So I am going to briefly review some of what I told you last time,
and then I am going to walk through as I mentioned, I am going to walk through
the Disney movie film Pinnochio and which I presume most of you have seen
How many of you have seen it?
Yeah, OK, that's, that's...so as I think I mentioned that is something in of itself right?
I mean the fact that you have all seen it means that it's an
production of cultural significance, and because it's such a strange artifact
That's one way of looking at it, it might be worth
trying to take it apart to understand why it is, for example, that you even understand it.
and so,
I offered you the proposition last week that we
view the world as essentially through a narrative lens
and I believe that we view the world through a narrative lens
because the fundamental problem that we have to solve
as living creatures is how we should act in the world.
and,
that means,
how we should act to maintain ourselves
but also how we need to act in relationship to other people
and in relationship to the broader world in order to maintain our self across time.
so that's a complicated problem, right, it's not just how you survive
it's how you survive now and next week, and next month, and next year
and 50 years from now and maybe your, your descendants as well
if the culture is going to stabilize
and then not only you across all those time frames but you and everyone else across all those time frames
It's a viciously difficult problem
and so, I would say that we have evolved mechanisms to solve that
I think that is self-evident in some sense because for example one of the mechanisms that
animals have evolved to deal with the problem of social being
even if they are not particularly social animals
is the dominance hierarchy, right, or you could call it hierarchy of authority or power, because
I think that considering human
structures, social structures as mere power
structures is a terrible mistake, it's a terrible oversimplification
because power is no means the only, like force is what I mean
force is not a stable way of solving the problem of how to live together across time
the question is what is the stable way of solving how to live together
across time, and the really is the question and it's part of the question that
I am trying to answer
partly because it's a perennial problem, right, we face the problem of
how to organize ourselves in small social units
without undue conflict and then we face the larger problem
of how to organize ourselves into large social units without undue conflict and that conflict can be
absolutely devastating, and, and frequently is
so,
so then I would also say that the first way of solving this problem isn't conscious
you see, not at all
and, you know
you may know, and you may not know that there are
there are different forms of memory
right
really technically different forms of memory, so for example
there is short term working memory
which is the memory that you use to hold things like telephone numbers in your active imagination
it decays very rapidly, it's only 4 to 7 bits
which is why
well it's why phone numbers are, were at least
7 digits long, you know, you can kind of
manage that as a loop that, and then there is
episodic memory, and that has two elements one is semantic and the other is episodic
it's, what's the name of that
mmm, someone said something...
[Student] Procedural?
Yes well there is procedural memory and then there is another
the kind of memory that you use to represent your
experiences to yourself, so let's say it is image laden and the other one is semantic
and semantic is your memory for facts and those are quite different, so for example
procedural memory
that is how you ride a bike, that is how you play the piano
that's how you play jazz music if you are in a combo
it's, it's the memory, it's a funny kind of memory because it is built right into you, you know, I mean
so is, so is, the kind of memory that you use to represent your own life, but it is much more malleable is some sense
so, what that means is that in your procedures
there is information that you don't know about, it's patterned information that you don't know about
part of that is how to act
you know, like, when you walk into a social gathering
you don't really think through how you are going to act
you know how to act, and if someone asks you
exactly what it is that you are doing and why, you could formulate a story about it
but the probability that, that it's the existence of that story that enabled you to act that way is zero, because
you have to react way faster than that, and so, you know have social knowledge
built into your nervous system because you have practiced being a social being for a very long period of time
and of course, then that social being has been shaped forever really, it's the right way of thinking about it
Now, we know that animals organized themselves into hierarchies
and we will say of dominance, because it is more true the farther back you go in time
at least since the time of the crustaceans, you know , when we split from out common ancestor 300 million years ago, and so
and it's true for social animals and non-social animals so
even animals that don't live together in groups
have to organize themselves into a hierarchy
in the space they inhabit, songbirds are a good example and they have dominance disputes all the time
partly that's, you can hear them having their little dominance disputes in the spring when they are singing because basically what they are singing is
I am pretty damn healthy and I am ready to go and if you are another bird like me you had better steer clear of this tree!
and, the dominance songbirds
you know, they don't live together, crows are social but don't most songbirds aren't
the dominance songbirds get the best nest
and the best nest is the one that doesn't get rained on
it's not to windy and it is close to food sources, and
you know, so they have the healthiest chicks and they attract the best mates, and
like it is really important where you are positioned in the hierarchy even if you are not
like a flock or a herd creature, now, we are more like herd creatures so it's even more
it's even more relevant to us , but there is just no escaping
a hierarchical arrangement in social being
that is social being
and, and, and it is evolutionary ancient beyond conception so
300 million years ago there weren't trees, you know I mean, so the dominance hierarchy is older than trees
so that is really something to think about and then, you know, when you are thinking about the reality that shaped us
say, from an evolutionary perspective but also from a cultural perspective
what you have to understand is that that the things that have shaped us most are the things that have been around the longest, and so you could say
those are the most real things
and you can't even see some of them, it's not like you can come in here and, well it's not exactly true
you can't come in here and see the multiple dominance hierarchies that are at work
You can in a way, because,
the chairs are set up to face this way and I am facing that way and
that gives you some clues about the social order here and you take the cues instantly, right
you come down, you sit in the chairs, you organize yourselves according to mutual expectation and that's part of your procedural knowledge
about how to behave as a social creature
now,
that knowledge is really really deep and a lot of it is coded in your behaviour
now, and in other peoples behaviour as well
and that's, you know. that's the expectations you have of other people and of yourself, and a lot of those are implicit right,
so,
when we are interacting there's, there is a very large number of things that you just don't get to do
and you know that too, and you won't do them, and that way we can act as if we understand each other
even though we don't, because you are really complicated
and I am really complicated and there is lots of situations where we might really be in conflict
but because we share a map of the culture, the cultural expectations
it makes part of our, it's built right into our perception
you will act out that set of expectations and so will I
and if neither of us can do that, even if one of us can't we are going to stay, we are either going immediately
devolve into conflict or we are going to avoid each other like the plague
and that's exactly the right thing to do,
and so, one of the really useful things to understand , and this took me a long time to formulate properly, you know,
you hear the terror management theorists for example and they have this idea that
your, your meaning representation, the story you tell about the world
regulates your death anxiety, it's something like that
but that is not right, I mean it is close to right and it is a smart idea
it came from Ernest Becker by the way who wrote a book called "The Denial of Death", which is actually quite a good book even though it is wrong
you know, sometimes a book can be very useful
it can be usefully wrong, and Becker's book is usefully wrong
because he thought that
it's the internal representation of your belief system
that regulates your anxiety and that anxiety is fundamentally
in the final analysis anxiety about death, it's like well, OK, fine, it is a reasonable
proposition, but that isn't how it works, you see,
it isn't my beliefs that right now that are regulating my emotion
It is the fact that I'm acting out those beliefs, which include implicit perceptions, I'm acting them out
and so are you
and so, what you're doing and what I expect, more accurately, what you're doing and what I want you to do
and the way I want you to react to me, that's working!
so it's the match between my belief system and the way that everyone else is acting that is regulating my emotions
it's not the belief system
it's mediated by the social culture and you see if you understand this then
you understand more particularly why people
are willing to fight to the bitter end to protect their culture
it's not a psychological structure that they are protecting
it's a psychological structure and sociological structure, simultaneously
so the social contract is
you have a set of expectations and I have a set of expectations
they are actually desires, they are not merely expectations because as
living creatures we are desirous, we don't just expect
and so you desire an outcome and I desire an outcome
and we agree to act in accordance with that
that's the social contract
and so people don't like having that disrupted
well it isn't because it psychologically destabilizes them, although it does
it's because it actually destabilizes them
right, if all of a sudden we can't occupy the same
specified domain of territory it isn't only that we are thrown into psychological disarray, although we will be
it's that we will start fighting with each other, like, and that can kill you
it's no joke, it kills people a lot, like it happens
it can happen very easily that a cohesive social group can fragment along some fracture line
of identity let's say, and all hell breaks loose
and you know, that's what the Tutsi's and the Hutu in the, in the, in Rwanda
and those things can get out of control just so fast it's just unbelievable and so
and that wasn't, death anxiety, that was death, that's a whole different thing
and that's the other thing that terror management people don't exactly get, it's like
it isn't just that your culture and cultural beliefs protect you from anxiety
and say anxiety about death even, it's that they actually protect you from death!
as well as protecting you from death anxiety, I mean look
It's warm in here
it's cold outside
the fact that the culture is intact means that you are not outside freezing
that's a hell of a lot more fundamental in some sense than mere anxiety, although
I am not trying to underplay the role of anxiety that's a major issue, but
there is something that is a lot more fundamental at stake that mere psychology
so it's the match between your map of the world and other peoples actions that regulates your emotions
and, and it regulates it completely, because
you know if someone in here starting acting seriously deranged
like brandished a pistol, let's say
all of a sudden you would not be in the same place
at all
not a bit
and so what would happen, well
chaos would happen
and chaos isn't just that you would get anxious, that's not a good enough explanation
what would happen is a lot more complex than that, what happens in some sense is that your body
and it does this, it does this, what would happen is that you would react the same way that a rat reacts to a cat
it's exactly that, it's exactly that, you would respond as if
a terrible predator had emerged in your midst
And so, What is that reaction? Well it's not just anxiety
because, when you encounter a predator
anxiety isn't the only thing that is useful, that would just make you freeze, that could be the worst thing you could do
freeze and well you are a pretty easy target
so you have to be prepared for a lot broader range of responses that mere, mere
mere, petrification
like how about a little aggression
that might be helpful, you don't know it also might get you killed but,
but maybe you could take the guy down and maybe that's a good idea
you know and, and maybe you have to run, so that's disinhibited as well
and maybe you have to think really quickly
and reflexively, so that happens, that's actively disinhibited I would say as well, it's like
your whole being thrown into intense concentration on the moment
and you are burning up physiological resources like mad, and so what will happen after something like that
if you don't develop outright post-traumatic stress disorder, which some of you would
is that, you'd, assuming that the situation was brought under control
you would walk out of here shaking with your heart rate at like 170, and it would take you like
well it might take you the rest of your life
and maybe you would never recover, but you could be bloody well be sure that it would take you the rest of the day
that's for sure!
and so
it's no joke when someone steps outside the confines of the social contract
right, and that is kind of, there is a philosopher named Hobbes
who I suppose in some sense was a centrally conservative philosopher as oppose to Rousseau
who is kind of his exact opposite
Rousseau believed that people were basically good
in their natural state, so he believed that nature was basically good
and he believed that culture was what corrupted people
and so
Hobbes believed exactly the opposite, he believed that in the state of nature, let's say
every person was at every other persons throat
and the only thing that prevented continual chaos was the imposition of a
of a collective agreement that would be the social contract
that essentially governed how people would interact and that would keep that underlying chaos
at bay
and you know
my contention is is that Hobbes was correct and Rousseau was correct, and
and I think that if you add Rousseau and Hobbes together you get a total picture of the world and that's really
I think the picture of the world that I am trying to relate to you, it's both at once, it's like
well, you can't just attribute human
malevolence and unpredictability to society
it's a non starter
it's like, people built society so all you are doing is pushing the problem back, it's like
where did it come from
well, the society, the society before
well then, the one before that, it's like well
you got to tangle up the individual in there at some point, right, because people created society
and so,
you can't just blame human irrationality and malevolence on society
well and also, it's, it's ungrateful for God's sake, it's like
society obviously also makes you peaceful, part of the reason you are peaceful right now, all of you is because
well, you are not that hungry,
you are certainly not starving to death, you would be a very, very different person if you were starving right now
you know, or if you were enraged or if you were panicking or if you were terrified
because your future was radically uncertain, I mean you are not just
any of those people right now, you're
satiated, and I mean that technically, you're satisfied
none of your biological systems except perhaps curiousity
which is a rather pleasant emotion
are activated in the least
and, you know, because of that you all think that you are in control of yourself
but don't be thinking that, that's just not right
you mean, if you look at how the brain is structured, for example
the hypothalamus which is a really important part of the brain, it basically
it basically establishes the framework of reference and the actions
the framework of reference within which and the actions you take
in order to fulfill basic biological needs
so the hypothalamus makes you thirsty, and the hypothalamus makes you hungry
and it makes you sexually aroused
and it puts you into a state of defensive aggression, and
it actually also makes you explore
and be curious and all of that's hypothalamic, it is an amazing structure
and then
and it's really small and it's right at the base of the brain
and you could imagine it as something that has tremendously powerful
projections upward throughout the rest of the brain into the
emotional systems and the cortical systems and all of that, like
tree trunk sized connections, you know, metaphorically speaking and then
the cortex has these little vine-like tendrils going down
to regulate the hypothalamus
you know, and when push comes to shove
man, the hypothalamus, that thing wins!
and so, you know you get people now and then
who have a hypothalamic dysfunction and one of them produces a condition called
I can't remember it, it's not dypsomania
although it's like that, it doesn't matter
it produces uncontrollable thirst
and so what will happen is that people that have this hypothalamic problem
will drown themselves by drinking water, which you can do by the way
and so they just cannot get enough water
and there is not stopping them, right
no more that there would be stopping you if you were suffering from raging thirst, it's like
it's a happy day when the hypothalamus is not telling you what to do
and you know you live in such a civilized state that most of the time
roughly speaking, you are tranquil and satisfied and
more or less you can imagine yourself as a peaceful
you know, productive, well meaning
entity
but don't be thinking that's you would be if you were put in the right situation
because that's just not right at all
so,
you know lots of times soldiers develop post-traumatic stress disorder because they go out on the battlefield
they are kind of naive, they are young guys you know and...
