The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - December 19, 2016


Tragedy vs. Evil


Episode Stats

Length

48 minutes

Words per Minute

166.73846

Word Count

8,129

Sentence Count

360

Misogynist Sentences

9

Hate Speech Sentences

15


Summary

In this episode, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson discusses the difference between tragedy and evil, and how to distinguish between them in order to understand the nature of reality and the reality we live in. Dr. Peterson is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, specializing in the study of evil. He is also the author of the book, Tragedy vs. Evil: A History of the Idea of the Devil, and has been a long-time advocate for the defense of the right to define evil as something that is beyond our ability to understand. In addition, he is the creator of the self-development program, Self-Authoring, which focuses on self-awareness and self-improvement. You can support this podcast by donating to Dr. B.P. Peterson s project by searching Jordan Peterson's PODCAST on PODCASTS.org. Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. P. Peterson on Depression and Anxiety. Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. With decades of experience helping patients with depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Dr. Peter offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way, and offers 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. -Let's take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling, and help them find a way to feel better. - let s help them feel better, and a place to begin to feel their way forward, no matter how far they've come this way. Thank you, and let's all of us know that they're not alone! of course, we're listening to you, too! -The Dark Side of the Dark Side Of... -Podcast: Episode 2, "Tragedy Vs Evil: The Story of Evil: How to Identify Evil: What's Good, Not Bad, Not Good, And How To Deal With Evil, And Why They Don't Have It? by Jordan Peterson , by Dr. by and , by , and . is a new series that explores the role of evil and tragedy in human existence, and their relationship to suffering, and the role they play in our reality.


