[Music]
three difficult stories tonight and
hopefully my plan is to get through all
three of them so we'll see how that goes
so we're going to talk about the story
of sodom and gomorrah and then the story
of the sacrifice of Isaac which is an
extremely complicated complicated story
and so we'll try to make some headway
with that the story of Sodom and
Gomorrah is plenty complicated - all
right so what we established last week
at least in part was this idea that the
Abrahamic narratives are set up as
punctuated epochs I suppose in Abraham's
life and we were hypothesizing that you
know you set out a goal for yourself in
your life it's like a stage in your life
you might say that and then when you run
that goal to its end when that stage
comes to an end then you have to regroup
and orient yourself once again and I was
making the case that that's a good time
to make necessary sacrifices you know
and part of that because as you move
through your life you have to shed that
which is no longer necessary and because
otherwise it accretes around you and
holds you down and you perish sooner
than you should and I think that's in
large part because if you don't dispense
with your life as you move through it
then the stress of all that undone
business and all those unmade decisions
turns into a kind of chaos around you
and that chaos puts you in a state of
psychophysiological emergency
preparedness chronically and that just
ages you and so it's necessary in some
sense to stay light on your feet and
also I think
to renew your commitment to your aim
upward and I believe that that's what
the sacrificial routines in the
Abrahamic stories dramatized I said
already that these things are often
first portrayed very dramatically and
concretely before they become
psychologists and we'll see because one
of the things that happens tonight as
well in these stories is that when God
makes his covenant with Abraham this is
the next part of the story it's also
when the idea of circumcision is
introduced into ancient Hebrew culture
and others every bit of evidence that
other cultures were utilizing
circumcision beforehand so it wasn't
necessarily a novel invention of the
Abrahamic people but I see its
introduction as a step on the road to
the psychologize ation of the idea of
sacrifice right first of all it's giving
up something concrete and then second
it's signified by the sacrifice of a
part of the body instead of for the sake
of the whole it's something like that
it's dramatizing the idea that you have
to give up a part of yourself for the
sake of the whole and eventually well by
modern times that becomes virtually
completely psycho psychological and it's
in its essence in that we all understand
perhaps not as well as we should but at
least well enough to explain it that
it's necessary to make sacrifices to
move ahead in life one of the themes
that I'd like to explore tonight in
relationship especially to the sacrifice
of Isaac is that you know once humanity
had established the idea that sacrifice
was necessary to move ahead which is
really it's a discovery of incalculable
magnitude right the idea that the idea
that you can give up something in the
present and that will in some sense
ensure a better future is an
unbelievable achievement it's equivalent
to the discovery of the future it's
equivalent to the discovery of the
utility of work like its importance
can't be overstated okay so it took a
long time for people
figure this out animals haven't figured
it out at all right we've figured it out
and it's hard it's hard for people to
make sacrifices because of course the
present has a major grip on you as it
should because in some way you live in
the present
so anyways there's the twin problem of
getting the whole idea of sacrifice up
and running and then figuring out
exactly what it means but there's a
problem that branches off that too or a
two-fold problem so the hypothesis is
that sacrifice is necessary to ensure
the that the future is safe and secure
and productive and positive and all of
those things ok so then then a question
immediate two questions immediately rise
from that right one is well what's the
proper sacrifice now we already talked
about that a little bit with regards to
Cain and Abel and one of the things we
saw was that Cain's sacrifice whatever
it was was wrong and Abel's was right
Noah's seemed to be right
Abraham seems to be right there is
something about a sacrifice that can be
correct there's something about a
sacrifice that can be incorrect the
question is what would be the maximally
correct sacrifice so because that's an
obvious question to arise from the mere
observation that sacrifice is necessary
okay if you're going to sacrifice and
it's necessary well how is it that you
would behave if you were going to do it
really well if you're going to do it
perfectly okay so that's question number
one and then question number two might
be well if the future can be better
because of the sacrifice and sacrifices
can vary in quality then how much better
could this set the future be if your
sacrifice was of the highest quality
right there's a limit issue there and it
the limit is something like well how
good could your life be if you really
got your act together and you gave up
all the things that we're impeding you
in your movement forward if you did that
forthrightly and and and with with
integrity and with seriousness with with
dead seriousness and you tried to set
your life right what is the upper limits
with regards to how your life might lay
itself out and I would say well we don't
know the answer to that but I think that
like the idea of something like the City
of God or the kingdom of God on earth or
the re-establishment of paradise
something like that is the answer of the
imagination to the court
how good could the future be if
sacrifice was optimized and those are
archetypal questions right an archetypal
question is a question that everyone
asks whether they know it or not because
sometimes you can act out a question an
archetypical estin is a question that
everyone asks and an archetypal answer
is the answer that can't be made any
better to that question so I can give
you an example of that the reason that
Christ's passion is an archetypal story
is because it's a kind of limit right
it's the worst possible set of things
that can happen to the best possible
person so it's a story that constitutes
a limit it has nothing to do with the
factual reality of the story that's a
completely independent issue I'm
speaking about this psychologically is
that certain stories can exhaust
themselves in a perfect form and that
would be the archetypal form so that's
the territory that we're going to wander
around in a little bit today and we'll
use the stories as anchors in thinking a
lot about the Sodom and Gomorrah story
because it has its classically
associated with a biblical injunction
against homosexuality and that's often
how it's read I would say in particular
by the more fundamentalist end of the
Christian spectrum and I've thought
about that a lot because it's pretty
damn clear that the story of Sodom and
Gomorrah has something to do with sexual
and propriety but I've really come to
the conclusion and it's very little to
do with homosexuality so we'll see how
that interpretation prevails as we walk
through this tonight okay so we'll start
with a bit of a recap from last week so
Abraham's had had his last adventure and
he's 90 years old ninety nine years old
actually the Lord appeared to Abram and
said unto him I am the Almighty God walk
before me and be thou perfect well
that's quite the command now
Alexander McLaren who we talked about
before it elaborated upon this slightly
and this is what he had to say it's this
is not precisely walking with God the
idea of walking before God it is rather
that of an act of life spent in
continual consciousness of being naked
and opened before the eyes of him to
whom we have to give an account okay so
that's that's an idea that's in keeping
with the notion that what we're seeing
an Abrahamic story
is the call to adventure of the of man
of the typical person right because your
life in some sense is an adventure and I
suppose the reason for that is that
you're confronted by things that you
cannot understand that you have not yet
mastered there's a heavy price to be
paid if you fail to conduct yourself
appropriately and there's a large reward
to be gained if you conduct yourself
properly and so that pretty much defines
an adventure story and God calls to
Abraham and tells him to move out into
the world to leave what he's familiar
with to go into the strange lands of
famine and tyranny and to find his place
and that works out quite nicely for
Abraham and so what that also means is
that because Abraham is doing that
consciously at least according to this
interpretation that he's not naive in
his in his determination to move forward
you know I mean I've dealt with lots of
people who have anxiety disorders you
know and one thing about people who have
anxiety disorders is they are not
mysterious to me I understand
it's no problem for me to understand why
people have anxiety disorders or why
they're depressed or why they have
substance use problems the mystery to me
is always why people don't have all of
those things at once because everybody
has a reason to be anxious in fact we
have the ultimate reason to be anxious
because we know that we're vulnerable
and we know that we're going to die and
how you cannot be anxious under those
circumstances is a great mystery it's a
massive mystery and the same thing
applies with regards to depression and
then the same thing applies to some
degree with regards to drug and alcohol
abuse because I said last week there's
plenty of reasons to drown your
consciousness in alcohol that's for sure
we could refer to the aforementioned
anxiety depression not least and so and
the and the sorts of drugs that people
are prone to take our chemicals that
take the affective edge off the tragedy
of life so so back to back to the issue
of fear being Abraham is self-conscious
that's what this commentary says but the
thing is as he moves forward despite
that he's self-conscious and he knows
the danger but he moves forward despite
that and that's actually
the appropriate response in the face of
actual non naive understanding of what
constitutes life like if you're naive
and you move forward it's like well what
the hell do you know you know there's no
courage in naivety because you don't
know what there is to stop you you don't
know what dangers you might apprehend
but to be aware of what it is that your
problem is so to be alert existentially
let's say or to be fully self conscious
means that you're perfectly aware of
your limitations and how you might be
hurt and then to make the decision to
move forward into the unknown and the
land of the stranger anyways that's the
I would say that's one of the secrets to
a good life and I can say that really
without fear of contradiction I would I
would say because the clinical
literature on this is very very very
clear what you do with people who are
afraid and to some degree depressed but
certainly anxious is you lay out what
what they're anxious about first of all
in in detail what is it that you're
afraid of what might happen and then you
decompose it into small problems
hypothetically manageable problems and
then you have the person expose
themselves to this thing that they're
afraid of and what happens isn't that
they get less afraid that isn't what the
clinical literature indicates exactly
what happens instead is they get braver
and that's not the same thing right cuz
if you get less afraid it's like well
the world isn't just dangerous as I
thought it was you know silly me if you
get braver that's not what happens what
happens is the other world am world's
just as dangerous as I thought or maybe
it's even more dangerous than I thought
but it turns out that there's something
in me that responds to taking that on as
a voluntary challenge and grows and
thrives as a consequence and there's no
doubt about this even the
psychophysiological findings are quite
clear if you if you can if you impose a
stressor on two groups of people and on
one group the stressor is imposed
involuntarily and on the other group the
stressor is picked up voluntarily the
people who pick up the stress or
voluntary voluntarily use a whole
different psychophysiological system to
deal with it they use the system that's
associated with approach and challenge
and not the system that's associated
with defensive aggression and withdrawal
and the system that is associated with
challenges much more associated with
positive
and much less associated with negative
emotion it's also much less hard on you
because the the defensive posturing
system the prey animal system man when
that thing kicks in it's all systems are
go for you you know you're the gas is
pushed down to the are the pedals pushed
down to the metal and the brakes are on
you're using future resources that you
could be storing for future time right
now in the present to ready yourself for
emergency so there's there's there's
nothing simple or trivial at all about
the idea of being called to move
forthrightly forward into the strange
and the unknown and there's a real
adventure that's associated with that
right so that's an exciting thing which
is part of the reason why people travel
and then also to see yourself as the
sort of creature that can do that is
willing to do that on a habitual basis
is also the right kind of tonic for I
hate this word for your self-esteem you
know because the self-esteem has nothing
to do with feeling good about yourself
as I already mentioned there isn't
necessarily reason why a priori you
should just feel good about yourself but
if you can view yourself acting in a
courageous and forthright manner and
encountering the world and trying to
improve your lot and and and taking
risks you know in a non naive way well
then you have something that you can
comfort yourself with at night when
you're wondering what the whole damn
point of is of your futile and miserable
life and so and that's necessary because
it's often the case that you wake up at
4:00 in the morning or at least
sometimes the case that you wake up at
4:00 in the morning when things haven't
been going that well and wonder just
what the hell the point is of your
futile and miserable life you have to
have something real to set against that
it can't be just rationalizations about
how you know you're a valuable person
among others even though that's true
that's not good enough you need
something that's more realistic to set
it against that an observing courage in
yourself is definitely one of the things
that that that can help you sleep
soundly at night when when things are
destabilized a little bit around you so
back to the covenant God tells Abraham
me make my covenant between me and D and
will multiply the exceedingly and Abram
fell on his face and God talked with him
saying as
me behold my covenant my contract is
with thee and thou shalt be a father of
many nations neither shall thy name
anymore be called Abram but thy name
shall be called Abraham for a father of
many nations have I made thee an abram
means High father and Abraham father of
a multitude and I'll make thee
exceedingly fruitful and I will make
nations of thee and Kings shall come out
of thee and I will establish my covenant
between me and thee and thy seed after
thee in their generations for an
everlasting covenant to be a God unto
thee and to thy seed after thee and I
will give unto thee and thy seed after
thee the land wherein thou art a
stranger all the land of canaan for an
everlasting possession and I will be
their God I love that line really the
line about the land where you are a
stranger you know and everything that
happens in the Bible almost everything
that happens in these more archaic
stories in particular is laid out
geographically the metaphor is
Geographic so you move to a land that
you haven't yet occupied maybe that's
full of strangers and then the land is
what's granted to you but it's perfectly
reasonable to think about this from the
perspective from a more abstract
perspective it's much more relevant to
modern people with our incredibly
complex societies you know it's
definitely the case that if you go into
the land of the stranger which is
exactly what you do when you try out any
new endeavor right when you start a new
job or when you start a new educational
enterprise or when you start a new
relationship doesn't matter you're out
there in unexplored territory like the
physical geography is the same but we
don't live in in the physics in the
spatial world only we live in the
temporal spatial world and what that
means is that the same place can be
different at a different time and maybe
it can be completely different and so if
you're in your house but you have a new
person in your house while your house is
new for all intents and purpose because
the territory surrounding that new
person is the territory of the foreigner
essentially and the same thing happens
to you when you start a new job and
you'll find that when you start a new
job especially if you stretched yourself
a little bit beyond your zone of comfort
that you very much feel like an imposter
right when you're first there and then
the question is well how do you master
