The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - What To Do When You've Lost Your Way

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00:00:30.000 Hi, everybody. I hope you find this week's lecture interesting, compelling, and useful.

00:00:36.080 I've also written and posted a diatribe against the climate change apocalypse mongers,

00:00:44.280 outlining the true ecological significance of industrial carbon dioxide production.

00:00:49.260 It's not what you think. It's certainly not what you've been told.

00:00:53.420 Anyways, check it out if you're interested.

00:00:55.860 I think it's one of the better journalism pieces that I've written.

00:01:00.000 i have been writing a bit lately so i think that's a good thing i hope you agree note the essay

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00:01:15.560 you'll get notified of these essays early you can do that at jordanbpeterson.com on with the show

00:01:30.000 Thank you all.

00:02:00.000 So I want to talk to you tonight about

00:02:04.160 the last part of

00:02:08.640 the story of Moses

00:02:12.200 and the Israelites

00:02:14.180 after the commandments. 0.59

00:02:19.860 And I want to do that

00:02:22.480 because

00:02:22.900 the story of Moses

00:02:29.100 of the Israelites is an archetypal

00:02:31.540 story and

00:02:32.480 what that means is

00:02:35.300 that it's a story that has been

00:02:37.220 stripped

00:02:39.440 to its essence

00:02:40.580 the essence

00:02:43.540 of the story is a story

00:02:45.260 that is always

00:02:47.180 happening

00:02:47.740 that's how it's true it's true in that

00:02:51.260 it happened and it

00:02:52.520 it's always happening and it will continue

00:02:55.380 to happen

00:02:55.880 and that's a very interesting form of truth that's the the truth of the eternal narrative

00:03:02.620 it's the truth of the story of of the individual and and and man and god

00:03:09.920 always and forever that's a good way of thinking about it

00:03:14.360 now there's a particular reason that moses gets the commandments

00:03:22.820 and this is perhaps how they should be most deeply understood after the israelites

00:03:32.740 are led away from tyranny and across the the chaos of the red sea

00:03:42.520 they enter the desert where they wander for three generations 40 years

00:03:52.260 and it's not that long a trip

00:03:55.260 not geographically

00:03:58.560 but the duration of their

00:04:00.840 wanderings indicate that

00:04:03.100 the eternal truth

00:04:05.320 that if you're lost

00:04:07.060 it can take you forever

00:04:08.960 to get to where you're headed

00:04:10.160 right

00:04:11.700 it reflects also the fact that

00:04:14.740 the fact of their sojourn in the desert

00:04:16.800 also reflects something that's very much

00:04:18.900 worth knowing

00:04:19.540 it's a crucial

00:04:21.320 realization in relationship to individual and social psychology

00:04:29.040 we all face the threat of tyranny

00:04:35.560 that's why the story of moses is a universal and eternal eternally true story

00:04:44.440 every person has to contend with the reality of tyranny and slavery so for example

00:04:51.300 you might be the slave of your habits or the slave of your presumptions or the slave of your pride

00:04:58.440 or the slave of your appetites those are all forces that tyrannize over you but that you enable with 0.82

00:05:08.040 your slavish habits that's a good way of thinking about it you might be a tyrant in your marriage 0.82

00:05:13.240 You might be a tyrant in your workplace. 0.99

00:05:17.160 You might be a tyrant in your utterances on X. 0.94

00:05:24.620 You might be a tyrant to your children.

00:05:29.320 You might live under a political tyranny. 0.94

00:05:35.200 And you have to contend with the fact of your own proclivity to slavish conduct. 0.94

00:05:43.240 And so, the landscape of tyranny and slavery is the landscape that everyone, by necessity, traverses. 0.52

00:05:53.600 And the genuine leader, which is what Moses is, is the man who learns to stand up against the forces of tyranny

00:06:02.860 and who forever leads those who are enslaved away from the tyrant, across the sea of chaos,

00:06:10.880 into the desert and toward the promised land and the reason for that is is that

00:06:15.980 we're always moving to some destination that we desire that's the journey of

00:06:22.820 life is to move from the state or condition that we presently occupy to

00:06:29.060 the next highest mountaintop and then after that to the mountaintop above that

00:06:34.100 and then past that to the mountaintop past that and so on until the journey

00:06:39.980 comes to an end and then you might ask as well why do you cross the red sea

00:06:49.340 before you enter the desert after freeing yourself from tyranny and the answer is 0.95

00:06:56.380 well when you're under the thumb of a tyrant you're dependent and infantile and slavish 0.74

00:07:03.580 and possessed of a false certainty but when you abandon that or move beyond it

00:07:11.620 and that all falls apart you don't instantaneously find yourself with the habits of a free and

00:07:20.220 responsible person you find yourself in the chaos that's the inevitable bloody aftermath

00:07:26.660 of the collapse of a tyranny, and then in a period of chaos and confusion

00:07:32.740 that can last for decades or lifetimes in the aftermath of that.

00:07:38.600 And if you want to know why people are willing to be the slaves

00:07:43.640 even of their own tyranny, one answer to that is that

00:07:47.600 they're very loath to experience the Red Sea chaos

00:07:52.720 and the sojourn in the desert lost that's the inevitable consequence of moving beyond 0.90

00:07:59.880 even the foolish assumptions of a tyrannical state

00:08:04.780 sometimes before you move from bad to better you move from bad to worse and

00:08:12.700 the fact that you can move from bad to worse before moving to better is one of the things that

00:08:18.080 forever keeps you locked in the kingdom of of what's undesirable it's a great mystery right

00:08:25.380 because it's a very curious thing that it's unlikely that people will stand up against

00:08:31.020 tyranny or reject even in the microcosm of their own life within the confines of their own mind

00:08:38.060 within the strictures of their own marriage if you understand that when you leave tyranny you're

00:08:44.860 lost, then you understand why people are afraid to move forward even beyond that which is not

00:08:51.940 desirable or acceptable to them. And Moses is the person who leads. He's the embodiment of

00:09:00.960 the Spirit that forever leads people away from tyranny, across the Red Sea, and then through the

00:09:07.440 the lost desert now what happens in the desert is that the israelites lose faith and what does

00:09:15.460 that mean well it means that when you're lost it's easy for you to despair to lose the faith

00:09:26.340 in the future that's a necessary precondition of the commitment to move forward even to lose faith

00:09:34.360 in the goodness of not only being but also of transformation itself a cataclysmic loss of faith 0.95

00:09:41.260 and the lost israelites lose faith continually and in consequence and they have the habits of 0.85

00:09:49.660 fractious slaves and because they were slaves for so long they no longer know how to take

00:09:56.120 responsibility for themselves they're not integrated psychologically they're not mature

00:10:01.080 they're immature they're infantile they can't regulate their own behavior they're hedonistic

00:10:06.280 they're desirous of power and they fight amongst themselves because they don't have

00:10:11.640 the experience or the good sense or the wisdom or even the desire to adopt responsibility for

00:10:18.360 regulating their own conduct and that's part of the attraction of the hedonism that makes

00:10:24.680 itself manifest in the story that i'll talk to you about tonight and instead of stepping forward to

00:10:29.960 take responsibility so that they can adjudicate their own conflicts they call upon moses to act

00:10:36.520 as their judge and that's how fractious infantile dependent slaves rekindle tyranny around them

00:10:45.240 and so they ask moses to sit as judge and he's already somewhat contemptuous of them because 0.76

00:10:52.280 they're so faithless and hedonistic and immature and puerile and whiny and impossible to lead and

00:10:58.600 pining for the tyranny and, and, and the irresponsible. And he agrees to sit as judge, 0.82

00:11:06.900 and the Israelites bring their troubles to him from dawn till midnight for a decade. And all he 0.88

00:11:14.540 does is hear their squabbles and adjudicate their disputes, like the father of, of fighting siblings.

00:11:23.860 Imagine your favorite lecture.

00:11:26.560 Dial that up on Macs, put that on steroids,

00:11:29.400 and then add some cinematic elements to it.

00:11:31.740 That's the best way I could describe a Peterson Academy lecture.

00:11:37.160 I went to college because I had to.

00:11:39.120 I'd go to Peterson Academy because I want to.

