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would be nice and well directed to -
Tammy Jorgen I've known each other were
afternoon
sixteen nearly 30 years nearly 50 years
he'll that hold up a we come from
northern Alberta he lived up the street
I mean I only movie with the a
fascinating person so in my late
twenties he moved East island in
material and I thought it's probably had
to marry him because if I don't marry
him I won't know what happens and now
we're seeing what happening yeah I mean
he's been talking about these things
he's been talking about what's going on
in our society and how it's moving left
and how things are destabilizing for
last 20 years and go in in September he
said he came down one morning and he was
quite disturbed and he said you know it
welcomes love email that I can't do list
I can't deal with classes and I'm going
to have to say something what do you
think
and I said well he was speaking to me
and my dad was there too for a very very
long time and maybe it is time for you
to tell everyone what's going on and so
we didn't we didn't know what would
happen you know we didn't have any idea
just went up and made a video instead
what he all you said and what he's
always walk and the lady she's coming
down like
and they resonated with Tara members
response and mostly all you 95 percent
or more
whether this response so although it was
destabilizing I got everything email
list you can saluting we've left a lot
you know myself I wasn't as learned at
this in but I sure learned a lot and I
know you guys have to and you're going
to learn a whole bunch big
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so your filming is can I walk around
yeah can you hear me without the
microphone good then I'll be able to
walk around so I want to tell you a
story it's it I have a mic on here yeah
so okay so I started studying the things
that I have been talking about in well
really as long back as I can remember I
think that's true I wrote an essay when
I was about 13 on the on ash with it
wasn't very good essay but I was only 13
so it's not that surprising but and I
don't know exactly why it was a
particular concern to me except that of
course it's the sort of thing that
should be of concern to everyone how
about if I speak a little louder all
right all right no I'll do it I'll do it
this way I think if you have any trouble
at the back let me know what I'll all
make sure that I'm projecting so I said
when I was about 13 I wrote an essay on
on our Swift and I I was trying to
understand it I think maybe I tried to
understand it in a way that was somewhat
different than most people who examine
historical events because I was trying
to understand how human beings could do
that knowing full well that I was one of
them and that's the critical thing
because generally when people examine
especially something horrifying that's
done by humanity they make the
assumption that it's other people doing
it and that's a that's a big mistake
in my estimation because if a lot of
human beings have done something
terrible
you can be sure that being a human being
that you're capable of it and you know
one of the things that we've been asked
repeatedly to do as a consequence of
what happened in world war 2 is to not
forget it but it's always been my
contention that you can't remember
something you don't understand
and you don't understand what happened
in Nazi Germany or in the Soviet Union
for that matter until you understand
that had you been there the probability
that you would have played a role and
that wouldn't have been a positive one
is extraordinarily high when people do
think about themselves as actors in
situations like that they have a
proclivity to cast themselves in a
heroic role assuming that had they been
say in Nazi Germany in the 1930s that
they would have taken on the burden of
fighting against the Nazis and defending
the things that should have been
defended but that's a very foolish
presupposition especially because it's
more or less self-evident from the
historical perspective that that isn't
what people did and in order for us to
come to terms with that it means that we
have to understand how it happened but
more importantly what role we still play
as individuals in acting in such a way
that such things are not only likely but
desired
when I was older and in university I was
plagued by nightmares mostly about they
were apocalyptic nightmares mostly about
the third world war and I had very large
long series of dreams about about
nuclear bombs I remember one of them and
I was living in Edmonton at the time and
on the on the south side and I could
remember watching out through my window
in the dream I'm seeing mushroom cloud
form over the main core of the city and
then the dream shifted locales and there
were a bunch of people in the wreckage
and they started to fight and I thought
that's just exactly right and that was
exactly what my nightmares were like
that no matter how tremendous the
catastrophe we don't seem able to derive
the proper conclusions from us and start
to act in a way that makes us things
less rather than more likely when I was
in graduate school at McGill which would
have been after that I was studying
political science decor that sorry back
when I was in Edmonton and before that I
had even thought about going into into
law but as I studied political science I
got increasingly disenchanted with the
explanations that were being offered to
me about motivations for for human
conflict that especially in the upper
years of my undergraduate education that
the lower years were pretty good because
mostly what I studied was political
philosophy and literature and I found
that very helpful but in the upper years
the the contention of the professor's
was that people primarily engaged in
conflict for economic reasons that never
struck me as very deep deep explanation
because it didn't get at the core of the
issue which was well okay people fight
about things of material value but why
do they value those things I mean it's
self-evidence if you think about food
and shelter and so forth but you know
generally speaking especially in the
20th century it wasn't necessarily about
the basics of food and shelter that
people were engaging in conflict about
it was it was something much more subtle
than that maybe it had more to do with
national identity with identity that
kind of thing and so there was a
psychological element missing in the
analysis of the human propensity for
conflict that to me loomed larger and
larger and so I decided at least in part
for that reason to pursue a graduate
degree in psychology and in clinical
psychology and I went to McGill and
that's when I started to read very much
more broadly I suppose and I spent a lot
of time reading I read a lot of Freud
and a lot of all the classic clinical
psychologists who extraordinarily useful
Carl Rogers and Sigmund Freud and Alfred
Adler and a whole host of them all the
classic thinkers I could get my hands on
and also most particularly the
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche most of
whose major work works I read at that
point in Fyodor Dostoyevsky who was
writing very similar things to Nietzsche
there in fact Nietzsche was quite
influenced by Dostoyevsky and Dostoevsky
was a like a master in the literary
genre his five great books focused on
the most difficult questions that face
humanity both socially and individually
I found those books overwhelmingly
powerful and also extraordinarily useful
good the only good or Crime and
Punishment for example if a brilliant
brilliant piece of work outlining the
motivation of someone who regards
himself as above all law and who decides
that to not kill when necessary is an
act of cowardice and so doth dfd walks
through his rationalization sense and
the murder and the aftermath of it in a
way that's extraordinarily enlightening
and painful simultaneously and at the
