[Music]
now you know I used this picture to
represent my class and you might not
know anything about this picture it's
it's a picture of Jonah being thrown up
out of whales belly after spending three
days inside it it's an old biblical
story it's a myth it's a fairy tale
that's that's one way of looking at it
and and I don't mean that derogative
manner we know for example that some of
the Grimm's brothers fairy tales are
perhaps fifteen thousand years old
they've been traced way back they're
really really old and old stories are
strange and they're strange because well
they've been told generation after
generation after generation and so you
could imagine that something retold over
such an expand of expansive time has
been reduced to its gist many many times
and nothing that's in the story anymore
is superfluous it's all meaningful in
some sense it's sort of like a meta
story that's one way of thinking about
imagine that you took a hundred books
hundred adventure books and you had to
extract out the central features of an
adventure book now it's hard to do that
it's like you're averaging across them
or something like that
distilling them in some manner then you
get a meta adventure and it would be
like a myth upon which all adventures
are based and this story is actually one
of those stories and I'm going to tell
you what I think the story means and I'm
not saying that this is all it means
because most stories of this sort are in
some sense inexhaustible just like great
works of art are inexhaustible there
there's more information in them than
you can possibly articulate that's what
makes them profound that's why you go
look at them otherwise someone could
just tell you about the painting and
that would be the end of that but that
doesn't work so so that Jonah is being
spit up by this whale and of course on
the face of it that's an impossibility
because well
you can't live inside a whale that's why
it's impossible now you may remember and
likely do that you all know a story
about someone who is inside a whale
that's Pinocchio right and you know you
go to that movie maybe even as an adult
you watch that movie and Geppetto is
down there in the whale in his little
boat you know it's big cavernous inside
you don't really care that that's
there's a bunch of things you don't care
about you don't care that those are
drawings and not real people you don't
care about that and you don't care that
the inside of a whale isn't a cavern and
you don't care that Pinocchio is a
puppet for that matter none of that
matters to you at all and that's because
you're really strange creatures and you
don't even notice when you're doing
something absolutely absurd and that's
one of those times when you are but if
someone taps you on the shoulder and
says you know you're just watching
drawings of a puppet puppets can't
really move autonomously and now he's at
the bottom of the ocean you have no idea
why he's going to rescue his father and
you're just sitting there annoyed and
you're okay with that and you'll say
shut up because I want to finish
watching a movie and so that's
interesting you see that tells you
something about your unconscious if
you're psychoanalytically minded because
you're doing something that you cannot
account for now you might say well it's
it it's enjoyable
well that's deep man you're really
really going a long ways with that the
question is a why is it comprehensible B
why is it enjoyable see just exactly
what are you doing there and you think
that whatever you are doing there is so
valuable that you'll actually pay to do
it weird very very weird and you know
when you read about let's say the
archaic rituals of tribal people and you
ask yourself just what are they up to
you might think well they're up to the
same thing that you're up to when you go
see a movie so and then you might also
notice that the
most expensive artifacts or among the
most expensive artifacts that human
beings create our movies they spend
hundreds of millions of dollars on them
and we consider that a good deal and you
know it drives our technology to because
the high-tech movies like the Marvel
movies that require so much computer
animation they actually drive the demand
for high-end graphics chips so our
technological advance forward is
actually motivated in part by our desire
to represent things fictional II in ever
more spectacular manner so Jonah well
let me tell you the story of Jonah and
I'll tell you why I'm gonna tell you it
this is from Camille Paglia who's a
critic of the modern University and a
very brilliant woman I would say very
controversial incredibly rapid speaker
and she can think so fast it's just
unbelievable she's really fun to watch
if you like that sort of thing
vicious adversary in an argument she
says the number one problem in academia
today is not ignorant students but
ignorant professors who have substituted
narrow expertise and theoretical
sophistication a preposterous term for
breadth and depth of learning in the
world history of art and thought art is
a vast interconnected web work a
fabricated tradition and over
concentration on any one point is a
distortion here's here's a problem I had
I wrestled with this when I was trying
to understand some of the things that
I'm going to teach you about there's
some things that you kind of have to
grasp as a whole you know sometimes you
have a flash of insight and a bunch of
things that you didn't know we're
related fall together that that's
supposed to happen in psychotherapy when
you link different disparate patterns of
behavior together because you've linked
them say with a single cause and you get
this like excited feeling
of illumination and possibility and
there are forms of communication that
require the simultaneously the
simultaneous realization of a multitude
of disparate phenomena like a movie can
be like that
you know you you listen to a movie you
watch movie and then you don't know what
the hell is going on and then something
happens near the end and bed everything
clicks together and it's cuz you've sort
of seen the thing as a whole and a lot
of the things that we a lot of the ways
that we interact with the world that are
mysterious are like that there and this
is what peg lay is referring to is that
and this is a psychoanalytic proposition
I would say or a romantic proposition
now the idea roughly is that way out in
the periphery of reality are all those
things that not only do you not know but
you don't even know you don't know right
there you're completely blind to their
existence and then there's unknown
things that you have some suspicions
about and then there's unknown things
that you can start to imagine and and
act out and dramatize and so all of that
is on the periphery of our knowledge
that's a psychoanalytic dictum where the
thoughts come from well partly they're
nested in dreams dreams are the
birthplace of thoughts fantasy it's not
that surprising fantasy is the
birthplace of ideas you know if you're
thinking about what you're gonna do in
the future
you enter into a reverie a dream state
and you contemplate multiple
possibilities and then you start
thinking them through
use your imagination to search beyond
where you are and the collective human
attempt to do that is our mysterious
humanistic artistic tradition which is
very difficult to justify from a formal
articulate point of view
what good is dance like what is it that
you're doing when you're dancing
well you don't care because you like to
dance why well you don't know what you
do it's built into you music musics a
human universal cultures use music to
organize themselves right they use music
to catalyze their identities they use
music to unite around you know in in
more archaic societies less
differentiated societies let's say no a
mask that represents part of the family
tradition will have a particular design
and there'll be a particular song
written for it and there'll be a
particular dance about it and the song
and the dance or something like the
symbolic representation of a mode of
being in the world like maybe the mask
is a wolf mask and so you act out the
wolf and there's music that goes along
with that and you think well what are
you doing when you're acting out the
wolf and part of that is what you're
trying you're trying to understand
wolves
you know it's an image it's imitation in
part and you know if you live in the
natural world and if you hunt and if
you're preyed upon then understanding
the things that you're hunting and
preying upon is useful and there's also
pull out perhaps useful things to learn
from them and so we play this strange
symbolic game with the world like
children pretending that's another way
of thinking about it and we do that to
act out and to begin to understand
things we don't understand like how to
act that's now for me the most important
question in life is not what the world
is made of and in fact I would say
that's a relatively new preoccupation of
humankind you know we didn't really
formalize you could say that the ancient
Greeks originated laid the groundwork
for the emergence of an empirical
science and then it emerged more
formally with bacon and Descartes and
Newton five six hundred years ago not
very long like a blink blink to the eye
in human terms before that people were
engineers they could build things and so
forth but they didn't know how to
they weren't scientists they didn't
really conceptualize the world as an
objective place we do that automatically
because science has seeped so far into
our set of presuppositions that doesn't
make us good scientists by the way but
it does make us believe that the
fundamental reality of the world is an
objective reality and I'm not going to
dispute that particularly but leaves one
set of questions unanswered
probably by its nature because it wasn't
designed to answer the question then
that question is how should one conduct
oneself in the world and that's an
important thing since you're alive and
hypothetically you'd rather stay alive
and well you're alive you probably don't
want to suffer any more than you have to
and no more stupidly than you have to
and it might also be good if some of the
things that you want it actually
happened and so you know you're
motivated to know how to act and and
people are always telling each other how
to act we're sending each other
information all the time about how to
act we do that with our the expressions
on our face and of course when we talk
to people we always look at their face
and that's because their face tells you
what they're up to
you know if they're smiling and paying
attention to you well then you can
assume that you're doing something right
and if they're looking annoyed or
disgusted that's a particularly bad one
then you might think you might take a
hint
from that especially if you know three
or four people are doing it at the same
time and so we're reflecting we're
reflecting some ideal to one another
constantly and the more attentive you
are the more likely you are to act in
accordance with that ideal and the more
like you likely you are to move towards
it you may not even know what the ideal
is in an articulated sense in fact you
probably don't you know you could come
up with a well you know a good person is
nice and friendly and you know
cooperative and yeah yeah you know
that's all just cliche but you don't you
know your conception might be very
Hollow it's very likely that it's very
Hollow even though you may be able to
act in a very sophisticated manner
alright so anyways this is a story I'd
say oh it's a meta story it's it's what
would happen if you collected a bunch of
stories and then you extract it out a
story from them and it's sort of a story
about destiny and it's couched in a
religious language but that's okay
because most of these distilled stories
are form the foundation of religious
texts and religious texts and myth and
myths and stories are as I said part of
the outer perimeter of our society they
have a they have a coherent nature and
it's all and they form a foundation and
it's on that foundation that everything
that you take for granted rests even if
you don't understand the foundation so I
can give you an example there's a
metaphysical idea that underlies Western
civilization and that metaphysical idea
is that the individual has transcendent
worth that's that's the idea from which
the notion of natural rights is derived
and of course our legal system is
predicated on the idea that you have
certain natural rights they're enshrined
in the Bill of Rights for example and in
the in the states when the bills Bill of
Rights was being formulated when the
legislation Ridge the legislation that
found that the state was being
formulated the formulators said we hold
these
truths to be self-evident what does that
mean
they're axioms of faith right there
they're propositions and there's no
proof for them there they're a mode of
operation in the world and so the
hypothesis is something like well if I
treat you like there's something about
you that has transcendent value implicit
intrinsic value whatever that might be
and there are stories about that and
we'll talk about that and you do the
same to me and then we set up a body of
laws that recognizes the sovereignty of
the individual so that the law itself
has to act with respect towards every
individual even if that individual has
done something reprehensible which is
very weird if you think about it
then our society will work better and
well perhaps that's true but for better
or worse that is what this society is
predicated on and that's a very very
very very very very old idea and it's an
idea that people came to with great
difficulty because it was over thousands
of years that people learned how to take
their little tribal groups which are
always squabbling with one another right
because there's human beings they're
very violent and tribal groups are by no
means civilized it's there's no noble
savage like the Europeans thought if you
study tribal groups in the world today
the murder
the death rate by violence is
unbelievably high so something unites a
tribe within a tribe it's often kinship
but then tribes come together to form
larger civilizations and they have to
determine some sort of meta principle
that guides them so that they can
cooperate and come together without
destroying one another and they have to
extract out a principle by which the
society might function and that has to
work and then as societies get bigger
and bigger and bigger and bigger and
bigger they have to bring more and more
of these diverse traditions together and
extract out something from them that has
power and functional utility and that
allows people to unite
and so this is one of the stories that
talks about that it's a story about
individual responsibility and what
happens when it's not heated so you know
because we could say you are a social
creature right to the core and most of
your environment is other people and
those other people want something from
you and you want something from them so
you're gonna play games with them you're
either gonna be good at it you're gonna
be bad at it but you're gonna play games
with them and so the game might have
rules really sophisticated rules in fact
and you'd expect that because as your
behavior more and more approximates an
ideal assuming such a thing exists then
you're more and more sophisticated and
the nature of the ideal is perhaps more
and more complex and and difficult to
understand you get a hint of this though
you can get a hint of this because you
will see if you pay attention to your
own soul your psyche your unconscious
you'll see that there are people that
you admire and that there are people
