Hi
I'm in the dressing room at the Palace Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky on June 14th
2018 and
I thought I'd read you an excerpt from maps of meaning the architecture of belief which is a book I published
in 99 with Routledge and
It's been the basis of my YouTube lectures and I would say also
Twelve rules for life a lot of the ideas and twelve rules for life were first worked out with maps of meaning
I just recorded an audio version of the book was released two days ago
June 12 2008 een and
It's available from Penguin Books on audible. I'll put the links in the description of the video
I'm hoping that the audio version with its
Careful intonation will be easier to understand maps of meaning is a rather difficult book
in any case I'm going to read you an excerpt from it today and
That'll serve as a bit of an introduction to the book
I'll make some more excerpts over the next coming weeks I think as well, but we'll start with this one. I
Was reading
Jeffrey Burton Russell's mephistopheles the devil in the modern world when I came across his discussion of
Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
Russell discusses Ivan's argument for atheism, which is one of the most powerful ever mounted
Ivan is one of the brothers in The Brothers Karamazov
Ivan's examples of evil all taken from the daily newspapers of 1876 are unforgettable
The nobleman who orders his hounds to tear the peasant boy to pieces in front of his mother
The man who whips his struggling horse on its gentle eyes
The parents who locked their tiny daughter all night in the freezing privy while she knocks on the walls pleading for mercy
The Turk who entertains a baby with a shiny pistol before blowing its brains out
Ivan knows that such horrors of kur daily and can be multiplied without end
I took the case of children Ivan explains to make case clearer
Of the other tears with which the earth is soaked. I will say nothing
Burton Russell states
the relation of evil to God has in the century of Auschwitz and Hiroshima once again become center of
philosophical and theological discussion
The problem of evil can be stated simply
God is omnipotent
God is perfectly good
Such a God would not permit evil to exist
But we observe that evil exists. Therefore. God does not exist
Variations on this theme are nearly infinite
The problem is not only abstract and philosophical. Of course. It is also personal and immediate
Believers tend to forget that their God takes away everything that one cares about possessions comforts success
professional craft knowledge
friends family and life
What kind of God is this any?
Decent religion must face this question squarely and no answer is credible that cannot be given in the face of dying children
It seems to me that we use the horrors of the world to justify our own inadequacies
We make the presumption that human vulnerability is a sufficient cause of human cruelty
we blame God and God's creation for twisting and perverting our souls and claim all the time to be innocent victims of
circumstance
What do you say to a dying child
you say
You can do it. There is something in you that is strong enough to do it and
you don't use the terrible vulnerability of children as an excuse for the rejection of existence and the perpetration of
conscious evil
When I wrote maps of meaning I did not have much experience as a clinical psychologist
Two of my patients however stayed in my mind
The first was a woman about 35 years old
She looked 50 she reminded me of a medieval peasant
Of my conception of a medieval peasant. She was dirty clothes hair teeth
dirty with the kind of Filth that takes months to develop
She was unbearably shy
She approached anyone who she thought was superior in status to her, which was virtually everyone hunched over
With her eyes shaded by her hands both hands as if she could not tolerate the light emanating from her target
She had been in behavioral treatment in a Montreal
Hospital before as an outpatient and was in fact a sight known to the permanent staff at the clinic
Others had tried to help her overcome her unfortunate manner of self presentation which made people on the streets shy away from her
Made them regard her as crazy and unpredictable
She could learn to stand or sit up temporarily with eyes on garden
But she reverted to her old habits as soon as she left the clinic
She may have been intellectually impaired in consequence of some biological fault
It was difficult to tell because her environment was so appalling. It may have caused her ignorant
She was illiterate as well
She lived with her mother whose character. I knew nothing about and with an elderly desperately ill bedridden aunt
Her boyfriend was a violent alcoholic
schizophrenic who mistreated her
Psychologically and physically who was always muddling her simple mind with tirades about the devil and the worship of Satan
She had nothing going for her. No beauty. No intelligence. No loving family. No skills
No employment
Nothing
She didn't come to therapy to resolve her problems
However, nor to unburden her soul nor to describe her mistreatment and victimization at the hands of others
she came she
Came because she wanted to do something for someone who was worse off than her
Of the clinic where I was interning was associated with a large
psychiatric hospital all of the patients that still remained after the shift to community CAIR in the aftermath of the 60s were so
incapacitated that they could not survive on the streets
she had done some volunteer work of some limited type in that hospital and
Decided if she could maybe befriend a patient take him or her outside for a walk. I
Think she got this idea because she had a dog which he walked regularly and what she liked to take care of
All she wanted from me was help arranging this helped finding someone who she could take outside
Help finding someone in the hospital bureaucracy who would allow this to happen. I
Was not very successful in aiding her, but she didn't seem to hold that against me
it is said that one piece of evidence that runs contrary to a theory is sufficient to disprove that theory of
Course people do not think this way and perhaps should not in
General a theory is too useful to give up easily
Too difficult to regenerate and the evidence against should be consistent and believable before it is accepted
but the existence of this woman made me think she
Was destined for a psychopathological end from the viewpoint of biological and environmental determinism
fated as surely as anyone I had ever met
And maybe she beat her dog sometimes and was rude to her sick aunt
Maybe I never saw her vindictive or unpleasant even when her simple wishes were thwarted
I don't want to say that she was a saint because I didn't know her well enough to tell
But the fact was that in her misery and simplicity, she remained without self pity and able to see outside of herself
Why wasn't she a criminal cruel?