It is actually is worse if they are not that bright it turns out because having a lower IQ
is one of the things that predisposes you to post-traumatic stress disorder, but anyways
they go out on the battlefield and they see what they are capable of under battlefield conditions, and like
you know, we have been fighting wars for a very long time
millions of years, you know chimps basically have wars with other chimps
the troupes right, because the juveniles will patrol the
perimeter of their territory and if they find other chimps from other troupes that they outnumber
they will tear them to pieces
like and chimps are really strong, and so, when I say they'll tear them to pieces I mean that literally you know
hey tear them to pieces
and Jane Goodall discovered that originally in the 1970's, she didn't even report it for a while because
she was so shocked, you know
she kind of assumed like most followers of Rousseau that the human proclivity for warfare was
that was something that was uniquely human
you know, it had something to do with our
our unique self-consciousness or our intelligence or something like that
she had no idea that it was rooted
that deeply
you know, we split from chimps about 6, 7 million years ago something like that, and so
we were patrolling territory, we were gang members
7 million years ago, and, you know
that's a minimum estimation because of course that ancestor
shaded back, maybe, 20 million years into
entities that were roughly primate like
and so, territoriality and the proclivity to defend territory is so deeply embedded in us
it's like,
the control center for our whole brain
and so, there isn't anything more important to us I would say than maintaining
the
match between
what we want to have happen and what other people are doing
in response to our actions, like that's that, that's what we want
and as long match is maintained
then our emotional systems, and I would say that anxiety is probably primary in that regard
our emotional systems remain
inhibited
they're on
they're ready
like a nuclear reactor rod are on
and the rest of the brain dampens them down but
it's like, you don't want them to take time to start up, man you want them to be on at a tenth of a seconds notice when it's necessary
and so, you know that's kind of why, well if you look at a wild animal
it's like, its alert
you know, it's ready to dart this way or that way, especially a pray animal
instantaneously and it has reflexes
built into it as you do
that will respond way before you're conscious
So, for example
if you happened to be walking down a trail and you detect something snake like in the periphery, you will leap away
before even know that you leapt
and that's because it takes a fair bit of time to actually see a snake
by which I mean, form a conscious representation of the snake
you know, and maybe it takes a 1/4 of a second or something like that
or even longer
but it doesn't matter, maybe it takes a tenth
a twentieth of a second, a tenth of a second but the thing about the damn snake is that it's way faster than that
it's really fast that thing and it co-evolved with primates by the way
and so it can nail you way faster that you can look at it so, you have
your eyes map snake like objects right onto your reflexes so that
the eyes go, the eyes make you jump
and then they see after that, yeah well now you can see that's no problem
so
alright
now what I would say that what we do is that we live in a shared story
and the story is a way of looking at the world and it's a way of acting in the world at the same time
and that story has to operate within narrow parameters
and this is something that is extraordinarily important to understand
because, and this is something I think that Piaget figured out, Jean Piaget
figured out, better that anyone else, I think that he really got this right and
by the way, one of the things that Piaget was trying to do
you never hear about how strange these great thinkers are
Piaget was a very strange guy and he was a
he was a hyper-genius, he was offered the
curatorship of a bloody museum when he was 10 years old, you know, because he wrote this little paper
on mollusks which apparently was very good and
so they offered him the curatorship of a museum and his parents wrote back and said, "Well you know,
no, probably not because he is actually ten."
and so that was Piaget, man, the guy was a genius
and, you know, he was actually motivated by the desire to reconcile science and religion
that was actually was his entire
motivation for what did, you never hear that but that is the case
and so,
Piaget was very interested in how
you produce structures that enable you to regulate yourself
because you are kind of like a
a colony of strange sub-animals that have to figure out how to get along
so that you can sort of be one thing
you kind of learn that, I would say between the ages of 2 and 4
as you are being socialized, you know how erratic 2 years old's are, I mean they are a blast and
and it's part because they are erratic, it's like
they are unbelievably happy and then they are unbelievably hungry and then they really hot
and then they are really upset and crying, you know and then they are really scared, it's like
and all of that's just untrammeled so it's really fun to be around them, especially when they are happy, because they are just so happy
that it's just, you know
you don't ever get to be that happy
and so, it's nice to be around a 2 year old because you can kind of
feel that again, you know, and a lot of, one of the horrible things about being a parent is that you spend
a tremendous amount of your time
making your child less happy
and the reason for that is that positive emotion is very impulsive
you know, because everybody says well you should be happy, it's like
well, no, when you are happy you are actually quite stupid
and so, because happiness makes you impulsive,
happiness makes, happiness says, "Hey, everything is really good right now, get what you can while the getting is good!"
and so,
as a, like if you are hyper-optimistic, manic we'll say
It's like every stock investment looks like a really good stock investment
and it's like, you go out and spend all your money because
look it, there's those wonderful things everywhere and you could do so great things with then, and then
you know, you spend all your money
and then, you crash and think, oh God, my life is over, you know because I just, I just
spent all my money on all this useless stuff and it's all under the grip of impulsive positive emotion
you know and so.
when you're telling your kids to be quiet and settle down
it isn't because they're making a lot of noise being in pain
it's because they are running around like wild baboons having a blast! And
disrupting things like mad, you know and so, well kids, have to settle down, you know like,
"Quit having so much fun!"
and it's kind of awful that you do that but
but you do
and that's because
the emotions and motivations have to be brought into
like a relationship with one another within the person
so that, you know
one thing I remember with my son who was quite
he is quite disagreeable by temperament
which is actually a good thing as far as I am concerned although it brings its own challenges
and so with my daughter when she was misbehaving, she was pretty agreeable
and uh,
you know, if she was misbehaving I could basically just look at her
and she would just quit, you know, but my son, it was like
that was just nothing, you're looking at me, it's like, no that's just not going to go anywhere man
so then I would like tell him to stop, and
that really wasn't having much of an effect either
he would just sort of maybe laugh or run away
or whatever, he was a tough little rat, and
you know, what I would do with him, is that he would
be doing something and I would interfere and he would get upset, and you know
angry, and so then I would get him to sit on the steps and I told him, this was when he was about two
I said, look, you are going to sit on the steps, that's time out, you're going to sit of the steps
until you've got control of yourself, and you can come back and be
and play the family game again
I basically said, be a civilized human being and they you are welcome again
and so he would sit on the steps, it was so interesting to watch because
he was just enraged, he would sit there
like have you every seen a two year old have a temper tantrum?
It's really quite the bloody phenomena
if you ever saw an adult do that, you would like, you would call 911
right away, it's like oh my God! and I have seen adults do that, you know because
people, say, with borderline personality disorder will have temper tantrums and it's like
man, you want to about 30 feet away from that person, that's for sure, it's really, but
in kids, it's like
well first of all they are only this long, so how much trouble can they really cause
but it's like, you know they're just completely gone, they are like
on the floor, their face is red, they are just furious, like way more furious than you ever get
if you are even vaguely socialized
they are just outraged and they are kicking and hitting the ground and like, it's like a little
epileptic fit of anger you know , they are completely controlled by their rage and
we took care of one kid for a while who
he was actually a pushover, that kid, you could get him to behave by
you know, kind of shaking your finger at him, but, his mother thought he was really tough
because he had her fooled, he had her figured out
and one of the things he would do is have temper tantrums and during the temper tantrum
he would hold his bloody breath until he turned blue!
it's like try that, like you know as, that's your homework
go home and, go home and have a temper tantrum and while you are doing it hold your breath
until you actually turn blue
it's like, you won't be able to do it
you don't have the willpower of a two year old
that's for sure, that little varmint, man he would just have a fit
then he would hold his breath and then he would turn blue, it was like, Wow! that's, that's amazing
and we would just let him do it, and you know
he would turn blue and everybody would be gone and he would come out if it, you know, and
it didn't work, so he just quit doing it, I think he did it like twice, and then he figured out, oh well,
that's a lot of work for very little outcome, and you know it's not like two year old's are stupid, they're
they're not stupid, but they are probably smarter you
but they are not civilized, by any stretch of the imagination, and so, anyways back to my son
I would put him on the steps and he'd be like "RRRRRR!", just like enraged!
and, and trying to get himself together, you know
and I'd wait a few, like I had a strict rule which was
as soon as you are done
you're welcome again
so, it's completely under your control, you
you can get yourself calmed down, you come and talk to me again
if you are calm enough so I like you
then you are welcome back in the family, no grudge, nothing
and so, it's harder that you think, like people think that they like their kids, like don't be thinking that
they are hard to like, they are little monsters, and they are very very pushy and provocative
and so lots of their parents do not like their children
and they do terrible things to them their whole life
so, it's no joke, and uh,
it's very common and, you know, that was Freud's observation, fundamental observation, that
a lot of psychopathology is rooted in the family and you can be sure of that
you know and, when you hear about some mother who's done something terrible to her child, which happens reasonably frequently
you know perfectly well that
she has very terrible capacity to discipline, the child has just provoked her
and provoked her and provoked her and provoked her and provoked her
it just happens to be a day where
her new boyfriend left, and she is quite hungover and she got fired, and it's like
that's the wrong day to provoke her
and then she does something that is not good!
And you read about it and you think, "Well how could that happen? How could anyone do that?" Well
that's how they do it
and so, kids they are very provocative, just like little chimps
chimps will
the adolescents will, like throw little pebbles and sticks at the sleeping larger males
and bug them
and that teasing, which it is, that teasing
turns into full fledged dominance challenge behaviour once the adolescent males get big enough to do it
and so when you are being provoked by a child, which
they provoke you all the time, they are trying to figure out well just,
"Where are you exactly, what happens if I do this? What happens if I do this?" You know and
how else are they going to figure it out?
Anyways, he would sit on the steps and just
he is just enraged and trying to control himself and I would watch that and then you know I'd
come back after about two minutes or whatever and he would still be "RRRRRRR!"
and I would say, well, you know, have you got yourself under control
are you ready to get of the steps? And he would go "NOOOO! NOT YET!"
and then, you know, he would get himself under control
and then he would come back, and you know, he'd be contrite
and then I would like him right away, you know
you got to watch that, you know because, you don't like being dominated by a two year old, no one does
and so if the child hasn't
mastered himself and started to act in accordance with the prevailing social norms
you won't like them, well you think, "Yeah I will because I am a good person.", It's like, no you won't
and no you are not a good person so don't be thinking about that at all, it's just not true
so
when he was contrite then he'd come and then, you know, we would just go on like nothing had happened
because that is what you want to do, right as soon as you get compliance
especially if the compliance is in the best interests of the child
you want to reward it instantly, right, that's the right thing to do
because so then
and
you could just see him gaining control over himself, and so what was really was happening is
His, in his mind, in his brain we'll say there was a war between the psyche, the ego that was starting
to become integrated, you know and starting to become a continuous person, an identity
and it is fragile in two year old's and it can be disrupted all the time, and it is, that's why they are so
hyper-emotional, it's fragile that little ego
and it doesn't have a lot of power
and so what you want to do is reward it when it wins!
You know, when it, he gets control over the underlying motivations you want to say
Hey, good work, man! Good work, kid!
You did it, you know, you got yourself under control, way to be! And the kid is really happy about that because
it's actually not that much fun to have a temper tantrum
It's exhausting, you know, it takes you over
Question?
[Student] Could you give an example of what you would reward him with?
[JBP] Oh, just a pat on the head or, you know, "That's good!" kind words you know or whatever
[Student] Notice it.
[JBP] Yeah, notice it pay attention, that's it, that's it, pay attention and that's a great
it's a great thing to know with people, like in your relationships
here is the key to a good relationship, it's not the only one but
Watch your person
carefully, carefully, carefully and whenever they do something that you would like them to do more of
tell them that that was really good and, mean it, and it's not manipulative, because if it's manipulative it won't work
It's like you have to say, "Wow! I am so glad you did that!" And you have to be precise
Here is what you just did that I though was great!
and then "Oh boy, that's so nice that you noticed, I can't believe that noticed" It's like
you know, you do that twenty times and the person will be
like the rat that's just pushing the lever for cocaine, you know
so but no, I'm serious, Skinner established this, B.F. Skinner noticed this a long time ago
Reward is intensely, useful in terms of modifying behaviour, but the problem is, is that
it's really hard to notice when things are going right.
