The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Why You Read Their Eyes First

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00:00:30 all these great bands and here you are tonight

00:00:39 well thank you very much for coming let me tell you what's going to happen tonight i'm

00:00:45 i'm going to share my thoughts with you for 70 minutes thereabouts then i have a special guest

00:00:55 here, Konstantin Kizin, who runs a podcast. Good. Well, you should know about him, definitely.

00:01:04 Crazy Russian from the UK. A real voice of reason for our fellow Westerners in the UK. 1.00

00:01:18 Konstantin is going to come out on stage and torture me about what I said, I hope. Well,

00:01:24 what i'm hoping constantine is a very clear thinker very witty man he's got a very sharp mind

00:01:31 he's critically oriented in the best possible way a good critical mind separates the wheat from the

00:01:37 chaff right to because to be property critical isn't to hurt or destroy with criticism it's to

00:01:44 separate what's truly valuable from what isn't valuable so that you have solid ground to stand

00:01:49 on and you know one of the things that i've strived to do in my whole academic career is to

00:01:54 move closer and closer to

00:01:57 believing

00:01:58 and stating and writing

00:02:00 things that I can't

00:02:03 I can't

00:02:04 move

00:02:05 and

00:02:06 you do that yourself by

00:02:10 subjecting your own

00:02:12 presumptions to

00:02:14 critical analysis

00:02:15 you do that so that you think

00:02:18 through what you're doing so that 1.00

00:02:20 you don't act out your stupid 1.00

00:02:22 ideas in the world and die and and that's the purpose of thinking right seriously the purpose 1.00

00:02:28 of thinking is to have your stupid ideas die instead of you and that's part of the reason 1.00

00:02:36 why your enemy can be your best friend because if someone can take out something you think because 1.00

00:02:41 they can show you how it's erroneous and counterproductive and then you don't have to go

00:02:46 through all the trouble of learning that stupidly in the world that's a fine gift and so i'm hoping

00:02:53 that constantine can stand in for for the for the audience for the critical and skeptical audience

00:03:00 we're talking about very difficult issues it's highly likely that

00:03:04 i could formulate what i'm stating more clearly and precisely and so constantine will come out and

00:03:13 we'll discuss what was presented tonight and then we'll turn to the questions that

00:03:20 you've kindly delivered and discuss those and and then we'll reintroduce the band and

00:03:27 that should do for the evening and so that's the plan and so away we go i'm very much looking

00:03:36 forward to this so the first thing we're going to talk about is we're going to talk about stories

00:03:48 and and set the stage i think we're at a crucial inflection point in in the world

00:03:59 culturally and philosophically I think we're on the dawn of a new set of realizations

00:04:07 a new set of realizations that will return us to our fundamentals I think the reason that we have

00:04:15 a culture war raging in the west why there's so much instability is because something new is

00:04:21 struggling to be born or reborn and I want to explain the reason for that first and

00:04:29 the reason is that the enlightenment view of the world

00:04:36 which has guided our technological and scientific endeavor

00:04:41 our conceptual endeavor

00:04:42 our philosophical endeavor

00:04:44 for a few hundred years

00:04:47 is there's something about it that's wrong

00:04:50 like deeply wrong

00:04:52 and that error is making itself manifest

00:04:58 in the scientific community because i would say now that scientists themselves from a multitude

00:05:05 of different disciplines understand that the idea that we see the world as a place of facts

00:05:13 or that we see the world as rational creatures or that you can even see the world that way

00:05:19 is wrong wrong and i believe that it's it's been demonstrated to be wrong it's this isn't a matter

00:05:27 of mere philosophical opinion anymore although it's also that one example for example is that

00:05:34 the newest artificial intelligence systems that we've designed the large language models that

00:05:41 have burst onto the stage in the last year or thereabouts chat gpt the catastrophic gemini

00:05:48 that google so foolishly launched um elon musk's grok these systems are trained like human beings

00:05:58 are trained they have an aim they have a purpose they were trained with reward and punishment so

00:06:05 to speak their approximations to a target they see the world through a structure of value

00:06:11 that they have absorbed from human beings

00:06:14 to make the world's smartest

00:06:17 linguistic machines

00:06:20 we had to inculcate in them a structure of value

00:06:24 okay and so

00:06:26 and we produced machines now

00:06:28 that can engage in discourse

00:06:30 that can use language in a way that's virtually indistinguishable from the human

00:06:34 and it's going to become

00:06:35 radically indistinguishable from the human

00:06:38 very very rapidly

00:06:40 and they're not programmed like lists of rules they're not programmed like ordinary

00:06:48 thinking machines they're programmed the same way that human beings learn they're

00:06:53 programmed with aim they have an ethos and an ethic

00:06:56 we can't orient ourselves in the world with the facts

00:07:06 We can't follow the science

00:07:09 Because science isn't a leader

00:07:12 Science doesn't establish our aims

00:07:15 Our aims are established using mechanisms of perception and emotion

00:07:21 And thought that aren't in themselves scientific

00:07:24 We're aiming at something

00:07:26 Why can't we orient ourselves in the world with the facts?

00:07:34 while the simplest explanation for that is that there are too many facts

00:07:41 there's as many facts as there are phenomena more actually there's as many facts as there

00:07:50 are possible combinations of phenomena you drown in the facts when you're confused in your own life

00:07:59 and things are chaotic and you're anxious,

00:08:02 it's because a plethora of possibilities is making itself manifest in front of you

00:08:08 and you don't know which way to turn.

00:08:10 You don't have a clear direction.

00:08:11 You don't have a clear aim.

00:08:13 There's no way of simplifying the world so that you can act in it.

00:08:17 We know, for example, that to perceive the world,

00:08:20 you have to obliterate from your consciousness almost everything that you could see

00:08:26 because otherwise you you're overwhelmed we know even that the hallucinogens who

00:08:33 are being studied in in with increasing intensity in recent years interfere with your normal

00:08:40 perception such that they bring to consciousness a plethora of things that under normal circumstances

00:08:49 you ignore and the consequence of that is um influx of a sense of overwhelming significance

00:08:56 and meaning but at the same time a kind of paralysis of action because when everything

00:09:02 becomes infinitely meaningful there's no straightforward way of moving forward when

00:09:10 you're in a restaurant with someone on a first date and you're focusing on the conversation and

00:09:16 actions of your date in a sea of competing conversations you zero out everything that

00:09:26 you could be attending to in every other table all the competing thoughts in your imagination

00:09:32 all the things you could be bringing to mind to zero in with like laser pinpoint accuracy on

00:09:39 what it is that your partner in conversation is doing and you do that in the world all the time

00:09:45 you make one thing at a time of pinnacle importance and you arrange everything else

00:09:53 in the world at every moment that you perceive around that thing that you've made of pinnacle

00:09:59 importance that's how you see the world and i don't mean think about the world this is under

00:10:05 thought it's more profound it's what you do when you actually see if i decide to do something

00:10:15 straightforward like walk from here to the stairs on the stage and i set my aim i don't perceive

00:10:27 any of you in consequence because the fact of your existence is irrelevant to my purpose and you're

00:10:35 gone. None of the facts of the stage that I could attend to are relevant and perceptible

00:10:44 anymore, except insofar as they're pathways or facilitators or obstacles to my journey forward.

00:10:56 If I'm looking to the stairs, I see the chairs, but not as places to sit. I see them as

00:11:03 obstacles that i have to circumvent in order to attain my aim everything that you see in the world

00:11:10 makes itself manifest in accordance with your aim and that's a radically revolutionarily

00:11:18 different way of conceptualizing the world than the notion that you take the facts and you

00:11:27 sort them despite their infinite number and calculate your way with the facts rationally

00:11:35 forward that's not what you do imagine your favorite lecture dial that on one max put that

00:11:43 on steroids and then add some cinematic elements to it that's the best way i could describe a

00:11:48 peterson academy lecture i went to college because i had to i go to peterson academy because i want

00:11:55 I'm still paying off college from 10 years ago, and I'm also still questioning the value that I got out of college.

00:12:00 In traditional universities, a lot of times, it's just pretty dry.

00:12:04 They don't bring the same energy as the professors at Peterson Academy.

00:12:08 It is a completely different experience to learn from somebody who actually wants to teach you.

00:12:12 If you've been on the fence about this, this is the time.

00:12:16 That thing that's calling to you, you won't have an answer for it unless you enroll and see for yourself.

00:12:20 You have the opportunity to investigate that calling.

00:12:25 Here's a proposition to contemplate. It's another proposition that has revolutionary

00:12:31 significance. It'll explain all sorts of things that you know to be true, but don't know why

00:12:36 they're true. The description of the structure through which you see the world is a story.

00:12:49 that's what a story is okay so now this explains many things that are otherwise left as

00:12:57 mysteries or or side effects i read a book by stephen pinker once pinker's an enlightenment

00:13:05 rationalist from harvard and a good guy and very smart and much of what he says is extraordinarily

00:13:11 useful but he believes for example that our proclivity to enjoy and tell stories is like a

00:13:17 side effect of something more fundamental cognitively it's it's the story as entertainment

00:13:23 theory you go to a movie because it's it's fun you you read a book of fiction to your child

00:13:29 because it's fun it's it's not core to the what would you say it's not a core element of the way

00:13:37 that you exist in the world. It's mere entertainment. It misses the point, that theory. Why is

00:13:48 it entertaining? Why can you teach children with stories? If you get the story right for

00:13:56 a child, you can capture the child's interest and you can integrate almost any form of learning

00:14:02 into the story. And the child will be captivated by that. When children play, pretend play, which

00:14:08 they do spontaneously, they spontaneously dramatize the world. They spontaneously make

00:14:15 stories out of their roles and their destinies. And that captures them. That forms the basis of

00:14:25 their friendships. That's why children want to play so frenetically, is that they're practicing

00:14:31 modeling the world when you go see a movie it's not that you want to be entertained although it

00:14:38 is entertained that's not why you're there it's not for fun either that's easy to understand and

00:14:44 to and to see what's fun about a horror movie i'm dead serious it's like

00:14:50 people will be so afraid in a horror movie that they'll cover their eyes

00:14:56 they'll hide behind the chair in front of them

00:14:59 they'll ask themselves afterwards

00:15:01 why they even put themselves through it

00:15:04 and yet they'll line up

00:15:05 and pay to do it

00:15:06 well why would you

00:15:09 line up and pay

00:15:11 to torture yourself 0.97

00:15:13 well

00:15:15 because you want to know how to deal

00:15:19 with what's horrifying

00:15:20 and you want to practice

00:15:24 that in a way if you can that

00:15:25 isn't in itself fatal. You want to expose yourself to the catastrophes of existence

00:15:31 so that you're prepared when those catastrophes come along. You want to expose yourself to the

00:15:37 predators that lurk everywhere. You want to inure yourself against what's disgusting and

00:15:43 contaminating because you're going to have to deal with it. You want to expose yourself to

00:15:48 what's frightening so that you can find the courage within you to deal with what's frightening.

