Sodom and Gomorrah
Episode Stats
Length
2 hours and 35 minutes
Words per Minute
167.74182
Summary
In this episode, Dr. Jordan Peterson discusses the role of sacrifice in the Abrahamic narrative, and how it can be understood through the lens of the sacrificial routines in the stories of Abraham and Gomorrah and the sacrifice of Isaac. Dr. Peterson argues that the stories dramatize the idea that sacrifice is necessary in order to move forward in life, and that it is necessary to make sacrifices to move ahead in life. He argues that once humanity had established the idea of sacrifice as a necessary and effective means of moving forward, it was then that we could begin to understand the importance of sacrifice for the sake of the greater good of the whole. With decades of experience helping patients with depression and anxiety, and a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way, he offers a roadmap towards healing. He provides a roadmap toward 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. J.B. Peterson's new series on Depression and Anxiety. Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. You can support these podcasts by donating to Dr. B. Peterson s PODCAST by making a donation to his project, The Jordan Peterson Project by becoming a patron of Daily Wire Plus. - a program that could be a lifeline for those battling Depression and Anxiousness and Depression and Depression. Dr. P. Peterson is available in English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and Hebrew. and other languages. Please visit Dailywireplus.org.org/jordanbpetersonerson/thejordanpeterson/jpeperson/discover/theory/the-depressionandanxiety/jcr&t=1&referenced=3&ref=a&qid=1 and learn more about his new series. . Thank you for listening to this podcast, and please reach out to someone who may be struggling with Depression and/or Anxiety and Depression? or Depression and Depression? , and let me know what you think of this podcast can do to help me know about it. Thank you, and I'm looking forward to hearing from you, too, thank you, and I appreciate the support you're feeling better!
Transcript
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Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious
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and important. Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for
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those battling depression and anxiety. We know how isolating and overwhelming these
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conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who
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may be struggling. With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique
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understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series. He provides a
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roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible
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to find your way forward. If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope
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and there's a path to feeling better. Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr.
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Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety. Let this be the first step towards the brighter
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Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. You can support these podcasts by donating to
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Dr. Peterson's Patreon, the link to which can be found in the description. Dr. Peterson's
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self-development programs, self-authoring, can be found at selfauthoring.com.
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Three difficult stories tonight, and hopefully my plan is to get through all three of them. So we'll
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see how that goes. So we're going to talk about the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and then the story of
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the sacrifice of Isaac, which is an extremely complicated, complicated story. And so we'll try
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to make some headway with that. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is plenty complicated too. All right,
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so what we established last week, at least in part, was this idea that the Abrahamic narratives are set
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up as punctuated epochs, I suppose, in Abraham's life. And we were hypothesizing that, you know,
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you set out a goal for yourself in your life. It's like a stage in your life, you might say that. And then
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when you run that goal to its end, when that stage comes to an end, then you have to regroup and orient
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yourself once again. And I was making the case that that's a good time to make necessary sacrifices, you
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know, and part of that's because as you move through your life, you have to shed
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that which is no longer necessary. And because otherwise it accretes around you and holds you down and
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you perish sooner than you should. And I think that's in large part because if you don't dispense with
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your life as you move through it, then the stress of all that undone business and all those unmade
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decisions turns into a kind of chaos around you. And that chaos puts you in a state of
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psychophysiological emergency preparedness chronically. And that just ages you. And so
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it's necessary in some sense to stay light on your feet. And also, I think, to renew your commitment
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to your aim upward. And I believe that that's what the sacrificial routines in the Abrahamic stories
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dramatize. I said already that these things are often first portrayed very dramatically and concretely
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before they become psychologized. And we'll see because one of the things that happens tonight as
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well in these stories is that when God makes his covenant with Abraham, this is the next part of
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the story, it's also when the idea of circumcision is introduced into ancient Hebrew culture. Now,
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there's every bit of evidence that other cultures were utilizing circumcision beforehand. So it wasn't
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necessarily a novel invention of the Abrahamic people. But I see its introduction as a step on the road
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to the psychologization of the idea of sacrifice, right? First of all, it's giving up something
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concrete. And then, second, it's signified by the sacrifice of a part of the body instead of for the
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sake of the whole. It's something like that. It's dramatizing the idea that you have to give up a part
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of yourself for the sake of the whole. And eventually, well, by modern times, that becomes virtually
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completely psychological in its essence, in that we all understand, perhaps not as well as we should,
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but at least well enough to explain it, that it's necessary to make sacrifices to move ahead in life.
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One of the themes that I'd like to explore tonight in relationship, especially to the sacrifice of
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Isaac, is that, you know, once humanity had established the idea that sacrifice was necessary
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to move ahead, which is really, it's a discovery of incalculable magnitude, right? The idea that,
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the idea that you can give up something in the present, and that will, in some sense, ensure
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a better future, is an unbelievable achievement. It's equivalent to the discovery of the future.
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It's equivalent to the discovery of the utility of work. Like, its importance can't be overstated.
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Okay, so, it took a long time for people to figure this out. Animals haven't figured it out at all,
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right? We've figured it out. And it's hard, it's hard for people to make sacrifices, because, of course,
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the present has a major grip on you, as it should, because in some way you live in the present.
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So, anyways, there's the twin problem of getting the whole idea of sacrifice up and running,
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and then figuring out exactly what it means. But there's a problem that branches off that,
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or a two-fold problem. So, the hypothesis is that sacrifice is necessary to ensure,
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ensure the, that the future is safe, and secure, and productive, and positive, and all of those
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things. Okay, so then, then a question immediate, two questions immediately arise from that, right?
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One is, well, what's the proper sacrifice? Now, we already talked about that a little bit with
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regards to Cain and Abel, and one of the things we saw was that Cain's sacrifice, whatever it was,
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was wrong, and Abel's was right, Noah's seemed to be right, Abraham's seems to be right. There is something
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about a sacrifice that can be correct. There's something about a sacrifice that can be incorrect.