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 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.
00:01:05.040 This is episode two, Tragedy vs. Evil.
00:01:14.580 You can support this podcast by donating to Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's Patreon account by searching Jordan Peterson Patreon.
00:01:22.940 Dr. Peterson's self-development programs, self-authoring, are available at self-authoring.com.
00:01:35.820 When I started working on this problem, or I guess when it started working on me,
00:01:43.380 it was probably really in the mid-80s, and I found myself suffering from two things.
00:01:51.220 One was a very lengthy sequence of nightmares about nuclear destruction,
00:01:56.480 and they were very affecting dreams.
00:02:01.340 And associated with that was a sense of amazement that a dream that was that awful
00:02:10.160 could reflect a reality that could be that awful.
00:02:14.280 And an additional amazement at the fact that despite the production of thousands and tens and thousands
00:02:23.900 of weapons of unimaginable destruction,
00:02:26.980 and the qualitative change in human capacity that represented,
00:02:32.980 that people could go about their day-to-day lives without acting as if anything fundamental whatsoever had changed.
00:02:40.020 Now, I've never really been able to figure out why that disturbed me so much
00:02:44.980 when it seemed to not disturb, to any profound degree, most of the people I knew.
00:02:52.600 It doesn't really matter.
00:02:55.180 The upshot of it was that I spent,
00:02:58.940 I probably spent my whole life trying to understand what evil was,
00:03:02.520 and more importantly, what might be done about it.
00:03:04.620 It's a strange pursuit in some ways for an academic to undertake,
00:03:10.640 because academics tend to talk about academic things.
00:03:13.060 And one thing you can say about evil is that whatever it is, it's not bloody well academic.
00:03:18.600 It's not an intellectual issue.
00:03:20.580 It's an existential issue.
00:03:22.060 And it's not a theoretical issue.
00:03:25.340 It's an issue that deals with the absolute nature of reality.
00:03:31.380 And I guess sometimes I think that people who go into academia
00:03:34.360 go into academia to shield themselves from having to ask questions
00:03:37.220 about the absolute nature of reality.
00:03:39.840 So, anyways, I think before you can talk about something,
00:03:46.060 before you can dare to talk about something like evil,
00:03:49.620 you should do some thinking about what it is that you're talking about.
00:03:52.820 Definitionally speaking.
00:03:54.300 I learned this, I believe, from a historian named Jeffrey Burton Russell,
00:04:00.400 who wrote a very detailed history of the idea of the devil in the 1980s,
00:04:05.220 when such histories were strange, to say the least.
00:04:09.600 He was very interested in the history, the embodiment of ideas of evil.
00:04:13.580 And one of the things his work did for me was to help me clarify
00:04:17.600 the distinction between two terrible things,
00:04:21.240 the distinction that has to be made,
00:04:23.840 and that's the distinction between tragedy and evil.
00:04:26.260 And I don't think you can talk about it evil at all
00:04:28.600 until you distinguish it from tragedy.
00:04:30.360 And so I'm going to try to distinguish evil from tragedy
00:04:33.380 by making some reference to the essential existential condition of human beings.
00:04:38.280 I would say that the nature of human being is such that
00:04:41.640 it consists of a confrontation with the bounded finite,
00:04:45.560 with the unbounded infinite.
00:04:46.820 And those are the bare facts of the matter.
00:04:49.920 And the facts are that the world of experience as it presents itself to us
00:04:55.780 is literally, and not metaphorically, complex beyond our capacity to understand.
00:05:01.460 And that means that people deal, in a real sense, on an ongoing basis, with the infinite.
00:05:08.180 And I believe that that fact is the reason why religious experience is essentially,
00:05:14.460 and belief, is essentially endemic to mankind.
00:05:17.440 It's a human universal, and it's not because people believe.
00:05:20.720 It's because human existence as such consists of a confrontation
00:05:24.320 between the finite and the infinite.
00:05:26.360 And religious systems merely take that into account.
00:05:28.500 Now, our finitude, in the face of the infinite, has some inevitable consequences.
00:05:35.260 And I would say those consequences are essentially the existential conditions of life.
00:05:39.760 The first of those consequences is that
00:05:41.440 the finite is always overwhelmed by the infinite.
00:05:44.660 It has to be, because it can't encapsulate it.
00:05:47.400 And so what that means is that it's,
00:05:49.900 that suffering is central to the nature of human existence.
00:05:53.180 And suffering exists as a consequence of
00:05:55.600 the consequences of our limitations.
00:05:58.500 I mean, every single person who's alive is going to die.
00:06:02.800 And every single person who's alive is going to deal with,
00:06:05.340 with serious physical illness and mental distress.
00:06:08.560 If they don't suffer, if they aren't suffering it directly, immediately, right now, on their own,
00:06:13.540 it's almost inevitably the case that every single person who walks the earth
00:06:16.840 is confronting the bare bones of reality at that level in the guise of an afflicted family member.
00:06:24.100 And so the fact of our finitude is, again, no academic issue.
00:06:27.900 It's central to the nature of our being,
00:06:30.580 and we're forced to deal with it on an ongoing basis.
00:06:33.120 So I would say insufficiency is built into human experience,
00:06:37.840 and there are existential consequences to that.
00:06:39.900 Now, I read something a long time ago, and I don't remember who wrote it,
00:06:45.200 but it was written about Jewish commentary on the Torah.
00:06:52.500 God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent.
00:06:57.280 What does he lack?
00:06:59.320 And the answer is limitation.
00:07:01.500 And that's a riddle and an answer of unparalleled brilliance, as far as I'm concerned,
00:07:06.120 because I think it speaks deeply to something about the central nature of existence itself,
00:07:10.660 and that is that without limitation, there's no being.
00:07:15.000 Now, that's a hard thing to understand,
00:07:16.740 but I think you can understand it in a number of different ways.
00:07:19.440 The first thing you might want to understand is that
00:07:21.560 I play this game with my students sometimes in my class.
00:07:25.740 I'll come up to a student or pick them at poor victim at random
00:07:28.620 and come up to them and say,
00:07:30.100 okay, we're going to play a game.
00:07:32.620 And they say, okay.
00:07:33.560 And I say, well, you move first.
00:07:35.540 Well, they don't know what to do.
00:07:36.900 And the reason for that is because
00:07:38.140 the limiting parameters of the game have not been defined.
00:07:41.560 And as a consequence of that,
00:07:42.900 they're stunned by their infinite freedom into complete immobility.
00:07:46.340 And what that means, in a sense,
00:07:47.660 is that in the absence of serious constraint,
00:07:50.360 there can be no choice, no freedom, no existence.
00:07:53.400 And I believe this to be fundamentally true,
00:07:57.120 just as the fact that human being is vulnerable is fundamentally true.
00:08:02.260 Here's another example that I think is more personal to me.
00:08:05.800 And it emerged in my imagination as a consequence of my contemplation
00:08:08.900 of my son's vulnerability.
00:08:11.140 So I have children.
00:08:12.340 There are teenagers now.
00:08:13.900 I still like them.
00:08:14.980 One of the things I was really struck by
00:08:19.620 when my children were little was how perfect they were.
00:08:22.540 And I believe that that was the benevolence of God, in a sense.
00:08:27.660 Children are tremendously difficult.
00:08:29.300 They're a tremendous responsibility.
00:08:30.940 But they're so perfect,
00:08:32.160 and they manifest that perfection in such a remarkable way
00:08:35.680 that that's the payment for taking on the responsibility
00:08:38.440 of bringing them into being and caring for them.
00:08:41.560 And the thing about being a parent is that
00:08:43.880 the vulnerability of people is made manifest to you
00:08:47.460 in a way that was never the case prior to that.
00:08:50.920 And it's haunting, and it's beautiful,
00:08:54.100 but it's also exactly right, in a way.
00:08:56.160 And I was thinking,
00:08:56.820 well, look at my son.
00:08:57.640 He's a little kid.
00:08:58.640 You know, you've got to chase after him all the time.
00:09:00.260 He can get sick.
00:09:01.020 People hurt him.
00:09:02.340 You know, people are going to be mean to him.
00:09:03.860 He's going to be disappointed in his life.
00:09:05.380 But he's vulnerable,
00:09:07.040 and it's a constant, tragic reality that he's vulnerable.
00:09:11.300 And I thought, well, okay,
00:09:11.960 let's say we want to do something about that.
