It's not all that
happens though when they eat the fruit of the tree of
The knowledge of good and evil because it's not called the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of nakedness
It's called the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
And I thought about that for a tremendous amount of time
It's like what in the world because I assumed these old stories make sense. You know, it's a game
I play it's like they're old. They've been around a long time. I'm not sure why they're there, but there they are
they're at the basis of our culture like
many many of the stories that we depend on depend on them our whole culture grew out of their
Roots, let's say and so I assume that our ancestors who managed to survive conditions
That would have done a lot of us in very rapidly
I can tell you we're a lot smarter than we think and that the mysterious
Processes that that produce these stories and compelled us to remember them are a lot more
Psychologically significant than we generally tend to presume
So I give them the benefit of the doubt and try to understand why it is that they might make sense
Instead of assuming that they don't and that that's not easy
As their complicated stories and so I thought about this nakedness
Knowledge of good and evil idea for a very very long time like about 20 years
Puzzling it out. What the hell is the relationship between discovering that you're naked and
discovering good and evil and then one day
mostly because of studying totalitarianism
Totalitarianism and the atrocity that proclivity for people to commit atrocity in the service of their group belief
Or maybe just because that's what they were like
Clued me in and I thought I see this is one of the things that really makes people different than animals
It's like, you know
It's one thing to realize that you're naked to realize that you're naked means that you know that you're limited in time and space
That you're mortal and that you're subject to degeneration and to social
Humiliation and to your own harsh judgement all of that nakedness to know that you're vulnerable
Against the world and definitely a source of shame because of that
and
and a felt lack of self-sufficiency and then no wonder and no wonder
it's understandable, but the other thing is is that
This is and this is the rub
it's like if you're out in the veldt and you're not being very careful and a hungry lion jumps on you and
Eats you you don't really think of the lion as evil. I mean you might right at that moment, but you know
Philosophically, it's not evil. It's just hungry and as soon as it's not hungry then
It goes and has asleep and it's not up to some malevolent trick. It's it's done for the day but
Human being that's a whole different sort of creature. And because human being is capable of doing terrible things to someone else and
Consciously, so you think well, what's the connection between that and nakedness itself? And it seems to be this is like
Here's the thing is that once I realize that I can be hurt, you know, I have a self conscious model of my own
vulnerability
Then I can generalize that to other people I can think. Oh, this is interesting
Here's how I can be heard by myself. Here's how I can be heard by society
Here's how I can be hurt by nature and by the unknown and what that implies is that well you can be hurt
with exactly the same mechanisms and
that in need immediately becomes part of my
what would you say my repertoire of ability and then all of a sudden the world is no longer a walled a
Walled garden and a well watered place, but it's a moral story because with that ability to inflict
suffering
Comes the knowledge of good and evil as far as I'm concerned those are identical
Propositions because now we have the choice a deep choice about how we're going to treat ourselves and each other we can inflict
tremendous pain and suffering on each other in a very
voluntary and and
conscious manner in
a way that no other animal can manage and that's the dawning of the moral sense that
capacity we now have to choose to
Mitigate or exaggerate suffering and and that's not all but it's a huge part of it