same time Nietzsche in Germany was
writing philosophical tract on exactly
the same themes their lives
an unbelievably close parallel in fact
when Nietzsche finally went insane he
had some illness that has been very
difficult to diagnose he had he'd seen
someone beating a horse in the street
and embraced it out of compassion and
there's a scene exactly like that in one
of Dostoyevsky stories so it's the
parallels are really uncanny and I also
read a lot of neuroscience because I did
my thesis on the biological
predisposition to alcoholism and that
required a lot of investigation into
more hardcore science investigation into
the structure and function of the brain
and I tried to weave all of that
together in a book that I published in
1999 it took me about 15 years to write
I was writing three hours a day for
every day and thinking about it all the
time like I was absolutely 100% obsessed
by by the sorts of issues that I'm
discussing with you today
it took me deep I read Alexander
Solzhenitsyn much of what he wrote at
the same time and then of course I
studied Carl Jung in great depth when I
finally started to crack what he was up
talking about was extraordinarily
difficult material I read volume 9 of
his collected works which is called
archetypes of the collective unconscious
and first time I read it I didn't
understand a word he was saying and I
think that's very common experience for
people reading Jung has certainly
persona non grata in the modern academy
and I think the reason for that is that
well I think when you first encounter
you you tend to bounce off them and then
the next thing that happens is you get
very frightened and then you just leave
it the hell alone and and it's no wonder
as far as I'm concerned because I don't
think I've ever read anyone including me
chip that was more terrifying than young
Nick Young was a student of Nietzsche I
don't mean technically speaking although
Nietzsche was everywhere Nietzsche's
thinking was everywhere when you lose
maturing people no Carl Jung primarily
as a disciple let's say a Freud which is
true in part because Freud of course did
the initial you my
might describe it as initial excavating
work outlining the fact that there was
more going on in the human psyche than
the met the conscious eye and his
greatest work likely was the
interpretation of dreams where he
started to perform an archaeology of the
of the symbolic unconscious showing that
much of our mental life went on in some
sense underneath our conscious awareness
which is of course regarded as a truism
now by psychologists but was quite
revolutionary at the time it wasn't
Freud wasn't entirely an original idea
with Freud few things are entirely
regional ideas but he went farther than
anyone else synthesizing it and also
publicizing and promoting it and also
basing a psychotherapeutic theory on it
pretty remarkable set of accomplishments
and Jung was very much influenced by
Freud but also by Nietzsche and the
reason he was influenced by Nietzsche
most particularly was that
Nietzsche's announcement of the death of
God in the late 1900s was a very
striking philosophical event and and
I'll return to this but Nietzsche
believed that because God was dead so to
speak and the value structure upon which
Western civilization was constructed had
God at its foundation that that would
all crumble and that people would have
to become their own deities in a sense
they would have to discover or create
for Nietzsche to create their own values
and before nature could outline how that
might happen he suffered the unfortunate
descent into madness and then died and
so he left this major problem behind
which is if it's the case that the
radiation of Western civilization was
predicated on illusion on an illusion
what what what what would we do next
and Nietzsche said well that what we
will certainly do next is descend into
an unholy combination of nihilism and
totalitarianism because those will be
the things that will beckon most clearly
in the chaotic aftermath of the
dissolution of the value structure upon
which our society had been predicated
and needs you in his book will to power
prophesied very directly that millions
of people would die in the 20th century
specifically because of communist
revolutions and that was 40 years
roughly speaking 30 to 40 years before
the Communist revolution in the Soviet
Union so that's an active prophetic
vision that's absolutely
incomprehensible to I mean in the West
we didn't know that the Soviet Union was
going to fall until the day it fell and
Nietzsche knew what was going to happen
in the 20th century in like night-in
like 1880 it's absolutely remarkable
Young was very interested in the
Nietzschean problem more interested in
it than anything else because he knew
that the question of where we would
derive our values from and how we would
ground them in some sort of underlying
solid underlying reality would become
was the paramount psychological question
of the of the age and he spent his
entire his entire life attempting to
address that Young's idea was that we
weren't going to be able to create our
own values because human beings cannot
create their own values and you know
that if if you observe your own action
if you observe your own being you can
make resolutions you can try to act in a
particular way maybe a way that you
regard it better but you'll find out
very rapidly that you can't enslave
yourself and tell yourself what to do so
easily even when you're motivated to do
good things you know when you make your
new year's resolutions and say that
you're going to eat properly and go to
the gym that generally lasts about a
week and so you can't boss yourself
around as it turns out no more than you
can really boss other people around and
it's because you do have a nature you
have a nature and you can't just
arbitrarily mold and shape that nature
because if you like other people will
rebel against your own will and so and
so young content
was that we would have to go inside
ourselves but that's how he looked at it
into the symbolic background of our
psychological structure and rediscover
what we had lost and so I found that's
the ancient mythological motif of voyage
into the depths and rescuing your father
from the belly of the beast and you see
that idea reflected often in popular
culture on a very well developed example
of that is in the movie Pinocchio which
I'm sure how many of you have seen that
Louie yeah right well that speaks for
itself right I mean there's a why why
why are you watching a puppet an
animated puppet rescue is farther from
the belly of a whale it makes absolutely
no sense but you don't care when you're
watching it you think this is quite
interesting and the reason it's
interesting is because it speaks to you
at a level that you understand but that
you do not understand how you understand
and of course any good work of art does
exactly that to you it speaks to you
about things that you almost know but
don't yet know and that's what makes it
profound and you knew that it would be
necessary for modern people to journey
to the chaotic depths and rescue their
dead farther from the underworld which
is a very interesting symbolic
realization in the aftermath of
Nietzsche's statement that God had died
and so that's what you did that's what
he spent his entire life doing and he
detailed that out in a very long series
of very difficult and and very
unsettling books which people tend not
to read and and no wonder and no wonder
and so I read everything I could get my
hands on that Jung had published at that
point and a lot of work by various
historians of religion and like Maria le
ADA who's who's out of favor because the
post modernists don't like him and and I
put this all together in this book that
I published in 1999 called maps of
meaning and it's also a very difficult
book and that was some somewhat
purposeful
and somewhat inevitable it was it was
