Maps of Meaning 7, 8, & 9

[0] Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

[1] This episode is an amalgamation of episode 7 to 9 of Maps of Meaning, recorded by TV Ontario.

[2] You can support these podcasts by donating the amount of your choice to Dr. Peterson's Patreon account, which can be found by searching Jordan Peterson Patreon, or by finding a link in the description.

[3] Dr. Peterson's self -development programs, self -authoring, can be found.

[4] found at self -authoring .com.

[5] I think of all the stories that we've investigated so far, all the fundamental myths of creation that we've investigated so far, the two that we're going to talk about in detail today are probably the two stories that have had more impact on the course of world history than any other two.

[6] I'm going to talk in some detail today about the story of creation laid out in Genesis and also the story of the Buddha's enlightenment.

[7] Both stories are also characterized by a kind of depth that's virtually illimitless.

[8] And I think in some ways that the topics we're going to discuss today are the most enlightening of all the many ideas that we've traveled through so far in this series.

[9] So we're going to be concentrating on an analysis of this schema again.

[10] The idea of being here, of course, that the world of experience which is the world that mythology is attempting to describe, has these fundamental constituent elements, one associated with chaos or nature or the unknown, one associated with culture or the great father or the predictable, and another associated with the archetypal son, the individual, who's the offspring of the interplay of these two fundamental forces.

[11] Now, given that part of the purpose of this series is to elucidate the causes of war and motivation for war, attention paid to the dualistic nature of the individual is of paramount importance.

[12] So we could say that just as nature has its terrible side and just as culture has its terrible side, so the individual has his or her terrible side and the depth of that capacity, say, for atrocity and vengefulness is just as deep as the depth of terror that the unknown itself holds.

[13] I think this is a difficult fact for normal individuals to grasp given that we're highly motivated to view ourselves as, if not precisely good, at least as relatively harmless, but the evidence that as individuals we are relatively harmless is very, very thin indeed.

[14] And I don't think it's possible to understand the depth of motivation for atrocity and social conflict without coming to terms with the capacity for evil that's characteristic of the individual.

[15] Now, both the story in Genesis and the story of the Buddha's enlightenment lay bare in many ways, the nature of the structure of individual evil, and also not only its structure, but its motivation, why it is that people would turn more or less voluntarily away from the good and embrace what can only be described as its polar opposite.

[16] So, in addition to making reference to this structural schema, of course, we're also going to be discussing the typical mode of interaction of these elements of experience.

[17] You may note, for example, that this diagram with which you're now very familiar, the notion of order, chaos, and reestablishment of order, also parallels the structure of the story in Genesis, the creation myth, where human beings are created first.

[18] and exist in a paradisal state, that that paradise is disrupted as a consequence of some event of virtually cosmic significance, that as a consequence of that disruption, people are destined to live a profane existence in constant weight for the next state of order.

[19] So just as this is a fundamental archetypal structure, so that fundamental archetypal structure constitutes the basic grammar for the story in Genesis.

[20] Now, what we're going to do to begin with is to describe precisely how this idea of paradise descent and the search for paradise is illustrated symbolically in Genesis and exactly what those symbolic representations mean.

[21] The idea here being that the reason that the authors of Genesis, the multiple authors of Genesis extending over thousands and thousands of years, chose those symbols, is not because they were laboring to be obscure or not because they were establishing a pre -empirical representation of reality, a kind of quasi -scientific representation, but because these symbols have an elusive or metaphorical richness that enables a story, although short, to be characterized by an almost infinite depth.

[22] That's part of the reason.

[23] The other part of the reason is that when you say something profound, you say it using the language, the clearest language that you have access to, and if the story is almost unutterably profound, then the images in which it is enshrouded are almost incomprehensibly complex.

[24] It has to be that way, because if the target of the investigation is reality itself, something so complex that we cannot conceptualize it fully, then the language that we use to represent that reality has to stretch us to the limits of our ability to understand.

[25] And it is the case that the story in Genesis say as much as the story of the Buddhist Enlightenment constitutes an artistic endeavor on the part of the human race to portray the nature of human reality and to explain the behavioral and philosophical consequences of that reality.

[26] That being in tall order, perhaps we should forgive the multiple authors for only being able to manage it in a way that's essentially imagistic and dramatic rather than explicit, logical, philosophical, and fully developed.

[27] So the first thing I'd like to point out to you is to, is a statement made by Garcia Eliad, which I think is one of the most enlightening things I ever read.

[28] Now, the first thing that Iliad does is describe the universality of flood mythology, but then he puts a twist on it.

[29] So the idea behind flood mythology is something like this.

[30] If societies deviate from an emergent, a necessarily emergent kind of morality, a kind of morality that takes the viewpoint of all the inhabitants of a given society into account.

[31] If a society deviates from that viewpoint sufficiently, it dooms itself to annihilation.

[32] That annihilation being represented mythologically as the flooding of the society by the pre -cosmogonic waters, the primordial element or chaos.

[33] So societies that are tyrannical doomed themselves to eradication by chaos, a simple equation, but made more complicated by Iliatti's observation that more than one factor plays a role in the establishment of a tyranny.

[34] On the one hand, there's straight degeneration of cultural presuppositions in that if you establish a state or a game which has particular rules, because the environment is constantly transforming itself, the rules by necessity become out of date.

[35] So merely as a consequence of the progression of time, the presuppositions on which any state are founded tend to become less and less relevant to the current environment.

[36] Okay, so there's this aging and senility merely as a consequence of thermodynamic processes.

[37] But then Iliata also points out that there's one additional factor which has to be attributed not to society, but to the individuals that make up that society, which is that the strictures and rules on which society is founded can be constantly and carefully updated when necessary if all the individuals that make up that society are perfectly willing to confront exemplars of emerging chaos in their own lives, when those exemplars emerge, which is to say that it's perfectly reasonable to be guided in your personality by the structures of your state, but if you face something unknown that those rules cannot handle, it's a moral necessity, an obligation on your part to face that emergent anomaly forthrightly, to solve it if you can, and then to communicate the consequences of your solution to the rest of the members of your society.

[38] Now, what Iliata points out is that the individual who removes him or herself from the responsibility of confronting their own anomaly speeds the process by which the state decays.

[39] So the decay of the state and the possibility for the emergence of chaos is an interaction between the tendency of the state to archaism and senility merely as a consequence of change and the voluntary unwillingness of the citizens that comprise that state to face the unknown courageously when it confronts them.

[40] So Iliadus says the deluge myth is almost universally disseminated.

[41] It is documented in all the continents, although very rarely in Africa, probably because of the relative shortage of water, and on various cultural levels.

[42] A certain number of variants seem to be the result of dissemination, first from Mesopotamia and then from India.

[43] It is equally possible that one or several diluvial catastrophes gave rise to fabulous narratives, but it would be risky to explain so widespread a myth by phenomena of which no geological traces have been found.

[44] The majority of the flood myths seem in some sense to form part of the cosmic rhythm.

[45] The old world, people by a fallen humanity, is submerged under the water and sometime later a new world emerges from the aquatic chaos.

