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  • I'm really looking forward to this lecture, not like I wasn't looking forward to the other ones,

  • but the stories that I want to cover tonight, one of the things that just absolutely staggers me about them,

  • especially the story of Cain and Abel (which I hope to get to) is, like, it's so short. It's unbelievable.

  • It's like ten, eleven lines.

  • There's nothing to it at all.

  • And I've found that it's essentially inexhaustible in its capacity to reveal meaning, and I don't exactly know what to make of that.

  • I mean I...

  • I think, you know, because I said I was going to take as

  • rational an approach to this issue as I possibly could, I think it has something to do with

  • this intense process of condensation across very long periods of time. That's the simplest explanation.

  • But I'll tell you, the information in there is so densely packed that it really is--

  • it's really-- it's not that easy to come up with an explanation for that. Not one that I find fully compelling.

  • I mean, I do think that the really old stories (and we've been covering the really archaic stories in the Bible so far)

  • I think that one of the things that you can be virtually certain about is that everything about them

  • that was memorable was remembered, right, and so in some sense

  • And this is kind of like the idea of Richard Dawkins idea of memes, which is often why I thought that Richard Dawkins

  • if he was a little bit more

  • mystically inclined he would have become Karl Jung, because their theories are unbelievably similar. The similar of meme and the similar of arch...

  • the idea of archetypes of the collective unconscious are very, very similar ideas except Jungian ideas-- far more profound in my

  • estimation well it just is he thought it [through] so much better. You know

  • Because Dawkins tended to think of memes sort of like a mind worm you know something that would infest a mind and maybe multiple minds

  • But he never really took I don't think he really ever took the idea with the seriousness it deserved

  • And I did hear him actually make a joke with Sam Harris the last time they talked about the fact that that

  • there was some possibility that the

  • Production of memes say religious memes could alter evolutionary history, [and] they both avoided that topic instantly

  • They had a big laugh about it men decided they weren't going to go down that road

  • and so that wasn't fair that was quite [interesting] to me, but

  • these

  • Is the the the density of these stories I do really [think] still is a is a mystery it

  • Certainly has something to do with their absolute

  • [their] in their impossibility to be forgotten [you] know and that's actually something that we could be tested empirically

  • I don't know if anybody has ever done that because you could tell

  • naive people two stories even equal length right one that had an archetypal theme and the other that didn't and then wait three months and

  • See which one's people remembered better and be relatively straightforward thing to test

  • I haven't tested it, but maybe I will at [some] point, but anyways, that's all to say that. I'm very

  • Excited about this lecture because I get an opportunity to go over the story of Adam and eve and the story of cain and Abel

  • And I [hopefully] [manage] both of those today, and maybe we'll get to the story of Noah and the tower of babel as well

  • But I wouldn't count on it not arthur eight we've been not at the rate we've been progressing if that's okay

  • That's that's no problem. It's there's no sense rushing this [alright]. So we're going to go before we go that before we do that

  • I want to

  • Finish my discussion of the idea of the psychological significance of the idea of God, and I've been thinking [about] this a lot more

  • You know because of course this lecture series gives me the opportunity and the necessity to continue to think and you know it

  • Certainly is the [case] so the hypothesis that I've been developing with the trinitarian idea is something like

  • That the trinitarian idea is the earliest

  • Emergence in image of the idea that there has to be an underlying cognitive

  • Structure that gives rise to consciousness as well as consciousness itself and so what I would suggest

  • Was that the idea of God the father is something akin to the idea of the a priori?

  • structure that that gives rise to consciousness

  • You know that's an inbuilt part of us, so that's our structure. You could think about that as something

  • That's been produced over a vast evolutionary time span

  • and I don't think that's completely out of keeping with the with the

  • With the ideas [that] are laid forth in Genesis one at least if you think about them from a metaphorical perspective

  • And it's hard to read them literally because I don't know what you know. There's an emphasis on day and night, but

  • The idea of Day and night as as 24-hour diurnal. You know

  • daytime and nighttime

  • Interchanges [that] are based on the claw on the earthly clock seems to be a bit

  • Absurd when you first start to think about the construction of the cosmos so just doesn't seem to me that a literal interpretation

  • is

  • Appropriate and I mean it's another thing that you might not know but you know many of the early church [fathers] one of them origen

  • in particular stated very clearly this was in 300 ad that these ancient stories were to be taken as as

  • Wise metaphors and not to be taken literally like the idea that the people who established

  • Christianity for example were all the sorts of people who were biblical [literalist]. It's just absolutely historically wrong

  • [I] mean some of them were and some of them still are that's not the point

  • Many of them weren't and it's not like people who live 2,000 years ago were stupid by any stretch of the imagination

  • And so they were perfectly capable of understanding what constant you know what constituted something approximating a metaphor and also knew that

  • fiction in some sense

  • Considered as an abstraction could tell you truth that nonfiction wasn't able

  • Wasn't able to get at lets you think that fiction is only for entertainment

  • And I think that's a very that's a that's a big mistake to think that so

  • Alright, so here we go

  • so yes

  • so with regards to the idea of God the father, so the idea is that

  • In order to make sense out of the world you have [to] have an a priori cognitive

  • Structure that was something that immanuel kant as I said last time

  • put forward as an argument against the idea that all of the information that we

  • Acquire during our lifetime [is] a consequence of incoming sense data and the reason that kant objected to that and he was

  • Absolutely right about this is that you can't make sense of sense Data without an a priori structure

  • You can't extract from sense data the structure that enables you to make sense of sense data

  • It's not possible, and that's really being demonstrated

  • I would say Beyond the shadow of a doubt since the 1960s and the best

  • demonstration of that was actually the initial failure of artificial intelligence

  • because when the AI people started promising that we would have fully functional and autonomous robots and artificial intelligence back in the

  • 1960s

  • What they didn't understand and what stole them terribly until about the early 1990s was that it was almost

  • That the problem of perception with a much deeper problem than anybody ever

  • Recognized because like when you look at the world you just see well look there's objects out there and by the way you don't

  • Objects you see tools just so you know in the neurobiology. That's quite clear

  • You don't see objects and infer utility

  • You see useful things and infer object so it's actually the reverse of what people generally think but the point is is that

  • Regardless of whether you see objects or useful things when you look [at] the world you just see it

  • And you think well seeing is easy because they're the things are and all you have to do is like you know turn your head

  • And they appear

  • And that's just so wrong that it's it's almost impossible to overstate

  • Like the problem of perception is staggeringly difficult and one of the primary reasons that we still don't really have autonomous robots

  • so there were a lot closer to it than we were in the

  • 1960s because it turned out that you actually have to [have] an embodied you have to have a body before you can say it and

  • Even more importantly you [have] to have a body before you can see

  • Because the act of seeing is actually the act of mapping the patterns of the world [onto] the patterns of the body. It's not

  • Things are out there you see them then you think about them, then you evaluate them

  • Then you decide to act on them and then you act. [I] mean that you could call that a folk idea of

  • Psychological processing or a perception it's not that is not how it works like your eyes for [example] map

  • One of the things they do is map right onto your spinal cord for example

  • They might right onto your emotional system

  • So it's actually possible for example

  • For people to be blind and still be able to detect facial expressions

  • Which is to say you can with someone who's cortically blind so they've had their visual Cortex

  • Destroyed often by a stroke they'll tell you that they can't see anything

  • But they can guess which hand you put up if you ask them to and if you flash them pictures of Angry or Fearful

  • Faces they show skin conductance responses to the more emotion laden faces

  • And it's because imagine that the world is made out of patterns which it is then imagine that those patterns are transmitted to you

  • Electromagnetically you have to light and then imagine that the pattern is duplicated on the retina

  • And then that pattern is propagated along the optic nerve and then the pattern is distributed throughout your brain and some of that pattern

  • Makes up what you call conscious vision, but other parts of it

  • Just activate your body so for example when I look at this when I look at this this

  • whatever it whatever it is a

  • Bottle that's words, huh?

  • You know when I look at it

  • Especially with intent in mind as soon as I look at it the pattern of the bod of the bottle

  • activates the gripping mechanism of my hand and

  • Part of the action of per Sortie the active perception is to adjust

  • My bodily posture including my hand grip to be of the optimal size to pick that up

  • And it's not that I see the bottle and then think about how to move my hand

  • That's too slow

  • It's that I use my motor motor Cortex to perceive the bottle and that's actually somewhat

  • Independent of actually seeing the bottle as a conscious experience

  • so

  • Anyways, huh the reason the reason that I'm telling you that [all] of that

  • And there's much more about that that can be told

  • Rodney Brooks ['is] someone to know about he's a robotics engineer who worked in the 1990s and he invented the Roomba

  • among many other things so he's a real genius stuffed guy and

  • He works was one of the first people to really

  • Point out that

  • to have to be [able] to have a

  • machine that

  • Perceived well enough to work in the world

  • That you had to give it a body and that the perception would actually be built from the body up rather than from the abstract

  • cognitive perceptions down and so

  • well

  • and that that turned out to be the case and bird rooks boiled all sorts of weird little machines in the

  • 1990s that didn't even really have any central brain but they could do things like run away from [light] and

  • so they could perceive light that their perception was that act of running away from right and

  • So perception perception is very very very tightly tied to action in ways that people don't normally perceive

  • Anyways, that's all to say that you cannot perceive the [world] without being embody and you know your embodied in a manner

  • that's taken you roughly three and a half billion years to pull off right there's being a lot of death as a

  • Prerequisite to the embodied form that you take and so it's taken all that trial and error to produce something like you that can interact

  • with the complexity of the world well enough to last the relatively paltry 80 or so years that you can last and

  • So I think about that as this may be wrong, but I think it's a useful at least it's a useful

  • Hypothesis, I think the idea

  • God the father is something like the birth of the idea that there has to be an internal

  • Structure that out of which consciousness itself arises that gives form to things and well

  • And if that's the case and perhaps it's not but if it's the case it's certainly reflection. It's a reflection of the kind of

  • Factual truth that I've been describing now

  • and then like I also mentioned that I kind of see the idea of

  • Both the holy Spirit and those also of christ and most specifically of christ in in the form of the word

  • as

  • the active consciousness that that structure produces and uses not only to to

  • Formulate the world because we formulate the world at least the world that we experience

  • We formulate but also to change and modify that world because there's absolutely no doubt that we do that

  • Partly with our bodies which are optimally?

  • Developed to do that. Which is why we have hands unlike dolphins would have you know very large brains like us

  • But can't really change the world. We're really

  • adapted and evolved to change the world and to world and our speech [is] really a an

  • Extension of our ability to use our hands, so the speech systems that we use are you know very [well-developed] motor?

  • very well-developed motor skill and

  • generally speaking your your dominant linguistic hemisphere is the same as your dominant hand and

  • People talk with their hands like [me] as you may have noticed [and] we use sign language

  • and there's a tight relationship [between] the use of the hand and the use of language, and that's partly because

  • language is a

  • productive Force and the hand is part of it part of what changes the world and so all those things are tied together in a

  • Very very complex way with this a priori structure and also with the embodied structure

  • And I also think that's part of the reason why classical christianity puts such an emphasis not only on the divinity of the spirit

  • But also on the divinity of the body, this is a harder thing to

  • grapple with you know it's easier [for] people to think if you think in religious terms at all that you have some sort of

  • Transcended spirit that somehow detached from the body that might have some life after death [something] like that

  • but the Christian Christianity in particular really insists on the divinity of the body, so the idea is that

  • There's an underlying structure. It's this quasi patriarchal nature partly because it's for complex reasons

  • But partly because it's a reflection of the social structure as well as other things and then that

  • uses consciousness in the form particularly of language

  • But most particularly in the form of truthful language in order to produce the world in a manner

  • That's good, and I think that's a walloping

  • Powerful Powerful idea especially the relationship between the idea that it's truthful speech that gives rise to the good because that's a really fundamental

  • Moral Claim and I think that's a tough one to beat man because one of the things I've really noticed is and then this and

  • It isn't just me that's for sure is that you know there's a lot of tragedy in [life]

  • There's no doubt about that and lots of people that I see for example in my clinical practice are

  • Laid Low by the Tragedy of life

  • But I also see very very frequently that people get tangled up in deceit in webs of deceit that are often multiple

  • Generations long and that just takes them out you know and so that so deceit can produce

  • Extraordinary levels of suffering that lasts for very very long periods of time and that's really a clinical truism. You know because

  • freud of course identified one of the

  • Problems that contributed [to] the suffering we might associate with mental illness with repression

  • Which is it's kind of like a lie of omission

  • That's a perfectly reasonable way to think about it

  • and Jung stated straight out that there was no difference between the psychotherapeutic the curative psychotherapeutic effort and

  • Supreme moral effort including truth that those were the same thing as far as he was [concerned] and carl Rogers another great

  • Clinician who was at one point a Christian missionary before he became

  • More [moore's] more strictly scientific. He believed that it was in truthful, dialogue that that that

  • clinical transformation took place and you know it and of course one of the

  • prerequisites for genuine transformation in the clinical setting is that the

  • Therapist tells the truth and the client tells the truth because otherwise how in the world. Do [you] know what's going on?

  • how can you solve the problem when you don't even know what the problem is and [you] don't know what the problem is unless the

  • Person tells you the truth that's something really to think about in light [of] your own

  • Relationships because you know if you don't tell the people around you the truth?

  • And they don't know who you are and maybe that's a good thing

  • You know because well seriously people have reasons to Lie, right?

  • I mean that aren't trivial

  • But it's really worth knowing that

  • you can't even get your hands on the problem unless you formulate it truthfully and if you can't get your hands on the problem the

  • Probability that you're going to solve it is it's just so low and so then I've been thinking [about] as well

  • The this and this idea has become more

  • Credible to [me] the longer. I've developed it the longer. I thought about it. You know the idea that there's oh

  • Go Bob

  • It's partly the idea that

  • Well, let me let [me] figure out how to start this property friend of mine business partner and a guy that [I've] written scientific papers

  • with very smart guy

  • Took me to task and I think I told you this a little bit about

  • Using the term dominance Hierarchy which might be fine for like

  • Chimpanzees and for lobsters and for creatures like that

  • But not not first not not for chimpanzees even so much and and he said something [very] interesting

  • he thought that the [idea] of dominance Hierarchy was actually a projection of a

  • early 20th century quasi Marxist

  • Hypothesis [onto] the animal Kingdom that was being observed and the notion that the hierarchical structure that you see that

  • characterizes say mating hierarchies in Chimps for

  • Example the idea that that was predicated on power was actually a projection of a kind of political ideology

  • and I thought that really bugged me for a long time when he said that because

  • Like because I'd really been used to using the term dominant iurc and I thought he told me all that

  • I thought that's so annoying

  • It's so annoying because it might be right and then it took me months to think about it

  • And then I and then I was also reading Frans de Waal at the same time [and] he's a primatologist and also Jaak panksepp

  • Because he was a Brilliant Brilliant

  • effective neuroscientist who unfortunately just died he wrote a great book called Affect of Neuroscience and

  • For rats to play they have to play fair or they won't play with each other

  • And that's that's a staggering discovery right because anything that helps

  • Instantiate the

  • Emergence of ethical behavior in animals and that associates it with an evolutionary

  • Process which is essentially what what pays up was doing gives credence to the [notion] that the ethics that guide us are not near

  • social

  • logical

  • epiphenomena Constructs [their] deep

  • Deeply rooted if flat and that they're rats for god's sake he can't trust them and they still play fair you [know] and De Waal

  • Notice that the chimp troops that he studied, but it wasn't wasn't the barber barbaric chimp that ruled with an iron fist

  • that was the successful ruler because he kept getting torn to shreds by his by the

  • Compatriots that he ignored and stomped on Susie showed some weakness. They just tear him into pieces the chimp leaders that were

  • Stable you know that had a stable [kingdom]. Let's say

  • We're very

  • Reciprocal in terms of their interactions with their friends and chimps have friends and they out they actually last for very long time chimp friendships

  • and they were also very

  • reciprocal in their interactions with the females and with the infants

  • And I thought that's [what] Frans De Waal is a very smart guy

  • And I thought that was also foundational science because it's really something to note that

  • The attributes that give rise [to] dominance in a male [dominance] Hierarchy sort of use [that] word let's call it

  • Authority that might be better or even shudder competence which [I] think is a better way of thinking about it

  • Is that that's not predicated purely on anything? That's that's that's as simple as brute power, and I think [too]

  • You know I think as well that the idea and this is [a] deeply devious and dangerous

  • political idea in my estimation the idea that male dominance hierarchies sorry Male hierarchies are

  • Fundamentally predicated on power in a little in a [law-abiding] in a law-abiding society

  • I think is I think all you [fu] think about that for like a month say

  • She's not long to understand

  • How absurd [that] is because most people who are in positions of authority let's say are just as hemmed in by ethical

  • responsibilities or even more so than people at the other levels of the of the hierarchy

  • And we know this even in the managerial literature because we know generally speaking that

  • Managers are more stressed by their subordinates than the subordinates are stressed by their managers

  • And that's not surprising you want to be responsible for like [200] people you really want that. That's hard work, man

  • and I mean [I] know it's a pain to have a boss because the

  • To care about what the boss thinks and maybe the person is arbitrary which case they're not going to be particularly successful

  • But it's no joke to be responsible for 200 people

  • and you have to behave very carefully when you're in a position of

  • Responsibility and authority like that because you will get called out if you make mistakes

  • [constantly] so it's not like you're it's not like because you have a position

  • That's higher up in the hierarchy that you're less constrained by ethical necessity now if you're a psychopath

  • Well, that's a whole different story

  • but

  • psychopaths have to move pretty rapidly from Hierarchy to hierarchy right because they get found out quite quickly and

  • As soon as their reputation is shattered then they can't get away with their Shenanigans anymore, so [okay]

  • [so] all of this is to say that there is something very interesting about

  • the Pattern of Behavior [so] imagine that

  • Imagine that sexual selection is working something like this

  • And we know that sexual selection is a very very very very powerful biological

  • Force even though biologists ignored it for almost a hundred years after charles Darwin originally wrote about it thinking mostly about natural selection

  • They didn't like the idea of sexual selection because it tended to introduce the notion of mind

  • Into the process of [evolution] because it deals with choice

  • you know

  • But so imagine on the one hand that you have a male hierarchy

  • We know that the men at the top of the Hierarchy are much more likely to be?

