The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Why Short-Term Pleasure Is Ruining Your Life

00:00:00.480 Recently, our company's softball team lost the big game by one run.

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00:00:30.000 Hi, everybody. Welcome to this week's lecture.

00:00:33.180 The first note, all the lectures that I'm releasing from my tour archives

00:00:37.100 focus on psychological analysis of a set of key biblical stories.

00:00:42.080 Each of them stands alone, but they work together as a group as well.

00:00:45.920 Second note, last week in the intro,

00:00:48.860 I mentioned that I had written and released an article on climate change,

00:00:52.360 but we decided to forestall that in favor of releasing another piece

00:00:57.560 that I recently wrote called They're Not Rape Gangs. Well, you can tell from the title that

00:01:04.180 that's a very punchy and provocative essay, and we thought it should take primacy with regards

00:01:10.960 to the first thing that I've written in a year. Not to say that the climate piece doesn't have

00:01:15.700 plenty of power behind it. Anyways, you can find it on my blog. You can find it on X. You can go

00:01:23.040 to jordanbpeterson.com. On with today's show. Well, I'm looking forward to this. That's typical.

00:01:42.280 If I stopped looking forward to this, I would be morally obliged to stop doing it. It's a great

00:01:48.840 privilege. So I'm going to talk to you for an hour, 15 minutes, something like that. Then we're going

00:01:54.320 to do a Q&A. And so I'm going to talk to you tonight about, well, something that I have talked

00:02:01.760 about before and I've written about before, but there was an idea that's been brewing in the back

00:02:06.440 of my mind for a long, long time that I haven't ever made explicit. And I'm going to try to do

00:02:13.940 that tonight. So that'll be

00:02:15.520 entertaining. See if we can

00:02:17.460 manage that.

00:02:20.980 So

00:02:21.500 I have this

00:02:23.980 new book, which is the name

00:02:26.020 of this tour, We Who Wrestle With God.

00:02:27.880 And it's a great joke on the New York

00:02:29.840 Times that it hit number one

00:02:31.800 on the bestseller list, which

00:02:33.120 I'm quite

00:02:34.240 grateful for, let's say.

00:02:39.000 And also

00:02:39.920 regard as

00:02:41.660 ridiculously comic that

00:02:43.800 The book focusing on the stories of the Old Testament

00:02:47.580 could hardly be anything more traditional.

00:02:50.240 It's the number one book in your advice section. 0.99

00:02:54.420 That's utterly preposterous and ridiculous 0.98

00:02:57.000 and a very good thing 0.99

00:03:00.440 because you might as well get advice

00:03:02.560 from the best possible source.

00:03:04.880 And I don't mean me.

00:03:06.800 I mean those stories.

00:03:09.420 So, we who wrestle with God,

00:03:13.800 Well, I picked that title because it turns out that that's what the word Israel means.

00:03:21.160 And Israel, the people of Israel, are the chosen people of God.

00:03:26.440 That's the promise, and that's so interesting as far as I'm concerned

00:03:30.420 because everybody wrestles with God to a greater or lesser degree,

00:03:35.940 and the reason for that is that we are fated to make moral decisions.

00:03:41.840 We have to chart our course forward into the unknown.

00:03:45.960 There's no way around that.

00:03:47.340 And that means that at every opportunity, with every glance, with every word, you're aiming up or down.

00:03:59.460 Those are your options.

00:04:01.640 And it's very much worthwhile thinking about what that means.

00:04:07.120 So I had a rule when I wrote this book.

00:04:09.500 there was a couple of rules, but one of them was that I wasn't going to put forward any claim that

00:04:15.540 I couldn't justify from the philosophical or theological perspective insofar as I'm capable

00:04:23.340 of doing that, and from the scientific perspective simultaneously. And part of that was based on my

00:04:30.360 presumption that insofar as there is a unity at the base of all things that the scientific and

00:04:39.400 the ethical must converge, I don't see what the alternative is to that, that there is

00:04:47.780 no moral world, that's an utterly foolish claim, that empirical facts have no basis

00:04:55.340 in reality, that's a ridiculous claim, that those two modes of being are going to be necessarily 0.90

00:05:00.960 set at odds with one another, that's the claim of those who insist that there's a conflict

00:05:08.040 that's inalienable between the ethical and the scientific.

00:05:13.940 I don't think any of that's true.

00:05:15.940 I can't see how it can be true.

00:05:18.380 So, I'm assuming for the time being that it isn't true

00:05:21.680 and that any apparent conflict is a consequence of our ignorance

00:05:26.180 and not a consequence of some disjunction in the fundamental nature of reality

00:05:31.680 or the illusory nature of the ethical.

00:05:34.960 No, none of that makes sense to me.

00:05:38.040 So, let's investigate that a little bit.

00:05:48.540 Where to start, exactly?

00:05:53.920 We could start with a riddle.

00:05:56.820 Why did the chicken cross the road?

00:06:00.880 Well, the answer to that is to get to the other side.

00:06:04.960 The question is, why did he want to get to the other side?

00:06:08.840 And the answer has got to be that, unless it was a self-destructive chicken,

00:06:13.640 that he assumed that the grass was greener on the other side of the road, right?

00:06:18.960 And it's a funny little joke, and everyone knows it, and that's kind of interesting.

00:06:24.460 And I think the reason it's a funny little joke, and everyone knows the joke,

00:06:30.420 is because it points to something very fundamental.

00:06:34.820 It's a meme.

00:06:35.820 That's a way of thinking about it.

00:06:37.840 That would please Richard Dawkins.

00:06:39.920 Possibly.

00:06:43.600 There's a reason that we do everything.

00:06:47.920 Now, we can have a bad reason or a good reason.

00:06:52.560 We all know that, right?

00:06:54.420 We know that we're likely to feel ashamed,

00:06:58.680 even though we might be happy that we got away with it,

00:07:01.340 if we do something for a reason that's bad and might be easy and pleasurable in the moment,

00:07:08.920 but that doesn't mean that we think it's right.

00:07:11.620 We don't make a decision of any sort without making a moral decision

00:07:18.040 because a decision about destination is a moral decision.

00:07:23.500 We make the decision to go from point A to point B

00:07:26.820 on the assumption that

00:07:29.560 that's an uphill climb

00:07:31.860 towards something better

00:07:33.000 or the opposite

00:07:35.260 that we've decided

00:07:36.660 that we're going to make things worse

00:07:38.460 for whatever reasons of resentment

00:07:41.640 or deceit or deception

00:07:42.960 or Machiavellian manipulation

00:07:47.320 or vengefulness

00:07:48.800 or just sheer sadistic delight

00:07:51.840 in making the world

00:07:52.940 a more unbearable place.

00:07:54.320 every action is a directional action

00:08:00.680 and every directional action is an ethical action

00:08:03.060 and this is true in the most microcosmic way possible

00:08:08.720 so for example

00:08:11.560 there is no perception without action

00:08:16.500 this is a fundamental discovery

00:08:20.980 laid out in detail by physiologists

00:08:25.220 in the last 60, 70, maybe 100 years.

00:08:30.960 There's a very different idea than

00:08:32.860 you look passively at the world

00:08:35.700 and you just see what's there.

00:08:38.500 That isn't how perception works.

00:08:41.220 There's no base level of perception

00:08:43.740 independent of action.

00:08:45.300 And there's no action independent of decision.

00:08:48.240 and there's no decision independent of morality.

00:08:51.860 And that means there's no perception independent of morality.

00:08:55.980 And that's an interesting thing to contemplate.

00:09:00.200 So when you're looking at the audience, for example,

00:09:04.700 when I'm looking at the audience, I do that with a kind of intent.

00:09:09.540 I have to select the person that I'm looking at

00:09:12.740 or I can look at the whole crowd at once.

00:09:15.500 I have to, I'm looking at a given person or the crowd with a set of nested intents in mind.

00:09:26.120 Here's a way of thinking about it.

00:09:27.960 Here's a good way to be self-conscious on stage, which is not an experience I'd recommend.

00:09:33.800 If you want to be self-conscious on stage, which will make you embarrassed and ashamed and stumble,

00:09:40.580 you have to look at the audience with the glorification of your ego in mind it has to be

00:09:51.780 about you you know if you go out it's a good thing to know if you're going to speak publicly

00:09:55.980 if you start worrying about you how do they are they going to be interested in what i have to say

00:10:04.100 are they going to think i'm smart are they going to think i'm compelling what will this do to

00:10:09.940 for my career, for better or worse.

00:10:12.840 As soon as you start thinking about that,

00:10:15.300 you treat the audience in a way that's oriented towards those ends,

00:10:19.220 you're highly likely to be self-conscious,

00:10:21.440 and that's going to interfere with the truth of your proclamations

00:10:26.720 and with your so-called performance.

00:10:29.060 It's not supposed to be a performance, exactly.

00:10:31.460 Certainly not one dedicated to your own self-plorification, let's say.

00:10:36.560 and if you have that as your aim however unconsciously then you're going to treat

00:10:43.340 the audience like a means to your own ends and that's going to trip you up because it turns out

00:10:49.540 it's not that pleasurable to be self-conscious and in fact there's no difference between being

00:10:56.920 self-conscious and being miserable technically those are so tightly associated that you can't

00:11:03.720 distinguish them conceptually or statistically.

00:11:07.680 So then you might say, well, what should it be about?

00:11:11.540 If it's not about you, you're the one offering the talk, let's say.

00:11:17.980 Well, there are alternatives.

00:11:22.520 You could use the opportunity to tear someone or something down.

00:11:28.480 You could use the opportunity to say what you think is true.

00:11:33.720 You could use the opportunity to explore something honestly and share that.

00:11:41.940 Those are very different aims, and the fact of those difference in aims

00:11:48.860 is going to make itself manifest in every gesture that you make

00:11:53.520 and every glance that you undertake,

00:11:56.560 and that's true for absolutely everything you do with everyone,

00:11:59.900 including yourself, all the time.

