The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast


What To Do When Resentment Is Eating You Alive

Hosted by
Jordan B. Peterson Mikhaila Peterson
Mentioned
Joshua Aaron Israelites Korah Jordan Peterson Jethro Exodus Jacob Torah Caleb

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Harmful content

Misogyny

1

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Toxicity

14

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Hate speech

65

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Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The story of Moses and the Israelites is an archetypal story. And what that means is that it s a story that has been stripped to its essence. The essence of the story is that is always happening, that s how it's true, and it will continue to happen. And that is the truth of the eternal narrative.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 I'm Howard Mackler. I spent my career building companies that help businesses solve problems.
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00:00:51.660 That's supersure.com. You can thank me later. Paid for by Supersure Insurance Agency, LLC,
00:00:56.580 a licensed insurance agency. Hi, everybody. I hope you find this week's lecture
00:01:01.300 interesting, compelling, and useful. I've also written and posted a diatribe against the climate
00:01:08.880 change apocalypse mongers, outlining the true ecological significance of industrial carbon
00:01:15.540 dioxide production. It's not what you think. It's certainly not what you've been told.
00:01:21.360 Anyways, check it out if you're interested. I think it's one of the better journalism
00:01:26.460 pieces that I've written. I have been writing a bit lately, so I think that's a good thing. I hope
00:01:32.200 you agree. Note, the essay, the diatribe, is available on X at Jordan B. Peterson and on my
00:01:40.860 blog. If you sign up to my newsletter, you'll get notified of these essays early. You can do that
00:01:47.300 at jordanbpeterson.com. On with the show.
00:01:56.460 Thank you.
00:02:26.440 you all
00:02:26.940 so I
00:02:30.560 want to talk to you tonight about
00:02:32.160 the last part of
00:02:36.640 the story
00:02:38.680 of Moses
00:02:40.200 and the Israelites
00:02:42.180 after
00:02:44.580 the commandments
00:02:45.580 and I'll
00:02:48.440 I want to do that
00:02:50.480 because
00:02:50.900 the story of the
00:02:56.420 of Moses and the Israelites
00:02:58.520 is an archetypal story.
00:03:00.380 And what that means
00:03:03.040 is that it's a story
00:03:04.240 that has been
00:03:05.220 stripped to its essence.
00:03:10.700 The essence of the story
00:03:12.440 is a story that
00:03:13.620 is always happening.
00:03:17.220 That's how it's true.
00:03:18.560 It's true in that it happened
00:03:20.140 and it's always happening
00:03:22.520 and it will continue to happen.
00:03:23.860 and that's a very interesting form of truth that's the the truth of the eternal narrative
00:03:30.640 it's the truth of the story of of the individual and and and man and god
00:03:37.920 always and forever that's a good way of thinking about it
00:03:46.360 now there's a particular reason that moses gets the commandments
00:03:50.820 and this is perhaps how they should be most deeply understood
00:03:58.140 after the israelites are led away from tyranny and across the the chaos of the red sea
00:04:12.660 they enter the desert where they wander for three generations 40 years
00:04:20.260 and it's not that long a trip
00:04:23.260 not geographically
00:04:26.560 but the duration of their
00:04:28.840 wanderings indicate that
00:04:31.100 the eternal truth that
00:04:33.600 if you're lost
00:04:35.060 it can take you forever to get to where you're headed
00:04:38.180 right
00:04:39.700 it reflects also the fact that
00:04:42.740 the fact of their sojourn in the desert
00:04:44.800 also reflects something that's very much worth knowing
00:04:47.540 it's a crucial
00:04:49.320 realization in relationship to
00:04:53.420 individual and social psychology.
00:04:58.880 We all face the
00:05:01.360 threat of tyranny.
00:05:05.200 That's why the story of Moses is a universal
00:05:09.600 and eternal, eternally true story.
00:05:13.800 Every person has to contend with the reality of tyranny
00:05:17.760 in slavery so for example you might be the slave of your habits or the slave of your presumptions
00:05:24.360 or the slave of your pride or the slave of your appetites those are all forces that 0.94
00:05:29.880 tyrannize over you but that you enable with your slavish habits that's a good way of thinking 0.88
00:05:38.500 about it you might be a tyrant in your marriage you might be a tyrant in your workplace you might 0.88
00:05:45.520 be a tyrant in your utterances on X. You might be a tyrant to your children. You 0.65
00:05:57.900 might live under a political tyranny. And you have to contend with the fact of
00:06:05.420 your own proclivity to slavish conduct. 0.99
00:06:10.920 And so, the landscape of tyranny and slavery 0.54
00:06:17.460 is the landscape that everyone, by necessity, traverses.
00:06:21.820 And the genuine leader, which is what Moses is,
00:06:25.500 is the man who learns to stand up against the forces of tyranny
00:06:30.860 and who forever leads those who are enslaved away from the tyrant across the sea of chaos
00:06:38.900 into the desert and toward the promised land and the reason for that is is that
00:06:44.020 we're always moving to some destination that we desire that's the journey of life is to move from
00:06:52.460 the state or condition that we presently occupy to the next highest mountaintop and then after
00:07:00.440 that to the mountaintop above that and then past that to the mountaintop past that and so on
00:07:05.820 until the journey comes to an end. And then you might ask as well, why do you cross the Red Sea
00:07:14.900 before you enter the desert after freeing yourself from tyranny? And the answer is,
00:07:23.360 well, when you're under the
00:07:26.560 thumb of a tyrant
00:07:28.100 you're dependent and infantile 1.00
00:07:30.880 and slavish 1.00
00:07:31.740 and possessed of a false
00:07:34.840 certainty
00:07:35.420 but when you abandon that
00:07:38.060 or move beyond it
00:07:39.620 and that all falls apart
00:07:42.620 you don't
00:07:44.780 instantaneously find yourself
00:07:46.740 with the habits of a free and responsible
00:07:48.760 person
00:07:49.360 you find yourself in the chaos
00:07:52.260 that's the inevitable bloody aftermath of the collapse of a tyranny and then in a period of
00:07:58.700 chaos and confusion that can last for decades or lifetimes in the aftermath of that and if you
00:08:06.960 want to know why people are willing to be the slaves even of their own tyranny one answer to
00:08:14.900 that is that they're very loath to experience the red sea chaos and the sojourn in the desert
00:08:22.820 lost that's the inevitable consequence of moving beyond even the foolish assumptions of a tyrannical
00:08:32.220 state sometimes before you move from bad to better you move from bad to worse and the fact that you
00:08:42.000 can move from bad to worse before moving to better is one of the things that forever keeps
00:08:47.380 you locked in the kingdom of of what's undesirable it's a great mystery right because it's a very
00:08:54.420 curious thing that it's unlikely that people will stand up against tyranny or reject even in the
00:09:01.540 microcosm of their own life within the confines of their own mind within the strictures of their
00:09:08.500 own marriage if you understand that when you leave tyranny you're lost then you understand
00:09:15.200 why people are afraid to move forward even beyond that which is not desirable or acceptable to them
00:09:23.240 and moses is the person who leads he's the embodiment of the spirit that forever leads people
00:09:31.040 away from tyranny, across the Red Sea, and then through the lost desert.
00:09:37.700 Now, what happens in the desert is that the Israelites lose faith.
00:09:42.760 And what does that mean?
00:09:43.980 Well, it means that when you're lost, it's easy for you to despair,
00:09:52.320 to lose the faith in the future that's a necessary precondition
00:09:58.200 of the commitment to move forward.
00:10:01.040 Even to lose faith in the goodness of not only being, but also of transformation itself.
00:10:07.420 A cataclysmic loss of faith.
00:10:09.420 And the lost Israelites lose faith continually and in consequence. 0.98
00:10:16.220 And they have the habits of fractious slaves.
00:10:19.840 And because they were slaves for so long, they no longer know how to take responsibility for themselves.
00:10:25.740 They're not integrated psychologically.
00:10:28.300 They're not mature.
00:10:29.240 They're immature.
00:10:30.100 They're infantile.