  • Reprimanded the boil. It's particularly true of men

  • So you have twice as many female ancestors as you have male ancestors not going to do the math?

  • But and I know it doesn't sound plausible, but you could look it up and figure it out

  • It's it's perfectly reasonable fact that actually happens to be true

  • So there's twice as if twice as many female ancestors because females are twice as likely on average to leave

  • offspring as men now, what happens is

  • Any man man who does reproduce tends to reproduce more than once but a bunch of the reproduce zero?

  • Whereas so it would be the average man who reproduces has two children [and]

  • the average man who doesn't reproduce have zero obviously and the average woman who reproduces has one child so

  • That means that there's twice as many

  • Females in your line as there is males so that that's a big deal and and so imagine that it works something like this

  • so

  • the men elect

  • the

  • Competent men who are admired and who are and who are I?

  • Can't say dominant who are who are given positions of authority and respect let's put it that way and it's like an election

  • Now it could be an actual democratic election, but it's at least an election of consensus or it's at least an election of well

  • We're not going to kill him for now. Which is also a form of election, right?

  • it's a form of tolerance [you] know so

  • So and then what happens is the women for their part peel from the top of the mental Hierarchy and so you've got two

  • Factors that are driving

  • human sexual selection across vast stretches of evolutionary time

  • One is the election of men by men to positions where they're much more [likely] to reproduce

  • And the second is the tendency of women to peel off the top of [dáil] dominant turkeys which is extraordinarily well established [cross] culturally?

  • even if you flatten out, the

  • socio-economic

  • Disparity say between men [and] women like they've [done] in scAndinavia. You don't you don't?

  • Reduce the tendency of women to peel off the top [of] the male hierarchy by much

  • And why would you [I] mean women are smart why in the world wouldn't they go for four?

  • Why wouldn't they strive to make relationships with men who [are] relatively successful?

  • And why wouldn't they let the men themselves define why that how that constitutes success?

  • it makes sense like if you want to figure out who the best man is why not let the men compete and the

  • Man who wins whatever the competition is is the best man by definition? [how] else would you define it, so

  • okay, so why am I telling you [all] that well the reason is is because

  • it seems to me that there's this comp this being this complex interplay across human evolution between

  • the election of the male dominance Hierarchy and sexual success

  • And that's a big deal if it's true. It could be because what would happen [you] see is that as men evolved

  • they would evolve to be better and better at climbing up the male hierarchy because the ones who weren't good at that wouldn't reproduce so

  • Obviously that's going to happen

  • But then it wouldn't [just] be a hierarchy because there's a whole bunch of different hierarchies and so then you might say well are there

  • commonalities across hierarchies

  • reasonable thing to propose it mean

  • They're not completely opposed to one another at least if you're more success relatively more successful in [Run]

  • Hierarchy then you're more probable

  • It's more probable that you'll be successful in another

  • And that's actually a really good definition of general

  • Intelligence or IQ and that's actually one of the things that women select men for now men also select women for that

  • But the selection pressure is even higher from women to men and general Iq is one of the things that propels you up across?

  • Dominant turkeys because it's a general problem-solving mechanism, and the other thing [that] seems to do that to some degree is conscientiousness

  • And there's also some evidence that women prefer

  • conscientious men so and of course why wouldn't they because you can trust them and and

  • And and and they work, and so those are both good things

  • So then you think okay, so men have adapted to start to climb the male dominance Hierarchy

  • but it's the set of all possible hierarchies that they're adapted to climb and

  • So then you think there's there's a set of attributes that can be acted out

  • That and that can be embodied that will increase the probability that you're going to rise to the top of any given

  • Hierarchy and then you could say well that as you adapt to that fact then you start to develop an understanding of what that pattern

  • Constitutes and so that starts to become the abstract

  • representation of something like multi-dimensional competence

  • And that's like the abstraction of virtue itself well and none of that has them none of that's arbitrary now

  • and that's as bloody well grounded in biology if anything could [be] and I think [that's] a really hard argument to refute and

  • Like one of the things I should tell you [about] how I think is [that] when I think something

  • I spend a long time trying to figure [out] if it's wrong

  • You know because [I] like to hack at it from every possible Direction

  • To see if it's a weak idea because if it's a weak idea

  • Then I'd rather just dispense with it and find something better

  • And I've had a real hard time trying to figure out what's wrong with that idea

  • I it seems to me that it's pretty damn solid and then the idea that

  • You know if you watch what people do in movies, and so on and when they're reading fiction

  • It's obvious that they're very good at identifying both the hero and the antihero we could say the antihero

  • generally speaking the bad guy is someone who strives for

  • Authority and position, but fails

  • generally speaking not always, but fail

  • so he's a good bad example a kid you take a kid to a

  • good guy bad guy movie the kid takes out pretty fast that he's not supposed to be the bad guy and and

  • Figures out very quickly to zero in on the good guy

  • And that means that there's there's an affinity between the pattern of good guy that's being played out in the fiction and the perceptual

  • Capacity of the child you [know] and one of the things I told my son when he was a kid I used to take him

  • to movies that were sometimes more frightening than they should have been but

  • One of the things I always told him was I never said don't be [afraid] because I think that's bad advice for kids

  • What I said was keep your eye on the hero

  • Right keep your [eye] on the hero and again

  • He was gripped by the movie and often quite afraid of them you know because movies can be very frightening

  • so he just like zero in on that guy and

  • Hoping and you know what it's like in [a] movie you hope that the good guy wins

  • Generally speaking, and I mean why do you do that?

  • Where does that where does that come from you see how deeply rooted that is inside you you'll bloody well go

  • Line up and pay to watch that happen

  • it's not an easy thing to understand and it's it's so self-evident to people that we don't even notice that it's a tremendous mystery and

  • So is it so unreasonable to [think] that we would have actually over the Millennia come to some sort of collective

  • Conclusion about what the best of the best guys are best of the good guys are and what the worst of the bad guys are

  • And to me archetypically speaking thinking of that as the Hostile brothers

  • So that's christ and Satan or cain and Abel for example very common mythological motif the hostile brothers

  • It's like those are those those are archetypes

  • it's like the satan for example is by definition the worst that a person can be and

  • Christ by definition, this is

  • Independent of anything but

  • Conceptualization is by definition the best today that a man can be

  • now

  • as I said speaking psychologically and conceptually but I

  • given our capacity for imagination and our ability to engage in fiction and our love for fiction and our

  • capacity to dramatize and our love for the story stories of heroism and

  • Catastrophe and and good and evil. [I] can't see how it [could] any other way like so [well]

  • so so that's part of the

  • Idea that's driving the notion of the evolution of the idea of God and even more specifically

  • Driving the evolution of the idea at least in part of the trinity so God is an abstracted ideal

  • formulated in large part to

  • Dissociate the ideal from any particular incarnation or man [or] any ruler and there's another rule in the biblical stories

  • which is that when the actual ruler [I've] mentioned this before when the actual Ruler becomes confused with the

  • Abstracted ideals then the state immediately turns into a tyranny and the whole bloody thing collapses, [so] [the] idea, it's so sophisticated

  • You know one of the things that we figured out and this was a hard thing to figure out was that

  • you had to take the

  • Abstraction and divorce it from any particular power structure and then think about it as something [that] existed as an abstraction

  • But a real thing right real and that [it] governed your behavior in [everyone's] behavior including the damned King

  • The King was responsible to the abstracted ideal man that's an impossible. That is such an impossible ideal

  • You know why would if they agreed [that] [5000] years ago?

  • But one of the things you see continually happening in the old testament [is] that as soon as the israelite for example the ISraelite Kings?

  • become

  • almighty

  • the real God comes along [and] just

  • Cuts them into pieces and then the whole bloody state falls apart for like hundreds of years. It's like

  • I think that's a lesson that that we have not thoroughly

  • Consciously yet learned. It's still implicit in the narratives. We still haven't figured out. Why that's the case

  • Again, I think that's a real hard argument to to to dispense with

  • so

  • All right, so we looked at this a little bit

  • The trinitarian idea is that there's a there's a father

  • that's maybe the

  • Dramatic representation of the structures that underlie consciousness the embody structures that underlie consciousness, and then there's the son

  • And that's that that's consciousness

  • But in its particular historical form that's the thing that's so interesting about the figure of the son

  • And then there's consciousness as such and that seems to [be] something like the the indwelling spirit and so

  • I mean these psychological ideas came from somewhere right that they have a history they didn't just spring out of nowhere

  • and they emerge from from dreams and

  • Hypothesis and artistic visions and all of that over a long time and maybe they get clarified into something like consciousness

  • but it takes a long time to get from

  • To get from watching you know from to chimpanzees watching each other to a human being saying well

  • We're we all we all exhibit this faculty called consciousness. I mean, that's a long journey

  • You know that's a really long [journey], and there's going to be plenty of stages in between

  • One of the things I really like about Jean piaget the developmental psychologist was that he was so insistent that

  • children Act out and dramatized ideas before they understand them and

  • And Merlin Donald who's a psychologist at Queen's university?

  • wrote a couple of interesting books along those lines at all as well looking at the importance of

  • imitation for the development of Higher cognition in human beings and so the notion that

  • We embody ideas before we abstract them out and then represent them in an articulated way

  • I think is an extraordinarily solid idea

  • And I really can't see how it could [be] any other way

  • And if you watch children you see that like think about what a child is doing

  • When he plays house or she plays house you know the child acts out the father or the mother

  • But what's so interesting about me to think well? Look isn't that cute she's imitating her mother

  • It's like no

  • She's not that's not what happens because when your child imitates you it's very annoying because you move your arm

  • And then they move their arm, and you know that you move your head to copy you no one likes that

  • It's direct direct imitation. That's not what a child is doing with the child is playing what the child is doing is watching the mother

  • over multiple

  • instantiations and then extracting out the spirit called mother and

  • that's whatever if mother like across all those multiple manifestations and then laying out that pattern internally and

  • Manifesting itself in an abstract world, it's so sophisticated

  • It's just I'm that's what you're doing when you're playing house or having a tea partier or taking care of a doll

  • It's not you've seen your mother take care of a doll. You haven't seen that

  • It's that you're smart enough to pull out the abstraction

  • And then embody it and certainly the child is attempting to strive towards an ideal at that point

  • You know she's not lighting her doll on fire. You know well with you know certain exceptions, but generally

  • ones that we try to not encourage right, so

  • So you see that capacity in the children, and it's something we also know that if children

  • Don't don't engage in that sort of dramatic and pretend play to a tremendous degree

  • That they don't they [don't] get properly socialized. It's really a critical element of

  • Developing self understanding and then also [developing] the capability [of] being with others because what you do when you're a child

  • Especially around the age of four is you jointly construct a shared fictional world?

  • Will play house together let's say and then you act out

  • your joint [roles] within that shared fictional world you know and and that's a form of

  • Very advanced cognitions very sophisticated [I] see that and piaget did as well and so did you and so did freud these brilliant?

  • Observers and also Merlin Donald these brilliant observers of the manner in which cognition came to be they noted very clearly that

  • embodied imitation and dramatic abstraction

  • constituted the ground out of which higher abstract cognition emerged enough, how could it not [be] because

  • Obviously, we were mostly bodies before we were minds

  • Clearly and so we were acting out things way before we understood them just like the chimpanzees act out the idea that

  • You know you have to act reasonably sensibly if your head chimpanzee or you're going to get yourself ripped apart

  • And you see that rules because when wolves have a dominance dispute, you know

  • They pump up their hair at each other to look big and they they growl and bark and you know they're very menacing and one

  • Wolf chickens out rolls over puts up his neck and basically what he's saying is yeah, I'm pretty useless

  • So you could kill me [if] I want to if you want to and the other wolf says yeah

  • You know you're pretty useless and I could tear out your throat but tomorrow we might need to bring down a wolf or moves

  • so I'll kick you out and

  • And it's not like they think that

  • because they don't know they don't think [that] they acted out as a behavioral pattern then if you're an [anthropologist] or [a]

  • An ethologist and you went and watched the wolves you'd say it's as if they were acting according to the following rule and that

  • Often confused me because I thought well the wolves act black wolves act out rules, and I thought no. No a rule is what we

  • Construct, when we articulate a behavioral pattern right we observe a stable behavioral Pattern and when we articulate it

  • We can call it a rule but for the wolves. It's not a rule

  • It's just a stable behavioral Pattern and so we acted like wolf troops or chimpanzee troops all of that

  • When well I'm firfer untold really [untold] tens and perhaps hundreds of millions of years before we were able to formulate

  • That pattern of behavior at anything

  • approximating a story or the image and [and] even longer before we could articulate it as a set of

  • Ethical Rules, and I'm dwelling this I know I've repeated some of this before

  • But it's so important because you know there's this tremendous push, especially from the social the social

  • Constructionist to make the case that ethics is arbitrary ethics is morality is relative

  • There's no fundamental biological grounding in relationship to human behavior

  • Especially [in] the in the category of ethics, and I think that that's well first of all

  • It's dangerous because that means that people are

  • Anything you want to turn them into [and] you bloody well better be careful of [people] who think [that] and second?

  • I just think that the evidence that that's wrong is so overwhelming that we should just stop thinking that way

  • I mean the and that's probably why I'm also attacking this from an evolutionary perspective

  • there's lots of converging lines of evidence that ethic ethical standards of

  • at least of the most of the most crucial store Sort not only evolve but also

  • Spontaneously re-emerge for example in the dramatic play of children, so we need to take that seriously and so well

  • That's partly what we're doing here

  • trying to take that seriously, so

  • Okay, so the idea there at least in part was [that] the father employed the sun to generate habitable order out of Chaos [I]?

  • Also think there might be something more approximately true about that as well too because one of the things we do know

  • There's something that's cool about men

  • men are much more criminal than women and that by the way that does not look like it's

  • Socio-cultural partly because it peaks when testosterone kicks in around 14 like it just spikes the hell up

  • And then it really it stays pretty high until about 27 and so standard

  • Penological theory for those of you who don't know this is that if you have a repeat offender?

  • You know a guy who just won't stop getting in trouble

  • [yes] home in prison till he's 28, and it isn't like you're rehabilitating him or anything. It's like by 28

  • He's done with his criminal career because the crime curve is peaks at 15 and then falls down around

  • 27 or so it burns out

  • and that's often by the way that's often that's that's often when men get married and settle down and [stabilized] one of the things that's

  • One of the things that's cool about that is the creativity curve for men is almost exactly the same thing [it]

  • Ramps up when testosterone kicks in and then it starts to flatten out around 27 that

  • Curves Match very very closely so that's so that's that's quite cool

  • It's the creativity

  • Element of it that I'm particularly interested in because the creativity is in many ways it [attributed] youth and that's look. I mean

  • if you look at that sentence

  • And you've stripped it of its religious context

  • what you would say is that well the older people use the younger people to

  • Generate creative ideas and renew [the] world it's like yeah, that's that's what happens, and you you know you also have no idea

  • How many of the things that we?