00:12:02.160 so there are structures of ethics that are complex and sophisticated that are governing

00:12:11.560 how you use your eyes now you all know that and here's here's an example of that

00:12:17.980 you can use your eyes improperly on a date right and the manner in which you do that speaks to

00:12:27.920 your motivation. And that motivation speaks to your ethic in a very deep manner. And one of the

00:12:35.540 things that your date is going to evaluate you in relationship to is the intent indicated by your

00:12:44.600 gaze. And we're doing that to each other all the time. Our eyes have evolved so they're maximally

00:12:50.980 visible right white colored black you can see them at a distance you can tell where people are

00:12:59.440 pointing them and you can figure out what the hell they're up to and that's so so think that's

00:13:05.740 so cool it's so remarkable to know that because it means that the facts that you gather about the

00:13:12.600 world, by looking at it, are a reflection of your intent. Now, I tell you, man, if you understand

00:13:21.720 that, if you understand that, it immediately terrifies you. Because it means the world

00:13:29.440 reveals itself at the level of fact in accordance with your intent. Man, if you really think that

00:13:40.640 through it'll scare you straight it begs some questions like if things are truly miserable for

00:13:46.800 you and i do understand that people encounter arbitrary runs of bad luck right i mean there's

00:13:55.960 an element of existence that's unpredictable and just because you're careful doesn't mean you're

00:14:03.140 going to be safe but it's an open question how much of the misery that we encounter is a consequence

00:14:09.220 of our misaligned aim and it might even be better for all of us that you prayed so to speak that

00:14:17.720 that's the case if you're miserable because if it is the case then maybe you could do something

00:14:23.780 about it and you're not just the victim the powerless victim of arbitrary and unfair fate

00:14:29.480 what's it called peterson academy peterson academy peterson academy it's called peterson

00:14:34.920 academy peterson academy if you want an actual education with hand-selected professors from top

00:14:41.020 universities around the world bringing the best professors together making sure they're not

00:14:46.040 censored in any way giving them the audience and the remuneration and appreciation they deserve

00:14:49.760 and you were true to your word you gave me absolute intellectual autonomy i have had it

00:14:53.580 through every course we figure we can offer people a high quality university level education

00:14:58.660 for under $2,000.

00:15:00.240 Well, congratulations, Jordan.

00:15:01.500 It's honestly brilliant.

00:15:02.440 I can't wait to enroll myself.

00:15:03.700 I'll be doing that straight after this.

00:15:06.440 Funjo.

00:15:18.240 It's a possibility that if what's making itself manifest in front of you

00:15:25.400 is not the answer to all your prayers

00:15:29.040 or the source of all your valid desires

00:15:32.940 that you're just not looking at it

00:15:35.720 with the right aim in mind.

00:15:39.200 Okay, so let's talk about aim

00:15:42.980 in even more detail.

00:15:46.680 There's a story in the Old Testament

00:15:49.540 that's relevant to this.

00:15:52.000 It's the story of Jacob, who becomes Israel.

00:15:56.180 Now, Jacob is not a good guy when that story begins.

00:16:01.300 Quite the contrary.

00:16:02.940 And this is actually a very interesting feature of the majority of the stories about the Old Testament prophets.

00:16:10.340 These patriarchal oppressors, so to speak.

00:16:14.060 They're not particularly admirable people at the beginning of their adventures.

00:16:19.140 That's generally the case.

00:16:21.340 And this is a good thing, because if the only people who can become agents of the divine are those without flaw,

00:16:29.400 then there's no hope for anyone.

00:16:31.620 There's plenty of hope if those who became great in a manner that's been remembered for centuries

00:16:38.000 started out just as flawed as you might be, or I might be.

00:16:45.080 And so, and that's also a realistic portrayal, right?

00:16:49.100 It's the kind of portrayal you'd expect in high-quality literature.

00:16:53.440 Because in high-quality literature, the heroes are complex figures.

00:16:57.640 They're not all good.

00:16:59.060 They're flawed and twisted and bent in all the ways that make people horrible and wonderful and interesting.

00:17:06.360 And the story of their life that unfolds is the story of how those flawed people make their way to hell or heaven, so to speak.

00:17:19.100 And maybe even in reality, Jacob, when the story begins, Jacob is a dweller in tents compared to his brother, who's a very masculine figure, an outdoorsman and a hunter.

00:17:38.160 And an impulsive person in keeping with that archetypally and stereotypically masculine orientation.

00:17:49.100 And Jacob is a favorite of his mother.

00:17:54.460 And that in itself is not necessarily a bad thing.

00:17:59.940 Although there's danger in it.

00:18:01.240 Because there's danger when any given child is a favorite.

00:18:06.140 And that favoritism is evident.

00:18:09.100 And there's a danger in being your father's favorite.

00:18:12.320 And there's a danger in being your mother's favorite.

00:18:15.040 And the canonical danger, I suppose, of being your mother's favorite is that that can set you against your father,

00:18:22.920 which is, and perhaps your other siblings, which is not an optimal outcome.

00:18:26.920 And also, maybe you'll be a bit too close and tightly bound up with your mother,

00:18:32.380 which is also not generally a good thing, as Sigmund Freud warned about continually.

00:18:38.980 seeing that, as he did, as the source of much of familial psychopathology.

00:18:46.900 Why? Human children have the longest period of dependency of any creatures.

00:18:52.860 And that means that that maternal bond and desire for nurturing and protection

00:19:00.000 is extremely powerful and necessary, and also capable of going spectacularly wrong.

00:19:06.760 And that's what happens in the case of children who are rendered or invited to become dependent.

00:19:15.720 And that's what happens to Jacob.

00:19:17.520 And it's worse because he conspires with his mother to take the right of inheritance from his brother

00:19:25.000 and to deceive his father even on his deathbed.

00:19:28.900 And that's pretty ugly and very typical of family pathology.

00:19:37.360 The story of Jacob as an independent person begins after he deceives his father and his brother in a manner so beyond the pale that it makes his brother murderous.

00:20:01.060 And so Jacob leaves.

00:20:02.280 Now, when he leaves, you might imagine that he's shocked enough about the necessity of leaving and maybe now old enough, because he's now a young adult, to understand that perhaps he's done something wrong and also may be able to see things clearly for the first time because he's got away from his mother.

00:20:27.120 Now, I'm reading into the text because the details of that particular story aren't all there.

00:20:32.820 But we can infer what the situation might be in consequence of our shared experience.

00:20:40.240 In any case, when Jacob leaves his family, he makes a decision.

00:20:46.600 And his decision is that he's going to aim up.

00:20:51.300 Okay, so

00:20:53.620 If you're an alcoholic

00:20:56.100 It's a fairly common fate

00:20:58.600 How might you

00:21:01.040 Recover from being an alcoholic

00:21:03.320 Well, you could go to a treatment center

00:21:06.200 For example

00:21:08.580 You could undergo medical treatment

00:21:11.000 Hypothetically

00:21:12.040 There's no evidence that that'll work

00:21:14.360 There's no evidence whatsoever

00:21:16.480 That any treatment

00:21:17.680 So-called medical treatment

00:21:20.820 psychological treatment, for that matter, for alcoholism, ever works.

00:21:24.980 It's been known for 70 years that religious conversion treats alcoholism.

00:21:33.240 Now, I'll explain why that's the case as we proceed through this.

00:21:43.780 If you're going to wrestle something like an addiction to the ground,

00:21:47.780 if you're going to radically alter your pathway through life,

00:21:53.280 which is what Jacob decides to do,

00:21:56.100 you have to come to a point of crisis

00:21:59.120 where you decide to reorient yourself.

00:22:03.520 You have to understand that the path you're on has been destructive,

00:22:09.280 and you have to realize that.

00:22:10.980 I think other people can tell you that, but that won't work.

00:22:14.500 You have to figure it out.

00:22:15.580 you have to understand that you've gone spectacularly wrong that it's your responsibility

00:22:23.560 that that's the case and that in principle it would be worth risking something to

00:22:31.840 put that right now all those are acts of faith right it's like what makes you think you can

00:22:41.260 change you haven't what makes you think there is an up as opposed to the

00:22:48.220 direction that you've been going and what makes you think you'd have the power

00:22:53.140 of will and commitment to walk the straight narrow path even if it revealed

00:23:01.240 itself to you you don't know and so you have to step forward towards what's

00:23:09.100 better by stepping into the unknown and you have to do it with a sacrificial

00:23:16.480 attitude and this is something that's laid out very carefully in the Old

00:23:20.200 Testament stories because there's an insistence in those strange stories

00:23:24.640 that you establish the proper relationship with what's highest so that

00:23:31.000 would be the highest upward aim through sacrifice now everyone knows that who's

00:23:39.400 even vaguely familiar with these old stories but it isn't obvious at all that

00:23:44.260 anyone understands it especially because it's couched in this archaic language so

00:23:49.540 for example when Jacob decides to aim up instead of down when he leaves his home

00:23:56.980 He builds an altar, and he sacrifices something concrete, right?

00:24:04.340 He makes an offering, a burnt offering on the altar,

00:24:07.240 and sends the smoke, which contains the essence of his offering,

00:24:12.080 upward towards the God who dwells in the sky,

00:24:15.700 who assesses the quality of the offering and determines whether it's acceptable.

00:24:21.840 That's a very archaic conceptualization, right?

00:24:26.980 that the essence, that a sacrifice is something concrete,

00:24:31.840 that immolating it on an altar releases its essence,

00:24:36.940 that the essence can be detected by the God of the sky

00:24:40.160 who decides whether that's an acceptable sacrifice.

00:24:43.800 It's primordial conceptualization,

00:24:46.300 but it means something deep.

00:24:51.020 It's the way that a very complicated and sophisticated idea

00:24:56.000 made itself manifest before

00:24:59.200 thorough understanding of it could be established,

00:25:02.760 before it could be abstracted.

00:25:05.100 If you're going to change,

00:25:08.080 you're going to sacrifice something.

00:25:11.540 That's the nature of change, right? 1.00

00:25:13.980 You're going to sacrifice your stupidity, right? 1.00

00:25:18.480 You're going to sacrifice your immaturity. 1.00

00:25:21.180 And you know this too, that as you progress through life,

00:25:24.680 assuming you progress,

00:25:26.000 and a new or a new opportunities make themselves manifest to you in consequence of your progress

00:25:34.880 you're be going to be called upon to leave the parts of you that were only worthy of the last

00:25:43.220 adventure you had behind you see for example when people have children they often undergo

00:25:53.640 process of radical maturity. Not always, but usually. And you can see it in their face. You

00:26:02.660 can see it in how they conduct themselves. They turn from children to adults. I saw this

00:26:07.760 happen with my son before my son had children. He was a perfectly fine young man, but he

00:26:12.860 was still, was he still a kid? Most people are still kids before they have children.

00:26:20.580 Partly because you're not an adult until someone is more important than you.

00:26:27.020 And that's a hard thing to pull off before you have children.

00:26:30.260 You can do it, but it's not easy.

00:26:33.560 Children make it necessary, and if you don't manage that transformation,

00:26:37.860 it's very difficult for you to be the parent you should be.

00:26:41.380 so

00:26:43.780 the process of transformation

00:26:47.760 is

00:26:49.600 the decision to aim up

00:26:52.400 so that's

00:26:54.720 to turn your eyes

00:26:56.820 let's say heavenward

00:26:58.040 that's the poetic language

00:26:59.880 and then to vow

00:27:02.460 to make whatever sacrifices

00:27:05.160 are necessary in that pursuit

00:27:07.260 and that's how you leave behind

00:27:10.620 the dried up carcasses of your previous self and ascend.