00:10:31.040 they can't regulate their own behavior they're hedonistic they're desirous of power and they
00:10:37.000 fight amongst themselves because they don't have the experience or the good sense or the wisdom
00:10:42.860 or even the desire to adopt responsibility for regulating their own conduct and that's part of
00:10:50.740 the attraction of the hedonism that makes itself manifest in the story that i'll talk to you about
00:10:55.340 tonight and instead of stepping forward to take responsibility so that they can adjudicate their
00:11:01.660 own conflicts they call upon moses to act as their judge and that's how fractious infantile
00:11:08.060 dependent slaves rekindle tyranny around them and so they ask moses to sit as judge 0.54
00:11:15.640 and he's already somewhat contemptuous of them because they're so faithless and hedonistic and
00:11:22.800 immature and puerile and whiny and impossible to lead and pining for the tyranny and and 0.89
00:11:29.160 and irresponsible and he agrees to sit as judge and the israelites bring their troubles to him 0.88
00:11:38.200 from dawn till midnight for a decade and all he does is hear their squabbles and adjudicate their
00:11:47.640 disputes like the father of of fighting siblings imagine your favorite lecture dial that up on max
00:11:55.860 put that on steroids and then add some cinematic elements to it that's the best way i could
00:12:00.740 describe a peterson academy lecture i went to college because i had to i go to peterson academy
00:12:08.120 because i want to i'm still paying off college from 10 years ago and i'm also still questioning
00:12:12.800 the value that I got out of college.
00:12:14.480 The traditional universities, a lot of times, it's just pretty dry.
00:12:17.960 They don't bring the same energy as the professors at Peterson Academy.
00:12:22.100 It is a completely different experience to learn from somebody who actually wants to
00:12:25.760 teach you.
00:12:26.760 If you've been on the fence about this, this is the time.
00:12:30.060 That thing that's calling to you, you won't have an answer for it unless you enroll and
00:12:33.400 see for yourself.
00:12:34.400 You have the opportunity to investigate that calling.
00:12:42.800 Now, you could understand that if you perform that role, as perhaps you do, in your positions
00:12:50.420 of responsibility as parents and in the broader community, that in order to render a judgment
00:12:56.660 that holds, you have to abide by the principles of natural justice.
00:13:01.940 That's a good way of thinking about it.
00:13:03.600 So if I'm sitting as a psychotherapist and I'm speaking to two married individuals who
00:13:09.560 having a conflict and i'm listening to their planes in order for me to mediate between them
00:13:15.800 so that they can come together without further tension and and turmoil i have to render a judgment
00:13:24.060 let's say if i'm acting in the role of moses in that situation i have to render a judgment that
00:13:30.000 they actually both find not only acceptable but perhaps even desirable which is a very difficult
00:13:36.240 thing to manage a judge whose judgment stands isn't someone who forces either party to abide
00:13:44.160 by an arbitrary dictate but someone who mediates the conflict such that both parties who are
00:13:50.040 disagreeing view the new arrangement as preferable to the previous arrangement and to the conflict
00:13:55.800 and even perhaps if the judgment isn't perfect it will stand if they themselves can't come up with
00:14:01.840 better solution and so now imagine moses becomes the master of such judgment and he does that for
00:14:09.520 a generation he builds up a tremendous amount of implicit knowledge about the structure of
00:14:16.560 social psychological and social order itself and that sets the stage
00:14:23.920 now his father-in-law jethro comes to him during this time and says something of extraordinary
00:14:30.880 importance for the entire history of western civilization and likely the world he says you
00:14:36.440 can't continue to do this and moses says why not and he says well first of all you're wearing
00:14:44.200 yourself out you're taking responsibility for a hundred a hundred thousand people or more and
00:14:50.440 no one can bear that burden and survive and so it's not good for you and it can't sustain itself
00:14:57.160 and so that's not acceptable it's certainly not ideal and it's not even acceptable and then
00:15:04.520 jethro says but it's worse than that what you're doing because by mediating the israelites disputes
00:15:11.280 for them you take away from them the necessity for their own maturation that development you
00:15:17.880 leave them as slaves and you're setting yourself up again as a pharaoh in the desert and so he
00:15:24.240 tells Moses, in essence, that the man who's supposed to be the prophet of God is being 0.50
00:15:30.040 tempted by the offer of power, and that that's a spiritual danger to him and a catastrophe
00:15:38.740 for the Israelites, even though they might be happy about it, because it means they wouldn't
00:15:42.940 have to bear any responsibility for determining their own way forward. And so, Jethro tells
00:15:51.220 Moses to have the people divide
00:15:53.340 themselves into groups of ten
00:15:54.860 and to appoint
00:15:57.120 from within that group of ten the best
00:15:59.180 person to represent that
00:16:01.360 group and then to gather
00:16:03.360 the representatives together in groups
00:16:05.220 of ten and have them elect
00:16:06.800 a representative of representatives
00:16:09.020 and to do that all the way up
00:16:10.660 in groups of ten and fifty up to
00:16:12.940 the level of ten thousands
00:16:14.600 and for them to mediate their disputes
00:16:17.360 in accordance with that hierarchy.
00:16:19.440 so if you and your wife can't get along you can go to the local representative of 10 and perhaps
00:16:26.680 he can render a judgment and if he's unable to solve the problem then he can bump it up the
00:16:31.840 new hierarchy of distributed responsibility to his representative and if that doesn't work then
00:16:38.420 it can go up the chain of command another level and if it goes all the way up to the 10 thousands
00:16:43.840 and it can't be mediated,
00:16:45.360 then Moses, who's the prophet of God, can step in
00:16:47.860 and only then can he render a judgment.
00:16:50.360 And that is the erection of a distributed hierarchy of responsibility
00:16:56.260 as the alternative to the tyrant and the slave.
00:16:59.580 And that's the model for your country.
00:17:02.440 Right.
00:17:07.700 And that model only works if people take responsibility
00:17:10.980 at every single level of the hierarchy.
00:17:13.840 And to the degree that they take responsibility, they don't need a tyrant.
00:17:17.780 And they're not slaves.
00:17:19.040 And that means that the absence of tyranny in your country and the absence of slavery is not a consequence of the fact that you have rights,
00:17:27.320 but a reflection of the fact that you bear the responsibility for governing yourself.
00:17:31.680 Right.
00:17:36.980 Right.
00:17:37.540 And the politicians who wish to turn the polity into a nanny state that does nothing but cater to hedonistic infants should remember that all that does is call forth the spirit of tyranny.
00:17:49.860 Right. And that's what happens in this story.
00:17:52.620 so moses is well prepared for the revelation of the law because he's put himself in a position
00:18:06.420 to understand the structure of the law by rendering judgment in a professional capacity for
00:18:11.980 for many many years for thousands and thousands of hours and he receives the revelation of the
00:18:18.640 Ten Commandments and the Ten Commandments are the law and you might ask yourself well what is the
00:18:24.280 law and you could say well it's the word received from on high and there's truth in that but it's
00:18:31.140 an incomplete truth because the law is also a reflection of the customs and the behaviors of
00:18:38.100 the people of any people who've managed to organize a mature self and a collective community that
00:18:47.400 that functions as a
00:18:50.400 consensual structure across time.
00:18:56.580 So imagine that as you mature,
00:18:59.140 you move away from the demand
00:19:02.040 that every one of your instinctive whims
00:19:04.900 be gratified now
00:19:07.840 to the realization that at times
00:19:12.180 you have to forego
00:19:13.460 what's of immediate value
00:19:17.600 so that you can thrive and develop
00:19:22.800 over the medium and long run.
00:19:24.840 And so as you mature, you substitute
00:19:27.120 your narrow self bound to the moment.
00:19:31.240 You substitute for that
00:19:32.420 the iteration of your future self
00:19:34.880 out into the decades of your adulthood.
00:19:37.760 And you make the sacrifices of your whim
00:19:40.300 in the present that increase the probability of your future well-being and continued growth.
00:19:48.380 That's part of maturation. But that's not the only part of maturation. The other part of
00:19:53.060 maturation is that you learn to take turns, let's say, when you're somewhere between two and four,
00:20:00.660 and learning to be a social creature or a communal creature. And what that means is that you
00:20:06.560 sacrifice your immediate demands for the sake of the reciprocal relationship with others.
