How To Find Your “Upward Aim” When You Feel Stuck

pretty good crowd for the city of sin who it's very it's very very amusing to in a in a strange and unfathomable way to to walk down the strip and to see the big billboards and to see all the entertainers in Vegas one after another and then to see the we who wrestle with God tour pop up it's like unbelievable ably preposterous and impossible happening. And so, and it was also funny. See, I didn't I hadn't remembered what Michaela said when she came out here that I was too controversial for Vegas. I mean, really, I mean, what are you supposed to make of that? How can how can you be too controversial for Las Vegas? That just [laughter] organized crime. That's no problem. gambling. No problem. Peterson, no bloody way. [laughter] That's [snorts] so funny. It's so ridiculous. Anyways, I'm very pleased to be here. It's very good of you all to come and uh I'm looking forward to tonight. So, I'm I want to start with a little story. [snorts] Um I had a lot of fun with my kids. Well, for their whole life, but I had a particular amount of fun with them when they were little. And uh I used to teach them like silly tricks and when they were very very little. One of the things I taught them was I'd ask them which way was up and they'd just point right away. And I thought that's good. That's good. No one no one's ever going to be able to accuse my children of not knowing which way is up. And they knew that when they're like early as they could point. Which way is up? That way. It's like great. Good work, kid. Pat him on the head for that. Good work. Okay, so that's what we're going to talk about tonight. Which way's up? And what does that mean? Because it it means something. And so we're going to we're going to get to the bottom of that or as close as I can manage. And uh we're going to see what the consequence of that is. So I'm going to start with a story. So this tour is a explication and a further exploration of the themes in my newest book which is called we who wrestle with God and it will be published in November. So, this is like the world's earliest book tour. And uh it's been very useful because I've been I've I've been editing and finishing the book while on tour. And that meant that I could wrestle with the ideas that are in it like in real time every night or three nights a week, let's say. And um and I'm writing otherwise. And then also trying out the ideas kind of like a stand-up comedian in a ways seeing what lands and what doesn't seeing how I can communicate what works with the communication that's extremely useful. If you listen to the audience, which is again what standup comedians do, the audience tells you what works, right? Um mostly well with two ways I would say fundamentally with their silence because if what you're saying is landing then everyone is gripped by it and they don't even rustle like there's no sound and so that's good. or the alternative would be an enthusiastic response, you know, and and uh it's very useful and informative and challenging and interesting and playful to try to stay in the place where that's always happening, right? And you know, that's a collective thing, isn't it? Because in order to make that happen, you need one audience full of people. And they have to be gripped by the same thing obviously because it's happening to all of them. And that's a dynamic that exists between the person who's speaking and the audience. So that's a conversation. Uh and it's a dialogue, a dialogos. It's an exchange of information. Um, obviously I'm speaking, but you're listening and you're listening individually and collectively and that's part of the celebration that we're engaged in in this event, the the stage show, the the play, the performance, all of that. Um, and there's a spirit that goes along with that. And if you pay sufficient attention, then you can, what would you say? You can embody that spirit more and more accurately and then everything works and that's fun. It's ridiculously entertaining to try that. Um, and and so that's always what I'm trying to do in these shows. And tonight, as I said, we're going to talk about aiming up. Now, what I I have a I wouldn't say it's a technique because it's not a technique. It's uh because it's not it's not something you do automatically and unthinkingly. It's more it's more like the essence of the lecture, let's say. Um, a lecture, a good lecture, great lecture hopefully, isn't the attempt to convince an audience or to force them to believe something or even to entice them, let's say, into believing it or to tell the audience what you know or to deliver a talk or any of those things. What what you want to do especially in a situation like this is you want to engage in an active in an active dramatization of wrestling. [snorts] I always have a question that I want to address in mind. Usually a single question because that helps with the focus and then the goal of the lecture that emerges out of that question is to try to answer the question. So the first thing that you have to do for that to be real is it has to be a real question and it has to matter. And so it matters to me what it means to aim up. And that's a very mysterious thing. And so you can inquire into the meaning of that endlessly. And I have inquired into that a lot. But then I have another opportunity tonight to push that further. And then I have the privilege of being able to do that while also seeing if I can bring everybody along for the ride. And so that's a good deal. That's a fun challenge. And the grip of the lecture is what would you say the audience's curiosity about whether or not that'll land, whether it'll happen, right? And whether that'll be real because that's you want to see a real performance. A kind of a paradoxical thing, a real performance, but um that's what you want to see. and you need that. So, okay. So, let's start with a story because this is about stories. The the book, we who wrestle with God, is about stories. And the biblical library that I'm assessing in this book is a collection of stories, a collection of characterizations in a sense akin to what you would experience if you went and saw a movie or if you read a work of fiction and fell into the characters that were being presented to you. And these are very deep stories uh unfathomably deep I would say and we'll string together a sequence of them tonight to investigate this idea of aiming up. So I'll start with the story of Jacob and Esau. And it's a it's a typical Old Testament story in some ways. There's a hero, Jacob, and uh his foil, who's actually the better man in some ways, Esau, his brother. And Jacob, like many of the Old Testament patriarchs, is not a very good person when he starts. And that's a relief actually if you think about it with some degree of humility because if progress forward was limited to those who were good, none of us would have a chance because we start everything. We start flawed and prone to error. Some of that's merely a matter of ignorance because what the hell do you know when you start something new? But a fair bit of it is a consequence of willful blindness and refusal to learn and pride and the classical sins you might say. I mean it's one thing to be ignorant and that's not a great thing but it's another thing to be what would you say consigning yourself to predition out of bitterness? How about that? And there's no shortage of suffering that emerges as a consequence of that. That's worth knowing too. Now, Jacob at the beginning, he's battling with his brother. Now, this is a very ancient motif, the battle between two brothers. Uh it's constantly reproportrayed in modern stories, modern films in particular. I mean, the the dynamic between Batman and the Joker, for example, there's been much mileage made out of that in recent years. the war between Harry Potter and Voldemort or Harry Potter and uh Meloy who's like he's the junior version of Satan let's say um or the or the or the battle between Superman and Lex Luthther the the notion that there's a antithesis between two patterns of being one heroic and one villainous is an extremely old idea and it's also the basis for a a very large number of the stories that we find compelling. We want to see the good guy against the bad guy and we want to investigate the nature of the bad guy. We might even watch a movie just about a bad guy. Why? Well, for some people because he's a role model. But that's not the wise approach. The wise approach is to watch the bad guy so that you know who the hell he is. To see how much you might be like him. To watch how that pattern deteriorates and degenerates to see if you can understand why so that you develop enough wisdom so you don't do that. Right? So a good bad guy is a solutary counter example. And so you could imagine too that there are different depths of bad guy with the kind of casual villain that you might meet every day in a relatively believable and realistic drama representing one level of analysis with regards to what's evil and a figure more like the Joker who in the Batman series in particular particularly as played by Heath Ledger let's say is the bad guy who's so bad that he doesn't even want to win. His victory is to lose everything, including himself and everything around him. And so he's a he's a representation of of the downward path, let's say, that verges on the archetypal. It's there's a form of there's a form of the ultimate about it. You see the same thing in the figure of Voldemort, say in Harry Potter or the figure of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings. Saurin is sort of with his all-seeing eye. He's sort of the god of the totalitarian state, you know, and the Chinese communists are building the allseeing eye of Sauron. I mean, the literary imagination is very, what would you say? Very wise when it comes to representing such things. You need the allseeing eye of the state to monitor people who don't attend to their own moral development. And so in the absence of let's say a this is one way of looking at it at the in the absence of the establishment of a relationship between God and each individual in the absence of that relationship which allows for a kind of hedonistic and immature lentiousness you need a replacement that's the tyrannical eye of the state right and so that's very much worth knowing is that the cost of not aiming up is that you will 100% fall under the dominion of an allseeing totalitarian state. And part of the reason for that is that well, you asked for it, right? I'm dead serious. Like you asked for it with your own foolishness. If you don't Well, think about it. You can think about it very straightforwardly. If you don't take responsibility for your own self-governance, for the governance of your community, well, someone is going to vacuum up that opportunity and also be invited to play that role. And if it's not you because you have the foolish habits of a hedenistic slave, let's say, then it's going to be someone who's contemptuous of you because of your constant proclivity for idiot misbehavior and who's going to clamp down on you with all the power at their disposal. And so that's a very bad idea. That's one of the consequences, let's say, of failing to aim up. The enemy of the hedenist, the enemy