and the sons of noah that went forth of
the ark were shem and ham and Japheth
and ham is the father of canaan these
are the three sons of Noah and of them
was the whole earth overspread and Noah
began to be a husbandman and he planted
a vine yard and he drank of the wine and
was drunken and he was uncovered within
his tent and ham the father of Canaan
saw the nakedness of his father and told
his two brethren without and Shem and
Japheth took a garment and laid upon
both their shoulders and went backward
and covered the nakedness of their
father and their faces were backward and
they saw not their fathers nakedness and
Noah awoke from his wine and knew what
his younger son had done unto him and he
said cursed be Canaan a servant of
servants shall he be unto his brethren
and he said blessed shall be the Lord
God of Shem and Canaan shall be his
servant and God shall enlarge Japheth
and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem
and Canaan shall be his servant and Noah
lived after the flood three hundred and
fifty years and all the days of Noah
were 950 years and he died and the whole
earth was of one language and of one
speech okay so I remember thinking about
this story it's got to be 30 years ago
and I think the meaning of the story
stood out for me sometimes when you read
complicated material sometimes a piece
of it will stand out it's for some
reason it's like it glitters I suppose
that might be one way of thinking about
it it's if you're in sync with it and
you can understand what it means I've
really experienced that reading the DAO
de Jing which is document I would really
like to do a lecture on at some point
because some of the verses I don't
understand but others stand right out
and I can understand them and I think I
understood what this part of the story
of Noah meant and I think it means you
know we talked a little bit about what
nakedness meant in the story of Adam and
Eve and the idea essentially was that to
know yourself naked is to become aware
of your vulnerability the physical your
physical boundaries in time and space
and your your your physiological your
fundamental physiological
insufficiencies as they might be judged
by others so there's biological
insufficiency that sort of built into
you because you're a fragile mortal
vulnerable half insane creature and
that's that's just an existential truth
and then of course even merely as a
human being even with all those faults
there are faults that you have that are
particular to you that might be judged
harshly by the group well might be will
definitely be judged harshly by the
group and so to become aware of your
nakedness is to become self-conscious
and and to and to know your limits and
to know your vulnerability and that's
what is revealed to ham when he comes
across his father naked and so the
question is what does it mean to see
your father naked and it seems to me and
especially in an inappropriate manner
like this it it it's it's it's as if ham
he does the same thing that happens in
the Mesopotamian creation myth when when
time out an absolute give rise to the
first gods they're they're the father of
the eventual deity of redemption
Marduk they're very careless and noisy
and they kill absolu their father and
attempt to inhabit his corpse and that
makes timeout enraged and so she bursts
forth from the darkness to to do the men
it's like a precursor to the flood story
or an analogue to the flood story and I
see the same thing happening here with
ham is that he's he's insufficiently
respectful of his father and the
question is exactly what does the father
represent and you could say well there's
there's there's the father that you have
and that's a human being that's the
demand like other men a man among men
but then there's the farther as such and
that's the spirit of the Father and
insofar as you have a father you have
both at the same time you have the
personal father that's a man among other
man just like anyone else's father but
insofar as that man is your father that
means that he's something different than
just another person
what he is is the incarnation of the
spirit of the Father and to see that to
take it to what to disrespect that
carelessly maybe even he's like no one
makes a mistake right he produces wine
and gets himself drunk and you might say
well you know if he sprawled out there
for everyone to see it's hardly hams
fault if he stumbles across them but the
book is laying out a danger and the
danger is that well maybe you catch your
father at his most vulnerable moment and
if you're disrespectful
then you transgress against the spirit
of the Father and if you transgress
against the spirit of father and lose
spirit of the Father and lose respect
for the spirit of the father then that
is likely to transform you into a slave
that's a very interesting idea and I
think it's particularly interesting
maybe not particularly interesting but
it's it's particularly germane I think
to our current cultural situation
because I think that we're pushed
constantly to see the nakedness of our
Father so to speak because of the
intense criticism that's directed
towards our culture and the patriarchal
culture so to speak we're constantly
exposing its weaknesses and
vulnerabilities and let's say nakedness
and there's nothing wrong with criticism
but the thing about criticism is the
purpose of criticism is to separate the
wheat from the chaff it's not to burn
everything to the ground right it's to
say well we're going to carefully look
at this we're going to carefully
differentiate we're going to keep what's
good and we're going to move away from
what's bad but the point of the
criticism isn't to identify everything
is bad it's to separate what's good from
what's bad so that you can retain what's
good and move towards it and and to be
careless at that is deadly because
you're inhabited by the spirit of the
Father right insofar as you're a
cultural construction which of course is
something that the that the postmodern
neo-marxists are absolutely emphatic
about you're a cultural construction
insofar as you're a cultural
construction then you're inhabited by
the spirit of the Father and to be
respectful towards that means to
undermine the very structure that makes
you not all of what you are certainly
certainly not all of what you are but a
good portion of what you are in insofar
as you're a socialized cultural entity
and if you pull out the if you pull the
foundation out from underneath that what
do you have left
you can hardly manage on your own you
know it's just not possible
you're a cultural creation and so Pam
makes this desperate error and is
careless about exposing himself to the
vulnerability of his father something
like that he does it without sufficient
respect and the judgment is that not
only will he be asleep but so all of his
descendants and he's contrasted with the
other two sons who I suppose are willing
to give their father the benefit of the
doubt something like that and so when
they see him in a compromising position
they handle it with respect and and and
don't capitalize on it and maybe that
makes them strong that's what it seems
to me and so I think that's what that
story means
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