Anyways, if you have a relationship with someone, it's predicated on trust.
Part of the reason for that is that trust
is what enables us to look at each other without running away screaming.
And what I mean by that is that if I trust you, then I don't have to take
into account how complicated you are, because you're horribly complicated.
I think, chimpanzee full of snakes.
That's what a human being is.
And as long as you'll do what you say
you'll do, then I can take you at your word and your word simplifies you.
And you can take me at my word and my word simplifies you.
And then we can act like we understand each other even though we don't.
But then if that trust is betrayed, then all the snakes come forth very rapidly.
And so all of you, I suspect, of being betrayed one way or another.
And so what happens if you're
in a relationship with someone and you trust them?
Then you make certain assumptions about
the past, and you make certain assumptions about the present,
and you make certain assumptions about the future and everything's stable.
And so you're standing on solid ground, and the chaos...
It's like you're standing on thin ice.
The chaos is hidden, the shark beneath the waves, isn't there.
You're safe. You're in the lifeboat.
But then if the person betrays you, like if you're in an intimate relationship
and the person has an affair and you find out about it, then you think one moment
you're one place right where everything is secure, because you've predicated your
perception of the world on the axiom of trust.
And the next second, really,
the next second, you're in a completely different place.
And not only is that place different right
now, the place you were years ago is different.
And the place you're going to be in the future, years hence, is different.
And so all of that certainty,
that strange certainty that you inhabit can collapse into incredible complexity.
And you say, well, if someone betrays you, you think, well, okay.
Who were you?
Because you weren't who I thought you were.
And I thought I knew you, but I didn't know you at all.
And I never knew you.
And so all the things we did together,
those weren't the things that I thought were happening.
Something else was happening.
And you were someone else.
And that means I'm someone else because I thought I knew what was going on.
And clearly, I don't. I'm some sort of blind sucker or
the victim of a psychopath or someone who's so naive that they can barely live.
And I don't understand anything about human beings.
And I don't understand anything about myself.
And I have no idea where I am now.
I thought it was at home, but I'm not.
I'm in a house and it's full of strangers.
And I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow or next week or next year.
It's like all of that certainty, that habitable certainty
collapses right back into the potential from which it emerged.
And that's a terrifying thing.
That's a journey to the underworld from a mythological perspective.
And that is really something worth knowing, because journeys
to the underworld are extraordinarily common in mythological stories.
And like the Hobbit going out to find
the smog, the Dragon and get the gold is a journey into the underworld.
And journeys to the underworld happen all the time.
And modern people don't understand what
the underworld is except that we've all been there, and we go there all the time!
And we go there every time,
the solidity and stability of the world that we've erected,
at least partly through our speech, is shattered because, while some sort
of snake appears, that's another way of thinking about it,
and it's a really good way of thinking
about it, because no matter how carefully you construct the little habitable area
that's around you, there's always something you didn't take into account,
and there's always something that can pop up its head and do you in, and make you
aware of your mortality and age you for that matter, or even kill you.
And that's the permanent situation of life, which is part of the reason why I
think the story of Adam and Eve, for example, is archetypal.
It explains the eternal situation of human beings.
We're always in that situation.
We're in a walled garden, or we bloody well hope we are.
But there's always a snake.
And then it's even worse, because if there is a snake,
we're exactly the sort of creatures who are going to do nothing but go
and interact with that snake the second that we can manage it.
Imagine you've been married for ten years,
and then your wife tells you that she has had three affairs,
each of them lasted three years,
and the last one has lasted five years, and it's still ongoing.
Or maybe you discover that. Okay...
So then you might say, well, what happens, then?
Well, what happens is that everything you thought was wrong! Right?
And this is such an interesting thing
because it actually means you had the past and you think the past is fixed.
It's done with.
That's why it's the past.
But all of a sudden, you find out that one of the things that you thought about
the past, and it happens to be a very important thing wasn't true at all.
And so what that means is that whole past
that you thought was what it was wasn't what it was at all.
And so it transforms itself from in actuality, into potential.
And most of that potential is negative
unless you're relieved that your wife had an affair.
Well, but that's an important
consideration, because you can imagine a situation where your marriage is
dreadfully unhappy and you're just looking for an excuse to leave.
It's possible that that revelation,
even though it would be shocking, would also come with a fair bit of relief.
And so this potential that manifests itself, even when it's unexpected,
doesn't only necessarily manifest itself in the negative guys,
it can also free you.
And if your marriage was unhappy, even if you wanted to cling to it,
if your marriage wasn't happy and the betrayal was revealed and you're divorced
and you set yourself up in two years, you might be in a better place than you were.
It's not a pathway I'm recommending, by the way.
I'm just saying that it's more complicated than it looks.
That's the introduction of chaos into order.
Right? And the oldest story we have is something
like order is susceptible to disruption by chaos.
And...
The fundamental demand that's made on the human being is to contend
with the chaos that disrupts order, not to live in order and not to live
in chaos, but to be able to contend with the chaos that disrupts order.
And so when you encourage your children,
for example, what you're doing is encouraging them
to become the Masters of the chaos that can disrupt order, rather than
denizens of order, which makes them tyrants or denizens
of chaos, which makes them nihilistic and hopeless.
So you train your children,
you encourage your children and yourself and your partner, if you have any sense
to be a master of emergent chaos and to be able to contend with that.
So, chaos is potential,
and it's this disruptive... It's the capacity
of the infinite world to disrupt your finite considerations.
That's another way of looking at it.
Another way of looking at it is it's the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
And the reason that that story is set up the way it is
is because it's trying to represent that.
There's no place that's so bounded and secure,
even if it's set up by God himself, that doesn't have an agent of chaos inside it.
It's exactly the same idea
that the Taoists put forward with their symbolic representation.
It's just portrayed in a different manner.
The question is, well,
what do you do in the garden, given that there's a snake in it?
And the answer to that is something like you become the master of snakes.
And that's a deep idea.
That's the same idea as confronting the Dragon and getting the treasure.
That's the same idea as going
to the bottom of the ocean and rescuing your father from the belly of the whale.
It's the same idea.
And that's an element in the greatest of stories.
And the greatest of stories is heroic story.
And the heroic story is to voluntarily
to confront the unknown when it manifests itself and to gather something of value as
a consequence and to share it with the community.