that you have contempt for and that's
and it isn't necessarily that you're a
hundred percent accurate in your
judgment you know it's not such a bad
idea to criticize your first impressions
but those states exist and so there's a
reason you admire someone and there's a
reason you have contempt for someone
there may be multiple reasons and that's
a hint to your intrinsic value structure
it's a hint about your intrinsic value
structure right you wouldn't admire
someone unless there was something about
them that you valued and perhaps that
you would also like to be able to do and
he wouldn't despise someone or have
contempt for them if you didn't feel
that something they were doing was wrong
and that it would be wrong if you did it
too and so you're bringing to bear on
the situation an implicit morality and
you have to do that because as I said
you can't act without a morality because
if you're gonna act you're gonna try to
make things better that otherwise why
bother and if you're acting to make
things better than some things have to
be better and some things have to be
worse and that's a value structure so
you have one
all right so Jonah he gets a call from
God and God tells them that there's a
city Nineveh that's falling into moral
disarray now what does that mean well
it's a universal story it's like all
cultures are always falling into
disarray it's their nature just entropy
does that right things change the world
changes the environment changes and the
culture doesn't keep up very well and
then of course it has corrupt elements
and so it's an interior eternal story
the individual is always placed in
relationship to a culture that's
somewhat corrupt and then the question
is well what do you do about it and if
the answer is nothing well then it'll
just get more corrupt and if the answer
is be corrupt - then it will just get
more corrupt so the answer has to be to
oppose the corruption because that's the
only way it's going to stop now god
threatens to destroy this city because
of its corruption and I don't think you
need to presume anything particularly
metaphysical about that to understand it
it's very straight forward that the more
corrupt the culture is and the less
Trust is possible between individuals
the less productive of the culture is
going to be because why do anything if
some corrupt person is just gonna come
and take it you know it might even be
that the culture is so corrupt that if
you are good for something and you
produce resources you're actually more
likely to get killed because you have
something of value so like this just
you're just not going anywhere with that
and why would you work if you didn't
have any sense that you know you
store up the value of your work for some
reasonable time in the future so if the
society is corrupt and there's no trust
its degenerating and you know it might
live for a while but isn't it last very
long and so that's the idea corrupt
societies collapse that leaves open what
corruption means anyways Jonah
thanks no no bloody way I'm not going to
that City they can go to hell as far as
I'm concerned and that's really what he
thinks and why in the world should I do
anything about it anyways and these are
good objections it's like why would you
do that and you'll face this believe me
in your life you will face this in fact
you already do always constantly
continually in small ways perhaps when
you're interacting with people who
aren't treating you properly and when
you're acting and those might be your
parents they might be your friends they
might be people at your workplace they
might be professors they're playing a
crooked game and you don't like it and
you know it's crooked
and so then the question is well what
should you do about it well if you know
you're correct know it's crooked it's
not so good to play along with it I mean
we'll say that you know it's crooked by
your own standard of values it D
degrades you to play along with it
you're gonna stand up and oppose it well
no probably not
you're probably gonna do what Jonah did
jump on a ship and get the hell out of
there and you know that's a logical
thing to do but it doesn't solve the
problem and I think this has something
to do with human ethical responsibility
because there are other old stories and
I'll tell you one likely where the son
of the king the Lion King the son of the
king he goes off and he's some pathetic
adolescent and then he's shamed by the
reappearance of his old girlfriend into
turning into something vaguely useful
and he opens his eyes and he goes back
and he fights scar and you know it's a
scene of hell right because there's fire
everywhere and he fights scar finds
skaar killed his father he casts him
into the pit roughly speaking and then
the rain comes and then you know the
movie returns to its beginning
fundamentally it's a paradise paradise
lost' Paradise Regained that's the movie
and and I mean that's the story of human
beings you know you're in a place that's
working out pretty well something
happens to knock you off your perch
you're down in the chaos for a good
amount of time and maybe you never get
out but maybe you learn something down
there maybe a strength in your character
then you pop up to a new place and maybe
it's better better aim better you now
I'm not being overly optimistic about
this I know perfectly well that people
encounter impediments during their life
that they find almost impossible to
recover from but it's the best shot you
have so anyways Jonah runs away but God
isn't very happy about that because it's
actually Jonah's destiny it's necessary
for Jonah to repair the city so God
sends a storm and you know the waves are
high and and and I think what that means
is because the water is often a symbol
for the unconscious and that's because
things lurk down there in the water and
that you could pull up that that are
useful monstrous things that you can
pull up they're useful you can fish for
them you can go fishing in your own
being for answers which is what you do
when you try to think right you ask
yourself a question and you wait maybe
an answer appears it's like where did
that come from you didn't know what the
answer was before it appeared but it
just popped into being out of nowhere
who knows so you fish so anyways the
waves come and the boats gonna be
knocked over it and that's what happens
I think when you know when you know you
should do something I mean everyone has
the this experience I believe perhaps
you would be willing to put up your
hands if this experience is foreign to
you okay
just part of your telling you you should
do something and it's hard
to do it effortful and maybe you're
afraid of it and so you don't do it you
just procrastinate right and so how do
you feel about that good I mean so what
do you feel that you're betraying
yourself your anxiety actually gets
worse not better even though you know
you can put it off moment to moment but
that doesn't help because every time you
put it off the anxiety just grows a
little bit you're not proud of yourself
you have a sense that you're making
things more chaotic than they should be
you know and if you do that long enough
and I'm sure many of you have had that
experience if you do that long enough if
that becomes habitual things will get so
stormy around you that you'll fall right
into the into the chaos into the watery
chaos and maybe you'll drown so it's not
a very good idea to run from your
destiny let's say whatever that might be
and you need a destiny you need a place
to aim at because that's what gives your
life meaning and you need meaning in
your life because life is hard so you
know you need something to buttress
yourself against that so anyways they
wake joan up and jonah says that's
probably my fault because like i'm
running away from something i'm supposed
to do and you know god isn't very happy
about that so why don't you just throw
me over to overboard and the crew isn't
very happy about that but the waves are
really starting to come up and joan is
pretty insistent that he's the cause of
the problem and so they draw they draw a
lot and and jonah is chosen and so they
decided to toss him into the ocean and
immediately everything's calm so he's a
center of chaos because he's not doing
what he's supposed to do fine well then
that whale comes up and swallows him and
then he's in the whale for three days
now that's a weird thing the whale
that's the way all that
Gepetto's ian that's a dragon it's the
thing that you have to go out there and
conquer to get something of value now
when you've made an error when you've
fallen off the pathway when you deviated
from what you know you should do it
produces a state of internal chaos and
worry and concern you're you're thrust
into the unknown you're thrust into
unknown territory and chaos you don't
know what to do and that's often
symbolized by the encounter with a with
a monster
like a dragon something that lives under
the water that's and I think the reason
for that is as far as I've been able to
tell is that human beings because we've
been prey animals for forever in our
battle with carnivorous lizards for
example and alligators and even
dinosaurs because there were dinosaurs
around at the time of our most distant
ancestors there was even a cat at one
point that was that was adapted with
teeth to pierce human skulls so it had a
head that was exactly shaped to grab you
here and put a tooth through the back of
your skull so like we've come through
some rough times man and we have a
system in our mind that's a threat
predator detection system that's the
thing that makes little kids think about
monsters in the dark right because well
there is monsters in the dark parents
always say well there's no monsters in
the dark it's like that's not true the
dark is full of monsters there might not
be any in your room right at that moment
but that doesn't mean there aren't
monsters in the dark and crimes take
place like criminals don't get up at
6:00 in the morning and like you know
have breakfast and go rob a bank they do
it they do that sort of thing at night
people do the things that are fit for
the night in the night and lots of
predators are nocturnal and you can't
see very well in the dark and kids
aren't stupid
you know they've evolved to stay pretty
damn close to the fire because the kids
that wandered away from the fire got
picked off by hyenas and lions and you
know crocodiles and whatever else the
hell was out there to eat the unwary so
the circuit that we use to to defend
ourselves against predators as we've
evolved cortically that circuit has has
come to represent what we don't know in
general because the Predators of course
inhabit where we don't know and so
evolution is a conservative force and we
use the circuits that we've evolved to
represent new things and so the unknown
the chaos is often represented by a
monster that swallows you up and pulls
you down and you know when you're
feeling terrible you don't say well I'm
feeling up you say I'm feeling down well
why is that well down is worse I guess
you're flat on the ground when you're
down or you're in a hole or something
like that you're hiding in a hole
you know it's down and you're threatened
by something you know maybe you're
threatened by your own inadequacy that
might be part of it maybe that's partly
what you imagine as a monstrous force
because you know your proclivity towards
procrastination and your weakness of
character is part and parcel of why you
happen to be in the underworld and
that's the underworld the mythological
underworld that's where you go when
things fall apart and if you understand
that if you know that that's what that
means then you have one of the keys that
opens up ancient stories to you and you
understand things you could live can be
an organized going very well and then
something comes up and poof everything
changes some axiom that you were living
by and it might be the existence of a
partner might be a job it might be your
health any of those things go on and you
go somewhere when that happens you go
somewhere it's a state of being you're
still in the same world but it's not the
same at all anymore
everything about it is different it's
all negative and dark and you don't know
what to do you're confused and so what
do you do down there in the underworld
when things have fallen apart especially
if oh if it's the worst possible case
scenario and you
realize that you actually had something
to do with your demise that's really
annoying you know when something bad
happens to you and then you know you
grind yourself into bits trying to
figure out what the hell happened and
then you realize that well you were
playing a causal role now sometimes
you're so depressed you assume you're
playing a causal role and you work it's
not easy to figure out by any stretch of
the imagination and it isn't that
everyone who does something terrible is
at fault for it but sometimes you find
that you are off the path somehow and
maybe even that you knew it and they
didn't attend to it and that's why all
of this hit the fan and so then down
there in that chaos you decide that
you're going to do what you're supposed
to do instead and then maybe you get to
rise up again renewed if you're lucky
and then you can go fix the city and
that's what this story's about and
that's why I picked the image to
represent the course because really what
happens you see with the psychoanalysts
the road due to health if you're not
doing well which means that as you act
in the world you're not getting what you
want there's something wrong with your
the match between your presuppositions
and your actions habitual and the way
the world is responding to you and so
it's not turning out for you and the
question is well what can you do about
that
and one answer might be to examine
yourself for presuppositions and action
patterns that are not serving you well
and to find out what they are and what
to do about them and maybe some of that
is maybe you're not moving forward
because of fear and maybe that fear is
grounded in terrible experiences that
you had in the past that you've never
been able to understand and maybe one of
the ways of gluing yourself back
together and expanding your personality
so that you could in fact live properly
in the world is to go back to those
terrible events and untie them and
straighten them out and understand them
and drop them and that's what
psychotherapy is about in large part
psychoanalytic behavioral doesn't matter
what are you afraid of what are you
avoiding what are you failing to develop
maybe from fear maybe from avoidance god
only knows maybe from disgust how can
you get over it
how can you reclaim those parts of your
self
now I said in the first lecture that I
was going to try to provide you with a
schema into which you could place the
theorists that we're going to discuss
and it requires going down deep to do
that and there are presuppositions in my
presupposition and this is a
psychoanalytic presupposition it's
predicated on a poetic tradition I would
say don't an ancient tradition I learned
most of it from reading Jung it was Carl
Jung that helped me understand that
we're nested inside a dream that we have
to be because we don't know everything
we have to take things as Givens and the
things that we take it as Givens are
nested inside stories and we accept the
stories as valid and then outside the
stories is the absolute unknown you know
and that's partly the stories are tricky
you know that one of the classic stories
it's a variant of the the Jonas story I
would say is st. George and the dragon
and that that story was represented in
during the Renaissance and during
medieval times thousands and thousands
of ways it's like the story of st.
