them go

00:42:28.480 to encourage them to what to go out into the world and have the adventure of their life

00:42:33.300 and be broken because of it because that's what will happen but what's the alternative

00:42:39.280 what eternal what what would you say that nihilistic desperation of the eternally juvenile

00:42:46.640 we're seeing what the consequences of that are in our society now with the desperate failure to

00:42:53.560 launch people who sustain their adolescence into their 50s and are brutally bitter and murderous

00:43:00.240 and Cain-like and vengeful as a consequence?

00:43:04.520 If you're a good mother,

00:43:06.420 what did the psychoanalysts say in the 1920s? 0.99

00:43:08.960 The good mother necessarily fails.

00:43:12.320 Well, what does that mean?

00:43:13.640 Well, when your child is six months old,

00:43:16.060 you should be doing everything you can

00:43:17.680 to care for them for every moment.

00:43:19.500 But by the time they're a year,

00:43:20.980 it's time to expose them to the catastrophes of life, right?

00:43:25.400 You want to do that on the edge.

00:43:26.700 You don't want to overwhelm them with challenge,

00:43:29.700 but you certainly don't want to protect them from it.

00:43:32.400 You want to watch them and establish a relationship with them

00:43:35.720 so that you can see them dancing on the edge

00:43:38.340 and have the courage to facilitate that holy

00:43:41.640 even though it might break your heart to watch them leave.

00:43:45.300 And your heart's supposed to be broken.

00:43:48.100 Right? And what's the offering?

00:43:49.740 Well, if you let your children go, you'll get them back.

00:43:53.600 And that is what happens insofar as you can get them back

00:43:56.920 or maybe insofar as you even want them back 0.98

00:43:59.200 because if you have any sense well seriously if you have any sense you don't want a 55 year old

00:44:06.020 seven year old in your basement

00:44:07.920 so god says to abraham look you have to offer up even your son and abraham thinks well that's a

00:44:22.380 hell of a fine deal i've been working myself to the bone to make sure that this child appears

00:44:28.080 and this is going to be pretty hard on my wife

00:44:30.240 who's like 85 when she finally

00:44:32.200 gives birth and yet

00:44:33.940 I will continue

00:44:35.980 the sacrificial pattern of my life

00:44:38.180 and so 0.72

00:44:40.260 up they go to the mountain Abraham

00:44:41.980 rises up early in the morning and saddles 0.99

00:44:44.180 his ass and took two of the young 0.99

00:44:46.160 men with him and Isaac his son 1.00

00:44:48.200 and claved the wood for the burnt offering

00:44:50.200 and rose up and went unto

00:44:52.060 the place of which God had told him

00:44:53.740 on the third day Abraham lifted up 0.97

00:44:56.240 his eyes and saw the place afar off and abraham said to his young men abide ye here with the ass

00:45:02.340 and i and the lad will go yonder and worship celebrate devote ourselves to what's highest

00:45:07.420 and come again to you and abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it upon isaac his son

00:45:12.880 and took the fire in his hand and a knife and they both both went together you know and this is if

00:45:19.940 Maybe you take your son for the first time to an organized soccer game or a baseball game,

00:45:27.300 and he's a bit timid, and he comes with you anyways,

00:45:31.640 even though he's afraid and introverted, maybe a little bit on the anxious side,

00:45:35.960 and you stand with him, and he has enough faith in you to accompany you to wherever you go,

00:45:42.240 and you push him forward, and you say, you know, look, kid, this is frightening,

00:45:46.800 and it's challenging and it seems like it's a bit beyond you but i can do it and you walk he walks

00:45:52.760 your son in good faith walks forward with you towards his destiny right and that's what you

00:45:59.360 attempt to foster as a father and you're certainly sacrificing his childhood to do that

00:46:05.320 you sacrifice your his childhood so that something greater can take its place and that's a true

00:46:13.960 sacrifice and a true loss and every mother has her moment of pain when she leaves her child for

00:46:20.960 the first day at school because she knows that her the toddlerhood is over and and that time

00:46:26.680 of life has passed and there's some genuine sorrow in that and if she has any sense she does it with

00:46:32.560 a smile that masks her sorrow and maybe goes home to cry but is thrilled that you know she's going

00:46:37.800 to lose this creature who she's invested everything in and that's what lends her motherhood

00:46:44.880 more than a touch of heroism right that that willingness to sacrifice in towards the child's

00:46:53.060 better nature regardless in some sense of the cost and the cost of placing your child out in

00:47:00.040 the world is always the totality of your child you're always offering your child to death and

00:47:05.280 the evil of the world we know that so many women now decide not to have children they say well 0.99

00:47:10.800 who would dare to bring a child into a world such as this despite the fact the world is now better 0.99

00:47:16.960 and easier than it's ever been in the entire history of mankind a conscious mother is still

00:47:22.080 going to ask herself whether the price of entry into this world of toil and trouble is worth the 0.92

00:47:29.360 investment and the the mother who follows the pattern of mary who's called upon to become the

00:47:36.080 mother of god is the woman who says that even if the price is catastrophe and hell the provision

00:47:42.320 of the child is eternally worthwhile and it's that decision upon which society itself depends

00:47:49.360 and we have to understand that there's heroism in that and faith

00:47:59.360 and Isaac spake unto Abraham his father and said my father and he said here am I my son and he said

00:48:06.780 behold the word and the fire but where is the lamb for a burnt offering and Abraham said my son God

00:48:13.460 will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering so they went both of them together and they came

00:48:19.060 to the place where God had told him of and Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order and