  • Discovered or invented as human beings were stumbled across by children and adolescence

  • You know because they're well, they're much more exploratory

  • They're less constrained by their by their already extent knowledge structures

  • and they're less conservative so yeah that seems just right to me, so

  • And right in an extraordinarily important way

  • Because it also means that it's like if you're an actual father

  • One of the things that it means is [that] that's part of what you should be encouraging your son to do right

  • Which is which [is] does the rail of a father is to encourage

  • That is clearly the role and to encourage is to say well. Go out there confront the Chaos of

  • The unknown and the Chaos that underlies everything and drop it with it. You know how because you can do

  • It here as big as the Chaos itself

  • And you know do something useful as a consequence and makes your life [better] and make everyone else's life better

  • And you know you can do it and man. That's the right thing to tell that's the right thing to tell young men

  • You know talking to young women is more complicated because they have more more

  • Let's say issues to deal with because their lives are more complicated in some ways

  • but that's definitely the right thing to be to be telling your your son and

  • one of the things that I've really noticed

  • recently since I've been lecturing especially in the last seven or eight months most of my audiences being young men and and

  • I've talked a lot of them [too] a lot

  • I've talked a lot to them about both truth and responsibility

  • and I think that those those are the two things that underlie this capacity and

  • It there seems to me to be a tremendous [hunger] for that idea. It's not the same idea as right

  • You know it's very different ideas. It's a counterpart to right and so it's you know

  • Life is [hard]. [it's] chaotic. It's difficult. It's really

  • Definitely a challenge

  • And so you can either shrink from that and no bloody wonder because you know it's going to kill you

  • It's not it's no joke man where you can?

  • Fuckin front it and try to do something about it

  • Well, what's better and and then you say [to] the person look man?

  • you could do it like that's what a human being is like and if you just stood up and got yourself together and

  • You find out by trying that you can in fact do that

  • And I do think that that's that's a great core religious message as far as I [can] tell and I think that's deeply embedded

  • in this sort of in this sort of idea, so

  • All right, so this is what I've [been] telling you. This is something like how knowledge itself is generated

  • first of all there's the unknown as

  • And that's really what you don't know anything about and generally when you encounter that you don't encounter it with thought

  • You encounter it like this

  • Right and that that's the first

  • Representation of the absolutely unknown, it's something that is beyond your comprehension, and it's terrifying and because it's Beyond your comprehension

  • You cannot perceive it you cannot understand it

  • But you still have to deal with it and the way you deal with it

  • Is [that] you freeze that's what the that's what a basilisk does say to the to the kids in Harry Potter, right?

  • They take a look at it

  • And they freeze

  • that's the snake the

  • Terrible snake of Chaos that lives underneath everything you see that that thing freezes you and that's because [you're] a prey animal

  • but at the same time it makes you curious, and so that's the first level of

  • contact with the absolute unknown is the

  • Emotional combination of freezing and curiosity and that's reflected

  • I think in the dragon stories the dragon is the terrible thing that lives underground

  • Accords gold or hoards Virgins very very strange behavior for reptile as we pointed out before

  • but the idea [is] that it's a symbolic representation of the

  • Predatory quality of the Unknown combined with the

  • capacity of the Unknown to generate nothing but novel information

  • And it's very you can see that is very [characteristic] of human beings because we are prey animals, but we're also unbelievably

  • Exploratory and we're pretty damn good predators

  • And we occupy this weird cognitive niche and so one of the things we've learned is that if we?

  • Forth Lightly confront the unknown terrifying as it is there's a massive prize to be gained

  • continually and so that seems to be

  • true, right

  • [it's] true as anything is and then I would also say that that idea and we know that one of the metaphors that underlies [gods]

  • extraction of

  • Habitable order out of Chaos at the beginning of time is an older idea and a more archaic idea that God

  • confronted something like the

  • leviathan and that's one of the words for this serpent like Chaos creature that's often used in the old testament or the

  • Leviathan and they

  • Beat them on. Yeah. That's the other thing and so there's this [idea] that

  • I think came probably came from the mesopotamia that the God either in the [sun-like]

  • Aspect or in the father like aspect is the thing that confronts this terrible beast that?

  • represents the Chaotic unknown and

  • Cuts it into pieces and then sometimes gives the body parts to the populace in order to feed them so you can see a hunting

  • Metaphor there as well, but it's deeper than that and so

  • all right, so

  • The first thing is there's the absolute unknown and the unknown is what you do not understand. It's what's beyond the campfire

  • Maybe it's what's beyond the tree even more anciently [an] old [word] when we when we lived in trees

  • It's out there that where you don't know and what's out there

  • Crocodiles and snakes and birds of prey and cats and all sorts of things like predatory cats

  • And they will eat you but there's utility and going out there to find out

  • What's there like maybe you go?

  • And you don't kill the snake you kill the damn nest of snakes and that makes you pretty popular just as you should be that

  • accelerates your your rep reductive

  • Potential let's say and we're descended from people who did that and so we have this?

  • Notion about how the world is structured that's deeply embedded in our pSyChe [like] really really deeply way way down way below

  • the surface

  • Cognition way down in the limbic system in these ancient parts of the brain that are like

  • 60 million years old or a hundred million years old or older than that?

  • ancient ancient brain structures

  • And so the first thing we do is we act out our

  • Encounter with the unknown world and we act that out in the same way in a manner. That's analogous to the Manner

  • That's presented as a description of what it is that God does at the beginning of time to extract habitable order out of Chaos?

  • And [I] I will tell you about the other part of that for now, so you act it out first and then

  • The second thing is you watch people who act it out?

  • And you start to make representations of that that's stories, right?

  • And maybe you admire them and then after a long time you collect a bunch of those stories

  • and then you can say what that is you can articulate it as a pattern and

  • So and this is something Nietzsche also figured out to begin with you know because prior [to] Nietzsche

  • [I] would say he did so many things first it was quite remarkable. You know there was an idea that

  • You first think and then you act, and then people like to think that of course you do it

  • Bloody Rubbish because you're impulsive as you can possibly imagine you're always doing things before you think and sometimes

  • That's a really good idea so the idea that you see things and then think and then act

  • It's like you really know I'm sorry did I don't do that. I know one

  • I know I know does that and they certainly do that

  • Don't do that when they're emotional you know you act first and one of the things that Nietzsche said very clearly was that our

  • Ideas emerged out of the ground of our action over over thousands and thousands of years and then when philosophers were

  • Putting forward those ideas what they were doing wasn't generating creative ideas

  • They were just telling the story of humanity

  • It's already there. It's already in us it's already in our patterns of behavior and and it strikes me that that's

  • Well he was a genius and that was one of the genius one of his

  • Many many observations of pure genius and so you can think about it. You know you can think about it like this, [too] is that?

  • There's unknown and then you act in the face [of] the unknown and then you you dream about the action

  • and that's what you're doing in a movie theater, and then you speak about it and

  • So you know and of course once you speak about it that affects how you dream and how you dream affects

  • How you act it's not like the all of the causal direction is it was one way because it's not deep these things loop

  • But it's still from the unknown through the body through the imagination into articulation

  • That's the primary mode of the generation of of wisdom let's say and you can easily map that onto an evolutionary explanation

  • Because the body comes first right and then is the imagination, which is the body in

  • Abstraction and only then the word and of course that's [exactly] how things did evolve because we could imagine things

  • Long before we could speak at least that's the theory, so

  • and I represented that this is a

  • image from my book maps of meaning and so

  • So the idea is that this is the fundamental representation of the unknown as such it's half

  • spirit because it partakes of the air like a bird and it's half matter because it's on the ground like a like a like a

  • Make and and that's what you think is there when you don't know what is there?

  • That's how your body reacts to what's there when you don't know what is there? You know that [too] because if you're alone at night

  • You know it maybe you're a little rattled up for one reason other maybe you watched a horror movie and you know there's some weird

  • Noise in the other room. It's dark, and you could just try this once

  • It's like so you're on edge you think

  • You want to turn the light on and go in the room and see don't do that

  • just open the door a little bit and sneak your hand in and just watch what your

  • imagination

  • Fills that room with right and then then you remember what it's like to be three years old in bed in afraid of the dark

  • Right and I read a good book on dragons lately

  • Recently that that that had a very interesting hypothesis about them. I thought one of the things the guy did was track

  • I can't remember his name unfortunately

  • Track how common the image of the dragon was worldwide. It's unbelievably widespread

  • it's crazily widespread and he thought that this was actually the category of

  • Primate Predator and

  • The Predator was so predator is a weird category right because like there's there's crocodiles in it, and there's lions

  • And they don't have much in [common] except they eat you so it's a functional category

  • And so this is the this is the imagistic representation of the functional category of Predator and his predator

  • Theory was well if you're a monkey, then a bird would pick you off like an eagle, and so that's this

  • right and

  • Then if it wasn't eagle it was a cat as they climb teary trees and give you a good chomping and then if it wasn't

  • a cat And you go down to the ground and a snake would get you or maybe a snake would climb up the tree because snakes like?

  • to do that and get you and so that's a

  • pre cat

  • snake

  • basically

  • Free cat snake bird, and that's the thing you really

  • That's the thing [you're] really want to avoid you don't want to come across one of those and so

  • [and] then you know the other thing it does is breathe fire

  • Which is quite [interested] [because] obviously fire was both greatest friend and greatest enemy of humanity

  • And we've mastered fire for a long time it might be as long as [two] or [three] million years

  • That's what Richard rang him. [I] think it's [rang] [ham]. He wrote a book recently on. I think it was ragan

  • who wrote a book on when human beings [learned] to cook that was about two million years ago and cooking increased the

  • Increase the availability of calories you know how chimpanzees are sort of shaped like a big

  • Like they're ugly. They're shaped like a big bowling ball

  • You know they're really they look really fat, [and] it's and they're short

  • and they're wide and that's because they have intestinal tracts that are like you know 300 miles long and the reason for that is because

  • they have to digest leaves and so you go out in the forest and like sit there and eat leaves for a whole day and

  • See how that works out for you. You know yeah, they have no calories in them. So chimps spend about [inkless] I

  • think it's eight hours a day chewing and

  • It's because what they eat has no nutritional value

  • And then they have to have this tremendous

  • Guts in order to extract anything at all out of it human beings at some point

  • Just thought oh to hell [with] that we'll cook something and then we traded our guts for brain

  • Which you know more or less has worked, and I think it's made us a lot more attractive as well

  • So okay well, so the idea here was that

  • Well, that's the basic archetype [of] the unknown as such and then I like the st.. George version of this it's so cool because

  • St.. George lives in a like a castle and the castle is partly falling down and it's partly because there's a dragon

  • That's come up [to] like it's an eternal dragon

  • It's come back to giver who in a rough time which always happens

  • Because there isn't the eternal dragon is always given are giving our fallen down castles a rough time always

  • And so then St.

  • [George's] the Hero who goes out to confront the dragon and he

  • Frees the virgin from its grasp and I would say that's a pretty straightforward

  • Story about the sexual attractiveness of the masculine spirit that's willing to forthrightly encounter the unknown

  • That's it looks just straight looks like a straight biological representation to [me], and it's a really really old story

  • Right it's the oldest written story. We have and that's basically the mesopotamian creation myth

  • The anu male ish, which which basically lays out precisely that story and so and it's replayed. I mean I bet you

  • The movie Goers Among you especially the ones that [are] more attracted [to] the superhero. You know they're really flashy sort of

  • Superhero type movies, you've probably seen the St.

  • George story like 150 times in the last 10 [years] you never get tired of it because it's the central story of mankind so

  • you've got the unknown as such and

  • That is what you react to with your body in the existential terror and extraordinary

  • Curiosity are gripping you and then it's like the unknown unknowns that

  • Who's the politician under bush?

  • Rumsfeld yeah, I think the reason that that phrase caught on so well is because he nailed an archetype

  • There's unknown unknowns, and there's known unknowns

  • and that's the unknown unknown and you have to be able to react [to] an unknown unknown because they can get you and

  • You can't just plead ignorance because then you're dead that doesn't work like human beings are the sort of creature who has to know what?

  • To do when they don't know what to do, and that's very paradoxical and what we do is we prepare to do everything

  • That's right

  • We're on guard we prepare to do everything very very stressful and but also very engaging and very

  • Very much something that heightens consciousness

  • and maybe those circuits are

  • Permanently turned on in human beings because we also know that we're going to die and no other animal knows that and so sometimes I

  • [think] that our that our stress circuits are just on all the time, and that's part of what accounts for our heightened consciousness

  • so you have your unknown unknowns and then you have your

  • relatively you have the unknowns that you actually encounter in the world like the mystery of your of your

  • Romantic partner when you have a fight [with] them

  • It's like [well]

  • We're having a fight who the hell are you [I] mean you're not the absolute unknown because I know something about you

  • but you're the unknown as its manifesting itself to me right now, right and and and then there's a

  • known that we inhabit

  • And then there's the knower and the known is given symbolic representation as far as I've been able to tell in

  • Patriarchal form in the form of male deities and the unknown as you encountered

  • it's given Feminine form so

  • We won't get into that too much but but if you're interested in that you could look at my maps of meetings lectures

  • Or maybe take a look at the book but I think it's a good. I think it's a good schema for religious archetypes

  • I've worked on a long time it seems to fit the union Criteria quite nicely. It maps nicely [onto] Joseph Campbell's ideas

  • He got almost all has ideas from you however

  • and

  • It also makes sense from a biological and an evolution a perspective as far as I [can] tell that's a lot of cross validation

  • at least in my estimation

  • So okay so back to the hierarchy of dominance. Well, let's take a look at it a little bit, so

  • I'm quite enamored of lobsters as some of you might know

  • Because I found out this just blew me away when I found it out. I mean

  • I I've done a lot of work in Neuro Chemistry

  • Some similar chemistry because I used to study alcoholism and drug abuse and alcoholism

  • to study alcohol

  • You have to know a lot about the brain because alcohol goes

  • Everywhere in the brain it affects every neural chemical system

  • And so if you're going to study alcohol it kind of has to study, Neuro chemistry in General

  • And so I did that [for] [quite] a long time. I really got in a [murud] of a book

  • Called the Neuro psychology of anxiety by [Jeffery] Gray which is an absolute work of genius although extraordinarily?

  • Did I don't know how many references that book has it's like?

  • Must be a thousand and gray actually read them and worse

  • he understood them and then and then he and then he

  • integrated them [into] this book and so to read it you have to really master functional neural chemistry and animal Behaviorism and and

  • Motivation and emotion and neural anatomy like it's a killer book

  • but man

  • It's really rich and it's taken psychologists about 40 years to really unpack that book

  • But one of the things I learned about that was just exactly how much

  • Continuity there was in the neural chemistry of human beings in the neural chemistry of animals. It's absolutely staggering

  • It's the sort of thing that makes the fact of evolution something like [self] [evident]

  • I do think it's self-evident for other reasons that I'll tell you about later. I think evolution or I think natural selection

  • Random mutation and natural selection is the only way you can solve the problem of how to deal with an environment

  • That's complex Beyond your ability to comprehend

  • [I] think what you do is you generate endless variants because [God] only knows what the [hell's] going to happen next

  • They all almost all [of] them die because they're failures and a couple

  • propagate and you know the environment keeps moving around like a giant snake you never know what it's going to do next and so the

  • Best you can do is say well

  • Here's thirty things that might work, and you know twenty-eight of them are going to perish if you're if you're an insect

  • It's like the ratio is way way higher than that, so

  • Anyways back to the lobsters

  • In all of these so these creatures engage in in

  • Dominance disputes and and I think dominance is the right way to think about it because lobsters aren't very empathic

  • And they're not very social and so it really is the toughest lobster that wins

  • You know and what's so cool [about] the lobster is that?

  • When a lobster wins he flexes and gets bigger, so he looks bigger because [he's] a winner

  • It's like he's advertising that and the biological the [neurochemical] system that makes him flex is serotonergic

  • And you think well who cares what the hell does [that] mean?

  • Well tell you what it [means]

  • It's the same chemical that's affected by

  • Antidepressants in human beings and so like if you're depressed you're a defeated lobster like you're like this. I'm small

  • I'm not you know things are dangerous. I don't want to fight you give someone an antidepressant

  • It's like up they stretch, and then they're ready to like take on the world again

  • Well if you give lobsters who just got defeated in the fight serotonin, then they stretch out and they'll fight again

  • and that's like we separated from those creatures on the evolutionary timescale somewhere between

  • 350 and 600 million years ago, and the damn Neuro chemistry is the same and so that's another indication of just how

  • important Hierarchies of Authority are I mean they've been conserved since the time of

  • Lobsters right there weren't trees around when lobsters first first manifested themselves on the planet

  • and so what that means is these hierarchies that I've been talking about those things are older than trees and

  • So one of the truisms for what constitutes real from a Darwinian perspective?