Patrick who chased the snakes out of
Ireland same idea and that the typical
st. George story is the Hobbit or Harry
Potter so in the second volume of Harry
Potter correct me if I have any of these
details wrong you remember there's that
snake the basilisk so this is Magic
Castle right you guys have no problem
without Magic Castle no problem there's
an or if he's an orphan he goes to the
Magic Castle to learn how to be more
than normal right the muggles he has a
muggle family we're not too happy with
the muggle family like as
representatives of normal people they
they have some blacks now of course the
reason for that is that well that's what
teenagers often feel about their parents
right they fail Jesus these couldn't
really be my parents I must have some
other parents who are like
together those are like magical parents
right parents that live in the sky and
of course Harry Potter has earthly
parents that's the muggles and Dursley I
think is the kid he's at one he's a
wonderful piece of work and you know
ill-formed a spoiled ill-formed
selfish very far from the ideal he's a
foil for Harry and of course he's
appreciated and doted on and Harry is
actually punished for his virtues that's
a classic story right to to be punished
for your virtues I mean if you look at
the story the central story in
Christianity the central story and
Christianity is about someone who is
precisely punished in the worst possible
way for the highest possible virtues
that's what it makes it an archetypal
story because there isn't anything more
unfair than that and so it's a limit in
a sense you it can't be worse than that
being punished for being you know
unworthy it's like yeah yeah well at
least makes sense but to be punished
because you have your act together and
you're a good person that's real
punishment and that's what happens to
Harry so luckily he finds out that he's
magical which is quite convenient and
off he goes to Wizarding school and you
know that's actually like taking that's
actually like going and studying the
humanities I mean it was when they still
were you know because you it's through
the humanities that you that you make
contact with the magic of your culture
and that makes you more than merely the
child of your parents because you are
more than merely the child of your
parents you're the child of nature and
you're the child of culture and until
you understand what that means
understand that you have two sets of
parents like the divine hero always has
two sets of parents you you can't
construe yourself properly as an
individual you're not situated properly
in the world you don't know what your
responsibilities are you can't orient
your values properly and you will suffer
for that because as far as I can tell
because life is so difficult you have to
do something that's
truly worthwhile in order to justify it
and so well that's what all these
stories tell you that's what the story
of Jonah is telling you it's like you
have an ethical duty to straighten
things up and if you don't do it you're
gonna be sorry and that stories echoed
everywhere while now st. George
well let's go to Harry Potter well
that's what we were talking about so he
goes off to the Magic Castle and he's
learning to be a wizard and he's kind of
an interesting character a because he's
not really good and we find out I think
that's because does he have a piece of
gold amarti in him he's not what happens
yeah and that's what that means is that
to be good
truly good you can't just follow rules
that's that's very clear in the Harry
Potter story and you also have to be
able to understand and malevolence and
in order to understand malevolence so
that you can withstand it you have to
understand that part of you that's
malevolent because if you don't you're
naive and if you're naive you're easy
pickings and so that's a union idea too
and the Union idea is that part of
personality development is to understand
your shadow and the shadow is those
things about you that you do not want to
admit to and you can learn about your
shadow by reading history you know you
can read about Auschwitz you can read
about the concentration camps in Russia
and you can imagine yourself as a guard
instead of as a heroic rescuer of
unfortunate victims which would be very
very unlikely and once you can imagine
yourself as a guard which is a
terrifying thing to do then you
understand something about yourself and
I actually think and I think this is
also from students studying young that
you cannot have proper respect for
yourself until you know that you're a
monster because you won't act carefully
enough you know if you think well I'm a
nice person I'd never do anyone any harm
it's like you're no saint you can be
sure of that and the harm that you do
people can come in many many ways and so
if you regard yourself as harmless
inoffensive nice well why do you have
any reason to be careful
you're like a teddy bear sitting on a
shelf even if you throw it at someone no
one's gonna get hurt
but that isn't what you're like because
you're a human being and human beings
are some vicious creatures and there's
utility in knowing that because it's
also the case you know in the Harry
Potter series Harry could stand up
against full-dome art and understand
them and speak his language because he
was infected by him to some degree a
very very interesting idea anyways in
the second 10 the reason I'm telling you
this and this is worth thinking about
it's like how long were each of those
books like 500 pages they're long eh and
there was how many of them seven and how
many of them were sold I mean how many
of you read every Harry Potter book
right that's how many of you read at
least one okay how many you saw the
movies it's like you're all in a cult
you are I'm telling you really that's
the truth it's really the truth so in
the second volume there's this snake
that's zip it around there the basilisk
right and it lives in the underground
that's chaos that's chaos and that's
because wherever you are you're on thin
ice and underneath you're thin ice is
chaos and here we are in this
unbelievably civilized environment and
everyone's getting along so perfectly
but you know we've got hot guard lights
with electricity the sewage system is
working no one's hungry it's like we can
be peaceful but if any of that fell
apart and it could easily fall apart
because it's a bloody miracle it ever
works at all then the chaos that's just
underneath the surface is going to come
up right now and it's useful to know
that because it makes you properly
grateful if you really understand it it
makes you proper
be grateful for the bloody miracle that
it is that you can be here in peace
so anyways there's this snake that's
underneath the surface and it's you know
no joke that thing it's big and it's
ancient it's always been there and what
happens if you look at it it turns you
to stone right it paralyzes you well
that's the more that's the Gorgon that's
Medusa the woman with the head of snakes
and if you look at her it paralyzes you
what does that mean well you're walking
through the jungle and big snake appears
what do you do you freeze and no bloody
wonder because you're a prey animal and
that's what they do when they see things
that are going to eat them and so the
snake well lots of people still die from
snakebite and our ancestors were and I
mean our ancestors like you know tens of
millions of years ago when they were
living in trees and weren't very big
they made a nice snack for a snake and
there's a woman named Lynn Isbell who's
an anthropologist at UCLA who's
correlated the presence of carnivorous
snakes with the acuity of primate vision
and what she found was that the more
snakes around the better the primates
could see so and we're particularly good
at picking up patterns like snake
camouflage in the lower half of our
visual quadrant you know and people
generally don't like snakes you can
learn to handle them but no snake fear
appears to be an eight to Nate in
chimpanzees and it tends to increase as
you age rather than decreasing you can
overcome it but well my daughter had
snakes and one day her snake bit her it
was a fairly big snake and she hadn't
paid attention to it for a while so it
nailed her and from then on she had very
difficult time grabbing the snake it was
like bitten once you know shy
permanently she also told me years later
she had nightmares about snakes all the
time when she had a snake in her room
it's like you know and I think it was
probably the smell so anyways so Harry
Potter decides he's going to go
after the basilisk rake he's gonna go
out there and face the thing that he's
most afraid of so he does that wait out
in the depths so it's like Jonah going
down into the depths and he faces the
basilisk and it bites him and you know
that's a that's right because if you go
down into the depths you can get bitten
like it's no joke and this is a hero
story but the thing about the hero
stories it's actually real the thing
that you're facing is actually dangerous
and even though facing it voluntarily
might be your best bet and is likely
your best bet because that's the central
story of humanity that doesn't mean
you're going to succeed it's the real
thing so anyways he gets bitten right
and he's gonna die now he's rescuing
Ginny so that's the st. George story if
you go after like dragon dragons like to
capture virgins god only knows why I
think it's because I think it's because
one of the things that male humans have
done from the beginning of time is chase
the damn predators away and I suspect
that the males from god only knows how
long ago who were particularly good at
that were rewarded with female attention
and why the hell not so it's deeply
rooted inside of us that idea of facing
the unknown and freeing the woman so the
idea there is that if you it's a male
idea and in large part I can talk about
the central female myth and I will as we
proceed the idea is that if you're this
sort of person who can stand up against
the unknown and the frightening then
you're also likely if you develop into
that sort of person then you're also
likely to develop into the sort of
person that other people will find
attractive so you know and that's why
young believed that the inside the
shadow was the anima which is like a
female figure and so his idea was
something like you know if you look
watch movies there's always this beta
male guy if there
romantic movies and he's a nice guy and
he's the friend and you know the woman
tells him everything but she doesn't
like him a bit she likes the guy who's
like God an edge and and who's capable
of I would say mayhem but at least of
aggression now that doesn't mean she
wants them to be aggressive but what it
does mean is that she wants him to be
able to be aggressive that would be good
and so he's the romantic target and so
he's the person that's incorporated the
shadow and he's someone that is
respectable and perhaps useful and so
well that's a very old story
so let's let's think about this for a
minute I've already offered you a
proposition
and I think it's an important
proposition and I'm I'm offering you
this proposition so that you can make
sense of art and literature and
mythology and religion and dance and all
those strange ritualistic things that
human beings do which seem central to us
including including not least the in
eradicable tendency of us to seek out
stories of heroes I should finish the
Harry Potter story so Harry Potter goes
down there to rescue Virginia no it's
that's not her name what is it
Ginny yeah but there's a there's a
formal name for that it's a variant of
Virginia anyways which is a very
divergent so um and it gets bitten
didn't yes Ginevra that's it he gets
bitten and the bite is poison and so
there is dying which doesn't seem to be
so good and then what happens and again
you guys swallow this it's no problem
so what's his name the Dumbledore
character he's got a bird right so he's
the wise old man he's the ruler of the
castle he's the ruler of the Magic
Castle he's the Magic King you know he's
like God the Father as far as Harry
Potter is concerned and he has a bird
what kind of bird is it it's a Phoenix
right and one of the things that's very
strange about a Phoenix is that well
it's immortal but in a strange way you
know it lives and lives I think a
hundred years and it gets older and
older and then one day poof it bursts
into flames and turns into an egg and
then you get a new Phoenix so that's a
symbol of transformation it's a symbol
of transformation the bird is a spirit
or psyche and so here's what it means in
part you know you know how when you
learn a lesson in your life that that's
not very pleasant right it's not like
when you learn something important it's
best day of your life it's often the
importance of what you learn is often
proportionate to just how wretched it is
to learn it you know you learn things
the hard way you learn things by getting
hit because obviously if what you're
doing is working you get where you want
there's no learning in that and that's
happy it's when you're doing something
and you hit an obstacle and maybe yeah
bloody well hit it hard and then you
know you recoil and then you down into
the depths you go and you have to sort
yourself out and you realize that you're
you know this particular kind of idiot
and that you should probably fix that
and that's really annoying and difficult
and you know and maybe you're down in
the dumps and anxious for quite a while
and then you get it repaired more or
less and you know you put yourself back
together
that's the Phoenix poof into flames bang
egg new you and so you know that's the
ability to learn now human beings are
very strange creatures right because
we're very malleable compared to most
animals you know like grizzly bears now
and grizzly bears a thousand years ago
it's like whatever they're the same
thing they do the same thing
there's no transformation about human
beings we have this massive brain and
you know it's a pain because it means
you have to take care of human children
until they're 40 and and that's a big
burden and so you know we pay a big
price for it it also makes childbirth
very difficult and and it's costly you
have to eat a lot because you have a big
brain because it uses up a lot of energy
and so you know you pay a price for it
but the advantage is your plastic you
can learn now learning is a strange
thing because you can think of it as
just acquiring more information but you
could also think of it and this is more
accurate as finding out something that
you're doing wrong so that's sort of
built into you like a character a
character element of your character a