unbalanced and miserable
She had every reason to be
And yet she wasn't in her simple way. She had made the proper choices
She remained bloody but unbowed and she seemed to me rightly or wrongly to be a symbol of suffering humanity
sorely afflicted
Yet capable of cur and love
God justifies his creation in Milton's Paradise Lost
Such I created all the ethereal powers and spirits both them who stood and them who failed
Not free what proof? Could they have given sincere of true allegiance?
constant faith or love where only what they needs must do appeared not what they would
What praise could they receive what pleasure I from such obedience?
Paid when will and reason reason also his choice?
Useless and vain of freedom both de spoiled made passive both had served necessity not me
They therefore as to right belonged
so were created nor can justly accuse their maker or their making or their fate as if
Predestination overruled their will disposed by absolute decree or high foreknowledge
they themselves decreed their own revolt not I
If I for new foreknowledge have no influence on their fault, which had no less proved certain unfair known
So without least impulse or shadow of fate or ought by me immutably foreseen they trespass
authors to themselves in all
Both what they judge and what they choose
For so, I formed them free and free. They must remain till they enthralled themselves. I
Else must change their nature and revoke the high decree
unchangeable eternal
Which ordained their freedom they themselves?
ordained their fall
The other patient I wish to describe was the schizophrenic in a small inpatient ward at a different Hospital
He was about 29 when I met him a few
Years older than I was at the time and had been in and out of confinement for seven years
He was of course on antipsychotic medication and participated in occupational therapy Act
He's on the ward making coasters and pencil holders and so on but he could not maintain
Attention for any amount of time. It was not even much good at crafts
My supervisor asked me to administer an intelligence test to him
The standard ways are more for the sake of my experience than for any possible diagnostic. Good. I
Gave my patients some of the red and white blocks that made up the block design sub tests
He was supposed to arrange the blocks so they matched a pattern printed on some cards
He picked them up and started to rearrange them on the desk in front of him while I timed him stupidly with a stopwatch
The task was impossible for him. Even at the simplest of stages. He looked
Constantly distracted and frustrated. I
Asked what's wrong?
He said the battle between good and evil in heaven is going on in my head. I
Stopped the testing at that point. I didn't know exactly what to make of his comment
He was obviously suffering and the testing seemed to make it worse
What was he experiencing?
He wasn't lying. That's for sure in the face of such a statement. It seemed ridiculous to continue. I
spent some time with him that summer I
never met someone who was so blatantly mentally ill we talked on the ward and
Occasionally I would take him for a walk through the hospital grounds outside
He was the third son of first generation immigrants his firstborn brother was a lawyer the other a physician
His parents were obviously ambitious for their children
hard-working and disciplined
He had been a graduate student
working towards a degree in
Immunology, I don't precisely remember his brothers had sent him a daunting example, and he felt pressured to succeed
His experimental work had not turned out as he had expected. However, and he apparently came to believe that he might not graduate
not at least when he had hoped to
so
He faked his experimental results and wrote up his thesis anyway
He told me that the night he finished writing he woke up and saw the devil standing over him at the foot of his bed
This event triggered the onset of his mental illness from which he had never recovered
It might be said that the satanic apparition merely accompanied the expression of some pathological
stress induced neural development whose appearance was
biologically predetermined or that the devil was merely
Personification of his cultures conception of moral evil manifesting itself in imagination as a consequence of his guilt
Both of these levels of description have their merits
But the fact remains that he saw the devil and at the vision accompanied or even was the event that destroyed him
He was afraid to tell me much of his fantasy and it was only after I had paid careful attention to him that he opened
up
He was not
Bragging or trying to impress me. He was terrified about what he believed
Terrified as a consequence of the fantasies that impressed themselves upon him
he told me that he could not leave the hospital because someone was waiting to shoot him a
typical paranoid delusion
Why did someone want to kill him?