[46] In a large number of variants the flood is the result of the sins or ritual faults of human beings.

[47] Sometimes it results simply from the wish of a divine being to put an end to mankind.

[48] The chief causes lie at once, therefore, in the sins of men and the decrepitude of the world.

[49] By the mere fact that it exists, that is, that it lives and produces, the cosmos gradually deteriorates and ends up falling into decay.

[50] This is the reason why it has to be recreated.

[51] In other words, the flood realizes on a macrocosmic scale what is symbolically affected during the New Year Festival, the end of the world, and the end of a sinful humanity in order to make a new creation impossible.

[52] So then the question might arise logically enough.

[53] What is it that would motivate an individual to work to avoid anomaly when it emerges in his or her own life and to risk an eventual flood?

[54] And even more profoundly, what would motivate an individual perhaps to work for the antithesis of order, to work to promote the emergence of chaos since we know that people are relatively ambivalent in their moral stance?

[55] Is it possible that we can create a a compelling motivational story for the desire of the individual as such to work against the emergence of the good rather than for it so let's take a look at what Genesis says about the creation of experience so first of all remember we're taking a phenomenological stance on this story which is to say that this story is not an objective retelling of of materialistic emergence it's something more specifically dramatic.

[56] It describes the nature of human experience, the nature of conscious human experience.

[57] And in fact, the creation story in Genesis lays explicit stress on individual consciousness literally as a precondition for being itself, which is to say that underlying the story in Genesis is the notion that without whatever consciousness is, there would be no segregated entities and therefore no being.

[58] So this is one manner in which Genesis attempts to put human beings at the center of the cosmos so to speak which is the idea that the world independently of consciousness whatever that world is absolutely needs to be reflected by consciousness in order to exist in any sense that existence could reasonably be defined the first chapter in the beginning god created the heaven and the earth and the earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep now the idea that the earth was without form and void takes us back to the Mesopotamian creation myth and Marduk and Tiamat because the word for void, the Hebrew word for void is Teum, and Teum is a word derived from Tiamat and the void, the chaos that constitutes the unformed condition of the cosmos prior to the elaboration of being is assimilated to the same category as Tiamat, which is this terrible, unformed and frightening a prior condition that has to be courageously confronted in order to manifest itself as being.

[59] And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.

[60] So now you see another interplay of opposites here between matter and water, the primordial element.

[61] So first of all, it's heaven and earth, and then it's earth and water and the height and the deep.

[62] And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the water.

[63] So another opposite representation between spirit and whatever it is that the pre -cosmogonic water or chaos constitutes.

[64] And God said, let there be light, and there was light, and God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness.

[65] And then a prototypical division between light, which is associated with illumination and enlightenment and consciousness, because we're conscious during the day, and the sun and life that emerges nested inside this, the initial opening lines of this sentence.

[66] Northrop Fry notes that there's tremendous emphasis on the notion of a repetitive cycling of days and nights in the opening sentences of Genesis, even though from a formal perspective this emphasis is paradoxical because the notion of the day emerges before the creation of the sun.

[67] And Fry's point is not that this is some careless gesture on the part of the people who authored Genesis, but more that it's an attempt to emphasize the idea of a cyclical relationship between consciousness and light and darkness and chaos.

[68] And to highlight the idea that this cyclical relationship is somehow absolutely vital to being itself.

[69] So Genesis 1 5 says in God called the light day and the darkness he called night and the evening in the morning were the first day.

[70] Fry says the central metaphor underlying beginning is not really birth at all.

[71] It is rather the moment of waking from sleep.

[72] When one world disson, disappears, a world of virtuality and potential, and another comes into actual being.

[73] This is still contained within a cycle.

[74] We know that at the end of the day we shall return to the world of sleep, and that's a notion that has a metaphorical resonance because there's the sleep that punctuates periods of consciousness and then there's the great sleep at the end of life, which is characterized by the complete cessation of consciousness.

[75] We know that at the end of the day we shall return to the world of sleep, but in the meantime there's a sense of self -transcendence of a consciousness getting up from an unreal into a real or at least more real world this sense of awakening into a greater degree of reality is expressed by Heraclitus as a passing from a world where everyone has his own logos into a world where there's a common logos the experience that we all share Genesis presents the creation as a sudden coming into being of a world through articulate speech which is another aspect of Logos incorporates the idea of creative exploration and then the formulation of the consequences of that exploration in verbally communicable categories, right?

[76] Which give our aspects of our being their defined boundaries and parameters and enable us to establish a shared mode of social being.

[77] Through articulate speech, conscious perception, light, and stability.

[78] Something like this metaphor of awakening may be the real reason for the emphasis on days and such recurring phrases, and the evening in the morning were the first day, even before the day as we know it, was established with the creating of the sun.

[79] The most fundamental pair of conflicting and cyclically interacting pairs of opposites that is portrayed in Genesis is essentially the pairing of chaos versus order, generative chaos versus generative order.

[80] And a poem expresses this idea extremely well and very powerfully, so I'm going to read it to you.

[81] When sacred night sweeps heavenward, she takes, the glad, the winsome day, and folding it, rolls up its golden carpet that had been spread over an abysmal pit.

[82] Gone, vision -like is the external world, and man, a homeless orphan, has to face in utter helplessness, naked alone, the blackness of immeasurable space.

[83] Upon himself, he has to lean with mind abolished, thought unfothered, in the dim depths of his soul, sinks for nothing comes from outside to support or limit him all life and brightness seem an ancient dream while in the substance of the night unraveled alien he now perceives a faithful something that is his by right absolutely brilliant poetic statement I think laying out very nicely very richly the the fundamental nature of the existential paradox that constitutes human life pointing to a very profound sense of futility and fear but then beyond that to the notion that in the depths of the unknown in the depths of the darkness and in the depths of all that that's fundamentally unfaceable there still lurks something that can be discovered given sufficient courage another fundamental division portrayed indirectly in Genesis the word versus chaos so what you have in Genesis is an absolutely stellar idea I think perhaps the most fundamental contribution of archaic Jewish thinking to Western and world civilization, which is that although it is easier in some ways to consider the actual matrix of things, their material substrate as the strata from which they emerge, it is equally reasonable and perhaps more pragmatically useful, to note that things only exist because of the interaction between the logos, the word that characterizes consciousness, and whatever this matrix is.

[84] So in Jewish thought, and then Christian thought, and of course, in thoughts of that sort echoed throughout the world, there's the idea that consciousness associated with the transcendent, directly associated with the deity, is actually the thing that in interaction with this matrix gives rise to being.

[85] Genesis places stress on this notion of the internal logos, the individual consciousness, in two very complex ways.

[86] It first says that it's the word of God, the logos of God, that gives order to chaos and makes being emerged.

[87] But then, even more particularly, it's the self -conscious logos of individual humans, their capacity not just to see the world as an object, but also to see themselves as an object that gives the world the particular value slant that it has for us, which is to say that not only are we in a world where the subject and the object are separated and therefore experience and suffer the consequences of that separation, but even more particularly, we are the only creatures who are so conscious that we can observe ourselves as objects.