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The question is, what would be the maximally correct sacrifice? So, because that's an obvious
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question to arise from the mere observation that sacrifice is necessary. Okay, if you're going to
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sacrifice, and it's necessary, well, how is it that you would behave if you were going to do it
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really well, if you're going to do it perfectly? Okay, so that's question number one. And then question
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number two might be, well, if the future can be better because of a sacrifice, and sacrifices can
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vary in quality, then how much better could the future be if your sacrifice was of the highest
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quality, right? There's a limit issue there, and the limit is something like, well, how good could
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your life be? If you really got your act together, and you gave up all the things that were impeding
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you in your movement forward, if you did that forthrightly, and with integrity, and with
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seriousness, with dead seriousness, and you tried to set your life right, what is the upper
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limits with regards to how your life might lay itself out? And I would say, well, we don't
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know the answer to that, but I think that the idea of something like the city of God, or the
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kingdom of God on earth, or the reestablishment of paradise, something like that, is the answer
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of the imagination to the question, how good could the future be if sacrifice was optimized?
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And those are archetypal questions, right? And an archetypal question is a question that
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everyone asks, whether they know it or not, because sometimes you can act out a question.
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An archetypal question is a question that everyone asks, and an archetypal answer is the answer
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that can't be made any better to that question. So, I can give you an example of that. The reason
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that Christ's passion is an archetypal story is because it's a kind of limit, right? It's
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the worst possible set of things that can happen to the best possible person. So, it's
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a story that constitutes a limit. It has nothing to do with the factual reality of the story.
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That's a completely independent issue. I'm speaking about this psychologically, is that
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certain stories can exhaust themselves in a perfect form, and that would be the archetypal
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form. So, that's the territory that we're going to wander around in a little bit today,
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and we'll use the stories as anchors. I've been thinking a lot about the Sodom and Gomorrah
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story, because it's classically associated with a biblical injunction against homosexuality,
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and that's often how it's read, I would say in particular, by the more fundamentalist end
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of the Christian spectrum. And I've thought about that a lot, because it's pretty damn clear
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that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah has something to do with sexual impropriety, but I've really
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come to the conclusion that it has very little to do with homosexuality. So, we'll see how
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that interpretation prevails as we walk through this tonight. Okay, so we'll start with a bit
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of a recap from last week. So, Abraham's had his last adventure, and he's 90 years old, 99 years old,
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actually. The Lord appeared to Abraham and said unto him, I am the Almighty God, walk before me,
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and be thou perfect. Well, that's quite the command. Now, Alexander McLaren, who we talked about
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before, elaborated upon this slightly, and this is what he had to say. This is not precisely walking
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with God, the idea of walking before God. It is rather that of an active life, spent in continual
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consciousness of being naked and open before the eyes of him to whom we have to give an account.
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Okay, so that's an idea that's in keeping with the notion that what we're seeing in the Abrahamic story
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is the call to adventure of the man, of the typical person, right? Because your life, in some sense,
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is an adventure. And I suppose the reason for that is that you're confronted by things that you cannot
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understand, that you have not yet mastered. There's a heavy price to be paid if you fail to conduct
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yourself appropriately, and there's a large reward to be gained if you conduct yourself properly. And so
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that pretty much defines an adventure story. And God calls to Abraham and tells him to move out into
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the world, to leave what he's familiar with, to go into the strange lands of famine and tyranny, and to
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find his place. And that works out quite nicely for Abraham. And so, what that also means is that
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because Abraham is doing that consciously, at least according to this interpretation, that he's not
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naive in his determination to move forward, you know? I mean, I've dealt with lots of people who have
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anxiety disorders, you know? And one thing about people who have anxiety disorders is they are not
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mysterious to me. I understand... It's no problem for me to understand why people have anxiety
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disorders, or why they're depressed, or why they have substance use problems. The mystery to me is
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always why people don't have all of those things at once. Because everybody has a reason to be anxious.
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In fact, we have the ultimate reason to be anxious, because we know that we're vulnerable, and we know
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that we're going to die. And how you cannot be anxious under those circumstances is a great mystery.
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It's a massive mystery. And the same thing applies with regards to depression. And then the same
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thing applies to some degree with regards to drug and alcohol abuse. As I said last week, there's
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plenty of reasons to drown your consciousness in alcohol. That's for sure. We could refer to the
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aforementioned anxiety and depression, not least. And so, and the sorts of drugs that people are prone
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to take are chemicals that take the affective edge off the tragedy of life. So, back to the issue of fear.
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I mean, Abraham is self-conscious, that's what this commentary says. But the thing is, is he moves
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forward despite that. He's self-conscious, and he knows the danger, but he moves forward despite that. And
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that's actually the appropriate response in the face of actual non-naive understanding of what
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constitutes life. Like, if you're naive and you move forward, it's like, well, what the hell do you
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know? You know? There's no courage in naivety, because you don't know what there is to stop you. You
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don't know what dangers you might apprehend. But to be aware of what it is that your problem is, so to be
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alert existentially, let's say, or to be fully self-conscious means that you're perfectly aware
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of your limitations and how you might be hurt. And then to make the decision to move forward into
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the unknown and the land of the stranger. Anyways, that's the, I would say, that's one of the secrets
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to a good life. And I can say that really without fear of contradiction, I would say, because the
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clinical literature on this is very, very, very clear. What you do with people who are afraid, and to
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some degree depressed, but certainly anxious, is you lay out what they're anxious about, first of all,
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in detail, what is it that you're afraid of, what might happen. And then you decompose it into
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small problems, hypothetically manageable problems. And then you have the person expose themselves to
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the thing that they're afraid of. And what happens isn't that they get less afraid. That isn't what
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the clinical literature indicates exactly. What happens instead is they get braver. And that's not the
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same thing, right? Because if you get less afraid, it's like, well, the world isn't as dangerous as I
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thought it was. You know, silly me. If you get braver, that's not what happens. What happens is,
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yeah, the damn world's just as dangerous as I thought. Or maybe it's even more dangerous than I
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thought. But it turns out that there's something in me that responds to taking that on as a voluntary
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challenge, and grows and thrives as a consequence. And there's no doubt about this. Even the
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psychophysiological findings are quite clear. If you, if you, if you impose a stressor on two groups of
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people, and on one group, the stressor is imposed involuntarily. And on the other group, the stressor
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is picked up voluntarily. The people who pick up the stressor voluntarily, voluntarily use a whole
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different psychophysiological system to deal with it. They use the system that's associated with
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approach and challenge, and not the system that's associated with defensive aggression and withdrawal.