00:27:18.160 And that's exactly what Jacob dreams, right?

00:27:21.120 Because it's at that point that he has the dream of Jacob's ladder.

00:27:25.040 And Jacob's ladder is a spiral staircase that reaches up to what?

00:27:31.580 To heaven itself.

00:27:33.700 Well, what does that mean?

00:27:34.960 And angels descend and ascend on that staircase.

00:27:39.660 So Jacob has a vision of the structure that unites us with the ultimate upward aim.

00:27:46.720 Okay, so let's think through what this story is trying to relate about the nature of God and the nature of man in relationship to God.

00:27:58.200 We've already established that to do anything is to aim.

00:28:05.340 And to do anything good is to aim up.

00:28:08.800 And we talked about micro aims, the aim that you might indicate with your eyes if you were on a date, let's say, and your true goal was the establishment of something like a lasting relationship predicated on truth and love.

00:28:25.780 A very different signal, you might say, about your intent, given all the alternative motivations that you might bring to bear on that situation.

00:28:36.480 now it isn't necessary that the person that you're dating wants you to signal the highest

00:28:47.060 possible motivation because they might be oriented and maybe you're hoping for this

00:28:52.480 for something short-term more intense and requiring a hell of a lot less commitment

00:28:58.380 But it's still the case that the dynamic of attention and speech and the dance of personal interaction that characterizes that date is going to reflect the structure value within which both of the participants are operating.

00:29:19.580 And that means that they each inhabit something like a ladder, but God only knows what's at the top.

00:29:31.420 And this is a very important thing to understand.

00:29:34.780 Now, there's an insistence in the Old Testament, and the New for that matter, that what's highest is ineffable.

00:29:42.960 okay so this is a very important thing to understand because the god that's portrayed

00:29:49.760 in the biblical library is not definable not in the final analysis and there's a reason for that

00:29:56.900 the first reason is you cannot conceive of what the highest possible good might be

00:30:01.420 and you know that because as you pursue what you deem to be good in your life you learn more about

00:30:09.200 what's good. And there doesn't seem to be a limit to that, right? If you're striving upward and you

00:30:18.360 accomplish something, you gather the wisdom that's a consequence of that accomplishment, and now you

00:30:23.840 can specify your next aim more precisely. And there's no reason to assume that there's any

00:30:31.300 limit to that, and what that means is that what's at the top recedes as you approach it. And you

00:30:36.920 also want that because otherwise you'd be in the position of Sisyphus you know Sisyphus he rolls a

00:30:42.740 stone up the mountain and then it rolls back down and he has to roll it up the mountain and then it

00:30:48.380 rolls down and he has a life of fundamental pointlessness and you might say that your life 0.82

00:30:55.560 is Sisyphean which means it's one damn thing after another and but you could construe or the 0.88

00:31:04.080 same damn thing over and over more accurately but you could construe your life as a sequence of 0.96

00:31:09.760 mountains each of which is higher with no peak in the distance ever being the ultimate peak 0.98

00:31:17.780 and that would also be a place of endless adventure because no matter how much you

00:31:22.820 accomplished there'd still be something left to accomplish and then you could think of

00:31:27.180 whatever beckons at the farthest reaches of that endeavor as the highest possible principle

00:31:35.700 that recedes as you approach it. And that's one of the ways that God has defined in the biblical

00:31:42.160 library. And I don't see any way out of that, because the only other hypothesis is that

00:31:49.760 there's nothing that unites what is good. And that's preposterous, because we would even have

00:31:55.900 concept of good if there wasn't something that was the same about all good things and so and

00:32:03.760 you have to think about it as inexhaustible because otherwise you'd be able to reach perfection and i

00:32:09.920 don't see anybody glowing white in the audience so it seems like at least none of you people have

00:32:15.540 managed that and so and you'd want what's highest to be ineffable and receding because otherwise it

00:32:24.200 would be exhaustible and then you could come to the end of your adventure and you don't want that

00:32:29.580 and so and so we have jacob's ladder and jacob has that realization when he decides to aim up

00:32:38.180 right that the realization is that you could aim up and that if and that if you aimed up this is

00:32:46.660 the next thing that's in the dream, if you could aim up, if you did aim up, then what was at the

00:32:55.320 pinnacle of your aim would then communicate with you. Now you think, well, does that make sense?

00:33:03.260 Okay, here's a way of thinking about it. Let's say that you, you could just remember this,

00:33:09.340 remember a time when you're like viciously angry and possessed by the desire for vengeance

00:33:16.780 okay now imagine that you now strategize in that spirit okay so now your aim is you this will

00:33:25.660 happen to you when you have a fight with your wife or your husband you know and in the anger

00:33:29.880 if it's a serious fight in the anger of that fight you're going to want to win and maybe

00:33:34.920 at whatever cost necessary and that's not an aim commensurate with spiraling the relationship

00:33:44.460 upward but in the throes of your rage maybe not only do you not care you're actually happy that

00:33:53.460 you sacrifice the peace of your relationship to your momentary victory that's your aim and then

00:34:00.120 the ideas associated with that aim

00:34:02.240 make

00:34:04.100 themselves manifest to you in the

00:34:06.020 theater of your imagination because

00:34:07.960 you called upon the spirit

00:34:09.880 of vengeance to reveal

00:34:12.320 its proclivities

00:34:14.280 to yourself.

00:34:16.740 So there's something to be

00:34:18.080 terrified about.

00:34:20.220 The spirit of your aim

00:34:21.740 informs

00:34:24.200 your revelations.

00:34:26.360 And that's true.

00:34:28.160 That's true. That's not some

00:34:29.880 superstitious religious proclamation it's true biologically because your perceptions and your

00:34:38.720 motivations your emotions are markers for navigation they take you where you're aiming

00:34:48.580 and so if you understand that the next thing you want to figure out is just exactly where

00:34:55.440 the hell are you aiming and jacob's vow like the vow of abraham is that he's going to aim up now

00:35:04.720 you might say what does that mean and the answer is well you don't know right because what the hell 0.51

00:35:09.840 do you know and especially when you start out flawed like jacob or like abraham for that matter 1.00

00:35:15.760 Your vision is obscured by your own foolishness and you're ignorant and immature. 0.99

00:35:23.620 But that doesn't mean that you know nothing about the distinction between what's good and what's not. 0.99

00:35:32.540 And so you're called upon, you might say, to aim up in keeping with the limits of your knowledge and your morality.

00:35:43.180 If you don't know what's good or not, maybe that's not a decision to make,

00:35:50.520 but there'll be times when you know, when you know, and then you listen, or you don't.

00:36:01.420 there's a scene in the Gospels

00:36:13.780 that's a very interesting scene

00:36:15.300 so Christ is on a mountaintop

00:36:17.560 now it's a trope

00:36:19.340 like a meme

00:36:21.300 that people experience

00:36:23.460 enlightenment on a mountaintop

00:36:25.060 not in a hole

00:36:26.400 on a mountaintop because you can see

00:36:29.040 long distances

00:36:30.300 on a mountaintop right the world is spread out before you your vision is enhanced and a mountaintop

00:36:37.940 is up and up is nearer the heavens and up is the direction of our aim if we're aiming at the good

00:36:45.400 these are all metaphorical truths you might say and so christ is up on the mountain and

00:36:51.000 his disciples have a vision of him

00:36:55.520 in the company of Moses and Elijah

00:36:57.720 and they're glowing white

00:37:00.920 like the sun

00:37:03.020 which amplifies the notion of

00:37:06.440 the heavenly up that's associated with

00:37:10.420 the transcendent heavens

00:37:12.860 and Moses is there

00:37:15.740 because he's the greatest prophet of the Old Testament

00:37:18.220 and the founder of the law

00:37:19.760 But why is Elijah there?

00:37:24.260 Elijah is a relatively minor prophet compared to Moses in relationship, let's say, to narrative length.

00:37:32.320 The story of Exodus, the extended story of Exodus, occupies a substantial proportion of the Old Testament stories.

00:37:39.260 And the story of Elijah is pretty short.

00:37:41.100 And he's not a figure whose identity is known even to those who are divorced entirely from the religious enterprise.

00:37:53.740 Why Elijah?

00:37:59.120 At the time of Elijah, the faith of the Israelites in the God of their ancestors has become weak.

00:38:08.500 In fact, the narrative theme is that the only real emissary of Yahweh at the time of Elijah is Elijah himself.

00:38:24.900 And it's partly because the Israelites have succumbed to the temptation to have a king.

00:38:32.100 Now, the Israelites in the desert, they don't have a king.

00:38:36.480 in fact they escaped from a king they escaped from the pharaoh and now they're out there trying

00:38:41.280 to be responsible citizens and not doing that great a job at it because they have to take on

00:38:46.460 the responsibility of the state they have to take that responsibility on to themselves

00:38:52.400 and they'd rather not and so in the aftermath of the exodus expedition the israelites clamor for a

00:39:02.400 king because everyone else has one and because they're not regarded as a formidable power

00:39:08.440 without one. And God says, you can have a king, but I wouldn't recommend it because kings turn

00:39:15.360 into tyrants and their subjects turn into slaves and even voluntarily because they want to dispense

00:39:23.740 with the responsibility and that's not good for them. And the Israelites say, yeah, but we want 0.71

00:39:28.720 king anyways and so

00:39:30.740 they end up with the king and

00:39:32.640 the king in this particular story

00:39:34.920 is Ahab

00:39:36.080 and he's not a very good king 0.99

00:39:38.460 as kings tend

00:39:40.700 not to be

00:39:42.460 and

00:39:44.200 he deviates from

00:39:46.880 Jacob's aim

00:39:48.400 and he marries 0.96

00:39:50.180 a foreign queen

00:39:52.760 named Jezebel

00:39:54.460 and Jezebel

00:39:56.880 is a nature worshiper

00:39:58.140 and you might have noticed that a lot of them have popped up in recent years and that's not

00:40:05.720 a good idea nature worship is generally associated with the sacrifice of children

00:40:11.940 and that's happening now all right jezebel the nature worshiper is a prophetess of a god

00:40:21.820 whose name is Baal, B-A-A-L, and he's a god of nature.

00:40:26.460 Now, why would there be gods of nature?

00:40:29.760 Well, for the same reason that there are nature worshippers now.

00:40:34.520 Nature is very impressive.

00:40:36.640 It's awe-inspiring, right?

