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