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And the system that is associated with challenge is much more associated with positive emotion,
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and much less associated with negative emotion. It's also much less hard on you, because the,
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the defensive posturing system, the prey animal system, man, when that thing kicks in, it's all
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systems are go for you, you know? You're, the gas is pushed down to the, or the pedal's pushed down
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to the metal, and the brakes are on. You're using future resources that you could be storing for future
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time, right now in the present, to ready yourself for emergency. So, there's, there's, there's nothing
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simple or trivial at all about the idea of being called to move forthrightly forward into the
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strange and the unknown. And there's a real adventure that's associated with that, right?
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So, that's an exciting thing, which is part of the reason why people travel. And then also,
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to see yourself as the sort of creature that can do that, is willing to do that on a habitual
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basis, is also the right kind of tonic for, I hate this word, for your self-esteem. You know,
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because the self-esteem has nothing to do with feeling good about yourself. As, as I already
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mentioned, there isn't necessarily a reason why, a priori, you should just feel good about yourself.
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But, if you can view yourself acting in a courageous and forthright manner, and encountering the world,
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and trying to improve your lot, and, and, and taking risks, you know, in a non-naive way,
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well, then you have something that you can comfort yourself with at night, when you're wondering
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what the whole damn point of is, of your futile and miserable life. And so, and that's necessary,
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because it's often the case that you wake up at four in the morning, or at least sometimes the
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case that you wake up at four in the morning, when things haven't been going that well, and wonder
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just what the hell the point is of your futile and miserable life. You have to have something real
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to set against that. It can't be just rationalizations about how, you know, you're a valuable person
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among others, even though that's true. That's not good enough. You need something that's more
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realistic to set against that, and observing courage in yourself is definitely one of the things that,
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that, that can help you sleep soundly at night, when, when things are destabilized a little bit
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around you. So, back to the covenant. God tells Abraham, you'll make my covenant between me and
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thee, and we'll multiply thee exceedingly. And Abraham fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying,
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as for me, behold, my covenant, my contract is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many
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nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be called Abraham,
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for a father of many nations have I made thee. And Abram means high father, and Abraham father of a
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multitude. And I'll make thee exceedingly fruitful. And I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come
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out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed after thee,
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in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.
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And I will give unto thee, and thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger,
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all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession. And I will be their God. I love that line, really.
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The line about the land where you are a stranger. You know, and everything that happens in the Bible,
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almost everything that happens in these more archaic stories in particular, is laid out geographically.
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The metaphor is geographic. So, you move to a land that you haven't yet occupied, maybe that's full
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of strangers, and then the land is what's granted to you. But it's perfectly reasonable to think about
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this from the perspective, from a more abstract perspective, that's much more relevant to modern
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people with our incredibly complex societies. You know, it's definitely the case that if you go into
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the land of the stranger, which is exactly what you do when you try out any new endeavor, right?
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When you start a new job, or when you start a new educational enterprise, or when you start a new
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relationship, it doesn't matter. You're out there in unexplored territory. Like, the physical geography
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is the same, but we don't live in the spatial world only. We live in the temporal spatial world.
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And what that means is that the same place can be different at a different time. I mean,
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it can be completely different. And so, if you're in your house, but you have a new person
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in your house, well, your house is new for all intents and purpose, because the territory
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surrounding that new person is the territory of the foreigner, essentially. And the same
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thing happens to you when you start a new job. And you'll find that when you start a new
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job, especially if you've stretched yourself a little bit beyond your zone of comfort, that
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you very much feel like an imposter, right? When you're first there. And then the question
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is, well, how do you master that? And the answer to that seems to be, well, it seems fairly
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straightforward. If the place that you're in has any degree of possibility, if it isn't
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inhabited by demons, so to speak, the best way to act is to lift your aim upward and
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attempt to get your act together and to tell the truth and to live a meaningful life and
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to do difficult things, all of that. And that is the best way of mastering a new territory.
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And in all probability, the degree to which you're able to act that out is precisely proportionate
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to the degree to which you're going to become a master in that territory. And that sort of thing
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can happen a lot faster than people think. You know, it's really quite remarkable how fast you
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can move forward if you can establish yourself somewhere and prove yourself useful, assuming that
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you're around people to whom proving yourself useful actually matters. Like, I know perfectly
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well that you can end up in an employment situation where you're punished for your virtues, right?
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In which case, you should just get the hell out of there. And really, really, you get out of there and
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you go find somewhere where if you work hard and do what you're supposed to do, you're actually
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going to be rewarded, right? Because that's not a workplace. That's hell. And you should just leave
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there. So, and God said unto Abraham, thou shalt keep my covenant, therefore thou and thy seed after
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thee in their generations. This is my covenant, which he shall keep between me and you and thy seed
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after thee. Every man child among you shall be circumcised. That's a mystery there. Like,
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why that particular right? Well, it's dramatic. I mean, it certainly, it certainly affects a man
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where he's most concerned to be affected. There's something like that. And so, it's a sacrifice
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that has a certain, I would say, a certain degree of unforgetability. That would be the first thing.
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And a certain degree of pain and threat that goes along with it. So, it's not nothing. That's the
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thing. Now, you can argue, and I think there is an argument, a case to be made about whether or not
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in the modern world, circumcision is a reasonable, is something reasonable to inflict on infants. I
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don't want to have that conversation at all. But I don't think that's relevant to this particular
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issue because we're talking about something different. We're talking about humanity's attempt
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to reconcile themselves to the fact that something has to be given up in order for something else to
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happen. And to try to really work through that idea and to make it into a psychological reality.
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And so far, what we've seen in the biblical stories is that when you make a sacrifice, it's not really
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something personal or psychological, right? It's something external and dramatic. You give up
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something that you own. You don't give up something that you are or that's part of you. And it's actually
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more of a sacrifice to give up something that's a part of you or something that you are than to give up
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something that you own. I mean, it's a subtle distinction because in some sense, the distinction
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between what you own and what you are is subtle, right? I mean, it's not overwhelmingly subtle, but
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people identify with their possessions and they need to because otherwise they wouldn't care for them.