00:20:12.280 And then you could imagine that the pattern of sacrifice that serves you as an individual best
00:20:19.000 in the future and you as an individual in communal relationship with other people is the same
00:20:24.820 pattern. And that's the pattern of maturity. And that pattern of future sacrifice and communal
00:20:32.100 maturity is the essence of the behavioral patterns of a sustainable, productive,
00:20:41.540 hospitable and generous society. And there's nothing about that that's
00:20:46.560 morally relative. It's very unlikely that that situation, balanced that well, will
00:20:54.280 emerge. Just as unlikely as it is that you'll attain a continual state of
00:20:59.280 Productive and generous harmony within the confines of your marriage or your family, but that doesn't mean that it that state
00:21:06.400 Has no existence and it doesn't mean that the pattern of that existence is arbitrary quite the contrary
00:21:12.180 It means that the harmony that prevails between your current self and your future self and you as an isolated
00:21:19.200 individual and everyone else is a is the straight narrow path that leads up Jacob's ladder to the kingdom of God
00:21:26.480 That's what it means symbolically
00:21:28.880 right and that's built into the structure of that's built into the structure of reality itself
00:21:34.400 and the law that comes to moses is an explicit representation of that underlying reality
00:21:41.440 and moses has access to it first because he sits his judge and second because in a burst of
00:21:47.120 revelatory intuition he can make explicit what up till then has only been implicit
00:21:54.160 ritual and custom the emergence of the law is the description of the customs and rituals that
00:22:04.060 unite a society and that constitute maturity and that's what Moses offers his people
00:22:10.020 straight from the lips of God
00:22:12.760 it takes Moses 40 days to journey up the mountain and to confer with God and to receive the
00:22:21.380 revelation and to descend. And during that time, the state
00:22:26.460 falls into the hands of Aaron. And Aaron is Moses' political 0.82
00:22:31.180 wing. So when Moses is called upon to be a leader, which
00:22:37.500 happens when he encounters the burning bush, which is a symbol
00:22:42.200 of life, it's a symbol of life and its transformations, he
00:22:47.200 objects to the call telling god that he's not the right man for the job because he's incapable of
00:22:55.680 speaking in a manner that is attractive to the public and god says to moses
00:23:04.560 two things nothing is impossible when it comes to god and second that
00:23:10.000 Moses inadequacy is no excuse for his failure to
00:23:14.560 Adopt the responsibility of leadership
00:23:17.660 And so and that's the case for all of us
00:23:20.940 Because you might think not me
00:23:23.320 But and you might have a list of reasons
00:23:25.980 Why not you but none of those reasons suffice
00:23:29.300 Not least because the abandonment of that responsibility
00:23:32.460 Even in the face of your own inadequacy
00:23:34.600 Is the pathway to slavery and tyranny
00:23:37.120 And so
00:23:38.400 when moses leaves so this is when god vanishes right because moses is the prophetic voice
00:23:52.000 when moses leaves the fractious slaves conspire with the political voice
00:23:59.480 to regress into a state of materialistic hedonism that's what the worship of the golden calf
00:24:09.100 signifies so a calf is a form of a calf in a in a in a tribal community in a nomadic tribal
00:24:19.020 community of herders wealth is flock and a calf is a sig a calf is a symbol of stored value
00:24:29.160 do you have a calf you have something to eat do you have a calf you have something to offer your
00:24:35.200 guests it's wealth a golden calf is wealth as such and the worship of the golden calf is the worship
00:24:43.820 of material wealth it's the worship of the treasure that rusts on earth the worship of the
00:24:50.180 treasure that moths can destroy and not the worship of the treasure that's properly stored
00:24:55.780 in heaven that nothing earthly can demolish right the worship of the golden calf that emerges as a
00:25:04.400 consequence of the absence of the divine word mediated through moses is accompanied by
00:25:10.320 orgaistic hedonistic celebration because moses returns to find the israelites not only
00:25:18.320 worshipping an idol which is the idol of materialistic wealth but also dancing 0.79
00:25:25.480 drunkenly naked in a manner that makes them the laughingstock of their enemies
00:25:31.980 and if you can't see the relevance of that situation to the current state of
00:25:39.480 the west then you're part of the problem and not part of the solution
00:25:44.140 so moses is enraged as a consequence of the faithlessness of his people now you have to
00:25:57.340 understand too that the israelites conspire with aaron to bring about this state of worship and
00:26:03.920 that what that means is that the political voice unmoored from its concordance with the
00:26:13.720 divine will serve as the handmaid of the materialist hedonist materialistic hedonism
00:26:21.620 of the masses right that's the danger of an unbridled populism right it's consensus to the
00:26:29.040 whim unmoored by respect for tradition and upward aim and it's it's also the invitation to tyranny
00:26:37.560 because just as the slavish israelites attempted to transform moses into the pharaoh being unwilling 0.56
00:26:49.300 as they were to bear the responsibility for their own life so the hedonistic materialists of the
00:26:55.400 golden calf worship look to aaron to become the tyrant that has to regulate everyone if they
00:27:04.720 insist upon acting like impulsive toddlers. Right.
00:27:15.680 Moses is enraged by what's happened and by the faithlessness of his people. And this is
00:27:23.360 also reflective of something that happens politically. So you could imagine that as
00:27:29.040 the mob degenerates into hedonism and materialism the rulers called upon to bear the responsibility
00:27:39.080 that the infantile rabble has abdicated become increasingly contemptuous of them and more and 0.79
00:27:49.520 more likely to tyrannize over them in a manner that is reflective of nothing but the power that's 0.97
00:27:55.820 granted to them by the abdication of responsibility and so there's a vicious spiral right as the
00:28:03.180 populist degenerates into short-term immature materialist hedonism and the rulers gather up
00:28:10.940 all the responsibility and use it as power they become simultaneously contemptuous
00:28:16.620 of the people they're called upon to regulate and treat them worse and worse and that's the spiral
00:28:23.340 between hedonism and tyranny
00:28:24.980 that demolishes the state
00:28:27.740 and produces hell 0.78
00:28:28.840 right always
00:28:30.420 always
00:28:31.720 now too
00:28:33.640 God 0.89
00:28:37.940 Moses demolishes the
00:28:40.640 tablets
00:28:42.620 in a fit of pique
00:28:45.220 and maybe as a manifestation
00:28:47.180 of his proclivity to use excess
00:28:49.360 force which is Moses
00:28:51.220 temptation because
00:28:52.860 the temptation to power is always the temptation of the person who's called to lead.
00:28:58.560 And it's the temptation of power that's actually Moses' Achilles' heel
00:29:02.240 and the eventual reason why he's forbidden to enter the Promised Land.
00:29:08.640 There's another meaning of the dashing of the tablets.
00:29:12.680 It's the demolition of the divine presence.