  • Is that which has been around the longest period of time right because it's had the longest period of time to exert selection pressure

  • Well, we know we evolved and lived in trees something on the order of 60 million years ago

  • we're talking [ten] times as far back as that for the

  • Hierarchy and so the idea that human beings that the hierarchy [is] something that has exerted

  • Selection pressure on human beings is I don't think that's a disputable. That's not a disputable issue

  • How it's done it and exactly what that means we can argue about but like that sort of biological

  • Continuity is just absolutely unbelievable [I]

  • It was funny because I revealed this finding

  • I didn't discover this I read about it

  • But [I] talked to my graduate students about I used to take them out for breakfast you know and they were very

  • contentious Snappy Bunch and

  • And they're always trying to one-up each other

  • And they're quite witty and for like six months until it got very annoying

  • Every time one of them went up the other they'd stretch themselves out like snap their hands like

  • So [that] was that was very funny. It was really very funny. So you see this in Lobsters, and so that's pretty amazing so

  • You know and one of the other thing that's really cool about lobsters

  • Is that let's say you've been like talk lobster for a long time, but you're getting kind of old and some young

  • Lobster just you know whales the hell out of you and and so you're all depressed, but thing is your brain is dominant

  • But you don't have much of a brain because you're a lobster

  • and so now what are you going to do because you just lost and the answer is while your brain will dissolve and

  • Then you'll grow a subordinate brain

  • Yeah, so that's we're thinking about [two] right here for a couple of reasons first of all if any of you have ever been seriously

  • Defeated in life. You know what that's like. It's like

  • It's a death a descent a dissolution

  • and if you're lucky a regrowth

  • And and maybe not as the same person that's what happens to people with post-traumatic [stress] disorder right their brains undergo permanent neurological

  • Transformation and

  • they then

  • Inhabit a world it's much more dangerous than the world that they inhabited to begin with but we also know - if you have post-traumatic

  • Stress disorder or depression that your hippocampus shrinks

  • Right it dies and shrinks and you can sometimes get it to grow back your hippocampus shrinks and your amygdala grows and the amygdala

  • increases emotional sensitivity and the hippocampus inhibits emotional sensitivity and so if you've been badly defeated the hippocampus shrinks and the amygdala Grows

  • now if you recover the

  • hippocampus will regrow and the antidepressants actually seem to help that but the damn amygdala never shrinks again and

  • So well so that's another lesson from the lobster

  • It's quite a terrifying one but but it's one like it's so interesting that [you] can relate to that, [right]?

  • It's like I get what that poor crustacean is going through you know

  • so

  • Okay, here's the rats and this is from yak [bank] [steps] work rat. He was the first guy who figured out the rats giggle

  • And you might think well, what kind of stupid thing is that to study is like [$50,000] research grant for giggling rats. You know [aside]?

  • but

  • He discovered the play circuitry in mammals. That's a big deal right? It's like discovering a whole new continent

  • There's a play circuit in mammals

  • . It's built right in so it's not socially constructed. There's a there's a biological

  • Platform for that and so what?

  • [panksepp] would do with rats he found out if rats if you take a rat puff away from its mother it dies

  • Even if you feed it even if you keep it warm it dies now

  • you can stop it from dying by taking a pencil with an eraser on the end and

  • Massaging it right because rats won't live without love and the same thing happens to human babies

  • And we saw that Romania when there was that

  • Catastrophe have to tell Chesco in the orphanages where the orphanages were full of unwanted babies because

  • Ceausescu insisted that every Romanian woman was constantly pregnant

  • So the orphan is just stacked up with unwanted babies lots of them didn't even have names and they were warehoused warm

  • shelter food

  • Devastating lots of them died most of them died before the first year and the ones that didn't die were permanently

  • dysfunctional because

  • You have to be touched if you're a human being it's not an option you have to be played with it's not an option

  • It's it's part of Neural Developmental Necessity

  • And you have to also play fair, so because otherwise you produce a very disjointed

  • Child who isn't able to engage in the niceties of social interaction?

  • Which is continual play in some sense and reciprocity so what panksepp did with his [rat] he noticed that male rats?

  • juveniles really liked to wrestle and they wrestle just like

  • humans

  • Beings wrestle they pinned each other for crying out loud with like that that rat has just lost

  • He's down for a ten count right and so so what you do is you take Juvenile rats?

  • And you can find out that they want to play

  • because

  • you can attach a spring to them and

  • Then they'll try to run and you can measure how hard they're running by how hard they're pulling on the spring and then you can

  • Estimate how motivated they [are] and so you can find out that?

  • well Fed rat who doesn't have anything on his mind will still work hard to play if

  • To enter an arena where he's been allowed to play before he'll work [for] that

  • So that you think while the rats motivated, so the two rats

  • Go out there

  • and they play and

  • And so they're playing like dogs play and everyone knows what that looks like if you're you know what you have any sense about dogs

  • [they] kind of go like this and kids do that and

  • maybe you do that with your [wife] if you're gonna play with her a little bit okay my poor my poor wife man when she

  • Huh?

  • she was a she was a

  • Young she had older siblings and so she wasn't played with as much when she was little as she might have been and I

  • Used to like you know what you take a pill away

  • And you go like this three times right that means look out a pillow is coming your way

  • So I go one two [three] wow

  • But she looked she was completely dismayed at me like what do you do that for and I thought well I?

  • Eventually taught her that rule the other thing I used to do

  • The only thing I used to do you know it said sometimes

  • She'd come at me like this when we were playing round, and I grabbed her wrist

  • And I'd knock her for her for her hamsters heard not close together. She used to just get completely annoyed about [that] and I thought

  • Right that's what you do you just opened your hands well. She didn't know that either

  • So she hadn't been played [with] enough when she was a little [rat] and so

  • anyways

  • Anyway, so you let the route the little rats. Go out there, right?

  • And so let's imagine one [of] them is 10% bigger than other and so that the 10% bigger rat wins

  • Because 10% is enough in rat way to ensure that you're going to be the pinner rather than the penny, okay?

  • So so that's fine

  • so a knit net the rat the rat pins the big rat pins a little rat and now the big rat is the is the

  • Authority Rat and so then

  • the next time that the rats play

  • The little Rod has to invite the big rat to play so the big rats out there being cool and a little that pops up

  • And you know does the whole will you play with me thing and the big rat will deign to play with it

  • but if you pair them repeatedly

  • unless the big rat lets the little rat win 30 percent of the time so little rat will not invite him to play and

  • Panksepp discovered that it's like I read that that just blew me away

  • it's like that is so

  • amazing because you see well first of their there's an analogy to psays ideas about the emergence of

  • Morality out of play and human being so that was very cool

  • But the notion that that was built in to rats at the level of wrestling was and their social

  • They're deeply social animals right they have to know how [to] get along with [one] another and most of their authority

  • Disputes dominance disputes, you don't want them to end in bloodshed and combat because you know if your rat won

  • And I'm rat [2] and we tear each other to shreds

  • In a dominance dispute rat 3 is just going to move in it's really not a great

  • Strategy and so be better if we could settle our differences

  • You know somewhat peacefully and so while so rat anyway peg's had figured out that rats

  • Play and not only [did] they play they play fair and they [seemed] to enjoy it he also figured out

  • This was really cool [to] that if you give juvenile rats

  • attention deficit disorder drugs

  • Ritalin

  • suppresses prey play

  • So that's worth thinking about. It's like well. Why do you have to give?

  • Juvenile Human beings

  • Amphetamines in school well because they need to play well, you know they don't get to play you know get to wrestle around

  • I mean that's oppression as far as I can tell they don't get to wrestle around that's fine feed them some amphetamines man

  • [that'll] shut down the old play circuits. Well is the other problem is panksepp found out that if you don't let Juvenile male rats play?

  • Their prefrontal cortexes don't develop properly

  • Surprise surprise, you're not letting them [ensure]

  • It's like what else would you expect so you know that's something to think about really hard, I would say so

  • Well, so there's some wolves going at it, [and] [we're] all [hunting] not exactly there's some moves

  • having an Authority dispute, but

  • More technically speaking

  • And a lot of [its] posturing you know they tend they tend [not] well

  • Socialized wolves tend not to hurt each other during authority disputes because well for over obvious reasons

  • It's too dangerous and so they have other ways of demonstrating who should be listen to authorities

  • And there's chimps doing you have this particular house. I think if I remember correctly I think it's right

  • This is a really cool picture because I think this chimp chimps don't like snakes by the way

  • So for example if you take a chimp that's never seen a snake

  • And you show it a snake it is not. Happy it will get the hell away from that snake if you bring a chimp

  • Anesthetized into a roomful of chimps the chips will all get away from that and then look at the body

  • they don't like that either and

  • if you bring a big snake into a chimp cage even if the chimps have never seen it like they'll get away from it and

  • Then stare at it and chimps out in the wild if they see a big snake

  • They'll they'll stand there and they have a noise that means it's like holy crap. That's a big snake you know

  • It actually means that technically, I'll tell you why in a minute

  • But they get they stand away from it then they make this this

  • Noise which means oh my [God] look at the snake

  • and then they'll stand there for like 24 hours looking at the snake and so the snakes are really really they're super stimuli for

  • Chimpanzees

  • So that's pretty interesting in this chimp seem to learn how to take this dead snake and go

  • scare other chips with it and that was

  • That was hardly how he established his authority and you know and [while] there?

  • There's a there's a there's a threat, and you like if I was you, [and] I was around that chimp

  • I would take that threat seriously because those things are no joke man

  • And you see the same thing here with the I don't remember what kind of monkey that is but they're engaged in

  • agonistic Behavior and so

  • From so and there has been by the way there has been

  • Recent research showing that in higher order primates that [there] is snake Detection circuitry that's built into them right so it's not learned

  • It's not learned deeper than that now for a long time

  • Psychologist psychologist knew for a long time that I could make you afraid in a conditioning experience

  • Experiment much faster using a snake or a picture of the snake than a gun or a picture of a gun

  • So we can learn fear [to] snakes very rapidly spiders as well, and so then people thought well

  • maybe we were prepared to develop fear to snakes or

  • spiders that sort of thing

  • But the more recent research has indicated that it's more than just

  • prepared is that we have the Detection circuitry built right into us and

  • Well is because well why wouldn't we that's that's really the [issue]. It's like

  • It's not really [that] much of a surprise unless you think of human beings as a blank slate

  • And if you think that [been] I don't know you should crawl out of the 16th century

  • That's that's all I would look I would look at it because I mean that's that's that's just go on that idea

  • it's it's it's so wrong, so

  • So maybe you can think about this as a dominance hierarchy, but wolves look for those wolves look for

  • Credibility and competence as well and and chimpanzees don't like Brutal tyrants

  • And so we'll talk about it as the hierarchy of authority and so well. This is kind of how it starts to [develop]

  • You know you see well these girls are negotiating the domestic environment here

  • and how to behave properly and how to share and all that and turn and take turns

  • And so they're negotiating the hierarchy of authority and if you're good at reciprocity

  • It's sometimes you're the authority and sometimes the other person is the authority that's fair play, right?

  • And so these boys are doing the same thing and you see they're all smiling away

  • And so it looks like aggressive behavior and people who are not?

  • Very attentive and who are paranoid and who don't like?

  • Human beings can confuse this with aggression and they forbid it at schools

  • Which is you know I know when my kids were going to school for example. This was quite a while ago now

  • They were forbidden to pick up snow on the off chance

  • They might throw a snowball and we know how terrible that is

  • So what I told my son was [that] he was perfectly welcome to pelt any teacher he wanted to in the back of the head

  • with the snowball as long as he was willing to

  • Suffer the consequences of doing it, and I don't know if he ever did

  • But he was happy with he was certainly happy with the idea which made me very [happy] about him, so

  • Yeah, so so you know kids need to do this they really really

  • Seriously need to do this

  • it's what civilize --is them and [they] that needs to happen [between] the ages of [two] and [four] because if they're not

  • Civilized by the time they're [4] then you might as well

  • Just forget it, and that's a that's a horrible statistic

  • but it's unbelievably well borne out in the relevant developmental literature like there's lots of aggressive two-Year-olds most of them are male and

  • If they stay aggressive past the age of four they tend to be lifetime aggressive. They make no friends. They're outcasts

  • they're much more likely to end up antisocial criminal Delinquent and in jail and so

  • Your kids need to be socialized between the ages of two and four

  • And that's particularly true for the more aggressive males and most of the rest of two-year-olds are male and that isn't socialization by the way

  • So there's a [more--not] more abstract representation of the same sort of thing

  • And I'm trying to make the case [that] this that the that the hierarchy of authority emerges out of a [game-like]

  • Matrix an Underlying Game-like Matrix

  • And that's one of the things that one of the things that's so brilliant about Jean Piaget he figured that out

  • it's so smart and he was interested in the biological origin of morality and he identified it he he he

  • Traced the origin to play and the emergence of morality out of play, and that's it's so smart

  • [it's] just I [just] can't believe how smart an idea that was because it's the [bottom-up]

  • construction of of

  • Morality now Piaget was [a] constructionist and to some degree social constructionist

  • He underestimated the role of biology, but that doesn't invalidate his theory. It's really easy to put a biological underpinning underneath

  • underneath pas theory, we know the biology well enough to do it quite quite nicely now so I mean we

  • well the fact that tanks have for example [could] identify the play circuit is a really good start with that right because

  • Play has been around so [long] that. We have a circuit. That's dedicated to it and so that's that's a very very ancient

  • That's a very ancient issue

  • And so you know this is this is very much of an abstraction of a game here, and then of course you get the ultimate

  • abstraction in representation, what in a representation like

  • like that

  • Where even though even the landscape of the game is fictional and of course we've migrated to a large degree [into] those sorts of fictional

  • landscapes

  • fictional books movies

  • video games

  • so it's the same it's an extension of the same thing so practice for

  • practice for real life the Shades in some cases into real life itself, so

  • Alright

  • More representations of God the father I like these representations. I like the triangle

  • Idea I mean I [don't] know why God is wearing a triangular hat it's kind of a strange fashion choice

  • but I think it's

  • Associated with the idea of the pyramid and I think that's associated with the idea of the hierarchy of Authority and I think that's why

  • the Egyptians put their pharaohs inside pyramids

  • I know, there's more to it than [that]

  • But I think some of that has [to] do with the notion of this hierarchical structure you see this on that now

  • that's speculative obviously and I don't want to make too much [of] it, but

  • But I can't help but think that there's something to that see that's on the back of [the] American Dollar Bill

  • I like that a lot

  • [that's] like the eye of horus from the egyptians and so the idea here is something like

  • At the top of the Hierarchy is something that is no longer part of the hierarchy

  • Right, so if you move up the hierarchy enough what happens is [that] you develop the [ability] as a consequence of moving up that hierarchy

  • To be detached enough from the Hierarchy, so you're no longer really part of it

  • And so [that] you can move in all sorts of different hierarchies and the thing the idea here is [that] the thing [that] you're really?

  • Developing is the capacity to pay attention, and I would say from a from

  • mythological perspective the the one thing that seems to compete with the idea of the spoken word as

  • the as the source of the

  • Extraction of habitable order from Chaos is the [I] is the capacity to pay attention so marduk for example the mesopotamian creator. God who?

  • emerged in the hierarchy of

  • Mesopotamian gods and came out at the top right he was the victor of the gods

  • He had eyes all the way around his head and he could speak Magic words, and I really like that

  • I really like that idea and the egyptians developed that idea too because their God horus was the eye

  • Everyone knew was the eye of [horus] that that sense that image is so compelling that we still know [about]

  • everybody has seen the eye of [horus] with a really open pupil and

  • What the egyptians learned was that the open eye was what revivified the dead society it's so smart

  • So what do you do if your life? Isn't in order bloody well pay attention and that isn't the same as thinking

  • It's a different process paying attention thinking is like the imposition of structure in some sense

  • I know I'm oversimplifying but paying attention is something like watching for what you don't know and

  • So like one of the things I often recommend to my clinical clients if they're having trouble with a family member is

  • Number one, shut up. Don't tell them anything about yourself just and I don't mean in a rude way

  • It's just like no more personal information

  • number [two] watch them like a hawk and listen and if you do that long enough

  • They will tell you exactly what they're up to

  • And they will also tell you who they [think] you are and then you'll be shocked because they think you're something generally speaking

  • That's not like you what you are at all and when they tell you it's like a revelation to both of you

  • But attention [is] an unbelievably powerful force, and you see this in psychotherapy

  • Too because a lot of what you do and in any

  • Reparative relationship is really pay attention to another person

  • pay attention and listen

  • and

  • you would not believe what people will tell [you] or reveal to you if you watch them as if you want to know instead of

  • watching them so that you'll have your

  • prejudices

  • Reinforced that's usually how people interact is like. I want to keep thinking about you the way

  • I'm thinking about you, and so I'm going to filter out anything that just proves my theory

  • That's not what I'm talking about at all. It's like

  • I'm going to watch you and figure [out] what you're up to. [not] in a rude way none of [that]

  • I just want to see what's there and that'll be good for you

  • Probably and also be good for me, and so well, so that's the idea that

  • you know climbing up a hierarchy of authority can give you vision and that vision can

  • transcend the actual Hierarchy, and I think that's also the I think that's also the

  • That's the metaphysical space that an artist occupies because artists really aren't in a hierarchy there outside of hierarchies

  • You've watched the Lion king most of you yeah

  • That's that Zoo you know the little bird

  • that's the eye of the king that's the same thing there so and that's that's echoed in this idea as well, so

  • So well that's some more

  • More ideas of Hierarchies same idea. This is right gold

  • Silver Bronze, why gold gold is the sun [gold] is pure right?