Right, because you are kind of primed to notice when things are going wrong, and so you use
threat and punishment more often as
agents of shaping the people that you are around because, you know, when everything is going right
what are you going to say, everything is going right
it turns to zero, you just assume it
and that's, that's not good
that's not good, you want to pay attention and if your person, your children, your wife
whoever, your mother
your sister
if you want them to
if you want to rectify your relationships with them, and I am not saying to do this in a manipulative way, it won't work
but if they do something that's promoting harmony and peace and goodwill, it's like
attend to it, tell them that you noticed, it's like
so useful and you have to get rid of grudges and your resentment to do that
right, because you don't want to, you are kind of mad at your sister
and then you know, she does something good, you think there is no goddamn way I am going to reward her for that
so you ignore her when she does something good, it's like
that's brilliant that is, because then you just punished her for doing what you want
and people do that with their kids all the time
you know, because they let the kids dominate them, then they get resentful
then the kid will run up to them to show them something that's kind of spectacular and they'll
they are not happy, they'll like, "Oh yeah, that's, I'm working."
You know, little kids
all sad about that and he has just learned something
so and it's not perhaps what you want him to learn
and so you have to keep your relationship with your children pristine
and that means that you can't
hold a grudge or resent them and that means that you have to help them learn how to behave
so that you like them
and that way, if you like them
and you are kind of sensible, and maybe your partner also likes them, so, you know, you have got a consensus going there
there is a reasonable possibility that other people will actually like them too
including other children and then the world open up to them
you know, then you'll bring them to peoples houses and the people will actually smile at them
and give them a pat on the head instead of thinking, "Oh my God that brats coming to visit again
I wonder what he will break this time."
You know and that's just a horrible thing for your child to experience repetitively
in situation after situation
all they learn is that adults have a false smile but they are really lying all the time
God!
It's like a bit of hell and there's a lot of children who are trapped in that, it's really awful to see
I can see kids like that when I walk down the street, you know, it's like
they are little doomed things and they're, they are, you know, they are screwed in 15 different ways and there is no way out of it
It's really awful
so,
I would not recommend that you do that
It's better to notice that you are a bit of a monster
or a lot of a monster
and notice that
you are much happier with the people around you when they behave in accordance with
reasonable social norms and then you actually feel genuinely connected to them
you want to work on their behalf so that everything works out
but if you think that you are a good person and that you would never do anything that was
harmful to your children then you can just forget about that because you will never take it seriously enough to actually learn
so,
alright, so anyways we live inside this story as far as I can tell
and
you know we kind of put the story together inside us to begin with
and that happens between 2 and 4 when you are
integrating those motivations and emotions into a relatively functional unity
right, and that does happen between 2 and 4
if you don't have your kids socialized by the time they are 4, you might as well just forget it
and I know that sounds terribly pessimistic and all of that but I know the literature on
trying to rectify antisocial behaviour in children, and after the age of 4 it's virtually impossible no matter what you do.
and the reason for that is that
kids who are still acting like two year old's when they are four
you know, they are twice as old, eh, as a two year old
that's a lot of difference, like a four year old is an adult as far as a two year old is concerned
and so if the four year old is still acting like a two year old, that's really not good!
and other four year old's will come up and, you know
do a little play invitation, like a dog, and you know, the kid, the two year old four year old has no idea how to react to that and so the more mature kid thinks
"Oh, well..
how about I play with you?" [motions to another student]
and then that kid is isolated
from the peers and after four you mostly socialized by your peers
and so you just fall farther and farther and farther behind
you are more and more alienated, you are more bitter and angry and no wonder
and it's just not, you can't rectify it
so,
so that's useful to know, it's like your job from two to four
is to turn your child, help turn your child into a functional unity, and by three they should be
functional enough as a unity
within themselves so that they can concentrate on a voluntary goal
for some reasonable length of time
which is also why it's useful to let them spend some time alone, so that they can learn to amuse themselves
because if they can't amuse themselves they are not going to play with other kids
and then by three
they are sorted together enough so if another three year old comes along
they can at least play in parallel
and may also start, maybe able to start playing
a cooperative game
and so, that's often a fantasy game, you know, pretend
and so what the kids will do, sometimes they mediate it verbally
but sometimes it's more acted out
it's a combination of the two
they will assign each other roles
they will do this with you too, well let's have a tea party
well, what does that mean?
well it means let's sit down and act out the act of sharing food
and see if we can get that right
that's what the kids saying we will have a little tea party
you know, it's very important, because human beings share food, like this is a major thing to get right, man.
And so, the kid will say well you be the Mom and I will be the Dad and, you know,
we will make little fort and that will be our house and we will go in there and run our roles and
you know, we are acting out
we are acting out family
and if we are both reasonably civilized as three year old's we can concentrate on that goal
we can establish that little fictional world
we can
negotiate a mutual goal
and then we can run the simulation and that is what kids are doing when they are pretending
it's bloody brilliant, that's play man, it's like
It's brilliant!
It's absolutely unbelievable because
you know, if you are going to play Mom, let's say
It isn't like you
it isn't exactly like you imitate your Mom because imitation would be
you know how annoying it is when someone copies you
so, you know
you are sitting like that and then
and I do the same thing, that's really annoying and that isn't what kids do
they don't
act out the precise actions that they have seen the target of their fantasy
display, they're way more sophisticated than that, they watch
they're mother, let's say, like hawks
and then they start to extract out the regularities in their behaviour, which is Mom behaviour, let's say
that's what makes you Mom
whatever that is, and then
so it's like they look at you across time and they extract out the regularity that makes you Mother
and then they try to embody that regularity in their pretend play and then they sort of encapsulate or
incorporate the spirit of being a mother, or being a father or whatever
or an animal because they'll play at that
and so that is what they are doing, they are using their body as, and their mind as dramatic forums
it's really amazing, you know it's so sophisticated
and no other animal does that as far as we know
and it's the platform on which language is based, first of all we imitate
and language is imitation, right, because we use the same words, right, so it's imitation
it's a big deal so you can act out someone else
and then you can conceptualize them in fantasy and it is only way after that that you
could maybe articulate it, what does it mean to be a mother
so I could have you write an essay about that
well you would have to think about it right?
you wouldn't just automatically know, but if someone hands you a baby, you know, you are not completely
socially blind, you roughly know what to do after you are done with your initial nervousness
you roughly know what to do
don't drop it, that's a good rule you have probably figured that one out at least
you know, don't yell at it, don't startle it, give it a little pat maybe, try hugging it
maybe you go like this, you know, you make eyes at it, you know what to do!
It's built into you, you know, it's built into you, but
that doesn't mean you could lay it out as a series of rules about how to be a mother
it's like you could right a whole damn book about that, so
alright, so anyways, you live in this story
and first of all you get your own story together
and that's by integrating your motivations and emotions together
under social influence
you know,
Piaget kind of states that
before the age of three kids can't really play
they are egocentric, and it's not exactly right because
you are actually playing with you mother
from the time you are born, so even with breast feeding that's a social interaction and
it's a complex cooperative endeavour and it's often hard for a mother and the infant
to get that right
because it's complicated and it requires a lot of social interaction, like the child has to learn not to bite for example
you know and a mother has to learn not to be too nervous and
and there is a lot of social bonding, it's a really complicated social interaction
so the child, the infant even at the earliest stages
is already engaged in a complex social dynamic
that is essentially play oriented
but it's you know pretty primordial , it has to do mostly with the mouth, and
a child's mouth and tongue are already hardwired at birth so
you child is most, this is a Freudian observation as well, your child is almost all
mouth and tongue when it's born, the rest of it's body, well you watch infants , it's like
even when they are
How old?
Seven months? Six months? Four months? I can't even remember now, you know, they will move their arm and they kind of go like this
it's like they have no fine control, they're
it's more like they have
you know clubs on the ends of sticks, it's like that
their nervous system isn't
thoroughly myleinated, then don't have control over themseleves
but their mouth and tongue are already wired up
and so, otherwise they wouldn't be able to swallow or nurse, so
the oral element is extraordinarily important for a young child
that's why kids put everything in their mouth
you know, even when they are a bit older it's like they see with their tongue
which of course everyone can do
you know if you put a block in your mouth you can tell that it's a cube, you can tell that it is a cube without looking
so you can with your tongue, you can see with your hands, you can even see to some degree with your ears
anyways,
so they're a social interaction right from the beginning, but for the point of simplification
you might say well first the child
organizes
themselves into a functional unity under the
pressure of social dynamics
and then they get unified enough so that they can attain unity with another child by
setting up a fictional world
and cooperating and competing within that, because that's quite interesting to because
you know, people often
juxtapose cooperation and competition as if they are opposites
but they are not opposites at all
another Piagetian observation
so you say, "Well is hockey a competitive game?"
and people would say, "Well yeah!" but then you think, really!
Really! No one brings a basketball
Right?
So, we are going to play by the rules
That's cooperation, well are teams competing against each other
Well yes! But they agreed to compete within a particular landscape
and they all cooperate to maintain that landscape, and so
you do the same thing when you are playing Monopoly
It's like you are trying to win but at the same time you are cooperating
That's what, that's society man! That's society right there!
You are cooperating
That's the big enclosure, and within that there are regulated competitions
But, to separate those artificially and say one is competition and the other is cooperation is just
It's just not. just not very smart, it's not observant, that's not how it workd
and games are intensely cooperative even if they are intensely competitive, I mean
the hockey teams are playing in the same game, that's the cooperation, then each team
there is competition within the team to be the best player, let's say, but everyone wants that
because everyone wants good players to emerge, but still cooperate like mad with your team mates and if you don't pass
and you know, play like a reasonable person then, they're going to not be happy with you
and so,
even within that competition, cooperation is regulating the interactions and then you can think
this is a really good thing to think too, it's like
People often say to their kids,
doesn't matter whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.
and the kid of course has no idea what that means, it's like what do you mean, I am trying to win
and the parents says, "No, no, it matters how you play"
and the kid pushes them and the parents really can't come up with a good explanation of why that is the case
They might say, "Well other kids won't play with you"
There you go!
Because you could say,
this is something to think about, so
there is a game
and there is a victory within the game
but then there is the set of all games
and there is victory across the set of all games
and the victory that you attain across the set of all games
isn't winning all the games
it's being invited to play all the games
and so if you play fair
then you are playing a meta-game
and the meta-game is how to win across the set of all games
and so if you teach your child how to behave properly then they always get invited to play
and that makes them winners
and that's that!
and so if you understand that you understand something
phenomenally important about the emergence of morality
you know because people, moral relativist in particular think that morality is relative
and of course human beings are diverse, just like languages are diverse
and there is more than one playable game but there is not really more than one playable meta-game
it's like you are either the kind of person that other people want to play with
or you are not.
and it you are not the kind of person that people want to play with then you are a loser
it's as simple as that, and that's
true of all cultures, they might be playing different individual games
within their culture and undoubtedly they are, but
the set of all games that they play is still common across cultures, that's part of what makes us human
and then you could say as well
we are actually evolved to detect people who are good at playing the set of all possible games
and we actually know that, that's not theoretical, we know for example
some things are easy to remember and some things are to remember, you know
Here is something that is easy to remember, you play with someone and they cheat
Man, you will remember that, that's like in your mind, that's not going anywhere
and so great are detecting cheaters and you remember
and that's because you can't trust a cheater and you shouldn't invite a cheater to play a game with you because they might cheat!
and so, that's part of the innate morality system, you remember cheaters because they good at playing the meta-game
and of course you're evolved
of course you are adapted to the meta-game because
you are the product of this immense evolutionary history right and
whoever your ancestors were
which is an unbroken string of successful reproducers going back 3.5 billion years
you think about that, every single one of your ancestors
successfully reproduced, it's mind boggling that you chances against that
are so, it's billions to one and here you are the line of
3.5 billion years of success, the whole world was trying to kill you, that whole time and here you are, it's like, and but
you know, you are still only going to last about 80 years
so,
but that, you know, is still, you know good for you, so anyways
there were lots of games that your ancestors were playing across that immense span of time
many, many you know, lizard games and tree dweller games
and crustacean games, you know the huge set of games
and you are adapted to win across those games, all of them
and that's built into you, man, that's your central human nature, that's what makes you social
and it's not some mere cultural construct
quite the contrary, it's so deeply embedded in you, it's what you are
Alright, so well
this is a story, it's a game too, that's another way of thinking about it, you know, that's a Monopoly game, well
what's the frame
well that's the rules of the game
and are they, why do you accept them
Well, it's kind of arbitrary right, it's like
that happens to be the rules, hockey has different rules
basketball has different rules, but what they share is that they have rules
OK, so there is a frame, that's the rules, and then within the frame there is a goal
and the goal is whatever the rules dictate, you know there is usually
It's usually the construction of a heirarchy
of success within a frame
and so that's what you play, and so you play Monopoly, and it's like, we'll accept the rules
that's the social contract and then we will each try to win
and that will be fun!
We find that amusing, and if you lose, what do you say?
Well, you say there is always another game
and so that's great,, so
if you have that attitude and you play fair, then it doesn't matter whether you win or lose
although you still want to try to win because otherwise you are not a good player
but you accept defeat gracefully because
you can play again!
and so, and you will win some and you will lose some and that's not so bad, you know and
even if you lose, well maybe you learned something, and
and you're doing a lot more than one thing while you are playing Monopoly, you know, you are having a conversation and
learning how to interact with people, and learning how to regulate your emotions and so
even if you lose if you have any sense you win
and if your kids have any sense they know that
and so, that way you buffer then against defeat, it's like yeah, yeah, you know
next time
it's OK
You should try but it is OK
and, and that's
useful information for people to know
so,
alright, so you are always in one of these little frameworks and there is just no getting out of it, so
and that's because, you know at any given moment
this is like field theory, there used to be psychological theories that talked about the field of human experiance
something like that, and this is kind of what that is, this is a field and
basically what happens is that you parse out a little part of the world
say
and
an amount that you can handle
so let's say it has some duration , you are not aiming at something 50 years in the future
it's because how the hell are you going to to that?
there are too many variables, you know
so, your aiming at some handleable amount of time
and you posit a goal in there and you plot your route and then,
that tells you what is up
and tells you what is down, because up moves you towards the goal and down moves you away from the goal and
that's sets up your motivation framework so that
you have something worth attaining, you know that's a really interesting thing to know too, it's like
Why have a goal?