00:11:41.020 I'm still paying off college from 10 years ago,

00:11:43.140 and I'm also still questioning the value that I got out of college.

00:11:46.240 In traditional universities, a lot of times, it's just pretty dry.

00:11:49.660 They don't bring the same energy as the professors at Peterson Academy.

00:11:54.000 It is a completely different experience to learn from somebody who actually wants to teach you.

00:11:58.300 If you've been on the fence about this, this is the time.

00:12:01.920 That thing that's calling to you, you won't have an answer for it unless you enroll and see for yourself.

00:12:06.420 You have the opportunity to investigate that calling.

00:12:08.800 now you could understand that if you perform that role as perhaps you do

00:12:20.800 in your positions of responsibility as parents and in the broader community that

00:12:26.120 in order to render a judgment that holds you have to abide by the principles of natural justice

00:12:33.700 that's a good way of thinking about it so if i'm sitting as a psychotherapist and i'm speaking to

00:12:39.960 two married individuals who are having a conflict and i'm listening to their complaints in order for

00:12:46.340 me to mediate between them so that they can come together without further tension and and turmoil

00:12:53.540 i have to render a judgment let's say if i'm acting in the role of moses in that situation i

00:13:00.800 to render a judgment that they actually both find not only acceptable but perhaps even desirable,

00:13:07.360 which is a very difficult thing to manage. A judge whose judgment stands isn't someone who

00:13:14.320 forces either party to abide by an arbitrary dictate, but someone who mediates the conflict

00:13:19.920 such that both parties who are disagreeing view the new arrangement as preferable to the previous

00:13:26.400 arrangement and to the conflict and even perhaps if the judgment isn't perfect it will stand if

00:13:32.160 they themselves can't come up with a better solution and so now imagine moses becomes the

00:13:37.120 master of such judgment and he does that for a generation he builds up a tremendous amount of

00:13:45.760 implicit knowledge about the structure of social psychological and social order itself and that

00:13:53.200 sets the stage now his father-in-law jethro comes to him during this time and says something of

00:14:02.160 extraordinary importance for the entire history of western civilization and likely the world he

00:14:07.920 says you can't continue to do this and moses says why not and he says well first of all

00:14:15.520 you're wearing yourself out you're taking responsibility for a hundred a hundred thousand

00:14:21.200 people or more and no one can bear that burden and survive and so it's not good for you and it

00:14:27.600 can't sustain itself and so that's not acceptable it's certainly not ideal and it's not even

00:14:34.500 acceptable and then jethro says but it's worse than that what you're doing because by mediating

00:14:41.960 the israelites disputes for them you take away from them the necessity for their own maturation

00:14:48.280 that development you leave them as slaves and you're setting yourself up again as a pharaoh in 0.77

00:14:53.720 the desert and so he tells moses in essence that the man who's supposed to be the prophet of god

00:15:01.600 is being tempted by the by the offer of power and that that's a spiritual danger to him and a

00:15:10.220 catastrophe for the israelites even though they might be happy about it because it means they

00:15:14.700 wouldn't have to bear any responsibility for determining their own way forward. And so

00:15:20.300 Jethro tells Moses to have the people divide themselves into groups of 10 and to appoint

00:15:29.100 from within that group of 10 the best person to represent that group and then to gather the

00:15:35.580 representatives together in groups of 10 and have them elect a representative of representatives

00:15:41.020 and to do that all the way up in groups of 10 and 50 up to the level of 10,000s

00:15:46.860 and for them to mediate their disputes in accordance with that hierarchy.

00:15:52.080 So if you and your wife can't get along, you can go to the local representative of 10

00:15:57.760 and perhaps he can render a judgment and if he's unable to solve the problem,

00:16:02.140 then he can bump it up the new hierarchy of distributed responsibility to his representative

00:16:08.940 And if that doesn't work, then it can go up the chain of command another level.

00:16:13.360 And if it goes all the way up to the 10,000s and it can't be mediated,

00:16:17.340 then Moses, who's the prophet of God, can step in.

00:16:20.080 And only then can he render a judgment.

00:16:22.540 And that is the erection of a distributed hierarchy of responsibility

00:16:28.260 as the alternative to the tyrant and the slave.

00:16:31.760 And that's the model for your country.

00:16:34.460 Right.

00:16:38.940 And that model only works if people take responsibility at every single level of the hierarchy and

00:16:45.720 To the degree that they take responsibility

00:16:47.720 They don't need a tyrant and they're not slaves and that means that the absence of tyranny in your country and the

00:16:55.620 Absence of slavery is not a consequence of the fact that you have rights

00:16:59.140 But a reflection of the fact that you bear the responsibility for governing yourself, right?

00:17:08.940 Right. And the politicians who wish to turn the polity into a nanny state

00:17:13.960 that does nothing but cater to hedonistic infants

00:17:17.060 should remember that all that does is call forth the spirit of tyranny.

00:17:22.140 Right. And that's what happens in this story.

00:17:28.640 So Moses is well prepared for the revelation of the law

00:17:34.100 because he's put himself in a position to understand the structure of the law

00:17:40.100 by rendering judgment in a professional capacity for many, many years,

00:17:45.860 for thousands and thousands of hours.

00:17:47.460 And he receives the revelation of the Ten Commandments.

00:17:51.520 And the Ten Commandments are the law.

00:17:53.900 And you might ask yourself, well, what is the law?

00:17:56.600 And you could say, well, it's the word received from on high.

00:17:59.780 And there's truth in that, but it's an incomplete truth because the law is also a reflection of the customs and the behaviors of the people, of any people who've managed to organize a mature self and a collective community that functions as a consensual structure across time.

00:18:27.460 So imagine that as you mature, you move away from the demand that every one of your instinctive whims be gratified now to the realization that at times you have to forego what's of immediate value so that you can thrive and develop over the medium and long run.

00:18:56.860 And so as you mature, you substitute your narrow self bound to the moment.

00:19:03.320 You substitute for that the iteration of your future self out into the decades of your adulthood.

00:19:09.780 And you make the sacrifices of your whim in the present that increase the probability of your future well-being and continued growth.

00:19:20.340 That's part of maturation.

00:19:22.000 But that's not the only part of maturation.

00:19:23.980 The other part of maturation is that you learn to take turns, let's say, when you're somewhere between two and four,

00:19:32.660 and learning to be a social creature or a communal creature.

00:19:36.800 And what that means is that you sacrifice your immediate demands for the sake of the reciprocal relationship with others.

00:19:44.720 And then you could imagine that the pattern of sacrifice that serves you as an individual best in the future,

00:19:51.700 and you as an individual in communal relationship with other people is the same pattern.

00:19:57.680 And that's the pattern of maturity.

00:19:59.680 And that pattern of future sacrifice and communal maturity

00:20:04.600 is the essence of the behavioral patterns of a sustainable, productive, hospitable, and generous society.

00:20:17.020 And there's nothing about that that's morally relative.

00:20:19.440 It's very unlikely that that situation, balanced that well, will emerge, just as unlikely as it is that you'll attain a continual state of productive and generous harmony within the confines of your marriage or your family.

00:20:34.840 but that doesn't mean that it that state has no existence and it doesn't mean

00:20:40.480 that the pattern of that existence is arbitrary quite the contrary it means

00:20:44.620 that the harmony that prevails between your current self and your future self

00:20:49.720 and you as an isolated individual and everyone else is a is the straight

00:20:54.600 narrow path that leads up Jacob's ladder to the kingdom of God that's what it

00:20:59.320 means symbolically right and that's built into the structure of that's built

00:21:04.240 into the structure of reality itself and the law that comes to moses is an explicit representation

00:21:11.520 of that underlying reality and moses has access to it first because he sits as judge and second

00:21:17.600 because in a burst of revelatory intuition he can make explicit what up till then has only been

00:21:24.560 implicit

00:21:26.240 ritual and custom.

00:21:31.120 The emergence of the law is the description of

00:21:33.860 the customs and rituals that unite a society and that constitute maturity.

00:21:38.700 And that's what Moses offers his people.

00:21:43.040 Straight from the lips of God.