00:29:16.780 And what that means is that as individuals and societies degenerate,
00:29:22.860 into an immature and infantile power mad materialistic hedonism their ability to attend
00:29:32.100 to the divine voice of adventure and truth that calls them force calls them forth and
00:29:40.800 the willingness and capacity to attend to the dictates of their own conscience
00:29:46.080 becomes muddied and unclear in the gospels christ tells those who search for the sins of others to
00:29:54.960 take the beam out of their own eye the log before searching for the dust mode in the eye of their
00:30:00.740 neighbor and it's a reflection of the same idea that as you practice what is immature and narrowly
00:30:08.380 self-serving, instead of aiming upward and sacrificing responsibly, your ability to maintain
00:30:15.920 contact with the divine instinct that moves you properly forward is damaged and possibly beyond
00:30:24.900 repair. And even in the aftermath of your foolishness, if you repent and atone, it's not
00:30:32.020 necessarily the case that you'll be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together. And what happens in
00:30:38.600 the Exodus story is that the Israelites get a second set of commandments, but this time they're
00:30:44.540 written by man and not God. And that's an indication of the fact, twofold fact, that God
00:30:50.480 has decided to recede into the distance as a consequence of the faithlessness and sin of the 0.82
00:30:56.480 israelites and a consequence of the fact that the secondary covenant that's thereby generated by 0.85
00:31:03.440 even moses the prophet of god is of secondary value compared to the genuine voice of adventure
00:31:12.200 and calling and conscience that speaks to everyone from within that would guide them properly
00:31:17.680 even in the absence of law if they refuse to pervert their own vision right
00:31:23.980 god tells the israelites at the same time well first of all he threatens to destroy them which
00:31:34.580 he does quite with some stunning regularity and that's a characteristic of the old testament god 0.58
00:31:41.640 that makes the atheist materialists of the modern age into prideful critics of the spirit of the
00:31:48.800 old testament claiming as they might that no good god would act in such a way and it's an absolute
00:31:55.280 mystery to me that in the aftermath of the bloody and catastrophic 20th century where we saw
00:32:04.420 the dismal descent of states of of massive states like nazi germany and maoist china and soviet
00:32:15.720 socialist
00:32:16.440 Soviet Union 0.61
00:32:19.660 into abysses of 1.00
00:32:21.860 hell that anyone would dare
00:32:23.720 to claim that the wages of sin
00:32:25.780 weren't death because that's exactly
00:32:28.040 what happened there
00:32:29.100 and that's evidence
00:32:30.680 in its purest form
00:32:33.780 that when people abdicate
00:32:35.820 the responsibility for their own
00:32:37.640 self-governance and erect a 0.61
00:32:39.800 tyrant as a replacement for the
00:32:41.760 divine order that would properly guide them 0.97
00:32:43.840 that the necessary and inevitable consequence of that is the opening up of the abyss of hell and
00:32:51.920 everyone's descent into it and that is a reality that threatens continually that's portrayed in
00:33:00.000 the old testament corpus as the inevitable consequences of departure from the straight
00:33:06.980 narrow path and there's nothing about that however terrible that might be that isn't 100
00:33:14.840 percent true it's like walk off the path not only at your peril but at the peril of everyone you
00:33:24.080 love and everything you hold dear right and you people in the united states have remembered that
00:33:30.700 well for some 250 years and god help us all if you forget it
00:33:45.420 moses maintains faith with god and that means that the fate of the israelites themselves is now
00:33:52.700 dependent on the unmarred relationship between one man and the divine pathway forward and that's a
00:34:03.980 terrifying state but there's a psychological truth that's embedded in it as well which is that
00:34:11.980 it's akin to the realization that the pathway forward specified by the christian sacrifice
00:34:20.380 is the hoisting of the cross of ultimate responsibility
00:34:23.640 onto the shoulders of the individuals
00:34:26.520 who are true followers of the spirit of divinity.
00:34:29.600 It's the same idea, and that means everyone, right?
00:34:34.440 Because these stories represent human beings as such.
00:34:39.020 And so the fact that Moses maintains his connection with the divine 0.93
00:34:44.840 even in the presence of the corruption of his people 0.92
00:34:48.600 and that that's sufficient to guide the world properly forward 0.59
00:34:51.960 is a model for the manner in which you're to conduct your life
00:34:55.560 to stand up against tyranny and slavery
00:34:58.660 insofar as you're capable of doing that
00:35:01.220 within the confines of your own life
00:35:03.340 and thereby become the light on the hill
00:35:06.500 that guides other people properly upward
00:35:09.100 right
00:35:10.060 and that's the same
00:35:11.980 that's the same idea
00:35:14.920 as the voluntary acceptance of the responsibility of the distributed responsibility of the state
00:35:22.780 that's the alternative to tyranny and slavery those are the same ideas now
00:35:27.880 as a reward for moses faithfulness god reveals himself even more fully to his prophet and he
00:35:41.100 hides moses in the cleft of a rock and shields him and walks by and allows moses to
00:35:50.780 get a glimpse of his back and the back of something is where it's already been and the
00:35:58.300 idea there is that as moses deepens his relationship with the spirit that calls
00:36:05.420 him forward as leader his ability to apprehend the manifestations of the divine in the workings of
00:36:12.540 the world increases and deepens to the point where it's virtually unbearable but that his intrinsic
00:36:21.340 goodness and willingness to make the sacrifices necessary to transform as a leader protects him
00:36:27.980 against the destruction that would otherwise visit him when exposed to cataclysmically to
00:36:36.380 to the divine fire itself
00:36:41.500 moses sets up the tabernacle which is the the church around which the community is founded on
00:36:47.500 the edge of the israelite encampments because they've departed so badly from their relationship
00:36:54.940 their covenantal relationship with god and he continues his dialogue with the spirit that guides
00:37:02.640 him and in consequence of that and the israelites forthright decision to repent and to return to
00:37:10.780 the proper path god relents and either emerges to lead the israelites again or sends an angel
00:37:18.620 to guide them if it's the angel or god himself it's a worthy replacement for the secondary
00:37:27.600 tablets and it's an indication of the fact that even in the aftermath of egregious error
00:37:35.060 meditation on upward aim and willingness to confess repent and atone can re-establish
00:37:48.460 the relationship between the spirit of adventure calling and conscience that serves as the
00:37:54.400 alternative to subjugation to a tyrant right and this is a good thing to know in your own life
00:38:00.680 because it means that even if you've lost your way and are in the desert wandering blindly and
00:38:05.960 hopelessly and ridden with anxiety and in a contentious and fractious and faithless mood if
00:38:13.760 you make the sacrifices necessary to put yourself back together and approach the problem with
00:38:21.300 sufficient humility and that would be a humility proportionate to the magnitude of your sins
00:38:26.100 unfortunately then you have the the offer for you to reattain the relationship with the even
00:38:35.740 what would you say divine forces of instinct that would otherwise lead you forward properly
00:38:40.840 you have the option of re-establishing that relationship and that's a wonderful thing to
00:38:48.340 understand because it means that even when if and when you wander which is a certainty that 0.75
00:38:56.180 there is still the possibility of return to the straight and narrow path and so the israelites
00:39:03.980 continue their voyage forward
00:39:07.440 onward into the desert.
00:39:17.220 But their bad habits reemerge
00:39:19.520 and
00:39:19.720 despite the fact that they're provided
00:39:27.600 with sufficient sustenance
00:39:30.280 as they move forward.
00:39:32.400 The manna from heaven
00:39:33.500 which is spiritual food and the quails which are
00:39:37.160 which represent food as such in its material form
00:39:42.200 the sustenance of the Israelites being the balance
00:39:45.840 between wisdom and corporal nourishment
00:39:49.360 that are necessary preconditions for life
00:39:51.740 the Israelites are provided with sufficient sustenance
00:39:56.320 spiritually and materially but they begin to
00:40:00.360 they begin to cultivate their own desires
00:40:11.400 they fall prey to the sin of
00:40:13.760 hedonistic gluttony
00:40:15.840 and they start to complain that
00:40:18.080 the sufficiency with which they've been provided
00:40:21.760 was inadequate
00:40:22.960 they come to despise the
00:40:26.760 manna and the quails 0.97
00:40:29.200 and to demand even a return to the tyranny of Egypt
00:40:32.840 so that they can enjoy a more diverse plethora
00:40:38.140 of hedonistically enjoyable pleasure.
00:40:47.240 They cultivate their own desires.
00:40:51.320 They're ungrateful to be provided
00:40:55.240 with what's strictly and appropriately necessary and so they fall prey again to the pull of
00:41:05.000 this immature demand for immediate gratification and the punishment that god brings forward is
00:41:11.560 twofold the first is that he provides them with so many with so much food in the form of quails
00:41:24.760 that it's literally stacked three feet high as far as they can see and coming out of their nostrils
00:41:35.400 and so the consequence of their cultivation of their narcissistic desire is the production of a
00:41:46.120 surfeit that's so overwhelming that it destroys appetite itself that's what
00:41:56.380 we're doing with pornography after the excess plague of the quails comes a
00:42:08.740 genuine plague and the Israelites not only perish in large numbers as a 0.95
00:42:14.820 consequence of their reversion to ingratitude and immaturity hedonistic 0.99
00:42:24.180 gluttony but they also move further into the desert and what's the consequence
00:42:32.460 of that they encounter a drought now Christ describes himself as the living
00:42:51.420 water and the image of the drought in the biblical corpus has a twofold
00:42:57.660 meaning it's this it's the emergent sterility of the environment you
00:43:03.980 remember in the lion king most of you have seen that when scar emerges to rule
00:43:09.100 the landscape parches and all the provision disappears and what that means
00:43:15.420 is that when the state deteriorates the natural resources vanish and the reason
00:43:23.520 for that is there's no such thing as a natural resource there's the provision of what's necessary
00:43:30.280 as a consequence of the establishment of the state that's functional enough to provide everyone
00:43:37.220 within it what's sufficient including water for most of human history it's been impossible for
00:43:46.240 people to get access to clean water because water is not a natural resource if you have a large
00:43:52.160 population it takes a tremendous amount of organization to structure society such that
00:43:58.200 a sufficient degree of technological expertise that's true can be devoted to the problem of
00:44:05.740 the provision of water and so that water can be distributed without corruption without enslavement
00:44:11.680 and without excess cost and you might think that that's a technological issue with the
00:44:17.760 technological solution but it's not it's a moral issue with a moral solution because if the state
00:44:25.220 organizes itself in accordance with the principles that we already described which is the adoption of
00:44:33.720 maximal responsibility by the individuals within the state by their sacrifice of their current
00:44:40.420 whims to the benefit of their future selves and to the community, then the state organizes itself
00:44:48.140 so that even the deserts can bloom. And that's a moral effort and not a technological effort,
00:44:54.100 even though the technological effort can aid the moral effort if the foundation is laid properly,
00:45:00.700 which is what's happened again in your country in the maid. 0.90
00:45:08.760 Now, the Israelites are very upset 0.85
00:45:12.900 because they've gone deeper into the desert 1.00
00:45:15.480 and because they've corrupted their state
00:45:17.520 to the point where they can't determine
00:45:20.160 how to provision themselves with water
00:45:21.980 and so they get whiny and fractious 0.77
00:45:24.820 and complainy and victimy and bitter and miserable 0.89
00:45:27.460 and they go whine to Moses
00:45:30.320 because they always turn to Moses when times are tough
00:45:34.140 and they ask Moses to intercede with God
00:45:37.620 so that the water can flow once again.
