[Music]
all right so the last time I was here
many of you were as well we got halfway
through the story of Jacob and I've been
digging underneath the story
sporadically since then to try to find
out whether other themes are being
developed and I've got some things that
I think are really interesting to talk
about so so we'll get right into it so
I'm gonna review a little bit first so
we were talking about Jacob and I'll
read eight his biography a little bit so
that we can place ourselves in the
proper context before we go on so his
mother Rebecca gave birth to twins and
the twins even in her womb were
struggling for although they were
struggling and of course the story is
that they were struggling for dominance
the older are the younger against the
older really because Jacob Jacob means
usurper and Rebecca had a what would you
call a vision from God that said that
Jacob would supplant Esau and so even
before her twins were born they were in
a state of competition and that's a
recapitulation of the motif of the
hostile brothers right it's a very very
very common mythological motif and we we
already saw that really well developed
in the story of Cain and Abel right and
Cain and Abel were essentially the first
two human beings the first two natural
born human beings and they were
instantly locked in a state of enmity
which is symbolic of first the enmity
that exists within people's psyche
between the part of them you might say
that's aiming at the light and the part
of them that's aiming at the darkness
and I think that's a reasonable way of
portraying it obviously it's a way that
sort of rife with symbolism but my
experience of people especially when you
get to know them seriously or when
they're dealing with serious issues is
that there is quite clearly a part of
them that's striving to do well in the
world or even to do good and another
part that's deeply sinned
and embittered that that says to hell
with it and is self-destructive and
lashes out and really aims at making
things worse and so that seems to be a
natural part of the human psyche and
that's also reflected in the the idea of
the fall and so those ideas are not
easily cast away they're associated with
the rise of self-consciousness right and
in the story of the Garden of Eden and I
think that's right because I do think
that our self-consciousness produces
that division within us because more
than any other creature were intensely
aware of our finitude and suffering and
that tends to turn us at least to some
degree against being itself you know I
was watching a bunch of protesters in
the US last week scream out the sky
about Trump you know and it was
interesting like I thought it was an
extraordinarily narcissistic display but
but despite that there was something
symbolically appropriate about it
I also there's a movie I really like
sadly enough called fubar I don't know
how many of you have seen that yeah you
know that movie I take it yeah it's
about the people I grew up with so yeah
that's true man I'm telling you that's
true so the the guy the main actor in
fubar who's quite bright but completely
uncivilized gets testicular cancer and
there's one great scene where he gets
far too drunk and he's stumbling around
the street you know in in a virtually
comatose state and of course he's not
very thrilled with what's happened to
him and he's shaking his fist at the sky
it's pouring rain and he's cursing God
and you know it's like well you can kind
of understand his position so that kind
of reminded me of these people who were
yelling at this guy you know they were
basically they were out dramatizing the
idea of in rape they were enraged at
well you could say god of course most of
them wouldn't say that but but they were
the ones yelling at the damn sky I mean
you know so you got a he got a look at
what they're doing rather than what they
say
and they were outraged that being was
constructed such that Trump could have
arisen as president and so well so this
idea you know that we can be easily
turned against being and work for its
destruction is a really it's a really
common common common theme it never goes
away you see it echoed in stories like
with the new Marvel series for example
you see the enmity between Thor and Loki
that's a good example of the same thing
or between Batman and the Joker there's
there's a Superman and Lex Luthor these
there's these pairs of hero against
villain that's a really dramatic and
easily what everyone can understand that
dynamic right it's a basic plot and the
reason it's a basic plot is because it's
true of the battle within our spirits
our own individual spirits it's true
within families because sibling rivalry
can be unbelievably brutal it's true
between human beings who are strangers
it's true between groups of people like
it's true at every level of analysis and
then in some sense it's it's archetypal
true at least with regards to deep
religious symbolism because you see that
echoed in many stories as well so I
think the clearest representation is
probably Christ and Satan that's the
closest to a pure archetype although
there's in the old Egyptian stories
there's Osiris and Seth or Horus and
Seth and Seth is a precursor to Satan
etymologically so it's a very very
common motif and so that's what happens
again in Rebecca's womb is that this
thing this idea is played out right away
and the two two twins are actually what
would you call it there they have a
superordinate destiny because one of
them is destined to become the father of
Israel and of course that's a pinnacle
moment in the Old Testament obviously
and arguably a pinnacle moment in human
history now you know degree to which the
stories in the Old Testament actually
constitute what we would consider
empirical history as a matter of debate
but it doesn't matter in some sense
because as I mentioned I think before in
this lecture series know there are there
are forms of fiction that are met a true
which means that they're not necessarily
about a specific individual although I
generally think they are based on the
life of specific individuals it's the
simplest theory but who knows right but
they're they're more real than reality
itself because they abstract out the
most relevant elements of reality and
present them to you and that's why you
watch fiction you know you don't you
want you want your fiction boiled down
right you want to boil down to the
essence that's what makes good fiction
and that essence is something that's
truer than then plain old truth if it's
handled well and so you know if you
watch a Shakespeare play half a lifetime
of events can go by in a Shakespeare
play and it covers you know a wide range
of scenes and so on and and so it's it's
cut and edited and compressed all at
once but because of that it blasts you
with with a kind of emotional and
ethical force that just the mere
videotaping of someone's daily life it
wouldn't even wouldn't even come close
to approximating so then this motif of
the hostile brothers that's a that's a
deep deep archetypal truth and raychel
two nations are in thy womb and two
manner of people shall be separated from
thy bowels and one people shall be
stronger than the other and the elder
shall serve the younger and so there's a
inversion there right because as we've
discussed historically speaking and
traditionally speaking it's the elder
son that to whom the disproportionate
blessings flow there's some truth in
that too even more
what would you say more empirically iq
tends to decrease as the number of
children in the family increase the
younger the old
is the smartest generally speaking it
isn't clear why that is but it might be
that they get more attention and who
knows so those of you who are younger
can be very unhappy about that fact now
Jacob
okay so there's another there's another
plotline here too because Abraham and
and Rebecca are at odds at sorry Isaac
and Rebecca are at odds about the
children right so there's a there's an
eatable twist to it too because well
Isaac is allied with Esau who turns out
to be the hunter type so he's your basic
rough-and-tumble character you know and
he's kind of a wild looking guy he'll
Harry and he likes to be outside he
lives in tents he likes to hunt he's a
man's man that's one way of thinking
about it
whereas Jacob dwells in tents you know
he doesn't go outside much he's more
well maybe he's more introverted but
he's certainly this sort of kid
adolescent say who hangs around home and
it there's some intimation that he's his
mud well he's clearly his mother's
favorite and with all the advantages and
I suppose disadvantage does go along
with that and Isaac and Rebecca don't
see eye-to-eye about who should have
predominance among the sons and Rebecca
is quite complicit with Jacob in
inverting the social order so the first
thing that happens that's crooked is
that Esau comes in from hunting and he's
you know maybe he's been out for a
number of days and he's ravenous and
he's kind of an impulsive guy doesn't
really seem to think about the long term
very much and Jacob was cooking some
lentil stew and Esau I want some of it
and Jacob refuses and and then says that
he'll trade his his birthright for it
and Esau agrees which is a bad deal
right it's a bad deal and so you you
could say that Esau actually deserves
what's coming to him
although
at minimum you'd have to think of them
both as being equally culpable it's a
nasty trick
and so that's Jacob's first trick and
then the second trick is that it's later
and Isaac is old and blind and you know
close to death and it's time for him to
bestow a blessing on his sons which is a
very important event apparently among
these ancient people and Esau again is
out hunting and Rachel dress dress is
Jacob up in a hairy it puts a goat skin
on his arm so he's kind of hairy like
Esau and dresses him and Esau is closed
so he smells like he's so and Isaac
tells Esau to go out and hunt him up
some some venison I think it is and
which is a favorite of his and Rebekah
has Jacob cook up a couple of goat kids
and serve that to Isaac and play the
role of Esau and so he does that it's
pretty net damn nasty really all things
considered you know to play a trick like
that both on your brother and on your
blind father and the inclusion with your
mother it's not the sort of thing that's
really designed to promote a lot of
familial harmony and so especially
because you've already screwed him over
in a big way once you know you'd think
you'd think that would be sufficient so
anyways he's successful and Esau loses
his father's blessing and so that Jacob
ends up really in the position of the
firstborn and it's quite interesting
because you know God tells Rachel that
Jacob is going to be the dominant twin
and you'd think again with God's
blessing or at least the prophecy that
Jacob would end up being a good guy but
he's certainly not presented that way to
begin with which is also quite
interesting given that he's the eventual
founder of Israel and it's another
indication of the realism of these old
stories you know and it's it's quite
amazing to me it's always been quite
amazing to me how unpretty fight these
stories have remained you know because
you'd think that if you're even the
least bit sinned
especially if you had the kind of
Marxist religion is the opiate of the
masses kind of viewpoint which which is
a credible viewpoint you know although
it's wrong but it's correct well I I
think it's a shallow I think it's a
shallow interpretation and not part of
the reason I think it's a shallow
interpretation is because the stories
would be a lot prettier if that was the
case these characters wouldn't have this
strange realistic moral ambiguity about
them you know if you're gonna feed
people a fantasy then it you want it to
be like a Harlequin novel or or our
greeting card or something like that you
don't want it to be a story that's full
of betrayal and deceit and murder and
mayhem and genocide and all of that if
that just doesn't seem all that
what would you say calming I guess would
be the right right answer
so anyways Jacob gets away with this but
Esau is not happy and and Jacob is quite
convinced that he might kill him and I
think that was a reasonable fear because
he saw was a tough guy and he was used
to being outside and he knew how to hunt
and he knew how to kill and he actually
wasn't very happy about getting
seriously screwed over by his you know
stay-at-home younger brother twice and
so Jacob runs off and goes to visit his
uncle and on the way and this is a very
interesting part of this story he stops
and to sleep and he takes a stone for a
pillow and then he has this vision it's
called a dream but the context makes it
look like a vision of a ladder reaching
up to heaven and with angels moving up
and down the the ladder let's say and
there's some representations of that I
showed you some of them the last time we
met but I'll read it to you first he
lighted upon a certain place and Ty read
there all night because the Sun was set
and he took of the stones of that place
and put them for his pillows and lay
down in that place to sleep and he
dreamed and beheld a ladder set up on
the earth and the top of it reached to
heaven and behold the angels of God
ascending and descending on it and
behold the Lord stood above it and said
I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father
and the god of Isaac
land whereon thou liest to thee I will
give it and to thy seed and thy seed
shall be as the dust of the earth and
thou shalt spread abroad to the west and
to the east and to the north and the
south so that lays out the canonical
directions right so now there's a center
with the canonical directions like the
thing that you see you know that little
symbol you see on maps it's the same
thing that symbolically placed upon the
earth so a center has been established
with radiating well with with what with
with directional lines radiating from it
so it establishes as a place and in the
end I seed shall all the families of the
earth be blessed so that's pretty good
news for Jacob and it's not self-evident
why God is rewarding him for running
away after screwing over his brother but
that seems to be what happens and so
here's a couple of representations
classic representations the one on the
right is William Blake is what I
particularly like you know and Blake
assimilates God with the Sun and with
light right so that's quite a common
mythological idea that that God is
associated with light and the day behold
I am with thee and will keep thee in all
places whither thou goest and will bring
me again into this land for I will not
leave thee until I have done that which
I have spoken to thee of and Jacob
awaked out of his sleep and he said
surely the Lord is in this place and I
knew it not and he was afraid which is
exactly the right response and said how
dreadful is this place it is none other
than the house of God and this is the
gate of heaven and Jacob rose up early
in the morning and took the stone that
he had put for his pillows and set it up
for a pillar and poured oil on the top
of it and that's that's a more important
thing than you think and we'll go into
that a little bit more deeply because up
to this point in this story there isn't
anything really
there isn't anything that's really
emerged to mark a sacred space right
there's no there's no cathedral there's
no Church there's nothing like that but
here's this idea that emerges that you
can mark the center of something that
and that's important and you mark it
with a stone
and stones a good way to mark things
that that are important because the
stone is permanent right and we mark
things with stones now like we mark
graves with stones for example because
we want to make a memory and to carve
something into stone to carve a stone
and then to carve something into stone
is to make a memory and to use stone is
to make a memory because stone is
permanent and to set it up right is to
to indicate a center and so that's what
happens and pours oil on the top of it
which is kind of offering and he called
the name of that place Bethel but the
name of the city was called Las at the
first and Jacob vowed a vow saying if
God will be with me and will keep me in
this way that I go and will give me
bread to eat and raiment to put on then
a tenth of what I earned I will give him
I missed that that's interesting too
because now there's a transformation of
sacrifice right because until that point
sacrifices have had been pretty
concretize dit was the burning of
something
whereas here all of a sudden it's the
offering of of productive labor per se
like a tithe because it tithe is a form
of sacrifice and so there's an
abstraction of the idea of sacrifice no