00:09:14.000 So let's say we make him so that no one can pick on him.
00:09:17.280 So you could inflate him to about 20 feet high
00:09:19.640 and equip him with a metallic skeleton
00:09:22.480 and a cast-iron exoskeleton.
00:09:25.680 And you could equip him with a computerized intelligence
00:09:28.860 that far supersedes his own.
00:09:30.640 And you could remove his vulnerabilities one by one, hypothetically.
00:09:33.740 And, of course, more and more we're in a position
00:09:35.980 where we could do that in reality.
00:09:37.340 And one of the things I realized right away was that
00:09:39.120 as you remove the vulnerabilities,
00:09:41.260 you remove the thing you love.
00:09:43.880 And then I started to understand more deeply
00:09:46.260 that vulnerability was a precondition for a human being,
00:09:49.580 and that was a desirable precondition
00:09:51.340 because the things about human existence
00:09:53.460 that are wonderful and remarkable
00:09:55.900 are so integrally tied up with vulnerability
00:09:58.920 that they're actually inextricable.
00:10:00.860 The Jewish commentary,
00:10:05.640 what the infinite lacks is the finite,
00:10:09.280 is a more abstract way of getting at the same thing.
00:10:11.620 If you could do absolutely anything you wanted at any point
00:10:15.960 and be anywhere you wanted
00:10:17.140 and be anything you wanted,
00:10:18.400 and if there was nothing that was out of your reach,
00:10:21.800 there would be nothing to do
00:10:23.180 because you'd be everything at once.
00:10:25.060 And when you're everything at once,
00:10:26.760 which is, at least in principle,
00:10:28.340 the position of God,
00:10:30.500 there's no story.
00:10:31.840 And there's no being.
00:10:33.040 And there's something about being that is a story.
00:10:35.240 And without limitation, there's no story.
00:10:36.880 So then the question starts to become,
00:10:38.680 with regards to consideration of human vulnerability,
00:10:41.620 is there a way to conduct your life
00:10:43.820 in such a manner
00:10:45.260 that the intrinsic vulnerability
00:10:46.760 that characterizes your life
00:10:48.340 is rendered not only acceptable but desirable?
00:10:52.580 And to me, that's the central question of existence.
00:10:54.920 And I tell you, get that wrong.
00:10:56.520 You're on the wrong track.
00:10:57.680 And if you're on the wrong track,
00:10:59.020 man, you are in one terrible place.
00:11:01.280 I would say, with regards to tragedy,
00:11:05.340 humans are vulnerable.
00:11:07.440 And that's tragic.
00:11:08.840 But if tragedy is the price that we pay for existence,
00:11:11.340 then so be it,
00:11:12.160 if existence is justifiable.
00:11:14.440 And so tragedy itself,
00:11:15.780 which is merely a revelation of our vulnerability,
00:11:18.400 can't be regarded as evil.
00:11:20.760 It's just a condition of existence.
00:11:24.300 And so it's necessary to distinguish
00:11:26.320 the tragic conditions of existence from evil
00:11:28.460 before you can even address the problem.
00:11:30.000 And I think what that means to some degree
00:11:31.820 is you should not blame on the relationship
00:11:34.560 between the finite and the infinite
00:11:36.300 the terrible failings of humanity
00:11:39.480 that can be laid directly at the feet of human beings.
00:11:43.140 So earthquakes aren't evil,
00:11:44.560 and cancer isn't evil,
00:11:46.160 and mental illness isn't evil,
00:11:48.280 and predators aren't evil.
00:11:49.580 They just are part of the way things are.
00:11:53.040 But there are certain categories of human action
00:11:55.380 that are definitely outside the parameters of mere tragedy,
00:11:58.980 and those are the things we really have to get a handle on.
00:12:03.300 Evil for me is differentiated from tragedy
00:12:06.660 by its lack of necessity and its voluntarism.
00:12:10.240 And it's a tenant, I think,
00:12:14.360 of modern materialistic thought
00:12:16.180 that there are social or material causes for actions.
00:12:20.960 And it's an extraordinarily useful theory.
00:12:23.880 But I think one of the unfortunate consequences of that
00:12:26.820 is that we've tended to write off much of human misbehavior
00:12:29.540 and attribute it to, say, insufficiencies in material conditions,
00:12:32.840 which is not an acceptable theory.
00:12:35.680 There are all sorts of human cultures
00:12:38.220 that were characterized by virtually complete absence
00:12:42.100 of material luxury, well-being,
00:12:44.620 whose cultures were highly functional and highly moral.
00:12:48.920 And to describe the propensity towards misbehavior
00:12:52.400 as a consequence of economic inequality
00:12:54.220 is entirely beside the point, as far as I'm concerned.
00:12:57.320 Evil is more pernicious than that
00:13:02.040 which is generated, for example, by social inequality.
00:13:06.540 I think it's actually,
00:13:08.040 although this is a terrifying thought in some ways,
00:13:10.300 it's more appropriate to consider it
00:13:11.920 a form of demonically warped aesthetic.
00:13:19.260 And I'll give you a couple of examples
00:13:20.860 of what I mean by that, for example,
00:13:22.420 because the manifestation of this warped aesthetic
00:13:27.160 makes itself apparent under certain conditions.
00:13:30.760 So, for example, I think it made itself apparent
00:13:34.000 in the imagination of the first politician
00:13:35.920 who coined the acronym MAD
00:13:39.000 or Mutual Assured Destruction.
00:13:41.960 That's an aesthetic of evil.
00:13:43.720 To make a joke of a situation that catastrophic
00:13:48.640 indicates the kind of malevolence
00:13:51.660 that lurks behind the fact
00:13:53.160 that such a condition exists.
00:13:55.100 The motto on the gates of Auschwitz, I believe,
00:14:00.180 in the Second World War,
00:14:01.600 work will make you free.
00:14:04.600 That's another manifestation of the aesthetic of evil.
00:14:07.340 It's a terrible, terrible, ironic joke.
00:14:10.920 And it's instructive to meditate
00:14:13.400 on what sort of imagination would have the arrogance
00:14:16.400 to tell such a terrible joke.
00:14:22.480 The concentration camps are classic examples of evil.
00:14:25.620 And I think by analyzing at least certain kinds of events
00:14:28.940 that occurred within them,
00:14:30.060 it's easier to get a clear idea of what evil constitutes.
00:14:33.280 And one of the stories that's always haunted me, I guess,
00:14:36.140 is, I believe it's another story derived from Auschwitz,
00:14:39.260 the prison guards in Auschwitz would take the prisoners
00:14:42.060 who were already stripped of their dignity
00:14:44.260 and to whatever degree possible, their identity
00:14:46.440 and their culture and their language
00:14:48.120 and their status as valuable beings.
00:14:50.520 And yet that wasn't sufficient.
00:14:52.620 They needed to be tortured in addition to that
00:14:55.040 before they were killed.
00:14:56.660 And the torture often consisted of
00:14:58.760 self-evidently counterproductive work.
00:15:01.440 A situation that also frequently characterized activity
00:15:06.100 in the Soviet Nulag archipelago
00:15:07.560 where perhaps 60 million people met their death.
00:15:12.440 A typical Auschwitz example was the requirement
00:15:15.640 for prisoners to carry 100-pound sacks of wet salt
00:15:18.520 from one side of the compound and then back again.
00:15:21.380 Now that's evil as far as I'm concerned.
00:15:23.260 And you have to think about it from an aesthetic perspective
00:15:25.720 in a sense because it's a celebration of horror.
00:15:28.880 And it's a conscious attempt to violate
00:15:32.740 the conditions that make life itself tolerable.
00:15:36.360 And it's aimed at dehumanization,
00:15:40.260 destruction of the ideal,
00:15:42.500 and at an even deeper level,
00:15:44.940 revenge against the conditions of existence itself.
00:15:48.360 I've tried to understand the developmental pathway
00:15:51.140 that leads to acts like that.
00:15:53.500 My academic research as well as my clinical experience
00:16:00.960 has revealed to me that
00:16:03.140 what appears to lie at the bottom of motivation
00:16:06.660 for the excesses of behavior that characterize evil
00:16:09.860 are two tightly causally related factors.
00:16:15.880 One, arrogance.
00:16:17.820 Another, resentment.
00:16:18.900 And both of those are tied up with
00:16:23.340 vulnerability of human beings
00:16:27.860 in the face of the infinite,
00:16:31.720 but tied up with something more profound as well.
00:16:38.240 The most thorough account of this
00:16:39.960 that I've managed, I think,
00:16:41.740 at least to partially comprehend,
00:16:43.500 I believe is contained in the first couple of the stories
00:16:45.820 in the Old Testament,
00:16:48.160 in Genesis,
00:16:50.040 the story of Adam and Eve and the fall of man,
00:16:53.220 and the immediately following story of Cain and Abel.
00:16:57.620 As far as we can tell,
00:16:58.760 those are very, very old stories.
00:17:00.820 They predate Judaism,
00:17:03.200 at least in some of their structural elements.
00:17:07.500 It's conceivable that some of the elements in those stories