[88] And the consequence of that is that because we've extended our consciousness to ourself, we're capable of conceptualizing things that other creatures cannot conceptualize, such as the infinite possibility that lays manifest in the unknown, but also the fact that as individuals we're subject to our finite limitations, right, that we can become diseased, that we can become mentally ill, and that finally will die.

[89] And so the idea here is that something like the extension of logos to the object, to the subject, has made human existence finally problematic.

[90] And Genesis refers to this as essentially the heritable sin of Adam.

[91] Because we're aware of our own vulnerability as a genetic consequence merely of being human, there's a transformation in the nature of experience that has essentially cosmic significance.

[92] Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching makes a comment on the formless chaos that constitutes the matrix of things, the origin of things in the following manner.

[93] he says there was something formless yet complete that existed before heaven and earth without sound without substance this is the void or the chaos dependent on nothing unchanging all -pervading unfailing one may think of it as the mother of all things under heaven the idea here being that whatever experience is in the absence of a delimited human consciousness is something that's outside the boundaries of time because time is a temporality is a human attribute and it's outside the boundaries of spatial limitation because only human beings with their delimited and fixed size can attribute spatial aspects to being itself so whatever it is is that exists without us is so comprehensive and so complete and transcends temporal dimensions to such a great degree that it can't be conceptualized as being at all it's something that transcends being to such a degree that it's not even namable but still exists as the mother of all things under heaven.

[94] Now Genesis formally associates the human being with logos and this is a determinative move in human history just as the Mesopotamians first hypothesized that their emperor was equivalent to Marduk the force that confronted time at and carved her into pieces and made the world and just as the Egyptians conceptualized their Pharaoh as the intermingling between Osiris, the stability of the state and Horus, the exploratory hero, and then disseminated that identity down the aristocratic levels closer and closer to the individual.

[95] So the ancient Hebrews said, and God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness.

[96] Now it could be said that the logical derivation of that statement is that God looks like human beings or conversely that God is an old man with a beard, but it means something I think that's more sophisticated than that, which is that the central aspect that's associated with this transcendent deity, the logos, which is the thing that gives rise to order as a consequence of its confrontation with chaos, is also the thing that centrally characterizes human consciousness.

[97] And so with that, there's this transcendent notion that inside each human being is a spark of genuine divinity, and it's the manifestation of that divinity in human temporal and spatial parameters that literally keeps the cosmos generating.

[98] So God created his man in his own image, in the image of God created he, him, male and female created he them, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the fall of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

[99] Fundamentalist Christians read this as an injunction, right?

[100] This is what human beings should do, dominate all other living things.

[101] But it's more like a description, which is that the consequence of the embeddedness of this spark of divinity in the individual is precisely what gave rise to the human ability to dominate the planet, which is an ability that at least at the moment seems fundamentally unparalleled with no limit in sight.

[102] So it's not an injunction so much as a cold -hearted description.

[103] There's a very profound idea underlying the necessity of the creation of the individual human being.

[104] There's a line of archaic Jewish speculation that runs something like this.

[105] Why is the creation of a limited subject necessary if God's omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent?

[106] Why would he bother creating anything outside of himself and the line of speculation runs like this?

[107] the one thing that a being that is complete in all regards, even all hypothetical regards, lacks by necessity is limitation.

[108] And as a consequence of that, anything that's absolute is not complete and can't be complete without limitation.

[109] And so there's an emergent idea in Genesis and most notions of the emergence of human consciousness that the absolute needs the reflection point of a delimited being to actually spring into some kind of defined actuality so that being itself becomes an interplay between the necessary limitations of the finite and the transcendent reality of the absolute.

[110] And so being is something that emerges because of the fact as another ancient Jewish tradition has it, God and man are in a sense twins mutually dependent on one another for their defined being.

[111] from such a perspective, being has the same nature as a game.

[112] When you're playing a game, you have to play by rules, which means that there are things that you can do well playing the game, but there are many, many things you can't do, and that the game could not exist without the limitations.

[113] Also predicated on the idea that the imposition, a Nietzschean idea, that the imposition of limitations on a structure actually gives rise to the possibility of diverse new forms, which is also a very sophisticated way of conceptualizing the world.

[114] So from the perspective of Genesis, the individual is the locale of the experiential drama, and the fact that the individual is limited is a necessary precondition for being.

[115] So let's take a look at the structure of paradise as it's presented in Genesis.

[116] So the first aspect of the initial paradisal state is unself -consciousness.

[117] Now, if you look at factor and analytic studies of human personality, you note that self -consciousness, although it is arguably our greatest gift, also loads almost entirely on the factor that defines negative affect.

[118] And you might also notice that when you say I became self -conscious, you generally put a negative cast on that, in that I was talking before a group of people, and suddenly I was seized by self -consciousness.

[119] And as a consequence of that, I was flooded by negative emotion and was fundamental.

[120] immobilized so it's a very paradoxical a very paradoxical state of being that our highest rational gift say and the only one that clearly distinguishes us from animals is also that which when manifested makes us almost unbearably anxious the initial paradisal state when Adam and Eve first walk in the Garden of Eden is characterized by an animal -like unself consciousness Adam and Eve whatever they are are not clearly segregated from the rest of the world they have no idea for example of their own nakedness and if you think about what nakedness means you immediately understand that that's also a very profound dramatic representation you know with children that around the age of three or four many of them regardless of their mode of upbringing start to become very concerned about privacy say with regards to bodily functions and also very concerned about ever showing themselves without clothes And it's perfectly reasonable to presume that that's a consequence of their emergent self -consciousness, an event that takes place somewhere between the ages of two and five, and that's a defining moment, right?

[121] That makes them segregatable, say, from their mother.

[122] And so you also have images of paradise that float through Western history that are characterized by the image of the unconscious union between the mother and child, right?

[123] which is an imagistic representation that eradicates the tension of self -consciousness, both for the mother and for the child.

[124] So the notion that the child is living in a paradisal condition that somehow lost as he or she approaches adulthood gives another sort of symbolic layer to the notion of the pre -self -conscious paradise.

[125] It's also a place where order and chaos are in perfect balance, and you know that because what paradise means is para around daiza a wall while Eden means delight or a place of delight para daesa paradise is a walled garden a walled place of delight and a garden is precisely that place where the forces of nature or chaos and the forces of culture are held in perfect balance right that's what a garden is it's nature given form by culture and it's a place that's archetypally pleasant a place where the intervention of human activity has produced a kind of stability that transcends that of nature because it's a cultural construct but also that transcends that of culture because all of the plants and the other growing things that constitute a garden are somehow transcendent even though they're under the cultivating hand of culture and the individual if you look at the manner in which the fall story is represented you all can also see that the place of previous stability can be regarded as a kind of paradise.

[126] So if you remember the story of Moses leading his people through the desert, it's clearly the case that when the Israelites were in the desert, even though they got away from the tyranny, it was easy to look back and say, well, you know, tough as it was, the place that we were before was much better than the place we are now.

