Set Your House in Order
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 50 minutes
Words per Minute
158.57434
Summary
Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety. With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way. In his new series, he provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn t easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward. If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better. Go to Dailywire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on Depression and Anxiety. Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Today's episode is a 12 Rules for Life lecture recorded in Cambridge on November 1st, 2018. That's almost exactly a year ago, which is almost exactly one year ago. In this lecture, he talks a lot about the rule, "Set your house in order before you criticize the world." I ve been working through the rules backwards since I ve come to North America and North Europe, and I m trying to figure out how to solve complex problems that I think need to be solved. And since then, I ve started working through 12 Rules of Life, and it s been challenging and challenging to solve them for me. And that s why I m here in the UK and Northern Europe, starting with Rule 6, which I m working through Rule 1. In this episode, I m talking about the hierarchy and why hierarchies are inevitable and necessary in complex problems, and why we need to work through complex problems in order to solve complicated problems in complex situations. And why they ve got too tight to climb up the hierarchy. and why they tilt towards tyranny and blindness. If you ve got a problem that needs to be loosened, too hard to climb too tight, too bad it isn t serving its proper purposes anymore that s a good thing and that s not a simple problem, right? Let s get to work on it, shall we all of us? Let's get to it! - Mikayla Peterson, daughter and collaborator and co-author of Maps of Meaning by Dr. Michael Peterson . . Thank you for listening to this episode of Daily Wire Plus now! - Mentioned in the Daily Wire plus podcast, Subscribe to DailyWire Plus on your favorite podcasting platform, Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
Transcript
00:00:00.940
Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:00:06.480
Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:00:12.740
We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.
00:00:20.100
With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
00:00:27.420
He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
00:00:35.360
If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.
00:00:41.800
Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.
00:00:47.460
Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:00:57.420
I'm Mikayla Peterson, Dad's daughter and collaborator.
00:01:01.300
Today's episode is a 12 Rules for Life lecture recorded in Cambridge on November 1st, 2018.
00:01:12.280
Obviously took that from his book, but he talks a lot about the rule,
00:01:16.000
set your house in order before you criticize the world in this lecture.
00:01:22.100
Things are still improving though, so that's fantastic.
00:01:24.260
Hope your Halloween was great and you didn't eat very much candy.
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Set Your House in Order, a Jordan B. Peterson 12 Rules for Life lecture.
00:01:43.700
It's very nice to be here in this strange theater.
00:01:49.060
It's quite an interesting building and a very interesting town.
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I wish I had a few more days to stay here, but I have lots of exciting things planned for the next couple of days.
00:01:58.660
So it should be a very interesting visit, starting with what will hopefully be a somewhat interesting talk.
00:02:06.800
Since I've come to the UK and to Northern Europe, which is I guess about 12 days now,
00:02:17.580
I've been speaking about 12 Rules for Life, obviously, and about my first book, Maps of Meaning.
00:02:24.820
I tend to speak about both of them together, because 12 Rules of Life is a subset of the first book, Maps of Meaning.
00:02:34.740
And I kind of mix and match the rules and play them off against one another.
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Because each of them is a story, but they're connected to an underlying story.
00:02:44.360
And so you can come at the same problem from different perspectives that way and make something new each time.
00:02:57.080
You know, I use the lectures as an opportunity to think on my feet.
00:03:04.680
And to simultaneously and to think through complex problems that I think need to be solved.
00:03:10.340
I need to solve them for me, but hopefully the solution has some general utility.
00:03:16.740
And then to make the problem formulation clearer, because that's really important.
00:03:24.380
And then to make the problem solution clearer, that's useful and more concise and more poetic and more elegant.
00:03:32.460
And since I've come to, on this tour, I've been working through the rules backwards.
00:03:38.840
When I was in North America, I was starting with Rule 1.
00:03:44.280
I kept getting stuck on Rule 1, because it was that stand-up straight with your shoulders back.
00:03:48.600
And that led me into a fairly lengthy discussion about the inevitability of hierarchies.