Well it's easy, no goal, no positive emotion.
Because you experience positive emotion by noticing that you are moving towards a goal
and so if you don't have a goal
well you can't have any positive emotion! So,
you better have a goal, and so you might say well what should the goal be?
Well we could start by saying, well, any goal is better than none.
And then we might say well it should be a goal that other people
will let you pursue, because otherwise it's going to be kind of difficult
and maybe they will be even happy to help you pursue it, that would even be better
and maybe it's a goal that would enable you to learn how to pursue other goals
while you pursue that goal, boy, that would really be good,
And so, you can see that your goal was parameterized
but that doesn't mean that any old goal works, it means there's some goals that work nicely
and some not so nicely, there are playable games and non-playable games, that's a good way of thinking about it
and you want to have a playable game, and there is a lot of them
lawyer, plumber, you know
actor, whatever, they are playable games
and it's not obvious which one is better but
it's certainly obvious which ones are sustainable and which ones are worse
and so they're is a set of playable games and you need to extract from that set of playable games
a game that suits you.
and that would be partly due to your temperament, you know, because extroverted people want to play an extroverted game
highly neurotic people want to play a safe game
agreeable people want to play generous game and
disagreeable people want to play a game that highly competitive so they can win, and
you know, fine!
but they're all
within the realm of playable games
and that means they are socially acceptable as well
and so, that means, it isn't just
arbitrary , it isn't just relative
what you decide to do, it is heavily parameterized, there is only
there is a set of playable games, and it's large, the set is large but
there are commonalities within it, and that's why there are commonalties
that is why morality has a common basis
fundamentally, and so that's partly what we are trying to investigate, it's like
what's up, what is up mean?
what does it mean, is there such a thing, now
one thing to remember is that
if you don't erect a hierarchical structure with something to aim at
you got no positive motivation
because, you experience positive motivation in relationship to a goal, not from attaining the goal
that's satisfaction, besides it's fleeting
you know perfectly well, you graduate from university, poof! Next day you have a problem
which is what do you do next, and that's a tough problem
it's not like you solved your problems by winning that game
you just introduced the problem of having to introduce another game!
so it's unreliable as a source of positive emotion, but what's reliable is, you set a goal.
and you try to attain it
and then that gives your life, literally
provides your life with meaning
that's what meaning is, now it's more than that, but that's what it is
and so then you might ask yourself, well
What's a really good goal?
Well, that's what we are trying to figure out, what's a really good goal? And now,
OK, so you got that, so now I am going to walk through, at least partly through
we will see how far we get, I am going to walk through Pinocchio with you because that is what the movie is about, and
it's a
it's hard to say how it come about, like it was written, the story, by a guy named
Collodi, [spells it]
it's quite a bit different, the story, that story, the written one from the Disney version
the Disney version was a product of the collaboration of
geniuses of animation, essentially, so they were artistic geniuses
great at capturing motion and emotion and all of that
they were stellar at that
and imaginative, tremendously imaginative, but collectively imaginative
and so they put together a collective product
and you might say well how did they do that exactly, it's like well
they were good storytellers, and what does that mean, well
it means you know the story that works and the story that doesn't
and maybe partly what you do is you kind of think out a story, and you think, well what is this happened?
Well, maybe this should happen? Oh! That's the thing! That would work!
It's like a little flash of inspiration, right it's like
you got a piece of the puzzle that fits, you think, That will work there!
and then you talk to the other people and you generate ideas and someone says, What if?
What if they do this? And then everyone goes, No, no that's just not believable, no ones going to buy that.
and someone else has a little revelation, they say, Well, you know, it makes some sense somehow if,
if they do this! And then everybody goes, Oh yeah! That really
that really works!
It's like, why?
Why? why?
Well you don't know, you don't know why it works
but it works because
It works because it's the right story
and so what does that mean?
well it's kind of associated with this meta-game idea
you know, there is a story that you should be acting out that works across games
and you have an inkling of it, you have notion of it, you have a vague apprehension of it
it's sort of built into you, that's an archetype, that's an archetype
and so when you read a story that works you are just entranced by it, and you all know that
You go to a movie and it's a great movie and you are just blown away, you know it's
a movie can pull you in
and turn you into one of the screen characters and, like, run you through a huge set of emotions.
I saw this movie once about
South America, it started with this guy running out of a subway, naked, and he didn't know where he was
and it turned out that he had been
absconded by
the totalitarian death squads and he couldn't remember anything about himself, and
he went back to his village and
basically what happened was that, he ended up back in the totalitarian
death grip.
and it showed how the fascist state
had saturated the village completely, and,
so it was a tragedy and you could see with every action that
this amnestic guy as he recreated himself and remembered his identity
was going to travel down exactly the same road because nothing had changed
and by the time, I wish, I have looked what that movie was for years, I've never been able to find it again
but, when the movie was over every single person in the theater was crying
and not just a little bit, they were just out of it, it was brilliant
terrifying movie
and that meant that was something right about it, man
and it got people, and you you might say
you know you have dim apprehensions about the world
and some of those are instinctual, and some of those are a consequence of your
of your experience, and it's like
the pieces are fragmented, but, if you get away from them, a long ways, you can see how they fit together
but they are fragmented and then you go see a story and those pieces go
click, click, click, click
and then you think, Wow! That's what, that's how that works out, that's what that means
and that produces that overwhelming emotion, and then, and that partly how you make yourself
transparent to yourself
You go and experience a story and watch a story and you tell a story and you start to find out who you are by doing that
My nephew, had a dream at one point
someone made a little animated thing out of it and put it on the Internet which is quite cool
So anyways, he was having night terrors and he ran around like a little knight
you know, k-n-i-g-h-t, knight and he had a little
you know, armor and a sword and he would run around the house
with a little knight hat on, being a knight
and he was only like four or something and he had watched a lot of Disney movies
a lot of movies, so he kind of got the knight idea, it was
He was acting that out and he was having terrors at night, right
and so he would go to bed with his little knight hat and his sword and he would put them on his bed, and then
at night he would wake up screaming, and that happened for a very long time, and so
when I went to visit, you know, I found out that this was happening and
he had night terror, so the kid wakes up with night terrors
screaming but can't remember anything generally speaking, so
anyways, this was happening and so
it happened one day and I was sitting with him and his family at the breakfast table and I,
said, "Did you have a dream?" and he said "Oh yes, I had a dream"
I said, "Well, what was your dream?"
and he said,
"Well I was out in this field, I was surrounded by the dwarves and they came up to my knees and
they were, they didn't have any arms they had big feet
and they were covered with hair and there was a cross shaved at the top of their head and they were all greasy and they had huge beaks
and every where I went they jumped at me with their beaks
and there was lots of them!"
and every body was very quiet after he said this because it was like
Oh, that's why you were screaming at night, it's like yeah, OK!
and so
so then he said
"But at the background there was a dragon, and the dragon would
blow out smoke and fire and then it would turn into these dwarves!"
so it's like, man, that kid had a problem, right, it was like
Well, what are you going to do, fight off a dwarf, who cares! Puff!
Ten more, that's life man, that's life!
Really!
That's the Hydra
you cut off one head and seven more grow, that's life, snakes everywhere
and you get rid of one and there will be more
and so, he figured that out!
It's a hell of an existential shock when you are four
and so he is like, he is a knight, he's thinking, what do I do about these dwarves
well their are too many of them, but there is a dragon
well so I said, "Well, what could you do about that?"
Right, loaded question, it implies that you could do something about that!
Well he kind of knew that, which he was running around like a knight
and he kind of figured that out
and he said, "Well I'll get my dad,
and I jump up on the dragon and I poke out both of his eyes with my sword and then I go right down its stomach
to the place where the fire came out, the firebox, and then I'd carve a piece of the firebox out and make a shield,
and that would be the end of that!" And I thought,
Wow! Good work kid! Like
you really got it, right, it's the central human story.
There's the terrible unknown, right, fire breathing
generating trouble
and what do you do, you confront that, you confront that
and by confronting it you get stronger, that's the shield, and that's
that's what a human being is
and that's right, it's exactly right
and that was the end of his night terrors, by the way
which seems to good to be true, but it is actually true
because I followed up with his mother for a long time, and that was that!
He catalyzed that part of his identity
he adopted the role of the mythological hero
and that's what he needed to do, because, like there was a dragon and a bunch of dwarves
like what the hell are you going to do about that? Run? That's not going to help.
You know, if you run in a dream like that
the dwarves multiply and the get bigger and you get smaller as you run
It's like, that no a good, that is not a good solution
and people do that in their life all the time, and so the dwarves get bigger until they are giants
and they get smaller until there is nothing left of them, and then
then there is no recovery, that is not good
Now, OK, so now I also proposed to you that there is a symbolic structure to the world
It's a meta-structure I would say, I think these categories are truly real
and their basically this! There's
unexplored territory and explored territory
and there is you!
and unexplored territory is the source of great riches and probably will kill you and
explored territory is you culture and it crunches you into submission and conformity
and turns you into a civilized being, and
you are stuck with both of those and then there is you, you know you are kind of admirable and cool and you do a lot of
decent wonderful amazing things and there are things about you that are just horrible
and you know about them, and you are stuck with them and that's the world
and that's the the landscape of the world and what you will see
if you pay attention is that people who are ideologues like Rousseau or say, like Hobbes
but it doesn't matter, ideologues will tell you part of that story
so environmentalists for example will say
Nature, that's pristine beauty
natural harmony
French landscape
it's a paradise especially if there are no people, it's a paradise
and then, culture is a rapacious monster
and human beings driving that culture against nature are
monsters of a sort that, and perhaps there should be fewer of then, it's like, yeah, yeah that's all true
it's exactly dead on, right on, exactly right
Was that movie called Avatar?
Yes, that's James Cameron's movie right?
That's that story, yeah, and
Hey, it's a good story
It's even a mythological story but it is only half the story
The other story you could think about it as a frontier myth, that's Star Trek
or Star Wars for that matter, mostly Star Trek, it's like
but we will put it into the context of the frontier myth, the myth that drew settlers into America, say. It's, well
there is a wild savage landscape out there that can be conquered by and settled and stabilized by civilization
and it will be the heroic pioneer who does it
It's exactly the opposite story of the environmental story, which is why I think that the environmental story emerged. It was
you know the frontier story
had a lack in it, it missed half of the world
and so the other story had to come up and it did
and if you take both of those stories, even though they are exactly the opposite to one another
if you know both those stories, then you know the whole story
and it's really weird, you know, because one of the propositions of formal logic
is, it's a fundamental proposition is that something can't be itself and it's opposite at the same time, it's like
that's true for some sorts of things, it's true for logical claims
but it is completely wrong in this particular situation because things are, what they are and their opposites at the same time
and that makes it very very difficult to
that's why a dragon hoards gold, it's like
What's up with that?
Well it will eat you!
And it will, but it has gold!
So what do you do about that? Because it's paradoxical demands
well, what you want to do is face the dragon and get the damn gold, that's what you want to do
well
you have to be a paradoxical being even to do that, so, in "The Hobbit"
for example, when, what's his name
Frodo, right? It's not, it's Bilbo in "The Hobbit"
You know he is kind of this little underdeveloped
over protected Shire dweller, and,
he is called on a great adventure
to go and find the dragon, and he has to become a thief
in order to manage it
Well that's pretty weird, you know, it's like, it's because
as a good citizen he is just not enough to conquer a dragon
He also has to become a bad citizen in some sense, he has to incorporate the part of himself that is monstrous
let's say, and develop that and hone it
and that's to say that, if you are harmless you are not virtuous
you are just harmless
you are like a rabbit
a rabbit isn't virtuous, it's just can't do anything except get eaten
it's not virtuous
If you are a monster, and you don't act monstrously
then you are virtuous, but you also have to be a monster
Well you see this all the time, Harry Potter is like that too, it's like he is flawed
he's hurt, he has go evil in him, he can talk to snakes, man
He breaks rules all the time
All the time, he is not obedient at all, but, you know, he has a good reason for breaking the rules
and if he couldn't break the rules
him and his little clique of rule breaking troublemakers, if they didn't break the rules
they wouldn't attain the highest goal
so it is very peculiar, but it's very, it's a very very very very common mythological notion
You know, the hero has to be
the hero has to be a monster
but a controlled monster, Batman is like that, you know, I mean it's everywhere, it's the story you always hear
[Student] Is this where morals become ethics?
[JBP] Meaning? You have to be more precise.
[Student] I feel like, because every one is moral, but, in order to become ethics you have to refine the morals, you have to kind of go into....