00:17:10.780 are as old as the human capacity to tell stories itself,
00:17:14.160 assuming that they were grounded in an oral tradition
00:17:16.880 that predated the written tradition.
00:17:18.540 And we know that oral traditions can last,
00:17:20.780 at least in some forms,
00:17:22.100 unchanged for periods of up to 25,000 years.
00:17:25.040 So the anthropological and archaeological evidence
00:17:27.480 is fairly clear on that point.
00:17:29.760 These are very, very, very old stories.
00:17:32.460 And people remember them and created them
00:17:34.440 for reasons we really don't understand.
00:17:35.940 And they're strange and mysterious
00:17:39.080 and unforgettable all at the same time.
00:17:42.380 The story of Adam and Eve,
00:17:43.980 as far as I can tell,
00:17:45.460 is the story of the coming of consciousness,
00:17:48.700 the coming of self-consciousness to mankind.
00:17:52.240 And I think that the human self-consciousness
00:18:00.880 is what separates us from animals.
00:18:02.520 In Genesis, there's an insistence
00:18:05.760 that when Adam made the apple that Eve offered to him,
00:18:09.040 the scales fell from his eyes,
00:18:10.440 and the first thing that he realized
00:18:11.800 was that he was naked.
00:18:13.500 And what that seems to me to mean
00:18:15.120 is that I think it means, first of all,
00:18:17.300 that women make men self-conscious.
00:18:19.520 And I think there's ample reason to presume that.
00:18:21.700 And there's good evolutionary reasons
00:18:23.020 for suggesting why that might be the case.
00:18:24.840 Because sexual selection among human beings
00:18:27.920 has been a primary force of evolutionary development.
00:18:30.600 And sexual selection in human beings
00:18:32.160 is primarily conducted by women.
00:18:36.140 So, for example, as Roy has pointed out
00:18:38.580 in his address to the APA a few years ago,
00:18:41.820 and I hope I get this right,
00:18:43.020 twice as many of your relatives were women as men.
00:18:45.820 And that means that women
00:18:47.680 are more frequently reproductively successful than men
00:18:51.680 and that they reject most men.
00:18:53.860 And the rejection of a man
00:18:55.720 for reproductive purposes by a woman
00:18:57.500 is the most serious form of rejection
00:18:59.260 that's possible from an evolutionary point of view
00:19:01.500 because the judgment is that,
00:19:03.160 well, you might be nice enough to talk to,
00:19:04.600 but you're sure not fit
00:19:05.920 to have your genes propagate
00:19:07.060 into the next generation.
00:19:08.820 So it's no wonder that women
00:19:10.300 can make men self-conscious.
00:19:12.580 And I think there's some reason
00:19:13.680 to presume that it's the sexual selection forces
00:19:16.540 that women placed upon men
00:19:17.860 that drove rapid human cortical evolution
00:19:19.800 and the development of self-consciousness.
00:19:21.980 Now, that's a leap,
00:19:22.920 and there's no way I can justify that
00:19:24.540 in the course of this particular talk,
00:19:27.020 but I think there is good reason
00:19:28.200 to presume that it's the case.
00:19:30.700 In Genesis, human beings become self-conscious,
00:19:33.360 and the first thing that happens to them
00:19:34.600 is that they realize they're naked.
00:19:35.880 And then the next thing that happens to them
00:19:37.300 is they develop the moral sense
00:19:38.840 to tell the difference between good and evil.
00:19:40.920 And it's a very strange thing
00:19:42.040 because in some sense,
00:19:43.000 before a creature is self-conscious,
00:19:44.820 there is no distinction between good and evil
00:19:46.620 because, as I said before,
00:19:48.220 a predator is not evil.
00:19:49.680 It's just a predator.
00:19:51.240 The fact of a predator, like a wolf,
00:19:53.080 might be a tragedy for the rabbit,
00:19:54.620 but you can't be assuming that the wolf is evil
00:19:56.660 merely because it wants to eat the rabbit.
00:19:58.360 But with the dawning of self-consciousness,
00:20:01.280 there seems to be the emergence of a moral sense
00:20:04.880 that's essentially unique to human beings.
00:20:06.800 And that has something to do with our capacity
00:20:09.400 to reflect upon the mechanisms of our action
00:20:12.360 and then, for some reason,
00:20:13.740 to be able to modify those actions
00:20:15.520 and to choose which ones to implement
00:20:17.020 in the future.
00:20:18.580 We don't understand that.
00:20:20.220 And you can even deny, if you'd like,
00:20:22.280 that the phenomena of free choice exists.
00:20:24.780 But our culture is essentially predicated
00:20:26.680 on the notion that it does exist.
00:20:28.240 And in the absence of evidence that it doesn't,
00:20:30.540 I'm going to take the easy way out
00:20:31.820 and assume that it does.
00:20:32.820 Otherwise, things fall apart,
00:20:35.020 and they fall apart badly.
00:20:38.100 When, after Adam and Eve become self-conscious,
00:20:42.580 the first thing they do is close themselves.
00:20:44.440 And to me, that's a mythological description
00:20:46.420 of the emergence of culture
00:20:47.820 as an intercession between the fundamental vulnerability
00:20:52.220 and nakedness of the human form
00:20:54.280 and the depredations of nature.
00:20:56.240 If you realize that you're vulnerable
00:20:57.860 and prone to death,
00:20:59.420 the first thing you're going to do
00:21:00.480 is to start rearranging the manner
00:21:02.180 in which you construe yourself
00:21:03.360 so that you can protect yourself
00:21:04.880 from such an unfortunate outcome.
00:21:07.040 That's, I think, partly why God curses Adam
00:21:09.120 with the necessity of work
00:21:10.460 once he finds out,
00:21:11.460 once God finds out
00:21:12.340 that people have become self-conscious.
00:21:14.000 Like, if you know that winter
00:21:16.200 is lurking in the future, for example,
00:21:18.400 you're going to work.
00:21:19.200 And animals don't work.
00:21:20.220 They're just motivated to do whatever they do.
00:21:22.060 But humans work.
00:21:22.960 And that means they subvert
00:21:24.300 their day-to-day motivations,
00:21:25.840 their immediate motivations
00:21:27.520 for the purposes of future security.
00:21:30.480 And there's a real cost to that.
00:21:32.080 I mean, part of the cost is separation
00:21:34.020 from the pure and unadulterated flow
00:21:36.980 of animal life.
00:21:37.820 And I believe that people suffer
00:21:39.020 from that absence of flow continually.
00:21:44.440 And the advantage they gain from it
00:21:47.520 is that they can plan for the future,
00:21:48.860 but the disadvantage is that they're calculating
00:21:50.680 and cold and separated
00:21:52.120 from their own instinctual resources.
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00:24:43.320 In today's chaotic world,
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00:26:03.720 Eve, of course,
00:26:04.880 is cursed by what's going to be
00:26:06.200 terrible pain in childbirth,
00:26:08.320 and that's related
00:26:09.280 to the development
00:26:10.640 of the immense skull size
00:26:13.140 that characterizes human infants
00:26:14.740 and their incredibly lengthy
00:26:16.680 period of dependence,
00:26:19.040 which is also associated
00:26:20.120 with their immense brain.
00:26:23.940 After Adam and Eve
00:26:24.920 become self-conscious,
00:26:26.280 they hide.
00:26:28.220 And this is actually
00:26:29.200 a comical part of Genesis.
00:26:30.540 It's never really read
00:26:31.360 as a comedy,
00:26:32.060 but it is a comedy.
00:26:33.320 Even the fall itself
00:26:34.340 is a comedy,
00:26:35.140 and so they're hiding away
00:26:36.960 behind a bush,
00:26:38.420 and God comes walking
00:26:39.960 through the garden,
00:26:40.600 and God the infinite
00:26:42.220 is accustomed to walking
00:26:43.860 with Adam
00:26:44.380 with no interruption
00:26:46.860 of the flow of information
00:26:48.080 between them.
00:26:49.820 But Adam isn't there,
00:26:50.700 and God says,
00:26:51.760 you know,
00:26:52.260 where have you gone?
00:26:54.440 And Adam says,
00:26:55.160 well, I'm hiding.
00:26:56.580 And God says,
00:26:57.580 which is kind of stupid, really.
00:26:59.060 And this is why it's a comedy.
00:27:00.200 It's like he's hiding
00:27:00.740 behind a bush,
00:27:01.560 and this is God,
00:27:02.820 and he can see through bushes,
00:27:04.440 and like Adam should know that,
00:27:05.720 but it doesn't really matter.
00:27:06.460 He's hiding behind this bush anyways.
00:27:08.240 And so Adam says,
00:27:09.960 I'm hiding,
00:27:10.760 and God says,
00:27:11.560 well, why are you hiding?
00:27:13.940 Well, it's because Adam
00:27:14.600 is ashamed,
00:27:15.260 and Adam says,
00:27:17.360 well, I'm naked.
00:27:20.040 And this is an example
00:27:21.300 of the tremendous compression
00:27:23.020 of human wisdom
00:27:23.960 into a few lines
00:27:25.060 that characterizes mythology.
00:27:26.580 You say,
00:27:26.720 well, why would people
00:27:27.420 hide from God
00:27:28.200 once they realize
00:27:29.660 they're naked?
00:27:30.480 And I would say,
00:27:30.960 well, that's pretty obvious.
00:27:32.360 Once you know
00:27:33.120 you're vulnerable.
00:27:34.620 Do you really have