00:15:53 and that's part of the instinct to develop and expand your competence

00:15:58 and it's in that expansion of competence and skill

00:16:03 that occurs as a consequence of that voluntary exposure

00:16:06 that the entertainment is situated

00:16:09 the reason that's entertaining is because

00:16:11 it's part of the manner in which you expand yourself

00:16:15 and you can do that in the direction of what's dark and terrible

00:16:19 just as you can in the direction of say what's heroic

00:16:22 Like, what do you do when you go to a movie?

00:16:26 Well, you fasten on to a character.

00:16:28 And you understand that character the same way that you understand people that you're in conversation with.

00:16:34 Now, you might think that the way that you understand people is by you listen to what they say.

00:16:39 And you extract out the knowledge that they're delivering to you in terms of facts.

00:16:44 And you interpret the facts and you derive your understanding of the person.

00:16:48 Like, none of that's true.

00:16:50 That has absolutely nothing to do with how you establish a relationship with someone and well here's some proof

00:16:56 Is that what you do with a dog?

00:16:59 Well, obviously not but you can establish a relationship with a dog and

00:17:04 So and the relationship you have with the dog it's not the same as the relationship with a person

00:17:09 But a dog's a pack animal the dog can become a member of the family you can you can

00:17:15 understand a dog well enough so the dog likes you right and so whatever you're

00:17:22 doing with the dog it isn't discourse about propositions because most of the

00:17:27 dogs you own don't talk so and it's the same with very young children and it's

00:17:37 the same with an infant you establish a relationship using mechanisms that

00:17:42 that aren't propositional. They're not rules, they're not descriptions, they're not facts.

00:17:48 That's not how you do it. How do you do it? Where do you look when you talk to someone?

00:17:53 You look at their eyes. Why? To see where they're pointing them. Why?

00:18:00 So you can see what they're looking at. Why? So you can infer what's important to them.

00:18:06 Because we point our eyes at that which is important to us.

00:18:10 That's why our eyes look the way they look.

00:18:14 Black in the middle, colored on the ring around that, against a white background.

00:18:19 That's an evolved mechanism. I can see your eyes.

00:18:23 All of our ancestors whose eyes weren't visible, either got killed or didn't reproduce.

00:18:30 The one thing you want to know about someone right away is where the hell their eyes are pointed.

00:18:34 And you can do that politely, which you do by attending to someone without too predatory a stare.

00:18:41 You do that by attending politely to their face, but not too intensely,

00:18:46 and not attending, let's say, inappropriately to other parts of their body.

00:18:51 And they're going to be watching you to see what you do with your eyes.

00:18:55 Because the one thing you want to know about someone, above all else, is what the hell are they up to?

00:19:01 Right? What's their aim?

00:19:02 and so when you go to a movie that's what you do when you watch a character

00:19:07 in a role you see him in a variety of different situations and you watch how he structures his

00:19:17 attention what he pays attention to his attention is a costly business and so people pay attention

00:19:24 to what they value you watch what they attend to and you watch how they prioritize their actions

00:19:32 and from that you derive an understanding of what's important to them as soon as you understand

00:19:39 what's important to them you've got their aim you figured that character out this is what you do when

00:19:44 you learn to know someone what's their aim as soon as you know their aim

00:19:52 you can see the world through their eyes you can see the same objects they see

00:19:59 and the objects take on the same emotional significance and when you say i come to

00:20:04 understand someone what you really mean is oh i understand their aim and now i can aim at the same

00:20:10 thing at least in simulation at least fictionally and i can come to inhabit the same world of

00:20:17 perception and emotion that they inhabit. I can even guess at how they might act and to what they

00:20:25 might attend in situations I haven't seen, because now I know their aim. What's he up to? That's what

00:20:30 you're thinking in a murder mystery or in a thriller. What's he up to? What's he up to? What's

00:20:34 going to happen next? And so the plot of the fiction is the aim of the character across time,

00:20:42 the aim as the character unfolds. And that might involve the transformation of his aims as well.

00:20:47 Right? And that would be the transformation of a character in a movie.

00:20:50 He aims at one thing and he learns that that aim is off in some manner.

00:20:54 Or he comes to a bitter and dismal partial end and has to switch course.

00:21:00 And you want to see people transform their aims.

00:21:03 That's character development.

00:21:08 We see the world through a story.

00:21:12 The world's objects reveal themselves in relationship to our aim.

00:21:18 The landscape of emotion presents itself as markers on the pathway to our aim.

00:21:27 The world reveals itself in accordance with our aim.

00:21:29 That's how perception works.

00:21:31 That's a hell of a thing to learn.

00:21:33 Because if the world, for example, appears to you only as thorn-bearing obstacles, right?

00:21:40 If you feel that everything's arrayed against you and there's no pathway forward.

00:21:44 If you feel that you're surrounded by foes and obstacles instead of walking the golden pathway.

00:21:51 Accompanied by allies with the world on your side.

00:21:55 You might ask yourself whether or not your aim is wrong.

00:22:01 And so the world lays itself out in accordance with our aim.

00:22:07 we go

00:22:08 we

00:22:10 produce fiction

00:22:12 we generate fiction

00:22:14 we live in a fictional landscape

00:22:17 because we want to get our aim right

00:22:20 we read stories

00:22:22 we watch movies

00:22:23 we go to plays

00:22:25 we talk to each other

00:22:26 because we want to get our aim right

00:22:28 we want to find the place we should go

00:22:31 and we want to learn how to get there efficiently

00:22:32 and we're compelled

00:22:35 by spirit and instinct to establish the aim and follow the path and to transform ourselves so

00:22:44 that our aim becomes ever more precise and efficient and delivers us a world that's ever

00:22:52 more abundant and beautiful and that's all a function of aim

00:22:58 okay so we live in the story well then as soon as you know that this is what the postmodernists

00:23:09 figured out by the way this is why the literary critics have become a dominant force in the

00:23:16 culture war the postmodernists were literary critics you think well there's nothing more

00:23:20 irrelevant than a literary critic like who the hell cares what an intellectual thinks about a

00:23:24 story. I mean, of all the preposterous things to be concerned about, that might top the list.

00:23:30 Not if the story is the thing through which you see the world. If the story is the thing you see

00:23:35 through which you see the world, there's nothing more powerful than a literary critic,

00:23:39 except perhaps an author. And we wouldn't have a culture war right now if the literary critic

00:23:48 wasn't far more powerful than anybody had possibly imagined. Because the French intellectual

00:23:53 literary critics known as the post-modernists have criticized the central story of the west

00:24:00 to death and that's why we have a culture war and it's no joke this is foundational there's no more

00:24:08 serious conflict than that and you all can feel that that's why you're here you know that the

00:24:13 world is shaking and uncertain in a way that's new and the reason for that is the story itself

00:24:20 is under assault all right so let's let's wander through that a little bit you see the world through

00:24:28 a story the rationalists or empiricists even the biologists they might have an answer to that they

00:24:34 say okay fair enough you see the world through a story but the story is biologically determined or

00:24:40 socioculturally determined it's a story of sex that would be freud because for freud and for

00:24:47 Charles Darwin, for that matter, for Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist, to an equal degree,

00:24:53 the story, the aim is sex, reproduction, and the story is predicated on that aim.

00:25:06 Freud, Darwin, Dawkins.

00:25:09 The degenerate element of that

00:25:15 Is a descent into a kind of hedonism

00:25:18 Because if sex is the story 0.98

00:25:21 Then why not worship sex 0.97

00:25:23 And some dispute that 0.97

00:25:28 And say no the central story isn't sex

00:25:31 This would be the Marxists

00:25:33 The central story is

00:25:35 Power

00:25:37 that's the story that the universities tell when they're not telling the story about sex

00:25:44 it's all about power the essential human aim is domination oppression victimization

00:25:57 exploitation the central theme of the family is a power dynamic the central theme of the

00:26:06 The relationship between men and women is a power dynamic.

00:26:10 Marriage itself is a heteronormative, patriarchal establishment of oppression that goes back

00:26:17 to the dawn of time.

00:26:19 The nuclear family is the same thing. 0.71

00:26:23 Economic arrangements are nothing but power.

00:26:25 Friendships are nothing but power.

00:26:27 The landscape of human interaction is a dynamic of power.

00:26:33 Or sex.

00:26:34 Or both.

00:26:36 both fighting against one another. Look, these are powerful ideas. Why? Well, obvious. It's

00:26:44 obvious. Why? I mean, first of all, without sex, there's no reproduction. And without

00:26:50 reproduction, there's no people. And so the Darwinian, Freudian, Richard Dawkins, selfish

00:26:58 gene claim is that, well, what could it possibly be other than sex? And the Marxists come running

00:27:07 forward and say, how about power? And then the Marxists say, well, obviously it's power

00:27:14 because there's radical inequality in the world. There's some who have and some who

00:27:20 have not. There's no reason to assume that property in the final analysis, let's say,

00:27:25 isn't a form of theft. And everyone who has established themselves in some manner has only

00:27:31 done that by stealing from those who are powerless and who have less everything they have and

00:27:37 accruing it to themselves. And that's a credible claim for a variety of reasons. The first most 0.90

00:27:43 fundamental reason is that a minority of people have all the success on any possible dimension

00:27:49 of comparison. It's a very small number of people who are radically attractive. It's a very small

00:27:54 number of people who are radically gifted in the visual arts, let's say. It's a radically

00:27:59 small percentage of people who are musicians. A tiny percentage of the people have most

00:28:04 of the money. A tiny percentage of the people gather most of the attention. It's a Pareto

00:28:11 distribution, and that's what Mark's pointed onto. The rich get richer, and the poor get

00:28:15 poorer. And there's real truth in that, and there's truth in the claim that people structure

00:28:24 their relationships with power. And that some people who obtain success do it as a consequence

00:28:30 of exploitation. And it's equally true that when any human relationship deteriorates, it tends to

00:28:38 deteriorate in the relationship of power. If your marriage starts to become shaky, then you begin to

00:28:45 exploit each other. Use force. You try to get your way. You try to dominate. It's the same within

00:28:51 any family that's deteriorating into a state of pathology. It's the same in any organization.

00:28:56 We've seen huge states deteriorate into the tyrannical use of power. If you had to identify

00:29:03 a cardinal attribute of mankind, power is a reasonable hypothesis.

00:29:15 But let's think about that for a minute. So imagine that

00:29:21 Well, imagine that it's sex that is and should be the complete story of mankind.

00:29:29 Well, what does that mean exactly?

00:29:30 What's a world organized on that basis?

00:29:34 What does a world organized on that basis look like?

00:29:37 Well, there's nothing more important than sex. 0.63

00:29:39 Well, how about immediate sexual gratification whenever you want it? 0.81

00:29:43 How about immediate sexual gratification as the archetype of hedonism?