[JBP] Well that's a good question, you know, because one question is
you know you are kind of implicitly moral in so far as you are socialized
but that is sort of procedural, it's just built into you
this is different, this is also becoming conscious of it
and expanding out your personality into dimensions that it wouldn't normally occupy, so
this happens to people all the time
So, for example, lots of my clients, my clinical clients are too agreeable
and, they are generally women because women are more agreeable than men
but not always, because I have had agreeable men as clients as well
and what happens is, they're resentful and they don't how to stand up for themselves and it's because they're
very compassionate by nature, and so, if you entering into a negotiation with them, they will let you win
Well that's not so good, because you need to win to,
Especially if you are in an organisation of adults
where there is a struggle, right,
When you have kids you can let them win
especially infants, like you have to let them win and that's partly
why compassion is so necessary, but as a
basis for negotiation between adults, it's like
Sorry, it's insufficient, you have to be a bit of a monster so that you can say no.
And so a lot of what you do in psychotherapy
is treat peoples anxiety and depression, that's a huge chunk of it
help them straighten out the way they think, that's a huge chunk of it, but another chuck of it is
well let's toughen you up, you know, let's put you in a position where you can bargain, let's teach you how to
assert yourself and stand up for yourself, and that's assertiveness training and it's a huge chunk of psychotherapy
and you need to learn it, because
part of how you regulate your interactions with other people is to negotiate
and you cannot negotiate unless you can say no
you can't do it
and it cause conflict to say no, and if you don't like conflict
which is basically the definition of being agreeable
then you cannot tolerate the conflict and so then you can't negotiate on your own behalf
and so then you keep losing!
And you are bullied, and you know
it's not good, then you get resentful and
and it's really not good, so you have to
develop your inner monster a little bit
and, and then that makes you a better person, not a worse person
It's weird!
It's weird, but,
but that's just how it is.
Outside of that
diagram is chaos itself and that's the chaos from which things emerge, now,
I can't tell you much about that yet because it's do damn complicated
but I think the best way to think about chaos is as potential
That's one way of thinking about it. It's also that place you end up when you don't know what to do.
It's the source of all things, but it is also the terrible predator, the terrible eternal predator that lurks beyond the explored domain.
It's a winged dragon
and it's winged, who knows why, matter and spirit, that's partly what it is
and I will explain that later
It's also potentially the predatory beast that's been after us for, forever
And the winged predator that picked us off from the sky, so
primates for example, monkeys have
some monkeys have three specialized alarm crys, one is for snakes, and that usually means
Hit the trees! And then one is for leopards, and that means, hit the trees and go out on a skinny branch
because the leopard can't get to you
and then there is one for like birds of pray which means hide somewhere on the ground so that you don't get picked off, and it's like, well
That's what that is, that's what that is
and that's chaos
and it's expanded into much more than that
and then I showed you, I don't remember if I showed you this, but, this is a symbolic representation of
Mother Nature, Father Culture and the suffering of the individual, but it is all, that's all positive
There's no negative elements there
but, that's OK
that's a partial representation and those things are sacred in some sense because
they are representative of an ultimate
reality, of an ultimate reality, the sacrificial individual here, the suffering individual, well that's pretty straight forward, it's like
that's what, that's life
that's suffering, that's life
that's what happens to the individual, so, and everyone is looking at that.
It has power that idea
Well it's because, you know
culture supports the suffering individual, and culture is nested inside benevolent nature and that's
part of the story of the world,
and it's the part of the story we are trying to figure out and make articulate, we have been doing that
for thousands of years, trying to make this story articulate
and it's not yet articulated, it's only, we are only getting it, we are getting it
and we basically do that now with movies and stories and fiction and that sort of thing
We still don't have it articulated
I think Jung went close, came closer than anyone else
Jung and Erich Neumann who was one of his students
came closer than anyone else ever has to actually articulating that, and that's what Jung was trying to do
Is to take all these images, archetypal images
Instinctual images and say, well, what do they mean? What do they mean? What do they mean?
And he got a long ways on that, although his writing is quite obscure, and it's obscure because
How the hell are you going to explain an image like that, without being obscure? It's like
it's insanely complicated, and it's not linear
It's not a linear thing, that's why it's in a picture
Because a picture presents everything at once
and you want to take that apart linearly. Jesus! It's just, it's just impossible.
But we have been struggling to do that, really we have been struggling
From the time that we became self-conscious
You know, what is the world about? How should we live in it?
Well that's a partial answer, and it's a culture bound answer, obviously
But you see archetypal representations like this in many cultures, so for example
the image of the Virgin and Child, that way predates Christianity
like the Egyptians, that was Isis and Horus, that goes back, hoh, we have no idea how far
thousands and thousands of years before the emergence of Judaism and Christianity
Way back before that, and no doubt
back into prehistory itself! Because
a culture that doesn't hold
the mother and child as sacred, dies!
Obviously!
Because, obviously!
So, it has to be held, it has to be held as something
that you revere, which at least means that, you don't kill mothers and children, it at least means that!
And that's an instinct, you know,, it's an instinct, it violates you to to that and thank God!
Alright,
Let's take 15 minutes
So,
I told you about this a little bit last week, but, you know, one of the motivations I had for
thinking about the things that I have thought through
the motivation I had for thinking them through was because
Well, I
It seemed self-evident to me, let's say
and I think that it was partly from reading Jung, but that just helped me clarify it, was that
You know it was sort of Jung's contention that
We had an organic development of a metaphysical ethic
that was embedded in, in religious tradition
and that basically unfolded let's say in the West until about 1600, 1500, something like that, and then
science emerged and we got unbelievably technologically powerful
using a certain view of the world
you know, we are so technologically powerful
but, we are still not very wise
and that just seem to me to be a bad combination
and, I thought about that a lot, it's like, OK, how do you handle the combination of
exceptional technological power and
and an impaired ethic, let's say
something like that, underdeveloped ethic or one in even which you have no faith, because
you know, it seems, the foundational elements of it are irrational, they're in mythology
they're in religion, they don't fit well with the scientific world view
How do you rectify that problem? And
Well that's a tough problem, you know, it's a crazy problem
and certainly it was the problem that Jung was trying to address, there is no doubt about it
Along with that went an associated problem which was, you know, what happened in the 20th century
which was so awful
and in so many places, it was just so unbelievably brutal and terrible and it was perpetrated by
millions of people, and they were individual people and they weren't that much different from normal people
and in fact they were normal people. So,
the other thing that struck me was that it would be better if that sort of thing didn't happen anymore
and so I was trying to figure what the hell could possibly be done about that, and
you know, part of Jung's contention was, well you had to understand yourself as a monster if you were ever going to
maintain some control over the fact that you are in fact a monster and that that could come forth if the situation is correct
Ok, that seems reasonable, and so,
Well it seemed to me that , you know, people had to become wiser
and, of course, that's a very difficult things to figure out, because you could even question
whether there is such a thing as wisdom, you know, and
and then I thought well that's what the universities are supposed to do, especially the humanities mostly, in particular
it is supposed to make you wise, that's what it's for
and it's a doing a terrible job of that in my estimation
it's more decimating people as far as I can tell, and undermining whatever ethic that they have
rather than making people wise
and,
but I think that we have to become wise, I don't think that there is a choice, I think it's a matter of survival, and
it's more than that, because if you're wise in your own life, you are going to have a way better life
like incomparably better because you are going to
sleep soundly with a good conscience at night, and you know people say that's worth more than money
that's worth more than money. I know lots of people who have lots of money and let me tell you
money protects you, you are as well as protected from the world by money right now as you ever will be for the rest of your life
because most of life's fundamental problems can't be solved with money!
you know, like, rich people get divorced, they have affairs, their children get sick
they have all the problem you have, and that's partly because you are already rich
And so,
you might think that if you had a bunch more money things would be better
but it's just not true, in fact in some ways they might be worse
because money can open up
can open up the possibility of all sorts of temptations to you that you just can't afford at the moment
So, well so, economics, we have already solved that problem fundamentally
and we are rapidly solving it everywhere in the world, right.
The world economy is growing so damn fast that you can't even imagine how you could possibly make it grow any faster
It's crazy, we have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the last 15 years, you know
The U.N. set a goal, by 2015, I think it was to cut poverty by half
if I remember correctly, and they reached it two years early, you know, it's like
It's unbelievable! So,
Well, so then I started to
try to understand what it might be to
to live and really what I was looking for, and was not so much to live a life that was wise
but at least to live a life that wasn't pathologically unwise
you know, I thought of
the sorts of things that people were doing to one another in the
Auschwitz camps, and in the Gulag Archipelago and all of that
horror that was perpetrated on
on people as definitely unwise, whatever else you might say about it,
it was unwise, so then I though maybe there is a way to figure out how you could not do that!
And so, that's
and I think that that's,
my sense is that when you come to university to learn how to be a civilized person
which is what is supposed to happen at university
otherwise it is just a trade school, and you might as well go to trade school as far as I am concerned if you want
to learn, something that will get you a job, it's like, it's a lot
faster, and it's more certain and it's useful
if you are not taught to be a citizen at university, then
Why bother with it?
So, well so that's what we are trying to figure out!
and, and that's part of that
cloud of mythological fantasy that surrounds our culture, that's
it's part of its deep history that we are trying to,
you know, if you grapple with the humanities and with art and all of that
that you are trying, you are trying to master and incorporate and,
pull in to you so that you're situated properly in history, and
and you are not just floating in the void of, you know, this
tiny individuality that is divorced from everything else, you are weak in that circumstance
Alright, so
that's more of an explanation of why I try to puzzle through these things, and try to puzzle through them with you
So anyways, we talked about this song last week, and
you know, I made a hypothesis to you, we'll go through this quickly
It's doggerel, it's not great poetry but it is irrelevant
It was a very popular son, it's quite beautiful
In the movie it actually sung by like a heavenly choir, that's what it sounds like, so
Its got this cathedral, you can imagine people singing it in a cathedral essentially,
and so that's not accidental, it's purposeful
you know, it partakes of that
what would you call it, it partakes of that esthetic, that's. that's it
So the film makers are, are
implying that
what is about to be shown to you has this
divine element, essentially and that that's signified by the choir of voices that sings this song
and the song says, fundamentally something like this
is that if you lift up our eyes above the temporal, into the transcendent, and so that's
what exists in the heavenly world, in the stars
if you pick an ultimate goal, if you pick the right ultimate goal
then,
and anyone can do this, that's the other thing it's democratic
it's anyone can do this, so that's the second proposition, "It doesn't matter who you are"
You can do this.
And so, I think that's a reflection of the idea of the divinity of the individual, it's like
there is something about each individual that's valuable, regardless of their idiosyncrasies , and
and so they have this potential that they can manifest, and how you manifest it? Well,
you pick the right goal, and, what's the right goal, well it's high
it's elevated, it's above the mundane
Now what does that mean? Well you don't really know, you don't really know? That's why it is signified by a star, and
the star is something that glimmers in the night, right
so it's a source of light in the darkness
And so, there is a metaphor in there, obviously, there is a metaphor there.
And, the star is the star that that's the star of Hollywood
you know, the person that you emulate, that's part of it because an ideal
is, it's going to be a human ideal of some sort that you are going to be aiming at
and so the ideal human being is the star that you are aiming at, maybe it's something like that.
If that's what you are aiming at, well you might say, well, "What should you aim at in life?" And one answer is, well,
Why don't you aim at being
whatever you could be that would be the best!
Now, you don't know what that is, exactly, because how do you know
you know, what, you could think "Well that would be really good if I could have it" And then you could say, "Well,
can I think of anything better than that?" and if the answer is no, then well, why not go for that?
You know, well you might say, "Well, it's too ambitious, it takes too much responsibility."
It's like, yeah yeah, those are definitely problems and,
one of the things that I have figured out over the years is that if you offered the person the opportunity, you know
because people say, "Well, life doesn't really have any ultimate meaning". It's like
yeah, OK, fine, let's say that it has an ultimate meaning
but that in order to
experience that ultimate meaning you have to take on ultimate responsibility for what you do.
That's a heavy price to pay to have a meaningful life.
You know, and you might say "Well, there's no damn way I going to do that, I'll just go for the, you know, pointless,
I'll go for the trivial pointless perspective, which is kind of hard on me existentially, but it frees me up, I can do whatever the hell I want,
moment to moment, I don't have any ultimate responsibility."
and so then, you think "That's kind of a good deal". And then, but that raises this weird spectre
of doubt, which is, well, when you hear people talk about the ultimate futility of life
is it because life is ultimately futile, or is it because they have decided that
they would just as soon not adopt the responsibility, and they use that real decision, which is to not adopt the responsibility
they rationalize that by proposing that life is ultimately meaningful (sic), meaningless
and like, you know I kind of buy that, I really do think that's what is going on.
So,
but maybe not
but it could be that if you want to have an ultimately meaningful life that you have to adopt ultimate responsibility
Makes sense, and what might that mean?