purposeful because I knew that if I was
going to discuss such things and I
didn't make it ridiculously rigorous at
least to the degree that I was capable
of doing that that it would be easily
dismissed and that seemed
counterproductive but but it was also
because I was trying to figure out
rather than trying to write a book I was
trying to figure something out and I was
doing that by writing because writing is
a very good way of figuring things out
and I was trying to make it as clear as
I could but that that wasn't all that
clear you know it's about 500 pages long
I think this book in it and it and I
think I rewrote every sentence in it at
least 50 times probably too many times
because by the end it got I think I over
edited it I think it was it's in some
sense too tight it it's like an
overworked piece of art that that might
be one way of thinking about it but and
then it's taken me decades of speaking
about it to continue to what would you
call it purify and refine it so that I
can discuss it without having to go
through dozens of hours of explanation
and to condense it down into something
that's more easily comprehensible so
that's what I'm going to try to do this
afternoon I want to tell you why I think
we're in the position that we're in what
that position is and also potentially
what can be done about it and those
things because also I believed and still
do believe that if you actually
understand the problem you can solve it
but but you have that's actually an
indication of your understanding right
if you if you if you haven't sold that
you actually don't understand it there's
things about it that you still don't
grout and so when I was writing maps of
meaning I wasn't so much trying to only
figure out why it was that people were
capable of the terribly barbaric things
that they so happily did at our switch
but also to figure out what could be
done if anything to stop that from
happening because it was also by no
means self-evident that anything in fact
could be done about it you know because
that might just be an expression of that
central human nature that I was talking
about earlier and the fundamentally
irreparable this there's been no
shortage of
writers who proposed that human beings
are fundamentally flawed in a way that
cannot be rectified in that you know art
and we have a catastrophic destiny
waiting for us as a consequence I mean
in some sense that's built right into
the fabric of Christianity itself
because of course have these certain
variants of it and I'm speaking about
Christianity because in many ways to set
the foundation of Western society
because certain elements of Christianity
at least regard people as irretrievably
or irreparably tainted with original sin
which emerged right at the birth of our
species and there's something
extraordinarily powerful about that idea
because of course everybody in this room
knows that they're seriously flawed and
also those that they do things that make
those flaws more rather than less likely
and everyone has that sense about
themselves unless they're you know
narcissistic beyond belief in which case
they also suspect it but only at an
unconscious level so you know we do
carry this sense of ourselves as deeply
flawed and imperfect and and maybe
fatally so and that seems to be built
right into us and so maybe there is no
solution but that seemed like a dismal
hypothesis to begin with so I wanted to
do as in it I wanted to investigate as
deeply as I possibly could to see if I
could conjure up something that vaguely
Rek represented the solution for a long
time you know there were months when I
was writing where I really felt quite
mad and what the one of the most intense
periods of time where that occurred was
when I think I was kind of on the cusp
of figuring out what I needed to figure
out I figured out two things one was
that I kind of understood finally why
people had belief systems
it wasn't the belief system was there
because we have to deal with an
infinitely complex world and we have to
simplify it down to proportions that we
can manage because we don't have
infinite cognitive or emotional or
physiological resources we're very
bounded creatures living in an unbounded
environment roughly speaking it's too
much for us and so
we have to impose structures of
simplification on the world or we we get
so stressed we die that's roughly the
bottom line for example if you develop
post-traumatic stress disorder which
occurs when you encounter something in
your life that you cannot compute so to
speak your body goes into emergency
preparation mode which which makes it
hyper hyper responsive to threat and and
ready to do anything which is emergency
preparation and that's so
physiologically demanding that it
demolishes your health it's not merely
psychological it damages your brain I
mean if you just can't stay in high gear
running flat out continually you you die
and so people need to simplify the world
they need to live within structures of
simplification because that's how they
that's how they protect themselves from
the terrible onslaught of complexity but
by the same token we organize ourselves
into these these structures of
simplification that's what our culture's
are we negotiate them we inhabit them
jointly and because of that when we run
into people who do that differently the
probability that we'll engage in
conflict is extraordinarily high because
I can't give up my beliefs just because
you have different beliefs and if we
don't have the same beliefs then we
can't peacefully occupy the same
territory so there seems to be nothing
for that except conflict if we can't
negotiate then we have to fight so then
I thought well that's that's that's that
then on the one hand we can abandon our
belief systems because they structure
our realities and protect us but and we
can't fight because now we're so
technologically powerful that if we do
we're going to destroy everything it's
like well that's masters that's option
one and it's opposite that completely
exhausts the auctions and so that was a
horrible realization absolutely dreadful
realization because you know it's
certainly possible if you think about
this from a biological or an
evolutionary viewpoint is that we're
kind of a peculiar species and we've
developed these terrible technologies of
war there's absolutely no reason to
assume that we will just use them to
wipe ourselves out and you know maybe
30% of us as individuals and in our own
psyches would be happy about that
because
life is pretty dreadful and it's full of
suffering and there's lots of things
that are harsh about existence and so
maybe we should just let the whole thing
go and believe me people are plenty
motivated to do that if you haven't
observed that motivation in yourself at
some point in your life either you're
not paying attention or don't want to
pay attention or something sufficiently
dreadful has not yet happened to you but
it will it will you know because
everyone encounters catastrophic crises
in their life and it drops the bottom
out of them and makes them desperate and
angry and and that's also part of the
human condition
luckily after about three months of
thinking about that I had a series of
dreams that help me sort out a third
alternative and that was of course at
least in part immersed as a consequence
of all the things that I was reading so
I want to research return to the
Nietzschean conundrum so Nietzsche was
an extraordinarily astute critic of the
judeo-christian tradition pieces he
wrote a book called the Antichrist in
fact and he also said that he
philosophized with a hammer and what he
meant by that was that he was taking the
hardest heaviest object he could and
smashing up everything he possibly could
with as much intellectual rigor as he
could manage and that was plenty because
he was truly a genius but he was he
wasn't a nihilistic person quite the
contrary he had a very good reputation
among those who knew him for example as