00:45:39.900 And so Moses goes and has a chat with God
00:45:42.160 and he intercedes on behalf of the Israelites
00:45:45.160 even though he's not very happy with them.
00:45:47.540 And God says to Moses something very specific.
00:45:53.000 He says,
00:45:53.620 he specifies a location a rocky location in the desert and he tells Moses to go to that location
00:46:04.080 with his people and speak to the rocks and ask them to bring forth water and Moses listens and
00:46:13.300 he tells the Israelites and they follow them follow him to the place of rocks and Moses
00:46:18.860 with Aaron, takes out
00:46:21.240 his staff
00:46:22.380 which is a symbol of his authority
00:46:25.280 and a tool
00:46:27.240 of coercion, force
00:46:29.280 and power
00:46:30.180 and he hits the rocks
00:46:33.080 with his
00:46:33.620 with the rod of tradition
00:46:36.580 thus using
00:46:39.020 force when he's called upon
00:46:40.940 by the divine itself to
00:46:42.540 offer even to the rocks
00:46:44.860 an invitation and not a command
00:46:46.860 and the consequence of that is that the rocks do indeed bring forth water
00:46:53.520 but god tells moses that as a consequence of his disobedience despite the fact that he's led the
00:47:00.900 israelites for his whole life away from tyranny across the red sea and through the desert for
00:47:06.860 40 years that he will die before he enters the promised land and here's the reason if you use 0.76
00:47:13.340 force when you're called upon to use invitation you will corrupt the state and you will fail to
00:47:21.040 lead your people to the promised land and that includes you right and we've seen plenty of that
00:47:28.060 too so it's worse than that because not only does is moses now forbidden to enter the promised land
00:47:38.640 even though he can see it in front of him aaron dies and what that means is that the state itself
00:47:45.680 is in peril when it turns to force when invitation will suffice right all policy based on force is
00:47:53.280 bad policy right it it undermines trust and it's the gateway to tyranny aaron dies worse
00:48:08.640 previous to this
00:48:13.040 in the desert before the episode with the rocks
00:48:20.100 there's a rebellion in the desert
00:48:23.520 and it's led by a man named Korah
00:48:27.400 and the rebellion is extremely interesting 0.72
00:48:30.760 so the Israelites are all fractious and whiny and resentful 0.72
00:48:34.980 and hedonistic and materialistic 0.87
00:48:37.280 and faithless and without courage and cora comes along and he offers them a revolution
00:48:45.720 and this is how he justifies the revolution he tells moses and aaron that what they claim as
00:48:53.000 divine authority is nothing other than their use of arbitrary power right it's exactly the same
00:49:03.580 refrain you hear now. This is exactly the refrain that you hear from your so-called institutions of
00:49:09.580 higher learning that insist that all manifestations of your culture, male ambition, marriage, family,
00:49:20.120 patriarchal community, business, state, and government are nothing but the manifestations
00:49:26.340 of power, and that that power is arbitrary, oppressive, and victimizing, and all of those
00:49:33.920 who don't have, who aren't basking in success, are not failing in consequence of their own
00:49:43.880 unwillingness to make the necessary sacrifices, but virtuous victims of arbitrary power.
00:49:51.520 And that's what Torah tells the Israelites.
00:49:53.880 now the thing is is his accusation is justified to some degree because the primary temptation 0.76
00:50:01.000 of moses is the use of force right early in his life when he sees one of his hebrew brothers when
00:50:08.700 he's an adolescent in egypt slayed or beaten by an egyptian aristocrat he kills the egyptian
00:50:16.000 that's why he has to flee from egypt moses has a proclivity to use force and this is the eternal
00:50:22.580 temptation of the leader. And so
00:50:24.680 when Korah emerges to 0.95
00:50:26.640 tell the fractious Israelites that 0.99
00:50:28.600 the reason their followers
00:50:31.000 in Moses is a leader is because
00:50:32.780 he's the oppressive
00:50:35.000 oppressive
00:50:36.160 tyrant of power
00:50:37.980 there's a
00:50:39.880 element of truth in the accusation
00:50:42.780 that's sufficient to give it credibility.
00:50:45.600 And that's another indication
00:50:46.760 of the terrible sin 0.59
00:50:48.660 that Moses makes
00:50:50.780 manifest when he misuses his authority because he has this power granted to him not by power but by
00:51:00.520 his alliance with the underlying structure of the moral world itself and when he uses force when it's
00:51:09.260 not required he validates the revolutionary tendencies of the usurpers and puts the state 0.74
00:51:16.140 in danger now the counter position to the notion that moses is nothing but a wielder of power
00:51:23.800 an objection to which he uh an accusation to which he objects i've never taken anything for my
00:51:31.020 services is the counter proposition that it's of unbelievable convenience to those who fail to make
00:51:41.280 the proper sacrifices, like Cain, who become bitter and resentful in consequence of their
00:51:48.560 inevitable failure, who degenerate into a homicidal vengefulness as a consequence of
00:51:55.260 their misery, and who strive to destroy the notion of success itself, it enables those,
00:52:04.540 that spirit
00:52:06.600 to
00:52:08.060 take possession of people
00:52:10.420 while they simultaneously make the claim
00:52:12.860 that
00:52:13.220 everything they do as
00:52:16.720 oppressed victims is moral. 0.98
00:52:19.760 That demolishes
00:52:20.780 the notion of success itself
00:52:22.800 and constitutes
00:52:25.040 one eternal threat
00:52:26.880 to the integrity of the functional state.
00:52:29.740 And that's what's happening
00:52:31.040 now too.
00:52:34.540 Moses is replaced
00:52:37.600 Moses and Aaron
00:52:40.040 are replaced by Caleb and Joshua
00:52:41.960 and Caleb
00:52:44.100 means loyal follower
00:52:45.880 and dog and Joshua
00:52:47.540 is the same name as Jesus
00:52:49.900 and Joshua means
00:52:52.040 acting in the
00:52:55.920 salvific spirit of God
00:52:57.960 the Old Testament stories are attempting
00:53:02.080 at this point to
00:53:03.200 formulate a conceptualization
00:53:05.840 of the leader
00:53:07.400 whose nature surpasses even
00:53:09.440 Moses. And the
00:53:11.440 initial foray into that conceptualization
00:53:14.040 is the
00:53:14.720 hypothesis that the
00:53:17.440 joint combination of Joshua
00:53:19.580 and Caleb is the appropriate
00:53:21.700 replacement for Moses and Aaron.
00:53:23.620 Now, Joshua and Caleb
00:53:25.320 were given a task
00:53:27.660 as scouts by
00:53:29.420 Moses when he was on the
00:53:31.720 Brink of the promised land he said scouts out into Canaan which is the promised land already inhabited to
00:53:40.400 Scope out the territory and to report and the scouts come back and they divide themselves into two camps
00:53:47.800 One camp is allied with Joshua and Caleb and the other camp is
00:53:52.600 Allied with the faithless scouts and the faithless scouts report of the future that it's a land
00:53:58.860 and inhabited by giants who cannot be defeated,
00:54:02.160 and that the best pathway forward for the Israelites
00:54:04.720 is to turn back in terror and flee.