Well one thing it might mean is that
And I do think it means this, is that
I think that it was Alexander Pope, but I might be wrong about that who said, "Nothing human is foreign to me"
[transcibers note] Publius Terentius Afer, Terence, "I am a man: nothing human is foreign to me."
and that's a hell of a statement, right, because if you think about all the things that human beings are capable of
and they are capable of some
like if you really want to know what people are capable of, you should read about Unit 731
but I would not recommend it, because if you read it, you will never forget it, and you will be sorry that you read it
but, you'll know
Anyways, to say that human is foreign to you, that's a hell of a thing to say, because
that means that what other people have done, you could do
and that also means you need to take responsibility for that
that's no joke, you know, it's a big deal to do that in even a trivial manner
Anyways, so the idea is you can elevate, if you elevate you viewpoint to some transcendent
ethic, that you want what is ultimately good, you really want that, whatever that is!
You don't know, that's what you are aiming at
Well then it says this strange thing, well what you want will all of a sudden come to you
well that's a proposition, and it's the proposition that basically played out in the movie.
It's a hypothesis, the hypothesis is, the best way to orient yourself
in life is to orient yourself towards the highest good that you are capable of imagining
and then aim at that, and then things will work the best way they can for you.
And I think, I believe that that is correct, it's my observation of life
has lead me to see that that seems to be correct
So for example,
you don't get something that you don't aim at,
that just doesn't work out, and so lots of people aim at nothing and that's what they get.
So, if you aim at something you have a reasonable crack at getting it, you know
you tend to change what you are aiming at along the way because like what do you know, you know
You aim there, you are wrong but you get a little closer, and then you aim there and you are still wrong,
you get a little closer and you aim there, and, you know
As you move towards what you are aiming at, you are characterization of what to aim at becomes more and more sophisticated
And so it doesn't really matter if you are wrong to begin with, as long as you are smart enough to learn on the way
and as long as you specify a goal, so specify a vague one
"I want things to be the best they could be, and I am willing to learn what best means as I go along"
Ok, ok, so fine, and then you get
what you truly need we'll say, well maybe not
[reading] "Know that if your heart is in your dream"
What does that mean?
Well, that to me reflects this idea of a kind of integrated viewpoint.
One of the things Jung proposed, was that as you
integrate yourself psychologically what happens is that
Your rationality integrates with you emotions
they stop being opposed forces, like the Enlightenment ideas that rationality and
and desire are opposites and enemies in a sense
The Jungian notion, and the psychoanalytic notion I would say, in general
and the humanist notion even, perhaps, is that no, that's not right
what you want to do is you want to integrate your rationality with your emotions and your motivations
They're not separable, even technically,
they have to work together, and that all has to be integrated with you body
not only do you have to take your
heart into account and notice what is is that you want and don't want
but you also have to embody that, you have to act that out in the world
So, fine, that's what that means, and if you do that then
Well then your horizons will open up, and
I also believe that's true, you know, I have known people in my life who are insanely successful, like
insanely successful
and those people are, like they're
They're pretty damn together, man, you know, like they are tough, smart
strategic, generous, you know they are always giving people opportunities, honest
like, they have got it all
and you know, and sometimes, now I am not saying that everyone who is wildly successful
Is wildly successful because they have got themselves together, but
you know, because there are people who are crooks and, you know there are people who gain status
one way or another by nefarious means
but that's a lot more unstable than you might think
and I can't say exactly if that, if you pursue that route
you are going to pay for it, you will have your money or whatever it is but
it's not going to do much good for you, so,
And so it does seem to me that people that have integrated themselves, and that
and that are pursuing a noble goal, a high goal, who
actually are able to do remarkable things, and remarkable things can be done at every level
you know, it isn't like you have to change the world
as a whole, it could be that you do something remarkable within your family
you know, that can be tremendously admirable, you know, someones got to take care of a family member if they are sick
you know, there are heroic acts that you can undertake in the local environment
and maybe that will go unheralded let's say, but
that doesn't mean that it isn't remarkable, I mean
I have met people who are so damaged
you just can't imagine it, and yet
Well one person I met when I was in Montreal
was this women, and she was just ruined, man,
she looked like a street person, and she was so shy, she couldn't even look at you, like
she basically looked at the ground because it was like there was light emanating from everyone else
and she was way too timid and humble to even to bear it.
And you know, partly what I was doing was trying to get her to straighten up and not look so street personish
because it wasn't going very well for her in social interactions, you know
but it turned out that isn't what she came to the behavioural therapy unit for
and she had her aunt, I think she lived with her aunt who was like, schizophrenic and then
her aunt's boyfriend was an alcoholic who like went on long harangues about the devil, and it's like, really, man,
and she wasn't bright this women, she really wasn't and
You know she really didn't have a job and it was just like, it was just not good in every way
and then she also had this unbelievable humility and
But then it turned out what she wanted, I just couldn't bloody well believe this that
she had this dog and she used to walk it around, she took care of the dog, and, you know, that was a good thing, and
and she had actually been an inpatient at the Douglas hospital, which is where I was working, and
they're were inpatients in the Douglas hospital, and this was back in the 80's, and
those people were, like she was like Superwomen compared to the inpatients at the Douglas hospital
those people looked like they were from a Hieronymus Bosch painting
because they had deinstitutionalized everyone that could possibly be deinstitutionalized
and so the only people that were left were people who couldn't be deinstitutionalized
and so those were the people who were in the psyche wards for like 30 years, and
all of the hospitals were connected by tunnels underground and the patients used to hang out
down there by the Coke machine and so forth and one day I took my brother down there, he was visiting, and
like it was just like, he just turned white, you know, because it was just...
really, I don't know if you know Hieronymus Bosch, he is a very interesting painter to say the least, but
that's what it was like, and so
So here was here idea! She had come to the behavioural therapy unit because she had been
she had been in the inpatient ward for a while, and she met some of these ruined people
and she tried to get the hospital, she thought
"While I am walking my dog, you know, well maybe I could take one of these patients out for a walk"
you know, and she had been talking to the hospital administrators trying to get her,
allow her to go, you know, take out one of these patients and go for a walk with her dog.
and basically she had come to the behaviour therapy unit because that's what she wanted to do, it's like
Man, that person, she just blew me away, like, it's like
I just couldn't believe it, like, she had nothing going for her
like nothing
and yet, she wanted to, you know help some people that were worse off, and like
there just weren't that many people that were worse off than her
Mind boggling, mind boggling!
I never forgot it.
and it really, really blew me away
you know there are opportunities for elevating your sights
within your realm of capability wherever you happen to be, and
and that's interesting, it's strange that that is the case
[reading] "She brings those who love", that's what that's should say, " the sweet fulfillment of their longing"
"Like a bolt out of the blue, Fate" characterized here as feminine
and that's what happens in the movie, the movie has got a Christian underbelly, like
it's quite pronounced but it's really a pagan movie in many ways, so for example
there is no blue fairy
and the reason I am speaking of Christianity of course is because this movie was
created in a culture where Christianity was still reasonably intact
and of course it was fully informed by that, but
the underlying mythos is not precisely Christian even though it is informed by Christian imagery
There is this old idea, I think it's an Gnostic idea that
the wisdom of God is feminine, something like that, an anima, which means soul is feminine
and so there is an idea like that lurking here
and anyways, that's fate, and that's the blue fairy in this particular movie, you know she comes down from this star, which is
kind of makes her a avatar of God, that's the idea
and she's the transformative agent, she's really Mother Nature
you know in her positive guise, and
that's why she can animate
to animate something means to infuse it with soul, that's what it means
and she animates Pinocchio, right, she is the force that frees him from his strings
and so that's her, Fate,
[reading] "Like a bolt out of the blue, Fate steps in and sees you through"
Well what that means, it means something like
It means something like this, is that
if you orient properly in the world, and we will say that you do that by trying to attain
the ultimate goal whatever that happens to be, then it is as if the world is on your side
and, and,
and things go well for you and I also believe that that is true because
certainly one of the things that more or less self evident is that generally speaking, if you tell the truth
things go a lot better for you, and, the reason for that is, well, heh
you want to be, do you want to have reality opposed to you?
Or do you want to have reality backing you up? It's like it's a pretty straight forward question
If you are truthful to the degree that you can be truthful, then reality is on your side
That's a good thing because there is a lot of it and there isn't much of you
Whereas if you take a deceitful approach to things, well, then you're challenging reality
It's like, good luck with that, man!
It's like you are holding a plastic ruler in front your face and bending it, you know, and at some point
you are going to let go and it's going to, all that force that you have
stored up, and it's going to snap back and nail you and that happens
Like, I have just never seen anyone, in my clinical practice, ever get away with anything
Nothing!
And it's not surprising, it's like, if you are going to mess with the structure of reality
Like it's going to mess back, and it does, and it might not happen for years, and you might not even notice the connection
I mean part of what you do in psychotherapy, is actually
make those connections, it's like why did this horrible thing happen to me
Well,
Who knows?
It's like let's take it apart, well who knows how far back we have to go
It might even have things to do not even with you, it might have things to do with the errors in parents relationship
Like,
you just can't mess with the structure of reality, it
It stays warped until you straighten it out, and
it's not good.
So, so there and injunction here which is that, you know, if you follow this path, you
pick a high goal and, and you put your heart in it, you know you commit to it
believe in it, believe means to love, believe and belove, it's the same thing, it's means to act out
and that's what the belief means, like we think that belief means to accept a set of propositions as true
Well that is one form of belief, but
that's more like factual knowledge, right, belief is more like you decide that you are going to act something out
you make a decision and then you act it out and that is a reflection of you belief
You know, you are staking yourself on something, do you know?
Well no! Because you can't, you can't know, you are bounded by ignorance, you can make your best guess and move forward
and you can do that with commitment, but you have to believe in order to do that
I guess that's why it's a wish
Ok, so fine
Well then we have Jiminy Cricket, Southern U.S. slang for Jesus Christ, by the way and the initial overlap isn't
a fluke, I mean I am sure that the animators thought that that was funny, and of course it is funny and it
you know in the Lion King, you know that, that baboon
whose the shaman, basically, well to begin with he was kind of just a comic relief character, like a fool, you know, but
One of the things that Jung mentioned about the fool is that, the fool tends to turn into the saviour and it's an archetypal reality
Bugs Bunny is sort of like that, you know, he is a trickster
and, as the movie developed the character of the fool baboon took on the full fledged
you know , shaman priest element, and
and, you know, OK, Jiminy Cricket he is this little cricket and,
and he turns out to be the conscience which is pretty damn weird, it's like a bug is your conscience
and the bug is J.C. and, that a very strange juxtaposition of ideas, conscience, insect
saviour, it's like what's up with that
and so, well, what bugs you, that's part of it
Well, your conscience certainly bugs you
and you should pay attention to it's, it's just niggling little annoying thing that you can't
quite, you can override it, right, obviously
but, it's this, well, he says when he talks to Pinocchio later, it's that still small voice, you know
and, I have asked people before, like in my personality class, like
because conscience is a weird thing, and it
and like , if I said to you
if you are about to do something that you know you shouldn't do.
Do you have a voice in your head that tells you that you shouldn't do it? So how many people have had that experience?
OK, OK, good, now so other people have a feeling instead of a voice, and so, is there anybody here
who's willing to admit it, who has neither the feeling, neither the voice?
OK, so, you know it's a very understudied phenomena in psychology, this conscience,
I mean people can be conscientious,
and maybe those are people who listen to their conscience more
I don't know, but nobody has ever investigated it, and
the fact that do this little voice, whatever it is inside your head, it's like, what the hell is up with that?
You know, it doesn't tell you what you want to hear.
At least as far as I can tell, now you could say, "Well that's the internal representation of society operating within you."
That would be a Freudian view, that's the superego
and certainly there is something to that
but,
I don't think that it is necessary to presume that that's all there is to it and even if it is
you still wouldn't have the voice, if you didn't have the biological potential
to have that voice embed itself in you.
So even if it is socioculturally constructed, which it is in part,
It's like language, it's like your language is socioculturally constructed but the reason you can speak
is because human beings can speak and if you have a conscience, it's because human beings have a conscience,
and the contents of that conscience might differ, but the fact that it exists
seem to me to be
universal. OK, well, so that's the conscience
and,
that's Jiminy Cricket
and then the cricket opens this book, then you look at the book
and you think, "Well what kind of book is that?"
Well it's got a spot light on it,
so, it's being highlighted, this is an important book, and what kind of book is it?
Well, it's leather bound, it has a lock on it, you know, it's not some cheap book, it's kind of like a
you might think about it , it looks like something from an old library, or maybe it looks biblical
Whatever! It's a major league book, and this bug is the introduction to the book
So does that mean your conscience is the introduction to the book?
Well?
Maybe that is what it means, it's certainly what's being played out in the movie.
Well then, the cricket opens the book and so then what do you see? Well, what does that look like?
What does it look like? What does it remind you of?
OK, so that's the Van Gogh painting.
It's the Nativity scene.
It's the Christmas star!
And you know that because what's going to happen? Well the hero is going to be born
That's what happens and so a star signifies that
Why does a star signify the birth of an infant? Let's say.
Well because there is something miraculous about the birth of an infant, and
why would the infant be a saviour? Which is the Christian notion, say.