of the immature hedenist is the is the tyrant. And that's a what would you say? That's another pattern of the eternal battle between the hostile brothers. And so that's useful to know. That's an eternal pattern. >> Is it called >> Peterson Academy? >> Peterson Academy. >> Peterson Academy. It's called Peterson [music] Academy. >> Peterson Academy. If you want an actual education >> with hand selected professors from top universities around the world. Bringing the best professors together, making sure they're not censored in any way, giving them the audience and the remuneration and appreciation they deserve. >> And you were true to your word. You gave me absolute intellectual autonomy. I have had it through every course. We figure we can offer people a highquality university level education for under $2,000. >> Well, congratulations, Jordan. It's honestly brilliant. Can't wait to enroll myself. I'll be doing that straight after this. Find your Jacob and Esau fight in the womb. So that's how deep their struggle reaches. Now, why is this? Well, there's a variety of reasons why these this story rings true. The first is that sibling rivalry is far from rare. It's it's a common pattern in households and it's more likely to emerge between samesex siblings obviously because they're competing for the same slice of resources, you might say. And it's even more likely to be the case if they're born relatively close together. If you want to have children and minimize the probability of intense sibling rivalry, it's good to space them for about three three years. Now, I'm not saying you should do that because there's a cost to the spacing, too. It's possible, for example, that the siblings won't be as close. I'm just saying that on that unitary dimension, the reason three works perhaps is because a three-year-old is no longer an infant. A three-year-old is social. And so when a new baby comes into the house, the three-year-old can establish a relationship with the baby and that can be, what would you say, a payoff for no longer being the infant, right? Because the problem if you're the older child and a new infant shows up is well, you're not the infant anymore. And so the lion share of attention, at least for the first while, is not going to go to you. and attention. That's like the ultimate valuable resource. There's nothing that's more valuable than attention. That's why advertisers pay for it, right? And so there's a there can be a fight, very intense fight for parental attention in families. Now parents who are awake can regulate that but it takes a fair bit of careful negotiation. Right? So the rivalry can get out of hand. Well this is what happens with Jacob and Esau. But something deeper happens too because Jacob's mother Rachel and Jacob's father uh Isaiah, they don't agree on which kid is the right kid. And so Jacob is his mother's favorite and Esau is his father's favorite. And they have some interesting personality characteristics, these two, that kind of go along with that as well. So Esau is kind of a hairy brute. He's very masculine. He lives outside. He doesn't like the tent. He's out hunting constantly. He's a man's man. And his father particularly admires him. And he admires him partly because Jake, Esau, is a skilled hunter and provider. And well, because Isaac is also male and a certain amount of favoritism falls on Esau in relationship to the father. Whereas Rachel likes Jacob better. Jacob is more of a he's a more of a homeboy. He's more of a mama's boy. Truth. Truth be told. Um, and I'm not saying that necessarily because that shows a weakness in his character that Esau doesn't share. Esau has the faults of someone who's more exploratory, mas exploratory in the masculine way. He tends to be impulsive, for example. and he he isn't as concerned about abstract what would you say he's less concerned with abstract thought and he doesn't think that much about the future and that actually that's a fault and that also makes him susceptible to the machinations of Jacob who's more serpentine more capable of planning and who conspires with his own mother to take what is rightfully Esau's. So, Esau is the firstborn by seconds. Jacob and Esau are twins. And uh that's one of the things that increases the probability of sibling rivalry, right? Because they both appear at the same time. And Jacob is literally holding on to Esau's heel when they're born. And his name means something approximating he who grips the heel. And that's a archaic characterization of jealousy and envy. And so Jacob is a usurper. Esau is the firstborn. That means that he is entitled according to the archaic laws to a double portion of the inheritance. Now many archaic societies were set up so that the firstborn got the lion share of an inheritance. And the reason for that was that if you kept dividing up property for example or wealth equally among siblings, you did that for multiple generations, everybody ends up with like two square feet of land and you know a few pennies and everyone starves. And so one solution to that is to give the bulk of the resources to one person and let everyone else know they have to fend for themselves and that that's not cruel. It's just custom. It's not there's nothing personal in it. Right? And so anyways, Esau has this firstborn right and Rachel and Jacob conspire constantly to steal it from him, right? And so there's a very ugly story there, right? Like seriously, if you if you think it through, it's a seriously ugly story because you have a relationship between mother and son that's too close. It's a relationship that excludes the other brother plus the father. So that that's not a good thing. Then there's a conspiratorial element to it. And then there's this this twin flaw of character. On Jacob's part, he's kind of timid. He sticks around the household. He's a mama's boy and he's a conspir. And on Esau's part, he's a wild kind of adventurer and he's impulsive and foolish. One day, Jake, Esau comes in from a hunt and he's ravenous from the hunt. And Jacob has been sitting at home making porridge and Esau is hungry and impulsively demands some of what Jacob has been cooking. And Jacob says, "I'm not going to give you any of this unless you turn over your birthright." And Esau, who's a little on the impulsive side, as I said, and not sufficiently concerned about the future, not not civilized in that way to be concerned about the future. He agrees and this is this is not a good trade. It's not a wise trade. And it it it's a way the story highlights the danger of a kind of well an otherwise admirable exploratory nature. Like, you know, Esau is a tough guy and he's out there in the wilderness hunting and and taking care of himself, provisioning the family, but he lacks the civilized wisdom that would enable him to regulate that exploratory proclivity, courageous exploratory proclivity in light, let's say, of the future. Because what he does is sacrifice his future, his birthright, right? His inheritance. This is a big deal for to gratify what's essentially an immediate whim. It's like he was hungry, but he wasn't starving. It's like it was he didn't even trade it for like cheesecake. It was like, you know, porridge made out of beans. Stupid deal. So, he kind of wandered into it, you know, and I'm sure Jacob and Rachel contented themselves and their conscience with that realization. typical realization of psychopaths who are trying to justify their crime is well if he's stupid enough to let us take advantage of him then he deserves it which is a pretty weak defense but on the other side Esau is careless now Isaiah tries to reverse this theft and on his deathbed he's preparing to bless his sons which was a custom as well to provide this final blessing of the father and he wants to return to Esau much of his birthright. And Rachel and Jacob get wind of this and uh they conspire once again and and even more deeply and more consciously. It's really a nasty story. And uh J Isaac sends Esau off to hunt. He says, "I'm going to die, son, and I would like you to find some get a deer and and make me some of the venison that you're so good at providing, and I'd appreciate that." So, Esau goes off the hunt, and then Jacob dresses up like him because his dad's old and blind and hypothetically easy fooled. He puts on some skins that make him hairy like his brother and he mimics Esau's voice and he tells his father that he's returned from the hunt and Isaac checks him out and he's fooled by the by the uh by this treachery and he delivers the blessing that's meant for Esau to Jacob which means that Jacob for the second time conspires with his mother to steal to steal from the firstborn what's rightfully his. So this makes Jacob a usurper, right? A usurper is someone who conspires to take a position of authority that they don't deserve. In the Lion King, Scar is a usurper, right? And the the Luciferian spirit itself classically speaking is a usurper because for example in the Garden of Eden when the serpent tempts Eve in the guise of the snake he does that as Lucifer. So the story goes to to overturn the divine order. And he tells human beings that they can become as gods if they take the right to determine the moral order to themselves. But it's at a deeper level, it's a reflection of what came to be recognized as the rebellion of the Luciferian intellect against the pre-established moral order. It's something like that. And that's echoed in the story of Jacob. So as a usurper, he's unbeknownst to himself, you might say, falling under the sway of this Luciferian impulse to overthrow. And it's in keeping with his personality as tent dweller and scholar because that's uh development of the intellect and the intellect itself has the temptation constant temptation to be the usurper. That's the luciferian in intellect that flies in the dreadfully wrong direction. And so Jacob and Esau have a fractious relationship. And it's characterized by a very intense pattern of betrayal. Dante, who wrote Dante's Inferno, is one of the figures of the classic age, the Renaissance, let's say, classic European age, who who really formulated much of the modern vision of hell. There's not a lot of description of hell in the biblical stories. Almost none. virtually none. Virtually no reference to Satan. They're oblique references. They have to be pieced together. Our vision of hell comes primarily from legend, the legends that aggregated around the Bible and the Judeo-Christian tradition and also the accounts of Dante and of Milton. That's where we got a lot of our images of Satan and hell and Satan and Lucifer as rulers of hell. Dante, this is something very interesting to know about Dante's Inferno. It's very useful to know practically. You know, couples are often loathed to engage in conflict. Now, there's a reason for this. Or maybe you're in low to engage in conflict with people that you love or even people that you don't like, you know, but it's more relevant, I would say, in the context of relationships that are intimate. Imagine that you have a pattern of disagreement with your wife that results in sequential frustrations of the same type. Now, she could easily have precisely the same problem with you. This is not a sex-typed problem in any way. It's a situation that characterizes any