00:54:08.100 And that's what you're being told about your future.
00:54:11.720 Right.
00:54:12.780 And there's no doubt,
00:54:15.660 there's no doubt that the state of your future 1.00
00:54:18.600 is already inhabited by the pathologized descendants of Canaan, 1.00
00:54:24.200 because that's always the case.
00:54:25.600 But the insistence in the Old Testament stories is that you are required to maintain faith in the ability of the human spirit to prevail even in the face of the worst possible obstacles if it is guided by the spirit that's capable of standing up against tyranny and freeing the slaves.
00:54:47.660 And that's what Joshua and Caleb report.
00:54:50.860 And so they observe the future and they tell the Israelites that with faith and goodwill,
00:54:58.520 with the proper sacrifices and upward aim,
00:55:01.220 that the chosen people of God can move into the future with courage and faith
00:55:06.440 and make of it the place of the land of milk and honey and the place of life more abundant.
00:55:12.860 and that's how we're called upon to conceptualize the future as a function of our courageous faith
00:55:21.000 right and that's what joshua and caleb do and they're allowed to cross the river jordan and
00:55:28.420 to lead the israelites into the promised land and that's a description of the attitude that's the
00:55:35.460 opposite of cynicism but is not naivety that you're called upon to make manifest in relationship
00:55:41.960 to the future and as you can tell the faithless scouts who tell the israelites to free in terror 0.84
00:55:49.820 fail to enter the promised land and invite them to return to tyranny which is exactly the offer
00:55:57.040 that's on the table to you at the moment right right the future is nothing but climate apocalypse
00:56:03.940 right give us all the power right that's not how the people of this generation will enter the
00:56:10.900 promised land right
00:56:13.140 caleb is faithful and loyal his his name means faithfulness and loyalty it also means
00:56:29.760 it means dog and the dog that caleb embodies is loyalty faithfulness and optimistic voyaging
00:56:40.460 forward and joshua is the type of christ that leads forever towards the heavenly jerusalem
00:56:50.300 that's how the story lays itself out and then it does something stunningly remarkable in its
00:56:55.900 further investigation of the characterization of the spirit that must make itself manifest
00:57:01.900 for the promised land to to be occupied the israelites become even more fractious and 0.88
00:57:13.260 immature and whiny and contemptible than they ever have been right on the very cusp of their movement 0.94
00:57:20.780 to the place that's been promised to them and god is at his wit's end and decides in a fit of 0.99
00:57:31.900 just retribution to take the annoying miserable victimy whiny complainy faithless immature 0.98
00:57:42.600 israelites who are already having a pretty miserable time of it in their self-imposed 0.99
00:57:49.420 terror and cowardice and he visits a plague of poisonous snakes upon them and you might say 1.00
00:57:59.340 well why would a good god do that and the answer is there is no situation so dire that some stupid 1.00
00:58:05.700 son of a bitch can't make it worse right and i mean that and that's why hell is a bottomless pit 1.00
00:58:12.600 and even if your material circumstances are dire you can be absolutely sure that your reversion to 1.00
00:58:19.380 a faithless hedonistic power mad immaturity will do nothing but open up a new pit of hell underneath
00:58:26.800 the hell that you're already occupying and that you can continue that far you can continue that
00:58:33.680 in a manner that literally has no end right which is why hell is a bottomless pit and so 0.95
00:58:42.320 that's what happens is the israelites fall apart and more misery makes itself manifest 1.00
00:58:48.880 and so the snakes bite them a lot which is exactly what they deserve and they eventually get to the 1.00
00:58:58.340 point where instead of conducting themselves so that even more snakes appear which is what the
00:59:04.800 Pharaoh did by the way when he was called upon to repent they decide that they've had enough
00:59:10.160 yet again they call themselves to order and they go to Moses and they say to him we know you have
00:59:16.980 pipeline to the divine do you think you could find it in your heart to have a chat with god
00:59:21.620 and get him to call off the snakes and moses says i'll see what i can do and so he has a chat with
00:59:31.220 god and god says something extraordinarily strange he says he doesn't say all right i'm pretty sick
00:59:38.980 of these people but they put themselves together yet again and i kind of like you so you know
00:59:43.780 i'll call off the snakes which is the most straightforward way out of the conundrum
00:59:48.340 and also something akin to what's happened previously when god and the israelites are
00:59:53.300 having a scrap but that isn't what happens and it's partly because the story is now setting the
00:59:58.900 pathway for the adoption of a new mode of being in the promised land the mode of being that's
01:00:05.220 characterized by the emergence of joshua as the new leader god says to moses take your brazen 0.77
01:00:13.060 your bronze items take the bronze items of your people and cast a staff and put a serpent on it
01:00:22.980 and plant it in the ground
01:00:26.900 so that all the israelites can see it so this is a a substantial sculpture so that all the
01:00:34.900 israelites can see it and if they come and gaze upon it they will be immune to the poison of the
01:00:41.220 the serpents okay what does that mean the first thing it means is the same thing that the symbol
01:00:49.560 of the physician has meant for 3 000 years right because the symbol of the physician is a staff
01:00:56.480 with a serpent wrapped around it and that's the asclepius symbol of healing and it's a
01:01:04.260 representation of the snake and tree motif that's also characteristic of moses staff
01:01:11.620 because in the story of moses when he encounters the magicians of the egyptian court
01:01:18.260 moses throws his staff upon the ground that's tradition it transforms itself into chaos that's
01:01:26.700 the serpent and moses is the master of order in chaos and the egyptian magicians duplicate the
01:01:35.340 feet throwing their staffs to the ground turning them into serpents and the serpent from moses
01:01:41.180 staff eats all the serpents of the egyptian magicians which indicates that the real thing
01:01:47.740 is more than the real thing is more than the match for the propagandistic magic of the corrupt court
01:01:55.340 right all that's all that's echoed in the image of the serpent on the staff
01:02:04.720 there's an idea associated with healing that comes from the Greeks
01:02:10.580 embodied in the word pharmakon which is the source of the word pharmacy and
01:02:15.700 pharmakon means poison and cure and what it means is a little bit of what poisons
01:02:21.620 you cures you and what that means is that you'll grow and develop in proportion to your ability
01:02:28.980 to face the things that terrify you right and that's what moses calls upon his people to do
01:02:38.820 inspired by the word of god not to become the inhabitants of a
01:02:43.220 of a landscape devoid of threat
01:02:49.060 and safe like infants are safe in the home
01:02:52.720 but to become masters of even what's poisonous
01:02:56.880 so that they can be immune to what
01:02:59.560 to the worst things that can possibly be thrown at them
01:03:03.200 which is what you do when you encourage your children
01:03:06.620 to develop like they should develop
01:03:08.520 right?
01:03:09.660 competence, not safety
01:03:11.380 that's what encouragement means and that's what happens symbolically when god calls upon the
01:03:18.840 israelites to face what terrifies them so they can become immune to the poison even of their own sins
01:03:26.540 right all right we'll we'll cap that off
01:03:32.580 that's a development of the theme of joshua who bears the same name as christ
01:03:39.980 Now, thousands of years later, Christ himself says something exceptionally mysterious and virtually incomprehensible
01:03:51.100 that relates back to the brazen serpent, to the idea of the pharmakon,
01:03:56.560 to the notion that a little bit of poison redeems you if it's administered voluntarily.