Well because that's the infant is, potentially
Every infant.
and so that's how you should act about them
and you know one of the things that really is interesting about having little kids
And I loved having little kids, is that,
You have this opportunity, to have this pristine relationship with someone, like
Like a relationship you have never had with anyone, because the kid really
is just there to love you
If you don't screw it up, you've got that
and then you can keep that going, you know, and you can try keep that relationship
like, pristine, and that's so fun, it's so fun to try to do that, it's
It's really,
it's amazing, it's an amazing thing, and
you know kids get a bad rap in our society, but
it's an amazing thing to have little kids
and they are remarkable and they give you back far more than they require from you, and
partly because they treat you like, you're
valuable beyond belief, that's what the kid think about you, it's like
That's pretty good.
So, yeah, it's like something divine is going to happen and so, OK fine, you know, fair enough!
Well there is the star signifying that, and that's associated with in some way with this star that you are supposed to wish upon
Well that's kind of odd, there's this
There is this relationship that is implicit, the star that signifies the birth of the hero is the same star that you wish upon
Well,
perhaps the star that you are wishing upon is the wish that the hero will be born in your soul
It's something like that, you are aiming at an ideal, it's the ideal you, whatever that would be, well?
You can certainly figure out what it isn't.
That's where you start, as far as I can tell
You know what you shouldn't be doing,
and you could at least stop doing those things, and then see what happens, you know
If you ask yourself, it's a meditative exercise, you know
And you do this with the autobiography to some degree, it's like, OK
Sit down for ten minutes and have a little dialogue with yourself
Like you actually wanted to know the answer, you know
So, you ask!
"Well I am probably doing something stupid that if I could quit doing my life would be better, that I could quit doing, that I would quit doing."
And maybe it's not a very big thing, because you are not very disciplined, but maybe there is something?
Ask yourself that question, man, you will have an answer in no time flat.
Like, "I should stop doing this, well yeah, yeah, I know, and I could, and I won't, or maybe I would but if I did, I know my life would be better"
It's like, you could figure that out immediately, and if you do that a hundred times
Well, you will be in way better shape. So if you don't know what
to do that is good, you could at least figure out what you shouldn't do that's just moronically
you know, pathetic, and you can be sure you're doing at least a dozen of thoee things at least
You know, procrastinating or, you know
you know, that's what the conscience tells you, and if you ask it, it will just tell you why you are, you know, are stupid and insufficient.
And so, who wants to hear that? But
but, maybe you could do something about it.
Ok, so the cricket comes into the village there and he sees this little house, and
there is a little fire in it, and so, it's kind of got, it's a welcoming place, it's a light in the darkness
this house, just like the star, and so, he hops towards it, and then he ends up inside it, and
you know, there is a nice fire, you get to see the inside, and
the inside is cozy, you know, it's welcoming, and then when you look around you see that everything is kind of
in it's place, it's not hyper-organized or any thing like that, it's
it's friendly and welcoming and it's, there is a lot of wood and there is a nice fire and
then there are toys everywhere, and they are well constructed, so you know that whoever lives there likes children
and so, if someone likes children, well, someone that doesn't like children, it's like, you should run away from them very rapidly
but if they like children, well then that's a good sign that, you know
Jesus, they are a least human, it's a start you know, and then these things are all
high quality, they are made very well, and, then there's, and he is looking around to see all of this and there's
there's toys and clocks, and they are all hand made, and
so he is sort of infers that maybe there is a wood carver who lives there, and
a wood carver is someone who can build things, and
and it you build things that work and that are beautiful, that's a kind of truth, right? It's like
it's built right into the object, that's what quality is, quality is the building into an object of truth
the thing works, it does what it is supposed to, it has integrity, and so
you see that everywhere in here, and
So you are getting the sense of, that the film makers are setting the stage
and so,
well so they set the stage by showing you the stage and the cricket tells you what he sees, and he's
pretty happy to be there, because
and this is also someone who is concerned about time, right, because there are a lot of clocks, there are a lot of clocks
And so, time turns out to be an important sub-element of this story
And then he sees the puppet, he's a marionette, and so, what's a marionette?
Well a marionette, and he's sitting on the shelf.
A marionette is something that is quasi-animated, because it can move
It doesn't really have a soul, but sort of acts like it has a soul
In the sense of anima and soul and animated, and,
but a marionette is something that is being
manipulated by something else behind the scenes
Right, it doesn't have it's own volition
It's dependent on the will of something behind the scenes
And so, there is a strong implication that whatever this thing is, it's half formed
and that it's, being manipulated by unseen forces behind
unseen forces
behind the facade
Well that is a Freudian idea, that's you, that's all of you, you know, you're pulled hither and fro
by unconscious forces, and some of those are biological
and some of them are cultural, you know, and you think about people who are swept
up in great ideological movements, like the communists or the fascists, those people are marionettes
That's exactly what they are, they all say the same thing, they all mouth the same words
they all act the same way, and something is behind it
and the question is, what?
Well that is the question and that's partly what this movie tries to figure out. So,
you see this marionette, he's a half formed wooden headed puppet
and he has a little bit of potential, you know, and the cricket goes up and interacts with him
and sees that he is made out of pretty good wood, and makes a little joke about having a wooden head
and you know, that's kind of obvious what that means, and
you notice that the cricket is dressed like a tramp
and when you first saw him, he wasn't, he was dressed like a 1920's millionaire
So, but here he is a tramp, and this is so interesting, it's like
So this bug, that's a messiah, that's the introduction to the book
that's the conscience, is also a tramp with no home, it's like, what does that mean?
And it took me a long time to sort that out, and it's like
He has been everywhere, this tramp he has been everywhere, and
and he know, he's traveled the world, and, but he doesn't have a place, he doesn't have a home
He hasn't made a relationship with anything real yet, he is kind of a potential
And this is one of the things that is really interesting about this movie because
if you think about the cricket as a fragment of the hero
and say, a reflection of the saviour, which is his relationship with J.C., of course
and the person who introduces the book
then the story gets strange, because
if it was merely a representation of the perfect person, the archetype of the hero
then the conscience would know everything, right?
And it would just tell the puppet what to do, and that would be the end of it
But that's a dull story, it's like, perfect conscience comes along, puppet does everything it says
Bingo! Perfection.
But that isn't what happens, there is this weird idea that this thing that has got all these attributes
Needs a home, and has to enter into a learning relationship with the thing that it's trying to transform
It's so sophisticated, because I could say, "You should do what your conscience tells you."
It's like, well maybe not, maybe that's not exactly how it works
maybe your conscience isn't omniscient and omnipotent, maybe it's not God, right?
It's a guide, but it's maybe smarter than you sometimes
Maybe because it's society in your head
and obviously it's smarter than you sometimes because it tells you not to do something and you go do it and then
You get into trouble and you think, "Well if I would have just listened."
but you don't, and that is interesting too, it's something that you don't have to listen to
which is, seems to be associated with free will, it's weird, if your conscience knows what to do
why aren't you just a deterministic puppet of your conscience
Christ! That would work a lot better, you wouldn't have to torture yourself, and you wouldn't make any mistakes, so
why the separation?
Well maybe it's because the conscience is generic
and so it has to be taught, it has to learn too, and so what you do is you have a dialogue with your conscience
it's something like that, and you expose yourself, to more and more of the world, and
you get wiser and your conscience gets wiser and you mature together
and that's what happens in this story because the cricket starts out as a, this tramp
you know, that is smarter than the puppet, but not as smart as he thinks he is, that's for sure
and, when he first starts to operate as a conscience he is a completely useless at it, he babbles of a lot of cliches
about morality and then, he's late the first day for his job, and
he's just not very good at it, and so
there is this weird idea that the conscience which is part of which puts you towards redemption
is something that you actually have to interact with
over the course of your life in order for it to develop as you develop
and, so then I would also say that the cricket represents at least in part what Jung described as the self
which is like the potential
fully developed human being that sort of exists within you as a possibility, but it has to be
It has to be manifested in the actual conditions of your life
and the conscience has to learn how to position itself here and now
and it's got generic advice, and that's not good enough
and so that's why the cricket is looking for a home, and so, he needs a home.
Even though he is all these other things we already says he was, he has to find a specific home before he can become
who he could be
Well so, then Geppeto shows up, and he is kindly old guy, which is pretty much exactly what you would expect, and
you know, he's a careful craftsman and he likes kittens, and you know, that's always a good thing
and he has some fish, and you know he's
good at making things, and he has got a sense of humour and he is kind of playful and so he is the good father
fundamentally, he's the wise king, he's the positive archetype of the masculine, and that's what he is
and so he is culture in it's positive manifestation, and he gives rise to this creation which is his puppet
which is what culture does, because you are a puppet of your culture, a marionette of your culture
and so maybe you could be more than that
and that's the other thing that is strange about this movie and it's strange about the mythological way of looking at the world
because scientifically
deterministically, there is nature and there is culture
and you are the deterministic product of the interaction between nauture and culture
there is nothing else to you than that, that's that!
But the mythological world doesn't say that, it says something different
It says that there is nature and culture, and then there is you!
And the you that's in there has choices and a destiny
and that you actually affect the interplay of nature and culture in determining your own character
and it insists upon that, the oldest stories we have, there is always the hero and the archetypal mother and the archetypal father
there is always those three things, there is never just two
So, from the narrative perspective, there is always implication that there is something autonomous about
the hero of the story, and, you know, you can't account for that, we don't have a good way accounting that
for that from a scientific perspective, I was having a discussion with Sam Harris the other day which,
was very
what would you say, he said we got wrapped around an axle, which is pretty much, Sam Harris is one of the four famous, you know
atheists along with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennet, yeah
and so we were having a discussion and, he is a determinist just right down to the bottom
it's like you are determined, you are determined, there is no free will
You're a deterministic machine and, you know, if you are a coherent scientist and you are
a Newtonian, roughly speaking, you don't really have much choice other than to think that way, but that isn't how it seems to people!
And we don't treat each other that way, and our entire legal system is predicated
on the idea that you do in fact have free will!
So, well, can we account for it? Well no, and do we have a scientific model for it? No.
But then I would also say that we do not have a scientific model for consciousness, we don't know a damn thing about conciousness
Which is why Dan Dennet's book, which was called "Consciousness Explained"
was referred to by its critics as "Consciousness Explained Away"
Which is exactly right as far as I am concerned, because he took a mechanistic approach and
I just don't think you get to do that, because
there is something really weird about consciousness, I mean
the phenomanologists like Heidegger, who tried to radically transform Western philosophy, right from the bottom up
He basically said, "Well, you know, you can treat the world as if consciousness is primary and that
human experience is reality, that's reality
and that it down't exist independently of consciousness in any explicable way"
It's like, well, what's out there if there is nothing to experience it.
Well everything at once, it is something like that, it's not really comprehensible, as
without a subject, the subject defines it and makes it real. Now you don't have to believe that but
at least I am telling you that there are thoroughly coherent philosophical positions that make that case
very strongly, and that allow consciousness to exist as a phenomena and to take it seriously, and
you certainly act like you take it seriously, you act like there is a you and you make choices and
you certainly treat other people that way
deterministic or not, you are still going to get angry when, you know, rude to you, and
you are going to act as if they had some choice in the matter.
Now maybe that's an illusion, possibly, but maybe it's not. And I would say the oldest stories that we have
always include that as not only the a fundamental element, but even as the fundemental element
So, well so, you can think about that how ever you want, but
Anyways, so Geppetto, comes along and he is going to finish off the puppet
And so what does he do to finish off the puppet, he gives it a voice!
He gives it a mouth! Well that's really really interesting, so
In Genesis, in Genesis
this is a very very complex idea, and it took people thousands of years to figure this idea out
and it's something like this, so
At the beginning of everything there was chaos, and that was like potential, it was something like potential
the potential for being, and God who is God the Father in the Genesis account
uses a faculty that he has, which is the word, to call being from chaos.
And that's the creation of being, right, it's the manifestation order from chaos
and it's the word, the Logos, that, it's the Logos that's the tool that God uses to do that and that Logos
in Christianity is associated with Christ, which is a very weird thing, but the reason for that is that
there is an idea that the divine element of the individual
is the thing that uses language, communicative language to call the world into being
And that is what we do, as far we can tell, you make a decision, you think it through, you talk it over with your friends
you plot a course and the world manifests itself in relationship to you choice
and it's for that reason, and it is for that reason that in Genesis and many other accounts
that Logos capacity is identified with human beings, it's like you have a small bit of that in you
whatever that means and you participate in the process of
continually generating order out of chaos, and sometimes the reverse, you mediate between them
And so, that in our, in Western culture, and it is certainly the case in other cultures as well, that
that's why you have rights! Fundamentally, that's why the law has to respect you
is because you have got this spark of divinity in you, that's transcendent, that nobody gets to transgress against
And you say, "Well, do you believe that?" It's like, well, you act like you believe it!
You treat other people like you believe it, or they are not very happy with you
So, it depends on what you mean, by believe, well you act it out. Well, do you accept it as a proposition? Well,
I don't care if you accept it as a proposition frankly, because I think the best indicator of what you believe
is how you act, not what you say.
Because what do you know about what you know, hardly anything.