00:03:53.880
And the fact that the political discussion that we all engage in centers, at least in part, on the fact of hierarchies and their necessity.
00:04:07.560
That would be the right-wing position, the conservative position, let's say.
00:04:11.160
And the tendency for hierarchies to become corrupt and dispossess people at the bottom.
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And we need to continually have a discussion between those two positions, because hierarchies are inevitable and necessary.
00:04:27.120
If you want to solve complex problems in a social environment.
00:04:34.900
And they do tend to dispossess people at the bottom of the hierarchy.
00:04:39.320
So, sometimes the hierarchy needs to be strengthened, because it's decomposed.
00:04:44.360
And so we're not solving complex problems very effectively.
00:04:48.140
And sometimes the hierarchy needs to be adjusted and loosened, because it's got too tight, too hard to climb.
00:04:53.240
And it isn't serving its proper purposes anymore.
00:04:59.400
Although, that was a relatively straightforward summary of it.
00:05:04.480
Since I've come here, I've been working through the rules backwards.
00:05:09.120
And I've got to rule six, and that's the one that I'm going to discuss with you tonight.
00:05:13.800
And I think it's the shortest chapter in the book, rule six, which is put your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.
00:05:21.940
I think it's actually set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.
00:05:27.500
And it's a meditation on the motivation for evil.
00:05:33.540
And so you can understand why, not necessarily why that would be the shortest chapter,
00:05:39.440
but why it might be the most challenging, because it's such a dark topic.
00:05:47.480
And so, I was sitting backstage, juggling ideas, thinking, okay, how am I going to approach this idea of malevolence,
00:05:56.540
and what might be done about it most appropriately.
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And I wove a bunch of things together relatively quickly.
00:06:03.480
I mean, there are things that I've been working on for a long time, so...
00:06:07.040
The weaving is quick, but the ideas behind it aren't.
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And I'm going to sit down in this chair, and I'm going to talk to you a bit extemporaneously,
00:06:17.680
but I'm going to also rely on some notes that I made,
00:06:19.780
because there's some things I want to read you that are very precisely formulated.
00:06:25.560
And I don't have a great memory for quotations.
00:06:31.220
We're going to do a deep analysis of this idea that you should put your house in perfect order
00:06:38.340
And I want to explain what that means psychologically.
00:06:41.500
I'd also like to make a case that it's actually...
00:06:46.660
See, one of the things I've come to realize in this lecture tour,
00:06:49.140
with regards to rules and regulations and responsibility, let's say,
00:06:56.740
that you need rules, obviously, because why else write a book called 12 Rules.
00:07:02.500
And people in our culture, especially over the last four decades, five decades,
00:07:09.300
I would say, have started to view rules as nothing but limitation to their freedom,
00:07:15.900
and that their untrammeled freedom is an unquestioned good,
00:07:19.400
and that any limitations to that freedom are...
00:07:31.400
and part of your responsibility is, in some sense, to abide by rules.
00:07:38.780
and it's certainly not because it's nothing but a negative limitation on freedom.
00:07:42.920
A lot of responsibility, and let's say rule following, for lack of a better word,
00:07:53.160
You know, the thing about structure, especially if it's associated with value,
00:08:00.740
This is the problem with the idea that hierarchies are bad, in essence,
00:08:05.560
It's like, well, a hierarchy is a hierarchy of value
00:08:07.720
that posits that one thing is preferable to another.
00:08:11.480
Well, and a hierarchy means, is also a judgment as a consequence, right?
00:08:17.160
and one thing is better than another, then some things are worse than others,
00:08:20.800
and those things that are worse are judged by those things that are better,
00:08:24.520
and that dispossesses people, and it might be hard on their feelings as well.
00:08:28.540
You know, if you fail at something, then, well, that's painful.
00:08:32.620
And one thing you can do is rectify your failure.
00:08:35.120
Another thing you can do is criticize the structure that gave rise to the idea
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that behavior such as yours constitutes a failure.