that and the answer to that seems to be
well it seems fairly straightforward if
the place that you're in
has any degree of possibility if it
isn't inhabited by demons so to speak
the best way to act is to lift your aim
upward an attempt to get your act
together and to tell the truth and to
live a meaningful life and to do
difficult things all of that and that is
the best way of mastering a new
territory and you know I all probability
the degree to which you're able to act
that out is precisely proportionate to
the degree to which you're going to
become a master in that territory and
not sort of thinking having a lot faster
than people think you know it's it's
really quite remarkable how fast you can
move forward if you can establish
yourself somewhere and prove yourself
useful assuming that you're around
people to whom proving yourself useful
actually matters like I know perfectly
well that you can end up in an
employment situation where you're
punished for your virtues right in which
case you should just get the hell out of
there and really really you get out of
there and you go find somewhere where if
you work hard and do what you're
supposed to do you're actually going to
be rewarded right because that's not a
workplace that's hell and you should
just leave there so and God said unto
Abraham thou shalt keep my covenant
therefore thou and thy seed after thee
in their generations this is my covenant
which he shall keep between me and you
and thy seed after thee every man child
among you shall be circumcised that's a
mystery they're like why that particular
right what's dramatic I mean it
certainly it certainly affects a man
where he's most concerned to be affected
there's something like that and so it's
it's a sacrifice that has a certain I
would say a certain degree of
unforgettable 'ti that would be the
first thing and a certain degree of pain
and threat that goes along with it so
it's not nothing
that's the thing now you can argue and I
think there is an argument a case to be
made about whether or not in the modern
world circumcision is a reasonable is
something reasonable to inflict on
infants I don't want to have that
conversation at all but I don't think
that's relevant to this particular issue
because we're talking about something
different we're talking about humanity's
attempt to reconcile themselves to the
fact that something has to be given up
in order
something else to happen and to try to
really work through that idea and to
make it into a psychological reality and
so far what we've seen in the biblical
stories is that when you make a
sacrifice it's not really something
personal or psychological right it's
something external and dramatic you give
up something that you own you don't give
up something that you are or that's part
of you and it's actually more of a
sacrifice to give up something that's a
part of you or something that you are
than to give up something that you own I
mean it's a subtle distinction between
because in some sense the distinction
between what you own and what you are is
subtle right I mean it's not
overwhelmingly subtle but but people
identify with their possessions and they
need to because otherwise they wouldn't
care for them and they need their
possessions in order to live so their
possessions are in some sense integral
to them but this transformation here of
an act that was external and associated
essentially with possessions to
something that was actually at least
part of the body brings it much closer
to it brings it much closer to the to
the to the individual as a psychological
reality it's something like that and you
shall circumscribe is circumcised the
flesh of your foreskin and it shall be a
token of the Covenant betwixt me and you
it's also a permanent marker you know
and I've read a fair bit about practices
like tattooing and body scarification
you know which is those are very very
common practices right they're human
universals actually no matter where you
go around the world you mean you see a
couple of things first of all almost
without exception people wear clothing
and sometimes it's relatively minimal
clothing but but it's and often it's
more decorative than protective but it's
almost inevitably clothing and the other
thing that you see is that people do
scarify and tattoo themselves and they
do that in some manner to catalyze their
identity right they're trying to
transform themselves from a generic
person in some sense to a person that's
been designed by their own hand it's
something like that they're it's a
marker of developing identity and some
of it seems to be catalyzed with pain
you know that modern people who tattoo
and I'm not saying that I'm in favor of
tattooing because actually I'm not but
that but that
my own particular bias and if you have a
tattoo that's fine with me
I'm also not saying that there's
anything wrong with it
but one of the things you do see what we
the people who have it to tattoo do
report is a couple of things is that the
pain is actually necessary and that the
pain is actually something that seems to
establish something like a memory so
well it's a memory because of the pain
because you plenty well remember things
that hurt but it's also a memory because
it's actually etched on you right it's
not something that you can just abandon
and forget and so a circumcision is
exactly the same thing it's like you
don't forget it because it's part of you
and so it makes a good token for a
covenant and so that seems to be the
rationale here from from speaking from a
psychological perspective it's to
indicate as well that the the damn thing
that's happening is serious and I think
also that was the case with the earlier
sacrifices of animals it's like modern
people don't do this like you don't know
how serious you would take a vow if you
sacrificed a goat in your backyard you
know it's actually a very dramatic thing
to do you know you think about it as
primitive and perhaps it is archaic and
and and no doubt it is but it's also to
take the life of something and to spill
its blood that's no joke that's
something you remember especially if you
haven't done it before and we actually
don't know what we would need to do in
order to take some things seriously you
know because we all do things like make
new year's resolutions about how we're
going to be better people and we don't
do it and the reason for that at least
in part is because we don't know how to
make the sacrifice sufficiently bloody
let's say so that we remember that it's
necessary right we don't take it with
seriousness we don't think I should quit
smoking because I'm going to die and we
don't think through what that means like
coughing your lungs out for three months
in a hotel bed well your entire family
is like a half repulsed and horrified
and sorrow stricken at the fact that
this has happened far too early you know
we won't make that real enough to make
it serious and serious and without that
seriousness we won't do it so there's
something to be said for rituals of
seriousness and I think this is one of
them and he that is eight days shall be
circumcised among you every man
child in your generations he that is
born in the house or bought with money
of any stranger which is not a dice seed
this is from Charles John Ellicott who
was bishop of Gloucester the fitness of
circumcision to be a sign of entering
into a covenant and especially into one
to which children were to be admitted
consisted in its being a representation
of a new birth by putting off the old
man and the dedication of the new man
unto holiness it's like a baptism that's
right that's that's what's that's what's
echoed there and of course baptism is
returned to the pre cosmogonic chaos
because that's what the water indicates
and return to this source of life and
and then the renewal that comes along
with it so it's the it's it's it's a
sacrificial idea in some sense that if
there is to be a new you that the old
you has to dissolve has to return to the
solution from which it emerged initially
and to reconstitute itself and so
there's an echo of that idea here the
flesh was cast away that the spirit
might grow strong and the change of name
and Abram and Sarai was typical of this
change of condition they had been born
again and so must again be named and
though women could need be admitted
directly into the could not indeed be
admitted directly into the Covenant yet
they shared in its privileges by virtue
of their constant annuity to the men who
were as sponsors for them and that Sarai
changes her name equally with her
husband well you could make a case and
and anthropological observers have made
this case to that women undergo a
sufficiently a set of sufficiently
radical psychophysiological
transformations merely as a consequence
of being part being feminine in nature
such that the additional rituals of
transformation that might be necessary
for men aren't necessary and one of
those might be menstruation because
that's a pretty dramatic transformation
and there has been some indication that
circumcision is like a male it's like
the male equivalent of menstruation
something like that because of the blood
that's involved and because of the
locale and then of course the same thing
is the case with women when they give
birth because that's a particularly
dramatic thing as I just witnessed
because my daughter just had a baby this
week so thank God for that
[Applause]
recent investigation this is from the
Cambridge Bible for school and colleges
which if you want to read it is only 58
volumes recent investigation is not
tended to support the theory that
circumcision has any connection with
primitive child sacrifice nor again that
it took its origin from hygienic motives
apparently it represents the dedication
of the manhood of the people to God in
the history of Israel it has survived as
the symbol of the people belonging to
Jehovah through his special election
this corporeal sacrament remained to the
Israelite when when every other tie of
religion or race had been severed the
other thing that that I read about in
relationship to this idea of the
multi-generational covenant had
something to do because God told Abraham
to include all of the people of his
household into this covenant and and
that that that really meant that he was
establishing it a territory of ethics
around them like the ark except the
psychological equivalent of the ark
right so it was it was a spiritual or
psychological or ethical territory that
everyone who was of that household was
required to occupy or obliged or perhaps
privileged to occupy and there was also
an injunction to Abraham with regards to
his children which was that as he had
established a covenant with God which we
could say is something like his decision
to to aim as high as possible and to
live properly as a consequence it's more
than that but it's something like that
that he also was under the supreme moral
obligation to share that with his with
the other men in his family especially
as children and so and so I think
there's also a call here to adopting a
sacred the sacred responsibility in
relationship to children that has to do
with ensuring that they understand how
to take their place in the world and I
think that that's
definitely something very much worth
considering especially given the
emphasis in the Noah's story in the
story of Noah that Noah had his that his
generations were perfect right
as I said before it wasn't merely that
he had walked with God that he had
perfected his own relationship with the
divine let's say with the transcendent
and I want to make that concrete which
is a strange thing to do with the
transcendent I mean people ask me all
the time
about what I believe and of course
that's what I'm trying to explain while
I'm talking but but but and and many
people of course are skeptical about the
idea of anything transcendent and and
and say transcendent and eternal but
that can also be addressed from a
psychological perspective because I
would say well if you have an ideal of
any sort how is that not transcendent it
transcends you that's the first thing
and it doesn't exist in reality it
exists in a place of possibility and
believe me man we treat places of
possibility as if they're real because
people will call on you you know about
your possibility in your potential
they'll say to you you're not
manifesting your full potential and you
might say well what do you mean by that
potential it doesn't exist it isn't here
now you can't measure it or weigh it you
can't get a grip on it and they'll say
don't rationalize you know perfectly
well what I mean when I'm talking about
your potential and so we could and you
do and everyone does and everyone knows
exactly what that means and so that's a
metaphysical reality that will
immediately accept as real and also
castigate ourselves for not fulfilling
and others to like because you're just
not happy when the people around you
especially if you love them don't
fulfill their potential you really feel
that something has gone wrong and so
there's a transcendent reality and
potential and then when you hypothesize
an ideal that you might pursue which you
always do if you pursue anything right
because to pursue something means you
don't already have it you're pursuing
something that doesn't exist you're
probably not pursuing something that's
worse than what you already have because
why the hell would you
sooo it right that's completely
counterproductive so in in the mere fact
of your pursuit you you pause it a
transcendent reality that you can that
you can that you can journey towards
that's more valuable than the reality
that you have now that's predicated in
some sense on something like an eternal
Verity or an eternal truth it partakes
in the ideal and so we have an
relationship with the transcendent and
you might say well that doesn't mean you
have to personify the transcendent say
as Jehovah you know the God the Father
but there's also some damn good reasons
for doing that because one of the things
that I've realized thinking through this
covenant idea and also the sacrifice
idea is that the idea that the future is
a judgmental father is a really really
good idea you know because you think
about what the future is in part I mean
the future is however the natural world
is going to lay itself out over the next
endless amount of time that isn't what I
mean I think more about your future now
mostly your future is the future that
you're going to negotiate with other
people but they're going to be other
people in the future and some of those
people are going to be you in the future
and family members in the future and so
what's happening right now is that if
you make the sacrifices properly then
you're actually pleasing that future set
of people and that future set of people
is definitely going to serve as a judge
that's exactly what it does that's
precisely what it does and so you might
say well it was the brilliant
imagination of mankind that hypothesized
that the best way to think about the
social group including the family but
also including you as your future self
was to consider that you live in
relationship with a future father who's
a judge it's like yes that's exactly
right now is it right right or is it
psychologically right well it's at least
psychologically right and you know one
of the things I've learned about the
biblical stories is that to say that
they're psychologically right doesn't
exhaust the ways in which they're right
but it at least gives rational modern
people who are skeptical
properly so a better way of getting a
grip on them so and the uncircumcised
man child whose flesh of his foreskin is
not circumcised that soul shall be cut
off from his people he had broken my
covenant so it's a serious contractual
relationship now I was thinking about
how to understand this and I remembered
this old story which I'm going to read
to you about a monkey so there's an old
impossibly apocryphal story about how to
catch a monkey that illustrates this set
of ideas very well first so goes the
story you have to find a large narrow
neck jar just barely wide enough in
diameter for a monkey to put his hand
inside and then you have to fill the jar
up with rocks so that it's too heavy for
the monkey to carry away and then you
scatter some treats around the jar that
are attractive to monkeys and close to
the jar and then you put a few of those
treats inside the jar and so that's the
first part of the trick and then the
second part of the trick is the monkey
comes along and gathers up the treats
and then puts his hand in the jar and
grabs the treats that are in there but
it's narrow necked and so once the
monkey puts his hand in there and grabs
the goodies then he can't get his hand
out of the damn jar and so then you can
just come along and pick up the monkey
and like too bad for the monkey rights
like he shouldn't let go of what he had
so that something terrible didn't happen
to him but that isn't what the monkey
will do because he can't sacrifice the
part for the hole and there's something
about the circumcision story that's
about that it's about sacrificing the
part to save the whole and I mean
there's an echo of that in the New
Testament if I remember correctly I
believe it's I believe this is correct
although it might not be where Christ
tells his disciples to pluck out their
eye if it offends them seems like a very