a very kind man but he was in part
looking for something that he couldn't
destroy right because that's partly how
you find out what's real you you hit
things so to speak you push against them
your children do that to you for example
they push against you to see where you
won't yield and then they think off
there's reality there there's a wall
there I can't go beyond that and that's
what Nietzsche was searching for and he
was doing it all out fundamentally how
his contention was that what had
happened in the West was that
they're the judeo-christian tradition
and even the precursors of that
tradition upon from which that tradition
emerged had insisted for millennia that
the pursuit of truth was the highest
moral value and that one of the
consequences of that was that the West
developed science which was part of that
pursuit of the truth and then and then
the tools of science once successfully
grasped and universalized we then turned
against the dogmatic structure of the
church when everyone woke up as
scientists so to speak and thought well
we're living by a set of superstitions
and and they're not true and we have to
dispense with them and so that was
Copernicus and that was Darwin and that
was Freud and that was these repeated
blows that that our symbolic culture
took at the hands of something that had
fostered and created and
Nietzsche said something as well at the
same time only remarked on this on this
consequence he said one of the most
terrible things about discovering that a
system you believed in no longer
functions is no longer sufficient or can
be undermined is that it raises the
specter that all such systems have the
same flaws you know sometimes you can
jump from atheism to Christianity and
from Christianity to socialism say in
successive leaps and and then you're
someone who's faithless from within the
perspective of a given system but you're
faithful to the idea that there are in
fact systems that will work but if your
system fails enough then you can end up
in a situation where you don't even have
any faith in the idea that systems as
such can work and that makes you
nihilistic and Nietzsche saw that as as
as as the origin of the specter of
nihilism hopelessness fundamentally now
it's more complicated than that because
there are underground reasons so to
speak for being nihilistic that have
nothing to do with the mere collapse of
a rational belief system and I'll talk
about those two and he also talked about
the the inevitable rise of
totalitarianism as a medication for the
loss of all meaning in some sense you
might say well if you're in a chaotic
state because you no longer know what to
believe it's very and someone offers you
a set of certainties to guide your life
by then it's very attractive for you to
reach out and grip on to those with all
of your soul so to speak because that
stops you from merely being adrift and
then there's underground reasons for
that too that all also return to
so the first question is was it
necessary for the sense of truth that
Nietzsche described as developed by the
judeo-christian tradition that then
manifested itself in the scientific
methodology to turn against the symbolic
foundation of that structure and
demolish it was that inevitable and was
it correct and that's the first question
and so Young's answers that was the
conflict between science and religion is
a consequence of the immature state of
both of those domains of thinking it's
not built into the structure per se it's
just that we aren't good enough at being
religious or good enough about at being
scientific in order to see how they
might be reconciled now that's a that's
a hell of a claim and it's a frightening
claim because and this speaks to some
degree to the underground reasons for
being nihilistic so the terrible thing
about being nihilistic is that nothing
you do has any meaning and and that's
not so good because actually it's
actually untrue because there are forms
of meaning in life that nihilism won't
protect you from or or even increase
your exposure to and those are the
tragic meanings of life I don't care how
nihilistic you are what you don't
believe in you're going to believe in
your own pain you're going to believe in
your own anxiety you're going to believe
in the fact of pain and anxiety for
everyone else you're going to believe in
tragedy
you can't think to yourself out of the
catastrophe of the world by being
nihilistic so the negative meanings
remain you can dispense with the
positive meanings which seems to be a
bad bargain but the outside of doing
that is quite straightforward if I said
to you
here's your alternatives nothing you do
matters or has any meaning alternative
one everything you do matters and has
meaning which one would you pick
and you might think well of course I
would go for the second alternative
because the first one is so horrifying
but the truth of the matter is the
second one is even more horrifying
because it means that the things that
you do for better or worse actually do
matter and in some sense you're
responsible for them not only for the
effect that they have on you in the
immediate circumstances of your life but
for the effect that they have radiating
out from you cause err to the other
people that your network too and also as
they reach as a as a make wave through
time it could be that everything you do
does matter that every choice that you
make matters and I do believe that
that's the case that you're constantly
making choices between good and evil and
that that determines the destiny of
being and it isn't obvious to me at all
but that's something that you would wish
upon yourself and so one of the
advantages to be nihilistic is it
enables you to be totally irresponsible
even though the price you pay for that
is the sacrifice of all positive meaning
well so much for the intellectual purity
of nihilism right and so those sorts of
things have to be considered very deeply
because when someone says well I'm
hopeless sometimes it's because they're
suffering and people can suffer terribly
because of that but it's sometimes
because they don't want to be
responsible for anything and no wonder
back to use point you started to examine
religious ideon I would say symbolically
but it's more complicated than that
because you might think that the attempt
to analyze religious thinking
symbolically would reduce it to nothing
but psychology but that isn't what
happens precisely because as you reduce
the religious ideas to psychology you
elevate the psyche and so they meet in
the middle and this is something you
understood very very well it was for
that reason that he believed that Christ
was a symbol of the self the self being
the full totality that might be one way
of thinking about it everything that you
could conceivably be if you were
everything that you could be
that's that potential that risks inside
you that everyone knows about you know
we also even speak about it because we
take people to pass when we say you're
not living up to your potential and
everyone knows what that means but no
one knows what it means because what the
hell is that potential it's not
something that's real by definition it's
something that's virtual it's something
that is yet to be and may never be but
we still treat it as if it's real and we
also treat the entire world as if it's
made out of potential and I believe that
that is the correct way of viewing the
world it's not the dead matter of the
18th century rationalist or empiricist
it's the living domain of potential that
that we interact with on a regular basis
from which at least to some degree we
extract our own potential here's a rough
outline of the story that that Jung told
that I'd be working on so I'm going to
tell it as I understand it according to
the selection of stories that were
encapsulated in in the biblical
tradition the world is roughly 6,000
years old and of course at one level of