00:40:38.560 You go to the Grand Canyon, you look over the expanse of the ocean,

00:40:43.360 or you see a storm on the ocean,

00:40:45.340 you look up at the immense expanse of the Milky Way,

00:40:48.800 or just watch a sunset you experience an earthquake or a forest fire you can feel

00:40:56.960 or thunderstorm you can feel the power of nature and its beauty and its majesty and

00:41:02.780 you can see it as valuable and you can see it as beyond the human and you can see it even validly

00:41:10.920 as worthy of protection and you can take it to four and you can make nature itself something

00:41:17.180 more valuable than the human soul let's say and you can fall into the worship of nature and that's 0.94

00:41:24.580 what happens with Jezebel and in consequence she persecutes all the prophets of Yahweh and 0.94

00:41:34.880 until the only one left is Elijah and Elijah has a showdown with the prophets of Baal and 0.86

00:41:43.960 They both make altars and the nature worshippers are praying away that their offering is taken up by Baal and that doesn't happen.

00:41:53.920 And Elijah makes an altar and he soaks it in water so that it can't be burned. 0.82

00:42:05.040 And then the fire of Yahweh descends and consumes not only the sacrifice but the altar itself.

00:42:11.660 and that's pretty much does in the reputation of the prophets of Baal 0.89

00:42:19.300 and they're all put to death by Elijah's followers

00:42:23.120 and the drought that affects the kingdom disappears.

00:42:34.480 You remember in the Lion King, you may remember this,

00:42:37.340 everybody knows the Lion King, so it's a good referent.

00:42:40.300 when star becomes king scar right vengeful luciferian intellectual dismissive derisive

00:42:54.180 self-worshiping when he takes the throne which is the pride rock and the kingdom suffers a drought

00:43:02.740 why because if your society worships the wrong thing everyone starves why you think it's easy

00:43:11.080 to get fresh water you think fresh water that's a natural resource you know most people on earth

00:43:17.520 still don't have fresh water you have to organize your society very carefully before you can think

00:43:23.520 of fresh water as a natural resource and you're not going to do that if your society isn't oriented

00:43:28.900 in the proper direction, right?

00:43:31.600 It has to be oriented

00:43:32.460 so that it's going to serve everyone,

00:43:35.560 even the poorest,

00:43:37.400 have water in the United States,

00:43:39.980 in Western countries,

00:43:41.360 because we put people higher than nature

00:43:44.700 and we'll make dams

00:43:46.400 and we'll move rivers

00:43:47.560 and we'll disrupt the natural order

00:43:50.360 so that children don't die of thirst.

00:43:54.660 So the presence of water

00:43:56.780 is dependent not on the benevolence of nature although that plays a role but on the ethos that

00:44:02.300 governs the society and that's true for all the abundance that we enjoy it's not a mere consequence

00:44:09.260 of good fortune there are plenty of countries in the world that have ample natural resources

00:44:15.260 that are devastated hell holes in fact there's almost no correlation between the wealth of a

00:44:22.940 nation and the prevalence of natural resources the economists call that the natural resource paradox

00:44:29.900 well why well maybe if things come too easily for you you don't appreciate them and maybe if wealth

00:44:36.380 is just lying around the corrupt egomaniacs capitalize on it and turn into tyrants you have

00:44:43.900 as counter examples places like japan a highly ethical high trust society with no natural

00:44:50.300 resources hyper rich right

00:44:54.300 elijah defeats the nature worshipers and so that's one thing he represents and that's part

00:45:03.560 of the reason that he appears transfigured with christ but that's not the end of the story of

00:45:10.160 elijah even though just that is quite remarkable you remember in the lion king with scars defeated

00:45:17.480 by simba who matures under the influence of nala and returns to take his kingdom back that as soon

00:45:25.600 as he defeats scar in a conflagration of fire the rain returns right and that's because the

00:45:32.300 proper principle has been put at the pinnacle of the ladder that reaches to the sky and in

00:45:39.320 consequence of that the soul is satisfied and society becomes productive and abundant right

00:45:48.720 so elijah defeats the prophets of baal and uh jezebel gets word of this and she's not happy

00:46:00.040 to put it mildly and she calls for his death and so elijah heads for the hills and he hides out

00:46:08.940 and he's in a cave

00:46:13.900 which is where

00:46:15.520 prophets hide out

00:46:18.400 and

00:46:19.100 when he's there

00:46:21.720 he's wondering what's going on

00:46:24.700 he's despairing to some degree

00:46:26.360 because

00:46:27.600 there's hardly anyone left in the whole

00:46:30.720 kingdom who is oriented properly 1.00

00:46:32.620 they've all turned into

00:46:33.980 nature worshipping 1.00

00:46:36.460 hypocrites 1.00

00:46:39.980 and 1.00

00:46:41.560 he's

00:46:43.920 attempting to

00:46:45.760 find his way. And when he's

00:46:47.820 hiding out, he

00:46:49.980 his place of habitation

00:46:55.820 is visited by an earthquake

00:46:57.260 and then by a

00:47:00.000 forest fire and then by an

00:47:01.800 immense storm.

00:47:03.000 And Elijah is tempted by the power of those manifestations of nature to make the assumption that the divine itself is revealing itself in the awe-inspiring displays of the natural world.

00:47:27.200 And then he has a realization.

00:47:29.100 his realization is that God is not in the earthquake

00:47:34.940 or in the conflagration or in the storm

00:47:38.860 but in the voice that comes to people from within

00:47:45.000 the still small voice is the voice of God

00:47:50.300 that's Elijah's realization

00:47:52.100 and it's this realization that puts him in the league

00:47:56.860 of the most eminent prophets because that's a stunning transformation in attitude for humanity

00:48:06.460 of the same order of importance you might say as socrates discovery of how to think

00:48:12.620 elijah posits that it's the voice of conscience that's equivalent to the voice of god

00:48:22.460 now this is something to really think about

00:48:27.120 so let's take that idea apart

00:48:31.400 well the first thing you might realize is that

00:48:34.380 you don't have to do what your conscience tells you

00:48:37.640 so the idea that it's still and small

00:48:42.040 that you have to be quiet to hear it

00:48:43.780 and that it doesn't compel you with power or threat

00:48:47.660 that seems right

00:48:48.960 you do something that you shouldn't do

00:48:51.500 and you're awake at night sweating it out

00:48:54.780 and you know that you did do what you did

00:48:58.200 and that you could continue

00:48:59.480 but there's something that's, what, calling to you?

00:49:04.180 Calling you out on your misbehavior

00:49:07.020 that you could attend to, that you don't have to attend to.

00:49:10.300 You can squelch it, you can ignore it,

00:49:12.680 you can continue with your misbehavior

00:49:15.360 or worse, you have the freedom to not abide by your conscience

00:49:20.560 And maybe it manifests to you as an emotion or as verbal thoughts, a feeling, let's say,

00:49:26.720 or fully developed conceptualization.

00:49:29.380 Hints about what the appropriate pattern of action might be.

00:49:35.440 And it has an autonomy, which is a fascinating thing.

00:49:39.300 Because you might think if you're running the show, especially your own show,

00:49:43.520 and you'd think that you are, because it's your show,

00:49:46.900 that you could just tell your conscience what to do.

00:49:50.560 Because it's you, or it isn't, those are the options, and if it's you, then why can't you just shut it down, and tell it to leave you the hell alone, or make a pact with it, so that despite the fact that you're doing something second-rate and malevolent, that it's fully on board.

00:50:14.580 how in the world is it the case that you can't control that and what does it mean that you can't

00:50:22.640 control it does it mean that there's a part of you that's not you and it's a part of you that's

00:50:28.180 not you that can think and can invoke emotion can invoke shame can invoke the desire to change

00:50:35.540 that you can't control well what's the difference between that and the hypothesis of a spirit

00:50:42.460 and then you might say well is there a similarity between the diverse voices of conscience that come

00:50:49.980 to multiple people and we say well of course because we can recognize someone who's appropriately

00:50:56.700 conscience ridden we're even likely to forgive them and we know that the voice of conscience

00:51:02.040 that speaks to you might speak about your particular flaws to you and about your particular

00:51:08.180 or flaws to you, but the thing that it's aiming at is similar enough so that we can recognize it as

00:51:13.900 the voice of conscience. And so, not only is it not personal in that you don't get to control it,

00:51:19.280 and internal, it's also transcendent. It's something that isn't you, that's beyond you,

00:51:25.900 that speaks to everyone with the same aim in mind. It's an Old Testament insistence that that,

00:51:34.080 this is a definition you see it's a definition that's a definition of what is to be regarded as

00:51:41.840 god now you can think of that as a hypothesis that's perfectly reasonable and it's not the

00:51:48.280 only way that god is characterized in the biblical writings in the story of noah for example noah

00:51:54.780 the god that comes to noah is the voice that tells the wise to prepare when trouble is brewing

00:52:01.960 now you can see a association between that and the idea of conscience but it's not exactly the

00:52:08.900 same thing it's a different angle on the same thing and in the story of Abraham God is the

00:52:14.260 voice of adventure and the biblical insistence is the voice of adventure the voice that calls

00:52:21.600 the wise to prepare and the voice of conscience they're all the same thing that's that underlying

00:52:27.760 unity that makes the book aim at a

00:52:29.900 monotheism and

00:52:31.400 I think that's 0.98

00:52:33.960 correct now back to Jacob's

00:52:36.140 ladder because we could take apart

00:52:37.820 what conscience is technically

00:52:39.380 so let's say that

00:52:43.860 you're a reasonably

00:52:46.060 well socialized

00:52:48.240 man and I'm going to

00:52:49.900 say this technically

00:52:50.940 we know that among men and women

00:52:53.720 but it's more blatant in the case of men

00:52:55.380 there are two patterns of attitude

00:52:57.260 towards sex and women one pattern of attitude is characterized by preference biologically speaking 0.99

00:53:06.800 for so-called short-term mating opportunities that might be the land of the eternal one-night

00:53:15.080 stand which is a land where conquest is unlikely to be successful or lasting but still beckons

00:53:25.620 attractively there are men who prefer the short-term mating strategy and there

00:53:33.900 are men who prefer sexual opportunity in the context of long-term relationship

00:53:42.240 and commitment that's clear that those two patterns actually mirror two

00:53:48.360 different patterns of reproduction in the biological world at large there are

00:53:52.680 some creatures that have no investment in their offspring puffballs mosquitoes fish reproduction

00:54:02.200 is nothing but sex the only contribution is sperm and egg there's millions or billions

00:54:09.240 of offspring produced all of them die except a tiny handful and sex and reproduction are the

00:54:15.640 same thing and then there's investment reproducers and human beings are the ultimate exemplars of that

00:54:22.680 very few offspring, very long investment period, multi-generational even. And there's no

00:54:30.080 creature that exemplifies that pattern more particularly than human beings.