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And they need their possessions in order to live. So their possessions are in some sense integral to
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them. But this transformation here of an act that was external and associated essentially with
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possessions to something that was actually at least part of the body brings it much closer to
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it brings it much closer to the to the to the individual as a psychological reality. It's something
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like that. And you shall circumcise circumcise the flesh of your foreskin and it shall be a token
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of the covenant betwixt me and you. It's also a permanent marker, you know, and I've read a fair bit
00:22:33.020
about practices like tattooing and body scarification, you know, which is those are very, very common
00:22:37.960
practices, right? They're human universals, actually. No matter where you go around the
00:22:42.120
world, I mean, you see a couple of things. First of all, almost without exception, people
00:22:46.140
wear clothing. And sometimes it's relatively minimal clothing, but it's, and often it's
00:22:52.260
more decorative than protective, but it's almost inevitably clothing. And the other thing that
00:22:57.800
you see is that people do scarify and tattoo themselves. And they do that in some manner
00:23:02.960
to catalyze their identity, right? They're trying to transform themselves from a generic
00:23:08.420
person in some sense to a person that's been designed by their own hand. It's something
00:23:13.820
like that. There, it's a, it's a marker of developing identity and some of it seems to
00:23:18.320
be catalyzed with pain. You know, the modern people who tattoo, and I'm not saying that I'm
00:23:24.020
in favor of tattooing because actually I'm not, but that, but that's my own particular bias.
00:23:29.100
And if you have a tattoo, that's fine with me. Um, I, I'm also not saying that there's
00:23:34.640
anything wrong with it. Um, but one of the things you do see, what we, that people who
00:23:39.600
have a tattoo do report is a couple of things, is that the pain is actually necessary, and
00:23:45.200
that the pain is actually something that seems to establish something like a memory. So, well,
00:23:50.120
it's a memory because of the pain, because you bloody well remember things that hurt, but
00:23:54.120
it's also a memory because it's actually etched on you, right? It's not something that you
00:23:58.180
can just abandon and forget. And so, a circumcision is exactly the same thing. It's like, you
00:24:02.820
don't forget it because it's part of you. And so, it makes a good token for a covenant.
00:24:07.500
And so, that seems to be the rationale here from, from speaking from a psychological perspective.
00:24:13.080
It's to indicate as well that the, the damn thing that's happening is serious. And I think
00:24:18.200
also that was the case with the earlier sacrifices of animals. It's like, modern people don't do
00:24:23.780
this. Like, you don't know how serious you would take a vow if you sacrificed a goat in
00:24:27.460
your backyard. You know, it's actually a very dramatic thing to do. You know, you think about
00:24:32.100
it as primitive, and perhaps it is archaic, and, and, and no doubt it is. But it's also
00:24:37.060
to, to take the life of something and to spill its blood. That's no joke. That's something you
00:24:41.340
remember, especially if you haven't done it before. And we actually don't know what we would
00:24:45.640
need to do in order to take some things seriously. You know, because we all do things like
00:24:50.240
make New Year's resolutions about how we're going to be better people, and we don't do
00:24:53.880
it. And the reason for that, at least in part, is because we don't know how to make the sacrifice
00:24:59.440
sufficiently bloody, let's say, so that we remember that it's necessary, right? We don't
00:25:05.960
take it with seriousness. We don't think, I should quit smoking, because I'm going to
00:25:10.360
die. And we don't think through what that means, like coughing your lungs out for three
00:25:15.200
months in a hotel bed. Well, your entire family is, like, half repulsed, and horrified,
00:25:21.400
and sorrow-stricken at the fact that this has happened far too early. You know, we won't
00:25:25.400
make that real enough to make it serious, and serious, and without that seriousness, we
00:25:30.260
won't do it. So, there's something to be said for rituals of seriousness, and I think
00:25:38.080
And he that is eight days shall be circumcised among you, every man-child in your generations.
00:25:42.620
He that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy
00:25:46.440
seed. This is from Charles John Ellicott, who is Bishop of Gloucester. The fitness of circumcision
00:25:52.860
to be a sign of entering into a covenant, and especially into one to which children were
00:25:59.400
to be admitted, consisted in its being a representation of a new birth by putting off the old man, and
00:26:06.200
the dedication of the new man unto holiness. It's like a baptism, that's right, that's what's
00:26:11.620
echoed there. And, of course, baptism is a return to the pre-cosmogonic chaos, because
00:26:16.440
that's what the water indicates, and a return to the source of life, and then the renewal
00:26:21.460
that comes along with it. So, it's a sacrificial idea in some sense, that if there is to be
00:26:27.000
a new you, that the old you has to dissolve, has to return to the solution from which it
00:26:33.020
emerged initially, and to reconstitute itself. And so, there's an echo of that idea here.
00:26:37.960
The flesh was cast away, that the spirit might grow strong. And the change of name in Abram
00:26:43.960
and Sarai was typical of this change of condition. They had been born again, and so must again
00:26:48.300
be named. And though women could indeed be admitted directly into the covenant, could not indeed
00:26:54.100
be admitted directly into the covenant, yet they shared in its privileges by virtue of their
00:26:58.540
consanguinity to the men who were as sponsors for them. And thus, Sarai changes her name equally
00:27:03.580
with her husband. Well, you could make a case, and anthropological observers have made this
00:27:08.260
case too, that women undergo a sufficiently, a set of sufficiently radical psychophysiological
00:27:15.340
transformations, merely as a consequence of being part, being feminine in nature, such that
00:27:21.920
the additional rituals of transformation that might be necessary for men aren't necessary.
00:27:27.680
And one of those might be menstruation, because that's a pretty dramatic transformation.