00:48:24.260 bound isaac his son and laid him upon the altar on the wood and abraham stretched forth his hand

00:48:31.400 and took his knife to slay his son and the angel of the lord called unto him out of heaven and said

00:48:37.400 abraham abraham and he said here am i and he said lay not thine hand upon the lad neither do anything

00:48:43.760 to him for now i know thou fearest god seeing thou hast not withheld thy son thine only son

00:48:50.160 from me and abraham lifted up his eyes and look and behold him behind a ram caught in a thicket

00:48:57.020 by his horns and abraham went up and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the

00:49:02.580 stead of his son and abraham called the name of that place jehovah jireh and it is said to this

00:49:08.580 day in the mount of the lord it shall be seen and the angel of the lord called unto abraham out of

00:49:15.080 heaven the second time and said by myself have i sworn saith the lord for because thou hast not

00:49:20.240 done this thing or has done my thing this thing and has not withheld thy son thine only son that

00:49:26.660 in blessing i will bless thee and in multiplying i will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven

00:49:31.780 and as the sand which is upon the seashore and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies

00:49:37.400 and thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because thou hast obeyed my voice

00:49:42.780 well what sort of son do you want to raise for that son to be the sort of man who will attract

00:49:52.440 a woman who will want to be with him and a man who can produce the children that you'll admire

00:49:58.100 as their grandfather and the children who can attract their own mates and establish their own

00:50:04.040 families and so on down the generations and the answer to that question is embedded in the story

00:50:09.260 And the answer to the question is that you establish the pattern of sacrifice that even sacrifices your children themselves to what's highest.

00:50:19.400 Because in that sacrifice, the pattern that ensures the propagation of the generations is to be established.

00:50:31.840 And what happens as a consequence?

00:50:35.120 Well, Abraham gets his son back.

00:50:36.860 and more than that there's a miraculous transformation in ritual conduct that occurs

00:50:47.280 simultaneously and it's the establishment of the principle of substitutionary sacrifice

00:50:52.640 and this is a transformation of immense significance that

00:50:57.580 it's a it's the beginning of the transformation of the idea of the ritual of sacrifice

00:51:05.400 out of the domain of concrete dramatization

00:51:09.900 and into the realm of the psychological.

00:51:14.420 You fight with your wife,

00:51:16.080 and you fight with your wife

00:51:17.220 because there's something wrong with your personality.

00:51:19.580 You fight with your wife

00:51:21.160 because a spirit of resentment and deception inhabits you.

00:51:25.920 And your wife could sacrifice the marriage

00:51:28.540 to solve that problem.

00:51:30.600 And you could sacrifice your relationship with your wife

00:51:34.080 to free her from the dominion of your devil let's say or you could sacrifice what's worst about you

00:51:41.080 instead and allow the relationship to continue and that's a form of substitutionary sacrifice

00:51:47.620 and this is what we've learned to do as modern human beings as the religious enterprise has

00:51:53.260 has developed and and unfolded is that as we've become more and more sophisticated we've learned

00:52:01.480 that instead of sacrificing ourselves in the concrete manner

00:52:06.780 that the original ritualistic sacrifice is demanded

00:52:10.760 to offer up, for example,

00:52:15.020 the immolation of the best of our flocks to God,

00:52:18.580 we can offer up the fragments of ourselves

00:52:22.900 that are unworthy to be burned in the divine fire

00:52:26.860 so that we can move ourselves forward

00:52:29.040 as increasingly sinless creatures

00:52:35.520 towards this expanding horizon of opportunity.

00:52:38.560 And that was a transformation in attitude

00:52:42.180 that took humanity thousands and thousands of years

00:52:45.000 to manage to see the psychological equivalent,

00:52:48.320 let's say, of confession,

00:52:53.260 this is what's wrong with me,

00:52:55.200 of the desire to reconcile,

00:52:58.320 and that's atonement and the offering of what's insufficient about the self to be demolished so

00:53:05.760 that we move forward and develop right that's that's that's the benefit of thought itself right

00:53:12.720 and why do we think and why do we criticize our thoughts we think so that we can come up with 0.99

00:53:17.780 new selves and we think critically so that our stupid ideas can die instead of us and that's a 0.99

00:53:26.040 substitutionary sacrifice that's pleasing to god and it's it's the hallmark of movement forward and 0.99

00:53:32.580 adaptation itself to let go of everything about you that's an obstacle to your own progress as

00:53:39.740 new adventures and opportunities beckon and that's not a straightforward thing to manage and

00:53:45.140 it often means or sometimes means you have to literally give up what you love most right but

00:53:50.060 that's still holding you back the identity that you have now sometimes the friends you have

00:53:55.740 sometimes the career that's offering you security sometimes even members of your family

00:54:02.820 who's who's a relationship with whom cannot be maintained if you're continuing to abide by the

00:54:10.720 voice that guides you to the adventure of your life the continual sacrificial movement up the

00:54:18.040 holy mountain towards the beckoning gates of paradise right the city of jerusalem on the hill

00:54:23.640 that's the pattern of life that's what god offers abraham is a secession of expanding opportunities

00:54:31.580 accompanied by a secession of sacrifices of increasing magnitude with the promise offered

00:54:40.380 that if that voyage is undertaken wholeheartedly

00:54:45.940 and in good faith,

00:54:48.640 then there's no limit to the degree

00:54:53.000 to which uphill progress can be made manifest.

00:54:57.100 And it's the opposite of a vision of hell.