00:08:42.260
And that's a pretty easy way out, in some sense,
00:08:44.760
except you also lose the perceptual structure that the hierarchy grants you,
00:08:52.600
It's no joke, because it leaves you with nothing.
00:08:55.280
It leaves you in an enemy, and it leaves you in chaos.
00:09:03.220
And the thing about life, human life, is you can't exist.
00:09:15.180
And so you can't sacrifice hierarchies of value for convenience,
00:09:24.340
because we're never left with nothing if we're alive.
00:09:27.160
You know, because life in the absence of something worth doing isn't nothing.
00:09:34.560
And so what it leaves you with is pain and anxiety as the ineradicable meanings of life,
00:09:43.380
And that's the consequence of demolishing, casually demolishing hierarchies of value,
00:09:50.640
You know, one of the things Nietzsche said when he talked about the death of God,
00:09:54.640
he said, the collapse of a belief system leaves you lost.
00:10:00.980
It leaves you lost because the value system gave you a direction and orientation and structure.
00:10:06.580
And then if that collapses, the belief in God, say, the collapse of Christianity,
00:10:17.580
He said, it's not just that you're left with nothing.
00:10:21.620
Because if you lose faith in one system of value,
00:10:24.940
it might not only be the case that you lose faith in that system of values,
00:10:30.660
but you lose faith in the idea of systems of values as such.
00:10:41.540
and you need to believe in order to have the faith to move forward,
00:10:45.800
but you don't even believe that belief is possible.
00:10:47.980
And then I would say, in some sense, that's the post-modern condition.
00:10:58.460
Well, one being, how do you distinguish between a meta-narrative and a narrative?
00:11:04.240
given that the structure, the very structure of your thinking,
00:11:09.240
And so to be skeptical about narratives is to be skeptical about thought itself.
00:11:14.780
And that's the same as being skeptical about action,
00:11:23.520
well, let's say it runs into some rather thorny practical problems.
00:11:30.640
I'm very interested in why people's belief systems collapse,
00:11:37.360
And also interested in the process by which they might be reconstructed on solid ground,
00:11:42.920
because I do believe that there is solid ground on which belief systems can be constructed.
00:11:51.260
So I'm going to have to do some reading and some direct thinking,
00:11:59.740
All right, so this is directly from 12 Rules for Life,
00:12:12.100
It does not seem reasonable to describe the young man
00:12:26.240
at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012
00:12:33.980
This is equally true for the Colorado Theater gunman
00:12:43.580
But these murderous individuals had a problem with reality
00:12:52.220
As one of the members of the Columbine duo wrote,
00:13:28.740
they appoint themselves supreme adjudicators of reality
00:14:06.940
the world of experience is insufficient and evil.
00:14:13.880
What is happening when someone comes to think in this manner?
00:14:44.780
Mephistopheles is the eternal adversary of being.
00:14:55.240
of the spirit that inhabited the Columbine killers.
00:15:13.980
human beings are capable of being possessed by ideas.