01:04:04.040 he says unless i'd be lifted up
01:04:08.580 unless i'd be unless i'd be lifted up like the serpent in the desert
01:04:14.540 no man can be redeemed now that's a unbelievably strange thing for anyone to say
01:04:23.880 first of all the notion that christ would associate himself with a crucified serpent
01:04:31.500 is strange enough in itself but the illusion itself is very difficult to comprehend
01:04:38.680 unless you understand it in which case it becomes deep beyond comprehension in a manner that's
01:04:47.260 as close to miraculous as anything i've ever seen in print what does it mean
01:04:53.100 one of the oldest stories we have is the story of the encounter with the dragon
01:05:02.440 mesopotamian creation myth
01:05:04.720 talks about creation as the encounter with the serpent of chaos the the story of saint george
01:05:13.680 is the story of the man who confronts the dragon that threatens the state and frees
01:05:19.760 the treasure that the dragon guards what's the theme confront what is terrifying and find what
01:05:28.220 is redeeming that's the story of human development that's the story of the movement up jacob's ladder
01:05:35.080 that's the story of the ascent to the city on the hill that's the story of taking your life
01:05:41.060 out from under into the bushel that hides it and revealing it to the world that's the story of
01:05:46.000 courage and adventure and truth it's the redemptive story why does christ assimilate himself to the 0.57
01:05:53.640 serpent the israelites are called upon to look forthrightly and voluntarily at that which poisons 0.73
01:06:01.140 them christ's life is a hydra of serpents why because it's an archetypal tragedy what does
01:06:16.000 that mean it's a distillation of catastrophe itself imagine that you had a hundred people
01:06:22.720 tell you the worst thing that had ever happened to them in their life and then you gathered all
01:06:27.920 those terrible things, which is what occurs, for example, in the story of Job. You gathered
01:06:34.480 all those terrible things and you visited that fate on one person. That would be the
01:06:41.380 archetypal tragedy. What's the archetypal tragedy? What's a tragedy? A terrible thing
01:06:46.060 befalls someone. What if he's a criminal? Well, then it's not so tragic. Maybe then
01:06:52.660 it's justice. A terrible thing befalls someone innocent. The worst set of possible things
01:06:59.220 befalls the person who is most innocent. The archetypal tragedy. What's the worst thing?
01:07:10.180 Death. No. Pain and death. No. Prolonged pain and death at the hands of a tyrant. No. Prolonged
01:07:18.820 pain and death young at the hands of a tyrant delivered by the mob betrayed by your friends
01:07:27.260 in the presence of your mother accompanied by the betrayal of your acolytes
01:07:34.400 well occupied by an imperial force despite doing nothing but working for the good
01:07:42.800 and simultaneously be known for doing so
01:07:47.320 even by those that persecute you.
01:07:50.680 Right.
01:07:52.340 Face that.
01:07:57.740 The transformation of the story of the brazen serpent 0.92
01:08:02.300 into the meta-tragedy of Christianity
01:08:06.760 is the insistence that redemption is to be found
01:08:11.520 by confronting the sum total of all that's terrifying the story of christ is a meta tragedy
01:08:20.140 and it doesn't end with death because painful and undeserved death at the hands of a treacherous mob
01:08:29.440 is not the worst thing that can happen to you the worst thing that can happen to you is that
01:08:35.380 plus a full-fledged encounter with the forces of malevolence itself that happens to christ when he
01:08:42.760 encounters satan in the desert after the holy spirit descends upon him and it happens when he
01:08:48.280 harrows hell after his death and so the calling of christianity which is the crucifix at the center of
01:08:56.040 the community is the calling to the followers of the divine to confront not only everything that
01:09:03.400 terrifies them about life but the deepest and most abysmal spirit of evil itself in the belief
01:09:11.420 that that courageous confrontation will invigorate and defend and make the forthright and courageous
01:09:22.080 and open-eyed disciple immune from the poison of the serpent right and that's
01:09:32.680 the story and the principle upon which the free states of the West are
01:09:37.260 predicated right
01:09:41.080 And that's the story of the last third of Exodus.
01:09:51.900 Thank you very much.
01:10:11.080 Thank you, everyone.
01:10:27.920 All right, my dear.
01:10:41.080 Hello there.
01:10:49.160 That was awesome.
01:10:51.180 Oh, thank you, dear.
01:10:52.340 That was awesome.
01:10:53.200 Yeah, thank you.
01:10:54.180 Yeah, that was a new story.
01:10:57.280 Yes, well, thank you all for listening to that.
01:11:00.440 I'm sorry to inflict it on you.
01:11:07.000 Mmm.
01:11:11.080 it's a crazy story eh yeah god i think the reason that the meaning of those stories is
01:11:31.480 is so stark and clear now is because the patterns that the biblical stories refer to
01:11:40.580 have always been present, right? They're the patterns of life.
01:11:47.140 But things are happening so fast now that you can see it unfolding, right? As the rate of
01:11:54.460 transformation in our culture accelerates, the patterns are dancing. Patterns that might have
01:12:00.220 taken centuries to move are now dancing within weeks and you can see the realm of the spirits
01:12:05.700 re-emerge that's really the case and it's a terrifying thing
01:12:10.720 so hang on to your hats people and get your houses in order right
01:12:19.420 question number one dr peterson in what way does love expand consciousness
01:12:28.540 well you become what you aim at
01:12:45.840 so that's why
01:12:48.240 you're called upon
01:12:49.160 in the foundational stories
01:12:52.000 of the west to
01:12:53.960 turn your attention
01:12:56.080 to turn your eyes upward
01:12:57.660 to the highest that you can imagine.
01:13:03.900 Because in the effort to align yourself with that highest goal,
01:13:11.000 you'll transform yourself into the carrier of that spirit.
01:13:17.240 And you'll become your deepest self.
01:13:20.900 The promise in Genesis 1 is that human beings are made in the image of God,
01:13:24.800 But we obscure that reflection with our presumption and pride.
01:13:37.220 The great commandment that underlies the Ten Commandments is that you are to love the God that is one with all your heart and all your soul.
01:13:47.780 and to conceptualize and attend to
01:13:53.920 and act in relationship to others
01:13:57.020 as if they were you.
01:13:59.840 A vertical orientation and a horizontal orientation.
01:14:05.000 That's the spirit of love
01:14:07.660 and love is the desire that all things flourish.
01:14:11.300 And so you want to allow the spirit
01:14:13.740 that has that aim to possess you
01:14:16.440 and that's the goal of religious practice is to invite that spirit to possess you
01:14:21.420 now what does that mean well imagine that you decided to
01:14:26.200 practice devoutly the love that it that led you to your marriage
01:14:38.060 we know that people are enticed into partnership as a consequence of love we know that the
01:14:47.960 foundation of our relationship with our children and our parents is love we know that in the first
01:14:54.760 throes of a romantic relationship that love is offered as a gift but you might imagine that
01:15:01.340 it's incumbent upon you to make the fostering and nurturance of that love
01:15:07.100 religious duty and that if you practice that it would your ability to inhabit that realm would
01:15:15.860 expand now what would that mean it would mean that you would remember when you were interacting
01:15:22.700 with your wife or your children or your parents that you would remember that you loved them
01:15:28.480 and you would remember what that implied and what it would imply is that you would interact
01:15:33.900 with them in a manner that would be best for them insofar as you were capable of that
01:15:38.040 insofar as that was commensurate with your understanding but that that would be your aim
01:15:42.800 and if that was your aim you would see the world in accordance with that aim and your deviation
01:15:49.740 from that aim
01:15:51.820 would
01:15:52.640 make its appearance to you
01:15:55.800 as error, as error
01:15:58.000 that you could correct
01:15:59.040 or as
01:16:01.260 desired response
01:16:04.020 from the target of your love.
01:16:06.940 And you could
01:16:07.980 learn from
01:16:08.740 that error
01:16:10.900 perceived in relationship to your aim
01:16:13.500 how to rectify
01:16:16.000 your attention
01:16:17.980 and action so that the spirit of love was ever more present and that would be a consequence
01:16:25.300 of you gathering information that is offered to you in consequence of your aim but that's
01:16:33.580 not all you become what you practice imagine that a challenge emerges and that there's
01:16:43.340 two ways you can respond to it. One is resentfully and with the mien of a victim, as if the challenge
01:16:50.960 has been arbitrarily imposed on you by an unjust tyrant. Alternatively, you could face
01:16:57.360 that challenge with faith and hope, like Caleb and Joshua, and you could construe it as the
01:17:04.680 dragon that guards it as of yet unrevealed treasure and you could embody the spirit of
01:17:13.560 saint george and move forward in strength to grapple with the challenge what happens if you
01:17:23.320 do that everything changes psychophysiological analysis of stress response indicates that
01:17:34.680 The difference in those two patterns of response
01:17:38.480 is so profound
01:17:40.540 that it makes itself manifest in
01:17:43.480 neurological activity,
01:17:48.300 psychophysiological patterning,
01:17:51.120 muscular movement,
01:17:53.420 blood flow,
01:17:55.100 hormonal preparation,
01:17:59.440 and cellular transformation
01:18:01.760 all the way down to the genetic level.
