So, there's this idea in Cain and Abel
that you have to make sacrifices in order to stay on the good side of God.
And so I thought about that, practically, say, not so much
metaphysically, but practically, and realized that that was
equivalent to the discovery of time, of the future, because we do act,
and this is a peculiar discovery of human beings,
maybe a consequence of our expanded intelligence
is that we're actually aware of the future, and we actually treat
the future as if it's something that you can bargain with.
Partly, it's because the future is other
people, and they remember your reputation, they remember your past actions,
and if you do someone a favor,
then that favor is in some sense stored up in the future.
So you could think about the future as
a place of judgment about your moral actions.
And it's not that far
from that to imagining a God who's keeping track of that or who even is that.
But in any case, the idea of sacrifice emerges in the story of Cain and Abel.
And Cain and Abel, both make sacrifices to God in order to stay on His good side.
And what a sacrifice means is that you give up something of value in the present
so that you can improve the future.
And that's no different from what we call discipline.
It's exactly the same thing.
It's just... The concretely acted out version of that.
And so the idea basically was that, well, God was in the transcendent heavens,
and the first question would be, Well, why is that?
It's like, well, if you go out in a really dark night and look up at the sky,
you have a sense of what's beyond you, what's transcendent, what's infinite.
And so to associate that with the highest
of values is a reasonable association, right?
Say, from an emotional point of view.
So it's not particularly primitive.
It's a smart metaphor, or it's a smart intuition, and it's above you.
And we tend to think of when you're moving
towards an ideal that you're moving up, that you're moving above,
you're moving to the mountaintop, you're going up, not down.
And so it all sits within that same framework.
And it's partly because when you go up,
like on a mountain, you can see for long distances.
Right. So all those things are tangled together.
So the idea is that you have to give up
something of value now so that you make the future better.
And sometimes it's even something you love, now.
That's a good example, too,
because often the things that stop us from moving forward,
are our attachments to things that we should no longer be attached to, right?
And, in fact, you can almost make that definitional.
If you're not moving forward in your life,
there's a high probability that you have some idea or some mode of action or some
habit that you're so in love with, that you won't let go of it.
All right. So Cain and Abel makes sacrifices.
And there's kind of a hint in the story
that, it's just a hint, that Cain sacrifices their sort of second rate.
But in any case, it's ambivalent.
But Abel, he just does wonderfully well, and everything works out for him.
And everyone knows people like that, you know?
So, God accepts his sacrifices.
But for some reason, he rejects Cain's.
And maybe it's the arbitrariness of God,
or maybe it's because Cain's heart isn't
in the right place when he's making his sacrifices, which is more likely.
And so Cain goes and has a chat with God.
And he says, basically what he says is something like: "How in the world can you
possibly justify this Universe that you created?
You look at me and I'm breaking myself
in half trying to adapt and to make things right.
And it's not working.
And then there's this Able character
and things come easy to him, and everything is flourishing for him.
And so, like, what the hell?"
If you don't understand that question,
then you're not thinking, because it's very, very frequently the case when
a serious catastrophe besets you in life that you essentially asked exactly
that question, what's the meaning of life?
What's the purpose of the world? How come there's suffering?
And it's easy to become resentful and vengeful as a consequence of that.
And so you've got to think about what state of mind having your sacrifices
rejected puts you in, especially when you see someone who's
successful, because that's where the jealousy
and resentment starts to...Fester, is probably the right word.
And so God says to Cain exactly what he doesn't want to hear, which is:
"Well, yeah, okay.
But you have made lots of mistakes in your life."
So he basically says "Sin is at your door like a predatory and sexually aroused
animal, and you've invited it into your house to have its way with you
and produced something creative as a consequence."
(So He's using a sexual metaphor, you know?)
And so that you've willingly gone down the negative path,
and you've allowed that to enter into you and to operate in a creative manner.
And you've spun off all these terrible
thoughts and this justification for not acting properly.
And that's why things aren't going well for you.
And so don't lay that at my feet!"
Which is the most brutal possible message he could've got.
And so, then, he leaves the presence of God, let's say.
And it says in the story, that his
countenance fell, which meant he was basically enraged.
And so what does he do? He goes out and kills Abel.
And then that's a very fascinating idea, because Abel is his ideal.