intimate relationship. You know that there's problems that arise in your marriage and some of them have a the characteristic of repetition which means they're more serious problems. And often couples either just bicker stupidly about those problems or they ignore them and let them continue. And there's a reason for that. The reason is and everyone knows this. You know, if you start to investigate what appears to be a trivial disagreement, generally what happens is tempers start to rise and more profound accusations start to be thrown back and forth and people become defensive and then then spirits that aren't helpful enter the dialogue. And one spirit would be the spirit of power that wishes to dominate. So that one partner in the dispute or the other strives for victory instead of clarity and peace. You want to win the argument. So you're right. And that's a big problem because you're probably not right cuz who the hell are you? And second, well, what about your wife? She's going to be there tomorrow and like next week if you're lucky and next year. And so if you're continually defeating her because you're right, then she's going to be continually defeated and that's going to be your partner. And that's unless you want to be a tyrant with a slave. That's a pretty stupid strategy. And so you want to Well, but you can see the temptation, right? Because people like to be right and if you're right then you don't have to change and that's a relief. Plus you have the moral upper hand and it's the impetus is on her to make the adjustments. That's a good deal for you even though it's not. It's a terrible deal for you if you make the case that you're right and you're not. That's a really bad deal and it's a bad deal for her too. Now, what happens if you start to investigate a problem, you know, and and instead of trying to win or being tempted to avoid, you actually start to listen to each other and you dig into it. And this is hard. You want it you you're going to have to want peace. You have to want to solve the problem. What happens is you go deeper into it, right? And that's the same thing as a journey into Dante's Inferno. So see in in the story of the inferno there's levels of hell right and the outer levels are sort of just common misery you know that's where you are if you're just your day-to-day idiot self you know it's like you're not suffering too badly but it's not paradise by any stretch of the imagination then you imagine that there are layers of foolish hell that you could make manifest more deeper and deeper more and more profoundly that are associated ated with more and more suffering. And well, that's what Dante investigates, right? This spiraling down to the bottom of things, right? How do things go wrong most fundamentally? Now, Dante put betrayers at the bottom level of hell. And why? Well, one of the practical reasons is that if you imagine that part of the reason you're having a fight with your wife or or she with you is that neither of you really trust the opposite sex, right? And that's pretty much the norm. And no wonder, right? Because the relationships between human beings are very fractious and difficult. And you know, maybe your wife didn't have great role model in her father or maybe in her father and her grandfather and maybe her father and her grandfather and her brothers and all the men she went out with before you. And so she's kind of hurt because of that. And maybe, you know, you were under the thumb of your mother or your aunt or your previous girlfriend and you've got a lot of builtup resentment about women. And if you dig into all that as it makes its horrible horned head manifest in your relationship, you often find that at the bottom is some form of betrayal. And betrayal is the most profound sin in some ways because the community is based on trust, right? Like really what you have in your marriage is trust fundamentally. That's the bedrock of the relationship. I mean the vow of fidelity for example, you're going to forego all others is a it's a covenant of trust, right? And the reason betrayal is such a terrible sin is because betrayal violates trust. And that means it undermines the most fundamental element of any relationship, intimate or otherwise, and thus threatens community itself. And so Dante was very wise in placing the betrayers right next to Satan. And so then if you dig into that, well, first of all, your person that you're fighting with, they're not going to want to admit to these betrayals, especially if they played a part in them like Esau did, let's say, with Jacob. Lots of times when you're betrayed, you're willfully blind. You set yourself up. And so it's bloody embarrassing to go over it again. And even if mostly you were, you know, tortured at the hands of someone else, you probably did a few stupid things along the way to increase the probability. And that's not exactly fun territory to go back over. And so you have to do this terrible expedition and excavation if you want to get to the bottom of I would say any problem. And a lot of what you do in psychotherapy is exactly that. You know, people come to you as a therapist and they say, "Well, I'm miserable." And you say something like, "Well, what do you mean miserable?" And that's a long accounting because it's a mystery. Like if you're suffering, well, what does that mean? Like are you suffering all the time? Is it minute by minute? How profound is it? Are you suicidal because of it? Is it because you're physically ill? Or is there something psychologically wrong or did you make some immediate decisions? Or are you are you sick physically? Because that can certainly be the case. or is this something that's multigenerational and you're just playing it out or is it situ who knows? That's a lot of trouble. And then that's just to sort of specify the nature of the suffering. Is it better sometimes and worse at other times? If it's worse sometimes, what makes it worse? If it's better sometimes, why is it better? I mean, that's months worth of discussion, especially if you're talking to someone who no one has ever listened to. And that's a lot of people. and especially about deeply private matters. And that's there in your marriage. You can be 100% sure of that. And it's of course most likely that the things that are most troublesome are the things that are most likely to be buried the most the deepest and to take the most excavation to unearth and the most pain to straighten out. Plus, it's not an easy thing to straighten out. Like if your person or you has been betrayed, which is highly probable, what the hell are you supposed to do about that? You know, because the betrayal could be real. And then, well, if you're betrayed, should you trust? Well, that's kind of naive, isn't it? Once burnt, twice shy. But then if you don't trust, what are you? Bitter, resentful, and afraid. Now, you're not going to have any relationships anymore. You're going to contaminate the relationships you do have with your distrust. because that seems like a bad idea. But it's not like that's easy to solve. It's really Here's one solution. Wise people trust because they're courageous, right? This is a good thing to know. Well, because you get cynics, say, and a cynic is an improvement over a naive child. Like a cynic is a naive child who's been burnt and noticed. And the cynic says, "Well, all hell can break loose, and so why should I trust?" And that is an improvement over naivity because the naive person trusts because they don't know any better. Whereas the cynic thinks, well, I've been burnt and the world is on fire in many ways and so I should be careful. But then if you're cynical, well, what's the problem? Well, you're cynical. That's a problem, right? Well, it's a weight, man. To be cynical, that's a weight. This distrust that you have on your face, you know, this attitude you bring to bear on everyone. It's like, are you a snake? because I've met some people before that seemed pretty good. But when I got to know them, all hell broke loose. And that's a hell of a barrier to put between you and someone that you're just meeting, right? Why the hell should they struggle to overcome your distrust, warranted though it may be? And so what do you do? You trust because you're courageous. This is what you have to do in your marriage continually, right? You have to say, "Look, you're probably no better than me, and we're going to hurt each other, but we're not going to close off, and we're not going to stop extending our hand to each other. And we're going to hope that in consequence of that trust, which is now a form of courage, we're going to shed our pathological pasts and build ourselves into the people who could be deserving of that trust." But thing is for that to happen you got to extend the hand of trust to begin with, right? And so that's definitely a form of both wisdom and courage. And it's the right alternative to cynicism. It's like, yeah, I've been burnt, but that doesn't mean that I'm I've allowed my faith to be destroyed, right? And you might think, well, that's stupidity. It's like it's no that's you have to make your way forward in the world despite your ignorance and despite the pain of existence and being willing to do that in the best possible manner can't be defined as naive or or foolish because the alternative is hell. So that's not a good alternative. And so it's definitely the case, you know, if if you can develop an attitude of wise trust, you still want to have your eyes open. You don't want to be a pushover. You're not supposed to be a fool, but you also open the door to an endless number of opportunities if you put forward a hand of trust. Part of the reason your society is so rich, this is actually the definition of rich genuinely, is because the default trade in the United States is honest. It's staggering. Like you guys take that for granted. It's like you go into a store and you assume that what you're getting is the genuine article and then it'll actually work and that it won't be poison, that it's not counterfeit or otherwise fake. And the person that you give the money to assumes that that's actually money and not a check that'll bounce or some sort of credit card fraud. And you both walk away better because one of you has the money and the other has the thing they want. and what a deal. And you think there's nothing to that. It's like there's a lot to that, man. That happens very few places. And all the places it doesn't happen are poor and they'll never get out of it, right? And so when the default trade is based on trust, man, you are so rich and that's so delicate and so unlikely. You know, you should be always regarding that as the complete bloody miracle that it is because we're all full of snakes. And the fact that your society is so well constituted that the default interaction between trading strangers is trust, that's like a complete and utter miracle and there's a reason for it. So without that trust, it's that trust and the ethos that justifies it. That's what makes the desert bloom, you know. So that's an ethical endeavor. It's the ethical endeavor upon which true wealth is predicated. Has nothing to do with in some fundamental sense with the bountiful provision of mother nature. It's an ethos. It's just same within your marriage. If