00:27:31.040
And there has been some indication that circumcision is like a male, it's like the male equivalent
00:27:37.440
of menstruation, something like that, because of the blood that's involved, and because of
00:27:41.160
the locale. And then, of course, the same thing is the case with women when they give birth,
00:27:45.580
because that's a particularly dramatic thing, as I just witnessed, because my daughter just
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Recent investigation. This is from the Cambridge Bible for School and Colleges, which if you want
00:30:54.660
to read it, is only 58 volumes. Recent investigation has not tended to support the theory that circumcision
00:31:02.260
has any connection with primitive child sacrifice, nor again that it took its origin from hygienic
00:31:07.780
motives. Apparently, it represents the dedication of the manhood of the people to God. In the history
00:31:13.500
of Israel, it has survived as the symbol of the people belonging to Jehovah through his special
00:31:18.000
election. This corporeal sacrament remained to the Israelite when every other tie of religion or race
00:31:33.620
The other thing that I read about in relationship to this idea of the multi-generational covenant
00:31:40.100
had something to do, because God told Abraham to include all of the people of his household
00:31:45.800
into this covenant. And that really meant that he was establishing a territory of ethics around
00:31:53.500
them, like the ark, except the psychological equivalent of the ark, right? So it was a spiritual
00:31:59.200
or psychological or ethical territory that everyone who was of that household was required to
00:32:05.840
occupy, or obliged, or perhaps privileged to occupy. And there was also an injunction to Abraham with
00:32:12.580
regards to his children, which was that as he had established a covenant with God, which we could say
00:32:17.780
as something like his decision to aim as high as possible and to live properly as a consequence. It's more than that,
00:32:25.620
but it's something like that. That he also was under the supreme moral obligation to share that with the other men
00:32:34.240
in his family, especially his children. And so I think there's also a call here to adopting the sacred responsibility
00:32:43.120
in relationship to children that has to do with ensuring that they understand how to take their
00:32:49.220
place in the world. And I think that that's definitely something very much worth considering, especially
00:32:56.960
given the emphasis in the Noah story, in the story of Noah, that Noah had his, that his generations were
00:33:04.800
perfect, right? As I said before, it wasn't merely that he had walked with God, that he had perfected his own
00:33:10.720
relationship with the divine relationship with the divine, let's say, with the transcendent. And I want to make
00:33:14.760
that concrete, which is a strange thing to do with the transcendent. I mean, people ask me all the time
00:33:21.100
about what I believe, and of course, that's what I'm trying to explain while I'm talking. But, but, but, and, and many
00:33:29.460
people, of course, are skeptical about the idea of anything transcendent, and, and, and, and, say, transcendent and
00:33:38.760
eternal. But that can also be addressed from a psychological perspective, because I would say,
00:33:44.980
well, if you have an ideal of any sort, how is that not transcendent? It transcends you, that's the first
00:33:53.880
thing, and it doesn't exist in reality, it exists in a place of possibility. And believe me, man, we treat
00:34:00.500
places of possibility as if they're real, because people will, will call on you, you know, about your
00:34:06.360
possibility and your potential. They'll say to you, you're not manifesting your full potential. And you
00:34:11.140
might say, well, what do you mean by that? Potential. It doesn't exist. It isn't here now. You can't
00:34:18.300
measure it or weigh it. You can't get a grip on it. And they'll say, don't rationalize. You know
00:34:24.100
perfectly well what I mean when I'm talking about your potential. And so we could, and you do, and, and
00:34:28.580
everyone does, and everyone knows exactly what that means. And so that's a metaphysical reality that we'll
00:34:33.560
immediately accept as real, and also castigate ourselves for not fulfilling. And others too,
00:34:39.480
like, because you're just not happy when the people around you, especially if you love them, don't
00:34:43.900
fulfill their potential. You really feel that something has gone wrong. And so there's a
00:34:47.700
transcendent reality and potential. And then when you hypothesize an ideal that you might pursue,
00:34:52.940
which you always do if you pursue anything, right? Because to pursue something means you don't
00:34:58.420
already have it. You're pursuing something that doesn't exist. You're probably not pursuing
00:35:03.000
something that's worse than what you already have, because why the hell would you pursue
00:35:07.200
it, right? That's completely counterproductive. So in the, in the mere fact of your pursuit,
00:35:12.360
you, you posit a transcendent reality that you can, that you can, that you can journey towards,
00:35:19.980
that's more valuable than the reality that you have now, that's predicated in some sense on
00:35:25.040
something like an eternal verity or an eternal truth. It partakes in the ideal. And so we have a
00:35:32.440
relationship with the transcendent. And you might say, well, that doesn't mean you have to
00:35:36.280
personify the transcendent, say, as Jehovah, you know, the God, the Father. But there's also some
00:35:42.160
damn good reasons for doing that, because one of the things that I've realized, thinking through
00:35:47.360
this covenant idea and also the sacrifice idea, is that the idea that the future is a judgmental
00:35:54.860
father is a really, really good idea. You know, because you think about what the future is in part.
00:36:01.560
I mean, the future is however the natural world is going to lay itself out over the next
00:36:05.740
endless amount of time. That isn't what I mean. I think more about your future. Now, mostly your
00:36:11.220
future is the future that you're going to negotiate with other people, but they're going to be other
00:36:16.260
people in the future. And some of those people are going to be you in the future and family members
00:36:20.920
in the future. And so what's happening right now is that if you make the sacrifices properly,
00:36:26.380
then you're actually pleasing that future set of people. And that future set of people is definitely
00:36:32.500
going to serve as a judge. It's exactly what it does. That's precisely what it does. And so you
00:36:38.220
might say, well, it was the brilliant imagination of mankind that hypothesized that the best way to
00:36:44.320
think about the social group, including the family, but also including you as your future self,
00:36:50.260
was to consider that you live in relationship with a future father who's a judge. It's like, yes,
00:36:58.360
that's exactly right. Now, is it right, right? Or is it psychologically right? Well, it's at least
00:37:03.520
psychologically right. And, you know, one of the things I've learned about the biblical stories is that
00:37:08.960
to say that they're psychologically right doesn't exhaust the ways in which they're right. But it at
00:37:17.840
least gives rational modern people who are skeptical and properly so a better way of getting a grip on
00:37:23.600
them. So, and the uncircumcised man-child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul
00:37:32.060
shall be cut off from his people. He hath broken my covenant. So it's a serious contractual relationship.
00:37:38.200
Now, I was thinking about how to understand this, and I remembered this old story, which I'm going
00:37:43.500
to read to you about a monkey. So, there's an old and possibly apocryphal story about how to catch
00:37:49.320
a monkey that illustrates this set of ideas very well. First, so goes the story, you have to find a
00:37:54.260
large, narrow-necked jar, just barely wide enough in diameter for a monkey to put its hand inside.
00:38:00.500
And then you have to fill the jar up with rocks, so that it's too heavy for the monkey to carry away.