00:54:59.140 And we all know, and this is something to note

00:55:01.060 that we all believe, we know perfectly well

00:55:03.560 that there's no situation that's so bad 1.00

00:55:05.880 that there isn't something stupid you can do to make it worse. 0.99

00:55:08.780 and you certainly see that in your own life and you see that you see that in the collapse of 0.99

00:55:14.060 states themselves you see that in the tyrannical doubling down let's say of states like stalinist

00:55:20.240 russia where things got so bad in the 1920s that people were literally cannibalizing their own

00:55:26.260 children and there was still new bottoms that could be discovered as a consequence of people's

00:55:33.080 failure to make the adventure of their own life manifest there's no there's no bottom to the abyss

00:55:40.560 that's why hell is a bottomless pit nothing is so bad that you couldn't make it worse and the

00:55:47.500 corollary of that perhaps is that if you followed the voice that called you to be everything you

00:55:53.140 could be that there would be no heaven so great that you couldn't still improve it and you can

00:55:59.540 ask yourself whether you believe that you could say to yourself for example you could be much

00:56:04.400 better than you are and everyone knows that and calls themselves out on their conscience for

00:56:09.300 failure to reach that goal but you could ask yourself simultaneously certainly know that to

00:56:14.760 the degree that you have a family how much better would the people around you be if you were better

00:56:19.560 than you are and then you could ask well what's the limit to that if you were everything you could

00:56:25.300 be how much better would everyone around you be and what would happen if everyone did that

00:56:30.580 instead of whatever it is that we're doing playing both ends against the middle right

00:56:36.440 sitting on the fence and swaying in the wind refusing to voice what we have to voice when

00:56:43.040 we're called upon because of our cowardly alliance with what gives us false security

00:56:47.580 refusal to have enough faith to pursue the adventure of our life and why does it take

00:56:53.220 faith well what do you know about what might happen you always step into the abyss when you're

00:57:00.020 moving forward and you do that with insufficient information you don't get married because you know

00:57:05.180 what's going to happen and even if you thought you knew what was going to happen that doesn't

00:57:10.040 mean you knew what was going to happen you might have thought you knew who you were when you got

00:57:14.840 married but you certainly didn't and neither did your wife and both of you are still discovering

00:57:20.340 both of those and maybe you try to put each other in a box so you could remain predictable and

00:57:25.660 secure but all that does is bore you to the point of despair and take the spirit out of your

00:57:31.420 relationship and so you step forward in your marriage as you do with all major decisions in

00:57:39.300 your life from a position of ignorance and why do you step forward in consequence since you can't

00:57:45.460 compute the results and the answer is well what do you have faith in and maybe you have faith in

00:57:51.540 the spirit of adventure that calls you forward to become who you are and you either have faith in

00:57:56.480 that or you have faith in the contrary spirit because that's the only choices that you have

00:58:01.120 and the fact that you're ignorant and finite and limited means that you're never going to have all

00:58:06.180 the information at your disposal and so the faith you need to manifest in order to set your life 1.00

00:58:11.420 straight isn't the idiot willingness to believe a pack of superstitious lies but the existential 0.97

00:58:17.740 courage to set yourself forward in the manner that straightens you out makes you more than you are 0.98

00:58:23.600 despite the fact that you have no idea what the consequences will be

00:58:27.220 one of the things i understood this is a lovely thing to know first we've established that

00:58:32.940 the spirit that calls you to be everything you are is the spirit that calls you to the adventure

00:58:38.000 of your life and the promise of that adventure is that you could be not only everything you

00:58:42.580 could be but that for everyone else as well which is a fine offer but there's there's another layer

00:58:48.160 of depth to that that's associated with faith and that's the analysis of something approximating

00:58:53.680 the truth abraham aims up and he tries to live in truth and what does it mean to live in truth

00:58:59.600 it's a form of continual sacrifice imagine that you conducted your life so that you cease to

00:59:06.600 imagine what would happen if you used your words and actions merely to obtain what you wanted and

00:59:14.040 you determined to act instead so that all you did was lay out what you believed to be true with

00:59:19.980 every gesture and utterance at every moment well what would that mean it mean you'd have to

00:59:25.180 sacrifice what you think you could gain by using your words to manipulate and what would you gain

00:59:31.300 you'd gain whatever would happen if you told the truth well imagine this imagine that if you told

00:59:38.040 the truth if you lived in truth that you'd align yourself with the spirit of reality itself

00:59:42.740 well what would happen to you if you aligned yourself with the spirit of reality itself

00:59:48.200 and the answer to that would be it would exceed the limits of your wildest dreams

00:59:54.040 and so that decision to abide by the spirit of adventure that calls to you in the decision to

01:00:02.200 abide by the truth leads you to the adventure of the of your life which is a place of ever

01:00:08.140 expanding horizon and the requisite sacrifices and the value of that is so high that it makes

01:00:14.280 security and wealth for that matter pale by comparison christ compares the kingdom of heaven

01:00:21.120 to the pearl of great price and the pearl of great price is a single pearl that any man no

01:00:27.820 matter how wealthy would that's so valuable that any man no matter how wealthy would sacrifice

01:00:33.800 everything he owns to purchase that one thing and what's that well how about how about a life so

01:00:39.340 intrinsically and deeply meaningful that it's a miracle as it unfolds and what if that was the

01:00:45.160 case that that would be there for you if you followed the voice of the spirit of adventure

01:00:49.700 and why wouldn't that be the case because you know perfectly well if you consult your conscience

01:00:55.320 that in the times of your life where you dared to do that you did find your best self and you found

01:01:01.920 those experiences adventures that you could rely on when the demons of despair come calling and