you both trust each other and you give each other reason for trust, man, you've got a treasure, right? And you can imagine even that it is the treasure that allows you to have a treasure because one of the things if you want to be poor, here's a good thing to do. Just fight with your wife all the time instead of working. And then you'll be poor plus miserable, you know, and resentful, that's another kind of poverty. You know, if you can establish a harmonious relationship that's genuine, then that frees you up to well do all the other things that you might do if you weren't torturing yourself and her with endless fractious idiot disputes. And so you can see right there that there's a direct relationship between a relationship predicated on honesty and the provision of what you need to make your way through life. And that's also true at the broader social level. This is not what Jacob does. He's a crook and his mother is an enabler and they conspire. And so it's this underground evil that deprivives Esau of his rightful place and confuses and manipulates Isaac on his deathbed. Not a pretty story. Esau learns what happens now. He's stuck with it because Isaiah is a man of his word and he's delivered the wrong blessing. But say Levie, the words, the faithful words have been uttered. And you might think, well, that's preposterous because why maintain a contract written with a liar. And the ethos of that time was you stick to your bloody word. And you know, there's something to be said for that. And you could argue about the details, but the gen the central idea is a good one. If the father has his statement, then he's going to live up to it. And so that's what Isaiah does. And Esau is ooked out of his inheritance. And that does not make him happy as you might expect. And so he decides that he's going to once Isaiah dies, he's going to kill his brother. And so that's kind of like the ultimate extent of sibling rivalry, right? It's a story very similar to the story of Cain and Abel, right? Where the brothers engage in murderous conflict. And of course, in the story of Cain and Abel, Abel dies. He's killed. And Cain suffers the consequence of that dreadful murder. And that pattern, that pattern, that dynamic between Cain and Abel, that dynamic of misery. Cain makes improper sacrifices. He doesn't offer his best. So, he fails. And that's part of the pathway to his intense misery, which he nurses. And then, as a consequence of that nursing, that conspiracy with with evil itself, he decides he's going to kill Abel. Even though Abel is who he wants to be and who he most admires and so he does that and that's very deep story. The victim victimizer narrative that pervades our culture is a variant of the Cain and Abel story. Marxism is a variant of pathological variant of the Cain and Abel story. Everyone who succeeds is a thief. It's like really just imagine what happens to a society that defines success as theft, right? How are you going to be successful if you define success as theft? That's a communist insistence. Property is theft. Great. Success is theft. Well, you see all the accusations leveled at the Jewish community. Now, that's the emergence of that pathological hatred for success. It's a Jews are always canaries in the coal mine. It's really not good. Perennial successful minority. you hate them in good conscience, all the people who are successful are next. So that's a th that's something to watch out for. It is not a good sign. And that's everywhere on your university campuses at the moment. It's really not good. So why? Because envy is a deadly sin. Really. And what does that mean? It means if you do enough of it, you die and in some bloody miserable manner. And so that's a good definition of sin, right? Misaligned aim. Okay. So now Jacob gets wind of Esau's plot and he thinks, I got I better get the hell out of here. Now it's worthwhile giving Jacob some credit at this time. He's not very old. And so he's young and foolish. And so you want to have some sympathy for him because you were young and foolish and maybe now you're old and foolish and you probably have your, you know, your temperamental proclivities in the false and sinful direction. And it's it's useful to know that that's how the story is set up. You know that Jacob starts his journey as a very flawed person. Okay, why is that good? Because you're very flawed. And so if there's hope for Jacob, given his terrible beginning and his conniving behavior, well, maybe there's hope for you. And so what does Jacob do when he leaves? Okay. Well, now you could imagine he leaves. Well, that means he leaves home. So that's a maturation decision. even though he has to run off. Lots of times when people leave home, you know, when they're teenagers, older teenagers, they kind of leave in a flurry of trouble, maybe with a fight. It's like, "It's time I get the hell out of here." Well, what's the fight about? The two heavy tyrannical hand of the father, the too much enabling on the part of the mother, the idiot sins of the juvenile who's resentful, whatever. Away he goes. That's what happens to Jacob and that's what happens to most of us. you know, the parting the parting that constitutes the first step into maturity doesn't have to be smooth and often isn't. And so, Jacob, anyways, Jacob at least leaves and obviously not under the best circumstances, but we could imagine that maybe he's relieved to get away from the what the machinations of his manipulative mother because we don't even know from the story how much of this decision was Jacob's and how much of it was Rachel's. And you never know that in a family, you know, and so children can be enticed into sin by their parents and they can go along with it or refuse it too. And so it's very comp in any case, Jacob leaves. And so that's a good thing. He takes a step out into the world and then he makes a decision and this is it's a key decision and it's really worth understanding. He decides he's going to aim up. Okay, so what does that mean? Well, let's make it very concrete and practical and and and what would you say? Immediately recognizable and believable. We all know people who have led a rather proflegate life. This is likely true of virtually everyone sitting in this audience who have decided at different times in their life that they're going to stop doing the stupid things that they're doing and they're going to try to to what to aim up. Okay, so that seems like something that you can do, right? You can not be doing things correctly and you can be suffering the consequences of that along with the people around you, but then you can decide that that's not maybe that's not optimal. Something like that. Maybe there's something wrong with the way you're conducting yourself. That's what happens when people try to escape from an addiction or a gambling habit or something like that. It's like maybe I'm doing something wrong here. Okay, two decisions. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. That's kind of like a confession. And maybe I could try to be better. Okay. So, what is it? What happens when you decide to try to be better? Well, you're you're what would you say? You're taking taking a step forward in faith. Well, what's the faith? Well, it's kind of twofold. The first bit of faith is there's something that's better. And that's not so self-evident. You know, lots of people who have a criminal bent, let's say, or manipulative bent, they justify that by saying, "Well, there's no real evil or good. You know, it's just a matter of power. It's a matter of opinion. It's all morally relative. And if you object to what I'm doing when I steal your car, for example, it's like, well, property is theft, buddy. So, get over it, you know, and you you made your money by exploiting and you got your car, and I'm just returning the favor, let's say. So when you decide that you're going to aim up, you've agreed provisionally that there's a moral framework to the world and that you at least in some way are not on the right side of the equation, [snorts] right? That maybe that happens when you're addicted to alcohol and you hit rock bottom and you think, "Oh my god, you know, enough of this. I got to do something different. I got to change. And so there's the second part of the faith. It's like not only now do you understand that there's an up something better than what you're doing, something less hellish than what you're doing, but you've also decided to risk the proposition that you are the sort of person that could in principle aim up. Right? So it's a two-fold faith. And why faith? Well, you don't have much evidence that that's the sort of person you are cuz you wouldn't be in the predicament you're in if that was the case and you didn't really believe in up to begin with because uh why the hell were you aiming down? And so it's quite a radical transformation. Now the the question that arises like what exactly is the nature of this transformation? Well, I've tried to take this apart as a clinician. Let's imagine that you tried to decided to aim up. you're going to rescue yourself from the pit you dug in so far as you're capable of doing that. Well, how might you do that? Because you're blind and you're corrupt. And so, what the hell do you know even about what up is, right? So, that's a big problem. You're all morally confused. How do you take the first step? Well, generally, there's a prayer that I've formulated that sort of goes along with this. This is a good prayer. If you want a prayer that'll be answered, this is a good one. What stupid thing am I doing or did do that increased the probability that this hellish situation is upon me? What stupid thing that did I do that I might be willing to try not to do again? It's a very particular kind of prayer, right? Because it's first of all the admission that maybe you had something to do with it. And second the admission that well you might have had something to do with it but maybe you're not going to be willing to change that but maybe there's some little bloody thing you could do that you would do. It's a useful technique by the way if you're having an argument with your wife or your husband. This actually works very well. It's like maybe it's an intractable argument you know and temperature tempers are flaring. You could return to your corners and you could sit on the edge of your bed, let's say, and you could aim heavenward and you could say to yourself, "I know she's wrong, like she always is. I know I'm right, or at least 95% right, but maybe despite my perfection, there's something I did that increased the probability of this miserable situation." You know, some little thing obviously. And then if you allow the revelation to occur, some little memory will come up about some bloody stupid thing that you managed maybe a long time ago that set the stage for this particular bit of trouble. And then you can go tell your wife that and maybe she can do the same. And then you're a lot happier with each other because neither of you are right and both of you contributed and you both admitted it. and maybe there's something you could do about it. And so if you want to solve a hard problem, it's a good idea to start with yourself. And even if you still think you're 95% right, well, at least you've opened