Well, he was hospitalized during the Cold War
Not at its height perhaps but still during a time when the threat of purposeful nuclear annihilation
Seemed more plausible more likely than it does now
many of the people I knew used the existence of this threat to justify to
Themselves their failure to participate fully in life a life
Which they thought of romantically as doomed and therefore as pointless
but there was some real terror in the pose and
The thought of the countless missiles pointed here and there around the world sapped the energy and faith of everyone
hypocritical or not
My schizophrenic patient believed that he was in fact the incarnation of the world annihilating force
That he was destined is released from the hospital to make his way south to a nuclear missile silo on American territory
That he was fated to make the decision that would launch the final war
The people outside the hospital knew this and that is why they were waiting to shoot him
He did not want to tell me this story in consequence
Although he did because he thought that I might then want to kill him too
My friends in graduate school thought of ironic that I had contact with a patient of this type
My peculiar interest in young and Young's ideas regarding the collective unconscious were well known to them and it seemed absurdly
Fitting that I would end up talking to someone with delusions of this title
But I didn't know what to do with his ideas
Of course, they were crazy and they had done in my patient
But it still seemed to me that they were true from the metaphorical viewpoint
His story in totality linked his individual choice between good and evil with the cumulative horror then facing the world
His story implied that because he had given in to temptation at a critical juncture
He was in fact responsible for the horror of the potential of nuclear war
But how could this be?
And seemed insane to me to even consider that the act of one powerless
Individual could be linked in some manner to the outcome of history as a whole
But I have no longer so sure
I've read much about evil and its manner of perpetration and growth and I'm no longer convinced that each of us are so innocent
so harmless
It is of course a logical to presume that one person one speck of dust among six billion motes is any sense
responsible for the horrible course of human events
But that course in itself is not logical far from it and it seems likely that it depends on
processes that we do not understand
The most powerful arguments for the non-existence of God
At least a good God are predicated on the idea that such a being would not allow for the resistance of evil in its classical
natural
diseases disasters or moral war
pogroms forms
Such arguments can be taken further even than atheism can be used to dispute the justice of the existent world itself
Dostoyevsky states, perhaps the entire cosmos is not worth a single innocent child's suffering
How can the universe be constructed such that pain is permitted
How can a good God allow for the existence of a suffering world?
These difficult questions can be addressed in part as a consequence of careful analysis of evil
First it seems reasonable to insist upon the value of the natural
moral distinction
the tragic circumstances of life should not be placed in the same category as
willfully undertaken harm
Tragedy subjugation to the mortal conditions of existence
Has an ennobling aspect at least in potential and has been constantly exploited to that end in great literature and mythology
True evil by contrast is anything but noble?
Participation it Out's whose sole purpose is expansion of innocent pain and suffering destroys character
Forthright encounter with tragedy by contrast may increase it
This is the meaning of the christian myth of the crucifixion
It is christ's full participation in and freely chosen
Acceptance of his fate which he shares with all mankind that enables him to manifest his full identity with god
And it is that identity which enables him to bear that fate and which strips it of evil
Conversely it is the voluntary demeaning of our own characters, which makes the necessary tragic conditions of existence
appear evil
But why is life tragic why are we subject to unbearable limitation to pain
Zees and death to cruelty at the hands of nature and society
Why do terrible things happen to everyone?
These are of course
Unanswerable questions, but they must be answered somehow if we are able to face our own lives
The best I can make of it is this this has helped me
Nothing can exist without
preconditions even a game cannot be played without rules and the rules say what cannot be done as much as what can
Perhaps the world is not possible as a world without its borders without its rules
Maybe existence wouldn't be possible in the absence of our painful limitations
Think of it this way if we could have everything we wanted merely for wishing it if every tool
Performed every job if all men were omniscient and immortal that everything would be the same the same
All-powerful thing God and creation would never exist
That is the differences between things which is a function of their specific limitations that allows them to exist at all
But the fact that things do exist does not mean that they should exist even if we are willing to grant them their necessary
limitations
Should the world exist?
are the preconditions of experience so terrible that the whole game should be called off and
There is never any shortage of people working diligently towards this end
It seems to me that we answer this question implicitly
But profoundly when we lose someone we loved and then grieve
This is a very common experience. I
Don't think we cried because they existed either
But because they are lost
This presupposes a judgment rendered at a very fundamental level of analysis
grief
presupposes having loved
presupposes the judgment that this person's specific
Bounded exists was valuable was something that should have been even in its inevitably imperfect and vulnerable form
But still the question lingers why should things even love things exist at all?
If they're necessary limitations cause such suffering
Perhaps we could reserve answer to the question of God's nature his
Responsibility for the presence of the evil in creation until we have solved the problem of our own
perhaps we could tolerate the horrors of the world if we left our own characters intact and
Developed them to the fullest
If we took full advantage of every gift we had been granted
Perhaps the world would not look horrible then
That was from pages
343 to
347 from maps of meaning
published in 1999 audio version released June 12
2018. I'll read some more excerpts in the coming days and weeks. Thanks very much. Bye bye