00:21:46.500 It takes Moses 40 days to

00:21:49.040 journey up the mountain and to confer with God and to receive the revelation

00:21:53.680 and to descend. And during that time, the state falls into the hands of Aaron. And Aaron is

00:22:01.720 Moses' political wing. So, when Moses is called upon to be a leader, which happens when he

00:22:10.180 encounters the burning bush, which is a symbol of life, it's a symbol of life and its transformations,

00:22:17.140 he objects to the call telling God that he's not the right man for the job

00:22:24.920 because he's incapable of speaking in a manner that is attractive to the public

00:22:32.780 and God says to Moses two things nothing is impossible when it comes to God

00:22:41.160 and second that Moses' inadequacy is no excuse for his failure to adopt the responsibility of

00:22:49.320 leadership. And so, and that's the case for all of us. Because you might think, not me, but,

00:22:56.380 and you might have a list of reasons why not you, but none of those reasons suffice. Not least,

00:23:02.320 because the abandonment of that responsibility, even in the face of your own inadequacy,

00:23:06.600 is the pathway to slavery and tyranny.

00:23:10.000 And so...

00:23:10.880 When Moses leaves,

00:23:19.840 so this is when God vanishes, right?

00:23:21.840 Because Moses is the prophetic voice.

00:23:24.720 When Moses leaves, 0.96

00:23:26.920 the fractious slaves conspire 0.94

00:23:29.640 with the political voice 0.95

00:23:31.460 to regress into a state

00:23:35.580 materialistic hedonism that's what the worship of the golden calf signifies so a calf is a form of

00:23:45.340 a calf in a in a in a tribal community in a nomadic tribal community of herders wealth is

00:23:55.740 flock and a calf is a sig a calf is a symbol of stored value you have a calf you have something

00:24:04.620 to eat if you have a calf you have something to offer your guests it's wealth a golden calf is

00:24:10.820 wealth as such and the worship of the golden calf is the worship of material wealth it's the worship

00:24:18.160 of the treasure that rusts on earth the worship of the treasure that moths can destroy and not

00:24:24.900 the worship of the treasure that's properly stored in heaven that nothing earthly can demolish

00:24:30.940 right the worship of the golden calf that emerges as a consequence of the absence of the divine word

00:24:39.220 mediated through Moses is accompanied by orgaistic hedonistic celebration because Moses returns to

00:24:47.900 find the Israelites not only worshiping an idol which is the idol of materialistic wealth but

00:24:55.740 also dancing drunkenly naked in a manner that makes them the laughing stock of their enemies 0.74

00:25:05.180 and if you can't see the relevance of that situation to the current state of the west

00:25:12.060 then you're part of the problem and not part of the solution

00:25:16.060 so moses is enraged as a consequence of the faithlessness of his people now you have to

00:25:29.340 understand too that the israelites conspire with aaron to bring about this state of worship and

00:25:35.920 that what that means is that the political voice unmoored from its concordance with the

00:25:45.720 divine will serve as the handmaid of the materialist hedonist materialistic hedonism

00:25:53.620 of the masses right that's the danger of an unbridled populism right it's consensus to the

00:26:01.040 whim unmoored by respect for tradition and upward aim and it's it's also the invitation to tyranny

00:26:09.560 because just as the slavish israelites attempted to transform moses into the pharaoh being unwilling 0.56

00:26:21.300 as they were to bear the responsibility for their own life so the hedonistic materialists of the

00:26:27.400 golden calf worship look to aaron to become the tyrant that has to regulate everyone if they

00:26:36.700 insist upon acting like impulsive toddlers right

00:26:47.980 moses is enraged by what's happened and by the faithlessness of his

00:26:53.820 people and this is also reflective of something that happens politically

00:26:59.420 so you could imagine that as the mob degenerates into

00:27:04.460 hedonism and materialism the rulers called upon to bear the responsibility that the infantile rabble

00:27:14.460 has abdicated become increasingly contemptuous of them and more and more likely to tyrannize 0.95

00:27:23.260 over them in a manner that is reflective of nothing but the power that's granted to them

00:27:28.940 by the abdication of responsibility and so there's a vicious spiral right as the populace degenerates

00:27:36.720 into short-term immature materialist hedonism and the rulers gather up all the responsibility and

00:27:44.680 use it as power they become simultaneously contemptuous of the people they're called

00:27:49.920 upon to regulate and treat them worse and worse and that's the spiral between hedonism and tyranny

00:27:56.980 that demolishes the state and produces hell, right?

00:28:01.760 Always, always.

00:28:04.720 Now too.

00:28:09.080 God, Moses demolishes the tablets

00:28:14.620 in a fit of pique

00:28:17.220 and maybe as a manifestation of his proclivity

00:28:20.360 to use excess force,

00:28:22.320 which is Moses' temptation

00:28:24.040 because the temptation to power is always the temptation of the person who's called to lead.

00:28:30.560 And it's the temptation of power that's actually Moses' Achilles' heel

00:28:34.240 and the eventual reason why he's forbidden to enter the Promised Land.

00:28:40.620 There's another meaning of the dashing of the tablets.

00:28:44.660 It's the demolition of the divine presence.

00:28:48.780 And what that means is that as individuals and societies degenerate into an immature and infantile, power-mad, materialistic hedonism,

00:29:00.960 their ability to attend to the divine voice of adventure and truth that calls them forth,

00:29:11.240 calls them forth, and the willingness and capacity to attend to the dictates of their own conscience,

00:29:18.780 becomes muddied and unclear in the gospels christ tells those who search for the sins of others to

00:29:26.960 take the beam out of their own eye the log before searching for the dust mode in the eye of their

00:29:32.720 neighbor and it's a reflection of the same idea that as you practice what is immature and narrowly

00:29:40.360 self-serving instead of aiming upward and sacrificing responsibly your ability to main

00:29:47.900 maintain contact with the divine instinct that moves you properly forward is damaged and possibly

00:29:56.340 beyond repair and even in the aftermath of your foolishness if you repent and atone it's not

00:30:04.020 necessarily the case that you'll be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together and what happens in

00:30:10.600 the Exodus story is that the Israelites get a second set of commandments but this time they're

00:30:16.540 written by man and not god and that's an indication of the fact twofold fact that god

00:30:22.480 has decided to recede into the distance as a consequence of the faithlessness and sin of the

00:30:28.480 israelites and a consequence of the fact that the secondary covenant that's thereby generated by 0.85

00:30:35.460 even moses the prophet of god is of secondary value compared to the genuine voice of adventure

00:30:44.180 and calling and conscience that speaks to everyone from within that would guide them properly

00:30:50.020 even in the absence of law if they refuse to pervert their own vision right

00:31:01.380 god tells the israelites at the same time well first of all he threatens to destroy them which

00:31:06.500 he's does quite with some stunning regularity and that's a characteristic of the old testament god 0.91

00:31:13.620 that makes the atheist materialists of the modern age

00:31:17.400 into prideful critics of the spirit of the Old Testament,

00:31:22.020 claiming as they might that no good God would act in such a way.

00:31:26.080 And it's an absolute mystery to me that in the aftermath

00:31:31.640 of the bloody and catastrophic 20th century,

00:31:35.620 where we saw the dismal descent of states, 0.84

00:31:41.460 of of massive states like nazi germany and maoist china and soviet socialist

00:31:50.660 soviet union into abysses of hell that anyone would dare to claim that the wages of sin weren't

00:31:58.340 death because that's exactly what happened there and that's evidence in its purest form that when 0.56

00:32:06.820 people abdicate the responsibility for their own self-governance and erect a tyrant as a

00:32:12.700 replacement for the divine order that would properly guide them that the necessary and

00:32:17.680 inevitable consequence of that is the opening up of the abyss of hell and everyone's descent into

00:32:25.660 it and that is a reality that threatens continually that's portrayed in the old testament corpus as

00:32:34.520 the inevitable consequences of departure from the straight narrow path and there's nothing about

00:32:41.940 that however terrible that might be that isn't 100 true it's like walk off the path not only at

00:32:52.620 your peril but at the peril of everyone you love and everything you hold dear right and you people

00:33:00.680 in the united states have remembered that well for some 250 years and god help us all if you forget it

00:33:17.400 moses maintains faith with god and that means that the fate of the israelites themselves is now

00:33:24.760 dependent on the unmarred relationship between one man and the divine pathway forward and that's a

00:33:36.040 terrifying state but there's a psychological truth that's embedded in it as well which is that

00:33:42.540 it's akin to the realization that the pathway forward specified by the christian sacrifice

00:33:52.120 is the hoisting of the cross of ultimate responsibility

00:33:55.540 onto the shoulders of the individuals

00:33:58.520 who are true followers of the spirit of divinity.