00:27:35.580 enough courage
00:27:36.140 to manifest any sort
00:27:37.380 of semblance
00:27:37.900 of a divine destiny?
00:27:39.060 Well, the answer
00:27:40.180 to that is pretty much
00:27:41.060 clearly no,
00:27:41.780 and it's no bloody wonder.
00:27:42.980 And so the hiding is,
00:27:44.000 people hide
00:27:44.740 when they're self-conscious
00:27:45.660 and vulnerable.
00:27:46.480 What do they hide from?
00:27:47.360 They hide from
00:27:47.980 their deepest destiny,
00:27:49.300 and it's no wonder.
00:27:50.720 God says,
00:27:51.460 okay, yeah,
00:27:52.080 well, you figured that out,
00:27:53.100 how that happened.
00:27:53.900 And Adam says,
00:27:54.560 and this is comical too,
00:27:55.580 well, it's the woman's fault,
00:27:56.600 which I think
00:27:57.040 is really funny,
00:27:57.760 and which actually
00:27:58.440 may have been
00:27:59.060 the original sin
00:28:00.040 and not the eating
00:28:00.860 of the apple, right?
00:28:01.860 The first time
00:28:02.660 that the man
00:28:04.080 blamed the woman
00:28:05.460 for his self-conscious misery,
00:28:08.080 I think that's the real fall
00:28:09.380 and not the rise
00:28:10.140 of self-consciousness itself.
00:28:12.360 Anyways,
00:28:12.840 we know the rest
00:28:13.440 of the story.
00:28:14.100 God says,
00:28:14.640 oh, well,
00:28:14.960 the cat's out of the bag now.
00:28:16.460 You know you're vulnerable,
00:28:18.060 and from here on in,
00:28:18.900 history starts.
00:28:20.100 You're out of paradise.
00:28:21.100 You're out of unconscious
00:28:21.920 identification
00:28:22.620 with the natural world.
00:28:24.140 You're going to work.
00:28:25.640 You're going to sweat.
00:28:26.700 Lots of the time
00:28:27.440 it isn't going to work.
00:28:28.660 And women,
00:28:29.620 they're going to be
00:28:30.360 beholden to their husbands,
00:28:31.840 not because that's divine fiat,
00:28:34.260 but because the developmental
00:28:35.760 dependency of a human infant
00:28:39.540 is so extreme
00:28:40.300 that women are cursed
00:28:41.260 to rely on men
00:28:42.380 for protection
00:28:43.000 when they're at
00:28:43.540 their most vulnerable.
00:28:46.160 Fine.
00:28:47.000 So that's self-consciousness
00:28:48.320 and an explanation
00:28:49.080 for why people
00:28:49.840 would hide away
00:28:50.660 from their destiny.
00:28:51.640 But then the next story,
00:28:53.060 the Cain and Abel story,
00:28:54.000 really elaborates that out
00:28:55.700 and describes it.
00:28:56.540 And so Cain and Abel,
00:28:57.520 of course,
00:28:57.920 are two sons
00:28:59.240 of Adam and Eve,
00:29:00.260 and they're really
00:29:00.720 the first people
00:29:01.500 because, of course,
00:29:03.260 Adam and Eve
00:29:03.780 were made by God.
00:29:04.720 So they're really
00:29:05.120 not people at all
00:29:05.880 because people are born
00:29:06.960 and Cain and Abel
00:29:07.820 are the first two people.
00:29:10.380 And they characterize,
00:29:11.860 as far as I can tell,
00:29:12.920 two canonical patterns
00:29:14.480 of reaction
00:29:15.520 to the terrible vulnerability
00:29:17.340 that's revealed
00:29:18.420 as a consequence
00:29:19.380 of the development
00:29:20.060 of self-consciousness.
00:29:24.000 Cain and Abel
00:29:24.760 make sacrifices to God.
00:29:27.180 Why?
00:29:28.540 Human cultures
00:29:29.340 make sacrifices.
00:29:30.180 That's what they do.
00:29:31.380 Sacrifice,
00:29:32.000 sacrificial ritual
00:29:32.900 is a human universal.
00:29:35.000 Blood sacrifice
00:29:35.860 is a human universal.
00:29:37.240 Human sacrifice,
00:29:38.740 at least in some
00:29:39.580 anthropological epochs,
00:29:41.400 was regarded
00:29:41.880 as a human universal.
00:29:43.360 Why do people
00:29:44.060 make sacrifices
00:29:44.980 to God
00:29:45.580 to please Him?
00:29:47.080 It seems like
00:29:47.560 a mystery
00:29:47.980 to modern people.
00:29:49.620 I ask my students,
00:29:50.860 what sacrifices
00:29:51.720 did you make
00:29:52.320 to go to university?
00:29:53.760 Well, they can answer
00:29:54.460 that in two-tenths
00:29:55.180 of a second.
00:29:56.240 You know,
00:29:56.480 they can't party
00:29:57.060 as much as they might have.
00:29:58.020 They can't drink
00:29:58.960 nearly as much beer
00:29:59.740 as they might have liked to.
00:30:01.260 More seriously,
00:30:02.380 a lot of them work.
00:30:03.460 A lot of them
00:30:03.940 have put their families
00:30:05.100 in serious financial straits
00:30:07.680 to send them to university.
00:30:09.180 They've given up
00:30:10.100 all sorts of things
00:30:11.280 in order to pursue
00:30:12.340 a course of action
00:30:13.480 that they believe
00:30:14.180 will best ensure
00:30:15.280 their harmonious relationship
00:30:16.820 with the nature of reality.
00:30:18.520 Everyone makes sacrifices.
00:30:20.120 Okay.
00:30:20.580 We can say that now
00:30:21.560 because we're
00:30:22.100 psychologically sophisticated
00:30:23.400 and linguistically sophisticated
00:30:24.640 and we know something
00:30:25.520 about human psychology.
00:30:26.600 But thousands and thousands
00:30:28.040 of years ago
00:30:28.700 before people had
00:30:29.620 this explicit
00:30:30.260 psychological acumen,
00:30:31.520 the best they could do
00:30:32.360 is act out
00:30:33.420 and tell stories
00:30:34.300 about human psychology
00:30:35.240 because they hadn't developed
00:30:36.420 any further than that.
00:30:37.780 And Cain and Abel
00:30:38.380 is one of those stories.
00:30:41.480 The sacrifices are burnt
00:30:43.080 on an altar.
00:30:44.280 Why?
00:30:45.120 Well, the smoke rises.
00:30:46.700 Well, so what?
00:30:47.840 Well, God's up in the sky
00:30:49.100 and if the smoke rises up there
00:30:50.400 and he gets a whiff of it,
00:30:51.360 he can tell what the quality
00:30:52.340 of the sacrifice was.
00:30:53.700 And you can laugh about that
00:30:54.940 and you can think about it
00:30:57.100 as primitive
00:30:57.600 but it's not primitive.
00:30:58.640 It's artistic
00:30:59.140 and it's beautiful
00:30:59.920 and it's accurate.
00:31:01.460 And here's why.
00:31:02.280 It's because before the invention
00:31:04.640 of the electrical light
00:31:06.660 and maybe before the invention
00:31:08.000 of fire
00:31:08.520 and the closest a human being
00:31:12.060 could ever get
00:31:12.700 to direct confrontation
00:31:13.680 with the absolute unknown
00:31:15.080 was to look up
00:31:15.780 at the night sky
00:31:16.580 because the night sky,
00:31:18.160 especially when it's
00:31:18.820 sprinkled with stars,
00:31:20.020 confronts you directly
00:31:21.180 with the fact
00:31:22.160 of the infinite.
00:31:22.800 And to make the presupposition
00:31:24.420 that God resides
00:31:25.480 in the infinite
00:31:26.140 and you're having
00:31:27.260 a direct experience
00:31:28.060 of the infinite
00:31:28.520 at that moment
00:31:29.360 is not a primitive notion.
00:31:31.200 It's a very intelligent
00:31:33.060 and creative hypothesis.
00:31:35.480 And so the notion
00:31:36.060 that God occupies the sky,
00:31:37.760 the day sky
00:31:38.300 being equally as impressive
00:31:39.520 as the night sky
00:31:40.240 is not a primitive hypothesis.
00:31:42.180 It's a reflection
00:31:42.880 of the nature
00:31:44.020 of a certain kind
00:31:44.740 of human experience.
00:31:46.440 You burn something
00:31:47.340 and you send the smoke up.
00:31:48.680 God gets a crack
00:31:49.540 at determining
00:31:50.900 the quality of your offering,
00:31:52.360 the quality
00:31:52.840 of your sacrifice.
00:31:54.220 Well, let's get,
00:31:55.440 let's be perfectly clear
00:31:56.620 about this.
00:31:57.720 If your sacrifices
00:31:58.780 aren't first rate,
00:32:00.020 the nature of your relationship
00:32:01.340 with the infinite
00:32:01.980 is going to suffer dreadfully.
00:32:03.880 And that's exactly
00:32:04.640 what the story
00:32:05.240 of Cain and Abel reveals.
00:32:06.560 Now, Abel,
00:32:08.540 he's a trusting character.
00:32:10.200 He believes
00:32:10.720 in the nature of experience
00:32:11.900 and the nature of existence.
00:32:13.100 When he's called on
00:32:13.760 to make a sacrifice,
00:32:14.640 he sacrifices the best
00:32:16.080 that he has to offer.
00:32:17.280 And that makes God happy
00:32:18.580 and as a consequence,
00:32:19.500 everything that Abel touches
00:32:20.800 turns to gold.
00:32:21.620 Everyone likes him.
00:32:22.520 They respect him.
00:32:23.600 His crops multiply.
00:32:24.820 He's successful with women.
00:32:26.200 Plus, he's a wonderful guy.
00:32:27.540 So you could hardly imagine
00:32:28.640 a more annoying creature
00:32:30.160 if you possibly attempted
00:32:31.580 to do it.
00:32:32.200 Whereas Cain,
00:32:33.260 see, Cain has reacted
00:32:34.820 to his self-consciousness
00:32:36.480 by withdrawing
00:32:38.060 from the infinite.
00:32:38.920 And there's a tremendous
00:32:39.920 danger in that
00:32:40.700 because it starts to mean
00:32:41.840 that he relies
00:32:42.600 purely on his own
00:32:44.160 devious devices
00:32:45.780 to sail his ship
00:32:48.240 through the shoals of life.
00:32:49.540 He believes
00:32:52.160 as his arrogance develops,
00:32:53.820 as a consequence