dramatic you know piece of advice but
it's it's partaking of the same idea
which is that now if there's something
holding you back we'll see this when we
get to the story of law - if there's
something holding you back even if it's
beer to you you have to let it go you
seriously have to let it go because
there isn't anything more important than
progressing forward and cheap sympathy
cheap empathy cheap
nostalgia none of that is sufficient
none of that will work because the
consequences of not putting things
together immediately are dire and
there's no time to wait and God said
unto Abraham as for Sarai thy wife thou
shalt not call her name Sarai but Sarah
shall be her name my princess
that was suraíh Sarah is mother of
Nations and I will bless her and give
thee a son also of her yea I will bless
her she will be a mother of Nations
kings of people shall be of her then a
hebrew ham fell on his face and laughed
and said in his heart shall a child be
born unto him that is a hundred years
old he's got a lot of doll I would say I
mean there's God talking to him any
laughs you know but that's okay that's
he's a courageous guy and that's what
people are like and and shall Sarah that
is 90 years old bear and Abraham said
unto God oh that Ishmael might live
before thee and God said Sarah thy wife
shall bear thee a son indeed and thou
shalt call his name Isaac and I will
establish my covenant with him for an
everlasting covenant and with his seed
after him and as for Ishmael I've heard
thee behold I have blessed him and will
make him fruitful and will multiply him
exceedingly 12 Prince's shall he beget
and I will make him a great nation now
what does this mean this is this is a
miraculous story in some sense right
because well Sarah
it's what the Isaac want or what Abraham
wants most is to have a son but it looks
like it's pretty much impossible and I I
think what the story is attempting to
indicate is something like god only
knows what will happen to you if you put
your house in order certainly things
that you do not currently regard as
possible will happen and the more you
put your house in order the more things
that you regard as impossible will
happen and it might be the case that if
you put your host together sufficiently
things that were of miraculous
impossibility would happen to you well
and there's no way of knowing until you
try it but there's no way of being sure
that it's not the case unless you do and
my experience has been that
I don't mean just personally I mean that
the world is a remarkable and mysterious
place and the relationship between the
nature and structure of the world and
your actions is indeterminate they may
be more tightly related than you think
and I don't know how to square that with
the fact that well you're obviously in a
mortal body and constrained by all sorts
of serious constraints and none of that
none of that can be trivially overcome
and I don't really understand how there
can be that seriousness of mortal
constraint and the infinite potential
that also seems to characterize human
beings all at the same time but then I
don't really understand anything about
the nature of reality so that's just one
more mystery to add to the pile so but
my covenant I will establish his Isaac
which share a Sarah shall bear unto thee
at the set time next year and he left
off talking with him and God went up
from Abraham and Abraham took Ishmael
his son and all that were born in this
house and all that were bought with his
money every male among the men of
Abraham's house and circumcised the
flesh of their foreskin in the selfsame
as God had said unto him that must have
been an interesting conversation that's
I mean really this is what God told you
to do it like okay and Abraham was
ninety years old and nine when he was
circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin
and Ishmael was thirteen years old when
he was circumcised in the cell same day
was Abraham circumcised and his son and
all the men of his house
ORN in the house and bought with money
of the stranger were circumcised with
him all right so that's the renewal of
the Covenant that's the next part of the
story that's the circumcision that's the
circumcision story and as I said it
seems to indicate to me something about
seriousness of intent something about
the responsibility that Abraham
determines to take for everyone that's
part of his household the psychological
increasing psychological transformation
of the idea of sacrifice the necessity
of doing something memorable
and the the what would you call it the
end the utility of rekindling the aims
of your highest values when you come to
the end of an epoch in your life when
you have to take stock again right you
take stock of yourself that's really
what that phrase means to take stock is
to take stock of yourself and to decide
ok well what should move forward in time
with me and what should be let go as if
it's Deadwood and the more Deadwood that
you let go of and burn off when you have
the opportunity the less it accretes
around you here's something interesting
about forest fires you know people have
been trying to prevent forest fires for
a long time especially that damn bear
smokey right he's trying to prevent
forest fires
and so because forest fires burn up the
forest and that can't be good but here's
what happens if you don't let forest
fires burn is that
well forests collect a lot of dry
branches right because tree branches guy
and wood falls on the forest floor and
collects and so the amount of flammable
material keeps increasing with time and
that's not so bad if it's wet but if the
amount of flammable material is
increasing and it gets really dry and
then it burns then you have a real
problem the forest fire can burn so hot
that it burns root does pop soil right
off in which case you don't have a
forest at all anymore you just have a
desert and lots of trees are evolved to
withstand forest fires of a certain
intensity and some won't even release
their seeds unless there's been a fire
and so a little bit of fire at the right
time can stop everything from burning to
the ground and that's also a really
useful insight a metaphorical insight
into the nature of sacrifice right it's
also a lot easier to let go of something
when you're deciding to let go of it
because you've decided yourself that
it's you're done with that it's a weak
part of you it needs to disappear you do
that yourself it's much better and much
easier than it is if it's taken away
from you forcibly in which case you're
very much likely to fight it these other
there's another interesting thing here a
motif that runs
the entire Bible it's a very very
powerful motif and it's partly
associated with this idea of walking
with or walking before God and you know
in the New Testament Christ says
something like thy father's will be done
and he means that that will should be
done through him and so I can't I won't
build a state that's exactly right but
it's something like this you know a lot
of what people regard as their own
personalities and and are proud of about
their own personalities aren't their own
personalities at all they're useless
idiosyncrasies that differ them
differentiate them trivially from other
people but they have no value in and of
themselves they're more like quirks I
remember once I was trying to teach a
particularly stubborn student about how
to write and she had written a number of
essays in in University and got
universally walloped for them and the
reason for that was she couldn't write
really at all she was really really bad
at writing and so I was sitting down
with her trying to explain to her what
she was doing wrong and she was being
very annoying about it very recalcitrant
very very unwilling to listen that was a
pearls before swine thing you know and
at one point she said it I can write
perfectly well this university
professors just don't like my style and
I could see all my hands creep towards
her neck yeah well then I'd be funny if
it wasn't true but was also true you
know and I thought what the hell's with
you you can't even write and you think
you have a style and normally do you
think
ya know not knowing how to write is not
a style that's the other point right and
so you know she she instead of humbling
herself which was necessary and okay
right cuz she was a new University
students like of course you don't know
how to write when were you gonna learn
in school I don't think so so she had
this you know this this this style issue
and it it just it just didn't go
anywhere at all and so now let's see I
lost my train of thought and telling you
tell me all those jokes oh yes in terms
of above letting things burn off yeah
well so she was proud of her
insufficiency that's arrogance right
that's not humility it's self-deception
and arrogance to be proud of your
insufficiency that's a very foolish
thing and that means to cling to the
parts of you that are dead
okay now there's this idea that runs
through the Bible I think as a whole
that okay I'll tell you another little
side story here I was reading about
Socrates today and I was reading about
Socrates trial you know he was tried by
the Athenians for corrupting for failing
to worship the correct gods and
corrupting the youth of Athens by like
teaching them stuff and asking them
questions you know which is great way to
corrupt people and so he knew the trial
was coming and Athens wasn't a very big
place only on about 25,000 people
everybody knew everybody everybody knew
who the powerful guys were and everybody
including Socrates knew that the trial
was a warning
do you like get out of town right we're
going to put you on trial in six months
and the potential penalty is best got
that it's like so so Socrates had a chat
with his compatriots and they were
contemplating fair means and foul to set
up a defense for him so that he could or
to leave so that he could not be tried
and put to death and he decided that he
wasn't going to do that and he also
decided that he wasn't going to even
think about
his defense and he said why this is
quite an interesting thing he said why
he told one of his friends that he had
this voice in his head
a daemon a spirit something like that
that he always listened to and that that
was one of the reasons he was different
from other people because he always
listened to this thing it didn't tell
him what to do but it told him what not
to do it always told him what not to do
and if it told him not to do something
then he didn't do it if he was speaking
and the little voice came up and said no
then he shut up and he tried to say
something else and he was very emphatic
about this and he said that when he
tried to plan to evade the trial or even
to mount his own defence the voice came
up and said no don't bother with it and
he thought well what would he what the
hell do you mean by that like there's a
trial coming and I'm going to be put to
death and well he eventually concluded
that he was an old guy you know the next
10 years he was in his 70s perhaps the
next 10 years weren't going to be that
great for him he got a chance maybe the
gods were giving him a chance just to
bow out you know to put his affairs in
order to say goodbye to everyone to
avoid that last descent into catastrophe
which might have been particularly
painful for a philosopher and to and to
walk off the world on his own terms
something like that the point I'm making
with that is that Socrates attended to
this internal voice that at least told
him what not to do and then he didn't do
it and of course Socrates was a very
remarkable man and we still hear about
him today and we know that he existed
and all of those things and so back to
the back to the walking with God idea
you know as you elevate your aim you
create a judge at the same time right
because the new ideal which is an ideal
you even if it's just an ideal position
that you might occupy even if it's still
conceptualized in that concrete way that
becomes a judge because it's above you
right and then you're you're terrified
of it maybe
why you might be afraid when you go
start a new job right because your this
thing is above you and you're terrified
of it and it judges you and that's
useful because that's the judge that
you're creating by formulating the idea
tells you what's useless about yourself
and then you can dispense with it and
you want to keep doing that and then
every time you make a judge that's more
elevated then there's more useless you
that has to be dispensed with and then
if you recreate an ultimate judge which
is what the archetypal imagination of
humankind has done say with the figure
of Christ because if Christ is nothing
else he is at least the archetypal
perfect man and therefore the judge you
have a judge that says get rid of
everything about yourself that isn't
perfect of course that's also what
Abraham that's also what God tells
Abraham right he says to be perfect to
pick an ideal that's high enough and you
can do this the thing that's interesting
about this I think is you can do it more
or less on your own terms you have to
have some collaboration from other
people but you don't have to pick an
external ideal you can pick an ideal
that fulfills the role of ideal for you
you can say okay well if things could be
set up for me the way I need them to be
and if I could be who I needed to be
what would that look like and you can
figure that out for yourself and then
instantly you have a judge and I also
think that's part of the reason people
don't do it right why don't why don't
people look up and move ahead an answer
is well you know you start formulating
an ideal you formulate a judge it's
pretty easy to feel intimidated in the
face of your own ideal that's what
happens to Kane vs Abel for example then
it's really easy to destroy the ideal
instead of to try to pursue it because
then you get rid of the judge but it's
way better lower the damn judge if it's
too much like if your current ambition
is crushing you you know then maybe
you're playing the tyrant to yourself
and you should cap down your ambitions
not get rid of them by any stretch of
the imagination but at least put them
more reasonably within your grasp you
don't have to leap from point one to
point 50 and one leap right you can do
it incrementally but I really like this
idea I think it's a profound idea that
the process of recapitulating yourself
continually is also the process of it's
a phoenix-like process right you're
shedding
and all those elements of you that are
no longer worthy of the pursuits that
you're that you're valuing and then I
would say the idea here is that as you
do that you shape yourself ever more
precisely into something that can
withstand the tragedy of life and that
can act as a as a beacon to the world
that's the right way of thinking about
it maybe first to your friends and then
to your family it's like it's a hell of
a fine ambition and there's no reason
that it can't happen you know every one
of you knows people who are really
bloody useful in a crisis and people
that you admire right those are all you
can think of all those people as you
admire that you admire us partial
incarnations of the archetypal Messiah
that's exactly right
and the more that that manifests itself
at any given person then the more
generally useful and admirable that
person is in a multitude of situations
and we don't know the limit to that but
people can be unbelievably good for
things you know it's really something to
behold so that's what God tells Abraham
okay so the next story is about Abraham
and these angels Ames will show up on
his doorstep and this is part of the
story of Sodom and Gomorrah but I don't
think as I said this story is generally
read as if it's about homosexuality but
I don't think it is here I think it's
about two things primarily one is how do
you treat the strange
so the strangest strange things and
strange ideas and strange people and
strangers right it's all about it it's
that which is not you it's like the
strange lands that God asked Abraham to
move out into how do you interact with
this strange and here here's one
possible rule because you could say to
yourself well what what do I want to
make friends with more where do I want
to be more comfortable do I want to be
more comfortable with that which I
already know and so that would be the
circumscribed territory that you've
already mastered or do I want to be
comfortable with all those things I
don't know and then the right answer is
that you should want to be comfortable
with all those things that you don't
know because there is a
bloody lot of things that you don't know
and if you can be a Sojourner among what
you don't know well then you're so
protected because well you're going to
go lots of places where you don't know
and you're going to be able to manage it
so you want to be you want to be that
person that can act where they don't
know and so also what happens with with
Abraham well he's at home and these
angels show up now we don't know whether
they're angels or men precisely because
well as this part of the story reads as
the Lord appeared to him in the plains
of Mamre and he sat in the tent door in
the heat of the day so he's not a
visionary state by the by all
appearances and he lifted up his eyes
and looked and lo three men stood by him
there's real ambivalence in the story
about the men are the three men are the