00:34:01.600 It's the same idea.

00:34:03.120 And that means everyone.

00:34:06.160 Right?

00:34:06.520 Because these stories represent human beings as such.

00:34:10.900 And so, the fact that Moses

00:34:13.220 maintains his connection with the divine 0.97

00:34:16.840 even in the presence of the corruption of his people

00:34:20.600 and that that's sufficient to guide the world properly forward

00:34:23.960 is a model for the manner in which you're to conduct your life.

00:34:28.100 To stand up against tyranny and slavery

00:34:30.660 insofar as you're capable of doing that within the confines of your own life

00:34:35.340 and thereby become the light on the hill that guides other people properly upward.

00:34:41.700 Right?

00:34:42.640 And that's the same...

00:34:44.260 That's the same idea as the

00:34:47.700 voluntary acceptance of the responsibility of the distributed responsibility of the state

00:34:54.760 that's the alternative to tyranny and slavery those are the same ideas now

00:34:59.880 as a reward for moses faithfulness god reveals himself even more fully to his prophet and he

00:35:13.100 hides moses in the cleft of a rock and shields him and walks by and allows moses to

00:35:22.780 get a glimpse of his back and the back of something is where it's already been and the

00:35:30.300 idea there is that as moses deepens his relationship with the spirit that calls

00:35:37.420 him forward as leader his ability to apprehend the manifestations of the divine in the workings of

00:35:44.540 the world increases and deepens to the point where it's virtually unbearable but that his intrinsic

00:35:53.340 goodness and willingness to make the sacrifices necessary to transform as a leader protects him

00:35:59.980 against the destruction that would otherwise visit him when exposed to cataclysmically to

00:36:08.380 to the divine fire itself

00:36:13.500 moses sets up the tabernacle which is the the church around which the community is founded on

00:36:19.500 the edge of the israelite encampments because they've departed so badly from their relationship

00:36:26.940 their covenantal relationship with god and he continues his dialogue with the spirit that guides

00:36:34.640 him and in consequence of that and the israelites forthright decision to repent and to return to

00:36:42.780 the proper path god relents and either emerges to lead the israelites again or sends an angel

00:36:50.620 to guide them if it's the angel or god himself it's a worthy replacement for the secondary

00:36:59.600 tablets and it's an indication of the fact that even in the aftermath of egregious error

00:37:07.060 meditation on upward aim and willingness to confess repent and atone can re-establish

00:37:20.440 the relationship between the spirit of adventure calling and conscience that serves as the

00:37:26.400 alternative to subjugation to a tyrant right and this is a good thing to know in your own life

00:37:32.680 because it means that even if you've lost your way and are in the desert wandering blindly and

00:37:37.960 hopelessly and ridden with anxiety and in a contentious and fractious and faithless mood if

00:37:45.760 you make the sacrifices necessary to put yourself back together and approach the problem with

00:37:53.300 sufficient humility and that would be a humility proportionate to the magnitude of your sins

00:37:58.080 unfortunately then you have the the offer for you to reattain the relationship with the even

00:38:07.740 what would you say divine forces of instinct that would otherwise lead you forward properly

00:38:12.840 you have the option of re-establishing that relationship and that's a wonderful thing to

00:38:20.340 understand because it means that even when if and when you wander which is a certainty that 0.75

00:38:28.180 there is still the possibility of return to the straight and narrow path and so the israelites

00:38:35.980 continue their voyage forward

00:38:39.440 onward into the desert.

00:38:49.220 But their bad habits reemerge

00:38:51.520 and

00:38:51.720 despite the fact that they're provided

00:38:59.600 with sufficient sustenance

00:39:02.280 as they move forward.

00:39:04.400 The manna from heaven

00:39:05.500 which is spiritual food

00:39:07.760 and the quails which are

00:39:09.160 which represent

00:39:10.860 food as such in its material

00:39:13.660 form the sustenance

00:39:16.040 of the Israelites being the balance

00:39:17.840 between wisdom and

00:39:19.920 corporal nourishment that are

00:39:21.780 necessary preconditions for life

00:39:23.740 the Israelites are provided with

00:39:25.660 sufficient sustenance

00:39:28.320 spiritually and

00:39:30.040 materially but they begin

00:39:31.840 to

00:39:32.340 they begin to cultivate their own desires

00:39:43.380 they fall prey to the sin

00:39:45.440 of hedonistic

00:39:47.260 gluttony and they start to

00:39:49.300 complain that

00:39:50.080 the sufficiency with which they've been

00:39:53.260 provided was inadequate

00:39:54.960 they

00:39:55.800 come to despise the

00:39:58.740 manna and the quails 0.96

00:40:01.180 and to demand even a return to the tyranny of Egypt

00:40:04.840 so that they can enjoy a more diverse plethora

00:40:10.140 of hedonistically enjoyable pleasure.

00:40:19.180 They cultivate their own desires.

00:40:23.320 They're ungrateful to be provided

00:40:27.240 with what's strictly and appropriately necessary and so they fall prey again to the pull of

00:40:37.000 this immature demand for immediate gratification and the punishment that god brings forward is

00:40:43.560 twofold the first is that he provides them with so many with so much food in the form of quails

00:40:56.760 that it's literally stacked three feet high as far as they can see and coming out of their nostrils

00:41:07.400 and so the consequence of their cultivation of their narcissistic desire is the production of a

00:41:18.120 surfeit that's so overwhelming that it destroys appetite itself that's what

00:41:28.380 we're doing with pornography after the excess plague of the quails comes a

00:41:40.740 genuine plague and the Israelites not only perish in large numbers as a 0.95

00:41:46.820 consequence of their reversion to ingratitude and immaturity hedonistic 0.99

00:41:56.180 gluttony but they also move further into the desert and what's the consequence

00:42:04.460 of that.

00:42:16.920 They encounter a drought.

00:42:20.380 Now Christ describes himself

00:42:22.400 as the living water.

00:42:24.460 And the image of the drought

00:42:25.880 in the biblical corpus

00:42:28.340 has a two-fold meaning.

00:42:30.540 It's the emergent

00:42:32.600 sterility of the environment.

00:42:35.460 You remember in The Lion King, most of you have seen that, when Scar emerges to rule, the

00:42:42.460 landscape parches and all the

00:42:44.460 provision disappears. And

00:42:46.460 what that means is that when

00:42:49.460 the state deteriorates,

00:42:52.460 the natural resources vanish. And the reason for that is there's no such thing as a natural resource.