00:38:06.400
And then you scatter some treats around the jar that are attractive to monkeys, and close to the jar.
00:38:13.000
And then you put a few of those treats inside the jar. And so that's the first part of the trick. And
00:38:17.840
then the second part of the trick is the monkey comes along and gathers up the treats, and then
00:38:21.460
puts his hand in the jar and grabs the treats that are in there. But it's narrow-necked. And so once the
00:38:27.640
monkey puts his hand in there and grabs the goodies, then he can't get his hand out of the damn jar.
00:38:32.080
And so then you can just come along and pick up the monkey. And like, too bad for the monkey, right? It's like, he should have let go of what he had.
00:38:38.680
So that something terrible didn't happen to him. But that isn't what the monkey will do. Because he can't sacrifice the part for the whole.
00:38:46.180
And there's something about the circumcision story that's about that. It's about sacrificing the part to save the whole. And, I mean, there's an echo of that in the New Testament, if I remember correctly.
00:38:58.080
I believe this is correct, although it might not be. Where Christ tells his disciples to pluck out their eye if it offends them. Seems like a very dramatic, you know, piece of advice.
00:39:11.080
But it's partaking of the same idea. Which is that, you know, if there's something holding you back. And we'll see this when we get to the story of Lot, too.
00:39:19.080
If there's something holding you back, even if it's dear to you, you have to let it go. You seriously have to let it go. Because there isn't anything more important than progressing forward.
00:39:30.080
And cheap sympathy, cheap empathy, cheap nostalgia. None of that is sufficient. None of that will work. Because the consequences of not putting things together immediately are dire.
00:39:49.080
And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.
00:39:55.080
My princess, that was Sarai. Sarah is mother of nations. And I will bless her and give thee a son also of her. Yea, I will bless her.
00:40:03.080
She will be a mother of nations. Kings of people shall be of her.
00:40:06.080
Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is a hundred years old?
00:40:13.080
He's got a lot of gall, I would say. I mean, here's God talking to him and he laughs, you know, but that's okay.
00:40:18.080
He's a courageous guy and that's what people are like.
00:40:21.080
And shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear? And Abraham said unto God, Oh, that Ishmael might live before thee.
00:40:29.080
And God said, Sarah, thy wife, shall bear thee a son indeed. And thou shalt call his name Isaac.
00:40:35.080
And I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant and with his seed after him.
00:40:40.080
And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee. Behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and will multiply him exceedingly.
00:40:47.080
Twelve princes shall he beget and I will make him a great nation.
00:40:50.080
Now, what does this mean? This is a miraculous story in some sense, right?
00:40:55.080
Because, well, Sarah, it's what Isaac want or what Abraham wants most is to have a son.
00:41:02.080
And I think what the story is attempting to indicate is something like, God only knows what will happen to you if you put your house in order.
00:41:13.080
Certainly things that you do not currently regard as possible will happen.
00:41:19.080
And the more you put your house in order, the more things that you regard as impossible will happen.
00:41:26.080
And it might be the case that if you put your house together sufficiently, things that were of miraculous impossibility would happen to you.
00:41:35.080
Well, and there's no way of knowing until you try it.
00:41:38.080
But there's no way of being sure that it's not the case unless you do.
00:41:43.080
And my experience has been that, I don't mean just personally, I mean that the world is a remarkable and mysterious place.
00:41:55.080
And the relationship between the nature and structure of the world and your actions is indeterminate.
00:42:00.080
They may be more tightly related than you think.
00:42:03.080
And I don't know how to square that with the fact that, well, you're obviously in a mortal body and constrained by all sorts of serious constraints.
00:42:22.080
And I don't really understand how there can be that seriousness of mortal constraint and the infinite potential that also seems to characterize human beings all at the same time.
00:42:33.080
But then I don't really understand anything about the nature of reality.
00:42:36.080
So that's just one more mystery to add to the pile.
00:42:41.080
But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time next year.
00:42:47.080
And he left off talking with him, and God went up from Abraham.
00:42:50.080
And Abraham took Ishmael his son and all that were born in his house and all that were bought with his money,
00:42:57.080
and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the selfsame day as God had said unto him.
00:43:02.080
That must have been an interesting conversation.
00:43:06.080
I mean, really, this is what God told you to do, eh?
00:43:13.080
And Abraham was 90 years old and nine when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin.
00:43:19.080
And Ishmael was 13 years old when he was circumcised.
00:43:22.080
In the selfsame day was Abraham circumcised and his son and all the men of his house,
00:43:27.080
born in the house and bought with money of the stranger, were circumcised with him.
00:43:31.080
All right, so that's the renewal of the covenant.
00:43:39.080
And as I said, it seems to indicate to me something about seriousness of intent,
00:43:44.080
something about the responsibility that Abraham determines to take for everyone that's part of his household,
00:43:52.080
the psychological, increasing psychological transformation of the idea of sacrifice,
00:44:04.080
The utility of rekindling the aims of your highest values when you come to the end of an epoch in your life.
00:44:17.080
That's really what that phrase means, to take stock.
00:44:19.080
Is to take stock of yourself and to decide, okay, well...
00:44:25.080
And what should be let go as if it's dead wood?
00:44:28.080
And the more dead wood that you let go of and burn off when you have the opportunity, the less it accretes around you.
00:44:34.080
Here's something interesting about forest fires, you know?
00:44:37.080
People have been trying to prevent forest fires for a long time.
00:44:44.080
And so, because forest fires burn up the forest, and that can't be good.
00:44:48.080
But here's what happens if you don't let forest fires burn.
00:44:52.080
Is that, well, forests collect a lot of dry branches, right?
00:44:57.080
Because tree branches die, and wood falls on the forest floor and collects.
00:45:03.080
And so the amount of flammable material keeps increasing with time.
00:45:11.080
But if the amount of flammable material is increasing, and it gets really dry, and then it burns, then you have a real problem.
00:45:18.080
The forest fire can burn so hot, that it burns the topsoil right off.
00:45:25.080
In which case, you don't have a forest at all anymore, you just have a desert.
00:45:28.080
And lots of trees are evolved to withstand forest fires of a certain intensity.
00:45:33.080
And some won't even release their seeds unless there's been a fire.