00:54:39.440 That distinction between short-term low investment and long-term high investment

00:54:45.400 is echoed in human personality. What's the personality of the men who favor short-term

00:54:52.420 mating strategies they're machiavellian which means they use their language to manipulate 0.99

00:54:58.660 they're psychopathic which means they're predatory parasites they're narcissistic 1.00

00:55:05.660 which means they want unearned social status and to cap it all off they're sadistic which 1.00

00:55:11.380 means they take positive delight in the unnecessary suffering of others and so

00:55:17.420 So, that's a good example of how aim determines character and character, attention, action, and speech.

00:55:31.820 Now, imagine that you're not a dark tetrad kind of guy, or that maybe you're only 25% tilted in that direction.

00:55:42.860 so you're an intermingling let's say of

00:55:45.880 a good reliable man and an opportunistic man

00:55:50.940 and that's pretty much the standard situation

00:55:53.840 and you're tempted

00:55:56.760 drunkenly

00:55:59.840 to tilt in the direction of sexual exploitation 0.80

00:56:05.740 and maybe you have a willing partner

00:56:07.680 who's tempted for the same reasons

00:56:10.760 And so, you take the intensely pleasurable, advantageous in the short-term path, and then your conscience tortures you.

00:56:25.160 Okay, why?

00:56:26.380 Well, we made a theological case in a sense, right, working on the hypothesis that human beings are related to the ultimate city on the hill, let's say,

00:56:44.740 in that in some sense the occupant of that city is in communication with each of us

00:56:53.100 and that makes itself manifest in the case of conscience.

00:56:56.400 But there's a more mechanistic interpretation that doesn't make that one irrelevant

00:57:01.340 but adds a more practical realism to the idea.

00:57:09.560 if part of you is aiming at love if part of you is aiming at responsibility if part of you is

00:57:17.760 aiming at children part of you is aiming at having the children who will love you that you will be

00:57:23.500 committed to if part of you has the spirit of someone who will become a grandfather then that's

00:57:30.680 part of the implicit structure of aim that's shaping your attention and actions and it might

00:57:37.040 be lurking in the background, highly likely if you're 19, let's say, and impulsive, not

00:57:42.300 thinking about settling down, not thinking about the multiple decades of your life, but

00:57:47.380 still, insofar as you're acting out the pattern of manhood, valid manhood that characterizes

00:57:54.640 your society, that ethos of long-term commitment and abundance is going to be operating unconsciously

00:58:05.260 in the depths regulating your conscience and when you act in the moment in a manner that violates

00:58:15.260 that longer term covenant or contract your own soul is going to let you know that you've wandered

00:58:22.540 off the path and i think by the way that we know enough about the way the brain is structured

00:58:29.260 Neuropsychologically, we know enough about how vision and aim and emotion and motivation and thought are associated to make what I just said an incontrovertible empirical fact.

00:58:43.400 And so that's pretty interesting.

00:58:45.440 You get the union, and it makes sense, right?

00:58:47.560 Because you know perfectly well that you're plagued by your conscience when you do something pleasurable and useless in the moment

00:58:56.240 that compromises you in the medium to long run, or that puts other people at risk.

00:59:01.960 It's a form of betrayal, let's say.

00:59:04.000 You can betray yourself, your deeper self, your true self, that's another way of thinking about it,

00:59:09.980 your higher self, you can betray that.

00:59:13.640 and there's a mechanism that operates within you that lets you know and of course there is because

00:59:21.620 how the hell else would you know how to orient yourself in the world over spans of time that

00:59:26.560 exceeded tonight and it's a pretty sad creature who's birdie and hasn't got a vision of the world

00:59:36.280 that lasts longer than the next hour you want to be as far away from someone like that even if you're

00:59:43.420 that person as you can possibly get right we know that as you mature your capability

00:59:49.800 your capacity to govern your actions by a longer and longer span vision increases that's what the

00:59:59.480 difference is between a two-year-old and a ten-year-old the two-year-old's got a span of

01:00:04.820 a few minutes you know the ten-year-old's got up to the point where maybe he can manage a week

01:00:09.960 you'd kind of hope by the time that you're an adult that maybe you can think about something

01:00:15.120 approximating the multiple decades of a marriage let's say and no one in their right mind is going

01:00:23.700 to presume that the shorter term orientation should trump the longer term orientation i mean

01:00:29.960 how could that possibly make sense if you're worth serving you're worth serving over the longest

01:00:37.780 possible period of time, clearly. And I also believe, and I think you can make a technical

01:00:44.740 case for that, that if you acted in your best interest over multiple decades, there'd be

01:00:50.520 absolutely no difference between that and acting in the best interests of other people,

01:00:55.680 especially your wife, your husband, your family members, because they're you.

01:01:00.760 what a neighbor said to me once,

01:01:04.760 no mother is any happier

01:01:06.500 than her most miserable child. 0.69

01:01:10.200 And there's truth in that. 0.55

01:01:11.680 It's like once you're mature

01:01:14.700 and you're embedded

01:01:16.080 in your social community,

01:01:17.960 when you have long-term commitments,

01:01:20.340 which is what you have 0.98

01:01:21.320 if you're not a bloody psychopath, 0.98

01:01:23.880 then there isn't any difference 0.98

01:01:26.360 between your long-term emotional stability,

01:01:29.340 the hope the future offers, and the manner in which you treat the people around you.

01:01:34.900 It's the same thing.

01:01:36.840 And that's part of that upward aim.

01:01:39.520 And it's the violation of that principle that your conscience speaks to you of.

01:01:43.280 And you can think about that as a deep biological instinct.

01:01:47.080 Or you can think about it as the voice of God himself.

01:01:50.060 And it doesn't matter, and they're the same.

01:01:57.120 Conscience as God.

01:01:59.340 That's a deep, by the way, a deep Catholic supposition.

01:02:03.540 It's one of the classic arguments, and I think a very powerful argument for the existence of the divine.

01:02:10.880 It's very difficult.

01:02:14.720 It's very difficult to falsify that proposition.

01:02:21.100 I don't think you can do it.

01:02:23.040 I tried to do it.

01:02:23.960 Everything I wrote in all my books, but...

01:02:26.920 I tried to break all the things I wrote.

01:02:31.100 I'd have an idea, and then I'd think, you know, for a week

01:02:34.020 about how that might be wrong, and if it was wrong, then I'd just scrap it.

01:02:38.940 The only thing that was left were things I could not make wrong.

01:02:43.680 I don't think it was because I had an agenda

01:02:45.860 other than trying to find firm ground, you know?

01:02:51.000 And if you want to find firm ground,

01:02:53.000 then you want to subject everything to a rigorously sacrificial process that's

01:02:59.840 for sure that's separation of the wheat from the chaff and that's a manifestation

01:03:05.420 of the divine logos Jonah when we meet Jonah we don't know anything about him

01:03:18.920 he's a middle-aged guy

01:03:23.000 Nondescript, apparently, because there's no story about Jonah

01:03:27.840 up until the story that I'm going to tell you unfold.

01:03:34.960 God comes to Jonah and says to him,

01:03:40.080 you've got something to say.

01:03:43.620 And Jonah is not very happy with that idea.

01:03:46.780 God explains it in some more painful depth.

01:03:49.900 He says to Jonah, you have a divine duty, even though you don't know it.

01:03:56.140 You have to go to the city of your enemies.

01:03:58.840 It's Nineveh in this tale.

01:04:00.880 And you have to tell them, you know, I'm not very happy with them.

01:04:06.000 And then if they don't straighten the hell out, there's going to be like serious trouble of a sort you can hardly possibly imagine.

01:04:13.000 And then we might say, well, is that the revenge of God?

01:04:18.460 and do we wish to believe in a vengeful God?

01:04:21.180 It's like, mess around and find out.

01:04:24.820 I'm dead serious.

01:04:26.100 It's like we all know perfectly well

01:04:27.780 that there are choices that we can make

01:04:29.860 that will lead to nothing but devastation,

01:04:33.880 suffering, and destruction.

01:04:35.320 And if you make enough of those choices

01:04:37.000 and there are enough of you making that choice,

01:04:39.700 then good luck to you.

01:04:41.640 And that's basically what God tells Jonah. 0.71

01:04:43.840 Just like he tells Abraham 0.59

01:04:46.080 in relationship to Sodom and Gomorrah. 0.95

01:04:48.460 It's like, break the rules long enough and reap the benefits.

01:04:53.640 And that's the descent of the vengeance of God, you might say,

01:04:57.000 or the descent into Dante's Inferno.

01:05:00.560 And that's a place people go,

01:05:02.560 and it might be a place that you all have visited,

01:05:05.280 however temporarily in your lives.

01:05:10.380 God says to Jonah, you have to go to Nineveh. 0.58

01:05:12.940 Now, you have to understand that Nineveh was a city of the enemies of the Jews

01:05:18.060 at that time so nineveh was like it's like san francisco on steroids to middle america right

01:05:29.900 if god descended to take vengeance on san francisco then there'd be many medical middle

01:05:36.700 americans who were thinking well it's about time and if god came to them and said you go talk to 0.62

01:05:43.100 to the hedonistic golden calf worshippers of San Francisco

01:05:50.580 and tell them to fly right or else,

01:05:53.480 you'd think, yeah, I don't think so. 0.94

01:05:56.060 They can go to hell in a handbasket in their own particular way. 0.63

01:05:59.820 And that's basically what Jonah thinks. 1.00

01:06:01.640 He thinks, I'm not going to talk to the Ninevites to straighten them out 1.00

01:06:06.880 because they deserve a good smiting and far be it from me to stand in the way. 1.00

01:06:12.420 And there's other considerations. 1.00

01:06:15.440 There's like 150,000 people in Nineveh, and they're foreigners. 1.00

01:06:19.660 And so Jonah thinks, so this is the voice of the divine. 1.00

01:06:22.820 It's telling me, I have to go preach to my enemies,

01:06:25.920 who are people to whom I do not wish the best,

01:06:30.040 and I have to do it alone as their enemy,

01:06:34.260 and there's 150,000 of them, and there's one of me,

01:06:38.520 and who the hell am I, and why would they listen to me? 0.78

01:06:42.160 so it seems like a fool's mission that's certainly the case and jonah thinks yeah no i don't think 0.87

01:06:50.720 so and so he makes for a port city and he jumps on a boat which is going to a city called tarshish 0.50

01:06:57.440 which was literally as far away as you could get from nineveh at that time it's like and you can

01:07:03.440 if you have an iota of sense you identify not with god but with jonah and you understand that

01:07:09.280 that that is exactly not only what you would do in all likelihood,

01:07:13.280 but what everyone would tell you to do.

01:07:16.180 So, so fine.

01:07:18.780 So now Jonah's on the boat, and he's asleep.

01:07:23.880 Now that's interesting, eh?

01:07:26.020 That he's asleep.