the door that she could be 5% right. And that's better than you were, it's better positioning than you had before you tried the exercise. And you know, there's something to be to know about that, too. Painful as it is to admit that you're wrong. And so you might say, well, why should I even bother? It's like, well, maybe you wouldn't have to be wrong again. That's a good deal. So, this is one of the advantages to the notion of soulsearching, abiding by conscience, and let's say confession. It's like, why look at your own sins? Well, if they're producing misery, unnecessary misery, it's a good definition of sin. And you could figure out how you're contributing to that. painful as that realization is is likely to be, then maybe you could stop and you wouldn't have to replicate the errors in the future and that particular slice of hell wouldn't make its appearance anymore. And that is what happens if you go down Dante's Inferno to the bottom when you're having a conflict with your wife or someone that you love and you get to the bottom of things and you sort it out, right? You change and they change and hopefully you you both change in a manner that makes that pathway not necessary anymore. And that's a form of up and that's a good deal. And so if you extend your contemplation of that, you might come to understand that the more soulsearching you do and the more you can attend to your own sins, let's say, the more you admit, that's humility, to where you might have gone wrong, the higher the probability that you could set things right. And maybe that payoff would be worth the trouble of having to do that painful investigation, right? And so that's worth knowing. It's like, well, why should I admit that I'm wrong? It isn't exactly the admission, although that's necessary. It's more like, God, if I could discover where I was wrong, oh well, then maybe I could get back on the right road. This is exactly the opposite, by the way, of what the Pharaoh does when Moses comes to tell them tyrant that he's to let the enslaved people of Israel go to worship him in the desert. Right? That's the words God uses for Moses. The tyrant instead of noting his error, which in this case would be the vicious enslavement of the of the Jews, a particularly ungrateful thing to do because they were great benefactors of Egypt, not so in times not so much previous. He just doubles down, right? And that is the alternative in an argument. The alternative to trying to figure out why you're the idiot is doubling down and insisting that you're right. Well, so what happens to the pharaoh when he insists that he's right? Well, he gets a plague. It's like, well, do you understand that? It's like, what happens to you if you're wrong and you insist that you're right? Well, if being wrong made you suffer and now you're even insisting more directly that you were right, a plague is going to visit you. And theoretically, you could learn from that. But you won't if you're a tyrant. And then you'll double down even harder and use whatever magic tricks are at your disposal to show how you're right, which is what the Pharaoh does. And another plague will come. And if that doesn't teach you, then a worse plague will come. And there's no end to that. Well, there's an end in the Egyptian case. The destruction of the future. That's the firstborn. That's the last plague. The destruction not only of the present, but the future. So that's not very much fun. And then the utter destructive chaos of the Red Sea, which is a flood of destructive blood. And that's the final destination for the tyranny that won't admit to its own error. So unless you want to end up there, which seems like a bad plan, then maybe what you want to do is figure out what you're contributing to the situation. on the off chance that you could stop being a delusional tyrant and in the hopes that you could learn to negotiate in this dialogical manner and move yourself upward. Okay, so now we have Jacob. He leaves home and he decides that it dawns on him, you might say, that he wasn't that good a guy and that Esau kind of has a point in his murderous rage. And maybe he's away from his mother. And so he wakes up a little bit and he thinks like you think when you make a change, you think maybe something new could be born in me. Maybe I could be a different person. And so how is that signified in the text? He builds an altar to God. Now I I don't want to explain that completely yet, but I can make some hints in that direction. He makes a sacrifice. Okay, so imagine that you're trying to improve. What do you sacrifice? Some stupid thing you value that's impeding your progress. So every bit of progress is going to be marked by a sacrifice, right? When you become an adult, you put away childish things. You grow up. What does it mean to grow up? It means to sacrifice your immaturity, to sacrifice your self-centeredness in this attempt to aim upward. And Jacob at least he marks the decision with this building of an altar. Well, that was a good thing for those archaic people to do because they had a they had a ritual to signify the willingness to sacrifice properly and transform. We don't really have that. And that's a really bad thing. You know, I don't know, the Catholics have it a bit because you can go to church and confess and then at least you've told someone what you've done wrong and informed them of your intent to improve. And you kind of made it real that way. But if you don't have anyone to tell and you can barely tell yourself, it's not that easy to formulate a conviction that's going to transform you. We're very bad at that in our society. But you know, people do decide to aim upward. Okay. So, so what do you do when you aim upward? Blind as you might be. Well, practically [snorts] speaking, we might say, I don't think that anyone is so lost ever that it's that they're unable to see that some of the things they're doing are wrong. Right? You can imagine someone's moral compass being dreadfully a skew, but the probability that they're aware of their most egregious current errors is still quite high. And then you might also hope, and I think this is true, unless you're totally lost. And you know, the Judeo-Christian promise is that you're never that lost, right? There's hope for everyone, no matter what dire straits they might be in, even if they're in hell itself, so to speak, like Jonah was when he refused the commandment of God to say what he knew to be true. You start perhaps by deciding not to do some of the things that you are doing that you know to be wrong. So that first bit of upward aim is something like a prohibition, right? It it's a thou shalt not like a commandment. All the commandments, virtually all the commandments are things you should not do. That's sort of the first step in moral striving. You know, maybe you realize that, I don't know, all that methampetamine, it's just not doing you any good. And so, what's the rule? Well, you're going to try to stop or maybe you lie or maybe you cheat or God only knows. Whatever your temptation is, there's lots of them. It's like you can see that some of them are are what? They're stopping your progress forward. They're hurting the people around you. Now, maybe you're willing to put up with that because you were in the past, but like I said, now and then people come to a realization. It's like maybe I could change and they they make that decision and that's a step towards up. And that's an interesting thing because it implies that there is an up. Okay. So now what happens to Jacob? Well, he has this dream and everyone knows about this dream. He dreams of Jacob's ladder and he sees this staircase. I imagine it as a spiral, a staircase that spirals up and disappears into the highest conceivable place. and that the angels of the Lord descend on that to deliver messages to earth and to bring messages back up the hierarchy to God. And so what kind of vision is that? Well, it's an entrancing vision, which is why we remember it thousands of years later, but it's also an ancient vision. It's the same vision as Mount Si or Mount Horeb. It's the same vision as the pyramid. Um, it's it's it's the same vision as the tree the tree eggdrasil, the tree of the ancient Scandinavians that the Scandinavian shaman climbed to to commune with the spirits of their ancestors when they entered the divine realm. It's the same as the stock in this story of Jack and the Beantock where Jack can rise out of the earthly realm into the along the axis that unites heaven and earth to find the treasure that lurks at the highest possible place. This is a very old idea. it's tens of thousands of years old that there's a structure that unites the profane realm and the divine realm and that there is a the possibility of communication between those realms if the doorway is open and thing is Jacob opened the door because he decided that he was going to aim up. Okay, so now we got to think about that aim up. Okay, like I said that implies that there's an up. All right. So, imagine now, imagine someone on a moral journey upward and the first thing they do is they stop doing some of the stupid things that they're doing, right? They discipline themselves to some degree. And what's the consequence of that? Well, there the the scales fall a bit from their eyes, right? So, once you stop blinding yourself, you can see better. And so, what does that mean? Well, it means that your moral compass is set more accurately and maybe you can see more subtle examples of the foolish things that you're doing that were that you were blind to to begin with. And so your ability to see up improves and so maybe you're smart and you make the sacrifices that are attendant on that new realization. And what happens is you can see even a little better. Now, the story of Jacob and the story of Abraham are both stories of that sort. So, what happens to Abraham once he leaves the safety of his father's tent and goes out into the world for his adventure is that he faces an everexpanding field of opportunities, right? And each of which is marked by a sacrifice that is more costly. Okay? So, so what does that mean? Well, that's your life. If you're if you're aiming up is that as you mature and improve and your vision clears, the opportunities that avail themselves to you will grow. But as they grow, more will be required from you because as you have more at hand, any foolishness that you bring on for the trip is going to trip you up. You know, if you have hardly any responsibility, you can be fairly irresponsible. But if you have weighty and deep responsibilities, you better bloody well get your act together because the price you pay for the expanded opportunity is the necessity for improved for more wisdom, right? Improved vision on the moral dimension. And so Abraham, that's Abraham decides to follow that pathway. And while God offers him a remarkable deal, he God offers him says if you take that path, the path of expanding opportunity and expanding sacrifice at each opportune moment, then you'll be a blessing to yourself. So that's a good deal. And your reputation will grow and validly. And so that's a good deal. And you'll do that in a way that will enable you to establish something permanent, a dynasty. In Abraham's case, he becomes the fathers of na