00:30:30.480
interesting we can't forget it, now why that is, that's a whole
00:30:34.560
different question, and I'm not going to go into that
00:30:36.420
tonight, although I think there are answers to it, but
00:30:41.000
interesting enough to be, not to be forgotten, and for almost everyone
00:30:47.160
that it's not forgettable, and so it's memorable, and that
00:30:50.980
there's a reason for that, I think it's memorable, because it
00:30:54.700
describes something that we cannot describe any better,
00:30:59.920
that needs to be described, so what happens in the story
00:31:02.960
of Adam and Eve, there's many things, but we'll concentrate
00:31:05.160
only on the rise, on the part of the story that I believe indicates, is
00:31:10.600
indicative of the rise to self-consciousness, now what
00:31:12.920
happens is that man, Adam and Eve are naked in the
00:31:17.000
Garden of Eden, the Garden of Eden is the human
00:31:19.720
environment, it's the ultimate balanced combination of
00:31:23.780
culture and nature, that's the walled garden, right, the walls
00:31:27.400
and the garden, culture, the walls, and nature, the garden, and
00:31:31.580
that's the human environment, because we don't just live in
00:31:34.000
nature, obviously, because we just die in nature, and we can't
00:31:38.360
just live in culture, because we need nature, and so we have to
00:31:41.060
balance the two, and a great metaphor for the balance between
00:31:44.180
nature and culture is a garden, and so that's a perfectly reasonable
00:31:47.920
representation of the dwelling place of human beings, and initially
00:31:52.400
we dwelled in that garden in unconscious, in unconsciousness, or
00:31:57.540
at least in unself-consciousness, now the dividing line between
00:32:01.440
those two things is not so easy to draw, but it's certainly the case, partly
00:32:06.360
because, you know, human beings are clearly conscious, and animals appear to be
00:32:10.660
conscious as well, although perhaps that consciousness is on some sort of
00:32:15.360
gradation, from lower to higher, it's hard to tell, because animals can do some
00:32:21.900
very intelligent things, but it doesn't seem like there is any evidence that's
00:32:25.440
credible, that animals are really self-conscious, he had trivial evidence, like
00:32:29.860
the fact that if you put lipstick on a chimpanzee, and you show it a mirror, then
00:32:34.160
it sometimes can notice that it has lipstick, and that's sort of self-consciousness, but
00:32:39.020
it's really reflexive self-consciousness, whereas the self-consciousness that human
00:32:42.740
beings possess is a much richer and detailed kind, because not only can you
00:32:47.660
recognize yourself as an individual entity, separate from other individual
00:32:52.340
entities, but you have a theory about your own being, a very thoroughly
00:32:56.900
developed, fantastical, imagistic theory of your own being that's laid out, say, in
00:33:02.440
dreams, and then an articulated theory of your own being, and then also, on top of
00:33:06.960
that, knowledge of your borders and your boundaries, which is the critical aspect,
00:33:11.660
not so much whether you can recognize yourself in a mirror, but the fact that you know that
00:33:15.480
you're finite in time and space, which is the critical element of self-consciousness,
00:33:20.080
because it defines your limits as a being, right? You once weren't, and then were, and
00:33:26.980
once, and at some point won't be, and it's the consciousness of that boundary that
00:33:34.500
surrounds you, that's like the boundary of your body, except the temporal extension of
00:33:39.000
that, that really makes you self-conscious. And so Adam and Eve are clearly not that to
00:33:44.000
begin with, and the serpent tempts Eve into eating this apple, this fruit of the
00:33:50.560
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is a very strange tree, and a very
00:33:54.700
strange fruit, and a very strange tempter, to say the least. And one of the great
00:34:00.120
mysteries is why the fruit is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and
00:34:05.520
evil, because it's not obvious how the ingestion of this particular delicacy, let's
00:34:12.820
say, results, is associated with knowledge of good and evil. And so this is
00:34:17.800
something that I did write about in Twelve Rules for Life that took me decades to
00:34:21.460
figure out. And it's, it's, it was a discovery that I would say shook me to the
00:34:26.940
core, because I think it's so crucial, and I think it's actually quite, it's quite
00:34:31.960
easy to understand. You already know it, but you don't know you know it, and so when
00:34:35.800
you hear it, then you know that you know it, and that's even worse than merely
00:34:39.300
knowing it. So Adam and Eve, Eve takes the fruit and eats it, and, and the scales
00:34:45.240
fall from her eyes, and then of course she shares it with her husband, who, who is,
00:34:49.480
who is equally enticed, let's say, to devour it. And the scales fall from their
00:34:56.520
eyes, and their eyes open, which implies that their eyes were closed to begin with,
00:35:00.500
and that's the unconsciousness that I was discussing. And the first thing that
00:35:04.600
happens, or one of the first things that happens, is that they both realize
00:35:08.000
they're naked. And that's often given a sexual connotation, and, and there's
00:35:12.880
utility in that, but that's not the fundamental issue, as far as I'm
00:35:15.600
concerned. Like, you know, if you have a nightmare that you're naked on stage, which
00:35:18.980
is a fairly common nightmare, then that, that's not sexual. I mean, there might be a
00:35:23.340
sexual element in it. Maybe you're afraid that people will make fun of your
00:35:26.560
endowment, let's say that. You know, but, but, but it's deeper than that. It's that to be
00:35:31.720
naked on stage, is to have your limited self subject to unmediated evaluation by
00:35:39.320
the group. And so, that's rather terrifying. It's partly why people don't
00:35:42.500
like public speaking, as well, especially if they're actually saying what they mean,
00:35:45.960
because then they have who they are laid bare for the evaluation of the group.