analysis that palpably absurd I would
say and also narrow because I think to
conceptualize the world as 15 billion
years old with the developmental history
that extends across that massive amount
of time and to note that it extends
incomprehensibly
vastly outward is a much more
magnificent view of the cosmos than the
rather constrained cosmos that we
inherited from thinkers in the Middle
East say 10,000 years ago but there's
something about it that's true and the
truth in it seems to be its relationship
to the origin of civilization because it
is the case that civilization everywhere
in the world of the sort that we would
regard as complex and technological is
about 6,000 years old and why that is is
not so self-evident although I suspect
it has something to do with how long it
took us to reformulate ourselves after
the last ice age which of course was
only roughly 15,000 you
ago it's not really that far away in
time so that's the first thing but the
second thing is what the story the
creation stories in Genesis for example
actually mean because they actually mean
something and what they mean is
absolutely remarkable in my estimation
and so I'm going to tell you a little
bit about that story because it's
necessary to understand what the story
means to determine if what Nietzsche
said about the inevitable destruction of
our symbolic religious structures by
science was inevitable and necessary and
I think the answer to that is no we just
didn't understand what the hell we were
doing any more than we really understand
why we put up Christmas trees at
Christmas so we do that in part because
the Christmas tree is a symbol of life
because the tree is a symbol of life
because we inhabited trees for untold
millions of years and we put lights on
the trees to symbolize the coming back
into the darkness of midwinter of the
Sun and the light and so we play this
symbolic game that celebrates both life
and the emergence of light and
consciousness and we associate that with
the birth of the Savior but we don't
know that we're doing that but we do it
anyways and we do that sort of thing all
the time because we're smarter than we
know and that has to be the case because
we don't know ourselves we would need a
psychology or sociology and anthropology
or any of those things if we were
transparent to ourselves we're machines
so to speak that are far more
intelligent and wise then the machines
themselves can understand and we've
revealed ourselves to ourselves in our
action and our symbolic gestures
constantly and then have to reflect on
that to try to understand what it is
that we're up to so here's the idea that
lurks at the beginning of Genesis so
there's the three elements that are
involved in the creation of habitable
the creation of habitable order from
chaos at the beginning of time one of
them is whatever is represented by God
the Father and one of them is whatever
is represented by the chaos that exists
at the same time and the other is
whatever is represented by the idea of
God's Word
that's the logos from
Christian perspective which is a very
very strange idea so there's this idea
that was developed over the course of
thousands of years that the redeeming
savior was also the thing that God used
to extract habitable order out of chaos
at the beginning of time it's a very
strange idea and to to assimilate an
idea of that preposterous nough sand
magnitude to mere pre rational
superstition is foolish first of all
because we don't even understand what it
means but it means something utterly
profound and it means something that we
cannot forget we forget it at our peril
the story at the beginning of Genesis
means that structure that's the father
that's the patriarchy if you will
structure extract habitable order from
chaos through speech that's what we do
it says in Genesis as well that human
beings are made in the image of God and
that's why because we've observed these
are ancient ideas they were they were
created with so much blood and effort
that it's incalculable account
contemplated the idea is that there's
something about the human being whatever
it is that makes us conscious that
interacts with the chaotic potential
that constitutes reality and extracts
out from that the order within which we
live and that there's something divine
about that and that's the value of the
human being right that's the in
eradicable value of the human being and
the idea that each individual even
criminals even murderers the worst and
most reprehensible people have to be
treated with the respect due a divinity
because we partake in the capacity to
extract habitable order from chaos with
our consciousness with our speech and
with our capacity to communicate and we
recognize insofar as we each recognize
the other that's valuable it's
predicated on that observation
we each have something to offer each
other and something vital and you know
that if you engage in a real
conversation with someone a meaningful
conversation that suspend your sense of
fragile mortality for a moment you
understand that in that communication
between people something of inestimable
value emerges that you have to pursue
and you live for that you live for that
relationship with yourself you live for
that that discovery of that relationship
when you're engaged in an artistic
pursuit it's the core of meaning in life
and it's not an illusion in fact it's a
manifestation of the highest functions
of your nervous system because what your
nervous system does is signal to you
that you're in a place and time that you
cannot see when you're engaged in
something meaningful you need comes upon
you and it's secure for the catastrophes
of tragic mortality that wonderful
engagement in what's meaningful that you
do you can and do experience and that
you can get better at experiencing if
you practice and that's because your
nervous system which has evolved over
billions of years has learned to tell
you when you're standing on the border
between chaos and order and keeping them
in balance and that's what manifests
itself is meaningful and that's the same
phenomena that's referred to in the
creation stories in Genesis and it's the
same idea that's reflected in the
strange Christian assistance that the
thing that saves mankind is the same
thing the draws order from chaos at the
beginning of time it's unbelievably
brilliant and we've been trying to
figure it out for who knows how long
forever and have never been able to
fully articulate it because it's so
complicated it's such a complicated idea
but there's nothing in the least it's a
losery above it the habitable order that
is created at the beginning of time
that's paradise right paradise that's a
walled garden it's a well watered place
that's what Eden means paradise means
paradaisal walled garden what and that's
where Adam and Eve are first put and why
is that well it's because we do come in
male and female form that's part of it
so that's part of our our eternal
landscape that's how you could think
about it is it's the landscape that
transcends all landscapes it's the
landscape that is what all
and escapes have in common that's what
it is that's what makes it an archetype
it's a walled garden why well the walls
are structure and culture and the garden
is nature and all that says is that
people live in an amalgam of nature and
culture and of course that's precisely
the case and that's another variant of
the order chaos juxtaposition order
being culture and chaos being nature so
we live eternally in the balance between
nature and culture and if it's properly
balanced it's as close to paradise as it
can get but paradise is flawed and why
is it flawed because there's always
something lurking in it that could turn
it upside down and that's the snake and
the reason it's a snake is because the
circuits that we use to process the
things that turn our lives upside down
is the same circuit that our
tree-dwelling ancestors used to identify