01:01:08.240 ask you what you've made of your life and you go through the banks of your memory and you say to

01:01:13.480 yourself well i dared to live once and this is what happened that what would it be like if you

01:01:19.300 did that all the time well that's the offering that god makes abraham is that everything you

01:01:26.180 could imagine would lay itself out in front of you and you'd see the world for what it is and

01:01:30.820 that's what the kingdom of god whose contours are hidden by the blindness of men and you see

01:01:37.760 glimmers of that you know they attract you by attracting your attention or they make themselves

01:01:42.460 manifest when you're apprehending someone or something that you love right you see the reality

01:01:48.100 of the world make itself manifest most clearly in those situations it's obscured and hidden from you

01:01:54.120 by your own ignorance and sin the remainder of the time if you follow the pathway of challenge

01:02:00.960 to the place of maximal development the scales fall from your eyes and you can see the pathway

01:02:06.760 forward in a manner that's ever more clear and that will make of you the person who's capable

01:02:12.840 of bearing the catastrophe of your own existence voluntarily and gratefully and joyfully and to

01:02:19.260 develop into what you could be and to be a blessing to everyone else and that's the truth

01:02:25.100 and so you sacrifice everything that you have and everything that you are and everything that you

01:02:37.340 love to god who calls upon you to do that and the reason that you do that is because 0.97

01:02:42.420 Only a fool wouldn't sacrifice what was lesser for what was greater.

01:02:47.880 And the injunction in the Old Testament and re-presented in the Gospels in the New Testament 0.97

01:02:53.900 is that you're called upon to let everything within you that isn't perfect go

01:02:59.780 in celebration and worship of what is highest.

01:03:03.940 In the Old Testament, the voice that calls you to do so makes itself manifest in two manners.

01:03:10.540 one of those is illustrated in the story of abraham in in the in the insistence that god

01:03:18.060 calls to you with the voice of adventure god is to be found in the calling that lightens the

01:03:25.040 pathway forward right that illuminates you right that that that it's the place that meaning makes

01:03:31.500 itself manifest in your life and you see that when you're in love you see that when you're

01:03:35.640 interacting with someone you care for and maybe you're terrified of that terrified enough of the

01:03:40.680 love of your children which calls you to be much better than you are that you reject it because

01:03:45.280 the pain of being what they want is so great because of everything you'd have to abandon about

01:03:50.420 yourself to live up to that you'll forego that opportunity if people do that with their children

01:03:55.460 all the time it's a complete bloody catastrophe for them and their children but but to allow that

01:04:02.620 transformational process to take place means that everything that makes you weak in the face of the

01:04:08.460 travails of life will disappear painful as that purification process will necessarily be

01:04:14.800 and your conscience as well it's the secondary voice of god that's a good way of thinking about

01:04:20.520 it the calling asks you to move forward in accordance with the spirit of adventure and

01:04:30.540 And the conscience is the voice of God within telling you when you deviate from the path.

01:04:35.700 And the God of the Old Testament is presented in those stories as the interaction between calling and conscience that guides us forward.

01:04:44.300 And that's there for everyone.

01:04:45.680 And everyone knows it because you know that things grip your attention and ask you to move forward.

01:04:50.940 And you know that you call yourself out on your inadequacies.

01:04:54.880 And you aren't required to do either of those, right?

01:04:59.300 it's an optional choice because you have free will but the promise that's laid forward in the

01:05:05.660 biblical corpus is that if you follow the calling and you abide by the dictates of your conscience

01:05:11.040 that your life will be a never-ending expanse of increased opportunity as well as necessary

01:05:18.000 as well as the necessary sacrifice that will actually only remove from you every impediment

01:05:24.060 to your further progress right and so that's the promise that that's the definition of the of god

01:05:32.900 in the story of abraham and that's very think about that as a as a hypothesis or a bet you can

01:05:40.180 watch how what compels you forward makes itself manifest in your dreams in your innermost desires

01:05:46.580 you can consult with yourself to see what it is that you need and want if you were treating yourself

01:05:52.360 properly and you can dare to walk one step forward one foot in front of the other incrementally to

01:05:59.420 make that possibility real and the offer is that everything that could manifest yours everything

01:06:06.220 that could make itself manifest within you as the incarnation of the divine spirit of your ancestors

01:06:12.560 will make itself manifest in you and you'll get that merely by doing what it is that your soul

01:06:19.260 most longs to do and how could that possibly be a better offer and you can bolster your conviction

01:06:27.040 to do that by considering the alternative which i already laid out lose the pathway forward and

01:06:33.820 descend and as you descend become ever more bitter and work for the destruction of all things

01:06:40.820 that's the divine world of what good and evil that we all inhabit right that's the landscape

01:06:48.300 of narrative that lays itself out

01:06:50.300 in the Old Testament corpus

01:06:52.160 and that is the true description

01:06:54.280 of the

01:06:54.900 of the earthly garden

01:06:58.480 that human beings inhabit and move

01:07:00.280 through

01:07:00.600 that's the story

01:07:04.280 of Abraham

01:07:04.800 thank you very much

01:07:18.300 Thank you, everyone.

01:07:27.840 Thanks.