00:35:52.020
And that's, that's, that's knowledge of, that's nakedness. That's knowledge of
00:35:55.900
nakedness. And the nakedness is, well, the nakedness is the vulnerability to, to know
00:36:00.440
that you're naked, is to know that you're vulnerable, is to understand your, is to
00:36:04.880
understand your limitations. And with human beings, I think part of the reason
00:36:07.920
for that, and maybe part of the reason that that actually developed, is because
00:36:10.940
of our stance, you know. Like, most animals are, of course, on four legs. And
00:36:15.880
they're, the most vulnerable parts of them are actually armored, in the mammalian
00:36:22.180
community anyways. They're armored, because they have their back covering the
00:36:26.100
vulnerable front parts of them, right? But human beings, we stand upright. And
00:36:29.940
one of the consequences of, of that is that everything about us, so to speak, and
00:36:34.300
certainly the most centrally vulnerable parts of us, physiologically speaking, even
00:36:39.460
metaphysically speaking, for that matter, are subject to public evaluation. And not
00:36:44.400
only public evaluation, but to, but to harm. Because you can certainly be, with open
00:36:49.380
like this, I mean, we're, we're not rhinoceroses, you know. We're, we're, we're not
00:36:53.620
armored. We're very vulnerable creatures. And when you become self-conscious, then you
00:36:57.740
become aware of that vulnerability. And, and that's like a meta-vulnerability. Not
00:37:01.620
only are you vulnerable, but you know it. And so, not only can you then experience
00:37:05.660
pain, but you can experience anxiety. And not just anxiety in the trivial sense, but
00:37:10.240
anxiety in the long-term, permanent sense. Knowing that no matter how comfortable you
00:37:14.480
are right now, and how well constituted your life is at the moment, that all of that can
00:37:19.040
break apart at any moment, and leave you with nothing, and leave you dead. And
00:37:22.240
that, and everything around you can disappear. And that's all a consequence of
00:37:26.040
the knowledge of your limitation. And that's, in some sense, why death enters the
00:37:31.400
world. And the consequence of that is that Adam and Eve clothe themselves, right? They
00:37:35.940
put an intervening structure between them and the terrible world, both social and
00:37:40.900
natural. And it's only clothing in the, in the, it's only a leaf in the, in the story. But
00:37:46.480
it's symbolic of the, well, you're all clothed. It's, it's symbolic of that. There's a reason
00:37:51.480
for that. I mean, it's warm in here. You don't have to be clothed, but you certainly
00:37:54.780
are. And you have been for a very long time. It's tens of thousands of years that people
00:37:59.380
have worn clothes to protect themselves against the elements, for sure. But also to protect
00:38:04.680
themselves against their own harsh self-judgment, and the judgment of others. And that's partly
00:38:10.480
the intermediation of culture against nature. And it's symbolic of that as well, is because
00:38:15.200
once you understand that you're vulnerable in some permanent sense across time, then
00:38:19.900
you're liable to work. And of course, that's the next thing that happens in the story of
00:38:25.260
Adam and Eve, is that God finds out what happens. One of the next things that happens, God finds
00:38:29.940
out that Adam and Eve are now self-conscious. And he says, oh, now you're in trouble. You're
00:38:35.100
going to have to work. As why do you have to work if you're self-conscious? And the answer
00:38:39.260
is, well, you might have everything you need now, but that doesn't mean you're going to
00:38:44.060
have it in the future. And so there's no escape from that. You have to work, you have to sacrifice
00:38:50.400
the present for the future. Because now you're aware of the future. And the definition of work,
00:38:56.020
in some sense, is the sacrifice of the present for the future. To forego gratification. If it's
00:39:01.300