presumption of your perception or a deep
habit it's really built into you it's a
neural structure right it's a little
I've and you have to kill it because it
isn't working
properly and the pain that you go
through in part when you're suffering
because you did something stupid is it's
something like your your the neurology I
can never get this quite right it's the
pain of the death of that structure and
that could be a huge chunk of you you
know if you really have to go through a
massive revision it's like the person
that comes out the other end might
hardly be the same at all
you know that happens for example if
you're trying to combat alcoholism which
is just you know a wretched thing to do
because well all your friends are
alcoholic all your family drinks too
much the only thing you know how to do
when you're socializing is to go to the
bar and drink too much you know and you
spend like 20 hours a week on it it's
like it's not just that you're addicted
to the substance it's like that's how
you live and so if you want to stop
being an alcoholic
not only do you have to stop drinking
alcohol but you have to stop seeing all
your drunk friends and then maybe you've
had them for your whole life and you
have to have continual battles with your
drunk family and then you have to figure
out something to do with that 20 hours
that's now like hanging around your neck
like an albatross and so you have to let
that whole part of your personality die
and a new part has to spring forth and
that's what the Phoenix is and the
Phoenix is the capacity of the person to
transform and so when Harry gets bit by
the snake that freezes him he gets
seriously injured the Phoenix comes in
Christ some tears in his wound it
prepares him bang he's back to life and
the strange thing is that that's okay
with all of the viewers now why would
that be there's nothing about it that's
rational nothing right Magic Castle
that's not rational giant snake
underneath it that's a little more
irrational
turning you to stone going down there to
face it being rejuvenated by a Phoenix
it's like yeah yeah that's okay we can
we'll watch that clue
well swallow it will be completely
engaged in it and the reason for that is
because it's a myth it's about how
people it's a meta story about how to
act about how to conduct yourself in the
world to face the things that you're
afraid of that would otherwise paralyze
you to let the death of what is
insufficient about you occur and then to
wait for the rebirth
okay so science is about what the world
is and myth and drama and dream and the
unconscious all of that let's say the
aesthetic and artistic and fantastic
side of humanity that's more about how
things should be it's more about how to
act they're there lessons in how to act
and they're abstract lessons people are
capable of abstraction right so you say
well there's something good about you
and there's something good about you and
there's something good about you and and
there's some bad about you and you and
you and so we'll take all the good
things and make one good thing out of
that we'll take all the bad things and
make one bad thing out of that and then
we sort understand the difference
between good and bad and we get better
and better and better and better at that
over the centuries as we distill that
and then we have a figure of ultimate
good and a figure of ultimate evil and
that helps us understand what those two
things are those are the hostile
brothers that's a very common
mythological motif and you could say
well they're at war inside you and and I
think that that's a universal truth it's
an existential truth
the domain of ethics and morality is how
are we in the world and what how should
we be what's the good and the reason I'm
telling you all this apart from the fact
that you should know it because this is
what you should know if you go through
university is that it bears directly on
issues of health you're trying to
accomplish something say if you go see a
psychotherapist you know you could say
well I'm trying to get healthy but you
know that's not really right what you're
trying to do when you go see your
therapist just get your life together
and that's not the same thing you know
like mostly when I'm acting as a
therapist it's not like I'm directly
treating mental disorder like mental
disorders aren't there just not neat
little boxes it's not like someone has a
fully functioning life but they have an
anxiety disorder and then you bring them
and you treat the anxiety disorder and
they go back to their fully functioning
life it's like it's not like that at all
the disorder is tangled out into their
life you know if you're depressed
well usually your your workplace isn't
going very well and your relationships
with the people around you are damaged
and you know you're connected in the
actual world with all of these things
and so when you come to see a therapist
you have to work on putting your life
together in a sustainable manner and
that's certainly not just removing the
mental illness is very rare now and then
you see someone who's depressed whose
life is together and they're just
depressed something's gone wrong
probably biochemically and so with
someone like that you can often give
them in SSRIs I can't give them to them
but I can recommend them recommend they
go see a doctor anyways and that
sometimes just does the trick because
you know their life is actually pretty
good they just can't see it but that's
bloody rare man it's usually the case
that someone comes and sees you and
things are in a serious state of chaos
and all of that has to be addressed and
some of its psychological and a lot of
it's just practical its embedded out
there in the world that's what the
behavior cycle behavioral psychologists
are particularly concerned about so
anyways psychology especially the
clinical end is predicated on it's
necessarily predicated on the question
how is it that we obtain the good how do
we aim at the good and what would that
be when my clients for
come to see me one of the things I often
ask them is okay well let's say you look
a year ahead what do you want what are
we aiming at what would what wouldn't
your life isn't the way you want it to
be how would it look if it was the way
you wanted it to be or at least partly
that way and we aim at that right we
look for impediments psychological
impediments fears avoidance strategies
that sort of thing and we develop
strategies and we try to move towards
that I would say ideal all right to
understand the categories of myth we'll
say you we have to understand something
about the nature of categorization now
categorization is a tricky thing and
we're gonna run through some complicated
ideas relatively quickly you know you
think you put things in the same
category because they're similar but the
problem is is that first of all that's
not an answer it's just a restatement of
the initial proposition and second of
all you can put things in the same
category that are by no means identical
and you often do that and third it's
things are things that are similar are
often also importantly different and so
picking which element of similarity you
know like let's say oh if you have a
group of books well are they the same
well obviously no because well unless
they're you know all the same book but
the category of books is a pretty
strange category because the content of
the books differs completely well you
could still make a group of books and
you pick some arbitrary element that
unites them and consider that grounds to
make a category there's other categories
more scientific categories and
scientific categories tend to actually
contain things that are very very
similar in across multiple dimensions
like protons are like that as far as I
can tell there's nothing that
distinguishes one proton from another
and the same with electrons and you know
the set of triangles is like that
because you can define it precisely but
most of the categories that human
Jews aren't so neat and the problem with
that is that unless the categories are
neat like scientific categories it's
very difficult to investigate them
scientifically so for example you might
do research on a group of people with
anxiety disorders but the problem with
that is that the anxiety disorder
category is so heterogeneous that it's
almost impossible to identify the
commonalities across all the people who
are in that category and that's partly
because the category isn't actually a
scientific category it's a hybrid
category it's a practical category I can
give you an example of that
no I can't because I must not have saved
it anyways many of the DSM categories so
these are categories for psychopathology
require if you're part of that category
imagine there's seven symptoms that you
could have or eight symptoms that you
could have that would put you in that
category like antisocial personality
eight symptoms you steal you kick you
hit you bite you you know you're abusive
I don't remember the category categories
precisely but you can be in the category
if you have symptoms two through five
and you can be in the category if you
have symptoms six through eight they
aren't the same symptoms but you're in
the same category and you think well how
the hell can that be well that's a
family resemblance category roughly
speaking and lots of the things that we
use our family resemblance categories
there's a prototype and then if you have
enough of the features of that prototype
imagine the prototype has ten features
and if you have an six of it those pro
features you get to be in that category
but it means that the categories are
actually quite diverse and that's one of
the problems that plagues psycho
psychiatry as a science in clinical
psychology as a science it's a really
big problem because if the categories
aren't homogeneous then it's very
difficult to draw conclusions about the
members of the category and the
psychologists and the psychiatrist's
claim that those are scientific
categories but but they're not and they
can't be partly because they're aimed at
the classification of health or ideal
versus non health or non-ideal and
partly because they play multiple roles
say I mean the category isn't there just
to provide neat demarcations for
scientific study the categories there to
give people a language to talk about
certain sets of symptoms to diagnose
because you know when you come in and
you have a set of symptoms you might
want to know what what they are so that
you also know what they aren't it's
really a relief often to find a
diagnosis and then of course the
diagnosis has certain implications for
treatment and and for billing and for
all of that so the category has to play
all of those roles so there's multiple
types of category and the categories
that were talking about in relationship
to
ecology aren't scientific categories
they're categories about the world
construed as a place to act so here's a
way to think about it you're always
looking at the world through a framework
of reference and you have to do that
because there isn't very much of you you
can't see the whole world at once and in
fact the amount of the world you
actually see is so small you can't
believe it the central part of your
vision is zipping around producing a
pretty high-resolution representation of
exactly what you're looking at but
outside of that center like if I look at
you I can't see her eyes I can see her
glasses but barely I can't even tell
whether you're male or female the person
past that I can't see it all now you
don't notice that you know you don't
notice that you're that blind because
you're your central vision is always
popping around illuminating that tiny
space but you're so damn blind it's just
mind-boggling and I'm sure some of you
have seen the invisible gorilla video
you know where a gorilla comes into the
video and you don't notice which is
somewhat shocking because you would
think that you would notice a gorilla
but what happens is that you actually
don't notice something unless it
interferes with what you're doing and
because what are you gonna do notice
everything you can't do that you can
hardly notice anything so what you do is
you pick something to focus on it's
usually something that you value because
why else would you focus on it so that
means that your value system determines
the direction of your perception bloody
well think about that for a minute
that's a Buddhist idea right people
people live in a kind of illusion and
sometimes that illusion causes suffering
and they can transform the way they look
at the world and that can release them
from their suffering but the idea that
you do live in an illusion well I don't
know if it's exactly an illusion but you
certainly do live within a framework of
perception that's determined by your
values now that is so weird you know
because we never think of the world as
something that reveals itself through
our values but of course it of course it
because you look at what you want you
aim at what you want and once you've
aimed the world lays itself out for you
and that's exactly how perception works
that's why I represented it this way
you're always somewhere that's point a
that's somewhere in some place and some
time and you always have some notion
about what you want to have have
happened next you know you're gonna go
to the next class maybe you've got a
plan after this in this class you have a
plan you're hoping to learn something I
presume and maybe you have a goal with
regards to a grade and that's nested
inside your desire to get a degree and
that's nested inside your desire to be
educated and to have a career and and
and and have a successful life so
attending to me at the moment the reason
you're doing that is because all of
those values exist within you
simultaneously focusing your attention
and so you're attending to me and not to
something else assuming that all of you
with your computers open aren't surfing
the web which you might be but assuming
that you're focusing whatever you're
focusing on is directed by what you
value and some of that can be
unconscious in fact a lot of it is
unconscious because you know it's very
difficult for you to get control of what
you pay attention to you know what
that's like you're trying to study it's
kind of a boring paper christ' your
attention it's just like everywhere you
know maybe you'll vacuum under the bed
instead of doing the Pape reading the
paper you know you can't get a grip on
that thing so your attention has an
autonomy and that's another
psychoanalytic idea you know because you
kind of think well you're in control
it's like really
you ever try telling yourself what to do