  • So the idea is that the thing that's at the top of the hierarchy is incorruptible because gold doesn't mix with anything else, right?

  • It's this sort of metal that doesn't ever become corrupted. It's a noble metal

  • It doesn't become corrupted, and so it Shines like the sun

  • And it's associated with what's ever at the top of the [hierarchy] and the gold

  • The gold Medal is a disc like the sun, and it's awarded to those people who?

  • Occupied the top position and who are manifestations of the ideal and here's here's I can tell you a quick story

  • [so] imagine that you're watching an olympic contest

  • [I] found this happens to me very often with gymnastics because the gymnasts are so absolutely unbelievable you know

  • so you go watch the gymnastic performance and

  • the verse is out there bouncing around like

  • You know you can't even imagine doing it. They're so perfect at it. So you see this person they're going through this routine

  • They're just absolutely

  • Spectacular and flawless at it. You know at the [end]

  • They stop and everybody claps and and they're all excited to see what a human being can do and that's why we're in the audience

  • Watching because we want to see what a human being can do and the judges go like 9.8 9.8 9.8

  • Everybody's thrilled and then the next contestant comes out, and it's [like] well

  • They're just basically screwed right it's like this person came out there and was perfect

  • How are you going to top that that's an interesting question because this

  • Is a representation of what you do to top?

  • Perfection itself and you can do it [and] here's how you do it

  • And you know this even though you don't know you know it, so let's say the next contestant comes out

  • They're kind of shaky because it's like oh man the bar is being raised high so what they do is

  • they put themselves right on the edge of Chaos and

  • You can tell by watching them that they are one bloody fraction of a second from Catastrophe

  • [they're] pushing themselves farther than they've ever gone in the direction of their perfection [and]

  • Everyone in the room is so tense they can hardly stand it right you can hear a pin drop and that person is flipping around

  • It they're just it's just right on the edge of catastrophe [and] at the end

  • They go like this, you know

  • And there's that gesture of triumph that goes along with that and everybody rises in one instant and just claps like mad

  • It's like well, why what are you doing? What are you doing? When you're doing that right?

  • You can't even help it it grabs you right in the core of your being and you stand up

  • And it's it's an act of worship. That's what it is and you saw someone

  • Go Beyond their perfection into the domain of Chaos and establish order right in front of your eyes

  • And you're so thrilled about that you know you're happy to be alive

  • And everyone's celebrating it all at the same time, and it's an absolutely amazing thing, and that's what well sometimes

  • That's what this represents and sometimes that's what this represents

  • And that's what we're trying to get at because that's at the pinnacle of the hierarchy right not only are you doing?

  • What you should be [doing]?

  • but you're doing it in a way that increases the probability that you'll do it better the next time you do it and

  • [then] you could say here's another thing to think about along the same lines

  • And I know we haven't got that [out] of an easy yet

  • You tell your kids to play fair right you say [Norman] it's not [whether] [not] you win. It's how you play the game and

  • You say that you don't really know what you mean you feel kind of stupid saying it even though

  • You know it's true and your kid looks at you like there's something wrong with you because he doesn't know what you're talking about either

  • but you know it's true [and]

  • So here's why it's true

  • Life isn't a game. It's a set of games and

  • The rule is never Sacrifice victory across the set of games for victory and one game

  • Right and that's what it means to play

  • Properly you want to play so that people keep inviting you [to] play because that's how you win

  • Right you win by being invited to play the largest possible array of games and the way you do that is by

  • Manifesting the fact that you can play in a reciprocal manner every time you play even if there's victory at stake

  • And that's what makes you successful across time

  • And we all know that and we even tell our kids that but we don't know [that] we know it and so we're not

  • adapting ourselves to the game and Victory in the game

  • We're adapting ourselves to the [metagame] and victory across the set of all possible games, and that's what that well

  • That's exactly what as far as I can tell that's exactly what this is aiming at to that. That's the same idea that

  • There's that there's a transit. There's a mode of being that transcends the particularities of [the] of the localized contests

  • That's the other way to think about it and to act morally is not to win

  • today's contest at the expense of the rest of possible contests and

  • Again, I don't see that as something that's arbitrary it's not relativistic

  • there's an absolute Moral an absolute Moral stance there and everyone recognizes it and

  • And I also think it's the key to success

  • and I would also say it's very much akin in a strange way like the the the person who is the master at

  • Being invited to play the largest possible games number of games is also the same person

  • I haven't quite figured out the precise [relationship] between these two is also the same person that goes out

  • Forthrightly to conquer the unknown before it presents itself as the enemy at the door. They're the same thing now

  • I don't I can't haven't figured well. Why that is exactly but but

  • Well, I'll figure it out eventually and when I do I'll don't tell you well

  • if you're interested, so

  • okay, so here's the mother no ideas of

  • God as as

  • Hierarchical authority figures so strip the religious preconceptions off what you observe and just look at what you see well look there's primate

  • looking upward Ad

  • Dominance figure, that's that's what you see there now

  • It's very interestingly

  • symbolically

  • Represented because you have gone

  • The farther there with the cross and I think what that [means] as far as I can tell is [that] there's a recognition there in

  • the image that the person who's most dominant is the one who's or the most have the most [authority] is the one who's

  • Voluntarily accepted the suffering that's part of being and that's what that picture represents

  • It's like the authority holds that says this is what you have to accept and that that that that transfix is the viewer

  • Because of because of the fact that it's true, and you think well is that true, okay? Well think about it this way?

  • Do you like brave people or do you like cowards?

  • Well that that's pretty straightforward and what's the ultimate act of Bravery?

  • It's to come to terms with the fact that you're mortal and limited and to live forthrightly

  • Regardless well obviously that's at the core of what's of what's admirable and why would we presume that that's not the case

  • We act as if that's the case. It's what everyone dreams and wishes that they could they could do I mean assuming that?

  • You know you've dispensed with the idea that you're going to be immortal

  • I suppose that might be worth wishing for [too] or or perhaps not immortal is a very long time

  • But you certainly want this and that [image] says well

  • This is what you should be and you [know] we've got that same

  • Opening into the sky going on in that image that I showed you before it's like

  • This is a transcendent truth that constantly reman efest itself across time and space and jung would say it's built into your psyche that

  • Image now you know there are elements of it [that] are culturally constructed it wouldn't [necessarily] have to be the cross

  • Although the cross is a very old symbol. It's far older than then it's use in Christianity. It has been used in many many

  • religious

  • representations, but that echoes the soul echoes with that you know and

  • Well, then there's moses up there on [the] on the mount

  • Receiving these the the law and so we'll talk a lot more about that when we get to exodus

  • but if yeah yeah, yeah

  • If we get to exodus so well look where does it happen well on the mountain. Well, that's a pyramid

  • That's up right. That's optics up. It's it's up in stratosphere is up in the sky where where you look upward, okay?

  • And and then so what's happening to moses well here?

  • Here's a bit of a clue as far as I can tell [I]

  • Figured this out partly again by reading jean Piaget because one of the things that pSA said about kids was that

  • They first learned to play a game

  • But they don't know what the rules are meaning that if you have a bunch of kids together they can play a game

  • but if you take one of the kids out of the game when they're young say six, and you say

  • What the rule are what are the rules they can only sort of give you a representation?

  • So you take six-year-old one and he'll tell you some of the rules and six-year-old two will tell you different rules and and you know

  • Six-year-Old three will tell you different rules, but if you put them all together they can play so they have the knowledge

  • Embodied either individually or [in] the group the knowledge is there

  • to be extracted well then they get a little older they can extract the rules and

  • Then they start to play by the rules [and] then the CSA's last step was well

  • they didn't just the kids play by the rules that they learned that they can make the rules and

  • He thought about that as moral progression first you can play then you can play by the rules then you learn

  • Maybe because he didn't think everyone learned this that you're actually the master of the rules [that] [doesn't] mean the rules are arbitrary

  • But it means that

  • You could be the generator of the rule that's assuming that you know how to play the game

  • And he thought about that as a Moral Moral progression

  • And then I thought well that's exactly what happened [to] moses in in the story of exodus because moses is out there leading all those

  • Israelites around and like they don't have a law they don't have a lawgiver

  • They have a tradition, and they're all like crabby because both are in a desert. It's like

  • They're in a tyranny, but now they're in a desert. It's like. That's no improvement

  • So they're really getting pretty bitchy about it

  • and so they're worshipping False idols and having one catastrophe after another and they get moses to judge their

  • Conflicts so he does that for God only knows how long forever crabby israelites come to moses and bitch at him

  • It's like wow he did this and she did that and and so then he has to figure out how

  • [to] make peace

  • and

  • He does that so long that one of his I think it's his father-in-law tells him he has to stop doing it because he's going

  • To exhaust himself [well] then you think well, what's happening? Well?

  • And I'm not assuming that this is a like a literal historical story. I think again

  • It's a condensation. Well any group has a set of customs

  • Just like a wolf pack does and so then the customs are being manifest in someone. Who's a genius is watching and thinking okay?

  • Well, what's the rule in this situation? What's the rule in this situation? What's the rule in this situation and then in his imagination

  • [the] rules turn into a hierarchy and then he goes up on the mountain [just] bang and he thinks oh my God

  • Here's the rules that we've been living by all this time, and that's the revelation of the commandments well, and you think well

  • How else could it be you think the rules came first and baying them came second? It's like no the rules come first

  • Sorry the actions come first the obeying them comes first

  • And then you figure out what everybody's up to you say hey look this is what you've been up to all [along] everybody goes oh

  • Yeah, that seems to make sense peak and if it didn't who would follow them

  • no one was going to follow them if they don't match what's already there you just think about that is unjust and so that's that's

  • portrayed here as A

  • Cataclysmic human event it's like oh my God we've been chimpanzees. We've been in this hierarchy of authority for so long

  • we have no idea what we're doing and all of a sudden poof it bursts into

  • Revelatory consciousness, and we could say here is the law and you say well is it given by God well?

  • Hey it depends on what you [mean] [by] God we could start with [that] presupposition, but it's not like it

  • Just came out of nowhere it took it and this is something else Nietzsche observed

  • so interestingly, and he said you know that a moral revelation was the consequence of a

  • tremendously long process of initial

  • construction and then formulation thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years of

  • custom a building custom before you get the revelation of the

  • Articulated law and that's a description of the pattern [that] works. Let's say well. What's the pattern that works?

  • It's the game that you can [play] with everybody else day after day with no degeneration

  • And that's another thing piaget figured out. It's so brilliant, and that's his idea of the equilibrate state

  • it's an extension of the [menu'] accounts idea about the universe [Maksim] right act in a way so that each action could become a

  • Universal rule that was Kinda Mental Moral Maxim and PSa put a twist on that. He said no, no, that's not exactly yet. [it's]

  • Act in such a way that it works for you now

  • And next week and next month and next year and ten years from now and so that while it's working for you

  • it's also working for the people around you and for the broader society and

  • Then and that's the equilibrate estate

  • And you could think about that as an intimation of [the] [kingdom] of the city of God on Earth

  • It's something like that

  • And it's based on this idea that a morality has to be iterable

  • And you know there's lots of there's been lots of simulations online already artificial intelligence simulations of trading games

  • Right I mean the people who've been studying the emergence of Moral behavior say in artificial intelligence

  • Systems have already caught on to the idea that one of the crucial elements to the analysis of morality is inner ability

  • you can't play a degenerating game because

  • Because it degenerates

  • Like obviously you want to play a game that at least [remains] stable across time and God if you could really get your act together

  • Maybe it would slowly get better and of course that's what you'd hope for your family, right?

  • That's what you're always trying to do unless you're completely hell-bent on revenge and destruction

  • It's like is there a way that we can continue to play together that will make playing together even better the next day

  • that's what you're up to and

  • Well, I don't see anything arbitrary about that [and] part of it. This is also

  • why I think that bloody post modernists are so incorrect because you know they say something like there's an infinite number of interpretations of

  • The world and that's actually true

  • But then they make a mistake and they say well, no

  • Interpretation is to be privileged over any other interpretation. It's like wrong

  • wrong that's that's where things go seriously off the rails because the

  • Interpretation has to be and this is the piagetian

  • Objection is like if you and I are going to play a game rule one is we both have to want to play

  • Rule two is other people are going to let us play rule 3 is we should be able to play it across a pretty long

  • Period of time without it degenerating and maybe rule 4 is well. We're playing the world shouldn't kill us

  • It's like there are not very many [gay] like you don't send your kids out to play on the superhighway, right?

  • So they're not playing hockey on the superhighway because the world kills them and so

  • There's an infinite [number] of interpretations

  • But there is not an infinite number of solutions [and] the solutions are

  • Constrained by the fact of the world and are suffering in the world and then also constrained by the fact that we constrain each other

  • And so that's that's where. I think that's gone like dreadfully dreadfully wrong, so

  • All right

  • It's really fun to look at these old pictures once you kind of know what they mean, you know the leaf

  • That's what I've discovered. Is that once I kind of understand the underlying

  • Rationale for I mean someone worked hard on that that's an engraving right they took a long time making that picture

  • They're serious about it and when you understand what it means

  • You know all those people there their prostate prostrate at the at the at the revelation of the law?

  • It's like well, no wonder

  • It's like break the law and see what happens breaks the universal Moral law man and see what happens

  • You know I see people in that situation

  • Well as you all do all the time perhaps me more than you because I'm a clinical psychologist

  • you know and if the people I'm seeing haven't broken the

  • Universal law then you can bloody well be sure that people around them have it's no joke

  • Like you make a mistake and things will go seriously wrong for you, and so it's no wonder that. You'd be

  • Terrified at the revelation of the structure that governs our being one of the things that's so remarkable about the old testament

  • This is another thing Nietzsche commented on: he was a real admirer of the old testament not so much of the new testament

  • He thought it was a sin for Europe to have glued the new testament on to the old testament

  • [because] he thought the old testament was a really accurate

  • representation of the phenomenology of Being. It's like

  • stay awake speak properly be honest or

  • Watch the hell out

  • Because things will come your [way] that you just do not want to see at all and it might not [just] be you it might

  • Be everyone you know and everything about your culture that is demolished for for generation after generation. It's like

  • Stay awake and be careful

  • And I like I think that people only don't believe that when they're being hubristic

  • And I think that most people know that deep in their hearts

  • You know when you get high on your horse that happens fairly often if you have any sense you think geez I better be careful

  • [top] myself down and fare a bit because if I get too puffed up man

  • Something's going to come along and take me out at the knees and everyone knows that pride comes before a fall

  • It's like if you have any that's why it says in the old [testament] that fear of God is the beginning of wisdom

  • [it's] like I've never in all my years as a clinical psychologist, and this is something that really does terrify me

  • I have I have never seen anyone ever get away with anything at all even once you [know]

  • There's that old idea that. God has a book you know and keeps track of everything in heaven. It's like okay

  • Okay, [you] know maybe it's not a book

  • fine

  • But that is a really useful thing to think about because well, maybe you disagree

  • Maybe you think people get away with things all the time

  • I tell you I've never seen it what I see instead

  • is [that] thing happens right they someone twists the fabric of reality and

  • They do it successfully because it doesn't snap back at them that moment and then like two years later something

  • Unravels, and they get walloped and they think oh my God that's so unfair and then we track it

  • It's like but what happened before that this and then what this and then what this and then what oh?

  • Oh this well that's where it went wrong. It's yeah, because you can't twist the fabric of reality

  • without having it snap back

  • It doesn't work that way, [and] why would it because what are you going to do twist the fabric of reality?