01:07:27.740 He's asleep like Christ's disciples are asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane.

01:07:32.680 And he's asleep like Cain after his murder of Abel,

01:07:36.640 wandering in the land of Nod and he's asleep because if you violate the call of your conscience

01:07:44.660 then you will do everything you possibly can to make yourself unconscious and so Jonah is asleep

01:07:53.700 on the boat and a storm rises and that's a convenient time to be asleep too especially

01:07:59.100 if you're the cause of the storm and so the wind blows and the waves rise and the ship is in peril 0.81

01:08:06.220 and the sailors who are a pagan lot are unhappy about their impending demise and they think

01:08:14.900 quite reasonably from a literary perspective maybe there's someone on board who isn't exactly right

01:08:20.920 with God and so they ask the passengers and they all deny any heavy burden on their conscience and

01:08:30.340 they find Jonah asleep and they ask him and he's somewhat sheepish at the moment and says

01:08:38.560 well now that you mention it I did experience a direct command from the god that I worship to

01:08:47.420 go to Nineveh and I'm making tracks in the opposite direction and so it's possible that it

01:08:54.640 has something to do with me and the sailors say well like who is this god that you worship and

01:09:00.840 they're kind of expecting like it's the god because they're pagans of the local forest or

01:09:06.300 the local well or maybe the beach or you know some relatively trivial deity that you could just kick

01:09:12.940 to the side without too much threat and jonah says well you you know the guy who made the oceans and

01:09:20.100 the continents and the stars and the moon? That God. And the sailors think, you probably

01:09:28.560 shouldn't annoy him. And so, Jonah indicates by the fact that he told the truth that he's

01:09:38.440 actually not such a bad guy, all things considered. And the sailors, who are none too happy about

01:09:43.780 the fact that their ship is in peril, decide that despite all, they're going to row like

01:09:49.000 mad to shore and see if they can save themselves and Jonah even though he tells them to throw him

01:09:55.180 overboard but they row and they row and they try to make progress and they throw all their cargo

01:10:02.280 overboard and doesn't matter because the storm's just getting worse and worse and so finally they

01:10:09.980 understand that they have nothing to lose by tossing Jonah into the drink and he's on board

01:10:17.600 for that and so they do and the storm ceases and they all decide to abandon their gods of the

01:10:27.520 forest let's say and bend the knee to the god of israel and jonah's in the water so what does this

01:10:36.560 mean well here's one interpretation if you're called upon to speak by your conscience even to

01:10:45.820 your enemies and you refuse then you put the ship at risk and that might be the ship of your soul

01:10:55.140 and it might be the ship of your family and it might be the ship of state or maybe it's all of

01:11:00.320 those and the notion is that you despite being nobody like jonah have something to say and if

01:11:11.400 you don't say it, then everything is imperative. And you might think, well, that's preposterous.

01:11:18.480 It's like, yeah, maybe. How do you know that the truth that you know that's unique to you

01:11:25.560 isn't necessary for the abundant provision of the world? Don't we all agree that every single

01:11:32.660 person is made in the image of God and has something valuable to offer? And if that's the

01:11:37.000 case well then maybe you're called upon to bring that forward when asked to and maybe the world

01:11:43.800 is a markedly lesser place degenerating into something approximating totalitarianism

01:11:50.120 when you're silent when you're called upon to speak when abraham meets the angels or god

01:11:58.040 halfway through his adventure they tell him that they're going to destroy sodom and gomorrah

01:12:04.740 for similar reasons as the threat is posed to Nineveh.

01:12:10.060 And Abraham says, I don't think you should do that.

01:12:14.720 He's bargaining with God.

01:12:16.180 And God says, why the hell not?

01:12:18.540 And Abraham says, what if there's some good people there in this immense city?

01:12:24.540 And God says, I don't think there are.

01:12:27.620 And Abraham says, yeah, but you might.

01:12:29.540 Have you looked everywhere?

01:12:30.560 Like, you might be wrong.

01:12:31.460 what if i can go there and find 50 good people and god says okay you find 50 people no smiting

01:12:41.400 and abraham who's a stubborn character says well how about 45 and god's annoyed at his presumption

01:12:52.260 but says hey 45 knock yourself out and abraham says 40 i imagine with some hesitancy and god

01:13:01.040 says, okay, 40. And Abraham says, well, how about 10? And God says, okay, 10. And so what does that

01:13:10.140 mean? Here's one interpretation. If the city is sufficiently uncorrupted so that there are

01:13:20.160 10 people in it who still dare tell the truth, then it has hope. And so then you might say,

01:13:28.920 well are you called upon to be one of those ten well what's the alternative that you're

01:13:35.480 part of the mass that's destined for desolation because those are the options and you might say

01:13:43.560 well how probable is it that it's you that would be called upon to speak and the answer is why not

01:13:51.120 you if not you then who and it's certainly the case that there are going to be times in your

01:13:58.200 life where you're the one that has to speak because no one else knows what you know about

01:14:03.140 that situation or about that circumstance that's a part of the fact that you are in fact unique

01:14:10.400 and that there's something about you that is unlike anyone else who will ever exist

01:14:15.720 and that that's part of the potential that you could bring into the world and who knows how

01:14:20.900 valuable that is the biblical insistence is that it's so valuable that if just 10 people in the

01:14:27.740 city do that then the city can be saved regardless of its iniquity let's say so maybe that's the case

01:14:35.660 for your family and for your town and for your state and your city and your state and maybe it's

01:14:41.440 the case for your nation and maybe if everyone said what the hell they're supposed to say then

01:14:46.980 the waves wouldn't rise and the ship wouldn't be imperiled and that's not all because when

01:14:53.420 Jonah gets thrown into the water. You might think, well, that's pretty bad. That's a pretty

01:14:57.440 vicious punishment. It's like, you ain't seen nothing yet. Because you only think that Jonah's

01:15:03.180 punishment, which is to die by drowning, is the ultimate punishment. And that just means that you

01:15:10.080 are naive beyond comprehension. Because you don't know that there are worse things than death.

01:15:17.220 And there are worse things than death. There are conditions under which life degenerates into

01:15:22.900 something so unbearable not least in consequence of your own inaction that you might beg for death

01:15:30.020 if you were there and you want to pray that you don't end up understanding exactly what that means

01:15:36.580 but that's what jonah comes to understand because what happens to him next is that

01:15:42.020 a beast from the deepest possible abyss comes up to the surface and takes him in its jaws

01:15:48.900 and brings them to the bottom of the earth itself right and it states explicitly in the text that

01:15:56.020 that's hell and so what's the idea well if you're silent when you're called upon to speak

01:16:03.620 then maybe you put the ship of state in peril and maybe that even imperils your own life but that's

01:16:09.380 nothing compared to the fact that you're inviting yourself and your fellow people into hell itself

01:16:16.620 And you might say, I don't believe in hell.

01:16:18.460 And I would say, well, that only means one of two things.

01:16:23.080 One is, you've been very fortunate so far

01:16:25.860 because you haven't had a visit, and that's unlikely last.

01:16:29.780 And you know nothing about human history.

01:16:32.860 And you know nothing about how states degenerate

01:16:35.740 when everyone who's called upon to speak remains silent.

01:16:42.700 and that's the definition of a totalitarian state and if you don't think that's hell

01:16:48.440 you don't know anything about totalitarian states so now jonah is in hell and he spends three days

01:16:56.080 there that's analogous to the three days by the way that passed between christ's crucifixion and

01:17:02.800 resurrection and that's not accidental in the depths of his misery in hell itself jonah looks

01:17:12.280 upward and says my error led me to this place help me rectify my fault and the god who makes

01:17:25.700 himself manifest even in the depths of hell responds and says will you obey and jonah says

01:17:33.180 yes and the beast from the abyss arises from the depths and deposits him on the shore

01:17:41.020 and he goes to Nineveh.

01:17:45.420 And I suppose, having been through all that,

01:17:50.200 he's the sort of man to whose words,

01:17:53.840 to whom, he's the sort of man

01:17:58.000 whose words compel people to listen.

01:18:02.080 Just as you might be if you undergo some terrible travail

01:18:06.300 and speak sincerely in consequence of your knowledge of the inalienable truth and he goes

01:18:13.720 to Nineveh and he tells the Ninevites you don't have to listen but here's what happened to me

01:18:20.420 and here's what's revealed and he's so compelling that they listen and they put on sackcloth and 0.96

01:18:30.540 ashes and cease their golden calf worshiping hedonistic ways and straighten themselves out

01:18:39.100 and god spares the city and that's how the world retains its proper orbit in consequence of people's

01:18:49.340 fealty to the voice of conscience and you can decide for yourself whether or not you think

01:18:57.100 that's true and i certainly can't see any possible alternative conclusion and i think if you

01:19:08.300 understand that and you think about it it's enough to terrify you too it's enough to terrify you

01:19:17.020 sufficiently so that you might decide to fly straight and i would say too and the times we're

01:19:25.960 and now which are characterized by a rate of change that's unparalleled in human history

01:19:33.000 and by a realm of opportunity that's limitless and a realm of catastrophe that's bottomless

01:19:41.120 the decisions you make about whether or not you're going to say what you have to say when

01:19:47.200 you're called upon to say it or not are going to have a bigger impact on how things unfold over

01:19:54.360 the next few years than you can possibly imagine and that's definitely worth thinking about

01:20:02.280 so that's god as conscience and that's the story of elijah and that's the story of jonah

01:20:12.840 and that's part of the way that the relationship between the human soul and what's properly put in

01:20:21.120 the highest place is laid out in a fraction of the biblical stories and that's outlined in we

01:20:28.340 who wrestle with God and we got a little bit farther tonight in its investigation than I did

01:20:34.540 in the book so thank you very much

01:20:51.120 you know one of the things you might think about in relationship to that is

01:21:13.540 it's to consider what prompted you to come and expose yourself to such a miserable

01:21:21.120 A miserable sequence of ideas, you know, because maybe that's conscience too.

01:21:28.380 And so, those are the sorts of things that are definitely worth some protracted thought.

01:21:36.360 Cam, you're coming back out.

01:21:40.880 So.

01:21:49.520 Hi there.

01:21:51.120 Thank you.

01:21:55.780 So there's some questions?

01:22:02.480 Okay, here's a question.

01:22:12.380 What's your opinion on the modern-day Western church?

01:22:17.020 I have concerns after experiencing the church

01:22:20.420 as more business, religious practice versus genuine faith.

01:22:29.640 I think that, you know, when I was a kid,

01:22:33.420 I stopped going to church when I was around 13,

01:22:36.220 which was pretty common practice at the time,

01:22:39.080 which is an act that's propagated itself into the culture at large.