sacrifice it's really important that the
idea of sacrifice gets abstracted right
because it should be abstracted to the
point where it's it's used the way that
we use it today which is you know we
make sacrifices to get ahead and
everyone understands what that means but
the sacrifices are generally some
combination of psychological and and and
practical so we're not acting them out
we're precisely we're not dramatizing
them at ritualizing and we actually act
them out in our in the covenant that we
make with the future and we do that well
unless we're extraordinarily impulsive
and aimless in our lives and have really
no conception whatsoever of the future
and are likely to sacrifice the future
for the present which is it what he saw
does right then we make sacrifices and
you got to think like the idea of making
sacrifices to make the future better is
an extraordinarily difficult lesson to
learn
it took people god only knows how long
to learn that you know like we have no
idea it's not something that animals do
easily chimpanzees don't store leftover
meat you know they just and neither do
wolves they just a wolf can eat about
thirty pounds of meat in one sitting and
that's that's where the idea of wolfing
it down comes from they're not hiding it
saving it for later you know they can't
do that so they can't sacrifice the
present for the future so this is a big
deal that this that this happens now I
want to tell you a little bit about the
idea of the pillar because it's it's an
unbelievably deep idea and it Orient's
us in ways that we still don't it's
still orienting us in ways that we don't
understand and in fact it's actually the
mechanism by which we're oriented or and
if it's lacking then we become
disoriented and so I'll show you some
pictures and describe them first okay so
first of all there's a walled city so
let me tell you that you could think
about that as an archetypal human
habitation maybe it's a reflection of
something like a fire in the middle of
the plain or the forest or the jungle
for that matter although it's kind of
hard to get a fire going there imagine a
fire ringed around with logs and perhaps
ringed around with dwellings right so
the fire is in the center and the fire
defines the center and then as you move
away from the fire you move out into the
darkness right so the fire is light and
communion and safety and as you move
away from the fire you move out into the
darkness and what's terrifying out
beyond the perimeter so what's beyond
the perimeter is terrifying you can feel
that if you go camping somewhere that's
wild you know you're pretty damn happy
especially if the wolves are howling
you're pretty damn happy to be sitting
by the fire because you can see there
the fire keeps the animals away and you
know if you do wander into the bush into
the darkness then you're on alert and
you know you're predator detection
systems are on alert and so you could
think about the classical human
habitation as two places one where your
predator detection system isn't on alert
another where your predator textured
detection system is alert on alert and
you could think about that roughly as
the distinction between explored
territory and unexplored territory and
really the the founding of a place is
precisely this is a lot of this I got
from reading your chair le ah de the
founding of a place is precisely the
definition of a explored center set
against the unexplored periphery and you
know what's interesting about that so
you can kind of think about that with
regards to the walled city right
everything in the wall is cosmos and
everything outside the wall is chaos and
you know but it also extends to the
conceptual realm because imagine that
you're the master of a field of study
and so that's an interesting metaphor
because a field is a geographical
metaphor right and if in the center of
the field are those things that everyone
knows really well the axioms that
everyone abides by in the field and then
as you move towards the fringes you get
to work towards the unknown towards the
frontier of the discipline and as you
become expert you move from the center
to the frontier and so then you're on
the border when you're when you're when
you're a scholar a competent school
you're on the border between the
unexplored or the explored and
unexplored and you're trying to further
that border so even if you're just doing
this abstractly it's the same thing and
it's a reflection of the fact that every
human environment concrete or abstract
it makes no difference
recapitulates the cosmos chaos dichotomy
or the order chaos dichotomy and that's
why in Taoism for example it's the union
of chaos and order that constitutes
being itself and that you stand on the
border between chaos and order because
that's the proper place to be to orderly
to much in the explored you're not
learning anything too much out there
where the Predators lurk then you're
frozen with terror and neither of those
positions are desirable so and that's
what you know and so you think and this
is a concur
reality obviously as well as a
psychological reality there were reasons
for those walls right because inside the
walls where all the people like us and
so that begs the question what does it
mean for people to be like us and then
outside the wall there rose all those
people because they were the worst forms
of predators because people are actually
the worst forms of predators who aren't
like us and the wall is there to draw a
distinction between like us and not like
us and so and that was a matter of life
and death if you can tell that because I
mean look at those walls they had to
build those by hand and you know you do
see walled cities that have three rings
of walls so these people were terrified
but not so terrified as the people who
built three walls they were really
terrified and they had their reasons so
okay so now there's an idea that's
that's reflected in the Jacob's Ladder
story that the center where you put the
pillar is also the place where heaven
and earth touch and so that's that's a
complicated idea I think that you can
you know I'm trying to look at these
stories from a psychological perspective
and so then you could say that that's a
symbolic place where the lowest and the
highest come together and so it's a
place where earthly being stretches up
to the highest possible ethical
abstraction and that's the center
because one of the things that defines
us say as opposed to them is that we're
all united within a certain ethic that's
what makes us the same this is a
complicated line of reasoning and but
I'll go back to it after I show you some
more pictures but so that's that's the
first idea is that the center is the
place where the lowest and the highest
touch simultaneously and so you could
say that in some sense it specifies the
aim of a group of people that's another
way you know if you get together with
people
make a group even at work you group
yourself around a project and that
unites you and it unites you because you
all have the same aim you're all
pointing to the same thing and that
makes you the same in some ways because
if you're after the same thing I am then
the same things are going to be
important to you that are important to
me and the same things are going to be
negative to you that are negative to me
because our emotions work out that way
and that means I can instantly predict
you I know how you're going to behave
and so our aim which is basically our
ethical aim it's because we're aiming at
something better at least in principle
we're aiming at something better so our
ethical aim that unites our perceptions
and that's what aligns our emotions and
so that sort of begs the question if
you're going to build a community around
what aim should the community congregate
okay so the idea here is that the center
of the community is the pillar that
unites heaven and earth so it unites the
lowest with the highest so there's some
intimation of the idea that it's the
highest that unites the community okay
and so keep that in mind and that's a
very old idea as well that's the idea of
the axis mundi which is the center pole
that unites heaven and earth it's an
unbelievably old idea tens of thousands
of years old it might even stretch back
to whatever our archaic memories quasi
memories
I don't know how what you would describe
them archetypal memories of our
excessively old ancestry and trees when
the tree itself was in fact the center
of the world and that it was ringed by
snakes and chaos and so well we have no
idea how old these ideas are but they're
very very old and evolution is a
conservative business once it builds a
gadget then it builds new things on top
of that gadgets like a medieval town
right the center of the town is really
old and new newer areas of the town get
built around it but the center is still
really old and that's what we're like
you know our platforms like our our
basic physiological structure this this
skeletal body is some tens of millions
of years old or older than that if you
think about vertebrates it's much older
than that
and that's all conserved so everything's
built on top of everything else alright
so there there's a kind of a classic
town and there's the idea I showed you
this is Scandinavian World Tree same
idea at unites heaven and earth and
around the roots of that tree are snakes
that eat this tree constantly so that's
the idea that there's stability but
there's constant transformation around
that stability and at the same time the
snakes are knowing in the roots there's
streams that are nourishing it so it's
sort of it's sort of an echo of the idea
that life depends on death and renewal
constantly because your cells are dying
and being renewed constantly right if
they are just proliferating then you
have cancer if they're just dying then
you die it you have to get the balance
between death and life exactly right so
that you can actually live which is also
a very strange thing so and that tree is
something that reaches from the bottom
layers of being maybe the microcosm all
the way to the macrocosm that's the idea
anyways so then there's okay so there's
there's Jacob and his and his pillar
he's got this idea that you can mark the
center with this stone like it sort of
symbolizes what he was laying on when he
dreamt but now he's got this idea you
put something erect and it marks the
center and it symbolizes his vision of
the highest good something like that and
the promise that's been made to him and
then this is an Egyptian obelisk the
pyramid on top of it that's in Paris it
was taken from Luxor and it put in Paris
and so that's a much more sophisticated
instance of the same idea okay and there
was a Stone Age cultures across Eurasia
that put up these huge obelisks
everywhere these huge like the
Stonehenge is a good example of that
although it's it's very sophisticated
and there are also markers of places we
don't know exactly what their function
is but they're very much akin to this
some permanent marker of place there's a
good one so that's in st. Peters and I
really like this one because you can see
the
echoes of jacob's vision for the
establishment of a territory there right
you've got the obelisk in the middle and
then you've got the directions radiating
from the center and of course save
Peters this is the st. Peter's Basilica
in Rome which is an absolutely
unbelievable place it's just
jaw-dropping and so there's the
Cathedral at the back of it and then
there's this circle of pillars that
surrounds it you can just see them a
little bit on on the middle left there
that goes all the way around that entire
enclosure and you know very large number
of people can gather there and then so
that pillar marks the center and that
would be the center of Catholicism
essentially that's what that represents
right the the symbolic center of
Catholicism although you could make the
case that the cathedral is the center it
doesn't really matter they're very close
together and it's it's half a dozen of
one and six or the other and then here's
another representation of the same idea
right is that this is why people don't
like the flag to be burned
you know because conservative people see
the flag as the sacred thing that binds
people together and so they're not happy
when that sacred thing is destroyed even
if it's destroyed in the name of protest
whereas the people who burn flags think
well there are times to dramatize the
idea that the center has been corrupt
and you can demonstrate that by putting
it to the torch you know as a
representation that that this that the
corrupt center now has to be burned and
transformed and the thing is they're
both right they're both right all the
time because the center is absolutely
necessary and is sacred and is almost
always also corrupt and in need of
reparation that's also an archetypal
idea and and that's a useful thing to
know because you know it it's easy for
young people in particular to think that
well the world's going to hell in a
handbasket and it's the pot fault of the
last generation they've left us this
terrible mess and you know we've feeling
pretty betrayed about that and now we
have to clean it up it's like yeah yeah
people have been thinking that for like
thirty five thousand years it's not new
and the reason it's not new is because
it's always true you know what you're
handed is a sacred center with flaws
always always that's partly because it's
the creation of the dead right and the
dead can't see and they can't
communicate and so they're not in touch
with the present and so what they've
bequeathed to you apart from the fact
that it might actually be corrupt which
is a slightly different thing is at
least blind in dead and so what the hell
can you expect from something that's
blind and dead you know you're lucky if
it just doesn't stomp you out of
existence so so that's a lovely
photograph obviously and that's the
establishment of a new centre then the
the centre can be a cathedral too and
often is of course in in classic towns
European towns in particular although
it's not only European towns that are
like this there there's a center that's
made out of stone so that would be the
Cathedral and it's got the highest tower
on on top of the tower there's often a
cross and that's the symbolic centre so
people are are drawn together around
whatever the cross represents now that
the cross obviously represents a center
because it's an X right x marks the spot
so the centre of the cross is the center
and then the Cathedral is often in a
cross shape which also marks the center
and then in the cathedral there's a dome
often and that's the sky and that's that
ladder that reaches from earth to heaven
so it's a recapitulation of the same
idea so and people are drawn to that
Center and the centre is the symbol of
what unites them and what unites them is
the faith that the cathedral is the
embodiment of and you think well what
does the faith mean and again we're
approaching this psychologically and
what it means is that we everyone who's
a member of that group accepts the
transcendent ideal of the group now the
thing is if you're the member of a group
you accept the transcendent ideal of the
group that's what it means to be a
member of a group so if you're in a work
team and you're all working on a project
what you've essentially done is decided
that you're going to make the goal
unquestionable right I mean you might
argue about the details but if
are tasked with something you know
here's a job for you ten people organize
yourself around the job you can argue
about how you're going to do the job but
you can't argue about the job then the
group falls apart and so there's an act
of faith in some sense the reason that
the act of faith is necessary is because
it's very very difficult to specify
without error what that central aim
should be given that there's any number
of aims right and it's a very very
difficult thing to figure out and this
is something we're gonna do a little bit
tonight is like what should the aim be
around which a group would congregate
you know that so so especially if it's a
large group and it's a large group that
has to stay together across very large
swathes of time and the group is
incredibly diverse you know what
possible kind of ideal could unite a
large group of diverse people across a
very large stretch of time that's a
really really hard question and I think
part of the way that question has been
answered is it's been answered
symbolically and in images because it's
so damn complicated that it's almost
impossible to articulate so but
obviously you need to have a center
around which everyone can unite because
if you don't then everyone's at odds
with one another like if I don't know