00:42:58.460 there's the provision of what's necessary as a consequence of the establishment of the state

00:43:05.300 that's functional enough to provide everyone within it what's sufficient including water

00:43:13.420 for most of human history it's been impossible for people to get access to clean water

00:43:20.040 because water is not a natural resource if you have a large population it takes a tremendous

00:43:25.940 amount of organization to structure society such that a sufficient degree of technological

00:43:33.700 expertise that's true can be devoted to the problem of the provision of water and so that

00:43:39.460 water can be distributed without corruption without enslavement and without excess cost

00:43:45.160 and you might think that that's a technological issue with the technological solution but it's

00:43:51.920 not it's a moral issue with a moral solution because if the state organizes itself in accordance

00:44:01.380 with the principles that we already described which is the adoption of maximal responsibility

00:44:07.060 by the individuals within the state by their sacrifice of their current whims to the

00:44:13.220 benefit of their future selves into the community then the state organizes itself so that even the

00:44:20.940 deserts can bloom and that's a moral effort and not a technological effort even though the

00:44:27.340 technological effort can aid the moral effort if the foundation is laid properly which is what's

00:44:33.700 happened again in your country in the main now the israelites are very upset because they've 0.99

00:44:46.340 gone deeper into the desert and because they've corrupted their state to the point where they 0.97

00:44:50.900 can't determine how to provision themselves with water and so they get whiny and fractious and

00:44:57.040 complaining and victimy and bitter and miserable and they go whine to Moses because they always

00:45:03.960 turn to Moses when times are tough and they ask God ask Moses to intercede with God so that the

00:45:10.200 water can flow once again. And so Moses goes and has a chat with God. And he intercedes on behalf

00:45:16.460 of the Israelites, even though he's not very happy with them. And God says to Moses something very

00:45:22.840 specific. He says, he specifies a location, a rocky location in the desert. And he tells Moses to go

00:45:35.320 to that location with his people and speak to the rocks and ask them to bring forth water

00:45:42.120 and moses listens and he tells the israelites and they follow them follow him to the place of rocks

00:45:49.760 and moses with aaron takes out his staff which is a symbol of his authority and a tool of coercion

00:46:00.400 force and power

00:46:02.180 and he hits

00:46:04.520 the rocks with his

00:46:05.640 with the rod of tradition

00:46:08.580 thus

00:46:10.620 using force when he's called

00:46:12.520 upon by the divine itself to

00:46:14.540 offer even to the rocks

00:46:16.840 an invitation and not a command

00:46:18.860 and the consequence of that is

00:46:22.540 that the rocks do indeed bring

00:46:24.640 forth water

00:46:25.500 but God tells

00:46:28.720 Moses that as a consequence of his disobedience despite the fact that he's led the Israelites for

00:46:33.640 his whole life away from tyranny across the Red Sea and through the desert for 40 years that he

00:46:40.240 will die before he enters the promised land and here's the reason if you use force when you're

00:46:47.260 called upon to use invitation you will corrupt the state and you will fail to lead your people

00:46:53.800 to the promised land and that includes you right and we've seen plenty of that too

00:47:03.880 so it's worse than that because not only does is moses now forbidden to enter the promised land

00:47:10.680 even though he can see it in front of him aaron dies and what that means is that the state itself

00:47:17.720 is in peril when it turns to force when invitation will suffice right all policy based on force is

00:47:25.240 bad policy right it it undermines trust and it's the gateway to tyranny aaron dies worse

00:47:43.880 previous to this

00:47:47.720 in the desert before the episode with the rocks there's a rebellion in the desert and it's led by

00:47:57.080 a man named korah and the rebellion is extremely interesting so the israelites are all fractious and 0.89

00:48:05.640 whiny and resentful and hedonistic and materialistic and faithless and without courage 0.96

00:48:13.320 and Korah comes along 0.75

00:48:15.520 and he offers them a revolution

00:48:17.700 and this is how he justifies

00:48:19.760 the revolution. He tells

00:48:21.660 Moses and Aaron that

00:48:23.660 what they claim as divine authority

00:48:25.980 is

00:48:27.520 nothing other than

00:48:29.400 their use of arbitrary

00:48:31.660 power.

00:48:33.600 Right? It's exactly the same

00:48:35.580 refrain you hear now.

00:48:37.740 This is exactly the refrain that you hear

00:48:39.640 from your so-called institutions of

00:48:41.580 higher learning that insists that all manifestations of your culture male ambition marriage family

00:48:51.980 patriarchal community business state and government are nothing but the manifestations

00:48:58.780 of power and that that power is arbitrary oppressive and victimizing and all of those who don't have

00:49:06.700 have, who aren't basking in success, are not failing in consequence of their own unwillingness

00:49:16.780 to make the necessary sacrifices, but virtuous victims of arbitrary power.

00:49:24.160 And that's what Torah tells the Israelites.

00:49:27.480 Now the thing is, is his accusation is justified to some degree, because the primary temptation 0.93

00:49:33.100 of moses is the use of force right early in his life when he sees one of his hebrew brothers when

00:49:40.700 he's an adolescent in egypt slayed or beaten by an egyptian aristocrat he kills the egyptian

00:49:48.000 that's why he has to flee from egypt moses has a proclivity to use force and this is the eternal

00:49:54.580 temptation of the leader and so when korah emerges to tell the fractious israelites that

00:50:00.600 the reason they're followers and Moses is a leader is because he's the oppressive

00:50:07.000 oppressive tyrant of power there's a element of truth in the accusation that's sufficient to give

00:50:16.260 it credibility and that's another indication of the terrible sin that Moses makes manifest when

00:50:23.960 he misuses his authority because he has this power granted to him not by power but by his

00:50:32.760 alliance with the underlying structure of the moral world itself and when he uses force when

00:50:41.020 it's not required he validates the revolutionary tendencies of the usurpers and puts the state in 0.78

00:50:48.340 danger now the counter position to the notion that moses is nothing but a wielder of power

00:50:55.800 an objection to which he uh an accusation to which he objects i've never taken anything for my

00:51:02.980 services is the counter proposition that it's of unbelievable convenience to those who fail to make

00:51:13.280 the proper sacrifices like cain who become bitter and resentful in consequence of their inevitable

00:51:20.980 failure who degenerate into a homicidal vengefulness as a consequence of their misery

00:51:27.900 and who strive to destroy the notion of success itself it enables those that spirit

00:51:38.600 to take possession of people

00:51:42.420 while they simultaneously make the claim

00:51:44.860 that everything they do

00:51:48.360 as oppressed victims is moral.

00:51:51.760 That demolishes the notion of success itself 0.95

00:51:54.840 and constitutes one eternal threat

00:51:58.880 to the integrity of the functional state.

00:52:01.740 And that's what's happening now too.

00:52:03.660 Moses is replaced

00:52:09.600 Moses and Aaron are replaced

00:52:12.640 by Caleb and Joshua

00:52:13.960 and Caleb means

00:52:16.460 loyal follower and dog

00:52:18.540 and Joshua is the same

00:52:20.840 name as Jesus

00:52:21.900 and Joshua means

00:52:24.040 acting in the salvific spirit

00:52:28.900 of God

00:52:29.960 the Old Testament

00:52:32.840 stories are attempting at this point to formulate a conceptualization of the leader whose nature

00:52:40.180 surpasses even Moses. And the initial foray into that conceptualization is the hypothesis that the

00:52:49.440 joint combination of Joshua and Caleb is the appropriate replacement for Moses and Aaron.

00:52:55.340 Now, Joshua and Caleb were given a task as scouts by Moses when he was on the brink of the promised land.

00:53:05.800 He set scouts out into Canaan, which is the promised land already inhabited, to scope out the territory and to report.

00:53:15.640 And the scouts come back and they divide themselves into two camps.

00:53:19.000 one camp is allied with joshua and caleb and the other camp is allied with the faithless scouts

00:53:26.640 and the faithless scouts report of the future that it's a land inhabited by giants who cannot

00:53:33.000 be defeated and that the best pathway forward for the israelites is to turn back in terror and flee

00:53:39.180 and that's what you're being told about your future right and and there's no doubt there's 0.73

00:53:48.200 no doubt that the state of your

00:53:50.160 future is already inhabited by

00:53:52.240 the pathologized 1.00

00:53:54.780 descendants of Canaan 0.85

00:53:56.080 because that's always the case.