does the how does that work for you I'm
going to go to the gym three times a
week right sure heard you who are ya I'm
gonna quit eating sugar for a month it's
like how long does that lasts like 15
minutes and you're eating like three
chocolate bars so you're this is and
this is Freud central insight I would
say you're an autonomous group of
spiritual agents let's say personalities
and they don't really get along very
well and
you the ego will say is by no means
necessarily in charge and that's a very
strange thing to realize but you can
really realize that by noticing how
little control you have over your
attentional focus okay so you've got
your point a you're going to point B
you're always doing that you inhabit a
structure of value and it changes what
the point a is and what the point B is
but the structure itself doesn't change
when you're looking at the world what
you see is not objects you see tools and
they make you happy those are things
that facilitate your movement forward
and you see obstacles and those are
things that make you unhappy and when
you encounter in an obstacle one of the
problems is as well you don't get to
where you're going and that's a problem
but the other problem is if you
encounter an obstacle the frame might be
wrong right because you never know it
might be just something that you could
Ditu around real easily might be a fatal
flaw in your whole plan and so obstacles
have this dual nature they get in your
way but they can also take your plan
down and so they can produce anxiety so
my point is and this there's a book
called visual an ecological approach to
visual perceptions great book by Gibson
JJ Gibson if I remember correctly and
this is although I thought of this a
while back I realized eventually that it
was a variant of his theory and when he
believed was that when people looked at
the world they saw a value first and an
inferred object second so for example
for Gibson if you're standing by a cliff
you don't see a cliff and then think
about the fact that you might fall and
then feel frightened you see a falling
off place and part of the seeing of that
part of the act of seeing is being
afraid of that because your eyes are
connected right to your emotional
systems and part of what your eyes do is
tell you what the object is but your
eyes do all sorts of other things like
they prepare you for action they prepare
you for gripping they prepare you for
emotion and and none of that actually
requires the the existence necessarily
the existence of your perception of the
object so there are people who have
blind sight and if you show them so they
think they can't see but if you flash
them in angry face they'll show a skin
conductance response and that's because
the visual pathways to the amygdala
which does face a most facial emotional
processing can still be active these are
people who've usually had a stroke so
their eyes are okay but they've
destroyed the visual cortex so so
anyways it's perfectly plausible that at
least at one level of analysis when you
look at something you see it's utility
first so you see a chair and you might
say a chair is an object but I wouldn't
say that beanbags a chair and a stump is
a chair and they don't share much in
common except that you can sit on them
and so you know the chair is just the
chair is basically conceptualized by its
functional utility and when you look at
a chair what you perceive its is its
functional utility and the chair tells
you what to do
it says sit on me and so that and there
are people who have prefrontal damage
and they engage in something called
utilization behavior and if they're
walking down the hallway and there's a
door opened they have to walk through it
they can't not do what the object tells
them to do that's called utilization
behavior so that's how the world is laid
out and I would say inside that domain
you're in the predictable world you're
in the world that you understand it that
you know and that if you hit an obstacle
or if you're outside that domain you're
in the unknown you're in unknown
territory in the mythological world in
the world for action you could
conceptualize the world as a stage for
action and this is a Shakespearean quote
that sort of sums it up quite nicely all
the world is a stage and all the men and
women merely players
they have their exits and their
entrances and one man in his time plays
many parts and you might say well is
that really true and the answer to that
is well it depends on what you mean by
true and and that really is the answer
because there are different ways of
defining true so and it isn't
self-evident that there's only one way
of defining true that's appropriate
you know the definition of truth might
be more like a tool and you know we are
tool using creatures and really what
we're trying to do with our conceptions
of truth is to work through the world
successfully so even science is
subordinate should be subordinate to our
use of the world as a tool because if it
isn't useful tool like what are we doing
with it you know
just generating technology that might
destroy the world that seems like a bad
idea
so so I think that that the world as
tool is actually the fundamental sword
of truth and I think that that's a
Darwinian idea right that that our
notions about the world have evolved
through a Darwinian process and that
it's appropriate for us to regard as
what is most real those things that
reliably ensure are the continuation of
our life and the probability of our
propagation and if you're a true
Darwinian I don't think there's a way
out of that argument and it isn't
self-evident by any stretch of the
imagination that seeing the world as all
as objects is the way that our brain
works in fact I don't think it's the way
it works at all and I think that that's
why we're so wired for stories right
it's a mystery
you know like you won't line up for two
hours to go see a lecture but you'll
line up for two hours maybe you'll even
camp overnight if you're mythological
imagination has been seized for god only
knows what reason by Star Wars and you
know that's the source of mythology
it's the mythology of the modern person
and it fills a gap and that's why people
do it so that to me speaks of men the
manner in which our psyches are
constructed and that's a union idea
that's the idea of the archetype
essentially that to be human is to
participate in a certain pattern of
being and that that pattern of being is
socially it's acted out individually but
it's also part of your structure even
your perceptual structure as a as a
living organism of your particular type
and it would be the case at least in
part that the hero myth which is go out
where no one has gone before
face they terrors of the unknown gather
something of value and return is the
central story of humankind it's not the
only central story but it's it's up
there in the top three and many of the
dramas that you engage yourself in are
variations of that story and you watch
it over and over and over because you're
trying to learn how to do that because
that's what you need to do to live okay
here's the here's an idea what's common
among people
well we're self conscious so we know of
our own existence and we know of our own
limitations and so that means that we
have a certain innate terror and
fragility our existence is a problem to
us and in some sense what we're trying
to do when we search for meaning is to
search for a solution to that problem
and that can be security but it don't
can also be mode of being you know and
so for example being engaged in
something worthwhile seems to be a good
medicine for being fragile you know
because you think well I'm doing this it
seems worthwhile and the fact that
there's a price to be paid for it and
that things could befall me that aren't
good I'm willing to put up with that
because what I'm engaged in seems to be
of appropriate of sufficient
significance to justify all that we all
become self-conscious and we're all
trying to do something about that figure
out how to deal with it so there's a
landscape that we inhabit I would say
within which that takes place so there's
a human being self conscious doomed to
tragedy and doomed to be aware of that
the human being has two elements and
that's the element that seeks the good
and there's the other element that seeks
I would say revenge and destruction and
we have our reasons you know if
something tragic happens to you it's
tragic and unfair and it really brings
you low the probability that you're
going to become resentful and want
revenge is extraordinarily high at no
wonder and you know the archetypal
representation of that is evil itself
and the archetypal representation of the
good that you could do is is the hero
and so those things inhabit us they're
they're permanent elements of the human
psyche and then what else is universal
to us well we live in a society you
could say and that's deep that's deep
it's not just human society like we've
lived in a society forever so you know
lobsters live in dominance hierarchies
and they use their serotonin system at
least in part to keep track of their
dominance position and so you can use
antidepressants on lobsters when they
get defeated and they don't feel so bad
from being defeated in a fight and so
you just think about that because the
antidepressants do the same thing to us
we're so bloody social that the circuits
that evolved 300 million years ago when
the lobsters in us had a shared ancestor
are still operating at the base of your
brain that's why status is so important
to people and reputation I mean that
serotonin system governs your emotional
regulation how people respond to you and
what they think of you man that matters
that's why you're on Facebook all the
time and checking your texts and and
obsessing continually about your online
presence and assuming that you're doing
that and you know contacting people
frantically and seeing what the updates
are it's like where where how are you
held in the esteem of others very very
important and that's because it
determines your emotional regulation
it's really important so we exist in a
society always and the society has two
elements the tyrannical element of the
society that would be the tyrannical
king roughly speaking a very common
mythological theme you see that in the
Lion King - right because that's scar
and of course you see it in the real
world with almost continually and then
the benevolent king who is the source of
all the good things about culture you
know and and you can see these things
play out as mythologies in political
terms so I would say for example the
continual harping about the oppressive
nature of the patriarchy is part of a
myth and the myth is that society is
oppressive it's like well yeah obviously
you know because you have to be quite a
bit like you and you have to be quite a
bit like you even if you're not so that
you can get along right everybody
sacrifices a tremendous amount of their
individuality to the common to the
common mode of being that's there's a
tyrannical element to that but you know
by the same token it's the basis of
cooperation and the stability of society
and the the final element is that's
often represented met in a masculine
manner by the way society and I think
that's because our primary dominance
structures given the creatures we are
like chimpanzees the primary structures
of dominance are masculine and then
outside of what's known is the unknown
and we always have to contend with that
and it's wonderful in that it's the
source of all new things and it's
terrible in that it's the place where
all the things that destabilize you come
from and so this is a good
representation although not the only one
so that's the feminine nature that's the
masculine order and that's the
individual who's destined to suffer in
the grasp of those two things and
I'll finish this next time what have we
got here yep
all right good enough we'll see you next
time
so today to begin with we're going to
finish the last lecture and then with
any luck we're gonna start the next one
there somatically linked anyways well
you know what all the lectures for the
next well for the whole course hopefully
will be thematically late to some degree
given that nominally they're about the
same topic but some are more tightly
linked than others
so I started telling you last week about
this idea of the voyage to the
underworld
and I want to tell you a little bit more
about that young in particular
conceptualized the voyage to the
underworld as a journey into the
unconscious and the unconscious for the
psychoanalyst is a place of fantasy and
dream an implicit presupposition and
habit and that's all correct you know we
there is an unconscious and it's
perfectly reasonable to conceptualize it
that way that the big difference I think
between the psychoanalysts and the later
more empirical scientists is that the
psychoanalyst sort of envisioned your
psyche as a place of living partial
personalities instead of cognitive
computational systems you know they took
into account the fact that you're alive
and that the parts of you are alive and
you know there's there's a
neuroscientist named gives that Gazza
Nick I don't know how to say his name
Gazza nigga that's wrong is that
Gazzaniga yeah I think that's it anyways
he did some of the earliest experiments
on split brains and so sometimes if you
have intractable epilepsy which I
wouldn't recommend by the way
one of the surgical procedures for
mediating its negative effects is
something called a you cut the corpus
callosum and it's very large number
large structure in the brain that
connects the two separate hemispheres
and you know it's not obvious why we
have two separate hemispheres although
I'll tell you a little bit about why I
think it is but anyways they do
communicate and what Gazzaniga
demonstrated was that you could tell one
hemisphere something without the other
one knowing that both hemispheres were
conscious and that the consciousness was
somewhat independent it really strange
it's very interest makes very
interesting readings reading you know
because it suggests that fragments of
ourselves you could think of you have
fragments of yourself within you that
are like low resolution representations
of you you know and that and the
psychoanalysts would think of those more
as they're kind of like they're kind of
like one-eyed Giants that might be a way
of thinking about it if you were
thinking about it in a fantastical way
so there's the angry you and you know
you've all come in contact with the
angry you it's a rather rigid that's the
first thing you might say about it it's
impulsive and short-term it doesn't