what you're up to and you don't know
what he's up to
we have no we're just strangers and we
don't know that our ethics match at all
then the probability that we're going to
be able to exist harmoniously decreases
rapidly to zero and that's obviously
just no good that's a state of total
chaos so we can't have that it's it's
not possible to exist without a central
ideal it's not possible and it's deeper
than that it's deeper than that partly
because it's I don't know I'll try to
get this right this is the sort of thing
that I was arguing with sam harris about
you see your category system is a
product of your aims that's the thing
like if you have a set of facts at hand
the facts don't tell you how to
categorize the facts because there's too
damn many facts there's a trillion facts
and there's no way without imposing some
ape
I already order on them of determining
how it is that you should order them so
how do you order them well that's easy
you decide what you're aiming at now how
do you do that well I'm not answering
that question at the moment I'm just
saying that in order to organize those
facts you need a name and then the aim
instantly organizes the facts into those
things relevant to the aim tools let's
say those things that get in the way and
a very large number of things that you
don't have to pay attention to at all
right it excludes Verte like if you're
working on an engineering problem you
don't have to worry about practicing
medicine in your neighborhood you don't
there's a bunch of like if you're
focusing on a particular what would you
say any any job any any set of skills
implies that you're good at a small set
of things and then not good at an
incredibly large number of other skills
it simplifies things and so you can use
your aim as the basis of a category
structure and so you also have to keep
that in mind because what it means is as
far as I can tell that what it means is
that your category system itself which
is what structures your perceptions is
actually dependent on the ethics of your
aim it's directly it's a moral thing
it's directly dependent on your aim and
that's a stunning idea if it happens to
be true it's not how people think about
thinking we don't think that way we like
we think that we think deterministically
let's say or that we think empirically
or that we think rationally and none of
that appears to be the case what we do
is we pause it a valid aim and then we
organize the world around the aim and
there's plenty of evidence from that in
in in psychological studies of
perception right that that does look
like how the the perceptual systems work
mostly they ignore because the world is
too complicated they focus on a small
set of phenomena deemed relevant to
whatever the aim is and then of course
the aim is problematic again it's
complex because the aim I have has to be
a name that some of you at
or at least don't object to because
otherwise I'm not gonna get anywhere
with my damn aim it has to actually be
implementable in the world it has to be
sustainable across at least some amount
of time it can't kill me like it's
really hedged in this aim it's it isn't
any old thing there's hardly any things
that it can be so you know Jacob's aim
for example in undermining Esau almost
gets him killed and you can understand
why that's the other thing you think
well that that was a nasty bit of work
you can understand Esau's rage it's even
though we're separated from the people
in these stories by what four thousand
years three thousand years something
like that you know in immediately why
everyone feels the way they do at least
once you understand the context of the
story that none of that's mysterious in
the least so so there's the church and
the church is underneath the cross right
and so that's st. Peter's Basilica and
so there's the cross on the globe on top
of the Basilica and then there's the
cross on the obelisk as well and so what
that means is that and this is where
things get insanely complicated is that
the center is defined by whatever the
cross represents now the cross
represents a crossing point
geographically it's it's certainly that
the cross probably represents the body
to some degree but then the cross also
represents the place of suffering
obviously and more importantly it
represents the place of voluntary
suffering transcended I'm speaking
psychologically right not theologically
that's what it represents and so you
might say so here's the idea behind
putting down the obelisk with the cross
and saying that that's the center so
that's the thing that everyone's aiming
at and so the the idea would be well if
you're going to be a member of the group
defined by this obelisk then what you do
is accept your position at the center of
suffering voluntarily and therefore
transcend it that's the idea and that is
one hell of an idea
it really is man that is
a killer idea because it's actually a
signal it's a really clear signal of
psychological health you know because
one of the things you do if you're a
clinical psychologist and someone is
paralyzed by fear is what you do is you
break their fears down into relatively
manageable bits and then you have them
voluntarily confront their fears and it
might also be things that they're
disgusted by it's a if they have
obsessive compulsive disorder
but it produces very strong negative
emotion whatever it is and then you have
them voluntarily confront whatever it is
that produces that overwhelming negative
emotion and that makes them stronger
that's what happens it doesn't make them
less afraid it makes them more
courageous and stronger and that is not
the same thing it's seriously not it
doesn't decrease the fear it increases
the courage and so that's a
mind-boggling idea and it's deeper you
know one of the things that's really
interesting about these archetypal ideas
is that and maybe it's partly because of
the hyperlink nature of the Bible that's
part of it but it's not the whole thing
is that no matter how deep you dig into
them you'll never get to the bottom you
know you hit a bottom you think god
that's so unbelievably profound and then
if you excavate a little underneath that
you find something else that's even more
profound and you think wow that's got to
be the bottom and then you dig under
that's like there's no bottom you can
just keep digging down well as far as I
can tell you can keep digging down layer
after layer and we'll talk a little bit
about more a little more about what the
cross signifies as the center because
you see what people were trying to
figure out is what is it that we need to
unite under right what's the proper
thing to unite under I can give you
another example so in the Mesopotamian
societies the Emperor you know who was
more or less an an absolute monarch he
lived inside what was essentially a
walled city and the god of the
Mesopotamians was mardik and Marduk was
the figure who had eyes all the way
around his head and he spoke magic words
who is very attentive and very
articulate and it was Marduk who went
out and confronted the goddess of chaos
the dragon of chaos and cut her into
pieces and made up the world
okay so you can kind of understand what
that means so mardik goes beyond the
frontier into the place of predatory
chaos and encounters the thing that's
terrifying and then make something
productive out of it so it's a hero myth
and an mardik is elected to the position
of preeminent God by all the other
Mesopotamian gods because he manages
that so the the mardik idea emerges up
the Holy dominance hierarchy and hits
the pinnacle so that and god only knows
how long that took it would be the
amalgamation of many tribes and then
that the what the the distillation of
all the tribal myths to produce this
emergent story of what constitutes Tok
God and then the job of the Emperor was
to act out Marduk that's what gave him
sovereignty so the reason that he was
the center around which people organized
themselves wasn't because he was when he
was being a proper Emperor it wasn't
because there was something super
special about him like the power didn't
exactly reside in him which is a really
useful thing to separate right you want
the power which is why it's kind of nice
to have a symbolic monarch you get the
symbolic power separated from the
personality power right because
otherwise they get conflated that's what
happened in Rome it's a very you know
you can see it tending to happen now and
then in the u.s. like with the Kennedy
dynasty's and that sort of thing so the
idea was the Emperor had sovereignty as
long as he was acting out Marduk
properly and going out into the chaos
and cutting it into pieces and making
order that was his job so they used to
take him outside the city on the new
year's festival and strip him of all his
Emperor garments and humiliate him and
then force him to to confess all the
ways that year he hadn't been a good
Marduk so he wasn't a good ruler and so
that was supposed to clue him in and
wake him up right and then they would
ritually reenact the Battle of Marduk
against time out the chaos monster using
statues and then if that all went well
then the Emperor would go back in and
the city would be renewed for another
year and we still have
echoes of that in our New Year's
celebration right it's the same idea
that's echoed down all those all those
centuries thousands of years so it says
such a staggeringly brilliant idea right
because so part of the idea is that the
thing that's sovereign so that's the
pillar at the center that that everyone
gathers around is at least in part the
thing that courageously goes out into
the unknown and make something useful
out out of it for the community so
that's very very smart it's very smart
so this is another example of a center
so these this is the flag this is the
Union Jack and so it's made up of a
bunch of crosses right and so the first
cross the English cross that's the flag
of st. George that's the flag of England
and st. what is st. George do slaves the
dragon exactly same idea right so safe
George patron saint of England goes out
and slays the dragon and frees the
Virgin from the grip of the dragon same
idea right so that's the center and then
the second cross is called a saltier
but it's another crucifix so it's the
cross on which st. Andrew was crucified
says so it's the same idea it's that the
center is the center of suffering
voluntarily undertaken cuz Saint Andrew
was a martyr and then st. Patrick is the
third cross what did st. Patrick do in
Ireland chased out all the snakes right
so it's the same thing right and so the
flag of Great Britain is the combination
of all of these three crosses that
defines the center and that's what the
flag is so that symbolizes all of that
so that's you know completely
mind-boggling so and there's more about
st. Patrick - so he banishes the snakes
after a 40-day fast and so that's an
allusion to the 40 years that Moses
spends in the desert and also the 40
days that Christ fasts in the New
Testament and his walking stick when he
plants it grows into a tree so that
echoes all of this ideas about the
center that we just described and he
also speaks with the ancient Irish
ancestors which if you remember is a
characteristic
of the shamanic rituals where we're so
in the typical shamanic ritual which
seems to be elicited by psychedelic use
the shaman dissolved down past their
bones and then they go up into heaven
and speak with the ancestors and then
they're introduced into the heavenly
kingdom and then the flesh is put back
on their bones and they come back and
tell everybody what happened and that's
a repeatable experience right the
shamanic tradition is unbelievably
widespread so all over Europe ancient
Europe and Asia and perhaps as far down
as South America right it's highly
conserved and it's out of that tradition
in all likelihood that our religious
city Asian emerged so and you can see
echoes of that here so so back to the
story of Jacob and his ladder so that I
can come again to my father's house in
peace then shall the Lord be my god and
this stone which I have set for a pillar
shall be God's house and of all that
that thou shalt give me I will surely
give the tenth unto thee so that's
that's also an echo I would say of the
obligation of those who climb the power
higher hierarchy to attend to those who
are at the bottom right because if you
think about the tithing as a form of
wealth distribution which is essentially
what it is the part of the ethic that
defines the proper moral endeavor that's
related to that Center is not to advance
yourself at the expense of the entire
community so if you're if you're
fortunate enough so that you can rise in
in authority and power and competence
within the confines of a community you
still have a obligation to maintain the
structure maintain and further the
structure of the community within which
you rose now that's obvious right
because if people didn't do that after a
couple of generations the whole thing
would fall apart so you know you you you
it's it's not reasonable to destroy the
game that you're winning it's reasonable
to strengthen the game that you're
winning and so that's another thing
that also describes the ethic that
should allow you to be an active member
of the community around which that that
gathers around that Center so so so one
of the things I've learned about the
hero mythology that I really really like
is so you see this pretty clearly in the
figure of Christ but because two things
are conjoined in that story but Christ
is also the here there's two kinds of
heroes say there's the hero that goes
out into chaos and confronts the dragon
of chaos and gathers the the treasure as
a consequence and then shares it with
the community that's that's that's one
the other form of hero is the hero who
stands up against the corrupt state and
rattles the foundation of the state has
it collapse and then reconstructs it
right so because the two great dangers
to human beings are unprotected exposure
to the catastrophes of the natural world
and subjugation to tyranny right those
are the two major dangers and so a hero
is their ultimate hero is the person who
reconstructs the structure of the state
by using the information that he
gathered by going out into the unknown
that unites them both and so what that
means here's that here's the rub as far
as I can tell so a structure a center
has two risks associated with it one is
that it will degenerate into chaos and
the other is that we'll rigidify into
tyranny and it'll degenerate into chaos
even if it just stays doing what it's
doing so if it just does exactly what
it's doing and it doesn't change it will
degenerate
because things change and if it doesn't
change to keep up then it gets farther
and farther away from the environment
and it'll precipitously collapse and so
and then if it just changes willy-nilly
so that nobody can establish a stable
centralized a game then it degenerates
into chaos immediately and no one can
get along so there's a rule for being
longing to the community and the rule
has to be that you have to act in a
manner that sustains and that sustains
the community and
increases its competence that's the
fundamental moral obligation for
belonging and well and obviously soul
right because why would you belong to a
why would you walk into a clubhouse that
was on fire like that's just not smart
right if you're gonna be part of the
game if you've decided that being part
of the game is worthwhile you've also
taken on the moral you've also decided
even if you didn't notice it that you
have to work to support that game
because by deciding to play that game
you've said that it's valuable and if
it's valuable then obviously you should
work to sustain and expand it because
that's the definition of having a
relationship with something that's
valuable and so that's the criteria for
membership in the community and that's
partly why if you regard the cross say
as the symbol of voluntary suffering you
know suffering accept it voluntarily
something like that which is means that
there's another element of that too
that's worth thinking about so you know
the reason that cane gets so out of hand
is because he's suffering and he won't
accept it he certainly won't accept
responsibility for it he's angry and
bitter about it and no wonder right I
mean we have to be realistic about these
sorts of things there you guys all of
you people are gonna suffer at some
point in your life to the point where
you're angry and bitter about it I mean
there's just absolutely no doubt about
that and you're even gonna think well
it's no bloody wonder that I'm angry and
bitter about it everyone would be and
things are so god-awful that there's no