  • I don't think so

  • I think it's bigger than you. You know

  • And I think that one of the things that really tempts people is the idea that well, I can get away with it

  • It's like yeah you try you see. Oh, well that works

  • It's like you get away with nothing and that is the beginning of wisdom and I it's something that deeply terrifies me

  • And you know err ever since?

  • last September when I

  • Came to Board like broader public

  • attention one of the thing I'd be terrified [of] making [mistake] because I certainly know I'm more than capable of making a mistake and

  • Going so far either. I haven't made [one] or no one found out about it, so

  • But it's like you know we walk on a very thin and narrow Edge

  • and we're very lucky when things aren't degenerating into Chaos around us or

  • Rapidly moving too far too much order

  • and it's not an easy thing to stay on that line and

  • You can tell when you say you're on that line because the things are deeply meaningful and engaging when you're on that line

  • but if you're not

  • Existentially terrified about the consequences of wavering off that then you are truly, not awake

  • So and that's what I see in this picture

  • You know it's like look out man, because there are rules and if you break them

  • God help you

  • so one of the things that seems to me the case with regard this in the question period A bit last time is that

  • one of the things that seems to be actually one of the

  • Advantages to gluing the new testament on to the old testament is the idea of a transformation and morality that is analogous to the pia

  • Jetty an idea that

  • After you learn to play [by] the rules you can learn to make the rules because I think that's actually what happens to some degree

  • in the transition between the [old] testament and the new testament

  • Because in the old testament most morality is prohibition

  • Here are things you shouldn't do. It's like no fair enough. That's a lot of what you do with your kids

  • Don't do this don't do this don't

  • Especially when they're happy you're always going around telling them to stop being so happy because all they're doing is causing trouble

  • It's quite painful if you're a parent and you notice that but the first morality is prohibition

  • right

  • Control yourself so you don't cause too much trouble and then maybe if you get that down

  • And you're good at it, then the next thing is well once you're disciplined

  • then you can start working [toward] something that's a positive good, and that's the transformation that seems to me to [be] fundamentally characteristic of the

  • Juxtaposition of the new testament on to the old testament, but in these images is still something like serve tradition serve the father

  • psychologically speaking support the tradition because

  • You live on it

  • they're in an old mesopotamian story the enumeration you can which you can read about if you're interested [in] the

  • Original gods who are really badly behaved? They're like two year [old] in fact. They're a lot like two year olds

  • They kill the primordial gone absolute

  • Pea tree oracle God they kill him and try to live on his corpse

  • Well, that's what we all do right because we live on the corpse of our ancestors

  • You could say we live on the corpse of our culture

  • It's dead

  • And that's not a great place [to] live [so] you have to keep revivifying it so the damn thing

  • You know stays

  • Active and awake you you stay [on] the carbs for too long and then the devil or the Demon of Chaos comes back

  • And that's what happens in the mesopotamian story

  • It's like don't be thinking that you can stay on the corpse of your ancestors for too long without

  • Contributing to the revivification of the system because the Chaos that all of that holds that that all that

  • holds that bay will definitely come and visit you you [see] that in stories like

  • The Hobbit you know hobbits. They're nice they like to eat. [they're] kind of fat. They're shorts are not very bright you know

  • They're hubristic. They have no idea. What's out there in the broader world

  • They're protected if you remember by the striders who are the sons of great Kings who look like?

  • Tramps they have nothing but contempt for them they patrol the borders and keep the Bloody hobbits safe

  • But out there out there in the periphery all hell is brewing and Chaos is is is

  • Generating and forming and that's an archetypal story

  • And that's why people like that story so much

  • Because that's exactly right [like] we're the hobbits and there are we are

  • Protected from Chaos by the spirits of our dead Ancestors, and we're too damn stupid to know it, and we think oh well

  • We don't need them anymore and that to me that's post-Modernism

  • That's what the bloody universities are doing with the humanities [to] absolutely appalling and we will pay for it

  • so

  • Unless we wake up, and hopefully we'll wake up because that would be better than paying for it even [though] being awake as well

  • [they're] painful

  • so

  • so then I had this vision one time and I kind of portrayed it in this in this image of

  • What the world was like and I thought well, it's not a pyramid

  • It's not a single Hierarchy of authority that's not what it is

  • It's it's an array of hierarchies of Authority so you imagine this sort of infinite plane and the the infinite plane

  • There's nothing but pyramids and inside the pyramids there are strata of people

  • Everywhere far as you can look some of the pyramids are tall some of them are short they overlap

  • it's endless the [plain] is endless and those are all the positions to which you could rise and

  • everybody's inside the pyramid sort of crammed up trying to move towards the top and then there's the possibility of sailing across over top of

  • all [of] them and seeing how the structure itself works

  • and that's and that's the eye that floats above the

  • pyramid and it sees the

  • structure itself and the highest order of being is [not] to be at the top of the pyramid it's to use the

  • discipline that you attain by striving towards the top of the pyramid to release yourself from the pyramid and move one step up and

  • That's I [think] that's one of the things that's instantiated in the idea of the for example of the holy ghost

  • so

  • And I think that's akin to that that's sisyphus and needs a set of sisyphus if I remember correctly that one has to

  • [Imagine] him happy well

  • If there's a rock at the bottom of the Hill

  • Then you might as well push it up the hill and if it rolls back [down] well

  • then you've got something else to do don't you can push the damn rock back up the hill and there's no shortage of

  • Rocks to put up to push up the hill and that's what we're built for anyways

  • And so let's go out and like push some damn boulders up the hill and then maybe we could have enough self-confidence

  • And enough enough respect for ourselves that we wouldn't have to turn to

  • Hatred and revenge and try to take everything down because I think that's the alternative

  • so

  • He's not weak. That's one thing you can say about him

  • The same idea represented there right that's outlets who voluntarily takes the world on his shoulders

  • It's like the idea of christ taking the sins of the world on his shoulders

  • [it's] exactly the same notion which is the notion that you should be able to recognize in yourself all the horror of

  • Humanity and take responsibility [for] it because that's what that means and the thing that's so interesting about that is that if you can recognize

  • Yourself in yourself all the horror of humanity [you] [will] instantly have a hell of a lot more

  • Respect for yourself than you did before you did that because there's some real utility and knowing that you're a monster

  • Now on just because you're a monster doesn't mean you have to be a monster, [but] it's really useful to [know] that you are one

  • so then and one of the things that Jung

  • Knew and this is something that I find so [amazing] about his writing [is] I think something that really distinguishes him for example from Joseph

  • Campbell who talked about following your bliss is like

  • Jung said very clearly that the first step to enlightenment is the encounter with the shadow and what he meant by that was

  • Everything horrible that human beings have done was [done] by human beings

  • and you're one of them [and]

  • So if you don't understand that and to understand that really means to know

  • how it was that you could have done it and that's a shattering thing to try to imagine that to try to imagine yourself as

  • Someone who's engaged in medieval torture to see how you could in fact do that

  • You're never the same after you learn that but being never the same after learning that is

  • Unbelievably useful because when you understand that that's what you're like, then you're a whole different creature

  • And I don't think and this is something

  • I did learn from jung is that you cannot be a good person until you know

  • How much evil you contain within you it is not possible, and it's partly because you just don't have any potency

  • like if you're just naive if you're just nice if you'd never hurt anyone you'd never hurt a fly you don't have the

  • Capability [for] any of that, why would anyone ever take you seriously?

  • You're you're just you're a domestic animal at best

  • You know and a rather contemptible one at that?

  • and it's a very strange thing because you wouldn't think that the revelation of the capacity for evil is a

  • precondition [for] the realization of good

  • But I believe first of all why [would] you be serious enough to even attempt [to] pursue the good?

  • Unless you had some sense of what the consequence was of not doing it

  • You have to be serious about these sorts of things. It's not it's not it's not the game of a child, right

  • It's the game of [a] fully developed adult and you have learned this in part when I had little kids

  • I wrote a chapter from my new book called never let your children do anything that makes you dislike them and

  • Why was that and I read I read that wrote that after [I] knew I was a monster

  • And I thought I'm going to make sure I [liked] my kids

  • I'm going to make sure they behave around me so that I like them because I'm way bigger than them

  • and I'm way more cruel than they are and I've got tricks up my sleeve that they cannot even possibly imagine [and] if if they

  • Irritate me. [I]

  • will absolutely

  • Take it out on them, and if you don't think that you're the sort of person that would do that

  • Then you are the sort of person [who] is doing it?

  • you know

  • We're not going to get to Adam and Eve ha ha

  • Aria I watched this great documentary once

  • Called Hitman hart and was about Bret hart and who was the most famous Canadian in the world for a while and he?

  • was a worldwide wrestling federation wrestler you know and he was a good guy and

  • He came from this famous family of wrestlers who all came from Alberta?

  • I think there were seven brothers who were wrestlers and seven sisters and all the sisters married wrestlers, and they were all

  • offspring children of Stu hart who

  • Was a wrestling impresario like 40 years ago

  • and it was it was such a cool documentary because I was always wondering why in the world did people watch wrestling and

  • And then believe it you know believe it. Do you believe movies when you go watch them? It's like

  • That's a hard question to answer while you're there you do and so if you're watching wrestling, and you're a wrestling fan

  • Do you believe it? Well it is a matter of belief?

  • It's a matter of being engaged in a drama and there are different levels of drama right so let's say worldwide wrestling

  • Federation drama is not the most sophisticated form of drama, okay?

  • But I'm not being a not being a smart aleck when I'm saying that

  • There is drama of different sophistication for different people, and that's also why religious truths exist at multiple levels simultaneously

  • Right it is got to [be] something in it for everyone, and that's a hard belief system

  • that's a hard system to put together something for the

  • Unbelievably sophisticated and something for the common person okay?

  • So we have wrestling and bret hart was a good guy, and he fell into the archetype of being a good guy

  • And that's partly what [the] what the story's about. It was a bit too much for him, but um

  • One of the things that he he laid out

  • So carefully where because he figured that 120 million people knew him something like that and that everywhere he went

  • he was treated like a hero and he found out quite a bit of quite a burden as you could imagine if you think about

  • It but he portrayed. What was happening in the wrestling ring as

  • classic good against evil but not

  • Conceptualized and discussed right embodied thought out acted out

  • You know like like the like thor and the hulk except like right in front of you and so

  • well

  • That's exactly this sort of thing. I mean we could consider hockey more sophisticated than wrestling perhaps and

  • As I said I'm not being a critic of these, I'm not being

  • Critically minded about these things I understand their purpose, and I would highly recommend that documentary it's a brilliant documentary

  • But this is it's the same thing. It's a silver cup right. It's like there's the hero of the team

  • That's the hero of the team's you know here's something cool

  • if you're the fan of the

  • Toronto

  • blue Jays are the Toronto maple leafs of course this hardly ever happens to you if you're the fan of the Toronto maple leafs because

  • they always lose, but haha but but if

  • You're watching a game and your team wins and we take your testosterone

  • Levels then they went up

  • And if you watch the Toronto maple leafs and they lost, and you're a fan then your testosterone levels go down

  • So that's pretty damn funny. You know. I mean really don't you see how deeply instantiated. This is in people

  • I mean it bloody well alters your biochemistry like your your your testosterone levels. It's all more my team loss

  • You know it's like ah do. We know there'll be nothing in it for the wife tonight. You know

  • Yeah

  • Well, this is the cosmos I think from from the phenomenological perspective and one of the things that that that has come

  • To my realization is that this is real?

  • This is real. It's not a metaphor

  • [it's] [way] deeper than a metaphor the most real things about life are the place you don't know and the place you know and

  • You could say well that's explored territory and unexplored territory that's real and it's been around forever back to the lobsters

  • You know if you put lobsters in their new place the first thing

  • They do is go around their territory finding places to hide and also making a burrow so the first thing

  • They do is establish what they know?

  • Against what they don't know and [that's] real it's real from the Darwinian perspective

  • And we're going to say that what's real from the Darwinian perspective is plenty real enough because we're alive [and] everything and so that sort

  • Of thing matters like well, that's what this is the taoist symbol. That's what it says. Is that what way it says?

  • What is experience made of?

  • Eternally that's easy

  • Chaos and order and

  • In every bit of Chaos. There's the possibility of order and in every bit of order

  • There's the possibility of Chaos, and that's the way right. That's the path of life

  • That's life itself and where you're supposed to be is right on the border between the two of those and why is that?

  • stable enough

  • Engaged enough, right?

  • So not only are you doing what you should be doing you're doing [in] a way that increases the probability that you'll do it better

  • tomorrow and you can tell when you're doing that because

  • You're engaged you're in the right time and place and your your neurology tells you that that's what

  • meaning is that's what transcendent meaning is and that's so cool because I also think [that] that is the antidote to

  • Existential suffering the antidote to existential suffering is to be at the right place at the right time and you know?

  • You want to get technical about it okay anxiety and pain?

  • That's the cause that's the reality of the existential [so] suffering okay

  • So let's say you're in the right place at the right time what happens to you, biochemically?

  • Dopaminergic activation, what does that do?

  • Suppresses anxiety and it's analgesic now

  • it's more than that because also produces positive emotion and the desire [to] move forward and it underlies creativity and

  • And so so not only do you get the positive engagement from a neurochemical?

  • Perspective you get the analgesia and you get the anti end and you get the reduction of [anxiety] so it's not hypothetical

  • It's and it is the case that the dopaminergic systems those are the exploratory systems unbelievably ancient and archaic are

  • activated when you're optimally positioned to be

  • To be what?

  • Incorporating new information, which is what human beings do because we're information foragers, and so we want to be secure

  • But building on [our] security at the same time and then we want to do it for ourselves

  • We want to do it for other people we want to do it for our families

  • We want to do it for broader Society we want to bring the whole world

  • Together in alignment to do that, and that's meaningful

  • And God only knows what we could do about the suffering of the world if we did that you know we have no idea

  • What we could do if [we] started doing things properly and maybe so many of the things that dismay us about life

  • We could we could stop

  • I mean

  • We stopped a lot of them in the last hundred years you [know] things are a lot better than they were a hundred years ago

  • Obviously, they're not perfect, but [a] hundred years ago

  • 120 years ago man, you know the average person in the western world lived on less than a dollar a day in today's dollars

  • It's like you just try that for a week and see how much fun that is

  • so the daoists

  • Well, what is this well?

  • This is the pre cosmogonic Chaos out of which the [word] of [God] extracted habitable order at the beginning of time

  • It's the same thing. It's the [same] thing and [that] Chaos

  • We'll talk a bit more about [that] later

  • I guess because it's a very complicated thing to to describe, but it's certainly the thing that when you encounter

  • The Chaos is what you encounter when the twin towers fall?

  • right you remember what that was [like] right, so

  • It was it was september 10th. Well that was the world everyone knew what the world was like and then it was september 11th

  • and everyone walked around day for three days because

  • the [Building's] [failed]

  • But so what you can see a building fall, you can understand what it's what happens when a building falls

  • So then what's going on with the being dazed well?

  • it's the Chaos that underlies our habitable order manifested itself in those buildings [collapse] was a Brilliant act of Terrorism and

  • Everyone was frozen and curious because that's how we react to that sort of thing the it's like

  • It's like the shark. You know remember that famous

  • That famous movie poster for jaws with the woman swimming on the top of the water and that terrible

  • Leviathan shark underneath coming up to to take her out. Well that's life man

  • That's the world and now and then you see [that] [and] when something falls like the twin towers fall you

  • remember that the Ocean below you the abyss right the primordial abyss that bloody thing is deep and

  • Then you're fragile, and that happens when [someone] betrays you and it's happened

  • It happens to you when your dreams fall apart you encounter that Chaos again from which the world is extracted

  • And then you're called upon to act out

  • attention and the word in order to bring the world back into order and none of that is

  • none of that is

  • Superstitious none of that is superstitious none of that's even metaphorical. It's real

  • Its ribs more real than anything else, and I [think] the reason for that in part is that

  • This has been it's been this way forever

  • Right as long as there's been life

  • this has been the rule of life and

  • That's the cosmos that's reality. That's what we inhabit

  • And so one of the things you know the the so-called new atheists

  • And I they don't want to go on a tangent about new atheists because I think atheists are often remarkably honest and very

  • consistent in their analysis, so

  • But I just don't think they're taking the problem seriously that like I don't think they take their evolutionary

  • theorizing nearly

  • With the seriousness that it that it necessitates, and I don't think that I

  • Don't think that you can dispute the proposition that the longer something has had a selection effect

  • Life the more real it [is] it's the fundamental

  • axiom of Darwinian biology

  • And I think the Darwinian world is more real than the [physical] world that was the argument that I was trying to have with

  • with Sam Harris, and I didn't do the world's best job with that although it went not too bad the second time, but it's

  • It's not something to be taken lightly. [it's] a very

  • serious Profound and meaningful

  • proposition and

  • People [act] [it] out and want to act it out whether they know it or not

  • That's Marduk

  • So the story of Marduk, I'll just give it to you very briefly

  • Time at an apse who are locked in embrace at the beginning of time goddess of [saltwater]. God of freshwater?