merely spontaneous pleasure, we don't define it as work. Work is when you're doing something
00:39:06.160
for later, that you'd rather not do now. And why would you do that? Well, it's because
00:39:11.160
you know that you extend across time. And even if it's not you, maybe it's your family that
00:39:15.440
extends across time. You're vulnerable on all fronts. And so, you're going to work. And
00:39:20.480
that's that. And so, well, and then of course, the other thing that happens is that people
00:39:26.360
become aware of the difference between good and evil. And that's attributed, there's a
00:39:32.900
God-like element that's attributed to that. What God actually says after Adam and Eve eat
00:39:37.900
the fruit and become aware of good and evil, he says, well, we have to remove them from
00:39:41.960
paradise unless they eat the fruit from the tree of life and live forever and be like
00:39:46.680
God, gods themselves. They're halfway there with their knowledge of good and evil. You say,
00:39:51.640
well, what's going on? How is it that the ingestion of whatever this was, I mean, and food is often
00:39:58.920
a metaphor for knowledge. It's to ingest or to, and you might have received a bit of indigestible
00:40:05.860
news. That's a good way of thinking about it. The idea of incorporation of food and the idea of
00:40:11.580
incorporation of knowledge are very tightly linked. And the reason for that, at least in part at the
00:40:15.900
metaphorical level, is part of the reason that you want to incorporate knowledge is so that you
00:40:19.380
can incorporate food, right? Because knowledge is actually this, knowledge is actually the abstract
00:40:25.180
representation of the food that will, that will sustain you across very large periods of time.
00:40:30.760
I mean, it's more than that, but it's certainly that. So there's a very tight relationship between
00:40:34.820
us foraging for knowledge, which we do, and something very specific about human beings that
00:40:40.180
we forage for knowledge. And that foraging for knowledge is partly what enables us to maintain
00:40:44.960
ourselves biologically across long spans of time. It's like squirrels forage for nuts, and then they
00:40:49.920
have to remember where the nuts are. And then the remembrance of where the nuts are is equivalent to
00:40:54.500
the food. And the knowledge and the food are the same thing. And so, and then there's the food that you
00:40:59.780
can eat today, and then there's the food that will sustain you for the rest of your life. And the
00:41:03.580
knowledge is the food that sustains you for the rest of your life. And that's why man does not live by
00:41:08.480
bread alone. That's why that works out. So Adam and Eve realize that they're vulnerable. And they
00:41:16.820
realize that they're, that, and that death enters the world at that point. The knowledge of death. So
00:41:21.760
the vulnerability is final in some sense. It's cataclysmic. It destroys the structure of reality.
00:41:27.840
That's what that story means. And there's something about that, you know, because we're very complex
00:41:32.140
creatures as human beings. There's nothing more complex anywhere than what's inside your skull. The brain is
00:41:38.160
immensely, immeasurably the most complicated thing that there is. And at some point it gathered the power to
00:41:45.640
reflect upon itself. And the story in Genesis is partly predicated on the idea that that put a cataclysmic
00:41:55.020
rift in the structure of reality. Now it depends on how you define reality. But the most complex thing that
00:42:02.940
exists might have something crucial to do with the structure of reality. At least you can make that.
00:42:08.160
case. And whether it does or not, in some objective sense, whatever that might mean, it certainly does as far
00:42:14.000
as you're concerned. And so that's of sufficient importance. And so what happens when you realize that you're
00:42:19.700
vulnerable? Well, something very interesting. And this is where the idea of good and evil enters the world.