father of nations, which is quite the accomplishment. And uh you'll do it in a way that makes you a benefit to everyone else. So that's a pretty good deal. That's four great things stacked on each other associated with the call to adventure. And that's what Jacob follows as well. He goes off to have a to have a to have his life. He goes off and he lives with his uncle who's kind of a schemer, which is pretty much exactly what Jacob deserves. And he apprentices himself to his uncle for seven years to gain the hand of his his eventual wife. And then his uncle substitutes the other daughter on the bridal night. And Jacob has to work for another seven years to get the woman that he loves. And what does that mean? Well, it means that when you move from a crooked juvenile existence into adulthood, you probably have to apprentice yourself. And maybe it's just the fate you set up for yourself to encounter the kind of schemer who's going to pull the same stunts on you that you pulled. And maybe if that happens to you, you'll learn. And maybe not. But Jacob learns. And then he decides to go back to his homeland and reestablish peace with his brother. And on the banks of the river, before he makes the crossing into his brother's land, he wrestles with an angel. He wrestles with God. He's making another moral decision. He's going to go confront the catastrophe of his past. Should he do that? Should he not do that? Should he turn back? Is it dangerous? What should he do? That's the wrestling. Well, what does it mean to wrestle with God in that way? It's like, well, that's what you do when you have a difficult moral decision to make. It's like, is it this pathway or is it this pathway? That's why you meet the devil at the crossroads. It's like up or not? And even more, what's even more difficult? Which way is up? That's hard when the moral decision is complex. And so, you hope your vision is clear. One of the reasons that you want to practice your upward aim is because there will come a time in your life many times where if you've corrupted your vision, you will make the wrong decision and that will bring hell down on you and everyone around you and often at the worst possible time. And so one of the reasons that you're enjoined, let's say, to practice virtue with every glance and every utterance is so that when the time comes, which it will, you'll be able to rely on yourself, as you would rely on someone trustworthy, knowing them to be trustworthy, to make an impossible decision in the midst of utter chaos. And if you don't have that ability, well, it's the Red Sea for you. And that's not that's not something you would hope for if you had any sense. Okay. So now Jacob aims upward. Now the question is what do we make of the notion of upward aim? And so here's a way of thinking about what Jacob's latter means. This is a very cool thing to understand. So imagine that as you make the sequential transformations in your life that make you a better person, what beckons to you as an upward opportunity changes, right? So what you might regard as up when you're a teenager will move you ahead if you pursue it. But if you make that movement, something new will make itself manifest to you as up. And then if you realize that and make the sacrifices and make the changes necessary, your vision will change and your circumstance will change and something new will manifest itself as the next upward aim. Okay. So now you can see that as part of that ladder and so then the question is well what's at the top of that or what's behind that? Because here's a way of thinking about it. You can imagine that the upward calling makes itself manifest to you in different ways at different stages of your life, but it's still the same thing that's calling you upward. That upward calling also makes itself manifest in different ways to different people. Like up for you and up for you now may look even opposite sometimes. Like maybe you would have to get your temper under control and maybe you would have to have a temper now and then, right? Because you're too much of a pushover and so you could an outside observer might think, well, the up for both of you is opposite and therefore can't be a reflection of the same thing, right? That looks paradoxical. But that has more to do with the particulars of your circumstance than anything paradoxical about up. How is God defined in the story of Jacob and Esau? God is defined as the spirit that lurks behind all upward aim. And that is such a cool thing to understand like this is a definition. You see, it's a definition and it's useful for modern. It's not the only definition of God by any stretch in the biblical stories. There's many definitions. They're in principle. They all unite because it's a monotheistic document. And so God makes himself manifest in many ways. In the story of Noah, for example, God is defined as the spirit that calls to the wise to prepare when trouble is brewing. Right? And you might say, well, do you believe in God? It's like, well, if you're a wise person and you have an intuition that trouble is brewing and you're inclined as a consequence of that intuition to prepare, then you believe. The preparation is the belief. And if you don't, well then you just believe in what? The insignificance of your own moral intuition. That's a form of belief, too. Or maybe belief in the pathway of irresponsibility. That's not my problem. It's like, well, that's a form of belief, too. Jacob construs God in this vision. And as I said, this is a vision that partakes of a very ancient pattern as the spirit that lurks at the apex, the invisible apex, the transcendent apex of all upward aims. And so that's a very cool thing to understand. So because it means that you can establish a relationship with that very rapidly and very realistically. And the way you do that is you think, okay, [snorts] my life isn't everything it could be. I'm not in paradise, let's say. and some of that's on me. Okay, I would like to understand which parts of that are on me and I would like to rectify that. [snorts] Now, that's a decision, right? And as I said already, that's a decision that's based on faith in your ability to transform, but more profoundly in the idea that there is an up in comparison to your pathway. And so in all likelihood if you ask that question in the proper spirit that's the spirit of all due humility in the absence of pride and the desire for power some step forward will make itself manifest to you. And then your belief in that your manifestation of faith is to take that step and then the consequence is perhaps the next step will make itself manifest to you next. Now there's a pattern to that too. So Christ says something brilliant. Surprise surprise and in it's called the Matthew principle. Economists know about this. To those who have everything more will be given. From those who have from those who have nothing, everything will be taken. So what does that mean? Well, it means that progress and failure aren't linear. It means they have a pattern like this. Progress, failure, right? And that falling off the cliff, that's the endless descent into hell. What does that pattern indicate? Once you start improving, the process accelerates. And once you start failing, the process accelerates. Right? And so the upside of that, the downside of that pretty clear, right? Each mistake you make takes you closer to the brink. Everyone knows that. The upside is it doesn't really matter where you start. You can start as damaged as Jacob. Let's say the first step you take forward increases the probability not only that the next step will make itself manifest, but that it will be a bigger step and you'll be able to take it. And then the thing that calls you up will recede as you progress towards it and manifest itself in different ways. But that's a beckoning forward. And Jacob's ladder is a vision of that beckoning forward up to the highest possible. What would you say? It's calling upon you to be an avatar of the highest possible spirit. That's that upward aim is the voice of the image of God in which you're made attempting to make itself manifest within you. That's what it is. And that's there for you. That's there for you. And so, and so what does it mean to aim up? Well, it's a great relief for you to begin with. And everyone around you that loves you is going to be pretty damn happy if that's what you decide to do. Even if you failed in the past, anyone who loves you is going to be thrilled that you've made that decision. And if you stick to it religiously, then your reputation will grow. And if you do that properly, then maybe you could establish something permanent. And if you do that well, maybe you do that in a way that's a benefit to everyone else. And that would be a good deal. And there's no difference between that and wrestling with God. And there's no difference between that and establishing a covenant with the Lord. And these are matters of definition. I'm not trying to call on you to believe some superstitious archaic clap trap. These are descriptions of the pathway that opens. And it's the nature of the pathways that open up in front of us. They're always the same. And one leads up and the other leads down. And we all know that. And the upward path is a it has a pattern and the pattern is part of what's explicated in these ancient texts. And of of course it is because wouldn't you expect the wisdom of ages to specify the nature of the true pathway forward? It's like what do you think your ancestors were doing? Like nothing. They built all the they built everything you have around you. So, so this is a very optimistic story. You know, it it requires you to be on your knees, which is [snorts] the appropriate place for you to be unless you're in the kingdom of heaven to begin with, so that you can develop the courage to face your own sins, right? your own inadequacies and the mistakes that you've made to determine to attempt to rectify them in the hope that you could rectify them and that you would improve and that you would establish harmony within your soul and within your marriage and within your family and within your community, within your state and within your nation and all of that under God. And that's all part of that upward spiraling process. That's Jacob's ladder. And that's all part of what I was telling my kids when I asked them which direction is up. It's like is there up or not? Is there down? Do you suffer stupidly? Well, if the answer to that is yes, then the evidence that there's down is right at hand in the form of your own misery. And you can deny that if you want, but The cost of that denial is the multiplication of the misery and its transmission to everyone around you. And so it's a fool's journey. And the alternative is to take the great risk of up. And it's not a risk because the biggest risk is to not do it by an immense margin. They're not even similar in principle. There's no risk in aiming up unless you think it's risky to dispense with your idiocy. And maybe it is in the shortest possible term depending on how much you are in love with it, which might be a lot. But why would you not do that, right? Well, to shake your fist at God and spite the world. It's well, that's the Luciferian attitude, man. and you you play that game, maybe