predators 60 million years ago and so
the symbolic structure has remained
exactly the same that which lies outside
what you understand is predatory and
dangerous well that's why you demonize
others before and others because they do
stand in that relationship to you and
you use extraordinarily deep circuitry
to do that but human beings being
slightly smarter than your average
chimpanzee also have noted that the
terrible predator that lurks outside the
domains of what you understand is also
the thing that bears gold right and
that's the classic dragon myth the hero
goes out beyond the confines of order
and culture into the chaotic unknown to
confront the ultimate predator who
simultaneously offers the best that can
be possibly gathered and that's what
human beings are like predator animals
and prey animals simultaneously we've
learned to represent the unknown is that
thing that threatens us hideously with a
multitude of paralyzing snakes in the
head of Medusa but continually also
offers us precisely what we need to
continue our movement forward and
everyone knows that which is why we go
to movies that tell us that over and
over and over and over and over trying
to learn what it means and that's what
it means and that's what it means to
partake in the logo
and the logos the reason that I made the
videos that I made in September in
relationship to free speech is because I
know that respect for the logos and
respect for free speech are the same
thing and that without that respect our
societies cannot maintain their
structure differentiate and progress
they cannot do it we use our free speech
to face the chaotic potential of the
world and its horrors to structure it to
understand it to communicate about it
and to reach consensus it's the
mechanism by which we adapt there can be
no restrictions put upon that unless you
want to sacrifice out application and I
wouldn't recommend that things get stale
old decayed dead and dangerous with
extraordinary rapidity if living people
don't maintain their responsibility to
update the state and there's no
difference between that and diving down
into the chaotic depths and rescuing
your father from the belly of the whale
it's exactly the same idea
it's an ancient ancient idea and the
reason that we haven't forgotten it was
because everyone who forgot it died so
unless that's where we want to go we
better stop forgetting about it
Nietzsche said that after God had died
there would be two things that would
happen one would be the emergence of
nihilism as a temptation we already
discussed nihilism it's like it's a
logical consequence of the collapse of
value systems but it's also a place for
the irresponsible to hide fine nihilism
totalitarianism
well Nietzsche believed that once you
had experienced the collapse of one
value system you were unlikely to put
your faith in any value systems so then
why totalitarianism particularly say it
it's nationalistic and communitarian
forms which are the two forms that we
saw act as immense Devils in the 20th
century right with nationalism being
pushed most forcefully forward by the
sorts of political Creed's that were
exemplified by the Nazis and with
communitarianism being put forth by the
sorts of trees that were exemplified by
the Soviet Union both absolutely
catastrophic evolutionary dead ends well
nationalism is easier to understand I
think because you need an identity and
it has to be collective because human
beings live collectively I mean it's the
fact that we share an identity that we
can all sit here in this room peacefully
because the identity is partly who you
think you are but it's also partly what
you expect from the world and from
others and because you have an identity
that's similar to you you can sit
together peacefully because you expect
and desire something and so to you and
it's the same thing and that's what it
means to have a shared culture and so
you can't you have to defend that
culture and it has to be a sufficient
let's say tightness or magnitude so that
it makes sense for you to belong to it
it's not so diverse and chaotic that it
means nothing and I think that part of
the reason why we're seeing a return to
nationalism in places like Europe is
because the European identity is so
amorphous that people can't establish a
relationship
and that's not a good thing because
identity is actually something you have
to have a relationship with and so you
know it's the identity or identity it's
the identity of you within your family
it's the identity of your family within
the small community their friends and
that surround you and then the broader
community of the town and the somewhat
broader community of the province and
the state and so forth but as it expands
it gets vague and it disperses and at
some point the identity that's universal
is so all-encompassing that it means
nothing at all and leaves people chaotic
and so that's what's happening at least
in part in Europe it's happening to some
degree in the United States as well
because we've been pushed so quickly
forward into adopting a global identity
that people are shaking because that too
amorphous for them until we pull back
and say no we need to be around people
who we understand which is of course
absolutely true now the downside of the
nationalist endeavor is that you also
need to be around people that you aren't
alike and don't understand partly
because they exist and if you don't take
them into account then you're going to
have a war with them which is a very bad
idea but also because they have
something to offer and so we're trying
to sort out the proper balance between
differentiated identity say at the
nation-state level and the global
identity that seems to be manifesting
itself partly because of our widespread
electronic communication so okay
nationalism beckons if you're in a
chaotic state you know I heard the
Gallup people with pollsters at one
point I've never seen this made public
but I remember it very well
said that uh as was back when Quebec was
still a large proportion that Kaiba
Corps population was still agitating for
separatism I'd always looked at that and
I thought what made perfect sense
because you solecism collapses it leaves
a void what are you going to fill the
void with well to denialism which we've
already discussed or well or what well
nationalism obviously and the Gallup
people said that if you are lapsed
Catholic you were ten times more likely
to be a separatist perfect exactly what
you'd expect because you have to have an
identity so you turn from church to
state well that's fine if you believe
that the state
is the ultimate identity and that's
really that the story that is being sold
to people who are sold a nationalist
story the state is the ultimate identity
it's like well actually that's
technically wrong that's why that's why
it's wrong it's not wrong because it's
ideologically wrong or or morally wrong
precisely it's it's wrong because it's
technically wrong because the problem
with the state is the state is what
uniform across people and the thing is
is that we need what's actually diverse
across people in order to rejuvenate the
state and to keep it awake and so if you
reduce individuals to what's homogenous
about them across all people you
eradicate the very variability that
allows people to adapt to new things and
because we're constantly being presented
with new things we need to keep that
individual variability paramount because
it's upon that variability that the very
state depends and not actually what the
West discovered that's why we have
always subordinated the state to the
divinity of the individual and that's
expressed as I already said in our in
our in the primacy of free speech in our
civilization it's the cornerstone the
primacy of free speech and it's because
the individual has something to offer
the state and so state identity is
something that can only it can structure
and it can reassure but it also