01:18:04.680 when you approach a new situation in a given spirit
01:18:10.740 the spirit in which you approach the situation manifests itself as a physiological pattern
01:18:19.640 and that transforms the way genes themselves code for proteins if you practice love you
01:18:29.340 change yourself physiologically all the way down to the molecular level and you free
01:18:37.780 you release from the domain of implicit physiological potential
01:18:45.980 the you that would be what it could be if it was the purest possible manifestation of love
01:18:54.880 right that's possible
01:18:57.240 you and you know that you see the people around you and you you die for this you see the people
01:19:11.120 around you clearly at their best clearly at their best when they're motivated by love and if you're
01:19:18.480 spiteful and resentful and bitter and miserable and you're shaking your fist at god the sight of
01:19:24.120 that love might burn you to the core and further embitter you but you know in your deepest heart
01:19:29.600 of hearts that if you could live anywhere that's where you would live and so the religious call is
01:19:36.040 a call to live like that and it isn't a call to believe in that it's a call to do that because
01:19:42.400 that's the deepest form of belief and to practice it what's the purpose what's the purpose of prayer
01:19:51.620 god grant me the wisdom to have the humility to transform myself into the man who could
01:20:01.540 properly love his wife and children that's a prayer that will be answered
01:20:05.980 how does one find a connection to God
01:20:19.480 without following an organized religion
01:20:22.100 I desire relationship to God
01:20:25.020 but I am unconvinced by organized religions 0.99
01:20:29.280 well i'll say something rude to begin with if you're capable of finding the path to god by
01:20:46.580 yourself why don't you go to church and help the lost church i mean because because that's the
01:20:57.580 claim, that's the, that's the claim you're making. You're saying you, you are sufficient unto
01:21:03.980 yourself to find the divine pathway forward. If that's true, then why not revitalize the
01:21:10.060 institutions while you're at it? And if you can't do that, then maybe your first presumption was
01:21:14.720 wrong. And maybe you should go to, maybe you could go to the church that's composed of people no
01:21:21.380 worse than you, and you could participate with them in aiming up, and you could
01:21:26.220 rectify the errors of the community and your own errors in relationship to what's
01:21:31.460 highest simultaneously. Right.
01:21:35.740 I would also say that the end point of the presumption that you alone can find the divine
01:21:53.780 path is no difference from the insistence of the postmodernists that what they feel
01:22:01.180 is the final definition of reality those are the same thing right
01:22:06.200 i i don't want to get too like high and mighty about that you know because
01:22:14.320 it's certainly the same thing i thought when i left the church when i was
01:22:19.260 a teenager and it's the same thing that so many people who've left the organized stream of religion
01:22:25.700 think it's understandable and it's built into our rebellious enlightenment demented protestant
01:22:36.700 luciferian culture and so the fact and i'm not singling out the protestants it's a it's a deviant
01:22:44.740 stream of what would heretical protestantism that's a way of thinking about it right the
01:22:51.300 notion that we can define ourselves we have to step forward communally so it's incumbent upon
01:22:58.880 you to participate in the process of communal organization because that's part of the manner
01:23:04.380 in which you approach the divine it's not a solitary pursuit you can't buddha knew that
01:23:10.620 buddha was offered the opportunity to enter the realm of the gods and to remain in nirvana and he
01:23:18.460 abandoned that offer which was genuine and hard-earned because he determined that he would
01:23:25.400 not step into paradise unless he could take everyone with him right and maybe that's because
01:23:32.980 there is no paradise for you alone right how could that be paradise an eternity of you alone
01:23:39.540 that sounds a lot like hell
01:23:41.720 What has been your biggest hurdle in bridging the theology-science-cultural gap?
01:24:08.720 Pride and lies.
01:24:11.720 the pride pride in relationship to the first question let's say because i thought
01:24:22.020 when i was 13 and perplexed about the apparent paradoxical relationship between evolutionary
01:24:29.940 theories and biblical accounts of creation that i knew enough to dispense with the entire religious
01:24:37.320 tradition of the western world well what's that pride obviously what kind of pride the pride of
01:24:46.440 the luciferian intellect like 100 that and i i escaped from that to the degree that i have escaped
01:24:59.640 Because I came to understand, first, that I knew nothing.
01:25:05.060 And second, that I truly knew nothing about evil itself.
01:25:10.480 Even though I became unshakably convinced of its existence.
01:25:17.020 And it was my investigation into the structure of hell
01:25:23.560 that eradicated my luciferian pride i came to understand when i was about 23 that
01:25:37.740 virtually everything i said was a performance and a lie 95 of it and i understood that
01:25:53.560 as a consequence of my developing understanding of the misapprehensions that led to
01:25:59.560 the development of totalitarian states i was very curious about the relationship between
01:26:06.160 individual misconduct of the sort that enabled people to remain silent when atrocities were being
01:26:13.360 committed of the sort that allowed people to luxuriate in the opportunity to exact their
01:26:19.760 sadistic revenge and my own
01:26:23.160 pride and presumption. And I
01:26:27.700 aimed at eradicating
01:26:32.040 that. And the consequence of that was
01:26:35.860 the dawning of my understanding that I was an actor
01:26:40.060 and a fraud. That I said
01:26:44.080 most of what I said to win arguments, to
01:26:47.900 instrumentally manipulate, to be the smartest person in the room, to ensure that my intellect
01:26:54.800 was celebrated, and to delight in the victory I obtained over others. And I learned that
01:27:05.540 speaking words oriented by that aim made me weak, contemptible, desperate, and dangerous.
01:27:16.280 And that on those few occasions when I strived instead to say instead only what I believed to be true,
01:27:25.740 that the ground under my feet came back together and that I was thereby climbing uphill.
01:27:34.540 and I learned to watch my words
01:27:41.640 and burn off 95% of what was encumbering me.
01:27:50.660 Right, so that was the obstacle, you might say.
01:27:54.960 Yeah, what was the obstacle?
01:27:56.720 95% of who I was, that was the obstacle.
01:28:00.340 look when god throws adam and eve out of paradise for the sin of pride and presumption
01:28:09.620 he bars the gates with a sword that is on fire that turns every which way
01:28:17.680 a sword that turns every which way is one that you cannot avoid
01:28:22.500 it burns and it cuts and what does it burn away and cut everything that isn't fit to be in paradise
01:28:29.860 it's highly probable that that's a lot of you and so you might say that
01:28:38.140 a vision of god is
01:28:41.160 equivalent to a trial by fire the trial by fire of hell in direct proportion
01:28:51.160 to the magnitude of your sins yeah well there's an impediment for you
01:28:57.340 when abraham proceeds on his voyage uphill animated by the spirit of adventure
01:29:12.800 he's called upon to make sacrifices in sequence commensurate with the expanding field of
01:29:20.800 opportunity that reveals itself in front of him until he transforms himself so completely
01:29:28.800 by his willingness to undertake even the ultimate sacrifice that he's awarded a new name
01:29:36.000 right that's equivalent to a death and rebirth and to movement toward the
01:29:44.720 establishment of an earthly paradise but it requires a
01:29:49.680 a secession of sacrifice that culminates in the sacrifice of everything
01:29:55.860 and the transformation of identity that's so complete that it's as if
01:30:00.480 you become born anew which is what happens to abraham and jacob right and christ when baptized
01:30:09.620 yeah and all those who are visited and then abide by the call of the holy spirit
01:30:15.940 terrible right that's the terrible swift sword yeah that's why when christ comes back at the
01:30:25.440 end of time or why the spirit that makes itself manifest when the end times reveal themselves
01:30:33.020 christ comes back with a sword in his mouth and he separates the sheep from the goats
01:30:39.060 and there's a lot more goats than sheep and that's a psychological warning and a sociological warning
01:30:48.760 and it's a terrifying vision into the under structure of reality itself
01:30:54.780 cain is doomed because he doesn't offer his best that means that insofar as you haven't offered your
01:31:04.140 best. All that is within you that has not been the offering of the best is dood. That's a terrible
01:31:17.000 thing to know. But it's the sort of thing that can scare you straight. And it's wisdom that says
01:31:24.380 the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. So aim up because there's no better place to aim.
01:31:32.840 but it's also aim up, or else. Right. Really.
01:31:46.160 And on those happy notes, thank you very much, everybody.
01:31:52.660 Thank you.
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