three angels are the two angels in God
it's all mixed up in the story so we
won't clarify that we'll leave it
ambiguous and I think the ambiguity is
important because you don't know who the
stranger is when you encounter them and
it depends on whether you're thinking
about it in the normative manner or if
you're thinking about it in the
transcendent manner because with each
person that you meet well they're just a
person that's one way of thinking about
it and and then they're the person that
you know or they're the person as they
choose to reveal themselves to you and
people keep themselves shielded but then
they're also something of great
metaphysical potential right and you
might say well do you believe that and I
would say well yes you believe it
because you expect a lot from people
generally speaking and are not happy if
they betray you but more importantly our
entire culture is predicated on the idea
that each person has an indefinite
intrinsic worth and I'm not talking
about self-esteem I'm talking about
something like the what would what would
you say it the implicit presupposition
in our legal structure that no matter
who you are even if you're a murderer
even if you're a condemned murderer that
there's something about you that's of
transcendent value that has to be
respected by the law by the law and by
other people right and so that's that's
a remark net and you might say well
do I believe that and answer that is
well yak it out because you follow the
law and it's not an easy thing to pull
out of the law it's kind of the idea
that you have intrinsic natural rights
and you don't pull that out of our law
man without having the whole thing fall
down and I think the whole idea that you
have intrinsic natural rights is
predicated on something like the
biblical hypothesis that human beings
have a logos nature and that we are
involved in the speaking forth of being
and as beings who are involved in this
speaking forth of being there's
something about us that has to be
respected by ourselves
in relationship to ourselves by
ourselves in relationship to other
people but even more strangely by
ourselves in relationship to even to
criminals even to vicious criminals you
can't remove that transcendent element
and that's that to me that's also a
mirror a miracle of conceptualization
because who the hell is going to think
that up right even the most vicious of
murderers has a touch of the
transcendent that needs to be respected
of all the ideas that are unlikely
that's going to top the list and of
course without that you you have a very
barbaric legal system right because no
one is protected as soon as you make a
mistake then you're in the Damned then
you have no rights whatsoever and that
isn't what happens in the West which
isn't an absolutely amazing thing so
anyways
Abraham is a master of the stranger
that's one way of thinking about it he
knows what to do when strangers come
along and he opens his he opens himself
up to them and I would say he does that
we know he's not a naive guy Abraham
right he's no weakling a couple of
stories ago he took a big army and you
know went and harassed a bunch of Kings
and took his nephew back he's he's a
tough guy
and so if strangers show up and he
welcomes them it's not because he
couldn't do otherwise he could certainly
do otherwise and it's not because he
isn't aware of what people can be like
he's perfectly aware of what people can
be like but he determines to take a
particular attitude towards them and
that is to welcome them and so and why
would you do that and I think
the answer to that is you hold out your
hand entrust to someone and you evoke
the best from them if that's their to be
given so it's an act of courage it's
like it's it isn't me meeting you
exactly not exactly it's more like the
transcendent part of me making a gesture
that allows the transcendent part of you
to step forward and that happens all the
time it happens all the time in
normative discourse you know this
perfectly well because sometimes you can
have a real casual conversation with
someone that just goes nowhere right
it's just shallow as can be or now and
then you can actually make contact with
someone right and you're both I would
say enlightened and ennoble by the
conversation and that's a de we would
call that a deep conversation first for
some reason because we made a deep
connection whatever that means it means
well it certainly means that it's not
shallow we're not sure about what these
metaphor means but it means that it
reaches deep inside of you it's
something like that you make direct
person-to-person contact and those sorts
of conversations are replenishing that
that's the right way to think about it
they genuinely are and I think that's
because they provide you with that bread
that's not Material bread and that's the
information that you need to to thrive
and to put yourself together and so it
does matter how you meet someone and it
does matter how you treat them when you
first meet them and it's amazing I've
learned to do this at least in part
partly because I'm a clinical
psychologist I've learned how to talk to
people very rapidly and I have the most
amazing adventures with people in cabs
and when I travel because I'll talk to
them directly right away and they'll
tell me the wildest stories and show me
the craziest things because I'm actually
interested in what they have to say and
I'm not afraid well I'm somewhat afraid
but I'm not I'm not sufficiently afraid
to have that stop me and I'm acting on
the presupposition that the person has
something of great interest to reveal
and that's a very useful thing to know
too because one of the things that's
really cool about people and you really
learn this as the clinical psychologist
is that if you can get people talking
they're so damn interesting you can
hardly stand it
you know because they have
these idiosyncratic experiences that are
only theirs right they're only theirs
personally no one else could tell the
story and that's the kind of stories
that you want to hear and when they tell
you those stories you learn something
you didn't know and so what that means
is that you can treat the landscape of
strangers as an endless vista of places
to learn things you didn't know and if
you know enough so that you're satisfied
with your life and everything has ceased
to be a tragedy around you well then you
could be comfortable in your
circumscribed domain of totalitarian
knowledge let's say but if you're if
your life is insufficient and you're
suffering more than you want to and
everything isn't what it should be then
you need to look where you haven't
looked for what you don't have and then
you can look outside beyond you and then
you can make friends with what you don't
understand and that's a huge part of
what this story is about because what
happens is that Abraham welcomes the men
God angels and treats them very well and
reaps a tremendous benefit as a
consequence and then well then the story
reverses and we end up in Sodom and
Gomorrah where the same angels sojourn
and they're treated terribly and all
hell breaks loose and so that's what the
story is about it's not fundamental now
there's a there's a sexual impropriety
thing going on that I'm also going to
delve into but I don't think that's the
critical issue in the story the critical
issue in the story is how do you act in
the face of the stranger you know
there's a statement in the New Testament
Christ says something like when you when
you do something to the least of people
you do it to me him right and that's a
very difficult statement to understand
too but it's something like it's
something reminiscent of the requirement
to keep the idea of the transcendent
reality of the person in mind at the
same time you keep their proximal
reality in mind to have to have your
mind in two places at the same time when
you're talking to people you know I
learned from a friend of mine in
Montreal
who is very socially sophisticated in
some ways
whenever went in whenever he went in to
us always like going shopping with him
and whenever he went into a store and he
talked and he had an interaction with a
clerk the first thing he would do is
have an interaction with the clerk and
he wouldn't have an interaction with the
role of the clerk he'd like look at the
person sort of take stock of the fact
that they were there and then asked them
something genuine about their job or
their store how they were doing like
going to a conversation right away and
he didn't get personal about it because
that can be intrusive right you have to
be very sophisticated to do this but he
did indicate to the person that he was
there at least in part for the good that
could be done between them it's
something like that and then the person
would be ridiculously helpful you know
and and so then you know if people
mistreat you you see this with
antisocial kids it's a very tragic thing
to see because if you're an antisocial
child by the time you're about 4 you're
very hostile and distrustful to people
and so you'd like a growling puppy and
if you're a growling puppy you can not
to get petted you're more likely to get
kicked and if you're a growling puppy
and you get kicked and you have even
more reason to grow and that's sort of
the story of antisocial kids if they're
not well socialized by the time they're
four and they're more on the aggressive
side then they alienate themselves from
the community and all they get is
rejection well and then they look at the
rejection and they think well to hell
with humanity you know and you wonder
they think that but but the part of the
catastrophe is is that they get what
they evoke and I'm not saying it's their
fault precisely but it doesn't matter
that's still what happens and so you
might ask yourself if you're not getting
from people what you need there is some
possibility that you're not approaching
especially if this happens to you
repeatedly across people and this is a
virtual certainty if it happens to you
repeatedly across people especially if
you have the same bad experience with
people it's not them it's you I would
say three is the limit
if something happens to you once you
write it off if it happens to you twice
it's like you open your eyes but you
write it off but it happens to you three
times it's probably you or it's the rest
of the world better it's you because
you're not going to change the rest of
the world and he lifted up his eyes and
looked and lo three men stood by heaven
when he saw them he ran to meet them
from the tent door and bowed himself to
the ground and said my lord if now I
have found favor in thy sight pass not
away I pray thee from thy servant let a
little water I pray you be fetched and
wash your feet wash your feet take the
dust from your feet extract yourself out
from your journey write and sit and I'll
fetch a morsel of bread and comfort ye
your hearts and after that you can pass
on for therefore are you come to your
servant and they said so do as thou hath
said and Abraham hastened unto the tent
into the tent unto Sarah and said make
ready quickly three measures of fine
meal knead it and make cakes upon the
hearth powerful call to hospitality here
and abraham ran unto the herd and
fetched a calf tender and good and gave
it to a young man and he hasted to dress
it and he took butter and milk and the
calf which he had dressed and said it
before them and he stood by them under
the tree and they did eat some
commentary from here Hebrews 13 to be
not forgetful to entertain strangers for
thereby some have entertained angels
unawares this is a commentary from
Matthew Henry with a nonconformist
minister and author cheerful and
obliging manners in showing kindness are
great ornaments to piety though our
condescending lord vouchsafe has not
personal visits to us yet still by his
Spirit he stands at the door knocks when
we're inclined to open he deigns to
enter by his gracious consolations he
provides a rich feast of which we
partake with him this is from
revelations 3:20 behold I stand at the
door and knock and If any man hear my
voice and opened the door I will come in
to him and will sup with him and he
with me well a hyperlink nature of those
quotes is quite obvious there's 10 or 15
things being said at the same time right
one is a reference to the idea that if
you ask for something it will be given
to you right it was a very strange idea
but I like that idea a lot and I believe
my in my experience that has been true
if it was that I wanted what I was
asking for because that's the real issue
right because the question is if you
want something what does it mean to want
it and what it means is to sacrifice
whatever is necessary to get it because
otherwise you don't want it and so
there's an equation here and I'm not
claiming its ultimate accuracy but the
equation is something like you don't
want it unless you're willing to
sacrifice for it and if you don't want
it you're not going to get it because
you're scattered but if you do want it
and you make the proper sacrifices then
god only knows what might happen and
that's a see one of the things I really
like about the existential philosophers
is their emphasis on personal
responsibility you know that many of
them had an emphasis on the role that
people had in shaping their own destiny
the exists for the existentialists and I
think this was a consequence of the
religious substructure of philosophical
thinking it was self-evident that life
was tragic and bitter but and then fair
enough but that isn't where it ended the
the next issue was well there are better
in ways better and worse ways of dealing
with that and the better way of dealing
with the fact that life is tragic and
bitter is to pause it the self you could
be and live authentically in
relationship to that and then the next
issue and something is something
Kierkegaard talked about particularly
when he talked about the necessity of
being a night of faith is that the thing
is and this is I think part of the light
part of life that's the intractable
adventure no one can take the adventure
of life away from you that that's they
can't deal with good advice for example
because no one can demonstrate to you
that if you straight
yourself out a name it what you want and
make the proper sacrifices that your
life will turn out in the manner that
you might want it to turn out
it isn't in anyone else's purview to
make that judgment the only person that
can possibly figure that out is you it's
something that can't be stolen from you
I would say it's your destiny it's a
destiny that cannot be stolen from you
and you can forego it you can say well
I'm not willing to put in the effort
because what if I fail well first of all
if you don't put in the effort you will
fail because life is hard and it takes
everything out of you to do it properly
so you will fail and if you make the
proper sacrifices you might fail that's
why I like the ambiguity and the story
of Cain and Abel because we're never
really told why God rejects Cain's
offerings there's hints that Cain maybe
isn't doing as good a job as he should
and he certainly gets bitter about it
but there's no smoking pistol
it doesn't say well Cain is a bad guy he
made terrible sacrifices so God rejected
him you never know
Cain might have been working pretty damn
hard and things still didn't work out
for them and I think that ambiguity is
appropriate in the story because that
imbued ambiguity is in life it you'd be
a fool to say that everything always
works out for everyone if they just do
things right I mean I think that's a
very that's a very careless thing to say
given how much tragedy and catastrophe
there is in the world and how much of it
seems to be undeserved but that still
has very little bearing I think on on
your own individual adventure and the
necessity for the necessity for opening
the door to who you could be and the
necessity to do that seriously and I do
believe and I think I think that's why
this most impossible of verses you know
knock and the door will open
why that's believable is that I have
never met anyone who couldn't
hypothesize a better them in some manner
all they had to do was ask it's like
well how could you be better I think
well here's three ways it's like it's no
problem right you can think about that
no time cloud maybe it's small ways but
you can almost always at least think of
something stupid that you're doing that
you could quit and so that means that
you do have this it's a strange thing in
people that we have this built-in
capacity to pause it a higher self and
then to move towards it and maybe maybe
that's part of where the religious
instinct really came from speaking like
really reductionistic ly like as a
materialist as an evolutionary
psychologist we we have this notion of
the transcendent ideal right that it
seems to be pervasive across cultures
well maybe that's the ultimate
manifestation of the human proclivity to
be able to pause it an ideal at all and
to move forward you pause an ideal okay
that you need that to move forward well
if you can pause it an ideal why can't
you pause it
the ultimate ideal well if you can then
instantly you've got a religious
sensibility instantly and so maybe
that's the kind of puzzles like as a
biologist what the hell is the basis of
the religious instinct because the idea
that it's mere superstition like we can
just dispense with that that's wrong