00:32:54.640 of his withdrawal
00:32:55.600 from the infinite,
00:32:56.600 a contact that he can't tolerate
00:32:58.360 because he can't tolerate
00:32:59.440 his own vulnerability,
00:33:00.640 that he's able to deceive
00:33:01.940 the structure of reality itself,
00:33:03.360 to offer second-rate sacrifices
00:33:05.160 to God himself
00:33:06.860 who can see
00:33:07.560 absolutely everything
00:33:09.020 because the infinite
00:33:09.860 is absolutely everything,
00:33:11.400 and to prevail nonetheless.
00:33:13.240 Well, needless to say,
00:33:14.620 this does not work.
00:33:15.840 And it doesn't work
00:33:17.560 in an obvious way
00:33:18.740 if you talk to people
00:33:20.120 and they reveal to you
00:33:21.640 their unnecessary suffering.
00:33:23.660 It's very straightforward
00:33:24.880 to look behind
00:33:25.980 what it is that they have to say.
00:33:28.060 They'll tell you
00:33:29.180 the poor decisions
00:33:30.160 they made in their lives
00:33:31.100 and the opportunities
00:33:31.780 that they didn't take
00:33:32.740 and the chances
00:33:33.600 that they didn't have
00:33:35.840 enough courage to grasp
00:33:36.940 and the sacrifices
00:33:37.880 they failed to make.
00:33:38.980 There's nothing mysterious about it.
00:33:40.700 And their own experiences
00:33:42.340 teach them full well
00:33:43.780 that they pathologize
00:33:44.900 the relationship
00:33:45.540 they have with
00:33:46.160 the nature of reality.
00:33:48.140 Well, that's a terrible thing.
00:33:49.680 Well, and Cain
00:33:50.140 is dreadfully unhappy.
00:33:51.640 He's unhappy
00:33:52.180 because nothing
00:33:52.800 he ever wants happens
00:33:53.940 and that's partly
00:33:54.560 because he doesn't
00:33:55.160 really want it
00:33:55.820 because if he really wanted it,
00:33:57.040 he'd make the right sacrifices.
00:33:58.720 The salt is rubbed
00:34:00.080 into his wounds
00:34:00.920 by the existence
00:34:01.700 of his brother
00:34:02.420 for whom everything
00:34:03.180 seems simple
00:34:04.000 but of course really isn't.
00:34:05.960 Cain goes to complain to God.
00:34:08.640 And I had to read
00:34:09.260 three or four different
00:34:10.100 translations of these
00:34:11.100 particular verses
00:34:11.860 to figure out
00:34:12.560 what this meant.
00:34:13.780 And he says
00:34:14.900 what in the world
00:34:17.180 is going on here?
00:34:18.400 I'm marking myself
00:34:19.420 to the bone.
00:34:20.240 I'm sacrificing things
00:34:21.520 left, right, and center.
00:34:22.660 Everything I touch
00:34:23.520 turns to dirt.
00:34:24.460 Everything turns against me.
00:34:26.540 What's up
00:34:27.380 with the nature of reality?
00:34:29.400 Cain's essential vulnerability
00:34:30.680 is revealed
00:34:31.980 and exacerbated
00:34:34.100 by his pathological attitude
00:34:35.600 towards his own actions.
00:34:37.160 God says to him
00:34:38.000 essentially
00:34:38.540 sin is a predatory cat
00:34:41.500 that crouches
00:34:43.020 that crouches
00:34:43.040 at your doorway
00:34:43.640 and leaps on you
00:34:44.600 at will it
00:34:45.260 but if you only
00:34:46.380 wanted to
00:34:46.880 you could master it.
00:34:48.460 And that is
00:34:48.900 absolutely
00:34:49.820 the last thing
00:34:51.360 that Cain wants to hear
00:34:52.480 because if things
00:34:53.820 are going from bad
00:34:54.660 to worse
00:34:55.160 for you
00:34:55.920 and you're playing
00:34:57.080 a causal role in it
00:34:58.220 there's nothing
00:34:59.200 more horrible
00:34:59.880 than something
00:35:00.460 that someone
00:35:01.720 can do to you
00:35:02.440 but reveal to you
00:35:03.620 in a way
00:35:03.960 that you can't deny
00:35:04.900 that you're entirely
00:35:06.120 complicit in your own demise.
00:35:08.300 And that's exactly
00:35:09.100 what God does to Cain.
00:35:10.820 And so what does Cain do?
00:35:13.760 Well the logical thing
00:35:14.860 would be listen
00:35:15.580 because if the structure
00:35:16.940 of reality itself
00:35:17.920 tells you something
00:35:18.740 it's best to listen
00:35:19.640 since there's no way
00:35:20.480 out of it
00:35:20.820 but that's not what Cain does.
00:35:22.540 He's so incensed
00:35:23.840 by his sensual vulnerability
00:35:26.060 compromised
00:35:27.100 and exacerbated
00:35:28.460 by his failure
00:35:29.400 to make the appropriate sacrifices
00:35:30.940 and to conduct himself
00:35:32.000 appropriately
00:35:32.520 that he decides
00:35:33.260 then and there
00:35:33.820 number one
00:35:34.560 to destroy his ideal
00:35:36.280 to reduce the tension
00:35:37.880 that he feels
00:35:38.540 when that ideal exists
00:35:40.140 as a contrast point
00:35:41.180 and number two
00:35:42.000 to destroy the favored son
00:35:43.360 of God
00:35:43.900 and so he goes out
00:35:45.020 into the field
00:35:45.600 and kills Abel
00:35:46.620 and God comes along
00:35:47.880 and says
00:35:48.280 where's my favorite son
00:35:49.740 and Cain says
00:35:50.480 I killed him
00:35:51.980 and it's so interesting
00:35:54.660 to me
00:35:55.040 that that story
00:35:55.880 is placed
00:35:56.440 really
00:35:57.060 it's the third story
00:35:58.500 in the Old Testament
00:35:59.700 it's with the archaic stories
00:36:01.780 and it's a story
00:36:02.820 that reveals
00:36:03.480 as far as I can tell
00:36:04.700 that there are two essential
00:36:05.740 patterns of reaction
00:36:06.780 to the self-conscious
00:36:08.740 vulnerable conditions
00:36:09.980 of existence
00:36:10.580 and one is
00:36:11.320 humble
00:36:12.460 approach
00:36:13.760 to infinity
00:36:14.820 with determined
00:36:16.100 attempts
00:36:16.680 to make the appropriate
00:36:17.620 sacrifices
00:36:18.300 the other is
00:36:19.220 arrogance
00:36:19.580 resentment
00:36:20.220 the keeping of everything
00:36:21.480 good for oneself
00:36:22.220 and the degeneration
00:36:23.320 of the soul
00:36:24.080 into something
00:36:24.680 that's homicidally murderous
00:36:26.420 well the story
00:36:28.360 doesn't stop there
00:36:29.240 and it gets really
00:36:30.060 compressed in this part
00:36:31.320 and that's perhaps
00:36:32.160 because some of it's
00:36:33.020 been lost
00:36:33.500 with the passages
00:36:34.200 of time
00:36:34.660 but the next thing
00:36:35.340 that happens
00:36:35.780 is that
00:36:36.300 well God
00:36:38.000 doesn't punish Cain
00:36:39.040 and you think
00:36:40.780 that's kind of strange
00:36:43.140 I mean the Old Testament
00:36:43.940 God
00:36:44.260 he's punishing people
00:36:45.160 left right and center
00:36:46.060 it's right
00:36:46.400 why not Cain
00:36:47.240 and you think
00:36:48.360 well he marks Cain
00:36:49.780 and he says to the people
00:36:50.980 who are around
00:36:52.120 that they should leave him alone
00:36:53.280 because he's been marked
00:36:54.980 by God
00:36:55.460 as to be left alone
00:36:56.380 and the reason for that
00:36:57.620 I think
00:36:58.020 and this is something
00:36:58.920 that's reflected
00:36:59.480 on our legal system
00:37:00.560 is that
00:37:00.980 murder promotes revenge
00:37:02.900 and revenge
00:37:05.020 destroys societies
00:37:06.160 and so God
00:37:07.300 puts an end
00:37:07.840 to the situation
00:37:08.580 right there and then
00:37:09.240 by telling people
00:37:10.040 that despite
00:37:11.380 the fact
00:37:12.580 that Cain
00:37:13.120 has
00:37:13.420 has committed
00:37:16.140 a terrible crime
00:37:17.020 that there will be
00:37:17.680 no
00:37:18.240 retribution
00:37:19.600 Cain goes off
00:37:22.440 and gets married
00:37:23.060 and he has
00:37:25.080 a number of
00:37:26.060 generations
00:37:26.560 of offspring
00:37:27.360 if you insult
00:37:30.840 a member
00:37:31.200 of the first
00:37:32.680 generation
00:37:33.180 of Cain's
00:37:33.680 offspring
00:37:34.020 he doesn't
00:37:35.400 kill you
00:37:35.800 he kills
00:37:36.120 seven of you
00:37:37.000 and if you
00:37:38.360 insult a member
00:37:39.080 of the second
00:37:39.980 generation
00:37:40.500 of Cain's
00:37:41.000 offspring
00:37:41.300 he doesn't
00:37:42.440 kill seven
00:37:43.000 of you
00:37:43.280 he kills
00:37:43.700 seven times
00:37:44.380 seven of you
00:37:45.160 and then
00:37:46.580 on down
00:37:47.360 the road
00:37:48.980 of the
00:37:49.720 offspring
00:37:50.340 of Cain
00:37:51.220 is Tubal Cain
00:37:52.460 and Tubal Cain
00:37:54.040 is the
00:37:54.680 artificer
00:37:55.880 of weapons
00:37:56.760 of war
00:37:57.320 and this
00:37:58.980 stunningly
00:38:00.120 brilliant story
00:38:01.140 says in its
00:38:02.520 incredibly
00:38:03.400 compressed fashion
00:38:04.440 that the
00:38:06.220 motivation that
00:38:07.160 drives the
00:38:08.160 commission of
00:38:08.800 the worst
00:38:09.300 human atrocities
00:38:10.460 is an inevitable
00:38:11.980 social consequence
00:38:13.260 of the refusal
00:38:14.580 of the self-conscious
00:38:15.660 individual
00:38:16.260 to make
00:38:17.080 the sacrifices
00:38:18.120 appropriate to
00:38:18.980 establishing a
00:38:19.740 harmonious life
00:38:20.660 and their
00:38:21.720 consequent
00:38:22.420 degeneration
00:38:23.000 into a kind
00:38:23.940 of murderous
00:38:24.660 and resentment
00:38:25.320 filled rage
00:38:26.280 rage