  • Together Chaos an order right they give rise

  • Masculine feminine they give rise [to] the world of the elder gods and those are to me their primordial

  • motivational forces or something like [that] and

  • Their rage and their lust and their love and all these things that possess us that are there forever

  • and they're out in the world acting and they carelessly slay absolu their father and

  • they're making a racket and then they

  • Collapse ooh and then time at

  • gives wind of [that], and that's a [timeout] right there by the way she's kind of a rough looking creature and

  • She's a mother of all things and so she's not very happy about this. They said though these her children have destroyed

  • structure itself Plus

  • They're noisy and Careless and so she thinks all right, just like Noah

  • Just like the God that brings the flood to know what exactly the same idea time ad comes back

  • It says yeah, okay enough is enough. I'm going to take you out and she makes this

  • Battalion of monsters and puts the worst monster there is at the head of the Battalion. His name is King

  • He's like a precursor to the idea of Satan and she lets the gods know hey

  • I'm coming for you, and so they're not very happy about this because their gods, but like yeah

  • She's Chaos itself right she gave birth to everything. This is no joke and so they send one

  • God out after another to confront her and they all come [back] with the tails between their legs

  • There's no hope and then one day

  • There's a new God that emerges in that marduk and the gods know as soon as he pops up they know he's something new

  • Remember and this is happening [while] the mesopotamians are assembling themselves into one of the world's first great

  • Civilizations so all the gods of all those tribes are coming together to [organize] themselves into a hierarchy to figure out

  • What proposition rules everything and so marduk is elected by all the gods and he says look I'll go out there

  • And I'll take on time at but here's the rule from here on you follow me. I determine destiny

  • I'm the top God I'm the [thing] at the top of the hierarchy and all the other gods say hey look no problem you get

  • rid of Chaos

  • We do exactly what you say now marduk. [he] [has] eyes all the way around his head and he speaks Magic words

  • Those are his primary attributes

  • and so he takes a net and he goes out to confront time out and and he he

  • He encloses her in a net which

  • I think is so cool because it's an encapsulation right? It's a conceptual encapsulation. He encloses Chaos itself in a conceptual structure

  • he puts it in the net and then he cuts her into pieces and he makes the world and

  • then

  • Then he creates human beings to inhabit [that] world and to serve the gods

  • and he creates human beings out of the blood of king of the worst of the demons and

  • That took me to call into young as the student might help me figure that out. I thought that's pretty damn pessimistic

  • It's like you know what exactly it sounds like a fall metaphor. It's like the idea of original sin, but but our

  • joint Conclusion

  • With regards to that with it human beings are the only creatures in creation that can truly deceive

  • Right we have the capacity for evil. Just like it says in the Adam and Eve story

  • We can actually do that

  • and that's why we're made out of the blood of king of the king of the demons the

  • We are the thing that can deceive that can twist the structure of reality?

  • well, so marduk now the mesopotamians had an emperor right and the emperor was the

  • Avatar of Marduk that's what made him emperor. He was only at emperor

  • if he was going to be marduk he had to be a good marduk which Mantia do confront time at Chaos and

  • Cut her off and make or out of her pieces and what the method name is used to do at the New Year's celebration

  • They go outside the walled city, and that's explored territory versus unexplored territory

  • They go outside their walled city into [Chaos] and they bring all the statues that represented the gods

  • And they'd act this out because they're trying to figure something out right you're trying to figure [out] what this means

  • They're acting it out, and then they take their emperor and the priest would make them kneel, and [they'd] take all his king

  • equally all his king uniform off his emperor uniform off and

  • Make him kneel and humiliate him and nail him with a glove and say okay

  • How were you not a good [marduk] this year right? And then he'd recount all the ways that he was inadequate in

  • confronting Chaos, and then they do the celebration and marduk would win and and the king would go sleep with a royal prostitute and and

  • The reason for that was it's the same [idea] st.. George pulling the virgin from the dragon

  • it's exactly the same idea that if you call if you encounter the

  • Reptilian Chaos you can extract something out of it with which if you unite, you produce creative order

  • That's what they were acting out, and that was the basis for the mesopotamian idea of sovereignty. It's so smart

  • it's so unbelievably smart and you know the mesopotamians had a massive influence on the

  • civilizations that then had a massive influence on assets one of the stories of how the notion of sovereignty itself came to be it's the

  • Evolution of the idea of God that's one way of thinking about it

  • But even more importantly it's the evolution of the idea of the redemptive human being right?

  • And that's taken - it's one of its conclusions following the story of buddha

  • But also in the story of christ the idea of the perfect individual and the notion is well

  • That's the word that speaks truth into Chaos at the beginning of time to generate habitable order that is good

  • That's the story and so with that

  • Let's See oh

  • Sure, I'll just show you these [pictures] because they're so interesting once you know what they mean, they're so cool. That's a symbol of infinity

  • [let's] Hercules and Hydra. What's life like cut off one head what happens?

  • Seven more grow right, what do you do run hold well? No, that's not what you do it

  • This is what you do you fight it

  • It's the it's the Chaos that generates

  • Partial Chaos, it's the ultimate Chaos that generates partial Chaos

  • But that Chaos also is what Revista finds life because otherwise it would just be static

  • Mercury

  • The head of the Hydra right freeze of you, I'd [saint] George. He's doing it peacefully which is so interesting right?

  • He's got a beatific look on his face in that particular representation another [Saint] George right the virgin in the background

  • I think that's say dan if I remember correctly

  • St.. George is the Patron Saint of England

  • Here's an interesting one this actually sheds light on on the human proclivity for Warfare St.. George

  • That's a Muslim soldier

  • It's really easy to transform the enemy into the dragon right because the enemy is often the predator and we do that instantaneously

  • Right without a second thought and so then we can go to war morally because why not take out the snakes?

  • well, you know the problem is where are the snakes or maybe they're outside and maybe they're not maybe they're in this room and even

  • Worse maybe they're in you and that's wisdom when you know that they're in you.

  • Why wouldn't she be happy about that especially [if] she had a especially if she had a child right seriously?

  • and that's [horace] right the god of vision and he was a

  • He was a falken because Falcons have great vision and they fly above everything and they can see everything so that was the egyptian created

  • God horus, and I'll tell you the story about horus at some points well

  • Now here are some pictures that demonstrate what I had

  • Described as the emergence of let's say the meta hero out of the hero

  • So there's the person you [admire], and then there's the set of people that you admire

  • [and] then there's the meta set of admirable people and the extraction of that ideal as far as I can tell that's just what's portrayed

  • in these images

  • That's a great one. It's very sophisticated image you see that the two sides of Christ's face are not

  • symmetrical

  • One is God in ones man. That's what that icon means and so the fully developed person in this representation. [it's] one of the oldest

  • representations of this sort that we know the idea is that

  • There's a there's a human person

  • In his ordinariness let's say, and then there's this this kinship with the divine that's associated with the willing

  • adoption of the responsibilities of Moral Mortal being and that produces this union

  • And then it's manifest in a book right because that's speech, and it's associated with the son right it's the proper way of being

  • And that's a perfect example. I think of the emergence of the archetype out of the multitude. That's what it looks like to me

  • and so I guess now we're done with Genesis one and took three lectures, but

  • [God's] complicated you know, that's the thing

  • so

  • so thank you and

  • Next week by all appearances. That's where we are so we've got

  • 20 minutes for questions

  • So in the past I've done some work with blog big brother big sister and whatever

  • [that] being said that the most common story I tend to hear from pacific youth is that they write they're raised in a single family

  • Home usually [with] a mom daddy's there on a picture in alcoholic, whatever whatever the writer

  • So we have this child who is trying to?

  • Seek ways to make himself healthy and Empower himself in a ways that a healthy father should have done

  • So you know between the formative years [of] like 1 to 4 so I think you know I'm going with this

  • How let's say for someone who born without like a good father figure where would they go out in the world or like what?

  • for series of incidents where they try to expose themselves to to like

  • gain access to that

  • balancing of health and

  • Knowledge that a father though a good father figure should have provided to in the first place

  • [ok] well partly

  • I mean certainly to some degree a good mother can provide that right to some degree although

  • it's hard for one person to be everything right you know and I think one of the conundrums that face women and this is [a]

  • Tough one and this is why I think women are higher in trade agreeableness and higher and trade negative emotion

  • Is that you know the primary?

  • Problem that a woman has with an infant is why not throw it out a window because it's very annoying right?

  • I mean, it's there all the [time]. It's constant demand

  • It's absolutely constant amount tremendous dependency and so a woman has to be tilted Towards Mercy

  • That's how it looks to me

  • Right and especially during it's so important during the especially the first year when children are so unbelievably vulnerable

  • And so I think it's very difficult for women to be merciful like that and to make the shift to encouraging

  • Disciplinarian I think that's a very difficult thing for people to do

  • simultaneously although

  • You know people people. I'm not saying that women are always only merciful and men are always only encouraging disciplinarians

  • But things do sort themselves out to some degree [like] that, and I think also the biochemical transformations

  • That accompany pregnancy and childbirth and lactation also tilt a mother towards that as well

  • We have to really love that little thing right it's it's number one

  • No matter what it demands, and then telling it what to do and making sure it's behaving properly

  • That's that's a whole [different] issue now, but the kids who Lack fathers. I mean

  • first of all they can find that to some [degree] in their friends

  • And that's often what father boys do in particular they go into gangs and they generate the missing men

  • Masculinity in the game well that's not so good because like what the hell do they know

  • Well, they don't know anything, right?

  • They're just stupid kids

  • And they're like [fifteen] years old and the testosterone is pumping and they're trying to get the hell [away] from their mother

  • Which is what they're supposed [to] do and and they're not in the right position [to] exercise any authority over themselves

  • So that's that's not good. They can find it in education. They can find it in books they can find it in movies

  • They can find it in sports heroes and so forth because the image of the father is fragmented and distributed among the community

  • But it's very very difficult

  • To not have a father

  • [right] and you know one [of] the things that we're doing in our society which I think is I think it's absolutely

  • Appalling is that we're making the case that all families are equal. It's like sorry no wrong

  • Then there's no empirical data supporting that proposition by the way

  • It's much better for kids to have two parents know who those parents are that's a whole different issue, okay?

  • and if I could just

  • [add] one [more] thing of how would you ask that question so let's see a daughter [was] raised not a father because [she] would all

  • See have different ways to find those fragments of her missing [father] than like a boy would instead because obviously they're raised differently at least

  • They should have been well. I think it's the same issue. You know. I mean. I think that another danger that emerges Mrs.

  • Freud's of course famous observation is that you know if there's mom and child were father and child that

  • relationship can get a little closer than it should and

  • Then the lines get blurry and mixed and I'm not saying that that happens to everyone

  • Obviously, but but it's still a danger that that's inherent in the situation

  • They're thrust together too tightly without

  • sufficient resources

  • and so the responsibility has to be distributed more and like I really do think that it's the sign of the degeneration of the

  • Society when that when when single parenthood becomes anything approximating the norm it's not a good idea

  • then the and part of the reason I believe that and I [think] this has to do with the

  • overwhelming selfishness of

  • Modern life is that marriage isn't for the people who are married

  • It's for the children [obviously] [and] like if you can't handle that grow the hell up see right now. I mean seriously yeah seriously

  • Thank you

  • Once you once you have kids it is not about you

  • period Now that doesn't mean it isn't about you at all but

  • That just seems so self-evident to me. I can't believe that anybody would even would even question it. Oh, it's [dino] larson

  • Oh, yes, well, I'm certainly aware of that yes. It's questioned. It's almost illegal to question it now you know [to] to or

  • illegal to make the set of propositions [that] I'm making so

  • That's the best. I can do guys excellent. Thank you

  • The question is going in part two the first part of first up here lecture, but it's also something that's been on my mind

  • Listening to your lectures over the past few months, and that's when we talk about

  • the

  • Psychological truth or significance of the Bible to what extent does that psychological psychological truth has to be embodied in specific?

  • Historical events or people and so for instance the thing that sort of been bugging on my mind

  • There's there's a part that st.. Paul is talking about in the new testament somewhere

  • In one of his letters, and he's talking to the resurrection, and he says if it didn't happen

  • Then if this whole thing just means the [faith] is meaningless like for him there had to be that

  • Embodiment of that his capital. Yes

  • The nor event in that case

  • Well the best answer I have to that at the moment is that I'm really happy that I'm not at that point yet in this

  • lecture series

  • you know because because that there's a there's a crucial issue there, and I don't know exactly what to make of it and

  • My approach at the moment as I said is to approach this as rationally as I possibly can and I hope I know a hell

  • of a lot more about what I'm doing by the time I get to that particular [question] [and]

  • I do have

  • The beginnings of ways to answer that but I'm not going to answer that at all right now because it's so bloody complicated that would

  • Just burn me to a frazzle and I'm already mostly bird to a frazzle after that lecture, so I

  • Couldn't attempt to even start to sketch it out

  • I don't know. [I] mean part of it is to be just rational about it just to be rational about it

  • There is something about the idea that continual death and rebirth is a necessary precondition to proper human adaptation

  • every time you learn something new that's important part of the stupid old you [has] to die and

  • Sometimes that can be an awful lot of you and in fact it can be so much of you sometimes that you just die

  • Right you just can't handle it

  • And so there is there is a real idea that you have to identify with the part of [yourself] that

  • Transcends [your] current personality that can constantly die and be reborn

  • Now then I could say well that means that all of this is psychological and symbolic, and that's the simplest answer

  • But I'm not satisfied with that answer even though

  • I think it's coherent and complete because the [world] [is] a very weird place and there are things about it that we don't understand so

  • so I can't go I can't go any farther than that at the moment, so

  • Yeah

  • Hi, Dr.. Peterson. I just recently watched

  • One of your videos of you debating with transgendered protesters at uoft

  • free speech Rally in October and

  • one of the

  • Protesters one of the comments one of the protesters said to you which [isn't] particularly very like very chilling was

  • Why do you have the right to determine whether an individual is worthy of you using their pronouns?

  • The scary thing to me is how common this type [of] view is among Radical Left-Wing?

  • [protesters] on University campuses who feel they have the right to tell other people

  • What they [can] think what words they can use and what speakers they can or cannot listen to?

  • The even scarier part is that our government is creating legislations to back up their ADl?

  • ideologies

  • which is evident through [Bill] C16

  • M103 and Bill 89

  • So my question is what do you think the [endgame] is in all this because it seems?

  • Every year or we're in the process of finding that out?

  • You know and I'm sorry. I'm sorry

  • Okay, we're in [the] [process] of finding that out

  • I don't I mean I think the endgame that underlies all of that in my estimation

  • Is best summed up by jacques?

  • Derrida's [Christiane] [her] criticism [of] western Civilization its Fal logo centric now

  • We've already talked about what the logos means

  • Right and so and and so for for Derrida that was a sign of its utter

  • What would you call it utter despit the dot early despicable dominant nature of Western Culture

  • Well that that's what animates the post modernists now. They may not know that because

  • an Indie ology gets fragmented

  • across its Adherents

  • And then it only acts as the coherent ideology with all those adherents come together in a mob and then you see the animating spirit

  • So I

  • Said I think that there's a battle going on. That's a battle exactly at the level that Derrida

  • Described and that's a theological battle with a philosophical

  • With it with the philosophical implications

  • And out of those philosophical implications come political implications, but it's not primarily political and it's not primarily philosophical

  • It's deeper than that and the post modernists are out

  • There their criticism was designed to be

  • Fundamental and it also emerged out of Marxism and let's not forget that the Marxist Criticism was not only fundamental

  • But just about resulted in the nuclear annihilation of the [girl] these are not trivial issues, and we're back in the same

  • Insane boat and so what do I think should be done about that well?

  • I thought about that way before any of this happened, and I think that what?