01:07:48.300 do you need me to pour some water on

01:07:53.680 first question

01:07:59.860 I'm a cop

01:08:01.500 what is one piece of advice

01:08:04.520 you can give to law enforcement

01:08:06.580 officers in the United States

01:08:08.820 made him think

01:08:17.780 so in the story of exodus

01:08:28.540 you you have a leader right you have a leader who it's moses is the leader and

01:08:35.960 the reason that moses moses is the archetype of the leader you you could think of abraham in some

01:08:41.980 ways as the archetype of the individual moses is the archetype of the leader and

01:08:47.180 the leader the leader always does the same thing which is why moses is archetypal

01:08:53.620 the leader confronts tyranny which you all do to one degree or another could be the tyranny that

01:09:01.120 you impose on yourself it could be the tyranny that your wife imposes on you or vice versa or

01:09:07.260 that you impose on each other it could be the tyranny of your workplace or your state

01:09:11.580 it doesn't matter one of the things we confront eternally as human beings is the spirit of

01:09:17.300 tyranny and we simultaneously do what we can to free ourselves and those we love from the

01:09:24.360 attractions of slavery and a tyrant needs willing slaves and so to lead people is to lead them

01:09:33.440 away from tyranny and also away from the attractions of slavery and the attractions

01:09:38.560 of slavery are something like irresponsible security right and so we're all called upon

01:09:44.320 to do that and moses is called upon by god to do that and he's called upon to lead in a proper

01:09:53.200 manner and moses is subject to a temptation most of the biblical prophets have their

01:09:59.300 temptation have their weaknesses like we all do right i mean every gift that you've been granted

01:10:06.200 will be associated with an equivalently potent temptation.

01:10:10.800 So, for example, if you're wildly intelligent,

01:10:13.440 you have the Luciferian temptation,

01:10:15.960 and the Luciferian temptation is to presume that your intellect should rule, right?

01:10:21.520 And so, that's the price you pay for being granted the privilege of being intelligent.

01:10:28.080 Moses is a leader, and he wrestles with the temptation of power. 0.80

01:10:32.060 and at the beginning of the exodus account moses has taken his slavish people away from the

01:10:42.660 recalcitrant pharaoh out into the desert and the reason for that is that that's where you go

01:10:48.040 after you abandon tyranny so one of the things you might ask yourself is why do people remain

01:10:53.920 subject to tyranny their own and communal tyranny why don't they stand up and oppose it and the

01:11:00.820 answer is well there's proximal risk right because if you stand up against what's tyrannical

01:11:05.540 you might get smacked down especially if you're incautious but there's something more

01:11:10.080 subtle lurking as a threat and that is you don't go from the tyranny to the promised land 0.94

01:11:16.560 you go from the tyranny of certainty to the desert of uncertainty and the israelites end up there for

01:11:24.040 40 years even though it's a two-week journey and what this means is that sometimes everything that

01:11:29.960 you understood that constrained you falsely collapses and you're not free you're bereft

01:11:37.180 and that's a form of freedom because you're nowhere no no longer dominated by that tyranny but 0.92

01:11:42.700 you're aimless and directionless and wandering and that's what happens to the israelites in the 0.98

01:11:47.520 desert and they're there for a long time three generations and they're bitchy as you can 1.00

01:11:52.140 possibly imagine and all they do is squawk and moan and complain and fight with each other and 0.93

01:11:56.980 long for the good old days of of stalinist provision and shake their fist at god and

01:12:04.280 whine about moses and want to turn around and lose faith and worship false idols and 0.77

01:12:09.880 and party naked in the desert and like pride parade and it's

01:12:15.020 and so moses moses is trying to keep them together right but he's got this temptation

01:12:24.860 to use force because he's in a position of authority he falls prey to that several times

01:12:29.660 in his life when he's a young man he kills an egyptian who is harassing one of his hebrew

01:12:35.720 brothers and he has to flee the country moses is a powerful man and is capable of using force

01:12:41.360 and god tells him repeatedly don't use force when persuasion is a possibility don't fall prey to the

01:12:49.080 temptation of power and at the end of moses sojourn he's gone through the desert for 40 years

01:12:55.680 he's been a uh what would you a devoted servant of god pursuing a difficult destiny with a fractious

01:13:03.160 group of ungrateful acolytes and he's right at the threshold of the end of the journey he's right on

01:13:12.900 the boundary of the promised land itself and the israelites still in the desert run out of water 0.98

01:13:20.420 yet again and they get all bitchy and whiny and even though they're damn near where they're 1.00

01:13:24.840 supposed to be they want to turn around and they start getting fractious and it's the whole faithless

01:13:30.140 catastrophe and they come to moses and say oh we don't have any water again and you know you

01:13:36.000 promised to deliver us and god isn't delivering and what the hell's going on do you think you

01:13:40.860 could intercede and moses has had just about enough of them at this point because they're 0.97

01:13:45.300 pretty bloody pathetic and contemptible but he goes to god anyways and he says your people are 0.95

01:13:51.800 lacking the water of life what do i need to do to provide it and god says speak to the rocks in the 0.98

01:13:57.640 desert and the water will come forth and so moses goes to the rocks that are indicated and he

01:14:03.760 strikes them twice with his staff right with the rod of tradition that guides him as he moves

01:14:10.940 through the desert and the consequence of that is that the water comes forth and moses is sentenced

01:14:16.180 to die before he enters the the land of milk and honey why don't use force when you can use your

01:14:24.600 words right well that's good advice for policemen

01:14:29.060 What role do dreams play in our life

01:14:46.480 and how can we use them to see God?

01:14:54.340 So, Freud believed that

01:14:57.480 dreams were mysterious because

01:15:00.340 they attempted to hide from us

01:15:03.640 the unpalatable truths of our deepest desires.

01:15:08.140 And dreams can do that.

01:15:10.660 But Jung, Carl Jung, his greatest student,

01:15:15.280 his greatest colleague, said,

01:15:16.940 no, the dream attempts to make

01:15:20.780 the completely incomprehensible

01:15:22.920 more comprehensible.