excuse for them to even exist
and like that's a powerful argument
although I think it's ultimately
self-defeating well that's kind of what
the story of Cain and Abel that's kind
of what the story of Cain and Abel what
would you say that's the moral of the
story of Cain and Abel essentially so
what that means instead is that even
under those conditions of relatively
intense suffering you have to accept it
voluntarily because otherwise it turns
you against being and then you start to
act in this terrible manner that makes
everything worse and it seems to me that
there's a contradiction in that if if
the reason you're complaining
that things are bad then it isn't
reasonable for you to act in a manner
that makes them worse right I mean even
if it's no wonder that people do that
but it's it's a degenerating game and so
that's so the the idea
part of the idea of the cross and the
suffering that it represents is that if
you can accept that voluntarily
regardless of its intensity then you
won't become embittered and resentful
and vengeful to the point where you pose
a danger to the stability of the
community so or to your own stability
for that matter cuz it's you know it
might be your own stability the
stability of your family the stability
of the community and the stability of
the world it might be all of that and
increasingly I think it is all of that
so okay so now Jacob we get the second
part of Jacob story he goes to meet his
uncle Lebon and he meets Rachel there
again by oh well he falls in love and
goes to live with
levan there are two daughters there Leah
as well as Rachel Leah is not a
particularly attractive person it isn't
exactly clear why but the story makes it
quite clear she's definitely the least
desirable of the two daughters and the
story makes reference to her eyes and it
isn't clear if there's something wrong
with her physiologically or if there's
something wrong with her attitude it's
not obvious but doesn't really matter
the point is she's the older daughter
but she's the less desirable one Jacob
stays a month which is the limit of
hospitality in in that time if you
stayed for a month you were welcome but
you had to work for your keep I think
after about three days something like
that which seems rather reasonable and
so he stays a month and then he has a
chat with Lebon and he says he's fallen
in love with Rachel by this time and he
says I'll stay with you and work for
seven years and then all weird Rachel if
and
the band says that's a fine deal and
then the seven years passes and there's
a wedding ceremony it's quite a long
thing and the bride is veiled and the
bride goes into the tent with with Jacob
and if I remember the story correctly I
haven't looked at it for a month or so
rachel is outside the tent speaking but
leah is inside the tent and so Jacob
thinks he's getting married to Rachel
but he's actually getting married to
Leah and this is it's an inversion a
because he's in the dark like Isaac was
when he fooled Isaac so now it's Jacob's
turn to be in the dark and he gets
betrayed by his uncle and his
bride-to-be Rachel and her sister in a
manner that's broadly parallel to the
trick that he pulled on Esau and so
there's a karma notion there which I
which I'd like you know I mean you might
think of karma as a superstitious idea
but and there are ways of interpreting
it that might make it the case but I
don't think that's what it is it's that
no bad deed goes unpunished it's
something like that it's like you know
maybe you've done something bad to
someone and therefore there's part of
you that feels quite guilty about that
hopefully and that part is looking for
punishment to set the stage right and
you might think well no but things are
yes unless you're a psychopath that's
how things work if you're interested in
that kind of thing you should read
Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment
because it's the definitive study of
that sort of phenomena right because in
that book the main protagonist
Raskolnikov gets away with murder like
he does it successfully no one suspects
him and he drives himself so crazy with
guilt that he basically falls into the
hands of the police he drives himself
into the hands of the police because he
can't tolerate what he did it's very
it's amazing it's amazing book but
anyways the point is he
Jakub falls prey to the same sort of
crookedness that he used to ratchet
himself up the ladder and that happens
far more often in life and people think
and it's really not like he can complain
about it right not if he has any sense
it's like he does he brings Leah out to
see Lebon and he says what's what's with
this sister you know and Lebon basically
says to him in our culture it's the
custom to marry the eldest daughter
first which is exactly right and he said
well it would bring you know he's
rationalizing obviously because he's
just screwed over Jacob in a major way
but it's a little late to take it back
that the marriage has been consummated
and the ceremony has been complete and
all hell would break out if there was
any attempt to sever the relationship so
that's how it is
so Leah's married and Jacob has the
wrong wife so then so this is Jacob
there you see on the left he's got the
little flowery hat and he's pointing to
Leah and he's saying like what what's up
here
and love the band you know Laband 'is
tough old goat and he's not really all
that sad about it in fact you can
imagine that he's kinda good so so okay
then he has to work another seven years
and he gains rachel but because god is a
tricky character there's another twist
in this story Rachel
turns out not to be very good at having
children or Rachel and Jacob turn out
not to be very good at having children
but Leah she's really good at having
kids so she provides Jacob with Reuben
Simeon Levi or let's leave I believe and
Judah and the names of those meanings of
those names are there Reuben means see a
son Simeon means hearing though I think
that was the Lord heard my prayer I
think that's what that was
Levi means joined Judah means praise to
yahwah and it's Judah from whose tribe
Christ arises Judah is essentially
promoted to the status of firstborn
later in the story this is important
because Reuben Simeon and Levy all do
something reprehensible and so Judah
gets gets promoted to firstborn and
that's partly why in the logic of this
narrative that it's from the tribe of
Judah that Christ arises so so now while
this is going on Rachel is like
suicidally desperate for children she's
jealous of her older sister who's rather
ill-favored as we pointed out but who
seems to be damn good at producing sons
and she's really not happy with Jacob
and so she choose him out and Jacob
basically says like what do you want me
to do about it I'm not God which is a
reasonable response I would say and so
in her desperation she gives Jacob illa
who's her maidservant we've seen that
sort of thing happened before and -
Billa produces two children Dan and Neff
Kelly
the reason I'm detailing out all these
sons it's
Gordon because Jacob is the founder of
Israel and his sons are the founder of
the 12 tribes so it's a pivotal moment
in the story right it's it's because
he's that he's the fundamental patriarch
of of those who wrestle with God because
as we'll see that's what the name Israel
means he gets the name Israel you'll see
why in a while but but it's you need to
know these genealogies in this situation
because they play an important role in
everything that happens afterwards so
Naphtali is the second and her name or
his name means with great wrestling's I
have wrestled with my sister right
contended with her and have prevailed so
that gives you some indication of the
tension in the household now
leah is now past bearing children she
gives Jake Jacob her maidservant to
Zilpah to keep up with her sister I
guess and now Zilpah bares to children
for Jacob so he's piling up the kids
left right and center here one of them
is named gad good fortune and the other
is named Asher happy or blessed so
there's more rivalry going on between
the sisters this is quite an interesting
little story so Reuben who's Lea's
daughter goes out and looks for
Mandrake's now Mandrake's have
aphrodisiac property so that's a little
odd to begin with but it doesn't matter
that's what happens and Rachel is Rachel
wants the Mandrake's because she's still
interested in having some children and
so she bargains with Leah to give her a
night with Jacob in exchange for the
Mandrake's and more sons emerge as a
consequence of that
so then Rachel finally gives birth
Joseph and Joseph plays a key role in
the last story in Genesis which I hope
we'll get to in the next lecture and
then we can close off Genesis that's the
plan anyways so now
Jacob isn't really very happy about the
whole arrangement because he he's been
there 14 years and he's got two wives
it's not too bad but he you know he got
he the bargain wasn't exactly clean
he doesn't really trust la Bannon and
there's no reason for him to do so
levan was poor before Jacob came Jacob
turns out to be a very useful person to
have around and so he tells Lebon he
wants to leave and go back to his home
country and that he'll take the speckled
and spotted cattle the brown sheep and
the spotted and speckled goats from the
flock and they're in the minority so
that's the idea and sola ban or lab and
takes all those animals out of his flock
so there was an idea that the speckled
goats and the brown sheep would breed
true so if you have two male goat and a
female goat and they're both speckled
they'll have speckled kids that's the
theory and the same with brown sheep and
so what Lebon does is he takes all the
speckled animals out of the flocks gives
them to his son and they go three days
away with them so that Jacob is left
with the flock but with no with none of
these animals now the idea was that all
the what newborns were going to be his
and so what Lebon is basically done is
set it up so that in principle Jacob is
going to get nothing for his work so
that's another time when Jacob
experiences betrayal you know it's
almost as if God isn't done with
reminding him of the magnitude of what
he did in the past that that's the moral
of the story in some sense now there's a
weird little twist in the story here so
what Jacob does is some sympathetic
magic and so when the animals are
rutting he puts speckled objects in
front of them speckled branches and so
forth I guess to remind them about what
they're supposed to be producing
something like that and it works and so
all these animals that Lebon left are
are producing spotted animals like mad
and so that's I guess God's changed his
mind and let Jacob off the hook slightly
here so soon he was very wealthy much
cattle maidservants men servants camels
analysis Laban's son sons become jealous
and Lebon is outraged well you know
obviously there's some competition there
between Jacob and the sons which is
hardly surprising and the blonde played
this trick to strip Jacob of all his
property and instead he got far more
than he was going to get to begin with
so you can imagine that's been a bit
annoying so Jacob thinks he better get
out of there so he tells Rachel and Leah
and said unto them I see your father's
countenance that is not toward me as
before but the god of my father has been
with me and you know with all my power
I've served your father and your father
has deceived me and changed my wages ten
times but God so far has suffered him
not to hurt me
if he said thus the speckled shall be
thy wages then all the cattle bore
speckled and if he said thus the
ringstraked shall be thy hire then all
the cattle bore ringstraked thus God has
taken away the cattle of your father and
given them to me and they decide to
sneak away and they're unhappy with the
inheritance lack of inheritance from the
man so as they sneak away
Rachel steals the idols that her father
has in his house and it's not exactly
obvious why there's a lot of contention
about why she's doing that some of them
is to punish him to bring with her the
images of her ancestors you know maybe
she's lonesome moving away from home
just out of spite to show him that the
idols were actually powerless for
protection to stop her father from
divining the route of their escape that
last one is the strangest one because
the idea would be that Lebon would have
used some sort of ritual with the idols
that would help him infer their escape
route and then could chase them so
anyways that's the range of speculation
about that I think it sounds to me
mostly like a little act of revenge
maybe with a bit of loneliness mixed in
Laband pursues them but God comes in a
dream to tell him to leave Jacob
unharmed hmm LaVon catches up with him
and reproaches Jacob saying that he
would have thrown a great party if he
would have known that they were going to
leave you know he didn't want them to
sneak away in the night and you can't
tell from the story whether that's true
or not and you know these people were
pretty rough and
pulse of I would say and maybe there was
a 50% chance of a slaughter and a 50%
chance of a party who knows I've been to
parties like that actually so Laband
complains that his gods are gone and
Jacob says that whoever has them he will
have them killed
and Rachel who's really quite a sneaky
character all things consider basically
claims that she's having her period and
she's sitting on the carpet with all the
idols underneath and she can't move and
so they search everywhere and can't find
them and she's like laughing away behind
her hand about that sneaky little
maneuver but she doesn't die so that's
probably a good thing
so the ban checks everything out checks
the camp out and he can't find anything
so they reconcile and so that's the
first reconciliation that Jacob engages
in it's sort of like the what would you
say the karmic dad is being paid that's
one way of thinking about it that's so
he got punished for his wrongdoing he's
learned his lesson perhaps and it's it's
that's good enough as far as he's
concerned you know he got away good
enough and they make peace so then the
next thing that happens as they're
travelling is that Jacob was left alone
and there wrestled a man man angel God
it's not clear we'll go with angel with
them until the breaking of the day or
God and when he saw that he prevailed
not against him he touched the hollow of
his thigh and the hollow of Jacob's
thigh was out of joint as he wrestled
with him and he said let me go for the
day breaks and Jacob said I will not let
you go unless you bless me and the angel
said unto him what is thy name and Jacob
said Jacob
and the angel said thy name shall no
more be called Jacob so the supplanter
right the the overthrow ur with that
kind of intonation of or implication of
crookedness but Israel which means Hui
who wrestles or strives successfully
with God for as a prince
hast thou power with God and with men
and has prevailed that's quite a story I
like it's it's I don't know I don't know
exactly what to make of it there's
obviously a symbolic level of meaning
which is that that is what human beings
do in some sense is they they wrestle I
would say they wrestle with the divine
even with the concept of the divine for
that matter and but the question is do
they prevail like it's got an odd thing
that Jacob actually seems to win this
battle right or at least he wins it
enough so that whoever he's wrestling
this divine figure that he's wrestling
is willing to bestow a blessing on him I
guess maybe that's a testament to his
courage it's something like that maybe
it's an indication that he has paid for
his sins sufficiently so that he's sort
of back on the moral high ground but but
I think it's really telling that the
transformation of the name from Jacob to
Israel and that what Israel means is he
who wrestles with God or who struggles
with God and perhaps successfully but
it's also so interesting that he
actually emerges victorious you know you
wouldn't necessarily think that that
would be a possibility especially given
you know God's rather hot-headed nature
in the Old Testament you don't wanna
mess with him too much but but Jacob
does it successfully but even more
importantly is the idea that whatever
Israel constitutes which would be to say
the land that Jacob founds is actually
composed of those who wrestle with God I
think that's an amazing idea because it
also seems to me to shed some light on
perhaps what was meant by belief in
those days you know like I've often
thought of Rett of marriage as a
wrestling match right if you're lucky
the person that you marry is someone you
contend with it's not exactly I don't
think it's exactly
it's not tranquil precisely you know you
might have noticed that some of you and