00:38:27.180 propagating
00:38:28.340 endlessly
00:38:29.140 through its
00:38:30.440 variations
00:38:31.140 in society
00:38:31.960 until everything
00:38:33.380 comes to an
00:38:34.080 end
00:38:34.340 and the next
00:38:36.240 story
00:38:36.580 is the
00:38:37.420 flood
00:38:37.720 and it's
00:38:39.780 not surprising
00:38:40.540 because if
00:38:42.280 things go from
00:38:43.200 bad to worse
00:38:43.920 long enough
00:38:44.520 everything
00:38:46.040 falls
00:38:46.600 and it's a
00:38:47.900 terrifying story
00:38:48.680 and I didn't
00:38:49.200 understand that
00:38:49.900 story I didn't
00:38:50.380 understand that
00:38:50.900 story for years
00:38:51.700 it wasn't
00:38:52.600 really until I
00:38:53.280 read Alexander
00:38:53.940 Solzhenitsyn
00:38:54.560 that I
00:38:55.860 developed I
00:38:56.840 think the
00:38:57.200 cognitive capacity
00:38:58.100 to even
00:38:58.720 understand what
00:38:59.720 the story
00:39:00.020 meant because
00:39:00.700 Solzhenitsyn said
00:39:01.960 it is no
00:39:02.380 bell prize
00:39:02.900 accepting speech
00:39:03.840 a single person
00:39:05.480 who stops
00:39:05.860 lying can bring
00:39:06.500 down a tyranny
00:39:07.160 which is a
00:39:08.260 stunning thing
00:39:08.880 to say but I
00:39:09.580 would also say
00:39:10.200 something that's
00:39:10.800 been amply
00:39:11.220 demonstrated in
00:39:12.040 the 20th century
00:39:12.760 because we have
00:39:13.420 historical examples
00:39:15.100 of people who
00:39:15.660 did precisely that
00:39:16.560 Gandhi did it
00:39:18.160 Vaclav Havel
00:39:19.020 did it
00:39:19.420 Nelson Mandela
00:39:20.220 did it
00:39:20.900 Solzhenitsyn's
00:39:21.740 Gulag Archipelago
00:39:22.720 was definitely
00:39:23.700 one of the
00:39:24.420 ax blows that
00:39:25.180 brought down
00:39:25.620 the Soviet Union
00:39:26.340 a stunning
00:39:27.200 achievement for
00:39:28.040 a person who
00:39:29.020 started writing
00:39:29.660 that book by
00:39:30.400 memorizing it
00:39:31.160 when he was a
00:39:31.840 concentration camp
00:39:32.620 victim this far
00:39:33.400 away from
00:39:33.780 starvation
00:39:34.340 it shows you
00:39:35.360 as clearly as
00:39:36.500 anything possibly
00:39:37.340 can how
00:39:38.320 powerful the
00:39:39.100 human spirit
00:39:39.640 can be if
00:39:40.680 it's willing to
00:39:41.340 take on the
00:39:42.100 obligation of its
00:39:43.140 relationship with
00:39:43.960 the divine
00:39:44.460 and also how
00:39:45.400 terrible things
00:39:46.200 can become if
00:39:47.160 the responsibility
00:39:47.880 of that burden
00:39:48.740 is not
00:39:49.140 shouldered
00:39:49.620 now it's no
00:39:51.360 wonder as far
00:39:51.980 as I can tell
00:39:52.500 that people don't
00:39:53.060 think this way
00:39:53.600 because thinking
00:39:55.100 this way is
00:39:55.720 it's catastrophic
00:39:56.420 in a way
00:39:57.160 because the
00:39:58.080 burden it places
00:39:58.800 on the individual
00:39:59.560 is so extreme
00:40:00.360 that it's almost
00:40:00.920 unbearable
00:40:01.560 well and
00:40:01.960 but that's
00:40:03.100 exactly why it
00:40:03.940 is in Genesis
00:40:05.040 to begin with
00:40:05.740 that Adam
00:40:06.160 hides when he
00:40:06.840 becomes conscious
00:40:08.080 of his own
00:40:08.600 vulnerability
00:40:09.180 it's like he
00:40:10.060 thinks well a
00:40:10.700 creature such as
00:40:11.440 I I could never
00:40:12.180 bear such a
00:40:12.820 burden
00:40:13.040 well there's a
00:40:14.000 lot more to
00:40:14.420 people than meets
00:40:15.120 the eye
00:40:15.560 and the only way
00:40:16.740 I learned that
00:40:17.320 was by looking
00:40:17.860 at people's
00:40:18.440 and my own
00:40:19.120 people's
00:40:19.600 and my own
00:40:20.040 capacity for evil
00:40:20.980 because I started
00:40:21.740 to realize that
00:40:22.460 we regard ourselves
00:40:23.840 as narrow little
00:40:24.660 beings in a
00:40:25.320 particular kind
00:40:25.980 of box
00:40:26.540 and there's real
00:40:27.320 comfort in that
00:40:28.040 although there's
00:40:28.520 tremendous limitation
00:40:29.480 you cannot see
00:40:30.840 your way out of
00:40:31.380 that box
00:40:31.840 until you know
00:40:32.940 well what I teach
00:40:33.940 my students
00:40:34.540 I teach them
00:40:35.160 about Nazi
00:40:35.700 Germany
00:40:36.040 and I try to
00:40:36.900 make them
00:40:37.200 understand that
00:40:37.940 there's an
00:40:38.780 overwhelming
00:40:39.220 probability
00:40:39.840 if they were
00:40:40.480 in Nazi Germany
00:40:41.140 in the 1930s
00:40:42.040 that they would
00:40:42.460 have been
00:40:42.720 perpetrators
00:40:43.320 and Nazis
00:40:43.980 an overwhelming
00:40:44.980 probability
00:40:45.660 and if they
00:40:46.480 can't accept
00:40:47.120 that because
00:40:47.680 it's a historical
00:40:48.300 fact
00:40:48.780 they have
00:40:49.220 absolutely no
00:40:49.980 idea who
00:40:50.420 they are
00:40:50.860 now imagining
00:40:52.680 yourself as a
00:40:53.420 Nazi perpetrator
00:40:54.220 is an unbearably
00:40:55.100 terrifying thing
00:40:55.900 to do
00:40:56.260 but I don't
00:40:57.080 believe that you
00:40:57.620 can do
00:40:58.040 I don't think
00:40:58.960 that you have
00:40:59.360 any insight
00:41:00.000 whatsoever
00:41:00.660 into your
00:41:01.200 capacity for
00:41:01.860 good
00:41:02.180 until you have
00:41:03.260 some well-developed
00:41:04.640 insight into your
00:41:05.360 capacity for evil
00:41:06.300 because people can
00:41:07.740 tell you until
00:41:08.300 they're blue in the
00:41:08.820 face about your
00:41:09.520 capacity for good
00:41:10.300 it just sounds like
00:41:11.140 wishful thinking
00:41:13.460 it sounds like
00:41:14.000 the sort of thing
00:41:14.480 that an advertiser
00:41:15.280 might tell you on
00:41:15.980 TV
00:41:16.280 it's just too good
00:41:17.300 to be true
00:41:17.860 and I don't think
00:41:19.520 people believe it
00:41:20.400 but I think that
00:41:21.820 if you tell people
00:41:22.720 that you know
00:41:23.280 in the cold
00:41:24.480 dark corners
00:41:25.200 of their mind
00:41:25.820 there are
00:41:26.120 motivations that
00:41:26.800 are so terrible
00:41:27.500 that they would
00:41:28.460 traumatize themselves
00:41:30.400 if they were ever
00:41:31.400 revealed
00:41:31.840 that everyone knows
00:41:33.060 at some level
00:41:33.940 of analysis
00:41:34.420 that that's
00:41:35.020 absolutely true
00:41:35.960 you think
00:41:37.460 there's evidence
00:41:38.660 throughout history
00:41:39.340 that it's possible
00:41:40.160 for people to be
00:41:41.260 enlightened
00:41:43.000 and you'd think
00:41:44.380 since enlightenment
00:41:46.120 is viewed as the
00:41:47.060 medication for
00:41:47.880 vulnerability and
00:41:48.660 death
00:41:48.900 that everybody
00:41:49.580 would be struggling
00:41:50.380 as hard as they
00:41:51.560 possibly could
00:41:52.220 to be enlightened
00:41:52.880 if such a state
00:41:53.840 exactly
00:41:54.320 and precisely exists
00:41:56.060 but if the barrier
00:41:57.360 to enlightenment
00:41:58.080 is the development
00:41:59.480 of self-consciousness
00:42:00.580 of the individual
00:42:01.720 human's
00:42:02.480 infinite capacity
00:42:03.640 for evil
00:42:04.160 then you can be
00:42:05.020 immediately
00:42:06.020 convinced
00:42:07.240 about why
00:42:08.720 enlightenment
00:42:09.460 is in such
00:42:10.200 short supply
00:42:11.160 when I
00:42:13.000 finished my
00:42:15.580 first provisional
00:42:16.360 examination
00:42:16.860 of the sorts
00:42:17.580 of motivations
00:42:18.200 that drove people
00:42:19.040 to set up
00:42:19.460 concentration camps
00:42:20.520 and to torture
00:42:22.360 people terribly
00:42:23.140 in those camps
00:42:23.940 I came to a
00:42:25.520 terrible conclusion
00:42:26.380 it was a
00:42:28.040 conclusion that
00:42:28.700 I think in some
00:42:30.220 ways was the
00:42:30.620 worst thing that
00:42:31.160 had ever happened
00:42:31.720 to me maybe
00:42:32.240 intellectually and
00:42:33.040 morally
00:42:33.320 I thought
00:42:33.920 I came to
00:42:35.940 understand why
00:42:36.520 it is that
00:42:36.900 people depended
00:42:37.620 on their group
00:42:38.120 identity and
00:42:38.680 their cultural
00:42:39.160 identification
00:42:39.760 because that
00:42:40.700 helped protect
00:42:41.340 themselves from
00:42:42.120 their own
00:42:42.540 vulnerability
00:42:43.000 you have to
00:42:44.040 believe things
00:42:44.720 because you
00:42:45.100 just don't know
00:42:45.680 everything
00:42:46.060 so you have to
00:42:46.560 believe things
00:42:47.100 they fill in the
00:42:47.680 gaps
00:42:48.000 the beliefs
00:42:48.440 fill in the
00:42:48.900 gaps
00:42:49.200 if the beliefs
00:42:50.540 are stripped
00:42:50.940 from you
00:42:51.380 then your
00:42:51.960 defenses against
00:42:52.780 the infinite
00:42:53.200 are stripped
00:42:53.760 and it's no
00:42:54.280 wonder that
00:42:54.800 people will
00:42:55.200 defend their
00:42:55.660 beliefs
00:42:56.080 I thought
00:42:59.200 well
00:42:59.520 if you're
00:43:00.560 too involved
00:43:01.200 in defending
00:43:01.640 your beliefs
00:43:02.180 you're going
00:43:02.700 to be willing