constrains to too great a degree and so
societies that become only state
immediately become old and blind
malevolent and co-op's and that's an
ancient story the Egyptians have this
figured out 3,000 years ago in their
fundamental mythologies they had a deity
named Osiris who was threatened by his
evil brothers set who later became the
Christian Satan the words are related
etymologically and set was like star in
the Lion King
he was waiting in the wings to for the
old king to turn a blind eye so that he
could chop him into pieces and rule in a
malevolent way across the entire state
the Egyptians had another daddy Horus
who was the son of Osiris and the queen
of the underworld Isis who was the eye
should I who was the Falcon because
Falcons can see and Horus was different
than Osiris because he could see what
Seth was up to he grew up outside the
kingdom like King Arthur and came back
and triumphant overcame Seth who's an I
in the process he overcame his evil
uncle and banished him to the corners of
the world then he took his eye and went
into the underworld where his father
Osiris was living a life of a dead ghost
that's one way of thinking about it he
gave him his eye and that revivified
Osiris and then Osiris and Horus went
back up to the surface from the chaotic
underworld and their union was the
symbol of what the Pharaoh had to
manifest in order to rule Egypt properly
the Egyptians figured that out three
thousand years ago in there in a great
story but it's very difficult to make
something like that an articulated
reality but that's the relationship that
has to obtain between the individual in
the state the state is a corpse the
state is dead but it's a gift that the
dead have given to you and you have to
provide it with vision and with speech
because otherwise it can only blunder
around like a zombie you go to
university you become educated so that
you can serve as the eye and the mouth
of the rejuvenated state that's the
purpose of developing saya an education
in the humanities when there was still
such a thing left but that's the purpose
of that education is to turn you into
the thing that ensures that the entire
ship doesn't founder and sink and that's
your responsibility and if you're
looking for a meaning in your life
that's the leading keep the state afloat
why well because it's better for us all
to be in a ship than drowning in the icy
water and that's the alternative
knowing if you're if you find that the
tragedy of life is too much for you to
bear without becoming resentful and
bitter and murderous and even genocide
all it means that you haven't picked up
enough responsibility because if you
picked up enough responsibility for the
religion of the state and the
eradication of unnecessary suffering
you'd find enough meaning in that so the
idea of meaninglessness would vanish in
an instant you have more
then you knew what to do with and that's
the terrifying thing as well but to
fight off one terrifying thing the
specter of mortality and insanity and
finitude and death
you need another monster of equivalent
size and that's one that you can find
and it's one that you can bear up and
this one that you can live and that's
what we need to do because if we don't
do that then all hell breaks loose
really really eternally that's what
those stories mean viewed in this light
you can understand post-modernism
because post-modernism manages as a
response it's a response to the
Nietzschean dilemma right the
cornerstone of civilization has been
demolished by rational critique and no
wonder it needed to be criticized but it
needed to be more deeply understood and
criticism and deep understanding are the
same thing unless the criticism is only
destruction because if you criticize
something what you're doing is
separating the wheat from the chaff
you're not burning all of it you're
saying well not this not this but
definitely this definitely this and
that's what education should provide you
with the opportunity to do as well
what should we conserve and what should
we dispense with well we can serve
what's centrally true and now we need to
understand it we have to conserve the
ideas that the individual has an
infinite responsibility to the direction
of being and we know that you know
perfectly well that you live in a
relationship with your own conscience
and when you violate the moral order
that's part and parcel of your soul
you're ashamed and hide and bitter and
then you get angry you can't show your
face to other people you can't even look
at yourself in the mirror and you know
perfectly well that's true even though
you may not know what to do about it or
how to get out of it
if there's a moral order built into
human beings if there wasn't there's no
way we could even communicate with one
another because there'd be no rules of
communication there'd be nothing that we
mutually wanted or expected from each
other you know one of the things that I
figured out is that we're all appalled
when we run into another person who is
not yet
Redeemer every person you ever meet
you're you're dissatisfied with because
they're not who they could be
and you're broadcasting that message at
everyone all the time you're not who you
could be you're not who you could be
you're not who you could be I'm not who
I could be and we're all facing each
other with our emotional displays
pleading with each other to become that
which we couldn't become and everyone
knows it
but we won't do it and it's no wonder
the post modernist there's a logical
conclusion of the Nietzschean dilemma
god is dead values the value structure
collapsed the specter arises of all
value structures collapsing that's the
post modernist dogma all value
structures have collapsed they're only
there for the purposes of exclusion they
have no intrinsic value it's a very very
powerful argument that's why it
dominates the universities that and the
fact that allows people decision to
dispense with their moral responsibility
which is something that's never
discussed by the post modernist but you
have to give the devil his due what's
the problem with post-modernism well if
all value structures have collapsed then
there's nothing to do because in order
to do something one thing has to be
better than another because otherwise
why do it and so people who are
ensconced in the postmodern traditions
are undermined by their own philosophy
they can deconstruct their own
deconstruction in which case they might
as well just sit there and do nothing
which would actually be preferable to
what they're doing else so how do they
extract themselves from that dilemma
they do it eeeh logically but they don't
care because the post modernist first of
all don't believe in logic that's a
reflection of the logos which they
dispensed with dialog they don't believe
it because that's a reflection of the
logos which they've dispensed with logic
and dialogue
irrelevant well that does bring up the
problem of what to do well there's post
modernist finesse that by reverting to
the Marxist doctrines from which
post-modernism emerged and so they say
well yeah you can't get any direction
from post-modernism but we don't we're
not going to worry about that because we
don't worry about such things what we'll
do is just use sleight of hand to push
forward the communitarian doctrines out
of which our original hypothesis emerged
and everyone says well we'll turn a
blind eye to the paradox because we
actually need something to do and plus
to the degree that we're communitarian
we can take out our nihilistic
resentment and arrogance and ingratitude
on every single person we deemed to have
something more than we have and so if
you're wondering why certain values can
exist in the absence of any value you
have to look no farther than to
understand that people who are desperate
and chaotic will still be angry and
destructive and they can manifest that
perfectly with the moral mask that says
well I'm not really after what you have