but but the thing is if you have
something to contend against then that
strengthens you and and that's actually
better than having nothing to contend
against and so Jakob is the person who's
also strengthened by the necessity of
this contending and that seems to be the
proper relationship with God or the
angel is that contending the battling
right rather than some sort of kind of
loose weak statement of belief I mean
I'm not trying to denigrate that to any
great degree it just doesn't seem like
the right mode of conceptualization
right because human beings are aren't
like that were contentious creatures and
that's actually seems to be something
that meets with God's favor in this
situation so especially given that
that's actually what he names the well
the whole kingdom of the chosen people
is the idea is that that's composed of
those who contend with God so that's
that's a hell of an idea that that's for
sure and Jacob asked him and said tell
me I pray thee thy name and he said
wherefore is it thou dost ask after my
name so there's no that's not happening
and he blessed him there and Jacob
called the place of the name of the
place Peniel for I or penny'll for I've
seen God face to face and my life is
preserved and he passed over Peniel the
Sun rose upon him and he halted upon his
thigh now Jacob does walk away it
injured from this right so he has a
permanent limp after that and so that's
also an indication of just how dangerous
that contention actually is like he gets
blast he wins but he doesn't get away
scot-free and so now so Jacob goes back
to Esau and he's terrified even though
it's been 14 years he thinks maybe his
heart headed brother hasn't calmed down
yet and he has good reason to think that
I would say
so he sends messengers to Esau who then
sets out with 400 men and so Jacob is
not very happy with this whole idea and
he breaks his people into two bands so
that maybe half of them cannot be killed
and then he takes from his large flocks
a bunch of animals and a bunch of
servants and he sends them out to meet
he saw basically to say look I'm I'm I'm
a jerk and sorry about the whole
birthright thing and and here's some
animals and you know maybe maybe that's
the beginnings of an apology it's
something like that and so but he's not
very convinced that that's actually
going to work but he saw who actually
turns out to perhaps have matured in the
interim perhaps that's one way of
thinking about it meets Jacob and says
that just seeing him is enough but Jacob
insists that he takes the gift and Esau
accepts and which is probably a wise
thing because even if he saw is 95%
convinced that just seeing his brother
is enough there's probably 5% of him
that's still really not all that happy
and so you have to be careful you know
when you say that you forgive someone
because there might be a part of you
that really doesn't that really needs
something else before you can actually
say okay look fine you know and you
don't want to fool yourself about that
because that 5% that hasn't been
completely convinced will find its voice
at some point and then maybe undermine
the whole reconciliation process you
don't want to think that you're any
better than you are or any nicer than
you are it's not helpful and so he saw a
smart I think so while Jacob smart to
say no no like thanks a lot but take the
damn goats and Jacob and Esau is smart
enough to accept that and he might do
that maybe - you know - please Jacob but
also I think so that there really is the
possibility of establishing peace
because hypothetically the gift that's
being offered is of sufficient magnitude
to erase the debt of the loss of the
birthright it's something like that
right it's it's it's
it's it's the payment of the real debt
and Esau said what meanest thou by all
this drove which I met and Jacob said
these are to find grace in the sight of
my Lord and Esau says I have enough
brother keep thou keep that that thou
hast unto thyself and Jacob said and
this is interesting statement I think no
I pray you if if I have now found grace
in thy sight take the present at my hand
for therefore I have seen thy face as
though I had seen the face of God and
now was pleased with me and so that's so
he's he's taking the Honorable judgment
of his brother because it is honorable
because he saw did get betrayed so he
has a right to be standing in judgment
and he equates that judgment with with
what would you say with the highest of
virtues it's appropriate judgment and so
he wants to make complete amends to Esau
as if Esau as a representative of the
divine element of justice and I guess
that's convincing to ease so it's quite
a thing to say you know that I need to
be reconciled to you because that would
simultaneously reconcile me with God
it's like it's crucial this is between
us but it's there's a higher principle
at stake that's vital and I think that
is the case with betrayal that's very
frequently the case because if you
betray someone you really have violated
you've deeply violated what can only be
called a sacred trust it's the right
terminology for that take it I pray the
my blessing that is brought to thee
because God has dealt graciously with me
and because I have enough and he urged
him and he took it so you know the story
seems to be something like well Jacob
was kind of an arrogant crooked
deceitful character maybe / impressed
with his own ability he thought it was
pretty amusing to pull a fast trick or
two on his brother then he ran off which
is not all that
brave and then he got walloped of a lot
and perhaps learned something and then
when he came back you know he was a
different person and so that's a that's
a reasonable story and you know he he
has to repent completely of about what
he did
before he can rectify the situation
properly and he's willing to do that so
that's an interesting idea too because
it's it's it's the early reflection of
the idea that it is if you do something
wrong in the past a that you can learn
from it right so that you're actually
capable of learning and be that you can
set the balance right in the present
those are very optimistic ideas you know
because you might say well once you've
committed some sort of crime that's it
there's no hope for you but that's
pretty rough because the probability
that you've done unethical things at
some point in your life is a hundred
percent and so if there was no way of
setting the balance right after that
then everybody would be doomed so so
then the story gets rough again Jacob
settles in Shalem Shalem Dinah his
daughter goes looking around for friends
Shechem the son of Hamor lays with her
and then once her for his wife he
actually has the order reversed there
that turns out to be a problem
Jacob hears of this the fathers talk and
so they make an agreement the agreement
is is that if all of hammers men
including hammer and his son are
circumcised so that's the proper
offering I guess that brings them into
the familial fold and indicates that
they're willing to make a sacrifice to
do so especially after you know Shechem
put the cart before the horse let's say
the man of hammer or circumcised they
agree to do so that turns out to be a
big mistake so well they're laying
around the next day suffering madly from
the circumcision Simeon and Levi come in
they sneak in and kill all of them
and take their wealth and their women
and children that's rough it's rough
yeah I guess you guys noticed that a
so-so at their honor societies right and
there's still lots of honor societies in
the world and so they don't take kindly
to what happened to their to their
sister although they don't kill her so
now it turns out that yeah it says as it
came to pass on the third day when they
were sore the two of the sons of Jacob
Simeon and Levi
Dinah's brethren took each man his sword
and came upon the city boldly and slew
all the males and they slew hamor and
shechem his son with the edge of the
sword and took Dinah out of Chekhov's
house and went out the sons of Jacob
came upon the slain and spoiled the city
because they had defiled their sister it
took the sheep and the oxen and the
alysus and that which was in the city
and that was which it was in the field
and all their wealth and all their
little ones and their wives took they
came captive and spoiled everything else
that was in the house and Jacob actually
turns out not to be very happy about
that because he'd met with hammer and
they'd like hammered out a deal and that
and that's where they were living and so
he figured well that he was making the
best of a bad law let's say and his sons
went behind his back and Jacob says to
Simeon and Levi you have troubled me to
make me meat to make me stink among the
inhabitants of the land among the
Canaanites and the perizzites and I
being few in number they shall gather
themselves now together against me and
slay me and I shall be destroyed I had
my house and they said should he deal
with our sister as with a harlot and God
said unto Jacob and this is where we get
back to the idea of the center God says
to Jacob arise go to Bethel and dwell
there okay so Bethel was where Jacob had
originally put that pillar so now it's
back so he it's it's it's a real hero's
journey right there's there's the place
that he has a set place he goes out and
has these adventures and and undergoes a
moral transformation reconciles and then
he comes back to the same place right as
it
transformed person so that's a full hero
cycle arise go to Bethel and dwell there
and make that there an altar unto God
that appeared to thee when thou fled us
from the face of Esau thy brother and
Jacob said to his household and to all
that were with him put away the strange
gods that are among you and be clean and
change your garments and let us arise
and go up to Bethel and I will make
there an altar unto God who answered me
in the day of my distress and was with
me in the way which I went and they gave
unto Jacob all the strange gods which
were in their hand and all their
earrings which were in their ears and
Jacob hid them under the oak which was
by Shechem and they journeyed and the
terror of God was upon the cities that
were round about them and they did not
pursue after the sons of Jacob
so Jacob came to laws which is in the
land of Canaan that is Bethel so that's
the place where he put up the pillar to
begin with he and all the people that
were there with him and he built there
an altar and called the place el Bethel
because their God appeared to him when
he fled from the face of his brother and
God appeared to Jacob again when he came
out of peda an aram and blessed him and
God said unto Him thy name is Jacob thy
name shall not be called any more Jacob
which you remember means usurper
but Israel shall be thy name he who
wrestles with God and he called his name
Israel and God said to him I am God
Almighty be fruitful and multiply a
nation and a company of nations shall be
of thee and Kings shall come out of thy
loins and the land which I gave Abraham
and Isaac to thee I will give it and to
thy seed after thee will I give the land
and God went up from him in the place
where he talked with him and God set up
Jacob set up a pillar in the place where
he talked with him a pillar of stone and
he poured a drink offering thereon and
he poured oil thereon and Jacob called
the name of the place where God spake
with him Bethel
so he's returned to the central place
which had been given to him as his
territory Rachel dies in labor in the
process giving birth to an only son of
my sorrow whose name was then changed to
Benjamin son of the right hand now
Reuben so Simeon and Levi have already
done something unforgivable
now Reuben it's Reubens term he sleeps
with Bilhah who's Jacob Israel's
concubine
so he's the third of the sons to make an
unforgivable error and Jacob / Israel
gets wind of it so Reuben is no longer
he would have been the premier son given
that the two older sons were put out of
the running so to speak because of their
disobedience and impulsive vengeful
cruelty and then Reuben can't keep is
what do they say well you get the idea
yeah yeah seems to be something that's
still quite surprisingly common so then
we have this story that that basically
ends with this establishment of the
twelve tribes of Israel from Leah
there's Reuben Simeon Levi Judah
Issachar and Zebulun from Zilpah there's
gad and ashur from billah there's Dan
and Naphtali and from Rachel there's
Joseph who figures extraordinarily
importantly in the next story that we're
going to cover which hopefully will wrap
up Genesis and Benjamin and so now
Israel itself is established and so then
we turn to actually going to end this
early tonight that's quite bloody
miracle so the story then turns to
Joseph and the story begins essentially
now Israel loved Joseph more than all
his children because he was the son of
his old age and he made him a coat of
many colors
and so what that seems to me to indicate
you know coats in dreams very often
seems to be particularly true of women's
dreams that's that's been like my
clinical observation clothing and
footwear in particular symbolizes a role
and that makes sense right because you
address for the roles it's not that big
a mystery but so then you might say well
what does a coat of many colors indicate
and you know if you think of that
multiplicity there it's something like
the mastery of multiple domains right or
maybe something like plural potentiality
and so Jacob is is Israel's or Joseph is
Israel's favorite and because he sees in
him this excess possibility and he
basically tells his other sons that
Jacob is going to be the head son which
they are not happy with right because
he's just this young punk fundamentally
and he's clearly his father's favorite
and he gets this coat that's sort of
indicative of this higher status and so
Israel inadvertently sets up a
tremendous amount of sibling rivalry in
the household again and that that's the
the understructure of the last story in
Genesis and so in in the last of this
lecture series for 2017 we'll cover the
story of Joseph and and his coat of many
colors and what happens as a consequence
of his of the favoritism shown to him by
his father and we'll track what happens
as a consequence of that and so I'm
going to stop there because I'm finished
so
hello dr. Pearson
this is an idea I've been wrestling with
for quite some time now this idea of a
lot of like the greatest sources of
wisdom that we've received through human
history either through texts experiences
or scriptures seems to always come from
people going to isolation and then
coming back so I've had a hard time
trying to figure out from a scientific
point of view or evolutionary point of
view what would compel an organism to
that is that is centered around its
behave its behavior centered around
surviving in especially for humans as
social groups as well as reproducing to
want to go into isolation and then not
only that but obtain some level of
information that actually helps the
group in coming back that's a really
good question okay so there's this
neuroscientist neuropsychologist named
el Conan Goldberg and Goldberg was a
student of Alexander Luria and Alexander
Luria was a Russian neuropsychologist
perhaps the foremost neuropsychologist
of the mid to late 20th century and he
had students Sokolov in vineger dov'è
who discovered the orienting reflex for
example the orienting reflexes the
reflex that Orient's you when something
anomalous interferes with your goal
directed behavior it's a major discovery
like one of the one of the four or five
most important discoveries that have
ever been made in in in psychology I
would say certainly in neuroscience so
Luria was a big deal and he was the
first person who really established the
functional role of the prefrontal cortex
as well so and had it very nice overall
view of how the brain function his book
was written in 1980 and it's still
there's still loss in it that's really
useful which is pretty strange for a
science that's advanced that quickly
anyways so Goldberg came from a great
pedigree I believe Maria's teacher was
have
if I remember correctly so anyways
Goldberg you know you hear some of you
may have heard the idea that the left
hemisphere is more or linguistic than
the right hemisphere is that left
hemisphere is specialized for language
and the right hemisphere is specialized
for nonverbal imagistic communication
the left hemisphere has a pretty well
organized microstructure and the right
hemisphere is more diffuse as well and
that's true in left-handed males in
particular so the circuitry can be
switched around a bit but it's okay the
modules are basically the same although
they can be moved a little bit but