[127] So it's perfectly reasonable and expectable for people who are caught in a crisis to look back to the time prior to the dawn of that crisis with longing, even if the crisis that they're presently experiencing is a necessary precondition for further development of personality.

[128] So the story that's laid out in Genesis has its structure something like this.

[129] Before we became self -conscious, the world was perfect.

[130] As a consequence of the rise of self -consciousness, we were thrown out of the Garden of Eden, and out of paradise and destined to live the profane existence that characterizes our present mode of being where we're subject to knowledge of mortality and the possibility of illness and alienation from God.

[131] And wouldn't it be ever so great if we could only return to that condition of unself -consciousness and make all our problems go away?

[132] And you see this kind of pathological paradisal reminiscence manifesting itself in the most banal forms of conservatism which are always projecting the ideal past somewhere back into the unattainable reaches of time and also in those situations that obtain psychologically when people are absolutely possessed by depression and anxiety and wish for their consciousness to come to an end if not metaphorically so they desire to sleep then actually so that suicide is viewed as a kind of unconsciousness whose paradisal nature, the absence of all opposition, is viewed as clearly preferable to the difficulties of actually maintaining being.

[133] Iliadus says the idea of paradise once and then paradise lost is not something unique to Western or great Eastern societies.

[134] It's a widespread motif, just as wide as the flood motif.

[135] Regardless of where you go in the world, you find this notion when heaven had been abruptly separated from the earth, that is when it had become remote as in our days, when the tree or vine connecting earth to heaven had been cut or the mountain which used to touch the sky had been flattened out, then the paradisal stage was over and man entered into his present, fallen condition.

[136] In effect, all myths of paradise show us primordial man enjoying a beatitude, a spontaneity and freedom, which he has unfortunately lost in consequence of the fall, that is, of what followed upon the mythical event that caused the rupture between heaven and earth.

[137] As I said, Eden is delight, a place of delight by terminological definition, whereas paradise is a walled garden.

[138] I want to show you what knowing that does for analysis of the relationship between Eastern and Western thought.

[139] So let me tell you quickly the story of the Buddha, and I'm going to represent it fundamentally like this.

[140] Buddha starts his life in what's essentially a walled garden by all reasonable comparative analysis, and as a consequence of his emergent self -consciousness, the unself -conscious childlike perfection of that early state is permanently disrupted.

[141] So you have a situation where the greatest redemption story of the East, follows precisely the same grammatical track as the greatest creation story of the West.

[142] So this is the story.

[143] Buddha's father is visited by an angel who tells him that his son is going to grow up to be the greatest temporal, profane ruler the world has ever seen or a great spiritual leader.

[144] And his father, being a pragmatic and conservative man, decides that there's no possible way I'm going to allow my son to take the ambivalent road of spiritual enlightenment.

[145] I'm going to allow him to fall completely in love with the world, so that he will remain attached to his domain.

[146] So, prior to Buddha's birth, his father constructs a great city with walls around it.

[147] And inside that city, he removes all signs of pain, frustration, and disappointment.

[148] Any sign of ugliness and age, the only people that are allowed to exist within this city are those who are in perfect, mental, and physical health who are paragons of beauty and virtue and the idea that lurks behind that archetypal story is that when a father has a child his moral obligation is to shield the developing consciousness of that child from contact with any of the horrors of life that could provide the child with an experience too traumatic for that developing consciousness to apprehend so because it's an archetypal story it relates to the development of all people not just the redemptive savior and that's the motif that the buddhist story initially follows a good father makes his child fall in love with life by enticing that child into a direct relationship with all that life has to offer so Buddha grows up within this walled garden this unself -conscious paradise but precisely because he's been shielded to this degree and allowed to mature his consciousness continues to expand and the world outside the boundaries that his parents have established for him starts to attract his attention now we know already that the forbidden fruit right the lure of what's outside the walls is something that human beings just can't keep their mangy little paws off right we are absolutely uncontrollably curious and the best way to make sure that we investigate something is to lay down a stricture that says whatever you do under whatever circumstances never look there right and then the automatic systems that underlie our orienting and that motivate our seeking experience are constantly pulling our attention precisely to that forbidden spot compelling us to investigate exactly that which has been forbidden so because Buddha is a consciousness developing in a healthy manner he immediately becomes curious about what lies beyond the the limits that have been established with him and he makes a decision to go outside of paradise right which seems a particularly ridiculous thing to do given that in principle he has everything he could possibly want inside the walls but then again we have the troublesome notion of the original sin of Adam right which is that if any of you were offered a forbidden fruit again under circumstances mythologically equivalent to those that obtained in the beginning you'd immediately reach your hand out and take it because what we haven't got for human beings is always far more compelling than what We have got.

[149] So Buddha goes outside the walls, but his father, who's a good father, although somewhat conservative, decides he's going to rig the game a little bit, so he gets rid of everybody that's diseased or unhappy or uncomfortable or ugly or old or anything that could possibly disturb the Buddha.

[150] And he lines the streets with flower waving women and puts petals on the road and sends his son out in a gilded chariot.

[151] But the gods who are lurking around, right?

[152] the troublemaking gods who represent chaos and disorder and the unknown decide to send in front of Buddha a sick man who hobbles unsteadily into view, and Buddha asks his retainer precisely what this phenomena represents and his retainer says, well, you know, human beings like you, since you're human, are subject to the deterioration of their physical powers in an arbitrary way.

[153] And this man is one person who's been so afflicted, and so Buddha is completely disenchanted by his exploratory, move out into the terrible unknown, and runs back into the castle walls and shuts the door, and is perfectly happy to think of nothing for months.

[154] But then as his anxiety habituates and his curiosity grows, he can't stand the notion of never going outside the walls again and outside he goes again.

[155] And this time after his father prepares the route ever so carefully that God send in sight.

[156] An old man who hobbles into view and Buddha looks at him in shock and horror and says to his retainer just precisely what's going on here.

[157] And his retainer says, well, that's an old man and everybody gets old and you're going to get old too and that's the way of all humanity and that's the point at which Buddha's self -consciousness expands not to only include the possibility of degeneration, but to include the temporal horizon that's characteristic of life.

[158] And he finds that so terribly shocking that he runs back into the castle and shuts the walls down and plays with his friends for another six months or maybe a year till his anxiety finally habituates and he goes out one final time.

[159] And this time the gods send a funeral parade for him and he sees his first dead body.

[160] And this is such a terrible shock to him that he can't even go back to the castle.

[161] So his father prepares for him a great party in the woods near the castle, full of nude dancing women who are perfectly willing to flaunt themselves and to offer themselves to him.

[162] But Buddha is so absolutely and catastrophically shocked by this notion of emergent death that he can't take any pleasure whatsoever in what's being offered to him and he leaves the kingdom once and for all.

[163] And you think, well, that's exactly what happens to you when you grow up, right?

[164] If you're reasonably well socialized and properly looked after, then your curiosity gets the better of you and you keep going out into the world until what your parents have established for you is no longer sufficient for you.