00:29:47 how about immediate sexual gratification whenever you want it regardless of what anyone else has to

00:29:53 say about it because if it's the story and it's the fundamental story then what stops me from

00:30:00 gaining access to what i want right now regardless of the cost to anyone else

00:30:08 if there's nothing beyond that if only the naive believe that there's anything noble about humanity

00:30:14 beyond the immediate demand of reproduction, then what have you got to say that's moral

00:30:19 about sex? And why the hell shouldn't everybody just do exactly what they want with whoever

00:30:24 they want, whenever they want, all the time? And with power, you can make exactly the same

00:30:33 argument. And classical societies, aristocratic societies, militaristic and martial societies

00:30:40 are predicated on this idea if i can push you around

00:30:44 all that indicates is that i should push you around because if you're so weak that i can push

00:30:51 you around you have absolutely no ground whatsoever to stand on to oppose me because

00:30:59 if you were moral by the traditions of power i wouldn't be able to push you around and so

00:31:05 it's very difficult to argue out of that from a rational perspective why doesn't might make right

00:31:11 and why isn't it only the weak who claim that that's wrong and why isn't it only that the weak

00:31:17 claim that that's wrong not because they're moral but because they're weak that would certainly be

00:31:22 a spin-off on the Nietzschean notion that will to power constitutes the core of man

00:31:28 And I would say, up until the dawn of Judeo-Christian ethic, let's say, power ruled.

00:31:38 And then we can imagine what sort of world it's like when power rules. 0.73

00:31:41 Well, we know what that world's like.

00:31:43 It's like, pay attention to the strongest or suffer the consequences.

00:31:50 Well, is there something beyond that?

00:31:54 That's not mere naivety?

00:31:58 What's, if it isn't power that's the story, and if it isn't sex that's the story, what's the story?

00:32:09 For the West, the answer to that is the library of the Bible.

00:32:16 That's the story.

00:32:18 It's the story upon which the West is founded.

00:32:23 It's the story that has arisen over thousands of years.

00:32:28 tens of thousands of years, for that matter,

00:32:34 attempting to address the core issue.

00:32:39 What's the fundamental story?

00:32:41 It's no mystery to make the claim that

00:32:45 the claim of the biblical library of stories,

00:32:48 as it is a library,

00:32:50 is that it's the fundamental story.

00:32:54 Alright, so...

00:32:56 We live in a story. We've identified the competitors, power and sex.

00:33:03 What is it that's being expressed in the biblical story?

00:33:07 Look, if you go to a movie, you read a complex book.

00:33:10 You go to a sophisticated movie, a sophisticated play, a Shakespearean play.

00:33:15 Or you read a sophisticated work of fiction.

00:33:18 You see a multi-dimensional characterization. Right?

00:33:23 A comic book has a hero with one motive.

00:33:28 A sophisticated work of fiction has a hero, and perhaps an anti-hero, with complex, multidimensional motivations.

00:33:37 Whatever characterizes those more realistic people isn't reducible to any single attribute.

00:33:45 And in a complicated work of fiction, the author walks you through a multidimensional characterization.

00:33:52 You see the same person, the hero, aiming upward, the anti-hero or villain aiming downward.

00:33:59 You see that person portrayed in multiple different situations.

00:34:04 And pursuing partial reflections of their ultimate aim.

00:34:12 And in consequence of that, you learn to understand and embody that complex of aims.

00:34:22 When you see a movie and you watch the hero, you're watching the hero to learn how to act like a hero.

00:34:30 When you're watching a movie and you watch the anti-hero or the villain,

00:34:34 you're watching the movie to learn how not to fail catastrophically and land in hell,

00:34:40 while taking everyone else along with you.

00:34:44 Is it reducible to something as simple as power or sex?

00:34:50 Not if it's not a comic book

00:34:53 You need a multidimensional characterization

00:34:56 Alright

00:34:57 The biblical corpus provides a multidimensional characterization

00:35:03 Of the fundamental aim of

00:35:05 Man and cosmos

00:35:08 That's the claim of the book

00:35:10 So I'm going to walk you through some of the stories

00:35:12 And show you what's being revealed

00:35:15 What's being revealed is the proper object of worship

00:35:20 Okay, so what does that mean?

00:35:22 The proper object of celebration.

00:35:24 The aim towards which all sacrifices and work are to be directed.

00:35:29 That which should be held in the highest regard.

00:35:33 That which should be imitated in ritual and admiration.

00:35:39 Okay, so that's the idea.

00:35:43 Admiration in the same way that a small child who hero worships.

00:35:50 the boy down the street who's the baseball star because that boy

00:35:57 portrays a pattern of skill and attention that is the next appropriate developmental step for

00:36:06 the hero-worshipping child that's a recreation of the religious impulse the impulse to look up

00:36:14 admire and imitate the question being what to what should we

00:36:18 address our attention upward looking admire and imitate

00:36:25 that highest possible object of apprehension and admiration

00:36:33 is by definition god it's a definition

00:36:39 It's the highest aim that lurks behind all proximal aims.

00:36:44 That's a good way of thinking about it.

00:36:46 It's the upward aim as such.

00:36:49 Alright, how do you bring that down to earth?

00:36:51 Well, let's start with Genesis 1.

00:36:54 There's a characterization of God and man in Genesis 1.

00:37:00 The story opens at the dawn of time.

00:37:04 At the beginning of things.

00:37:05 That's not exactly the beginning of time.

00:37:08 That's usually how it's read, but it's more complex than that.

00:37:11 It's not only the beginning of time, in the linear sense,

00:37:15 but it's the beginning of all things that begin.

00:37:18 This is what happens every time something begins.

00:37:21 This is what happens every time something new makes its entry into the world.

00:37:26 It's the continual beginning that continually unfolds,

00:37:30 that happened and is happening now and will always happen.

00:37:35 It's the pattern of...

00:37:38 the emergence of order out of chaos that makes itself manifest

00:37:47 in the form of your life

00:37:51 how is the stage set the spirit of god

00:37:57 hovers over the water over the deep

00:38:02 you hear that in the judeo-christian tradition god

00:38:08 engenders the world, ex nihilo, out of nothing.

00:38:12 That's not how the story sets itself up.

00:38:15 It sets itself up with the Spirit of God hovering above the waters.

00:38:19 But it's not water.

00:38:21 That's not the word.

00:38:22 Water is one of the symbolic images attempting to make what's being described clear

00:38:31 using a sequence of complex metaphors.

00:38:35 The word for the water over which the Spirit of God hovers is Tohu Vabohu or Tehom.

00:38:42 And it means a lot of things.

00:38:45 It means the dragon that lives at the bottom of the deepest well.

00:38:53 It means the unplumbable depths of the most abysmal ocean.

00:38:59 It means the water that brings forth life.

00:39:02 It means the infinite well of possibility itself.

00:39:10 It means the confusion that reigns when your world falls apart.

00:39:16 It means the unstructured day that makes itself manifest when you wake up.

00:39:28 It means all of that.

00:39:29 It means the dragon that the archaic god sliced into pieces and made the world from.

00:39:37 It means it's the hydra that Hercules defeats to form the world.

00:39:44 It's all of that.

00:39:46 So what does that mean?

00:39:49 It means that the spirit of being and becoming generates the world from possibility.

00:39:56 What does that mean?

00:39:58 That's what your consciousness does.

00:40:00 That's what you do.

00:40:02 See, you think you're surrounded by a world of objects that you manipulate in a robotic fashion.

00:40:07 But you're not concerned with the objects that are static.

00:40:12 You're concerned with what you can dynamically transform.

00:40:16 When you wake up in the morning, what presents itself to you is a field of indeterminate opportunity.

00:40:24 That's why you're worried.

00:40:27 Or, perhaps, excited because you have something to grapple with that hasn't yet come into being.

00:40:33 The possibilities of the day. And you might think, oh my god, I have so many things to do. I'm overwhelmed. It's too much.

00:40:41 Well, that's the tohu vabohu. That's the chaos and confusion. That's a plethora of possibility.

00:40:47 You're thinking, oh my god, how many ways are there for things to go wrong?

00:40:52 Well, that's the multi-headed serpent that the hero always confronts.

00:40:57 And what do you have to do with that?

00:40:59 It's like, well, are you going to establish the order that's good in the course of the day?

00:41:07 Because that's what you're called upon to do.

00:41:09 And it's your recreation of what God himself does at the beginning of time

00:41:14 that constitutes the action of your conscious on the possibility that's in front of you.

00:41:21 You have a microcosm of plenitude and possibility right in front of you at any moment

00:41:30 that you can wrestle into order if your aim is right.

00:41:36 The process that God relies on to extract the cosmos, the order that's good,

00:41:46 from the well of unformed possibility

00:41:50 is the word.

00:41:53 It's the logos.

00:41:54 Well, what does that mean?

00:42:00 How much hell can you bring into being

00:42:02 by saying the wrong words to your wife?

00:42:07 Right, now your wife is who she is,

00:42:09 but she's also who she could become,

00:42:11 as you've no doubt noticed many times.

00:42:13 And you can extract out something good or something terrible from the possibility she represents with the cautious and loving application of your words or with the careful and prideful and dismissive application of your words.

00:42:32 And the world you live in will be radically different depending on which of those two approaches you apply.

00:42:41 And that will be exactly the same with anyone else you talk to and how you treat yourself and how you interact with the world as such.

00:42:49 Because there's a provision of possibility that you're offered as a participant in the process of creation.

00:43:01 that you formulate in accordance with your aim.

00:43:05 What's the insistence in Genesis 1?

00:43:10 Aim up with love.

00:43:13 So, if you want to establish the paradise of your household

00:43:18 in relationship to your wife and your children,

00:43:22 you aim at what's best for the best in them.

00:43:27 You offer them the security that you can imagine.

00:43:31 That's the walls of the walled garden and you

00:43:36 present to them the challenge that

00:43:40 Allows them to unfold and develop optimally and

00:43:45 You do that appropriately if you're aiming at what's best what's highest and

00:43:53 That's the spirit of God that makes itself manifest on the waters of possibility

00:43:59 that's the embodiment, the source, the initial source, and the spirit of upward-aiming ultimate love.

00:44:12 You can understand this by understanding what sort of walled garden you produce in your own household with your aim.

00:44:22 god

00:44:25 wrestles with the possibility that's not yet manifest and creates the cosmic order as a

00:44:37 consequence in sequence creating the fundamental divisions to begin with the separation of light

00:44:44 and darkness that's the phenomenology of day and night the separation of the land from the waters

00:44:50 the establishment of the dome of the sky

00:44:52 over the disk of the earth

00:44:54 populates the world with its created beings

00:45:01 and on the sixth day

00:45:04 produces man

00:45:07 and says in his own image

00:45:11 so now we have a characterization of God

00:45:16 who's the dynamic process that gives rise to order from possibility itself in keeping

00:45:26 with the highest possible aim.

00:45:28 And we have a characterization of the human being as a microcosm of that process.

00:45:35 The notion that each of us has a worth that's transcendental and not given by the state,

00:45:45 given by yourself not given by other individuals is predicated on that image i mean that historically

00:45:55 and i mean it conceptually the notion is that one of the notions is that the state itself

00:46:04 has to grant to you the worth of

00:46:07 someone created in the image of the creator himself in order even for the state to exist

00:46:18 maintain itself and transform that the state itself cannot function unless it

00:46:24 establishes a sacred boundary between its operations and the operation of the psyche

00:46:33 the human psyche, the human spirit, that's a manifestation of the God who generates the order

00:46:39 that's good from possibility. And you might ask, well, who believes that? And I would say,

00:46:47 try talking to one person once without believing that and see how it goes. We call to each other

00:46:57 all the time, especially in our intimate relationships, to be treated as if we are the

00:47:03 locus of value. And if you treat people that way, if you regard them that way, if you perceive

00:47:11 them that way, if you encourage them in that pathway of development, everything in your

00:47:22 interactions with human beings will open itself up to you and fill your life with abundance.