think much about the past unless it's
bad things about whoever you're angry at
in which case it thinks about them a lot
it's not too concerned with long-term
future consequences and mostly it wants
to be right and you know when angry you
disappears and normal you assuming such
a thing exists reappears you can be
perfectly shocked about how angry you
behaved and in fact sometimes if angry
you really gets out of hand like it
might in a battle like a war it might do
things that you just can't imagine that
you would do and under those
circumstances you can reveal parts of
yourself to yourself that are so foreign
and so horrifying that it will leave you
with post-traumatic stress disorder
because it is the case that many but not
all people who suffer from
post-traumatic stress disorder
especially if it's battlefield related
get it because of something they did
rather than something they saw or
something that happened to them and
that's really we're thinking about you
know I mean there's a lot of weird
potential nested inside people and you
know you don't see it under normal
circumstances because the circumstances
are normal and part of the reason that
we like the circumstances to be normal
is precisely so that we don't see those
parts of people we don't want to see and
that's really worth knowing it's really
worth knowing because that's why people
are so identified with their culture and
why they need a culture you know the
terror management theorist types they
kind of think of culture as a mechanism
that inhibits anxiety and they think
about it psychologically like it's it's
something inside your your head let's
say and it gives meaning to events and
stops you from collapsing into chaos and
protects you from death anxiety but that
isn't that's not right it's sort of
right but that isn't what your culture
is your culture is a set of value Laden
presuppositions that you orient yourself
in the world that match the set of value
Laden presuppositions that everyone in
your culture has and acts out and so
what that means is that when you believe
something and you're among your own
people you believe something implicitly
it's the way you look at the world it's
the way you act things out you act about
everyone expects you to act about
they're happy about it in fact so
there's a match between what you're
doing what you see and what you're doing
and what other people expect and it's
that match that regulates your emotions
it's not the belief system it's the
match and so part of the reason that
people are so tied to their cultural
identity is because their cultural
identity regulates their emotions and in
a profound way like this is
no joke you know I mean one of the
things that stabilizes human nervous
systems is imagine that you have a
domain of competence there's many
domains of competence and of course in
some of those domains you're completely
incompetent but they met me not matter
because you don't go into that domain so
you have some area of specialization
which you might think of as your
sub-tribe you know your university
students and so some of you are lower
status by the rules of the university
game and some of you are higher status
by the rules of the university game by
the tribe and so the higher status
people tend to be the ones who fit into
the academic environment you know and
and find it conducive to their mode of
being and all who also do well and their
serotonin levels rise and you know the
neuro chemicals that moderate mood
particularly are serotonergic its
serotonin it's lots of other things it's
an oversimplification but that'll do for
now as you become dominant in a
hierarchy your serotonin levels rise and
what that means is that happy things
make you happier and sad things make you
less sad it Tunes your nervous system so
if you're down at the bottom of the
hierarchy and you're failing it's like
hey hardly anything makes you happy and
everything makes you nervous and it's no
wonder because it's it's not very good
down there so the the societal structure
which which is an elaborated dominance
hierarchy regulates your emotions
because of the match between your
expectations and the behaviors of the
people within that structure and then
your position within the hierarchy
regulates the rate ratio let's say and
the intensity between positive and
negative emotion so you mess with
people's status at your peril and you
disrupt their culture they don't like
that and no wonder because when it's
disrupted they fall into chaos and chaos
isn't just anxiety the anxiety is bad
enough but it's not just anxiety because
when you fall into chaos when things
fall apart for you
of course you're uncertain and anxious
because you don't know what the hell is
going
on and you don't know where you are and
you don't know what to do Pat's
anxiety-provoking and maybe you can't
even understand your past properly
anymore that as I said that happens when
people get betrayed and so you fall into
this state where nothing is certain the
way you construe the world isn't certain
and even the way the world is is no
longer certain because you don't know
how to act or your actions aren't
working and so the world is presenting
itself as something that's chaotic it's
not just psychological the chaos is a
weird intermingling of the chaotic world
and the chaotic self I mean that's what
happens when you get unemployed it's
like it's devastating right it's
devastating to people and it you could
say well that's psychological it's like
well yeah but they're unemployed that
makes the world far more
incomprehensible and uncertain it's not
just psychological
it's psychological and that's bad but
it's also real and that's even worse and
then those two things can spiral which
they often do because you know if you
don't set your expectations properly for
a job search and assume that you're
gonna get 49 rejections for every
interview which you really need to know
because if you get 49 rejections it's
not because you're useless it's because
the baseline for rejection is 98% and
that's okay because the base rate for
rejection for everything is 98% no
matter what you do but you need to know
that so that you don't feel that it's
like something wrong with you and of
course you only have to get it right
once that then you have a job it's a
lottery but you have to set yourself up
you have to think okay well I'm gonna
look for a job I need to how many
resumes can I tolerate sending out a day
you know it has to be enough so you
don't feel like a useless moron and it
can't be so many that you're overwhelmed
by the burden so and I help people do
this sort of thing all the time so maybe
you decide well you're gonna send out
ten a day and you're gonna work two
hours on it and it's gonna take six
months and then you know you've got your
parameters set properly and you would
know what to expect in the world and and
your emotions are regulated and so but
the state of being unemployed doesn't
just produce psychological consequences
so the distinction between the psyche in
the world in some sense is quite
arbitrary and the psychoanalysts I think
it air too much on the side of the
subject they tend to think that too much
of you is inside of you and too little
of you is outside of you and part of the
reason I believe that is because of my
clinical experience
I love the psychoanalyst man they're
brilliant they're brilliant they're deep
they grapple with real problems like
with the problems when people have real
problems that I mean profound problems
there really won't profound moral
problems or problems of good and evil
really you know there are things going
on in their family that are so terrible
that well that there are there are
sometimes fatal
you know lie upon lie upon lie upon lie
for decades and decades and decades it's
awful and that's not exactly inside them
it's out there in the world and lots of
the people that I see very famous critic
of psychology I can't remember his name
but I probably will criticize the
practice of psychology quite effectively
in the leave in the early 60s the myth
of mental illness by Thomas says Szasz
it's a classic you should read it if
you're interested in psychology read it
like it's it's a classic and he
basically said most people have problems
in living they don't have psychological
problems and so I've experienced despite
my love for the psychoanalysts very
frequently what I'm doing as a therapist
is helping people have a life that would
work you know and you can parameterize
that it's like what do you need how
about some friends that people kind of
like that how about an intimate
relationship with someone that you can
trust that maybe has a future that would
be good
how about a career that puts you in a
dominance hierarchy somewhere so at
least you've got some possibility of
rising some possibility of stabilizing
yourself and our schedule in a routine
because no one can live without a
routine you just forget that if you guys
don't have a routine I would recommend
like you get one going because you
cannot be mentally healthy without a
routine you need to pick a time to get
up whatever time you want but pick one
and stick to it because otherwise you
dis regulate your circadian rhythms and
they regulate your mood and eat
something in the morning I had lots of
clients who've had anxiety disorders I
had one client who was literally
starving very smart girl sheet there's
very little that she liked she kind of
tried to subsist on like half a cup of
rice a day she came to me and said I
have no energy I come home all I want to
do is watch the same movie over and over
what like is that weird and I thought
well it depends on how hard you work you
know it's a little weird but whatever
it's familiar you're looking for comfort
so I did an analysis of her diet it's
like three quarters of a cup of rice
it's like you're starving eat something
you know you'll feel better
so she modified her diet and her all her
anxiety went away and she had some
energy it's like yeah you got to eat so
schedule that's a good thing man your
brain will thank you for it it will
stabilize your nervous system with it's
a bit of a plan that's a good thing you
need a career you need something
productive to do with your time you need
to regulate your use of drugs and
alcohol most particularly alcohol
because that does even a lot of people
you need a family like the family you
have your parents and all that be nice
if you all got along you could work on
that that's a good thing to work on and
then you know you probably need children
at some point that's life that's what
life is and if you're missing you know
you may have a good reason to not be
operating on one of those dimensions
it's not mandatory but I can tell you
that if you're not operating reasonably
well on four I think I mentioned six if
you're not operating reasonably well on
at least three of them there's no way
you're going to be psychologically
thriving and that's more pragmatic in
some sense than psychological right
human beings have a nature there's
things we need and if we have them well
that's good and if we don't have them
well then we feel the lack and so
behaviorists behavioral psychologists
concentrate a lot more on that sort of
thing
you know it's practical it's like
strategizing make a career plan figure
out how to negotiate because that's
bloody important figure out how to say
what you need figure out how to tell the
truth to people figure out how to listen
to your partner in particular because if
you listen to them they will actually
tell you what they want and sometimes
you can give it to them and maybe
they'll return the favor and if you
practice that for like 15 years well
then maybe you're constantly giving each
other what you want well hooray that
would be good and then there's two of
you under all circumstances and it's
better to have two brains than one
because people think differently because
of their temperament mostly and so the
negotiation is where the wisdom arises
and it's part of the transformation the
psychological transformation that's
attendant on an intimate relationship
and one of the fundamental purposes of a
long-term intimate relationship anyways
when that falls apart chaos ensues and
that's why chaos is represented so
continually in myths and stories and I'm
going to walk you through a bit of that
more today I talked about the story of
Jonah now here's something to think
about the internal representations of
language meaning evolved partly from our
pre linguistic ancestors knowledge of
social relations like modern monkeys and
apes our ancestors lived in groups with
intricate networks of relationships that
were simultaneously competitive
operative the demands of social life
created selective pressures for just the
kind of complex abstract conceptual and
computational abilities that are likely
to have preceded the earliest forms of
linguistic communication although
baboons have concepts and acquire
propositional information from other
animals vocalizations they cannot
articulate this information they
understand dominance relationships and
matrilineal kinship but they have no
words for them this suggests that the
internal representation of many concept
relations and actual action sequences
does not require language and that
language did not evolve because it was
uniquely suited to representing thought
well you you know you can think without
language well take the case of someone
who's deaf and mute they have no
language well they can operate in
society they learn how to represent
other people and they do that with image
now with the post modernists who I
despise would be a reasonable way of
putting it have this proposition that
there's no meaning outside language and
and it's a powerful argument by the way
but it's seriously wrong
there is a meaning network outside of
language and it's what language is
grounded in and that's this pre verbal
comprehension of the world it's an
embodied comprehension of the world
animals have it lobsters have it you
know this particular scientist Seyfarth
talks about our shared history with you
know higher primates that probably goes
back 20 million years something like
that
we split from the common ancestor with
chimps about 7 million years ago but you
know lobsters have dominance hierarchies
they hardly have a nervous system at all
which is partly why they're studied
quite extensively and so they have a
social structure and they understand it
like if one lobster thira lobster to be
quite a shark to you if it happened and
you were fighting with another lobster
and you lost you would remember that and
the next time you saw that lobster you'd