00:53:58.100 But the insistence

00:54:00.620 in the Old Testament stories

00:54:02.200 is that you are required

00:54:04.220 to maintain faith in the

00:54:06.260 ability of the human spirit

00:54:08.300 to prevail even in the face

00:54:10.520 of the worst possible obstacles

00:54:12.060 if it is

00:54:14.300 guided by the spirit

00:54:16.360 that's capable of standing up against

00:54:18.140 tyranny and freeing the slaves and that's what joshua and caleb report and so they they observe

00:54:25.400 the future and they tell the israelites that with faith and goodwill with the proper sacrifices and

00:54:32.260 upward aim that the chosen people of god can move into the future with courage and faith and make of

00:54:39.300 it the place of the land of milk and honey and the place of life more abundant and that's how we're

00:54:46.720 called upon to conceptualize the future as a function of our courageous faith right and that's

00:54:54.300 what joshua and caleb do and they're allowed to cross the river jordan and to lead the israelites

00:55:01.820 into the promised land and that's a description of the attitude that's the opposite of cynicism

00:55:08.920 but is not naivety that you're called upon to make manifest in relationship to the future

00:55:14.800 and as you can tell the faithless scouts who tell the israelites to free in terror

00:55:21.800 fail to enter the promised land and invite them to return to tyranny which is exactly the offer

00:55:29.040 that's on the table to you at the moment right right the future is nothing but climate apocalypse

00:55:35.920 right give us all the power right that's not how the people of this generation will enter the

00:55:42.900 promised land right

00:55:45.140 caleb is faithful and loyal his his name means faithfulness and loyalty it also means

00:56:01.760 it means dog and the dog that caleb embodies is loyalty faithfulness and optimistic voyaging

00:56:12.460 forward and joshua is the type of christ that leads forever towards the heavenly jerusalem

00:56:22.300 that's how the story lays itself out and then it does something stunningly remarkable in its

00:56:27.900 further investigation of the characterization of the spirit that must make itself manifest

00:56:33.900 for the promised land to to be occupied the israelites become even more fractious and 0.88

00:56:45.260 immature and whiny and contemptible than they ever have been right on the very cusp of their movement 0.94

00:56:52.700 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

00:57:03.900 just retribution to take the annoying miserable victimy whiny complainy faithless immature 0.98

00:57:14.600 israelites who are already having a pretty miserable time of it in their self-imposed 0.99

00:57:21.420 terror and cowardice and he visits a plague of poisonous snakes upon them and you might say 1.00

00:57:31.340 well why would a good god do that and the answer is there is no situation so dire that some stupid 1.00

00:57:37.700 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

00:57:44.600 and even if your material circumstances are dire you can be absolutely sure that your reversion to 1.00

00:57:51.380 a faithless hedonistic power mad immaturity will do nothing but open up a new pit of hell underneath

00:57:58.800 the hell that you're already occupying, and that you can continue that far, you can continue

00:58:05.420 that in a manner that literally has no end. Right. Which is why hell is a bottomless pit.

00:58:12.420 And so, that's what happens, is the Israelites fall apart, and more misery makes itself manifest. 0.77

00:58:20.720 and so the snakes bite them a lot which is exactly what they deserve and they eventually get to the 0.58

00:58:30.340 point where instead of conducting themselves so that even more snakes appear which is what the

00:58:36.800 Pharaoh did by the way when he was called upon to repent they decide that they've had enough

00:58:42.140 yet again they call themselves to order and they go to Moses and they say to him we know you have

00:58:48.980 pipeline to the divine do you think you could find it in your heart to have a chat with god

00:58:53.620 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

00:59:03.220 god and god says something extraordinarily strange he says he doesn't say all right i'm pretty sick

00:59:10.980 of these people but they put themselves together yet again and i kind of like you so you know

00:59:15.780 i'll call off the snakes which is the most straightforward way out of the conundrum

00:59:20.340 and also something akin to what's happened previously when god and the israelites are

00:59:25.300 having a scrap but that isn't what happens and it's partly because the story is now setting the

00:59:30.900 pathway for the adoption of a new mode of being in the promised land the mode of being that's

00:59:37.220 characterized by the emergence of joshua as the new leader god says to moses take your brazen 0.77

00:59:45.060 your bronze items take the bronze items of your people and cast a staff and put a serpent on it

00:59:54.980 and plant it in the ground

00:59:58.900 so that all the israelites can see it so this is a a substantial sculpture so that all the

01:00:06.900 israelites can see it and if they come and gaze upon it they will be immune to the poison of the

01:00:13.220 serpents okay what does that mean the first thing it means is the same thing that the symbol of the

01:00:21.940 physician has meant for 3 000 years right because the symbol of the physician is a staff with a

01:00:29.140 serpent wrapped around it and that's the asclepius symbol of healing and it's a representation of the

01:00:37.940 snake and tree motif that's also characteristic of Moses staff because in

01:00:44.820 the story of Moses when he encounters the magicians of the Egyptian court

01:00:50.380 Moses throws his staff upon the ground that's tradition it transforms itself

01:00:56.300 into chaos that's the serpent and Moses is the master of order in chaos and the

01:01:03.360 egyptian magicians duplicate the feet throwing their staffs to the ground turning them into

01:01:11.120 serpents and the serpent from moses staff eats all the serpents of the egyptian magicians which

01:01:16.880 indicates that the real thing is more than the real thing is more than the match for the

01:01:24.640 propagandistic magic of the corrupt court right all that's all that's echoed in the image of the

01:01:34.240 serpent on the staff there's an idea associated with healing that comes from the Greeks

01:01:43.040 embodied in the word pharmakon which is the source of the word pharmacy and pharmakon means poison and

01:01:49.920 cure and what it means is a little bit of what poisons you cures you and what

01:01:55.320 that means is that you'll grow and develop in proportion to your ability to

01:02:01.020 face the things that terrify you right and that's what Moses calls upon his

01:02:06.600 people to do inspired by the Word of God not to become the inhabitants of a of a

01:02:19.200 landscape devoid of threat and safe like infants are safe in the home but become but to become

01:02:26.880 masters of even what's poisonous so that they can be immune to what to the worst things that can

01:02:33.520 possibly be thrown at them which is what you do when you encourage your children to develop like

01:02:39.440 they should develop right competence not safety that's what encouragement means and that's

01:02:45.760 That's what happens symbolically when God calls upon the Israelites to face what terrifies them so they can become immune to the poison even of their own sins.

01:02:58.960 Right.

01:03:01.500 All right.

01:03:02.840 We'll cap that off.

01:03:06.280 That's a development of the theme of Joshua, who bears the same name as Christ.

01:03:11.980 Now, thousands of years later, Christ himself says something exceptionally mysterious and virtually incomprehensible 0.93

01:03:23.100 that relates back to the brazen serpent, to the idea of the pharmakon,

01:03:28.560 to the notion that a little bit of poison redeems you if it's administered voluntarily.

01:03:36.040 he says unless i be lifted up

01:03:40.580 unless i be unless i be lifted up like the serpent in the desert

01:03:46.540 no man can be redeemed now that's a unbelievably strange thing

01:03:54.140 for anyone to say first of all the notion that christ would

01:03:59.700 associate himself with a crucified serpent is strange

01:04:04.660 enough in itself but the illusion itself is very difficult to comprehend unless you understand it

01:04:13.640 in which case it becomes deep beyond comprehension in a manner that's as close to miraculous as

01:04:21.640 anything i've ever seen in print what does it mean

01:04:25.100 one of the oldest stories we have is the story of the encounter with the dragon

01:04:35.140 Mesopotamian creation myth

01:04:36.720 talks about creation as the encounter with

01:04:41.160 the serpent of chaos.

01:04:43.640 The story of St. George is the story of the man

01:04:47.180 who confronts the dragon that threatens the state

01:04:51.000 and frees the treasure that the dragon guards.

01:04:55.220 What's the theme?

01:04:56.420 Confront what is terrifying

01:04:58.380 and find what is redeeming.

01:05:00.960 that's the story of human development that's the story of the movement up jacob's ladder that's

01:05:07.420 the story of the ascent to the city on the hill that's the story of taking your life out from

01:05:13.720 under into the bushel that hides it and revealing it to the world that's the story of courage and

01:05:18.600 adventure and truth it's the redemptive story why does christ assimilate himself to the serpent

01:05:26.840 The Israelites are called upon to look forthrightly and voluntarily at that which poisons them.

01:05:36.780 Christ's life is a hydra of serpents.

01:05:43.380 Why?

01:05:44.900 Because it's an archetypal tragedy.

01:05:47.620 What does that mean?

01:05:48.420 It's a distillation of catastrophe itself.

01:05:51.940 Imagine that you had a hundred people

01:05:54.720 Tell you the worst thing that had ever

01:05:56.620 Happened to them in their life

01:05:57.780 And then you gathered all those terrible

01:06:00.500 Things

01:06:00.980 Which is what occurs for example in the story

01:06:04.580 Of Job

01:06:05.180 You gathered all those terrible things and you

01:06:08.020 Visited that fate on one person

01:06:10.820 That would be

01:06:12.940 The archetypal tragedy

01:06:14.460 What's the archetypal tragedy?