01:22:45.040 and see i had the wrong attitude because i went to the church and i saw the faults of the church

01:22:53.140 which were manifold and i thought i'm above all that and

01:22:59.380 that's a preposterous idea when you're 13 it's like really you're above all that you're 13 it's

01:23:09.620 Like, what the hell do you know?

01:23:11.680 You don't know anything about anything.

01:23:14.220 And does the church have grievous faults?

01:23:18.000 Absolutely.

01:23:20.680 Are you above that?

01:23:22.360 Definitely not.

01:23:23.920 Yeah, 100% not.

01:23:25.640 And worse, it's like, maybe the thing to do in a situation like that.

01:23:31.480 you know if you

01:23:35.420 if you're fortunate enough to

01:23:37.100 purchase a dilapidated old house

01:23:39.940 you don't curse it

01:23:41.900 for being dilapidated

01:23:43.160 you

01:23:43.440 you

01:23:46.380 thank God that you have a house

01:23:49.160 and then you fix it

01:23:50.140 and so

01:23:52.020 fix it

01:23:53.760 and how

01:23:56.080 well

01:23:56.720 that story of Jonah tells you how

01:24:00.680 Is something bothering you about the situation that's genuine?

01:24:07.620 Say it.

01:24:09.680 Talk to other people.

01:24:12.040 Figure out what's wrong.

01:24:13.620 Fix it.

01:24:15.260 No, we all inherit the privileges and errors of the past.

01:24:22.820 We're not above that.

01:24:24.760 It's quite the contrary.

01:24:25.940 you have presumptuous enough to presume that merely because you exist now that you're a moral

01:24:32.640 specimen superior to the people who came before you it's like yeah you last about 15 seconds on

01:24:41.920 the american prairie in the dead of winter 150 years ago so what was my mistake some of it was

01:24:50.320 luciferian intellect you know i presumed that because my local minister protestant minister

01:24:58.080 wasn't particularly good at reconciling the paradox between the darwinian view of evolution 0.94

01:25:04.900 and the creation account in genesis that the whole damn enterprise was faulty when the truth 0.94

01:25:13.020 of the matter was at least in part that i didn't want to go to church i had enough bloody school 0.91

01:25:19.840 for the rest of the week and I was looking for a reason to not to not what to not attend services

01:25:28.280 with my mother which was really not very smart you know it's okay Jordan yeah well well you know

01:25:38.800 I like my mother I know you did I did too yeah and uh I could have spent more time with her

01:25:45.660 and i didn't and she's dead but you know that now yeah thank god so yeah the church has problems

01:25:54.100 you have problems your family has problems your city has problems like do something about it and

01:26:02.360 here's something cool something i didn't say in this lecture i wanted to talk about it you see

01:26:08.200 you might say that god asks jonah to do something preposterous and impossible and

01:26:17.700 it's not reasonable it's like that's true but it turns out that you're the sort of creature that

01:26:23.740 can do something preposterous and impossible and so and then if you did that you'd find out you

01:26:30.780 could do it and then you'd find out that there's way more to you than you thought and way more to

01:26:35.600 the world. And so that responsibility of speaking is the opportunity of your life. And so if

01:26:44.920 you're wise enough to see that the church is flawed and you have your finger on it,

01:26:49.880 it's like, fix it. Everyone will be thrilled about you.

01:27:05.600 Okay, how do you distinguish between high discipline and tyrannizing yourself?

01:27:16.280 That's a really good question.

01:27:18.640 You could ask the same thing about your children or your wife or your husband or your citizens.

01:27:25.520 So, I'll tell you a story.

01:27:28.260 So near the end of the Israelites, Exodus from Egypt, the fractious and immature sojourners are lost in the desert again and running out of water.

01:27:49.480 And they go to Moses, who's kind of fed up with them by this point, and for good reason, and say, we're out of water.

01:27:58.260 we know you have a channel to God.

01:28:01.240 Do you want to have a chat with him

01:28:02.620 and see if we can get some water?

01:28:04.780 And Moses says, okay.

01:28:06.080 And he has a chat with God.

01:28:07.360 And God says, there's some rocks nearby

01:28:09.840 and you're to go over to those rocks with Aaron,

01:28:12.900 who's the political wing, by the way,

01:28:15.220 the political wing of the spiritual.

01:28:17.320 And you're to invite the rocks to give forth water.

01:28:25.240 and so Moses and Aaron go to the rocks

01:28:29.220 and they strike the rocks

01:28:32.380 Moses strikes the rocks with his staff

01:28:36.240 now his staff is an emblem of authority

01:28:39.260 it's the staff that has the living spirit in it

01:28:43.720 that's the serpent

01:28:44.920 it's the staff that springs into life

01:28:48.820 when it's planted in the ground

01:28:50.120 it's living tradition

01:28:51.360 it's the staff of living tradition

01:28:53.260 it's the symbol of his authority

01:28:55.640 granted to him by his relationship

01:28:58.240 his valid authority

01:28:59.840 granted him by his relationship with God

01:29:01.960 and he uses that

01:29:04.320 to demonstrate his power

01:29:08.500 and he uses force

01:29:10.040 and the rocks give forth water

01:29:12.920 and then Moses

01:29:15.860 is punished with death

01:29:18.100 and with

01:29:18.940 failure to reach the promised land

01:29:21.880 and this is after guiding the israelites out of tyranny through the desert for four decades

01:29:29.160 he uses force when he's told to use invitation when he's told to use his language his words

01:29:37.480 and not compulsion and the punishment for that even though he's arguably the greatest leader in

01:29:43.720 the old testament library is that he sends to death and he doesn't reach the promised land

01:29:51.180 don't use force

01:29:53.360 don't use force

01:29:55.820 even on yourself

01:29:56.900 you want to invite yourself along for the ride

01:30:00.060 now that doesn't mean you get to be

01:30:02.140 undisciplined but you have to negotiate

01:30:03.940 you know it's like

01:30:04.960 find something that you'll do

01:30:07.620 find something good

01:30:09.900 you'll do enthusiastically

01:30:11.400 find something

01:30:13.820 small enough so that you'll do it

01:30:15.520 for good enthusiastically

01:30:17.880 and then build on that and it's the same

01:30:20.020 when you're

01:30:20.500 dealing with your children, or your wife, or your husband.

01:30:25.700 It's like, could we jointly come to a negotiated end

01:30:30.860 that we would both be thrilled to pursue?

01:30:33.900 And that's a great basis for negotiation.

01:30:36.180 Like, if I'm talking to Tammy, and she wants something, and I want something,

01:30:40.980 it isn't necessarily the case that we can come to an agreement

01:30:43.740 that gives her what she wants and what I want.

01:30:46.700 And what is this I that wants, anyways?

01:30:50.500 But maybe if we are honest and we let each other know what the situation is

01:30:55.580 and we pay attention to what's right in front of us,

01:30:58.500 we can negotiate a deal that's far better than anything we could have pursued on our own.

01:31:03.780 And if that wasn't the case, then why the hell would you ever be married?

01:31:07.900 I mean, the proposition of marriage is that you can do things better together

01:31:12.780 than either of you could do alone.

01:31:14.960 And so, why couldn't it be the case that you could exchange your views

01:31:18.460 and come up with a vision of how you might proceed

01:31:20.760 that's far better than anything you could conjure up on your own,

01:31:25.400 and that if you did that religiously,

01:31:28.620 then you'd never have to use force,

01:31:30.900 because people would say, yeah, I could go for that,

01:31:33.840 and then they're enthusiastically on board,

01:31:35.900 and God only knows what you could accomplish then.

01:31:40.180 And so, invitation, not force.

01:31:48.460 Force is the sign of bad policy.

01:31:52.240 Now, you know, maybe you make exceptions

01:31:54.960 for people who are truly malevolent,

01:31:57.860 but you certainly do that with caution

01:32:01.200 and with full knowledge that it's a suboptimal solution.

01:32:10.020 Did I address that completely?

01:32:12.880 Yeah, I thought that was good.

01:32:14.420 Okay.

01:32:15.300 Between high discipline and tyrannizing?

01:32:17.180 yeah yeah highly disciplined and tyrannizing yeah well you know you know you see this in

01:32:23.820 psychotherapy so the psychoanalysts figured this out like if you're dealing with someone

01:32:27.660 and you're both aiming at positive transformational change sometimes the therapist let's say will

01:32:35.540 offer some advice and it's well-meaning and maybe it's even accurate but the person won't

01:32:40.700 enact it or they'll even do the opposite and the reason for that is they're actually annoyed that

01:32:48.020 the therapist is stealing their life you know you don't you can't tell someone else what to do

01:32:55.100 exactly because what the hell do you know about what they should do you can invite them to

01:32:59.880 participate in the process of discovering what they should do and you can encourage them in that

01:33:04.760 but even if you are well-meaning and even if you know what you're doing if you impose it

01:33:10.480 You get what the psychoanalysts call resistance.

01:33:13.940 People will work at cross purposes to your force.

01:33:18.800 Even despite themselves.

01:33:21.520 And it's partly because they want to be free.

01:33:24.400 You know, so you want to make an offer.

01:33:27.900 And you do that with vision.

01:33:31.460 So your initial stance is to aim up.

01:33:36.040 So you think you're sitting down to negotiate with your wife.

01:33:38.700 and you think, okay, what the hell are we aiming at here? 0.73

01:33:42.500 You've really got to think that this is a prayer.

01:33:44.680 This is an attempt to establish a connection with the divine.

01:33:49.120 You think, okay, I love my wife.

01:33:51.600 You've got to remember that and rediscover it.

01:33:54.360 And what do I want?

01:33:55.960 Well, I want her to love me.

01:33:57.140 That'd be good.

01:33:58.160 And I want her to be thrilled about the fact that we're together

01:34:00.760 and I want our life to improve continually

01:34:06.200 and I want to know what's going on with her

01:34:08.920 and I want her to know what's going on with me.

01:34:11.620 And I want to do that in a way that's sustainable

01:34:13.740 and joyful and playful

01:34:17.600 and that requires no force.

01:34:22.220 Okay, so now you've identified the aim

01:34:24.260 and you conjured up the right spirit

01:34:26.740 and now you can listen in the spirit of that aim

01:34:30.620 and then she'll do the same

01:34:33.500 And then you jointly climb the ladder to heaven.

01:34:38.520 And that's fun.

01:34:43.620 And there's no force necessary.

01:34:46.620 And so if you're resisting your own insistence,

01:34:50.960 then maybe you're bringing a hand that's too heavy even to yourself.

01:34:56.220 And that's worth thinking through.

01:34:58.420 And that's very different than having no standards.

01:35:01.040 It's like children love you if you have high standards.

01:35:05.180 You have to adjust the standards to the situation and personalize them and make them invitational.