it's a human Universal you can evoke
religious experiences all sorts of ways
so we're not going to play that game
there's there's some reason that that
instinct exists and this the first thing
to do with it is to try to reduce it to
something that's biological and leave it
at that
not to mess with the metaphysics but it
certainly could be the case that it's
the ultimate extension of our capacity
to posit an ideal and we also might say
well that's good enough because well the
ideal moves you forward it fills your
life with meaning there's no doubt about
that because it is in the movement
towards your ideal that life's meaning
is to be attained and then the question
is well how much meaning is there in
moving forward towards an ultimate ideal
well more meaning even though it's more
difficult how much well that's the open
question behold I will stand at the door
and knock and if any man hear my voice
and open the door I will come in to him
and will sup with him and he with me
that's a pretty good deal and the angel
said unto Him where is Sarah thy wife
and Abraham said Behold in the tent and
he said I will certainly return unto
thee according to the time of life and
lo Sarah thy wife
have a son and Sarah herded in the tent
door which was behind him now Abraham
and Sarah were old and well stricken in
age and it had ceased to be with Sarah
after the manner of women therefore
Sarah laughed within herself saying
after I am waxed old shall I also have
this pleasure my lord being old also
well she's kind of skeptical about the
whole angel man God having a child at a
hundred thing and and and and well write
and so rightly so and the Lord said unto
Abraham why did Sarah laugh saying shall
I've Asura T bear a child which I'm old
is anything too hard for the Lord at the
time appointed I will return unto thee
according to the time of life and Sarah
shall have a son then Sarah denied
saying I laughed not for she was afraid
and he said nay but thou didst laugh and
the men rose up from thence and looked
toward Sodom and Abraham went with them
to bring them on the way I'm gonna make
a small detour and talk to you about
this idea of potential again because
it's really I've really thought about it
a lot I think music speaks of potential
like I think music speaks of potential
bursting forward it's something it's
something like that and that's why it's
so deeply meaningful and and it's this
continual pattern revelation of the next
wonderful thing that might happen it's
something like that so there's that and
people find that deeply meaningful and
then there's the idea that we all have
potential that isn't realized but that
we regard that potential even though
it's not realized as real which I can't
get my head around at all it just
doesn't make sense and then although
everyone acts that way and everyone
believes it because what you act
reflects what you believe and you make
judgments about yourself and others
based on those beliefs and their deep
judgments so the idea that you believe
that there is such a thing as human
potential I think I think it's
undeniable
if you act at all if you expect things
of people at all then you're
demonstrating your commitment to the
idea of potential but then I wonder if
there's something even deeper going on
because we are very materialistic modern
people and there's great power in that
obviously I mean we've obtained great
control over the material world for
better or for worse but we do have a
tendency to think of the world purely as
a material structure and isn't really
obvious to me that the world is exactly
a material structure it seems to be to
be something more like constrained
potential you know because everything is
a certain way but everything that is a
certain way could be a multitude of
other ways in almost an infinite
multitude of other ways and the degree
to which something that is could be a
multitude of other ways is dependent a
large part on how you interact with it
right even with materials that we're
very familiar with
we continue to discover new properties
and put them to use it's like things are
things are compacted into their material
form but that doesn't exhaust what they
are especially not in relationship to
other things and so it seems to me even
if you can't replace the materialist
perspective with the perspective that
it's better to construe the world
construe being as if it's made of
possibility rather than the world as if
it's made of matter it's at least useful
to have that as an additional viewpoint
is that because you could say well the
material philosophy is very useful as a
tool for obtaining certain sorts of
benefits which it clearly is
but then this more metaphysical
perspective which i think is more
accurate in some ways that the world is
a place of potential is also an
extraordinarily useful way to approach
the world and and it's practically
useful you know what we talked last week
a little bit about doing something as
simple as trying to organize a room it's
it's by no means obvious how much
potential there is in a room right
there's a very large amount of potential
in any given room tremendous amount of
potential especially if it's connected
with people I think maybe an
inexhaustible amount of potential and
maybe there's an inexhaustible amount of
potential everywhere and we just don't
know how to get access to it well that's
certainly true
and it's certainly true to some degree
we don't know how to get access to all
the potential of our children for
example or ourselves or our loved ones
or it or or the people that we know so
well so I think the this story is trying
to hammer that idea home to which is
don't be so sure that it's impossible or
maybe don't let the assumption that's
it's impossible stop you from going
forth into the world that would be and
that's a that's a what would you say
that's like an inoculation against
nihilism and I'm for a long time I
understood nihilism very well I could I
could understand its rationale
associated with the tragedy of life
associating with suffering and evil
associated with the observation of
finitude and the arbitrary and unjust
nature of the world but the more I
thought about it the less I've come to
believe that there's any excuse for it
whatsoever and I think the reason for
that is that it forced all the effort it
four stalls the ability to discover for
yourself maybe there's no reason to be
so goddamn hopeless except that it's
easier to be useless now on a not
believe me I'm not making that case I'm
not saying that that's what's besetting
people who are clinically depressed for
example that's that's not my point
clinical depression is a terrible thing
there's lots of reasons to be rendered
to be to be tossed into a catastrophic
condition that isn't what I mean I mean
that kind of cynical arrogant rational
hyper-intelligent nihilism that throws
the world away as if it's of little use
before it's been properly engaged with
better to engage with it and see what
happens and better to make the
assumption that if the world isn't
returning to you what it is that you
need then either you're not doing it
right
or you've conceptualized what you need
badly why not at least open yourself up
to that possibility right because you
could be wrong
hopefully if you're suffering this is a
great thing to know hopefully if you're
suffering you
wrong because if you're suffering and
you're right then there's nowhere to go
so it's very useful to find out whatever
errors you might be committing another
thing that's really interesting about
the Jews in the Old Testament it's a
remarkable thing every single time they
get flattened by God it's always their
fault they never say the world that God
created was corrupt and God is evil they
never say that no matter what happens
right no matter what catastrophe occurs
when they have every reason to at least
put that hypothesis forward they don't
they say we erred we walked off the path
it's our fault
and that's hard you know because it puts
all the weight of human capacity on the
human being that's very hard but the
outside is it gives you the control it
opens up the door that it opens up the
possibility that you could be the person
that could set it right if you would
just let go of what's in your way
whatever that is and the men rose up
from thence and look towards Saul to man
Abraham went with them to bring them on
the way and the Lord said shall I hide
from Abraham that thing which I'm about
to do
seeing that Abraham shall surely become
a great mighty nation and all the
nations of the earth shall be blessed in
him I guess God is talking to himself
here or maybe he's talking to the angels
but I think he's trying to make a
decision for I know him that he will
command his children and his household
after him and they shall keep the way of
the Lord to do justice and judgment that
the Lord may bring upon Abraham that
which he has spoken of them and the Lord
said because the cry of Sodom and
Gomorrah is great and because their sin
is very Grievous I will go down now and
see whether they have done altogether
according to the cry of it which has
come to me and if not I will know well
we don't know what's happened in Sodom
and Gomorrah but we know that God's got
wind of it and that that's not
good and we know that sin means to miss
the mark and so we know that whatever
has happened in Sodom and Gomorrah means
that something about the natural ethical
order of things has been seriously
violated and there's a strong intimation
in the Old Testament which I think by
the way is completely correct that if
the proper order of being is violated
and that's something like the balance
between chaos and order say if the
proper balance of being is violated then
all hell will break loose and one of the
things I can tell you from reading a
very from reading a very comprehensive
set of myths from around the world is
that that's a conclusion that human
beings have come to everywhere stay on
the goddamn path and be careful because
if you start to mess around and you
deviate especially if you know that
you're deviating things are not going to
go well for you and that idea is
everywhere and I think it's right I
think the idea is right because there
aren't that many ways of doing things
right and there's a lot of ways of doing
things wrong and if you do things wrong
the consequences of doing them wrong can
be truly catastrophic you know one of
the things I learned from reading Viktor
Frankl first but then Alexander
Solzhenitsyn who I think did a deeper
job was that and vaclav havel thought
the same thing that these people were
very much trying to understand what
happened in places like Nazi Germany and
in the Soviet Union
so schnitzel school like our Capello's
caligo is a particularly good analysis
of what happened in the Soviet Union and
his conclusion and it's a 20 100 page
conclusion and it's like hammered home
with a hammer it's it's a book that
everyone should read you know assuming
that you can read a 20 100 page screen
because that's basically what it is you
know first of all what he does is
document just how terrible things were
in the Soviet Union between 1919 and
1959 and no matter how terrible you
think they were unless you know the
stories they were a lot more terrible
than that and they were terrible
personally because everyone lied they
were terrible in families because two
out of five
were government and farmers they were
terrible among friends because no one
could tell each other the truth they
were terrible socially because the whole
system was corrupted ban on slave labor
and they were terrible philosophically
because the doctrine of man upon which
the state was founded was hopeless and
nihilistic and and they were murderous
destructive and genocidal it's like they
got it wrong at every single level of
analysis simultaneously and the question
is why and Solzhenitsyn's answer and to
some degree Victor Frankel's answer as
well and vaclav havel and I would say
also Nelson Mandela and Gandhi they all
they all ended up in the same conceptual
sphere and the answer was because
individual people lived crooked lives
because individual people swallowed lies
and spoke them and didn't stand up for
the truth and the corruption that spread
from each individual pulled the entire
state mechanism into that corruption and
made everything into hell you know there
are other theories obedience right
that's kind of the Milgram idea from
that it's easy to make human beings OBD
obedient to people in authority and I've
explored that idea quite a bit with
regards to what happens happen for
example in the Nazi concentration camps
yes you can set circumstances up so that
people are likely to be obedient to
orders that are pathological there's no
doubt about that and yes sometimes
that's indicative of the weakness of
their character but that's not the issue
and the idea that what happened in Nazi
Germany was because a population of good
people listen to a tiny minority of bad
people that's a really that's really not
a good theory the the the Nazi ethos was
there at every single level of the
social organization right right from the
personal right from the personal right
from the familial all the way up to the
leadership it was the same thing all the
way up and all the way down and the same
thing in the Soviet Union and so well so
if you miss the
which is apparently what the people of
sodom and gomorrha did their sin was
Grievous than they risk destruction and
I just cannot see how after the 20th
century anyone with any sense could
possibly not see that as true and I
think that there's a line in the Old
Testament you know that the fear of God
is the beginning of wisdom and I can
tell you one of the things that
frightened me badly was the realization
from reading Souls nets and and a
variety of other things that I was
reading at the same time that
Dostoyevsky as well because he makes the
same point he said that a human being is
not only responsible for everything they
do but for everything that everyone else
does now you know that's crazy and he
was an epileptic and a mystic and that's
a crazy thing to say
but it's also there's something about it
that's true because if you were better
the people around you would be less
worse than they are and if you were good
enough you don't know how much better
the people around you would be and so
there's this idea too you know that
Christ took the sins of the world unto
himself that's a complicated idea that I
wrestled with that one for a very long
time but I think I figured out at least
in part what it means
it meant that it's something like the
realization of complete humanity you see
to take the sins of the world unto
yourself is to realize that is to
understand the Nazi concentration camp
guard because that person is human and
so are you and so if you can't see you
in that then you don't know who you are
and if you can see you in that well then
you've started to take the sins of the
world onto yourself because you've
actually started to take responsibility
for those terrible things you know I
think it's the motif of the the motto of
the Holocaust Museum in Washington we
must never forget that's close and I
think well you can't forgive you can't
remember what you don't understand you
will forget what you don't understand
and the question is what are you
supposed to remember about the Holocaust
historical event that six million people
died that's not what's to remember
what's to remember is that's what people
can do and you're one of them
and if you don't understand that you
could do that then you don't know who
you are
so God's making a case here he's making
a case that the people of the Sodom and
Gomorrha have sinned and it's making a
large racket that even God has heard
about that's a very common mythological
motif by the way that the sins and and
and and what would you call it the sins
and noise of humanity can read such a
clamor that even the gods hearin and are
forced to intervene that comes all the
way from the Mesopotamian creation story
so anyways it's logical yeah their
sinning okay well so what well no not so
what it means that God's offended and
that everything is at risk that's what
it means it's like that's a something
worth taking seriously and the men
turned their faces from thence and went
towards Sodom but Abraham stood yet
before the Lord and Abraham drew near
and said will thou also destroy the
righteous with the wicked this is a very
interesting part of the story um friend
of mine took me to task the other day
when I was writing about portraying the
Old Testament God is pretty harsh and
judgmental and the New Testament God is
sort of all loving which he isn't
because there's the whole Book of
Revelations thing but um but I got that
partly from reading Northrop Frye but
going through the Old Testament more
detail I realized that that's that is
too low resolution interpretation and
that God who's dispensing a fair bit of
harsh justice in the Old Testament it's
also someone who can be negotiated with
weirdly enough and that's what happens
here
you know Abraham has just been told that
whatever's going on in Sodom and
Gomorrah is seriously not good and that
God's going to do something about it and
he takes it upon himself this is an act
of mercy to to ask God to be a bit more
judicious right it's like okay you're
gonna wipe out the city well bad things