01:06:16.080 What's a tragedy? A terrible thing

01:06:18.040 Befalls someone

01:06:18.940 What if he's a criminal?

01:06:21.940 well then it's not so tragic maybe then it's justice a terrible thing befalls someone

01:06:28.020 innocent the worst set of possible things befalls the person who is most innocent

01:06:35.060 the archetypal tragedy what's the worst thing

01:06:42.180 death no pain and death no prolonged pain and death at the hands of a tyrant no prolonged

01:06:50.740 pain and death young at the hands of a tyrant delivered by the mob betrayed by your friends

01:06:59.220 in the presence of your mother accompanied by the betrayal of your acolytes

01:07:06.400 well occupied by an imperial force despite doing nothing but working for the good

01:07:14.800 and simultaneously be known for doing so

01:07:19.320 even by those that persecute you.

01:07:22.660 Right.

01:07:24.340 Face that.

01:07:29.480 The transformation of the story of the brazen serpent 0.92

01:07:34.320 into the meta-tragedy of Christianity

01:07:38.760 is the insistence that redemption is to be found

01:07:43.520 by confronting the sum total of all that's terrifying the story of christ is a meta tragedy

01:07:52.140 and it doesn't end with death because painful and undeserved death at the hands of a treacherous mob

01:08:01.440 is not the worst thing that can happen to you the worst thing that can happen to you is that

01:08:07.380 plus a full-fledged encounter with the forces of malevolence itself that happens to christ when he

01:08:14.740 encounters satan in the desert after the holy spirit descends upon him and it happens when he

01:08:20.260 harrows hell after his death and so the calling of christianity which is the crucifix at the center of

01:08:28.020 the community is the calling to the followers of the divine to confront not only everything that

01:08:35.400 terrifies them about life but the deepest and most abysmal spirit of evil itself in the belief

01:08:43.420 that that courageous confrontation will invigorate and defend and make the forthright and courageous

01:08:54.060 and open-eyed disciple immune from the poison of the serpent right and that's

01:09:04.680 the story and the principle upon which the free states of the West are

01:09:09.240 predicated right

01:09:13.100 And that's the story of the last third of Exodus.

01:09:23.920 Thank you very much.

01:09:43.100 Thank you, everyone.

01:09:59.940 All right, my dear.

01:10:13.100 hello there

01:10:17.540 that was awesome

01:10:22.120 oh thank you dear

01:10:24.140 that was awesome

01:10:24.920 yeah thank you

01:10:25.940 yeah

01:10:26.500 have a new story

01:10:27.780 yes well thank you all for listening to that

01:10:31.680 I'm sorry to inflict it on you

01:10:34.760 It's a crazy story, eh?

01:10:54.060 Yeah.

01:10:54.900 God.

01:10:55.400 i think the reason that the meaning of those stories is so stark and clear now

01:11:08.060 is because the patterns that the biblical stories refer to have always been present right they're

01:11:16.780 the patterns of life but things are happening so fast now that you can see it unfolding

01:11:24.240 right as the rate of transformation in our culture accelerates the patterns are dancing

01:11:30.640 patterns that might have taken centuries to move are now dancing within weeks

01:11:35.040 and you can see the realm of the spirits re-emerge that's really the case and it's

01:11:40.960 a terrifying thing

01:11:42.720 so hang on to your hats people and get your houses in order right

01:11:51.420 question number one

01:11:55.840 Dr. Peterson

01:11:57.120 in what way does love expand

01:11:59.820 consciousness

01:12:00.540 well you become what you aim at

01:12:17.840 so that's why you're called upon

01:12:21.160 in the foundational stories of the West

01:12:25.580 to turn your attention,

01:12:28.540 to turn your eyes upward

01:12:29.660 to the highest that you can imagine.

01:12:35.840 Because in the effort to align yourself

01:12:40.020 with that highest goal,

01:12:43.000 you'll transform yourself into

01:12:44.820 the carrier of that spirit.

01:12:47.240 and you'll become

01:12:50.700 your deepest self

01:12:52.360 the promise in Genesis 1

01:12:54.760 is that human beings are made in the image of God

01:12:56.800 but we obscure that

01:12:58.180 reflection

01:12:59.840 with our presumption

01:13:02.700 and pride

01:13:03.320 the

01:13:09.760 great commandment that underlies

01:13:12.500 the Ten Commandments is that you are to

01:13:14.660 love

01:13:15.880 the God that is one with all your heart and all your soul

01:13:19.780 and to conceptualize

01:13:24.020 and attend to and act

01:13:27.380 in relationship to others as if they were you.

01:13:31.840 A vertical orientation and a horizontal orientation.

01:13:37.000 That's the spirit of love

01:13:39.660 and love is the desire that all things flourish.

01:13:42.120 and so you want to allow the spirit that has that aim to possess you and that's the goal of

01:13:49.980 religious practice is to invite that spirit to possess you now what does that mean well imagine

01:13:55.720 that you decided to practice devoutly the love that it that led you to your marriage

01:14:10.060 we know that people are enticed into partnership as a consequence of love we know that the

01:14:19.960 foundation of our relationship with our children and our parents is love we know that in the first

01:14:26.760 throes of a romantic relationship that love is offered as a gift but you might imagine that

01:14:33.320 it's incumbent upon you to

01:14:35.440 make the fostering

01:14:37.460 and nurturance of that love

01:14:39.100 a religious

01:14:41.320 duty. And that if you practice

01:14:43.580 that, it would

01:14:44.360 your ability to inhabit that realm

01:14:47.560 would expand. Now

01:14:49.440 what would that mean? It would

01:14:51.580 mean that you would remember

01:14:53.700 when you were interacting with your wife or

01:14:55.560 your children or your parents

01:14:56.820 that you would remember

01:14:59.600 that you loved them and you would

01:15:01.400 remember what that implied and what it would imply is that you would interact with them in a manner

01:15:06.580 that would be best for them insofar as you were capable of that insofar as that was commensurate

01:15:12.540 with your understanding but that that would be your aim and if that was your aim you would see

01:15:18.860 the world in accordance with that aim and your deviation from that aim would make its appearance

01:15:27.380 to you as error as error that you could correct or as desired response from the target of your

01:15:37.160 love and you could learn from that error perceived in relationship to your aim how to rectify your

01:15:48.420 attention and action so that the spirit of love was ever more present and that would be a

01:15:56.900 consequence of you gathering information that is offered to you in consequence of your aim.

01:16:04.880 But that's not all. You become what you practice. Imagine that a challenge emerges and that there's

01:16:15.340 two ways you can respond to it. One is resentfully and with the mien of a victim as if the challenge

01:16:22.960 has been arbitrarily imposed on you by an unjust tyrant alternatively you could face that challenge

01:16:30.080 with faith and hope like caleb and joshua and you could const construe it as the dragon that

01:16:37.920 guards it as of yet unrevealed treasure and you could embody the spirit of saint george and move

01:16:48.160 forward in strength to grapple with the challenge what happens if you do that

01:16:57.360 everything changes

01:17:00.880 psychophysiological analysis of stress response indicates that the difference in those two

01:17:09.280 patterns of response is so profound that it makes itself manifest in

01:17:15.280 neurological activity psychophysiological patterning muscular movement blood flow hormonal

01:17:28.720 preparation and cellular transformation all the way down to the genetic level

01:17:38.960 when you approach a new situation in a given spirit

01:17:45.280 the spirit in which you approach the situation manifests itself as a physiological pattern

01:17:52.400 and that transforms the way genes themselves code for proteins if you practice love you change

01:18:02.320 yourself physiologically all the way down to the molecular level and you free

01:18:09.600 you release from the domain of implicit physiological potential

01:18:17.960 the you that would be what it could be if it was the purest possible manifestation of love

01:18:26.880 right that's possible

01:18:29.240 you and you know that you see the people around you and you you die for this you see the people

01:18:43.120 around you clearly at their best clearly at their best when they're motivated by love and if you're

01:18:50.460 spiteful and resentful and bitter and miserable and you're shaking your fist at god the sight of

01:18:56.100 that love might burn you to the core and further embitter you but you know in your deepest heart

01:19:01.580 of hearts that if you could live anywhere that's where you would live and so the religious call is

01:19:08.040 a call to live like that and it isn't a call to believe in that it's a call to do that because

01:19:14.400 that's the deepest form of belief and to practice it what's the purpose what's the purpose of prayer

01:19:23.620 God grant me the wisdom to have the humility to transform myself into the man who could properly love his wife and children.