01:15:25.680 So imagine this.

01:15:27.480 There's a domain of things you understand and can predict and control.

01:15:33.540 And then there's a domain of things that not only do you don't know,

01:15:36.860 you don't even know you don't know them.

01:15:38.960 They're so far beyond your comprehension that you don't even have the questions.

01:15:43.140 And then there's an intermediate area,

01:15:45.240 which is like the boundary between what you know and what you don't know.

01:15:49.520 And that's where the dream operates.

01:15:51.420 and so the dream is the manner in which our thought extends itself before we can say what

01:15:59.260 we think explicitly now you can see this in children because children play out their dreams

01:16:06.020 and they inhabit a dreamlike world and what they're trying to do is they're formulating

01:16:10.980 their explicit conceptions in imagination and the imagination is how they think before they can think

01:16:18.460 explicitly. So we dream the world before we live in it in an

01:16:25.160 explicable and verbally comprehensible manner. The

01:16:32.820 unknown, the ritual, the drama, the dream, the story, the

01:16:42.080 poem the explicable world right it's a hierarchy of transformation of knowledge what children do

01:16:50.980 when they first encounter something they don't understand is acted out that's what we've done

01:16:55.080 historically that's what our forefathers did when they acted out the drama of sacrifice

01:16:59.400 they didn't know how to formulate what a sacrifice was explicitly and they acted it out

01:17:03.800 we act things out we don't understand in our imagination that's what you do when you dream

01:17:09.480 And I mean this literally.

01:17:10.700 This is what dreams are for.

01:17:12.440 When you dream at night, you're paralyzed.

01:17:15.520 There's a little electronic switch, so to speak, that's turned on when you dream.

01:17:20.340 So that when you're moving in your dream, you don't move and die.

01:17:25.940 And there's been experiments done with cats.

01:17:28.500 Cats were often the targets of such experiments.

01:17:31.760 You can take out that switch.

01:17:33.660 And then when the cats dream, they run around.

01:17:35.840 come on that's not good because of course their eyes are closed and they're asleep and they run

01:17:39.860 into things that's not good that wakes them up when you're dreaming you're paralyzed except your

01:17:46.360 eyes your eyes move rapidly when you're dreaming indicating the grip of action by the dream but

01:17:52.820 doesn't matter that your eyes move because you're not going to do yourself any damage as a consequence

01:17:57.200 so you're acting out the realm of possibility when you dream and most of what you dream is

01:18:03.360 strange and mysterious because it's exploratory and and daring right and you practice in your

01:18:12.700 dream what you could in potential make manifest in your life and you experiment in your dream and

01:18:21.180 that's what we would do when we go to movies because movies are collective dreams as we

01:18:25.380 experiment with possibility before we embody it and act it out and the realm of imagination is a

01:18:32.380 place where you experiment with possibility before you act it out it's a domain of fantastic thought

01:18:38.440 it's part of the adaptive process that constitutes thinking and so your dreams are where you extend

01:18:44.900 yourself into the unknown now you can think about this practically so here's an exercise you can

01:18:50.920 try this i formalized this exercise in a series of of uh of of online activities that you can

01:18:59.960 undertake at a site called selfauthoring.com so we live in our dreams so what does that mean

01:19:06.620 what means we're visionary creatures you have to inhabit a vision of the world the vision includes

01:19:12.680 a destination that you hypothetically wish to attain and that would be a goal that motivates

01:19:17.440 you and you might ask well how do you dream up a vision and you do what christ says to do in the

01:19:22.900 gospels you knock and the door will open or you ask and the question will reveal itself or you

01:19:29.140 seek and you'll find and so how do you do that and the answer is by doing it and so you can try this

01:19:35.600 here's something you can do the next time you fight with your partner

01:19:40.080 you can tell them if i could offer you what it is that would satisfy you

01:19:45.940 in consequence of that argument what would it be and then your partner can go and think okay

01:19:53.220 i'm fighting about something what in the world do i actually want and then that and it might be i

01:20:00.920 want to win and that's not wise because you actually don't want to defeat your husband

01:20:05.800 not least because you have to live with him and so defeat repeated defeat of your partner is not

01:20:13.300 a winning strategy right so you might ask yourself if this altercation could produce the most

01:20:21.560 desirable possible and all things considered what is it that i would have to obtain and you'll have

01:20:29.860 a vision what is it i want it might take a while for it to make itself clear might take overnight

01:20:35.920 it might take a couple of days of thinking and you can go to your partner and say well

01:20:40.020 it seems to me that if this is what you offered me then i would have what i wanted and if the

01:20:47.120 person is acting in good faith which you hope they are then that might be the solution to the

01:20:53.320 argument that's the formulation of a vision you can do that more broadly in your own life and

01:20:57.900 in this future authoring program we tried to formalize this it's like well what should you

01:21:03.580 do with your life how would you formulate a vision that would inspire you and keep you moving forward

01:21:10.500 through the obstacles of your life?

01:21:12.820 And the answer is, well, you ask yourself.

01:21:15.200 It's like, okay, under what conditions would you be willing to do the effort

01:21:19.780 to put yourself together?

01:21:21.820 You can ask yourself that.

01:21:24.700 And I mean literally, it's like, okay, here's the deal.

01:21:27.340 In five years, you can have what you want and need.

01:21:31.600 Now, we're going to put a couple of assumptions in place.

01:21:34.780 You're going to treat yourself properly while you're formulating this vision.