are happening there but you know there's
probably a few people in the damn city
that aren't completely corrupted by
what's going on there
of course that's an open question you
know because it's an open question for
example how many people were there were
in Nazi Germany who weren't completely
corrupted by what was going on in Nazi
Germany and the same thing could be said
about Mallis China and the same thing
could be said about the Soviet Union
it's like well perhaps there was a
person somewhere who didn't
and at some level what was happening but
you know the whole issue of willful
blindness certainly springs to mind if
nothing else
anyways Abraham decides to intercede
with God on behalf of these people who
are going to be destroyed he says will
thou also destroy the righteous with the
wicked perhaps there be 50 righteous
people within the city will you also
destroy and not spare the place for the
fifty righteous that are there that be
far from thee to do after this manner
he's kind of reminding God that he's a
good guy as far as I can tell to slay
the righteous with the wicked and that
the righteous should be as the wicked
thought before from thee should not the
judge of the earth do right and the Lord
said if I find in Sodom fifty right he
seems a bit taken aback here to me if I
find him Sodom 50 righteous within the
city then I will spare the place for
their sakes and Abraham answered and
said behold now I have taken upon me to
speak upon the Lord unto the Lord which
but I am but dust in ashes possibly
there shall lack five of the fifty
righteous will thou destroy all the city
for lack of five and he said he said God
said if I find there forty five I will
not destroy it and Abraham spoke unto
him yet again and said he's kind of
sneaking up on God here huh her
adventure there shall be forty found
there and he said I will not do it for
forty sake and he said unto him oh let
the Lord not be angry and I will speak
possibly there shall be thirty found
there and God said I won't do it if I
find thirty there and Abraham he seems
really to be pushing his luck by this
point says behold I have taken upon me
to speak under the Lord possibly there
shall be twenty found there and God said
I won't destroy it for 20s sake and he
said oh let the Lord not be angry and I
will speak yet but this once perhaps ten
shall be found there and he said I will
not destroy it for 10s sake and the Lord
went his way and as soon as he had left
communing with Abraham and Abraham
returned unto his place well there's two
ways you can read that part of the story
one is that three let's say you can
bargain with God
even if you're kind of annoying about it
so that's kind of interesting
the second is that even if there's a
minority of good in a place that isn't
good it won't be slated for destruction
that's kind of a good thing and the
third is a minority of good in a place
can keep it from being destroyed and
that's a really good thing too and I
believe that as well I think that good
is more powerful than evil naivety isn't
but I think that good is and I think
that in a place that's corrupt a
minority of people who stand forth
against the corruption can prevail now
you know I think I think one of the best
examples of that again was all Alexander
Solzhenitsyn because he was in the
terrible work camps when he wrote his
book he memorized most of it which is
not an easy thing to do when it's 2,100
pages long and set in very tiny font he
memorized most of it and then he wrote
it and it was one of the things that
brought down the Soviet Union you know
was published in the 1970s
first of all in wet in the West and the
first thing that happened at least
initially was that the communism as an
ethical system lost absolutely all
credibility whatsoever among anyone who
was even vaguely educated immediately
upon the publication of The Gulag
Archipelago he pulled the moral slats
out from underneath it and the book was
definitely one of the reasons there were
many but was definitely one of the
reasons why the rotten system crumbled
and fell without a war and that's a
great example of how one person can take
on a tyranny and prevail so and he's not
the only person who did that sort of
thing because well Gandhi did the same
thing I mean I don't think the English
were the Russians but you know things
were not so good in India and what
Gandhi did in India under the influence
by the way of Leo Tolstoy was also a
remarkable example of a single person
intervening in a catastrophe and and
and and setting it far more right than
it could be so and there came two angels
to sought him and evening and lot
remember Lauda's Abraham's nephew sat in
the gate of Sodom and laud seeing them
rose up to meet them and he bowed
himself with his face toward the ground
and he said Behold my Lords I turn in I
pray you into your servants house and
tarry all night and wash your feet and
ye shall rise up early and go on your
ways
no he's Abraham's nephew and can spend
acting in exactly the manner that
Abraham does he shows hospitality to
these people and they said no no we'll
stay in the street all night and he
insisted he pressed upon them greatly
and they turned in unto him and entered
into his house and he made them a feast
and baked unleavened bread and they did
eat but before they lay down the men of
the city even the men of Sodom compassed
the house round both old and young all
the people from every quarter and they
called him to Lord and said unto him
where the man which came into thee this
night
bring them out to us that we may know
them well that's the part of the story
that's been used as a diatribe let's say
against homosexuality because to know is
to engage in sexual intercourse and the
inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah we're
willing to care the strangers out of
Lots house and use and abuse them as
they see self fit right and so what are
they doing well they're violating the
principle the principles that govern
appropriate conduct with the stranger
and maybe the stranger is something you
shouldn't mess with because you don't
know who you're messing with
so that's like warning number one well
they're violets are under violating the
essential principles of hospitality and
then there's the sexual thing here I
think is isn't the sexual thing here is
something more like the absolute danger
of immediate gratification sexual
included outside the constraints of any
civilized structure whatsoever right
because that's his uncivilized behavior
as you could possibly hope for
right strangers come into your city
they're in the house of someone who's
part of your city they're being shown
hospitality a mob shows up and says four
come over man we're going to do whatever
the hell we want to them and it's not
going to be good and if you get in the
way things are going to go even worse
for you so so that's what it seems to me
to be it's completely dysregulated
behavior its behavior that's outside the
confines of any civilized structure
whatsoever it's an indica it's an
indication that the entire the social
structure of the entire society has
collapsed so that there's nothing left
for the inhabitants to do except to
engage in the most brutal of immediate
gratification and destruction well so
what does Lott do I pray thee brethren
do not do so wickedly behold now I have
two daughters which have not yet known
man let me I pray you bring them out
unto you and you do to them as is good
in your eyes only unto these men do
nothing and therefore for therefore came
they the under the shadow of my roof
well it's hard to know what to make of
that you know I mean doesn't exactly
seem like the advisable thing for a lot
to do and but I think at least what it
is is an indication of the degree to
which he took the solemn vow of
hospitality seriously and I think that's
the idea that the story is trying to
promote
and the angel said stand back oh and the
men said stand back and they said again
this one fellow came in to sojourn to
talk to us and he will need to be a
judge
now we'll deal worse with him than with
them and they press sore upon the man
even law and came near to break the door
maybe what lot thought was something
like well we're done like we're all done
but this mob and perhaps I can spare
some of us and they press sore upon the
man even Lawton came near to break the
door but the man this is the angels put
forth their hand and pulled a lot into
the house to them and shut the door and
they smote the men that were out the
door of the house with blindness both
small and great so that they wearied
themselves to find the door so they were
so corrupt that they were blind and
could not see now even to find the door
and the man men said unto lot hast thou
here any besides any family members son
in law and thy sons and thy daughters
and whoever thou hast in the city get
them out of the place for we will
destroy this place because of the cry of
them is waxing great before the face of
the Lord and the Lord has sent us to
destroy it and lot went out and spake
unto his sons in law which married his
daughters and said up you get out of
this place for the Lord will destroy the
city but he seemed as one that marked
unto his son and sons-in-law when in the
morning arose than the angels hastened
blood saying arise take thy way for
ninety daughters which are here lest
thou be consumed in the iniquity of the
city and while he lingered lingered the
man laid hold upon his hands and upon
the hand of his wife and upon the hand
of his two daughters the Lord being
merciful unto them and they brought him
forth and seven without the city so he
still this is an indication of the
danger of not acting with appropriate
haste when the time has come I mean law
it's already seen what happened he saw
that the men came to his door he saw
that they were murderous rapists he saw
that the angels took them out and he
still
isn't to leave that place and so I guess
one of the things that this story
requires people to ask themselves is are
you in a place that's so bad that you
should leave or when are you in a place
that's so bad that you should leave and
if you are in a place that's so bad that
you should leave then the time to leave
is now because there's no time to waste
and it came to pass when they had
brought them forth abroad that he said
escape for their life look not behind
you
neither stay thou in all the plain
escape to the mountain lest thou be
consumed and Lord said to them oh not
not so my lord behold now they serve and
have found grace in my sight and now
have magnified thy mercy which thou has
showed me into saving my life
but I cannot escape to the mountain lest
some evil take me and I die behold now
there's a city near to flee unto and
it's a little one which means maybe it's
not big and corrupt like Sodom and
Gomorrah oh let me escape thither is it
is it not a little one and my soul shall
live Matthew Henry said Lord linger he
trifled thus many who are under
convictions about the spiritual state
and the necessity of a change defer that
needful work and he said unto him see
I've accepted the angel and he said unto
him see I have accepted the concerning
this thing also that I will not
overthrow this city for the which thou
has spoken the small City hasty escape
thither for I cannot do anything to thou
be gone hither therefore the name of the
city was or that's where Lord went the
Sun was risen upon the earth when Lord
entered into Zoar then the Lord rained
upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone
and fire from the Lord out of heaven and
he overthrew the cities and all the
plain and all the inhabitants of the
cities and that which grew up on the
ground but his wife looked back from
behind him and she became a pillar of
salt
no nostalgia for catastrophe I think
that's what that means is that when you
leave what's not good you wash the dust
off your feet and you don't look back
and that's a very harsh lesson
this is echoed a bit in the New
Testament the idea of the necessity for
immediate action these are some of the
harsher words that Christ said this is
from Matthew 8 Christ is addressing a
multitude and asking people to follow
him and a disciple comes up to him and
says Lord suffer me first to go and bury
my father seems like a perfectly
reasonable request but jesus said unto
him follow me and let the dead bury
their dead this is from Matthew 12 well
he had talked to the people behold his
mother and his brethren stood without
desiring to speak with him and one said
to him behold thy mother and my brethren
stand without desiring to speak with
thee but jesus answered the one who was
telling him and said who is my mother
and who is my brothers for whosoever
shall do the will of my father which is
in heaven the same as my brother and
sister and mother well what does all
that mean
it means that there's no excuses
whatsoever for not getting up and
getting at it that's what it means and
it means that it even means that when
people are beset with a catastrophe like
let's say the death of their father that
they are prone to use that as an excuse
for not going about the business that
they should be going about because they
can say to themselves well I would
accept and accept there's always good
reasons I mean believe me there's always
good reasons for not doing what you
should that's for sure the reasons pile
up day after day to not do what you
should especially because you're you're
aiming at things in the future you can
put them off and definitely right
because of the demands of the day but
these stories they say a variety of
things you know in especially in
combination they say when you leave
somewhere terrible do not look back
there's no nostalgia that's that's the
letting the dead parts of yourself go
and then if you're going to follow the
good there's no excuse not to do it and
that
it means no excuse whatsoever under any
circumstances and then it's taken even
farther with regards to familiar
relationships it is you can't even let
them stand in your way and I think
that's all true and I think I've seen
virtually all of that in my clinical
practice like there's no excuse
whatsoever for not getting at what it is
that you should be doing and I think
there's something else that's going on
here especially in the New Testament
stories which is even made may be worse
which is it's absolutely reprehensible
to justify you're in action with a
catastrophe that extracts mercy from
other people right there's a tricky
tricky game that's going well of course
I can't do that look at the terrible
thing that's just happened to me it's
yeah okay
I understand you're absolved of any
necessity to move forward because of
your current catastrophe it's like well
actually you're not and it's rather rude
of you to use it as an excuse and it's
certainly counterproductive and Abraham
got up early in the morning to the place
where he stood before the Lord and he
looked towards Sodom and Gomorrah and
toward the land of the plain and behold
and lo the smoke of the country went up
as a smoke of a furnace and it came to
pass when God destroyed the cities of
the plain that God remembered Abraham
and sent lot out of the midst of the
overthrow when he overthrew the cities
in the which lot dwelt and lot went out
of Zoar and dwelt in the mountain and
his two daughters with them for he
feeler feared to dwell and Zoar and he
dwelt in a cave he and his two daughters
and the firstborn said unto the younger
our Father is all and there's not a man
in the earth to come in to us after the
manner of all the earth come let us make
our father drink wine and we will lie
with him that we may preserve the seed
of our father and they made their father
drink wine that night and the firstborn
went in and lay with her father and he
perceived not when she lay down nor when
she arose and it came to pass on the
morrow that the firstborn said unto the
younger behold i lay yesternight with my
father let us make him drink wine this
night also and gold out in and lie with
him that we may preserve seed of our
father and they made their father drink
wine that night also and the younger
arose and lay with him
perceived not when she lay down nor when
she arose thus were both the daughters
of log with child by their father well
it's like the story you know the story
is outlined the catastrophe of sodom and
gomorrah essentially the ethical
catastrophe of sodom and gomorrah the
dissolution of the civilized constraints
that should regulate all behavior and
then the city is destroyed but there's
an echo of it afterwards right because
laud had lived in sodom and gomorrah and
what happens to him even after his
escapes is that he gets tangled into an
incestuous web and so I think that
that's a it's not foreshadow its post
shadowing if there's such a thing it's
an echo of what it's an echo and a
reminder of how terrible whatever it was
that was happening in Sodom and Gomorrah
was that even after escaping the
iniquity still remained well that's a
pretty good place to stop we got through
two of three stories so that's not too
bad next week
I'll talk about the sacrifice of Isaac
and see if I can get into the next
stories as well and next week is the
last lecture except I talked to the
theater people and it looks like I'll be
able to rent the theater once a month at
least for the next four months so I'm
going to do that and I'll announce when