scuttle off somewhere else and you
know that and all the lobsters in an
area know who's top lobster and who
isn't and top lobster gets the best
bloody place to be and the best food so
this dominance issue this cultural issue
you know the fact that we live in a
social environment is far deeper than
people usually consider and it's also
worth considering and that this is what
you might think of from an evolutionary
perspective you know you think of
natural selection as producing evolution
right well random mutation with natural
selection but here's something to think
about and Darwin knew this but Darwin
was really smart and the biologists who
followed in his footsteps even up to now
have only expanded out a fraction of
what he had to say you know he was very
interested in sexual selection now one
of the things about human beings that's
unique is that human females are picky
majors they're choosy
they're also sneaky because you can't
tell when they're ovulating and with
many other female animals you know so
they have hidden ovulation and they're
choosy and they tend to choose men who
are more successful in the dominant
turkey well they're there's a shock I
mean if you have a choice why not
if you pick someone who's at the bottom
of the competence hierarchy well that's
probably not going to work out very well
for you and since women bear the burden
of representation you know when you
think of a doorman sorry you might think
well it's the powerful guy the
aggressive guy say that rises to the top
of the doorman it's hurricane that's not
true it's not even true among chimps
like you can get a chimp tyrunt but then
what happens is other chimps gang up on
him and tear him to pieces and they
don't do it nicely
they don't do it nicely and the chimps
that tend to maintain their dominance
for long periods of time have a pretty
wide network of friends roughly speaking
with whom they engage in reciprocal
interactions like grooming and they
actually pay a lot of
attention to the female chimps who have
their own hierarchy by the way and to
the their offspring so they're like baby
kissing politicians and so the idea that
it's raw power that produces dominance
is a it's just wrong it's it's wrong now
you know tyrants you know it's pretty
damn up unstable business being a tyrant
there's lots of people who want to kill
you plus you know you tend to rule over
something approximating hell so maybe
that's bit worse better than being a
subject in hell but it's not much better
so anyway so this social social now so
what this means think about this for a
minute so imagine you know imagine what
I'm telling you bears some vague
resemblance to the truth I think there's
quite a lot of evidence for it from from
a biological perspective I mean this
choosy mating thing occurs with lots of
species you know there's this bird
called the bower bird you got to look up
bowerbirds man those things are you just
can't even believe they exist and so the
male bowerbird he makes this really
complicated nest that's close to the
ground he weaves it it's really quite
nice you couldn't make one so and then
he sweeps this yard in front of the nest
and then he runs around the forest or
flies cuz he is a bird
finding pretty things so maybe he'll
find a nice collection of red leaves and
so then he'll take the red leaves one by
one and fly back to his front yard and
make a little square you know he's a
bird so it's not a great square but he
makes a little patch of red and he takes
a look at that and then he goes off and
finds something blue and and he
decorates it makes a little piece of
abstract art in the front of his nest
and a lot of male bowerbirds do this all
at the same time and so then the females
come along they hop on something nearby
and they kind of look like this checking
it out and if they're happy with it well
then things proceed but if they're not
they'd fly off to someone else's piece
of abstract art and if a male piece of
art is rejected by like three females in
a row he gets irritated and brushes it
all off with his wing and then he makes
another one it's like God well they
obviously have a sense of where
well developed sense of beauty it's so
cool you know and I guess the idea is
that who knows what the hell the idea is
the female birds like artistic males
something like that but if you're
thinking about it biologically maybe
it's an indication of intelligence right
it's a marker of intelligence you know
and it's certainly the case that female
humans prefer creative men so and no
wonder of course we wouldn't be creative
if that wasn't the case so then imagine
that there's two primary forces of
evolutionary selection operating on us
and they're not really the natural world
which is what people always think like
the environment you know the animals and
the trees and nature but it is nature
that selected us it's two other things
well partly it's two other things so one
is the dominance hierarchy the male
dominance hierarchy is one of the
primary mechanisms of selection so it's
like well women are faced with a hard
choice which guy to go after right
that's a hard choice well so they do the
same thing that people do with the stock
market they outsource the cognitive
problem the computational problem to the
male dominance hierarchy then they just
let the male Sirk themselves out however
they're going to and then they appeal
from the top and so what that means is
the dominant male dominance hierarchy
itself is a selection mechanism because
if you fail at it then you don't leave
any offspring and so what that means at
least in part is that we have adapted to
be better and better at attaining status
in dominance hierarchies over god only
knows how long a period of time and that
doesn't mean just power you know it
might mean cognitive flexibility because
you could imagine dormant its hierarchy
a dominance hierarchy be dormant its
hierarchy see okay so if like if you're
really successful you climb up dominance
hierarchy a right but you'd be and see
know if you happen to land it knows you
just be a failure so then you could say
the ideal human being is someone who can
climb to the top of a doorman it's her
key no matter what the doorman is
hierarchy is right so we've evolved to
we've evolved such that success across
the set of possible dominance
hierarchies is the target and I think
that's why we have general intelligence
because general intelligence is a
general problem-solving mechanism and
it's a single factor even like there is
intelligence is a single factor it's
it's not divisible despite what people
like Robert Sternberg and Howard Gardner
falsely claimed so and then from the
female perspective females are the next
gatekeeper and that's why they're often
Mother Nature took me a long time to
figure this out why the hell is nature
feminine in mythological representations
it's a very very it's extraordinarily
common mother nature you don't think a
father nature you think of mother nature
it's like why well nature brings forth
new forms so that's feminine and nature
select in fact that's the definition of
nature from a Darwinian perspective
nature is that which selects women
select their nature and that's partly
why far more men than you might think
like far more are terrified of women
because to be rejected as a romantic
partner by a woman is to be classified
as vaguely acceptable life form huh no
value in propagating it though right so
it's a major major rejection and you
know I've had dozens of clients and many
many people write to me whose primary
problem is that they're so terrified of
women they can't even approach them very
very very common so all right I want to
show you this little triangle thing this
is kind of cool
go yet so no no nonverbal right
nonverbal so what happened well there's
mother triangle
I would guess and mutter triangle has
circle as a child and triangle is maybe
a friend but not one that's very welcome
according to mother and child Circle
goes out to try to play with triangle
child and mother doesn't like that so
she goes out there and pecks the hell
out of her out of him
chases him away pushes child circle back
into the home and goes into the home and
then child circle isn't very happy about
that
it's running around causing trouble and
it manages to escape and then bad child
triangle shows up and they play together
and run around and run around and round
around and run around with mother
chasing them and then they well maybe
they elope who knows and then mother
triangle has a fit and blows down the
house right it's obvious reasonable
would you consider that a reasonable
story about what happened perhaps you
had other interpretations but I suspect
they were vaguely along that line well
but the point here in this is the point
of this experiment is how much
information do you need from which to
derive a narrative and the answer is
like none it just it's just immediate
you you can watch some triangles moving
around a box and instantly you
personalize it and that's because that's
what you're like and the reason you're
like that is because your environment
isn't nature your environment is culture
your environment is other people other
people and that was even more true for
chimpanzees and so forth and especially
animals that had a limited diet like
like gorillas they pretty much only eat
like leaves you know a chimp spends like
12 hours a day chewing and
that's where they have a gut like this
it's like you can't eat leaves you know
have you tried
they have no nutrition so if you're
gonna eat leaves you have to eat a lot
of them and then it takes like three
months to digest them and so what we've
done and this is pretty cool because
we're so smart is that we've traded gut
for brain and that's why we're so svelte
and the way we manage that it appears is
that we learned how to use fire to cook
things and that meant that we had high
quality nutrition much higher it's
easier to digest cooked things
especially meat and so because we
invented fire we didn't have to have so
much intestine and we could spend a
little more time on the brain so human
beings really are fire users we invented
fire or discovered it or whatever man
mastered it at least a couple of million
years ago a long time so that's all
pretty cool as far as I'm concerned so
that's partly how you think and that's
naturally how you think you think a
certain way and so we'll say that your
fundamental architecture is social
cognitive you tend to view the world as
if it's personified and the reason for
that is that the world in which you
emerged as a being was primarily social
and what you needed to know was who's
the big primate who's the little primate
and who's related to who and you know
among chimps if a big chimp is
threatened by a small chimp well you
know the big chimp could just tear the
small chimp apart but the big chimp will
back off if it knows that the little
chimp is associated with some really big
chimps and so the little chimp can bully
the big chimp because it's part of a
dominant family and that's because the
nervous system of the big chimp doesn't
respond to the little chimp like a
little chimp it responds to the little
chimp like it's a little chimp with four
great monsters attached to it because
it's true so it's nervous system is
actually responding to the network
around the chimp and so that's exactly
what you well it's not exactly what
you're like cuz you're not chimps but
you know it's that kind of platform that
constant
it's the evolutionary underpinnings of
your psyche so what does that mean well
it means this is like perfectly fine to
us right can animate things we can hit
rabbits are people no problem will go
along with that
you remember Roger Rabbit I presume most
of you've watched that so this is the
detective whose name I don't remember he
has to go to toontown because there's
cartoons and there's people and you know
they share the same world and you can go
to toontown although it's kind of
annoying because cartoon figures are
kind of annoying like there's slapstick
types and so he's not very happy to be
there and this is what it looks like
right everything is animated meaning
alive anima means soul by the way so
everything has a personality and you
know when you're reading books to kids
the son has a personality train has a
personality jet has a personality
doesn't matter what it is it has a
personality and that's because the child
is learning to understand the world
using the architecture of social
cognitive architecture and so and the
thing that's really interesting about
that this just blows me away you know
evolution is conservative and so once
it's produced something it has to build
on it
it's like dass the operating system it's
like really it's still there if I
remember correctly under Windows 10 you
can't get rid of the damn thing because
it's part it's part of the structure now
and it's like the keyboards we use which
were actually designed to slow typers
down because with mechanical typewriters
if you type too fast the keys would jam
so they divine devise the keyboard to
slow you down and we still use it which
is stupid you know you want the high
frequency letters close to your middle
fingers that isn't what it's like at all
but we can't change it because everyone
uses it so your body plan that thing is
been around a long time man if you look
at mammals particularly but even lizards
there's so much like us in their in
their skeletal structure that it's just
mind-boggling you know and we're all
variants of this same symmetrical
four-legged
mouth here structure and so you have to
build in what you have and if you have a
social cognitive architecture then you
have to first understand the world
through the social cognitive categories
and what's so bloody strange about that
is it actually seems to work we actually
seem to develop a coherent
representation of being I would say of
being that's not the same as nature it's
not the same as the world because when
we think of the world we think of the
objective world and I'm not talking
about the objective world I'm talking
about the world of human experience and
we see that through social cognitive
filter and it makes perfect sense to us
and it works that's so strange
so anyways everything's got this
animated nature and we don't have a
problem with that
in fact we actually find it quite fun
you know people go visit the Disney
toontown and participate in it and and
have fun with it and so that shows you
as well how how natural it is for us to
to view things this way you know cars
have faces right designers know that
they know that people don't want a car
with three headlights because like who
wants to be associated with a three eyed