Goldberg thought that it isn't language
versus non language it's routine versus
novelty and so the left hemisphere and
there's a neuropsychologist physician
named Ramachandran who's done some very
interesting work that's pertinent to
this maybe I'll tell you a story about
him anyways Goldberg believed that the
right hemisphere say you have very old
systems underneath both both cortical
hemispheres that do things like respond
to anomaly to the thing that doesn't fit
to the predator in the distance some of
that's extraordinarily fast so that
would be like a snake reflex that can
move you away from a snake in less time
than it takes the snake to bite and it's
really a reflex it doesn't even hit your
brain it's really super fast and then
there's a defensive Crouch that's that's
instantiated higher up in the nervous
system but that's still remarkably fast
and then there's fear as an emotion and
and the orientation of attention and
then there's the cognitive processing
and that all streams out across a time
span right and maybe that time span is
half a second so you and that's really a
long time if something is attacking you
so you got those initial responses are
quite primitive but they're
extraordinarily fast all right so
there's subcortical structures that
orient you towards novelty and prepare
you for for freezing or for it
and the right hemisphere seems to be
dominated by those systems so imagine
that what happens is that something
threatens you you orient towards it
the right hemisphere produces a bunch of
images about what it might be
so imagine that's what happens when a
child is afraid of the dark
the child's on the bed they're afraid of
the dark they're crouched because
they're frozen like a prey animal and
their right hemisphere is producing
monsters to inhabit the the darkness
that are the child's hypotheses about
what might be out there okay because
that's what you want to know right you
want to know what's out there and then
you want to know what to do about it I
can tell you two kids dreams that are
sort of relevant to that so when my
daughter was about three she came into
the bedroom that my wife and I had and
she was crying she'd had a nightmare and
she said that she saw a stream and there
was garbage all over the stream and she
didn't like that and so I sat her down I
said okay so imagine the stream with the
garbage in it now imagine that you're
taking the garbage out and throwing it
in the garbage bin and so she and I got
her to like visualize that because that
kind of puts her back in the semi dream
state and then she cleaned up the mess
and then she could go off to sleep now
you you could tell the child don't worry
about the dream isn't real
that's not that's true because it's not
real like other daytime things are but
it's not like it's not real it's a dream
like a dream is real it's just not the
same kind of real and so what I did with
her was to indicate to her practically
that if she saw something a normal uh
something that was out of place right
something that was a mess that it was
within her capacity to set it right okay
and so okay so now your right hemisphere
tells you what monsters might inhabit
the the darkness now what you have to do
is figure out there's two things you
have to figure out one is what to do
about a given monster and now there is
to do what about is to figure out what
to do about the class of all possible
monsters right that's a whole different
thing that's
something that only human beings are
capable of that level of abstraction
right and so what you might do about a
particular monster is hide or go out and
get rid of it if it was just an actual
animal right but that doesn't help
because there's all the other potential
predators that are still there and so
maybe you can go hunt all them down but
that doesn't help either because you
can't hunt them all down it's not or
it's not very likely anyways so instead
what you have to do is figure out how to
configure yourself so that you're in the
best possible position to fight off the
monsters when they come that's your best
bet
all right so now people are trying to
figure this out forever they're trying
to figure out what's the answer to the
problem of the class of all possible
monsters part of that sacrifice
so there are routines for example in in
Hinduism with the goddess Kali you make
offerings to Kelly who's this devouring
goddess and then she turns into her
benevolent counterpart and so sacrifice
is actually one way that you can tame
the monsters if you think about the
monster has the set of all negative
future potentialities you make the
proper sacrifice as those monsters stay
at bay but then there's heroism as an
alternative to which which means the act
of confrontation of the class of all
possible monsters and the building of
yourself up and into this sort of
courageous person that can do that it
took a tremendous amount of meditation
to transform those images say of the
monsters in into it or to solve the
problem of the class of those monsters
so now I'll tell you another child
stream so some of you have probably
heard this before but it's such a great
dream that it's worth it's worth telling
so now is that my sister-in-law's house
once and her son was running around he's
about four very precocious very verbal
very intelligent running around with a
knight hat on and a sword
so he's engaged in this pretty intense
play world and when he goes to sleep he
puts the knight hat on his pillow and
the sword by his pillow and at the same
time he
having night terrors so he's waking up
and had been for a number of weeks
Nate waking up screaming and then but he
doesn't know why there's some things
that aren't going so well in the
household and the parents get divorced
shortly afterwards okay so that's oh
that's that's what's going on underneath
right and he's also gonna go to
kindergarten and so he's about to go
into the world and so he's coping with
this you know so I'm watching him zoom
around as this night and thinking that's
pretty cool and that night he woke up
and had a it was screaming and so we're
all at breakfast the next morning and I
said did you dream anything and he got
really intense and he said yes I had a
dream and I said well what was the dream
and he said well I was out on this field
and all these like dwarfs came up to me
they were only about as high as my knees
and they didn't have any arms they have
powerful legs and they were covered with
like hairy feathers and grease and there
was cross carved in the top of their
head and they had beaks and whenever he
moved anywhere they would jump at him
with his with their beaks and there were
lots of them and everyone like just said
nothing at breakfast it was like yeah
cuz and he was right into this story and
so we were all like yeah well huh there
are that accounts for all the screaming
and so and then he said yeah and then in
the background there was a dragon and
every time the dragon puffed out smoke
it would turn into these dwarves it's
like oh man kid you really got a problem
there you got you got beat things that
are biting you and you can kill them and
that's fine but then there's the dragon
just puffing out new ones so it's like a
Hydra problem right the old Hydra is the
serpent you cut off one had seven more
grow it's not a good thing and it's such
a cool dream because it really portrayed
this class of all possible monsters
problem so you've got the specific
monsters and that's a problem so you got
to get rid of them but that's
not the problem the problem is is that
there's a there's something in the
background that's just generating
monsters like mad and so I said to him
what do you think you could do about
that and that's a that's a loaded
question right that's like leading the
witness in the trial you don't get to
ask a question like that because it
implies that it implies the answer what
could you do about that
is not any different than saying you
could do something about that right so
so I hinted at that as a possibility and
his eyes lit up
now you remember he's already running
around as at night Hey so he kind of
already knew what to do because he had
the whole sword in the Hat and with that
you know that you can go after the drag
and he kind of got that and he said I'd
get my dad and then I jump up on top of
the dragon and I'd poke out both of its
eyes with my sword and then he'd go
right down its throat to the fire box
where the fire comes out and I carve out
a piece of the fire box and then I'd
used that as a shield and I thought yes
right right man it's so smart eh because
he got the thing instantly he knew that
he knew so imagine first of all he
thought okay I have to go to the heart
of the problem right and really to the
heart not to the dragon but right down
the dam thanks gullet right to the place
where the fire was actually being it was
actually being created because there it
was there you could find the shield and
that he'd take this thing that was
fireproof and make a shield out of it
and so that was just
he had bloody perfect it was so cool and
you think well how could a kid come up
with that and there's a bunch of answers
I mean one is we know snake fear is
innate we know that now there's been
recent research data that that has
demonstrated that okay so and we've been
preyed on and been predators for a very
long period of time so the idea that and
I found something else interesting about
the brain out that dubrow out about the
brain recently - and book I was reading
by Ray Kurzweil called how to build a
mind I think that's what it was called
it was quite a good book so I think it
was in that book or it was in the
neuroscience paper I was reading doesn't
matter
but it was in one of those two places so
you know that scanning technology has
got more and more high resolution over
the last few years right it just gets
more and more high-resolution all the
time and so people are now able to look
at the micro structures of the brain in
a way that hasn't been possible before
and so the old idea with the cortex
basically was that cortex was full of a
bunch of neurons and then when one
neuron and another fired at the same
time they would wire together and that's
kind of how your brain learned to make
connections it's a bit more complicated
than that but that will do and then it
was found that it wasn't quite that
simple because what your cortex is made
out of are these columns of neurons that
are duplicated sort of like a like
centipedes legs you know it's very
simple genetic code to add another leg
set of legs to a centipede it's sort of
like that with your brain it's made out
of all these columns and the columns are
basically already quite wired up and
then as you learn the columns wired
together
okay so there's some pre-existence
structure there but there's more
preexisting structure than what that was
thought so it's it's basically that
there are already tracts that link
columns together that are in different
parts of the brain and the columns can
or the columns themselves can send out
dendrites to these superhighways which
are already there and then the
superhighway is there and then it can
generate connections to the columns at
the end of the superhighway so what that
means is that there's a tremendous
amount of cortical structure already in
place but there's plasticity around that
and when I read that I thought well
that's part of the source of the
archetypes there's already an archetypal
structure there that as well as the
subcortical structures so you could say
that like the kid already had within him
not only the capacity to represent not
only the monster but the class of all
possible monsters and the fact that the
problem wasn't monsters the problem was
that monsters could continually be
generated which is a way worse problem
and then the answer to that isn't to
kill an individual monster the answer to
that is go to the source of the
monstrous itself and defeat it so it's
absolutely staggering and you could
imagine that it would take a tremendous
amount of meditate
of effort for people to have come up
with that solution over a very long
period of time so now the point of the
representation is to formulate a picture
of what it is that's the threat so that
you can then formulate a general purpose
solution and so there's this image of
Kali which I really like because Kelly
is sort of the goddess of the darkness
let's say in destruction and so Kelly is
she has a headdress of fire her hair is
on fire and she has a headdress of
skulls and she has hands cut off all
around her neck and she has a belt
that's often snakes but it's sometimes
she sometimes eating the intestines of
this guy that she's just given birth to
and that she's sitting on she has eight
legs like a spider and she's in a web of
fire and so she's a monster in some
sense that represents everything that
might terrify and devour you and the
question is so you come up with that
representation as an image to represent
the class of all terrifying things and
then you have to generate a solution in
the face of that class and sacrifice is
one of the solutions but that heroic
encounter is another one of the
solutions and that's the one that he
catalyzed now he'd been read lots of
books he'd watched lots of Disney movies
you know and and he'd seen the heroic
pattern portrayed many many places and
his little brain was working like mad to
extract out the essence of that and to
embody it and when I asked him that
question it just went snap and all those
things lined up and his night terrors
went away that was it and I followed up
with his mom because it was really quite
remarkable the whole set of occurrences
you know and he didn't have night
terrors that night even though he'd been
having the nightly and that was the end
of them because he'd solved his problem
like he needed to be the courageous
knight that went after the dragon and so
that is what people need to be so I
think when we go into solitude we shut
off the external stimulation and we let
the Dreaming part of our mind emerge and
that's this nonverbal pattern
detector that thinks in images and it's
it's the thing that mediates between
what we don't understand and what we do
understand like if you understand it
completely you can say it and you can
act it out if you don't understand it
you represent it in images and there
it's like it's the emotion fear
withdrawal paralysis and then that
manifests itself in an image of what
that might be and that image is the
basis for the story and it's the basis
for further development of the idea and
to go into isolation is to let those
images emerge and to dream a little bit
and then that moves you that moves you
ahead into the future so language they
use before it's enough just to map out
the danger that is imminent in front of
you but all the potential dangers that
you could come up with in abstract form
yeah well remember what happens when God
throws Adam and Eve out of out of
paradise they become aware that they're
going to die right the future becomes a
problem because you could say the future
is the place of all potential monsters
right and so just the monster that you
have right in front of you it's like
yeah well you get rid of that but that
doesn't solve your problem does it the
problem is how do you exist in a world
full of monsters and part of that answer
is well you become a monster yourself
that's a big part of the answer but it's
an incomplete answer because if you're
just a monster then you're just as bad
as the monsters so you have to trance
you have to be a monstrous enough to
contend with the monsters but then you
have to be civilized enough so that
you're not a monster yourself and that's
more or less equivalent to the Union
inter integration of the shadow so yep
yeah
hiya dr. Peterson now I've been wanting
to ask you this for a while now since I
started watching your lectures after I
started reading and nici's Beyond Good
and Evil I came upon a paragraph in his
chapter on scholars that really really
bothered me and it actually bothers me
to this day he talked about this kind of
person like they were just a mirror-like
they stretched he said every part of
their skin basically to allow every new
piece of information that they took on
and that all they ever were was just an
instrument they were just a mirror on
reflecting what they had learned never
actually having generated anything on
their own and it's it's bothered me
because I feel like in a way it's sort
of like it's it's it's impacted my
identity a lot because I don't know how
are you supposed to create something you
know ok well that's ok that that's a
really good question
I mean Nietzsche is often classed with
the existentialists right and so one of