I'm going to do that and I'll continue
doing this probably as long as you'll
continue to come and listen
[Applause]
[Music]
I could tell you something cool that
happened to if you want so some of you
may know that there was a memo leaked at
Google how many of you know about that
Wow law to you so a colleague of the man
who released the memo got ahold of me
yesterday and said that the man who
wrote the memo wanted to talk to me so I
interviewed him today I made a YouTube
video out of it we went over his memo
which was scientifically accurate in my
estimation and so I'm going to release
that hopefully tonight so we'll see how
that goes
he got fired last night eh right he got
fired for perpetuating gender
stereotypes he told me today that his
last performance review he had been
given superb which is the top few
percentiles of the employee distribution
at Google right perpetuating gender
stereotypes I went through his document
I don't think he said a single thing
that wasn't substantiated by a fairly
dense scientific literature not to say
that the scientific literature is
necessarily a hundred percent correct
because it never is but certainly to say
that he was not merely spouting out
misogynistic and ethnically biased
opinion quite the contrary so we had a
nice discussion about that today and
hopefully the discussion will continue
so all right questions hello well it's
great
I mean look a couple of things about
that I mean my my daughter has had a
catastrophic life in many ways a lot of
things went wrong with her physically
really bad things and this went
perfectly
so like thank God for that
so then and then the other thing is I
love kids you know now infants well you
know it's not that I it's not infants
are cool and interesting but I'm not
sure exactly what to do with them you
know but once they're about six months
old and then from then on like I love
having kids around so I'm thrilled about
the fact that this has happened so
hooray
you know hooray so thanks for that
so more as an aside but what you said
about not pushing aside the things the
day kind of made me think of Nikes motto
just do it yeah I thought cool but um my
question was that when you were talking
about circumcision being a contractual
relationship between sacrifice and
compared it to a girl having a period
that didn't make a lot of sense to me
but also it seems to me that it being a
sacrifice requires some form of
willingness basically from the one have
extreme precision they don't necessarily
want to put forward what you did you
said you specifically didn't want to
address as two infants not having any
choice in the matter but more in the
context of it being a sacrifice how does
that I think I think that's how a modern
person would see it and I think that
there's some I think there's some
utility in that but but it's it's it's
an incomplete incomplete to some degree
you know because one of the things that
happens with God neighbor ham is that
God tells Abraham that he has to take
care of his family his children now the
question is exactly how do you take care
of your children and the answer is
sometimes you make decisions for them
now you might say well be better if they
could make the decisions for themselves
and that's actually the case so you
might say well I won't bring my kids to
church because it'd be better if they
could make the decision for themselves
that's what I did with my kids you know
but I'm not so sure that was a good idea
and the reason I'm not so sure it was a
good idea was because there are a bunch
of things they didn't learn now the
degree to which a parent should
exercise control over his or her child
is indeterminate but I guess the hope is
that you exercise the minimum amount of
control necessary to maximize the
child's probability of success and that
certainly requires adopting
responsibility for making decisions as
well because the child can't make
decisions you know you can't just let
the child lay there and make decisions
right there's that's just not going to
happen and so you might say well Abraham
has no right to impose something like
circumcision on his children and because
it and the and because it's a sacrifice
it's something that they should be doing
themselves but the problem with that is
that Abraham also has no right to
abdicate his responsibility to his
children in the name of some
hypothetical mercifulness and those two
things have to be balanced well just
according to the story Abraham got the
balance right because of course he's
made this covenant with God now exactly
what that means in people's day-to-day
lives well that's a harder issue but I
would say I think in the modern world
people err on the side of I don't know I
think they're more likely to err on the
side of taking insufficient
responsibility for their children
letting them be free in ways that aren't
productive that's how it looks to me
often because they're afraid of their
children so that's about the best I can
do without
dr. Peterson I was recently I've
recently started reading maps of meaning
and there was something in the
introduction to that story that I found
particularly the introduction that you
wrote before you went and tell them that
I found particularly compelling I guess
the part when you're talking about the
split that developed in your psyche when
you were you know yeah all your yeah I
think he talked about it one of the
earlier lecture I talked about it a
little bit today yeah a little bit today
as well yeah you said something in that
paragraph there that what you said was
you have to earn the right to identify
with an idea yeah certain ideas for sure
than ideas for sure so basically my
question is how should a young person
such as myself who doesn't have a whole
lot of life experience like be able to
like read literature and psychology and
interact with you know the wisdom of
culture and then incorporate it into a
structure that still authentically their
own well look I think the way you ask
that question means that you're actually
doing a pretty good job of that well I
well I mean I mean that because that was
a very carefully formulated question and
it was obvious that you were actually
looking for an answer instead of trying
to tell the audience a bunch of things
that you knew which often happens with
questions right and it's alright often
it's very annoying for the audience to
be subject to questions like that right
because it's a form of
because it's a form of manipulation it's
like well I'll cap this off with the
question but actually it's a speech so
so I would say you probably already know
the answer to that and but then I could
elaborate on that a little bit is like
there are a lot of books that people
have historically regarded as great you
might as well start by assuming that
they're at least greater than you right
and then and to approach them with that
frame of mind because even if there's
much in them that perhaps is no longer
relevant often less than people assume
there's much in them that will be of
extreme benefit to you and then with
regards to making them yours the kind of
wisdom that you get from great books is
practical wisdom and you act it out and
so then what you do is you try to
incorporate what you learn into your
life into your practices and then if you
incorporate it into your life and your
practices you build a bridge between you
and the great idea right because you
figured out how to manifest itself in
the conditions of your own life that's
something like making the archetypal
personal which is which is the right
thing to do right it's the proper thing
to do because that expands your life
upward and outward and in Nobel's you
and brings you up as well but so
humility is part of it it's like
approach these books as if they have
something to teach you and then it's
humility again in the second places
don't take the ideas to yourself until
you live them there'll be lots of time
for that and besides you know even as a
young person it's not like you have
nothing to say but the only things that
you have to say are your things to say
and it's not necessarily that easy to
figure out what they are but as I said
you did a fine job of that when you
asked the question so I think I think as
far as I can tell you already know what
to do so good do it read everything
great you can get your damn hands on
hello dr. Peterson so a lot of your work
a lot of your lectures recommend the
audience tackle life with a lot of
attention and intention and you know in
my kind of personal gateway drug to
philosophy has been more Eastern
philosophy and like the bug hood gita
and the work of Alan Watts and tower's
Calvinism and what I've noticed I may be
wrong but this is a common theme in
Eastern philosophy which is more passive
non action don't make as many plans I
wonder how you reconcile that in how you
are reconciling that because you
mentioned earlier in previous lectures
that you've read the TEL teaching how do
you reconcile those two different views
well I think first that the daodejing in
particular isn't about inaction it's
about minimal proper action and it's
also about minimal proper action after a
tremendous amount of sacrifice right so
the sage that's speaking forth in the
Dao de Jing has already let go of almost
everything that he needs to let go of
and a tremendous amount of what you're
reading in the Eastern philosophies is
predicated I think at least in part on
the idea of sacrifice there's lots of
things that you're grabbing on to like
the monkey you know with the jar that's
actually causing your misery and so
sometimes letting go is the right way of
moving ahead but to me that ties into
this idea of sacrifice so now whether
there's more than that whether there's
more intentionality in Western
philosophy and less intentionality in
Eastern philosophy I'm not exactly sure
one way of mediating between those two
was was formulated at least in part by
Carl Jung he pointed out that
the archetypal figure for what the last
died at 32 and so to some degree that
outgoing extroverted let's say nature of
the West is a consequence of its
youthfulness in some sense it's useful
ethos and that the East Buddha died at a
fairly ripe old age and even in the
Hindu practices if I remember correctly
for many Hindu temples there's a lot of
erotic sculptures an idea is something
like it can't get past the damn erotic
sculptures it's not time to go into the
temple but it's more than that it might
also be that if you're young it's not
time to get past the erotic sculptures
so maybe maybe there's a moving forward
into life in youth and a letting go in
in the latter part of life and that's
well that was Jung's way of mediating
between those two traditions I think
they're tightly aligned with regards to
the importance of sacrifice it
frequently is the case that it's your
desire Maya let's say your desire that's
causing your suffering right and so
there's an emphasis in Buddhism even
more than in Taoism I would say on
letting go letting go of what's making
you miserable and but do you remember
the thing about Buddha is that he got
enlightened under the bow tree right
he basically stepped into the City of
God he stepped into nirvana and he could
have stayed there but he chose to come
back because he decided that he had a
responsibility to rectify suffering in
the rest of the world that it was not
sufficient for him to be enlightened
well everything else was left in a state
of insufficiency and suffering and so I
wouldn't call that inaction you know
it's a I've made the mistake myself it's
in action versus non action I actually
had to look up that's that good that's
well not
- really the daodejing does a very good
job of distinguishing between those two
because non-action is the minimum
necessary action to keep the balance
between order and chaos proper right at
the end in the egg and the Dao de Jing
is very very emphatic about this you
detach and you watch and when it's time
to intervene you intervene minimally
without a lot of arrogant self
propagandize ation and you tap and if
you do that properly you hardly have to
do it at all and it's as if you're doing
nothing and there's this great wisdom in
that book I really like the Dow teaching
it's it's a remarkable document and I've
seen managers who were like that who are
really good at running their company who
did nothing Lauren but and what they did
well but that but first of all they set
up people to replace them because
they're Dirk idea was well if I'm a
really good manager then this place
could run without me there's a real
humility in that let me just kind of
wandered around the place talking to
people and if there was a bit of a
problem then they just you know turned
the knob the tenth of a degree and the
place ran smoothly and it was as if they
were doing nothing and what they were
doing was detaching so they weren't
being buried by their current concerns
they were watching to see what was going
on and then they were minimally
interacting and that worked like a charm
so I think that the I don't like the
idea that all religious traditions are
the same because that just makes them
into like a gray mass but I don't see
that there's any difference there that
can't be bridged I think as you look
into the details the bridge has become
more clear
[Applause]
I'll get you to speak into the
microphone especially when you're saying
self-deprecating things let everybody
hear you okay I much my pleasure what's
happened what's happened to you as a
consequence yeah yeah well our view
seeing it that way anyways well mainly
on I've had I've had whatever you say
right it's something I thought but not
had been able to articulate right so
it's been very helpful in that regards
and kind of saving a lot of time no yep
good good good good my main question is
actually on something you said a couple
lectures ago it was something along the
lines of a family um so I think I'm like
god that's the history of your family
kind of like the sims or your family
something like that yeah be awed you're
facing it all the time yeah what's uh
how can you stand on that one well
there's this idea in the Old Testament
that your sins might be visited unto
your family seven generations down seems
kind of harsh but you know when you're
confronting maybe your father's
tyrannical yeah but you know maybe his
father beat the hell out of him and
maybe his father's father was a vicious
alcoholic and he just bloody well don't
know how far back that goes and and that
means also you don't exactly know what
you're dealing with right to some degree
you're dealing with your father but only
partly what you're dealing with is the
pathological paternal spirit something
like that and it's better to think about
that way because it becomes an
existential issue at that point you know
so you could say that while the father
has two components and I mean this
psychologically speaking there's the
Great Father that's beneficial and
protective and that that organizes
society and teaches you how to speak and
has produced all these wonderful things
and then there's the tyrannical
oppressive part of the father just like
there's the terrible part of mother
nature that's destroy
than the benevolent part of mother
nature that's wonderful and productive
and you're stuck with that right you're
stuck with having to mediate between
those opposing forces just like you're
stuck with the adversarial part of
yourself and the heroic part of yourself
and it's up to you to set those things
right otherwise they propagate into the
future and it isn't it straightforward
thing to say how to set them right
there's quite a good movie about that oh
now I will Magnolia which I really love
it's by Paul Anderson if I remember
correctly I hope that's right it's a
beautiful movie and it's about this part
of it's about this kid whose father's
really pushing him to be a superstar at
a at a crucial right he's a genius kid
and the kid studies this guy named
Charles fort you don't understand this
movie if you don't know this because you
got to know about Charles fort to
understand Magnolia Charles fort was
this weird old guy who got rich with an
inheritance when he was like 20 and
spent the rest of his life in libraries
looking up impossible things and
documenting them impossible things that
couldn't happen from a scientific
perspective that were well attested to
by multiple observers and he produced
this news paper called the 14 times
which still runs anyways in magnolia
magnolia begins with this guy who falls
out of a building and then is shot by a
woman who misses her husband with a
rifle as he falls and I think she's
she's charged with murder and the street
names have something to do with the
deaths and his fall and all of that
happened and then in the movie there's a
rain of frogs and there are rains of
frogs from time to time sometimes
they're frozen sometimes they're rains
of fish sometimes they're frozen it's
like what the hell how does that happen
happens quite frequently as it turns out
there's a rain of frogs in the in the
movie magnolia and this little kid see
what happened to him is that he's on
stage and he ends up peeing his pants
because of the pressure basically and
humiliates himself and then there's this
rain of frogs which he kind of takes as
a sign from God and then he goes to his
father even he's like eight years old
this kid and he says you have to stop