00:47:29 Everyone wants to be treated that way. And the reason for that is, it's in keeping with our

00:47:35 essential nature. And that that hospitable, welcoming, encouraging, upward aiming, loving

00:47:46 treatment is the aim and attitude upon which the soul the the soul the community

00:47:59 and the natural order itself depends for its integrity your country is predicated on that

00:48:08 notion. The idea that each of you is endowed with inalienable rights and their requisite

00:48:16 responsibilities is a direct reflection of that conceptualization. And one of the things

00:48:23 you might frequently remind yourself of is the fact that your country wouldn't be what

00:48:30 it is, which is the closest approximation to a shining city on the hill that's been

00:48:36 established so far in the travail of mankind without that fundamental conception right

00:48:44 so then you might say well is it true and the answer is it's not hell i mean that because lots

00:48:57 of countries are hell and they're hell in a way that opens up into an abyss and has the possibility

00:49:05 of a deeper abyss waiting latent within it which will open up with the possibility of a deeper abyss

00:49:12 within that and that's what happens when that fundamental characterization is overthrown in a

00:49:20 revolutionary manner or carelessly abandoned and we saw that for all of us who are non-believers

00:49:27 and no longer conceptualize the metaphysical hell is real we saw the metaphysical hell realized in

00:49:36 the 20th century many times in case anyone having abandoned their metaphysical presuppositions

00:49:47 was so blind that only an object lesson would suffice right nazi germany

00:49:53 the soviet union under stalin the chinese communist party under mao 0.88

00:50:00 if that isn't close enough to hell for you then i would say you should pray that

00:50:08 you aren't introduced to something even worse for the purposes of convincing you about what's real

00:50:16 So, in the second, God announces two things, three things, four things once he creates man.

00:50:30 He says, man is to tend the garden.

00:50:34 That's his purpose.

00:50:36 Why a garden?

00:50:38 It's a walled garden, actually, because that's what paradise means, walled garden.

00:50:41 Why a walled garden?

00:50:42 Well, a garden is a place of nature, obviously.

00:50:45 and walls are a place of culture

00:50:48 and a walled garden is a place of nature

00:50:50 encapsulated in a manageable manner

00:50:54 by the walls of culture

00:50:56 that's what your backyard is

00:50:57 it's a yard, it's nature

00:51:00 it has walls 0.99

00:51:01 the walls are culture

00:51:02 the walls you could think of as physical

00:51:05 as physical entities, as objects

00:51:09 but your lawn has borders

00:51:11 if you don't have a fence

00:51:13 and your neighbors know where the borders are and where are the borders well they're in the

00:51:17 imagination of your neighbors i'm dead serious about that the walls it's so funny because you'll

00:51:24 see people in the border between canada and the united states they'll get out and they'll step

00:51:29 across the border it's like as if it's an object of it as if it's an entity that's there on the

00:51:37 And people know that that's magic in some sense, because the grass in Canada is only slightly less healthy than the grass in the United States, let's say.

00:51:53 It's easy to concretize that, but the idea of a walled-off space in a communal society is a social agreement.

00:52:02 You have your domain, your house, your garden, your backyard.

00:52:06 That's enough cosmos for you to set right and perhaps if you're competent enough to do more

00:52:12 You'll expand your garden so that you have more to tend

00:52:17 but you start with a

00:52:20 walled garden of some

00:52:23 Size and if you tend it properly, then the promise is that as your competence grows, so will your dominion

00:52:31 man sent to tend the garden and to name everything that's in it this is adam what is it what does

00:52:41 that mean well it's the logos again it's an re-representation of the creative spirit of god

00:52:48 that makes itself manifest when time begins and when new things come into being

00:52:54 our ability to name our ability to speak is that in in the microcosmic manner that's

00:53:02 what we're capable of doing that's what the patriarchal spirit does is name and order the

00:53:08 world and god brings everything to adam to see what he'll name them and that's a

00:53:14 reflection of the idea that we have a created order but man has a place in it and the place is to

00:53:23 organize it and to put

00:53:25 everything in its proper place

00:53:27 and to assign it its identity

00:53:30 and that's

00:53:31 no different than the prioritization

00:53:34 of attention that's part

00:53:35 of the story

00:53:36 name things in relationship to their

00:53:39 function put things in place

00:53:41 in relationship to

00:53:43 their significance

00:53:46 in the

00:53:49 hierarchy of being

00:53:51 orient them

00:53:52 orient all named things upward sequence constrain organize and order the manifestation of the

00:54:04 patriarchal spirit what does god decide that's not good enough man lacks a helper man needs a helper

00:54:13 woman's created as a consequence because the order that men produce

00:54:21 because of their limitations is insufficient and something has to be introduced to

00:54:30 speak for that which is not included that's the role of woman that's the biblical role of the

00:54:40 woman. It's the biological role of the mother. You know this in your own household. Women bring

00:54:48 the concerns of the marginalized to the center. You can think about that politically. It's useful 0.99

00:54:56 to think about it politically. All established human orders exclude. The exclusion causes pain.

00:55:05 the pain of exclusion requires a voice

00:55:09 that's the voice of the eternal mother

00:55:12 that's where Genesis 1 ends

00:55:16 Genesis 2 begins

00:55:19 contains the story of Adam and Eve

00:55:22 it's another creation story

00:55:24 it's commensurate with the first one

00:55:29 it's a variation on a theme

00:55:31 god creates adam out of matter earth and breath spirit why because that's what human beings are

00:55:44 we're material creatures that are animated anima means spirit we

00:55:52 what's the spirit the spirit is the living organizing principle of the material

00:56:03 and human beings are an amalgam of the living organizing principle and the material and that's

00:56:12 what's portrayed in the creation of adam the combination of matter and spirit the combination

00:56:18 of material and conscious. You could think about it that way, if you're more secular-minded.

00:56:25 We're conscious matter. What's up with that? No one understands that. No materialist understands

00:56:33 that. We understand nothing about consciousness. It's as mysterious now as it's been throughout

00:56:39 the entire course of our existence. It's never been reduced to material phenomenon. We have

00:56:45 No idea what that would even mean.

00:56:47 And if we did reduce it to the material, all that would mean was that we inadvertently elevated the material.

00:56:54 We treat each other like we're conscious.

00:56:56 We presume from first principles that we're conscious.

00:57:00 We can't even distinguish between being itself and being conscious.

00:57:04 And so, that's a perfectly reasonable representation of man. 0.93

00:57:13 Woman is taken from man. 0.80

00:57:15 from a rib from the side as an equal there's a critique of patriarchal judeo-christian

00:57:25 narrative from the resentful feminist side that makes the claim that the biblical narrative is

00:57:31 for example radically patriarchal in its orientation dooming women to subjugation

00:57:38 um that's a preposterous claim by the way it's it's not only false it's false in a very particular

00:57:46 way there are falsehoods that are approximations of the truth there are falsehoods so deep that

00:57:53 they're the exact opposite of the truth and the truth of the matter is that right from the first 0.60

00:58:00 words the biblical library is miraculous in its in its insistence that women like men are made in

00:58:08 the image of god that emerges in the first chapter and that eve is the equal of adam in every manner

00:58:16 although complementary and not identical and our society is riven by conflict so deep that

00:58:27 We now doubt both of those propositions

00:58:30 There's no form of confusion more profound than that

00:58:35 Sexually reproducing creatures without nervous systems 0.99

00:58:40 Can tell the difference between male and female 0.71

00:58:42 I'm dead serious about that 0.82

00:58:44 If you can get people to swallow the lie

00:58:52 That there's no difference between men and women

00:58:54 There is no lie they won't swallow 1.00

00:58:57 right 0.99

00:58:58 so God makes Adam and Eve

00:59:05 each with their own role 0.51

00:59:08 and he puts them in the garden

00:59:11 to play

00:59:13 forever under the watchful

00:59:15 eye of their heavenly father

00:59:17 and he tells them they have

00:59:19 free reign in the garden

00:59:20 with everything delightful that's being

00:59:23 created

00:59:23 except for one thing

00:59:27 They're not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

00:59:37 So what does that mean?

00:59:39 Man, that's a mystery.

00:59:42 I spent a long time trying to crack the micro-narratives in the story of Adam and Eve.

00:59:48 And it wasn't until three or four years ago that I think I started to understand that particular fragment of the story.

00:59:59 A friend of mine is here, Jonathan Pajot.

01:00:02 Some of you might have been following him.

01:00:05 Jonathan and his brother Matthew really helped me crack this.

01:00:09 And so we're here.

01:00:12 I'm here with Jonathan and a number of my other colleagues and friends right now with The Daily Wire

01:00:17 recording another seminar we released an exodus seminar we're recording a seminar on the gospels

01:00:23 right now we're about 60 of the way through that and so just so you know that's also forthcoming

01:00:30 god tells human beings he makes one fundamental rule

01:00:36 do not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil okay that's moral

01:00:42 knowledge that that should be self-evident knowledge of good and evil that's moral knowledge

01:00:47 moral knowledge is predicated on the idea that there's an upward path and a downward path that

01:00:53 there are desirable things and that there are undesirable things and that at the pinnacle of

01:00:57 what's desirable is what's heavenly or paradisal and in the abysmal depths of what's undesirable

01:01:03 is the diabolical and the hellish and that's the moral landscape that's the landscape of good and

01:01:08 evil that's the fictional landscape fictional in the sense of characterization and plot

01:01:15 fictional in the sense of distilled truth not falsehood fictional in the sense that the fiction

01:01:22 describes the structure through which you see the world fiction has the deepest form of truth

01:01:29 what does it mean to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil when nietzsche

01:01:38 announced the death of god in the late 1800s he said something that he believed would

01:01:45 constitute a pathway forward he said we have dispensed with god we are the greatest murderers

01:01:53 who ever lived we've engaged in a murder so profound that will never wash away the blood

01:02:03 How could we possibly conduct ourselves in the aftermath of that murder?

01:02:11 You read of Nietzsche as a triumphant anti-Christian.

01:02:15 He was a very complicated person.

01:02:19 And he knew perfectly well that the dissolution of the Christian metaphysic would produce a cataclysmic consequence.

01:02:26 He predicted in the late 1800s that Europe would turn to a radically resentful, egalitarian 0.82

01:02:34 communitarianism that would kill tens of millions of people, which is exactly what happened.

01:02:41 And he saw that coming just as clearly as his Russian counterpart, Theodor Dostoevsky,

01:02:47 saw it.

01:02:48 He knew what would rise in the aftermath of the death of God.

01:02:51 He knew that resentment and communitarianism would be one temptation.

01:02:58 And he tried to formulate an alternative path.

01:03:02 He said, we're going to have to create our own values.

01:03:05 We're going to have to take it upon ourselves to create the moral landscape.