[165] And as a consequence of that movement out into the world, you find out all sorts of things, characteristic of your own life, that not only your parents can't precisely explain to you, but even the broader formal structures of your culture have a very difficult time handling.

[166] And when you finally do encounter such realities and allow their effect on you to fully manifest itself, while then you're finally independent, and you no longer can return home.

[167] But from that point forward, you're also burdened as Adam is burdened when he loses his paradisal unself -consciousness with the full revelation of what it means to be limited and alive.

[168] So what happens to Buddha as a consequence of this revelation, he becomes an apprentice, And the chronicles of the Buddhist adventure are careful to say that he becomes the world's most proficient Practitioner of Samkhya which was a philosophical precursor to yoga and then to yoga so he masters all the positions in the asanas until he's disciplined physically to an almost unlimited degree and then he decides that he'll Adopt the stance of world renunciation which is also something he's remarkably good at and he starves himself until the chroniclers say he resembled Nothing so much as a pile of dust, and then having exhausted all the disciplinary structures that his sophisticated culture has to offer him, but still not precisely finding the answer that he's looking for, he retreats into the forest, a place of the unknown, and sits himself at the base of a tree.

[169] Underneath the tree, he's visited by visions and temptations.

[170] The first vision is an essentially erotic one.

[171] Life itself tempts him back.

[172] out of his self -conscious state, into the domain of pure physical pleasure, a perfectly reasonable temptation, right?

[173] And one that's powerful enough so that Hindu philosophers say, as their churches and cathedrals are covered with erotic drawings, if you can't get past the erotic drawings into the church, that's the domain that you should still inhabit, right?

[174] In the dawning phases of life, at least till middle age, that's the appropriate mode of being, to be enticed and seduced by the physical pleasures that life has to offer.

[175] But in the final analysis, those are not sufficient to solve the problem of emergent self -consciousness.

[176] And so the angel of death visits him and offers him the opportunity to exist permanently in a state of nirvana.

[177] A very, very interesting twist on the story because you have to wonder, given the association, say, between suicidality and the notion of paradise that exists underneath that, if what Buddha isn't being offered by the angel of death is in fact death and the cessation of all the problems of being regardless.

[178] He rejects that, attains enlightenment briefly, and then decides to return to the world to share what he's discovered with all of suffering humanity.

[179] The idea being that the Buddha, who is the awakened or enlightened one, is capable of attaining a transcendent state, but also knows fully that because human beings have a shared soul, aspect, it is not possible for any one person to attain redemption until all people attain redemption.

[180] The reason being that it's very difficult to be transcendent and enlightened when you see someone who's sick lying in a ditch.

[181] So, then we shift from that back to Genesis and the tempted fall of man and read the third chapter.

[182] And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

[183] Well, what does that mean?

[184] Well, Freud pointed out that one of human beings most common nightmares is to be stripped of clothing in front of a crowd.

[185] Now, why would that be precisely?

[186] Well, your naked self is the most vulnerable aspect of you, right?

[187] We're all clothed and for good reason, partly that's protection from the terrible natural world, right?

[188] But it also offers this the possibility of placing a barrier between ourselves, our vulnerable cells and the searching and critical gaze of the community, right?

[189] Because not only are we vulnerable to the rigors of nature, we're also vulnerable to the depredations and criticisms of society.

[190] And the notion that a man and a woman could exist naked and not know it is a clear finger pointing in the direction of a story that says these people were not conscious, or if conscious, they certainly were not self -conscious.

[191] And what's that?

[192] how does the story develop?

[193] The serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

[194] And he said unto the woman, yea, hath God said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden.

[195] And the woman said unto the serpent, well, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the center of the garden, God hath said, you should not eat of it, neither shall you touch it lest you die.

[196] And the serpent said to the woman, For God knows that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, right?

[197] A clear pointing to the notion of an awakening and an illumination.

[198] And you should be like gods, knowing good and evil, right?

[199] Which attributes to humanity, a dawning sense of morality, explicit morality, a faculty for comprehension that we do not share with any other animal.

[200] And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.

[201] Women.

[202] Trouble.

[203] What's the tree?

[204] Well, we talked about this a little bit before, so you say, well, if you look at the structure of experience from this particular perspective, and you think about that in a vertical plane, with the layers one on top of another, then you can imagine the tree as the thing that unites these three layers.

[205] The tree is the domain that unites chaos and order and the individual, the structure running up through the middle of it.

[206] And you see a representation of that, interestingly enough, from Norse mythology.

[207] This is Igduzil, the tree of the gods, the tree that stands in the middle of the Norse paradise.

[208] And one of the things that's very interesting about this particular tree is that if you look at its roots, the roots are covered with snakes and serpents, and underneath the snakes and serpents is water.

[209] and so that you see that the tree that stands at the center of the world is rooted in chaos fundamentally, is rooted in whatever it is that constitutes the pre -cosmogonic matrix of being.

[210] And then the central aspects of this domain are nicely laid out as the domain of territoriality, the ends of the borders that the individual understands and the habitual territory that he inhabits, and then the tree in the center represents whatever it is that's central to this, to our mode of being.

[211] And so let's take a look at that in some detail and flesh it out symbolically.

[212] We find Iliad is saying the tree that stands hypothetically at the center of the world is precisely that structure that shaman climb when they make their transition from the normal mode of earthly being into their transcendent of being so iliadis says the symbolism of the ascension into heaven by means of a tree is clearly illustrated by the ceremony of initiation of the burriate shaman the candidate climbs up a post in the middle of his yurt his tent reaches the summit and goes out by the smoke hole but we know that this opening made to let out the smoke is likened to the hole made by the pole star in the vault of heaven so you can imagine there's a conceptualization of the world as centered around a particular axis and that the tent is regarded as as at least transitorily as a symbolic equivalent of that cosmological structure.

[213] Among other peoples, the tent pole is called the pillar of the sky and is compared to the pole star around which the world rotates, at least from the visual perspective, and is named elsewhere the nail of the sky.

[214] Thus, the ritual post set up in the middle of the yort is an image of the cosmic tree which is found at the center of the world, with the pole star shining directly above it.

[215] By ascending it, the candidate enters into heaven.

[216] That is why, as soon as he comes out of the smokehole of the tent, he gives a loud cry, invoking the help of the gods.

[217] Up there, he finds himself in their presence.

[218] The tree is an absolutely archaic symbol, and it seems to me most likely that it represents the structure of the nervous system.

[219] I think a structure that's rooted not so much in the spinal sensory motor structures, but deeply in the autonomic structures, stretching down into the center of the body and planting the mind firmly in its material substrate so that the autonomic system and its projections up into the amygdala and the limbic system and then up into the cortex constitute the interface between the spiritual domain that our psyche inhabits and the material domain that constitutes our body the tree at the center of our being what does a tree do well it bears fruit well what sort of fruit well there are multiple medieval representations that are quite peculiar, showing Christ, for example, as the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the fruit of the tree of life.

[220] And what does that mean?

[221] It means that conceptualizations like the hero are products of whatever it is that this tree represents.

[222] The tree is something that produces fruit.