to be and he's dead serious about very
careful not being you know what would
you call insubordinate nothing like that
he decides that that's coming to an end
right now and you have to make those
decisions in your family because
otherwise things propagate down the
generations right and every family is
rife with pathologies of one form or
another and you can learn from that and
refuse to push it forward and that's
part of I think what you do when you
when you when you shoulder your
existential burden because everyone is
the beneficiary and the victim of the
tyrannical father just like everyone is
the beneficiary and the victim of mother
nature and of themselves and so you lock
horns with that and straighten it out
one way or another and you don't move it
forward to the next generation so and
maybe you detach it a bit from your
parents too because god only knows what
combination of catastrophes culminated
in their particular forms of pathology
so good enough
so this week we've had the Google thing
there was the YouTube thing that
happened last week
what's going on with censorship and what
should people do about it if you're in a
workplace and pathological things are
happening this is easy I can tell you
how you know if pathological things are
happening at your workplace or they're
happening with you one of the two but
you can straighten that out if you're
being required to do things that make
you weak and ashamed
then stop don't do them like one of the
things I learned from Solzhenitsyn and
Frankel was that systems go terribly
under out of control when people don't
stop them when they're going mildly out
of control you know when you might say I
should just keep my goddamn head down
and shut up it's like maybe you should
like that's not bad advice you know you
don't want to make unnecessary enemies
and you don't need any more trouble than
you need but you got to ask yourself on
a day-to-day basis what makes you think
you're not selling your soul you know
and there's so much foolishness going on
in the mid-level bureaucratic world now
that's where all the tyranny seems to be
focused and the reason that it
multiplies is because sensible people
say nothing when they should say
something and what's so strange about
that is that there are way more sensible
people than people who aren't sensible
they're just not as noisy so whether
you'll turn out if like you know so
let's say something's bugging the hell
out of you at work well then you have to
prepare to find another job that's the
first thing you have to do I don't think
that you should find another job but you
should prepare to find another job and
if possible you should prepare to find a
better job because if you can't tell
someone to go to hell then you can't
negotiate with them and if and if
they've got you over a barrel then you
can't say anything so you going to
you've got to set yourself up so you've
got some ability and actually that's a
really good principle in your life
period
you should set yourself up so that you
have a lateral move at hand and
you should find out well are there
things at work that are disturbing my
soul you know when you find that out
first of all you ask yourself okay I'm
disturbed at work okay I'm probably weak
and deceitful and useless and lazy you
might as well start with that and then
you talk to some people like your your
wife your friends your coworkers and
find out are you stupid deceitful and
lazy or is there something not-so-good
going on at work and so if you if you
can then eliminate your own personal
pathology as a cause of your
dissatisfaction then maybe there's
something rotten in the state of Denmark
and maybe you should say something about
it before the whole goddamn thing
collapses because that can happen it can
happen in companies a lot faster than
people ever think you know and you may
find that well first of all you may find
if you say something well first of all
that's an adventure that's for sure
that's a bloody adventure and you have
to do it carefully and you have to be
prepared for it it might be the best
thing that ever happened to you and the
other thing is if you're careful about
it you get your words right like in this
is a this is strategic battle right it's
not something you wander into carelessly
then you may find that there's lots of
people who feel exactly the same way you
do and that you've actually caught and
gone to something you're a canary in a
coal mine and not just some like
psychopathic mouthpiece so you go to ask
yourself when you go and do what you do
like is this making you stronger is this
making you weaker and if it's making you
weaker then you got to ask yourself do
you really want to be weaker because the
weaker you get the more your tyrannize
and then worse than that like the weaker
you get the more bitter you get and the
more you'll work towards terrible things
the more you'll snap at your wife the
more you'll kick your kids you know like
it's no joke to be terrorized at work
and so I would say you have an ethical
responsibility as a citizen to
forthrightly confront creeping tyranny
no matter where it occurs and part of
part of what we're learning I would say
from these stories if we're learning
anything at all is that if you're aimed
at the good which is a question you
really got to ask yourself you know if
you're genuinely end up too good then
take heart because you're a lot stronger
than you think so
I have a follow-up question okay so I'm
speaking to there's lots of people who
are in this situation like you know
people at universities and corporations
all over the place I you know Google is
not the only company that is no
unfindable what's the worst repressive
freedom of speech denying workplace
codes and everybody feels alone right
they're all like why should I stand up
be a martyr get fired
this guy Google got fired yeah what's
the point like I'm asking rhetorical no
no it's a good question and how do you
how do you convince people that there's
a point to standing up when it appears
to be futile well the first thing I
think is you convince them that it's not
futile it might be difficult but it's
not futile if you get your words right
you have something to say
there'll be an impact of those words it
might not be the impact that you would
choose but but the other thing you got
to tell people is pick your poison you
don't you may be in a situation where
you don't have you don't have a cake
walk to the garden of paradise
you got tyranny or famine those are your
choices but you get to pick which one
you have and I would say if if you're
being oppressed and I mean in your soul
by what you're required to swallow at
work well you think you're not paying a
price for that you have no self-respect
and and rightly so but worse than that
you're an agent of your own destruction
you're destroying your own ideal and
you're letting people who are weak and
corrupt win and if you stood up and and
stood up property but you have to put
yourself in order to do this at least to
some degree right you can't do it
casually you have to do it from some
position of preparedness and strength
then what makes you think you couldn't
scare them back into the corners and
that would be a good thing and you know
the alternative personally is bad
because
psychological degeneration that goes
along with it I've seen this with many
many of the people that I work with who
have been terrorized in the workplace to
the absolute detriment of their
psychological and physical health right
to the point of collapse confronting
these crazy crazy things when they were
sensible people that's a terrible price
to pay man like it's it's a bad price
and then if the foolishness isn't dealt
with at the local level when it's still
relatively trivial then it will multiply
until it's dealt with at the social
level and we're seeing signs of that
already antiphon of that you know and
problems that aren't solved multiply and
soon people fight and you know better to
argue than to fight unless you want to
fight and some people want to fight and
I can understand why but I wouldn't
recommend it because that doesn't lead
good places
it really doesn't lead good places so
I'd say you have a duty maybe that's
that's where you stand up it's because
you have a goddamn duty to stand up and
say just say what you have to say if you
don't even have to be trying to make a
point exactly or trying to get something
done it's like this is how it looks to
me that's what that guy at Google did he
wrote this memo and he said I talked to
him today said well he went to a
diversity training seminar and he
thought no I don't agree with that and
so then they asked for feedback so we
wrote this document a month ago this was
written a month ago got no real response
to it but bounced around inside Google
until a lot of people you know got
interested and then it escaped into the
outside world but all he was doing was
he was told a bunch of things he didn't
think were true he wrote down a bunch of
things he thought were probably true he
launched that out and said well I think
these things are probably true it's like
well probably they're true well so he
paid a price for it but maybe we'll see
what sort of price he paid for it man
it's going to be a lot tougher in two
years than he was two years ago so
no they didn't answer his feedback
no no but well you can watch the video
the story's there but that's kind of the
outline of it so sorry to monopolize
this so I have one other question about
this and I think it's important
aside from Google just being a workplace
right it also controls the own YouTube
right yes which in order how is the new
censorship scheme and it controls a huge
amount of the information that people
get then so true and so what happens to
society when companies such as Google
which control our information start to
censor not just how about themselves and
and maybe the information that's coming
out to the rest of the world how much is
this already happening and how much how
about if we what happened how about if
we refused to find out that would be
good you know like I reviewed this this
guy's document I did that yesterday and
everything he said was validated by the
scientific literature so what has
happened is that someone has been fired
publicly by major corporation for
stating well-grounded scientific truths
right there are exactly the sorts of
things that I say in my classes for
example and the reason that I say them
is because I read the literature it's
not because I'm personally happy about
the facts I think I cube research
particularly is so dismal that you can't
possibly read it without being seriously
disheartened if I could reconstruct the
world so that IQ the IQ research wasn't
true well it'd sure be tempting you know
but that's not how science works science
doesn't tell you what you what you want
to hear it just tells you the way it
bloody well is and he got pilloried for
he got pilloried for revealing a good
fraction of current scientific knowledge
about gender differences okay that's not
good and as you said that's a big
company and it controls our
communication how about we do
what we can to ensure that these large
communication companies don't get to
impose a factually false ideological
structure on the rest of the planet well
you can think about supporting this this
guy who blew the whistle there's a
fundraiser for him online he could use
some money he wants to sue Google yeah
you know maybe we could maybe we could
let them know that hiring a human
resources director who's also concerned
with equity is probably not a good idea
for capitalist company why in the world
would you hire your own enemies I don't
understand that so well we'll see how
the dialogue continues but back to the
personal like you need to say what you
think because that's where you come from
right and if you don't say what you
think then you kill your unborn self
that's what you do that's what Cain did
when he killed Abel and that's why his
punishment was unbearable you know you
have things in you that are struggling
to come to the light that's the truth
you need daughter and you need to either
that truth because without that truth
you cannot live in the world because the
world is real and you need truth to live
in the world and if you stifle your
truth well how how can that be anything
but something that brings about hell how
could it be any other way so you think
well why should you speak up that's easy
because the consequences of not speaking
up although delayed are far worse that's
the reason that's the reason if it can't
be courage it could at least be prudence
so yeah
one more dr. Peterson
first of all kudos for mentioning
magnolias in my favorite movie that's a
great movie man
so a few months ago I had a dream and
when I told someone this dream they
suggested that I read the Book of
Revelations
oh yeah that's a bad dream that the
there's a lot of interesting stuff in
that book the thing that really that I
found really interesting right off the
bat was the the state is represented in
two instances as female positively and
negatively and I was wondering if you
had any thoughts on that in the context
of like in maps of meaning you often
talk about the state just as as male or
as masculine okay first of all I'm going
to comment on your t-shirt that's a
lobster hierarchy with Horus at the top
isn't it it's even better it's the eye
of a lobster so that's one that we found
yeah that's a good one that's a good one
that one really cracked me up when I saw
it I really thought that was funny man
yeah yeah yeah when my graduate students
used to meet when I first talked about
this Lobster stuff we meet for breakfast
day and they were a very combative
snappy group of graduate students and
they're always trying to one-up each
other with jokes and whenever one really
pulled a good joke on another they'd
stand up and like it was really it was
really funny it was really funny okay
let's see can I answer that question you
know how if you're looking at a if you
look at a room every color that you see
is dependent on every other color in the
room right your eyes adjust to that so
for example if you're in a room based
with red light your eyes will in some
sense remove the red so you can still
see the colors okay so your perception
is to some degree on-call is to some
degree dependent on Khan
context and that's one of the things
that makes the symbolic symbolic
interpretations tricky because to see
how something is represented
symbolically you actually have to look
at the broader narrative context within
which the symbols are embedded so for
example you see if I can get this right
if the story has an island and an ocean
then the ocean is often symbolically
feminine and the island is symbolically
masculine but if the story's the island
and the sky then Island often becomes
symbolically masculine and feminine and
the sky symbolically masculine and you
might think well how can the island be
masculine and feminine at the same time
and the answer is well it depends on
what what it's being contrasted with and
why and so that's part of the key to the
change in symbolism in the book of
Revelation and so it isn't inevitably
the case that culture is represented
with the patriarchal symbolism but it's
most commonly the case so you know there
is Mother Russia for example I guess it
would depend to some degree to on what
your metaphor is for the state because
the state can be in all providing mother
or it can be a judgmental father and it
it seems that we killed more towards the
father with regards to terminology
relating to the state and I think the
reason for that is because I think human
hierarchies like chimp hierarchies are
fundamentally masculine the fundamental
hierarchy is masculine even with chimps
there's a female hierarchy but it's like
the female hierarchy is nested within
the male hierarchy it's not the case
with bonobos exactly but I think it is
the case with human beings and so I
think we have a strong proclivity to
masculinize the state but that doesn't
mean there aren't exceptions and in
symbol symbolic representations are very
slippery that way because you can't
stamp an entity with a symbol because
that would be the same as just giving it
a name right and you can't have a
dictionary of symbols where you say well
you know a house
always means the psyche it's like know
sometimes the house means the psyche but
it depends on the story and so you have
to take the the entire structure of the
narrative into account to determine why
those particular symbolic
representations are being used what I
offered in maps a meaning was kind of a
shorthand you know generally speaking
there's nature positive and negative
usually feminine generally speaking
there's culture positive and negative
usually masculine and generally speaking
there's the individual good and evil
right heroic an adversarial often
typically represented as masculine
especially in adventure stories but it's
a schema and it's an interpretive guide
and not a set of hard and fast rules
because you're in the domain of metaphor
and it's a it's a slippery domain so you
have any luck figuring out your dream
sorry did you have any luck figuring out
your dream at least in some parts I
think there's different levels of
analysis I mean one was pretty obvious
yeah all right all right well thank you
very much everyone
[Applause]