00:45:38.080
And so, a little bit of fire at the right time can stop everything from burning to the ground.
00:45:44.080
And that's also a really useful insight, a metaphorical insight into the nature of sacrifice, right?
00:45:50.080
It's also a lot easier to let go of something when you're deciding to let go of it.
00:45:55.080
Because you've decided yourself that you're done with that.
00:45:58.080
It's a weak part of you. It needs to disappear.
00:46:01.080
If you do that yourself, it's much better and much easier than it is if it's taken away from you forcibly.
00:46:07.080
In which case, you're very much likely to fight it.
00:46:10.080
There's another interesting thing here, a motif that runs through the entire Bible.
00:46:17.080
And it's partly associated with this idea of walking with or walking before God.
00:46:21.080
And, you know, in the New Testament, Christ says something like,
00:46:28.080
And he means that, that will should be done through Him.
00:46:34.080
I can't, I won't be able to state this exactly right, but it's something like this.
00:46:38.080
You know, a lot of what people regard as their own personalities, and are proud of, about their own personalities,
00:46:46.080
They're useless idiosyncrasies that differ them, differentiate them trivially from other people.
00:46:57.080
I remember once I was trying to teach a particularly stubborn student about how to write.
00:47:04.080
And she had written a number of essays in university, and got universally walloped for them.
00:47:12.080
And the reason for that was, she couldn't write.
00:47:17.080
And so, I was sitting down with her, trying to explain to her what she was doing wrong.
00:47:30.080
That was a pearls before swine thing, you know.
00:47:32.080
And, at one point she said, I can write perfectly well.
00:47:36.080
The university professors just don't like my style.
00:47:39.080
And I could feel my hands creep towards her neck.
00:47:50.080
You know, and I thought, what the hell's with you?
00:47:53.080
You can't even write, and you think you have a style.
00:48:09.080
Instead of humbling herself, which was necessary.
00:48:14.080
It's like, of course you don't know how to write.
00:48:34.080
I lost my train of thought in telling you all those jokes.
00:48:42.080
Yeah, well, so she was proud of her insufficiency.
00:48:51.080
And that means to cling to the parts of you that are dead.
00:49:04.080
Okay, I'll tell you another little side story here.
00:49:10.080
You know, he was tried by the Athenians for corrupting...
00:49:15.080
For failing to worship the correct gods and corrupting the youth of Athens.
00:49:19.080
By, like, teaching them stuff and asking them questions.
00:49:21.080
You know, which is a great way to corrupt people.
00:49:35.080
And everybody, including Socrates, knew that...
00:49:53.080
And they were contemplating fair means and foul to set up a defense for him.
00:50:01.080
So that he could not be tried and put to death.
00:50:30.080
And that that was one of the reasons he was different from other people.
00:51:18.080
The next ten years weren't gonna be that great for him.
00:51:30.080
Which might have been particularly painful for a philosopher.
00:51:49.080
And of course Socrates was a very remarkable man.
00:52:14.080
Even if it's just an ideal position that you might occupy.
00:52:17.080
Even if it's still conceptualized in that concrete way.
00:52:26.080
That's why you might be afraid when you go start a new job.
00:52:46.080
Every time you make a judge that's more elevated.
00:52:47.080
Then there's more useless you that has to be dispensed with.
00:52:53.080
Which is what the archetypal imagination of humankind has done say.
00:53:20.080
Is you can do it more or less on your own terms.
00:53:27.080
You can pick an ideal that fulfills the role of ideal for you.
00:53:33.080
Things could be set up for me the way I need them to be.
00:53:42.080
And I also think that's part of the reason people don't do it.
00:53:53.080
It's pretty easy to feel intimidated in the face of your own ideal.
00:53:56.080
That's what happens to Cain versus Abel for example.
00:53:59.080
Then it's really easy to destroy the ideal instead of to try to pursue it.
00:54:12.080
Then maybe you're playing the tyrant to yourself.
00:54:16.080
Not get rid of them by any stretch of the imagination.
00:54:18.080
But at least put them more reasonably within your grasp.
00:54:21.080
You don't have to leap from point one to point fifty in one leap.
00:54:31.080
The process of recapitulating yourself continually is also the process of...
00:54:39.080
You're shedding all those elements of you that are no longer worthy of the pursuits that you're...
00:55:12.080
Every one of you knows people who are really bloody useful in a crisis.
00:55:19.080
You can think of all those people as you admire...
00:55:21.080
Partial incarnations of the archetypal Messiah.
00:55:27.080
And the more that that manifests itself in any given person.
00:55:31.080
Then the more generally useful and admirable that person is in a multitude of situations.
00:55:38.080
But people can be unbelievably good for things.
00:55:48.080
The next story is about Abraham and these angels.
00:55:52.080
And this is part of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
00:55:57.080
This story is generally read as if it's about homosexuality.
00:56:18.080
It's like the strange lands that God asked Abraham to move out into.
00:56:35.080
Do I want to be more comfortable with that which I already know?
00:56:38.080
And so that would be the circumscribed territory that you've already mastered.
00:56:42.080
Or do I want to be comfortable with all those things I don't know?
00:56:48.080
The right answer is that you should want to be comfortable with all those things that you don't know.
00:56:52.080
Because there's a bloody lot of things that you don't know.
00:56:55.080
And if you can be a sojourner among what you don't know.
00:57:01.080
Well, you're going to go lots of places where you don't know.
00:57:06.080
You want to be that person that can act where they don't know.
00:57:21.080
We don't know whether they're angels or men precisely.
00:57:28.080
As the Lord appeared to him in the plains of Mamre.
00:57:31.080
And he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day.
00:57:34.080
So he's another visionary state by all appearances.
00:57:40.080
There's real ambivalence in the story about the men.
00:57:58.080
And it depends on whether you're thinking about it...
00:58:03.080
Or if you're thinking about it in the transcendent manner.
00:58:30.080
Because you expect a lot from people, generally speaking.
00:58:34.080
Our entire culture is predicated on the idea that each person has...
00:58:47.080
The implicit presupposition in our legal structure that...
00:59:12.080
And it's not an easy thing to pull out of the law.
00:59:20.080
And I think the whole idea that you have intrinsic natural rights...
00:59:32.080
We are involved in the speaking forth of being.