01:03:12 I read that, and I understood why he said that.

01:03:17 I could see its influence on clinical psychology, for example.

01:03:21 The notion of the self-actualized person.

01:03:24 The notion that our soul should unfold in the direction that's commensurate with

01:03:28 the deepest understanding of our subjective selves, right?

01:03:32 The radical unveiling of subjectivity.

01:03:35 Self-definition.

01:03:37 I am what I say I am.

01:03:40 Which is a radical claim in our society now.

01:03:43 A claim of omniscience.

01:03:44 Not only am I who I say I am, you better act like I'm who I say I am.

01:03:50 That's the claim of the radical subjective.

01:03:54 Well, what's wrong with that claim?

01:03:56 Well, the psychoanalysts criticized Nietzsche very effectively.

01:04:00 They said, look, how are you going to create your own values when you're not mastering your own house?

01:04:04 Have you tried telling yourself what to do?

01:04:07 How does that work for you?

01:04:09 I know, you're just your own obedient servant, right?

01:04:11 You're so morally pure.

01:04:13 You just tell yourself at New Year's that you're going to go to the gym.

01:04:17 And you're going to diet.

01:04:18 And you're going to be some stellar, physiqued, lean, mean fighting machine by March.

01:04:24 And you go once.

01:04:26 And then you tell yourself lies about why you don't have to go again.

01:04:30 And that's the end of that.

01:04:31 And if you were capable of creating your own values,

01:04:35 you wouldn't be

01:04:36 the

01:04:39 the banner, the tattered banner

01:04:43 that blows in the wind of its own whims

01:04:45 the psychoanalysts figured this out very quickly

01:04:48 you're a war of competing whims

01:04:51 and a creature like that's going to have a very difficult time

01:04:55 navigating the complex landscape of the ultimate

01:04:58 moral

01:05:00 pronouncement

01:05:02 who are you to make a decision about what constitutes good and evil

01:05:06 and that's what God tells men and women

01:05:09 it's like you don't get to create the moral order

01:05:11 you get to dwell within it

01:05:12 you get to align yourself with the pre-existent moral order

01:05:16 you do not take to yourself the right

01:05:19 the presumption to define good and evil themselves

01:05:24 you bow your head to good

01:05:30 and you pray for deliverance from evil and if you violate that look the hell out

01:05:39 and that's the pronouncement and so what happens

01:05:43 the serpent offers eve the fruit why the serpent well the serpent is camouflaged

01:05:54 the serpent is crafty subtle the serpent is marginalized the serpent is the voice of pride

01:06:08 the serpent is lucifer that's the metaphysical surrounding of the story that develops over

01:06:15 centuries the notion that the serpent in the garden of paradise is lucifer himself the spirit

01:06:20 of pride what does that mean it's prideful presumption that makes you assume that you

01:06:26 can define the moral order what's the provide what's the prideful presumption of eve at the

01:06:32 beginning of time and forever i can even clasp the serpent to my breast it's the

01:06:39 careless welcoming in of the monstrous and prideful

01:06:44 under the guise of the pretension of maternal compassion

01:06:50 and if you can't see that happening in our society you're blind

01:06:56 and what's the sin of a of adam

01:06:59 well what do men care about women care about

01:07:04 properly about

01:07:06 the helpless infant 1.00

01:07:09 It's a powerful feminine virtue 1.00

01:07:15 And it can be 1.00

01:07:16 Inverted and made prideful

01:07:18 And trumpeted

01:07:19 And presumptuous

01:07:20 To infantilize the world

01:07:22 And to advertise that compassion

01:07:25 As a badge of

01:07:27 Worth and honor

01:07:30 As a mode of attaining status

01:07:33 What's Adam's sin?

01:07:36 What do men care about? 1.00

01:07:37 Impressing women 0.95

01:07:38 men are ambitious fundamentally to impress women 0.99

01:07:44 for better or for worse what's the prideful pathway and false pathway to 0.98

01:07:55 establishing a relationship with the two demanding feminine 1.00

01:08:00 i've got it anything you want dear right and that's adam's sin he eve hearkens to the voice 0.71

01:08:11 of the serpent and clutches it to her breast in despite the clear injunction from the divine

01:08:21 never to do that

01:08:23 and Adam

01:08:24 weakly does exactly

01:08:27 what the worst part of his 1.00

01:08:29 wife wants

01:08:30 and so here we are folks

01:08:33 so what's the consequence of that

01:08:38 well the scales

01:08:41 fall from their eyes and they notice they're naked

01:08:43 and they're deeply ashamed and they cover up

01:08:47 they become

01:08:49 self-conscious

01:08:51 Okay, so when do people become self-conscious?

01:08:54 When they make prideful errors.

01:08:57 When you overreach and you reveal your inadequacy as a consequence of the mismatch between your pride and your ability.

01:09:06 You'll be ashamed.

01:09:08 You'll recognize your insufficiency.

01:09:12 You'll be aware of yourself as an isolated entity.

01:09:17 That's all to become self-conscious.

01:09:20 Psychologists have learned over the last 40 years that there's no difference between being conscious of yourself and being miserable.

01:09:26 Those are literally the same thing.

01:09:29 If you're living a life of other-centered, communally-oriented, hospitable calling,

01:09:37 you're not attending to the miseries of your isolated self.

01:09:42 If you stay in your bailiwick and you don't put forward your hand presumptuously,

01:09:49 you can live in the absence of painful self-consciousness.

01:09:53 Pride goes before a fall.

01:09:57 We have a month devoted to pride in our culture.

01:10:01 Right.

01:10:02 Pride goes before a fall.

01:10:04 You know this in your own life. 1.00

01:10:06 You can ask yourself, and this has been a Christian conundrum since the beginning of time. 1.00

01:10:12 Is your life miserable because misery is baked into the structure of the world? 1.00

01:10:16 Or is your life miserable because you do stupid things and refuse to learn and bring endless misery on yourself in your presumption? 0.99

01:10:24 And you know, you might say a little of column A and a little of column B, and fair enough. 0.99

01:10:28 But you certainly know that the most painful episodes of your life come when you claim falsely to be more than you are.

01:10:38 And the core narrative in the Judeo-Christian ethos is that the fall of man into the profane world is a consequence of pride.

01:10:53 And that is really something worth thinking about. 0.97

01:10:56 You know, Adam and Eve are called upon to work in misery as a consequence of their pride.

01:11:01 Well, could you work joyfully?

01:11:03 If you didn't overreach yourself, if you were aiming upward properly, if you were telling the truth, if you were acting communally, if you're acting in relationship to what was highest, would it be possible that your work would be joyful and bring abundance?

01:11:18 Isn't there times in your life when that's happened?

01:11:20 Is it the case that you move forward in misery in precise proportion to the pretension of your aim?

01:11:30 It's worth considering.

01:11:33 It's the suspicion that arises at the end of the story that begins history,

01:11:39 because it's with the prideful fall of Adam and Eve that history begins.

01:11:49 Adam and Eve discover they're naked, and they hide.

01:11:53 And God comes along and says, Adam, where are you?

01:11:57 And Adam says, I'm over here. I'm hiding.

01:12:01 And God says, well, why are you hiding? 0.78

01:12:03 It's a foolish thing to do, right?

01:12:05 Because Adam is perfectly aware that God can see through bushes. 0.86

01:12:09 Adam is hiding from God. 0.99

01:12:11 Is it your pathetic self-consciousness that makes you hide from God? 1.00

01:12:16 That's a good question. 1.00

01:12:18 Are you not everything you could be because you're ashamed of who you are?

01:12:23 That's what that story indicates.

01:12:26 And so God calls Adam on.

01:12:27 He says, who told you?

01:12:29 Why are you hiding?

01:12:30 And Adam says, well, I'm naked.

01:12:31 And God says, well, how do you find out that you were naked?

01:12:36 How did you find out that you were inadequate?

01:12:40 How did you find out that you are shameful?

01:12:43 And Adam says, you know that woman you made me? 0.97

01:12:47 It's her fault.

01:12:49 And that's the second sin of Adam.

01:12:51 And that's another indication of the non-patriarchal nature of the text.

01:12:55 You know, Eve is the first human being to take a bite of the apple.

01:12:59 But Adam follows along, and it isn't obvious to me that the follower of sin is in a worse, better moral position than the initiator.

01:13:07 And then he compounds his sin, like men do, by blaming the woman.

01:13:12 Why is your life so...

01:13:13 Well, if you had my wife, man, you'd know. 1.00

01:13:16 It's like those damn women. 1.00

01:13:17 It's like, it's a handy excuse for men all the time to say that... 1.00

01:13:21 And it's not least because men can't tolerate being rejected by women. 0.77

01:13:25 And women reject them all the time. 1.00

01:13:27 And the reason women reject them is because they're not all they should be. 0.99

01:13:31 And so, of course, that makes men painfully self-conscious. 0.97

01:13:35 And makes them shake their fist at God.

01:13:37 And makes them hide.

01:13:38 And so, what God says. 0.97

01:13:41 And so, Adam reveals himself in this pathetic manner. 0.96

01:13:44 It's like he can't even take responsibility for his own misstep. 0.98

01:13:48 He has to blame the thing that's been granted to him as the highest form of gift.

01:13:54 And not only her, but God.

01:13:57 Whose fault is it? Well, it's not mine. It's probably women's fault.

01:14:01 And if it's not women, it's clearly God. It can't be me. 0.98

01:14:07 So what happens? Well, both Adam and Eve are condemned to suffer in their work.

01:14:12 And that's how history begins.

01:14:15 And that's the situation of the fallen world.

01:14:20 And that's the description of the landscape of profound fiction that we inhabit.

01:14:34 And that's only a tiny fraction of the characterization of God and man in the biblical corpus.

01:14:45 Thank you very much.

01:14:50 All right, so we'll welcome Constantine onto the stage.

01:15:05 He's going to.

01:15:11 Thank you.

01:15:12 Thank you.

01:15:14 Thank you.

01:15:14 That was great, Jordan.

01:15:19 Shall we sit?

01:15:21 Absolutely.

01:15:23 Well, so much to agree on, first of all,

01:15:26 not least just when you were talking about the Foundation of America

01:15:31 and how great it is.

01:15:32 How could anyone disagree with that?

01:15:33 Everyone here has guns.

01:15:39 No, but I mean it, actually.

01:15:42 And one of the things I was thinking that I really agreed on,

01:15:46 I don't want to spend too much time on the stuff that I agree on,

01:15:48 But I've had this phrase in my head for a long time now, which is the cultures, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

01:15:56 And I thought that was very interesting that you mentioned it.

01:15:59 But you brought me here to be a contrarian.

01:16:02 So it's his fault, not mine, if I offend you, when I offend you.

01:16:10 You said we're here partly because the Enlightenment doesn't work, is wrong.

01:16:16 If the Enlightenment is wrong, why are we sitting in an arena of 6,500 people with bright lights

01:16:22 and all of this created through the scientific method and research

01:16:27 and all of the stuff that comes out of the Enlightenment?

01:16:31 How are we here?

01:16:34 I don't think the scientific method is wrong.