you end up the biggest devil in hell, but that makes you the worst possible failure. And that's not a great pattern for your life. Not not unless that's what you're aiming for, man. And if you are, you're going to regret it when you get there. That's for sure. And so my kids, they knew which way up was. And we all know which way up is, you know, and there's a promise in the biblical corpus is that if you commit yourself to the upward aim, you participate in the process that transforms possibility into the kingdom of God. That is a good deal. That is a good deal. And so and so that's that's right there in front of you right in the form of your own willingness to admit to your inadequacy and and determine to improve. And it doesn't matter how manipulative and crooked you are to begin with. You can aim up and then the spirit of the highest upward aim will glimmer to you and invite you forward. And you can take that responsibility and that's a good deal because that's a meaningful adventure. And that's a good deal. And if you do that, well then maybe you could set yourself straight. And that'd be great because God only knows who you could be if you were everything you could be. And God only knows how much less the world is if you're not that. It's a lot less, maybe fatally less. Right? And that's why is that true? Well, are you made in the image of God? Are you sovereign citizens? Are you the creatures whose essential nature is of such value that even the state itself has to maintain a respectful distance from that so that it can maintain even itself? Well, that's what your country that's the vision your whole country is predicated on. Was it true? Well, how do you know? Find out. How do you find? You knock and the door opens, right? You ask and you receive and you seek and you'll find. And you do that on your knees hoping for the revelation of the appropriate upward aim. Thank you very much. >> [applause and cheering] >> And apparently apparently that's even possible in Las Vegas. All right, I'm going to invite Michaela out here to ask some of the questions that you've kindly provided. You nailed it, Dad. >> Thank you, dear. >> You need some water? >> Yes. [laughter] Okay, we have 22 minutes, so we should get through one and a half questions. Are you ready? Coming from a soontobe dad, how do you raise a mindful child amid extreme wokeism and toxic gender ideologies that surround all the major academic institutions? What was the first part? Coming from a >> soon to be dad. >> Soon to be dad. >> Congratulations. >> Okay. Well, I'll start that with some observations that would be useful for a soontobe dad. So your child comes into the world with an offer for you and you need to know what this offer is because a child is a lot of responsibility and that's a great thing if you're wise but it can seem a burden and that's unwise. [snorts] You need to see the opportunity in that instead of the burden. There's something you need to understand. And this is a lovely thing to understand. All of the relationships that we have in our life are corrupted. Our marriages, our our love affairs, our friendships, they're corrupted by the fact that the people that we're interacting with have their burden of sins and their blindnesses. You're going to contend with that in every relationship. The the impurity of the preconditions for the relationship. The doubt even that your partner, your wife, or your husband might have that they can be loved, that they're deserving of love, that you're deserving of love. They'll put up barriers to that and so will you. None of that's true with with a newborn child. That child wants one thing. This is a great thing to understand. If you have the wisdom to see it and accept it, that child wants nothing more than to have the best possible relationship with you that you've ever had with anyone in your entire life. Right? And so unless you want to be alone and miserable, that's the best offer anyone can make to you. And Christ points out in the gospels that there's a particularly vicious form of hellfire that's reserved for people who pervert the souls of children. And that's a very wise observation. And your obligation and responsibility and privilege as a parent is to have that divine offering at hand and then to maintain it. And you can do that. And the benefits of that are so overwhelming that any of the trouble that goes along with children is nothing in comparison to that benefit. And so when I was a junior professor at Harvard in the 90s, I had my little kids, Michaela and Julian. And I had a I really liked my job. It was a great job. It was a great privilege to be there. I really liked my students. I liked my research. It was a good deal, you know, but it was still my experience that there was nothing better than spending time with my kids. They they were the best possible company. Now, there were some preconditions for that. You had to take care of them and you couldn't let them run around like tiny screeching demons, but it's not that hard to do that. And their company was ridiculously rewarding because they were so engaged in everything, which children are. And that's what they offer you is that re-engagement, that spontaneous re-engagement with life. You [snorts] can see that through their eyes. And so if you're an an adult and you're blinded and cynical like you will be, you can see the world through fresh eyes when you have children. And that's a fine deal, man. if you're wise enough to see that. And then they're also ridiculously fun, you know, because kids love to play. And play is the highest form of human endeavor. That's what you want to do with your wife. You want to play house with your wife. Play dress up with your wife. That's what you were practicing when you were smarter when you were four, right? And you could do that again. And so that's a good thing to know. The opposite of tyranny is play. That's a good thing to know. So I would say to this would be father, it's like understand what you're being given. You have the opportunity to have the best relationship you've ever had with anyone in your whole life. And that's such a good deal. And so, and if you do that, well, then you won't have to worry so much about the woke mob because you'll have established the kind of walled garden in your household that helps your children learn to handle the serpents of the world, right? And that's a good thing to know, too, is that you see, you don't want to protect them. You you want to encourage them in their faith and their skill [snorts] such that they're able to deal with what's difficult and challenging and even potentially corrupting and maintain themselves. And you do that at least in part by establishing that deep relationship with them so that there's trust there. And then well then the propagandists will bounce off them because they look for just like cult leaders everywhere. They look for the confused and the lost and they offer them the false the false bread of the criminal, the enticement and the attention that the lost are craving. And if you attend to your children gratefully and and fully, your home will be a fortress and built on a rock. And then the woke mob will do nothing but educate them, right, in the ways not to behave in the world, right? Look, there was woke nonsense to some degree in some of the schools that we sent you. >> Definitely. >> Yeah. So, so what do you think it was that made you resistant to that? >> When I was in grade two, uh, dad, this was like maybe even earlier. I think it was grade two though. Dad told both my brother and I, don't listen to stupid rules. That was the rule he left out of 12 rules for life. Don't listen to stupid rules. And so I think I just learned that from a young age. And I was just skeptical about everything. Like too many things, but everything. So anybody any anytime anybody said anything to me, I was like, is that true? >> Yeah. Well, we we did the rule that Michaela is alluding to had another component which I don't know if you remember this explicitly but I told both kids this is probably when you were older if you think a rule is stupid then you don't have to follow it but there's problems with that right it's like well who are you to say that a world a rule is stupid how do you tell the stupid rules from the necessary rules how do you know you're not just being a foolish troublemaker these are hard questions so a side rule with that was if you break a rule at school and there's a consequence, you have to accept the consequence, right? Even if it's a stupid rule. Like you have to part of the and this is also one of the things that stops you from just casually breaking rules is like if it's a stupid rule, you're not to follow it. But that doesn't mean you get away scot-free, you know, and and that's a good thing to know, too, because, you know, maybe there's stupid rules at your work, like DEI rules, let's say, and you're afraid to break them and because there'll be a consequence. It's like, well, if you can accept the consequence, then you can break the rule. And you know, if the rule, if breaking the rule guards your soul, which is exactly what happens if you break a stupid rule, then that's a good trade. And so, so it was that. Is there anything else you remember that was relevant to to that? Because you went to university and it was a very woke university that you went to and you that didn't really have that didn't take with you at all. >> Oh, no. That didn't take it all. Uh I went to Concordia. It was an art school in uh Quebec in in Canada and it was extremely woke. There was a parade at one point and I looked outside like my dorm window and everybody was naked. It was just a naked parade and I was there people riding bikes naked. I was like h [laughter] this was 2012 so it was a while ago. Uh why did that not take? I was just super disagreeable. Like what I did was I read all the books I could that were pro- feminism and all the books I could that were anti-feminism and then decided which one was more logical at that point. >> Right. Right. Right. Well, so you know that's the other thing with regards to your kids is that you want to you want to educate them as broadly as you can manage. It's really good thing to start familiarizing them with books early so that they start carrying them around when they're like 18 months old. get that proto literacy going. And then you want to read to them at the edge of their ability to comprehend and also things that are challenging and get them to think the ideas through, you know, and we had lots of opportunity for discussion around our dinner table and breakfast table. And that's a good thing to know, too. If you know, lots of people don't have set meal times anymore. And that's a big mistake because a lot of socialization is socialization that might make children resistant to idiot propaganda that emerges in the give and take around stable and regular meal times. And so that was a pleasure too in our household. So, all right, next question. >> Okay, this is this is a sad one. Um, but I think it it's a good followup to the first question. Um, I'm childless in my 50s and I grieve daily for the abortions I had in my youth. How do I move forward? My deep regret consumes me. That's a rough one. All right. Well, I guess the first