[223] Fruit is also something that can be ingested.

[224] And as Eric Newman point out, wherever liquor, fruit, earth, herbs, etc. appear as the vehicles of life and immortality, including the water and bread of life, the sacrament of the host, and every form of food cult down to the present day.

[225] We have an ancient mode of human expression before us.

[226] So imagine the idea of the Piagetian idea of assimilation and then accommodation and then understand it's assimilative, nutritive, underlying metaphorical nature.

[227] The idea being that there's a tight analogy between ingesting something, something, material and undergoing a transformation of energy attendant upon that, which is what happens when you eat, and ingesting a piece of information which offers you a new mode of doing things.

[228] So you can say, well, people will trade work for information, they will trade food for information.

[229] There must be a kind of equivalence between work and information and food and information because otherwise the trade wouldn't make sense.

[230] And then you realize that if you're informed, you can undertake transformations of yourself and the material world in a much more efficient manner because that's what being informed means and that means that being informed acquiring some information and eating something are all tied up in a complex way into the same metaphorical structure eat something forbidden transform as a consequence conscious realization is acted out in the elementary scheme of nutritive assimilation and the ritual act of concrete eating is the first form of assimilation known to man. The assimilation and ingestion of the content, the eaten food, produces an interchange.

[231] Transformation of the body cells through food intake is the most elementary of animal changes experienced by man. How a weary, enfeebled, and famished can be turned into an alert, strong, and satisfied being, or a man perishing of thirst can be refreshed or even transformed by an intoxicating drink.

[232] This is and must remain a fundamental experience so long as man shall exist, Eric Newman's point being that our psychological experience of the capacity of psychological transformation through eating is a metaphor waiting to be applied to the equivalent experience that we obtain, the equivalent excitement and sense of transformative possibility that we acquire as a consequence of coming across some new and truly valuable piece of information.

[233] So you have the idea that the tree that stands at the center of the world, the individual mode of being, is something that bears fruit.

[234] And the ingestion of that fruit, that idea, say, or that piece of information is something that can produce a permanent transformation.

[235] You know that the snake is utilized conceptually and metaphorically as representation of transformation, right?

[236] Because the snake is something that can shed its skin and be reborn.

[237] We know that a snake is something that's innately attractive and terrifying to human beings and other primates so that if you come across a snake you're likely to be at least startled if not horrified by it but also attracted to it in a way that is underneath your voluntary consciousness right because snakes attract orienting reflexes and they activate the systems underneath your consciousness that actually govern the structure of that consciousness.

[238] We know that the snake can be well represented as well as internal chaos so imagine this imagine that it's not unreasonable for a self -conscious mind searching for a mode of self -representation to remark on the parallels between the structure of the snake and the spine and the brain given that a snake is essentially a spine with the brain and then imagine as well that the most archaic aspects of our nervous system those that govern novelty and orienting and anxiety responses are in fact precisely those that were described by McLean as nested inside the reptilian brain and then imagine along with the Hindu yogis that the purpose of Kundalini Yoga is to activate the circuitry that's associated with that snake so to speak to produce a permanent state of alert wakefulness that's associated with consciousness so imagine this imagine an animal like like a zebra grazing mindlessly in the herd with no consciousness consciousness whatsoever and then imagine its relatively undeveloped cortical structures activated suddenly by the movement of a lion off in the perimeter and then imagine for that brief moment that that zebra is actually conscious a state that requires a tremendous amount of energy and difficult to maintain but because the threat and the uncertainty manifest itself within the zebra's mode of consciousness it wakes momentarily and then imagine that human beings are like that zebra always because we've become self -conscious because we know that the unknown is around us all the time even when we think we're safe we're never safe imagine that the reason we're so conscious is because as a consequence of our discovery of the possibility of our own mortality all this underlying circuitry that in other animals is only apparent when they're startled or afraid or interested or curious in human beings it's on all the time and that's what makes us And the reason for that is because we developed enough cortical elaboration to note that we're always threatened by everything that's around us.

[239] And then imagine that, well, that's pretty awful, isn't it?

[240] Because it's at the basis of all our innate existential terror.

[241] But then imagine as well that without that terror pushing us forward and our constant reference to the dangerous aspect of the unknown, we would have never been motivated to produce the kind of societies that we've produced.

[242] which are essentially very remarkably elaborated devices that enable us to find some protection from that unknown and to manipulate it effectively.

[243] And then remembering that story, we'll return to Genesis.

[244] Jung says the snake was regarded by early Gnostic Christians as a kind of deity whose faculties were more developed and advanced than the original deity that actually structured the world.

[245] The idea there being that the world initially was a pretty dismal place.

[246] Everyone wasn't conscious, we all existed at the level of the animal, and then the snake came along and said, wake up, wake up, and the movement from that state of unself -consciousness paradise to this profane state of awakening can be regarded not so much as a descent, but as an assent of sorts, even though a painful one.

[247] And then you have Gertes' commentary from Mephistopheles, his representation of Satan, and his capacity for temptation, who says, follow the adage of my cousin's snake, from dreams of Godlike knowledge you will wake to fear in which your very soul shall quake.

[248] A statement associating a human tendency to attribute to all revolutionary souls.

[249] sources of new information, a kind of demonic being.

[250] And then you have the problem of the woman.

[251] Now we know that within the context of the Judeo -Christian tradition, women have unduly suffered for their role in tempting humanity in the embodied form of Adam towards higher order self -consciousness.

[252] And then you think, well, let's just take a look at how human beings and their mating relationships differ from those of other animals like chimpanzees to whom we are very closely genetically related and if you look at the mating strategies of female chimpanzees you see that they really don't care who they sleep with so to speak any old chimpanzee will do now the less dominant male chimps tend to be chased away by the more dominant male chimps but if a female and less dominant chip can get the hell away from the watchful gaze of the dominance hierarchy they're perfectly happy to mate human females are not like that.

[253] They're selective maters and there's a tremendous body of evolutionary psychological information that suggests that although both genders value intelligence and physical appearance females value the ability to attain dominance hierarchy status in men far more than men admire the ability to attain dominant status in women which is to say that men don't care what a woman has with regards to potential for attaining status, whereas with women it's one of the strong determinants of mating preference.

[254] So then let's say, look, we don't know why the hell our cortex has expanded so rapidly somewhere between 5 and 3 million years ago.

[255] Let's offer this as a hypothesis.

[256] The women started to get choosy, and because they were so damn complicated, the whole human species had to exaggerate its cortical growth prior to any even use for that cortical growth, just so that the men had an even hand in the competition, right?

[257] So women put tremendous selection pressure on the human being to develop tremendous cortical expansion.

[258] Now we already know that from the mythological perspective that women are frequently cast into the same conceptual domain, the tempterous domain, as the benevolent aspect of the unknown.

[259] And we know as well from representations of hero mythology that it is the individual who goes out to confront chaos, who's most likely to free from the dragon not only treasure but a virgin say in the case of mythological representations like Saint George and the dragon in the Old Testament in Genesis there's no there's this notion that not only did people become self -conscious because they did something but they did this voluntarily right they made this decision on their own so Milton puts words into God's mouth and says so will He, meaning the human being and his faithless progeny, whose fault, who's but his own?

