[Music]
yo Josh gates
oh good Josh asked me an easy question
young suggested that the Christian myth
failed to articulate Christ's descent
into hell and that this resulted in the
mass shadow projection of the West's
thoughts yeah well I'm gonna refer to my
book again I talked about this in rule 7
pursue what is meaningful not what is
expedient in that chapter I discussed
there's this idea and Christianity that
Christ took the sins of the world onto
himself and I think that's very much
related to the idea of descent into hell
they're not exactly the same thing
but I but I'm gonna address the first
one and it'll shed light on the second
so what does it mean that the Messiah is
archetype Li the figure who takes the
sins of the world onto himself
what it means practically speaking or
psychologically speaking and I've tried
this with some of my clients who were
very naive it means to read the history
of the world as if you were the
perpetrator of the evils that you read
about instead of the victim or the noble
intervenor you know I talked to somebody
the other day about the movie
Schindler's List and Schindler was this
German industrialist who saved a very
large number of Jews that were in danger
of well in danger of the final solution
and one of the things he said was well
you know when people watch Schindler's
List they always think they'd be
Schindler and and if they don't think
maybe Schindler maybe they think maybe
the Jewish victim of the Nazis but they
almost never think that they'd be the
Nazi persecutor and that's a big mistake
because when you read about history then
you're reading about you even if the U
is the perpetrator and unless you
understand that then someone else has to
be the perpetrator and if someone else
is the perpetrator well then you have a
devil that you can chase and you know
maybe you've identified the devil
properly because you know now and then
it's like John Wayne
see or Ted Bundy or someone like that
and you've actually you know you've
identified a perpetrator but so often
far too often the best way to constrain
the malevolence outside is to constrain
the malevolence within and so if you
don't have a locale for the evil of the
world then you have to externalize it
because the evil of the world certainly
exists now it's a better solution
to assume that you're fully capable of
the terrible things that people have
been capable of throughout the history
of humanity and to contend with that
genuinely and there's massive advantages
to that I mean first of all it can
actually produce an remarkable increment
and self-esteem because you know if
you're just a rabbit and you freeze
whenever a wolf looks at you then you're
just a frozen rabbit and that's not so
good you're just a scared rabbit but
maybe you learn one day that you're not
a rabbit that you like you're actually
quite the damn monster and you've got
teeth and you could really use them in
an underhanded and horrible way this is
why people like antihero movies so much
hay because they go and see the villains
the Mafia guys and these tough guys and
they anti-heroes that populate our
imagination and think oh yeah well I'd
really really like to be someone like
that and the thing is is that being
useless and weak it's better to be a
monster than to be useless and weak and
that's because being useless and weak
makes you a worst monster than a monster
that's why it's not like being a monster
is good but weak useless monster is the
worst kind of monster because that's the
sort of monster that'll jump you in the
dark and sink its teeth into the back of
your neck instead of confronting you
forthrightly in the alley and so if you
start to see yourself as the perpetrator
of historical malevolence you know if
you can imagine yourself as an ostrich
camp guard if you see yourself as as the
the vicious villain of the human story
then all of a sudden you've got a lot
more respect for yourself and you can
unlock that internal monster and not
internal monster and then maybe you
contain the damn thing or at least bring
it bring it into some sort of
partnership with yourself and then when
someone pushes you around you can let a
little bit of that out in your eyes just
a little bit and you can say it would be
better for you and for me if you didn't
continue to do that and
you can actually mean it and then
actually it will stop because if you let
a little bit of that out when you tell
someone to stop the probability that
they'll stop is extremely high and then
just a tiny like vision of the monster
you could become is enough to keep order
in your house a and maybe in your state
and so the mast shadow projection of the
West well you know here's another thing
so one of the things the Christians
figured out was that the snake in the
Garden of Eden was also Satan I can't
get into that it's too complicated
you'll have to read chapter 7 if you
want a full explication of that idea
that's as good an answer to the question
as I can manage tonight I spent all day
let's see all day I got up at 7 and I
worked all day till 5:00 on this video I
told you about so I made about 400 edits
or something like that so I'm a little
bit on the burnt-out side tonight so