because you have a little more than me
I'm speaking on behalf of these people
who have even led like it's absolute
nonsense it's so funny watching Yale
students complain about the privilege
they're in the top one-tenth of one
hundredth of a percent of people who've
lived in the entire history of the
planet much less just the people that
are on the planet now they're dominating
patriarchs in training right there baby
representatives of the patriarchy and
all they do is complain about that tiny
tiny infant essa mole fraction of people
who have slightly more than they have
now it's appalling and their idiot
professors pass them on the back and
send them out the world to do that
instead of teaching them how to live
they damaged their mental health they
hurt our society they're bringing things
down and that's what they're aiming at
the post modernist managed to be
nihilistic
and totalitarian at the same time which
is something that not even Nietzsche
dreamed about despite the fact that he
had the greatest imagination for
pathology that perhaps ever existed in
addition they combined the nihilism and
the totalitarian ISM with the worst
aspects of dogmatic religion because
what they've essentially established is
a cult into which children who attend
University are now indoctrinated at
great cost I might add and with very
little practical outcome what's the
alternative given that they have a point
well as far as I can tell the
alternative is a proper return to the
past and that is precisely to journey
into the chaos to look at the worst
possible thing and to pull the dead
farther up from the chaotic depths
that's how you start being a puppet
someone whose strings are being pulled
by forces they do not understand behind
the scenes you find out what's great
about your culture this thing that's
provided us with everything that we see
in this room this amazing warmth that
we're experiencing when it's 30 bloody
below outside the fact that the
electricity or the heart and that
computational resources are working that
we can all sit here peacefully and then
no one is hungry fact or to fact that
for a big problem oh no we have so much
stuff for getting fat yeah well that's a
good problem to have you should have
some gratitude for what's being produced
that's brought us to this point and we
need to wake up and understand what
we're doing well that's what that's what
people like that's what the
psychoanalysts were trying to do in the
20th century that's what all the great
clinicians were trying to do and I would
say above all else that was what Carl
Jung was trying to do
he believed firmly that the idea of the
divine spark within the individual was a
was a metaphysical reality by which he
meant a reality that actually
transcended and existed superordinate to
the physical reality a more real reality
that's whatever consciousness is
something we understand from a
scientific perspective not at all
all that's been represented in our
mythologies as far back as we could push
them as an independent agent in the
world giving rise to form that's how we
treat each other that's how we recognize
ourselves that's how we judge each other
you make your bed and then you lie in it
and everyone knows that that's not to
say that you're not subject to random
and chaotic circumstances and the
tragedy of life just because you can do
some things doesn't mean you can do
everything but you can do some things
and if you don't do them then things
fall apart and the problem with things
falling apart is that you will be happy
about it to the degree that you're not
trying to repair them because to the
degree that you do not manifest what's
within you then your life falls apart
around you and everything that could
make you better multiplies until you're
in a situation where you want the
destruction you want to bring it on and
it's not surprising because life can be
so terrible that the question of whether
or not it should exist at all can be a
real question but the answer to that is
is life so terrible that it shouldn't
exist well the answer is it depends on
how you live it and if your life is so
terrible that you can't bear it then it
raises the question of whether or not
you're living it properly and that's not
to say that people don't suffer under
burdens that are too great for them to
bear they certainly do it doesn't matter
because if you let that in bitter you if
you let that destroy your religions to
the proper path all it does is make that
worse and everything else it's no out
so what did I learn from studying from
studying the terrible situation that
obtained in the mid-1980s when the
Soviets and the West had tens of
thousands of hydrogen bombs pointed at
each other ready to go at a moment's
notice why did that happen what did I
learn
it was simple the reason that that
situation existed was because I was not
good enough I was not good enough the
reason that the terrible situations in
the world exist now is because you're
not good enough you're not good enough
you're not good enough we could solve
any problem you can solve any problem if
we used all the resources that were
available to us if we live properly we
have no idea what we could turn what
we're in into so I would say you support
free speech because it's the mechanism
that maintains the sanity of the
individual and society and you live in
relationship with the spoken truth to
the best of your ability because the
alternative is hell and if hell is what
you want then you can remain arrogant
and resentful and deceitful but if you
want to work to better the world to
bring it up to what it might be then you
speak forthrightly you clarify yourself
and you act properly in the world and
then you see what happens and this is
the final thing I'll say I spent a long
time studying the Sermon on the Mount
it's a key document
it's Christ's commentary on the 10
commandments in a sense the question
being if you codify the rules by which a
society might function is there
something within the structure of the
rules that rises above them that acts as
the fundamental principle from which
they're all derived it's the ultimate
question of human ethics what is the
highest principle an answer that's put
forth in the Sermon on the Mount is
quite straightforward
and at the highest possible good that
you can conceive of whatever that is
that you can conceive them that serves
as your God for all intents and purposes
having aligned yourself with that good
speak the truth and see what happens
that's the act of faith the act of faith
is whatever the truth reveals is the
best of all possible worlds regardless
of how it appears to you now it's a
guess right it's something you stake a
back on well what do you think the best
of all possible worlds will be brought
into being by defeat it seems unlikely
you know that doesn't work in your own
life you tangle yourself up in your own
lies right one lie breeds 10 and 10
breeds 100 and maybe you put the
consequences on down the road and you
don't fall into the pit for five or six
years maybe you'll even forgotten why
you fell in when you finally do fall in
but everyone knows that everyone knows
that you don't get away with anything
and so the issue is well what would
happen if you just said what you thought
stupid as it is inaccurate as it is and
listen to people criticize you in
response to shape you and make you more
articulate what would your life be like
and answer that is and I know this to be
true I've worked with many many people
on precisely this problem your life gets
better and better and better and richer
and deeper but that comes with a heavier
and heavier burden of responsibility
well that's okay you use the observation
of your own capability to bear
responsibility to buttress yourself
against the terrors of being finite you
say weak and miserable as I am I can
still stand up to the terrible tragedy
of life and prevail and that's good
enough thank you
[Applause]