00:59:37.080
Who are involved in the speaking forth of being.
00:59:40.080
There's something about us that has to be respected.
01:01:10.080
He's perfectly aware of what people can be like.
01:01:13.080
Determines to take a particular attitude towards them.
01:01:40.080
Making a gesture that allows the transcendent...
01:01:51.080
You can have a real casual conversation with someone...
01:02:15.080
We're not sure about what these metaphors means.
01:02:45.080
And it does matter how you treat them when you first meet them.
01:02:53.080
I've learned how to talk to people very rapidly.
01:02:55.080
And I have the most amazing adventures with people.
01:03:05.080
Because I'm actually interested in what they have to say.
01:03:12.080
I'm not sufficiently afraid to have that stop me.
01:03:18.080
The person has something of great interest to reveal.
01:03:23.080
Because one of the things that's really cool about people.
01:03:25.080
And you really learn this as a clinical psychologist.
01:03:33.080
Because they have these idiosyncratic experiences.
01:03:39.080
And that's the kind of stories that you want to hear.
01:03:44.080
And so what that means is that you can treat the landscape of strangers.
01:03:52.080
And if you know enough so that you're satisfied with your life.
01:03:56.080
And everything has ceased to be a tragedy around you.
01:03:59.080
Well then you can be comfortable in your circumscribed domain of totalitarian knowledge.
01:04:13.080
Then you need to look where you haven't looked.
01:04:19.080
And then you can make friends with what you don't understand.
01:04:22.080
And that's a huge part of what this story is about.
01:04:32.080
And reaps a tremendous benefit as a consequence.
01:04:54.080
I don't think that's the critical issue in the story.
01:17:57.080
And talk to you about this idea of potential again.
01:19:11.180
then you're demonstrating your commitment to the idea of potential.
01:19:14.480
But then I wonder if there's something even deeper going on,
01:19:16.680
because we are very materialistic, modern people.
01:19:22.720
We've obtained great control over the material world.
01:19:29.540
But we do have a tendency to think of the world purely as a material structure.
01:19:33.860
And it isn't really obvious to me that the world is exactly a material structure.
01:19:38.280
It seems to be something more like constrained potential.
01:19:45.380
but everything that is a certain way could be a multitude of other ways.
01:19:49.400
And almost an infinite multitude of other ways.
01:19:51.980
And the degree to which something that is could be a multitude of other ways
01:19:55.480
is dependent on a large part on how you interact with it.
01:19:58.580
Right? Even with materials that we're very familiar with,
01:20:01.800
we continue to discover new properties and put them to use.
01:20:05.900
It's like, things are compacted into their material form,
01:20:13.360
Especially not in relationship to other things.
01:20:15.320
And so, it seems to me, even if you can't replace the materialist perspective
01:20:20.020
with the perspective that it's better to construe the world,
01:20:26.360
rather than the world as if it's made of matter.
01:20:28.260
It's at least useful to have that as an additional viewpoint.
01:20:33.900
well, the material philosophy is very useful as a tool for obtaining certain sorts of benefits,
01:20:45.920
is also an extraordinarily useful way to approach the world.
01:20:53.400
We talked last week a little bit about doing something as simple as trying to organize a room.
01:20:59.060
It's by no means obvious how much potential there is in a room.
01:21:03.780
There's a very large amount of potential in any given room.
01:21:07.240
Tremendous amount of potential, especially if it's connected with people.
01:21:10.580
And maybe an inexhaustible amount of potential.
01:21:12.900
And maybe there's an inexhaustible amount of potential everywhere,
01:21:16.240
and that we just don't know how to get access to it.
01:21:22.840
We don't know how to get access to all the potential of our children, for example,
01:21:25.840
or ourselves, or our loved ones, or the people that we know.
01:21:30.300
So, well, so I think this story is trying to hammer that idea home too,
01:21:37.720
which is, don't be so sure that it's impossible.
01:21:41.820
Or maybe don't let the assumption that it's impossible stop you from going forth into the world.
01:21:49.520
That would be, and that's a, that's a, what would you say?
01:21:54.500
And I'm, for a long time I understood nihilism very well.
01:22:01.240
Associated with the tragedy of life, associating with suffering and evil,
01:22:07.980
and the arbitrary and unjust nature of the world.
01:22:10.560
But the more I've thought about it, the less I've come to believe that there's any excuse for it whatsoever.
01:22:16.220
And I think the reason for that is that it forestalls effort.
01:22:20.760
It forestalls the ability to discover for yourself.
01:22:24.940
Maybe there's no reason to be so goddamn hopeless,
01:22:30.580
Now, and I'm not, believe me, I'm not making that case.
01:22:35.060
I'm not saying that that's what's besetting people who are clinically depressed, for example.
01:22:46.320
to be, to be tossed into a catastrophic condition.
01:22:51.940
I mean that kind of cynical, arrogant, rational, hyper-intelligent nihilism
01:22:57.200
that throws the world away as if it's of little use
01:23:08.320
And better to make the assumption that if the world isn't returning to you
01:23:21.740
Why not at least open yourself up to that possibility?
01:23:43.800
Another thing that's really interesting about the Jews in the Old Testament.
01:23:53.840
the world that God created was corrupt and God is evil.
01:24:17.520
because it puts all the weight of human catastrophe
01:54:09.960
probably as long as you'll continue to come and listen
01:54:12.860
I could tell you something cool that happened too
01:55:08.400
which was scientifically accurate in my estimation
01:55:11.780
and so I'm going to release that hopefully tonight
01:55:26.900
he got fired for perpetuating gender stereotypes
01:55:36.460
which is the top few percentiles of the employee distribution at Google
01:55:50.480
that wasn't substantiated by a fairly dense scientific literature
01:55:54.280
not to say that the scientific literature is necessarily 100% correct
01:55:59.780
but certainly to say that he was not merely spouting out
01:56:26.380
my daughter has had a catastrophic life in many ways
01:58:33.600
well it'd be better if they could make the decisions for themselves
01:58:41.220
because it'd be better if they could make the decision for themselves
01:58:48.960
and the reason I'm not so sure it was a good idea
01:58:55.660
the degree to which a parent should exercise control over
01:59:31.680
it's something that they should be doing themselves