01:16:38 I think the Enlightenment is wrong.

01:16:40 So, I don't know how many of you noticed this, but yesterday, the day before, something like that, Richard Dawkins announced that he was a cultural Christian.

01:16:53 Most upvoted question for the Q&A.

01:16:56 Okay, okay, well there we go.

01:16:57 Well, because Richard Dawkins, who is a genuine scientist, and I think actually a good man,

01:17:05 is feeling in his bones that something is up.

01:17:11 And what he said essentially was that, even though, and it's paradoxical, right?

01:17:16 He said, even though I'm happy that formal belief in Christianity in the West is on the decline,

01:17:23 I would rather live in a Christian culture 0.98

01:17:26 Than in a culture dominated by any other religion 1.00

01:17:29 And so that's kind of a backhanded compliment

01:17:33 And then he said also

01:17:34 He doesn't want the cathedrals to go

01:17:36 He doesn't want the churches to go

01:17:37 He doesn't want Christmas to go

01:17:39 There's a lot of beauty in the culture

01:17:41 That he wants to maintain

01:17:43 And so that puts Dr. Dawkins in a difficult position

01:17:49 I don't say this with any delight 1.00

01:17:53 If Christianity works in the manner that even makes science possible 1.00

01:18:01 Which is something that Dr. Dawkins is beginning to understand

01:18:04 What is it about Christianity that works?

01:18:08 And how is what works different from what doesn't work?

01:18:11 Now, Dr. Dawkins doesn't like to mention this

01:18:14 but one of the things he is doing is contrasting what he believes is the Christian UK

01:18:22 with perhaps what the UK might be if it was fundamentalist Islam, for example.

01:18:28 And I'm not criticizing Islam when I say that. 0.91

01:18:32 I'm criticizing, more pointedly, fundamentalism.

01:18:36 And Dr. Dawkins knows that there's something, regardless of what might be wrong with Christianity,

01:18:41 let's say there's something like seriously wrong with that kind of fundamentalism and that means

01:18:47 he's making a hierarchy of moral order and he's placing what's christian above what's fundamentalist

01:18:53 so that's part of that reflection of a moral order and then he's stuck with the problem is

01:18:58 like well what then what is it about christianity that makes it right well we have to get rid of all

01:19:02 the, what? The miracles, the magic, the superstition? Well, how do you separate out that from what's

01:19:14 hypothetically good? And why do you even think that's possible? There's no evidence that

01:19:20 it's possible. Like, perhaps it's possible. We haven't done it since the Enlightenment

01:19:24 arose, so I don't think we can. So there's that problem. The Enlightenment has run to its end

01:19:35 because there are fundamental propositions that it was predicated on that aren't true.

01:19:42 Like what?

01:19:43 We don't orient ourselves empirically. We don't orient ourselves rationally. We orient ourselves

01:19:48 in the narrative world and we don't yet really understand what that means like let me give you

01:19:55 an example of that okay so carl sigmund freud believed that the reason your dreams were

01:20:03 mysterious was because your dreams were delivering to you messages about your desires that you didn't

01:20:11 want to become conscious of, and that the dream was symbolizing them to hide what was

01:20:21 repressed, but, well, offering it, you might argue, in small doses. And that accounted

01:20:27 for the mystery of dreams. Why are dreams so mysterious? Well, Freud's answer was, well,

01:20:32 because the dream disguises unpleasant truths from the dreamer so that he can maintain his

01:20:37 slumber. Carl Jung came along and said, no. The dream is the universe within which philosophy

01:20:50 situates itself. You dream about what you do not yet understand. The dream is the mediator

01:20:58 between what is still mysterious, so mysterious you might not even know that it exists, and

01:21:04 what you concretely can contend with. Jung's correct. We know enough now about how the

01:21:12 hemispheres of the brain function. We know enough about how the dream functions. We know

01:21:16 enough about the relationship between the imagination and our ability to speak to say

01:21:21 that what we understand is nested in a dream. The dream is mysterious. The dream isn't the

01:21:29 same world as the graspable describable world christianity is the dream within which the west

01:21:38 is embedded and there are elements of it that we we can't understand partly because we have to

01:21:46 situate ourselves in relationship to what's ultimately mysterious and that means that the

01:21:50 dream shades into the miraculous and mysterious and there's no way around that because we need

01:21:57 that buffer at least because we need that buffer it's also because things that are true that we

01:22:05 cannot understand from our current frame of reference appear as miraculous within that frame

01:22:10 of reference now that doesn't mean i know how to contend we're doing this gospel seminar now i don't

01:22:17 know how to contend with the plethora of miraculous healing stories i don't know how to contend with

01:22:22 the story of the quelling of the waves on the sea of galilee but

01:22:27 but i know that we live in a story and i know that the story mediates between the finite and

01:22:37 the infinite and i know that we can't dispense with the story not without opening ourself

01:22:42 up to invasion by any number of catastrophic competing stories and that is what's happening

01:22:50 in the west as far as i'm concerned not least the story of power or the story of hedonism

01:22:55 or the story of paganism the story of nature worship we moved very quickly from worship of the

01:23:04 transcendent spirit beyond nature to worship of nature itself that's what the environmentalist

01:23:11 movement is and you know you know this the irish want to sacrifice 200 000 cows to change the weather

01:23:20 Right. Right. And that's a re-emergence. That is truly a re-emergence of that pagan spirituality and a whole different aim.

01:23:28 We put nature above all else. Well, where do we put man? What's our birth rate? 0.73

01:23:35 Way below replacement. We know where we put man. There's too many of us. 0.99

01:23:42 In relationship to what? Nature.

01:23:45 So

01:23:47 How is the enlightenment wrong?

01:23:52 Well, man does not live by bread alone

01:23:54 You know

01:23:55 The technological enterprise

01:23:58 Offers

01:24:00 Material abundance and

01:24:02 More power to it, but

01:24:04 As an end in itself

01:24:06 As a moral ethos in itself

01:24:08 It's unsustainable 0.86

01:24:10 It produces nothing but towers of Babel 0.69

01:24:12 And 0.99

01:24:13 And it produces people who can't master their own tools.

01:24:19 And we're in that situation.

01:24:27 Do you think it's possible that it's the material abundance that's the problem?

01:24:33 I wouldn't say it's the problem.

01:24:36 The cause of the problem.

01:24:38 No, I don't think so.

01:24:40 I think it's a it's a fundamental symptom. Let me tell you a story. This is very cool

01:24:47 This took me 40 years to figure out and I can tell you in three minutes. So that's a good deal for you

01:24:54 You remember I like the movie pinocchio a lot. I've talked about it a lot

01:24:58 I would do a whole series on pinocchio if disney hadn't crookedly

01:25:02 Re-established copyright control over it by bribing public officials

01:25:07 you remember something there's a variety of very strange things happen in Pinocchio but one of the

01:25:15 strangest is that Geppetto ends up in a whale and that's never explained it's like Geppetto makes

01:25:22 Pinocchio he's the benevolent father and Pinocchio leaves and Geppetto goes and looks for him and

01:25:26 fair enough and then he ends up in a whale at the bottom of the ocean and no one just walks out of

01:25:33 the theater thinking you know what the hell what's going on here they think oh yeah well of course

01:25:38 he's in a whale and then of course pinocchio goes to the bottom of the abyss like jonah to find his

01:25:46 father who's living in a gigantic carcass right there's an ancient story the mesopotamians told

01:25:58 Called the Enuma Elish

01:25:59 And in the Enuma Elish 0.73

01:26:01 The world is constituted by 0.98

01:26:03 Tiamat 1.00

01:26:05 Who's a feminine dragon 0.98

01:26:06 From her name, Tiamat, comes 0.98

01:26:08 Tohu Vabohu and Tehum

01:26:10 That possibility that

01:26:12 God makes order out of

01:26:14 At the beginning of time 1.00

01:26:15 She's the feminine dragon that represents 0.99

01:26:19 Nature and possibility 0.72

01:26:22 And she has a husband, Apsu

01:26:24 Who's the patriarchy 0.53

01:26:26 Matriarchy and patriarchy

01:26:27 yin and yang it's the age-old story they unite and they give rise to the first world

01:26:36 the deities of the first world start pursuing their own aims and they get noisy and prideful 0.78

01:26:45 they kill apsu and they live on his corpse

01:26:48 that's what we're doing geppetto is in the corpse of a carcass why wealth is a carcass

01:26:58 wealth is a storehouse of value wealth can be traded for food the past is the carcass of a

01:27:06 whale harvard is a whale carcass harvard is a whale carcass inhabited by unconscious people

01:27:13 who are living on the storehouse of past value right right absolutely without replenishing it

01:27:22 right it's the it's the parasite problem fundamentally and it is a problem with wealth

01:27:27 because the problem with wealth is like this is the problem abraham has abraham has wealthy

01:27:34 father and he doesn't launch his life till he's 70 and the reason for that is because he doesn't

01:27:39 have to. He can exist unconsciously in the carcass of his ancestors, right? That's what we're doing

01:27:47 in the West. And we've been building these storehouses of value since World War II. We're

01:27:52 so rich. And now we have the pathologies of the wealthy. And one of the pathologies of the wealthy

01:27:59 is prideful ingratitude. And that's what the universities specialize in. That's what they

01:28:05 train their students to have you know prideful presumption and the universities opened the door

01:28:13 to the non-productive scavengers starting in the 1960s and they took over over a 40-year period

01:28:25 i watched it happen and much of what's happening downstream is a consequence of that and this is

01:28:33 an age-old story, like the Mesopotamian story.

01:28:35 That's the oldest story we have. It's like 3,500

01:28:37 years old, something like that. And

01:28:39 in its oral form, way older. People knew

01:28:41 a long time ago that if you are 1.00

01:28:43 stupid enough to kill 1.00

01:28:44 the spirit of your fathers, 1.00

01:28:47 you 0.99

01:28:49 die. What happens in the Mesopotamian

01:28:51 story is the Tiamat, whose chaos 0.95

01:28:53 itself comes back, just

01:28:55 like God in the story of Noah.

01:28:57 It's exactly the same idea.

01:28:59 She comes back and says, I'm going to take you all

01:29:01 out.

01:29:03 Well, you brought me here to disagree with you, and I'm struggling here because I agree with everything you're saying.

01:29:08 I'm tricky that way. 0.51

01:29:10 Well, it's much easier to see as an outsider like me, having come from the Soviet Union, to see a civilization essentially forgetting how it got there.

01:29:20 I feel like we're kind of a cargo cult in a way. 0.53

01:29:23 Right.

01:29:24 but the obvious question then is how do you put the toothpaste back in the tube which i think is

01:29:33 where we are now you're here talking about christianity being the dream in which we're

01:29:38 all embedded but there is what i call the generation of door the children of dawkins

01:29:44 is what i call my generation and that conversation became fundamentally about one thing i think which

01:29:51 is are the metaphors that you laid out so beautifully true that's what that discussion

01:29:59 is about and it's very difficult to convince people like me you know if you if you have to

01:30:06 believe that my suit is red in order for everything to turn out correct you still won't because it's

01:30:12 not red right does that make sense of course of course of course okay so what's your prescription

01:30:19 You had two questions, so I'll address them in order.