01:21:38.580 And it has to be within the bounds of the conceivable.

01:21:43.200 Right?

01:21:43.740 So you have to be as reasonable as you can manage in consort with your desires.

01:21:48.540 You could imagine to yourself,

01:21:50.220 if I put my life together in a manner that I would find maximally compelling,

01:21:56.140 how would it look?

01:21:58.380 You can do that with your wife. 0.99

01:21:59.840 It's like, what do you want?

01:22:01.740 Five years from now, you can have what you want.

01:22:03.840 But there's a rule.

01:22:05.520 You have to identify it.

01:22:07.960 including what you want from me and i want you to go think about it genuinely right so to open

01:22:15.080 yourself up to see if you can understand what it is that would satisfy someone like you

01:22:20.740 in the future authoring program we have we differentiate that for people to some degree

01:22:26.240 because it's a pretty overwhelming question right what do you want need that can that can stop people

01:22:31.740 in their tracks because it's such a it's a question of such magnitude but the alternative

01:22:36.160 to answering it is to blow in the wind, right? Is to be at the whim of the things that are

01:22:40.960 happening immediately around you. And that's not a good plan. So I might say, well, if

01:22:48.400 your marriage was everything it could be, what would that look like? And then you might

01:22:53.380 want to specify that. One of the things I used to do with my clients, for example, one

01:22:58.860 of the ways of specifying that is, imagine the things you do every day in your marriage.

01:23:04.200 those are the things that make up your life it isn't the exceptions in your life that make up

01:23:09.860 your life it's the things you repeat so maybe you come home every day from work let's say that's

01:23:16.320 something that people generally do and then there's a transition period of say 20 minutes when you

01:23:20.980 first arrive home so let's say it's 20 minutes and so it's 100 minutes a week or 400 minutes a

01:23:28.460 month or 4,800 minutes a year. And so that's 80 hours. That's two full work weeks. So the time

01:23:37.100 you spend coming home is 2% of your life. So you just have to have 50 things like that. That's

01:23:43.620 your whole life. Okay, so if you were greeted the way that would maximally motivate you when you

01:23:51.620 arrived at home, what would that look like? And you have to ask, and that's terrifying because

01:23:57.160 you might have to reveal to yourself your vulnerabilities, right? You have to admit to

01:24:01.980 yourself what would actually speak to you. You'd have to admit that, well, what do you want? You

01:24:06.640 want a sandwich? You want a beer? You want a hug? You want to talk for 10 minutes? You want to be

01:24:13.560 left to hell alone? Well, you have a shower. I don't know what you want. Maybe you do. And then 1.00

01:24:19.380 you could figure out what that was, and you could negotiate toward it, and then you could have that,

01:24:23.640 you'd have two percent of your life fixed and you do that 50 times and man you've got the whole

01:24:30.040 thing in order and so and then maybe your marriage is made up of 10 things like that

01:24:34.620 really that would make up like 80 of your marriage you know like what are your romantic interludes

01:24:41.360 with your wife like well hopefully they repeat do you have them in order are they right are they

01:24:46.580 what you want or your is your imagination and your dreams leading you to pursue something else

01:24:52.280 and if so why and so maybe you could sort that out negotiate with your wife and find out what

01:24:57.620 she wants and see if jointly you could come together and produce a dream or a vision that

01:25:02.200 would flesh out the romantic portion of your life and then bang you've got another 10 percent under

01:25:07.380 control and maybe you could think about that with your friendships and you could think about that

01:25:11.920 with your family relationships and your education and your time outside work and how you take care

01:25:17.040 of yourself and the service you present to your community and you could sit and ask yourself okay

01:25:22.220 If I could set my life in order the way that I would like to live it,

01:25:29.660 which means you could live your life in all its difficulties

01:25:32.220 without being bitter and resentful and looking forward to the opportunity,

01:25:36.720 what do you want?

01:25:38.960 Well, and that's a dream, right?

01:25:40.600 That's a vision, and you can develop that.

01:25:43.640 And then you can work towards it, and then it'll make itself,

01:25:47.240 it'll realize itself if you're willing to make the attendant sacrifices along the way.

01:25:50.960 And that is really how you follow your calling in your conscience.

01:25:55.560 And I've seen this many, many times and talked to hundreds of people

01:25:59.060 who've tried exactly this sort of thing, you know.

01:26:01.800 You can hit what you aim at.

01:26:04.600 You know what sin means in three different languages.

01:26:08.020 Sin is always derived from an archery term.

01:26:10.940 It means to miss the target.

01:26:13.300 Well, one way you miss the target is by not specifying the target.

01:26:17.140 and you do that to some degree because of laziness and to some degree because of lack of faith you

01:26:23.440 might think well you know i don't really want to admit to myself what i want because first of all

01:26:28.340 i might not get it and that would be terrible second i might betray myself along the way so

01:26:33.280 it's best just to keep myself blind so i don't understand that i'm so that i don't understand

01:26:39.360 my failure jesus brutal better to aim and miss and re-aim you know at least you learn along

01:26:47.120 the way and your your your accuracy and your calibration will improve if you aim and when you

01:26:52.460 make a plan to begin with and flesh out a dream it's going to be a little off kilter because what

01:26:57.340 the hell do you know but as you move towards it you know if you do that this is what happens to

01:27:02.440 abraham you know he's pretty flawed person when he first starts moving forward he makes lots of

01:27:06.600 mistakes he lies about his wife when the egyptian prince attempts to essentially kidnap her and 0.85

01:27:14.040 bring her into his harem because he's too much of a coward to stand up against her you're going to 0.99

01:27:18.360 be a fool when you first start to lay out your vision but if you attempt that in good faith 0.99

01:27:24.340 you'll adjust your vision and your actions and you know you'll you'll deviate less and less from 0.99

01:27:31.400 the pathway forward as you move and the and the goal will move as well and and that's a fine deal

01:27:36.880 and so well that's what you have for your dream and your vision and that's what orients you in

01:27:42.340 your life. And that's what dreams are for. A dream you live in a dream. If you don't live in

01:27:47.560 your dream, you're living in someone else's. And it might not be the dream of someone you want to

01:27:53.120 dream with. That's what happens in a tyranny. That's what happens when you're a slave. And

01:27:58.080 that's not to be recommended. So develop your own dream.