00:42:27.100
Because, you know, maybe you're hungry. And maybe you're hungry like a lion. And when you're hungry like a lion, you rouse
00:42:33.180
yourself out of your torpor. Because most of the time lions just sleep. Except when they're hungry. And then when they
00:42:38.860
get hungry, they organize themselves. And they go hunt. And they take down a zebra. And then they eat the zebra. And that's
00:42:44.380
the end of that. And it's a little hard on the zebra. But there's no malevolence in it. You know, there's no casual
00:42:50.640
slaughter. They're certainly not dragging out the torment of the zebra. You know, they're just eating. And so it's tragic,
00:42:57.840
certainly for the zebra. But it's not malevolent. An animal that does something carnivorous does it by
00:43:04.820
necessity. But humans can do something carnivorous out of far more than necessity. And the reason that
00:43:11.540
they can do that is because they actually understand their own vulnerability. And the flip side of that
00:43:16.120
is that as soon as I understand my own vulnerability, I have some sense of how I can be hurt and what makes
00:43:21.800
me terrified and anxious. As soon as I know that for me, I also know it for you. And as soon as I know
00:43:27.700
it for you, then I can use it. And that's how the knowledge of good and evil enters the world with the
00:43:34.020
revelation of vulnerability. And because now you have within you the power to take that knowledge of
00:43:41.040
the misery of the world and to utilize it in any way that you see fit. And so that's why human beings
00:43:47.060
are capable of malevolence because they can take that which they hate, which is something far darker
00:43:53.300
than mere predatory behavior, and subject it to endless creative torment. And that might be something
00:44:00.100
that you apply to yourself. And it might be something that you apply to your family. And it might be
00:44:04.400
something that you apply to your community. And now and then it might be something that you directly
00:44:08.800
apply, right? That you're directly engaged in precisely that malevolence, which is the exploitation
00:44:15.560
of vulnerability. And if it's truly malevolent, it's exploitation of vulnerability merely for the
00:44:22.100
aesthetic joy of doing so. You know, you see this dark humor, that satirical humor that goes along with
00:44:30.180
great acts of malevolence, like this gate sign over the Auschwitz concentration camp,
00:44:36.760
work will set you free, right? Some great cosmic joke that could have only been written by the spirit of
00:44:43.800
evil itself, to demarcate a place where if there was work, all it was done was to parody work for the
00:44:51.660
purpose of the violence and destruction that it could produce prior to death. And so that's the depths
00:44:58.560
of malevolence. And there's no doubt that exists, that's for sure. And so then the question, I suppose,
00:45:05.540
is, well, people became self-conscious and they became capable of malevolence. And is that something
00:45:10.760
that you can lay at the feet of God? And so that's something that Milton was very interested in,
00:45:16.940
in Paradise Lost, his great poem. And so, and it's a poem that's very much worth reading if you,
00:45:22.740
if you understand what it's about. And it's about free will, and it's about evil, and it's about,
00:45:30.260
it's about this great narrative that we're embedded in that we don't understand. It's part and parcel of
00:45:35.100
the biblical corpus, let's say, but it's also part and parcel of all the great plays and dramas and
00:45:41.760
literary productions and musical productions and, and cathedral-like architecture and, and, and the
00:45:49.520
dream, all of that artistic endeavor that's part of the dream in which our articulated cognitive
00:45:55.820
structures are embedded. And that's, that's what Milton is trying to understand. It's the structure of
00:46:01.100
that underlying dream because you're embedded in a dream. You have to dream every night or you can't
00:46:05.520
maintain your sanity. Your, your articulated cognition has to dissolve into the dream that
00:46:12.140
surrounds you in order to maintain its sanity. And the underlying metaphysics of our culture
00:46:18.400
expressed, at least in part in stories like the biblical corpus, constitute the dream upon which
00:46:25.500
our sanity depends, even though we don't know that. And you see people like Milton, who are great poets,
00:46:31.780
who are, who are geniuses of the imagination, who are playing in the realm of dreams, trying to sort
00:46:37.660
things out at a level that's far below articulated cognition, to wrestle with questions that are so
00:46:43.180
deep that they trouble all of us, but that none of us are intelligent enough to articulate our way
00:46:48.180
through. And that's why you study literature and poetry, if you have any sense, because it pushes you
00:46:53.980
down into that dream where you can, where you can straighten out the metaphysics upon which your
00:46:59.540
more formal theories of being indefinitely rely. Something has to buffer us. Something has to serve
00:47:10.800
as a buffer between our limited knowledge and the unknown itself. And it's, it's the dream that
00:47:17.080
surrounds us that constitutes that buffer. And it has to be maintained in order. And that's what poets
00:47:22.260
and artists and, and, and, and, and, and, and philosophers, if they're deep. And sometimes
00:47:30.100
psychologists, that's what they do. And I'm thinking about people like Jung and Freud, when I'm thinking
00:47:36.920
about that. So, this is God's discussion of, of the emergence of evil in the world and his, his attempt
00:47:47.880
to reconcile, his attempt to justify, his attempt to justify, I would say in some sense, the structure
00:47:54.700
of being, even given that malevolence made its emergence on the stage. And he's talking about
00:48:04.080
the relationship between Adam and Eve, but mankind in general, and the spirit of evil as such,
00:48:12.120
which might be that proclivity to seek revenge on existence for the tragedy of being.