01:30:22 Okay, so I'm going to tell you the rest of the Mesopotamian myth.

01:30:25 Okay.

01:30:27 So you know what happens in the Pinocchio story, right?

01:30:29 Pinocchio, by the time Pinocchio gets to rescue his father, 0.95

01:30:32 he's a braying jackass who is enticed into slavery by hedonists. 0.95

01:30:39 And also by neurotic hedonists, because if you remember the story, 0.99

01:30:43 the reason he ends up on Pleasure Island is because the criminals convince him that he's too sick

01:30:50 and neurotic and victimized to become real so then he goes to Pleasure Island with all the

01:30:57 delinquents and they throw rocks through the masterpieces of western civilization 0.71

01:31:02 and they turn into braying drunken donkeys while the slavers prepare to sell them to the coal mines

01:31:08 and pinocchio escapes with some of his voice intact and he goes to the bottom of the ocean

01:31:15 to rescue geppetto okay so that's the first part of the

01:31:18 cure you go into the depths to find your lost father into the depths now what's in the depths

01:31:29 for pinocchio a fire-breathing dragon right you remember the whale has fire in it and when it

01:31:35 comes up to the surface, it breathes fire. It's a dragon. It's the dragon that has the treasure.

01:31:38 The treasure is not only the father who's rescued, but the discovery of the true pathway that

01:31:46 restores Pinocchio, restores his voice, restores the true voice to Pinocchio and transforms him

01:31:55 into what he could be. And that's the courage to confront the unconscious abyss. And that's

01:32:02 the psychoanalysts were calling for, especially Jung, is the courage to confront the unconscious

01:32:08 abyss. Auschwitz, the darkness itself, and that's the pathway to the light. There's no difference

01:32:15 between that and the idea of the crucifixion. The ultimate confrontation with death and mortality

01:32:22 and malevolence and the revelation of eternal life in consequence. The Mesopotamians,

01:32:29 tiamat re-emerges the dragon of chaos to destroy everything because the ungrateful inhabitants of 1.00

01:32:37 her husband's corpse have enraged the structure of being so profoundly that devastation is the 0.97

01:32:45 most likely outcome the inhabitants of apsu panic and marshal the forces to confront chaos

01:32:54 they send out one hero after another and they all fail well that's happening new

01:33:03 beings are born and one of them is qualitatively different this is the birth of the hero

01:33:12 this is the god of mesopotamia whose name was marduk marduk has eyes all the way around his head

01:33:19 and he speaks magic words that's the logos in nascent form magic words words of truth

01:33:26 words of truth and the eyes are the same as the eye of horus the the egyptian eye that sees

01:33:33 everything what's the antidote to unconsciousness pay attention what do you pay attention to

01:33:39 everything you don't want to pay attention to so marduk goes out marduk tells all the other

01:33:45 inhabitants of the dead corpse.

01:33:47 He says, look, I'll go out and I'll

01:33:49 attend to

01:33:51 and deal with

01:33:52 chaos.

01:33:54 The chaos you brought upon

01:33:57 yourself with your unconscious presumption.

01:33:59 But here's the deal.

01:34:01 I'm

01:34:02 at the pinnacle.

01:34:05 This is the emergence of a kind of monotheism.

01:34:08 What's at the pinnacle?

01:34:09 Magic, truth, and vision.

01:34:12 And the Mesopotamians figured that out.

01:34:13 so is how is that concretized the magic words of truth and the vision that enables you to

01:34:22 forthrightly confront chaos and malevolence itself the darkest elements of possibility

01:34:31 and to make the orderly world as a consequence and that's exactly what

01:34:36 marduk does he goes out with a net he encloses chaos in the net that's understanding as a

01:34:45 consequence of confrontation he cuts her into pieces and he makes the world and that's the

01:34:52 eternal medication for the death of god it's happened murcia elia had mapped this out in his

01:35:00 magisterial works on the history of religion we think the death of god has happened in 1850 it's

01:35:06 happened many times repeatedly it's the same pattern all the time which is why the mesopotamians

01:35:12 had it nailed like thousands of years ago and the medicine is always the same here's another example

01:35:18 in numbers moses is leading the lost israelites through the desert they're a long ways on their

01:35:29 journey by this time they're almost at the promised land they've been wandering around 0.85

01:35:33 lost for a long time and they're still pining for the tyranny and whining and irresponsible 1.00

01:35:39 they're still slavish they still wish they had a king they are whiny and terrible and 1.00

01:35:45 they run out of water and they're not really listening to moses but they're starting to die 1.00

01:35:51 of thirst and and worse and they're complaining about this bitterly and god has had enough of

01:35:59 them by this time and he sends poisonous snakes in to bite them and the meaning of that story is

01:36:04 that you might be lost and things are miserable and you're irresponsible and you think it's pretty 1.00

01:36:09 dismal and that you get to shake your fist at god but if you keep being stupid worse things will 1.00

01:36:16 happen to you without end and so god sends some poisonous snakes and so the israelites 1.00

01:36:21 that's enough for them the the thirst and the lostness is enough the snakes are too much they 0.59

01:36:27 go to Moses with some degree of humility and they say do you want to ask we hear you've got a

01:36:32 pipeline to God do you want to ask him to call off the snakes and Moses says I'm not very happy with

01:36:38 you people and I just as soon leave you like die and be poisoned in the desert but I'll see what

01:36:45 I can do so he goes and has a chat with God and God says yeah I don't think I'll call off the 0.98

01:36:51 snakes but what i'll do instead is i'm going to ask you to do something i want you to cast a

01:36:58 bronze serpent take all the bronze that you have and make a serpent out of it and put it on a stake

01:37:04 and like make a statue out of it and put it somewhere where the israelites can all see it 0.65

01:37:11 and if they go and actually look at it then they'll be immune from the poison okay it's that

01:37:19 symbol, that stake with a snake around it, that's the same symbol that Asclepius, who's the Greek

01:37:26 god of healing, that's the same symbol that represents Asclepius. It's the same symbol

01:37:31 that your physicians use to signify their operation. And there's a principle there, which is that

01:37:38 a little poison voluntarily incorporated will increase your resilience.

01:37:49 That's what a vaccine does when liars haven't made them. 0.58

01:37:54 So the Israelites go look at the snake on the bronze staff,

01:38:10 which is also Moses' staff, by the way,

01:38:12 which is also the staff that transforms itself into serpents

01:38:15 and that transforms itself into the serpent that eats all the serpents of the pharaoh's magicians

01:38:22 all of that's symbolically locked together and what's the idea confront what you're terrified by

01:38:29 that poisons you and prevail in the gospels christ says to his followers that unless he's lifted up

01:38:38 like the serpent in the desert that men will be redeemed if he is lifted up like the serpent in

01:38:45 desert that's what christianity was and so so this is a way of thinking about it

01:38:52 the serpent on the stake is a symbol of what's dangerous and poisonous and

01:39:01 what's dangerous and poisonous is an example of the danger and poison of life the danger of life

01:39:07 is the brute reality of mortality our vulnerability our naked vulnerability

01:39:14 and the poison is malevolence so a serpent is threat and poison

01:39:21 you're to confront threat and poison the crucifix is a meta

01:39:29 serpent it's everything about life that's catastrophic and everything about life that's

01:39:37 poisonous in one symbol and the west realized in this dreamlike fashion that we're to look upon

01:39:47 that we're to imitate the pattern of that confrontation which is a sacrificial pattern

01:39:54 and we're to regard that as the center of the community which is why the cross is at the center

01:39:59 of the church and the church is at the center of the town and the town is at the center of the state

01:40:06 It's all predicated on the idea of the ultimate sacrificial offering, a voluntary acceptance of the mortal and poisonous preconditions of life, right?

01:40:21 And that's the cure. That's the cure. And that's always been the case, right?

01:40:27 so i want to bring a couple of audience questions in while we have time and actually on this very

01:40:33 point about richard dawkins and whether cultural christianity quote unquote can be the solution

01:40:42 can it can you have practice without belief we were at constantine and i were in a conference

01:40:52 in London, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, ARC, which we put together as a distributed

01:41:02 responsibility alternative to the global internationalists, the doomsaying prophets

01:41:08 of the future, who offer tyranny as an offering to the gods of nature and as false security.

01:41:16 and ian herzi ali came to the conference and she spoke very eloquently about her recent

01:41:24 conversion to christianity from islam which has made her a marked woman yet again is a very brave

01:41:33 woman ian herzi ali and she said a flower can live for a time when you cut it off from its roots

01:41:39 but only for a time we're living on borrowed time it's the same idea with regard to the corpse let's

01:41:46 say of apsu or the whale carcass there's a spirit that gives rise to that plenitude right and it is

01:41:52 something like the spirit of communal self-sacrifice it's something like that now

01:41:57 okay so that's one story now douglas murray said something interesting to me too that was very

01:42:03 surprising because murray has come to the cultural christian conclusion despite also being a follower

01:42:09 of Dawkins, like Ian was, he said, I realized something. If you take the magic and the miracles

01:42:18 away, Christianity degenerates into wokeism. And so now, it's not like I understand that. I'm not 0.97

01:42:25 claiming that. But it has something to do with this issue of the dream. It's like the narrative

01:42:33 of our culture has to mediate between us and the infinite. And that means it has to shade into the

01:42:39 miraculous. Now, you might say, well, what does that mean in reality? Is that just a metaphor?

01:42:46 Which is kind of the question you asked earlier. Your suit isn't red, it's green, and how can we

01:42:50 predicate our culture on a lie? Well, I hashed this out with Jonathan Paggio, and he said

01:42:56 something which I thought was brilliant. He said, look, if the pattern that you're identifying is

01:43:04 that deep. And it's crucial to the maintenance of the integration of the psyche and of culture

01:43:14 itself. How can it not actually be reflective of the structure of reality itself? And, you

01:43:23 know, I've had a proclivity to view the mythological stories, let's say, as symbolic. And that's

01:43:34 a valid reading but the question that pageau posed is a very trenchant question it's like

01:43:40 at what point is something so highly functional and universally applicable that you have to

01:43:48 allow that even though you don't understand it it's reflective of the deepest

01:43:53 structure of reality itself and i'll put a twist on that

01:43:58 I tried to get Richard Dawkins to talk to me for a couple of years

01:44:04 Now he eventually did, and we're going to talk again publicly

01:44:06 I hope we're arranging that at the moment

01:44:08 The first thing he said, he's a very disagreeable guy

01:44:13 Like, very educated Englishman

01:44:15 Those are dangerous people, man

01:44:17 They'll cut you into ribbons politely

01:44:19 And be quite gleeful about it

01:44:21 And they're very good at it

01:44:23 Better than anyone else in the world, I would say

01:44:26 And he first of all he said I don't think I'd have enough patience to talk to you

01:44:29 You've said a lot of preposterous things and I don't know why the hell you want to talk to me anyways

01:44:35 But maybe it has something to do with this and he sent me a paper that he wrote like 30 years ago

01:44:39 And I thought you know exactly why I want to talk to you

01:44:43 So he sent me this paper

01:44:46 Where he made the claim that and it was a paper I had read and it had actually had some influence on me that

01:44:51 um

01:44:52 A living organism has to be a microcosm of its environment.