the tenants of existentialist there's
two real tenants of existentialism
there's more but obviously we're
oversimplifying but one is that life is
a problem it isn't because there's
something wrong with you it's that life
is a problem and so that's often
contrasted with the Freudian view which
is that if you have a problem it's
because something went wrong during your
development the existentialist said no
no it's like life is a problem make no
mistake about it and that
the purpose of the purpose of
scholarship is in some sense to solve
that problem and so for Nietzsche like
he said all truths are bloody truths to
me and what he meant by that was that if
an idea didn't incarnate itself in you
and transform your perceptions and your
actions then you were merely possessed
by the idea you were merely a
spokesperson for the idea or you could
say that the idea possessed you you're a
puppet for the idea it's not you it's
the idea is in you and it has you you
haven't taken the idea and incorporated
with you and made it part of your life
and so there's a romanticism that's
associated with that right that's the
passionate scholar the person for whom
ideas are not merely they're not merely
what would you call abstracted
representations that can be tossed about
as if they're commodities there there
there are more like pert they're more
like personalities that might be another
way of thinking about it and so if
you're if if those ideas are compelling
then you don't like one thing I learned
a long time ago and I think this is
probably relevant I know when I was a
kid I like to argue and I like to win
arguments or or or lose them although I
like winning them a lot better but I
didn't really mind so much what the
content of the argument was you know I
could engage in it like a sparring match
and it was in some sense to establish
dominance right to establish
intellectual dominance I quit doing that
when I was in my mid-20s because I
thought that that was too shallow an
approach to the ideas they they're not
commodities of that sort they're there
they have tendrils that reach down into
the living that's the right way to think
about it and so Nietzsche's criticism of
scholars and he did this a lot was that
they were bloodless you know they didn't
they were full of performative
contradictions that's another way of
thinking about they'd say one thing and
do another because their intellect was
completely dissociated from their
from their actions and Heath he he
thought that was a very bad idea and I
think that that's a good criticism I
think it is a bad idea I also think it
makes for an extraordinarily boring
lecturer you know because you can tell
if you're listening to someone whether
the idea is that you're hearing are
merely being passed through the person
as if they're being memorized say or
whether they're part of the dynamic core
of the person and if they're part of the
dynamic core of the person then they're
almost always engaging and gripping and
so he wasn't a fan of bloodless scholars
and I think that's correct because one
of the things that I see it's not a good
idea to have ideas possess you unless
you know what the ideas are up to and
lots of people are possessed by ideas
rather than possessing them and that
what that means is they haven't taken
the ideas and integrated them into their
own being
they haven't it's like an incarnation in
a sense they haven't incarnated the
ideas in an embodied form and and so
they're incomplete
you know Nietzsche also in thus spake
Zarathustra when Zarathustra comes down
the mountain he sees a bunch of people
gathered around a famous individual I
think maybe a scholar but doesn't really
matter
and when Zarathustra goes in looks at
the person all he sees his little tiny
with a gigantic ear and so he's a
hyper specialist right and so he has a
pretty impressive ear but he's only this
big and that was Nietzsche's imagistic
commentary on the danger of hyper
specialization and also on the danger of
adulation for hyperspecialization
and and because he thought about it as a
kind of deformity
now Nietzsche was a pretty harsh guy but
but he did address the issue of the
relationship between intellectual
knowledge and and action because for
Nietzsche those things are not to be
separated in some sense so yeah so maybe
I don't know why it maybe it bothered
you like it's hard to say why it
bothered you it might have bothered you
because it's sort of undermined the idea
of scholar but the other possibility and
this isn't an accusation because
obviously
I don't know anything about you but it
might also be that it struck a chord you
know and that maybe you were doubtful or
questioning how tightly associated your
intellectual endeavor was with your
actual character and your practice so
that's another possibility I mean that's
a really good thing to think about
because generally speaking that
integration is it is very much lacking
people are a lot smarter and fluid with
their ideas than they are ethical and
consistent and characterized by
integrity so yep
hey um so last week you talked about how
you hated people asking you if you
believe in God or do you believe in
miracles or you just like those
questions elytis but you also talked
about how and I want to put words in
your mouth but I think you said
something about the idea of an empirical
evidence for religious experiences or
spiritual experiences and I wonder how
those two ideas can a spiritual
existence or can a spiritual experience
exist without God or who knows who knows
you know I don't know what I don't know
what to make of that I mean you could it
depends on what you're willing to accept
as proof I suppose that's where things
get tricky you know if you have to
demonstrate the existence of God
objectively then subjective experiences
of the transcendent are irrelevant right
but and and that's a perfectly
reasonable standpoint if your initial
presupposition is the only thing that
has actual existence is those things
that can be demonstrated objectively and
I'm not putting that down like that's a
powerful methodology our technology is
basically dependent on the acceptance at
least a partial acceptance of those
axioms but I also think that it's
difficult for me to deny the existence
of these patterns of thinking that seem
to exist cross-culturally like the
existence of the representation of the
Dragon for example especially given that
I can see an evolutionary rationale for
the emergence of these representations
so and then there's also the
indisputable fact that religious
experiences are accessible to people
through a number of different avenues
now and one of the things I mentioned
when I discussed this before is well you
could say well those are no different
than experiences of psychopathology but
they are different because the
experiences of psychopathology damage
people whereas the evidence is that the
transcendent experiences actually help
people so unless you can unless you're
willing to say well there are some forms
of psychopathological experience that
actually facilitate health which is
possibility but you know I think you're
you're pushing your hypothesis at that
point I'm not sure what you're saying
about a religious experience is what I'm
well generally a religious experience is
something like an experience of the of
the renewal of the world that might be
one way of thinking about it so that
everything sort of leaps forward as
crystalline and perfect as if you had
been viewing it from behind a mask
before another would be a sense of the
union of everything and so you're a
singular being and you're isolated and
in the religious experiences so for
example there's a book written recently
by a neuroscientist my stroke of what's
it called my stroke of insight yeah
that's right and I believe she had a
left hemisphere stroke if I remember
correctly and she was sufficiently
well-developed neuroscientists to
understand what was happening as she had
the stroke and and she had a intense
religious experience as a consequence of
that and she experienced it as a
dissolution of the ego into this state
of union with everything and this
transcendent experience of awe and and
the open well I don't remember the rest
of it I mean there are other elements of
religious experience that are quite
common the idea of the opening of the
heavens that's one the communion with
the ancestors that's another the
reduction of the body to a skeleton
that's another movement up into heaven
like these are well documented phenomena
and a lot of them are associated well of
a fair number of them were associated
with psychedelic use but that's not the
only Avenue to experiences like that and
epilepsy can produce experiences like
that too and then people usually report
a near-death experience as well you know
people usually report that those
experiences have life-altering
significance now that in and of itself
only proves that people are capable of
having subjective religious experiences
right
it doesn't definitively prove
there's anything outside of that so
young Carl young for example most of the
time he didn't talk about God he talked
about the God image which is not the
same thing because you could have a god
image that was even evolutionarily
instantiated without that necessarily
being rep to any transcendent being
beyond the image right so who knows who
knows again I think it depends on what
you're willing to accept as proof now
the proof the it's beyond question that
can people can have life-changing
religious experiences another example of
that is that the best treatment for
alcoholism is religious conversion it's
well documented in the literature and I
studied alcoholism for a long time so
one of the cures that sticks is
religious conversion and the 12-step
programs essentially attempt to
instantiate religious conversion and
it's hard to document their success
because they succeed for the people who
stick with it but that's not a very good
measure right it's sort of it's sort of
self-evident that they work for the
people who stick with it I'm not cynical
about about Alcoholics Anonymous or
anything but we don't have good data on
on outcome but there is good data
showing that religious transformation is
a good cure for for alcoholism so and
that's an interesting phenomena too it's
too complicated I probably can't okay
I'll try I'll try this for a second so
here's how I think a religious
conversion might work so imagine you've
got the left hemisphere and it's the
place where your habitual
interpretations reside so I can give you
a quick example of this so this guy
Ramachandran who's a neurophysiologist
or I think that's his that's his field
of study I think he's at UCLA he studied
people who hadn't neglect and neglects
is a very very bizarre phenomena so if
you have a stroke that damages your
right parietal lobe you'll lose the left
part of your
being not just your body it's really
weird it's like so for example if you
have a right parietal stroke and you
look at a clock you only see you only
only half the clock exists for you it's
not like you only see half the clock
it's weirder than that it's that there's
only the right side of the clock there's
only the right side of you there's only
the right side of my body I don't know
that this exists and so sometimes people
with right parietal damage will wake up
after the stroke and grab their left arm
and throw it out of bed and or their leg
and throw it out of bed because it's not
theirs and then of course they fall out
of bed which is quite a shock to them so
and so now they'll only eat half the
food on the plate nobody can really
understand this phenomena logically
right because we can't imagine what that
must be like I think it must be like you
know how you know there's things behind
you but you don't not see them they're
just not there it's not like it's black
or anything or there's a space it's just
not there and so I think what happens is
the not there extends to three-quarters
of the field instead of half the field
that's a guess anyway so ramas now the
funny thing about people with neglect is
that if you tell them if you point it
out you say well I noticed that you're
not moving your left foot today they'll
say well it's it's arthritic and I can't
move it and say well why do you just try
to move it so no look doctor I already
told you it's in too much pain to move
it was working fine this morning that
can be months after the the accident so
it's a denial and and people thought
actually that that was trauma induced
denial for a long time before they
figured it out was actually a
consequence of the neurophysiological
damage you know Ramachandran found that
if you irrigated the contralateral ear
say now if you pour cold water in
someone's ear it upsets their vestibular
system and their eyes will move back and
forth like this you can try that at a
party if you want and anyways
Ramachandran was testing vestibular
function on these patients and he
irrigated the right ear with cold water
and they woke up and maybe what happened
was that that was shocking enough
so imagine the networks in the right
hemisphere were degraded but not
completely gone and they needed a really
high threshold of activation to snap
into function so here's an example of
that if you have Parkinson's disease
imagine you're frozen there okay and I
throw a ball at you you'll go like this
and catch it but you can't throw it back
so you can the stimulus is enough that's
enough to push you past threshold but
you can't do it voluntarily now if you
have Parkinson's like right to the tenth
degree you won't even be able to couch
it but there's a stage where you could
still do that there's a great case study
where this grandpa was in a wheelchair
he had Parkinson's and his young
grandson was playing out on the dock and
fell in the water and started to drown
and he got out of his wheelchair went
into the ocean rescued him brought him
onto the beach sat back down in his
wheelchair and was paralyzed together so
that was enough so you can imagine there
was enough network left so if the
emotional tension became high enough
that the degraded circuits could still
function so okay so back to Ramachandran
so you irrigate the ear all of a sudden
the right hemisphere connections flash
the remainders managed to connect and
the person goes oh my god I've had a
terrible stroke I've lost the left side
of my body they're crying they're like
completely catastrophic aliy overwhelmed
by it and then 20 minutes later the the
effects wear off and they snap back in
and now they they've lost their left
side again they don't remember it and so
what seems to happen is that the right
hemisphere is collecting anomalous
information that's what it does that's
what it does when you're dreaming it's
it's it's it's representing that
anomalous information in image form and
sort of slowly passing it to the left
hemisphere so it doesn't overwhelm it
and maybe if it gets overwhelming you
wake up and you're afraid and you tell
someone about the dream that helps you
figure out what it was but anyways so
that the right hemisphere is always
trying to tap the left hemisphere into
transformation right so now imagine that
that can happen a little bit or a lot so
maybe you're just ignoring a little bit
of anomalous
information you just have some mildly
frightening dreams or maybe you've just
stacked up a whole bunch of things that
you're ignoring and there's some
major-league monsters that you haven't
contended with maybe there's situations
where the right hemisphere is stored up
enough counter enough of a counter
hypothesis let's say about how the world
works
out make making sense out of all those
things that you've ignored that one day
it just goes snap and you're a new
personality and maybe the new
personality isn't addicted so it's
something like it's something like that
I think so yeah okay
joke good morning citizen Peterson oh
you got I've prepared a real doozy for
you here oh good it's a good thing
you've got extra time to handle this one
I'd even say it's rehearsed a little bit
so it's gonna be ultra ineffective yeah
okay now I understand that a lecture on
the psychological significance of
anything really
is going to indubitably wander off into
an anthropocentric worldview but as a
practitioner of the hard sciences I
wanted to dig a little bit deeper you
know so I sought out I guess a religious
interpretation of both creative freedom
and I guess the very nature of time
itself and I found it obviously that's
why I'm here and if you think you have
an anthropocentric worldview it's
nothing compared to Joseph Cardinal
Ratzinger you know now I like to think
that you know this microphone here the
one that you keep muting out on me