01:28:12.340 what advice do you have

01:28:20.160 for introducing God and faith

01:28:22.020 to your kids

01:28:22.840 without being pushy

01:28:24.340 as someone who's also

01:28:25.940 tried to find their faith

01:28:27.560 well certainly example is useful

01:28:38.360 practice is useful you know we didn't bring our kids to church and that was a mistake

01:28:47.480 part of the reason that was a mistake is because they weren't exposed

01:28:52.540 to the stories you need to know the stories you probably also have to act out

01:29:01.700 communally your dedication to the communal sacrifice and that's what you do when you set

01:29:10.280 aside an hour a week to attend church when i was stopped going to church when i was 13

01:29:16.400 i justified that on the basis of the hypocrisy of the churchgoers who were in my thoroughly

01:29:25.140 informed opinion sinners all week except for the hour they spent in church i didn't understand

01:29:31.320 at that time that that must be better than being sinners all the time without an hour spent ever

01:29:38.300 looking upward, right? So I would say find a church and attend with your kids and expose your

01:29:51.380 kids to the stories. And if the church isn't everything that you think it might be, then

01:30:01.320 who are you to judge and maybe you have some judgment to make but also maybe the fact that

01:30:08.240 the church is out of order is something you should address right and that part of attending is

01:30:13.280 actually bolstering the institution that you participate in so that it pursues its its aim

01:30:20.840 with more accuracy and we can abandon our traditional structures and our rituals but

01:30:26.180 And we can do that because we think they're imperfect, but that leaves us with what we have now

01:30:33.260 and the catastrophic mess of confused ritual that inevitably floods in to replace the flawed institutions of our tradition.

01:30:45.480 Enact the rituals.

01:30:48.480 Learn the music.

01:30:51.440 Expose your kids to the artistic tradition.

01:30:53.800 tell them the stories teach them to be literate and act out the morality that

01:31:01.700 bolsters and fortifies your marriage and makes it deeper with your children present and that's what

01:31:10.380 you have to offer them you know what here's an interesting thing too so i don't know how much

01:31:17.440 you guys know about this but as the sexual revolution has progressed and every form of

01:31:25.220 sexual gratification imaginable is at hand in the realm of pornography and celebrated in every form

01:31:31.800 in the popular culture the actual amount of sex that people are having is declining precipitously

01:31:39.260 such that in japan for example 30 percent of people under 30 are virgins you know who has

01:31:46.860 the most sex religious married people right well so so isn't that remarkable right i mean who the

01:31:57.520 hell would have ever guessed that because the the popular parlance was that that more fundamentalist

01:32:04.640 proclivity was associated with like a finger wagging sexual fear right and a and a stricture

01:32:14.180 But the reality turned out to be the case that even in the sexual domain, the pathway of maximal engagement on the sexual front turns out to be the disciplined religious pathway that constitutes a long-term heterosexual religious-founded marriage. 1.00

01:32:31.560 And so, that's another thing you have to offer your kids, you know, in the face of the blandishment of the idiot hedonists. 0.99

01:32:38.120 It's like, no, kid, if you want to be satisfied, it's like, have a real relationship. 1.00

01:32:43.020 right and that is the human pathway forward we know as well just so you know we know as well

01:32:49.280 that people who prefer short-term mating strategies that's how they're described in

01:32:54.320 the psychological literature and that's the one night stand crowd what are their associated

01:32:59.080 personality characteristics it's a marker for the early onset of criminality the more criminal kids

01:33:07.400 have sex with more partners younger that's been known for like 40 years but at the pure personality

01:33:13.840 level the short-term hedonistic maters are psychopathic so that makes them predatory 0.99

01:33:21.260 parasites machiavellian so they're manipulative narcissistic so they want unearned admiration 0.94

01:33:28.620 and to top it all off and that was only discovered probably in the last four years

01:33:35.040 sadistic which means they take delight in the pain of others and that's pure empirical

01:33:42.140 investigation by the way done by people who essentially lean left who didn't expect that

01:33:49.240 finding and so by offering your children the traditional religious pathway forward and

01:33:57.520 emphasizing the foundation even of the sexual in the committed relationships that are founded

01:34:05.340 and sacralized by the religious not only do you protect them and discipline them in a manner that

01:34:11.860 will make them maximally productive and generous but you offer them the best pathway to the deepest

01:34:19.600 pleasures that could possibly inform their lives right right

01:34:23.380 well it's always good to end with a celebration of sex

01:34:39.520 so 0.90

01:34:40.380 so alright everybody

01:34:42.940 thank you very much for coming tonight

01:34:45.280 and much appreciated

01:34:47.320 thanks Tim

01:34:48.880 you're lucky

01:34:49.900 thank you everyone

01:34:59.100 it's good to see you all

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - October 11, 2026

Peterson Admits He Got This Wrong

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