[260] Ingrave he had of me all he could have.

[261] I made him just and right.

[262] It's efficient to have stood, though free to fall.

[263] And then you think, well, maybe the notion of the heritable sin of Adam characterizing human beings and their fallen existential condition isn't just the black -hearted ravings of fundamentalist Southern Baptist lunatics, right?

[264] There's something to this.

[265] Human beings are the only creatures that seem to live at odds with their own experience, and it's not so unreasonable to suppose that it's our dawning capacity for self -consciousness that put us in that uncomfortable position.

[266] So why do I associate the eating of the apple with self -consciousness?

[267] Well, it's because that's how the story lays itself out.

[268] You have the collateral evidence of the Buddha's story of enlightenment, right?

[269] His contact with death.

[270] You have multiple medieval representations of Eve offering to Adam, not an apple but a skull.

[271] You have multiple representations of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and medieval iconography as not containing apples but containing skulls.

[272] And you have the statements that are within the context of Genesis itself.

[273] and the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons well there's a lot of information packed into those two lines right what does it mean to have your eyes open well half your brain is visual cortex it's not unreasonable to presume that that means a quick a quick magnification of consciousness you're conscious during the day that's when your eyes are open what happens when your eyes are open what happens when your eyes are open well you know you're naked what does that mean well you know you're vulnerable right to social comment to social judgment to dominance hierarchy status maneuvering and to all the terrible things that the unknown world can can reek upon you and so then what do you do well you create culture right and that's what this little sentence says and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons it's a pretty eventful sequence all crammed up in two little sentences so then what happens i think it's extremely interesting so before adam and eve figure out that they're naked they're cruising around the garden having a fine time doing whatever they want they don't take any thought for the future right they don't have a prefrontal cortex they're living in a in a paradoxless environment like an animal lives well what happens after they become self -conscious well prior to this Adam's walking around with God, right?

[274] And you think about what that means.

[275] It means something like this.

[276] An animal isn't in the world of good and evil.

[277] An animal like nature points out is beyond good and evil, right?

[278] Enraptured entirely by the actions of automatic instinct, governed by processes that are completely transcendent.

[279] The animal is nothing but a force of nature.

[280] There's no opposition between the animal and the world.

[281] The animal is the world.

[282] And just, as in the case of the animal, prior to the eating of the apple, Adam walks around the garden with God.

[283] There's no discontinuity between him and the transcendent world as such.

[284] But as soon as he becomes naked, he hides.

[285] Well, why?

[286] Well, that doesn't need to be answered.

[287] All you have to is think about it.

[288] Why would you hide if you know you're naked?

[289] Well, it's simple.

[290] you hide because you think you can get hurt you think that whatever you are is so vulnerable that if it shows itself to the transcendent to others to the natural world that something terrible will happen and then you think well that's a pretty logical presupposition right look at us so god comes cruising around the garden after adam and eve eat the apple in the cool of the day and Adam and Eve hide themselves among the trees of the garden.

[291] And God says to Adam, hey, where are you?

[292] And Adam says, I heard your voice and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

[293] And that story has bottomless depth because it means something like this.

[294] At the beginning of Genesis there's this notion that there's a transcendent relationship between the individual and God, right?

[295] identity of logos and the individual.

[296] Right, a notion, by the way, that our entire idea of intrinsic human right is predicated on, as we've been at some pains to demonstrate, a relationship between the limited and the limitless, eradicated by the dawn of self -consciousness.

[297] What does that mean?

[298] Well, let's say you have a destiny, just for the sake of argument, right?

[299] Because you are a being with a tremendous history and an unbelievable potential, So let's say you have a destiny just for the sake of argument, what would cause you to hide from that destiny?

[300] Well, obviously, it's your own reflections on your mortal vulnerability, right?

[301] How could I be characterized by any transcendent power whatsoever when I'm susceptible to social alienation, right?

[302] when I have this body which is capable of terrifying degeneration that will eventually decay into old age and that is bounded by death.

[303] How could I be good for anything?

[304] Which is precisely what this little story says.

[305] And so God figures out that Adam and Eve ate the fruit and that's a pretty decisive move because once you wake up, sorry, you're awake.

[306] And he says, and this is not an injunction, by the way.

[307] This is a description.

[308] All right, you've done it now.

[309] Unto the woman, he says, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.

[310] In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children.

[311] Why?

[312] Why?

[313] Well, we have a big cortex, right?

[314] Really big.

[315] It grew fast, and what that meant is that there was an evolutionary arms race between skull size, date of birth, and pelvic diameter girth.

[316] the wider the pelvis the less effectively you can walk the larger the skull the bigger the brain the younger the baby the more dependent and vulnerable so what do we have in the case of human beings the female human pelvis has already stretched to the limits of its structural capacity so the hole in its center is as big as it can get without compromising the structural integrity of the pelvis while still allowing women to walk and run so how babies adapted to that?

[317] Well, that's simple.

[318] A mammal of our size should have a gestation period of two years.

[319] We have a gestation period of nine months.

[320] Why?

[321] You've got to get the damn baby out before its head gets too big.

[322] What does that mean?

[323] Well, it means it's vulnerable, right?

[324] Nothing more vulnerable than a baby human being, except maybe a baby kangaroo, right?

[325] But it's got a pouch to hide in at least.

[326] So we're born vulnerable, right?

[327] Characteristic of the birth of the hero.

[328] Who suffers in childbirth?

[329] Women.

[330] Why?

[331] Baby, is just a little bit too big, has to be crunched and compacted during birth, right?

[332] The skull bones aren't joined together so that the baby's head can be squashed and visibly deformed during the process of birth prior to the 20th century.

[333] What was the death rate among women giving birth?

[334] One in three, one in five, terrible.

[335] Why?

[336] That's the price you pay for self -consciousness.

[337] And thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

[338] This is not an injunction, this is a description.

[339] the additional burden that dependent offspring place on women, place them at a disadvantage.

[340] What's the consequence of that from a historical perspective?

[341] Well, any feminist can answer that question, right?

[342] And unto Adam, he said, because you listen to your wife and have eaten the tree of which I commanded thee saying, don't eat that.

[343] Cursed is the ground for thy sake.

[344] In sorrow shall thou eat of it for all thy days of thy life.

[345] Fair enough, right?

[346] Once you're self -conscious, you work.

[347] Why?

[348] Well, animals don't work.

[349] Why do people work?

[350] Well, because we know, right?

[351] We know that if it isn't going to happen today, it's going to happen tomorrow.

[352] And if it isn't going to happen tomorrow, well, it's going to happen next week or the week after, the month, after, the year after.

[353] And we bloody well better prepare.

[354] So that's what we do, constantly, prepare and prepare and prepare.

[355] So we're not bounded and motivated by what's happening from second to second, like the animal is, and it's still paradise, state, we're constantly tormented by an endless string of what -if questions, because when we look at the unknown, we can see the possibility for everything, including our own punishment, our own torment, our own demise.