monster no one it's like two eyes that's
something you could be comfortable with
and so cars have faces like a BMWs the
new ones they really look cat-like you
know and they have sexy curves they do
they do there's been a more eye studies
of that so if you show men photographs
of attractive women looking directly at
them there's a little part of their
brain called a nucleus accumbens that
lights up because to have someone look
directly at you especially if they have
like a smile is is interpreted as an
invitation to approach and women they
have the same damn problem because with
women because if you go into drugstores
say and you look at women's magazines
they're all the same they've all evolved
to the same endpoint they all have an
attractive woman on them all of them and
they're looking right out and so when
women see that they actually see it as
something to it approach it's an ideal
and you know when people say that those
Beauty ideals are
to women and all ideals are oppressive
but the empirical research some of it
done here suggests that interacting with
those images helps that it performs the
psychological function of helping the
woman equate herself with the ideal and
in most cases that actually produces a
pop and elevation and mood and you know
think about it you're really gonna go to
the magazines store when you're just
looking for something to do and you're
gonna buy something that makes you feel
depressed and oppressed it's like no
you're not going to do that magazines
that do that to you they will die
because no one will buy them and there's
a reason they all turned out the same
way it's like they're just responding to
demand so faces oh yes with regards to
the sexy curves so a woman who looks a
woman's picture looking right at a man
will produce this activation in the
primary reward system cocaine produces
the same response and so does sports
cars especially curvy red sports cars
and so that's why you often see an
attractive woman sitting on a curvy red
sports car in an ad because it's you
know if there's a an ad for beer on the
side it's like hey everything's perfect
so and you know those are all primary
real reward representations and they
produce attraction because part of
positive emotion that dopamine
dopaminergic Li mediated element of
positive emotion is an approach emotion
it's not a satiation satisfaction
emotion it's oh good there's something
good here I can move towards it and that
that is what happiness is that's
directly what happiness is it's not
attaining something because that just
puts in a whole new problem you got to
figure out what to do next
alright so I suggested to you that one
of the problems that we have the problem
I would say is not what the world is
made out of but how we should be in the
world because we're alive and how we
should be well it's fairly
straightforward not so much pain would
be good that'd be good not too much
anxiety hey we're
bored for that little pleasure down then
some stability not dying that's a big
one that's a big one and then let's say
from the Darwinian perspective
propagating and so that's what rained
out and the reason we're aimed at that
is you just think about this it's so
amazing so every single one of your of
the relatives you have in your ancestry
every single one of them successfully
produced a child who successively
successfully produced a child all the
way back to three billion years ago
it's bloody unbelievable like the
probability that you exist well it's a
hundred percent because there you are
but the probability of predicting that
you would exist you know if you tried to
predict it it's like you the chance that
the chances that you're here are so
infinitesimal that it's just absolutely
mind-boggling think about that unbroken
sequence of success over literally over
billions of years god it's amazing and
so you have to obviously you have to
think that there's a pretty strong
proclivity for that to happen I mean
some of obviously was necessity but not
only that I mean it's necessary that
impregnated females have an infant it
isn't necessary that they keep it alive
so you can't account for that continuity
merely from necessity you have to
interject least a small amount of
consideration that the care that's
associated especially with taking care
of infants because there you know there
are a lot of work that's there to tennis
it's actually I think it's manifested in
the personality trade agreeable to us as
it looks to be like agreeableness is one
of the dimensions where men and women
very most substantially agreeableness
looks to be like the manifestation of
the maternal instinct now men can be
agreeable to because of course male
human beings take care of children you
know if you're a grizzly bear
female you just chased the damn male
away because he'll kill your Cubs that's
not so helpful but they're not maternal
at all
quite the contrary but you know human
men are pretty damn maternal they're not
as maternal as women on average although
some women are less maternal than some
men because you know the curves overlap
but but on balance how are we in the
world well we're aware of our own
vulnerability who are aware of our own
shortcomings let's say and that's I
think that's partly from being a social
being because people are always
signaling your shortcomings to you to
such a degree that you even signal your
shortcomings to yourself because well
you might as well fix them before
someone else points them out that's
guilt and shame you know when Freud
called out the super ego the super-ego
is kind of like the internalized
representation of the judgmental father
and culture I think is represented as a
father figure God the Father let's say
because it's actually oh it's actually
quite a bit like there is an all-seeing
eye that's always watching you it's a
really really intelligent way of
conceptualizing it because the group
which is more or less eternal is
watching you all the time all the time
and it's judging you all the time and we
know that if you put people in a room
and you put a big eye on the wall you
know that you give them an opportunity
to cheat on some little Chiti thing you
know nothing too important if they're in
the room with the big eye they're less
likely to cheat if they're in the room
with no eye at all so you know and what
do you do you keep an eye on your kids
and the reason you do that is so they
don't misbehave and we keep an eye on
each other and so we have a
representation of that and as far as I
can tell we represent it as a
transcendent figure of judgment and it's
like yeah it's hey that's a pretty good
metaphor so one of the
this is a major intellectual battle the
major intellectual battle and it's
raging in universities it's basically a
battle between post-modernism and
traditional and tradition I think that's
the right way of thinking about it for
the post modernists human beings have no
nature
we're blank slates everything that we
are is enculturated so we're completely
malleable and all elements of our
identity are valuable on the other side
are the traditionalists who are I would
say grounded more in biology on the one
hand but also in in historical
humanities tradition that suggests that
people have a nature I explained some of
that nature most people want to have
threads it's part of your nature you
know most people want to find love
part of your nature and you suffer
without it so and you know you could say
those are all social constructs but you
can say you can say anything so you know
and don't ever trust someone who has one
explanation for everything
you know how much intelligence does that
take
you got one explanation you just trot it
out for every phenomena this is an
alternative now here's what happened in
part Nietzsche
back in the late 1800s was very
interested in the dissolution of
traditional faith in the West we fell
out of our myth that's a way of thinking
about it we start believing in its
fundamental axioms we start believing
that there was such a thing as a
transcendent deity for example it did it
didn't mesh well with the emerging
scientific viewpoint and so in the late
1800s Nietzsche announced the death of
God which sounds fairly presumptuous but
it wasn't something he was celebrating
the full quote and I haven't got it
exactly right is God's dead we've killed
him and we'll never find enough water to
wash away the rivers of blood so like
that's a lot different than what you see
scrawled on bathroom wall
you know and echip hypothesized that in
the 20th century millions of people
would die in the conflicts over what
values were going to reign as an
alternative to that tradition and he
particularly brilliantly pointed to
communism he said that's where it's
gonna be and Dostoyevsky did the same
thing and so and since then there's this
being this battle hey and the battle is
kind of like this the battle is on the
one hand between social construction
social constructionist utopians who
believe that human nature is infinitely
malleable and that with the proper
transformations in society you can bring
apart about the perfect state and the
perfect human being and and
traditionalists and young I think is the
classic example of this who believe that
there is a human nature and it's deeply
embedded within us and that the cultures
we set up have to manifest themselves in
accordance with that nature or they will
fail well Jung believed in the existence
of a meta-narrative
the hero myth roughly speaking and he
explained its connections to various
religious traditions in a staggeringly
brilliant manner Camille Paglia
who I would recommend and I think I
already told you that you know she she's
already concluded after going through a
radical feminist period early in her
life that the proper way for society
orient itself is within a mythological
structure and that that's part of what
the humanities provides and the
alternative is rational arguments over
what values are going to dominate and it
isn't obvious that rationality can solve
that problem I don't think it can
that's Humes point David Hume said you
can't derive an art from it is right you
cannot use science as a guide to
behavior so what do you use instinct
instinct manifested in imagination and
the evolution the evolved structure of
your organic cultures
something like that do they have a
structure that's the question okay so
you ask yourself this question what is
it that every human being shares
regardless of place and time so any
universally comprehensive language that
would be a meta-narrative a myth a hero
myth let's say a myth about what a human
being not only is like but should be
like has to speak to us about those
aspects of experience that we all share
because otherwise we wouldn't understand
the damn story now we go to how we go to
stories that we understand all the time
like Star Wars and it really doesn't
matter what country you know everybody
gets it more or less so obviously
there's stories that we can understand
and mutually you know we understand love
stories we understand stories of
conflict we understand stories of
betrayal we understand stories of anger
and that's because we can feel jealousy
we can feel love we can feel anger it's
it's part of you it's right there we
even know where the circuits are you
know and then you're like other animals
they feel it too so very similar
emotions as far as we can tell so here's
here's this is derived in large part
from you but not only here's what we
share natural world social world and the
fact of our existence as an individual
and that can be represented different
ways it can be represented as you the
known the and unknown or it could be you
culture and nature all the same
representations and the cultural
representation tends to be male that's
God the Father let's say and the
representation the feminine
representation tends to be female this
is the known the culture Apple Indian
control that's associated with the Sun
consciousness the king the patriarchy
the plow because it pushes up the earth
the phallus obviously order and
authority and the crushing weight of
tradition the wise old man and the
tyrant Dogma the day sky the country man
the island heights
the ancestral spirits the activity of
the dead Captain Hook he's a tyrant and
that's why Peter Pan doesn't want to
grow up to become him and that's why
Peter Pan does well because he thinks
that adults are all tyrants why is
Captain Hook a tyrant because a
crocodile ate his hand and the crocodile
has a clock in its stomach and the
reason for that is that the crocodile is
time and times already got a piece of
Captain Hook and he's not very happy
about it he's bitter and resentful and
tyrannical and when Peter Pan looks out
adulthood that's what he sees and he
thinks why should I sacrifice the
potential of childhood for the
singularity of tyranny and so he stays
immature his entire life and he's king
of the Lost Boys Jesus great there's a
porn star named Jeremy Christ I can't
remember his name it's really an ugly
guy he is he is he is an ugly guy he
admits it and he said something funny I
was watching a documentary about him and
he said the funniest thing he said I'm
the hero to people who think people like
me are heroes I had what a drag a I mean
he's just did in this horrible situation
he doesn't admire the people that admire
him but he gets admired by them all the
time well it's sort of like Peter Pan
it's like well he's king of the Lost
Boys he doesn't get Wendy either right
she grows up she has a family he asked
to content himself with Tinkerbell and
you know what Tinkerbell doesn't exist
well that's what happens when you don't
grow up that's a representation of
culture that's a nasty one eh he'll will
kiss us we'll kiss a statue of Stalin
who cares that he murdered 30 million
people culture well you know in the
university you hear a lot about the
patriarchy and how impressive it is it's
like yeah Yeah right
definitely no kidding but you know it's
kind of useful as well since it provides
light the food and all of that which you
know kind of counterbalances it to some
degree culture has a pause development
and a negative element the individual
has a positive
the negative element nature has a
positive element and a negative element
and if people tell you a one-sided story
which is the ideological story they
leave out that they say all culture is
terrible the human being is a Despoiler
and nature is perfect it's like no
nature kills you culture keeps you alive
and there's things about you that are
honorable and good as well as things
about you that aren't and you need to
know both of those and that's what the
great stories tell us all right