And so, actions speak louder than words and if you want to be treated properly by someone is that you want to treat them
You want them to treat you as a valuable autonomous entity, that's what you want
And, so maybe you're not that, maybe you are a deterministic puppet
and what this strange movie suggests is that you are a kind of deterministic puppet but you don't have to be
Alright,
well the mouth goes on, and then Geppetto is happy about that and then they have a little dance, you know, they
They turn the music on and all these little music boxes, and
they all play together and it's like
harmony of some sort has been established, because that's what the music represents, and
there are layers of reality that are communicating with one another because that's what the music represents and then they have a little dance
and the idea is that, well it's a good thing to let this puppet have it's own voice
Well that's an interesting idea because what the hell does it know, it's a wooden headed marionette
Why the hell would you want something like that to talk?
Well it's the same question you have in relationship to you children
It's like what do they know, they are two, or three, you know, they don't know anything
Well so should you just tyrannize them, and make them do everything that you want, or are you going to let them have a bit of a voice?
And the question is whether you want them to be a puppet, or not.
And if you don't want them to be a puppet, if you want them to grow up autonomous, then then you let them have a voice.
And you facilitate the development of that voice, and so
and that's, and that's what you do if you don't want a marionette
So, and Geppetto doesn't want a marionette, so he gives the puppet a voice, even though he knows it's just a puppet
and that it doesn't know anything
And then, this is fantastic, the cricket is sitting up there watching that, he is pretty happy with it
that's the first little scene you see there, and he is sitting by this other thing that is just not happy at all
And that's the terrible father, and you see it's a character that repeats throughout the
entire movie, you see manifestations of the tyrannical father continually through the movie
in different characters, it's like he is played out by different roles
And so, first of all the cricket is so thrilled about this, and then he looks at the frowning king there
Who is not happy that the puppet has been given a voice, he is a tyrant, right, he is the representation of a tyrant
and a tyrant does not want you to have a voice
And so, the cricket looks at him and says
"Well, you can't please everybody all the time"
and it's just a tiny little fragment of a joke, you know, but it's. There is this old idea
I think that it comes from Chekov, and the idea is that, if you set a play up, and there is a gun, a rifle
or a pistol on a table in the first act, it had better been used by the third act or it shouldn't have been there at all
And the idea is, you don't put anything in you play that's random, you never do that, it' like
because this isn't life, this isn't life this is a work of art and everything
is connected and it is there by intent
And so, this isn't accidental that this little king character doesn't like what is going on, or that he shows up.
So anyways, all the clocks go off and the music boxes go, and the have a little dance and everybody is happy about it
And then, Geppetto notices what time it is, and there is a tremendous emphasis on time in this part of the movie
Because there are all these clocks going off, and they are all telling him what time it is, like 30 clocks go off, and then he takes
watch out that and notices what time it is, it's like the idea that there is something about time
going on, is like whacked at you, you know dozens of times, so that you get it
And it's a little joke that he pulls out his watch and he figures out that it is time from bed
Well, so now we are making the transition between the conscious world and the unconscious world
OK, so there is an intimation in the movie that everything that happens now is in the unconscious world
and the way you know that is that, it's strange, because the movie moves in and out this underworld
but at the very end when Pinocchio is transformed into a real boy
the last thing that Geppetto does is, I think that it's Geppetto, hit one of the pendulums and start all the clocks again
So it's as if, what happens from here onwards is part of a dream
Now it's murky because, Pinocchio goes to school, and you know, there is the next day and all of that, but
and so those are sort of realistic elements, but then there is the whole going down into the ocean
to find the whale thing that seems completely dreamlike
But there is an intimation that we are in a different kind of world, and so
They all go to sleep, including the cricket.
And so, then Geppetto notices the star!
And, because he is a good guy he makes a wish on the star and we have already
explained why you might wish on a star, and what that might mean, and he makes a very interesting wish.
It's not a self-serving wish, in fact it's quite the contrary, he doesn't wish that Pinocchio is an obediant son.
He doesn't wish that he produced someone who will work for him.
He doesn't wish any of that, he wishes for what a good father would wish.
Which is that the creation that he has brought forth
would develop it's capacity for autonomy.
He wants him to become real, he wants him to become an actual living creature and not and not a wooden headed marionette
And so you would say that is what your father should wish for you, you know, and I have clients
frequently whose father's weren't like that at all, they were tyrannical or they were negelectful or
or the punished the person every time they did something good, that's a real fun game.
They competed with them and undermined them at every opportunity, they didn't want to produce someone strong and autonomous
They wanted to
give birth to a slave and then diminish it as much as possible
And so, that's bad, it's not good, and so Geppetto is not like that, so he says, "Well, I am going to wish for
something completely unreasonable", which is part of that ideal idea, right?
And the unreasonable thing is that this puppet
could become
real! Could actually take on it's autonomy and move forward. And so that's what he wishes.
And then they go to sleep
And then the cricket starts to become driven mad by the noises of the clock, so it's like he is going into this state of hyper-alertness
And the clocks are clanging at him and Geppetto is snoring and
he can even hear the little grains of sand falling out of the hourglass, he is becoming hyper-alert
And then he yells, "Stop!", and all the clocks stop
Which is a pretty good trick for a cricket, you know, he is the master of time but also we are in a place where time has
come to a stop, we are outside of time.
And one of the things that Freud pointed out about dreams is that, dreams are kind of outside of time.
Now, here is what that means, is first of all they draw on eternal themes, that's part of it
but you know, you must had had this experience, Freud noted this carefully in the "Interpretation of Dreams" where
you know you are sleeping and the alarm will go off, and the alarm noise is incorporated into the dream
and it's like, the dream has been going on for an hour in subjective time, and you wake up and you realize that it is the alarm clock
It's like, and there is no reason why your dream time should be the same as real time because it is all going on in your imagination, but
It's amazing in some sense, how much can happen in such a short period of time in your imagination, and so
it's outside of time, the world of fantasy is in some sense outside of time, and so, the cricket
tells time to stop, and it does.
And then, the star, enlarges
and it turns into this blue fairy, whose got a celestial gown covered with stars
and who has got wings, so she is some kind of ethereal being and, like, you don't have a problem with that
in the movie, it's like, "Yeah, sure, I mean you know, it's a fairy that came from a star, that makes perfect sense.", which of course it's makes no sense
whatsoever
right, it makes no sense, but you are willing to go along with it because,
on the one hand it makes no sense, and on the other hand it makes perfect sense
It's like the fairy godmother idea, it's like, "Yeah, yeah fairy godmother, no problem, we got that."
And the idea there is that well, Nature comes to your aid, it's something like that,
It's the benevolent force of Nature is on you side, now, not obviously, only on your side
because it opposes you as well, but
And there is your own mother as well, who is also Nature whose on your side, and so
but there is an idea here and the idea is that if the father gets the wish right
the aim right for the child
then Nature will cooperate
Right, and that is true, I believe that that's true, is that
if you set up your relationship, your cultural relationship with your child properly
then they are far more likely to flourish, and so, you get the magic of Nature on your side, by
establishing the proper aim. And so that's what happens, Geppetto says, well this is what I am aiming at
and because he is aiming at it, and because it is in the realm of possibility, maybe Nature comes to his service, and
that is how it works, that's exactly how it works because when you aim at something
then, you muster your biological forces towards that goal, and, if the goal is
feasible, and attainable, then you will cooperate with yourself
And so that's quite cool, Carl Rogers would call that
What's the word for that?
I think he called it genuineness which is kind of weak
but I think that is still what he called it, he sort of meant that, that's sort of what happens when your
goals and your physiological and biological being are alined well, and you're
and you can communicate both, you are not full of internal contradictions
And so, your conscious aims and your biological possibilities are manifesting themselves in the same direction
and so, that would be good!
So anyways, the fairy shows up and she is quite sexually attractive, she is quite provocative
and she charms the cricket
who gets all, blushes and like, is all, you know embarrased and
overwhelmed by this like figure of celestial beauty and decides to cooperate, the conscience decides to cooperate
and gets some responsibility, and so
the fairy allows the puppet to move without strings
So that's kind of interesting, it's the intervention of Nature. Culture focuses the aim,
and then it's the intervention of Nature that produces the autonomy
and that seems to be right, I mean even though it's not that understandable, it seems to be right.
And then, so, she
takes the strings off Pinocchio, and you might say well that's partly because your child is not
certainly not just a creature of culture, by no means, your child has a temperament, you'll see that right away
and that temperament will unfold
and hopefully it will unfold in a cultural context that's amenable to it, and that the combination of those two produce something new.
He can talk,
he can walk
and so the good fairy basically tells him that
he has got a bit of autonomy and now it is up to him to
like clue in a bit, and act properly, and learn the difference between good and evil, and to speak truthfully and all of that, it's a bit
propagandistic that part of the movie, I would say, but it doesn't really matter it is kind of the inculcation of conventional morality
and, there's a fair bit to it, especially that he is supposed to tell the truth
and, you know, he says he will, and the cricket is listening, and then
the puppet asks, "Well what does conscience mean?" because the fairy says always let your conscience be your guide
and he says, "Well what does conscience mean?" and the bug, whose like all puffed up because he wants to impress the fairy
pops down and gets on his little matchbox and gives this like horrible little lecture about
how to behave properly, that's just like ideological chatter, you can hardly even stand listening to it, and
it's supposed to be like that, it's generic moral advice that anyone could give
that is kind of dull and also puffed up and grandiose, he's just not very good at it
So that's why he is on his little matchbox there, with his chest puffed out, and so
he says, "That's just the trouble with the world today." [sarcastic falsetto]
and I think that's his opening line, you know
He's diagnosing the whole world, and, you know, the fairy, she thinks he is kind of funny because he is
And you know , it's sort of, there is a real interesting thing here going on because he's male, and he's
he's all puffed up with his knowledge, which is completely shallow and, he is put in contact with this like celestial feminine ideal
and he just turns into a complete moron, and that's exactly what happens to men, it happens to them all the time
So, anyways, she decides to give him a chance and turns him into this conscience, and all of a sudden
he's this 1920's millionaire, so he's, he has been ennobled, but then she tells him, that, you know
he has to journey along with Pinocchio in order for things to go properly, and he promises that he'll be a good conscience and do it
and he already thinks that he can do it,
and that's why he is on the matchbox, podium, you know, espousing his morality, but
the reality turns out to be much more complex
So!
The bug has a little talk with the cricket [sic], the bug has a little talk with the puppet
the bug tries to tell Pinocchio explicitly what it means to be good.
And, he gets completely tangles up in the explanation because what the hell does he know
and the puppet doesn't understand anything says anyways, so there is message there, and the message is
the kind of knowledge that the conscience and the puppet are supposed to co-create,
is not something that you can articulate easily as a table of rules, it's not like that
because life is too complicated, to just have five rules that you live by and that will solve every problem
partly because the rules will conflict, that's a huge part of the problem, right
One moral guideline contradicts another in a situation, it's like you don't know what to do
So anyways they decide that they're...
They decide that they are just going to...
He says, Pinocchio says, "Well, I will be a god boy." and the cricket says, "Well that's the spirit!", and then, well then
Geppetto gets wind of it, and they have a little, like, horror episode
and then, he finds out that the puppet can...
he is autonomous and they have a little party, which tells you,
exactly what Geppetto is up to, is, the autonomy emerges and he is happy about it it
So it's stamping home the notion that Geppetto is, in fact, a good guy and that is, in fact, what he wants
So, it's like, the encouragement of your father is the precondition for the emergence of your individuality
And it also allows the feminine to play a role, both as Nature and perhaps as mother
and so, the combination of those two things produces the autonomous individual, it's like that seems perfectly reasonable
So, off they go to sleep, the next day they wake up
and it's a new day, and Pinocchio is off to school, and that's a good thing too, because
Geppetto isn't, and he is really excited about it, and so what that means is that
He's been parented properly, he is going to go out in the world of his peers, which is where he belongs
and Geppetto isn't to worried about it, in fact, he is pushing him out the door, you know
It's like, go, you can do it, this is the next thing!
The kid isn't cowering in the corner and cowering in terror, with the parents freaking out about all the things that are going to go wrong, it's...
There is some faith in his ability, so
he sees all the kids wandering by and Geppetto dresses him up, and sends him off to school.
And so, and so that's good, that's a happy family story, it's like, Mom and Dad got together, they decided that the
kid was going to, you know, be competent and autonomous and ready to face the world, and so
out he goes, and so he's like five years old at this point and that is where we get
that's were we are at
in the story.
And I think that that is a good place to stop, because the next thing that happens is,
anomaly essentially, Pinocchio goes off to be a good boy
but it turns out that is a hell of a lot more complicated than he might think because
there are actually, complications in the world, but also malevolence
Right, the desire for things not to go right, there are people who are not oriented towards
the ideal, in any way at all, and Pinocchio is young and naive,
and so he has no defense what whatsoever against this malevolance, and that's, you know
That's not unexpected, and it also turns out that the conscience, the cricket, who is still not very clued in, oversleeps
And so he's just not there at a critical moment
But I think that we will pick that up next week, because this is a good point in the plot to stop
The child has entered the broader world and has to cope with it
And so, he's prepared because he had a wonderful father and he had a magical mother
and so he is prepared as you can be, he is even not completely a marionette anymore
but, now it's up to him, that's the thing, now it's up to him, his parents have done basically what they could
And that's really about right, you know
It's wise, I would say, psychologically
Alright, so, that's that!