[356] And so we're motivated, like no other animal, to work, and so we work.

[357] But that is another aspect that alienates us from paradisal being.

[358] Thorn and thistles shall it bring forth for thee, and now shall eat the herb of the field.

[359] in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return right therefore the lord god sent him forth from the garden of eden to till the ground from whence he was taken so he drove out the man and he placed at the east of the garden of eden cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life Adam and Eve right the mother and father of all humanity so you can give them a mythological slant And you can say, Adam is culture, say, and Eve is nature.

[360] Because they're the archetypal parents, it's a perfectly reasonable interpretation.

[361] They have twin sons, Cain and Able.

[362] So let's read firstborn creatures, first born human creatures, in the new self -conscious world.

[363] So what are the first two individuals in the new self -conscious world like?

[364] And let's find out.

[365] And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived in Bear Cain and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.

[366] And again she bare his brother Abel, the younger brother.

[367] And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

[368] And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.

[369] Okay, so we're going to remove this from its story from its entrapment in a particular temporal domain.

[370] And within a temporal culture, we're going to say something like this.

[371] Well, if you work you make sacrifices, right?

[372] That's what works all about.

[373] And the reason you make sacrifices is because you're offering up to the unknown, the fruits of your labor, in the hope that as a consequence of your diligent effort, you're going to be favored, right?

[374] Because otherwise why work?

[375] The point of working is to transform the transcendent into something benevolent.

[376] So you work and you work and you say, is that sufficient?

[377] And the answer you get from the transcendent is the answer.

[378] Now, it's certainly true.

[379] that lots of people work and doesn't go all that well right they make sacrifices and they do what they think they have to do and their life is one string of catastrophes after another right so we have this situation in the process of time it came to pass that cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the lord and abel he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof and the lord had respect unto abel and his offering so what that means is that old abel working away man things are going great for him right fortune smiles on him he's doing wonderfully he's got everything he needs well okay he's scrounging away in the ground and things aren't going as well for him at all right plagues locusts you name it farm life isn't going well so what happens well cane was very wroth and his countenance fell precisely right because if you work diligently towards a certain end and you don't get there then you're continent falls, right?

[380] You're angry, frustrated, disappointed, hurt, anxious, threatened, ashamed, guilty, the whole panoply of negative emotions.

[381] And that's fair enough because, of course, if you fail, that's what's going to be the consequence.

[382] But then there's this little twist on it, right?

[383] This specifically human twist.

[384] It's like the kind of moral of the whole story.

[385] And so you find the Lord saying, you know, what's what's up with you?

[386] Why are you so unhappy?

[387] If you just got your act together, then you'd be accepted.

[388] If you really got your act together, which is a statement, something like this, if you keep making sacrifices and the same terrible thing keeps happening, there's always the possibility that you're just actually not doing it the right way.

[389] And if you just get yourself straightened up, tap together, right, and drop the preconceptions that you don't really need and adjust your behavior accordingly, then fortune would smile on you, and that's exactly what the Lord says to Cain.

[390] right?

[391] You don't walk around with such a crabby look on your face.

[392] If you did well, you'll be accepted.

[393] And if you don't do well, sin lies at the door.

[394] So what does that mean?

[395] Well, this is a deep motif in ancient Hebrew thinking.

[396] If the world isn't laying itself out in a manner that you find acceptable, you're faced with a tough choice.

[397] Either the world is a terrible place bent on your destruction or you're doing something wrong and it bloody well better be that you're doing something wrong because if the world is a terrible place bent on your destruction you've got absolutely no hope and Kane talked with Abel his brother and it came to pass when they were in the field that Kane rose up against Abel his brother and killed him so what does that mean well it's pretty easy it's simple it means this well say things aren't going that well for you and it's really not because life's unfair and everything stacked against you, it's because you're kind of an arrogant, stubborn, quasi totalitarian, cowardly idiot.

[398] And as a consequence of that, the world is turning into something resembling a wasteland around you.

[399] You have this option, change or continue.

[400] Or you have another option, man, look around, there's all those people doing well.

[401] The world's a terrible place, bent on my destruction.

[402] Wouldn't it be just the most interesting thing if as things are going to hell for me, I could take along just for the ride some of those successful people who are successful just for unfair reasons anyways, right?

[403] So instead of using all that negative emotion as a cue that there's something about me that might need to be transformed, I can say, well, why not just eradicate the target of my resentment, right?

[404] Not only because that sort of removes the problem of comparison, but more profoundly, and I think sort of, again, illimitlessly profoundly.

[405] Let's say you make the decision that the world's a terrible place and it's bent on your destruction, and then you think, well, what's the logical response to that?

[406] And then you think something like this, Gertha, Faust, Methystopheles credo, the spirit eye that endlessly denies, and rightly too, for all that comes to birth, earth is fit for overthrow as nothing worth.

[407] Wherefore the world were better sterilized.

[408] Thus, all that's here is evil recognized is gained to me and downfall, ruin, and sin the very element I prosper in.

[409] And Gertrth draws our attention to this credo not once but twice in his writing of Faust and has Memphisophily say, right?

[410] Once again, gone.

[411] to sheer nothing past with null made one what matters our creative endless toil when at a snatch oblivion ends the coil it is bygone how shall this riddle run as good as if things never had begun yet circle back existence to possess I'd rather have eternal emptiness and so then you think about cane -like figures like Stella and you think well what exactly was he motivated by and on the one hand you you think well he was trying to extend his cultural dominion right plagued by his own self -conscious neuroticism he wanted to extend the the the borders of his totalitarian certainty to every corner just to not be plagued by the unknown and you think fair enough you know like we're all pretty nervous and the little stability is a good thing why because they make a fundamental judgment which is the judgment of metastopheles look Life is terrible, terrible, terrible.

[412] We're self -conscious.

[413] We get sick, we go insane, we're going to die.

[414] Children, innocent children, suffer everywhere.

[415] How in the world is it right to let such a state continue?

[416] Maybe it would be better, all things considered, just to bring the whole game to an end.

[417] And so then you think, again, with Iliada, that the reason that human societies fall apart is twofold.

[418] One is, things go from bad to worse of their own accord, right?

[419] Thermodynamic reality, pure entropy.

[420] Structured entities, decay.

[421] But then there's a twist.

[422] Structured entities constructed by humans are sped in their process of decay by the participants of the individuals within that society who have essentially decided that the game is not worth the price and that under such conditions the only reasonable thing for a self -conscious painfully self -conscious individual to do is to work as hard as he or she possibly can to take the maximum amount of revenge on the conditions of existence and to ensure that the entire game folds up the consciousness disappears and that being is eradicated.

[423] Thank you for listening to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

[424] This was an amalgamation of episode 7 to 9 of Maps of Meaning, recorded by TV, Ontario.

[425] To support these podcasts, you can donate to Dr. Peterson's Patreon account, the link to which can be found in the description of this episode.

[426] Dr. Peterson's self -development programs can be found at self -authoring .com.