So, he kills his ideal.
And when you kill your ideal, you're lost!
Sacrifice.
You get to pick your damn sacrifice. That's all.
You don't get to not make one.
You're sacrificial whether you want to be or not.
This is the Peter Pan story, roughly speaking, Peter Pan is this magical boy.
Pan means, Pan is the God of everything. Roughly speaking.
Right? And so it's not an accident that he has the name Pan.
And he's the boy that won't grow up.
And he's magical.
Well, that's because children are magical.
They can be anything.
They're nothing but potential.
And Peter Pan doesn't want to give that up.
Why?
Well, he's got some adults around him, but the main adult is Captain Hook.
Well, who the hell wants to grow up to be Captain Hook?
First of all, you've got a hook.
Second, you're a tyrant.
And third, you're chased by the Dragon of Chaos with a clock in its stomach.
Right? The crocodile.
It's already got a piece of you.
Well, that's what happens when you get older.
Time has already got a piece of you.
And eventually it's got a taste for you.
And eventually it's going to eat you.
And so Hook is so traumatized by that that he can't help but be a tyrant.
And then Peter Pan looks at traumatized Hook and says,
Well, no, I'm not sacrificing my childhood for that.
So that's fine.
Except he ends up King of the Lost Boys in Neverland.
Well, Neverland doesn't exist.
And who the hell wants to be King of the Lost Boys?
And he also sacrifices the possibility
that they have a real relationship with a woman.
Because that's Wendy, right?
And she's kind of conservative, middle-class, London dwelling girl.
She wants to grow up and have kids and have a life.
She accepts her mortality, she accepts her maturity.
Peter Pan has to content himself with Tinkerbell.
She doesn't even exist.
She's like the fairy of porn.
She doesn't exist.
She's the substitute for the real thing.
But the dichotomy that you're talking
about, it's very tricky, because there's a sacrificial element in maturation, right?
You have to sacrifice
the pluripotentiality of childhood for the actuality of a frame.
And the question is, well, why would you do that?
Well, one reason is it happens to you whether you do it or not.
You can either choose your damn limitation
or you can let it take you unaware when you're 30 or even worse, when you're 40.
And then that is not a happy day.
I see people like this,
and I think it's more and more common in our culture because people can put off
maturity without suffering an immediate penalty.
But all that happens is the penalty accrues.
And then when it finally hits,
it just wallops you, because when you're 25, you can be an idiot.
It's no problem.
Even when you're out in a job search,
it's like, well, you don't have any experience and you're kind of clueless.
Yeah, yeah, you're young.
It's no problem.
That's what young people are like, but they're full of potential.
Ok, well, now you're the same person at 30.
It's like people aren't so thrilled about you at that point.
It's like, what the hell have you been doing for the last ten years.
Well, I'm just as clueless as I was when I was 22.
Yeah, but you're not 22.
You're an old infant. Right?
And that's an ugly thing. An old infant.
So... part of the reason you choose your damn sacrifice because
the sacrifice is inevitable.
But at least you get to choose it.
And then there's something that's even
more complex than that, in some sense, is that the problem with being a child is
that all you are is potential, and it's really low resolution.
You could be anything but you're not anything.
So then you go and you adopt an apprenticeship, roughly speaking.
And then you become, at least you become something.
And when you're something that makes the world open up to you again, like,
if you're a really good plumber, then you end up being far more than a plumber.
You end up being a good employer.
Not that plumbers are not putting plumbers down.
It's like more power to plumbers.
They've saved more lives than doctors.
So... Hygiene...right?
So if you're a really good plumber, well, then you have some employees.
You run a business, you train some other people, you enlarge their lives.
You're kind of a pillar of the community.
You have your family.
Once you pass through that narrow training period,
which narrows you and constricts you and develops you at the same time,
then you can come out the other end with a bunch of new possibility at hand.
And Jung talked about that.
He thought that the proper...
Part of th,e proper path of development in the last half of life was to rediscover
the child that you left behind as you were apprenticing.
And so then you get to be something and regain that potential at the same time.
Very, very smart. Well, he was very smart.
So that's... Very wise thing to know.
Sacrifice.
You get to pick your damn sacrifice.
That's all. You don't get to not make one.