00:43:03.100 to kill other
00:43:03.700 people in their
00:43:04.260 defense
00:43:04.600 and we're so
00:43:05.100 technologically
00:43:05.740 powerful now
00:43:06.480 that we can
00:43:06.900 no longer be
00:43:07.460 willing to
00:43:07.900 kill other
00:43:08.300 people in
00:43:08.760 the defense
00:43:09.640 of our own
00:43:10.020 beliefs
00:43:10.280 because the
00:43:11.480 time for that
00:43:11.940 has passed
00:43:12.540 and I realized
00:43:15.040 well if you
00:43:15.720 don't stand up
00:43:16.360 for your beliefs
00:43:16.880 you leave
00:43:17.240 yourself bereft
00:43:18.000 you're open
00:43:18.560 to the
00:43:18.840 depredations
00:43:19.460 of the
00:43:19.780 infinite
00:43:20.060 that's equally
00:43:20.820 intolerable
00:43:22.200 it seems to
00:43:22.880 leave no way
00:43:23.480 out
00:43:23.820 there is a
00:43:27.200 way out
00:43:27.600 you know
00:43:27.860 and I think
00:43:28.360 it's the way
00:43:28.960 out that
00:43:29.380 genuinely
00:43:30.420 religious people
00:43:31.320 have tried to
00:43:31.920 offer humanity
00:43:32.680 for thousands
00:43:33.600 and thousands
00:43:34.100 of years
00:43:34.600 and the way
00:43:35.780 out of the
00:43:36.780 conundrum
00:43:37.440 posed to you
00:43:39.100 by your
00:43:39.580 reliance on
00:43:40.300 ideological beliefs
00:43:41.380 and your
00:43:41.900 vulnerability in
00:43:42.860 the face of
00:43:43.340 the unknown
00:43:43.800 is the
00:43:44.480 development of
00:43:45.180 a truly
00:43:46.280 integrated and
00:43:47.220 powerful character
00:43:48.140 and that's a
00:43:49.800 individual
00:43:50.480 development
00:43:51.060 and it means
00:43:51.860 constant
00:43:53.000 confrontation
00:43:53.760 with things
00:43:54.280 you don't
00:43:54.600 understand
00:43:55.100 and constant
00:43:55.920 attempts to
00:43:56.600 ensure that
00:43:57.080 your character
00:43:57.640 is composed
00:43:58.620 of truth
00:43:59.780 and solidity
00:44:00.980 rather than
00:44:01.580 deceit
00:44:02.180 and to make
00:44:03.480 of yourself
00:44:03.880 something that's
00:44:04.560 built on a
00:44:05.040 rock and not
00:44:05.800 predicated on
00:44:06.560 sand and the
00:44:07.300 thing is it's
00:44:07.880 one thing to
00:44:08.600 tell people that
00:44:09.460 because maybe
00:44:10.400 they should take
00:44:10.960 care of themselves
00:44:11.660 but I don't
00:44:12.980 know if that's
00:44:13.440 enough to tell
00:44:13.980 people because
00:44:14.660 they don't take
00:44:15.460 care of themselves
00:44:16.020 that well but
00:44:16.700 it's a completely
00:44:17.660 other thing to
00:44:18.300 say look you
00:44:18.860 know every time
00:44:19.980 you make a
00:44:20.440 pathological moral
00:44:21.380 decision you
00:44:22.580 move the one
00:44:23.200 the world one
00:44:24.000 step closer to
00:44:24.740 complete annihilation
00:44:25.720 and I absolutely
00:44:27.280 believe that
00:44:28.060 I think the
00:44:29.240 historical evidence
00:44:30.060 is crystal clear
00:44:31.460 and I also think
00:44:32.800 that every time
00:44:33.400 you make an
00:44:34.060 appropriate moral
00:44:34.740 decision and you
00:44:35.500 manifest moral
00:44:36.240 courage in the
00:44:36.880 face of your own
00:44:37.480 vulnerability
00:44:37.860 then you move
00:44:39.000 the world one
00:44:39.600 step farther
00:44:40.260 from the brink
00:44:41.000 and every
00:44:42.400 that's the case
00:44:43.220 for every single
00:44:44.120 person
00:44:44.660 you know
00:44:45.320 Solzhenitsyn said
00:44:46.320 drawing on his
00:44:47.140 eastern orthodox
00:44:48.080 Christian background
00:44:49.040 every single
00:44:50.840 person is the
00:44:51.520 center of the
00:44:52.020 world
00:44:52.360 a center of the
00:44:53.720 world
00:44:53.980 not the center
00:44:55.100 of the world
00:44:55.640 the world's a
00:44:56.360 complicated place
00:44:57.200 it can have all
00:44:58.140 sorts of centers
00:44:58.900 it's hard to
00:44:59.760 believe that you
00:45:00.280 might be one of
00:45:01.060 them but everything
00:45:02.800 about human existence
00:45:03.740 is hard to believe
00:45:04.660 the fact that it's
00:45:05.660 here at all is hard
00:45:06.400 to believe
00:45:06.780 the nature of it's
00:45:07.600 hard to believe
00:45:08.180 everything that human
00:45:09.680 beings does is so
00:45:10.880 ridiculous and
00:45:12.200 remarkable that it's
00:45:13.340 like it's a
00:45:13.980 consistently and
00:45:14.960 constantly unfolding
00:45:15.960 miracle the idea
00:45:16.960 that each of you
00:45:17.600 might be a
00:45:18.600 center of the
00:45:19.680 cosmos in that
00:45:21.440 infinite admixture
00:45:23.300 of ridiculousness
00:45:24.420 and absurdity is
00:45:25.380 is hardly more
00:45:26.980 than one more
00:45:27.760 ridiculous thing
00:45:28.600 to swallow
00:45:29.220 well I'll
00:45:31.280 summarize I
00:45:31.880 guess
00:45:32.140 I said that
00:45:34.040 tragedy is a
00:45:34.740 precondition for
00:45:35.480 being
00:45:35.820 being is the
00:45:39.200 interplay between
00:45:39.880 the finite and
00:45:40.540 the infinite and
00:45:41.220 in that interplay
00:45:41.900 there's tragedy
00:45:42.500 and there's no
00:45:42.920 way out of that
00:45:43.600 evil is something
00:45:44.900 different
00:45:45.340 evil is the
00:45:47.440 conscious attempt
00:45:48.220 to make the
00:45:48.680 conditions of
00:45:49.300 existence more
00:45:50.060 pathological than
00:45:51.020 they have to be
00:45:51.700 and it's motivated
00:45:53.140 by conscious intent
00:45:54.180 the motivations arise
00:45:56.400 because people pay a
00:45:57.560 terrible price for
00:45:59.040 their self-conscious
00:45:59.820 awareness and that
00:46:00.700 awareness is their
00:46:01.600 awareness of their
00:46:02.380 vulnerability and that
00:46:03.500 is a terrible thing to
00:46:04.920 be aware of
00:46:05.620 that vulnerability can
00:46:11.060 be confronted
00:46:11.660 forthrightly
00:46:12.820 accepted and the
00:46:13.780 appropriate decisions
00:46:14.660 made alternatively
00:46:15.720 people can retreat
00:46:16.580 into their own
00:46:17.420 rationalistic arrogance
00:46:20.120 and attempt to
00:46:21.200 deceive themselves and
00:46:22.740 everyone else about
00:46:23.660 the nature of their
00:46:24.380 own existence and
00:46:25.120 about the nature of
00:46:25.880 reality that pathway
00:46:27.500 leads to nothing but
00:46:28.400 destruction
00:46:28.920 I think that there's
00:46:33.620 good reason to assume
00:46:34.560 that it's too late in
00:46:35.720 the in our
00:46:36.380 developmental course as
00:46:37.400 a species for that
00:46:38.660 path to be acceptable
00:46:39.720 anymore because we're
00:46:41.060 too powerful and if
00:46:42.300 too many people stay on
00:46:43.440 that path we're going to
00:46:44.420 do ourselves in and so
00:46:46.520 I would say as we've
00:46:48.360 become more
00:46:48.900 technologically powerful
00:46:50.100 an increasing moral
00:46:51.480 burden is being placed
00:46:52.460 on each of us it
00:46:54.260 matters to the to the
00:46:56.520 to the destiny of the
00:46:58.360 cosmos whether or not
00:46:59.640 you get your moral act
00:47:00.740 straight and I don't
00:47:01.760 mean that in a trivial
00:47:02.740 way I believe that
00:47:04.120 that's as close to an
00:47:05.060 empirical fact as
00:47:06.040 anything that can be
00:47:06.880 demonstrated I also
00:47:07.700 believe that's as
00:47:08.300 terrifying a thing to
00:47:09.260 consider as anything you
00:47:10.240 could possibly imagine
00:47:11.180 and maybe it's too
00:47:12.200 much to ask of people
00:47:13.280 but you know our great
00:47:14.900 religious traditions do
00:47:16.180 continually remind us
00:47:17.740 that inside every human
00:47:18.920 being there's a spark of
00:47:20.060 divinity and that idea
00:47:21.600 is a precondition for our
00:47:23.960 entire system of law
00:47:25.520 there's always the
00:47:27.980 possibility that it's true
00:47:29.220 and if it's true it means
00:47:30.980 that there is a there's a
00:47:32.880 there's an infinite avenue
00:47:34.920 of potential that lays open
00:47:36.740 to every single person and
00:47:38.480 that the ability to
00:47:39.920 transform the terrible
00:47:41.600 conditions of reality into
00:47:43.500 something not only
00:47:44.540 acceptable but worthy of
00:47:45.920 celebration actually lies
00:47:47.260 within our grasp and the
00:47:49.600 alternative that the
00:47:50.940 alternative to that is the
00:47:52.360 continual generation of a
00:47:54.420 kind of hell that's so
00:47:56.000 incomprehensibly awful that
00:47:59.640 by any reasonable person's
00:48:03.340 standards it has to be
00:48:04.920 regarded as something to
00:48:05.960 avoid that's all i have to
00:48:11.980 say about that
00:48:12.660 thank you for listening to
00:48:17.300 the jordan b peterson podcast
00:48:18.980 that was episode two tragedy
00:48:21.880 versus evil you can support
00:48:25.240 this podcast by searching
00:48:27.820 jordan peterson patreon and
00:48:29.940 donating the amount of your
00:48:31.060 choice or by visiting
00:48:33.160 self authoring dot com
00:48:35.040 thank you
00:48:37.080 you
00:48:39.180 you
00:48:41.180 you
00:48:43.180 you