01:19:36.120 That's a prayer that will be answered.

01:19:37.940 how does one find a connection to God

01:19:51.480 without following an organized religion

01:19:54.080 I desire relationship to God

01:19:57.020 but I am unconvinced by organized religions 0.99

01:20:01.260 well i'll say something rude to begin with if you're capable of finding the path to god by

01:20:18.580 yourself why don't you go to church and help the lost church

01:20:22.180 i mean because because that's the claim that's the that's the claim you're making

01:20:32.500 you're saying you you are sufficient unto yourself to find the divine pathway forward

01:20:38.980 if that's true then why not revitalize the institutions while you're at it and if you

01:20:44.140 can't do that then maybe your first presumption was wrong and maybe you should go to maybe you

01:20:50.820 could go to the church that's composed of people no worse than you, and you

01:20:55.140 could participate with them in aiming up, and you could rectify the errors of the

01:21:00.600 community and your own errors in relationship to what's highest

01:21:03.900 simultaneously. Right.

01:21:05.760 I would also say that the end point of the presumption that you alone can find the divine

01:21:25.780 path is no difference from the insistence of the postmodernists that what they feel

01:21:33.180 is the final definition of reality those are the same thing right

01:21:38.200 i i don't want to get too like high and mighty about that you know because

01:21:46.320 it's certainly the same thing i thought when i left the church when i was

01:21:51.280 a teenager and it's the same thing that so many people who've left the organized stream of religion

01:21:57.700 think it's understandable and it's built into our rebellious enlightenment demented protestant

01:22:08.700 luciferian culture and so the fact and i'm not singling out the protestants it's a it's a deviant

01:22:16.740 stream of what would heretical protestantism that's a way of thinking about it right the

01:22:23.300 notion that we can define ourselves we have to step forward communally so it's incumbent upon

01:22:30.880 you to participate in the process of communal organization because that's part of the manner

01:22:36.380 in which you approach the divine it's not a solitary pursuit you can't buddha knew that

01:22:42.620 buddha was offered the opportunity to enter the realm of the gods and to remain in nirvana and he

01:22:50.440 abandoned that offer which was genuine and hard-earned because he determined that he would

01:22:57.400 not step into paradise unless he could take everyone with him right and maybe that's because

01:23:04.980 there is no paradise for you alone right how could that be paradise an eternity of you alone

01:23:11.540 that sounds a lot like hell

01:23:13.720 What has been your biggest hurdle in bridging the theology-science-cultural gap?

01:23:40.720 Pride and lies.

01:23:43.720 the pride pride in relationship to the first question let's say because i thought

01:23:54.000 when i was 13 and perplexed about the apparent paradoxical relationship between evolutionary

01:24:01.940 theories and biblical accounts of creation that i knew enough to dispense with the entire religious

01:24:09.320 tradition of the western world well what's that pride obviously what kind of pride the pride of

01:24:18.440 the luciferian intellect like 100 that and i i i escaped from that to the degree that i have escaped

01:24:31.640 because i i came to understand first that i knew nothing and second that i truly knew nothing about

01:24:41.000 evil itself even though i became unshakably convinced of its existence and it was my

01:24:52.440 investigation into the structure of hell that eradicated my

01:24:59.880 Luciferian pride, I came to understand when I was about

01:25:07.600 23 that

01:25:12.500 Virtually everything I said was a performance and a lie

01:25:17.860 95% of it and I understood that

01:25:21.280 as a consequence of my developing understanding of the misapprehensions that led to the development

01:25:32.720 of totalitarian states i was very curious about the relationship between individual misconduct

01:25:41.040 of the sort that enabled people to remain silent when atrocities were being committed

01:25:46.160 of the sort that allowed people to luxuriate in the opportunity to exact their sadistic revenge

01:25:52.760 and my own

01:25:55.160 pride and presumption and I

01:25:59.720 aimed at eradicating that and

01:26:05.200 the consequence of that was the dawning of my understanding that I was an actor and a fraud

01:26:13.220 that i said most of what i said to win arguments to instrumentally manipulate to be the smartest

01:26:23.460 person in the room to ensure that my intellect was celebrated and to delight in the victory i

01:26:32.400 obtained over others and i learned that speaking words oriented by that aim made me

01:26:42.140 weak, contemptible, desperate, and dangerous, and that on those few occasions when I

01:26:51.140 strived instead to say instead only what I believed to be true, that the ground under my

01:26:59.760 feet came back together, and that I was thereby climbing uphill. And I learned to

01:27:11.720 watch my words and

01:27:14.180 burn off

01:27:16.980 95% of

01:27:19.620 what was encumbering me.

01:27:22.560 Right. So that was the

01:27:24.220 obstacle, you might say.

01:27:26.880 Yeah. What was the obstacle?

01:27:28.800 95% of who I was.

01:27:31.060 That was the obstacle.

01:27:32.920 Look!

01:27:34.900 When God throws Adam and Eve

01:27:37.100 out of paradise

01:27:38.060 for the sin of pride

01:27:40.460 and presumption,

01:27:41.720 he bars the gates with a sword that is on fire that turns every which way

01:27:49.680 a sword that turns every which way is one that you cannot avoid

01:27:54.500 it burns and it cuts and what does it burn away and cut everything that isn't fit to be in paradise

01:28:02.960 it's highly probable that that's a lot of you and so you might say that

01:28:10.120 A vision of God is

01:28:13.140 equivalent to

01:28:16.240 a trial by fire.

01:28:19.660 The trial by fire of hell

01:28:21.780 in direct proportion

01:28:23.160 to the magnitude of your sins.

01:28:26.860 Yeah, well, there's an impediment for you.

01:28:37.320 When Abraham

01:28:38.480 proceeds on his voyage uphill animated by the spirit of adventure he's called upon to make

01:28:47.060 sacrifices in sequence commensurate with the expanding field of opportunity that

01:28:53.840 reveals itself in front of him until he transforms himself so completely by his willingness to

01:29:02.200 undertake even the ultimate sacrifice that he's awarded a new name right that's equivalent to

01:29:11.400 a death in rebirth and to movement toward the establishment of an earthly paradise but it

01:29:20.680 requires a a succession of sacrifice that culminates in the sacrifice of everything

01:29:27.880 and the transformation of identity that's so complete that it's as if you become born anew

01:29:35.120 which is what happens to abraham and jacob right and christ when baptized

01:29:41.780 yeah and all those who are visited and then abide by the call of the holy spirit

01:29:47.940 terrible right that's the terrible swift sword yeah that's why when christ comes back at the

01:29:57.420 end of time or why the spirit that makes itself manifest when the end times reveal themselves

01:30:05.020 christ comes back with a sword in his mouth and he separates the sheep from the goats

01:30:11.040 and there's a lot more goats than sheep and that's a psychological warning and a sociological warning

01:30:20.760 And it's a terrifying vision into the understructure of reality itself.

01:30:28.080 Cain is doomed because he doesn't offer his best.

01:30:32.740 That means that insofar as you haven't offered your best,

01:30:38.020 all that is within you that has not been the offering of the best is dood.

01:30:48.020 That's a terrible thing to know.

01:30:50.760 But it's the sort of thing that can scare you straight.

01:30:54.080 And it's wisdom that says the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

01:31:00.480 So, aim up, because there's no better place to aim,

01:31:04.840 but it's also aim up or else.

01:31:08.860 Right. Really.

01:31:10.660 and on those

01:31:19.420 happy notes

01:31:21.380 thank you very much

01:31:24.240 everybody

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01:31:33.760 could change the direction of your entire day

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - July 19, 2026

What To Do When You've Lost Your Way

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