thing I would say is that your unnecessary misery isn't improving the world. And so you're not obliged to heap any more burning coals of fire on your head than are sufficient for you to learn. I would say, what would I say? I would say that you should go Yeah, I have a website self-authoring.com. You should go there and you should do all three exercises. There's one that helps you write an autobiography. That's the past authoring. You should do that specifically. If you only did one of the three, that's the one you should do. And you should write down absolutely everything you remember about those events and what surrounds them so that you know exactly what you did. And that will be unpleasant. But you're already stuck with unpleasant cuz you need to know the whole story. You're obviously guilty about this and perhaps guilty in part because you're alone. But you won't be able to forgive yourself or even understand what you did until you investigate what you did thoroughly. Now you did what you did when you were young. You've got decades since then hypothetically that have allowed you to derive some wisdom. So, you should be able to go back into your past with the wisdom you have now and to lay out the story in detail and to grapple with the mistakes that your younger self made with some what would you say? Some forgiving wisdom of maturity, right? I mean, when I think of things I did when I was 14, they're regrettable things. some of the things I think about. But then I remember too, while I was 14, you know, and there's a certain mercy in judgment that's appropriate when you look back at yourself. You need to detail out what situational factors influenced your decision, what ideological factors influenced your decision. You need to make a case against yourself and you need to make a case for yourself like a profound case. And then and you need to do that exhaustively and that will help you get past it. that there's very reliable clinical evidence suggesting that such exploration. It's exploration into the heart of darkness, right? What's the theme? Confront what terrifies you voluntarily. And that includes your past. And so if it's plaguing you and won't let you go, it means that you ate something then that you have not digested and you have to reconsider it until you've scoured every corner. And you could do that in the belief that if you do it, you might find your pathway to being free. That's the promise, right, of of a full confession. You will learn too what you need to do in the present and in the future to atone. And I I believe it's true that if you embark on that mission with faith that you can reconcile yourself to to the misdeeds of your life. And we hope that's true. Everyone hopes that's true for everyone because everyone makes mistakes, you know. And if the cost of a mistake was eternal damnation for every mistake, it would be a pretty brutal world. And so, can you recover from even sins you regard as egregious? I suppose it depends on the depth of your confession. And that is the case. So, try that. Try that. It may take you a year. Write every day and and write badly, you know, just get it down. everything you remember, you can sort it out later. Just get it down and and try giving yourself the benefit of the doubt. You know, one of the wonderful things about the West is that when you're accused of a crime, you're entitled to the presumption of innocence. And that's a good presumption to bring to bear on yourself when you're accusing yourself of, you know, unforgivable crimes. You want to make a case for yourself. And that doesn't mean to let yourself off the hook because that doesn't help. But this is good advice for anybody who's got a burden on their conscience. It's like there's a monster chasing you as you turn around and face it and you look at every bit of it. Every bit of it. You detail it all out. And that courage makes you grow and might transform that hideous beast that's pursuing you into an ally. Right? So good luck to you. that that past authoring has been very good for trauma too, for letting the trauma go, processing it properly. >> Yeah, >> it's been Yeah, it's useful. >> Yeah. Well, anything that's any old memory that still plagues you is it's not being understood. You you haven't done enough exploration. That's why it keeps knocking like that. that's true neurologically is that that memory signifies a danger to you, a clear and present danger because you did something that hurt you and you don't know why. And so it won't let you go. It it's your conscience in some ways. It won't let you go until you understand what you did wrong. Well, why? So you don't do it again. Right? The purpose of your memory is to remember where you've been. You remember where you fell off the path so that you don't fall off the path in the future. That's the purpose of memory. And so if something's plaguing you, it's because there's a part of you, a deep part that is telling you you don't understand you could make the same mistake again. And no one will let themsel go if they understand that they're still at risk. So any emotion, any memory you have that's older than about 18 months, if it's still hot, then you are avoiding something you cannot avoid. So that's a useful thing to know. And it's horrible to delve into that, but it's worse not to. So if you do it voluntarily, it will that's your best bet. By far your best bet. Are you going to EDC rave later after this show? >> No. No. I'm it's it's I actually like going to concerts like that, outdoor concerts, but that's become quite difficult because people know me and um that's usually very good. Um whether that would be very good at an electronic music festival is a different question, but but it might be. So, uh, I I can't go to radically public events like that, but I'm also going up to see my father tomorrow morning in northern Alberta. So, that's that's the priority for the next 10 days. >> Albertan says, >> "Yeah, loud. Uh, how can someone who wants to believe in God but is deeply cynical about religion overcome their skepticism by listening to this lecture? Maybe maybe that's been answered. What do you think? >> Well, here here's one way of looking at it. Um, you know, I left the church when I was 13. Why? Well, I thought that I think I probably thought that I knew more than the church probably. I mean that the there was a bunch of honest reasons and some dishonest reasons. The dishonest reason was likely that I just didn't want to go. Like I'd sat in school a lot. Church was a lot like school. I didn't want to go to school again on Sunday. And so I had these moral reasons why I didn't want to go. But mostly it was that I didn't want to go. I knew there was something wrong about that cuz my mother really wanted me to go with her and I really should have gone with her. Um what were the honest reasons? Honest. Well, I had taken confirmation classes and the priest preacher I was a pro Protestant church. He didn't know how to reconcile the theory of evolution with the biblical accounts. And I guess I thought he should have been able to. Was kind of a presumptuous desire cuz that's quite difficult. And because he couldn't do that, I thought that it was acceptable for me to be skeptical and and leave. And then, you know, there's, oh, there was the other arguments about, well, religious hypocrites. It's like, all those Christians, they go to church one hour a week and the rest of the time they're just as bad as everyone else. It's like later I realized that at least they were trying to aim up an hour a week, which is like way more than never, like way more. And so I would say like if you're skeptical, well, the first question is like, well, who the hell are you? You know, and the next question is, well, maybe the church is corrupt. It's like well you know compared to you okay and then even if it is corrupt more than you which is very unlikely by the way um maybe you could go do something about it right so if you went to the church and you were a better person than the church you could be the sort of shining example that would improve the church and that'd be a great deal for the church so you could think about that and if that doesn't happen it's maybe you're not shining quite as bright as you thought you were, you know. And then you might also ask yourself, well, are you the sort of person that nothing is above? And if you're that sort of person, God help you. Because the last person you ever want to meet or be is the person who has nothing above them. That's like the definition of the ultimate tyrant because if there's nothing above you, buddy, you think you're at the top and that is a very, very dangerous thing to think. So, you know, the other thing I guess I would add to that, I've been going to church a lot more often since I recovered from being so ill. I was pretty antsy in religious ceremonies before that. It's probably a hangover from these childhood experiences. But when I recovered, I was in a lot of pain for a long time, like a lot. And when I recovered, then I would have these times without pain. And that was such a bloody miracle. I remember being in pharmacy one of the first times this happened after about 3 years of unremitting pain. I was standing in this pharmacy waiting for the pharmacist to fill a prescription. They were making a bunch of mistakes and that would have just annoyed me three years previously. But I thought I could just stand in this pharmacy without pain for like a year and that'd be just fine. And then one of the things I found in the religious ceremonies after that was that just the fact that it was peaceful was like such a relief, you know, and so I wasn't in a hurry. I wasn't impatient and a time just to take a break and just to feel at home I suppose and to aim up it's like that was that was good that's a good thing and then I also understood you know that you can't pursue virtue by yourself you have to do it communally and to do it communally you have to make a sacrifice and some of that sacrifice is time and that's the time you go to church and some of that sacrifice is well Maybe you don't agree with everything. It's like, well, no one agrees with everything, but we still have to live together. So, you know, you got to make your gesture towards communal being. And you make your gesture towards communal being in a church. That's always been the case. And so, well, those that's some reasons to not let your cynicism triumph. and [snorts] you got a better idea. You know, that's the other thing is like what there's no upward aim. That's that's not a good theory. It's a very destructive idea. Very very destructive idea. And so better to try to understand to assume that if you have a beef with the traditions of the past, it's pretty reasonable possibility that you just don't understand what the hell you're doing. Right. Or was everyone who lived before you wrong and you were right? Yeah. I don't think so. You'd last about 3 seconds as a shepherd in the Middle East 2,000 years ago. We are way over time. [sighs] We've got to play by the rules when they're not stupid. Thank you very much everybody for coming tonight. It was a pleasure talking to you all. Thank you, Mick. Well, thank you everyone. It was a pleasure. Was a pleasure being here. Yeah. Good night.