you know this microphone is an object
which exists outside of our individual
perceptions that's just the way I like
to look at it but then I think about the
concept beauty is in the eye of the
beholder and certainly I mean when
you're talking about are the
appreciation of art there has to be some
sort of subjective element integrated
into that but there also must be a limit
as well I mean certain works of art do
we appreciate as absolute masterpieces
like Michelangelo's pietà for example
which you bring up frequently because it
really is that good but there's other
things which are just by comparison
there like vandalism you know now
there's always a temptation all right to
invoke the principle of a
non-overlapping magisteria
but that seems like sort
of a capo right so I formulated I guess
for myself for standards of measure
which help me separate what's the
difference between art and mediocrity
and here's the four number one education
number two time commitment you got to
put in the time if you're an artist it's
probably gonna become your full-time
occupation it's that you have to be that
passionate about it
number three public display art isn't
something that you own for yourself you
hide it in your basement then it's not
art it's something what you have to
express you know something which you've
got to share and number four and I think
this is the most important one efficacy
of vision if you're an artist you've got
to have a vision and we talked about the
dream state here a lot you go into the
dream state you have inspiration but
it's not enough to just have the
inspiration because that's totally
subjective for you the art the art part
about it is having the techniques and
the skill and the intent and I guess the
capacity to turn that into something
real you know that you can then express
or share so can you read cardinal
ratzinger as explanation for the nature
of time and then address the concept of
beauty in the eye of the beholder with
specific reference to the body
positivity movement how
sheesh misses
no I don't think I can I think I think I
think that's ha ha ha I think I think
that you you tangled together so many
things and this is also a tangle of
things not that that's a criticism that
I can't pull them all together with
sufficient rapidity not to bore the
audience to death so I'm gonna I'm gonna
wait I'm gonna wait ok dr. Peterson I'm
fascinated by the idea of faith what
faith means Jacob listens to a voice and
believes it he probably heard other
voices why did he believe this one why
what there must have been an a priori
sort of functional necessity for him to
believe the voice that told him one
thing or another and and I think that
that's a string that runs through the
Bible and then through the New Testament
we are expected as well I confess I'm a
Christian I'm I act like I believe God
is real and and so there is this call of
faith and also the in in every hero's
story we we see now there is always a
moment in that story where the hero must
believe something beyond the evidence
that is before them which is to say they
must take a leap of faith so I'm
wondering if you can just kind of unpack
that experience of faith and the
understanding of how a human being makes
the choice to believe one thing or
another god that's a great question I
mean uh is this still on
is this still working okay okay okay
good um I don't I don't precisely know
the answer that it's it's a very
peculiar thing because we think many
things or you could say many voices
appear in our minds because when
Nietzsche took des cartes I think
therefore I am apart and he said well it
isn't so obvious that there's an AI
first of all that it's a unity like a no
unity transparent unto itself which of
course the psychoanalysts picked up in a
big way and then he wasn't sure that it
was the AI who thought in some causal
manner he said well no it's more like
thoughts it's something like thoughts
appear in the phenomenal field and maybe
you choose between them or maybe they
possess you like there's lots of other
ways of thinking about it it isn't
exactly obvious to me why we choose to
take one pathway rather than another
when so many of them offer themselves to
us you know people tend to talk about
that as something like conscience right
and now maybe it's that it's got to have
something to do I think
it's an endless regress because you can
always ask why the why any assumption
became primary but I'll put that aside
for a moment it seems to me to have
something to do with your aims you know
that you're more likely to listen to a
voice that is in keeping with your most
fundamental aims and then the question
is where do your most fundamental aims
come from and from what I've been able
to determine and I'll speak
psychologically again is that to begin
with you're a concatenation of rather
primitive sub personalities hungry ones
tired one's upset ones laughing one so
you can see that in babies you know they
cycle through those states very rapidly
there's a infantile unity above all that
but it doesn't have control right and so
then the developing individual has to
figure out how to integrate those
primitive sub personalities into a
unified personality
at the same time they integrate the
unified personality into a social unity
so it's partly individual integration
but it's fed by social forces I mean
even when you watch a an infant
breastfeed its established a
relationship with its mother and there's
a reciprocity that's already at play
there so then that underlying
multiplicity starts to form itself into
a unity and then the question and I
would say that's something like that's
something like the emergence of the the
individual out of out of the the Titans
that's a reasonable way of thinking
about it like a sovereign out of the
Titans it's something like that but then
there's another division which seems to
me to paralyse parallel the the Cain and
Abel division it's that that integration
can be oriented towards something that's
positive but it can also be oriented
towards something that's negative and
that's the split of the world into good
and evil I think and then it looks like
you're navigating between those and I
can only account for that with something
like choice like I think the free choice
even though I don't understand it I'm
unwilling to deny the existence of free
choice merely because I don't understand
it because it looks to me like that's
how people act that's how they expect to
be treated and that societies who that
that structure themselves in accordance
with the idea that people have free
choice actually work now that doesn't
prove that there's free choice but
people have been arguing about that
forever so but it looks to me so those
are two possible means of integration
and then I think what you're doing is
feeding one or the other constantly and
I think you probably choose which one to
feed I think that's and I mean that's
how it feels that way to me as well like
when I look at my own you know maybe
you're really aggravated with something
maybe you're aggravated with your wife
you know or your child or something like
that you know and you're feeling kind of
nasty and maybe even know that you're in
the wrong and an idea comes into your
head you think I could say that and
no you could say it and you know what it
would do but then you pause and you
think would that make it better or worse
and then maybe you go to hell with it
which is a quite the thing to say I've
got a little story about that in a
minute
and then you say it but you knew you
knew that you took the low road right
and you know it and then you're guilty
about that and defensive and that makes
the fight way worse because then there's
no damn way you're gonna admit that you
actually did that and so things do go to
hell and so so here's here's an ugly
little idea so that's that's that's
relevant to the question so imagine
you're playing around with cocaine now
I'm using cocaine because it's very
addictive but it's a very interesting
chemical because it's a dopaminergic
agonist and what what dopamine does is
two things it makes you feel like what
you're doing is worthwhile but it also
imagined that there's a bunch of neural
circuits that are active and then they
get a hit of dopamine or you do then
those neural circuits get a little bit
more powerful okay so it it has a
rewarding property which is that it
makes you feel like what you're doing is
important and it has a reinforcing
property which is it makes neural
circuits grow so now what that means is
that whatever you were doing just before
you took cocaine grows okay so now
imagine there's a bunch of different
things that you do just before you take
cocaine but there's a string of
decisions and at one decision point is
the same for all of those difference
occurrences and that decision point is
because you know you're in trouble and
that decision point is well to hell with
it
okay so then you think that each of the
200 times that you take cocaine even
though you do it in different places but
that one thought is there all the time
and that thing grows because you're
reinforcing it and it grows and it grows
and it grows and so now that's in you
let's that's part of you and it's the
thing that says to hell with it okay so
now and maybe that's not such a good
thing to grow inside your brain so then
you your idea
and they take you to a cocaine treatment
center and after a week you're no longer
physically physiologically addicted
you're not craving you don't have a
problem as long as you're there but then
they take you back to your normal
environment and you see like cocaine Joe
your friend and as soon as you see him
up that thing comes and bang you're back
on the you're back on the to hell with
the track and that's well you're in well
you're where you will end up - if you
reinforce that particular perspective
long enough so that's akin in a sense to
the this decision-making process you
know if you if you take the low road
then that wins and it gets a little
stronger because everything that wins
neurologically gets a little stronger
it's like a Darwinian competition so one
rule is don't practice what you don't
want to become because you really do
become that it builds it builds itself
right into your neural architecture and
that's one of the terrifying things
about addiction you know because you
think well it's kind of psychological
it's like yeah kind of it's also kind of
neuro physiological and you build a
one-eyed cocaine monster in your head if
you hit yourself enough with something
that reinforcing so yeah
last question I guess it's just a really
simple question then about long
suffering so when it one of the things
that was noticing from the stories of
Jacob and a lot of these biblical
narratives is you do have this
all-powerful God who is able to kind of
essentially be the hidden protagonist in
the narrative but then the funny thing
is that he's kind of revealing some of
his qualities throughout the course of
the story so you were talking about the
weird paradox of the fact that God
somehow allows Jacob Israel to win the
fight yeah
so my question is relating to pants EPs
thing about the rats that you told like
three or four times and the number of
occasions I saw one even more recent
videos you talked about it where the
bigger rat lets the smaller rat win
because then the other the smaller rat
won't engage in the game so the question
is is twofold for me one is God allowing
humanity to win periodically so that's
to allow us to actually engage in the
dialogue through these stories and to is
it a much more primitive version of the
virtue of humility which you wouldn't
normally characterize of an Amana path
of anonymity omnipotent deity well those
are excellent questions that's I really
like the second one in particular that
that that God's decision to allow human
victory from time to time is actually a
manifestation of something approximating
humility or at least mercy but humility
is an interesting take on it well it's
also connected to Paul's image of how
Christ handed him hands himself over and
allows himself to be defeated by men and
therefore conquers sin which is man's
enemy it's a weird it's the same paradox
where God enters into that dynamic with
people and loses and willingly loses
yeah well that's a okay so the first
thing I would say is that that's a
really interesting analogy I I
I can't it's complicated enough question
so that I can't go be I don't think I
can go be
the question actually because it's so
complicated that I don't think I can
formulate it any better than you already
did like it's an interesting string of
ideas I'd have to play with it a while
to see it does shed an interesting light
on why God is amenable to negotiation in
the Old Testament which is really a
strange as you pointed out it's really a
strange thing it's like this is
omnipotent God who obviously can do
whatever he wants and yet he allow he
can be bargained with and that also
opens up the question of why like your
hypothesis is well if you don't let the
little rat win now and then then they
get dejected and quit playing and that's
I mean that's that's a pretty good
observation if people don't get to win
now and then you know they that's kind
of what happens to Cain God says well
you not playing a straight game that's
why you're not winning but I don't know
there's an intimation in the Old
Testament and I think it's more
developed in the New Testament maybe not
that the straighter the game you play
the more likely you are to win and so
maybe part of the reason that God lets
Abraham bargain and and even Jacob is
because they've started to play very
straight games and so maybe you do win
in your wrestling with God if you play a
straight game I mean I think that's I
actually think that's I think the reason
that's true is because that's actually
why we would define it as a straight
game now then we could speak
psychologically again I think that what
we've come to recognize as a straight
game is the game that in the broadest
number of situations across the widest
range of time spans is most likely to
produce a positive outcome and that's
that's actually the grounds for our
sense of ethics that it's really
practical not to belabor it too much
because there was there was an
interesting insight from Chesterton's
the man who was Thursday where God sets
himself up as the benevolent antagonist
so as to accelerate the game yeah well I
think that's a really interesting idea I
mean there is there is hints I would say
throughout the biblical story
that the reason that God tolerates Satan
let's say is because without an
adversary you're soft and that's I mean
that's tied in with the notion that life
is something like a moral struggle you
know that that's the fundamental essence
of being a moral struggle now it I think
that that's phenomenologically a
reasonable observation maybe it's maybe
other people don't experience it that
way but it seems to me like within my
own experience that that's accurate now
I don't know what again I don't know
what that says about the fundamental
nature of reality but I had a vision at
one point that I was in a ring with
Satan actually believe it or not and it
was like a Roman Colosseum and you know
I was rather upset to find myself there
but I won and I asked God afterwards why
he would do such a thing and his answer
was he knew I could win and that's
interesting you know because like I
don't know what to make of that believe
me I have no idea what to make of that
but the idea was that if you're trying
to encourage someone rather than protect
them because those are really different
things right to protect someone isn't to
make them strong to encourage them is to
make them strong then you set them a
series of challenges right right at the
point where they may win and maybe you
could make a case that that's what you
do if you really care for someone now I
know that that's it I'm not saying that
that interpretation is correct I'm not
but but there's something mean you
definitely with your children you know
when you're wrestling with them say when
you're playing with them you use you
push them to the limit of their ability
because otherwise they don't transcend
their current abilities so yep
[Music]
so we'll see some of you perhaps most of
you in December and I think we'll finish
off Genesis at that point and then in
the new year probably not till the
spring I'll start with exodus which I'm
really looking forward to because I
really like the Exodus story it's an
amazing story and unbelievably deep note
well the ones we've covered so far being
you know pretty good as well but so
thank you all for coming and we'll
perhaps see you in about a month