  • We [should] do about it is we [should] tell the truth

  • Because there isn't anything more powerful than that

  • And that's the right theological answer because the spoken truth brings good into being

  • Well, that's the [Fal] logo centric idea

  • And I'm trying to revisit that to explain to people what it means and to see if they think that's a good idea. [I] mean

  • that's what we have to figure out is it is that an idea worth adhering to or not the alternative [is] the

  • [C4] the post Modernists the world is that landscape of pyramids that I described, but there's no

  • Transcendent vision that's over above that and all of those pyramids are equally valid and it's a war [of] everyone against everyone

  • It's like it's like the nightmare of hobbes thomas hobbes except that it's not individuals. It's groups and everyone's that group

  • You're a group. [you're] whatever your group is it's like that's death as far as I'm concerned

  • it's it's it's utterly reprehensible and

  • and

  • We better sort it out because if we don't sort it out. We are bloody well going to pay for it, so

  • Thank you

  • Hey, how's it going? I just want to say thank you for doing all this and I really appreciate that's Bob and doug mcKenzie

  • Right yeah, hey how's it going? Yeah?

  • I'm glad you caught that yeah yeah, yeah, well I did a Facebook poll

  • Yeah, people who are familiar with where your work and a question kind of rose to the top like just?

  • Right out of their lives

  • Spectacular and what it was you didn't really touch it here, but you touched it a bit in your lectures

  • It was about integrating the shadow yep, and one of [the] main questions was how does one

  • Go about that, especially in the Modern world. You know like

  • Really sheltered from anything resembling that kind of concept you know we don't engage like the unknown we don't

  • Come into life-or-death situations most of us [must] [rework] is like an ambulance. [you] know

  • Well, that's one thing you can do with that is one thing you can do. You know well?

  • Yeah, you can search out experiences that put you there

  • That's that's that's you know because well, you can do that as a volunteer for example

  • I mean, you can one of the things I saw once

  • [Within] montreal I was in this outdoor mall in Montreal on St.. Hubert and

  • saw this great big 17 year old kid you know and

  • He had a mohawk and he was dressed in leather

  • And he with you know studs and like he was he was

  • He was doing the water and Barbarian thing and he had it really down

  • And [you] know he's standing on the corner with two pink shopping bags

  • Hey, because look into him

  • And I thought you know if someone offered him the ID

  • The opportunity to drop those goddamn sleeping bags or shopping bags and go fight with isis

  • He'd be there in a second

  • Yeah, right, because what the hell is some monster like that doing standing on the corner of St.. Hubert alden [-] pink shopping bags

  • So I mean so some of it is that it you need you need to find out where you can push where you could you?

  • Can need to find out that edge that you can push yourself against the tree

  • It's going to be different for different people

  • But there's there's that's the call to adventure and heroism

  • And there are life and death situations everywhere around you if you want to involve yourself in them

  • you know

  • an idiot sometimes that might be

  • like to put yourself together to the degree that you can say physically or spiritually or intellectually it could be an

  • intellectual Battle it could be a Moral battle like the

  • Frontier is everywhere

  • the Frontier is just the Edge between what you know and what you don't know you want to put yourself on that damn edge and

  • Then make yourself into something and and you can retreat into comfort in the modern world, and I think that is a problem

  • You know I mean I've noticed that

  • It's one of the pathologies of wealth I would say because one of the problems with [being]

  • Relatively wealthy if you're a parent

  • is that you cannot provide your children with necessity, and that's a big problem, because they need necessity to call them into being and

  • You know if you don't have a lot of material resources and your children ask you for something you?

  • Can say no because no is the [answer] it's like

  • No, you can't do that, but if you can say yes, then it's really hard to say no because then you're just arbitrary well

  • I don't know

  • it's like

  • Kierkegaard said you know there will come a time when we have so much security and comfort that what we'll want more than anything else

  • is part

  • deprivation and challenge, and I think I think that's

  • particularly, what young men want

  • Now I think that that's partly because young women

  • they're stuck with that anyways because they have to it's it's it's the necessity of living in the world and

  • The responsibility of infant care in particular [like] that occupies them men have to do it voluntarily

  • Women now - because of the birth control pill, but you know that's [what] thirty years ago

  • We hardly have to talk [about] that at all yes, so

  • Then you have so much

  • Hi, Dr.. Peterson, so I'm actually a coptic orthodox and egyptian, so I found [you're] [talking] [a] incredibly interesting

  • I've also taken a deep interest in the old church fathers and as if you're talking about Iraqis I [arkin] back to St.

  • Athanasius when the idea feels is that you brought up last time that God became man so that man can become like God

  • So I was thinking about the systems of the hierarchies and is that an example [of] at the top of the pyramid the Hierarchy?

  • sort of gets inverted or

  • descends to the bottom and brings it up and to the top and that sort of an attraction to of Christianity that sort of

  • Made Christianity such a powerful idea. What are your thoughts on that? Oh?

  • well, it's certainly one [of] the I mean it's certainly one of the things that we not just Christianity a powerful idea because one of

  • the things that happened this was called the democratization of

  • Osiris if I remember correctly and like what happened see if I can answer this question

  • Using this approach for sex is that going to work?

  • Hmm, I

  • don't know if I can answer that [question] that way the the

  • part of the attraction of

  • Christianity, but this was something that emerged across time was the notion that even if you were in a lowly position that there was something

  • About you that was akin to the divine and now you might say well, that's just wish fulfillment

  • That's what freud would say that's what Marx would say right the opiate of the masses

  • Tweeted yesterday something. I thought was pretty funny which was that

  • like religion was the opiate of the masses

  • but that marxism was the methamphetamine of the max of the masses, so

  • So so I think the attraction was that it it [it]

  • Allowed people to recognize their intrinsic dignity and one of the things I've been thinking about is the juxtaposition

  • Between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 because what I was in genesis 2 is that human beings collapse and fall?

  • right and then were these fallen creatures that no evil, but in the beginning in Genesis 1

  • It's really [an] optimistic story because it says well

  • we're the sorts of creatures that partake in the calling forth of being from Chaos and

  • Then that's in our essential nature and to some degree if you juxtapose both of those it's as if that's the entire biblical story

  • rammed Together in the first two chapters

  • Which is partly why we're taking so long to get through this by the way is that

  • to return to genesis 1 is the antidote to genesis 2 it's like to continue to Act out the

  • Doctrine that you're made in God's image

  • And that means that you're you're capable of speaking good being into existence through truth

  • And that that's also the antidote to the fall which I think is actually the fundamental

  • narrative message of the entire Biblical structure, and I also think of [western] civilization for that matter, so

  • There's a nobility and this is also

  • I think Nietzsche was fundamentally wrong in his [criticism] with Christianity because he thought about it and slaves morality you know the

  • vengeance of the bottom against the talk

  • That's more historical than theological so it gives dignity it

  • illuminates the dignity [of] the human being and

  • and

  • Requires responsibility so it's not just wish fulfillment

  • It's not freudian wish fulfillment the freudian theory which I thought about a lot is

  • Not tenable in my estimation it also doesn't account for the [existence] of hell because if it's only wish fulfillment, why bother with hell

  • It means a lot more

  • If you're really going to just fulfill a wish it's like everybody gets to go to Heaven no matter what they do

  • You don't have hell which was of course something absolutely terrifying to medieval Christians and then to plenty of people now for that matter

  • so

  • It's the nobility it's the idea of the nobility that I thinks deeply attractive to people, and that's all there is I mean

  • What you have to fight against your worm-like?

  • Fragile Mortal existence is the possibility of

  • Transcending that with nobility of speech and act. That's what you have and who can hear that without feeling

  • Ennoble by that now you might say well you might shudder and say well, I don't I can't bear the responsibility

  • [it's] like well fair enough, man. You know I mean that that's a reasonable criticism, but the consequence of not bearing the [responsibility] is

  • That's hell really so thank you

  • And thank you very much beautiful um I don't know feel familiar with the words of Nasan Talib

  • I'm reasonably familiar with them, so I think it's sad [to] say that he has

  • He talked about the idea that

  • People and especially modern people have a failure to recognize

  • the Unknown Unknowns

  • Yeah, such yes, right. That's a good way of thinking about it

  • Can you move the mic up a bit so that people can hear you a little better? Thanks gary. Yes um

  • Well, I was wondering do you think that that failure might?

  • Might be in some way related to the way that modern people

  • fail [to] relate to the idea of God so in the sense that

  • your people can't

  • Really grapple with the notion of God

  • I think as much as you can give a rational [argument] or you can't feel God in the way that perhaps a more religious person

  • or more

  • [an] older person might have

  • Felt God do you think that that inability to?

  • recognize

  • the Unknown Unknowns might play into

  • That yeah, well they're okay so that seems to be related to this idea of the absence of necessity

  • That's something like that. Is that no because I think that I think that what you're you're making a claim?

  • Maybe tell me if I've got it wrong that if you're sheltered too much

  • Then it also

  • It also separates you from anything that's divine

  • [I] guess that might be right because there's not enough intensity of the experience and something like that

  • is that is that part of the is that part of the issue it might be more related [to] the idea of

  • like

  • realizing the absolute infinite root of what you don't know like the like the mysterium tremendum that that kind of

  • You know if you believe that through statistical analysis you can get everything under control and you genuinely believe that at some point

  • You'll get it or wonder you know. Yeah, okay? Well, so okay, so so well, that's also

  • I think part of the danger of

  • Rationality that the Catholics have been implicitly warning again forever

  • Is that rather rational mind tends to fall in love with its own productions and then to worship them as absolutes?

  • Which is I think what [Melville] was trying to represent?

  • by his Satanic figure in Paradise lost [I] think about as like a precursor a prophetic precursor to the emergence of

  • Totalitarian states in the Modern world and so yeah, I think that you can believe that

  • What you know is?

  • Sufficient to Banish permanently what you don't know and I do think that that does

  • Paradoxically although you think that that would make you secure it also does destroy your relationship with with with with

  • With the spirit that might help you deal [with] what it [is] that you really don't know with the unknown unknowns, so [yeah]

  • I mean, we don't know to what degree extreme experience is necessary

  • to bring Forth extreme

  • Experience right what do you have to be through before you encounter a religious revelation?

  • Well people might say well, you can't because there's no such thing. It's like well. Don't be so sure about that

  • I mean people have reported them [to] row history, but they don't generally occur when your that's my favorite tropen

  • You're eating [cheesie's] [and] playing you know and playing Mario brothers, right?

  • So yeah, so that's the best I can do with that engine yes. Yeah

  • This has to be the last question [all] right

  • I'll make it quick yeah earlier when you talked about

  • Criminality and creativity trends in that in men peaking at 14 it reminded me of something. You said, I think it was Joe Rogan

  • [talking] about Sjw's and

  • Kind of and how they create their own Chaos talking about how adolescents have this drive to change the world

  • And I was wondering if if those three the criminality creativity drive to change the world are

  • linked and if so if they manifest differently in men and women

  • And if they [kind] of come from the same, era well, I think they are linked

  • But I'm going to concentrate more on the net second part of your question

  • So I'm going to ask you two guys some think about something, so I talked to a friend of mine the other day

  • He's a very very smart guy and we've been talking about

  • While all the sorts of things that we've been [talking] about tonight for a long time and we were talking about the relatively

  • relative evolutionary roles of men and women this is speculative obviously and and

  • Because our research did indicate it's tentative research so far that that the the sgs

  • Sjw Sort of equality above all else Philosophy is more prevalent among women

  • Well, it's predicted by the personality factors that are more common among women so agreeable this and high negative emotion

  • primarily agreeableness, but in addition

  • It's also predicted by being female

  • And that's interesting because in most of the personality research that I've done and as far as I know in the literature at

  • you know in more broadly speaking most of the time you can get rid of the

  • attitudinal differences between men and women or at least reduce them [by] controlling for personality

  • so if you take a feminine man, and a masculine woman then you know that the [polls]

  • reverse but that didn't seem to be the case with political correctness, and so I've been thinking about that a lot because

  • well men [are] bailing out of the humanities like mad and

  • Pretty much out of the universities except for stem the women are moving in like mad

  • And they're also moving into the political sphere like math

  • And this is new right we've never had this happen before and we do know [no]

  • do not know what the significance of it is it's only 50 years old and

  • So we were thinking about this and so, I don't know what you think about this proposition, but imagine that that historically speaking

  • it's something like

  • Women were responsible for distribution and men were responsible for production

  • Something like that, and maybe maybe that's only the case really in the tight confines of the immediate family

  • But that doesn't matter because that's most of the evolutionary landscape for human beings anyways

  • What the women does it did was make sure that everybody got enough?

  • okay, and that seems to me to be one of the things that's driving at least in part the Sjw demand for for equity and

  • Equality it's like let's make sure everybody [has] enough. It's like both look fair enough

  • You know I mean you can't you can't argue with that

  • But there's there's an antipathy between that and the [the] reality of differential productivity

  • [you] know because people really do differ in their productivity, so

  • All right, so to answer your question fully. I do think that the rebellious tendency of adolescence is

  • Associated both with that criminality spike, especially among men and with creativity. Yes

  • I think that the sJw phenomena is different

  • and I think it is associated at least in part with the rise of women to political power and and

  • We don't know what women are life when they have political power because they've never had it

  • I mean

  • There's been [queens] obviously and that sort of thing [just] being female authority figures and females have

  • Wielded far more power historically than feminists generally like to admit

  • But this is a different thing and we don't know what [a] truly female political philosophy would be like but it might be

  • Especially if it's not been well examined and it isn't very sophisticated conceptually it could easily be well

  • Let's make sure things are distributed equally well yeah

  • But sorry that's that's just not going to do you fly do you think in terms of the rest of this?

  • Jw's and you talked about last lecture as well creating Chaos when there is none otherwise. It'd be static

  • Do you think there would be any validity in saying that in a country [like] Canada were pretty gender equal is

  • There any merit to thinking Sjw's are trying to create Chaos

  • Even when they're arguably is none on the mass level obviously there's still problems

  • Why would they do that otherwise it would be static and that well doesn't if it wouldn't for them

  • So I read this I read this quote once and I don't remember who

  • Who said it it might have been robert heinlein for crying out loud science fiction author that Springs to mind

  • But a problem it probably wasn't

  • And his the proposition was that men tested ideas and that women tested men, and I kind of like that

  • There's something about that. You know and now it obviously it's an [over] [generalization], but we also don't know to what degree

  • women test men Cheerilee through

  • Provocation it's a lot because like if you want to test someone you don't have a like little

  • Conversation [with] them like you [poke] the hell out of them

  • And you say okay like I'm going to let go after you and see where your weak spots are and it seems to me that

  • This it seems to me that in this constant

  • protest and use of shame and all of that that goes along with this with this sort of radical movement towards egalitarianism that there's a

  • Tremendous amount of provocation and

  • God, I'm going to say this too even though

  • I shouldn't but it but we mean how I don't believe this, but I'm trying trying to figure it out

  • You know I thought it was absolutely

  • Comical when [fifty] [Shades] of [Grey] came out a not just I [just] thought that was just so insanely comical that at the same time

  • there's this massive political demand for like radical equality and and

  • And say with regards to sexual behavior and the fastest-selling novel the world had ever seen

  • Was S&M domination right? It's like. Oh, well. We know where the unconscious is going with that one don't leave and

  • and sometimes I think like because one of the things that I've really tried to puzzle out and

  • It's not like I believe this right

  • I'm just telling you what I wear the edges of my thinking of being going is that you have this crazy

  • Alliance between the feminists and the radical islamist that I just do not get it's like the [feminists]

  • [it's] like why they aren't protesting non-stop about Saudi

  • Arabia is just

  • Completely Beyond me

  • like I do not

  • Understand it in the least and I wonder - I just wonder bloody well is this is the [freudian] means that is there an attraction?

  • You know the is there an attraction that's emerging among the female radicals for that

  • Totalitarian male dominance that they've chased out of the [west]

  • And I mean that's a hell of a thing to think but I after all I am

  • [psychoanalytically] [minded] and I do think things like that because like [I] just can see no rational reason for it the only other

  • Rational reason is that well the west needs to fall and so the enemy of my enemy is our [yeah]

  • It's a guy exactly now. What is it? I thought that wrong with the enemy of enemy is my friends

  • Yes, exactly [so] Elements tend to vote liberal as well. Yes

  • Well, so that that could be the case

  • but I am not going to shake my suspicions about this unconscious balancing because as the demand for

  • egalitarianism and the eradication of masculinity

  • Accelerates there's going to be a longing in the unconscious for the precise opposite for the [problem] of that right the more you want you?

  • Scream for equality the more your unconscious is going to admire

  • Dominance and

  • so

  • Well, that's that's that's well. That's how you think if your cycle analytically minded

  • And you know I'm a great admirer of freud

  • he knew a hell of a lot [more] than people like to think and and so which is partly why everyone still hates him even

  • Though it's late a hundred years since he's you know really really being around so all right. We should stop

I'm really looking forward to this lecture, not like I wasn't looking forward to the other ones,

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聖經系列三:神與權柄的等級制度 (Biblical Series III: God and the Hierarchy of Authority)

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    Оксана Дякова 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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