00:48:19.680
For man will hearken to his gloving lies and easily transgress the sole command, sole pledge
00:48:29.580
of disobedience. So, will fall he and his faithless progeny, whose fault?
00:48:40.440
Who's but his own? In great. He had of me all he could have. I made him just and right, sufficient
00:48:55.320
to have stood, though free to fall. Such I created all the ethereal powers and spirits, both them
00:49:07.580
who stood and them who fell. Freely they stood who stood and fell who fell. So, that's a fairly
00:49:19.760
straightforward hypothesis that evil beckons, but that people have within them what would
00:49:35.180
be necessary if they drew upon it to resist it. And the existence of evil, the manifestation
00:49:43.180
of evil in the world, can therefore not be laid at the feet of God. Now, perhaps it's an argument
00:49:50.220
that you don't buy, but it's an argument, and it's a strong one. And then, there's another justification.
00:49:59.380
You know, Milton wrote Paradise Lost. He said he wrote Milton's Paradise Lost to justify the ways
00:50:04.560
of God to man. That's quite an ambition. It's a hell of a thing for someone to say, especially
00:50:09.780
given that he meant it. And so, here's another section from book two.
00:50:15.520
Why would you allow people the choice to indulge in evil? Why grant the power of free will? Because
00:50:27.760
perhaps that's free will, is the power to choose between good and evil. It seems to be the most
00:50:37.540
I else must change their nature and revoke the high decree, unchangeable, eternal, which ordained
00:50:51.340
their freedom. They themselves ordained their fall, self-tempted, self-depraved.
00:51:00.020
And one more, and perhaps this is more relevant to freedom to choose the good, rather than evil.
00:51:12.200
What pleasure I, from such obedience paid, when will and reason, reason also is choice, useless
00:51:21.140
and vain, of freedom both despoiled, made passive both, had served necessity, not me.
00:51:30.020
They, therefore, as to right belonged, so were created. Nor can justly accuse their maker, or their
00:51:40.600
making, or their fate, as if predestination overruled.
00:51:45.900
So the next story in Genesis is the story of Cain and Abel. And it's a very interesting story. It's a very short story.
00:51:59.520
It's only a few lines long. I don't, I've never encountered a story that has that much depth packed into that tiny amount
00:52:08.900
of space. It's absolutely unfathomable, in some sense. And so, I'll go over the story briefly.
00:52:15.900
The first thing is, is that, well, Adam and Eve are the mother and father of us all. And so, you could say, well, if you were thinking about it symbolically,
00:52:24.900
maybe from the Jungian perspective, that Eve is the personification of nature itself, and Adam is the personification of culture itself,
00:52:33.480
and each of us is the child of nature and culture. And then the question is, well, what is the fundamental nature
00:52:40.480
of the child of nature and culture? And the answer is,
00:52:57.080
And it's a terrible story, because it's a story of
00:53:14.240
and there's a reason for that, but we won't go into that.
00:53:36.420
if you were guarding sheep, there were wolves and lions.
00:53:44.240
against lions, then you were the sort of person