01:35:11.420 But there's no difference between having high standards for someone and loving them and encouraging them and paying attention to them.

01:35:17.760 The same applies to yourself.

01:35:20.600 Discipline can be religious adherence to a set of enabling principles rather than heavy-handed tyranny.

01:35:28.740 right and then it's the discipline that enables rather than the super ego that crushes it's an

01:35:36.260 invitation rather than the oppressive patriarchy i suppose and an invitation to play that's way

01:35:46.080 better than do this or else so and the equally disciplined you know we know that athletes who

01:35:55.600 play are very disciplined people when they play at the highest possible level. So you can play

01:36:01.720 with discipline. That's a good deal. That's a good deal. That's different than force.

01:36:09.140 Okay, that's the answer to that question then. Good, good. Okay, here's one. You have seven minutes.

01:36:17.480 okay so you said perhaps the most important words ever said

01:36:26.160 was when jesus christ on the cross said my god my god why have you forsaken me

01:36:32.200 what do you mean by that please

01:36:36.240 well i don't remember saying that those were the most important words ever said although it's

01:36:43.680 possible that i said that um they were certainly important words so we'll proceed on that basis

01:36:53.160 so the passion of christ is a comprehensive tragedy and i mean something technical by that

01:37:07.140 so we know that there's a category of story that's tragic right and there's many variants

01:37:14.700 many movies that you see are tragic many books of fiction that you read are tragic people's lives

01:37:22.280 can be tragic so there's a category of the tragic and then you could imagine that a story can be

01:37:29.380 more or less tragic and then you could imagine that a story could be so tragic that no story

01:37:35.680 could surpass it and the passion story is that story and part of the meaning of the passion story

01:37:48.320 is that the spirit of god the spirit of the prophet and the laws descends into the common

01:37:55.680 life of humanity and experiences life in its totality so that everything terrible

01:38:05.560 that could happen to someone happens to Christ and arguably to you that includes

01:38:15.960 that moment of desperation when things are as bad as they can possibly be and

01:38:23.520 And that plaintive cry that all the good that was done was done for naught.

01:38:32.520 And Christ's, the Spirit's descent into the flesh of mankind would be incomplete without that despair.

01:38:40.600 Because the despair is part of the tragedy.

01:38:45.160 And so it has to be there.

01:38:48.380 And what does it mean?

01:38:50.900 It means the promise of the resurrection is fulfilled despite the despair.

01:38:55.820 What does that mean?

01:38:57.880 God only knows.

01:39:00.060 You know, the Christian insistence is that the voluntary sacrifice of Christ

01:39:04.320 has reconciled man to God and God to man.

01:39:07.760 And I believe that's true, but I don't understand what it means.

01:39:14.480 Because I think it's beyond understanding in the final analysis.

01:39:18.900 It means something like you reconcile yourself to life by voluntarily accepting all of its challenges.

01:39:29.060 All of them.

01:39:30.760 This is what Job does when he's tortured by Satan in conspiracy with God to strip him of everything.

01:39:38.600 Job retains his faith in the essential goodness of his being and in the ineffable benevolence of God.

01:39:47.080 despite his suffering and christ does that to the ultimate degree and how could you reconcile

01:39:54.900 yourself to fate life in the divine without accepting catastrophe or maybe even without

01:40:04.720 welcoming it you know and in the christian story which retells the story of jonah to some degree

01:40:11.040 It's not only that Christ dies in desperation and painfully betrayed by his closest friend

01:40:21.140 and under the thumb of tyranny and rejected by his community despite being the exemplar of the good man.

01:40:29.360 After his death, he harrows hell.

01:40:32.180 And that means that to redeem the world, that not only do you have to face unjust death,

01:40:38.940 But you have to wrestle with malevolence itself.

01:40:43.020 And of course that's true.

01:40:44.360 Because how else is life going to be undertaken?

01:40:49.420 You're going to thrive because you hide.

01:40:53.640 No one believes that.

01:40:56.340 No one teaches anyone they love to run in terror from death and evil.

01:41:03.880 And the alternative is to what?

01:41:07.900 God.

01:41:08.540 To welcome it with open arms?

01:41:11.220 That's a lot, man.

01:41:13.380 But that's the spirit of adventure.

01:41:18.440 That's the voice that comes to Abraham.

01:41:23.280 And we know, we've learned as therapists over the last century,

01:41:27.360 that people who voluntarily confront what terrifies them and makes them desperate,

01:41:38.540 become brave enough to prevail.

01:41:41.980 And the biblical explanation for that is that

01:41:44.620 if you walk through the belly of the shadow of death in faith

01:41:48.280 and the spirit of your ancestors

01:41:50.040 walks with you,

01:41:56.480 that's right.

01:42:00.140 So that's what that means.

01:42:08.540 one more

01:42:14.320 one more

01:42:15.320 alright

01:42:15.980 that was a rough one

01:42:25.900 that was a rough one

01:42:26.740 okay how about this one

01:42:32.180 what effect does phone addiction have

01:42:34.220 on one's relationship with God

01:42:35.940 and how would one go about

01:42:37.980 decreasing their phone usage.

01:42:52.060 So, I guess that's a variant

01:42:54.140 of the Tower of Babel story.

01:42:56.320 So,

01:42:58.340 the Tower of Babel is built by engineers. 1.00

01:43:04.820 They're the descendants

01:43:06.040 of the city builders and the creators

01:43:07.960 of artifacts they're people who are obsessed with technology with things with machinery and it's not

01:43:16.260 that that's a bad thing but it has to be put in the proper place it has to it can't be the goal 0.63

01:43:22.200 it has to be the servant of the proper goal and the tower of babel is the tyrannical society that

01:43:29.580 emerges when technology is worshipped as God. And the consequence of that inversion of the

01:43:38.400 proper moral order is that everyone loses the ability to genuinely communicate. That's the

01:43:45.160 proliferation of languages

01:43:47.080 and the descent into

01:43:48.340 linguistic chaos.

01:43:57.400 So that's the abstract

01:43:59.040 level of answer.

01:44:01.540 The practical level of answer.

01:44:06.500 A phone should be your servant and not your

01:44:09.020 master. Now that's

01:44:11.060 a very tricky

01:44:13.280 victory to attain because

01:44:16.000 you have more computing power

01:44:18.700 in your phone

01:44:19.560 than any human

01:44:22.860 being on the planet

01:44:23.920 no, every human being on the planet

01:44:26.780 had 10 years ago

01:44:29.020 and so that's

01:44:31.020 quite the adversary

01:44:32.820 it's a very difficult

01:44:35.040 thing to stay on top of

01:44:37.200 we better stay on top of it

01:44:40.460 because if we don't it's going to be on top

01:44:42.980 of us. And that's the Tower of Babel. That's the all-seeing eye of Sauron right from the Lord of

01:44:51.160 the Rings. That's the technological God whose omniscient vision will replace the truly divine

01:44:59.780 if people are sufficiently irresponsible. Is that a battle you'll have to fight with your own phone

01:45:08.280 and in your own family yes what did you tell me at lunch today

01:45:15.080 i was on my phone what did you tell me

01:45:20.960 i'd phoned my sis no i phoned oh i know what it was you asked me if you could call charles and

01:45:31.200 charles had a flood in the house so he had to call charles a friend of ours yeah and i that

01:45:36.120 was allowable. And I said, yeah. Charles had it. I bet I saw him. And I snuck in an additional phone

01:45:40.820 call, which was an important phone call, but not a vitally important phone call. And it was. I think

01:45:46.340 I said, I think you can be with your phone or you can be with me. I have other things I can do.

01:45:52.300 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She said it, I would say, kindly by her standards and also, but also

01:46:05.480 honestly and like it was a very good response because she noted that I was pushing my luck

01:46:13.560 which I was and there's likely some egotism in that and also that that didn't make her happy

01:46:19.680 and that's not helpful it's not that her unhappiness is the problem it's that if her

01:46:27.960 unhappiness is valid then it's a problem because I don't want to use my phone in a way that will

01:46:33.500 interfere with her wanting to go have lunch with me

01:46:36.620 because I'm going to have a lot of lunches with her hopefully

01:46:40.120 and I'd rather they went well and so

01:46:42.920 you know I mean one of the things you do in your family

01:46:46.360 is you speak when you've got something to say

01:46:48.920 it's like you're pissing me off with that phone

01:46:51.060 and then you might say well that's because you're a little too sensitive

01:46:54.860 and like who knows right

01:46:57.540 maybe you're not so good with your phone

01:47:00.360 and maybe she's a bit too sensitive

01:47:02.100 And you can hash that out and hopefully come to some conclusion.

01:47:07.560 My conclusion was, I kind of knew I was pushing my luck with that second phone call.

01:47:12.200 But I also appreciated it because we need to be tapped into shape constantly by the people around us.

01:47:21.240 Like, none of us are sane enough to be sane by ourselves.

01:47:24.400 You can just forget about that.

01:47:26.580 That's never going to happen. 0.99

01:47:27.860 you're saying if people can stand you because they keep reminding you of how useless you are

01:47:34.040 and then that sort of makes you sane so that's the definition of sanity really and you got to

01:47:39.780 conduct yourself in a way that makes you acceptable to other people so they remind you politely how to

01:47:44.680 not be insane and in hell and so you battle that out with your phone and you guess i guess you

01:47:52.780 refer to your own guilt and your sense that you're wasting time and the clock is ticking and then you

01:47:59.620 watch and see if everyone you're sitting down to you know at Christmas dinner is on their phone

01:48:06.560 and not interacting with each other because that's obviously not so good unless you don't

01:48:12.140 like them in which case what the hell are you doing there and or maybe you should fix it yeah

01:48:17.920 And then you should fix that definitely so I mean, I don't have any particular wisdom other than

01:48:24.980 that on the phone front because

01:48:27.920 everyone's wrestling with this

01:48:31.120 insanely powerful and attractive technology and

01:48:34.780 It's just going to get worse and better

01:48:38.080 Like and fast like whatever you're worried about in relationship to these phones something way

01:48:44.340 more terrifying

01:48:46.760 is going to be coming down the pipelines

01:48:48.700 in the next few years

01:48:49.920 like you ain't seen nothing yet

01:48:52.340 so get ready

01:48:54.620 because it's going to be

01:48:56.100 quite the ride

01:48:57.920 so

01:48:59.600 so I guess that's that for tonight

01:49:04.840 yeah

01:49:05.360 alright everyone thank you very much for coming tonight

01:49:08.540 thank you dear

01:49:09.760 you're welcome

01:49:10.380 very good to see you all

01:49:13.040 especially you people

01:49:14.840 from Cleveland

01:49:15.640 good night everybody

01:49:23.820 thanks again

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - July 26, 2026

Why Short-Term Pleasure Is Ruining Your Life

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