01:44:58 So what that means, for example, imagine an alien scientist came to Earth

01:45:01 and took a bird up to its lab and took the bird apart.

01:45:07 Well, what could it learn about the Earth?

01:45:09 Well, it could learn the chemical makeup of the atmosphere by studying the bird's blood.

01:45:16 It could derive a tremendous amount of knowledge about the whole history of life on Earth

01:45:20 by analyzing the DNA.

01:45:21 It could infer the density of the atmosphere by the ratio of the area of the bird's wings to the mass of the bird

01:45:31 It would know something about the temperature that the earth

01:45:35 That characterizes the earth and could infer something about the sun

01:45:40 It would be able to derive

01:45:41 Knowledge of the gravitational field

01:45:45 The bird is a model of its environment and Dawkins went further

01:45:48 He said, no animal that isn't a model of its environment can survive.

01:45:53 We're a microcosm.

01:45:54 A creature is a microcosm of its environment.

01:45:56 That's a medieval conception of the relationship between man and God.

01:46:00 It's like we're a microcosm of the cosmic structure.

01:46:04 And at the highest level of organization, the highest level of human organization, we're a personality.

01:46:11 Do we live in relationship to the spirit of the cosmos?

01:46:15 That's the biblical claim.

01:46:16 I think it's correct.

01:46:18 I think reality itself is founded on sacrifice.

01:46:22 Do I know what that means?

01:46:24 Not completely.

01:46:25 I do understand what it means that the integrated psyche and the community are founded on sacrifice.

01:46:31 I think I can make that argument completely coherently.

01:46:34 When you mature, you give up your hedonistic short-term whim for the future.

01:46:39 That's the sacrifice.

01:46:41 When you become communal, you give up your self-centeredness for others.

01:46:45 and so the community and the site and this integrity of the spirit are predicated on complex

01:46:51 sacrifice that what does that mean about reality the answer to that is it depends on what you mean

01:46:58 by reality right see most people who say is the religious worldview true assume axiomatically

01:47:09 That the rationalist, empiricist, materialist worldview is true

01:47:12 See, I don't think it's true

01:47:14 I think you can't help but bring the nature of reality itself into question

01:47:20 When you ask that question

01:47:21 This is why I don't like people asking me if I believe in God

01:47:23 It's like, not on your terms

01:47:25 We don't mean the same thing

01:47:28 I mean something in my belief, such as it is

01:47:32 That's radically different

01:47:34 so there's no difference between asking the question is the religious real and asking the

01:47:43 question well what do you mean by a reality that's not religious

01:47:48 so they're equally mysterious and i would say a reality that's not religious can't maintain itself

01:47:55 it can't it's missing something crucial it's missing meaning that's a problem it's like

01:48:01 not only is it a problem

01:48:04 it's possible that it's

01:48:06 the problem. This is why Christ

01:48:08 says you can't live by bread alone and that's part

01:48:10 of the problem with the technological enlightenment

01:48:12 it's like, here's all the bread you

01:48:14 need. Yeah?

01:48:17 For what?

01:48:20 What?

01:48:20 For what? To pursue my hedonistic whim?

01:48:22 Like, for what?

01:48:24 This is a crucial question.

01:48:26 People in abundance will commit suicide

01:48:28 without an answer to that question.

01:48:30 right so the technological enterprise is insufficient that doesn't mean it's unnecessary

01:48:34 or unworthy it just means that it has to be put in its proper place in its proper position in

01:48:40 the hierarchy that's how it looks to me i have so many questions but we'll have to save them for

01:48:49 next time because we're together for a few shows uh i want to ask you we're in wrestling some very

01:48:54 difficult questions tonight i want to finish maybe with the most difficult one this is from jonas

01:48:59 who says, my wife and I took your personality test.

01:49:02 I'm 0.1% neuroticism.

01:49:05 She's 99%.

01:49:06 Any advice on navigating this difference in personality?

01:49:14 Well, the first thing I would say as a clinician is that

01:49:17 I would find out if your wife is suffering

01:49:27 from an anxiety disorder depression like i would first of all find out if there's something physical

01:49:32 that's troubling her because that's a high enough level so neuroticism is sensitivity to negative

01:49:38 emotion right there's five cardinal personality dimensions sensitivity to positive emotion

01:49:43 that's extroversion sensitivity to negative emotion that's neuroticism agreeableness which

01:49:49 is really a maternal care dimension it's people orientation rather than thing orientation as well

01:49:56 um agreeable people are empathetic and compassionate and disagreeable people are

01:50:02 blunt and competitive and there's quite a sex difference there by the way conscientiousness

01:50:08 is dutifulness and orderliness and industriousness and openness is breadth of idea and aesthetic

01:50:17 interest it's creativity that's a good way of thinking about it if you're at the 99th percentile

01:50:23 for neuroticism you're more sensitive to negative emotion than 99 people out of 100 that's sensitive

01:50:30 enough to raise the question are you depressed or do you have an anxiety disorder and that raises

01:50:39 the question first is are you ill in some way because people suffer from depression and anxiety

01:50:49 For all sorts of reasons.

01:50:51 And some of them are linked to behavior and attitude.

01:50:54 But a lot of them are linked to physical health.

01:50:57 And so, especially if your wife has a proclivity for depression.

01:51:03 Which means she becomes hopeless.

01:51:07 That's the absence of positive emotion.

01:51:09 She suffers a surfeit of pain and anxiety.

01:51:13 You might want to see if something can be done about that.

01:51:16 if it's merely a matter of variability and temperament i would say

01:51:22 the way that you help people who are very sensitive to negative emotion

01:51:29 become more resilient is to help them establish an aim because that stabilizes them so she could

01:51:37 do my future authoring program at selfauthoring.com that helps people establish an aim and then

01:51:43 Once she decides her aim

01:51:46 There will be things that get in her way

01:51:48 That she's afraid of

01:51:51 That'll be the negative emotion

01:51:52 And you want to work out 0.60

01:51:54 Routines to have her

01:51:56 Practice

01:51:57 Exposing herself to the things she's afraid of

01:52:01 That's what you do too if you have a timid

01:52:03 Child

01:52:03 You know, so maybe you take a timid child

01:52:06 To the playground

01:52:08 And they want to hover around your feet

01:52:10 Because they're afraid to go make friends

01:52:12 You say

01:52:13 well look kid today we'll just go to the playground and you can watch the other kids

01:52:18 tomorrow we'll go to the playground and you can sit on that bench over there and i'll sit

01:52:25 over here 20 feet away and you can you can just watch from there and the day after that you can

01:52:31 do this progressively you go and stand near the kids and the day after that you go say hello to

01:52:36 one kid you know when you with someone who's very sensitive to negative emotion you can find

01:52:42 The border of their fear

01:52:44 And then you want them to put

01:52:47 You want them to put themselves

01:52:48 Voluntarily on the border of their fear

01:52:51 Until they're

01:52:53 Habituated

01:52:56 Until they understand that nothing terrible

01:52:59 Is going to happen

01:53:00 And then you want them to take a step forward

01:53:02 And if you do that carefully

01:53:03 You can take anyone who's very afraid

01:53:07 Of virtually anything

01:53:07 And you can make them more robust

01:53:10 And it's the clinical application of the Marduk principle, fundamentally,

01:53:14 is find out what the person's afraid of,

01:53:17 break it into manageable challenges,

01:53:20 expose them to the manageable challenge one,

01:53:23 so you could ask your wife,

01:53:25 is there something that you'd really want to do

01:53:27 that you're afraid of doing and haven't done because of the fear?

01:53:32 You know, list ten things like that.

01:53:35 Okay?

01:53:36 Now, list them in order of fear.

01:53:38 with number one being the thing i'm most afraid of and number 10 being the thing i'm least afraid

01:53:43 of okay now take number 10 and break that into steps and then have her take the steps and just

01:53:51 do that as a routine as a practice this is what you can do too like in your own life if you're

01:53:57 afraid of things it's like well cut the thing you're afraid of down to size how much do you

01:54:02 cut it down until you're willing to advance that's the rule you just break it down until you'll do 0.62

01:54:09 it wherever that is no matter how pathetic that is let's say you have to accept that and if you do

01:54:16 that you'll face it you'll master it and then you can take on the next task and people get it's

01:54:23 exactly what god tells the israelites to do in the deserts like you look at what frightens you and

01:54:30 throws you into chaos you look at it voluntarily every school of clinical therapeutic endeavor

01:54:37 since the dawn of the 20th century has converged on the understanding that voluntary exposure to

01:54:44 what stops you as you move forward is curative so you can use that as a treatment for negative

01:54:52 emotion it's well documented among timid children this is why it's so dangerous to have an

01:54:57 overprotective parent because the overprotective parent stops the child from transforming you have

01:55:03 to say out to the edge there kid you know and i can only get within five feet it's okay five feet

01:55:11 good get four and a half feet away then get three feet away right dance on the edge of the abyss

01:55:19 and that's a terrible thing for a mother to tell her child to do but all the good mothers do that

01:55:25 even with their terrified children.

01:55:28 It's even more important for them.

01:55:31 You know, and there's a kind of harshness about that,

01:55:33 but it's a harshness that prepares them

01:55:35 to not die when they leave.

01:55:39 So that's the answer to that question.

01:55:44 One more.

01:55:46 There you go.

01:55:47 I thought that was going to be a lighthearted question.

01:55:51 Jordan, what a pleasure it's been tonight.

01:55:53 I just thought I would maybe emphasize one thing that you said before we go, before we bring Kelly's Heroes back on to send us off with a bang, which is we've had this conversation about religion and God and so on.

01:56:04 But actually, I think irrespective of where people are on those issues, two of the most powerful things that I thought you said tonight was a reminder that, A, perception is projection.

01:56:15 What we see is a function of what we project into the world, what we expect to see.

01:56:20 and the second one is we wake up every day

01:56:22 with the opportunity to reorder the world

01:56:24 and I thought that's a very powerful

01:56:26 couple of things to take away

01:56:28 Thank you sir, good to have you

01:56:30 aboard man

01:56:31 Alright everyone

01:56:32 Thank you very much

01:56:35 It's a pleasure talking to you all

01:56:38 Much appreciated

01:56:40 I love your city

01:56:46 by the way, good work

01:56:48 yep

01:56:49 alright so we'll bring the band back on

01:56:53 and they'll take you out rocking

01:56:55 goodnight everybody

01:56:56 what if a few minutes

01:56:59 with God could change the direction of your

01:57:01 entire day

01:57:01 with pray.com

01:57:04 you can begin each morning

01:57:06 with powerful daily prayers

01:57:09 inspiring bible stories

01:57:11 and messages created

01:57:13 to strengthen your faith

01:57:14 whether you need peace

01:57:17 encouragement or a fresh start

01:57:19 Pray.com helps you make prayer

01:57:21 part of your everyday life

01:57:23 download the Pray.com

01:57:25 app today

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - September 27, 2026

Why You Read Their Eyes First

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